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Your Second Act isn't just about starting over; it's about starting smarter. You’ve left the safety of a structured career to follow your passion, and while the opportunity is exciting, the uncertainty is real. You have the vision and the drive, but without a roadmap, that leap of faith can quickly feel like a freefall.
Welcome to Second Act Business Owner, the podcast dedicated to ensuring your new venture lands on solid ground.
Hosted by Lee Gray—an award-winning ActionCOACH, certified executive trainer, and serial entrepreneur—this show is for the courageous professionals who are trading corporate stability for entrepreneurial freedom. Lee understands that being an expert in your field doesn’t automatically make you an expert in running a business.
Each week, we strip away the fluff to provide the real-world MBA training you need to turn chaos into clarity. From navigating the emotional rollercoaster of ownership to mastering the mechanics of profit, Lee brings the structure and strategy required to build a legacy.
Hit follow and let’s get to work.
Ep20
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Welcome and Life Laws
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[00:00:00]
Lee Gray: hello, and welcome to the Second Act Business Owner podcast, where I help you navigate the second act of your life, whatever your age, wherever you are in your life. We've been diving into some of the laws that govern business and life, and most of us are familiar with the law of gravity.
You know, what goes up must come down. The interesting thing about our second act is that it, too, is [00:01:00] governed by laws. On the podcast, we've talked about the law of entropy, which says anything without improvement always changes, and it changes to the negative. And we've talked about the law of the vacuum, which says that nature abhors an open space.
It will find something to fill the space. So open time gets filled with something like doom scrolling or something intentional if you decide to be. Even habits that get a- abandoned will be replaced with another, another habit.
Introducing Adaptation
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Lee Gray: That's the law of the vacuum Let's dive into our next law today, which is the law of adaption.
Adaption means recognizing your environment, responsibilities, opportunities, or goals that have changed, and be willing to change them. That's basically what adaption is, the willingness to change. It doesn't mean you have to, but true adaption is the willingness to change. It doesn't mean abandoning who you are.
It means applying strengths, [00:02:00] experience, and values in a way that works in your current situation. And I will say from personal experience that second actors probably have to be more adaptive than most. That's okay. That's what makes us second actors. What makes us successful at 30 or 40 may not be what creates success at 40, 50 or 60 or beyond because our priorities have changed, our responsibilities have changed, technology has changed, the marketplace has changed.
Our energy, finances, and the definition of success that we have today may be different, so we have to adapt because of those changes. A second act requires us to think about what still serves us from our past, and what do I need to do differently? What do I need to learn to do differently? What do I need to let go of, and how can I use my experience in a new way?
That's really adaption.
Identity and Change Barriers
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Lee Gray: Doesn't mean we have to change for the sake of change. The biggest [00:03:00] barrier often isn't ability, it's attachment, too. Like, ugh. We become attached to an old identity, a career or a routine or a definition of, "This is who I am. This is how I've always done it." You know, and even when an old approach no longer fits what we want in life, sometimes we still do it.
Actually, that's the law of familiarity, which is another law, which we'll go into at another time. But all the laws that govern laws and business are, integrated, and I hope that, that you're starting to see that through what we've been going through these last podcasts, is they all apply and they all are related.
They're kind of like cousins, some closer than others. An example is someone who spent 25 years managing employees may become a consultant, a trainer, or a business owner. Their experiences is still valuable but must adapt. Learn how to sell, learn to talk to a new market, learn how to sell their experience, learn how to use [00:04:00] technology, learn how to think like an entrepreneur.
That's the law of adaptability, being able to do that. If we can apply that law, we can be way more successful in our second act.
Assess Adjust Act Evaluate
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Lee Gray: Reacting is changing because the circumstances forced us to, but adapting is intentionally changing so that we can move forward. and a simple framework for adaption is access. You know, what's changed around me? What's changed within me? What do I need to no longer accept? What can I ignore? And then adjust. What, what, what behavior or skill or system must I change? What expectations do I need to change? And then I have to act.
What experiment can I do now? And evaluate, is this the right adjustment? Is this the adjustment moving me to the second act that I want in my life?
Experience Not Limitation
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Lee Gray: What I love about this, and I love about the law of adaption, is your experience is your foundation. It's not your limitation. It's [00:05:00] your experience is your foundation, not your limitation.
Adding adaption to that is very powerful. You don't have to become a different person in your second act. You just have to be someone who's willing to use who you already are in a different way.
Gas Heat Adaptation Story
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Lee Gray: So let me tell you a story, and I actually heard this story from my aunt, but it stuck with me. I- she told me this story when I was a little girl, and that is that my grandparents, who lived in a farmhouse in the country, Lived in a house without toilets, without electricity, without running water.
And while they lived in this home, a new technology came about, and you may have heard of- heard about it. It's called gas heat. And they had not had gas heat, but the community was making every effort to get gas pipe to, to every home, wherever it was in, in Kansas. Luckily, in Kansas, we were one of the first states [00:06:00] to have readily available gas piped to homes in our state.
But, you know, everyone knows that gas can explode, and it's really dangerous, and it's powerful, and if you light a match and it's a terrible thing. So someone had installed a furnace in my grandparents' home so that it could accept this new energy of gas being piped into the house. Well, my grandfather decided it was dangerous, and he had it taken out, removed, and had it sealed off.
