Indianapolis. Indianapolis. I have never been before. What am I missing? It's nice this
time of year. The weather is nice. Excuse me. Good food scene. I feel like me. I'm over
here coughing too as you know. I made it. I mean, it's contagious. Oh no. No, no. Good
food scene. Nice art community. Yeah, it's it. Quaint. No, it's a little bigger than
quaint. But it's nice and it's one of the most attractive things about Indianapolis
is it's several hours from so many really cool cities. Oh yeah. That is nice. That sounds
like everything in Texas. Just several hours from everything. No. Okay. I lived in Texas.
It's not several hours. Right. You want to go to Big Bend? It's nine and a half. Oh man.
Well we're going to be diving in today. Visionaries, leaders listening in. We're going to be talking
about how passions change. And Lorraine on the spot came up with such a great title for
it. I was getting real cerebral with it and like evolution of passion. She's like, why
not something conversational? That was my passion. And then it wasn't. And I was like,
there you go. That's why Lorraine Ball as a marketing strategist, I'm getting just blessed
so fast with decades of experience and wisdom. So yeah, our passions change. Let's just dive
right in on that subject. So what drew your attention to that and got you thinking down
this path? Because there's so many people out there that are probably in some type of
transition, but tell me about where this vision came from. So I had a successful corporate
career and when I started thinking about going out on my own, I started thinking about, well,
what would people pay me for? I know what they paid me for in corporate and what did
I really love? And one of the things that I was really good at, it was never in my job
description per se, was building high performance teams. I had a lot of history going into dysfunctional
organizations, figuring out what was wrong, turning them around and transforming both
the teams and the individuals into high performance. And I did that multiple times. And so as I
looked at my business, I was like, you know, I'm really good at it. That's really fun.
I really, I love the magic of finding what lights up somebody and helping them figure
out how to use that well and how to work with other people and be creative. And so I built
a business model that would have me in a perfect world running around the country, talking
to senior managers about how to build their high performance teams, doing workshops on
it, and then going in and doing those deep dives to help them figure out what were the
stumbling blocks, where was the communication? And I love that. I was jazzed. I was really
excited. And I wasn't very good at selling it. And I had some gigs and did really well.
And so I was like, oh, that was fun. I can do that again. And but while I was sort of
trying to develop that business, people kept coming up to me going, Hey, Lorraine, I know
that, you know, I know you're doing this other thing now, but you were in marketing all those
years and you're really good at it. And I mean, and I was, and I always had fun with
it and it was a passion, but it wasn't lighting me up the way this idea was. And they're like,
can you help me? Well, yeah, you know, I'll do that on the side. And the more I did it
on the side, and the more success I had, not just for me, but for my customers, the more
I was like, wow, this is really cool. And again, I'm really good at it. And I am I'm
making a difference. And the people who I'm working with are appreciating and all of a
sudden and I know it wasn't all of a sudden, but over time, I realized that I loved it,
that it was what was waking me up every morning. And it wasn't just, okay, I love getting paid
big, big fan of I'm a capitalist, my mother, my mother raised a capitalist. And so I embrace
it. But it wasn't just the money, because there were a lot of things I could have done
for the money. It really was getting a phone call from a client saying, Oh my God, we just
sold this because of a lead on the website. We just got funding for our business because
of the plan you helped us put together. We are moving out of our basement, and we're
going to put a sign on the outside of the building with our company name, and we would
never have been there without you. And all of a sudden, I was like, okay, this, this
is what I meant to do. And it made me sad, sort of like breaking up with a boyfriend,
to let go of the, the vision of me running around team building and teaching other managers
to do because I continue to see crappy leaders in all levels. And I continue to see the opportunity
and it hurts me because I know that I could help. But I also know that I have and continue
to have a much bigger impact on the path that I've chosen. And so what I did was I took
all of that passion around building high performance teams and turned it inward and took everything
that I knew about communication and supporting and cultivating and created an organization
that over the 19 years made a huge impact on anyone who came through that door. And
much the way I have tremendous pride when I drive by the sign that says e-imagine because
I wrote their business plan when they were three guys working in a basement. Yeah, I
have tremendous pride when I see former employees are senior editors for national publications
or seriously senior managers at large agencies and still kind of talk to them and they all
say, yeah, you know, I learned it at round pick. And so I let go of my passion, but I
didn't.
