All right. So today we are going to be talking about courageous leadership. We're going to
talk about how to actively invite feedback by using one thing feedback. We are going
to build mental strength through asking powerful questions and we're going to continue to challenge
our assumptions. So one power question to ask is what am I being as a leader that this
is the result. Really powerful. And today's pro tip is that in times of high pressure,
we can sometimes default back to old patterns or habits. But when we have two or three powerful
questions ready, it keeps us moving forward. And Dionne will expand on this a bit more
during the teaching today. So is everyone ready to dive in? All right. Got some thumbs
up. And all right. Well, as we're going through the material, just a reminder, you can add
questions to the chat. We would love to answer those. And all right, we can welcome Dionne
in the chat now. And over to you Dionne. Thanks, Jen. And thanks so much for jumping
on standing in for Jenny. And we appreciate that. So what we'd like to do is just do a
quick introduction to what we're going to cover in the next 13 weeks. So that's quite
a bit. We're going to do four leadership sections. Remember, we've broken each section
into their key pillars. So there's leadership, culture, innovation, economics. So we're going
to do four on leadership. We're going to do three on work culture. One of them is on how
to power start a project, how to be a brilliant project manager. We're also going to talk
about how to hire great people. And you say, well, surely that's just for the leader or
the CEO. But actually, the way we hire people involves the whole team. So we're going to
talk a little bit about that. And then under economics, we're going to talk about an amazing
way to look at your business to find the key spot of where your sweet spot is economically.
We're also going to talk about creating a ownership culture, how to scale the business.
And under the leadership, I'm particularly excited about that. Today, we'll talk about
courageous leadership. Next week, we'll get into the whole idea of how do you create relational
space when you wear multiple hats with some people? Maybe some of you are working with
a spouse or a child, or maybe you have a different close friend relationship. We're going to
talk about how to have different hats. This is separate from the six hats teaching. And
then we're going to talk about the three types of people and how your leadership strategy
changes depending on the type of person. Most people have one leadership strategy for all
people. And they try to teach everybody the way they want to be treated, which certainly
is one of the modes. And we'll get into that in a lot of detail. But probably the most
exciting or the biggest, I would say the power band where the season two lies is around
the innovation section. We're going to talk about shaping up work that matters. And what
that is, is we're going to use an incredibly powerful tool to take big projects and slice
them up into the thinnest possible slice, and to be able to execute and to set up a
weekly regular culture where you're checking in and presenting projects all the time. This
was we know we learned that we had to have deep work, focused work, general work, we're
going to show you now what to do with the deep work session. So if you have dropped out
of the habit, maybe of doing deep work, let me remind you again, get back into doing at
least one deep work session per week if you can. And that will get us ready for when we
get to do that particular talk. So what we'd like you to be able to do by the end of season
two, we would hope that your own personal productivity will have dramatically improved
while your stress level gone way down. As you know, we like to see people functioning
more from a restful, peaceful atmosphere. And we also want them to see that the powerful
techniques we're sharing with you come from very capable leaders that we've gathered over
while I've gathered and collected over 30 years. And in the process of doing that,
I found that there are so many great leaders, but nailing down that one key thing,
and then figuring out how does that work in a smaller business context. So as we go through
this together, I hope that you'll enjoy some of the new concepts that we'll be sharing with you.
So let's get right into it. We've talked in season one a lot about the concept of leadership.
We discussed the idea that your title doesn't make you a leader.
If you want to know if you're a leader, just see if anyone's following.
So, you know, you can have a placeholder, you can have a position holder with a title,
but that doesn't actually make you a leader, it just means you're holding that particular
position.
So, how do you intentionally manage your influence?
I know many of you, I'm sure, have been in teams where, you know, there are people with
the titles, but then they are the opinion leaders in the room.
You know what I'm talking about.
That person that shifts opinion regardless of title, they just have that kind of influence
on the whole group, they just have a certain gravitas.
And this is about how to manage that influence that you wield.
And we're going to go through a little bit of that today.
And then, you know, at the end of the day, we're trying to become a team of leaders,
where we've got our hands on the fireman's net or the firefighters' net, we used that
analogy before, and we want to get just the right tension.
And to get that right tension in a leadership team is actually quite difficult.
A lot of people think, well, there's tension in the team, something's wrong.
No, tension in the team shows there's balance, shows there's something good happening.
Of course, if somebody walks in, grabs the net and rips the net out of everybody's hand,
then that's not exactly what we want.
So sometimes people have powerful, you know, just powerful personalities, when they come
in, grab the meeting, and sort of just take it over, sack up all there in the room.
And then those who sit quietly by, just agree, it's like, you know, they've let go of the
net.
