EntreLeadership - #203: EntreLeadership Summit Day 3—John C. Maxwell

Episode Date: May 25, 2017

He may be known for teaching leadership and writing international best sellers, but John C. Maxwell says what he’s most passionate about is personal growth. On the final day of EntreLeadership Summit, he takes the stage to share his tips on bringing out the best in yourself and your team. Check out this excerpt from his lesson. Following his talk, podcast host Ken Coleman interviews John for even more wisdom, plus our top leaders take part in a special Q&A session. Leadership Growth Assessment Tool 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. Broadcasting from Orlando, Florida, and this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, four leaders. Thanks for joining the conversation. Here's what we're bringing you. John Maxwell led off day three, and we're going to give you some of his talk, and then he hung out with me on the Facebook live stage. You'll hear a bit of that conversation as well.

We also take you into one of our premium lunches where our attendees got to ask questions of our leadership team at Ramsey Solutions. And then we'll wrap it up with two of our All Access members who are attendees. Megan and Ted are great. They're just like you, and you'll be encouraged by their stories. Well, I introduced John today, and I went with a very personal introduction, and I think that works as well on this podcast. Many of you may not know that before I worked with Dave, I had the opportunity to spend three years working with John Maxwell, and obviously he is respected around the world for his leadership teaching and his writing.

But I respect John so much because I think if all of us take just a moment and we think back through our life, who are the men and women who maybe gave us a hand up, who opened up a door for us that we would have not been able to open up on our own. And John Maxwell was somebody that, for whatever reason, I don't know if he had poor judgment, but he saw something in me and gave me an opportunity. opportunity to be on stages in front of thousands upon thousands and really opened up a huge pathway for me that led to where I'm at now. And so I simply introduced John as that man and I challenged leaders to be that for somebody else in their organization or in their lives. Find somebody that needs a helping hand. It doesn't have to be somebody who's down and out, but just maybe a young leader who you see something in them and give them a shot. You never know what that could do. So big thanks to John for his influence on my life. Here is John speaking on our

summit stage. Well, I want to start by saying that if you came and said, John, what's the best advice you could give me? I would look at you and I would say the best advice I could give you is for you to every day intentionally grow and never allow yourself to get into a state of where you're not learning and growing and expanding and getting better. I know. I know, I'm known for leadership, but I'm more passionate about personal growth. Because all the things I've been able to learn and expand and the books I've been able to write have all been a result of my commitment to personally grow and develop myself. In my 20s, I sat down with a guy named Kurt Kampmeyer and he just asked me what my plan for growth was.

I didn't have one. And I was embarrassed. I was young and in fact, I didn't even know I was supposed to have one. And I remember I began talking to him about how hard I worked and I was just kind of faking it, trying to, you know, act as if I had a plan. And I probably talked for five or eight minutes as soon as I did that and shut up. He looked at me, he said, you don't have a plan, do you? And I said, no, I don't have a plan. He said to me the words that just changed my life. I still in my 20s. I'm so glad I heard him when I was young. He said, John, growth is not

automatic. You don't automatically get better. If you're going to get better, you're going to have to do it intentionally. And those words changed my life. Because I, to be honest with you, I assumed that if I went to work and I just went through the daily schedule, what I assumed was that I would automatically grow, that I would just automatically get better. I had no clue that the only way you and I get better is to be intentional. The only thing automatic in life is death. That's automatic. You don't have to worry about that. You don't have to plan for that.

You don't have to read a book, say, well, you know, I've got to learn how to die. No, you hang around long enough. you die it's just the way it is you see the only thing it's automatic is we just get older but just because you get older doesn't mean you get better

what I'm going to talk about will get you better because you see the only guarantee the only guarantee that you have that tomorrow is going to be better than today is that you're growing today it's the only guarantee

so when I hear people they talk about well I hope my business will do better next year I hope my family will do better next year. I hope, you know, boy, I hope for a good year coming up. Whenever they do that, first of all, I want to tell them, hope's not a strategy. And if you really want tomorrow to get better, I can tell you exactly how to get better. It's just a fact. You grow today.

You set up tomorrow for success. If you don't grow today, you set up not tomorrow. See, every day, you're either pre-paring or repairing. And most people spend their days repairing. And then they wonder what happened. You see, if you and I could just have a conversation, which would just be wonderful, like a one-on-one conversation, I would ask you two questions, and those two questions are going to determine the success of your organization, your business, your team, more than the other two questions, and they're going to determine your personal success. Two questions I would ask you is, what is your plan for personal growth in your life?

