Brain Optimization for Effective Leadership [Lee Gerdes]

Hi, I'm Susan Drum and welcome to the Enlightened Executive where your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution. Each episode we feature groundbreaking techniques and strategies to help you get the edge in personal and leadership effectiveness. Today we are talking about brain optimization, the latest technology and leadership. I'm excited to introduce my guest, Lee Gerdes. Lee is a Nebraskan born entrepreneur and businessman who founded Brain State Technologies in 2004. Most recently, he founded Saracet, a growing company with a proven neurotechnology that helps the brain reset and rebalance, decreasing the impact of anxiety, stress and sleep issues. Lee is also an author and a speaker and currently resides in Scottsdale. He holds a BA in math and physics and a master's degree in divinity. Understanding how the brain works and the connection with how technology can help us has been a common thread in his very diverse career. So welcome Lee.

Thank you. Nice to be here.

I'm really intrigued by your technologies and I'm excited to share them with the audience today. So perhaps we could start a little bit about the technology itself. Tell me more about what it is you discovered and how it's used.

The discovery happened out of need, not out of. Because I was smart. I wasn't at the time, at all, frankly. But the technology happened out of need. But what my experience had been was that things weren't helping my brain and I dramatically needed the help. At the time, the question on the table was why not? And why not was simple. The psychotherapist, and by the way, I have two years of clinical psych that didn't help me. Medical, the physician didn't help me. You know, nothing helped me. And so my question on the table was, well, what am I going to do? This is serious. And I thought about it for a long time and I thought, well, you know, when we're created, when we happen in this world, we happen with a sense of rightness or balance most generally, unless there's something inherently or genetically inappropriate or maladjusted.

Right.

We happen that way, we're created that way. And so I thought, I need, I want to find a way to get back to that core, almost a wholeness, Right? Exactly.

And what was it that you just so people could understand, what was it that you were struggling with at the time that caused you to seek that wholeness or balance?

I spent 8 years with mild traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress after an assault by four youth. One had a baseball bat.

Oh my.

And so I see some recent stuff about last summer and people beaten. And I think about that A little bit. But interestingly, I don't think about it and it doesn't bring up any emotion, you know, because now my, My brain is balanced. The end of the story is I found a way to balance my brain by just showing it itself and letting it do its own work. If I cut my finger, the brain knows I cut my finger. It sends appropriate cells and protection for the cut, to fight bacteria, to added skin resilience so it can, in fact, heal itself. That's what the brain's job is, to keep us alive. That's the number one. So that's cool. What about me? Keep me alive because I spent eight years, eight years in hell. And I don't want to make fun of that, because people out there that might hear this have, or they know people that have. And I want them all to know it's not your fault. What you experience is not you, it's your brain. Your brain is driving. And so when I looked at my brain, I saw left and right hemispheres to be very different in terms of amplitudes in certain areas. Because I hacked together some software and I, you know, I'm on computer software as well as physics and math. And so I'm. I'm looking at things, but I'm always looking at how am I going to help the brain do its own stuff. Because if, in fact, if it's an infinite system, that means as a finite being, I can't get my arms around it, so I better just shut up and step out of the way. Let it go.

Yes, yes.

And so that was my.

As long as it's operating optimally, right. If it's not operating, then we don't want to keep letting it go.

Yeah, that's where that was my key, you know, but my key instruction to myself, you know, just shut up and get out of the way, but find a way. So the way was I wanted to reflect it back to itself. So I looked at doing it on a computer screen and showing waveforms in my brain and left and right hemispheres on a computer screen. But that took about 2 1/2 seconds to get from my brain through the technology to the computer screen. In 2 1/2 seconds, the brain moves 2,500 steps a long ways. And then I knew that sound at the time was less than about 900 or so steps. You know, I can do it in 900 milliseconds. I thought, I'll use sound. So that's what I did. I took the middle dominant frequency and I kept showing the brain that middle Dominant frequency. And you know, I had to do it a lot then, probably 70 sessions or so, whatever, long time. But I started sleeping for the first time in eight years. Huh. And that's key? Yes, is key. That's how we heal, that's how we optimize, that's how the computers defrag. The computer between our ears is sleep. It's hugely important. And so there I was. And after that I thought, well, this is interesting. It must have just been my time, you know, and so I didn't worry too much about it. And then I went on for a while and I thought, well, what if it wasn't just my time? What if this technology is actually worth something? Uh huh. See I'm trying to tell you that this isn't about me being smart. My mother always told me, by the way, she died at 102 and a half and told me what to do with my real estate holdings the day before she died. Just so you know, my mother always told me, son, it's great to be good at something, it's better to be lucky, but it's best to be both. Yes.

