The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 297: Tero Isokauppila - CEO Of Four Sigmatic: Principled Based Leadership

Episode Date: February 11, 2019

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk #297: Tero Isokauppila - CEO Of Four Sigmatic: Principled Based Leadership Full show notes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com Show Notes: Commonalities of sustaining excellence: "They love what they do" -- Love the process.  The work Humility/Excitement to learn -- they know things will change and they must adjust Listen more than you talk. Curiosity -- The Dalai Lama exemplifies this very well. Able to adjust -- Madonna is a prime example of being able to adjust and reinvent herself How being a 13th generation farmer from Finland helped set the course for Tero's life -- "I have domain knowledge." Finnish people consume more coffee per capita than anyone in the world The idea of putting mushrooms in coffee came because of this Super foods help with: Hormonal response Gut health Immune system Four Sigmatic is a company built with super foods The beginning -- "It all comes down to value generation.  If you want to generate value, you have to see what others don't yet see." Culture -- "You need to rally around people who believe in the mission." Find believers and sponsors as your first employees -- his founding team were former teammates Get to know you team deeply -- how they think, feel, act, what motivates them Currently they have a fully distributed team of 37 people The hiring process and qualities they look for.  Four lenses: Can they do they job? -- Skills How will they fit in our culture? -- Fundamentals What do they cost? -- Financially and emotionally What is their growth potential? They must be "extra good" at communication - written and verbal.  How do they write emails?  Must be extra organized. "Culture exists whether you want or not.  It is what it is." Their principles: S - Stay healthy, eat well, exercise W - We are us, not them A - Always carry product R - Results with freedom -- KPI M - Make it grow, let it go Examples of innovation

You need to rally around people who believe in. The first few people are the most important. Just because if you're a lone lunatic, you will not look good. But if you can gather a little group of misfits or believers, then they can start spreading. This episode is once again brought you by Gusto. Gusto offers modern, easy payroll, benefits, and HR to small businesses across the country. They were even named Best Online Payroll by PCMag. And as a listener of The Learning Leader Show, you'll get three months free when you run your first payroll.

Sign up and give it a try at gusto.com slash leader. That's GUSTO.com slash leader. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thanks so much for being here. It is Mindful Monday. Text learners to 4422.2. in order to join thousands of other fellow learning leaders from all over the world,

text learners to 44222. Now, on tonight's featured leader, the very interesting, Terro Isocopola, the founder and president of Four Sigma, a nature-centric Finnish-American company specializing in functional mushrooms, superfoods, and adaptogens. Terra was chosen as one of the world's top 50 food activists by the Academy of Culinary Nutrition. He's a sought after speaker and a best-selling author. A few of the topics we cover during our talk.

Why he prefers principles over core values, what his are and why that's important for you. Then the four-part process to ensure you make excellent hiring decisions, then the true story of Santa Claus and why knowing it is important for leaders. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Terro Isocopola. All right, Tara, CEO from Four Sigmaic. It's so good to have you here on The Learning Leaders Show. Welcome. Thank you.

Thanks, Ryan. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, of course. I'm curious, man. So there's a lot to get to in your story and what you've written about. The book title is so interesting. And as I dug into it, I loved your most recent ones. So we'll talk about that in a second.

But I'm curious to get us going. You've built a thriving, fully distributed, successful company. So I would say you've figured out. how to sustain excellence for yourself. And I also know the network that you are surrounded by, the people have done that as well. So I'm curious, if you had to think about the commonalities of leaders who sustain excellence, what are some of those characteristics? Yeah, that's a great question because obviously you can be successful in and, or you can also fail

in individual cases, but how do you maintain that good percentage of winning? And obviously there's so many different kinds of leaders, let's say Steve Jobs. as just someone everybody knows, is a very different kind of leader. I might not follow the leadership principles of many books and what's advised as the right way to do. But he clearly sustained excellence or sustained leadership a long time. So if you think of the commonalities, I think, first of all, you have to love what you do because sustaining something for a long time, especially at a high level, the pressure and

the demand that has, you have to love what you do. You have to love either the industry or the company, but you can also love the process. I know a few of my friends who just love leadership by itself. They could be leading any kind of a company. So I think loving what you do is huge. I don't think you can be a poser for too long. Like eventually you will just get tired of it or you just don't succeed. Another thing I think what I've noticed with myself and other people is you kind of have to have the humility or the excitement to learn to constantly be.

because it's more likely if you want to sustain excellence is that things will change either internally or externally many times over. So you have to kind of be able to adjust and in order to do that, you have to be half the humility or the passion for learning. So you just have to constantly be listening more than talking and learning more than doing as well.

