The Leadership Hacker Podcast

Going Upside with Lisa Marie Platske

Lisa Marie Platske is the President and CEO of Upside Thinking, a leadership coach and speaker, she’s also an international best-selling author, In this intimate show we explore some amazing leadership lessons including: 

• How being in New York at 9/11 in law enforcement became a turning point in her career
• How self-examination can help with forgiveness
• The 3 steps and 7 pillars to unlock courageous leadership
• How can we remain relevant as leaders in such a dynamic and changing world?

Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com

Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA

Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services

Find out more about Lisa below:

Lisa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisamarieplatske/

Upside Thinking Website: https://upsidethinking.com

Lisa on Twitter: https://twitter.com/UpsideThinking

Lisa on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UpsideThinking

 

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Leadership Trajectory with Dr Jeffrey Magee

Dr Jeffrey Magee is a Chief Culture and Learning Officer, Editor in Chief at Professional Performance Magazine, author of 31 books, he’s also a speaker and board adviser. In this really inspiring show you can learn about:

• The importance of investing into Human Capital
• How to become part of the Top 1% high achievers
• Why settling for a “B” grade will stimulate mediocrity
• How to find your X Factor and trajectory

Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com

Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA

Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services

Find out more about Jeffrey below:

Jeffrey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjeffspeaks/

Jeffrey Magee Website: https://www.jeffreymagee.com

Professional Performance Magazine: https://professionalperformancemagazine.com

Jeffrey on Twitter: https://twitter.com/drjeffspeaks

 

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The Hot Sauce Principle with Brandon Smith

Brandon Smith is, "The Workplace Therapist.” He's the Founder and President of The Worksmiths, an Executive Coach, Speaker and Author of the book, The Hot Sauce Principle. In this fascinating conversation you can learn about:

• The reason there is so much dysfunction in the workplace.
• The best survival tactics for eliminating dysfunction.
• How to stimulate urgency and avoid panic when driving performance.
• What the Host Sauce Principle is, and why getting balance is essential.

Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com

Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA

Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services

Find out more about Brandon below:

Brandon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonsmithtwpt/

The Workplace Therapist Website: https://theworkplacetherapist.com

Brandon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheWPTherapist

Brandon on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewptherapist/

 

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Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.

 

Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you

 

On The Leadership Hacker Podcast today, we have Brandon Smith, the workplace therapist. He's a founder and president of Worksmiths, executive coach and speaker and author of the book, The Hot Sauce Principle. But before we do sound speaker Brandon, it's The Leadership Hacker News.

The Leadership Hacker News

Steve Rush: Have you ever avoided just putting stuff off that you know, that you should be doing. Well, procrastination could be the most expensive cost in life and business. Leading to stress, misunderstandings and missed opportunities. Many people put off task until the last minute. And according to psychology today, twenty percent of people are chronic procrastinators. More than ever people are getting pulled in different directions and demands on time, schedules and energy are increasing. So, in order to cope with the pressures of life and work, many spend excessive time tuning out non-work activities, scrolling on social media, engaging in group gossip, reading blogs, watching TV. The activities that make us feel better in the moment yet prevent us from taking the action on our tasks.

So how can we perform at peak performance levels? When our self sabotage can often hold us back. According to an article by Balkis & Duru, procrastination occurs because of a number of things, including poor time management. I like to call that self-management by the way, lack of motivational skills, organizational skills, inability to concentrate, unrealistic expectations and personal problems, a fixation on negative thinking or negative beliefs about one's capabilities, perfectionism and anxiety, and fear related. Also contribute to procrastination. So here are five tips for peak performance and to bust through procrastination. Number one, question yourself like you've never questioned anybody else. The voice in your head is the one voice you wake up to in the morning, but it can be questioned. So, have you asked that voice in your head questions like? Are you setting and realistic expectations for yourself? Am I putting pressure on myself?

What types of things are you hearing? What's the why behind what I need to do today? What are the consequences and what are the rewards of getting this done? Take time to just keep asking those questions. Two, you might be familiar with the Eisenhower Matrix often called urgent and important matrix. In a time where everything is urgent and important. The reality isn't really that true. So many of our tasks and deadlines can be adjusted or renegotiated and a powerful strategy that can help us do that is the Eisenhower Matrix. There are four quadrants that help label tasks, urgent and important, urgent and less important, less important and urgent and less urgent and less important. So, identify which of the task go into which quadrant which will help focus your energy time and attention. Number three is called the one-minute method. Start something for one minute.

All it takes to get into action and get moving is one minute, sixty seconds. Jump in regardless of how you're feeling. Start that task before you're ready. Many people think too much, take too little action. Set your timer for sixty seconds and take action. And before I call the bracelet technique. And I learned this technique while studying neuro-linguistic programming. Start out by getting an elastic or rubber band and wear on your wrist like a bracelet. And every time you find yourself putting something off or thinking negative thoughts, snap that elastic rubber band on your wrist. This act associates, physical pain with negative thoughts and procrastination. It can be an effective way to overcome procrastination and the negative thoughts that sometimes come along with it. And number five, the timeline. Can setting deadlines and timelines really help when overcoming procrastination. Well, according to a study mentioned in the psychological science journal, it's been reported that setting deadlines does in fact, improve the ability to complete your task.

Self-Imposed external deadlines, really quite effective. Play a game with yourself, run an experiment and set a small internal deadline to see if you can complete it in a specific amount of time, a little competition between you and your internal voice in your head and your words and actions can be fun. And it also turns out the procrastination is actually a mindset. So, if we think we can do it in the time we have, and we can do it now, and it won't cause us discomfort, we're more likely to do it. And if we think we can't, guess what? You're probably right. So, the leadership lesson here is when you're engaging with your team and the people that work with you. Think about and observe, are they holding back something? Are they're procrastinating? And if so, how can you help them engage the voice in their head? How through the power of questions, can you help them unlock their thinking? So, they can really hit peak performance. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. If you have any news, stories, insights, you know where to find us through our social media, we look forward to hearing from you.

Start of Podcast

Steve Rush: Our special guest on today's show is Brandon Smith. He's the founder and president of The Worksmiths. He's an executive coach, speaker and author of the book, The Hot Sauce Principle, Brandon, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast.

Brandon Smith: Steve, I am thrilled to be on the show today.

Steve Rush: Me too. It's been a real challenge for us to get our calendars to connect since the last time we spoke. But the world's a very different place too, to be fair, right?

Brandon Smith: That's absolutely right. That's absolutely right. You know, it's funny. I used to think to myself. Oh yeah, I'm pretty good about predicting what's going to happen.

Steve Rush: Yeah.

Brandon Smith: The last eighteen months has been very humbling for me indeed. So, I've thrown my crystal ball and it's just, you know, take it as it come.

Steve Rush: Exactly right. Now I remember from the first time we've met; you have a really kind of tragic slash challenging kind of upbringing that really kind of led you on the path to what you're doing now. For the listeners that haven't had the chance to meet with you perhaps, can you just give them a little bit of that backstory?

Brandon Smith: Sure, sure. So, I was the youngest of three boys. Both my older brothers were adopted. My parents were told they couldn't have children and surprise I showed up. And so, both my older brothers were twelve and eleven years older than me. So, I would always tell folks, you know, if you've ever had older brothers like that, you know what the inside of a dryer it looks like, you know, it's like someone say, don't ask questions, just drink it. That's what older brothers do to little brothers. And my life was, you know, when I look back on it, I would say generally, I feel grateful, but there was some times in my life where it's was very dysfunctional as hell. My older oldest brother, Chris, he was in and out of either jail or rehab centers, my entire life growing up.

And when he was home, it was a lot of yelling and screaming in my house. And so, when I was ten, he ran away from a rehab center and he was living with us and he just decided life was too hard. And he took his life one night and it was very, very tragic and very, very challenging for all of us. In fact, it was so challenging for me that within about six months of that happening, I came down with an uncontrollable stutter. So, I couldn't speak in public at all. And so, every day before school, I would go in and see my speech therapist early in the morning. I'd work on my Bs, my Ps, and my Ts, the letters that would always trip me up, and then I'd go on to the school day.

So, between growing up with that dysfunction of my house, and then the way kids with stutters are treated at school. I made a kind of a conscious or unconscious decision that I just wanted to distance myself from people. They were just way too dysfunctional. And so that's kind of how I went through high school all the way to college and university. I just kind of kept myself kind of arms distance. Well, ironically enough, I ended up majoring in communications at university. And like most communication majors. I couldn't find a job after graduation. And I took a job in a small chain of retail stores. It was a family-owned business. The woman who started the business had fifteen stores. And I was going to be the assistant manager at one of these stores. And my boss was the son-in-law of the owner.

So, her daughter marries this guy, he’s, my boss. So, on my first day of real work, so I'd worked other jobs before, but this was my first day post university full-time job. I show up at the store, he greets me at the door and he says, I'm so glad you're here, before you get started, I have task for you. Waiting for you in the back room is the current assistant manager of the store, but he does not know you're coming. So, your job is to go back there and fire him and you get his job.

Steve Rush: Wow.

Brandon Smith: That was my first task on my first day of work. And that was how my manager rolled. He loved to do everything that we know as kind of really followers and lovers of leadership. He would do everything that's opposite of what we believe to be true and good about leadership. He loves to do surprise visits, to try and catch people doing the wrong thing. I had to do more layoffs of people in that first six months of that job than any other time in my career. That kind of experience really woke me up, made me really realized three things about my life. First, work should not have to suck. It should be a place for fulfillment and purpose and meaning for all of us. It shouldn't be a place of anxiety and depression and worry. I mean, it is work, it's not perfect, but it should have all those positive things. Not those negative things. We can't always choose the families we get, but we could choose our workplaces. We have a lot more control over that. Second, if my boss was any indication of the state of leadership in the world, I really want to change that. I want to improve how we lead other people and the impact we can have on workplaces. And third, that was where my purpose was born. I decided at that moment, I want to eliminate all workplace dysfunction everywhere, forever. Having no idea what I signed up for Steve.

Steve Rush: Yeah.

Brandon Smith: So, I went on and pursued a clinical therapy degree and practice in the clinical world for many years. And then also then got my MBA to kind of balance those two things. So, my version of kind of chocolate and peanut butter combined, somehow it works. And that was where my handle of kind of the workplace therapist was born. So that's a little bit of my journey that kind of got me on the path that I've been on.

Steve Rush: And having met with you and looked at some of the work and spend some time looking at your book. There is a real purpose behind this. This is not something that somebody is doing for a job. You are doing this because intrinsically it's something that you want to eradicate, right?

Brandon Smith: Absolutely. Absolutely. We have enough challenges in life, you know, if we can make work, not one of them, that would be a really great thing.

Steve Rush: Yeah, so what do you think the reason is that there is so much then dysfunction in the workplace today?

Brandon Smith: There's always been dysfunction in the workplace for one primary reason. We bring our own stories to work. We bring our own histories; we bring our own family dramas and family place to work. And so, you know, we put that on other people. So that's always been true about us as human beings. So that's always going to be a challenge, but you used an interesting word in that. You said, why is so challenging today? So, today's a little different time in the workplace. So, what I've experienced and you've experienced is, it doesn't matter where in the world we meet somebody. There are two things that are true about our workplace today. Time is our most precious resource. It's not money, it's time and everything feels urgent all the time. And that creates a whole other set of distinctions to fall along with that, because we're rushing and everything feels urgent, we don't spend time giving positive feedback to our team members. We don't get to know them or look to align with other leaders in the organization. It causes a lot more challenges particularly with communication. So, there are some interesting challenges, we can even go further down the rabbit hole of working remotely on some of the challenges there, but there's a real interesting opportunity let's say, for our workplaces today.

Steve Rush: And the world has changed as we've moved to more of a hybrid world working from either our desks or our homes, or a combination of both. Have you seen the change to how people are responding in that environment?

Brandon Smith: Yes, absolutely. So, in the first six weeks, two months of this event, everyone around the world probably said something to this effect. Well, you know, this isn't so bad. I just picked up two or three hours in my day. I'm not commuting, so I can kind of wake up in the morning, have some coffee, maybe have a little bit of breakfast and then hop on my first meeting at nine am. At some point around that six-week mark, eight-week mark. Everyone realized, everyone wasn't commuting and they start scheduling meetings at eight thirty in the morning, eight in the morning, seven thirty in the morning, six o'clock at night, six thirty at night.

Steve Rush: Right.

Brandon Smith: So now when I talk to my clients, one of the challenges they say, they say, I don't know how I'm going to go back to the office because I have staying meetings at seven thirty in the morning. That's when I'd be commuting. And I have meetings during lunch. So, we we've packed our days, even more full with all these meetings, and so that's the first one. Second, I hear constant kind of complaints from folks about being on camera all day long and the strain that's putting on them. I think that's the second one. The third one is people just aren't able to really fully connect. It's hard to build relationships over zoom or teams or whatever platform you use. Those meetings tend to default to more task, operational things. Let's catch up about how your weekend was. We often do those over meals and we haven't been able to do that. So, it's hard to build those relationships. I met a lot of people. I know you have two that have started with a new employer within the last year, and they have not even ever met their coworkers yet.

Steve Rush: Right, exactly.

Brandon Smith: Let alone go into an office. So, I would say those three at least would apply to everybody that's been working remotely. There's been some real challenges around that.

Steve Rush: And the principle of everything being urgent all of the time has been expedited because of that, right?