What's your plan? I mean, what kind of a plan do you have right now that's going to help you get better for tomorrow? What's your plan? And the second question I'd ask you is what's your plan for your plan for your life? team to get them better for tomorrow. And I can tell you I'm in the best time of my life. I'm learning more than I've ever learned. I'm experiencing more than I've ever experienced. I'm still absolutely growing and I'm just loving what's happening to me. And I want it to happen to you. And it can't happen to you, but it won't happen to you unless you're very intentional. And the moment

growth began to change me, I stopped and have never asked the question since then. How long will it take. The question changed from how long will it take to how far can I go. And the moment the question changes to how far can I go, you are on a personal development and growth track that's going to serve you better than anything else that you can possibly do in your life. And that's a fact. So my growth goal, my own personal growth goal when I was very young, was asking myself, how far can I go. And then as I begin to look at my team, I began to ask myself, well, how far can they go? And let me tell you the answer to that question.

How far can you go? You can go as far as you can grow. And you can't go any further. For example, there's the law of the mirror. And the law of the mirror just very simply says you must see value in yourself to add value to yourself. It's a phenomenal law on self-image. And basically the law just simply. says you will invest in yourself to the degree that you see yourself.

And that if you see yourself as a seven or eight, you'll put a seven or eight investment of growth in your life. You see yourself as a two or three. You'll put a two or three. In other words, you will vet and bet and invest in yourself just about the way that you see yourself. There's another law called the law of tradeoffs, which basically says you have to give up to go up.

That every time you go further and go higher, it's because you trade it off something. That there's no such thing as a free ride and there's no such thing as a free ride. and there's no such thing as an easy ride. By the way, the way that works, it's a phenomenal teaching. But the way it works is very simple. The higher you go, the bigger the trade-offs. So when you start off in the beginning, your trade-off isn't very much. And the reason it's not very much is because you don't have anything.

And so when you have nothing, you know, I love these people. I say, well, you know, we just started off and we just had nothing and we just gave it all up. And I said, well, that was good. I'm not sure what you gave up, but it was good. You know what I mean? whatever you gave up. But I can tell you right, when you get successful and you begin to get stuff in your life and you begin to get reputation in your life, I mean, the higher you go, but at every major decision point, you've got to make a tradeoff. You've got to give up something

to take this next road and this next path. And what happens is when people stop making tradeoffs, they stop growing. It's a fact. People stop growing when the price gets too high. It's an absolute fact. I can guarantee you 95% of all growth stops when the price gets too high. I'm not talking about financial price, maybe it's time price. It can be many things, but trust me, growth always extracts a price from us. There's always a trade-off. You can't take people any further than you've gone yourself. So understand this. When I teach leadership, the reason I'm so passionate about getting to the leaders is because the leaders are going to set the table and they're going to set the limit for everybody that's on their team. From a one to a five, if you're an average leader,

you're a five, let me tell you what you're going to do. You're going to have a ceiling of four for your people and they can't go any more than four. I mean, they may have seven potential, but it doesn't matter. You're the leader. You're the ceiling. As the leader goes, so goes to people. You've got to keep growing. You've got to keep learning. You've got to keep expanding yourself so that you can constantly grow and expand your others. So when you become a leader, all of a sudden, you begin to understand this incredible multiplication, but also this incredible responsibility that you and I have of what we can do for others once we develop and we grow ourselves. Everything I'm will give you is uphill. There's no downhill stuff here, folks. If you want downhill stuff,

you can go home right now. It's all uphill. And the only way you go uphill is being intentional. The only way you go uphill is being consistent. It's all uphill. There's nothing easy about it. It's simple, but there's nothing easy. It's uphill all the way. The problem is we have uphill dreams and uphill hopes. I mean, everybody has them. I mean, you walk in by, what would you like to be? What would you like to do? Oh, uphill hopes, uphill dreams. Here's the problem. We've got uphill hopes and uphill dreams, and we have downhill habits. You can't go uphill with downhill habits. You see, consistency compounds. Trust me, I know, I'm 70. The reason that we don't like, consistency, we don't even like to talk about consistency. When you think of success, you don't think of

