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.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: I'm holding a bunch of roundtable discussions with either CEOs or heads of HR.
And we did this back in November with HR people and one of the topics, we had a couple of topics. One of the topics was AI's impact on HR.
I had four or five senior HR people. It was really interesting. There were what I was hoping to get out of this was for some people, first off they could expand their networks to peers who were in non competitive industries. But the other was sharing best practices.
And it was really interesting to me that two of the five were doing anything. Everybody else was curious and they're just falling behind.
And there were, we had great discussion on a lot of things on governance issues and change management and all sorts of things that are important in this.
But it was fascinating to me that people who are in organizations that you think just because their size have to be doing something.
They're just still thinking about it.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: It's so crazy.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: Yeah, Steve, I don't know past year.
How far behind are they now? So, and we're doing that, we're doing another discussion in, in the next couple of weeks doing one again on with HR people But also with CEOs on their, you know, their AI transformation.
And this is transformation is an overused word, right? I mean it's used for this one. This one is with a capital strategic
[00:02:11] Speaker A: over trans or transformation with the SWOT analysis of the bell curve of strategic solutions.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: Almost any, almost any digital change has and trans transformation.
This one's transformation.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: Oh, I have so many questions. I'm so excited to have you back. I, my, my inclination is just to continue going down this rabbit hole. Let's put a pin in this because I think there the, the bucket of AI converse questions that I have are, I think are going to be context, contextual to the some of the conversations I want to have.
Any updates on what you've been doing with like your leadership program, your mentorship program? I was so fascinated with it. I have helped my clients find recruiters integrate C suite people since you and I have talked last with my coaching program. So I'm more attentive to this.
Who are the people that are going to take over the C suite? How are we going to integrate them? How are we going to make them last? And so I'm very fascinated with your Business. So what are the updates?
[00:03:10] Speaker B: Sure. So this was a business that for a long time I was trying to find the third leg to the stool. So when I started, it was all about senior onboarding. And that was in large part because it was a pain point for me personally. Right. I. My last corporate gig, I lasted a year and a half, and. And after that, I kind of swore off corporate life.
And, you know, it was a bit of ptsd. And I did a bunch of things in consulting, and I was kind of in the back of my head was always, what went wrong? What could I do to fix it? So I developed IP around executive onboarding, and I had clients who said, well, do you do anything else besides that? And I got tired of saying no. Right. So eventually it started off.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: What else?
[00:04:05] Speaker A: What are you looking for?
[00:04:08] Speaker B: It started off and, you know, it was nice to have this tight focus to start with, but then it became kind of tedious.
So we had. I built out a toolkit on leadership development, but really with an eye towards promotion readiness. So if you've identified somebody in succession planning and you're saying they're going to be ready in a year, what the hell are you doing in that year to get them ready?
And, you know, so that's something that we started working on. And then I. I stuck my toe in dei. Well, that seemed like a good idea at the time. Right.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: Did your toe get smashed?
[00:04:47] Speaker B: It. It just. It hardly got wet. I mean, put it that way. And. And it became kind of clear when the people, the mentors that I had brought on, who were DEI experts, are trying to redefine their own business. Yeah. It's time maybe for me to do something else there.
And I came up with something. And it's, It's. It's morphed over the past couple of years. So I started realizing there was a large group of people out there who were no longer. They're at a point in their careers where they're not necessarily motivated by a promotion.
You're the CIO of a company. Where are you going to go?
You're probably where you're going to be.
And trying to decide whether you're, you know, comfortable in that, in that spot for as long as you want to be in that.
And I found a lot of these people kind of start going on autopilot.
And so the question is, what can you do to reignite their engagement in the organization?
So that was one area that, that we've gotten involved in, and it's. It probably has the biggest potential Audience, but it's also less urgent than onboarding or, you know, promotion.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: Yeah, the triggering event is like a slow boil versus yeah, very much so.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: So, so we're.
But it's a big issue and it's, it's an issue for, for people, you know, who are starting to see folks who maybe aren't giving it their all and what can you do, particularly when they're in important roles. So we started working on that and then there was like another phase which was, okay, the last couple years somebody's got retirement in their sights now and they're still on the job and what are you doing now? It becomes as we've been working on, onboarding.
How do you offboard them?
What does it say about the culture of the organization?
How do you share the institutional knowledge that this person has?
If I can make a plug, Minnesota based guy Ben Bomar is doing fabulous work in this area.
The Lithias Group is his. This is business on how you retain, celebrate and share institutional knowledge. So maybe somebody for a future.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: Yeah, that sounds fascinating.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: So, but there's this, this area really of getting people to start financially, emotionally thinking about what's life going to be afterwards and how can you, how can you do that preparation and still be effective in the job that you've got, you know, and maybe, you know, for some people it might be you're, you're serving on several boards. Okay, well that might be a goal for people who are executives now. What are they going to do afterwards?
Well, maybe how they get into that is if they can be on a for profit board to start with. Great.
But maybe it's nonprofit boards that they start getting involved in in their last few years and all of this really to try to make sure they continue to feel relevant.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: Yeah. How do you provide value without the same like, because in theory, if you retire, you should have the optionality to work.
We probably know that most people don't. Hopefully the people that you and I are working with generally have more of that optionality. And then how do you provide the relevance without all the stress? And like it's a choice. I mean like that's the intent. Right. Like your work is a choice, flexibility, whatever the place is that you are deciding to keep, whatever you're deciding to keep doing, it's choice indeed.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: Yeah. So that's, that's another area as well and still in the exploration stage. But over the next few weeks I'm having conversations with, with a bunch of people who may be able to help me on this. This one Kind of closing this whole loop is if I, if I'm starting with, you know, onboarding or that promotion readiness and then onboarding and then kind of, you know, a later tenure in a career and then off, you know, as, as people get prepared for an exit. How about the people who are exiting the organization? Not necessarily by their choice. So there's, you know, there's a lot of people who are in the outplacement business.
My, my belief is a lot of that is not done in a way that is, that creates a great customer experience for people.
And, and I think there, there are some organizations that, that do this well, that provide a high touch approach, and that's something that I'm, I'm looking at as, as kind of a, another part of what Executive Springboard can build.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: So it's super fascinating, Steve. So the, the, with these different kind of tentacles of your offering of providing a good, meaningful career path, it sounds like, I mean, there's a, I don't know what your tagline is, but it's a meaningful journey throughout all this. The, Are the, are the executives paying you? Are the companies paying you?
[00:10:29] Speaker B: Yeah, it's almost always the company paying. Okay, Ryan. When I, probably five years ago, I started realizing there were situations where the company wouldn't get involved.
Either they weren't going to make the investment in the work that we do, or in some instances, if the impetus came from the executive, the executive might not even want to ask.
Imagine you've just landed a new job. You know, you've been hired from the outside. You may have tried to convince them that, that you're Superman, and in that process, Superman needs a trainer.
[00:11:09] Speaker A: Steve.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: Yeah, you know what? You don't want to admit that there's, that there's a need for a coach, or you feel like you've negotiated as hard as you can and doing something that does this would push things over the edge. So.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: Fascinating.
