450 Marcy Axelrod

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:00] What if the key to unlocking your fullest potential wasn't about doing more, but about being more present? Marcy Axelrod has spent over two decades exploring this question, and her findings are transforming how we live. I. Lead and connect from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.

Marcy has advised some of the world's most influential companies, yet her most profound work delves into the human experience of presence and engagement as the award-winning author of how we Choose to Show Up, A number one bestseller honored with the Hay Waka book prize. She introduces a groundbreaking framework that redefines success beyond more productivity. Marcy's research reveals that we operate in three distinct modes, barely there, just showing up and truly showing up. Through her showing up system, she guides individuals and organizations Through her show up system, she guides individuals and organizations to transition from [00:01:00] autopilot to intentional living, fostering deeper connections and meaningful impact. In a world where business is often mistaken for purpose, Marcy offers a compelling alternative. A life driven by conscious choice and authentic presence.

Her insights are not just theories, but practical tools for anyone seeking to lead with intention and live with fulfillment. This isn't just about showing up, it's about choosing how you show up every single day.

And before we start this episode, a quick word from our sponsor, Deep Wealth and the 90 Day Deep Wealth Mastery Program. Here's Jane, a graduate who says, and I quote, the Deep Wealth Mastery Program prevented me from making what would have been one of the biggest mistakes of my career. I almost signed on the dotted line with an unsolicited offer that I now realized would have shortchanged my hard work and my future had I accepted that offer. Deep Wealth Mastery has tilted the playing field to my advantage.

Or how about Lyn? Wow, he gets right to the point, and I quote, Deep Wealth [00:02:00] Mastery is one of the best investments ever made because you'll get an ROI of a hundred times that. Anyone who doesn't go through this will lose millions. 

And as you're listening to these testimonials, are you wondering if you have the time? Are you even thinking that you've got this covered, you have the advisors or people in your network? Well, I got to tell you, these myths, they're often behind the 90 percent failure rate for liquidity events. Think about it. You have one chance to get it right for your financial freedom. You really want to make it count.

And when it comes to time, let's hear what William has to say. We just got in this testimonial, William says, and I quote, I didn't have the time for Deep Wealth Mastery. But I made the time and I'm glad I did. What I learned goes far beyond any other executive program or coach I've experienced. 

So what do you think?

As I hear that, that's exactly what gets me out of bed every day. That's my mission. That's the team's mission here at Deep Wealth to literally change the social fabric of society. One business owner at a time, one liquidity event at a time, and my Deep Wealth Nation, what I want you to [00:03:00] know, the Deep Wealth Mastery Program, it isn't theory.

It's from the trenches. It's the only one based on a nine figure deal. And that deal, that was my deal. You know my story. I said no to a seven figure offer. I created the system that later on, myself and my business partners, we said yes to a different buyer, a different offer, a nine figure deal. That's what we now call the Deep Wealth Mastery Program or the Scale For Ultimate Sales system.

It's built by business owners, for business owners, so if you're interested in growing your profits for preparing for a future liquidity event, and that may be two years away, it could be 22 years away, whatever the time may be, you want to do this now, and you want to optimize your post exit life, Deep Wealth Mastery is for you.

To get started, email success at deepwealth. com. Again, that's success. S U C C E S S at DeepWealth. com. You'll receive all the information about the Deep Wealth Mastery Program or better yet, why not hop on a complimentary strategy call.

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Deep Wealth Nation, welcome to another episode of the Deep Wealth Podcast. Well, Deep Wealth Nation, I've got a question for you. How are you showing up? And you may be saying, Jeffrey, what do you mean? How am I showing up? Well, how are you showing [00:05:00] up? How are you showing up at your business? How are you showing up for your family, for your friends, for life?

And you may be saying, well, what does one have to do with the other? And in a word, everything. And that's exactly what we're gonna be speaking about today. In the House of Deep Wealth, we have a very special guest. So Marcy, thank you so much for being part of the Deep Wealth Podcast. Welcome to the Deep Wealth Community.

My goodness. With your background, you're a thought leader. You're on TEDx, you are really leading the charge from Silicon Valley to everything else in between. But I'm curious, before we get going, there is always a story behind the story. So Marcy, what's your story? What got you from where you were to where you are today?

Marcy Axelrod: Jeffrey, first of all, what an honor to be with you and to be with you. All of your guests and au audience here on a Deep Wealth podcast. So what got me started? So I'll tell you, there were three seminal moments that I believe were the launchpad, and I think a lot of people have similar moments, so I will briefly share each.

The first was when I was six years old. The family had just moved from Baltimore to Boston. My parents [00:06:00] had these new fancy jobs and little 6-year-old Marcy all of a sudden became a bit of an afterthought. So I needed more attention and more support than I was getting, but I wasn't the sort of kid to act out.

And so I acted in. And what that meant is that I let the genetics and the environment predispose me to stutter. So Marcy lost the ability to speak at age six

Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow,

Marcy Axelrod: and the stress of that, you move and then you can't speak. So now you know I'm on the playground and my lens of myself turned outward.

I could not show up as I chose. So I started to observe everyone else's show up choices, and I noticed, well, that person's being a bully, and that person's a scaredy cat, and the educator over there is noticing it all and just shuffling her feet or his feet and not doing anything about it.

Why are they showing up that way? They're throwing their show up choices away Next. [00:07:00] Learning at age 12, I was dropped off at a rehabilitation hospital supposedly to learn to speak traumatizing because everyone else there was 80 years old, you know, recovering from strokes. And what I saw is these people with experts by their side with.

