The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Businesses Don’t Fail They Commit Suicide: How to Survive Success and Thrive in Good Times and Bad by Larry Mandelberg

Episode Date: December 12, 2024

Businesses Don't Fail They Commit Suicide: How to Survive Success and Thrive in Good Times and Bad by Larry Mandelberg Amazon.com Mandelberg.biz Symptoms that Your Business May be About to Commit Suicide... Do constant disruptions and distractions make you feel like the business is managing you rather than you're managing the business? Do the Board and senior managers disagree on major decisions? Is one department or department head the source of most problems? Is conflict within the leadership team undermining staff morale? If your business is suffering from any of the above problems then it's time to do something about it. No business ever failed because they ran out of money. Most businesses fail because their success brings unfamiliar problems that leaders and managers do not know how to solve. Running out of money is simply a lagging indicator of prior bad decisions and a failure to anticipate change. This book shows you how to anticipate change, manage internal conflict, and leverage it to your advantage. With real-life stories that explore common situations, angst, and humor in ways that are understandable and insightful, Mandelberg - The problems that come with success and how to manage them - The infallible crystal ball that lets you see change coming before it's too late - Eight operational must-haves and how your organization ranks - Exiting the 'whack-a-mole' cycle with problems that don't get fixed - Turning change done unto you into change done unto others, and of course, - Why businesses fail Based on over 40 years of experience and interviews with over 250 business leaders, Mandelberg explains how to avoid failure and build a strong, successful business that lasts. Click 'buy now' and prepare your business to survive success!About the author Larry Mandelberg solves complex problems. Then again, he had a four-generation head start. This consultant, speaker and author represents the 5th generation of his family’s business, so he inherited “170 years of organizational success experience.” Larry has launched four start-ups, led a merger, and performed a successful turnaround. (That’s evidence of six complex problems, solved.) He is an effective catalyst for change who achieved new levels of efficacy and growth for businesses in industries as diverse as software, automotive, education and agriculture. A prolific writer, Larry has published more than 80 columns. As a sought-after speaker, Mandelberg has delivered more than 60 business-changing keynotes and workshops. He has been a guest on television and radio programs talking about business and entrepreneurship. Through his consulting practice he provides leadership development, executive coaching, ethics training and strategic planning to mid-sized organizations and their Boards. Mr. Mandelberg is a student of organizational lifecycles and has developed a system to help business owners master change and create sustainable growth. His new book, Businesses Don't Fail, They Commit Suicide provides a roadmap for executing his system. In addition to his role as Chairman for Innovative Education Management, Larry has provided training for Cooperative Personnel Services, taught team building classes for the Sacramento Entrepreneurship Academy, and received his MBA from Drexel University. He has been married to his wife Nancy for 42 yea

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hey, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

That shrill sound is the sound of the Iron Lady telling you that the time has come. We are live on all the social medias there. As always, folks, refer to the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrissvoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrissvoss, chrissvoss1 on the TikTokity and all those crazy places on the internet. Today, I hope you have the, what was it? The tray tables up and ready for the Blaine brain, the Blaine bleed, the brain bleed. It's Friday. People give me a break.

We have a great author on the show with us today. It is entitled the newest book that just came out March 21st, 2023 businesses. Don't fail. They commit suicide, how to survive success and thrive in good times and bad Larry Mandelberg is on the show with us today we're gonna be talking to him about his insights his experience and how to survive and succeed and thrive in good times and bad it sounds like a Led Zeppelin song good times bad times do we have to pay for that now Larry is a consultant speaker and author with more

than 150 years of combined business experience. A natural problem solver, Larry represents the fifth generation of his family's business. He started working as a young age where he learned from his father before and after school. He's an effective catalyst for change who has solved intractable problems and achieved new levels of efficiency and successes for business in multiple industries. A prolific writer, he's published more than 80 columns. His first book, the one Fort mentioned, is released in 2018.

