Shownotes
What if the key to building a wildly successful business wasn’t grinding harder—but healing deeper? In this powerful and refreshingly honest conversation, Dr. Kevin Mays and I unpack how our childhood programming, emotional triggers, and outdated leadership models silently shape the way we show up at work, at home, and in the world.
We dive into:
- The myth of free choice and how subconscious patterns drive your decisions
- The hidden cost of the hero/victim cycle in relationships and leadership
- Why scaling your business without inner growth will sabotage you
- How cultivating a personal vision can radically change your life and team culture
- Real talk about the messy, beautiful work of self-awareness and conscious leadership
Whether you're leading a team or just leading your life, this episode will challenge the way you grow—and inspire you to do it more soulfully. Plus, you’ll get access to Kevin’s free Vision Mastery Playbook to start creating your own leadership North Star.
📥 Grab it here: vision.maysleadership.com
Let’s evolve together. 💫
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Grab a free Client Acquisition Audit and I’ll show you exactly where your message, offer, and CTA are leaking conversions—and the 3 fixes to turn your podcast/Substack into a client pipeline.
👉 Book here: https://coachsalchemist.com
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Transcripts
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: What if the secret to building a wildly profitable, profitable business wasn't grinding harder but healing deeper in this episode? We're diving into the growth strategies, high impact leaders are using to unlock their team's hidden potential
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: drive, purpose-fueled performance and create deeply bonded cultures that thrive. If you're ready to lead with vision, ignite next level success, and finally stop carrying it all alone. This conversation will change the way you grow.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: hi and welcome to the uworld order, showcase podcast where we feature life, health, and transformational coaches stepping up to be the change they seek in the world. I'm, your host, Jill Hart, the coaches alchemist on a mission to help coaches and entrepreneurs amplify their voice, monetize their mission and get visible leveraging podcasts and substack. Today we are chatting with Kevin Mays
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: growing up in Michigan during the GM. Bankruptcy shaped Dr. Kevin May's mission to help businesses not just survive, but truly thrive
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: as an executive coach author and speaker with decades of experience. Kevin has guided hundreds of leaders to build high-performing teams and workplaces where growth is a natural result of engaged, purpose-driven people. His deep expertise in leadership, strategy and team dynamics makes him a trusted partner for companies ready to set a new standard of success. His latest book, which is coming out soon is titled. Lead yourself first.st
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Welcome to the show, Kevin. It's great to have you here with us.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Yes, absolutely. Thank you. I am excited and fired up to be here. It's so good to see you, and and to know that we have some things in common that I think we can dive into out of the gate.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, yeah, I I didn't actually put the 2 together until you got on here. I was like.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Oh, we have
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: a super big connection there. So we'll let the audience know about that in just a minute. But 1st the big question, are you ready.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: I'm ready.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Okay, what's the most significant thing in your opinion, as individuals, we can do to make an impact on how the world is going.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: I had this dilemma in my head when I was coming of age, is the most effective way to have an impact from within the system or out of the system. And what I've realized along the way that the biggest impact
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: a human is ever gonna have starts with leading themselves first.st
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Yes, you can focus on the external world. But I see so many people who focus on the external world and have so little awareness of the impact they're truly having. They don't understand the shadow their personality is creating. They don't understand the wake they're creating.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: And for me, the most powerful thing a leader or anyone can do is start with self leadership. Understand the patterns that drive your thinking, because those patterns then drive how you feel and those patterns drive, how you behave, and that behavior gets results in your life. I see way. Too many people who don't want the result they want in their life, and they end up blaming.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: They blame the tax man. They blame the boss, they blame the spouse, they blame the dog, they blame the neighbor, everybody but themselves. And when I talk about leading yourself 1st for me, it's about that
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: fierce ownership of all the results in your life. That's the starting point.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, choices always have consequences.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And you you can make any choice you want.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But you're going to get the consequence that comes with it.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and sometimes the consequence isn't what you think it's going to be doesn't matter. Still, the consequence.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Still the consequence. The hard thing is, I see so many folks think they're making free choice, and the reality is, I think it's more like a fish in a fish bowl, believes he has free reign to swim anywhere he wants, but doesn't realize he's in this little fishbowl.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: and most of us are so pre-programmed with all of these ideas and beliefs that we inherited, and we adopted in the 1st 3 or 5 years of our life, that this patterning has been set. And now we make decisions based within the confines of that patterning and don't even realize we're doing it. We're just replicating the same way of thinking over and over and over in true.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: true, free choice, requires a fierce ability to interrupt that pattern, and sometimes it's very uncomfortable, because you have to look at yourself.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: That's really for me the power of leading yourself first.st
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, I. And and and often people hang on to patterns that they've
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: as we get older. And there's a large older population out there who have these these ideas about the way things should be. But we are in this time period where things are happening so fast and shifting. And we're still trying to hang on to these these thought patterns that served us in like the sixties and seventies which in the twenties
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: 2020 s. It's like you're gonna get run over and left behind. You are irrelevant.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Well, you know, I think it's that's so right on, and my experience is the the beliefs that we hold most dear and most precious is our self concept, our ego identity. Right? So I learned. And this is for me the phenomenal
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: piece of science. When we're 3 years old our brains are forming a million neural connections a second, we are so influenced by the environment around us, and we form our self concepts. So I learned to be the the helper, the helpful one, the pleaser, the one who doesn't make waves
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: absolutely brilliant. It serves my survival when I'm 3 years old, but now, when I'm 53 years old, and I'm still playing the same pattern out. And I'm not creating accountability in my organization because I don't want to upset people. I'm getting in my own way.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: or I'm not having that real conversation with my spouse. Instead, I'm just saying, Yeah, everything's fine, and there's no depth. There's no vulnerability, there's no connection. I'm the one who's driving the wedge in the relationship. But I projected onto the other person. I think they're the issue.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It always comes back to us.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It does. And it
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: personal relationships, business relationships, relationships with your children. It's just like relationships between countries. When you've got a country that's like confused about its identity
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and what it stands for, and not just the Us. Like a lot of countries, are experiencing this.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: And.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It just like, no wonder there's chaos.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: And the hard thing is we're so hardwired for authority. Humans need it. Our survival depends on it. And it's just so interesting to think in this larger, like political arena, how we project our authority onto who's ever in charge, our authority issues or authority just our matrix. You know, the way we learn to be with
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: our original authority, figure that we needed to do in our 3 year old mind to get survival needs met. Now we start doing that well, that becomes the model, the framework for how we interact with coaches, the teachers, the policemen, and ultimately politicians and leaders and the boss at work. We project all that on to these individuals, and in ways it just completely clouds any sort of
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: true decision, making ability, any true clarity, any true back to free choice. People don't make free choice. They make emotional choice, and that is a handcuff that binds us.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah. And they're they're easily swayed with emotions.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: we all are as humans. Right? We make emotionally driven decisions and we're easily manipulated it's hard how do you suspend and step out of that. That's the question. And for me, that's been my quest. That's my lifelong quest. How do you step out of that ingrained patterning?