Right. And, and there's sometimes where that, that let go is permanent. Sometimes it's,
it's seasonal. Sometimes it comes back. Right. Full circle. And that's okay. Right. That's
that begs the question. We might come back to, to bad leaders versus great leaders in
a little bit. But, you know, the, I think a lot of us question and wonder where you
see these very powerful memes or speakers say that like true passions never really change,
you know, unlike I get it. I understand like the feeling and, and the optimism and like,
especially if you're a leader of an, of a multi-level marketing company and you've got
to convince people to stick around and fight through everything in order to win. I'm like,
but that's no passions can change. It's not, it's not wrong. And so there's what, one of
the things that you hit on, you said, you talked about success and success doesn't always
equal happiness, but there are certainly, there is a certain ingredient that can make
the cake sweeter. And so I look at the sandlot, right? That's a little bit more of a fantasy.
There's that kid and he's got his plastic glove and, and, you know, and he embarrassed
himself and then the leader of the baseball team brings him out, gives him a glove, you
know, happens at the ball perfectly to him and he catches it and his summer changes instantly.
All right. Eventually he then becomes confident and capable, but looking at real life examples,
David Robinson of the San Antonio Spurs, long retired, right? I was thinking through
as you're talking, I was like, who else represents this in real life? He was in the air force,
you know, and Stefan Footer sitting in a cockpit of an airplane, you know, and he got into
basketball in college. He had never played before and he became one of the best top 50
players of all time by giving the opportunity. And then I think of blindside with Sandra
Bullock and Michael Orr and right. Michael was homeless. He had never played football.
They got him into the game and he fell in love with it. He had the opportunity finally
to do that. So sometimes people do steer us towards a new opportunity and we need to be
prepared. The one in the one infographic I'm going to end on related this. It's so funny.
You talked about that small company. There was three guys who wanted to build an app
and we get so addicted to the things we want to build, right? If I want to draw something,
I want to finish it. If I want to start lemonade stand, I want to be successful with it, right?
We want to accomplish things. We want to avoid people telling us we were wrong too. So let's
look at another example of this. And this infographic shows how a little bitty app called
Angry Birds got started. There were three guys in 2003. They made 51 different games, 51
times. They pivoted their passion on these games. And in 2009, six years later, they
were almost broke, but they wanted to make one more game. So they sketched 10 ideas per
day and one day they sketched this bird. That is such alignment with what you're talking
about, about how it's a process. It's an evolution.
And I do not, you know, in retrospect, when I look back over the 20, 25 years that I did
this, I am not sorry, really and truly, I am not sad that I embraced a different passion.
Other than sometimes I look at things and think, oh my God, you could be so much better,
but okay, whatever. But I am okay. Everything you do in life.
It's unhealthy to acknowledge though. Like my life would be different if I didn't have
kids. And it doesn't take away from the fact that I love the fact that I had kids early.
I get extra years that other people don't. Right? So we can get obsessed with looking
at what we missed out on or what didn't happen, or we can choose to be centered and grateful
for the things that we do have. And that's part of having a healthy mindset.
Absolutely. I mean, every day you wake up and there's a fork in the road. Okay. I'm
a sci-fi geek and I love these movies about these alternative universes and timelines.
And if just one little thing changes, how everything ripples. And when I look at my
life and I look at the choices that I made and the amazing people that I've met along
the way and the incredible experiences, and I know that if this other thing that I had
wanted had happened, none of that would exist. Now, that might've been cool, but I'm not
willing to trade. I'm not willing to trade, even in my mind, away any of those experiences
for what might've been. And I think, as you said, it's a healthy way to look at life.
And it's a really positive way to get up every morning and figure out, I'm going to have
a fork in the road and whichever one I choose, it's going to be okay.