I'm clearly still in the 1900s. I'm old, people. A sought-after speaker, he's delivered more than 60 business-changing keynotes and workshops. Welcome to the show, Larry. How are you? Outstanding, Chris. Outstanding. I think you were in just shock and awe as to how amazing your bio is.

Yeah, I know. I'm like, who is he talking about? I thought it was me on the show today. I lived through this. Wow. And I'm still here. Give us your dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs in the sky?

Businessesdon'tfail.com is the easiest, and it's being upgraded, so it's only going to get better with each passing week. Well, that's what I say every time I go in for surgery. I'm not getting knee replaced, and I'm getting an upgrade. I'm not getting knee replaced when people don't want me. It's a warranty replacement. It's a warranty. If only that were free.

I'm definitely out of warranty, evidently yeah my warranty expired a lot most of my body is as well let me tell you yeah yeah i mean really if there really was a god in the sky wouldn't he give us like a parts division you know you can go to gm and get you know parts for your car like how come there's no part division or at least a complaint desk where I can be like, hey, I got some bad news. I need to return these knees, and I have my receipt. And here's my mom. Here's my receipt. So, Larry, give us a 30,000 overview.

What's in your new book? I got frustrated with why so many startups failed. And you mentioned the parts counter. Fifth generation in the family-owned business. In the 2000s or in the 1900s, it was an auto parts store, basically. So I love that analogy. That's really great. Wow, I nailed it.

That's why you're the best, man. That's why you're the best. We need to research. So my dad said to me in the 60s he said you know how in the world did we go from no automobile manufacturers to 300 automobile manufacturers and then back down to three in 20 years how did that happen he was not yeah right now one company owns most of it so that that fascinated me and i really didn't care about the car business through the auto business i cared about any business it's like why do

businesses fail so i spent 23 years trying to figure out the answer to that question and i went through a pretty boring scientific process of developing a hypothesis building a construct running it through the construct getting up with a theory then six process of developing a hypothesis, building a construct, running it through the construct, getting up with a theory, then six years of proof of concept. And guess what? I found the answer. I know why businesses fail. So the book was not written to tell people why businesses, it's all in my new book. Yeah. And it wasn't written to tell people why businesses fail. It was written to tell businesses what they need to do so they don't fail. Yeah Yeah, failure is bad last time I checked

Unless you're bad. I'm trying to think of a joke, but I can't put one together real quick. So Sometimes that's how we fill it criminals when criminals fail. That's a good thing because they don't know I'm in a crime. That's good. That's always good. In fact, it would be great if they wouldn't fail being born, but that's another story. So tell us about your experience. What led you down the path of life that you did? What got you into entrepreneurism? We've alluded to a little bit in the bio in your father's experience.

But how did you grow up and how did seeing your know, seeing your parents as your family as an entrepreneurial family influence you? And then obviously you got experience with other seeing other companies that were maybe had challenging times. You helped them through it. Tell us about your story from your words. Yeah, it's really a pretty simple story. My family started in hides and furs in the 1850s. And they were, I like to say they were the originators of the pay it forward concept. They were like, we learned how to do something, we're going to make sure that our next generation understands what we've learned. So there's this accumulation of knowledge, which is why I say I

have 150 years of experience, right? So one of the things that my dad said when I was going to school, grade school, was if you're not going to school, you're going to work. Right? So he took me to work in the morning at 7 a.m. before school. And then at 8 o'clock, they'd take me to school. I'd go to school. If I had a sports or some after-school activity, I'd do that. And if the store was closed, I'd go home. But if it was open, I'd go back and I'd work in the afternoon. And I worked on the weekend. So he used to be fond of saying saying and some of your older listeners will relate to this this business puts a roof over your head and food on your table and by God if you're gonna not be going to school and making something of

yourself you're gonna be supporting that business so I said okay Wow and there you okay guys said you i i honestly believe that was a a real competitive advantage because number one school was never very challenging for me so i didn't have a hard time i didn't have a problem with homework and stuff like that and second I was challenged mentally, intellectually. And that, I think, was a good thing. So all of that leads to a really strong work ethic. So I'm blessed because I have found work that I love to do, and I don't ever want to stop. I believe that human beings like to do things that are productive and contribute, and they like to be recognized for them.

