with a teacher and they were each allowed to ask me one question.
So they were 14 year olds and it was amazing the kind of questions.
It's basically like seeing inside a 14 year old's mind, you know, kind of questions were like,
does it ever get easy in life to get out of bed?
If you're on your own business, does that mean you can just play PlayStation and eat pizza all day?
Have you ever been bullied?
If so, how did you deal with the bullies?
In my head, I'm like, OK, that kid's getting bullied.
He needs some help.
So, but, you know, those are not your typical questions.
And I actually stop and think and like, you know, you're actually helping some kids here
who are making not necessarily immediate decisions, but really thinking about what is it?
What is it like being an adult? Help me out here.
Oh, that's amazing.
So how do you how do you find more more shows like that?
Shows with with helping the youth.
That's really cool.
So I use a couple of platforms.
All right.
Welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
With Jackson Calame, I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are building
fantastic visions out there.
And welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm your show host, Jackson Calame, founder and CEO of First Class Business.
I'm super excited to be bringing on board today Faris Aranki.
He is an IQ, EQ and FQ strategist.
We're going to talk about those acronyms, what they mean in just a minute.
Some of them you may be familiar with, but even if not, they have all the more reason
to write some notes.
We're talking about intelligence, emotional intelligence and focus.
And I thought it was financial intelligence.
But as I looked at that, I was like, wait a second.
All three of these have to do with raising your financial game.
So I can see why he added that focus intelligence at the end there too.
And we'll find out if he coined that or if he's just a superstar professor of that.
But I've really, really enjoyed my time with him already and I look forward to
putting him on stage.
When we talk about enhancing company success, we're not just talking about
profits either.
We're going to be talking about success and we're going to be defining what Faris
sees as success as well.
Before we do that, I want to talk about these sponsors though.
These sponsors, two of them, both of them are super important to me.
One of them is ColdClick.
We actually use ColdClick for LinkedIn automation ourselves.
Art Hoffman launched this program.
Now we've used U-Link and we've used Buzz and he's got this, in fact, I shouldn't say
what he has behind the scenes, but I mean, he's cool like that.
He's got Octopus connected to U-Link and he helps us understand the direction that
the algorithm is going in.
For LinkedIn, so we don't get in trouble as we automate our messages.
I mean, if the president of the United States can automate his birthday cards and his
messages to get in front of people, then we should be able to leverage the same types
of systems to make sure that we're maximizing the people that we're reaching.
And what that does, it allows you to just move forward to the people who are best fit
to work with you right here and now.
It also, if you use it right, allows you to connect with complete strangers in
authentic ways.
Please don't automate your messages.
In authentic ways, please don't automate your business in ways that aren't authentic.
Like the famous message that says, Hey, it looks like we have mutual friends.
Don't automate that.
That's just trashy.
Now on the flip side, if you're starting out in business and you don't have a website,
I wish I had known about SimplyFastWebsites.com, because what Shane Michael has built is a
platform where for $179, you can get a website.
Now, if I were in your shoes, I would push Shane to that specific limit.
I spent thousands of dollars on my first couple of websites.
I also spent even more than thousands of dollars in my time trying to figure out Weebly,
trying, I'm dating myself there, trying to figure out Wix, trying to figure out Squarespace,
playing with themes on WordPress.
I even hired somebody in Upwork for a couple hundred bucks.
It started out as a couple of dollars, by the way.
And then he got me connected with a hijacked version of a WordPress theme.
I loved the kid and wished him the best.
And my website did fine.
Nothing happened with it.
I just felt bad because I was like, this, I think is kind of illegal.
So I want to save you that hassle.
I would go with a company like SimplyFastWebsites.com.
Pick their brain the best you can, respectfully.
Know that you're not going to get a Nike.com, but you're getting started with somebody who
has a passion for both web design and web development.
And you end up saving yourself a whole lot of time and hassle.
So big fan of Shane and what he's built there.
I continue to wish him the best of success and the water project.
If you have access to this, which if you're listening to the podcast, you likely do.
There are people all over the world who do not have access to clean drinking water.
And this is an opportunity to find those communities and actually give to a specific
community. Maybe you can't give financially right now.
Maybe you're like COVID economics has got you down and you can only share this.
Do that. Share it with somebody you never know.
Maybe that person that you connected to this is able to donate ten thousand dollars and
fund water wells for a couple of these communities.
The cool thing is once you do add some funding to one of these communities, you get to see
the actual results of what happens.
You get to learn about their story upfront.
You then get to see the transformation that takes place.
What you may not see, but I challenge you to think about is look at this picture of these
children right here. Imagine how this is going to affect them over the next 10 years of
their life. What it will do for their education.
What it will do for their health.
