They're like, go, go.
All right, cool.
Thanks, I appreciate you, man.
So yeah, as I mentioned, when I grow up,
I wanna be like you, man.
So leadership wise, like, did you start young in leadership?
Did you figure it out late?
What's the secret?
Sure, I guess it kind of fell into my lap naturally.
I guess when you say that,
the first thing that comes to mind would be high school.
Did things like student government and journalism,
which led me to positions where I'm often talking to people
and trying to kind of learn about their needs and wants,
and then figure out like how that can drive with mine.
So that's probably where it first.
All right, welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
With Jackson Calame, I'm your show host.
We will be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs
and guest leaders who are building
fantastic visions out there.
["Vision Pros Live"]
All right, welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm your host, Jackson Calame,
founder and CEO of First Class Business.
And today's episode features somebody
who I have extreme, extreme respect for.
And I'm so excited to make him a long-term friend in life.
I hope he sticks around because I did this series
on LinkedIn with LinkedIn Automation,
where I've got my messages going, right?
And you always want to create a message
that's inviting, open-ended,
allows people to realize that you have a purpose
that matters, right?
So here was mine.
And if you want to use this for yours, fantastic.
I'd love to see it go viral.
I think it's a good subject.
I said, can I get your opinion on leadership?
And so we had a lot of really positive responses to that.
We had a lot of negative responses too.
In fact, we got more negative responses than I anticipated.
And people who were in amazing leadership positions
who acted beyond childish, and I get it.
You can hate against the spam world,
but when you're slamming the door
on good people with good intent,
that you get mail of automation every day.
Some that's good, some that's bad.
Anyway, I'm getting off topic here.
I got tons, I got hundreds of great responses.
And hands down, Ryan Giordano's
was my absolute favorite response.
And I really loved his take on leadership,
and it made me dive deeper and deeper with him.
We became friends over the matter.
We masterminded the subject a little bit after that.
And so today's gonna be a treat to have him on.
Now, before I bring Ryan on,
I want to announce our sponsors.
You'll notice we have two new sponsors
up here in the corner.
We still love Able Health, by the way.
We still love Rick at Epiphany.
And there's just an amazing opportunity
to showcase more great value to the world.
CapShow is our hidden secret for creating our content
for our show, post show.
What does that mean?
We upload the episodes to CapShow.
And then CapShow's AI, they call it,
they have this little phrase about humanity
where they put a little AI in the humanity aspect.
They're very dedicated to the personal touch and experience,
but they've trained this AI to do a really good job
of breaking down all of what I say
and Ryan says in the show to create social media posts,
to create LinkedIn articles, blogs, et cetera.
You can literally go through and just click on these buttons
to get all the content generated that you need,
which allows you not to have to go into incubation mode.
You can be in superior creative genius mode,
and you can be in the mode where you're like,
wow, okay, I can now assess in here
which aspects of the puzzle I want to pull together
to create shorts and reels and things of that nature.
Creative Studio takes that even a step further
and it does audio sound bites.
And I haven't explored the depths.
In fact, Jaime knows more than me about all the features,
but one of the things that I love the most about CapShow
is the community behind it.
So we actually get to go in and participate
in these masterminds that they do.
They talk just about how to podcast.
We're new to this.
Like we're doing the best we can to make sure
that every show that comes out is awesome.
But at the end of the day,
we're gonna get more and more awesome
as we collaborate with minds like theirs.
So they're working with more than 100 to 1,000 entrepreneurs
somewhere in that range,
building out podcasts and scaling and growing.
So they're getting all of the insider secrets
and then they're turning around to their community
and sharing those as much as they can,
as authentically, as profoundly as they can.
I love the way the team portrays themselves
and how they engage with people.
It has been so fun to be part of that.
So if you're looking for a system to advance your reach
and create content for you,
so you're not stuck on the content treadmill
of just like trying to think of things to write,
I hate doing that.
And it's just not, it's not as authentic.
Then consider doing your own show
and consider of course using CapShow with live videos,
videos that you've done in the past, et cetera,
to create your content.
It is a blessing.
And now that also leads us to Icon Maker Live.
We hosted Cheryl last week and Cheryl's partner
with Tom Matson, Cheryl Plouffe, by the way.
I don't know if it's Plouffe.
I gotta get it right, or Plouffe.
But part of that problem for me
is I speak Spanish fluently.
And so my nature is to go to the open O's
and the open O sounds.
So Cheryl, forgive me, my friend.
But anyway, I'm distracting from the subject.
Icon Maker Live is happening at the end of this month
and they're going to have a thousand people
at this virtual event conference,
20 who are live in person in Charleston, South Carolina.
I'm also going to go and attend this event
where they're showing podcasters
how to launch seven figure podcasts.
By the way, Tom Matson has launched more than 80 businesses
over his lifetime.
And he knows a lot about distribution,
coaching, how to show up on camera.
Cheryl as well spent more than 20,000 hours
in broadcast journalism, being on TV, rocking the mic,
not stopping to say words like, I'm like I do.
She's a great presenter, she's a great trainer.
She's also extremely empathetic
and has an amazing way of helping you feel comfortable
in that environment when you may not be as polished
as others rather than condescending.
So I've absolutely loved getting to know them
and seeing what they're building.
If you want to check that out,
Icon Maker Live has a general admission,
I think for around $97 and that's to get access
to several of the days.
And there's a VIP experience where you get post-event access
to each of the leaders and speakers
that have their own sessions.
It's all broken down on icommakerlive.com,
which we just updated the copy for by the way,
and made it a little bit more streamlined
to help make sure that the messaging was clear as possible
so people understand the value
that they're going to be throwing down
at this amazing conference.
So we're very excited to be involved in that.
Grateful to have them as a sponsor.
And I would say more important than all of those agendas
is the Water Project.
There are people in this world who, you know,
I don't want to cry, I don't want to make you cry,
but they don't have water, clean drinking water.
And there are people dying because of this
on a regular basis.
And so if you're crying right now, again, my apologies,
but at the same time, if you're crying
and you happen to have an extra dollar in your hand,
then do us all a favor, please go to the Water Project,
donate, it will make you feel good.
And the process of also getting to help somebody
with the essentials that they need in life
in order to survive and have a chance
at thriving in this world.
