World Thought Leader, Futurist, And Strategist Nick Jankel On Why Purpose Is Your Deepest Wealth (#265)

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast where you learn how to extract your business and personal Deep Wealth. 

I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg. 

This podcast is brought to you by Deep Wealth and the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience. 

When it comes to your business deep wealth, your exit or liquidity event is the most important financial decision of your life. 

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I should know. I said "no" to a seven-figure offer. And "yes" to mastering the art and the science of a liquidity event. [00:01:00] Two years later, I said "yes" to a different buyer with a nine figure deal. 

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At the end of this episode, take a moment and hear from business owners like you, who went through the Deep Wealth Experience. 

Nick Jankel is a sought after and highly regarded professional international keynote speaker who inspires, motivates and empowers people all over the world to forge a future rather than fail it. 

Nick inspires audiences to eliminate the confusion of our times as a futurist, take the pain outta business digital sustainable transformation, blast through the barriers that block innovation, transform the challenges of [00:02:00] teams and cultures by galvanizing creativity, energy, and action where they count most.

Jankel has worked with senior leaders from organizations like HSBC, Boots Walgreens, Unilever, Diageo, Google, Nike, Merck, Walmart, and NHS. Led systematic change programs with WWF and Oxfam. 

Worked with entrepreneurs and social innovators on four continents and lectured at world-class universities, including Yale, Oxford, SciencePo., UCL, and London Business School.

He has a Triple First from Cambridge University in Medicine And Philosophy and helped innovate the most successful TV show in history. Jankel has been a TV host and transformation coach on two network TV shows, helping celebrities change and addicts transform. Jankel has been a guest on CBS, Coast To Coast, BBC News, Aspen Ideas Festival, Huffington Post, Hay House Radio, and much more.[00:03:00]

Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast, and wow do we have an episode lined up for you? You heard the official introduction. We have a rockstar in the hills. He has done just about anything and everything when it comes to success. From the corporate world to entertainment, to everything else in between.

We'll talk about the strategies in the trenches, but I'm gonna put a pin on it right there because we have Nick who's in the house. So Nick, welcome to the Deep Wealth podcast. It's a delight and pleasure to have you with us. And I'm curious, Nick, because there's always a story behind the story.

What's your story, Nick? What got you to where you are today?

Nick Jankel: I think maybe in some ways similar to you, Jeff. And thank you for being here, inviting me on. What got me to where I've got to, one of the things is saying no to things and letting go of things. And it's tempting to want to keep on accumulating and grabbing. And I have learned personally as well as as a business Advisor and consultant, that to open up a new door, you have to close the door.

And that closing can be very painful. So I had two. [00:04:00] Maybe three major closings. First closing is I said goodbye to a glittery career as a doctor. I left medical school which was not an easy thing to do for both my family and my medical school. Didn't want me to go. And that opened up a whole nother world.

Then I set up a business soon after, a couple years after and was offered an Exit. And that didn't feel right for various reasons, and I said no to that and I said no to that business. And that was a a very Exciting, lucrative, profitable business, but something wasn't right for me. And then I've also let go of some of my foundational beliefs about the world, and that has also opened up many avenues and possibilities for my own consciousness to grow and become more powerful.

And as I become more powerful, my work does and my business does. So those are probably three, points where I said, Goodbye to something that most people would be delighted to have. But they weren't right for me. There wasn't something just wasn't [00:05:00] fitting. And yeah, that's been a painful but rich experience and as they say, you have to pay for education.

And as a leader you have to pay for education, usually with some kind of pain, and then you move through the pain into the next growth sort of period.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Well, Nick, it sounds like you graduated from the most prestigious school in the world, otherwise known as a school of hard knocks with a few PhDs along the way. You've earned your stripes. Let me ask you this, because saying no is difficult, and in fact, most people, if they're honest about it, they walk away from it.

They duck it, they shy away, oh, you know, I'll just figure it out another day, and 10 years past 30 years, whatever, time passes and they're still there. So three different times you said no some lucrative times as well where you're saying no on the business side. How did you do it and what's the secret sauce here for you, Nick?

That you're able to do that three times and as a result it catapulted you to really being on the world stage now and working with the best of the best to lead them to better times for all of us. How did you do that?

Nick Jankel: I'd like to [00:06:00] say some of it was wisdom Before the wisdom was there. I think it was an unconscious wisdom

Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay.

Nick Jankel: that I now am conscious of and can teach to people. So that's kind of, I think. I don't want to say that my 22 year old or 29 year old self had deep knowing how I was able to know what it was knowing.

But there was some wisdom. And I think we all have an inner wisdom. We have an inner voice that gives us guidance and we're not really taught how to. Listen to it or nurture it, or co or test it. You can also test the voice. It's not like a thing that you just operate, just do whatever it says.

There's lots of different voices in there. As we know. There's a voice of doom and the voice of judgment and the imposter voice and the aggressive voice. But within all of those other voices, there's usually what you might call a purpose voice, which speaks to you of what is for you to do to bring.

