Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Independence by Design podcast, where we discuss what it means to be a business owner and ways to get unstuck from the day to day so we can design a business that gives us a life of independence.
Leadership. And that word gets thrown around a ton. I had one of the most meaningful conversations about leadership and truly what it means to embody leadership. And Jeff west, who was my guest, he has grown and sold his own company. He went through the dot com bubble. He's been a CEO facilitator for decades. He's got an applied leadership program.
And I don't know how else to say this other than, you going to have to believe me, this is not a fluffy podcast. And I took four pages of notes about what leadership means and what it is.
And you're going to have to check out the show notes if you want to get some of the top 10 takeaways of my notes, you got to listen to Jeff. I.
I'm going to be a different person because of what I heard and the conversations I had with Jeff. And I hope you can take away some good things about what it means to be a leader for you and how to think about your team as leaders and how to actually think about what it means for your business and the impact that you can make. Check out the show notes if you want to know a little bit more about Jeff. Otherwise, enjoy this episode. Jeff, I am very ple. Pleased to have you here. I appreciate the time. This is gonna be fun. I know it well.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: Appreciate being here. Thanks for asking.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: So I know you're. You've been a listener and I'm excited to have you on. And I don't know if it's like, I've been on a couple before too, like, oh, now I'm on the other side. I'm actually going to be part of the people like that are in their car. I'm going to be in the voice. The voice in the car. And I met you when you reached out to have me come to your peer group, which started in tech, which is prior to Vistage, and I just, you know, I have to say that, like, your view on leadership, business, and life was so refreshing. I mean, we sat down for four hours or three hours or whatever it was, and I felt like I'd known you for a long time. And so what is your definition of leadership?
I want to start there.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: A good way to put it. I. As opposed to just a definition.
What is it? Yeah, I think I believe, you know, that. That.
And when I'm talking About leadership. I talk about being a great leader. I mean, there are a lot of leaders out there, right? And you know them when you see them. They're poor leaders. And I've always kind of compared it to, you know, NFL quarterbacks. You know, if you got a bad NFL quarterback, I mean, you make me an NFL quarterback. I don't care how much money you pay the wide receivers, we're not going to be very good. And you know, those guys, they don't last very long. They bounce around until they leave. There's a lot of them in the middle that are okay but not great. And their, you know, teams usually about the same way.
And then there's those handful that are just exceptional.
And you know that when you see it, too, they can take everybody around them and make them better, right? I mean, they make average wide receivers look like all stars. They, you know, they can take an offense that, with an average or poor quarterback would go nowhere and turn it into, you know, something awesome. You know, the Tom Brady types and the Joe Man Montanas. And I look at leadership the same way that, you know, there are a lot of people out there with a leadership title, but it's really just the title.
They're not taking their people anywhere. They're not taking their organizations anywhere. There's a lot of them in the middle that do an okay job. And the reason why they get away with that is their competition is really not any better.
And then those few that are just elite, and by that I mean they make everybody around them better. And I think that's my definition of a great leader, that if you're going to be a great leader, everybody around you has to be better because of it. You know, in business, that means you're obviously your employees, your customers, your vendors, community you're in.
And if you haven't hit that, where everybody, without exception, is better off for you being a leader than, you know, I don't think you're a great leader. But if they are, then I think that's as close of a definition as I'd have for it.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: I love it. And you know, what I was trying to explain to. Because I. I talked to a couple clients in my group about your program, and I don't know how to describe my. Like, when I. When I got out of, like, the coffee shop with you, I was like, you know, I just. I just.
[00:04:33] Speaker B: Since we.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: Since we met, I was like, I just feel like I.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: You.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: We view the world the same way, have similar perspectives.
I've learned a lot already. From our engagements.
And I just hear the word. I mean, it's the same thing, Jeff, like, leadership strategy, it just is like so fluffy bs, you know what I mean? And like, and so even trying to explain, like, hey, Jeff's got this applied leadership program and people go, leadership strategy, you know, it just all falls short. But like listening and talking to you for hours, I'm like you. And it was from your experience that I'm hearing you talk about your, the business that you grew and sold. You've been, you were in a CEO peer group. I facilitated one. You. I talked about different business case studies. And how do you describe. Like, because like that, like, and I like how you, you pulled on that analogy of, of a football team. Like, how do you get across? Like, what does it mean to be better?
[00:05:29] Speaker B: You.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: I mean, like, and like, what does better mean to you other than when you look, when you see it, you know, it kind of thing. You know what I mean? It's just so hard to put into words.
[00:05:39] Speaker B: Yeah. To me, better means it's just that you're living a fulfilling life.
Right. I mean, we always, everybody always asks, you know, what's, what's the meaning to all this?
And you know, you can go into deep philosophical discussions about that and have done for centuries, but at the end of the day, for me, it's about just being fulfilled. You know, can I get up and can I take some pride in something I've done? Can I look back and you know, it always comes back to people and are the people that I've been around better off for me being around them?
You know, that's a fulfilling thing. And when you can look at that and say, hey, I made a little bit of a difference, I think that that's a pretty nice bar to get over.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: And I think there you wrote this a good way for the listeners to hear, like, what are you, some of your nuanced thinking. You wrote a children's book, My Girl's Room. And I want you to talk about the children's book and the dragons, because I think it could help us get some perspective on what you mean by better, what you mean by fulfilled and how you think about life. Because, you know, you got a lot of business stories that I want to unpack and how you learned all this stuff. But like, I'm trying to capture the essence to, to do you justice of how you think about this because I think your standards for applying what does it mean to make everybody else better, you know, making trade offs when it's not Obvious. You and I talked a lot about trade offs and making sure you're doing what's right. But talk about your children's book and the dragons, the concepts of the dragons and. And y. I think it's so fantastic.
[00:07:11] Speaker B: Well, over the years, you know, I've got, as you know, I've got this program called Applied Leadership Program. And many times during that people go, you need to write a leadership book someday. You need to write a leadership book. I'm like, no, I don't. There are plenty of good ones out there and I can name a few that, you know, a couple that we use in the program actually. And as we were, my wife and I like to just, you know, we're in Wisconsin, so we like to head someplace warmer in the winter and we spend usually about a week or 10 days in Mexico every year. And we were flying down last January and I was telling her that and she looked at me and said, why don't you write one for kids?
And it was like starting a brush fire. I couldn't get it out of my head that, man, how many things would I like to have known that I know now that I really didn't know a lot of them until, you know, even later in life, later than I hate to admit that, you know, you could get kids to see it for what it is early. How cool would that be? And the whole concept of dragons is that dragons in ancient China, way before, centuries before they were these winged fire breathing creatures were nothing more than what the Chinese meant for mental blocks. You know, the things that we get stuck in our own heads were that keeps us from being the best version of ourself we can be.
And so that's what popped into my head right away was this idea of, well, you know, dragons seem to be popular, wizards seem to be popular with kids. So, you know, writing a book based on dragons being these mental blocks and it just took on a life of its own. I mean, we had so much fun just sitting by the pool and okay, what's the next dragon? It's basically, it's 10 short stories. It's easy enough.
[00:08:42] Speaker A: Four or five walk through the dragons because I think they're so awesome. I mean, I was resonating so much about the concept of a dragon being a mental block, you and I, and I don't remember where it came up in the sequence of our conversations, but you know, integration of the shadow self, you know, from like Carl Jung, you and I talked a lot about these different isms that like, that's what Helped me, me understand how, how real your perspective was, was on this. And the dragons kind of integrates with that whole concept of like these, these narratives, these things that you're trying to overcome to get to a point where you're like awake and aware and just trying to help people. But walk through the 10 and like, because I. And how did you come up with them?
[00:09:24] Speaker B: Well, the, I mean the idea behind the, the whole book is that it was interesting because as soon as my wife said that, the 10th story, which wraps it all up and I'll leave that one to the readers if they want to try it out, well played, popped in my mind right away. I knew how it ended. Now I just need to come up with like, you know, nine stories about how do I get there. And the idea behind it is that there are, each story is based on a dragon. The first one's a victim dragon. You know, this, this girl that's in the story, there's three kids, two boys and a girl in the story. And, and she strikes out, makes the, strikes out the championship game for her softball team. And yet she's turning herself into the victim of it. And of course the victim dragon ever shows up and tries to convince her she's right. Yes, you are the victim.
You know, on the flip side of it, I created three guardian dragons, one for each of them. And the guardian dragon shows up. And so it's this conversation back and forth about, you know, how are you thinking and how are you creating your thinking and is it really true what you're making up? And you know, by the end of that first story she realizes, oh no, you know what? I, I made up a lot of this stuff that wasn't true and I'm really not a victim. And the, you know, the idea behind each one of those dragons is that, you know, I want them to see the mental blocks, you know, the next one is the I can't dragon.
And the, you know, the guardian dragon comes and talks about, you know, how, you know, if you say I can't, you're right, but if you don't let that dragon rule you, what can you do? And so it was that story after story like that of each one of these things that my goal is once these kids see these dragons for what they are, they can't unsee them, right?
And at the end of the story, boss, basically they finally realize that all these dragons that, I mean there's pictures in the book of them and that and these fierce fire breathing dragons and stuff were nothing more than Just mental, you know, blocks of their own. They made them up.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: Made up? Yeah, yeah. Made up. Yeah.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: My favorite story of it is. Yeah. There's one of the. The guys in my. My business partners group, our peer group. He has a son that's 10 years old. And I asked him if he would, you know, be a test case for me. And so they read it and gave some feedback and that, and. But he said last winter they're coming home from a basketball game and they were giving one of their friends a ride home, his friends, after the game. And they always talk about, you know, what went well, what went poorly, what can we be better at? And at one point, Asher's friend said, you know, talk about the defense. Airplane. He just said, I can't.
