Why Emotional Intelligence Matters even more in an AI world with Christine West

Hey Mark.

Hey Katie.

Hey you wanna do a podcast?

Yeah.

Sweet okay.

Welcome to the Unforget Yourself Show where we use the power of Lou and the proof of science

to help you identify your blind spots and get over your own bullshit so that you can do the fucking thing

you actually want to do.

Absolutely.

I'm Mark.

And I'm Katie.

And we're the founders of Unforget Yourself and the creators of the Unforget Yourself system.

Look, being a business owner is tough, with vulnerability and with humour, we'll be sharing

with you the real stories behind the success of those brave and crazy enough to start their own

business and to show you that you're not alone.

Not from the accidental entrepreneur to the laser focus CEO.

We have honest conversations about how they get to where they are today.

We talk about the challenges that they faced and what they're currently dealing with in real time

on their rollercoaster day.

Along the way, we want to show you that it's you.

You are the most important asset in your business.

Yeah you are.

So let's cut the bullshit and start the show.

Enjoy.

Okay, hello everyone and welcome to the show.

Now, just a quick interruption to a normally scheduled episode.

If you wish more people knew you, trusted you and actually reached out wanting to work with you,

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So if you want a proven way that actually grows your business,

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And now onto your scheduled podcast episode.

So today we have with us, Christine West, founder of the Business MD,

a people strategy consultancy that helps leaders, business owners and entrepreneurs win with people

through emotional intelligence and effective communication.

Through EQ assessments, coaching, training, consulting and speaking,

Christine supports leaders in recognizing patterns, strengthening emotional awareness,

and shifting how they lead and communicate in high pressure environments.

Now, Christine's journey of building a business that truly reflects who she is,

demonstrates what emotional sovereignty looks like when leadership, boundaries and purpose finally align.

And while navigating rapid growth, family dynamics and an AI driven world that still demands

deeply human leadership.

She is helping people lead of clarity, courage and emotional precision.

Christine, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Mark.

What an introduction.

I was listening to it.

I was like, wow.

It's, you know, it's always beautiful to hear somebody else, you know,

introduce you and, wow, I'm happy to be here.

You're welcome.

And you got a British accent.

I do.

How about that?

Nice.

Well, to kick us off, can you just expand a touch more on, you know,

where you are today with your business and who is it that you love to work with?

You know, who I really love to work with and where I'm at,

is those who are really thirsting for emotional literacy.

And what I mean by that is, it's not that people wake up and say,

I want to have literacy with my emotions, but they want to have more wins with people.

They want to connect with people.

They want to win when they get surprised by how another group or, you know,

human being behaves, they have the solution.

They know how to the, they have the skill to navigate through those complexities.

And then they deal with confidence as though they're playing, you know,

one of their favorite games, you know, that it's fun.

Instead of saying, oh, no, I want to avoid this is scary.

So part of your question, where am I with my business is, I'm really excited that I am creating more and more, you know,

things for folks entrepreneurs and leaders, small business to purchase around emotional intelligence,

because I hear so many folks being so afraid of, you know, I want no part of that AI.

I want no part of that.

Well, I'm here to share with you AI isn't going to take over your job.

It's an assistant and it's really not as smart as most folks think it is.

It's about the human that has more emotional intelligence.

Hold on, that's just fear.

So it's the fear that comes in, rather than those embracing, how do we,

how do we use it as a tool, how will it improve things?

Where do we collaborate with it?

It's fear based.

So there's the emotion intelligence.

Okay, let's tap into that because you're right.

No one comes here because they want emotional literacy, but no one says that.

What is it that they deep down?

What is it that they know that they want that triggers them to reach out to you?

Well, what triggers them is they're having headaches with people.

So the headache could be, why doesn't anybody want to work in my business?

Why are they lazy?

The trigger could be something such as, why do I keep saying the same thing over and over and over?

And my employees keep doing the same thing that I don't want.

Maybe the trigger is, I'm stuck in this same old conversation,

whether it's at, you know, at home and I bring it to work or it's at work and I bring it home.