[00:11:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I started doing, I started thinking about that. It led to a different model in part because, you know, we work with companies. Companies are paying Executive Springboard. I'm assigning mentors to work with executives. So it's, it's somebody who in my business is contracted by, by, by me to do the work companies are willing to. Some companies are willing to make that investment.
An executive probably won't reach that deeply into their own pockets.
So in those instances, basically what I was doing was charging the executives what I would pay the mentor.
You know, in, in a, in a normal engagement.
The funny thing is the work was really Different. The, the engagements we got were, were really different. They were almost all.
What I'm looking at now is an outplacement. It was people who were looking for a coach in career, in a career search.
And that's when individuals were thinking about making the investment, not when they landed.
So that was kind of interesting. And so as I look now at providing outsourcing services, the toolkit's already built because I've been delivering this personally, I've been delivering this to other people. Now we're trying, I'm looking to turn this into something where it's again the third party. It's mentors who would be doing this or in some cases people who are professional career coaches be doing it.
[00:12:57] Speaker A: I'm so excited to unpack a lot of your areas because I'll frame this up, Steve. So with my clients, which I think are slightly on the lower scale compared to what you're working with. So I think helping to understand the type of clients that you're working with. And the reason I think this is so important because I'm trying to extract best practices from like the, like what is the gold standard for these different programs. So like one of my nine modules that I was showing you before we hit record is leadership and understanding how to build out the leadership team.
After we've come up with an owner's boardroom playbook, we have an actual machine that is very clear and we've. I categorize leadership, Steve, into there's the CEO bucket, then there's CRO, someone who's responsible for revenue, the CEO who's responsible for margins and gross profit, and then the CFO who's responsible for cash flow and ebitda.
That's just kind of the three buckets of the income statement. And like there's just a natural way of saying okay, I know that the smaller sized companies call it like 5 million to a couple hundred million privately owner operated.
This is an ideal to strive for. We can't get there tomorrow. But what we're trying to do is build escape velocity is as we're growing and as we're reinvesting, we're doing it
[00:14:09] Speaker B: in like go for scaling. Yeah, yeah.
[00:14:12] Speaker A: It's like the, like how are we going to actually continue marching towards that North Star? So leadership becomes a. Has become a crazy point of the conversation because of the boomers that are retiring trying to figure out how to. Because a lot of my clients are trying to keep their companies or have optionality so they can actually run it from the boardroom. Without the job of the CEO. And so they're collecting their income through distributions while keeping a line of sight of the valuation.
So there's all these things going on, but at the end of the day, we need a C suite and a leadership team that can actually execute this. Finding people that can think, finding people that have intrinsic motivation. Where the hell are these people? There's so many problems, or I should say opportunities. And so I've had executive recruiters on people that have different forms of leadership programs or, and, or communities trying to help us identify. Where are these people?
How do they think, what equals success? Because the leadership team, I think, will be the unbelievable competitive edge as the boomers retire.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: Here's the thing that I try to think about in my work.
You hire a search firm to find that great candidate for you.
They can do that.
They'll find somebody who has all the requisite functional skills.
They can test their way to see about the leadership skills.
They may do things to take a look at and try to assess cultural fit.
Then there's what happens when people get together and it's businesses, it's a human invention. And how these relationships work is something that's not necessarily all that predictable.
And it becomes kind of, you know, that's really the thing that I see when, when and when, when things don't go well.
If somebody has trouble developing those relationships, getting all the, the pieces of the culture right, understanding the politics that they walk into when they're, particularly when they're new. Because when you're new, you're the, the least politically savvy person there. Even if you have more stripes on your sleeve than other people. Right. So you have to.
[00:16:25] Speaker A: Who has what say who again, who gets the favors?
Yeah, all of it.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: Right. And it's, it's. There are these. The situations that happen all the time where people know in an organization, those who've been there understand the levers of influence and that new person doesn't necessarily.
So there are landmines that are laid out in front of somebody.
People, people in the organization don't necessarily make nice with that new person or even the person who got promoted in the organization, you know, and is now their peer. That's a really interesting relationship that doesn't get talked about a lot. There's people talk about, you know, how. Well, I used to be kind of like the captain and now I'm the manager. Right.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: Or like, or the job that someone gets was posted, someone thought they were going to get it, and now someone externally got it and like, who's that person's job that I took,
[00:17:25] Speaker B: Ryan, I call that passed over and pissed off.
And it happens, it happens almost all the time. And it takes up an enormous amount of that leader's time trying to figure it out, trying to make it right.
Probably most of the time it doesn't work out and somebody has to leave the organization. And normally you try to make it work, but if somebody becomes a disruption, you can't have that happen.
That happens a lot.
[00:17:56] Speaker A: Okay, so this is super helpful framing up. What are the type of, like, what are the size clients that you're working with and who are the type of leaders and the domains pay scales? I'm just kind of curious to frame it up for the listeners.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: We've got businesses ranging from, I think about 20 million.
We've done smaller than that, but right now clients are from 20 million to probably 8 to 10 billion.
So it's, it's a broad range and
[00:18:28] Speaker A: for me it's like the bailiwick.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: Now, maybe, maybe after this discussion, you can tell me where it should be. We're really agnostic by industry.
For a long time, I tried to keep away from industries that had their own sui generis functions in IT because I was concerned that maybe my mentor team of over 100 people wouldn't necessarily.
If there's a function that seems to be only within one industry, that might not be a, that might not be a real efficient way for us to be working.
As time went on, you know, I wasn't going to turn down the requests that came. Yeah, so, so we've, we've had, we've had that. We brought in somebody who was a chief risk officer at fis.
We, we brought in somebody, we're bringing in somebody right now who's got DC experience in medical technology.
Why?
Because, because we have somebody who asked for that.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. No, I'm. You're seeing, you're matching the opportunity. That's what you're doing. What are the, what are the most common, like does the CRO, CFO and COO and CEO kind of framing make sense from your, like, what are, how do you, how do you view about that?
[00:19:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I like that particularly on, in the, in the smaller companies.
And I think you've got it right on the size of that. And it's, you know, I've seen other models. The EOS model would have, you know, their, their own thing between a visionary and a, and, you know, an integrator. But I think the role of the CRO, CFO and COO as you spell it out, it's.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: There's three buckets of the income statement.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: Yeah, it's nifty how that works with the income statement.
[00:20:24] Speaker A: So that's like, I don't know. It's like, as people and it's math. It's not really arguing like, and like the, the, the point of identifying it like that. How I landed there, Steve, was like, if we want to truly create leverage to get out of the operations into the boardroom, you need to know where the leverage points are and say, well, we want one person responsible for revenue, one person responsible for margin, one person responsible for cash and finance, and then the CEO responsible for all three of those people. I mean, like, and obviously, like size company, you got like a lot of different variables. You can be, you can. You can drift from there, which is okay as long as it makes sense, you know, and like, somehow it all lands in the income statement. So I think before we. Because I'm dying to hear like, what's chattering between. Or what, what the chatter is on. AI, like boomers, the next gen, like the different industries, all that kind of stuff that I want to get to. But the. I think it'd be important context for the listeners of your definition of a mentor, how your business works compared to like, coaching and consulting. Because I think it's so fascinating how you framed it up, because I think it's solving a very unique problem.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: Yeah, consulting is, is more different, I think, than.
