EntreLeadership - #192: Scott Belsky—Making Ideas Happen

Episode Date: March 27, 2017

Scott Belsky, author of Making Ideas Happen and co-founder of Behance Inc., reveals his top tips for prioritizing your energy and keeping your team fired up while you’re in the trenches, fighting to make your dream a reality. Also on this episode, Brian Mayfield, Sr. Vice President of Ramsey Media, uncovers why the real work in sales begins after you’ve closed a deal. entreleadership.com/podcast Summit Event EntreLeadership "Sales Cheat Sheet" Infusionsoft's "Emails to Close a Sale" 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. We are broadcasting from the Music City, and this is the podcast of leaders by leaders for leaders. Thanks for joining the conversation. Our feature interview happens to be one of my favorite guys to interview in all the world. Bright thinker, great writer. He is truly a master entrepreneur.

His name is Scott Belski. offer the book Making Ideas happen. Also, we go in-house to share some great sales conversation with you that will help you. He is Brian Mayfield, our senior vice president, that oversees Ramsey Media. Hello, that includes

the third largest radio show in America, the Dave Ramsey Show. We also have our amazing March resources for you from our Entree leadership team and InfusionSoft. Well, folks, this is exciting because my guest's studio is not just a Ramsey leader. He is a senior vice president of Ramsey Media, Brian Mayfield. And when you say Ramsey Media, folks, I need you to understand that we're talking

about the third largest radio show in America. That's a big deal. Brian Mayfield, good to have you in here, buddy. Thanks, Ken. Good to be here. All right, so let's give these folks, because you are a sales guy. I mean, like, you may not fit the prototype. These are your own words, but you are a sales guy. So let's give them a snapshot. How long you've been in sales specifically? About 25 years. 25 years. You don't even look that old. You're holding up well. Well, thank you for that. All right. Now, how long with Dave?

I've been here almost eight years now. Okay. So when you came to Ramsey Solutions almost eight years ago, where were you at? What industry were you in radio? No, I came out of the television engine. Interesting. What kind of, was it, easy parallel? Media as a whole, there's a lot of similarities, but there's a lot of difference when you get into radio.

What's constant is the customer. Okay. I like that. All right, so that's where we're going to start. So we were talking several days. ago and we were talking about this conversation and helping salespeople. And one of the things you do many times for our Entree Master's series, you'll come in and spend some of your time mentoring our attendees. So some of the things we're going to cover today you're always talking about. And one of the things that you said that stuck out to me and I want to start with is you said that the real work is not the process of finding a lead, pursuing the lead, closing the lead. You say the real work begins when you sign on the bottom lines. When you close the deal, salespeople, Brian, you're saying, and the real work begins there. What do you mean?

What does that look like? Well, I don't want to diminish the amount of work that's required to get to it. There's a lot of work required, and a lot of people are really good at that. But what they miss is how important relationships are. And you can't start building a relationship until you establish a relationship. That establishment really begins at the point that you both say, I trust you. Right. Okay, that's when you close a deal.

Okay, I believe what you have. I believe it's going to be good for me and you're going to deliver, then you start working on that relationship. Because if you don't, you're going to find yourself replacing a lot of things. And this is a temptation for salespeople. I used to be in sales. There's a certain thrill. I know salespeople are listening right now. They know exactly what we're talking about. There's a thrill when you close the deal. And then you're kind of moving on to the next one. And that is a real temptation. If you're not careful with that, what you're saying is you're going to be constantly replacing those same people you just closed because you didn't build the relationship. Oh, no question about it. I mean, I hope you enjoy negotiating because you're going to do a lot of it. I mean, that's what I, I really, that's where I get

jacked. I love that part of the deal. I love the negotiation, but where you get your fulfillment and where you basically get your paycheck from, that comes from, did I do what I said I was going to do? Am I under-promising and over-delivering? Am I giving them what they expected and then some, and better yet, when I call them back to renew it, how quickly are they going to jump on it? Oh, you just said a word I want to laser focus on renew. So what you're telling us is you'd rather renew clients instead of constantly be replacing them. Oh, no question about it. I mean, you're going to find yourself just constantly digging the same hole and you're not going to get any deeper.

If you don't learn to renew a client, you're going to work yourself to death for the same amount of money. And that's the key to building. You cannot build your sales business or your business period. If you're not renewing, then you stack new people on top of that. Oh, absolutely. That's how you grow your business, how you grow your paycheck, and it's how you grow your position. One of the things that I want you to talk about is the idea that closing a deal is not a transaction. It's much more than that. And sometimes people get into a position, Brian, where they're selling, and they're just trying to close the deal. And it's not closing, and there's a natural frustration there. What's happening?

Well, in a lot of instances, I find that they are coming from a position of fear. Okay, I've got to close this. If I don't, I'm going to lose my job. If I don't, I'm not going to be able to make payroll. If I don't, I'm not going to be able to feed my family. It's just a constant position of fear. You can't negotiate from that kind of position. You have to be confident that what you're delivering is what your client needs. If you're negotiating from a position of fear, your potential client is going to pick up on that initially, and you're going to find yourself at a disadvantage. When you're in a negotiation, one of the two of you are going to be in charge. And it's always going to be me. Okay? I've got to be so confident in what I'm selling that if you tell me no, there's actually a part of me that feels I've failed at explaining to you what you need to know about my product. Yeah, see, now that's really good. Does that confidence come from you, Brian, because you've gone into this thing ahead of time,

doing your homework, and your whole purpose of that conversation is explaining to that potential customer why they need what you're giving them. It comes from being associated with a product that I believe in. Yeah. You know, when they hear from me that this is what they need, it's either going to be genuine or disingenuine, okay? And I truly believe in what I take to the market is good for the person on the other end. I've done my homework. Not everyone is a good fit for what I have.

