The Learn-it-all Leader — Damon Lembi

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 talent. Talk to Doxatalant and you won't be disappointed. Go to doxatalent.com Bill G Again, that's doxatalent.com BillG. One more time. Docsatalant.com Bill G Check it out. Today we're talking about the difference between being a know it all and a learn it all today. And probably you're a little bit of both. Which one do you gravitate to and what is there to learn about that? Hi everybody. My name is Bill Gallagher and I am often a know it all. That's what I do for a living. Being a teacher and a coach is often a know it all kind of a thing. Um, I want to be a learn it all kind of guy and I often am. But I'm also often a know it all. I, I have the one virtue. I have the one sin often. So my name is Bill Gallagher, Scaling coach and host of this Scaling up business podcast. Our show comes to you every week with something to do with the world of Scaling Up. We've got hundreds and hundreds of shows now@scalingcoach.com or wherever you're watching. Listening to this right now. Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, whatever. We love it all. We want to be all places for all people. So like it. Subscribe turn on your notifications if you want to find out about our other programs, that kind of thing. Scalingcoach.com or you can go in the show notes. Scalingcoach.com is our website where we've got all our workshops and programs, classes, coaching, things like that. So that's where it is. I want to welcome to the show now Damon Lemby. Damon joins us from Sausalito today. He's the CEO of a company called Learn It. They're a global corporate training company and he spent over 20 years playing baseball, pursuing the dream, being coached by some Major League hall of Fame coaches and then join the family business and he's got some fantastic stories to share with us. We're going to talk about Axl Rose, we're going to talk about leaving behind a billion dollar real estate business. We're going to talk about all the lessons, the things that almost happened, the pandemic, and all that much more. Damon, welcome to the show.

Bill, thanks for having me. It's great to be here today.

Yeah, it's nice to have you on. So you're in Sausalito now, your business based in San Francisco, where I normally am.

Correct.

And you have got this business called Learn it, and you've got a book, the Learn It All Leader, that we're all about. The Learn it types, the learning leaders are the ones who earn the most, who excel and that kind of thing. People create learning organizations. So I'm excited to have you on.

Thank you. It's great to be here. And I actually like, during your introduction how you said sometimes we're a little bit of a know it all and a little bit of a learn it all, too, because. True.

You know, I think my tendency is to be a know it all. I, you know, I definitely am smart. I definitely have some experiences. And also I'll tend to be arrogant. I'll tend to move into a place of. Of. Of arrogance. And then my job is, of course, to observe and call out and teach and train. So it plays to being an arrogant know it all. Of course, that's not where I ever level up. And then I know it all gets schooled at some of the worst moments. Right. By life, by circumstances.

Absolutely. I totally agree with that. Yeah.

So you got a great personal story about moving to this business and the things that you learned along the way. We'll get to that in a minute. Let's start with Axl Rose and. And then we'll go to the Billion dollar and all that good stuff. Yeah, sure.

So I mentioned the actual Rose story in my book as just a way to talk about a little bit about decision making, and we can get through and talk a little bit about my family and my background and everything. But in the 2000s, I was kind of the. My brother and I, we were kind of the go to people to go to when it came to swapping hotel rooms with rock stars and rock bands. And I got a call in 2006 from a good friend, and he said, hey, Guns n Roses are playing. And this was when it was just. For those of you who know, it was just Axel and a bunch of no names. And the band, the main band was Slash, wasn't together at the time. And he's like, they're playing at the Warfield in September and they really want to do an after party. Is that something you could put together? And the person I was talking to is a gentleman by the name of Dean Delray, who's actually done a really good job as a podcast host himself on a show called Let There Be Rock. But at the time it was more of a roadie.

Yeah.

And long story short, we put together a party for Guns N Roses. And we. Right before the party started, the, the club owner pulled me aside and said, hey, we might have a problem here. I'm like, what's that? And he said, you know, there's a chance that the water may go out in the middle of the night and just want to give you a heads up. And this is like literally an hour.

Before you like your bathrooms and the bar and things like that.

