The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 477: Steve Holmes - Finding Your Purpose (Ikigai), Bouncing Back From Failure, & Using Your Working Genius

Episode Date: June 19, 2022

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders will receive a carefully curated email from me, each Monday morning, to help you start your week off right! Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12      https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Steve Holmes founded Springfree Trampoline in 2003 and has overseen its growth to almost 400 employees globally. He is responsible for strategic business development and leads growth initiatives worldwide. Springfree® Trampoline, the World's Safest Trampoline™, was introduced in 2003, and available in Australia in 2004. Dr. Keith Alexander re-designed the trampoline from the ground up to invent Springfree Trampoline, over fifteen years of research and development. Notes: "I hope that customers describe Springfree as a company which has integrity, honesty, great character, and deals with its customers in a way that values their experience with the brand and the product, and delivers on the promises they make. Living in the tension of competing priorities. This is the job of the leader. It's happening at all times both at work and at home. We must be aware of and understand how to live in that tension. Your working genius - Jim has learned that his sense of wonder and invention is what brings him the most joy. We have to know what lights us up in order to sustain excellence over time. Responding to losing the Costco account. Steve called the Jim Sinegal and worked out how the relationship would end and then immediately planned for the future to keep his company in business. "The greatest piece of marketing is our customers." How to find your purpose: Ikigai is a Japanese concept that means your 'reason for being. ' 'Iki' in Japanese means 'life,' and 'gai' describes value or worth. Your ikigai is your life purpose or your bliss. It's what brings you joy and inspires you to get out of bed every day. Life is about giving so that others will benefit. The C's of business Clarity Competency Confidence Choice "The pace of change is faster than the pace of learning." Sustained excellence: Humble Hungry Smart As the leader, you must create an environment where people want to learn

Welcome to the Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text, Hawk to 66866. Become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your we golf right.

You'll also receive tales about how my book The Pursuit of Excellence will help you become a more effective leader. Text, Hawk, to 66866. Now, on to tonight's featured leader, Steve Holmes, founded Spring Free Trampoline in 2003, and has overseeing its growth to almost 400 employees globally. He is responsible for strategic business development and leads growth initiatives worldwide. He's an actual operator in the thick of it each day.

A few of the topics we discussed, the six seeds to build an excellent business. Then how to respond when you lose your largest client, which Steve did was Costco. And then how to build a world-class customer. experience in both the B2B and B2C worlds. And then Steve shares the must have leadership qualities to get hired working for his team. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Steve Holmes. All right, here we go, Steve. It's so great to have you on The Learning Leaders Show.

Welcome, man. Well, it's great to be here. Thank you. And I'm humble. I've had the opportunity to listen to your past guests. And it was like, okay, I'm not sure where I fit in here. Well, I love some of the pre the pre recording chat. And you're showing me your leadership Bible with clippings that go back decades,

which blows my mind. And so I'm going to start at a place that is so important to me. And that is sustaining excellence. And when you leaf through that Bible, these clippings that, you've put together over the years and you're obviously a you're a current operator as well you're doing this and we're going to get to that what have you found to be some of the commonalities among leaders who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time well i mean we both have a great enjoyment of patrick lencioni and his three words of humble hungry and smart so those are things

and first let me say it's just a pleasure to be here your your book congratulations on it and i hope that in our conversation today what we get is some fun because that's what it's about in this is because sustainability and leadership you do have to get joy there has to be joy at the heart of that and one of the things I want to share with you is I'm a sponge and I you know your show has been been very instrumental in the sense of leaders do learn and to sustain that you do actually have to make a commitment and people talk about balance right you know and I would say I have a great friend who shared with me a really good insight, which is actually not balance. It's about living in the tension of the competing priorities. So I think sustained

leadership requires one to understand where are those tension moments. And when I recognize it, how do I come back? And part of that for you to be sustained is to absolutely, you use the word great and so much the stuff you do, be curious. Always acquiring that sense of insight and knowledge. Last comment I'll make and then I'll move on for you to ask me a question, but there's a wonderful guy, Dr. Terry LeBlanc, who's a Mick Mack Acadian, Indian, indigenous leader. And he shared with me once that this whole process within the indigenous community is it moves through phases, which is there's information gathering, which leads to understanding, which leads to knowledge, which leads to wisdom. And what I would say to you is

sustain leadership, guys who truly have been excellent that I've followed and then I really enjoy, seem to understand the importance of those four phases and actually know how to wait to ensure that that information turns to understanding and that understanding turns to knowledge and then to wisdom. Because so much of us, we're getting so much information overload. We jump and we think, oh, I heard this. I'm really wise now. And it isn't actually the way it works. And so I think sustained leaders have an ability to listen, to be curious, and really have an ability to understand how that information leads to those various phases. So I'm sorry, but that's kind of where I'm at. I sense such a high level of joy in you, Steve, which is really cool.

And from the instant we connected, I sense that. And that's part of the joy of work, the working genius, some of what we talked about, Patrick Lynchone's stuff. and I know you've worked with his team. Where does this joy come from? Like, I feel a deep sense of gratitude from you as well. Where does this stem from? It stems from the journey of tension. And what I mean by that is we all, you know,

we have all been through highs and lows in our life. And I have been through those lows. I am fortunate and everybody has a different place. I have a faith. And so my faith has shaped a lot of what I've done. My parents have shaped a lot of what I've been. And, you know, their example all over their life, my dad had polio. So he walked around with two canes, never knew him any different.