Plans, you know, multi-page plans that they were flipping through with instructions. You know, Here's how you start to learn to feed yourself again, to stand, to sit, to take a step. And yet they struggled. And I said, these people, these elders with their wisdom and experts by their side and well-made plans, they know how they wanna show up.

And yet. They can't. It's so hard. So I said to myself, where is the blueprint? Where is the playbook that explains how humans are designed to show up so that we thrive? It has to be easier. So I started to devour everything I could find on psychology, neuroscience, [00:08:00] evolutionary, biology, you name it, anything like that that would help me to puzzle together the framework of how nature designed human beings to show up.

As a strategy management consultant, right? With a background first on Wall Street and then in silicon. Valley a decade with KPMG consulting, helping companies like HP beat IBM around the world and every industry group and every continent you start to develop a skill to basically put very simple frameworks down that share a tremendous depth and wealth of insight.

So that is what the model is. It's a three part model of how nature designed humans to show up. So once the model was down, I started to test it. Global studies with hundreds of thousands of data points about how do you choose to show up, do you choose what gets in the way? What helps you out? So that started in 1999, Jeffrey.

So I've got a lot of data by now.

Jeffrey Feldberg: I love that And Deep Wealth Nation. [00:09:00] Go to the show notes and in there you'll see a number of links, but one of which is a link Marcy to your books and you have a few books out there, hopefully more on the way. I love how we choose to show up nature's playbook for creating a meaningful life and the world we want, and it's all in their Deep Wealth Nation.

It's a point and click. And Marcy, I gotta tell you, just before we get going, as you're talking about this, I'm actually going back and this is amazing how the brain works to two different parts on my business side. And so one part of the business side, I remember, I don't know why it popped in into my mind.

We were making a pitch, my e-learning company, Amnet. We were making a pitch for this one particular customer and. Truth be told, I didn't really care so much. I had these negative thoughts about this customer. I wasn't really sure if I wanted to work with them, and I didn't know it at the time, but we were the favorite.

We should have won the business. Spoiler alert, we lost the business and it had everything to do with how I showed up, even though I wasn't aware of how I showed up. But wow. I might as well have had a neon sign saying, don't pick us. [00:10:00] Go to the competition,

Marcy Axelrod: You did have a neon sign.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Clearly. And then on, on the flip side, after the exit deal.

So myself, my business partners, you all know the story. Seven figures? No. Create a system. Nine Figures. Yes. And the day after and the journey after the deal was done, I didn't know how to show up. I never really learned that. I was always focused on, let's just build the business, let's grow the profits, let's cross that finish line.

And then once I was done I, I suppose I was like. Those astronauts, they went to the moon, they did their big moon landing. They took their moonshot. Okay, now what? And that's how I was, and some of the biggest mistakes in my life came not before the exit, but after the exit. That took years, decades for me to unwind and begin to set things right.

I don't think I'm alone with that. I'll put myself under the microscope. So big picture wise, as you're speaking with. Leaders, and you've worked with some of the best logos in the business, the royalty of business you've worked with and [00:11:00] entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. What are you seeing? Where are we getting it wrong as entrepreneurs of how we're showing up or not as the case may be.

Marcy Axelrod: We're valuing the wrong things, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So talk to us about that. What are we not valuing that we should be? What are we valuing that we shouldn't be? Where is this all coming from? Where's it all? We all know where it's leading to, but where, how do we get down this path?

Marcy Axelrod: Yeah, so culture from our birth teaches us what a good life looks like

And it's wrong, right? Society has really run amuck in the last 2, 250 years since industrialization, ultimately so I like to look at deathbed reflections. And there are two that are well known and the third was recently added.

And I'm gonna share what that is. 'cause I think, everybody's gonna nod and think that's exactly right. So the two that almost everybody on their deathbed says is, I wish I had worked last, number one, and I wish I had told the people I care most about. I love you. You mean the world to me?[00:12:00]

And then of course you have to act on that. So the third thing though, that keeps coming up, and I'll tell you, in a survey of female executives at one of the largest hospitality companies on the planet, a name you all know, over 95% of the female executives used a single word in response to the question. What is the main challenge in showing up as you choose? And the word is authentic. I am not living the life I want to lead. So the deathbed reflection is. I wish I lived more of my life. What's meaningful to me as opposed to doing kind of what I was told to, right? So I need a certain house and a certain clothes and a certain car, and I have to earn a certain amount of money and a title in that, right?

I can't be happy with the seven. I need the nine. I'm gonna say no now yours I think. I think that you said no to the seven for the right reasons, you were already feeling abundant. You already. [00:13:00] Felt that the value of what you were doing met a higher need. If it didn't, you would've come across with greed, with patience, with stress, and that neon sign would've been out saying, don't pick me.

The values that help someone grow a business. Are showing up with a generosity of spirit, showing up with a connectedness. So this is where like the model of how nature designed humans to show up really comes in. But I wanna pause there and not keep going and let you either reflect on what I just said or grounded in your own words for your list.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay, so my goodness, there's a lot there. Marcy, too. I'm back and thank you for sharing and although I think you gave me far too much credit for some of my earlier decisions, but we'll go with that. And so, you know what's interesting and I love in the book how that you spoke about, but then you have the fourth part making it easier to show up as we choose.

Now, I would imagine, I didn't grow up [00:14:00] with social media. I guess I'm gonna date myself here somewhere. I didn't grow up with social media. I can't imagine. What it would've been like with social media. I can only imagine that some of my anxieties, my fears, seeing the fear of missing out, how everyone's having that perfect life, that perfect day, I would've been, oh my goodness, I'm just not good enough.

I've gotta get out there and do even more. So what are you seeing with social media? How much of a contributing factor is this to what's already, I would imagine a fairly deep problem?

