March 12, 2025 • 36 mins
Betsy Tong’s relentless drive in the high-stakes world of major tech companies led her to a breaking point culminating in a terrifying fainting episode on a plane. In this eye-opening episode, she shares her raw and powerful story of burnout, resilience, and the crucial turning points that transformed her life.
We also dive into the fast-paced world of book writing as I break down how I crafted a bestseller in just 72 hours. From AI-powered creativity to strategic adaptation, I reveal the game-changing techniques that can help anyone maximize productivity and success. Plus, my collaboration with Peter Swain highlights the power of innovation and streamlined communication in achieving remarkable results.
What You’ll Learn:
✅ The warning signs of burnout and how to reset before it’s too late
✅ The emotional and professional impact of high-stress careers
✅ How Betsy transformed personal struggles into growth and empowerment
✅ Strategies for leveraging AI to supercharge creativity and productivity
✅ The mindset shifts needed to reclaim balance and long-term success
🔥 Whether you’re navigating a high-pressure career or looking to unleash your creative potential, this episode is packed with insights to help you rise, reset, and redefine success.
🎧 Listen Now!
📢 Join A Million Dreams Success Circles → milliondreamscommunity.com/leadership-growth-success-circles
⭐ Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review! Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Listen Notes.
Would you like me to create show notes as well? 🚀
Colorado’s best business coach, Baz Porter, has a new mindset strategy mentoring service to help you unlock new heights of growth, prosperity, happiness, and success. Book your first meeting with the coaching visionary at https://www.ramsbybaz.com/
Friends, as we wrap up today’s powerful conversation, hear me loud and clear: I’m grateful for you. You’ve chosen greatness over settling, clarity over chaos, and brilliance over burnout. Remember Great CEOs deserve NO burnout.
Did this hit home? Pass it on. Your share could be the spark someone desperately needs. Together, we’re rewriting the rules of leadership, one bold conversation at a time.
I want to hear YOUR story your wins, your struggles, your breakthroughs. My door is wide open whether you’re in Boulder or reaching out at support@ramsbybaz.com, I'm here.
Here is a gift For you Click Here
Are you ready to drop confusion, claim clarity, and step powerfully into purpose?
Let’s connect. Book a coaching session today and experience firsthand how the RAMS framework amplifies results, shatters limits, and creates lasting legacies.
This is Baz Porter, in your corner, fiercely committed to your brilliance. Keep rising, stay unstoppable, and know you’re never alone in this climb.
Until next time rise boldly.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
ladies and gentlemen, welcome to rice mash's season
five.
This is burnout to brilliance.
Why burnout to brilliance?
Quite simply, people likeyourselves listening to this
have a journey, they have astory and it usually starts with
something fucking tragic, aanomaly in their lives they feel
has taken them off the rails.
(00:24):
Go.
High level people, people withambition, ceos, c-suite and
above and anybody else who arehigh level entrepreneurs, have
this issue.
They have the challenge, butwhat makes these people
different is they come back andthey bounce back with a
vengeance.
My next guest is one suchperson.
(00:47):
She has come from tech, povertyand all sorts of drama in her
life into complicity, into peace.
But, more importantly, sheempowers other people who are
searching for more in theirlives C-suite and if you're
female, please listen to this,stop are searching for more in
(01:09):
their lives C-suite and ifyou're female, please listen to
this, stop it.
Get a pen and paper and payattention.
Betsy Tong, how are you today?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
And welcome to Russian Nashes.
It is a privilege and apleasure to have you here.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for the timeand for your thoughtfulness.
I feel like I've been takencare of every minute of the way
into this podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
The privilege is mine , I will assure you, and it's a
complete honor to have you heretoday.
I know you're a very busy woman.
You have many things going,many fires going in the
background, and your time isprecious to me.
I want to touch on a moment ofburnout first, and can you take
me back in time to early stagesin your business career or even
(01:53):
in your childhood?
Were you experienced aderailment or a burnout within
your life that really shook youto your core?
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Gosh, there are many moments in my life that I have
been shaken to my core, but ifyou're specifically talking
about burnout, I think one ofthe things that is true for
women of a certain age likemyself, particularly who rose to
an executive level,particularly who grew up in big
(02:26):
tech, and I spent 20 years atcompanies that were the size of
small cities IBM, lenovo,symantec, intel.
You get used to being the onlyone in the room that looks like
you and you get used to the ideathat you have to work twice as
(02:49):
hard to be noticed half as much,and that is one of the factors
that leads to burnout, or thatled to my burnout.
And when I was at Lenovo, I wasrunning the services business
in Europe and that businessdelivered 40% of the profit to
(03:17):
the bottom line on a muchsmaller percent of revenue.
But that's how bad PC.
At the time, pc profitabilitywas right and so the pressure
was so intense and I was not.
I had never run a warrantybusiness before.
(03:38):
There were many things thatprobably I would have gotten
wrong or did get wrong At thesame time.
I would have gotten wrong ordid get wrong At the same time.
We were moving our supportcenter from Scotland to the
newly divided Czech Republic butnot even the sexy side of the
Czech Republic, the Slovakianside and trying to teach really
(04:02):
smart former communist peopleand literally 20-year-olds what
customer service meant.
And that you couldn't just fireoff an email that said, dear
complainers which was probablytechnically correct, but not the
experience that we wanted thatyou couldn't drink during
(04:23):
working hours or snog yourgirlfriend yeah.
So just little lessons.
And then, at the same time, wehad a massive battery recall and
battery shortages, because thatwas during the time when Dell's
batteries were exploding andcatching fire and nobody wanted
that to happen.
So we were doing recalls.
(04:44):
So there are many things goingon.
And so I was traveling.
I was living in California andtraveling back and forth to
Paris, where nobody should besad about that, but I was
traveling back and forth toParis and then going to Slovakia
and traveling all around Europeand also Beijing, because our
headquarters were in China, andat a certain point I was
(05:08):
exhausted, like literallyexhausted.
