011: The Profitable Happiness Factor – Dr Pele Raymond PhD

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Dr Pele Raymond 0:00
As the bombs are falling and we had no food. My mother did the most amazing thing. She would sing to me about food. So instead of being fed, and having, you know, physical things, the music and singing, fed us and made us happy. And that’s when I realized that you can actually strive for happiness first, and then all the other things follow because happiness is the true food we’re looking for. So that’s my life in a nutshell.

Tony Maree Torrey 0:33
Welcome to the Legacy in the Making Show. I’m your host LA’s foremost Success Coach Tony Maree Torrey, I interview leaders and influencers who have gone beyond the superficial markers of success and claimed true fulfillment by leveraging their positions to create positive and profitable changes in their businesses and beyond. They share their stories and offer real world, boots on the ground experience. That translates into practical advice to apply to your own journey. I invite you to this injection with wisdom and inspiration so you can prevail and leave your own lasting legacy.

Hello, and welcome to the legacy in the making podcast. today. I have the amazing Dr. Pele Raymond to talk with. And he is such a multi talented, wise man, I’m very glad to be able to share his expertise with you. Let me tell you a little bit about him and his history. And then we’ll get on to hearing some of his personal wise words. So Dr. Pele is a best selling author. He’s a musician, and host of the profitable happiness Podcast, where he features the stories of highly successful executives, experts and entrepreneurs who build happy and profitable workplace cultures. He was born and raised in war torn Africa and he was in a refugee village. He was named after Pele of Brazil, the soccer player and his influence was great on his life, as he transitioned through the bloody civil war that he lived through. But he internalized his namesake what a gift.

Dr. Pele I just love that. So early on in life, your parents set you up for success. He’s phenomenally creative. If you get the chance, please make sure you connect with him on Facebook because he releases these amazing inspiring music videos. And if that weren’t enough, he’s also the author of six best selling books. He’s got an MBA and a PhD in organization and management. And today, he artfully blends all his passions for music, and purpose and creates a business built on happiness. Don’t we all want to create a business built on happiness? So Dr. Pele over to you share with us a little bit more about your story?

Dr Pele Raymond 2:58
Wow, I don’t know if I can beat that kind of an introduction. Thank you so much. It’s such a pleasure to be on your show. Tony Murray, thank you for the invitation. All I can say is you know how people say that it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. I can tell you one thing, I don’t even bother about the destination anymore. I’ve just focused on that journey being the truth of what I am in my authenticity. It’s just where am i right now? And so that’s, that’s what I’m trying to do.

Tony Maree Torrey 3:28
What do you find are the benefits that you experience from living in the present moment like this and letting go of attachment to outcomes, I can tell you, just freedom of

Dr Pele Raymond 3:39
heart, spirit, a sense that I’m truly living my best life. And I’m just not shackled to the idea of perfection, or, as you say, outcomes. You know, maybe, maybe we do finally learn to live fully and correctly when we focus on living now. You know, so I think that’s, I think I’ve finally arrived at that. And that’s why I do things. Some people might think they’re crazy. Like, I spent so much time to write and produce a song. It’s like, I’m not trying to get a record deal. I’m not trying to be Michael Jackson, one would almost ask, why would you write a song? Why would you do this. And it’s because I’m in the moment. And it’s beautiful in that space, to share and to cry, and to release those words, so that it can touch someone else’s heart. So that’s kind of where I’m at.

Tony Maree Torrey 4:32
And it does touch other people’s hearts. And I think that there’s a lot of power in that a lot of the work that I do with my clients is actually around getting them out of their heads and in connection with their other neural networks, primarily the heart and the gut, because that’s their actually the seats about brilliance and wisdom, and anything that you can do to contribute to the world to crack someone’s heart open and allow them to access that Dr. Pillai is so powerful, what have been some of the benefits for you of taking that risk and stepping out of that more? I don’t know, I guess kind of head based game into something that is more wholehearted.

