John Jantsch (00:00): Hey, this is John, and before we get started, I have a gift for you for being such an amazing listener. Everyone’s talking about AI these days, but most of it’s about tactics. We’ve created a series of prompts we use to create strategy, and you can have them for free. Just go to dtm.world/freeprompts and grab yours. Now. Let’s get started.

(00:30): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Lisa McCarthy. She’s the co-founder and CEO of the Fast Forward Group, a professional development and executive coaching company that has transformed the careers and lives of more than 100,000 professionals at leading companies around the world, such as Amazon, TikTok, Google, JP Morgan, Chase, Ford, and more. Lisa is designed a simple and immediately actionable system of power principles to help people achieve success and fulfillment in their whole lives. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today because that is the basis of her book. Fast Forward five Principles to Create the Life you Want in just one year. So Lisa, welcome to the show.

Lisa McCarthy (01:16): Thank you. Great to be here.

John Jantsch (01:19): So I’m sure everybody starts here. I’m going to have to start here. You put a timeline on somebody creating the life they want in one year. So tell me a little bit about the basis of that and where that comes from.

Lisa McCarthy (01:32): Yeah. Well, what we’ve found throughout our lives and careers is that people have a to-do list. They have goals, and it’s challenging, particularly when you’re working in a fast-paced, high pressure, constantly changing company to zoom out. And so we have a lot of ambition dreams that mostly we keep to ourselves, and if we do share them, they occur as a someday. And so our system recommends that people go one year out. And it’s funny because when we first started working and developing the curriculum, Facebook was one of our first clients and they were working on a weekly basis printing money at the time, and they said, we can’t go even a quarter out. We could only think till Friday. And we said, well, in order to get people thinking big and believing and seeing more possible, we have to go out one year. And some people will say, oh, should we go three years? And we say, you know what? One year you really are putting a line in the sand and there’s things to commit to. And even if you don’t get to them by the end of the year, even if you fail, it’s worth playing for versus it’s staying in your head as a someday.

John Jantsch (02:49): And I think that’s a timeline that’s probably, people can think, yeah, okay, a year, I can stick with that. But that’s also some immediacy because there are plenty of books out there that talk about three and five-year planning for businesses, and I’m kind of with you. It’s almost kind of like a wish at that point rather than a goal, isn’t it?

Lisa McCarthy (03:06): Yes, very much. I think a year is viable and it also brings a little pressure, which is a good thing, which is a good thing because when something’s bound in time, people feel more accountable. And in our system, we give a very rigorous approach to designing a vision one year out and stating as if it’s already happened, which is very different from goal setting. And we ask them to be vivid and specific and measurable, not I want to improve something or I want to be a better manager. It’s very specific and measurable. And then ask them, coach them to come back to the present and look at what are the next three steps I could take? So very different from my action or to-do list.

John Jantsch (03:56): Yeah. So you use the term power principle. I think most people understand at least the basic concept of a principle. What are you bringing to the table with this idea of a power principle?

Lisa McCarthy (04:06): Our system. So there’s so much in life that we cannot control. We can’t control the economy, we can’t control the weather, especially now, we can’t control a lot of things that are going to happen in our company that gets sent on down from the top and we can’t control other people, although we’ll keep trying. So the whole book is about where, what can I control? Where do I have the power to improve and change? Where can I take a hundred percent responsibility? So each of the power principles focus on giving people actionable tools and exercises to zoom out and take control of your life. A lot of people are just in the passenger versus the driver’s seat, and we always say, you had the power all along. It’s up to you to exercise it. So declare bold vision, then we move to choosing a new perspective. You can control your mindset, creating an action plan. You can control where you spend your time and energy, and then we move into communication, another thing you can control. So it’s all about control and power in a positive way, in a positive way, and taking responsibility for how your life looks.

John Jantsch (05:26): Let’s talk a little bit about that first one. You mentioned the idea declare a bold vision. I mean, I think, I don’t know, I’ve done several thousand interviews on my podcast over the years, a lot of books on leadership and that idea of a vision for a business is really common idea. You have a specific exercise for that. I’d love it if you could unpack maybe why you, because I think a lot of people accept this idea. A lot of people have trouble actually doing it, so I wonder if you could kind of unpack your exercise for that.

Lisa McCarthy (05:55): Yeah. Well, the exercise is for an individual. So a lot of times people are doing visions for their team or their company, and those can be very compelling. And this is about at an individual level, a year from today, what does extraordinary success look like? Really defining it. So it’s not about wordsmithing, a three page, excuse me, a three sentence essay, which always used to drive me crazy when I took courses like that. This is about, we’re going to give you seven questions, John, and you are going to step off the treadmill and you’re going to answer those questions. And these questions are not just about business goals, these questions are about your whole life. So as an example, the very first question is a year from today, what are you known for? People are typically not conscious of how they’re showing up and who they’re being, not only as a leader or as a professional, but as a sister, as a parent, as a friend, as a colleague.

(07:06): So very early in the book and our program, you’re going to raise your consciousness because most people, they’re not even thinking they’re just going sleeping. Then we have traditional business questions about what would extraordinary look like in terms of growth. We have all disciplines. So for engineers, it’s going to look different from salespeople, it’s going to look different from lawyers. But you really want to define not only outcomes that are predictable. We don’t want to play unpredictable. This whole process is about playing for bold, uncomfortable outcomes that you may not had to achieve. And if you think about corporate America, it’s not designed for that. People want to play it safe under promise, over deliver, get paid, get promoted. This is not that exercise, this is that exercise. Keep it to yourself. We recommend sharing some of the things with your manager because if you’re not letting your manager know a year from today, here’s where I want to be in terms of my career, don’t plan on moving.

(08:09): Your hard work is not going to, excuse me, get you promoted, right? You have to take ownership of your career. So you’re writing down bold, uncomfortable business outcomes. If you don’t feel uncomfortable, you’re not playing big enough but uncomfortable in a way that you’re not up at two in the morning, uncomfortable in a way that I would feel so proud a year from today to have myself and my team accomplish that. And then how do you bring that same level of boldness and rigor and discipline to your personal life and to your relationships? I mean, we’ve had people in the program say, I don’t think about the quality of my relationships. I want to stay married. I want to get together with my friends. But they’re not really thoughtful about who are the people that really matter. And in the end, at our funerals, they’re not going to talk about 25% business growth or market share.

(09:07): I mean, it’s all important. Work is fulfilling. And if you drop out, whether it’s culture, friendships, health, and when we work with people, they’re dropping out a lot of those things. I’ve had people in the program that they’ll sleep when they retire, they’ll spend time with their kids after the I P O. And so this is an opportunity to really believe fundamentally that I can succeed and excel at work and I have enough time to do what’s important. I can take time and invest in my wellbeing. I can make a list of the relationships that matter and pay attention. For most human beings, this is a breakthrough. They’re just not thinking like that. They’re not thinking whole life. And that’s really what sets this book apart from most of the things on the market.

John Jantsch (10:00): I want to dive into number two, choose a new perspective. You talk about reframe negative stories that hold you back. I don’t think anybody would disagree with that, but a lot of those negative stories that hold people back, they’ve had a lifetime of carrying those around. How do you flip the switch on that?

Lisa McCarthy (10:18): Yeah, that is for sure. First off, I’ll state that my partner and I are not therapists. We’re not PhDs in brain science. The book does have a lot of research in it. And what’s made the biggest difference is practicing this model on our own lives and then sharing it with people throughout the last decade. You’re absolutely right, there’s negative. First of all, if you’re walking through life thinking, I just crushed that presentation, I’m going to get promoted. I’m such a great parent, I’ve never looked better, keep going. But that’s not usually what people are saying, right? We’re saying negative. We have negative stories about ourselves, other people and the circumstances, and they really do hold us back. Now, why do people change? They change because they ultimately unpack the negative story and recognize the cost. So step one is, what is my negative perspective or story?

(11:21): What is the cost of that story? And then what’s another story I could choose? So as an example, and I’ll share one of my own, when I was back in corporate America, there was a reorg. There were many, but I got layered under someone that I was not a fan of, and I went home, and this was more temporal. It wasn’t something that I had for decades, and a lot of times people have those too. But I was very upset, very disappointed, and went off about it with my husband, how did this happen? And this is not fair and this is never going to work, and I’m giving you the very short version. But my overall story was like, this is a mistake and it’s never going to work. And then when my husband said, well, are you going to put together your resume? Are you ready to find another job?

(12:14): I said, absolutely not. I love my team, I love this company. I’m paid well. And he said, well, am I going to have to listen to this every night? Which was a fair question. And this was really self-coaching. Self-coaching, using the model, which everybody that reads this book can do. I certainly could have suffered for months and months complaining to my colleagues and complaining to my friends. But given I didn’t want to change the circumstances and leave the company, I brainstorm new perspectives, which is what our model helps you do. And I ultimately took on, I can learn from every manager. Now, did I believe it at the time? It wasn’t authentic, but I then said, okay, so this is my new perspective. What can I do? Well, I can have breakfast with him and get to know him as a human being. I can share in a very proactive way our business vision and strategy and get his coaching on various things.

(13:14): And ultimately, I did. I did. So it was really about completing the past and all this stuff. I had a story about him. I have big collecting evidence. That’s what we do as human beings. And then unfortunately, human beings often choose to be right versus happy. So that’s what the model really helps you with. If you have a negative perspective about other people, we’re so busy being right and righteous, and I always say in the program like, Tom is not getting fired because that’s what they’re hoping. So Tom or that team is not getting eliminated. So if you need Tom or that team to be successful, what’s another perspective you could take on? And then we have people in the program that have collected evidence for years that I’m not good with conflict. I’m not good speaking in large groups. I’m not strategic, whatever it might be.

(14:11): I’m not good with numbers collecting evidence throughout the years. And that’s what stopped them. Because if you believe something to be true, you’re not going to take any actions to change it. So this has been so game changing for people to try on a new perspective about themselves and about other people, even if they don’t believe it at first. It may not be authentic at first, but they’re willing to say, okay, the current lens I’m looking through is disempowering and there’s high cost to me, so let me just go for it. Take on this new perspective. And it’s been massively valued to people we’re constantly hearing back over the last decade, they’ve had a breakthrough in confidence, they’ve had a breakthrough in communication and in relationships, both professional and personal. You’re not quitting your family, this is your family.