consistent. You think of charisma. You think of genius. You think of creativity. You think of brilliance. You think of Lee, I mean, I'll give you 25 words that you think about, but you don't think of consistency. And yet it's the high return word. You see why consistency we don't care for very much is we don't get rewarded for it immediately. I mean, nobody ever got a consistency award for three days showing up at work. Oh my, here's a trophy. My gosh, you came. You were here every day this week. See, there are no awards and rewards for consistency in beginning. So therefore, people don't, they say it really doesn't matter. What they don't understand, it's like investing money. I mean, Ramsey will tell you, it's like putting money in

the bank or money investment. The whole investment stuff doesn't pay off until on the end. But remember this. Every day it's working. Every day it's working. Every day it's working. Every day it's working. Every day it's working. Every day it's working. It's compounding little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, oh my gosh, look what I got. I'm a working process. What I love about being 70 is I've got this experience that I've evaluated all my life and what happens out of evaluating experience comes wisdom. And all of a sudden, you can get better and you can get older. And what's really fun is I'm getting older and I'm getting better. It's just it's sun because I'm now, I got a small window and I know I got a small window.

You ask my team, I'm more persistent and I'm more consistent and I'm more focused than I ever have before because I don't have a long window and I got a whole bunch of stuff that I want to share and I want to teach. But the best sharing, the best teaching isn't from things I knew 20 years ago. It's from things I'm learning today. If you see me again in a year or two, I'll be as excited to teach as I am today because of the next year or two, I'm going to learn some stuff. I don't know. And it's going to make me a better person. It's going to help me make you better. And that's my life. every day every day I learn every day I reflect

every day I write every day I apply every day I share kind of a wonderful boring bountiful life hello Facebook live so thrilled to have you with us from

Summit 2017 and we have an absolutely amazing crowd as you heard them here and just moments ago this guy John Maxwell just gave a phenomenal talk on our live stage and he's here with us. So, a long time, no C, buddy, but good to be with you.

That's always good to be with you, Ken. Thanks for hanging with us. These people, they're awesome, aren't they? Oh, you got a stand innovation. And a curtain call, is that right? Yeah. You get a curtain call? Yeah. It's a pretty good deal. Yeah, well, they read the sign that said stand. They read the set to curtain call. That's right. So, hey, we want to talk for a little bit for these folks that are watching from home.

They're not able to be here in this amazing crowd and hear what you talked about. So let's just go into a little bit about what you said. And one of the things I love is you just broke down. for people, the power of intentionality, this idea of you got to keep growing, never stop growing. Why is that so important? Well, the only guarantee, Ken, that tomorrow's going to get better is that you're getting better now. I mean, think about what an assumption it is to think, I'm not doing anything growing today,

but somehow tomorrow it'll be different. Tomorrow is going to be basically what I do today. So I want people to understand the power of intentionality. intentionality is the bridge between good intentions and good actions. And what happens is we all have good intentions, only if you have good actions. And the few that have good actions are the people that take in that bridge of intentionality. And they've said, I'm going to do what I know, and I'm going to follow through on what I think. And so we talked about just being intentional in your personal growth.

It's not an accident. Everything worthwhile is uphill. And by the way, nobody ever said, if somebody gets to the top, and you say, how did you get the top? You've never heard a person say, I have no idea. Yeah. I just woke up and here I was. I just wandered up here.

Yeah, I just wondered. I'm my gosh. I'm so surprised. No, no, they know exactly how they got the top because they had to climb it. They had to be intentional. One of the things that I know about you, having work with you, and I learned this from you, one of the things that you're intentional about is getting with other people,

not just your own books and things that you write, but other books that you read. But you've been intentional since a young man to get with other people. and asked them questions. And years ago, you had the opportunity to meet John Wooden, arguably the greatest coach of any sport to ever live. And you got a day with him, and you went and asked hundreds of questions. I want you to talk to these folks at home. When it comes to intentionality, how important it is to get with other people that you admire,

that know something that you want to learn. Yeah, well, the question you want to ask, this is the magic question, literally. When you go to somebody and they've put some value in your life, The question you want to ask him is, who do you know that I should know? That's the great networking question. I've asked that question a hundred times, and it's led me to the White House. It led me to John Wood. I literally ask a guy in Orlando that was the principal of a school.

