Ted Santos Reveals How Chaos Fuels Breakthrough Growth in Leadership - 1

Welcome to another episode of the Transforming Lives panel podcast, where we delve into groundbreaking ideas and strategies that challenge conventional thinking. Today, we are thrilled to introduce Ted Santos, a leadership disruptor and CEO whisperer known for his unconventional approach to business growth. Unlike traditional strategists, Ted teaches leaders to create problems as a means to achieve breakthrough growth, emphasizing the importance of disruption in developing new neural pathways and possibilities. In this episode, Ted shares insights from his transformative work with executives, revealing how he helps them navigate uncertainty and rethink their strategies. He also discusses his book, "Here's Why You Can't Find Love," which explores the impact of broken relationships on business success. Join us as we explore Ted's unique perspective on leadership, problem creation, and the power of disruption in both business and personal relationships. Get ready to flip your leadership playbook upside down and embrace a new way of thinking.

Sharmin Prince
Welcome to another episode of the Transforming Lives panel podcast. I'm Sharmin Prince, one of your hosts.

Mitzy Dadoun
And I'm Mitzy Dadoun, your other host.

Sharmin Prince
And before I introduce you to our guests, just join me in a brief breathing exercise so that we can be centered and grounded. Join me in taking a deep breath in, And out. In. And out.

Take a deep breath in. And on the exhale, let go of everything that did not serve you today. Take another deep breath in. And hold that breath so that you can be present with yourself.

And exhale all the distractions. And breathe normally. Thank you for joining us for that brief breathing exercise. Now today, I am excited to introduce you to Ted Santos, a leadership disruptor, CEO whisperer, and the mastermind behind the disruptive leadership model.

While most strategists teach leaders to solve problems, Ted trains them to create problems. Yes, you heard that correct. Because breakthrough growth demands breaking the rules. From turning struggling companies into market leaders, to doubting productivity in months, Ted's unconventional strategies help businesses scale the impossible without breaking themselves.

But his insight don't stop in the boardroom. His groundbreaking book, Here's Why You Can't Find Love. exposes how broken relationships drain U.S. businesses of 300 billion a year and gives leaders the tools to fix the hidden leaks sabotaging their success. If you're ready to think bigger, act bolder, and dominate your industry, this conversation will flip your leadership playbook upside down.

Ted Santos, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3
Well, quite an introduction. Thank you for having me here. I'm looking forward to this. Sounds like I have quite a reputation to live up to.

I don't know if you may have overstated me, but thank you for that. That was pretty powerful. Thank you.

Sharmin Prince
You are so welcome. Now, Ted, you teach leaders to create problems instead of solving them. Why is chaos necessary for breakthrough growth?

Speaker 3
So what I say to lots of CEOs is if you're not intentionally creating problems, you should be fired or retrained immediately. And I can give lots of examples in our business world and even government. So there are lots of great reasons. There's something called neuroplasticity, which changes and alters your perspectives of the world.

So everyone has in our brains like pathways, roadways of neural pathways, they call them, and that carries all your knowledge, experience, and information. And when you learn something new, you try to make sense of it based on what you already have. And sometimes it's difficult to make sense of it because you don't have anything in your brain. And a great example would be in the 1920s, a guy by the name of Robert Goddard said, one day we'll send man to the moon.

And the New York Times responded with an article and said, this guy's an idiot. He doesn't have the intelligence of elementary school. And in 1969, they had to write another article to apologize. That's a great example of someone talks about a possibility that sounds impossible to our current neural pathways as humanity, as a civilization.

And neuroplasticity means you can grow new neural pathways that give you new pathways. So from the 1920s to the 1960s, society had to grow new neural pathways to understand what Goddard was talking about in the 1920s. And this happens over and over. It's happening even now.

You mentioned my book about relationships. It surely happens there, and it happens in business. There are these possibilities that seem impossible or illogical, and history's full of it. Copernicus said, the world, the Earth, is not the center of the universe.

Well, he paid a heavy price for saying that, because Europe could not see that possibility. And even though he gave them mathematical equations and coordinates that just didn't make sense. So what disruption does, it helps grow those new neural pathways. It disrupts the patterns that you already have.

It disrupts the way you already see the world. And it helps to create new possibilities. So when I work with corporations, with executives, I don't come in and say, Let's just jump to your breakthrough initiative because a lot of times they may have it in the back of their mind except they think it's not the right time, the economy is not right, I don't have the financing, my people are not ready, and that's what exists in their current neural pathways.

