We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP 107 : Jack Welch's book - Winning (Business Podcast)

Starting point is 00:00:00 We study billionaires, and this is episode 107 of The Investors Podcast. Broadcasting from Bel Air, Maryland. This is the Investors Podcast. They'll read the books and summarize the lessons. They'll test the waters and tell you when it's cold. They'll give you actionable investing strategies. Your host, Preston Pish, and Sting Broderson. Hey, how's everybody doing out there?

Starting point is 00:00:30 this is Preston Pish, and I'm your host for The Investors Podcast. And as usual, I'm accompanied by my co-host, Stig Broderson, out in Seoul, Korea. And today we've got a book for you. And this book is all about Jack Welch. Jack and his wife, Susie Welch, wrote this book. It's called Winning the Ultimate Business How to Book. Before we chose this book, just so everyone knows, I'm pretty sure everybody out there knows who Jack Welch is, former CEO of General Electric, very, very famous American CEO. His personal net worth is not a billion

Starting point is 00:01:05 dollars. It's around 720 million. So we really do try to read books from people that have a net worth over a billion or has been recommended by that. But I think we can definitely make a exception to the rule with Jack Welch. So this book here was very good. The thing that I'll tell you, if you're listening to the show and you're looking for investment advice as far as like investing in stocks and bonds and that kind of stuff, you're definitely not going to really get a lot of tips in that direction. But what you can use this book for is how to find good sound management in a business that you might be investing in.

Starting point is 00:01:40 So that's kind of the angle that we're taking with this one. And for anybody that's in middle management or lower management or anything like that, and you're looking for what is it that executives are wanting to see in me in order to to rise to the next level within my company. This is also a fantastic book for that type of person that would be listening to the show. So Stig and I have this broken down into four different segments. The first segment, and this is how Jack has the book broken up. The title of the book is winning because Jack's written a couple different books.

Starting point is 00:02:12 This one had the best reviews on Amazon. This one was also recommended by Warren Buffett on the title there. Warren Buffett highly endorses this version of one of the books that he's wrote. he has a bunch of different ones out there. So that's why we selected this one was really kind of the review process and it had a billionaire endorsement. Stick, did you have any really kind of top level highlights before we start digging into the book? No, not all of them.

Starting point is 00:02:37 I'm curious about this, Preston, because I, like you, I enjoy the book, but I might have done that from like a different angle, I think, like from a personal value perspective, I have had few books that I, where I personally disagreed so much with the author as it did with this book, but at the same time, I'm floored about Jack Wells and the accomplishments that he had. So it's not like my place to say, it's not true what he's saying. I just think, like, from a personal standpoint, I think the way he talks about corporations are just very, very different from how I see it. So I think there would be an interesting discussion between you and me as well, Preston. Yeah, did you like it? Because I liked the book. I thought it was, I don't think it was the

Starting point is 00:03:18 best book I've ever read, but it was decent. It was good. I think I learned a few things, but I think I think the way he looks at corporations and the place in society and how to behave inside a corporation, I think it's about also, do you feel you can sustain your personal values and the way that Diaguelas is looking at personal values and how to think like an employee and how to think like a manager? I think that's very different from how I look at life, I guess. So I think that was really the big thing, but also the really challenging thing. Sometimes we might even read books, Preston.

Starting point is 00:03:53 We really feel like this is the gospel. Like, that's really, everything is just amazing about this. So I think the challenge of reading a book like this is amazing as well. Yeah, so when I was going through it, I was often thinking, and this is probably a bad thing to say, but it was more employee-minded, if you will. He was always talking about it from like, hey, if you're at this lower level in the company and you want to be an executive someday, this is how you got to act. this is how you got to perform in order to get there. And I think you and I on the show focus a lot more on an owner's perspective and not an employee perspective of kind of rising through the rank.

Starting point is 00:04:32 So it's just an interesting dynamic. I mean, I completely agree with everything that he's saying here is if you want to go from a lower level in your company and rise up, these are definitely things that are going to help you get there. So let's go ahead and dive in and then we'll talk about some different stuff as we go along. So the four sections are underneath it all, your company, your competition. And your career and then he ties up a loose end at the very end. But really the four categories are the ones that we mentioned here.

