Making the Shift from Boss to Leader with Vishen Lakhiani

Bosses tell you what to do. Leaders infuse you with values. They infuse you with new ways of viewing the world, new meaning schema for understanding the world. Think back to great entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, like Steve Jobs. They have this vision in their head that their people are moving towards. Think about great politicians. John F. Kennedy, who spoke about America going to the moon vision. Now, whether you're a political leader or business leader, when you can do these four things, you're moving towards great leadership.

I wanted to just ask you some questions. Yeah, my mind is just going. I love all the things you shared. I also love this thought about. It's not about you waking up every day thinking, how can I make a difference in other people's lives? And I remember a mentor of mine many years ago, and that's exactly what he said to me. He said, alison, the secret of. Because I remember I was going through my divorce, a really rough time and I was just struggling looking for the answers. And he said, the secret of happiness is helping other people. And I was like, wow, get out of your own way. So now you are brilliant, vishen at taking an idea and going really big with it. And I know you just, you talked about the 10 year vision and everything, right? And you've also said that you get into the feeling of the vision. Can you talk about how you get into the feeling of the vision?

So. So I. So I visualize my life every morning. So I devised a meditation approach called the six Phase Meditation. You can find it free online. But what I do is within the context of the six phase. I go into a deep state of mind. I see an aspect of my life three years ahead that I want to manifest and I feel myself being there. There's more nuance to it, but it's basically a process called creative visualization. And it's a really effective process. Whether you think of manifesting or whether you think of it as brain training. It's a really effective process to make the visions for your future come to you faster than ever before.

Yeah. That is so powerful. And my husband and I both did your meditation program on mindvalley, by the way, and we did it together and it was fantastic.

That's great.

Yeah, we did. We loved it. Now, there's a word that you are kind of famous for that you shared the last time you were here. You know the word that I'm talking about?

No, actually I don't. I. I have a potty mout, Alison. I have so many weird, awkward potty words in My book.

Uh huh. I was trying to get you to say it, not me, but actually my husband wants to hear me say it on stage. So.

Yeah.

So unfuck withable, right?

Yes. Unfuck withable.

So I said it, you heard it. So let's talk about not to be.

Not to be confused with unfuckable. That is not where you want to be. Unfuck withable is a completely different concept. And it simply means to be so secure in your own state of being that other people's praise doesn't go to your head and other people's criticism doesn't rap with you.

I love that. I love that. Are you all ready for that? Can you own that? Right? You got to be un. Fuck with the boy. A bull with the bull. Okay, I got to practice saying that. All right, so one of the hardest things I believe that business owners struggle with, and I know that I have in the past, of course, is letting go. Right? It's your baby and you got your hands in everything and it's so easy to just like jump in and try to fix it. And, and so what do you feel like are the most important questions, qualities that the business owner needs to do to move from being the boss to being the leader to, you know, telling people what to do, to more inspiring them into action? How do they let go?

The four principles I shared are actually part of the concepts of what it takes to move from boss to leader. Bosses tell you what to do. Leaders infuse you with values. They infuse you with new ways of viewing the world, new meaning schema for understanding the world. So one is the meaning schema of love, kindness, unity. Think about the difference between politicians who speak about love and politicians who speak about hate. They are both leaders by job title, but there's a vast difference in terms of how history judges them. Love, right? That was the first one. My entire presentation is actually a framework on that. The second one is transformation. Leaders help people transform by bringing out the best in people. It means that you are creating an environment where your people are constantly growing. If you're allowing your people to grow and become the best they can be, they will stay with you. All employees today, millennials especially, it's not just about the money. They want an opportunity to discover themselves, to grow. The third thing is envisioning the future is giving them a vision to build for, because human beings are goal driven creatures and we need a vision. Again, think back to great entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, like Steve Jobs. They have this vision in their head that their people are moving towards. Think about great politicians. John F. Kennedy, who spoke about America going to moon vision. When you think about the greatest leaders out there, they inspire their people by giving them a vision that excites them, that keeps them up at night. It gives. And this vision helps give. The fourth ingredient, meaning. Meaning is very. Is a more complex idea to understand. Meaning means that you are showing up to do good in the world. Great leaders teach people to show up as their best selves, not as their most hateful selves, not as the storm, the capital selves, but to show up as their best selves to improve the world, to take care of the planet. There's an entire philosophical scale that measures consciousness, developed by the philosopher Ken Wilber. And great leaders move you from what is called egocentrism to cosmocentrism. Cosmocentrism is the embrace of all life. It is the ability to see beyond all artificial barriers. Race, ethnicity, color, sexual orientation, borders, and to see us and the planet as unified and to rally people to do good for species, animal life, and plant life. That's really what cosmocentrism is. Great leaders do that. Now, whether you're a political leader or business leader, when you can do these four things, you're moving towards great leadership.