Ultimately more love, truth, creativity, and power to the world. And I think it's just about. Noticing, being [00:07:00] aware and embracing that voice as one of many inputs for decision making. One of them is data. One of them's impact one of them's potential upsides. These are all normal things we use in decision making.

But inside our body and mind, there's a lot of other factors which science is now catching up with and telling us lots of interesting things about. So I think that's the inner wisdom, the inner knowing. Some have called it the still small voice of calm, which you can only hear when you're calm.

That's the other thing. You can't hear it when you're noisy and grabby and, oh my God, I can't let that go. I can't that, you know, or my dad's talking in my head and my grandma's talking in my head and I'm the son grandson of Holocaust survivors. So the got all those people talking in my head about what I should do to be safe and successful.

And I think I've had to calm those voices to be able to go, okay, this is my true path, my true north. And I won't tell you it's not been, as I'm sure you recognize, it's not been an easy walk to get to the place I'm at. You know, I feel like I am [00:08:00] on a global stage and doing really awesome work with incredible companies credible people.

But I've only got there through really working on myself and learning to listen and slow down. Cause I was already fast. So fast wasn't my problem. I was already fast. Slowing down reflecting, discerning listening to others really building relationships. These are all things that smart people aren't.

Taught to do or expected to do, and that's been a big learning for me, that relationships become before or as important as rationality.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Nick, as you're talking about this, let's walk through this, and there's a method to my madness here because we'll get to some of the remarkable insights that you have on the world stage with some of the most compelling topics that we've ever faced as a human race. But before we get there, back to this inner wisdom, this inner voice that you're talking about.

I mean, it's one thing for you to say that. On the flip side, you aren't off on some ashram in the woods on your own doing this. You know, You've worked with some [00:09:00] companies and our listeners may not have heard of some of these companies. I'll just throw them out there to remind them, they may not have heard of Google or Nike or Walmart.

I don't know. Never heard of those companies, but yeah. You know, I'll, joking aside, some of the titans of business that you're working with, how do you bring. That ability to listen to that inner wisdom. And by the way, some people call it the universe. Some people call it the field God, quantum physics, whatever you like to call it.

How do you bring that into the boardroom and have people around the boardroom in a corporate setting follow that? Can you even do that? What does that look like?

Nick Jankel: I'll tell you what it isn't, and it isn't dream catchers and drums. And humus. Much as I might like those things in my private life. So yeah, I joke, but that's really the deal. You've got to be integrative. You've got to integrated it into you, you have to be able to model it and model it in a, this worldly.

Fully alive. I'm in the room with you. I'm a professional. I show up with my power. I show up with rigor. My proposals are world class. Our [00:10:00] slides are beautiful. The team who, supports me have a beautiful architecture of process that we follow it. You can't do all that cool, jazz hands.

Intuition, purpose, compassion, psychological safety. You can't do all that stuff unless you are already a fully functioning no, I would say not over functioning in a bad way, but extraordinarily functioning human being. So I think that's the cost of entry into these rooms. And actually I say that to leaders.

I say, you are here listening to me because you are amazing at getting stuff done to time to budget, and with some level of excellence. And that's only got you to where you need, so far. And if you wanna engage in the world, you've gotta be more creative, connected, purposeful, whatever. So, let's say the soft skills, which I really find that hilarious thing cuz there is nothing harder in the world than being relational listening.

Compassionate. So they're the hardest skills and the hardest skills, let's call it that. So the hardest skills are being relational, being a human being, a full human being. The hard skills of being smart, being successful. [00:11:00] And they're not in a position to each other. I talk about a creative harmony.

You have to bring them together in yourself. And the way I get to do that is one half being who I am, showing up fully, I don't like to tootle my own trumpet being a Brit. But you know, when I show up in the room, you know I'm there and you can feel my presence.

I'm in, in a incongruence of myself. if I speak truth, I am truthful. I am radically honest and transparent. I come back, I apologize for my. Foibles. I try and treat everyone with compassion and when I don't, I, relook at myself. Why was I upset on the call to, whatever mobile phone network has not been serving me recently.

So that's part of it. Half of it is showing up. The other half is the grammar. And so my business partner, who's also my wife we have spent years trying to find the language, the icons, the memes, the sayings the tools, the printouts the materials, the make all this stuff land and feel.

Real and normal and just what [00:12:00] intelligent, awesome people do. And taking it away from all those ashram yoga type places, but without losing the power of it, cuz it's not about people talked a few years ago about mindfulness. It's not about taking mindfulness and taking away all the power and making it acceptable to the machine.

It's actually about taking all the power and making it acceptable to the machine. So the machine. Absorbs it and goes, oh, there's a better version of me that isn't quite so aggressive or performance oriented where we can still have productivity and an and awesome results, but we can do it through compassion and empathy and customer insight and design and all the things that we know we want, which don't work well in a scary overly pressured environment.

Jeffrey Feldberg: As you're going through that and you're walking us through Nick, how you show up with your inner wisdom. Really that inner calm that you talked about at a personal level for you to get there, at the risk of possibly crossing a personal line with you. I mean, what is that like for you?

