It is. We're catching up. We'll have the same types of highway systems and crazy driving here soon enough.
Actually, the Highway 10, Interstate 10 connects our two worlds actually too.
Oh, so that was interesting. Just get on that highway and go and you're in Texas.
That's right. I've driven that many times. It's a good drive if you like the desert.
Yeah, a lot of desert.
I liked Route 1 better. We did a 41-day road trip up the California coastline when my kids were 1, 3, and 5.
Well, 6 months, 3 and 5. Route 1 was awesome.
Oh, that was beautiful. Especially Big Sur, that whole area there. Just stunning.
Yes, all the Blue Jays at Big Sur. The whole experience was such a fun, fun trip.
If you're listening, you got to travel. You got to take the time to get to know this planet.
There's so many cool places to go to see.
Orange County being a fantastic one. If you're going to live somewhere, that's one of those where it's like, man, it's a good place to go home.
It's all right. It's not too bad.
Guys, today with Vision Pros, there's marketers, the people who claim they're marketers and claim they have agencies and claim they know what they're doing.
And then there's Jack Skeez. I'm just going to say that.
I was looking through your story and the depths and where you go back to and how much you've done.
Just studying your pages, too, you can see the beauty of the art and science behind what you've been able to bring to the table, how you go about growth, et cetera.
You got some Jack Canfield in you. You've got some John Maxwell in you. You got some Peter Linconi.
I mean, the greats. I was like, man, this is going to be so good. So as we get ready to dive in, if you had to limit down to three resources, what three resources do you recommend for visionaries and leaders right now?
So I think the first thing I'd say is for leaders and visionaries, you know, thyself.
Right. And that is I think the thing I've learned over the years is do do the work, do the work with the capital W, whether it's therapy. I did a coaching leadership coaching training program, mindfulness, awareness, whatever you've got to do.
I've got a book or two. One is Letting Go by David Hawkins, great author.
And it talks about how to actually sort of let all the other stuff go so you can be in the moment. And lately I've been getting into Gabor Mate, who is a just an amazing writer.
Right. Yeah, he's an amazing writer and thinker about how we as humans are wired and operate and a lot of great look him up on podcasts. He's he's all over the podcast scene.
So, Gabor Mate, M-A-T-E.
Perfect.
So that's one. Be the best is my second advice. I had a I had a moment when I got kicked out of college, I got kicked out of undergrad. It's not a story I put in the book. I got kicked out of undergrad by my dad's best friend who was the dean of liberal arts and sciences.
And he said, I don't want to be a philosopher, but there's no money in it. He said, bullshit. Be the best you can be at what you love. And, you know, I think that was that was probably the most phenomenal advice for me I ever got in that way.
And, and when I finally found something I loved, I'm like, OK, I want to be the best at this. So I think that is really important is that if you're in a situation where you're in a situation where you're not doing what you're supposed to do, you're not doing that.
That is really important is that if you're going to do something just frickin do it right just just dive in and don't be afraid and that kind of thing.
And the last one, and you know, I think, look, I get get an MBA if you want to understand a business operates coaching programs, you want to understand how to be a manager, of course, cheap plug for my book Unmanaged.
Great way to start finding your way there.
The last is monitor yourself. And I think the most fun thing that's been that entered my life is this this goofy little ring here. It's not a wedding band. It's an aura ring. Oh, you are.
Oh, yeah. It's a body monitoring ring. And it's part of a whole program that I just sort of like started putting myself in. It's just, you know, I got more fit.
I paid attention to my sleep. I paid attention to how late I eat at night and started noticing like I don't eat as many carbs at night. I sleep better.
And just pay attention to yourself. Monitor thyself. Right. I think that's a just because then you can be the best you can be. Right. And that ties into knowing yourself as well.
Absolutely. And I'll go in reverse order on that. So I saw on your website the timeline that talks about studying Mazzo Mazzo's hierarchy of needs back in 2010. Right.
And you had all sorts of other mentors you're studying before that, of course, but that that dedication and then taking to the new level with our ring, etc.
It really validates what you said. And you've shared two philosophies, one that really hurt my life, but one that changed my life for good. You said be the best. And then you said be the best you can be. Right.
Not being not focusing on being better than others. I spent a lot of my life focused on trying to be better than others. Yeah. And that's a trap. Yeah, it is. It's a huge trap. It's an external reality you can't control.
You know, but you can focus on what you can do to be your best. And there's so much abundance and joy that can be found in doing that. So I love that you added that little segment in.
And I'll definitely take a look at some of these resources, including the book. And I think it's a fantastic opportunity. Go ahead. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. You know, what you brought. Thanks for calling me out on that.
I appreciate that. Because I, you know, I hate imprecise speech, though I do it all the time. I think there's an interest. Yeah, I do. So I do leadership coaching. I did that coaching program. I do leadership coaching.
One of the most common misconceptions when I work with someone, they're like, Tell me how to be the best leader. Right. And the answer is exactly what you said, Jackson, there's no best leader.