Marcy Axelrod: So Well, first of all it's absolutely massive, but let me explain why, because this isn't explained sufficiently. Human beings are not separate from, right? We are of the earth. We are not on the earth. We literally come through each other physically, and I don't just mean through your mother down, right?

When you are looking at me eye to eye and I'm looking at you, our brainwaves literally start to resonate, [00:15:00] and it's called inter. Personal neural synchronization. We are designed to sense each other and to feel each other right through our skin, right through our skull. And it's what we do naturally.

And it was actually part of our survival. When you were in your tribe and you saw a. Stranger 50 feet away in a fraction of a second, your body told you friend or foe or not, right? So the value like how we're designed to live is the opposite of what technology does. So what tech does is it brings you into a single, very narrow focus on something that's an abstraction. It's the map, it's not the territory. And that's a quote from Alfred Korki who created a field that I think is misnamed called [00:16:00] General Semantics. But it's also the, source of wisdom, I think from many contemplative traditions. David BOM and Krishna Murti also spoke about how every ill in society has its source.

The false belief that we are all separate ANGs. So we have two attention systems. One leads you to feel connected with others. It will lead your business to grow. It will lead you to know when to say no to seven, such that you can get to nine, right? But the other side of our brain, that left hemisphere, is about power and control over, and that is the one that is dominant today, and that is the one that technology is based on.

Because what the apps are designed to do is to capture us and to lead us and to have control over us. This, that left hemispheric system cannot [00:17:00] feel what you are feeling right now, Jeffrey, even as I look at you with all the open-heartedness and depth of my ability, you become an object to me.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, so interesting and Deep Nation, when you pick up the book, one of the things that you're gonna see, and Marcy, I loved how you did this. You did not make it complicated. When it comes to showing up, you gave it three values. 1, 2, 3, 1, barely there, two, just showing up, three truly showing up, and you can share Jeffrey OnBase or off base.

When we get to level three truly showing up, I would imagine that's what some of the mystics or from eons ago, the ancient wisdom people or people that are really into the present moment and gratitude and all those wonderful things that go along with that. It's really not. To doing. It's, we're actually being, we're in the moment.

I'm really looking at you. I'm seeing all of you. It's not in the back of my mind. Okay, what do I wanna get from Marcy today? What is on my agenda? I don't really care what she's saying. I'm just gonna assert myself [00:18:00] in such a way that I'm just going to get what I want and then move on to my next meeting or call or task, whatever the case is gonna be.

That's, number one, or maybe even a negative one on that side, but truly showing up. And Marcy, I'm gonna throw this to you because I'll share most of my early days, probably to my mid days as an entrepreneur, primarily number one, maybe a little bit in number two. But I gotta tell you, the magic began to happen.

And thankfully I had some very patient mentors that didn't throw me out the door and the window as they mentor me. Jeffrey can't just be like that. It's not a winsome, you lose, I win. You lose vice versa. You gotta really show up and help other people and go the extra mile, help enough people get what they want.

Eventually you'll get what you want. And really taking that number three, truly showing up for me, that's when the magic began to happen, not just on the business, but in all areas of my life. I'd love your thoughts on that.

Marcy Axelrod: Yes, definitely. So you bring up presence or ing, right? Because everything is a flow. There's so much more than that. [00:19:00] Yes, that is a crucial first step, but there's so much more because there's a belief system that's underneath it about the reciprocity in nature. The way we show up to the world is the way the world will show up to us. Okay? So if you are inter-connected within yourself. You then bring that to others and you don't show up as, here's my goal, here's what I want to achieve. Just as you said, it is more let's explore together. There's this kind of curiosity that shows up. There's an openness, there's a desire to truly be with and for as opposed to just be two, like that's part of the show up lexicon.

It switches two to with and for. Let me just talk about the model though, because everyone inherently knows there are levels of showing up, right? Some days you lay in bed and you're like, this day felt meaningful. Other days you lay in bed and you're, what in the world just happened. I should have known better.

I should have foreseen this right? One is barely there. Now you've gotta be there. Some of the time you're [00:20:00] sick, you're grieving, you're just incredibly stressed. You're burned out. Sometimes you're aware that you're there, sometimes you're not. And there's a whole chapter explaining that and how to get out of it.

Chapter two is what my 24 now, years of research shows 80% of us are doing 80% of the time. Level two. This is when. You're just kinda going from one thing to the next. This is get it done mode, but it's also sleepwalking through life. And it's also regret V when you get up and you know, you shut off the alarm and you brush your teeth and you're just boom, and you're not seeing 99% of what's going on and you're not feeling a sense of gratitude for other people who may be in the house with you and you aren't feeling like, wow, like I'm.

I'm not feeling any pain or I'm just feeling this small pain like, you aren't living in both attention systems going back and forth as we're designed. Instead, you're here, you're not you're here, you're not. And [00:21:00] what happens is your focus is narrow 

and you go from this, to this.

Have you ever seen a bird's head move? And it's like, click, click, click, click, click when you're in. Get it done mode. That's what you're doing. The flow of time is cracked and you are living in this staccato boom. You won't feel a sense of significance or depth of presencing with anything. And what happens with your attention is it just bounces off. The people you are with, often you don't feel a sense of care for as you move up the continuum, what happens, and I've got this chart in the book, is that as you go from level two toward level three, the first thing that happens is you notice, boom.

Now you're noticing. Once you notice, it pulls on you, so then you tune in. As you tune in, now you're switching from your left hemisphere into [00:22:00] your right. Your nervous SY system settles from the sympathetic into the parasympathetic. You will notice your breathing even shift and get deeper. After you tune in, Jeffrey, here's the magic.