So I spend the time, you know, I spend the time finding the right pieces, connecting the right eyes. If I got a no, Brian, and I'm working for you, and you're my sales leader, and I got a no, and I came to you and I said, Brian, I did, I thought I did everything. I did this. I did that. I did this. And they just said no and they've said no a couple of times. What is my leader, what are you going to say to me? What are you going to ask me? Or what should we be asking ourselves when we get a no? Well, the first thing I'm going to say is no just simply means not yet. I like that. You know, I mean, you're going to have a lot of nos. And you can take a position of, is it going to knock me down or am I one? No, no closer to a yes. It's just, we're wired differently. Okay, people do not like rejection. Nobody likes rejection, but I also don't like failure. So let's just evaluate where the no was coming from, and let's go back again. And I will push my salespeople to get three noes before a walk away. Wow. You know, I mean, you're not going to get it right every time. You just do the best you can. And sometimes it's not a fit, but if you leave on the first no, you're going to work yourself today. That's good. All right, two things you said there. One, you just mentioned walk away. You said you want three nos before your team walks away. And you were talking about fear earlier. And that leads to something you talked about a few minutes ago, which is negotiation. So the walk away, the power to say, all right, it doesn't matter if I may not hit my projection. I'm not worried about food on the table. You're kind of just saying, look, I've got to walk away. Why is that so powerful? And what does that do for the salesperson themselves? And then I'm wondering, what does it do when you walk away?

from a client? What's their reaction to that? Well, you know, there's a lot of things. I was taught a long time ago that if you're not willing to walk away from a deal, you're in no position to negotiate for it. Okay. That doesn't mean you take a stance of arrogance. There's a lot of humility that comes with that. But if I've done my homework and I have convinced myself that this person that I'm having a conversation with is perfect for my product, okay? I'm in a great place there. So I'm going to I'm going to state my case. I'm going to give them my why, and I'm going to tell them why they need what I have for them. And if we reach a point to where they're just simply trying to negotiate for a better price, or they're just being ridiculous in some cases, I'm in a position

to where I can go, you know what, I've done everything I can do, okay? At this point, I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree, and I'm going to walk away from the deal, because I know that I've done everything that I could possibly do. But you do reach a point. There's a difference between give away and walk away. You know, I'm not going to give this to you. There's a lot of value in this deal, okay? I feel that I am priced right.

I am confident that this is a good deal for you. I know that I'm going to deliver 4x, 5x over what you're going to pay for this. This is not transactional. It's not a $10 product for $10 in cash. Right. Okay. I have priced it right. I have positioned it right.

I have done my homework the right way. If you don't see the value in this, I may have failed in position in it, but if I feel I've done everything I can do, then we're going to reach a point to where I will walk away because there is someone that will see that value. And when I find the person that sees the value, I can start to build the relationship and I can have a long-term relationship with lots of renewals and rate increases, and we're just all winning and making money together. All right.

We've been talking about some sales philosophy. be some tactics and practical things. Before I let you go, you are at the top leadership position for our Ramsey Media Division, and you're leading an amazing sales team. They're selling on multiple platforms. I want you to speak to leaders, specifically your advice on how they should break in or mentor young salespeople, because I think that would be a pain point for a lot of our listeners. So what would you say to them? They got a brand new salesperson. How do they break them in, Brian, and get them ready? Well, breaking in is one thing. Hiring is a other. You know, one of the things that you have to be careful about as a sales leader, and one of the things you have to find comfort in is do not be afraid to hire people that are different from you. Another lesson I was taught early on. If you hire a bunch of sellers that think and act just like you, you're going to have a bunch of you, and worse yet, you're going to be limited to you. You know, hire people that are different, hire different skill sets. I, on my sales team, I have some that are good with sponsorships. I

have some that are good with agencies, and I have others that are good with direct relationship, direct calling, cold calling. Surround yourself with a lot of different people, okay? And then allow them to fail. Brow beating does not work. Challenging. I may challenge you. I may, if I see the potential in you, I'm not going to let you slack off.

I'm going to hold you accountable. I'm going to challenge you. I may even come in and get alongside you and just go, are you doing this? Are you doing that? But lead by examples. don't ever ask your sellers to do something that you wouldn't do yourself. You know, don't hold them to the impossible. Praise them when they do well, but get them right back to work.

Folks, that's not philosophy. That's real practical stuff that Brian does on a day-to-day basis, and we have an amazing team. The numbers do not lie. He's Brian Mayfield, our senior vice president of Ramsey Media, and hey, man, this was fun. You're always over there selling, and we rarely get you in the studio. I know that you've got a lot going on,

and we appreciate you hanging out with us. Thanks for having again. Hey, folks, before we move on, remember we have two great resources coming to you from Entree Leadership this month. It is the super-selling cheat sheet. A lot of people are taking us up on that, free downloads. So go get it, the super-selling cheat sheet. You can get that by texting EL Sales, EL Sales, to 33444. That's 33444. We also have a link in this episode's show notes at Entreeleadership.com. Don't forget, infusion us off bringing you an amazing template, 10 types of emails.

They're all templates, all the work done for you, to help you sell and close. You can go get that at infusionsoft.com slash 10 emails. Infusionsoft.com slash 10 emails. In less than two months, the Entree Leadership Summit will be upon us. It's going to be an unbelievable event.