Right. Exactly. And what makes me sad is the people who live in that they can't be happy
for what they have. They're constantly longing for something more and out there that's existential
versus being able to appreciate their current reality. And I hope more people get the chance
to dive in. And I get it. If life is hard and things are tough, it's very hard to see
what's good. And I know what it's like to have a hard life. And I know what it's like
to find value in even the darkest experiences that I've had. Sometimes I'm not good at doing
that in the moment, but I think that's one of the great realities of great leaders, is
great leaders learn to see and value and appreciate each moment for what it is and not beg for
something different. So we're going to cut to a little bit of a break. We're going to
come back. We'll talk a little bit about bad leaders and great leaders. We'll dive more
into these experiences of passions. We'd love to hear from you. If you have changed gears
with your passions and you found value in it, or you've found a storm of problems from
doing so, or you've buried your passions, need to come back. All those stories that
you have the opportunity to inspire others with what you've experienced. And that's really
what the show is all about. So we'll see you guys on the other side right after this break.
All right. Welcome in to Vision Pros Live with Jackson Callum. 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 Vision Pros? Welcome in to another episode of Vision Pros
Live. I'm your show host, Jackson Callum, founder and CEO of First Class Business. And
I'm excited to have Lurien Ball back with us today. She's a marketing strategist. And
I'll tell you what, visionaries out there, when you lack in the marketing, your vision
doesn't take off. That's why I love talking to people who do marketing. It's one of the
things that we do. But I always say that the best pill never wins, unfortunately. Even
if we have the cure for whatever it is, whatever disease is out there, most of the time it
fails and it doesn't make it to fruition. Why? Because they didn't learn how to market
it. And so you don't just need one marketer. I will say there is absolutely no such thing
as a marketing guy or a marketing gal, no matter what they say, that is a control freak
trying to help you hire them alone. It is called a department. A marketing guy or marketing
gal would be harder to find than a unicorn in this world. So I recommend going to look
for unicorns if you're going to look for one, but look at what perspectives you can find.
Again, that's why we bring people like Lurien on. So you can have a depth of different perspectives
to help move your visions forward. Now, before I bring her back on stage, a couple of sponsored
opportunities here. In fact, one marketing guru I highly recommend getting to know is
none other than James Bond. This is the real James Bond. He wrote Brain Glue and Jack Canfield,
who has sold more than a hundred million copies of his own book, said, any entrepreneur would
be an idiot not to buy Brain Glue. And it should be taught in every marketing class
in every university. This book has some serious power with it. It helps your ideas become
sticky. It helps you become unforgettable by helping your audience emotionally connect
with your message. And if you just listen to the audio sample clip, it's got a hilarious
story. I'm not going to repeat on the public air on my show, but I highly recommend going
and listening to that. Then there is Dave Morrow with the Hard to Kill Podcast and hardtokill.org.
We joined forces with him. He's helping a hundred thousand veterans lose two million pounds
collectively. We've been working with Dave for about three months now. Honestly, I lose
track of timelines. It's somewhere between two and four months. But Dave's workout plan
has actually got me working out and I haven't worked out in eight years. I had a back surgery.
I've avoided physical therapists and personal trainers very, very well. Somehow Dave has
meagred me into doing a hundred pushups per day at this point. It did not start there.
I started with one I could barely do. And he's opened his door so that civilians can
now join as well. But if you know veterans and you know, if you're learning about the
veteran community, a lot of them have a very hard time with transition back to being civilians.
And we have suicide rates going through the roof right now. Dave's focus is to help veterans
look good, feel good, and go about doing good. And I hope we're all willing to get behind
a mission like that. Again, join us in the Hard to Kill community. It's free to join.
We'd love to see you over there. And it has helped me tremendously with my health. The
water project. We are not affiliated with the water project. This is something that
I really just hope to continue to help people understand. Because when I found out that
there's millions of people who don't have access to clean drinking water, I could have
just said, you know, I can't feel that emotionally. That doesn't apply to me because I've never
been thirsty in my life. But I didn't. I decided to pay attention and think through what would
my life be like, or what would it be like to have four kids and not have access to clean
drinking water? You know, we have to walk miles and who knows what could happen to somebody
on that type of a walk. I've made myself start to really meditate upon this. And what I love
about this organization is you actually get to pick the community that you help. And when
you give $5 or $10 to that community, they will actually send you a notification and
the pictures and evidence of that community and what they've been able to accomplish.
