Teaching the World to Lead and Closing Generational Divides with Ron Carucci

Welcome to Make More Marbles. My name is Brad Hart and we're here to interview the game changers, the future makers, the co collaborators and creators who are here to collaborate with one another towards a better future for all of us. Enjoy the show. We've got a great guest coming up for you right now. Welcome to Make More Marbles. My name is Brad Hart, and I am thrilled, overjoyed, and a little bit, I don't know, I guess excited. Like, this is just a new year. It's a new opportunity to kind of clear the slate of whatever 2017 was and now May 2018 to anything we want to make it into. And this is the first podcast that I'm recording this year with my friend Ron Carrucci. Ron, thank you so much for being on the show.

Hey, Brad, thanks for having me. Happy New Year. It's great to be here. Looking forward to kicking off a great conversation with you for the new year.

Absolutely. And Ron was actually introduced by a dear friend, Dori Clark, who is a political wunderkin. She's worked with incredible people. Check out that show if you haven't. And Ron came highly recommended by Dori, so I obviously trust that recommendation. And I would really love, Ron, if you could just kind of give us a sense of what the journey's been like for you so far. In case people haven't heard your name before and they know what you're up to in the world, we'd love to just kind of ground it with the hero's journey, if you don't mind.

Yeah, well, I'm not sure how much of a hero it is, but I have spent the last 30 years of my life traipsing the world of organizations and wandering through the hallways trying to provoke leaders who are on some type of messy, transformational journey to try and get them to do it without hurting themselves or other people. And so I get to spend my days with my colleagues at navilint, some of the most amazing consultants in the world. You know, in the noble, audacious, sometimes a little crazy work of helping leaders conceive of something that they haven't conceived of before and then construct a journey to get there. So whether that's, practically speaking something strategic, something organizational, or something personal from their leadership, we at the intersection of all three of those things, we play.

I love it. And, you know, it's hard to really predict the future. Right. It's hard to say, okay, this is what's going to come next with any degree of real certainty, certainly we can assign a probability and place our bets. But, you know, throughout your entire career, you've made a habit of helping people to create the future. What are some of the things that you've learned that you had to really just take as standard operating procedure in approaching these types of problems?

Ron? You know, it's such a great question, Brad. What continues to amaze me, and maybe it's because now I'm working with a generation. It's my peer group who are running CEOs of big companies, or it's a generation before me. So now I'm reaching back to the leaders coming up, and I'm astounded. For as much as we've talked about some of the same kinds of systemic issues, we still somehow run into the same challenges. So I'm perplexed by how much we're not learning from our own mistakes. I still get calls from leaders saying, we've got this major, audacious strategic challenge. We're on the brink of disaster. Could you do a keynote or, you know, can you help me write this memo? Better to manage this big change and the insanity of trying to reduce something as messy as and complex as the changes they're facing to something that's simple, easy, digestible, and quick. And I think, you know, I mean, there's no wonder that 70% of all major change efforts fail. It's because the one thing we know about that's true about change is that it's hard and we prefer not to do it.

So what you're saying is basically a lot of people are still waiting till the very last minute. Or at least that's what I'm getting, is like, the crisis has already happened. We had all these opportunities to shift the boat, but now the boat's about to crash into the rocks. Ron is called to come in and save the day.

It's amazing how many times I say, the second best time to call me was last week. The best time would have been to call me a year ago.

So can you give us an example, just to ground this like, of something that you're allowed to talk about and, you know, is a really good anecdote for or metaphor for what we're talking about here?

So major retailing is being disrupted by digital retailing. No big secret, right? If you're a catalog business and primarily you're, you know, and you've migrated to digital online work and you've never heard of Amazon, and you've waited forever and convinced yourself, you know, the forces of denial are strong, the two major contenders are almost always Success and hubris and denial, right? They conspire together in amazing ways to make leaders believe this too shall pass. And suddenly you have customers defecting and tell you that the exclusivity you thought you had with them, they can now go, you know, go on Amazon and get, you know, like if you own this factory in the middle of nowhere and you normally shop with one particular industrial supply company and one weekend you happen to be on Amazon ordering Christmas gifts and you think, oh, I need screwdrivers for the shop. I'll just get them here. Oh, and look, they're a whole lot cheaper. And finally you think, oh, crap. And so those kinds of, you know, I mean, there's no such thing as sustainable competitive advantage anymore, right? It's, it's your competitive advantage today and how you've chosen to differentiate yourself. And so, you know, those are two of the major forces in terms of responding to change that I find continually perplexing, that leaders don't have their eye on the horizon. They're not looking at the context, they're not reading the tea leaves of what's coming at them. But then when you get into unpacking, okay, let's right this ship before it truly heads off a cliff, you ask them, well, so tell me, what was your strategy? Tell me, who did you intend to be for the marketplace? You get everything but a strategy. You get all the classic counterfeits of a mission statement or a vision statement or a set of product objectives or a set of margin objectives or set of, you know, top line financial growth, usually delusions, not even goals. But when I ask people to tell me, who are you to your marketplace and tell me, why would somebody choose you over, over the next person doing what you say you do? What makes you better? What gives you the right to win and stay and compete? They don't know. They haven't done their homework. They haven't put the grooves in their swim lanes and stuck to their knitting. And so you, if you look, if you unpack and rewind the tape of their history, you see how many different places they wandered off the reservation, how many different places they bolted on new ideas or they just became dilutive in whatever the salesforce was selling that day, that was the strategy. And so now you have the arduous work of reclaiming some identity of who they are or who they're going to have to be to stay and win. And that's now I've doubled that transformation.