Wow. That was so incredibly powerful. And it's true because, you know, when you think of all the things that you want your team to do, you know, the tasks, the results, if you're focused up here and you elevate them, then they naturally want to do that, and they naturally want to show up and go above and beyond, you know?

Mm.

So you have said that you do not focus on the competition and.

Right.

But rather ways to collaborate. And that's how we do in Pinnacle Global Network. We really. A lot of our members collaborate with one another. Can you just. Because I really feel like a lot of people got in business, it's like, let's pound the competition, you know? And I think a lot of industries operate that way. And so what are your thoughts on that?

Well, it depends on how you define business. Right. So the meaning schema for me as an entrepreneur is that my life is not about my business. I don't care about my title as a founder. I don't care about. In fact, my business isn't my main goal. My main goal is to be the best ambition I can be. My business is simply a vehicle for me to get there. My business is like an education system for me. My business is my. The business is the best vehicle for your personal growth. Guess what? A marriage is a great vehicle for personal growth. Having kids is a great vehicle for personal growth. But you must understand that the most important thing that you can do for yourself is to make your personal growth number one. So if my business fails, I really don't give a damn. I've had many businesses fail. What I ask myself is, how did I grow? How do I not make the same mistakes? And how do I take what I learned from to make the next business even better so that next business can be an even greater and even greater way for me to grow? Now, when you. I know this is a counterintuitive thought to the American mindset, right, which is so much about hustle and dedicating your life to your business. And that mindset, by the way, is bullshit and breaks so many people and actually creates worse off businesses. The best entrepreneurs put themselves first. If you want to really understand this concept, read the works of Arianna Huffington. She's one of the most influential women entrepreneurs of our time. And she is so deliberate, deliberate about the pillars of wellness, of sleep, of taking care of herself and then applying herself to her business.

Yeah, no, I agree with that wholeheartedly. And that's why we really talk about getting the business owner out of the weeds. Because you just, you break your health, you break relationships, and if you don't take care of you, then, you know, you absolutely have no business anyway. So thank you for sharing that. Now you have built a company, quite a large company, without investors.

Right.

And we, you know, Susie Batiste, who's the founder of Poo Pourri, I don't know if you know Susie, but she also spoke at our event. She's got like a, at least a $600 million company, has not taken any investors at all.

Wow.

Yeah, it's quite, quite remarkable. And we, we had the founder of Birchbox on here yesterday, Katya Beacham, and they have been dealing with, you know, a lot of VCs from the get go and the challenges with VCs. And one of the things she said was that, you know, they, they own part of your company and they're, they're helping you make those decisions, which is not always a good thing. But how does that feel to do it this way on your own? Were you purposeful with that? Have you had people wanting to say, hey, I want to come in as an investor?

Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. It really is just about, it really is a balance. I don't think I'm the best person to speak about this because I haven't taken any investor money up to now. We are opening friends and family around because now we want to go really big and we want to do a public listing. And so at that point, you do need to get the right advisors on board. But basically, like, the only reason I'm taking investors right now is not just for the money, but, but for the, the, the advisory, the, the, the brain power that they can bring in.

Right, right. So you've taken it at a pretty high level and now you're at a place where you're ready to take another level. Absolutely. So. And you know, I'll wrap this up with saying something that you shared in your talk, which I love. And you said, don't ask if you are worthy of your goals, ask if you. If your goals are worthy of you. And I'd love to just wrap this up with you just sharing a little bit more of your thoughts on that.

