The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Great CEOs Are Lazy by Jim Schleckser

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

Great CEOs Are Lazy by Jim Schleckser Jimschleckser.com Theceoproject.com How do the really exceptional CEOs get more done in less time than everyone else? What is their technique for getting their work done while still having the time to spend pursuing hobbies and spending quality time with their friends and family? The truth is that great and lazy CEOs know a secret when it comes to time management. Rather than spending a little time on a lot of things, the best CEOs spend most of their time eliminating the single biggest constraint to the growth of their business. They spend a lot of time diagnosing this constraint before taking action. This process is similar to looking for the kink in a garden hose so you can get the flow going again. These is no use trying to unkink the hose until you find the actual problem. Depending on the nature of the constraint, they engage in fixing the kink in the hose using one of five different roles the Learner Architect Coach Engineer Player These form the archetype for great leadership. These are all high leverage roles that create a permanent improvement in the business. This insight isn't just some theory either; it s derived directly from working with thousands of CEOs running high growth companies. The trick to being great and lazy is to only work at the point of constraint and avoid all work that doesn't increase organizational capacity. Lazy CEOs have a series of well developed tools to properly avoid this non-value work. I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it. -Bill Gates. So, do you want to keep working hard? Or would you rather get busy being lazy? About the author Jim Schleckser is a Certified Sommelier from the Court of Master Sommeliers, has an Advanced certification from the Wine and Spirits Education Trust, and is a businessperson with 30 years of professional drinking experience. As the CEO of the Inc. CEO Project, a firm that offers coaching and advising to CEOs of fast-growth companies, he has entertained business associates around the world. Jim Schleckser is the author of the best selling book, “Great CEOs are Lazy”, detailing the behaviors that make the difference in CEO performance. With 30 years of leadership in business, he brings experience in leading global organizations in both public and private environments across many functional areas to the table. He has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Time, and National Public Radio. His ideas have been translated into 9 languages and he has done business in over 26 countries. He is committed to helping professionals navigate wine, while keeping it fun. He has a popular blog that speaks to the same topics as this book at professionaldrinking.com, where you can learn more, including about hiring him as a speaker for your event. He is a soccer player, prolific reader and outdoorsman. He resides in Potomac, Maryland.

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. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

Ladies and gentlemen, we've been bringing you the Chris Voss Show for over 21, not 21 years, wow, that's really old. Chris Voss Show for over 16 years, going on 17 and 2,100 episodes. That's where that comes from, going on 2,200. If you're not watching all the Chris Voss Shows, and I know you are because you guys consume like 96% of every episode, or further share with your family, friends, and relatives. Get the word out there.

Go to goodreach.com, fortune.christmas, linkedin.com, fortune.christmas, christmas1, on the great tickety-tockety, I guess, whatever. And all those places on the internet. We had an amazing young man on the show today with us. We're going to be talking to him about his insights, his advisory towards CEO. And now he's kind of almost a doppelganger for the Michael Eisner. His book, his latest book, is called Great CEOs Are Lazy. Jim Schleckser joins us on the show today. We're going to be talking about his book and why I'm now offended by his title of his book.

No, I'm just kidding. It's all just comedy, folks. And Jim is an amazing author. You may have heard of him before and his work so we're going to get into all that and the good stuff so Jim is the founder and CEO of the CEO project renowned executive coaching company specializing in high revenue entrepreneurs Jeff offers a distinctive CEO coaching program that combines peer group discussions with personalized one-on-one coaching sessions

that are led by former CEOs. Were they great or were they just lazy? We'll find out. He was an advocate for the concept of the lazy CEO, emphasizing efficient delegation and time management as an essential traits for successful leadership. I think I see where he's going here. He is an active supporter of many nonprofit organizations and author of the latest book aforementioned.

Welcome to the show, Jim. How are you? Great, Chris. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming. We certainly appreciate it. Give us any dot coms. Where do you want people to search you and stalk you on the interwebs?

You can stalk me anywhere you want, but the best place to find out about us is theceoproject.com. So theceoproject.com. And we're set up outside your window in your office there so we're just yeah i saw the black van i was gonna call the binoculars yeah yeah we do that to all of our guests so jim give us a on the book you have give us a 30 000 overview of what's inside most ceos are consumed with the use of time i mean mean, they're spending 70, 80 hours a week, and many of them don't get the results they want. And what we found is the really good ones focus on what we call the point of constraint,

the most high value thing in the business. And they spend 30, 40% of their time on that. And they kind of delegate and get rid of all the other baloney that they have on their desk. And yet, because of that, they get great results. So that was the whole idea of great CEOs are lazy. You don't have to spend 80 hours a week to get great results. You can spend, you know, 50, 55. Can I just get everybody to do my work for me? I can delegate all of it and I can just, I don't know, sit in my office and eat bonbons, watch TV soaps or something. Yeah. Chapter seven is on eating bonbons. Yeah. Yeah. You've read the

book, obviously. It's all encompassing, isn't it? So you're very thorough and efficient. And then we want to talk about, you know, your.com, the lazy CEO website. And what was that.com one more time? Sorry. It's theceoproject.com. Theceoproject.com. Oh, there it goes.

See, now you got me tuned into the laziness. You're all excited about the lazy thing. Yeah, it's good. Yeah. I mean, first I was kind of like what and then i'm like i'm not a great ceo i'm just a good ceo so i guess i'm not a fully offended but when i published the book i had one of my clients go i got the lazy part nailed i just got to work on the great part but that's an issue a lot of leaders have especially entrepreneurs entrepreneurs, the delegation, delegating stuff. Yeah. Especially in small business.