This picture you're about to see reminds me of my kids on Christmas Day. And these are
kids celebrating the simple reality of having clean drinking water. Talk about passions.
These kids are passionate about water. What a gift it is to be able to give something
like that to others. If you're not in a financial position to contribute and give back to the
water project, my hope is that you'll just think of somebody that might be inspired by
this because you never know if you share it with one person, that one person might fund
10 of this projects by themselves. We can do more than we give ourselves credit for
simply by sharing the opportunities in the world. And we all have 8 billion people out
there to help. So jump in the game with us, do what you can. And if there's another project
or another cause that you'd love to see us support, please just drop it in the comments.
Give us a chance to learn what it is and go in and maybe I'll talk about that on the show
as well. Lorraine Ball, thanks for joining us again on Vision Pros Live.
Nice to be here. Thank you.
Absolutely.
Go ahead.
Before we go anywhere, a hundred pushups a day. Way to go.
We're 25 now, started on Monday. So 25 sets, 25 sets. I'm sorry, 25. Five sets of 25.
Five sets of 25. Nice.
It's nice. It's weird. I've got like these, I got like this indention growing right here
and it's like, huh, what is this? I'm a pretty skinny guy. Yes. Thank you for that. And you
know, those of you listening in too, let's talk about ego just a little bit. Let's talk
about arrogance, you know, a vice. And let's also talk about the mirrored virtue, confidence.
Leaders, great leaders are confident. I can be beautiful and recognize that Lorraine is
just as beautiful and recognize that all of you are just as beautiful. What if our world
switched and transitioned to where we no longer labeled the virtue of confidence as the vice
of cockiness and arrogance? How would our, how would our conversations change in life?
If we could appreciate each other's values, virtues, our growth and all the good things
that we're doing, that's what we're creating at First Class Business Envision Pros. Lorraine,
what are your thoughts on that? How do we, how do we inspire that?
First off, I love, I love the idea of both, I'm getting a little feedback. I love the
idea of both getting comfortable with confidence. I also appreciate humility, not when it's
a humble brag, you know, when it's not, when you say something and you're looking for someone
to tell you, no, no, no, you're better than that. But I think confidence when you are
leading an organization and you are trying to get people to change their behavior, act
in a certain way, support a certain cause, I think confidence is absolutely critical
because they have to believe, number one, that you believe and they have to believe
that you can do. At the same time, when you succeed, acknowledging that you did not do
it on your own, no matter how good you are, no matter how, how much you toil day, night,
whatever, whatever, you ain't living in a bubble. There are people around you who have
made it easier for you to be successful, whether it's dropping off food sometime or running
an errand or actually proofreading that brilliant manuscript you wrote. Whatever it is, there
have been contributions along the way. And so I think those two joint virtues need to
go together.
I'll say, I'll say with that example of the people in your life, maybe and maybe not.
And here's why. There is one that often gets left out, in my opinion, and I know this is
projecting a little bit on the audience, but I'm an unapologetic Christian, right? And
that's God, right? God is always there. We also know the story of Job. And for those
believers out there know that Job was abandoned by literally everybody. It doesn't mean people
didn't contribute at some point along the way, but there came a point in time where
it was just God by His side. And I think that's the one that oftentimes we neglect to acknowledge.
And I want to go back to this topic of humility because our world is so lost when it comes
to the true definition of humility. 100% loss. Check this out. This is hilarious. I just
Googled it because it's constantly changing. Definitions of words are always changing.
We are always learning. The dictionary people are always learning. Here's AI. And check
out how they define humility. It says humility is, right? And then they don't define it.
They just use the word that define itself, but they say humility is having a lack of
pride or arrogance. That's a bull crap definition. You don't define happiness by saying it's
the opposite of sadness. You actually have to create a true definition. But worse, even
in the Oxford languages here, it says humility is a modest or a low view of one's own importance.
Once again, this is absolutely bull crap. This is our language getting twisted and twisted
to the point where we can't even recognize virtues. If you go back and you look at the
Aramaic or the Judaism definitions of humility, what humility actually means and what it's
supposed to be is a full appreciation of oneself and a full appreciation for everything else.
