Why Music Can Create A Better Leader [The Leader’s Playlist]

Foreign Hi, I'm Susan Drama, and welcome to this special edition of the Enlightened Executive, a seven episode podcast series on the Leaders Playlist, where we'll be discussing how to use the power of music and neuroscience to transform your leadership and your Life. Go to susandrum.com to learn more about these concepts and the book. And I'm thrilled to have with me Justin Donald. Thank you so much for coming on. Justin is what Entrepreneur magazine calls the Warren Buffett of lifestyle investing. And his whole ethos is to create wealth without creating a job. And he's got a fantastic podcast called the Lifestyle Investor. If you haven't subscribed, I really encourage you to do so. He's amazing. He's been on my podcast, I've been on his podcast, and I'm super thrilled to have him here. Thank you for coming on to chat with me about the Leaders Playlist.

Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. And you know, it's really fun always getting a chance to hang with you, Susan. So I'm just excited about all the cool stuff you're doing, and I've got a bunch of questions for you. So I'd love to just kind of start out with just this idea of really incorporating music into your approach here and helping leaders become more effective. It's kind of off the beaten path, at least from a mainstream standpoint. So I'm curious where you learned about this, where you got the idea to incorporate music. I love it, by the way. I'm just, I'm curious for sure.

This is a technique that worked for me and it's something I started working with other leaders with. And I started to say, there's something here with music. What is it about music that allows us to essentially shift our emotional state so quickly? But even more what I found is it primes the neural landscape to be able to help make change stick faster than it normally would. And I think it was me starting to then do some research on how does music affect the brain and why am I having these great results with myself and with other leaders I'm coaching in using music. And it's really fascinating when you get into it now. You may have heard these stories of like Alzheimer's patients when you play music and they're like unresponsive patients, they come alive. Like, you play their favorite music, all of a sudden it's like the synapses are working again. So there is something incredibly powerful about music and how it lights up all regions of the brain. And I just wanted to harness that.

Well, that's cool. And I totally get it because, you know, if I'm going to go work out and I throw on some music, you know, there's certain music that really creates a mood or, you know, you see it in motion pictures, kind of elevating a scene or trying to get, you know, more of an emotional response to maybe a scene or a situation. And I see it in my own life, you know, where there's a certain type of music, no lyrics, where I can really go down the rabbit hole of flow and, you know, really getting into a project. So I think that's awesome. Something that you say is that you have this hidden objective for the book. So what is this hidden objective?

We kind of have a sense that, hey, if we play upbeat music while we're running, it's going to help improve our running. So we've already intrinsically know there's something there with music. But what I'm doing is taking it at a much deeper level, which the hidden target is. What I've seen over the past 20 years of doing this work is that our childhood wounds show up in our leadership and how we lead others. So whatever happened to us, we way back when and what we made that mean, and we've all sustained some type of thing. I'm not necessarily calling it trauma, but some experience trauma. I'm calling it more wounds. Like, what was that thing that happened to you that you had to overcome? And there are incredible blessings in that. But they're also. Sometimes we think things about the world and about ourselves that just aren't true once we get into a higher level area of leadership. So the hidden target is really to see how that old patterning is getting in the way and how your past is completely expressed in your leadership today, and then how to use music to shift that.

Yeah, that's interesting. It's powerful. My next question kind of is along the same path, and I think I already have an idea as to the answer of it. But was there a specific event that brought you to this realization that music is really powerful and really impactful, specifically in leadership?

It was more on the personal side. But my old childhood wound that I discovered from writing about my life was I'm treated unfairly. And I had lots of examples of where that happened to me. And even objectively, people would look at what happened and be like, yeah, that was like. But I kept saying, stuck in that. And I was like, I need to shift it. And I was able to use music myself. And I had this sort of new playlist of empowerment. Songs that were the exact opposite of that. And the more I played them, the more I started my day with them, the more that they actually gave me that feeling of being empowered. And really everything is going my way, everything is working out for me. That's how I would begin my day and that's how I would finish my day. And even in the middle of my day. So the more I got into that emotional state, the more my external life started to shift. And so really it was through me doing that and then saying, well, let me test this out on some of my coaching clients. Right. And I could see the changes that where they were getting stuck and things that we hadn't been able to shift, we started to be able to shift using this anchor of. Of music.

