Welcome to The Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love. Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second. From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism. So buckle up and let your heart guide your business journey.

Back to the heart-led business show where we blend passion with purpose. And today we have the pleasure of chatting with Randy Lyman, the maestro of emotional, intelligent, and the architect of authentic leadership. He's here to share his wisdom from his book, the Third Element, and How he transformed his path from Corporate Success to Heartfelt Connection. So get ready to unlock your potential as Randy reveals the beauty of leading with love and emotional truth. Randy, welcome to the show.

Hello, Tom. Good to be here.

I'm really excited to talk to you about. All about your business and what makes it Heart-Led, but of course, the first question I always like to ask is, what's your definition of a Heart-Led Business?

While a heart-led business means we show up, understanding that we are all spiritual beings on a human path, and anything we do together whether we want to or not, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. When we show up as a leader, that's because we're leading somebody. We can't do the job by ourselves. And the best way for corporate success is success through our teams. And the best way for success through our teams is connection with our teams. And that's where our heartfelt leader shows up and is experienced and acknowledged completely different by their team than somebody who's just there to drive them. One of the challenges with that is we have to take risks and try new things in order to find out what works and if we are in a position where we're worried about our business succeeding, then that's a big risk. If we're in a position where we're worried about getting a promotion, that's a big risk. And if nobody shows us how to do it, we're gonna make some mistakes along the way. I'm a risk taker. I made a lot of mistakes and I figured out a lot of things by making those mistakes and was able to correct and learn and really share, now share those successful approaches with other people. But it's a risk to start down a path that's undefined. The heart-led side of it's done right, really drives the business and the numbers don't drive people. People drive the numbers. And so the heartfelt connection that we have with our teams, that drives, motivates, inspires people to be their best and when they are and when they're given good guidance and direction, then the business finds more success than it would have without the heartfelt leader. And that's the irony. It's absolutely ironic that when we show up caring about people first, then the numbers really show a positive response to that. And in business, the only way we're going to be able to support our customers, support our employees, support ourselves, just to be able to find success. And so we're always worried, oh my God, I gotta have the success, I've gotta have the numbers, I've gotta have the profits and all that. But again, what I learned through my experimentation was how to interact with teams in a way that they drive the profits, they're concerned and they're interested in the success of the business. And we get to that level of the team members being interested in the success of the business, and the business finds more success. I've had several situations where leaders within my business were not approaching their team from a heartfelt point of view from a heartfelt position. And when they did that, it did of course cause challenges within the group. And I've had success working with those leaders to help them become more vulnerable, to become more genuine to show up more authentically. And I've had situations where even one of my best friends ever in the early two thousands was not able to become clear enough to show up genuine. With authenticity and vulnerability, and I had to let them go. That was one of the most difficult decisions I ever had to make in my business. But I've had others where when we sit down and we talk about, okay, what's going on? What are you thinking? And then underneath, what are you thinking? What are you feeling? What's irritating you? And can we get to whatever the underlying emotional challenge is now? In business, we're taught to look at operational challenges. We're taught to look at logistics and all those things are still very important, but when we have a relationship challenge, it comes down to somebody having an emotional wound from the past and they're not willing to address and look at that emotional wound. So first we have to be aware of it, and then we have to be willing to look at it and address it, and then we have to be willing to be vulnerable to the pain. Of addressing our emotional wounds, and I am educated as a scientist. I'm a mechanical engineer with multiple patents. I'm an Ink 500 entrepreneur. Yet my success came not from being smart and from working hard. Those helped, but from being able to work through my own emotional wounds to deal with my disappointment and my loneliness, to deal with my own anger issues, and to work through my own emotional challenges. In a space away from business. Now, once I became comfortable with that, then I could help my other business leaders that I worked with become comfortable with their own emotional challenges and work through them with exercises and processes and things that are proven that work to help us become more clear, put our personal baggage aside and show up. As caring, considerate leaders who people respond to. So it's a, it's always still about logistics and operations and accounting. Underneath that, what really drives that is when leaders can say, okay, I have my own issues. I'm gonna work through them. I'm gonna show up in a way that is more authentic and more genuine so that people I'm leading can feel me in a positive way and can respond to me in a positive way.