We send our entire leadership team to this event, and this is an event more for teams. Now, our Master Series events are more for the leader, right? the maybe the CEO, the CEO, top of leadership. But this becomes a great leadership and team event. It's a great reward. We talk to people all the time that are bringing large groups as they are rewarding their team and you're going to grow, grow, grow.

The speakers are Dave Ramsey, Simon Sinek, Robert Hershevik from Shark Tank, John Maxwell, legendary coach Lou Holtz, leadership writer, and I think one of the best teachers in America, Patrick Lenscioni, all joining Dave Ramsey, as I said, and of course Chris Hogan and Christy Wright from our team to get a seat and a special discount. Text Summit 17. Summit 17, text 33444. That's 33444. I've had the opportunity to interview Scott Belski many times and wanted to go back because he's new to this podcast. You may have heard of him and his work. We've never had him on this podcast, and I had the privilege of interview many, many years ago. And I think Scott's one of the great thinkers in America, very diverse background, co-founded

companies that are event-driven, and then of course entrepreneurial, I think, like, I'd call them think tanks online. And the guy is always thinking he is somebody that's going to challenge you. And I promise you're going to love this conversation. Get ready to learn. Here is Scott Belski. Well, Scott, it's a treat to talk with you again. And I know you're always up to something helping people make ideas happen.

Behands, 99% of me, you're always into things. And so before we dive into some of the ideas that I'm really excited you sharing with our audience, give us a snapshot of what Scott Belski's up to these days. Always too many things, but always learning. My passion is still to help creative people and teams execute. I've certainly taken a shift towards entrepreneurs who are artists in their own right, people who have an idea and they embark on a journey. And one of the things I'm thinking a lot about these days as both an investor,

entrepreneur myself, is the messy middle. We love talking about the starts. and finishes of every journey, whether it's the romanticism of the start, quitting your job, starting something new, taking a risk in your career. And we love talking about the finish. The press loves talking about IPOs and acquisitions. The press also loves talking about bankruptcies and failures. But it's the middle that matters. How do you endure anonymity and the craziness of not knowing where you're going and how long it's going to take? How do you optimize what works to become a better business or a better team or a better worker yourself? So

That's some of the stuff I'm thinking about these days, but I'm happy to talk to you about whatever. Yeah, well, so I want to stay here because we'll get to some of the great content for making ideas happen, but I think this is great for our audience. We have an audience of entrepreneurs who certainly understand where you're coming from, high achievers, people who are passionate about getting something done. And when I heard that term, the phrase, the messy middle that you just introduced, I thought, oh, that's so rich because think about it, people who are going after something. We're always thinking about the start because we can't wait to get started. And of course we're visualizing or romanticizing that glorious finish, right, when we reach the pinnacle. And to your point, it all happens in the messy middle. And that's where we overlook so much.

We don't reserve energy, the emotion necessary to get through that. So help us. Where are you going with that? What kinds of things are you developing, helping leaders and entrepreneurs think how to manage, mitigate, and get through that messy middle so that we can be triumphant? Well, I think one of the things to think about is the myth that having that great visualization of what that end might be is enough to keep you motivated and to keep you moving. Because the truth is that that's enough to get you started to make you take a risk maybe

or spend a couple of weeks jumping into something. But that fades quickly. And what takes over is what we've always had from the very beginning of our lives, which is this desire to get love and gratification. and the check on the test and the grade in the course and the salary and the bonus. I mean, these are the short-term rewards that we are hardwired to work around and to be motivated by. And, I mean, I remember one of the greatest quotes from one of our 99 U conferences that Fred Wilson, the investor in New York once said was, the two biggest addictions are heroin and a weekly salary.

and when you unplug yourself from this series of short-term rewards that you've been using all your life, you and your team can't survive on that long-term vision for too long. You actually have to hack your own reward system to have the short-term rewards there when they aren't really there. So in some ways, you're fabricating them. You're figuring out a way to merchandise progress to your team so they feel like they're making progress and keep making progress. you're celebrating things just to keep people motivated and engaged.

I remember one of the stories in the early days of Behance was whenever you typed in Behance into Google, it always said, do you mean Enhance? And so I said to the team, my goodness, we're a mistake. And maybe, maybe, you know, I don't know when we're going to start making money or when we're going to have millions of members or whatever. But in the near term, let's just try not to be a mistake anymore. Let's build enough portfolios for creatives and our product. Let's put enough blog posts out there. And to the point where someday, and it happened a year later, you type into Google Behance, and it says Behance.

And it worked. And then you know what? A year later, Beyonce became really popular, and we were a mistake again. Oh, wow. So it's one of those things. It's just an example of making sure that you short-circuit your own and your team's reward systems and to find a way to just keep people motivated in the near term to make progress. Yeah, so let me ask you this.

As a leader, as we were casting vision on the front end, whether it's for ourselves, for that leadership circle around us and then the greater team, what do you think is effective in addressing the idea that, hey, folks, there's going to be a messy middle. We don't know how messy it's going to be, but I just want you to know it's coming. So obviously what you just addressed, I think, is kind of a, as we go, we need to constantly be short-circuiting. But what do you think is valuable on the front end to discuss the messy middle alongside of the big vision? I think it's a great question.