Are you meditating? Are you having some moments of stillness [00:13:00] from when you open your eyes and you have an important, whether it's a keynote or you're coming up with another one of your wonderful books that we'll talk about? How are you getting in that head space?

Nick Jankel: I have daily practices, which I'll share in a moment. But what allows me to do those daily practices fairly quickly is that after I said no to my second big offer I went on a bit of a deep dive and I really went into this work and I traveled and I did some healing on my own trauma and tried to find some of that personal trauma, intergenerational trauma.

I really practiced all these different tools, whether it's. Quiet tools, what we call them by colors, blue tools for quiet, red tools for movement and stuff. Or purple tools or brown tools, which is nature. So I really practice for years and years. So now I can go for a walk with my dog in the woods and I can touch into the nature of the brown and I can get some information. I can go for a run as I did before this, and I can ask a question of [00:14:00] myself and I can get a response. I do work every night. I do what we would call inner work. I lie in bed, you know, I'm about to go to sleep. I don't sit in a meditation room or anything, but I go through any part of me that feels out of alignment, upset.

Something didn't work. Was I rude? Was I whatever? And I work it through and do some practice and let it go. And then for example, whenever I do a keynote or a podcast as I did just before I came on, I do a practice where I basically let go of my own egoic needs for it to go well, for me to look good to serve the audience.

And I visualize like one person listening to this, hopefully more than one, but even one is just awesome. Who is hearing this and it's just what they want to hear right now because we are now in a sort of, Connection, a field and I'm here for that moment. And so there's just all, these are all different practices, but they're all basically doing the same thing, which is allowing that inner knowing, inner wisdom, the inner guru to come to the fore.

And [00:15:00] that very smart but partial, fragmented ego to which is what you need. Cause I couldn't speak this without one. To just to take a chill pill, take a backseat, be there, but not be trying to sort of, go see me, look at me, see me, which is what my career was based upon for the first 10 years successful.

It was.

Jeffrey Feldberg: I love that. And so let me ask you this, because it sounds like what you've done or what you're doing each day as you're talking through that, I'm really reminded of Benjamin Franklin, who at the end of each day, he had his own checklists and he'd go through all these different habits and attributes.

Okay. How did I do today? It sounds like for yourself, you're in competition with yourself as it should be. Okay. How did I do to, oh, in this area, I knocked it outta the park. Well, this area not so great. Why? You get curious and you're going behind that. So is that part of really what you're doing on a daily basis of reviewing your own day, what you could have done better, what you did well, and how to take it to the next level?

Nick Jankel: I guess it is. Actually in Daoism, there's a wonderful concept of a [00:16:00] zenn which is the sort of, they call it the translation is the perfect man, but I think in the West we get a bit loopy with the idea of perfect. , let's call it the whole self, the whole me.

And so I guess I am constantly referencing. Would I know that is for me now cuz I'm only a partially work in progress and yet also a sense of who, what my full wholeness is in, in future. And I'm kind of in a conversation with, and I'm making notes and I'm sort of making a check like, must tell my son tomorrow this need to write that email.

I'm not gonna. Do that tomorrow I'm gonna go for a run, whatever. It's I'm course correcting my wholeness my purposefulness on a daily basis. And it's a lot of work, but it works. It's a lot of work when it works.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And for the listener who is hearing this conversation and they're saying, okay Nick's on the world stage. He is a force for positive change. He's doing all these things. I'm nowhere near that. How can I even really [00:17:00] begin, or where do I start? What do I do to even get a modicum of where Nick is?

What would you say to that listener of where they could start on this practice that you've refined and for yourself, perhaps we can call it your secret sauce that's really made the difference for you?

Nick Jankel: Yes, I am definitely a nutter and am relentless that someone called me that recently as I took it as a compliment. Uh, I'm not sure I would've done in the past. But I think there's a part of it is to be relentless. Like we've only got one moment, actually, my son's doing his School playing in Shakespeare, the Tempest and it's this beautiful quote.

We are such stuff that dreams are made on and I'm gonna macerate it now. And basically all our lives end with asleep, and it's just like, boom, you've got this one moment. Your dreams are made of this. And if there's nothing wrong with being relentless and being hungry and yearning and unstoppable, that's one part of it. And to be unafraid, to really be hungry, cuz a lot of people aren't, or not, or don't show it, or it's not cool to be I don't necessarily mean hungry for [00:18:00] Wealth or sex. It's just ambitious in the most beautiful way, to really fully and to explore anything.

That's like the kind of move towards energy. And then there's also a kind of, propelling energy that I think we all have. And I would call that purpose cause I don't know what else to put it. And I actually think this is one of our things that came to me on my run is that one of our deepest wealth is our purpose it's like a font of energy.

But it never stops. It doesn't get tired. That doesn't mean it can't, doesn't have to be tended to. And I think our purpose is that very specific thing. That connects our. Specific skills, background, culture, where we live, where we grew up, all of that is rich, right? Rich. And it's unique to us. No one else in the world has got that set of genes epigenetics culture, even our.