Yeah, I mean at first I was like, oh no, no big, no, no big deal. Let's go to, let's go find a 24 hour grocery store and get a bunch of water bottles. And he's like, you don't get it. The if the water's out, there's no bathroom, everything. And he said, so what do you want to do? Do you want to move forward with the party or do you want to, you know, cancel it? So, you know, we looked at it and these are one of these decisions where in, you know, it's what's the worst case scenario? And the worst case scenario is we embarrass ourselves. It's not, you know, life altering or anything. So we went forward, didn't even tell the Guns and Roses guys had an awesome party and around 3:30 in the morning there was all these guys from Metallica and skid Row and everybody's like, well, where's Axel? You know? And I said, I don't know, but you should look around. There's, you know, there's guy Robert Shahilo from Metallica, et cetera that like 4 o' clock in the morning, Axel came in and he walked over to the VIP area, sat down, had a drink, garden got an argument with his wife or excuse me, girlfriend stubbed out a cigar and walked out and left. So, but, but the good news is that never had a problem with the water and the water stayed on. And I don't know how many people can possibly say that they had a party for Guns N Roses. So that, that's my Guns N Roses story for you.

That's funny. They show up A brush with fame and rock star. You know, my daughter texted us once or was it on the phone. I don't know. She's like, oh, I'm going to a party with Beyonce tonight. I'm like, oh, that's awesome. God, you live a great life. And then the next day we're like, so how was the Beyonce thing? Did you meet her? Like, was it cool? Yeah, it wasn't really that. It was something else. Like, is this whole thing. And like it was a bait and switch. Beyonce. Beyonce, bait and switch. Yeah. It's an interesting thing. And, and, and, and definitely a lesson of, of like leaning into circumstances, embracing a little risk. Right. And then not everything going essentially as planned. It's funny how some of those things like that, we don't think of them as learning moments, and yet we learn so much from them. Time and that kind of thing. So let's talk about your story a little bit next, I think. How did you go? You know, you, you told me as you're getting ready about playing baseball through school and wanting to go and so tell us about that. And then ending up in the family business.

Sure. So I basically, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area. I went all in as a kid wanting to be a major league baseball player. I was drafted by the Atlanta Braves out of high school. And I had a choice. Do I start the minor league journey or go to college? Took the route, the college route, went to Pepperdine, got hurt, struggled, left. You know, funny enough, they won the College World Series the year I left. You know, it just happens that way. I bounced around and I ended up.

Helped them out.

Yeah, I mean, I helped them out. They won the World Series as a small regional school, which is a great story. And then I ended up at Arizona State. I had a good career there, excited for the opportunity to continue my career, and didn't get drafted. And there I was, 22 years old. My dreams of baseball were shattered. And it's like, well, what do I do now? And I wasn't sure I had any transferable skills. I was fortunate to come from a family that had several businesses that I could join. A little intimidated. So I started at a brand new business as a startup at the time. It was Learn It, a computer training company at the time. And fast forward 28 years. I worked multiple positions and I've been the CEO for over 20 years. We've upskilled nearly, I don't know, 2 million people. And in my book, I talk a lot about my journey at Learn it and just my learning lessons in general. So that's in a snapshot that's really my story.

So who. Who were the coaches that you played under and. And what did you learn from them?

Great. So the first one I played for was Andy Lopez at Pepperdine, and he. He had two rules. Annie Lopez had two rules. Rule number one was show up on time. Rule number two was do the right thing. And so, you know, people and I. Coach Lopez and I actually caught up for the first time in 30 years. And we talked about this, and he said, show up on time. That's easy. Do the right thing. People are like, well, what does that mean? You know, can you be more specific? And he's like, no, do the right thing means do the right thing, whatever that is. You know, people generally, Bill, I think they know what the right thing to do is. Have some integrity and do the right thing. So that's really what I learned from.

Yeah, that's an interesting point, because we. I mean, we may have difference of opinion about what the right thing is, but very often we know the right thing, and then we do something else that feels more convenient or easier.

Absolutely. Right. Or try to cut corners.

I hope nobody will notice. Hope it'll turn out. Yeah.

