out for this month, this quarter, this week.
I mean, like really just anything in the present future,
Ethan.
A lot of the people that I've talked to
are actually quite excited about moving forward
on their projects.
I don't know why it's something that I was
at a conference last night and it felt much more optimism
that I've seen in the first quarter.
So that I'm very excited about.
And also just spring,
just the world comes back alive
and I start bicycling again.
When I was younger, I definitely bicycled through the winter.
I've definitely given that up as I've gotten older.
So I am definitely more of a fair weather cyclist.
I am ashamed to admit.
I know, it's okay. I get it.
It's just easier.
You like your comfort as you get older.
I live in Texas for a reason.
Yep.
Exactly.
I like my heat.
A lot of people don't like the heat.
They hate the heat or you love the heat.
I love my heat.
Granted, I probably wouldn't if I didn't have an AC.
Right, there's that.
There's that reality.
Spring in New York can be very, very special.
The flowers are just coming up.
The trees are getting their buds back.
I live right by the ocean.
So sometimes I'll just take the family
and have picnics there and I can bike kind of anywhere.
I can bike into the city.
So it's pretty amazing.
It's a pretty special time.
That's awesome.
I've only been during fall and that was amazing
in and of itself.
It was early fall.
And man, that was something else I will never forget.
I don't think I'll ever forget that experience
of like, whoa, I'm 30 something years old
and how the heck did this place blow my mind?
I've been to Chicago, but never to nothing
like going to New York City.
I do a lot of traveling for my job.
I've been to 89 countries and it's amazing
that after I started getting going and coming home,
I have this overwhelming sense of New York
because it is legitimately one of the best cities
in the world.
I stand, I will defend that.
And so it's pretty cool.
So I have these great experiences around the world
and then I love coming home.
Love that.
Well, yeah, I can't disagree with you.
It's when you are one of the biggest,
you did something right to become that big of a city
and it's easy to point out flaws,
but man, I really, really liked everything
I've experienced in New York.
People too.
So a lot of my network is international
and for one reason or another,
the second quarter is when more of them
than other times come to New York.
So I'm getting hit up by a lot.
I'm coming this week, I'm coming that week.
So one of the amazing things about living in a city
like New York is lots of friends come through.
It's just lots of interaction.
So that part I'm just really excited about
because I get to see people, friends from Estonia,
I'm on like I haven't seen in like a long time
and I'm very excited about that.
That's cool.
I hadn't thought about that.
And that's a really neat aspect for entrepreneurs
that are often in isolation.
That's why it's so helpful to live in places
like even places international airports can help with that,
but not like the effect of a New York city or Los Angeles.
So that's really good.
Yeah, I mean, investors and I don't fully agree,
but I understand why they say it.
So a lot of people very gung ho on San Francisco
and the reason is the density of idea and innovation.
So basically you literally cannot walk down a street
in San Francisco and not be literally bombarded
by a startup idea.
But there's something to that.
Whereas I've seen startups all over the world.
And the one thing that separates the good environments
from the bad is community.
So I'd have to say like a definite actionable step
that I tell every entrepreneur is find your tribe.
Now, sometimes they might not have to be
in your immediate geographic area,
but between its mentors and peer,
both are incredibly important.
So the mentors are gonna help guide you
in things you haven't done,
but the peers are at the same stage of your life.
And there's incredible ecosystems and communities
that have forged up.
They don't see each other as competition.
They're really helping.
I just did a pitch night last night
for these young entrepreneurs.
They're all in their early 20s
and they're all supporting each other.
I remember going to this,
I was just in Tunisia recently in North Macedonia
where the startup, they're friends.
They're like, this is my second family, the founders,
because you're going through the same kind of thing.
And that makes such a material difference on the journey.
Huge, man, that's huge.
That's the resource number one.
Let's just call it, let's name it for what it is.
I'm a huge fan and believer in community as well
and that process of abundance.
So that's number one.
If you were to name two other resources for entrepreneurs,
visionaries out there, what would they be?
There's a book by Greg McQuinn called Essentialism.
Props, approximately 50% of the store,
one of the trappings of an entrepreneur is,
so what does an entrepreneur have to do?
They have to create this grand vision that's,
let's be honest, almost delusional in nature.
And that's okay.
That's where you're going and that's where you need to go.
Then the difference, they talk about execution.
Well, what is execution?
Execution is a well-defined step-by-step plan.
This is where a lot of entrepreneurs get it wrong
because they almost jump the gun, build too many products.
The joke that I always tell people is,
Amazon is a great example.
Amazon owns football rights right now.
Amazon owns the largest cloud service provider.
Now, if Jeff Bezos had gone and said, hey,
we're gonna conquer the internet,
we're gonna do it through books and e-commerce,
and we're also gonna own the NFL
and we're gonna make our own movies
and we're gonna own data centers around the world,
he would have been laughed out
and never would have gotten funded.
So I appreciate and love your vision,
but what are the things that actually move the needle forward?
In my opinion, it's two things.
Very simply, it's building long-term relationships
because it's the only way
you get anything done in this world.
And it's about prioritization.
And for prioritization,
essentialism is your guide and resource.
That's amazing.
I'll contrast that with Ali, right?
The boxer who claimed to be the best
before he actually became the best.
And that somebody once used that as a reference against me
because I also am not a big fan of absolutism
and absolute word choices.
But there's, yeah, it is wise to share your vision
with people who will appreciate it.
The vision is not the problem.
So take George Foreman, for example,
if you wanna go boxing, right?
George Foreman is this big boxer.
He ended up making a cooking machine
that a lot of us bought 20 years ago, right?
The vision is not the problem.
In fact, I love entrepreneurs that come out and say,
we're revolutionizing mobility,
we're revolutionizing communications.
That part's not the problem.