There's only the natural expression of yourself as a leader. We want to maximize that. And it turns out, by the way, if you just do that, you're a rock star. Okay. It's just you don't sound like Jack Welch or some with Steve Jobs or anything like that.
But you'll be very happy and they'll do a great job. And so I think that that natural expression thing you're getting at is spot on. Yeah, it's huge. And there's something about this name, Jack. I'm feeling it. I'm digging it today.
We've got Jackson. We've got Michael Jackson. We've worked hard to maintain our status with our names. So, all right, but everybody is welcome in. Your name is not what is guiding your success, by the way. So we look forward to helping everybody that we can on the show.
And when we come back, we're going to dive into Jack skills vision at large. 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.
Hey, what's up, everybody? Welcome into another great episode of vision pros live. I'm so excited to have Jack skills of agency agile on today. We've got a phenomenal leader to be able to learn from. This is going to be able to touch all areas of business, growth, leadership, happiness, you name it. There's so much we're going to get out of today's show. I'm going to dig as deep as possible with those questions. Now, before I bring them back on stage and we go into that, of course, I'm always going to give the access to those who are new, especially to the resources that are really helping
me with growth. And so we use those in terms of sponsors. We got two here, one who has become not only a client, but now a strategic partner of ours and Melissa Gray with the lawspot.com. I went through a twenty thousand dollar lawsuit to protect my own brand name at restaurant connect.
And we won, but we didn't. We spent twenty thousand dollars of money we didn't have to protect a brand name we already had. That doesn't make any sense. Well, why does that happen? I'm a big believer that it's because I wasn't a wise steward at the time. I didn't know what I needed to know about protecting my business. And I was too scared to talk to the attorneys in the world because I don't really like people who are pretentious and condescending and supply and demands in their favor. So I don't really care about you a lot of times. I couldn't find somebody's further from the truth regarding that. And Melissa, I'm
going after you. You're doing a great job. And I'm going to leave you this, I'm going to leave you this. And so, and so we decided to talk about how we're going to be helping you with your business. If you have any questions, please let me know. I'm going to leave you this. So, we're going to get started now.
in legal space.
So I definitely recommend interviewing her
and checking out what her programs look like.
In addition to that, there's Recovery Unplugged
with Andrew Sosa.
Now there is no plug there.
I'm not part of their program.
He was a guest in the show and I love what he's up to.
If you are not suffering with an addiction of your own,
a vice of your own, you probably know people who are.
And this is one of the greatest opportunities
for help and support for those individuals.
And you might be the mechanism that helps them.
I recommend calling this hotline,
finding out how their programs works,
telling them about who in your life might be struggling
and being the person who bridges the gap
between them and a potential solution.
One of the things I love about Recovery Unplugged
is they incorporate music into what they do.
And I'm a big fan of music.
My daughter's name is Harmony Melody, by the way.
Like that's a big thing for my life.
And I know the value importance
of belonging to communities.
Andrew's got a team of over 400 people
and COVID forced them to go online.
That was one of the greatest gifts to the world,
was moving that program online
so anybody could access to it
beyond the five states that they're in.
If you're a Tony Robbins fan,
I think you'll also be a huge fan of his program.
He's been to that program 22 years in a row
and he's gained a lot of knowledge and insight
and how to influence and help people.
He works with some incredible individuals.
And if this even helps one person that I'm grateful for,
but I know it has the potential to bless at least one person
in everybody's life that's listening right now,
if you take advantage of taking a look at it.
And there's a water project.
I have never ever been without water in my life.
I've had the first world privilege,
even when I lived in Uruguay for two years,
never had the problem of not having water.
So when it came across my attention that, man,
there's millions of people out there
who don't have access to clean drinking water.
I was like, I gotta use this microphone
to kind of rock the stage about that and create awareness.
We can do something about it.
Thanks to the water project,
if you give $5 even to one of these community projects,
you actually get to see the results
and the outcome of your contribution
and the generational impact that this creates
is absolutely phenomenal.
When I see these kids celebrating water,
like my kids celebrate Christmas day,
I know there's some serious needs there.
Also imagining those kids leaving school to go get water,
they interrupt their education
or the parents have to go three to five kilometers
just to find a source of water
that may or may not be safe for their families.
It just reminds me like, man,
we have so much opportunity to help in this world
and all we have to do is either provide a little bit
of economic advantage to them,
give a little bit of what we have,
or if you've been hit by COVID hard
and the economy is just crushing you,
my request is that you share the message just like I have.
If you have another cause though
that you'd rather see us talk about and you're like,
man, I wish Jackson would talk about this,
drop it in the comments, it's not a competition.
We've got lots of people looking up.
There's 8 billion people out there.
The more we do to pull together and to help those
who are in greater needs than we are,
I have found more peace, more happiness in my own life,
but also it's just the right thing to do.
So without further ado, I'm gonna bring Jack on.
We're gonna talk about what he's up to
and we're gonna do our best to uncover some serious wisdom
and truth to help everybody in what you're doing
by speaking from our own experiences.