We have an amazing opportunity to impact in that regard.
So without further ado, Ryan Jordan is going to be coming on.
We're going to be talking about leadership.
We're going to be talking about his company, Growth Wave.
We're going to be talking about,
it was something I had never heard before,
the Sunday, something about Sundays, blues at night.
You have to teach me this, Ryan.
This is a corporate concept.
And so I don't spend a lot of time in corporate America.
I spend a lot of time with startups
and fast growing companies.
And so I've avoided that bureaucracy for a long time
because I was not a leader cut out for it.
To be honest with you, that was me.
I had a lot to learn about leadership
throughout my 20s, early 30s.
And I continue to look at how can I be the best leader
possible for those that I serve.
And it's people like Ryan who I'm pulling around myself
saying, man, I would love the wisdom that you have.
So with that said, this is very much a personal episode
as much as it is knowing that this is going to help
other great entrepreneurs out there who would benefit
tremendously from learning how to make more space
and create more inspiration for those that they teach.
And so Ryan, without further ado,
thank you so much for being here today
and honoring us with your time and presence.
Thanks for having me.
I'm excited to talk about the Sunday Scaries
and many of the things in that space.
The Sunday blues is pretty close, so I love it.
There it is, Sunday Scaries, I love that.
And that concept comes from the idea,
what I understood of it was that people who on Sunday night
are kind of dreading going back to work on Monday,
going back to that office environment
where they have to go through the drudgery of work.
And I haven't had that experience in a very long time.
Oh, well, since 2020 when it was the only time
I went back into an office was when everybody escaped offices,
I went back into it.
And by the end of that experience, I have an inkling,
I know what it was like to work in that environment
where you just are not connected anymore.
But that's a very small experience for somebody
who's 35 now.
I haven't had jobs like that, but I do see the office
and I don't find it funny because I can't relate to it.
But I know what lots of people do.
So what the heck are Sunday Scaries
and how do you overcome them?
Yeah, wonderful question.
Well, so it's a term that kind of emerged
more from like a cultural phenomenon,
which maybe sounds like giving a fancy title
to just what I'm actually describing,
which I think is people who drink or consume drugs
or do other things to kind of numb themselves
from the pain that they associate with work
over the weekends.
And then when they wake up on a Sunday and they're like,
ooh, like I just ignored this feeling all weekend,
now I've got the Sunday Scaries.
So that's really the first time I heard it was more like,
I've been kind of numbing myself
and now I have to face this thing.
And I'm nervous about that.
Over time that phrase has caught on
and it's more relatable.
So I think you hear more and more people describing it.
And when they said the Sunday Scaries,
they're not necessarily saying I was hung over.
They're just saying, I feel the pit of my stomach
dropping out.
I feel nervousness around re-approaching work.
If you really start to ask like what's going on there,
yeah, it's numbing or kind of ignoring or neglecting
something that they know they're gonna have to face
in the future.
And we all know what that feels like.
Yes, and entrepreneurs and visionaries,
like I think a lot of us are able to protect our brains
and our hearts from those realities,
but we're not doing ourselves any services
by forgetting that so many people out there face this.
And so Sunday Scaries, munchies,
I know that also sounds like a synonym for some people
in that respect based on what you said.
And then the other one that came to mind was quiet quitting.
That became really popular last year
from what I saw based on articles.
And so that's another element that people are having to face
and that leaders need to get ahead of.
So let's talk real quick, Ryan,
who should be listening right now?
Why should they listen to you?
You look 19, I know you're not.
And what are they going to get out of today's show?
Well, I'm getting to the age where it's hard to realize
that's a compliment.
It used to be a hindrance in life to look younger.
Now I'm starting to appreciate it as a compliment.
So thank you.
So I appreciate that.
My background is in the corporate world.
I've spent 10 years working at tech companies
out in Silicon Valley.
And usually my function, my reason for being there
is to help keep employees engaged in their work.
That's the number one focus.
There's a bunch of different ways that we do that.
There's different ways that it's measured,
but you can consider that the common denominator underneath
is how do we keep people excited and engaged in their work?
Not just from the perspective of keeping them trapped
at a company, but keeping them legitimately excited
and interested in what they're doing.
And so I strike a balance between figuring out
what companies feel they need
and what people feel they need
and trying to create solutions that meet in the middle.
I love that.
You worked, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.
I'm just gonna add.
So I've mostly been in the background,
in the corporate background.
But I wanna tell everyone that's listening,
I've also spent the past 18 months working for myself.
So I was always curious.
It's great to have value through an organization,
through a full-time job, but I really was curious,
like, am I valuable on my own?
Which sounds like a sad question,
but I think it's important for all of us to explore.
So I spent the past 18 months doing private coaching
and also being hired through contracts
by companies to coach inside of their companies.
That's what I've been up to recently.
Brother, I would just want you to imagine,
you don't have to close your eyes on this,
but hear what I say, know that if I was on a stage
with 100,000 people in front of us and I told you,
Ryan, you are beyond valuable on your own.
You would have a standing ovation right now.
You really would.
Yeah, I appreciate that.
And try to, I just encourage you and invite you
to internalize the reality of that because you are.
You're showing up in a great way to serve.
Now I wanna get to go back a little bit
of that corporate reality because your corporates
are some of the dream jobs that I think a lot of people,
especially young folks are like, oh my gosh,
I would love to work for those environments.
And they were environments that were smart enough
to hire somebody to do exactly what you were designed to do.
They probably wasn't perfect,
but if I remember correctly,
was Pandora one of those companies?
Yes, yeah.
Yeah, that caught my eye.
I was like, ooh, who would have Pandora?
I was like, that's gotta be amazing.
That's gonna be so cool.
It's probably just fun and music all the,
and I know it's not, but.
The surprising amount was, yes.
Oh, that's so cool.
So yeah, this is the jobs that even entrepreneurs
can be jealous of.
And I will admit that.
So thank you for the authentic walkthrough
of how it can be scary to go out on your own.
But let's talk first about what are some
of the other companies that you worked for
that people have heard of and are aware of in the world?
Sure, I mean, you might have to be in this space.
I think the goal is to not have to be
and start to hear them.
Pandora is certainly probably the most reputable.