Starting point is 00:04:56 So the first one is underneath it all. This is broken down into four subsequent categories, mission and values, candor, differentiation, and voice indignity. So, Stig, I'm going to throw it over to you for the first comment and we'll go from there. I think it's really hard to say Jaguels without talking about his 2017-10 system. because it's been heavily debated over the years. Just to break it down briefly, is that the 20% of the best performers, as managers, you would do everything you can to motivate them.

Starting point is 00:05:32 As Jack Wells are saying, shower them with love. I don't know exactly what that means. And shower them with bonuses. Like, they're really the stars of the organization. Then you have the 70% that are, it's called the meat and potatoes of the organization. That's really the people you also need to have everything run smoothly.

Starting point is 00:05:50 you know, you don't necessarily give them like a lot of bonuses. You motivate them and you really want them to be in the top 20 and want to set a good example for them so that they can perform better. And then you have the bottom 10%, which you would basically let go one way or the other. So that his view of differentiation. And he's been heavily criticized for this. And I also think that the way that perhaps I'm explaining it, that also seemed really rash. But the way that the way that he's actually having the discussion is that he's saying that's actually the way that corporations work. We might not say so, but the bottom 10% is usually going to leave anyway, and by having this system, we're really helping a lot of people to move on if they don't want

Starting point is 00:06:38 to be here. So I have a few points to this, but Preston, I'm really curious, like, your overall thoughts about this differentiation, because that's probably the most controversial thing in this book and about Jack Wells. Yeah, so I'm going to come across really brash in my response. I completely agree with it, to be honest with you. I am all about, if you're not a top performer, then you probably need to move on to something else. And the way Jack kind of described it in the book,

Starting point is 00:07:05 which I agree with is your personality in which you're actually interested in might not align with the job that you're currently holding. And if that's the case, you're not going to be performing to your caliber of maybe doing something else. And so that might be the reason that you're down in the 10%. And so I think this is such a critical point to this 20, 70, 10 rule that he had when he was a GE. And I think that it's all about expectation management and communicating with your employees

Starting point is 00:07:37 and being honest with your employees of where they stand and what their performance is actually looking like. And that is so hard for people to be honest. But you know what? When you were honest as a boss and you're honest with your employees and you're telling them like, hey, honestly, you're probably the weakest guy on my team of 10. And when you can say that to somebody, they're going to do one of two things. They're going to say, holy crap, I thought I was the best or I thought I was at least middle

Starting point is 00:08:05 of the road. And when they hear that candor, they're going to do one of two things. They're going to get a lot better and they're going to try very hard. Or they're going to work even worse, which even. gives you more reason to move on and find a replacement for them. And the way Jack describes it in the book, and I agree with them is you might be doing that person a favor. They might go on to their next job and it might be a perfect fit for their actual interest and their skill set. And they're going to go on to be more productive later on where they weren't productive

Starting point is 00:08:33 for you. It was a lose-lose situation when they were working with call at you. But then when they move on, then they move on to something that's better. You're able to bring somebody in that's a better fit, you're not talking like 30% of the population here. You're talking about the bottom 10%. If you've got 10 people, it's your worst person. And I think that something else that he talks about in the book, which I think is really important is that 70% are the people that are making it happen. Your top 20%, they're just making moves all the time, you know. But that 70% that are really in the grind, making things happen, you have got to keep them motivated. You have got to let them know how much you appreciate what they're doing sincerely, not just to say it, but the

Starting point is 00:09:11 sincerely mean it because they're the ones that are actually helping you as a leader accomplish what you're trying to do. Having him explain it in the manner that he explains it in the book, he does a fantastic job to really justify it. Some of the criticism that you can always bring up is how do you measure performance? But I guess you can say that with any management system. It's the same as, you know, your start investing records. Like, how are you going to measure that? So, I mean, it's really hard to make concise in terms of how to measure that. And I guess you can always criticize that. But I think, you know, you can always criticize that. But I think, you're think for a system like this to work, you need to have a lot of people. And I think it's something