Yeah. And I can imagine that, that transformation that you went through. To become that heart-led leader was somewhat challenging maybe at the time. What was that like for you in terms of where you had to recognize that you needed to change and become the heart-led leader? That process like?

As I learned about the law of attraction, and some people don't believe in that, but let's just say when I show up happier, the people around me are gonna be happier and let's leave it that simple for now. And we can always go into that in depth if that's on another show or another topic. But when I learned that the world responds to who I am at a deeper level, not just how I act and what I say. But how I feel when I show up, when I realize that when I walk in the room, people can feel me before they can hear me. And sometimes even before they can see me, I said, I need to experiment with this. And I had different businesses, I had different departments. So I chose one of my smaller departments. And it was interesting, it was in, I had a differential repair service shop in Sacramento, California. And so I said, I'm gonna try with these guys. It was, I dunno, eight guys. And so I said, let's go to dinner and we're gonna talk about what you'd like to see different in the business. So first I got them to open up. First we established communications. Then when I heard what they wanted to work through, then I got to work through their challenges. And eventually I got to work through, Hey, let's figure out a way that together we can see the outcomes we want for the business, and together we can figure out how to make changes to get the outcomes for the business. So it was group problem solving. That sounds really simple, but to me it was very scary. Because what happens if they come up with a solution that sucks? What happens if I have to disagree with them? What happens if I have to say no, we can't do what you guys wanna do, guys. Now I've created more problems than I had before I started. I didn't really have any problems, but I wanted an improvement, so I took that risk and. I learned some things along the way. I learned that before people can really become part of planning and problem solving, we have to teach them how to plan and how to problem solve. And I've broken that down into four steps. So that becomes easy discovery, assessment, prioritization, and execution. So once I taught them that, then our communications changed. I had to teach them to disagree with each other openly in a way that was civil, in a way that was caring and compassion. So we almost did our own mediations in a way. If somebody disagreed, we knew how to communicate that. And then most importantly, I had to learn how to listen without being ready to respond. I had to learn to put my thought process aside. I had to be open to whatever they had to say and I had to do, I had to learn the pregnant pause, give them a lot of time to respond if they want to and if they don't. Ask them more questions. So all this was, can sound really simple. Oh yeah, I could do this. But when I had to put it into practice and there was the chance that things could go sideways and everything can turn upside down, that was risky. But what I learned was, again, I learned the listening. I learned to teach people how to problem solve, and I learned that people want to show up and be acknowledged for who they are. They want to feel like they're contributing to the cause and they wanna feel like they belong to the group. And when I was able to actually quantify that, the acknowledgement, contribution and the belonging, then I was able to interact differently. And so these are real simple things that I integrated all together by making a lot of mistakes. And I was fortunate. I had, so for example, Robert. Robert was really difficult to deal with. You disagreed with everything. And so I asked at this first dinner, I said, Robert you have any ideas on what you could do? And he says I think we should be open six days a week instead of five days a week. And he said we can't for these reasons, but thank you for sharing that. He said, okay. That's the first time Robert ever said okay to anything. He always wanted to argue. I said hang on. What's going on? You just said, okay. He says, you listen to what I have to say, and you heard me, and that was an epiphany to me. This person who was used to arguing about everything was suddenly okay with me disagreeing. That was because I listened and that his response, his clear response of because you listened to me, helped me realize that I hadn't been listening. It helped me realize that we could disagree with each other if we spent the time to actually pay attention to what the other person was saying. And that was one of the that was one of the times when I was divinely guided to learn something new and if we set out on a path of I'm gonna learn how to do this, and I'm gonna find success, and I'm determined to find success, then the entire universe gets behind us and helps us find success if we're doing it from a place of caring and what's good for the entire group.

Yeah. So how long did that process take? Surely it wasn't just one dinner and then solution. So like, how long, how many dinners did it actually take to, get everybody to open up and really share?

