EntreLeadership - How to Scale and Advance a Bold Vision with Lauren Letta

Episode Date: March 28, 2022

Join us as our host, George Kamel, talks to Lauren Letta. Lauren is the former COO of charity: water, an incredible nonprofit organization that brings clean drinking water to people in developing countries. She shares how she took the bold vision of charity: water’s CEO Scott Harrison and converted it into an organizational structure for building their team. Later in the episode, George sits down with Daniel Ramsey, the executive vice president of EntreLeadership. Daniel shares the desired future framework we use at Ramsey Solutions and explains how you can use it to rally your team around your company’s vision.   You’ll learn: Why Lauren Letta left fashion to join charity: water What key hires you need to get to the next level Why you might want to start a bagel breakfast meeting How to focus your team   Sign up for The EntreLeadership Podcast Takeaways—a weekly email where you’ll get three tangible takeaways and a tactical action step related to each week’s episode: https://bit.ly/podcast-takeaways   Support our sponsors: BELAY: https://bit.ly/33SwBlO Hite Digital: https://bit.ly/HiteDigital NetSuite: https://bit.ly/NetSuiteEntre Kyro Digital: https://bit.ly/KyroDigital   Links mentioned in the episode: The EntreLeadership Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheEntreLeadershipPodcast charity: water’s website: https://bit.ly/3KWnkd4 The Tactical meeting: https://bit.ly/36m26Gl Download the Desired Future Dashboard PDF: https://bit.ly/38aAPHI Schedule a call with Tim, our producer: https://bit.ly/3bJOSmi   Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: EntreLeadership Summit: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipSummit EntreLeadership Master Series: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipMasterSeries   Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: Elite: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipElite Advisory Groups: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipAdvisoryGroups Executive Coaching: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipExecutiveCoaching Workshops: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipWorkshops Weekly Report Tool: https://bit.ly/WeeklyReportTool   Listen to all the Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download the Ramsey Network app: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Does your company have a bold vision for the future? Maybe you want to double your revenue by 2023. Or maybe you want to disrupt an entire industry and serve a whole bunch of people along the way. Well, how do you and your team fit into that vision? Do you have clear goals that will help you get there? From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, George Camel, and today's episode is all about scaling a bold vision. Our first guest today is Lauren Letta.

Lauren is the former C-O of Charity Water, an incredible nonprofit that brings clean drinking water to people in developing countries. These days, Lauren is a consultant that helps founders get to the next level with their companies. And today, she's going to share how she took the bold vision of Charity Water CEO, Scott Harrison, and converted it into an organizational structure

for building their team. Our second conversation is with Ramsey Leader Daniel Ramsey. He's going to walk us through a framework that our senior leaders use to help our team's focus on the right goals to help them accomplish the company's vision. Up first, here's my conversation with Lauren Letta. Lauren, it's so great to have you on the podcast. How are you?

I am great. It's super good to be here. Well, I'm excited to talk to you because you have quite the resume. For the last 15 years, you've worked across industries from fashion to philanthropy. And what I know about you is that you love working with visionary founders, with big, bold ideas, and helping give shape to that, give structure, to that so they can actually see the results. And so that's what I want to focus in on today. And one of the things you've done most recently was spend a lot of time at Charity Water over a

decade there. And five of those years, you were C-O-O helping Scott Harrison the founder accomplish this amazing vision. And this is what I found on your LinkedIn. I did some snooping. You had the honor of architecting a transformative organization from a bold vision into a 100-person, $100 million global award-winning enterprise that has brought clean water to more than 12 million people across 29 developing countries. Are you tired? Yeah, that was, I was. I am, but I would say that I'm much more motivated and inspired. I know that says that on my LinkedIn, but even just hearing it, it still really fills me with joy and gratitude for, you know, it was really an amazing once-in-a-lifetime experience

to be a part of Scott Harrison, the founder of Charity Water's vision, and to play a role and really bringing that organization to where it is today. Yeah. And, you know, we've had Scott Harrison at some of our entree leadership events. He's an incredible guy. And one thing I know about his vision, you know, it was partly to bring clean water to all of these countries that so desperately needed it. But he also decided, on top of that, I also want to reinvent charity as a whole. Is that what drew you to charity water?