But I've never known a man who was a really, he was deeply committed to his faith. But he also totally understood the concept of being grateful. And so I've had my journeys where one could put your hand up and say, woe is me. But it doesn't, that doesn't actually get you anywhere. Getting somewhere from point A to point B has to be based in that sense of joy and gratitude. And it's not always easy. You live in that tension, but you try and reinforce it every day.

So when it comes to business, and we're going to get into your businesses, I pulled a quote from a friend of mine who's been on this podcast before and will be on again. His name is Brent Beshore. And since you're an actual operator within multiple businesses, I want to surf a this quote and then get your take because you're actually doing it right now okay he said all businesses are loosely functioning disasters and some are profitable despite it when you think about that and the challenges and the the chaos that comes with running an actual business and actually creating profit and making it a place where others want to do great work and create

joy not only for yourself and your family, but for those who work at your companies. How do you view business from the starting of them as then you go through to get to the point where you are with some of yours right now? Well, it's a great question that's pretty heavily loaded. You know, the word chaos starts with the letter C. Just this week I shared with our team here, the six C's that I'm trying to think through. there's about 10, but six have been on my mind, our business in this midst of chaos, because it's been chaos for two years, right?

Unbelievable highs, unbelievable lows, uncertainty. But in the midst of that chaos, what we're always trying to seek is clarity. Okay, if we can gain clarity, just it may not even be perfect. You know, Eddie Obeng said, you know, the key, I think it was a great TED talk, where the pace of change is faster than the pace of learning. And we've gone a step further, which says change is happening before you can adopt to the first change. So for us, it's about gaining clarity. And then everyone in our organization has to use their competency.

And they take their competencies that they have and they try and have a sense of confidence. And so go through those three words for a moment. Clarity with competency and confidence allows you to do what has already been known as the three choices, to make a personal choice, to take a chance, in order that change can occur. Wow. And so what I would say to you, in the midst of the chaos that your guest has talked about,

which we are all in, my simple message to my staff is seek clarity. And if you don't have it, let's talk about it. Let's find it. And sometimes that clarity, it doesn't happen very easily. And he talks about it. And all of us are in case. I don't agree with him because I think there's a, on the comment about, and some of them are lucky enough to be profitable.

Yeah. I think that one of the things that we've lost in business today is the concept of stewardship. What does it mean? There's been this whole new world shaped by this idea of stakeholders instead of shareholders, right? And I get it. I get it. But there is this concept of stewardship. And we've lost some of that.

part of the reason we've lost it is our governments have become so irresponsible with their money. But I think you do have that sense of stewardship. And that stewardship does require you to actually make money. And so in the midst of that chaos, you have to plan accordingly. You know, lots of startups that you and I have been exposed to, wherever they be in tech companies, it's not about, oh, we got this great IP. We got this great IP. And I always ask them the question, yeah, but how are you going to execute on it? Because ultimately you have to.

So I would say to you, I'm all about his quote, all about his comments, except for that last piece, I think that leaders do have a responsibility to seek that return. Because that's the only way where they can tell their employees that they can provide them with a sustainable long-term work environment. Right. I want to focus on one of your business right now because it's important to me, given the stage of age of the children in my house. house, spring free trampoline, because I used to have this long, rectangular, rectangular, very dangerous trampoline with these springs that I've personally come down on. And every once, and it hurts. And every once in a while, I'm driving around.

And I see, I'm like, what is that? What is that different looking trampoline? It's like the springs are on the outside or the bottom or it looks different. There's a beautiful net. There's a basketball hoop. It's huge. God, we need to get one of those. And so it was just amazing that I get connected with you and you happen to be the guy who runs that company of the trampoline that my wife and I have said, we have got to get that for safety reasons first and foremost.

And so I love to go back to the beginning. of how you got essentially partnered up with the inventor of this new trampoline, because I think it's an amazing story. Can you take us back to that moment, the person and your conversations and dialogue as you were getting it started? Yeah, look, we both know the best part of business is people, the worst part of business is people. And I've had both sides of those, but the greatest joy I've had is the opportunity I got to meet in 2002 with Dr. Keith Alexander. So I was a young guy, you know, doing entrepreneurial things. And I had been doing some stuff in New Zealand previously. And I got introduced to Dr. Alexander. And it was

the very first time I met him. You know, in fairness, there wasn't Zoom or I don't think there was no Skype or FaceTime. So it was a good old telephone call. And, and I remember having the conversation. I could tell the nervousness on the end of his voice, et cetera. But what I heard was a guy who said to me, it's my job as an engineer to try and make the world better, to do things to make change that improves the world. And in the midst of it, I heard a story where he shared with me that he actually wasn't allowed to buy a trampoline for his kids because his wife said they're too dangerous. And the joke, of course, that I figured out is that he had exposed his kids to more danger than anybody had ever exposed their kids to because for 11 years, he tried to figure out,

how do I make a safe trampoline? And some of the original contraptions were probably not safe. And so I got an opportunity to meet him and then I flew over to New Zealand to meet him face to face. And I said to him, like, what is it you're trying to do here? And he said, I just want to make a safe for trampoline because they're really bad. And in our research, I said to him, I got to figure out whether anybody actually cares. And so, you know, we had the joy of doing some research internally. And we found out there was only one retailer in the world who said trampolines are dangerous, so dangerous, I won't sell them.

