Creating Happier Employees and Work Culture w Dane Sanders #281 Entrepreneurship Elevated Podcast

Alright, my friend— friends, stay on the microphone when you laugh like that. Keep going, let it all out, let it all out. Alright, my friends, you're gonna let it all out on today's episode, so you better strap on your rambunctious Jeep because we're about to discuss how to make your employees' dreams actually come true, which will make your dreams come true. You You're about to discover that and so much more on today's episode of Entrepreneurship Elevated. I see energy, right? That's all I got. That's all the mustard I have, Kelsey. Hey guys, I'm Mike Michalowicz, the author on a mission to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. Do you know— what is that? I can hear that on the mic. You banging around there, Kelsey. Was that you, Kelsey, or was that Jeremy? So, uh, you know—

That's my version of grunting.

Is slamming the table. He's coughing over there. The whole studio's a mess. I'm on a mission to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty, that challenge we face as entrepreneurs in achieving our dreams. Well, we fix that on this show in every episode, so make sure you listen to every episode. Also joined in studio by my desk-banging friend Kelsey Eris.

Uh, can you take that back?

Yeah, sorry, you're a desk-banger. Oh, and a weird laugh, like you're—

what?

No, you actually had the best laugh.

New nickname.

Weird laugh. Desk banger.

Guys, for real.

No, no, you won't be. No, you're KRE, Kelsey Ruins Everything. You are Sparkle. And now you're Desk Banger.

On that note, hello friend. Thank you for listening to us. And if you could, please subscribe wherever you're listening and leave us a comment.

Yeah, review. Don't call her a desk banger, Mike.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

I'm not, guys.

And join studio also with Jake Blone. Hey, welcome, sir.

Thank you.

Did you take the motorcycle up today?

I did not. It was a little chilly.

Yeah, yeah.

I only have a couple more weeks of riding left, and then—

yeah, that's my big question. What's the temperature range where you can't ride anymore?

So when it's summertime and it's, you know, 85 and 90 degrees, it feels like it's 85 or 90 degrees. Because you get the heat coming off the bike.

You might get the road too, I guess.

Yeah, you might get like a little breeze, plus you got your gear on, your helmet and stuff. Oh yeah, I would probably— I think the, the lowest temperature I ever rode in, and it was really cold, was around 42.

Oh wow, that's really cold.

Yeah, when it gets 55, it gets, uh, that's the magic number. Yeah, yeah.

Talking about gear, I realized my little aspirations for mixology— you can't do that banging. I'm not trying to be a pain, you just can't because it picks up. As I'm aspiring to be a mixologist, but I'm not, I noticed for the last 5 years I've already been dressing— I've been wearing the mixologist uniform.

Your hipster clothes, you mean?

Yeah, I don't know if it's so hipster. It's a vest, it's the rolled-up sleeves. Now I have the necessary bracelets, the beard, right? I'm morphing into a mixologist. But I have no mixology skills. It's like—

You don't have no, you have some.

Some, but I can only make a few drinks. I think it would be like seeing someone walk down the street with a guitar slung on his back. He's got the— this is an '80s reference— like the spandex on, the blown-out hair, like an '80s hair band, and then can't play guitar or sing. That's what I think I've become.

You're like Milli Vanilli.

I was at— this is true— I was at a presentation. I am like Milli Vanilli. That just landed and it hurt. And it really hurt. Didn't one of the guys commit suicide from that?

Oh, I don't know. Is that true? Then I feel bad.

I don't know. We are going to do Dead or Alive today, and I won't know the Milli Vanilli facts. Don't look it up. Don't look it up. I may try to Google it while we're doing it. I thought, I thought, yeah, but I'm at an event to keynote. I'm dressed like I am now, and some of these events are at like, like an elk lodge, like a glorified elk lodge, right? So the green room was the bar, and they also were serving coffee in there, so I'm kinda sitting there, and they said, hey, if you want a little quiet, just sit near or behind the bar. I'm like, okay, so I'm taking my notes down, and one person comes up and goes, hey, Keep, I'd like a mimosa. And I'm like, what? And they're like, Keep, Keep, first of all, who calls him Keep?

I like that though.

People go to Elk Lodge, a mimosa, so I tried to make a mimosa, but all they had was the water was functioning, so I was like, will water do? And then I spoke.

Is that a lie?

No, true story.

You gave him water?

No, that part's— that, that was poetic license. I was called to keep— I said, I actually, I'm gonna be speaking here. And they're like, really? How often do bartenders speak at an event?

I love you call lies that you say poetic license. I would use that. I would use that in life. No, I wasn't lying. That was just poetic license.

It's poetic license to round out the story. Duh.