And Luke told me that right away, Asher looked at me, said, dragon, dad.
Yes.
My whole day right there. Yeah, he could see it as a mental block. It's, you know, it's not this fire breathing. It's just something in our head that if you say that. He said, of course, on the rest of the way home, they had to explain to this kid what they were talking about.
[00:12:10] Speaker A: That's awesome.
[00:12:11] Speaker B: That's what I hope to come out comes out of it. And from what I've been hearing back from parents and reviews on Amazon, that that's what's.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: What's, you know, I don't know if you know them off the top of your head, but any, Any chance you want to just rip through the.
[00:12:26] Speaker B: The other.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: If you don't know, that's okay.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: Here's the. I can't be. Yeah, no, I probably wouldn't get them all right right now anyway.
Yeah, my wife, it's called Whimsy Wing. She's the one that I have to be like Dragon. You know, where.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: What I like about the thought about giving these ideas to kids is.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: We'Re.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: Everybody listening and we all deal with the same stuff, you know, I mean, you, you deal with very successful owners in your peer group. I mean, especially with the size of companies you're dealing with.
How fascinating is it realizing, I mean, like, I don't know if this, like you wrote a kid's book, but I mean, everybody deals with this stuff.
And like, what, what when you're looking at your group or all. I mean, you have, you've met a lot of owners and you and I talked a lot because, like, you've also been one too. And we can get into some of that story too.
That's why when we're having a conversation like you Just get it because you've lived it. And then not only have you lived it, but you're seeing from the. The lighthouse too, lots of other people and trends of behaviors and stuff like that. So how, like, when. If you were to, like, boil down, like someone that is constantly moving forward and succeeding and maybe you can lend some insight of what you think the word succeed means, because I think there's a lot of people that would maybe have, like, I think your and I's definition of success might be different than others. And so if you were to look at someone like they've got. They've got it going on and they're successful, how would you describe that person?
[00:13:58] Speaker B: The first word that comes to my mind is growth. They're in the growth mindset. They're always wanting to get better. They're always challenging their thinking. They're open to new ideas. You know, it's so easy to get, you know, that. Get stuck in the knowing mode, as I call it, that.
And you know, those people that they always know, you know, you can't teach them anything. They always have an excuse or a reason why something didn't work, or they always know better. Even if you can prove that what they're thinking isn't right, they're just stuck.
And the people I know that have been the most successful and successful doesn't always mean business is successful. I mean, you know, you can do a lot of things right in business and still end up.
I mean, by one definition of failure, the business fails for it's completely outside of your control, you know, but what it does, it gives you a much better chance to be successful than others in the long run.
And success means just that. Always wanting to be curious, always wanting to learn more, always being, you know, asking good questions. And. And so I say, you know, that that growth mindset is the first thing that comes to mind. And I think that's what always differentiates the really good ones from the rest.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: Where does the role of, like, ego and these dragons play a part in these leaders?
[00:15:17] Speaker B: Yeah, that can get in our way a lot, can it?
You know, you know, ego in.
In depending how you look at it. But ego is often one of the biggest limitations, limiters of. Of how far we can go. And it works in subtle ways. I mean, when you think about ego, you think about the big. The person that's braggadocio and all, you know, but it's not. It's not necessarily always that. Ego can be a thing where you just can't go have that tough Conversation with somebody goes telling you that, oh man, if I go have that conversation with someone, they're not going to like me and I need to be liked. You know, that's where, you know one of the dragons.
[00:15:55] Speaker A: Dragon, yeah.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: When you boil it down, it's ego though, right? It's this fear. And, you know, and you and I have talked about it, there's a book written many years ago now called Play to Win by the Wilson brothers.
And they boil it down into what they call the four fears.
And they work with tens of thousands of people in business across the country. And, you know, the interesting thing was that they came up with that there are only two fears we're born with the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises.
But then they came up with four more they saw over and over and over and over in people, in businesses and in life as well. You know, the one is a fear of failure. The next one is a fear of being wrong.
The third one is a fear of rejection. And the fourth one is the fear of emotional discomfort. Fear of emotional discomfort.
And when you work it backwards in any issue or problem you're having, you will always find it's one or more a combination of those that's keeping you from being the best person you can be.
You know, to go back, you know, my mind, I'll admit, when I first started SLE back in 1996, one of mine was, you know, emotional discomfort. I, I, it was tough for me to go have that tough conversation with people, but it didn't take too long to realize that if you're running a company and you're responsible for the success of the company, that you can avoid that conversation as much as you want, but sooner or later it's going to blow up in your face. And so it's better just to go have that.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: The longer it goes, the bigger the bomb too.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: Exactly. Right? Yeah. It gets worse, doesn't get better. They don't go away either. That's what you kind of hope that maybe it'll take care of itself.
Yeah.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: What was your, your ism? People are looking for a problem they can't solve versus a what is it?
[00:17:41] Speaker B: People prefer a problem they can't solve to a solution they don't like.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: Oh, I love that so much.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: That's from a gentleman named Lee Thayer, who I'm sure we'll talk about more.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: Today, but, well, let's double click on that because, I mean, there was quite a few these people that you're pulling on, which is why I also Appreciate where like these mental models and these concepts you're pulling on people that you are, you've been studying. And there, there wasn't a huge crossroads. Like, I mean, it was so fun to hear like a list of people and books that I hadn't been aware of. But. So why don't you. What was this person's role in your journey of understanding leadership and business? And what are some of your favorite takeaways?
[00:18:21] Speaker B: Oh, an hour and a half wouldn't do it for takeaways from Lee. Lee was somebody that, again, through the peer group I heard about, he had been a speaker on the, on the peer group circuit, I guess you would call it that. We never had him with my group, but I kept hearing his name from other speakers and so I finally bought his. One of his books. Actually. It's. I, in my mind, there is not even a close second for best book on leadership ever written. It's called Thinking Being Doing Leadership Thinking Being Doing by Lee Thayer.
And I can remember the first couple times I started to read it, I got a couple chapters in and I put it down like, man, this is hard. And I just, you know, and you know, as opposed to another book you could read, blow through it quickly, put it up on the shelf and never look at it again. And finally it hit me, like, why do I keep putting it down?
And I thought, because it's challenging me in a way I've never been challenged before. And I finally, I made a promise to myself that I'm going to read this thing from COVID to cover and I'm not going to stop till I'm done. And it was revolutionary in multiple ways in the way I look at leadership. And, you know, and then my pure happenstance, I, I got fortunate enough to work with Lee for the last few months before he passed away in 2020 at 92 years old.
So I.
[00:19:34] Speaker A: What were things that changed about how you viewed leadership? Like, what were some of the unlocks that made you think differently?
[00:19:40] Speaker B: Well, the first one, I mean, we talked about already, was that Lee would tell you, right, the same thing, that everybody around you isn't better for you being a leader than you're not a great leader. And that took a while for me to get work to sink in. But the more I've studied, the more I've thought about it, the more I've worked with applied leadership teams or groups that I've had and read their stuff and talk to them, and I completely buy into that. That's my definition of a great leader is it, everyone has been better for you being around as a leader.
But in just sayings, I mean, most people prefer a problem they can't solve, the solution they don't like. That took me a while. I sat there, what the heck?
[00:20:16] Speaker A: Does anybody love it so much?
[00:20:19] Speaker B: And then on a Sunday, when it hit me like, oh, you know, we'd rather put up with the problem, make every excuse in the world than just face it head on, then I'm everywhere. It was like the sixth sense, right? You know, you see them everywhere, and there's one that leads to an alley, and if you get down to the root cause one and get somebody to fix that, the rest of them just vanish. And it's amazing.
You know, another. Another one of his sayings is success is the only measure of success.
While in a way that sounds simplistic and it has such ramifications for how you lead as a leader.
It, you know, you take it and think through that. If success is the only measure of success, I mean, and you're not being successful, there are only two reasons, or somebody that works for you is not being successful, there's only two reasons. They're either one, not competent enough, or two, they don't care. I mean, you know, they're not competent. You can work with that. Possibly, number two, possibly there's not much you can do about that one.
And so, I mean, it gets back to, you know, those two things and which, you know, in a way makes it fairly simple. Which one is it? And this whole idea of competence is another thing that really, really came through for me on through Lee, that, you know, leaders, I think the best, and I don't know where I remember I heard it the first time, but I think the best definition I've heard for leadership versus management, because many people look at those as the same thing, and they're not, you know, management is working on your business or your organization.
I mean, and we all have management things we have to do. We got the things that we've got to get through and do. But leadership is working on your people.
And that's a completely different way of looking at it. Different position.
And one, I actually find that many people that get promoted into leadership positions, and especially in the case of, I've had people that come from a COO position and the CEO retires and they get promoted into the CEO position, but nobody ever tells them it's a completely different job.
You know, coo, you're in charge of operations. I mean, so there's a lot of management stuff. In there that you've got to follow the CEO position, especially at a reasonably sized company. And bigger is people, it's people, people, people. How do you keep getting your people more competent in every level of your organization?
