Hosted by Jeff Walter, Founder and CEO of LatitudeLearning
Leadership is one of the most discussed topics in business, yet it is often one of the most misunderstood. Ask ten people to describe a great leader and you’ll likely hear words like confidence, vision, communication, accountability, or charisma. While each of those qualities certainly has a place, they tend to describe what people observe after leadership has already taken shape. Far less attention is given to the internal process that determines whether those outward behaviors remain consistent when circumstances become difficult.
That deeper perspective is exactly what makes Jeff Walter’s Training Impact Podcast conversation with Mary Ligon so compelling. Rather than focusing on management tactics or motivational techniques, the discussion explores the foundation that supports every leadership decision. Before leaders can inspire confidence in others, they must first understand how they respond to pressure, uncertainty, criticism, and change. Leadership, Mary explains, is not something that begins when someone is promoted into management or asked to oversee a team. It begins much earlier, in the habits of thought and emotional patterns that influence every conversation, every decision, and every interaction.
As founder of Mary Ligon Company, Mary has spent years working with executives, entrepreneurs, managers, solopreneurs, and organizations that want stronger leaders and healthier workplace cultures. Although each engagement is unique, she explains that businesses rarely seek leadership development simply to create happier employees. They invest because they want measurable business outcomes. They want stronger performance, better communication, improved retention, healthier cultures, and ultimately better financial results. The interesting realization throughout the conversation is that those business outcomes are often achieved not by changing organizational systems first, but by changing how leaders think and respond under pressure.
Early in the conversation, Jeff challenges one of the most common assumptions about leadership. Popular culture often portrays leaders as highly charismatic individuals who naturally command attention and rally people around a cause. Mary quickly offers a different perspective.
Some of the most effective leaders, she explains, are people whose names may never become widely recognized outside their organizations. Their influence is not measured by public visibility but by the lasting impact they have on the people they develop. Great leadership is less about standing in front of a room delivering inspirational speeches and more about quietly helping individuals become more capable than they believed possible.
That philosophy shapes much of Mary’s coaching approach. Rather than attempting to create larger personalities, she helps leaders become better observers of people. Exceptional leaders notice strengths others fail to recognize. They identify potential before employees see it themselves. They encourage growth instead of simply directing activity, gradually building confidence through trust, feedback, and opportunity.
Mary shares her own experience of working with mentors who recognized abilities she had not yet discovered. Looking back, she credits those experiences with shaping not only her career but also her understanding of what leadership truly looks like. The most influential leaders are often those who invest so deeply in the development of others that their success becomes reflected in the people around them rather than in personal recognition.
Jeff brings an especially valuable perspective to the discussion through his work with franchise organizations and extended enterprise training. Over the years, he has observed that successful franchise owners typically require four core competencies. They must know how to sell, understand operations, manage financial performance, and lead people effectively.
While franchise systems generally provide extensive operational guidance and sales training, leadership development often receives considerably less attention. Yet leadership may ultimately determine whether the other three capabilities produce sustainable success.
Mary agrees, adding an interesting observation that reframes leadership entirely.
Every leader, she explains, is constantly selling something.
Not products.
Not services.
They are selling belief.
Leaders sell belief in the organization’s purpose, values, direction, and future. Every interaction either strengthens or weakens employees’ confidence in where the organization is headed. When leaders consistently communicate a compelling vision and genuinely believe in it themselves, employees begin seeing their work as part of something larger than individual tasks or daily responsibilities.
The discussion naturally turns toward Disney as an example. Mary describes how Disney’s onboarding process succeeds because leadership intentionally helps employees become part of a larger story rather than simply teaching operational procedures. People are not merely learning how to perform tasks. They are learning why those tasks matter and how they contribute to a shared purpose. That emotional connection becomes one of the strongest drivers of engagement and organizational culture.
One of the most thought-provoking moments in the interview centers on the pressure leaders experience every day.
Mary describes middle management as living inside a sandwich.
Pressure comes from above through executive expectations, financial goals, deadlines, and organizational priorities. At the same time, pressure comes from below through employee concerns, staffing challenges, operational obstacles, and changing customer demands. Business owners and entrepreneurs often carry an even heavier burden because every decision directly affects their livelihoods, their families, and the future of the organizations they have worked so hard to build.
Under those conditions, even capable leaders can become reactive.
Instead of listening carefully, they become defensive.
Instead of coaching, they begin directing.
Instead of building trust, they begin protecting themselves.
Mary emphasizes that these reactions rarely occur because someone consciously decides to become a poor leader. Much more often, they arise from fear. Leaders begin worrying about losing credibility, losing authority, disappointing others, or failing to meet expectations. Without realizing it, those fears begin influencing conversations, decisions, and behaviors throughout the organization.
One of the most important distinctions Mary makes is between confidence and control. Confidence does not require dominating conversations or asserting authority. Genuine confidence comes from knowing who you are and remaining steady regardless of external circumstances. Leaders who operate from confidence tend to encourage others, provide honest feedback, and create environments where people feel safe contributing ideas. Leaders operating from fear often become more controlling precisely because they feel they are losing control internally.
Perhaps the most fascinating portion of the conversation explores the relationship between leadership and neuroscience.
Drawing on her background in clinical hypnotherapy and years of coaching individuals through anxiety and personal transformation, Mary explains that many emotional reactions occur long before conscious thought enters the picture. Human beings evolved with an extraordinary ability to recognize danger and respond quickly through the fight-or-flight response. That biological system protects us from genuine threats, but it does not always distinguish between physical danger and imagined future outcomes.
As Mary explains, leaders frequently create anxiety by mentally rehearsing worst-case scenarios. They imagine losing clients, missing financial targets, disappointing stakeholders, or watching projects fail before any of those events have actually occurred. The unconscious mind responds to those vivid mental images as though they are already happening, triggering the same physiological responses designed to protect us from immediate danger. Heart rate increases. Muscles tense. Clear thinking becomes more difficult. Decision making becomes increasingly reactive rather than intentional.
Rather than allowing those imagined futures to dominate decision making, Mary introduces a remarkably practical visualization technique. She encourages leaders to mentally move beyond the event causing anxiety and imagine themselves fifteen minutes after its successful completion. From that perspective, leaders naturally begin asking different questions. What did success actually look like? What decisions helped create that outcome? What challenges were overcome along the way?
The exercise accomplishes something surprisingly powerful.
Instead of repeatedly imagining failure, leaders begin mentally rehearsing success.
Jeff immediately connects this concept to his own experiences learning to ski. One of the most valuable lessons he ever received was simple: always look where you want to go rather than where you fear going. Skiers who focus on the trees often hit the trees. Skiers who focus on the path naturally guide themselves toward it. As the conversation unfolds, both realize that the same principle applies to leadership. Organizations often move toward the future leaders consistently envision.
The discussion eventually shifts from internal leadership to organizational vision.
Mary shares examples involving Walt Disney and Richard Branson to illustrate how influential leaders create extraordinary results by communicating compelling futures rather than relying on authority alone. Walt Disney did not simply build a theme park. He painted a picture of an experience people could imagine long before it existed. Richard Branson repeatedly inspired teams around ambitious ideas because people believed in where he was trying to go.
Jeff reflects on an interesting consequence of clearly communicating vision.
Strong visions naturally attract people who believe in them while discouraging those who do not.
That kind of alignment is impossible when organizations lack clarity about where they are headed. Employees may appreciate working for kind managers, but genuine commitment often requires something larger than simply enjoying the workplace. It requires believing that everyone’s efforts contribute toward a meaningful destination.
For learning and development professionals, perhaps the biggest takeaway from this conversation is that leadership cannot be developed solely through technical instruction.
Organizations spend considerable time teaching managers how to conduct performance reviews, delegate work, communicate expectations, and solve operational problems. Those skills remain important, but they become significantly more effective when leaders also understand their own emotional responses under pressure.
Leadership development should include opportunities for reflection, self-awareness, emotional regulation, coaching, and resilience alongside traditional management competencies. Technical expertise may prepare someone to manage work. Emotional maturity prepares them to lead people.
That distinction becomes increasingly important as organizations navigate rapid change, distributed workforces, franchise expansion, and increasingly complex business environments. Leaders who remain calm, intentional, and focused during uncertainty create stability for everyone around them.
One of the most memorable aspects of this conversation is that it quietly redefines leadership without ever reducing it to a simple formula. Rather than presenting leadership as a collection of techniques, Mary Ligon reminds us that leadership is ultimately an extension of how we think, what we believe, and how we respond when circumstances become difficult. Vision matters. Communication matters. Strategy matters. But each of those capabilities becomes stronger when leaders first develop the ability to lead themselves with confidence instead of fear.
For organizations committed to developing stronger cultures, better managers, and more resilient teams, that may be the most valuable lesson of all. Leadership does not begin when people choose to follow. It begins much earlier, in the quiet decisions leaders make every day about how they interpret challenges, communicate possibility, and help others become more than they believed they could be.
To learn more about Mary Ligon Company and its leadership development and executive coaching services, visit https://www.maryligonco.com/.
For more conversations exploring how training, leadership, and learning drive organizational success, follow the Training Impact Podcast on social media: https://t-sml.mtrbio.com/public/smartlink/trainingimpactpodcast.
Jeff Walter (00:05)
Hi, I’m Jeff Walter and welcome back to the Training Impact Podcast, where we explore scaling through training infrastructure. My guest today is Mary Lagon.
Mary is the founder of the Mary Lagon Company, a leadership development firm that helps organizations build stronger cultures through intentional leadership, communication, and people development. So it’s going to be a lot of fun because today we’re going to explore how leadership training creates lasting business impact by equipping managers and teams with the skills needed to improve performance, engagement, and organizational success. So, Mary, welcome to the program.
Mary Ligon (00:37)
Thank you, thank you for having me.
Jeff Walter (00:39)
I it’s a I I’m excited to talk about this ’cause I I you know, y I’ve been in the channel training space now for a couple of decades and I really believe that that that that leadership development is a is a very important thing. People usually think of it as internally, but I I believe it has huge impact externally if you’re building your network. As a matter of fact, when I talk to folks in the franchise space, they say franchisees need four skills.
They need to be able to sell, they need to be able to execute or operations, they need to be able to read financials, and they need to be able to lead. And they and usually your typical franchisee is good at one, maybe two of those things, but needs support in the other. And I’m like, okay, so then my next question is, okay, so what are you doing on each of these? And there’s usually something in the sales and execution side, and very little on the financial understanding and the leadership side.