What that will do for the safety and sanctity of their families.
This is we're creating generational impact when we give to projects like this.
Now, if you've got a project and you're like, hey, Jackson, I think this project is way
more important than that one.
Just drop the link in the comments, please, because I would love to check it out and love
to see what we can do to support that as well.
So thank you for always taking the time to give back.
We got eight billion people in this world who need a ton of help.
So without further ado, let me dive into Ferris's profile a little bit.
I've got to get better at the screen sharing technology, my friends.
Let's see here. Screen share is LinkedIn.
I always love for people to have the chance.
Hey, what's up, Scott?
I love for people to have the chance to take a look and see where people come from, whether
it's his opportunity to go to Durham University or his business, Shia Ghetto Consulting,
which stands for Sharpening Stone in Japanese.
I knew that prior to no, I didn't.
And I like this intelligence quotient, the ability to come up with the best solution,
emotional quotient, the ability to bring others with you.
That was brilliant.
I was like, oh, that's really no better way to define emotion than that understanding
that we utilize it to inspire others.
And then this focus quotient ability to focus and be efficient.
We're going to talk about focus and action and how they may be the same or differ as
well.
I'm going to scroll through real fast.
Skip past some of the recent activity.
You can check out that.
But one of the things that would challenge you to do is the leaders that you're working
with, that you're looking up to, go in and look and see their job backgrounds.
What is it that they've done to get to where they are and build what it is they're
building?
For instance, three years at Ernst & Young as a strategy advisory team, managing a
consulting member.
That's a big deal.
It's a big company.
There are ways they do things.
There's things you can do.
There are ways they do things, there's things you can learn about why Ferris has
adapted and adopted the type of personality that he has in relation to leadership.
Asking him about that experience, whether it was good, bad or ugly, allows you to get
to know him on a deeper level as well.
Just again, little tips and tricks to help you establish yourself with the leaders that
you're meeting and talking to.
So, Ferris, thank you so much for joining me on Vision Pros Live.
It's great to have you.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jackson.
And you know what, that's the first time I've seen my profile sort of anatomically
dissected by somebody in front of me.
And I'm like, wow, there's nothing as humbling as hearing your CV or your LinkedIn
profile read to you.
You're like, damn it, I need to change that.
I need to move that.
But hey, I loved it.
It was a great intro.
First time for everything.
First time I've done that too.
So that was fun.
Not the first time I've read one, but the first time I've definitely done that live
for somebody and humbling or not, it is an impressive background.
And I'm excited for others to, again, ask you about those realities.
I hope to discover many more things about you as the years come.
So, Ferris, who should be listening today?
And the ultimate question of arrogance, no, just grounding.
Why should they be listening to you about these subjects?
OK, the answer is everyone should be listening.
But who should be listening?
Anyone who wants to be a bit more effective in life.
Right.
And that can mean anything to anyone, right?
Because we all have goals, not necessarily achieving them.
And that's both personal and professional.
Why should they listen to me?
Because quite frankly, I'm very entertaining.
I've got stories for everything.
But more importantly, as you unpack, I've got this equation, this patented methodology,
which actively helps companies unlock value.
Right.
You sort of alluded to it at the start.
Why did I call my company Shia Ghetto Consulting?
All right.
Shia Ghetto, the Japanese word for a sharpening stone.
There you go.
We even have a pillow with it written on.
I was like, that's not a sharpening stone.
You're not going to convince me.
The arrowhead is sharpening stone.
But why is it called a sharpening stone?
It's because we all, you know, like your knives, like your pair of scissors,
they go dull over time.
It's a bit like us.
It's a bit like our strategies.
They go a little bit dull.
We don't realize it.
OK, they lose five percent, 10 percent effectiveness.
Right.
It just means cutting through that piece of meat a bit harder,
getting stuff done in your company and your personal life gets a bit harder.
So if you can just sharpen and improve your effectiveness,
you unlock a whole lot of value in all aspects of your life.
So those are the people who should be listening today because I'm going to give some tips, tricks.
And this is the stuff I eat, sleep and breathe and absolutely love.
And it makes a material difference for companies and people.
I'm going to dive into an indirection here because of what you just nailed down.
So when you talked about people becoming dull, you know, or systems becoming dull,
their realities becoming dull, et cetera, I think a lot of us tend.
I found myself for a couple of years focused on sharpening my mindset.
Yeah.
And I didn't realize how little I was paying attention to sharpening my systems.
So I'm curious, do you know, do you compartmentalize that process of sharpening?
Are there different elements?
What does that look like to you?
100%.
That's why the equation comes up with IQ, EQ and FQ.
And, you know, I do this, me and my team, we do this, we go into companies.
And do you know what the number one thing we find, particularly with a lot of the big
corporates we work with, they've got a lot of IQ.
