The Daily Signal - Steve McKee on the 'Turns' That Lead to a Better Life

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

All of us encounter twists and turns every day—whether in our personal lives or at work. Steve McKee’s new book “Turns: Where Business Is Won and Lost” offers a guide for which turns to take to live a better life. McKee, co-founder of the McKee Wallwork marketing agency in New Mexico and author of several acclaimed books, has navigated turns throughout this own life and successful career. He joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to explain how he navigated the ups and downs as an innovative leader. Listen to the full interview or read a lightly edited transcript at DailySignal.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Everything universe is turning, including you, if you don't like where you are, you can always initiate a new turn. Which is true in your career. It's true in our politics. It's true in economics. It's true in your personal life. There's a real empowerment to that. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, September 29th. I'm Rob Bluey.

And those were the words of Steve McKee. He is the author of a new book called Turns, where business is won and lost. We talk about his own life's turns and how he navigated the ups and downs as an innovative of small business owner in the marketing field. All of us encounter twists and turns every day, whether in our personal lives or at work. McKee's book offers a guide for which turns to take to live a better life. Before we get to today's interview,

let me tell you about another Great Heritage Foundation podcast, SCOTUS 101. It's a podcast where you will get a breakdown of the top cases in the highest court in the land, hear from some of the greatest legal minds and get a healthy dose of Supreme Court trivia. Want to listen? You can find SCOTUS 101 wherever you get your podcasts or just head toheritage.org slash podcasts.

We are joined in studio today by Steve McKee. He's the co-founder of McKee Wallwork, a marketing agency in New Mexico, and the author of several excellent books, including his latest turns where business is won and lost. Steve, thanks for being here today. Thanks for having me. It's not too often that we have folks from New Mexico in here at the Heritage Foundation Studio with us. us. What's the mood in Elbeker Cue these days? These days, the mood is kind of cranky. We've had a big overreach by our overreaching governor. It's been national news, so probably everybody knows about it with her trying to suspend the Second Amendment with a public health order.

And I'm actually very proud of my fellow citizens because the local sheriff says I'm not going to enforce it. The Democrat Attorney General says I'm not going to defend it. And nobody really seem to be complying. So it's a little bit cranky. It's interesting. We have covered it at the Daily Signal. Our Second Amendment expert here at the Heritage Foundation, Amy Swearer, obviously has paid close attention to this, as she does, all matters involving gun rights, and certainly something to keep a close eye on. This is one of those issues that we know that the left is concentrating a lot of attention on. We see it in Tennessee and other states as well. So thank you for that perspective. But, you know, we're here to talk about your new book, but I always like to hear a little bit more about the author's life before we delve into the heavy content.

So you have had quite a journey in your own life. You've had many turns, to use a phrase, on the title of your book. And I'd like you to share with our audience how you got to the point you are today. Yeah, well, I'm a homegrown kid in New Mexico. I wasn't born there, but I grew up there in public education all the way through kind of had to make my way. And nearly 40 years ago, I found myself in the advertising business. And I guess what you're good at you tend to like and what you like you tend to be good at. And I was pretty good at it.

And one thing led to another. And 27 years ago, we started McKee-Wallwork and we're a marketing advisory firm that actually helps companies become what they're intended to be, especially when they run into rough waters. So very often that involves a turnaround, which is kind of where this whole idea came from. And in your own case, you've had a couple downturns. That Mickey Wallwork. So how did those experiences, the highs and the lows in your own business, help shape your thinking as you prepared to write this book? Well, my first book is called When Growth Stalls, How It Happens Why You're Stuck and What to Do About It. And that was a memoir.

We grew very quickly for five years when we first launched, and then we nearly went bankrupt. We had a very difficult time. And it's a long story, but we commissioned some market research that basically we were looking for the keys to growth than what we found were the keys to failure, which is the same thing, just hold it up to a mirror. And we turned our company around using it. And so that was the first big downturn. That was in the early 2000s that was really an eye-opener for us. And then, of course, we all lived through the Great Recession, beginning in 2008, nine, that went on for a decade, really, that everybody had to cope with.