Sibling doesn't, cuz they had a whole different journey. Right? Different books, different everything. So we've got this uniqueness about us and then there's a world that, as you said, is full of big problems, right? Really big problems. No shortage of big problems. [00:19:00] And it could be a big problem in your community, it could be in your town, it could be in your village, or it could be, I happen to be interested in big global problems.

That's just because I happen to fall into a global Stage very early, which is particularly my source. I don't see it any, it's any bigger or better than a village level problem. And then the purpose is that conversation or communication or connection between our special source and what the world around us needs.

And you can't fail. If you live that purpose, there's no failing. If you live that purpose, it's impossible to fail. And in fact, I was watching a show on Netflix with my son the other day. It's a really cool show about they, take a house that someone who. Doesn't have any money or a lot of resources, but he's an awesome human being.

And they get them out the house at 7:00 AM and they get, leave the house at 7:00 PM and they basically redo the whole house in 12 hours. And my son's like mind blown. They have 50 people, they have interior designers or whatever, but it's done with so much heart. And one of these guys was this firefighter in a small town in the Midwest, I think.

And this guy [00:20:00] lives his purpose. Every day he's giving, he's serving his community. He is modeling what it is like to be an awesome human being. And that for me is the purpose trick it's, being true to that. What is, that is being called from you to serve.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so Nick, as you talk about that, and I love how you said this, our purpose is our deepest wealth and. My takeaway on that is when we have the right purpose, and sometimes you don't always have the right purpose, we think it is, but it isn't for the right purpose, which literally gets us outta bed every day, has us leave the family to go slay those dragons out there.

Whatever that looks like for everyone, it sounds like if I'm getting this right, that purpose, it's bigger than us and it's really something that when done right can change lives for the better, make a difference out there, really help other people, and is much bigger than just a data point of one being ourselves.

Would I be on base with that?

Nick Jankel: Yeah. Purpose is never about ourselves. It comes from [00:21:00] ourselves, but it's never about ourselves. One of the things I say about purpose is you don't get to choose it.

You get to choose what to do with it though. And that's why that ambition and relentlessness is powerful because it brings it into a canvas.

And actually, I dunno if I made this up or someone told me this, but I love it. Definition of how is meeting your purposeful self once you're dead, that's like, who I could have been if I'd become a whole human being. I wanna make it really clear to everyone listening, this is not necessarily about being famous or anything.

In fact, often it isn't. And as I said, once in a book puppet doesn't care if we're on the company on the cover of Fortune magazine or Forbes. That said, I do believe that financial wealth can follow. Purpose Wealth the Indians call it the goddess of Fortune follows The Goddess of Wisdom. And there's nothing against having large amounts of financial Wealth that come from purpose. And I certainly believe that success can follow that. But. Financial Wealth [00:22:00] without purpose is not a pleasant experience. And I have been there myself and I know many people and have coached many people who have got oodles of financial Wealth but are lonely, sad, and unfulfilled, and that is really painful.

And money can't buy purpose. That's one of those beautiful things that can't buy purpose.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It can't by purpose, and as the old saying goes, it can't by happiness. Yes, it makes life easier. Absolutely.

Nick Jankel: It does, money allows you to do things with your purpose that you couldn't do without it. That's what excites me about Wealth is I get to build like we're building an AI bot thing, whatever. We invest in loads of innovation because we have money coming in that we can then spread our ideas back out into the world.

And it's a beautiful And in some ways sacred thing, this flow of service and resource to be off service.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And Nick, let me ask you this before we segue into ai, and I wanna talk about that and your thoughts and from your book, which we'll get to in just a moment with what you [00:23:00] said, with purpose, if I said the following different words, but I'm wondering if you'd agree. It's the same essential meaning. And then as all of us are born with what I'll call superpowers, But the game, if you want to call it that, is we don't know what those superpowers are.

And, And our first mission is to find out what our superpowers are. Once we know what those superpowers are, it's our, not just our mission, our duty to take that to the world and put ourselves out there with those superpowers to make the world a better place. And every single person has this, but just in different areas, would I be on base with that off base?

What would you say to that?

Nick Jankel: Absolutely. I would say life wants us to show off life. The life force we have and the colors we have access to. And you see a beautiful flower and it's not a humble thing. It's beautiful thing. It's radiant. And at the same time, we don't want to make the mistake of thinking that the world will somehow not work without us.

The wisdom is [00:24:00] moving between as someone said taking up. Not too much space, but not too little either. And somewhere between the two, between being a self-expressed genius who loves life and someone who knows the world's just fine without them there is a beautiful place to live.

And it's a very fine line. It's a nuanced line. I don't get it right every day, but any stretch. But part of that wholeness is to be fully in my powers. Actually, funny enough, the book I've just written, just segueing to a book it's a book I wrote in honor of my oldest son. It talks about the four superpowers that we all have access to.

But they all have different ways of showing up. And our job is to like find the four crystals. I don't know what the meta, I didn't use this in the book, but the idea is, to find the four stones or whatever that we all have access to and then bring them together into one light. Like this would've been a great metaphor for the book.