They've got a lot of smart people, you know, coming up with great ideas.
What they lack is the EQ and the FQ, the EQ, you know, smart person.
If they're not able to talk to other people and say, hey, this is my idea.
Are you excited by it?
Then it's just their idea.
It's just a piece of paper.
Right.
So just having IQ, high quantities is not enough.
So it's a bit like you working on your technical systems and the bit you said, you
know, your knowledge, your things, that's great.
But what do you do with that knowledge?
How do you get others inspired?
And then you talked about having systems.
That's where the FQ comes in for me.
Right.
Having great systems, not being able to do things more efficiently, not be
distracted, unlocks the likelihood that you're going to achieve whatever you said, i.e.
you're going to use that knowledge in an effective way.
Because that's so often, you know, there you go.
If you look at it, there's some, you know, I use some analogies on my website about
what does IQ, EQ and FQ mean?
And let's imagine you want to scale amount it.
Right.
IQ is working out all the different ways you could scale the mountain.
EQ is making sure you've got the right team and they've got your back and there's
high levels of trust.
And FQ is making sure that you damn well go through with it and climb that mountain.
All right.
You can't achieve anything without those three components.
I was going to ask you about that with FQ.
So FQ, as I read your topic on focus and was kind of preparing for this, I thought
I should ask Ferris, what's the difference between focus and action?
So focus, focus starts with prioritization.
All right.
Okay.
So too many times in life you can be active, but you're not focused.
So what do I mean by that?
Let's just take personal habits.
We all do stuff day in, day out without really stopping and thinking, why am I doing that?
Yeah.
Right.
Is it really getting me a step closer to my goal?
We all have sat in a meeting that is probably not really delivering a lot of value.
We've all eaten a couple of biscuits, even if eating biscuits wasn't our goal.
Right.
Just because they happen to be in front of us.
So that means we're doing action.
Right.
It's just not necessarily in the direction it should be.
And so taking a moment to remind yourself, what is my goal?
What are the things that are going to get me there?
Therefore, what are the things are not going to get me there?
Like scrolling on my phone is not going to get me there, but I'm still doing it.
Right.
Just that simple check and balance can give you instant FQ.
It can give you an instant more focus and more likelihood of achieving success.
I love that.
You've probably heard the analogy of the two lumberjacks in the woods.
One's old, one's young.
The young guy loses the race.
The old guy beat him pretty badly and chopping these trees down.
The young guy says, hey, how the heck did you beat me?
I saw you taking lunch and breaks.
Old guy says, while you were chopping with a dull axe, I was sharpening mine.
And it allowed him to win the race.
And that's what led me to my own realization and that analogy of, huh,
I see a lot of people sharpening their mind, but I also see a lot of companies ignoring
their tools, not sharpening those.
And then you talked about it.
Even more prominent, I think most people, at least in America, I can't speak for other countries,
are seeing that the corporations are kind of putting the well-being of their workers
on the back burner.
And it's like, hey, have you gotten that report done?
By the way, how's your family?
If they even ask that, that's being a little bit generous.
So it's neat that you help with that.
And I like how you said focus starts with prioritizing your actions.
Right?
That's also really, really helpful.
So what's the vision for those that you serve?
What do you hope that on the other side, what does it look like, the clear destination,
the clear destination of awesome behind that?
Hey, it comes from them, right?
I work with companies ranging from Amazon in one scale to an educational charity startup,
you know, and the other.
And we always start with vision.
I say, look, you cannot be successful unless you are clear on what you want to achieve,
where you want to get to.
And I say to them, back in the days when I was a strategy consultant, I used to be my job
to help write that vision.
But now I say to them, I literally do not care what your vision is, as long as A, you have
one and B, as long as the second condition is that you all align on it.
Right?
Because I've been in companies where the four founders or the eight senior directors all
have a slightly different view of the vision.
And then what happens?
It just causes chaos to the company.
Even a 1% split means they're going out walking the floors, telling people slightly different
things.
So yeah, it's not my job to assess now.
At times I've heard visions that I've gone, oh, my God, that's shocking.
I wouldn't do that.
But if I can get them aligned and get them to have a clear direction, then that's the
vision I do for my clients.
Interesting.
Do you ask them that vision individually or does that come out in a group discussion?
So I always do an activity to start off with where I say, right, in silence.
And when you alter write down the vision in 15 to 20 words in your own words, right?
We then reveal our post-its and we see how close or how far they are.
And I said, right, we are not leaving this room till when we repeat that exercise, you
all have a 90% overlap.
Okay?
So we're going to discuss, we're going to have honest conversations.
And that's what I do.
I create the environment and make it engaging.
I challenge to get that.
And it's really funny.