And it's this looping thing.

And they don't understand it.

So is somebody else's fault?

And part of why I brought up emotional literacy because my clients begin to understand,

oh, this is what I'm feeling.

This is what's going on with me.

This is how I'm participating in this.

At that moment right there, that, oh, I see it, I feel it, I get it.

I think that moment is such a fantastic.

It can be frustrating, it can be scary, it can be guilt ridden,

but it can be super empowering as well.

So can you explain on that because at that moment, that's where change truly happens.

Well, certainly, it's where all this sense, so let's speak it from this.

Most people know what this is.

Most people sometimes with my clients, they are, they're, they're feeling as though they're a fraud.

They're in an imposter syndrome.

So that a half moment is, from my view of feeling as a fraud or feeling an imposter syndrome is,

all of a sudden you realize you gain the emotional capacity to solve whatever it is you're trying to solve.

The imposter syndrome of the fraudulent feeling is really the emotional, you know,

piece of you that says, I don't know what to do.

I don't know what to do, so I feel bad about myself or I feel, you know, say I'm a leader of a business,

I don't know how to solve this and I don't want to admit to anybody, I don't know how to solve this.

So once you begin to have that aha of, oh, I'm beginning to sit in my emotions and now I'm expanding emotionally.

And now I can start to see as I'm working through this with other people.

I'm lighting up some vulnerability, I'm being honest, like, hey, can you help me?

I don't know exactly how to solve this, but this is what we're dealing with.

And so that aha is the brilliance of being a little vulnerable and realizing that, oh, these emotions aren't so scary.

I can work through this.

So this is all about is we're trying to solve external problems now with internal solutions,

because rather than keep us externally, because that's where the blame lives.

That's where we're trying to play other people's games.

And, you know, we can't control everyone else.

They have their own understanding or challenges or blocks, but to understand ourselves,

now we get to, we get to play the game differently.

So maybe talk about that.

How do your clients, how do they change the game? What do they see?

Oh, well, this is what's almost fun for me.

Once I teach somebody to be emotionally solver, meaning that you have started becoming masterful over yourself.

It doesn't mean that you get to control everybody else, but if you think about something that say,

let's just say two weeks ago, irritated you, triggered you, you know,

that you snapped at somebody or you spun out of control telling everyone the story over and over and over

and you wasted a whole bunch of time and you realize that you spent your entire work day talking about whatever triggered you.

That was a lot of time.

As an entrepreneur, that's a lot of energy, but it happens.

And so the sovereignty point is somebody does the exact same thing that triggered you

and then all of a sudden you handle it differently. You're not triggered by it.

You respond differently. You don't spin out of control. You don't pick up the phone.

You don't as soon as somebody else comes into your world or at lunch, you don't tell the story.

It's irrelevant.

That what you said there, the wasted energy.

I was reading the untethered soul, Michael Singer again last week.

Right, but there's that there was a piece in it that he really spoke about the energy and how much energy it takes to

to let the maniac, the all the the the person your head run the show.

You're doing so much, you're thinking about so much, but if you can just pause and pull that away.

You save so much time, you save so much energy rather than winding there.

It's like I've got the exact quote as a beautiful one in there, but I think you framed it there.

It's all this wasted energy.

And we get wrapped up in it. We get we got swept away and it fuels us in certain ways, but it's not that helpful.

No, it's it's wild because there was always a saying about you were speaking about that I can remember the first time I saw it,

probably about 10, 15 years ago, is you know, kick those out of your head who are living rent free.

And it's only that as far as how many folks out there, you're in business.

I personally, I don't have time to have somebody who live rent free in my head.

I don't have time to be picking up the phone and whining about how somebody did me wrong.

It's something. Yeah, you have a question there.

I think we know this logically, but what what tools or tactics do you have that could in that moment when you catch yourself can bring yourself back in?

Is there anything that's tangible that you can give us to maybe just give us that helping?

So a cooked tool is seriously.

So what you can do is, you know, put, you know, you're, you know, one hand over the heart, one hand over the belly and just start taking some deep breaths.