And many of them just, they don't. They have a hard time switching gears and figuring that out. And until they do, I mean, all of a sudden you just basically got a CEO running your company and then you wonder why the innovation goes away, why the, the vision and the enthusiasm goes away, and because it just turns into a, you know, a task based company as opposed to accomplishment based company.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: You and I talked about that where, you know, showing you my diagram of like the board CEO and then the three functional leaders right underneath it. And we talked a lot about how that CEO should be responsible through getting the organization to ownership's goals, through people of those three other, you know, function leaders and shouldn't have any tasks. And how many people don't see that, like you said? And it becomes, I mean, like, how difficult can it be to make sure that you're focusing on whether people are competent or not and whether people care and moving things through people versus, you know, with a task list? And it's fascinating. Like, why do you think so? I got a couple questions that I think are tied together here. Jeff is like, you know, why is this so not obvious? Is part one of the question.
And then, you know, it's tied to part two of the question which I asked you, which was unbelievably helpful for me and my understanding of the marketplace and kind of dynamics. I asked you and some shape or form was because I am struggling with like watching companies, leadership teams that are just not performing the way that I think that they should be. And I was asking you with how your, I mean, your experience, your journey, your exposure to all this stuff, is this a now thing? Like, is it the people, you know, like people will blame the social media, they'll blame, you know, the money system or they'll blame the hardships or like what you name that, you know, a million things that are all probably tied to dragons.
I said, is there, is there an actual issue here? Because you and I both, and we'll get to the 2030, you follow it, economics and stuff like that. I was actually just talking to Alan Bo this morning and, and I was asking you, is this, is this a now issue where there's a higher volume of this problem going on right now, or is it always kind of been this way? And I think you said it's kind of always been this way. So I'm like, why is it not. Why is this not like all the stuff that we're talking about? Why is it not obvious? And then are there trends that you're seeing?
[00:25:19] Speaker B: Yeah, well, one of the advantages of. One of the few advantages of getting older is you get to see multiple decades of this. And yeah, I. And I'm sure it was before my time, too. I. I don't think it's any different than it has been, you know, and has it gotten any worse? I don't think so. Has it gotten any better? Unfortunately, I don't. Not that I, you know, I've seen it. I've, you know, I've just got a small snippet of it. But the, the reason why I think it continues to be such a bugaboo, if you want to call it that, is that, you know, thinking about, really thinking about leadership and what leadership means takes a lot of thinking.
And I think. Was it Henry Ford said that, you know, thinking is hard. That's why he thought that so few people did it.
It's so easy to fall into this management thinking because check, check, check boxes.
[00:26:06] Speaker A: And the dopamine that comes with it.
[00:26:08] Speaker B: Somewhat the old command and control. And in some ways, we've gotten a little better from that. We've, you know, start pushing down responsibilities a little bit better maybe, but in many places, no. And why is that? I mean, this whole thing about, you know, I guess you call it bureaucracy, you know, why does bureaucracy exist? Well, it starts from the standpoint that we want this illusion that we have control of what's going on, right, as leaders.
And so all of a sudden, something pops up and we create a procedure for it, and then something else pops up. We just create a procedure for it and something else pops up because we want to know that it's going to be done the same way, the right way every time.
And I've had a couple companies over the years that I've come in and worked with, and you walk in and their book on procedures is like that. You know, it's just like the IRS.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: Tax code or the law.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: And the first thing they tell me is that they just can't figure out why our employees aren't more engaged.
Why would they be engaged when you got every step of every day here, what to do in every situation.
And that's the problem. I mean, and don't get me wrong, there are certain procedures and rules and things like that, some for safety. I wouldn't want to get on airline, go on vacation.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: You're just being practical, right?
[00:27:22] Speaker B: Control rules. I want first airplane land wins.
Yeah. You know, there are regulations we need to follow, but there are so many times that something will pop up, oh, we need a procedure for that. And we'll create a procedure. Well, more than likely it's a one off. I mean, you're never going to see that again. Certainly not that exact same form. And yet we create a procedure because as the higher up we get, we want to make sure we feel that we understand everything that's going on below us and everybody's doing the right thing.
And that to me is lazy leadership thinking.
You know, the way that I think great leaders would look at it, they're going to go and spend that time, instead of creating procedure, they're going to go and spend that time getting their people more competent.
And the way I kind of put this out to leaders, I say, think about it. Now, somehow by magically tomorrow, you walk into your business and everybody that works for you, I mean, everybody without exception, is the very best at their job in the world. What would your company look like?
And you know, they can kind of see the steam coming out. They can't even, you know, imagine. Oh, my goodness, then why aren't you spending more time working on getting to that? Do you ever get perfect? No. But can you get much better and closer? Yes. But you've got to spend time doing it.
And that's the thing I find is a tough thing to get through to people. It's a whole different way of thinking about, you know, leadership and building an organization.
And at the end of the day, I mean, part of it is that, you know the old saying, this is nothing new. I mean, way back in with the Oracle of Delphi, they had on the side of the wall, leader, lead thyself. Which means, you know, if you haven't figured out how to lead yourself first, you're not going to have any chance of helping other people lead themselves.
And so figuring that out and then being able to see that, that the leadership position is your people, as I said earlier, and in many cases, you know, I don't say that, you know, I always, especially with the people in my applied leadership program, I mean, they're second, third level, whatever executives and companies or managers or whatever. And you know, I tell them, I said, you know, it's really a spectrum. I understand that you have a management job to do. You've got things that have to be done to run your business.
But so that's one end of the spectrum. But how many times do you have a conversation with somebody that's working for you that it should be a leadership conversation? They're coming to you day after day after day, well, what should I do here? What should I do here? Well then our ego flares up, woohoo, I'm needed. And you tell them so. And then they can't figure out why people don't grow, you know. No, I mean, how about having conversations, asking them what do you think you would do? Or what's the issue here? How is it different from before? Or any number of examples and questions you could ask somebody.
But the goal being put the leadership hat on and help them grow.
Because the more they grow, the more confidence they get, the more fulfilled they feel.
They're happier with their job and their work and you don't have to do it. So building that team up, building that confidence in your team. And I think that gets short sheeted way too much. And I think that's one of the root causes of why we keep being stuck with this lack of what we really want is leadership, not management.
But we kind of lump leadership and management into the same thing. And you know, again we get, you know, you know, this whole idea that oh boy, they need me, so I'm going to just jump right in and help them.
And I see that a lot with people in my applied leadership program that they'll come in and they'll say, oh man, I'm starting to see it more and more now, how many things are just come in and get dumped on my desk or people will call what should I do? And they start switching it around where they start, you know, helping them figure it out and become more competent and all of a sudden their job becomes easier. I mean they got a whole group of people underneath them is very competent and very cool things happen.
[00:31:07] Speaker A: Then, oh that's, you were, you were headed right, right where I wanted to go next.
[00:31:12] Speaker B: So.
[00:31:15] Speaker A: You'Re, you're familiar with my ownership operating system and where I'm headed with my material. And I think this so in phase three is elevate, which has a lot to do with the people.
How do we actually, because there's a whole mechanical build the machine, understand what you want, your goals, all this kind of stuff. But then you get to the point where it's the leadership team and then the leadership team and then eventually replacing yourself.
And I want to talk about what you've seen worked really well and where things struggle. And so I'll start with some of the biggest struggles I'VE I've been witnessing and watching with my group of. Of coaching clients where that transition period, Jeff, of like, okay, great. All right, Jeff. I'm aware of this dynamic. I want people that are competent. I want people that care.
How do I judge or assess my current team?
And then. Because, like, and then eventually, so maybe we can kind of take. I'm gonna throw out a couple things, and I'm trying my. I'm trying to get better with my personal growth and just not spraying a thousand questions at you. And then Alan Bolio was just like, all right, Ryan. Well, he would. He refused. Refused to answer one of my, like, monologue just riffs the other day. So there's this concept or there's this dynamic, Jeff, of I want to be in the boardroom, and I'll. Maybe I'll start from the outcome and we can talk about, like, what you see as a successful journey to that outcome using some of your principles.
[00:32:40] Speaker B: So.
[00:32:41] Speaker A: Because I believe and I've. I've witnessed it, I've experienced it.
When you have leaders that care and they're competent, it is easier and it can become really fun, and you don't have to do the. You don't want to do, and then your company becomes great, and then you like the cash flow, and then you don't have to be stuck in the middle of it. So, like, the outcome that you and I both rally around is like, especially you throw in 2000-30s and the ability to keep a good company and prosper when everybody else is. You know, like, we can talk about all the benefits that come from the outcome that is so worth what you and I want to help people with.
Okay, well, that's the outcome, and we can talk even more about the outcome. But, like, it's the, The, the, the challenge that I'm watching people, okay? It's like they take the red pill in the matrix. You go, I get it now.
And like, and specifically as it relates to leadership, I'm like, I'm hearing you, Jeff. Like, okay, I need a chief revenue officer, a COO and a cfo.
[00:33:37] Speaker B: What.
[00:33:37] Speaker A: Look at what I've got right now.
I've got loyalty to these people because I'm a good person. It's the family. You know, I got a good culture, all the good morals and things that you and I probably subscribe to there. So there's this, like, well, we can't.
We. We can't just pass. Judge people for things that were not clear expectations. So there's this transition period of, like, now I have new expectations. So I have to somehow, as an individual and as the top leader, recalibrate my expectations to my group.
You know what I mean? Because, like, I can't just fire you because all of a sudden I had this epiphany and I came to come in the next morning and just fire you because you're not following the expectations that I now have. So there's this, like, recalibration phase and then balancing competence and care.
Does the question make sense?
[00:34:27] Speaker B: I mean, you know, the first thing is that if you're not clear about what you're trying to accomplish, how do you measure anybody?