Yes, 100%. You know, my career started, as you mentioned in fashion. And I was so, I've always been motivated by creativity and big vision and the ability to disrupt a space with a brand. And Scott, when he founded Charity Water now more than 15 years ago, as you said, there was this mission, which was, you know, exceptional. And most of us hadn't thought about if we've heard about it and certainly weren't acting on it, which was to solve the water crisis. At the time, there were a billion people on the planet without access to clean water. There are still now nearly 800 million people on the planet that don't drink. clean water. But Scott had this bigger vision and that is what what I was attracted to, which is

the idea to reinvent charity to really change what we thought of and expected from a charity from what was previously maybe not lots of trust in charity and not a lot of clarity on where our money was going. It was about proof and transparency. I was also really motivated by Scott's bold vision to take a charity and make it beautiful and hopeful and inspiring, something that we love, something that we couldn't wait to tell our friends about. Not that we were giving out of guilt, but we were giving because we were inspired to be a part of this movement of generosity.

I think, you know, Scott has always really seen the joy and giving. And I think with what Charity Water, with the vision, was to invite, you know, hundreds of millions of other people to participate in that giving and that joy. And even more profoundly, you were helping people you would never meet, people you would never see, people you probably couldn't really relate to because you did have all the clean water that you needed

to brush your teeth or, you know, whatever it was to take your shower. Like you hadn't thought about not having access to clean water. And so Scott was able to have this bold vision that would transcend that gap and bring us together and unite us in a way that, you know, as a people, we could be lifting one another up. Yeah.

There's so many incredible components of what Charity Water has done and is doing. And you had an incredible part in that. So how did you take that? vision, which is, you know, an overwhelmingly large vision and then convert that into organizational structure where you could kind of put some feet on the ground and go, okay, this is how we're going to accomplish this. Yeah. Well, you know, first of all, for me, I am an operator and a generalist, which basically means I'm a problem solver, which means I like working with big visionary people

who have a lot of problems they want to solve. So Scott and I were a good match from the beginning because of that. And, you know, it's step by step. And so, so, so, for me in the beginning, the way I started at Charity Water was as a consultant, actually to produce an annual gala. And that was my first kind of foot in the door of understanding what was happening at Charity Water. And in that instance, a gala, especially in a fundraising organization, is really like brings all of the team together. It's about fundraising. It's about your donor engagement. It's about your operations and your creativity. And so I was able to really get a taste for the structure of the organization.

And that led me into becoming the executive producer, which was my first role at Charity Water. As you said, I was there for 10 years and kind of moved up the operations chain from an executive producer to a chief of staff and ultimately, as you mentioned, to COO. But as executive producer, where I started was an audit. And I still do that today,

kind of anywhere I work, as before having an opinion or a point of view or a perspective, is listening and learning. So I do a kind of learning toward, not just meeting the people, but also understanding how does the work actually get done here? I'm a really big believer in ensuring that the organization is designed in a way that is authentic and aligned with the mission and the vision. And so knowing so clearly from Scott that we were existing to solve the water crisis, but that we wanted to do it by reinventing charity,

my job was to make sure our organization was designed and had the right people in it and the right way of thinking to achieve those things. Wow, that's incredible. And quite the big vision, as we mentioned there. So you needed to build a team. Once you've kind of got the lay of the land and said, this is where we're at, this is the vision, this is the mission. How do I assemble the right team and fill the roles in this organizational structure?

What were some of those first roles that you decided we've got to hire these people? We've got to have this in place if we're going to get there. Yeah. Well, one of the unique things about Charity Water and what I loved and loved about it is we never had this kind of obvious organizational structure that would match another charity. And part of that was because we were disrupting charity. And you have somebody like Scott Harrison who doesn't come from charity. You have somebody like me who comes from fashion.

And so that allowed us to think about how we built the team in a new way. And I think in general, no matter what environment you're operating in, bringing a new perspective to it is really, I think, an important way of seeing, what are we missing or what's a new way to solve this problem? And so within Charity Water, our greatest strength from the beginning and continues to was our brand and our ability to tell stories. And that was because we knew, you know, when you go back to your mission and vision

and think about how does the team line up to that, we knew that it didn't matter how big the water crisis was. And it didn't matter how amazing our programs were. If people didn't know about it, if people weren't called upon and inspired to support it, we wouldn't make the dent that we knew was possible in the water crisis. And so that meant our organizational structure and the people that we hired needed to really embody that mission and the vision.