So what we want to do is we want to talk about how to get that tension right, and how to
strengthen and make your leadership courageous.
So what are we talking about courageous leadership?
You know, one of the most difficult things is to train leaders to be simple.
There's always the desire for complexity.
Somehow in modern culture, we've gained the idea that if my stuff is complex, that shows
I really am sophisticated, that I am like on the cutting edge, you know, and I spent
a lot of time in technology and in financial services.
And we use huge words for simple ideas, because we can charge big fees for that.
You know, when people go, what's the big term?
What does it mean?
You know, complexity really is the enemy of clarity.
And clarity is the enemy, you know, of simplicity.
When we talked last in last season, simplicity drives speed.
And to be simple takes a lot of self confidence.
It takes a lot of courage to ask the dumb question, to ask that one clarifying question
that just makes the whole thing simple.
Or even if you're particularly courageous, ask that one question, like, why are we doing
this again?
Or what was the main point?
Or what are we hoping to achieve?
That simple, clarifying point takes courage, because especially if everybody's deep in
all the complexity and the detail, and somebody asks that one simple question, why are we
doing this?
So we're going to talk a bit about that today, and then we'll break out into the breakout
rooms, and you can hang out a bit together.
So you know, getting chaos out of our heads, or as we said before, the mist in your mind
becomes the fog in the organization.
So the more we get clear, the more we can get that thing so simple.
And that's the culture we want.
We want what's the simplest version of this thing?
What is, how do we make this simple?
Jack Welch once said, he called it the three S's, self-confidence, simplicity, speed, and
that's where we get the expression simplicity drives speed.
Because you have to be really self-confident to be simple.
And we've used the term in the past that if you're in complexity, you're still the student.
And if you're in simplicity, you're becoming the master of your craft.
If you listen to very sophisticated, incredibly intelligent people, the ones that make it
super simple are the ones that truly are the master of their craft.
So we want to encourage or create a culture in our teams around this idea of the courage
to be simple.
So I want to share with you three powerful techniques that I have found that really take
your courage and your leadership to the next level.
The first one is actively invite feedback.
It was Elon Musk who said he actively invites feedback all the time because he found that
he doesn't grow from positive encouragement.
He grows from negative feedback.
And so he actively solicits feedback from people he trusts.
So actively inviting feedback, there's a powerful technique to do this and we call it.
the one thing feedback. Now the one thing feedback works like this. These are three kinds of questions
you can ask people and what you're asking for them is for one thing and this one thing has
an interesting psychological item to it. If I ask you, if I sit and ask you what one thing do I
uniquely bring, it forces you to kind of get out of all your personal little hang-ups maybe with
some of the things I do if we're working together in a team and it helps you focus on the one thing
and it makes it clear to you too brings value in your own mind as to what I'm doing. Now if you're
the CEO of a company this is a great question to ask key members of your team especially those
reporting to you. So I used to do this twice a year. I would get on the phone at one point when
you're running a private equity firm. We had several firms in that you know were under our
care and when we made investments I inserted myself as the CEO as part of that investment
and then I would go to each president of each company once here and I'd ask them these three
questions. What one thing do I uniquely do and need to keep developing? You know what's the
most helpful thing that I do? Number two, what one thing do I need to stop doing?
And number three, what one thing can I do better? And what I found is that they answer them with
enthusiasm. The first one pretty enthusiastic, the next one a little more hesitancy but the last one
is quite difficult to get people to answer honestly. It takes time so you really have to
come up with creative ways to get those questions answered. So again what one thing do I uniquely
bring? So if you're in a team you might ask this of the person you report to. You might
ask this of people in your team at the same level as you but what you're looking for here is
you're trying to understand what is it that I bring that everybody around me sees but maybe I
don't see so clearly and it's this feedback that is really helpful. So we start with the one unique
thing. What's the one thing that I bring to the team and you know because a lot of times of course
we see ourselves in a very full way, we see our professional lives, our personal lives, we see
ourselves in a much more complete way but our team may see us quite differently and sometimes the one
thing you think you bring isn't the one thing that they're receiving and so a lot of times you are
what you received as you think well I'm a real encourager, I'm a leader, I'm at this or
I'm at that but really you are what you received as meaning what people take from your life, what
people receive from you is your one thing. It's very powerful when you as the leader especially
those who lead the teams who are on the call here when you're the one asking for this kind of
feedback. Firstly, it's humble which is healthy but secondly, it helps people realize that this is how
you grow and you model something for your whole team. What one thing do I need to stop doing
is such a great question because sometimes we do things that we're particularly
fond of doing but we're not very good at it so it's like it takes some courage and
so when you're asking that question you have to give people permission say look there are no
consequences to you answering this question. I'm not going to react, I'm just
going to write out what you say, I'm not going to respond so feel free to say what one thing do you
need to stop doing and then what one thing can I do better. Again, the one thing really helps people
it kind of gives permission to just you know big rocks and not getting to all the little things
that maybe annoy them about you or things that we should you know said differently or did
differently gets them out of the small picky stuff and really helps focus and if you are answering
that question when somebody asks you those questions here's a suggestion I would say can
I think about it and get back to you in a day or two and then think those questions so that's the
kindest thing you can do because sometimes off the cuff you know doesn't always work as well
and when you're thinking about it more you know specifically when we talk later in the
season we're going to get into how to give very powerful feedback as part of developing
the team members and these questions are built in there. Okay, so number one was actively
invite feedback using the one thing technique. Number two, build mental strength
through powerful questions. You can tell we've had a lot of sessions
this week. Build mental strength through powerful questions. So what do we mean by that?