John Jantsch (15:04): You do have to admit though, that you kind of wanted to punch your husband a little bit at the time.

Lisa McCarthy (15:09): Probably it wasn’t the best night of our marriage, but I wanted him just to listen, but it didn’t play out that way.

John Jantsch (15:18): Alright, let’s talk about, you talk a lot about, in the book about language and changing your language of action, you actually call it. Can you give me some examples of where you’ve coached people through, here’s the language you’re using today, here’s the language of action that you might consider.

Lisa McCarthy (15:35): Yeah, so one of the biggest pain points our participants face in their companies is meetings. And the reason this is such a pain point is because people are generally going back to back with phone calls and meetings. There’s very little preparation. People are winging it. They may spend more time preparing for a client meeting and they’ve never been trained in. How do you manage a conversation towards a desired outcome? Because if you think about it, most meetings have an agenda. This is what we’re going to cover, which has a lot of what we’d call in the stands we’re going to describe, we’re going to forecast, we’re going to explain all of those things can make a difference. And we’re coaching people to get on the field, okay, what do we do on the field? We start with the finish.

(16:33): How will this meeting be successful at the end? What is our desired outcome from this phone call or this team meeting? We’re not just here to cover and inform. As an example, if it’s an internal meeting, we’re out to, if I’m a manager, I’m out to have my team leave appreciating how their work contributes to the greater vision and leave with ideas that are going to ignite them and inspire them to work in a productive way that week versus covering stuff that’s boring where people are checked out and on their phones. And this really has helped our, for example, our sales teams, because often we get with sales teams and they have a long deck largely about themselves because they’re so excited about their products and they have a lot to say, and you got to reel that back because we always need to stand in the customer’s shoes and say, what do they care about?

(17:30): And why should they care about anything that we have to say? And so that’s a breakthrough for a lot of sales teams. Let’s start with their business, their priorities, their competition. What would be a breakthrough for them? How have we helped other clients address those challenges and how can we help you? So I’m riffing that like, oh, it’s so easy. But people aren’t doing that. They’re going in capability pitches or not going in with a plan at all, particularly with internal meetings. So we’re training people in managing conversations, and we even have a conversation planner in the book. So you can start from the finish and ensure that it is a conversation versus a presentation. A lot of people are getting into a meeting, they’re presenting, they’re trying to get through their slides, and then at the end with four minutes left, they’re saying any questions?

(18:26): And that question, any questions is the death toll. Nobody’s going to say anything. Nobody’s going to say anything. So part of the training is if I really want to get feedback, I need to say, Sam, what are your thoughts on this? Or open up a question. What are you thinking right now? How does this fit in with the rest of your strategy? Does this match up with what you’re seeing your people are saying? So you’re asking open-ended questions. And one of the most powerful plays in managing conversations is you ask the questions and then you stare at people and then they ultimately speak. A lot of people, if they’re so uncomfortable with silence that they just move into the next question and start talking. So part of this breakthrough in communication is listening, is pausing, is giving people a chance to think, but it’s always about starting with the finish.

(19:26): And while mostly in the book we focus on professional application of this, it’s super relevant with coaching, whether it’s at work or at home, right? Because if I want to need to give some constructive feedback, I want to start with the finish and say, how am I going to leave this person empowered to believe that I care and see how changing his or her behavior and mindset will be a value to them? And that’s not usually, we’re really not being thoughtful about what’s happening over there, what’s happening over there, even with your kids. My kids will go on and on about some complaint and then I will have them feel heard. Got it, got it, got it, got it. And even though I’m dying to give advice, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to ask them, well, what do you think you should do? How would you like it to look? And this is all in the book, what are the coaching questions to help people help themselves, which is very hard to do because we’re dying to help everyone.

John Jantsch (20:42): Plus I just want the damn answer.

Lisa McCarthy (20:44): Just tell me what to do, just tell me what to, and that’s a big challenge in management and at home, except for my husband. He doesn’t want to be told what to do. Yeah, he says that he doesn’t work for me.

John Jantsch (20:59): Lisa, I certainly appreciate you just taking some time to come by the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. Why don’t you tell me where you invite people, where they might connect with you, find obviously about your work, and pick up a copy of Fast Forward?

Lisa McCarthy (21:09): Sure. So our website is fastforwardgroup.net , and there’s a tab right there where you can tap on the book. We’re in presale right now, and order it at a variety of different places and you’ll get it in September or it will make a massive difference in your career and life, and that’s how to find out more.

John Jantsch (21:31): Well again, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Lisa McCarthy (21:36): Great. Thank you, John.

John Jantsch (00:00): Hey, this is John, and before we get started, I have a gift for you for being such an amazing listener. Everyone’s talking about AI these days, but most of it’s about tactics. We’ve created a series of prompts we use to create strategy, and you can have them for free. Just go to DTM world slash free prompts and grab yours. Now. Let’s get started.

(00:30): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Eduardo Briceño. He’s a global keynote speaker and facilitator who guides many of the world’s leading companies in developing cultures of learning and high performance. Earlier in his career, he was a co-founder and CEO of Mindset works, the first company to offer growth mindset development services. We’re going to talk about his new book, the Performance Paradox: Turning The Power of Mindset into Action. So Edar, welcome to the show.

Eduardo Briceño (01:04): Thank you, John. Thanks for having me here.

John Jantsch (01:06): You bet. So let’s start with the title. What is the paradox?

Eduardo Briceño (01:10): The performance paradox is the counterintuitive phenomenon that if we’re always performing, our performance suffers. So we actually achieve lower results if we’re only performing. And by performing, I mean focusing on doing things as best as we know how, trying to minimize mistakes, what we’re doing come game time. That’s what I mean by performing.

John Jantsch (01:37): So the paradox of that then is you’re saying that’s actually the counterintuitive thought is instead of just getting better and better, you actually have burnout or people they perform worse? Is that what you’re saying?

Eduardo Briceño (01:48): Yeah, we can have burnout, but at the very least, like you’re saying, we don’t get better. So what happens is to understand the idea. If we take it out of our context, let’s look at, for example, sports. If you take any sport, you’re in the game. Say for example, you’re playing tennis and you’re in a championship, you’re trying to win the game, you’re having trouble with a particular move, you’re going to avoid that move during that match because all you care about is winning and doing things as best as you know how. But then for the great athletes, the people who become fantastic at what they do after the game, they go to their coach and say, coach, I have to work on this thing. This thing that I wasn’t doing during the game, I wasn’t doing. Now I need to work on that. So that’s a very different activity, an area of attention and focus than when we do, when we’re performing and often in work and life, we just get wrapped up in our to-do list, just worried about getting things done, and that keeps us at our current level of effectiveness rather than finding opportunities to be more effective over time and achieve more.

John Jantsch (02:52): It’s interesting, I’ve heard athletes talk about that, particularly athletes that have become entrepreneurs talk about this idea that I only play once a week. I’m only on game time once a week. The rest of the time I’m working on stuff, I’m practicing. Entrepreneurs are like, it’s 24 7, I’m a game time, and it really does make a lot of sense.

Eduardo Briceño (03:12): And so well with athletes, they have kind of the privilege that they can spend a lot of time in practice focused only on performance and then that short amount of time where they’re performing or focused only on improvement most of the time, and then that short amount of time where they’re in game time, they can show us what they have learned, how good they are in our normal jobs and life, we need to be getting things done all the time or most of the time. So the opportunity for most of us is to get things done in a way that’s also going to lead to improvement. So that we have two goals as we do things. One is to get things done, but the other one is to figure out ways to do things better. So that means we have to not be doing the same thing in the same way every day, but we have to be trying new things, experimenting, listening to your podcast to get ideas about what to do differently, reading, soliciting feedback from customers or measuring what we do in terms of marketing to see what works better, doing AP tests all the time.

(04:12): So those are examples of how we can get things done in a way that’s also going to lead to improvement.

John Jantsch (04:19): When I listen to you talk about that, I mean that you’re really suggesting something that’s very structured. I mean, this is not like nap time would be right? It’s like every day at two o’clock we should have nap time, or every day at two o’clock we should have learning time. I mean, is that really the only way it’s going to get done? There’s always more to do in the performance category, right?

Eduardo Briceño (04:40): Yeah. So structures are so powerful and habits, I agree. So for example, a structure that a lot of teams have is a weekly meeting. And so at LinkedIn for example, they have a weekly meeting with their top 100 leaders, and when they started focusing on growth mindset and on improvement, what they did is they tweaked the agenda for the weekly meeting where there’s a section of that meeting where every week they talk about what somebody learned the prior week during that time, anybody is welcome to come and say, Hey, this is what I learned, this is what I’m going to do differently going forward. So their colleagues can benefit from that lesson as well. Or when we’re doing marketing, making sure we have ways to measure the effect of the different campaigns to see what works better and continuing to iterate from there. Absolutely, the structures and habits are critical or individually what we do every morning. And for me, being deliberate about what I’m trying to get better at and reminding myself of what that is every morning, the morning habit becomes effortless. I do it every morning, but then it prompts me to be looking for opportunities to improve in that area throughout the day.

John Jantsch (05:47): So you actually identify a couple zones when people are in their performance zone as when they’re in their learning zone and learning’s not just simply reading a book, is it?

Eduardo Briceño (05:57): No, absolutely. So I mean, it can be right? Learning can be reading a book or watching something or listening to something, but learning can also be integrated with performance. So there’s the learning zone, the performance zone, and then there’s, when we do the two together, often people have talked about that as learning by doing, but the reality is we don’t just learn by doing. If we just do something, it doesn’t actually lead to learning to, but we can learn while doing so that we can do things and get things done in a way that we’re going to be generating ideas, trying new things, measuring what works better and getting better over time as we get things done.