I mean, I was guilty of that when I started my companies. I was like, I can do it better. And you're like, but this really is a job for somebody who can actually do it better, really i came down to it but you know we came up with a rule to help people in that mode it's called the 70 rule of delegation so the idea is if somebody's 70 as good as you delegate immediately and the problem is most of us do what you did they go he or she's not as good as i am and so i'll just keep doing it you're just doomed never to delegate anything at that point. But if I say,

Hey, 70%, they go, yeah, probably 70%. They're almost as good. Bam. So that,

that is sort of permission to delegate is 70%. And, and when I threw you under the bus with a Michael Eisner reference, I have way more hair. You do. And you don't really look like him but the thing that come up as i was making that joke was a picture of you holding your hands you're going ah and it does look like my clients eisner does have a picture like that yeah i think he does and yeah and i

think he stole it for me just for the right i think his ears stick out obama's i don't know that you don't have that problem so i don't want to throw you too far into the michael eyes but he i mean would you term him as a great CEO just a matter of conversation? Yeah, I think he had an era where he did a heck of a job. I mean, and that's the point. Everybody's got a shelf life. Very, very few people are CEOs for 20 years, and you usually got about five, six, seven good years in you. You come up with your ideas.

You get them implemented. You get the benefit. Maybe you come up with a few more good ideas, and then seven good years in you. You come up with your ideas, you get them implemented, you get the benefit. Maybe you come up with a few more good ideas and then it's time to go. Let somebody else take the read. He had a cycle. He had a time when he was really good and then there was a time he was maybe not so good. I think it was, who was it before him? Michael Eisner?

Ellison? Michael Eisner? Pass. I think the CEO before him kind of had their time too. And then it kind of expired. And that was how Bob Iger overthrew him. Yep. I mean, average tenure for a public company CEO is like three to four years.

Yeah. It was Michael Eisner. That's who it was. You know, I had a CEO of one of the public companies on our show. There's probably been multiple ones, but we had this discussion about how it's so hard for a CEO to affect long-lasting change in a company because you only have an average three years. Yeah.

And that's really why a lot of CEOs don't invest in long-term R&D and long-term projects is because they're not going to see the end of it. They're not going to get any benefit from it. No. And also, in the public environment, you're not rewarded for that. You're rewarded for delivering this quarter, next quarter. And if I go, hey, wait, wait, wait, wait, I'm going to invest. We're going to get it back in two years.

People go, yeah, two years is like forever. I don't care. You won't be here. I might not be here. So how did you tell us a little bit about yourself? You've written multiple books. How many books have you written? And then kind of, how did you grow up? What influenced you and how did you get down this road of, of doing what you do? Yeah. So I've written two books, one about being a great CEO and one,

funny enough, about professional drinking, which we can talk about a little bit. Who knew it was a job, right? It's tough. But I grew up in sort of an upper middle class family, highly educated parents, ultimately became a chemical engineer, undergraduate. I was not a good chemical engineer. And so I pretty quickly moved over to business, sales, marketing. And I started running companies at 29 years old for other people, small ones, medium, public, private, M&A, global. I mean, I kind of ticked all the boxes and it was always sort of strategic for me that I was going to learn how to be good at this by trying everything. And it was either run a really big company for someone else or run my own company. And, you know, God intervened. I got, I got fired, which, you know, occupational hazard, it happens. And I started my own business at that point.

It was, I'm going to tell you what, Chris, I should send a thank you note to the guy who fired me. It was the best thing that ever happened in my life. The best. You know, that was, that was what started my entrepreneur journey at 18. I got fired from McDonald's cause my hair was too long. I lasted a little longer than you did but not by much yeah my hair was too long and and i was you know i was wearing these rock and roll satanic shirts according to the religious guy who fired me van halen evidently is quite satanic

and uh and concert t-shirts and you know i had this long rocker hair and so he was like you can't work here and so he fired me and then i went home and my dad said why don't you just do my old stucco company that i used to do that used to help when we were in summers and so that's what i did i started we started a stucco company and off we went but what is what is that old thing necessity begets necessity is the mother of invention so i went back three or four months later shook his hand i was making more than he ever and i actually thanked him i wasn't i wasn't vicious about it but i said thank you and by the way i now earn more than you so you've given me the good and i had no idea what sort of gift he'd given me

you know over a lifetime of being an entrepreneur but But once you get that drug, you're stuck. There's a line that goes, the definition of an entrepreneur is somebody who will work 80 hours a week so they don't have to work 40 hours a week for someone else. So it's not like you get a break on the hours, but you have freedom. I love that. Yeah. I mean, still to this day at 56 from 18 what is it 36 years or something i've been an entrepreneur and i i mean i could never work at a corporate job i mean number one they

never hire me they'd be like you have technically no experience and you don't get along well with others clearly yeah i tell people i'm i'm turning terminally unemployable at this point hey jim you need to come to the three-day strategy meeting. I'm like, yeah, that's not happening. Yeah, that's not happening. That's not happening. I've got video games I've got to play. But, yeah, that's true. You know, to this day at 56, I still, like, when holidays happen,

I have no idea. I'm like, why is the bank closed? Why can't it go anywhere today? They're like, oh, it's a three-day holiday, Chris, and a three-day weekend. And I'm like, that must be nice for everyone. I'm just pissed that I can't do go anywhere today? They're like, oh, it's a three-day holiday, Chris. And a three-day weekend. And I'm like, that must be nice for everyone. I'm just pissed that I can't do business right now. And no one's paying me because it's a holiday and they're not spending my money. And yeah, I'm still like that.