Maybe in the next book. The Stones of Part, maybe it's cuz I'm watching Indiana Jones in advance of more Indiana Jones,

Jeffrey Feldberg: Love that. Yeah. Yeah. Looking forward to that as well. Yeah. [00:25:00] Yeah. Yeah, the inner kid in us. I love that. Well, speaking of books with what you've done for your son, and I wanna go back, it's just a few years out Now Lead The Change and in there you talk about artificial intelligence, but you spoke about it not surprisingly, before it really came onto center stage.

And as of this recording, it's front headlines and you hear the good, the bad, the ugly. So from when you published the book, now Lead the Change. And by the way, for our listeners, in our show notes, we'll have links to Nick's books and all of his wonderful websites that I encourage you to point and click and buy the books and visit the website.

What would you say though, for us as business leaders and for us following our purpose to get our deepest Wealth with ai, where it is now and where you see it going?

Nick Jankel: One thing I would say is it's blown my mind. What's happening right now so we started working on a, a leadership, AI powered leadership app about seven years ago. And the tech wasn't there. it was just burdensome and expensive and it, I could see it wasn't gonna be elegant, [00:26:00] so we just stopped work.

And then suddenly we've got these LLMs bursting onto the scene and they are astounding. They are not foolproof. They are not geniuses of the human capacity, but it is amazing what predictive word based algorithms can do. On the other hand, I don't believe the thing that gives me great pleasure and comfort is I don't believe that AI will ever be conscious.

So I don't believe that we'll ever have anything major to be scared of. It's not to say some mad men can't use them, or we can't let them operate some algorithm which drives us into the ground. The paperclip analogy that if you give a robot without feeling a set of tools or goals, it might destroy us in the process of achieving its goals, that's for sure.

But I don't think they'll be conscious and therefore I don't think they ever have purpose in the way that we've just talked about. I don't think they have that Wealth will they be incredibly intelligent and able to beat us in pretty much every rational [00:27:00] pursuit for sure. I think they probably already do in some ways.

So my kind of take is a number of things. One is if you are a leader or entrepreneur who loves spreadsheets, and that's your thing. You gotta be ready for the fact that your spreadsheet will be done better by. A robot or an ai probably now, but certainly in five years. And that's great cuz what else could you do with your time?

All sorts of things, right? Which means therefore why not develop more of these hardest skills like pair, compassion, creativity, collaboration all the seas, the sea states. So that's the first thing. Secondly, Any business that doesn't integrate these things in it, I think is a missing opportunity.

And b ultimately will be disrupted by someone who does because they can do a bunch of things quicker and faster and cheaper. So we're a tiny business, five odd people with a, bunch of others in and out. We are putting serious money and energy into a disruptive innovation for our industry which is [00:28:00] exciting and enlivening.

And I think everyone should. Tried out. Don't put it into everything. It doesn't need to be everywhere. But there are definitely ways to use it in, I think any business in-house operations, back office at a minimum, but also brand development, copywriting. I mean, we wrote an article as a test recently, and it's not bad, you know, had to check it.

There's a few hallucinations and weird things but not bad. Pretty boring and Al doesn't have a good style but not bad, so, One thing you can't do is ignore it and pretend it's gonna go away. That's the general rule. But if we can embrace it and see its potential, I mean, it's astonishing.

It's astonishing that it can read every bit of public text and predict fairly well what the next word should be. that does mean also is it doesn't have breakthroughs. And I'm a purveyor of breakthroughs and breakthrough technologies and breakthrough thinking and I think. AI can have accidental breakthroughs, but it can't have the kind of moments where we have purpose, a customer a relationship, an [00:29:00] empathy, an intuitive sense, a creative idea.

It can't sort of, I don't think it can bullet. It can do what we do when we have an aha moment. I don't think it can do that. I don't think it'll ever be able to do that, but it can certainly try out a million things and maybe one of those will be an aha moment. But I dunno if that's the same. And I, you know, the jury's out where that goes.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And Nick, with what you just shared. There's people in the AI community and you're in those circles, and listen, you've been with AI a lot longer than most other people. You've been in there, you've been testing it, you've been trying it, you've seen the evolution of it. Some people in the AI circles are saying, stop calling it artificial. It's simply intelligence. Just remove artificial and they take it a step further. And they say, as of today, right now, as of this recording, they consider these bots, if you will, to be sentient. That they have their own presence, that they can feel and that, okay, maybe they can't have the breakthroughs today, but give them time and short period of time and they'll do that.

Nick Jankel: Yeah. I [00:30:00] don't think they're sentient in the way that we consider sentient. I don't think they're intelligent in the way we most of us think of intelligence. They are semantic. And no one's ever defined intelligence really very well anyway, we're gonna dance around what that means.

Are they rationally capable? For sure. Are they able to make sense of an environment and choose an adaptive path? I don't know. An ameba can, so, is that intelligence. Probably. But one thing I have said and in my little catchphrase is there ain't no such thing as artificial wisdom.

So I guess that's where I would land. I don't think they're sentient. On the other hand, I do believe all matter has some Subjective stuff. I'm a what people will call a pans cyclist. Or something like that. So yes, maybe if you cluster a sufficiently complex neural network, it might have some spark in the machine.

