Start With A Win - Unleashing Leadership Magic: Dive into the Mind of William Vanderbloemen Author of 'Be the Unicorn'!

Starting point is 00:00:00 I think first things matter a tremendous amount. It's that easy. Now, you've got to have some discernment about what you respond to quickly and what you don't. Otherwise, you're just going to be a slave to whatever's the urgent thing right in front of you. The second one is top of mind is first in line. Oh, that's good. Because we all think we're good at it. There's some gold right here.

Starting point is 00:00:19 Welcome to Start With A Win, where we unpack franchising, leadership, and business growth. Let's go. I'm coming to you from Start With A Win headquarters where we unpack franchising, leadership, and business growth. Let's go. I'm coming to you from Start With A Win headquarters at Area 15 Ventures. It's Adam Contos with Start With A Win. Today, we have William Vanderbloemen on the show. William is the CEO and founder of Vanderbloemen Executive Search, a search firm that's got over 15 years and 3,000 searches under its belt in executive search. William has written a book called Be the Unicorn, 12 Data-Driven Habits That Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest. It was released by HarperCollins Leadership in November of 2023 and has a ton of great game-changing tips for job seekers, employees, hiring managers, and really people who want to grow their leadership. Isn't that what we're here for, is to grow our leadership?

Starting point is 00:01:11 So let's dive in today with William on Start With a Win. Thanks so much, Adam. It's great to be with you. Awesome. So tell us a little bit about yourself. I mean, you were in a faith-based community for quite some time, got into executive search. Take us through that journey. And how did we get to where we are today? Totally normal career progression. Textbook.

Starting point is 00:01:33 Not. Yeah, exactly. You know, the entrepreneur's journey is never straight up into the right. It's loopy, right? So for about 15 years, I served as a pastor and that's a whole long story. That's another podcast. But prior to that, I was the kid that was always an entrepreneur. I mean, just always had a bent for it. I remember starting a car wash when I was about 12 and then hiring my little brothers.

Starting point is 00:02:05 And, you know, it was not indentured servitude. It was pretty close. And I remember buying out. I was the paper boy in our neighborhood and I bought out the other routes around me and reconfigured them and then chopped them back up. So, like, I'm just incessantly tinkering and building and trying. And then that combined with a pastoral move was really interesting. I served great churches. I think I was probably always a little too entrepreneurial for the church and rock the boat more than probably should have. But yeah, I left the church that I was serving, went through a divorce, which I would not recommend.

Starting point is 00:02:47 It wasn't anything juicy enough for the tabloids, but it was just a tragic, bad thing. I ended up being a single dad of four kids and needing to figure out what to do. So I went to work for a big oil and gas company since we live in Houston. That's kind of what to do. So I went to work for a big oil and gas company since we live in Houston. That's kind of what there is. And it was really fortunate to get a good job. I had been on a management rotation track, right? So you do this discipline one year and this another, and you'll come out learning the business. First rotation was HR. And during that year, the CEO said, I've been CEO for nine and a half years, which is a Fortune 200 company. That's a long time in that setting.

Starting point is 00:03:30 And he said, it's time to find my successor. Yeah. Yeah. So they hired this thing called a search firm. And 90 days later, they had their new CEO. And I thought, what in the world did I just see? And since I was in HR, I was kind of the water boy for that team, right? Didn't get to contribute much, but got to see what was going on.

Starting point is 00:03:53 The church that I had served here in Houston, First Presbyterian, it's actually where Sam Houston went to church. Wow. Yeah, I was called to lead that when I was 31. What were they thinking? They did not use a search firm. They should have. But they took almost three years to find me.