I remember being on a plane,getting up, coming back from the
bathroom and then fainting andwaking up because the airline
attendant had called a doctorfrom back and he was super
nervous because he'd never beencalled before and he stepped on
(05:31):
me and that's what woke me upagain.
So the reason I tell this storyis when you are driven and you
are used to producing and youfeel this anxiety about not
doing enough, you just keeppushing to the point where
you're falling over and faintingon an airplane and it's no good
.
(05:52):
And, by the way, I was no goodat work for doing that.
I was no good at work and Iended up taking a leave,
probably a couple months afterthat, because my body, my mind,
I was just exhausted.
I was exhausted and I couldn'tdo it.
I couldn't do it again.
I couldn't do it.
(06:12):
First of all.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Betsy, thank you for sharing that was quite.
I was being very vulnerable andI know you well.
Actually, you actually wentback there and you actually
relive that story.
I can tell because I know youand you can see your face and
your face expressions.
So this is why I like askingthese questions, because it's
real and it's real so to mylisteners.
(06:35):
If you are hearing this and youare regretting with this and you
can pick up on things that best, you have gone through in
similar situations that you'reexperiencing, these are signs
for burnout and it doesn't meanburnout as in physically.
That's the end or part of theend result, where you either
(06:56):
step back and do time off, takea reset or a sabbatical,
whatever you're to do.
But the problem affects scaling.
Problem affects much deeperlevels of the business and your,
what you have to do in it andyou what you do now is awesome
within your own right becauseyou've actually paved the way
(07:18):
from your own experiences.
If someone was coming to younow and they had a problem with
scaling because of burnout,because they just hit that
24-mile wall of the marathon andthey've gone holy shitbags, my
whole fucking life is born apartand they're having this problem
scaling because of that.
How would you advise them?
Speaker 2 (07:41):
So, so, fundamentally , if you are on a railroad track
going 90 miles an hour and thatis the choice that you want to
make I'm not going to be able toadvise you.
And the people that I do bestwith are not the ones that come
(08:01):
to me and say, betsy, help me,use AI to save time, because
that's a false premise.
They are the ones that comeback and say I don't know how to
figure out how to do more withthe time I have.
And so there's this great bookthat I read last year called
(08:22):
4,000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman4,000 Weeks by Oliver Bergman,
and it puts into greatperspective the idea that any
human has 4,000 weeks.
That's it, that's it.
And are you going to use thattime working harder and more
hours for your company orwhatever else, or are you going
(08:48):
to do that building a life thatis significant to the people
around you or your customers orwhatever else it is?
It may be that, yes, I have to.
I got to work for the companyand that's what makes my life
significant.
But I think, when you start torealize it's really 4,000 hours,
it makes a big difference.
(09:08):
It makes a big difference toperspective.
And then the second thing that Ithink makes a big difference to
perspective and this is why thepeople who find me are
generally in their second stageis that most of us end up
dealing with parents who are insome kind of decline.
And not only do you, are youmaybe at your 2,000 weeks left,
(09:30):
1,000 weeks left, whatever it is?
But you're observing what willhappen at the end of life, and
your parents' end of life is nowaffecting the amount of time
that you have to do the thingsthat you ordinarily would have
done, and maybe you're an emptynester.
Now You're like, oh great, lifeis going to be so much greater.
But no, because you have theburden of a parent.
(09:52):
And in my life right now, myfather is in early stage
dementia and he thinks that heshould be able to do whatever he
wants and live the life that hewants.
And he'll say that over andover again and that takes hours
of my time to enable him to livethe life he wants, which means
it's hours of my time that don'tget enabled Betsy to live the
(10:16):
life she wants, and that's areality that you have to face
and it's bullshit, frankly, andI hate it when people say you're
just such a good daughter, youmust get so much out of it.
No, I don't.
I think about the thousands ofdollars that I'm not like my
time is worth money.
(10:37):
I'm thinking about thethousands of dollars that I
don't get to work on me and methings because I have to
sacrifice for him and it's not.
Yeah, I'd love to be able to saythat.
Oh, yes, I'm an angel.
I'd love it, but these are realconstraints that we live with
and when you think about that,then it's not doing things
(10:58):
faster or saving time that youneed, it's trying to get people
to the.
Are you doing the things thatare the smallest increment or
the domino that creates thebiggest leverage one, or are you
taking things off your plate?
What are you taking off yourplate?
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Because we don't live in a world where all things are
possible all the time thank youfor thank you for sharing a bit
of your personal life with yourfather, and you have a check
relationship with the sounds ofthings, but it's real and it's
important as entrepreneurs, aspeople who are leading others,
(11:39):
that we stay honest andauthentic with who we are.
And I think a lot of that getsdiluted in a world of bucket
fakery, when a prime example iswhen a younger generation of
millennials or gen x said I wanta real woman.
A woman says I want a real man,but a woman I'm just being
(12:03):
honest has fake hair, fake nails, fake fucking teeth, eyelashes.
They've done up to the nose.
Airbrushed, yeah, and they putall these Instagram posts or
things like that.
That's all AI generatedNewsflash.
It's not fucking real.
Stop messing with humans andwho you truly are.
(12:24):
Betsy just shared somethingvery real and that's reality,
it's not fake.
And who you truly are.
Betsy just shared somethingvery real and that's reality,
it's not fake.
And lessons like that can't belearned by books and books are a
wonderful thing, but they don'tcreate real life.
They create a scenario so youcan learn from them, but the
(12:45):
actual learning comes frompeople like Betsy who are in the
fucking trenches doing the work, making the sacrifices and the
emotional components to thatlifelong.
But what she's done here and Iwhich I love is using them, them
scenarios, that themexperiences, to not just empower
(13:05):
herself, because she's nowsetting a standard for herself
going this is what I'm worth.
Going back to the a thousanddollars an hour or whatever you
believe you're worth.
