0:00:00.4 Speaker 1: Welcome to The ET Project, a podcast for those executive talents determined to release their true potential and create an impact. Join our veteran coach and mentor, Wayne Brown, as we unpack an exciting future together.

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0:00:24.4 Wayne Brown: Alright. Welcome, Team ET. This is episode 40 and we’re at the end of the first quarter, so I’m gonna pop over and look at our slide here so we can refer to that a little bit easier. As you can see, today is all about rounding up or summarizing, if you like, recapping on the 12 guests that we’ve had on the show so far during quarter one of 2023. So, welcome to this final episode of the quarter. And as you can tell, episode 40, that means we’re edging closer to that infamous one year mark when we hit that number 50 or number 52 guest. We’ll be celebrating hard. Let’s look now at what we covered in the last three months by starting with our now famous intro. I’m delighted to be delivering this podcast for executive talent all over the world, whom we’re affectionately referring to as Team ET.

0:01:23.3 WB: With that, let’s get started and look at our first guest for this quarter. And as you can see, at the beginning of January, we welcomed onto the show Ann Betz. Ann’s a neuroscience coach and leadership coach, and we had a great conversation around neuroscience. And we also looked into a model that she and her colleagues have developed called the Seven Levels of Effectiveness. Ann and her team deliver a lot of leadership programs and they work a lot with organizations and leadership in those organizations. And I found the conversation really fascinating, so much so that I’m really pleased to announce that we’re going to bring Ann onto our live and you can see it down the bottom here, our ET Project live broadcast in the month ahead. So I’m really looking forward to that. Ann’s a great person and she also is a poet. I’m sure we’ll have the opportunity to listen to one or two of her poems as we have our conversation. That was our first guest.

0:02:30.1 WB: Please, episode 28. So if you want to go back and look at these episodes, that’s the purpose of today’s recap, is just to remind you if you missed it, what it’s about, and we’ll let you know the episode number so you can find it a bit easier. Alright, so with that, let’s look at our second guest for the quarter, Swire Ho. Swire hails originally from Hong Kong, based now in LA. Swire calls himself the promo guy. Swire’s business is all around servicing customers that want to buy those small promotional trinkets that they give to their clients. As far as a character, he’s got his own podcast. But we had a really great conversation around how to really zone in and zoom in on your target customer, the right target customer. The ones that are willing to pay you the money that you desire, as well as become loyal. We spoke in that regard a lot about selling as well as the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule, as you may know it. So it was a great conversation. Again, episode 29.

0:03:41.0 WB: Then onto our third guest for the quarter, Susanna Lahteela. And Susanna was somebody that is a colleague of mine within a program that we’re working on at least. And Susanna is a leadership coach, but she specializes in communication. What I enjoyed about Susanna is she’s a no holds barred person. She tells it as it is, she gives it to you straight. As a coach, that can work for and against you. So, Susanna’s background is that she’s worked in corporate world, she’s traveled around the world. Her partner is from, I believe, Chicago. For the last several years, she’s taken out the Regional Toastmasters Championship in Speaking. So, she’s well gifted and well versed in the area of communication. And so we had a great conversation around some of the challenges she’s faced, the successes she’s had, but also the things that you need to be aware of and look out for as a leader in the corporate space in particular when you aren’t good at communicating. That was episode 30.

0:04:53.2 WB: Our fourth guest, Faris Aranki. In this episode, I think it was 31, episode 31. Faris is based in the UK, in London, although he’s not British by nationality or origin, he may be a national, I’m not sure. He comes from the Middle East but he’s got a great English accent already. He’s been living there most of his life, I guess. And he has a really fascinating company that focuses on strategy consulting. And he uses a formula which I love and I’ve adopted a little bit myself. It’s called IQ x EQ x FQ. And F stands for focus. And he uses this formula for helping sharpen the effectiveness of his customers. I don’t know if you’ve ever followed Faris, but he is always traveling. He shares insights of his trips around the world working with different customers, so really interesting character. Episode 31, if you’re interested in listening and finding out a little bit more about how to become more effective.

0:05:57.8 WB: And then on to Irina Poddubnaia. Irina is based in Bulgaria. And during this episode 32, we really jumped around the world because Irina has worked in China, in southern China, of course my stamping ground the last 18 years, so we had a lot in common. But also on top of that, she’s a project manager, and of course that’s my background, so we had a great conversation around project management. We spoke about her platform, which is designed for package tracking. We spoke about some of her skills in software as a service, and we dove into the topic of project management in Agile as well as with the traditional version of Waterfall. Again, really interesting conversation from my point of view. Lots to learn, lots of insights to take away.

0:06:54.8 WB: Now I think we’re up to guest number six, the halfway mark already. A great conversation here with Dr. Lance Secretan. Lance is a real character. I won’t say his exact age, but it’s higher than 70. You may not think so looking at the picture on the screen, right? He’s extremely active. He floats between Canada and the US. He still skis. He’s very active in terms of the water sports. He’s a volunteer when it comes to the snow fields and search rescue. So, he’s extremely interesting character.