And that was a guy named Jim Senegal from Costco. And I went, okay, if somebody says they're dangerous and won't sell them, then safety can sell. And so I had the joy of meeting Keith and he and I then for the next time. You know, we've just celebrated 20 years together. And so we've had a lot of. fun in that journey. We've made huge improvements. So as much as you're focused on safety, my team is focused on quality and longevity and safety. We want everybody who buyers our product to know that it's going to stay in their backyard with the same highest quality, the same safety

throughout the entire life of their kids' experience. By the way, I assumed you just had random independent contractors who come in your backyard and set these things up. I was out of town when ours got set up. We have one now, spring free trampoline. And it is, it is, I am, I got the credit for getting this in the house. My wife gave me all the credit. And so now I am briefly a hero because of how cool it is. They had sleepovers with friends on the trampoline, by the way, which is awesome. But anyway, I wanted to hit on this fact because I, I'm curious to here because I think this is important like the end-to-end feelings, the experience. And I think all leaders can think about the experience that others have when working with your company.

That doesn't matter what you're B-to-B, B-to-C doesn't matter. So my wife told me they were two of the kindest, nicest people who offered to help with many different things outside of, and they set the trampoline up in like an hour and a half or less and were as accommodating. They wore uniform that said spring free trampoline on it. So I wasn't sure of this setup of how you're able to not only have a product of integrity and safety and so much joy and fun, but even the people who set the thing up seem to embody the values and the integrity that I know is so important to you. Can you tell me how you think about all of that? Well, once again, I'm not a guy who has a lot of original thought. I get to absorb so many things from other people. And one of the great

things you, if you ever read about Patagonia and the founder there, he talks about the fact that when you buy a piece of apparel, you actually don't own it. He owns it and you're just renting it for life. So one of the things that we try and embody is that when we go into somebody's yard and we put that trampoline there, we own it. If that isn't perfect, if we don't make it, we own it right up until that experience and we own it for a period of time in the sense of giving them the same experiences they otherwise would get. We like a. to think of ourselves as the Patagonia of trampolines. You're just renting it for a lifetime, Ryan. And when your kids are moved on, you're going to call me and say, hey, I'm going to give it away to somebody. But I probably need just a little bit of service or help. We're going to be there. And so one of the things we try and get, I mean, people is a hard piece of this puzzle. You know that. We're all struggling with retention in this world today. But one of the things we'd like to try and ask all of our staff is treat our customers the way you will. want to be treated. It's a great principle and it's a simple one. And when they walk into a backyard,

they go, how would I want to be treated? Wow. But I think a lot of people say that. Most people, or everybody, would say that, but then to actually have it happen on the back end when you're thousands of miles away from where this is being set up, you don't know these guys, I would imagine. you know, how does it get from the top of the leader of the company down to the actual in the streets, in the front line workers? How does that message get there and stay there consistently so that it keeps happening over and over? Well, I think a little bit about that goes back to what we talked about a few minutes ago, that sense of joy of work. we want people to actually come to work every day to be able to answer three questions in their own mind. And if they can answer those things that in like, so go back to my words of clarity, competency and confidence or motivation.

In the clarity piece, we think that every employee should be able to answer three simple questions. What's my job? If I do it well, what's the impact that I can have on the company's performance and success? And if I do those two things well, how do I get compensated? So you've had Dan Pink on your show, phenomenal guy. You know, he said, hey, he said, you know, people aren't driven by money at a certain level, various things. That's, you know, mastery, autonomy, purpose. What I would say to you is in the midst of it, he did say in his book, as long as you take money out of the equation.

So we always want people to understand what their value is and how they're valued. We want to understand that they know their job and they know the impact. that has on the company. And we try and make sure they have that. And if you do, then you hire well, then you see some of that joy and work come out because they get it. Okay. This is my job. This is how it impacts the company. If I do it well, this is how I get paid. And if I don't want to do those things well, this isn't going to work for very long. So you, one of the jobs of a senior leader like you is you're hiring other leaders. I'm curious, what are some of the must-have qualities for a leader that you're going to hire onto your team? Well, I mean, we've said it already,

humble, hungry, and smart. I mean, those are great words. Once again, they're words, and you've got to put words into action. So on some fronts, I want to say to you, one of the books that most impacted me early on in my career, I shouldn't say that recently, was the book called Quiet. How to get the most out of your introverts? Susan Keynes, yeah. Yeah, a phenomenal book. And what I would say to you is often we lose sight of that word leader and we assume it's an A-type personality that's, I have some phenomenal, phenomenal people who I deem to

be leaders and they would say, no, I'm not a leader. I'm a follower. I'm just quietly impacting and doing. my job. I'm not really a leader. And I would say, yeah, but they've got all of the characteristics of leadership, but maybe not the external ones that you and I often look for. So one of the things is we want to create an environment where people desire to learn. They want to learn. They want to continue to be on that sense of learning. And in the process, sometimes they're followers. So I'll give you a great example. I have a young man who works for me named Norm O'Hara. When Norm came to work for me,

the first thing he says is, look, I don't want to work, I don't want people working for me. I want to work amongst them. I want to gain their respect. Is it okay if I work amongst them? Work with them. Work amongst them. Not that they work for me. He said, Norm, whatever you need to do, you have my full support.