It's the problem is if you were George Foreman,
I'm gonna be the best boxer in the world.
And when I am, I'm gonna build cooking machines
and I'm gonna do advertisements
and I'm gonna do great investments
and I'm gonna start businesses.
That's the part where you lack focus.
Be bold in your vision.
I look at LeBron James and he's been pretty open
about what he does.
So I think we can agree to agree.
Not in the very beginning.
If you go back to high school for a couple years.
We have to be in his head, so I know that.
That's okay, but he didn't advertise that
in the very beginning.
He specifically focused very, very heavily
on getting an MBA contract with a championship kind of thing.
Like you didn't hear that from him in the beginning.
To your point, maybe in private,
I get you, I'm gonna build an empire, all about that.
But the public persona, for instance,
one of the reasons I say this to entrepreneurs
is in order for you to succeed,
you need people like Jackson and Ethan
to understand your business well enough
to tell it to other people
because that's how ideas spread.
So if your idea is succinct enough,
Ali succeeds in that message, Boxer.
So I don't care whether he's saying this the best or not.
I can go away from that message and say,
okay, I got this guy who's a Boxer.
Oh yeah, Jack, my friend named Jackson likes Boxers.
I'll tell him about him.
You need the message to be that simple
so that people like us can spread the message.
When it gets to the prime points.
From an ambassador standpoint, especially,
from a communication amongst the team,
it can be very important to be prudent with what's shared
while holding, I like to say,
keeping something sacred, not secret.
That's one way to put it.
But those are fantastic.
Did we talk about three resources already?
We've got a lot of great-
So the book that I read pretty much at least once a year
is How to Win Friends and Influence People.
It's a very typical book.
I'm sure a lot of people on your podcast
will really think it's-
I really think it's one of those.
Yeah.
Ready for this?
This is 1936.
That's the-
Oh my God.
That's the OG of lead magnets.
So I lived 14 years in the town that he wrote that in.
That was like my claim to fame, if you will.
But it's such a good,
look, not everything in there is exactly accurate,
but what it does is it makes me step out of my own shell
and ego and consider others.
And that's what I think the biggest value is.
It's huge.
How to Win Friends and Influence People,
Dale Carnegie, one of the absolute legends of influence.
That way to throw down big.
We are going to dive into the vision next, everybody.
So stay tuned in, look those resources up
while you have the chance, get them into your audible,
and we'll see you right when we come back
and talk about Ethan Mayer's vision.
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.
You can watch me from the show's edge,
and this morning we talked about our project
developer characteristic.
Today I'm going to integrate vision and business
into communication between our game developers
and cases in the business
looking at sustainable innovation as well.
And we're gonna be debating that
because there are so many angles
to figure out these formulas
and that's something that of course we specialize in too.
And so when we bring great minds together,
think of it like two mathematicians
that are trying to conquer a formula as fast as possible
in order to serve an audience of students.
It's just like eating it up and watching them go at it.
So it's gonna be what Ethan
are gonna be doing today a little bit
after we talk about his vision
and his leadership experience
because he has a plethora of that.
It's been involved in a lot of cultures.
So without further ado though,
before I dive into that,
I wanna make sure to talk about some of these other resources
you guys can utilize.
The first being the law spot with Melissa Gray.
Melissa Gray came onto our show, blew me away.
I almost canceled our show
because I'm not a big fan of lawyers.
They're typically kind of condescending
and they kind of get under my skin
and they talk over me.
She did the exact opposite.
She's a nurturer.
She helped me feel comfortable.
And at the law spot, they teach people
how to make legal not complicated
or rather that it can be simple.
And that's so refreshing to see.
She's now got this spot on business blueprint
for entrepreneurs as well.
We're hosting an event with her in Dallas on April 16th.
That's gonna be a lot of funds coming up this coming week.
And she's become a legitimate friend.
And more so importantly,
she's such a great leader for our team as well.
The way that she interacts with the people
who are working with her.
It's a great insight by the way,
for any company you might wanna hire
is how do they treat the people who help them build things?
Choosing a really great sign of what type of leader
they'll be for your practice or your brand as well.
So without further ado, I'll move on from that
just for the last tidbit of
if you already have legal counsel, then keep it.
But if you're not super comfortable
and not super excited about the legal counsel you have,
consider her as you move into your wise stewardship
of interviewing other options.
And there's Andrew Sosin with Recovery Unplugged.
He is not a client.
He's somebody whose program
we just have tremendous respect for
and I love what he's done.
He's got over 400 employees now.
They're located in over four states,
I believe five states now.
And more importantly with COVID,
they turn their program online.
What they do is they help people
with drug and alcohol addiction treatment.
And I would say even there's more important addictions
that aren't talked about a lot like Netflix
and watching sporting events.
And I'm talking about binge watching.
I'm talking about getting stuck in apps for hours at a time
in order to escape the reality of life.
If you're in that situation and you know somebody who is,
they've got this hotline you can call to talk
and get professional advice on what can you do
to maybe recover or stop from some of the traumas
or the darknesses that life has presented you
to where you feel like that's where your best life is.
Our best lives aren't meant to be in an app, my friends.
They're meant to be out with great people.
And so if this even helps one person,
I'm just really happy that we were able
to get the message out there.
And then there's the Water Project.
The Water Project is something
that I just never ever wanna forget.
There's millions of people out there
who don't even have access to this.
And that simultaneous, one thing, it breaks my heart.
Two, it reminds me of my responsibility
to not cry about it, to get up and do something about it.
Maybe help draw some attention for this.
And of course, raise some funds for this.
What I love about the Water Project
is they take that money,
you get to apply it to a specific community
that you wanna support, and you get to see
how many people are gonna be affected by it.
And they show you the outcome of the results
of what they do.
And that transparency is something
that greatly inspires me.