Okay, you talking, I'm going to unpack a couple things here because you talked about a sustainable competitive advantage, as if there is such a thing in the modern world. It kind of brings the entire thought of competition into the spotlight. And a lot of what we talk about here, and as you so graciously mentioned before, the show, is like this idea of grabbing for all the marbles. Is that still a sustainable method in the real world? Right? Is this real world that we're entering into? And for all of generations, talk of millennials not having to figure it out or they're always changing their mind, they're always doing this. It's really hard to compete these days, especially if you're not trenched and established. So extrapolating on that, moving into an exponential world, into an exponential economy, not just additive or linear or multiplicative even, but now exponential. Is an individual or company going to be able to compete except by being nimble? Or is the entire idea of competition open for reinterpretation?

Well, I think it got. I think it's a great question, Brad. I think it was reinterpreted and some folks didn't get the memo. I think we are no competing against versus competing for is what I think the shift was. And I think there are still people who think they're competing against in the zero sum game, as if consumers were that loyal anymore. Competing for meaning this is who you can count on me to be in the mind of your, of who you serve, who's giving you money is a very different mindset. It's a very different shift. And I think those who believe that whatever the market share is or whatever it is, that limited set of share of wallet, share of dollars, share of mind, share of whatever that a certain provider is up against. If you participate in your marketplaces, if you have a right to take that from somebody else, it's going to be very short lived, right? And you might turn ahead to compete on price or something else for a short season. But that's going to be hard to keep up with for a long period of time. And you're certainly never going to do it with someone else's dollars, investors or shareholders. So the only logical choice is to be able to compete for right on behalf of and those clients or customers you want to serve. But that requires you to submit to a level of vulnerability to the marketplace, both distinguishing its capricious whims from its supremacy, right? If you're here to serve, you have to. The will of your customers, the will of those who pay you has got to trump your own whims or your own desires. And that's hard sometimes to give up.

So it comes down to basically the un, the unshakable desire to add more value in the marketplace. Right. To really, truly listen to who is the people I'm going to serve, who are the people I'm going to serve? And from the questions that I ask them and the data that I get back, whether you're doing this on a one to one or one to many, or using huge organizational reach to do this, you have to really get clear on who it is that you're serving, what they want and how you can add the most of it to their lives as possible at a price that's so competitive and real realistic. Right. Because you could always scale up on price and not necessarily serve anybody.

Right. There's always that demand unless you're adding tremendous value where that price point is warranted. Right. But until you can tell me who you won't serve, until you can tell me what you're saying and who you're saying no to, you have no strategy. And so there is not an infinite number of answers to the questions you just listed out, Brad. Not for every organization. Now, if you're going to compete at a global scale and global reach, sure, you may have some diversification of your portfolio, you may have some different businesses you may try and get into, some countercyclical businesses to help offset businesses that may be prone to cyclical finickiness. But for the most part that's not today's average small or mid sized mid cap business. And so the discipline it takes to pick a swim lane and stick to it is hard. And whenever I talk to startup leaders, or I talk to venture capitalists or I consult to people on the beginning of that journey, they just gotten their Series A money and they think we're too small for that stuff. How could we possibly know? And I think that is so foolish. More than ever now you have to define yourself. Sure. Are you going to evolve and change? Sure. But not whimsically. If someone wrote you a set of Series A money, it was predicated on you having some idea about who it is you could sell this thing to for money, not just how you could exit. Right. And so I think for entrepreneurs especially, it's critical to get the questions of strategy and identity correct. Otherwise how are you going to scale? You can't tell me where are you going to add resources and muscle to. You tell me what you're going to be good at and you can't tell me what you need to be good at till you Tell me who you are, Ron.

That's a great point. And I think a lot of people, they either have one of two strategies, right? Folks like me who have been through enough startups and failures to know that if I can't sell something, I'm not even going to get into it. I'd rather never raise money again. If I could possibly do that, I would be a happy man. Maybe that's not realistic. Maybe that's me playing small. You could say anything about that and maybe it's true. Then I'll meet entrepreneurs. Also, that a good example is somebody I just had an interview with on Friday. They raised a bunch of venture capital and now they have $50 million valuation and 14 months later, they're crushing 700k month over month, 20% increase. It's great. So you can go either way. Certainly. Where do you see more people succeeding, I guess is the best question. And as such, what do you recommend most? Is it going the venture capital route? Is it raising bootstrap through sales? Or is it some third option that we haven't discussed?

