Episode 217: Deep Leadership with Jon S. Rennie

Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have John Rennie. You know, the name of the podcast is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, and I love to talk about all things leadership. You're going to get a ton out of John. I could have spent probably 2 or 3 hours talking to him about leadership. I love the way that he approaches it. He's got background in the military, in the corporate world, and now as being an entrepreneur, business owner. Himself. Without further ado, here's my conversation with John Rennie.

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers.

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John Randy, welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Hey, it's great to be here. Thank you.

Very excited to have you. So I got to know you— I was on your podcast back, uh, just a few weeks ago, which I was honored to get to do. And so I said, man, we got to get John on to talk about all things leadership. But John, we always start with background and origin story. Love to kind of hear just people's journeys about kind of where they got— how they got to where they are today. So why don't you share with our listeners yours?

Yeah, absolutely. I grew up in Manchester, New Hampshire, a small New England you know, city. And it was a blue-collar town, and everybody who— basically, you're born there, you raise your family there, you die there. My grandparents were born there, my parents were born there, I was born there. And I was one of those kids that wanted to do something different. I wanted to leave the town of Manchester, New Hampshire, and go do something. And I had— fortunately, I had two grandfathers that served in World War II, one in the Army, one in the Navy. And as a kid, I remember hearing their stories and things that they did and the places they went and the experiences they had. And so for me, that was something I wanted to do in my life. So I said, I set a goal very early in life to become a submarine officer. I was fascinated with the stories of World War II submarine crews and captains. So I took it that that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to join the submarine force. I want to be an officer. And at that time, the Cold War was kind of raging, you know, we had the Soviets and the Americans, and there was this cat and mouse game happening with submarines. And I'm like, I want to be there, I want to be part of this. And so even before I went into high school, I set my goal to, to get into the Navy and get into the submarine force. So I ended up, uh, uh, you know, having good grades in high school, enough to get into a good engineering school. I studied mechanical engineering and I got accepted into the submarine community. I spent a year and a half training out of college, and then I went and served on the USS Tennessee, which was a ballistic missile submarine out of Kings Bay, Georgia. I did that for 5 years, made 7 deployments, and, uh, and then I decided to get out and, uh, and I entered into the corporate world. I went in for 22 years working for 3 global companies, and during that time I ran 8 different manufacturing plants. So I got a chance to lead in the military and then lead in this, you know, in the corporate environment. And then, uh, 7 years ago I quit my life as a corporate guy and I started my own manufacturing business, uh, and that's what I do today. So I run a manufacturing business, I write books on leadership, And I do a podcast called the Deep Leadership Podcast, which you were on. And, uh, that's what I do for a living now. So I'm on, I'm a complete entrepreneur, completely independent. And, uh, it's a lot of fun. I'm having fun doing it.

I think I'd say once you go, once you go become an entrepreneur, you never go back, right? Like I would suspect you're not going back to corporate world.

There's no possibilities that I could ever go back.

Respectfully, you're unemployable at this point.

And I recognize that completely.

Yeah. Uh, what is it about leadership, John, that you— that, you know, like, for me, leadership, small business is like in my blood. I mean, you know, in entrepreneurship. And I hope, I hope our listeners kind of pick that up, is that that's just who I am, and I, and I love it. What is it about leadership for you that, that you love so much?