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: I see it the most in myself when I am frustrated or irritated because somebody else is being a knucklehead, and I know that I'm right.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: That's when I realized. It's not them.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: It's me. It's me. It's a hundred percent. I'm the one who's irritated. They're just living their life trying to do their thing. I'm irritated. Okay, wake up.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: How do I want to manage? And what's the source of irritation? I think, doing that deep dive, that root cause analysis to understand what's really going on, how my beliefs have been infringed upon.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: because I'm the important one. And now you're demonstrating, not listening to me so suddenly, I become triggered and behave differently and become more of a persecutor. And now I'm attacking you. But I think you're the problem.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Hmm!
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: It's a crazy cycle, or I've seen one cycle. I just talked with somebody yesterday about this hero victim cycle that somebody was going through. They're the hero at 1 point. They always are the Savior, and then they fall into the victim and fall back to the hero and back to the victim, hero and victim. It's like this roller coaster. They're on exhausting. And it's not intentional. It's not conscious. It's only because of a lack of self-awareness.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And that hero victim mentality. Once you understand, some of these paradigms
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: exist, and you start looking at your own life and relationships, it can change things so dramatically for you. Just the awareness piece. And I know, for example, in my own life, my husband. He came back.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: He was a truck driver for a million years, and he he retired. And so he's home all the time now, and I started learning about. You know I can either be a victim and hope for a Savior, or I can be my own damn hero, and, you know, recognize when I'm falling into these victim patterns, and it's the everyday little things like, you know, chores around the house.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Dishwasher dishwasher dish.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: In the sink things that trigger me that he just like doesn't think.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But I can either be the victim or I can be
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: an adult and say, Hey, this, this is bothering me, and I'm feeling like a victim here, and we've gotten to the point where we joke about it like
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: he.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: He uses all the ice, and we don't have an ice Maker in our freezer, so he's getting, or he's doing something. Oh, it's grating cheese.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: He also uses all the cheese in the house, so he's grating cheese. I taught him how to grade the cheese. I always have to grate the cheese, and I'm like, yes, you do, honey, and you always have to fill the ice trays.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Let you have the victim card for that.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: It's so funny. I love this story. When we were when our children were young.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: My wife came home with a newborn, and she stayed at home with the 2 kids, so she had a toddler and a newborn, and I would come home from work, and I remember specifically the toys all over the floor, and
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: I had gotten used to
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: not having toys all over the floor certain lifestyle right now I come home, and there's stuff everywhere. And I'm thinking, let's approach this as adults, honey. If you could. Please be so kind before I come home. Just pick to have the toys picked up
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: brilliant, not asking too much. Right? I come home. What happens? I come home one day, and the toys are all over the floor. What do I know my wife is saying about me in that moment?