Two or three dinners set the tone, and then when they knew that I was listening to them because I responded to what they had to share with me, I didn't just let it go in one ear and out the other and then do something different. My actions had to follow my words, and when they did, then they built trust in me. And then our meetings at work we're different. Our morning meeting was different. If we had a challenge and we had to discuss it individually or as a group, they went different. So I set the tone through the offsite dinner meetings, and then I built the trust by following through on what I said I would do. And then as my team started to trust me more and realized I valued them than they interacted differently. And then that trust in me became trust in them because also, if I don't have trust in my team, they can't have trust in me. So it took months, it took probably three months before it really took hold. I had to be steady, I had to be consistent. And within a year. Huge differences in how smooth things ran and our profitability increased. So it, it's not easy and it's a big investment of time, but here's the thing that people don't realize upfront. That investment of time gave me free time to attend to other things rather than having to be there and babysit the business and babysit the team. And I know I didn't have to babysit'em, but I'm using extreme terms and that investment and time gave me my time back, gave me my peace of mind and allowed them. To learn how to lead themselves.

Yeah. Oh wow. That's, that's fascinating case study. And what were some of the results that actually happened? Did you actually, change the time to six days a week versus five days a week, or?

No, I still disagreed with Robert, but he understood why. And for me, it's really important in the business that I was in where I had mechanics in the differential repair shop who had to be able to follow a job through from beginning to completion. They had to be there on the day the customer picked up their vehicle. And I like to give people two days off. To do what they wanna do. I don't even bother my my executive assistant on the weekends, unless I absolutely have to when I'm traveling because I think people need some time to recoup and recover. Then they can be extremely focused on what they need to be doing at work. Now, it's a different work environment for so many today because we're virtual, but we still need time to to recover and to have our own enjoy the things that we wanna enjoy in life that are outside of work.

Yeah. Yeah. So you did this experiment with this one department. Then did you take that to the rest of the companies that you worked with, or, how did you roll this out after?

Then I worked at, I rolled it out into my sales group and as we know, sales is is the face of the business. So that's one place I definitely wanted to know that I knew what I was doing and I had a idea how to find success before I took this to my sales group. So I took it to one of my sales groups and we found good success. And from there I rolled it out simultaneously to several groups. Once I got through my second my second team and I had success with that team, then I rolled it out to a, pretty much the entire company and it changed the tone. And the tone of a company is not easy to sense when we're in our heads and we're thinking, and we're acting and we're planning and doing all those things. But over time, what it came down to for me was I could walk into a room and I, at times found people problem solving together. Imagine that. I found that people just seemed happier and that's something we can measure. And I found that I was more comfortable on Sunday nights. On Sunday nights, I would start to worry about what I have to do Monday to keep the business on track. And my Sunday nights became more calm and I was anticipating going to work rather than worrying about going to work. And. During that time, the businesses all were growing and I was continuing to have more and more success. But I saw the key numbers, the dollars pro gross profit per call increase. I saw the sales commission's calculations. I saw that people were selling more. I saw the errors in inventory counts go down, and those are the things that really were the, those were the monetary rewards. And at the same time, I had the personal rewards of seeing people. Realize how capable they were and take ownership of their positions at work. And then they just seem to be brighter and they seem to be in a position where they're able to help the people around them more. And all those things had a positive effect on my emotional state, their emotional state, and the success of the business.

Yeah. So how would you handle then and you work with other companies now, is that that's right.

Yes I do.

So how do you deal with an executive that is not getting it like and trying to bring them around if you can.