So to disrupt that and have them grow new neural pathways allows them to see possibilities for that initiative that keeps them up at night. They've always wanted to do it. And then sometimes the breakthrough is knowing what the breakthrough is, because people can be so mired in everyday business that they don't have an opportunity to think outside of business as usual, everyday work.

Sharmin Prince
Thank you for that. How difficult it is to help a leader reframe their thinking from the norm to the new norm.

Speaker 3
Oh, you're asking me how difficult is it to do that

Sharmin Prince
when

Speaker 3
you're working with people who are already Ivy League educated and, you know, smart people, right? Sometimes high IQs and they know a lot already. The way I work with people is only existing conversations. So having conversations

Sharmin Prince
that

Speaker 3
disrupt what you already know and have you rethink. One of the challenges, and when I say this to people up front, is there's a big distinction between thinking and having thoughts. People think it's a matter of semantics. So having thoughts You could say we go back to your neural pathways.

That's what's already there. Having thoughts, it's what you already know, you've read it, you've heard it, you've encountered it, you've engaged it in some way, and you know about it. Even if, let's say, you do not speak Mandarin, but you know it exists, and you can go somewhere and learn Mandarin if you wanted to. So those are all thoughts that you can have about the world.

You don't speak Mandarin, yet you can have thoughts and conversations about Mandarin. You know it's spoken in China. But to think, think that which you have never thought, that often, that means you're going into uncertainty. And our education system is not really good at teaching people on how to navigate uncertainty.

We get, I'll ask you a question. When you have baby birds in a nest and the parents come back to the nest, what do the baby birds do?

Mitzy Dadoun
Chirp excitedly to see mom and dad and ask for food.

Speaker 3
And how do they ask for food?

Mitzy Dadoun
They chirp, they cry.

Speaker 3
Like don't they like open

Mitzy Dadoun
their

Speaker 3
mouth? So that's, we're educated like that. Like, give me the answer. Just give me the answer and I can be certain and everything is fine.

That's the way we run businesses. It's the way we run our lives. And we are educated to be experts at something. But when we come to uncertainty, it can be uncomfortable, so we want to find the answer, because it's almost like there's something wrong.

I'm a really smart woman, I'm a really smart guy, and I don't have the answer. Well, if I don't have it, there has to be someone out there to give it to me. Give me the answer, just like the baby bird, and I'll move forward. But when you're going into these new possibilities, like the Wright brothers creating flight, there was no one to give them an answer.

So there's a gap. There's where you are, right? It's not working, and there's where you'd like to be. And how do you bridge that gap when there's no blueprint for it?

And oftentimes, we don't have the capacity for dealing with that kind of uncertainty. It can be chaotic, and it's usually not worth it. In organizations, most breakthrough initiatives fail because of that. And you can imagine some people may think, well, Maybe I'm going to be obsolete if I don't have the answers here because we have a society built on certainty

Sharmin Prince
and having answers.

Speaker 3
But breakthroughs are often found in this domain of things you didn't know you didn't know. So how do you how do you operate in a domain of you don't know, you don't know, you didn't even know you didn't know it.

Mitzy Dadoun
So are there exercises or like how do you. Train your brain to be able to think versus having thoughts about something? How do you work with somebody to build that skill set or experience?

Speaker 3
So there are a couple of things. One is part of what derails us are the things that we already know. I think I said what we know hides what we don't know. And part of the things that we don't know we don't know.

I'll give you an example. I had a client, early 60s, smart guy, CPA by his trade. He worked for one of the largest CPA firms and then decided to do a career change. And he went into the mortgage industry.

And in the beginning, he's doing okay. And then he had hit a slump, and there was kind of no escape from the slump. So when he hired me, the end result was this. In six months, the first three months, he doubled his productivity.

In the next three months, he doubled that. So when he met me, he was doing two. In three months, he was doing four. And in six months, he was doing eight.

This was a guy who knew how to break the ice with people. He was a master icebreaker. You meet him, like no one could not like this guy. And he was able to get investors to the table, people he called heavy hitters.

And he knew how to break the ice. Everyone laughed, they're ready to do business. And he'd talk a little business, then he'd start making another joke and another joke and another joke. Everyone wanted to have a beer with him, but no one wanted to do a deal with him.