So I think those are two big factors. I'm sure there's other ones as well, but loving what you do and being constantly learning are massive ones for sustained success. there are few people that immediately come to mind that that you have when you view them you can it's so obvious that they love what they do and then they had this humility about them to constantly be in a they're a learning machine maybe as some would say who are those people that immediately come to mind well out of the people that everybody would know i think dalai lama actually is

considering that as a spiritual leader of the world in certain ways I feel like every time you see an interview of him, he still has the curiosity for the world and excitement for the world. And I think in music side, a lot of people would say, let's say Madonna, who's being able to just her style many times. But I think there's many others who along their way being able to adjust their music style over the years. But yeah, I think. Terra. So. Current Dalai Lama.

I love it because I've asked that question to a lot of people because I like to then dig into the story, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the taxi idea to put mushrooms and Madonna. So, and that became your business. Tell me, take me back to 2012, what were you thinking? How did this become your life's work? Yeah, well, Foresigmatic was started in 2012 and our concept, like you said, is getting everybody to drink mushrooms. Coffee is one of the forms, and that's the one that got the most popular initially. So, but to answer your question, it starts with a personal passion around health and wellness and growing up, I'm a 13-generation family farmer, and both of my parents are.

in health, wellness, and agriculture. So having domain knowledge and passion for something is vital. It didn't come out of thin air. And there's also cultural aspects. So Finnish people where I grew up in Finland, so Finnish people consume more coffee than anyone else in the world, up to three times more than the Americans. And during Second World War, just because of a situation,

were attacked both by the Germans and the Russians, and we had a lack of coffee beans. And then local people started brewing these mushrooms growing on trees, not your normal portobello mushrooms, but these functional mushrooms. And people felt great. And after the war, the University of Helsinki started studying their health benefits. So one is that there is family lineage, heritage reasons, there is cultural reasons. But at the end of the day, I've always been entrepreneurial, and I wanted to create something new.

And if you want to create something you have to think differently. But it needs to be based on a consumer need. So I had started writing down things that could really change the people's health for the better. and I came to three answers. One was hormonal bounds. The other one was gut health, and third was immune system. And I think these are the lead dominoes in health.

For example, hormonal response impacts our stress levels and energy levels and our skin. And gut health also impacts our brain power and all those other things. And when I listed down, what could help with all those things? These superfoods like these mushrooms and adaptogens were on top of that list.

So it was also understanding customer needs as well as just having personal domain knowledge and expertise on something. So it's always kind of a mix of both of those two is understanding what people need, even though they might not know they need it, and also understanding how to deliver that to them. And that's how Four Sigma-Oxmatic also started. So there's only 50 Superfoods that qualify as, I believe, Four-Sigmatic. Is that correct?

Yeah, so it's a very kiki name. We probably should have chosen a better name. But basically, when I started, I was a little frustrated by this whole kind of like snake, oily superfood marketing. Like there's always a new berry, Amazonian super berry. And I just wanted to focus on what are the really clinically most research whole foods, not supplements, not like isolated compounds, but what are the whole foods that are most studied? And then it's just math on standard deviations from a bell curve and stuff. But the point being is that out of the 50 most research foods in the world, there are foods that everybody knows, like lemon, black pepper, cinnamon, green tea, coffee. Then there's foods that some people know, like turmeric or coconut products or ginseng or maca.

And then there's ingredients nobody really knows, like estranglors and Rishi. And I just wanted to kind of bring more awareness to the well-known products and the lesser-known products and get increased people's well-being through them. So what was it like at the beginning, the creation? Who was a part of your team? How did you decide who to work with? I'm curious, I love the thought of because I think there's a lot of people listening Tara who are either, they're currently working and maybe either in a position of trying to get promoted within their job or, and or they are, have some sort of a side hustle that

they've begun or would like to begin. And it doesn't fully relate to the beginning of your business. But I think the origin of how things. start and hearing it from somebody who's done it and then sustained it over many years is helpful. So I'd love to hear that beginning part for you. Sure. So I think either way, if you're starting a company, have a company, if you work for someone else looking to advance in your career, it all comes down to value generation.

And at the end of the day, that's what it's all about, whatever if you're just getting started or if you're in a senior position, it's all about value generation. And by almost definition, if you want to generate value, you have to see something someone else is not seen or something that is undervalued. It's not like mushroom market doesn't exist. It's an $18 billion market, but it's just undervalued for its potential. That's the same as investing. You're looking for undervalued assets or assets that have growth potential. And the same thing is ideas.

There's no different. You're trying to find ideas that others don't yet see or they don't respect the value of that idea yet. and within an organization or externally. And the same with us. My idea was to use these Wells Most Research mushrooms and get them people to drink them because that's the original way of consuming them. And when I came to America,

and I was like, hey, I want to get Americans to drink coffee or with mushrooms. It's an outrageous idea, and nobody necessarily believes in it. So that comes down to your question is, you need to rally around people who believe in. The first few people are the most important, just because if you're a lone lunatic, you will not look good. But if you can gather a little group of misfits or believers, then they can start spreading.