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Don't care what you have to say, no respect, total disregard for my opinion, my perspective. I'm unimportant, and in that moment, right? Something gets triggered in my head, and I start to get short and condescending and irritated.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: My wife is at home with a newborn and a toddler, and I'm over here worried about the toys, and it's just so.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Offer to go to work for you the next day, and let you try to deal with the toddler in an infant.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: So the brilliant thing is, I learned to deal with it myself. Right? Okay, fine. I'm gonna come home and I'm not gonna make a deal about it. If there's toys on the floor I can be empowered. I just clean them up.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: but I was still triggered, and so now I'm I'm cleaning them up with an attitude, and I'm slamming the toys around. And my wife says, Honey, what's the problem? What's wrong? Nothing. We are such.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: We're such fools in our own minds. Right? We have these monkey minds that that we want to. We want to be valid. We want to be important. We want to be recognized, we can become so sensitized to the, to believing we're not. We personalize the world around us. My wife is not making a statement about me by not cleaning up the toys she's just trying to manage.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: and I come in and project all my stuff all over her, and then
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: I'm the victim. She won't clean up, and then I become the persecutor. I become pissed off and angry and frustrated, and start to take it out on her, which, of course, then she reacts.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: And I say, see here you go! Here you go again, doing it again, like, Oh, my goodness! You can't change it to people.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You can't change other people, and it's really hard sometimes to put yourself in their position, especially around things like, you know. You see a newborn baby, and you think, oh, they just sleep all the time.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: No, they don't, and they weigh a ton.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: He tried carrying around a sack of flour 30 pound sack of flour, for you know, all day.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and then you have like an orangutan that's running around wild in your house. You got the 30 pound bag of flour, and you're trying to like deal with everything with one hand.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I mean, not all kids are like that, but.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: I've had 5 of them. I I have an idea of what I'm talking about.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Well, but in my mind as a as a leader in a business, hey? That's your job.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Just do your job.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: That's what so many leaders say to just do your job. Why do I have to, Babysit? Why do I have to recognize every little thing you do. Just do your job.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: and it never works. People want to be validated, they want to be recognized. They want to be part of something larger. But it's the ingrained autopilot patterning that we adopt in the 1st 3 years of our life the software that's now driving us. I love it. I have this dos programming
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: that's now driving me in a in a windows world.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: How do we upgrade the software.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah. And and how do we have compassion for each other? So that we understand what what the limitations are that these people are up against when we're trying to ask them to do a job that we think should be done a certain way. I'm the worst at this, like I'll ask my husband to do something, and I'll have something in my mind about the way I want it to be when he's done.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and it's the hardest thing for me to just like.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Just let him go. It'll be fine. He'll do it fine.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Can I.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Want this result.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and it's never if I want the result that I want, I need to just do the damn thing myself.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Well, and that's the brilliant thing that so many people fall into. Fine. I'll just do it myself. And then here we are, the victim again, and I see so many leaders. Nobody wants to work as hard as me. I'll just do it myself. And then oh, they're the one carrying the burden. They're the. They're the martyr who has to do everything themselves and guess what they're teaching their organization
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: that they have. They
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: fine. You're gonna do it. Just go ahead and do it, and I'll just sit around. Wait for you to tell me what to do.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: And I've seen I've seen high level organizations like where the founder is bringing in 4 Star generals to to be part of the team, and the 4 Star generals are saying, Why am I here. If you're just going to tell me what to do. You're not asking for my expertise. I don't belong here. I'm not a fit. And leaving the organization. It's ineffective. Those patterns are ineffective.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They are definitely ineffective. You have back to the choices again. You can either have the make, the decision that you're going to allow the people that
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: you bring in or that are in your periphery make decisions, the best decisions that they can make.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And you know they're in your organization or they're in your family, like your wife is making the best decision she could make at the time
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: she decided to care for one of those children rather than leave them there crying so she could pick up the toys.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I mean. Those were her options.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Yeah, how we make decisions. And again, I go back to how do we cut through that patterning to really see ourselves? Most? You know. We spend our lives being educated
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: to see the world around us, and to master and manipulate that not to become aware. And I see so many leaders who are good at producing a task or getting things done. So they get elevated into leadership, and it's a totally different skill set that they often have no idea how to do so. They go around commanding, commanding people, telling people what to do.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: And it's just not effective. I mean, so it's interesting. It's like.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: I say, the patterns are ineffective.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: half of them half of them are highly effective. Sometimes it works, I mean the thing, the person you became beautiful, but the secret to your success. The thing that got you here is not the thing that's gonna get you where you want to go. It's going to keep you here.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I. I like companies that
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: they they do like to promote from within. But I like companies that really reward people for being specialists in the thing that they're doing, you know, if you have somebody that's really good at a job.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: don't promote them.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Pay them more.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Yes.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Them, maybe help, but not like a whole.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Don't overwhelm them. Let them be part of something where they can be significant and feel like they're getting validated for being like they're really best at that.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's much cheaper than keeping on replacing people.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Oh, big door! There we go!
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: In.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Door. It's so. It's interesting in our culture how we recognize
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: good performers. And we do that through promotion into a different skill set. It's just an interesting
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: system that we've developed for ourselves, that somehow.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Don't think it serves us.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Well, and I've seen folks who are really good managers who aren't good on the shop floor doing the work. But, man, they know how to bring out the best in people and direct people and align people and motivate people. But if they're on the they're the ones doing the task, they're not going to be effective at it, but because they're not the ones effective at it. They never make it to the manager position because you have to go through that
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: to get there 2 different 2 totally different skill sets. And somehow in our culture we combine them as one track that it definitely can underserve us, that's for sure.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: So for me, I love it. I go back to the 1 million dollar question, you know, and I spent a lot of time in monasteries and in meditation retreat centers trying to figure this out. How do we peel back
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: those layers? How do we cut through that narrative? If there's the way I see it. We have this, these ingrained patterns, this I call it the robot self. That's just when you sit down to eat. You don't think about what fork, what hand you're going to use to pick up your fork, you automatically do it. And we have these self concepts that are that deeply ingrained. But they're changeable.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: And then so we have that kind of robot self who just moves through the world a certain way. And then we have the caveman self. When things don't go our way, the limbic system takes over, and this reactivity comes out, and suddenly we get short or condescending or shut down or uproarious. Whatever the thing is, neither one of those are the best version of herself. They're adopted patterns.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: So if we're going to cut through that?