And this is why, by the way, a lot of experienced teams who come together again for their second venture are much more likely to succeed. Because they've developed the muscle memory and the tolerance of the ambiguity, the anonymity. and they know that when they're in that project plateau, as I like to call it, they know that there's an end. They know that they're kind of flying blind for a while, but that they're going somewhere. And when your team has not gone through it before, as the leader, even if you haven't gone through it before,

your job is to merchandise progress. And I say that again because we typically believe that our team knows that they're making progress or that we don't have to say it. And when we feel like we're selling it to, them. We feel almost dirty like we're trying to market something to our team and why should we have to do that. But the truth is, is the leader is the storyteller. The leader needs to repeat things at nauseam. And when you feel like you're repeating yourself again and again and again, you're doing your job, especially as new people join your team or people start to gain doubt

a few months later and they have to be reminded again, why are we doing this? What is the progress we're making? What do we keep needing to do? And yes, it's going to be tough. sometimes. No one else understands what we're doing. Your parents are telling you to get a real job. Your wife or husband's telling you to get a real job, but we're going to stick with it. It's part of the narrative. Yeah. Boy, that's really good, the messy middle. I mean, that's where great organizations are formed. I mean, they forged through that time. And then we go, oh, where did these people come from? It is all that matters. You know what? And it's also something that most entrepreneurs, when they reshare their stories at the end of their journey, they don't talk about it. I think it's because

they don't even want to remember it. Who wants to remember sleepless nights and endless months where they were just kind of surfing the unknown and making no momentum in behance. They were five years where we were bootstrapped as a business before we became venture backed and then a few years later we were acquired. And when I get introduced at conferences, they say, oh yeah, bootstrap for five years and then venture backed and then acquired. And I always want to be like, wait a second, hold on, bootstrap for five years? Like, let's talk about that. Um, How does a company survive for five years, hand to mouth, where people are not making the money that they feel they should be making?

People are all making a sacrifice. There were some lost years in our journey that we never like to talk about because we kind of want to forget them. So I think it's an important conversation to have. And it's because every small business entrepreneur or leader deals with the messy middle and wonders how to get through it. Absolutely. And I don't want to leave this yet.

One more question on this, because you've given us the phrase, I think you said, merchandising progress. Did I say that right? Yeah. And so I think I get that. But I think there's a lot of people listening in right now and they're going, Scott, that is exactly where we're at. Everybody is sacrificing. Our friends and family think we're nuts. We still believe this thing is worth pursuing. We believe we're coming through the clouds soon. Just one more question on that to practically speak to the heart and the mind of a leader who's exactly where you just described. How do they merchandise progress specifically? How do they keep the those hearts and minds of those who are true believers where they need to be?

In one word, design. And let me explain. Oftentimes, this means putting graphics up on your wall in your office or around your team or for yourself that shows, okay, this quarter is about this, this quarter is about this, this quarter is about this. Having this tucked away in a business plan does nothing for you. It needs to be visual. It needs to be in front of you.

And it needs to be in front of your team. It's like marketing. How does a company get you to buy stuff? It puts up billboards. It gives you commercials. It puts things in the newspaper. And as you see it again and again, you end up taking an action in this action. In that case, would be buying something.

The action that I'm talking about is moving your business forward, is staying engaged, staying on the execution of tasks and getting the feedback from your early customers or testers or whatever the case may be, your patrons. It's really about using the power of design to put the progress you're making and the things you have to do next in front of you and to reiterate those things again and again again to yourself and your team. It's just so funny to me how many teams make a great plan, but then they tuck it away and everyone just does their work every day and comes to work and goes home. The narrative needs to be replayed and retold and illustrated. Folks, I'm telling you that's a masterclass

right there. Really good stuff. Okay. Now, folks, I'm going to, you know, I love to take you through books and I like to pop around on my own personal notes. Now, I've had the privilege to interview Scott before in his book Making Ideas Happen. If it's new to you, run, get it, digest it, live it out. I'm going to pop through a couple sections in specific chapters. I want to go to a concept that you introduced, this idea of an energy line. And this is in the idea of prioritization. So, you know, how do we prioritize? Because we get, you know, people right now, they're going, oh, my word, my day is just jam packed. A lot of people pulling at me. I got people pain points over here. but as the leader, I've really got to prioritize my time.

That's a huge amount of tension, Scott. You know that. So explain that energy line because I think it's really an effective model. Well, when I bring the concept of the energy line, and it will mean something different to everyone who's listening. But what I'm talking about is prioritization. You have all these different projects in your life, both personal and professional.

And every day, you need to determine how to allocate your energy across them. Now, I say energy and not time because your energy at the beginning of the day is worth a lot more and has more potent than your energy at the end of the day. So rather than think of it in time, think of it in energy. Where should you spend your energy and for how long? So imagine taking every project in your life that I just mentioned personal and professional and putting them along the line that starts at idle and then goes low, medium, high, all the way to urgent or extreme.

And so you place those projects along your energy line, and then you look at it. And so here's when I do this exercise with teams, and I've done it many times before, here's what I end up seeing. As an individual, people put too many things on medium, high, and extreme, and very few things on low and idle. And that's the equivalent of starting a computer up, opening every application at once, and then wondering why it's so darn slow. Your RAM can only process so many things at once. And so the first challenge is to determine, okay, which things am I willing to fall behind on in order to be ahead or on deadline on other things?

And those are the things that should be on low and idle in exchange for the things that are medium, high, and extreme, which are the things that you need to either make or beat a deadline on. And you have to force yourself to put some stuff on idle and to put some stuff on low. And it's just a reality, right? And I think you should do this across your professional and personal projects because the truth is is that they all eat away at your energy. Your energy is indiscriminate. It will just be allocated wherever you put it. Now the second thing I would say is when I do this with teams and people compare their energy lines with each other, they start to debate. How could you put that on extreme?