Or don't. Or maybe don't prepare the way you should and go from there.

Right.

And then, you know, before I got to Arizona State, I played for a gentleman out of junior college named John Nochi at College of San Mateo. And he really taught me a lot about just drive and competitiveness. I mean, he was a tough. He was the head coach for the Italian Olympic team, but just a very intense gentleman who. I was a great coach. Great learning experience.

Interesting. So along the way, you're accumulating these experiences. Your family starts a learn it business. Is your dad.

Yeah. And before I get to that, I finished up at Arizona State with a legendary coach by the name of Jim Brock. And I actually played for him. You know, he coached Barry Bonds and others, and. But Jim Brock, I played for him literally the last year of his life. I. And he died while we were in the College World Series. And that was a.

Something.

I'll never forget how courageous he was to show up. And I got a kind of funny story about my last conversation with him, but it was. It was just an incredible learning opportunity playing for all three of those gentlemen.

It's interesting that we go through life and then suddenly we pass. Right. And you just never know when that time. Sometimes you have a lot of warning, like there's some lead in and some. They're gonna probably. More often, I don't know, the Stats, but. And then every now and then it's kind of a little bit more sudden and. But one way or another. And then I like how he spend that last time, the last year, the last week, the last day.

Yeah, he was going through liver. Final stages of liver cancer, so it was inevitable. But he chose to split, to spend it with his family was with him and his team and it was pretty surreal.

That's awesome. I mean, not awesome for the family and the grieving and the loss and the suffering, but awesome for people to be together through a challenging experience. Definitely. How sometimes I'll answer. Oh, that's awesome.

Yeah, yeah.

No, no, no, that's not what I meant.

No, it's not awesome you died. But yeah, it was awesome. We had to spend with his family.

Yeah, it's awesome that people could be together in a difficult time. So why, why this business? How did the family get in this business? Why did you join this business in particular? So after my career accident, you know.

Pretty much, I mean, never my wildest dreams did I imagine I would be in this business. And so after my career ended, I was kind of like, well, what do I do now? I didn't know if I had the skills to do anything. I mean, I figured that business was in my blood with my family. We had a really large real estate company and I was, you know, quite honestly intimidated. So instead I started off at this new business just opened up and start off at the. As a receptionist. And how the business came about was, you know, my dad just wanted to learn how to digitize his portfolio. Went, took a class on Excel. I remember this is back in 1995 or 93. And he thought the class was boring and slow and like a lot of great entrepreneurs, he just said, hey, there's gotta be a better way to do this. And in a nutshell, that's. That's where learn it came from and, and that's where I started.

Yeah, it's right. So he saw a problem, he's like, I'm going to. Other people must have this problem. I'm going to solve this problem for everyone. And that's a business. Right. That's actually one of the more useful ways to start a business. Other than there's this thing I could do. What business could I build around me?

Yeah, absolutely. Went, went solve. Found a way to solve it himself.

Yeah. And so was it immediately then a learning training kind of company?

Yeah. So we started off doing mostly Microsoft Office classes back in the windows 95 days. And then we've morphed into a leadership company and focused more on people skills over the last 10, 15 years.

Interesting. And your book, now tell us about the book. What's the point of the book, the message, the learn it all leader.

So my book, learn it all mindset traits and tools, it's really, you know, it's my personal spin on I think leadership and what I've learned going through, you know, playing for some great coaches and through my family. And a lot of it the book is broken down into the first part is being, you know, and it talks about the key traits of being a great leader like humility and curiosity and courage and resilience. And then the second half of the book is just how to implement those with some practical tools. And then I throw in there some stories like where we kicked it off with the Guns n Roses story a little bit. It's kind of a way to, it's pretty easily digestible book. Hopefully try to make it fun and interesting.

So you're now doing less computer training and more general business and leadership training?

Yes, I would say it's about 85, 15. You know, we're, we're working with companies when they are looking, you know, to upskill first time managers or maybe they're having challenges with communication or maybe they just want to build or need to build a learning culture. So we kind of help help them with that. Probably similar to a little bit to what you do with your scale up practice.