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Well, 1st of all, how do you cut through that? And secondly, what do you do instead.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Exactly.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Yeah, I'm curious what your what your thoughts are like. What do you do instead? How do you decide how to behave or what to do if you're not gonna let the old patterns
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: dictate how you show up.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: What have you found that works.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Vision. In my, in my opinion, it starts with a decision that I'm going to change how I react to these things. And then you start
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: looking for help, and you know, maybe people come to you. Corporations would come to you.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And individuals might come to you if they're looking at up leveling their game in the business world. And it's
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: it's taking personal responsibility for your thoughts and actions and words, and and mostly it starts with your thoughts
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: how you think about things and how you approach things, not from a judgmental state. It's like you don't beat yourself up for having these thoughts, but you know the 1st thing is recognizing that these thoughts exist in your head.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: To me.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Yeah, right? I think it's so dead on. I think of the objective observer learning how to cultivate that objective observer of yourself, like you're sitting in a movie theater watching the movie of your life and realizing that it's not you, it's just patterns that you've adopted and being able to
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: detach from it, and watch and see the cadence of the patterns over and over and over, and again recognize that it all, as you said, starts with your thinking. I love it in Christianity. What do they say? It all starts with the word. The 1st teaching of the Buddha was with our thoughts. We make the world and the thoughts that are most precious to us that we're most attached to self concept. There's our ego identity.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: And so it's so easy to fall down that slope of attachment. And then that's really where I think the work is like. Oh, the attachment! How do we let go of the attachment of needing to be right, needing to be funny, needing to be important, needing to be the hard worker, because when I was a kid, if I was a hard worker. Dad liked that. And so I got my attention needs met
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: that laid down a billion neural connections in my brain. Now, I've got marching orders for the rest of my life, and I'm always the last one there and the 1st one in, and I'm the one who's going to take it on. But guess what I'm creating this culture of disengagement through my autopilot patterning
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: for me. The key is, if you're not going to let that autopilot drive you, and you're going to stay out of the caveman zone. Manage that kind of have that emotional awareness. It goes back to what you're saying. That decision making, or I think about having a clear vision of who you want to be in aligning your decisions with that, aligning your decisions with your vision of who you truly want to be and recognize that.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: And we get so caught up right. I mean, we have one shot at it. You get 100 year shot 100 year gift.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: and I find people spend so much time struggling and suffering in life.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: and it's of their own making.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: We suffer because of our attachments, of how our expectations, and how we want things to be, and how we think things should be, and how others should be.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Just thinking about our thoughts.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Yes.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Judging our thoughts. That's.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: That's.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Not every thought that comes into your head deserves your attention. It can just come in and go out.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You don't have to even acknowledge it.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Yes.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Like.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: because we have thoughts all day long. I mean, things are always happening in there, and you're always talking to yourself one way or another, and
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: you know sometimes you can just say, not available right now for that.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Well, and one thing I found myself doing is when I observe
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: I start to recognize these old patterns right? I learned to behave in the world a certain way that when I did that it made me okay. And when I don't do that thing, I start to fall into self-doubt. My ghosts come forth and I start to. I feel like I'm I'm failing somehow, or I'm a failure. I don't measure up, and the
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: what I've learned to do is just notice. Oh, here it is again. Oh, here's my old friend, here's that ghost, and I think of it as a ghost, because it's just fleeting. It's not real, it's an apparition in my mind.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Oh, here it is again! Oh, there's that self doubt! Oh, here I am beating myself up here I am feeling like I'm not smart enough like I'm an idiot. Oh, okay. And with that it kind of that awareness pops the bubble for me right, just being able to be aware and not take it so seriously.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: It's just a thought I've created. It's my programming. And guess what the programming has some viruses. There it is. I don't have to lose my cool about it.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: The old model is, though, what happens? You get upset over being upset, and you kick yourself over kicking yourself over kicking yourself, and this is downward spiral of depression and anxiety and shame and guilt, and all of this stuff, and it's just so. We have so much more ability, I think, to manage than we know.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: If you learn some core, just core skill sets for me like so much of it is learning how to be present.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: how to be there, and then how to align your thinking and your behavior with that vision, who you want to be
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: sounds easy.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It does sound easy, and it really, honestly, it is easy, but it's also helpful. If you have others around you who are kind of walking that path, or have walked that path that can.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Okay.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And help you. Just like, just today, I have an an example of this. I
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: tend to spiral off on things that are happening in the world, and it it
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: it's not good for me. It.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Me in a in a place that I don't like to be in, and she just said, You know, Jill, there's only things
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I think you could just think about things that you have control over and everything else is just gonna be what it's gonna be. It's just like, Oh, so thank you. Thank you for that. For that reason.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Focus on what you can control, and
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: why spin your wheels on stuff you can't control or even influence, but you can expand your circle of influence. If you focus on it. So many people I find well, the seeds they plant in their own mind. I used to love to listen to Npr. And after a while I started to realize every 20 min on Npr. They have the death count.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: How many people died in what war they? Oh, 27 people died in Israel, and 16 people died in a bomb here, and a wildfire here. So I'm continually putting this into my psyche. Guess what with your thoughts, you create the world. Now I'm living in an anxious world.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: What if I just turn that off? I love it when you look at national politics to how inflamed people get when you turn off your TV. I live in an amazing neighborhood where people look out for each other when everybody watches their TV and they get inflamed and passion. We have people who won't talk to each other when you turn that off and just have real conversations with real people. It's phenomenal how much, how transformative it can be.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Hey? That's substack for you.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: That's fantastic. That's fantastic.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: People turned off the TV, and you could just have civilized conversations about stuff that's going on without having to be like totally entrenched in my way, is the only way, because that doesn't work in the world.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Fear me, yeah, it's really fear based. And it, yeah.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: But it creates for people. You know that fear is a powerful motivator, and then it creates a sense of us
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: and a sense of belonging, and it really evokes some of those ancient human needs and desires, because it's truly a survival need to fit into a tribe. And the worst thing you could do eons ago was not be
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: executed by your tribe. But to be
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: communicated yeah. Exiled where you're sure to die because you must be with other people to survive. And now there's these strong tribes and identities, and I love it. In Northern Michigan. There's a blessing of the bikes that just happened where all the bikers show up from all over the place, from all over the country. 10,000 motorcycles. And it's amazing to see everybody has the same uniform, anything black
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: and anything with 2 wheels, and you show up, and you're immediately part of the part of the tribe, and it's just phenomenal to see that sense of belonging and kinship that people who would otherwise maybe have nothing in common. But they show up now, and they have everything in common. They're part of the Brotherhood, the sisterhood
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: we all want that belonging. And the crazy thing is, I go all the way back when we're 3 years old, and we're figuring out how to get that belonging.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: and that gets wired into us. So much of it is often based on like our birth order.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Oldest children behave different than youngest children.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: we find our belonging comes differently, and so I see a lot of leaders who are oldest children, who are the the family hero. Everything relies on them, and then what happens? Everything has to go through them.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: and they become the choke point or the bottleneck in their organization, and they're the ones who work the hardest and the most responsible and the diligent. Others might start to feel micromanaged.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Hmm!
