EntreLeadership - #179: The Top 10 EntreLeadership Podcasts of 2016

Episode Date: December 26, 2016

We’re taking a look back at 2016 by sharing clips from our favorite podcast episodes of the year based on the number of downloads and feedback from our listeners. We’re also featuring our top five EntreLeadership tools. entreleadership.com/podcast Top 5 EntreLeaderhip Tools Infusionsoft's Target Market Worksheet EntreLeadership Summit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now, here is your host, Ken Coleman. For the final time in 2016, we are broadcasting from the Music City, and this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, four leaders. Thank you for joining the conversation, unbelievable. We all say this every year, but it doesn't make it less unbelievable. 2016 flew by.

And as we go into our final podcast of this year, I always thank you at the end, and I will do so, I'm sure, again today. But I just want to say a heartfelt appreciation for you. I've met so many of you this year on the road at live events or here in Nashville, our offices, if you've come to watch the Dave Ramsey show, which I'm a part of. And each time I meet you, your true blue thankfulness for the content we're putting out means so much to Eric and I and the entire Ontario leadership team. but it is you that we appreciate. And we're thankful for the kind words, but without an audience, we don't get to do this. And so we're thankful.

We know you have a lot of options to choose from out there. Thank you for continuing to choose us. Those of you that I've met have told so many about us. And so I just want to say thank you, because we're doing something that matters. We hear that from you. We know that. But it is you who matters.

And it is you that are the reasons, if you will, why we do what we do. And so I just wanted to say a big thank you. It's so much fun to have these conversations on behalf of you. As I've met you, I've told many of you this that it is my goal each time I conduct an interview to really, truly have a conversation, a conversation that you feel like you could pull a chair up to and very much fit in. And I try to ask questions that I think you want to hear. And I try to learn so that as I'm learning, hopefully you're learning along with me. And so you are so important to us, and we appreciate you, our listeners.

So here's what we're going to do. This is kind of fun. We did this last year for the first time. Eric, the producer and I thought we'd do it again. And so we picked some of our favorite conversations as well as we looked at the results. We looked at the numbers. What did you give us the most feedback on? What were the episodes that maybe got the greatest amount of likes or comments or just hits?

And so what we're going to do this episode is we're going to go back into 2016. team and pull some of our favorite content, your favorite content. And here's how it's going to come at you. We're going to give you top five leadership conversations, just snippets of these, and our top five personal growth conversations. And then, you know, each month we give you an entree leadership resource. It is always free and it is designed to help you practically. And the response has been unbelievable.

And so we went back and looked at it, which were the most popular tools or resources that we gave away from our entree leadership team. So we're going to go back and review those and give you those as well. So keep in mind as we go throughout this, kind of set this up, let you get in and out of the content. But we will reference in this episode links to those full episodes. So if you joined to just two months ago, and we play a conversation for you that happened eight months ago, don't worry about it. You won't have to go diving in and looking for it. You'll just go to this very last episode, episode 179, and we'll have links to all these conversations in full, the episodes they were on. And then, of course, the

actual resources we're going to tell you about. So let's do this. The year-end podcast is underway, and right out of the gate, episode 166 featured Charles Duhigg. Second time on the podcast, second time I had interviewed him, and I'm just going to tell you point blank, this is one of my votes. I think this guy is probably one of the most enjoyable people to talk to on the planet. And in the second conversation featured in episode 166, we're going to play you just a little bit of that conversation. And the theme was around productivity and really locking in on ideas like how we think rather than what we think. And this episode really does help us evaluate how we focus, how we create mental scripts and how those play out in our personal lives and professional

lives. So here's a little bit of Charles Duhigg from episode 166. This question of how you get teams to work together, I've got all these people who are kind of real strong individuals, they all have different approaches and backgrounds, how do I get them to work together? And interestingly, the answer to that question can be found at Google, the computer company, because Google had a very similar question, which is what they were trying to figure out is, how do you build the perfect team? About five years ago, they started this quest to figure this out, and it took them years and years and millions of dollars. But what they figured out initially was that they thought that building the perfect team had to do with choosing who is on the team,

putting the right characters together, right? Like maybe you have friends away from the conference room, so everyone gets along really well. Or maybe you look for people who all like the same type of management style. Or maybe you want a combination of introverts and extroverts. And Google experimented with all of this. And they looked at all their data and they figured out that who was on a team didn't seem to correlate very well whether that team was successful or not.

That instead the thing that made a difference in whether a team succeeded was how teammates treated each other. And in particular, if the teammates, all did two specific things, then almost no matter who was on that team, it would succeed. The first was that you needed to have what psychologists call equality in conversational turn-taking. Or put differently, basically everyone on the team has to speak up at some point. Not necessarily everyone speaks the same number of minutes, but during a course of a meeting, everyone has to speak up. Everyone has to say their peace.

And the second thing that you need, because talking up isn't enough, is you have to have what's known as ostentatious listening behaviors, which means that when you speak up, I show you that I'm listening by making eye contact with you, or by asking you questions about what you just said, or repeating what you just said. Or I pick up on nonverbal cues, and if Jim hasn't said anything in a little while, I say, hey, Jim, I notice your arms are crossed. You don't look like you're that happy with what we're talking about. Tell me what's going on inside your head.

If you have these two things, it creates what's known as psychological safety, this feeling like you belong in this meeting, other people at the table, they want to hear what you have to say. And that's why Saturday Night Live works, is because when Lauren Michaels runs a meeting of his writer's room, he forces every single person in that room to speak up. And he makes people show each other that they're listening by first of all demonstrating this kind of ostentatious listening, but by teaching everyone else to do the same thing. And that's why you can get all these people who might hate each other normally, people who are kind of misanthropes, who can't get along with other people.

And you put them in Saturday Night Live and somehow magically a team comes together. Smarter, faster, better, the book is looking at why some people and companies are more productive than others. And one of the things that we know from research is that the most productive people tend to be able to focus better than their peers. Their brains tend to be able to, in split seconds, decide what is important and should be focused on and what can be safely ignored, what distractions can be set aside. When you're an executive walking into your office in the morning and your pockets buzzing with your phone and there's 100 emails competing for your attention and there's all these people coming up and saying, hey, can you come to this emergency meeting? How do the best executives decide this is how I'm going to spend my time and these are things that I can set aside for right now? And what we know from studies is that the people who do this best are people who build what you call mental models. Essentially, they tell themselves stories about what they expect to occur, and they tell themselves those stories as things are occurring.

And as a result, that helps their brain automatically decide what to focus on. I was talking to one Fortune 500 executive, and he said that every morning on the subway, he would do this thing, where he would try and visualize his day with just like half a degree more specific. specificity than anyone else. And this is how he would do it. Most of us would say, you know, I've got a meeting at 10 o'clock. It's going to last to 11. You know, here's what I hope to accomplish in that meeting. This guy, he would get up the subway and he'd say, okay, I've got a meeting at 10 o'clock. And you know what? I'm just going to tell myself a story about how that meeting's going going to unfold. I bet it's going to start with Jim bringing up that dumb idea that he always brings up.