And to know that when I'm creating
or helping create with some small contribution,
a borehole well or a sand dam,
I know that that resource has the potential
to help that community for decades.
And the transformation that occurs
when children are educated without interruption,
when parents are able to work
and provide for their family without interruption again,
and when we're not losing people to unnecessary deaths,
the whole world improves with that.
So if you aren't in a position financially
to give back to this,
my request is that if that moved you, you share this.
Or if you think of somebody like,
man, I know somebody would like that,
just tag them in this and give them the opportunity
to see and learn about what the Water Project is up to.
And if you have a cause that is near and dear to your heart,
that is that you're like,
man, no, why doesn't he talk about this?
Just drop that in the comments.
Give us the chance to also participate
and perhaps give back to that.
Maybe we will also include that cause
in our show in the future as well.
And we never know how many people will reach
when we just simply try.
So I hope you try with me and give back.
We've got 8 billion people in this world to help.
And it's an awesome opportunity
we can step up and do something to do just that.
So without further ado, Ethan Mayers,
thank you for joining me on Vision Pros Live, man.
I'm so happy to have you here.
Thank you so much.
I'm so happy to be here.
Yes, sir.
I love that you use that word too.
When you came on and right before we got started,
you talked about being happy to be here.
And that is an emotion that a lot of people
may not be able to gravitate towards.
They may be blocked from it.
But what is happiness to you?
I will answer that, but I'll tell you why I do it.
Because it's actually important.
Because before we started,
we also talked about doing actionable steps.
Yeah.
I'm not always happy when I say it.
And so there's a lot of research about this
that what a lot of people do is they say things like,
well, when I'm happy, I'll express that.
Or when I'm happy, I'll play guitar.
Or when I'm happy, I'll do whatever.
And the research seems to be pretty clear.
No, no, you play guitar and then you become happy.
So a lot of that is me practicing and training myself
because happiness is a desire of state.
I have a particular opinion on what it is.
In Hebrew, happiness comes from the word Asher,
which has a very specific definition.
It means one without want.
One without.
A variation of that is content with one's lot.
Yes.
So you can think of happiness in a couple of different ways,
but one of them is what eliminates happiness?
Well, wanting what someone else has
is a surefire way to be unhappy.
Not living your life's purpose
is a sure way of being unhappy.
Not taking care of your mental and physical health
ways to be unhappy.
Sometimes you have to put it out there
and the real feelings lag.
So what I practice is something called active gratitude.
And I don't always feel it,
but I want to err on that side of the fence.
And basically what I'm hoping is the rest of me catches up.
Today I particularly am happy
because I'm very happy to be talking to you in the audience,
but other days I'm not.
And basically what you also feel,
just one more point on this,
is that these things are socially contagious.
Yes.
Because if I say happy and it's great to see you,
you're more likely to have a positive response.
And that's one of the small tiny effects
that we can have on each other
of building this positive momentum.
You call it small and tiny.
I call it fundamental.
And I get to be the color commentator
that makes everything sound a little bit awesome.
And it's like, no, you set the stage for this.
So I ask you about happiness.
Somebody might say, some of you guys listening,
it might be like, wow, like that,
couldn't you have just said you're happy?
They would want to oversimplify that.
No, no, no, you just went to the depth
of the appreciation for not only the word,
but the concept, which guided us to new knowledge
about how to embrace it even further.
And again, that's back to that genius aspect.
The other day I was realizing I had an epiphany,
probably late to the game on the epiphany,
but I realized in the English language,
we have absolutely destroyed the virtue of humility.
Like the definition of humility in English
has nothing to do with the original context
of what humility actually is.
And I already knew that that was the case
with the word hope.
We use hope like it's an awful thing.
I hope he doesn't screw that up.
Like we've convinced ourselves,
one of the greatest powers in the world
is something that is meant to be used in darkness.
So with humility, the definition of it, as I looked up,
was pretty much synonymous across the dictionaries
with having a low esteem for self.
And I was like, oh my gosh, like that's like no way.
So I went and looked up the definition in Aramaic.
I went and looked it up in Hebrew and what else?
And Judaism.
And ultimately the definition that really aligned
with my heart was in a complete appreciation for self.
And I was like, wow, that is a very different reality
than people who think they're supposed to self deprecate
in order to be humble.
Like that doesn't quite work for me.
So again, thank you for diving into the depths
because it is getting beyond the word, right?
It's getting beyond the label
that we've created in our languages
and moving towards that, for me, the abundance of feeling,
the abundance of being.
And you helped me achieve that
and a new level with happiness.
And I am gonna be forever grateful for that.
Thank you.
I'm a huge curiosity advocate.
We could probably do a whole show on that,
but what I say about that is,
etymology is one of the most important words I ever learned.
E-T-Y-M-O-L-O-G-Y.
Etymology is where words come from.
So I can say that on my app.
I'm probably using etymology.
I'll literally type into Google etymology happiness,
etymology community once or twice a day.
And it's given me a lot of context.
Well, I'll give you a great example
from my travels around the world,
phrase we use in English mostly.
So let's say we have a great podcast
and we decide to go to this popular place
and we're not sure if it's open, right?
In America, we'll say we'll see,
and it has a negative connotation.
Basically it says, well, I'm not that hopeful
and I don't know and we'll see what happens.
But in a lot of other cultures,
mostly actually has a positive connotation.
What it means is I've done all I can.
There is nothing further to do except perform the action.
So we shall see whatever happens happens.
It's actually almost like a surrender kind of conflict.
So it's very different, same words,
completely different.
Yes, absolutely.
And that, for me, I gain that appreciation
through the study of language, speaking Spanish and English,
realizing just how nuanced the relationships
and cultures are.
And it takes a tremendous amount of humility
and reverence to be patient enough to appreciate that.
So thank you again for that.
What is your vision, Ethan, for those that you serve?