John Jantsch (06:36): So again, thinking about this structure, would you suggest that people actually need to identify, I don’t know if we call it zones, but time for learning and then further that, I mean, sometimes learning by doing means you have to be really bad at something or less productive maybe to find it a better way. So we also have to have permission for that. We

Eduardo Briceño (06:58): Absolutely, when the stakes are high and mistakes are very costly, we switch to our performance zone and that is appropriate and that we need to be doing that when the stakes are high, when there’s a very important customer that we’re meeting with or it’s a championship game, we want to be putting our best foot forward. So to your point, we want to identify what does my performance zone look like? When is that and when do I want to not focus on learning and when and how do I want to focus on learning? What strategies am I going to use? Who is going to help me learn? Well, who am I going to be soliciting feedback from and being deliberate about that and aligning with our colleagues on that. Because if you’re going into a meeting with a customer and you’re not clear on, are we just going to be performing, putting our best foot forward doing what works, which is appropriate sometimes, or are we going to be experimenting in a small way here and just getting on the same page, right? Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:50): Yeah. So the book is broken up into two major sections, targeting the individual as well as then the organization, because those two, especially in the workplace, those two are going to go hand in hand how successful the individual is. Might have something to do with how open the company is to this idea. But one of the tools, I’m a consultant as well, so I love a good metaphor and framework. One of the tools that you talk about for the individual is this idea of a growth propeller. I wonder if you could kind of unpack that one.

Eduardo Briceño (08:19): Yeah. So the growth propeller is something that helps us think about how we want to continue to evolve ourselves to be great learners and great performers, and really it can help us think about how we want to shape ourselves to be successful in any area of our lives. And so at the picture propeller with three blades at the center of it, we have our identity and our purpose. And the three blades are beliefs, habits, and community. So when it comes to our identity, it’s really important for us to see ourselves as a learner, as someone who is continuing to change. And over time, sometimes we want to think of ourselves as naturals, like we are gifted and we have something special around us, and that’s why we can do things very well. And then that doesn’t lead us to continue to want to learn and get even better over time.

(09:09): And when we struggle, we take that as evidence that we’re not good, and so we go do something else. So our identity of being a learner and continuing to change over time, we need a purpose, a reason that we care about for both putting effort into learning and effort into performing. So that’s like we can be tinkering with things that we care about, thinking about the contribution and the effect that we have on our colleagues and our customers so that it gives us a purpose, like the energy to put effort into both zones. And then I unpack some kind of key beliefs, habits, and aspects of our community that help us be more effective in both of those zones. For example, belief about transparency is really important. When we make our thinking visible to other people, then we can learn more because they can give us feedback on our thinking and they can learn more because we’re making our thinking visible to them.

(10:02): So that’s an example of a belief. What do we think about transparency and how do we use it in our lives in terms of habits, how we respond to mistakes is what I call a responsive habit, but how do we practically drive our growth and what are some proactive habits or something to think about? And our community is super important, the people around us, because the people around us, whether they see themselves as learners, whether they act like learners with us and in collaboration with us, that affects us a lot. So who are we working with and living with and how are we continuing to shape ourselves? And the way that we collaborate with each other is something to think about as well.

John Jantsch (10:42): So further on the community aspect, it feels a little bit like you’re saying. I mean if you work at a place and you like the place you work at, but your coworker community is not necessarily going to drive you to meet your goals in the learning capacity, I mean, is that something you should proactively be thinking about building who can I, even if it’s networking or mentors or something, who can I surround myself with? Not necessarily just my coworkers?

Eduardo Briceño (11:09): Absolutely. Yeah, we can think about what can I most influence or control or influence. So the thing that I can most control and influence is myself. So how do I perceive things? How do I behave? And then there’s the people who are close to us and we can try to influence them. We can try to share an idea or a video or an article with them and say, Hey, this resonated with me. What do you think about this? Do we want more of this in our team? And see if you can continue to shape the culture of your team in the way that you want. Sometimes teams will respond to that, sometimes they won’t. And we can work on continuing to get better in our ability to influence others. But to your point, we can look also beyond our team, whether it is our friends or other people in other departments or mentors, and get those relationships that will support us and help us learn and grow over time.

John Jantsch (12:03): Like book clubs, we have a Slack channel that people are constantly dropping in, Hey, here’s something I read, I think everybody would be really interested in. So those little things can actually, I’ve seen them have impact on the culture.

Eduardo Briceño (12:15): Absolutely.

John Jantsch (12:17): Alright, so the second half you talk about this idea of a learning organization. So I’m going to ask you a question that would probably take you 20 minutes to answer, but I guess the short form, I mean, how do I create a learning organization? What are some of the things an organization can do, especially if they haven’t been seeing themselves as such?

Eduardo Briceño (12:37): So one is to start exploring these ideas and thinking about are we a know-it-all organization that values people who behave like know-it-alls or the people who are most respected in a team, people who are sure that they have the right answer, or are they people who might know a lot, but they’re continuing to expand their understanding, they’re asking questions, they’re soliciting other people’s ideas and exploring really, what do we think about this idea of continuous growth and Olympic athletes continue to work even to get even better, even though they’re the best in the world? Do we want that type of culture? So the intention, do we want to create a learning organization? What does that mean? And then depending on where you are in the organization, your next steps might be different. If you’re an executive, you might want to think about your executive team and talk about with the executive team, what are your core values that maybe you want to refresh?

(13:35): How do you give guidance to the organization on what key behaviors those core values entail? Maybe soliciting some feedback from the organization in terms of what are the strengths of the organization and here’s what we’re thinking. What do you think about this? We love your feedback, but even if we’re in the middle of an organization or in the bottom of an organization, we’re just starting out our careers. We can influence our circle, like our team, even within an organization that might be call it a know-it-all organization, there are teams that can be great learning teams, and the culture really is a culture with the people that we have the closest relationships with. So we can create those islands of excellence and of deep relationships and collaboration, even if we work in an organization that has whatever culture,

John Jantsch (14:20): So many organizations pay is based on performance evaluation. Are you suggesting that we should add learning goals as part of how we would evaluate the effectiveness of a team member?

Eduardo Briceño (14:35): Well, so there’s the performance evaluation and it is completely reasonable to have bonuses and performance be based on performance and on outcomes. But we see over and over across organizations and industries that the people who figure out systems and habits to make the learning zone part of their everyday life perform better. So those people achieve higher performance, they achieve higher bonuses because they figure out ways to engage in the learning zone on a daily basis. And so in performance management, it’s an opportunity to have people reflect not only on their performance goals, but also on their learning goals. What do I want to get better at? How am I going to go about it? Who might help me along the way? What resources can I tap and think about, okay, for the last quarter or the last six months, I said I was going to get better at X in these ways. How did that go? Did I actually get better? Is that actually making an impact? And if we share those learning goals with our colleagues, our teams, then that can be very powerful because they can give us feedback that’s relevant to that thing that we’re interested in along the way.

John Jantsch (15:45): What have you seen, what characteristics or traits do you find an organization is either really is abundantly clear that they have those and so they can adopt this? Or the backwards way to ask that is what traits are missing in organizations that try to do this? Because for example, anytime somebody comes and says, oh, here’s our new initiative, we’re going to do X, but there’s no trust because you’ve said that a hundred times and we’ve never done X. It’s pretty tough. So I asked you a question and then I sort of answered it probably, but I’ll tee that up. What are the characteristics you think really have to exist? A learning

Eduardo Briceño (16:24): Organization? People feel that continuous growth is a default, that the organization believes that they can continue to grow and expand their skills and develop throughout the organization. And that there’s resources for them, right? There’s resources for them to grow, whether it’s mentorship or through some organizations might have even role playing or simulation rooms or all kinds of different structures. And so part of that is, and you alluded to this, is that people feel safe to take risks, to try new things, to solicit feedback, to say, Hey, I am not sure that meeting went great. I’m not feeling great about it. I would love your ideas about what I could do better next time. Or in this particular meeting, I’m going to be working on this specific thing. I would love for you to look for that so that after a meeting you can give me feedback on it or I can give you feedback if I saw something that I thought would be an opportunity for greater impact. So where people can have open and honest, transparent conversations, feeling that’s bringing them closer together, getting to know each other better, and they’re contributing to each other’s learning and performance.

John Jantsch (17:36): I suspect there are organizations that the culture is such that people would see that actually as a weakness to be asking for help, to be saying, oh, I want to learn this new thing, or maybe this job, my zone of genius, I’d like to work on this because I’d like to go here. I mean, that takes a level of trust and transparency that maybe doesn’t exist in a lot of organizations.

Eduardo Briceño (17:59): Yeah, I agree. I think it doesn’t exist in a lot of organizations, so we have to build that trust. And what we’re saying is not that people are not competent, and so they need to spend more time learning in these organizations. People are very competent, but they want to get even better. So when we’re hiring somebody, for example, we don’t want to hire somebody who has learned the skills that are needed for the job. And even the better, the skills are better, but then we want to grow from there. We want to go from good to great, from great to greater.

John Jantsch (18:32): Yeah. Have you seen incentive packages and recruiting approaches that really are rewarding that growth mentality?

Eduardo Briceño (18:39): Yeah. So first there’s, in recruiting, there’s the employer brand. When you communicate with the candidates, do you communicate that this is a company that really will support your growth? And once people who want to work hard and continuing to develop themselves in collaboration with others. So there’s that kind of employer branding. Then there’s the onboarding of how do you onboard people and teach them how do we learn in this organization? What resources, habits, and structures do we have to learn? And also using that as an opportunity to get these people with fresh eyes to give you feedback on what they see because we can learn so much from these new people who are just seeing things with fresh eyes. And then in terms of compensation, when we tie monetary rewards to learning, there can be some unintended consequences. So it’s better actually to elevate the purpose of the work and the satisfaction that comes from growth and from the higher performance from growth and leave the compensation tied to actually the performance and the results.

John Jantsch (19:46): Yeah, I’ve actually seen some people kind of gamify it where it might not be compensation, but it’ll be some sort of perks from the company store or something like that, really just to kind of keep it fresh and gamify a little.

Eduardo Briceño (20:00): Totally. One of the companies that I mentioned in the book, many companies, it’s named Clear Choice Dental Implants, and they have some awesome games where people learn with each other through games. They have gamified their learning pathways in the organization. So that, for example, if you are in the middle of a learning progression to continue progressing, you have to help somebody who is earlier in their progression, maybe by giving them feedback or observing them and giving them feedback or something like that. So yeah, those gamifications can be really fun.