And then Susie is going to disagree with Jim, because Susie always disagrees with Jim. And if I let them fight it out for three or four minutes, then if I jump in with my idea, I'm going to look like the peacemaker and I'm going to kind of look like a genius and everyone's going to listen to me. Now, it only takes about 45 seconds to kind of tell yourself a story about how you want that meeting to unfold. But as a result, because that person has a mental model for what should happen, they're so much better prepared to take advantage to that meeting. And more importantly, they know where to focus. They kind of have a story, a mental model that can follow to help them succeed. If we have a script in our head and something unexpected happens, our first instinct is to say,

look, either put that aside or pay more attention to it before you behave. A mental model, the story we tell ourselves, when we just visualize how we want our day or this meeting to unfold, it gives our brain the ability to almost automatically decide what we should automatically pay attention to, what we can put aside and what we can ignore. And that's the key to focus. All right, folks, and remember that conversation really centered around his latest book,

Smart or Faster, Better. And remember, the link to the full episode is in this show's show notes. Okay, so you can check that out. And again, I recommend this book highly. Up next was Simon Seneca on our list. He was episode 158. And I got to tell you,

second time I'd interviewed Simon. and I mentioned this at the top of the podcast that it is my goal in each conversation that we record to truly have a conversation. Many of these men and women have been interviewed countless times. And most of these conversations are happening via these miniature laptops that Eric the producer and our engineers have come up with. And the sound is great. Sounds like they're right here with me. But most of them they're not. And so you know that there's just not the same connection out of the gate.

that you have when you're across from somebody, when there is a physical connection. We're in physical proximity. We're looking at each other. I can see his face. I can read his body language. All those things are not available to me most of the time. So I'm always trying to connect and take the conversation to a more intimate level, thus creating an experience for you that you feel like you're eavesdropping in.

And I will tell you, I felt like we did that here. A lot of fun here. Of course, you know who Simon Seneca is. If you don't, you need to learn. but we talk a lot about why. And anytime you're talking to Simon, you're going to have that conversation because that's what he's thinking about all the time.

Some great stuff here. Here is a little bit of Simon Sennick. It's a common theme in all my work. When you go to start with why or leaders eat less or even the new theories that I'm toying around with these days, you know, the common theme in all my life is, and all my work, rather, is you can't do this alone. Like, building a business is so difficult.

why would you ever try and do it alone? Leadership is the most complicated thing you would ever do in your life. Why do you think you can do it alone? It's like difficult and dangerous things we would never think to do alone. Together, honestly, is better. And the thing that we don't nurture

is how do you create together? How do you create a team of people who love each other and care about each other and got each other's backs? How do you find and make relationships where you trust each other so deeply that you know no matter what you have each other's backs? I mean, that's what love is. That's what we think about your own personal relationships.

The best definition of love I ever heard is giving someone the power to destroy you and trusting they won't use it. Now apply that to the relationships you have at work. Wow. Right? And the question is, how do you create those relationships with partners and employees and bosses that literally you give someone the power in the company to destroy the company and trust that they won't use it?

Whether it's access to information, access to bank accounts, control over significant parts of the business, you know, whatever it is. it's an incredibly powerful thing. It's an incredibly nerve-wracking thing. And so once you do that, amazing, amazing, amazing things happen. The way the brain works that every single organization, even our own careers, always function on these three levels, what we do, how we do it, and why we do it. It's just the way the brain makes decisions. And I realized I knew what I did. I knew how I did it, but I didn't know why. So I became obsessed with it. I became obsessed with that missing piece. I realized that was putting me out of balance. And once I discovered my why, it restored

my passion to levels I'd never experienced before. This is why visionaries are important, because they take abstract concepts and they articulate them in terms that make them tangible. One of the things about vision that I'm frustrated by, which is, I think it's an unfair standard. Everybody's told these days, you have to, what's your vision? Do you have to have a vision? I think that's grossly unfair, because not everybody is Martin Luther King or Steve Jobs. We don't all have these huge, big visions, and yet we know we need one. I think the correct way to tell people, is you have to find a vision. So this is why visionaries have to learn to communicate their visions, because when other

people hear their visions, they can say, that's what I believe, that's what I want, that's the world I want to live, and that's what I need. I'm going to follow that person. I'm going to follow that movement. And we join up and we choose to follow, and their vision becomes ours. Because I needed it myself, I was able to put some sort of vision into terms that others could see, not just feel, but see and feel. And I think the reason they were jaunted is because they found something that they wanted to do, be a part of, et cetera, et cetera.

This burden of have a vision is madness, but rather find a vision. I think we should go looking for it, but it doesn't necessarily have to come from within us. It can come from the outside. And this is why we don't all follow the same person. We don't all follow the same beliefs at. We follow the one that resonates with us that we can feel. But the sad thing about our society is we celebrate the visionary. And the visionaries are important.

Absolutely. They are the compasses, and you've got to have a compass if you're going to get anywhere. It's true. But we completely forget and ignore that no visionary on the planet would ever have their vision come to life if it weren't for the followers who elected to follow. And it's the followers who make visions into reality. Visionary set the direction. And so this is what gives our lives purpose, right? This stupid and endless pursuit of having a vision and I'm going to go and live in the woods for a week and have a corporate offsite and we're going to figure out of it. our vision. Sometimes that works, but we can also find a vision. And when we find one that resonates that we feel, we choose to follow it, then we can commit our time and our resources to build it. And sometimes we will build it beyond even what the visionary imagines. Then others choose to follow us. You know, we didn't even realize it. It's like the visionary lights the torch, but somebody has to carry the torch and pass it onto a next generation. Boy, that's so true. I find what is so refreshing about you or speaking is your ability to distill you know, from maybe complex factors or all these different things, and then boom, here's the simplicity.

And that's a great strength. Have you worked to develop that, or would you say that's more on your innate strength side? So it goes back to when I was a kid, like, I'm smart enough to know that I'm not that smart, right? I'm okay saying I don't understand something out loud. So it's not that I simplify things because I want to. I simplify things because I have to, because otherwise I don't understand them. Right. So I'll give you a prime example, right? So I was invited to, it was a company we used to work with many years ago, and there's a big company, and they hired a management consultancy to come and do some work for them. I don't know what. And all the senior executives, C-levels, all the C-level executives are sitting around this huge boardroom, and the management

consultants were presenting their findings. And they asked me if I just wanted to sit in on the meeting. So I said, sure. So the management consultants doing their thing, and everybody's nodding and everybody's nodding. And I sort of raised my hand and say, I'm really, really sorry. I'm fully aware that I'm the only person in this room that doesn't have an MBA. But can you please explain to me how you got to your answer because A plus B doesn't equal the answer you're telling me. Can you just re-explain it to me? I'm really sorry. I'm really sorry. I'm really sorry. I'm really sorry. I'm like, listen, A plus B equals D, not C. You're telling me to equals C. I'm just really sorry. Can you please explain it again? I just don't understand the logic. Anyway, this line of questioning,

one by one, all of the C-level executives said, yeah, I don't understand either. Now, had I not spoken up, they all would have nodded their heads, said, thank you very much, paid all the money, and that would have been a pointless exercise, because nobody was willing to sit there and say they didn't understand. In other words, nobody understood. So I think a lot of people don't understand complex things. They just pretend they do. I'm just the idiot who's, you know, willing to humiliate himself and be like, I don't get it. So can somebody please explain it to me in dirt simple terms? I put things in dirt simple terms so that I understand the things that I'm trying to communicate. Well, there's a great lesson there. You have the courage to just ask why

or say, hey, I don't understand, explain it to me. And then it ends up helping the rest of the group who just doesn't have the courage to say it. And the risk you run is, the risk you run is sometimes you get humiliated. Right. Not always. Sometimes you get an answer and sometimes people are like, oh my God, me too. But sometimes you are the idiot. So if you're afraid of that, you'll never get the great answers.