Starting point is 00:09:48 that's hard to pull off if you're 10 people. If you're 10 people, I need to fire the worst person. Like, how does that work? Because the way that Jack Wells describes, sometimes I feel like he's describing the various business units as a family. You don't fire your family. Fortunately, I guess some people would say you can't fire someone in your family, but you can't do that. And if you have a good team. You don't always need to fire that worst 10% in my opinion. Now, we can always discuss if you need to fire 10% of 50,000 people or, but if you have like a small well-needed team, how are you necessarily going to move that bad person? I don't think that's actually what Jack is saying, but you need to be careful about that because you also, I think you are

Starting point is 00:10:36 afraid of losing a lot of trust and a lot of confidence in the mission and the vision of the company, if you are sticking to that rule. At least that was what I was thinking. It's hard to argue with performance. GE strike records really speaks for itself. So clearly it's working. From a personal standpoint, from an emotional standpoint, I might find it hard to be working in a collaboration like that. But I agree with you, Preston, in a sense that that's probably how most organization work. You know, I think it's really important to highlight the point that this is true with large numbers. So let's say you're assessing an organization of 10,000 people.

Starting point is 00:11:15 So, you know, 10% of that 10,000 are probably going to be pretty bad performers for the most part. Okay. But if you do get on a team of 10, which I've been on teams of 10, where every single person of that 10 were absolute all-stars. And then I've been on other teams of 10 where five of the 10 people needed to be fired. You know what I mean? So like when you're dealing with a small sample size, you get yourself in a unique position as a manager. If you are trying to implement this work, it gets pretty tricky.

Starting point is 00:11:45 Like there has to be exceptions to this. But then when you look at things from a macro standpoint, probably the 10% at the bottom of a large organization might need to be moved on or 5% somewhere around there. And that's the trouble of being a leader at his level. Just an interesting discussion. I like the discussion. I think the key point for me is not necessarily the firing of 10% of your bottom performers, but more of providing good, candid feedback on a consistent basis that addresses what the

Starting point is 00:12:17 expectation is and what the actual performance was to meet that expectation. When you're having that candid conversation and you're doing it routinely with each one of your employees as a manager, that is so important. And you can manage in a way that you're steering the direction of performance instead of creating rumors within the organization and all these other corrosive and toxic behaviors that you see in more cases than not that actually occur. And so that was one of the other portions of this underneath it all section that we were talking about. And this was coming out of chapter two where candor, the biggest dirty little secret in business is the way Jack describes it. is that people are not candid. They're not honest in a work environment.

Starting point is 00:13:03 So before I throw it over to stick on this, I have a quick comment. I've seen in my personal experience that people are really, really bad at framing criticism. Let me just give you an example. Let's say that as a lower level employee, you have a manager that's somewhat difficult to listen to negative feedback. So right out of the gate, you're in a bad position in order to bring this up. But think of it like this. If you frame it appropriately, it will work. But so often people don't know how to delicately frame the idea.

Starting point is 00:13:41 So you could go up to the boss. You could say, hey, I know that we're going in this direction and I am completely on board. I have an idea for something that might actually be more beneficial or more fruitful in the long run. And if you don't like the idea, no big deal. We'll just continue to execute your strategy. But here's an idea. Let's just, you know, I'm going to throw out an idea for you. What if we did X, Y, and Z?

Starting point is 00:14:04 And the reason why, if we did X, Y, and Z, it might actually produce this result. It might, it might not, but it's just an idea, you know, obviously not something that we need to even make a decision on. But if you want to think about it, I'll be more than happy to be your action officer in order to make this thing happen if you would decide to do it. If not, I'm just going to keep on going down the past. that you laid out for us and we'll keep trucking along with no issues. And so I think when you frame things in a manner that is, hey, I know you're the boss and you're the person making the decisions. And whatever decision you make, I'm ready to execute it.