Brandon Smith: That's right. It's very difficult to tell what really matters and what doesn't matter. And because there's constant change. And we could attribute some of this to technology, we're always available, on call all the time. We could also attribute some of this to general global media. There definitely a frenzy regardless of what media you listen. It definitely heightens that sense of anxiety and urgency really is that. Urgency is anxiety, so we're living in a very anxious time right now.

Steve Rush: Of course, the only one person that can control it, is ourselves.

Brandon Smith: Well said, well said

Steve Rush: You wrote the book, The Hot Sauce Principle, how to live and lead in a world where everything is urgent all of the time. So, what is The Hot Sauce Principle?

Brandon Smith: So, it's a really simple analogy. From now on, for everyone listening to this. When you think of urgency, I want you to think of hot sauce. And why that analogy works so well is because, you know, I love hot sauce personally. I really do. I put a little bit hot sauce on something and that's flavor, it adds focus, it adds spice. It really makes it stand out. And so, urgency by itself is not a bad thing. It's really preps prioritize things. But if everything that's coming out of the leadership kitchen is covered in hot sauce. The appetizer, the salad, the entree, the brownie, the iced tea that you're drinking, at least in the U.S. we drink a lot of iced tea here. If all that's covered in hot sauce, your mouth is going to be on fire. You're not going to be able to taste anything and you're going to be overwhelmed.

And so that's really why the idea is so sticky because we want to make sure we're very thoughtful and intentional about what we're putting hot sauce on for our teams, but also pushing back if our leaders are putting hot sauce on everything, because it makes everything a priority, which then means nothing's a priority. The other reason why this is also such a great analogy is, you know, we know our teams, some members of our team just need to drop or two hot sauce and they they've got it. They know what they need to do. And often running, we've got other members of our team that need a bottle or two to really get them moving. So, knowing your people and knowing how much urgency they need is another kind of important element around that analogy.

Steve Rush: I love it. It's really, I'm quite a visual guy and therefore, and olfactory. So, I can see this and taste this and smell it. And therefore, it's a really great analogy tip to let leaders know that actually you're holding the hot sauce bottle most of the time as well, right?

Brandon Smith: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And what you choose to put hot sauce on and how much you choose to use is going to either create an amazing, wonderful dish, or you're absolutely going to ruin the whole lot. So, it's a good image for leaders.

Steve Rush: So, here's the thing. It's a really fine line between urgency and panic. How do you differentiate the two and maybe how do you recognize it even?

Brandon Smith: So, I'll tell you a story to illustrate that point. So, I was having a conversation with a client of mine some years ago around this idea, this analogy, and he was an entrepreneur. He owned a marketing business and he was probably one of the most anxious guys I've ever met. And so, kind of unusual to be an entrepreneur. I mean, he was almost shaking when I'd meet him. He was just so wound up. And when I spoke to the folks in his organization, they said, you know, we really like it. He's a really nice guy, but he makes everything urgent all the time. And it's really creating burnout around here. To your point, it's like panic. So, I told him this analogy, well, on his own, after our conversation, he went to the grocery store and he bought three bottles of hot sauce. And he put them on his desk, one, two, three, and whenever there was a new project or initiative, when he was assigned that to a member of his team, he would hand them one of the bottles of hot sauce.

And he instructs them to keep the bottle of hot sauce on their desk, representing the importance and urgency of that initiative. And until the project was done, they had to keep a hot sauce bottle there. But once it was done, they had to return the hot sauce bottle to him. Here was the beautiful thing that kind of gets to your question. He only had three bottles he could give out. So, because he only had three bottles, that was like a forcing mechanism for him. So, he was able to prioritize, but he couldn't create panic because he didn't have an infinite number of bottles. So, any way you can limit the number of bottles you put out, or the number of hot sauce items you create, that will help to keep it on the urgency side and not tip the panic.

Steve Rush: And what do you notice in people's response? Either through their verbal and nonverbal communication that might help you recognize as a leader, if you've gone too far, you've nudged into the panic zone?

Brandon Smith: So, the panic zone by itself is not as concerning as the apathy zone. That's where you get past panic. So, we pass panic and now we're into full on burnout. And that's when the people are just apathetic. So, no matter how much hot sauce you put on them, they just respond to the same way. That's when you know, you've gone too far. And so, another way analogy around this is, I've often heard working today in our workplaces, it's almost like you have to think about like interval training, high intensity interval training. So, you're running or pushing or exercising at a high intensity, but then you need to take time to rest and then do it again, time to rest and then do it again, and time to rest. And of course, the challenge with our workplaces today is there there's no time to rest. So, another way that we can manage panic is make sure that, you know, if you are pushing your team really hard on something that's urgent, give them a little bit of a pause before you immediately throw another urgent item on them.

Steve Rush: Yeah, I want to go back to the apathy bit. Because something you said that really struck a chord with me, most people, when they hear apathy would maybe have a thought process or a connotation of somebody who is lazy, disengaged and not the opposite, which you described as going past panic. And I wondered what you'd noticed and how that might've played out for you when you've coached your clients?

Brandon Smith: So, when we think about love, the opposite of love is not hated. The opposite of love is apathy. We were no longer invested. So that's why when you get to that place, it's a really dangerous place to be because you've lost your people. They're no longer invested. They're no longer committed; they've got nothing left. They feel like, it doesn't matter how hard they try. It's never enough. They've almost given up at least emotionally and maybe even mentally. So that's a real, real, a dangerous spot to be because when I see clients get to that place, really the best antidote for them is to take a vacation or holiday. They need to take some time away to reset and recharge it. Often it takes at least two weeks. And the more time they can take off the better. Because it takes at least week to get that apathy out of your system and start to really reconnect to what's important to you in life and what really matters to you, but you need that space. So, my hope would be that leaders don't push their folks that far because it takes time to recover from that.

Steve Rush: And most of it, of course, from a leadership perspective, in my observation, in any case, is this, isn't an intentional thing that leaders do. It's often very unintentional as a byproduct of bad behavior or too much urgency, right?

Brandon Smith: That's exactly right. And I'd say that the biggest culprits in this would be your publicly traded companies, because what they do is, because of the way the markets move, the markets put pressure on them to change quickly and transform. So, then those C-level executives make everything urgent all the time and pat themselves on the back and say, I'm a great leader. I just pushed lots of urgency into the system. And all they've done is just given the organization an overdose of anxiety. And so, then that goes down to the next level of leaders who push it down to the next level of leaders who push you down to the next level of leaders. And it just kind of funnels all the way through. And so, it's a real dangerous place for us to be. And so, if more leaders can be conscious of how much they're doing of this, it can be good for not only performance because it creates more focus, but the overall health and wellbeing of everyone in that organization.

Steve Rush: And I suspect that also then contributes to more dysfunction in the workplace?

Brandon Smith: Absolutely. Absolutely. Funny when you said dysfunction, the first word that came to mind for me was kind of a close synonym to that, which was chaos. A lot of chaos, a lot of chaos, because again, if everything's urgent, nothing's urgent, it's just chaos. There's no focus. And then it becomes really hard to know what to work on, to align, and do all the other things that we need to do.

Steve Rush: Yeah, indeed. And in your book, I love the fact that you call this out, you have an emotional booster shot. Love you to share with our listeners what an emotional booster shot is and how might they want to go ahead and get one?

Brandon Smith: So, let's think about how you can do it for yourself. So, when we talk about an emotional booster shot. Think of it as resilience, we really want to try and help ourselves have more resilience, be kind of stronger, almost more flexible, like almost like stretching. We're going to stretch if we use the analogy again of, you know, a workout, okay. So, there's a couple of ways we can do that. First, we can reframe the situation. So, when people are pushing down more urgency on you, you can reframe the situation as this is not a crisis, we're going to get through this. And you do that with your teams, communicate that, we can overcome this. Second one is, think of it as a learning opportunity. I'm going to learn and grow through this.

It may be really hard and challenging, but I'm going to get stronger. And it's going to help me, help me grow. And the third way we could look at this is kind of how can we maintain kind of hope that things are going to turn out better on the other end of this, that everything's going to kind of work out for a reason. There was a famous theologian at Emory University name James Fowler, and he used to have this beautiful saying, he would say. As leaders, we want to give people hope and handles. And I just think that's so beautiful, hope and handles.

Steve Rush: Love it, yeah.

Brandon Smith: What's the future going to look like? And what can we do right now to move kind of further down that path. So those are all ways that you can reframe it for yourself. But also think about how you can use those same techniques, with your team.

Steve Rush: Yeah, I love it. I love the principle of the hope and handles and hope is a word that we sometimes quite uncomfortable in business using because it has this notion of being not grounded in purpose and not grounded in something, because it's hopeful, but actually that's where most vision and purpose drives from, right?

Brandon Smith: I agree with you, hundred percent. Hope feels like it's out of our control, but if anything, over the last eighteen months as taught us, there's a lot of things out of our control. And so, it's okay to be helpful. We're hopeful that we can meet our teams again, by the first of the year, we're hopeful that, you know, life will start to resume some sense of normal by 2022. Hope is a good thing.

Steve Rush: So how do you see the future of work playing out as the workplace therapist and in the work that you do with organizations with Worksmiths, what do you think the future of work will look like for us? And how might we want to adapt for that?

Brandon Smith: Here is what I hope it's going to look like. I hope that we we've learned a lot from how we've learned to work together over the last eighteen months, and we carry that with us into the new future. So, I think hybrid workplaces are very healthy things. That said, I still think we need that time with each other. So, I'm really worried about the organizations that say, oh, we're going to go virtual from now on. I've worked with fully virtual organizations before that were virtual, even before the pandemic. And they have a whole set of dysfunctions that are very difficult to cure. Then there's largely two of them. One they really struggle with alignment because they don't ever get in the same room with each other, they're virtual. And two, they struggle with giving each positive intent, assuming positive intent. So, they give each other feedback, some of the feedback in those organizations is absolutely brutal because they just don't know each other. So, I still think we need those times and moments to meet each other in person for collaboration, innovation, and frankly, just connecting over a meal. That's always been important to us as human beings. So, I wouldn't want to lose that, but if we can bring in technology, I think it can allow people to have better work-life balance, a better wellbeing and a lot more care and compassion each other.

Steve Rush: Yeah, I agree. It comes back down to compassion a massive driver here, isn't it? More we understand about people, the more we can empathize, the more we can adapt ourselves.

Brandon Smith: Absolutely, and just hearing you say that Steve reminds me, you know, now we've been given the gift of being invited into a lot of our coworker’s homes, at least virtually. We may see their children; we may see their pets on camera. We may be talking to them in their kitchen and they're dressed more casually. And so, we've learned more about their lives, and I think that's a really good thing.

Steve Rush: Do you think we'll have a return to the future moment at some point in the future where we become more connected and go back to being more office and location focused?

Brandon Smith: I do think so, but I think that is going to be not nine to five, Monday through Friday. I don't see that for most workers that are able to work virtually. Now, there's always going to be jobs out there where you don't have the opportunity to work virtually, you're a frontline worker, so you've got to be onsite, but for those jobs that allow for virtual work and collaboration, I think a hybrid is likely, I don't think there's going to be a lot of organizations that are going to require everyone to be back in the office nine to five, if there's options.

Steve Rush: Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? That for so many decades, we got into a routine of doing things and within eighteen months, the whole work environment has completely changed.

Brandon Smith: Absolutely. Absolutely. And most organizations that were really nervous about that change. Their fear was, I won't be able to see my people working. Therefore, they won't be working there. It's going to lower productivity. And all the research that has come out has actually shown increase in productivity with people working from home. So, the good news is that fear wasn't valid. But again, how we carry that forward is going to be the real challenge.

Steve Rush: Yeah, it's going to be the game changer, isn't it? So that we don't move beyond urgency into panic and we maintain that trust and work-life balance as you called it. Absolutely. So, so what's the focus of the work with Worksmiths and for you now, Brandon?

Brandon Smith: Yeah, thanks for asking. So, I've always still had my practice, which is the Worksmith, probably is very similar to you. I'm an executive coach and I work with individual clients as well as teams and also teach and facilitate sessions on helping people become better leaders. And that work really hasn't gone away, even through the pandemic. There's still been a lot of leaders and teams that have needed that extra support and counsel. The one additional change is I co-founded another business this past year called The Leadership Foundry and what we do there is we do leadership development, all virtual, but with cohorts of leaders. So that's been a big change because a lot of organizations still want to develop their leaders, but by necessity, it's going to have to be done virtually.

Steve Rush: Right.

Brandon Smith: But without it, it's actually a lot easier to coordinate. You can easily schedule a two-hour session. You don't have to find a big meeting room or a hotel ballroom or whatever happens to be location, to get everyone in. And you can give people kind of small doses of leadership tools and training to kind of keep them nourished and supported. So that's been a new evolution that I've really enjoyed, kind of exploring over the last year.

Steve Rush: Great stuff and congratulations on the new venture as well.

Brandon Smith: Thank you. Thank you.

Steve Rush: So, there's a subtle shift to the tone now is we're going to start to hack into your leadership brain. And my job as a leadership hacker is to grab hold of those great ideas, tips, tools, or ideas. So, if you had to wrap your arms around your extensive career and narrow that down to be your top three leadership hacks, what would they be?