He built a loyal following that was just incredible. Why? Because while he worked amongst them and got that sense of mutual respect, he also had the opportunity to learn from them and to give. to them. His life is about giving. And so I would say to you, that's one of the things that I think we see in our organization by people who I call leaders, who they would say to you, no, no, no, I'm not a leader.

I'm just part of the team. Is that they have that continuous desire to learn and they continue to work amongst their peers, not so that they work over them. You call yourself a student of business. And so we talked about one of your businesses. spring free trampoline one that I'm a giant fan of but you do you do other things you have other business you're a part of can you share more about because it feels like wow this isn't this one thing enough well there's there's other things that

you're doing and it feels like part of what brings you joy is pouring into others and helping them so what does your whole portfolio look like and how do you manage your time amongst all of them um well You're going to have to stop recording because if I answer that second question, my wife's going to call me a liar. Oh, boy. No, I have a phenomenal team in every aspect. One of the things that impacted me early on was the book, because you go back to your friend who's talked about businesses in chaos. If you're in chaos, you always have to look about what are the alternatives of the chaos, right?

And there's that book by Jeffrey Moore, which started with Crossing the Casm. And that taught me all about that big gap between innovators and early adopters and the gap between early adopters and early majority. And so the cycle of business is way harder today than it was before. I mean, it's really way harder. And so now you've got this book that you've got insights by what's the guy's name, Chris Zook, beyond your core. And so our businesses that we've developed all came out of a core of Spring Free or others where we said,

there's an opportunity here. Should we create a new business? Is this a new product? Is this a new idea? Is this a new adjacency that we should be considering? So I'll give you a great example. Imagine a trampoline in the American marketplace. 20 years ago, I couldn't get insurance.

You know and I know that you can't say. anything in America unless you got insurance, right? It was almost impossible to get insurance. And so I started to ask myself, well, what does it mean to be self-insured? What does it mean to be self-insured? And everybody went, boy, you can never afford to do that. So we started a journey. And over that time, we ended up creating a portfolio where we ended up having an insurance company that came up with that. And you, and insurance, a reinsurance, if you want to call it that. So all of a sudden, we were in the insurance game. Why? Because we were forced to. Why? Because we were in chaos.

Somebody was giving us a premium price, which didn't reflect the risk. So that was a good example. Another example, just for fun, we were doing a ton of foreign exchange transactions. We kept using the bank and we kept paying fees because we have businesses around the world. And we went, this is nuts. Foreign exchange doesn't seem that hard. Why don't we get in the foreign exchange business? So we did.

So all of those came out of the Chris Zocke kind of concept, which is where can you, where can you vertically integrate? 99% of my colleagues, friends, competitors use China as an outsource. Well, we manufacture our components, key components in New Zealand still, and we ship them into China where we have a very dedicated team

and we own our own factory. Why do we own our own factory? Because those employees are equally valued as any other employees. They're part of our global team. And we're dedicated to them. We're not going to say, we need you tomorrow, but we don't need you the next day. So all of those businesses have kind of come out of opportunities that have been from the core business.

And that's how it's derived. And how do I allocate my time? I have as many good people as I possibly can. And my job is to encourage and to give of my time where people ask. So I don't walk in the office every day and say, I'm going to win 10% on this company, and 5% here and 5% here. everyone knows my extension 1137 they know my email they know my cell phone number they know my door and pre-covid i used to try and be in every market every six to eight to 10 weeks wow what so

can you take me back to the beginning of that because it's almost intimidating to hear now almost 400 employees and you've been doing it for decades what was it like at the beginning you said you mentioned at one point that it was it's harder now than it was then but the the very beginning of trying to build something, that's the toughest part. It's really hard to build from scratch. So what was like an inflection point or two at the beginning that kind of helped create momentum for you to grow? Well, the willingness to take a chance. So you say the startup would be harder. I am, some people use the term entrepreneur. Truth be known, Raina, I'm a starter. I really love to start things. I get my greatest joy through the concept in Patrick's Lencioni's working

genius, this sense of wonder and invention. That's why I get my joy. And so I am a starter by nature. So I never viewed any of the startup as actually hard or risky. It was totally encompassing it. It was like if I look back, I might go, wow, that was crazy. What are you thinking? But sometimes it's harder to keep running a sustainable business and keep people motivated and and keep people retained and find new customers. That's hard work. Starting sometimes it's just, heck, let's just, but above all, do it. And so in that do it phase, I had a whole sense of different risk profile than many. I was taught by my dad very, very early on, no matter what you do, your mother and I will love you and love you always, period.

