Toxic Positivity and Leadership in the Impact Space

What is toxic positivity, and why is it harmful to an impact leader's goals? And what do you do instead of it? These are the kinds of questions that I had the honor of having a conversation with Saen Raja. Satyan is a long term leader in the impact space, and I hope you'll listen to this episode because one of the things we cover is that when you are leading from a place of toxic positivity, it's really hard for people to trust you and lean into your brand. And if you can find some other strategies, you'll be much more effective in reaching your goals. So take a listen, tell your friends, and let's get into it. Hi. This is Paul Zellizer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life.

Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could go to Apple Podcasts or whatever app you're listening to the show on, hit subscribe, do a rating and a review. It helps more people learn how to have positive impact through a values based business. Thanks so much. Today, I am really, really excited to introduce you to Satyan Raja. And our topic today is toxic positivity and leadership in the impact space. Satyan is the founder and CEO of Warrior Sage and is a renowned teacher, mentor, and guide for his ability to move companies beyond the old business model of struggle into a new paradigm of passion, purpose, freedom, and the magic of flow. Sahin has been founding, building and scaling businesses for over 30 years.

Saeed, welcome to the show.

Paul, a pleasure and an honor to be here and to share with you with our good friends.

Such an honor to be here, and there's a lot to talk about when it comes to toxic positivity and more healthy forms of leadership. But before we get into that really important topic, give, if I'm a listener, I'm like, who is this person, and what have they done before this podcast went live? Like, give our listeners just a little bit about you and your background and your back story so that they could have a sense of who who you are, what you're bringing, the experience you're bringing to the show.

Thank you, Paul. So I come from a business family from my father's side going back generation. So I grew up in all types of business from an Indian family, big businesses and small businesses, medium size. And I've been through the gamut, apprenticing with my family throughout all the years. And my mother's side are all Gandhian advocates and and connected to social service and making positive impact. And so these two particular influences in my life, business and social impact, have really guided my life since I've been quite young, and that has led me to the journey of diving deep into consciousness, personal growth, human potential, spirituality, and then creating organizations and businesses that further the development of our of our consciousness and our inner alignment with the whole. So that's been my journey for many, many years, and I've had the blessing of mentoring many CEOs, founders of various other types of positive impact companies as well as leading my own companies.

Beautiful. So this topic of posit so this topic of toxic positivity, give us a little bit of like, what does that even mean? And why are you so passionate about talking about toxic positivity and what you're seeing in the business world when it comes to this topic?

Well, we've heard for a long time about toxic negativity, toxic negativity. And in the ancient wisdom traditions of the east, we always talk about there's things that come in a duality, come in opposites. And so if you have toxic negativity, there's also its rear ugly neighbor or friend or family or brother or or sibling, which is toxic positivity. Now toxic negativity, we know about it. Someone being constantly acidic energy of a space that draws and sucks your energy away, a a sense of separation and criticism and criticalness. And just anyone who's in that toxic negative state or a space or a culture that has that is very off putting and and really destroys the human spirit and doesn't call upon our best. So we all know this. We've been dealing with this.

And what's really positive is is that there's a change. There's a movement to have hey. Let's have higher awareness. Let's have more affinity amongst each other. Let's have more humanness and connect at a human level with each other in our organization. So that's great. But just like anything, we can swing to the other extreme and other opposite. And so toxic positivity is the other extreme of posit toxic negativity.

And that's when there's a disconnection from human to human. That's the root. Toxic negativity, same disconnection from human to human, being to being, heart to heart, soul to soul. And this is the same. There is this false bravado, a false energy, a false new ageism, a false persona that sometimes can be carried on, or or we can identify with, which has to always look at things from the positive standpoint. The challenge with that is is we can become parents of human potential, but not and lose our empathy, our care, our compassion to meet people where they're at. So in essence, if someone comes with some challenge, life challenge, a family challenge, health challenge, some challenge within our workspace, within our circles. And we just drop on them all this positive new age philosophical ideas without listening to their heart and spirit, without attuning to the suffering they have, then we're bypassing wisdom, and we're going into this false state of toxic sensitivity.

Right. So I think our listeners that that's a great summary on the top level, Psyon. And I'm thinking of all of our listeners who could probably think of really concrete examples. I'll give you one listeners of a leader I was talking to of a negative culture. Right? This leader I was speaking to recently was not long ago, like for months being shouted out top performer, best salesperson in the entire region for this company. Right? And there was one interaction of just a few moments that led to a bad review, and suddenly this person was getting slammed. Like, it was like a pile on by a number of leaders in this company, and this person was like, just last week, you were saying I was like the top person and making sales and everybody's and there was one negative interaction that is kind of unfortunate as human and, like, suddenly, like, I'm just this horrible person and you're throwing me under the bus, like that kind of negativity of just like how quickly somebody could go and make a mistake or just have a challenging interaction with somebody in business. We deal with a lot of humans in any moment.