Starting point is 00:14:40 But here's an idea and it might be a stupid idea or whatever. I think when you take that approach and you frame things, you have the opportunity to be very candid in organization. So I guess my advice to people is work on how you frame things. Think about that discussion of how you can present it. And more importantly, put yourself in the shoes of the boss that you're getting ready to tell this to because all he hears all day is all day. And how this won't work and that won't work. That's what they hear all day long. So scope it so that you're seeing it from that vantage point so you can frame it appropriately. And when you do that, you're going to be so successful. All right, that's the first of the four different sections. So the next section is called Your Company. And in this section of the book, he talks about leadership hiring, people management, parting ways, change, and crisis management. So I'm going to throw this over to Stig to open up some comments. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.

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Starting point is 00:20:14 goes on to talk about how you should give credits when things are good and take responsibility when times are bad, which are not fun. But most importantly, leaders should show that they care because leaders simply set an example for the entire organization. And this is one example. It's actually not one of Jack Wells' example, but this is one example that I thought a lot about, especially because when you have not just an online organization, but really any organization today, you receive a lot of emails. So I'm definitely in position. I think a lot of other people are in position

Starting point is 00:20:49 where they get too much email traffic and what should you do about it. But I have this one rule that I found to be really helpful is that if you can really feel that you have someone on your team that spent a long time, a long, long time writing an email

Starting point is 00:21:06 and it's evident that something is extremely important to them, you should always, always, always respond to that email with the same passion as the team member. That doesn't mean that because that team member spent 30 minutes or two hours writing the email, that you need to spend the same amount of time. But you should show in your correspondence that you really, really care because there's nothing that kills motivation as a leader that shows that he doesn't care. Nothing will succeed. I want to start off my comments with just the titling of the fifth chapter.

Starting point is 00:21:42 leadership, it's not just about you. Because what he's really getting down to is, are you a leader with a lot of ego, or are you a leader that's really humble and it's all about your people? I have worked for a lot of different people through the years, through the military and just all sorts of different circumstances. And I have worked for some really, I mean, amazing and talented people. and I have worked for some really bad people too. And when you have a big ego, the leadership role, the perks, the all that stuff, it's all about you. It is all about you.

Starting point is 00:22:21 It's all about those people coming to you and briefing you and the focus is completely on feeding that ego. The person who is humble and it's all about the people that they're leading, they step into this role where they're a resource manager. that's their greatest strength is they're sitting at the top of this organization that has enormous power and potential. And what they're doing is they're saying, hey, I'm going to distribute all this authority down to the lowest level possible. And what I found is when you charge people with responsibility, they take responsibility. But you have to give that to them. And when you do that,

Starting point is 00:23:02 you'll be amazed at how creative they can be. If you give them an end state and you give them the authority to execute. It's amazing how creative they will be in order to achieve that end state. And a lot of times, they'll actually achieve a level way higher than the threshold that you might have even set. One of the things I really enjoyed about this chapter was his discussion about how to hire people. And he said that that was probably, because Jack Wells is he's traveling around the globe and he's having a lot of Q&A's with business leaders. And he always gets a lot of questions he tells in the book about how to find their best people, because that's something that all leaders struggle with. And there are really no finite solution to go about how to find the very best

Starting point is 00:23:47 people. But he was asked at some part of time, which question? If you could only ask one question, what would you ask to a candidate to a position? He had like no one question that he would ask. And he said that he didn't have a chance to actually say it back then, but he thought, lot about it. So this was his answer. He said that I would always ask candidates what they liked the most about the previous job and what they disliked the most. And he said there was actually a lot more powerful than what a lot of people thought. Because if you were asking a candidate what they really liked about their previous job, it's not the same as, you know, the very generic question, what's your strength? It's very, very different because what do they like? What do they

Starting point is 00:24:35 feel is their purpose, but it's really motivating them. Because at the end of the day, that's what you should focus on. You're not hiring people based on what they can't do. You're hiring people on what they can do, what they're motivated to do. And this really relates back to what Preston said about happiness and feeling there's a purpose of them being there. And you can really pinpoint that if you're asking what they're like the best. On the other hand, when you talk about what they really dislike. First of all, if they're saying that they can't come up with anything, you know that they're lying. And I want to say that in the best possible way, but I never heard about a job where they weren't like something that people didn't like. And I don't think that job exists in the