Oh, I, one of the, the key things I have found is that coming up with the best questions is what makes a powerful learner.
It's, it's interesting that I know when we were running a school for academically able children, one of the things we really taught the kids is that questions are more important than the answers.
The best questions are the ones to go after, it's not the best answers.
And so if you create a culture where great questions are encouraged, and I'm not talking about people just being annoyed, like, why do we have to do this?
And I'm not talking about those questions.
I'm talking about the questions that really are leaning forward, that come from a place of mental strength.
And so, you know, if you're asking these powerful questions, like, what would happen to the world if we cease to exist?
Would they, one, notice? Two, in our world, I'm not talking about the whole world, I'm just talking about in your world, if you cease to exist, what would be the impact?
The, the, the thing that's so clarifying about that question is you start to realize what impact are we actually having in our space?
You know, we often get the idea that things automatically improve, especially technology, we think that technology just gets better and better and better over time.
This is not actually true.
In 1969, we put a man on the moon, and then progressively forgot how to do that, to the point that it took all the way back to, you know, even now, SpaceX and all the modern technology, and all the new, you know,
space initiatives, we still haven't actively done that again.
So what the technology we had in 1969, with all the limitations of that technology, didn't, it didn't go up from there, it went down.
And there's a lot of examples of this.
So my point about this is when we ask powerful questions, we keep the whole organization alive and thinking and moving forward.
Here's a hint as a leader.
If, if you're, if everybody's agreeing with everything you're saying, you're the only one doing the thinking.
So that's a good thing to tell your team, right?
Hey, I can't be that good.
It's like, you know, we do these talks, we say, hey, does anyone have any questions?
Nobody has questions, you're thinking, either I did a really poor job, or they weren't engaged.
Somebody must have questions.
And so coming up with the best questions.
And you know, one of the questions to ask is, what question have we not yet asked about our business?
What question have we not yet asked about our customer?
What's the one thing that our customer really wants that we still don't really provide?
How can we partner with other partners and bring a fuller experience to our customers?
Sometimes we just look at what we can deliver to a customer.
We're not looking at, hey, we partner, if we start with a customer in mind, and work backwards,
we don't start with saying, we've got this, how do we sell that to customers,
we start with a customer and work backwards, and then partner with other companies if we need to,
to create a fuller, you know, a fuller service, or fuller product suite.
And then I want to talk about this, you know, watching out for quick fixes that get a life you did not
intend. Maybe the simplest way to explain this is, I know one thing we all hate doing is moving,
you know, when you move from one house to another, or from one office to another,
oh, man, that must be the worst, right? Moving.
Now, here's an interesting thing, when we move, I have a rule that all the boxes are unpacked,
and we're up and everything's done, and the picture's on the wall within 48 hours.
And the reason I do that, and it's brutal, I mean, it's like two days of darkness, it's bad,
we just get in and do the thing. And the reason we do that is because quick fixes get a life,
you know, that box that you left, just at your back door as you walk into the garage,
it's a year later, and it's still there, it got a life somehow, it's now part of the scenery,
it gained its own life. There are quick fixes we do in business that get a life.
And so watch out for the things that get a life. And this takes mental strength, takes courageous
leadership, to fix these quick fixes to get rid of the quick fixes. So the third key idea I want to
share with you is continually challenge your assumptions. Now, Team Brilliant knows that how
many times we've hit the pause button and challenged our assumptions again, and then found
out that there was an entire range of things we do, because of assumptions.
we had two years ago. You know what I'm saying, right? Where you just never took the time,
you didn't hit the pause button to just think about why do we do this still?