And so when I came in, we had an amazing creative team. Some of the first folks that Scott hired were creatives and storytellers. We didn't have any fundraiser. So when I started to come in, it was kind of looking at, okay, what are the deltas now between our strengths and the opportunities were missing? And a lot of times at that stage of growth, the company was, you know, under 20 employees, under $10 million in revenue. You've kind of had this like growth trajectory that was like a rocket ship,

but all really based around this growth. grassroots movement and around everybody kind of working, you know, as many hours a day as possible. And when we looked at hiring, we said, okay, well, what's going to get us to the next level? So what type of professionalism do we need? For me, that's a lot of, like, connecting the dots between different teams and connecting the dots between how we communicate. So some of the first hires were in project management. It was a really important kind of through line at Charity Water, which was how do we make sure

what we're doing in the field, lines up with what we're talking to our donors about, lines up with what our finance team knows and really kind of that building that connective tissue of the organization. And then we also started to hire really specialized people at that point. You know, you've proven the theory. You have a lot of traction. And now it's about, okay, who's going to go from being the generalist to being super focused? So instead of everybody producing the gala and the organization, what's the, who's the person who's the event producer, right? So that was the kind of change as the organization was passing that, that maturity kind of chasm. Yeah. If you just have a room full of creatives, you can make some really cool stuff,

but will it ever get done on the right timelines? Will it ever get done? Yeah. To reach the right people. So that's really cool. You came in with that operational brain, got that 30,000-foot view, and you were able to see all of the moving parts and what needed to happen in order to get to that vision, which is incredible. So you've got the organizational structure. You're starting to build this team. What did the day-to-day look like to kind of reverse-engineer the goal? Yeah, well, you know, so first of all, I really believe in an agile organizational structure and an agile mentality when it comes to building a company, especially today's companies, which are fast-paced and oftentimes lean and oftentimes, you know, changing with the economy and the market around us, which is rapid speed, as we all know. And so what I like to do is pay constant attention, kind of always have 10% of my brain on like, how are we operating right now? So there's no same day-to-day because you're always kind of paying attention to what's happening in the moment and how does that line up with our goals? And so a lot of times that's kind of looking at roles and departments and thinking, you know what, this made a lot of sense to have project

management live in creative in the beginning. But now we really need this production skill set over in our programs team. How do we help them become more efficient and how do we help them build better systems and processes to help their program scale? So there's a kind of nimbleness that I think has been really important and was always a part of my mentality and thinking the company. I think the other side is really about amazing communication. I am like known for over communicating. I think in companies that are growing fast and changing and have big bold visions and big bold visionary founders, it's about how do we ensure that everybody is coming along and that we're incorporating feedback and moving together. And so for me, that's about lots of communication.

Communications and person, communication in town hall meetings where we're addressing big goals, communications and the, you know, in between the meetings and in the one-on-ones, just like lots and lots of keeping people informed and collecting that feedback. And I'd say the third thing that's always been really important to me is not to immediately solve a problem with a title. So what I mean by that is, as we were growing, a lot of times we'd be like, we have a huge problem with marketing. Our brand is amazing, but we haven't reached enough people. How are we going to reach more people? Well, a marketer. A marketer reached more people. Well, we need a marketer. We need a senior marketer. We need a chief marketer. And we would go through that, you know, for every function. You know,

every time you kind of ran into a problem. And I think that's a common knee-jerk reaction to, we have a Delta in our organization. How do we fill it? And no surprise, that can lead to, A, a really bloated organization with a lot of hires. And B, if you haven't really done the work of figuring out what type of marketer do we need? How much experience do they have? What type of experience they have?