That's where you start.
And the emotional componentsyes, they cause fatigue.
There's been examples from thatin this conversation so if
you're listening to this now andyou're thinking about I'm just
(13:29):
surviving and I really want tothrive, try subscribing, try
sharing the message, taking somegoddamn notes and actually
using betsy's wisdom, because ifyou were doing a consultant
with her, she'd charge you afucking thousand dollars an hour
.
This is free information.
You get to do what you wantwith it.
When you're reframing some ofthis, betsy, and you're learning
(13:54):
all these situations from theexperiences, who do you really
speak to?
Who's he?
Who's your ideal person?
Someone's to walk into youroffice, in, in, in, wherever you
live?
I can't remember.
I don't really want to say I do, but I don't want to say where
you live over the internetanyway.
Um, unless person walked in,who is that person?
(14:17):
What do they look like?
Obviously not physically, butwhat are their problems?
What do you?
What's your sweet spot?
What's your passion?
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah.
So I think the people that cometo me are ones who have
achieved a certain level ofsuccess and significance, right?
And they have been in thetrenches 20, 30 years, whatever
it is 20, 30 years, whatever itis and they know how.
(14:48):
They've spent a lifetime ofgetting the experience, getting
the expertise, honing what theydo, and now they're looking out
at the second stage and goingwhat do I do now?
And it might happen because youwere a VP here or whatever, and
suddenly Google or somebody elsesays ah, you know what, we
(15:13):
don't need you anymore, likewhat I spent 20 years of my life
building you and you don't needme anymore, right?
And I think many parents feelthat when their kids fly off,
yeah, I'm an adult now, I don'tneed you.
And so then what does that mean?
So maybe you've just lost yourjob, or you feel insecure about
(15:36):
your longevity because AI ishere and suddenly they can do a
lot more things with less people, or whatever else it is.
Or you literally are ready totransition into a different way
of life and a different way ofwork, and maybe you're
considering becoming a coach, aconsultant or an entrepreneur of
(15:56):
some sort and you start torealize wait a minute, yeah,
wait a minute, I don't even knowhow to express how I got to
where I got and tell my stories,much less productize it.
And one of the places that Istart with people is taking what
(16:20):
made them brilliant and greatand helping them create that
into.
This is your system, this isthe BAS system, this is the BAS
methodology, the tools and thetemplates, and along the way,
let's figure out how it changes,because AI is here and can do
things differently than youwould have done a year ago even
(16:45):
and then figure out how to makethat a product or something that
scales, or something that youteach, or something that makes
your team or your company workmore effectively.
And the specific way that Istarted doing this myself is
number one.
I've spent decades helping bigtech companies disrupt
(17:05):
themselves, and so, at Lenovo,it was a PC business that needed
to have services.
At Symantec, it was a hugeenterprise at the time storage
business that wanted to buildappliances.
At Intel, it was an ingredientcompany that suddenly decided it
wanted to be solutions.
And, oh, people weren't justgoing to say yes because I
(17:26):
showed up.
You actually had to talk to acustomer and know what their
problems were.
Oh, great, in a very small way.
I've taken that background andexperience and in June,
developed my process forbuilding a book and wrote my
first book, the Edge, which isabout the proficiency meta.
(17:46):
It's about the process ofbuilding a book, and wrote my
first book, the Edge, which isabout the professionary meta.
It's about the process ofbuilding a book, and I did it in
72 hours, put it out on Kindleand then made it a bestseller
six days later because I wasspeaking it.
I had two speaking engagementsand I could market the book and
I had coaches along the way thebrilliant Peter Swain of ROAI.
(18:07):
One of the things that I'vedone is I've taken what I've
learned from him.
I've taken my own experienceand then I've created a system
that allowed me then to createthree more books and ghostwrite
other books and teach otherexecutives who want to create a
(18:28):
book and learn AI.
But the point is not thedeliverable, which is a book or
a course.
The point is that processallows them to really think
through what makes them reallygood and to think of themselves
as a methodology that they nowcan share with the world and be
(18:50):
more significant as a result.
Hopefully that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
To me it does, and I'm tracking you.
So I love that.
You mentioned a couple ofthings in there, and that was
your book Curse at Super 1, andI want to touch on that for a
moment.
But you're not just a one-timebestseller.
How are you?
You're being modest.
Can you?
Can you inline what else you'vedone in the in the author space
, because it's a hugeaccomplishment for any of you
(19:19):
just be a bestseller, but you'vedone it two or three times, I
believe.
Is that correct?
Five times?
Okay, I was wrong five times.
I apologize, I fucked up.
Five times.
Bestseller whatever, but pleasecan you tell them where they
are, how, how?
Speaker 2 (19:34):
and yeah, can you choose.
So, if you think about thepackage of books together, right
, and the three package of books, and and so I've done five
books, but the three that arethe package together is the
first is the Edge, and thatreally is about how I, with the
fact of AI, reframed andrethought the, the process of
(19:58):
how I do work and the process ofcreating Betsy's brain into at
the time this feels very old nowat the time custom GPTs, right,
and to codify how I analyze,how I synthesize, how I
communicate, and then ultimatelycreated an army that is my
(20:22):
chief of staff, my CFO, my focusgroups, all of the things into
different chat GPTs and thatprocess of again taking what I'm
really great at, which iscreating operations, people,
systems that scale and doing itnow in AI.
That scale and doing it now inAI.
The second book behind me isUnstoppable Advantage and that
(20:45):
one I started to realize as Iwas working with executives last
year, which is that everybodygets very excited about the
productivity potential of AI andwe are super well-tra trained
as executives to think, oh, Ican do more with less, and
fundamentally, that to me, is aterrifying.
(21:08):
It's a terrifying trajectorybecause people are outsourcing
work to AI, which means a verydark future, because if there
are no jobs for humans, there'snobody to buy the things that
(21:29):
the companies create.