You know, I think where, my gosh, if you, if you don't have to do with someone else's money, you're always better off, right? But I think it depends on how, what your aspiration is. If you really want to scale big and cash out, you're gonna have to do it with some. I mean, unless you're independently wealthy or it's your second time at the rodeo. Although interesting, the data always says that your second time around has a much higher probability of failure than the first time. Interesting because. And I think it's because of hubris, right? So I'm now taking a formula that worked for me once and I'm going to try. And it's not an attempt to be entrepreneurial a second time, it's an attempt to replicate your success. And that's often why the second ones fail so frequently, to the shock of the entrepreneur. But I think if you're going to use someone else's money, you need to be first of all, pick well. Right? There are a lot of, lot of people out there who would write you big checks. But you're hiring a boss, so be very clear what you want in a boss before you hire them. Because once you have their money, there's a lot more that comes with it than just the check. So be very clear. You're hiring someone who can add value to your journey of growth and scaling beyond just their money, or someone you're going to put up with at A board meeting once a quarter too often it's the easiest term sheet wins. And that's often not always the best choice. So having chosen to go on a bigger scaling journey, learn how to scale. So often leaders don't understand how to add resources, how to add capacity, where to build muscle, and so that you see this big blip in the body count showing up in droves and mayhem, and suddenly we go from 40 people to 300 people and people are running around not knowing what to do. There's no sense of organization, there's no sense of discipline. If you can produce breath on a mirror, you're hired. And now I've got this seemingly disorganized chaos that I've scaled and I don't realize if I'm not paying attention that hemorrhaging cost out the back door. And so doing the organization design work, understanding what capabilities you have to add and add, people don't realize that growth and scaling are different, right? And so they think they're growing and yet cost is ballooning almost at the same rate. And so scaling requires an art form of understanding organization, design and capability in a way so many entrepreneurs don't.

That's a really great way to put it. So one recent example is we're heavily in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space, which is exploding right now, rightly so, there's a lot of interest around it. Cryptocurrency is just recently top $500 billion in market cap and everybody's talking about that. One company in particular is getting a lot of the news is Coinbase. And I've had the pleasure to meet one of the founders, actually just randomly, very smart people, venture backed, us based, the whole thing. Silicon Valley's darling child, this cryptocurrency exchange that's going to be highly secure and easy to use. But what they're experiencing right now is a tremendous amount of growth. They're onboarding sometimes 10,000 new accounts a day, up to 100,000 a day during the holidays, which is absurd for any, you know, type of company to work with, provided you're not just a straight up software player, an app that you can download where it's very simple to make a little tweak or an update and you can scale again. They are, you know, bringing in people's money. They got to deal with the irs. They have all these different demands from Wall street to create better and better products and services. So, you know, if you were to put yourself into that world of these startups, you know, and I remember watching an interview with the, with Mr. Armstrong, the CEO, about how they just added 400 people to help just deal with all of this. What would be some of the things like step by step, okay, cool, we've got this situation. We have this opportunity to do this right, or to completely screw it up and ruin our good name. What are the things you focus on and how do you scale effectively?

So, and I'm, you know, for. Isn't it going to be fascinating to watch how those alternative currencies, how they fare? I think it's going to be fascinating. You can find as many predictors of great success as you can. I mean, just this morning we saw the article on Bitcoin is not going to be as great as you think it is. But regardless, adding that many bodies at one time, you're diluting a sense of culture and brand by the minute. Right? There's no way you could inculcate that much new DNA and graft it to an old DNA and think something good is going to come of it. So before you add a body, or in this case, if I were entering the story, I'd say before you add a body more, let's get very clear on the four or five ways you believe you are competing with whom you believe you are competing and what you believe. You know, I mean, now, in essence, those companies are selling trust, right? More than anything else, they are selling trust. They want. I'm sure many of them want to believe they're selling an investment, but what they're really selling is vaporware. So until they can garner the trust, they're really just a glorified casino, right? So how do you scale trust? How do you sell trust to make sure that the right accounts are signing up? There are some people for whom to. That's a really bad idea, right? The gambling addict would be one of them. But there are, for some people for whom it's a great investment, it's a great opportunity to buy that currency. How will you serve them? What capabilities do you have to have technologically from a service point of view, from an account and relationship management point of view, what are the muscles that are gonna make this thing stick, given how fragile right now it really is and how many of them popping up then? If you tell me These are the three or four capabilities that if I invest a dollar in, $5 comes in the door. These are the things that will help me stick and sell trust in this case, well, then that's where I want to see your bodies go. That's where I want to see your best talent go. You have to organize your most supreme competitive distinctions for effectiveness. The best talent with the best money. Everything else, which is 80% of the rest of your work, should be organized for efficiency. You have to do it on par, no better than anybody else, because you don't get paid for doing it any better than anybody else. And get a reasonable amount of talent and keep that work separate from the competitive work. Because the minute we mix competitive work and necessary work, we dilute it all. And so getting a basic model of the organization, a basic grouping of how the work glues together and how we're going to wire it together. And then I would talk about governance. Who gets to make what decisions, with what resources, with what authority to execute what part of your strategy. And get very clear on who's sitting around what tables making what choices and making sure they're not contradicting or diluting decisions that somebody else is making. Because when you go from 40 to 80 to 300 to 900 to 1500 to 3000 people that quickly, we are making, this is the wild, wild west, and we're making it up as we go. And so you have multiple organization designs proliferating, like in heavy duty mitosis, right? Cells are dividing here. And if you are not, if that is not dividing into one type of human body, you're going to have. You're going to wind up with somebody who had the classic, we had too much cosmetic surgery, we look like one of these people. And your audition will have no sense of identity. And now you compress. You have to have leaders reach so far down into the organization to keep things on track. Nobody's minding the future anymore because we're just trying to keep things from going off the rails. So that's how often how the story goes. But it sure doesn't have to.