But if you're willing to accept that, you'll get the great answers. Great stuff there from Simon. And, you know, there's one thing you could do in the new year. It's just try to ask why more. And for you parents out there, I think a great way to get into this rhythm is to try to channel the inner toddler in you, right? Or the toddlers you may have at home or the now grown-up toddlers that you might have at your home. But that idea of why, why, why, just for fun one day, try it. And when you're on the borderline of creating tension, because people are sick of you

asking why, I think you've probably done it just enough. And I think you might be surprised how effective it is. Just try that. Eric, you should try that with me and see how big of a hypocrite I might be, if it drives me bananas. Just like keep asking me why. Next time we're talking about a show, turn the tables on me. See how I do. We bring you in and give an oral report

on how that goes. All right, next up, Todd Duncan was a fabulous conversation. Episode 132, the new rules of customer service. He wrote a little book called the $6,000 egg, the 10 new golden rules of customer service. And here's what's great about it. The book was written based on the story

that Todd told us in that episode. And it really affected me Dave Ramsey, who is my leader here and tremendous influence on me and mentor, really had a profound effect upon Dave as well. This is good for all of us that are in some type of business or an organization where we're serving others. This was, I think, breakthrough stuff. If you didn't get that episode, of course, 132, it is worth a listen. But hey, let's give you a little bit of my conversation with Todd Duncan. It's a great story. And my wife, Deb and I had been, at a restaurant in Newport Beach where I live in California, I would venture to say we were probably

spending about between business events and our personal events about 500 bucks a month at this restaurant. So one of these occasions, Ken, we simply asked for a side order of a fried egg that we could put on top of our cheeseburger, and the bartender said, yeah, let me see if the kitchen can do it. And that was the first kind of interesting thought that I had. Somebody has to go check and see if they can do it. So he came back and said they couldn't. They could not give me a side order for an egg. And I said, why not?

He said they're just not prepared to do it. And so I waited just a couple minutes and asked the other bartender who I thought I'd do an end around on. And she went back to the kitchen. And it was the same thing. And we were very perplexed because on their menu for the day, they had a special egg and waffle dish. It was 1595.

And they were offering that up. So they had the egg. But the request for a side order of an egg to simply put on top of a meal, our cheeseburger fell on deaf ears and there was this resistance I had never really felt in a service environment. So the end result was I just simply asked if I could speak to the manager and her name was Natalie and she came over Ken and she approached us with the kind of body language where you know this is not going to turn out well. Yeah, right. And her arms were crossed, you know, and she didn't have a smile on her face. I mean, these are like customer service basics, right? And her first words were,

so I understand you have a problem. And it was like, okay, no, I don't have a problem, really. I think the problem is on you. I didn't say that. But I said, you know, it was real simple, Natalie. We just wanted a side order for an egg. And she said, we can't do that? And I said, can I ask why?

I mean, you have this waffle special. You're throwing eggs on top of the waffles. And here was her response. She said, if I gave you a side order of an egg, we wouldn't have enough eggs to sell the waffle dishes that are part of the plan today. And it dawned to me that here's what she's doing. She's a business manager. You know, the restaurant is a small business. And she basically is saying that the rules are going to rule your outcome.

Right. I said to her, I said, so, you know, we probably spend 500 bucks a month here. You would rather not give me an egg that costs you maybe 50 cents so that you have that egg for a waffle dish that you're going to sell for 1595 and potentially lose a cup. customer over this. And she said, that's all I can do. And that's right. That's exactly right. We cannot change our inventory for our specials. So I said, I said, man, that's weird. And she said, you know what, I'm sorry for your inconvenience. Allow me to pay your bill. And I looked at her, Ken, and I said, that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard a business do in my life. And she looked at me confused. And I said, and I opened the tab, it's like 71 bucks. So I say, you're going to pay my bill for

$71, okay? Instead of giving me an egg that cost you 25 cents, and she said it's the best I can do. So she grabs the bill, we check out, we're out of there. We get out of the restaurant and a hundred feet to the right of the restaurant is Whole Foods. And we walked down to Whole Foods, walked to the Egg Y' aisle, and they were 33 cents apiece. And I reflected back on just the restaurant experience, a 33 cent egg in the back of this Whole Food restaurant. So we go back. and Sandy's the waitress and she said hi and I said Sandy you're not going to believe what just happened at R&D and she said what and I told her and she said you know what john macky has taught us all founder of Whole Foods to say yes to be in the yes world if we can do it we will do it so deb

goes sandy here's the deal I want a garlic pizza with parmesan and I want it with a fried egg on top We're just going for it. They've never had the order before. It's not on the menu. She goes, I believe we can do that. She comes back in a minute and says, pizza's in the oven. And then listen to this, right before the pizza's ready,

the chef's confused because he doesn't know, this is the kind of detail to service. He doesn't know whether or not they should fry the egg and put it on top and then cut the pizza or cut the pizza first and then put the egg because if you cut the egg first, the yolk's going to go everywhere. They had enough wherewithal to ask a simple question.

How would the customer like the egg? It unleashes this kind of within a hundred feet. Customers have choices. And one place says no can do over an egg, which now costs them $6,000 a year. And one provider says, we can do. And now, listen to this, the book is in Whole Foods. One employee who said yes has now shifted the entire culture of Whole Foods. what did you learn and what can we learn as leaders about that particular manager who in the moment has come to you before she's ever said a word to you and here's what jumped out to me and she bowed up she had her arms crossed i understand you have a problem and the fact remains that she had already decided i'm not going to give this dude the fried egg and so i'm just wondering what's going on there to take that posture versus, you know what, if we're short two eggs, we can go next door and get a dozen eggs for a buck 50 or whatever it is. So what's happening there that she's

bowed up? Well, so I think she's following old rules. And the old customer service rules are, you know, let's build a trap and then sell it and this is how we do it, this, that, and the other thing. The new rules are so different. We're in a yes economy. You know, people have options. And I think that from my vantage point, the culture there was missing, whoever's running that store, and obviously the CEO that owns all the restaurants, you know, whatever he or she is doing to create culture, what they're not doing is they're not empowering employees that care about the brand to make smart decisions about optimizing the customer's experience. That's what it comes down to. And with small business owners and large businesses, there has to be boundaries on what the employees do to run the

company the right way. But when it comes to the customer experience and the customer encounter, employees need to be empowered to make decisions that when that transaction is over, that customer goes, holy cow, I'm coming back again. So we're in a yes economy. We have to empower employees to say yes, not give away the farm, but make intelligent decisions. We're going to build a business around intelligent yeses. You can't be competitive. It's not enough anymore. You have to connect. I mean, Gallup just threw this number out that said that if you have the ability to create emotional connection with the customer, which the egg girl did not, you know, in the first place, and the second place did, emotional connection increases margins by as much as 26%. Wow. So that's what

was missing. It's a very simple plug-in play cultural shift in the way that we say yes to customers and make sure their experience is off the charts. All right, folks, listen, you need to go digest that entire episode, 132, and make sure your team listens to it. If there's anything this year that we gave you that I would say is mandatory for your team to listen to, and I'd sit there and make them listen to it. I really would. I think this is the story and this is the episode.

So we appreciate Todd for that. Hey, speaking of customer service, other things you want to make your team do, make sure that they have tremendous clarity on who your customer is. how sad is it that there are a lot of companies, a lot of organizations in America, and there are people really, they're coming to work every day, doing stuff, going through the motions, have no idea. They don't have that target customer, if you will, on the tip of their tongue, on the front of their mind, whatever that is. And so InfusionSoft has helped us all year long. They've helped us in so many ways, but specifically this idea in December we've been driving home. It's a free download, and it's going to help you figure out who your target customer is,

what are their big pain points, and establishing why they actually come to you and buy from you. Why do they keep coming back? These are things you need to know. It's not a willy-nilly lick your finger, stick it up in the air, and see which way the wind is blowing. You've got to be strategic. Infusionsoft.com slash target-dash-worksheet. Infusionsoft.com slash target-dash worksheet. a link for you in the show notes. Do check that out. It is an absolute must-get resource.

Really will help you in 2017 and beyond. Episode 150 included a special guest in that we on this podcast rarely have guests from the faith world. Are we anti-faith? Absolutely not. It's just we don't bring in a lot of pastors, and it is rare when we do, and we had a rare case, and it was worth it. who is the pastor of the largest church in America. That is significant, no matter what your faith walk. And if you're an atheist, it doesn't matter. Let me tell you what you do believe in as an atheist. You do believe there are business principles.

