MindShift: Unlocking Innovation and Humanity in the Age of AI

Jim Marous (00:10):

Welcome to Banking Transformed, the top podcast in retail banking. I'm your host, Jim Marous. Today, we're joined by Brian Solis, the Head of Digital Innovation at ServiceNow, and the author of the new book Mindshift.

Jim Marous (00:23):

In this episode, we explore the critical insights from Brian's latest work, which offers a roadmap for corporate executives and just regular human beings trying to navigate the complexities of leadership and innovation in an era of unprecedented change.

Jim Marous (00:39):

We discuss how leaders can find clarity amidst uncertainty, harness the power of AI while maintaining a human touch, and leverage customer experiences as a competitive advantage. From redefining leadership in the digital age to embracing disruption as an opportunity for growth, Brian's book Mindshift provides a fresh perspective on thriving in today's rapidly evolving business landscape.

Jim Marous (01:06):

Banking is being challenged more than ever by the need for digital transformation, changing consumer expectations and disruptive competition. Brian's Solis' insight from his new book, Mindshift on balancing AI with human touch, driving innovation, and maintaining trust provides a valuable framework for banking leaders trying to navigate an increasingly complex and rapidly evolving financial landscape.

Jim Marous (01:33):

So, Brian, this is not the first time you've been with us. In fact, you've joined us, I think almost every year since our podcast started. Because you're a futurist, you got a really good handle on the pace of what's going on in the marketplace, you're an ongoing learner which I admire you tremendously for because it's what I try to do, either by learning on my own or surrounding myself by people that do the learning for me.

Jim Marous (01:56):

But can you discuss a little bit about the personal and business transformation that's going on right now? Maybe how AI and generative AI has really helped motivate or move that even faster and how does your new book help leaders become future ready?

Brian Solis (02:18):

All in one question, Jim.

Jim Marous (02:20):

Oh, I know. We figured we’d cut to the chase.

Brian Solis (02:23):

Well, first of all, it's great to see you and thank you for having me back and it's with good reason because this new book, it's my first in five years and it is my first book that actually gets into the heart of my work throughout my career, which is studying trends, well identifying trends, studying them, ranking them as to which are longer, shorter-term trends and which are viable at all.

Brian Solis (02:54):

What moves into a separate area for later tracking, and then how to scenario plan around them so that you're not reacting to them when they happen, that you're proactively future proofing your organization towards them and if they don't plan out, then it's better than not being ready but the exercise itself, it's a discipline.

Brian Solis (03:15):

It makes you stronger, and it's also, it affects every part of your organization in terms of how you lead, how you engage customers, how you engage employees, so it's just a general good practice to have from the top down and the bottom up and side to side.

Brian Solis (03:26):

So, with that said, there's a section, I think it's in the first chapter that breaks out every massive, disruptive trend that played out going back, I think, to 1994 with Amazon.com. I could have gotten further than that, but I just didn't want to make it monotonous.

Brian Solis (03:45):

But if you look at Amazon and Uber and Meta and Ray-Ban sunglasses, or you look at ChatGPT, Spotify, iTunes, every single one of those have been disruptive. The 2007 launch of the iPhone was a big disruptor.

Brian Solis (04:06):

But what I draw to in that chapter is that each one of these in their own right should have been transformative for banking or for any business. But instead, what we did and what we're doing right now with ChatGPT and generative AI in general, is we are bringing it in to business as usual.

Brian Solis (04:29):

We are scaling yesterday's mindsets and yesterday's processes and yesterday's products and services toward tomorrow, much in the same way we've done going all the way back to the industrial revolution and there's nothing wrong with that, but you have to balance it with disrupting yourself as well.

Brian Solis (04:47):

Because if you're not willing to give yourself the gift of disruption, someone else will give it to you. And it's not a matter of if, it's always a matter of when, and this is a proactive exercise that the book tries to teach you, is that at some point these trends are not adaptable, they require a control, alt, delete moment and the question you have to constantly ask yourself is, “How do you want to reboot?”

Brian Solis (05:17):

So, I believe we were able to get away with it. I'll give you an example, 2007 iPhone, we've got a new screen, we've got a new format. It's on the go, it goes with you everywhere, for better or worse. And we just said, "Well, rather than creating a net new experience on an entirely new platform, we're going to take our existing websites and make them adaptive and responsive to this device."