Dr Pele Raymond 5:16
You know, it’s interesting that you mentioned the idea of stepping out because one of the reasons why I use music in my leadership development and executive coaching and team development work, is because there’s so much magic and power in helping people step out of where they currently are, so that they can watch their own lives from a distance. And and, and music is the way I do that. It’s, you know, you could do it with I’m sure many different strategies and things. But for me, music has become an environment I can take people to, where they can let go, they can let go of, of all the little details of where they are when they’re inside the frame and can’t see the picture, if you will, Thanks for using the word stepping out. To answer your question all my life, I have tried to fit into the boxes that people have created. I’ve tried to be the vice president of this, or the Vice President of that big corporations. I’ve tried to do the traditional got to make a million dollars online. I’ve done all those things. And none of them were me, I had some moderate success even. And yet, you know, you sit down there with your pile of gold, and you’re like, still unhappy, you know. So, for me, happiness became the real pursuit and contribution, how can I not only be happy for myself, but help other people be happy that became the contribution I saw. And the goal I saw as most important when I was able to step outside of myself for just a short time, and really asked myself, you know, this does not make you happy, does it know? You know, I’ve probably shared this with you before, back when I was maybe what, three years old. In the Nigerian Civil War, way back late 60s, millions of people were dying, you know, bombs are falling everywhere. We’re all hungry. In fact, I’m sure you’ve seen those black and white pictures with children, big stomachs. There’s a disease back then called kwashiorkor. And you’ve got flies buzzing around. I hate to be so graphic, but I was one of those children.

Tony Maree Torrey 7:23
Oh, my gosh,

Dr Pele Raymond 7:24
I was one of those children in those pictures.

Tony Maree Torrey 7:28
Thin arms and legs

Dr Pele Raymond 7:29
Yes, I was one of those pictures like that. And, and so as these bombs are falling, and we had no food, my mother did the most amazing thing. She would sing to me about food. So instead of being fed, and having, you know, physical things, the music and the singing, fed us and made us happy. And that’s when I realized that you can actually strive for happiness first. And then all the other things follow because happiness is the true food we’re looking for. So that’s my life in a nutshell.

Tony Maree Torrey 8:06
That way you weren’t being fed, but you were being nourished.

Dr Pele Raymond 8:10
Yes.

Tony Maree Torrey 8:11
Yeah. Oh, that’s so powerful. It makes me think about the breatharians there really are actually people that exist in this world who don’t rely on food for their nourishment, breath practices, actually a lot of what I do for my nourishment, I actually you know, I’ve always been pretty rail thin, I call it a kind of a consequence of having had a pretty unhealthy digestive system. For most of my life, I was very susceptible to things like food poisoning, and just any stomach flu or anything that went on. And I was always thin and lacking in energy, I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. And I know people with those diagnoses that to this day are on disability and wouldn’t get out of bed. But for me, my operated from just sheer bloody will is what I used to call it, you know, like forcing myself to get out of bed, regardless of what my body felt like. And breath practice was a lot of what bought me back to life. And so I love what you’re saying. It’s like you can nourish people through music, through love, you can change your state. And that’s really, so much of what it’s about is learning how to change your state, regardless of the circumstances that are around you.

Dr Pele Raymond 9:32
It’s well known now that, you know, happiness is not a feeling that you just sit around and wait to feel. Because you just never know. If you do you might be surprised that it’s just not going to come no matter how much money you make, or whatever you do. Happiness is actually a verb. It’s something you do. In order to be happy, you have to do happy. I actually developed one methodology that I use every single Good day to stay in that zone. I call it predictively h a p p y?

Absolutely.

It’s H. And it’s actually in my current book, the one you see over there. It’s the seven songs of a successful team. We’re glad you brought that up, because I was going to ask you to show us the cover and tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, yeah, I will, I will. Let me let me tell you what, what happy means. So every single day, I find a way to do five things. Okay, if I can do those five things, I usually will have a happy day. The first one is, ah, I focus on my head, my heart, and heedfulness. And for anyone for whom that word is not very common, it means mindfulness. It just means whether you meditate, or you read. For me, I play music, I play my guitar or my keyboards first thing in the morning, and it just puts me in a positive state, right? It allows me to meditate. And then the next thing I do somewhere in the day, I find a way to show appreciation that’s a so h for heedfulness. A for appreciation. And then the next thing is you focus on practice, practicing optimism. Now, the reason why I say you got to practice optimism is because, believe it or not, optimism, optimism is a skill. Most of us tend to be negative thinkers, it’s very rare to find that person who’s automatically optimistic about life. And so you have to actually practice it look for opportunities to be resilience, regardless of adversity and just be positive about what you see. Then the second p, which is H, a P. And then now another P is people, make community find ways to show generosity to someone else other than yourself. Because it’s all about people. In fact, I think relationships have to be the number one reason for success and for happiness everywhere. So find those people you can connect with the show generosity to and lift up. And then the last one the Y is say yes to yourself, whatever you say, I believe becomes the truth. People might wonder why I would want to have a recording studio in my house, and I do all this work on music, which is my passion. Because I’m saying yes, I’m saying yes, regardless of a non music industry, there’s no music industry anymore. It’s like not even like a viable thing to just put a song out. And it’s like a freebie. I do it because it means so much to me. And I’m saying yes to myself. So that’s my formula. h a p p y.