Starting point is 00:25:17 world. So if they're saying they can't come up with anything, that's really a bad sign, because that means that they won't have candor, which really would mess up your organization in the long run. But I think it's very important because you can figure out. if you have a good match, if you're honest about yourself and your organization, if there's a good match between that employee and your organization. And it's just so important, this is something that Greg Well stresses, and I completely agree with that if you can't find that match, you shouldn't be working together in the first place. And the way to figure out if you can work together before I actually work together is really to ask them what didn't you like about your

Starting point is 00:25:57 previous workplace. So I have a really quick comment before we go into the third section here. and it's really kind of some of the points that he's making in chapter six, which is hiring what winners are made of. And the thing that he really quickly here talks about is this concept that ideas are nice to have, but the people that are really great within your organization are the people that can take those ideas and literally execute them, make them happen. He kind of makes the comment that, you know, I can find any person within the organization and they'll have a hundred different ideas. is on how to do whatever at their level. But it's very rare that you find the person that can just knock it out and make it happen. And so that would be my advice to the listeners.

Starting point is 00:26:45 And even, I mean, just anybody, figure out a way to become that person that makes things happen. And it's hard to do. It's very hard to do. But if you can start developing that habit where you're just constantly knocking things down and making it happen, I'm telling you, you're going to take your level of your game to a whole new level when you start taking that task on. So, okay, let's go ahead and jump to the third section here. It's called Your Competition. And this is broken down into five different chapters. It's strategy, budgeting, organic growth, mergers and acquisitions, and then Lean Six Sigma. So, Stig, over to you to kick off this section. So I thoroughly enjoy his

Starting point is 00:27:27 discussion about mergers and acquisitions. And I know that this is something that a lot of people, people probably aren't working with from an executive point of view. But really as an employee, it's really interesting to observe. And the thing is that he talks about how a lot of mergers and acquisitions on paper seem to be really good. And there seems to be a lot of synergies. Because he's saying, if you read like mission statements or looking at the values, the corporate values, you would hear buswords like great customer service,

Starting point is 00:28:00 high quality products. But does that necessarily mean that you can merge or acquire another company that also focuses on high quality products? Rhetorically, he answers, you know, of course not. That's two very, very different things. And he's talking about how at the end of the day it comes back to culture. If you can't really adapt to that culture or merge those cultures, especially if you want to have like a full integration, it really doesn't matter what this is in the mission statement. He's really practically oriented when it comes to this. And I think the way he's looking at this, I think it's very different that, for instance, what Warren Buffett is doing.

Starting point is 00:28:40 It's very clear from this discussion that Jack Wills is thinking like a CEO. And even though he has different business units, he's talking about having the GE corporate culture and how he's growing his business and why there need to be similarities and synergies, best practices across an entire organization. This is very, very different from what you hear Warren Buffett is saying. And he's talking about how he's decentralizing anything. He has like no people in his headquarter. And he lets everyone has their own unique culture whenever they're doing an acquisition or a bold on an acquisition or whatever that they're doing. And if you look at the pure numbers, Jack Wells has done very, very well in terms of

Starting point is 00:29:25 growing and building GE and how he has been working with culture. But he has been dwarfed significantly by Warren Buffett and all the capital allocators in terms of providing shareholder value. In relative terms, it's really important that we stress in relative terms because Jack Welch was, what, at a 20% annual return and some of these other guys were in excess of that. Yeah, exactly. It's actually good that you said that because we're going to do another book soon. I actually really laughed when I read that because I think the first chapter that was all about how Jack Welch was actually not that good. No, you're right.

Starting point is 00:30:01 So here's some context. So in a future episode here, it's probably going to be the next one we do. There's a book called Outsiders. And this book starts off with this idea how good Jack Welch was, but these eight people were this much better than Jack Welch. And so Jack Welch was really kind of the baseline for the start of this book. And it's just pure coincidence that we read a Jack Welch book before the other. Yeah, but just really to round off this topic. And I think this is just another approach.

