Embracing Authentic Leadership: Simon's Journey from Corporate Executive to Intuitive Advocate

00:03 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Welcome to Voices in Leadership, where leaders who connect, inspire and grow come to share their stories. Live. I'm your host, Dr Angela J Buckley. Join us as we explore authentic leadership, gratitude and the power of connection through powerful conversations with inspiring voices. Let's inspire, uplift and elevate leadership that truly makes a difference together. Well hello, Simon. Thank you so much for joining us today on another episode of Voices in Leadership. I am so thrilled that you have chosen to be one of our podcast episode guests.

00:46 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Thank you for having me, ngela, absolutely super thrilled to share a little bit of my story and for this conversation. I was really looking forward to it all week.

00:55 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
So I put in the show notes that you are a NASA scientist and I know that was a little fun because you call yourself the rocket shaman. And, honestly, I grew up right down the street from one of the NASA science development centers, right the NASA Lewis Center in Cleveland Ohio. So NASA scientists are a regular in our neighborhood, but that's not exactly how you got your name. So how did you come to naming yourself or being referred to as the Rocket Shaman?

01:31 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
The Rocket Shaman? Yeah, it's a great question and, by the way, I had to chuckle this morning when I saw that. Listen, it's literally been a moniker that my brother gave me and you know, I'm sure we'll dive a little bit into my story and how I ended up from corporate executive to, you know, to shaman, and doing a lot of energy leadership these days. But he referred to at the speed of which I was transmuting and transforming my life from, you know, bedridden and cancer to thriving and yeah, and I guess the the moniker stuck. So the rocket shaman. And you know, I thought sometimes, uh, you know, names are hard for some of us, like you know, you don't remember, and so, like, this is something that stuck. And then I was looking for a title for the book uh, that's coming out in September and becoming the rocket shaman is my story, and so that's, uh, that's, you know, really has evolved now from just not myself, but becoming a brand and becoming a mission.

02:31 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
So it feels like I read about you in Forbes many, many years ago, and they were already referring to you as the Rocket Shaman then, so it's not a new nomenclature for you.

02:45 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Yeah, it's a newer moniker. I'm not sure about Forbes, but I definitely, yeah, yeah, it could be Fast Company and you know I've been doing a lot of personal healing and literally felt the calling to reach out into, um you know, fortune 500, 100 companies again, because I really do feel like the old leadership model that has served as well is slowly dying. We have a new generation, the gen z's, coming out that are going to demand a completely different leadership style and, um, you know, ultimately I I made it my mission to equip people with a new way of authentic and conscious leadership, and I'm sure we'll we'll chat a little bit about what that all means and how to get there.

03:34 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
I am going to ask you some questions. Absolutely Thank you for leading me in there. Before we get too far in, let's just talk a little bit about your history and who you are. And so you really started out with travel, travel, travel policies, with Amex Right and then moved into some global product management. But all of it surrounding travel and travel development for companies Is that correct?

04:03 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Yeah, that's absolutely correct. Yeah, so in the mid-90s, I was starting, I would say, living the American dream, really started as a call center agent in one of the business travel centers At the time. You couldn't book your flights online, that was all you had to call somebody, and Amex was one of the leaders in that space. And, yeah, that's right, and I have moved my my way up the ladder literally, you know, promotion, promotion after promotion after promotion, and so that's been my reality for many, many years, almost 25 years, and then, you know, been in charge of chase travel, which was a multi billion dollar business, JP Morgan and then again until I got sick.

04:47
They always say it works well until something stops you in your tracks, and in my case, it was literally an autoimmune that started in the summer of 15, was misdiagnosed by the Western system and had to look at all the logical and illogical places to get, to get healthy and, in all intents and purposes, I thought I was fine. And then pandemic struck and, you know, to add insult to injury, I was diagnosed with cancer in in 2020 as well, and that was really the beginning of me starting to pay attention to my body and realizing that I've started to live someone else's, or not started to that. I've been living somebody else's story, and the unraveling of that and really becoming truly myself is what this book is all about and what I'm sharing openly with the hope to encourage others to live a more authentic and conscious leadership in life.

05:43 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Well, I appreciate that and if you would share just a little bit how you went from. Okay, so you had your diagnosis and then you said logical and illogical, right? So, speaking again like many of us who think of our CEOs very much rational driven, and yet we know that we make our decisions emotionally first, right, Like there's literally been awards given for that level of research, that the work Nobel prize that was given for identifying that we make decisions emotionally before we basically rationalize them.

06:21 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Yeah, that's right. I'm so glad you're bringing this up. So I talk a little bit about the you know re-emergence of intuition into the executive suite. It's really a skill that humanities had, you know, for thousands of years before we had spreadsheets. And that art, like you just talked about, of the innate knowing, is something that we often just dismiss because we have data right and data should be telling the truth. But there's multiple case studies of you know deals that are going south If you think about. Probably one of the best example is with, you know, the Amazon cloud business. Uh, you know the amazon cloud business. Um, you know all the data and this just goes back to 2006. All the data showed oh my god, don't do this, it's going to be a money drain. And and basil's just listened to his gut and said I believe in this. And now look at this. It's like what is it? A 90 billion dollar business, it's. It's a. It's amazing you know.