Than the difference between coaching and, and mentoring. And we, we do a little bit of consulting kind of again, for it.
Yeah.
A client. A client who said, we had a conversation with somebody who was introduced to me. I'm talking about how we might be able to mentor him. And he's got a family business.
And he said, I'd love to have a mentor, but honestly, there are some issues with my business right now.
And I'm like, Steve's thought bubbles. Okay, here's where I get blown away. I get blown off. He said, I really need something that's somebody who's more involved in the business than what I think a mentor would provide.
And that was kind of cool. And one of our mentors who has been a CFO and has been a president is working with them, for lack of a better term, I'm calling him a mentor. But his work is really consulting or some doing.
Yeah, he's kind of an embedded member of the leadership team at this point. He's been working there for, for several years. So we get, we get that in the, In The. If you think about coaching and mentoring as opposed to consulting, the coaches and mentors seldom tell you what to do.
Right. There's, There's a recommendation that, that comes from a consultant that you should do this.
And the coaches and mentors probably take different angles to that. A coach will probably ask another question and have you answer the question yourself about what you want to do.
And a mentor will say, well, when I was in a situation like that, I did this. And it either worked for these reasons or it didn't work for these reasons.
But it's much more experience them sharing their experience with. And in the work that we do, we have people who are certified coaches as part of Executive Springboard, but most of them, their experience comes from having been in the C suite.
And, and so they're, they're sitting in the chair of the executive.
I just, I talked to one of my mentors earlier today who was talking about an executive that she had been mentoring, and she said, yeah, she's where I was 10 or 15 years ago in my career. And that's kind of, that's when things.
[00:24:07] Speaker A: Yeah, tell me what happened when you were passed over and pissed off and you had a way, like in that situation or in family, like, yeah, it's. I like how you frame that up. The experience. This is what worked or didn't work. But you're not telling someone what to do.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: Well, and one of my mentors gave a.
Used a term that I, I've stolen from her liberally. You gotta be. As a mentor. You have to show your scars and what's really important. And I, I think about this when I'm bringing on new mentors is how much people are regaling me with their successes versus telling me about their failures.
Because the story of somebody's success, that may be great.
I'm not exactly sure how much I learned from that as opposed to somebody's, you know, somebody telling me about when something didn't go wrong. Because in those situations, at least my learning is going to be less painful than theirs was.
[00:25:06] Speaker A: So you just hit on something. There's a woman named Meg Gold who was just on my podcast, and she's created a community called Bond of professional women in their second and third stage career who, like, are trying to find meaning, trying to be authentic. And it's just sick and tired of the, of the corporate world. And it's like this being authentic. I mean, it's. I hate it because it's a platitude, but, like, you know, because if you're Talking about being authentic, you're actually not being authentic. It's kind of this weird thing. And so, like. But it is a thing. I think. Like, it's like, it's definitely a thing as long as it's used in the right context for the right reasons, and it's actually true versus, like, some word someone's using. The.
The na. The. The. The skill that a mentor has to have to be vulnerable and actually both be authentic is probably your job to make sure they're the right people. Because when it works, it works unbelievable. And I think people are yearning for that and, like, yearning for the authenticity, yearning for someone that's willing to be like, I screwed shit up a lot, and here's what I did versus, like, it's all perfect. Steve.
[00:26:08] Speaker B: No, it's. It's absolutely right. And a lot of people, it takes a while to build the rapport.
But part of what we try to do with the experience that a mentor has had is it creates credibility. And it's sort of like, yeah, I've been there.
And even that I've been there helps somebody realize they're not alone.
They're not discovering America.
Other people have been there before. Right. And I think that's a really important part of all of this, is kind of that the security that comes from the fact that, no, you're not crazy. No, this does happen. You're facing a situation that lots of other people have faced. As a matter of fact, I faced it and I fell down and had to get back up and whatever. So that's. Yeah, that's. That's all really kind of the part that. That becomes important. And when the. The mentor can do that, they're making themselves vulnerable, which models the whole relationship we want.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: Super fascinating. And I might be jumping way too far ahead of, to, like, solution building here because I'm just so fast. Topic is.
So, okay, here I'll frame up kind of the spectrum of things that I'm seeing with my clients and one of the issues that I'm trying to help solve. So I would buck myself. So I. It's a coach. Coaching program that I've got. So again, I don't tell. I probably blend. Like, what I'm doing is a blend of both because I've eaten a lot of crap, but also the. The coaching program is what I'm trying to grow. Steve. And the playbook. The playbook sets the kind of the. The standards. Like, here's how the business. The game of business in the boardroom works. Then there are, like, the positions of the CRO, C. O cfo, and then there's all the nuances and the idiosyncra synchrony, synchronies of, like, the different people and the different companies. But, like, hey, here's the standard. Then we got to figure out, okay, like, here's the goal, but that. Where I'm going with this is knowing that there are these three leadership buckets. Most people have got a message of like. And even if they're running eos, it's like, you get a accountability. You get an account. It's like, no, like, there's three buckets of the income statement. Like, we need to have at least someone responsible. Because I get the.
[00:28:34] Speaker B: What I like.
[00:28:34] Speaker A: The way I think about it, Steve, is someone's not responsible for just revenue. And then there's four people. How does that work? Sales and market. It's like. It's so, like, it's okay to acknowledge that there are different breakdowns of this, but then the owner, operators, you gotta be responsible for the final say. But what I want. So I got a handful of clients that have enough size to afford essentially a million dollars at the top of payroll. Okay, because you're talking 250, you know, boom, boom, boom, depending on, you know, and like, you know, depending on the size. But, like, okay, so as someone's growing into those positions, which is what I want to help people do of, like, have a practical roadmap to that.
Taking the controller to become a cfo, Taking the director of operations, which, I mean, whatever that means to an actual CEO. Take the sales manager or director of marketing to get them to the CRO. I am seeing Steve. And what the thesis that I have that I have not been able to prove is if we can come up with a leadership development program for people internally, we need to have a path to this to say, okay, like, all right, Steve, like, I can't pay you 250 right now because you're not worth. And the company's not that big. But if we have this goal that's clearly identified, and then what I've been struggling to find, Steve, is that who can help us do this?
[00:29:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:59] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's hard to find those people.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: We're. We're. We're just starting on a. On a. An engagement just like that right now. Size of the company, I'm not exactly sure. We haven't had. He and I haven't had that conversation. My guess is it's about 100 million.
He has a vice president of finance what he said to me was, they're not a cfo, they're vice president of Finance.
I want to get them to be cfo.