So if you want to go fast, you can go alone. If you want to go far, you've got to work with other people. So I think most happiness and success in life only happens through other people. And finding the people who will believe in you for might be different reasons. And the only way to kind of achieve it is understand their needs and belief systems. and accepting that not everybody will be a pioneer and an early adapter of something. So if you have an idea or a thing within your business and you're working for someone, for example, and you want to create more value to your company and you want to rally your unique idea,

you've got to find your believers or sponsors within that organization, then the only way to really achieve it is by getting to know them. So my first employees, what now are my business partners, basically, which is what was the founding team for Sigmaic. With people I used to be roommates with. And so you get to know them real close. You know, you get to know their, and not every person I was roommate with when I was growing up is people who ended up working with.

So not all of those people were people I wanted to be in business with. But you get to know them really intimately. Like, when do they wake up? How did they operate? And in a working environment, that's obviously not feasible. but in those water cool conversations after work, going for a run, those are the places when you kind of get to know someone, understand how they think,

and you also understand who will be those believers in that organization or externally who can support you. So I highly encourage everyone to spend time getting to know people on a deeper level, and through that it will become almost obvious who will be the people supporting your belief or your attempt to create value. So let's fast forward now. How many people work for Four Sigma now? Yeah, we're 37 and we're fully distributed. We have an office in in Venice Beach, California, one in Manhattan, New York and one in Helsinki, Finland. But you don't have to go to the office currently. So it's kind of like people, some people live in like Florida or Illinois or Washington and they work from home. And then some people, or a lot of people are also in the L.A., New York area, but they don't necessarily come to the office. So you've, from the founding team to now 37 and onwards, you have made hiring choices.

And I'm fascinated by this process because one, just selfishly, I'm always curious about how people make choices is who they bring on to the team because it's probably the most important choices you make in your business for myself. And then also, like I mentioned, for that avatar, those people who are listening that are in those roles, a lot of times we're faced with, growing our team or maybe we're a new manager and for the first time ever we're having to do interviews and we have to define what we want and what we're looking for. So I'm curious from your perspective, what are some of the qualities that are must have to work at 4Sigmatic when you're going through your interview process and you're looking for people to add to the team? Well, with 4Sigmatic or with other company, I always looked at hiring through four lenses and I actually used to work as a recruiting manager. So I've interviewed thousands of people.

of people for hundreds of hires. And I always look at it from these four lenses. And they're almost like a stage gate analyzes if you're familiar with that business concept. So you can't go to stage two before you pass stage one. And the stage one is can they do the job? And if everything else is perfect, but they can't do the job, it doesn't matter. So when you, if you apply for a new job, really focus on the skills assessment of that. is like, are you capable of accomplishing those work objectives?

So the first one, two, maybe even three interviews are really focused on their skill sets. What is their experience? What is their capability? And again, if that doesn't happen, none of the rest matters. The second one is probably as a CEO, the one I focus on the most, is how will they fit into this company's culture? And the bigger the company gets, the more clear it is, how it is. important culture is. When you're five, 10, 15 people, you don't realize, oh, it's not just a culture.

That's what we do. But the bigger the company gets, the more important the culture is. And if when you're in the thousands or hundreds of thousands of employees, it will be so obvious that the company culture matters so much. And those are the fundamentals. But again, if they can't get the job done, that cultural alignment doesn't really matter. The third step is what is this person going to cost to me financially or emotionally or emotionally? whatever the other factors are, like how difficult it is or to get this person into the company, the training cost, relocation fees, whatever might be involved. And then the fourth one is, what is their growth potential within the business? So those are the four lenses I look at every

higher. And the first step is obviously very dependable on what type of person this is. But the second one that I mostly focus on the cultural alignment is because we are fully distributed, it requires that you have to be extra good at communication, written communication, oral communication because if you're working and you don't basically not good of communication and you don't see the other person in person, it's even harder to kind of come across what are your objectives, what are you trying to achieve. So I really look at how they write emails to me, how do they talk to me in interviews. And then when you're also, a virtual team is like somebody needs to be extra conscientious and organized because there's less of that face-to-face time

kind of tracking where you are. So those are some of the characteristics that I'm beyond obsessed with in a hiring process. You mentioned fitting in with the culture. What are the values of your business, of your company? What is the culture that you have created and carefully crafted? So one of my pet peeves is actually these values. Because I think values exist in a company. if you want it or not, same way as culture exists in a company or any organization if you want it or not.

But there's also subcultures and sub-values within the company. And I don't think you can fake them. They are what they are. And I think a lot of companies write these values, who are caring or honesty on their walls. And then you don't live by them, and those values on the wall become almost like a joke. Our people just kind of tune off from them and they don't listen to them. So instead, I've tried to make it into practice. And when the company was started, we created these principles called Swarm.