I'm blessed for that. So I did that in the family business, and I realized that I didn't really want to work for other companies. So I ended up starting businesses. And in fact, my first business was in grade school. I started a candle making company and I was actually selling homemade candles all over the world to ski resort, you know, trinket shops, tchotchke shops, touristy stuff. So I was selling to Aspen and Vail and Switzerland.

And I mean, I was like 14 years old. Yeah. So I've owned 14, 13 businesses I can count in my life. Other than college, I've never worked for a company I didn't own. And this business about the failure has lived with me my whole life. It's been the root of everything I do because it's okay. I'll be the test bed and try it and see if I can make this stuff work. And then I'll research and help other people and give them that knowledge as well and try it and see if I can make this stuff work and then I'll research and help other people and give them that knowledge as well and try and support them so it's a very synergistic life I've led and I've been very blessed to to get to where I am yeah the yeah I mean it's it's that's wild

you're selling the candles and stuff you know all that good stuff. And then how did you get into analyzing businesses, you know, researching companies and finding, you know, why they weren't succeeding or failing? I got into it when my dad made that comment to me when I was like 14 years old. So, you know, when we traveled, vacation for my dad meant going into a local auto parts store and talking to the owner about how business was, or going into the bar and sitting at the bar and talking to people in the bar about how business was, whether it's a guest at the bar or the bartender. So that's what we did. So I learned from my dad, talking to people about business just was second nature to me. So I was started researching when I was very, very young and understanding how businesses operated gave me a level of understanding of what they need to do to be successful. That, that led to the, all this research, putting it together and coming up with the answer. And let

me just say this, cause it's really so simple. There's only three reasons organizations fail, and none of them have anything to do with money. Money is a lagging indicator of prior bad decisions. That's all it is. There's only three reasons businesses fail. Lack of clarity of purpose, lack of consistency of performance, lack of engagement of people. I get a lot of pushback on the purpose because people say, what are you talking about? All our people know what we do. They know why we're here. Okay, fine. Take 10 of them and ask them to write down on a piece of paper just exactly what the

purpose of your organization is, and I'll bet you you won't get two that are the same. That's not clarity of purpose. And then I say, consistency of performance. The reason McDonald's is successful is not because they make great Big Macs. It's because when they go in there and they give you a Big Mac in the wrong container, you know it by looking at it and you say, that's the wrong, that's not what I ordered. And they say, we just ran out of the big batch stuff. That's consistency. They're successful because they can make commitments, they set expectations, and they live up to them. If you can't do that, you can't succeed.

And the engagement of people is the holy grail of human resources. It's where you make someone feel valued, feel like they're part of the organization and that the success of the organization is analogous to their own personal success. So they become an owner that's not an owner. And when you get those three things done, you're indestructible. Wow. Indestructible is pretty good from what I hear. Superman told me one time. So you talk about some of these issues in the book.

I used to see this a lot. We were talking pre-show about how we used to run an ad in the paper back in the day saying we loaned money for companies that were in trouble. And a lot of the ones we'd cherry pick, we'd find were small businesses. And usually they would be doing the things that you talked about. A lot of times they would have one business model and they would just run into the ground with all their money they had saved up for their company.

And it would be interesting to me is that they would never change models. They'd never switch gears. I don't think they would really understand their business as you've talked about. And it was always funny to deal with them and talk to them, you know, or sometimes, sometimes the worst ones

I'd show up at their company and I'm like, and they're like, yeah, there's my cousin and my brother and my son. And I'm like, your whole family works here? And I'm like, your family, you know, this isn't a profitable business where your family's was. And I'm like, I can see half here? And I'm like, your family, you know, this isn't a profitable business where your family's was. And I'm like, I can see half the problem I'm going to fire right now. But, you know, it would be, it was just wild to deal with their things.