That's certainly less important than this one. Or how could you put that on low or idle? That's something we need to get done this quarter. That can't be there. And these debates are really healthy because you're trying to do, as you debate it out, you're arming people with ammunition for making decisions on an everyday level. If we as a leader, if you as a leader, if I as a leader, tell the team, okay, here's where things lie in the energy line.

We're not being too optimistic in terms of putting too many things on high and extreme. This is what we've all agreed on as a team. Then later, people should be able to miss the deadline on the low and idle, as long as they've exceeded the expectations on the high and extreme stuff. And so it's an important exercise to do to equip your team to make real-time decisions with their energy. Yeah, that's really good because there's a great personal application of that, but also a great team application.

What have you seen happen when a team, and I'm just making this up, let's say it's a team of 12 to 15 and they're obviously, maybe they're developing an app or something like that, and they're all working, obviously, individually, but collectively, this concept, when they really get it, it does give tremendous freedom, doesn't it, to really focus on the most important things? I think that alignment is one of the most beautiful things that happens in the early stage of a team. When everyone comes together for the right reason, everyone's sitting in the room next to each other, everything's audible and natural, but this is not scalable. In reality, people fall out of misalignment because you grow. People work in different places. They have different

interest or incentives. And it's sort of crude to say, but I've always felt like process is the excretion of misalignment. It's when people, it's when people fall misaligned that you have to layer on process to solve it. So if we're not all working towards the same end and we're not all working as hard as possible, that's when you need to introduce the idea of deadlines and Monday morning check-in meetings and other systems and processes for accountability. So I always always like to tell teams when they first start out and they're both fully engaged and incentivized and aligned, I tell them, don't worry about process yet. You don't want to until you have to. Trust me. Right. But when you start to feel like people become misaligned and energy is not going in the right places,

you know, that's when you have to start layering in some process to solve the problem. Okay, folks, jumping ahead in the book, making ideas happen. The conversation leads beautifully to this, this concept of mental loyalty, maintaining attention and resolve. Talk to us about what that looks like and how important that is. Well, I think this is really about the creative's tendency to move on from thing to thing to thing. That's what motivates us. We get so energized when we come up with something new. It stimulates all this, you know, this dopamine response in our body and we're willing to do crazy things when we have a new idea. But then when you enter that project plateau, the doldrums of project management, it is very seductive to just come up with a new idea and then a new idea.

And that's why they're more half-written novels in the world than there are novels. And so you need to figure out ways to keep yourself engaged with one idea long enough to push it to fruition. I like to call it the creatives compromise. It's like a compromising an aspect of your very essence in exchange for giving your idea the nurturing and the nutrients that it needs. It's sort of like with the art of bonsai cultivation. You're always cutting off the nicest, newest leaves and branches in order to let the main stem become bigger and healthier. Writers call it killing your darlings.

You know, you're killing all these wonderful little plot points and characters and sentences in exchange for making the core plot and the core plot and the, core message have more integrity. And so it's an important thing that we do, you know, to maintain our attention to stay loyal to one idea long enough to give it a chance of happening. Now, folks, I want to give you this. In the book, Making Ideas Happen, there's three main components, if you will, or ingredients to making an idea happen. Organization and execution is how he lays it out, and then there's several chapters under that. Two, the forces of community, three, leadership capabilities. So diving into this idea of the

of community. Yep. You challenge us in the book to harness the forces around us and then push those ideas out to your community. Let's focus in on this idea of harnessing the forces around you. It is my observation, certainly with this tribe of people, a large tribe of entree leaders, that this is something we can overlook very easily. You know, it's like you get the blinders on and you're beating your head against the wall

because sometimes we just don't even see the forces, so therefore we can't even harness them. So how do we observe the right forces and then harness them? Well, the core realization here is, first of all, that you can't do it alone. The idea of the lone creative genius is a myth. It takes a lot of people around you to hold you accountable, to give you the feedback to the force of competition, which we can talk about if you'd like, you know, is really important. And a lot of, especially people I meet in social enterprise or religious organizations who say,

hey, you know, there's no nature of competition in my world. You know, this is all for the greater good of society and humankind. No, you're wrong. Your competition is actually an incredible force towards execution. And if you're not pacing yourself with people around you, you're not going to execute as well as you could. And so all of these forces, you know, play in and we can talk about them. But I'll just start by saying, I like to call them the doers and the dreamers. The dreamers are the ones who go to bed at night so excited when they can add something new the next day, when they can bring up a new idea to their colleagues about a new partnership or a new thing we can do before this deadline or before this conference or before this. And, you know, that's the dreamers mecca when they can go to bed

at night excited about a new thing to share with their colleagues. The doers, on the other hand, are like the Debbie Downers of the world. You know, the doers go to bed at night happy when there is no new surprise, nothing new in the pipeline. Everything is on budget and on plan and on track. as expected. And so you can imagine the doers and the dreamers, you can go at it sometimes. It's important for all of us, whatever we're mode we're in as a doer or a dreamer, to round ourselves off with people with the opposite tendency. That's just part of the realization that even though your tendency as a dreamer is to hire other dreamers or to hang out with other dreamers, we need to not only hire and engage, but also empower people with the opposite tendency because that's what keeps the healthy immune system

of a team. You've got to kill off the new stuff in order to stay loyal, as we were discussing, to the one thing you want to really accomplish. One of the big thoughts I think that I just want you to share on, and folks, you need to get the book and dive deeper. We can't even touch it all. It's so brilliant. But Scott, you say communal forces, this is what you write in the book. Communal forces are best channeled in circles. I think this is a very helpful concept. Can you unpack that? Yeah. I mean, the idea of circles came out of some of the research I was doing around very productive and prolific writers who talked about these writing circles where they would go to. And sometimes they wouldn't even get good feedback from other writers.