Right, Right. And so now tell us about the technology today, where it happened.

In about 2000, I worked with some people to try to see if I could help them, and it did. And then, you know, I carried it in my trunk of my car and went to their home and hey, you want to try this technology? Oh, you got a problem with golf? Oh, you got a problem with depression? Let's try, you know. And so there I was about a few years later and I incorporated and then I was off and running. Today the technology is light years from where it was. We have 160,000 clients. We've completed nine clinical trials, over 1,000 patients through those clinical trials on various topics. At the beginning of this year, we had 29 franchise offices in the United States and the EU for in the EU. And today we have about. And by the end of the year we'll have about 50 and by next year we should have close to 90 or 100. Wow.

So rapid growth, rapid scale.

It is.

And so how does the technology work today?

Today it requires four sessions. In the first part, where the client comes in, sits in a comfortable chair, sensors are placed on the scalp and the sensors read the brain. And then they're given earphones to listen to the brain. Then the room's darkened and the chairs put back in a comfortable position. Hopefully they'll take a nap because we don't want them to participate.

Get out of the way, as you said.

Yep, yep. And so, and then the four sessions are about an hour and a half each, roughly hour and 15 minutes. And all they do during that time is simply listen to the brain. Now we're scientists, we measure stuff because I'm an engineer, which doesn't necessarily make me the greatest businessman in the world, by the way. And I know I have to step aside here. It's coming.

Now that we're moving forward, we can talk about leadership. Yeah, Leadership development.

Now that we're moving fast, I gotta get out of the way, right? Getting out of the way.

You can help me with my sleep and I'll help you there.

Yeah. So, but, but we're looking great. We got a great team. And of course I sleep well and I have a tune up session every three to six weeks. Takes me now about 15 minutes, 20 minutes to get a tune up session and I'm just, boom, back with it.

So you do four sessions and then you're seeing results or what's the.

I'm sorry.

Oh, go ahead. You started to say there's four sessions.

And then, then we measure the brain and show the client what the brain looks like. And then we measure it again until they know how they did. It's measurable. Then we do an integrative session about two to three weeks down the road. Then we'll see how the brain was doing on its own. Then we'll have the fifth session at that time. It's not that expensive. The first package for wellness package is $1,500 for those five sessions. Then after that they're usually about $150 a session because the client knows the process and the provider knows the client, sort of. Right. And they move much more quickly together and it's a lot easier to find out what their, where their brain's going. So it's. But the computer makes all the decisions.

And so what's actually happening there? Like how is this working?

What happens is in real time. I say real time and it is real time for practical purposes. But generally the whole process takes about 600 milliseconds. That's pretty close to real time. In real time, we're reading the brain in four locations. Each location 48,000 frequencies. And we're doing that 500 times a second. That's processed. And as it's processed, we find out where the imbalance is in the, where the sensors are. And then the computer decides and relates a particular sound to each particular frequency. And that sound is played when the dominant frequency associated with it is in real time, dominant. And so the brain sees it has a resonance loop. If, you know, two tuning forks, you strike this one, this one picks it up. Well, this one's the brain, this one's the computer, and they're picking that up. And so everything's going kind of towards the middle. It's relaxing. And as it relaxes, it's like two gears that are supposed to fit together, but they're both moving very fast. And then once you slow them down and they click together, and that's what we see the brain happening and it's measurable.

So I am so fascinated by the use of sound here because I've been working on a book for about two and a half years focused on how people can shift their leadership using the power of sound, specifically music, and how music can shift state and how we can get caught in what I call an old playlist and how to shift to a new playlist. I've actually found music and sound in general lights up all regions of the brain as I did more of my research. Why is it that music has such a powerful influence on us? There's a connection here with what you're talking about because you're using sound again, lighting up the brain in the way it needs to in order to make those gears fit together and click. And you're being able to measure the impact on that. So that's just fascinating to me. I haven't heard of this type of technology.

So when we use sound, we're trying to relate a particular note, say, to a particular frequency. But to do that means that the note has to be the same. We don't want a note to prejudice the brain.