0:07:34.4 WB: On top of that, he’s the world’s number one leadership guru when it comes to the topic of inspiration. And he’s built his whole career and his company around this inspirational topic. And during our conversation, we spoke about a number of his books that he’s written, some of the communities that he’s established, the programs that he runs. And we touched on the new book that he’s about to release. And I’m really excited to let everyone know that on the 5th of April, Lance will join me as a guest on our ET Project live broadcast because he will be releasing his new book in April, and we’ll be discussing in detail that book. It’s called Reawakening the Human Spirit. And as you can imagine, from an inspirational perspective, this is a book not to miss. He believes it’s his finest work to date. And so, I really look forward to having that conversation. This was episode 33. So we’re at the halfway mark.

0:08:39.8 WB: Starting the second half of our journey is another guru, Ms. Sally Helgesen. Sally, I believe this year, is ranked as number three by the Global Gurus Ranking Group, number three in the world of leadership. She’s a phenomenal lady. She’s written so many great books that have been recognized at the highest level of corporate and consulting. She’s been a consultant for the United Nations. She’s done everything. She writes primarily for the support of women in leadership and in business. But as I identified in our conversation with her, much of what she talks about is equally applicable to us as men as it is to the women. Now, maybe the women have a tougher time, I’m sure, with it, but it’s equally applicable.

0:09:36.8 WB: So if you haven’t read her latest book which was released in the end of February, it’s called Rising Together, hence the title here, Bridging Divides and Rising Together Through Inclusion. The book is about inclusion. It’s about how companies and groups within the company can work together and rise together through leveraging inclusion. So, it was a great conversation, one of my favorites of the podcast series so far on this journey. So, please do yourself a favor, episode 34, one that you really will get a lot of insights and learnings from.

0:10:13.5 WB: Then we move on to Professor Dr. Jonathan Passmore. As you can tell by his title, he’s extremely talented, educated individual, works as a professor for Henley Business School, or I think maybe another one. He’s a psychologist. He’s a leadership coach. He’s the vice president of an AI firm that has a coaching platform, one of the leading platforms in the world. Just an all-around nice guy from the UK as well. So, a little bit closer to my upbringing, being Australian and having England as our mothership. So I grew up also with the English world than I did with the American side of the Western world. So always nice for me to speak with people from the UK, because I resonate more with their accents and where they’re from. Jonathan, really fascinating guy, an expert in many areas when it comes to coaching and leadership, does a huge amount of research, written an inordinate amount of books. I would say one of our leading experts in the world today when it comes to looking to the future with AI and the influence it’s going to have on coaching and leadership. And that’s what our conversation was primarily around during episode 35. As you can see by the title, the impact of technology on organisation and coaching practices. So, a great episode to get your feet wet, so to speak, if you wanna understand where we’re heading in the future world of AI.

0:11:51.7 WB: And now to one of my absolute favourite people and discussions, conversations, Ms. Teresa de Grosbois. And Teresa is a world renowned expert in the practice of influence. And she’s got a great book. It’s been, I think, in the bestseller list for the last eight years, related to influence. And she’s a great speaker. She has a huge network, following, and a loyal community where she’s able to help them understand how to grow and become better at influencing. And as you can see, she talks about the challenges that shape our habits and what we can do to actually become authentic influencers ourselves. For all of us, becoming an influencer as a leader is something that we need to be able to ascend to and aspire to. So, a really important conversation, episode 36. And I didn’t mention, of course, Teresa is located in the country of happiness, Costa Rica. Not originally from Costa Rica, comes from northern Canada, but has relocated to Costa Rica. Loves where she is, loves the community that she’s surrounded by there. And it’s now on my bucket list of must-see places, having spoken to her at length about what’s it like in Costa Rica.

0:13:25.4 WB: Then we move on to episode 37. I know some of our ET team experience the challenge of Jiu-Jitsu. Our guest for episode 37, professor Leonardo Xavier, his story is quite remarkable, I have to say. We didn’t get to cover a lot of his background story in our conversation. Now as a young child, he had the fortune of knowing somebody associated with the Gracie family in Rio de Janeiro. And the Gracie family, for those of you that don’t know, really are the founding fathers of the world of Jiu-Jitsu, although it’s very much seen as a Japanese sport. The Gracie family are phenomenal martial arts practitioners who have so many members of the family who have become world champions in this martial art and represented Brazil, represented South America, represented the world basically in this sport. And Leonardo had the opportunity to practice and learn from the Gracie family itself under one of the world’s most recognized Gracie family members, Rickson Gracie.