You start to feel with. And then once you feel with the heart circuits, come into play and you enact care. And I will tell you, this is when the business deal gets done. ' cause it's sure not going to get done when you're doing this. for the listeners, I'm like hitting my knuckles into each other.

So as you move up. From level two to level three, the whole neuroscience about it is that you're moving into the connected attention system that we have in our right brain. This is the only one that when your child looks into your eyes, he or she will feel your care. It is the only attention system that when there's music in the background, you will start to [00:23:00] sway to it as opposed to just totally tune it out or ignore it or feel it's pesty.

It's the only one where when you see that drop of water on the leaf some part of you is changed and you're like, wow, good. It's like a crystal. It's gorgeous.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yes, Yes. Mercy. I am absolutely there with you. I want to share two flashbacks with you. So what you're talking about right now, the one and then the three, and we took a lot of heat when we came up with Deep Wealth Mastery, our 90 day program built on this system that. I was, you know, very fortunate I had the right people around me and the great team to be able to build actually what you're talking about right now.

So deep Deep Wealth Nation, if you're saying, yeah, Marcia, I hear you. I'm sure you're a great TEDx speaker and it is great that you've worked with the royalty of business. What you're saying though, doesn't really resonate so deep. Both Nation, I gotta tell you, I'm gonna point you to step three, future buyer and then step five, winning mindset.

Because people say, well, Jeffrey, if your company ette, if it was the same company. [00:24:00] And you didn't buy companies, your growth rates were relatively the same in the less than two years that you went from seven to nine, what did you do? And the magic, it doesn't show up on a balance sheet. It doesn't show up on a profit and loss.

It's step three future buyer and the step five. The winning mindset. So step three, future buyer. It's exactly what you're talking about doing. Seven figure offer Jeffrey was what's in it for me? I don't really care about this buyer. All I care is the check going to clear versus the nine figure.

Okay, I know what my company does. What is this buyer? Or the investor, what's their problem? How can my company solve? That's my problem. Does my company solve that problem? And if it does, terrific. Am I world class in it and how can I help that buyer or investor all the way through to, to step five when your mind said, Hey, it's not a zero sum game.

It's not. I win. You lose or you win. I lose. How do we create a win? So I'm right there with you. And I also wanna zoom out for just a second. I'm not gonna name the guest name, but on the Deepal podcast, this one particular guest, [00:25:00] people would know the name. This individual had the life, Marcy. I'm talking out there and hobnobbing with all the big names.

Movies, you name it all with this one person and on the podcast the guest came out and it was one of the questions towards the end, which you and I will get to. He said, Jeffrey, when I look back at my life, the biggest regret that I have is I just put the business first. I can't remember, I can't remember the deals that had me say no.

To family members that didn't have me there at family events that didn't have me with my loved ones, and now some of those loved ones are gone. Now that I'm successful, now that I have all these zeros in the bank, I can't go back in time to make up for that. And it's such a heavy burden he was sharing that he carries with them day in, day out.

So it goes exactly back to what you're doing. And let me ask you this. I wanna hear your thoughts because I'm very biased on this. I don't so much believe in balance, but I do [00:26:00] believe in blending 

because when I hear balance, I say, okay, go to the movies, go to Hollywood, read a fiction book, trying to balance my life.

It has never worked for me, but I can blend my life and I am certain extremes on the business side of times and also certain extremes on the personal side of times. So before we go into the methods here of madness, where the magic happens with you, Marcy, blending balancing, where are you on that?

Marcy Axelrod: it's interesting that you bring this up. You're the only other person in my entire life who has brought this up. The moment anyone talks to me. That balance. I say the entire word is a farce applied to our lives. What humans are supposed to do is what nature does. We're just supposed to flow.

And when you picture an infinity symbol going around and around, it's also a Mobius strip and I really like that. so. We're supposed to go from our narrow attention to our broad attention. Why? Because when we lived out in the Savannah, we had to both eat, think, grab, get power, over, [00:27:00] extremely narrow focus.

Boy, we're sure there's no reason to bring doubt or poetry or I wonder if that Rabbi I'm about to kill just gave birth to a litter, right? It's that type of a attention. But in addition to feeding ourselves, we had to not be fed to something else. 

So what's going on? What's that? Russell, in the brush way over there.

What's happening with my tribe? Way over there. This broad attention. There isn't a balance. You aren't supposed to do half of this and half of that. You're supposed to flow. And really what gives us the fun, the connectedness, the creativity, the inventiveness is the broad perspective where we feel fully intertwined, not just within the moment, but also with the more that's out there.

Is the word balance starting to feel like it doesn't quite fit with that understanding of the [00:28:00] world, right? So the world responds to us in kind with how we flow with and for it, right? Once again, there's no two, we aren't to each other our business deal to be done. No, no, No. With So balance.

Within a certain framework of weights and measures, which once again is an abstraction. It's the map, not the territory. so there are finite human defined circumstances in which science and measurement and balance. Are helpful. However, when you truly expand to see the much bigger picture of the ecology in which things exist, the broader system balance doesn't quite apply because everything is dynamic and flowing.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's interesting as you're talking about that, I'm thinking about the continuum. This beautiful graphic that you have, and again, do both Nation go to the show notes. It's all, there's a point and click pick [00:29:00] up the book. Actually pick up all of Marcy's books and go through that. But I remember because you talk about just now.

Okay. Have the self, you have the situation, you have society. And Marcy, when I look back at, okay, I'm gonna put a label on it. Maybe I shouldn't do it, I'm gonna put a judgment on it, on my quote unquote, failures, really learning opportunities. It was focus really on one, usually the self, and I was ignoring society.

