EI is Humanity's Best Chance

Emotional intelligence is humanity's best chance. By the way, get interactive in chat, please. Get in there, talk, engage. I want some feedback. My co founder is on Todd Duncan. He said hi earlier. He's going to be engaging, so get it, get in there and get engaged.

In 2023 in Chicago, a 21 year old put on a backpack filled with clothes and.

Some equipment, some resources and said to his mother, I'm going to Ukraine to help the war.

She goes, what? Said yes, I'm, I'm, I'm made, made up my mind, I gotta go help. I'm. Me and my buddy were gone. Well, he's 21 years old, what's his mother gonna say? He got, he's got his stuff, got on a plane, headed off to Ukraine. This woman in Chicago was born in Ukraine, she's from Ukraine. Her son was actually born in the United States, but she was from Ukraine and very much followed what was happening in Ukraine and was, and was devoted to seeing something change and her son felt that and he took it upon himself to go. Well, around the same time a friend of his mother's, still living in Ukraine was telling her about how she needs to get her son out of Ukraine. They're starting to come get kids and taking them to war, they have no option, they're just coming and they're asking them, they're giving them guns and they don't care if you've ever been at war, if you've ever been trained, they're giving you a gun and they're sending you out. And she says, I have to find a way to save my son. And she made a plan to get him out of the country by getting him to walk through the woods to Poland. And this boy got the courage, put on his backpack filled with food, some clothes, some money, an extra battery pack for his phone and he left. And he was going to walk to Poland.

On the second day in the evening, around 2 o' clock in the morning, he was lost.

If I get a little emotional, I myself was born in Ukraine too. So pardon me if I get into this, if it's a struggle to get through this, this story. Around 2 o' clock in the morning he was lost and scared and he came out on the road to see the direction if he's heading in the right direction. His phone wasn't helping him and he knew he had to stay off the road. So he wanted to get on the road, make sure and then duck back into the woods. Well, the moment he stepped out onto the road, he saw two Lights coming right at him. A car, two o' clock in the morning, a car coming right at him. He tried to duck into the woods, but they called him, asked him to come to the car. They had a conversation. They put him in the car, they drove him to Poland, got him food, put him in the hotel room, and left.

The next morning, the woman from Ukraine calls her friend in Chicago and she says a miracle happened last night. And the moment she started explaining what happened, the woman in Chicago started bawling because her son had just called her and said that they rescued a boy at 2 o' clock in the morning trying to get to Poland.

That kind of emotional connection does not happen with technology and artificial intelligence. That divine timing of driving down. They had just landed in Poland, got a car and started driving to Ukraine to help. And the minute they get to a road at the exact time this boy comes out, it's. You cannot, you cannot make something like this up. This does not happen without an energetic connection and emotions. They define us. They make us stronger. They make us more resilient. They make us better together. And when you can have that inside your organizations, you, your team will move mountains for you. You do not have to ask them to work harder. They will. Okay? It's, it's. It feels good to do good and to be part of something greater. I started with that story because emotional intelligence is humanity's best chance. And it's the best chance for organizations too. There's a huge business case for investing in emotional intelligence. And by the way, it's not eq, it's ei. There's no quotient. So everyone using eq, you can stop. You're welcome if you got nothing else from this conversation. There you go. No longer use EQ TI. But the business case for happiness, number one, it's boost productivity. Happy workers are 17% more productive per employee. Let's be clear. 17% more productive per employee. Improve retention and loyalty. Employees who feel their, their development is prioritized are 94% more likely to stay.

You want to keep your great players, your great workers, your great team members. How do you do that? Invest in them, in their personal development. By the way.

If you can retain more talent, you save 15 to $50,000 per person retained. Let's meet somewhere in the middle. Let's say it's $30,000. If you could retain 10, 15, 20. Let's just go with 10, 10 key people. A quarter. Not a day, not a week, a quarter. That's $1.2 million a year. In savings for you just by retaining 10 people. A quarter of the right people. Studies show that within six years 1/3 of the workforce will be cons will consider happiness as the defining criteria for accepting a job. All right, here's more Business cases for well being. Higher profitability. 21 more profitable per employee. Okay. Enhanced creativity and problem solving. By the way, you're about to hear more about creativity and problem solving. How it is the number one thing that organizations are looking for in people in 24 and beyond creativity, their ability to be creative. And of course we want that because they're going to be supported by AI tools. The doing the, the complex, you know, tasks that over and over are going to be done by something else. You want somebody to be creative. AI is for the creatives. If you're creative, you're. I just read an article that a company, an AI company launched and within two months are doing $10 million because they're creative. Eight employees. Eight employees. $10 million because it's. You can. If you have creativity, you have the ability to accomplish remarkable things. Companies prioritizing well being report 41% reduction in absenteeism. We talked about how valuable that is. They. This is one of my favorite things that Satya Nadala said. I absolutely love this. Highly recommend you screen capping this and grabbing it for yourself. The idea of a leader as the know it all is outdated. The best leaders are learn it alls. Okay? Fostering curiosity and growth in themselves and their teams. That's what we're looking for. Okay? That's the best chance. A study showed that we are willing to exchange $5,000 in salary. Okay. For a better work environment. Everyone's talking about the economy and this is from last year, 2024 showed that people are willing to exchange $5,000 in salary if they feel supported. Heard of their part of a better work environment. I know most speakers don't do this. They say pay attention. Do not leave everybody focus here. Stop it. Get off your phones. I'm not telling you to do that. I'm asking you to do this right now. Hey Google, what is most important in life? Go ahead and do that. Go ask Google right now. Chat GPT what is most common answer to the question what is most important in life?