Yeah, I guess what I— the, the big thing for me is, is I found I found a really good baseline of leadership in the Navy, especially in this environment, in a submarine, a closed space. Uh, you know, you were stuck with the crew that you deployed with. So we'd be out to sea for 3 months together and really got to know people. You got to know the people that you worked for, you knew the people that you, that worked for you, and you had deep relationships with them. And so when I got into corporate, what I recognized is that that was very that was a foreign concept in terms of getting to know the people and understanding what motivates them and how to get the best out of them. And what I recognized after running, you know, these 8 different manufacturing plants is that I was leading differently than all my other peers. You know, I was put in place to turn around struggling manufacturing businesses. They put me in to do it, and I did it every time. And I did it just through engaging people and getting them motivated and having them understand what the goals are and listening to their ideas and, and trying to establish where we wanted to go with the business and, and, you know, what they needed to do to contribute toward that. So one of what I learned through this, you know, this long journey of leading people is that leadership is a people business. It's about engaging, you know, our teams to be able to get difficult things done. And I think as an entrepreneur, you know, I've interviewed a lot of entrepreneurs on my podcast, and a lot of the launch entrepreneurs get stuck because they grow their business up to a certain point and they just can't let go. You know, they hold tightly to a lot of the things that make them successful. And you write about this too. And they have a hard time just letting go and letting others, you know, bringing smart people and letting go and letting them take the lead in certain areas so that you can grow, you can scale. And so I think it's all about people and engaging people and getting the most out of people. And I think that's something that It's what I talk about, what I write about. It's, it's that leadership is all about people.

So who are the people from your life and childhood, high school, into the corporate world for 22 years? Who are the people that you look back on, and for good and bad? Okay, you may have seen, had some leaders that influenced you, but influenced you and said, hey, I don't want to be that type of leader, right? And so obviously, you don't have to call those people out. But what are some of the some of the people that poured into your life that you learned from that kind of shaped your beliefs, your values, your philosophies around leadership?

Yeah, I would say my first commanding officer was as tough as nails, and he was, he was really difficult to work for. He was hard. And, but, and so there were a lot of qualities about his leadership style that I just said, I'm never going to be that way because he was a yeller, screamer. He would poke you in the chest physically, you know, poke you. This was, you know, we're talking the '90s.

Here.

So it was some of the, some of these kinder, friendlier military groups don't, didn't exist back then. But so he was tough on us. But one of the things I recognize is that he knew how to fight that ship, right? And so he was tough on us because he wanted to bring us to a higher level. So he pushed us really hard. And I became a really good naval officer because of him. And I ended up having a deep and, you know, deep respect for him because he was very knowledgeable and he wanted the absolute best out of all of us. And so he was tough, right? But he also— there was a purpose behind his toughness. So, so there was some things in his leadership style. I'm like, okay, I like the fact that pushing and trying to get to a higher level of performance, I love that. But, you know, we can be a little less pushy, shovey, and screaming, you know, and A little less of the F words, right? So, and then, you know, fast forward to my, one of my first leadership, first jobs in the corporate world. I was actually an R&D engineer and I had a major failure at a test lab. So we had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing a new product that had never been done before. And I was responsible for doing all the product testing. And we went to the lab for the first time. And this piece of gear was supposed to be safer than the alternatives. In other words, a person could be around it and if something happened, it would contain this arc. It was basically a piece of electrical equipment and it would put all the gases out the top of it to protect the people around it. That was the goal at least. And so my first test, we ran it and it completely blew up and pieces everywhere. And I write about it in my books is it was a complete failure for me as a young design engineer working for a big company.

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But I had a boss, and I remember I called him and I had to tell him, you know, my tail between my leg. I had to call him and say that we failed this test, you know. And he asked me two questions. He said, do you know what happened? And, and I knew how it had failed and why it had failed. And I said yes. And he said, can you fix it? And I said absolutely. And he said, we'll get back to the get back to the factory. Let's, let's get back to the lab as quick as we can. And, you know, it was a great example of where, you know, a boss had my back, you know, backed me up when something went wrong, knowing that it was something that had never been done before. We're trying something that had never been done before, and there was a possibility that it might be a failure. And so he never exposed me to the type of, like, heat that he got from upper management. He protected me. He kept, he kept the lane cleared while I reworked the problem, redesigned the product, and got back to the test lab. And we ended up passing the next time. We got back 30 days later, passed all our tests. We were the first in the market. We, we gained market share. We, we got— we won all these patents. Uh, we became widely recognized in the industry for this safer equipment, and it was all because one boss had my back. And so I think, so those two bosses, one demanding the best out of our performance and another one having my back when things went wrong, I learned a lot of, a lot of things early on from those type of leadership styles.