The other two companies I spent,
so I was there for three and a half years at Pandora.
Three and a half years at Pandora.
That's a lot of time to gain a lot of insight.
Yes, and it did set a pretty unfair bar
for what work life could be like at a company
because we did have concert breaks
in the middle of the day sometimes.
That's true.
So that was fantastic.
Oh, wow.
But the two other companies that I've spent time at,
so I worked at a company called Blend,
which is they essentially digitize the mortgage process
so that banks and other types of lenders
can help people not have to fill out paper applications.
And that's way underselling what they're doing
and what they're capable of.
But that's kind of how I did it
because it helps speed up that process.
It's hard to compete with Pandora.
Yeah.
Yeah, and then the other place I've worked
is a company called Gong,
and they do like a sales recording software.
And again, I'm probably underselling it,
but what they do here is that they record conversations
like this, especially if I was say,
trying to sell you on something,
and then it allows me to analyze the call afterwards.
And so I worked there for a year
and learned a lot about that as well.
Okay, that's good.
I'm glad I at least have a connection with that one
because as I was president of a solar company
whose name I won't mention, for good reasons,
but for good reasons in that you don't want to work
with that company, I will say that.
Now let's go back to Gong now.
I was researching all of these different softwares
for the sales team in terms of what are we gonna use
to track the return rate,
what we're gonna use to track,
quality of call assurance and all that stuff.
And that was one of the entities that had
some of the more impressive case study materials
to help you understand the value of what you were getting.
There was a lot of little concepts that I learned,
even as a seasoned sales individual,
I was like, ooh, I should have known this as a manager.
Oh, cool, these reports, I never ran these before.
There's a whole checklist of ways
that can be more valuable to companies in the future.
So I was definitely impressed with that.
And I can see that you can read their materials
and you can feel the power of the company culture behind it.
And that's usually a great sign.
I wanna digress though,
and we're going all over the map right now guys,
but there's just some cool things.
Pandora concerts, who performed?
Are these bands that we know that came in to do concerts?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, it was a pretty cool,
I mean, from my perspective,
it looked like an employee perk, right?
Like you're getting to essentially like-
Absolutely.
The first time someone, my manager said,
yeah, we're gonna go watch,
Third Eye Blind or someone like that,
do a couple of tracks.
And you're like, so I can get it from my desk
and stop working.
And they're like, yeah, come on.
And it's pretty incredible.
But what was going on behind the scenes,
which I think is even more intelligent
from a business perspective is that
they were bringing in bands
to also show them their data on Pandora.
So band comes into the office,
they get to see where are people listening to their music,
like geographically,
so that they could maybe think about how to build a tour.
They might get information on like what age groups
and another, you know,
there's not a ton of information available,
but whatever Pandora had access to,
they're willing to share.
So artists can better understand
and connect with their audience,
what I think is so important.
Oh my gosh.
That is like the most brilliant element
of sales strategy I've ever heard too,
because Pandora, when I looked it up,
when I was with Restaurant Connect
and running that company,
we were looking for distribution advertising opportunities.
I thought it might be a good opportunity.
So I called Pandora up
and I got my quote for $10,000 a month
and stuck my tail between my legs
and walked away terrified.
I'm like, oh my gosh, that's amazing.
That would be so cool to do.
But so they're bringing the bands in,
having this experience with them,
creating this camaraderie experience,
like where it's just, it's an experiential opportunity.
And then it's like, well,
why would you not run your tour
through the Pandora advertising platform?
You got all these raving fans here at this place too.
They now love us and are gonna support us well.
Like what a brilliant way to honor the prospect
and showcase your capabilities at the same time
while massively improving a work-life balance,
culture type thing that you're never gonna get
at most other companies.
It's like almost a once in a lifetime opportunity
for everybody involved.
Yeah, it was pretty powerful stuff.
And as you pointed out there just at the end,
it's a lot of companies struggle with,
they message that it's important to take breaks,
but they struggle to find ways to actually implement
and structure that.
And so this, I don't think it was designed for this reason,
but it had a really nice effect of like,
usually the shows were sometimes between 11 and one.
And so it was around lunch,
but it never necessarily overlapped with lunch,
but you were encouraged to, yeah, go take 20, 30 minutes
and listen to a band play a couple of tracks.
And it was usually acoustic,
but occasionally they'd bring a full setup.
And yeah, it provided a nice break
and a way for employees from teams
that may not sit together and normally interact
to also kind of connect with each other.
You'd be sitting on a couch watching a band,
but then on the way there and on the way back,
you'd be talking to someone from a different department
learning what they're focused on,
which is a good way to kind of infuse more collaboration
with the company too.
Wow, okay.
So that leads me to a deeper question
for the more experienced entrepreneurs,
the bigger company opportunities that are out there.
If you're listening to this,
this is gonna be an important opportunity
to learn some super wisdom from Ryan.
So I think one of the fears that a company would have
with implementing such a reality is the repercussions, right?
And I think of startups that I worked with
where beer pong was every Thursday
and people were getting slammed and hammered.
Here I was with my Dr. Pepper and me and Kelly
at our own little table, somewhat participating,
but we didn't drink.
And so we watched everybody else get slammed
and drunk on Thursdays.
We went back to work and did our stuff.
And there was this awkward culture
of no productivity taking place on days like that.
And then there's of course the liabilities that could exist.
So you guys could have like full on mosh pits
in this company.
And I'm imagining like people doing cake stands
and things like that in the opposite Pandora,
but I have a feeling it didn't go that far.
How do you set the precedence
of creating a fun environment like that,
but controlling the rules enough to where you don't kill it,
but you still allow it to happen
and manage the emotions of, whoa.
Like whereas if you just have a plain boring office, right?
You can manage emotions.
It seems like you can manage emotions with more control,
but lay down the wisdom on this, Ryan.
I'm just gonna talk to you.
Yeah, I suppose from a baseline, like a couple of things.
I mean, there were no mosh pits as far as I saw.
Generally this was like an acoustic thing happening
like feet from your desk.
So you can picture a wide open office plan
and we had a space, literally just a giant whiteboard
and an open area with some couches.
And one thing that was kind of cool
and also kept the tone kind of mellow
is that we would have some of the design team
like in the hours leading up to that concert
would actually use whiteboard pens to draw the artist's name
like a really artistic way.
