Evolved Pros Pilot Episode

George Leith: Conversations with the operators, founders, and leaders doing the slow, hard, beautiful work of becoming who you always knew you could be. I'm George Leith. Let's get to work Hi there. I'm George Leith. Welcome to the pilot episode of the Evolved Pros podcast, my new show, and I'm excited to bring it to you every week on Apple, YouTube, Spotify, and X. I'm not new to podcasting. Those of you out there might know me from the show Conquer Local, which we hosted for over five years as a part of the Vendasta brand when I was chief customer officer of that organization, and, uh, I got the bug. I love podcasting. I love learning from the guests that we had on those shows. Over 250 episodes, we won two awards, and over 20,000 people listened to the show on a weekly basis. And it's been three long years since I sat across from a microphone, and now cameras because everything needs to be video, and I'm really excited to bring you this new show. I've been on an evolution for some 56 years, but in the past 15 years, that evolution has been incredible. I live a life today that I didn't think was possible 15 years ago. And in the coming months, I'm going to be sharing my new book, Evolved, which is a story about my journey, and my life's changed a lot. I don't want to give the book away, but there's some crazy stories in there, and I can't wait to get it out into the wild and get some feedback on those various stories. And I'm hoping in that book, Evolved, that I can share with you my, what I call the evolved architecture, the way that I was able to build a transformation in my life. Again, I don't want to give away the punchline. You have to read the book to find out more about it, and you can pre-order it today on Amazon. It's called Evolved by me, George Leith, and, uh, probably the middle of August, we will be launching that book worldwide. Well, even if it's not worldwide, it will be available worldwide. So now into the podcast, and I'm gonna try and do my best Simon Sinek and start with why. Why the Evolved Pros podcast? We need to learn how to evolve as professionals and quite frankly, as humans, because we are in the middle of the biggest change our civilization has ever saw. Mark my words, AI is going to completely rewrite the rules for every single one of us. And if we want to maintain relevance in this world that we're moving into, we need to learn and we need to get better at reinventing and evolving ourselves. I got pretty good at reinvention. I've had to reinvent myself a number of times, and I have met some folks that have reinvented themselves, and you don't even recognize the life that they live today compared to the life that they used to live. I'd love to unpack those stories. I wanna learn from folks like that. I've been able to adopt some of the things that mentors of mine have been able to teach me and evolve even faster than I ever would've been able to do it without those learnings. And every week we're hoping to bring you stories from folks that have evolved. And it doesn't mean that they've evolved from having a horrible experience or anything like that. It might just be small tweaks that they've made, but those small tweaks when compounded, have led to remarkable outcomes in the long term Evolution. Think about it. We as a species have always been evolving, but I truly believe that we need to get better at it as contributors. We need to learn from folks that have evolved to the point where you don't even recognize their lives anymore. How were they able to do that? I'm gonna ask those questions. And in this show, because it's my show, don't really answer to anybody except the good Lord about the show, I'm hoping to get even deeper into the why. Like, to really pull out of them what was really going on. Can we get to the heart? What was the catalyst that led you to the evolution that you embarked on? And then what were some of the struggles? Because I think we've all saw that graphic of success is the destination, and we think that it's a straight line, but actually it's not a straight line. It's like 8 steps forward and 25 steps back and 14 steps to the left and 30 to the right, and you get this squiggled line, and that really is what that journey to success looks like. It's never a straight line. It's not up and to the right. If anything, it's a journey of struggle, it's a journey of iteration, it's a journey of epic failure. And then from those moments, we learn. And then the odd time we meet somebody that helps us leapfrog ahead, that's what we're trying to do every week here on the Evolve Pros podcast. Meet folks that can help you help me help anybody that is able to consume the content learn to leapfrog ahead by learning from other individuals that have embraced evolution. The good news is, is that evolution is in our DNA. As a species, we have been evolving since day one, and all we need to do is put folks in front of us that can teach us how to do it faster. Trial and error is the slowest, most expensive, and most painful way to learn. There's another way to learn. It took me a while to figure that out, that I could learn more by surrounding myselves with people that had already been there, done that. Already had the T-shirt. They knew how to take it from A to Z without all of the battles of success in