I may have it a little wrong, but it sounds like he was in a human form what you were trying to build in a, and in the manufacturing facility. He, he absorbed a lot of that shrapnel that he was probably getting and pressure and didn't push that on to all of you.

You know, I've given that speech probably 20 times and I've never put that together. So great, great point. Exactly. He was protecting me and keeping me safe while I was trying to rework the problem. Yeah, absolutely. Great. I'm going to put that in my next time I give that talk.

That's great.

You should, you should, you should. Yeah, I mean, uh, yeah, absolutely. Um, so what were some of the things that you feel— okay, so I'm a sports nut. I, I will try to of, you know, we use, well, analogies or metaphors or stories from sports that whether it's myself or what we said this week, actually on the podcast, we just dropped the episode, um, Leadership Secrets of Nick Saban. Now I'm an Auburn guy, but you know, everybody knows Nick Saban at Alabama. And, and so now I don't think that all of the parallels between sports and business exist, okay, which is where I'm wanting to go with you. In the military context is to say, what are some of the things that you did learn that absolutely do apply over to business? And then maybe there's a couple things that you say, no, that, that, that, that works in the context of the military, just as if, as in, in sports, there's things that the context of it only works in sports, it doesn't really transfer over to business. What were some of those for you?

Yeah, I think the, the big thing that I came away from my time on the submarine is there, there's really two things the leader is responsible for, and That's the mission and the people. And I think that the key word there is "and." So it's to accomplish the mission. In our case, it was to defend the country and get everybody home safely, right?

We—

that was our mission. Everybody knew what the mission is, and we carried out that mission. But we also did it by also taking care of our sailors, right? Making sure that they, you know, they got three square meals, that they were I mean, even simple things, you might laugh at this, but making sure they were doing hygiene and take care of themselves and, and that they were, you know, that they were getting their— we had this thing called a family gram. So every week you would get one letter from home. So make sure they were getting their family grams, make sure their mental health was okay. We took care of the mission and the people. And I think that's the one thing I take away from the military. And when I'm, when I'm running businesses, a lot of times you see, you know, there's, there's this term called servant leadership, and servant leadership is all about the people. You're taking care of the people. And I think, you know, I used to think I was a servant leader all these years, but really servant leadership places the people number one priority. And I think that's really important. What's missing is the mission. You can't, you know, especially as a small business, we're not charities, right? So we're here to make money. We have a mission that we have to accomplish. So to me, it's always been the mission and the people. And, uh, and, and so, so those, that's, that's one of the big things that I pull from this idea of a mission and people. The one thing though, that, um, probably, you know, and I think it does translate well, but I don't use it very often in, in the civilian world as I did in the military, is there are times when the leader just stands up and takes charge and has to run things. And so it's very rare that I have to pull that out in, in business, but there are times when there's a crisis with a customer, there's a crisis, like, you know, the big, big order you're trying to land and Sometimes you have to get on a plane and go and you have to lead from the front. And that's the way it was at battle station. Went to battle station, you put your best officers, your best sailors in there in their highly skilled roles because you were going into a combat situation. So you wanted your best people in the best roles. I think that's probably— I don't do that as much in the business world, but I have used it. And you can probably think of times in your career where you've had to say, Yeah, okay, this is it. I'm taking the reins, right? Because this is a big problem for my company and I need to take the leadership here. So, but it's, it's, it's a lot more, um, it's not as common as, as what we did in the military.

I think that, um, it's worth saying that, yeah, you— there is a time and a place that you always hold that trump card if you want to, to say, okay, but the reality is more people would be served to get out of having to feel like that all of the answers— hub and spoke, like they are the hub and everything is— it kind of revolves around them, all the questions and everything goes through them. Versus like, no, there's a time where, no, I do need to step up and make a difficult decision on, you know, the direction or something like that of the business. And that's actually where I want to kind of go next with you is You mentioned, uh, mission and the people. How do you integrate then vision along with that? Because I kind of think around vision, mission, values, and that goes a lot— keeps going if you go into people and stuff. Um, but in general, vision, this is the direction of the company. Mission, what are we trying to accomplish? And then values kind of really speaks to the culture. What are your thoughts around those?