Mary Ligon (01:19)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Walter (01:29)
So I’m very excited to talk to you about this. You’ve been it’s it’s really exciting. So as as my listeners know, I I I love the the autobiographical and and how you got where you’re at. So founder of the Mary Lagon company. So what prompted you or what was the journey to founding a company? And and what does your company do?
Mary Ligon (01:47)
Okay, I do exactly what you said I do. I take people who are either solopreneurs or they’re leaders inside or want to be leaders inside companies. From CEOs down to middle managers or just people who want to climb the ladder, want to improve more. I also work with solopreneurs, actors to increase their ability because they are their own business.
And when I work with an actor, I work with them like that. You are the CEO of your business. You have hired an agent, but you have hired that person. You still have to manage your business. So I’ve worked with a lot of different people in a lot of different categories with this because these kind of skills relate to pretty much anything you’re doing in business.
when a company hires me, I will go in and work with a group usually, and or they will have me work with some key people to improve them, you know.
Jeff Walter (02:40)
So now yeah,
so so leadership is one of those terms that we that that we all know we all have a we all know what it means. We all have some type of connotative definition or our head. But when when we talk about leadership development, what w what exactly are we talking about, right? Like most people think of it as
Mary Ligon (02:49)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Walter (02:59)
the leader as being the c you know, increasing charisma and rah rah, let’s go everybody and and and and but I i d I don’t think that’s quite right. So
Mary Ligon (03:10)
No, actually,
some of the best leaders, you’ll never even know their name. Because they aren’t out front all the time in terms of the company, but they’re leading the company from the inside.
Jeff Walter (03:14)
So
And and so when we
talk about leadership development, what is it what kind of skills or or knowledges are we actually talking about? You know, when you when when when when when when a firm engages you, what are they hoping to accomplish? We we know leadership but what what does that mean and what how does it benefit them?
Mary Ligon (03:39)
And in a lot of ways, like you mentioned with the franchisees, they have to be able to sell, right? Well, leader has to be able to sell too. And who do they have to sell their teams? They have to be able to sell the values of the company.
and where that company is going to go to their team to buy into it and make that. It’s like we talked about earlier when we were talking ahead of time about the Disney way. The reason the Disney company works so well in terms of their employees is because their onboarding is about the leadership training them to understand and be a part of the Disney dream.
Jeff Walter (04:02)
Right.
Mary Ligon (04:16)
and to own it. That takes a really good leading of a person to get people to buy into that.
In other words, you want to build your team so that they go to work going, wow, I’m part of this bigger thing that I’m doing, and it’s exciting, and it’s cool that they’re paying me for it, but I’d do this anyway because it’s so awesome, and I want to work with this company and these people that are leading it. That’s what you want to build into your leaders.
Jeff Walter (04:21)
What
Mm.
Well and and so okay, so that’s the end i i if we so if we talk about leadership and to go back to my to original question, what if I can play back what I think I heard is it’s it’s not the charismatic, you know, all right everyone follow me, you know, charge, right? It’s it’s it’s it’s building that sense building that sense of community that people
Mary Ligon (04:45)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Walter (05:06)
voluntarily want to be a part of and that community is going in a direction towards a goal. What and and and it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re a swashbuckling, charismatic. It’s it’s you can be the quiet whisperer, you know.
Mary Ligon (05:17)
No.
Mm-hmm.
You can,
you can. And what I find with great leaders is they’re good at reading people. some of the skills I teach is how do you read people? How do you read them and bring out the best in them? Subtly, by seeing potential in them they don’t even know they have. So basically a good leader is also a good coach.
So they see that in a person. The other person may not even know it. I was in a position like that with Tad James. He saw something in me I didn’t know existed and he brought it out in me when I went to work for him.
Jeff Walter (05:41)
And that Yeah.
Mary Ligon (05:51)
And then he nurtured it. And then he, of course he benefited because I made tons of sales for him and I went out on the road and was a trainer and I made him a lot of money. But I learned so much along the way. But when he hired me, I was like, what is he even seeing me? I’d never sold trainings before. I’d never worked with big groups. I didn’t know why this guy hired me.
Jeff Walter (05:57)
Right.
Yeah, it you know, it’s it’s it’s funny you say that ’cause it it forced me to reflect so on my myself. and and it’s interesting because I always think of it personally as well one of the great joys of running a company for myself is is exactly what you just said, is helping others be successful and achieve their potential. And I always thought it as pattern recognition, right?
Mary Ligon (06:19)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Walter (06:37)
Like like I you know take your example. Like if I was in hit I the way I process it in my head is like well I know what works and what doesn’t work. I’ve seen people be successful and unsuccessful at this role, and you haven’t, so you don’t have the pattern recognition, but I have the pattern recognition and I can see it in you, I can see the patterns in you. It it that’s but that’s
Mary Ligon (06:51)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Walter (06:59)
Not exactly anyway, I it just made me think of that. I you know, that that that’s how I’ve always thought of it is I just have knowledge that you don’t or not me and you personally, but but as a manager I I I have I I I I’ve seen the pattern before. And and and the the employee hasn’t and therefore that they they don’t know what they don’t know, but they also don’t know what they do know. That that’s implicit.
Mary Ligon (07:02)
Yeah. Right. Yes. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Exactly. Yeah.
Jeff Walter (07:23)
You know, and really kinda cool. So s so
Mary Ligon (07:23)
Yeah. Exactly.
Jeff Walter (07:27)
w when so when when when when a firm engages you and and you embark on the leadership development, w why like what are they hoping to achieve? What w what what’s the benefit for them?
Mary Ligon (07:38)
Well, always when any company hires you, they want to make more money. Come on. They don’t do it to be warm and fuzzy. They do it because they feel that it’s going to do something for the bottom line in some way or another. When they hire someone like me, they bring me in and I don’t know what they need yet.
Jeff Walter (07:42)
Okay.
Mary Ligon (07:55)
Because I don’t know where they’re excelling and where they’re not in terms of their management and their leadership. I don’t know where their problems are yet. And sometimes they don’t until I do a really strong intake with them. Like, you know, so I don’t fix what’s not broken.
Jeff Walter (08:08)
And and they’re good.
Well, so when you’re looking at them, w what is it you’re looking at, you know, and again, most people would have that, you know, swashbuckling charismatic thing, but what is it you’re evaluating in terms of they do these things well, they they they are, you know, struggling on these other areas? Well, like what what does that
Mary Ligon (08:18)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
A lot of times they know and they’ll tell me where they struggle, okay? And a lot of times it’s that they can’t manage their own state under pressure. That is a big one for management. A lot of times, that means when they get criticized or when there’s a lot of pressure on from maybe the top, you if you’re a middle manager, you’ve got the pressure from the top and then the pressure from the bottom, right? And if you have employees that are,
Jeff Walter (08:40)
What what does that mean? I can’t manage your own state.
Mary Ligon (08:54)
what are a little more difficult to work with and you’re under constraints, a lot of managers and leaders will blow up. They’ll get angry or they’ll get upset or they’ll take it personally.
Jeff Walter (08:57)
Uh-huh.
Mary Ligon (09:06)
And a lot of it has to do with how do you manage your own internal state under any kind of pressure, no matter what’s going on around you, and how to learn not to take other people’s behavior personally.
Jeff Walter (09:20)
okay. A and do you see that as one of the main one of the top deficits, I guess would be a a a word, is is how do you disassociate your yourself personally from what’s being asked of you professionally? Is that a way of looking at it?
Mary Ligon (09:20)
Okay, so yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Right. Yeah, because
I think a lot of people, I’m not gonna, it’s not just gender-based, but especially with men, is their job becomes their identity. Okay? It just does. I am this, I am, I’m in this position, and I need to behave in a certain way so people respect me. That’s really not the way to go, because that’s not how you earn respect. That’s ego-based. How you earn respect is,
Jeff Walter (09:44)
Yeah.
Right.
Uh-huh.
Mary Ligon (10:03)
not lying to people, being honest with them, supporting them, not betraying them, encouraging them, and yeah, bringing them to task when they need it, but in a way that encourages them to do better next time.
Jeff Walter (10:14)
Yeah, well, I mean that’s I mean that’s really difficult. because because we as as animals, human y say humans, but it’s more it’s more fundamental than that. You know, we’re innately status driven, right? It you know, you know, you know, and and it goes down to crustaceans and it’s not just a human thing.
Mary Ligon (10:21)
You
Mm-hmm.
It does. The birds out
in my backyard do it.
Jeff Walter (10:36)
Exactly. That’s what I mean. That’s why I said animals. Like like it’s not just a human thing.
And you know, I think I think one of the challenges to g is when you’ve achieved some level of you know status, you know, I’m I’m I’m a supervisor, I’m a division manager, I’m a VP. i I think
Mary Ligon (10:49)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Walter (10:56)
one of the things just as a person and and I and I and I I do think there are some gender differences in our physiology. ’cause but but I think all of us are I’ve achieved this status, I’m respected in a certain way. I don’t want to lose that. And and by the way, and then I put my like you said, I put my identity into that because, you know, that’s how I spend most of my waking hours is, you know, working.
Mary Ligon (11:03)
There it is.
Right? Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Right,
right, so I am what I’m doing, but we aren’t human doings, we’re human beings. So that’s one of the first things I teach them. You’re not a human doing, you aren’t what you do. You are a human being, so be human doing what you’re doing.
Jeff Walter (11:25)
Right.
I I like that.
Right. Well and so how do you
how do you how do you train that in like how do you how do you take somebody that look I worked really hard to get to where I’m at, I’ve achieved a certain amount of status and authority
I’m concerned that I can lose that at any time. And then and this gets to the pressure, right? It’s coming down to increase sales 10% or cut costs five percent or do this more efficiently by sixteen percent, whatever the the pressure coming down is. And then from below I’m I’m getting the well, this isn’t right. You’re just asking us to work harder. Like you you you’re getting the we’re you’re being asked to do more with less. Yeah.
Mary Ligon (11:57)
Yeah.
I call it the sandwich. You’ve got
the pressure from the top and the pressure from the bottom when you’re middle management. And you’re getting squeezed.
Jeff Walter (12:24)
A and and how do you how do you disassociate and not
you know, from a leadership p s standpoint, how like how do you do that? Because the I think the tendency or the the normal human reaction would be to basically become more dictatorial, right? And and like you know, like the do it because I say so, right?