So these guys would leave the table not doing a deal. What he and I discovered is that when he was 13, he was in a car with guys older. These guys were 16, 17, 18. And one of the guys looked at him and said, hey, what's this guy doing here with us?

Like he's little, he's young. And he made a joke. Everyone laughed. And they put their arm around him and said, oh, you're cool.

So he was allowed to hang. So when he failed to be, in his mind, he failed to be good enough, he failed to belong to that group of guys, the way he survived and was successful was to make a joke. So here he is in his early 60s, and that way of being is still running his life, except he doesn't know it. He doesn't know that when you put him in a room with people and he's not sure he belongs, the way he survives is to be the icebreaker, to make jokes.

So that was running his life, and that's an example of one of those things people don't know they don't know. So that's part of it. Another part, is to actually walk people through conversations where you can't just come up with an answer the way you always do. You actually have to think through it.

So there are conversations that I will have with people. And so there are lots of conventional ways that we tell people to deal with themselves. You

Sharmin Prince
have an

Speaker 3
ego. This was a subconscious. There are all these things that we tell people. And I say, I assert There's no such thing as an ego.

If you are 100% responsible for what you think, there's no ego, there's no man in your head making you do these things. So it's being responsible, like the guy who was selling mortgages is now being responsible when he gets at the table and he wants to make a joke. He can do what it's great as an icebreaker, but that's not his strategy. So he and I also worked on selling skills and knowing what questions to ask so that he can understand their needs and then be able to close.

And that's how he was able to double his productivity.

Sharmin Prince
Wow, I love that example, Ted. How were you able to identify the root problem of. Or connect the root problem of him being 13 in a car of 16 years old, and that was the. The catalyst of his failure.

Speaker 3
So let me how do I want to answer that, because you're asking me now about my secret sauce?

Sharmin Prince
Yeah.

Speaker 3
You're asking me to give away my trade secret. There are a series of questions that I ask people. And so let's see how I can say it without giving it all away. People have complaints.

There are recurring complaints. There are patterns that people have in their life. There was another woman who one day said, Ted, why do I always have to be right? And we had a conversation about an incident that happened when she was five and she gave the wrong answer.

And now here she is fighting like an alley cat to make sure she's never wrong. But it was all because of that one incident. And I'm glad you said getting to the source, because see, that's why I don't say to people, oh, that's just your subconscious or that's your ego. I want to get to the source of it, because then you can choose.

The guy who's making jokes, Well, this is the guy you've always been since 13. You can't say, I've always been this way. We can pinpoint to the day that it's happened, right? And for people, it's so clear that they can sometimes tell you what they were wearing.

The sun was out. It was raining. They name all the people there. They can be so detailed because it was that impactful.

So you have this way of being who you've always been since 13, and then when you find yourself in a situation where you're not sure if you belong, you have a choice. Do I do what I've always done since 13, or do I commit to something else that I've created? So it's now you're standing for something as opposed to being at the effect of something that happened in the past.

Sharmin Prince
I love that you didn't give away your secret sauce, but you help us to understand that after identifying the root with your clients, you also give them an alternative and you heighten their awareness of the root and the patterns. So the perfect example that you just presented is that after bringing me to that awareness and giving me an alternative, When I am ready to resort to my old behavior or the old pattern, I have the alternative. So at that time, because of my awareness, I can make a choice. Beautiful.

Thank you.

Speaker 3
Yes. Do you mind if I peel back another layer on that, on what you

Sharmin Prince
said? Please, please.

Speaker 3
So my work is like this. If I was walking down the beach with you two ladies, and we have to get further down the beach, and we come to a fence, and the fence says, for the next 100 meters, this is a minefield. And we need to get to the other side of that. What do you ladies want to do?

Oh,

Sharmin Prince
that's a question. I want to continue.

Speaker 3
And you're going to walk through the minefield?

Sharmin Prince
Yeah.

Speaker 3
And you know what happens when you step on a mine?

Sharmin Prince
Yeah.

Speaker 3
So you're gone. So

Mitzy Dadoun
I'm a bit more on the cautious side. I want to figure out if there is a way I could find out where the landmines are so I know where not to step so that I can get across without killing myself or see if there's another way to get to the other side. Because the minefield can't go on forever.

Speaker 3
But there's no other way. That's it. We have no other way to get, there's no way around it. There's no backdoor to the right or left.