Yeah, so one of the things I talk about is vision needs to be communicated in— I always say, if you can find 4 words to communicate your vision, you're going to be in better shape than most companies. And, and I learned this by— my wife's a teacher, and she was teaching when I was still in the Navy. She was teaching at a local public school in, in Kings Bay, Georgia, where we were stationed. And she had a principal that they had a goal of trying to maximize the amount of time that each student was being taught. And so he had an expression, he would say get up and teach. And he would repeat this over and over again. So he, you know, he'd be in a meeting and said, remember, teachers, get up and teach. And so my wife, she said she'd— every time she'd be in the classroom, she would hear her principal's words behind her, get up and teach. So she would like, oh, she's— if she found herself grading papers on, she's like, I gotta stand up and teach, I gotta teach. And even to this day, so we're talking, you know, 25 years later, she still hears the words of that principal, get up and teach. So the question is, what is your vision? How can you communicate it in 4 words or less, right? To the point where everybody knows what it is and it resonates and it means something. And so I always try to do that. And in our company, we say we're a different kind of supplier, and everybody knows what that means. There's meaning behind that. In other words, when the big companies say no, we say yes. When the big companies go slow, we go fast. When the big companies make it complex, we make it simple. So we're a different kind of supplier. That's our That's the vision for our business, and that's the mentality I want in my team. And so we try to keep it simple and short, and that's kind of the idea behind a quick and simple vision that you can communicate. Simple mission is obviously, you know, where we are in the world, what we want to try to achieve as a company, right? What do we want to be known for? What's our niche? But one thing you mentioned is values, and one of the things I do is I have on we've got it up on the board in the front room, but I teach all our employees that I have, I have certain expectations for every one of my employees, you know, and number one of it is, is number one is we respect each other. We keep each other safe. That's number one in our expectations. So, you know, treat everybody with respect is number one. Number two is do what you say you're going to do. Be a person of integrity. If you say you're going to be doing this, then you do this, you know, Uh, and, and if you're going to miss a deadline, you tell me before the deadline, not after the deadline, right? So we've got certain expectations that we communicate with the employees. So if you work here, these are my expectations. If you want to be a part of the team, this is what the expectations are. So I think some of those resonates a little bit with how we do it as a small company. One of the things I noticed in big companies is like vision and mission statements kind of get put in these cheap Walmart frames and end up in the lobby and nobody Nobody sees them. They don't, they don't have meaning. And I think especially as founders, we need to, you know, keep that vision fresh in the minds of our employees and not only communicate it, but act towards that, make our actions reflect that we're consistent with that. I'll give you an example. So, uh, big companies in my industry will argue when there's a quality problem. They'll say, well, you know, how did you install that? How did you, you know, it could be your fault. You know, maybe what voltage did you place on it? So they'll fight with the customer when there's a problem. There's one vendor in our industry that changed it when they said, if you have a problem, no questions asked, we'll return it. And they're in a different kind of sector of our business. But we said, we're going to be that kind of supplier when it comes to problems. If a customer has a problem, we take it back, no questions asked, and we provide a replacement. And we don't, we don't argue with the customer. And so, so especially as a new entrance to our, to a very conservative industry, they recognize that, oh, even if, if I get stuck, peak demand, my company will, will take care of me. They'll replace it, no problems asked. And again, it's, it's different from what— it's a different kind of suppliers, a different way that we operate than the big companies. And so the thing is, what happens when the— when your employees come to you and say, we have a $10,000 problem at this account and they want to return everything? See, that's the real test, right? If you say, well, no, no, we can't do it, then your vision is dead. The goal you have for for, for what you want to be as a company is dead. So that's the moment when, as an entrepreneur, you got to say, absolutely, we're taking it back.

Yeah, sounds real good when you're sitting in a boardroom at a quarterly retreat and you're like, let's— is what we're gonna do, right?

Yeah.