Mary Ligon (12:39)
Yeah, that’s what happens.
Yeah, but that’s
Jeff Walter (12:49)
Right. Okay.
Right, what right, exactly.
Mary Ligon (12:57)
So
once you get to the point, and I use a lot of my techniques that I use one-on-one with clients in my one-on-one deep sessions to get them to the point where they’re, I call it bulletproof for having those kinds of reactions under pressure because it’s fear-based. or I’m afraid these people won’t respect me or.
Jeff Walter (13:15)
b well, ’cause I’m I’m I’m afraid of losing my my position, my status, my role, my authority, my res the respect. Right.
Mary Ligon (13:24)
Damn
it, just get the job done. Don’t tell me about your problems. Well, that doesn’t work really well long term. Because then people are like, this person doesn’t care about me. I’m just a number to them. They treat me like I’m a machine. You’re not going to get that kind of loyalty that way. It’s just not going to happen. And pretty soon, you get everybody below you whispering about what a jerk you are.
Jeff Walter (13:28)
Right.
Right. Okay.
So how do you break that cycle? And and and you know, and I and I’m thinking of it as is you know, we we we’ve been talking in the context of an organization, but I’m also thinking of it in terms of an extended enterprise. You know, especially in a franchise situation where a lot of times and and you just talk about the pressure, you know, a lot of franchisees are first time entrepreneurs.
Mary Ligon (13:48)
And…
Mm-hmm. Right.
Right.
Jeff Walter (14:09)
They’ve taken their life savings or a good chunk of their savings. You know, they’ve they a lot of times they’ve quit a steady paycheck. They’ve taken a yeah, they’ve taken a chunk of their life savings that took years to accumulate. They gave it to this franchise or and now they’re not just a manager, but they’re actually the leader of their company. Even though they’re, you know, a franchisee within a brand, it’s still their company.
Mary Ligon (14:17)
I know I’ve been there, I’ve done it.
Jeff Walter (14:34)
everything stops with them and they put a bunch of their personal life savings. It’s it’s even more pressure than to in my mind, more pressure than the middle manager because the worst thing that can happen to the middle manager is they get fired. And you know, and as painful as that is, and they might have to move and all and all the ramifications of it. I don’t mean to minimize that. But but the the the franchisee, they lose their life savings.
Mary Ligon (14:36)
Yep.
Exactly.
It is.
find another job. Yeah, yeah.
Right.
Well, work out, you know, that’s really my sweet spot is working with people who have left their big jobs to start a business, not just franchisees, but start their own business. And I was there, right? You know, I worked for a paycheck and then decided to open my own business. So I understand also that there is a big jump in your neurology from steady paycheck.
Jeff Walter (15:02)
Right.
Okay.
Right.
Mary Ligon (15:24)
and a system that you follow for somebody else. Now, at least with the franchise, they get a system in place. They don’t have to make up their own system. That’s good. They get a playbook where most people, like when I opened up my stuff, it was, better invent how this is gonna work. Although I did work for a company with Tad James where I saw how he made it work. So that helped. Yeah. Yeah.
Jeff Walter (15:30)
Right. Right. They they got it they get it they they get a they get a playbook, right? Yeah.
Right. I I I say same thing for me. When I when I started
Latitude, you know, I had built consulting practices for other larger firms and had been mentored by some very awesome human beings over the years. And and so I just like I took that playbook and I applied it, right? And
Mary Ligon (15:57)
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Because you
can do that. But I’m sure a lot of people buy franchises. Some of them have never even been in sales. You know, I was in sales. I was also good at working one-on-one and with large groups. I had been a trainer for years before I started this in 2008.
Jeff Walter (16:12)
Right.
Mary Ligon (16:23)
And before that I had smaller little businesses, hypnotherapy businesses that I ran. And it was just me and those. So I had that background of sales. And I think building that into everybody, all leaders, is important because you’re always selling, whether you’re selling a client or you’re selling somebody in your organization on doing what you’d like them to do. And you know what I’m saying? We’re always selling.
Jeff Walter (16:35)
Right.
Mary Ligon (16:50)
what we’d like to share with somebody and influence them to do in some way.
Jeff Walter (16:55)
Well well so let’s get back to that that squeeze, the sandwich you you said. You know, the a and and and I understand the selling part, like it it and I I I I remember I I I wish I could attribute it to a proper person, but I remember somebody saying, No matter who you are, if you’re in the workplace, you’re always selling. At the very least, you’re selling who’s ever writing you a paycheck, the fact that you’re worth keeping around.
Mary Ligon (16:58)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Exactly.
Jeff Walter (17:20)
Right.
so you’re you’re and and I was like, huh, that’s interesting. Cause we usually think, you know, sales of salespeople, I’m I’m just the accountant, I’m just the customer service person, I’m just the fill in the blank, I don’t sell. And and and but but getting into that squeeze and that that that human defensive reaction to I’m being threatened from above
Mary Ligon (17:32)
Mm-mm, yeah.
Jeff Walter (17:43)
Or in the case of franchisee, I’ve I I put my life savings and I’ve I’ve got this franchise or that’s telling me to do X, Y, and Z, but it I it doesn’t feel right and I and and I’ve got these employees that are like
Mary Ligon (17:54)
Right?
Jeff Walter (17:57)
How do you break that cycle of that normal human reaction to basically just say, just do what I say because I say to do it? Like it’s it’s a very, you know, it’s it reminds me of the parental thing. It’s like, you know, because I’m the daddy and I say so, right? To the kids. Like I’m not, I’m done explaining it to you. I’m the parent. So just do it because I’m the parent and I say so, right? It’s like, how do you what tools do you bring in that helps people start to go?
Mary Ligon (18:06)
Yeah, I know.
Yeah. Right. Yes. Right.
Jeff Walter (18:25)
That’s not a good long term strategy.
Mary Ligon (18:27)
Right, well you know my background is in helping people one on one with that sort of thing in their personal lives and business lives. So I was a clinical hypnotherapist for years. So I understand how these are unconscious reactions. They don’t want to do it consciously. It happens unconsciously. So I know how to work with the unconscious mind with people to get them to find deeper resources to handle that and also to learn how to
Jeff Walter (18:35)
Okay.
Mary Ligon (18:55)
control a very calm state, how to get into a calm, confident state. Confidence isn’t being a bully. Confidence is knowing who you are and not being rattled by something that’s going on outside of you. And so when I work one-on-one with clients, solopreneurs or leaders or whatever, and I have some that I’ve worked with for years, I have four clients that I talk to once a week, and I’ve done it for 20 years, that are highly successful and I’ve helped them be
Jeff Walter (19:13)
Mm-hmm.
Mary Ligon (19:23)
successful and stay clean on how they’re reacting, overcoming personal problems, business problems, communication problems, deciding who to hire, who to let go of, how to do it. All of these things that come up for people, I help them through that. So when they talk to me once a week, one of them said, well, the reason I do that is because I don’t ever want to be reactive. And every once in a while, I’ll run into something where that stuff will come up again and I want to work through it so that I’m
clean again.
Jeff Walter (19:53)
So
so how does one build that resiliency? Like what
Mary Ligon (19:58)
Well, first of
all, it’s admitting that it’s a problem. That I have this problem. When somebody looks at me in a certain way or has a certain tone of voice when I’m talking to them, I get angry or I get defensive or…
Jeff Walter (20:01)
Okay.
Right.
Mary Ligon (20:13)
whatever it is that comes up, we need to change that. It’s called an anchor. You’ve heard a stimulus response with Pavlov and his dogs, right? That’s an anchor. So he took the steaks, put it in front of hungry dogs, they salivate. He got them to do that a bunch of times. So steak is the anchor, salivate, right? Then he took a bell with the steak a few times, got rid of the steak and he could just hit the bell and the dogs would salivate without the steak. That’s an anchor.
Jeff Walter (20:19)
Yeah, yep, yep, yep.
Right, ’cause it it
Mary Ligon (20:39)
We use
it, we can use that in our own life, and I use it a lot, to anchor positive states and to make those states so much stronger than the negative that they actually collapse the negative one, they neutralize it.
So it’s a process called, well, you can stack anchors or you can collapse anchors. It’s a process. I use that a lot with people. So then they can go into that situation and whatever used to trigger that doesn’t trigger them anymore because the positive states are stronger. OK. OK.
Jeff Walter (20:53)
Okay.
Okay. Well it’s okay. So all right. It’s good. So let let let’s play this on me.
so so I’m you know, you know, you know, I’m running a business, right? I’ve I’ve got a lot of my personal financial stuff here. You know, we we lose big clients, it it it has negative impact, you know, we’re making money, we’re losing money, all that kind of stuff. Right. It’s and and so but but but
Mary Ligon (21:17)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Sure, it’s called business.
Jeff Walter (21:32)
But you know, I’ll feel at various times this this this you know this anxiety, this this tension building up inside of me for whatever the reason is, right? you know, s whether it’s financial or interpersonal or or I I I want us to go left, but a bunch of people saying that you know, are hesitant, they want to go right.
Mary Ligon (21:35)
Hmm.
Jeff Walter (21:54)
Whatever it is and and and and I’ll I’ll I’ll just feel myself getting to that well no I’m the yeah, b we’re gonna do it ’cause I say so, right? How do how how do I w what anchor am I trying to build that can help mitigate that that anchor, you know, and collapse that anchor? How like
Mary Ligon (22:03)
Yeah.
Well,
there’s two things with that. Anxiety is different. So what you’re doing to create that anxious feeling is you’re actually running worst case scenarios about the future.
Jeff Walter (22:16)
Okay.
Okay.
Mary Ligon (22:24)
You’re running these movies in your brain that it’s gonna go wrong, that you’re gonna lose this deal, you’re gonna lose the money, you’re gonna look at your bank account and it’s gonna be gone, you’re gonna have to do a bankruptcy. Some people go all the way to, I’m gonna be homeless and a bag lady or a bag man under the bridge, in their mind. Now, if you run those movies in your mind over and over again, you will create anxiety. You’re actually imagining the worst.
Jeff Walter (22:41)
Right. Right, right. Right.
Okay.
Mary Ligon (22:53)
happening, your unconscious mind looks at those movies as if it’s in real danger, goes into fight or flight. It doesn’t know the difference between something you imagine vividly and what’s in front of it. So we are designed as human beings to do fight or flight if there’s real danger outside of us.
Jeff Walter (23:00)
Right. Okay.
