ï»żHello and welcome back to Resilient Entrepreneurs. Mark Miller is our guest today. He's a Wall Street Journal and international bestselling author, a communicator and the former Vice President of high performance leadership at Chick-fil-A.
Today, Mark is the co -founder of Lead Every Day, an extension of his life-inspired mission to encourage and equip leaders with the tools they need to be successful. Sound familiar? That's exactly why you're listening to this podcast. You're in the right place.
A leadership expert and seasoned author with over a million books in print in 25 languages, Mark's global impact is still continuing to grow. In his latest book, Uncommon Greatness: 5 Fundamentals to Transform Your Leadership, released just this year, he connects leadership and heart. One of the universal truths that he states early in the book is the truth is⊠You are powerful.
This is Resilient Entrepreneurs Podcast. We speak with business owners from all around the world and from all walks of life to give you insights that will help you lean into your business and take that one next step toward your goals and dreams. And today, perhaps you'll find or start to seek your uncommon greatness.
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Mark, welcome to Resilient Entrepreneurs.
It's my pleasure to be with you today.
Well, thank you so much. We're really honoured to have you here today and honoured to have a copy of your book, an early version copy of your book that we had the chance to read. So we're going to definitely dig into a lot of the beautiful things that are in there as we talk in this conversation. But first, I love to start with going a bit on your backstory. So we want to know who you are, where you came from, about where you grew up and how that has led you on this journey today.
Okay, well, that's a big question, but I love the opportunity. So let me go back and say that, I started my Chick-fil-A career about 45 years ago. I was a team member in one of the chain's local restaurants. And I don't know if all of your listeners are familiar with Chick-fil-A, but it's a restaurant company based in America, over 3000 locations over $20 billion in annual sales. So it's become a big business but it was very small when I started and I began in the restaurant. I was awful in the restaurant. We won't go into those details, it's still too soon, but I made a strategic career decision and this is not advice to your listeners, but I quit. Because I figured it would be better to leave than to have to explain the rest of my life why I got fired from Chick-fil-A. I just was not good in the restaurant. And so I quit and I went and got another job. And six months later, I got laid off and I thought I need a job and I can't do what they did in the restaurant, but maybe I could work at their corporate headquarters, which of course makes no sense in any universe. I chalked that up as the mind of a child. This was a long, long time ago.
So I walked into the headquarters and told the receptionist that I wanted a job working in their warehouse because I knew they had a warehouse. And so she told me to have a seat, which I thought was a good sign, she didn't call security. I later learned they didn't have security, but nonetheless, I was proud to be there. And a few minutes later, Truett Cathy, the founder of Chick-fil-A came out and took me into his office to conduct that interview. Again, for your listeners, you may not know that name, but Truett Cathy is the guy who actually invented the chicken sandwich. And he was the CEO of Chick-fil-A. And I'm confused by this. I'm thinking, I knew who he was, why is the CEO interviewing a kid to work in the warehouse? Well, I later learned that he only had 15 employees. And if you've only got 15 employees, it makes a little more sense for the head man or the head woman to be conducting those interviews. And so Truett Cathy gave me that job working in the warehouse and again, that was about 45 years ago. And I had trouble holding down a job throughout the organisation. I worked all over the business. I got to start a lot of things. I don't think it had much to do with my talent, I think it was more of a âLet the kid do it, let the kid do itâ, and I'd do anything. So I started our Corporate Communications group when I was, I guess I was 19, might've just turned 20. I ultimately started our Quality and Customer Satisfaction group, I led in Restaurant Operations, I led in Training and Development. I started our Leadership Development group and so forth and so on. And so I spent almost 45 years with the chicken and took an early retirement last year. I asked them how long you have to stay to get a full retirement since like I'm taking an early one, but we worked through all that and I have co-founded a company and I'm continuing to do the same thing. Just trying to serve leaders. That's what I did there for 45 years and I'm trying to find new and different ways to do that.
Wow, what a phenomenal response, Mark, and what an incredible story. And I love how you're so humble with the, you know, âlet the kid do it, let the kid do it.â I suspect that what's happening between the lines there is that you were incredibly intuitive, good at what you did, saw leadership, had natural leadership skills, and they were recognising that. And I just love that that was your start. Tell us for our audience just to help those of us on this side of the world, there were 15 employees then, how many do you reckon there are now?
Well, on the corporate staff, they're over 3000, but they're probably 500,000 employees in the restaurant because the restaurants are independently operated. And so those employees are not corporate employees. They work for the men and women who run those restaurants, but that number's probably got to be really close to 500,000 team members. Oh by the way, there's a hundred percent turnover. So they have a new 500,000 team members every year, which creates many challenges as you can imagine, everything from recruiting and selection, training, education, development, how do you sustain the levels of excellence that our guests have become accustomed to? So it's quite a challenging business, but it's been quite stressful.
Itâs quite a beast you started there, Mark.
I had my hand on the rope with everybody else for sure. Yeah.
Sounds like it. Thank you.
So tell us about your shift now. You've launched into a new era of your life. Let's talk about that a little bit. And what is Lead Every Day? How do you help people?