Starting point is 00:04:11 And it's a great church. And then I stayed six years. And then they took three years to find the next guy. So in 12 years, they spent half their time looking for a leader and half their time with one. And I thought, wow, the oil and gas company just did this in 90 days. There's got to be a way to build something better. So I went home. Adrian and I had been married maybe two months, blended our families, six kids, a house we could barely afford. And I said, Adrian, I think I'm supposed to quit my job and start something new for churches. And she looked at me and said,

Starting point is 00:04:54 that's because churches love new ideas, right? So no one's ever said that in the history of ever. Yeah. And it was the fall of 2008. Now, if you're too young to remember that, just Google 2008 economy. Right. Yeah. I remember that well. Really stupid time to quit your job and to start something new. But here we are 15 years later. We've completed 3,000 searches. We branched out. We

Starting point is 00:05:26 started with how do we help a church find a pastor? And then it turned into heads of school for faith-based schools and C-suite for very large nonprofits. And now the values-based businesses of the world, kind of the Chick-fil-A's of the world hire us to help find their leadership. So it's been a crazy, strange journey. I never could have done the job I'm doing now had I not done all the jobs leading up till now. So, you know, wins in things that didn't feel like a career led to a career that I love and would call a win right now. Awesome. So this is interesting because, you know, I've got your book here, Be the Unicorn, 12 Data-Driven Habits That Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest. And it's interesting.

Starting point is 00:06:10 I mean, the foreword is by John C. Maxwell, who's one of the preeminent leadership minds on the planet and a great guy. You know, you obviously recognized that there were a lot of leadership principles and leadership steps that need to happen. Obviously, we're talking about key leaders and organizations here. So you have to find somebody that's, you know, leadership driven. But a lot of that has been, you know, this combination of soft skills and tactical skills. How did you sit down and figure out, okay, if I can refine leadership to these 12 steps, I can define it better for my clients. Tell me, tell me about that process. Yeah. Well, John Maxwell has been a friend for a long, long time, mentored me when I was a young leader. I'm not as smart as he is.

Starting point is 00:06:57 He can sit down and say, here are the 10 things that related to the 21 irrefutable laws of like he just he just comes out. I'm not that I'm not that smart. So I like to see patterns and see if I can name them. And I like data to drive things because you don't want my ruminations or my thoughts. That won't take long at all. So in the in the lockdown of the pandemic, we had a little time on our hands. Every one of our clients was closed indefinitely, which I learned is really not good for your P&L. But we realized, you know, in our searches, the very best candidates toward the end of the search get a long format face-to-face in-person interview. And we realized we've now done 30,000 of those. That's a lot of data. You could probably find some patterns. So we said of the best of the best, how do they do in the interview? How are they doing the job? How

Starting point is 00:07:57 are they, are they getting promoted? Have they added value of the best that we've ever seen, are there common denominators? Do they look the same? Do they act the same? What do they have in common? So we went and kind of scoured through things. And what we realized was it wasn't the way they looked. It wasn't their IQ. It wasn't where they went to school or pedigree. It was how they treat other people. And we found 12 distinct habits that these best of the best, I call them very intentional, bent toward habits that most of us are unintentionally bent away from.

Starting point is 00:08:58 And so when we realized this is no longer, it started out as kind of a selfish project. Like, could we figure out how to spot unicorns better? When we saw the common denominators, these habits, we realized we're not spotting unicorns now. We can train people to become one. And that's when I said, okay, this needs to be a book. Because as you know, writing a book is not a lot of fun and you don't make any money doing it anyway. So it better be a message that you feel really needs to get out there to put the time and effort in. And that's kind of what led to the book. And, you know, if you open the table of contents and look at the list of the 12 habits, the most common reaction is probably like, duh, William, who wouldn't guess that?

Starting point is 00:09:39 I kid people, Adam, and tell them the alternate title should have been, well, I guess mom was right. Because it all sounds like stuff that you get drilled in your head when you're a kid, you know. But what's different is this is not William's 21 irrefutable thoughts about leadership. This is, here's what the data says about people who stand out in the crowd. It's simple interpersonal habits that if you will train these habits into who you are, you will stand out of the crowd and become a unicorn. Awesome. So you've, I mean, there, these things are broken down very succinctly into, you know, there's the prepared, there's the solver, the agile, the authentic, the curious. I mean, there are, I love how you have these defined in this book,

Starting point is 00:10:34 and they're really easy to process, really easy to understand, and really easy to reflect on. So take us through, what do you find are, you know, obviously you have 12 here, but take three or four of these and let's share some of those with our audience so that we can impact their day through this podcast. So, you know, what is your favorite of book, I'm going to wait a year because I wrote that, you know, in publishing you write and it's about a year before the book actually gets out. Oh, yeah. Now that I've read the thing over and over a year, I think I know the material better than I did when I wrote it. I'll go rewrite it. And, you know, what would the order be? What's my favorite habit? So I'm kind of like, I'm a big believer that if you want to make a permanent life change, you need to start with a small, winnable change. You need to start with a win, for lack of a better way to say it. I like that.