John Jantsch (20:33): Awesome. Well, Eduardo, are you want to, again, appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. You want to tell people where they can connect with you and obviously find out more about the Performance paradox?

Eduardo Briceño (20:43): Sure. So my website is briceno.com. It’s my last name.com. I have a monthly newsletter. I am active on LinkedIn, and the book is available wherever books are sold. It’s the performance Paradox, turning the power of mindset into action. Thanks again, John, for having me today.

John Jantsch (20:59): I appreciate you taking the time, and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road in real life.

Eduardo Briceño (21:04): I look forward to it.

John Jantsch (00:00): Hey, this is John, and before we get started, I have a gift for you for being such an amazing listener. Everyone’s talking about AI these days, but most of it’s about tactics. We’ve created a series of prompts we use to create strategy, and you can have them for free. Just go to dtm.world/freeprompts and grab yours. Now. Let’s get started.

(00:30): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Dr. Kirstin Ferguson. She’s one of Australia’s most prominent leadership experts and a highly experienced business leader in her own right beginning her career as an officer in the Royal Australian Air Force. Kirstin has held roles that have included c e O of an international consulting firm and was appointed acting chair and deputy chair of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation by the Australian Prime Minister. We’re going to talk about her latest book, Heart and Head: The Art of Modern Leadership. So Kirstin, welcome to the show.

Kirstin Ferguson (01:13): Hi, lovely to be here. Great to meet you, John.

John Jantsch (01:16): So did you get to fly airplanes?

Kirstin Ferguson (01:20): Well, I did. I wasn’t air crew in the Air Force. I married a fighter pilot and I worked at a squadron, but that wasn’t my core role, but I certainly got to go off and I have a few flights.

John Jantsch (01:32): So with the term modern leadership, I mean, my first question I guess is how modern does leadership need to be? What has changed, let’s say in the last five years when it comes to leadership that it needs modernization?

Kirstin Ferguson (01:46): Oh gosh, how much has the world changed in five years? It’s incredible. And I think this whole idea of what I’ve written about head and heart, the art of modern leadership, it’s really around understanding that those old models that we all grew up with, seeing leaders who felt they needed to have all the answers, and that being a leader meant that you had a solution for problems that you were able to navigate through really difficult situations. All of that remains true, but so too does being prepared to rethink what you thought you knew and being prepared to be vulnerable and not have all the answers. And I think that’s what leading with your head and your heart is all about. And the art of modern leadership is knowing what’s needed and when.

John Jantsch (02:31): So is there a shift that you think has gone on in the workplace that makes this a very practical, I mean, I can see some people saying, okay, we have to change some things, but why? I mean, some people we’re going to get into the head part and the hard part specifically, and I think some people have always been wired that way, but what is sort of the practical reason why people need to be looking at a new approach?

Kirstin Ferguson (02:54): I think expectations have absolutely changed, and we can see that even about the debate with work from home, suddenly you have employees saying, actually, I quite enjoyed working from home. I don’t want to do the commute and I’m productive, and they’re speaking up about it. People are speaking up about social issues, wanting their organizations to be actively campaigning and CEOs being vocal about those kinds of challenges. So I think expectations have changed, and no longer do we want those leaders who are just treating work as something that we have to do. And here it is, and I don’t care what you think about it. And so leaders who don’t incorporate others into their decision-making or put people at the center suddenly look like dinosaurs and they stick out. And I think we’re reading in the press every day about leaders that are still that old school and now shareholders and investors are saying, it doesn’t actually matter how much you might know the industry or your connections or whatever it might be, that technical skill we used to promote on you now equally need to be able to lead people and bring them behind you with a vision and a purpose.

John Jantsch (04:07): Would you say that this is a generational shift or is this really just culturally, every generation or every age, every decade group, whatever you want to call them, is also demanding this?

Kirstin Ferguson (04:20): I think all generations. I mean definitely you’re hearing it loudly from millennials and that generation who frankly aren’t prepared to take it anymore. They’re finding ways to quit the traditional workforce and work in a gig economy or whatever it might be to avoid having to work with these kinds of leaders. So yes, definitely that generation, but I think even older generations who are wanting some flexibility with how they work with people who instead of retiring fully, are saying, well, why can’t I do some work from home a few days a week? So I think there’s a real shift in working to live, not living to work and wanting to find leaders who are able to be flexible with that.

John Jantsch (05:06): One of the things you talk about a lot in this book that, and I think this is growing also, it used to be a leader had to have a title. You were a director, you were this or you were that, and you kind of talk about, Hey, maybe everybody’s a leader.

Kirstin Ferguson (05:22): Yeah, well, I firmly believe they are. Now, don’t get me wrong, not everyone is the c e O or the president. Clearly that would lead to chaos. But I think in our own lives, in our families, we are leaders at our local sporting club, whatever it might be, we are leading. I used the story I saw during the pandemic of a supermarket checkout operator who had to deal with a really difficult customer in that moment. She handled herself brilliantly, and she was leading in that moment, yet under the old models and definitions of leadership, she would’ve been the most junior person in organization. And I think once we start to recognize that we are leading in all aspects of our life, then we realize that every moment is actually an opportunity to leave an impact with others. And if we are formal leaders with those titles, reminding people that we lead that they too are leaders in their life is really important too.

John Jantsch (06:20): And that’s probably a cultural shift inside of a lot of organizations. It used to be kind of the top down approach. And I think that actually making that an expectation, like that person you mentioned as the example in a lot of organizations, they were like, sorry, it’s not my job. And I think that what you’re suggesting is that we can actually empower people to make leadership type decisions, right?

Kirstin Ferguson (06:44): Yeah, exactly. And I think we are having people make decisions, so people make decisions every single day. The way the words we use, the actions we role model, the behaviors we demonstrate, all of those are leadership decisions and moments. And I think for most of us in a really busy lives, we often miss those moments. We miss the opportunity to have an impact. And if you think back, John, to all of the leaders in your life who have had both a positive and negative influence on you, it’s all been moments. You can think back to moments when a leader made you feel really small or undermined you or you don’t forget those moments. But I guess it’s harder to look in the mirror and recognize when we are impacting others on those moments as well.

John Jantsch (07:34): I was going to get to that, but since you mentioned moments, I’ll jump to it. As I read that part, I was thinking as a parent, same thing as a teacher, same thing, right? There are these moments. So there I feel like that puts a heap of responsibility on a leader to think they’re always watching every moment. It’s like, how do you know the core moments? How do you

Kirstin Ferguson (07:56): Deal? Yeah. So whether you like it or not, I mean, I’m a parent as well, whether you like it or not, our kids are always watching. So it’s not as though you can just say to them, Hey, can you just give me a break for a week? I’d like to just not have to be responsible for you and the impact I have on you, none of that is reality. So I think the more we recognize that it’s not so much an overwhelming weight of pressure, it’s simply being aware and being mindful of the fact that those moments matter and they’re happening every day. You may as well be conscious of them.

John Jantsch (08:35): No, I don’t agree with you. It’s exhausting. I’m just teasing.

Kirstin Ferguson (08:40): It sure is.

John Jantsch (08:42): So we’ve gone on for almost half the show and haven’t really talked about Head and Heart, which is the title of the book. So kind of explain a little bit what you mean by head and heart. I think most people have an idea, but I’d love to hear from you,

Kirstin Ferguson (08:56): And I mean, I’m glad most people have an idea because the idea is it’s a metaphor we’ve all heard of and used before. It’s obviously not literal. However, research shows that actually the way you think about your head and your heart impacts your performance. And so what I wanted to do is research, well, what are the attributes of these modern leaders that stand out on the world stage and locally, and those leaders that we all know who just seem so different to who we’ve been led by in the past, but yet who seems so right for now. So I’m an adjunct professor at one of our universities and and researched what those attributes are. And so leading with the head is around curiosity, wisdom, which is around making decisions and gathering data and evidence. It’s around capability, which is growth mindset, which many of your listeners would be aware of, and importantly, perspective.

(09:49): And that was the attribute found to be the most highly correlated with being a modern leader. And it’s in layman’s terms, reading a room and understanding the environment you’re leading in, but importantly also see who’s missing from that room and what’s going on outside of the room as well. So they’re the four attributes of leading with the head. The four of leading with the heart are around humility, self-awareness of the impact we’re having on others, empathy. And so being able to put yourself in other shoes and then courage, speaking up for what you believe in. Now, all eight of those attributes, often at qualities we’ve all got, everyone has those to some degree, but not everyone brings them to work. And so leading with your head is what we’ve been rewarded for at school and at college and in our jobs. We get promoted from being capable and making decisions. Yet I’m arguing that modern leaders are also able to excel at those heart attributes as well, and that it’s those leaders who know what’s needed when that will succeed best in today’s world.

John Jantsch (11:02): Okay, because everybody wants one answer. What’s the most important?

Kirstin Ferguson (11:06): Yeah. Well, as I said, of the data shows that perspective is definitely the one that’s most highly correlated. So if you were to score highly, and I should say for all listeners, go and visit head heart leader.com, head heart leader.com, totally free. You can go and self-assess your own head heart leadership, and you’ll get a personalized report. But what you want is to score highly in perspective, because that means you’re more likely to score high in the others as well. And perspective was linked most highly or correlated with empathy. So having the two that balance head and heart is really helpful. And it’s all about reading a room.

John Jantsch (11:50): So I will tell you, I did no research, but I’m going to tell you from my perspective, what I think I see in a lot of leaders is without self-awareness, you can’t really pass go. I mean, you’re not going to work on any of this stuff or even realize that you’re deficient in it without that. At least accept bit that I have to Yeah, it is. Yeah, it’s, it’s me.

Kirstin Ferguson (12:12): So how do you,

John Jantsch (12:14): Go ahead.

Kirstin Ferguson (12:15): Yeah, self-awareness is clearly incredibly important. I’m not going to argue it’s more important, but there was one question out of the 24 that people can do if they do their head heart scale, that came from the self-awareness attribute. And that is about knowing your limitations. So of all the questions, if you don’t know your limitations, then you’re likely to think you are the smartest person in the room. You’re likely to think you’re always right. All of those attributes of leaders that we don’t want to see.