I'll tell you a story.
I once was in a room with a startup, an engineering firm, and they had a vision on their website.
It said, look, we want to save the world by doing environmental projects, maybe a bit
like the water project.
And I said to them, as preparation for the meeting, I said, can I have a look at all
the projects you've done in the last five years?
So I walked into the room and I said, look, something's wrong here.
Either you are shit salespeople because you're the five years worth of projects.
You've not done anything that is vaguely saving the environment.
Or you're lying about your vision.
So which one is it?
All right.
And there was silence in the room.
Two minutes past, three minutes past, four minutes past.
Finally, one of the directors broke and said, you know, we're going to do this.
Yeah, I just want to make a bunch of money and retire by the time I'm 50.
I don't care how I do it.
And the second guy went, oh, such a relief because I also want to do that.
You know, I don't really care about the environment.
And it went around the room and in my head, I'm like, OK, that's that is what it is.
Right.
It's shocking.
But I said, guys, do not put on your website then that's what you're going to achieve.
Right.
OK, maybe don't write you want to retire by your 50.
But by writing that, you're lying to yourself.
You're lying to clients.
You're lying to your staff who've joined in for those reasons.
And yeah, let's rewrite something that you all now believe in and will dedicate your day in,
day out to achieve.
I love that.
And Ferris, I'd like to come in as the devil's advocate on that a little bit.
And talk about that from two different angles.
One, I think the gut reaction of most people hearing a story like that would say, like,
well, why the heck would you help somebody who's that evil or that self-centered?
And on the flip side, I'd also add that I believe that most and take it
for what it is, guys, but most people have the intent to do good.
Even if we're dealing selfishly or we see things from a selfish perspective,
there's still an inherent good that's behind it 99 percent of the time.
So while that may have been their immediate motivation, we don't know if they were struggling
to provide for their families.
We don't know if there's a grand reason behind why they needed that financial advancement for
themselves. And we don't know by getting to that financial reality if there's a certain virtue
or opportunity of service that exists beyond that.
I'm curious how how how motivated how important was that for you to uncover as part of that
project or team or was that irrelevant?
I mean, completely.
And that's, you know, I'm not doing them a disservice.
They built a company, they were employing 40 people, so they were putting wages in people's
hands. They were still doing interesting work. It just wasn't aligned to what they said.
And that's what I really was challenging them.
You know, and then then the sort of marketer in me said, look, you can't write on a website.
Our vision is to retire by the time we're 50.
That that doesn't look that doesn't look great to us.
But yeah, it you know, where we reached was we want to do interesting projects with
interesting people, you know, which allowed them much more of an umbrella to go out and continue to
do the work that they did anyway.
I appreciate that.
And it just provided more clarity.
So, yeah, I'm not saying that there aren't plenty of circumstances and plenty more beyond a simple
statement like that.
It's funny.
I presented at South by Southwest for our first company in Austin.
And I was probably 23 at the time, I think.
And one of the investors that came by invested in environmental projects.
And I was pretty quick to respect his time and say, like, we don't do anything with the
environment.
I mean, I'm like, sorry.
And he said, he said, you know, don't be so quick to write yourself off.
We look for people who are helping human to human associations as well.
You're part of the environment.
We're not just talking about solar.
And so I think one, he respected my humility and backing down.
But then he elevated my vision and helped me see that this isn't just about wind farms and and
solar. This is about anything that contributes to the greater good of humanity.
So I appreciate you bringing that up.
Go ahead.
You have something else to say about that before we move on?
Yeah, I was just going to say that, you know, as I explained what I do in work, particularly
on the EQ side, right, which is about getting people working better together now, rightly
or wrongly, companies will not pay a big amount necessarily to make people feel better.
OK, they might in the wellness space, but then it's you know, they're not paying the sums
that they pay to a strategy consultant.
So rightly or wrongly, I am paid to solve problems.
It just so happens that often I use the people route to get there
and that people are happier as a result.
But if I didn't move the dial on sales or costs or some other metric within their business,
they wouldn't pay the fees that we asked them to pay.
So that's the reality of life.
It makes me a little bit sad.
I can I can certainly tell you about a couple of conversations with senior individuals who
to my face told me, look, I don't care enough about my team.
It's cheaper to pay you to care about my team.
Just made me a lot sadder about human beings.
But that, you know, at least they were being honest with me.
Right.
Hey, and you have the opportunity to come in and bridge that gap.
So good for you.
Sometimes it's not easy to do the drill.
But again, we got to get out of our own heads a lot of times to perform our service.
What's your vision, Ferris, for you?
And you can go a thousand years.
You can go five minutes.
Your call.
Five minutes.
That's far too far.
Well, I mean, I mean, like, yeah, exactly.