Jack, skills, thank you so much for joining me
on Vision Close Live.
Well, thanks for having me, Jackson.
Looking forward to this.
A lot of great questions to go through.
Yes, sir, absolutely.
So starting from the top in that regard,
Jack, what is your vision for the people that you serve?
I think the, so I work in the management
and leadership space, obviously, right?
So I think being a great manager is actually easy.
And that like making your organization perform
20 to 50% better, it is actually easy to do,
but it's not intuitive.
And in fact, it's mostly the opposite of what we think.
In fact, there's a lot of the stereotypes in our society
about a strong manager.
I'll talk a little bit more about leaders later.
Another one of my favorite targets in that way.
But if you ask yourself, do you know a manager
who doesn't wanna be a great manager
or a leader who doesn't aspire to have a great organization?
The answer is no.
All the ones I know truly deeply wanna be better
if they can be.
So it's one of the beautiful things.
So my lens is I look at organizations
and I can see what they're not doing right in management.
And there's this great paradox there,
which is they're not doing that well
at managing the organization,
yet everyone's trying pretty darn hard, right?
It's not a thing of neglect.
It's actually a lack of, if you will, skill and knowledge
about what to do and the like.
And so I think my vision is that you can do that, right?
They can do that.
And there's a massive impact if you can change this.
They can, both on themselves in terms of feeling good
about themselves and their impact on the world,
and also the greater impact into the organization.
And so I think it's achievable.
I think a lot of people get into management
because that's how you get a raise, okay?
Or that's how I signal my improved status in my role,
that kind of thing, what I call the firefighter meritocracy.
We firefight our way to the top of the hill
and work our way into a job that isn't particularly
what we were great at, right?
And it's a whole different set of skills.
I see you grabbing a book, I'm curious.
Had to, had to, one of the legends on the subject.
And I have to bring him up,
because you're right, it's not intuitive.
And I appreciate that you talk about that.
Let's pull up our two things.
I'm gonna pull up my screen, right?
So this is our internal version of this book right here.
The One Minute Manager with Ken Blanchard, right?
And it scratches the surface
in a very, very ferociously fun way.
Like, I mean, it's like hard not to change your mindset
as you read this book.
Like, wow, I can simplify
and be so much more effective very fast
because of the principles taught in that,
what is it, 100 pages of large print font?
Oh, but.
It's a genius book.
That and Who Moved My Cheese,
both are books I would aspire to write
as my second book for sure.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
And so they've, you know, it's mathematicians.
That's how I look at it,
is they're writing formulas on the board for years
and we get to build on the backs of these giants, right?
And what's there, and you're that giant too,
I'm looking at now, and now I've got you on my radar.
I'm like, oh, fun, right?
He's got all these new formulas I haven't seen before.
This is gonna be awesome.
And I'm gonna broaden a little bit.
You may not see yourself as a manager,
but if you have a family, you're a manager.
If you have a community that you wanna belong to,
you're a manager.
Well, there's opportunities for it
and it can change the scope of your relationship,
change the quality of your relationships
by diving into the principles of management.
So what's your vision for you, Jack?
What do you see for yourself on the horizon?
Well, you know, I think I could spend a lot of time
talking about it, but I spent a lot of my career
bouncing around and I talk about it
in the beginning of the book, I call it the pinball.
I had, you know, there's moments
when I tried to be a plumber, right?
There are moments when, you know,
I worked in aerospace company
and I would bounce from thing to thing,
you know, usually two years, five years
in those roles and the like.
And I never really knew where I was going and the like.
And then all of a sudden this sort of came together
about 20 years ago for me and I thought, yeah, I'm here.
I think that I've always, and by the way,
the other piece I've always wondered about
is that you talk to people and they say,
oh, I have a vision for my personal vision
of what I wanna be and do and I never had that, right?
And a lot of those people have, especially these days,
which is wonderful, the younger folks, younger than me,
have this idea that they wanna make the world better
and even in what they do as their job,
as their work, their profession,
or if they're an entrepreneur running a company,
they wanna make the world better.
And I think I found that in myself in fact,
and in that, you know, work,
we talked about work-life balance and I don't think,
I get the idea behind that phrase,
but it's a false dichotomy.
And I think you're just getting at that
is that what happens in work,
the patterns we exhibit in work
are patterns we exhibit in life, right?
And the effects of work and the effects of life
actually feed over into work and vice versa and the like.
And so, and we define ourselves in so many ways
by what we do and the like.
And the thing that the greater good,
and I think the thing that touched me
is that essentially work is so wired into us
in our American society for sure,
but I think in a lot of societies,
the idea of work is this greater good, right?
And the, you know, almost,
I always think back to our Puritan,
American Puritan heritage, you know,
which is this sort of doing good work brings oneself closer
to one's God, you know, whatever that is,
but that's where we find ourselves
is in doing the work.
And I think that that's true.
It's a truism about humans, right?