Bridget tells a wonderful story, my wife Bridget tells a wonderful story of
a young lady whose mother is teaching her to do Thanksgiving turkey. And so she says, well,
you take the turkey and then this one part of the turkey, you just cut it right off,
just this whole section, you just cut it off. And so she said, mom, why do we do that? She said,
I don't know. That's the way my mother taught me. She says, well, you know, grandma's in the room
next door. Why don't you go and ask her? So grandma, why do you cut off the front of the
turkey? Oh, that's really easy. I used to have a small pan. So how many times we're doing our
thing? Cause we always did that way. And that's because we had a small pan. You know, I'm,
I'll give an example at Brilliant. We used to have monthly subscriptions and annual subscriptions
and annual subscriptions sold really well. And, you know, we, we found a sweet price for it.
We found the sweet spot, did a lot of experimentation. And as we're going through all this,
we started to notice something really odd about these annual subscriptions. And the first thing
we noticed was that, you know, we came up with assumption and said, why, why are we doing these
annual subscriptions? Well, they sell well. The more we dug into it, the more we found out that
annual subscriptions had a retention rate of about 8%. That means 92% of people were canceling
after the year was over. How many of you know, that's a pretty lousy business model.
If you're losing, you work your tail off, get a customer and a year later, you lose them or most
of them. So when we dug into why it turns out that, you know, if you're charging $20 a month,
that's $240 for the year, we thought, well, what if we give them a discount and, you know, for 197,
they can get, they can get the whole year's payments. So it was driven by an assumption
that a discount will help sell it, which it did. It had a horrible downside. And that is people
paid it, forgot about it. When you paying every month, you remembering that you're paying that,
and I've got to use that subscription. I've got to use that service, right? And because of this
assumption that we wanted to give a discount, we provided a product that was terrible. It was
terrible to us. And it was terrible to our customer because it created this sort of adversarial
relationship at the end of the year, where we were like, because it would automatically renew,
even though we told them five ways from Sunday that, hey, this thing will renew automatically,
we send them reminding emails, hey, this is a, you know, week's time, this is going to renew,
no matter how many times we told them, they all were shocked when it renewed. So it was like,
oh, no, Christmas happened on the 25th of December this year. So it was that kind of,
we told you, and we realized that it wasn't a matter of, all this complexity came because
somebody wanted to give a discount, we made an assumption that the discount was the important
thing. So we did away with that. And we realized the best sort of relationship is either monthly
or lifetime. That's it. And if you know, brilliant, there's monthly and there's lifetime
subscription and paying because if people want, we don't want to pay monthly payments,
subscriptions, we can just give it to them. Here's a fee, lifetime, you're in, you with us,
we with you, it's gonna have fun. And it came down the number of times we've done things because,
you know, 18 months ago, we had a small pan. So maybe it's time to rethink what you're doing.
And it takes a lot of energy, because when you got momentum as a business,
you don't want to go back and keep challenging your assumptions, like feels like we're going
backwards, it feels contrary to the idea that we're progressing. But you really are progressing,
especially in terms of scale, why can't we scale this product, I found that products that don't
scale well, and by scale, I mean, sell a lot of them, or sell a lot of them to the right people,
or they, you know, come down to really one of two things, you've made an assumption about the price,
versus the value, or you've made an assumption about how the customer wants to receive it.
So when you always questioning your constraints, you know, I love that the concept that all,
all our constraints are wrong, to some degree or another, all us all our
every design or every plan is wrong, to some degree, the only question is,
How wrong?
And so the job of a good leader is to make it less wrong.
When we start off with now we have the perfect plan,
how many of you have had the perfect plan
and it went nowhere?
So now this, we are going to knock it out of the park.
This thing is going to take our business to the next level.
A lot of red hat excitement about it.
And then the white hat data came in and it did not.
And then something quite small just took off
because it was unexpected.
So I want to use it as example, x.com, which you may not know,
was the precursor to PayPal.
So in x.com, when Elon Musk and his partners at the time
were building x.com, they were building the one banking
app to do everything.
And one little side feature was the idea
that you could send money that didn't need a banking system.
And that little side feature, that little thing,
nobody was interested in all their many modules
of sophistication and banking and all that.
Nobody was interested in that.
But it was interesting, this little thing
where you could send people money.
And that little thing of sending people money
became a billion dollar business.
So another example of that, many of you
use a piece of technology called Slack.
Does anybody know the history of Slack?
So the history of Slack was another accident.
It was a gaming company.
And they wanted to communicate with each other
informally during software development.
And somebody said, we need something to take up the Slack.
So I said, OK, I'll throw something together.
We'll have these little channels.
And the little thrown together little thing
became the main thing and became a multibillion dollar product.
And no one remembers the gaming company at all.
So sometimes we make these assumptions.