And so those are the very personal aspects of turnarounds. And then, of course, doing consulting for companies on those very issues, it's really remarkable because the first, title chapter of When Growth Stalls is it's not just business, it's personal. And that's the way I look at it. We consult with companies and help them turn around, but we've been through it more than once. And it's, it's, it's, it gives us a real empathy. And I think a good perspective from which to, to consult. Absolutely. Well, I think what you've described are that sometimes, and you've say this in the book, that the turns happen to us, but can also, we can also make turns happen ourselves, I think is the way you paraphrase it.

And so tell us about this new book. First of all, I love the first chapter, and you just describe in very, you know, plain terms, how turns are a factor in our lives in so many different ways. And we don't even think about it sometimes. But the word itself is quite prominent in almost everything we do every single day from the moment we wake up. Yes, exactly. First of all, physicists tell us everything in the universe is turning, literally, all the time, which is kind of crazy. To butcher Cicero, paraphrase Cicero, he basically said,

there are a few new things that we look at and we marvel at them, but there's marvelous things around us all the time that we ignore. And that's the way I felt about turns. I'm a swimmer, and there's not a lot to do in the pool. You can't check your email in the pool, so you think a lot. And I realized that a swimming turn is one of the most complex things in sports, and yet good swimmers do it without thinking. And when that occurred to me, I thought,

what are the kinds of turns do we do without thinking? And so I was just inspired. I did about a year of research, and I began with looking at turns in the physical world, the actual physics of turns, whether you were turning a car or turning on your own foot or what have you, and began to understand that as a sort of a meta metaphor for turns in life. Turns in history, turns in politics, turns in sports, turns in our careers. It is remarkable how common the things that we deal with in a physical turn apply to the things that we deal with in our life turns. Not the least of which is, yeah, turns happen, but we can also make turns happen. And that's really the empowering message of the book. Well, before I ask my next question, can you help my son do a flip turn? Because I know I could shave a couple of seconds off his 50 meter time. I actually used to win my races on the turns. Really?

Okay. I was very proud of that. And it just takes a lot of practice. I'm not a swimmer. I admire them for their talents in the pool. but yeah, that's one thing we've not been able to get the 11-year-old to master yet. You wrote another book called Power Branding, which had a big influence on my life as somebody who was trained in journalism

and has spent most of my career doing journalism. I now have this responsibility with wearing my other hat at the Heritage Foundation working with our marketing team. And so it was very helpful in that context. And I remember talking to you about this a couple of years ago when you first gave me the book, and I didn't know you were working on a second book called Turin's. So it's a book that's about, it's a business book, but it's also about life, as you've talked about.

What was the motivation that I'm most curious, what is the motivation to devote the time and energy into producing a book like this? Yeah, that's a good question. I would say two things. One is just a general curiosity. You have to be curious. And I was just curious. And once I started doing the research, it was kind of a vortex that sucked me in. But the second thing is, given what I do for a living and how we help companies turn around,

what we've learned over the years is when things go south, we tend to naturally blame external events. We all do it just as human beings and certainly as business people. And yet we have so much agency, personal agency and personal power to be able to turn things around, not to overuse the word. It's really remarkable. So one of the things I say in the book is, you know, turns, of course, everything universe is turning, including you, if you don't like where you are, you can always initiate a new turn, which is true in your career.

It's true in our politics. It's true in economics. It's true in your personal life. There's a real empowerment to that. So it was both the curiosity of this fascination I had with this thing, but also the motivation of trying to help people recognize that we can always change things. You know, you say that. And yet at this time in our society and our culture, it seems that people are, they don't

the direction of the country, consistently poll after poll, they give the president and Congress, terrible approval ratings, the same thing with the news media, frankly, and other institutions in America. What's your advice then to, you know, turning this around so we can get back to a situation where we're proud of our country and we don't have people who are questioning the, you know, the founding principles that this great nation has built upon? The beauty of the principles upon which this nation is founded, among other things, is that we have freedom and liberty and agency. And so my advice is not to wait for somebody to fix it, especially our politicians.