It's the sensation of accomplishing something
and accomplishing something meaningful
and all those sorts of things.
So here's my point.
My vision is that you bring it home, okay?
What happens at work comes home with you.
And if you can make workplaces better,
and that's what I do, right?
If you can make workplaces better,
it means you're making people happier
and you're making them better people
and they're better able to manage the rest of their life.
And through this one leverage point,
you can say you want people to have happier families
and be better parents and all that kind of thing.
And that's its own minefield and training ground as well.
Like telling people how they should parent and the like.
But I think you're getting at something very important,
which is if you learn how to be a manager,
a collaborator, a facilitator,
all these skills that are management skills
are really human skills, okay?
They're just people there at work, right?
And you bring home not only the competence around that,
but you bring home the joy, okay?
You bring home the ability to see
your children's learning journeys
or the ability to deal with the inevitable conflict
and collaboration with your partner, that kind of thing.
And so in that way, my vision,
my personal visions, I'm actually making the world better
in a way I never imagined,
but I'm able to make the world better
by helping people work better together.
And that flows through to everything else.
I love it.
I believe it.
I think there's tremendous potential
for both of our visions to be in absolute harmony.
And that's what's cool.
And I think it's there.
I say that as a musician because you can play the same note,
but if your guitar's a little bit off,
it can actually have a discord,
woo, you know, effect real fast.
But I love what you're doing.
I love what you're bringing to the table
of our vision as well.
At First Class Businesses to create a full appreciation
for family and personal wellbeing in the workplace,
in it, not outside of it.
I'm a single father of four.
I don't have the luxury.
I mean, I'm so-
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I say luxury, so many times the luxuries of our life
are the vices that actually hold us back from what's best.
So I couldn't agree with you more
that if you can create an environment
where we spend a lot of our time at work
in such that it recognizes the value and builds us up,
we can feel good about what we're doing,
the byproduct of those, we go home with no complaints.
We go home ready to just receive more goodness in our life.
So I think it's beautiful.
And I can see the philosopher in you 100%.
Like Puritan, teach me.
Okay, good.
I got the context.
I was like, good, I can remember this now.
Let's dive into the opposite though,
because we've both probably been there and experienced it.
What's the worst leadership experience that you've ever had?
Most of them, okay?
And I probably, in a way, because of how I grew up, okay?
I grew up in a home that is not like what I'm describing
with a happy, well-balanced family and somewhat in ruins.
And I felt terribly abandoned for many years.
That gave me a very cynical attitude towards leadership.
I mean, partly because parents are leaders
and inside the family unit typically.
I think the worst experiences I've had,
and I've had so many of them,
and is when leaders think that charisma
and dominance accomplish something,
like they make a difference.
And this is, if I want to explain this maybe,
I've been watching these documentaries
on church leaders gone bad and churches gone bad.
Like I think it's Hillstone is one of them, right?
Or Hillside, whatever it's called.
And where just these very persuasive, dominant,
just talk, talk, talk kind of thing.
And with the idea, it's that opiate of the masses thing,
right, is that it pushes everyone into submission
and you just follow me and do what I say
and that kind of thing.
And that's not leadership, that's horrible.
And I'm gonna do a quick shout out
just to end this whole answer to say,
I wanna give a shout out to the management consultants
as well who are horrible about this, right?
Didactically preaching things
and then not implementing them
or turning them into disasters and the like.
That's another form of leadership, thought leadership
that is often messed up horribly.
Right.
There's a lot to it.
Now, I'm gonna dive in a little bit of a sensitive subject
cause I have to take a little bit.
You mentioned the challenge of family.
Oh, I'm gonna on like the upbringing aspect there.
I can relate to, I grew up in two homes.
I know one was love, one was the opposite.
And I saw that you, at the same time,
you dedicated your book to your father.
And so I was like, man, there's a dynamic here
that I wanna uncover if you'll allow us to.
Was he always a great leader?
Was there a challenge there?
Feel free to reveal what you feel is best for the audience.
Yeah, I think the thing I would counsel
is that for a lot of my life,
for a good period of my youth, age 13 to 19,
I thought my dad was the biggest problem in the world.
And then my mom passed away when I was about 23 years old.
And then I thought, oh my God,
well, how much time do I have left with my dad?
So I spent a lot of time with him.
And then I flipped again to another mode
where I was like, you know,
but I remember all those bad things and the like,
and then flipped back before he passed away
to realizing that he was a man,
he was a college professor, university economist.
He ended up running the department,
but he was one of these people
who was very, very patient, very calm.
He had the work ethic of that sort of puritan work ethic
kind of thing, which I go into work every day,
I get my stuff done.
He was an incredibly fair person.
And I think the thing,
every day I see more and more of his imprint on me.
And it's humbling in that way is that
to have such beauty inside of him and yet to be,
I mean, it was leadership in a way,
a quiet leadership of sorts that was quite amazing.
I'm gonna tell a quick little anecdote about him as well,
which is kind of cool.
It's hard to hire great people in an economics department.
