296: Getting Real with Michael Solomon — 10x Management

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done? I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent, and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have. Talk to Docs of Talent and you won't be disappointed. Go to docsatant.com Bill G. Again, that's doxatant.com Bill G. One more time. Doxatalent.com Bill G. Check it out today. Do you hear the music? Yes. So we're talking about what some interesting insights today between all around talent recruiting, retention, engagement, that kind of thing. And we're talking with somebody who's going to share about the interesting parallels between technology and artists, right? Musicians, performers, that kind of thing. And programmer developer types. Hi everyone, my name is Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach, host of the Scaling Up Business podcast. We bring our show to you every week and we haven't been live for a little while, so this is fun to be back recording again. We got kind of far ahead of ourselves, so we're happy to go live once again. And so we bring our show to you every week with everything to do with growing and scaling your business, getting the team right, dialing the strategy, getting execution honed so you've got less breakdowns and you're profitable and all that, and refining the cash model for the business so that you don't have to seek outside funding as much as we often do. All that and more. And the leadership maybe to get your business growing and scaling all that@scalingcoach.com or wherever you get your Scaling up content, you know, your, your business stuff, your YouTubes, your iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, all that kind of. You were everywhere, hopefully. Scaling business podcast scalingcoach.com all right, so we're joined now by groovy guy on the screen with me here, Michael Solomon. Michael, welcome show.

Thanks, Bill. It's a pleasure to be here.

Michael's in the New York area, everyone, and he's written a new book, Game Changer, how to be 10x in the talent Economy. And he's got an interesting background where he started out in music and talent management and everything related to that. And then he grew that and started to move over into technology and he noticed some interesting parallels. So we're going to talk all about his experience in that. Some of the things in the book, the ideas, that kind of thing. I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Me too. Can't wait to see what we're going to uncover on earth. How real will we get?

Can't wait to see what I'm going to say on this subject. I think I'm going to make it up as I go.

That's how entrepreneurs roll.

Talk to us, I guess first of all about kind of your background. How did you arrive at this? You started in this talent management. You move, take us through kind of your personal.

I'll give you the very fast version and we can dive into any areas of interest.

Oh no, give us the two day version.

The two day version. Okay. Well that, that's, that is now if we're going to talk entertainment, that's what most people in the entertainment do industry do is they'll tell you you'll have an hour meeting and they'll spend 57 minutes telling you about how great they are and who they work with and who they know. I won't do that. So got out of school, went on tour with Bruce Springsteen, which lucky enough to be able to do because I.

Was, as we all do, right out of school.

Exactly, exactly. I happen to be. I got that job the good old fashioned way. I was dating his manager's daughter. One of his manager's daughter, which was great. Got to go on the road. Got to have. I didn't have this word yet. Got to see 10x at the very beginning of my career. Bruce Springsteen is a 10x er. His management 10x ers, pretty much everybody that works in that organization 10x ers. And what I mean when I say 10x error is these are people who produce 10 times the value of their peers or more.

Right.

They have to have a high EQ and a high IQ and we'll get more into the attributes of those folks. But that was pretty amazing experience because you like to get real. Unfortunately, coming out of that experience, that girlfriend who I'd been with for four years died of a very rare cancer. So that was sort of the beginning of my adult life. At age 23, understanding mortality was a thing and that sort of informed a lot of decisions that would come later. But coming out of the experience of touring with Springsteen, I saw artist management. I wanted that. So my business partner and I, who's the co author of the book, set up an artist management company in 1995. So that's 26 years old that company and it's still going strong. And we manage musicians and we work with people like John Mayer and Vanessa Carlton and Citizen Cope and quite a few others that you would know and some that you wouldn't. And it was great. Except the music industry got crushed in the early 2000s by technology. It was the first of the entertainment industries because it was the easiest to, to do file sharing. That really decimated the industry. And we thought that there was going to need to be another source of income in our lives. So there was a period of brainstorming and figuring out in a startup land this would be called a pivot. But since we weren't getting rid of the entertainment company, it's not exactly a pivot. We were starting something new, but it was really a pivot. And what we concluded was the new rock stars were the software engineers who were building all of the apps and technology that was eating our lunch from the music business. And why don't we go get in bed with them instead of just musicians. So we started the first of its kind tech talent agency called 10X Management. And that goes back to about 10 years now. We were very fortunate. Everybody loved the story of the rockstar managers managing the new rockstars. And that resulted in a seven page feature in the New Yorker. And all kinds of wonderful, wonderful. Every major media outlet in the world covered us, which was pretty awesome without a publicist, by the way. Just the right, the right story at the right time. And we've been focused on that for the last 10 years. But about three years ago, we added one more business where we help very senior technology professionals who are not freelancers negotiate their job offers. So we are, we are a compensation advisory service. We are not finding them their jobs, we're just coming in and helping them negotiate them. These engineers are sought after in such crazy ways. Everybody in the business world reads the technology information that basically explains that for every one of these good people there are 25 jobs for them. And we help navigate and make sure they're getting the best deal they can. That's a little bit about the background. I'll just add that along the way I've also co founded three nonprofit organizations which I won't get into too much detail, but it adds to the story of I like starting things. What I'm not good at and somebody else can talk about is how you exit things. Because I'm like a kid with a bunch of trains that I started dragging along all my little, my little fiefdoms that come with me and it's worked out quite well. But I'd like to learn how to exit soon.