Like I just, I'll forget about stuff and I'll be like, Thanksgiving? They give you time off for that? Oh, all right. And you know, because you're just 24 7 you just work i know when i thought i thought the ceos i got how many hours a week you work they go when i'm awake you know you're always thinking you're always thinking about it right i mean dude never turns off at the peak of our companies we had our empire of companies we had quite a few companies we ran at the same time. So it was complete insanity and madness to be a CEO of them all.

And at the peak of it, I would dream business. So I would have dreams of what I was going to do when I was going to fire somebody the next day that we knew we had to fire. Or meetings that I would have. I would dream the pre-dream of those meetings and shit it was like my brain was preparing me for the next day and i would complain to my my managers i'd be like you know i would just have a dream of maybe a pretty girl running on the beach maybe you know that beau thing. Or, you know, anything but business. Like, every dream is business, business, business. And I'm like, can I just have a dream of a dog running through a field?

You know, maybe something. And then when it would happen, I'd be like, hey, I had this dream, man. It was great. And it wasn't about business. About nice. Yeah. That's the life of an entrepreneur. And you know what's funny is there's a i i follow

a lot on tick tock and there's a guy on there who buys and sells planes he's a plane broker and he's been doing it all of his life and he's i think he's in his 60s um he's a pretty debonair classic oh yeah i know like an elegant guy people come in to buy planes from him yeah yeah i've seen him he's like a wall of yeah that's really cool and so I fall because he's got a lot of class and he seems really cool and he knows he's doing but he's in his I'm pretty sure he's in his 60s if he's in his 50s he's it's life's been hard that's kind of like how I look but I think he's in his 60s and he was doing a like a run through his day he was showing what a day of his life is

and he actually goes to the gym in the middle of the day, which is wild. In your 60s, I think you have to. I think it's a law. Just to stay alive, basically. Is that how it works? I play soccer. I do mine the first thing in the morning, get it in, get those endorphins flowing, and I am ready to go. I love exercise. I'm a fan. I have to go at night. I can I'm a fan. I do it at night. I have to go at night. I can't go to sleep if I do it late. I'm buzzing.

I'm like, oh. I'm one of those weird people. I can drink coffee to go to sleep. Oh, my gosh. I have problems. There's issues. But at least we know what they are. But yeah, he mentioned he was talking one day and he goes, you know, the funny thing is about the 30 years or whatever how long he's been in business and all his life he goes you think i would have

all the answers and we would know just how to make everything work smooth and he goes but even after all these years every deal is going to have a problem that has to be solved he goes that's all i do is solve problems and it never ends he goes with new technology with ai with you know new stuff that's out you constantly have to be on the cutting edge of that and he goes that's all i do all day long is i i'm just amazed that i'm selling solving new problems the old ones and i was like you know i think we should almost name rename entrepreneurship problem solver yep it's pretty much all we do and i always thought that you know, I think we should almost rename entrepreneurship problem solver. It's pretty much all we do.

And I always thought that, you know, eventually I'd be like, whoa, if I solve these problems, you know, it'll just be efficiency. But no, man, we just have shit that catches on fire randomly. You got to put it out. Yeah. And, you know, we run into that with CEOs as they grow. They love solving problems. And as you scale your organizations, you actually want the organization to solve the problems. But we're so addicted to the juice of, I solved that problem.

I solved this problem. It's great. And you've got to go, no, no, no. I've got to let them solve the problem. And only when it's impossible to solve do I get involved. And otherwise, you're in the way of scaling the company. I tell people it's part of the delegation thing, but every time somebody else solves the problem instead of you, you just built muscle in the company. That's our job as leaders, as we scale. The stronger the organization is, the more you're going to grow,

the better you're going to do. The juice of I I'm being a great salt, in the early days, no choice, Chris. But as you scale, it's hard to kick the juice, unfortunately, but we have to as leaders. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of, I guess we kind of, oh, it's kind of an ego thing. We kind of celebrate ourselves doing that. When really there's bigger problems we need to fix you know i don't need to innovate the copier that's somebody else's job i need to have a vision for the forward march of the business and i need to have a vision of of where we're going maybe a 10-year plan or something i don't know 10 years is a little long because yeah you never know what innovation it seems like every 10 years things kind of change it yeah it's it's a hard bet to do. I've kind of learned to expect a 10-year change in my businesses

where I'm like, yeah, it's just going to turn upside down. Like right now, AI, I'm just struggling to keep up because it's so crazy and so fast and so rampant. I'm just still trying to put my head around it. I don't think it's because I'm old. It's moving hella fast no nobody has the answer and they kind of it ranges from it's gonna make all our lives better to it's going to take over the planet and make us our you know flesh-colored slaves you know

somewhere in between there is the truth i don't know what the same thing tiktok did made us our flesh-colored slaves yeah yeah yep or for husbands, that's where their wives did that to them. Oh, I'm just doing marriage jokes, folks. I'm just kidding. Don't write me. You know your wife has got everything under your control. Anyway, guys, so tell us about the CEO project some more. What sort of services do you offer?