Everyone was sort of too focused on their own work. However, the accountability of, I need another chapter done by next Thursday, because I'm getting together in my writers group, was a really important part of these people's careers. And so even experienced writers were joining writers groups for the sole purpose. of having this repeated sense of accountability. We all need a circle of sorts that we can rely on, that holds us accountable. Some entrepreneurs that I know have their personal advisory boards, they call them. Even before they know what company they're going to start, they have small groups of people

that they go do, that they're transparent with, they share ideas liberally, they're not trying to be secretive. They recognize that the benefit of sharing your, ideas really early exceeds the cost. There's a strange notion out there that someone who hears your idea can so easily steal it and replicate it better than you. Well, if that's the case, then you shouldn't be doing in the first place. It wasn't scalable and it wasn't differentiated enough to matter. So the tendency to share ideas is important. It gives you that accountability, feedback. It also connects dots for you. Sometimes people will say, oh, you're working on that.

You should talk to this designer I know who just left his job or her job and has the same interest. You guys should get together. Sometimes these circumstantial meetings and conversations make all the difference in a business or a product or a movement. I want to jump ahead because there's some other stuff I want to get Scott to weigh in for you that I think was really valuable. But last piece of conversation from the book making ideas happen, you give some great stuff on self-leadership towards the end of the book. and I'm going to cut a skip ahead here, folks, and lead Scott somewhere. One of the challenges you tell us is, obviously, we have to find a path to self-awareness. And I think this is huge.

So many headstrong entrepreneurial type leaders sometimes are completely, they're like the horse in the Kentucky Derby with the blinders on. You know what I mean? They can only see forward, and they're bumping into everybody and back and forth and all anybody, you know, all the leader sees, Scott, is the finish line. And all everybody else sees is a horse's butt, you know? I mean, just bump it into everybody. It's just, it's tragic. So I want you to touch on the self-awareness, and then in the book, you actually say self-awareness leads us to develop a tolerance for ambiguity. I'm smashing those two together, and one question just let you go, because you tie them together so well in the book. And I also think this is, this is equally a huge muscle that

entrepreneurs and vision casters need to learn, this tolerance for ambiguity. It's so hard, but it's so necessary to stay the course, isn't it? It is. So let me talk about both of those things. I'd start by saying that I really, really believe that self-awareness is a competitive advantage in business. And the reason, the proof point I have for that is that once anything is working and you start to feel like you are right and that you've made good decisions and you must be so smart and people that are giving you feedback are suddenly more likely to be wrong than right. This is when kind of power corrupts, right? This is when success starts to backfire, when your competitors start to outpace you because they're still questioning the status quo, whereas you think that you figured it out and that you

know what you're supposed to do and what is now the new status quo is the right path, it's really being able to take a step back and be aware when you're wrong, when suddenly, the assumptions you had that we're right are now wrong, when the playbook has changed, the playbook always changes. And that's the reason why small companies have a chance, because big companies aren't able to change their playbook, because they aren't self-aware enough to realize. And some of the best companies in the world that have endured have done so by competing with themselves. You know, Steve Jobs was always famous for talking about how he was happy that the iPod was going to be cannibalized with the iPhone and, you know,

and the laptop would be cannibalized by the iPad. It's, this is the way we need to be thinking and we need to be aware of our faults and willing to question things that we once thought were right. So self-awareness is a competitive advantage. That's why I think the personal pursuit of self-awareness and of psychological growth really enables you to, uh, to do wonderful things, you know, throughout. Hey, Scott. Yep.

Let me interrupt you on that because I think you're right. What if, if all of our listeners could sit with you for a cup of coffee and they said, okay, Scott, what can I do? What would you recommend practically so that I become extremely self-aware? What would you tell them? What are some practical thoughts you'd say, hey, do this, try this. I'm just curious what you would say. I would say that everyone needs to invest in coaching like relationships, you know, whether it's a psychologist or a, you know, a group you join, or whether it's a coach that you employ, or whether it's a mentor that you're really open to, that you really respect, that can challenge you and challenge the way you're thinking.

these sorts of relationships matter. It's also important to play your own contrarian. I always try, whenever I get aggravated by somebody or a situation, or I think that someone in business did something wrong, rather than just harp on the fact that they're wrong and I'm right, or they're annoying and I'm annoyed, I really always try to play the other point. Like, why do I think I'm annoyed by them?

Like, what is it that they did that is putting me off, here. Is it something I'm insecure about? Is it something that I'm afraid of? Like, I really try to scrape away at the reactions that I'm having. And sometimes even when I find something, I'll still retreat to the, oh, but I'm still pissed. But still, the process that I went through is what is building my own level of self-awareness. And so these are things you must do with yourself, but also you should engage other people to help you do them. That's good. Okay, I interrupted you, And you were transitioning into this idea of developing a tolerance for ambiguity. So I'm giving it back to you.