Then there are no companies,and then they're like.
The cycle is terrible, but toactually talk about that is a
little bit more than people canthink, and so, in Unstoppable
Advantage, I try to break downthe cycles of disruption that
have happened during our historyand create the analogy that
what's happening now is likeelectricity and we don't know
(21:51):
what the end results of havingelectricity in our lives will be
, but we know something willhappen.
Hopefully it'll be good.
And so I spent time looking at21 disruptive, highly disruptive
scenarios and have amethodology that allows you to
look at if those disruptionshappen, what is the margin
(22:15):
compression that happens?
How quickly does it happenSorry, somebody is calling me
how quickly does it happen?
And then what happens to yourvaluation?
And again, that's reallytheoretical, but let me break it
down for you, for anybody whodoesn't spend a lot of time
nerding out about this like I do.
(22:35):
I needed to get a headshot donethe other day.
In the old world, I would havegone on Yelp, I would have
looked for photographers and Iwould have booked somebody for I
don't know $500.
I would have driven myself overto their studio with my little
makeup bag and my seven outfitsand we would have spent a couple
(22:56):
of hours and two weeks later Iwould have had some proofs.
Okay, so, if that elapsed timethree weeks, four weeks,
whatever Today or this week, Ican take a picture of myself
with an iPhone.
I can pay $12 for an AI app andI can generate 100 headshots,
(23:20):
right, and that took me maybe 30minutes.
And it only took me 30 minutesbecause I started playing around
and I gave myself a haircut.
I made myself a blonde.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
You went down the rabbit hole, didn't you?
Speaker 2 (23:33):
I went down the rabbit hole and the thing is 30
minutes versus weeks and $500versus 12, massive value to me.
Great for me.
Can you share that?
Speaker 1 (23:49):
for the viewers.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
But sucks for the photographer, right.
And that's what will happen.
To the extent that you arehaving productivity games you
also will be.
Somebody else is going to comearound and do what you do a
thousand times faster, athousand times cheaper, and that
is what companies need to bedefining strategies around.
(24:15):
And then the third book isunusual and unique because I
wrote it with our mutual mentor,peter Swain, and here's how
that process.
This is why this system worksso well.
So the process for that book isBetsy and Peter are on Telegram
talking to each other, as inchatting right, and Peter is on
(24:38):
a plane going from New York backto England and Betsy is in
California having insomnia andPeter says I've got a great idea
and I said great, I'm in, andPeter shows me this methodology
that he wants to write about,and then, at the end of his
(24:59):
flight, he sends me a 10-pagedocument that just has an
outline of a methodology, andthen Betsy takes it and she
writes a book called the ADAPTFramework in 24 hours.
And then, at the same time,chatgpt created projects, and so
(25:21):
I took the book and the notes,I created all the tools,
templates and the methodologyand again, these are things that
we know how to do.
We just had not productizedthem and created beautiful
templates, tools and products.
The book itself is it's a book.
It's not the best book I'veever written, but the point of
(25:42):
the book is that we also havecall outs to my clone.
90% of the content is in myclone, not in the book itself,
right?
Because the point of a booklike Adapt Framework is that
somebody does something with theframeworks.
You often have to talk tosomebody to do that and, by the
(26:03):
way, if you get the book, youget to talk to the clone and you
get access to all of thatknowledge and those explicit do
A, b, c lessons and, likeamazing, and that was done
literally within one weekend forthe book, one weekend for the
methodology and less time forthe clone.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
You see, what you've just done there is you've put
components of people's audienceinto one place, productize them,
systemize them and thenmonetize them all in about 72
hours.
Absolutely, that to me, is agenius.
First, and I know Peter verywell, I know you well enough the
(26:53):
things that we do to uncoverour brilliance.
Before we close part one today,I want you just to think about
and this is for the viewerswhere are you burning out?
Where are you limiting yourself?
And before I go with that, Iwant to ask Betsy.
(27:17):
To ask Betsy what are youavoiding?
What are you not tellingyourself that?
Speaker 2 (27:29):
you where you can play bigger and better.
So many places right, because,again, you don't have the
privilege of living living afull life if you don't come up
with many myths in your headthat are true or not true, as
the case may be.
And I feel like where I amburning out, or where I have the
(27:51):
chance to burn out, is thatidea that I'm not going to be
good enough for what I want todo and who I'm speaking to.
And that goes back to the egoof somebody who, frankly, was an
(28:13):
executive right and all thesacrifices and things you have
to do to get chosen for, becausein public companies they often
the board has to say okay to you, not just your boss anymore,
and so there's that fear thatI'm not going to meet the bar
and that I'm going to lose steamin doing what I do.
(28:35):
That's just that's.
That is one of the things.
This.
The second is and I was talkingto Peter the other day and he
was making me laugh because hewas using this analogy is are
you the fishmonger who says Isell fresh fish?
And he said if you're afishmonger, you pretty much are
(28:56):
not going to not sell fresh fish, not going to not sell fresh
fish, and I've listened to a lotof people who, basically, are
the equivalent of the fishmonger.
And so then I start to havedoubt about myself and say is
what I'm saying differentiatedenough?
And that's again also an egoissue, because fundamentally, if
(29:20):
you can help one person, isn'tthat enough?
Isn't that enough?
And that, at my core, issomething that I've always
believed and always felt.
And if I could diverge for asecond, one of the stories of my
life is in the early days I wasa police reporter and then I
(29:40):
was a reporter at the BostonGlobe.
I realized I didn't like towatch life, I wanted to
participate.
And so what did I do?
Something that I ended up beingterrible at, but I became.
I went and I worked in schoolsin the city of Boston to learn
how to apply arts into everydayteaching, and they put me in
(30:02):
probably one of the worst schoolsystems.
I won't name it.
It was like, literally, younever want any child to be
taught by the folks that werethere.
