EntreLeadership - #204: EntreLeadership Summit Bonus 1—Simon Sinek 

Episode Date: May 25, 2017

On today’s bonus episode from EntreLeadership Summit, we’re featuring a Q&A session with one of our favorite leadership experts—Simon Sinek. In addition to his lesson, Simon took the time to answer queries from our attendees. Once off the stage, Simon continued sharing his insights in a special conversation with podcast host Ken Coleman. We’re wrapping up today’s episode with an interview with Josh Hayes, a top Dutch Bros. Coffee franchisee. Dutch Bros. is known for its amazing coffee and incredible culture. Josh shares how he keeps his team motivated and fired up to win. EntreLeadership Core Value 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. This is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, four leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation, bringing you a couple bonus episodes because we had so much content flowing out of Summit 2017. So here's what we're bringing to you for this episode. Simon Seneca spoke and then really turned his keynote time into Q&A with the audience.

Really fun to see speakers do this where they open it up to questions from the audience. I asked Simon after the event. I said, why'd you do that? And he said, I really love to be challenged with something I don't expect. At the end of the day, they can go watch my talks for free on YouTube. Love that. And it was a power-packed session. And then, of course, we're going to give you a little bit of my interview with Simon on the Facebook

live stage for more great content. And then Dutch Bros is one of our favorite organizations here at Ramsey Solutions. Travis Beersmo is their CEO and he was a guest on this very podcast a while back and he had one of his franchise operators in with a bunch of his team. In fact, 15 of them. And so we're going to dive into the Dutch Bros. Local culture with that franchise operator. So all that coming to you. But first, we're going to start off with Simon Seneca. and he's not new to this podcast, so no need to say anything more. Here is the genius of Simon Seneca. So I've grown a business for a long time since I was in high school,

but we've grown very slowly over time. And now we're starting to grow kind of fast. And to be honest, I kind of winged it for a long time. And I'm realizing now we need more structure to get to the next level of where we want to go. But I'm trying to figure out how to do that without breaking the culture. Because we've a very, I run a digital agency, so we're very casual, very comfortable. And I want people to be inspired to move towards that next level. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Okay. You are going through something that almost every business will go through at some point, big or small, right? It's really, really common. I think it's also one of the reasons so many small businesses fail as well.

Okay? Because when a business is started, business exists on two levels, some sort of metric and time, right? And when you start the business, what you do and why you do it are inextricably linked. You had a big idea.

You suffered or somebody close to you suffered a real problem. You came up with a solution. that solution became the company. And your early employees were your friends. The people who got you, knew you, believed in you, took risks themselves to quit their perfectly good, well-paying jobs, to come do something

with an overwhelming chance of failure. Seemed like fun at the time. Right? And what ends up happening is you're running on force of personality. You and maybe the couple people close to you, but often you can be in every meeting, make every decision, make every hire. And it's fun.

And the biggest challenge you face is your own success. Because what starts to happen is as what you do grows, you can now no longer be in every meeting. You can now no longer be the salesperson for everything because you're the best sales guy. Of course, it's yours. Nobody's as good as you, right? You can't make every decision.

And so now you have to hire somebody who hire somebody who has to make a decision based on what? Exactly. And so what starts to happen is the reason, the cause, the purpose, the why of the business starts to become disconnected. This is called the split. Symptoms of the split include things like you start becoming more obsessed with your competition than you used to be.

In the early days, you didn't even think about your competition. The only thing you thought about was how can we be better than ourselves. Now you're worried how can you be better than your competition? How can we beat our competition? How can we be number one based on what metrics, based on what time frame? It's all arbitrary. So the focus went on how do we be better than ourselves, now we're focused on how to be better than our competition.

So you're looking outwards instead of inwards. Symptoms of the split include things like, in many companies, they start doing focus groups. They start asking other people, what should we do? You never did a focus group in your life to make a strategic decision. They're wonderful tactically, but not strategically, right? Symptoms of the split include things like the old timers. The guys who've been there since the beginning.

who are making more money than they've ever made, have more power than they've ever had, walking around going, yeah, it's not like the olden days. When you had no money and nothing, those were the, they're reminiscing. They reminisce about the old days because it wasn't about how much you were selling, it was about how they felt and what they felt a part of.