It's like warm with an S in front. And every one of those letters means something how we operate as a company. And through those how we operate, it kind of also expressed what our values could be. And the first one is stay healthy. That just kind of explains how important is that you can't help others to be healthy if you're not healthy. You can't work hard if you're not healthy. So a big part of our quote unquote values comes from this principle of let's just staying healthy. ourselves, eating healthy, exercising.

So in our company, it's very encouraged to go for a run or go workout, go do yoga, whatever may be. The W is where us, not them. Again, something is important for us is that we're not trying to do what other companies are trying to do. We should just focus on our own needs and our customers' needs just to kind of run through them. A is always carry a product.

Wherever you are, you always have a product in your pocket. If you're in an airplane, somebody asks what do you do, here you go, here's a sample. Our results with freedom is basically where management by objectives company, so if you hit your KPIs, it doesn't really matter how you hit them. You're kind of measured by the results, and within that you have a lot of freedom how to approach it. And the last one is make it grow, let it go, where not a company is trying to grow 5, 10% a year or 20% or trying to double every year. And this just means you have to take big bets and not be scared to fail. And if also if it's not a big win, also having the courage to stop doing it. So we kind of operate through those principles versus values.

I mean, they're slightly different than some partly similar. But for me, it was always the values were such like lip service that I didn't really care for them. Rather focus on what are the activities that our company does. And through those activities, you kind of learn the company's culture as well. What about the M? Does make it grow, let it go? Like double every year, that sounds quite ambitious. what are some examples of that?

Yeah, that's a great question because it depends on the business area. But I think there's two kinds of innovation. There's incremental innovation, which is like optimization, which is valuable. But then there's also that like kind of destructive innovation. And a company like ours has to take enough of destructive innovation to succeed, like us trying to optimize and be little different. And by definition, already our products are quite different. So that alone is different.

But let's say in marketing, once we started growing, we couldn't really afford conventional marketing. I wouldn't believe that we can compete with Starbucks or Nestle fighting over the conventional marketing. So we have to figure out what is a cost efficient but also unique enough way to educate. So we started doing podcast marketing. And our first partnership was quarter million dollars. And that was more than our normal marketing budget had been at that point many years ago. So it was a lot to believe that the company would take almost. was the annual marketing budget and booted on a podcast, which at that time, podcast marketing

was definitely not a proven model, but we felt that it was a right way to do. We could measure its success. We did our due diligence as far as we could and then took a bet, and it succeeded big time. And our company was built largely also by podcast advertising. Then on the other hand, we have the hill up, by the way. Go ahead. Yeah, and obviously we've had for every win like a podcast advertising, we have many that have failed, and

it's as long as you make those best consciously and you continue to track their performance and also admit when he failed, it's not really a failure. And that's what that principle tries to communicate is that if you take conscious bets and you own them

and then they don't pan out, that was needed. like if you're a good baseball player, you hit three out of ten. And that's world class, right? So it means you miss seven out of ten. So it's not any different in an early stage company. You're not going to definitely not going to succeed every time, but we just try to encourage taking conscious big bets.

What made you make that decision? What's your decision making process for that specific example you use? I'm not just saying it because I like, you know, I have advertisers on my show as well, but I'm just curious of what went into it for you guys. Well, one thing is our product is very unique and it requires education and we've done a lot of education. And if you make classic traditional advertising, you have a couple like almost like classic billboard callouts, but it's not really that detailed. And in order to change someone's behavior in health or wellness or anything so personal and such like a coffee, such a ritual for people, it's hard to do on a quick. shoutout. Instead, when you have long-form content and you can really go deeply into the story

and history around, let's say, in this case, mushrooms and coffee, through valuable content and education, you can then change people's understanding by actually knowing what you're talking about. So in this case, it was just a product required a lot of education, and that is, podcast is an awesome long-form content that people consume. And it was just, that was a big fit for us. Another part, so I want to, yeah, go ahead. Ryan just finished it. Back to the value that I mentioned is that as an entrepreneur or a business person in an organization

or your own company, you have to create value. And that means that you see something that other people didn't see or you see that something is underrated. And I think we just saw that podcast was underrated. It had a lot more traction that people understood. it and it was like an undervalued asset. So even though it was a big investment from us, we actually got many,

many times the value back. And again, that's like seeing in, for example, in marketing, sales or market and advertising, finding the channels that are underappreciated. Something might be awesome,

but it's overappreciated. So the market price makes it not as exciting. Yeah. You know, it's an interesting thing. I have never said this, I guess publicly, but I just was thinking about every single advertiser.

I think I have an eight or nine different ones. over the last couple years, 100% of them have emailed me back asking to buy more episodes. So I think that's like the most telling sign that it's worked for them because they wouldn't want to do it again if it didn't work. And that is obviously a good feeling because I'm very careful about that with that because I value my audience's time and I want to make sure that the company is real. So I think that's another reason why it works so well because the host probably on most shows vets it and says, yeah, I'm a believer in this.