That definition is the one that I'm 100% aligned with. And if we can get a full appreciation
where we don't take anything away from anybody because there's no need to, and we are confident
about who we are, that is a beautiful setup for leaders to then encourage others to put
their best foot forward.
And I think you kind of touched on it and then went off in a different direction. Having
a sense of humility is not necessarily being humble. I think as people talk about being
humble a lot of time, or maybe it is the perception that that gets tied much more to the low self-esteem.
I don't really deserve this.
Which is not the true definition of that word.
No. And so, yeah. And so when I think of humility, I definitely agree and gravitate towards the
description of-
Humble is a good word. Humble is a good word and modern society has ruined it, just like
the word game and happiness. So there's the original definitions, there's the ability
to withstand the world. I would not go on CNN and talk about this or Fox because the
way they want to converse is a different style than what this environment is. But in Vision
Pros Live, we're in an environment of people who are seeking holistic growth.
Absolutely.
And people who seek holistic growth and wellbeing understand that definitions of words, or they're
at least starting to understand that the definitions of words change based on culture, based on
context, based on cadence, based on tone. And the whole point here is I want my audience
to know that there is no reason to put yourself down and self-deprecate. There's zero reason
to hold back how good you could feel and should feel about your passions and your virtues.
There's no arrogance whatsoever, no vice in appreciating what you've been given and what
you're able to accomplish. And so no bars. Be your best self and be grateful that you
are. That is my hope for those people who come to the show.
And that is such an attractive characteristic. When you are doing that, when you are confident,
when you are appreciating the people around you, the opportunities, the inspiration, the
luck, whatever it is, when you are doing those things and acknowledging that all of that
is contributing to you moving forward, it brings people in. They want to be a part.
They want to be a part of that environment where there is appreciation.
It's powerful. It feels so good.
I did something so silly. I took over a department one time and it was such, I can't even begin
to talk about the negative energy I stepped into. And I, on my journey to figure out what
was going on there, one of the things I realized is nobody ever said thank you. And so I bought
a stack of these little note cards and I had, I think there were 48 people on the team and
randomly something would happen during the day and I would just write one sentence and
I would leave it on their desk at the end of the day because I always kind of worked
a little bit later. And they would come in in the morning and there would be this little
tent card sitting on their desk. And just that shifting the culture to appreciation
was, it just brought such light and such energy. And it was funny because after I did it for
a while, I noticed that they started saying it to each other. And that's really where
the culture changes. And that's really, to me, when we're talking about what's a good
leader versus a bad leader, it's less about what you say and more about what you do and
can you with your behavior inspire others to shift their behavior?
For sure. And I want to come back to that topic. We're going to be coming back to the
good and the bad. First thing I want to ask you and an audience, when it goes to these
interviews, we interview a couple hundred people every year. Maybe more than I think
this year we've interviewed almost 500 already. And we sometimes remember what we talked about,
we sometimes didn't. We had the question, what's the worst leadership experience you've
ever had? What's the best leadership experience you've ever had? And the powerful lessons.
Did we talk about those three on our last episode, Lorraine? Or is that something we
should revisit? Or should we move forward with the good and the bad leadership experiences?
This is your call today. I think I may have answered them. And so now
as I'm struggling to remember, I don't know that I want to necessarily answer again going,
Lorraine, you said this was your worst leadership experience.
Well, here, let me play devil's advocate on that. And in fact, I call it angel's advocate.
If I learned the best secret from Richard Branson, right, and I got to listen to him
talk about it for five minutes only, why in the world would I not want to listen to that
again and get the 150 minute version of what it is that he is really trying to help me
share with. So again, I'm not pushing you that way, only saying we can go any direction
you want, knowing that the ability to dive deep in the well is something that at Vision
Pros we appreciate tremendously. So I'm totally good with that. When you ask
it right now, the which one the thing that popped the worst leadership experience, the
thing that popped into my head may or may not be what I talked about before. Correct.
But this was a leader who was absolutely not confident. And I remember that he did something
that I thought was just so awful. He would call a staff meeting for Saturday morning.