Brandon Smith: So, the first one, and this is order of priority. First one is, drive clarity. You can prevent fifty percent of dysfunction in your workplace by setting clear expectations, not only of yours, but also of the person that you're working with. What do they expect of you? Whether it's your boss, your customer, you're a direct report. So, clarity from my perspective, it's the first job of any leader is for her or him to drive clarity. Second, I think it's really important that leaders look to continue to find opportunities to connect and spend time with their people. That consistency is really, really important. So, we've got another kind of letter C here. Consistency is really important. So, making sure that you're consistent in your rhythm and your meetings with people, that's really important. And that goes out the window when everything feels urgent all the time. There was a group of researchers and they did work on studying kind of what's the most dysfunctional kind of leader to work for.

And I expected them to come back with angry, yelling and screaming boss or the micromanager. None of those were the worst. The number one worst was the one who is highly inconsistent because you don't know what you're going to get. So, the more we can be consistent with our messaging and consistent with our meetings, the better. And the third is just probably a really simple, easy tactical thing that all leaders can do, all individual contributors can do. Be highly, highly responsive. There was a piece of research that found that the thing that separated the best managers from everyone else is they were highly responsive to all of their people on their team and that communicated that they valued their people and respect to their people. So, if we drive clarity, we're very, very consistent and highly responsive, it's going to really create a strong team environment. And it's going to prevent a lot of dysfunctions.

Steve Rush: I love It. It's really simple, but very, very effective advice. Thank you for sharing that, Brandon.

Brandon Smith: Of course, of course.

Steve Rush: Next on the show we call Hack to Attack. So, in essence, this is where something hasn't worked out well, might've even been quite catastrophic, but as a result from that experience, it's now a learning and a positive in your life or work. So, what would be your Hack to Attack?

Brandon Smith: So, I would say probably the number one for me, you know, thinking about the way you say that, there so many Steve, gosh. Things I learned from, miss steps that I've made along the journey. I would say there was one. And this was probably more driven out of fear. So early in my career as workplace therapist, I kind of straddle the fence. I taught part-time and multiple universities. And then of course, I also did my coaching and leadership development practice. So, I kind of lived in both worlds. And what I found was the university world was a very political world. And it actually limited a lot of my other opportunities because it was one that consumed a lot of my time. But there was fear of leaving that because not only would I maybe lose some of the credential, I lose some of that stability. And ultimately, I made the decision to it. And it was scary. It ended up working out for the best, but I would say the learning in that was, I probably waited a good five to ten years too long to do that. So, if I could go back in time, I would probably say, wow, Brandon, you should have probably done that a little bit differently.

Steve Rush: That's really interesting. You're not the first person on this show. And certainly, the many leaders I've worked in coached over the past ten or fifteen years have also said that it's sometimes the fear that holds us back and the stability and not being comfortable with discomfort that stops us moving forward, right?

Brandon Smith: That exactly right. I've always heard this adage that, you know, when you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else.

Steve Rush: Yeah.

Brandon Smith: And the opposite was true in this situation. If I say no to that, that means I can say yes to a lot of other things, but the scary thing was, I didn't see what those things were. It wasn't like I had a whole bunch of things I could choose from. I had nothing to choose from. So, I was kind of creating this vacuum where this void hoping that it would be filled. So, there's that word hope again, and luckily it did.

Steve Rush: And of course, you can't sometimes even see those things until you've said no. And the yes appears, right?

Brandon Smith: That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Steve Rush: Yeah, really fascinating. Love it. So last thing we get to do today is give you an opportunity to do some time travel and you get to bump into Brandon at twenty-one and give them some advice. What would be your words of wisdom?

Brandon Smith: Okay, here's probably, gosh, I have a couple. One, here's what I would tell the younger Brandon. Younger Brandon really watches the relationships that you're in, personal and professional and make sure you don't stay in some of them too long. So that's been a big learning I had. I had a business partner for some years that I worked with, wonderful man, wonderful guy, brilliant man, not a very good business partner. I stayed in that too long. I've had some other folks along the way that I've been, you know, stayed in too long, that ended up limiting. So, I would say, you know, make sure that all the relationships you're in, are always healthy and are getting you what you need and you're giving them what they need. The second one I would say is, write your book sooner, Brandon, you don't need to wait until you're forty-six to write it. You can write it sooner, it's okay.

Steve Rush: Yeah, there's this strange notion, isn't there? About putting pen to paper. That you have to have this inordinate legacy of a career behind you to share your lessons. Whereas when I coach some very young leaders now, they already have some fantastic lessons that need to be shared. And that comes back, I think, to your point around fear saying no, opening another yes, and vice versa, right?

Brandon Smith: Right, exactly, exactly. And then of course, with something like a book, a bigger project like, that no one else is putting on your plate, you're putting on your own plate. You've got to be really intentional with your time and block that off and, you know, manage that. Which was a hard thing for me. I struggled with that for many years until I finally hired a book coach to hold me accountable.

Steve Rush: Yeah, right.

Brandon Smith: Yeah.

Steve Rush: So, is there a book two?

Brandon Smith: There is a book two, I'm working on a second one right now. It'll be out at the end of the year. I'm really, really excited about it. I won't spoil it yet, but I think it's going to be so incredibly helpful for leaders. Very practical, easy to use, help them learn how to sit in the right seats with their leader and with their team. So ultimately, it'll get them using their time in the way they should be.

Steve Rush: Awesome. We'll make sure we get you back on the show so you can tell us a little bit more about it another time.

Brandon Smith: That sounds fantastic.

Steve Rush: So beyond today, we want to make sure our listeners can stay connected with you. Where's the best place for us to send them?

Brandon Smith: The best place frankly is, just go to theworkplacetherapist. I'm the only one, so if you just google the workplace therapist, you'll naturally go to me. And so that's a site, it's got free resources, it's got blogs and articles and podcasts for my show that folks can listen too to help their workplaces become smoother and better and less bumpy. And then of course, if they're interested in anything beyond that, then there's links on that site that will take them to either the Worksmiths or The Leadership Foundry. But the workplace therapist is the best place to start. And if you haven't bought a copy of the book, The Hot Sauce Principle, how to live and lead in a world where everything is urgent all the time. You can find that on Amazon and lots of other places as well. So that's another option.

Steve Rush: Awesome, we make sure they're in our show notes as well.

Brandon Smith: Okay, thank you.

Steve Rush: And I'd just like to say, thanks, Brandon. I think we've had just enough hot sauce today to get everything to spice up. So, you've done a brilliant job in the time that we've had together. I've always enjoyed talking with you and just thanks for being part of our community at The Leadership Podcast.

Brandon Smith: Steve, this has been absolutely fantastic. Please keep up the great work. I know you're doing so much good in the world.

Steve Rush: Thank you very much, Brandon.

Closing

 

Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.

 

Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there: @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.

 

 

The Champions Mindset with Jeremy Snape

Jeremy Snape is an ex-England International Cricketer, since retiring from playing internationally,  he studied a master’s degree in sports psychology and has been a coach and advisor to business leaders, premier league football clubs, other international cricket teams as well as the England Rugby Team. Now he is the CEO and Founder of Sporting Edge. In this amazing show you can learn about:

• What does make a champion?
• The valuable role mindset plays in performance.
• The common parallels in sporting champions that also are present in Business Leaders?
• How neuroscience helps us and holds us back.

Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com

Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA

Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services

Find out more about Jeremy below:

Jeremy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremysnape/

Sporting Edge Website: https://www.sportingedge.com

Jeremy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesportingedge

Jeremy on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeremy.snape/

 

Full Transcript Below

Read the rest of this entry »

Thrive Without You with John Warrillow

John Warrillow is an entrepreneur, author, podcast host as well as being the CEO and Founder of the Value Builder System. In this super conversation you can learn:

• Why he coaches entrepreneurs to consider selling from the outset
• Making yourself dispensable - your ultimate poker hand - so what is that?
• Why we should focus on value above all else
• “Parenting” your team and business can deliver great value

 

Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com

Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA

Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services

Find out more about John below:

John on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnwarrillow/

Value Builder System Website: https://valuebuilder.com

John on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JohnWarrillow

Full Transcript Below

Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.

 

Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you

 

Our special guest on today's show is John Warrillow. He's the founder of The Value Builder System, a practice management software for business advisors. His best-selling book, Built to Sell has been internationally recognized as one of the best business books. He's also the host of the Built to Sell Radio. But before we get a chance to meet with John, it's The Leadership Hacker News.

The Leadership Hacker News

So, as we head towards the end of the summer holidays, business leaders and team leaders are going to start thinking about how to get ready for 2022. Although we can't predict a future, we can say that next year will not be returned to business as usual. The pandemic, social unrest, cultural divisions, new remote, or hybrid working, schooling possibilities, all but guarantee that leading teams of businesses in the coming year will be anything but business as usual. The technological trends in which workers will need to learn new skill sets outside of their roles, combined with new ways of working. Remote, in person, or hybrid of the two, would require leaders to be nimble, empathetic, and inclusive as well as strategically focused.

So how do we get ready for 2022 and beyond? Use technology in human ways and for human reasons, when it comes to even the near future, the ability to adapt to new technology is always going to be a priority. And the question often in its minds of its workforce, is this tool a force of good or the enemy? Professor Roshni Raveendran research explores the integration of novel technologies into the workplace and where those technologies intersect with the psychology of human behavior. With studies include an examination of monitoring technology and the use of virtual and augmented reality. Raveendran keeps focus on the use of new systems to augment human life and how to use those new technologies responsibly. For example, the use of avatars may relieve a sense of social threat through psychological distance or an organization's behavior tracking application may be used for better.

If it's for the information for its employees to self-analyze, rather than making them feel monitored constantly, as companies start thinking about making remote work a long-term reality, one key challenge pertains to the missing social connection, the feeling of being part of the same group, said Raveendran. So, there'll be a lot more demand for immersive technologies like virtual reality. That's why it's important for us to understand the psychology that drives people to adopt some of those technologies. Let's look at maintaining and improving company culture. If a company does maintain remote work as a status quo, how can leaders nurture a sense of teamwork and company culture across a distance and the difference that might exist? Well, Darden Professor Laura Morgan Roberts is an expert in human potential, diversity and leadership development. She knows compassionate, responsive leadership is what every organization needs, whether it's face-to-face or screen to screen, because learning needs to happen so rapidly.

The fastest route is often peer to peer through nonlinear ways of thinking. Even after a crisis, there will be a normal, normality and leaders need to map out old values and behaviors and norms, even especially the unspoken ones. And then contrast them with what we now know to be the normal as it is today, or as we'd like it to be. As companies compete and grow, the successful ones will emphasize with a culture of inclusivity, authentic ways of developing and retaining their talent. And the last thing I want to call out for how organizations and teams can get set up for 2022 is advance your diversity efforts and intelligent inclusion as we move forward next year or any year for that matter. Successful leaders will forge beyond diversity efforts and developing minority talent, pushing their organizations to embrace the importance of intelligent inclusion, ultimately the impact of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

However well-meaning will depend on how they're viewed. Professor Martin Davidson, who also serves as Darden's senior associate Dean and global chief diversity officer, said, create an inclusion climate is inherently ambiguous task, how organizations and to take inclusion matters is key. Decades of research in social psychology and organizational behavior show us that when individuals questioned the value of group identity, the social identity threats they register are massively damaging, not just to the individual, but to the individual's relationship with the organization they work in. Davidson and explores how those organizations can design and Institute programs and policies that work to eliminate racial inequality by reducing that psychological reactivity that arises in response to any racial friction. While Davidson's research was focused on racial equality. For me, intelligent inclusion is about any minority. Age, race, religion, sexuality, cultures. The more we can recognize that we're all in the same boat, heading in the same direction, the better we can serve each other. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. If you have any news, insights or any information that you'd like us to showcase on the show? Please get in touch.

Start of Podcast

Steve Rush: Our special guest on today's show is John Warrillow. He's an entrepreneur, a writer, he's a podcast host, and he's also the founder and CEO of The Value Builder System. John, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast.

John Warrillow: Hey, good to be with you Steve.

Steve Rush: So, delighted to have a fellow podcaster and an entrepreneur on the show today. But for the folks that listening for the first time that may not have heard a little bit about your backstory, let's just give us a little flavor of how you ended up creating The Value Builder System and doing what you're doing now?

John Warrillow: Oh man, it goes back 25 years ago. I had a market research business where we did quantitative market research for big companies. We had a decent sized company. I think we were five or six million in revenue, 20, 30% profit margin. So, it was a good business. I thought I was sitting on a gold mine and I went to see an M&A professional guy named Harry Mielly in Toronto. And I said, you know, what do you think it's worth? And I was kind of rubbing my hands together, waiting for his number. And he said, well, it kind of depends on the answer to a couple of questions and I said, shoot. He said, all right. So, like, you do research? And I’m like yep. He said who does the research. And at the time we worked with these massive companies, Bank of America, Apple and JP Morgan Chase.

And so, I was involved. So, I said, well, I'm involved in the research. He said, all right, who does the selling? And I'm like, we're working with these giant companies. Of course, I'm doing some of the selling, right? He says, okay, well John, there is nothing here I could sell, your company is worthless.

Steve Rush: Wow.

John Warrillow: And man, that was tough to hear for me, especially going into that meeting, thinking, I was sort of sitting on this goldmine, kind of counting my shekels, so to speak. And leaving, realizing that I had built this business that was effectively unsellable. And I spent the better part of, I guess, three years, really trying to listen to what Perry had to say and others frankly, and transform that business, made much change we create. It’s a subscription model I got out of doing the selling out doing research. Long story short, it was acquired by a New York stock exchange listed company in 2009.