Yeah. So obviously the scaling up training is about company business growth. Right. And all the things that go into business growth. But then along the way we do a great deal of leadership development, specific leadership skills required to grow your company so that you don't get left behind or that you don't be the lid on the growth of the company by the way that you lead. So that's a big part of our training and adjunct. In fact I have got a book coming out on it myself about essential leadership skills. Yeah, great, we'll save some of that stuff. I've been starting to talk about some of the topics and things within that, the stories, lessons in, in our short shows every week.

How did you finally decide to come out write a book yourself?

So I've been working on my book for about five years and what's made it like more urgent is really thinking about where I want to be five years from now. The things that I want to have in place kind of require that. So it doesn't really solve anything to do with the, I mean I use the lessons, worksheets all the kinds of things in my work today. But having a book gives you much bigger platform, a much bigger audience. And so getting that done felt pretty essential for the next stage of my career. Like having that book that is the summation of the work that I've done over the last 18 years.

I think that's great. And I can't tell you, Bill, how many people have come to me since my books come out and they've said, I've always wanted to write a book.

Yes.

And if, I don't know if it's a compliment or not, but it's typically like, and if you can do it, I can do it too.

That is not a compliment.

Yeah, but, but it is. I mean, in a way, you know, as far as, you know, busy with a lot of. I got two little ones, I got a five year old and a two year old. I mean, it's got to find time to, to get, get all this done. But it was a kind of a rough, not, I wouldn't say rough, a frustrating process, but it's, it's rewarding once.

It'S done, you know, and my kids are very, very young. I had an idea for another book on a more of a technology lifestyle book. And I, it, I wrote a proposal, I pitched it, I got an agent, I pitched it, I sold it, we got an advance. And then I decided it wasn't enough and that I was making more money doing work in tech than writing and talking about tech. And so I, I returned, you know, passed on the advance and we never wrote it. And, and for years then I regretted that I hadn't done that because although my career went in different ways, I'm like, I would have liked that, like more for my ego than my self respect than anything else, but it would definitely have been. When I think about the title and what it was at the time, like it was so ahead of what people were talking today. It's a very common idea. But the title of the book was the Digital Nomad. And it was a time long before people would travel and work sort of remotely from all points of the world. And I would do that on a pretty regular basis back then. So.

Yeah, well, get this one to the finish line.

Get this one done. Yeah, actually we're a long way to getting this one done. This thing we're struggling with right now is actually the title, which is subject for another thing. Like getting a really great title is a challenge.

Well, you could ping me. I have somebody who's fantastic at that. We could talk about that offline. But I have somebody who basically does that for a living who's fantastic.

Oh, interesting. Well, there are some interesting books out there that have really got their home run on the back of a really breakthrough title and title testing and things like that. So it can make a difference in taking a solid book and making it get the kind of attention. Let's go back to your stories, your family in particular. What did you learn from this? So does the family still have this billion dollar real estate business or how'd that go? Would you learn from that experience?

No. So what you're referring to is in the, over the years, mostly from 2000, I would say 2004 to 2010, we were one of the largest. My family was one of the largest real estate companies in San Francisco. And through that. Yes. And I thought about that story coming on here about scaling up and growth and I learned a great deal from that. You know, I wasn't, I never worked there day to day, but I was kind of on the sidelines and watching my grandfather, Frank Lemby, who's a first generation American starting from nothing, a World War II vet, and he got it to a certain level and then you know, my father, Walt Lemby kind of came in and really helped them come through hyper growth in 2000, I would say starting in 2003. And, and it's, it's one of those situations where. And then it all kind of went away in the, in the last, the great, in the Great Recession. And it's something I was just reflecting back on. You know, my dad.

A lot of real estate went belly.

Up in that time and it's kind of happening now again. Yes. No, I mean that's, it's kind of, it's kind of top of mind now. And so we, we live that and, and it was, it was a crazy wild ride. And it was also I lost my dad died of cancer right in the middle of that too. You know. And so, but yeah, I mean there's certain things I learned that I'd be happy to share as far as what I think they did great and you know, kind of reminded me again. And certain areas where they were learn it alls and certain ways where they were, they were know it alls, you know, and, and, and what people can learn and what I've definitely learned from them.