Do we have any, uh, shout outs, Kels?

We do. This one comes from Elizabeth Grugs. She writes, I heard you speak for the first time at our RESA convention a year ago.

Where I served a mimosa.

July in Vegas and learned about Profit First. Since implementing it, I've made great strides in my business, cash flowed everything since reading it, paid off a lot of debt, tripled my income, and hired 2 people. This is huge for me since I've been a one-woman show for 20 years, but I still have a way to go. I just began Clockwork and I'm making commitment to try and get some of my life back for my children, for my husband, for my sanity. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and helping entrepreneurs eradicate poverty, financial and otherwise.

Oh, you are welcome, Elizabeth. And, uh, is that last line you shared about, well, near the end about getting back your life and giving time to your family? That's what it's about. Someone asked me, how do you define success? And how I define it today is simply joy. Like that's the translation. Are you living joyous? And I think our business is a means to get there, and it in itself can be joyous, but there's so many other elements it needs to provide.

Yeah, I know internally we were talking about the perception of profit first, and really when we say it, we mean life first. Like, it's, it's not about profit first, it's about having a life.

Yeah, sustainability. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some people like, oh, profit first, the guy's all ego, clearly surprised he ever got past bartending school. And no, it's not, it's, it's just about the challenging the formula where we've been told profit comes last, it's an afterthought, and saying no, no, your stability comes first. You gotta put the oxygen mask on first. Talking about oxygen masks, I want to thank our corporate partners. That doesn't translate at all, does it? Nextiva is a voice over IP phone system and next generation CRM. And I also want to thank Process Street, who we actively use, for their workflow system. We'll give you more details on those folks in a little bit, but let's get to the, let's get to the event at hand.

How's that?

Yeah.

How's that sound?

Sounds great.

Okay.

His name is Dane Sanders. I know he likes to drink, cause we spent, we met up down in the Bahamas. Not, hey man, what are you doing down here? Nothing, just hanging out. Oh, me too. It wasn't one of those. I was speaking down in the Bahamas.

And, uh, clarifying.

That sounded kind of weird. So then Dane and I, we met down in the Bahamas. We went to a bar and we just hit it off. We were just talking about books and stuff. He is a best-selling author himself. He's written two books that Seth Godin described as a priceless gift, Fast Track for Photographers and the Fast Track for Photographers Business Plan. He has degrees in business and philosophy and has a career as a creative entrepreneur and teacher. Dane works lives where— Dane's work lives, gosh, where creativity and commerce collide.

Here's your fund.

Oh my God, because I'm sick. He also believes the The fastest way to the best version of yourself is going after your dreams like your life depends on it. With no further mess-ups, I want to welcome Dane Sanders to the show.

Dane, welcome! Welcome, Dane!

Thank you, guys. Thank you, Mike.

Was that the worst intro ever?

Maybe, maybe like top 10, top 10 for sure.

So I turned you on to, uh, tequila gimlets, I think is what we were firing back in the Bahamas.

That's what you were serving up, and, uh, I was impressed. I, I only knew gimlets from Gimlet Media, and I never had I've never seen you with a gimlet before, but you seemed well-versed.

Yeah. Yeah.

It, it was not your first gimlet.

No, it was not my first rodeo with a gimlet. And, uh, that turned into a confab. That's just using that word that you two would not recognize. Confab around, uh, different entrepreneurial topics. And one of the topics we were talking about is dream alignment. I, I thought it was fascinating. Tell me what, what you mean about this, uh, of addressing entrepreneurial dreams employee dreams and aligning them all together?

Yeah, well, I think you kind of have to go back to how the economy that we're in and how we were incentivized to work. Like, if I have a company and I have a bunch of people who work for me, basically the message that in our culture that we give is, if I'm the owner, my job is to get the most amount of talent for the least amount of money. And if I'm the talent, my job is to get the most amount of money for the least amount of effort. I think that's kind of jacked. I think there's a sense in which people are, especially in this moment, this cultural moment where people are so overwhelmed, anxious, just from keeping up to FOMO to anxiety and loneliness, even in our hyper-connected world. As a result, we're incentivizing our people to have kind of the minimal viable contribution at work. And, and as long as they get paid, then that's okay. And I don't want to be cynical when I say that. It's in the data. Like, if you talk to Gallup, they're saying the workplace, uh, study, 67% of the American workforce right now describe themselves as disengaged. And of that, 12% describe themselves as intentionally disengaged, like actively disengaged. What was the number? 12%. 12%. And it's— they're, they're in this place where they're trying to save back some energy for themselves just to keep up on social and keep up on their lives and give the impression they're giving their most at work. We don't think that's the way humans thrive. I actually think that people give— when they give their most at work, they actually get their most, but they're just not incentivized to do it. The industrial age kind of thinking around ownership of a business is kind of a scarcity mindset built in where it's like, "What are my people doing? How am I tracking their hours? How can I make sure I'm getting my return on my investment?" I actually think the data bears out that if they took a slightly different approach, they'd get a lot more from their people and their people would get a lot more from work.