And, boy, that's the first thing I see. I mean, and I call it purpose. I'm not a big fan of mission vision statements. I, you know, companies that claim they have them, but they couldn't tell you what it means.
[00:34:46] Speaker A: What did you say in your. When we were the coffee shop, you're like, you asked one of your clients and he had to go find it.
[00:34:51] Speaker B: Yeah, he was starting to go to his file cabinet to pull it out. Never mind.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: Oh, that's awesome.
[00:34:59] Speaker B: So I just replace it. What's your purpose? What do you, you know, what's the reason that your business or organ exists? And that is critical. And that's not an easy thing to come up with. People can, you know, they'll spit out something quick and like, okay, check the box. Which is what they do with mission and vision statements most of the time.
You know, a process I've got, if people are interested in trying to figure out what their purpose is, is something I came up with quite a few years ago that's had really good success, is that, you know, you think about your business, think business or organization, and write down what's our purpose?
And when you write that down on the line underneath, it should say pointing up to what your purpose was. Why is that important?
Then you have to go and write, why is that purpose statement important? And then you've got to iterate on that. At least I say at least seven times. So every time you write something else down the line below that, it says, well, why is that important? And why is that important? And be honest.
You know, the first three or four of those will usually come pretty easy. I mean, you can probably knock them out in a day. Why is that important? Why is that? It's those last two or three that do not expect to get them done in a day. Matter of fact, you're going to wake up at three in the morning or you're going to Be in the shower, you're going to be working out at the gym, and all of a sudden it's going to. Oh, that's why it's important.
And you'll know you've gotten there when it gets visceral, when you get actually emotional about why that's important.
And once you get that, that part of it, I tell you, that would put you ahead of, in my experience, I don't know, 90 plus percent, probably closer to 99% of the company I've ever worked with or ever seen, that they can absolutely tell you with conviction why that's important.
And once you.
[00:36:45] Speaker A: Thinking's hard, right?
[00:36:47] Speaker B: What's that?
[00:36:48] Speaker A: Thinking's hard?
[00:36:49] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Once you have that. I mean, Lee Thayer's thing says you'll know you have it when it has you.
Really?
[00:36:57] Speaker A: Gosh, I love it.
[00:36:58] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, when. When that has you where you just. Well, once you've got that. And that takes time, don't you. This is not a process. You can rush to get to it, but once you have that, that's the filter everything goes through.
Does what we're doing right now get us closer to that or doesn't it? Now you got something you can measure against.
And if you're a leader and you got a company and you're trying to move up into, as you say, kind of like the chairman of the board role in that.
There's your filter. Is what my team doing getting us closer to where we want to get to? Are they clear about why, what our purpose is? And is that the filter they're using?
Once you get that, it gets a whole lot easier then to be able to judge are we making progress or not. But it takes the upfront work. Like everything that's worthwhile, you got to take some time and effort and really work on it. And I've worked with.
It's kind of fun for me, you know, in an Eau Claire, I drive around, I've probably got, I think nine or 10, 11 companies. I've helped them get their purpose statement around here. And I'll see a truck going by with it on it, or I'll drive by some building. You know, one of the buildings has got their purpose statement out front. And, you know, that's cool to help companies figure out who they are and what they're trying to accomplish.
[00:38:06] Speaker A: Not enough fluffy mission vision values and that.
[00:38:08] Speaker B: That's why I like.
[00:38:09] Speaker A: I mean, everything you're like, all your isms and all the things that you're saying, just like that's why I've enjoyed our conversations because it's not the. Is the right word platitudes. Like, it's, it's. It's not the lip service of. It's like real, right?
Yeah, it's real, right. Like people actually embody this stuff instead of just saying, you know, just saying what they should do you have any good exam or favorite examples of like, what, what someone's purpose or like one of the companies are that you've. You've worked with?
[00:38:40] Speaker B: Well, one of them, I don't think they mind my sharing, is Wind Technologies and is in. Headquartered in Eau Claire here. And they're a big networking company in upper Midwest.
And I worked with their team of their executives and we started out over the first month and they're putting all this stuff up on the whiteboard. What's important to us and what, you know, we get through the day. And I like, all right, well, that's a good first step. I mean, you know, well, it's get back. Think about it. We'll come back next month. Oh, well, we're not done yet. Like, no, we're not done.
And I came back the next month and we. They started to distill it down. Some. It was. Some cases, it was two or three sentences. Other case it was. But they still weren't there. But there were a couple of things that started popping up that kept being repeated over and over and over and. And then the last month we got together, they had really kind of distilled it down and. But the word connections and matter kept coming up and in different sentences. And finally one of the people in the group says, why isn't it just connections matter?
And that's one of those situations. You could feel the change. And I went around. I was like, there were 16 of them there.
[00:39:46] Speaker A: Feel the change. Yeah, I love it.
[00:39:48] Speaker B: And I went around each one of them, like, what does that mean to you? And each one of them, while it was the same, it was different. Connections matter. Well, you know, fun one. It's a fun play on. We're an Internet company, so connections matter. Right.
Connections matter between our employees. You know, connections matter with our customers. Connections matter with our community connection. Those connections matter. And, you know, so one, you know, it's kind of fun. It doesn't always work out that way where you can kind of play it off, what the business does. But on the other hand, you know, that's.
[00:40:18] Speaker A: That's the feeling. I mean, like, that's what I meant by the embodiment where, like, then like you're not pulling it out of your briefcase, right? Because like when you're sitting across from someone in your company and they're not embodying that, that purpose, then you're, like you said, you're using it to measure and to filter against.
How do you then balance.
How have you experienced? I've got thoughts about it, but like balancing the competence versus care in light of that purpose. So let's say someone's got that purpose nailed down and now you've got your leadership team that you've kind of had this, okay, we got the light bulb from, for the, the main leader of the owner operator. And then they, okay, now we got our purpose. And now you got your current leadership team that you're trying to all, you know, give them the red pill.
And now you're balancing this competence versus care.
And what's that process to, to judge whether they work out long term or not. And like, how, what's the, how do you, how have you seen that?
[00:41:20] Speaker B: Well, I think, you know, you mentioned it a couple of times. The first thing, I'm a leader, you know, I have that purpose now. And I go back, what, what do I mean by caring for my people?
And that's something that it's worth taking a lot of time to that. I mean, a lot of times care just means, well, you know, I, you know, I care about my people, I'm going to take care of them. And even if you get somebody that's just, you know, doesn't fit or just isn't doing the job or that, that cancer in your, in your organization or your team or whatever, but you just keep trying and trying, figuring that sooner or later they're going to wake up and yet deep down, you know, they're not going to.
And, but, you know, but they've got a family and they've got a, you know, and I get that. But is that really caring? I mean, first of all, what does it say to the rest of your employees, right, when you really care about them, you can let somebody, and everybody knows who those people are, you know, caring in my definition, and I think this is another one I got from Lee was caring means not letting people default themselves. And I love that term, that, that not let them default themselves. They're better than what they're putting out.
And so if you've got somebody that's just for whatever reason, not working out, not doing the job, you know, always in that victim mentality, whatever that might be, that having that conversation with them, if you believe they do have the talent and the ability to do it, but there's just some dragon in their way to sit down with them and have a conversation. You know, there's two ways you can have that conversation. Sit down, you can bang the table and say, hey, you know, pick it up or you're out of here. Right? Or you can sit down and look, look, you're defaulting yourself. You're better than this. I see it in you. Do you?
And then at that point, you've got to let them be responsible for their own career and their own life. If they, you know, if they just still fight you and give you every example and every excuse and everything, then they're not a fit for you. I'm sorry. I mean, but who made that decision? They did, not you. And that's where we get stuck. I think part of it's maybe our Midwest. Nice. We just, you know, the way I kind of tackle it with some of my executives and CEOs I work with, I said, at what point was it? Did it flip over where you're more responsible for their career than they are?
And they sit there for a minute, and I'm like, that's what you're.
[00:43:34] Speaker A: Jeff, why'd you word it like that?
[00:43:36] Speaker B: You know, when did that happen? And why is that? You know, and when you put it like that, Jim, like, oh, yeah. On the flip side, though, I've. I've had multiple stories, and I just had one recently in applied leadership. One of the ladies, she's a service manager for a fairly large auto dealership here in northwest Wisconsin.
And she said she had a young man come in and a job in their service department. And she said, I know his background. He was. He had a rough background and family life, but, you know, wasn't here very long. All of a sudden, he's showing up late. He's not hardly doing his work. He's, you know, leaves early once in a while. And she said, before this pro being in this program, I would have sat down and had the, you know, hey, pick it up or you're gone. And she goes, I finally pulled him in one day. And I said, look, you know, you're defaulting yourself. You know, I know your background. I know what's gone on, but you're better than this.
Do you believe in yourself, and do you think you could be better than what you're doing?
And so, you know, we meet once a month with those groups, and the next month she comes in, everybody's asking her about it, and she said it was like inventing a whole nother person. I mean, the next day he's in early, he's doing his work, he gets done. He's going, asking other people, what can I do to help? And she goes, this went on for like two, two and a half weeks. And I just kept waiting for him to revert back, and he never did. And she goes, I pulled him in my office.
And I said, I just. I'm so proud of you. You know, what you've done is amazing. And she said, he literally broke down into tears and said, nobody's ever believed in me before.
[00:45:05] Speaker A: Oh, that's so cool.