And he was in a second or third tier school,
Northern Illinois University,
sort of the second tier state school sort of thing.
And the thing he found in the 70s
when he was running the department, 70s and 80s,
was that he could get great people
as long as they didn't look like him.
And he was hiring people from Korea,
scholars from Afghanistan, women.
Women were rare in economics back then, blacks, whatever.
And when they have the economics department
summer picnic every year, which is a potluck, right?
It was like this smorgasbord from the UN.
It was just amazing the mix of foods and the like.
There's no potato salad.
We had curries from Afghanistan and Korean barbecue
and all these things and just really, really wonderful mix.
And he saw past people in that way
and saw to who they are and what they did.
And they were great people,
played racquetball and tennis with some of them.
And there was one of those lessons,
I didn't even notice it for what it was
because that's how I grew up, right?
So, yeah, I think a lot of the things in the book
or things that I learned later
were things that I'd learned from my dad, just innately,
right, or unconsciously kind of thing.
And that's hence the dedication.
And he always believed in me.
So I love him for that forever.
That's amazing.
And it does overlap the next question
and quite a big regard.
That's often true of our worst leadership experiences,
not always, but many times they kind of go hand in hand
with the best experiences.
Let's not limit it to that though.
What's the best leadership experience that you've ever had?
You know, I picked two.
I mentioned that I got kicked out of college
in the sophomore year.
And I decided I was gonna go work at a Del Monte factory
that made creamed corn and peas, okay?
And I'd done summer work for them for years
and stuff like that.
But I'm gonna go get a full-time job there.
And there was a plumber job open.
And so I had the whole summer to prove
that I was actually a great plumber and mechanic
and all, and I was handy guy, I'd rebuild cars.
And so it really wasn't that hard of a job.
I got to the end of the summer and Chuck Hanby,
Chuck has passed away since unfortunately,
Chuck Hanby came to me one night
and I was on the night shift and he said,
I've got bad news for you and good news.
The bad news is you don't belong here.
And the good news is you should go back to college.
And what a gift.
I mean, it was one of those things
where he was able to have the, he's a great guy.
We really enjoyed each other.
I didn't do a horrible job, but he actually said,
there's something bigger here
that I should be thinking about, right?
And that is what's right for this person, okay?
Where does this person belong?
Do they belong here or not, right?
Can they serve a greater good?
And I could just as well dedicate the book
to Chuck in that way as an example.
He just about who Chuck is for those who don't know.
I'm in that bucket.
So Chuck was a supervisor at the Dell Mountain plant
and he was my boss and reported directly to him.
And just another guy, they called them white hats
because everyone had to wear hats.
And the white hats are all the established managers
and the green hats for all the laborer managers.
That was a green hat and that kind of thing.
So it was this hat hierarchy going on.
So Chuck had this ability to recognize
that you weren't meant for that position long-term.
Knew from his perspective where you should go.
And it sounds like he was pretty direct with you
about where you should go with that.
But how did you know that that was the right call,
the right move?
Why didn't you get mad and say, well, forget that.
I'm meant to be here.
I was totally pissed, of course.
I was totally pissed.
No, but then I woke up like two days late
because that was basically
and don't come back tomorrow kind of thing.
And two days smoking a bunch of weed and drinking beers
and playing pool with my buddies.
And I woke up one morning and I thought,
well, fuck, I got nothing else to do.
So I might as well try and get back into school
and do the community college route and everything.
And eventually I got that.
It was a pretty good idea on his part.
Okay, so cool.
So he didn't even give you the option.
It was done.
It was a very direct, like here's,
it's just, you have a new road to figure out
and then you followed that road.
So even if you had a little bit of a stumbling process
to get there, you know, it's often what happens.
It's not always a linear, like, okay, great.
Thank you, God of wisdom.
Let me just go and be perfect from here on out.
That's really neat.
And I became a computer scientist is what I did.
Computer science and robotics and the like,
which I didn't do any of that anymore.
I didn't even do it for a couple of years when I came out,
but it sent me on that path, right?
And so forever grateful for that pinball bounce,
if you will.
Yeah.
I see that.
All right, diving into, I think this is our best question.
If this was the last chance that you had to speak,
this is it.
This is the last piece of wisdom.
What powerful lesson can other visionaries learn
from your experience, Jack?
But I'm gonna nod in the way that it might sound,
it may sound like a crass commercial answer,
which is I'm gonna mention the book, right?
And my advice for a visionary is write a book,
not for the reason that all the blogs tell you
to write a book and all the books tell you to write a book,
which is that you market yourself by that
and all that kind of thing.
That is true.
But one of my good friends and author, Blair Enns,
which if you work in the agency space like I do
and the small business projects,
digital projects and all that kind of thing,
he has a great book called Win Without Pitching, right?
Which is a great way to manage customers
and all that kind of thing.
And he's become a good friend on the conference circuit
that we're both on and the like.
But Blair made a post on his LinkedIn the other day
and he said, you think you're a visionary, write a book, okay?