Okay.
Mary Ligon (23:14)
Right? So if you’ve got a lion who walks into the room and he hasn’t been fed for a month, you go into fight or flight. You go into can I beat it up and stop it from hurting me or can I get away from it? And what happens is all the blood that was in your digestive system and for digestion goes straight into your muscle so you can run or beat it up. That’s what we’re designed to do.
Jeff Walter (23:22)
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Mary Ligon (23:36)
then after we’ve either beat it up or we’ve gotten away from it, we’re safe, we are to flip into parasympathetic, which is our normal, relaxed, calm-centered state, which is the best place to be working from all the time. That’s when we make our best decisions. That’s when we can evaluate what’s going on better, not when we’re in fight or flight, right?
Jeff Walter (23:48)
Okay.
Okay.
Mary Ligon (23:59)
So when you’re running movies about it not working out, your unconscious mind is going to physiologically feel threatened and you’re going to get that feeling that you would if you were in fight or flight. So the way, really when you have anxiety, it’s your unconscious mind’s way of telling you you’re focusing on things going wrong out in the future. Right? So.
Jeff Walter (24:14)
Gotcha.
Interesting. Interesting.
Mary Ligon (24:26)
One of the techniques I use for that is, if you were to, you can do this right now, it’s an easy thing to do. We all have the way that we structure events in our mind, and it’s usually in a linear way, the way the brain works. So if I were to ask you if you were to imagine that your future was out on a line, would it be in front of you or to the side of you or where would it be?
Jeff Walter (24:40)
Uh-huh.
Well, h hopefully in front of me.
Mary Ligon (24:53)
Okay, okay, so you’ve got it in front of you. And if I were to imagine all the events that happened in your past were strung out on a line, where would that be? Okay, good, okay, so that’s your timeline. That’s where your brain, by the way, people have it in different directions. So that’s yours, yeah, that’s yours, okay. So what I have people do, once they understand that, is I have them float up above their timeline, 15 minutes.
Jeff Walter (25:01)
Behind me.
okay. I all right.
Okay.
Mary Ligon (25:17)
after the successful completion of what they thought they were nervous about or anxious about. And then I have them look toward now. Now, they’re now imagining that it’s over, it was successful, and they’re looking toward now. And then I go, where’s the anxiety? Well, it’s not there. Well, of course not. Because now you’ve changed your brain to make up movies that it turns out the way you want it to.
Jeff Walter (25:24)
Okay.
Interesting.
Mary Ligon (25:41)
And least
unless you have a crystal ball, and if you do, let’s go to the horse races together. The future hasn’t happened yet. Now, the other thing is once you’ve done that, because you’re in a more confident state after doing that, you are more likely to make the right decisions to have that thing turn out successfully.
Jeff Walter (25:48)
No, just pick the lottery numbers, it’s much quicker.
Well so Okay, so just working on that for a second, it’s very interesting because I never thought about it from that. I thought about it from the perspective of I’m I’m here, I’m anxious because I’m frozen, because I’m in the unknown, and I don’t know the right way to proceed, and that’s what causes the anxiety. Should I go left, should I go right, should I go straight, should I go like and
Mary Ligon (26:10)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Right. Yeah. Right.
Jeff Walter (26:29)
A and then y you’re right, you you start filling your mind with worst case scenarios, but you’re saying jump ahead, imagine
Mary Ligon (26:32)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. First
of all, decide how do you want it to turn out? Are you clear about how you want it to turn out?
Jeff Walter (26:39)
Well, that’s a good question, right? ‘Cause you well, ’cause you focus on how it could to go all terribly wrong, but you don’t you don’t really focus a lot of energy on how it can go terribly right.
Mary Ligon (26:40)
Right? Yes, exactly.
Right,
it’s all about how we focus this beautiful brain of ours. And that’s how we get these emotional states. Right, so how are we focusing this incredible thing that we have between our ears? Because it will create emotional states based on the pictures and the self-talk that we’re doing.
Jeff Walter (26:57)
Gotcha.
That’s really I mean, I’m I’m you know, we’re we’re going down this great rabbit hole that I’m really enjoying. But that’s really the interesting thing there, and I I and and I I don’t know how to s you know, in my brain I’m sitting there going, how do you scale this? But but but the interesting thing there is the phys is the interaction of the mental and the physiological, right? It’s like i i if you go back to what you said earlier, it’s like, well, there’s a physiological response.
Mary Ligon (27:11)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm, yeah.
Jeff Walter (27:32)
You you we evolve to have a physical physiological response. When in danger, put all the energy into your muscles so you can fight or flight and and survive. Right. And then when you’re not in danger, back to the parasymp I think you said parasympathetic mode. Right.
Mary Ligon (27:35)
Yeah.
Yeah, parasympathetic. There’s a sympathetic
nervous system and a parasympathetic nervous system.
Jeff Walter (27:50)
And then and then the com
comms and then you can go back to more long more long term systems that are good for you, like digesting your food, for example.
Mary Ligon (27:57)
Yeah, digesting
your food, enjoying the day, making decisions based on your calm state, not doing it out of fear. I have never made a good decision while I was in fear. Never, ever made a good decision when I was fearful.
Jeff Walter (28:01)
Right. Right.
And then the interesting thing is that the those nervous systems, f if I hear what you’re saying is they don’t know the difference between reality and what your brain is thinking. They’re just responding to what you’re thinking. So if so if I’m if I’m in a room with the lion, I’m thinking about the lion. And and and my body reacts accordingly. But if I’m thinking about being in a room with a lion, my body’s going to react accordingly.
Mary Ligon (28:21)
Nope. Yep, exactly.
Yeah.
Right.
It’s
Jeff Walter (28:37)
Which is which is interesting. It’s exactly
Mary Ligon (28:37)
Exactly.
Jeff Walter (28:39)
what happens when you when you’re watching a movie.
Mary Ligon (28:41)
Exactly,
exactly. We suspend our disbelief when we’re watching a movie. We all know somewhere in our brain that it’s just celluloid, you know, little frames going. And yet, if they’re good at storytelling and they’re good at the visuals, if some scary person comes out of the closet with a knife and goes,
Jeff Walter (28:50)
Yeah.
Right. ‘Cause you have that yep, yeah, ’cause well and and and so what I you’re saying is it’s there’s no difference between watching that movie and watching the movie in your brain. Right.
Mary Ligon (29:02)
Right?
Right? Exactly. And this is
even more intimate to your unconscious mind, your subconscious mind, because it’s you.
Jeff Walter (29:17)
Interesting.
Mary Ligon (29:17)
It’s listening to you all the time and really what we’re doing is we’re making pictures all the time. This is how we encode things in our brain. We make pictures of things. Some people make movies, some make them 3D, but we all do it. And we do self-talk. We have sounds. We talk to ourselves. If you listen to your own self-talk, you’ll know if you’re focusing on things working out or not. Yeah, that’s your belief system. You start listening to your self-talk.
Jeff Walter (29:26)
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mary Ligon (29:45)
The other thing is we have feelings, the kinesthetic feelings and emotional feelings, right? And then we have logic and they call it auditory digital. And the logic is we’re looking at things outside of us and we’re evaluating them. Are these things good or are they threatening or are they bad or are they morally wrong? That’s how we’re evaluating it.
And any event, you and I can’t experience the same event and experience it the same way. Because I have different memories and filters and values and experiences. I’m a different gender. I came from a different place.
Any event that happens, have to filter that through all that before I can even make sense of it. Same with you. So what happens with most people, and I know this intimately because I had really bad panic attacks before I got into knowing how to do all this stuff when I was young. So bad I couldn’t get out of bed and take care of my kids. They were little at the time. I called somebody and they said, you got to go to this doctor down at USC. I was in California then. I went in there.
Jeff Walter (30:36)
Right.
Mary Ligon (30:47)
I had somebody drive me there. I couldn’t even drive and I said to this guy He was good. I really liked him. Am I having a nervous breakdown?
And he calmly sat back and he goes, are you hearing voices? I said, no. And he goes, nah, you’re having a garden variety panic attack. I went, what do mean? I thought I’m dying here, man. I’m freaking out. What are you talking about? You think you’re gonna pass out? Nobody does. You think you can’t drive, you’ll get in a car accident? Nobody does. You’re having a panic attack. And what you’re doing, he says you’re running worst case scenario movies
Jeff Walter (31:04)
Ha ha ha.
It’s like, Yeah, you know, whatever.
Okay.
Mary Ligon (31:23)
your mind and your body and your unconscious mind is reacting as if you’re in real danger.
Jeff Walter (31:27)
Because it does because the s the nervous and parasympathetic nervous system don’t know any different. They just know what you they just know what your brain is saying to itself.
Mary Ligon (31:32)
They don’t know any different. Now, he didn’t
tell me how to fix it. He just told me what it was. It took me a year and a half of trying a bunch of different things to be able to change that and have control over it. I study Transcendental Meditation, Hypnosis. It put me on this journey, which I’m thankful for, because in curing myself, I learned a lot about helping other people. Yeah. Yeah.
Jeff Walter (31:38)
Right, right, right.
Well it’s interesting. We you know, we back to your per your personal dream. You know, now
now that all makes sense, right? Like like your your path and and then why you would s start a a company is if if if you had this
Mary Ligon (32:02)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right, and the more I learned, the more I
wanted to learn about human consciousness and the way the mind works. Right. In practical ways so that they live happy, productive lives without being, you know, constantly fighting themselves.
Jeff Walter (32:13)
Well and then share it with others. And and all of a sudden right.
Well and and and I think, you know, it’s it’s really interesting. You we we glossed over it, but that one little technique that you put there is like how do you see, you know, your future and your past on a timeline and then you know, elo you know, take yourself up, go fifteen minutes after the event and Yes, exact you know, like
Mary Ligon (32:32)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Successful completion of the event. Successful is important.
Jeff Walter (32:43)
Right. Well and and and
and look back and and and it it’s a successful com and well that also forces you to say to yourself, what does success look like? Right? Like like you can’t just say successful then. It’s like if you really do put your self into the future there, well what are you feeling? What are you seeing? What happened? And and and and now you’re playing it’s really it’s it’s really interesting because it it almost at least
Mary Ligon (32:57)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Walter (33:05)
what it it almost becomes like a self fulfilling prophecy, whatever you’re focusing on, right? If I if I focus on we’re gonna, you know, like I like what I’m sorry, just it another random thought came to my head as you were talking about this. I remember when I was learning the ski downhill ski and one of the best pieces of advice I got was always look where you want to go, not where you don’t want to go, because your body will take you wherever you’re looking.