Yeah. Well, interesting. It's very, very similar to what I had been doing for decades where we're trying to help leaders improve their individual performance, we're trying to help them improve team performance and we're trying to help them strengthen their organisations, depending on their need. We don't have a program or a product we're selling, we're trying to serve leaders. And some have called and said, Hey, we want to buy the program. I said, there's no program.
They say, âwhat are you selling?â I say, âWell, what do you want to see different in your business a year from now than what you're experiencing today? Or what do you want to see different in your leadership in a year than what you're experiencing today? And then we'll try to figure out a way to help you do that.â And so we have all the levers to pull. We have coaches and trainers and folks that do keynotes. We've got a digital platform. We're continuing to create resources. Uncommon Greatness is our 12th book and there are two more in the works and we've got field guides and on and on and on assessments. We're just trying to bring the tools to bear to serve leaders. And so I'm excited to be doing that. I tell folks I'm working 100% remote now because the work really hasn't changed. And it took me a minute to kind of figure out how I wanted to approach my second half. And I said, âWell, I just want to run the score up in the second half.â And they said, âYou're kind of old to be talking about your second half.â And I said, âYou don't know how long I'm planning to live!â That's the first thing.
And then I've talked to a lot of my friends and colleagues and peers, and I don't want to be really respectful of people that see retirement differently. But here's where I've landed. You can retire from a job, but I don't believe you can retire from a calling. And my calling is unchanged. And so I'm just, again, working a hundred percent remote now and still trying to do what I believe I'm supposed to do, which is to encourage and equip leaders. We are trying to serve a hundred million leaders in the next seven years. So that's what we're chasing.
Just a small goal there, just a little one. I actually highlighted that quote, âYou retire from a job, not a callingâ, in your book, because I think that is so powerful. And I think that resonates with entrepreneurs because a lot of the reason people become entrepreneurs is because we have some calling to do some greater thing. That's a lot why you started your second phase of your life, this new business for you. But I want to know why Uncommon Greatness? What does that mean to you?
So Uncommon Greatness was the last project commissioned by the organisation. We actually began the research a couple of years back while I was still employed by Chick-fil-A. And I think the reason this matters in the world at large is there's a crisis that I reference at the beginning of the book. There's a leadership crisis out there and we don't have to go deep into that. I think most of your listeners have experienced the leadership crisis. And I think there are two sides to that coin. One is there aren't enough leaders. We did a global survey, over 4,000 leaders while preparing this book and a third of them said they don't have enough leaders today. And that's troubling. But what's more alarming to me is that 50% of the leaders surveyed said they don't expect that they're going to be able to solve that problem, that they're preparing to live with a leadership deficit going into the future, which to me is awful. So that's part of the problem is there aren't enough. The other part is so many leaders are not meeting the demands of their role. They're not meeting the demands of the moment. People in large numbers are being very poorly led.
And if I could just share one stat to illustrate that, Marcus Buckingham used to work with Gallup, some of your listeners will remember that name. He spent almost 20 years at Gallup. He now works with an organisation at ADP and Gallup has been doing engaged global engagement numbers for years. Well, now Marcus is doing that at ADP. He just published his latest results on global engagement and it's at 15%.
Some think that's an indictment on the workers. I think that's an indictment on leadership. I had the privilege to work in an organisation where those engagement numbers were in the nineties. So I know it's possible. I've lived there. I've been there. So to think about that.
So that's the other side of this problem. There aren't enough leaders, and the ones that are many of them, most of them are not, they're not doing what they need to do.
And so I think to resolve both of those issues, you have to start with a point of view. You have to start with a definition. You're not going to create a leadership culture, and we would say a leadership culture is a place where leaders are routinely and systematically developed and you have a surplus, and you have no hope of doing that if you don't first define your point of view.
And so, we have done this work over the last 25 years at Chick-fil-A and interestingly enough, I won't go too deep here, but we had written two books and Chick-fil-A said, Hey, it looks like you're actually going to leave here someday, which I'd been telling them for a while, yes at some point I'm actually going to leave here. And they said, we want a final book that will combine your past work so that we'll have our point of view in a single volume. And it might help leaders around the world who are struggling with what's their point of view. Because I tell leaders, I don't care if you adopt mine or not, but you have to have one. And so we have leaders in probably 25 countries at least, that have embraced this point of view. But there are any number of reasons it was time to write this book.
So Mark, help me understand, does the point of view sit above, before the mission, vision of a business? Is this like you're getting a leadership state before you can set goals or how does it all fit together?
No, no. Okay, here's, thank you, lovely, lovely question. And before I answer that, it took us a while to figure this out. We were doing work for years to serve our leaders, but it was work on engagement or work on teams or work on execution. And people came to us with that question in our organisation and outside the organisation. Iâd get calls, Iâd get emails, âAll right, you've done a lot of work out there. Can you help us?â And here's what we realised, here's the way we think about it. I don't know if any of your listeners or if you have ever tried to put together a jigsaw puzzle without looking at the box top. It's harder than it has to be.
And what we realised is because we had been creating these pieces, they were gorgeous and they were colourful and they were intricate and they were well crafted, but we had never shown people the box top. So we did some work a few years back studying high performance organisations, those organisations capable of sustaining elite levels of performance. We found they only do four things.