Well, pretty much selling is the ideal way versus closing bankruptcy, right? Or being stuck with it for like. So I, I want to come back and I want to talk about some of the lessons there. I want to talk about and, and what you've learned between the two it, but also the senior management and that, that negotiation side. And I think that's a really interesting thing. Before we get into that, let's. Let's do a little deep dive on some of this getting real stuff. So it sounded like your big break was really getting attached to Bruce Springsteen at the beginning of your career.

That definitely did not hurt our career. I mean, in truth, that was a wonderful job and a great feather in my cap. But that was not what launched the career. What launched the career was the management company. And we finally figured out who the right clients and how to figure that out and what we learned through that period of time and then we continued to learn and brought into the technology sector. And this is sort of what the book is about, is the distillation of what do all creative, highly talented people have in common and how do they want to be treated? And it was really interesting going from the entertainment world with all of these rock stars who wanted to be treated a certain way to go into the technology world where they were not. They were not divas. Some of the rock stars were divas, but they still wanted very similar things. They wanted to be treated like a human being, not like a cog in the machine. They wanted to be treated like somebody who actually added value to the equation. And that's not where the industry was when we started this 10 years ago. These developers were just cogs in the machine. And only as the, as the industry got more competitive and market forces like us came along that they've been. And the supply and demand imbalance has really turned it into what it needs to be now.

So let me ask that people like to be treated like they matter, right? Like they are critical and yet some amount of that creates some very bad, like personality traits, right? Being told yes to everything, being given, every drug under the sun, being coddled to a degree also has that. Is there a balance there that you've seen or what do you notice?

I think one of the people we interview the book is Daniel Lubecky, who founded Kind Snacks and has since sold it and moved on to greener pastures. I mean, he might still be executive chairman, but he talks about the reason he named the company Kind is. It was very important to him to build a certain kind of company. And he talks a little bit about the distinction between being kind and nice. So just because you want to treat somebody like a human and not like a cog in the machine does not mean you say yes to everything they want. You still have to hold people accountable. They still have to be delivering in accordance with the company's goals and the quarterly okrs. And everybody has to be rowing in the same direction. The difference is if you treat them with a little bit more of humanity and you're a little bit more aware of their lives and what's going on in their lives, it's not that they're going to perform better because you're doing that, they're going to stay longer, they're going to feel better, taken care of. I mean, if you read a lot of the management books, including ours about millennials and Gen Z, what you learn is if those people don't know that you're thinking about their future career, they're looking for a new job, they're out the door. They got choices. I mean, look at the great resignation that we're going through right now. People are just walking out the door all over the place. They have to know that you care about them. They have to know that you see a future for them. And you also have to create some alignment between their values and your company's values. If there's no alignment between who they want to be in the world and the mission of your company, then maybe you can keep them by paying them really well, but their heart's not going to be in it.

So you're saying, don't worry so much about coddling them or give a little bit of attention, but don't just indulge everything.

It's not about indulging everything. It's about creating an environment. I'll give you a very concrete example. So software engineers, designers, lots of creative people, get into something called a flow state that positive psychology has defined as when you're doing your work and you're completely focused, you start working at an exponential rate, the way you normally than you normally do. If you take a developer and you put them in an office, in an open floor plan, and they start to get into that flow space where they're now delivering 2, 3, 4, 5 times the value for your company because they're working optimally, and then somebody comes over and taps them on the shoulder and says, hey, we gotta go to this meeting. Hey, what? You know, whatever it is, and they get knocked out of the footsteps. It takes an hour to two hours to get back into it. You just cost the company lots of money. So it's not. That's not about coddling. That's about giving people what they need to be them that their best sells for you. And I just want to be very clear. I like being very humanistic in my management style and that's what I'm talking about. But if you don't give a crap about your employees, I would still suggest that you do what I'm talking about. Because it's not about being nice. It's about creating the environment where you can get the best out of your best people.