Not just writing the job description, but really thinking about how does this role interact in our unique environment, because all of our environments are unique. that was a really important part of my role in the COO capacity as it related to the organizational structure and hiring was really thinking about what type of finance person do we need? You know, what stage of the company are we in and how do we make sure we really hire the right person? And frankly, that means sometimes you have to go through the mistake of hiring the wrong person and learning what it looks like to operate in your company at that time and that stage of growth. So that was really important to me as really dissecting roles and functions.

and understanding what do we need today and how does that get us closer to the goals that we're achieving. Yeah, that takes a lot of strategic thought there. And I think a lot of the leaders listening, they may be where you were talking about, where they're early on and they're going, we've got six people. And I'm just desperate for anyone who has any marketing experience. And they get in and he go, this was not the right person, but you needed that role for that time to figure it out. And so as you grow in scale, you can get more specific and more thoughtful with that person and this is exactly who we need. And obviously, Charity Water, an amazing brand, who wouldn't want to work there? So you guys can get some top talent folks who really are engaged in the

mission. So we talked about the structure. We talked about some of the day-to-day and some of these roles. What types of rhythms did you establish for the team to keep that communication strong, keep that collaboration strong? Is it weekly meetings? Is it quarterly? What does that look like for you? Yeah, sure. Well, I also have the privilege. of I wasn't dealing with COVID times and all the remote work and future of work that we are in now. And when I was in my role as COO, I transitioned out in the year of COVID in 2020 unrelated. But so we are just starting to kind of deal with the new way of working. But I can speak to the way we were working.

And we had a really amazing culture at Charity Water of collaboration and communication. And as you said, it's a really unique honor when we're able to recruit such a amazing amazing talent who are the best in their fields, but also deeply passionate about, you know, solving the world's biggest problems. And so we had, you know, embedded in that, we had amazing team members. But we really strive to keep people informed and to keep people collaborative. And so that was every single Monday, we had a meeting called bagel breakfast. And we got together. We usually had bagels. So after, you know, 10 years, we started to switch to like yogurt and waffles every once in a while just for some fun. And that meeting involved. And again, going

back to that kind of agile way of thinking, we constantly looked at that meeting. It never left. We always had it every Monday morning. Everybody was there. But the way we structured that meeting changed over time based on the needs of the team and the needs of the organization. And so that looked like oftentimes having somebody from each department represent something that was going on in that team, whether it was an upcoming initiative or something that they had just accomplished. We would announce new hires. We would celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. It was really just a time to be together and to start the week together. And at Charity Water, we also had this wonderful tradition of ending the week together with pizza every Friday.

And so every Friday at that time, and all being in the office, we would come together and end the week together. And that was an amazing, really amazing kind of foundation of the team and our ability to really stay, you know, kind of stay united and stay aligned and continue to collect feedback even as we were growing, you know, from 10 people now to a close. to 100 people. And then in between, there were lots of one-on-ones. All the teams had their own team meetings, and we adopted a really amazing meeting format, which is called the tactical meeting, which comes from a great organization called the Ready, which really helps businesses think about kind of the future of business and building 21st century systems and communication channels. And so the tactical was every single team in the organization did it. And it was a type of meeting that really allowed ownership of the meeting to be on the team. And so,

team to set the agenda in real time. And the whole point was, let's not worry about what we were worried about last week or what we might be worried about in the future. Kind of this week, today, what are we dealing with and how do we support and unblock each other? Wow. Some great little tidbits that our listeners can take and go, all right, it's time for bagel breakfast starting Monday. We are doing this thing. But I love that because it speaks to how business moves at the speed of trust. And when you can form those relationships with your team, spend time together, that's not always just focused on business. but you have that collaboration spirit,

that can really change the game as far as getting to that vision. And it may be underrated. You think, well, vision, we got to just get to work. But you can't do that unless you trust and like the people you work with. So some great reminders there.

So as we wrap here, Lauren, I want you to speak to our listeners as if you are consulting them. And they are the early days of charity water, and there's less than 10 people, and they have this big vision. They want to disrupt maybe their industry, and they don't know exactly what next step

to take because it can be overwhelming and even reverse engineering it into the thousands of steps that need to be taken, you just, you kind of need to take a breath and go, okay, what is the thing I can do this week to get to that vision, to convert the vision into actionable steps? And how do you talk someone through that? Yeah, sure. That's a great question. I think, you know, from a, from the highest level, there are two things that I think are

critical to accomplishing big visions and to breaking down those complex things into bite solutions and one is showing up. Like at the end of the day, and Scott and I used to talk about this every once in a while, you know, you'd have a breakthrough and you'd say, you just kept showing up. You know, you just keep working hard and showing up. And I think at the same time that you put your head down and you keep working, you need to have the presence every once in a while to stop back, look down, look around, make sure that the path you're on is the right one and be willing to challenge yourself and question yourself. Maybe, you know, you know where you're going, but maybe the vehicle that you're getting in to get there needs to change.

And so be willing to change your environment, change your surroundings, change the way you're thinking in order to continue to accomplish your vision. I think the second thing is it's okay if you don't know what you're doing or if you doubt yourself. No one has all the answers, especially today when businesses are just growing at such a rapid speed and changing the way we think about almost every industry and second. we are reinventing and disrupting. So it's okay. You might be the first person who's asked that question or who's the first person who's willing and daring enough to try to solve it and get comfortable knowing that you're going to make decisions without all the information. At the end of the

day, you are never going to have 100% of the information to make that big decision, but you have to make it. And I think trusting your instincts and being a leader means having a perspective and being willing to admit that sometimes that perspective was wrong. But you have to. have a point of view and be willing to take a step closer towards it. So I think those are my two kind of more philosophical leadership pieces of advice. And in a more tactical way, you know, you've got to start somewhere. So you do, you kind of take, like you said, reverse engineering, but you kind of take that big problem and figure out what's the next step that gets me were there and be willing to kind of deconstruct that problem and find those pieces and solutions that will

help kind of pave the way. Yeah. I'm hearing a lot of themes of commitment and vulnerability and humility and so many great leadership traits that every leader listening, I think, has, but it's a great reminder and encouragement to them that they're doing important work and it is going to be hard and it is going to be worth it. And there are people that need your service, your help on the other side. And I love how you've been doing that for over 15 years now. Continue to do that as you consult and help leaders out there get through those blockers or chasms, as you call them, to get to the results they want, help the people that they want to help. So, Lauren, thank you so much for the work that you have done, that you continue to do,

and we appreciate you being on the podcast today. Thanks so much for having me. It was great. I really am honored to be here. Big thanks to Lauren for an inspiring conversation. You know, she talked about taking a bold vision and converting it into an organizational structure. But it's easier said than done, especially when it comes to rallying your team around it. So how exactly do you take a bold vision and communicate it in a way that the

team not only understands, but also gets passionate about? We'll have a conversation about that right after this. All right, in our second conversation, I sit down with Daniel Ramsey. He's the executive vice president of Entree leadership, and he's going to share a framework that we use at Ramsey called the desired future to get your team rallied around your company's vision. We'll talk about how to create a desired future statement and how it translates to objectives and key results for your team. Here's our conversation. Daniel, great to have you back on the podcast. Hey, it's so good to be here. So we are talking about a very exciting topic, something that is very near and dear to us here at Ramsey, something that our entire leadership team has adopted,

and we call it desired future. So talk to me about this framework and kind of where it came from and why we started using it. Yeah, sure. So this framework was really fun to discover and build, and really it goes back to our leadership, spent a lot of time and off-send, trying to figure out where are we going? What are we trying to achieve and how are we going to get there? And so we had various facilitators come in and teach us this stuff. And we had, you know, we're good friends with Palanchione and Henry Cloud. And over the years, we've had both of them come in and help us with us. And so we kind of merged two of their frameworks together, things that they both brought to the table. Henry Cloud coined the term desired future.

And we really stole a lot of Palantioni's framework in how we actually implemented it and how we lay it all out. So we talked to those guys and they've helped us build this and they're cool with us kind of repackaging some of the things they've taught us. That's awesome. Yeah, great, great friends of ours. So what is the purpose of desired future? I mean, we didn't have it for many, many years and we were doing okay. At what point did we go, we need something better, different to figure this out? Yeah, so a desired future is simply the future you desire. It's that simple, right? Mind blown. Oh, my gosh. And so you really want to take time to describe what that looks like. And so not everyone knows it.

You know, you as the leader sometimes you think you have it in your head and you think, like, hey, it's really clear in my mind where we're trying to achieve, where we're going. But your team usually doesn't know that. They can't read your mind. And if you've explained it to them once, it probably didn't stick. So writing it down, capturing it in a phrase is incredibly important. And so that's what we encourage you to do is sit down with your leadership team and write out a phrase that describes in one sentence what the future you desire is.