Starting point is 00:11:35 I don't know if it's my favorite habit, but I think the easiest one to just grab hold of, focus on, and master is the very first chapter. And we call it the fast, which is a little misleading. That's a little bit of clickbait. Oh, it's, it's not raw speed. I am not fast. I tell people I'm Dutch. We're built for wind resistance, not speed.

Starting point is 00:12:00 So it's, it's, it, if it were really accurately titled, it would be the responsive. Unicorns get back to people and they do it quickly and they do it intentionally. They're fast at getting back to people. They're fast to make it personal. And that is something that we as humans genuinely stink at. Why do you think that is? I don't know. And what is that trait that you see typically?

Starting point is 00:12:35 Is it just that, okay, I got a call from William. I'm going to pick up the phone and call you back right away and say, hey, buddy, how you doing? Hope your day is going great. What can I do for you? Is it simply that easy? Yeah, it is that easy. It is that easy. Now you got to have some discernment about what you respond to quickly and what you don't. Otherwise you're just going to be a slave to whatever's the urgent thing right in front of you. But somehow unicorns find a way. They figure out how to respond to people, not in an auto-respond, not with a chatbot,

Starting point is 00:13:05 not with one of those automatic messages Apple tries to populate your text with when you're on the phone, like a real human response in very quick time. And we found that it really doesn't matter what part of humanity you look at. We're terrible at this. I don't know the why. I mean, I was reminded when I mean, you know, I was reminded when I was writing this book, I took a lot of Latin in college and the word in Latin that means tomorrow is the word crestina. So when you procrastinate, you're literally putting it off

Starting point is 00:13:40 for tomorrow. And we do that no matter what we found. Adam, we found that people who use inbound marketing, like fill out a form and somebody will get in touch with you. Yep. You know, the sales team should be sitting waiting on those forms, right? Oh, there's form. Got to get back to somebody. We found that a massive study of companies that use inbound marketing, if you respond to a form when it gets sent in within a minute of receiving it, you have a 98% chance of being on a sales call with that person. 98%. And this slam dunk, you wait 20 minutes after the form comes in, you have a 60% chance. You've lost almost 40% chance just by waiting 19 minutes. If you wait 24 hours, I won't walk through all the stages, but at 24 hours, if you wait 24 hours after a form's filled out to respond to it,

Starting point is 00:14:31 you have a less than 1% chance of having a sales call. And the average response time for all of the people taking this survey, 42 hours have it they don't have a chance none and they're paying money to have inbound marketing right and they're paying marketers and they're literally throwing away we talked to um i don't know your listeners may not remember this is going back but e-harmony you remember that it's like the og before people were swiping left and right or whatever. Yeah. It was one of the first online dating deals. That's right. Yeah. A database populated almost exclusively with lonely people who really want to meet somebody.

Starting point is 00:15:15 Right. So eHarmony sends an email. Oh, we found two people who might be a match. The response time for those forums? Crazy bad. Interesting. Terrible. You get people in our work.

Starting point is 00:15:28 So we're executive search. So usually we're going and finding somebody like you that's already got a great thing going on. And we're going to introduce you a brand new destiny. But we do have people who are genuinely looking for a new setting. Like whatever they're doing has run its course and it's time to make a change. People that really want to find their next career move, we send emails to them and they wait days to get back to us. If you want to make a quick change, if you want to start with a win in becoming a unicorn, it's pretty simple. Just get back to people. Now, remember, I was a young senior pastor, 27 or something like that. And I'd been asked to come help this church relocate. They'd sold their