What consulting and different projects do you have for people that are out there listening, especially on LinkedIn? Yeah. So when you get to a certain size, you think about many CEOs think about building an advisory board. And if they were going to do that, they'd have to, you know, find the people, recruit the people, pay them, organize all the logistics, figure out the agenda, get your staff or, you know, to organize the meeting and hotels and travel and all that jazz

what we do is we go hey we can do that for you which is we build a group of really high caliber ceos your size around you and it's like a mastermind group from back to think and grow rich napoleon hill they're there to help and the only deal is i'll help you if you help me and we curate and find and recruit those people for you. All you've got to do is show up and bring your difficult problem, and we will process it as a group and try to help you solve the problems. And I'm going to say, you know, I'm a pretty bright guy. I'm good at this. Every damn time, Chris, the group comes up with an idea, I go, oh, do that. Because that's way better than anything I would ever come up with. So the power

of the group mind, when they're from kind of a diverse set of backgrounds, we bring that to the table with the CEO. And good ones look at it as kind of part of their infrastructure of how they do the job is building a CEO group. And we do it for them. And it makes it easy for them to participate. And so less time cheaper, and better impact ultimately. And then the time it takes to curate that group is done by you, which is very efficient. And then I can just be lazy. So they pay you, obviously, to do that work. Do the people in the group get paid by the CEO that hires them?

Or is there a simpatico of having that back and forth? Basically, it's a membership organization. So they pay us for constructing the membership. And everybody else is just paying for their own travel. They're for free. Their deal is I show up to get feedback, and I pay to do it. And somebody else organized everything for me, so they made my life easy. That's really what we did.

And then we've got a view, too. We've been around the block a few times. Yeah, you've been doing this for a while. A little bit. When I had my, I wrote about this in my book, Beacon's Leadership. When I had my business partner and best friend of 22 years, and we'd been business partners for 13, 12 years, and we'd had a really great run, but we got Yoko. I got Yoko on by a girlfriend who was like, you don't really need Chris. And it turns out he really did, but he found that out later. But she basically talked him into quitting one day. Oh, wow. You're right. She pulled a Yoko on you. Yeah, she really did.

She really did. And now he has never amounted to anything since then. He was really surprised that you can't walk out of your own company and go someplace and be like, I need $40,000 a month after taxes. Will you just pay me that? Because I was a vice president somewhere else. And he was really surprised that that's not really a thing. Especially when you've been the VP

and you've been following me around for 20 years innovating. Those jobs are few and far between. I saw a stat the other day about the wealthiest people. Like 75% of them are entrepreneurs. Oh, yeah. You're not running your own thing. It's hard to accumulate real wealth. Yeah, yeah.

And so when that happened, I had no sort of, you know, I was used to having him as a sounding board and for over 22 years as a friend and 13 years as a very loyal best partner you could ever have until the Yoko Ono-ing. And so I had nobody. And I was pretty isolated. And this was in the 2000s. And the internet was just barely coming up. So there wasn't a lot of resources online like you can have now.

You could build like virtual groups and boards and stuff. And so I knew a lot of entrepreneur friends. So I came up with something I called the virtual board that I wrote about in my thing. And it's basically what you're talking about. Only you've sophisticated taken to that next levels, but it's basically, I called up my entrepreneur friends and I said, look, I don't, I got nobody. And I really don't want to pay some fucking attorney. I really don't want to hire a board because you know, then you got power issues and all that stuff. I don't share power, I guess, but I really don't want to hire a board because, you know, then you got power issues and all that sort of stuff. I don't share power, I guess, but I really don't want to pay for it. It was basically money. And so I said, look, I'll give you open access to me. If you need to call me

to run something by me, ask an entrepreneur question for whatever your field is, you know, some more like photographers somewhere, you know, they're all different fields. And I was like, but you know, if I call you and i need to bounce something off you i really need to be able to make that connection because usually i'm i'm i'm firing on all cylinders and i want to and i want to run with something i want to innovate and they're like so i'll give you access to me anytime you need call me you can call me if i can call you at any time and do you. And it worked great. Nice. It was an amazing virtual board. But I was lucky that I knew enough entrepreneurs to curate it.

Yeah. Nowadays, I kind of have a harder time because I've been so isolated. I worked from home since 2004. And usually I'm looking for more people that are diverse but also are kind of at my league, you will yeah and that's one of the key differentiators most peer group models and there are a few other competitors out there they'll take anybody of any size you know you're running a 30 million dollar software company and you're next to a guy running a four million dollar scrapyard and you're like i don't know what

i'm going to talk to you about or how you're going to help me. And the answer is you can't. What we do is if you're $100 million, you're with other people in that range. So they're dealing with the same problems you are and they go, oh yeah, sales comp. Yeah, I just fixed that last year. Let me tell you what I did. And you can take half of it probably and off you go. I think the other day, it's all of us, all of our advisors are former CEOs. So it's not like I woke up one day and decided to be a CEO coach. I mean, I actually did the job for a long time. We got a little experience too.

I love that because that can make all the difference. I mean, I keep private Facebook groups with high-income successful men. I think I am, but I'm just really some guy who lives under the viaduct down by the river in a van but one of his best bits ever yeah so great Charlie but so I keep I keep those friends you know I learned a long time ago what's that old line the five or six people you keep around you you become so I quit average yeah so I quit hanging down by the river with my friends and you know we have some tents down there and you know some meth and stuff anyway don't do math kids it's a joke yeah don't write me cops are knocking on the door now case of case of pap's light you know i

mean it was it was great and so i started collecting friends around me and a lot of them are virtual. So they're international friends, but they're, you know, they're friends who go to Davos and, and you know, there are people that are interested in putting a dent in the universe. And, and so by keeping those people around me and having the access, but that's just kind of like a friend group for me. It's not really a business group, although sometimes I can run problems by him, but you know, we're all in kind of different different places like i don't go to davos i don't really even care to go to that i don't even want to go to the office it's fucking cold if they got davos in the summer i'd go but i just don't care and bill gates isn't going to do anything for me