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: I work with youngest children in organizations. And they're creative. And they're fun. And they're pleasing. But they're not the ones who really create solid accountability in their organization.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: They create places. People want to be.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: but the results maybe, aren't as efficient as they could be. And again it goes back to noticing you didn't come into the world with that kind of patterning you adopted, that you developed that. And now here it is decades later, playing itself out.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: And so one thing I want to just mention. You know I created. That's why I spent a lot of time creating this this vision mastery playbook.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: So I want to put it out there, free download for people get it, think about. And it's really, specifically for your leadership vision to think, who do you want to be as a leader? When I say, leader, I'm not talking about a position in an organization, talking about how you lead yourself, how you lead your life. How do you influence others to have a guide to be able to help reset, to say, if I'm not going to be in these autopilot patterns, and I'm not going to be in this reactive Caveman State.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: What is going to be my north star
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: to actually write that down? You know, it's interesting, Joe. I've seen almost every organization, of course, you know, has a clear.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: a a clear vision.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Statement.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Yeah, vision statement teams will have it.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: The majority of leaders, majority of humans, don't
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: they just react to the thing that happens around them with no guiding principle, no North star. What if you create a north star? What would the impact be? Who could you be in this lifetime? And I've seen folks who've done it
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: radically transform how they show up in their life. It's just phenomenal and warms my heart.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I love it. When people make the decision to be something.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's it's really about that. It's what's your identity and just embrace it. The world needs everybody.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's we're we're all intricately integral of efforts not coming out today related. And we need.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: we need each other.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: We need each other to be the best.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: We are
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: not the best, we are told we should be just showing up who with who you are, and owning that, but knowing who it is.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: it as opposed to being pushed into, or allowing ourselves to be pushed into a box
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: that doesn't really feel that great for us, that we do it.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Screens feel like we have to.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Well, and that's so much of the programming, though. Right? I mean, think about big boys. Don't cry. I'll give you something to cry about. And if boys at a young age and many, you know, many people have experienced this. Boys, you know you don't show emotion. So boys grow up to be men who don't know how to be aware of emotion
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: because they learn to be stoic.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Women, on the other hand, have a different, a different model they're cut from.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Women are allowed to show the vulnerability. But a strong woman is an angry woman. Is is a is a bitch right? Oh, you don't want to be that. So you learn. And I worked with one woman powerful, CEO. She would get so angry. She said she would start crying.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: There's the old programming playing itself out.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: And then, when those moments you look, you know she's afraid of looking weak or vulnerable.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: and people would misinterpret. She's crying, she said. No, she's mad as nails, and that's how it comes out.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: But it's just so interesting we we fit into this world of who we should be. And now, how do we shed that? How do you get? Let go of that, and become the person you were born to be?
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Because most people, when you ask them. They're just gonna replicate the pattern because that's comfortable.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Sure, I'm just going to be the family. Be more responsible. Be more diligent, more hardworking, because that's what feels good, because that's what got me the affirmation, and sometimes the real Us. We have to go through some discomfort to find it. I say, if you're going to cross the river you're going to get wet.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Or sure.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: So here's the getting wet right? Life is messy. Life is messy welcome to the mess. Step into the mess, and that's the the way to really kind of find on this adventure
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: to find your true self right. So many folks I find, as they age over the course of their life. What happens? They get more entrenched in those those patterns and those beliefs. And then you see that cantankerous old sob, who is stuck and always unhappy.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: always cantankerous, always unhappy. Nothing's ever right, nothing's ever good enough. Everybody else is the problem. And then you find people. So what happens? Those same patterns we adopted, get tighter and tighter and tighter and constrain us over time. Our worldview gets smaller and smaller.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: But then you find people
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: who learn to have a different relationship with those core drives. Right as opposed to attachment, they learn to become
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: detached, they learn to let go. And you find people who have this ability to age into wisdom.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: To me that's leading yourself 1st is to understand how to gain wisdom within yourself, and how to let go of expectation. Let go of your attachments, and to truly be in the unknown in this moment.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: It's powerful, and to be able to kind of be squeamish in your own skin sometimes right and be okay with that
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: is that that's the way life is.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And it makes aging better.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: This point in my life. I I would not trade it for anything at 65. It's like.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: the world is great. Human beings are amazing. They're all different. They all have something amazing to offer, and I love getting to chat with them about what they have to offer. But it's just.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I don't have to take ownership over it.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They can. I could just let them be.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And when you can just let others be
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: God, there's so much magic in that.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: For one thing, we don't ate.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Yeah, just witnessing people for who they are, not trying to mold them into your expectation of who you want them to be, which is the hardest thing in a personal relationship, right? We fall in love with the person who fulfilled something in us, our idea, our expectation. We don't really often love the other person. We love our idea of the other person.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yep.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: And true unconditional love is letting them be who they are, even when they don't fit your idea. A lot of marriages can't withstand that people don't understand that difference, and when the person stops fitting into their mold.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: then they they won out.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: and they never let the person they never see the person for who they are, a real human being.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: It's tough.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It is tough.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: It's a wonderful path to walk, though, for me it goes back to. You know I was in. I took my family to Greece earlier this year we were studying Socrates and the Sophist and all the ancients to understand and walk in there on the ancient agora, where they, you know Socrates and Plato used to hang out, and Aristotle. It was phenomenal, and to see bringing to life the unexamined life is not worth living. As Socrates said, what does that mean to be an examined life?