You caught it.
I didn't mean five minutes timewise.
You can go 20 minutes maybe.
But where does your vision take you?
My vision takes me.
So I set up my business four years ago for the combination of boredom.
I wasn't I wasn't developing myself anymore and wanted to make more of an impact.
I'd started my career, funny enough, Jackson, as a high school teacher.
And there's there's if you talk to any high school teachers or any teachers out there,
you know, yeah, there's some frustrations, but why do they continue to do it?
There is a moment in every class.
It could be one student or multiple students where you something happens and you know,
at that point, their life is going to be better because of something you did.
I was missing that feeling.
And so I set up this business because I was like, we can bring that to business.
Right.
We can make an impact.
I can continue my own development and and sort of growth, but we can do that.
And I get that moment with boards, with senior people, with teams.
And it might, you know, it doesn't happen every day, but that's that's my vision.
I want more of that.
And a lot of that comes.
That's why I linked it to effectiveness.
A lot of it comes from unlocking things that have been just troubling teams, holding them
back, that dullness, that lack of sharpness and just sharpening them up again.
You know, good stuff is going to happen for them, their team and their business beyond
that point.
So that's my vision.
I want more of that.
You know, it just so happens I'm doing it through a vehicle at the moment of this company.
So I want the company to grow.
We've got a team, but it will get bigger.
I want to work with more clients and just keep having fun.
You know, I tell you what, Jackson, that is the only metric we measure as a company every
week.
Every Friday afternoon, we say on a scale of one to ten, how much fun we had this week.
And do you know what?
The more fun we have, the more money seems to come in.
So I don't worry about the money side of things.
I know my accountant's listening and she'll be screaming at the screen.
But I mean, that a little bit tongue in cheek.
Obviously, we have to do accounts and stuff.
But it's...
I'm sure you have other things you measure, but that's the one that you gravitate towards.
You never miss, I'm assuming.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You're right.
That's the instance.
That's sort of like the pulse check.
That gives me a sense of, you know, are we going in the right direction?
And obviously, I then dig into other things more sporadically, but every week, that's
the main one.
Very good.
I got more fun.
And that's awesome.
We aren't as dedicated to that as we should be.
But we do have a meeting on Fridays called Level Up Calm Down.
Okay.
I like that.
And we're not...
It's an hour and a half back office chatter because you don't get that in a remote company.
So we just take an hour and a half.
We're not allowed to talk about any fires.
We're not allowed to talk about any emergencies.
We are there for each other.
We'll do some level up stuff, but it's also time to calm down and appreciate each other.
And next thing you know, we're doing karaoke in the whole language.
So it's definitely a fun aspect.
But I do like the idea of making sure we're looking at that KPI or that opportunity as
kind of a KPI.
Yes, I nerded it up to where it may not be fun any longer, but I'll digress.
All right.
So let's go into darker territory.
What has been...
Let's see if you can shock us.
What's been your worst business experience ever?
Oh, God.
I got a whole catalog of them, right?
I don't think anyone who is doing all right in business or anyone in business hasn't had
a terrible experience.
It's funny when they say they don't have them.
I'm like, you don't have experience or you're not being honest.
Yeah, they're not being honest, right?
And you know what?
You find it sort of grows with you, right?
The things that were your worst experience when you first started your career, you couldn't
speak in front of an audience, you got something wrong in your analysis.
They obviously no longer...
They're sort of small fry when you're in things.
So the tide moves.
And obviously now I have a team and now I have to look after some of them.
Those are the things that make me feel about the worst experience.
And I guess just bring it back a bit.
I started my company six months before COVID.
So a very, very challenging time.
The timing was...
Yeah, it was what it was, right?
As my dad said to me, if you can build a business during COVID, then just think how awesome
you'll be as a businessman outside of COVID, right?
So it's very true.
But the reality was seven months of no work.
Seven months of every day going, I can't even reach out to people anymore.
I've tried that.
They're all in a state of panic.
So how do I keep myself busy without going mental, without thinking I've got no money
coming in, but also just mentally occupied, right?
So that I don't just do nothing and then that will lead to never restarting the business.
So that sort of resilience, mental fortitude, just taking it day by day and getting through
it because we were all there.
We didn't know how long it would last.
For me and the business, it was seven months before we got some work in through the door
again.
And I laugh about it now and I did a lot of stuff during that time, but it was...
I go back to those days and it was one of the worst experiences that I can remember
in recent times.
Seven months of no clients, trying to contact people.
And if anybody who's been jobless for an extended period of time where you're actually
actively looking and getting told, no, thanks, hey, we went with somebody else, it is so
debilitating to be in that position of trying to remember your value when nobody else seems
to want to invest in it.
So well said.
That is difficult.