John Jantsch (12:48): Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess what I was saying is it’s not necessarily the most important in my view, but it definitely, it’s almost like you can’t really start on the others without some level of it. Totally.

Kirstin Ferguson (13:00): And I notice that with people who come and hear me speak and who buy the book, it’s all the people who are already aware that they want to be a better leader. The dinosaurs we’re trying to get to, they don’t tend to think they need it.

John Jantsch (13:12): I don’t need all that happy crap. So how do you suggest, and I know that in addition to the leader scale, you talked about you also have some elements of an action plan, but how do you suggest somebody, I mean, these are great words, but for a lot of people they’re just words. How do you go to work on building these core attributes?

Kirstin Ferguson (13:38): Well, of course, luckily if you buy the book, then we can deal with all of them in detail about the action plan. But the most important thing that people need to do, and it comes back to your comment about self-awareness, is to have a team of people around them who will give them feedback. We are our own worst judges of how we’re actually going. And there’s some data that shows that 95% of us think we’re self-aware. Only 10 to 15% of people we work with would agree. Now that terrifies me, John. So that is reflective that most of us think, but everyone else has a different perspective. So I think being able to give and receive feedback really well and hear it without getting defensive is an incredibly important skill. So if you’re going to start anywhere, that’s where I would start.

John Jantsch (14:27): So particularly, and I could be wrong on this, it’s probably both camps, but particularly in matters of the heart, it feels to me like remote work has made that so much harder and not just work from home, but a lot of people are building entire distributed teams from the start. And it feels like some of the things that seem to translate better in person maybe are lost or much more difficult and remote. How do you suggest that people adapt to that with some of these more, I used to call ’em handshakes and hugs. It’s like the handshake was kind of the head part where the hug part was something that you obviously did more from a heart place, a lot harder to do all of this across video.

Kirstin Ferguson (15:12): So I have a different perspective, John. I think there’s just different ways. Not everyone was getting handshakes or wanted hugs even before Covid. And I think as long as we’ve had multinational corporations and large companies, we haven’t worked in the same offices as everyone that we’ve worked with. I think the onus is on leaders to work a bit harder. I do think you have to find ways to make those moments matter, to be interested and focused on what’s going on in the lives of the people that you’re leading. That might be on the other side of the world, but I think if we say that it has to be a physical co-location, then that’s really quite limiting in thinking about how you connect with people.

John Jantsch (15:59): No, and I would never suggest that frankly, my company’s been distributed for 15 years. Half of my, I have people that our entire relationship is a video

Kirstin Ferguson (16:10): Screen. Exactly.

John Jantsch (16:11): But I would also say that you have to be far more like the moments you talked about. They just don’t happen as often. So you have to be far more,

Kirstin Ferguson (16:21): And that’s exactly what I’m saying. You actually have to work harder. It’s harder work. Yes, it’s, but it’s not impossible. And I think the payoff for those who want to work remote, remembering it’s not for everyone. I know with my husband, he loves going into the office. He loves talking to people and catching up over lunch and doing all those things, and it’s good for him. So that’s how he works. But whereas I’m more than happy to work from home and catch up with people intentionally online. But if you’ve got people like me, then we need to find ways to make those connection times. And it’s really just now this shift we talked about at the beginning of not treating everyone exactly the same. We’ve now really got to understand the people we lead and what motivates them, what drives them, and how they work best.

John Jantsch (17:10): Yeah. You talk about one of the, I don’t know, I’ll call it responsibilities of a modern leader, is to see their role also as building a family tree of leaders. And I love that idea. So talk a little bit about how you address that idea.

Kirstin Ferguson (17:28): Yeah. Well, I mean it’s really being, again, conscious that you are there to develop the next generation of leaders. So if you are so fortunate to be running your own business or at the top of the tree, that formal tree, then really succession and making sure that the people coming up behind you are better than you, and that is not something that you should be fearful of, but C is your main job. And so for me, that’s what building a Family Tree of Leaders is about. It’s all about those opportunities that if you’re in a meeting and you are doing all the talking as a leader and you’re giving all the solutions and coming up with all the answers, then you’re not using that moment as a coaching opportunity to really ask great questions. So every single opportunity to build leaders in others and leadership in others, I think needs to be taken by those of us who have been around a while.

John Jantsch (18:24): Yeah, I think you’re also telling people that you don’t have to use your brain, so I’ll wait and I’ll tell you what to do, which is very disempowering, but it also means you as a leader are going to have to come up with all the ideas.

Kirstin Ferguson (18:37): Exactly.

John Jantsch (18:39): I have worked with many entrepreneurs over the years, so not somebody who’s been hired to do a certain role, who maybe is years of management experience. A lot of times entrepreneurs when they’re building an organization, it is on the fly. I mean, it’s the first time they’ve ever done half of these things. And I think that for them books like this, or really taking time to reflect on building that skill is even more important because in many cases, they’ve never had an example to go by. So how would you suggest somebody like that who is really, everything they’re doing in many ways is just being done on gut? How do they start addressing more what you would probably call normal leadership practices? How do they acquire those?

Kirstin Ferguson (19:32): Well, I don’t know a person that hasn’t worked for a bad leader. So not only have they not seen good leadership, they’ve actually seen actively terrible leadership ideas and traits. And I think we learn as much from that as we do from working with good leaders. So if you are feeling alone and you’re the only one who gets it, my advice is it can be very frustrating trying to change someone else. You can’t do that. You can only look after yourself. And if what you are doing is working in your context and the feedback you’re getting confirms that, then keep going, keep being you and leading in the way that is working for you. I think it’s important to be aware that style, however it works, might not work in the next place. And that’s perspective that’s leading and understanding your environment and adapting. You mentioned at the beginning, I started my career in the military. I then went into law firms with lawyers. I then went and led a group of psychologists, and so every time I had to completely adapt the way that I led, but I brought tools from each of those roles. But understanding and really reading the room is critically important. So my advice would be get feedback. That’s the only way you’re going to know and to recalibrate if you need to.

John Jantsch (20:52): And occasionally listen. I bet.

Kirstin Ferguson (20:55): Always listen, always.

John Jantsch (20:58): Well, Kirstin, I appreciate you taking a moment to drop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Do you want to invite people where they might connect with you or certainly find more about your work and about head and heart?

Kirstin Ferguson (21:08): Absolutely. So if they visit head heart leader.com, you can do the scale, get onto Amazon, the books available to order now. It’s out very shortly. Perhaps when you’re listening, it will be out. So jump onto Amazon and my website is Kirstin ferguson.com. K I R S T I N ferguson.com. Can’t wait to hear from your listeners.

John Jantsch (21:31): Kirstin, don’t call me Kristen Ferguson. Right?

Kirstin Ferguson (21:36): Gets everyone.

John Jantsch (21:37): It does get everyone. So again, thanks for dropping by and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days when I’m in your hemisphere.

Kirstin Ferguson (21:46): Look forward to it. Thanks, John.

John Jantsch (00:00): Hey, this is John, and before we get started, I have a gift for you for being such an amazing listener. Everyone’s talking about AI these days, but most of it’s about tactics. We’ve created a series of prompts we use to create strategy, and you can have them for free. Just go to dtm.world/freeprompts and grab yours. Now. Let’s get started.

(00:30): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Angelo Ponzi. He’s a marketing and branding strategist that works with small to mid-market companies as their fractional chief marketing officer, fractional CMO. His company Craft focuses on three strategic pillars for success, insights brand and plan to develop effective and efficient programs for building enduring brands and sustainable business growth. So Angela, welcome to the show,

Angelo Ponzi (01:03): John. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.

John Jantsch (01:05): So I still think there’s a lot of confusion around it, like a lot of terms in marketing. So I’m just going to go ahead and say, if somebody says you, you’re a fractional CMO, what is that? How do you describe that? How do you define that term?

Angelo Ponzi (01:17): Yeah. Well, I think simply it’s a part-time outsource contract situation. So for me, fractional being that it’s not a short-term contract, it’s a long-term engagement where I’m going into the organization or depending on my remote client, where I’m engaged on a weekly basis, sometimes daily basis with them. And so think of me as the guy down the hallway, not the guy across the country. Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:48): So I mean, would you describe a business that you think is a typical great fit for that? I mean, most people are familiar with the C-Suite roles, a chief marketing officer inside of an organization, but what kind of business or what kind of challenge are they facing that you think makes an ideal fit for a fractional strategic marketing hire?

Angelo Ponzi (02:10): Sure. In most of the companies that I’ve dealt with, they have some kind of a marketing manager or a team in there. Typically, they tend to be a little more transactional in nature, just tactically oriented. And so I hear things like, our sales aren’t growing, our messaging is not correct. Our competition is eating our lunch. And so looking at those kinds of issues, so they can’t get to that next level with someone who’s more of a tactical transactional person. So they may start to think of a strategic person, however, a full-time CMO doesn’t necessarily come cheap. And so they wrestle with how do I get a senior person without having to have all that expense? And that’s typically what get engaged or when they’ll call me, because again, depending on the client, how much time I’m engaged, but I sit in that C-suite level and helping develop strategies and directions and messaging and competitive differentiators, and then drive those down into the people that actually execute.

John Jantsch (03:21): Do you get yourself in engagements where they’re like, Angelo, this is great, but who’s going to do all this? I mean, is there ever an expectation that you are going to do the work or that any strategic, if somebody hires A CMO, do they feel like they’re also hiring an implement mentor, or is it strictly separate functions?

Angelo Ponzi (03:43): Yeah, well, that’s always the dilemma for me. It’s my nature to tend to go across the line and start facilitating and doing, but I’m pretty clear upfront is what my purpose is. If someone calls me and says, look it, I need a website, I need a social media or digital campaign, my reaction is let’s talk about your messaging, your strategies, and if that’s not correct, I have to start to the left, right? I got to talk to your customers that look at the competition, examine the marketplace and work our way towards execution. So I like to refer to myself sometimes as an architect, I’m building that foundational strategy. And then once the plans are in place, then I will sometimes call myself a general contractor and therefore I’ll bring in outside people to execute or work with the internal teams. But I do cross the fence, but a lot of times they’re like, I’m not going to pay you to frankly write a blog. It’s too expensive.