So you talked too about the problems that come with success and how to manage them. That's something that many entrepreneurs go through. I kind of struggled with success as well. I think struggles is an understatement, but it's hard, especially if you grow up poor, to become successful. Tease out a little bit of that, if you would, please. So I heard you say two things, and I'm going to ask you to clarify. Is it the teasing out how you become successful when you're poor? Or is it something else that you want me to tease out?

Yeah. In your book, you talk about the problems with success. The problems with success and how to manage them. Yeah. So the first thing that happens when you're successful, it works like this. I call it the arc of success. You get an idea and you try it and it works. It's successful and success leads you to growth. Oh, that worked. Let's do more. Let's make more. Let's sell more. Let's do more of this. Success and growth leads to the need for controls. You can't handle 30 customers the way you handle 300 or 300 the way you handle 3,000.

You grow. The success, there's always some form of growth. So you have to put controls in place. The minute you put controls in place, you end up losing flexibility. The minute you start losing flexibility, you start having people say, I'm not happy. I have stuff being done unto me that I don't want done unto me. So failure is always triggered by change that's driven by success. So the very nature of being successful means if you're going to maintain your success, not only do you have to learn how to

embrace and manage change, but you have to embrace and recognize that you cannot remain static. This is the eternal conflict. I talk about this a lot. Since the first caveman made a barter deal with his neighbor caveman for some products and services, the world of business, the world of exchange has lived in a perpetual state of conflict. The world is not static. The world changes every moment of every day, and it's not changing slower, it's changing faster. Business wants stability. It wants stasis. It wants dependability. It wants expectations to be set and not changed. So you have a desire for stasis in a business existing in a world that refuses to be still. So you have a problem there. So what's the first thing that happens that you need to identify and understand? This is the first thing. I call it the whack-a-mole. It's

problems masquerading, assumptions masquerading as problems. Whenever somebody says to you, I got a problem. I've tried this. That won't fix it. I've tried this. It won't fix it. I've tried that. It won't fix it. I don't know what the hell to do to fix this problem. That's because you're not working on the problem. You're working on a symptom. That's the first, the first thing that happens. That's a problem. Okay. Here's the second thing that happens. There's three of them. It's kind of funky how all of this stuff lives in sets of threes. The third, the second thing that happens is good behaviors, operational behaviors suddenly begin creating undesirable results. For example, you give salespeople the freedom to have an expense account with no controls. As long as they use it properly,

great. But the more successful they are, and the more money they make, and the more freedom they have, that's power. And power, when fueled by money, leads to abuse. It's human nature. It's not that people are bad, or that they're not honest. It's not that. It's human. You can't stop it. If it didn't happen that way, the world would be broken. So you have to put controls in place. You have to change the way that works. And people say, this has been working great for 10 years. Why do we have to change it?

Right? Or you put a policy in place. You're no longer going to be able to order all your own office supplies. We're not going to have central office supplies. It's not going to work. I have my own special this. I have my own special that. I want to have control over my stuff.

No, we're not going to do that anymore. And you get a lot of pushback. So when you start seeing that, you realize that you're in a moment of dramatic change demand. Because you've got something that's worked okay before when you were successful. Tell me if this doesn't sound right, Chris. Hey, we've always done it that way. It's worked pretty good till now. Yeah, but it ain't going to work tomorrow. And the third problem with change is when you have somebody, when you have people in your organization, and they say, it would really be great if we could do this. And you say, no problem,

we can do that. We just have to change this over here. And they say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't change what's over here. I'll forego this good thing that I want. So what I call that is emotional resistance to beneficial change. Those are the three root core primary problems with success. Yeah, that will definitely lead to it and stuff. There's a lot that goes into that. What else do we have? Let's see, exiting the whack-a-mole cycle with problems that don't get fixed. How do you get out of that, the whack-a-mole cycle? What you have to do is you have to ask

yourself, if I'm having a problem with, I have a great example. We did some work for an agency, a government supported nonprofit agency that handled orphans. And it placed at-risk children in foster homes, it housed them, it took care of them until they were 16 or 18. And they hired us to come in because they were having a lot of trouble with their social workers handling the cases. They were not getting all their cases processed. So they had tried to hire more social workers. They had tried to change the model that they were using for the visitations with the kids, visiting the kids in the homes, rules within the housing where they were housed.

