Ryan Blair. Gang member. Gun slinger.
Now a married man and a leader in purpose-driven business practices – with an AI base.
Covid brought him low.
“I was downed by a high fever. Twenty-one days in isolation. I was stuck by myself, and I said, ‘I'm going to do life differently. If these are my last days. This – alone – is not the way I want to go out.’”
This experience kicked off a dramatic, transformational process. His mother passed away. “I broke mentally. I broke physically. I broke everything that I had going on in my life: the drinking, the partying. I spent two years trying to figure out how to get through this awakening, and now, I’m no longer the same person.”
When he met his now wife, a NASA scientist, he told her right up front about his past. “She said ‘no mud, no lotus,’’’ and that was it. I was all in.”
Watch Ryan Blair at METAL
Seven years after the start of his transformation, Blair is shipping an AI platform to service purpose-driven organizations. “Think of us as an outsourced leadership development engine. Our AI models analyze communications within a company and give people actionable insights as to how they can improve their leadership and grow both personally and professionally.”
The first stage in his process is to analyze communications across the company.
“As you think, you speak, and as you speak, you act,” he explains. “We help move people from victim-based to a more expansive-based consciousness.”
The AI scores communications in four areas:
- Listening.
- The ability to affirm the other individual’s experience.
- To respond consciously.
- To ask open-ended questions.
“We then roll that up into a metric that can be improved upon each time,” he says. “For example, we watch how often people reference themselves in a conversation versus referencing the mission or the company, or something outside of themselves. So [after] every communication, you get feedback as to how you can improve. The objective is to basically turn an organization's growth on autopilot.
“As a company grows and they start to deploy standardized management practices, the mission of the company often gets lost. You lose some of that purpose. The consciousness gets diluted. We get in there and provide this operating system that keeps mission at the center.”
Blair believes there is a large transition where people are moving from being exploited cogs in a machine “to people who are discovering their calling, linking that to a vocation, and I think that that's how we're going to retrain the workforce. Only this way will they go deeper, be happier, more productive and grow companies better.”
He credits his mentor, Dan Gilbert, founder of Quicken Loans, for teaching him that money doesn't lead, it follows.
“When you put something above money, that actually generates the money. It drives engagement, and customer success. If you focus on money, it'll run from you. For example, I don't focus on the amount of money I want to raise. I focus on my connection to my faith, to nature, to myself, and then I go get the money. And it comes.”
Takeaways:
- No Mud, No Lotus. Hardship can produce the most beautiful results.
- If you put purpose and connection first, the money will follow.
- The future of work is in connecting people’s personal, spiritual growth to their vocation.
- AI can help create actionable metrics for positive, mission-centric communications within organizations
Written by Adam Gilad
Trending Now
Here's How Green Bubbles are Getting Upgraded in iOS: iOS 18 introduces RCS support for messaging, enabling chats between iPhone and Android users to have many features core to other messaging apps. Cross-platform chats will now support high-resolution media, typing indicators, read receipts, and more reliable group messaging. Not all carriers support RCS on iPhone yet. Apple's RCS support doesn't include cross-platform end-to-encryption between iOS and Android. (The Verge)
Hollywood Studio Lionsgate Struck a Deal to Feed its Movies to an AI Firm’s Model: Lionsgate, the studio known for blockbuster franchises such as The Hunger Games, Twilight, and John Wick, intends to incorporate generative AI into its film and show production through a new partnership with the AI startup Runway. Lionsgate will provide its media catalog to Runway, an applied AI research firm established in 2018, which will use this extensive library to develop and train a bespoke AI model for the studio. This model will have the capability to create cinematic videos, which can then be refined using Runway's editing tools. (QZ)
World-First ADHD Headband Treats Symptoms in 20 Minutes Per Day: Neurode is an Australian startup with a device that treats ADHD using non-invasive light electrical brain stimulation delivered by a headband worn for just 20 minutes a day. It helps manage focus, memory, and impulse control and can measure brain activity and track changes over time through an app. The headband and app feature an AI assistant to help users reduce overwhelm and help form personalized to-do lists. It is unclear how much it will cost or how effective it is, but those in the US who are curious can now sign up to beta-testing the headband. (Newatlas)