So I hear in that, like challenging people, creating a supportive environment, freeing them up, but keeping them focused and doing their great work versus putting more nicer furniture necessarily in the office and giving them feedback.

Very smart people like to learn. They want to know when they're doing well. They want to know how they can do better. That's one thing. So if you're an organization and you have once or twice a year feedback, that's not going to work for these people. They also don't suffer fools. If you've got a rock star who's on a team with a whole bunch of people that are not awesome, they're not going to stick around forever. And the most important thing as it relates to that particular point which we talk about in the book, is we've come up with a concept called a sabotage impulse. And everybody who's listening, and I believe you're going to recognize this also when I describe it, these are the people who never take responsibility for their role in anything. They are the duck and cover kind of people. And because it's never their fault and it was always somebody else's fault, they actually don't have the ability to improve and get better because you can't give them feedback because they're not saying, no, no, no, it wasn't me, it was George. The other thing about those people, in addition to taking down your culture and taking down your team, because they walk around with a, with a blame thrower, everybody on that team is ducking and covering out of fear that something's going to get thrown their way. Your 10x performer, the person who's delivering the most value, they don't want to be in that environment. And again, who, who would? If you have endless choices, these 10 Xers have endless choices.

So I've watched and, and overheard, not eavesdropped, but, but overheard employees in some of Our tech teams getting really petty and talking about the food in the break room and what the amenities are in the company and things like that. And I. And I remember being a little bit disgusted because I knew that I'm going to walk down the hallway and continue meeting with the CEO in the C suite in a few minutes about the. The strategy of the company and where we're going and that kind of thing. And I'm thinking, wow, these people are completely disconnected. But I. But I also know what it's like when folks are back in the green room or equivalent for a show and a performers back there, and the artist management is there and they're like, okay, how are you doing? Are you ready to go? Did you get yourself sorted out? You know, how are you feeling? There's a lot of people out there. They're excited to see you. The mood is good. The other act is just coming off, and they're doing that kind of like checking in with the team and setting them up and that kind of thing. And that's like a little bit of coaching and a little bit of, like, huddling before they go on. And when we see teams going into a major trade show, a sales event, some other, a launch, something like that, we have similar conversations. All right, how are you doing? What's your intention? Any concerns for yourself like that? Like getting them ready, having them be taken care of, but that kind of focus on something that's on point.

What do you need to succeed at this? Like, that's a great question to ask somebody. What don't you have that you need to succeed? What can I be doing better for you? I mean, part of the first half of this book is really about how companies can be more 10x and make themselves a better place to house these kinds of people. And the second half of the book is how individuals and individual managers can become more 10x so that they can manage those people better and become better performers themselves. And it's really. We have a chapter called the Double Hat World, because you're always, if you're in management, if you are, oversee other people. You have to both oversee them and make sure you're being overseen well. And down the food chain, everybody needs to look up, down and 360 degrees around to make sure that they're working well with the rest of their team. When there's discord. And I mean, we see this all the time with a little bit of gossip, a little bit of, oh, there's a rumor the company's got something going on. Work, grinds, to a halt. So the more that you're able to stay on top of the feelings of your team and be able to keep them moving together and working together and like you said, huddling up before something big and important, I mean, this is the difference between leadership and management.

Yeah. So a couple days ago I saw Elvis Costello live in the theater down here. And I notice as we're talking about this that, so as, as you know, we're seated and we're waiting for the show to start and people are filling in and that kind of thing. And the roadies at that point have the stage, right. It's their stage, they're setting things up, they're in control, they're working things. They're very intentional. They're thinking about stuff, they're looking around, they're checking on that kind of thing. Then the performers take the stage. Now the roadies are thinking about the performance. Okay, how's he doing? Is he okay? Is he unhappy with the guitar? Does he need a new guitar? Has it gone out of tune? You know, they're totally focused on them. They're coming in. Okay, here's some more water, here's a towel. You know, that kind of thing, switching out things and the roles and who's in the foreground in the background is changing constantly. And I don't think that our teams think about that enough.

That is a great analogy. That is a great analogy. When you have 10x ers, you are the manager and the road crew and your job is to completely protect their ability to do the one thing they can do better than anyone else.

Yeah.

And that's, that's really what we talk about, is being able to create the environment where these people can thrive because they are so much better than the average person. I don't mean better as a human being.