I'm gonna burst your bubbles here. Spoiler alert. Family, health, love and happiness. I dare you to check it for yourself. What is the most important thing in life? What is the most common answer for that? Family, health, love and happiness. You're going to find that. Does that change when you go to work. When you go to work, when you're employed, when you're in an enterprise, an organization, somebody asks what's most important in life? Does, does your answer change? No. Family, health, love and happiness. And the most successful organizations prioritize that. They know it. They prioritize it. They know that if you want to move mountains and win in the most competitive environments in the world, you have to have people, capital, human connection. Google, who happens to be the number one in their industry, has project Aristotle. I don't know if any anybody has seen this before, have done this before. Highly recommend diving into it. I'm going to give you some key pieces from it. The focus of of this study was to primarily examine the factors that contribute to a team's effectiveness. On the left side, you can see the teams that fostered the strongest sense of psychological safety and demonstrated high levels of emotional intelligence.

That was considered the most critical factor for team success. Not their seniority, not their past skill. Not, not, not, not, not, not, not. Most important, psychological safety and high levels of emotional intelligence. That was the most important factors for team success in this study. Salesforce. You're all about to see Marc Benioff tomorrow. Speaking. By the way, all of these companies are future partners for Fuel. They also happen to be number one in their industry. Okay. They're inspired by Ohana. Okay. Which prioritizes collaboration, inclusivity and the well being of every individual. This is a priority. This is not something they think is a good idea. It's a priority. Their core values. Check this out. A deep seated support system.

Just read that again. A deep seated support system.

Not to blow away the competition, not to work hard. A deep seated support system. That's in the first line of their core values. We collaborate, take care of one another. Have, have fun together and work to leave the world a better place. Mark, we're all excited to hear you speak tomorrow because that kind of belief to be and then to create the number one company in your industry, in the world with that type of mindset and belief.

That is what sets us apart. Okay, let's keep going.

This is a myth that everyone has to understand you. You do not keep employees at all cost. Talent should always be improving or moving to a better fit role. Always as a leader. Your number one task is developing talent. Number one, develop talent. Number two, raise the bar. Develop talent. Raise the bar. Develop talent. Raise the bar. Develop talent. Raise the bar. That's all you have to do. Professional sports, the military has proven that is the ideal way to build Performance and culture. Okay. And one more company that invests heavily into personal development and well being. Netflix once again happens to be the number one in their industry.

Imagine working alongside stunning colleagues who are great at what they do and even better at working together. It's why we model ourselves on professional sports teams, not a family. And you can read there, by the way. You can snap the picture of this too if you want. Families are about unconditional love. They can also be dysfunctional. As anyone who's who's watched Ozarks. I just love how Netflix communicates with their people. Read that for yourself. Even when that means swapping out someone they love for a better player.