It's interesting. If you're busy being a know it all, life will kind of hit you up side the head with lessons on a pretty regular basis.

Yeah.

And then you may not accept them you may not let them in. You may keep being the know it all about things, but that usually leads to some suffering.

Totally. I agree.

When you think about the, your personal history and your family businesses and where do you net that out to? What is your like, life takeaway and how does that show up in the book?

I think my life takeaway is. First of all, I think it's great to be authentic, you know, be yourself and doesn't matter if it's a billion dollar business or whoever you are, you should just treat people, you know, everybody the same. And then life always doesn't, doesn't always turn out the way you want it to be, you know, and then when it, when it, when you have to make a pivot and do something different, whether it's baseball or business changes, then work within the constraints that you have and make the best of it. Stay positive. Surround yourself with great people, which I've done my entire career at Learn it. People who are better and smarter than me, there's no doubt about that. Some phenomenal people. And yeah, I mean that's, I mean, in a nutshell, that's kind of what I've learned from my family business and in my, my journey.

Well, I hear, when I hear your stories, I definitely hear some humility, like getting some, whether it be health, losing people, having breakdowns, having businesses fail. I hear the humility coming through and then, and then also kind of going hand in hand with that. The courage to face those things and to keep moving ahead and keep working on things. Where do you pick up curiosity and where do you notice that and what does that mean for you or do you have a particular story around curiosity that you like?

Well, I think curiosity is kind of the theme or the stream that goes through, kind of through everything, you know, for, for assault for great leaders is being curious and being open to the idea that, you know, things can be done differently or better. You know, that's, that's kind of where my thoughts are around curiosity, which, you know, it's. Sometimes it's, it's difficult to, you want to, you know, sometimes shut down and feel like you do have all the answers. But, you know, if you're able to be open and learn from others and yeah, I think that you could really benefit from that.

You know, that annoying kid that in class would just like instantly raise their hand up all the time. Oh, I know, I know, I know. Call me.

Drive me nuts.

Yeah, I've often been that kid.

Yeah, I was never that kid. I would, I would just kind of sit in the back and look at the clock and see when, when is it, when are we going to get out of here? You know?

Yes, well, sometimes I'm that too. But if I'm at all engaged, I'm often, oh, I want to participate. Oh, I, oh, I have something to say. Right. And, and so I might be curious in some realms, but in other realms I'm just like, I'm just want to get in there and mix it up, which is, you know, not true in every realm. And I think each of us has a place where we're like, oh, and that's happening or well, so one of the things is I, I did almost no team sports as a kid. I'm pretty active, outdoorsy person, but almost no team sports. And so when I'd see stuff like that going, I'm like, yeah, that's not for me. Right. Some philosophical discussion or conceptual thing. Oh, I'm all in on that. Right. A little bit more on that on the, the brain side or some self pursuit like that. Like I think that each of us has places where we are more curious places where we just act unconsciously without thinking about it where or where we're stubborn about that, you know, that I.

Was thinking about reflecting back on this as well is like you look at. Let's take my dad for an example. He was very curious and he came up. I mean we had everything from a Chinese restaurant to shopping center. He always had all these ideas and curious about. About businesses and doing things. But then Bill, on the other hand, he was very close minded about certain things. You know, I mean it was either his way or the highway, you know, and a lot of that was. And I think that that's one of those. And I'm sure I'm that way too sometimes, but I think that, that there are certain situations with their business mostly around operational excellence. It would have been great to have some individuals who could have helped elevate and maybe done things differently than him and my grandfather wanted to do. Kind of like stay in your lane here. You're a visionary. Let's get some people here and see what they have to say on the.

More execution side of things. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I think that's a whole. So what do you notice about you? Where are you tending to be the know it all and where are you tending to be more open and curious?