So I've come up with a really good vision.
And one of the things, the reason I say that is
I'm proud of myself for realizing I've acted on it,
but I didn't have the words only until a couple of years.
And I think one of the messages,
it's kind of like a pre-message I wanna say,
is I think we're all on a path
and sometimes we don't have the word,
the narrative, the story will evolve over time.
And it's funny because then you'll look back and say,
I was always on this path.
I just didn't have the concepts of words.
So my core belief is wisdom diffusion.
What I believe we're here to do,
it's not just knowledge diffusion
because knowledge is not that difficult
because knowledge is what year is the US founded?
And that's a Google question.
Wisdom is nuance and it's always human-centric.
And it's basically about a shared or lived experience.
And wisdom also does not mean,
it's kind of like the law,
like these won't guarantee your results,
but it's more of like when I was in a similar situation
as yours, this is what happened.
This is how I acted, behaved.
This is how other people acted and behaved.
And I'm giving that to you as a gift.
And obviously you do with it what you need.
I believe so much in wisdom diffusion
as especially a key to entrepreneurial behavior.
Entrepreneurs often have, they lack time,
they lack resources, but the one thing they can do
is kind of learn from those who basically
have failed and succeeded.
Both are equally important because there's no reason,
I kind of joke, make your own mistakes.
Try and learn from all the other mistakes in the world
and make completely new ones if you're possible.
So that, and my vision is twofold.
You receive wisdom and you share it.
We need to create this cycle
where we're constantly diffusing wisdom to each other,
to the next generation, just all around.
I love that.
I can see how somebody who embraces
and appreciates mistakes would gravitate, of course,
towards innovation and vice versa.
I mean, all those aspects go hand in hand.
What's your vision for you?
No, I mean, it's tied in.
It's kind of one and the same.
So basically-
Well, I get that.
I mean, the visions are certainly going
to be paralleled in there, but I guess more so pointed.
What do you see for yourself on the horizon?
Yeah, I mean, my skill set is in technology.
I built B2B software for most of my career.
I've led companies.
I'm very lucky to be a mentor
for many companies around the world.
And so my vision myself is to basically apply that.
Basically how I describe myself on LinkedIn
is I want to use technology to solve
some of the most entrenched conditions of humanity.
And I think that if, you know,
whatever bite I can make of that, I will have done well.
And secondarily, second to this vision is
I hope that I inspire others,
because if we can inspire others
towards positive movements and positive actions,
that's how we create real change.
Yeah, absolutely.
And that would also go back to that essence of community too,
you know, and that generates that community,
the process of belonging.
I love that you talk about some of your friends visiting,
you know, going through New York
and giving you a call about that.
And it's really helpful when, again,
especially for the entrepreneurs and the visionaries,
with your vision and with your entrepreneurship stuff,
your everyday relationships
aren't necessarily going to understand that at all.
And you can have great relationships with them
over normal everyday interactions that also occur.
And it's very helpful to get out of the isolation
and into a hub of people who really love and appreciate
your vision and what you're up to.
Do you have any thoughts on that
before we move on to leadership topics?
Well, I think it's communicate,
I could not agree more.
It's all about community.
And I'll go even a step further if you would allow.
It's relationships over transactions,
relationships over commerce.
I can tell you countless, countless stories
that if you're playing the long game,
which by the way, everybody listening should be,
then it's about creating and fostering relationships.
I cannot tell you that most of the best opportunities
I've had in my life were from relationships
that I fostered for multiple years.
I was just talking to some guy yesterday
and he said he got a call out of the blue six months ago
from somebody he hadn't worked with or talked to
since 2019.
Opportunity came up, woman called and said,
I remember how good of a job you did, sorry I haven't called,
life gets busy, but can you bring,
and it was one of the bigger projects of his life.
And this has happened to me countless and countless times.
If you wanna play the long game, build relationships.
And the way that you do that is actually care
about another human and see how you can help them.
Techstars, for instance, I went through Techstars
in 2018 in Berlin and their thing is give first.
I actually believe that.
So just one quick note on that, in game theory,
they do all these simulations
and it works always the same way.
The best way to play game theory
is basically be kind reciprocity.
So in game theory, they simulate all sorts
of different conflicts.
So when you're a jerk, I'll be a jerk back,
but in equal forces, if you will,
but it's always be kind first.
Assume the better and give first.
So look, when someone shows me their quote unquote nature
and they're givers and takers in this world.
So this is what I say,
as an entrepreneur, you're gonna be successful.
Be a giver, identify your takers and give them less energy.
Absolutely.
I can see that you've experienced many opportunities
for the best and worst of leadership.
We're gonna dive in first.
What is the worst leadership experience
that you've ever had?
Oh, wow.
That's a good one.
I mean, so I'll be careful because I've had a lot.
So I'll tell you what actually just came to mind at first.
So I had a leader, it was an EdTech organization
and basically he got this idea, which was a fine idea
that he wants to run a flat organization.
And he came in one day and announced
that he was getting rid of all titles.
And except that he didn't get rid of his own titles,
he gave himself two titles, which was CEO and founder,
and no one else could have a title in the company.
And we actually spent two weeks
not being able to talk to each other
because he also banned several words,
like the word like sales,
because he didn't consider that in line with his philosophy.
So you couldn't say anymore that you weren't sales.
So I would come to you Jackson and I would say things like,
because there's a lot, not a lot,
a hundred and something people organizations,
we didn't know each other.
So I'd be like, well, I help customers
facilitating their initial progress
as they interact with their systems on Boarding Specialist.
So that wasn't my job, but I'm giving examples
of how people would talk.
So it was after two weeks and he kept two titles for himself.
So basically the entire company not only lost faith with him,
but we didn't know how to really act or speak.
And he basically ground productivity to a halt.