And when we're constantly doing these,
it takes so much courageous leadership
to kill your own products or to take, OK, we're
not doing all these modules.
I was about 31 or 32 years old.
And we developed a piece of software
for the insurance industry.
And this software allowed insurance agents
to run their whole life.
It was a laptop-based software.
It did everything from calendaring,
manage their contacts, they could see all their products.
It even had multimedia presentations
to explain different insurance products.
It was very powerful.
And the one little thing on the back end
is it would fill out the insurance application forms
correctly.
It made sure that they were correct and complete
and compliant.
And this was one out of 40 modules.
And when we went to all the insurance companies,
guess which one thing they cared about?
It was like our PayPal moment.
All they cared about was that silly forms thing
that it could fill out the forms for them.
And they could click it.
And back then, it was dial-up modems, getting my age away.
But dial-up modems, and it would send the application,
all the data in, back to the computers at the home office.
And that became the main business.
And we had raised over $30 million
with two big companies, two multibillion-dollar companies,
came together.
And together, we partnered.
And we took that one little tiny section.
Perhaps there's one thing in your business
that you're sitting on a Slack or a PayPal or an e-forms.
Maybe there's one idea that you're sitting on right now.
And here's the thing, the person who suggests it
may not be the person.
Again, ideas have no rank.
We know this.
So who is suggesting?
Listen carefully, because sometimes the one simple idea
of, what if we just did this one thing?
Or what if we spun that off as a separate product?
It's often the simplest thing that produces
the most profound impact.
But here's the bottom line.
We've got to make our businesses solid,
because good leaders cannot fix bad businesses,
no matter how good they are.
And the way you make your business better
is the marketplace is changing all the time.
And so driving simplicity, actively looking for feedback,
building mental strength through powerful,
constantly looking for the powerful question,
and then continually challenge your assumptions.
Anyway, I'll end it there.
And I know we can get chatting.
And that's what's in the, as you go through the form today
that we've created, the little worksheet.
That's what we were trying to get you to think.
Exercise one uses the one thing feedback mechanism.
You can go through that and ask that of each other.
And exercise two is trying to look
for all the quick fix things that gained a life.
Or, you know, what do you want to upgrade about your leadership, or what question has
been in the back of your mind about our business, you know, I wonder why we don't do that.
I'm trying to help you find your PayPal moment.
So okay, back to you, Jalen, tell us what we're doing next.
All right, so we are going to be heading back or heading into our breakout rooms now.
So this is where you can discuss the worksheet with your team.
So the breakout rooms are open, you can go ahead and join your team, you can self-assign.
If you need any help, just let me know in the chat, and I can help you get in that room
as well.
So we'll see you back here at 155 for Q&A time.
And leaders, if you need access to that worksheet link, let me know in the comments and I can
send that over again.
All right, we'll go ahead and get separated.
Okay, does anyone need any help getting into a breakout room?
You can let me know.
Actually, Jalen, I can stay with those who are remaining.
Okay.
Yeah.
Let's see.
Stu and Tamara, how are you doing?
Hey, Amber.
Good.
Hi, Jalen.
I did put in a text to you, a message to you that I needed the link.
I don't know why I can't find it.
Yes.
I sent that link to you.
Can you see that in the chat?
I can send it again.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
Okay.
Yeah.
No problem.
Okay.
This is a super silly question, but I want to go buy the books, and no matter where I
go, I cannot find where I'm supposed to go buy the books.
Which books are you referring to, Tamara?
The ones in the email that you sent, or it's on the website that I'm looking at.
So you have two books you say to purchase or to grab, and then let's see, they're the
books on my congratulations next step thing, where I got the link to get into the Zoom.
Why are being connected to the life of God within you and the newness advantage?
Yes.
It says go buy those?
Yes.
So they should be on the Shopify store.
We can drop those links for you quickly.
That'd be perfect.
Okay.
All right.
Yeah.
Jalen, if you can still hear me, we can just drop that for them.
Thank you for answering the questions.
Appreciate that.
Sorry, Dion.
Which book are you looking for?
It's okay.
I got it.
Perfect.
Okay.
It looks like I'll stay in this room with you, Dion, with having the breakout rooms
open.
Yeah.
No worries.
We can definitely do that.
And yeah, the newness advantage.
Actually, that's book two of a two part series.
If you want it, you can either buy the whole series or you can.
It's the letters from God series from Graham.
Or you can just buy that book.
Give me a second.
I'll drop them for you.
Are you dropping the link to the store?
Yeah.
Perfect.
Got it.
Okay.
And newness.
The newness advantage.
Maybe my favorite book of all of Graham's books.
It's very short.
The newness advantage.