You can fail, you can screw up, you can do whatever you do, we will still love you unconditionally. So when you have that, you kind of go, okay. Now, like, that's not so bad. So, like, you know, it worked. And so we work really hard. Our biggest, biggest problem was our challenge, I think, in my whole business career. I just wrote about it recently, May 13, 2009. So 13 years ago last month, Jim Senegal, who.

was the CEO of Costco. We were doing phenomenal stuff with Costco. We were just blowing the doors off. We were running big numbers. We were building a new factory, just totally dedicated to them. He walked into a store in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. He was never a big fan of trampolines. Remember, at the beginning, I told you that I started this business partially because I knew somebody said they were dangerous. And we kept making progress. And I think we made so much progress that we finally hit his radar. And he went, no more. So on a single day, at a single moment in time, in a store in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, we effectively, Costco stopped selling trampolines.

And they've never sold them since. And we stopped in the UK, the US, Canada, Japan. We're selling all at Mexico. We're selling to Costco stores and online. And in one moment, it was over. One person changed their mind. One person changed the market. What was the key learning from?

that? Well, the great thing is that great leaders are respectful. So here's what happened. He did change his mind, but I got an insight which said Jim Senegal sits at his desk on Saturday mornings from 12 noon to from 9 a.m. to 12 noon Pacific time. And here's his phone number. Just don't tell him how I got anybody. So I phoned him. And he answered the phone, no secretary, no assistant. And I said to here's my name and here's where I'm from. And I said, I respect your decision because it is your company and it's your decision. I'd just like to see if you can help me in the transition. And he was respectful.

He wasn't dogmatic. He was a gentleman, quite frankly. He said, Mr. Holmes, here's why. And I'm not going to change my mind. But let's talk about your company. And so he said, look, every purchase order that we've got in the system up to the end of May 31st, 2009, we will honor. And then it'll be over when those purchase orders are finished. I got off that phone. I phoned every Costco buyer I knew. I said, just get me purchase

orders. Please just give me a purchase order. Anything, right? And so I learned in that process, you can make a tough decision and still be respectful to others. And what about the thought of not being too dependent on one giant customer, how that can be really? It was amazing. It was really amazing. All of our internal team, we came back together and said, like, there was obviously the moment that we thought we were dead. I mean, you thought we were dead. And especially since we had just built this crazy factory, we all got together and we said, how are we going to rethink it? Because no one can compete with Costco margins. So we knew we had to increase our price points. And so it was a conscious effort by everybody around the globe to say, how do we go back and look

I don't know if you've done much on the business model canvas, which is a book series that's been done out of Luzanne, Switzerland, and it's new. So it wasn't around when this happened to us. But every single value proposition has to get to a customer. And that value proposition has to get to a customer either through a direct relationship with the customer or through channels. And what we found out is we had no relationship with the customer, and we had one single channel, which was Costco. And so we had to rethink how do we reengage with direct consumers? How do we find specialty retailers? And so it took us a couple of years to rebuild, but we did it.

What size were you at? Number of employees, revenue, where were you at on that day? Well, that's the interesting part. You know, you can service Costco with a lot fewer employees. So, and you can do a lot of revenue with Costco and a lot fewer employees. Because what you're doing is you're doing drop ship or, direct FOB out of the factory. So all of a sudden, we had to probably increase our employee pool around the globe 10-fold

in less than 12 months because all of a sudden we had to service customers. We had to install their trampolines. We had to actually sell to dealers. We had to build specialty retail channels. We had to start marketing. I mean, that you had to feel like you were going out of business. No question. No question.

We were on that kind of cusp. I mean, we went from, you know, paying suppliers at 30, 45 days to saying to suppliers, I don't know when I can pay you, but if you please stick with me, I promise I'll get there. You know, you were stretching everything. I remember I went to our landlord. In a way, we were renting a building. I went with a warehouse and I went to him and said, look, I need free rent for six months. He said, I gave you a free rent five years ago when you moved in here.

I said, I need it again. And he said, what are you going to do for me? I said, I'm going to make it and I'm going to make it back to you and I'm going to pay you back over the next 24 months and you can charge me a premium on it. You got to get scrappy. You've got to find a way. You've got to get scrappy. Yeah. But, you know, what's that story about who's done a video series that he went to YouTube to be rejected?

You know, I don't know if you've heard this. He went to get 100 rejections and he found out. Oh, G. Yeah. Jane. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And what he found out is that actually by asking sometimes, people don't want to reject you. So what I would say to young leaders who are listening today who are about to go through chaos, who may have too much inventory, do not be afraid to ask. And you are the one who make the choice to whether to ask. Yeah, I think. You that decides that. It's, it's so true. This is why if there is somebody who is a recent, recent college grad who isn't quite sure what they want to do, I tell them to get a job in sales. I mean, partially because that's what I did and because I didn't know what I wanted to do. But the reason why it's so beneficial is because you're forced to deal with rejection and getting ignored. And you've got to ask over and over and over. And you start figuring out things that work while also continuing to get just demolished every day. It's amazing practice.

It's great repetition for whatever. whatever it is you're going to do moving forward. And it sounds like you've got your fair share of that. Yeah, I mean, I got my first projection when I first started, when I first started business trying to ask people for money to support me, right? And it was like, what? What are you talking about it? I'm not going to need you any money for that.

So I wasn't in sales. By profession, I'm a CPA, CA, chartered accountant and certified professional account. But what's funny about that is that I went through the phases in the early days of my business career of being an auditor. So all you do all day, every day is ask people questions. And so I learned that art of curiosity that you talk so much about. I learned that art of curiosity because I was trying to actually gain completeness and gain accuracy, you know, and understanding. So I learned that side of it. So I didn't learn the rejection side so well.