Yes. Well, let's talk about that because I'm sure everyone that's listening right now, especially if they are starting organizations or starting new teams or giving birth to new companies, all of us share something, which is that we have a part of our brain that is constantly processing uncertainty. It is one of the greatest costs of being a creator, you know, of being a make. is constantly processing uncertainty. And let's just be honest, that means that we will never be fully present in our lives with anyone.

It's sort of sad, and it's true. And you can do your best of compartmental eyes when you're at a child's soccer game or when you're, you know, with your spouse or whatever. But the truth is, is that you're constantly processing this uncertainty in the back of your brain because you're doing something that is bold. It has a headwind and not a tailwind. you know, it's sort of shunning the status quo to some degree because anything new does, because, you know, society kind of extinguishes new ideas. That's how it keeps the water running.

And so how do you become comfortable with this notion of constantly processing uncertainty and constantly crunching ambiguity to try to figure out what's really going on, what should I try next, why isn't this working? I think it's about accepting it to start with. You know, let's not pretend that we are above it. let's accept it. Let's at times compartmentalize the things we're having in our personal lives and let's try to be present as much as possible. But you just kind of have to accept part of the cost and then figure out ways to kind of taper it. When is it consuming 50% of your RAM and your brain? And when is it consuming only 5 or 10%? This is so good, folks. It reminds me of a conversation I had with Jim Collins on a podcast once where I asked him about that. And he said, and I think you probably agree,

that people are more afraid of ambiguity than they are something that they actually know is extremely risky. So if you know, maybe let's say you're going to, I don't know, go whitewater rafting or something. You know that the risk is you could break something, obviously bruise something, but this idea of going into a deep, dark cave where you have no idea what's in front of me, that's more terrifying. And that's the thing here and the great thought that you're leaving with is Scott. So let me ask you this. I mean, you've adventured a lot. I mean, you've been out there. You've been on the end of very high diving boards.

how do you personally, I mean, you gave us some great concepts, but what are some things you do when it begins to just creep up and the chest tightens because you go, oh, my word, this ambiguity is frightening. Well, I really think that part of it is short-circuiting your own reward system, which you talked about earlier, and making sure that your team and yourself, you know, you're focused on short-term milestones, incremental moves. I always also believe that every step you take towards,

something you're genuinely interested in will lead you to a good place. It's this wild, wild belief that I have that I've never seen violated, which is that a labor of love always pays off. Just not how you'd expect. I have seen many people take a job for more money or take a job because they believe it's the job they have to take in order to get another opportunity later on. That ends in a bad place. But I have never seen someone pursue something that they truly, truly love, despite the fear and the uncertainty and the ambiguity and did not end in a good place. Many of them didn't end where they thought they would, and their labor of love introduced them to someone who introduced them to someone else, who led them to something else and whatever.

I just think that that's one of those convictions, those core convictions that you need when you're embarking on this kind of unknown journey with this unknown outcome. You're dealing with ambiguity and self-doubt and whatever. It just needs to be in an area that you are insatiably, interested in. And you have to be able to be comfortable taking incremental steps. Yeah, and that helps us keep our mind on that incremental step and not on this big grand unknown. That's really good. And I love the analogy of, you know, driving in a car with headlights at midnight. And, you know, you don't see any more than 100 feet in front of you, but you know

that if you keep going, you'll get there. And that's really what it's all about. Oh, that's good, folks. Somebody needs to use that this week and a team meeting, because that's goal. I like that. All right, Scott, I'm going to, this is a little bit of, I'm going to jump out of the book, folks, and again, just a quick thing here, you need to get making ideas. I'm telling you this book, making ideas happen is phenomenal. I've known about it for years. This is not a new concept or a new conversation, but I'm so glad that we've brought Scott to you, and I really want you to get the book and make it come alive in your organization. Now, Scott, obviously, is a great thinker. I'm also going to tell you, I think you need to be following him on social media. I was just playing around. I was just playing around. this morning, Scott, very early in the morning, it was still dark. And I thought, well, let me see what Scott's up to on Twitter, get some, maybe some interesting thoughts for the conversation today. And I'm going to focus in on the tweet he has at the top of his Twitter feed. And by the way, it's at Scott Belski, very simple.

And you've pinned this tweet. And it's your thoughts on accommodating new types of new years. But here's the real breakthrough, I think. And it's got a visual with it called the Product Lifecycle. Now, I'm going to read this to you, folks. But for those of you out there, and it's a lot of you that are building a business, building a service product, this is a huge temptation that Scott really destroys. So here's what he says. I'm going to read it to you, and then Scott, you expound on it.

It's called the product lifecycle. And he basically says, users flock to simple product. Product takes users for granted and adds features to satisfy the power of users, right? The evangelist, oh, we want more. feel the stress to do that. And then, this is the payoff, users flock to simple product. In other words, they flock to another simple product. This is a massive temptation, Scott. Great observation. Expound on that thought. That's a lot. Well, it's a, you know, it's a paradox of product success, which is that as you focus on power users more and as you try to serve your customers better,

as you succeed, you take your eye off of new users. Now, it's also important to note that the customers that come to your product first are different than the new customers that will come to your product later. So let's say you figure out how to engage new customers using your product. The example I like to use is the onboarding process for a new digital product. Imagine a new app. You know, and the onboarding is the first few screens that you go through that kind of get you into the product and get you signed up and whatever. If you get that right for, and then you launch a product and it does really well,

the tendency of a team is to never go back and look at it again. But what they're forgetting is that the people that use a brand new product are different than the new people to a product that's been around for a long time. And so you need to actually redo that onboarding. You have to rethink the way you engage people. You have to even simplify it even further. And so part of this is about keeping some emphasis. and some energy always on the new user experience,

even as, especially as new users change. And then the second point here, you know, is that simple products go viral. Like, products go viral because they are simple. And so simple in some ways is right is the competitive advantage. And as soon as you start to take these, you know, the need for simplicity for granted and your customers for granted and you start giving more features and making it a little more complicated,