Let's move into...
We're going to leave people on the hook with that.
If anybody wants to reach out to Ferris and find out how he overcame that, then of course,
feel free to do so and what went on next.
But what is your best experience in business?
What does that look like so far?
I mean, I think I've alluded to those.
These are going to be different moments.
There's loads of those.
Loads of those.
They come thick and fast.
Some great.
But I often talk about, you know, funny enough, we're talking about the pandemic and COVID.
One of the most exciting experiences in business was, go back 15 years ago now.
And it's 2008.
I'm working as a consultant on a project for the UK Department of Health where we are preparing
the UK in case there ever is a pandemic.
It's a three-year programme.
We're a team of 50.
And we're about halfway through the programme.
And suddenly there's a disease called swine flu coming out of Asia.
Right.
And at the time, the UK government thought that was the pandemic.
So it's 2009.
We're halfway through building our preparation as a UK.
And we're just told to launch, launch, launch.
So it was super exciting because suddenly it was like having a pandemic, but it wasn't
actually the pandemic.
So we got to do everything at a heightened step.
I got to join super senior government meetings on the periphery.
I got to design a war game, my first ever war game, which was let's play out how this
pandemic will go and how we win.
You know, all I'd ever done was read it in a textbook.
But I was told I had 24 hours to pull something together with another colleague.
So that's sort of adrenaline and seniority and something.
I don't know.
I was still quite junior back 15 years ago.
It was a super exciting experience and it gave me a lot of insight and a lot of skills.
And I still recreate war games nowadays about that.
You know, how can you create that urgency and experience in a safe environment for companies
so that they can really develop their IQ, in particular, their thinking?
Because often we get lazy and we only deliver our best thinking when something's on fire.
And so how can you bring that without actually setting it on fire?
Interesting.
And yeah, I would imagine there's a lot of companies that have never experienced a war
game setup, that have never seen one outside of movie clips and what that looks like.
So do you actually bring the war game concept in and pre-prepare them for it?
Or what does that look like?
Yeah.
Yeah, so I run two or three war games a year nowadays with companies.
And they can be very light touch, right?
Just a desk exercise or they can be, you know, I've designed ones that are sort of four or
five months of preparation with actors, videos, you know, we get them all outfits.
And fundamentally, you're doing one or two.
You're laughing.
You are laughing, yeah.
But in a business context, the CEO will not like the word laugh, but he loves a war game.
And what you really want is that experiential, either a competitive war game.
How do you beat your competitors in your same market?
Right.
And it could be your Walmart and you want to be Best Buy and you want to beat all the
other guys, right?
Or it could be a team preparation.
So there's something like COVID coming or a pandemic.
Let's test the plan you've already got in place.
Let's find the holes in it.
So it's super fun, super engaging and the learnings that come out of it.
But here's the crucial thing.
If you go in without an inflexible mind, you don't learn anything.
So every time I play a war game, always the first round is very dull.
We don't learn anything.
And I'll always say the same things.
Let's go and find a population who think differently to you.
So usually it's some graduates or it's a team from the shop floor.
And I bring them in and say, do you want to beat your bosses?
And they go, of course, they do.
Right.
And I say, right, this is the game.
You can do whatever you like.
And they start thinking creatively.
They start going, well, what about this?
And the bosses usually go, well, that's not fair.
We, you know, because they're just used to only looking at things one way.
You need to mix up the gene pool.
You need to mix up the creativity.
And that's what great IQ is about.
And that's why inclusivity is super important because we sometimes just get a bit too casual
in who we allow to generate ideas when there are so many great ideas out there.
Man, you just sparked a rate one of me with that question that,
that do you want to beat your bosses?
Reminds me.
It makes me remember when you're young and you want to play your,
your coaches, you know, play against the coaches or play against the teachers and kickball.
We did that in elementary school.
And there's just this massive rush of adrenaline and, and belonging that occurs when you get to
see those who are leading you compete in something at your level that you're possibly better at
than they are too.
It's, it's a fantastic way to mesh and harmonize.
So well said.
We can definitely bring that in the work environments.
I wanted to, I want to shift gears a little bit too.
We've got, I think we have some time back to focus prioritization actions and,
and getting things done quickly.
I have been overhauling our Facebook ads right now, like tremendously, which is weird because
I'm an, I'm an optimizer.
You don't throw things out the window and redo them.
And, and as I've been doing this, thanks to AI and some things I've seen in the market,
I had a goal to get my ads, like my new ads launched for me and for some clients as of
last Thursday, I spent most of my weekend working on, on the ads, reestablishing the base.
And I'm sitting here going, okay, Ferris, how do I get out of my way and launch today by tonight?
Yeah.