That reminds me of a great quote. Growth without contribution is the motto of cancer. You kind of talked about the mitosis, the unregulated dividing of anything. What are all these people for? What are all these bodies here for? What is everybody doing? Why does everybody making choices? And if not tended to properly, then cancer can develop as a result and undermine the entire organization. So I guess certainly experience and the right people are part of this. People who have the capacity to act as if they're scientists as opposed to just winging it. Hypothesis testing consistently over time. But when you're just kind of looking to. To scale and grow, I think what you mentioned earlier is like, who are we really targeting? Who are we saying no to and why and how are we doing that in a way that is professional but also well understood and communicated properly is so important. And whenever you're in a large growth sector, because like the problems and challenges of these types of businesses that I was kind of poking at and hoping to get your perspective on is like these have never existed before. Can you name another company besides maybe like Facebook and Google and a couple others that has this type of challenge of scaling true trust as quickly as they're scaling utility? Yes, they're in the picks and shovels business. Yes, they're a glorified casino for now. But I believe cryptocurrencies are here to stay in some form or another. Which one could be debated till the end of the day. But some of these companies are going to win. We're just not sure which. What gives them the highest probability of winning when there's no rulebook, when it is the Wild West.

Well, and wouldn't you, if you were them, wouldn't you want to be the one deciding now before regulation comes in? Right before, I mean, you know, the irs, the SEC are swarming, trying to figure out how to get control of this. And the thing that I, we've all read as many articles as we can because we're all, everybody's sitting there almost with bated breath watching what Bitcoin is going to do. The thing that I, other than I get the whole no intermediary based it, you know, it de risks high risky transactions is the theory. Right. The thing that I found somebody needs to go do this research is, you know, I have friends who have bought lots of Bitcoin and I've watched the shares grow and are all going to buy my house with this money. I'm like, well, we'll see. I buy it now before we see what happens is why? Why out of nowhere did these currencies arrive? What was Japan thinking? And do we have an understanding of what's in the mind of these either institutional buyers or individual buyers? What is it they believe they're running? Because my fear is this, Brad, that they're not running to something. People are running from something that institutional trust. In traditional banking industries. We saw Edelman's survey last year. Financial services is the bottom of the barrel. Has been for a long time and now the bottom is even further when it comes to how dist trusted they are. Right. So is this the nirvana now? Is this the whole finally somebody we can trust because we, we think we have more control over this? I Think someone's got to do the socioeconomic psychological study of what is this mayhem about? And why are people running headlong toward these cryptocurrencies? Because. And what do they believe? What is it they believe is happening when they do it?

That's a great question, because I've actually headlong in this and talking to thousands upon thousands of people. I get over a hundred messages a day about crypto. We have people reading our cheat sheets been downloaded 10,000 times. We just rolled out a course, and this is not a pitch for that. But I had to step into the fray because I realized that people in my own little circle of influence actually do trust what I have to say, because I have a background in finance. I did start a hedge fund that was successful. I have been a trader for a very long time and I was in very early and I was In Bitcoin under 100 bucks Ethereum, I was buying like 8 to 11 Litecoin very early, the 20s range. All those have 10x or some of them have 150x or more. So people come to me and they say, all right, well, what is this about? Well, I'm like, first of all, have you ever invested anything before? And 8 out of 10 of them say no. 8 out of 10 people who are investing in cryptocurrency that I speak to out of the hundreds and thousands say, no, I've never invested in anything before. So that's interesting to me for a couple reasons, because guess what, it's good that they're excited about investing. It's good that they're finally interested enough in something to say, hey, with the extra money I have that I don't just have in cash or I'm not just using to pay the bills. I want to invest in something they believe in this future currency. What they don't seem to understand is just the very basic, tried and true ways to approach any asset class or any investment. How to manage the risk, the downside, before you even think about trying to participate in upside, they see all their unsophisticated friends getting rich too, because they got in early enough and they're telling them to get into this one or that one. We're going to see some of the biggest Ponzi schemes we've ever seen before in cryptocurrency. Massive billion dollar global scale, bigger than Madoff, mark my words. We're going to see them. They're starting to blow up already. We're going to see a lot of startups that fail, essentially. But more importantly, than any of that is that that's the hypothesis. People are getting into it for the reasons you mentioned, that lack of trust, that, hey, we think we can do better thing. And I do think it's a better system. That's why I support it. However, it's going to be a while before the kind of establishment gets into place and the regulatory bodies get into place. And additionally, we haven't seen a giant crash during which cryptocurrency existed. People don't remember or maybe they're not 100% sure. But you know, 2008, at the end of 2008 was when that first Satoshi Nakamoto paper was written.