Mary Ligon (33:08)
Yes. Yes.
Jeff Walter (33:28)
So if you’re looking over the cliff, your body will take you over the cliff. If you’re looking at the path you want to carve, your body will take you down the path you want to carve. So always look where you wanna go, not where you don’t wanna go. Best piece of you know, and I love downhill skiing, especially my youth, and and I was like, wow, that was like the single best piece of advice I ever got on how to ski was look where I wanna go, don’t look where you don’t wanna go. And I’m just
Mary Ligon (33:37)
Exactly.
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Walter (33:54)
And I didn’t think about this until you just mentioned it. It’s like, that’s exactly what was going on there. I was vision I was picturing my future of a successful future of I’m gonna carve this path down this hill. And and and next thing you know, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. You know, you know, now sometimes I catch an edge and you you know wipe out and all that kind of fun stuff, but right. But but I never I never hit the tree. I I never I never went over the edge.
Mary Ligon (33:56)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm, exactly. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Yeah, but you recover and get back up and you learn something and you get back up.
Yeah, you’re still here to talk about it.
Jeff Walter (34:23)
Right, like and yeah,
especially when I was a younger man, I did some really, you know, I
Mary Ligon (34:27)
Yeah, yeah. I used skiing too because
when I learned to ski I was in my 30s and I was afraid of it and I had a great teacher who, you know, she kept saying you’re looking at the bottom of the hill you’re freaking yourself out. I go well that’s where I’m going right. She goes no I’m gonna ski backwards you’re gonna go three feet to me.
And then she’d skate, she’d go further back, now just make it to me. Now just make it to me and pretty soon I was at the bottom of the hill. went, I made it to the bottom of the mountain. She goes, yeah, you’re freaking yourself out looking at the bottom of the mountain. Just look at what’s right in front of you and where you want to go. It’s very important. Skiing’s a really good metaphor for life. Yeah. Yeah.
Jeff Walter (34:56)
Yeah. And and
Well, I you know, I never put those two things together and when you said the you know jump into
the future and what’s a successful outcome look like for that event, I’m like, huh. And then all of a sudden the skiing thing just came to my mind. I’m like, Huh without without knowing it and without getting into the detail, it’s like there that that’s it that advice, which I’ve said for decades, best I’ve you I’ve told people that for decades.
Mary Ligon (35:07)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right, yeah.
Yeah, it’s a great metaphor. It’s wonderful. Yeah, yeah.
Jeff Walter (35:26)
No w
like just this last season there there was a you know, a boyfriend in the picture. And anyway, you know, in he’s in his in his early twenties and and you know, he doesn’t know how to ski, but his girlfriend does, right? And you know, and and you know, I was part of that party and I said, I’ll I’ll hang with you for today and I’ll
Mary Ligon (35:40)
Yeah.
Jeff Walter (35:46)
We’ll we’ll figure this out. And anyway, I told them that same thing. I was like, stop looking where you don’t want to go. Just look where you want to go. You know, you’ll you your body will take you there. And it’s and it’s the same, but it’s the same. But I never thought of the jump ahead at the success. Look back. It forces you to think about what success looks like. Because when I’m standing here frozen in fight or flight, I d I it it’s hard to see what success looks like. Success is don’t get eaten by the lion.
Mary Ligon (35:51)
Yeah, yeah,
Yes.
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Exactly.
Jeff Walter (36:15)
Right. Like
that but I don’t know if that’s beat it over the head with a stick or run away, right? Like I’m I’m I’m frozen, right? But if I jump ahead, I’m like, well success was I saw this way I could back away and slowly exit and not disturb it, or I had a piece of meat and I threw it fifteen feet in the opposite direction and I went like like all of a sudden I can see what success looks like. That’s
Mary Ligon (36:20)
Right. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Right. Right.
Right. Yeah. Another fun thing to do is get a real clear idea of what you want to happen. Right? I mean, that’s where I start with people. What do you want? How do you want it to be? Don’t tell me how you don’t want it to be right now. Just tell me what do you want? And what does that look like, feel like? Get real clear on what you want to happen. Right?
Jeff Walter (36:40)
Huh, that’s really interesting. Thank you, Mary. Appreciate that.
Right.
Yeah, so yeah, so
now let’s scale that ’cause let’s get back to leadership, right? Like and all of a sudden it’s something I I’ve I think
Mary Ligon (37:03)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Walter (37:06)
I I I’ve never put these pieces of the puzzle together, so it’s this is a really fun conversation. So thank you. but if you get back to the leadership, whether you’re the rah-rah leader or the quiet whisperer, and things you said earlier, it’s it sound like is it it’s it’s it is a similar type of approach? It’s like let me show you what success looks like. Like this is not we’re here going here and fraught with danger and lions and tigers and bears, my.
Mary Ligon (37:11)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Walter (37:34)
But is is is
If we’re talking about leadership, is it is it a similar type of approach of what you’re trying to do of like, here’s where we’re going to be, this is what it’s going to look and feel like, here’s what success looks and feels like for us as an organization. You know, it wasn’t just me escaping the lion, it’s a it’s a pride of lions came into the village. And here’s how all of us villagers, you know, successfully dealt with.
Mary Ligon (37:54)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Walter (38:01)
that threat and got to where we want to go and look, we’re over here now and and and we were able to get there through this means. Now it doesn’t mean that that was not fraught with challenges and and danger and and and all that, but here’s the path to getting you know, to getting is that i is i am I on the right track?
Mary Ligon (38:04)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Yeah, but what’s question?
Jeff Walter (38:23)
I I well I’m t I’m w what what popped in my head it wasn’t so much a question as it was a thought of huh, you could take that same approach and scale it. You know, like we that that that’s where I was going. Like is is yeah.
Mary Ligon (38:34)
sure. Yeah. For the whole organization. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For the whole organization, of course.
So if you’re Richard Branson, who he’s kind of famous for being very charismatic leader of his companies, and everybody seems to love him when they work for him because he’s fun. He’s a fun guy.
Jeff Walter (38:46)
Right.
Mary Ligon (38:50)
He has an idea or a vision of what he wants to do. Like when he decided to go into the airline business or when he decided to, you he jumped into a lot of different businesses, right? So he knew he had the vision. He knew he couldn’t do it by himself, right? So, but he had the vision. And I think leaders have to hold a vision and then be able to communicate that to the people they need to move that vision forward and make it real. Walt Disney.
Jeff Walter (38:56)
Right.
Uh-huh.
Mary Ligon (39:16)
His brother held the purse strings of the studios when he wanted to build Disneyland. They were making a lot of money off the cartoons. His brother went, I’m not going to give you the money for this. And he was like, but this is my vision. This is going to be great about the land across the street. We’re going to build this land. His brother was like, no, no, no. We’re doing fine with the studios. This is crazy. So he got a bunch of other people to help him invest.
Jeff Walter (39:34)
Interesting.
Mary Ligon (39:40)
because his brother wouldn’t give him the money. Right? Yeah. So he got it started that way and he was brilliant because he was already doing the Mickey Mouse Club in the Disney hour on TV. I’m old enough to have watched it, the Mickey Mouse Club.
Jeff Walter (39:42)
Huh. I I did not know that.
Mm-hmm.
Mary Ligon (39:55)
He had that all rolling, so everybody tuned on to that. I we didn’t have a lot of stations and a of things to watch in those days, so Walt Disney’s hour was great. So what he did was while he was building the park, he had cameras out there showing what they were doing and how wonderful it was gonna be at Walt Disneyland. So he did all of his promotion through the TV show that he was already doing.
Jeff Walter (40:17)
Uh-huh.
Mary Ligon (40:18)
His brother said, it’ll never happen, nobody will show up. He had so many people show up, it was crazy. It was the biggest show up of people ever on an opening of anything like that. That’s vision. He knew what he wanted. He knew, he believed in it. He even hired one of his cartoonists to come and draw it out. So the lands and what it was gonna be and all of that. That’s somebody who knows where they’re going.
Jeff Walter (40:28)
And that’s
Right.
Mary Ligon (40:41)
The next trick for that leader is getting, he can’t do it himself, obviously, is getting other people on board with that idea and feeling as passionate, enough passionate to lay their money down to put it together. Now that’s a strong leader. He had a vision, he shared that vision, he got people excited about that vision.
Jeff Walter (40:56)
Interesting.
Well, y yeah, the other thing, just listening to that also, is when you have that and it it and it’s that whole what does success look like looking backwards, right? Let’s like then you flip that around and it’s the vision going forward is that that I that I hadn’t thought about till just now is like, well, one people get excited about but but you’re going to attract a certain type of person to that particular vision and and you’re going to turn off
Mary Ligon (41:08)
Mm-hmm. Right.
Right?
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jeff Walter (41:28)
a certain type of person to that type of vision and you you almost get a self selection going on going like if I have a strong vision of what we want to do going forward, I will attract people that are attracted to that strong vision. I will re I it’ll be repelling to people that don’t think that that’s a strong vision. I i you know, in this case say his brother, right?
Mary Ligon (41:33)
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
Yeah, he was a beancater,
well he was the bean counter and he was looking at the beans. You know?
Jeff Walter (41:53)
Well and and and so that
you know, like that that vision was I I I he wasn’t on board with it, right? And he controlled the purse string, he’s like, Yeah, no, you’re not gonna take this. But but he attracted other people, other the investors, but also the the people to architect it, to design it, to think through you know, the thousands of people that had to bring it to fruition. And it’s interesting. I it’s a it’s almost a sorting type of thing. Yeah. Yeah, they came up with a new new term.
Mary Ligon (41:56)
Mm-hmm. No. Mm-hmm.
Right.
Yeah.
He even called them Imagineers. The people he hired were his Imagineers.
Jeff Walter (42:21)
Right. But it’s
Mary Ligon (42:21)
Because he wanted
people with imaginations. He didn’t want people that were being counters that went, well, we can’t do, this is what we can’t do. He wanted people said, well, this is what we can do.
Jeff Walter (42:30)
Right. Well and but I’m comparing it to say a a a poorly articulated vision. Right? Like whether you agreed with his vision or not, if you didn’t agree with it, you you wouldn’t be on board and you wouldn’t be part of it. If you did, you would be on board and you’d be part of it. And then you have a group of people that are strongly aligned with what you’re trying to achieve.