Tony Maree Torrey 12:37
Love that. And it is so easy to remember there was so many things that I resonated with, with what you were saying there, the practice hatefulness, it’s rare to hear that and we almost always think about like heating a warning, right? But there’s this other side of it, where we get to heat which, for me, it’s probably not the full interpretation of the word. But for me, it’s about listening. And so much of what you’re doing with your music is about listening to yourself, listening to your passions, and saying yes to yourself. And for me, like the breath work, for instance, that is so much about listening. And I’ve had so many incredible benefits as a result of doing that in my life, because I get uncommon levels of guidance, and find myself what I you know what I say to my clients, because it happens to them, too, they report back, they find themselves in the right place at the right time saying the right things to the right people. And that’s what happens when we take that time to pause. And listen, have you got any specific examples of something that’s happened to you like some inspiration or some guidance that has come to you as a result of you listening to yourself and being on this path of happiness?

Dr Pele Raymond 13:55
Well, one thing is, I have been surprised very recently about how much my music is touching people before COVID-19. And before a lot of the racial tension that just recently showed up. People would say your music makes me happy. It’s very positive things like that. But with COVID-19 and one song that I put out. Yeah, very recently, and then another one. Yeah, very recently, another one actually are adding this racial tension that’s happening in the world. The feedback I’ve been getting from people has been overwhelming. I’ve never had so many shares, and thousands and thousands of views. And I’m like, I think I’ve touched on something here. Finally, a chord.

Tony Maree Torrey 14:43
And one of the things that amazed me and this is this is about the mastery and the practice because you put that out so quickly and and people there’s not it’s not just the amazing music, but also this gorgeous video and I want to The things that I marveled at, because you know how your brain thinks about things on all these different levels all at the same time, yeah, is being moved, feeling so much love and amazement at your talent. And at the same time there was this logical part of me that was going, man, how did he turn that around so quickly?

Dr Pele Raymond 15:18
The Chinese bamboo tree, right, apparently, which, you know, you plant it now, but it doesn’t come out for five years, right. And it’s easy to think it’s not there anymore. But five years later, boom, here’s a little tree coming out. And it’s funny, I’ve been developing these skills, you know, music, video production, audio production, for years, and have really not targeted it at any kind of profit. But now I can see that I wanted to do a song in a week or so. And I did it. And it’s like, because I wanted people to hear that message right now. And it’s really touching a lot of people. And it’s it’s opening a lot of doors, the door of conversation that’s, that’s authentic and open minds that are open. So for example, if I talk to a CEO at a corporation, it’s very, very quick for me to know who my real clients are, and who might, who just won’t be a client, because all they have to do is listen to my music, and make a decision. It’s like, Oh, yeah, we don’t see the connection between all this brain mind neuroscience stuff you’re talking about and profit. Fine, good. We won’t be talking for me, if you are a leader who doesn’t see the power of people, and the need for people that have happiness in your workplace. Sure, go for it, you do your kind of business profit-building, and I’ll do mine because this for me, it’s about the people, not the profit.