I think I tend to be the know it all more when it comes to sales around our, you know, in that aspect of our business, you know, as far as what I think is the best approach to doing things. But when it, where I feel like I'm much more open is, especially these days, is how do we get our business to the next level overall? You know, how do, how do we go from where we're at to the next level? And I try to surround myself with others who have done that before and really listen and not be formulating another response to them, but really listening to what they have to say and taking their advice and implementing it when you can. So I think that that's where I fall between the know it all and learn it all.

Yeah, it seems kind of obvious. Well, let's talk about how you navigated the pandemic then, and what you did with your sales organization and tell us all about that. Well, I think we all went through a pandemic a couple of years ago.

Yes. You know, I mean, it was what I, what I, what I'm referring to in my book, I call it possibility spotting. And, and that is where, you know, the old adage or phrase, you know, making lemonade out of lemons and, you know, where we're out there, everybody's struggling, it's a horrible time. And you really have two options. You can freeze and do nothing, or you can see, you could take during this terrible time. You could see if there's any opportunity to evolve or get ahead. And that's kind of really the approach I try to take with it, risk taking is we said, hey, you know, there's a lot of businesses, especially in the beginning of this, that are, that are struggling. And so that must mean there's some great sales talent. And so I kind of thought about. Got curious and thought about what industries are going to be, because typically great salespeople don't get let go. You know, they. You typically hold on to great salespeople, but if you're in event planning and there's no events. Right. Or you're selling sports tickets to corporate, nobody's buying that either. So we kind of went in and I got a recruiter and sent out a couple hundred LinkedIn messages myself, and we ended up doubling our sales team. So. And which has kind of been a game changer for us because now we're able to, you know, sell more throughout the country and, you know, scale ourselves a different way. So that's, it's basically possibility spotting. I refer to as during a really challenging, difficult time, making the best of it and then sometimes even coming away stronger.

Yeah, I definitely hear curiosity coming into play, like, what's happening in the world. I remember as well, after the initial hit of the pandemic, right, we saw people kind of fall into a couple of camps. One of them was, you can't do anything. Just stay home, like, do nothing. Freeze, hold. And I. And I saw some businesses, people I knew fail because they were like, you just can't operate right now. And then we saw people who were like, there's no pandemic. Just go to work, like, go about your business. And some of those people got sick. People suffered, died. Things were impacted. But, you know, of course, there's something often still here. And then there was the folks in between that got a lot less attention because it was less political and whatever. And they were just finding ways. And you probably saw many of them around all of our neighborhoods and towns and cities where people just found a way. So if they couldn't have a restaurant open, they sold takeout or meal kits or they did things like that, right? The. The wait staff became delivery staff. The people pivoted in that. And then some, like you, like, said, oh, I could hire salespeople from these industries that are selling nothing. And I helped one event company navigate through the pandemic, and they did some virtual things. And then eventually they. They came back. But. But for a while, they were like, what do we do? Like, how do we. You know. Well, right away, it was pretty clear there's something to do for some of them. But some of them were like, you can't do anything right.

Well, yeah, I mean, that's. I kind of. Back when that was all going on, and hopefully we don't have to experience that again. I thought it was pretty amazing how some people came together and just made the best out of things. And like you said, you know, people who had certain jobs, all of a sudden they're. They're doing doordash or they're pivoting and selling stuff on the street, and communities came together and people, you know, I mean, it was pretty. A lot of humanity at some, you know, for the. For the group in the middle, like you said about. Right. Not the crazies who think there's no pandemic in my. Or the. The, you know, the completely shutdown. But I think that there is. It was pretty. Pretty great at some points.

Well, it's a big spectrum, right? I have family members, not immediate, but in my extended family, who are still afraid to interact with people socially.

And.

And then I have other people who are just like, yeah, we're not doing anything. We're not whatever. And. And There was no rhyme or reason to how it went for either of them. There was no connection. There was no justice or deciding thing. It just went how it went. And there were people that suffered. I mean, my mom nearly died several times and spent months in the hospital and never could live on her own again. And she's alive and well today, but. But it changed her life. And other friends and friends, family passed away. So real impacts I just want to acknowledge, first of all. But secondarily though, a lot of really beautiful humanity, all the slowing down and the coming together and the turning in and the connecting with family and the taking time and noticing and the quiet in the streets and the banging of the pans and the rallying to do things for people. And that was pretty cool, right? And I like, you know, there was something special as well about it.