Blow out.

Just do that a few times to calm and center yourself and then ask yourself the one question, how important is this really?

Is this profitable for me?

It's just, it's asking yourself that question and it's a matter of your breath.

I mean, that's a simple way that if it gets like too overwhelming, it's something that, for example, from an emotional intelligence perspective, many folks do not have control over their impulses.

For example, somebody does you wrong according to you, whatever that may be.

It could be something as simple as somebody cut you off in traffic and you got to bring it into the workplace, tell everybody the story.

Or maybe something more, you know, as serious happened as far as say the employee who's not performing and you don't know what to do.

So you decide to tell everybody else about it except for the employee.

I mean, that's a big waste of time because it doesn't help anyone, it doesn't solve anything.

So part of taming the impulses to tame, ask yourself, is it my interest in solving this?

Or am I interested in everybody listening to this because I'm getting something out of it?

Because that's two separate issues. Because if I want to solve something, then I'm going to look at places to solve it.

If I'm looking for attention, be honest, I'm looking for attention. I need attention.

Okay, so I love that. Put that on t-shirt. How important is it really?

It's such a great question. It cuts through so beautifully because the chances are I would say 92% of the time it's the answer is not very true.

No, no, it's, you know, at the end of the day, I mean, this, this is how I see things because honestly, if I live in Alaska, so if, so we have some crazy weather here.

So in, and right now, it's, it's about minus 10 below right now. It's pretty chilly out.

So why am I bringing that up? If I was standing outside and I'm cold.

Okay, am I going to stand there and complain to anybody will listen how cold I am?

Or am I actually going to get myself inside so that I don't get, you know, frozen?

I mean, looking at it from that standpoint and almost sounds, well, why wouldn't you go inside?

But to me, it's the same thing as far as why would you sit there and tell everybody about the employee or who cut you off in traffic?

You said the word. It's about attention. So we're, we're trying to bring attention to something that is not feeling right within ourselves.

We're lacking something. So it feeds that lack. So we're trying to get attention in different ways and it shows up differently.

But that's trying to get attention, trying to get something from this rather than just empower yourself to be able to, what do you say?

To solve the problem rather than fuel it.

Yeah, solve the problem because I mean, the question I have for folks is, do you want to be in the driver's seat or do you want to ride your life?

Or your business from the back seat? Because if you want to be in the back seat, then it's going to be everybody else's fault.

Somebody else did it. But if you truly want to be in the driver's seat, well, then guess what?

Then you need to start rephrasing things and looking at life or your decisions from a perspective to say, okay, how did I participate in this?

What did I just learn from this?

But then spoiler, you were in the driving seat all along. You just didn't know it.

Ah, yes.

Okay, well, Christine, I love this. Tell me about what was it about this line of work that you were like, yes, this is how I want to help people.

This is what my business should be about. What was that like for you?

Okay, so this is wild because I, this is not, there's nothing logical about what I'm about to share.

So back in 2001, I was in a big transition period of my life.

I did not grow up in Alaska. I was stuck. I used to work in corporate. And there was just so many messy things going out of my life.

And then that messy part of me, I didn't know how to express it. I didn't know how to, I was embarrassed about it, all this other stuff.

So I decided to go mountaineering in Alaska because I knew I was in a funk and I needed to do something really crazy.

And it wasn't really to go climb a mountain. It was to do something insane that I, I've always been outdoorsy.

But back then it was the first time I ever lived on a glacier for seven days.

So how the business came into this, I never ever thought by going mountaineering that I would get a business idea.

Well, on the last day of sitting in base camp, the rest of the group was climbing a second peak.

I got to experience what it would be like to be the only human on earth.

I'm sitting, you know, on this glacier. And it was so surreal. And then all of a sudden, I hear the voice of God.

And the voice of God really literally having this conversation with me.

And then all of a sudden, in my consciousness, I was risen above everything that I knew that was familiar.

And I could see how I can solve my own dilemmas.

And it was so cool. And I could solve these things in a nanosecond.

