Soren Kaplan: Experiential Intelligence: Finding Strength in Your Past

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. Today's conversation is with Soren Kaplan, who has a pretty impressive resume. It includes being a best-selling author, a keynote speaker, and consultant to companies like Disney, Red Bull, Cisco, and Pepsi, founder of multiple companies himself, and he also has a master's and PhD degree in organizational psychology. What caught my attention about Soren was his work around the topic of experiential intelligence. Now, we all know IQ and EQ, but Soren dives deep into the importance of XQ, or experiential intelligence, and how that guides many of our decisions and actions as we are today.

So we start the conversation by going back on both of our personal experiences growing up and how those experiences have shaped us into who we are today. Now, I was real curious why some people take childhood trauma and use it as a motivator, while others in the same family let it define them and ultimately limit their beliefs. We went on to talk about the value of the traditional education system and how it needs to evolve to include more experiential learning, and how there's a cultural lag in how we react to technological advances. I found this to be an absolutely fascinating conversation, and I hope you do too. Let's make it happen. What's happening, make it happen family? Big shout out to our partners today, Gong, Vidyard, and Chili Piper.

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Be sure that you're checking out all these great tools, and now let's pass it over to John to find out who's joining him today. See you soon, everybody. Soren Kaplan, welcome to the podcast. Good to be here, John. Yeah, appreciate you reaching out. I'm really interested in this conversation for multiple reasons, and appreciate you reaching out because I've been following some of the stuff that you've been doing as I prep for this. So for the audience, we're going to be talking about experiential intelligence, and it's that next stage here. But to get into that first, let's talk about your experience. Let's go back, give the audience here a little preview of where you're coming from and how you got to where you are right now, and then we'll take it from there.

Sure thing. Professional background, and then a little on the personal side, because personal always ties to professional. So I formally ran the internal strategy consulting group at HP's Hewlett Packard in Silicon Valley. Had a consulting firm, have had a consulting firm for 25 years, probably worked with 30 of the Fortune 1000, Visa, Colgate, Medtronic, Kimberly Clark, Disney, in the areas of innovation, product service development, business model, strategy, as well as leadership development. And I've had a consulting and software company called Praxi.com, which is a SaaS platform for best practices and strategy and innovation and HR and various things out of the box. So I've morphed all of the work that I've done into packaged up best practices on the software side.

And then I've got this new book that just came out called Experiential Intelligence. And it's all about how you take your life's experience and understand it so you can leverage your strengths that you bring that make you unique. So that's kind of, you know, what's on the horizon in terms of kind of getting the word out about experiential intelligence these days. Love it. And to tie into that, your experience, I was reading about your, you wrote it on your website, your childhood, and how it was rather interesting in more than a few ways. You had a dad who was working all the time and into some spiritual stuff. So he wasn't around a lot. You moved around 15 times. You know, your mom had some issues.

So talk us through that, like what were, because I always, you know, obviously, who we are as children kind of turn us to who we are. And and the nature and nurture factor is going to be huge as far as this conversation is concerned. So how did maybe some of the highlights and how it shaped you? Yeah. So, you know, my, my insight, just having worked in business for a long time is that a lot of people ignore the factors that shape them and then the triggers that they have, like, and it just gets in, either gets in the way, like really creates dysfunction in an organization or a team, or you just don't understand what's making you tick. So you can't optimize like your strengths and lean into them and leverage them.

Now I, you know, through various things in my own life, I had to kind of, kind of come to grips with some of the things that I was dealing with because of my childhood. Now I, like you said, I, my mother had a mental illness. Got, she got it when I was three. My father was rarely around. He was kind of focused on some kind of alternative spiritual communities here in California. Um, and, and I moved, uh, 16 times before I was 15. Now I, it was looking back, it was pretty traumatic childhood. However, as I kind of address some of the trauma, but then recognize like those things gave me the ability to live with a lot of uncertainty, look at patterns in kind of social environments, kind of figure out what's going on, use, you know, kind of limited data to pivot in, you know, make decisions.

And then I realized as I was looking back, it's like, I kind of stumbled into innovation, culture transformation strategy. It's like I'm using those things that actually were, you know, I developed, you know, not despite my trauma, but because of it. So I'm like, wow, like, how do I help other people understand that their life's experiences, give them strengths, no matter really what they are. It's just a matter of how do you kind of understand them and look for them and kind of decipher them, right? You said something that was interesting. You said, once I viewed my experiences in a different light, so there was like an inflection point. Cause, cause it always fascinates me people who use these experiences to strengthen and ultimately become stronger because of them versus people who use the, people who have these experience impact them in such a negative way.

And I'll use my wife as a perfect example. Like she grew up in a rather, you know, I don't want to say traumatic, but her dad was piece of shit, basically. You know what I mean? And he wasn't there, didn't really have the dad gene. And, and they got, and he got divorced from my wife's mom when I think my wife was probably six or seven or seven or eight. And her, her sister was 13, 14. Right? So my wife used that as motivation to say, you know what, I'm going to, I'm going to take this. I'm going to, I'm going to succeed despite this hand I've been dealt. Her sister took the exact opposite, right? Her sister is now stuck in a world of depression and all sorts of stuff. And it all stems back from that trauma when she was a kid.

So for you, I mean, because, I mean, look, I got a 12 year old daughter right now. I can't imagine, I I've said, I'm, I am quote unquote stuck in my, in my house now, as much as I hate the winter here in Boston. And my wife hates the winter here in Boston. I'm looking at snow right now, which I'm not a big fan of, you know, we're, we're quote unquote stuck here until she graduates high school. Right. Cause I, I don't want to move her all over the place. So, so what was that inflection point for you and why do you think some people take it as a motivator and some people take it as a, as I don't want to say excuse, but, but you know, it, it drags them down as opposed to pushing them up. Yeah, that's a great, it's a great question.