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: What does it mean at a deep level? Because everybody can say, Yeah, I've examined my life, and I've yet to meet anybody who just says, no, they haven't. Everybody says they do.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: and they're right, right, and everybody else is wrong in the world. No, no, we had learning to look at ourselves and let go
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: of needing to be right and really examining the patterns in our thinking and are feeling and are behaving. It's a lifetime pathway. It's not a 1 time fix that. You just get it.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: It's like a path of evolution.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: I love that question. How are how are you evolving? How am I evolving? How are the people listening? How are you evolving? Who are you evolving to become? What's your vision?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But it doesn't have to be like some concrete goal that you have to achieve.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It can be a little bit ethereal. It's like this is. This is my idea of
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: right now, because it changes.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: And it's.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Always moving away from us, but being good with that.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: but moving in a direction that's not stagnant and not.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Reactive.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, that's very reactive where you're just like
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: trying to fend off all of the things that you don't want versus moving towards what you do want, because moving towards what you do want brings in gratitude and gratitude changes everything.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Gratitude our state of mind. Well, and it goes back to that reticular activating system right? I remember when I decided I wanted to buy a jeep wrangler.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: And I did research on this thing. And finally I found the one I wanted. And oh, my goodness! Before I bought that thing I started realizing
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: everybody at the same time. Must have just bought a jeep wrangler, because now they're everywhere, and I never spotted them before. How has that happened. It's the state of mind that internal filter. So I love. When you talk about gratitude, it's the same thing when you have a gratitude as a state of mind. Guess what world you start to live in a grateful world, an abundant world. But it all comes back to that cognitive framework.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: How do you? And if you're frustrated and angry at the world, you're going to live in an angry world. If you believe people are going to harm you, you're going to live in a scary world. If you believe people are untrustable, you're going to live in a untrusting world
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: with your thoughts. You make it all so. Isn't it brilliant? I love that to come back to look at?
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Well, you know the thing that really gets me. I realize whenever I'm irritated at somebody else's idiocy. Foolishness, knuckleheadedness again, 100% of the time. All I'm doing is projecting from my own mind onto them. I project from my own mind onto everything I experience and perceive, and to recognize that what I'm seeing is not the actual thing. I'm seeing my interpretation of it, and through my interpretation. It's evoking an emotion
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: which may be anger, maybe
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: rage. I can't believe it, but it's then what am I doing with that? Then I show up rageful, based on my interpretation of what they're doing, and I drive the wedge in between us.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: I perpetuate the problem.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So how do you help people? Do you? Do you do coaching for companies? Do you do coaching for people, one on one? How does all that look.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Yeah, primarily, it's well, through companies working one on one, you know, it's executive development. I say, executive meaning. Yes, it's about leadership. And it's about often I'll start at the top of an organization, because if we start in the middle and the leader isn't on board, it's not gonna work very effectively.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: But I also say executive, because it's helping understand that executive function in your brain, your prefrontal cortex getting mastery of that. So I enter into organizations and help their leaders learn how to lead consciously. And then I work with teams because I grew up. I was the youngest child in my family always had groups around, and my natural wiring is to be able to understand and notice
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: human dynamics at play interactions and then be able to label them. And then I studied it right? And I was a group therapist for a long time before I transferred all that into an understanding of executive team development. So yeah, I go into businesses, a lot of them. I'll work sometimes with smaller business owners who are trying to scale and help them know how to build a business because I've worked in business for a long time.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: But also I'm a psychologist, a recovering psychologist. I like to say so. I understand also that the biggest obstacles
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: aren't just business metrics.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: It's about how we're working together and how we're thinking.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: And so I help, I have, you know, different programs that I have one called the the Business Academy. I have the leadership ascent. I have different different programs depending on what the need is in the organization and what results they're trying to get.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: And we'll we'll help the organization move that direction and get the result. But I love it. Often we start with understanding what they think, they want.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: what they think they need, and then well, what they think they want, and then give them what they need, which may be very different, because again, we tend to project out the problem and often misunderstand what the real issue is, and often the issue isn't out there at all.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: It's in here.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Bye.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: So I love it. I have this vision, and after growing up in flint
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: and watching what happens when the world's largest company goes belly up and watching the the erosion of the community and the infrastructure and watching what happened. Just the decay that happened. I made a commitment early on in my life when I saw that this does not
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: have to be the way it goes. That was a choice. Humans made. And humans need to learn to make better choices.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: So that's been my my push. That's been my. My reason for being is to help create vibrant, sustainable businesses where people thrive. You spend a 3rd of your life in this place.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: My God, it should be fun! I talked to somebody yesterday who said, My business has no soul, and I'm not interested in being there. I'll go there and just go through the motions. But
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: and I said, What's that mean? No soul, he said. Well, I was out