Two things that really matter. Two, two words. I go back to curiosity and deeper. So they have to be curious about what else is possible, and they have to be curious and interested in learning new things. If they're not, it's not gonna work. And then second, if they're interested in a deeper point of view. First about themselves, how can I improve? And then how can I look at my team dynamics? How can I look at my business from a different perspective and go to a deeper root cause of what's really bringing us success or keeping us from success? And again, I'm a scientist. I'm still action first and planning. But I understand the importance of the emotional aspect of the human experience. So I always. Look at my own problems of what do I need to feel? What do I need to heal from the past, and when I can help people understand. Hey, you have some frustration here, and let's not push all this out on the operations. Yes, we may have to set boundaries. We may have to change our operational approach, but let's look at you, the leader, and how are you feeling and why are you feeling this way, and can you find a way to work through this inner turmoil in a way that you show up more clear and caring and compassionate so that people can first feel you. Then once they feel you, they can hear you. Because if they feel tension from us. They feel tension when we show up. They're guarded, they're not listening to our great ideas and our plan. They're not getting on board with what we wanna accomplish. They're protecting themselves. And that's a natural human response. And if I walk into a room anywhere, whether it's in, in a cashier at Home Depot, or whether I walk into a team meeting, if somebody is tense, I feel that. And then I'm trying to navigate that and it gets in the way of progress. So the personal approach to what am I feeling from the past that I can work through curiosity and an openness to look at that from a deeper perspective. That's what leaders need. And when leaders have that, they're easy to work with the right approach. But if they don't have that, there's no way I'm ever going to get them to open up to showing up vulnerable and genuine and authentic. Now, if they are open to a different approach. Then I have systems and processes. Some of'em I outline in my book The Third Element in chapter seven, there's 14 different processes for working through our emotional challenges. Some of'em are as simple as journaling that's safe for a left brain leader right down the list of the problem. So we step through it. We work with lists, we work we some visualizations. We work through simple EFT tapping and breathing exercises that are tangible and that are acceptable for a person who is. Really starting out from an intellectual perspective to open them up to the perspective of, hey, there could be some underlying emotional issues that are going to help. And it doesn't mean we're gonna make decisions based on emotions, doesn't mean we're gonna let emotional people control us, or people who are being emotional control us. It means we're going to be aware of the emotional component and we're gonna balance on a three-legged stool of thoughts and information of our actions. And the emotional component, and when we have balance on that three-legged stool, it all comes together better for the business.

Yeah, that's so much to unpack there. I'm really curious too, though, have you worked with leaders that are too far on the other side? So we have the leaders that are not emotionally connected and then you need to work with them to become connected. But what about the leaders that are way emotionally connected and are really looking at the business. and the numbers appropriately in the business that might be faltering, but they have a great heart. Like how. How, or have you worked with people like that? I have ano, and when people are sympathetic rather than empathetic, they're allowing other people's emotions. They're internalizing those. Yeah.

And they're symp, they're sympathizing, and they're in resonance with them without separating out their own emotional wounding or their own emotional response or their attachment style or lots of different ways of looking at the psychology of it. But they're not separating out and saying, this is outside of me and this is what I get to work on. And once they work through their own wounds that are bring, that are coming up. And they say, oh, wow. I have something I need to feel and I can work through. Then they get to a place where their thoughts can be more involved. Their thinking, logical mind can be more involved and they can take the action they need to if they've been in a place where they're paralyzed. But. People who are emotionally centered, and some of us, some people are, I'm not any better than anybody else. I'm just different. But if somebody's emotionally centered, they tend to go to their emotions first, and sometimes they get stuck there. But when we can help them get to a deeper feeling and understanding of their emotional experience, they can work through it because emotions are bigger than time and space. That energy. Doesn't change until we address it. People say time heals all wounds. No time doesn't fix it at all. Diving in and feeling the pain or feeling the joy that we were told not to feel when we were children and feeling whatever it is that we're avoiding feeling when we do that. And we can do it in a personal space. We don't have to do it at work, but we can do that and we can work through that emotional pain, that energy, that energetic frequency that's getting in the way of our clarity that's released and gone. But again, it's bigger than time and space. And the only time, the only way we can. Release that emotional and not gonna just call it trauma. It can be something really simple. Maybe in the eighth grade, I'm sitting next to a girl I got a crush on and somebody makes fun of me. Their teacher says, don't speak. That's really simple Now, as an adult, right? But as an eighth grader next to sitting next to my crush, that's emotionally devastating. And if I didn't feel that completely, that energy stored in my energy field, in my being, so it's like gasoline. Gasoline. I can store gasoline in a metal can for 10 or 20 years. When I pour it out, it still burns, but once I burn it, it only has to be burned once. So our emotional trauma, when we feel it completely one time, it gets rid of most of it. Maybe there it's like peeling an onion and there's more layers to get through. But every time we release that, that emotional trauma, good, bad, or otherwise, now that energy is not in our field and we can show up. More clearly in our intellect and more clearly in the actions that we take. So emotional people who are on the surface of their emotions without diving down into the deeper part. That's scary for everybody. It was scary for me to start opening Pandora's box of emotions, but when I did. And I worked through some of that pain. Then it became easier and eventually it got to a place where I'm like, oh yeah, I gotta dive in and feel this, and my world will become more clear and my work will become easier and my job will become easier. And that's a process and that's a path. But emotional people who tend to act emotional first can learn to be comfortable with their emotions in the way they let that energy out of the way, and then they contend to the numbers, then they contend to the planning. Then they can take the action they need to take.