Well, I. Absolutely. And I was just, as you were talking, I was thinking about all that. And for instance, my personal situation was my daughter at the time was like one or two. And I would, you know, I travel quite a bit for work and I was usually out and about, but during this time, I would put her down for naps Every day at 2 o'. Clock. When would there be another time I'd be able to do something like that?

You know, you got to be home, you got to.

Yeah, yeah, it was. Yeah, it was. It was pretty amazing during all the.

You learned to bake bread, but yeah.

I didn't do that. Yeah, yeah, but people are made masks.

But I. But in our world, there is a tool that we use when there's anything big like that. We use it about once a year with teams and annual planning. We use it anytime your business or your industry changes. And we use it across sort, you know, larger things. I used it in 2008, 2009, to rocket our business out of near success, our other business. And that is the SWT tool. We call it the sweat tool. It's like a swot except its strengths and weaknesses, but really just the core ones that never change in the company and then trends, what's happening in the world and looking really broadly at what's happening. So you look at events, you look at sports, you look at other kinds of things and you're like, ooh, there's salespeople. We could use some salespeople. And I think when you lean in with that kind of thing. So I looked at, with the sweat tool, I looked at, well, people are needing support, they need a coach more now than ever. They're worried about spending any money Well, I don't necessarily need money. I could coach for free. So I did. I was busy around the clock for a while and then many of those people were successful and that became a business. I also developed a lot of online tools. I focused on getting better on camera because that was one of my long term goals, was to get good on camera. Right, so what did you do? And not just the pandemic, but now for the people listening, what could you learn about what's happening in the world? And I think the thing is to look well outside your industry, right, not just at what's happening in your particular industry, sector, region, whatever, but look broadly what's going on in the world and see if you can spot something.

I honestly cannot agree with you more. I always recommend looking outside of your industry, looking adjacently looking, you know, for us, looking at maybe what, what is peloton doing that around their subscriptions? You know, how can you, how can you do that? I really don't like, I, I don't go in and focus on what are our competitors doing, what are they doing, you know, kind of look. I love that you said look broadly and, and again, get curious and. And what? And don't reinvent the wheel. What's that book called? Steal like an Artist. Steal like an Artist. You know, add pieces that can help your business, you know, get creative and think outside the box. So I'm with you 100% on that.

Well, it's a great conversation and we're touching on a lot of things about the importance of learning and being open and the humility it take. The humility it takes to be curious and to stay courageous in the face of things. The website is Learn It. Learn it right Learn it dot com. The book is the Learn it all leader. The Learn It All Leader. So being that kind of a leader who's. And I think it takes some will as we're learning to consciously choose to be a learning leader and set aside your know it all nests that we all have some amount of. It's a great conversation. David, thanks for being on the show with us. Reminder to our listeners, viewers. ScalingCoach.com is our website and that's got our summits, our boot camps, our workshops, our coaching programs, all that kind of stuff about business growth. So you'll find all that scalingcoach.com or of course wherever you're watching listening right now, like subscribe, turn on your notifications so you get it every time. If you want to do us a solid, give us a review that helps us in the stats and the following and that's a sweet thing to do to give us a honest review. If you're like, oh I like this, but Bill talks too much about that, that's fine. But we love getting that kind of public feedback and hearing from folks. You can drop us an email to info scalingcoach.com and then I want to give a big shout and thanks to my mentor, my friend Vern Harnish who created the Scaling up framework and the Rockefeller habits that came before it to who's not here today due to extended Internet outages, but Wanda Mitchell, our show producer who gets our guests ready and actually our clients and that kind of thing ready each week. So Wanda Mitchell, thanks and then to the folks at Podfly Productions, get our show ready, edited and out the door each week. Thank you Podfly for keeping us alive and getting things going. And to everyone for watching, for listening. Thanks. We'll talk to you again next time. Keep scaling up. Until then, Bye bye. Foreign. Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software. Powered by Align, 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.