Episode 162: Unlocking the Power of Transformation with Adele Kamel Whitley (Part 1)

Good day, and welcome to the Budding Entrepreneur podcast. I'm your host, Randy Bridges. In each episode, I cover my experiences, both good and bad, of being a business builder, as well as my journey through the crazy world of entrepreneurship to reach my goal of earning $10 million a year.

All right, all right, we are on episode 162 of the podcast. Today is Friday, August 23rd, 2024. In our agenda for today on this episode, we're going to do a quote from Dave Kekich.

And this is a set of 100 sayings that he put together over the course of his lifetime about business and how to handle it. And then moving into our business strategies, we're going to do the first of a two-part interview I did with Adele Kamel Whitley. Now, she is a life transformational coach, a speaker, and a moderator.

And she calls herself Lebanese citizen of the world. She's also a foodie, which is kind of a good thing. I love, personally, having new and unique types of food.

Moving in on our quote, this is number 33. It's a portion of the quote, but it said, Maintain a long-term outlook in all endeavors. Live like you don't have much time left, but plan as if you'll live for centuries.

If you live like you don't have much time left, you're going to be in a lot better shape. You're going to do things that you wanted to do and you would really want to do. But then if you plan as if you'll live for centuries, you'll be able to plan out your life appropriately.

Moving into our business strategies, we're going to take a look on our case study as an interview this week with Adele Kamel Whitley. Now, she's in Sweden, and I know her through one of my programs that I'm studying. She lists herself as a life transformation coach, a speaker, and moderator.

She's also a Mindvalley life coach. This is something as transformation being that transformational leadership is our topic. We did this interview this morning and kind of put all the pieces together, and it was a great conversation.

And like I said, I'm breaking it up into two pieces because I want these to each be good for you that you don't have to worry about taking 45 minutes out just to listen to a podcast. We're trying to keep everything under 30 minutes. And so today is going to be the first part of this.

And I really enjoy the fact that Adele spent time talking with me today about her background and some of the things. We're going to kind of talk about that, about her job as a transformational coach. And then she's working with business leaders all the time.

So we want to be able to kind of blend these two together. Today will be an interesting part. I think it's a great introduction to her and her perspective on things.

So let's dig into that right now. Well, let's jump right into this here. I don't want to make it too difficult.

Why don't we start with your background, who you are, what got you here, some of the things that are happening for you. Yeah, so my background is I come from an entrepreneurial family, born in Lebanon. And we moved to Sweden.

And for some reason, my parents had the idea of how important an education is. So I did not want to, but I kind of had to go that conventional road of getting an education. So I have an MBA in finance and realized pretty early on after six months in a bank that that's not my path forward.

I was already very connected to myself to listen to myself and realize what I want. But I must say, during the journey, I have been taking on influences from the external world. So my journey has been like an on and off authentic on and off going back and conforming on and off going back to myself.

But I think and I don't think I actually know that that was the way it needed to be for me to be able to sit here today and work with the people I am. Yeah, I'm working with because I've gone through it myself. Yeah, that's that's important for any coach, you know, for any, any teacher has to go back and figure out how did I learn that? Okay, well, that's the best way to go back at it, you know, and then teach people is well, how did I learn and how did I go through it? And it becomes a result, it, it resonates much easier.

So exactly. Yes. So what got you into this field? This is this is a kind of a it's not a it's not a common field that a lot of people go into with the NLP and all the different parts of that.

So how did you kind of get into that? Yeah. So I got into personal development very early on. And because I've always felt like the odd person in the room growing up.

When I got into personal development and got my first mentor. That's also when I got introduced to growth mindsets and neuroplasticity, which was for me, my savior, because I realized then that everything I've been told, I can change from this moment on. I realized that everything I felt from inside could be, you know, could be expressed outwards.

I realized that I wasn't crazy. I was me and I had to fully learn to fully embrace myself and who I am. And with that, I started learning leadership pretty early on as well and started with leading sales teams, first of all, leading myself, but with that leading sales teams and going up the rank in sales organizations.