Somebody might not like me or you or our performance or have an issue. And he was like, rather than work with me and help figure out what happened and how do we learn from it, it was just like, okay, flip the switch. Now you're a terrible person, and we hate you. Right? So I think all of us can and that's just a recent example that's fresh in my mind because I just had this conversation recently. I think all of us can understand what it feels like to work in a culture like that, and how that can anybody who's good at what you do, if you have a choice between working in a culture like that and working one that's more supportive through time. And if there's a challenge, people dig a little deeper what happened, and let's try to learn from it. And okay, you got this. Sorry that happened.

Blip on the screen. You're awesome still. Let's just adjust. Right? To, you are a terrible person because one negative thing happened in seconds. And that kind of culture, nobody enjoys being in. Give us an like, you gave us a explanation at a top level, but can you give us some, like, concrete examples of what toxic positivity looks like on the ground, and what does it feel like to work in a culture, to be in a company where toxic positivity is the norm?

Very good. It's not usually a widespread the widespread way of being in organizations. It tends to be usually some star performers, some leaders who've been doing some type of personal development work. They've done some type of inspirational, aspirational work, but somehow they haven't fully lived it. They're not fully embodying it. They've taken on the teachings. They've taken on the reframing. Hey.

You can look at it this way. Hey. Instead of looking at it negatively, what's the advantage of this? Again, all these reframing into the positive way of looking at things is super valuable when you're grounded and connected, and you're really touching reality of people. So how it shows up in actuality is this. If someone gets really lit up by some human potential program, or some positive, reading that they're doing. And they come in now with some type of prosthetization energy, some type of converting energy. And that converting energy can push people away. It's the energy that says, it doesn't matter what's going on, doesn't matter what's wrong, doesn't matter what's going on.

We can fix this. We can fix this. We can fix this. But it's a type of candy coating. I've seen this happen many times where leaders or people who are newly inspired. They can decode what's going on. They don't look at the numbers. We're going, okay.

They've been avoiding the numbers. They've been avoiding the actual stats. They've been avoiding going into the minutia and looking at what are the real challenges, and they're staying in this flighty positive zone to keep away from the pain, the suffering, and looking at the actual reality of what's going on and and the termites underneath behind the walls. Yeah. So positive this type of negative positivity, it's a it's a type of denial of wanting to look at facts for real, and I've seen this in many, many ways, from top to bottom. The other thing we need to look out for is those who always tend to be very positive. So there's sometimes always some person or a couple or 2 who tend to be in this ex state of of positive positive positive, but you can feel they're somehow disconnected. Their their lights are turned on to another room.

But when as you express there with that story, as soon as something goes wrong, as soon as you haven't performed, as soon as there's some review, then they go the other extreme. They can extreme into the other end. And one of my martial art teachers, masters, tell me years ago, he says, beware of the student fan who loves you head over heels. Because sooner or later, you do one thing wrong, one slip up, you weren't fully alive, you woke up a little late that day, and you're gonna be slammed. Their image of you will crumble, and now they're gonna be your worst enemy, and they're gonna be criticizing you, being critical of you behind your back. So you're gonna watch that same propensity to go one way, when Flip in the same individual turns the other way. So we need to look out for this in ourselves. We need to look out for this with our teammates, and we need to we need to honor what's the humanness, what's the what's really going.

Before we get into reframing into something positive, I need to know what's going on. I need to know what you're feeling. The good, bad, the ugly, the upsetting, the challenging, stuff that you have ashamed, the stuff that you feel less than about, when we start expressing and opening up that and inviting that out with safety, with clarity, with heart, with conscientiousness, then we can go, okay. Now let's take a look at how we can take make an advantage of this. Now let's lay it out on the table with wisdom. Let's look into it. Let's talk about it. Let's uncover it.

Let's unmask this stuff. Let's get to the root of what's going on. Then the positivity becomes real, natural, something to move along rather than this false facade, which then you wanna just move away from.

So so I'm hearing you, you know, put your finger on 2 things. 1 is people who are very positive, but there's not really, in business, we would call them KPIs, right, in business coaching, like key performance indicators. You're you're not tracking anything over time. Just rah rah rah, my team is awesome. You guys are great. And that's great to think highly of your team. But there's also wants to be what are we watching to have a sense of are we moving certain needles or not? If we're just rah rah rah, there's no protein to that conversation. And at some point, we're likely to see negative ripple effects of that approach.