Right.

That's the first known account of, hey, this is an idea for working cryptocurrency. It only came around in 2009 after the crash. And now we're at the height of another market bull run that's been going on basically since that happened right after 2009, that we've never seen a crash during which cryptocurrency existed. So if capital flight is the theory and it's real, we'll only know that after the fact. Right. If the stock market goes goes and takes a dump at some point, or the real estate market takes another dump at some point, or some major global crisis happens and everybody floods into crypto at that point, then we'll know for sure. But it's anybody's guess at this point. That's the way I'm currently leaning. I think that's reasonable to expect. Right. If people are, A, they never wanted to invest in anything before crypto, and B, they think it's the most exciting thing that's going to change everything, and C, scared and or distrustful of the current systems that are in place, you're going to see a lot of flight into crypto. However, I don't know that it's the best thing for everybody.

Well, and that's where I would hearken is that people, my guess is that if you got the crypto players, the two or three big ones, Bitcoin and others, and a wide range of the consumers who are considering the investment at the table together, and you asked the buyers, both inexperienced and experienced, what is it you believe you're buying? And you ask the crypto, what is it you believe you're selling, you wouldn't hear the same answer, not even close.

I know that to be true and.

I think until that reconciles until the marketplace, and maybe it's gonna take a little bit of a hiccup for it to happen until the buyers and the sellers are in the same transaction. This is gonna stay a little bit squishy, right? And so I do think that it's reconcilable. I do think that I'm not running from a bad system and I'm not looking at or it's the get rich quick. This is, this is my Amazon shot. I didn't buy any Amazon, but this is my shot to get my big thing and retire early. Right? So that's the casino lover. My guess is that a lot of the cryptocurrency folks don't even know what they're selling. They, you know, they, it's just, oh, this is cool. So but until they understand that the trust they're selling, the investment they're selling and the alternative currency they're selling matches what it is these people want and need and can sustain, this is going to stay a lot of paperware for a while. And I think once those two things reconcile, which at some point there'll be some forcing of that, either regulatory or technology or something will force it, then I think we're gonna have a very interesting new thing. Right? But until that, it's an interesting thing to watch.

It's fascinating. And it's not often that you get to live through a period of such exponential growth and so many things happening so quickly. I mean you went from, you know, when I traded the stock market, there was stuff happening back then that was interesting and exciting and there was these big moves and I thought we were up and down all this time and now that was nine to four. That was during very distinct hours in the day. Now it's 247 worldwide, global. It's crazy, right? So just to see how fast it's able to move is really interesting. And I just think it's going to continue to speed up because now you have not just human actors, now you have artificially intelligent actors, automated actors. I foresee a future possibly where a computer is going to have a really good idea one day at 9:00pm PST and by the time you wake up in the morning, you're going to have a billion dollar traded company.

And no.

Human had to do anything. There were no bottlenecks. You know, it's like this wealth creation process. I mean, who can really compete? Ron, at the end of the day, when you talk about competition with automation and AI, with robotics, with all the things that are coming, you know, it's either going to go one of two ways. I look at it as like, okay, the Very few humans that actually own, if it's ownable, these systems are going to be very wealthy, and the parity is going to continue to increase. Or what I think is more likely to happen is that the cost of serving food, energy, water, shelter, just the basic goods and services that people need, are going to become so cheap as to be almost free in practice, get them down to 1000 bucks a month. And this is something that I'm working towards, get our needs covered, our very basic needs, so that we can end the scarcity story and start to come from a place of, all right, we've got this new floor through which nobody can fall. You know, pain of death and starvation and being homeless is not really a thing as much anymore. And this sounds like crazy talk, but I've seen the future. It's coming. You know, what. What do humans do? How do we find meaning? How do we derive. Like, if we're not just sent out to work and find our way and compete with each other, where do we now create mythologies? Where do we now create meaning and stories? And that's something I think about a lot.