Whoa, that you threw down.
Oh, so many lessons we can learn from history
on that situation.
I gotta move us into the next one though.
We might circle back to some of those concepts,
but what's the best leadership experience
that you've ever had?
Again, the same thought, like I'd have to rate them,
but I'll tell you what I first thought.
So back early in my career,
I really wanted to be a television producer
and I was also a single parent.
So at the age of 27, I became a single parent
to a four-year-old and I had custody.
And getting a job in TV New York is really hard,
especially since the hours.
And I had a job and I was with my parents
and I was with a kind of famous personality.
And the show was taping at around six o'clock
in the evening and it was fine.
It was tight, but it worked.
They decided to change it to a late night show.
So it became an 1130 taping.
This effectively meant that my job was over
because it was impossible for me to get daycare.
It just wasn't possible.
He literally went out of his way because he valued me
and he valued community and he showed me what leadership is
to essentially make an exception.
And the whole staff kind of rallied around me
to make sure that I was able to get home for my kid
to show that you can have work-life harmony.
Oh man, that's amazing.
That is so rare in the business world.
Probably in many other types of worlds too,
but like as a just single father of four,
you know, like I get that.
I appreciate that.
It would be so awesome.
That would be clear.
I was working still.
I would just be home with the kid on the computer.
I used to, I worked like 24 seven for this guy.
So that's part of it was I was good at my job
and I was always there.
It's just that physical requirement became difficult.
So they said, you know, we're going to go out of your way.
And he didn't have to.
He has a sat chair.
A thousand people would have lined up
to take my job in a heartbeat.
It could have been far easier to do many other choices.
We were all in that situation.
I remember when, you know,
going as a kid to Six Flags Fiesta, Texas,
you know, I remember a lot of the people
who were at the gates taking tickets were disabled
in some form or another.
And I thought that was really neat how, you know,
they specifically chose to make sure
that they were giving jobs to people
who were often probably overlooked
in other job environments,
even though there was plenty of capacity for them
to learn and do things, to be productive
and in a work environment.
So it's whether it's a single father or a single mother
or somebody who needs to be a stay at home parent.
There are so many ways today to create abundance.
And the byproduct of that was probably exponential growth
and other forms and fashions.
Cause when we do what is hard, but right,
there's always a law of the harvest associated with it,
even if it's not immediate, sometimes it is.
I guess, yeah, no, I just, thank you for asking
cause it's bringing me up.
And I just wanted to tell one quick anecdote,
which is very, very early in my career,
I worked for Pat Summit,
who was a winning basketball coach in Tennessee.
And one of the lessons that I learned from her
and she was very much, it was great
because I've kept it with my leadership.
I'm not sure that I always do well with it,
but I always think of her.
It's very simple for you, it's Thursday afternoon
for the person you're talking to, you're the CEO,
you're the celebrity, you're the big cheese.
They're gonna think about what you said all weekend,
all week, all month.
Be careful with the economy of your vocabulary,
say as little as possible as a leader and let your,
no, that's why there's a lot of CEOs
that they have their five to 10 staff.
They're the ones doing most of the work
because I just talked to my friend and he's like,
I rode the elevator with the big boss, who's a billionaire.
He remembers that.
For that guy, it's Tuesday at three o'clock.
Wow, for the big boss is Tuesday at three o'clock.
But for the person who's working with them,
it is an experience of a lifetime.
Right, that he's telling me, that he's telling stories
to his friends and family about that.
So as a big boss, when you have those interactions,
be kind and give them, just keep that in mind.
So interestingly enough, what she said to me a little bit
was, and now I paid attention,
when the girls were on the court,
when there was a specific shot,
she would yell at them or whatever.
But if it was a little more than that,
the assistant coaches would all do it.
Basically, she was attempting to say as little as possible
because she felt that leaders
have extraordinary power of words
and needs to use that power very scarcely
and very carefully.
That's brilliant.
I remember when, you know, Jeff Van Gundy is,
for those who don't know,
he's a broadcaster, former basketball coach.
And I'm working at this restaurant,
it was my software for the restaurants.
And he walks into the door,
and I'm such a basketball nerd.
And I lost my brain because I go,
finally, I get to meet you.
I didn't even know what I said.
He looked at me as bewildered as could be like,
what?
I was like, your table's this way.
They'll take care of you.
I'm getting out of the way.
I'm like, what did I just say?
I meant to say something eloquent,
or something like,
I'm so impressed with your career and like what you do.
It's anything, but I was out of my element.
And it goes back to that,
certainly back to humility a little bit.
If you appreciate yourself and where you're at,
and we learn to stop self-deprecating as leaders,
or putting this down or saying, you know,
well, I'm not anybody great.
You know, why aren't we all great, first off?
You know, let's just move that to that category.
But it's impossible to recognize your impact
as a leader with words,
if you do not view yourself as a leader.
So we're going to write into a new lesson on that.
Let's change gears completely.
Ethan, you shared a powerful lesson right there,
but if this was the last lesson,
last powerful lesson you can share with visionaries,
what can they learn from your experience?
This is good timing because when you told me the best,
and then I said the worst, the best,
and then I thought of two others.
So this is like great.
So now I get to go.
So, you know, understand people come
with their full emotional selves and treat them well,
be respectful and economic with the words.
And the third one was an interesting one.
So early in my career, I got to work with a guy
who essentially was one of my first mentors
and almost like my hero.
And I looked up to him probably in unhealthy ways,
if you would.
So he brings me on to this project to produce a show.
He's kind of the executive above it, right?
And he's giving me a lot of power,
like a lot more than I think maybe I deserve.
And I asked him about that.
And what he said to me kind of changed my life
because what he basically said to me is like,
look, I'm good at getting the money and the resources,
but you're good at production.
So I let you do your job.