I'll take their money to really do the reads and that I support the company. I think that's a big part of it because people trust their host. And so they try it. And they want to support their host because they know if it goes well, that helps with their show as well. And then they get a product like 4-Sigmatic because your team generously sent us a ton of stuff, turn my wife into in love with your company and me too. And so I think that's what's neat about what, and by the way,

this episode is not a sponsored for four-sigmatic. I just think I should put that out there. Do you guys not pay me anything? I'm just saying it that you guys are generous to do that. I think that's why it can work so well on this medium. Yeah, and for us, we had two rules. We would always only work with people who would talk about us for free. So just like it is authentic.

And secondly, we didn't give any reads. A lot of podcasts have a specific read. They're like, hello, this. this product is awesome. We just said, we're not going to tell you what to say. You say what you want to say. Wow. I've never had that.

I've never had that. So sometimes people, they're like, tell me what to say. We're like, no, you have to figure out yourself. Tell me how you felt when you had it. What did you think? And just talking to your own words, like you would talk to your friend. And that was also another thing within that particular marketing method is the authenticity that you have. And maybe to your original question, what makes good leaders or good business people sustain success as being who they are.

And if you're a tough person, don't try to be soft if that's not who you are. Because in long term, people will find out your true nature. And if you are a vulnerable and sensitive person and a leader, show that. Don't try to be tougher than you actually are. So whoever you are as a human being, in order to sustain success, you have to be authentic. So I'm big on perspective and upbringing in that and how that creates who you are. And so when I was looking at your story, taro, you've lived in eight countries on three different continents. What did that, that accommodation of travel and being a more worldly person living all over the place and multiple continents and multiple countries more so than most people on this planet?

what do you think that those experiences brought to you from a perspective standpoint? Yeah. So first of all, when you grow up in a small country, like I grew up in Finland or maybe a small town, you quickly realize that that is not the center of the universe. And you understand that there are different ways to do it. So I sometimes almost think that, yes, if you grew up in New York City, which is in a way like one of the center points of the world and consumerism, it's sometimes a little bit of a shame because then, you know, are you able to see that there are different ways to do things as well?

And the same with when you live in different countries or significantly different kinds of cultures even within the same country that shows you humility, but also gives you ideas how things can be done. If you think that you want to create undervalued assets, it doesn't mean that nobody doesn't know about them. For example, mushroom coffee was not like nobody in the world knew about mushroom coffee before 4-Sigmatic was built. There are great ideas around the world, and just seeing being exposed to them kind of gives you fate and also understanding what could work here. Let's take the most classic business example, I think, that is in a certain way, it took it from the U.S. to Japan and then Japan back to here, but like, lean management or Six Sigma or whatever you want to call it from Toyota on manufacturing practices. And that was something that for the Japanese, it was obvious to make sure that there is no waste and they are always learning. never stop learning and those principles. And then they were brought to the U.S. and value was generated in dramatic ways for those companies who adopted those leading management practices.

And that's how I think business works is you can get a lot of good ideas from different parts of the world and bring it to your market or to your company, adjust it slightly to fit that culture of that company or that culture, and then reap the benefit. So what can you, if you're, for example, in an industrial company, what can you learn from a fashion, company and bring it to your organization. If you're in consumer products, what there is in, let's say, B2B world that you can learn and bring to your industry. So I think, again, to the value generation, learning from other cultures and other companies,

other industries is massively valuable as long as you have the ability to adjust that ever little bit. So if it's also your organization. Do you think you, all that travel and living other places is for, you to probably meet people to be the new guy from time to time. That has helped you from a not having a fear when you're put in those situations because you've lived the bulk of your life doing that, meaning you're okay being uncomfortable because you probably have a lot of experience doing that.

Sure. And in Finland, we also have to go to the army. So I became a sergeant, the Finnish Air Force. And that's another thing. I don't think the skill set in the army are needed to become a good leader or a business person, but it forces a lot of uncomfort in many ways physically and emotionally. And I think that is really valuable. Absolutely, you don't need to go to the army to learn those skills.

You can do it anywhere. But having struggle and understanding how to bounce back through sports or just your personal situation are really, usually valuable. Because I think even the people I know who have been quote unquote the most successful, those people have had a lot of struggles in their life and continue to have a lot of struggles. Even if you're winning and crushing it and killing it, you still have everyday problems that come to you. You have to fire people. You have to deal with problems in the organization. And it's not that those problems occur. I think that almost the more successful you are and the bigger the organization is, the more you have those problems is just your ability to handle them

changes and and by living in different countries and cultures and seeing difficult situation multiple times, just, you know, you don't panic. You kind of stay on top of the task and really think about what's the problem and focus on that. So I... Yeah, from a practicality standpoint, let's say this person who, like I said before, is listening and they haven't traveled the world, really. They haven't lived in multiple continents or multiple countries.