A cheerleading only, not that not that being somebody's cheerleader is a bad thing. But if we we also want to tie that into something, are we looking at moving sales goals? Or are we tracking how our clients are doing? Are people who weren't doing so great at certain action steps starting to take those action steps? If we don't have any of those things in place, it can be a there there's not a lot of substance there. So that's one thing you're pointing out. And the other thing is somebody who's cheering such an extreme is such a positive person. But if there's any negative, like you said, you you show up late or you underperform or you forget something or you miss a meeting, and suddenly you went from being the most amazing human on planet Earth ever to you are now the most horrible person on the planet ever. And they throw you under the bus. Those are, those are 2 patterns I think I heard you describe. Does that sound about right?

Yes. Yes. You described it really well. And and the second one we've heard of this type of individual. Be careful of that. Alright? And, you know, the ancient wisdom, the old age wisdom is, if someone is really lifting you up, and really admiring you and really and and sharing such positive things, take it lightly. Say thank you. God, take it lightly.

Because that way, when they flip the switch or they go to the other extreme, you can also say, thank you very much. You don't have to change your inner disposition. Thank you. I receive also that criticism from you. But if you allow yourself to get so built up by this false cheerleading, that's not based on substantive progress, KPIs, moving the needle forward, moving exact, you know, requirements and and and missions and purposes forward, then as you said, the cheerleadership becomes toxic and becomes unreal, and then turns the turns into the other opposite. That's the nature of of our human existence. And so by playing this, we can, first of all, we can watch out for that in ourselves. And how do we how do we do this? What's the essence of not going into this negativity? This, you know, this toxic negativity or this toxic positivity.

How do we avoid that? We have to have within our core the sense of I want to get to the truth. What's the reality? What's the actuality? What's actually going on? And that's where you said we've got to remove our emotions, go back to the KPIs, go back to, you know, some numbers, go back to objectivity. Take a look at how we've progressed. What are we doing well? What could we do better? What can we celebrate that we're doing excellent? What needs it a tune up? What needs to be thrown out totally? It's really off track with our mission and purpose that needs to be re scripted from around up. What can we what's going good that we can turn into great? And what's broken that we need to cease. And why is that happening? And many times when we work on looking at where are the cycles that continue continuously jam us up, that are going on over and over again, cyclical problems, cyclical challenges, Whatever department, whatever way they appear, that's where we need the eyes and we need a magnifying glass of truth, not positivity or negativity, but truth, which is removed of all those impressions.

Beautiful. So the listeners of this podcast, I am by definition, we're trying to both build thriving businesses and live a good life and be able to support our families. And, yeah, just genuinely like have good things. But we're also very dedicated to making the world a better place, whether that's a climate solution, or reinventing agriculture, or bringing more women into leadership. And all of these are fairly complex issues that don't always move super quickly. Right? Climate, we've been heading in the wrong direction in terms of making our earth more sustainable from a climate perspective for a very long time. So it's, it's a complicated dance to be in a leadership position in a climate solution startup, let's say, right. That'd be a fairly typical profile of somebody listening to this podcast and we have like big dreams and a new technology comes along, or we're combining things in a different way.

And suddenly we see a new possibility, but it's gonna take a while to even know if this is going to have its intended outcome, let's say if you're a startup. So how can leaders who are in companies like this that have both an impact and a profitability mandate, how can we be skillful when there's a lot on the table that we're trying to manage as leaders, that we're trying to be both encouraging when we're dealing with heart problems, We're trying to help the people around us find their find the ability to wake up and go to work for another day on a hard problem, And we want to cheer them on, but also we don't want to fall into this pattern of rah, rah, rah to the point of we lose track of any sense of reality and we miss problems. Right. How do we thread that needle? What kind of tips do you have for us?

This is really poignant as you shared. I'm working with agricultural companies now that are working on soil rejuvenation. Yeah. They have breakthrough technologies, cutting edge technologies that can scan the Earth, scan soil, give a reading of exactly what's aligned, what's not, what substances are needed, what nutrients are needed to rejuvenate it, all organically, all biodynamically. And it's like, wow. There's an and if you're in the this realm of understanding that we have a major soil erosion challenge on this on this planet, major. And all of our foods of course comes from the nutrient dense soil, and we don't have nutrient dense soil, and they've got incredible solutions. So working with them, working with the CEO, the executive team, and the whole the whole team of scientists and such.

To them, if you go into some type of state, there are many scientists in this organization. If you go into a positive a false state of positivity, there's a natural mistrust that happens because of their scientific orientation. It's like, there's a little too much fluff coming off here. You can tell. And they're like, so when I'm mentoring, guiding, coaching the leadership teams in this, you nailed it. You said, what is the reality? We need to look at the reality. So I have a simple triangle, affinity, reality, and communication. Affinity is that positivity, that feeling of closeness, camaraderie, that feeling of we're all for 1, one for all.