There are success strategies. And Craig Griselle certainly helped us out with that. This is something that he has figured out when you have a church that is in multiple locations, that's their story, multiple states. a lot going on there. How do they systematize? How do they delegate so much incredible stuff in here around scaling and margin and all these great things? It really is fantastic stuff. So listen in to my conversation with Craig O'Sholl. Let's talk about the other part of the people equation, and that is empowering them. You've already given us a sense of what it's like. Each campus has the same

staff set up, and then you send them out. You're not there, you know, and you've got this spread-out situation. I think it makes a lot of leaders uncomfortable. But how do you empower these people within a very clear role? Yeah, that's a great question. And so if we get really basic, it starts with the power of delegation. And most people think that delegation is me telling someone what to do. If I delegate tasks, what I'm doing is I'm creating a follower. I'm creating someone that does what they're told to do. So what we want to do as leaders is we don't want to delegate tasks, we want to delegate authority, meaning you're not just doing what I ask you to do, but you're creating something. You have the authority to make it better. If we delegate authority, we're creating

leaders. So what I want to do is I want to give away as much of the ministry as I possibly can. In fact, when I teach on leadership just about empowering, I go through a little exercise and I ask, which of these staff roles do you think that I'm personally involved in on hiring? Would I be involved on hiring my assistant? And everybody says, yes. My assistant's assistant, they say, probably. The pastors of our 25 churches, everyone says, of course you would be. The worship pastors, maybe. So we go through the whole list.

And then at the end of it, I say, well, in the last 10 years, the only interview that I've done was for my assistant. And that's it. And everyone's like, oh, my gosh, you know, you're kidding. Are you lazy? What's your problem? And then I try to explain that I've empowered the right people to do the hiring process. I've empowered the right people. Next week, I will go and do a vision night at one of our churches that I have not.

yet seen. I've never seen the building. It is a church that runs over 3,000 people. I've got the right people who built the building, pick the location. I've not yet seen the building, have not yet even been by there yet, and it's been functioning for a year without me because I've got the right people and the right places. So as a leader, you can have control or you can have growth, but you can't have both. What I want to do is I want to trust people to do what they do. If I want to attract, build and retain the best leaders, I have to empower them to lead. If I need to know it all, do it all, and control it all, then I'm not giving them the freedom to lead. You can have control or you can have growth, but you can't have both. I need to trust people to do what they're called to do,

or I will not keep them or they will not get better. You know, listening to you talk about this, there's no question, right, people, right place, but the system, the system, the system. Am I over-emphasizing the power of the system within Life Church and your organization? No, not at all. We all have systems. Some of them are intentional. Some of them are accidental. You know, right, right. And I think it was Andy Stanley. He did a talk years ago that was really powerful. He said something like the result of what you have is a direct result of the system that you created.

You know, your systems are designed to bring about the direct result. If you don't like the result, you have to change the system. And that's just so true. At the core of everything we do, we need to have values that drive us. Then we need to have systems that take us to the desired result. We need to focus on communication, getting the right people, doing the right things right now. I think in most organizations, if you're going to look at probably the two or three biggest problems, it would be lack of attention to culture would be probably be one of them. And then certainly probably in the top three in most organizations would be lack of systematic structure designed to bring about the end result.

That's really good. I want you to talk for a moment about how Life Church, how you lead the budget, how you budget, because this is so relevant to the business leaders. I think this is, it's simple, but it's profound. And I want you to share how you budget each year, how you stick with it, because you're always growth-minded, yet you're doing it so smart. It's really Entree leadership exhibited. So I want you to share that. Well, first I want to say that Dave Ramsey, I was in my late 20s when I discovered him. He is my mentor, my friend.

And so everything I've learned, I've learned the vast majority from him. We're a debt-free church. Last year we launched four campuses, and all the buildings were paid for before we. we broke ground. So we have the money set aside. How do we do this? Because that's really difficult to do in the church world. What we try to do, Ken, is we really try to work super, super hard to create margin in every area of our lives. The best things happen in the margin. So one of the areas is financial margin. And we do that several different ways. One way is that we always budget lower than the previous year's revenue. We expect growth. So, you know, this year, our attendance is up 13% over last

year, but our budget, we budgeted at 89% of last year's revenue. So already I've got significant margin built into it. Then we're going to try to create margin. In my world, your two big expenses are going to be salary, your staff members, and you're going to be your buildings. And so what I want to do is be efficient in both those areas. We have one of the smallest staffs in numbers for the number of people who actually come to our church, probably most any church anywhere, and we do it by efficiency, meaning I've got a central staff and I've got campus staff. Central exists to support the campuses. And so when we create something that's going to be used one time, it's actually used at 25 different locations. So I've got efficiency there. And so when the normal church

puts 55 or 60 percent of their budget towards staff, the last several years we have not been above 28 percent. That creates margin that we can use toward growth. And that's a business model. That's no doubt about it. And it's a kingdom business model. We believe that's how we honor God by a wise use of resources. The people in our church love it because they feel like when they're giving, they're giving to something that's efficient, to something that works. It's something that has a real spiritual return on their financial investment.

And so we're bold about it, and we believe in this philosophy. Rounding out the top five in our leadership conversations, well, how do you have a top five leadership list and not have Jim Collins on it? You should be ashamed of yourself if he's not. not in that list. And we love Jim around here and always fun to talk with Jim. And this was one of the most interesting and unique interviews I've ever done. Because what we essentially did, if you did not hear episode 130, I basically had Jim just walk me through the four books. Your four books, his four books that really are the Mount Rushmore business. I mean, good to great gets all the press, but the fact of the

matter is the research that drove good to great drove four books. So it really had three other companion books with it. And we walk through that in that entire conversation. It was really fascinating because all the research they did informed the way they asked different questions and thus spit out different books. And I think that's a great exercise. The knowledge that you have in your business needs to be looked at from multiple vantage points because there's a lot of stuff there. It's not just one or two or three or four valuable pieces of information. You've got to look at the true information and the data that you're mining and you've got to look at it like it's a prism. It's not just a mirror. So there you go. Let's get right to it. Always fun to talk

about Jim Collins, who is endlessly fascinated about why great companies are great. Let's listen to. Preserve the core means you have to be really driven by a set of core values that are not open for negotiation, they're not open for discussion, they're not open for change. They're not open for change. These don't define what you do. They define who you are. They define what you stand for. And a core purpose that is a reason for being that goes far beyond just making money. No truly great company had as its purpose principally to make money. No truly great company ever was driven principally just to make money. It was money is like blood, food, oxygen, and water. Absolutely essential for life. But it's not the point of life. You don't come at life and say, you know,

the point of my life is to breathe oxygen and eat food. No, the point of life is to do something useful and significant. And so what we found is that's how these people built these companies. So, you know, you look at Walt Disney, he wasn't trying to make money. He was making money so that he could do what he was really about, which was to make people happy, right? That was the drive. And so that's one side, is preserve the core, the values and the purpose. But the other side, to stimulate progress, which means to be constantly stimulating change and improvement in innovation and renewal, always evolving your practices and your strategies as the world around you changes. So you go from, you know, Mickey Mouse and Little Films to eventually doing features to eventually

doing Disneyland, right? That's a lot of stimulating progress, but consistent with the core. All companies have a culture. And what we found is that culture and even having a strong culture doesn't necessarily distinguish a great company from a not great company. It's rather something about the culture. And what you really find is that a great company is marked by a culture of discipline, a self-disciplined people who engage in discipline thought and who take disciplined action. And when you begin to lose a culture of discipline, that's when you really begin to fall. The other is the best culture is the one that does both sides of that coin that we found back and built to last, which is you preserve the core and stimulate progress, which

means that you have to keep your culture aligned, whatever your values are, whatever the purposes that you have to be fanatic about preserving that. You begin to lose it, you're going to fall. But the other side is you have to have a culture that really, really, really wants to stimulate progress. I mean, it's got this sense in it of, think of the B-Haggs as setting out to do these big, monstrous climbs, right? The hardest climbs you can possibly do, and they're big and they're scary and they're overwhelming. And the thing is, and here's the thing you have to keep alive, is the sense that when you get to the top of a climb and you are tired, you are exhausted, everything hurts, you're bleeding. And your first reaction to that should be to look out and say,

next climb, right? And if you ever lose that sense of no matter how hard what we've just done is, there's something harder for us to do. And we love to do harder. And we love to go further. And we're going to do bigger things. And it's never going to stop. And we're never going to rest. and we're never going to retire, and we're never going to go on the glide path to irrelevance. It is just a relentless search for the next challenge that's going to push us, make us feel inadequate, so therefore we have to grow. And what you have to do is to keep alive that sense, that that's just, that is what we love to do. We love to put ourselves in situations where we are just overwhelmed and we overcome.