When you get done with the book,
if you can tie together all your ideas in 50,000 words
and it makes sense, okay?
Then you can call yourself a visionary.
And what he's reacting to is a lot of people are out there
and I'm sure you get them on your LinkedIn feed
or wherever else.
You post something like this podcast
and some visionary leader type person weighs in
with their 25 words about what leadership means, okay?
And it's just like, okay, fine, whatever.
You don't have a whole integrated way
of thinking about this, right?
And a vision has to be actually, I think in that way,
a gospel and the like, right?
It needs to have a completeness to it
and that you've thought through what it is
to actually have the whole conversation
on every single dimension of it.
And I mean, it is again, back to the powerful lesson is
you wanna be a visionary, write that book
and you'll really learn what you have to be thinking about
and how to present it and all that kind of thing.
It's powerful.
That's a powerful lesson.
I will acknowledge gracefully
the controversial nature of that lesson.
I would say visionaries who hear that,
take it in two strides, right?
There are, when Michael Jordan was cut
from his basketball team, right?
His coach basically told him,
you wanna be a basketball player,
like it's not happening here.
You're not gonna make it.
You don't have what it takes.
That's what I hear when I hear Blair in thought process
on until you get here, you're not truly a visionary.
And I'm here to also say like, F that.
Every single person on earth is a visionary
but what Stephen King said was
talent is cheaper than table salt.
What separates those who are great from those who are not,
and I can't remember that exact phrase,
but I'm not knowing that.
Those who are great, those who are not,
it's a whole lot of hard work.
Back to your capital W, right?
If you want your vision to come to fruition, right?
It has a very, very strong potential to become a pipe dream.
If you're not careful, your vision will become a pipe dream.
You have to carefully, articulately, intentionally build.
And I think that's the point behind what Blair is pointing
out is it's not gonna serve everybody
unless you really, really build it on a strong foundation.
And what better way to do that than trying
to piece together a book that publishers
and others scrutinize and are able to say like, wow,
what a masterpiece.
Yeah, yeah.
Now you're absolutely, you know, you're right.
I love the way you reframed that a lot.
Yeah.
You know, and I, I'll throw in another thing too,
which is I knew what I wanted to write back in 2009.
And I started, and when I finally figured,
I mapped it out in diagrams,
all that stuff you're supposed to do.
And I thought, shit, I've never done this before.
Not the book.
I mean, I've never managed that way before.
I thought, I can't write a book on managing
if I've never done it before.
I mean, I've never done this.
And so that's, that's why the book,
the book basically took 10 years of waiting
to see if I was, if I was right about this, right?
We did it with a hundred organizations plus,
before I said, okay, maybe it's real.
I'm not a real confident guy.
And then I said, then now I can write a book.
And then, then I actually understood it even better.
So I think you're absolutely right to work,
do the work first.
But, and you're, you know, there's so much value in this.
And again, in both concepts of this,
what I'm saying is don't give up.
But what he's saying is, is don't pretend you're there.
You know, like you got work to do to get there.
And I agree wholeheartedly with that.
I'm gonna just have a softer platform to get people on,
to talk about the essence of the vision.
But you're right.
You know what was one of the strangest things to see?
And it's one of the most painful realities
is when I go back and look at my visionaries
six months later or go forward,
and I see they haven't moved.
Yeah.
I see they're in the same position.
I said, nothing's changed about their digital presence
that they didn't like when they came on my show.
Nobody does.
Ask somebody, tell somebody their website's great.
I can tell you 99% of what they're gonna say is,
oh, well we're working on it.
Oh, we've got updates to make to it.
It's the impossible compliment.
It's telling somebody their website's great
because it's a representation of our past.
But I see so many visionaries come to this process.
I go back and look at where they're at now,
and they're still spinning their wheels
with the same problem or an iteration of it
that's nowhere near where they could be
if they get out of their own way.
Yeah, yeah.
That's painful.
So Blair's, again, I don't think he's coming at people
as much as to them with a very quick answer of,
if you're gonna do it, do it right.
I'll double down with you.
You're right, it is hard.
This is the power marketing funnel.
It's huge inspiration for us,
but I've been trying to publish the book,
the marketing funnel is wrong for a couple of years.
And the first time I designed this, I was wrong.
Once Cynthia designed it,
but I gotta give her full credit on the design.
Nice job.
My design was off, but when she brought my design to life
and I looked at it, I went, oh gosh, that doesn't work.
That doesn't make sense at all.
I was an outline guy and my outline was only a fraction
of what that was supposed to be.
She brought the design to life
and I could see more clearly how wrong I was.
And then I was like, okay, we need to switch this here,
switch this here, switch this here, switch this here.
And we started to just continue to revamp.
And I realized the value of working with designers
to bring your verbal poetic self to life
and realize, oh man, my poetry's not as smart
as I thought it was.
Well, and that's the same thing
with if I'm gonna advise on how to manage.
To be frank, I knew what I wanted to write,
but I didn't, working with a hundred organizations,
I would start hearing back from people
how they thought of it, right?