I mean, so your programmers, your key performers, your salespeople.

Yeah, I was going to say it could be a salesperson. It doesn't.

Any number of folks, they're out there, they're the point person. As a leader, you're often kind of creating that environment right around them, making sure they're well set up.

And the more you can bring in other people like that, the more you can create the high performing team which then attracts the other high performing members. It's almost impossible to have a high performing team with only one or two high performing members because they don't, they don't want to be the best in the room. Really high performing people don't want to be the smartest person in the room, they want to work with the best. I've got a situation in the negotiation world. This person works at a major tech company. I think one of the big ones, being recruited by a financial services company that's offering tons of money, let's just leave it like that. And one of the considerations for him, even though the money is so much better, is do I want to leave this great company where I work with the best of the best technologists in the world and even though I'm going to make a lot more money, go work in a place where their tech stack, the technology they use is old and not great and their team is old and not great. I don't mean old age wise. These are just not the newest rock stars I'm talking about. A massive amount of money is being considered in this equation that like, even though it's, you know, almost again, I don't want to talk about numbers because I don't. I'm just trying to think about whether anybody could identify anything from this conversation. So I'm going to just leave the numbers out. Massive, massive numbers differential. And, and this person might walk away because it's not the right, it's not the, it's not the right environment where they can do their best work.

Yeah, you think about it. So there's a couple things that work. One of them is that key challenge, right? What are, what is your company up to? What is this team working on? Is it some next cool app or some really interesting. It doesn't have to be technology. It could be anything, your work. And a lot of our work is more in technology, but it could be really any realm. Are you up to something really worthy? And you talk about working with millennials. They're going to think people want to work on cool shit that's actually going to impact the world. And then they think about, and what kind of bozos am I going to work with? Am I going to work with a bunch of cool rock stars who are really going to up my game and challenge me and. Or am I going to suffer a bunch of fools who don't know what they're up to and who are all.

Petty and, and that's a really big consideration. And if you're one of the, one of the people who's listening and you keep saying, I have not been able to hire the people I want to hire, you have to look around at what you're offering. Is, are you explaining your offering? Are you explaining the value of what your company does? I mean, Everybody younger than 40 and many over than 40. But the younger generations, they definitely want to work on mission critical things that are important in the world, as you were just saying. And that doesn't mean that everything they need to do needs to be a social justice fight, but they need to feel like they're not making the world a worse place. And so few people hiring actually bother asking any questions about that. I mean, one of the most important things that we came up with is a tool called the lifestyle calculator, which is on the 10XSN site. And it's a way for a potential employee to take 100 points and distribute it among up to 24 different things that go into a job package and a job lifestyle. First of all, every time people do this, they're like, wow, I never really thought about all these things before. And it allows us to understand their priorities. And usually it allows them to understand their priorities. What I can tell you, having done this quite a number of times now, is not a single question is asked by most companies about what are you looking for in your employment? They will ask, what is your salary requirement? What is your compensation requirement? That's it. That's all. I've only seen one company to date that actually gave an offer in two forms. There's one startup that said you can have a little more cash this way and a little less equity, or you have choice B, which is more equity, less cash. And what a great idea. You have to. I mean, with the market being what it is, you have to sell your company to the people you're trying to hire. And most people don't. They think, I've got a job offer, I'm going to make an offer to this person. They're going to, they must jump at that. But that's not the market we're in right now.

We often learn from our mistakes. Right? What, what do you think is the biggest mistake that you made that led you to this work in this way?

It's a very general mistake, but I've given this a lot of thought. I think the biggest thing I did early in my career was I did not measure what I was doing in a reliable way. I worked very, very hard to try and boil the ocean. And I did that for years and years and years. And now I am very calculated in where I put my effort. And in a lot of ways it's a very light touch. I can figure out with doing not that much that I can have the right impact on an outcome. Which isn't to say that I don't work hard, but it's really about working smarter, not harder. And that was a mistake I made very badly in the early years.

We can all tell you're in New York right now.

Oh, because of the siren. Sorry about that.

The amount of background noise that you have in New York is always, always kind of blows me away. Whenever I. I go, I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah.

I often do my podcast from my home in Montclair for that reason. But then you have leaf blowers and. Leaf blowers, yes. So you can't win.

You can't win.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it's interesting that focus on what it is that you do well, which kind of goes back to this idea of. Of people in their roles and working together and working with great people. I watched the. The show the other night. Elvis Costello there doing his thing.

Right.