07:18
There's tons of these case studies but in essence, to bring it back to me, I was misdiagnosed, or diagnosed to the best of Western's ability of like they just knew I was inflamed. I just again, I had that innate knowing inside of me that I'm like they were going to put me on malaria medication and maybe we'll talk a little bit about mystery illness and chronic illness, which is crazy staggering numbers now in the Western world. And you know there was quite a few things that happened that just strengthened my intuition that I just knew I had to look elsewhere for healing Because the doctor said something to me he goes, you need to go see an ophthalmologist because you know the medication has a side effect and you could go blind from it. And at the time I was thinking, hey, my eyes are the only thing that are actually working, why would I start messing with that? Right, and that's really where I started to look into what else you know can happen. And so back to the logical. I went to Germany in a more integrative clinic to actually be properly diagnosed. I had a heavy metal toxicity, environmental toxins and food allergies.

08:31
But at the same time and that's really where I've started to pay attention and stay with me everybody we're getting a little woo-woo here, but this is real stuff and it has been scientifically proven the belief that we and we call it epigenetics. And there's a great book by and he's a PhD professor called the Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton if you want to read up more on that. And this is really about can our minds start to form ideas that can have a negative impact on our body? And I think I have to look it up real quick. There is a New York bestseller, professor Dr Gabor Mate, that many of you maybe know. He said once when you live someone else's life, your body stages a revolt. Think about that for a second. If you live someone else's life, your body stages every goal.

09:24
And I think that's really been my story of figuring that I was living somebody else's dream, starting with my grandmother, starting with my parents. As many of us, right we're we don't know what we want to do after high school and we just kind of you know the parents are oh well, you're good at this, maybe do this, and some of us have fulfilling great careers and others, like me, you know, you get into a job that you're good at, but you're not necessarily thriving because you love what you do. It's more of a okay, I'm pretty good at this and I'm successful and I'm promoted, and so in my case, I think I've always had a completely different trajectory if I was able to listen and boldly follow what I needed to do. But which 18-year-old, really right, can say, oh, I'm going to be an author at some point? I'm going to be leading into executive leadership.

10:14 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
So for me it was as the mother of a 17-year-old right now. I can assure you, we do not have any clarity of what is coming next.

10:23 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
That's right. That's right, exactly, exactly. But I just I think it's important to make that that point again is you know, 70 percent of our anxiety or 80 percent of our relationship patterns and limiting beliefs are inherited and not chosen, sort of the area where the illogical starts to happen again. How do you unravel these inherited beliefs so that you can get healthy, healthy body, healthy?

10:50 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
mind I read one of the questions that you proposed for me was how do you send it back? Right, Send back these limiting beliefs, and sometimes they're not just family related, but social, cultural norms that are established for whoever they perceive you to be as well. So I would love to really pop onto that kind of a conversation Once you identify them, like maybe we start there how do you identify your own self-limiting beliefs, and then I would love to hear your thoughts on sending them back. That's a great phrase.

11:30 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Right, unsubscribe and sending it. Return to sender. It's one of my keynotes. Yeah, absolutely so.

11:36
I think the first step when something happens and in my case you know it was illnesses, but you could just maybe even feel something is not in congruence, you know, you can't really put your finger on it, but just something isn't quite there and recognizing that something's off, I think is probably the first step. And then the question is what is it really? So, this feeling that you're feeling, is it mine or is it not mine? I'll give you maybe a practical example. And a lot of us in relationships know, and you know, they say relationships take work and you have to work at it. Right, but the interesting thing is, when you have a disagreement with your significant other or your partner, so often phrases such as you always do this, oh, you're driving me crazy. Or oh my gosh, not this again right, and we take it on, we take it personal, we take it as criticism, we take it as like, oh my gosh, I messed up, I have to now fix something, when actually, in reality, a lot of what happens is a mirror to the other person. It's a trigger, right, so we're triggered about something, but we can't put our finger on it. You know what it is and it's a bit of a okay, something's coming up. Let me stay with this before I, you know, start shooting at everybody around me, and that's even more so in a in a very stressful corporate environment.

13:00
Many of you and your listeners probably are can can associate with this. You know you have 10 hour, 12 hour days these days, every half hour, meeting, no time in between, and you are exhausted and really being in tune with your energy and performing at a level that is high energy, high integrity and still keeping the peace is hard to do, right. And so, to come back, what I mean by this is very so often we take on inherited traits from our mothers or from our fathers and we don't even know it until we really start to go oh, okay, so I am acting like my dad, I am acting like my mother, oh, and you can say that's just the way it is, that's how I was raised, and here's really the big I teach this in my classes is this nervous system liberation tool? So you start really with an energy audit of recognizing something's off and you then go okay, is this feeling, is this mine, is it not? And then, if not, where is this coming from? I teach a bit of somatic tools as well around breathing techniques just to kind of calm down that nervous system.