First, they bet on leadership.
We can't find a high performance organisation in the world that's not well led. And that includes investments in your current leadership and investments in your leadership bench, your leadership culture, so that you have a ready supply of leaders so that you can continue to grow into the future. So first they bet on leadership. And that's where this leadership point of view fits in. We often draw this as a pyramid and leadership is at the foundation because without leadership, you can't do the other three moves.
The second move is high performance organisations act as one. This is about alignment. And we've done work on culture. In fact, our last book, by some measures, the most successful we've done, it made the Wall Street Journal list and it's called Culture Rules. And we did a multi-year, multi-million dollar study trying to figure out how leaders can build a high performance culture because that's about alignment. If you get everybody on your team, but they're not pulling in the same direction, you lose the opportunity. Right? So, act as one is the second move.
The third move that all high performance organisations, they win the heart, which is about engagement. Now there's a lot in the world and you've probably encountered some of this and people think engagement is the goal. Engagement is not the goal. Performance is the goal to your question. Youâve got to figure out what you're trying to do, your vision, mission, value, even your tactical and strategic goals, but high performance organisations have a strategy to make those things a reality. Because after people are engaged, assuming they're well led, they're aligned, and they're engaged, then you're positioned for what I would consider the hallmark of all high performance organisations, they excel at execution.
And when you excel at execution, you can meet those goals. You can achieve those, those objectives. You can hit those targets. You can fulfil your mission and purpose and live out your values. So, that's one reason this book matters is organisations that don't have that foundation of leadership cannot execute those other moves.
Yeah. Wow. It's so important. And I think especially to our audience who are entrepreneurs, some of them are at the early stage, so they're just starting out. Maybe they're still solo entrepreneurs. Would you say a book like this is valuable for someone in that beginning stage to understand that, and I do believe this, even if you're a solo entrepreneur, you are a leader because you have to do it all and lead and eventually almost all good entrepreneurs with a great business will grow and will scale and we'll have to hire employees. And at some point, a good entrepreneur also knows they may need to step back and not be the CEO of their business, which is another interesting point that we've not really talked about on this show much. But understanding where you sit as a leader within your business is really, really important. But I love what a lot of the things you were saying about culture too. That's a big topic these days is culture within business. It's super important. But it's all being in the same boat, rowing the same direction that matters so, so much. I love it. So what makes a leader Uncommonly Great versus just leader?
Well, it hinges on a choice because most leaders are chasing what we would consider common greatness. And I'm a fan of greatness. I have experienced and learned that there's a higher bar. And I've met too many leaders who are chasing common greatness. They wouldn't think of it that way, they just think it's greatness. And they get that ladder and they put it up on that wall and they climb it and they get to the top and they go, this is not fulfilling. This is not satisfying. This is not enduring. This is not life giving. There's a higher bar, Uncommon Greatness. Because here's the fundamental difference if I would simplify it. Common Greatness is about the achiever. Uncommon Greatness is about helping others achieve greatness. It's a shift of focus and priority. And it may not get you the trophies that you would have gotten chasing common greatness, but it's enduring and common greatness is fleeting. And so the premise of the book is you've got to make a choice that you want to pursue the higher bar. Well, then the question I get from leaders and have for years is, well, âHow do you get on the right wall?â And I said, that's a choice and it's a choice to pursue uncommon leadership. The only path to uncommon greatness is uncommon leadership. And so we then unpack the fundamentals that we think are required for a leader to climb what we would call the right wall.
Let's get into that, Mark, let's talk about the five fundamentals that you write about and how can an entrepreneurial leader implement them in both themselves, the way they operate in the world and in their business.
Yeah. And that goes a little bit back to Laura's question. I think this is applicable to a solopreneur, by whatever label we might choose because one, you've got self leadership, which I would still contend is the most challenging leadership of all. And I'm guessing these men and women who are doing it on their own, they still have strategic partners. They still have vendors. They still have collaborators, they still have other humans they're interacting with. And these principles and practices will work whether it's a group of employees, a group of contractors, a group of vendors, a group of partners, the principles, the fundamentals of leadership transcend the organisational structure. So unless you're literally holed up in a room doing your work all by yourself, then everything we're gonna talk about is still applicable.
So you wanna talk about the fundamentals? The first is to see the future. Leadership always begins with a picture of the future. What are you trying to accomplish? What are you trying to become? What are you trying to achieve? Why does it matter? And if you're not pursuing something, I would argue you're not leading. You might be managing, but I'm not even sure. I mean, if you're not pursuing anything, if you're not trying to achieve anything, I'm actually not sure what to call what you're doing.
But leaders are pursuing something. And if they want followers, they've got to be able to tell people what are we pursuing? And so it might be a blinding flash of the obvious, but so many leaders miss it and they're either unable or unwilling to articulate that preferred future. And people expect their leaders to have vision. So let me give you a quick story.