Tony Maree Torrey 16:45
Absolutely. This is why I started the innate wisdom Business Council, and it’s a mastermind for business leaders who want to create work environments and global environments and contribution and, and shift how business is done. And one of the reasons why you know how our wounds are oftentimes the things that that implement our desire to do things, and one of the main switches that shifted me from really wanting to make it in the corporate world at higher and higher levels, to actually going yeah, I don’t want anything to do with this anymore, was when I worked under an executive vice president. And I knew I was in trouble when we had our first meeting. Because I had already started some training with regard to coaching and things like that. And I was really starting to find a shift in my mindset, and how I was building my teams, I was managing global teams, and was really helping me with my communication with these people. And people would oftentimes say, and I especially like the folks that I was in the US, the folks in Australia would be Tony’s The only person that gets it. She’s the only one that gets what’s going on here. Because I was having intentional dialogues with them. And so I asked him, I said, Okay, you know, like, what are your goals for our team? And he started talking about revenue. And I’m like, Okay, I’ve got some code running. I know, sometimes you need to ask the question more than once. And so I actually bought him back to that question three times. And by the end of it, he was like, super irritated with me, because all he wanted to do was talk about money. And finally, I was just like, what do you want to do around the business culture and things like that. And he just, he didn’t go there. And I think he kind of earmarked me is a troublemaker or something. And he just treated people like units of production. Yeah, he actually devolved the entire team, this entire leadership team, everyone, except for one person who I also consider was a bit of a bully. There was one person that he mentored and moved into more high-level positions. I mean, we were pretty high up already. But he had opportunity. And he was more of cut from the same cloth, as everyone else, left the company or went to different went under different leadership. Yeah. And that’s really, My mission is to make sure that people have the skills and the capacity to lead other people. In this way. You know, you and I, I think we have very similar bowls in.

Dr Pele Raymond 19:13
Yeah, I mean, if you look at the leadership development field, many of us have PhDs. I have a PhD, I’m certified and that all the psychometric assessment tools like Hogan and Burkman and Myers Briggs, and we all have that science down. You know what, what we don’t have is that thing that opens up the heart, right? It’s not about the mind anymore. I mean, if all of us can do this, then why would I do it with you? Well, it’s because you open up my heart, and you allow me to just breathe and I can be authentic and that’s the space that I pursue. That’s why music plays such a role in what’s really an otherwise, you know, stuffy business of we’re going to do an assessment and we’re going to Take interviews with your 20 leadership people. And we’re going, you know, the music actually brings a whole new spin on everybody just relaxing.

Tony Maree Torrey 20:10
And actually, I’ve just had this little light bulb go off, I need to connect you with a client of mine who’s a motivational speaker, and a musician. And he’s bought that into his motivational speak. And he goes into organizations and create songs specifically for that organization or for that team. And he actually does a lot of work with nonprofits and with schools and also with corporations. And yeah, it opens people up and creates this sense of camaraderie and togetherness that empowers people on so many different levels, like the benefits of doing things like this, like what you’re doing, are so far-reaching, they move beyond what I call the superficial markers of success.

Dr Pele Raymond 20:56
Yeah, I mean, I, I take no backseat to anyone on the science of leadership development and behavior change. We use all the same tools. But the thing that I bring that that is unique is the opportunity to ice break, and to start a conversation that uses a universal language we all have, and that’s music. It’s one of my tools. It’s not all my it’s not the only tool, for example, I actually make a good I try to make a good effort to tell people, I’m not the entertainer today. Yeah, I didn’t come here to entertain you. Even though I got a guitar. We’re gonna do the science. But for a moment, let’s just stop. Let’s breathe. And let’s connect with our spirit.

Tony Maree Torrey 21:39
Oh, I just love that. So Dr. Pele, if you imagine yourself standing in front of a room of founding CEOs and people that are building their businesses wanting to take things to the next level, and also create that lifestyle, that sense of that they’re not just hamsters on a hamster wheel, but they’re contributing and they’re creating something amazing in the world. What’s through piece of sage advice that you could give a room of people like that?

Dr Pele Raymond 22:11
I would say

you don’t want to hear that the words that I was about to say I was about to say something very controversial. Oh, go for it.

Tony Maree Torrey 22:21
polarizing, polarizing, right? We’ll have the lovers and the haters,

Dr Pele Raymond 22:25
I would say get naked.

The people who have succeeded the most are the people who have just taken all the layers off. And they are simply who they are. Their natural instincts are on full display, their natural talents are fully leveraged. They’re living inside of the dream that they’ve stated for themselves. Just find those people. And you’re like, yeah, that’s someone who’s walking their own unique path. And I feel that though I feel as though this is the finally the message I can uniquely bring to the world that is mine. I mean, there was a time I tried to be the guy who could teach people how to make a lot of money. No, wait a second. I’m not exactly Donald Trump. Well, maybe that’s not a good example.