Right.

Notes have an envelope, it's called, some of it's longer, some of it shorter. And so the shorter envelope happens when there's a very, very high pitched note goes this waveform goes this way. In the old world, my world, there used to be thing called Memrax tape and they used to have a commercial on TV and they had a soprano singing in that commercial and they could record it on memory tape and then they played it back and it broke a wine glass, right?

Yeah.

It made it vibrate.

Yeah.

Okay. That's because up and down. Now that's a high pitch, a low pitch, very long. Because it moves this way, not this way. Yep. So what we hear when we pull up to a stop sign, say next to another car, and the car has music on very loudly, the only thing we hear from them is the bass. Boom, boom. Because the bass is very low. Well, we had to engineer every note and make it exactly the same length in milliseconds, so it wouldn't influence the brain anymore between one frequency and another. And that's what we did. Now it's all engineered tones.

Got it. So what are some of the results that someone can get by going through this process using the technology? What have you seen? And particularly I'm interested in what's been the impact on executives and entrepreneurs.

In terms of the executive. It's the matter of being at peace and in that piece, being confident and in that confidence being outward rather than inward, rather than what I want, I want. The question is what's best and how can I facilitate that with the resources I have.

Absolutely.

And so to do that, I have to get out of my own way again and I have to be able to be out there. So to give you some idea about what can happen and how stuck we get because of our brain, we could even think about a gentleman who came here some time ago and he had been in a car accident, hadn't been able to sleep and et cetera. And he came to get some help with that. A small concussion, but a concussion. And so we worked with him. And then he said, so you tell me, I want to know right now what happened. I said, what do you mean, what happened? He said, I've been in AA for 20 years. I have a 20 year pen for 20 years. Every single day I wake up and I say, I will not have a drink today. Now I go through Saracet and a week later I don't even remember saying it. I don't say anything. I'm just waking up and everything's good. And what happened? And I said, it's because your brain in a specific location has this kind of an imbalance, asymmetry, and this drives your need to have a drink. That's what alcohol did for you. It made this, it falsely made this look, feel like it was similar. And so what you did then for those 20 years is you controlled that, but it took energy. Right now you're freed. Don't you understand how powerful that is? And he said, oh, yeah, I do. I'm writing stuff I never thought I would be. I'm doing stuff I never. I said, yeah, that's it. That's freedom.

That's amazing.

That's freedom and capability. Now for the executive, it's, you know, you always have those. You know, my president, CFO says to me, he says, this would be such a wonderful business, didn't depend on people. I love that part. And so. But he said, you know, because we're all variable, right? So to be a leader, we've got to understand how am I? And the best way to answer that question for myself is to say, how am I sleeping? Do I wake rested? Do I wake positive? And the second question then is, although you may or may not be able to ask those directly who you lead, if you can, to find out how are you sleeping? Yes, that's key.

Oh, I know so many entrepreneurs and executives struggling with that, myself included, as I mentioned earlier. So you've really piqued my interest here. So that's one key indicator that you might have an imbalance in the brain is what you're suggesting.

And let me tell you how that may start, because it just happened this week, so it's kind of hot on my list, and wildly just. I would have never believed it. Okay. A woman came from Mexico. Her therapist in Sonora said, the only way I've ever heard anything that might help you is Sarah said in Scottsdale, Arizona. So she and her husband traveled up to Scottsdale, Arizona. She's 30 years old. Since she was born, she's never been able to sleep. 30 years old, maybe an hour or two, but usually never able to sleep at all. And her mother called her the night baby. She was here on Monday for her first session Tuesday. Yesterday, she came in so excited that we couldn't even. We couldn't understand her. First of all, her husband does translate, luckily. But she was just, you know, talking away, and I just stayed behind my door thinking, hopefully they'll handle it, because I didn't know it was good or bad. Anyway, long story short, she was telling that she got seven hours of sleep that first night. So what happened? Probably there was a traumatic event during pregnancy and. Or a traumatic event at birth. And that traumatic event caused the brain to stick in a certain pattern. Now, when it did stick, it was important because it helped keep her alive. And that's a job. Just like my brain stuck for eight years because it stuck when the baseball bat hit my head. That kept me alive then, but it was hell to go through.

Yeah.