Not how I thought of, but how they thought of.
One of our great, good friend of mine now, especially,
he had actually said to me, he said,
I take what I used to do.
I think about how would I deal with this?
And then I think about the opposite.
I try to do that as closely as possible
and I'm usually right.
And so it's literally that I was like, oh yeah,
it's very contrarian and the like.
So yeah, I think you learn a lot from the people you affect
when you're on that sort of actualizing
your vision journey as well.
That's correct.
And we got LinkedIn pulled up here.
Jack's got great content on there.
I do highly recommend giving the follow,
going and connecting with them on there.
We're gonna dive into this concept
of how do you manage less
in order to achieve more a little bit.
It's one of the things I gathered from the form submission.
And if you wanna take that in a different direction, Jack,
my goal with the next seven minutes or so
is to make sure I give you the space
to really provide what you feel is best for us.
You have me as strange loss for words actually.
There's decades of opportunity in that to sort through.
So I'm not surprised by that.
But in terms of the first question then,
I gathered this concept that if you're managing less
then you can achieve more.
I gathered that from what you submitted.
Is there truth to that?
And if so, I think that's a great idea.
And if so, what are some of those secret sauce items
people can bring to the table?
Yeah, thank you very much.
Sorry, I didn't follow the prompt, my bad.
I asked like 30 questions in one, so you're good.
Yeah, yeah.
So one of the key, I said that idea behind the book,
Unmanaged is this idea that it's provocative.
So every, if you do a book,
you want a provocative title, right?
And the idea is like, oh, my team is unmanaged.
Like someone would respond, oh my God,
your team's unmanaged.
And in fact, my unmanaged team
is outperforming your managed team, okay?
And that's a very common reality.
And we've proven it in,
like with all the organizations we've worked with.
So then the question is, well,
what does it mean to unmanage?
And it doesn't mean not managing at all,
but there's an implied idea here,
which we call the manager tax.
And that goes as very simple.
So I was a think tank researcher
in management sciences for many, many years.
And one of the key ideas in business research
is the intensity of management.
In other words, how much managerial activity there is
in an organization, okay,
is inversely proportional to how much productivity there is.
And so what's that saying?
It's like a little balance beam scale sort of thing,
is that the more I push on managing,
the less productivity happens, okay?
And it's a very strange paradox
because most managers,
if you ask who is responsible for productivity,
they will say, I am, I am.
And the reality is,
is management is not a productivity function,
it's a productivity management function.
Productivity comes from the team.
And this sort of understanding that,
okay, well then that means maybe I need to be careful
about when I'm interacting with the team.
Maybe I need to be careful
about what managerial actions I take.
That's the question that we ask
that managers start considering.
And we've got guidelines in the book for,
there are key moments when you should be managing
and there are certain things you should manage
in those moments.
There are only four of them,
so it's nice and easy in that way.
And then the rest of the moments,
in general, if you just lean back
and let people self-manage, they do a lot better, right?
And we've proven this.
So we've proven that if you do these,
if you do two of these really well,
and then the third one is about how to lean back,
and the fourth one is about how to mentor and support
teams outperform teams that are traditionally managed.
So I'd say, sort of a little bit of a cookbook,
it's a personal cookbook.
It's not about how to change an organization, right?
And that's organizational change is the whole bigger thing.
It's what we do as Agency Agile
and in our consulting and coaching practices.
But the book enables you as an individual.
And like I said in our earlier parts,
what I want is I want managers,
individual managers and leaders to be able to be better
at their day-to-day interactions.
And that's something you can actually do
without changing your organization.
You can just become a better manager.
That's awesome.
And you mentioned Goodreads and a promotion
that's going on right now for the free ebook, correct?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And we'll probably be running this for a while.
So Goodreads is a cool site.
And I feel like an idiot
because I didn't know about this, okay?
But the-
Well, thanks a lot, you found it.
Wasn't I just, I got spammed by,
I'm like, what's this Goodreads thing?
We sell our book on Amazon,
which is the only place people buy books,
it seems these days.
And Goodreads is some sort of adjunct of Amazon.
It's sort of a reader community and the like.
And you don't have to sign up.
You just sort of log in with your Amazon login
and boom, you're in and you've got a Goodreads account.
And you can do book reviews and join groups about,
if you like science fiction, like I do,
join the science fiction club
and people talk about the latest books they're reading.
And it's a way to find great books and the like.
And for authors like me,
they offer this service where you can do a giveaway.
And so, and they publicize it within Goodreads and the like.
And so I'm doing a hundred ebook giveaway.
And yeah, for the next 10 days or something like that,
if you go into Goodreads, which is really easy to do,
and then click, find my book on managed
and click want to read.
You put it on your sort of like list, if you will,
want to read and then they run the sweepstakes
or whatever, you know, at the end of 10 days
and we give away a hundred copies.
But I had a little bit of challenge with the signup,
but I got it.
Okay, so we're gonna work that link out
so that the action steps is a little easier for others.