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: yesterday after work, and I could smell my neighbor having a barbecue.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: and he said, I start reflecting. I worked at a place where they used to do barbecues at work. Employee recognition team building, just actually knowing each other, he said. Where I'm at now, none of that happens. They couldn't care less. All it is is, get, get, get, get, get, get more, get more, get more, get more. And this is the changing paradigm. But I think I love it. There's this talk about the next generation. They're lazy. No, they have their value straight.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: They're not. Gonna we're now workers. And it's all part of that industrial revolution model, right? The new paradigm. Everybody's a piece, a cog in the machine, and your job is to be loyal to GM. And to do this for 30 years. So I think part of the what happened when GM. Went bankrupt is that it? It instilled a whole new, a whole new value system like, no, the organization. You don't work 30 years and get a pension like my father did.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: That doesn't happen anymore. You have to look out for yourself. The organization is not looking out for you the same way it used to. And maybe there's I mean, it's whether it's good or bad. That's the change. And when I see leaders say the the new generation is lazy in my mind. What I really hear is.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: there's a lot of bad leaders out there who don't know how to manage true needs that people have.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: And so that's the work.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And they don't offer opportunities for people to be really good at what they're doing. I I have a daughter who's 21, and
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: she works for Amy's kitchens, and they're they're a factory.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and she's had lots of experience. She got out of high school at 16. She worked for Casper's ice cream. They make
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: fat boys, fat boy, ice cream and so she kind of has been in food. And she went from there. She was a night baker for a grocery store. So she's she's been in food for
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: probably like 8 years now.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: she loves this company. She's been there for a year. They they have Amy's bucks.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: She loves the people she works with. They all go out after work and do stuff together, don't have to do that. But they want to do that because they like each other and they have buddies. Their training system is a system of buddies, and it's just like they? They really
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: have something good going on there. This there's not the the complaining or the this is really hard work, and I don't want to go to work.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Like this is.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Fun, and we're having a good time, and we enjoy each other. And you know, I look forward to going to work and meet new people and having friends. And we all have this one big mission that we're on to make food for other people
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: just kind of a nice thing. But.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Isn't it something when there's clarity of the mission and the vision.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: And
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: there's nobody getting in their way and letting them show up and do the thing. So I think part of the difficulty, too, is a holdover from the Industrial Revolution, where everybody has a job description, and that's effective and important. But then I see too many organizations that try to fit people into this job description, and don't really leverage the wisdom and the power that they're bringing, because they need this little job done
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: so. And they they under and they don't appreciate what's in front of them. They miss it. They miss the opportunity.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah. And yeah, everybody starts at at the bottom in most of these places, but they they allow people
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: to to move laterally and not necessarily up, but you can move laterally, and you could do different things. So you're not
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: so bored with one thing.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: because human beings we need variety in our lives we can't just have. We're not robots.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: We can't show web pages like.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: It goes back to those deeper.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: deeper needs we have of of
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: well, it's interesting because the old school was the old model of scientific management that humans are intrinsically lazy and don't want to work, and your job as the leader is to beat them with a stick and give them the carrot and induce them the carrot that is, and induce them to do the work they need to do. And over time that has shifted into this real humanistic model where we realize no people want to solve problems. That's just a natural.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: a natural characteristic of primates. We're curious beings at our best, left to our own devices. We want to be curious. We want to learn. We want to contribute and be part of something larger.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: In fact, the Gallup organization. What do they say of roughly, a 3rd of people actually show up and give a rat about their job?
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: That's not the way they show up. Day one
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: day one. It's a new chapter in their life. They're excited to be there. They're excited about this. You know what they're going to be able to bring, and then we beat it out of them in our organizations. We beat it out of them in our leadership. We beat it out of them in our own reactivity, and and don't even really notice that it's us and not them who are creating the problem.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah. And and it ends up costing you because it's expensive to hire new employees.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: And instantly.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And if they're calling in sick all the time, and you know, even with your point system, you can lose really good people if you point them out
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: because something happened beyond their control. And it's just like it's interesting to look at
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: different ways, different systems work
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: all of my children have jobs in different fields, like one works for Nucor, and I like some of the things that new core has in place in terms of motivating people. Everybody works for minimum wage, but they pay these huge bonuses on production. So people work.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They want those production bonuses.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: That's fantastic, right?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I didn't thought it was genius.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Everybody starts in t-posts, t-posts, suck.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: You know, it's just you're gonna be there for 3 months. Get over it.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Yeah, right? That's just the way it works in the organization. It's brilliant, though I've seen too many organizations, however, will say I'm paying. You do your job, and while there's the salary is a great motivator, and people will work harder if they're bonus based at some point to unless the organization is also recognizing the human element
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: right? There's so many organizations want to look at the next morning or the next quarters, financials and and the stakeholder and shareholder value, and all of this stuff great.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: But it's a organization of people for people to a human end. And to what extent are you creating this culture that they want to be a part of?
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Or are you creating one where they just show up and go through the motions?