14:16
And then it's really about reclaiming. So sending it back. So it can be as simple as you know writing out a letter to your mom or to your dad or your significant other, whoever, and just saying, hey, I released this feeling, this isn't mine, this was never mine to hold to begin with and send it back. And you can do this by just either writing it out. You can burn it or put it in the paper shredder afterwards. It's not about adding more confrontation with the other person, but it's recognizing it's not yours. You can send it back like any mail that's not yours. You put the stick back in the mailbox and off you go. And I would challenge everyone that's listening just try that for once and see how you feel Next time you have a tough meeting or an argument with a family member or whatever. Don't react. Just pause for a second and think is this mine or not?

15:08 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
So I like that and do you share with them, or do you just handle that for yourself?

15:17 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
I usually handle it myself. It depends on you know really what it and it's. It's tough sometimes, you know, can the the person across from you hold the space? But what I found, especially in personal relationships, when you um, when something happens and you now sense something coming up, there's a difference between reacting and responding yep and reaction, right, it's just a blah.

15:43
And responding is like, you know, pause and say, hey, I'm sensing something bubbling up. I want to sit with this for a moment before I respond or react to you. Can you allow me a minute to just kind of feel into this and then I will, you know, share with you and that's just disarming, right. That kind of takes the whole conflict. That could go and again, whether that's personal or business, that could go sideways. Now, all of a sudden, you created a whole new container to actually talk about stuff, and when you don't make it about the other person but you say, hey, this really doesn't feel like it's mine, you know, it's maybe something that you should look at as well, I find that to be very what's the right word for that. It's like it's more of a peaceful conflict resolution than our typical fear-based you know, cowboy, you know shoot from the hips kind of thing that we've grown up with.

16:47 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
So if someone, for example, I love when we're on time, I just want to see if I'm I'll explain a situation maybe. So I'm trying to clarify. So I love, I love a plan and I love being on time. Not everybody is as time conscious as I am, but it makes me feel safe and it makes me feel like I am able to perform at the level of expectations that I would like to deliver to my clients and friends, et cetera. Right? So when the plan changes without information or someone's running late without telling me, then I often feel frustrated, a little anxious. Do I trust that they're going to show up? However, if they call and say, listen, there's traffic, I'm running late, I can adjust my plans. So do you share then that conversation how to navigate when things don't go wrong, so you don't have all of the negative energy flowing around?

17:51 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, and I would say I would go a little deeper here. So it's a perfect example of the way that you're sharing it and it's perfect legitimate expectations because we are running businesses right. This isn't about becoming soft per se, or you know. I'm just saying when you start to manage your energy a little differently, you start to show up for your team differently, you still have, obviously, business to run right. That's not what I'm saying at all.

18:18
But interesting is why are you wired to have a plan and structure? Where is this coming from? Is this something that you were taught as a young child from your parents? Or was it a survival mechanism because maybe chaos in your upbringing, or whatever? It's just interesting to me when we start to not just accept of who we are, but figure out why are we that way? And then you can ask the question is this serving me or is it not serving me? Like, is it becoming too rigid in a way that I cannot really allow for creativity to come out of this, because I'm such, you know such structure and what does it cost me? So it's not to be critical of ourselves. It's more a question of understanding and feeling into is this mine, and is it serving me, or is it not mine and it's no longer serving me? And then what do you do with it? Right that you have power in making changes.

19:18 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
So first step of change is always awareness. For sure, for sure, yeah, Okay yep, that was really a question mark, right? So I was seeing if I understood you correctly yeah, yeah, you got it okay, all right. So so we're working through. We understand that we're like, we have our triggers and we have different underlying potential reasons. It's more of a symptom, not a root cause, to use my engineering language. Correct.

19:48 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Yeah, right, and to go back to the illness aspect, right, so what my experience was that we're treating symptoms, we're not actually looking at the root cause, and I've always been very, very interested in what's causing this in the first place, right?

20:03
So if you're bedridden and you can't get out of bed, you don't have any answers and they're throwing meds at you and I was on I think it was prednisone, which I could dance on the table all of a sudden, but then I had side effects and heart palpitations on a business trip and thought I had a heart attack, right, I was like, okay, that's not really going to work, and so really looking at what made me sick in the first place and why I couldn't get out, that was the first aspect of really truly, you know, healing and coming out of this with a different story. And I think that's the, that's the invitation here. It's not just treating the you know the root cause, but or going to the root cause of not just a symptom itself the root cause, but or go into the root cause of not just a symptom itself.

20:47 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Okay, so someone's having symptoms, they're struggling, and what? What is the first step? Where are they? Where do they go?

20:54 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Yeah. So I invite people to just start by doing some energy audits. You know, like, awareness is one thing, and what I mean by energy audits is you start having a journal or a protocol or like a spreadsheet, if you will. Right of, hey, I've just had a meeting. How do I feel after this meeting and do I feel good? And if so, yes, great. Why am I feeling bad? Is my energy system activated? Is my nervous system activated? If so, why Did I hear anything, say anything, experience anything? So that's kind of a just journaling it out, because that now starts to then get.

21:33
For those of you you know that are data-driven and still love spreadsheets, you can start to then at least get a little bit into the root cause of like. Oh, it seems like it's always with this person. Something is happening, and it's not that you want to do, you know less, but maybe there's now an awareness that this actually drags down your energy and your nervous system is activated again. Where is this coming from? So that's a little bit of a identity check and then, um, you know the what I would call the rebuild is kind of like. You can then start doing more. You know breathing, you can do more pausing in between. And I'm not talking about, you know, taking a 30 minute yoga in meditation break, but I'm talking about being aware something is off. Let me breathe into it, let me see if I can clear it out myself, and then, you know, move into your next space and if this keeps happening, you start to develop or recognize some patterns.