It's a pretty little book and it took me two years to read it.
I was like that with.
You were like that with which one?
Crafted prayers.
Oh, yeah.
It's like crafted prayer.
Yeah.
It's pretty good.
Yeah.
It's one of those, you read half a paragraph and then you talk to the Lord about that for a week
or a month. So no, it's definitely a good book.
Yeah, it seems like a lot of people didn't get our link for the beginning of season two,
so we'll have to circle back. Jalen, we'll have to look into what happened.
Yeah, we didn't get the link. I found it in, I just so happened to have a link open on my
computer from weeks ago that I never closed. And that's the only reason I got in at all.
So thank you for, we didn't get an email, but yeah.
Yeah, I can tell a lot of most people are missing. That's something's gone wrong with the link.
So Dionne, I have a question because last season we were in the solo group and I know you're not
doing the solo group anymore. So when the teams go out to break out, we're just working on our
own. Is that what we're doing? If we don't have a team that we're part of, I know with Addy last
time, we had a great, we had some great conversations. Yeah, we can create a general
group. Let's do that Jalen. We'll create a general group for next time. Anybody can just
join the general group. So we'll just create a general one for those of you that would still
like to hang out and talk. Thanks. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that'd be great. That was the one
question I had too. Although it's lovely seeing everybody who is this solopreneurs are in this
room. So it works just fine. Yeah, on that program, but they have small teams. It's just that they,
they've just bought it for themselves. That's why. So that's fine too. Yeah. Well,
the good news is no new people join this, this part of the program because it builds
systematically. So this will stay like this until the end of November, end of season three.
So when the letters from God series, it appears that it's only an ebook. Is that correct?
No, that, that should be, that should, you can get an ebook, but they should be in the ability
to buy the, let's see. Okay. I see. You have to do a drop down menu to find the book,
but cause it defaults to an ebook. Oh, it does. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Because of, because of the international aspect of the team. So, and it sold out.
Oh, okay. All right. We'll something else. Jalen will notice note for Jenny.
Yeah. We have a, we have a third party fulfillment house that takes care of all that.
You can probably grab the ebook in the meantime. Let's see.
The individual book is available. So I'll just grab the one book that you guys suggested and
we'll get the other one at a different time. Oh yeah. Yeah. They're, they're in first,
they're written like for in first person. So you should love that.
That's what I called letters from God. Yes. Yeah. They, they're very beautiful.
There's a big jump between nature of freedom and munis advantage.
Unis advantage. If you've been around Graham for a while,
unis advantage is probably what you want. All right. That's when I grabbed,
cause that's when they had. Yeah. Thank you.
Well, you, you, we have a few minutes. So since we're a group now of our own,
you're welcome to take the time or the opportunity to talk and ask questions or make comments,
whatever, you know, we can just chat where you can hang out with each other. I can mute.
Can I just comment on the teaching today? Yeah. Yeah. Cause I missed yesterday. I didn't find the,
this to get in yesterday, but I'll go back and watch it.
But I love the questions,
the brilliance of asking correct questions.
So it's funny, I just had a conversation about that
this morning with a mentor of mine,
telling me I'm asking the wrong questions.
And then God, you know, Graham says it all the time.
If you're not getting an answer,
God's like, I don't like that question,
go ask me another one.
So this is coming at a new time
because we're literally restructuring our entire company.
We blended our for-profit with our nonprofit
because we serve the same clientele.
And now we're going through a separation phase
of taking the nonprofit to its own place
and the for-profit to its own space.
So I'm being challenged even as I'm listening to you going,
are we asking the right questions?
Because it's hard to, it's almost like,
and this is not what I mean, but I'm not cursing myself,
but it's almost like a divorce.
You know, we're separating us,
but divorcing is just tearing apart, you know,
something that was once one.
So it's a challenge, it's a challenge.
But I love what you're talking about.
Even for us, as we're looking at our staff,
we're going, which company do you belong in?
So I appreciated the questions, they were perfect.
Yeah, well, Jalyn, I know you can comment on this
because we've just gone through a very intense version
of that the last 60 days.
Yeah, we've done exactly that in the last 60 months.
Tamara, you know, because you're a part of it,
you're a piece of that,
which we launched Brilliant Churches, you know.
We had our first gathering, as you know, on Monday night,
and I know that you were in on that, I saw you there.
And going through that exercise is what,
start with the customer, work backwards.
Now, start with where's the customer?
And so that a lot of times,
just going out and speaking to customers, you know,
is one of the best things that you can do as a leader,
I think.
And too many leaders are stuck in their office
behind their computers.
So when I did CEO consulting
and the companies would bring me in,
I'd do these 90-day sprints.