[00:45:06] Speaker B: And I've heard that story roughly the same thing half a dozen times or more, where people that just had never had anybody show any faith in them. You show faith in them and challenge them. Well, to me, that's Karen now, it could just as easily have gone and, you know, still been, you know, been made every excuse in the book and whatever, and he wouldn't have fit and you would have to let him go in. But that's his decision for his life. It's unfortunate, but we can't take that on, and we do way too often.
But also the outside of caring, this caring means no, I see something in you. Do you? I mean, think back again. Sports analogies are always so easy to use. But if you go back and read any book from players that played for great coaches, read any of the guys from, like, Lombardi, and what's the first thing they'll tell you is that they treated us all the same, like animals, like dogs. But what's the next thing I always write? He got more out of me than I thought I could get out of myself. And you hear that about all the great coaches. Well, that's what great leadership is. You're getting more out of people than they thought they could get out of themselves. And to me, that's caring. It's not saying that you care for somebody that's just not pulling their weight at your company, but you give them every excuse. Why?
Again, that gets back to ego. It means you have some fear of emotional discomfort or something. Or you. You'd have to admit you were wrong hiring them. Or. I mean, there's something ego wise there keeping you from doing what you need to do for your group.
[00:46:30] Speaker A: So many good things, Jeff. And like, you know what? I.
What? I get encouraged by like. And I just think about where I've.
I have failed at this dynamic multiple times in the past.
I know. And it just gives me a stomach ache knowing What I should have done versus what I did is kind of pulling on a couple of the concepts that you and I are going back and forth on is like having a clearly articulated outcome for that owner operator. So like now you have your own goals, then you identify the company's purpose within the goals of. It can be mechanical of like, hey, you have to like grow value, cash flow and value. But that, that becomes like the, the true constraint. Like there are rules in every single sport, right? Like there are specific rules, but then you get to layer on how you want to play, which becomes your purpose.
And then you go, okay, well, now we have a framework and a filter to measure people against, to give people the courage to have these conversations. Because these are hard conversations.
[00:47:29] Speaker B: Right.
[00:47:30] Speaker A: And I don't know if you and I talked about Alan Watts. I sent you a couple of those videos. We've been going back and forth with some of those on the text. And it's just like the letting go but not being passive and like letting go of that outcome where you're trying to like, and this has been something that I've been wrestling with for years, is like, I'm going to make sure that outcome is going to happen and if it, if it turns me inside out and it's like, that's not healthy.
[00:47:53] Speaker B: Right.
[00:47:53] Speaker A: So it's like letting that person through care and love to them, but not owning the outcome. Because you like to use your words, you're not more responsible for their career than you are, or you're not more responsible for their career.
And if you can keep the goal and the company as the ultimate benchmark, then you have the ability to have a courage, a courageous conversation with that person and let it be okay if they deselect themselves.
[00:48:22] Speaker B: Well, and that's, that's something. I think that once you get in. One of the things I've heard from people through the Applied Leadership program is that, that once they get this, they understand this and they really believe that, you know, caring for others means not letting them default themselves all of a sudden. Those conversations aren't hard to have because you have such faith, such belief and confidence in your own leadership, what you're trying to accomplish, that if they can, if they can hear what you're saying and change their life for the better because you challenge. That's a huge gift you just gave them. Right?
[00:48:57] Speaker A: Right.
[00:48:58] Speaker B: On the flip side, as you say, if they reject it, you've got to just. I mean, it's again, that the ego thing, Let the ego thing go. It's not your call. They have the final call in their life on what they want to do. And that's the part, I think, where most people, I mean, and I think how we get trapped in this that, you know, I tell people in the applied leadership and yourself and myself, I mean, not bragging, but we've got to where we're at because we just can't imagine not doing a good job. Right. We're just wired that way. We're just going to keep doing what's, you know, keep learning, keep pushing forward. And the people that get sent to my applied leadership program are that way too, or the companies wouldn't invest that kind of money in them.
But it's so easy then to think in our own heads that, well, everybody's that way. We just can't not be in that way.
[00:49:40] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's why I asked you that question is like, is this a now thing? And like in.
And I think this is why having a group of people around you that is also thinking this way and not just striving for more revenue is so important. Because what I have found, it was an Alan Watson video recently, is like, the more you become aware of the real way that reality works, it can be very lonely.
And so it's.
[00:50:08] Speaker B: But also very fulfilling.
[00:50:10] Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. And then it's the game of one. Right. Like we are the player and the. What was I going to say about that?
You said so. Yeah. I think it just allows us to recalibrate our energy with the people around us, with our goals, have better expectations. That takes that unbelievable burden and stress that we have to be successful for everybody else's outcome. And then I think it inverts the situation where we can actually use our company as a platform to really change people and the world in a way where we can actually put our fingerprints on it without having to be the one that actually does the work for everybody.
[00:50:52] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yep, yep. I mean, it's another theorism is the strategic distribution of problems.
[00:51:00] Speaker A: Good God. I need to come up with an inventory list of just all of the things that you're.
[00:51:05] Speaker B: But when you think about it that way, who owns what? Problem ownership means true ownership. There's no passing it off. There's no, you know, it didn't work. I failed two or three times. I got every reason or excuse in the book. No, I mean, it's yours. Take it, own it. And when you find the right people, I mean, the A players, that's what they want. Right?
[00:51:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:51:26] Speaker B: Leader, just tell me what you Want be very clear about what we're trying to accomplish and then get the hell out of my way, right?
[00:51:33] Speaker A: And then like, and then as a leader, be like, it's really like a parent, like, let people watch the growth and find the joy in watching the people grow and hit the outcome and identifying the goals. And I love it so much.
[00:51:47] Speaker B: There's a paradigm to that too, that, that if you get good at leadership, you understand that. And this was from a. We had Peter Schutz come talk to our group when I was still a member, like three times. And Peter was a former CEO of Porsche. It was Dr. Porsche that actually hired him in the early 80s. And Porsche at that time was really on life support. And it was Peter that went into CEO and resuscitated him. And one of the things he said that in Germany they have to once a quarter. I don't know if it's still true or not, but by law you had to have all employees come in once a quarter, your executive team up on the stage and the employees can ask you any questions they want for as long as they want it.
And he said he thought, when he first thought about it, he goes, man, that scared him to death. But he thought, well, now I'm getting asked questions. I don't know, maybe these are good things and I can learn from it. And you know, but he said one of the one that stuck with me, he said one of the questions was one day a guy got up in hair shoots. You know, we all work on the show or on the manufacturing floor here. We're building these cars and we're making, you know, the, you know, the money for the company. And we see all you suits up there with a big salaries in that and I, I don't see what you're providing.
And Peter's answer to me was just brilliant. He goes, yeah, you're right. You are making the, you know, the money for the company right now.
And if, if we were gone for a week or three weeks or even three months, six months, and this place didn't run like a top, then we've done a lousy job.
But our job is what about two years from now or three, are we still going to be making the same cars? Are the tastes in what automotives are the, you know, is the technology going to the same? Is company people's taste going to be the same? Is it. Our job is looking into the future and figuring out where we need to keep positioning ourselves.
And I thought that was a really good way to put it. So that his job, he saw it as a CEO, was get all the people in the right spots where he didn't have to be there every day. This is kind of the thing you talk about about making an owner the chairman of the board.
If you get this right, you have a purpose that everybody lined up with. You've got a great culture, you've got good people in all the seats doing a good job.
You will find you don't have to be there any day. Matter of fact, if you have to be there every day, you're still doing a lousy job. Or you have to be there once a week or you should be able to go. And I even tell the guys in my group so that, you know, the bigger companies that. And even to, you know, I don't guess what you decide is medium sized. But if you can't be gone for you take a month vacation and just leave your phone and leave everything and not worry about it, then you haven't built a good enough team yet. You don't have the purpose figured out right yet. You don't. But the paradigm in that is you can't be gone forever because as the leader, you're the one that realized how you built that leadership really means that putting the right people, having the right, you know, the right vision of what's going, where we're going and all that and holding people accountable to it.
If you're gone for too long and you have people again that don't understand that, things revert back to. All of a sudden silos start going up and there's, you know, arguments happening.
[00:54:46] Speaker A: There's a Keith Cunningham's book, the Road Less Stupid. I don't know if you've read that he's got this. The way I think about the ownership dynamic with the relationship with the business like this. If you have an ownership operating system where you're having monthly check ins on all the things that are important, from the financials to the culture to the people that are different than the operational cadences. And then you have your quarterly board meetings and you have your kind of more specific strategic annuals. It's the, it's the like when you take a merry go round at a playground and just. It takes you just cranking that thing, right? And Keith, because Keith says there's no such thing as a passive business. That's because that's called the dumb tax. You'll pay the dumb tag. And he's got the nice text and accent, it's so great. And he calls it the stupider Dumb tax. But you know when you, if you step away once it's humming, it'll slow down.
But if it's going, you can just tap and you can look around and all of your energy and concentration is not on it and it's not through the pure energy of the muscle. So it's like this, all of the stuff that you're talking about, that's why this elevate phase in my operating system is the third phase. You're building that all the way up and then the true escape velocity hits. When you've got the people, the leadership team and you've connected all these dots when you said that if you've done this right and it decouples the owner operator from specifically needing to spend the time in the geographic location of the office where they have all the monkeys. So when you've decoupled your cash flow and your time, then you can think about the business in other places. You can have checking calls and you have more time, geographic flexibility and go ahead, I want to hear.
[00:56:30] Speaker B: Well, yeah, and even if you have owners that don't want to be completely, let's say checked out to just like be the head of the board, that's an option.