between, and that's who we're going to interview on this show. I've been privileged to meet some amazing individuals and to be able to reach out to those individuals, and I, I just wanna thank everybody that I've talked to in the last six months as we've been building the show and doing the research for the book that have very freely shared their stories. I find that people are more willing today to open up about the challenges that they've had and be authentic about the real battles that they've faced. I gotta tell you, in the book Evolved, there's some chapters in there that I can't even believe that I'm telling. But what I believe is that if someone else that is facing the challenges that I was facing in my life, most of those challenge, by the way, of my own doing- That maybe if I could help even one or two people not go through some of the battles that I went through in my life, then it will be a resounding success. That's what I wanna do. I wanna share those stories. And in the three years that I've not been podcasting and that I've not been speaking to an audience on a weekly basis and bringing some of the smartest minds that I've been able to meet over the years forward with their stories I've missed out. I've missed out on that learning. I've missed out on communicating. I've missed out on sharing. And as I've talked to folks who are like, "Oh, I've, I've missed listening to your show. I've missed listening to some of the, the feelings that you have and the learnings that you've had." And, and that's really humbling for me because I'm just a small town farm boy from the middle of Saskatchewan, Canada, that has been privileged enough to be able to travel the last 15 years, meet amazing people, and be able to interview those folks and really dig in and get to the meat, the meat and potatoes of their evolution. So get ready. The Evolve Pros podcast coming to you weekly. We're gonna be interviewing some very, very smart individuals. We're gonna be learning from them. We've got the book coming up in the next couple of months. And then in this evolution of George Leith, the podcaster, we're doing some additional things because technology continues to improve. We are going to be launching the Evolve Pros platform. So think community meets academy, meets the ability to learn online at your own pace. We're gonna have video learning components, and anyone that wants to subscribe to the show will also get a subscription to the new platform, and that platform will be going live in the next couple of weeks. So I wanted to embrace, uh, Simon Sinek in starting with why. Why are we doing this show? Well, one reason we're doing this show is I miss podcasting. I miss talking to an audience. And the other thing that I miss the most is learning from the guests. The two... Over 250 guests that I had over the years in the Conquer Local podcast taught me so much. And I'm fortunate to have relationships with a lot of those folks that they continue to teach me to this day. My hope and my wish is that you will put your trust in this show, and you'll join me and the amazing guests that we're gonna bring forward on a weekly basis, and we'll all set out on an evolution. And then come to the Evolve Pros platform and join the community and start to have conversations in real time. I will tell you that I have a tendency to swear a little, some might say a lot. This will be an unfiltered podcast. I wanna get right to the heart of the issue. I don't wanna be some watered-down version of who I really am. I am who I am. You either like me or you hate me. I really could care less. But I wanna bring the unfiltered, the real George to you, and I wanna try and pull that out of our guests every week. If you have suggestions of guests or you might wanna be a guest on the show, reach out. You can do so at www.evolvepros.com. We're also on X, or you can reach out to me on my personal LinkedIn profile and follow on those profiles as well. I'm very active on social media, and I look forward to speaking to you. I will return every message And, uh, I'm also looking forward to the coming weeks and getting your feedback on the show. Good, bad, or ugly, I actually can take it. We'd love to hear from our audience. That's one of the reasons that I think we were able to be so successful with the Conquer Local podcast. That show evolved over the five seasons that we hosted it, and it evolved based upon the feedback that we were getting from the folks that were coming to the show every week. By the way, that's still a great podcast. It's hosted by my good friend Jeff Tomlin. So I encourage you, if you've never heard of the Conquer Local podcast, go have a listen. There is, by the way, some really great episodes from about six, seven years ago that still have value to this day and some great interviews. Jeff's been doing a great job doing some amazing interviews on that show. I listen to it on a regular basis. The Evolved Pros podcast. Every week, we're looking forward to you liking and subscribing the show. Please do so, and I can't wait to see what we're able to create together in the Evolved Pros platform and community. I'm George Leith, and I'll see you when I see you. That's the conversation for this week. If it moves something, share it with someone who needs it. I'm George Leith. I'll see you when I see you.