22:29
You know, either by just intellectually, or you know. You will have it statistically on a spreadsheet as well and that can then go into this, you know. Return to sender, and you know my experience. I've seen people that are going through this protocol and this system see about an 87% reduction in anxiety, and it's very, very, very important for especially young people, right, and or for leaders of young people. So we're similar ages. My kids are now 20,. What are they now? 24, 28. Okay, and but it's interesting to me that they are almost demanding a different way of working, you know, and how they show up in the world. So this time of development plans and or top-down approach, you will do this, or else it's just not going to work, and so it requires us to show up differently, right.

23:28 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
It has been an interesting round of conversations, as we, meaning me, encourage the awareness that in the workplace there still is some top-down approach and we have to be prepared to manage that, even though that's not what they are expecting, it's not what they're asking for and it's certainly not what they've been taught or practicing even as they go through young leadership development programs. The programs today are highlighting the importance of collaboration. Excuse me, and as our youth are entering, there is a misalignment and you hear about it in different ways where everybody's talking about the gen z stare or um, they always want to work on their phones and they don't want to do anything else. They're expecting a different level of of relationship as soon as they walk into the workforce yeah, 100.

24:26 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
And you know, one of my favorites is, uh, what I call strength-based leadership. I've've had I talk about it in my book. I've had a disagreement with a boss a couple of years ago where I was a big advocate to think about strength-based leaders. So I was basically saying, hey, do we actually understand the strengths of our employees and do we give them projects and tasks that are aligned with their strengths? Or, under the disguise of development plans, what is that? Stretch them into areas that are uncomfortable, sort of under the disguise of lifelong learning? Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying stop reading books and expand your mind what I'm talking about. We are energetically wired to be really passionate and good about a few things, and then we are just uncomfortable in other areas. We can learn and we can be like. People say oh, you can achieve anything, yes, but how powerful is it when you have your team performing work that they're actually aligned with their strengths? Right, because now you don't have to ask them to do overtime, you don't have to continuously micromanage their output. They are driven by it because they're doing something that is meaningful and that they feel good about it. And I was laughed out of the corporate boardroom when I was advocating for this, like, oh yeah, you're a dreamer and whatever, and interesting, this was what 2017?. So this like oh yeah, you're a dreamer and whatever and interesting this is, you know, this was what 2017. So here we are, about eight years later.

25:58
There is a conscious rise of strength based leadership. Lots of companies, large companies, that are starting to recognize that that's actually, you know, the future, and I think it's one of the tools that we should really deploy with this next generation coming in, and it requires you to have conversations right. It's not just stereotyping of oh my gosh, they are this XXX and they roll their eyes and say, oh yeah, well, my parents' generation, they don't get it. It's really starting to feel into what their strengths are and that's going to have a completely different output going forward. So I think it's an important thing to just understand and recognize and then make some changes in your teams.

26:45 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Well, I think what happens when you do that is that you have subject matter strengths, subject strengths and it will drive collaboration because they are no longer do-it-yourselves. Pull up your own bootstraps Because you can be a jack-of-all-trades, but you will also be a master of none, and that leads to a certain amount of independence. But if you want to talk world-class excellence, you need world-class players who are excellent in their strengths.

27:19 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
And that requires collaboration right.

27:21
Yeah, 100% yeah. And I would go also a step further into authenticity, you know, because Gen Z and a lot of people can smell, you know, bullshit from a mile apart. It requires more and more authentic leaders to come in, and I'll give you one, a personal example, as an encouragement. So I came out of this first health crisis I call it, you know, again could hardly get out of bed when I sat for 30 minutes I was limping through the hallways of the office and then got properly diagnosed, got cleared I don't take any meds, full disclosure like. I literally was able to clear that all out. And so the team lovingly called me the green smoothie guru, because you know, I went from bread and butter and jams and cheese and stuff in the morning to green smoothie. That just started to eat different. And I took over a team.

28:18
The employee survey stats were in the cellar because I had to do some reorganizations. I had just lost a beloved leader to cancer and my stress levels were high because I was navigating my own healing journey and trying to take over a team and restructuring everything um, and I realized that one of my biggest strengths was my authentic self and just showing up and sharing what's going on, and so I started to um, introduce my own story of you know, hey, I was sick. Many of you didn't know it, and here's why we're making some changes. So we're no longer having sandwiches and chips and and junk food in our, in our meetings and, or you know, larger. So if I'm now feeding you healthy, nutritionist food, it's because I believe that that's one of the aspects that you know can really drive healthy teams. I've I've introduced them to corporate meditation, which means, you know, can really drive healthy teams. I've I've introduced them to corporate meditation, which means, you know, a quick two minute energy reset, and we had a couple, a bunch of other things.