One of my job changes at the chicken, I don't know, this was 20 years ago or so, I was taking over a department, a new department. So the President of the company actually came to introduce me, which I thought was a nice gesture, obviously just to show his support because everybody knew me. But he basically said, we're so excited, Mark's going to be your new leader. And he left, which was great. First question, somebody raised their hand, we went right into Q and A cause somebody had a question and they said, âWhat's the vision? Now, I don't know if that would shock you or not, I had been their leader for six minutes at that point, but it didn't shock me. People always expect the leader to have a vision. They just do. And so I made a comment that sounded something like this. As we move into the future, we're going to have more reach, we're going to have more influence and we're going to have more opportunities. And she said, no, no, no, no. She stopped me. She said, âThat's not what I'm talking about.â I said, âWell, what are you talking about?â And she said, âIs my program going to be continued? Where will I sit and who is going to be my supervisor?â And I said, âI don't know any of that. I said, we'll figure that out together, but we're going to have more reach, we're going to have more influence and we're going to have more opportunity.â See people want certainty, but they'll settle for clarity. So even six minutes in, you better have something to say. Leadership always begins with a picture of the future. That's the first fundamental.
Loving that. Let's keep going.
Second fundamental is to engage and develop others. I referenced earlier, engagement is critical. Again, it's not what some people want it to be like this single pursuit, because I know engaged people that don't perform well because they've not been focused on that last move but we have to execute. Right. We've got to excel at execution, but it's still critical because it's an enabler. And in many organisations, I think it's the last barrier to great execution because the people aren't engaged. Again, if you believe Marcus's numbers, 85% of them aren't engaged. And so how in the world do you consistently execute? Well, the answer is you don't. You just don't. And so this fundamental, there are really two parts to engagement as we discuss it.
The first is who do you recruit? Who do you select? Who do you invite to join your team or organisation? Who do you engage to go with you on the journey? And then the second part is the engagement that is best defined in our world as how much someone cares, how much they care about their work, their coworker, their customer, and the organisation. And leaders have to care about both. Leaders have to be focused on who they bring onto the team and what are they doing to steward the engagement of those people once they're on the team? And it makes all the difference in the world. And you probably have seen examples where organisations just cannot meet their own performance expectations. And it doesnât take long to figure out it's an engagement issue. So the best leaders, that's why this is one of the fundamentals.
Can we just ask one more question on this part? A common complaint by leaders that I hear is that âMy team's not engagedâ. And my instant thought is, âWhat are you doing to engage them?â But leaders like to complain, some leaders, not exceptionally great leaders or uncommonly great leaders, but some leaders will say, they'll put it down to a generation. They're just different or they are entitled or they, they, they, and I like to say you, you, you, what are you doing? So let's talk about that just for a touch.
Well, leaders, there's a step there. And I've had this debate in the last year with pretty decent leaders. Now I wouldn't say they're great leaders, but you might look at them from the outside and go, yeah, they're pretty good. They don't feel they're responsible for engagement. There's the fundamental flaw. Because if I assume that you're responsible for your own engagement, then I'm not going to do what I can do to raise that engagement.
Maybe they don't have the skills that they need. Maybe they don't have the tools they need. Maybe they don't have the resources they need. Maybe they don't have the direction they need. Maybe they don't have the coaching and accountability they need. Maybe they're in the wrong job. Maybe they shouldn't be on your team.
Maybe they don't have the point of view.
You can make a long, long, long list. And what I'll often do with leaders is I'll say, make a list, think about a time you were fully engaged in a role, whether again, maybe it was in school or in a club or in a nonprofit organisation, or in a job. And then everybody has to have something in mind. And then I'll say, start listing the things that you believe contributed to that state.
And people will say things like, well, my ideas mattered and I had the tools I needed. I've had leaders make a list of a hundred things that contributed to their engagement. I said, are you providing all those things for the people on your team? And they'll go, huh? I said, yeah, yeah, that's how you get engagement. And so those that are saying that have never owned the responsibility. And then the hardest, I say the hardest, the one that I run into most often is, I've done all that stuff and they're still not engaged. I said, so why are they still on your team? Because you control who's on your team. And if you can't lift the engagement of a person on your team through your very best efforts over time, then you're responsible to get them off your team and put somebody on your team who is engaged.
Thank you.
That's my two cents worth on engagement.
It's a big one. It's a big one for entrepreneurs too, because even if we're working on our own, like you said, engagement is a bit of a roller coaster. It's that motivation as well. How does one engage oneself? And I think everything that you said there definitely applies, including writing that list of what was it that used to motivate you and engage you, what you were doing and find your why, find your joy again. So I just wanted to touch on that one. Thank you. So I think we're up to number three.
Yeah. Well, there's a long list. People will actually do that activity. And we wrote a book about that called Win the Heart, which might be of interest to some.
Okay. Number three, reinvent continuously, reinvent continuously. Now you're probably not old enough to remember this, but it sounds like a buzz word from the eighties. And I was there and yes, it could be confused as a buzz word from the eighties. But we think this is the perfect way to illustrate what we're trying to communicate. See, I meet too many leaders on a very frequent basis, and they think that change is the enemy. They think change is a burden. They think change is an obstacle. They think change is something to be avoided at all costs. And I would argue none of those men and women understand their job, because progress is always preceded by change. Leaders are supposed to create and sustain positive change in service of the vision. Because here's what I tell leaders all the time, your systems, your structure, your behaviours, and your beliefs are perfectly aligned with the outcomes that you're now enjoying.