Who do you know that I should know? They said, well, I know John Wooden. I said, well, I'd like to know him. And he said, well, if you go out to Los Angeles next month, you can meet him. And so I did. Now, here's why I want you to understand. When you have an opportunity to meet somebody like this, be prepared. be ready. When opportunity comes, it's too late to prepare. And so a month before I went to see

John Wooden, I bought every book he had, written, I read them all, I took notes from them, got my questions from them, and so we went to breakfast. I was going to get a two-hour breakfast meeting with John Wooden at his favorite cafe. So we sat down, we did a small talk for about 10 minutes, and I'm wanting to get to my questions, to be honest with you. And finally, he looked at me, said, John, do you have any questions? I said, yes. And so I got my briefcase, and I put a legal pad up on the table in that little diner where we were having breakfast. And he saw that the whole first page had questions. He said, oh my goodness. He said, are those questions you want to ask me? I said, well, yeah, there's some of them. He said, what do you mean some of them? I said,

I have more. I went page two, page three, page four, page five. I had five pages of questions. I said, do you mind if I ask you a few? He said, we better. get started. That was at 8.30 in the morning. At 4 o'clock, I left his home. And we'd only gotten through the first page. And he looked at me, he said, John, we didn't get all your questions answered. Would you like to come back? Here's the key. When you have your first meeting with somebody important, you don't want to make it your last meeting. That's right. So what you do is you prepare in such a way that you grab hold of that person that's mentoring you and teaching you, and they're saying, Would you like to do it again?

He told me later that I had more questions to ask him on my first visit than anybody who'd ever come to see him. And he said, I couldn't get over how ready you were for me. Just remember that when you're going to be with somebody, get ready for them. You follow me? Because you may only ever get that hour and you want to maximize it. And remember, it's the questions that direct the conversation. Yes.

So be ready so that when your time comes, you maximize that time. Does that make sense? Yeah, but there's also something else there. and you've taught me this as well. Folks want to get with somebody they think, you know, they admire or make them a mentor because they want them to help them. And that's the wrong spirit.

You went in and you said, John, teach me. And when you went in, he saw your spirit and he said, all right, I'm going to give you more time than I probably even imagine because you want to learn, not help me. Don't go to somebody who can help you and say, John, help me, go, hey, would you teach me? I want to learn. Big difference, right?

It's a huge thing. I would rather have an idea than have a hand. because the idea is the greatest commodity in the world a good idea. And so, yes, I always go to a person not asking, what can you give me? I always ask them, what can I learn from you? What can you teach me? And I find that, again, if you're teachable, if you're teachable, they have something to offer to you. And then, let me just say something else.

I met her a guy named Courtney McBath out of Newport area. Anyway, the first time I spent time with him, it was a good time. And he said, could I see you again? And I said, well, go work on what I gave you. And when you're ready to call me back. So he called me back and he said, could I see you again? And I'm just kind of hesitated for a minute. He said, before you answer that, could I just share with you what I learned from the last time?

I said, sir, he said, okay, this is what you said. This is what I did. This is what I learned. This is what I changed. Can I ask you some more questions? I said, you sure can. He gave me fruit. He gave me a return.

You follow him on what I said. It connected with me, and I mentored him for probably a couple of years because he was taking everything I gave him, and he was maximizing what I gave him, which is huge. John, you've written so many books, and my personal favorite is a topic that I think every person in the universe is going to have to deal with. So in our remaining couple minutes,

I want you to encourage people on this idea that sometimes you win and sometimes you learn. It addresses the universal reality of things. failure. Anybody that's going for something is going to fail. That's Tom Brady. Absolutely. You pick any champion from any sector of life. Teach us about the value

of learning from our losses. How many of you have failed out there? How many of you failed? That's everybody out there in Facebook as well. Yeah, exactly. You with me? That's right. I mean, sometimes I think I feel so many times I think it's a spiritual

gift in my life. You know? I go, okay. So when a person wants to talk about their failure to me, of course I want to listen. But I'm waiting for them to finish that so I can ask them, what did you learn from that failure? Because can I tell you something? If you didn't learn from your last failure, you're going to do it again. See, repeated failure in the same area is a result of not learning. And so when I fail, when you fail, we have two responses.

We either learn from that failure and improve ourselves, get better, change, correct, or what most people do is when they fail, they're embarrassed by it, so they get away from it as quickly as again. They leave it. I mean, they're like, oh, I didn't do it, or I wasn't there, or my gosh, I'm not there. And what happens is if you leave your failure without learning, you'll come back to it. Because remember this, failure never leaves you until you learn from it. It will come back time and time again. And I watch people constantly can go back into the same hole.