And I realized pretty early on when I worked with sales teams that I wonder why there were so many people that have difficulties with asking for the order. And that's when I got interested in NLP and psychology and how the mind works and how people works and motivations. And I got it down to back then, three things, what I realized and how my company also started my company by herself.

I realized there were three things that made people not ask for the order or ask for the order. It was three factors. Number one, if they believe in themselves.

Number two, if they believe in the product and the service. And number three, if they believe in the company and where the company is going. And when I realized those three, those three things, I also realized that that's how we can start working inwards with the person to believe in themselves, because you cannot sell anything to anyone before you buy yourself.

And with that journey, I also started to see the power in influence in the positive way, how I could influence people to look inwards and change themselves rather than try to change everything around them. And going forward, I had to learn to lead myself. I worked with mentors.

I worked with coach. I worked as a manager in different organizations. I also had my own businesses.

But deep down, I always knew that I was going to come to a point where I was going to coach one-on-one where I'm doing today. I did talk myself out of it at an earlier point of my life. So I was coaching already in mid-twenties, coaching and speaking.

But I did talk myself out of it. And this was also the inner talk and the talk from external influences. But again, I think that had to be my journey for me to sit here today.

So when I realized that I wasn't too young anymore to help people, when I realized that now I'm old enough to do that, I just said to myself, now it's time for you to go out and do what you're meant to do in this world, which is help people reconnect with themselves and go out and be the best potential self they can be. Yeah. Yeah, I know for me, I was going to be a teacher.

And so I had my psychology background there. And I wanted to do that for a long time. And then all of a sudden I realized that the number of jobs that were available to me was very limiting and very limited.

And I went, there's got to be something different for me. And so years later, I picked it back up and said, okay, let's go down the coaching and consulting path and drive it that way. So how do you describe a transformational coach when you're talking with people for the first time and they're wondering what it is and what you do? How would you describe that? So for me, transformational means that you have everything that you need within you to do exactly what you want.

And you realize that. So we have the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. If you can realize that, if you can change the way you're thinking, if you can change your perspective, if you can realize that you are under no obligation to be the person you are right now or 10 minutes ago or yesterday, in 10 minutes or tomorrow or in one year, then you're always on this constant journey of transforming, of elevating, of growing.

And with that power comes the ability or the knowledge or the security that you can do and be whatever you want to do. If we transform that into leadership in yourself, like first, you of course have to lead yourself, which is getting self-aware, getting to know who you are, what your values are, what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are. But once you do that and understand how you can motivate yourself, now you can also go out and do that with your team if you're in an organization or if you're leading a business.

So for me, that's transformational. It's realizing that it's not transactional. It's not you give me that, I give you this.

It's motivational. It's inspiring. It's leading yourself first and then go out and lead others.

Right. And value is always an important thing for people coming in to any kind of a mindset change, a mind-fix change. And the value that you bring as a coach, what's the top one or two things that you bring that pretty much everybody kind of sees? I saw a lot of good stuff on your website.

A lot of really nice, those were good. Yeah. Yeah.

So my top values, I think if you really think about many people, like most people I work with, they all come down to similar values. Maybe they name it in different things. But one of my top ones is freedom.

Another one is integrity, growth, love, connection. I think many people have connection as well. Health.

But at some point it's also what I do want to emphasize on is that's not a list of values. Because this is what many people get wrong. They think that they know their values because they have a list of values that they at some point went to a workshop and worked through.

Because those words resonated. And maybe they did because values is literally just a reflection of your heart or your core. Like this is what deep down I feel is right for me or gets me going or I would fight for.

But I always want to take it further with values because values needs to be like maybe the word freedom for me is different than it is for you. So you can't just know your values from a list. You need to know your values and what they mean to you and how they show up in your life.

Right. That's how you know your values. And this is where many people get it wrong.

And I think if I don't get the numbers wrong, I think only two to three people in America only know their values. And then I think the number is even lower of how many people know how to live their values. Yeah.

Yeah, that's important. How often do you see that transition occurring with your clients? I mean is that something that has to happen or is that something that kind of over time will develop? So what I see all the time with my clients is when they come to me, most of them have disconnected with themselves. So maybe they come with an external challenge or problem or something they want to fix.