29:22
And what was interesting is I think it was about a year and a half and I had the highest employee satisfaction scores in the company. So, and people asked me, how did you do this? And you know, thought, you know, maybe do this, and I said it literally is authenticity. People could identify with me as a human being. They saw that I made some changes that actually made sense to them and they were more likely to follow my lead because they knew I wasn't BSing them. So it's just one of the tools that I found. So it's just one of the tools that I found. When you show up more authentically in whatever way, shape or form, that that is in your, in your case people start to react differently to you and, again, that's not weakness. I think it's a strategic skill that that we need more of.

30:08 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
It is a critical element of the likable leadership model. So I'm all in with you on that one. Simon, you had another comment about healing being a spiral journey and not a straightforward journey. It reminded me, it called to mind for me the continuous improvement loop that again we like to talk about with engineering. Can you talk about that a little bit for me?

30:40 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Yeah, that quote really came out of my work with the shamans, and so I've been blessed to have met wonderful tribal healers and indigenous healers and and you know, from around the globe, and their belief is that time isn't actually linear, but time is circular, so that you can heal backwards and you can heal forward. Now that sounds a little bit like science fiction, probably to a lot of analytical brains, so stay with me. But what it refers to is that you can actually go back and start to rewire your brain into a different belief. And so in my case, I have realized that I show up with expectations and these expectations were all the way back to my grandmother. So I've gone through life with I'm not lovable, and these expectations were all the way back to my grandmother. So I've gone through life with I'm not lovable, and because I'm not lovable, something must be wrong with me. And I've then also interestingly attracted, even in business situations, a lot of difficult things because it was like, okay, it seems like people just don't like me. But I realized that I've again been playing somebody else's story and I came when I really stopped and said, ok, is this mine? Why do I believe this? And then what is sort of my coping mechanism. I realized this actually was all the way back to my grandmother.

32:11
So my mom real quick personal story, but I think it's important for context. My mom had a tubal pregnancy and almost bled to death between my oldest siblings and I and had one fallopian tube left and they really wanted another child me. We have one grandmother. She reacted very negatively and said what are you doing? You're challenging God. It was clear that you know it's dangerous for you and the baby. You should not be pregnant again. And that said grandmother was always mean to me. I've never felt this, you know, like when we say we go to grandma's house and get ice cream and chocolate and all none of that. It was. And then my other grandmother, however, her husband, my grandfather, passed away two weeks before I was born. So to her I was like the savior. It was the golden child, the one that she could now take care of.

32:58
And so I've learned OK, if I'm not lovable, I just have to go rescue people. So I've been always in rescue projects everywhere, like restructuring became my middle name. Whenever there was a difficult task, a difficult customer, they called me because I could fix it. And so it took me almost 50 years right to kind of go oh my gosh, like that's actually this whole notion of I'm not lovable and I have coping mechanisms that work.

33:29
I could go back to the grandmother, so I used that same concept with return to sender that we talked about, of writing them a letter they're no longer here so I couldn't send it to them but just the act of writing it out, writing out my grievance and said hey, sorry, I never asked for this and you've really made my life difficult. Write it out with love, put it in an envelope and then I just burn it in the fire with love. Put it in an envelope and then I just burn it in the fire. But there was liberation in doing this act to go okay, I could strip myself from generational trauma, from expectations that were in the family, and so this circular motion of time that I'm referring to is exactly that, so that I went back and healed the timeline and it was amazing how that started to almost immediately bring about changes in my life, in my personal life, in my business, in the way I show up and where I'm at, just by basically refusing to go that way.

34:23
So we come back in the linear aspect. So now being here, I'm healed. You know, I've had cancer, I'm in remission, I've been five years cancer free.

34:31 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Congratulations.

34:33 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Thank you, and I believe that healing absolutely is possible for all of us. It's just a matter of are we bold enough to look into maybe some of the tough areas and epigenetics? And then I encourage everybody, go your route, whether that's an allopathic with an energetic or all Western or all integrated, like just healing is possible. But we have to start with the feeling state first and figuring out something is not in congruence and whose story are we living? Right? That's sort of the plan. That's really kind of where I feel super, super strong and if I could heal myself, so can anybody else.

35:13 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
I'm convinced of that and so if people are looking to start that journey, do they reach out to you are? Is that a service? What offerings do you bring? I know you have your books. Uh, you mentioned that you are also doing keynote speaking. Is there anything else that they can learn directly from you?

35:43 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Yeah, so the return to sender is a program, coaching program that I offer in a one-on-one setting. So just reach out to me on my website there's more information. It's a nine-part coaching program. It's pretty intense. We're going deep into the psyche, but it's been amazing to see the transformations of people that are going through it. And then the other one is the Rocket Shop and Leadership Academy.

36:03
So I have round tables and master classes to just kind of go to the next steps and for those that are really ready, I'm offering five day retreats that we're really going deep on stuff. But I think there are so many people that have tried everything else and have done the rise of even the ayahuasca ceremonies, or going into the jungles or doing the vipassana silent retreats to the jungles or doing the vipassana silent retreats for those that have tried it all, um, and they're still feeling stuck, especially in an executive leadership role. That's the programs we want to go through. Right, I really combine ancient wisdom with modern technology and modern wisdom and translate all of this ancient wisdom into a language that people can actually understand and then take forward so that they can be more effective in uh in, their leadership roles and they can find information about that at your website.