So if you want different outcomes, my first question is always, what are you willing to change? What do you need to change? A lot of leaders will talk about hope and I say, hope is not a strategy. I mean, hope is a good thing, but if you hope profits are going up or you hope sales are going up or you hope you're going to be more profitable, I'm not betting on those leaders. So we say you've got to be willing and able to reinvent continuously, because you're always trying to pursue the future and what got you here won't get you there. To put one little bit of detail with that, because a lot of people, we've been teaching this concept for 25 years and some people are kind of overwhelmed by it. Reinvent continuously, that sounds like chaos. Well, again, judgement is required. You don't reinvent everything all the time, but you're always reinventing something.
So we give them three domains to consider. We say, what are you reinventing about you? We say reinvent self. What are you learning? What's in your development plan? Where are you trying to grow personally? Because again, you won't have the moral authority to ask other people to learn and grow if you're not learning and growing. So reinvent self.
The second, reinvent the systems and the work processes. I've already referenced that. If you do what you've always done, you're going to get what you always got or less, right? Because of the diminishing value of ideas. So you got to reinvent the systems and the work processes.
And third and finally is structure. So many leaders, they act like they're a victim or a prisoner of their structure. Now, I will quickly concede that many leaders don't control the structure. But I think if it's an impediment to performance, you need to try and influence the changes that are needed in structure. Structure is supposed to make it easier, not harder to get the work done. And so from time to time, you need to reinvent the structure. Not always, not every week, not every month, but sometimes that's the thing that's holding you back.
Yeah, I think that leans on the 1% principle, right? You talk about that in your book and you reference Atomic Habits, which we had in our book club recently. So we just read that book and it's exactly that principle. It's just that 1% improvement and then that exponential change that happens over time when you're just improving things a little bit, a little bit. So it's not when you're saying reinvent continuously, it's not change the whole business and direction and invent a whole new product every six months but it's that continuous evolution of better.
Yes. And sometimes you can make significant shifts and significant changes. So, the reason we included that story, thank you for bringing it up, is some people assume it's cataclysmic and you're talking about flipping everything upside down. Not always. Sometimes it is the incremental incremental 1% better and sometimes you need to flip the whole thing upside down. Sometimes you got to, it's a new strategy or a totally new structure. But again, that's where judgement is required and the leaders have to figure that out. That requires a lot of discernment to get that right. But the spirit of it, if I could maybe summarise it, is that leaders that don't want anything to change shouldn't be leaders.
Yeah, I think COVID taught us that, the importance of being able to pivot. We almost hated that word by 2021, we used the word pivot so often during that time, but it certainly was true. And the businesses that always come out of a major crisis, whether it be an economic crisis, a world crisis, a war, anything, the ones that pivot and change throughout that and grow are the ones that are massively successful going down the line. And others who can't move, who can't shift, who can't turn the boat, tend to be the ones that sink. We see that in history, absolutely. All right, we're on to four.
Number four, value results and relationships. And for a lot of your listeners, this might be the most challenging of all. Now, I don't have data to support this, I always like to be clear when I'm sharing statistics versus an opinion, but I've been teaching this to leaders all over the world for 25 years. And I would say with a lot of confidence, this is going to be hard for about 95% of your leaders that are listening. Now, why 95%? Because I believe 95% of the leaders in the world have a natural bias. They are either more results-oriented or more relationship-oriented. Therefore, for them to value both is challenging. The reason it's not a hundred percent is I estimate there are about five percent of the leaders in the world, the way they're naturally wired, they value both. And I don't like those leaders because leadership is easier for them. For the rest of us, we have to work at it because when we show up, we're either thinking results or we're thinking relationships. And I never recommend that leaders try to change who they are, but I do encourage them to find a way to value both.
And so here's the activity that I have been prescribing for many, many years. So Laura, let's use you as an example. You have beautiful glasses. I would not assume that you're a lesser leader because of your glasses. Here's what I would assume. You're actually pretty smart because you identified something you didn't do naturally well and you got a prescription to compensate so that I'm assuming you can see quite well now. Right. So as we think about results and relationships, I encourage leaders to own the bias, quit trying to run from it, quit trying to hide, quit trying to disguise it, because the people around you know you're either more results-oriented or relationship-oriented. And then all you need to do is to compensate. Just like getting a pair of glasses, you've got to figure out how much correction is needed. You've got to dial in the right prescription. And so for some leaders, if you're more results-oriented, all the compensation you may need is to put a relationship-oriented leader around your table. That may be all you need or vice versa, because they'll provide that other perspective. But some are going to need to do more than that. And I think you'll spend a lot of time as a leader, trying to figure out how much compensation do I need and in what form, what mechanisms or what habits do I need to create in my world, so that I can value both.