Things that I thought were so huge and so big and impossible.

And then all of a sudden, what was that, what was that message that came through to you?

The message from God was Christine. I'm showing you divine purpose.

Showing you this vision. And I'm seeing how I can solve these human issues within me.

And how simple it was and how I was participating at a lower vibration, lower consciousness.

And I remember saying to God, well, this is really cool. What if I don't want to do it for a living?

And God said to me, well, you don't have to. You can just go back to sleep and you go back to the familiar.

You already know what this, how the story ends there.

Red pill or the blue pill, right?

Exactly. And the analyst said, we exchanged a few more words and I just said, well, I got to do, to go do this.

And God said to me, you say yes to me and you follow my lead.

And I thought about it for a second and then I shouted out, yes.

And then the conversation ended, the commuter plane came.

And I couldn't get it out in my head.

And I had this brand new superpower of how I started looking at my life.

And everything that I thought was so crazy and so impossible.

All of a sudden, I fly, I fly back from Alaska and I go back to Chicago.

And in a short period of time, I grew my old life.

And everything that I thought was so huge and problematic, I literally could solve an anonymous second now.

And when I went back into the corporation I used to work for, I realized how powerful I was.

Not because I was doing anything just respectful or mean or getting into somebody's face.

It was because I was so grounded.

And I didn't buy into the corporate Kool-Aid anymore.

And I had new thoughts and I had, I was free.

And it was amazing.

So this, I was shown what how I was my first client.

And then I was shown how I could do this for other people.

I'm not saying that there was, you know, just there, you know, just in that moment that I didn't have to grow.

I mean, obviously I had, I keep growing and growing and growing.

But that was the moment for me.

That was, wow, this is, this is amazing.

But then you'll put into a situation where these, these tools, these tactics, these modalities, the business that you have.

You have a human being, have your emotions, your thoughts, your worries, your programming.

So you're dealing with and experiencing this at the same time as you're helping other people and growing this.

So what's it like to hold those both sides is true?

You know, to do that, you know, in the early years, it was a little bit more difficult because I wasn't as skilled as I am now.

It was, you know, like any common, you know, person, when you're starting that type of work, you know, the mistakes where it's taking on other people's stuff.

That's a big no no.

There was also, you know, the mistakes of because of my background of looking to rescue someone.

That's a big no no.

All these, all these experiences you had actually fueled you and you got to experience and see and understand are, I have corrected, I've made that mistake.

So all of these everything that forward goes into, so this experience made you a better coach guide leader.

Yes, yes.

It was literally this experience in, you know, and then what really after I decided to move to Alaska, which was by the end of 2001, that's when the real training started.

Because when you leave everything familiar behind and you go into a place where you have no friends.

And I brought my two dogs and two suitcases and got rid of everything was familiar and back then technology was very different.

So we didn't have a zoom. Internet was flaky. There was still dialogue.

Long distance calling was expensive.

So I didn't have somebody to say, hey, you want to go to the movies? You want to go do something?

So when you're faced with you, just you and you and you just to deal with you, it's, it's crazy wild about, you know, the programming, the emotions, the stuff that stops surfacing.

And I'm happy I made made a through it to, you know, keep growing and, and to get through things.

But I will share with you just, you know, as a business, starting the business was the greatest personal development tool ever.

Yeah, well, I guess it has thrust everything on to you, everything that you've learned, everything that you've experienced every, because we said a couple of podcasts ago.

The cycle that we see every single time is every business problem is a personal problem.

Every personal problem is a health problem. Every health problem is a financial problem and every financial problem you've guessed it is a business problem.

Yeah, it's always interlinked. So these business challenges, it turns out, oh, thank you, mirror. Thank you for showing me what's going on, right?

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's things such as, you know, for example, and I'm sure the audience can relate to this.

So for example, you know, a something I was always raised with was don't get involved.

Don't get yourself in trouble. Don't put yourself out there. Does that work as an entrepreneur? No.

It's so needing to, you know, get through that type of things where dealing with a lot of rejection, dealing with, oh, I said, you know, I didn't know what I was saying.