And so that's what we've got on our plate. And so we have four mentor candidates in front of the vice president of Finance for them to make the decision on, you know, which, which one of these is, is a person who I think I can, you know, I, I understand how I can grow from, you
[00:30:55] Speaker A: know, are you balancing the technical ability of those mentors versus, like, the people political acumen?
[00:31:02] Speaker B: Yeah, because it may be a little different in this situation.
I don't think it's a whole lot different, though.
Generally there's a.
The skill set is already baked in at some level, way below the C level.
And now it becomes much more about leadership, about presence, about how you are interacting with the board.
You know, in, in. In this case, I think part of it is going to be not necessarily the, the, not necessarily the, the. The functional parts of, of finance, but lifting your, your sights a little bit and thinking more strategically about those levers.
And what is that going to mean? Because that's where you can partner with the CEO. And if I can make a comment just between the CRO, cfo, coo, I think that's, I think that I get that, and it makes a lot of sense.
I would also include a Chro, because I think often a cfo.
[00:32:19] Speaker A: What you do. Are you talking about they're not the Chief Culture Officer?
[00:32:23] Speaker B: No, they're not necessarily.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: Maybe, but open enrollment and 401k TPA.
[00:32:30] Speaker B: Listen, in a lot of successful organizations, we had this recently.
We had somebody who had been identified as the next CEO in an organization, and we were brought in to mentor that person, get them ready to be the CEO, Then he becomes the CEO. And the question is, now he's got the crap that we were telling him about. It's flying at him in real time, and he needs to bat it all away. So he's like, I want my mentor back to help me through what's now an onboarding process.
And then things start getting a little bit easier.
He starts finding his groove, and he then says, you know what? I'm past that.
But this guy is my advisor. He's my trusted advisor. I want to keep him in. And maybe the cadence isn't as much as it's been in the past, but there's a value that I have from having him here. And one of the conversations early on was the mentor, Mark, saying to the executive, Mike, the two most Important people you're going to have are your chro. Your head of hr, your head chief people officer. I think that's what they. What he's ended up calling the role and your cfo. And if you've got. If you got the person who's probably looking at things more than just cash flow on this, but playing that role of reflecting on the assets of the organization and the productive, the production assets and the person who's got the human assets and having those together, that's a pretty good combination.
[00:34:15] Speaker A: Really interesting. To validate that comment, I was interviewing my buddy Nick Bradley, who has done 30 deals in private equity and like, $5 billion. And we were talking about this because my coaching program is essentially running the business like a PE firm or an esab. Just putting that structure that you're probably very familiar with, Steve, with your. The. The people that you're working with, it's just taking that next level of ownership, organization and boardroom organization to the smaller companies. Nick said, yeah, man, yeah. Agreed to all that stuff. And it's people and numbers. And he's like. And we were talking about the ying and yang because, like, the numbers are the byproduct of what the people did, and the people have to do things that actually land in the numbers. So, like, it's not one or the other. And I think that's where I'm validating and confirming and also agreeing with what you're saying. Like, to do more. One more than the other is dysfunctional. And I think people are so, like, they want to grab onto one of those. It's like, no, it has to be both. And we have to use them in conjunction with each other.
[00:35:18] Speaker B: Yeah. And you know, we're kidding about culture. But the culture part comes into play with how these folks work and play together.
Right. Because you can have great people who don't make it because of, you know, the. The shit that gets thrown at them by. By a colleague.
[00:35:39] Speaker A: Right.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: And. And how they may go about responding to that.
So getting. Getting that right is kind of an important piece. And call it culture, call it whatever you want to call it.
[00:35:49] Speaker A: Can you help us understand more of this? Because I agree that the chief culture people officer, whatever you want to call that person is unbelievably necessary. A lot of times the people that I work with, the owner operator, it's them by default, which I think is also one of my clients we were talking about. As he's accelerated towards the boardroom, he's like. It's like, it's less Exhausting. I'm like, yeah, because you were the cheerleader for 40 years. It's like, yeah, like, and if you're, if you're just slightly less energetic, that everybody thinks the world's falling, and it's like, now we got a plan in place. But then it's that last. So once the machine is built, and that's why elevating the people is the last phase for me. It's like, then you want to hand off the energy, the culture, the people, the leadership. And so I think that this per, this identity or this role you're talking about is super important.
I want to hear your thoughts of, like, when and how the size is appropriate, and then also, like, difference between, like, if that person exists, open enrollment, the, like, the technical stuff of, like, hr. What goes to, like, more like probably the, the CFO versus what's responsible for that person. How do you, how would you actually profile that person?
[00:36:58] Speaker B: Yeah, well, in, in the, in the case that, that we were talking about, it was a company was about 400 million, so a little bit, a little bit larger than what you're talking about. So it, it might be like the next scale, the next stage in the evolution for them. Right.
[00:37:12] Speaker A: Let me interject there, though. I think it's okay because, like, that's what I, I, I was hesitant for a long time, Steve, just putting these standards in, and then people just appreciate, like, hey, I know I'm not there yet, but I'm moving that direction, and I know what good looks like. So even if it's a few hundred million dollars or more, at least acknowledging that this set of things has to be done by someone.
[00:37:34] Speaker B: Well, and, you know, it's, it's critical that you have role clarity, and that's what you're doing.
You know, that's, that's, that's what you're setting up with, with that triumvirate, if you will. Right.
[00:37:50] Speaker A: So what's this person responsible for doing? And how do you, like, how would you look at that profile?
[00:37:56] Speaker B: We're talking about that, that people, human
[00:38:00] Speaker A: officer, whatever you want to.
[00:38:02] Speaker B: It's, it's, it's funny. There's, there's a lot that I don't get into that I think is, is important to, in, in that role.
So there's, there's an operations part of hr, right?
And there's a talent part that might be kind of separate. So getting the payroll done, getting the, you know, the having the processes in place, that's, that's one thing, and that's a Critical part. And it's not how I'm wired. So I don't think about it all that much.
[00:38:39] Speaker A: And like the benefits and the, all the technical stuff.
Let me use cfo, I think kind of sucks.
[00:38:46] Speaker B: Let me use benefits as an example.
In an HR organization, the person who handles the benefits is often most wired, like an engineer.
[00:39:00] Speaker A: I love what you're saying because I got multiple clients that are trying to find where's the person that can do open enrollment benefits and all those technical things and be the hoorah person. It's like I feel like you're looking for the engineer that hangs out at the bar all the time.
[00:39:16] Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. And you know, and it's a lot of those people, that's what they love to do.
And God bless.
Listen, my career was in corporate life was not in hr or it was. It was in marketing.
I've been close to the HR function for like the past decade doing what I'm. What I'm doing.
And I think about. There are, you know, you might see the same thing, like where there's all the stuff that is the background stuff, the maintenance stuff, and then there's the transformative part, like the AI stuff that
[00:39:57] Speaker A: we're going to get to. Yeah, right.
[00:39:58] Speaker B: The AI stuff.
And the CIO is in charge of all of it.
Part of it's sexy, part of it's not.
[00:40:08] Speaker A: I like that a lot.