I don't know. My sense is, and it's in intuition more than anything else, is that for consciousness we need organic [00:31:00] matter. And these things are not organic. And so I don't know. But also dunno if it matters that much because ultimately we're gonna have to blend the organic and the synthetic in our work and our business.

We already do. I mean, you think about what one does with an iPhone in every one day life. We're already blending the synthetic into our organic, we couldn't be doing what we're doing now without, this stuff. So yeah, I don't think they're sentient. I don't think they have purposes.

Ultimately I don't think they have that, form of awareness. But they have emergent intentions, definitely.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Oh, we'll see where it goes. I, I certainly am in, your camp. I, I really hope that pans out to be the case because on the flip side, it's a dark future that's ahead on the other side. 

Nick Jankel: it's the Terminator. And we'll be going back in time to find someone in San Francisco to stop them making that first leap.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Exactly. So let me ask you this, for our listener out there who's hearing us talk here, and Nick to put you on on the spot, I mean, you've talked about inflection points through [00:32:00] artificial intelligence, and we've talked about breakthroughs even on the personal side, having that inner wisdom listening to oneself.

For a listener, if they could walk away from this episode and they could do one thing that could really move the dial, knowing that they don't have the resources of some of your clients like a Disney, a Unilever, P&G, I mean, the list goes on and on. You've worked with the royalty of business, but if someone who's perhaps a startup or someone who is small to medium-sized, but they're on their way to create that market disruption and they will become one day a tighten the business, what would be one thing on the business side that you'd recommend? 

Nick Jankel: Wow. I mean, I'll tell you something that I'm learning myself, so maybe this is the best teaching I can give right now is what I've learned in recently. When I was a kid, I was told I. By my school teachers in my school reports that I spread myself too, them. Now, that has been great for me cuz I've been a generalist.

I've picked up information across the scientist and I went to philosophy, then I went to advertising and marketing and branding and [00:33:00] innovation and business and leadership and a lot of picking picking like a magpie. And I built a kind of network of thoughts and theory and tools and I have learned.

Recently, relentless and radical Focus is my agenda right now. As we talked about at the very beginning, I'm saying no to many things coming in my door. Partnerships, cool stuff, shiny objects that just aren't on the path of this disruption that I know. I am birthing through me. And I know I've been an entrepreneur for 20 odd years.

24 years. I live in a kind of perpetual startup mode continuous beta. And I'm learning the power of getting rid of 90% of the things I wanted to do, what could do, might have done, and just like steely-eyed getting rid of. Endless things I could do and just being like, what is the biggest impact next?

What is the next biggest impact task I can do? [00:34:00] And that's kind of where I've got to, I've only got, I'm 50 in three months, four in that six months, and, thank you. It's a while still. I've just. Bringing it close so I can get my head around it. But I'm just like, I don't have much time, want to do other things.

So stop taking on all these other bits and bobs. Four or three months ago, I had multiple companies, and now I've just got one company. One project. We've got an old world version. We have a disruptive new World version. We're doing both. We are dual innovating ambidextrous, whatever you wanna call it.

But it's in one relentless place. We've got rid of half the pages on our website. I've got rid of products that I don't wanna sell anywhere. And so that's been amazing for me. Now, some people may have already been doing that. Great. You have to do something else. But for me right now for the consummate What would you call the person Polymath, who's just like, I want a bit of everything. You've had your time doing all that. You've been in the university, now you've gotta focus. So that's what I'm all about right now is relentless focus. Say no to 90% of the things that I'm offered and do what I know I can [00:35:00] do extraordinarily well.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So for the relentless and radical focus, I love those words that you're using. When you get that new shiny object

Put in front of you, what you said earlier. What's the next biggest impact? Action that I can do or take? Is that the question that you're asking yourself to give? That yes or no? If you're going to go down that particular path as shiny, as exciting, that it might be.

If the answer is no, then you're walking away. Is that the thought process?

Nick Jankel: Absolutely. And I've actually, I've been trying to create a little process for one of my clients actually who want me to help their leadership team with prioritization, with focus. And so I'm trying to create kind of, I haven't cracked it yet, but it's something around next biggest impact.

What can I do each day for the next biggest impact? And everything else, Siara, can't do it. Goodbye. That lovely article I was gonna write that someone should write. It's just not me, and it's painful for me because I'm a. Do everything really well. Love everything, read about everything.

I'm even saying goodbye to books. I'm getting rid of podcasts. I mean, like, [00:36:00] it's been a kind of aha moment of my own, you're just everywhere and you need to be somewhere here doing this.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific. With that in mind, thanks for being on this podcast. It sounds like you're eliminating most things, but here we are with that. Let me ask you, so for a listener who's hearing us talk and they're saying, okay, you know what, Nick, you are light years ahead of most other people out there with your thought leadership, with your experience, where you've been, what you've done.

For a company that signs on board to work with you, they're now your client. What does a process look like? What do you take them through? Nick and I, I know you can say well, Jeffrey, it depends on the company. Every company's different in different times and different 

Nick Jankel: of course. Customize,

Jeffrey Feldberg: But broadly, broadly speaking, broadly speaking, you know, for world domination 

what, what does that look like? 