So it would say, again, I'm using the same example
but like third eye blind
and they would draw it in a really creative way.
And then that would become some kind of like art
that would get used and things like that,
which I thought was cool.
But here's the real answer to that, which is,
and this is actually where more of my work
and my focus comes in.
There was like a very known thing
that usually probably after six months to 12 months,
people stopped going to these concerts.
And anyone who was new to the company
would be shocked by that.
Like when I first heard that I didn't believe it.
And then you'd hear some band is coming in
and you'd go, hey, everyone wanna go?
And people like, eh, kind of busy.
So it's one of those things where
we get used to the nice things that we have.
And this is not me critiquing anybody,
but I think I'm trying to think of a comparison in life.
Like we always want that nicer car.
And then the moment you have it,
a year later, you're like, now I need a nicer, nicer car.
And I think that same effect shows up here.
We're like concerts at work, amazing.
And then a year in, you're like concert,
is it like one of my top 10?
No, okay, then I'm gonna keep working.
And I don't think we had a particular
like harsh working culture.
It was just a matter of, I think people get used to things
and it almost becomes less valuable
as it becomes like always available to you.
And yeah, people start focusing on work.
So unfortunately we kind of pleased ourselves,
which is what I'm more interested in resolving.
How do we help people not do that just for the,
if it is driven by the appearance of working,
then I worry about that.
Okay, so when you talk about the,
are you just talking about wanting to see more cultures
open to the point where people can police themselves
into productivity or did I misunderstand that?
I suppose, well, what I'm describing here
is a phenomenon where I don't know that this was the case,
but I think that people felt too busy
to get up and go to a concert.
And we're not talking like an hour.
This is usually they play three to four songs.
It's a 20 to 15 minute situation where to me,
like that's not a big deal to get up and take that break.
But you would see a lot of people eventually say,
I'm not gonna get up from my desk.
I can't afford to take that break.
So I think what I'm actually saying is I'm worried
about people who, especially in the office,
want to appear to be working to their colleagues
or their manager often because that carries value.
And it's unfortunate that's how it works
because I think it's actually,
it should be valuable to take breaks
and know how to take care of yourself
so you can do your best work.
But it started, and this is one of the first places
I saw this and I've seen it in many other ways
throughout my career, but I like to pay attention to like,
you know, I mean, part of the reason my original message
in response to you stood out was because I spoke in part
to how can people care for themselves
and find abundance in the world.
And I think when we're trying to prove ourselves
to other people, we're more of in like a scarcity mindset.
I love that.
And oh, awesome, Jaime, you're amazing.
I was just about to ask.
So Jaime is gonna be showing on the screen
our original conversation of how we interacted
with each other, the answers that you gave.
People who are watching the video version of this podcast
will be able to see those on the screen
and read through those messages.
If you want the full length messages,
don't hesitate to ask us.
Ryan, will you be okay with me providing that?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
There was a lot of personal things about my,
I'm just kidding.
It was just a really great series on leadership.
So that said, one thing that stands out
with what you're talking about is something
that I have to control my and one of my weaknesses.
I'm a big fan of Peter Drucker's book too.
It also validates you and helps you feel better
about yourself.
He says, people with tremendous strengths
come with tremendous weaknesses.
It's always the case.
And so-
You feel that once.
Yeah, well, yeah, I hope everybody who's listening does.
That means you all have tremendous strengths.
And you have to, as an executive,
you have the opportunity to create space
for those people with tremendous strengths,
but you have to be willing to create space
for their weaknesses too,
and embrace the fact that they have those
and support or tolerate, honor the fact that they're human.
And that can be hard to do.
But let me digress.
The point I'm bringing up with this is,
in my cultures, when I create a company
and when I'm running things,
I run at a breakneck pace.
Yeah.
And I love it.
I freaking love what I do every moment of every day.
And I don't have my kids very often.
And I'm a dad first by far,
but I'm really with my kids because of my divorces.
So twice divorced and I'm my kids here.
And so I don't have the same social responsibilities
on a day-to-day basis that I have.
The problem that I face is,
I end up influencing the culture of first-class business.
And that's something I'm very,
I try to remember to be very careful about.
Jaime knows, I forget it all the time.
And I'm like, go, go, go, go, let's go, let's go,
let's get this done.
And sometimes I inspire the culture to shift.
Where everybody's like, man, I gotta be like Jackson.
We get new team members too.
They fall into that trap of thinking that's our culture.
That's what we're supposed to operate.
That's who we're supposed to be.
And next thing you know, you've got hastiness.
You got people who aren't there for each other.
You got people who aren't taking breaks at all.
Nobody's saying like,
I don't wanna be the guy who's taking lunch.
I mean, or the guy who's taking lunch.
And now I'm the one who's called out.
How do we balance this, Ryan, as startups
and as entrepreneurs who have different strengths,
capacities, things that we love to do?
What are some other options to ensure
that the culture stays centered on balance
while some people run at faster paces than others?
Yeah, that's a big question, but happy to unpack.
And I think we can start with what you've already
drawn attention to, which is we tend to mimic
each other's behavior.
And that's always going to,
I believe that's always gonna overrule any kind of like
documented or stated principles, right?
You can say we move slow and chill,
but if the person running the company is not doing that,
people are gonna say, that's not a real value.
Like I'm doing what he's doing.
And so we see that everywhere and that's okay.
I think to some degree that actually serves
as a really powerful message.
So what can you do about it or how do you balance it?
There's a couple of ways to look at this.
One, I think what's really important is some degree
awareness that we show up differently.
And I think that starts with us knowing ourselves, right?
If you come in and you end up hiring somebody
who is not too sure about who they are,
but they're really sure about who they need to be
to succeed in your company,
then they're gonna be doing a lot of this
mimicking behavior.
But if you hire people who,
whether it's experience or life experiences
that they've gone through,
if they know more about who they are,
what they have to offer,
including their potentially tremendous gaps or weaknesses,
the more people who know about that,
the more that you're gonna get someone who's okay,
operating at their own pace and speed.
So I'd say that's one place to start.
I'm happy to go further, but thought I'd check in with you.
Hey, go further, man.
Okay. Hit it.