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: It's up to us as leaders to create that.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And you know, I I've been talking about like big corporations. But there's, you know, this works in the mom and Pop level, or.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Hugely.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Even if you, you've got like just a couple of people in your organization.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: they they need validation, and they need.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: The hard thing is with entrepreneurs. They are good bootstrappers, they they raise up their their business by doing everything themselves, and then they bring somebody else on, and the other person isn't going to do it the way they did it, and nobody's ever good enough. Nobody works hard enough, and they end up getting frustrated and cycling through staff, because nobody can cut the mustard, and they don't realize
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: part of it is well, a large part of it.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: It's them.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And and sometimes because I fall into this category, you can make the decision that you just want to be a solopreneur, and you don't want to have other people and recognize that there are limitations to that, you know. If you don't.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I, personally don't want to grow.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's not my. I'm at a point in my life where I really am happy, and
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I don't need to do anything.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: My needs are taken care of, so I can just
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I can do the things that I want to do, and I can share what I want to share, and I don't have to hire a team of salespeople and train them all and
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: work, you know, 80 HA day, and I
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: no, that's not what I want. That's not my goal. And so I can be happy
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: doing what I'm doing. But recognizing that this is this is me.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And and not get.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I. I've talked to other people that you know they get involved in this whole. You know you get a
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: do XY and Z, and you're gonna make, you know, 1020, a million dollars a month, and you only have to work like 9,000 HA week.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Okay.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They don't tell you that you have to work 9,000 HA week, because there's a learning curve to get all those things, and you don't have the support staff to do it.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And the gap between just being a solopreneur and those kinds of income.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: There's there's a large learning curve, and there's a large.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I say, learning curve in terms of hiring.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: forming a company like you have to bring on people and train them, and you have to have systems, and you may start with, you know.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: outsourcing some of it, but the scaling is is not for the timid.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Well, that's exactly right. And that's why kind of one of our core flagship offerings is that 5 step to grow your business? The business ascent that really takes people through soup to nuts, how to get to a place where you can scale and replicate and franchise and have a business that works without you, because for so many business owners I mean, I know plumbers that hey wanted to. They were working for somebody else said, Hey, I could do this better myself. But what happens? They don't end up owning
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: business. They just own their own job with all the headaches that go with it until they start to think like a business owner. And there's a shift that happens when they learn to work on the business, as the saying goes, not just in it, learn to work on it and then build. Oh, start to have a dashboard, understand your financials, start to know, understand sales and marketing, open the taps and get new customers coming in and then build systems and processes
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: and then build a team that can replicate it. There are some steps, methodical steps you can go through. It does take it takes time. It takes work, but it's beautiful to pay off. If you decide to do that when you get there can be pretty effective. The thing I circle back to is.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: what is it that drives us to want to do that in the 1st place, and it's so much you think about humans in and of themselves, historically, before industrialization.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: That wasn't a thing we weren't worried about, more, more, more there wasn't having. Now, we're so concerned with having we find our identity external. We don't know how to be self-aware, self-possessed and be okay. And or we're just playing out the drives of trying to fill the hole.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: because somehow we don't feel like we're okay. If we don't have more.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: and how do you develop that contentment for me that goes back to our our vision like you're talking about the self concept and part of it is aging
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: right wisdom, because you probably weren't that same person 30 years ago.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: No, I.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: There's a hunger in you. You want more. Want more? Okay? Great. But ultimately, what's the game? Where are we going? Here?
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: We're going back
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: to where we came from before we were born, right, and I don't remember what it was, or something back there, I believe. Who knows but it's not like the one who dies with the most toys, wins. So who does win
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: the one who lives with with that gratitude? I think, because then you create that impact the positive impact in the world. And you leave that legacy.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: This is a great conversation. I just love connecting with you today, Joe, this is wonderful.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It has been amazing. I really appreciate you showing up today, Kevin. So how do people find you if they want to work with you?
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Yeah, absolutely. I love it. Easy. Just go to the website. Mays leadership, MAYS. Leadership like plural of May maysleadership.com go find me there! And again I would invite everybody download I've got. I put it together just because
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: let me a quick story. When I was young.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: I'm trying to think of the 1st time I really developed this clarity of how important mission or vision was. I remember at 1 point I read a book. I was way into studying vision visualization, all this stuff. How do you create your life? How do you manifest? And I remember reading a book and trying this exercise, and put myself in this situation in my mind's eye.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Okay, I was like, 19 years old. I want a sailboat, sure, and I saw myself on the boat on the Great Lakes. My friends are on it. The sun is setting, and then I let it forgot about it caught up in the day, day to day, of everything going on, and I remember a couple of years later I was on my sailboat with my friends on the Great Lakes, and there was like this portal that opened up in my mind, and I realized that what I was experiencing then was the same vision I had created in my in my head
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: years ago. And I realized, man, the world is a mysterious thing, and it doesn't work in logical ways. And when you understand how to create vision, how to be the person you want to be, it's amazing what's available to you in this lifetime, beyond anything that you can conceive of right now, because our conception is based on our past experience, we have this tendency to believe there's this linear thing. But linearity is what we create as humans. It's not the reality of how things work.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: It's much bigger than that. So download, download the vision mastery playbook.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Spend some time thinking about what impact you want to have. That's the one thing I would recommend and invite. People challenge. People, get clarity on your vision. If you want some help along the way. My goodness, this is the work of my heart and my life. So reach out easy website or easy email to kevin@maysleadership.com that easy.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Perfect thanks again for joining us today.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Thank you.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: To learn more about Kevin, and to get your copy of
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: what was the name of that.
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::Dr. Kevin Mays: Division, Mastery.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: The Vision mastery playbook.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: be sure to visit maysleadership.com, and the Vision mastery playbook. The actual address for that is vision.mazeleadership.com. And I will put both of those in the show notes below.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Thank you. All for tuning in with us today. If you have a podcast, or you're interested in starting one, be sure to reach out to us at support@heartlifecoach.com. We love to help spiritual entrepreneurs and coaches amplify their voice and monetize their mission, and offer a variety of ways to do this leveraging substack.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: join us for our next episode, as we share what others are doing to raise the global frequency. And remember, change begins with you. You have all the power to change the world, start today and get visible.