So, it had a happy ending, I think kicked off for me to sort of lifelong journey that I'm on to this day, which is to really discover what drives the value of a business. And hopefully, you know, you talking about purpose-driven leadership, hopefully helping other entrepreneurs you know, not have to experience what I felt and maybe save them some years off their lives by building a business from the start that's valuable. So, I've written a few books on that topic and of course, Value Builder is a software platform that advisors use to help their clients sort of understand some of these principles. So that's me in a kind of nut shell.

Steve Rush: Was that kind of an epiphany for you at the time where you had a perception there was valuing the business because of its turnover, yet when it comes down to its underlying asset value, there was a real mismatch. Was that the kind of defining moment to set you on this path I guess?

John Warrillow: Yeah, I walked around thinking my business is going to be valuable because it's profitable. And because we have great clients and people would say to me, they would say, wow, you work with Bank of America, you work with IBM, you know, fill in the blank, large enterprise organization. You're going to be, you know, this business is going to be valuable. And, I was under the impression that an acquirer would buy us for our client list. So, my focus for many years was to really win clients that were prestigious clients, right. We worked with British Telecom, biggest Telecom company in Europe at the time. And that was an aspiration for us. Not because they were necessarily great clients or the biggest revenue, but because we could put that logo on our PowerPoint slide deck to say, hey, we worked with British Telecom, and I was chasing the wrong stuff. What I came to learn was that clients are great and having kind of blue-chip clients can help the value of your company, but they're not going to make the value of your company. They're instiller tertiary to the overall value. So, it was a real learning experience for me.

Steve Rush: What's your experience then John, in helping other entrepreneurs on this path, when they start to think and realize that value isn't derived from turnover?

John Warrillow: Yeah, it can be a bit difficult, right? Because again, we have these yardsticks, I think as entrepreneurs. As a society, we celebrate top-line turnover, right? Like that's all the newspaper articles and the magazine articles are like this company's growing this quickly. And their top line revenue is this amount of money, yet it's generally not necessarily the most important driver for value. You mentioned Built to Sell radio in the intro of podcasts, where I interviewed different entrepreneurs. I did two interviews kind of back-to-back a few months ago. And one guy distributed a product and distribution companies by their nature, terrible businesses to sell, they're really difficult to sell. And he distributed product, built it up to $15 million in revenue turnover, and ultimately sold it for 25% of one year's revenue.

Well, literally the next day I did an interview with a guy named Rob Walling who built a company called drip, which was a SAS product software and service product. And he focused exclusively on this one product, focused a hundred percent on recurring revenue and built it to just two million dollars of turnover. So, the day before I'd talked to the guy who had a business with fifteen million turn over, sold for twenty five percent of one year revenue. The next day I learned from Rob Walling that he sold his two-million-dollar turnover business for somewhere between nine- and thirteen-times top line revenue. He didn’t show the exact number, it was a multiple of revenue, not a multiple of profits. And it was a large, high multiple of revenue. And it was just such a black and white contrast for me, of here's two companies.

One is a fraction of the size of another. Yet the tiny company is trading at a much, much higher value than the large company. And so, I think we boast about and kind put out our chest and say, yeah, we get a million in turnover a week. You know, we got ten employees or we're at five million or whatever the boast is, but oftentimes it's kind of revenue sort of vanity, I think for a lot of entrepreneurs. And yet the real value oftentimes is not in the revenue, in the other elements of your business.

Steve Rush: So, what are they John? What are the other elements that you would really drive conversations to focus on value?

John Warrillow: Probably the biggest one, I think is finding something, an area where you can absolutely dominate. One feature, one product, one offering where you can be the dominant provider. Because again, when you look at an acquire, if you put your acquire hat on for a second, they've got generally tons of money. They've got tons of resources. If you're just selling a commoditized product, if you are offering something where you're competing on price, you're responding to RFP’S, you're selling by ounce or pound or whatever. That large enterprise organization is just going to basically come to the conclusion that it's a lot cheaper to compete with you than it would be to buy you. So, this is going to lower the price in the market for that service or product.

Steve Rush: Right.

John Warrillow: Get in a bidding war with you, and basically pick up your business. Whereas if you do something really unique, they're going to draw the conclusion that it would take years to replicate what they have bill. You know, if you go back to Rob Walling and Drip, he had a really beautiful, elegant email marketing software, which lead pages, which was ultimately his acquire didn't have. And he had some features that would have taken years to build out. And he had a two- or three-year head start, could lead pages with enough developers have replicated Drip, of course, but for lead pages where time was money, they thought, you know what, this is too unique. We can just acquire this. And I think, again, going back to distribution companies and why that fifteen-million-dollar distribution company was so difficult to sell and ultimately got such a huge discount is they're not selling anything unique. They're basically taking someone else's product and selling it. And again, if you're a fortune 500 or a large enterprise organization, you can simply do that without buying the company.

Steve Rush: Right? Yeah. It's a pretty interesting perspective, isn't it? And also, there's been some recent articles around the human capital element that plays into that value stream. So that's the people on your balance sheet versus the assets on your balance sheet. How do you frame that in?

John Warrillow: Yeah, look, the people on your team, again, a lot of acquirers will look at that and say, could we recruit all these people with some unique skillset? Yes, of course is yes. With enough money and time could, in many cases acquire will look at that and say, you know what, it's just going to be a lot cheaper rather than spent two years and many hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds on a recruiter. Why don't I just buy this company? Now, those valuations are referred to as acquihires in the industry, those generally are much lower than you would expect from a acquire who is placing value on other elements of what you do. So, I don't think you're going to get the highest valuation for your business if you're just looking at an acquihires, okay, effectively, you're selling your team. But you will get some value for that in particular, if they have some unique skill set that that is, you know, obviously if you have a bunch of people who are doing AI right now, or even people who have a real skillset in the area of digital marketing, those are very hard to come by. And so, someone might value that team of yours, but generally that's not going to be an astronomical multiple relative to having some sort of unique product that is more valuable.

Steve Rush: Sure, is there anything in the value set that you look at that should be avoided by potential entrepreneurs?

John Warrillow: Interesting, yeah. I mean, I think cross selling is probably one of the biggest mistake’s entrepreneurs make and they come by it, honestly, because if you listen and talk to virtually any sales and marketing guru that gets the stage or writes a book, they'll tell you that cross selling an existing customer is like eight or nine times cheaper than going and winning a new customer. And so most entrepreneurs here that, they're focused on scale and growing and top line revenue and they say great, we've got a few customers, let's cross them. And by doing that, they're ultimately diluting their value proposition and ultimately making the business less sellable, certainly less valuable than it would be if they stuck to their knitting. I'll give you an example. There's a woman I interviewed on Built to Sell Radio named Stephanie Breedlove. She built up a payroll company and they had a special niche where they did payroll for parents who had a nanny, an HomePay to pay.

And her niche was very small. And she reached a point at three hundred thousand dollars in revenue where it started to become harder for her to get new parents who had a nanny to pay. She was based in Texas. She was focused mostly locally. She reached three hundred thousand dollars in revenue, so tiny business, was just her and one employee. And she had this kind of fork in the road. She could go, and although it would be hard, find new parents who had a nanny to pay, or she could do what everybody else was telling her to do, which was to cross sell other services to her existing customers, right? So, what else did busy parents have a nanny need? They need, you know, lawn care services and meal deliveries, and you could go on and kind of brainstorm what busy parents need? And Breedlove was being told at the time that that's how you grow your business.

Yet to her credit, she did not do that. She instead took the much harder road. She went and said, I'm going to double down and go find more parents who have a nanny to pay. Twenty-five years later, she built her business up to nine million dollars in revenue, ten thousand parents who have nannies to pay. Nine million in revenue over twenty-five years. It's not liked the next Tesla, right? Like it's not a super-fast growth company. It's a kind of twenty-five-year overnight success, it's a slow burn.

Steve Rush: Yeah.

John Warrillow: And she goes to sell it. She sells it to care.com, care.com, I'm not sure if they have it in the UK, but basically if you plug in your postal code and it will render babysitters and Au Pairs in your local market, that all be five stars rated. Have you seen that, Steve?

Steve Rush: Yeah, yeah. Right.

John Warrillow: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, she finds care.com and care.com at the time of the acquisition had seven million subscribers. So, she made the case, look, with just one percent of your seven million subscribers by my payroll service. That's seventy thousand customers. We're a nine-million-dollar company on the back of ten thousand customers. Long story short, Stephanie sold her nine million business for fifty-four million dollars.

Steve Rush: Wow.

John Warrillow: That's like six times revenue. That's like unbelief. It doesn't make any sense on any valuation table you could possibly conceive of. And it would never have happened, had she done what ninety five percent of gurus would have told her to do at a time, which was to go cross sell her existing customers because care.com wanted a very elegant solution to provide payroll to their seven million subscribers. They didn't want meal delivery services or lawn care services, right? Like they had a very specific need. And that's really were understanding what a strategic acquires looking for and sticking to your knitting. Doing one thing is where I think so much value can be added, but also undermined and lost if you sort of follow the mantra of growth is good. Top line revenue is our number one goal. I think you can, many cases hurt you more than it can help you.

Steve Rush: That's super fascinating. Almost contradictory to what certainly I've heard. And most people have muted along the way because you build up a client base to cross sell more revenue. So, but I get the whole focus on the whole be great at your niche or your niche. And most importantly, be super, super good at that. And therefore, it just grows and develops and its strength and capability, right?

John Warrillow: Yeah, and again, put your acquirer hat on for a second. And when you're looking at company, they closed the boardroom door, you're not invited to the meeting. And the head of corporate development sits down with the CEO and says, why are we buying this company again? And why don't we just compete with them? Are they doing something that unique, that's special that we need to acquire them because it'll be a lot cheaper and a lot less disruptive if we just get in a price war with them and for six months drop our price, ten percent below them, we can sustain that way better than they can? Why don't we just do it and get in a price war? And then the corporate development head as to fight back to the CEO and say, no, but you don't get it. They got something really unique that would take us years to build, you know, many millions of dollars to replicate. And that's the conversation that happens when you're not in the room.

Steve Rush: Yeah.

John Warrillow: And so, if you're just selling a bunch of, I mean, like, I don't know what it's like in the UK, but in North America, the cable providers had a monopoly and they would package up their television programming so that if you wanted like one or two channels, you couldn't buy the one or two channels, you'd have to buy like two hundred channels. And it was the most frustrating thing on earth, right. Because all you wanted was a couple of channels and you're paying for something you really don't need.

Steve Rush: Yeah.

John Warrillow: And then along comes Netflix and now Disney and all these discreet channels where you don't need cable anymore. And they're obviously losing customers in droves because people are like, all I want is ESPN, Disney and Netflix, and I'm good. And I don't two hundred channels.

Steve Rush: It's exactly the same in Europe.

John Warrillow: The Acquiror of a business makes the same.

Steve Rush: Exactly the same. You have written the book Built to Sell. And it comes from that mindset of how you encourage entrepreneurs to consider building their business with the intention to sell at some point in the future. Tell us a little bit about what that mindset is and how we might need to reframe some of that thinking along the way.

John Warrillow: Yeah, I mean, the essence of building to sell is you're creating a company that can thrive without you, the entrepreneur, founder, doing all the work. And when you've created a business that can succeed without you personally doing the work, you've got all of the options, like think of the poker player who gets like a royal flush. I mean, you can't lose basically. So, you can run your business without having to do the hard lifting, right? The hard yards, as they say. You can just simply be the CEO and letting your teams sort of run the business and take lots of time away from the company. You could bring in a manager and literally leave and have the manager run the business. While you kind of think of it as a passive asset, as it works, you could bring in a private equity group and sell sixty percent of the company, put some cash in your jeans and then continue to run and get a sort of second traunche of equity.

When the private equity group sells, you can sell to a strategic. I mean, you've got every option available to you. If it can succeed without you personally doing the work and the inversus is not true. If the business is deeply dependent on you showing up for work, you've got very few options. You've got effectively a job, not to put too fine point on it, where you can't really get out of it. And then you're in this weird position where you got into business for the freedom, right. Freedom to do what you want, when you want, financial freedom, et cetera. Those were all, and for many of the entrepreneurs I speak with the aspirations. And yet, if the business is dependent on you, you actually have less freedom than most employed people.

Steve Rush: That's very true.

John Warrillow: Like if you go to work for Proctor & Gamble and you put in your fifty hours a week, and you're a good corporate citizen, you can have your weekends, you can have your evenings to do the things that you want to do with your family, et cetera. If you run a company that's dependent on you, your life sucks. You're not only putting in your fifty hours, but you're working all the hours in the evening, the weekends, you're on call for your customers, you’re thinking about it constantly in your back of your mind, worried that this is going to happen, that's going to happen. So, you have none of the freedom and none of the benefits. So, for me, I think if you're going to create a business, really the aspiration should be, if freedom is your goal, to get it to survive without you. And that gives you the ultimate program.

Steve Rush: Yeah, so you hold all the next play, don't you? And of course, if you are part of the play, so your part of that key human capital, then actually you could be at risk financially and probably the value of the business will be less, I guess.

John Warrillow: Absolutely.

Steve Rush: Yeah.