You know, politics is very important. We need to elect the right people. We need the right kind of public policy. But each of us has a sphere of influence. And if each of us takes the initiative to initiate whatever turn needs to be made in our sphere of influence, it'll all get better. There's just, there's no shortcut to it. but that's the main thing is don't wait for someone else to fix it and don't just complain. Get out there and start to create a turn.

Every great turn in history was begun by an individual. One of the beautiful things, and I love this part about the book, is I tell several stories of how individual people on individual moments in time, at individual moments in time, made an individual decision to take an individual act and everything changed. And that's true of every decision we make. Sometimes you change the whole world. sometimes you might just change your family or the life of a kid that it's all worth it. But we have to initiate.

That's amazing. Talking about principles, you have your own principles, turn principles that you go through in the book. Share with us some of those. And in the context of thinking about how somebody who is listening to this particular show or is going to go out there and purchase the book, how is it applicable in their everyday life? Yeah. It's funny, the first principle, or one of the first principles is called the principle of the object. And this sounds really simple and simplistic, and it kind of is. But since everything in the universe is turning, it means that every turn requires a thing. And the principle that I draw out there is that if we can separate ourselves from the turn mentally and psychologically, it's freeing to us. So when my company started struggling the first time, I gave myself too much credit on the way up and I gave myself as the leader too much blame on the way down. It was only after I was able to separate the fact that I might not be such an idiot that maybe what's happening to our company is normal, and I wasn't

blaming myself that I could creatively look at how to fix it. And so I have a line in the book that a number of people have mentioned, it's not my fault is my problem. If you can distinguish between what's your fault and what's your problem, that's very helpful, because very few things are going to be your fault, but many, many things are going to be your problem. And that itself, the principle, of the object is just separating yourself mentally from the turn gives you the perspective you need to make the turn. Other principles are the principle of the moment that every turn has its time. Moment is actually a physics term that physicists use to describe a turn, which I find fascinating. So you literally can't separate a turn from time. The principle of the contest is one of my favorites.

If you look at a turn in the physical world, there's all kinds of, there's friction and there's momentum and there's lean and there's entropy and there's all kinds of physical forces that are competing The only reason a car turns is because the tires are having friction with the road. Well, that's a wonderful metaphor for the ways we deal with turns. And I expand and explain upon that. And then the last one, which is probably the most conservative thing, it's a very conservative book, which I'm very proud of, is the principle of the consequences, which is every turn not only changes something, but it changes many things. And it behooves us to think well in advance of the secondary and tertiary consequences that could come of it. Yeah, and you've talked about already in this interview some of the historical events and

and the notable things that have happened in our own time on this earth. But there are a number of individuals who've made significant turns in their own lives and careers. And I'm curious to get your take on a couple of them. First of all, Elon Musk, making this turn to focus on the incredible power of social media and the freedom that it provides people in terms of sharing truthful information. And then a second person whose life interacted with Musk in a way that he didn't imagine, that's Tucker Carlson, who found himself facing a situation where he was canceled from Fox News

and without a home and then turned to Twitter, now X, to reach a massive audience through these interviews that he's now doing. Two great examples. I mean, Elon Musk, I mean, many, many turns, right, from launching Tesla to SpaceX to but his acquisition of Twitter was a turn that he, he followed my advice, not that he heard it, he decided that he was concerned about free expression, I mean, putting words in his mouth, this is what I've read,

and he chose to spend a lot of money, a lot more money that it turns out it was worth, to invest in that. And that's changing the world. You know, not everybody's on Twitter, but it is changing the world. Tucker Carlson, on the other hand, who has made a lot of decisions in his life as well, this most recent big turn he did not choose.