Brian Solis (05:45):

That should have been our TikTok moment where you create something net new and intuitive and amazing that takes advantage of the platform itself. You look at generative AI, you look at AI as well, just historically, and we are using it like RPA, we are using it much in the same way we did with digital transformation to automate yesterday's processes.

Brian Solis (06:11):

Like with digital transformation, we digitized yesterday's analog processes to be more efficient, scalable, faster, cheaper, better, et cetera. Nothing wrong with that. But again, what the book is teaching you is that to an extent you can make yesterday better today.

Brian Solis (06:28):

But at some point, like with generative AI, you now have a technology that gives you the ability to do what you couldn't do yesterday. And that's an entirely new type of conversation to have, a new mental model to build, to play with and new frameworks to introduce as you consider what augmented intelligence looks like.

Brian Solis (06:56):

So, with people, with AI, with agents, rather than just scaling yesterday. So, that's where we net, it's a big answer because it's a big question. It's where we net out to today, is that you look at all of the challenges facing banks and just financial services in general.

Brian Solis (07:16):

Whether it's security, AI, risk and compliance, operational resilience, all of these things have to be solved for, but it is how we solve for them and the outcomes we want to achieve that makes a mind shift so powerful right now.

Jim Marous (07:39):

It's interesting Brian, because the title is intriguing because we talked about it before, that both of us truly believe in ongoing learning. That the only way we can stay relevant in life is to continually update our thought patterns and continually grab onto the what's next or at least be prepared for it.

Jim Marous (07:59):

I think what's interesting about your title Mindshift is it's not about simply automating what you've done before, it's really shifting your mind. As you said, early in your response to my last question, it's about a reboot and that is really something that's so difficult until you make it part of your habits.

Jim Marous (08:22):

I look at myself and I worked in the banking industry forever. I worked at serving the banking industry forever but 15 years ago, is when I did a real mind shift and said, "The only way to stay relevant is to somehow make it obligational on my part to say I'm going to learn every day." And the way I did that was I build a platform to write about, talk about, present about the change in the marketplace by actually living those.

Jim Marous (08:50):

My wife did a mind shift when in retail, she started this store-based retail industry and had to completely shift her mind to accept digital sales, digital retail. My son was a baseball player until eighth grade and so he walked off the field and said, "Mom, dad, this is my last baseball game," which completely threw us off.

Jim Marous (09:09):

But he said, "I'm going to be a very, very good lacrosse player," he completely changed sports. In completely different ways, each one of these took a mind shift as opposed to simply a slight behavioral change.

Jim Marous (09:27):

We also find that when people are trying to lose weight or get more fit, that you can't just talk about it. It's not impossible, but you're going against momentum. You're going against status quo, what you're comfortable with and you really have to change your entire mindset in a shifting way to get there.

Jim Marous (09:46):

So, you discussed finding clarity in an era of uncertainty. What strategies can executives use to achieve that clarity and to make confident decisions about the uncertain future?

Brian Solis (10:01):

Yes, there is a Donald Rumsfeld quote that I model in the book as a mental exercise for everyone. And it starts like this, "The center is, I know what I know, the next realm is I know what I don't know," and that is typically where we tend to operate.

Brian Solis (10:26):

I know what I know, my experiences, my successes, my failures, lessons learned, and I know what I don't know is sort of that guardrail to protect us from uncertainty because the outer realm is, I don't know what I don't know and we tend not to play there.

Brian Solis (10:49):

So, the middle and the outer layer there, I know what I know, and I know what I don't know, that is our governing system, that's our core set of fundamental assumptions, conventions that we make in any given scenario.

Brian Solis (11:08):

So, when generative AI hits in November 2022, we then just instinctively say, "Let's explore how we could use this and take advantage of it today for our business to be better tomorrow." The outer realm, what we don't know, we don't know, is where opportunity lies, that is uncertainty.

Brian Solis (11:31):

And we have been hit with several waves of uncertainty, and I don't think we've actually tried to do anything about it other than make it the new normal. So, think I’ll just do the last two.