And if you ever lose that desire to just set the next goal for yourself that is just almost going to terrify you. I mean, there is, the moment you ever say, you know, someday I'm actually going to retire and rest, this makes no sense if you're going to build a great company. One day you won't be able to keep going. One day you'll be dead. But until then, wow. Now, folks, I'm just going to tell you folks right here, this is me telling you to rewind that last two, two and a half minutes and to find a way to cut that sound bite out, that whole two and a half minutes from Jim Collins, because, Jim, I got to tell you, buddy, that sounded like a locker room talk for me for every company in America from one.

people to a thousand people. That is unbelievable. I love that. Jim, last question for you, and this is kind of fun irony here. You've done all this research. We've reviewed, you know, briefly these four great books that came out of this research. And obviously a lot of it is focused on larger companies. Yet at the beginning of our conversation, you took us back to the very beginning of all of this. And here you are teaching a college course. And you're passionate about entrepreneurs and small business leaders. And so we have a huge swath of those folks listening in here. And so I want to ask you, in 2016, with the current environment, as you observe everything, what encouragement or challenge would you throw at entrepreneurs and small business men and women?

So two thoughts for entrepreneurs and small business people. The first is that all the companies that we studied in our research were once startups and small businesses. And the reason I got so excited about our research in many ways is that you look at how these folks went from zero in Bill to Last and Great By Chase, for example, they went from zero to through the small business mid-size and then to great company and that you have to think of it as a progression from idea to business, from business to company, from company to great company, from great company to enduring great company. And that's what all these folks did. And what it says to me is all the great ones started small.

That they became big is a residual reflection largely of what they did when they were small, not when they were large. So that would be point one. Point two is this. The only mistakes you can learn from are the ones you survive. So we write a lot about, in both Great by Choice and How the Mighty Fall,

productive paranoia, and the idea being that you have to stay in the game. I mean, luck favors the performance. persistent, but you can only persist if you stay alive in the game. And so that means you actually have to be really, really disciplined on your financials. We found over and over again that when our companies were small, they carried three to ten times the cash to assets ratio of other companies. And it wasn't a function of the fact that they were already big and successful. They were small when they started this. But that tremendous financial discipline allowed them to,

to endure the inevitable ups and downs and hits and misses of life and building a company so that they could have the long run. And that productive paranoia of channeling your paranoia into building buffers, into always being financially conservative while you build your company, so that you can absorb the unexpected shocks was a big part of how they were able to last long enough to really, really get their flywheel going. All right, so there are our favorite five leadership conversations. Let's move now into our favorite resources, the tools from the Entree Leadership team that we have recommended to you.

And really, I would say these are your favorites, not our favorites. We simply looked at the data. What did you, the audience, respond to more than anything else? So here we go. And if you're new to us, it's very possible. We have some first-time listeners here on our year in podcast. Every month we strive here at Entry Leadership to not just give you a great conversation. that'll make you better, but give you a resource that you can walk away with and apply in your

business and many times even in your personal life as well. And so we give those to you free. We either have you text in or you go get the link at entreleadership.com slash podcast, a particular episode that we give it away. And so we had enormous response this year. And so here we're the top five. The Entree Leaders Guide to Hiring. It's exactly what it sounds like. This may be one of the most critical things you do. I don't think that's arguable. I mean, you cannot win without people. And many organizations are losing simply because they've got the wrong people. So hiring is absolutely huge.

It also sucks a lot of energy out of you. It creates a lot of tension. So many things, if you don't do it right, it has a negative effect on you and your business. So the entree leader's guide to hiring was a wild success. Then we have the five-day plan to triple your productivity. I remember this one. Who doesn't want to do this? This is perfect.

If you missed out on this, who doesn't want to triple your productivity in 2017? It's a no-brainer. Entree Leaders' Guide to Running Your Business Debt Free. Number three, Entree Leaders' Guide to Running Your Business Debt Free. Again, it's a game changer. Life's going to happen. Lightning bolts are going to hit you and your business.

And if you're debt-free, and you got some operating expenses put aside, you're going to weather the storm. But if you've got no cash on hand and you're drowning in debt and the lightning bolt hits, guess what? You're dead. Next, mission statement mapper. Boy, I tell you what.

How many of you have been in an organization or know somebody in an organization or know a leader leading an organization where they've got the death spin going on. How do I describe this? It's like everybody's down on a shoulder and they're just spinning around and they can't get up. It's just like you're just completely spinning your wheels. You're in a hamster wheel.

You can't get going forward because you're too busy spinning around. That's because you have no mission at all. You have no idea why we're doing what we're doing. No traction. The mission statement map will help you there. And then finally, our fifth most popular downloaded tool was the Entree Leaders Guide to Delegation. You heard Craig Groschell in that episode. We talk a lot about delegation.

Again, how do you do it? If you do delegation wrong, you're just going to burn people out. You're going to drown them in stuff to do. You've got to do it and do it on purpose. So there they are. The Entree Leader's Guide to Hiring, the Five Day Plan to Triple Your Productivity, the Entree Leader's Guide to Running Your Business Debt Free, the Mission Statement Mapper, the Entree Leaders Guide to Delegation.

We're giving all of those two. You're just going to bundle them so that you're just there. it's one click or one text. You can text, 2016 tools. 2016 tools. Text that to 33444. 3344.

Or you can just go to the link in this episode's show notes at ontarioleadership.com slash podcast. Folks, listen. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands have taken us up on these free offers. These resources are phenomenal. We've got them bundled up for you, ready to go. Click and grow.

What are you waiting on? Okay, folks, moving on to our favorite personal growth interviews. And again, leadership personal growth is really kind of moving in and out here all the time of the conversations. And largely because we listened to you on our survey. If you're new to the podcast earlier this year, we did a podcast survey. We said, what do you want to hear? What is the content that you want most, that you appreciate most? And one and two, leadership content, personal growth content.

So we're constantly trying to work in both of those buckets of content, if you will, to help you win. And so going to name a few here that I think we're great. And again, the episode is 167. It was Marcus Buckingham. I am a personal strength junkie. I believe in it. I don't believe in spending hardly any time on your weaknesses other than to mitigate around them. John Maxwell, who was my leader for several years.

I worked close with John. I used to say this. He said, look, if you're a five singer, you can work your tail off and you might get to be a seven. Guess what? I don't pay for sevens. What was the last time you bought a ticket to a concert of a seven band? You know, let's just back the thing down.

If you're three at singing, work your tail off, you become a five. People don't pay for average. That's the point. You ever tell your wife, hey sweetheart, date nights Friday, let's go to an average restaurant. Let's have an average meal. Let's go to an average movie. Let's go get an average dessert afterwards. And hey, you know what?

We got to sit there for the whole night. Let's go to an average hotel. That never happens. Eric, the producer's behind the glass. He's newly married. Are you taking notes on this? You are never going to say to Angela any of those things I just said, correct? Angela doesn't want to go to an average meal.

There you go. So here's the point. Focusing on our strengths is the play. And sadly, a lot of people don't do it. Marcus Buckingham is the guru on this. I'm a disciple. So here's a little bit of Marcus Buckingham. For our audience, I want to ask you something I've never asked you before. And I'd love to get your thoughts on the origin that led to this obsession with fixing our weaknesses.