other than i don't know i'm teasing about something i'll'll be like, hey, I got this blue screen on my computer. Can you help me? So for clients that you're looking for to work with your project, is there a minimum net worth they need to have? Is there a minimum, you know, who are your clients? So that if they're listening out there, LinkedIn, et cetera, et cetera, on the podcast, they're like, oh, I'm a fit. I'm that guy or gal. I'm not going to get rejected by jim going

no we're not working with you unfortunately we do that once in a while but minimum revenue of 20 million dollars we prefer 25 or 30 a learner humility but a performer so that's a combination you can't always get like high performer with some humility that says maybe i don't have all the answers people that think i've got all the answers I'm like yeah okay great we're not for you that's fine with us you you solve your own problems and then you want sorry largest clients are about two and a half billion to enough billion that's it yeah I did I do two billion in sales if I write the check for it but the checks perfect sign them up but no that's coming out. Sign him up.

But no, that's a humility. That's got to be a little hard because we're kind of, I mean, number one, we usually have the ADHD CO disease, so there's that complication. I was doing pretty good with mine at 56, and then I started taking testosterone replacement, and that shit came back like a fire, man thought i had that adhd managed oh it's back it's back and yep but also the humility part because you know normally we have some pretty dark triad traits you know Machiavellianism, Psychopathy, Narcissism you know you kind of

yeah i think you have to be have a little bit of narcissism to get up on a stool and bark at people orders all day or you know you're trying to bark your vision at them and you think that they give a or something but you're paying them to so that's what they're listening to but you know there is kind of there is kind of that so i imagine it it might be hard for i'm not sure i'm fully humble i'm not sure if i'm i think most of my girlfriends would be like he ain't humble for shit so i don't know yeah you know we gotta we kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince so it's we're not for we're not for everybody and but you know most people my girlfriend says that too kiss a lot of frogs yeah i don't know what that's about but i think she's been calling me a frog

this whole time yeah ribbit yeah yeah but they're out there. They really are. And I think your Machiavellian comment is on point, actually. If you're in a position like CEO and you don't like power, you're lying. Yeah, that's true. You're just lying. So you like power. You may go, well, I use it. It's like the force. I use it for the good.

I use the force for good, not for evil. Okay, fair enough. But it's still power, and you're just good at using it. And so I agree on the Machiavelli. We all are a little bit Machiavellian, and we all think we're pretty special, and we are. But we've got to be able to suppress that a little bit sometimes. My girlfriends is special too. So does my mom. Yeah, they look at me kind of in a short bus sort of way yeah

you're kind of special my husky does that as well i get side eye from my husky and lots of judging but that's how they work so you got to be humble you gotta you gotta have some honesty and you know that's the thing i was humbled by early on in my ceo thing i smacked a lot of new companies out of the park and i was just creating endlessly. And then suddenly the bat went bad and I smacked home runs after about four or five companies in a row. And people around me were like, maybe he lost a touch. And I had to learn I wasn't the purveyor of all the greatest ideas in the world, even though my title was CEO that you know and fortunately I'd read Peter Senge's book so that's discipline yeah the fifth discipline and so my cultures

that I'd always been pre building in my corporations was trying to build learning organizations yeah good and we used to have this one of our learning organization rules was there's no stupid question the only stupid question is the unasked questions so So please ask questions. Cause the one guy who slept through training, who didn't ask questions cause he didn't learn anything is too afraid to tell you. He didn't,

he's going to be the guy who blows up $30,000 machine. Yep. Yep. Yeah. We used to joke though. We go there, there's no bet. There's no dumb ideas,

but that one is really close. And then when we used to train people, we would not only train them on how to do things, but we train them on the why. Oh, I think that's so important. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. See, I'm getting affirmation. Yeah, no, it's great. When I would learn math, calculus and whatnot in engineering school, and they go, here's how you do it.

And I would just be befuddled. I know, I'm like, ah, like, but are you telling me why it works like that? I can figure it out on my own. So I love the why question. It's, it's the more important of the, how is less important than the why. I get the why I can figure out the how. Yeah. And the great thing about the why and kind of how it was designed that way,

because I knew that with our open environment of culture, they would come to me and they would usually be like, hey, Chris, I think I have some better ideas on how to do this. And because they would know why we structured it and built it that way in the forum, they would sometimes innovate. Now, many times they would just come forward with something we already thought of that and tried that. And that's great that you come up with that. And we welcome that idea. The only stupid question is the unasked question and i think there was another rule we had it's in my book but i forget what it is but it basically kind of incurred the culture of of learning and stuff and you know sometimes my employees are just like i just want an answer on how to fix the copier i don't want to know the why part chris just

skip that. But a lot of times, every now and then, they come forward with an innovation. And I learned that I was, once again, not the purveyor of all the greatest ideas in the world. And that's why it's home. I think some of you have had that kind of experience where I was hitting home runs and then I wasn't. And people come to me with better ideas than I had. That shows a level of humility that says, you know, if I'm around a bunch of really smart people that I respect, I'm going to listen to them because, hey, I'm paying to

be here and investing time. And they really genuinely do have my interests at heart. And they're smart. Like, why wouldn't you listen to me? Be crazy not to listen. Yeah. You're like, wait, you run a company that's 2 billion and you know, you were really successful at that. And I'm just kind of getting on the mark. No, I'm not gonna listen to your idea. Yeah. You're like, wait, you run a company that's 2 billion and you were really successful at that

and I'm just kind of getting on the mark. No, I'm not going to listen to your ideas. Yeah. There's nothing I can learn from you. Come on. I mean, I would sit around and one thing I would always try and do is attack my scotomas or my blind spots as a CEO. And so we would have meetings over maybe an innovation that I was building, or maybe we were reanalyzing something that used to work and suddenly stopped working, you know, those 10 year changes. And I would sit around the room and I'd be like, okay, what am I not seeing? Where are we, where are we blind on this thing?