Starting point is 00:30:27 Like, if you are really good capital allocator, you can have great results, apparently better than Jack Wells. If you acquire a successful company and you just leave it alone and just have the management sent back a fat check to the headquarter and have that brilliant capital allocate that capital to something else, that can be a really, really successful strategy. but thinking like Jack Wells, thinking like a CEO, you need to have focused on how to merge their cultures. And I think the discussion he has here in the book is very interesting. Yeah, I think it was a really good discussion that he put in the book. And the thing that I really liked about the discussion was the fact that he really acknowledges how detrimental acquisitions can be for a business and how I forget what the stat was that he threw out, but more of these fail than the add value to a company in the long term.

Starting point is 00:31:17 And he talks about deal heat and how once you start marching down this path of an acquisition, it's really difficult to kind of reverse that. And I immediately, whenever I started hearing this discussion in his book, I immediately thought of that psychological impact in the book influence, where when you make one small commitment to do something, your likelihood of doing a larger commitment later on greatly increases. And I think for a lot of these CEOs that aren't necessarily attuned to these psychological behaviors, they start at a very initial phase, start going down this acquisition path with a certain company. And they start eyeing it up for they start running numbers on it. And then they become so committed to this thing that no matter what, they're going to make it work.

Starting point is 00:32:07 And they're going to somehow figure out a way to fit it into their organization. And in the first three years, it kind of works. They're still seeing the top line from the company, but then 10 years later, it's a total disaster and not something that was ever really creating real value. And Jack talks about it in the book. He talks about this idea of deal heat. He doesn't necessarily tie it to a psychological piece. But I think it's a very, very good discussion. And it's something that you don't necessarily see from a lot of CEOs talking about it.

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Starting point is 00:35:44 the investment material before investing, including objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. This and other information can be found in the income funds prospectus at fundrise.com slash income. This is a paid advertisement. All right, back to the show. Yeah, so one high part in this section, that was the mergers and acquisitions. The other thing was Six Sigma. Now, Preston, I know you have a black belt in this, so I'll just key it over to you and have you outlined the benefits of this concept. So the essence of Lean Six Sigma is this. It will take a process and it will improve the process. And the thing that it's really focusing on is mitigating and minimizing variance within the process. So, you know, you think of a Rube Goldberg machine.

Starting point is 00:36:30 It's like this super complex thing that makes a marble go from one end to the other and it pops out some toast or something crazy. That would be a process. That is something that is very complex. It has all these different moving parts. And at the end of the day, you have all these non, they call it non value added activities inside of that process. And as a lean six sigma person, your job is to come in, assess the existing process that currently exists in practice. and you've got to find those non-value-added activities, and you've got to eliminate them out of that system. Okay, because over time, people come in, managers change, more people are added, they're taken away.

Starting point is 00:37:14 This person's given a task, and next thing you know, you have this big, giant, awkward moving process, and some of those steps inside of there are not even required at all. And so Lean Six Sigma is a tool to go in there and identify all these areas and remove them. So you become very efficient over time. When you do this, your variance, let's say you're a company that's producing tools or something on a manufacturing line. And you have every 1,000 parts, there's a bad one that has to be thrown out and the material is wasted. In Lean 6 Sigma, your job is to reduce those number of defects and decrease your variance through statistics. And I'll tell you, as a person that's been trained in this stuff, it is insanely powerful.

Starting point is 00:37:56 It has a very negative connotation within business for the simple reason that a lot of people see these Lean Six Sigma people coming in and they immediately start thinking, oh my God, there's going to be cuts, there's going to be cuts. So I'm going to get laid off because they're going to think that I'm a non-value added activities inside of this process. And I think that at the end of the day, the really important part is if the company would implement efficiencies and it would be human labor, that can now be resourced into some. other area that might need to be plused up. And so I think people need to look at this with a maybe different vantage point and really kind of embrace the idea that this is a value creating thing, especially as a shareholder. Oh my gosh. This is big for shareholders. But I can see why it can kind of have that stigma from an employee standpoint, but very amazing, useful tool that is completely based in statistical proof on proving out a new and improved process. So let's go ahead and

Starting point is 00:38:54 move into the last section. This is your career. This section is broken down into four different chapters, the right job getting promoted, hard spots, and work-life balance. I think almost every word in this section I disagree with from a personal standpoint. But I want to say this like from the best possible way because that doesn't mean that it's nonsense or it's wrong what he's saying, it's just very important to understand that when it comes to careers, it's really a question about what your personal values are. And Jack Wallace, he's very honest about his own approach. And he's talking about how he never really saw his family whenever he was building his career. And he actually expected his employees not to see their families either

Starting point is 00:39:42 for that simple reason that he couldn't understand that someone would rather be with their family than being at their job. I just found that to be so profound that that was his point of view. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. I mean, from personal standpoint, I think it's weird that you want to have kids if you don't want to raise them.