Before we dive into the strength stuff, where do you think that comes from? I know we've talked before and you say this is a huge thing. in Western culture, Western Hemisphere, but what is the origin of that in your mind? Well, I think we are designed as humans to minimize our downside because we think it's a good coping or survival mechanism. So we're frightened of our weaknesses. And in psychology, we say, if you know someone's fear, you'll know their need. And so we are fearful that our weaknesses might harm us or undermine us. And so we think in the minds, I know. need to fix them. Know someone's fear, you know their need. So we're fearful that our weaknesses

will prevent us from having the success that we need or will prevent us from building the relationships that we need, getting the job that we want, performing that job. All of it probably coming from the fear that if we don't take care of the things that might lead to our vulnerabilities in life, that we will be harmed. So on some level it's like a, it's a deep-seated, that I'm going to be harmed. And when it comes to survival, I mean, that's pretty sensible, actually. I mean, for us to be thinking about where are our vulnerabilities as a family, as a person, as a society, we probably do need to fix some of our vulnerabilities so that we can survive. But when it comes to thriving, when it comes to success or growth or flourishing, the weakness

fixing strategy borne out of fear is not a terribly good one. Every single one of us has been, blessed with unique gifts, unique talents. And so our first mental shift has to be that the responsibility we have in life is to make that uniqueness useful. That is, and I know this is a grandiose word, but that is our destiny. We have to live into our destiny, and our destiny does not involve repudiating, fixing who we aren't or fixing the flaws that we have. That's not the way in which you live out the unique gifts that you've been blessed with. So we ought to change our mindset. Think about our gifts and talents

as responsibilities and that it is our God-given responsibility to be intelligent and deliberate about how we contribute those talents to others. I know that sounds pretty lofty, but But the moment you start flipping it around and think of talents as responsibilities or strengths as responsibilities is the moment when we start really living into the life and the contribution in that life that we ought to see as the purpose of our life. And that's a, gosh, that's just a huge call to arms for all of us to go, really, what have you been blessed with and then how can you contribute it? The moment you start thinking like that is the moment where you start taking your strengths,

seriously. Up next, new to me is Jesse Itzler. I had a couple of friends say, Hey, have you read the book Living with a Seal? 31 days training with the toughest man on the planet? And my answer was no. And so Eric the producer and I got into it. And it's a hilarious book,

but it's also just chalk full of incredible personal growth goodness. Jesse's an interesting dude. Very, very successful entrepreneur. Co-founder of Markey Jet. He's now a part owner of the Atlanta Hawks and the NBA. and he just happened to marry a billionaire, Sarah Blakely, founder of Spanx, friend to women everywhere. So anyway, got him on the line and really fun to talk with him.

This guy really made me think we had a lot of great interaction from our audience about this, and so here is a bit of my conversation with Jesse Isler. What would you say allowed you to have success as an entrepreneur, this idea of creating something that could be and should be, and then you release it and it works? what would be something that you look at and say this is one of the ingredients that allowed me to succeed? Well, I think for me, I think one common theme if I look through all of my past, my track record, is that I had no prior experience in any of the fields that I went into.

For me, that was the biggest blessing because it allowed me to approach things with a different perspective. It guaranteed that I was going to do things differently because no one told me how to do it or showed me how to do it. it made me really think out of the box and become, you know, like, how could I stand out? How am I different? And really look at each business like I was the customer. A lot of times you say, oh, well, I have no experience in something. Your young entrepreneur, and that fear prevents you from going into it because you say, you know, how could I get into coconut order or the beverage world or private aviation? Like, I don't know anything about that. I'm not going to do that. That's too hard. That's too intimidating. And I was able to kind of get through that by saying, you know what, that's going to be to my

advantage. I'm going to do this differently. And I'm going to figure out how to do this the way it hasn't been done because no one showed me the path. You know, a lot of times now I say to guys that work from your gals in my office, I'll say if no one ever told you how to do your job, how would you do it? Right. And inevitably, you're going to get all kinds of new thinking and creativity that wasn't there. I want to ask you about landmines. I think one of the things sometimes that we tend to do when we talk to successful people is, you know, tell us about this, that you've done well and how is this work. But, you know, you have started and sold, you know, multiple successful ventures as you take stock in this conversation. What are some landmines that you could share with us leaders, entrepreneurs that we need to

watch out for? Well, you know, this is going to sound crazy. But, But I think a lot of people don't spend enough time working on themselves. And I do a lot of, I call it the pre-work. There's so much work before success to prepare you for success. And I think business is a great reflection of you. The better you are, the better you will be in business, the better business you'll have. And there's so many buckets in your life. So, you know, a lot of times you'll step on a landmine or come across a landmine and you can trace

it back to your own personal self. How do you deal with it? Were you prepared for it? Why didn't you see it? And how you deal with those landmines is so important. The more you work on you through the different buckets in your life, I think the better prepared you are for those landmines. And, you know, we all have arrows that come at us, especially as an entrepreneur.

You have bills, you have employees, you have manufacturing issues, you have sales issues. You have, and every day it's like, you're dodging arrows. It takes a lot of time. So how you deal with that and how you're prepared for that, to me, it all. relates to the pre-work that you do on you. And I think that, you know, that's something that we fail to do a lot of times. I love that. That's a personal growth tip. Let's keep moving on here because I love the book. It's called Living with the Seal, 31 days, training with the toughest man on the planet. And this is kind of like equal parts human experiment, equal parts, personal

growth journal. And I think there's so much that you learn from it. So I'm just fascinated. And so I want to start with kind of the frame that we're already in. And that is this idea of constantly growing. You're a guy that, you know, that you are very intentional. But at some point, you feel like you're in a rut and you decide that you're going to train with one of the toughest guys alive, clearly this guy's a seal. He's created some reputation out there. And you decide to pull the trigger on this. Right. Take us to that moment where you're at, because you've got, at this point, how many kids, your wife's very successful in business, life's probably pretty crazy, and you make a decision to, like, literally shock your system. Yeah, well, it wasn't planned. You know,

I went out to San Diego to run a relay race, a 24-hour race with six friends, and we were each going to take turns every mile alternating the legs. And there was a guy sitting next to me at the starting line who didn't have a team. He was running the entire thing by himself, and he was about 270 pounds, which is huge to run this distance. And at mile 70, because of his weight, he had broken all the small bones in both of his feet and literally had kidney failure. And I watched this guy on guts, Will, who knows what, a drive I've never seen finished this race with his broken bones.

And I was so inspired and curious that I googled him. I was fascinated by this guy's backstory. So I decided to cold call him. And I flew out the next day to meet with him. And sitting next to him for about 10 minutes and listening to this guy talk, I realized that if a little bit of what he had in his mind, his mental toughness, whatever. was making him tick, whatever he had that made him finish this race rubbed off on me in my personal life, in my business life, physically would make those buckets so much better. So I just, on the spot, just asked him if he would move in with me and my family for a month

and kind of trained me. And three days later, he was at our breakfast table. And it's funny because at this point in my life, I'd sold a couple of businesses. I was married, still am. I had a child who was 18 months old, my first son, and I was in a great spot in my life. But I was in a routine, and that was equaling a rut. Routine's great, but I wasn't getting better because I couldn't get out of my routine. So I wasn't seeing any improvement.

So for me, you know, my routine was get up, work out, have my fruit, go to work, come home, family time, go to sleep, repeat. That was my day. And it was great. And I was operating at a high level, I thought. But what I learned was that I had so much more in my reserve tank that by shaking up my routine and getting out of my comfort zone and really pushing my limits, I started to feel way more alive and I started to operate at a higher level. And I got in great shape from the experience, but what I really wanted to get out of it was the what makes this guy tick and the psychological side is where the real kind of lasting benefits lied. A little fun fact for you folks, you hear me talk to and about Eric the producer all the time. He's behind the glass right now looking at me so you don't hear him.

But he's ever present. And so out of this conversation with Jesse, he changed his habits. April the 11th, back in April. You did the whole nothing but fruit until noon. Okay, so we had some other team members do the same thing, Eric's telling me. What is your fruit of choice? Bananas only. Okay.