I mean, you could always get a helicopter and avoid it, right? So, but we don't have a helicopter.

Mitzy Dadoun
I can phone for one.

Speaker 3
So, so once we come to that sign, are we now aware that this is a minefield?

Mitzy Dadoun
Yes.

Speaker 3
Okay, and how much will awareness help us?

Mitzy Dadoun
Well, it might have saved our life, because if we had stepped in the minefield without knowing it was there, we would have just stepped on it and blown up.

Speaker 3
Right, right. But how does it help us get to the other side?

Sharmin Prince
It helps us to create a plan, a strategy.

Speaker 3
What's the plan to get there? We have to get to the other side. And it's a minefield. It's deadly.

Sharmin Prince
Yeah. But in minefields, there's always a pattern. So it's it's it's about taking a risk. We have to get to the other side.

So we will strategize. I'd

Mitzy Dadoun
rather maybe some rocks and throw them and see if it exploded. And then if it didn't explode that spot, walk to that spot and then figure out a way to test the path before I actually went there.

Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah. And you'd have to have some pretty big rocks to make it go, you know, explode, right? So that's a lot of

Mitzy Dadoun
work. How would you do it? Since we haven't been able to figure it out yet, how would we do this?

Speaker 3
I mean, do you have to think about this or are you just having thoughts? I'm asking a question.

Sharmin Prince
We're not

Speaker 3
done, but we're having a conversation right now. Did you have to think about that or are you just having thoughts?

Sharmin Prince
I have to think about that. I

Mitzy Dadoun
think both because we're definitely having thoughts from experiences that we had. or what we've heard about and what we know about. We're trying to think of new things out of the box, so I think we're doing both.

Speaker 3
Okay. All right. Right. I assume neither of you walked across a minefield, but otherwise you would have had a different answer.

So, so, and I do know someone who drove a Humvee over a mine and it broke his back. So he told his crew to get out. He knew he had hit one and he told them, and that was in a Humvee. So he survived.

But anyway, so if I tell you that I have thousands of hours in training, to have distinctions because when you train, you actually can distinguish, you can look at the land and there's a pattern for where the mines are. So not only can I distinguish where the mines are, I can carefully dig them up, dismantle them, and I'm going to ask you to follow my footsteps. Are you going to follow me?

Mitzy Dadoun
Yep, you know what you're doing, you say you're educated and I'll let you go first.

Speaker 3
Yeah. And I'll say, look, I can see three minds right there and I'm going to go, I'm going to go directly to them, dig them up and say, stay in my footsteps. And we're going to make it to the other side because I have distinctions from minds in the minefield.

Mitzy Dadoun
Yeah.

Speaker 3
That's the work that I do. So I'm making a distinction right now. So being aware that it's a mind, you know, we just went through the exercise. It doesn't get us to the other side.

We still have to create strategies and throw rocks and we call helicopters. We still have to do all that. But because I have distinctions from minds in the minefield, I can get us to the other side. So when I work with people, that gentleman who was 13 and made a joke, he now has a distinction for what occurred and that has him React so it's almost like something happens it triggers poof and now he's making joke after joke after joke So that's like the

mind in his mind That he doesn't have any control. He has nothing to do with it. It runs his life. So being aware of And when I was 13, I was in a car and okay, but now he has it as a distinction and we reverse engineered so he can unlearn that and then have a choice.

So do I want to keep being that guy? No, we're not making it wrong because it's a, You know, it's a great way to be when you meet people and especially in business, people you don't know. And he's a great icebreaker. So he still has that as kind of a superpower, but he's not stuck with it.

So with the distinction for that mine, that incident that occurred at 13 was like a mine in his own mind. And when certain things happen, it triggers and he gets stuck there. He couldn't get to the other side of why he was initially sitting at the table with those investors. So I'm making a huge distinction between awareness and distinctions.

And that's what my work is being, is working with people so they can start to distinguish those minds that are in their mind that trigger them and derail whatever their commitments are. And this crosses over into intimate relationship. It's in business. It doesn't matter.

They're both involving people.

Mitzy Dadoun
Thank you so much for joining us today, Ted.

Speaker 3
Oh, no, it's been my pleasure. And you ladies asked some really good questions. I don't think I've ever had anyone dig as deep. I've never had to say I won't give away my secret sauce.

So no one's dug that deep with me. So thank you for inviting me. And I would look forward to coming back.

Sharmin Prince
Excellent.