And you know, we were working in retail, guess we were in the buying office. So we pretty
much were working Monday to Friday, but we had all just come out of the environment where
we were working in the stores. So we really valued our Saturdays. And it was because he
really did not have much life outside of this job and wanted to make sure that he had something
to do on Saturday morning. And it was just it was the it was the most awful thing because,
you know, we had all given is selfish and we'd all given two to three years of our life
giving up Saturday mornings. And quite honestly, when you rolled into the holidays, you still
were in the stores on the weekends. And so we solved the problem. There were five of
us on the team. And every Friday, someone we would rotate, hey, now, I'm going to be
working tomorrow. Can we talk about this? And the other four of us got Saturday off.
And it was so awful because he had so little value for who we were and the jobs we were
doing and how hard I mean, as you know, when you're a retail buyer, you're traveling.
We had 11 stores in Dallas and two in Phoenix, Arizona. And so we were on the road between
the stores all the time, which meant that, you know, Dallas traffic just kept getting
worse and worse. And so it could mean that we would get home at seven o'clock at night,
even if we left the store at five thirty or six. And we were showing up on weekends and
it just so little concern for what his needs were. And I that was one of the things that
as I went forward, I had a much higher sensitivity to the value of the time that people were
committing and having those conversations about what's the best use of your time.
We're going to shift right into this as well because of the they sparked a you sparked
a passion of mine. So these bad leaders versus good leaders opportunity to talk about that.
There's there's leaders themselves, by the way. There's also leadership experiences.
I would make a terrible leader as a Chinese teacher because I don't speak Chinese. I don't
know anything about the culture either. So that would not be something that I could lead
in. So many visionaries assume that they have to be the leader for everything that they
do with with their visions or that they have to be the chief executive officer because
they can't afford to bring somebody in. There's so many limiting beliefs we put in ourselves
in relation to leadership. But that is not a role. Those are not roles. I shouldn't limit
it to one because there are so many aspects leading clients is very different and leading
prospects, which is very different than leading PR and media personnel that might be interested
in promoting you. There's so many leadership opportunities that, you know, I want to explore
with you. Let's get beyond the basics, because, again, I think a lot of the visionaries who
come and watch the show, they understand leadership at a bigger level and they need some of the
nuanced guidance, some of the things that don't get talked about. So let's hit hard
on this one. What's a good leader? What's a bad leader? And how do we explore leadership
as a more holistic view?
OK, I want to take the third question and then I'll come back to good and bad.
When, years ago, I did this experiential training course and I taught it for years. And in the
experiment, there's you play a game and you tell people that there's an old man who's
got information and most people ignore him and go off and die in the desert. OK, that's
the short version. But the analogy is that when you look at your organization, you have
to find the old man and the old man is the person that has the information or the influence.
The old man might be the department secretary. The old man might be the person who's been
there 25 years and has never risen through the ranks. When in many times in my career,
I have been in a situation where I needed to get something done and the person that
I went to with my questions, the person who solved the problem, the person who could make
the connection that I needed to make, did not have the title. But if you ask anybody
in the environment, when a new policy came out, when a new procedure was introduced,
everybody in the room would turn and look at that person to see their reaction. Because
by the contributions they made to the organization, by the status they had gained by longevity,
by the fact that they were the keeper of the keys and they knew where the bodies were buried,
they could lead, they could influence. And so as a manager, when I came into a department
and I came into a job and I was, I think I was 10 to 20 years younger than everybody
I was supervising. So I had that working against me. I was a girl. I had that working against
me. And so what I did in the first couple of weeks is I went into meetings and I just
had conversations and I would throw out ideas and I would just watch which way the heads
turned. And then when I had something that I really cared about, I went to Mike and I
talked to Mike. And then the next time I threw out an idea, Mike was there to back you up.
Yes! Yes! So smart. So, you know, part of being a leader is recognizing you're not always
the most influential person in the room. Very rarely are you. Yeah. I mean, sometimes you
are. But it also comes back to bite you when you leverage that card, because when you're
wrong, then that deteriorates the value of your leadership. And so it's an ego play
at the end of the day. If you only focus on that, you miss out on the opportunity to empower
people to carry the load with you. But if you're a great leader, right? Or if you have
that authority and you empower somebody else to step up and kind of be the microphone for
what you're doing and they fail, right? You can still ruin that as a leader by going at
them. But if you uplift them and you show them that, guys, I also could have been prone
to make the same mistake. So let's applaud so and so for giving their best on this. And
who's got a new idea to help us with this pivot, right? Now you're empowering everybody
to realize that it is okay. It is safe. In fact, it is encouraged to make mistakes because
that's also a part of growth. So I'm going to switch the subject a little bit. Same topic.