[00:40:09] Speaker B: Yeah, right. And I think that that's what happens to some degree in the HR world as well. So you've got people who are doing the, who need to do the comp and benefits, who need to have the HRIS systems all, all of that stuff. It's critical to keep the lights on.
It's not necessarily. Then there's the other thing, which is the impetus for growth and that's where the talent piece is.
[00:40:42] Speaker A: Development, succession planning between roles and culture and just like recognition.
Recognition and all that.
[00:40:52] Speaker B: And in large companies, you know, going back to something we were talking about, about who do I target?
It depends on the size of the organization. In a smaller organization, I'm looking at CEOs and it may be, leave that, leave the cheerleading piece aside. They may be the ones who are really giving a lot of thought to the people part of the business.
You get to a certain size and then there's that chief people officer, the chro. Whatever we want to call it, you get to a bigger size and there's somebody who's specializing in talent.
Right. Just as there's somebody who's, who's got the Comps and benefit and somebody else who may have the HRIS side. So you start seeing a split there.
[00:41:41] Speaker A: I just think it's like this is super awesome, Steve, because to your point about role clarity, I've got my collaborator Kim Clark, who is covering the CRO list of functions and tasks and she even talks about how sales. I'm sorry, how marketing has to have an internal contract because marketing becomes some of the marketing for communications of the people and helping the talent, recruiting and stuff like that. So just having all this clarity because when people don't, people just get thrown crap and that's what leads to then the political unrest and all that kind of stuff inside an organization. And when you think about the, the what do people care the most about, like when you're looking at like your mentors and mentees and like what everybody's trying to accomplish, like what is the one to three things that they're like really trying to solve?
[00:42:39] Speaker B: Great question.
If I think about this from the standpoint of the executives that we're working on, most of them have a career goal.
There's an aspiration to be something having more impact than they have now.
And I think that becomes an important piece.
Maybe it's a promotion, maybe it's some other way of talking about the contribution that you can make.
So go back to the.
I'm only. I'm going to stop with just this one instead of going for three and I'm going to play this out a little bit.
[00:43:20] Speaker A: I did say one to three, so there's your out. Okay.
[00:43:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
When I talked about people who may be further along in their tenure who are no longer necessarily interested in a promotion or, or it becomes a non factor because it's pretty clear it won't happen in the organization.
They're often jazzed when you talk about broadening their impact.
So can they get out of their own lane and do something that demonstrates more of an enterprise orientation? And if it's in an executive leadership team feeling like they can make a, they can make a suggestion or they can provide a point of view on something that's not in their area, I mean that can become a really powerful thing. And I think it's something that for a lot of organizations that becomes kind of what's demanded of people on the leadership team.
And for a lot of people, they come in and stay try to focus on their own lane and figuring out how to get out of that lane, I think becomes really important. Then there are other, there are other things that those folks may try to do as well, that that plays into that.
That impact.
It may be that they figure out ways to be role models for whatever, for people, for values that the organization had.
And.
All right, I'll go. I'll go. A step out of impact now. It's still kind of connected, I think, for. For a lot of people at a different point in their career. We've been. We've been talking more about people when they. When they join an organization or they're looking to get promoted.
And right there it's like, can I be successful long term?
Can I get that promotion that I'm after?
For a lot of other people who are at a different point of their career, they're on the downslope.
Legacy becomes a really important thing.
What do I want to be remembered about for what I did?
[00:45:34] Speaker A: I'm curious. I hear impact, meaning legacy.
Impact and legacy. I think. Isn't it just this human desire for meaning?
[00:45:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I think meanings in there, for sure. Yeah. And I've heard people talk about kind of a few things that are critical in the work that they do and what makes them.
Anne Gotti has talked about this as kind of like the nobility of work. Can you find meaning?
Can you find dignity? And can you find community?
[00:46:13] Speaker A: You ever heard of icky guy?
[00:46:15] Speaker B: I'm sorry?
[00:46:16] Speaker A: Icky guy? It's a Japanese term.
[00:46:18] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:46:19] Speaker A: It's kind of like that right where you got. What is. I got. I've literally got a post right here. It's what you love, what you're good at, what you can be paid for. What the world needs.
[00:46:26] Speaker B: What the world needs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:46:28] Speaker A: And what a shame that the English language doesn't have a word for that.
[00:46:33] Speaker B: But. But we can. But we can use the IKI guide chart to try to lay that out for sure.
[00:46:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
What I think is so fascinating about this because by.
And that's what I. I was gathering from my conversation with me, Gold, like, hey, we're just striving for a place to be ourself and to have meaning and impact. And then, like, providing a reasonable clear path and then providing someone with a listening ear that can help them because they've been there before is just such a meaningful line of work that you have. And I look at, like, what is so, like, every one of my clients, like, the. The biggest challenge is, like, how do we build this next level bench?
[00:47:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:19] Speaker A: I mean, it is a freaking insane problem, Steve. Like, I hear people. And this is why I. Talking about Meg Gold, because she. She's doing a Lot of like, corporate women.
And I'm like, every one of my clients would want to hire some of you, but like, there's like this huge chasm between all these people who are starving for that and all the clients that I work with that need it. And it's like this weird recruiting. And like, that's how you and I started of AI, you know, is writing the resumes as reading the resumes. And all the humans are at home sad and don't have meaning. And like, I don't know, man. I don't even know if there's a question in there other than I just keep staring this problem in the face. I'm like, this is insane.
[00:48:02] Speaker B: I want to try something on this. Kevin Cashman is at Korn Ferry, kind of has the leadership advisory there.
And Kevin, years and years ago gave a definition of leadership that I think is spot on, which is it's the authentic self expression that adds value.
And what I hear a lot from, from people as, you know, as they're looking for people to fill more senior roles, is kind of this notion of executive presence.
And what the hell does that mean?
There's an assessment tool that looks at three different components of executive presence. And part of it is character, and part of it is substance, and part of it is style.
And the character ties into that authentic self expression that Kevin talked about.
And the substance talks about understanding what adds value. And there's that and then there's style that kind of crosses over this.
People try to change their style to enhance their executive presence, and in the process they lose their authenticity.
[00:49:22] Speaker A: Isn't that the truth?
[00:49:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:26] Speaker A: And everyone knows it when it's happening.
Yeah, that's what I mean. Like, it's like, like, and like the person knows it because they can feel it, and then the people around them can sniff it out. And then it's just like. And it's just. I have an allergic reaction to all of that, by the way, which is why I'm professionally unemployable.
[00:49:46] Speaker B: I think. I think that there's, you know, there is something on the style thing and it can be learned. And as much as anything, it's just don't make an own goal, you know, don't mess yourself up in this.
[00:50:02] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, well, and I think that, I think you're, you're highlighting what I would say is like the case in point for a mentor. So, like, like what I decided to do and I'm just self reflecting whether people. Sorry for everybody listening in. Like, I am like, wildly Open to change, but I need it to be on my terms, which I think is a probably a normal human situation. So, like, with my style, like, I just want to be in that. Like, what you summed up is, like, because it just makes me feel better. And I feel like other people want that too. Unless. And like, took me a long time to realize, I think that's the case. Other people just have a way higher tolerance for that misery than I do. And, like, I was willing to make ridiculous financial sacrifices over the years to make sure that I just could, but that could avoid that boxing in feeling. But then I listen. I mean, like, I can't hide from the comments on the podcasts and YouTube.