Mary Ligon (42:48)
Exactly,
and they would work for you for free if they didn’t need the money. They’d want to be a part of it, right?
Jeff Walter (42:52)
Right, if they didn’t have to make rent, right? Yep. E exactly. But but
if you have a getting back to the leadership thing and how how and scaling it, and and that’s why I like the whole idea of what you said before. Like, this scales, right? ‘Cause it turns into that vision. It turns into that what does it look like after we get there type of thing, but and then flip that around and here’s what it looks like going forward. But if you but if you don’t have that vision
Mary Ligon (43:00)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Walter (43:15)
then you have kind of a middle of the road, ill defined vision. Well you’re not gonna necessarily attract or d detract anybody in particular. So you’re just gonna have more of a random mix of folks because you’re not really clear about where you’re going. And so it’s just a good place to hang, you know, you’re a nice guy, you’re a nice you know, you’re de you know, you’re a great woman, you’re good boss, you know, you seem to treat people fairly and I’m just
Mary Ligon (43:19)
Exactly.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jeff Walter (43:42)
I’m I’m you know, it’s a nice place to hang out. Now I’m not I’m not invested in it. You know, you’re a good manager, right? But you’re not a leader. You because that we’re we’re we’re just kind of coasting on an you know, we’re on a cruise to nowhere, right? And and it when we’re having fun and it’s and it’s nice working with you. But but but you’re attracting you’re neither attracting nor d detracting people, and so you just give a mixed bag of people on this
Mary Ligon (43:51)
Right.
Yeah, Right.
Jeff Walter (44:07)
cruise to nowhere. And I you know, it’s interesting. I I I never thought about leadership from that perspective.
Mary Ligon (44:12)
The other
thing, the fun thing about that timeline, because I use the timeline a lot to work with people. We are the only beings that we know of that time travel in our mind all the time. Okay? So how often are you really present? You’re not very present very often. In fact, people have to train themselves to be present. So most of the time we’re either remembering things from the past or we’re out in the future making things up.
Jeff Walter (44:24)
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I well y you know, I I I heard that I I heard that once described as we’re the only four dimensional beings that we know of. Every other every other creature is a three dimensional. They live in three dimensional space in the now and yes, things yeah.
Mary Ligon (44:40)
Right?
Yeah, you’re… Yeah.
Yeah, that’s
why they’re so therapeutic to be around because they force us when we communicate with them and connect with them to be in the present moment. That’s why they’re therapeutic.
Jeff Walter (45:03)
Right. Yeah.
Yeah, it forces you to the now. ‘Cause I I can’t tell my dog my dog is not excited about we’re going on vacation up north this weekend and you’re gonna be running around the woods and it’s gonna be so much fun, you’ll be free, hundreds of acres of space to just run around as a No, she’s like, No, pet my belly
Mary Ligon (45:07)
Till now.
No.
No. Yes. Well, let’s take care of the business now. Let’s not worry about the business
in the future.
Jeff Walter (45:29)
Right. Yeah, yeah. But but you know, I I I
you know, I I would it be a fair you know, just trying to look at some some some takeaways here from a leadership perspective. And I think that, you know, y you’d mentioned some things before, like honest, trustworthy, not going to lie to you. but then also presents a very
you know, as well as you can define path to a future, which you can use the jumping the timeline and looking back as a way of helping craft the future, like yeah.
Mary Ligon (45:52)
Mm-hmm.
Exactly. So think of it this way. Think of it,
okay, you have finally decided what it is you want moving forward in your company. And you go out into your timeline to the successful completion of it, 15 minutes past the successful completion of it, and you could stay there and go, what are the things I did? Were there things that I took, the people I brought in, the steps I did to get here? So, right?
Jeff Walter (46:03)
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
Mary Ligon (46:22)
And
then come on back. I mean, you can play with this in a more positive way. We tend to, until you’re trained, and this is my job training people to use their brains differently.
Jeff Walter (46:24)
Yeah.
Right. Yeah.
Mary Ligon (46:36)
When we finally train our brain to think this way and focus this way, we get a lot more done. typically, percentage-wise, get our outcomes more consistently. And we’re in a good upstate when we’re doing it most of the time. And if things do show up that are challenging, we have the ability, because we’re in a good positive state most of the time, to handle those challenges and to work through them.
Jeff Walter (46:47)
Right.
Yeah.
Mary Ligon (47:01)
I went on, have you ever gone river rafting?
Jeff Walter (47:03)
Yes, yeah. Yeah.
Mary Ligon (47:04)
Okay, well I
went river rafting once and I’ve never done it before. And there was this wonderful guy that did this three-day river rafting thing and he also taught yoga. And so you’d go on the river raft, you’d stop, he’d do yoga and his wife would show up with tents and she’d cook for us and we’d do yoga and then we’d get back on the river thing, right? Well, I’d never done it. So the first time we’re out on the boat with this guy, he goes, look, we had two, I think we had two or three boats. So he was on one and then we have these other ones that we were on.
goes, here’s what I’m going to tell you. When you come up toward the rapids, you want to make sure that your raft is not going sideways or backwards because it’ll flip. And he goes, I know this is counterintuitive, but what you want to do is point it right at the danger. Right at it.
Jeff Walter (47:37)
Right.
Hmm.
Mary Ligon (47:49)
And we’re like, why? And he goes, because it’s magic. I said, what do you mean? Because when you do that, as you get closer to it, you’re going to see the path through the rocks. You’re going to see what you need to do to navigate right through them. It’ll just appear to you. And he was right. So a lot of times people don’t want to look at the danger ahead. They avoid it.
Jeff Walter (48:06)
Interesting. Interesting.
Mm-hmm.
Mary Ligon (48:10)
Instead of going, well, what danger is really there? It’s kind of like what they do in the military when they’re making decisions. What’s the danger? What are we going to do about it? Right? They don’t go, well, let’s pretend it’s not there and just hope that it works out. Right? They don’t bury their head in the sand. They look directly at it.
Jeff Walter (48:20)
Yeah.
Ha ha.
Well, it it feels like that that that’s tied to the the the way forward, the vision forward like it
Like you gotta we we’re going down this river. You gotta face the fear, but also the the facing it will expose the solution. I’ve got this vision of where we’re gonna go forward. I don’t know what rapids we’re going to hit, but when we hit them, when we hit those challenges, we hit head on and and we will figure out a way to navigate our way through them. And interesting.
Mary Ligon (48:37)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Exactly. And you know, eventually I figured out
how to fun doing it. It was fun.
Jeff Walter (49:02)
Yeah. Well, you know, I’m I’m I’m trying to bring it back to
well like it i I’m I’m thinking of that franchisee now, right? Like interest like you know less lessons for them and and and what just like it it it is really it this has been really interesting because I in my brain I’m like my brain’s firing all over the place in ways that you that you can institutionalize this. it’s it’s and and this goes to I’m I’m I’m
Mary Ligon (49:22)
Right.
Jeff Walter (49:26)
My brain’s firing all over the place. But but it it it goes to as a franchisee, you’re you’re getting a system of business, but it’s a it’s a but you have to figure out in your head what what’s your vision. And and that sounds counterintuitive because you’d usually think of like, where it’s a it’s a brand X franchise. And so we just do whatever brand X does, right? And and
Mary Ligon (49:44)
Right. Mm-hmm.
Jeff Walter (49:48)
You know, and maybe you’re aligned with the values of that brand and what they do and what and the service and it but but it’s giving you a starting point. It’s not a destination. Right? And and and so with from a leadership perspective, it w what are we all doing here? Are we just doing here so you can make a nickel and and and you know, put your kids through college and pay your mortgage? Or are we or are we doing something are we going somewhere?
Mary Ligon (50:03)
Mm-hmm.
Right?
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Jeff Walter (50:13)
Is this
a vehicle to go somewhere? And if so, where are we going? Even even though it’s a brand X franchise. Right? And and where you’re what you’re doing with your Brand X franchise and where you where you want to go with it, and where I want to go with my brand X franchise can be two different things. Right? You might sit there and go, Well, I want to be a multi-unit owner. I want to build this large organization of a thousand people. I’m starting with Brand X. I’ll open up a bunch of those stores. I’ve got investors.
Mary Ligon (50:18)
Right.
Jeff Walter (50:38)
and then I’m gonna also look at brand Y and brand Z. And next thing I know, I have a hundred units with a thousand people, and you know, and and I’ve created career paths for people because now I built a whole organization across the country. And I might be sitting there going, I I just want to make a decent living. I really love brand X. I love what they stand for, and I’m I’m more of a lifestyle guy. I want to have a certain type of lifestyle. I want to be able to, you know, pick my kids up after soccer.
Mary Ligon (50:41)
Right.
Right.
Mm-hmm. Right.
Jeff Walter (51:04)
I want to be you know, I want to have a nice environment. I want to be surrounded by people I like working with, and I really enjoy the brand. And so I’m going to but if I articulate that as a vision for joining my unit versus say your unit, I’m gonna attract a different type of person. Even though we’re the same we’re both brand X, right? I’ll attract a certain type of person if I have that stronger vision, that leadership of
Mary Ligon (51:21)
Right?
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Walter (51:28)
This is what it’s like to be here at our location. Whereas you’re going to attract a different type of person, still the same brand, still the same values of the brand and the services, but you’re going to attract a different type of person ’cause you’re like, I’m building this large multi unit thing. You’re you can you can have a huge career here. and it’s a and and that attracts a different type of person.
Mary Ligon (51:30)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Well does. Where are you? Where did you tell me you live? Okay, so in California there’s a franchise, it’s a small one called In-N-Out Burger. okay, now they, I love it. I don’t eat fast food. was the only place I ever ate fast food, really.
Jeff Walter (51:52)
I’m in Ann Arbor.
I’m familiar with them. They’re awesome. They as a consumer, they’re delicious.
Mary Ligon (52:07)
And I miss it because it’s consistent, it’s real food, and the people that you connect with while they’re working there are nice. They’re nice. They want to please you. They want you to have a good experience. And I don’t know if it’s because they’ve kept it small because they don’t have that many stores. Also Chick-fil-A. They attract a certain type of employee. You know?
Jeff Walter (52:23)
Right.
Well it it
yeah. W yeah well it’s that strong value system, but it’s not just the values, it’s also where you’re going with this and what’s the what’s the purpose, which are are
Mary Ligon (52:31)
Yeah. Yeah.