John Warrillow: The other piece of this is, that you can get out more cleanly if and when you decided, just did an interview with a woman based in the UK, your name's Jodie Cook, she started a social media company and the beginning, it was her. It was actually JC Social Media or something. It was her initials in the name of the company. So, it was totally dependent on her. And over time she realized that really what she wanted to build was something that didn't actually depend on her. And she ultimately came a decision that she wanted to sell the business and what she did not want to do, which is what most, every entrepreneur in the marketing services industry has to do, was to sign up for an earn-out. An earn-out is when you have a portion of the proceeds of the sale of your company at risk in the future.

And you've got to reach some certain goals that the acquire puts in place, and Jodie is an independent woman, and she just had no interest in that, right. Of kind of working for a company for three, five years and have some goals out there that she had. So, she said, I'm going to create a business, that's not dependent on me. And she focused on building out her standard operating procedures. These are like the processes that people need to follow to do the work. And she spent months building out these SOPs. I said but Jodie. I mean, for a young entrepreneur, like you, that must have been torture to spend all that time kind of systematizing your business and thinking about all the processes and so forth, Yeah, John think about this way, if you're going to go to jail, would you rather go to jail for four months or four years?

Steve Rush: It’s an Interesting philosophy, isn’t it?

John Warrillow: And her point was, I could sell the company, but then I'm going to have to be in a four, five year earn-out, while I’m working for some middle manager who reports to some senior manager, who reports to some division for some giant conglomerate and have no control over my destiny. Whereas if I do this work in creating standard operating procedures now, yeah It sucks for a few months, but man I'm much better off. And so, she sold her company,  She left two weeks later and that's almost unheard of in marketing services, almost all marketing services deals have some sort of burnout, but good for her for doing the work.

Steve Rush: Totally, right. Yeah. So, what's the reason you think then John, that entrepreneurs fall into this trap?

John Warrillow: You know, I think there's an element of ego to it, if I'm honest, I was just, you know, the same as I think many entrepreneurs. It feels good to be wanted, right? It feels good to be the Knight in shining armor, you know, that swoops in and saves the day and fixes the customer problem. And this, you know, this happens in virtually every industry where you, as the owner gets brought in to some really technical challenge or some difficult customer relationship, and you solve the issue. And for a few months or years, or a few weeks, probably. It feels good to be there and be the Rainmaker for your company. I got a chance; this goes back twenty years. So, bear with me, Steven. It was a while ago, but I got a chance to go to something called the birthing of giants.

It's simply, it's been renamed, something different these days, but it was a group of sixty entrepreneurs who were invited to MIT's executive education center for a three-year program of entrepreneurship, it’s called the birthing of giants. And we got to hear from these amazing speakers, like Patrick Lencioni who wrote The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and lots of other books in the area of leadership. He came in and spoke, and there's lots of speakers that came in. One day, this guy came in towards the end who just sold his company. And he started off the conversation with a ploy. Okay, raise your hand if you're involved in selling your product or service. And like every one of our hands went up. This is like sixty eager young entrepreneurs, we were all kind of, you know, the fourth grader got with the answer to the question when the teacher asks, like, we were all sort of like proud of that.

And he said, all right, put your hands down. He says, here's the deal. You've all got the right skills. You're selling the wrong product, hire salespeople to sell your product. Your job is to use those same skills to sell your company. And it was like, for me, it was an epiphany. Like I felt like an amateur who had just seen a professional game for the first time. Like I actually saw that my job was not to do the work. It was actually to sell the company and I don't mean sell it transactionally. I mean, to promote it, to be having conversations with strategic investors, people who might one day want to buy the company, that's the job of the CEO. I'll never forget that meeting again. It goes back twenty or so years now, but it was a real light bulb for me.

Steve Rush: Yeah, it's interesting that a lot of the principles that you've created within your writing and your books are all around that kind of take stock and be thoughtful about your role as the business owner, the CEO, rather than being the practitioner inside the business, right?

John Warrillow: Absolutely. I think one of the things that helps people get their head around that, or start the journey down the road of getting it to not be so dependent on them is this concept of recurring revenue, because for a lot of businesses, there are some transactional business models, right? So, you kind of run around bidding on jobs, finding clients, responding to RFP’s to win the project, and then it takes it two or three months to delivery. And then you kind of wake up, you delivery the project and then you've got nothing on top to follow and you're on this kind of hamster wheel that gets really frustrating over time. Because you kind of have the sense, I think, at least I did at the time when I was in a kind of a business transaction model where you just not making any progress. Every month, you kind of dread the beginning of the month. Because you know, you have to go create the magic again next month, right. And, you know, sell everybody. And so, I think one of the things in addition to finding one thing that you're really good at, Stephanie Breedlove did, I think the other thing is, is to create some recurrent revenue, put your company as much as possible on an annuity stream where customers have to opt out versus opting in.

Steve Rush: Yeah.

John Warrillow: And I don't mean that in a nefarious way, but I do mean, like if you're a carpet cleaning company, you know, don't wait for your customer to call you to come in and clean their carpets. Most customers frankly have better things to do, then think about how clean their carpets are. And most people only remember to clean their carpets well past the date where they should've had them cleaned, right. Whereas if you say, look, once a month, we'll come in on the third Tuesday of every month and clean your carpet, let us know, if you ever don’t want us to, but we'll be here on the third Tuesday of every month. And all of a sudden, first of all, taken something off your clients or customers to-do list to remember, to have the carpet clean and come in every period of time. And number two, you've got recurring revenue. Now you can decide how many people you need? How many trucks you need on the road? et cetera. It creates this sort of domino effect where it makes a much more predictable business and ultimately a whole lot more valuable. So, I'm a big believer in this notion of recurring revenue as an important element to building a valuable company.

Steve Rush: Of course, if it's recurring revenue, it's also bottom-line value on the balance sheets as well.

John Warrillow: Absolutely. I mean, I just looked at this recently, the security companies, you know, the folks we use to secure our homes and offices, you come in and they put together the sensors on the windows and they call the fire brigade if there's a fire. Those companies have two forms of revenue. They've got their installation revenue where they come in and do the initial setup for the system. And then they had their monitoring revenue. And you have the kind of thirty, forty, fifty-dollar revenue a month, they charge us to come on the system. Those companies, when they go to sell a typical acquire will pay about 75 cents for every dollar of installation revenue, because it's kind of one and done transactional, not very valuable. They'll pay between two and three dollars for every single dollar of monitoring revenue. Another way your recurring revenue is worth like kind of three, four dollars for every dollar of installation revenue you have.

Steve Rush: That’s really fascinating, yeah.

John Warrillow: We see it in virtually every industry. Carpet cleaning, you can look at HVAC, you know, heating and air condition, any industry. Your recurring revenue is going to be what acquirers place the highest value on.

Steve Rush: You know, it's just struck me actually, there are a number of different businesses taking the same approach. I have the same now with coffee beans. So, I have a coffee machine. It knows broadly that every two months, I need another three kilograms of coffee beans. And every three months I get a box of coffee beans. So same principle, right?

John Warrillow: Absolutely. Think about? For that coffee company, how much more valuable you are then sitting around, waiting for the phone to ring or buying Google ad words, trying to get you to stimulate your purchase because that's what most people do. They effectively manufactured demand through advertising. Whereas you're locking in, actively demand by subscribing. It makes it easy for you. You don't have to worry about that, you know, the morning you wake up and there's no coffee beans, it's like the dreaded morning of my life.

Steve Rush: Absolutely right.

John Warrillow: And so, knowing that you're going to get that order every two months or whatever preemptively allows you to just kind of sit back and relax and know what's coming. So, it's good for the customer. It's not something nefarious thing. It's good for the customer. Not only that, it makes it way, way easier for the coffee company, because they're probably not, you know, they're probably not growing their own coffee beans. They're probably buying them from a supplier. And when you're at the mercy of a transaction business module, you never know how many coffee beans to buy. I reminded of a company I wrote about in the automatic customer called H. Bloom, and they do flowers on subscription. They focus on hotels that want to have like a fresh cut bouquet of flowers on their reception table. Typical flower store, at least in North America. I'm sure it's the same in the UK or similar. Typical flower store in north America, will throw out sixty percent of its inventory every single month. Why? Because it's dead, rotting in your refrigerator, right? Like you guess wrong, you guess how many people are going to come in and want gerbera daisies, verses roses, verses daisies or whatever. And so, you've got a bunch of inventories you can't sell and you throw it out. 60% of the inventory, a typical flower store is thrown out. H. Bloom comes along and says, we're not going to sell flowers in some retail shop. We're going to sell flowers on subscription, were going to focus on hotels, four- or five-star hotels that just want that bouquet of flowers fresh cut every two weeks on the reception table. There spoilage rate, in other words, the percentage of their flowers they throw out every month is less than 2%.

Steve Rush: Wow, that's amazing.

John Warrillow: I mean, if you think about, which company would you rather own? Which company would you rather invest in? I mean, it's not even an argument. A company have a predictable revenue where you only buy the number of flowers you need to fulfill the subscribers you have is a much different model than worrying about guessing how much you need every month. And again, for your example, same thing. They're probably buying their beans from a third-party provider and beans have a shelf life. And if they guess wrong, they've got a bunch of beans that can't sell. Whereas if they get guys like Steve to subscribe, they only buy the coffee beans they have for subscribers, they need to fulfill. And it just changes the business entire.

Steve Rush: Yeah, it really does, yeah. So, when it comes to that moment where I'm now going to sell my business, walk away and leave it, is there ever a perfect time to sell it out?

John Warrillow: Well, you might make the case that right now is pretty good. I mean, I think, you know, interest rates are very low and of course, acquirers, in many cases in particular, private equity groups are one of those common acquires for SMEs right now. They make their business model work on debt. Like it doesn't work without debt. So, they take on a bunch of debt to buy a business and they try to sell it later on for higher multiple. And they put a little bit of equity in, but they give a lot of debt and that allows them to choose their return on investment for their investors. Private equity is fuel on interest rates. And right now, we're at a point in the history of our world where interest rates are still very, very low. And so that's creating an enormous sort of volume of sort of acquisitions.

I think on the flip side of that. I think we're also in a point where a lot of SME owners have come through the worst of the pandemic, I realized as we record this, the pandemic is not over, but there is a lot of entrepreneurs that have kind of come through the worst of it and said, enough is enough. I can't do this anymore. And they're willing to leave their company for less than they might have prior to the pandemic. And, I see that again, I do this Built to Sell Radio episode or Podcast. And in the last few weeks I've had that sediment two or three times where people said, yeah, you know, I was just at my wit's end. I wanted out and, you know, almost at any price. And so, I think those two things are off setting one on the right now. On one hand, you've got a lot of demands. On the other hand, you've got a lot of really burnt-out owners who are effectively willing to sell for lower prices. So, I think they're balancing right now, but you might make the case, at least economically that right now is a pretty good time.

Steve Rush: So, as we start to transition into me hacking into your leadership brain, the last time you and I met, we had a really fascinating conversation around Fortnite and how kids were getting dragged into Fortnite and consumed by video games. And that you had a great parallel to this, which is this whole concept of leadership being a bit like a parent. There's tell our listeners a little bit about that.

John Warrillow: Well, I think a lot of SME owners, small business owners, think of their role as being the leader of their company, the CEO, oftentimes they're involved in doing some of the selling, the rainmaker, the driver of their company, right. And that's all fine. I think a lot of us would be better served thinking of ourselves, not as the CEO of our company, but as the parent of our company. And again, I'm sure a lot of your listeners are parents. And if you think about your job as a parent, it's, you know, some people want their kids to go to Oxford or Harvard or some fancy school, but for most of us, we would be happy if our kids got out of the basement. They went into the world as adults and they were happy functioning, independent adults and like box check that as a parent, if you're able to succeed and do that.

And so, you know, despite the fact that many parents are sitting there with their, you know, kids play a lot of Fortnite and wondering, will they ever sort of get out of the house? I think that's the job as a parent is to kind of nudge them and cajole them and teach them to be independent functioning adults. And if we're successful in that, then we've done our job. And again, I think if we go back to our job as the owner of a company, I think if you can get your business to thrive without you, to be independent of you, it is the most rewarding thing in the world psychologically, but it also gives you all the cards when it comes to the value of your company. So, I think we'd be better served in a lot of ways, not thinking of ourselves as a rainmaker, as the CEO, but more as the parent of our business. And our main goal is to get it to become an independent thriving adult.

Steve Rush: Yeah, it’s a really great reframe. I love it. So, we're going to now start to tap into your leadership brain, having led and run businesses and coached other businesses for over twenty years, I want to hack into that leadership brain of yours. So, if you had to distill your top three leadership hacks or tips, what would they be John?

John Warrillow: I'm a big believer in journaling and really reflecting on what's working and what's not. And whether you do that in a sort of formalized program or just a white paper or white board every week or so. So, I'm a big believer in journaling and having the people you're leading also journal, I think is big win. So, I think it helps you, one for yourself personally. And two, for the people you're leading. I guess, you know, to take that hack to another level. I think there are some really good journaling tools out there. I know I'm a user of the high-performance planner, I this its Brendon Burchard product. I mean, there's nothing magical about it per se, but it's a good journal. And I think having some sort of system around that can be super helpful. So, I'm a big journaling guy.

Steve Rush: Me too. So, the next part of the show we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something has gone wrong and as a result of it going wrong or not working out well, you've now used the experience as a driver and a positive force in your life and work. What would be your Hack to Attack?