What advice would you give to them right now to make a change to help increase that? Would it be blocking time for traveling internationally or is there a specific way to get tactical here for a second to say, we can't say that their upbringing was like yours or that they want to the army or they did that. But what could they do now to actually make a difference? Yeah, I think there's so much you can do just to give a few examples. One, you absolutely don't need to travel. There's cultures and cliques and grouping within your city or town. So maybe a conscious effort to meet people in different social setting. It could be financially, maybe you volunteer and work in a city and see people who have a very different reality than yours.

Maybe it's people who are disabled. So my mother taught physiology and anatomy. And when I was a kid, she used to take me to people who were disabled and maybe go and volunteer with autistic children or adults. and just having that reflection and perspective within your city and town. You absolutely don't need to go elsewhere. Maybe even your neighbor you haven't gotten to know is very different than you and you've kind of held back, but there's something to learn there. The second one, I think on the travel side, a lot of people think traveling is very expensive.

It's not anymore at all. The same money you would spend to go on a trip to Vegas or Hawaii or Miami or wherever you would go on vacation. to the same that you would spend for a family to go and see an NBA game, you can take that same money and you can fly on the other side of the world. And probably the cost of living in a lot of those places is much less. And your dollar will go a lot further there. And the flights are not that expensive anymore.

So you can travel quite easily. And then finally, what we're doing right now, podcast and online, there's so many resources of different cultures and ways to come. connect with different kinds of people online that are just a click of a button and you're there. There's so many ways. I will literally no additional cost you can explore other cultures and learn through that. And there's, again, there's so many ways. Maybe the next movie that you watch instead of a Hollywood blockbuster, you watch a French

movie or some Asian film. And through watching a movie, you can learn from other cultures. So along with some great product you sent, I also, there was a book in there. And the latest book written by you that opened my eyes and surprised me a little bit. Can you tell me and the listeners the real story of Santa? Yeah. So I wrote an adult children's book called Santa Sol Shrooms, which is a very provocative name, obviously, for what it is. but it tells a story of at least a 5,000-year-old story of the origins of Santa Claus.

And a lot of people think that Santa Claus is like German St. Nicholas, but there's so many misconceptions with that. First of all, St. Nicholas was Turkish, not German. And there's no reindeer's in Turkey. And the story of this Christian saint is much younger than its actual origins from the only indigenous culture in Europe. So there's one official indigenous culture in Europe. They're called the Sami people. there's maybe 100,000 of them left.

They live in above the Arctic Circle in an area called Lapland, which is northern Norway, northern Sweden, northern Finland, and northwestern part of Russia. They're semi-nomadic reindeer herders. They are the people who took care of reindeer. This is one of the only areas where reindeer's live natively. And they celebrate, like many indigenous cultures, seasonal changes. And one of the big seasonal changes is winter solstice. and winter solstice was the original Christmas.

And the Santa Claus was a Sami, this indigenous shaman, that would go from village to village to heal people, if they had a flu or a cough. But then also during the winter ceremony, they would serve people this mushroom called Amanita Muscaria, which is also arguably the world's most famous mushroom. It's the mushroom emoji. It's the mushroom the Super Mario takes.

It's what Alice in the Wonderland takes. But it is also a psychedelic mushroom. 100% legal. It's one of the only legal psychedelics, even in the U.S., everywhere except Louisiana. All the other states, it's legal. And the Sami Shaman consume it and have a ceremony, and reindeer's would fly. And there's all the book just walks through, why the Santa come from the chimney, why there's Spruce Tree, the Christmas Tree, why there's red ornaments, red balls in the Christmas

tree, why there's red ornaments, red balls in the Christmas tree. why the elves come in, all these things through the eyes of a bedtime story and illustrations kind of made for kids, but it's also mostly made for adults. You mentioned psychedelics, and I think that that could be a point of confusion for people. Can you explain what four-sigmatic offers versus the psychedelics,

which are becoming way more in the mainstream now, much more talked about? So can you explain the differences there? Yeah, well, psychedelics are subsubstably. could be mushrooms or plants or something else that alter your vision and alter your mind. And Foresigmatic is focused on really real foods that have nutrient density. So think of a Shetaki or Lyon's main mushroom or my toki mushroom versus a psilocybin, which is psychedelic. So they have functional benefits.

They have minerals, fibers, vitamin D, B vitamins and things that make, they're in their everyday magical, but psychedelics like alter your vision and mind quite dramatically and you shouldn't drive a car when consuming them versus our products are 100% legal and more for health and wellness. So that's the difference. And I think even though it is becoming more and more of an acceptable topic days, days and more of entrepreneurs and business people, for example, microdosing on psilocybin and whatnot, our company is solely focused on just normal food. Has that been a struggle or has that been an issue of differentiating from that?