Right, right. And I think when
McDonald’s started, it was that way, because I remember the first McDonald’s, because I went to it in Chatsworth, California when I was a kid. It was like a big experience. I remember my father took me. It was like a big deal. I still remember that as a father, daughter outing to go to this McDonald’s. It was crazy.
But then it turned into this huge, it’s all over the world. And to keep consistency and when you scale that big, whoo, that’s tough. That’s tough. Yeah, it’s a tough one.
Jeff Walter (53:09)
So so shifting gears a little, Mary, what what’s next for you and and your company? What’s the future hold?
Mary Ligon (53:11)
Mm-hmm.
Well, you know, I’ve been in my creative mode lately and I used to teach NLP trainings.
certification trainings where you can learn all these. Neuro-linguistic programming is a model created by Richard Bandler and Grender. Grender was a linguistics professor at Santa Cruz University and Bandler was a student there but he was into computers and science and he got involved with the 70s movement of these psychologists that were breaking away from the Freudian theories. And they were getting all these incredible changes
Jeff Walter (53:23)
and what is NLP? Okay.
Okay.
Mary Ligon (53:49)
with people fast. Milton Erickson, Virginia Satir, Gregory Bates, had gestalt therapy, he was using hypnosis, Milton Erickson, Virginia Satir was the first person to work with family units. It was changing rapidly and they were getting these amazing fast results with people. And they began to study them. And they created a model from that of
Jeff Walter (54:07)
Uh-huh.
Right.
Mary Ligon (54:13)
Neuro-linguistic programming, how linguistics, the language we use, affects state. These pictures that we run, these things we say to ourselves, exactly. And these behaviors that run automatically that get started, that’s the programming part. So we all have things that are, we used to call it habits. My mom instilled with me, you brush your teeth when you get up in the morning and you never go to bed without brushing your teeth. I can’t go to sleep if I don’t brush my teeth.
Jeff Walter (54:30)
Uh-huh.
Mary Ligon (54:38)
That’s a program. It’ll bug me till I get up and brush my teeth. So our unconscious mind tries to make things easier. Your brain doesn’t want to work too hard. So once we learn something, it gets relegated to the unconscious mind as a behavior. you’ve had children, you have children. Remember babies, they can’t even get their thumb into their mouth because they don’t know how to use any of these muscles yet. Well now if I want my tea, I just pick it up.
Jeff Walter (54:52)
Right. Yes, yeah. Yeah.
Right. And
Mary Ligon (55:03)
I don’t
have to tell 159 muscles what to do.
Jeff Walter (55:06)
And you’re picking up and and and you might even just be sideway glancing at it. You’re not even focused on it.
Mary Ligon (55:10)
Exactly. Exactly.
Those, all those things are great because we don’t have to relearn them every time we go to do them. We never get anything done. So once we learn it, we’ve got it. That’s all awesome if it’s a good program or I call it a resourceful program. Many times we also pick up programs that worked as children, like having a temper tantrum got us what we wanted. Doesn’t look too good on a 30 year old at work.
Jeff Walter (55:26)
Interesting.
Right.
Right.
Mary Ligon (55:37)
But it’s a program.
Jeff Walter (55:38)
So so neural linguistic programming, if if I he hear what you’re saying, it’s it’s using language, linguistics, to create those images we were talking about before, the stories that you t say to yourself, which is the n the neural part, to create habits or programs. Yeah.
Mary Ligon (55:43)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, we create programs and also
we create feelings with them. And the idea of it was when people show up for therapy, basically they’re running programs that make them feel bad. And they’re running programs that create behavior that isn’t working for them out in the world or in relationships or making money or whatever, right?
Jeff Walter (56:02)
Right.
Interesting.
Right.
Right, like like the the
the thirty year old that has a temper tantrum. Right.
Mary Ligon (56:22)
Right, it’s not working
for them. And so instead of looking at it like psychiatrists do, you’re sick or neurotic, these people went, no, no, no, they’re just running the wrong programs. And if we teach them how to retrain their brain to write, to use the right programs, they’re gonna have a better life. So it’s not therapy, it’s basically retraining people’s focus and brains in a different way so that they get better results in life.
Jeff Walter (56:46)
I i a qu question
is is that the i is that the physiological underpinning of of the behavioralist yeah, like like it sounds like behavioralism was more you know, from a psycho from a psychology standpoint.
Mary Ligon (56:55)
It came from behavioralism to a certain degree, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Walter (57:03)
was an observed thing, and now you get to l neuro linguistic programming is what’s actually happening under the surface of behavioralism. Like
Mary Ligon (57:09)
Right. Well, take a look at,
like we said, Pavlov and the dogs. It happens in humans. In marketing, people use it all the time. You see the yellow arches, and you think, McDonald’s, I think I’m hungry. You see that, and all of our brands do it, they’re anchors, like Nike, that little check mark. They don’t even have to put the name Nike under it anymore. It’s just a check that’s Nike. That’s an anchor.
Jeff Walter (57:14)
Right.
A little swish.
Right.
Mary Ligon (57:34)
We’ve seen the commercials, they’ve set them to give us a certain emotional thing like the McDonald’s commercials where all the people are all there for breakfast and the old man talking to the little kids and then, you know, that’s the McDonald’s feeling. Now you see the Golden Arches, you get those feelings. Those are anchors.
Jeff Walter (57:51)
And is that
and when you say anchors, is that the neuralug is that basically the advertiser doing neuro linguistic programming on scale?
Mary Ligon (57:58)
Exactly.
It’s basically behavioralism. They’ve been using it before NLP existed. All these guys did with NLP was they looked at what all these people were doing in marketing, in propaganda, in all these social, you know, when you look at the Milgram experiments and all of these things, looking, how do you get people to do what you want them to do, knee-jerk? And marketers have been using it for years. They still do.
Jeff Walter (58:04)
Right.
Right. Right. Mm-hmm.
Right.
Interesting.
Mary Ligon (58:24)
Take a look at what now it’s really hitting us really hard now with social media because they really have our algorithms of what makes the brain light up over and over again with ludic loops. Like if you go to Vegas, I lived in Vegas for a while because the company, Tad James Company was in Vegas when I was working for him the last time. They set those machines up so you get to win randomly. That’s what keeps you playing, right?
Jeff Walter (58:43)
Yeah. Yeah. Not
not so much actually. Yeah.
Mary Ligon (58:48)
Yeah, well, I don’t I don’t I was
okay in Vegas because I don’t gamble. I’d rather go buy something and wear it or whatever. But yeah, yeah. And they’re doing the same thing with the algorithms on TikTok and Facebook. And then they figure out what do you tend to look at longer. And if you like, I like animals. So now they give me cute animals all the time. I had so many cute animals coming at me.
Jeff Walter (58:51)
Yeah. But but yes. Well no, no, the r the randomness. It’s random. call circle back. Yeah. Yeah.
Right. Yeah, it’s it’s it’s funny on the algorithms, I
I I will explicitly try and tweak the algorithm in a direction to see how much it how much attention does it take.
Mary Ligon (59:18)
I don’t… Yeah,
yeah.
Jeff Walter (59:21)
To do like
like, okay, cute animals or stand up comedians or your or give me the news or I or I want to focus on this thing and I’ll just go like, like, like, like, and then next thing know, my feed is flooded with that. And then I’ll it but but it’s funny when you brought up the casino and you said random, just to circle back on it. Cause it goes it’s this exact same thing. So one of my old colleagues, this is a a while ago, he ended up being director of IT for a casino.
Mary Ligon (59:24)
Yes. Yes.
All
Exactly, exactly.
Mm-hmm.
ha ha ha ha!
Jeff Walter (59:50)
And
and you know, and and they’ve got all the stimuli there. It’s and it’s all to do exact it’s the neuro linguistic programming, right?
Mary Ligon (59:55)
Yep. not only
that, you can’t find your way out the door there. They make it so confusing you have to ask how to get out of the casino.
Jeff Walter (1:00:02)
Yeah, so but here was the thing that was
really br like I thought like and this was twenty years ago, right? So this is the thing that I thought was like, no reason to ever go to a casino, right? He goes, Hey, if you ever go to a casino, never hit the slot machines by the bathroom. Because they’re programmed to pay out the they have the worst payout. Because basically those nobody wants to sit by the bathroom.
Mary Ligon (1:00:08)
Yeah.
Yeah
Jeff Walter (1:00:24)
So the only people playing those are the people waiting for somebody to come out of the bathroom. So they’re actually programmed to not really have a good payout. He goes, All the machines at the front of the casino as you walk in, they’re all programmed to have a higher win with a lower pot. So lots of small wins. So that there’s all this excitement when you come in because more off because people are winning more often.
Mary Ligon (1:00:24)
Uh-huh.
Yeah. Yeah, but you still hear the bells go off.
Jeff Walter (1:00:47)
But they’re win they’re winning little itty bitty pots. Right. But you hear the bells go off, they
go, Yay. And so a it and and and and then you know and you know, and if you so if you’re interested in like, you know, hitting a jackpot, you want to g you want to hit the ones in the interior and not on the edges and and I’m like, my god, it you know, here I am naively thinking, Well, you know, a slot machine is a slot machine is a slot machine. This machine has the same probability of of winning and losing as this one.
Mary Ligon (1:01:04)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mm.
Jeff Walter (1:01:16)
And he’s like, no. They’re all programmed to now from a regulatory standpoint, they have to, you know, hit a certain payout. you know, and they they publish, you know, ninety-eight percent or whatever the number is. But within the network, they have they’re they’re they’re using those techniques. Anyway, it’s just when when you said that, I was
Mary Ligon (1:01:28)
Yes.
And they
do everything possible to keep you there. They have no windows, so you don’t know what time it is. So there’s time distortion. They create time distortion.
Jeff Walter (1:01:35)
Yeah. Yeah. Right, no clocks.
it’s a very interesting physical manifestation. Well,
it it it takes back to it it goes back to what you were saying with the NLP, which is okay, there’s a very f dramatic physical example of trying to program you, right? And
Mary Ligon (1:01:54)
Yeah, right. And by
the way, Richard Bandler and Grindr were called in to do a lot of work for the military. In fact, when I worked with Tad James, I got calls from the military that wanted me to send Tad out to do some things with them. So it’s not that the government isn’t aware of the power of it. And Tony Robbins for years didn’t say that he was using NLP.
But lately, he is finally saying, yeah, my whole foundation of all my work has been NLP.