Sure. So if you live your life to turn yourself into the most powerful human being you can be, what's inevitably going to happen is that your goals are going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. The way you see the possibilities of your company are going to get bigger and bigger. But what this means is really living that rule that I shared with you from Sri Kumar Rao, ensuring that the number one thing in life is not your business, but it is your rate of self evolution, your personal growth. You got to look at your life from multiple dimensions. Mind, body, soul. You got to take care of your body. Like I'm obsessed with health, with wellness, with biohacking, with spirituality. I go deep into spirituality, spirituality, mind. For example, optimizing cognition, optimizing your brain, but also relationships, parenting, career skills, entrepreneurial skills such as what you're teaching in this seminar. I'm obsessed more with my rate of self evolution. My business is secondary. And I'm saying that my thesis is that that is actually the way great entrepreneurs function. Because the more you grow, the more your business grows. And the more you grow, the more, the bigger the goals you can take on. And so you can choose the goals worthy of you. You can crush goals which, which other people might, might think were challenging because you've grown bigger than the goal. That is what that quote means. Ask not if you are worthy of your goals, but ask if your goals are worthy of you. As you grow, you got to get goals which are worthy of this newer person that you're becoming every single month.

Wow, that is so phenomenal. Let's give Vishen a hand. This has Been absolutely amazing. Amazing. Thank you so, so much, so much. My name is Alison Maslin and I've built 10 companies and scaled them well into the eight figures. And I'm pretty proud about that because I was a single mom. I did this all on my own. And it all changed for me when I understood how to create the multiplier, how to build a team managed company beyond me. So now I'm able to help thousands of people transform their lives and that's what gets me excited every single day. So if this is you, if you're there going, oh my God, that is me, that's my life. And you know that there's more. I want you to register right now. It's called Level Up Live. This is our 11th year leading this event. It has literally impacted thousands of business owners just like you. And this year we're taking it virtual like you've never experienced it before. We are in a full on student with a stage and surround sound and cameras and we have hundreds of business owners tuning in, being present for the three days to transform your life and you're going to leave with a step by step plan customized for your company.

I was scattered all over the place.

And just trying to just survive, running the best.

My biggest challenge was lack of systems, lack of structure. Usually waking up at 2, 3 in the morning, just get the day's work going and I was exhausted.

I was really struggling with wearing too many hats. You know, I was the operations manager, I was the sales manager. You know, I was trying to generate new revenue streams.

The best part about this event is that you walk away with an entire plan for the year. You discover what products you're going to create, how you're going to increase your revenue, how you're going to scale your business. Hire a team. I was able to learn how to effectively delegate, how to effectively hire, how to set up scalable systems and processes and how to ensure that the cash flow is healthy. While my business is growing, I've been able to increase our profit margin to be above industry standard and I have been able to delegate a lot of my patients. We've hired more providers and I have a lot more time and I have more work life balance than ever before. And my team is really helping to manage and grow the company which is amazing.

At the scale it event I learned so many strategies that I could have implemented right away and which changed the trajectory of the business. It's like having a tribe of people that are just rooting for you and actually giving you so much more than you're even giving them. And so for me, what has actually changed is that I really am now again excited about my business and where it can go.

Favorite part about this event is just being around so many high level CEOs, entrepreneurs, people who are really ready to take the next level and maximize everything that they're doing in their business and scale it and build teams and really kind of building their dream in their business.

We've added 12 new positions to the company. We've increased revenue about 43%.

We've increased profit by 111% this year.

Because it really, in just such a short amount of time, I've got so much more free time to enjoy my kids and my family. And I've got a thriving business that's growing.

We started with one program that was an eight week course where we were charging about $4,000. Since then, we've created seven new courses, seven new training modules, plus an annual membership model with pricing up to $30,000, which I never thought people. I didn't know how to get there, I didn't know how to charge for that and how to structure it. And we just got a formal valuation of our business a few weeks ago for $10 million. And that just blew my mind because I can leverage the business and grow it faster now that we have that valuation. So it's helping me get credit lines, building a team, and really showing the vision of what we're trying to do.

Can you tell I am so excited about this. The seats are going fast. We're almost full. The event is approaching. Grab your seat right now. You don't need to keep hitting that wall. This is your time. Let's scale your business.