Well, that's actually a great point, I think, not just for this mushroom topic, but generally, there's misconceptions or thoughts from the external environment. So whatever you're selling, if you have a factory and let's say you sell a car and everybody thinks your car always breaks, instead of fighting that perception, you have to take that into account. You can just ignore the fact that if all the customers think that your car company makes products, break easily or maybe your university is known as the party university or I don't know whatever organization you're part of there's instead of fighting it I would embrace it and bring it into the communication so um I think uh in our case I don't have ever given a talk in any environment no matter how serious and scientific it is where somebody in the audience is out like are these mushrooms magic mushrooms and after a point of fighting it I just kind of embraced it and

and it's now part of like our most popular hashtag is on shrooms and and just like accepting it and being part of that communication. I think Volkswagen originally their most famous ads back in the day was they were just celebrating that the car was small instead of fighting the fact that they had a, you know, a small car. It was like part of like small is good or Mini Cooper. I don't know. Like there's a lot of examples of how companies have used quote unquote their weakness. into their advantage, which is the ultimate judo move. So it's been really interesting to learn more about the building of this company and how your

communication style. What, Tara, what's next? You are very aggressive from a growth perspective. What do you, as you plan ahead as well as one can, what do you see is coming next? I often would ask that is like, hey, what's our goal? And I think that's something leaders shouldn't overly focus on, is externally decided numbers or expectations, but more focus on, okay, I'll give this anecdote.

I go to the gym, and if I work out with the trainer, and the trainer says, let's do 10 push-ups. They never say 9 or 11. It's always like 10, 12, 15, 20, whatever, right? Why isn't it 11? Why is it 10? How do you know? Like, right? Why is it 10? It's just in our head, we like those numbers. We just think that that's a good number and we should go for that. But what if after four pushups, my form sucks? What if I, and then I get injured or I'm working the wrong muscle instead of the pecks I'm working on my shoulders. I'm like doing it wrong way. Or what if I can do 52? Like the 10 doesn't even barely, I feel it. But just we decided that we'll do 10. And I think building businesses are like that. We have these preconceived thoughts and what we should achieve instead of focusing on the form. And the form in our case, but for Sigmatic means like, are we having fun? Are we learning?

And are we contributing better of people's lives? I think a lot of companies fail when they focus on the growth over delivering value again. And if you continue to deliver value, maybe you don't grow exactly at that high percentage. Maybe this year, FSigmatic doesn't double. But if we deliver value and improve who we are and we continue. to learn, we've achieved something. So instead of focusing on those external factors, kind of focus on the feeling and the forum company. And that's obviously very hard if you have, you know, investors or expectations, then it's better to just communicate what is realistic and what is

not. But I would focus on long-term value generation over those external factors. And for us, it's more like, can we make better products? Can we improve our current product? Can we hire smart people to join our company, can we educate and train our current staff to be smarter? Do we build better processes and systems? Do we improve our service quality? Those are the things that I'm more obsessed about then. What is the growth percentage this year? How challenging is it to measure are we having fun?

Are we learning? Are we delivering value? How does one measure that? For customers, it's pretty easy. We use customer satisfaction rating. We use NPS core. Our NPS core is like 80. And I just like that as a factor.

I think for our industry average is like 41. So basically 80% of people give us a nine or 10, how likely they're to talk about us to their friend. So I think that's a very healthy metric. You can also do that to the staff. I do it twice a year. I guess you could do it more often. There's a limit of how many surveys can you do with everyone.

So you ask them, like, You'll have surveys going internally, like a big company might call it, an employee opinion survey. Yeah, an EOS score. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just like from 0 to 10, how happy you are to work for a company. Yeah.

Are you having fun and that type of thing? It's hard, though, because of the culture, how critical your staff is to know what's a good number. But what you can tell definitely is when you measure it consistently is, does it go up or down? Is it improving or not? It is not a perfect metric. Like, very few things are perfect metrics. but just like revenue is not a perfect metric or profit, a perfect metric of how healthy a company is, but it's a good metric.

Same way as I think NPS Corps or serving your staff is a good metric. It's not perfect, but it gives you at least some indication how well you're doing. Yeah. Tara, this is really enlightening. I love it. One of the commonalities I found among leaders who sustain excellence like you is that they've been fortunate to have good mentors or good people in their life who offer wisdom. slash advice. And you've also got people who offer you what they think is wisdom or advice that actually

is not helpful. What? And so this is kind of two part. You can answer whichever part that you'd like. What is either some of the best advice you've ever received or the worst advice you've ever received? And if you have both, even better. But if not, one or the other, because I think we can learn from both.

I'm curious from your perspective. Oh, there's so many examples. But one of the things that I learned actually in the military that I find often reflecting also as a business person, even though you're going to learn that anywhere. But is when you're a leader and you have the map and you're navigating and you're trying to find whatever place you're going to and you make a mistake and you're like half a mile off or something, you can't find the camp or whatever, you bummed down and people give you kind of shit. but nobody 10 years after remember that you made a mistake, well, that one small mistake, but they remember the feeling you had leading that troop. What was the energy that you had?