I was ignoring the situation, okay, what's good for Jeffrey? What do I want? Forget everything else. Big time failure. My biggest success is I couldn't tell the difference myself. It was the same as the situation as society. It was all intermingled really in a harmonious, beautiful kind of a way, and that's where the magic really happened.

So speaking of that, let me ask you this. As a founder, entrepreneur, business owner, I come to you and say, Marcy, her Laal podcast. Forget our liquidity event, forget our exit, or our next capital raise. I just want to have this [00:30:00] incredible culture. I want to enjoy my business journey, and I want my team to be able to do that as well.

Will you please work with us? What would that look like in terms of how long does it typically take? And I know every entrepreneur, every business is going to be different, but generally speaking, what are you doing with your system as myself, my team now begins to work with you. What does that look like?

Marcy Axelrod: So the very first thing that we do is a culture assessment, right? How are people able to show up within the cultural system that the leaders have built? Is there a sense of trust? Can people show up authentically? Can they bring their best self? Can they bring their true self? Can they be honest? Often we uncover that there's some version of the four things that kind of keep people from truly showing up, and that is someone feels better than, or they feel lesser than, or they feel they need to be seen as, or they feel they deserve.

Any of those four things. Mess up a culture of truly [00:31:00] showing up. Where you see beyond just what the marketing says the customer wants, customers are trying to achieve things, be it B2B or B2C companies and people are trying to achieve things that have a broader purpose. And the more you are able to look.

Beyond that, what is, you know, over the long term, what is it that leads this human being who works at the company to be successful? And can you create a culture where people feel safe, emotionally safe to show up with their true ideas, their true thoughts, their true insight of the moment.

That is when businesses thrive. So you do an assessment and then you go and you do workshops and say, this is what we learned what are like the three most important use cases where we need to reset this, and then we do pilots on [00:32:00] each of those three. And then from there you develop initiatives to roll it out to the broader culture, the broader company around the world.

Jeffrey Feldberg: I really like that process. Let me ask you, because I know as founders, business owners, entrepreneurs, there's a myth out there that we, well, we walk on water. We are perfect. We don't do anything wrong. We have all the answers, and we know what's best and effectively. At least from my perspective, what's, you know what that's doing is it's taking vulnerability and, well, I can't be vulnerable because if I'm vulnerable then I'm going to be weak.

So how does vulnerability play a process of truly showing up? And if someone doesn't have that for any number of reasons, what would be some strategies to begin to bring the vulnerability out?

Marcy Axelrod: So truly showing up level three is leadership. It is being the parent you wanna be. It is being the friend you wanna be. It is being the coach of the team that you want to be. When you can't be vulnerable, it's [00:33:00] because you've put up a wall. There's a defense inside of you that is protecting you from some fear.

And the fear can go way back and you may not know what it is. It might have been started at age three at a pre-conscious level, but there's something that's stopping you. Being calm such that you can really listen and say, wow, it sounds like when I showed up that way, it caused an issue and I need to learn from this, and I'm going to listen to a bunch of people about how they experienced that, and I'm gonna think about what I can do that's better.

And I'm gonna ask them, what do you think would've worked? And then I'm going to commit to you what I'm going to do. Differently, this is my work. And in doing that, Jeff, I'm giving everyone else permission to do the same. To say it sounds like I messed up and I wasn't as good as, as I needed to be.

And the limit of success of my company is defined right [00:34:00] here. So whatever my own wall of defense is that. Is the gate through which the success of my life and my life's work is going to be stopped. So only when we can be vulnerable can we get past that and grow our business through that limit.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Marcia, let me ask you this with that in mind, because am positive there's people in deep Deep Wealth Nation saying, no way, if I'm gonna be like that, I'm gonna lose a deal. I'm gonna lose a respect. I'll share with you with Marcia, and I know you'll likely agree with this. In the world of mergers and acquisitions, the currency isn't money, the currency is trust.

And I can't tell you how many times I've seen, not just with my deal, but with our entrepreneurs that are going through deep wealth mastery and then into the liquidity events. When they show up to an investor or buyer and they say, by the way, I. Here's where our company isn't so strong, we know it. Maybe you can do something better about this.

We just can't. That's one of the reasons why we're speaking with you. Or remember, I told you this. Yeah, we really dropped the ball on that and here's [00:35:00] what happened and here's why. And here's going forward how we're planning to deal with this. The amount of respect that comes outta that and the T word trust that comes outta that is huge.

So what's going on behind the scenes when people say, Hey, you know what? Jeffrey's not perfect. He's human. I can actually relate to him. Therefore, I'm going to put some more trust in him, or I'm gonna have a better comfort level with him. What's going on there?

Marcy Axelrod: Yeah. So this is your situation member role, and what's really going on is that there's an embodied. Lived experience that you are getting that tells you that someone is open to you and therefore you can feel safe being open with and for them. And it only happens in the moment, right? This is a presencing experience. It leads you to basically say, I feel that moving forward we can [00:36:00] journey with this person,

Right? We can grow and learn and merge our businesses and feel a sense of successful partnership with this person. When someone shows up with defense,

We experience that in our bodies and it creates a sense of threat. And this is when you say, you know, I don't feel that good about this deal. And that's when the deal isn't done.

And people will stay away from you and you won't get the phone call when you know someone else's business wants to grow. And they think, we would like to, initiate a process to see if there is a successful merger.

potential. Here you won't get that phone call when you are showing up with a limit based in your own fear.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Marc, let me ask you that, because what you're sharing, it's not. As gold, as platinum, as I like to say. Let's forget the deal. Put that off to the side. It may be a product launch, it may be a decision on the personal side, it could be perhaps a quote unquote smaller decision on the business side, but we don't have [00:37:00] that culture.