You're on a roll.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, so a huge part of what we're talking about here
is that people like you and me,
and many of the people that are listening
are gonna respond to the world differently.
That means, at a very high level,
we can talk about how we perceive the actions of others,
how we relate to our own mind,
how we maintain and use and store energy.
These are things that are like
drastically different between people.
As a quick side note this week,
so the Death to Sunday Scaries is actually my newsletter.
So I write a newsletter called Death to Sunday Scaries.
It's kind of my manifesto, like let's get rid of this.
And this week I wrote about a topic
called highly sensitive people.
And these are people who, it's about 20% of society,
it's been researched and they know that these people
just respond at a much deeper level
to all different types of stimuli,
whether it's emotional moods or it's physical sensations.
Me?
Yes.
Me?
These are, it's sounding like it's resonating.
And so these are people who, like,
this is just an example,
but if we're talking about like how to make a workplace
that supports different behaviors,
this week's newsletter I wrote was about
how do we support sensitive people
because they're gonna handle something like Slack,
where you're getting 30 different messages
from different teams and conversations,
they're gonna handle that differently
than the average person and it's gonna affect them more.
And so we need to be aware of
what is things that fill us with energy,
what are things that drain us of energy,
and how do we find a workplace that suits that need for us?
So that's really what comes to mind.
We could go into the more process oriented stuff
like how to teach and kind of evangelize principles,
but I think that's more of like a corporate approach.
And I think what really matters
is that we know ourselves
and we know who we're signing up to work with
so that we can figure out
if we can set the proper boundaries there
to take care of ourselves.
Well, they say you can't build Rome overnight,
but I think you're building the foundation
in a matter of a podcast, which is pretty amazing.
So yeah, no, I want people to realize too though that,
and that's a cool thing.
Ryan's willing to talk about all this stuff
because his experience with leadership,
he knows there's just so much more depth
that has to be built in order for the culture to succeed.
And so he's not holding back.
He's just continuing to throw down value.
He's willing to throw down more.
I'm gonna pause it for the sake of making sure
that we continue on to the other aspects
that I want you as an audience to know about him as a leader.
But I'm also gonna break down
some of what you talked about,
things that I can do on my end as a leader already.
Moin, you hit it right on the head
without being pretentious or rude.
You have this diplomatic value
that I'm striving for as a leader,
but you called me out.
They're going to mimic me.
There's no way I can escape that.
As long as I am the leader, that will happen.
And therefore I have an opportunity to choose balance
and choose how I communicate to facilitate balance.
The thing that I want entrepreneurs to hear as well,
my goal and intention for first-class business
is not to make it Jackson class business.
It's not to remain at the top, so to speak,
or to be the face of the company long-term.
I will eventually hire in a CEO
to take over this company as we grow to the magnitude
where we have the capacity to do so.
But we also need somebody who can lead
that type of an organization with greater capacity
than I can.
I'm more of a megaphone
than I am a leader of cultural development.
It would be very irresponsible for me to stay in that role.
I think more entrepreneurs will benefit
from coming to that realization sooner than later,
that they can be involved in their dream.
They can still be the visionary leader
without having to control the day-to-day dynamics
and without having to control the decisions
that are made within the culture.
And if you create that governing body
in a way where the democracy that could exist within
can outvote you if you don't behave,
but also protects the company
from you having absolute power, corrupting absolutely.
That's what I'm ultimately constantly looking at
is am I getting myself out of this situation soon enough,
fast enough to where I don't end up burning
the entire thing to the ground because of my ego.
So you said highly sensitive people.
We also, I would say, have a company
of highly sensitive people.
That's something that I think I tend to attract.
And so I'm very curious about exploring later
what you talked about with that,
those amount of slack messages and what to do there
and how overwhelmed can look.
And how do you communicate with people who aren't sensitive
about the reality that being sensitive
is not the same as being defensive and et cetera.
I'm just gonna open a bunch of cans of worms for this.
Because those people who are listening,
like I hope you're getting the point guys,
you want to reach out to somebody like Ryan.
If you have somebody like Ryan, awesome.
If you don't, this is exactly why
you need somebody like him.
So shifting gears a little bit, 30 seconds.
What is your vision for those that you serve?
Yeah, I think this is safe.
Sometimes I have a more polished version.
I'm gonna give you the real version
and then we'll talk about the polish.
So the real version, and I feel safe saying this here,
is to reduce suffering in the world.
And that's because-
I love that, that's the three-symmetry version.
That's beautiful.
Yeah. To reduce the suffering.
I think you say that in a professional setting
and people are like, people kind of give you the stink eye.
Like, well, do you cause the suffering?
I think sometimes when you were the one
to bring up a negative phrase,
people associate you with it.
So I have to be careful with that.
Oh, that makes sense.
That makes sense.
But when I'm talking to someone who I feel like understands
what's going on in the world at a personal level for people,
then that's okay to say that.
Because what we're talking about is that we often are the cause
of our own suffering, sometimes in our own minds.
And I find that if that's not in check,
or at least being observed and managed,
then we then become the cause of suffering
for people all around us.
Whether it's strangers in line at Starbucks
or it's our closest loved ones.
If we don't love ourselves and understand ourselves,
then we can become a menace or a nuisance to society.
And so my real vision for those I serve is a ripple effect.
I think that when I help one person,
I'm actually helping them be a better person
for the people around them.
And my ultimate goal is to reduce suffering in society.
So that's how I think about it.
I can tell you that if my mom and my five sisters were here,
we'd probably all be crying, like emotional joy.
That's the goal.
And I understand that that's not the common approach
to like a common feeling because it hurts to listen to that.
But on the flip side, so what is the vision beyond that?
We reduce the suffering, which causes what for the vision?
Let's go 30 seconds into that part.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, so as may be clear, like in the way
that I introduced myself, like I've
chosen the modality of doing this in the corporate world.
I think that the corporate world causes
a fair amount of suffering, not intentionally,
but as a byproduct of how we operate.
And so my goal is to help people find value in their work
and find meaning in their work because they often can then
build resilience to some of the challenges that
come with the difficulties of the work life.
That's amazing.
Yeah, there are millions of people
who are in corporate or in corporate cultures.
I don't know how many millions.
It's possibly billions worldwide too
that work in a corporate culture.