I don't know how I was supposed to handle that. And then you start thinking, oh, I guess my mom was right.

But my mom wasn't a business person. My mom wasn't an entrepreneur.

I mean, so we go through these, you know, things are patterns and are programming.

And sometimes, you know, being an entrepreneur is not for the faint of heart.

Because if you're all the sudden, I'm going to go wine and hide after you get rejected repeatedly.

And I'm not saying that it's enjoyable being rejected. And I'm not saying, hey, I said out to say, I want to go get rejected.

But it's something about looking at what is the mayor rejecting.

It wasn't me. It was looking at how I was showing up.

That wasn't me. That was just a pattern.

Or possibly knocking on the wrong doors.

Yeah, I mean, as an entrepreneur growing, you may have got your messaging wrong.

You're talking to the wrong people. It might be just completely them. And it's all about them.

So we get to learn, we get to evolve. We get to talk to the right people in the right way.

All these things start to, they just start to align. But we need to know, what do we need to align?

And that's what we gamify it. And you're right. Sometimes it can be a, it's not the most enjoyable game at times.

But if you reframe it to, I'm, I made 20 mistakes this week. I am 20 steps closer to finding what does work.

So what was maybe the biggest surprise as you, as you launched his business, the things that you, that you never even dreamed you'd see coming.

But some of the things that you never, you know, thought, okay, so when you come from, you know, a corporate backup, you're used to what is perceived security of, okay, that paycheck is coming.

And so there was a time as an entrepreneur, it was going from, okay, open the business.

And then I landed some really big contracts, which were pretty secure.

Yeah. But when you have a whale, and then also the whale dries up, and then you didn't market yourself, you're really a self-employed person, not really an entrepreneur.

And then, and then it's, wait a minute, what do I do? I didn't see that coming. I didn't see this drying up.

So learning how to negotiate, learning how to communicate, learning to set yourself up.

Yeah.

To not rely on just one whale. I mean, yes, I'm not saying don't go catch whales.

But if that's the only thing you got going on, that whale for whatever reason, it doesn't even mean that, I mean, you can be doing dynamite work.

And then just can dream up one day. Okay, we don't meet you anymore.

Yeah. But you also said those, those people from corporate, I mean, those people from corporate or even like therapists that turn into into coaches, don't know how to market themselves.

All the clients came from their teams or organizations or, or word of mouth.

And I think that moment there is like, it's great to have a whale. It's great to have some fantastic clients.

If you don't know how to get clients, and then you don't know that you've needed to do that, this can be a scary time because it starts to tap into, you feel like a fraud that you're not good at this.

Where it's like, no, you're great what you do. You just suck at getting clients. That's all.

Yeah, exactly.

So it's also, you know, looking at things from a perspective of, so this is, you know, part of why I really honed in on the skill of how to have really great conversations with people.

And I, and I really emphasize this to anybody who's listening to this.

You can, why I say about emotional literacy, because to have a great conversation is to be emotionally literate.

And to be able to be memorable, because part of being an entrepreneur is it's easy for folks to say no. Okay.

So if the mistake is, well, they said no, but what do they say no to?

So I have seen times in my business, so this is stuff that I had to learn is things such as, okay, somebody says no.

And then being able to have the conversation and saying, well, okay, maybe I missed it.

What did you just say no to help, you know, having them clarify for me what the know was.

Yeah.

And then, so, and then sometimes people decide to have it, just say no.

So think about like when you're a kid and your mother said it all the time, no, you can't have it.

So if you're a child, did you just stop there? Some kids may, other kids, maybe not.

So as an entrepreneur, asking that question, usually what happens is if the person is absolutely not interested.

They're just going to say, hey, I got to go.

But most of the time, they tell me what they're saying no to.

And then usually then the conversation, you know, can lead the conversation into, if they're really serious and they really want to do business,

it least doing something as far as well can, can you at least do something such as, can you make a commitment to showing me that you want to do business with me.

You know, even if it's something as silly as, okay, can we put down $1?

Just to show me that you want to do this eventually. You told yourself that.