What happens when the rubber meets the road? Okay. And you actually have that type of return, which is actually a good question follow-up to that.

What's—

then how do you balance looking at, look, gross margin, right? Or gross profit in your margins, your gross margins, your net margins, and that business matters. But yet you've got a philosophy of no questions asked. So you bring in somebody else and they're gonna be like, oh, we gotta get this, these margins, John, these are not good. We gotta get these down. We got to start talking about our returns. Oh, your returns are out of whack for industry norms. And then you're faced with this dilemma of, well, are we going to stick with it? And, you know, I'm giving an example. Of course, I don't know. I don't know your margins, etc. But I mean, I think that the analogies speak truth. So how do you reconcile those two different things of running a sustainable, profitable business that, yes, we do, we do look at our profit margins, we, and we want to make sure that we, you know, increase those. How do you think about it?

Well, I think, I think of this way, you know, it saves a lot in marketing costs, first of all, because we don't have to go out and look for new customers because they don't, they don't leave us once we, we gain them as customers. Not only that is, is that this industry is small. There's only 3,500 customers. I sell to electric utilities, only 3,500 electric utilities in the United States, and everybody talks to everybody. So they tell you the good stories of how, how this company Peak Demand took care of me when I had a problem. And they're like, wow, and contrast that to X, Y, and Z company over here, the $40 billion company treated me like dirt when something happened, right?

Yeah.

So it is, to me, it's cheaper to retain customers and to grow by word of mouth than to try to spend a lot of money trying to find those new customers. So for me, it's worth every penny to do this because we build a reputation of not putting your dollars at risk when you buy from us, especially as a new entrant. We're 7 years into the business. Yeah, my competitors are in the billions of revenue and we're the newest. So how do we minimize the risk for our conservative customers? And that's by saying, hey, we take care of you.

I love that. You know, there's— I think there's 3 different ways to grow a business: get more customers, get the customers you have currently to be worth more, and then keep the ones you got. Keep them buying back. And that's the part that's kind of the, the one that people kind of miss the most is how do we just do such a good job that we keep the customers we have so that we can spend less to be able to grow because our customers aren't leaving us, which speaks to, yeah, yeah, we may give up some margins, but look what we're saving on the, the, the marketing acquisition cost to get new customers to be able to grow because we're not churning the ones that we got, basically. Yeah, I think it's—

yeah, yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I guess I would also say that one of the things is we've learned over the years as to what our perfect customer is. So, you know, in the beginning we wanted to sell to all 3,500 of those utilities. What we've learned is the big companies don't appreciate our value proposition as much as the smaller utilities. Right. And so the smaller utilities are willing to pay a higher price to get that level of service. That they like from us. We're quick to return, quick on RFQs, quick on getting, you know, shipments out, quicker returning emails and phone calls. The small companies love it, and they're willing to pay that price. The larger utilities in our industry will, ah, you know, you know what, I don't really need that. And so, and they put an army of supply chain people on you to reduce your cost and reduce your margin. So we found that we had to spend time over 7 years to find who our perfect customers are, and that's who we want to sell to, the ones that we can make money and then appreciate our value proposition. So sometimes as, as a small business, you got to figure out who your ideal customer is. And one of, one of the customers I had to fire early on was a million-dollar customer to our business, and I had to fire them because we weren't making any money and they were causing us grief, aggravation, and they would lie to us constantly with respect to when we were going to get paid. And I just decided we're going to end that relationship. So a million-dollar client is gone, but it's already been— it was fully replaced within a year with higher, more profitable customers.

Hmm. Such a good example because, yeah, it's easy whenever the customer is a $10,000 customer versus a million-dollar customer. Then that really starts challenging you to start, you know, are we going to really— are we going to stick with what we say of how we're going to do things? I think it's awesome. And who are the customers we really want to serve? Versus the ones that we don't. I, I'm in the process right now, um, by the time this podcast drops, I, I'm sure I would have been able to, to decide on this, but I'm hiring an ad agency to run paid ad acquisition, um, for the coaching business. And it's expensive, like, it's expensive. And, uh, I mean, we're talking, it's a I mean, you're talking— it's a $100,000 decision, really. I mean, you know, the investment up front, um, etc. And at the end of the day, it's— yes, the money matters about, okay, I'm gonna evaluate it on that. But a lot of the ones, the 2 to 3 that I'm down to right now, really comes down to more fit and what's the experience been like and And those sort of things have transcended the actual dollar amounts.