Here's a guy in his late 60s, and a lot of his bandmates are people he's performed with for decades. And then. And then there's a guest artist that joined him. Charlie Sexton was another guitarist in the band. Fantastic guitarist. Right. These are all people that really know each other really well and count each other to be able to be, like, professional and do it. And then. And then they're all kind of doing their thing and. And then there are moments where they. It's all really working together and they just kind of flowing and. And that kind of work. And you think about your teams and your own role when you're doing your best work versus when you're doing things that you shouldn't be doing. Right. Things that. And things that your team shouldn't be fiddling with. Right.

There's a great juxtaposition for the story you just described about Elvis and his team and how they've come together and they've grown and there seems to be trust and that comes out on stage. Juxtapose that with James Brown. I don't know if you've ever heard this story, but James Brown would dock his musicians on stage while performing and practicing, and it would be hand symbol. He would literally turn. Look at the bass player. 10 bucks, 5 bucks, like, that's how he did it. It's a management style. You know, you can. You can get people to do things by with. With the carrot or the stick. But today, with these generations, that ain't gonna fly. Yeah, that's a gotta go with the Elvis version.

People tighten up their. Tighten up their game with something like that. But, yeah, I have seen James Brown perform a couple times, and the man is A. A God. Right. But.

Yeah, undeniable. But I'm not sure.

But we have seen a lot of people who perform in a way, whether it be in music or in other arts and, or in business in a way that's toxic and not sustainable. The, that churns people through versus finding, you know, your E Street band to play forever. And they just trust each other and they vibe and they, they know how to do their thing.

Absolutely. And that's, I think that's, that's the change that we're seeing is the days of, of just, you know, you're out, you're like, just, just doesn't work anymore. People have choices right now. They have seemingly unlimited choices. And I'm not just talking about tech people right now. I mean you can't, I don't know, I don't know what your experience is where you live. I can't have a good meal in a restaurant because there's no, there's no servers. I'm not exaggerating. I went to a business breakfast at the W Hotel in Manhattan on Sunday morning for a very important meeting and they couldn't get coffee out to us before our food was ready. Yeah.

Or water.

I mean it was, it was, it was nuts. And this is not, I'm not picking on them. This is. Everywhere I go, people are feeling like they have choices. They pre pandemic. Everybody was sort of rolling with the status quo. This is what my life is. This is what I'm doing. And then when you have a global mortality event that causes everybody at once to say, is this the life I want to live if I'm not going to live forever? And I mentioned earlier I had this mortality event when I was 23. Yeah. This is, this to me is what's going on right now. And people are being very picky in different ways than they were before. I don't think that's going to stick around forever because they won't have the choices. But it's a new, it's, it's really a new paradigm right now.

Yeah. And they've. And out of necessity. Right. People figured out other ways of dealing and some of them have lost money and that kind of thing. But the idea of just suffering stuff to get by is, is just not there anymore the way that it was. And we see it all the way down to low level folks, to very high level folks who are making different decisions. They're like, well, I'm not going to come in if I have to commute every day to your bs. Office. Exactly right. Like thinking creatively. And yet I have noticed our teams really love coming together right now. So many of our teams are still working remotely for some significant portion of the week, but we've been doing our meetings more and more in person, whether it be at a cool venue or outdoors or like that kind of thing. And places struggling to just fill a range of jobs and not all of them redesigning. We were at a place last week and they didn't have the kitchen staff so. And they were limited on the restaurant staff like your situation. So they pared down the menu massively and they focused to the grill area and the main kitchen was closed. So they were doing a very simple, limited range, but they were doing those things all right.

I mean that's great because we all have to iterate and adapt. And one of the things that I think if we look forward is every company is really being required to do more with less. Now the good news is that technology allows doing more with less very well. But it also means when you look past the technology resources, your human resources are also going to, are going to need to be better performers and being more selective about getting the right people in the door. Even if somebody costs 2x more than the person next to them, but they do 4x the work, that's a no brainer, that's a big win.

If you could go back and give your younger self some advice, what would you say?

Don't sweat it, it'll all be okay.

I'd have to echo that one that.

I would certainly say, you know, be a lot more selective about what you work hard on. Those are the two that, that come to mind and focus on process. I didn't start focusing on process until I was much older and now I. You know, one of the things that I like about the way that we operate our business is there are certain elements of it that, that, that we create a process that's based on our experience, based on our knowledge, and then we hand it off to people who are younger and not a season. But we've codified it in such a way that they can be successful. And I do believe I would have been able to grow the businesses faster earlier if I'd been having that process mindset. So I wish I had told myself a little bit about that.