We're here on a higher mission, a vision, and and that we cohere in a in a very tight way. And we're always learning to cultivate that joy and that positivity. Okay? So that's affinity building. We need that. That's essential in any family, any organization, especially impact organizations. But if it's only infinity, we don't have the second part of the triangle, which is reality. What's the reality? What are the numbers? What are the KPIs? Where are we doing well? Where's where are we challenged? What's really burning? What's the stuff we don't wanna face? What's the ugliness in our organization? Where do we have our head buried in the sand? Where are we avoiding what's most obvious? These are tough questions. And so as a leader in a leadership team, what I like to do is I say, okay.

We're gonna work on affinity building for our culture because that's what keeps that positive energy through up and down, through challenges, financial challenges, economic challenges, and it keeps our spirit alive with a grand vision that's here for a higher purpose and a positive impact. So, yes, the leadership needs to cultivate that. Yet to have it a true grounded, earthy, real, sustaining, just like the mission, that actually will perform and follow through with the with with with the goal and the mission in the long run, 10, 20 years. This is a long term mission and vision. Now what needs to happen is we also need to be totally dedicated to getting into reality. Where is the common ground? Where are we out in common ground? Where is there what's our level of communication? Where is it on a scale of 1 to 10? Oh, it's out of 3. What are we doing well to get to a 3? Okay. What do we need to do to get to a 10 to make this extraordinary? Okay.

Let's flush that out. Now let's implement the heck out of this in our organization, so we get into reality with one another. Especially organizations that have a lot to do with science, that have a lot to do with many moving parts. Without that firm establishment of numbers, dashboards, reality, then the leadership is left to this type of making up a positivity, drumming up a positivity because they're not looking at the numbers. But when you have both, when you have the real numbers, you have the real impact, you have the real reality of what's going on, good, bad, and ugly, and you have that positivity. He says, whatever is going on, we're continuing to move forward. Let's do this. We're going through challenging times during COVID economic downturns, supply chain challenges, yada yada yada.

Okay. Alright. This is challenging team. It's laying it out in reality. We've got some major challenges. We've got orders piling up. 1 year, we're 6 months behind, and we can't even get the materials from other companies. We need to get on the phones.

We need to tell the other companies. Hey. Listen. We'd love to fulfill your order. We're gonna be behind because our supply chain is behind. We don't wanna tell people. We don't wanna, and we need to be real with them. Not, hey, everything's gonna be great.

You'll get in next week. You're gonna get in a month from no. Sorry. We love you. You're our honored clients. We care about our relationship with you. We're also having challenges with getting the supplies we need to complete the projects that we need for you. It's gonna be delayed.

That's getting into reality. That's getting into truth. And that builds a deeper reality, which then allows a deeper true positivity to emerge. That's based on trust, realness, heart, genuineness, and authenticity.

Beautiful. And that I I I love that description of having a bucket for affinity, like, not making the inclination to cheerlead and support and be like what really rooting for your team members or your employees or even somebody who's in a different company, but you work together. And then also having that reality basis and being able to track certain things and communicate difficult moments like a supply chain disruption. Now, in your experience, Satyaan, is that equally distributed? Right? So in other words, is one leader doing all that or like do different people in a team take those different roles? Like if I'm, if I'm somebody who's in a company that wants to do better at this, Is it all up to me to build that skill? Or is this something I can say, look, I'm really good at being the cheerleader, but I also need somebody who's gonna, like, keep us grounded in the numbers. Can you hold a little bit more

to that?

You see what I'm saying? Like, is it is it equally shared or or can we ask people to play certain roles in a leadership team?

That's a great question, Paul. I think it's actually a bit of both. If we have the wisdom to understand there's affinity cultivation, which is positive culture cultivation, and then we have reality cultivation. Let's get to the brass tacks, the real talk, into the numbers, lifting off the lid, what's underneath the hood. Then there's the 3rd component which is communication cycles. If things are breaking down in affinity, we tend to break down communication cycles. Less people communicate, if they missed following up on an order that they have responsibility with, they won't say anything. They go shy, they be quiet, or they forget, or different things can stack up of communications can happen, or non communications, or misunderstanding.

So what do we also need to do is we also need to keep the communication cycles flowing. So in the organizations that I mentor, what we do is everyone gets trained on how to create affinity, how to cultivate affinity when things break down in affinity. There's challenges, disruption, strife amongst teammates, how to reestablish truth. True affinity, not this false affinity. Then we also work on reality. Let's get to the brass tacked. Everyone is trained in this. And then everyone is trained in proper communication cycles.

I speak to you. You've got the communication. You understand. You say thank you. You give me an acknowledgment. And so that cycle is over, rather than I share something with you by an email, or a call, or a text, and it drops into non space, and we have no idea if you heard it or not. Right? So when we have all 3 of those going on, infinity, reality, and clear clean communication cycles, and we all are taught that in in in a team and live up to it. Of course, there'll be natural propensity.

Some of us are natural cheerleaders. Some of us are more natural that, hey. We need to get to the numbers, and we need to hunker down. And so I think the gifts are we need to learn it all and allow those who are natural in their propensities to shine. And and if we're a positive person and we meet a reality person, not to go, oh my goodness. Here's a great cloud. They're gonna come in real. To get excited.

To go, well, thank you. We have them on our team. Because if I'm always in this positive state, thank good in my company, I have, you know, my my my right hand teammate, my VP, Jessica Hellman. She's the reality person. I'm very positive. She's the reality. She's we need to look at this, this, this, this. And sometimes it's not always aspiring, but when we crawl when I get the reality, and then we come up with solutions, and we move towards implementations, it's a deeper truthful reality and affinity that emerges.

Beautiful.

And then once in a while she'll reach me, and she says this is going on, and that, and then I'll give her that surge of positivity, and say, yes. We're in challenges, but we're gonna make it through this. We've got it. We've got a stellar team. We're gonna come through the other end. So we can riff off each other, serve each other, and inspire each other with these collective qualities.

I love this cycle. It's such a great cycle. And in your experience, when things break down in this cycle, when it's not going so well, are there common places it tends to kinda come off the tracks?

Yes. The first place is is in communication cycles. They get bogged down. Miscommunications, less communications. If someone is guilty of doing something, of failing to accomplish a task at a certain time, or they shameful? Even if it's 1 out of a 100, they might not communicate it. They might hold back their communication out of shame or upset. Then the other recipient who's receiving that communication might feel charged. Hey.

Why is this going on? Or feel upset or feel some type of strike going on, and their communication will then be less. It might ask 1 or 2 times, get a scanty answer, and then say, okay. I'm gonna leave this. And so there builds up of resistance, build up of frustration, build up of judgment, build up of criticism. All these subtle things build up when we have breakdown in the communication cycles. The way to heal it, to bring it back online, is always whether there's a breakdown in affinity or reality of communication, you gotta start in with communication. You gotta say, listen. Something's going on that doesn't feel right.

Something's going on. There's a breakdown in communication. We need to let's get into reality. Let's get into reality around this. What's going on? Right. Please share what's going on with you. Help me un and here's the question to understand with communication. Great one to ask.

What do I need to understand about this? Tell me something about yourself and what's going on that I need to understand. What would you like me to understand? What would you like us to understand about this situation that perhaps we're not getting? By that beautiful question, tell us what we need to understand. Tell us something about yourself that we're not getting, or we need to understand why this is bogging down, breaking down, these challenges are happening. That question rather than, hey. Tell us what's wrong. Tell us what we need to understand, opens up the communication channels, starts building affinity again, person doesn't feel threatened and challenged, they get to express whatever challenges are going on. The flow of communication starts. There's a trust that starts to develop, and now we're on the same page in reality.

We all can collectively work on the challenge itself together in camaraderie and transform it.

I love that question. What do I need to understand about this? That's such a great question. Thanks for sharing that with us. So let's do this in a minute. I want to come back and hear more specifically how you work with teams. I think you've learned something over the past 30 plus years about how to help a team that's doing okay, but isn't great at this, how to get better at it, and as well as individuals. But before we do that, I just want to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. Are you facing 1 or more important decisions in your impact business? And you'd like an experienced thought partner to develop a plan about how to proceed in the complex times we're living.

But you don't feel the need for an extended coaching or consulting contract that's gonna cost you many 1,000 of dollars. You're looking for an affordable, targeted, and time efficient type of support. Through paulzellizer.com, I offer a strategy session package. These packages are ideal for entrepreneurs who are facing 1 to 3 immediate decisions, like how to increase your positive impact, fine tune your marketing strategies to get more results for less effort, launch a new product or service successfully, or refine your pricing structure so it's both inclusive and provides you with a great quality of life. You can find out more by clicking below, and thank you so much for listening to this podcast. So welcome back, everybody. I am here with Satyan Raja, and we are talking about toxic positivity and leadership in the impact space. And just before the break, Satyan, we were talking you you had this great cycle and a wonderful question that I really liked.

That question was, what do I need to understand about this when communication is breaking down in this great cycle that you taught us? And I love that question. And what I was thinking about is I'm hearing from both an impact businesses and also in more traditional small to medium sized businesses, which is where most of my work is done. I'm hearing that there's 2 things going on. 1 is a relatively disengaged workforce across sectors. It, it, people are just saying it's hard to find folks who are really bringing their best selves to work. We know the research tells us we're having a mental health crisis across sectors and just across society, and people are dealing with just a lot of anxiety and depression and disengagement and relationships are coming apart more than they have in the past at higher rates, etc. Right? Anybody's been through a divorce knows I've been through 2 of them. It's really hard to show up and bring your best self to work when you're going through relationship conflicts.

Right. So that's, that's one question I have for you about how do we help create engaged real reality, reality based teams when we're doing hard work and people also have a lot in their own hearts and minds, some of which has nothing to do with work, but then spills over into the workplace. Does that make sense?

Yes. Yes. Well, this is the perennial question of all time, and and such a powerful question. So thanks for asking, Paul. I have a model. I have a training that I call the executive black belt training for CEOs and their executive teams and companies. And I go through a model of going from egoic power to enlightened powers. I call it power.

Going from the closed heart to the open heart, a heart connected company. Going from obstacle to flow state or or freedom state. So power, heart, freedom, flow, and wisdom. Those are the 5 elements of the company culture infusion that I do. Now let me start with the first thing, because that answers it. Power. How do we get a team, a disengaged, a challenged team, an organization which have people aren't fully on board, and there's not this passion, this energy, no matter what company it is, right? What do we need to do to to make that happen? Maybe the product, the service is not evoking of our human spirit. It seems so simple.

How can we get them on board with having some higher aspiration behind this? Well, let me give you an example. I worked with a company for many years called Casoro Group. It's a group of real estate companies in various sectors in Austin, Texas. And the first thing I started off with with them was, okay. How do we get everyone engaged, inspired? Let's take a look at, first of all, power. What is the focus of the power? And the power is usually in the mission statement, in the vision statement. I looked at the vision statement, look at me, and then I started it was brought up a yawn. I read it.

It started like a regular mission statement, shareholder values, yada yada yada. There's no human energy in it. There was no inspiration, no aspiration, nothing to grab me by the colors or my soul or make me go, okay. I wanna work with this company. It's boring, flat, and dead. That's why it's called a mission statement. It's something nailed to a wall with that's lifeless. To me, I don't believe in mission statements.

I believe in missions. A mission is a lie. It's it's it's real. It has life force. It comes from within. Whereas a mission statement is dead. It's flat. It's too d.

It's sitting on a wall. Okay? Now how do we find that mission? Well, with Kasora Group, I sat down with their executives for a few days, and I said, okay. You've got real estate acquisition. You've got property management. You've got construction. You've got 5 separate companies all in the real estate world. Okay? Financing, yada yada. What's congruent about all of them? Well, homes.

Homes and places where people live. I said, okay. We've got that. There is something we can establish. Now what would make it and I sat down with all of them. Said, what would make it so you all would be feeling really good about what you do? That you would all that you as executives would feel that you're not just cranking out a top notch business that's making great profits that you're all having benefit from? What would make this at a humanitarian, wholesome level, soul level, heart level, spiritual level, contribution level. What would make it what would make you feel like I'm doing something that has more meaning than crunching numbers and taking a a great check on. Well, after a day of diving in and check, we came out.

It just spontaneously emerged the new mission, and went from this long, drawn out, boring mission to very simple. Better homes for better lives.

Mhmm.

Five words. Better homes for better lives. And when that came out of everyone's heart, it actually came up from the VP. And she said, that's what we're here to do. We're here to create better homes for better lives. Our homes, as teammates, as employees, and leaders in the company, all the suppliers, all the wonderful people that live in our units, our construction crews, they're gonna have better homes. They make better homes. And so the company shifted from numbers KPIs as their primary fulfillment and mission to what can we do at a core level to make better homes and have better lives.

So every month, the team gets together, they look at that mission, and we do this process called CIE. We celebrate where we're online with that mission. We we did this. We just put new lights. We put a new parking. We put new playground in this complex area. We put we started potluck Fridays or once a month, fun stuff, yada yada. They come up with all these creative ideas for better homes, for better lives, for their complexes, and they implement them.

So we celebrate that. Then we take a look at what's inconsistent and incongruent every couple of months, every 2, 3 months. Okay. We're doing good in this. What can we do to make it great? Okay. We're answering the phone calls. We're taking care of complaints, but it's 24 hours, 48 hours before their plumbing gets fixed. What can we do to make it so that it's within 4 hours, 6 hours if they got a plumbing broken.

We're doing good, but we're not great. And then what are we not doing well at all? What where are we where are we not doing well at all that we need to totally re conscript? So we do the CIE process that re looks at the development, the fulfillment at a heart level of our heart mission. And we do this once a quarter minimum, and that becomes the guiding light of the whole company, not KPIs. What happens now is the whole company sourced in creating better homes for better lives. Then they're doing it for each other in the company, and for their customers, their clients, and so there's this whole new movement of positivity and that they have a higher meaning. It didn't seem like a higher meaning company. It doesn't matter if we're selling wing wing nuts. It doesn't matter if we're selling nuts and bolts.

There's a higher meaning to it. So and there's a higher value that can be offered that evokes the human spirit. So that's our role as leaders. What can we do to find what evokes the human spirit? So whatever becomes simple now becomes something of of deeper meaning and value.

I love that. Better homes for better lives. That's beautiful. So let's pivot a little bit, Sayan. Tell us about your company. Tell us about Warrior Sage. Why did you create it? And what does it look like in 2024?

Well, thanks for that. Well, I started in 1999 as a human potential company. It's working on leadership. I was working with leadership with tens of thousands of students internationally per year with very large workshops and such. And I shifted that about 10 years ago, and I started working specifically with founder CEOs as well as their their teams and their executive teams and such. And that shift happened from a drowning accident. I almost drowned here at a beach here. When I came out of it, I realized that, wow.

I I was doing well in so many ways, but I had I myself needed a rescripting of what's next in my soul and my purpose and my passion. That challenging situation helped me become sober again, and and and helped me get down to earth again. Says, okay. What can I do to serve the biggest way that I can in the time I have? And so I've been working with leadership because I feel leadership, that's the challenge we have on the planet is the biggest challenge is leadership. We have all the resources, brilliance. We have all the money. We have all the know how. We just don't have an enlightened, unified, and mobilized leadership.

And so that's been my mission and purpose now for the last 10 years. Very deeply, is to enlighten, unify, and mobilize leaders for the greater good. We have an executive leadership development called the executive black belt development, and That's where we go to awaken these enlightened qualities of power, heart, freedom, flow, and wisdom in organizations. It's a cutting edge curriculum that's world class, and what really the idea behind it is to create super teams that cross the finish line with even the highest, most noblest goals and visions. So that's what we've been up to. We've been activating that in in, some very powerful impact companies. And now we're also entering small and medium sized companies have been really inspired by this work of how do we create visions and missions that evoke the human spirit? How do we stay online, on track in a pragmatic way with that so it doesn't stay airy and fairy and in the sky, but it becomes a real tangible accomplishment. So that's the name of our company's Warrior Sage.

The warrior is the action. Get into reality. Let's make this happen. Let's roll up our sleeves. Let's get that warrior mindset going. The sage is let's get sourced in care, love, wisdom, higher values, higher meaning so that we become a whole human, And we're growing ourselves, growing our companies, growing our individuals in our companies. We're also helping them support their growth path as an individual, as a human, as a spiritual being on the planet. We can have our companies do that.

So that's my passion, is bringing all of that spectrum into our organizations.

Yeah. Tell us about your team. Like, how many people work for warriors aid? And you have a couple different programs. You told us about the black belt program. You have a mastermind program. Tell tell us, like, your team and your and your offering.

Well, thank you, Paul. So first of all, there's the executive black belt program, and that's you can see all about that at warriorsage.com for CEOs and their executive teams. And then I specifically mentor CEOs of impact companies myself. I have a circle called the Warrior Sage CEO dojo, and the dojo is a place where martial artists come to train. And because I'm a lifetime martial artist, I like to keep my CEO dojo for CEOs, and and and business leaders, and founders who have that desire to grow themselves on a physical, mental, emotional, spiritual level, grow their relationships, grow their warriorship, grow their higher spiritual values, and come into enlightenment. So it's a very unique circle who are interested in that, but it's it's an extraordinary group. I've got business leaders from all around the world in this. There's about 15 of them, Husbands and wives of various types of company.

And then we have a coaching organization as well underneath our warrior sage trainings called Accelerated Evolution Academy. We train their physicians, therapists, coaches, business leaders, managers in the methods that I've developed over many years to really become the cutting edge helper. So whatever, if you're a therapist, a coach, a guide, how to really be the cutting edge and create profound transformations in people, remove their traumas, help them cut back on their health, their well-being, their highest life potential in minutes. What used to take weeks, months, years, we've crafted, we've developed methods to have that, if you will, almost instantaneous breakthrough. And that's part of my part of my joys to see that instantaneous breakthrough rather than weeks, months, and years. So that gives you a little spectrum, and you can find all of that at warriorsage.com. I have a book set that business leaders have been really enjoying and been getting great kudos or and that's called the Transcendent CEO and Transcendent Culture. It's a win book set that you can get at warriorsage.com.

Transcendent CEO is an open anywhere book. You can have a vision, an idea, an inquiry, a challenge, and open it up anywhere, and you'll get a wisdom teaching from my many years of and stories and insights of the CEOs I've worked with, the companies, how they've gone 10 x, 20 x, 100 x. It's all in there. How they did it, what they had to deal at a mental level, how the the internal obstacles they came through, and the frameworks they developed. And then the accompanying book is Transcendent Culture. Transcendent Culture is a to zed, how to create and establish a super team. No matter what state it is right now, you go through this process. There's exercises, group development exercises, team building exercises, and a one day seminar all laid out that any company size, even if you got a small company, there's only yourself and your spouse or a partner.

You can apply this and you'll start to see a really a galvanizing of your team, and really an inspiration and a power come into your company like never

before. Beautiful. Again, all that's at the website. So look with us a little bit. You're you're not somebody who kind of lets moss grow on your stone, right? You're you've been pretty active over all these years. If you look ahead, 2 years, 3 years, 5 years out, where do you see your work? Like what's some of the growing edge aspects of your work and where do you see that leading in the next 5 years?

It's a great question. Well, you know, my edge is growth. I live a very comfortable life between Hawaii and the countryside of British Columbia, and so my edge is okay. Spirit is saying, it's time for you to bring this beauty of of company, and company organization, and culture transformation to my larger companies, bigger, make more of an impact. So that's my edge. We're growing that whole side very strongly, coming out to larger companies, coming up more publicly. And and also my particular edge is bringing in the deeper meaning aspects, and and not just reserving it for business leaders who are already dialed into that, but sharing with business leaders on a larger scale that we can actually have a holistically aligned life, in showing them, demonstrating to them, you can have great relationships. You can have great relationships with your spouse, your children.

You could have great health. You could have great spiritual attunement and awakening. You can have great vitality in life, and ease and joy. You don't have to be a mule. You can go from mule to magician. You can turn your whole company from mule to magician. So that's my joy to bring out. My my edge as well is we're also entering the political dimensions.

I'm starting to mentor and guide political leaders. With my colleague, Thomas Dafran, we've been creating a leadership curriculum for political leaders. We can see that the leadership in the political realm is basically bankrupt from from all intents and purposes around the world. The world has lost trust with the political leadership. Doesn't matter what side, where, and whom, and how. Just there's a disdain for it. Why? Because it's not sourced in truth, enlightenment, and for the greater good. There's always these internal agendas, even though on the surface it is.

So we've crafted in we're we're now delivering what we consider an illumination process for the world's leadership, so that they can become the great stewards of our of of all the huge challenges we have here, but at the same time, galvanize humanity to create a better earth for all. So that's that's my edge, my friend.

Exciting. And certainly, as you said, politicians, especially the younger you go, the more disillusioned people are with our current political dynamics, if we might say that. So, yeah. Thanks for taking that on. Well, Sayan, I can hang out with you all day. You're doing such interesting work, but I know you're busy. Our listeners are busy. If there was one thing you were hoping we were going to get to, and we haven't touched on it yet, you want to share an aspect of your work that we haven't touched on yet, or there's something you want to leave our listeners with as we start to say goodbye, what would that be?

Well, from my book, blatant, you know, from my book Transcendence CEO, there's a warrior sage in wiry. It's very edgy. Comes from martial arts. And it's an inquiry my kung fu master gave me years ago that I would say that all as business leaders, no matter what size of business we have, is a potent question to ask, and it can keep us on our edge. And it is this, what must I do to live, love, and die complete without regret? What must I do to live, love, and die complete without regret? This is a poignant pointed question I ask myself in the business. Today, I might need to spend more time with my family, and I might need to spend more time in my account and get that clear, get that finished. Who knows what I might need to, but what must I do to live, love, and die complete without regret? Because as business leaders, it's important that we're not living with the yoke of regret, with all this heavy stuff that we're able to be creative. We're able to be in our flow state.

We're able to be at the top of our game. And when you really answer this question truly, what must I do to live, love, and die complete without regret, Then we can chop off all the extra extraneous stuff we don't need to do. Focus and hunker down on what is the most opportune focus and movement forward, so we can live easy lives, go from mule to magician.

Ayan, thank you so much for being on the show today. It's been a pleasure to talk to you.

Paul, a great pleasure and honor to all that are listening. So grateful for your reception today.

So go check out the Warrior Sage site, check out the book, check out the programming, all that'll be in the show notes. Before we go, I just like to remind you, we love listener suggested topics and guests. So if you have an idea, go to the Awarepreneurs website. And on our contact page, we have 3 simple guidelines to try to give you a sense of who we're looking for. If you read through those and you say, yeah, I think this fits, please send your ideas on it. So for now, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care, and thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.