And then what starts to happen is the company starts to have performance problems, and you hire somebody to fix that stuff, but that's not the problem, it's this. It's why did you go into business in the first place, and you've got to get that back up. it's fixable when you're here. If you wait too long, you become America online and you're some big nothing, or you go out of business

because literally you become a dictator because you think it's you, and everybody leads you, and then you're alone, and it goes bankrupt, right? And not to mention the fact that you might be the inspiring one, you might be the one with the ideas, but you may not be the one to build the structure. And so you have to hire people who actually do know more about the structure of a business than you,

and I've been there, and it feels like Wiley Coyote falling off a cliff with your claws, sort of like clinging on for dear life. Like, I don't want to let go of this. I don't want to let go of this. But you've got to let go of this. And you've got to trust that people believe in you, believe in your cause and believe in your vision, and they really, really, really do know more and want to help you build it. But you have to be able to put into words your cause, your vision, your purpose, your belief.

Remember when I came out here right at the beginning? I said, I have a vision of a world that does not yet exist. A vision is not to be the best, because based on what metrics? A vision is not to be number one, because nobody's inspired by that than you. No one. Nobody cares about that. A vision is imagining a world that does not yet exist, and if everything you do as a company goes 100% right, you will contribute to the building of this world, but you won't be the only ones.

But if people see you trying to build that world, they will join you. that's what makes you a leader. What is your purpose? What is your cause? What is your belief? Why did you start your business in the first place? What is your why? You've got to get that front and center.

That's the thing that inspires people, and that's the thing that will give them their marching orders on how to build the business. And here's the best part. Here's the best part. As soon as I said the why, you knew what decision to make without me having to tell you trusting my gut.

That's called scale. The clearer you can put your why into words, the more easily anyone in your company, assuming they believe what you believe, can make the right decision without you in the room. And the true test of a successful business is the school bus test, which is if you got hit by a school bus,

would the company survive you? If you got hit by a school bus, would your people want to continue to grow the business without you or they all go and look for other jobs? That's the true test of a stable business. So you have a unique opportunity to visit a vast amount of organizations be exposed to different staffs, cultures, wise of those organizations. In those visits, in your experience, can you list one mistake you witness leaders do more so than any others in those organizations? So good or bad?

Correct. Yeah, I think the single biggest mistake that most, most leaders make is they think they have to know all the answers, and if they don't, they think they have to pretend that they do. And there's this weird thing that happens to us when we find ourselves in a leadership position. Sometimes we worked our way up through it, and sometimes we just got dropped into it, that we think we have to be the leader. We have to act like the leader, whatever that means. And it's difficult. You end up with the posturing of the alphas, and what if you're that person? And when somebody questions your logic, you get defensive, not because you

think that they're being difficult, but you don't want to be found out. The best leaders have this unbelievable humility. John Maxwell talks about this. He talks about when he was junior, he thought he knew everything, and as he gets older, he realizes he knows nothing. Right? And there's a beauty in knowing how little you know. And the best leaders I've seen are the ones who will show up and be like, hey, guys, totally new position for me, kind of learning on the job here, going to make a lot of mistakes. Please tell me. Even if it's harsh criticism and you're worried about my ego,

it may hurt. I may get defensive, but understand it's just because I'm hurt, but I want to learn because I want to be the best possible leader I can for you because I want you guys to grow. I also may not understand this industry as well as you. So I'm going to ask you a ton of questions, and sometimes I'm going to

defer to you. And if I'm asking a ton of questions, doesn't mean I'm disagreeing with you necessarily. Sometimes it just means I'm learning. And the best leaders I've ever seen are plonked in a position and are totally open how little they know. There's an unbelievable humility. So the biggest mistake I've seen is just the

facade that leaders put on thinking they have to be the leader, act like the leader, and know everything. There's nothing more incredible than a leader goes, dude, I don't know. If you think you got this, then you got this. Whatever. Go to it. Let me know if you need anything.

You know? And especially when we do that, when we give away authority, oh, it's amazing. because in most companies, this is David Marquez's work, most companies, all the authorities at the top, all the information's at the bottom. And the opportunity is not to push the information up,

it's to push the authority down. And so when we say to somebody, I remember, if you have a few people who work for you, I've seen somebody make this mistake where she wanted to be a good boss, so instead of making her people work late, she'd send them all home, and she would work till 11 o'clock at night.