John Warrillow: You know, I would actually go back to the very beginning of our conversation. And I think my hack was when I really got punched in the nose by a Perry figuratively. And he told me in no uncertain terms, that what I built was not a successful, not a valuable company. And so, I take that, although it was really strong cheese for me to hear at the time and very, you know, difficult, frankly for me to hear, I have now taken that. And also, you know, it's really informed everything that we do professionally, out the books and so forth. So, I think that's been super helpful and I'm also maybe inspired a little bit by that fairly straightforward with business owners, probably it's sometimes offensive at times where, you know, I make the case hopefully gently that a business isn't as valuable as they perceive it to be because it's too dependent on them personally. So, I think I've tried to sort of to honor that as time has gone on.

Steve Rush: Awesome. Last thing we want to do, give you some time travel. So, if you could go and meet John at twenty-one and give them some words of wisdom, what would your advice to him at twenty be?

John Warrillow: Stop chasing other people's approval. At twenty-one, I had graduated, I'd left university early because I hated university and I was trying to get a job. And I was in this funny zone where, you know, my father had worked for company all his life and I thought, okay, that's what I should do. I should go get a job and climb the corporate ladder. And so, I also knew at the time that I wanted to do my own thing, be an entrepreneur. And I was in this kind of really conflicted zone where I wasn't sure which path to take. And I spent a couple of years working for a company and probably three years actually. And I wish I had, if I can rewind the tape basically just started as an entrepreneur at twenty-one. I think I would have learned more.

And I think I would have, you know, in retrospect gotten as much, if not more experience just doing it. So, if I was twenty-one again, I would say, look, this one time in your life where you don't have dependents. You don't have stresses; you can live on a couch. That's the time to start something and really go all in.

Steve Rush: Yeah, isn’t it?

John Warrillow: Some people have the opinion, oh, you should work for a company for 10 years, get experience, understand the corporate world and then start a business. Well, good luck doing that when you've got, you know, a spouse, a mortgage, kids on the way, the whole idea just seems so much less attractive. But at twenty-one, I think that's a great time to start something.

Steve Rush: That’s great words of wisdom. Thank you for sharing that, John. So, we're very fortunate, in the fact that in order to keep our conversation going and keep our listeners connected with your work, you’re going to create a URL for us. So, we can get some free resources to share with us a little bit about how our listeners can get hold of some of that stuff.

John Warrillow: Yeah, just builttosell.com/hacker. We put together a landing page where you can get free video series on the eight key drivers of value in a company. We've also put the nine Subscription Models at the whole recurring revenue theme was sort of resonated with you. We've got a checklist that you could identify, which of the nine models might work for you. And then the art of selling your business workbook, which again is a digital workbook. You can work through to help you think about what you need to do to get prepared to sell your company. So, it's all free and it's builttosell.com/hacker.

Steve Rush: Thank you for doing that, John. And that's some great resources and we'll make sure that, they in our show next too, and of course, outside of the corporate arena, you blog, you're regularly quoted in lots of different articles. So, we'll make sure that your social media links are in our show notes as well.

John Warrillow: Thanks Steve. It was fun being with you.

Steve Rush: Love chatting, John. Good luck with the new book. Good luck with The Valuable Builder System continuous growth and thanks for being on the community.

John Warrillow: It's my pleasure.

Steve Rush: Thanks John.

 

Closing

 

Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.

 

Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.

 

Purpose Ignited with Dr Alise Cortez

Dr Alise Cortez is the Chief Ignition Officer at Gusto, Now! A management consultant who ignites passion and purpose. She’s the author of the book Purpose Ignited and the host of her weekly radio show; Working on Purpose Radio. In this show you can learn about:

• How Alise found her purpose and how she ignites others
• Why in finding our true passion, it will help us contribute to the world
• How conscious capitalism is full of purpose
• The steps and stages to ignite our passion

Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com

Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA

Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services

Find out more about Alise below:

Alise on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisecortez/

Gusto Now Website: https://www.gusto-now.com

Alise Website: https://alisecortez.com

Alise on Twitter: https://twitter.com/alisecortez

Alise on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alisecortez/

 

Full Transcript Below:

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Inside Out Leadership with Dr Laura Gallaher

Dr. Laura Gallaher is a keynote speaker, a leadership coach and Organizational Psychologist. She is also the CEO at GALLAHER EDGE. In this super interesting conversation, you can learn about:

• How she leads culture change using a blend of org’ psychology and industrial engineering.
• Learn about the “inside out” model and that is all starts with self.
• Why changing culture, you can influence positive outcomes and performance.
• How to recognise if you have imposter syndrome, how you can go about dealing with that.

 

Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com

Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA

Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services

Find out more about Laura below:

Laura on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-gallaher-phd/

Gallaher Edge Website: https://www.gallaheredge.com

Laura on Twitter: https://twitter.com/drlauragallaher

Laura on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drlauragallaher/

You can get Laura’s new book here

 

Full Transcript Below:

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The Leader as a Coach with Matt Somers

Matt Somers is a super coach who helps senior leaders to become better coaches; he wrote the amazing book, Coaching At Work. You can learn bucket loads from Matt in this show including:

• Why leader coaches get confused between leadership and expertise
• The importance of focusing on the right type of goal
• How to coach in a way of being as a leader/ line manager
• What the “Peak” coaching model is and how to use it

 

Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com

Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA

Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services

Find out more about Matt below:

Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattsomers/

Matt’s Website: https://www.mattsomers.com

Matt on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MattSomers

 

Full Transcript Below

 

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Just Schmooze with Cody Lowry

Cody Lowry is the President of the Automotive and Retail Division of the Intermark Group. He's also the author of Schmooze, What They Should Teach at Harvard Business School. Listen to Cody share:

• How he went from blue blood wealth to rags, moving 32 times before he was 11.
• How he intuitively used his schmooze to get on in life and work.
• Why paying compliments is more powerful than paying a gratuity.
• How to avoid the “What If Syndrome.”

Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com

Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA

Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services

Find out more about Cody below:

Cody on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cody-lowry-63a339a/

Cody’s Website: https://mrschmooze.com

Cody on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/misterschmooze/

 

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The Power of Storytelling with Andrea Sampson

Once upon a time… Ever wanted to speak in public as if you were on a TED Talk? Andrea Sampson is former strategist and consultant, she has spent over 25 years working in marketing and advertising, presenting and developing strategies for fortune 100 companies. Andrea is now a TED speaker coach and the founder and CEO of Talk Boutique. In this show you can learn about:

• The emotional connection in story is the same as when we buy
• How to put your brand ideas into the world
• The key components to design your story spine
• Why aligning your vision to your core purpose – is your story!

 

Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com

Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA

Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services

Find out more about Andrea below:

Andrea on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/acsampson/

Talk Boutique Website: https://talkboutique.com

Andrea on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LightningRod29

Talk Boutique Twitter: https://twitter.com/TalkBoutiqueInc

Talk Boutique on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/talk.boutique

 

 

Full Transcript Below

 

Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.

 

Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you.

 

Today's special guest is Andrea Sampson. She's an executive speaker coach, communication expert and business strategist. But before we get a chance to speak with Andrea, it's The Leadership Hacker News.

The Leadership Hacker News

Steve Rush: In today's news we explore why storytelling is so important in business. Humans always told stories and they're a vital part of our daily communication, but stories have meaning beyond entertainment value. In fact, storytelling is a strong business skill and when it implemented effectively, it can really boost business in a number of ways, such as improving customer loyalty, creating strong marketing strategy and increasing profit as well. Storytelling conveys purpose and businesses with purpose are noticed and win loads of customers more readily. So, it's not enough to just have a product or a service that can solve a problem, your company needs to stand out. The most successful companies have deep and thoughtful stories behind them that stir a sense of a larger purpose and meaning to what they do such as Google or Apple, who had not just businesses. Their brands made by visionaries who wanted and want to transform the world.

If your business has a vision, the audiences can really believe in and buy into them more likely to be successful. People want to buy into companies that they believe care, empathetic companies. And that was highlighted in a global empathy index where businesses near the top of the list were among the most profitable and fastest growing businesses in the world. The top 10 companies also generated 50% more income and increased in value more than twice of the other companies in the bottom 10. And it was shown that storytelling was at the heart of this. And storytelling shows your company can be empathetic and is more likely to lead to your company's success. So, experts say, just watch Steve jobs on YouTube when he introduced the iPhone and told the story about why they were doing what they were doing back in 2007. Stories, emotionally connect people and create loyalty and the best stories of evoke emotional reactions, and people generally relate and connect with those stories that they believe in and believe in the company and what it stands for.

When people listen to a story, they feel what the protagonist of the story is feeling. So good way of using a story to connect with the audiences, to tell the story about the journey you've been on or the mistakes you and your company have made, or a failure that wasn't going well for you. So, people can understand the reality of the journey and people will relate to this as we've all experienced mistakes and failures, and the more the audience relates to you and understand what went into creating your brand and your organization. The more likely they'll listen to you. And remember humans typically make emotional, not rational decisions. So being able to evoke an emotional reaction through a story is a powerful tool. So, transfer your vision into a captivating story and clearly communicating it, using a sincere and open approach and remember stories, give audience purpose and a motive to take action.

An example of this was when Wharton Business School found that when participants in an experiment were asked to collect donations in a call center, those who told the donors how the money would improve the lives of others earned, were able to collect more than double than the other group who were merely just collecting cash. The sense of purpose led to the first group earning so much more because of the stories that were able to tell that invoked that response. So, in conclusion today it's difficult to find a successful brand that doesn't have a good story. Stories provide meaning, they create context, they evoke a sense of purpose. Most humans are more receptive to stories than compared to facts and data. So, stories help us to relate, empathize and to remember, and this is why businesses are increasingly recognizing the importance of storytelling and the leadership lesson here is, as leaders the more stories we can tell to create an emotional connection with our teams, the more likely we're going to get buy-in to the journey we're taking them on. That's been leadership, if you have any insights, information, or ideas, please get in touch.

Start of Podcast

Steve Rush: Joining me on the show today is former strategist and consultant Andrea Sampson. She spent over 25 years working in marketing and advertising, presenting and developing strategies for fortune 100 companies. Andrea is now the founder and CEO of Talk Boutique. Welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast Andrea.

Andrea Sampson: Thank you, Steve. Wonderful to be here.

Steve Rush: I'm really looking forward to getting into the story about how Talk Boutique came about and the work that you do now with TED speakers. But before we get there, perhaps you can give our guests a little bit of a summary of your backstory?

Andrea Sampson: Sure, so as you said, you know, I spent almost 25 years working in marketing and advertising, and most of it was working on the agency side. I worked for some of the largest agency networks in the world, and I worked on some of the largest brands in the world. My role within the agency world was a planner, and what that means is I was basically a strategist. So, I worked on understanding the basics of why humans make the decisions they do. We would do a lot of research, a lot of understanding at the human behavioral level. And then we would come up with, me and my team would come up with the underpinnings of many of the advertising campaigns that you see in market which would go of course, to the creative teams who would do the actual advertising, but we would do the strategy underneath it.

Steve Rush: Oh, interesting. So, where there a number of key behaviors or you could identify that caused people to make decisions?

Andrea Sampson: Well, you know, I mean, the reality is, is that we buy, we make decisions based on emotions rather than needs. And I think, you know, this is not news to anyone. But we forget it all the time. We think that when we tell people the features of a product or the features of a solution that people will say, well, yes, I need that, absolutely. And people do listen to those, but the reality is we buy what we want. It's a want versus a need always, which means that you need to appeal to the heart before you appealed to the brain. And that was, you know, 100% of the time that is true. So how can we get into the hearts of consumers in such a way that we help them to make the decision that is right for them, but was also in line with what we wanted them to do.

So, it was always that sort of dance, I guess, a little bit, but what I found, you know, what was so interesting for me was that, you know, with spending all of the time in advertising and I got to a point, you know, after about 25 years where I started to realize that some of the early goals that I had as I came into the world of communications and advertising, I wasn't going to be able to hit. And those goals were really personal and deeply held. And I'm not sure that even coming into that world, I fully understood them because they were really based on making a difference in the world because ultimately Steve, I'm an idealist and, you know, I wanted to change the world and I saw this medium of advertising with its mass reach and thought, wow, now there's a way that if I can influence at a very core level, I can help do good in the world.

And I tried and I really tried. And the reality is, is that while there are many brands out there who do good in the world, they're few and far between, and at the end of the day, I really wanted to do good at a very core level, not trying to get consumers to do something else. And so, I knew that, you know, as the idealist in a capitalist world, I had to start thinking a little differently about my future. And at this point I was, you know, approaching my 50th birthday and I started thinking, you know, well, I've got hopefully another 30, 40 years on the planet. What am I going to do with that time? And how can I start to address this, underlying need, goal that I had. And I had the very good fortune to be volun hired.

And what I mean by that is, I volunteered, but I had to go through a hiring process to work with the team at TEDxToronto. And I was hired as a speakers coach. I didn't know what a speakers coach was to be quite honest, never heard of it, but I was presenting three to five times a day and, you know, in my regular day, because that's what I did all day, every day I present it. And so, I thought, well, with a little bit of training, I'm sure I can do this. Well, that first year that I worked with TEDxToronto, I worked with you know, a geneticist who was working on the worldwide human genome project. I worked with an architect who was connecting the internet of things to our daily tasks, to our walls, to our alarm clocks, to our windows. I worked with a food specialist who was looking at the way in which we were going to move forward with our food. And I worked with one of the foremost experts in the world on body language, I was hooked.