Starting point is 00:16:15 property. They'd bought some new property. They hadn't built anything yet. So I was kind of like with them in the wilderness, I guess would be the way you say it. And we were looking for somewhere. We'd outgrown the temporary facility that we had. So looking for a new place. And I'm riding around with a community leader who used to be on our board and had stepped away from the church. And he said, you know, right down the road from our new property, there's that YMCA and they're not even open on Sundays. I bet we could use that. I said, cool. He said, you know, I know the board chair there. I'm like, cool. And we were driving around, we get back to my office and he handed me the guy's number and said, you should give him a call. I said, I will. So we sat and visited for another 10 or 15 minutes and I said, anything else I can do for you? He said, yeah. Why haven't you called that

Starting point is 00:16:58 guy yet? I said, well, you just gave me the number and we're sitting. He said, William, let me tell you a leadership principle that has never failed me. Your first opportunity to get something done is almost always going to be the best opportunity you have to get something done. Call them now. Bam. Never forgot that. Right there. Your first opportunity to get something done is almost always your best opportunity. I can't agree. I mean, you ever pull out into, you're waiting to turn left into traffic and you pull up to the intersection and there's a chance to go? I pass on that sometimes and I sit there and wait forever for the next one to come up. Right.

Starting point is 00:17:36 Yeah, we, in the real estate space, you know, kind of my history here, we have something called speed to lead. And, you know, I listened to your statistics on how quickly you can get back to somebody. And absolutely, the rule of thumb is if they are engaged in that particular item at that time, and I'm pointing at my phone right now because it might be searching for a house on their phone or something like that, and it rings right then and there, it's top of mind. And I've been running off of this, these two key principles in my business. The first one is presence creates trust. And I'm sure we'll, we'll talk about that here. Um, you know, or something like that in your unicorn stuff. But the second one is top of mind

Starting point is 00:18:16 is first in line. And when, when you think about that, you're, you know, your responsiveness, the fast, I think is incredibly powerful. And, and I can't stress that enough, uh, in, in this list. I mean, you know, just chapter one right there, bam pays for the book. So, uh, I would encourage everybody to check it out, but, uh, I want to move on. Give me another one. What's another one of these key things we've already got people calling people back. Yeah. So you're calling people back you're doing great how about the um the the hardest one oh yeah that yields that yields the biggest result okay remember you start with a win you want to stack wins momentum is a leader's friend get a win get another win get another win it will lead to more when i suppose you're familiar with this just a little bit, but, uh, when you want to, when you want to try a challenging one,

Starting point is 00:19:10 uh, read the chapter called the self-aware. Oh, okay. And every chapter is pretty simple. It's a case study of a unicorn in that particular trait. It's what we learned interviewing the unicorns that we've identified. And then it's how you can apply it. You're not going to read this book and say, William is going to cure cancer. That's not going to happen. It's pretty simple. Go to the chapter on the self-aware. Why? Okay. So we surveyed all these unicorns that we found and we pretty long survey. One of the things in that survey was force rank these habits. Tell us what you're best at, what you're worst at. The clear winner for last place was self-awareness. Wow. Everyone's like, I'm terrible. I got to get better at that. Okay. Let's turn it

Starting point is 00:19:59 around. We also surveyed a quarter million normal people like you and me, right? Yep. Asked them some similar questions, including, would you rank yourself below average, above average, average, you know, at each of these 12 traits. 93% of all of the general survey that we did, 93% of respondents said that they are above average at self-awareness. Interesting. I'm not a mathematician. That doesn't add up though.

Starting point is 00:20:39 93% of a group is not above average. Right. Yeah. So, so on the one hand, the unicorn said, man, this needs more work than anything else. And on the other hand is the biggest blind spot we normal people have because we all think we're good at it. There's, there's some gold right here because I mean, when you look at it truly, what, what are one of the top traits listed academically and leadership? It's emotional intelligence. What is emotional intelligence? It's awareness of self awareness of others, awareness of the situation. So how do those three things play together? And if you think you're aware of yourself, but you're not, you are completely freaking oblivious to what's going on with other people. So yeah, this is incredible.