And it's something that would evolve over the next 15,
you know, 15, 20 years to be like,
when you hire good people, let them do their job.
And if you don't think they do a good job,
honestly fire them.
You're doing both of you a benefit
and get somebody who can.
So if I'm gonna hire you in this capacity,
let's say I want you to produce podcasts for me, right?
Let me let you produce podcasts.
I can give you helpful suggestions,
but you're the expert.
So what he taught me in that way is good leaders
not only aren't experts in every domain,
should actively not try to be experts in every domain.
The true power of leadership
actually comes in basically sales,
galvanizing a community, bringing people together
and letting great people,
people that have better skills than you.
And I consider that one of the greatest attributes
that I've been able to do is I've been able to work
with people that are way better than me
and give them the space to create.
Wow.
Again, Mike, you leave me speechless
and I can't be speechless on a podcast.
I have to find a way to fill the air,
but like I'm going to go back to this episode.
I have not done that with 203 episodes
that are 55 minutes long on, you know,
45 minutes long on average.
I don't have a lot of time to do that,
nor is there a lot of reason a lot of times,
but my goodness, you're throwing down.
So these, the takeaways on that too,
again, there's a balance there
of what the EMeth teaches, right?
With we want to be responsible in how we delegate,
but the way I try to balance that,
maybe you can add to this and refine what I'm doing
is I try to learn enough about the subject
to be able to hire responsibly, right?
To be able to provide assistance in a way
where it's going to amplify what the person is doing
in that work.
But like you mentioned, I don't want to take control.
I don't really want to learn how to do it
or be the savior of the situation.
That's just going to bottleneck my ability
to provide what I provide.
But how do you go about balancing the act
of being a proactive supporter and, or do you,
and recklessly abandoning the idea
and allowing somebody else to move in and do it?
I think it's a couple of things, right?
So as a leader, I provide myself as a mentor.
And in many of the people I hire, I'm never going,
you use the word responsible.
I kind of, I joke to myself,
maybe I'm the irresponsible hire,
because there are certainly fields,
I hire software developers, I can't code.
There are fields that I don't know and can't know how to do.
So I think, let me put, let me take a little scaffolding.
First of all, it's absolutely key and absolutely essential.
The biggest decisions we make in our lives
are basically the partners and the closest friends
we surround ourselves with, and business is the same thing.
So if you're not the tech guy,
I'm the CEO and I'm not the tech guy,
I need a CTO that I 1,000% trust without question,
because they're the ones when the other developer
is not delivering, I just have to listen to them
and trust them.
And if you can't have, if you don't have that,
you need to find that.
So you need to have a core cobble, if you will,
of trusted people that are helping you
run the organizations.
In terms of what kind of support I provide,
a lot of it is, you know,
I feel like-
So I'm gonna switch gears on you.
How do you then, what are you looking for,
or how do you go about finding the people that you trust?
Yeah, it's an interesting one.
A lot of it's what I've come to learn, unfortunately,
is relationships built over time,
specific recommendations and referrals,
and especially value systems.
And that's a lot of what it is.
Notice what I didn't say is skills.
And you didn't say a value poster.
I'm gonna point that out too, right?
Being, I'm assuming there's a very strong depth
to the value systems in your playbook.
And as a leader?
There are, but it's not what you think.
I haven't codified them.
I don't have them on a poster.
There's basic things that I expect
that people that work with me do,
and a lot of it's clear and honest communication.
A lot of it is, if you see a problem, say something,
things like that, that's basically.
So what I'm trying to often do with people
is teach them to think higher level.
One of the things that I noticed
that a lot of people struggle with,
so about 50% of the population
suffers with imposter syndrome.
So probably a third of my job as a leader
is just to give them confidence
to believe in themselves, honestly.
And I do that through active gratitude.
I do that through when I correct them,
I always try to tell them something nice.
And I do that by also taking an interest
in caring about what they want.
That goes most of the way, by the way.
What was that last one?
Taking an interest in them, caring about what they want.
That goes most of the way.
It's not transactional.
You're not a chess piece to use.
No.
No, no, I mean, like, just using example,
I hired you to do podcasts, I want you to do a better job.
It's not transactional.
I'm not gonna sit there and say,
be more like this podcast ghost.
No, because there's a good chance
that the reason you're not excelling
is maybe there's a stumble, maybe there's an obstacle,
maybe there's some way in which you're viewing,
maybe you don't have as much confidence.
So it's my job as a leader to basically get that out of you
and basically be like, how can I get the resources for you?
How can I knock the obstacles out of the way?
What can I do for you to do your best job?
That's my job.
The more micro you get in leadership,
the worse outcomes you often get.
Yeah, that's so good.
We gotta dive into your book now.
I wasn't gonna talk too much about it, but now I want to.
Like a really big, so, The Agile Shepherd.
You've got this book.
Tell me about the book.
What is it about?
Who should be reading it?
Why?
I mean, I think we all know why right now
for those who listened,
but maybe those who are jumping in right now, go ahead.
Thank you.
Yeah, so started it several years ago,
but what it became was I sort of asked a question,
which was kind of an eave now,
but it's like tech companies seem to move faster
and come up with more innovative creative ideas
than the regular company.
So what was kind of their secret sauce?
And I delved deep in, that was the initial question,
but then I zoomed out and delved into it.
And basically what I came up with was a couple of,
there's a high level theory
and a couple of things that underpin it.
So a couple of things that underpin it is,
because I'll cut to the chase, right?
So it's leadership, better leadership,
the ability to focus on plan and inclusion
are the keys to sustaining innovation
and leading in the age of ideas.
So the basic theory is the following,
in the 21st century,
what happens is companies are valued by their brand.
And when I define a brand in a very, very specific way
as what I call relevancy,
and I define relevancy in a very specific way,
it's a simple question.