Brian Solis (11:45):

So, we'll do COVID in 2020, generative AI in 2022, yet the questions we could be asking is, “How does generative AI, or how will it challenge my fundamental conventions of how we operate, how we sell, how we serve, how we ideate, create, innovate?”

Brian Solis (12:09):

Because asking different questions like, what if, why not, why can't we, exploring this new realm in new regards and the book introduces questions and models to follow this in a very approachable way. I didn't want to make people have to get all geeked out and overwhelmed by it. I wanted people to feel like it was embraceable because we need more people to start thinking this way.

Brian Solis (12:33):

So, once you start exploring this realm of uncertainty, you start to find answers, and you can layer those answers, you can make it as overwhelming as you want or as simple as you want. But the point is, is to take new steps in these new directions, to find those answers, to experiment, to pilot whatever, anything that people do in innovation, this is not new to them.

Brian Solis (12:58):

But once you start exploring these questions and answers, what you're doing is you're making it tangible and what you're doing is subconsciously and consciously, you're finding clarity in uncertainty. You are actually finding ways to move in new directions in the unknown.

Brian Solis (13:22):

And as you start taking these steps, you could still be doing everything else you're doing, but as you're starting to take these next steps, you're actually charting a new path forward. So, I'd like to just give you a hand drawn model of what that looks like over time.

Brian Solis (13:39):

So, if we continue with business as usual, and we do it great, generative AI, for example, we use it to automate, save money, be more efficient, et cetera, we're creating a linear growth path. So, what we've done very well, that's what businesses are designed to do, the good ones.

Brian Solis (13:57):

But now that you start asking new questions, and now you take the performance power of generative AI in its ability to augment what you do, which is what you couldn't do yesterday without it, you do this and now you're creating a net new growth path and the delta between the two is disruption for everyone who's not doing this and that is wild and powerful.

Brian Solis (14:22):

So, the idea of a mind shift isn't to say, "Okay, I'm going to open my mind and start doing all of these things." It's to recognize, and it's to appreciate that you don't know what you don't know and that's okay, but you're going to do something about it and that's where leadership lies.

Brian Solis (14:41):

The inspiration for the book is that I believe whether it's existing leaders or it's emergent leaders or people who help leaders, that we need to start moving in this new direction. We need a new world of leaders who want to take all of these amazing challenges, all this incredible uncertainty and turn it into opportunities to create a better future.

Jim Marous (15:00):

So, it's interesting, Brian, we all know, or we've heard about what AI can do to improve the customer experience, to reduce cost, to help innovate and build better systems and technologies. However, one of the keys when you look at leadership, and you bring it up in your book quite often, is the ability to use generative AI and AI to improve the actual learning process, to actually get you to know more about things you don't know.

Jim Marous (15:34):

How do you see the use of generative AI being used by the best leaders to make them more aware of what's around them as opposed to how to cut cost or increase revenue?

Brian Solis (15:47):

There's a quote by Vinod Khosla, who's one of the most prolific and successful venture capitalists of all time based in Silicon Valley. He recently posted on X that businesses have no idea what's about to hit them and went on to continue that the rules of engagement are going to change here in the short-term and that he feels that only 2 to 300 people in the entire world understand what's about to happen.

Brian Solis (16:16):

And that should be sending alarm bells everywhere but instead what happens is you see something like that, and you say, "Well, okay, I mean, it sounds threatening." Makes me want to spend more time, I guess with generative AI, for example, to better understand it as a leader. That's why you see CEOs leaned in so much, 2023, generative AI or gen AI was mentioned 30,000 times in earnings calls.

Brian Solis (16:43):

So, let's go back to Vinod's words. Businesses don't understand what's about to hit them as the rules of engagement change. So, when we stop as a leader, and this is where our mind shift begins, you have to be self-aware enough that you don't know what it means and then you have to be curious to want to know what it means.

Brian Solis (17:15):

So, most people will just hear it and say, "Okay, let's go. What do we need to do with gen AI? Instead, what I'm doing is I'm asking myself, "What does he mean by that?" And started to do the research of what rules of engagement will change and how will they change.

Brian Solis (17:34):

And after going through an exercise that's in this book to do that, I freaked out because it was closer than I thought and much more sweeping than I think anyone imagines hence his point, and I immediately penned an article for the National Association of Corporate Directors so that I could hit the board level of what they need to do for their CEOs right now and here's what you have to do and why.

Brian Solis (18:09):

So, taking a step back, a mind shift is a mindset overhaul. It's recognizing that in order to get there, you have to start with humility, self-awareness, and then start to unlock all of these skills that were actually going to help us be better with AI, like curiosity, imagination, experimentation, all of the pillars of innovation itself.

Brian Solis (18:35):

And so, when your original question is how are leaders using this? They're using it with a closed or a fixed mindset as Carol Dweck would describe versus this open, beginner's mind, this curious mind and once you shift sort of your relationship with generative AI rather than, I think you'll appreciate this. I think when everybody first started using it, it was much more like a Google like experience, put in this simple thing and then until you realize that-

Jim Marous (19:08):

And you get something simple back, which is-

Brian Solis (19:11):

Yeah, get something simple back. But then you realize that you could do all these incredible, complex prompts and then you could do role play and you could have it take on different personas and you could have it give you sort of different context and have it debate itself.

Brian Solis (19:23):

And you could tell it things like, and I need it to be really … like this is so important to me because this and that and it'll even go an extra layer down because you said that. And what you start to recognize is the thing that you're doing is you’re modeling your engagement around an exponential outcome versus a transaction and that's a big shift.

Brian Solis (19:47):

So, I am not seeing, for the most part, today's leaders thinking about it from an exponential outcome because you have to do all the work at the beginning to prompt it differently to do that and that's the exercise and also the benefits of a mind shift. You're essentially shifting and changing the outcome and that's tangible.

Jim Marous (20:15):

You brought it up. At the very beginning of ChatGPT, we're asking it stupid question, we're getting stupid answer. We're going like, "That's not that big of a deal." Until you start expanding the questions to include multiple layers and unknown futures and test all kinds of things.

Jim Marous (20:29):

I mean, I use it every single day for something, not only for helping my business, but just importantly to learn something new from a new perspective has shifted. We had an author on once that said he had I think 12 or 19, I can't remember the number, collaborative authors that helped write his book.

Jim Marous (20:50):

And instead of asking the typical question going, "Can you go look this over and see if it makes sense, if it's clear of anything else?" He basically said, "Assume you're going to give every one of these chapters a one out of five stars, simply a one, what was it in this chapter that made it so it was only a one?"

Jim Marous (21:10):

And that blew my mind because I'm thinking, that is so powerful. Because instead of looking at how do I fine tune what the author did, what is my unknown invisible demon that's out there that I haven't recognized?

Jim Marous (21:25):

And he said, "It was amazing how it changed the authors who wrote for him and with him their perspective on their own topic." And it's exciting when you think about how that can open your mind to other things. So, you're all over the country. You're not just looking at banks-

Brian Solis (21:42):

Well, hold that thought Jim because that's a key point that makes a mind shift possible, which is you have to be humble and self-aware enough to challenge yourself and that is the beginning of the opportunity for a mind shift and it's really hard for us to do because we're all human beings and we all have cognitive biases that are designed to-

Jim Marous (22:14):

And we don't want to change.

Brian Solis (22:16):

It's a self-defense mechanism. That's why denial is a natural response, or fight or flight or you name it but if it's just one thing, and I promise I'll let you get back to your other question. If it's one thing that I just as a human being, not just as an author, as a human being, we are in trouble as a society right now because we are not humble and self-aware and curious and-

Jim Marous (22:45):

A thousand percent right. Accepting of things unlike they are today and that's really simplifying the process but we see it everywhere. We're frightened of the change that's happening. We're afraid to take the effort to be part of that change as opposed to impacted by that change and we're looking for what I call very linear answers.

Jim Marous (23:09):

You brought up in the very beginning of our discussion almost like, “How do I automate, how do I make these pieces of paper PDFs and making it automated?” No, that's not what we're trying to do here. The Mindshift says, "How do we completely look at everything that's within those papers and change what they're generating, what they're doing?" It’s not digitizing the linear process, it’s rethinking the whole digitalization process.

Jim Marous (23:35):

So, Brian, you're all over the country, you speak to all types of individuals. You're observant on a natural basis. Can you share an example of maybe a company or an individual that you really think has at least gone pretty far in successfully undergoing a mind shift?

Brian Solis (23:54):

Well, I'll tell you two, in the book I talk about Steve Jobs. You can't come from Silicon Valley and not reference Steve Jobs, but I think this story would surprise a lot of people. I tell the story of how Steve Jobs almost killed the iPhone in 2004 before it even became the iPhone and how his team changed his mind.

Brian Solis (24:24):

And the reason I tell that story is that even Steve Jobs can benefit from a mind shift. In the book, I tell how to do what his team did, which was change the narrative for him to get it and to embrace it. And then another one that's not in the book but I'm a personal fan of his, I used to actually work with him back in the early days of Airbnb was Brian Chesky.

Brian Solis (24:52):

Brian has been someone who's undergone much like you, Jim, and me, constant metamorphosis throughout our time. And as a leader and co-founder of Airbnb, he's gone through several, Airbnb has shifted and pivoted and evolved multiple times.

Brian Solis (25:13):

And most recently he's been in the news, well, at least in the geek news, around what he calls a founder mode, which is understanding that as you're building the company, that you have to be self-aware enough to know when you need operational support, but not just bring in what so many startups do; a CEO to be the CEO and run the company like a company.

Brian Solis (25:41):

That founder mode recognizes that in order for that company to be successful, if it's an innovator, then you have to keep founder mode in act like perpetual continuity and I found that to be super fascinating. And if you remember, there's a story from a book I wrote called X: The Experience When Business Meets Design.

Brian Solis (26:01):

And I tell the story of how Brian at the time reinvented Airbnb as an experience company and it's famous, if you want to look it up, you could either read it in X or you could look it up on I think it's in Fast Company called something like Airbnb and Snow White. And I think I tell the story in Mindshift as well because it involved storyboarding from a Pixar artist and I talked about the importance of how they were able to change minds.

Brian Solis (26:26):

Anyway, the long story short is that he has made it a practice of keeping what I call a receiver's mind, which is open to the signals, open to the trends, open to the opportunities to make your company better, and then executing and executing and what's over time you keep your mind open, and you build out the discipline of that transformation. So, change actually becomes a practice versus something that's a threat.

Jim Marous (26:55):

Yep. It's interesting that you talk about it often about getting away from the transactional and getting to expirational, the experience side of it. It's interesting because Airbnb, it's a great example. I think Uber's a great example too.

Jim Marous (27:12):

Because they are getting engaged in so much of my life through what was once simply a car sharing experience. It's very interesting what they've done. So, let's take a short break here and recognize the sponsor of this podcast.

Jim Marous (27:40):

Welcome back to Banking Transformed. I'm joined today by Brian Solis, Head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow. We've been discussing his most recent book, Mindshift, and the lessons leaders need to embrace as they prepare for the unknown.

Jim Marous (27:54):

So, as we wrap up the podcast, Brian, how does Mindshift really address unique challenges faced by banking and financial services industry or any industry? How does it really change the way we think and the way we do?

Brian Solis (28:12):

Well, everybody asked when I shared the news with my community of friends and mentors, “Is your book going to be about AI?” Because it's all anyone can talk about these days and myself included. I meet with customers every day, and this is what they want to know.

Brian Solis (28:31):

I said, “No, I made a conscious decision not to make it about any kind of technology other than what to do about it.” Because that's the answer to this question is what do I need to know that I don't know so that I can start exploring what it is we need to do in the short-term and in the long-term that changes the outcomes in our work.

Brian Solis (29:05):

So, that could be just simply how we show up and communicate as a team, that could show up as changing the culture to be more embracing and experimental and safe in those experiments. The mini steps to get you to the bigger steps.

Brian Solis (29:22):

Because let's just say once you have a safe experimental culture where people can ask questions, can push back, they're being incentivized to do these things, you're going to get different ideas. You're going to democratize the ability to answer your question.

Brian Solis (29:39):

But I would also say this is that especially any regulated industry, you will be confronted with every reason and excuse why we can't do what I'm about to say. But that's exactly why you need to do it. Because if you are in any services industry, your customer is not the regulator.

Brian Solis (30:06):

Your customer could be a business, it could be an entity, it could be a consumer, whomever it is. Those things are in constant perpetual shifts, and you can use AI to help you figure out what those shifts are but either way, you have to be paying attention to those shifts.

Brian Solis (30:25):

And I don't mean things just like Web3 or Blockchain, of course those are factors, but those are things that you would use to achieve an outcome that matches where this is going and we don't spend enough time, this is the scenario planning, I do. This is where I became a digital anthropologist by understanding behaviors so that I could reverse engineer them to define strategies to those things.

Brian Solis (30:49):

But let me put it this way. I wrote a series for Worth magazine recently on the first one outlining what's called the introvert economy and how COVID has shifted consumer values and banking is right in that target zone and how people are thinking about money, how people are thinking about value, how people are thinking about long and how they're not thinking about long term plans.

Brian Solis (31:11):

And then I wrote a second piece as a follow on to build on it, that if I were in any services industry, I would look at now the convergence of how this market shift is happening. So, it's not just the consumer, it's just overall business and consumer markets, how the introvert economy is shaping up as affected by the attention economy and then as affected by the AI economy.

Brian Solis (31:40):

So, as a consumer or as your business customer becomes more literate and versed in using artificial intelligence in their day-to-day life, how do these three things combine shift your trajectory for an opportunity and a threat so that you could do something about it today?

Jim Marous (31:58):

Wow. It's interesting because your book basically opens up the door to saying, "How do we have to learn in the future? How do we have to accept what we may not want to accept in the future?" As a leader, we talked about it before the podcast started.

Jim Marous (32:18):

As I'm seeing almost immediately upon having discussions on a podcast with an organization, whether or not they're going to get to where their destination aspirationally wants to be based on the head of the company.

Jim Marous (32:31):

It's not going to be about the amount they invest in one technology or another. It's not going to be what new innovation they put into the field. It really starts at the very top and the sublayers and how those people, how willing they are to rethink what they've known forever.

Jim Marous (32:49):

Yes, they can apply their legacy thought patterns, their experience, but it can't be a anchor. They've got to look beyond that. They have to shift the way they think as much as shifting their mind as your book technology wise discusses. You've been in digital transformation and human behavior forever, what's the most significant change that you see on the near horizon?

Brian Solis (33:16):

I'll tell you a funny one out of the introvert economy is that restaurateurs all around the world noticed a stark overnight transformation and shifts from nine o'clock reservations to five o'clock reservations and that was super interesting.

Brian Solis (33:33):

Or how late-night venues are having a tough time surviving these days because people just actually enjoy their time with Netflix and online gaming or content consumption. But the biggest one that I just wrote about recently was the future of decision making in an era of AI. And we know that that one's a big one because that even caught Google off guard and brought the founders back in a … I think if you google Code Red the story of when they knew disruption hit them.

Brian Solis (34:12):

So, what happens in a world where Google search as one example, no longer serves the mindset of someone who's busy and moving fast, the attention economy, who's focused on their core values and what it is that they need, the introvert economy and is also empowered to find information because they know how to prompt better so that they can have the AI do all of the surveillance on potential options for, say a car, for example.

Brian Solis (34:38):

And then net out those results into the top one, two, and three suggestions based on the features that they need without any of that touching a website. So, that's a big transformative thing.

Jim Marous (34:54):

Or touching the phone.

Brian Solis (34:56):

Yeah, or touching the phone. Exactly.

Jim Marous (34:57):

I'm sorry. I've been following you around lately and you're doing as much with your Ray-Ban sunglasses as you are with anything. The way we're going to interact may change dramatically, the way we're going to do business may not have a device involved.

Jim Marous (35:13):

It may be something that's beyond the device, which is very interesting when you look at that. Because it completely blows your mind on how do I think about what we've been talking about. So, finally Brian, where do people start?

Jim Marous (35:30):

And mind you, you could make it very simple and said they got to shift their mind and you basically bring it back to the book. And I know they have to read the book but the reality is, where do they start as a human even without the book? Because we all have to change the way we view the world very quickly because the world isn’t stopping.