Yeah. So what haven't we talked about with regard to the book? What are we missing?

So I think that we talk about this manageability continuum and on the one end is the sabotage impulse and on the other end is sort of the 10x er and what we really get into in the book is very prescriptive ways about how to move yourself in the right direction on this. We go so far as to even have templates of, oh, you're somebody who's not getting the feedback you need from your supervisor. Here's a way that you might be able to approach them where you are being very cautious in how you ask for what you're doing. You're not being entitled, but you are explaining. I really value your input. I really want to grow and get better. Do you think we could spend 15 minutes once a month rather than an hour once every six months so that I can be improving, we can create a continuous cycle of improvement for me, things like that. There's lots and lots of very prescriptive tools in the book that really make it clear how to go about these things. And the other thing I'll say when you're talking about these teams and creating retention is they have to believe that you have their back. And that doesn't just mean when it's easy, sometimes that means you have to go to your boss and fight for somebody else's race that's on your team. When your team sees you do that, and they know that you do that, whether you succeed or you don't succeed, you're engendering loyalty and a commitment from your, from your team members that other things don't do in the same way. And it's really, it's a really significant point because again, they're always wondering, do I have a future here? Can I grow here? And when they see that their manager or their leader sees their future is willing to fight for it, I don't mean you don't have to put your own job on the line for it. There are moments for that, but it really creates an environment. I have a specific example of a client of ours who's a cto and there were modest bonuses being given out to the C suite and not to the rest of the team. And he just quietly took it and divided amongst his team. He didn't, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't going to change his life, but they really appreciated it. That's the kind of thing that creates loyalty.

Yeah. You know, it's funny, I hear that and I think that's really noble and great and I've heard a couple others share similar story. And yet I know a time in my life where I got something and I had an influence on it and I wasn't directly controlling it. And I didn't divvied up against everyone. And, and I had good reasons, I think.

I'm not suggesting that every time you get a bonus you should give it to your team. I'm just.

But at the. But in the long view, I'm a little embarrassed and ashamed that I didn't find a way to push for that to get divvied among all the, you know, six people that should have gotten it instead of, you know, cutting out a couple.

So that, you know that. That is actually a great example, not what you just said, but it's also a credit thing. If the, if the manager or the boss is taking credit for everybody's work, of course they get credit for their work. It's their team. They should be getting credit for their work. But if they're not sharing that credit with all the people who did the heavy lifting, that's another thing that's going to send people for the door. I'm not going to stay here and have that guy look great and take all the credit for my hard work when he couldn't have done or she couldn't have done half of this. I mean, I'm being hyperbolic, but it's intentional. And I think these are all of the ways that you can very easily, at very little cost to you, create the environment that's going to foster a place where the best of the best are willing to be and can succeed.

When you think about this book and the shift in your career, what's something that you can brag about that you did really well, that you might not do normally, you might not brag about without a prompt?

Most of the things that I comfortable bragging about have to do with non, non profit. Because I didn't have to do it. I wasn't compensated for it. It made the world a better place and I have a lot of pride in it. But I don't think that's the question. I think the question is if I'm getting it right, what can I brag about that's not that that I should brag about. I think that getting into this book and dealing with the complexity of all of the stages of writing a book, I don't know if everybody listening has ever contemplated it, but it was not an easy task. It was actually quite enjoyable. I really loved doing it. But conceiving of how to structure this and how to make have this make sense for both 10x ers and people who want to move to be 10x was not an easy task. And I think that we were able to break down that process. And this goes back to what I was saying a minute ago of being process oriented in a way that made it very achievable with steps and first we're going to do this, then we're going to do this, then we're going to do this. And that is something I'm feeling very good about right now is my ability to see big problem and break it into smaller bite size sequenced steps. Nice.

Nicely, nicely bragged.

What brag about my modesty.

That's like young people applying for a job. Well really I'm a pretty good communicator and a hard worker. I'm smart and I'm creative and I'm a self starter and I, I really like to play well with the team. I suppose, I suppose I'm not like I just, I work too hard I think really is my weakness.

Well I was going to say and what's your like when you ask them what's, what's the worst thing about, about you? What's your, what's your biggest weakness? I'm a perfectionist. I work too hard.

I don't have enough balance.

I asked that question in every interview and I hate those answers unless I really believe the person because there are moments that that's true but it's a little too pat and I don't buy it.

Well, I think I spent a lot of time as a C suite coach thinking about that. Perfectionism is a problem and when I see it in people I'm like oh we have to deal with that. That's going to get in the way of scaling that.