So if I go back to now the troops I led, they don't remember if I did the wrong turn on that one curve with my map. But they probably all still remember what kind of feeling they had of me as a leader. So the other way to say that is like people don't remember what you told them, but the feeling you left them with. And I think that's as a leader or as a professional, that's really important is to just like kind of don't overly worry about the actual things, was the email spelled out correctly,

but what kind of feeling you left them with? And I think that's a big advice. And then the worst advice is I think why one of our principles is where us, not them is something is like, hey, nobody drinks mushrooms or, hey, I don't think nobody currently does something and that's a proof that he will never be done. Life changes a lot. Like the Airbnb didn't start their companies like, hey, nobody rents their home to strangers. Like you shouldn't allow strangers at your home or you shouldn't jump in a car with strangers,

but yet Uber and Lyft exist. So a lot of the most successful companies do things that have not been done before. They have a Nobel unique viewpoint to it. So saying that something doesn't work. And same happened with Nokia smartphones when iPhone came. This has happened many, many times over. And I think just like history is a good data point and you can learn from history, but it doesn't mean that it's not going to change as we go.

And I think some of the worst advice I've ever received is looking too much in the rear room there. So good, man. Tara, I really appreciate the investment of your time here. Where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? I'm really bad online actually. Facebook or anything like that. I have a private Instagram called I-M-T-R-O. But if you're interested in mushrooms on what we do,

I build a free Mushroom Academy online. So if you want to learn about health benefits and generally about the kingdom of fungi, I've created like a 100% free e-learning course called Mushroom Academy. So if you want to go online, Google Mushroom Academy, you'll find us. Through videos and quizzes, you can learn about the fungal kingdom. other than that my company is called 4-S-S-I-S-I-M-A-T-M-A-C-I-C-C-N-E-C-M-A-C-C-M-A-C-C-M-A-C-C-M-A-M-O-S-O-S-V-E-M-S-E-M-E-M-E-M-M-E-M-U-M-M-U-T-E-U-T-E-U-A-R-E-A-U-A-T-A-A-A-A-A-A-

4Sigmatic and at Ryan Hawk 1,2. Tweet one or two key things that you learned from this conversation with Tarrow so we can continue this dialogue as all of us progress. And Tarot, I'd love to continue our dialogue as we progress because I'm fascinated by your work and your story. It's been really cool getting the opportunity to talk directly with you today, man. Absolutely. Thanks, Ryan, for having me on.

And for those listeners, if you tweet something out, me and Ryan will choose someone to get 100 bucks with a free product. Oh, I didn't know you're going to do that. Nice. That was a curveball. But tweet out and Ryan will choose two people and then we'll send you a free product. And so from all the people who tweet out some key tickets from this podcast, we'll send a couple of them free product. Oh, love it, man. That's awesome.

Thank you so much, Tero. And like I said, look forward to continue this dialogue out of our sweet. progress, ma'am. Absolutely likewise. All right man, see it. Wow, what an interesting leader. I really enjoyed that conversation with Tara. I certainly didn't know the true story about Santa Claus. I was fascinated by his four-part hiring process and then there's swarm principles really useful. I learned a lot from this conversation and enjoyed it. I hope you did as well. If so, I would love it if you would tell a friend who has never listened to a podcast or perhaps hasn't listened to this podcast, spread the message one person at a time. That continues to give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis, which is have fascinating conversations with enlightening leaders like tarot.

Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity. I will talk with you next week. Can't wait. This episode is once again brought you by Gusto. Gusto offers modern, easy payroll, benefits, and HR to small businesses across the country. They were even named Best Online Payroll by PCMag. And as a listener of The Learning Leader Show, you'll get three months free when you run your first payroll. Sign up and give it a try at gusto.com slash leader.

That's g-U-S-T-O.com slash. Leader. Okay. Are you still there? Yep. Oh, man, thank you for throwing that. I didn't know you're going to do that. That offer, and that's really cool. Yeah. It's better to surprise you. It's authentic. But yeah, choose whoever you like. Say that they won, DM them for their address, email, me or whoever the names and addresses, and we'll send them a care package. And you can just choose who they are. All right. I appreciate that, man, and I will. I'll see what was talked about who learned the most. Well, no, seriously, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I'm glad Brent connected us. I learned a lot and just learned a lot doing my research, preparing for it,

so it was good to then follow it up with this talk. You're awesome. Yeah, likewise. Appreciate talking. And by the way, if there's anything I can ever be helpful, it doesn't have to be related to the podcast or anything. Just feel free to you. reach out. I'm super reachable. So just hit me an email or a note and we'll get it going. Appreciate it, man. Thanks so much. And I'll let you know. I'll shoot a note when this thing goes live. It'll be a few weeks. Cool. Okay. All right. Thanks. Thanks. Take care. Happy holidays. Bye too. Bye.