Starting point is 00:40:00 Clearly that was how Jack Wells were looking at things. It was nice that he had some kids and that's all going well, but okay, let's go back to work. So I agree with you on everything you just said, 100%. When I got to this last section, let me make sure I say this correctly. Everything that he said, I agreed with as far as how you would achieve success in becoming an executive from lower management to the executive level.

Starting point is 00:40:31 What he said you've got to do in order to get there, I completely agree with. Is it something that I'm interested in going down that path and acting in this manner to achieve? Absolutely not. Like, not even close. In fact, I want to kind of do the exact opposite. So I'm with you stick. I can't understand it.

Starting point is 00:40:49 That doesn't mean that it's right or wrong. But for me, I listened to this last part of the book and I was kind of nodding my head like, yeah, you're right. This is what it does take to get to that level. This is what these people are looking for. This is what you do have to do in order to get that promotion. And it is giving you good sound advice if that's something that you really want to achieve. But if you are a person who really wants to spend a lot more time with your family than

Starting point is 00:41:15 you do at work and all those kind of tradeoffs that some people make and other people don't, I could see how you could take the last part of the book in a very negative connotation. Yeah, and I think it comes down to what we discussed here at the beginning of the episode in terms of do you think like an owner or do you think like an employee? And what he's basically saying is that, well, as you're saying, how do you go from that lower employee to the CEO? And yeah, he probably has a lot of great advice for that. And just to mention some of them, he's talking about how you should make it a purpose for you

Starting point is 00:41:44 to make your boss look smarter. I think a lot of people would probably have a hard time feeling that would be their purpose whenever they get up like in the morning. But he said, if you do that, you will probably get ahead. And he's probably right. And he's talking about how he should have a positive attitude. I agree with that. And he's talking about how you should make other people like you.

Starting point is 00:42:05 And he's talking about the likeability factor and different things you can do so more people will like you. And I just think I conceptually disagree with this. in terms of living your life in a way that you want to impress other people and basically doing it for so many other people than yourself. Because he's talking about if you consistently are doing that, someone will figure out how good you are and reward you. And just think that's a thin straw to hold on to.

Starting point is 00:42:35 Yeah, almost like if you want to achieve this, you have to change who you are to this model in order to do it. Yeah, because he has this entire section about promoting, And that is how promotions work. You're waiting for other people to like you and to reward you. And you are waiting for permission from other people. And I think if that's the way you work as human being, I think it's probably okay. But you should also just be very conscious about not be a victim if you into like the corporate structure. Because it's easy to be a victim saying, I'm doing everything I can for my boss to make him look smarter, but I'm not getting rewarded. I guess it could be easy to become bitter if that's the approach. that you want to have? So that really wraps up our comments for the book. Winning by Jack Welch. This is a good book. All right. So at this point in the show, Stig and I are going to do something a little bit different than what we normally discuss and do. With that said, Stig and I are actively trying to think of ways that we can actually add some extra value to people that listen

Starting point is 00:43:37 to the show. And we're trying to design products and services around our platform. And one of the ideas that we both came up with that we feel is really going to be a win-win, not only for us, but also more importantly for our audience, is this idea of consulting. And so up until this point in time, we've been doing the show for the last two years, but we really don't have any major products or services that we offer outside of people listening to our show each week. So the idea that we came up with from a consulting standpoint is we think that an area where we can add a lot of impact is on the job.