I think, my God, what happened to them? Well, what happened to them is, and they got embarrassed. So they got out of the hole as quick as they could and made excuses. Instead of staying there, I say this, when you fall down while you're down there, why don't you just clean up the floor? You're already down there. You know what I mean? Just learn something from it, glean something from it.

And one of that real quick thing. I love the guy who said, we value tenacity. So the guy got knocked down. It gets back up, knocked down, you know, back. And then we said, oh, what a great guy. He just keeps getting back up. And I want to say, stop, wait a minute, wait a minute, while you're down there, don't get back up, don't get back up.

Right. Stay there. Don't get back up until you know why you got knocked down. Yes. Because when you get back up, you're not tenacious without learning. You're just stupid. Yep. Are you with me?

That's right. Don't be strict. Learn in that process so that when you get back up, you don't get knocked down by the same thing again. It's a process of learning. It's so good. Well, folks, you can tell. It's got a lot to say. And that's just a snippet of what he said to our crowd.

He is John Maxwell. Appreciate you, John, for being with us. You've made us better. You added value. And to you folks on Facebook live. Thank you. Well, John, obviously, challenged our audience, and I will pass that challenge onto you that you need to be thinking about how are you growing.

John obviously wrote the book, The 15 Invalible Laws of Growth. So we have an amazing tool called the Leadership Growth Assessment. If you're new to our podcast and you haven't taken advantage of this, you need to do it. it's going to help you develop leaders within your team. So hopefully you are working on your own development, but one of the things that leaders must also do is continually be looking at how to develop those that they are charged with leading. And so this is a great tool. It's a roadmap.

So this is the nice thing that's going to walk you through what you need to do to check in with your team and allow them to be graded on rapport, credibility, trust, and influence. There's so much more in this tool. It's absolutely free as all of the Entre Leadership Resources. are what you need to do is text the phrase leader growth that's two words leader growth take out the space leader growth and text that to 3 3344 that's 3344 or you can get the link in this episode show notes one of the best things about ramsie solutions events in my opinion certainly our leadership events is when we give our attendees an opportunity to ask real questions

questions that they really care about things that they're facing and they can ask of not only the fellow attendees, which is what gives us such great community at these events, but really sitting down at lunches and opportunities that we provide and talk to Dave and our leadership. And so we had a lunch with Dave and five of our executive team members. And I think about 300 people was a lot of fun. And we're just going to give you two particular questions that we think resonated in that room and will resonate with you. Dave, I don't want to get you fired up again on the same subject, but my team is about 100 people between drivers and clericals. How do you kill once and for all the gossip around drivers that affect the whole group?

How do we, once and for all, what is the definition of gossip? Because I want to pass it on to my group and say, this is gossip. And I wanted to stop saying what you don't know. Our definition of gossip is, is if you're talking to someone that can't solve the problem, then that's gossip. So that's pretty strong. It's not just talking behind somebody's back. It really is, if I'm talking about the IT department and my computer doesn't work and I'm not talking to the IT leader, then I'm gossiping. Or to another leader somewhere.

Or to another leader. I would wait into that slow. We're hardcore because we've laid the groundwork. We've told people before they were hired at their onboarding for 15 years. And the whole rest of the organization is abiding by it. And so we're not trying to turn a whole group of people. We're trying to turn one out of 600. So we can be a little more cut and dried that way.

In your situation, what I would do is just begin to talk about it. If you start fixing a problem that people don't think is there, you have a real problem. So another kind of problem. You're going to have a backlash. So what I would do is just say, you know, guys, I think we've got a problem with gossip. What do you all think? I think it's kind of nasty the way everybody runs around running their mouth. What do you all think?

And I'll just do that for about 30 days and mess with them. and then I would go, you know what, I learn this thing. I think we ought to all get together and let's have a group meeting and let's just go, okay, anytime you have a problem, you have to hand it up. Negatives have to be handed up, positives down. And anybody that doesn't do that, I'm going to deal with you. Because we've all decided that this is a problem. So we've kind of all decided that we're going to fix this.