And is it, are there times when we should stay laser focused on the goal and just hit
the goal because the deadline is the deadline is the deadline or am I being smart and making
sure I'm doing it right and saying, no, I'm launching tomorrow because I'm not going to
screw this up.
What are your thoughts on that?
Well, you know, the old saying, you know, perfection is the enemy of, of getting something
done, right?
Cause you can, we can all sit on something for ages.
And I come from a world where, you know, strategy consulting, where perfection was demanded
on every slide, every document, you know, everything, and you would start for three
in the morning.
But when I run my business, I realize that most people don't care enough, as long as
it's 80% good enough, right.
And you, you, it's not like it's a one way door, right?
You can still go back and change things and update them.
So, so then, you know, loosening your ideals around perfection is, I think is a better
way because you will be just chasing this infinite thing that will constantly be in
the distance.
So that's, that's, that's one thing, but let's say you do have a deadline.
What is the reality when we have deadlines?
We turn up, we show up and we sit down in front of our laptop, which you probably did
this weekend.
And you tell yourself, this is the most important thing I'm going to work on today.
So let's imagine you have a hundred points of focus.
You go, I'm going to give this all a hundred.
Then what happens?
I bet you, you're sitting down to your phone, probably buzzed.
You probably just checked it, right.
And even if you don't know, I put it in the other room, actually, put it in the other
room.
So you're good.
I'm pretty damn relentless with focus.
You're doing relentless.
But okay, people who don't, even if they don't check your phone, they've already lost 10
points of focus.
Because their mind is like, Oh, I wonder what's on that phone.
It's called context switching.
Right.
And, and your brain doesn't count multitask.
But okay.
So you took your phone out of room.
Good man.
Right.
But what happened is you got to the words lunchtime.
Where did your brain go?
I didn't eat lunch.
You didn't eat lunch.
Okay.
All right.
Is it okay?
But you, but you probably, your mind was going to, I'm hungry.
Right.
Uh, yeah.
No, you're just, I'm nuts, man.
When it comes to being real, like I was, I was locked in, but I get what you're going.
I get what you're going.
But we're raising the bar here.
We're going to entrepreneurs who have no, no problem with focus whatsoever.
There's they're locked in.
Go ahead.
Hit it.
So eliminate all those things.
Cause most people, things like, you know, phones, food, uh, temperature, these are
things that you might, an argument you had with your loved one, these are where your
mind goes.
So you're not actually focused.
Right.
So anticipate these, close these off, like hiding your phone in another room.
Right.
Then, um, assume it is the most important task.
Right.
Okay.
Then it's about remove your, you know, the need for perfection.
And then it's as you yourself hinted, can you be a, be a bit smarter?
Can you already apply some of the pre decisions you've already made and the use of technology
or smart tools like you're using AI, but, um, a lot of it is you're never starting from
a blank piece of paper, right?
You've, you probably already had a lot of the content.
You've really made a lot of the decisions along the way.
And that that's the joy of something like a war game, right?
But make sure you document those so you can just embed them instead of having to rethink
about stuff from scratch each time.
Yes.
Love that.
And, and I love that you, you also outline that worst case scenario of, you know, because
you have to go through that drill.
If you're going to understand, am I postponing this indefinitely, right?
Where it's going to drag on forever or am I headed towards a new realistic destination
Thursday to Thursday to Tuesday, for instance, isn't an indefinite reality.
But it can be if you find yourself going from Thursday to next Thursday and then next Thursday
and then that now you're creating, uh, what you're talking about that, that, I don't know,
that drag, that obstacle that means you're just, you are probably just trying to be a
perfectionist, but there's something hidden in there that's probably blocking you.
So, um, I appreciate you diving into that.
Um, if you were only to share one more lesson.
Yeah.
The, and you didn't, you were never going to be able to share another lesson again with
us or anybody else.
Okay.
What powerful lesson can other visionaries learn from your experience?
I mean, most of the lessons I share tell senior executives, they already know them.
They're just not doing them.
And the number one thing I tell them to do is ask more questions and listen better.
Okay.
Too much sits in people's heads.
So the first half of that too much of what we think just sits in our head.
So go out, ask people about it, share it, ask them what they think.
Think about stuff.
It's amazing.
Literally everyone has an opinion and you will get such a richness back.
Don't, don't be a snob.
Don't be arrogant.
Think I can only ask senior people or academics ask everyone because you'll get some real
food.
And then the other half of the equation is you actually have to listen.
Most of us are terrible listeners.
We are really, really bad.
Right.
And if we can only improve like 10% in that, we are going to unlock so many good things
for us, for others, and for the world around us.
Well said.
I'm going to double down on that.
For the person who is guilty of, of not sitting in their head enough.
Yeah.
Well, sitting in there too much.