You know, he was canceled by Fox News on a Monday. That's when he heard about it. And now he's figuring out, you know, where he's going to go from here. But that's a good example of sometimes we choose the turns we make. Sometimes we don't. But in every case, we have agency and we have a decision. Yeah. So on that last point, you talk about the fact that we do have agency

and that we have the incredible ability to make significant changes in our communities, in our cities in the country, frankly. And so what are some favorite stories that you have about people who've maybe, you know, just been ordinary, everyday Americans who have really embarked upon significant changes that we can read about in your book or that just strike you as role models for those listeners to this program? Yeah, I'm really, for some reason when you say that, the name Riley Gaines comes to mind, who, you know, here's a young lady.

who, recent college graduate, when I was a college graduate, I didn't know anything, and I was afraid of everything. And here she is standing up for herself and a whole lot of other people. And certainly not single-handedly because a lot of people are involved, but she really is a tip of the spirit that's very inspiring. She says, this isn't right. And so she decided to stand up for herself and a whole lot of other people. And as a result, some things are happening. We see the same thing happened with Senator Tuberville right now, who is initiating, well, let's just put it this way. Had he not stood up for what he's standing up for, nothing would have changed. Nobody would have known about it. So here he is standing in the breach, getting a lot of flack.

One of the principles I talk about in the book is that in order to affect a turn, you have to be first willing to be thought a fool. If you think about all the great inventors, Copernicus, you know, Einstein, Musk, it's easy for people to call them fools at the beginning. But then when the turn happens, they're looked back upon somewhat differently. I think Senator Tuberville might be one of those people in that position now. So they're all around us. We see it in business all the time, the unsung heroes of small business across America, moms for liberty, the people who are just doing what's in front of them based on their gifts trying to affect change. It's inspirational. Megan Kelly recently interviewed former President Trump and asked him about the turn that he made

from being a popular entertainer and entrepreneur businessman in New York City to a relatively divisive candidate for president and president, who now seems on a daily basis to enrage the left in America and inspire the right. What do you make of his turn? And what lessons can we draw from it? Well, you know, I think when he made the turn in 2015, Yes. Nobody believed it, including me. In fact, I had seen him, you know, in the years prior talking about running for president.

He was interviewed 30 years ago or somebody said you'd be a good president. None of us believed it, but he did. And boy, did he believe it. And sure enough, it happened. That's what's so incredible about it is here's a guy who saw a future that he wanted, went after it. A lot of things had to go right for him, but they did. And he became president of the United States. Now he's facing a different kind of turn with all the lawfare that he's going through.

And that's just, that's the life we all have to live. So I give him a lot of credit for being determined, you know, so much a life is just being determined. Yes. Yeah. No, it absolutely is. And going back to your previous answer, the Riley Gaines example is so notable. You know, we have interviewed on this program so many parents who have decided. to speak out at school board meetings or run for office because they are frustrated with things

in their own life and they talk about the turns that they've made. They never expected that to happen. They always thought that they would be, you know, that parent who dropped their kids off at school and would never engage in that level of activism or even public service. But we're grateful for them stepping up and those who might be listening who are inspired to do so as well. We certainly wish you the best and encourage your involvement. Steve, any closing words, parting thoughts about what our audience would gain from your book and why it's something they should pick up. Again, the name of the book is Turns, and it's where business is won and lost.

But as we've talked about, it's so much more than just a business book. It's really about everyday life. Yeah, I would just say that turns, we all have to deal with change every day. Again, sometimes change is change we want and we initiate. Sometimes it's change we don't. This book will help you understand change better, understand your role in it better, and understand how to navigate it better. And I think my goal was to encourage readers

that we don't just take turns, we make turns. That's great. Steve, where can our audience pick up a copy? Anywhere, fine books are sold. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, you name it. Excellent. Well, very much. Appreciate you being here in studio with us, Steve, and keep tabs on things that are happening in New Mexico.

We expect an update on what your governor is doing and any other things that are happening in your state. Steve McKee, again, author of the new book, turns where business is one and lost. Thank you. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thank you for listening to The Daily Signal podcast. If you haven't had a chance, be sure to check out our evening show right here in this

podcast feed, where we bring you the top news of the day. Also, make sure you subscribe to the Daily Signal wherever you get your podcasts. And help us reach more listeners by leaving a five-star review and rating. We read all of your feedback. Thanks again for listening. Have a great day. We'll be back with you at 5 p.m. for our top news edition.

The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. Executive producers are Rob Luey and Kate Trinco. Producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Asheras. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop.

To learn more, please visitdailySignal.com.