We're going to make this innovative change. Is this really an innovative change? Or, you know, I used to call them the crazy Ivans. We check our butthole basically. The crazy Ivan comes from. I know. Yeah. Hunt for red October. change or you know i used to call them the crazy ivans we check our butthole basically yeah the crazy ivan comes from i know yeah hunt for red october hunt for red october and so i call them the crazy ivans where we would turn on our stern and check or i don't think stern's right turn on or whatever the back end is the boat we would turn just to check our shit and see if we were right

and so i'd ask people i'd be like know, and so I got really good at, you know, that person would there, there'd be a person in the group that would just, they'd nail it, they would have the idea I was looking for and I'm just like, that's it, bingo, that's what I'm looking for. You nailed it. And we would recognize that and that would, then we fire him a week later, but that would be the, you know, it was just being, having that humility to go. I'm not the end all be all of all great ideas.

Yep. I used to do what I'd have, what I thought I had something figured out. I go, all right, I'm going to lay out why, what I'm thinking and why I'm thinking it. And I want you to tell me why I'm stupid. And, or what am I missing? What's going to blow up? Yeah, yeah. I got a specialist already.

And it was great because I'll be vulnerable. Here's what I'm thinking. Here's why I think it is. And they go, that's not right. I go, okay, that's a problem. And that is never going to work. Even better. Great.

Thank you. What else did I screw up here? And it was refreshing. And the ideas got better as a result of almost being pressure tested like that. So, yeah, that's kind of signing. The only problem is that you have that employee who brings up the list, and they're like, oh, you want to know the list? We've all put together a list on what's wrong with you as a CEO. How about my answer would be just give me the top three.

I can't take the whole list. I probably know them all, but yeah. Yeah, probably. Just give me the top three. I can't take the whole list. I probably know them all, but yeah. There's probably a lot of Ayn Rand sort of CEOs, Machiavellianism. I mean, I love Machiavellianism. It's a necessary thing. It's part of the game. He was a smart dude.

And a lot of CEOs were influenced by Ayn Rand. The idea of objectivism and it is what it is and performance rules. There's some good stuff in there. Anybody who lasts, there's always a couple of good ideas in there. Maybe not everything, but a couple of good ideas. Like Senge's book. If you've read the whole thing, it's 550 pages. They're not all good ideas, but some of them are.

I had that with tom peters i studied a lot of tom p i prepared years because i didn't go to college i prepared years and basically gave myself my own mba only the way i wanted it yeah ceo and i basically prepared to be a ceo of a large corporation and so about half of everything tom peters did made me rich and the other half about bankrupted me. I love Tom Peters, but you're right. I love him too. And there's some good ideas in there, but they ain't all good ones.

Yeah. Yeah, they aren't all good. You know, it's one, I realized it kind of woke me up that a lot of great authors like myself, we try and deconstruct success. And sometimes you really can't, you really can't capture the lightning in a bottle sometimes there were you know other things yeah you know that were mitigating factors and stuff so thanks to mike out there for the live keep up the great work folks i think is that cartman from south park i didn't know he watched the show but yeah we run into that on on some ceos once in a while let's say they early like you did early days they had a couple of big hits and they go, I am obviously just that smart, right? I am.

Let me just touch you with my, the hem of my claw and you'll be granted gold and beyond measure. And the reality is like, sometimes it was a circumstances. You just got lucky as heck. You were in the right place at the right time dumb luck and you won and then the next time it doesn't work and they go they got to really check they got to check themselves because they go wait a minute i'm i'm the man with the golden touch and it ain't working anymore what happened and reality was you overestimated your impact on that situation as opposed to exogenous criteria like things were just happening around you you know market was moving up like crazy you rode the wave we of this quick story we had one company

one division they came in and they're reporting their results for the year they got we are up 38 year-over-year on revenue yeah that's amazing we go what's the market up? And they go, 55. We go, wait a minute. You lost market share to everybody else in the market. You didn't do a very good job, even though you're up 38%. So it can happen. You're in an environment like that. Thank you, Gene. And falling back to something I've been trying to set up is showing your staff that humbleness and that willing to listen I think is is is a good emotional intelligence trait and you know one of the things I always

learned especially in working for other people and I was young and consulting that I've done is is is having that having that humbleness to be able to listen other people and know it's always been important to me to be a fair judge because I've seen CEOs or leaders or managers that are very poor judges and they lose, they lose trust to their employees very quickly. You know, there's lots of different variations. There's the high school popularity contest manager,

you know, where no work really gets done. It's just about worshiping him. It's kind of like a little Mussolini sort of project. And I try and always show that I'm a good judge, that I'm fair, that I'll listen, that I'll consider things, unless of course they're completely wrong and I'm right, then that's different. But there's the narcissistic Mark Gavillion peering his head. That'll be in therapy tomorrow. Yeah, you got something to talk about tomorrow.

It's all good. Because I don't want to talk about the real issues. Anyway, but yeah, showing that humility, that emotional intelligence and stuff, I think is a really big deal. And people look for that. You know, leadership is a big deal

because a lot of people usually, I think one of the top reasons they leave a company is poor leadership. 100%. I wrote an article about this. It was people come for the mission and they leave for the manager. I love that line. So they love what you do. I need a shirt like that. Yeah.