Oh, okay, I got you. Every once in a pair eater. I should try some pears. I like apples. Oh, apple and a pair. Okay, there it is. So anyway, the point is even Eric's a producer is growing over there. Really interesting stuff.

I need to probably do that. I'm going to try that. I'm going to do that. Hey, I'm going to do that in the month of January, and then we'll report back on that. How about that? I need to be accountable to that. Someone to throw it out there. So anyway, I hope you enjoyed that again.

That full episode, Episode 142, highly recommend it. Speaking of Atlanta entrepreneurs, another one of our favorites. just recently, episode 174, Cat Cole. On the value of a messy, gritty experience, she's the group president of focused brands, which includes brands like Cinebun, Auntie Ans, Moes, McAllisters, my wife's favorite place. And so really, really, really refreshing conversation.

You talk about somebody who really understands personal growth and perseverance. It's Cat Cole. Listen to. I want to ask you about instilled skills and things that you learned along the way. as you begin to move up versus those that were inherent. They were given to you at birth and you just had some of those skills and you developed them, obviously.

But as you moved up the ladder, what was the key for you and your growth to adjust? Because there's this myth sometimes that we have to be ready for a position. And then I think many times the great leaders like you figured out that, hey, I'm not completely ready, but I can adjust on the fly and grow as I go. What was your journey like there? Certainly my journey was one of saying yes before I was completely ready. And there's no way at the age of 26, I was fully seasoned to be an executive of a company doing 800 million in revenue. And so on one hand, you have to recognize that there will always be a period that you're the first. You're doing it first at your first time. So you're not going to be perfect. And if I think about the alternative, simply preparing for a living and waiting. until you believe you're fully prepared for a role. One, by the time you're fully prepared, that role has likely changed.

Two, you haven't benefited from the real-world experiences. It would be the equivalent of simply training in a laboratory for something, training in a gym only for a particular sport in the Olympics, hoping to qualify for the Olympics, when really what would prepare you more quickly is the true experience of competing in front of crowds, competing against other world-class athletes, competing in a diversity of environments, that that actually is what prepares you for that elite level.

And so I learned to appreciate the value of what real, messy, gritty experience provides more than I appreciated academic or simply thinking or closed individual preparation. All right. So we have a large audience. And I know in an audience this size, there are a lot of people who are listening in and they want to be moving up the ladder. They want to lead. They're compelled to lead.

They feel like they can lead. And it's just not, it hasn't happened yet. Maybe there's some angst in the midst of the hustle. And I want you to speak to that group of people because you've been there and you've moved up the ladder. But I think this is always an important message to an audience like this who's so committed to personal growth and they want to get there and it's really hard to wait while hustling. What would you say to those folks?

I would say first to assess what you define as success. Some people spend so much time saying, I'm hustling for this goal, but I'm just not getting it. And I'll pause and say, well, why do you want that? Why do you want that title or that job? And sometimes they say, well, because financial advancement comes with that. And I say, well, let me tell you two other ways you could get financial investment. Why are you only focused on that one job? Or they say, because it's a point of pride for me to show advancement. And I'll point out, guess what? You're not with a company that's growing. So advancement's going to be really tough. So my first tip to this audience that where the next achievement just hasn't happened yet is to give yourself the gift of reexamining why you want that and then be scrappy and creative and asking yourself, are there one or two other ways that I could actually get the thing that it is that I want that might be different from that current goal. And there are so many different ways to get what you want if you actually deconstruct what you want. But if the work becomes about the work, if the goal, like being a manager or a director or a president or whatever it is, if the goal

becomes just about the goal and you forget why you wanted it in the first place, you will miss the opportunities that might be right in front of you to actually still get what you want. It just might be disguised as something else. So that's one. The other is I find that people are not aware of their own detractors that might be in place. And so they think, I'm technically checking all the boxes. I'm doing everything I should. I'm doing the job well, yet I'm not getting the fill in the blank. Notice visibility, recognition, promotion.

I like to play the devil's advocate because most people don't have these conversations. They just get told what they want to hear or they get patted on the head. And I like to say, you know, maybe you're doing all the technical things. but there might be something about your persona, your attitude, your style that is detracting from your otherwise readiness for a role. And I could tell you so many stories of this being true and people I've mentored or people who've applied for jobs and companies that I've run or be a part of where they're saying, I did the time, I meet the qualifications and I would say, yes, but every time you talk to someone in the hallway, you're complaining. Who's going to want you on their team? Obviously, I defer to

the personal accountability side of approaches to things instead of the environmental approaches. So that's something I've done for myself, is evaluated, how am I perceived? What are the behaviors that I have that might be separate of being technically good, getting in the way? And if I really want to advance, then I'll address those behaviors. Next up is Todd Henry from Episode 143. His book The Accidental Creative, How to Be Brilliant at a moments notice was one of my favorite books that we reviewed and prepared for in the conversation. Again, you all loved this. Todd gives a lot of very practical advice. If he did not listen to that episode, one of my personal favorite conversations, I'll tell you that. But this is just a little

bit of Todd Henry. I spent a lot of my early years in the marketplace working with people who didn't consider themselves to be creatives. They, you know, were managers, they were entrepreneurs, they were leaders of various sorts, but they were privy to all the same pressures and dynamics that many of the quote unquote creatives that I worked with were dealing with. You know, the pressure of having to go to work every day, having to figure it out, having to solve problems. Many of the typical creatives that I worked with had some systems and some tools and some methods in their life to deal with some of those pressures, but many of the quote unquote accidental creatives that I encountered did not have those same tools and methods.

So I would pretty frequently tell them, well, you're a creative. You're just an accidental creative. You don't realize it, but you are because you have to solve problems every day. And that's essentially what creativity is all about. Every entrepreneur has to deal with finding white space, developing products, forming systems, leading in some capacity, delving into uncertainty on a daily basis. That's what we do. We resolve uncertainty as entrepreneurs. And that is a form of problem solving.

It requires the ability to draw from both broad and deep stimulus in your understanding. environment, pull those things together and form patterns and create solutions. The key to being prolific, brilliant, and healthy all at the same time and producing high amounts of work over a long period of time is to focus on building infrastructure into your life. It's just like in any business, if you want results, you have to build infrastructure. It's critically important that we figure out how we're going to allocate our finite attention so that we're spending our mental resources on the most important problems. One very simple practice that I've seen implemented to great success is what I call the big three. And that simply means winnowing down all of the problems you're trying

to solve. I mean, there are probably 50 problems that are weighing on you right now. Winnow those down to the top three problems that are most oppressing you, that are keeping you awake at night. Write them on an index card and keep them in front of you consistently. Keep them on your office wall, put them on a whiteboard, someplace where you're going to see them consistently. That way as you're going through your day, you're prompting your mind to be looking for potentially useful things in your environment to help you resolve those problems. So often the most important problems, they get lost in the fray because we're so busy and we're so distractible. So that's just a very, very simple but very effective way to allocate your focus to those very important problems. As leaders,

as entrepreneurs, we need to dedicate time on a consistent basis to, as Stephen Sample from USC calls it, communing with great minds, right, filling our minds with insoling our minds with, aspiring, challenging stimulus that's going to help us solve problems more effectively. And this doesn't just mean, by the way, going to the echo chamber that will reinforce what we already think. What it means is finding perspectives that might push our thinking, might push us to see the world in a different way, but it's going to help us think more systemically as we're approaching problems and perhaps begin to see opportunities where other people don't see them because they're not filling their mind with the same kind of stimuli. And as a leader, as a leader, as a

somebody who is accountable for being the visionary of your organization, you have to stay out in front. This isn't just a nice to have. This is a must have for you. You have to be filling your mind with things that other people in your organization don't have the time or the bandwidth to deal with so that you can stay out ahead of things, notice patterns, and effectively lead the organization where it needs to go. If you want to grow your mind, you have to plant seeds. The seeds of tomorrow's brilliance are planted in the soil of today's activity.