One of the things I tell them that even if you don't want that you still want to be involved in the business, you need to create a ton of white space time. And by white space time I just mean time where you're just sitting and thinking, you know what I mean? And they like, well, what I mean. My example was when I was running sle, I would, we were right across the street from the library and I would tell our office manager that I'm going to go over, I'm going to spend, you know, a couple hours this afternoon over there. Unless this place is burning down, don't text me.
And I would just take a quadruple notepad and a pen and I'd over and it's right on the Eau Claire River. I'd sit there, I'd sit in a chair and people what did you think about? I said I didn't have to. I could never sat more than five minutes. And things would start popping in my head like oh geez, I should.
And within a couple hours I'd have a couple pages of things on a notepad that if I'm just staying task based all day long, the you never get time to think about that kind of stuff. And it took me a while, but I realized that's my job is to think longer term and Looking at where, you know, what's going on out there. And all of a sudden, you know, because of that, I would be setting up meetings and flying out to Silicon Valley and meeting with leaders of businesses out there and, and start making connections that if I hadn't thought about, I would have never known about. And I'm back and all of a sudden we get a new opportunity. Well, some people say, well, I was lucky you were out there. Well, you know, luck happens when you take action, only when you live and.
[00:58:07] Speaker A: You give this space to think or space to like, receive. I mean, I mean, how many of these great leaders, from Benjamin Franklin to, you name it, were like, they're like. It's in that, that white space of the margin where the ideas come. I mean, you're really, you're listening to the universe. And if you don't have time to listen and it's just right in front.
[00:58:22] Speaker B: Of you, look at some of the, you know, some of the more famous one, you know, Steve Jobs used to check out for what, two or three months a year go to everywhere from Nepal to India to wherever, and just Bill Gates used to do that back in the early days of Microsoft. Just completely unconnected, just thinking.
And it, in one way it's, well, you know, I haven't got time. That sounds lazy. It's nothing lazy about it. I mean, if you, the book, I think, I think time really is money. I don't know if you've ever read that.
[00:58:51] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Yep.
[00:58:52] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, they talk about, you know, in your role, especially if you're heading up a business or the owner of a business, that what kind of revenue should you be bringing in long term?
Well, for what you're being paid, it should be a pretty big chunk. But the thing you need to realize that's not going to happen every day. It's not like a sales guy going out and finding another order. Another order. You might work on something for two years.
You think of something, you go out, you start meeting the right people, you put things in place and. But two years later, all of a sudden you've got this big opportunity that turns out to be doubling your revenue for the next 10 years.
[00:59:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yep.
[00:59:29] Speaker B: Look at what does that mean to your time spent.
[00:59:32] Speaker A: You're looking for the step changes. Right. Like you're, you're like the, not this linear growth, but like the things that will step you up that change the paradigm of your company to be aligned with future opportunities. I mean, it's what I find, Jeff, and I'm curious if you if your experience is this too like with.
[00:59:51] Speaker B: I'm.
[00:59:52] Speaker A: Going to give you some of my thoughts here and then I think this will tie us into then the 23rd because I want to make sure we get to like how your thinking about the next five years because it's all tied into this future thinking and strategies. I so what I experience is that a lot of the owner operators that I, that I work with like this type of work, like most of my clients are like I need more time to think. I want to have more time with the big deep, meaningful relationships, whether that's suppliers or vendors or you know, the different people that can help them with ideas and strategy. I mean like the whole, you know, we can call it the visionary or whatever that they enjoy this type of work and when I see if the machine is built where they can actually have the white space and the freedom and the flexibility and the thinking without the monkeys with a good leadership team and a machine, they love their business.
[01:00:46] Speaker B: Absolutely.
Yeah. And then we had a guy, oh it's probably, I don't know, 12, 13 years ago now that I get a call just out of the blue because I worked with companies for quite a while when I first started bear down on just for lack of a better term reboot and company culture and the I get this confidence owner like say I, you know, I understand you, you work with companies and owners and, and you know, can help us, you know, figure out who we are and what we're doing and how to do it. And I said yeah. I said what's up?
And he said well I started this business 27 years ago and I came in last week and turned the lights on. I thought God, I hate this place.
[01:01:26] Speaker A: Everybody listening in has had that moment. I have multiple times.
[01:01:30] Speaker B: Yeah, me too. I went through the dot com implosion in charge of a high tech company. I went through two and a half years of God, I hate this place.
[01:01:38] Speaker A: But in the lights kept turning on, thank God.
[01:01:42] Speaker B: So I know, I thought yeah, it sounds like we should get together. So I went over and I meet with him and they did like farm implement type stuff and going to his office and clearly a very profitable and company that's done well.
And I said so what's up?
Just come in. I used to love this but I just hate it. And I said well what do you hate? And he said well this. And his desk was full of legal documents and HR stuff and he's explained and I stopped him for a second. I said all right, well what do you like to do.
And it really kind of caught him off guard. He had to sit back for that second and think and finally say, well, you know, I like just being out with our farmers and our clients and see how they're using our equipment and looking at things we can go and maybe had make better. And then within a few minutes, he was just all animated.
And when he got done, I said, why don't you do more of that?
And he's like, well, I just told you I got all this. You know, I said, look, I said, I understand that you got legal things, you got HR things. But you know what? I said, and I don't get it, but there are people out there in the world that love to do this.
[01:02:49] Speaker A: Yeah, totally.
[01:02:50] Speaker B: Right? I know.
That's like going to Disney World Forum. And I said, I don't get it either. I mean, I hated it too. But I said, look, and I bet you've got people in your office here can take over most of this for it. You just give it to them and trust them and train them up.
Or if not, if you need to hire another one, your financials are good enough. You could hire a person just to do this stuff for you and go through the legal, like, okay, here's the things you might want to talk to him about and just mark it up.
And to his credit, over the next, it was like eight or nine months, he slowly handed things off. And end of the story is, though, that it was about, I don't know, a year later, I think it was. I was out at the mall Christmas shopping, and I run in. I hadn't seen him in over a year. And he comes up and says, hi, and his wife goes, are. Are you the Jeff west that worked with him? And I like, yeah, I am.
She comes over, gives me this big hug, and it's almost in tears. Thank you. You gave him his life back.
[01:03:46] Speaker A: Oh, that's so Jeff.
[01:03:48] Speaker B: I mean, how cool is that? Yeah.
[01:03:51] Speaker A: You know, and instead of, like, you know, pulling the rip cord and ending up in the. The three fourths of people that, you know, regret the sale of their company because, like, there's this perception of the easy button that just doesn't exist. You know what I mean? It's like how if I sell this thing, and it's like, you either left money on the table, you left terms and conditions on the table, you left the impact and the. The cult culture and legacy that you wanted. Like, there ends up being you. You're trying to. People are trying to make this drastic, easy out For I hate the legal and hr.
And then you realize there was a lot of stuff I loved about this situation, financially or intangibles and legacy, personality, identity. And like, it took eight months, but that. That question hit them between the eyes and unlocked the progress.
And it goes exactly what I was saying. And like. And I've. I've been more and more focused, Jeff, of like, I believe that there is a world where everything that we're talking about right now is possible for these people that own these companies. And like, companies can change the community and the culture and people's lives. And as the economy gets harder, which I think you and I both believe will or get hard over the next handful of years, the people that believe this and can do this hard work will be life changers for the people that they touch. And if, you know, what did you say there was another leader? Lead thyself. And it's like you start with your oxygen mass first, you do the hardship yourself. And like, And I think about all the stuff that you just said, like, this is all possible if people are leading, like, what you're talking about, because, like, there could be a very dysfunctional way of delegating, not giving clear expectations, you know, I mean, where you're like, the perception of progress, of delegation, and then the whole thing falls apart, you know, eight months later.
Delusion. Yeah, exactly. So there's a lot of this, all of this, and makes what I think you and I have a shared passion for. Of is possible for people to have this beautiful relationship with their company and their people and their leaders.
[01:06:05] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah. You know, I advise them, you know, and people ought to, the ones I worked with, a lot of them, is that just what. What do you want to do? What excites you? What, you know, what part of it and what gets forgotten, especially with companies that start out small and keep growing, you know, when you're small, I get it, you got to have a lot of different hats on.
You got to do. I mean, you got to do everything. But as you get bigger and you hire more people, a lot of times it gets forgotten. They keep doing all that stuff, but they keep putting more hats on.
And that's where they finally get to the point where they're just burned out.
And so to back it up and say, well, what part do I really love about doing this? And I had an owner here, I don't know, six, seven years ago, that he loves, loves skiing, wants to get out, you know, out west skiing more in the wintertime, but just didn't think he could do it because in a way just didn't have the right, you know, his team wasn't where he wanted it to be yet. And so we talked about that and to his credit he did. He put together a really good executive team that he told me, I think was last winter the winner before now that he was out skiing for a couple of weeks. And he said while I was gone, two major things happened. They never even called and they handled it both great. Well, that's so cool. Getting the right team put in place with all these things we talked about, what's our purpose, what are we trying to accomplish?
People that are there that buy into that and want to be part of it, that's allowed him the freedom to go out and do some other things he loves. And it's also freedom up to look at other business opportunities and things that he would have never had time.
[01:07:31] Speaker A: The white space. The white space, yeah. And what's fascinating too is like, because I like, I think then there's been this confusion for some of the people that have followed me for a long time that I'm just a total finance junkie. And what happened, I've. Because like everything that we've talked about, Jeff, is like, that's the shit I love. The people, the philosophy, like, the feelings really.
And then what I have found is one of the biggest, one of the obstacles.