Well, I think, you know, so for the longest time, we wanted work to do that for us, right? We wanted our work to give us meaning. I think since 9 11, we've seen it become. We've seen the nesting thing, right, where families and community is now emerging. I think millennials want something very different from work than. Despite the fact that there are more similarities to millennials and boomers and Xers than we want to believe, there is still a different level of meaning they want. The thing that I find troubling about the meaning machines is the I want to feel something, you know, I want to feel part of something bigger than myself. But they all want to work by themselves, right? So the notion that big companies are now the employer of last resort, and I want to work with something small or I want my own thing, and yet the notion of creating something bigger than themselves is not really what they want. And so, you know, I think at the end of the day, I think our deepest human hunger is to be seen and be known by people that are important to us. And I think at the speed of which things moving these days, the ability to stop and see and know those around us and make people want to be fully who they are takes a lot more. Takes a lot more leadership than it used to, because you have a lot of folks in the workplace today who don't think it's safe to be all of who they are. You Have a lot of leaders who don't want to be vulnerable enough to see and know others. And so work is taking, I think, a marginalized place in the meaning story, which is great because millennials are the most socially justice minded generation in history, which is phenomenal. They were the generation we told would change the world. Turns out they believed us. Now we need to get out of their way. Let them do it. And let them, they want to get after solving some really intractable, pernicious social issues, let's let them. Right? And if they want to use capitalism to do it, great. So, you know, I think so the other day, New Year's Eve, we were having this interesting debate about bitcoin and I said, you know, when bitcoin goes either or some cryptocurrency goes public and it's a B corp, then I'm going to be interested. Right. So then, now we've really put our money, pardon the pun, where our mouth is. And to see a cryptocurrency become a B core, I think that would be, that'd be a head turner for me. Because now, at least before the one side of a table of the consumers have reconciled, at least the company itself has decided to. So I know who I want to be and what I want to sell. I think it'd be fascinating to watch. I think those organizations tend to be the kind that I think people are migrating where they can reconcile. I think the notion of workplace balance, work life balance is long gone. I think we need work life integration. And I think people are trying to bring themselves to work and live a life integrated with how they earn a living. And I think the workplace that can achieve that kind of lifestyle firm will be the ones that win. And that you can't automate that. Right. That isn't an AI replicable thing.

Yeah, I really appreciate those reflections and I think my next best question, and I'll set this up thusly, is like, you know, we're talking about capitalism as a tool, right? It's the best system we have, certainly. But just like Winston Churchill is off to say, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. There are certainly things that have happened in the past that were the best system at the time that no longer are the best system. Like for example, we don't use feudalism, we use capitalism. Now it seems to be the winner. But that doesn't mean that's not going to change in the future. Right. As things continue to progress. And what we know to be true now is not what we know to be true in 50 years. And you think of like, okay, cool. It would be really interesting if a crypto company or something that was out there in the crypto marketplace became a B corp. And that's a for benefit corporation. If people listening aren't familiar. And that's kind of a mix between profit and not for profit. Right. There's some elements of both that kind of come in the middle. And they think, a lot of them think in this term of triple bottom line people, planet profit. Because unfortunately, nature doesn't have a balance sheet, but if it did, it would be deeply in the red right now. Right. The resources that we're extracting from nature in order to drive the narrative of capitalism forward are unfortunately not being tracked. And what gets measured gets managed, as Peter Drucker was off to say. So I think about it as a couple different problems. In one, it's like, okay, cool, if you want to have that triple bottom line people, planet profit, if you want commerce and economies to be good for everybody, better systems to serve more people, I think these tools that we're creating, kind of figuring out are partners of that. But it's also that belief structure, right? It's like the people that actually participate need to care enough. Because, you know, and I'm sure if you've been around through the 80s, and I was just born then, but, you know, there was a whole period going on where it was like, I don't care about anything but myself and I'm going to make as much money as possible. And that's the American dream. And we needed to go through that to get a little bit of sobriety. But now it's like, okay, how do we create a world where whatever system we decide to use is the best system that benefits us? It benefits our world, it benefits our economy, it benefits our planet. And what are those kind of pieces that reach across the gap? Right? Like, how do I tell somebody from your generation to invest in something from somebody from my generation when they may not even be operating in entirely different. It's an entirely different world. Right. It's just not even the same thing. To compare it would be like comparing apples and oranges. But we have to bridge that knowledge gap. And how do we do that?

Well, so it's a great question. About 11 years ago, I did a bunch of research for a book called Leadership Divided. And it was before millennials were called millennials, but it was this emerging generational disintegration in the workplace. And I wanted to understand why were we using Labels like Boomer Xer, veteran millennial, to explain a relational conflict, because it didn't make labels didn't make sense to me. And so I dug in 3,400 interviews and surveys to understand these, and I just simplified it and called them emerging and incumbent leaders because. And the question I discovered in the research was not which are you? But which are you? When. Right? There are days I'm the millennial and the people your age are the boomer. Right. So the question for me across generational workplaces is, and I think I asked this of my, what do we think our responsibility is? Right. So in the last year since I started working with Dori, you know, there are days where I'm being reached back to to get help, and there are days I'm reaching back people earlier on the journey to give help. And I think we understand our responsibility to do both, to take help and offer help. So to get out of the zero sum game thing, then I think we can build that bridge you're talking about. I think that there are always going to be folks, you know, so entrenched in their ways. Some of them are among my peer group. Some of them are in your peer group that, you know, changing their minds is, you know, I now, I am very aware now when I walk into organizations and I'm sitting with CEOs who are seeking my advice and looking around the table of their teams of people who are dismissing me because I'm older, who think I'm irrelevant and obsolete, and I'm very aware of, wow, I'm the white guy and I'm other now, right? So I think the paradigms of who we let into our bubbles, who we let into our echo chambers, who we dismiss and who we listen to predicated based on our own sense of who thinks like me and who doesn't. I think that's a lot of where the fragmentation exists, right? Cryptocurrency is intimidating. It's mysterious. Cryptocurrency is what the Internet was 15 years ago, right? It's this mysterious force out there that we don't know what it's going to be. Well, now we get the Internet, right? I mean, we know what that is, but it took a long time. And so how you get people to have faith, I think. I don't think the merits of the idea are the answer, right? At the end of the day, if someone from my generation is going to give you a check for a cryptocurrency investment, it's going to be because I trust you, Brad, not Because I think the idea is great. At the end of the day, what's going to win me over is not something you can put on in an analytical spreadsheet.