[00:50:57] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:50:58] Speaker A: So then, like, it's like. And then I'm like, oh, man, like, I interrupt a lot. Maybe I should stop doing that. But then, like, to what extent? But I think it's interesting how you framed up those three things, because I want that for people. And when I walk into a boardroom and I look at executives or I'm talking to people at a company, Steve, it is palpable.
The people that are in their flow zone and in those three things, because I could feel the energy in a company, and you can feel it accelerating forward. And you can walk into a company and you can feel the vacuum of soul sucking.
And I think it's. When these things are not aligned, it's interesting how you frame it up.
[00:51:42] Speaker B: Yeah. And. And as I said, I think there is. Whether it's through mentoring or something else, there are things that can be done on the style side that will help.
Yeah, for sure.
[00:51:56] Speaker A: Like, if people respect the mentor. Right. And like, that's the same thing. Like, I'm willing to change if the person that's giving me the feedback is coming from a place of love, from experience. And I think there's too many people that project their opinions and their voice, and they didn't earn that to the people. So there's just a. I don't know. I. I like the men. I mean, it's a case in point for the mentoring.
[00:52:18] Speaker B: Well, I had a mentor who was telling me that she was. She had been working with her, the.
Her mentee, preparing her for a. For a speaking engagement outside of the company.
And they were running through some questions and answers, and the mentor stopped her and said, you know, you're saying way too much about a publicly traded company.
[00:52:49] Speaker A: That gives me a stomachache. A good thing. She said that. Yeah.
[00:52:53] Speaker B: It's like, and. And this. This was somebody. I, you know, it's not necessary people. She'd never had the experience of doing what she was doing. So it was, it was naive on, on her part and how she was, how she was planning. Good thing she had a mentor there to try to, to try to help on, on some of those things.
I also find that, you know, there are style elements that people can take on that don't necessarily get in the way of their authenticity.
If, if you speak in run on sentences, if you haven't discovered a period, you might.
[00:53:31] Speaker A: Are you talking to me?
[00:53:32] Speaker B: I'm talking.
[00:53:33] Speaker A: No, I'm not.
[00:53:34] Speaker B: That was a rhetorical.
[00:53:35] Speaker A: You.
[00:53:36] Speaker B: Come on, Ryan.
[00:53:38] Speaker A: Okay, just kidding.
[00:53:41] Speaker B: If, if, if you just go on with something, you know, that's, that's a five minute answer to a question.
[00:53:49] Speaker A: This is why I like AI because it actually knows what I'm saying.
I'm interrupting you again.
[00:53:57] Speaker B: Maybe you're giving the punch. Maybe you are giving the punchline right up front and you just don't realize it.
Maybe that's good.
[00:54:07] Speaker A: Sorry, I totally digressed and interrupted you again.
[00:54:10] Speaker B: So there we go.
I'm trying to fix you, Brian. Ryan, stay how you are, man.
[00:54:16] Speaker A: My wife's doing a good job at trying to.
[00:54:18] Speaker B: No, now you're getting in trouble.
[00:54:20] Speaker A: Yeah, right. So I think this is really fascinating stuff because I think, you know, my, my opinion is when there's the.
These things, whether if someone's in the character in substance and style and they can be a leader and they've got a safe space to ask questions. I mean, all of this stuff I think is like compounding up, which is openness creates vulnerability, then creates trust. Trust creates the ability to have hard conversations. I mean, I think it's. There's just so many interesting lessons in here, Steve, because when I think about AI and adopting to change or adapting to change, like I think what's happening and I'm curious on like what you're, what you're seeing in these organizations. I mean, I don't know if you ever heard or done enough research on like tyranny and these dictators that end up collapsing is because they insulate themselves from the real world, the truth. So like in China and history, I mean like all of these different dictators across all of history and there's a lot of this shit going on, like as we speak in the news, leaders that shed themselves or protect themselves from the truth because it's hard, they end up losing. So they get what they don't want because they're not willing to listen to the truth.
And I think about all of the stuff you've talked about is breeding an organization that has the ability to have good relationships at the C suite, to open, honest, cross pollinate, collaborate to deal with the truth in real time.
And I think about how AI is coming at all of this, like with a.
It's not stopping. That's what I like, I seriously think about is so fascinating. Steve is like there was an article that went viral that it was very doomsday. But like I thought that there was a sentiment about it which was it said it's something's coming or whatever.
And I hate to bring up Covid, but like, you know, like when you were just like this shit's accelerating and you could kind of feel that acceleration. That's how I feel with this. And I'm going like the update that came out three weeks ago, this is not a joke anymore. It's a real thing. And like how are, are these organizations? They're just sitting there with their head up their ass.
I'm going like your competitor's doing this by the way, so what are you going to do about it? And then, and so I just curious on like when you look at, across the types of industries and companies and leaders, like, how are people actually processing what's happening?
[00:56:45] Speaker B: Yeah, the adoption that I see is lumpy, right?
There are some organizations that get it and are jumping on it.
Almost anybody who's not on it realizes they're behind. And the day they make the investment, investment, the next day a competitor will get something that's better than what they have and they'll be behind again.
So there's, there's a lot, there's that I, that I see in leadership.
At the same time, employees are adopting it, they're, they're adopting it themselves and that becomes a governance issue, right? If, if you haven't decided what platform you're going to use and so your folks are out there doing something.
[00:57:43] Speaker A: We're just going to upload the customer client list to GPT and see where.
[00:57:48] Speaker B: It's the Wild West.
It's the Wild West.
And you know, that's, I think that's a big thing that everybody has to get into. So you got to get in the game.
And, and the, the organizations, a lot of the organizations that we work with are, are, they're, they're not, they haven't made the, the jump that I think they need to.
[00:58:10] Speaker A: They know what the jump looks like.
[00:58:13] Speaker B: Maybe not.
[00:58:15] Speaker A: Is there career risk Fe.
Like what's the, what's holding people back?
That's maybe A better way of framing up the question.
[00:58:27] Speaker B: It's, it's another thing about maybe discomfort with, with technology that they've always had or, or something that has to do with change.
I mean, you know, there, there's this, a part of this to me is you were talking about cheerleaders in, in the HR side.
HR can play a huge role in, in, in this because it is a change management problem and, or, or issue or opportunity, what have you. And getting people to get on board, getting people to, to buy into this is, is a big deal.
The first thing is you got to get, you got to get the, the leadership team on board.
[00:59:11] Speaker A: Have you read the book the AI Driven Leader?
[00:59:13] Speaker B: I have not.
[00:59:15] Speaker A: Jeff Woods AI Driven Leader I, I recommend it as a year old now. I think the book has a lot of first principles in it. I from, from working with and providing a board level playbook which is the judging rule is free cash flow.