And any time that you can go into an organization
and affect change for all those that exist within,
the ripple effect can be fantastic.
So I do appreciate that sentiment.
And now let's talk about you, though.
On your side, what's your personal vision for yourself?
Three, five, 10 years down the road?
Yeah, I try not to too oversimplify,
but I just want to help people.
Again, my vision is that I'm going to continue to find.
What I'm really struggling with and looking to continue to do
is to find ways to scale.
There's a lot of beauty that happens
in a one-on-one conversation that really helps people move,
I think, faster than taking a course or things like that,
where you're grouped in and your problem is a couple of steps
removed so that it can serve everyone.
So I really enjoy.
I was raised by two therapists, so I've always
valued the one-on-one instance.
And I've become a coach so that I can do that.
But it's also a challenge, because when you look out
and you see how many people are struggling,
it's difficult to think about how am I
going to talk to every single one of them.
So I'm looking for ways to scale myself
in a way that's still effective but helps
get the message out faster and farther.
Absolutely.
There's only so much we can do one-on-one.
There's limitations time-wise.
It's just the logic of reality science,
I guess you could call it.
But as you're talking about, I'm talking about scaling
effectively, where you're still able to make the impact
that you want to make.
So yeah, man, we look forward to, of course, seeing you do that.
And I'm sure you're well on your way.
Let's dive into one of the more intense questions.
We have one.
What is your worst business experience ever?
Two leap to mind.
Do you want to hear one that was directly impacting me
or one that impacted 300 people?
I trust you.
OK.
Well, I think since we're talking about personal motivation
and leadership here, one of the worst business experiences
I've ever had, I had worked at a company for 3 and 1
1 half years and had a manager brought in.
And she had been there for a couple of weeks
and seemed to struggle to understand
how to learn about people's motivators and drivers.
And within weeks of meeting with me and the team
that I'd been managing, she started communicating to people
that she felt I had senioritis.
And whether or not that that was an appropriate assessment,
it was a completely inappropriate thing
to go around saying to people.
And when I questioned her on it, she actually then
threatened to lower my pay and my level as somehow
an attempt.
I don't know, this was like a command and control attempt.
It made no sense at the type of company we were at.
And I was able to quickly get this resolved
by just going to HR and saying, this is what's happened to me.
I actually have a recording of this still today.
It haunts my dreams.
But I have this conversation recorded
because it's just unacceptable to speak to people that way.
We're human beings.
I don't care about profits or business goals
if we're going to forget that we're two human beings
collaborating in a space.
So that's why this is so important.
Let's define this real quick, though.
Senioritis, what is that?
I think it was a joke or an implication that like,
so senioritis for me reminds me of high school.
Like when you're in your second semester
of your senior year of high school,
you don't care about your classes anymore
because you're going on to graduate.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, so that's what she was saying.
Keep going on that.
So OK, so I graduated early.
I told my mom I'm either dropping out or I'm graduating
early, take your pick.
Not the coolest move.
I didn't graduate early.
That's a good joke.
I was ready to go.
That's right.
But so I didn't graduate early because I'm
like the super gifted, I'm going to be walking the stage.
And I did get to give the senior address,
but that's a different story.
And had to do with a whole different setup.
But it wasn't because I was this golden child, that's for sure.
So I didn't actually experience what you're talking.
I was thinking senioritis meant like you felt
you were superior to others.
But she was saying that you felt superior and checked
out.
In that case, you weren't doing it.
That's a better way for it.
She used the word senioritis.
Maybe she was saying I was old and forgetful,
but I certainly within the context perceived it as.
Oh, I didn't mean old and forgetful.
I meant like.
Oh, no, I'm adding a third definition.
Right, there we go.
But like the jock with the letterman who's like,
what do you know?
I mean, I already got it all figured out.
I don't think it was that.
She thought she was much more powerful than me.
So I don't think it was that.
I think she was accusing me of being checked out.
And a couple months into COVID, gosh,
I couldn't imagine why I might be a little overwhelmed
or overstimulated in that type of situation.
But just a complete failure to learn
how to recognize the experience of another person
and communicate with them and motivate them
in an effective way.
That was a very like 90s and outdated style of leadership
that I'm working hard to see removed from society.
Good for you.
OK.
And now let's hear about the other story.
If you don't mind, we're going to double down on worst
experiences ever.
I try not to be too much of a gush and tell,
but it's like, hey, if people are
willing to treat us like this, then
we ought to be able to tell people how we've been treated.
So this is a very different situation.
Essentially what this is a story about
is a time when I put a lot of work
into creating an experience for 300 people
and had one person essentially like shadow
that with a few words.
So as a company that I worked at,
we were having a large full company off site.
So two, 300 people in a venue.
It was actually like a comedy improv club venue.
And for weeks in advance, I had been working with,
there's a group called Radical Candor.
Have you ever heard of that book or that framework?
Uh-uh.
Cool.
Maybe we should talk about it because it's helpful.
But the gist is that Radical Candor is
a very simplified framework for how
to give feedback in a way that shows that you are being
direct and relatively confrontational,
like you're not avoiding, but you're also
being very caring.
So it's about pairing those two things together.
We find that in society, a lot of people
are so caring that they're not direct
and they kind of beat around the bush.
And there's also people who are so direct
that they completely forget to show
that they believe in the person.
And so this model is meant to bring these together.
That's amazing.
Radical Candor, look it up.
It's incredible.
Oh, I have.
I'm going to connect.
There's a beautiful grid, too.
I mean, if there's a possibility of getting on the screen,
there's just a four by four grid that
shows what I'm talking about.
So happy to talk through that.
And there you go.
You can see the grid on the left.
So what that grid is showing is essentially
like one axis is how much you are direct with a person,
and the other axis is how much you're caring with them.
So if you're in the bottom left, you're not being direct
or caring.
I think they call that, oh, there's a word for each one.
Top left is so direct and not caring,
and they call that obnoxious aggression.
And then the bottom right is when you're so caring,
but you're not direct.
And they call that ruinous empathy.
I love that word, because I'm very empathetic
and I pride myself on it.
But I can be ruinously empathetic sometimes.
So I appreciate that.
Nice.
As you can see, my friends, I have
got to get this in my audible immediately.