Nick Jankel: So the first thing we do is we have to build trust with the senior leadership team. In fact, cause one person, it's one person. If it's 30. Without trust, we can't do our work, right? We make a thing. We say we don't do training, we do transformation. We are not interested in just giving leaders some education on AI or prioritization or whatever.

We want to [00:37:00] transform hearts and minds, unlock potential create. Moments of coherence in the team that don't exist. Heal trauma, heal conflict, move on, open up new avenues and disrupt and breakthrough. So we are really there for the big game and without trust at the beginning, can't do anything. We also need to understand a bit about the culture and the specific industry and the ambitions.

What works, what people hate. The words people don't. Shiver when they hear it. The thing you tried three years ago that still people can't talk about because it was so painful. We just to know all that stuff. Cause otherwise what we do doesn't land quick enough, so we do have a bunch of forms that we ask people to fill out. Tick boxes. We have a diagnostic tool where leaders. Rate themselves on a hundred capabilities from the deepest inner world to systemic change, because then we can go, okay, where's this group at? Where's what people want more of? What are they missing?

And we're trying to align what the CEO or the most senior leader wants, what the sort of. Hr, whatever people, person wants, what the individuals want. But really what we think the organization wants as well is a lot of different [00:38:00] inputs. And then we design a process. And some of it's very experiential.

Some of it's about doing actual innovation, problem solving as a group so that people go through the paint together and then can reflect on it and metacog and go, oh, I was a bit of a butthole during that. MoMA, I wasn't listening to you, whatever, because it's gotta be live. But we make sure those projects are actually real, not pretend projects where you're learning actual, real scary, hairy problems that are either in the company or in the customer.

Then we do a lot of practice stuff. So, my business partner is a practice ninja embodiment practices. That's when we're bringing in the brown, the blue, the green, the red different practices because ultimately people think they can change with an external consultant, but actually it's the practice that makes.

The difference, right? And that's daily, and that's in a meeting. So we help, we design meetings. We give one of our little interventions. We give everyone a meditation chime, and a little toolkit for running a circle rather than a meeting. And just start a meeting with a chime.

And everyone spend two minutes in [00:39:00] silence. Before you start talking, that's a huge intervention in a meeting. Right? Not all meetings I should add. This is not efficient, but it's effective for creative meetings, for difficult conversations. So we basically, we build a mixture of tools, knowledge, practices, experiences Projects one-to-one.

We've got lots of peer-to-peer stuff. We really believe in people working together without us. We give people tools. We have a great toolkit for peer coaching. And we see what works and we evolve it and we iterate and something new comes up and then we change it some more. And people often say it's amazing we haven't seen you much, but things have really shifted in the.

Team, the cultures something people can't put their fingers on it, right? Cuz it's so ineffable. A lot of these things. But that's what we do, you know, and it's, part trial and error. It's part proven stuff that works. And we're experimenting all the time. We're pushing ourselves all the time.

 Creating new interventions all the time. For example, it's tiny little thing before we have a meeting in our workshop, we send everyone what we would've been a postcard in the olden days.[00:40:00] But it's now an image that we choose from that where the, you know, if it's gonna be in, in Cairo or in New York with something they have to do before the workshop, which is priming, right?

But it's all designed to be something that gets them thinking, them brain working or their hearts opening so that when they're at the meeting, we've already done some work. And they didn't even realize it. So these, you know, it's tools from psychology and neuroscience but also you know, the contemplative world and we mush it all up and it seems to work.

Jeffrey Feldberg: What's amazing about that is, you know, you're what I call the art side of business, and that's really where the magic happens. It's trust, it's the culture. You're building the foundation on there before you go into the problem solving or here's the strategies. It's amazing what you're doing on that side.

Nick Jankel: I used to be the guy who came up with the strategy. I was a strategy consultant and then an innovation consultant, right? So I did that. That model, which is solve it for the client cuz you're clever, never works because it has to be learned through the journey of each individual organization going through the hero's journey of their own and coming up [00:41:00] with the goods.

And then, cause if you don't, when the strategy might be amazing, but you haven't. Gone through the breakthrough experience yourself to know it. You don't know it on the inside, you just read it in the spreadsheet, and it just does, it never works. Not really. And so it's much better to get a team to go on their own collaborative hero's journey themselves.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Lots of wisdom in there and terrific takeaways for our listeners of, Hey people. They have to have their own buy-in. They have to go through that process themselves. You may have the answer and may take them on their own 30 days, 90 days, nine months, whatever, to get there.

Once they get there, that's where things start to happen. I love that. Nick, let me ask you this as we begin to wrap things up and before we go in, into the wrap up question, is there a message or a question or a topic that we haven't covered that you'd like to share with our listeners?

Nick Jankel: Oh just came to me. I just trust what comes to me. I've just published a series of articles collecting about 15 years of thought about this one word, which I wanna plant a seed of. If you haven't [00:42:00] heard of it, it's called regenerative. Business or regenerative leadership. And it's really about how we bring nature back into the heart of business and the heart of ourselves.