Yeah.

Your integrity, the character on which I believe you conduct yourself, the sense of trust you win from me will ultimately be what forms that choice.

So it's that basic human stuff that we always had, regardless of the technological times or the platform.

And gosh, don't we need it now more than ever?

And I've even seen this, like, I have a legitimate business in the Internet marketing space. We sell products and services to entrepreneurs, investors, philanthropists, and we do that all the time.

We do it really well.

But guess what? I won't be able to raise money for this company. Nobody believes in it but me. And maybe that'll change hopefully soon. But digital companies are just as valuable as, you know, it's this idea of like, the only assets that bankers will look at are tangible assets that they can essentially get leverage on.

Right.

It's this idea of collateral. Well, digital goods and services are collateral, too. They might be a shorter cycle and we don't know how we know the risk models for them. Yes, it's a wide open space. But, you know, I really feel like people with money and access and power and experience need to start having more conversations with entrepreneurs who are really actually doing good in the world and scaling.

Do you not see a shift in the venture funding and even some of the private equity money? Do you not see that loosening up now and people being more willing to.

Yes, and I feel there's still this disconnect between, like, all these cryptokitty people that are doing this token and this basically a marketplace or an ecosystem that they're trying to create that may or may not have no utility and anybody like me. And I'm kind of in between the world. I see how assets work and how investing works, and I'm like, well, even if that company wins, right? Let's say they build something that really does have utility and it wins. And it's like the next Facebook in crypto or blockchain or whatever problem they're trying to solve, how is that even relevant to my investing dollars? Right. Just because I have a token in this new ecosystem, does that mean anything in real world? Like, do I have any equity in that company? Do I have a collateral or not a collateralized debt obligation? What's the word I'm looking for? Convertible note in that company? Do I have any debt against that company? I don't own anything that company, I own your frickin tokens. You made up in 20 minutes and coded in solidity and put on the Ethereum blockchain. And now, now I have that. What the heck is that?

It's almost like a video game, right? It says it's like some virtual alternative universe that I'm playing a game in that I bought into. But you know what made me think as you were describing that disconnect read is one of the things that the digital world did in spite of more traditional investors was it grew up and found its way without their money, right? I can go on the Internet, I can open up a website, I can do it all myself. I can start collecting commercial value for whatever it is I'm offering on the Internet. Intellectual capital services, goods, podcasts, affiliate dollars, you know, I can now generate and proliferate large sums of money without you, right? And it was kind of a part of my thing, was a big middle finger to them, right? Was the whole digital space. So now that's part of what we have to get over is to turn around and say, okay, now we kind of maybe could use your money, right? And so they didn't bother to learn the space. A lot of my peer group, the days I'm trying to explain digital marketing, content marketing and social media marketing and all this stuff to my own firm, it's like I'm speaking French, right? And they're my age or younger. So I think part of the challenge is. And it grew up fast, right? I mean, digital years ago to today.

Is just insane how fast.

I mean, you can't even measure that, right? All largely without maybe on the front end with some BC dollars, but other than that, traditional investors. And who can explain Amazon, how do you go this many quarters without returning any share money to your shareholders and still be praised for that, right? Whoever thought that was going to happen. And you know, and Jeff gets to say, well, we're not for everybody. And suddenly it's okay. There's no other traditional bricks and mortar company in the world could get away with this many quarters of no returns and be getting applauded for it.

Well, because he came at it with a different angle. He said, listen, your profit is my opportunity, therefore I will maintain zero profitability on purpose for as long as I possibly can to gain as much market share as I can so that I own all the relationships and I show everybody a better way to do commerce.

And he did and it worked.

And he was the richest man in the world for a minute back there, I don't know if he is at this moment, I haven't looked at the stock price, but it's crazy to think that that being completely contrarian worked to the effect that it did.

Well, have the only people who have.

Ever changed the world been the crazy contrarians that think differently? You know?