Yes, it's a given.
I love it.
When you find a mentor and somebody
that you respect their opinions and they give you
access to their super secret, and not secret,
but of course, your treasure trove of materials,
it's like take action.
Get it done.
Even if you're in the middle of a live podcast,
it's always time to take action.
Never miss the opportunity.
So let's shift gears into your best experience.
Oh, wait.
I didn't get to share what happened.
Good.
I'm glad.
I was like, maybe he didn't want to share it.
So I'll just move on.
So yeah, what happened?
What happened?
I'll hit you with it.
So the gist is I've got 300 people in a comedy club
watching an offsite.
We've got the CEO talking about the corporate goals.
We've got other people rolling out initiatives and products.
But the kind of protein of the whole event
was that I'd worked for weeks to hire a certified consultant
to essentially deliver and teach the entire company
about this radical candor model.
And we were probably 20, 30, maybe 40 minutes
into a young woman my age on stage
presenting in front of 300 people, which I also
acknowledge is an intimidating situation to some degree.
When one of the co-founders of the company
stands up and asks for a microphone,
and he announces that he doesn't believe in radical candor
and we all just need to get thicker skin.
And my heart starts to sink immediately.
And then as I'm listening to my heart sink,
I'm also hearing the laughter of the entire engineering
department just going, ha, ha, ha, isn't that so true?
And this was just devastating.
Because not only have we just disrespected and embarrassed
a woman on stage, but we've also just
undercut the value of something we've invested thousands
of dollars in and hours and hours of time in.
And essentially, yeah, someone with a lot
of indirect influence over the company
was able to communicate, like, don't listen to this.
It's not valuable.
I don't care about it.
And I know because I had hundreds of employees come to me
and say, that was so embarrassing
and I'm so offended that he did that.
But this is someone with power.
And this is another risk that we run.
If you're a nobody like me at a company
and you're just kind of an IC wandering around
and you make an offhand comment, maybe three people hear you.
But if you're the leader or the co-founder of a company
and you make a comment like that,
you've got hundreds of people listening and acting
based on how you behave.
And I think that that was just completely inappropriate
and frankly, yeah, it just didn't serve really anybody
in the room.
So that was one of the worst experiences.
Oh, absolutely.
You know, it reminds me of the opportunity as a leader,
right?
These are the cool things.
This is like a role play scenario
where imagine what you would do as a leader
if this were to happen at your event, right?
And if you can place that in your mind
and practice these opportunities,
my initial response is I'm pretty good
with handling hecklers, but sometimes I do it
in a way that's not necessarily the nicest.
I need to read radical candid by the way,
cause I'm like, you know, I think my response would,
immediately would probably be,
you're like all gonna judge me for this.
And you have every right to, would be, okay, well,
you know, Scott, let's come Scott.
You know, we certainly appreciate your opinion on the matter
and we all know how valuable opinions are.
But you know, some people Scott choose not to wear underwear
either and that's their choice.
But it doesn't make either side right or wrong.
Those who understand the value
of what this wonderful lady is sharing
and those who have a heart to put this stuff into,
we appreciate that.
Those who don't, then, you know, we like you too.
So let's keep going with the opportunity though.
So anyway, there's probably-
I admire that.
What?
I admire that.
I think there's a way to kind of point out what's,
I mean, that sounds a little bit like radical candor
cause you're kind of addressing what's happening
while saying like, you're still valid as a person.
I think there's too much of this.
Like it's either me or you in the world right now.
So I think it's important to value someone's belief
while saying, you're kind of distracting
from the point right now.
Dude, I would have crushed him.
A couple of years ago, I would have crushed him
and just, and because I've always been a protector,
always been a protector of people who get picked on.
So I went to the office a lot in elementary school
and it typically was in the name
of protecting somebody who was getting picked on.
And when I was playing in the sports team,
those greatest sports, I would always pick second.
I picked my best player first.
And then second, I'd pick whoever I knew
was going to pick last.
I would just dominate.
I love that.
And so it was, it's kind of built into me, but yeah.
And a couple of my best friend,
he, James told me, he said,
Jackson, sometimes when you speak with people,
it's like you hit them with a steel bat.
Yeah.
And I was like, I know.
I was like, I was already aware, trying to figure it out.
I was like, but he's like, I know you're not,
but like, it just comes across that way.
And I was like, oh dude, like you're speaking truth
and I got to figure out how to stop doing that.
Cause yeah, I would have just made him feel miserable
for making her, for putting her through that.
And that's not the best way.
So we are a little bit over,
but I want to keep going if you're okay with that.
Yeah. Okay. Awesome.
So what's your best experience in business, Ryan?
Yeah.
And best is a very, you know,
we can interpret that in many ways,
but you're asking me, so I'm going to share.
One of the things that comes up for me is like,
for me, the best business experiences happen
when I have a visceral, positive, full body sensation.
Like when am I, when am I,
when is something that's happening at work,
making me feel so good that like,
I almost can't put words to it.
I just feel good in my body and in my mind.
And I'll tell you exactly when that was.
So years ago at Pandora,
one of the things that I was challenged to do
was to look at, so a lot of companies,
like especially these types of tech companies,
will use engagement surveys
and they'll actually pull and measure across the company
to find out what are we doing well,
what are we not doing well?
And sometimes these can go into like 80 different topics,
like it gets in depth and eventually you fatigue
your employees with over surveys, but.
Oh, it's kind of a secret.
But it can work if it's delivered in proper portions.
Sure. And one of the key components is to show
that you're acting on what you're,
like if you're just asking and people are telling you
for a year that we're unhappy in this one area,
it's like, eventually they're going to go,
I'm going to stop answering
because you're not doing anything.
But one of my jobs, which was one of the best jobs
I've ever had is to just look at those surveys
and try to get those scores to go back up.
And so, but the very specific experience
that I had within this is that one of the scores
that was low, we had people who loved their managers,
they were happy in their job,
they didn't want to leave Pandora,
but they were looking around on LinkedIn
and on weekends talking to friends at parties
and hearing other people are moving forward in their career.
They're like, I want to grow in the same way my friends are.
And we started to hear that that was actually
the biggest risk to losing people was not so much
that they were unhappy, but that they felt
like they weren't keeping up with their peers.