They tried all kinds of things, and they talked to the social workers to see what can you do, how can we help you be more successful, and all they would say was, take work off our back. None of it helped. None of it worked. They brought us in, we did an analysis, and what we found out was that the most valuable resource for successful placement of an orphan into a foster home is another foster parent. Not the foster parent that's going to take them,

but someone who's been there and done that and had the experience. So they hadn't reached out to any of their foster families to say, will you help us with our placement of other children? The minute we did that, they said, okay, we're happy to do that. We've never thought about that. So they reached out to those parents and the parents all said, are you kidding? If we can help some other families take on foster kids, it's better for the kids and better for the families. And literally, literally overnight, the problem went away. They didn't understand the problem. They had a resource they weren't using that was both eager and competent, and they weren't being asked to help. that's what i mean by whack-a-mole

trying to solve a problem without getting to their root yeah and then you just then you then just make more problems right it kind of compounds at that point right but you can you can i gotta tell you chris this yeah i've i've worked this system. This is independent of legal structure, independent of market segment, independent of revenue. I've used this on vocational colleges. I've used this system with a house representative who had three offices, one in two cities in California and, of course, one in D.C. I've used this on nonprofits. I've used this on for-profits. I've used this on every kind of business you can imagine other than retail. Retail is the one venue that I don't dabble in. I didn't do any research on retail, so I don't have any evidence of it working. But it's amazing how effective it is. It creates

tenure. It creates stable profits. It creates clarity. It creates ambassadors. Everybody in your organization becomes an ambassador, and people start loving their work. I call it the no-help-wanted zone. The no-help-wanted zone. the no-help-wanted zone. The no-help-wanted zone. The no-help-wanted zone is where everybody that wants a job has one and loves it, and everybody that has employees loves them and treats them properly. And what this model does is it creates that environment. So people can read the book, they can pick it up, they can learn how to make businesses not fail, make them succeed and thrive in good times and bad and be agile.

Let's talk about some of the things you do on your website, some of the consulting or coaching you might do for people. What do you do over there? Give us a.com real quick so we can have that again. Businessesdon't fail dot com. And the details on these programs are not there now, which is why the whole thing is being restructured and it's being turned into all kinds of delivery mechanisms.

You can have direct one-on-one interaction. You can have recorded self-driven, you know, approach to executing all this stuff. You can have small workshops if you want to do it in bite-sized pieces. There's what I call, and it's being renamed because the marketing people don't like it, I call it the Business Suicide Prevention Program. And it's the overarching thing that gives you a global look at your business. There are four other major programs that we offer. One of them is critical decision making for leaders. It's how do you make a

decision that's critical when you don't have the information you need? The second one is high functioning boards, how to create one or transform yours. That's, of course, for organizations who have boards and are not getting any value or getting more frustration and disruption from the board than value. The next one is creating the holy grail of business engagement. That's just a whole program focused on that piece of getting people to feel valued. And that requires some prerequisites. And then the last one is how to create an insurmountable competitive advantage. And that involves working with managers and supervisors and teaching them how to recruit and train their direct reports to manage up. Manage up. Then we have some small workshops that we do. One is on delegation.