That's martyrdom. That's not good leadership. And then what ended up happening is they just stopped working because she did it for them. As opposed to, now if it's things like licking envelopes and stuffing envelopes, then you stay there with them and work hard with them and the menial stuff.

But if it's something significant, like you're doing something, it has to go out to a client, you leave early and you say, okay, guys, you got this. You want us to send it to you before it goes to the client? Nope. I trust that you know when it's right to go to the client. I trust you guys. Have a good night. And giving someone authority over their work,

accountability over their work, people rise to the occasion. It's amazingly powerful, as opposed to thinking that you have to make every decision. In fact, I can promise you, I know how things work in here. How many of you in the breaks are on your phones, checking your emails, checking in? There's no quicker way to undermine trust of your team than thinking that you have to double check and recheck everything that's going on at work today. I like blue. Go with seven, you know.

So they're making decisions and you're interrupting them with random emails. Or worse, you're demanding that they tell you. As opposed to saying, hey, guys, I'm going to a three-day off-site to learn how to be a better leader. Okay? Let's hope I learn something. Right? I trust you guys got everything. If there's an emergency, I trust that you'll fix it too.

Don't send me anything. Right? There's no quick way to undermine trust on your team than to demand or expect that they have to check in with you while you're away. Let them make decisions. Let them own it. Facebook, how you doing out there? I'm Ken Coleman. He is Simon Seneca.

and we're coming to you from the Summit 2017 live stage. Yeah. And I got to brag on some of our amazing attendees. They're a great organization. I think it's the best coffee in America. Dutch bros are here. Those are a large portion of people that were just going nuts. Started in the northwest, the great state of Oregon.

And a great organization. So Simon just came off the big stage, 1,500-plus leaders, and did something really fun. You gave a bit of a talk, but then you said, all right, free for all, ask any question that you want, and that was really fun. Before I get into some of my questions, why do you do that? It's fun for me because I get to think. When I give a talk that I've given a bunch of times, I know what I'm going to say,

and it's hard to be present when you do it so much. Plus, I want to learn, too. I don't want to just show up to give. I also want to learn. And so there's nothing more exhilarating being asked a question I've never been asked and being asked a difficult question because then I get to actually think and I get to learn. So I try and do it as often as possible. Now, you said something today that I love. Now, I'm a history geek. So for those of you who don't love history as much as me, there's a qualifier. But you said something in your question-answer time. You talked about the Declaration of Independence. I don't want to paraphrase. But I want to set you up to talk about why you said this document is so amazing. And it wasn't just a patriotic statement. What were you teaching there?

So people are always talking about visions and missions and all of this stuff. And when people ask me, like, what example should I look to? Like, what company should you? I'm like, here's an organization with a vision, a cause. It was founded with a cause. It's an entrepreneurial venture. America is an experiment. It's an entrepreneurial venture where a bunch of people got together and decided we needed to start our own country because there were certain obstacles that were getting in the way of a vision that we had of a better kind of country, better kind of company, right?

And they stated it right out of the beginning. All men are created equal, endowed with these unalienable rights, amongst which include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And it's not just a competitive statement. Like to be the best, to be the most respected. That's not what it was. And I'm amazed how many companies start their visions or missions with that terribly egocentric language.

It was an ideal. And the amazing thing is, we've been good at it and bad at it in our history, but it's endured for 240 plus years because we fundamentally believe that we are at our best when we're pursuing that. But it is an ideal. We will never actually achieve

all people are equal, but we will die trying. And that's the point. And it's the same for a company, which is true vision inside a company, is something that has nothing to do with your product. It is an ideal to which you will attempt to build and advance that ideal through your company with your product. You'll never achieve the ideal, but you'll die trying.

And this is what gives our work meaning. This is what it gives our lives purpose. Right? The difference between vision and a goal is the finish line. A goal is 26.2 miles. You can simply count the metrics and know when you've completed your goal. A vision is having a crystal clear sense of what the finish line looks like, but no idea of how far away it is.