Well, so now he's got to stop paying some shareholder value, some dividends, right? So I think when people start actually making money on the stock, then we can say it actually worked. I think we have a reason to believe it will. I think the question of how many more businesses is he going to disrupt and ruin? Right. Which is what he's doing. Not intentionally with malice, but that's what's happening before people start to resent him. Right? Before people, you know, he becomes the Walmart to the Woolworths and the mom and Pop stores. So I think it'll be interesting to see. I mean, I think the Whole Foods thing was crazy, right? And so now he. There's. I think they're having their own identity questions around now. What do we do?

I live in one of the only communities ever kicked out of Whole Foods. We had a Whole Foods in Encinitas. Gone. So, I mean, people's consumer taste is changing. You know, people want to shop small. They want to do what they were gonna do. But I don't think it's all people. I think it's people with an amount of money and excess disposable money where they can vote with their dollars instead of. I'm just trying to survive. Right. Because time, energy, and attention are really what they're trying to reclaim. It's just, how can I get my problem solved as cheaply as possible so I can move on with my life?

Yep.

I'm just seeing so many different things conflagrate and crazy changes happening, and it's just really. I'm grateful for the opportunity to really discuss this with. With somebody who is more entrenched in, you know, kind of the more established worlds. And I certainly don't have. I've never been corporate. I've never worked for the government. I've never worked in a political think tank. I've never been to. I walked down K Street, but that's all the experience I have with that. So to be able to kind of match and mix with you has been really wonderful. Ron. So just to kind of sum up some of what we've been talking about, what are your thoughts like? Let's say you had a microphone that magically was able to speak in everybody's ears. Around the world. What do you wish everybody knew?

Oh my. I wish everybody knew. Your voice matters. Don't be afraid. So one of the things we learned in my research on rising to power was that despite the fact that we continue to see even the Vanity Fair article from this morning, right, the whole brotopia, gross Silicon Valley sex parties, even though we continue to see gross abuses of power, the greatest abuse of power continues to be abandonment, right? People not using it at all. And so people believing the power you bring with your role, your relationships, your information, your knowledge matters and can have impact. And if we all showed up every day believing that was the truth, whether when we were a giant global company or working for ourselves, I think we could all collectively make changes in the world that we all look around, agree, need to be changed. So I wish people would wake up differently about their own agency in the world. And secondly, I wish people would take a second look at organizations at scale. They're not all the evil empire, horrible fire breathing things that people make them out to be. There are actually many big corporations doing great things at scale that small ones can't. And so I hope that and then I hope big organizations start behaving more responsibly in a way that re earns the trust that they've come to lose as the employer of last resort.

Yeah, that's really important, Ron. And thank you so much for being here today on the Make More Morals podcast. We always strive to not only receive and we want to just thank you for taking your time and sharing your perspective from the halls and annals of the more successful established world, but also to give back. Right. We want to create an opportunity right now to help you move your mission forward. And the way we do that is we connect and catalyze resources, opportunities, people and systems together to help you do that. So what is a way that anybody on my team or myself or anybody listening might be able to help you out?

Yeah, well, a couple of things. One, come visit the website www.navalent n a v-a l e n t.com Come visit Hangout. We've got some great videos and articles. We've got a great quarterly magazine sign up. Join us for our own learning journey. We have some great resources@navilant.com transformation we have a great free ebook on leading transformation in organizations to help you out with yours. So come get that and join my journey. I have a new one of my new TED talks is out recently. Come watch it and let me know what you think. Congratulations on a topic we talked about power. So spread the word. Put that link in your show notes and let the world see that. That'd be a super help.

Absolutely, Ron. Yeah, we'd be happy to spread the message and if people want to reach out to you with thoughts, questions, comments, how is best to do that? Is there a contact form on the page?

There is on the website. Just hit the contact form and put it to me and I'll get it.

Awesome. Thank you, Ron. I really appreciate you taking the time today. Any parting words of wisdom for the audience?

I love that you're trying to make more marbles, Brad. Let's keep making more marbles. We need them.

One day we'll have made enough marbles. That's the key here.

It's not an.

It's not a mission that will never end. One day we'll have food, energy, water and shelter for every human being on planet Earth in a sustainable way. I'm not talking mansions and private jets, but we can get to a place where we got the basics covered and that'll really upend our scarcity model.

There is. There's enough food on this planet to feed four times its population.

It's stupid.

So it's really. It's really stupid. So this is not a supply problem.

It's a belief system. And there's perverse incentives and everything else. So we could dive into that maybe on another interview some other time.

But thanks for. Thanks for the good work. I appreciate it. Keep it up.

Thank you, Ron. Thanks so much for listening to the Make More Marbles podcast for more tips, hacks and strategies to create an amazing, abundant life in your health, wealth and relationships, whatever that means to you. Head on over to makemoremarbles.com check out our cool explainer video about what we're about, and join our community of entrepreneurial game changers. We want to help you level up your life in every possible way. And don't forget to subscribe to us on itunes, Stitcher or Google Play wherever you listen to your podcast. And please do leave a review. Thank you so much and we'll see you on the next podcast.