It's. It's like gravity. It either is there or it's not. You can't, I mean maybe Oracle and OpenAI can do the financing receivables to pretend that they have all this revenue that they don't actually have. But like free cash was either b. It's binary. You have it or you don't. And it's based on the valuation of the company and you have to use that money to pay payroll, reinvest or pay your taxes. And so I say all that because when the open or the AI driven leader and I, I vehemently agree with Jeff is this is a ownership CEO like people are trying to push it off on their IT director, their HR person or finance person. Because technically the way I look at it, Steve, it's like electricity. Like all it's doing is getting us to our goal faster.
[01:00:19] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:00:19] Speaker A: We have to know what the goal is. And I just, I'm seeing that most people don't know what the hell they're doing. They don't have a clear goal and they don't know how the things work and they're. Everybody's just fumbling forward. So like everybody's. Well, it's just fascinating because it should be spread across every part of the organization tied to more free cash flow.
[01:00:36] Speaker B: Well and it's interesting, two things I think have been happening at the same time which have added to fear.
So organizations are being rewarded for investing in AI.
Organizations are being rewarded for delayering and reducing headcount.
Some people are conflating the two and saying we're going to. And yeah, in a world of limited resources. It may be that money out of one of those buckets ends up in the other.
Almost everybody I've talked to in HR leadership capacities are really seeing this as an augmentation tool, not a replacement tool.
And there's this unfortunate thing that is that these two things are being looked at in a way that, that the message can easily be AI is going to cost you your job.
[01:01:37] Speaker A: Well said. And I'll add to that is like so my clients are real people that do real shit for the real economy.
It's not the. We lose money raising money for a SaaS company that maybe will never make any money, but it's worth $2 billion. And so like boiler businesses, commercial cleaning businesses, like low voltage insulation moving companies, auto and like it's all just real stuff. Like AI is not coming from any of this stuff. Like I think what's going to be super fascinating to actually put an exclamation point behind your comment is for us, it's like we can now actually grow instead of relying on consultants and advisors and all these other bloated costs that are out there. It's like what I'm doing with me and my clients where I don't have to call up an attorney at 850 bucks an hour or an advisor that doesn't know shit. And it's like we actually can just get the information. And so I think the tech companies that are getting all the news are the bloated, overvalued companies that have the visibility and the limelight. But like what about Real America? I don't know. It's my little.
[01:02:43] Speaker B: That's a really good point. And you know, the consultants are going to take a bath on this.
The thing that I think it becomes really important is. And it's it also what I think will happen in a lot of cases is organizations will make their choice on what platforms they're using, etc.
And with that comes a decision on the bias that they want to, that they want to have.
Because one of the things, you know, if you think about if, if you use chat GPT or you use Claude or can you use them, can you be using both of them to see what if you're getting answers that look anything like each other, do you. How often is it that you're getting the wrong legal advice?
You know when.
[01:03:29] Speaker A: Or they're just. The wrong answer.
[01:03:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Or the wrong answer. Right.
[01:03:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
It's really interesting Stephen, and this is I'm want to keep following this conversation point because like I think you have an interesting perspective on it is it's data that people need to know what they're doing and what information they need. Like when, like. Like, if we know what we're trying to accomplish, then we can get there faster. But if people don't know what the goal is or how the.
[01:04:00] Speaker B: Like.
[01:04:01] Speaker A: Because what I have, like, let me say it differently. Like, everything in a company is a byproduct of free cash flow. Everything.
It's a first principle. We either have more cash in the checking account in 2030 or we don't. And that level of cash flow between now and 2030 is what yields the valuation of the business.
And it's real cash, not like, not fake shit. It's like real money. So everything in the organization is a byproduct of that.
So we can literally connect every single dot from every single thing on the revenue line, Every single thing in the cost of goods and everything in the single thing in the sga. And then all of the stuff that is the capital, the debt and the taxes and the cash flow and reinvestment, everything's tied together. And so, like, when I just. I guess, Steve, it's just this fascination that I've had where people don't understand the connections. And even, like, very large companies are just fumbling forward for, like, decades. And now it's like. Well, like, because if. I mean, it's 20 bucks, we can get on and ask the thing. And like, it's like, holy shit. This thing was like, I. I now don't. I don't have to talk to an investment banker now or an attorney or a commercial banker. I can, like, literally go in there. I build out an entire internal deal structure for one of my clients. Because it was like, we got the financials, we got the goal. We know how this works. We like. And it's like, I mean, obviously we need to get everything checked, but it's like, whoa.
What I think is fascinating why I am just fascinated with your business model. It's like, we need more people that can think.
[01:05:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:05:30] Speaker A: We need more people that actually know what they're doing. How the people and the numbers tie together into an actual cohesive plan, and then how to leverage down to get all their employees to do the things that matter.
And I don't know where these, like, where do we find these people, I guess, is the fact. Or, like, how do we teach them up? Or, like, what do we do? That's because the tool's 20 bucks.
[01:05:54] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. That's the thing to me is Are you, are you buying or are you building?
And you know, where, where are those people? Give some thought to whether they're already in your organization and is it, is it a new skill set that they, that they need? I mean one of the things that, that look there, there are times when you need to bring somebody new in for the change that they can bring.
But with that comes the risk that,
[01:06:20] Speaker A: you know, passed over and pissed off
[01:06:22] Speaker B: and, and it's the Passover and pissed off. It's also, it's a culture fit thing. So when in a lot of the work that we do early on and kind of the, some of the, the principles that I saw when I started Executive Springboard, it was trying to figure out where, where are the problems that, that lead people to fail in, in new roles.
It was about are they coachable? Are they able to see, you know, ask for feedback, reflect on it, do something with it?
Are they acting with emotional intelligence? They got hired for their iq, they'll get fired for their eq.
Do they have the political savvy they need to do the job? Like as I said before, they're going to start out at a disadvantage there because they just don't know how everything works. But can they get there?
Can they develop cultural agility and then finally can they crack the code on how to make change happen?
And I have something I'll say and you may from some of the experiences you had and it may be changing because of AI, but I often see that people go too fast on the change that they want to try to get in place.
And they try to be, they think that they'll be a hero in if they can beat expectations by two weeks. So they put their head down, run forward, go around a corner, turn around and find nobody has followed them.
And it takes a little bit of time.
You know, somebody once told me that managing change is managing other people's grief and getting out of grief is something that doesn't happen overnight. So you know, I think that's, I think how much the world will change because we're getting faster. The ability for us to make decisions becomes so quick.
That begs the issue on whether we're able to bring people along.
[01:08:16] Speaker A: Wow, that was all really good stuff.
What I am hearing. I mean those traits are unbelievable. Coachable, feedback, reflective, eq, politics, cultural agility, making change happen. I mean all of like I didn't hear nose pivot tables Nose Hris knows active directory under, you know, I mean like it's people stuff and yeah, and when I think about when you say managing change, like a couple of things that come to mind, Steve, is like, it's just this ability to communicate the big picture and to communicate how people fit in.
[01:08:50] Speaker B: Well said.