I have a little story that might illustrate that. Recently, a friend of mine from a networking circle, she had a staff member who lost someone close to her. She was grieving, a young woman. And this friend of mine, who's the leader of the company, co-founder and leader, she says, I don't do emotions. I've outsourced the emotions. So the person, she put the person who was grieving, introduced them to somebody to chat to, right? But recognising that wasn't her strength. She says, I can't do emotions. I'm outsourcing the emotions. It just seemed so funny the way she said it, but it illustrates your point. Recognise where you're not strong and correct or find the resources to fill that gap. It was beautiful. And sure, it wasn't as personal as her, comforting her colleague. It is an extreme example, that's why I thought it would be fun. But at this, she tried to figure it out and I just think it was touching that she even went that far and, you know, the person who she was trying to comfort was comforted by the very nature of that reach out. It's funny.
Yeah. That moment of authenticity and honesty and transparency and even vulnerability on the leader's part that I don't do this well, but I want to still serve you and so I want to connect you. I mean, I understand. Yeah. Let me give you a little less radical example. just so just to put something in the middle. I mean, I understand what you're saying exactly. I'm more results-oriented. So for those listening that are more results-oriented, here's a tactic you might consider. I have done this several times throughout my career where I will set a goal in my annual plan for how many notes of encouragement, thanks and appreciation I'll write over the course of the year. Now, relationship-oriented people think that's pretty slimy, but the results will go, well, wait a minute, you just took a relationship-oriented activity and you made it performance based so that you could engage with it. Now the notes still have to be authentic and genuine and so forth and so on. But I can count, weigh and measure it. And I can do more notes than I would do if that were not in my plan. Cause I got a goal and I'm tracking it. So that would be another example. And for the relationship people, I often challenge them to set goals and to actually share them. And they will go, what do you mean? I said, yes, that'd be a good thing for you to do. So you can see sometimes these levers are smaller, sometimes they're bigger, but the key is to value both.
And I will say this as we move on, Jim Collins wrote about the concept of the âgenius of the andâ. I guess he wrote that 20 years ago, probably in Built to Last. And your listeners may know that story. He studied organisations that had been wildly successful over a long period of time. And one of the things he said that made them successful, he called it the âgenius of the andâ.
They would take two things that from time to time might actually be in conflict and they found a way to embrace both. And he said, there's tension there, but there's power in the tension. And so you say results in relationships from time to time, those may actually be in direct competition. Yeah. How do you do both? And when you do, I think you harness the power of the âgenius of the andâ.
I'm going to say that I think that partnerships and co-founding a company can make a big difference in this, especially on this point, because I'm just thinking about Vicki and I as we're speaking. And I think I'm more like you, Mark. I think I'm a little more results oriented. I'm more goal setting. And I think about the outcomes and stuff. Whereas Vicki, I think, is much stronger on the relationship side of things. So I think that's part of why we work really, really well together.
Right. And so that's built in for you, but for the men and women out there who don't have that partner who's different, because sometimes we select partners that are like us. And again, I understand that propensity, but you may need to bring somebody else into the equation just to help counterbalance that.
I love that. Do you agree, Vicki? Am I right on that?
100%, I was just thinking, what a kind way you just said that I am not goals-oriented or results or performance oriented. It's such a kind way. âShe's much more on the relationships sideâ. Spot on. Yep. I own that. I own it. I appreciate your results-orientation, I really do.
Well that's brilliant. Okay, we're up to number five, the final one. Itâs SERVE, by the way, I do want to mention that there is an acronym for this, which I love that you have an acronym for this so people can remember it's SERVE. So this is the E in SERVE.
All right, great. Embody a leader's heart. And so I'll give you a quick backstory here. When we did this initial work 25 years ago, we decided that a picture would help. And I probably influenced that. If my team were listening to this, they'd say, well, you were the one that said we needed a picture. Well, I needed a picture. So we said, what's our picture of leadership? And it's an iceberg with about 10% above the waterline and about 90% below.
And we think that's the perfect picture. The 10% above represents the skills and competencies of a leader. Those first four fundamentals are skills and competencies. And they matter, but they're about 10% of your success. The 90% of your success below the waterline represents your heart. If your heart is not right, no one cares about your skills.
I think I can prove that to your listeners. If they'll think about a man or woman they know who has the skills to lead, yet they do not want to follow them. And I'd say, well, why not? And I don't know what they'd say, but it wouldn't take long to get back down to you don't trust their heart. You think they're self-serving. You think they'd throw you under a bus just like that if it saved their hide. It's not about their skills. Yes, leaders need skills. But if their heart's not right, people won't follow you. So if you'll embody a leader's heart while pursuing these skills, you can become a leader that people actually want to follow. That's the fifth fundamental.
Beautiful. Mark, talking about leadership, where does resilience fit into this?
Well when we're done, I might ask you that. Don't I get to ask you a question? I think resilience, and again, you're the experts on this, but I would say resilience is an outcome, not an input. I think if you're clear on your purpose or your calling, you're committed to that. I'm talking about as an individual and it matters. I think you're much more likely to demonstrate resilience because you're actually pursuing something bigger than yourself. And I think you would see those behaviours in an individual and call that resilience.
I love that. I want to change the direction of conversation just for a minute because there's something in this book that I found really surprising and I loved it so much that I have to bring it up. You're talking about great leaders. Of course, you give lots of examples and stories within your book, which I love to read because I'm fascinated by those people. And the one that you brought up that I did not expect was Mr. Beast. I hope our listeners are familiar with Mr. Beast. I'm a huge fan. Of course, I have a 15-year-old son who's a massive fan and he introduced me to him. But he's an incredible story of a lot of the things you've talked about in leadership. And I think his story is remarkable. Why did you pick him as one of the people, as one of the leaders?