Does everybody agree with that? And everybody's going to go, oh, yeah, because it's a problem. You know, and then you've kind of laid the groundwork. And then, you know, you can push in on it and you can reprimand a couple people and push back on it, it'll take a little time. But you're sliding your culture along. You're trying to clean the toxicity out. You're pouring clean water in,

letting the bad stuff boil out is what you're doing. And let that happen a little bit over time. And then you'll reach a point that you've got somebody that's just going to test you. You know, your kids will test you? You know, they'll just go, put your foot over this. Put your foot over this. He's touching me. You know, I told you not to touch you.

He's touching me. And, you know, it's the same thing. They'll do it. They'll do it. And you're going to have to make an example of somebody after you've warned them and warned them and warned them, and the whole group has decided together we're not doing this you're going to have to go we said this is what we're doing and you're not going to do it so you can't be here and you let somebody go and then they go why did you why'd they let him go

because we said we weren't going to gossip and he won't quit we said we're all going to be on time and he won't come on time we said we were all going to tell the truth and he keeps lying to customers whatever it is that we all said we we were going to do who are we then we have to be that so I would take my time and develop this out rather than just going in and go, I have a new plan. Anybody who gossips, I'm going to fire your butt. Brand new. They never heard this before in their whole lives. You'd have a revolt. You'd have a morale problem. So instead, I would build up and let them, self-identify that there's a problem and then start solving the problem. Somewhere around four months-ish, you're going to fire your first one. And then they're going to go, Dadgummy, serious. And it'll take a year for this to clean, and you'll lose out of 100, you're going to lose three or four.

one or two are going to quit because they get mad and two or three are going to get fired over the course of 12 months out of 100. That's my guess. And it's going to take a lot of your time and energy. It's going to be, you're going to have just like, damn, give them, run a beauty parlor. You know, but I'll tell you this, is it worth it? Absolutely. I would say you've got to have your communication mechanism in place. Like if you don't have a group meeting, then it's going to be infinitely harder to start to move that ball through.

forward. But once you do, then it becomes self-policing. Our team deals with it. It's not us. Because inevitably, we're people. Someone's going to start saying something. But you'll see the distance is created real quick because they don't want to be associated with that. So they'll call each other on the carpet. And that's when you know your culture is heading in the right direction. That's good. James? Yes. Me and my husband have an underground utility construction business with 75 team members. So I have a two-part question. First, how do you transition from donkeys to thoroughbreds? I mean, we have some great thoroughbreds, but we also have a pool of donkeys as well. And also, how do you recruit thoroughbreds in a marketplace

where there's not very many available in our industry? I would say champion your thoroughbreds to go find more thoroughbreds. If you've got holes in your organization, then that's costing you money. Take a little bit of that money, give that to your thoroughbreds for the people that they're bringing in. That is our best lead source for team. And that'll be the quickest way that you build your stable of thoroughbreds. One of the hardest things is donkeys that think they're thoroughbreds. Anybody else? And so one of the best things that I have found in that situation is you can come up with almost any kind of rating scale, right?

And come up with the definition. Like, hey, you know, in terms of how good are you doing at sales or how good are you doing it, whatever, name the skill, right? And then one to five, one to ten. It doesn't matter, right? Just be like, hey, I want you to do. rank yourself on a couple of things and I'm going to rank you and then let's sit down and have a conversation about it and that exposes that real quick they're like I think I'm a nine you're like you're a two like and and they're like what you know and sometimes it's just a self-awareness issue right

and some people can make that turn and some can't but that's that's a great mechanism for figuring out if that's what's going on I've got another scale I use it's really similar to that where it's kind of a one to five where I say five is greatly exceeding expectation one is greatly missing expectation and three is just meeting expectation. Like the idea of somebody exceeding expectation, like what would it take? Like what must be true for, like let's establish what the expectation is. Now you need to be trying to exceed it. Like don't just go for that. You've got to go above and beyond. You know, it almost says like here's the minimum or the suck bar like we like to call it. But that should not be your goal. Like that should be the bare minimum. And so we say you're a one or a two

and we need to get you to fours and fives, you know, and so there is something, you could talk about all the gaps and people say, I get it, I get it, I get it, but if you say, well, don't you tell me one to five, where do you think you are right now? And they say three and you say one, that's where the real conversation happens. Like, there's something about that in people's minds that they say, oh, like, I didn't know it was that big. You know, there's something about that. I love that. It's an oh, crap moment. Yeah. Of the people that we put, we sit down, we call it, put them in a processor, put them in a program. We say, okay, we've talked to them, we've reprimanded them, we've said, this is off base, this is off base, this is off base. Okay, now, we're going to