37:00 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
That's correct.

37:01 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Yep, wwwtherocketshamancom. Uh, there's several sections. Uh, there's a contact sheet there as well. Um and uh, yeah, reach out to me and I offer 30-minute discovery class, free discovery classes. So if you just have a question book, a time with me and we can kind of individually tailor what it is that you need.

37:21 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Got it, so I just put that up there on the screen. So we are now at the part of the program where we talk about gratitude and recognizing someone in your life that helped you. Maybe it's the person that helped you, brought you to this identity, or someone that helped you get started in your career, because sometimes where we've been is where we needed to be to get to where we are now. So who did you want to recognize today?

37:56 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
yeah, I'm gonna go with two, because I never want to just pick one, but two come to mind. You know, again I have had a little bit of a trauma where I felt like I was not seen, and so I have two people in my life that I'm super grateful for. So one is my one of my not first bosses, but one of my key bosses Patrick O'Halloran Not first bosses, but one of my key bosses, Patrick O'Halloran. He was one that saw me when I was still a junior level manager and saw my gifts and has given me opportunities and been promoted. So I owe him a lot. We've been great friends over the years. So thanks, Patrick, if you're listening.

38:34
And then the other one is grandmother Rita Pitka Blumenstein. She was a Yupik healer, the only non-medical medical person in the Alaska native hospital in Anchorage. She's the first one that has seen me spiritually and has seen me for who I am, without knowing me, Like she. You know, I just introduced myself and she saw me, and so she's the one that has encouraged me to look, even when things get hard, that I have a mission. And so this becoming the rocket shaman and coming out in bridging these two on, you know, on one level, very different worlds into one, into one area. I owe it to her a lot. She passed away now but she's been instrumental in in in my you, in my conviction that I'm on the right track, even though it sounded crazy to walk away from the C-suite to become the Rocket Shaman.

39:28 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Okay, so let's talk about both of them. When we talk about really giving gratitude, we use the spirit method, and what that stands for is, specifically, what did they do? A personal element, so my fingers are up, but they're hiding away, thanks to the AI. So SPIRIT, specifically, what did they do Personal? How does it reflect back on their personal characters' values or what did they have to overcome in order to help you? Impact is the metrics and the values. Metrics truly like what measurable outcome occurred as a result of their help and support for you. Relevance really talks about usually, when we're talking about a corporate setting and we talk about the corporate values, how does it relate back to the corporate values In this case? How does it relate back to you as your person? And then the second I is inclusive and sort of making that public. And T for timely. Ideally, when we thank people, we like to thank them as close to the event as possible. This is a retrospective. So here we are. So Patrick was your first one.

40:45 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
PATRICK MCAVENALEE-.

40:46 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Yeah, yeah.

40:47 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
So, specifically, I think Patrick recognized that he was not afraid to add people around him and on his team that potentially were smarter than him. I'm not to say Patrick isn't smart he's really smart but he recognizes the power that he doesn't know everything, and so having a very talented team I think helped him to be successful in business.

41:12 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Okay, and did that come at some sort of personal cost or did that reflect a personal value of his?

41:20 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
I think it's a. I've known him for many, many years. I think, um, it's a personal value of his of of also being encouraging. Uh, I think that's one of his skills that he has. He's very encouraging with with his team, and he's been able to drive results as a result of that I'd like to highlight the fact that there's the word courage within encouraging right, especially when you're doing something different, and then what kind of impact did that have on you and on your leadership career?

41:52
Yeah, I mean, you know, first and foremost, I think he promoted me twice and it really got me into the launch of my career, ultimately into the C-suite at JP Morgan, and I think it gave me just again somebody sees me, sees my talents, let me be creative in all of this and let me run with it. It gave me a certain amount of freedom that I can actually be successful by trusting. It probably was the first time that I was intuitively doing the things that I thought were right and have saved, I think, many customer deals that otherwise would have gone not otherwise would have gone down, but we were afraid they were going down and I came in again as the fixer.

42:34 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Okay, fantastic. And how does that relate back to your values, the company values of the corporation? At the time?

42:44 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
I think you said Chase it was a perfect storm of, like the stretch goals like I talked about, right, like okay, but trust, I think there was a lot of. You know, hey, um, I was always a relationship guy so, um, winning deals on on relationship was important and I wasn't just told, oh no, it's all on finances and you got to make the numbers work. But, like, uh, being a relationship builder was acknowledged as something of my, my superpower, and that was you. You know MX has done that. You know really well.

43:20 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Okay, over the years Interesting. I did not know that about MX. So thank you for sharing. And then, okay, inclusive and timely. We don't really address those here, so can I try to summarize, or do you want to put those all in into sentences, or do you want me to try?

43:36 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
No, go for it, go for it. Put those all into sentences, or do you want me to try? No, go for it, go for it. I always love to hear, like how this all kind of stitches together.