Do I care about what you do next?
Think about this podcast.
Your podcast will continue to have listeners
if they care about your next podcast.
If they think that you're gonna continue
having cool, engaging, neat guests,
they're gonna continue listening.
And the moment they lose faith in you
having the ability to have good conversations,
they're gonna go away.
And that's the truth of any brand.
So if the truth is, is that we've,
and look at a great example right now, Liquid Death, right?
This is a brand of water that's now valued
at over a billion dollars, that's just water in a can.
And the entire value there is brand.
We see examples of this over and over
and over and over of brand marketing hype community
being outweighed.
Talk to investors all over the world,
take two startup people, one has a perfect product,
the other has a million people on Instagram,
guess who's getting funding?
This is just the reality of the world that we live in, right?
So brands are the people care what you do next.
So then if we care about what you're doing next,
brands, companies have become much more future focused.
So if they become future focused, what does that mean?
Well, brands are basically companies are now being
rationalized on how they're able to create new ideas.
So I said, okay, so how do companies create new ideas?
And basically I came up with three very simple theories
for it.
One is that, so they say a lot of companies suffer
when I call it the growth disconnect.
I see about half, first of all,
all companies will go through this,
about half it can kill them.
And I'll just tell you real quick
what the growth disconnect is.
Basically companies exist, social contracts,
we get together, Jackson, we'll make a company,
we wanna build something, we're gonna sell it, right?
Moment we sell it, we have made a promise
in the marketplace, that's all that is, right?
Have we been a promise to someone,
someone's gonna give us their hard earned money
and we're gonna deliver on them.
What can happen in the growth disconnect is
we can never predict the future.
So we're organizing our company in the best way we know how,
but it's never quite right.
So basically delivering starts taxing us
and that's normal and that's okay.
That's not a problem.
Those are the late nights editing
and delivering the projects for the client, that's okay.
And maybe seasonality might happen,
the Christmas season is very busy.
There's always times where delivery always extends yourself.
When a company experiences a prolonged period
where all they're doing is delivering
and they have no capacity of planning
and you've seen this before, like I come to you,
hey Jackson, I wanna talk to you about like next year
and cool things we could do together.
And you're just like, I am so slammed,
write me back in three months.
Of course you can do that for the short term,
but companies that stay in a sustained state
are focused only on delivery
and inability to focus on the future,
essentially fail and they fail through one key way.
Companies generally fail for only two reasons.
They run out of cash
or they do not respond appropriately
to changes in the market.
The second one can only be mitigated by planning.
And let me also be clear to audience,
planning is not a plan, business plans are terrible.
This could just be me having a coffee with you
and saying, let's just get out of our day to day.
Hey, what do you think about this new app that you saw?
What do you think about this?
Do you think that next month
we should try invoicing this way?
It's literally future state thinking.
It's all that planning is,
not focused on the delivery in the day to day.
So when a company loses their ability,
the first thing that goes by the way,
when they lose their ability is any innovation.
That's off the table.
The second thing that goes
is essentially future long-term planning.
There's not much to go after that.
And that's when companies can really be hurt
by an unexpected lawsuit, an unexpected disruption,
anything that happens,
that company can actually crash down.
Longitudinal study, 50 years of companies
by a company called Corporate Executive Board
found that companies actually accelerate into a stall.
They often have their best quarter
before they precipitously decline.
And that's because sales is a lagging indicator,
not a leading indicator,
and too many leaders rule by sales.
So essentially just maintaining,
even if it was no more,
like we ran a business
and if it was no more than 30 minutes over a coffee,
not talking about the day to day at all,
sometimes is enough.
So we're not talking about very complicated,
for actionable solutions.
We're not talking about very complicated ways,
but you have to maintain that ability to think forward,
especially as an executive and entrepreneur.
When you lose that first sustained period,
you make your business much more vulnerable to failure.
Wow.
Sometimes we meet people and our thoughts go,
man, I wish my brain thought as fast as his.
I wish I was as good looking as his.
I get excited.
Oh my gosh.
No, but that's a great thing.
I mean that, seriously.
I'm like, wow.
I just, like I said, I'm gonna go back and listen to this
because I can hear how fast,
you're not just talking fast,
you're pulling amazing concepts together at light speed.
So we're gonna use the last couple of minutes
to debate sustainable innovation a little bit.
So I'm gonna let you lead.
Sustainable innovation,
one, you combine those two words,
but like how do you do it and why?
Yeah, so the third pillar
and this is most important for the start of a debate
is inclusion.
It has to include everyone at the company.
Now, not everyone at the company can participate
in innovation at the equal level,
but what you learn really quickly is that your higher levels
are paying attention to how you treat everyone.
And when you start treating people badly,
they start participating.
So sustaining innovation,
so the name of the book came from my concept of leaders.
Leaders should be servants to the organization
and they should treat themselves as mentors,
not as managers.
One of the biggest mistakes that leaders
is they stay in the management role too long.
The management role is just running by numbers.
Jackson, when are you gonna have the thing done?
Why is it slow, whatever?
That's not a leader.
A leader is creating foundational frameworks,
is mentoring, is unblocking people for their own growth.
And so one of the keys is that people should,
leadership is entrained.
And I just wanna say very clearly,
I don't think leadership is you're born with.
I think it absolutely is entrained.
I wasn't, I know for a fact, I was an awful leader.
Yeah, so sustainable innovation comes from good leadership
and empowering people and creating the right culture.
Okay, and so empowering people,
creating that culture and what?
Inclusion.
And inclusion.
Great leadership, yeah.
Okay, now you talked about creating,
I'm trying to remember from the form here too.
It's got the, you define it, you create it, you sustain it.
You know, and you spent a lifetime
studying this concept of innovation.
So how do you define innovation?
Yeah, so and the definition I meant there,
just to clarify too, is we become what we measure.