Maybe we, maybe we ask too many questions.
Maybe we make people very uncomfortable.
What's that?
What's the powerful lesson that you'd share with the person who's on that extreme end
of, of maybe you should have thought about that before you open your mind.
Well, any, anyone who has any sort of behavior that might be like is, is the self-awareness
aspect.
Right.
Is ask, ask your three closest, you know, compatriots or people, what is the one thing
you, they think you should rein in or change about yourself.
And, and it might be that, look, hey, you just fire off too many questions.
And I've worked with many a leader who don't necessarily fire off too many questions.
The behavior is they shoot down.
They're too, they pounce on everything.
They've got to be the first person to speak and they've got to close everyone else's
ideas down.
Right.
And I always find with these leaders, the first thing to do is they have to acknowledge
it.
So I often use technology nowadays.
I'll record a session and say, like, let's count, let's count together how many times
you shot down somebody else's idea or let's use the transcript in teams.
You know, that tells us exactly what percentage of the meeting you spoke versus the rest of
your team.
So first of all, is getting them to accept it, show them the fact.
Then it's like, okay, what's a way that you can overcome this?
And I often get them to sit on their hands, you know, slap an elastic band every time
they realize they're doing it.
First step might be just counting how many times they do it.
Right.
Everybody will have a different technique for stopping it, but it all starts with that
self-awareness.
Interesting.
There you go.
Very good.
We're all wondering what you're trying to stop here now.
I appreciate that.
Well, it's that opportunity of, you know, like you said, it's funny.
Your answer was still the same.
It was just from a different paradigm, right?
The person can be asking more questions.
Even the person who's maybe asking too many questions, ask yourself these questions, right?
Gain feedback.
And I think that, you know, I'm not going to say it as well as you did, but there's
an opportunity for us to ask tough questions about ourself to others and giving them the
space to actually answer that honestly, openly, bluntly if necessary, and not reacting to
it.
But listening to understand what's one of your favorite resources for people who struggle
with the power of listening?
Well, like I said, data.
Just, yeah.
I was going to say, put something in their mouth.
But get them to shut up and listen.
I think everybody has a different way that they need to be to break through, right?
Because there are so many reasons we don't listen.
So many different drivers of why we don't listen.
So there isn't, I'd love to say there's one tool that would get everyone to listen.
Get everyone to listen better.
You know, but there will be the 10% who are growth mindset.
You can give them some great tools, you know, some great reading to do and they'll be enlightened
and say, oh, okay, I should listen.
But the other 90%, you know, because they're not great listeners, they won't listen.
So I have to tell the analogy about a team I worked with once, Jackson, where they weren't
talking to each other.
Each of the team members were super alpha, super dominant.
They did not see the value of having a team.
Now me turning around to them and saying, look, you need to be friends with your team
members.
You need to get rid of wouldn't have cut the mustard.
But I realized they needed to get closer together and I realized that they were super competitive.
So the next time I had them all together, I said to them, we're going to play a game.
You're all going to put in your own money.
The winner takes all.
Suddenly they're all interested.
Okay, now you're talking my language.
So everybody put in $50 and they said, what's the game, Faris?
And I said, well, you have to guess how many children we all have as a team.
Okay, so there's eight of us.
The first person went and goes, okay, on average, people have 2.1 children, right?
That's going to be 17 kids.
The next person I said, you can't guess the same number.
So they went around the guests, the guests.
And then I said, okay, now let's find out.
So then, you know, turn to the first person said, Jackson, how many kids you got?
Right.
What are their names?
How old are they?
You know, where do they live?
We do that.
It takes 20 minutes.
The next week we do pets.
Next week we do holidays.
Next week.
What happens?
They start learning about each other, even though that wasn't the case.
They start learning about each other, even though that wasn't their intention.
Their intention was to win money.
So there's lots of ways to get people, you know, the horse to the water without the horse realizing.
And the horse to drink it.
Well done.
That's awesome.
Faris, it's been an absolute blast to have you on.
Vision Pros, I hope you took notes.
You can, of course, go back and do so as needed.
You can implement a lot of these ideas for your own business without Faris, without myself.
And drive some success.
We actually will never ever need Faris.
No.
That's true.
If, well, and that's where healthy relationships begin too.
Those of you who are listening, you know, if you're feeling like you need us, either one of us,
you're already creating a toxic relationship.
Another lesson for another day.
But if you see the opportunity to enhance your own company's success and grow to new levels
with a strategist who can help cut right to the point and you want to reach out to him,
Faris is available on LinkedIn.
We'll also have his links to his resources and his show notes on the landing page once we produce that.
And this was an awesome opportunity.
So thanks for diving in with us, Faris.
Thank you very much.
Absolutely.
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