But I’m not exactly a gazillionaire myself, but what is it that I authentically truly bring, I simply bring the formula of, if you can find your happy, then you can help others find their happy. If I were to give anyone advice, I’d say stop what you’re doing. If it’s not you sit down and really think about what you is, you know, what, what defines you? What’s your authentic place and find it, because that’s the thing that makes you happy, and then use that use that to make others happy. Right. So for me, it was finding a way to finally bring music into my, my people building my work. I finally found it outside of the traditional music industry. I finally put the two together. And thankfully, I did it using science because there’s a whole neuroscience of music, that actually people don’t realize people think of music as entertainment, entertainment and therapy.

That’s it. If it’s either entertainment or it’s therapy, music, turns out is actually a great tool for learning and development, which is my field. So like learning and development, my goodness, we could do a whole talk on just how the science of learning mixes in with the science of music. A simple example is the way we learned our ABCs you and I probably learned it to the tune of Twinkle twinkle little star, right? Yeah, guess what you and I will never ever forget that. That’s the power of music when it comes to memory to learning and to development. And I’ve found all the tools I’ve done all the research to actually fully bring music into the conversation of how do we teach people to be better at teamwork, better at leader as leaders and so on and so forth. It’s fascinating. So for me, I finally found the authentic place whereby my happiness my music From childhood is now the thing I do when I’m talking to a billion dollar CEO. Mm hmm.

Tony Maree Torrey 25:06
Well, you’re so in touch with your purpose now. And this the expression of happiness through music plus your calling, I was talking with someone about it, we have our purpose, and we have our passion. And then we have our calling. And it’s when we can combine all three together, that’s when we really step into our authenticity, it’s when we have the the juice the generator inside that helps us persist, when you’re really clear on those things. And you know how to make a truly authentic decision, you may not always in the moment in the short term, or like the results of that decision, because it’s not a guarantee that life is going to be without bumps. But what it is a guarantee of is that if you know that you’ve been in alignment with those things, and you make a decision from that place, any of the bumps are so much easier to bear, and move beyond them so much more quickly than you do if you go back and start beating yourself up and second guessing yourself for having made that choice, because you don’t really know if you were in alignment when you made it.

Dr Pele Raymond 26:19
Yeah, I mean, I’m walking that talk that I’m talking because for example, it was I, who, for years, was afraid to bring the thing that made me happy the music, for example, into the work that I was doing. So I got a PhD, I went and tried to get these big titles of big companies. It was never happy until finally, I did that. I simply, I wrote the book, and put myself on the cover it with a guitar. Talk about Yay, that’s courage. Because now I’m really going for it. Yeah. And you can

Tony Maree Torrey 26:57
hey got naked without getting naked.

Dr Pele Raymond 27:01
Literally, I’m going for it. Now I am not afraid, I am finally comfortably living in my own skin.

Tony Maree Torrey 27:07
That’s fantastic. This has been such an amazing conversation. And I actually would love to have you back at some point to have that conversation around the neuroscience behind the learning and music. So please do come back. You are very welcome. And in the meantime, how can people find you? The

Dr Pele Raymond 27:26
best way to find me is at DrPele.com. It’s DrPele.com. And again, our focus is on leadership and team development. I’m also available on LinkedIn. Perfect, great, have you got any last thoughts that you want to share with us? Before we go, I just want to say thank you for bringing me on your show. I love the work that you do in the world. And specifically what I mean by that is you’re one of those soldiers that are focused on the heart and the human thing in us first before all the other superficial stuff and that’s where I want to be with my life. Thank you so much for that.

Tony Maree Torrey 28:02
I’m glad you tuned in to the legacy in the making show. If you’re genuinely interested in creating positive change in your business or your life or on a more global scale, I invite you to connect with me at Tony murray.com that’s Tony with a Y Maree with two E’s. When you get there you’ll find the pastor purpose master plan, the truly brilliant method to make sure you’re clear on why you’re here. This is the absolute critical foundation to honing your instincts and leaving a legacy you’ll be proud of. You can also find out about the Innate Wisdom Business Council which is an opportunity to evolve your vision in the company of like-minded leaders and much much more. Thanks for listening. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and we’ll see you next time.