So, mm, we all know now that that wasn't a very smart thing. It was not very adaptive. If you think about that today, it's not all that smart. But at some point, my grandparents had to adapt. You know, and adapting doesn't mean doing the things for the sake of doing things, so everybody's getting gas piped to their house.
We're doing it to improve our lives, to make things better, to leverage this... Adaption is a leverage tool. Now they can cook and have food quicker, and they can be warm when [00:07:00] it's cold, and maybe they can be sick a lot less. Talk about adapting in a very positive way. Accepting this piped gas to the home was an amazing way to adapt.
But my pa- grandparents decided not to. Now, later on, they, they did. But think about how easy it is sometimes to look at something and think, "Well, I'm not gonna adapt. I'm not ready to do that. I'm not ready to take that risk." You may be thinking of something else today that some people are really excited about adapting to, and some are really not excited about adapting to, and that's AI.
So let's think about how not having the gas pipe to my grandfather's house, that not adapting to that really delayed his progress, probably h- health and wellness and, and relaxation, and all of those things that those, those benefits bring to us.
AI as Modern Adaptation
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Lee Gray: AI i- is sort of the same way. It's not gonna replace everyone.
It just [00:08:00] isn't. And whether you love AI or hate AI you have to think about how can you use AI as a way to adapt? As the law of adaption goes, AI is a really, really great resource that we can apply. You can either adapt in some way or not. But if you think about your competitors right now that are using AI, they're adapting.
They're learning about how you do business. They're learning about what you do. They're following you on social media. They're using AI, adapting their business so that they can become more aware of their competition. That's one way that we can use AI, and I'm not an AI expert at all. I'm just talking about how AI and the law of adaption really do go hand in hand.
Using AI Without Laziness
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Lee Gray: Let's say that there are two experienced professionals who are starting a business, and one refuses AI because it's unfamiliar, spends hours drafting emails and writing proposals and designing things [00:09:00] on social media, and the second person uses AI as a first draft for an email and asks it to help them in their business with designing graphics and captions for social media, and this second person is still reviewing every single thing that AI produces.
You cannot... That's not the law of adaption. That's the law of laziness. We still have to use AI and apply our own intelligence, our own experience. After all, we're second actors, and we have that. The second person isn't necessarily smarter or more experienced, but the second person is adapting the resources and using them, and people who refuse to adapt could fall behind and, and their competitors would be able to respond to customers faster, create content more consistently, analyze information more efficiently, personalize communication, and accomplishing more without, you know, immediately having to hire additional help.
The law of adaption with AI tells us that we might be able to del- to delay hiring [00:10:00] some people in our business Until later if we leverage AI. It doesn't mean trusting it blindly either. I think that that's really important. No one should trust AI blindly. AI makes mistakes, but what AI doesn't have is your human judgment.
It doesn't have your ability to, , to have confidential and to keep things, confidential with your clients, make, make things personal. You do that. That's always going to be on you. The goal of AI is to let it assist your thinking, not to replace it.
One Simple AI Experiment
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Lee Gray: A simple way to begin using AI and applying the law of adaption is to just pick one thing that you can use AI for, , this week and use it.
Test it and see. I, I like the idea of having it help write an email. Tell it the purpose of the email, who will receive the email, the desired tone you want in the email, the important facts you want to include in the email, and then the action you want the reader to take, and AI will create that. So here's how you might say...
I [00:11:00] mean, here's how you might instruct your AI. You might say, "Help me write a warm but professional follow-up email to a prospective client that I met last week. She wants to grow her business fast. She's concerned about having enough time," and, , remind her of the value we discussed about, , working together and that you'd like to schedule a 30-minute call.
All you have to do is give it that prompt. So you're still telling it what to do, but you're can leverage AI and, and the law of adaption is right at work using AI today because those of us who are not adapting are going to fall back. We don't even know to what extent yet, but adapt to the possibilities.
So then review the response that you sent them. Is it accurate? Did it sound like me? , What should I add or remove? You're gonna change something about it or highlight something that the AI has written for you, and is there a- any private information that you wanna take out? That's simple, you know, and that's a great way to adapt in business.
Leverage the law of adaption. Leverage it because [00:12:00] it's on your side. It's a law. It is governing what we do. We might as well use it. Start with ChatGPT. It's free. You can use it for really simple tasks, and for the next seven days, just use AI for this one thing. Help it write one email a day. Don't ask it to replace your judgment.
You're still the expert. You're still the second actor. Ask it to help you think, organize, and draft or improve. And it doesn't diminish the value of your experience. It does not diminish it. It can amplify and multiply your experience that you have, which is why you're starting your second act anyway.
It's the experience that separates you from everyone else.
Wrap Up and Challenge
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Lee Gray: So remember, second actors, that your experience is your foundation, not your limitation. I know we've talked a lot today, haven't we? Woo. I love these laws, and I hope you do, too. Thinking about the law of adaption, tell me, let me know how you're going to leverage the law of adaption after listening to this podcast today.
What I feel like [00:13:00] expressing is the law of adaption is probably easier to talk about than actually do, but you're a second actor, and you've got this, and that's what I feel like expressing.