But when we start digging deeper, the whole thing is that they don't even know what they want or who they are or how to show up because they've lost connection with themselves. And the reason they lose connection with themselves is because they stop listening to themselves. So for me, one of the absolute most fundamental thing is to start with that, with values.

So everyone, every single person that I coach and work with starts with values because if we don't start with who you are and what's from your core and from your heart, from what place are we going to create? Right. Yeah, that's a good point because as you're kind of trained at least here is values are like a single word. But ultimately there's depth.

They have to be depth. It can't just be a single point and call it good. It's got to – what is it that's resonating at, like you said, at your core? What's really making a difference? And until you know that, you can't really do much of anything to really help you or anybody else.

Exactly. It's just going to be a list of words. Right.

And I also see like once people start to know their values, they also start to connect the dots in their lives. They start to understand why they feel fulfilled at some points, why they feel lack or stuck or not fulfilled in other points or in other events or happenings. They start to connect the dots, understanding themselves again.

And it's so cool to see when that happens. Yeah, it's like this light bulb. And once you're aware, you can't get unaware.

So that's what I mean with transformation. Like you've transformed someone's lives. Right.

What do you think is the most important character for people to bring to a coaching session, especially their first one, if they're not really sure what it is that they need to do? What is that most important one you are looking for? Yeah, a good one. So I never work with someone that's not coachable. And with coachable, I mean coming to the session with a willingness to change their perspective, with a willingness to get curious, with a willingness to say, I thought that because at some point who they are is based on a set of beliefs and programming and all that.

95% come from our subconscious. And if you're not willing to question and challenge yourself, which is the ego, then I don't think that there's any room for change and transformation moving forward. Yeah.

And that's the one thing we need to make very clear. And some people hold to that belief so hard because they believe to be somewhere for so long. And even if that hasn't served them, that's been a comfortable place to be in.

So they hold on to that identity. And changing that identity can hurt. It can hurt you.

It can hurt people around you. But that is what needs to happen in order to move forward and step into a better version of yourself and transform again if we talk about transformation. Yeah, that's a great point because a lot of people haven't really thought about that.

What do I need to do personally? I'm not – for me, a lot of people will come into a coaching session as opposed to a consulting session. And they'll come in, and they'll want me to fix them. And I'm like, I can't fix you.

There's not enough patience and time in the world for me to fix you. You have to be willing to fix yourself. And it's kind of a wake-up call to them.

They're like, oh. It's like, yeah, we have to work from the right frame of mind. And so people kind of go, oh, okay.

And then they kind of wake up. And you can figure out from then if that's going to be a bad thing or a good thing. Are they going to be resistant to making that change, making that adjustment? And many times they'll be like – the ones that can't, you'll know real quickly.

Assessments are great, but they are interpretive. And I just took one yesterday for a course that I started taking. And I looked at it, and I said, okay, it's close, but it's not accurate.

It's close. So by itself, it'll get us somewhere, but maybe we're going to have to look at it and take it a couple of steps back. And I'm like, okay.

And then there were like three or four other tools that go with that. And I'm like, okay, now we get into the deeper part of it. And it's very helpful to be able to think like that.

Exactly. And I live by that, like show up for what shows up, because like you say, everyone is different. I don't believe there's one approach that suits everyone.

And that's why I think the more techniques or tools I have to just pull out when needed, the more I can help the one that's in front of me. Sometimes it's a mix, right? Yeah. So you can take anchoring or reframing or all those kind of things.

But you don't have to do it maybe in the way that it's taught. It's more like pushing it in between the sessions to make the person move forward. Sure.

Okay. That's going to wrap it up for episode 162. Looking at our agenda one more time.

We had our quote from Dave Kekich. And then we did the first of two parts on our transformational interview with Adele Kamel Whitley. Next week, we're going to come back for part two.

It'll be the last week of the month. So we're going to go ahead and move in to agile leadership for the month of September. But for right now, I want to thank you very much for coming into the podcast, listening.

I wish you the best in your health, your wealth, your family, your business, everything about you. Take care. We'll see you back here next week.