We're talking about the relationship, though, of passions and leadership. And, you know,
is leadership required for passions or is it not? How do they relate? So I'll let you
lead on this as well. I think when you're passionate, it when you're really passionate,
you will attract people to your idea. Okay. At that moment, you need to decide, are you
the one to carry the ball forward? This trips up a lot of it trips up a lot of founders.
It trips up a lot of of entrepreneurs, because what you're doing in that moment, you have
to let go. And when you do when you identify somebody who actually has the skills to take
your idea forward, the most successful leaders, I think, surround themselves with people who
are smarter than they are. Cultivate those opportunities. I always took it as a personal
victory when someone on my team was recruited by another department head was recruited by
another company. Was I sad to lose them? Yes. But was it a victory that I had helped this
person who was excited and smart? Find that next opportunity and take with them the things
they learned with me. And was I grateful for the time they were with me? Absolutely. So
I think recognizing what your passion or your vision is, and then being able to say, I'm
not the person to carry this forward. I'm not the only person who should carry this
forward and figuring out why that is or what that is. Yeah, see, there you are right right
in the middle of my YouTube page. I get sidetracked by pretty pictures. But recognizing that you're
you don't have like if you if you're serious, if this is really your passion and you want
this project to succeed, and you know you're not the guy, find the guy or the girl who
can. I can tell you right now, visionaries, most of you are not the guy or the gal. You're
not your vision. If your vision is holistic, it's going to be inclusive of others. And
that means that others need to be empowered in the process and learning how to do that.
Maybe you just need to empower that one person who can empower the others. I think Steve
Jobs is a great example of that where, you know, he gets a bad rap, you know, as a leader
from a lot of people. And yet, he was still able to work with hundreds of people. Part
of the key for that is he had other nurturing individuals there to help shift and shape
that culture into something people wanted to belong to. And that's not a bad thing.
In fact, that's the superpower of his was, even though he was known for not getting out
of the way, he also knew how to get out of the way. And so we have to learn, you know,
if we want to really scale something people can participate in, how to do just that. And
part of that is, are we able to honor other leaders? One leader who I saw on your website
that I love as a person and that I don't know a whole lot about, but I was impressed with
her program. I was impressed with her leadership is Deborah Sunderland. So shout out to Deborah,
who I saw on that. How do you know Deborah? I met Deborah originally through a women's
networking group online. We've never met face to face. She's been a guest on my podcast.
She actually wrote a chapter for, and I think that's where you see her. Through online,
but you haven't met in person. No, no, but she's been a guest on the show a few times
and we just really connect. We have fun. We, she, and actually you're going to laugh because
I just put together an article for an upcoming newsletter and I'm featuring our conversation
about visionary leadership. And what I always do is I always go back into my library to
find other related conversations. And the conversation that I matched with you is Deborah.
Oh, that's so cool. Well, we'll have to let her know too, that she got included on this
episode as well. Yeah. Yeah. She's got a very, I remember it was an assessment on leadership
that I was like, okay, neat. You know, and it's that, it's that creativity and ingenuity,
you know, a vision that when I see somebody tinkering with stuff, like even if it's at
the beginning stage and not the Tony Robbins level, right. It's like, Oh, they've got a
depth within them, right. That we had a lock because they've got all sorts of wisdom, even
below the surface. Same thing with like the Angry Birds guys. Imagine what else they're
capable of doing and accomplishing as leaders in the world. So, yeah, that's, that's too
funny. So passions and leadership and these pivots, right. So again, my hope visionary
is you realize you don't have to be the best leader, but you do have to care enough about
people in order to find great leaders. And that's, that's usually the role. If you're
going to be the chief visionary officer, you might be a great stage presence, but I've
seen a lot of great leaders who are great teachers who are absolutely awful to their
teams or who don't know how to manage somebody who goes against their vision, right. They
just want to torch them to death. And it's like, there's, there's a reason why it's so
important to have others who can make space and not let your ego get the best of you as
a visionary who's trying to force what you have on everybody else. That's not healthy.