And I'd come in in 90 days, for only 90 days,
because I felt that I produced, it was the Pareto principle,
I could produce 80% of the benefit
in a very short period of time.
So it was very cost-effective.
And one of the first questions I asked the CEOs,
you know, how many days a week are you in the office?
Now, given that, you know, you're not a virtual company,
but assuming that by office, I mean, you're, you know,
if you had an office that you'd be there.
And they go, well, I'm here six days a week
or five days a week.
And I go, why?
And they said, well, I have to run the company.
I said, but do you have a management team?
And so the question was, well,
if you have a management team,
why are you managing the company?
So they said, well, what should I be doing?
I said, you should be out doing two things,
speaking to key customers and raising capital.
That's what all you should be doing.
You should be building out the business
at a strategic level.
And if you're in the office more than one day a week,
you need to ask yourself,
what do you need a management team for if you're there?
So he said, well, you know, not only if I trust them.
I said, well, that's easy to fix.
Let's fire them and get ones you do trust.
So, you know, people were shocked by this
because we have-
Can I ask you to repeat that?
Sorry, I lost you there.
I'm sorry to interrupt you too,
because can you repeat that?
I think you just said something brilliant.
If you are in the office more than one day a week,
what are we supposed to be doing
when we're not in the office?
I don't know if my-
Well, that's not speaking to key customers
or strategic partners or raising capital.
And by raising capital, it isn't always financial capital.
It's sometimes it's, you know, partnership capital.
It's speaking to people who can help you or grow.
You can grow with them.
You can be strategic with them.
So you should be spending a lot of your time
out speaking to customers.
And one of the best CEOs that I came across in my studies
was a woman in Florida
and they print labels for wine bottles.
She started this in her garage and it grew and grew
and they ended up with, I think it was like 800 employees.
And she would come into the office for one morning a week
and her management team ran the company.
And-
And she was out all the time, strategic customers, speaking to key partners, vendors,
she was on the road, she was, you know, or she was, you know, talking to them constantly.
But she was always out there, she was on the forefront, she wasn't internal.
It's like if I ran a church, and all I ever do is just run internal meetings,
I never know anything about the community I'm serving. Because I'm not involved in anything.
Same idea.
So it's, it's a, you know, it's a shocking idea for a lot of people that,
you know, why have a management team if you're going to do the managing anyway?
So I love that. I really love that. I know that my team is forcing me and pushing me constantly
for the last month to be the CEO. And honestly, I've done the business for so long, I'm not sure
I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to do differently as a CEO. But they're like,
no, go be CEO. Don't get into the minutiae, go to CEO, I may have to hire you to help me be a CEO.
It is a different training to the one we're doing now. Let's say that
it's a very different mindset. There's a great book you can get. It's an easy read.
And it's called Maverick by Ricardo Semler.
He's from Brazil. And he came up with a brand new concept that shook the world. He wrote several
books, but Maverick is an easy read. Ricardo Semler took over a company from his that his
father had started. And they manufacture large scale, you know, electrical equipment, like,
you know, commercial ovens and freezers, that sort of thing. And he had about 2000 employees.
Well, he fired 70% of the administrative staff who he said were just people watching other people
work, you know, accountants watching other people and gathering all their, you know,
travel receipts and all that kind of thing. And, and, you know, the time sheet, so he got rid of
time sheets, he said, we're going to work on a system of trust, if you abuse the trust, you will
be fired. So that's easy, you know, but we're going to give you the starting position is that
you're trusted. And then he went on to, in the two years, since they institute this trust culture,
institute this trust culture, which he was hardly ever there, by the way,
there, they grew their productivity by 300% in two years. And, and, and, and then they worked
on because it was a trust culture, there were no working hours. So if you in the middle of the day,
you want to go to your kids recital, you went did that. And if you came back, you and your team
figured it out. If you traveled, and you felt that you should have traveled first class and
stay in a five star hotel, when you got back, they pinned all of that up on the bulletin board
where your whole team could see it. And you could explain to your team why you felt you needed to
travel first class. And the simple peer pressure fixed all that. And so people, they, and then he
got it even to the point that they even set their own salaries as a team. He's one of the most
radical leadership thinkers I've come across. There are others like him.
But all of those great leaders are hardly in the office.
They don't, they're not involved in the internals, they're out creating strategic partners,
relationships. So
that's awesome. I will grab the book.
So Dan, if I can change the subject a little bit, I don't know how much more time we have,
a few minutes. I loved your challenge. And it's kind of a corollary to what you've been talking
about is what's the one thing that our customers really want? Not what I think they want, but what
they really want. And I think we spend a lot of time because we know how to solve their problems
for them, thinking that we know what they want or what they need, when maybe that's not really
what they need. That is, and here's how you know that as the leader, as you keep asking them.