Yeah.

Because if it, if it was between the three of them, there's one that is less than the other two.

Yeah.

But I'm thinking about the entire experience of what it's going to be like actually working with them on a regular basis. And do I enjoy them? Do I enjoy the team? Like, do I have an understanding? Are we aligned on the philosophies? You know, things of that nature, that stuff really matters. And And a lot of times in business, we kind of tend to forget those things.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's funny, I say leadership is a people business. I think sales is a people business too. And so is relationship with customers, relationship with vendors, relationship with the community. It's also a people business too.

Yeah, no doubt.

That's the magic there.

So I want to talk to you about, um, uh, one of your books and, um, it is I Have the Watch, uh, becoming A leader worth following. I'm going to ask a broad brush question here, but what does it mean to become— what are some tangible things? Somebody's listening to this and says, I want to be a better leader. I mean, the name of this podcast is The Leadership Podcast, but I really want to become in 2023 a better leader, and I want to take tangible steps to that. I'm listening to this podcast to become a better leader. I'm reading books. I'm listening to other podcasts. I'm investing my own development to try to be a better leader. What does that mean for you? And what are some tangible, specific things somebody listening to this could, could, uh, start today?

You know, it's funny, I get that question. I talk to a lot of graduate students about leadership, and the question I got one time, and it really, it was kind of interesting, she said, how do I know if I'm a good leader? And, and my answer was, if you walk up to a group of employees and they all go silent, You've got work to do, right? But if you go up and they turn and they all want to— they talk to you about what's going on and, hey, we've been thinking about this, we've been trying to do this. So, so how do you become a leader worth following? Well, part of that is, is beginning to truly understand what leadership really is. And it's about motivating people to accomplish a task, accomplish a goal. And so what leadership isn't— is it's not about emails, it's not about to-do lists, it's not about action. It's more about leadership. It's about people and about knowing your people and getting the most out of your people. And, you know, one of the exercises I do when I take over— when I took over a new manufacturing plant, I would, I would meet with all— as many employees as possible, obviously all the key managers, but I would try to get as many employees as possible. And I would ask 3 questions. One is, what's going well here? The second question is, what's not working here? And third is, if you were in my shoes, what would you do, right? What would be the first thing you would do as, you know, taking over this business? And what's interesting about those meetings that I have is that almost all the ideas coalesce around a few key things that have to be done and a few key issues. And a lot of times, you know, we think we need to hire a consultant to do that, but we, we can do that. Or we think that we need an HR person to deal with our people. And I say, no, you don't, you don't outsource leadership to HR, you don't outsource your leadership to consultants. I mean, obviously consultants can be brought in for certain things, but your people have some really good ideas and they really can help you take your business to the next level. It's just that many people have not listened to them. So people want to have a voice. They want to know that their ideas matter. They want to know that their job matters. They want to know that they're part of something bigger than themselves. And so part of your job as a leader is to engage them Understand what makes them special, where, what are their hopes and dreams? What are the things they want to do in their life? And if you can align their activities, their daily activities to something that is consistent with their goals and hopes and dreams, and it helps the company, the company's goals and vision and mission, man, it's magic, you know? And so your job is the quarterback, you know, you like the sports analogy. So you've got to get everybody in the right, in the right position. To be able to execute the plays with precision. And, and it's about fit. And you can't do that if you don't know your people, if you don't know what your players' capabilities are. And so you got to spend a lot of time doing that. And that— and when you do that, you build relationships. It's a two-way communication, you know, so you get to know them, they get to know you, and you figure out what, what makes them, what makes them tick. And what makes— what motivates them, what are their hopes and dreams. And if you can try to help them achieve them, and also achieve the goals of the business, then, then it's— business is fun. It's not, it's not, it's not difficult, right? When everybody's engaged, excited, and happy to be there.