There are three forces that I think people get. Why they're stuck is the gut based decisions that they're making, unpredictable cash flow, and then they're stuck in the operations. We've been talking a lot about how they're stuck in the operations and leadership. But I've worked with a lot of the clients that I'm working, that I work with.
The cash flow of the company becomes a serious constraint.
You know what I mean? Like, call it community. A few hundred grand and a few million bucks, like people's lifestyles creep into that. And then you have like inventory and working capital.
All these nuances that once they get visibility into the future.
I've watched people during anxiety. Like, I mean, I've got three or four people right now that are hiring the CEO or like, like looking at it, going like, I can afford this like 250 to $300,000 salary and still be fine. So then they're like, oh, like now I can do all this stuff that I really like. So it's not like life or death, you know, to get them through that escape velocity, to make all of this stuff possible.
Which is why I say like, you know, building the mechanics and building the machine are part of that. Like you said, as you're kind of getting to that point, then it becomes an actual conscious choice. When you've eliminated all the excuses, you're like, okay, like I understand, like you, sometimes you have to do these things, but like now you have the resources to let go.
So now what? Now what's the excuse?
[01:09:19] Speaker B: Right.
Yeah, no, that's, that's true. I, you know, I'm sure you've run into it too. I run into any number of people over the years that sold their business and a year later, tell me, I wish I hadn't done that.
[01:09:29] Speaker A: Right.
It's a good investment.
[01:09:31] Speaker B: They are in their personality and they're, you know, I mean, I've had one gentleman, just family business 135 years, something like, just sold his business but he had no family members that wanted it. Sold it to a guy that's worked with him for 40 years or whatever. And you know, we, his conversation mine right now is that okay, what's, what's the transition look like?
What he understands that if I don't have something else to take place of that. Yeah. You know, purpose, you know, the, the, the, you know, the numbers, medically and mentally are not good for people that don't have anything to replace it.
[01:10:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, if you think about all this stuff that you, you and I have talked about, which a business can be like, I've got this phrase now. So. Shana Core, have you ever had the happiness advantage?
[01:10:14] Speaker B: Yes, I am.
[01:10:15] Speaker A: Is my, his definition of happiness is one of my favorite. It's the joy we experience and pursuit of our fullest potential.
And I think that a business is one of the most amazing vehicles for self actualization because it, it's just everything on life on steroids. Right. Like, like your leadership and your fingerprints of all the different things. It's just like this big canvas that allows us to, to do that and that becomes really hard to replace in day to day life.
[01:10:45] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah. I tell my daughters now that are, you know, the kind of, the early to mid parts of their careers that enjoy the process. I mean one of my things always, I always wanted to get to the next level, get to the next level, get to the next level.
And in. While, you know, I can't say I wasn't enjoying it, I, I wish I would have appreciated it more at the time.
That, I mean, another theorism is if you finally reach your goal, you didn't set your goal high enough because it's not about getting to the goal. It's about the process of continuing on and keep pushing and how do you keep getting better? How do you keep getting more competent at something that continual learning. I mean, the short period of time I got to work with Lee, he was 92 years old and he started every one of our meetings by saying, my goal here today is to learn more about leadership than anybody else here.
And I thought, man, at 92 and you've forgotten way more than I'll ever know, that that was still his goal.
That was pretty cool. And so it's awesome. It is awesome.
[01:11:43] Speaker A: So let's say we got 10 minutes left. I want to kind of. Because I think there's a liftoff here of like where you see the economy and businesses going. So I'll see if I can regurgitate some of the conversations that we've had, then I'll put some of my beliefs in there because I want to hear how you think about it. So. Because I believe that like, you know, if we set our goals big enough, then it's like it's a playground.
[01:12:05] Speaker B: This like life is a playground.
[01:12:06] Speaker A: You and I have talked about that. Like you said, I'm not going to retire because I think retirement a goofy word. I'm just changing what I'm doing every day. And I think most people listening in would agree with that. And so what I believe is that by doing the work that we're talking about with the ownership operating system tied into them, with the people and the impact and all the purpose, all this stuff that we've been discussing, the possibility to ride the wave of a growing company that has outlasting impact is very high. And then at some point at the monetization of that, you know, through an estate plan or an ESOP or an internal transition, you're constantly growing cash flow value, and the impact is exponential.
You don't have to ever part ways with it in any particular. I mean, like you will all kick the bucket and at some point your cognitive resources will decline. But making sure that you have all those systems in place to create the optionality to do what you want until you, your game that you want to play changes. And then you like the moment you want to change that game, the whole thing doesn't fall apart. And then it's like this. I believe that, that it's harder to actually create something that's lasting longer than it is to sell something to pe, to be honest. Like, you could bundle it up and sell it, but it's harder to do everything you just talked about what we were talking about. It's way harder to do this shit than it is to just package it up and sell it sometimes. So that's my belief. And then I believe that also if we do this stuff that we're talking about and we have the leadership team and the systems in place, like you've discussed the ability to attract talent when talent's going to be hard to find, the ability to deal with very hard external events, whether it's AI or a currency crisis, debasement or trade or inflation or all this stuff. What I want is to see if you can articulate it better than me is all of the stuff that we're talking about becomes. It becomes so compounding where it can be easier to attract the right people and be better. And it's in mathematically becomes one of the best investments when all the other investments are shit too. So like doing all the hard work ends up and it's a process and it's a game and all this stuff becomes like, why wouldn't you want to do all this stuff? Because of how many reasons it can be awesome versus the alternative when there is no easy button. So I'm trying to think of like how to launch this into what do you believe and how does, how do you snap some of these ideas together and then how are you helping your group go forward amongst challenges as you see them coming over the next five years?
[01:14:44] Speaker B: Well, you know, you know, you and I talk about it some and we are, we've been followers and believers of the ITR and Brian and Alan, we've had them out talking to our group in the past years past. So if you're watching. Hello.
We've been following ITR for many years and we use it, their, their ABCD system and that for our companies and use that a lot for how we think about where each business is and how. What they should be thinking about doing. You know, they've written. It was over 10 years ago now their book that, you know, that we're going to see a rough time here by the end of the decade. And there's only been a couple, at least years ago that I would read. John Malden was another one saying the same thing. Now you see it. I see multiple articles a week about, you know, there's something not good coming up here towards the end of the decade. We don't know what it is exactly. I mean, everybody's got their own theory. So my goal is just. And, and I buy into that. You know, it's demographics it's financial. We, you know, we've, we're going to pay the price sooner or later for the debt we've run up as a country. You know, there's so many things there. You know, us baby boomers, we're using more Social Security and more Medicare now. And that's not going to end for a while. And so, yeah, there are some real serious things coming up here that are going to have to be dealt with. And how does that play out? I don't know. Exactly, exactly. Noitr believes we're going to go through a Great Depression.
I mean, something along those lines I don't think is unlikely. And then do you go through, I mean, you know, all the different ways, you know, we've talked about all the different things that could happen and I'm not as concerned about exactly what happens. It's just having my businesses making sure they're prepared. And you know, people go, what does preparation mean? Well, in my mind that means how do you get as much productivity in your company is going as possible? And one of those legs right now that we've never had before is how do you use AI?
You use it to do a lot of the mundane things so you don't have to hire more people. You can have AI doing a lot of things that before, as your business grew, you had to hire more people. How do you get your financials in order so that if it gets to the point where it's so tough out there business wise, that margins get really squeezed, you can get squeezed the most and still be around versus your competitors that weren't ready for that.
[01:16:49] Speaker A: Do you have any experience with that?
Weren't you the only person in your industry that was standing after the dot.
[01:16:56] Speaker B: Com, the only one that was less than a few billion dollars in years annual revenue and being subsidized by another part of the business? Yeah, right.
We went through a rough patch, but so those are the things, you know, it's this whole idea of being prepared and, and just how about people the argument that even that this isn't going to happen, none of these things you're doing are bad things to do for your business anyway.
But other subtle things to look at too. I mean, how do you know who's your top three vendors and how prepared do you think they are? You know, which are your most critical vendors and how prepared do you think they are for this coming up, what if you'd lose your, your most important vendor? What does that mean to your business? And maybe you should, you know, talking to them about what they're doing and, or maybe looking for a second source or a third source even, or. I mean there's things along those lines that, that we're starting to talk about. What things are you start putting in place to be ready for this. Because I, I do think, I don't know how we avoid rough patch. I mean there's a lot of, you know, the fourth turning books like that out there, tail end of this debt cycle. And, and to think it's different this time is foolish.
Yeah.
[01:18:09] Speaker A: And, and that's where you do such an elegant way of reframing it because like sometimes I get stuck in like, oh, you know, mindset and like that's why I'm always having like when I'm talking to Alan, I'm like, your book's called Prosperity in the Age of Decline.
And you said something really cool when we were at the coffee shop where you said, you know, everybody's talking about these leadership and people problems. You're like, my clients aren't having that problem. Because like, I mean, so they talk about like, because people in this to be like, I think it becomes a self re. Like the way I think about all of this, Jeff, is like, it's a self reinforcing spiral up or down, but in the middle is not really a choice. Like you're, if you choose not to go, like spiral it up and do the hard work, it's a spiral down. And good people and good leaders attract good people. And then they're helping you think about AI and talking to the vendors. So it's like it's up, but then also down. So like how do, how do you think people and the culture play an impact in everything that we were talking about?
[01:19:10] Speaker B: Well, that's why, you know, my, my members. Anyone watch this will be laughing by now because I've been harping culture for at least the last 10 years for, for two reasons. One, I think it's just the right thing to do if you do it right.