43:44 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
How it all stitches together, okay. So, Patrick, we would like to thank you for your support of Simon in his early career development. You saw him and recognized something in him and by promoting him twice and encouraging him and giving him the courage to really have the freedom to build trust and build relationships with the customers, you were able to save multiple customer accounts. You were able to save multiple customer accounts and it really it drove his career, the success of his career, but it also highlighted the importance that Amex put on trust in the relationships and relationship building within its business model, business model. So thank you for all that time and effort. It reflects back on your willingness to chase excellence and install people who are also excellent in their own right around you, which also helped lift the overall organization.

44:57 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Beautifully said. Thanks, Patrick.

44:59 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Yeah, thank you, patrick.

45:01 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
And thanks Angela for the summary.

45:03 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
So, and then we had grandma Blumenstein. Is it Blumenstein?

45:07 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Blumenstein, yeah, yeah.

45:08 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Blumenstein Okay, so what did she do? She saw your energy.

45:12 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
You said yeah, she just saw my I mean not just my energy, I think she saw my soul. You know, like somebody or like I don't know whether you've had an experience, but when somebody looks you in the eye and you just go like like a dog, they look, you know, in you in the eye and you're like, okay, they can see straight into my soul. She was one of those that, like x-ray machines that could just see me. And you know she and maybe we're going into the P, but, like one of the things that she stressed about is she said to me we need you, we need you, we need you.

45:44
And you know, grandma Rita was part of the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers, so this is an organization that was put together by grandmothers from different cultures, countries, to make the world aware that we're going into a wrong direction, that we need to come back in harmony with the earth. And you know they've been incredibly successful to getting their voices out, you know, with the Pope or with the Dalai Lama and with politicians, and there's a whole book about them. And I just felt honored that someone that actually had a world mission and coming from a life of struggle, you know would see me right, because I didn't really think of me as particularly important. I was still in this you know, not good enough state, as many of us, and so she really, with this, you know, we need you, we need you, we need you kind of not just kind of absolutely anchored my belief that I need to change my direction and go into what I'm doing now.

46:46 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
So also gave you courage.

46:48 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Yes, yeah, yeah, I think, see we have by seeing you in that way 100% yeah.

46:55 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
And so you, you know you say rocket. It was interesting. That's why I really wanted to hear where you were, how you came up with your nomenclature, because you say rocket, because you were changing so quickly. I saw it as a transportation vehicle, right Like you're going from here to there, and I even hear you now, for the way she recognized you as a bridge now for the way she recognized you as a bridge.

47:22 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Yeah for sure. One of my methodologies is called transmutation design. I'm transmuting myself, transmuting organizations, transmuting people, and we have to do this at a very fast speed. We can't wait long anymore. So that's where the rocket really is anchored in in the speed at which transformation and transmutation is possible.

47:45 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Will you define for the listening audience transmutation?

47:49 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Yeah, it's really taking you from a state of, I would say, asleep to a complete state of awakening, and I don't mean this in a spiritual sense, right, but you're no longer going through time kind of blindly and just you know, kind of in the rat race or the hamster wheel, like we say a lot. Transmutation is really making you aware of why you're acting and or how you're showing up in the world, and then transmuting you or transforming you into a more conscious leader, into a more conscious leader, into a more authentic leader, and as a result of that, um, you know, you live a healthier life. You live a healthier life for the people in your, in your friends and your family, but also for the companies that you show up, and I think the world needs more of that so we're recording this here in the beginning of August and where I live, this is the beginning of fog season.

48:41 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
So August and September we have these days where you'll wake up and you'll have some extreme fog and then by 930 in the morning there's a clear sky again and you can you literally can see and feel the fog dissipate.

48:59 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Lifting yeah.

49:00 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Yeah, it's really fascinating and when you talk, that's kind of the image that I'm getting, having experienced that many times.

49:09 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a great way to think about it. For sure, yeah.

49:15 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
So okay, Grandma Blumenstein, so she is one of the indigenous, and she saw you and encouraged you by saying we need you and so what? What else? How else is that? Was that enough to put you on your path? Was there more that she did with you?

49:38 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Yeah, I've, I've trained with her. She was already kind of at the you know the end of her let's just say, cognitive abilities. She was in her mid nineties I think at the time, but I was blessed enough to to get a lot of her wisdom and being equipped more with with what I would call um tribal medicine, um, of how to actually, you know, heal things. Again, she, she just had this, this gift, and she had a uh, I still see her smile. She has kind of a one of those, like you know, she won't tell you all the truth because you still have to figure it out, right? So it's, it's basically the opposite of a parent that will say do this and you'll be safe, you know. She would say you know we need you and you'll be, you'll be fine. But she would chuckle about some of the things that she saw as, as, along the way, kind of think. She had a great sense of humor, so.

50:44
But I needed to have someone because I still felt lost and you know this was two years before my cancer came. She made me aware that something was brewing, but I would be fine, I could handle it mine, I could handle it. So, you know, courage, yes, and I think there there's a, there's an element of don't be afraid to speak even a bit of the woo, spiritual side into the business community, right, because for me it's like they weren't combined a lot of the time. I might have this around this right, you can't be both, and what she really did inspire was that you can be all of it Right, show up authentically and don't be afraid.

51:28 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
And so how did that impact your career now?