They love the work, the people you help. It's all great. And then they get a jerk for a manager and they go i hate my life you know what this person is narcissistic or arbitrary or they play favorites like it's a sixth grade dance or like why this doesn't make sense for me to hang around and i used to look for clusters of high performers leaving the company. Because if there was a cluster, I'm like, I got a manager problem. And I didn't blame the people. I blamed the manager for losing good people like that.

They created that problem. Yeah, I had that with my vice president. I think that's what started it. Oh, really? Yeah, we had 16 people quit our telemarketing department. We had a huge dialer of about 100 people in our mortgage company that was on a dialer and and one day we had 16 people quit and when i called him up he was upset and quit because i'm tired of being a cia or you know this entrepreneur shit and but yeah it was i guess one employee i don't know if it was so much a management thing but one employee had

really been a mole and it talked to everybody about what horrible people we are and i think our corporation was nice people but of course clearly it was talking about me i don't know i don't know i have no idea what they were talking about but basically one guy talked 16 people into quitting one day because we're so bad man people and they walked off the job like a protest and so I was just like whatever man it would be nice to know what the fuck was going on there but he oversaw that department so I had to defer to him but maybe that was a problem there was he was part of it for sure I mean he may have been a problem but he was definitely part of the problem it shocked me that he wasn't aware of it because I was you know I was aware of sabotage or you know people in my

ranks that you know you'd write them up for something and then they would take an act they would start grinding stuff and then doing stuff and you know being subversive and shit so you'd have to you'd always be watching for the we used to call it the car business back in the 80s and 90s tubing and so it would be It would be tubing an employee basically depressing them and getting that quit by just telling them how horrible everything is and and Yeah, and so you get these people and you know I I think I've talked about this or written about it and basically you need to watch for those people because they're cancer in Organization. Yeah. Yeah, and it it's amazing you know you the worst combination you know if you think

about the little four box grid right they high performance level and toxicity level eric like low performer high toxicity easy decision see you later right the hard one is high performer who's toxic yeah they make the numbers. They sell mortgages. They sell cars. But they're, God, they're a pain. Everybody cringes when they walk in the room. Oh, yeah.

And unfortunately, I think as leaders, we've got no choice but to take them out, unfortunately. It's hard to manage them. I mean, it's hard not to make that move. And usually, the 80-20 rule is really the 95 rule I think but you know it's usually your top sales guy yeah and you're like hey I know you're a top sales guy but you can't be cutting the lines of cocaine on the desk with the hooker you know that please yeah I get the calls from limo and in vegas and and come by chris yeah i picked up one drunk one time on thanksgiving eve out at a bar he had a he had a bit of a he was one of those guys who whatever

the drug of choice is the opposite would happen so angry drunk happy cocaine yeah he blew up an eight ball of cocaine in my BMW one time, picking it up on Thanksgiving night in the middle of the night when cops are just looking for whoever's in it. And it's hard to get cocaine out of the passenger side of a BMW. Yeah, I think the dogs might smell that in the carpet. Yeah. It was in a full fucking eight ball that he did.

And he's like i'm just gonna start this and i'm like dude i'm gonna murder you if you do that in my car i will fucking you shouldn't even have that i i shouldn't even picked you up but yeah you know this is my number one guy but yeah well netflix has a rule say they don't tolerate what they call them brilliant jerks i think you just described me i think that's back to the narcissism my employees know that i think it's the brilliant jerk it's okay if i am but you can't be right that's the reason we keep them around the brilliant jerks brilliant jerks yeah they literally if you are that person like super super genius, solve problems like crazy, but you're a pain in the butt, they'll fire you. They're like, yeah, it's too costly on the team to have somebody like, we'd rather have high average performers who work like a team than one nut job that makes everybody make their lives terrible.

I have that problem in dating. A lot of women have told me I'm too ambitious for them. I'm like, what? Too ambitious? Yeah, I've been told that before. I thought people problem dating. A lot of women have told me I'm too ambitious for them. I'm like, what? Too ambitious? Yeah, I've been told that before. I thought people wanted that. Not in Utah. Utah is kind of a low self-esteem.

It's a state where they're doing it. It's the number one state, I think, in the consumption of depression medicines. It's very different here than California or Vegas, where I live, as well. And it's kind of interesting. Yeah, I mean, I've always been coastal, either California or Vegas where I live as well and it's that's kind of interesting yeah I mean I've always been coastal either California or East Coast and it's always been a thing money and success is really important in those states here they're just kind of yeah that's a little too much for me we like our our kind of laid-back life um but yeah and and I've been told I'm too intelligent either so evidently it's I guess that's the reason I've never been born.

You're too intelligent? Yeah. So what are we going to do, eat lead-pane chips or something? Pretty much. I mean, if you've ever been to Utah, you might see that. But no, it's a laid-back life here. It's kind of being in Kentucky, only the stills are caffeine-free instead of whiskey. You know the joke about Mormons.

I'm going to get you letters on this one to go, don't go camping with one Mormon. They'll drink all your liquor and smoke all your cigarettes. How do you get a Mormon to drink you? Make sure there's no other Mormons around. Yeah, that's it. Same joke. Those tropes.

They're very freaking true. But you know, hey, whatever you want to believe to get through life, it's your business. Just keep it out of mind. But, yeah, we've done enough warming. I refer to it as the cult because I grew up in it. And, yeah, I get enough hate mail from those people anyway. God bless them. God bless them.