Jeff Walter (1:02:20)
Well, I I I think yeah, look and I it as as you were explaining to me and I went into behavioralism, my my my my late wife was a behavioralist psychologist. And and I was like that’s the that’s the underlying operating system that actually drives that. You know, and that’s that’s why I asked the question. I was like, it’s it and then you read a book like Talmac Habitz and they’re not saying it.
Mary Ligon (1:02:25)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yep.
Jeff Walter (1:02:45)
But that’s what’s going on underneath, right? And it’s that’s fascinating. And then
Mary Ligon (1:02:46)
Right? Yeah. Yeah. You know,
our government has been studying how to manipulate people for a long time.
Jeff Walter (1:02:54)
Yeah, well I I would say I I wouldn’t limit it to our government. You know, I’d say we but well but but it’s inter well, the interesting thing is it but but also get yes, but it also gets back to what you said at the beginning of the the episode, from a leadership perspective is are you being manipulated i in that you’re being lied to, you’re being
Mary Ligon (1:02:55)
Yeah. Well, all governments, but we’re pretty good at it though. You’re pretty good at it. Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Right.
Jeff Walter (1:03:19)
you know, your that your the the authority is not being honest, they don’t have your best interest at heart. or or or are you using those techniques to help bring out the best in you and and allow you to do things that you didn’t think you were capable of?
Mary Ligon (1:03:26)
Right?
A lot of people say about NLP, that it’s manipulative. And I go, can be, if your intention is to manipulate. But you don’t have to be trained in NLP to manipulate people. There have been great manipulators who have never taken neuro-linguistic programming. So it is a system or a technique or something you can learn. And I use some of it in teaching leaders how to influence and how to.
Jeff Walter (1:03:48)
Right.
Mary Ligon (1:03:57)
how to not just their own state, but how to influence states and people who are listening to them. Politicians. If you take Obama’s speeches, he was well trained in neuro-linguistic programming. mean, so well that you, one of the NLP trainers broke down a lot of his speeches of what he was doing. He does pacing, matching and mirroring. He does generalizations. He does vagaries. He does anchoring. He’s, I mean, he was really good at it.
Jeff Walter (1:04:03)
Right.
Mary Ligon (1:04:27)
versus Kamala who was trying to do it but it turned into a word, Sally, because she didn’t do it well. Okay, so because I know language patterns and I understand how they’re used when you’re talking to people. I went on stage and used them with people. Obama was brilliant and he got to be president for eight years, right? He was very good at it. Kamala tried to use those techniques but she couldn’t master it.
Jeff Walter (1:04:33)
interesting.
Right.
It you know, it’s interesting I I I love those examples ’cause you didn’t go left right. You just stuck with one party to kind of draw the the the difference. And it’s interesting ’cause I’m like i I mean totally off topic, but it’s the interesting thing I I I remember when she first came on the scene back in the twenty sixteen primaries. Yo, or yo and I’m like, this could be a very interesting person, right?
Mary Ligon (1:04:57)
Mm-hmm. No, yeah.
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Walter (1:05:18)
you know, from a DA perspective, you know, s senator, like just, you know, whatever my politics are, but this could be an interesting person. Interesting background, very accomplished, haven’t heard of her. And then the word salad. Like I was like, what and I and and I had this cognitive distance in my head about her. I’m like, how did you become so accomplished? You’re obviously
Mary Ligon (1:05:21)
Right.
Right. Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah, just didn’t none of it made sense. Yeah.
That’s what I was
thinking. thought, how’d she get to be a, you know, a de… Yeah. I know. I know. Right.
Jeff Walter (1:05:47)
Yeah. Like like like yes, like I’m like look, like whatever your politics are, you don’t
get to those levels by being an idiot. Right? Like you you’re a smart person.
Mary Ligon (1:05:58)
No, yeah. And
then you take a Tulsi Gabbard who is brilliant at speeches. She’s brilliant at it. I listen to people not about their politics, it’s how they communicate. Right, I go and use to watch both sides, every side of it because I wanna see what kind of communicator they are.
Jeff Walter (1:06:05)
Yeah.
Yeah, interesting.
Right.
Mary Ligon (1:06:17)
And
Tulsi is, I mean, she’s solid. She never gets rattled. She keeps, she never, for a female, and I’ve trained females all the time on how to talk so that men will actually listen to them. Men won’t listen to high voices and statements where you go, my mother is at the end of the, they go up. So for women, I try to teach them to make statements or go down when they want to, because men won’t listen to it. There’s something inside them.
Jeff Walter (1:06:28)
Mm-hmm.
Mary Ligon (1:06:44)
male that tunes women out when they’re up in those high ranges. Tulsi has that down. She, if you listen to her, she has a very calm lower tone that she uses. She doesn’t go up and down a lot. She pauses. She does very much like Obama did. She has very definite pauses where it’s where she wants to really hit it and then she moves on. It’s not because she’s slow. She’s doing it on purpose. When you do a pause,
Jeff Walter (1:06:47)
interesting.
Uh-huh.
Mary Ligon (1:07:08)
The person waits for you to say the next thing and they open up and kind of go into a little trance, the pause trance. So the next thing that you say is going to go in. And if you listen to Obama, he was brilliant at the pause.
Jeff Walter (1:07:16)
Interesting.
Interesting. Very very interesting. Right.
Mary Ligon (1:07:20)
Yeah, so that’s all NLP. I have
attorneys hire me. I went on a podcast with the interesting attorneys and they wanted, had attorneys hire me to teach them a lot of these techniques to use in the courtroom and when they’re negotiating with other attorneys, how to make the judge like them better. We tend to do things for people that we like.
Jeff Walter (1:07:33)
Uh-huh.
Mary Ligon (1:07:41)
And if we can get an instant rapport with people quickly, they will tend to do things for us that they wouldn’t do for other people.
Jeff Walter (1:07:49)
Very interesting. So so back so back to so it sounds like I I I asked what what was what was coming down the future, what was next for you? yeah
Mary Ligon (1:07:58)
I
want to create trainings that are more designed for specific outcomes for people. So I’m working on a good sales training for helping people be amazing salespeople and enjoy it and ethically doing it so that they’re finding out what that person really needs.
Jeff Walter (1:08:03)
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Mary Ligon (1:08:15)
and seeing and blending into their values, finding out what their values are, what does that person really need, what’s their real pain point, and can my product or service serve them?
Jeff Walter (1:08:23)
Mm-hmm.
Mary Ligon (1:08:26)
and how to make it more of a consultive coaching type of sales process, which works beautifully. That’s how I did so well in sales. the other ones I’m going to do is also, I call it the power switch system, is I want to train coaches in what I do.
Jeff Walter (1:08:40)
Uh-huh.
Mary Ligon (1:08:42)
in my system of doing it and teach them the skills that I use when I work with people, both one-on-one and in groups. So I’ll be doing that. And then I have a couple weekends to give it people introduce them into these skills so they get an experience of it. I have one that’s a two-day weekend where they pick one area of their life where they want to make a big change, where they feel stuck. And we blast through that for them in two days so that they get a breakthrough.
working kind of more on that and then I do a lot of one-on-one right now with people so that keeps me busy. Yeah.
Jeff Walter (1:09:12)
So it’s ex it it well that’s exciting. Well I mean there’s a lot well there’s a lot of good
there’s a lot of really good things in there and I lo I like the idea of the switch and and growing the network because I the the the you know again back to the N N L P and and the manipulation, it’s like well any technique can be used in a in a negative way in the short run. But what blow is
Mary Ligon (1:09:28)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Sure.
Jeff Walter (1:09:38)
blows me away is that if you if you do the right thing in the l if you do the right thing for the right reasons, in the long run it always seems to work out very well for the individual. And that’s how you actually scale performance and and have it sustainable. And then these techniques are used to bring everyone along and you know, I think it’s it’s exciting.
Mary Ligon (1:09:50)
Right. Right.
Exactly. Yeah. And I have
worked with people in a sales process where really when I got down to it, what I had to offer wasn’t what they needed in that moment. And I’ll refer them to somebody that could help them with what their real problem was that was not something that I’d solved.
Jeff Walter (1:10:14)
Yeah. So
so Mary, i i if folks want to get a hold of you, what’s the best way to get a hold of you?
Mary Ligon (1:10:20)
They can get a hold of me on my website, Izzy Z’s way, and fill out that form to do a consultation with me. MaryLagon.com or they can go to MaryLagonCO.com. Either way will get them there.
Jeff Walter (1:10:27)
And the website is
All right, and we’ll make sure we put a a link to that in the show notes. and Mary, thank you so much. I I it it it was a really interesting conversation because and it it I I’m I’m it’s gonna take me a while to process it all. But but well, because leadership is one of the we talked a lot about leadership and we went really down into a rabbit hole there. It’s one of those things that everybody says
Mary Ligon (1:10:38)
Mm-hmm. All right.
Yeah.
Jeff Walter (1:11:00)
They understand what it means at the surface, but not as you get below it. And and as we as we went down there, it really started sparking a bunch of thoughts in my head in terms of, huh, like okay, I can start to see not only how you do it on a one on one basis or on a small group basis, but to a different degree how you actually would scale that and
Mary Ligon (1:11:03)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Right?
Yeah, don’t.
Jeff Walter (1:11:22)
And and I and
I and going back to where Richard is just I think one of the big challenges in these ecosystems, these partner ecosystems, is is how do you do that at scale? And I do believe that those leadership skills, those soft skills, those power skills, whatever we want to call them, you know, I I really think they actually are a huge competitive advantage.
Mary Ligon (1:11:32)
Mm-hmm.
they are. the other thing is once they might be motivated to learn them for the business, but it’ll also improve their personal life. Yeah.
Jeff Walter (1:11:50)
That’s the other thing I you know,
I I I I I I I’ve I’ve interviewed a couple of people on on leadership lately and and it’s yes, a hundred percent. It’s like it doesn’t stop at the at the office door. Like it it translates into your home.
Mary Ligon (1:11:55)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
No, no, it improves the relationships
with their spouses and their kids and their neighbors and their friends and their family. It translates all the way through their life. yeah. Hey, thanks for having me on. We had fun.
Jeff Walter (1:12:10)
Yeah, that’s very cool. Very cool. Well Mary, thank you so much for spending time with me. I appreciate it. It was it was a lot of fun. So thank you. Thank
you. And and to everybody out there, thanks for listening and we’ll catch you next time.