And so I had to make friendsand influence people, and at the
end of a year we had spent allthis money, we had done all this
(30:23):
stuff and it was the end of mytenure at that school and one of
the kids came up to me and hegave me a flower.
And I've always remembered thatbecause, even if I couldn't
tell whether next year theywould do anything, whether any
program that we had built wouldstill live, for that moment, for
(30:48):
that year, I made a differenceto that kid and I've always had
him in my mind Any moment that Ihave, no matter where I am, no
matter what I do, no matter whatjob I'm in, did I make that
difference to that one person,that one kid?
And if I did, then okay, I'llbe okay.
All the other trappings money,fame well, it doesn't matter in
(31:16):
a 4,000-week life.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
I really like that analogy, especially in memories,
because they don't go away.
They're the ones that drive youforward into the next level of
achievement.
You can't replace them andthey're amazing to share.
So thank you for sharing thatTo my viewers.
Thank you very much.
This is part one of Betsy Tongand myself having a little chat.
(31:42):
Please download, give a reviewand share the message to
somebody who this may changetheir life.
Don't forget.
In part two we'll be going abit deeper into a few other
things, some few surprises onthe way as well.
Thank you very much, betsy.
I'll see you very shortly andto make this?
please download, subscribe andshare.
(32:03):
See you soon.
ladies and gentlemen, welcome to rice mash's season
five.
This is burnout to brilliance.
Why burnout to brilliance?
Quite simply, people likeyourselves listening to this
have a journey, they have astory and it usually starts with
something fucking tragic, aanomaly in their lives they feel
has taken them off the rails.
(00:24):
Go.
High level people, people withambition, ceos, c-suite and
above and anybody else who arehigh level entrepreneurs, have
this issue.
They have the challenge, butwhat makes these people
different is they come back andthey bounce back with a
vengeance.
My next guest is one suchperson.
(00:47):
She has come from tech, povertyand all sorts of drama in her
life into complicity, into peace.
But, more importantly, sheempowers other people who are
searching for more in theirlives C-suite and if you're
female, please listen to this,stop are searching for more in
(01:09):
their lives C-suite and ifyou're female, please listen to
this, stop it.
Get a pen and paper and payattention.
Betsy Tong, how are you today?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
And welcome to Russian Nashes.
It is a privilege and apleasure to have you here.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for the timeand for your thoughtfulness.
I feel like I've been takencare of every minute of the way
into this podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
The privilege is mine , I will assure you, and it's a
complete honor to have you heretoday.
I know you're a very busy woman.
You have many things going,many fires going in the
background, and your time isprecious to me.
I want to touch on a moment ofburnout first, and can you take
me back in time to early stagesin your business career or even
(01:53):
in your childhood?
Were you experienced aderailment or a burnout within
your life that really shook youto your core?
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Gosh, there are many moments in my life that I have
been shaken to my core, but ifyou're specifically talking
about burnout, I think one ofthe things that is true for
women of a certain age likemyself, particularly who rose to
an executive level,particularly who grew up in big
(02:26):
tech, and I spent 20 years atcompanies that were the size of
small cities IBM, lenovo,symantec, intel.
You get used to being the onlyone in the room that looks like
you and you get used to the ideathat you have to work twice as
(02:49):
hard to be noticed half as much,and that is one of the factors
that leads to burnout, or thatled to my burnout.
And when I was at Lenovo, I wasrunning the services business
in Europe and that businessdelivered 40% of the profit to
(03:17):
the bottom line on a muchsmaller percent of revenue.
But that's how bad PC.
At the time, pc profitabilitywas right and so the pressure
was so intense and I was not.
I had never run a warrantybusiness before.
(03:38):
There were many things thatprobably I would have gotten
wrong or did get wrong At thesame time.
I would have gotten wrong ordid get wrong At the same time.
We were moving our supportcenter from Scotland to the
newly divided Czech Republic butnot even the sexy side of the
Czech Republic, the Slovakianside and trying to teach really
(04:02):
smart former communist peopleand literally 20-year-olds what
customer service meant.
And that you couldn't just fireoff an email that said, dear
complainers which was probablytechnically correct, but not the
experience that we wanted thatyou couldn't drink during
(04:23):
working hours or snog yourgirlfriend yeah.
So just little lessons.
And then, at the same time, wehad a massive battery recall and
battery shortages, because thatwas during the time when Dell's
batteries were exploding andcatching fire and nobody wanted
that to happen.
So we were doing recalls.
(04:44):
So there are many things goingon.
And so I was traveling.
I was living in California andtraveling back and forth to
Paris, where nobody should besad about that, but I was
traveling back and forth toParis and then going to Slovakia
and traveling all around Europeand also Beijing, because our
headquarters were in China, andat a certain point I was
(05:08):
exhausted, like literallyexhausted.
I remember being on a plane,getting up, coming back from the
bathroom and then fainting andwaking up because the airline
attendant had called a doctorfrom back and he was super
nervous because he'd never beencalled before and he stepped on
(05:31):
me and that's what woke me upagain.
So the reason I tell this storyis when you are driven and you
are used to producing and youfeel this anxiety about not
doing enough, you just keeppushing to the point where
you're falling over and faintingon an airplane and it's no good
.
(05:52):
And, by the way, I was no goodat work for doing that.
I was no good at work and Iended up taking a leave,
probably a couple months afterthat, because my body, my mind,
I was just exhausted.
I was exhausted and I couldn'tdo it.
I couldn't do it again.
I couldn't do it.
(06:12):
First of all.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Betsy, thank you for sharing that was quite.
I was being very vulnerable andI know you well.
Actually, you actually wentback there and you actually
relive that story.
I can tell because I know youand you can see your face and
your face expressions.
So this is why I like askingthese questions, because it's
real and it's real so to mylisteners.
(06:35):
If you are hearing this and youare regretting with this and you
can pick up on things that best, you have gone through in
similar situations that you'reexperiencing, these are signs
for burnout and it doesn't meanburnout as in physically.