And, you know, I know that there's times even still that I live in the tension of the fear of rejection. I share with you the Costco story because every year that that anniversary comes back, I think to myself, geez, I got to get back in there. I got to make that happen again. You know, and so. Was the pandemic? an accelerant for you because everyone was home, I assume? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was an accelerant.

It was an accelerant for us, no question, but we're no different than anybody else. No one, when when you or your wife says, hey, I want a trampoline for the kids because we need to keep them occupied, you pick up the phone. There was an urgency that existed during the COVID circumstance that none of us were prepared for. Yeah. And at the beginning, in fairness, Ryan, if you remember, when it first happened, we didn't think of it as a global circumstance because it started in China. I was in China at the beginning of the Wuhan shutdown, lockdown, and I left the country.

And I actually left and said, we may not be able to manufacture. Like if they start locking everything down, we may run out of product. And we may have other issues that are going to impact us. And so we actually brought our management team together to build a business. strategy. And our assumption was that if all of this came to a grinding halt, we needed to generate as much cash by selling our inventory that we had and preserve the cash in order that we could survive. The flip side happened. All of a sudden, you know, the demand curve went like this. And we went, oh, crap, like, how do we get enough to meet the demand? And so that was a challenge.

And we probably left lots of millions of dollars on the table and lots of families that we wish we could helped that we didn't help. And yeah, it was a hard job. How's it going now? Well, we're in good shape. We're in good shape. So, you know, we're a very healthy company because of that stewardship thing. We're not a company that believes in taking on debt, which which has probably slowed some of our growth opportunities, but it has preserved our ability to be resilient. So we're very, we have the ability to weather storms and we have the ability to build inventory and build product to meet opportunities going forward. And so, yeah, we're just, right now, our team is very excited about some of the things that we're

doing. So how about the relationship with Keith Alexander? You said before that you're still working together. He's the inventor. I read a story about the fact that he technically was working as a professor so he didn't own the patent the school did and did you buy it from him or how did this how did this work or the um yeah the university the university of christchurch or canterbury in christchurch new zealand had an agreement with its faculty that if they invented something the university owned the asset but the

faculty member could get a portion of that asset should any material gain come from it so when we bought the patent from the university keith received some compensation for the university uh from the university share. And I immediately went to him and said, look, I want you involved. Like this, like, and so he and I sat down and had a conversation about risk reward. And he was a university faculty member. And he said, look, I don't want any risk. I said, okay, perfect. So then the reward is changed. And so can we come to an agreement based on a sustainable long-term relationship where you carry zero risk. I carry 100% of the risk, but we work together and we continue to do it. And it's worked and we still do it to this day.

So, but in order to not take on any risk, then the reward had to be capped or lowered, I assume. Yeah, I mean, we created a contractual relationship, which I think, I think if Keith was on the show right now, he'd say it was probably life-changing for him because not only did it enable his wife to stop working and stay at home and be focused on their kids, which they chose to do, it enabled him to diversify some of the things that he was otherwise working on and it gave him some resources outside of the university that he could continue to invent and he's done that. And so it was a life-changing moment. I think it still is. And I'm not, he deserved everything. he's ever received and that relationship will go on as long as I have anything to do with

spring free trample. Wow, I was meeting with the mentor recently actually, Steve, and I'd love to get your take on this. And we were talking about risk and building and investing to build out a business, mine. And I mentioned, I was like, well, that seems awful risky, like talking about money and all this that go into it. And I remember he paused and he just said, dude, you're not. You're not. You're never going to do anything big if you think like that. And it kind of like hit me pretty hard. And so I'm curious, you as a serial entrepreneur, so to speak, who has done very well, how do you manage this idea of risk and a desire and ambition? How do you, all of those, how do you manage that? Well, it hasn't always been perfect. So I've had my serious,

serious challenges. And in those moments of challenges, there are learning moments, right, where you come out of it. And so about 1995, I had an experience which would my many standards be defined as disastrous. And out of it, I learned to be exposed both through my parents and other people who were supportive of me, that there's a purpose. And so, and that purpose is something that you, as an individual control. And when you understand your own personal purpose, there will be tensions and it won't be perfect. But it will help define how you behave and things like risk.

And so it isn't all just about getting rich or money or anything like that. It's about actually delivering against your purpose statement. You know, what is that purpose? Why am I doing what I'm doing? And when you do that, you understand how to determine whether or not you're compromising your purpose. And, you know. Yeah, what happened to you in 95? It was one of those circumstances where I think that selfishness and greed overcame servanthood and generosity.

And it did it in such a way that I lost perspective and I put myself in a very bad situation. You did this or like a business partner did? No, I did it. It was self-inflicted. It was self-inflicted. What happened? Well, I would simply say to you that I made judgment decisions where I was driving towards that I was infallible and that I could do this. And I saw a goal at the end that was a bigger, bigger objective than anybody else. And I ignored that all of those kind of things.

And that selfishness was compromised. And I'm not going to go into the details because what I can tell you is it defines who I am to this day. Yeah. It was difficult enough. And it was difficult and lots of different people because of my choices and go back. You get to make the choice. And I make the bad choices. The, you said you have to understand and know your purpose. So a couple, couple questions there that immediately come to mind. One, how do you figure that out?