Oh, and by the way, the easiest way to solve problems when you have a digital product is to just add another option or another feature or an additional complication. And so those add up like debt in the product. And at some point, users just say, wait a second, look at that new one over there. That's so simple. I'm going to try that instead. And so that's that product lifecycle that you just mentioned that I think is so true. And I always try to remind entrepreneurs to keep an eye on the new user experience

and the new types of new users that you're trying to engage and to never take your customers for granted. Make sure that you keep it simple. Okay, I want to go back to something you said to get a little bit more detail. You said that the first users are obviously different than new users. So when you launch something and it tends to take off, you've got that initial group of core users. And then as you get some critical masks and you got all these new people, how are they different? How are they different so that we can understand how to view those two groups differently? Yeah, well, I think, like, let's take an example product, like Snapchat, for example.

You know, in Snapchat's initial new users were people who were in their teenage years, who liked the idea of capturing and sharing media with friends that disappeared, that didn't leave a digital trail. And they were also mobile native. You know, they kind of grew up using mobile phones. They were swiping their finger on glass the day that they were born. and so that's like sort of the mentality that that demographic of new users has. And so when they were joining a product like Snapchat, they didn't need to be walked through any of the concepts or explained.

Why does it disappear? Because this was sort of native to them. And then as the product becomes more popular, you know, as older people started using the product for different purposes, then suddenly the new user experience that worked before, wouldn't work anymore, right? They had to rethink, okay, how do we explain this? What new ways do we need to accommodate an older user in this case? It's also about the difference between visionaries and pragmatists. In the beginning of a product, a brand new anything, the first people that come are the ones that are most willing to be forgiving and are most adventurous and like to be the first adopters. And they have a different threshold of tolerance for what you

tell them or what you don't tell them when they are first into the product. But then as your product becomes more known, and those visionaries tell their friends and tell their parents and tell their cousins, then you start having people come who are not the first adopters. They're more the pragmatists. They want to have everything perfect and spelled out for them. And so the initial onboarding sequence in this instance, you know, that worked in the beginning may not work anymore. And so it's just important to constantly re-evaluate who are the new users you're trying to be able to. And so, the new users are trying to engage. What's their psychographic? What are they worried about or interested in? Why are they there? And then rethink your whole product accordingly. And then what's the tension like and how do we

manage the tension between what you just described, continuing to focus on the onboarding experience for new customers? Also, the right amount of iteration, right? How do you freshen without all of a sudden falling into this trap? It's no longer simple anymore. I, Obviously, there's attention there. Is there something you could share there? How do you keep your eye on both sides of that? We want to freshen it, obviously, but also not weigh this thing down. And all of a sudden we wake up one day and it's no longer a simple product.

Well, I love the idea of trying to always take something out when you put something in. I think it's a very healthy debate at the very least. But I really try to do this with my teams as I would say, listen, what we know is that my friend Dave Marin, who's a product designer, likes to say, the devil's in the default. Whatever a customer or user sees at first is what they're going to engage with. And so everything is really about what you show them by default. So if you have a second tab or a third tab or a second feature or a third feature, every time you add an additional option, it cuts the likelihood of your customers using them

by 50% is the way I look at it. And so if we're going to add a new one, let's take one out. And then people will debate and say, oh, no, no, no, no, we can't do that. Because if people don't use this, then we don't ever get, you know, an engaged user or a happy customer. And it's like, well, then wait a second. If that one's so important, why are we adding another one? You know, that just reduces the likelihood of people doing what you just said is so important.

So do we really want to add this new feature when you're saying that we can't take that one out? But sometimes you'll get a conversation where it's like, oh, you know what? I would give up that feature for this new one. Like this new one is based on what we've learned. This is what we really should have had in the first place. And it's like, okay, well, then let's pretend that that's what we had in the first place by taking out the thing that we don't think is as good. That's so rich right there.

Really, really good stuff. Love that. Scott, before I let you go, I want our audience to know more about what you're doing with Behance and 99U. You've got a lot of great things happening in both of those communities. And tell folks what you're doing. doing and then how they can connect. Sure. So Behance, which is now a part of Adobe, is a network of of 10 million creatives. And so I encourage anyone who's listening who actually creates something

visual for a living to show their work on there. It's a great place to also find and hire design talent. You know, I'm writing a lot these days on Medium. And so you can follow me on medium if you're interested in any additional thoughts along these lines. And of course, you know, on Twitter at Scott Belski. And, you know, we'll see. I'm working with a bunch of new teams building some new products that aren't ready for prime time yet. So I'm always excited to share that when it's ready. I'm just grateful to have been able to share some of these ideas and have this discussion. Yeah, man. Well, listen, it's been several years since we were together, and I do appreciate you. I know you got a million things going on, but I knew that our audience would be better for it.

I'm absolutely right. So grateful for you, man, because I think you're a great thinker and appreciate everything that you're doing. We'll have you back again very soon. Thanks again for having me. Special thanks to Brian Mayfield from our Ramsey Solutions leadership team coming by. We appreciate that. And of course, Scott Belski, our special guest this episode, on behalf of Eric the producer, our engineer Will Rutter, and the entire Entree leadership team. Thank you for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.