We don't have those people around us. It's like the emperor with no clothes. They just don't feel comfortable telling us. So coming outta this episode, if a listener does a honest self-assessment says, you know what, I don't think our culture is so healthy. I don't think people are truly showing up.

They're just showing up. What would be some out of the gates strategies that I could start to do now as the leader to get people to move from just showing up into truly showing up?

Marcy Axelrod: Sure. I'm gonna give you two answers. I'm gonna give you something that a leader can do with a team, and I'm gonna give you something that an individual should be doing every day.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Please.

Marcy Axelrod: What the individual should do to practice truly showing up. What I want you to do each day, I want you to find someone. It can be someone at a store that you stop at on your way home.

It can be someone getting out of a car in the parking lot. It can be someone across the office. Just look at them and breathe. And what you start to notice is how [00:38:00] they feel. You are picking up how they feel while they're stressed, they're rushed, their concern, wow. I felt that yesterday myself.

That per just like me or maybe, you see them feeling worried about something, you think, wow, maybe they have a sick child at home. I remember when my little Jonathan was sick at home last month. That was a really tough day. I was worried about him all day. What you're doing is moving from just sh showing up with a person is just an object over there moving around, and they're not relevant to feeling with.

Four, and you're becoming open hearted and you're switching your attention system from that left hemisphere, grab it, get it done mode into human to human mode. And then when you walk into your team meeting, what's gonna happen is people are gonna feel you as this open, [00:39:00] caring person. The conversation's gonna be different.

And what's going to come to mind is, oh, Jane was mentioning, she's worried about her ailing parents because one of them recently fell. And you're gonna walk over and say, Hey, how's your dad doing? And your tone is gonna be one of care and the entire meeting is gonna take place. In a way where people are feeling safer to bring up like, Hey this customer actually mentioned something to me that I think might be a systemic issue that we need to really put some time into and different things are gonna come out.

And that's when the whole company starts to shift into more of a trusting, caring mode. And that's when inventiveness shows up. The broadening of the lens shows up and that's when even your marketing and messaging is gonna change. Because you aren't gonna view kind of growth for its own sake. It's gonna be a healthier version of progress that isn't just [00:40:00] a GDP or kind of net income focus.

It is gonna be more of are we having the impact on society that we wanna have?

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's so interesting there, and as you're talking about that, Marcy, what you're reminding me of on the podcast, very fortunate we've had. Thought leaders, authors, really brilliant people like yourself. We've also had people that have been in the services where it's life or death. And just because we're in the services, just because I may be your commander doesn't mean that automatically you've gotta give me your respect.

I have to earn that. And one of the things I hear continually from, regardless of what part of the services it is. It's this comradery that's there where it's well beyond the mission. It is, Hey, I've got your back. Personal or business and people sharing. You know what? I would happily go above and beyond what's being asked.

Yeah. I know what's being asked. I'm gonna go above and beyond that because the respect that I have is so much. For this person or this individual or this leader. And if I contrast that to business, [00:41:00] not all the time, sometimes though it's, well because I have this title, you automatically, it's assumed you need to respect me and you're gonna go above and beyond.

It doesn't really work like that. You can have people who are just clocking in or people who are really showing up to your point because it's been earned. And so from that perspective, what should I be thinking about as a leader to embed in the culture?

Marcy Axelrod: Oh, absolutely. So, some of the phrases that are used for this concept are things like service oriented leadership compassionate. Leadership, but essentially to create the trust and to create authenticity, the accountability that is needed where people are truly bringing all of themselves.

In essence, you need to make sure that the culture stays human to human. If it's just, Jane's in marketing and Joe's in supply chain, and everything gets broken down. There's a value chain of flow created [00:42:00] within your business and then without your business, meaning like as your products and.

Services flow through society, and then they're purchased, right? There's a flow, and the flow has to be honored and it has to honor the environment that we're in terms of what our culture needs to be healthier and happier, what are natural en environment needs. And as you start to show care for the individual, all of that starts to transition.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay, and the key word there is care and

Marcy Axelrod: Where is care because we are designed to care. I should mention hierarchies are inherent in nature, but when you actually take the shape of a tree and you ask yourself, which part of the tree is actually more important, where's the CEO? Where's the customer? Is the trunk more important than the roots?

Are the roots more important than any given leaf that's drinking in the energy of the sun? well, [00:43:00] really it's the system, the beauty, the success is in the entire system and the relationship of how it all fits together. That's what your success is based on.

It's not a given per person. It is how everything relates, and that's why it has to be heartfelt. And my success in business looking CEOs in the eye, I would hear over and over Marcy, I'm telling you things I've never told anybody. They're almost like, they're like, why? and I just look at them and, say, it's because you feel my care and you know I'm gonna honor you as a human.

And they look at me like, that's what it is. I never would've put it that way. I never would've thought of it. But language of business is one of separateness and it's falsity. The language of business should not exist because it's not the language of humanness or humanity. Your products are just going out into the world, so that's why I feel like we need, well, I shouldn't say I feel [00:44:00] the truth of success is that it's rooted in being human to human.

Jeffrey Feldberg: What's key there in duplication? Hope you picked up on this. Marcy, you said in this specific situation. And someone was sharing something that they just don't share with other people, their loved ones or close ones, they felt heard because they felt you cared about them. And it almost seems like an oxymoron business caring, but it should absolutely be blended, one within the other.

So let me ask you this, a couple more questions before we go into wrap up mode. If someone is feeling stuck in the barely there mode. What can they do coming outta this episode? What would be some low hanging fruit of one or two actions that they could take to begin to transition them towards the truly showing up?