So one of the things that we did is we-
A little bit of a roof on their head, perhaps,
of like what they could accomplish,
where they could go for.
This happens in jobs where you're essentially doing
like a relatively repetitive job.
This is huge for all the types of companies we work with
because I would say that it's one of the greatest reasons
why 96% of businesses are failing.
And that has to do with the entrepreneur
putting their thumb accidentally on top of those
or serving them saying, hey, we want the lowest price
with the fastest result.
And we're not going to paint any vision
for how we want to include you long-term
because we want the best ROI.
And what you're doing is you're basically saying,
I'm never going to care about you.
I'm never going to want to see what you want to accomplish.
And if you don't care about my vision,
I don't want to pay you.
It's happens, this happens at the smallest
of business levels, not just in corporate.
So go ahead.
It's good to know.
And I think it's even associated with quiet quitting,
which you've mentioned earlier,
so we can talk about that too.
But the answer to the question is that we launched
a skill development program that essentially enticed people
that, on one hand, I had a company saying,
we need people to learn new skills to adapt
with the new business model of the company.
But I knew in my heart that if I go and tell
these three, 400 employees that, hey, you got to learn
a skill to adapt to the business model,
that's not motivating.
There's probably 10% of people who are like,
heck yeah, let's do it.
Like I'm all on.
But a lot of people are like,
that sounds like you need more from me.
And it's human to ask, what are you going to reciprocate?
And so what we did is we found out what are the skills
you want to learn and matched those up with the skills
that they needed to essentially fit
into this new business model.
So the whole experience is really positive.
The program is still in place at Pandora,
even though I haven't been there since 2017.
So that's also a positive experience.
But the actual moment I'm talking about
that was really visceral is we created applications
for this program.
We didn't need to do this.
We were going to try to get as many people
to take the classes as possible.
However, I was worried about this problem
I just put in front of you, which is,
hey, if you're taking this because I'm telling you,
it doesn't feel as exciting as if I tell you,
you can get into this, if you can tell me
why you think you're going to do,
what you're going to do with it.
And so the best experience I've ever had was one night,
I had weeks of applications be open.
So employees were applying to this program
and it had questions like,
what do you hope to do with these new skills?
And I sat up until probably one in the morning,
just reading a printout of these answers
of what people, their vision,
they said, if I learn public speaking,
I'll be able to do this.
If I learn deck design, I'll be able to do this.
And just seeing other people get excited
about their future, that's a really positive
business experience for me.
Oh, absolutely.
And even if they don't even get to apply it
within the walls of what you're doing,
it unleashes a power that,
and then especially if you understand
that sometimes your vision is a vehicle
for other people that fulfill their own visions.
In fact, that's not a sometimes,
that usually is the case,
unless they happen to be the one
who's going to take over someday.
If we can embrace that reality too,
then we create more abundance in the presence
while creating more space for more beautiful future.
So I love that.
We strive to emulate that.
As a startup, it's a lot harder.
We have to do, I shouldn't say it's a lot harder.
We make our own justifications, right?
For our realities.
But I will say that we,
so we have a passions assessment.
And all of the entrepreneurs who work with us,
they have to take it.
All of the employees who work with us,
we want them to take it.
And they're usually inspired
because they fit within our virtues.
And the goal is to find out
what really drives that individual?
What strengths do they have?
What weaknesses do they have?
And we try to keep it open-minded too.
We're like, okay, you're coming to this company
to help fulfill this role.
And you're not stuck here.
Like we want to know where you want to be,
what you want to do.
Because people, when they do what they love,
produce far better results
than if they're doing something they're forced to do.
So we usually have a concession session
where we say, well, for now,
these are the roles that we really need fulfilled.
And if you can help us bridge these gaps
because we don't have somebody else to do that right now,
then let's make sure we never forget the importance
of building the education on these aspects of your career
and facility and the path for you to grow into that.
And I have seen that the people that I work with,
unless they're like terrified of me
and are constantly lying,
they tend to love working with us.
And that started with my first fiber assistant
that I did not treat like a payless shoe transaction.
Sure, sure.
I said, after asking his birthday and stuff,
I said, beyond design, what do you really want to do?
And he said, I want to learn everything I can about AI.
I should have listened to him.
This was like 10 years ago.
And I want to work in the artificial intelligence space.
And I had a friend that too,
I had one investor who helped with the money ball equations
and another one who was working
in the robotics division at Google X.
And I was like, well, I said, that's awesome.
I said, I don't have direct contacts,
but I do have some people I can introduce you to.
Sure.
And I would love to, if you perform really well on this,
of course, I'd be happy to honor you
with some connections and some insights.
That dude crushed it with my logos.
He went so far above and beyond.
And I was like, wow.
So if I just take interest in people, right, tactic wise,
if I just care about people,
then they will care about me.
Interesting.
It's a simple equation, but yeah.
Yep, that's it, man.
So this was awesome.
I'm so happy that we got to have you on the show, Ryan.
We'd be happy to have you back.
We wish you the best with Growth Wave as well.
If there's any opportunities to collaborate in the future,
we will certainly be open to it
where that future is one minute from now,
or that future is a hundred days from now.
So let's figure out how to make that happen.
And vision pros, if you have more questions
about leadership, please drop them in the comments.
So that Ryan and I can both give our attempts
to attend to that.
If you know people who could use some advice
on leadership, drop some healthy hints.
Hey boss, I was really inspired by this conversation.
That's a better way than saying, hey boss, you suck at this.
You should listen to this episode, right?
There are ways to share this
and there are ways that might go more viral sharing it.
So we went either way,
but there's a great opportunity to leverage
a lot of what was spoken here.
And I'll give you one more tip on that.
You're gonna share this episode,
think through what was the point in the episode
or the story that made the difference for you
and find the timestamp of what that is
and share that with your audience
because it creates a little bit of a hook
and a little bit of a teaser,
but it also helps them get right to the point
of the value that we provided.
And if there's anything else we can do for you
as visionary entrepreneurs, visionary professionals,
visionaries of your own lives, don't hesitate to ask.
We might be able to make the wish come true.
Have a fantastic day.
Ryan, thank you so much for honoring us
with your time today.
Thank you.
Everybody have a wonderful day.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show
and thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have a great day.