So at the end of the story, then, when I could balance it, I could be free. And that's what the executive can be in terms of cognitive function. Emotional, not control, but appropriate regulation of emotion. Because, you see, if I'm emotional, it happens. If I control it, it means I suck it down.

Yeah, Right.

But it's still there, and it'll leak.

Out in other ways. Or I'll manage it using other escape techniques like alcohol.

Right. People that really know me always know. Right. It's there, you know, watch out, whatever. Yeah, but emotional control, anxiety, depression, something that's not as easily measurable. Although in clinical trials we have tried to measure it as part of the quality of life is how good do you feel? How are you doing? How good are you? We usually say, how are you? Today we'd say fine. We're good at lying too, because most of us aren't.

Fine. Yes.

And when we lay our head down on the pillow, because remember, as executives we have responsibility for all those paychecks, those families maybe that are. Maybe there's many, many dozens, hundreds, thousands of families that could depend on us. We need to be on our game. This needs to be a top down kind of process. So it's just a matter of time before we get someone to start taking and making executive conferences that are a few days long around Saracet. So we can help them balance their brains at the same time and even perhaps get so confident or open that they can even talk about it.

Yeah. And so you need to come to a center to do that. That's why you're opening all the centers. Got it. Okay.

So we've got, yeah, we've got offices, you know, around the, around the country. And when it's local, it's very helpful because then when something goes awry in life, you probably are too young to know that that happens. But.

Right.

You know, it's great to go in and get a. Well, you might go in and get a massage. It's great to go in too and get a, you know, a tune up session.

Yeah. And so after the four and then the fifth, that happens, then it's from there on. Is it just the tune up session when life events happen, essentially.

Exactly.

That's amazing.

You know, when there's a major car accident, when there's a major issue with finances, when there's a major issue with the death of a loved one.

Right.

Yeah, because we all face those. It's a big deal.

Any stressful or traumatic event could be a time to make this happen. Any other examples that you have of executives and how they've improved their leadership.

As a result of it? So we worked with one executive and I'm not allowed to name the company, but we worked with one executive and he had had trouble sleeping, lots of troubles. And that caused some troubles in a little bit of tension in that one being facetious. Cause a lot of tension in his marriage. And so they both had sessions and then from that they decided, after a few weeks they called me and said, what if we set up and taught and bought just a closed system for our company? I said, that is a powerful. Why would you want to do that? He said, because we are in the steel business. We do very, very precision work and it's all done by computer, lathe, etc. Takes a long time to train people and when they leave it cost us a bunch. So he said, I thought maybe if they could be feeling as good as we are, they might hang around. So I said, brilliant. Now you're thinking that's a leader. So that's what he did. He took a Saracet session. He trained somebody, set an office up just for them. And then he told his employees about it and about their own situation, what happened. And then some of the employees started to come and then they told other employees and they went, wow. And then the wives heard it or the, the other, the spouse has heard it, it's manufacturing. So most of it was male. And before you know it, and this one guy said, you know, we've got four kids and they've had ADD and then they go to. Sarah said, and then they don't have it anymore. My wife told me flat out, I don't care if your job, if you get an offer for double your pay, you're not leaving.

So this is a whole new way of using a talent retention tool. Because we've been talking a lot about talent retention and the great resignation. So that is too funny.

Loyalty program with chains. I love it.

Where can people learn more if they're curious about what this could do for them?

Well, the name of the company is Saracet. It's made up of CE or cerebrum and then reset. So it's C E R E S E T. And there's a lot of information on there. And if somebody that's really interested in saying, oh, this is too good to be true. Yeah, really check it out on the research side, we got all those peer reviewed papers. We got over a thousand people, patients through clinical trials. We just finished up phase one with a military clinical trial on guess what? Mild traumatic brain injuries. Same thing I had. The circle is completing itself. Yes, I'm feeling very, very pleased about that. You know, it's a very good feeling for me.

Well, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing a bit more about this technology. I'm going to look into it personally. Very, very curious. So thanks for being here.

And thanks for having me.

So if you liked this episode, you're not going to want to miss my interview with Roland McCrady, director of research at HeartMath Institute, where we discuss the heart brain connection and how it affects our performance. Let's lead the way. Hope you enjoyed today's episode, and I'd like to point you to the next important step. Hit the subscribe button and the bell to get notified when we release new content. I'll see you on the next episode of the Enlightened Executive.

Sam.