So go to your customers and say, what's the one thing that we do for you that really helps?
Yeah. And they'll tell you, they will tell you.
And then you can ask them, what one thing can we do to make your job easier?
And I'm telling you the things that customers, having run software companies and financial firms,
We always think it's the big and complicated things.
Well, if I had an app, you know, it would cost $50,000 to buy.
And usually it's the simplest, tiniest things that you
do that helps them the most.
So just ask them, but you've got to be talking to them a lot to
get that information out of them.
So, yeah.
So that's a great question, Bev, that you've raised.
I don't know.
We've got such a tiny group.
So firstly, thank you.
I'm glad you found the link.
It seems like most other people did not.
So we'll have to fix that for next week.
But Bev asked a great question about, you know, how do you find
your PayPal element of your business?
How do you find that Slack piece of your business?
And the key is to ask the same bold questions to your customer.
What's the one thing we do for you that really helps?
What's the one thing we do as a company we should stop doing?
What's the one thing we can do to improve?
You can ask your customers that, and if you're the CEO or the
president of the company, get out there and ask your top
customers that question.
They will tell you.
And I was saying a moment ago, it's one tiny little thing that
for you would be almost a no brainer to do, and it would
add huge value to them.
I have found that more times than I can count, you know, it's
like, should we redesign a whole new piece of software?
No.
But if when I'm on the screen, if that little pop up could also
just be on the screen so I can see this and this at the same
time, you say, hang on a second.
And it takes the program of two minutes, code is in and said,
there you go.
And they go, oh, that's fantastic.
You guys are amazing.
It's usually that thing.
Okay.
Speak to your customers.
They will tell you.
All right, Jalen, are we all back?
Yeah, it looks like it.
What was that, Dion?
No, I was saying any questions, any other questions?
That was a great question they've asked.
Yes, if you have a question, feel free to raise your hand.
You can type in the chat.
I'll be checking that.
That was a very good question.
Great way to start our Q&A time.
Yeah, I think the other thing that I run into is that what
they think they want is out of my experience is not what they
really do need.
Right.
And then how do you manage that where you can say, hey, what
you really need is this little widget over here, but you want
me to do all this other stuff that is kind of a waste of my
time and you really want to pay me for that.
It's not going to help move your business forward.
This is exactly right.
You're talking about the other side, when we get into shaping
up projects, that's two sessions just addressing that issue.
But the very short answer is they tell you, can you build a
car? And then you say, well, what exactly do you want to do?
And you drill down enough and you find out they want to move
from one building to another building across the parking lot.
You realize a skateboard will do.
So it's that type of thing.
You have to go through that iterative discussion and drill
down, drill down, drill down until you get to the stop sign.
And by that, I mean, you know, you've come to the end of it
when they start repeating themselves over and over again.
Then there's nothing more to discover there.
Robin.
Yeah, hi.
One of the things that we're dealing with right now is international
builders from Turkey and China and Panama
and Afghanistan, I think we get it, Afghanistan.
I think we just got somebody from Afghanistan yesterday.
And, you know, we were thinking.
RVIA is the big 800 pound gorilla in the RV inspection world,
and they referred us to a company in Turkey that was building RVs
only because we can do remote inspections, I think.
And so we're trying to figure out what is our little secret sauce
that we could that we could utilize.
And one of the things that we do is we do everything remotely.
We do everything remotely.
And that may be need to be our focus.
Yeah, it sounded good when you said it.
For sure. Yeah.
But that's the experiment.
And that's why it takes courageous leadership,
because if you find out that is the thing.
Killing the other side of your business is hard,
very, very tough to do.
And that's why we are we are having difficulty with that, though, Dion.
International builders don't use U.S.
U.S. underwriter laboratory, U.S. products and things like that.
And there's a there's a problem with translation between,
you know, the languages and and also, you know, what is
what is a vent for a.
bathroom and they think it's an exhaust fan, it's really a plumbing vent, you know, so we're having some issues there. But if we can work through those, we might be on to something with these international builders.
Or perhaps a franchise model.
I've done a lot of franchising. That's a very powerful model for what you're doing, perhaps. Well, thanks, everybody. I really appreciate it. Thanks again, Jalen for jumping in and standing in for
Jenny and helping us out. We really appreciate it. Were there any other announcements, anything you need to tell us?
Just a reminder that we will have the end of call survey as soon as you close out Zoom. So if you want to give us any feedback or have more questions that you'd like to ask, please let us know. But thank you all so much for joining us and we will see you next week.
Thanks, guys.