Starting point is 00:44:14 interview market. So him and I were talking, and this is the one thing that we think is really somewhere that we can focus. So you got all these people all around the U.S. in particular, and I'm sure this is happening internationally as well, that are doing these things called case studies. And what a case study is is when you go in for a job interview, you'll sit down with your future employer. Now, this could be for a big consulting firm like a Bain or McKinsey, or it could be for any,

Starting point is 00:44:43 you know, Fortune 500 company. But what a lot of these companies are doing now are things called case studies. So I'm going to throw it over to Stig. He's going to talk to you a little bit about what a case study is. Basically, the companies are testing your ability to think like an owner. So let me just give you an example of a case study that you might be asked. So this consultancy company that might have a customer, and you will basically just get the case that they have used with their customer.

Starting point is 00:45:10 So basically they will just replace the name with some generic name, but it's a real business problem. The client might have problem with a declining gross margin for a given business unit. And you are asked to provide solutions for that. Or they might be even more specific and say, well, we'll have a decline in the gross profit. And it's because of problems with managing our inventory. And then based on very limited information, you ask to outline two different approaches of how to fix it and then how to present to the management. And so I just have something to piggyback on, what Stig's saying here. So the thing that's hard for, I think, a lot of people that are maybe coming out of their current job and they're looking for a new job, and they're served one of these problems,

Starting point is 00:45:54 one of these case studies in the interview for the new company is they might have a difficult time with that owner's perspective of being able to tie marketing with finance, with, you know, operations and kind of mixing all that stuff together in order to provide a really good response. And that's the stuff that Stig and I really focus on every single week is, is that mindset, that owner's mindset. And so that's why we really think that maybe this is a great direction for us to be able to provide a service, a consulting service on an individual one-on-one basis with people that are interested, and us providing you a case study, interacting with you, and providing feedback on how you can improve and better prepare for

Starting point is 00:46:38 these types of interviews. So if you're an end- MBA candidate at a college right now or you're somebody that's just looking to go get employed at a Fortune 500 company. I think this is something that is going to add tremendous value as you go through that process. Yeah. And Preston, it's a really interesting part in terms of solving these cases because I remember back in the days when I was applying for a job and I was in finance so I was kind of sure that I would be asked a lot of finance question. And clearly, yes, I mean, if you are applying for a position in the MNA, you are asked a lot of things. many questions. But the thing is that if you have a client, they don't think like you as a student.

Starting point is 00:47:16 I mean, you're not thinking, oh, you are a marketing consultant or you are solely an MNA consultant. They're like, we have an entire company as compiled by a lot of different departments. You need to solve our problems. And basically, so there might be outlining like eight points that you need to factor in. You might have two issues in accounting, two in marketing, and then force an MNA. and you really need to be able to think like an owner. And that's really where we think can help you. All right, guys. So this is the new service that Stig and I are working on.

Starting point is 00:47:47 And it's one-on-one coaching. So if you are looking to have some one-on-one coaching, go to tip prep.com. That's tip prep as in preparation.com. And you can get more information by going to that domain. And we'll also have links on our navigation bar if you're interested in learning more about this service. And we would love to see you guys come over to the page and check it out.

Starting point is 00:48:11 And more importantly, if you're not in the job market or you're looking to transition, but you have a friend that is, please do us a favor. We would greatly appreciate your support by giving that person a handoff to that domain. So before we're rounding off this episode, I would just remind you that if you want to read our executive summary, you can subscribe to our newsletter. Not only will get the executive summary of winning, you'll also get that for all future books that we're doing here on the podcast. We don't send any spam. The only things that you'll get from us, that's the executive summaries and our thoughts about the current mind conditions.

Starting point is 00:48:46 Also, if you're interested in listening to the books on Audible like Preston Me, you also have a chance to subscribe for free on a website and you can download your first book for free. But guys, that was all that we have for this week's episode. We will see each other again next week. Thanks for listening to The Investors podcast. To listen to more shows or access to the tools discussed on the show, be sure to visit www.theinvestorspodcast.com. Submit your questions or request a guest appearance to the investors podcast by going to www.com. If your question is answered during the show, you will receive a free autographed copy of the Warren Buffett Accounting Book. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. This material is copyrighted by the TIP Network and must have written

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We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP 107 : Jack Welch's book - Winning (Business Podcast)

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