That is another thing that I would both like to brag about and I would like to add to the list of things I wish I had known which is identifying what's gonna move the needle, like really being clear on that. And so. Well, let me stop there, why don't you. I'll let you see if you have a follow up question but I love that you brought that up.

Well, how about something you're grateful for?

I'm grateful that I'm a pretty happy person actually more now than ever in most ways. It takes a lot of work. The other thing I'm grateful for and the other thing I wish somebody had told me early on was invest in yourself relentlessly. You will never regret all of those investments of time and energy in yourself. I read Life Hacks every day. I am constantly making tiny tweaks to how I work to my work processes to make them more efficient and every single One of them people think I'm nuts is so valuable. I save 10 seconds here, a minute and a half there. You play that out over every day of the rest of my life, and it adds up. And it affords me a lot of times to do things I like to do.

So because we're all human and we all have our faults and weaknesses. What's a, like a guilty pleasure or a bad habit or something that you do?

Oh, that's kind of easy. I watch way too much television. I'm both embarrassed and proud that I've.

You and the whole world since the pandemic.

But even before the pandemic, I love watching TV and movies.

Love, love, love.

Yeah, that's not the worst guilty pleasure in the world, but let's just say I might not do that with moderation.

I think everybody, like, talks about, you know, how many books they read or whatever, but the amount of time that gets spent on tv, we don't all fess up to it. And yet how many weekends have been wasted, just blown. Even good weather weekends with some Netflix or something?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I don't need. I don't need it to be raining. Nice.

Nice confession. So what are you working on now with this book? Why this book? What are you working on? What's your focus? What's your big goal at this point?

So I think because we're speaking to a bunch of entrepreneurs, one of the exciting things of the last six months is we've spent the last bunch of years trying to figure out how to dump more into our funnel, our sales funnel. And we're now able to get a whole lot of data about our, like, detailed data about our sales funnel. And we can see that the bigger opportunity, the shorter term opportunity is optimizing the funnel for the business we're already putting in it and closing a higher percentage of it. And I'm very excited about being like, I see. As we return to the process, I see the very clear steps to be able to achieve that. And that could cause us to double the size of our business in a year or a year and a half without bringing in a single additional piece of business.

So just by fine tuning it.

Yes. Basically looking at what do we lose deals over and how do we fix that? And it's working. It's already. We're already seeing the needle move. It's very exciting.

More efficient. Yeah, really well done. So when. Why don't we. Before we run out of time here, let's talk about when CEOs are negotiating with someone you're more on the talent side of your comp conversations, and you're trying to get CEOs to see stuff. How do they be smarter? How do they make right choices but not be silly with their money? Talk about that. What should CEOs know about the compensation and negotiation?

This is. This is really coming back to where we started with this idea of the lifestyle calculator or some other version of it, where start out by understanding. If you're interested in somebody, understand what they're interested in, and then help them understand why the job that you have to offer them meets their needs and their goals. And sometimes it sounds like, you know, I think people quickly have this impression that I'm saying, give them all the money in the world that they want. Sometimes it's not about more money. It used to be about let them work from home on Fridays. But things like that, let them connect them to what really, really matters in their life or their mission or their values that will really, really, really cause them to want to work there and want to put their back into it, if you will. If you just come with the offering of, you know, this dollar, this equity, this package, if that's all that you're offering, they're gonna. They're literally gonna compare it to the next person and they're gonna say, who's gonna offer me the most? If you connect with them on the why? And that this is a good place to work and this is a good team and you can grow, and we have continuing education, and we are going to give you lots of feedback. And there's a gazillion ways to do this. You know, people are quick to say, oh, we have unlimited vacation time. I advise people to say, that's wonderful. I'm thrilled to hear that. What's the average amount of vacation people take? Because that's just. Unlimited vacation time is like. I don't want to say it's a scam. I thought it was a really. When Netflix first introduced it, I thought it was a brilliant idea. I don't know if you know this particular story, but they published their manual at the time, and basically what their policy said was, you have unlimited vacation time. If we have to tell you how much time to take off, you shouldn't be working here.

Yes.

And that. And that really led to a whole period of growth of companies doing that. But then so many companies have unlimited vacation policies, but nobody takes in a vacation. So I always want to give them that information. And that's the kind of thing. And this is What I mean is they really need to understand what is life going to be like at your company. Am I going to enjoy it? Am I going to be working 80 hour weeks? If I'm going to be working 80 hour weeks, compensation better be up to speed. I mean, I'm not sure if you've seen the article, but the law students coming right out of law school who are taking the $200,000 jobs, but they have to work 90, 100 hours a week, they're not taking them anymore. They're like, I don't want to do that. This is my life. I don't want to work all the time. I don't mean all of them. I don't mean to generalize, but many of them.

So we've been talking about talent and I think I asked you about compensation and you said instead, like focus on the fit and the mission, the purpose, like all kinds of other things, what you'll be working on, what the culture's like. And, and really I heard so that you don't have to be focused on getting the maximal dollar and, and being as tight there as anything.

I mean, I see this all the time. There's companies who have tremendous retention even though they don't pay top dollar because they connect with their people and their people stay because it either feels, I don't want to say like a family, I don't want to be that hokey, but sometimes it does. And sometimes they feel really supported by the people around them and that they know, you know, the difference between a manager who knows when someone's going through, through a divorce or they're moving or they've been sick or whatever it is. And just this is what I mean about being human. I'd like to think we would all do this because it's the right thing to do. How are you feeling today? I know you were sick. That's a nice, like that's the world I want to live in. I don't really care if you're a manager and that's not the world you want to live in. Do it not because you want to make a nice world. Do it because that person is going to be a little bit more leaning in on their work.

Well, you could do it because you want to be a mensch, but you could also just do it because it's practical. Right?

Like that's, and that's sort of, that's sort of what I'm getting at. I'd like people to do it because I like the world to be filled with menchi. People. But do it. You know, if you want to be fragment. There's something I say in the nonprofit world that I talk about a lot which is be selfish. Help somebody else. The reason I say that is we get more out of helping other people than we do anything we could do for ourselves. So you, somebody falls down, you help them up, they're grateful. You're literally going to have in your body reactions to that. Science has proven this are way more beneficial than if you had walked into a store and bought yourself whatever. That's not the way humans work. And the idea that you can gain a lot from being good to other people, whether that's helping them in a nonprofit context or in a kind context or even in a management context, it's a win win. They're going to be feeling better and being treated better and you're going to get better results. Yeah. Chances are you're also going to be feeling better for treating people nicely.

Well, the right. The old thing is doing to others and be the change you seek. Create that kind of a world. So.

You started to quote the Golden Rules, you know, the Platinum rule.

The Platinum Rule. I don't know.

Okay. Because I, I'm not a fan of the Golden Rule. The golden rule is due unto others as. As you would have them do unto you. The platinum rule is due unto others as they would like done to them. Because I don't know what, I don't know what you want. I want to ask you if I'm going to do something to you or for you. I want to ask you is this, is this good for you? I would like this, but you may not. And I think that that's a big upgrade.

Yeah. So not assuming that you know what they want.

Exactly. Or that they want what you want.

Well. And you talk about engagement, you talk about attracting people and retaining people. And we start off the show saying you're proud of your nonprofit work. And we know that people will work for free and put in loads of hours in the evenings and weekends in their nonprofit and then squeeze you for the bonus and complain about whatever because they don't feel like what they do matters. And when there's a connection to values and to purpose and you communicate it well.

Right.

Then there's really something there.

It's a huge difference. Yeah. Well.

So I would just want to tell folks where to go to get more information and I think the crawls up there. Gamechangerthebook.com Also, thanks to Michael for coming on the show. Reminder to our listeners that if you want to find all the shows and more, look for the Scaling Up Business podcast here. Wherever you, wherever you are now, we'll have it. But if you go to our website, there's some additional offers. You can search the catalog of them on the show notes and get the downloads and offers of the authors and the tools, that kind of thing.

There's also a quiz on that website that allows you to see how 10x your company is and how 10x you.

Are, which I think, oh awesome. Awesome. All right. A request to you. If you dug this show, share it with somebody else. Pass it along to somebody else that it might do some good for. If you want to give us some feedback, infocalingcoach.com is our email. Big thanks to Wanda Mitchell in the background producing the show, getting our guest ready and the show out the door and all that. To Verne Harnish, author and creator of the Scaling Up Framework. And to the folks at Podfly, Albert Burge who edits our show and Ein Cudina who writes up the show notes, Tim McGowan who proofreads everyone. Thanks again for listening everyone. We'll talk to you again next time. Keep Scaling Up. Bye bye. Now, Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software. Powered by alignment, it's the official software for Scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app, you can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software. It's what I actually use to manage growth in our Scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by Align. To try it now, go to aligntoday.com Bill G One more time. Aligntoday.com Bill G that's aligntoday.com Bill G Check it out and try it now.