So go ahead.
One of the things I was going to say in this, I think is ties back to the EOS, entrepreneurial
operating system and, and, and, and it identifies the visionary, the person who can tell the
story, the person who can inspire, but a lot of the characteristics of a person who is
good at that are not the characteristics of the person who gets the job done.
The integrator.
The integrator. Yes.
You know what? I'm going to call it out. I hate that book. I hate it. And why do we hate
things? Right. We hate things because we, we usually, because we want to love it. We
want something to be adjusted. There is, I hope Gina Wickman hears me on this because
he's a phenomenal leader. That book is so juicy and so great. And at the end of that
book, they tell a story about an entrepreneur visionary who refuses to acknowledge and appreciate
the value of the integrator for more than a year, even though this integrator has done
everything right to build this vision up. And in the book, they justify that leadership.
They literally say, you know, we understand entrepreneurs. That's okay. Bullshit. I'm
calling it right now. That is not, you do not set entrepreneurs up for success. If you
do not teach them how to become grateful for not many people, not many, many integrators
will stick around without an, with an entrepreneur who's not grateful for what they do. It's
so easy to learn how to say thank you.
Okay. I appreciate it.
Go back to my conversation about the little notes earlier. You know, the, the idea is
you, I, I acknowledge the need for the two personalities. They may or may not have all
the buckets, right? Right. But those two personalities, I, in every, in every job and every company
in every role I have ever been in, there has always been someone else that is the yin to
my yang or the yang to my yin, however, because I never remember which is, which is,
Yeah, both of them work, right?
But they are, they are my polar opposite. I am big picture. The minute I get, the minute
I verbalize an idea and I hear it, it's done. Oh, there are details. Yeah. Okay. Whatever.
Having someone who is coming in and saying, no, we have to dot this I, we have to cross
this T and it's not just that they clean up after me because I turn around and go, okay,
you have been tweaking that for a month. It's done. And I have to pry it out of their hands
and release it into the world. And so we are good for each, we are good for each other.
Absolutely.
You know, my husband and I are on opposite ends of that spectrum and we have been married.
No relationships can relate to that out there, right? We all understand that to a degree.
Yeah. But we've been married 46 years because we understand where that,
Hey, congratulations. That is huge.
But we've done it because we understand where the handoff is. When do I come up with the
big idea? When do I let him work? And when do I come back and say, okay, this is good
now? We're good.
I love it. And that book again, I love the book. What I don't love about it is again,
their attempt and this is an easy change for 2.0 by the way, rocket field 2.0 easy adjustment
is I'm just, I just wish more leaders would stop pacifying and coddling entrepreneurs
bad behaviors that is going to hold them back for far longer than if we could just as good.
Everybody respects, you know, Wickman, right? And he was very few people would even dare
to bother to speak out against anything that's being done. And so if the man made the one
adjustment and said, you know what, let's, let's honor the integrators. Hey, let's make
sure on the front end, we help these entrepreneurs realize that full appreciation of your team
and their wellbeing will lead to even better results. One tiny adjustment, but that the
book is an absolute masterpiece. So as a, as a great one. And it's built on the backbone
of the EMF. I will never give a shout out to also tying it to the spine of the book,
which is fantastic resources. So visionary leaders, thanks for joining us today. You
know, we'd love to hear your thoughts too, in the comments and, and feel free to send
us a loom video too of your thoughts and get passionate with us. We might add it to the
segment as a segment of this episode, but sharing your passions, what pivots, pivots
you've made, why you've made them and how we're going to have on the show notes as well,
how you can get in touch with Lorraine Ball. We'll have some resources down there. Some
of the things that we talked about, the leaders we talked about that we recommend diving in
deeper with let's dive deep into the wells of knowledge and wisdom as we grow. And we
look forward to seeing you on the next episode of vision pros live. Take care everybody.
Bye bye. Bye now. 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 going to 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.