That's the end or part of theend result, where you either
(06:56):
step back and do time off, takea reset or a sabbatical,
whatever you're to do.
But the problem affects scaling.
Problem affects much deeperlevels of the business and your,
what you have to do in it andyou what you do now is awesome
within your own right becauseyou've actually paved the way
(07:18):
from your own experiences.
If someone was coming to younow and they had a problem with
scaling because of burnout,because they just hit that
24-mile wall of the marathon andthey've gone holy shitbags, my
whole fucking life is born apartand they're having this problem
scaling because of that.
How would you advise them?
Speaker 2 (07:41):
So, so, fundamentally , if you are on a railroad track
going 90 miles an hour and thatis the choice that you want to
make I'm not going to be able toadvise you.
And the people that I do bestwith are not the ones that come
(08:01):
to me and say, betsy, help me,use AI to save time, because
that's a false premise.
They are the ones that comeback and say I don't know how to
figure out how to do more withthe time I have.
And so there's this great bookthat I read last year called
(08:22):
4,000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman4,000 Weeks by Oliver Bergman,
and it puts into greatperspective the idea that any
human has 4,000 weeks.
That's it, that's it.
And are you going to use thattime working harder and more
hours for your company orwhatever else, or are you going
(08:48):
to do that building a life thatis significant to the people
around you or your customers orwhatever else it is?
It may be that, yes, I have to.
I got to work for the companyand that's what makes my life
significant.
But I think, when you start torealize it's really 4,000 hours,
it makes a big difference.
(09:08):
It makes a big difference toperspective.
And then the second thing that Ithink makes a big difference to
perspective and this is why thepeople who find me are
generally in their second stageis that most of us end up
dealing with parents who are insome kind of decline.
And not only do you, are youmaybe at your 2,000 weeks left,
(09:30):
1,000 weeks left, whatever it is?
But you're observing what willhappen at the end of life, and
your parents' end of life is nowaffecting the amount of time
that you have to do the thingsthat you ordinarily would have
done, and maybe you're an emptynester.
Now You're like, oh great, lifeis going to be so much greater.
But no, because you have theburden of a parent.
(09:52):
And in my life right now, myfather is in early stage
dementia and he thinks that heshould be able to do whatever he
wants and live the life that hewants.
And he'll say that over andover again and that takes hours
of my time to enable him to livethe life he wants, which means
it's hours of my time that don'tget enabled Betsy to live the
(10:16):
life she wants, and that's areality that you have to face
and it's bullshit, frankly, andI hate it when people say you're
just such a good daughter, youmust get so much out of it.
No, I don't.
I think about the thousands ofdollars that I'm not like my
time is worth money.
(10:37):
I'm thinking about thethousands of dollars that I
don't get to work on me and methings because I have to
sacrifice for him and it's not.
Yeah, I'd love to be able to saythat.
Oh, yes, I'm an angel.
I'd love it, but these are realconstraints that we live with
and when you think about that,then it's not doing things
(10:58):
faster or saving time that youneed, it's trying to get people
to the.
Are you doing the things thatare the smallest increment or
the domino that creates thebiggest leverage one, or are you
taking things off your plate?
What are you taking off yourplate?
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Because we don't live in a world where all things are
possible all the time thank youfor thank you for sharing a bit
of your personal life with yourfather, and you have a check
relationship with the sounds ofthings, but it's real and it's
important as entrepreneurs, aspeople who are leading others,
(11:39):
that we stay honest andauthentic with who we are.
And I think a lot of that getsdiluted in a world of bucket
fakery, when a prime example iswhen a younger generation of
millennials or gen x said I wanta real woman.
A woman says I want a real man,but a woman I'm just being
(12:03):
honest has fake hair, fake nails, fake fucking teeth, eyelashes.
They've done up to the nose.
Airbrushed, yeah, and they putall these Instagram posts or
things like that.
That's all AI generatedNewsflash.
It's not fucking real.
Stop messing with humans andwho you truly are.
(12:24):
Betsy just shared somethingvery real and that's reality,
it's not fake.
And who you truly are.
Betsy just shared somethingvery real and that's reality,
it's not fake.
And lessons like that can't belearned by books and books are a
wonderful thing, but they don'tcreate real life.
They create a scenario so youcan learn from them, but the
(12:45):
actual learning comes frompeople like Betsy who are in the
fucking trenches doing the work, making the sacrifices and the
emotional components to thatlifelong.
But what she's done here and Iwhich I love is using them, them
scenarios, that themexperiences, to not just empower
(13:05):
herself, because she's nowsetting a standard for herself
going this is what I'm worth.
Going back to the a thousanddollars an hour or whatever you
believe you're worth.
That's where you start.
And the emotional componentsyes, they cause fatigue.
There's been examples from thatin this conversation so if
you're listening to this now andyou're thinking about I'm just
(13:29):
surviving and I really want tothrive, try subscribing, try
sharing the message, taking somegoddamn notes and actually
using betsy's wisdom, because ifyou were doing a consultant
with her, she'd charge you afucking thousand dollars an hour
.
This is free information.
You get to do what you wantwith it.
When you're reframing some ofthis, betsy, and you're learning
(13:54):
all these situations from theexperiences, who do you really
speak to?
Who's he?
Who's your ideal person?
Someone's to walk into youroffice, in, in, in, wherever you
live?
I can't remember.
I don't really want to say I do, but I don't want to say where
you live over the internetanyway.
Um, unless person walked in,who is that person?
(14:17):
What do they look like?
Obviously not physically, butwhat are their problems?
What do you?
What's your sweet spot?
What's your passion?
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah.
So I think the people that cometo me are ones who have
achieved a certain level ofsuccess and significance, right?
And they have been in thetrenches 20, 30 years, whatever
it is 20, 30 years, whatever itis and they know how.
(14:48):
They've spent a lifetime ofgetting the experience, getting
the expertise, honing what theydo, and now they're looking out
at the second stage and goingwhat do I do now?
And it might happen because youwere a VP here or whatever, and
suddenly Google or somebody elsesays ah, you know what, we
(15:13):
don't need you anymore, likewhat I spent 20 years of my life
building you and you don't needme anymore, right?
And I think many parents feelthat when their kids fly off,
yeah, I'm an adult now, I don'tneed you.
And so then what does that mean?
So maybe you've just lost yourjob, or you feel insecure about
(15:36):
your longevity because AI ishere and suddenly they can do a
lot more things with less people, or whatever else it is.
Or you literally are ready totransition into a different way
of life and a different way ofwork, and maybe you're
considering becoming a coach, aconsultant or an entrepreneur of
(15:56):
some sort and you start torealize wait a minute, yeah,
wait a minute, I don't even knowhow to express how I got to
where I got and tell my stories,much less productize it.
And one of the places that Istart with people is taking what
(16:20):
made them brilliant and greatand helping them create that
into.
This is your system, this isthe BAS system, this is the BAS
methodology, the tools and thetemplates, and along the way,
let's figure out how it changes,because AI is here and can do
things differently than youwould have done a year ago even
(16:45):
and then figure out how to makethat a product or something that
scales, or something that youteach, or something that makes
your team or your company workmore effectively.
And the specific way that Istarted doing this myself is
number one.
I've spent decades helping bigtech companies disrupt
(17:05):
themselves, and so, at Lenovo,it was a PC business that needed
to have services.
At Symantec, it was a hugeenterprise at the time storage
business that wanted to buildappliances.
At Intel, it was an ingredientcompany that suddenly decided it
wanted to be solutions.
And, oh, people weren't justgoing to say yes because I
(17:26):
showed up.
You actually had to talk to acustomer and know what their
problems were.
Oh, great, in a very small way.
I've taken that background andexperience and in June,
developed my process forbuilding a book and wrote my
first book, the Edge, which isabout the proficiency meta.
(17:46):
It's about the process ofbuilding a book, and wrote my
first book, the Edge, which isabout the professionary meta.
It's about the process ofbuilding a book, and I did it in
72 hours, put it out on Kindleand then made it a bestseller
six days later because I wasspeaking it.
I had two speaking engagementsand I could market the book and
I had coaches along the way thebrilliant Peter Swain of ROAI.
(18:07):
One of the things that I'vedone is I've taken what I've
learned from him.
I've taken my own experienceand then I've created a system
that allowed me then to createthree more books and ghostwrite
other books and teach otherexecutives who want to create a
(18:28):
book and learn AI.
But the point is not thedeliverable, which is a book or
a course.
The point is that processallows them to really think
through what makes them reallygood and to think of themselves
as a methodology that they nowcan share with the world and be
(18:50):
more significant as a result.
Hopefully that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
To me it does, and I'm tracking you.
So I love that.
You mentioned a couple ofthings in there, and that was
your book Curse at Super 1, andI want to touch on that for a
moment.
But you're not just a one-timebestseller.
How are you?
You're being modest.
Can you?
Can you inline what else you'vedone in the in the author space
, because it's a hugeaccomplishment for any of you
(19:19):
just be a bestseller, but you'vedone it two or three times, I
believe.
Is that correct?
Five times?
Okay, I was wrong five times.
I apologize, I fucked up.
Five times.
Bestseller whatever, but pleasecan you tell them where they
are, how, how?
Speaker 2 (19:34):
and yeah, can you choose.
So, if you think about thepackage of books together, right
, and the three package of books, and and so I've done five
books, but the three that arethe package together is the
first is the Edge, and thatreally is about how I, with the
fact of AI, reframed andrethought the, the process of
(19:58):
how I do work and the process ofcreating Betsy's brain into at
the time this feels very old nowat the time custom GPTs, right,
and to codify how I analyze,how I synthesize, how I
communicate, and then ultimatelycreated an army that is my
(20:22):
chief of staff, my CFO, my focusgroups, all of the things into
different chat GPTs and thatprocess of again taking what I'm
really great at, which iscreating operations, people,
systems that scale and doing itnow in AI.
That scale and doing it now inAI.
The second book behind me isUnstoppable Advantage and that
(20:45):
one I started to realize as Iwas working with executives last
year, which is that everybodygets very excited about the
productivity potential of AI andwe are super well-tra trained
as executives to think, oh, Ican do more with less, and
fundamentally, that to me, is aterrifying.
(21:08):
It's a terrifying trajectorybecause people are outsourcing
work to AI, which means a verydark future, because if there
are no jobs for humans, there'snobody to buy the things that
(21:29):
the companies create.
Then there are no companies,and then they're like.
The cycle is terrible, but toactually talk about that is a
little bit more than people canthink, and so, in Unstoppable
Advantage, I try to break downthe cycles of disruption that
have happened during our historyand create the analogy that
what's happening now is likeelectricity and we don't know
(21:51):
what the end results of havingelectricity in our lives will be
, but we know something willhappen.
Hopefully it'll be good.
And so I spent time looking at21 disruptive, highly disruptive
scenarios and have amethodology that allows you to
look at if those disruptionshappen, what is the margin
(22:15):
compression that happens?
How quickly does it happenSorry, somebody is calling me
how quickly does it happen?
And then what happens to yourvaluation?
And again, that's reallytheoretical, but let me break it
down for you, for anybody whodoesn't spend a lot of time
nerding out about this like I do.
(22:35):
I needed to get a headshot donethe other day.
In the old world, I would havegone on Yelp, I would have
looked for photographers and Iwould have booked somebody for I
don't know $500.
I would have driven myself overto their studio with my little
makeup bag and my seven outfitsand we would have spent a couple
(22:56):
of hours and two weeks later Iwould have had some proofs.
Okay, so, if that elapsed timethree weeks, four weeks,
whatever Today or this week, Ican take a picture of myself
with an iPhone.
I can pay $12 for an AI app andI can generate 100 headshots,
(23:20):
right, and that took me maybe 30minutes.
And it only took me 30 minutesbecause I started playing around
and I gave myself a haircut.
I made myself a blonde.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
You went down the rabbit hole, didn't you?
Speaker 2 (23:33):
I went down the rabbit hole and the thing is 30
minutes versus weeks and $500versus 12, massive value to me.
Great for me.
Can you share that?
Speaker 1 (23:49):
for the viewers.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
But sucks for the photographer, right.
And that's what will happen.
To the extent that you arehaving productivity games you
also will be.
Somebody else is going to comearound and do what you do a
thousand times faster, athousand times cheaper, and that
is what companies need to bedefining strategies around.
(24:15):
And then the third book isunusual and unique because I
wrote it with our mutual mentor,peter Swain, and here's how
that process.
This is why this system worksso well.
So the process for that book isBetsy and Peter are on Telegram
talking to each other, as inchatting right, and Peter is on
(24:38):
a plane going from New York backto England and Betsy is in
California having insomnia andPeter says I've got a great idea
and I said great, I'm in, andPeter shows me this methodology
that he wants to write about,and then, at the end of his
(24:59):
flight, he sends me a 10-pagedocument that just has an
outline of a methodology, andthen Betsy takes it and she
writes a book called the ADAPTFramework in 24 hours.
And then, at the same time,chatgpt created projects, and so
(25:21):
I took the book and the notes,I created all the tools,
templates and the methodologyand again, these are things that
we know how to do.
We just had not productizedthem and created beautiful
templates, tools and products.
The book itself is it's a book.
It's not the best book I'veever written, but the point of
(25:42):
the book is that we also havecall outs to my clone.
90% of the content is in myclone, not in the book itself,
right?
Because the point of a booklike Adapt Framework is that
somebody does something with theframeworks.
You often have to talk tosomebody to do that and, by the
(26:03):
way, if you get the book, youget to talk to the clone and you
get access to all of thatknowledge and those explicit do
A, b, c lessons and, likeamazing, and that was done
literally within one weekend forthe book, one weekend for the
methodology and less time forthe clone.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
You see, what you've just done there is you've put
components of people's audienceinto one place, productize them,
systemize them and thenmonetize them all in about 72
hours.
Absolutely, that to me, is agenius.
First, and I know Peter verywell, I know you well enough the
(26:53):
things that we do to uncoverour brilliance.
Before we close part one today,I want you just to think about
and this is for the viewerswhere are you burning out?
Where are you limiting yourself?
And before I go with that, Iwant to ask Betsy.
(27:17):
To ask Betsy what are youavoiding?
What are you not tellingyourself that?
Speaker 2 (27:29):
you where you can play bigger and better.
So many places right, because,again, you don't have the
privilege of living living afull life if you don't come up
with many myths in your headthat are true or not true, as
the case may be.
And I feel like where I amburning out, or where I have the
(27:51):
chance to burn out, is thatidea that I'm not going to be
good enough for what I want todo and who I'm speaking to.
And that goes back to the egoof somebody who, frankly, was an
(28:13):
executive right and all thesacrifices and things you have
to do to get chosen for, becausein public companies they often
the board has to say okay to you, not just your boss anymore,
and so there's that fear thatI'm not going to meet the bar
and that I'm going to lose steamin doing what I do.
(28:35):
That's just that's.
That is one of the things.
This.
The second is and I was talkingto Peter the other day and he
was making me laugh because hewas using this analogy is are
you the fishmonger who says Isell fresh fish?
And he said if you're afishmonger, you pretty much are
(28:56):
not going to not sell fresh fish, not going to not sell fresh
fish, and I've listened to a lotof people who, basically, are
the equivalent of the fishmonger.
And so then I start to havedoubt about myself and say is
what I'm saying differentiatedenough?
And that's again also an egoissue, because fundamentally, if
(29:20):
you can help one person, isn'tthat enough?
Isn't that enough?
And that, at my core, issomething that I've always
believed and always felt.
And if I could diverge for asecond, one of the stories of my
life is in the early days I wasa police reporter and then I
(29:40):
was a reporter at the BostonGlobe.
I realized I didn't like towatch life, I wanted to
participate.
And so what did I do?
Something that I ended up beingterrible at, but I became.
I went and I worked in schoolsin the city of Boston to learn
how to apply arts into everydayteaching, and they put me in
(30:02):
probably one of the worst schoolsystems.
I won't name it.
It was like, literally, younever want any child to be
taught by the folks that werethere.
And so I had to make friendsand influence people, and at the
end of a year we had spent allthis money, we had done all this
(30:23):
stuff and it was the end of mytenure at that school and one of
the kids came up to me and hegave me a flower.
And I've always remembered thatbecause, even if I couldn't
tell whether next year theywould do anything, whether any
program that we had built wouldstill live, for that moment, for
(30:48):
that year, I made a differenceto that kid and I've always had
him in my mind Any moment that Ihave, no matter where I am, no
matter what I do, no matter whatjob I'm in, did I make that
difference to that one person,that one kid?
And if I did, then okay, I'llbe okay.
All the other trappings money,fame well, it doesn't matter in
(31:16):
a 4,000-week life.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
I really like that analogy, especially in memories,
because they don't go away.
They're the ones that drive youforward into the next level of
achievement.
You can't replace them andthey're amazing to share.
So thank you for sharing thatTo my viewers.
Thank you very much.
This is part one of Betsy Tongand myself having a little chat.
(31:42):
Please download, give a reviewand share the message to
somebody who this may changetheir life.
Don't forget.
In part two we'll be going abit deeper into a few other
things, some few surprises onthe way as well.
Thank you very much, betsy.
I'll see you very shortly andto make this?
please download, subscribe andshare.
(32:03):
See you soon.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.