But I did manage to make it in.
I was stalling a little bit for you.
I was like, all right, I gotta find this.
So I got in now, here's the book
and I can add my Amazon account.
Is that where?
Yeah, that, yeah.
Okay, I'll get that done.
And I got to know my password and stuff.
So if you're better with your Amazon account than I am,
and you have that all connected and ready to go,
then you can get this added in for free, correct?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
It doesn't cost anything.
And you know, you can turn off all the notifications
and stuff like that, but it's actually a very,
very cool site.
I poked around, I'm like, wow.
I love Goodreads.
I'm a big fan.
I didn't have that connection.
We're gonna get that sorted out.
That way everybody, when you go to the action steps,
you'll be able to get in and get that book easily.
And then of course, we'll have all the other links
in there too for action steps that you can take with Jack.
You know, it's funny, this management concept
of managing less, I'm also, again, I'm a big fan of it.
I've seen the value of shifting from,
again, the overbearing manager that debilitates people.
You know, it can create fear within people.
Fear doesn't breed action.
Fear, you know, it breeds safety.
And you might get people to do like the basic
necessary elements to maintain their job,
but they usually won't expand beyond that.
And they'll usually only do most of it
because it's scary to take risk in an environment like that.
You know, I'll tell you a fun little side fact
because I learned so much through working
with all these companies and all the research I did
for the book as well.
One is you can judge how good of a manager is
by asking their people, right?
And so, and by another indicator is that managers
will tell you, and here's how a manager tells you
that they're not a good manager.
You ask, how many good people do you have?
If they say that less than half of their people are good,
then you know they're a horrible manager.
Because the most important job for a manager to do
is grow their people, right?
And without exception, every time we hear someone,
I had one client who said, 60 person department,
30 of these people don't belong here, right?
And, you know, we went in and did the training
and all that kind of thing.
And a year later, she's like, these,
I have the most amazing teams, da da da.
And we asked her, said, how many people left?
Because she was gonna get rid of those people, right?
She goes, oh, only one person left.
She had to go because her husband moved and moved jobs,
you know, and literally the, it's the way you manage
that creates great people, okay?
And that's not the other way around.
You're not, you as a manager are not a product
of your people, your people are a product of you
in that way.
Right, and I love the fact that your story honors
the reality that both groups can change.
You don't have to remove the manager
in order to drive the results.
This is somebody who saw something differently before
and now sees something completely different
on the other end.
You made space for that person too,
to be able to evolve.
And that is, there's extreme power
and that all the way around.
That is just awesome.
So this, you know, I hope this gets shared far and wide
with the corporate companies out there.
You know, that's not exactly the audience.
Well, I've never worked in corporate America, never.
I've seen it.
I'm a victim as a prospect and as a client
of a lot of corporate circumstances, if you will.
But actually running those entities
with an insane amount of people, not insane people,
an insane amount of people to try to manage
and to help out, those are not territories
that I know how to dive into.
So I appreciate what you do because there's so many families
that are affected by that.
There's so many people who need that.
And we're hearing from people with the book coming out,
we're hearing from people saying, oh, I work in healthcare
and it's just like you say.
And I think that's the last thing I would say
in this discussion to your listeners
is that's what I'm looking for right now
is I wanna go take this to the market, to the street, right?
In other words, I've spent 230 agencies
and other marketing organizations.
I've worked in this crazy, rarefied,
chaotic world of that space,
but all the things we're learning about management there
are true everywhere else.
And I'd love to go work in more corporate settings,
departments, all that kind of thing.
I think there's a lot that can be done
in those areas as well.
Absolutely, well, Jack, I appreciate all the wisdom
that you shared today just being willing
to dialogue with me about this as well.
Those of you listening, and if you have thoughts of your own,
absolutely share them in the comments.
If you liked what you heard, please like this,
like the video wherever you're at or the podcast,
leave an honest review, short and honest, authentic,
super helpful, any critique you have
as well, we're open to that.
We wanna continue to make this better and better
for those that we serve.
The action steps will be on the landing page
so you know what to do next and can connect with Jack
on all the different platforms that are out that he's on.
And lastly, there's one more call to action.
That's in the top right corner.
This is be our guest.
If you have a vision and you're striving to help others
and you're striving to build that
and bring greatness to others, you're a great leader,
meaning you care about those that you serve,
apply to be on our show.
We'd love to have you.
We don't have to be at the MVP hall of fame level
that Jack skills is at.
You know, you could be John Doe.
Well, hey man, you're up there with the Jack Welch
and the Jack Canfields.
Again, I'm gonna be studying your processes a lot.
So those of you who wanna come on our show apply,
give yourself a shot and come on and talk to me
about your vision and let's open the doors for everybody
to be able to see what you're doing,
see how they can support you
and let's make the most of this life.
We'll see you guys in the next episode.
Take care everybody.
And Jackson, thank you so much.
Wonderful, wonderful.
Thank you.
I'll see you right after the show, Jack.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show
and thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision.