058: Ari Weinzweig - Changing Your Beliefs and Improving Your Performance

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All right, Today's show is all about performance, performance outcomes and beliefs. Your access to altering your performance by altering people's beliefs. Normally we think about beliefs as fixed and we're going to talk about how they're malleable. On today's show, we'll be talking with Ari Weinsweig, who. Well, just so much to say and we'll get right into it.

Hello and welcome again to the Scaling Up Business Podcast. I'm your host and business coach Bill Gallagher. On the show today is Ari Weinsweig. We'll be talking all about how to.

Change beliefs and change the performance along with it.

So I know many of us have.

Been frustrated at times where we didn't think like we could alter performance. And we're going to hear how Ari has learned to alter beliefs with his team.

So let me tell you about Ari.

First, Ari, he's the co founding partner of Zingerman's Community. It's a whole community of businesses started.

Back in 1982 with a $20,000 loan and his partner Paul. And they began and they grew this thing over time. But Today it' over 700 people and revenues over $60 million. And he's written a series of books, he's developed a whole training company. Ari's named one of the world's top 10 CEOs by Inc. Magazine.

So he leads in a totally unique way and I think you'll really love him. He's been a speaker at our Fortune.

Growth summits with Gazelles and is just.

Not your typical CEO. And from that there's a lot of.

Things we could learn.

Right. He's also been the who's who of Food and Beverage by the James Be.

He's been awarded a Bon Appetit Lifetime Achievement Award.

He is today in Ann Arbor Michigan, and I'm on the North Shore of Oahu today, so we're connecting from two different places. You'll probably hear some background noises for both of us as we go through today's show, but we're connecting worlds and ideas today. Welcome to the show, Ari.

Thanks for having me on. I wish I was sitting next to you in Hawaii.

You should. Maybe we should do a repeat if this is awesome. And then we'll both go surfing, fly out.

Yeah.

So let's just step way back before we get into all this. Let's talk about the evil. The. You know, how you even got into business in the first place? Because you don't look like a business guy. Right. So you. How tall are you, Ari?

Well, that's. That's a belief right there. I'm a little under six. 3.

It is a belief right there. So here's this tall guy, and I'm going to stereotype you. I think I can. But Ra, to most of us, looks like a hippie, right? And I love that because my parents were hippies and you know. You know, I know, but that's. That's. So that would be the stereotypical. But he's also an accomplished entrepreneur, businessman, and we want to challenge some of these beliefs, so it's great. So tell us about how you got into your business.

Okay, you got it.

I grew up in Chicago, which is, for those who aren't familiar with Midwest.

Geography, was about four and a half hours drive west of Ann Arbor. So Ann Arbor is an hour east of Detroit. So we're on I94 between Detroit and Chicago. I came up here to go to school at University of Michigan, where I studied Russian history.

Oh, nice.

Very important major for the food business. And as I think you know, I.

Had a particular focus on the anarchists.

Yes, we have the largest anarchist collection.

In the country, is on the 7th and now east floor also of the.

Graduate library at U of M. And so I studied history just because I.

Liked it and I didn't have any.

Illusions that you could do anything with it other than go back to school and get another degree, which I failed to do.

So anyway, after I graduated. Visioning is a.

Is an enormous piece of our work here at Zingerman's, but when I graduated.

I had no vision. I only had what David White.

W H Y T E. You might know his book, so if you don't, I would highly recommend him on work and business. He calls it the VNext. That's where you're pretty much clueless about where you want to go, but you're very clear on where you do not want to go. And I did not want to go home. And in order to do that, I needed a job.

So I really didn't have much clue what I would do.

But one of my roommates was waiting tables at a restaurant in downtown Ann Arbor, and I went in there, applied for a comparable job. They said, sounds good.

We'll call you if some opens. I waited two weeks.

Dan called me, I went back, I reapplied. You know, I said, hey, if you want it, you could hire me to bus tables, and then I could, you know, make my way up later. And they said, sounds good.

We'll call you.

And they didn't call me. And two weeks later, they still hadn't called me. And I went back and I was like, hey, I'm running out of money completely. Do you have anything?

And they said, do you want to wash dishes? And I said, sure.

That's how I started. So there is no, you know, lifelong entrepreneurial dream. No one in my family was in business as we, you know, we could talk about. I had pretty negative beliefs about business. I would. I wouldn't have said that then, but I would explain it that way now in the context of today's conversation. You know, I didn't really know much about business. It didn't seem like it did much good for people other than making money.

Yeah.

And so I. And I didn't really have an interest in food. I mean, I grew up in Chicago, like I said, on sort of the mid 20th century classic industrial diet.

The.

The old American singles craft macaroni and cheese, Mrs. Paul's fish sticks, Tang, you know, Pop tarts. So I didn't have any interest in food either. And my mom was a good person, but not a good cook. So I really just.

I just got. I just got lucky. I just got lucky.

I stumbled into work that I love and also into great people.

You mentioned Paul, my partner.

He was the general manager at that restaurant when.

When I started washing dishes.

And then Frank Carollo, who's one of the partners in our bakery, was a line cook, and Maggie Bayless, who's the managing partner. You mentioned our training business, Zing Train, was a cocktail waitress. I have no idea why we were all dumped there together, but we are now 40 years later almost, and we still like each other.

So that's.

We're still working together, so that's pretty good. So that's how I got going. And I worked in the, you know, kitchen Prepping, line cooking, managing kitchens. So that's my background was really all.

Back in the house.

So let me just pause right there, because I think some of my best there, you know, various things that we've pulled good training from, but some of my restaurant work is. Is some of the best training I've had for all parts of business. Cause it teaches you that immediate feedback loop of customer happiness and also the immediacy of needing. No, you need to deliver that right now. You can't get around to it tomorrow or whatever. No, that food's going out now.

Sorry, go ahead.

Well, when you're interviewing people, if they've got a lot of restaurant work and they've been successful at it, you could ask them what they've learned about it. Because I think the lessons learned, the world of restaurants are valuable in all parts of business.

So, yeah, I gave a talk, I.

Don'T know, three years ago out in.

California at a wine conference and big group. Anyway, you know, people come as, you know, people come up to you at the end and, you know, compliments, etc. Etc. One guy comes up, you know, I love your talk. He said, what do you do? He goes, well, I'm actually an attorney. I'm one of the attorneys.

I'm an attorney for one of the wineries.

He goes, but he goes, I think.

Everybody should have to work in restaurants. Every lawyer should have to spend time in the restaurant business.

He goes, because when you don't know.

What to do, you can't spend. Well, let's call a meeting next week.

And talk about it. Right. You gotta take care of that now.

And you gotta figure it out.

Yeah. And then also things like spoilage. Right. Like you talk about inventory. I've been working with one company that's got some inventory issues. And, you know, in the restaurant business, if you make inventory mistakes, well, you're gonna eat it fully because you're gonna throw it out before you eat the cost. You're gonna eat the cost because nobody's eating the food.

Yep.

So I worked in kitchens. Paul, my partner, left about halfway through.

The four years that I worked for that restaurant group and opened a little.

Fish market here in town, Monahan's, which is actually one of the best in the country. They bring a fair bit of fish from Hawaii, actually. And, you know, he and I stayed friends that, you know, everybody in the food business talks about opening their own place. And anyway, fall 81, I had reached.

A point where my.

I could just sort of. I don't know where they were Going and where I was going were not the same place. So it wasn't a thing where I hated work. They weren't bad people, they're not a bad company. It was just you know, sort of less and less invigorating to go to work. And so I decided I'd give two months notice, which I did on November.

1St of that year, not knowing what I would do next.

And Paul just happened to call me two days later and said there was.

This little building coming open near the fish market. And he and I, he had grown.

Up in Detroit where you could get good deli food. In Chicago, where I grew up, you could get it, but you couldn't get it here. And so we sort of bounced that idea around at various points and four.

And a half months later we opened.

It's really great.

I have no idea how we that.

Fast since today it takes pretty much.

That long just to get a meeting set up right.

So at some point you have a belief that business isn't productive. And by the way, if you. Most of our listeners don't have that thought because they're actively engaged. But sometimes, yeah, I don't have it anymore. We have people with hang ups about money and very often we deal with people who are really good at some part of our business, but they've got a hang up about money. And on this same subject, we've done a show with one of our dear friends personally, just a lovely human being, but with a powerful message. And that's Lynne Twist and the Soul of Money in her book the Soul Hold Money. So I'll have to look it up. Lynn is someone I've known for. Well, she just says money is a, is not evil. Money is a useful instrument if. Absolutely. And if you let it flow through you for the things that you care most about and it serves what you, your values, then it's awesome. And her book transforms the conversation of money for many people. So. So you're that belief. Yeah, yeah, you'll dig it. I met her years ago working on a thing called the Hunger Project, which was out to eradicate hunger on the planet. And identifying the issues with people around just the political will that comes around letting people have or not have food, which is more important than the amount of food we have. So your beliefs get altered by this partner who has a different view of business than yours. So between a combination of your now partner and your own work experience, you start to alter your belief about food. And in some of our other work I've referred to and talked about stories. Right. People have these stories or interpretations and beliefs are like an interpretation. We see a set of facts in the world and then we develop an interpretation around them. We don't notice the collapse of the two things and pretty soon we got a problem.

So everybody in my family were teachers.

Doctors, lawyers, dentists, psychologists.

I really, you know, my grandparents had.

Had a laundry when I was really little, but they hated it.

And, and so Paul's grandfather, his dad.

Was a dentist coincidentally.

But my, his grandfather had a business.

In Detroit and he was very community minded guy, his grandfather. And so he taught Paul what Paul taught me, which is what I would.

Still hold as my belief today, which is that business is merely a tool. And it's not the tool itself that's.

At issue, it's how it's used.

And you know, if you choose to cause harm with it, you can cause.

Harm just like you could hit somebody in the head with a hammer and.

Do damage to them or you could take the exact same hammer and, and like on the hunger project you worked.

On, build a home for a family.

That didn't have one. And hammer wasn't any different, just what.

You did with it.

And I would say the same true for business.

So, so, so tell us a little bit about the growth of business. What the business like today. Yeah, yeah.

Yep, yep.

So we started 3-15-82, just sort of trying to set the stage. We were in, it's still in a building that was built in 1902 by an Italian immigrant named Rocco Desdirita, who.

I did a bunch of research on.

For the new book. But the whole space was 1300 square feet. There was an apartment upstairs that the. His family, he and his family actually lived in Orig. And there were actually not his family, but other people were living up there.

When we opened and it was just.

Me And Paul and two employees and 25 seats and for 29 seats, sorry. And 25 sandwiches and you know, a little bit of retail items and that sort of thing.

And.

That'S how we got going. So it's, it's in the Kerrytown neighborhood, Ann Arbor, about six, seven blocks from.

Downtown and sort of a mixed residential business neighborhood, kind of a cool spot.

Although at the time everybody told us.

It was a terrible neighborhood and we were crazy to open there.

Right.

And fast forwarding to today, like you said, we've got, I don't know what.

We got 10 businesses all located here in the Ann Arbor area. That's our vision, is only to do stuff here in the area.

I really like being connected in the community, into the community and seeing the people that we work with and tasting the food and knowing the customers. And we'll do about $62 million this year and we have about 700 people.

Working plus we hire about 320 something more at the holidays for mostly for mail order and some for the bakehouse.

Yeah. So at your peak every year, over a thousand people, right?

Yeah.

And I guess I should say. So we have, we have a creamery.

Candy business, we have a coffee roasting.

Business, we have sit down restaurant, Zingerman's.

Roadhouse, that's all regional American food. We have a little Korean restaurant we.

Just opened last year.

We have a 1834 barn or farmhouse.

And 1837 barn that we renovated that.

We do events in.

And now am I correct, all of.

These, all these teams are pretty much self running? You have a system of management, leadership?

Yeah, I don't think anything's self running completely.

Not completely.

Right nature. But what we operate is one organization.

And with these semi autonomous pieces.

So the idea is that there's a.

Managing partner, partners in each business and that they are running it.

But I mean Paul and I are active.

So it's not like we're sitting at.

Home playing video games and they send a check. It's an active presence.

Right, right.

I've actually never played a video game, so I don't really know how but.

Right, but you're active in all of them, but they have a leader for each one as well?

Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah.

And we operate, we operate using a.

Consensus model at the partner level.

So a consensus model, not an alignment. Yeah, yeah.

At the partner level.

At the partner level, but not down.

To every employee, not for every operational decision at all.

Right, yeah.

We're very consultative and we're very inclusive.

And all our meetings are pretty much.

Open to everybody that works there, et cetera. But the consensus model would be formally.

At the partner level.

Nice, interesting. So tell us about the evolution of this work in beliefs.

Yeah. So as you mentioned, Zing train, our training business.

So we opened the Deli 82. Zing train started in 94 up in Maggie's attic.

She was the only employee and the.

Partner and the idea was just to sort of a. She had developed. She was a German lit major from.

Oberlin College but had after working in the restaurants with us, had gone back.

To Michigan to get her MBA and sort of fallen in love with training.

And she got.

Her first job was at General Motors.

Which lasted about two years as she says long enough to make sure that wasn't what she wanted to do.

And growing tired of that dysfunction, she left and joined a small consulting firm in town, thinking she would go from.

Big dysfunctional to a small business that.

Would be run much more like Paul and I were trying to run the deli. And she found comparable dysfunction only on a small scale.

And so in the end, humans are humans. Well.

Operation is not scale, it's how you do it. And it can be done poorly and well at any level anyway. So she was increasingly fascinated with training work. And so when Paul and I in 1994 wrote our 2009 vision, which outlined.

This idea of having a community of businesses with managing partners we just talked.

About, she said, hey, how about doing a Zingerman's training business and I would be the partner.

So that's where Zing Train came from.

And so that, you know, really pushed us into, you know, slowly but steadily.

Into a much more overt teaching role.

And which is good because as you know, you got to learn it a.

Lot better to teach it.

And. And then I started writing about business.

I had already been writing about food.

Quite a bit and I still do. And see, I'm on now on.

Well, I wrote a little book on customer service, but then there's a four part series or four parts of the series are out.

The fourth one just came out last summer which is on beliefs and part.

One'S on building a business, part two is on leadership, part three is on.

Self management, and the new one's on beliefs.

So anyway, it's.

The answer to your question directly is it sounds odd, but I just never really thought about the impact of beliefs in business. And I'm not talking religion, sports and politics here. I'm talking about like what we about.

Customers, about ourselves, about quality, etc.

I just never thought about it up.

Until three or four, well, five years ago maybe.

And what got me thinking about it was really two things happening at the.

Same time, which is often how insights.

Develop, is connecting to otherwise disconnected things.

One was I was having incredible frustration.

Over a quality issue inside the organization.

That was sort of cross business.

It was, in other words, it was appearing in multiple businesses and they were.

All sort of blaming each other. And it was all the things you and I don't like.

And we put together, you know, whatever you want to call it, cross functional work team, which we do pretty regularly.

And we had done all the things.

You'Re supposed to do, you know, in our business, like I said, everything starts.

With a vision we wrote a vision, we had some partners yet, people with.

Equity, a couple newer people to get perspective.

You had some long time people, you know, clearly like share the values, etc. Etc.

And no matter what I did, it didn't work right. I tried everything, pushing, pulling, being nice, getting frustrated.

Nothing worked. And around the time that that was.

Causing me so much angst, I happen.

To be reading Bob and Judith Wright's.

Book Transformed, which I would highly recommend.

And in there is a little cycle.

That Bob can't remember where he learned it. So I don't know who to give total credit to for the original work. But anyway, I give credit to him.

Because that's where I learned it. It's a self aware, fulfilling belief cycle.

I'm going to visually draw it in.

The air for people because it's not that hard to understand.

It's if you imagine a circle at.

12 o', clock, there's a belief, right?

So we all have beliefs, which, like I said, I had never really thought about. But it turns out we got beliefs about everything.

We got beliefs about podcasts, we got beliefs about business, we got beliefs about.

Hawaii, we got beliefs about human beings, human nature, children, millennials, business people. Yeah, everything. So based on those beliefs, we take action. And it turns out that every single.

Action that we take is based on a belief.

Just most of us don't pause to think of what we believe.

We just act.

We go out to dinner, we give.

Our employee a raise, whatever.

Based on our actions, the people around.

Us start to form beliefs.

And based, of course then on their beliefs, they take action.

And lo and behold, it turns out.

90, 95% of the time, their action.

Reinforces our original belief.

So a, it dawned on me that of course part of the problem with.

The work group was they didn't believe.

In each other and they didn't believe in the work. And when you don't believe in the.

Work you're doing, guess what happens?

The actions you take are kind of limited and only moderately effective. The people on the work group with.

You start to think it's a waste of time.

So they do, you know, mediocre work.

Also, which just Reinfor is the original.

Of the first person, that the project's.

A waste of time.

Yeah, so that's shown me, shown a.

Little light on my problem in a moment.

But more importantly, it opened or turned.

Shown the light on all sorts of other things that were going on, which.

Is basically that if we don't like the outcome we're getting from other people's.

Behavior probably a good 3/4 of the time. The problem isn't them, it's our belief.

So in some really simple ways, just.

To show people on the pod or help them listen, at least on the.

Podcast, of what that would be like, you know, classic example, you have a CEO probably not listening to this show.

But there's plenty of them in the world who don't really believe training is a good idea.

Consequently, what action do they take? They don't do any training. What are the beliefs of the employees in the business?

They start to believe they don't matter. The company's not invested in them, the company doesn't believe in them, there's no real future.

Consequently, the work they do is pretty mediocre. And the CEO goes, thank God we.

Didn'T waste any money on training. Look how bad people are.

Yeah, lots of phrases all over the world. You know, I find again and again companies that I work with and look, my average client is like a $60 million company and I only work with about 10, about 10 companies at a time. And then I touch a lot of others in workshops and accelerator program and things like that. But it's remarkable to me how few have any formal training program. I mean, even companies with hundreds of employees sometimes don't have any formal training program. By the time they get to a thousand they do, and then some smaller ones too. But it's really rare. And even sometimes if the CEO and some of the leadership do things to train themselves, they're not doing ongoing things. And, and I think more often than not, it's just like we're busy. We're like we're going to get around to that someday. Like, you know, it's, it's, it's really.

Those are beliefs.

It's a belief, it's a belief that it's, you know, moderately important but not really right.

Good, bigger fish to fry that the.

Frontline people are, that the place to.

Focus isn't on the frontline people, you know, which is not my belief and.

I don't think it's yours either.

But you know, if you, if you believe the frontline people are sort of.

Interchangeable Mach machine parts or you know.

You want to be nice to them.

Like you want to change your oil.

But if you're, if you're other than that, if you don't really believe they're.

That intelligent or they're going to be there very long, right.

It's also self fulfilling, right? So they're going to be there very long and then you what's your action? Well, you don't invest much in them. What's their belief? There's no point in staying.

So they spend half their employment time.

Looking for another job and then they.

Leave and then the CEO goes, see, I knew they weren't going to stay very long anyway.

You know, so well, one of the.

Things I find is that even, even if the facts are different, right. And I noticed this again, even if the facts start to shift for some reason, we still view them through the belief. So we either don't see them or we see them. And so we just filter and view and we selectively focus on whatever we want to focus on. And we see this a lot today in social media around not just political matters but all, all phenomena. And, and people, we let's we see more of the same.

Yep.

So we have a little filter between.

Our beliefs and our actions which filters out all the information that does not.

Fit our belief and then allows in.

All the information that supports our belief and we're all doing it.

And I don't want to get into politics, but you're correct is that's why half the country can interpret what's going on in one way and the other half interprets exactly the same information in.

180 degree opposite way.

And without getting into politics. That's also going on in businesses, it's going on at home, it's going on in science, it's going on everywhere. And people don't even know that they.

Have the filter, let alone adjust it.

So this is happening all day long. So if you take that training example.

And you flip the belief of the CEO from training is a waste of time to the belief I have and.

You have, which is training is a fabulous investment. I had somebody in our organization counted the other day.

I think we have over 70 different.

Internal classes that we teach on a.

Regular basis for our staff.

Nice. Right now, Zing Train things are available beyond Zingerman's. Right.

Those internal classes, those are actually not taught by Zing Train.

It's taught by staff in the business.

But Zing Train has seminars which are@zingtrain.com.

And people come from all over. In fact, Craig Obermeyer, one of your colleagues, was just here in town talking.

To Maggie from Zing Training the other day.

But we have people come literally from all over the world to take those seminars.

So anyway, if you flip that belief.

Around, you believe training is a great idea, you do a lot of it.

Then you have all these, you know.

We'Re in the food business which you talked about.

So it means we have a lot of people who basically took the job.

Here, like I took the job because they need a job.

But all of a sudden they start learning a lot.

And all of a sudden work is interesting and work is fun and there's all this growth happening and they're growing.

And they're learning about all these concepts of, you know, business philosophy, life, money.

Customer service, quality of product, the history.

Of the food, you know, and all.

Of a sudden they're engaged and so.

Then they believe there's a positive future.

And the quality of the work they do is great. And Paul and I go, man, this training rocks. Let's do more.

And you know, so basically you're getting.

The total opposite outcome. And in honesty, with all due respect.

To me, Paul and the people who.

Work here, we're not that different from the people in the first scenario, right?

It's, it's all that's different is the belief of the leader.

So the two things that I focus on with companies when we start working with them are, and I think probably a lot of the other coaches are like, this is, the first piece is probably onboarding. So whatever, your onboarding program ought to include some kind of training and at a minimum, you ought to be teaching the values, the purpose and the bhag, if not things like the brand promises and so on, in addition to whatever doing you're your systems and your regular product or service information that you would train and how to access your email or whatever kinds of things that you would orient people to make sure you teach them the values and the purpose of the company along the way. Because everything else ought to be inside that. So that's the onboarding phase. And then over time we love for people just to, instead of focusing on creating a comprehensive training program, just start to make a habit of training. So you introduce maybe one little thing a month at the leadership level and then after you get that, then let's take it down to the rest of the company so that we're not hypocrites. We always start with the man in the mirror or the person in the mirror, right. And, and then we adopt a little bit and we make a habit of it rather than making some big project of it.

Yeah, well, we, it's, it's interesting you bring that up.

We, we.

I actually just taught Zing Train just.

Did a little special half day training.

Session about our orientation, new staff orientation class and there's an essay about it.

In the new book actually, because I realized as I was working on this.

Belief stuff that it was one of.

The places where we, very much to.

Your point, shape the beliefs of the people we're hiring.

So Paul or I still teach the.

New staff orientation class at the holidays.

Probably a dozen times over, you know.

Six, three, four weeks to get all.

Those people through it. It.

And I think it's one of the most important pieces of our job.

Right?

Because I've always felt that way, but now with the belief stuff, I feel it even more because, you know, face reality. I mean, most people come into work in most jobs, especially in the business.

I mean, they have had a lot of negative experiences with work.

They've been treated badly by previous bosses.

They may have low self esteem, you know, I mean, there's all sorts of issues and you will not, you, you won't get to greatness if those are their beliefs.

I mean, if they don't, if they believe work is a drag, you're not.

Going to get work.

If they believe bosses are jerks, they're.

Going to self fulfill into creating that prophecy.

So what I started to realize is just by like sitting with them and spending, it's a two hour class and you know, we use different terminology than the doll stuff, but it's basically the same thing. I mean, we talk about our history, we talk about our values, we talk.

About where, what our vision is, where we're going, why we're going there, how.

Important they are to it. You know, I give, you know, we give examples of where, you know, a tiny little act by a new frontline.

Person could cause either a huge upside or downside.

I get to know them a little bit. So we have them tell their story. I mean, just like that simple thing.

Right in the beginning of the class.

We go around and have everybody give their background and tell a little about themselves, right?

So imagine now you're in a $60 million company and you're sitting with the.

CEO and he's asking you to tell your history right now.

I mean, it's a tiny act, but.

They come in thinking all they're going to do is, you know, be this again, interchangeable machine part that no one cares about. And the irony is the sad thing.

Is that's been their work experience a lot of places.

I just taught a class internally on servant leadership yesterday and it's not new people, but one of the women who's.

Been here for a couple years and.

I was talking about how, you know, part of our approach to servant leadership is to treat the staff like our customers, right? And so, you know, greeting them, knowing their name, etc. Etc. Simple things, right? She said, you know, my old job.

I worked there three years and the.

Boss didn't even know who I was. And I would get in line, you know, to buy something, and he'd be.

In line with me, and he didn't even recognize me.

Another book that comes to mind that I have used a lot over the years, I think you'll. You'll completely dig another take on the same thing as the Three Laws of Performance. Dave Logan, Steve Zaffron. And in the book, essentially it just says that, look, the performance that you get is a function of the actions that you take, but the actions that you take are a function of the way you see the world. Right, yeah. Which are your beliefs, the way the world occurs to you. And so if you can change the way the world occurs for people, you change their action, you change the performance outcome. So we're all interested in performance in business and in other pursuits. So leaders have access to powerful tools, language and conversations and interactions that can change people's beliefs, and you can actually change them, which is remarkable because mostly we're like, no, this is what I believe, and don't go changing my beliefs. But there is more than we realize available.

It's huge.

I mean, yeah, first of all, most people I've come to realize, don't even.

Know they have beliefs about most things.

Other than politics or religion. And not that those are bad, but there's a lot more to it than that.

So, you know, if you. I mean, here. True, true story.

First time I taught this, which is now a little over two years ago, I taught it at Zing Train, about.

60, 70, I don't know, 80 people in the room.

I give my email out pretty much everywhere I teach. I give it out right now. It's Ari Zingermans calm. Anyway, woman emails me like two weeks later and, you know, thanks me for the talk. And she said, you know, based on what you told me, I did reflection, and I actually changed one of my beliefs. So, of course, being curious, tell me more.

So in a nutshell, the story is.

You know, she said, well, my daughter's in high school. Grades in my family have always been very important.

We put a lot of value on it. She's not doing well in school.

Every day I pick her up from school. Within five minutes, we're in a big fight. And I said, what? So what happened? She said, well, I kept reflecting on what you've been talking about. I realized I wanted to change My beliefs. And I said, what did you change it to? She said, it changed my belief to be that my relationship with my daughter.

Was more important than the grades.

And I said, what happened? She said, within two days, the fight stopped. It's, you know, so it's, it's, it's just, it's a simple switch. The reality was you, you know, and I know the daughter's grades weren't going to get better by the mother getting mad at her. If anything, this is actually more likely.

To make the grades better because the.

Daughter could stop focusing externally on the mother misbehaving. But at the least, you know, she's right. I mean, she's going to hopefully have 30, 40, 50, 60 year relationship with the daughter, if not longer. And you know how much damage can be done by arguing incessantly over something you can't make the person change. So tiny little thing. And you know, it's going on in.

Workplaces all the time.

So if two people in your employee, if one thinks the other one's a.

Jerk and you follow that cycle, right? So if you think George is a.

Jerk and George is walking towards you, what do you do? You look down, you avoid them, you don't talk to him when you're in a meeting. You, you know, you get reactive, you're anxious around him. So what does George start to believe? He believes you're a jerk and then.

He does the same thing and that reinforces the original belief.

So, I mean, this is going on.

All day long and we're paying people.

You know, in big companies a lot.

Of money to not like each other.

And it's really their negative beliefs about.

Each other that are at the root of the problem.

So here's the deal. I think we've given people a lot to chew on for this show. So you want to start to uncover your own beliefs, right? Start with the person in the mirror, start to deal with your own beliefs. Then start to consider that all the people that you work with have beliefs and get interested in what those beliefs might be. And then systematically, you can use things like training to begin to expand people's beliefs and alter them. So train and educate your people, invest in them, but at the basic level, get interested and curious about what that might be. Our guest is Ari Weinsweig. The company that we'll turn you to is zing train, right zingtrain.com go check them out. You can also learn all about the rest of the world of Zingerman's. And then our business, our website, is scalingupbusiness.com and you can go there and you can download a copy of the Growth Guide and and you'll get on our you can get on our list as well or download or and get a I do either or both. But go subscribe there, download the Growth Guide, learn how to begin to apply these things in your own business and we'll send you weekly updates with shows like these and articles and tips and stuff on growing your business, developing your own leadership. It's been a pleasure to have you on the show. I'm Bill Gallagher. Saru Weinsweig, thanks so much. We'll see you next time.

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