Um, the things that happen to us and I'll say that, you know, it's, it's what happens to us as we're young and we're growing up, like things happen to us. It's not like, you know, a child has a lot of discretion. Things happen and you respond. Now, those things that happen create oftentimes beliefs about yourself, about the world, about other people. And so those beliefs can, you know, they can be positive too. Like, you know, you can have a belief, like, you know, you can do anything or whatever it is, but they can also be self-limiting beliefs. And the traumas kind of the trauma stuff oftentimes creates self-limiting beliefs. Like, you know, your wife's father, piece of shit. My father was not around and didn't want to spend time with me.

And so, you know, those self-limiting beliefs, like I'm not worthy of attention or, you know, I, you know, I, I don't deserve the successes that I, you know, can, could potentially create. Those things can really get in the way of your goals. And so for me, I had a number of different, you know, kind of struggles personally with, you know, separation from my wife and struggles with my two daughters. And I just, I was tried to, you know, kind of look internally as much as possible and say, what are these things getting in my way? The fear of disconnection with other human beings. So I didn't, you know, discipline my daughters and kind of provide a structure. I was kind of loosey goosey dad and, you know, those, those are very personal things to me, but there's some patterns that exist that actually apply more broadly.

And it's, you know, it's, it's psychology, it's neurology, it's sociology. When those things combine, you can start to realize that we all are impacted by our experiences and we all have things to overcome, but we all have assets that we've gained from them. And so what I was able to do through a lot of work, being vulnerable with people I trust doing some, you know, therapeutic work called EMDR, which is eye movement to sensation response, which basically kind of rewires your brain from trauma. There's a lot of research on that. And I, I addressed some of the bigger things. And then I was able to say, wait, I can look at my, my own internal world a little bit differently. Meditation also helps by the way, um, to kind of, kind of get grounded.

And so there was a bunch of things I did. Um, but it was kind of hitting rock bottom as I defined it for myself. And then kind of recognizing that, you know, there's some patterns that exist that I needed to address in myself, but then there's broader patterns that I think I can help other people address too. Um, and so, you know, that's kind of how I came to, came to it all. What was that? Um, what was the eye, the, the acronym you use for the therapy? It's called EMDR and it's been used a lot. There's a great book called the body keeps the score. Um, and it's, it's really a groundbreaking. He, this, this author describes that it wasn't invented by him, but EMDR is a way it's used, been used a lot with PTSD and, uh, war trauma.

And it essentially, as you have an experience as a child, usually, or, or any other trauma, your brain actually wires together the visceral response of that experience. So when something like, let's say, you know, you had some traumatic experience of being belittled a lot when you were a child and you're actually get viscerally. When somebody says something negative to you, you kind of viscerally get tight. Well, you, 20 years later, you could be in a work meeting. And if you feel belittled, you might respond and reactively and it's wired into you. It's not like it's, you're a bad person. You might just get triggered because your manager says something that you, that brings you back to that experience.

And so through EMDR, you essentially, there's some very simple techniques that are very powerful, rewires your brain, and you overcome those triggers, which then creates a greater presence in your kind of body and in your mindset so that you can go through life much more grounded. And you combine some of that with like meditation and you then be, can be open yourself up to be more aware of your own internal process and see your strengths in a new light. And that's exactly the dynamic that I, I went through. And it's, it's helped me personally back together with my wife, family doing great. My businesses are doing great. And so like, you can like, look at how, what you need to heal from, but then what you can leverage because you see things differently after that.

Totally. Yeah. It's that frame of mind. It's a, you know, I've been talking a lot about the, the shift that you make from, you know, and you've said it earlier, there's as a child, life happens to you, right? But then as an adult, you have a choice whether life happens for you or to you. And there are two types of people on this planet where life happens to no matter how old they get and how experienced they are. And there's another switch where life happens for that person. And it's the same switch when you realize like, it's easier to go make $10,000 than it is to go save $10,000. Right. Right. But everybody's stuck on saving $10,000. But if you just shifted that mindset to say, let me go figure out how I can make $10,000, it's a totally different game.

And, and, and so those mindsets get instilled early on a lot of times or over a period of time. So, you know, the, the notion that, and it can be different for different people. That's, that's some of the other challenge, but like, I grew up with very little materially, like we didn't have a lot of money. So I've always been very thrifty. And like that saving mindset is something that's, that's in me. But I also have recognized I need to be entrepreneurial because I need to create, like no one's going to create it for me. So like those two things actually have been quite helpful. Like I'm always really thrifty and I'm always kind of going like, what's the next big, what's the next deal? So, you know, those, if you can kind of decipher kind of, if you understand yourself and then you can look at those things and you can appreciate them and actually they can become part of your culture as a team, as an organization, if you're leading one.

But let me, let me throw it back to you, John, because like, clearly you, you get it. You gave the example of your wife. I mean, I don't know for your, for yourself, when you look at the experiences you had and they could be either positive or, or some of the bigger challenges you've had, you know, growing up or whatever, how do you, what, what were, what were those experiences? And then what were kind of the mindsets you got from them or this, the, the abilities that you got for them that you use today to do what you do? I mean, you're quite successful. So how have you leveraged that in, you know, kind of from the past into your present and future? Maybe you can bring that to life. Yeah. I mean, I, I've, I haven't done a lot, you know, for me, thankfully, or not, I guess, I grew up with a pretty strong backgrounds and pretty, you know, my parents were married for 55 years until my dad passed away.

I had the entrepreneurial gene, even though I didn't know it though. So here's where I think the, a certain inflection point was. So my mom, I'm nine years older than my sister. I'm sorry, nine years younger than my sister. When my mom had my sister, she was a stay home. She was there for and everything else. Now, nine years later, my mom has a job at one of the top Wang laboratories. You probably remember them, you know, it was like Salesforce is today. Like if you worked at Wang, holy shit, but I was a kind of a pleasant surprise. I wasn't exactly planned. Right. So, but my mom at kind of the height of her career, she said, I want my son to have the same experience my daughter did. So I'm going to quit this high paying, highfalutin job.

I'm going to go home and I'm, but not, I'm just going to go home. I'm going to go home and start my own consultancy. So when I came home, I lived in a split level and our basement or the, you know, the bottom level, uh, our, our living room was half and half her office. So every day I came home and I looked to the left and it was her office. And I looked to the right and it was the TV. And my dad had always worked for the, he was a contractor for the FAA. So he was always there at home too. So they both worked at home. So I had this like non-office DNA in me, even though I didn't know it, which is why when I got into corporate, it felt so wrong to me. I'm like, wait a minute, you're putting me in a box.

I got to come into work at night. Like what the, like, and I didn't know why it didn't feel right. But then I all of a sudden realized when I got into startups, I'm like, Oh, I can breathe here. And, and I think one other kind of on the, on the more traumatic side was, and, you know, after talking to a lot of people about the imposter syndrome and a few other things that I have very deeply, like I, anytime I'm talking to somebody who has a resume that seems, you know, important or, you know, whatever has gone to a college that's smarter than me, I'm always like, Oh man, I, do I believe it? Do I, should, should I be at this conversation? And the funny thing is, is five minutes into it, I'm like, Holy shit.

Yeah. I should be in this conversation. This is super easy. But I think the reason is my dad, I absolutely love him to death. He passed away a year and a half, two years ago, coming up here. My dad was one of the smartest people I've ever come across in my life. Like he was a, he was a mechanical engineer. He got his PhD at Brown. He taught, you know, he taught calculus while he was getting his PhD. And, and I remember, I don't want to say being intimidated by his intelligence, but almost looking at it, like I could never be that smart. You know what I mean? And, and then to tie that, I remember vividly when I was a kid, probably my earliest negative memory was when I was reading a book. Um, I spent, I, I kind of said a word wrong or something like that, or I mispronounced it.

And my dad laughed. And when he laughed, I remember holding it together while I was reading, but then I went in my bathroom and I cried because I like, I felt like he was making fun of me. So guess what? I don't like to do today. I don't like to read. I genuinely do not enjoy reading. I thought, I think my brain is, has, has compounded it because now I fall asleep. When I read, you know, I read five, six pages of a book and my brain says, fuck you. I don't want to do this anymore. And I, and I get tired. I get lethargic. I get, you know, and so between, and I've always said, I'm not the smartest kid in the room. Like I know I'm not the smartest kid in the room. And I always diminish my overall intelligence and we'll break this down into EQ IQ.

Cause I believe I have a very high EQ. My IQ is average, you know, slightly above average, maybe whatever. Uh, but my experiential, uh, is, is really strong and I, and that's what I'm applying today. And so those are the kind of the, some of the thresholds for me of where I've realized how they've used to shape me to where I am right now. Cause I have the very same last point I'll make is I have the very same thing as you. I feel like I've been blessed with an opportunistic mindset where I can look at situations and with very limited data points, I can usually make a pretty good call and not overanalyze it and jump into it. Whereas other people would overanalyze the shit out of whatever it was, and they would take too long to make the decision.

The, um, some of that. So thank you for sharing that. Um, I think that that is incredibly insightful. And if you, we decipher it a little bit more, just in terms of kind of your experiences delivered certain beliefs as well as abilities, mindsets, as well as abilities that then has led to certain assets that you have that are lead to your success. Now, you know, the, the challenges, like you just, we talked about kind of the imposter syndrome and the reading, you know, clearly you looked up to your father. There were, you put certain standards on yourself when he laughed about the word mispronunciation. You probably experienced some shame, uh, around that. And then you didn't want to feel that again.

And so you decided, so, you know, you kind of shut down the reading gene. Um, it's in there and you can always kind of get it back is, is also the point, but you know, that, that also means like, you kind of don't want to take a risk perhaps around reading and reading in public or just, you know, whatever it is. And so that's a great illustration of the self-limiting beliefs and barriers that can be created. And you know, if, if it, that concept of risk, I mean, for you, it might just be, you know, reading out loud in a group and I'm making that up, but you know, for other people, it can be about risk around literally like starting a business or failure. Like you can't fail. And if you can't fail, then you're never going to be entrepreneurial.

So, you know, it can be bigger as, as a point, but you also illustrated like your, the example of your mom, like what a great role model. Like, you know, she wanted to give you something and she, you know, create the home office. Well, for however many years you were going out into the living room and seeing the work ethic and seeing kind of the flexible work environment, um, you know, kind of the way pre COVID that now everybody's kind of got the same thing going on. Like you, you learned and you saw, and you absorb that role modeling that then says, Hey, you know, if we want to do something in life, you quit your job, you're, you know, you do something different, you kind of change, kind of change things up and it works out.

And so you kind of have a, now a mindset. There you go. Make it happen. You know, make it happen is what it's all about. So, um, you know, you, you've just illustrated both sides of the coin is my, my point. And there, you can even look at your awareness of the, of kind of the challenge as a strength too, because not everybody's aware of those, of those things. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I think that's, and it's interesting because, you know, this is why I'm glad mental health is, is being talked about more often. Um, because it does need sometimes somebody else to help a lot of times, somebody else to unlock it for you. I'm, I use my, my podcast here as almost an open therapy session. You know what I mean?

I, I, some woman was, you know, jumped on a webinar for us and talked about imposter syndrome. I was like, shit, I got imposter syndrome. Come on, let's have a conversation. And as she dug into it, she's like, well, let's talk about it. And she just said, what's your earliest memory? And I kept going back and going back. And I was like, damn, I did. All right. You know, cause I've always diminished my intelligence. I've always said, well, you know, I've, I've worked my ass off. I got a 3.6. So I did, but I had to work my ass off for it. And, you know, I'm not going to go to Harvard, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Who fucking cares? But I've also diminished education. And this is where I want to take this because, because I've diminished in my mind, education, the value of it and all that other stuff, as far as like, you know, the traditional education.

Um, it, I changed my opinion recently, um, on my disdain for, uh, institutional education with, with Neil deGrasse. So Neil deGrasse, he said, you know, cause everybody talks about calculus, right? Like who the fuck needs calculus? Like in your, like, if you, unless you're going to be a professor, blah, blah, blah. Like who the fuck needs calculus? Right. And I've always said that. It's like, Hey Siri, you know, what's the square root of 8 trillion, 900. I'm like, I don't need that. Like my teachers, I'm sure same to you. It's like, I always used to ask him, why do I need to know this? And they'd be like, well, it's not like in the future, you're going to be walking around with a calculator in your pocket.

It's like, uh, Hey, uh, Mrs. Reed. Yes, I am. But what he said was it's not, that's what everybody says. He's like, it was not about calculus. It's about learning calculus because the way you, the way your brain works to try to figure out calculus is wiring your brain in a certain way so that in the future you can figure out other stuff. It doesn't even have to be math oriented. It's the way it's wiring your brain. And so could you help me answer the question of what the value of higher education is right now with that as a caveat, because I'm sitting there looking at what happened with chat GPS, there's a million different ways to make money right now for kids and going into school for $200,000 worth of debt to get a $40,000 a year job and have to live, you know, based on somebody else's rules for like that playbook is over.

So could you help me understand where formal education has a real value to it and then how we're evolving here and what we should be focusing on to teach these kids as opposed to what you've been teaching them for the past 50 years in the industrialized revolution area of education? Let me let me let me cut through some myths first. So what percentage let me throw this back at you what percentage of someone's success is tied to their ice IQ score? My opinion is, I would say very low, I would say sub 20%. Yeah, so that's that's typically the response I get. And there's no concrete data that actually answers that question. But most people have come to the conclusion that at least in today's disruptive world, it's low.

And that's because, you know, what is an IQ score? It's this test that has been around for 100 years, but it's been ingrained in our culture. Just like you said, I think you said earlier, like, if you're talking to somebody who went to Harvard, you feel like a kind of a piece of shit, because like, you know, like, I couldn't get into Harvard. And, and neither could I, you and I have the same GPA, by the way. So, you know, both, I think that there's this cultural undercurrent and assumption, the smarter you are, the more successful you'll be in business. But even in life, there's like this kind of like, Oh, you're really smart. You got it made like, no, that's bullshit. So really, what is the secret sauce for today's world is two things.

Well, the, the intelligence is kind of the intellectual intelligence, kind of that left brain. That's the analytical side. There is some merit to that, of course. You can't be an idiot, you know? Right, right. Yeah. But there's two other factors. You have emotional intelligence. Now that's, that was introduced 50 years ago. It got popularized in the 1990s through the book, emotional intelligence by Dan Goldman. And it's the recognition now for salespeople, it's really important because it's the recognition that being in touch with your own emotions and then the emotions of other people is an absolute success factor in the business and life and leadership. And, and so I truly believe that. And if you're a salesperson, you need to read people, you need to understand kind of how they're responding.

You need to know yourself. If you're getting frustrated, you're going to turn them off, all that kind of stuff. Then there's the experiential intelligence too. So, okay. Yeah. The analytical mind, the emotional side, and then what are the mindsets that you bring to it? What are the abilities you have? And kind of what are the key skills that your, your brain, your know-how that's experience. So your experiences, the more you can have experiences and get to your higher ed question, the better, because those, the experience of doing calculus, it's not about the, it's not about calculus. It's about the experience of doing it. That gives you know-how and gives you the ability to kind of connect complex ideas or whatever, that then you apply to some other context later down the line that you're not even thinking, Oh, I'm able to make connections in this organization from, you know, from this product to this, you know, kind of business model.

And it's because of calculus. No, it just becomes who you are. That's your experiential intelligence. So the, the idea here is that you want to create as many experiences as possible. So there's a university called Minerva university there in San Francisco, there's a bunch of kind of Silicon Valley folks have funded them. But the idea is that it's a higher, it's higher ed, but you go to school virtually, they're trying to create a scalable model, but you, they have their students living in like six or eight different countries so that you get that visceral, you know, kind of life experience. And then they also place them in internships that are real practical, like, like IDEO would be an example, like product design firm in Silicon Valley.

And, and so what these students are getting is deep experience. And so, you know, is higher ed's days numbered? I think the traditional gatekeeping function of a diploma is numbered. I think higher education has to reinvent itself. The business model's broken and the approach is broken, but there's still value. If you make it about experience and you make the business model unbroken, there's a lot of, you can, that could be a whole other conversation, but you know, it's, it's, it's that experiential component. Now you can get that experience other places. Now that's the other point. Like, do you need a lot of companies right now are getting rid of the requirement of a college degree diploma to have an interview and to get a job.

Like Google has their certificates that you can go get and then you just get a job and you'll pay a hundred bucks. So I think a lot of organizations are recognizing if you use that as a gatekeeping function, you're, you're locking out the talent that's going to drive your future. So you got, you can't do that anymore. Universities haven't fully figured it out. And I think that we've, we've got to reinvent the model there as well. Yeah. There's no question. My sister, again, nine years older. She went to Northeastern university here in Boston and I love their model. It's semester on, semester off, semester on, semester on. You learn something, then you go get an internship. Then you learn something, then you go get an internship.

And what was beautiful about that was my sister graduated, not necessarily knowing what she wanted to do, but she graduated absolutely knowing what she didn't want to do. Right. And so it gave her a different perspective. And I just wish all colleges were like that, where it was just like, you learn something, you go apply it. You learn something, you go apply it. Funny anecdote. My daughter, during COVID, I think she was like a sophomore in college and COVID hits. And she's just like, I'm not doing this virtual thing. Like, fuck this. I'm like, okay, well we can fund you for, you know, six months and then you're just on your own. Like no five, two, nine plan. You're, you're done. And within that period of time, she got a job running marketing at a big real estate company and also created her own social media marketing firm.

And now she's like totally support. She's, she went back to school after like two years, but she's got a thriving business and she's now in school going, you know, these professors are a little ivory tower. They kind of don't know how the real world works. And she does because of the experience that kind of was forced upon her. She forced herself to have. And that's just a wonderful little testament, I think, to the value of taking a year off, taking a gap year or whatever it is to give yourself life experience. And those internships, um, also like just volunteer, you know, if you can forward it, volunteer and do something on the side and just get those experiences under your belt. And then the experiential intelligence side is to extrapolate from those experiences.

What did you learn in terms of how you think differently now and communicate that and the abilities that you gained that are kind of, yes, skills are, skills are important. Those are kind of like the blocking and tackling. I can use, you know, word and Excel, but the abilities around, oh, I can do a competitive analysis. I can think, I can think about business models and I can define a business model. Those are the higher order abilities. So, you know, if you can create those experiences and even on your, you know, even if you are in the business world now, look at your resume and think about what are those knowledge, knowledge, the, the, the knowledge and skills, the higher order abilities, and then what you bring in terms of mindsets.

And usually that's what's being looked for these days when people are hiring. So just a thought there. What's up everybody. I know you're enjoying this conversation. John does a great job with genuine curiosity on these episodes and our guests consistently bring the heat. We want to take a moment here and let you know that you've got an opportunity, an opportunity to become better than you were yesterday. And you can do so by gaining access to all of JB sales content. All of their training tips, techniques, tactics, and takeaways can be yours for $1 a day. $365 for the year gets you annual access to everything, including our private Slack channel for members only, which you get access to all of us directly a hundred percent of the time, 24 hours a day.

And then at the same time, you're going to get access to our bi-weekly ask me anything sessions where you can bring real deals to the table and get the help that you need where you need it. This is very, very important. Sales reps that invest in themselves are often found at the tops of their leaderboards. Join us today and get the help you need to become the seller that you deserve to be. That URL one more time is joinjbsales.com. Let's get back to the show with JB and our guests for this week. Why don't you think we as a Western society celebrate experience as much as Eastern cultures do? For instance, like we don't, like there's that whole, I think there's, there's a survey that they do in regions.

And it's like, if you were on a boat and you could only save one person and your, it was your child, your wife, and your grandmother, who would you save here in the U S it's the kid a thousand percent of the time, because it's like, they haven't lived their life and they have, they need a chance, right? Most other East, like China, all those cultures, they would save the grandparents and they respect their elders. They don't just stuff them in old folks home and say, thanks. See you later. And then, and I bring this up because I'm disappointed in myself for not realizing this sooner. You know, I used to go and my buddy had a season tickets to the Patriots, right? For years. And we would go every Sunday and his, well, his dad is the one who had season tickets, right?

And his dad, big guy, he would literally just sit there and read his paper the whole time. And I'd be like, Hey, Joe, what's going on, Joe? Hey, but yeah, Mr. LaVangie, Mr. LaVangie type of thing. Right. And I never engaged with him. I never, you know, maybe a few niceties, whatever. And when he passed away, his obituary, I read his obituary and I, I was so disappointed in myself because like he had had four startups. He was part of two venture capital firms. Like, and I'm like the amount I could have learned from this guy just by sitting down for one beer a weekend with him and just taking a half an hour out of my binge drinking fest there would have been immense. I would have been able to get my MBA from this guy, but yet we all are like, Oh, that's so-and-so's dad.

Oh, that's grandpa. Like who cares? Like, why do you think we devalue it so much in Western culture? It's a great question. I, I, our culture, um, and the way it's evolved, we, we really want instant gratification. We want instant results. Um, we want quantifiable kind of value. We're very financially driven, motivated in our culture as well. Um, and so when you, when you look at those things, the, the patience required and the work required to hear someone's story and then internalize it in terms of what are the, what did, what am I learning from it? And then how does it apply to me? So it's like, kind of takes work. Um, there's a lot of work. Yeah. So, so, so when you look at other cultures, I traveled, one of the greatest gifts my father gave to me, my father was, was like, I mentioned not around a lot, but he was very connected to some of the Eastern mystics, uh, in India.

And he gave me a trip. I traveled alone right when I graduated college to India for a couple of weeks and it blew my mind. And those kinds of experiences, you know, it kind of taught me that there's so many, there, there's a, there's different cultures, like, you know, the, that culture really values experience and kind of daily presence and meditation. And, you know, the, it's changing a little bit now, but like when I was there in the 1990s, you know, there was, there was no, you know, I think I saw a Domino's pizza driver on a scooter and that was the only like Western influence in the whole country. Um, and you know, it's, it's, there's a presence of, you know, every moment is experience.

And if every moment's experience, how do you really recognize what's happening around you, where the, you know, kind of energy and connections are with other people and kind of being very grounded in that. And we are in our culture here, there's a movement towards that to a certain extent, but I think we're still so much future focused. There's anxiety about what's going to happen tomorrow and next week. And all of the conflict that we have politically and socially is, is infusing itself in not being able to be present. And I think that that's a challenge we face as a culture and it's, it's actually, you know, kind of sounds maybe, you know, a little bit woo woo, but at the same time, it gets in our way of really understanding what are our strengths and how do we leverage them and how do we learn so that we don't repeat mistakes and actually we can make real, you know, strategic progress.

So, you know, it's, you know, there's a, there's a softness to it, but a real practical application if you could kind of do it well. Yeah. I think the, the short-term focus gets you short-term results, right? And if you, if you look at this from a very, very, uh, you know, arc of history, if you will, you know, the U S has only been around for a couple hundred years, you know what I mean? Like those Eastern cultures have been around for thousands and thousands of years. And so we've, I, and, and look good for us here, short-term, like we, we came on the scene and boom, you know, rose to the top pretty damn fast. The question is, is, are we going to stay here? And it's looking more and more like we want, we aren't because we're still trying to take this short-term approach to long-term survival, if you will.

Yeah. And I think that also, you know, the, the, what you just said, not to pick on you, but I'll pick on you like rose to the top. It's like, what's the definition of the top? Yeah. Yeah. That's, you know, it's like, okay, well yeah. Economically powerhouse, like, you know, there's so many opportunities here and I'm not minimizing that. Like there are opportunities in the U S and a lot of people want to come here and like, it's, it's an, it's an amazing environment to do business and be an entrepreneur and have, you know, kind of success by certain measures. If you can combine that, it's the yin and the yang, it's the both in the end. If you can combine what our society and culture and economy has to offer with a groundedness and a focus and a presence about you, then it's like a 10 X opportunity in my view.

So it's like, how do you just combine the best of the best? And I think that's where we, we have a turning point in our whole culture. Like, can, are we going to go down or are we going to go up and like, let's figure this shit out. Yeah. And we're in it right now. We're at, we're at that inflection point right now. And so I'm wondering from your perspective, how do we, how do we educate the youth, if you will, of, you know, leveraging the experiences of, of people who've been there, done that, but also gaining experience as a younger, because let's, let's paint this picture, right? Say you've done what you're supposed to do your entire life. Like you, you went to school, you know, you got, you, you got your degree, you're probably in debt.

Uh, you've taught to the test, you've gotten your good SAT score. Good for you. And all that other stuff. And now you're like, you don't have experience. Soren, like you, you have educational experience, but you don't have any real experience. Um, cause there's this theory that I have, that I have in, or my discussion around this point is Gen Xer, right? Last generation to kind of figure it out, right? When you and I were kids, mom kicked us out of the house, said, burn down the house, you know, just don't burn things down. Be back by dinner. See you later. Right. We were, we were, uh, uh, what are they called? Whatever kids that get grown up by the TV, right? That type of stuff. So, but now every kid, their lives are so structured.

It's painful. Right. And I look at this with my daughter, right? They go from school to this hour to this hour, then they have soccer practice for two hours, then they have, you know, iPad for 30 minutes. So they go through their whole lives structured and then they get out into the real world and they have some idiot like me look at them and say, Hey, figure it out. And the kid says, what do you mean? Figure it out. Right. Tell me what to do. And so the, the response from somebody who's been there, done that experience. Oh, you don't know what to do. Let me tell you exactly what to do. And in our world of sales, it's here's a script, here's a template, here's the slide deck. And you give a kid a template, a slide deck, a script who's been taught to those things their entire life.

They will read the template. They will read the script. They will read the presentation. So my, my, my answer to it is structure, not scripts, give them structure, let them play within that structure. And, but we have to give that to them because right now they have none. And, and I think without structure, this, this generation is struggling with structure. They'll execute better than you and I ever would. The concept of experiential intelligence is, uh, I've applied it in my book to business and teams and, you know, to a certain extent, psychology, because it's like, we're all people and we got to come, you know, see our shit in order to improve ourselves and achieve our goals and stuff. But it's a broad concept, just like IQ and emotional intelligence.

You want to think about it as a parent. You want to think about it as a teacher. You want to think about it as a community. And so you're great example because you know, the whole helicopter parenting and kind of what the structure is that the over structure that's happening. Um, if you think about what builds resilience and what builds creativity, it's lack of structure. It's lack of structure. So like, if you want to be a good parent these days, it's about creating structure for downtime or giving your kid options so they can figure out what they care about and not forcing things on them. Like here's four or five things, or let's open the catalog of the community, you know, kind of events that are happening and let's pick one this week.

There's various things that we can do within a structure to have unstructured structure. And I think that that is a message that we need to kind of instill more in formal education and higher, you mentioned higher education also, giving people options or, you know, kind of various internships or, you know, kind of, you have to do this, but the world's your oyster, figure out, figure it out. And so that I think that those are the, the, the things that we need to provide as structure so that we can build the kind of the, the abilities and the way to think about choices to think about options, think about like, what is going to work here and not work here. And what do I really care about as a human being?

Because with that over structure, you, you lose yourself. And so we need to help our kids find themselves and build muscle memory around creativity and strategic thinking and, you know, abilities to navigate uncertainty and all of that kind of stuff. Yeah. I think that's, you know, it's a challenge because of the demands right now. And I think to going back to the point of, I think we're, we're at the, we're at the inflection point of the breaking of this do, you know, do everything perfectly. And, you know, because we're watching it fall apart, we're watching these kids. And, and that's the part that kind of scares me the most is, is that these, these, all these cool tools and all this new technology that's out there.

Quick example. I selling like my first few years in sales, I went to every networking event. I, you know, I literally, I co-called all day long, but I would go to every networking event at night and I would shake hands, kiss babies and, you know, and just, and just get to know people. Right. So when LinkedIn came out, it was very natural for me to figure out LinkedIn. I was like, oh, this just puts what I do on steroids. And I know how to do this and that, but I know how to do it the right way. Right. So there's all this technology, but without the context of this technology. So quick example, this kid I was watching on Tik TOK the other day, he created this, he used chat GPT to auto respond to every customer service response that came in.

And it was a really thoughtful email that you would get if you put in a customer service. But I sat there and I was like, this kid's 16 years old. He doesn't know what customer success is. He genuinely doesn't even know what customer success means. So how can he use a technology? But, but here's, here's actually my question for you, Sean. Is it a bad thing in the sense that he's using his different types of intelligence, whether it's IQ or whatever it is to learn this technology, to do something he doesn't know how to do? And the technology is probably ultimately going to do it better than a human would anyway. So is that a bad thing? I don't think it's a bad thing. Not at all. But, but if you, if you take a bigger picture, look at what's happening in our environment, the term that is happening is called cultural lag.

It basically means the technology advances faster than our ability to respond to it. And we've seen that with, I don't even have to go through the list, but you know, the, the idea that, okay, you've got chat GPT, it can now create these algorithms and you can kind of build tools with it that you have really no clue even about what customer success is. Like this kid somehow learned kind of what it was conceptually built something and put it out there. And it's like, to me, it's the same thing as he painted a painting and put it out there. It might be a piece of shit and no one's going to, you know, people ignore it, or it might be pretty brilliant. He's an ex Picasso and somebody is going to discover him and then put funding behind it.

And it turns into something, hopefully a value. So like this, these are, it's just a new creative outlet is how I look at it. But there is the bigger problem of cultural lag and probably the biggest side effect. You sort of alluded to this as mental health and the mental health challenges and problems that we're seeing now with our youth. And so the technology surpassed our foresight to build in mechanisms to support the mental health of our kids who are using it. And that's a travesty and it's unfortunate. And I think all of us can probably point to challenges because of it in certain ways in our communities and our families and, you know, our friends. And we've got to, we, I think we, what we need to do is we need to kind of preemptively recognize that our culture, you know, our policies, our norms, you know, a lot of times it's the companies that have to build this in because they're just so far ahead of any, you know, any kind of lawmaking or regulatory bodies and be ethical and be foresightful around what's the end goal.

Does being at the top mean all about profit or does being at the top mean we're helping people and we're being a benefit to society and we're creating a strong culture because we want to compete globally and we need different things other than an economic, you know, economic powerhouse to compete globally. We want like, you know, sane people and grounded people and educated people from just the standpoint of just knowing who they are as people. Like let's redefine the definition of some of this stuff and then take a leadership position as companies, as teams to address that cultural lag problem. Yeah. I mean, actually it just popped into my head. As you said, the regulatory things is, uh, I think this is a great example or a terrible example is what happened with FTX and Bitcoin.

You know what I mean? Like there was, there was like, holy shit, look at this cool technology. Basically it wasn't a monetary thing. It was a technology. And you got all these kids with no financial background, nothing, you know what I mean? Playing around with markets and all of a sudden creating billions, if not trillions of dollars worth of wealth with no regulation. And basically their only response was, well, it's on the blockchain. So it's like, it's like, okay, thanks. But there's gotta be a regulatory factor in here in case I lose my money on blockchain. So I think that was a perfect example of where technology outgrew our ability to under really understand it. And kids without the XQ were using it to create massive amounts of wealth.

And then it all came crumbling down because the foundation wasn't there. Yeah. Yeah. And we've seen this over time. It's a human condition. You can look at the history of bubbles, you know, like I lived in the dot-com bubble, but there was a tulip bubble in Europe like 200 years ago. Everybody thought tulips were the bomb, right? And everybody literally there was a tulip bubble. So, you know, the, those kinds of things can, you know, we get ahead of ourselves and you can count on, you know, reactively government and your regulatory bodies to kind of intervene. But I think we, the difference in competitiveness from a societal standpoint will come in self-regulation and we've got to figure that out.

I couldn't agree more. One last question is a very pointed one on that, on that, what causes this? Cause I'm just more curious than anything else. And I think, again, I think this is one of the bigger challenges I'm seeing with this newer generation coming into the workforce, the willingness and ability to accept feedback. Where if, if you, from a psychology standpoint or whatever, going back to like how tying into the fact that I don't like to read with maybe one day, my dad, you know, laughed at me type of thing. Where does the inability to, to receive feedback, where might it come from? I'm not saying, I'm not saying there's one answer to this, but I'll give you a quick example. There's people that I've, that I've worked with.

And when I'm giving them feedback, especially younger, you know, Gen Xers or Gen Zs, when I'm giving them very direct, but not like your fired feedback, like just, Hey, you screwed up on that. Let me show you that physically, like you literally, like physically see them like recurl back. And I'm like, Whoa, I'm like, are you okay? Are you okay? Like is, and they'll be like, Oh no, no, I'm fine. I'm like, and no, no, I like feedback. I want feedback, but they're like, they physically look like they're about to throw up. So where in the world with the, with that experiential component come from about that, the visceral physical reaction to getting any type of feedback, because I think there's a big fear right now of giving any type of feedback to anybody, because there's a fear that it's going to be like, Oh my God, you're not sensitive enough.