Steve Rush: Yeah.

Andrea Sampson: And what I saw was, I came to them thinking, okay, well, I can teach them, you know, probably how to present. But what I learned pretty quickly about myself was all this training I'd been doing for 25 years in advertising as a strategist where I was getting to that core consumer insight. The reason why we do the things we do was the absolute perfect training to take a TED speaker and be able to shape their idea because ultimately an idea at its core is an insight. And so, what I did in that first year was I became aware of this skill I didn't even know I had, which was taking insights and building stories around them.

Steve Rush: It’s kind of ironic because that's exactly what great marketing is, isn't it? It's about building those stories, creating the emotional connection with the audience so that they listen and pay attention to the advertisement you are creating, which I suspect is the parallel right to a TED speaker?

Andrea Sampson: Well, that’s exactly it. And I think when we're doing it as an advertisement, you know, we're not as uniquely aware of what we're actually doing because it's contextual, right? Like in advertising, you're doing it because you've got a product, a brand that you're putting out there with the consumer. So, you're putting the brand at the center, you're getting an idea that you can sort of, you know, build that, you know, take the brand idea and put it out there in the world. But we don't really think of it in the same way we think of a TED Talk, which you know, is often termed education. Sorry, how do they term it? Oh God, I can never think of it, it's the combination of entertainment and education. So however, you put those two edutainments, that's what it is.

Steve Rush: Edutainment? That’s cool, yeah.

Andrea Sampson: Edutainment, so we never really think of an ad as we would think of a TED Talk because a TED Talk doesn't actually want us to change our buying behavior or the things we're doing. It's often inspiring us to look at the world differently. So, it's just contextual, like it was really making the leap that said, well, everything I've been doing in advertising is exactly what it was to create a good TED Talk. But now instead of trying to sell a brand, what we're doing is we're selling an idea and that idea has the ability to impact the world.

Steve Rush: And do you notice any parallels in reverse where marketeers and now using the same principles of storytelling in their advertisements and their campaigns?

Andrea Sampson: Well, you know, here's the thing. As I've become, you know, really an expert in this world of not only storytelling, but building talks that create impact and create change. I now look at all the work that I did in advertising and wish I had known then what I know now, and I'm seeing that many marketers are beginning to embrace the idea of very purposeful storytelling. You know, storytelling in the ad world was always a means to an end, but we didn't really pay as close attention to how to build out that story. Now, there are so many different story arcs out there. When you've only got 15 or 30 seconds to do an ad, which is, you know, your typical ad length.

Steve Rush: Right.

Andrea Sampson: It's hard to use one of these very long story arcs. I mean, most of the story arc is actually, you know, are meant for screenplays or books. Whereas, you know, in a 30 second ad, you just don't have time to build that arc, but you would. And you know, what we would often do is take pieces of it. But what I've learned in doing TED Talks and now working with very seasoned professional presenters is that it's really about building a story in five steps. And we developed, so my company Talk Boutique has developed a process that we call the story spine, which really allows for a speaker to take about, you know, anywhere from 30 seconds to three to four minutes at the beginning of their talk and set up the premise of a story that will hold the idea.

Steve Rush: Really interesting.

Andrea Sampson: Yeah, the spine is so important because what it does is it forces us as humans first of all, to think about the things that create good storytelling, because it starts off with what we call the environment. So, if you think of an environment, the environment is your sense of place. Now, most of us, when we're at a cocktail party or meeting up with a friend and we started telling a story, what do we do? We rushed through the environment, first of all, and we rush right into the purpose of the story. But if you take a moment and you step back and you say, okay, let me just set this up for you. So, I was walking in the woods the other day. Now it was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, you know, it was warm, but not hot. You could feel that the day was going to get really hot. But we weren't there yet. And the moisture in the air was activating the pine needles. So, I could smell as I was walking, that musky scent of pine, and it was just a beautiful morning and it was peaceful. Now you're all on that walk with me, aren’t you?

Steve Rush: Totally, I’m right there.

Andrea Sampson: Right, now when you do that, what's happening is everybody is leaning in, but what's really happening is their brain has just gone to the place when they were last in the woods or a meaningful moment when they were in the words. That smell, the sounds of the birds, that the feeling of this sun dappled through the trees, everybody. Now, if I were to stop the story right there and ask a question around how everybody felt, the likelihood is, I've got everybody at the same place in that moment, which is in a peaceful place, in a memory that is enjoyable. And from there, it's almost like I'm a mind reader now, because now I'm controlling how they are feeling and what they're thinking.

Steve Rush: Very powerful, isn’t it?

Andrea Sampson: It’s incredibly powerful. That's the power of environment. So, once we have the environment, the next thing that we want to do is say, who's there with you? Who are the characters? Now, you know, characters, aren't just me and my friend. You can do that, but the thing is, you've robbed the audience of getting to know who you are and who your friend is. So, what you want is just a little bit of a backstory. So, there's me, you know, this was about five years ago. So, I was in a, you know, maybe an emotional place. This was just at the breakup of my marriage; I'm making this up. And my friend who was a dear friend who was supporting me through this very emotional time, her name was Shawna and Shawna was a lovely human. She's still a dear friend of mine, but she's one of those people whose incredibly compassionate and helps people through really difficult times. So here we were on this early morning walk, going through the woods and, you know, we can hear the birds chirping, and I'm at that point in the separation where we are, you know, separating stuff. And so, it's a difficult moment, and Shawna is helping me to see, you know, that I can let go of things that I thought were really important, but the reality is, they weren't. Now, again, I just want to stress here. I'm fully making this up.

Steve Rush: Hey, listen, you may be making this up, but I'm still ironically with you because of the compelling use of language.

Andrea Sampson: Right, and so listen to that, the language I'm using every piece of language is using rhetoric, really, right. I'm using a combination of metaphor. I'm using emotional words, words that have meanings that go deeper than just the core idea of that word. I'm also using in some cases repetition. So, I'm using metaphor all the way through it. So, what we've gotten through now is the environment, the characters, and we've gotten to the issue or opportunity. That's the third part of the story spine and this is where most people jump into a story because this is the real reason, I could've just started it off.

Steve Rush: That’s true, yeah.

Andrea Sampson: I could have started off going, you know, the other day I was walking in the woods and Shawna was helping me figure out what I was going to give to my ex, right? Because that is really the story, except you can see I've built it out, right? And so, then what you want, the fourth part of the story spine is what we call the raising of the stakes. This is the difference between a good story and a great story because the raising of the stakes is that tension moment. It's the end to them, and so, you know, as Shawna and I were talking about the things that I was going to keep and what I was going to let go of, we came to that blanket. You know the one, the blanket that my family had given us, but it was also the blanket where we had our first date. And it was the blanket that had followed us all the way through our relationship. And there was a part of me that really wanted that blanket, but there was a part of me that actually didn't ever want to see that blanket again. And I was distraught in that moment. How could I let go of the blanket? Now I think if you're following me, what you know is that blanket is really a metaphor for the relationship.

Steve Rush: Yeah, it is. But it's ironic, because it’s still is also a physical thing.

Andrea Sampson: Yes.

Steve Rush: It's a metaphor, but actually we all kind of have something that we relate to in our day jobs and our lives that are similar metaphors of physical things, but carry loads of emotion with them.

Andrea Sampson: Right, and so, as I'm going through this story, you know, anyone who's listening to this, you know, they may or may not have lived a similar story, but they have lived, everybody, because, you know, here's the thing about stories. Stories are all Mehta stories, as humans, we all live the same stories. The details are different, and so everybody has walked in the woods or has watched, you know, a movie or seen an image of walking in the woods. So, there's some experience of it. Everybody has a good friend who helps them through things. Now, you know, you may not have as good a friend or maybe your friend is better, but you have the experience of it. The human condition is that we all go through relationships and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't and heartbreak is common. And then the idea of having something that represents that, you can see, it's a Mehta story, right?

Steve Rush: Yeah.

Andrea Sampson: So, everybody, as I'm going through this story, everybody is having the same experience because they're living their own experience and my experience at the same time. And that's what makes it so powerful. So, when you take the time to build it, when you take the time to use emotions through it, what you're doing is, you're building a connection with anyone who's listening to that. Now we've gone through the four elements of the stories. By the fifth element is just the OCA. It's the way in which you tie it together. And so, in this case, it could be that in that walk in the woods, you know, Shawna helped me to understand that the blanket was in fact, a metaphor for my relationship. And as much as it was something that I was having a hard time letting go of, it was time for me to let go of it because I was letting go of that whole part of my life.

And that blanket was in a part of my life that was no longer going to be in my life. So, it was time for me to let that go. And by the end of that walk, I had not only let go of the blanket, but I had let go of the relationship, I was ready to move on. So, there's the story spine in action. Now, when you're using a story like that. So, one of the things that we teach, because the story spine is one element. But the other thing that I did when I started working with TED speakers is, I started to understand that a TED Talk has a very robust underlying structure and that underlying structure gets eliminated in the talk itself, but in the building of a TED Talk or of any presentation, quite frankly, that structure is essential.

And one of the things that I did was I developed something that I call the talk canvas narrative framework, and it's a framework that helps speakers and anyone from, you know, boardroom presentations to investment pitches, to TED Talks, develop their underlying structure so that they can literally obliterate it with story.

Steve Rush: Yeah.

Andrea Sampson: But it's such an interesting thing, because again, if I go back to, and this is a very long answer to your question, which was the, you know, the commonalities to what marketers do, this was where I really wished I'd had this structure because one of the things that I found was when I was in the agency world and we'd be building, let's just say a pitch to a new client, and we would spend, you know, countless hours, you know, stressful hours developing a presentation.

And the question always was, is it understandable? And have we missed anything? And what the talk canvas does is, in my new details, shows you all of the things that you need to address in order for your presentation to land, to be compelling, and to have all the information that the listener needs in order to be able to take in what you want them to take in. And so, it begins with the story spine, so it starts there, and then we move into what we call a core purpose.

Steve Rush: Great, so I wondered though, if you think about the notion of pitch presentation and speech, is there a huge difference and how you construct those or do they follow a similar path, but just the vernacular changes?

Andrea Sampson: So, there are differences for sure.

Steve Rush: Right.

Andrea Sampson: You know a stage presentation, as an example, you have much more latitude to use less visuals and more storytelling. And, you know, that's why TED Talks are so incredibly powerful, right? So, what they've done is, they take an idea, they wrap it in story, and then they tell us this amazing story, which then gets unfolded throughout the course of, you know, 10 to 18 minutes. When you're doing a presentation in front of a boardroom, as an example, there's a bigger expectation that you're going to get to the actual, you know, sort of core meaning or the core thing quicker. You can weave story all the way through and you should, but what you're doing is it's a bit more of a dance between the functional, here's what I want you to know and the emotional here's, how I want you to feel.

And so, Nancy Duarte, who's a TED Speaker and also an amazing thinker, developed what she called the shape of a presentation. And it really is a toggling between the functional and the emotional. And so, this is what we do in a presentation. We're using more visuals, because often we need those visuals to keep the audience, the boardroom audience with us. But what we're doing is we're moving between the visuals and the story and the visuals in the story. And then when you get into a pitch, which is a very different thing. Now, pitches you know, if we're talking about investor pitches, there's a lot of things that are really required, that the pitch, you know, that the investors know because they're putting up money. But what's similar is story and ideas still live in there. And what you're doing, the things you're telling them are a little different, but you're still using the commonality of story and idea. And that is true across a stage presentation, a boardroom presentation and a pitch. That's the commonality, some of the ways in which you do it are different.

Steve Rush: Hmm, that's super. And the irony here is that we've learned through story from generations after generations, after generations for thousands of years. But it seemed that certainly through my early part of my career, kind of in the nineties and in the two thousand, we seem to lose that. And only really in the recent years, I've seen story re-emerge has been quite a powerful medium of communication. What do you think the reason was for that?

Andrea Sampson: You know, it's interesting. I've thought about this a lot and you know, in the fifties. First of all, humans are hardwired to respond to story. And if we go all the way back into, you know, sort of the stone age, you'll see that the story has been our medium of communication.

Steve Rush: You can see it written on the walls of caves.

Andrea Sampson: Exactly.

Steve Rush: And that's how they used to tell their stories, right?

Andrea Sampson: And when you look at those cave drawings, what are they about? They're about the emotion of what was going on, right? There was the victory of the hunt, there was this sadness of the death. Like you could see it in these beautiful drawings on caves, but what happened for us is humans started to become more industrialized and really, you know, we've had about 150 years of industrialization with the advent of the industrial revolution.

And with that, what happened is, we became much more efficient. We were focused on efficiency. The belief has been, stories are not efficient, now that's not true. In fact, stories are incredibly efficient, but the belief was, I just want the facts man, nothing but the facts. And so, as we became more industrialized, our stories became about facts and we got narrower and narrower and narrower on facts. What's happening now, and it's so interesting because we're at the dawn of the fourth industrial revolution. And this is the first industrial revolution where humans are not being industrialized. And so, and what I mean by that is in every other industrial revolution, humans became the labor force, right? Well, now what's happening is we're being released from the labor force. We're being allowed to go back to what it is we do best, which is to feel, to emote, to tell stories, to create and being in our creative place.