Performance. At the end of the day, it's about results and performance and being able to do the thing you know, and being able to do it well and being engaged and wanting to do it. Okay. You can see their core values. Selflessness. You are humble when searching for the best ideas. Courage. You're vulnerable in search for the truth. Curiosity. You lean. You learn rapidly and eagerly. You are as interested in other people's ideas as your own. Emotional intelligence. Connection, purpose, reason. But making that the thing that drop that fuels your success. People, what it takes, it always takes people. It's not about skills and logic. Let me rephrase that. It's not about logic, it's about emotion. Because emotion creates action. Logic does not create action. Just teaching people sales skills, productivity skills, customer engagements. Just that alone is not enough. How are you investing in me? I'm not going to go through all of these, but Todd can put a link into chat here in just a second and we can send you this list. These are the, the 50 best organizations in the world that are investing in personal development and building their humans and emotional connections. We'll send you this entire list with all of these explanations. The link that Todd's going to put in there, you're going to click on it. It's going to open up our website. Scroll all the way to the bottom, there's an email link. Anyone that fills in that email link today is going to get a list of these companies and what they do, how they support well being. So if you're interested in that, click the link, go down to the bottom and just put in your email and we'll send you a copy of, of all of those companies. Okay? I told you we're going to talk about this. Forbes last year did a study. Well, they didn't do a study. The study was done by Statista. But they, they published this article that 70 of employers say creative thinking is the most in Demand skill in 2024. And it's going to be that moving forward. Why? When you have tools to support your strengths and it's your creativity that you want everyone to be armed with, how creative can you be? How can you apply this? It's a competitive. By the way, if you see the center block there, this wasn't a small study. 8 over 800 companies, over 11 million employees. And this is what they said globally, that creative thinking is going to be the most in demand skill. At the bottom there. If you don't tackle professional or business challenges with fresh approaches, you're just going to lose. Organizations thrive because they are led by leaders who think outside the box. Creative thinking, how do we arm people with doing that? Well, you mentioned it, Gerhard, you mentioned it. Binge worthy micro content for happier, healthier and more productive humans. Supported by a never ending list of live virtual coaching by the same instructors that can help you get happier, healthier and more productive. So a live community with recorded content always on, always working. The biggest room in our life is the room to grow in chat. Jump in there. Tell me if you love this. Snap this picture. By the way, every time I share this with people like, oh my gosh, I love this, it's true. The biggest room in our life is the room to grow. If you agree, get in chat and let us know that you agree. If that's true, then how do we support, okay. The well being and professional growth of every person in every department.

And in every language? We currently have organizations in more than 40 countries with accounts on fuel. We're just seven months young, but we've already touched, touched the world because of the purpose, the meaning behind it. The democratization of personal development and access for all in every language. Todd's about to post a link. Once again, I keep driving you away from this presentation, but please, this is a link. You will see how we use AI to translate every single lesson into every single language. But the importance of how we translate it, it's the emotional connection you get with the speaker who's speaking your native tongue. And the lips are moving exactly the way that they would move if it was you speaking it. And the connection, it's not an overlay. It's not some kind of just a sound over top of a presentation. We've literally made every speaker speak the language of the person that is listening. Okay, so you'll take a look at that in a second. But how do we arm our team to be able to Support every single person in every single department. Okay, here's an example. So if I was to give you two hours and I said, hey, take a look at every social media channel I have and see if you can learn something about me, see if you can understand me better right now in this moment by taking a look at my social media, you would spend time, you would look through everything and I promise you, you would get to know a lot. My likes, my dislikes, my friends, my interests. If I'm traveling, do I have kids? You will see it all.

How do we take that? How do we take what Facebook and TikTok and Instagram have done in learning us and take that exact same concept and, and give it back to our people and our leaders. This is a real life example of Ryan who happened to watch all of these lessons in a 24 hour period. Every person on our team is unique, but the only thing we've armed our leaders with is one simple thing. Ready? Here it is. This is what every leader and every company is armed with and they use it constantly. What can I help you with today? How can I support you today? That's it. That's all they're armed with.

Here's another example though. Here's another way that you're armed with things that are relevant to your people right now. Today. Ryan watched these four, these, these, these lessons, some of them multiple times, as you can see. What does this mean about Ryan? We've been, this is exciting because we've been developing this assessment process for almost three years and now it's available and it's beautiful. This team member is actively trying to regain control of their motivation, mental clarity and social impact. If properly supported, they can turn this introspective phase into a breakthrough moment of growth and transformation. How can you support Ryan? Encourage practical application of the brain habits. That's the best way you can support Ryan right now in this moment. This was today, 24 hour period. It's not an assessment you did two years ago. It's not a disc or some other assessment you've done. It is what's important to, to Ryan today. Okay, about Sion. What does she need? Okay. This team member happened to watch very, very different things. This is what she watched in a 24 hour period. Again, you can notice that there are several lessons they've taken more than once. Why? Because fuel is for applied learning, not for knowledge gathering in memory. We don't want you to just understand. We want you to be able to do the thing you understand. It's applied Learning. So why do you see those practices there? There's multiple times that. Because it's about practicing and make creating a skill, not just trying to remember something you learned, but being able to apply it. And so she's applying those skills in those. In those lessons. Okay. This team member's selection of lessons suggest a strong focus on emotional intelligence, communication skills, and handling resistance in conversations. Understand the reason this assessment is so powerful is because these people chose these for themselves. They weren't assigned to them. This wasn't obedience. This was individual choice.

Individual decisions, something that's important to me. And when those markers show up of what's important to me, it's very important that we can find them and bring them together so that me, the leader, you, the person that's on my team.