Okay. All right. So, I think I want to give you a two-part answer. I don't know him personally. So let me start with a disclaimer. Our team did lots and lots of research. So we hope we got it right. We were looking for men and women that we felt were exemplars of each of the fundamentals. And there's actually a disclaimer you may have missed at the beginning of the book, where I actually say I am not vouching for any of these leaders at the macro level. I actually don't know about all of the fundamentals for all of the stories, but he was selected when we began to look for people who really embodied the idea of reinventing continuously. And the more we got into his story, he's the poster child for reinventing continuously.
For those that don't know, he is now, he actually has got a pretty big vision. If you want to think about seeing the future, he has declared that he wants to be the first person to have a billion followers with a B. So he's got a big vision, but his primary strategy for getting there is reinventing continuously and always iterating and tweaking and pushing and trying and we even shared some of his principles for generating new ideas in the book. So he's a guy that knows what got you here won't get you there. He started posting online videos of himself playing video games. And now he does videos that get hundreds of millions of views. And so he is in many ways the embodiment. We tried to find somebody for each chapter that says, yes, this person, you can study their lifestyle, their leadership style, and their habits to see this fundamental in action. And he's really good at that. I hope to get to meet him someday.
He is, my God, I want him on our podcast someday, please. Yeah, I find him fascinating because I think he has a huge heart. I think he also embodies that heart of a leader because he's more than just someone who creates incredible, crazy, engaging content because he does, he blows things up and he gives away Lamborghinis and all kinds of craziness, but he also has a whole philanthropy, which is somewhat new for him, but it's growing hugely. And he's doing massive philanthropic projects around the world, having huge amounts of impact. He doesn't have to do that. He lives humbly. He's not a big ostentation guy. I think he lives in your area. I think he's in South Carolina or somewhere near the East Coast. So he's not even in LA in a big mansion. He could have all these things. He certainly has the resources but he lives such an interesting life. He's fascinating to follow. And I think he's definitely one we will follow for a long time as a different leader. And he's still young, really young.
He's very young. I think he's still in his 20s. And he turned down a billion dollars about five years ago for his brand. And let me quickly say, I'm not saying he doesn't embody the others, but we selected him because we knew he embodied reinvent continuously.
Yeah, yeah, he sure does. Very, very cool. And yeah, so if you want another reason to read the book, get some more information on Mr. Beast is really interesting. You really broke down his story well in the book. So thank you for sharing that. And thank you for really getting us in touch with lots of other stories, because I love stories. I love books as we have a book club, Resilient Entrepreneurs, anybody out there whoâs interested, we actually meet tomorrow on another book that we've been reading. So I've been reading a lot this week, but I read yours. It's an easy read. It's a fun read. It's actionable too, which I think is the best type of book. That's the type of book I love because this is personal development for me. This is my growth journey. Exactly what I love. So thank you for that.
So I think I'd like to give you the chair now to flip it around and ask us a question, Mark. So hit us. What you got for us?
Well, as I understand your work, I know you do a lot of things, but one of the things you do is you help organisations with brands and brand development. And I guess my question is, what's the biggest challenge you face as you think about your industry, that work? What makes it challenging?
Such a good question. Vicki, do you want to, you got it? You got the start on this one?
What makes the industry challenging? I actually, in all honesty, don't feel challenged by the industry or our work or even our clients. I can see our clients challenges. But I don't wake up and go, the industry is changing. Of course it is. But I don't consider it a challenge. It's all a part of it. Unless I'm not seeing something. Is there a tidal wave over there?
There's always a tidal wave.
I mean, I'm thinking AI and stuff, but I don't see it as a challenge.
That's exactly it though, but that's exactly the point is that in different industries, because we've talked about AI before and there's people that fear AI. They fear what's coming. They fear that they're going to lose their job and everything's going to change rapidly. The difference is in our industry and marketing and advertising and design, it is constant change from the beginning of my career. So I started at 16 working in the back room for a retail store in the marketing department, like pasting up sheets of paper to send to the newspaper for ads. Now I design an ad in a tenth of the time on the computer. You know, I can go get an AI image of something that I might need of a landscape or something for example. It's just changed, but it's been consistent change over all these years in this industry. So I think that's why I don't fear what's coming next. I just embrace it as the next tool. And I'm like, okay, this is now just a big leap into the future. But I do see that a lot of change worries a lot of other people. Everyone's trying to keep that ship going straight and there's so many waves hitting it. And marketing is one of those things that's ever changing, ever evolving but it's also, and this is what I want people to know or business leaders to know, is it's an experiment. Right. And a lot of people want results. If you're results-oriented, this is going to be hard for you because you want the ROI. You want to know what it's going to deliver you if you're spending $10,000 on an ad in a national magazine. What's the return on that investment? It's hard to know. Maybe that's a bad investment for you. Maybe it's a great investment for you. And it's going to take a little bit of experimenting to get it right. But the industry is always changing. So it can be very frustrating from a leader's point of view to be in this, understanding marketing and stuff. But from our point of view, we look at it as, it's a fun new challenge, it's a new thing to find out and a thing to figure out. It's a constant input of the new doesn't scare us. But it to me is what makes it exciting to be in this industry, because we've got to keep evolving. I mean, Vicki and I had a conversation yesterday about social media, and social media in general, organic growth has ground to a halt. It's so hard to get any cut through now, because it's just too many people on each platform. So what do you got to do? We've got to evolve. Maybe we have to turn more into the marketing, advertising side of things rather than posting. So there's a lot of things that we're even talking about changing with just how we do business, which has just evolved a few years ago. So I guess we're used to it. We embrace it. So we don't fear it, but definitely understand how much of a challenge that can be for others. But a lot of what you're saying, yeah, it will help.