give you about 90 days to turn this. Now we're going to sit down and give you a very formal meeting and do the emotional firing, and we say, look, you've got to measure up to this. Of the ones that make it to that point, only about 20 percent turn. We lose about 80 percent during that 90 days. Our HR director has a great phrase. He says, sometimes we just help them participate with the inevitable. They ain't going to make it. And you just tell them. I don't think you can try this if you want to try it or I'll go ahead and give you the severance now if you want it. But if you want to try it, I'll walk with you on this. But I'm looking at you going, I don't think you're a salesman. I think you're an artist. And you should be like arting somewhere. You know? Right?

I mean, because it's something's, you know, because God made everybody to do something, and you suck at this, so it wasn't this. So, you know, and so that kind of a thing, and you just have a real, you know, you can have a discussion. You have to be brutal with them. I'm being sarcastic, but you'd be kind. But most of them don't by then. They don't have the tools to turn it. And here's the thing. The weirdest thing happens. The thoroughbreds go, they're really dealing with this. Did you hear? You're really dealing with this. They're really dealing with this. And then they go, well, maybe I can invite my friend the thoroughbred. And the last part of your question is, it's hard to find thoroughbreds in certain industries.

No, it's not. Don't look in that industry. You know, I'm in the radio world, which is the dumbest industry on the planet. I mean, there's some really good people in the business, but there's not many. And so when we got ready to syndicate the radio show and get radio stations to take our show, meaning we call them and we have marketing plans to get them to take our show, instead of whatever's on the air losing in that slot that they should be having us, you know, that kind of a thing, then what did we do?

We don't need somebody that knows radio inside and out. We need somebody knows people and relationships, and we'll build a, you know, it's a small client base that you're calling over and over and over again until you finally turn them into a client. What other businesses do that? All of them, you know? And so what you need is a good salesman, really. You don't necessarily need a radio salesman, someone who's done syndication before.

There's not 10 people on the planet that have syndicated a show like ours at that level. anywhere. It's ultimate, but the skill set is there. And so I bring somebody in that knows people. I brought a guy in who used to book speakers. And once he knows how to work with personalities that are strong and he knows how to work with people and build relationships and collect fees and get deals cut and get contracts and work out the details of the contracts to get, you know, the travel done and all that kind of thing. He's perfect for managing some of our live event productions, right? And he's incredible. But he had nothing to do with that business. He just had some of the skillsets. And he was a thoroughbred with some skills.

All we had to do was teach him some cultural icons and some industry nuances. And boom, we've got him polished and he plugged right in. And so look outside the business for those kinds of basic skill sets. I've had so much fun each day hanging out with real attendees. I love to hear their stories, whether it's in the hallways or on the Facebook live stage. And we had a chance to talk with Ted and Megan. I think two bright stars out of the all-access community here at Entree Leadership. here is a bit of my conversation.

Hey folks, out on Facebook Live, welcome back to our Summit 2017 live stage. Really glad to have you with us. And as we've done a few times throughout the event, we love to have our real attendees here, folks that have paid some money to be here. And Megan and Ted are with me right now. Welcome to both of you.

Thanks for hanging out. Thanks for having us. Thank you. All right. So we talked a little bit about All Access, which for folks out there, if you don't know what All Access is, it really is a unique and sort of,

special community of leaders in our Entree Leadership Tribe that are part of a monthly, and I don't even want to call at a club, but it is so much bigger than that. There's content, there's coaching, and community. And so I want you begging to start with, how long have you been a member of All Access? And what was the pain point or the need that drove you to join? So it's my All Access anniversary. Can we get some applause for everyone? So I've been in it for a year. It was exactly what I needed. The community and the monthly and the weekly calls and the accountability, which is something that I really needed because I'm a, I'll do it tomorrow person. They do it better than the other groups that I've been in. And so it was, I think it took one

call. And I was like, okay, sign me out. Nice. All, Ted, same question for you, how long you've been a part of it. And what was the pain point that drove you to it? Yeah, you'll hear some similar responses in my answer as Megan's, but it's also my one-year anniversary. Oh, wow. So attending Summit last year, my first one, I started talking with some of the other attendees about all access. And I kept hearing the word accountability. Megan mentioned that. But the more I heard about it, the more I was dialed in. And I signed up right at the conference and quickly realizing the monthly check-ins that we have the format of it,

the fact that it's video-based, you don't have to leave your location. So the convenience is there, yet you still have that connection with those that are in your group. The content that's available on the website is highly valuable to my organization. That's great. All right. So real quick, tell folks at home watching, what is your business and then your role in that business? So our business, name of it is Settle Strauss. We've been around for 107 years.