It's not a complete no.

But it's being able to ask for things or come up with a creativity.

To be able to hold that conversation without losing it yourself internally.

So again, that's, I mean, that's about taps into our podcast business.

It's all about having great conversations because it produces great content.

But to be able to have these conversations, being curious, reaching in.

It's not projecting. It's not talking. That's social media. That's what that's all about.

But to have a real dialogue brings people together, right?

It does because here's the mistake. So she brought that up.

The mistake I see a lot of folks do is they have a monologue.

They're very skilled at monologues.

Monologues are boring.

And it's about being having a two way thing because, for example,

this is what's really interesting coming from a corporate background a long time ago.

Most corporate backgrounds teach folks how to have monologues.

You know, somebody tells you what to go do.

And then you go do it and blah, blah, blah.

As an entrepreneur,

the skill of being able to have that dialogue and to get to know folks

because when you can have an honest conversation with a prospect or client,

it doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, they're no,

just to cover what that no means.

Or if they say yes, what did you just say yes, too?

Because you never want a client that said yes, and there's not clarity on what they're saying yes, too.

I love that you brought in there.

You're just using the wrong lessons.

You're using the lessons of corporate entrepreneurship.

They don't belong there.

You're just using the wrong things.

So I love that you brought that in.

It's so interesting.

Well, I say that because there was a transition.

I've been in business for 21 years.

And so there was such a transition in how my mindset went from thinking,

I have tons of people a back of me because when I worked for corporate,

I did my J.O.B.

And there was a team and there was a marketing department.

There was an operations.

There was an accounting department.

There was a payroll.

And becoming an entrepreneur, it was, oh, there's me.

And how do you deal with, how do I deal with me?

And how does me deal with all this, my business and the clients?

And, you know, and, you know, how do you deal with yourself when you want to put your head in the sand?

Well, Christian, I'm so, so glad you did.

So thank you so, so much for sharing not only the amazing work that you do,

as some great principles here in tactics, but love about yourself and your journey.

It's always fascinating.

So thank you for sharing.

Absolutely.

And for those people that want to know more about you and this incredible work,

how do they reach out, how do they find you?

I would suggest go to my website, thebusinessmd.net,

and you have a couple of choices there.

There's a free gift I created an emotional intelligence crossword puzzle that you've been opt-in.

And what's really cool about that, I've heard from folks that have.

They've received so much inspired emotional intelligence they learned about themselves.

And if you want that step, then you can also, my calendar is right on my website.

You can go to that step.

You can do both, if you like.

So let's continue the conversation, let's chat, let's learn more about you and your business,

and what inspires you, because the more emotional intelligence out there,

and the better conversations, more people, better people in a world.

Nice.

Christina, I've had many people on this podcast giving away free downloads,

leave back bits, quizzes, never had a crossword.

This is fantastic.

I'm going to check that out.

Fantastic.

Please do.

Please do.

I've heard quite good things.

The feedback that I've received.

I was amazed.

I was honored.

Yeah.

When I heard some of the, you know, the introspective perspectives from, you know,

entrepreneurs that actually participate in this crossword.

Yeah.

Well, it's so different.

Well played.

Nicely done.

Thank you.

Christine, thanks again for this.

This has been an awful lot of fun.

Thank you so much.

Yes, thank you so much, Mark.

It's been a joy.

Oh, you're welcome.

Hey, Katie.

Yeah, Mark.

Wanna do an outro?

I should do.

Sweet.

Hey, thank you so so much for listening and making it to the end.

Yay.

You.

So what happens next?

We ask them the things that podcasts are supposed to ask at the end of an episode.

Can you please rate, review, download?

Subscribe.

Yeah.

But why is it important?

Because that's how our podcast gets noticed.

That's how people find us.

It is.

And we want all their earballs.

All the earballs, all over the place.

We do.

Nice.

Yeah, so please do all those things.

We'll be ever so grateful.

And then more people here, your beautiful voice.

Oh, you're awesome.

Oh, yeah.

See you next time.

Bye.