Did I just say that? Yeah. Anyway. You know, in Memphis, that doesn't mean what you think it means you know it was so funny my mom used to do that bless your heart oh no oh that's rough in utah and i don't know where she picked it up i think she put my my uncle was down south so she picked it up from him but she used to say that to people and finally i pulled her aside i go mom i don't think you know the that really means, especially in the South.

Exactly. So what haven't we touched on that we should tease out to people to get them to pick up the phone, pick. It's the secret to getting amazing results and not working a gajillion hours. And it's simple to learn, hard to do. And that's what we teach through our peer groups and our members, you know, double, triple their company. The number one reason they leave membership is they sold their company for a gajillion dollars. So it works. It really does work. And I just wish we could get in front of more people and help them with this because we would make their and all the people around them's lives better because they'd have a better CEO. And most data says the CEO is responsible for kind of 40% of the outcome of a company.

So better CEO, better outcome. And that's what we can help you with. So if you fill that bill and have some level of humility, we'd love to talk to you. And then you have people on your side too. I know we've talked about this with, with the successful CEOs and some of the public companies. And one of the problems is sometimes people on the board aren't really there to help you, you know, and the day they get the data that you give them or you share with them you know your your constraints or your concerns or you know it's kind of like crying in front of a woman or telling her your your problems she's gonna throw it back you later we we say that you know a public board or frankly a private equity board that is not a

no consequence environment. Those conversations all have consequences. You have a peer group like this, an advisory board like this, you can go, hey, I'm not completely certain what to do here. And it's okay. You can't say that in front of your board. You tell it to the board, man. Right? They go, I'd like to go into executive session and discuss the replacement of the CEO now.

It's all over. Give us your final thoughts as we go out. Tell people how they can onboard, reach out to you, get to know you. I don't know if you want to plug the CEO Summit. I see something about that on your website too. Yeah, please do reach out to us. We're all over LinkedIn. Go to theceoproject.com if you're interested in having a deeper conversation.

I'll be the guy who talks to you. You get to talk to Jim or whatever that's worth. And we'll see if it's a fit. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't. And if you want to grab the book, Great CEOs Are Lazy, you should probably add like runaway bestseller or some fancy word like that. But anyway, you can pick it up on Amazon, Audible, Kindle, or hardcover. If you listen to the audio book, you get to hear me speaking it.

So if you have any trouble sleeping that's people find that useful so anyway that's how you get a hold of us love to chat with you i have a feeling that my employees are gonna listen to this episode when they edit it and stuff and i know what books i'm getting for christmas i'm gonna get five book i i tell people they go oh man my boss could use that book. I'm like, you remember the commercial where there were two people in the hallway and they had a bottle of scope and they're like, I don't want to give it to the boss. You give it to the boss. You're going to put the scope on the boss's desk, right?

To tell him or her that they've got bad breath. I'm like, you really going to put great CEOs are lazy on their desk. Who's doing that? You got to have a lot of guts to do it. Hopefully you didn't get your head lopped off. So thank you very much for coming to the show, Jim. We really appreciate it, man. That was way fun, Chris.

Thanks for the time. And I love the concept idea. I took my attorneys because I came with a virtual board concept in the 90s. We may have to talk privately. No, I'm just teasing. I'm just doing jokes, folks. I promise I won't charge you royalties. Yeah, okay. teasing i'm just doing jokes folks i i promise i won't charge your royalties yeah okay

you've taken it to the next level which is great because it is hard to curate like i try and curate in my local friends group you know those those private groups i have that you know they're kind of for business but they're really just men who are in the same space that i am that you know we're up on that high wire and people you know i people always come to me they're just like it must be so nice to do what you do and you love it and and you know you can do what you want i'm like no i live in a gilded cage in a high wire and the higher it goes and the more i make and the more successful we are the more i look down and you you realize alone you are. It's really lonely.

Yeah. Because you're the- They say it's a lonely job. I had one CEO I was talking to, and he had some law change, and he had a $700,000 tax bill that arrived that he was not expecting, right? So he talked about ways to manage it and mitigate it and whatever. And afterwards, he goes, there is nobody I can talk to about this. None of my,

all my hunting, fishing, biking friends, none of them would understand this on any level. So it's, it is, it's hard, hard to find people who can get it.

I've tried to talk to about it. People when I'm playing call of duty and the gaming community isn't really evidently. And they go, ja, ja, ja, ja,

ja. And they're like, what, what the fuck are you talking about? Yeah. And I'm'm like you should also change the batteries in your fire alarm so anyway thank you for coming on the show that's a big thing in gaming there's a lot of people that they get used to that beeping fire alarm low noise and so you'll you'll be gaming and all of a sudden you'll hear this beep beep oh that's funny have. Have you changed the battery in your fire alarm? And they're like, what are you talking about?

I'm like, maybe you should take a break from gaming for a bit. How about go take a shower, change your underwear, and change the battery in your smoke detector? And they're like, no, I don't know how to do it. I'm like, you open it up and you replace the batteries. I didn't know this was a skill set you had to go to college for. But definitely, there's a lot set you had to go to college for, but it's definitely, it's,

there's a lot of people that they get used to it. Me. I hear that beep once I lose, I go mentally apoplectic. I don't know. Thanks Jim for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Thanks man.

Folks, check out his website and order up the book where refined books are sold. I'm trying to get it to come up. Give me the title of the book there, Jim, as we go out. Great CEOs are lazy. You'll find it on Amazon. And you can give it to me over the holidays. Thanks, everyone, for tuning in.

Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.