And just writing it down has power. It's really powerful to know where you're going. And it's something that people can remember. It's something they can come back to. It's something that you can point at and say, this is the North Star, this is the direction that we're trying to go. So that sounds real easy. Just write down your vision. But this can be a very difficult process.

I know our leadership team, I mean, they'll grapple for hours over what this statement should be. How does a leader come up with the statement and then know that this is right? Yeah. So the framework that we have is really simple. We start with saying, by a certain date, and so maybe by the end of this coming year or by the end of in two years, we will. So the first part is by a date. The second part is we will, saying the core thing that you're trying to achieve. And then we say resulting in something else.

So the three components to a desired future statement that make it really strong is having a date. So by when we will, and that's describing what you're going to achieve, what's going to be different in the future. And then resulting in is how things, what are the outcomes that you want to create from the desired future. So this is good, you know, it kind of harkens back to some of our basic goal setting techniques where we have to have, it has to be specific and measurable. We have to have the result in mind, how we're going to accomplish that. So once we have this statement that we all feel good about as a team, and the truth is maybe not everyone is going to go 100%, this is what I would have said, which, It can be hard to come to consensus, right? Oh, man.

This process drives me crazy. Like, it's easy, it's simple, and it takes longer than you expect. Like, for me as a leader, I've done this so many times where, like, I have it in my head, and I think it's really clear. But when we try to put pen to paper, it's harder than I expect. And it's also harder and takes more time to get everyone on board. And so for me, what I like to do is instead of doing it by myself, I like to gather the key leaders around me that I need that can really weigh in.

They can speak to it. They can really argue different points. of it, and so we really get it together. And by them weighing in, they buy into it as well. So that process is going to take a couple hours. Now, you might think, like, hey, half an hour, 45 minutes will knock it out. That's what I typically think going into every time I try to recreate one for the next year. But it's never the case. It always takes a few hours. So give yourself set expectations clearly for yourself and for your team. Yeah. So once you've got the statement, we're not done yet. We've got to have some defining objectives of kind of the next step. What does this

like now in tactical terms. So describe how you go about creating those. Yeah. So within your desired futures, you have your statement, and under that you have what we call defining objectives. These are the things that are going to help you accomplish the actual statement itself. So this could be anywhere from three to six key things you need to drive. Now, there's always a ton of things that have to happen in your business. But these are the key core, most important things for you to do to focus. And so that's a little bit easier of a process to do is identifying those. It still takes a little bit of time, but it's easier to help identify those. And then once you do identify them, you need to assign owners to them so they could hold that

person accountable for driving this across the lane and into fruition. That's super important to delegate that and go, okay, Daniel, you're owning this. We're all in agreement. So next time we meet, you're going to have an update on how this is doing. Which brings me to the next point. This is a living, breathing dashboard. This isn't, hey, we just do it once a year and put it away in a file somewhere. We're checking back in on this. We're saying if it's trending up, trending down. How do you measure those things? Yeah, so we actually do two things every single week with the desired future. In our leadership meeting, every week, our leaders, we review it together and we go over the status of this. Hey, what's the status of this objective? What's the

status of the overall? Are we on track or are we off track? We use a red, yellow green system just to say, hey, is it green? Is it on track? Is it red? Is it off track? Or is it yellow where it's maybe slightly off track. And so we just have a real honest conversation about that. If it's green, no problem. We keep going. If it's red or yellow, the leaders we look around and say, hey, what do we need to do to get this back on track? Hey, George, can I help you with your objective? How, what can I do to help you get this back on track? And so we really lean in together. There may be a single owner of an objective, but we're all responsible for it getting across the line. So that's one thing we do is in our leadership meeting. We have those conversations every week. And then also every week with

the team at large, we get up in front of our whole team and do a stand-up where we walk through it and we just give them an update. Hey, guys, here's where we're at and here's what we're doing about it. So, hey, guys, we're on track. We're doing great. Things are awesome. Let's celebrate. Let's high-five. Letting them know that. And also, sometimes things are off track. And it's good just to be open and honest with your team and share that. That insight's really helpful because it'll give them a chance to speak into it, maybe have ideas around it, maybe contribute to getting back on track. I know sometimes as a leader, like, it's embarrassing to get up in front of the team and say, hey, guys, we're not winning or we're off track, but it's really powerful if you can do that

and be just real and open and honest with your team of where you're at. Yeah, I think the team respects that vulnerability when Daniel gets up there and says, hey, my defining objective, not on track. I love your help, your ideas to get this thing back to where it needs to go. So I love that. So there's a lot of pieces of this, but at the end of the day, it's pretty simple. And I love the simplicity of it. This is not a philosophical discussion. This is very boots on the ground. What is actually happening? Are we trending towards this vision?