And it's a challenging time because we don't actually know how to do this anymore. We don't know how to be creators without that end goal. Like I'm going to sit on the line and I'm going to put this widget in this hole. And at the end of the line out will come a car or a thing. Well, now there's robots doing that. We're not really very good at doing the same thing over and over and over again. That's actually not what humans are designed for. And so, as we are coming back into what we are designed for, which is to be creators, to be creative. We're bringing back this medium of storytelling. My own supposition is, that this is the first, you know, process of training our brains to go back into the creative beings we actually are.

Steve Rush: It's great supposition, and one I have listened to you articulate it so well, can wholeheartedly concur with, because the whole principle of management is made up too Management only happened because of the industrial revolution, but we wanted to get some control and some measures and some guidance, which is also the reason why we lost some of that great core leadership experiences along the way as well.

Andrea Sampson: You know, I'm listening to Yuval Harari great books Sapiens right now. And I love, you know, there's a part in it where he talks about storytelling and he talks about us humans, that's actually everything about our lives, our story. And he goes all the way back to the beginning of the corporation and his supposition is that the corporation is really just a story that we've all bought into

Steve Rush: That's ironic, isn't it? Gosh, your right.

Andrea Sampson: It's true, right?

Steve Rush: Yeah.

Andrea Sampson: It's so true, so we don't see it that way, right? Because it's like, well, no, a corporation is a corporation. It's a legal entity. No, actually it's what we've done is we've taken a story and we turned it into a legal entity.

Steve Rush: My head's starting to go into crazy spins now thinking of different things, but it's, great that we're having this conversation because it's all really relevant to the role that we play when we're communicating with others, isn't it?

Andrea Sampson: Oh, absolutely. It's so important that we start to use our storytelling skills again. Because you know, the more that we do this, this is where, you know, as I go back to my own journey into the world of speaker coaching, I started to understand that when I live in a place of emotion, that is where I'm creating the deepest, most meaningful relationships. Whether those relationships be with, you know, people who are in my family or with my clients, because when we're starting with story, we're immediately starting with heart and it's such a different place from business, you know, having been in the corporate world for 25 years, you know, I got to tell you, there was not a lot of room for anything that, you know, smelled of heart-centered ness and that's not the case anymore.

Steve Rush: No, you're right. And one of the things I remember from the conversation that you and I had some months back, you were telling me that, you know, subject matter experts don't promote themselves very well. Is that a reason for them being dragged into the detail versus being thoughtful about their self-promotion?

Andrea Sampson: Yeah, I mean it's interesting, you know, subject matter experts and that's one of the things I, love, love, love, love working with deep subject matter experts. These are people, you know, and just to kind of frame that for the listeners, you know, these are people who are often in the back rooms and you know, they work in science and technology and academia, you know, they're really, really good at doing the work that they do. And many of them are working on things that are literally changing our world, but they're so busy doing that work. And they know often the importance of the work they're doing in the context in which they're working, but they don't look up and they don't tell the rest of us about this work that they're doing. They don't self-promote because it doesn't even occur to them to self-promote.

But here's the thing. When we don't understand what's actually happening in our world when these deep subject matter experts who are doing work in the world, that literally is changing our world. And we don't understand that we are at the effect of media, which also doesn't know that and who's choosing what we do know. And so, it's a real challenge for us to sort through what is real and what is not. So, these deep subject matter experts need to be heard. And we need to encourage them to come forward. And again, I come back to TED as a platform, also Singularity University, which is one of the partnerships that I've had through Talk Boutique. These are places where these deep subject matter experts are finally getting some airtime, but of course the challenges because they tend to be in these very complex places. What do they talk about? They talk about the facts. They tell us the process; they bring us into the world that is so complex and so abstract that most of us don't really understand it. And so that's not helpful either. And really this is where storytelling really shines.

Steve Rush: Yeah, absolutely spot on. So, from a story perspective, you must have had the opportunity to work with some really fascinating storytellers and some really fascinating people. Has there been a moment in your career as a coach or even just as a listener to stories where you've gone wow! that is the most compelling story I've ever heard?

Andrea Sampson: What immediately comes to my mind. So many years ago, I was working with a TED Speaker. He is a cosmologist, which is in the study of astrophysics, study of the universe, cosmology is the study of the actual universe. So not the stars, not the planet, it's not even the galaxies, the entire universe. So first of all, you kind of just go like, wow, I can't even contextualize that. I mean, as most of the subject matter experts that I work with incredibly smart, and this is sort of the story I hear all the time, oh, I'm not creative, right? So, here's an individual who says to me I want to talk about the origins of the universe, but I'm not creative. I don't really know how to do that. And as I spoke with him and started to understand more about him, it turns out that he also played in a band and he's does some visual art, of course not creative though, right? This is often what I hear from scientists.

Steve Rush: Yeah, exactly.

Andrea Sampson: But what was also really interesting about him, didn't know this, this was sort of fun fact, the driest place on earth is the south pole, which also happens to be the coldest place on earth. Now, why is that even a part of the story? Well, the reason is, is that as a cosmologist studying the entire universe, you need to have really powerful telescopes. Well, in order for a telescope to see the universe, you need to be able to have absolute absence of water because water obscures our ability to see in distance. So, in order to see the universe, you have to go to the driest place on earth, which is the south pole. And so, this individual lived for almost a year in the coldest place on earth. And so interesting story, first of all, like what is it like to live in the south pole?

And then there's the story of the universe. Well, working with this individual, what we were able to do was to build a story that literally wove together the origins of the universe and his own experience of spending a year, isolated in minus 100-degree weather in a station with about 30 other people, as they literally begin to degrade because it happens every year with them. There's only about two or three months of the year where they can actually get in and out of the south pole, planes can't actually get in, it's too cold. And so, they can't land, the steel would snap. So, listening to this story, it was phenomenal. It was literally poetic and this is a scientist. He literally wove these two stories together. So that comes to mind and it's one of those, great for me, moments of working with a speaker where I saw the academic side ma married beautifully with the art of storytelling.

Steve Rush: Yeah, that's great. Great story to refer onto it as well.

Andrea Sampson: Yeah.

Steve Rush: So as a CEO and a leader in your own, right, I'm now going to ask some questions of you in terms of getting inside of your leadership brain.

Andrea Sampson: Sure.

Steve Rush: And thinking about how we can share some great tips and ideas with our listeners. So, the first place I'd like to go, Andrea is to ask you what your top three leadership hacks would be?

Andrea Sampson: So, number one is, as a leader, you are not alone. So, make sure you have a good network. It can be very lonely at the top. People say that all the time, but if you think of leadership as a solitary sport, not only is it going to be lonely, you're not going to be very good at it. So, the reality is all good leaders have a great network of people who are advisors, who are supporters and who help them. So, make sure you've got your team in place. Number two, take care of yourself. You know, you as the leader of anything, you are the one who's making all of these decisions. So how have you taken care of your brain today? You know, look at the self-care that will help you be able to show up at your best. You know, are you meditating? Are you finding ways to work through whatever blocks you have? You know, what is your routine? Are you exercising? What's your food intake like? These are things that people don't like to talk about because it's like, oh, you know, we've lived for so long in a world that said, you know, just sacrifice everything and do it all. And that is the worst advice that you can get as a leader, make sure you are taking care of yourself. And then number three, make sure that you have very clearly articulated and identified what your vision is and that vision isn't just for your business.

It's also for your life. So, you need to have a vision that aligns with what your core purpose is as a business person, but as a human as well, because only then will you be able to continue to move forward with consistency. If your core purpose is out of alignment with who you are or what you believe, you will very quickly come to a point where you can no longer do it. You will run out of steam. So always asking yourself, do I have passion for this? Am I committed to it? Do I wake up in the morning knowing that I am moving forward on something that I deeply, deeply believe in? And if you can say yes to those things every day, you're going to jump out of bed and be excited for the work you're doing

Steve Rush: Really powerful stuff. That last one, particularly also, I bet makes your storytelling much easier as well, right?

Andrea Sampson: Yeah, absolutely.

Steve Rush: If it's intrinsically connected to something that's overly emotional for you, then it's going to be so much easier to convey emotional stories.

Andrea Sampson: Yeah, absolutely, yep.

Steve Rush: So, the next part of the show we call Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something hasn't worked out particularly well, and it could be that it was quite catastrophic, but as a result, you now have created some core foundations or something that's working really well for you in your life and work. What would be your Hack to Attack?

Andrea Sampson: So, you know, this past year, you know, we're recording this, you know, at a time where hopefully we're coming out of a global pandemic and this has been an incredibly difficult time, not just for me, but for everyone.

Steve Rush: Right.

Andrea Sampson: And you know, if I look back to a year ago where we were, I'm in Canada and, you know, in June of 2020, we were just coming out of lockdown and you know, wondering how the world was going to recover. Well, here we are in June of 2021, and also just getting out of lockdown and wondering how the world is going to recover, but we're in a very different place. Emotionally a year ago, I was really in a place of, I'm not quite sure how we're going to move forward. You see what had happened for me was I had made the choice to take over the company solo.

I bought out my business partner just prior to the pandemic and suddenly the world fell down around us. And I didn't know whether or not I was going to be able to make a go of it with Talk Boutique because, you know, the reality was we were an event-based business. We work with speakers and every event was canceled. And so, a year later I look at that and go, oh, thank God, because you know, sometimes things need to die in order for them to live. And what I mean by that is when you're in a partnership, what we had created together was important, but it wasn't my vision. And I needed the deconstruction to happen. And I'm not sure that if we had continued, the business had continued as busy as it was in the pre pandemic time, but I would have had the time to really stop and think about my own vision and purpose. And so, this past year of retooling and re-imagining the business, I've had the time to do that. And so, I look forward now with so much hope and so much gratitude for what happened a year ago. And so, I can see now that what I'm creating is much more in tune and aligned with my own purpose and vision about shifting the social narrative, you know, working with thought leaders, working with those who are doing good in the world and helping them to get their stories out in the world so that we can all see the good that's happening in the world and contribute to that, become part of that. And a year ago, I'm not sure I would have been so clear on that. So, you know, that is for me, it's sometimes the breakdown is really a breakthrough.

Steve Rush: Wow, that's really powerful words. I love the whole principle of how you framed that about breakdown to breakthrough. So, thank you for sharing, that's really powerful.

Andrea Sampson: You're welcome.

Steve Rush: The last thing we want to do is get a chance to do some time travel with you. So, our guest have the opportunity to bump into their former selves at 21. So, what would your advice to Andrea be if you could bump into her at 21.

Andrea Sampson: So, Andrea at 21 was driven and passionate and fearless. And, you know, if I were to go back and give her some advice it would be to keep going, first of all but also to slow down, don't worry that everything has to happen right now. You know, that was who I was. I was this, you know, young person who wanted to make my mark in the world. And I would tell Andrea at 21, that life is long and there is plenty of time and you don't have to get it right the first time. In fact, you're not going to get it right the first time. And sometimes the not getting it right, is the whole reason why we do things, because it helps us to learn. Failure is such an important part, you know, I grew up in a family where we were very much driven to perfectionism. And so, if I couldn't get it right, I moved onto the next thing instead of sticking with the thing and getting it right. And now, you know, many years later, I've learned that when you focus on something and when you take the risk to do it, and when you take the risk to fail, you are going to learn so much more than if you just abandoned it because it didn't work out right away.

Steve Rush: Yeah

Andrea Sampson: So that's a big one.

Steve Rush: It is, that's huge. So, Andrea, what's happening with Talk Boutique? Tell us about the journey you're on now and maybe how our folks can learn a little bit more about the work you're doing.

Andrea Sampson: Sure, so Talk Boutique now, I mean, we are both a speakers bureau and we represent deep subject matter experts who are doing the work in the world that I've described earlier, and we are speaker coaches. I have a team of coaches who work with me, who have all been trained in my methodology. And what we do is we work with thought leaders. We work with corporate leaders and we work with teams and we help them to become storytellers in every presentation or talk that they give. We train them through one-on-one coaching and through programs that we aim at the, you know, the core of any organization, we bring the TED-style into the corporate world, and this is a really powerful program. We also have an open enrollment program that we call The Thought Leader Academy for anyone who wants to work with us on a one-on-one basis, but they might not quite be able to make the commitment to come in through a corporate program or to work with our coaches one-on-one.

And that is a digital offering that includes group coaching. And so, The Thought Leader Academy, we do a couple of intakes a year. Our next one will be coming up in the fall, but we are doing some work right now around getting the story spine out there in a bigger way and doing some small trainings. So, if you're interested in working with us, you can go to our website at talkboutique.com, or you can email me directly at andreatalkboutique.com, either work. We love working with individuals and with teams. So always happy to help out in whatever way we can.

Steve Rush: We'll make sure our listeners can hook up with you as well by putting your links for your website and email addresses and stuff in our show totes too.

Andrea Sampson: Fantastic Steve, thank you so much.

Steve Rush: You're very welcome, Andrea. I'm super glad that we have you on the show, the whole story spine, and learning a little bit about how you are making connections through storytelling is a really inspirational one. So, thank you for sharing and thank you for being part of the community on The Leadership Hacker Podcast.

Andrea Sampson: Oh, Steve, thank you. It has been my absolute pleasure. Thank you for asking such amazing questions and for adding so much to today's call. It has been amazing.

Steve Rush: Thank you. My pleasure.

Andrea Sampson: All right, take care.

 

Closing

 

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