And the reality is you will spend your entire life never actually crossing the finish line, but the joy that every marathon you complete you feel like you're getting closer. Every milestone that you accomplish makes you feel like you're getting closer and closer to the ideal, and this is what gives our life and our work meaning. You know, I want to stay here for a second because I think of the founding fathers. I was just in Philadelphia for an event literally three weeks ago and I stood in Independence Hall and I imagine Jefferson here Washington at the big chair sitting presiding over the Constitutional Convention and all this and you had all these

in James Madison brilliant minds in this one room and you probably know this but it was a long process that led to the Declaration of Independence and then the first Constitution and then the Bill of Rights and all that and there's something to when something matters that big and it stood the test of of time, there was a bunch of different opinions and men coming together to somehow agree on a loose document that really has stood the test of time. Well, I think that the brilliant thing about the history is just what you're saying, which it wasn't all roses.

No. And some of those folks hated each other. I mean, Jefferson and Hamilton hated each other. And Adams until late in their life. Right. And so it wasn't like they all like big chums that's... I think this is a good reminder for us, which is we don't have to agree with people on our team, as long as we share the vision, as long as we share the cause, as long as we're devoted

to something bigger than us, we can actually find common ground, which doesn't mean consensus, and it doesn't mean dilution. That's a great point. It means common ground. And it always boils down to invoking the cause. And when they invoke the cause, they can find common ground. That's my favorite thing about the Founding Fathers, which is they didn't necessarily get along, but they produced some documents and some ideals that we live by to this day.

Wow, that's so rich. Is that not phenomenal? Simon Sinek, a dear friend of us who did a wonderful job here on the summit stage. Hey, thanks for being with us here. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Well, folks, one of the great privileges of this job is to meet organizations from the Entree Leadership Tribe, like Dutch Bros and the individual leaders. They're just doing amazing stuff. And I've got to tell you, if you want to spend some time with an organization that is building an amazing, healthy culture, it's Dutch Bros. Go see them.

I mean, I don't care where they're at. Go see him and talk to somebody's in leadership there. I promise you they're very, very intentional. And Josh is no exception. You're going to love this conversation. Here it is. This is Josh Hayes. And Josh is a leader in a great company that at Entree Leadership, we have grown to love.

In fact, I have interviewed their CEO, and it is Dutch bros. And he's got his team down here. But I wanted to talk to a leader who brought a whole team. And so I want to start with, you've been to many of our. Yes. Why did you bring your team to the summit? Well, the team that we brought specifically are aspiring franchise owners in Dutch Bros, but also people who have grown a ton, and we like to invest in our crew. And coming here last year with some of our other people, it was a no-brainer. We had to do it. So we set it up, and there's 15 of us here.

All right. So how are you experiencing the event? I know we have a full schedule, but is there some point at the end of the day, for instance, how do you all process this information on site or do you? We kind of share our favorites with each other, but I think we're going to have a big recap once we get back because there's just so much going on. And for us, for 15 people on our team to get together for this long, it's just more special to be together.

All right, so you, let's put you on the spot because we're going to talk with your team. So far, two days in, give me some stuff that you've just been hammered with. You know, one of my favorite guys has to be Chris Hogan and coming here last year, hearing him talk about appreciation, and then listening to him this year,

it really gave me perspective on what we've been able to do in just 12 months with looking for ways to show love. Like true love, like just going, hey, thank you, to the point where we had cards made that are Dutch Bros. Cardstock, and we use those now within our company to say thanks and birthdays and stuff like that. I will say that Simon Sinek was probably the most powerful speaker for me, being a veteran, but also hearing him talk about how teams work. Like trusting the person next to you, trusting the people who are working for you, they're in your care. And the terminology he used really sits with me because that's what we do. We operate 18 hours a day, seven days a week, and two of our stores are 24 hours.

And there's a high level of trust when you're not around for customers to be served at 45 seconds of time. Wow. So how do you, one on one or one to a few, how do you begin to trust? How do you create a situation where obviously you have to trust, but you're also looking at. looking to trust your team. What's that look like for you? It comes down to asking the right questions. I think you don't necessarily have to know everything to do the task, but you have to have the work ethic and you have to have a direction. And if I can ask you a couple quality questions just to make sure your head's in the game, I'm ready for you. Because

at the end of the day, our business is a people business. And if I have a good feeling that you can take on a task that deals with a group or bigger group of people, I've got you. And we also encourage our career, hey, ask questions. There's nothing that you couldn't ask us that we'd be upset about and just bring it right to us and let's get it handled. All right, in the panel, we just had Dave Ramsey and Simon Seneca and Pat Lynchini joined me on the stage and we took some pre-submitted questions.