So tell me about an example of maybe a defining objective that you have with the Entree leadership desired future. Yeah, sure. So our desired future for Entree revolves around making our elite membership better and stronger. So we're trying to triple that this year. We have a metric that we're trying to triple, which is the number of people that are engaged. So with that, one of our defining objectives is increasing the engagement in the in our product.

So how often are we getting people back in each week? That's what we're measuring. That's what we're tracking. And with that, we have a bunch of ideas and a bunch of ways the team is doing that. So they're constantly looking at new tools and improving existing tools. We're shooting a ton of new video courses that members have seen those roll out. And so we're launching a bunch of those right now. So there's a lot of fun stuff happening there.

And that's how we're measuring success is seeing how many people are logging in each week and are they engaging to the level that we expect. That's awesome. Really exciting. So this is a perfect segue, because the desired future dashboard is actually one of our newest tools that we have inside of Entrae Leadership League. So this is not a pitch.

It's very meta. But tell us about – because this is a tool that we used as a team, and then we decided, you know what, this can really help our fans, our tribe, our clients to also accomplish their vision. That's right. Yeah. So at Ramsey, we've been using desired futures for years now, but it's always been just scrappy using paper or like a PowerPoint presentation.

and it was difficult. So we decided we were going to make that better in elite. And so by doing it in elite, we were able to make it something where you can use it on an ongoing basis. You can use it to present to your team. You can use it to hold your team accountable by having them update in the app. That's been really powerful for us.

Yeah, we got to see a live demo that your team did in front of the entire company to give us a taste of what they're working on and where it's at. And it was amazing to see where it started and where it is now and how it'll continue to grow and serve our fans out there. Sure, yeah. So it's in a really good spot, and we've got so many ideas of how it can be better. So I can't wait to see where it's going to be five months, eight months, you know, 14 months later. It'll be great. So an obvious next step here is for our listeners to jump into elite, experience the desired future dashboard tool for themselves. But let's say they're not there yet. What's a great first step they can take to create this desired future?

Man, George, I would really just challenge our audience to take a moment and sit down, pull out a piece of paper, get a pen, and just start writing. try to describe in as few words as possible what your future is. And so it's difficult, but if you can just start the process of writing and thinking about it, that's really powerful. Bonus points, if you can involve your key leaders and bring them into that conversation. But just start writing. That's what I would say. Well, I love how this tool and this concept has helped our leadership team get to the next level

and start accomplishing that vision. Love the way you care for our team so deeply as well as our fans. Appreciate your leadership. Thanks for being on the podcast. Thanks, George. Thanks so much, Daniel. Always great having Entre Leadership's fearless leader on the podcast. As Daniel was just talking about, a desired future can really help your team rally around a common goal.

And we wanted to give you a PDF worksheet so that you can create your own desired future to start using with your team. To download it and fill it out, just use the link in the show notes. And if you find it valuable, we've made it into a digital tool that will allow you to set your desired future, create defining objectives, and track your progress. It's all part of Entree Leadership Elite, and if you want to learn more about that, you can use the link in the show notes. Hope you enjoyed today's episode of the show.

If you did, I want to challenge you to share this with three people on your team or in your circle. And if you really enjoyed it, leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts and tell us what you love about it. Now, there's one guy in particular who would love to hear what you think about this podcast, and his name is Tim, and he's the producer.

He wants to know what you like, what you don't like, and what improvements we could make. Your input helps shape what you hear, on this podcast. That's pretty cool. So go ahead and use the link in the show notes, connect with our producer, Tim. If you want to keep up with us on social media, you can follow us at Entree Leadership. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, edited by Jacob Harrison, and mixed and mastered by Will Rutter. I'm your host, George Camel, and on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thanks for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out

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