The seeds of tomorrow's brilliance are planted in the soil of today's activity. That begins right now. It begins with what you're putting in your mind, how you're cultivating the soil, how you're tending the seedlings. I think so many of us live in perpetual harvest mode. We just want to reap a harvest all the time, but we're not willing to stop the plant seeds to tend the seeds and to take care of it. Every once in a while you have a conversation with a guest and you sense their intensity

all the way through, you know, the technology on the other end. And Jock Willink was that guy, episode 154. All credit to Eric the producer telling me about Jocko Willink as well as John Falcons, our head coach at All Access for Ontario Leadership. They both put me on to this. And this guy is just amazing. He's a Navy SEAL, former Navy SEAL, and when you talk about a book called Extreme Ownership, it doesn't get any more personal, more leadership focused than that.

I really love talking to a true American hero. This is just a bit of our conversation. Well, obviously extreme ownership is an attitude. It's a mindset that you have where everything that you can control in your world and some things that you even can't control or barely control, you're going to take ownership of it all. And you're not going to cast blame on anybody else. You're not going to make any excuses about anything. And that is very difficult to do. This is the trait that we saw, not just in our unit and not just in other military units that we worked with not just the individuals, but the whole teams themselves have this attitude. And when we got

in the civilian sector, it's the same thing. When you see a leader and thereby you see a whole team that takes ownership of situations, that takes ownership of problems, that's when you end up with a successful team. As opposed to when you get a team where the leader and thereby the subordinate leadership and thereby the frontline troops, no one wants to take ownership of anything, No one wants to say, hey, this is, I'm the problem here and here's what I'm going to do to fix it. Instead, they say, I'm not the problem. And then the next person says, I'm not the problem either. And what you end up with is a whole team where nobody's going to take ownership of the problems and therefore nobody's going to solve the problems. Whereas when you have this attitude that you know what, this is my fault. And I'm going to fix this problem. And when you have that spread throughout your team, now you have an entire team where the whole team, instead of being excuse makers and blame passers, the whole team becomes. problems problem solvers. And that's the difference between an outstanding team that gets the job done and a marginal team that barely survives. And the thing that makes this so challenging is that if you don't believe in what you're doing, your entire team, both up and down the chain of command, is going to

recognize that. They're going to see that you don't believe in it. And when you don't believe in something, you just don't have the horsepower to make it happen. And therefore, your whole team is going to lack the horsepower and the will to make these things happen. But I think the piece of this chapter that catches most people off guard and is enlightening to them is the fact that I just don't talk about leading down the chain of command. We talk about leading up the chain of command. And that means that my boss is going to support me and give me what. I need and do the things that I need him to do for me, even though they might not think of it, even though they might not see what I need, I'm going to make sure they see what I need.

And you know, a really simple way to explain this is if I'm trying to get something done and my boss isn't giving me the training that I need or isn't giving me the support that I need or isn't giving me the gear that I need, whose fault is that? Whose fault is that? Guess what? It's my fault. I got to take ownership of that. And if my boss isn't giving me the support that I need or the training that I need or the gear that I need,

that's because I haven't educated my boss. That's because I haven't explained it to my boss well enough. That's because I haven't gone through the little bureaucratic steps and filling out the right paperwork so that I get the support that I need from my boss. I have to take ownership of that. Once I take ownership of that fact and now I start to re-educate my boss and I write him a better email and I explain to him what the cost is going to be. and I explain to him where the shortfalls are,

and I explain to him how this is going to help us in our mission set. That means my boss is going to give me what I need. And that is very simply leading up the chain of command and getting that support that you need from your boss. And you have to work hard to do this. Now, obviously it doesn't guarantee you're going to get everything you ever need from your boss because every business in the world and even in the military, there's asset limitations.

But at least you can explain to your guys why you don't have those aircrews. that there's other missions happening, that you are a lower priority, therefore we don't have aircraft tonight. And that way, your frontline troopers are looking at you saying, hey, our boss doesn't get it. Our boss doesn't understand that we need air support. No, here's the reason. Here's the answer. Our boss does support us.

I support us. Here's the reason. And they understand that. And then they can go out and execute the mission with a clean understanding that the whole team is involved and is engaged and does support what we're doing. just don't have all the assets that we need right now. I want you to talk to leaders about failure. We've been talking about belief, and you were so passionate there, and I think it was beautiful.

But let's stay there. You believe in the why, you come up with the how, and everyone on the team is completely committed to the mission. But for whatever reason, the mission does not succeed. That's got to be disheartening. Certainly when you're losing lives, if that's a factor. in business you're losing a lot of money maybe you lose key members but you're going hard after the mission and you fail despite best efforts at the time how did you respond to that as a leader because i think leaders listening in here they need to be encouraged on this what would you say to

them welcome to life yeah well of course welcome to life yeah right welcome to leadership Welcome to the burden of command because leadership is hard. And the missions, if you're doing anything worthwhile, the missions you're doing are going to be hard. And if you're winning every time, you're not going hard enough. You're not challenging yourself enough and you're not pushing your team hard enough. And so the fact of the matter is when I failed at a mission, I didn't look at it as, oh, now we're a disaster. No, when I failed, I'm going to learn from that. I'm going to get better.

I'm not going to get worse. I'm not going to fold. I'm not going to break. When I fail on a mission, we're going to take that. We're going to analyze it. We're going to look at the situation. We're going to say, good. Now we have mistakes that we won't make again.

Good. Now we know the way the enemy reacts to this situation. Good. Now we know what we need to train in order to be ready for this next time. So if I have a failure on an operation or a failure in a project that I'm trying to do, I'm going to say good. and I'm going to learn from it. And then I'm going to get better, and it's not going to happen again.

And so that's what failure is to me. Failure to me is a good opportunity to get better and improve. All right, folks, hopefully you did not get whiplash, but what we wanted to do was highlight that there's so much great content through our guests that we've been able to give you and through our Entree leadership team that we've been able to give you this year. And so as you should in your personal and professional life, Take a glance back here in these final days of 2016.

What did I learn? Where did I win? Where did I lose? Things like that. Those kind of questions as you take a look back on 2016 for the purposes of not dwelling on it, but looking to the future of 2017, which is right around the corner.

And hey, we appreciate you for being with us. I want to tell you about what I believe is going to be one of the great weeks of 2017 for our world. And we certainly would love to invite you. I've been telling you about it, but our Entree Leadership Summit, in my opinion, is one of the most unique events in the business space. When it comes to leadership and business principles, the Entree Leadership Summit on May 21 through 24 in Orlando, Florida is in a class by itself.

Now, we're going to have great speakers. We've been telling you about this. Robert Hershevik from Shark Tank is going to join us. Simon Sennick, John Maxwell, Pat Lynchioni, the legendary football coach Lou Holtz. Of course, Dave Ramsey, Chris Hogan, Christy Wright, and myself will be there as well. and we're going to give you a special offer. It's a pricey thing because it's worth it. And it's worth it big time.

In fact, this thing sells out. It's going to be our third one. And people rush to spend a lot of money because they know they're going to get results on this. So we're going to give you a $300 discount. That's how big of a deal this is, if you register by December the 30th. So you can get your seat and your discount

by going to entreleadership.com slash summit. Entrayleadership.com slash summit. We also have a link in this episode's show notes. We'd love to see you. They're going to be fun in Sunny Orlando, Florida. You only have five days to take advantage of this $300 discount. So go right now, entreleadership.com slash summit. Well, hey, we started out by thanking you.

And I want to thank our guest. I want to thank our entire team. And again, you, you, you, the listeners. You mean so much to us. So, hey, take advantage of all the tools. Go back and listen to some of these conversations. to get you set up to start fast and win big in 2017. On behalf of Eric the producer and the entire Entree leadership team,

thank you for listening. We'll talk with you again in 2017. Happy New Year.