But two is you can see this demographic trend coming. You can see where, I mean, heck back even just run an SLE up and through 2008, put an ad in the paper, you had 50 people that replied, you know those days. Now you put it in. I've heard many of my members, you put it on the paper and you get nobody. Right. Somebody that's had, you know, five jobs in the last eight months or something like that.
And so if you think about it, you get your purpose right. What you're trying to accomplish and you get the right people on the team going, eight players attract a players.
Good people want to go work for good companies.
You look at companies, and unfortunately I've run into a handful of them over the years where they're just poorly run.
And for all the reason. I mean, who's the first people to lead companies like that? It's the good ones.
I had one client tell me one time, he said, yeah, the only reason the poor ones stick around, they're like gum on your shoe. You know, they're just too busy even go look for another job all day long. But they're not leaving.
[01:20:23] Speaker A: I have to. I'm going to use AI and this transcript to come up with an inventory of all of your phrases because they're so good.
[01:20:31] Speaker B: Well, I mean, and so, and to the credit of the companies in our group, they've done a nice job with their businesses. I mean, it's still tough for them, but I mean, right across the board, most of them, if not all of them, they have people calling them, hey, you know, are you hiring? Are they? Because, you know, people work at a place they really like, they're going to tell their friends, they're going to tell family, they're going to tell, you know, or, you know, you're a customer of a place that, wow, you know, this place is just, is different, you know, you know, how, you know, are you looking for somebody? I get stories like that quite often. And so, yes. Is it still tough for them? It is, in a way. I mean, there are certain specific skill sets that are still hard to find.
But you know, for the most part, no. I don't think they're having the problem that most companies are having. I mean, I had one manufacturing company here, winter before last, lost three of their people to a big multinational company in town here because they were paying $2 an hour more.
Three months later they all came back and he said, my best evangelicals out on the floor now going, oh, you don't want to go there.
[01:21:32] Speaker A: That's awesome.
[01:21:32] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, and that's a big deal. I mean, to walk away from $2 an hour difference, you know, salary. But they came back because this place treats us like people and they would like working here and all the things they do for us. And you don't get that there. It's just work, work, work, work, work. And yeah, you make some more money, but it was just not fun and fulfilling. Worth it. Not worth it, right?
[01:21:52] Speaker A: You know, I think a lot of the, the concepts we're talking about here about how we look at the future is for me, like, you know, because I know if Tyler's listening the shout out to him, you know, health guy, that's also tied into, you know, he's doing a lot of stuff with AI. But, like, when I think about health, Jeff, and I can tell, you know, like, I mean, you've been disciplined for a long time. Like, when you have that routine and that discipline, it's still hard work every day, right? Like, there's like, you're just doing the hard shit. However, what I've experienced is what when that external shock happens. Like, I broke my leg 11 years ago, or whatever the hell it was I crutched into the gym, or when you sprain this or your rotator cuff hurts now, or like you didn't get a good night's sleep. Like, there's a forcing function of mechanism to, like, deal. Like, because everything else is stable, it's to deal with that shock in a more appropriate way versus, like, I also can't do other things. And I'm trying to deal with the one thing that happens, you know what I mean? So it allows, like, to us to handle all of the adversity that you're talking about in an appropriate way instead of having to manage the basics and the random thing that's also very, very much a big external threat.
[01:23:09] Speaker B: Well, and adversity is the right word there. I mean, it's another thing. Throughout Lee's book, he talks about competence, but right after every time he says that competence in the face of adversity.
Because if you don't have a first job, do you know if you're competent or not? I mean, there's a lot of companies. You start a company at the right, you know, right. Part of the cycle in a business cycle. And you can do really well even if you're not that good of a leader or not that good of a company.
But longer term, no company or organization or even an individual could be better than the leadership. Just, it's impossible long term. When you work at Basler.
[01:23:43] Speaker A: So good.
[01:23:44] Speaker B: When you think about any situation and work it backwards, it's going to always come back to decisions were made by the leadership of that organization or a leadership of yourself. I mean, what decisions are you making? What habits of thinking are you stuck in that are keeping you from doing the things you should be doing instead of what you know? And most people don't think of thinking as a habit, but we think about smoking is bad and exercising is good, but, you know, thinking is a habit we can get really stuck in ruts and believe we see the world, you know, in our way is we see the world is right and right up until it beats us up, you know, inside the head. And another author I like and personally like is Cy Wakeman. And her quote is that feel, feel free to argue with reality. Only know that you'll, you know, just know that you only lose 100 of the time, like if you're okay with the call.
Yeah. So it's, you know, it's this whole knowing who you are, what you're trying to accomplish and then, you know, Lee talks over and over and over about preparedness and a lot of times people, well, preparedness for what? And preparedness for anything. Well, how do you prepare for anything? Well, I mean that gets back to are your people really, really competent?
It's back to this confidence thing again. If they're competence competent, when adversity hits, they're going to be prepared. They'll figure it out. If you have a bunch of people you've been letting hang on and stick around that aren't confident or always have excuses, they're going, oh, the economy is bad. And that's the excuse or the this.
[01:25:14] Speaker A: Or the self reinforcing.
[01:25:16] Speaker B: You look at many of the best, greatest companies ever created were created during downturns.
I mean those people didn't get stuck in the, oh, the economy's bad. So I'm not, I mean, it's just, it's again, it's these Dragons we keep putting in our own head that keep us from being who we really could be. And so, wow.
[01:25:35] Speaker A: I think we should end on that note. That was beautiful.
[01:25:38] Speaker B: Dragons plug in.
[01:25:39] Speaker A: That was so good, Jeff. I will put the website applied leadership in the links in the show notes. Anything else that you want to leave with the listeners?
[01:25:48] Speaker B: No, no, I just, I mean, you know, you think about leadership. I would just say that, I mean really think about it because I don't think maybe I'm unbiased because it's the business, I mean now, but the reason I got drawn into it because I think if you do think back in any situation, it always comes back to decisions we make, which is leadership. I mean, it's either for ourselves personally, for the organization or the businesses we're in. I mean, you look at any situation, look at companies that have gone good, companies that went fubar, you can work it back and find out leadership changed and all of a sudden bad decisions were made or egos got in the way or whatever. Look at companies that are Successful or organizations that are successful and you work it back and it's always good leadership. I mean it's just, it's the, the root.
[01:26:29] Speaker A: I, I, I couldn't agree more. And I, as my clients in the coaching program have been working on their playbooks and we're getting to this last phase of the leadership team and I'm watching a lot of people build up their senior leadership team and the potential CEO to replace himself. It's like I, I'm like it's not my money, it's your money. But like if there's one place to over invest, it's here.
Whether it's invest in time or care or money or all of it. Like it don't shortchange this because it's not, it's not gonna go well.
[01:27:08] Speaker B: Well that's just, I mean that's the, the irony of how applied leadership got started. I mean I wasn't, didn't plan this. It was, I had an out having for one of our business partner meetings having 10 years ago or whatever now that beer with a few of the members and they were all lamenting that they'd been sending people to these leadership program, you know, the three day seminars and they just didn't think they were getting a really good return on investment.
And my smart alec response was really you expected to. And, and one of the members, you know, one of the CEOs looked at me and said well how would you do a leadership program? And I thought just that's kind of a fun thing to think about not thinking anything would come of it. And, and I knew that a couple things that, that right away would be based on a peer group. So I love the peer group format. People from all these different businesses come in and they think, you know, I got car dealerships here and I got a, you know, the fine arts center here and I've got, you know, technology company. What have I got in common with them? And after about two or three months they realized only about 95%, you know, and so I knew that I knew again Lee's book and Sai's book. And then the last piece was how do you make it different where it really makes a difference. And it came back with it. It's going to be one day a month for two years.
And I thought nobody would sign up for that. You know, they just know that's July. And to their credit they said let's give it a shot. And now I can't get it to stop.
[01:28:27] Speaker A: Well, and that's so it sounds like you know, whether it's the book about in the dragons, like, what would you have in the children's book? Or what would a leadership team or program look like? I think there's these questions that send you on a. On a goose chase. And the one that I want you to think about, because as you're trying to figure out how to pass on these ideas and concepts, is if you were to have an AI Jeff that has embodied all of this stuff, what would be the principles in the framework and the curriculum for Tyler to help us figure out how to extract all of this stuff into an AI bot? AI program of Jeff.
[01:29:06] Speaker B: Tyler's already got a. He calls it theoda. He's got Lee Thayer into AI and you can call them up, talk to him, ask questions. And it. It's. It's Lee. It's the voice. It's the. I mean, I just. I mean, it gives me the chills to think I'm talking to Lee. Weird.
[01:29:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:29:19] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm sure that there's probably way smarter people than me. I'm, you know, like, I forget who was it said I'm standing on the shoulders of giants and, you know, pass that along and cause some ripples, then that. That, to me, that's the fulfillment for me.
[01:29:32] Speaker A: And that's what's fun talking to you, because it's. Well, it's all practical, you know, I mean, like, we're. You're in the trenches. It's fun. And I'm excited to. To meet you in your group next month. This is gonna be fun having you.
[01:29:42] Speaker B: Yeah. And being a part of it. And. Yeah. What I say at the end of Casablanca, Louis, I think this is the beginning of a wonderful foreign friendship.
[01:29:48] Speaker A: Yeah, it is.
[01:29:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:29:51] Speaker A: I appreciate you. Appreciate your time, Jeff.
[01:29:53] Speaker B: Thank you very much, Ryan. I appreciate it.