Brian Solis (35:54):

I think it's really about at least recognizing that it's okay to explore the, you don't know what you don't know and our natural response is to just say F that or let fear take over. And I think the secret I learned along the way, still learning to be honest, is there's this binary relationship between fear and courage.

Brian Solis (36:19):

Like I can only step into the unknown because I'm going to be brave and courageous heroic but in reality, they exist together. You should have fear or at least some sense of awareness while you can also be courageous moving in this new direction. I think it's a big personal way as a human being that I learned to start that it's okay to not have the answers, it's okay to feel fear and it's okay to fail.

Jim Marous (36:51):

If anybody has watched my real estate transactions over the year, why am I seven years old and still have two mortgages that is somewhat through failure, but it's also through the whole dynamic that said, "It's not going to kill us. Let's take the experience."

Jim Marous (37:05):

We moved out to California in 2007, I think it was. Basically, the day I bought my house and the day that house was the most expensive ever was for the next 20 years. The reality was I threw out, basically could have thrown out a thousand dollars out the window every single day we lived there.

Brian Solis (37:21):

And we left when we were about to go flipped, so we said, "We got to get out here because we're going to be underwater." I asked my wife, I asked my son, "Today, would you change that at all given the massive financial impact it had negatively on our household."

Jim Marous (37:42):

Not a single peep other than I would do it again today. Why is that? Because we had learned a little bit prior to that, each of us in different ways, we'll be okay. But that is the mind shift. I think that's the fundamental mind shift is saying, "You know what, I'm going to be willing to shift my mind."

Jim Marous (38:02):

If somebody doesn't buy your book Brian, they got to barrier and if they buy your book, they're going to learn that prompting skills, the ability to ask questions is going to be much more powerful than being the smartest person in the room.

Jim Marous (38:17):

You've learned it. It comes with age too. I have to admit that the maturity gives you the ability to say, "I don't have to be the smartest person in the room anymore. I'm not trying to impress anybody." And you realize, you impress more people through the questions you ask, by the people you surround yourself with and from what comes out of that.

Jim Marous (38:35):

That is a really different way than we've learned in our path because we learned in a university situation to listen to the smartest person in the room, theoretically, the person in front of the room as opposed to through questions.

Jim Marous (38:48):

Brian, it's a treat. I've loved every one of your books. I think this one because it brings together so many of your previous thoughts into a brand-new context. But it really is a book about, I still believe, because I read it with this context, how to learn and I bring that together with, I recommend often for people to read Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Jim Marous (39:17):

Because if you take your book on how to learn and how to innovate and how to think, and you take his book about doing everything on a 1% basis, you're going to make amazing inroads in a very quick amount of time and honestly, you'll be a great leader. Brian, without anybody having to tell you, how do people buy your book just through normal channels, I would imagine.

Brian Solis (39:40):

Through normal channels, it's on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, you choose your favorite channel, your local bookstore, they can get it for you. And then if you want to learn more, the URL is mindshift.ing. So, mind shifting and then my personal website is briansolis.com.

Jim Marous (39:57):

Brian, always a treat. It's been a long time since we met each other except on video, looking forward to seeing you again and thank you so much for the great book you wrote.

Brian Solis (40:08):

Oh, thank you Jim. Thanks for this opportunity. It's always a pleasure to have an opportunity to speak with you.

Jim Marous (40:12):

Thanks for listening to Banking Transformed, the top podcast in retail banking and the winner of three international awards for podcast excellence. We appreciate the support we've received to make this endeavor a success. If you enjoy what we're doing, please take some time to show some love in the form of a review.

Jim Marous (40:30):

Finally, be sure to catch my recent articles on The Financial Brand and check out the research we're doing for the Digital Banking Report. This has been a production of Evergreen Podcasts. A special thank you to our senior producer, Leah Haslage, audio engineer, Chris Fafalios and video producer, Will Pritts.

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Jim Marous (40:48):

Remember the key lessons took from Brian's book, Mindshift is, bankers must embrace a transformative mindset that prioritizes customer experiences, leverages AI and technology, and intelligently maintains customer-centric approach to navigate the continuously evolving financial landscape.