Let's start with that one. How do you figure that out? What's been your process to figure out your purpose? and then maybe share what it is. So there's a wonderful Japanese, I'm going to get the word wrong. You can look it up on the internet. Ikaji, I think it's,

and you know, which is the Japanese concept of being, the reason for being. And so I was introduced to that in conjunction with some faith-related journeys that I needed to go through myself. And so I started in a journey

about trying to figure out what are you good at and what do you love? And what do you need to do financially to provide for your family? And what do you need to do that makes the world a better place? All of those things are components of that kind of reason for being. And then when you actually start to use that tool, but then add the concept of a personal faith, you become challenged and you start to say, okay, it isn't all about me.

Yeah. So in that journey, I determined that my personal purpose statement is that life is about giving and that I will give intentionally and I will give generously in order that others may benefit from me and I too from my experience with them.

And I got lots of tension moments in there. You know, I mean, when you say, you know, life is about giving. Well, there's times when you're selfish versus this idea of being generous. And so there's some tension. But that's where I've come out. And so I measure myself about that.

So there's times when I'll do some things and somebody will say to me, I thought you said life was about giving. You're just taking here. You know. But in a way, like, so if I grabbed from that statement and now let's actually put it into practice, it would probably be more profitable for you, Steve, and your business if you subbed out. the installation of your trampolines to just random, who is the cheapest two guys I could hire to just go into backyards and set up trampolines? It has to be way cheaper than the way that

you choose to do it. That's true economically. It's not true. It's not true practically. And I'll tell you why. Our greatest piece of marketing is our customer. Yep. You will, and I, and the interesting thing about our customer is mom and dad generally don't. use our product. And so if we ask, well, I do for sure. All right, good. And it is good for the whole family. Trust me. I have a good friend who has a bad back and everybody says you should never jump on trampolines. He says, I do it five minutes every day and my back's never been better. So I don't know. Maybe he's building back strength. But the point being is that most parents don't don't jump on the trample. Their experience of their kids' joy is really high right after it gets installed. And then

their interest kind of fades away. But they're really got great pieces. of mind because our product is so terrific in the backyard and it's so safe and so they've got good peace of mind it's got high quality all those things now now remember if we ask that parent please advertise on our behalf please tell the other friends about us why would they do that so the best thing we can do is provide the highest quality experience for them the longest lasting products so when people come on over into their backyard i don't have to call ryan to say well you tell them about the trampoline it it happens yeah happens when did you buy that. We bought it this long ago. The kids use it. Yeah, they love it. You know, it goes through cycles,

but they always on there with their friends and they're off their devices more often. And so for us, you go back, sometimes economics on a simple decision about outsourcing installation is losing perspective about what the big picture is, which is selling more trampolids. 100% agree, man. I think that's the longer term view. There are, are some especially with your background an accountant who may just look at every wait a second if I outsource it it costs this much versus if it's in-house it's whoa this much not thinking of the whole scope of the end-to-end feeling the experience then then that oh this is actually a marketing expense because if

it's done well it's done right it's a great experience they're gonna tell everybody and there's no better marketing than a genuine word of mouth referral it's as good as it You know, that's how this podcast grows, quite frankly, is genuine word of mouth telling a friend or two, and then it just goes from there. The same thing with what you're doing. I just love how intentional you are about the end-to-end experience for your customers. Well, one of the funny things is we had a complaint early on, you know, remarketing is something I don't fully understand, but we had a complaint from a customer who said, hey, I'm already a customer and you're remarketing me, and if you keep remarketing me, I'll never be a customer. I'll never tell anybody by your product. And I went to our digital group and I said, well, what's remarketing?

And they said, oh, it means this and this. Do we do that to our customers? Well, they might. Yeah, I guess we'd probably stop. Just stop. Please don't do that to our customers. Yeah. Yeah, but we wanted the, you know, no, just stop.

Just stop. And like, so you learn these kind of things, right? Yeah. So if you're respectful to your customers, the amazing things that they do for you that you'll never know about, they show up in the future. Yeah. I can't help but turn this personal since it's what I think about most, Steve. You mentioned before we started recording, you've got eight grandkids. So you've built an amazing relationship it feels like with a partner, kids, grandkids.

what are some like your overall general philosophy on relationship with your partner with your kids and then extension to your grandkids that seems like it's going well like you seem to have this just great comfort in your own skin and i don't feel like you could have that if you're not solid on the home front so uh i would be i've been married 38 years i've been married 38 years to my wonderful wife and she has put up with more i have moved targets. And the wonderful thing is that here's what's really interesting. Even through the pandemic, I didn't work from home. In our relationship, it's amazing. We never talked about it, but what's happened in 38 years is she has been unbelievably supportive, but she never talks to me

about business. So when I walk in the home, it's almost like it's, I breach it. You know, I'll walk in with a telephone in my hand or whatever the case can be or an email going on. But the truth be known is that my wife has been able to create a place where our family unit, including now our grandkids and my mom is still alive and so is hers, where that's sacred. Like where family isn't compromised because you think that your job is a higher priority. Now remember, I used the word tension. There's times when I live in the tension of that. But that's one of the, the things that's enabled me to truly enjoy what I do is that there is that opportunity to return to this place that is really almost a sacred space which says, hey, this is the family.