Yeah, it sounds like, it sounds like you're change-hardy, as we would say, you're change-hardy. All right. Can I ask one quick follow-up? What do you believe differentiates the great marketing and brand agencies from the mediocre ones?
Strategy.
Yeah, a hundred percent strategy. Strategy, because, okay, a lot of people like throw things against the wall and hope it sticks. Whereas if you, if you spend time, especially when you're starting out, really understanding a lot of things we talked about today, your goals, your objectives, your why, your values, your point of view, your purpose, vision, and then if you can help your marketing agency, understand those things deeply. So you got to be really clear on that. So if you get really clear on that, you know where you're going, then you're going to know who your target market is. So you can target them more specifically. We shouldn't be throwing it out there to the whole world and speaking to no one. Let's speak directly to your niche. Get clear on that. It can really, really massively help and it would reduce your costs tremendously, tremendously. Cause you don't want to be necessarily in the national magazine, but maybe if you're, I don't know, selling fishing lures, you want to be in the fishing magazine. Well, which fishing magazine? Maybe it's the Southeast regional. I don't know, but I'm just making this up, but you get my point.
It speaks to relationship versus performance right there. Because when you know who you're talking to, you're building a relationship one on one with each person. Even if you don't know who that is yet, it's building a relationship. It's not about getting the numbers.
So I thank you for giving me some free consulting there. I needed to hear that.
Yeah, anytime Mark, anytime. We'd be delighted. I mean, goodness.
Like I said, we're trying to serve 100 million leaders in the next seven years. And so we're talking a lot about strategy right now.
Yeah. Amazing, amazing. And that's such a great goal. I read something recently about the value of the absurd, right? Cause that hundred million almost sounds absurd. Like that's an absurd number of people. How can one person or a small team actually do that? But that's great. Cause that's what gets people talking. The absurd is what gets shared. It's what gets discussed around a dinner table. It's the stories that people, so it's good to do something really out there, really big, really lofty, and the people who have that type of vision usually get there. It's incredible.
Well, and I said we may not get there, but we'll get a lot further than if we're chasing 50 Amazon reviews.
Yeah!
Thank you very much. Absolutely. And you're building a movement. This is what it's all about. We all want to get behind a cause. So one big draw in marketing or any real action is to stand for something and get people, as you said, engage people in your cause, have them stand for something. And maybe that's the point of view, right? Is it the hundred million seven years? You know, is it the 1 billion followers for Mr. Beast, thank you for my education today. Mark, you co-authored this book with Ken Blanchett from One Minute Manager fame.
I dedicated this book to him. Ken and I did our very, my first book was with Ken 25 years ago. We started writing 25 years ago. We published just over 20 years ago. Ken and I did The Secret together, which was in many ways the first edition of this book. The fundamental difference is that was a parable, which your readers may know Ken Blanchard pioneered the business fable. And of course, this book is a traditional leadership book. But yes, so I dedicated this one to him because he's the one that convinced me to write in the beginning many years ago.
Thank you. And thank you so much for this gift to leaders out there. I cannot recommend it enough. This is a brilliant book. It is a masterclass in leadership and entrepreneurship. Any entrepreneur should read this. Any leader should read this. If you're a stay at home mom, you should read this because I think the lessons in there are for everyone. It really is. Anybody you need to lead and get on board with you, to move with you. I think that's the underlying thing. How can we all go together? How can we create a better world for everyone and create better leaders, more leaders? We need them. We see it in politics. We see it everywhere. We see it all over social media, everywhere, in every way. We need more leaders. So what can we do? Well, we can start here and share this. I recommend this as a gift to the people in your lives as well. Mark, this has been an amazing conversation. I hope to have many more. I hope this is just the start of our relationship and conversations. It was really, really enjoyable.
Thank you. I'd like to add one more thing. There's somebody out there that's got a question. So let me give my cell number. It's 678-612-8441. So I always like to give people a way to reach me if they'd like.
Phenomenal! That is very intimate.
That's incredible.
If you want to put that in your show notes, that'd be great. You can put my email and everything else in there, but the phone number is how a lot of folks like to call or text. And so I want to give them that opportunity.
We will! Incredible. Thank you, Mark.
That's a gift. That's a gift to everyone listening and the world. So thank you, Mark. This has been amazing. Thank you so much for listening, everyone out there to Resilient Entrepreneurs. Here's to growing more of us and better leaders in the world.