Oh my God, whatever. But feedback is the most important thing that we can give based on our experience. So where does that rooted from? Because I'm trying to figure out if there might be a way to kind of uncover it with people to say, Hey, did something happen that you don't like this feedback, or I can adjust my approach a little bit differently? Is there something that you could point to on that? So it's a, it's a dynamic and a feedback loop. There's certain things you can do to give feedback, but there's also certain things that you can't do because what is feedback to people who recoil from it? It's a threat and it's a threat to their sense of self. And so it usually is conjuring up some kind of belief about themselves.

They're not good enough. They're a failure there. You know, it's usually those kinds of things. And so feedback itself is a threat. And so, especially with someone you respect. And so, of course, there's, you know, there's whole courses on how do you give feedback and like, you know, kind of be communicate well and all that. And, but at the end of the day, I had my, one of my first bosses, big consultant, you know, small consulting firm. Um, the partner said, you know, I want feedback because it makes me better. It makes me a better person. Like, and he was even joking, like he had a mustache. He's like, if I have food in my mustache, I want you to tell me because like, how would I know otherwise?

And like, and, and that, that little moment, I mean, this was like 25, 30 years ago, that little moment stuck with me because feedback is a gift. If, if given with, with the intention of care and growth. Now you can't do anything about someone, however, who has had a, who has those self-limiting beliefs about what feedback means to them. And, and I think that that's an opportunity to create a dialogue though, about like what the feedback really does mean. It doesn't mean this. And a lot of times you're not conscious of it. Like you're not thinking, I don't want feed, I'm recoiling. I don't want feedback because I, I'm going to feel like a piece of shit or because I'm, you know, I believe I'm a worthless person.

Well, you don't have to be a psychologist to kind of get like, if somebody is struggling with feedback, it's probably because they're struggling with something bigger about themselves. So, you know, it just by basically saying what you said, you know, I think this is an opportunity and this isn't about you as a person. This is about how we can make, make things better and how we go after the next deal or how we create a better team. And, and then role modeling the vulnerability to like, meaning like if you're going to give feedback, usually in your position to, you know, kind of, you know, you're leading a team or something and being able to say, here's some of the feedback I used to get, or here's some of the feedback I got recently.

And I'm working on these things because the more vulnerable you can be yourself, people pick up on that. They let down their guard and then they can be vulnerable back. And you start to, instead of ratcheting up intensity, you kind of create a, a kind of more grounded environment to have those conversations. Yeah. And I think a lot of leaders out there need some help trying to figure out how to create those environments, to foster that creativity, to share those experiences, because there's, it's, it's, the rules have changed period. I think COVID was the, was the obvious inflection point, but I think it just accelerated what was happening in the first place. And the last analogy I'll use here is unfortunately my, my favorite team here, the Patriots and Bill Belichick.

I genuinely think that the game has passed Bill Belichick by because he is do, as I say, do your job. You know, it doesn't matter how good you are. Tom Brady, be damned, even though obviously he's the reason we got at least three of the six championships, but, but you know, and, and this new generation coming into the NFL, that's not how they operate it. They want to know why they look at themselves as a brand. They're trying to figure out, you know, where they fit. They, they, they need to understand the reasoning behind it. They're not just, you know, do what I tell you to do. And I fundamentally think that is the problem with Bill Belichick right now is that he tried this year to do things the way that he's been used to doing them.

And I think the same thing with managers, we are so far away from the world of do what I tell you to do, make 50 dials today, that, that if the ones who are not picking up on that and sharing their XQ, sharing their, you know, building their EQ of their team, they're, those are the ones that reps are going to come and go, you know, within six months of working for their organizations. Yeah. I'm big on goals and also principles, operating principles, because those are more flexible. And then from an experiential intelligence standpoint, you need a diverse team. And I'm using diversity in this most broadest way right now, in terms of experiences, like we all have different experiences because we all live different lives.

Um, how do you look at your team and decipher and even say like, what are the things that you've done outside of work, outside of your resume that you think have given you strengths and assets that you can bring to us? And those, that's the new, that, that's the new secret sauce of talent management and recruiting is like looking at broader views of experience and not stuck being stuck with those resumes and then leveraging that in a flexible way. And, you know, stacking your team with the diverse experiences and giving principles that are, you know, based in real goals, but also based in values that are meaningful for yourself. And, and, and I think that that's how we try to start to address some of the challenges that you, you've been listing off along the way, as we've been talking.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're hopefully chipping away. Uh, I think we're, we're hopefully at that inflection point. We see, we could start to move this in the right direction here. Uh, cause you know, if you listen to the news, uh, everything's heading in the wrong direction, but I think we have the opportunity to, to do our little part of moving in the right one. And hopefully we did that with this conversation here, Soren. So tell everybody else, uh, tell everybody where I can find out more information about your book, about what you're doing and, and, uh, follow you and everything else. My website's my name, sorenkaplan.com S O R E N K A P L A N.com. And you can get a, the first chapter, you can just download it and check it out.

Uh, if you do buy the book, I've got a full toolkit with a lot of the kind of practical tools and templates that I've kind of been alluding to and describing as we've been chatting. Um, and then from there, you know, social media on all, most of the channels and, uh, you can find me there as well. Fantastic. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you coming on here. Soren, I really enjoyed the conversation here, John, very insightful questions. And thank you for, uh, bringing to your audience, uh, some purposeful, meaningful dialogue as well. Thank you. And everybody listening, hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did and got something out of it to hopefully make you think a little bit differently or do something a little bit differently today.

And like I always say at the end of my podcast, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause no matter how bad your day goes or how bad you think it went, if you make somebody smile today, you know, you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much. And I'll see you on the other side. Thank you so much for your time today and listening to the podcast. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did with your support and our incredible guests. We're one of the top sales podcasts in the industry with over a million downloads. And I can't thank you enough to keep the momentum going. If you could go to your favorite podcast platform and leave us a five-star review, I would greatly appreciate it in return.

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