And I can tell you that about half the,
so about half the startups idea what their problem is
focus and prioritization.
And at least a third of them,
it's focused on the wrong goals.
And this is really, really important.
And there isn't, by the way, there is no right answer.
And so anybody listening to this,
it's not necessarily about having the right goals.
I'll tell you what it's about.
Every quarter at minimal,
you should just be revisiting their goals.
It won't be a problem as long as it's kind of like
a continuous journey of adjusting the goals.
That's my argument for how to solve that.
So don't worry about getting that perfect.
If you're having a continuous journey,
then you'll be able to feed all the new information in
and kind of have a continuous journey of goal adjustment.
So innovation to me is very simple.
There's a definition of it,
which is the intersection of convergent
and divergent thinking.
So you're like, what the heck is this?
I'll just give you a quick example.
So let's say you're making a cookie
and so you get some flour, you get some milk
and you're like, oh, I have an idea.
I'm gonna add lamb to it.
Well, that's a pretty nasty cookie
that no one's going to enjoy.
However, those same three ingredients,
milk, flour and lamb in different proportions
is a delicious crepe or a pancake for my European friends.
And that's where innovation comes from.
It's the courage to try something different,
learn from what failed and see something before
that hadn't been done before.
So it's literally challenging the status quo.
Yes.
Dang, man, I don't have anything to debate on that.
I don't have anything to debate.
There is one debate, there is one debate,
which is should how much
and should companies continuously innovate and how much?
And that actually is a fair debate about how much, right?
So you can take experts like me
but I'm not actually gonna tell you you shouldn't innovate.
There are plenty of cases,
which is one of the things I talk about
in the Agile Shepherd is what underpins all of this
is actually an incredibly simple concept.
And as simple as it is,
it's actually one thing that entrepreneurs
really struggle with, which is intentionality.
I think there might be plenty of times to say,
we're gonna pause innovation.
Fine, why?
What do you expect to hope?
What's the hypothesis?
What's the expected outcome?
And that's all I'm talking about with intentionality.
That way you can pause innovation,
come back in three months and say,
well, we pause innovation
because we thought we had a chance to grow 50%.
And then you could measure.
There's a concept called a null hypothesis,
which is very simple.
You can't divide by zero.
If you've tried that Excel,
just say undefined, undefined, undefined, undefined.
When we do things without intentionality,
without identifying why we did something,
what we hope to get out of it,
that's dividing by zero.
How do you know if you're ever successful?
One of the biggest lessons that I've told people,
and I'm gonna give this to your audience too,
it's a very, very, very simple concept.
Write a letter to yourself,
dated either three, six, nine, or 12 months ahead.
Depending, I don't know your personal situation,
so depending on what you're doing,
you'll know what the right time horizon is.
Write a very simple letter yourself.
Don't make it difficult.
Make bullet points.
Very simple, very, very simple bullet points.
And it's like, I'll just use the example
because we're on a podcast.
So I'm gonna spend a little more time on my podcast.
In six months, I'm hoping that I've attracted great guests,
had good conversations, maybe attracted leads.
Doesn't matter.
Whatever your hope and expectation is,
seal up that letter.
Do not open it for the required time.
Forget it even exists.
Suck cost fallacy is real.
We tend to keep on a program
because we're not measuring it against what itself is.
So in six months, you'll open that letter
and you'll have a snapshot in time saying,
okay, I'm spending twice as much on my podcast
and this is what I expected to be getting out of it,
and now I know what I got out of it.
So now you could make a much more rational decision
of should I continue it?
Was it worth it?
So I tell them, we're starting a new job,
doing a major change at work.
Just write a letter to yourself.
Very simple letter, bullet points.
Don't be complex.
Don't write flowery.
Just be like, it's six months from now,
this is what I would have hoped.
This is where I am hoping I would be.
This is where I'm hoping I would be.
Wow.
That is a profound visionary exercise.
Very simple.
I will definitely be doing that today.
Actually, I'll be doing it tomorrow.
Today I'm slammed.
But yes, I will be getting that done.
When I talked about not being able to debate innovation,
I'm not talking about the ability to debate
an innovative topic itself,
much more than I was expecting to debate your formulas.
I was expecting to say, well, I don't know about, no,
I do know about that.
Everything you talked about was a sound idea for me
to be more like a hypothesis of like,
okay, now I need to go play with this.
I need to go study this and try this.
Like it was all intriguing to the point where
it's going to add to what we're doing
at First Class Business.
So I really appreciate that.
I was able to add what we do at
Obrador de la Estrella y Obrador de Latino.
So it'll add at what we do for Passion Pro.
So dude, this was absolutely incredible.
Those of you who are listening in,
you can get the Agile Shepherd on Amazon.
You can also go to the action steps below.
Maybe the book is not the most important resource for you.
Maybe it's a direct connection with Ethan.
So you can, of course, click on any of those links.
We'll also make sure that if he has other resources
that we get those organized on there
so that you know what to do next.
And from our standpoint,
if you have a vision you'd like to share,
if you have a topic, a leadership topic
that you'd like to debate,
please take a look at that button at the top
that says be our guest.
That's an invitation for you.
We would love for you to come on the show.
And it doesn't matter if you are, I don't know,
leading a president of some country
or you just have some desire to help your local community
and you're leading by example.
You know that your vision is going to help others.
Challenge yourself.
Come on our show, come tell us about it
and see if it's something that we can support.
We would love to help you lead in the world
where there's so many people who need
great leadership out there.
So Ethan, this was absolutely my honor.
Thank you so much for joining us
on Vision Pros Live today.
Thank you so much.
It was great to be here.
Absolutely.
Everybody have a fantastic rest of your week
and we will see you on the next episode.
Take care, everybody.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned into 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 an excellent time building out your vision.