John Jantsch (04:44): Yeah. So do you find internal teams, I hear this a lot. Do you find that sometimes there’s some turf? Like, wait a minute, I thought that’s what we did. Why are we bringing in this outside person doesn’t know our business? Is there ever some turf wars sometimes, even though you’re brought in maybe to help them orchestrate better?

Angelo Ponzi (05:03): I can honestly say, actually, I can honestly say it’s only happened maybe once or twice where I’ll spend, I’m thinking of a technology company. A couple of years ago they brought me in, the marketing person was out of college for a couple of years. He had his own vision. They brought me in, I revamped everything, redid all their messaging, their plans, and then here’s the plan to implement. And within three months, he was back doing what he wanted to do because they didn’t know how to really manage him. But I would say in most situations, I’m very collaborative, so it’s not my way or the highway. So I find that even after I leave, they’re implementing. I have a company in the streaming space that I helped them when they launched. That was five years ago. When I see him constantly, he’ll be the first to say, I’m still working on the strategies you gave us five years ago. And so that’s really rewarding. But yeah, that is always a challenge, right? Because not invented here, somebody wants to put their own mark on it.

John Jantsch (06:08): Yeah. I’m sure there are some cases, I’m going to assume there’s some cases you’ve run into where they’re considering hiring you versus considering hiring a full-time strategic hire. If you were trying to help somebody work through the pros and cons, besides the cost component, which is obviously a huge selling point on the fractional approach, what are some other things that you might suggest that why the fractional CMO model is a good idea for them?

Angelo Ponzi (06:39): Well, partially too. It’s really what does that strategic leader need to do and what is the long-term play with that leader? Are you going to have somebody who’s who can totally stay engaged throughout the time and do all the things that you need ’em to do, otherwise they start to gravitate into the tactical and then you don’t really need that. I have a current client where we’re looking, I’m filling the strategic leader role, and at the end of the day, they don’t need a full-time me, but they need more worker bees, if you will. And so my recommendation is keep me engaged. Of course, that’s what I would like, but instead of hiring someone like me full-time, take that money and then let’s invest in more people at the real marketing level that the tactical level that needed to get things done. I was brought in last year with a consumer products company that had a CMO.

(07:35): They let him go, and he called me and said, Hey, I’m thinking about hiring. I think I need a fractional. And then about three weeks later, he called me and said, no, you know what? I decided to go. And then three months later, he called me and said, I haven’t found anybody. I think my original idea was great, come in for 90 days, help me. And I was there for eight months before we brought in. I helped bring in my own replacement at that point in time. They really needed somebody there. And there was a situation where I was there three days a week, so I literally was in the office and spending the majority of my time working for that organization.

John Jantsch (08:12): Do you find that to me, one of the benefits I think too, is a lot of times you bring in that CMO, well, they’re going to say, we need to build a team internally. And so they start kind of down the traditional path of hiring, whereas I’m assuming that in many cases you kind of look at this and say, no, we just need this expertise to do this one thing, and then we can rent this to do this one thing. And I mean, you’re really able to put together a much more affordable approach for exactly what they need, aren’t you?

Angelo Ponzi (08:41): Yeah, no, absolutely. It’s current client, they had a digital firm primarily writing blogs, and I analyzed it, and every blog had to be rewritten. And after eight, nine months, you would’ve thought that they understood the business. So I tried to engage with them, and ultimately we ended up parting ways. But instead of hiring another firm just like them, I went out and found a content writer that for a fraction of the cost, I could have twice as many blogs for literally a third of the money that I was paying them already. And so that is one of the things I look at. To me, I always look at any client I work with is my business. I was fortunate to, over the years, I grew a couple of businesses, I was fortunate to sell them, and I understand that a dollar is a dollar, and if I have to watch it for me, I have to watch it for you. So it’s really about maximizing the talent and the dollars that we have.

John Jantsch (09:42): I have been doing this approach probably for 15 years, but didn’t use the term fractional CMO because it didn’t mean anything to a small mid-size business at the time. Are you finding there’s a much more recognition of the concept and the term when you go out and talk to particularly mid-size business owners?

Angelo Ponzi (10:00): Yeah, absolutely. And I’ll go back. I mean, I’m heading into my 10th year, and in those first three or four years, it was like, I don’t understand what a fractional is. Are you contract? Are you outsourced? What are you, right? So there was different terms floating around. I haven’t had anybody really recently say they don’t understand it. I just say, you’re renting my time basically during the course of the week. So I think it’s better understood. I’d even think some of the value of having someone like myself that clients find now versus because it’s a tough decision, do you spend that kind of money? I had a client the other day that, again, looking at bringing in more workers than strategic leaders, and he said to me, well, what if we could hire you? And I suppose my answer was, you can’t. It’s not what I want to do because I knew I would eventually, I would just be pulling my hair out because they don’t need someone full-time like me.

John Jantsch (11:00): So as you’ve grown this and scaled it yourself, are there some hard lessons learned that you might share to say these are some of the landmines that you might look for?

Angelo Ponzi (11:14): Well, I think first of all, for me, and unfortunately it was a very hard lesson. I had an opportunity back in maybe 17, I think it was, to go in as a fractional, but it was like an eight month contract. And I was like, this is great. The money was great. I was excited, and when the contract was over, I was sitting there. I have no business. I wasn’t doing any marketing, I wasn’t keeping the pipeline. So anybody out there listening, if you’re doing what I do or something even similar, having your own agency, I mean, it is a constant balance of doing new business while you’re servicing the clients. I personally now, I would say in the course of the week, I spend a full day throughout the week, but networking, doing my own marketing, doing stuff like this and just making sure that I’m staying ever present, because you just never know.

(12:09): I mean, I have one prospect that I pitched in February. He literally said, you’re hired, but there’s no contract yet. Now it’s August. I still think you’ll come around, but I’m on his time. He’s not on my time. So that’s probably the biggest lesson that I’ve learned and making sure that you have a point of view and you put yourself out there. I mean, I have a blogging program, a newsletter program. I do emails, I do LinkedIn, I do public speaking. I just want to be able to have content. It’s all content to me to refer

John Jantsch (12:44): People too. Absolutely. Yeah. We actually teach people how to start this model, and I tell them, especially when they’re just getting started, I said, the thing nobody tells you is about 50% of this job is selling, but that’s true of really any business. When you start it, that kind of leads to one of the challenges I see a lot of people, how do you scale this model? I mean, in the traditional sense, somebody’s A CMO, they jump out on their own. They go, I’m going to be a fractional CMO, and they end up selling a fourth of their time and basically saying, I’m fully employed. I’m getting paid well for my time, but I can’t really scale a business. Have you run into that? Have you addressed that?

Angelo Ponzi (13:25): Yeah, it’s a really interesting challenge. So before I formed my agency, for example, this was many years ago, I actually, they didn’t call it fractional, but I broke off as a consultant. And so I left an agency, decided to be a strategic planner for agencies, and then eventually I came to the conclusion after about three years, why am I doing this for you? Why don’t I do it for myself? And so I kind of scaled that. So in this particular model for me, I have identified other CMOs, fractional CMOs or VP leaders, if you will, that are out on their own that I can partner with. One of my biggest clients last year is actually a competitor, but I have a background in research. So they don’t do research. They don’t do really branding and messaging and positioning. They’re more kind of internal management. And so we compliment each other.

(14:28): So one of the things that I did to scale is I identified in my trading area who my competitors are. I’ve literally met with every one of ’em trying to figure out are we really competitors or can we work together? And I would say the majority of ’em I can work with. And so I’ve also identified in some of the other key areas. So I have a business analyst that works with me that I pretty much dominate. I have a data scientist that works with me. I have a brand strategist that actually I worked with for years, even in my own agency that happened to, I lost their job during covid and now works for me as kind of a behind the scenes. So I’ve been scaling by putting other people in place, frankly, to do some of the work that allows me to continue to devote some of my time to networking and building the business, but also when I have to be in front of a client,

John Jantsch (15:23): The mistake I see some people make is just like, you get 25% of my time, what do you want? And it’s like they’re dictating. There’s no scope in agencies. We’d scope things out. And I see a lot of people when they do these consulting things, they don’t do that. And so they’re sort of at the whim of a client who doesn’t really know what they need. And I think that’s a key change that I think can allow people to scale this.

Angelo Ponzi (15:51): Yeah, well, one of the things I did to get around that is I created an assessment that I give at the beginning of every engagement just to really try to understand where they think they are, where they really are, where they think they are, but also among the team, I look for alignment, internal alignment. And so that has allowed me to actually through the analysis to say, okay, here’s where we’ve got some real issues and some problems you want to be, I’m just going through this with a client now where when I joined them back in February, they had a $5 million goal for this year increase in revenue. Well, as I started to dig into the data, it’s like, where’d that number come from? Your average growth is only 8% over the last three years. How do you go from 8% frankly to a 37% increase?

(16:39): I don’t see how you’re getting there. So some number was picked out of the air. So trying to bring, creating strategies, now that’s giving me guidance as opposed to, what do you think? If I would’ve just said, okay, I’m going to support a 37% increase, which I did originally, and then eventually I’ve swung them back to say, okay, how are we going to get, maybe it’s 15%, not the eight, but the 15. And I literally just said this to one of my marketing managers today. There’s an endless amount of things to do in marketing. You’ve got a plan and you always go back to the plan and just if you got, you are unsure of your messaging or somebody in sales is pushing back on you, try to understand what’s happening with them. Go talk to them, go listen to a call. So I find that sometimes in that marketing manager role, they tend to go, oh, well, that was my assignment. I did it and now what do I do?

John Jantsch (17:34): Yeah. It’s interesting. I find that we spend as much time, especially early on telling people what not to do as opposed to what to do, because always this temptation to say, oh, there’s a new thing out there. We have to do it. As opposed to doing any of them, right?

Angelo Ponzi (17:51): Yeah, exactly.