[01:08:51] Speaker A: And I think that's what's so fascinating to me is like, I want to like part of my mission is like help people see the big picture. Like, here's how like the game of business actually works. So we can.
[01:09:02] Speaker B: And it's simple. It's got these levers, you know, and it's right.
[01:09:06] Speaker A: Like, it's not like, like when I started doing my workshop, Steve, I mean, because I got a D in accounting, man. Like, I, I'm like, I was a terrible student. Like, my, my daughters are now in third grade and we're in conferences and they're like beautiful, perfect kids and they're complaining about the boys in the, in the classroom. Like, that was me. I'm like, I was terrible. And so I was missing the why does this matter?
And then what I've noticed when I had my 100 and some employees, like, if I could explain, like, by the way, did you know that like this is how copiers came to be? We have this cost per copy because it was break fixed and now we have this and then this is how it led to this. And like, like explaining to people how the whole why the company exists. What are we doing? How like the re. Like all these levers fit together.
The person that's in customer service or AP or AR or whatever. Like, like. Oh, back to meaning. Back to like the why then you don't have to change so fast, which is just stressful in itself, but then other people can do the work. And so it's just, it's fascinating how you framed all that up. Cause I think it's.
What do you see as the. Should I be hopeful that all these people are out there? What's the, how many people are the. Is the brain drain from the boomers actually happening? Like, what's the next. How do you kind of look at the age ranges of the 30, 40, 50 year olds that are coming after the 60, 70 year olds? I mean, how do you see all of this unfolding?
[01:10:29] Speaker B: Every group is different, but I, I think people are going to figure it out. So I'm going to be, I'm going to be optimistic on this.
It's, it's interesting in, in the work that we do most, not all the mentors are boomers. We have people as young as 30 as mentors in our organization.
I do think that the people who we are working with who may be in their 30s, 40s, 50s.
They pay attention.
And so maybe it's. Maybe it's because they're buying into what a mentoring model is like. And part of that is generally someone with more gray hair, if they have any hair at all, and that there's value that comes from that.
A quick story, Ryan. When I started Executive Springboard, the name wasn't Executive Springboard. It was NDY Springboard. And the NDY stood for not dead yet, because that's awesome. It had something to do with. With the mentors that we had and the contribution that they still wanted to make.
[01:11:49] Speaker A: Like, I'm still relevant.
[01:11:51] Speaker B: Exactly. And you know what we haven't had? I've never had a mentee come back to me and say, this person was bullshit. That they were awesome.
[01:12:04] Speaker A: What a testimony to you.
[01:12:06] Speaker B: Well, and. And to the people that. That.
[01:12:08] Speaker A: Well, you're finding the people. And. And Steve, that's really hard, man. Like, and that's really. Maybe, you know, if I were to just give you the credit that's deserved. Like, it's really hard to filter through these people.
Like. Cause I had a friend go, man. Cause I introduced him to one of my clients. That man, you just always introduced me to great people. I'm like, you didn't see the thousand idiots I came across to give you that person, right? So, like, your job as a filter is very difficult. And what I'm hearing is that the filter is the values that you've been expressing. So how hard it is to find these mentors, like, what is the process? Do they come to you or you find out about finding them?
[01:12:47] Speaker B: It's gotten to the point they come to me.
And that's not how it started.
Early days, I was working with people that I knew that I had worked with before.
I started realizing how limited that was. I mean, my whole career had been, like, in manufacturing. So a vice president of operations is a different thing in a service industry than it is in a manufacturing industry.
And getting the right people became a bit of a challenge. There were lots of times that I would call on somebody hoping that they would become a client, and they said, this is really great. Can I become a mentor? And we started having conversations and brought them in. And now I'm at the. I'm at the point where it's almost. It's probably more from a referral basis. Other current mentors who have other people that they know who would be effective, et cetera.
[01:13:41] Speaker A: So it's like some critical mass and escape velocity.
[01:13:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:13:45] Speaker A: The thing that's. Is there any topics we didn't cover that you think would be worth sharing?
[01:13:52] Speaker B: Oh, man, we covered so much.
[01:13:54] Speaker A: I know we did.
[01:13:55] Speaker B: This is great.
This is great. I don't know. I can talk about what I do for fun.
This is something. I used to live in Minnesota for about 26 years.
[01:14:06] Speaker A: You're a smarter person.
[01:14:07] Speaker B: We now live in Maryland, close to two of our three kids.
But while I was in Minnesota, we kind of realized the middle of January, when you see a minus 15 temperature, you've got your street cred. Get the hell out of town.
[01:14:24] Speaker A: So we had a whole three weeks streak, Steve, this winter that was like. We did not get above zero for like three weeks.
[01:14:31] Speaker B: Right. So I, my wife found a place that we go to on the, the Gulf coast of, of, of Florida on the Panhandle. About as far east on the Panhandle as you can go and still call it the Panhandle.
And we. What started as kind of like a month has morphed down to about seven weeks, something like that.
[01:14:51] Speaker A: Nice.
[01:14:52] Speaker B: So. And it's. For me it's. I think of it as my winter office, but honestly I'm not doing as
[01:14:57] Speaker A: much work desire us thinking of it like that too.
[01:14:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Well. Yeah.
[01:15:02] Speaker A: We'll make sure this transcript doesn't go
[01:15:04] Speaker B: to OpenAI too late
[01:15:09] Speaker A: the moment it came out of our mouth. Right, Right. That's awesome. Your grandkids, grandkids, kids go there or anything or.
[01:15:16] Speaker B: We've had, we've had one of our grandkids. We have two grandsons. One is four and the other's two and a half. And the four year old has been there. I don't think he would remember it, but he's, he's been there. It's. We're in a place that's like two hours from the closest airport. So it's, it's really a chore to try to visit, but we do find visitors and it's a, it's a great experience.
[01:15:38] Speaker A: Steve, this has been so fun. So glad that you reached back out. We'll have to keep the conversations more frequent than a few years here. Yeah. Because this is. I think I'm still bullish that there's some way to collaborate with our organizations because this isn't. There's. The leadership team thing is a problem I'm trying to help solve for people.
[01:15:59] Speaker B: Well, terrific. And you know, I, I think the, the same.
I've kind of got this, this area that doesn't have any overlap with. Oh, not, not much overlap. With what you do. And, and so I think there's, there certainly are opportunities for us to look at, at where we can, we can do some cross. Yeah, yeah, some cross pollination. Yeah, for sure.
[01:16:23] Speaker A: And I'll put your, I'll put the executive springboard link in the show notes and everything as I wrap. I got to tell you a story because you, you said it multiple times. You're like, well, you know, my clients asked, you ever heard that guy, that story about the, the guy outside of a movie theater?
So he was sold pop outside of a movie theater and people kept coming out to him and said, do you sell popcorn? You sell popcorn? And he kept saying no. He was like, maybe I should say yes.
He started selling popcorn and made a bunch of money. So I'm glad you're selling popcorn.
[01:16:50] Speaker B: Yeah, there we go.
Sa.