And I think it's huge. I think it's the only answer we've got really to the climate crisis and the poverty and the pollution crisis. So I just want, just plant that seed. If you see the word regenerative business, regenerative brands, I mean, it's in Fast Company, it's in wide, it's out there.

Pay attention to it because it's, there's something very powerful about returning. Nature to the heart of the machine that we thought we could escape nature with, but we can't because nature's saying, yo, it's getting hot. And so yeah, pay attention to the word regenerative.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. Okay, terrific. And for our listeners, there is yet another takeaway that you can do. Look for regenerative, let's look for some articles. Get get all that going. And Nick, let me ask you this, and we'll put all this in the show notes. Let's start going into the wrap up here, and I really have the privilege, the honors to tradition here on the podcast where every guest I have this fun question for you.

Let me set this up. [00:43:00] When you think of the movie Back to the Future, you have that magical DeLorean car that can take you to any point in time. So Nick, here's the fun part. It's tomorrow morning and you look outside your window and wouldn't you know it? There it is. The DeLorean car, it's curbside door is open, waiting for you to hop on in which you do.

You're now in the car and you're gonna go back to any point in time. Nick, as a young child, a teenager, whatever point in time it would be, what would you tell your younger self in terms of life lessons or life wisdom or, Hey Nick, do this, but don't do that. What would that sound like?

Nick Jankel: So I'd probably go back to the quite upset, sad, lonely, sort of 13 year old, 14 year old, maybe 15 year old. I was bullied a lot. I wasn't attractive. I didn't have a girlfriend, you know, I had the thick, thick glasses. You know, I was that typical comic strip dude. And I would whisper to myself. You are beautiful. You are loved, you are wanted here. You are invited here, [00:44:00] which is something of which I say to my kids or used to at night. That little message, you are wanted here. And I think a lot of people don't know that. And you're here for a reason. You've been invited here. I'm not a believer in, a higher power.

But I believe that we all have been invited here in some way, in some metaphor for a reason. That's the purpose thing. And when we know that there's an inherent beauty that we feel about who we are and the gift of our life, and it can, what's the word? I just had this feeling of like a sound wave.

It can go through all our upset and pain and suffering and loneliness and self-loathing and stuff, and it can heal all wounds I guess.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific advice and insights and wow, what a terrific takeaway for our listeners. Nick, before we wrap things up, one other question for a listener who has questions. Wants to learn more, perhaps even become a client, where would be the best place online for them to go?

Nick Jankel: I'm a LinkedIn guy. I don't really do any other networks. LinkedIn, me, Nick Jankel. I respond to everyone, even the crazy people [00:45:00] who are selling me things that they could, if they read through my bio, they would know. I don't want But yeah, LinkedIn say hello. and then the website switch on leadership.

And if you get set up for our newsletter, it's not massively regular but we take care of it and you get track of our, of our big thinking, basically our, our new thoughts.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific. And for our listeners, it doesn't get any easier. It's a point and click. Nick, it's official. This is a wrap. Thank you so much for your insights, your wisdom, and really putting things out there for us to help us move the dial and paying it forward. 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.

Nick Jankel: Thank you. 

Sharon S.: The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me. 

Lyn M.: This course is one of the best investments you will ever make because you will get an ROI of a hundred times that. Anybody who doesn't go through it will lose millions. 

Kam H.: If you don't have time for this program, you'll never have time for a successful liquidity 

Sharon S.: It was the best value of any business course I've ever taken. The money was [00:46:00] very well spent.

Lyn M.: Compared to when we first began, today I feel better prepared, but in some respects, may be less prepared, not because of the course, but because the course brought to light so many things that I thought we were on top of that we need to fix. 

Kam H.: I 100% believe there's never a great time for a business owner to allocate extra hours into his or her week or day. So it's an investment that will yield results today. I thought I will reap the benefit of this program in three to five years down the road. But as soon as I stepped forward into the program, my mind changed immediately. 

Sharon S.: There was so much value in the experience that the time I invested paid back so much for the energy that was expended. 

Lyn M.: The Deep Wealth Experience compared to other programs is the top. What we learned is very practical. Sometimes you learn stuff that it's great to learn, but you never use it. The stuff we learned from Deep Wealth [00:47:00] Experience, I believe it's going to benefit us a boatload.

Kam H.: I've done an executive MBA. I've worked for billion-dollar companies before. I've worked for smaller companies before I started my business. I've been running my business successfully now for getting close to a decade. We're on a growth trajectory. Reflecting back on the Deep Wealth, I knew less than 10% what I know now, maybe close to 1% even. 

Sharon S.: Hands down the best program in which I've ever participated. And we've done a lot of different things over the years. We've been in other mastermind groups, gone to many seminars, workshops, conferences, retreats, read books. This was so different. I haven't had an experience that's anything close to this in all the years that we've been at this.

It's five-star, A-plus.

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Deep Wealth is an accurate name for it. This program leads to deeper wealth and happier wealth, not just deeper wealth. I don't think there's a dollar [00:48:00] value that could be associated with such an experience and knowledge that could be applied today and forever. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table? 

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