John Jantsch (17:52): And that’s what I was going to ask you kind of halfway answered it anyway, but let’s say we get through the assessment. Obviously the assessment’s going to tell you maybe some direction, but do you typically focus on, do you find that you end up focusing on the same thing pretty frequently? What to fix first, so to speak?

Angelo Ponzi (18:10): Actually, no, because they have, it’s like our sales aren’t growing or we’re not achieving, or we think we have an issue. And I have found that if I can execute my assessment in the process that I do, I can uncover things that they’re not thinking about. Good case in point, this was last year working with a manufacturing rep organization, been around for 70 plus years. And so in talking to them and say, our clients love us, they’re mechanical engineers, they know us. We’ve been, we’re a focus. We’re always included, but I got them to agree to let me talk to their customers. Originally it was like, wow, I don’t waste your time. What we found is that they were right. Everybody knows them, everybody includes them. However, their primary customers were about ready to retire. The new generation of engineers had no idea who they were or knew them, but they were now thinking about environmental products and sustainability products, not the gas guzzlers, if you will, that are being put out. And so all of a sudden we identified a potential opportunity that they would’ve never seen until it happened. So now they were able to get ahead of it. So it’s that kind of stuff that we get to uncover, but that wasn’t one, that wasn’t something they told me to go do. That was just something that came, cream of the cop came rising up and we able to tackle it.

John Jantsch (19:41): Yeah, I have had so many insights over the years by talking to people’s customers. I mean, they know very little about why their customers buy from them sometimes. It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it? Or they make assumptions that are wrong

Angelo Ponzi (19:53): Or what the salespeople tell ’em. Right? Right. There’s a question I always like to ask is I ask the clients, do you think your clients are buying, are aware of all the products and services you sell? And almost always they say no. And to me it’s like, well then what are you doing to educate them? You could be leaving a lot of money on the table if they just knew more. And then we find out I asked those questions on the flip side, and almost across the board, the client will say, now I don’t really understand all the stuff they sell. I only know this. So right there, there’s a gap, right. So anyway,

John Jantsch (20:30): It’s fine. Yeah, that’s actually some easy money sometimes, isn’t it? Well, Angela, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by. You want to invite people to connect with you anywhere or find out more about your work.

Angelo Ponzi (20:39): Sure. That would be great. The best place, of course, is to go to LinkedIn. You can connect with me there. That’s the easiest. Also, all my contact info is there. As far as my website, I actually encourage people to sign up. I do publish a newsletter through LinkedIn every couple of weeks, and so do that. And that’s the best way to find out more about me.

John Jantsch (20:59): Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you taking a few moments out of your day, and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Angelo Ponzi (21:05): Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity.

John Jantsch (00:00): Hey, this is John, and before we get started, I have a gift for you for being such an amazing listener. Everyone’s talking about AI these days, but most of it’s about tactics. We’ve created a series of prompts we use to create strategy, and you can have them for free. Just go to DTM world slash free prompts and grab yours. Now. Let’s get started.

(00:30): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Dr. Sabrina Starling, the business psychologist. She’s an international bestselling author of How to Hire the Best and the four-week vacation. She’s the founder of tapthepotential.com and host of the Profit by Design podcast. She and her team coach entrepreneurs to take their lives back from their businesses and their own a mission to disrupt hustle culture by sending 10,000 entrepreneurs on a four-week vacation in the next 10 years. So big, hairy, audacious goal as she stated. Sabrina, welcome to the show.

Dr. Sabrina Starling (01:11): Thank you, John. I’m delighted to be back here with you.

John Jantsch (01:14): So let’s talk about this four-week vacation. What’s the idea behind that? Well, I mean, I think a lot of entrepreneurs probably think that idea is crazy. They don’t get four-weeks, maybe in two years strung together, but you’re talking about four consecutive weeks. I’m going to leave my business and it’s going to run itself.

Dr. Sabrina Starling (01:32): Yes. So this comes from the coaching that I’ve done with entrepreneurs over the last 17 or 18 years, and one of the awarenesses that I had is when they were reaching out for coaching, they initially seemed to have a work-life balance problem. Like my perception was these are workaholics, they don’t know how to stop. And yes, there’s a handful of us that are workaholics, but that’s not the real issue. The real issue is the systems and the lack of A players, the ability to hire a players in the business that keep the business owner from being able to take that vacation. Well, as a psychologist, I’ve seen a lot of business owners dealing with burnout, and I see how hard working 60, 70, 80 hours a week just grinding it out and seeing the impact that has. And we tell ourselves when we’re doing that, I’m doing it to get to this point.

(02:27): When I get that new team member hired, it’ll all be better. And the reality is that day never comes. And so if we don’t get in front of the bus and stop the bus and say, I need to take a break, I need a vacation. And the idea behind a four-week vacation, what really became clear to me around that is that means you have a team and you have systems in place and that business can run without you, which is very important if you ever want to transition. And I say if you ever want to transition, when you transition the business, when you sell it or you want to retire and someone else on your team is going to step in and run it, and if you get these things in place now you can enjoy your life. And that’s really all of us go into entrepreneurship for freedom.

(03:16): And a lot of it is we want time freedom. We want to be able to call our own shots and make our own choices. And then the irony when we get into business, we feel like we have less freedom and we also feel like no one else around us understands because they think we’re the business owner, we can run our schedule however we want, and we feel like, no, we’re at the mercy of every other person on this planet as the business owner. So the four-way vacation is all about really taking care of the entrepreneur.

John Jantsch (03:44): Do you feel like sometimes there’s always more to do than you can get done in a day, but do you feel like sometimes there’s a perception, the business, it’s almost like if I’m not working 40 hours a week, I’m cheating, I’m not doing this right. I mean, is part of that pressure there?

Dr. Sabrina Starling (03:59): Absolutely. I mean, our culture in the United States is a grinded out culture. It’s not just entrepreneurship that has the hustle grinded out mentality. When I started my business, I decided to become a coach instead of working in another business. And I wanted to have my own business because I was raising children and I wanted to be able to be available for them. So I decided I’m going to run my business on 25 hours a week, and I’ve made it work all these years. I’ve been able to grow the business doing that, but I kept it a secret For many years, I didn’t reveal to my clients that I was working 25 hours a week because they were all working 60, 70 hours a week. And I was afraid they would say to me, you don’t have a real business, Dr. Sabrina, you don’t understand, because a lot of ’em were men, a lot of ’em were in construction. And so I just kept it quiet and I’ve, in the last five years, I’ve started talking about that everywhere because I realized we all want someone to tell us it’s okay. It is okay to work less than 40 hours a week, and it’s really cool if you can.

John Jantsch (05:03): So you just went on a four-week vacation. You were telling me before we started, you just got back after about, I’m thinking of you’re very motivated, very driven person. You’ve built a wonderful business. After about two and a half weeks, you start saying, what am I going to do now for another week and a half?

Dr. Sabrina Starling (05:21): That actually happened about three and a half weeks in. I had two days left on my fourth vacation. I was like, okay, I’m bored. I am bored. And I think it’s because I have done multiple four-week vacations and I’ve really developed over the years, my interests away from the business. But I think the first time as business owners, when we take four-week vacations, we do have that feeling within a day of what do I do with myself? We’re not used to having hobbies. I know you play the guitar, you do woodworking, you have a rich life. I mean, where you live is a beautiful area. You have a very rich life away from the business. And what I find is the bigger we make our lives away from the business, the easier it is to put these healthy boundaries in place in our businesses.

John Jantsch (06:12): Yeah, I know I don’t suffer from this anymore, but early on in my business, I would go on vacation. I would be very, even if it was just a week long vacation, first couple days I was very fidgety. But then you start settling in and it’s like, eh, it’s going to all be fine. Michael Gerber, who was an original mentor of mine, wrote the E-Myth. I’m sure listeners are familiar with that. He actually wrote the Forward to Duct Tape. Marketing told me once, he said, if your business can’t operate without you, it’s worthless. And I think that’s pretty strong medicine, isn’t it?

Dr. Sabrina Starling (06:43): It is, and it’s exactly true. And as I wrote the four-week vacation book, I had a number of family members of business owners comment to me, I wish my husband or I wish my wife would’ve read this because they thought we were going to retire and then go travel and have all those things that we put off. And for whatever reason, they had a health reason. Some of ’em had passed away very early in life, much earlier than they should have, but it was because of the stress, I believe. And so when we think about there’s all kinds of reasons that we want our business to have value without us, and one of them, one of the most important ones is what happens to our family if we just drop dead in the business? And all those years of all this hard work that we’ve done, there’s no value in the business if it can’t run without the business owner. So the family is left without being able to really benefit from that. But then there’s your team members as well. If the business can’t carry on without you, then you have a whole bunch of people who’ve lost their jobs now and their families are impacted.

John Jantsch (07:49): So you mentioned already that you’ve really grown your business working 25 hours a week When I started for a number of years now, have not done much on Fridays and don’t have schedule any appointments. I’ve done that forever. And when you start doing that, you start realizing how much time you’re actually wasting in the business. I found because it was like, no, I got to sit here until five o’clock. And so you go, chase, check Facebook one more time or something. I bet you most people could actually condense what they do that is valuable down to a couple hours every day. You actually, in fact, where is it the $10,000 an hour activity you want to, I think that relates to what I’m suggesting, isn’t

Dr. Sabrina Starling (08:33): It? Absolutely. This is exactly it, and I will share that. When my first daughter went off to kindergarten, I thought, oh my gosh, I have all this extra time now in school all day. And then I was frittering my time away. I was on social media and it was worthless. So one of my big awarenesses when I started my business and I had an infant at home and I had these 25 hours a week to work, I had a huge meltdown in my laundry room just crying and blubbering. I had just dropped her off at daycare, but she had thrown up overnight. And so I had to come home and instead of working, I had to launder all the bedding and everything. And I thought, there’s just not enough time and I can’t get it all done. And I had this epiphany come over me around, okay, Sabrina, if you can only get one thing done today that’s going to move the needle forward in your business, what are you going to do?