And no matter what you do, this is the family. And so I've had that. And so that's been really good. And so, you know, I start. I said, people is the best part of business. People can be the worst part. But in the end, relationships like you and I are having conversations like this, that's where you get your, you know, that's where you get your real fun and learning from. Yeah. So, yeah. I just think to me when I do the perfect day exercise from time to time and just basically write out my perfect day. And every single time that I've done it over the past seven and a half years, this is a part of it is getting a chance. to meet with a thoughtful, accomplished, kind, curious leader,

and have a deep conversation with them. And I realize how rare it is. And so I'm so grateful for that and grateful for you that we've had the opportunity to do this, Steve. And to me, that's what it's all about is developing real relationships, real relationships through dialogue and through curiosity and through trying to learn from one another. That's, I don't know.

That's just what it's all about for me, man. So I'm really grateful for you. Well, I appreciate that. And as I said to you before, look, for me, everything has been a learning moment. And I'm going to tell everybody who's a listener, because if they've listened to your show before, the learning moments have been significant. If you haven't written them down, you won't retain them. Yep.

And you don't always retain them because your memory, not that good. So when you write them down, you got to go back and check up on them. Yeah. Speaking of that, are there any favorite, favorite things you want to show? I mean, this is primarily an audio show, but we do release the videos too. Any favorite inserts in that Bible that you carry around with you? I'll tell you that I was once in, I can't remember who I can give credit to, but there's six steps to leadership, which is kind of in the inside cover beside the picture of my mother and my father leadership number one leadership is setting goals for yourself to yourself goals for yourself to yourself so this is somebody else is this isn't me

but i don't know who would give it credit to number one you in that concept there's two concepts in there one is how do you set the tone and how do you treat people so goals for yourself to yourself directed to yourself then you set goals for yourself to others i.e setting you set goals for yourself to others i. the direction and how do you work with others to implement that. So goals, number one, goals for yourself to yourself, goals for yourself to others. Then number three, get the right people. Number four, get them the resources that they need. Number five, get yourself and other obstacles out of their way. And number six, evaluate, evaluate, evaluate. It's obvious that you embody this mindset of being a learning leader, of always being a work and progress.

That's why I was so curious to talk to you because regardless of how accomplished you are, you're still trying to get better and to learn and to realize that you're never going to have it all figured out. And that's part of the fun. So it's amazing to talk with you, Steve. I'd certainly love to continue our dialogue as we both progress. And just one more time, I just got to say I'm grateful for your products, man. You made me the hero in my house. And it's so, and it makes me feel a lot better purely from they get all of the joy that they had before and more.

And it's so much safer. And it's not an advertisement, but it's just genuine as I get to look out in the backyard or go on it myself. So I'm super grateful for that aspect of it too, man. And if there's anybody out there that wants to experience that sense of joy for their kids, you know, we'd be delighted to give the opportunity to serve them. That's, that's what I tell you. So it's been a pleasure. Love it.

It's been cool talking to your team too. Maybe we'll have to work something out where you can maybe do something moving forward for my listeners. I was just thinking of that. I should have probably checked with you before saying that. But hey, if we need to edit this out, we will. But I really appreciate that. No, no, no.

We're open to that kind of stuff. We'd be happy to do it. It's no different. and I was talking to Cody Thompson from the table group about the working genius. And Pat's coming on, I think, in a few weeks to engage with you. And I said, Cody, maybe I should give away some working geniuses to Ryan's leadership, you know, listenership. So if you haven't done it yet, Ryan, I'll send it to you.

If you love it, then you and I'll figure out something you can post it. We'll post, you know, 100 free assessments for people to get out there and try. But Pat might kill me for that. We had him on when he was launching that. And the code we used did, I know it did pretty well for Cody and Pat. We're pretty happy. So I'm grateful for that. I think we have such a loyal base of learning leaders here that trust in this message.

So I'm grateful for them too. But Steve, awesome talking. Thank you so much. Like I said, we'll be continuing. All right, man. Thank you. Bye-bye. I'm really grateful for the kindness and curiosity, thoughtfulness of Steve Holmes.

so he's done a lot. He's an operator in the thick of things. He's built a business from scratch to now employ almost 400 employees worldwide, partnered with an inventor, still works with him for Spring Free. It's a really cool story. I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did. A few takeaways from my notes. I can't imagine that moment when Costco called the CEO Jim Senegal and said,

we're done. But I do appreciate how Steve responded in order to save his business. And that shows how adept he is at responding to adversity and doing whatever it took to keep his people employed in his business alive. And then your working genius. This stems from Pat Lanchone, which we discussed when Pat's been on my podcast, multiple times, Jim has learned that his sense of wonder and invention is what brings him the most joy. We have to know what lights us up in order to sustain excellence over time. And then living in the tension of competing priorities. This is the job of the leader. It's happening at all

times both at work and at home and we must be aware and understand how to live in that tension. I want to say once again, thank you so much for continuing to spread the word telling a friend or two. Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Steve Holmes. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that and you continue to write reviews on Apple Podcasts and rate the show, hopefully five stars, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk you soon. Can't wait.