Can work towards a common goal from where you are today right now. This is what's important to you right now. Let me support you here. Okay. How can I support her? Give her an opportunity to lead discussions or handle objections. This will help her cement her learning in real world situations. Now we are arming our leaders with the ability to help our people where they are not from where we want them to be. We can't expect leaders to know it all and be able to do it all and just. Okay, let's think about this for a second. Do I have a sports picture coming up? Yeah, I have a couple of them. Think about this for a second. We told you we're modeling this after professional sports, right? Because they've proven that they always raise the bar. We have a couple of NFL players we work with. We asked him, could an NFL player from 20 and from 1990, could an NFL player in 1990 make the team in 20, 25? Knee jerk reaction from both of them. Nope. Many of you on this call, when I asked that question, maybe like, no, no way. So they both said no, but then they went, okay, maybe some would, but majority would not. Why? Develop talent, raise the bar. Develop talent, raise the bar. Develop talent, raise the bar. That is the method. But how are they able to develop talent and raise the bar? They have tools and resources. Tons of them. Think about this. The coach of a football team is not the bench press. They're not the dumbbells. They're not the track, they're not the leg press. But they know how to use those tools to build the talent they need to win games. That's what this is about. Giving your leaders access to resources, struggling to manage your time effectively. There's a course for that. Want to become Better public speaker course for that feeling overwhelmed or stressed course. Wishing you had better you. Wishing you were better. Handling difficult conversations, trying to build a powerful personal brand. Struggling to manage your time effectively. On and on and on and on and on. That's all equipment. And when you start to see what's important for your people, you can start to use the equipment, the resources you have access to, and actually build the talent on your team. So this is the gym. This is the iPad that you see when Patrick Mahomes comes off the field and he's looking at what he can do better. That's real time assessments. That's real time support for improvement in game. How can we help our people win today and again tomorrow and again the next day? Because they are in a competition. You are in a competition every single day. If you're in business, you're in a competition. So. So we gotta be able to arm our people with tools and resources to build talent. Remember, build talent. Up or out and then raise the bar. Up or out. Raise the bar. Okay. This is key. Do you have players or workers? You want players, not workers. You know why? Because they don't call them baseball employees or basketball workers. They call them soccer players, baseball players, basketball players, football players. They call them players for a reason. Because they're playing the game they want to play and getting paid to play the game. Workers work for a company that will give them a paycheck. They're not there to play the game they wanted to play. Never in the history of the NFL has a quarterback dropped back and said, I wish I was an attorney. Not once. It's never happened. Never going to happen. Because they're playing the game, playing the game they want to be playing. How many people on your team are working and are workers and consider themselves workers? And how many of them are playing the game they were going to play with or without you? They just happen to be playing for you. And that's how you support them. You want players, you want stars in every position and you want players. How do you discover those players? Commitment. Who's committing to their personal growth? That's all I promise you. There's no coach in any professional sport that follows their players home in a car, watches when they go to sleep, watches when they work out, watches what they eat and forces them to do things their way. No, Autonomy is the key. Autonomy is the key to discovering those people on your team who are playing versus those that are there for a paycheck.

Giving our people unlimited access, okay? To personal development tools and Resources to personal development is how we create happier, healthier, more productive people. Okay. The future of all organizations is mastering human, human development. That's what it is. You want to be able to apply the knowledge, not just say you learned it. Connect with others and feel heard, feel supported. You want to be part of something bigger. That's something that drives us. Support me. Help me become the best. Me. And I will help you build the biggest company in the world. But you got to want me to become the best, too. It's not just one way. Oh, but we're paying you. That's not enough. We already said that that's not enough. People want more. Happiness will be one of the most deciding factors in choosing where you're going to work. Okay. And of course, prioritize happiness, health and family. And that's why emotional intelligence is humanity's best chance.

All right, Gerhardt.

Or maybe I can jump into the audience.

I hope I did this.

I'm looking at the stream of messages and you are amazing. People love your energy, they love your stories and riveted. I, I think that somebody who has never experienced you is blown away.

And the comments are amazing.

Thank you. Well, look, it's, it's, it's time. I think the reason we're seeing the success and the growth and the, and the connection and, and people are coming from all walks of life to get their hands on fuel or introduce their communities to fuel. It's because it's time. It's time. It's time that we.

Created a platform that's available to everyone, for everyone to be able to reach new heights for themselves and not limited by their financial situations. Right. It's about access.

People need a little bit more sunshine after that political deluge of presidential directives.

I, I couldn't agree more with you, Gear. Couldn't agree more. Thank you for this platform. Thank you for, for allowing us to join you today and speak to your audience. You have one of the most amazing, most engaging, most intelligent audiences I've ever come across. I've been building businesses for 22 years and, and I've spoken on lots of stages. And I got to tell you, every time I speak on your stage, there's so much love, so much engagement, so much connection. So you've done a great job. Thank you.