0:14:46.3 WB: He went into learning Jiu-Jitsu with the aim of becoming an instructor. He did that, but in addition, he became a world champion, a world-class athlete himself in this martial art. And so, fantastic guy, extremely humble and really insightful conversation around the practice itself, the lessons he took from it, the need to conquer your inner self. And then we were able to make the connection to leadership as a whole and how you can apply similar practices in your own leadership style to really reinforce and accentuate the value that you bring as a leader. So episode 37, again, one not to be missed simply for the insights and the sharing that Leonardo had brought to the table.

0:15:45.3 WB: Now we’re getting close, and I think we’re up to our penultimate guest for this quarter, Ms. Le-an Lacaba. Le-an is sitting in Cebu in the Philippines, and I love her story as well. Le-an’s epiphany came about during a typhoon where her parents were away from home. She was the eldest of four siblings, and she had to take care of them during one of the worst recorded typhoons in the history of the Philippines. And if you know anything about the Philippines, they’re not strangers to being caught up in cyclones, typhoons, whatever you call them, tornadoes. This was a particularly severe one. And coming out of that, her realization was that because her father wasn’t home and he worked away from home a lot, she wished that he was there at the time, and it triggered a desire in her to help people that want to, that can’t find work close by, to work from home and never have to be away from home, so that regardless of circumstance, they’re there to support each other.

0:16:56.5 WB: And so that’s what drove her, and it created this “Yes, and” attitude that she’s taken through her life and into her incredibly successful business career. By the age of 15, she’s already working and earning an income from home. By, I think, the age of 18, she’s written her first book. By the age of 20, she’s a CEO. And by the age of 23, her and her boss move out and start their own organization, which is called 2xYou or 2xYou, whichever way you wanna say it, which is really a recruitment organization for solopreneurs and startup organizations looking for virtual assistants. So, it’s a really incredible story. She’s a speaker, she writes books, she writes novels. I think she’s released five already, and she has a different book coming out hopefully this year. So, really interesting person to speak with. So young, so dynamic, so full of life and the possibilities that it brings. I really enjoyed the conversation. Alright, so that was episode 38.

0:18:09.6 WB: And then moving on to our last and final episode for this quarter, apart from this episode of course, was episode 39 and talking with Sanjib Nandi. So Sanjib, as you can probably tell by the picture, is not American although he’s living in Wisconsin at the moment. Sanjib hails originally from India. He spent a short period over in London before he then moved to the US and lives in the township of Berlin in Wisconsin. In India, he was a pharmacist. The education that he had in India wasn’t recognized in the States, so he had to redo his education to retain his pharmacy practice, which he did. And hence, the reason we talk about east and west, using that as a bridge for wellbeing.

0:19:06.8 WB: So Sanjib is really focused on our wellbeing and how to support leaders in particular to live the life that they need to live, regardless of the stresses that they face on a daily basis. And one of the things that he’s developed as a support mechanism is an app called LUVO, L-U-V-O. And this is a wellbeing app, it does meditation, but it does so many other things that traditional wellbeing apps aren’t doing. So, really worth checking out. It’s free, you can find it on both Apple and Google and all the different stores. So, well worth checking out. Interesting guy to speak with, full of knowledge, studies neuroscience, studies medicine, studies and practices coaching of leaders, meditation, mindfulness, you name it, Sanjib’s into it. So, really fascinating guy to listen to the conversation. A very logical, rational type of person. So again, check out his app. Well worth the effort.

0:20:17.3 WB: And that rounds out pretty much our guests, our 12 guests for the quarter, quarter one of 2023. As you can imagine, the fun is far from over. And next week already, we don’t break, next week, we’re straight into quarter two. We’re off to Mexico, we’re speaking with Milena Regos, her business, which is called Unhustle, which is all about creating a lifestyle, whether it’s in your personal life, whether it’s in your business, your career, creating a lifestyle where the typical hustle and bustle is put aside, and she calls it the Unhustle. Really great conversation, looking forward to releasing it next week and letting you all tune into what we’re talking about. And she has some insights she shares, but also a huge amount of material that we will be linking to in our notes as well as in the comments section for everyone to access for free.

0:21:20.8 WB: Please join us next week as we commence quarter two of 2023. And I really look forward to continuing this journey with all of my listeners from team ET. It’s been fantastic so far, three quarters under our belt, we’re heading into the fourth quarter and the milestone of year one at the end of quarter four or this quarter, quarter 2023, quarter 2, 2023. So I look forward to seeing you then. Hopefully, you’ve enjoyed this recap on our 12 guests. Please do yourself a favor, it starts at episode 28, runs right through to episode 39, 12 new exciting guests, and we’ve got more to come. So with that, team ET, I’m gonna come off sharing. I’m gonna say hello and farewell before we leave, and I hope everyone enjoys the week ahead. Make the most of it, don’t let life get on top of you. And I’ll look forward to seeing you again next week, same time, same channel.

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0:22:29.3 Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on the ET Project, a show for executive talent development. Until next time, check out our site for free videos, eBooks, webinars and blogs at coachingforcompanies.com.