Marcy Axelrod: Yeah, so all the, big picture of what you're doing is you transition up from barely there, into just showing up, and then truly showing up is if you look into your hands, right cup your hands, and look into the, most people live in this self 

Jeffrey Feldberg: Mm-hmm. 

Marcy Axelrod: They basically [00:45:00] see a mirror of themselves reflecting themselves back.

That's an ego-based living. As you turn your hands outward and you start to live in an other centered attention, I. That is when the loneliness disappears, the desperation disappears. The anxiety, it just naturally dissipates because we are designed as part of a flowing, interconnected system. When you are truly burned out all of that, you have to nourish and restore yourself.

So the first thing to do is to reset your body. There are a lot of ways of doing that. It's breathing techniques like 4, 4, 4. Breathe in for four. Hold for four, breathe out for four. Hold for four. Repeat that. I know that Jim Doty, head of the Stanford center of Compassion and Altruism Research, who's a brain surgeon wakes up and he does that for five minutes every day.

Other things that you can do, write letters of. Gratitude. I mean, Just things that turn on the care CI circuits, [00:46:00] those are the things to do. If you're capable of doing things like interval sprints or just things that really get your endorphins going, that's great. Also, I know that it's certain ages getting out there and sprinting can be difficult.

But in essence what you're doing is things that turn on your inherent. Design of being connected with others and with things. Oh, spend time in nature, obviously. And engage in noble silence. That's a lot of things. But all of these things, like fewer words, language is part of the destructive force that's out there.

We talk about hitting keys and just. Our language is violent. We Deep Wealth to colloquial phrasing. Like the last thing you wanna do is like, you know, it's like really the last thing I wanna do. Like, No, what you're saying is, gee, it doesn't seem like it's a great idea. Like we go to extremes anyway.

There's so much that pushes us out of a truly [00:47:00] show up mode. So. Really what I'm discussing is things that switch you from your left hemisphere into your right more often.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Love that is really taking that whole centered approach where we're interacting with our environment, with those around us, with the situation myself, like you share society all rolled into one. We get the best results. 

So, Marcy, as we're talking about level one, two, and three, I suppose it'd be very easy to say, well, yes, Jeffrey, always be in level three 24/7, no matter what.

I suspect you're gonna tell me something else. So what's going on with that? Where should we be throughout the day, level one, two, or three?

Marcy Axelrod: Yeah. Jeffrey, thank you for asking. because a lot of people mistake the levels as finite places to just try to be, everything flows. So we, and everything in nature and everyone around you is constantly moving between levels one, two, and three. So when you feel like you're really on your game, you're deeply present, you're feeling open, you're feeling focused, you're feeling abundant.

You're in level three, right? But then you know, [00:48:00] as the day wears on, you're hungry, you're cranky, you're frustrated, you just need a break. You're moving down into level two. Your ability to truly listen to someone is much lower. Your curiosity has flown out the door. You're not particularly inventive like you need some food, you need a break.

You need to actually look further away than your laptop. You're in level two. Maybe then you start to feel concerned about something and your field of focus is very narrow and it's something inside your head and you ruminate. Now you're moving into level one, right? When you reset, when you restore, you get some exercise, you get some food, you've taken a walk you can look at an image of or real nature, you can then refuel yourself and move back up.

Now when you speak to someone, more questions are gonna show up for you. More care, more trust, right? Keep in mind everyone around you is also bouncing along that [00:49:00] continuum all day long. So you might walk up to someone and they're in level two when they're typically in level three, or they're in level one, right?

Feel acceptance of this truth because it lets you accept others for who they are and for where they are on the continuum, right then and right there. And the phase might be five minutes or five weeks or five years, that's someone is in a given phase, right? But you want to accept them and you wanna have compassion because everyone and everything is on that continuum at all times.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So amazing. As you're talking about that, it takes me back to what we hear so often, it's self-care, and how many times do we hear, Hey, Jeffrey, just take care of everyone else around you. You're. Not that important. You'll get to you when he get to you. And really it's the opposite. If we can't take care of ourselves, we wanna be at level three, number one.

No one's gonna be able to do that all the time. It's a human condition and it sounds as though, Marcy, when I'm finding myself at the lower levels, [00:50:00] okay, time for some Jeffrey time. Time to take a bit of a break here to recharge and refocus and reenergize so I can then go back out and give myself the best, the very best that I have back to the world.

So some terrific insights there.

So let me ask you this before we go into wrap up mode. I know there are so many questions I have not yet asked.

Is there one question that we haven't discussed yet that comes to mind or even a message or a topic that you'd like to share with the Deep Health Nation?

Marcy Axelrod: Yes. One question, was one of the greatest insights when the book first came out of what people told me. And when I say people, I mean, you know, people who have earned hundreds of millions of dollars as successful entrepreneurs. As someone who worked in the White House as a speech writer for one of our recent presidents, what they said is mercy. I hadn't recognized. We choose how we show up. So the question that I wanna leave people with is, how often are you choosing how you show up? Or are you just Deep Wealth showing up? Just going [00:51:00] through the motions?

Jeffrey Feldberg: As you talk about that, again, the mind works in some mysterious ways. What we're talking about, Marcy, I'm gonna date myself somewhat here. I wanna say it was the early two thousands and it was Adam Sandler, I believe the movie is called Click, and this is where no spoiler alerts. Here he meets this mad scientist who gives him this magical remote control that he can just fast forward through his life or go back in his life and what he ends up doing, he's a type A personality.

Let me achieve, let me do, let me get this, let me get that. That he fast forwards, he just pushes the fast forward on the remote to fast forward through his life. So he just wants to get to the really good part at the end to see what's there. And again, I'm not gonna give any spoiler alerts here, but it shows.