(09:23): Because you only have a few hours to do this in. And I don’t know what my answer was that day, but it was like this huge clarity and I have run my business every day forward with that question. And it’s made me realize that we have high value activities in the business that grow our business and that add value. And if we’re intentional to do those every day, and you know what? I don’t get high value activities done every single day, but I make sure once a week, five to six hours has been high value, $10,000 an hour activity time. And my awareness around the $10,000 an hour time came from reading the book 80 20 by Perry Marshall, and recognizing that 20% of what we do in a given day or given week leads to 80% of the results that we get. And I started looking at what is it that we entrepreneurs do that’s worth $10 an hour versus a hundred dollars an hour versus $10,000 an hour?

(10:22): And I created a chart around this based on Perry Marshall’s work, and I share that Anybody who wants to get it, we’ll send it to ’em. You can go to tap the potential.com/ten k. And having this chart in front of you is so powerful because it’s a reminder that if you are not doing the $10,000 an hour activities in the business, no one else is. And when we business owners struggle to pay ourselves appropriately, I think one of the hard questions we need to ask ourselves is, when was the last time I did a $10,000 an hour activity? Because we’re not growing. If we’re stuck doing the a hundred dollars an hour, $500 an hour or $10 an hour activities, that’s the reason the business isn’t growing. That’s the reason we’re not identifying how to add value and create the margin that we need to pay ourselves appropriately.

John Jantsch (11:15): So when somebody comes to you, and I’ll back up a minute. I had Dan Martel on this show recently and he wrote a great book called Buy Back Your Time. And he said, if you don’t have an administrative assistant or executive assistant or whatever you call them, then you are it, right? Because doing that work. And I was like, yeah, that’s pretty hard to swallow, but it’s true. So if somebody comes to you and they’re like, okay, I get it. This idea of four we vacation sounds really awesome, but couldn’t happen today, where do they start?

Dr. Sabrina Starling (11:46): So this is a really good question because when we hear four-week vacation, I think most of us feel like that’s so pie in the sky, I can’t even imagine. And it starts with the small steps forward, taken in a consistent direction that lead to big change over time. When I started my four-week vacation journey, I felt like I gave myself 18 months and I thought, that’s going to be really hard. I can’t imagine doing it. And we were a very small team at the time, but once we get clear, this is what I want, this is meaningful to me, then it’s easier to start seeing how we have to trust that the how will show up. And so I recommend, look at the longest you’ve been able to be away from the business, fully unplugged. And if that’s zero days, because in the research I’m doing with entrepreneurs, we hear that a lot like that’s zero days, Dr.

(12:40): Sabrina, then walk one day and tell your team you’re completely out of pocket and you got to unplug or start with unplugging in the evenings. Like you go home at a set time and put your phone in a drawer and just be present with yourself and your family. That’s the first small step. And then build from there and really pay attention to, well, what actually fell through the cracks. When I was unplugged time, and again, we hear, I can’t believe my team handled everything. When I went on this four-week vacation, this was the first one I had done in 18 months. We had two team members who were newer on the team who’d never experienced it. So I thought, and I had been training them, so I thought they’re going to need me. I don’t know, we better set up some, somebody else needs to jump in and train them while I’m out.

(13:31): They stepped up in huge ways. And it showed me that I had been telling myself a story in my head about how much they needed me. So we have to watch this with ourselves and the stories we tell. So try a day, try two days, try a week and see what actually falls through the cracks. Ask your team for their input on where they needed support and you weren’t there. And then look at can you create a system or do you need to hire and start taking those things off your plate? And the most important thing, whether it’s a day off or a week off or four-weeks off, whatever you delegated before you took that time off, do not take it back when you come back.

John Jantsch (14:16): Team you just talked about too. Yeah, and I think what might be missed in that, what you just described there is we sort of disempowered the team sometimes by feeling like we have to give them all the direction, but giving a chance to let them figure it out, they’ll actually be more empowered by that, won’t they?

Dr. Sabrina Starling (14:34): Yes, they will. And if we take it back, it’s very disempowering for them. So when I came back, I asked my newer team members that I’ve been running a meeting with every week, what did they do with that time that we were meeting and how would they like to revamp this meeting going? And they worked on strategy, they mapped things out, things that I wasn’t even aware needed to be mapped out or laid out. They had done that and they said, going forward, we’d much rather use this rather than just going over our basic numbers. I mean, we’ll obviously do that, but we’d much rather use this meeting for strategy with you, Dr. Sabrina. I’m like, yes, because if I have team members who want to think strategically, they’re thinking about $10,000 an hour activities from their seat. And that adds a lot of value to the business.

John Jantsch (15:23): One of the mistakes I’m sure you’ve come across all the time, I’ve certainly seen it, is a lot of times, particularly when people are maybe just getting started, they fail to invest in their team or they try to hire the cheapest help that they can find. And ultimately what you’re saying is the real key to this is you’ve got to have that leadership team or whatever you call ’em of a players. I mean, this is not going to happen until there’s people that can do the selling and the things that you thought only you could do. So how do you help people kind of change that mindset? And obviously I know you have a whole program around developing a-players, but first one is probably to change that mindset, isn’t it?

Dr. Sabrina Starling (16:00): It’s to change the mindset that if you’re in the middle and all the decisions run through you, you’re going to lose your A-players because they feel very disempowered. But I think a lot of times what I hear from entrepreneurs is, I don’t know that I can afford to hire an A-player. And I actually would argue that you can’t afford not to hire an A player because you may pay them, say you pay them $10 an hour more. But the reality is that A players will be 900 to 1200% more productive than warm body team members. So like your C players. And so you may pay them $10 an hour more, but if you need fewer A players, because you don’t have C players anymore, you have A players, your payroll is actually reduced significantly. And those A players will help you create systems. Those A players step up, they’re natural problem solvers and they’re good communicators. They don’t necessarily need to be extroverted. Not every A player’s extroverted, but they like to communicate and support each other as team members. And that is the best thing for you, the business owner, because when you’re out and they don’t know what to do, they don’t know how to handle something, they go to other people on the team and they ask for help.

John Jantsch (17:17): And I think another thing too, a lot of times people just jump to, oh, I need to have somebody whose resume says they were five years as X, Y, Z. And I think a lot of times if you get the right person and you’re committed to investing in their growth, you’ll grow a players, right?

Dr. Sabrina Starling (17:33): Yes. So an example that I like to think about is when I started my business, John, I knew nothing about marketing, nothing about sales, but I’m an A player. I learned Duct Tape Marketing was one of the first books that I read to learn. And our A players will do that. So let go of the belief that you need to hire for a lot of experience and really hire the people who are hungry and motivated, and then look to align what they’re doing with their personal strengths. And in the interview process, you can identify strengths by just asking them what are the things you love to do that come easy to you that other people seem to struggle with? And they’ll just, they’ll tell you, here’s the things, and they’re easy for me. I don’t know why other people have trouble with this, but come easy to me and make sure that those strengths align with the results that you need from them.

(18:27): And then knowing what you know about what you learned how to do in the business, have confidence that you can break it down and train them. And you are going to be much better off when you do that because it opens up a much broader pool of candidates for you. And as you create these systems to train, you’re not at the mercy of one team member. And if that one critical team member leaves, oh my gosh, what are you going to do? You have a system to train the next person and it works and you can refine the system the second time around.

John Jantsch (19:00): So we’ve been talking about some of the various things that you do from a coaching standpoint, maybe unpack when somebody comes to you and the stated goal is that they’re going to go on a four-week vacation. What are all the avenues, how you impact their business?

Dr. Sabrina Starling (19:18): So we utilize the the potential solution with our clients coming in. Most of the clients who come in are established businesses. The business has been around for a while, and the business owner is recognizing, despite my best efforts, I can’t take time off. I can’t be away. This isn’t working. Or they’re realizing they’re not profitable, or it’s a combination of I’m not profitable and I’m tied to the business. So we work on designing the business to be sustainably profitable. Every decision going forward needs to be based on does this add profit to the business or does it take away, once we have it designed to be sustainably profitable, then we look at niching down with a clearly defined sweet spot. A lot of established businesses are what I call overweight businesses. And that means that when you’re starting out in business, you say yes to every opportunity that comes your way because you need to get revenue coming in the door, but then you don’t have a real sweet spot anymore and your spread really thin and your team is too.

(20:18): And so I think our businesses need to go on a diet at least once a year, and we need to look at where are our best opportunities? What are we going to stop doing? And really focus on the top clients. And I know you teach a lot of this yourself, John, but it makes your marketing easier. It simplifies the business considerably. So that’s where we see a lot of stress come off for business owners. And then we start talking about innovation, which is again, paying attention to what your clients tell you they want the most and how they see you as unique and different, incorporating that in what you do, which allows you to charge more and create more margin. And then we focus on hiring the best, building your lean and mighty team around that sweet spot. And then the final step is to learn how to network to continually attract A players so that you never run out of team members. Because now that you have a sweet spot and you’re innovating and you have a players on your team, you better be ready. Your business is going to grow, and you’re going to need a lot of A players, but in the meantime, more and more is coming off your plate and you’re taking your life back. So our goal is, I mean, yes, I want lots of entrepreneurs taking forward vacations, but ultimately our goal is that you get your life back on a daily basis in your business.

John Jantsch (21:34): Awesome. Sabrina, always great to catch up with you. I appreciate you stopping by the show. You want to tell people where they can connect with you and find out more about your work?

Dr. Sabrina Starling (21:42): Absolutely. So I mentioned you can get the how to make your time worth $10,000 an hour download in the PDF chart of $10,000 an hour activities. Just go to tapthepotential.com/10K and you can learn more about us obviously at Tap, the Potential I record Weekly on the Profit by Design podcast and share tips, tools, and strategies to help you design a sustainably profitable business that gives you your life back. And I just want to share as a fellow podcaster, those of you who get benefit out of Duct Tape Marketing, please leave a review on whatever platform you’re listening because that’s how other people find great podcasts like Duct Tape Marketing and podcasting is a labor of love. John is putting out tremendous content. So please leave him a review.

John Jantsch (22:35): Well, I appreciate that, Sabrina. So again, thanks for taking a moment and hopefully we’ll run into you soon out there on the road.

Dr. Sabrina Starling (22:41): Okay, thank you, John.