51:43 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
walked away from an amazing, highly paid, highly visible job in 2023 to become an author, to become a speaker, to completely doing something different. But again it made me sick twice. We didn't talk about it, but I had three near-death experiences between the ages of three and 18, it was definitely a wake-up call with the cancer and I needed to take a bit of my own medicine. And so the impact of all of that I just could no longer avoid showing up as me and showing up with my gifts. And that's where, you know, the Rocket Shaman came about and the Leadership Academy came about, the books came about, and I think I just needed to be encouraged by her sort of as a last thing, like no, no, no, you can do this. Like don't be afraid. And here we are, and I, you know, I know this book will be in the hands of millions because, you know, we have an epidemic of chronic illnesses and mystery illnesses. People need to see a potential roadmap and we see our burnout levels are, you know, at an astounding rate.

52:46 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Yes.

52:47 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Right and we're living in this fear-based world where a lot of the emotional trauma is as a result. You know, we have been seeing lots of hostility, been seeing lots of hostility and I think, for me, showing up and offering a map and a path for it to be different and to showing up more in our humanity is just something that I personally believe in and hope to make an impact.

53:16 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Okay, You're making this one a little bit harder to sort of to put together in quick words here, Simon. So let me try, and I you know it's not clear to me. I want to say it like German Blumenstein or Blumenstein, but it kind of sounded like you were somewhere in between with that.

53:36 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
She called herself Blumenstein. But since, but since I'm German or Swiss, I always say, no, it's not Blumenstein, it's Blumenstein, but anyway. Yeah, so Blumenstein is is what she would call herself. Okay.

53:49 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
And we'll do that. So thank you, Grandma

53:51
Blumenstein, for seeing Simon. Not just seeing him, but also speaking to him and giving him the courage to be the bridge and, in doing so in a humorous way, also providing him the anchor that he needed to be able to soar into his new career as the Rocket Shaman, bringing together Eastern and Western methodologies in order to be the authentic executive leader and the voices in that leadership room that are necessary. Your impact on his life has allowed him to face challenges, health challenges with courage and confidence in order to continue to bring this message forward to the people who truly need it at this time.

54:55 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Love it, great job.

54:57 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
I feel like I skipped some of the end of it. It's hard. You made a huge hard one, love it. Great job. I feel like I skipped some of the end of it. It's hard. You made a huge hard one. I know I'm sorry, that's all right.

55:05 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
It's the intention of it. I love right of the acknowledgement, so I think that landed.

55:10 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Yeah, so that's the spirit of acknowledgement. It just helps us walk through, sometimes gives us a few more tangibles, right, like thank you for being here is nice. But then we can also highlight, and I think it helps us uncover some of the relationships as well, like what is that authentic? That helps us find it and then articulate it, yeah, yeah.

55:34 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Yeah, great Love this spirit of acknowledgement. I may have to steal that, that's great. Great Love this spirit of acknowledgement. I may have to steal that, that's great.

55:40 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
TM, so no. So, Simon, what else do you have for listening audience? We have just a few more minutes left.

56:00 - Simon Lüthi (Guest)
Yeah, no, I always feel like, you know, sometimes overload or information overload, but I just maybe one quick plug for those of you listening, for those of you that are leading people right, we have a crazy pandemic on our hands with, like I said, with mystery illnesses and burnout quotes and emotional trauma. Just be aware, I saw a staggering number that I think there's a billion health-related searches across conversational AI and Dr Google and of those, about 35% are these kind of like we can't really diagnose, and that's a crazy amount of number, right. And if you translate that, that's a trillion in healthcare costs that could probably be avoided. So you know why I do what I do. I have decided that I wanted to change the way we think about healthcare in America, but I didn't want to do this by fighting, you know, pharmaceuticals and or Western medicine or any kind of form of healing healing, really right, because I think we sometimes have to use all of the tools available.

57:02
But what I do want to do is I want to have a dialogue about how do we create healthier work environments and how do we create a healthier self. And it starts with us, right, it can't be the finger pointing. It starts with us and being aware of what you're going through, having super high amount of compassion for yourself, and then know that there are tools out there that you can use to heal yourself and heal your environment. So that's really what I made my life's mission. So becoming the rocket shaman is more than a book, it's a movement. Anybody can be a rocket shaman, really. And so, yeah, I just start the dialogue and start to hope, inspire some of your listeners to maybe pause today, check your energy, see where you're at and then, if I can be of helpful or of help for you personally or for your teams, let's have a dialogue, let's have a conversation, because healthier lives and healthier companies can only be a good thing as we're moving forward.

58:06 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
That is a great note to end on. Thank you so much, Simon. I really have appreciated this conversation with you today, and if anybody wants to get in touch with Simon, you can find him at therocketshaman.com Ticker is scrolling across the screen. If you enjoy listening to Voices in Leadership, please join us on the website, drop us a review and there is a place where you can click and send messages directly to us, leave comments and we can pull them up in future episodes. Thank you so much and have a great day. Thank you for joining us on Voices in Leadership, where leaders who connect, inspire and grow share their stories. I look forward to welcoming you back to our next conversation. In the meantime, visit www.voicesinleadership.live to access show notes, links and to subscribe and stay connected. And, in the spirit of gratitude, let's remember to thank one person near you Until next time. This is Dr Angela J Buckley, signing off.