They, they have families, they're, they're, they're not— they were not just put on this earth just to serve you and your vision that you have for the business. Although that is important, they do want to know where is this thing going, do I have a future here, etc. And they do want to get bought into that bigger purpose of like, what are we trying to do? What are we trying to accomplish? And as much as I love spreadsheets, it's not always a number on the spreadsheet. It is really getting down to how are you doing as a, as a person. I was thinking back a minute ago meant to say this is that you were saying, hey, in the military we would say, what's the mission? And then, and then the people. And you would say like one of the missions would carry out the mission and then bring them safely home. It's like, well, so what you're saying is it's not enough to be like, oh, listen, they return back. So I mean, like, that's good enough, right? It's like, no, we actually took care of them along the way on, on the journey. It's not just enough to say they made it safely home. It is also what, how well we took care of them along the way. Is that, is that fair?

Oh yeah, absolutely. It's, it's really important. And the other thing too is, you know, you touched on something that, that leaders have to do and it's difficult sometimes is that sometimes we have people that just don't fit in the organization. So, and it just like, you know, as a, as a football team maybe has a player that doesn't quite fit. Fit. And I liken it to a puzzle piece that just doesn't fit into the puzzle. And so sometimes you're going to find those people. And, you know, and it's a tough thing to do when you have to let somebody go. But I've always found that it's better to address that situation, especially in a small business where you have few, few employees, every employee is, is a high percentage of your workforce, right? So you want the best out of everybody. So sometimes you have to let people go. And you know, almost 99% of the time I've done it, they've found a better puzzle, a one that where their piece fits in perfectly, and it just didn't fit within our puzzle. And that's okay, you know, and that's okay. But we have to make those decisions, because all the rest of the team is looking at us like, are you going to take care of Bob? Yeah, because Bob isn't really pulling his weight, you know. And they're looking to you and say, are you going to take care of Bob? And you say, if you care just about people, and not the mission, you know, you might lose track of that, but it's the people in the mission, and these people are upset, and the mission isn't getting done, you've got to take action. So sometimes we have to let people go. And it's a tough thing to do as a leader, as tough thing to do as a boss. But we always try to do it in the most humane way, and help them find the right puzzle that they're going to fit into better.

Don't you think leadership has so much nuance to it?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it's, um, it's interesting because I'm working on my, uh, my doctorate right now in strategic leadership. And, um, you know, it's, it's like I told my professor, one of my professors, like this ocean of like, like the, the, there's just a deep ocean of, of leadership studies and, and, and theories. And there's so much out there. And it's because the human nature, we're so complex. We're complex creatures. And we, we don't do what we think You know, I always say this, people are messy, right? They're going to do whatever they're going to do, and you don't know how they're going to react to change. You're not going to know how they're going to react to a new way we're going to do things, or, you know, we lost a customer, or we had a bad month. Everybody reacts to things differently, and that's why there's just, like I said, a deep ocean of study trying to figure out what's the best way to handle these situations. So I think it's, you know, I've been doing it for 3 decades, and, you know, sometimes I'm introduced as a 'leadership expert,' and I hate that. It's like, I don't think, I don't think there's such a thing as a leadership expert. I think it's, it's people who are always trying to get better and trying to improve and trying to learn. And I don't think I'll ever be an expert.

You know, I think, I think that that's so— that, I mean, that's humble for you to say. Um, and it is, it is, that, that is a, um, that label of saying expert almost gives off the connotation that you figured everything there is to figure out about leadership. It's like, oh yeah, here, I've figured this whole— it's like, what are you talking about? I mean, one of the reasons I think about this podcast is called The Leadership Podcast is because it's a journey. I mean, from the time that I started this 3 years ago, we started this, to now, things have evolved in my mind about business and, and leadership in general. It's like Man, where my head was in 2019, even let alone 2015 or 2010, is totally different. And I'm an evolving person. Um, uh, and, and so is everybody else, right? And so like one thing, one, one idea in leadership taken too far becomes like too much. Like I love Oreos, you know, I, I don't buy too many Oreos, but I really do like Oreos. That's like that and York Peppermint Patties are my only two, like sweet tooth things, so I can't really buy them very much. But like, you know, 4 of them is okay. The entire box, not okay. Like, it's just too much of a good thing. So, um, tell listeners about our book, about the books that you have, John.