Wow. So we're still figuring out what we want to be when we grew up. Fourth generation and my family to lead the business, but the first to do so in a non-family environment. So my role is president and CEO. We're a marketing solutions company. Our roots are kind of in commercial print, direct mail. Today that represents about 60% of what we do.

The other 40% is more digital media, environmental graphics. All right, and then Megan, tell us about your role. So I'm the owner-inventor of Wings Cosmetics. They have me bring some. If you struggle with matching winged eyeliner, I invented the stamp that you just stamp it on. So if your wife or your girlfriend or your daughter is always running late, this is a time saver for you. The winged eyeliner. Winged eyeliner.

So you put it right up in there, and it puts it, am I right? little Cleopatra thing? Yeah, exactly. How about that, folks? Cleopatra. Do you like that? Just pulled that one out. We started with this, and now we have an online store and a retail store and a couple

other products. And you came up with this because you saw a need, obviously? It's not a fabulous story, but this goes back to our why. I couldn't do the look. And I always knew that I wanted to do something business-wise. And I kept seeing this look everywhere, and I was like, why isn't there something that just does it for you? Yeah.

And I didn't see it. So you invented it. Oh, that's very exciting. I did. All right, so let me ask you both this. You touched on this, Ted, but as you begin to get into all access, and this is the part that I find to be the most fascinating and the most rewarding as I talk to folks, and that's community.

So obviously you're going to get some great content from Dave and our team, and you get the one-on-one coaching. But when you begin to get in these mastermind communities, give me an example of something in a mastermind where you've gotten some feedback or inspiration, and it's helped move a needle for you. Something pop. Oh, my gosh. When I first joined All Access, I was a pushover, and I was pretty nice, and I didn't want to let anybody go because sympathy, and you can't, you have to be sympathetic as a business owner,

but you can't be a pushover. And so, like with Chris Oakley, he was like, you need to get a backbone and go fire this person. I was like, well, okay. And so, like, just that alone, from where I started to where I am now, a completely different leader. Wow. And that's huge, because I didn't think I would be here.

No one's born a leader, like Dave said. It definitely wasn't me. But all of them, and not just my coach and my mastermind people, but everyone helping me grow up. I love that. Ted, you got something for us? I would echo a lot of that. The one thing I would add is, I think the signs of success and tying that to what those big rocks are, that was the part Chris Oakley has really helped myself with is I tend to go right to the action. And I don't always define what done looks like.

So you just have a constant stream of these initiatives. and when there's too many initiatives, there are no initiatives kind of thing. So Chris Oakley facilitating our group, he's always asking that kind of question is, okay, I see you're working on this, this, and this. Now tell me what success looks like to find that right now. So the team understands so you can tell when you're actually done with those kinds of things. All right. Thank you so much, Ted. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Megan. And here's what I want people to know at home. All access is a no-risk situation. Dave and I talk about this all the time on the stage. And it has been structured that way on purpose. You know what I'm talking about. We're not signing into multi-year contracts where you can't get out of it. If it's not working for you, A, it's probably because you're not putting something into it.

But we give you that option. It's absolutely risk-free. And so we want you to be a part of this amazing community because, again, we on the Ontario leadership team, are seeing the results. We get to be that trusted guy that walks along, folks like Megan and Ted, and we get to celebrate in their wins. And they are just two shining examples of all of the All-access members who are absolutely killing it. So one more time, thank you all so much for hanging out with. Thank you. All right, folks, we are about ready to wrap Summit 2017.

Hard to believe our three days is about to come to an end. But here's the good news. These special episodes, daily episodes coming to you, we're just completely interrupting your subscription feed, and we're doing that on purpose. And our podcast team is working really hard here. Eric, the producer, doing a great job. And so we still have more episodes coming your way,

the feature for tomorrow's episode. episode is Simon Seneca and of course we'll have so much more goodness in that episode. So hey, before I leave, I want to say, as I always do, on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.