Yeah, that's interesting. And I'm curious if there's like a certain genre that works better, if it even matters, because, like, for me, if I'm listening to anything that has lyrics, it's hard for me to get lost in a project because I just want to, you know, I find myself singing the song or anything like that. So I'm curious. Like, for me, if I want to get in flow, it needs to be instrumental. But if I want to, you know, get into a certain mood or have a just a certain beat or, you know, a certain vibe, you know, I might play something a little more upscale to like bring the energy kind of like a faster tempo or more of a beat. So is there a genre like country, rap, instrumental, classical, you know, what does that look like?

Yeah. So essentially what you're doing is using music to shift your working state, which is entrainment, where you can use music to speed up or slow down. In this instance, we're actually using music to catch an old pattern, or what I call the eight lane highway to hell and interrupt that pattern. So that's what we call the old playlist. What I would say about what type of music is, it's. What is the emotional resonance for you? It doesn't really matter what music you use. It's more what the music does to you.

How might this impact someone's ability to create your, you know, a wealthy life, an epic life, a life well lived, as people would say. Like whenever I describe with my community what wealth is a component of, it is financial. But the larger elements of it have to do with other things like being mentally strong, physically strong, emotionally strong, spiritually strong. So financially strong is part of that. But do you own your time? Are you spending it the way that you want to Spend it. Do you look back and say, hey, what a great life I lived? Or do you say, oh, look at these opportunities I missed. I was, I was blind. I was on autopilot. I wasn't being proactive. So how does this help?

I love the whole concept that you talk about in the work that you do about redefining wealth as much broader perspective than just financial wealth. Because I think that that is so important. And certainly I've worked with these billionaires that have tremendous wealth, but would you say they have wealth in those other categories? I'm not so sure. You know, what we're really talking about is a shift in perspective in the way you view the world. And if you're going to shift perspective, using music to be able to shift that perspective and how you lead, like no longer does it have to be, let's say, a playlist of a leader I recently worked with was. He named it I'm Trapped. And he kept using things to, you know, running from being trapped and, and trying to avoid being trapped. But he was never trapped to begin with, but he so feared it. Well, that's going to play in. If you have this belief that you're trapped, how is that going to impact the decisions you make around your wealth and how you spend your time, where you put your energy, these childhood wounds play into how people live their lives today. And if we want to shift that and shift that through your work, then getting a handle on what those are, you know, everything from I'm not good enough, I'm treated unfairly. Mine, you know, I'm, I'm trapped, I'm not safe. All of those will play into how people really, from everything from invest their money to their physical, their physical wealth.

Yeah, that's a great answer to it. And I'm curious, like taking a step back, what are next steps? So let's say someone's read your book, let's say that someone's done the work. What's next? Is coaching necessary?

What we provide is a guide. So at each part of the chapter there's a QR code that you can download, taking you through the seven step process as well as some example playlists. So it can be great to work with a coach on this and deepen the practice and figure out how are you best going to apply it. And we also have a masterclass where we're talking about that and we're going to have retreats to help people as well. So there's going to be some more additional resources out there. But in general, working with a coach on this would be phenomenal.

Well, where can readers and listeners learn more about your book?

So go to the leaders playlist book.com there's all the information there about the book and would love for you to join the community that we've created of enlightened executives who want to get the cutting edge strategies on improving their personal life as well as their leadership. And that's what we're really focused on, up leveling to conscious leadership.

Well, fantastic. I really enjoyed our time here today. Thanks for answering some of these questions that I had and I'm so excited about all the great things that you're doing in the world and the impact that you're having. So thank you so much for all that you do.

Thank you, Justin. I mean, it's such a pleasure always to chat with you. I'm so inspired by your work. And again, I really want to encourage people to check out the podcast lifestyle investor get his book, which is phenomenal as well. And it'll also support you in making some of the changes you want to make in your world. So let's lead the way. Curious about the concepts we talked about in this episode? Go to the leaders playlistbook.com to learn more and purchase the book. And stay tuned for the next episode of the Leaders Playlist.