Yeah, so I've got, uh, I've got 3 books. Um, one's called Eye of the Watch. Uh, the second— and Eye of the Watch, it's a shorter book. It says 22 short stories of how to become a better leader. Uh, then I have what a book called All in the Same Boat, which is my second book I wrote. And that's really— a lot of people in the first book said, hey, I want to hear more sea stories. So All in the Same Boat's got a lot. It's like 50 stories in that book. A lot of them are sea stories. And you get to, you get to understand what it's like to live and lead on a nuclear submarine. So if you're into, if you kind of geek out on submarine stuff, like a lot of people do, you'll like that second book, All in the Same Boat. And then my last book is called You Have the Watch. And what that is, it's a guided journal for leaders and it'll take you through A year's worth of leadership training. So each week we go through a different leadership theme and each day we explore a different facet of that theme and it's meant to be interactive. So you, you learn something, you practice it that day and you reflect on it that night. So it's more of a guided journal. But yeah, so 3 books and everything's on my website. It's johnsrennie.com.

I feel like we scratched the surface of leadership. We didn't even like, we just barely scratched the surface. I'd love to have you back on in the future.

Absolutely, anytime.

So many things that stood out to me in that conversation with John. I mean, we've heard it, I've certainly said it, uh, many, many times, but it really is a good reminder that at the end of the day, leadership is really all about the people and taking care of the people that you are there to lead. And It's not just enough to accomplish the mission, but it's how you get there and who you get there along with really does matter. Being able to then align the goals that they have for their life, what they want to accomplish, to the, then the mission and the vision that you have for your business. That I love that vertical alignment there. We talked about vertical alignment a little bit different with Mansoor on his podcast. Of taking it from daily activities. But I think this is a different type of alignment. It's getting that person to be able to see that their voice matters, the work that they do matters. They have a purpose in your organization. They can achieve, help you or help the business and help their peers in the business to be able to achieve the goals, the objectives. The vision that we have in the company while along the way being able to serve their family and be able to maybe buy their first house, upgrade the car, put their kids in a nicer school, move to different neighborhoods, have more margin in their life. And they can accomplish those things and they're not different from one another. They can accomplish all of those things. While working for you in your organization. Love that conversation with John and definitely want to be able to have him back on in the future. Big shout out to our podcast sponsors. I heard this on My First Million podcast. Look, you're not paying anything to have guests like John to be able to come on the episode, but we have a gentleman's agreement, and that gentleman's agreement is that you tell one person about the podcast you make sure to subscribe to our podcast on Spotify or Apple or wherever you listen to our podcast and maybe consider leaving us a review if this has served you. I got that from the My First Million podcast, which I really like. And so I thought I'm going to, I'm going to share that with our Club Capital family. All right, everyone, big shout out to our podcast sponsors though, because if it wasn't for them, we would not be able to get incredible people like John on. Club Capital. It's important to be able to understand your financials, using your financials to be able to make better decisions. Maybe some of those decisions could be investing in marketing. And then you can reach out to DirectClicks, go to directclicksinc.com and talk to them about your online profile. 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I think as Andy Grove says, hey, it's either through training or it's through motivation. And again, just like you know how important it is to recruit on a consistent weekly, daily basis, you also— you've been in business for a while, you know the importance of pouring into your team and developing them on a weekly basis, actually having a developmental plan. There's nobody best— better in the business that not only is they are getting it done at a high level, but are able to kind of share with you the templates, the word tracks, the things that they're doing to have so much success. And that's Coach P. Go to coachpconsulting.com. Art of One. Till next episode, lead well.