How do most people learn how to delegate? They watch their parents. Not a good model for business. We teach them how to delegate. We've got a program for teaching people business ethics, which is fascinating. Ethics is just a fascinating venue, environment to be working in. We've got one on how to do presentations. One of the things that we found years ago was that, you know, you hear it all the time. And because I'm a public speaker, and you are, we, I mean, I thrive in that environment, I get on a stage, and I come alive, right. But it's true that the thing that most humans fear more than death is public speaking. So we found this in our clients, and we had clients, particularly some very high-end lawyers who are not courtroom lawyers who really struggled with presentations.

So we put together a program on how to put together a presentation. And that's turned into a really valuable tool for all of our clients because when you have anybody who's managing other people, they need to be able to communicate to them in a very succinct, concise, clear, and effective manner. And it's amazing to me how many people can't do that. So we have this beautiful little template that teaches people how to put a little presentation together, whether it's 10 minutes or 30 minutes or two days, to get their point across. So those are some examples of the stuff we do. Yeah.

It's a lot of work. And so how do people reach out to you? How do they onboard? How do they get to know you better, handshake with you, et cetera, et cetera? So they reach out to me typically by email or newsletter. If you go to the website, you can sign up for the newsletter. It's got a pretty good readership.

It's 45% open rates, and it's several thousand valid emails. So there's somebody likes it. Industry standard's about 23%, so we're double that. So somebody is getting value out of it. Industry standards about 23%. So we're double that. So somebody is getting value out of it. Send me an email, Larry at Mandel and rely on. And it identifies the level of maturity your organization is at and the areas that you're weak in. And then we let you know what those are and why. And then we leave you alone. And if you want to buy the book and figure out how to how to fix it, it's in the book. If you don't believe us or you don't care, no problem. None of this, we don't charge for any of this. We don't take on everybody that asks us to. We haven't done

any marketing for 25 years. We've got more business than we want. Wow. I see one free download that's on your website, a free report on why business plans collect dust. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All of these are on, as you know in the a in the digital age all of this stuff is continuously refreshed the website's being refreshed that's being refreshed we're going to be putting up some free collateral on debriefing very soon as well because a lot of people don't understand the value of a debrief or how to go about doing a debrief or what to do with it after you're done. So we're trying to, we're trying to give leaders the tools they need to create sustainable, profitable growth. That's what we're trying to do and to give them that what they need to navigate

the turbulence of change. And from Greg Graham, great points, Larry, from LinkedIn. Thanks to Greg for chiming in there with the live comment. And some we can publish, some we can't. There's lots of trolls on the mediums. But yeah, people can reach out to you. I noticed that there's also, you talk about growing pains, frustration, and friction in businesses. And so you can, and you've owned 11 profitable businesses in eight. 13.

13. Okay. And I've actually committed suicide. Yeah. I've committed 13 more than once. That's why the website's being updated. I've committed suicide more than once. So I have personal experience with what I write about.

Definitely. Yeah. Most of us have. Most of us that are successful have had failures. So as we go out, give people a final pitch on how they can onboard with you, how they can get to know you better, and all that stuff. My only goal is to help you understand what you need to do to be successful. I have no interest in your money. If you need my

help, I'll take it. But you need to understand what it takes to be successful. And the answers are in this book. It's data. It's statistically valid data from 250 executives from 100 organizations. Don't be afraid to look at the book. You can look at the beginning of it on Amazon for free. Look inside this book. If you can't afford it, send me an email. I'll send you a copy. But I just want you to avoid the pain and suffering of failure. Yep. Plan and stay ahead of it. Plan. You want to read the book before you start a business because sometimes when you're,

you know, when you're really fucked it up, you're talking to me and I'm like, you're three weeks from bankruptcy. You don't want to wait till then. Get the book now. Thank you very much, Larry, for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you, sir. I enjoyed it.

Thank you. And thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com. Force is appreciate it. Thank you, sir. I enjoyed it. Thank you. And thanks, Ron, for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, ForcesChristmas, LinkedIn.com, ForcesChristmas, all those crazy places on the internet. Order the book wherever fine books are sold. Businesses don't fail, they commit suicide. How to survive success and thrive in good times and

bad. Thanks for tuning in, everyone. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.