What life is like when he does that, when he doesn't do that, and everything else in between. And as you're talking about, that to me just reminds me of the social programming at least that I had as an entrepreneur of really. Okay, Jeffrey, just focus on the end goal. That's all that matters. Keep your eyes there.

Everything else is just [00:52:00] noise. Just yeah. Burn the candle at both ends. Who needs sleep? You'll sleep when you die. All those other kinds of things, which are the worst advice. But that movie click is just resonating in my mind of how myself, and I suspect I'm not alone with this. So many times I was just on automatic pilot or fast forward, lemme just get through this so I can get to the next, get to the next, get to the next, not really enjoying the journey along the way.

So that said, and speaking of the journey, it's actually a perfect segue. It's a tradition here. Marcy on the Deep Wealth podcast is really my privilege and honor that every guest I ask the same question. And it's really a fun question. I'm gonna set this up for you. When you think of the movie Back to the Future, you have that magical DeLorean car that will take you to any point in time.

So Marcy, imagine now it's tomorrow morning. This is the fun part. You look outside your window. Not only is the DeLorean car curbside, the door is open and it's waiting for you to hop on in what you do, you're not gonna go back to any point in your life, Marcy, as a young child, a teenager, [00:53:00] whatever point in time it would be.

What would you tell your younger self in terms of life lessons or life wisdom, or, Hey Marcy, do this, but don't do that. What would that sound like? 

Marcy Axelrod: What I really wanna tell her, and I hope this doesn't come out wrong. I really wanna tell her I'm so grateful that you love every moment, keep doing it because really if everybody felt the gratitude that somehow, I don't know, genetically came down to me, we would have a happier, healthier world. Even tech would've been designed differently than it is. it's designed based on a scarcity mode. It's not designed based on an abundant mode.

And I think the stuttering gave me a tremendous gift. Like each morning I can get up and speak. I like trip over my own happiness, you know,

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's terrific advice. Love every moment. And Marcy, you're being very modest. Not only can you not just speak [00:54:00] and not trip up on every word, you're out there as a world class TEDx speaker and you're speaking so often. It's a testament to what you've been able to overcome. And what I find interesting of what you shared of Enjoy every moment.

It'd be very easy for you to look back and say, oh yeah, those were really difficult dark days, which they were. But you're looking at the plus side and being able to enjoy where you are now versus where you've been and the progress that you've made. It's a wonderful way of looking at everyone goes through.

Such dark places at times on their journey, but it is that very struggle. More times than not, that brings out the greatness in everyone in our own unique way.

Marcy Axelrod: Yes. Yes. And the more people radiate their own gratitude and appreciation and presencing depth of presencing, and I explain how to do that. I call it a tuning which is, there's a difference there. The more you bring people into that shared space with you, and the conversations end up [00:55:00] completely different because you ask more questions, tell me more about that.

How do you envision this playing out? What do you really think about this? Would you share more about that? And all of a sudden that your entire world shifts into more of a truly show up experience.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's amazing, isn't it? How the emotion of gratitude and joy, it's like a magical key. That just unlocks the best of us. And you know better than I how the science shows. If we're thinking a happy thought or we're smiling, there goes the negativity. We can't do both at once. And there's so much more to, heck, that could be not just an episode, it could be an entire series.

Marcy, let me ask you this before we wrap things up. Somebody has a question, they wanna speak with you, they want you to come on in and help them and the team, where would be the best place online to reach you?

Marcy Axelrod: Choose to show up.com and there's a contact form and I love hearing from people. And I'll tell you, just this morning I heard from someone, he said, Marcy, I don't feel I've ever actually been right [00:56:00] here, right now, and I'm so desperate and would you help me? Yeah. So that was this morning. Yeah right after that, actually someone came to me, he said, mercy, I'm 67 years old.

I'm about to draw down my. Social security. And he said I am shifting my life, my entire life until now has been living with the wrong value structure and I'm shifting and would you come and talk to me? Yeah. So anyway, choose to show up. Dot com is the place. There's a contact form. There's, yeah, there's.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Deep Wealth Nation again, it does not get any easier. It's all in the show notes. Go to the show notes, it's a point and click everything is all there. While you're at it, please pick up a copy of Marcy's latest book, how we Choose to Show Up Nature's Playbook for Creating a Meaningful Life and the World. We Want Such Powerful World.

Such an incredible. Title. Absolutely love that. And Marcy that said, congratulations, it's official. This is a wrap. And as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. Thank you so much. So there you have it, Deep Wealth Nation. What did you [00:57:00] think? 

So with all that said and as we wrap it up, I have another question for you.

Actually, it's more of a personal favor. 

Did you find this episode helpful? 

Have you found other episodes of the Deep Wealth Podcast empowering and a game changer for your journey? 

And if you said yes, and I really hope you did, I have a small but really meaningful way that you can actually help us out and keep these episodes coming to you.

Are you ready for it? 

The dramatic pause. I'll just wait a moment. Drumroll, please. Subscribe. Please subscribe to the Deep Wealth podcast on your favorite podcast channel. When you subscribe to the Deep Wealth Podcast, you're saving yourself time. Every episode automatically comes to you, and I want you to know that we meticulously craft Every one of our episodes to have impactful strategies, stories, expert insights that are designed to help you grow your profits, increase the value of your business, and yes, even optimize your post exit life and your life right now, whatever you want that to look like.

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So all that said. Thank you so much for listening. And remember your wealth isn't just about the money in the bank. It's about the depth of your journey and the impact that you're creating. So let's continue this journey together. And from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for listening to this episode.

And as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to [00:59:00] thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. 

Thank you so much. 

God bless.