And one of the questions toward the end was that culture question. And so the guy posed a question, how do we kind of instill some culture when we got a 14-year-old company and it really has never existed? And that's the setup because what I love about, Travis and the leadership at Dutch Bros. Is there is a terrific and very intentional culture? Yeah.

Share with folks that are watching. What are some very intentional things? Give me some examples that Dutch Bros is doing that you look at as a team here and go, this is huge in developing this amazing culture that we brag about. Dave brags about it. When you all come to our events, we're like, oh, the Dutch Bros. People are here. That speaks to the culture.

You just have amazing people. I'm going to use two words for our audience. The first one is collaborate. And that's been one of the words that's been on my heart, and we share it a lot, is that Dutch Bros. intentionally seeks out its team to not only inspire and lead, but to build on ideas that they might have. For instance, we just collaborated as a company on a company-wide POS system, which has never been used. They took a guy who worked for a franchise as a regional manager and put him in a position of operational excellence, and he's traveled the country to different restaurant events and things like this.

And he basically worked with a company by himself with feedback and built a POS that Dutch Bros is using. And then Dutch Bros. said, hey, A-Z, you guys, you guys, you know, in the audience here, we've got one of the guys who helped us run it. Now, let me interrupt you for a second from folks watching home. POS stands for. Point-of-sale. So that's that when you go into a restaurant. That's how we take your order, charge you. Yeah, go ahead. All right, go ahead.

And then the other word I would use is freedom. inside and outside of the stand, whether you're at the window or not, you have the freedom to do the next right thing. And it's what you decide to do. So someone comes in and they say, hey, the drink's gone. Let's say your drink's gone. This drink sucks. Oh, let me make you a new one. No problem.

What did you get and what happened? And how can we fix that for you? Or in our franchise's case, we lost an employee to a car accident. And we decided to raise funds for his family locally to support the few. funeral and to take care of them. And TRAV encourages that kind of behavior. Those are just things that we do on a large and a small scale every day. We encourage our leaders to take their crew out to lunch, to talk with them. We do 30, 60, 90 day check-ins, all sorts of stuff that makes sense. But there's freedom and all that stuff, and it's very gray. It's not repetitive and it's not

as structured as it could be. It's very, do what you feel is right. And as a result, I'm guessing it's not difficult to attract these young people, their young, me that looks so bright and so enthusiastic. Am I right? It's the finest team I've ever worked with. People who are my brothers and sisters and that I would do anything for. Wow, good stuff. Folks, this is a great organization. And Josh, thanks for just hanging out with us, representing all of the 1,500 attendees

and what you're learning. And folks, I'm telling you, this event is so special because of the Josh's and his team. And really, Josh represents a large demographic of the folks that are here this week that have brought groups, brought whole teams to really dive deep. So, hey, man, appreciate you. And what a great organization. Tell Travis, I said, hello. I will. Love, love, love, love, your CEO.

One of the most stunning displays I've seen all week at Summit was our Ramsey Solutions core values suspended from the gigantic ceiling at the JW Marriott. Just an unbelievable display. I can't tell you any more about it because I don't know how to describe it. It was like they were thin, metallic, shiny, and just hanging. there and our attendees, we're taking pictures of it and staring at it. And we want to extend some of that goodness to you. And so we have a how to create core values. Now, this is a resource that allows you to begin this process. This is an intimidating process for a lot of people. Certainly leaders, I think, of all shapes and sizes would love to be able to identify and then

communicate core values. So we're going to give you this resource, which walks you through the five steps so that you can develop and not just develop, but again, communicate your company's core values, which allow you to stay within those riverbanks and never wander off from the mission. So this is easy to get. It's absolutely free. You know how to do it if you've been listening. You can text the phrase, EL values, no space there, just EL values. Text that to 33444.3344, or the link will be. in this episode show notes. Well, our minds here at the Ontario Leadership Podcasts are still spinning from Summit

2017. I'm sure our attendees who've now gone home are spinning. But what an opportunity to be together with like-minded people all unified around the idea of growing themselves so they can grow their teams and grow their profits. Now, we're wrapping up this episode, but guess what? One more bonus episode coming to you tomorrow. It'll feature Chris Hogan, Chris You Right, and more great content. So on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thank you for listening.

I'll talk with you again. Real soon.