Yeah, that's probably one of the best explanations of stored energy trauma that I've heard in a long time. So thank you for that very much, that it totally makes sense that If you don't feel the feels all the way through, then. That's gonna be stuck in somewhere in your body.

If I can add one thing to that which is the human mind, the thinking mind is never in the present moment. Yes, we can observe in the moment, but the thinking mind, our thoughts are never in the present moment. Our body is only in the present moment. And here's the real important part, our emotions, no, no time at all. They can only come through and be experienced through our bodily sensations in the present moment. So if I'm in my mind, disconnected from my body, I can't clear out my emotional trauma, I have to be in a place where I'm breathing. I'm doing a EFT, tapping. I'm exercising, working out, punching a punching bag. I'm feeling my physical experience. Then I can feel those old emotional wounds and trauma and release them. But I can never work through emotional challenges with my thinking mind.

Yeah. It's so interesting too that you can dream and then wake up and you have this whole physiological effect that, you know, if you're dreaming that you're running or is a nightmare and your heart's racing and you're exhausting and you're breathing heavy, and it's ah, wait a second. I was just sleeping. It was all in the head, and the head was controlling the body. And if, like what you're saying, if you're disconnected from the thought and the body, you can't release that energy.

We have a story when we have any situation where we're going to move towards it, away from it, our emotions, and we make a story. This is great. Good emotions go towards it. That emotional guidance is valid in that moment. Once the moment passes, it's not valid. Okay? Something happens that's scary. I create a story in my head. My body responds with hormones and adrenaline and emotions. And that guidance of emotion is valid in the moment, but once the moment passes, if I didn't feel that emotion completely, it stores in my being and it gets in the way of me being clear. So that emotional energy is a valid part of the human experience. Whatever emotion we feel in the moment is valid in the moment, but if we don't feel it and release it, it lingers on and it's no longer valid. And it influences us in ways that are just not valid and appropriate.

Yeah. Oh boy. A lot of work to be done, for sure. Tell us how can people learn more about what you do and how you're able to help organizations?

Most of what I do is out there in the world right now is on a personal level and helping organizations. What I have is I have written procedures and processes and such that can be implemented with teams. I have procedures and workbooks and worksheets and stuff. I work through with people on personal leadership coaching. So a lot of what I do in leadership coaching is not out in the world right now, but I implemented this in my business over a period of 25 years before I sold my business 10 years ago. And again, they can't find that directly, but they can book a call with me, they can DM me, they can email me, and we can have a exploratory call to talk about if what has worked for me, will work for them and their business, but other than that, randylyman.com, my website is a great way to see what I do on a more public personal level. And if they say, yeah, that makes sense, then I'd be glad to engage on a exploratory call.

Awesome. That's great. We'll link your website on the the show notes so people are easily can get to that as well. Randy, this is a fascinating conversation and just the emotional piece of it and how to manage that while it's still being a heart-led business owner is I think it was very valuable for our audience to hear today. So thank you for sharing that.

You're welcome. Thank you for having me on. And you, I loved your questions and this was a fun experience for me.

Awesome. And thank you listeners for tuning into the heart-led business show today. I certainly appreciate you and I know Randy appreciates you tuning in as well and make sure that you're checking out everything that Randy's doing. We're gonna provide all of that down in the show notes, so make sure you're clicking away down there. And you might actually see in the show notes this little thing called review now, if you could do me a big favor and give the show a rating and a review, I would really appreciate it because it does help other people find the heart-led business show and, get more advice on being more heart-led and still be thriving in the business. So until next time, lead with your heart.

You've been listening to The Heart-Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs. Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.