Starting point is 00:21:18 It's like when you walk up to somebody and you look at their face. I always believe that people are either living in love or in fear at the moment. And I have to understand where I'm living right now. And you're describing this thought that I have, but the way you put it is very, very effective, I would say, of, okay. I mean, if you could walk around and have a sign in your hand that says, how self-aware are you and how self-aware are they, we win. I mean, we totally have the ability to build that bridge of the relationship with whoever we're talking to. Yeah, but that's a tough one to swallow, man. I remember when I was 22 or 23 and going through grad school at Princeton, preparing to be a pastor. And in the Presbyterian Church where I served, you have to go through all these tests and personality things to figure out if you're, you know, not crazy.

Starting point is 00:22:14 And if you know what you're getting into. And I'd taken one of these. Where's Myers-Briggs and the Brickman and the StrengthsFinders and all these things. The counselor said, wow, it says you're really good at this and you get strengths here. And man, you're good at that. You just got a lot going on. That's great. Hmm. The results show that on occasion you might have trouble receiving criticism and tell you the straight truth. You might have trouble receiving criticism. I immediately said, I do not. And the counselor just kind of leaned back and said, is that right?

Starting point is 00:22:53 I don't like hearing this. And that's why we decided, when we started to see just how unaware people are of what they're good at or not. We built a software assessment tool that you can take to show how you measure up in the unicorn factors. We built it as a 360 so teams can take it together or even families so that people can try and develop some self-awareness with just some really raw data about here's how I see myself and here's how my friends and coworkers see me. Okay. Awesome. Well, that's, that's amazing. I mean, just, just those two be fast and be self-aware or the fast and the self-aware, uh, in your book are unbelievably powerful. Um, I, I wanted to make sure I let everybody know,

Starting point is 00:23:41 where can we find your book be the unicorn? So I hated my name growing up, but it's my best asset right now. If you go to Amazon and just try spelling Vanderbloomen, it's such a messed up name. You will get where you're supposed to be. Same on the internet. And if you just go to vanderbloomen.com, you'll actually find about 4,000 totally free resources for leaders on how you build and run and keep a great team. But you'll also see the book. Now, if you want a one-stop shop, a website with everything and some bonus content, theunicornbook.com. Theunicornbook.com.

Starting point is 00:24:21 Awesome. I hope that's helpful. Awesome. Make sure you check out the unicornbook.com and william vanderbloom's work here uh highly recommend the book i have it right here it's it's definitely a page turner and has a lot of great leadership content in it uh william i do have a question i ask all of our amazing guests on start with a win and that is how do you mr unicorn start your day with a win?

Starting point is 00:24:47 I don't know that I'm a unicorn. Does anybody ever say by hitting the snooze button? I haven't had that one yet. No, it's not really a win. I make my kids put their alarm clock on the other side of the room so they can't do that. Oh, nice. You got to get out of bed to turn it off. You know, on my best days, which I hope are most days, but we, you know, we're humans. I screw up all the time. I have a rule of first in,

Starting point is 00:25:16 first out. I think first things matter a tremendous amount. And so the first thing out of my mouth is always gratitude, gratitude. And I'm a spiritual guy. And so like for me, it's thanking God for all the great things in my life. And what's interesting is it's not just a spiritual thing. Probably the most red column I've ever written for Forbes was how successful people start their day. And it's amazing across all faith and non-faith bandwidths, how much, how many people start their day that are really successful with a moment of gratitude. And so that's, that's the first out, the first in for me, I want to read eternal principles so that as I step into a temporal day, I'm undergirded with something that's more permanent. And I'm not trying to proselytize or anything, but for me, that is a faith reading, right?

Starting point is 00:26:11 For others, it might be wisdom or something, just something that's a little higher altitude than what you're about to jump into for the day. I think the first things matter. So first thing out of me and the first thing into me are what I try and govern. Awesome. Incredible work here. Be the unicorn. And also some great ideas here, William. William Vander Bloemen, Be the Unicorn, 12 Data-Driven Habits That Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest. Thank you for being on Start With a Win. We appreciate all you do. And everybody, make sure you go check out William's book here. Thanks, Adam.

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Start With A Win - Unleashing Leadership Magic: Dive into the Mind of William Vanderbloemen Author of 'Be the Unicorn'!

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