What happened to pride in work though? Doesn't everyone show up with pride for what they do? Isn't there shame to not bring your best?

Well, they're bringing their best to their lives. I think people live in a more integrated way these days and there's a significant separation between, you know, going to work and going home, uh, their home life and their work life. If you're perpetually plugged in and the common denominator is our devices in our pockets, if that's always on and I'm always notified and I'm always, uh, available, there really isn't that distinction anymore. And they're— they are trying to bring their best. They really are. They're just trying to bring their best everywhere all the time, and it's overwhelming. And they don't have great strategies, um, to, to even pay attention to what they really care about. They're just trying to make it through another day.

Tell me about these 12% that are actively disengaged. Does that mean they're working against the company?

They're thinking about what's next. They're en route to the next thing. Once people and employees kind of hit that place, there's a diminishing return. If you're just looking pragmatically as a human, as a resource, and that's all you cared about, you probably want to get rid of that person at that moment, but you don't know when that moment is. They've begun all the research tracks when people have this thing in their mind of there's something better, that I can go get my dream to have happen, they actively start moving in that direction. Some people arrive with that intention. Everything is a stepping stone to the next thing, and that's really too bad because they never really land in a place where they feel like they're contributing and giving their, their best in one spot. There's this— here, here's where, here's where it comes from. There's this haunting quote, man, from, uh, Søren Kierkegaard, this old philosopher guy who, who said, man finds the level of despair he can tolerate and he calls it happiness. And for me, that's like, what, what, where am I tolerating despair? And candidly, I— my background was as a photographer. I shot for 12 years and spent thousands of hours with the consulting side with these small business owners. It was a rich time and I was one of those people too. But when you work for yourself and especially as the gig economy is exploding and even as major companies are hiring gig employees all the time, they're kind of navigating life in the open ocean on their own. It begins to make sense why life is so challenging.

You know, one of the risks here, if I'm a small business, I make my first hire, that's 50% more staff. I was the first person, and there's a 1 in 10 chance, 12%, greater than 1 in 10 chance that the person I hire is going to be actively disengaged. And now 50% of my workforce is not working for me, but maybe even working actively against me.

How do I— yeah, or at least actively looking at that. Yeah, so not moving the business forward. But I, I think there's That's right. And there's a way, there's a way to—

that's what I wanted. And that's what I want to know now. So now, now the pain's in place.

How do we relieve this? Well, so if you look at global companies, uh, it's closer to about 70— wait, it's 70%.

I'm just looking at it.

Just came in. 72%. I'm looking at the study on my desk around the corner. Uh, forgive me, but, uh, 70% of the world's best companies though are people are actively engaged, like highly engaged. And so there is hope. We know that when people lock into a mission and it becomes meaningful for them at work, they really do give their best. Those are the super competitors. Those are the ones who really, really do well in the marketplace. Usually, it's when they find meaning at work, when they find there's a connective piece to it. This isn't just a transaction anymore. It's not just I'm getting paid off to come in and trade my talent and time in. They actually begin to see it as contributing. To something bigger than themselves that they define as meaningful. And when that can happen, things really begin to shift. I'm part of a startup right now called Tell Me Your Dreams, and it came out of a digital ad agency in Southern California. It started about 2 years ago, and they, in the course of these 2 years, they've instilled this kind of idea of what would happen if we were to If we're going to ask our employees to give their absolute best to our mission, how could we reciprocate and create a symbiotic relationship where we care at the exact same level or even more for the individual dreams of the people who come and give their heart and soul for this place? What, what could happen? Well, what happened was in 2 years, 2 years in a row, actually, uh, this company Common Thread Collective, they became a Glassdoor Best Place to Work both years in a row, Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Companies both years in a row. And those aren't like— like people are lining up to work at this place. They're telling their friends to work at this place. Even when people move on, they're referring business back to that place. The goal isn't just to kind of retain people forever. The goal is to do what they call positive turnover where you're anticipating— like if they have a dream that's beyond the scope of what we can offer here, we actually set them up and give them an off-ramp to get there. Well, what that sparks is a sense of I don't have a lifetime sentence at this place. I'm either going to have the job of my dreams, or they're gonna help me get the job of my dreams. And you also exit people right at the moment when they stop giving their best. And you've created space, you can get in front of it, you can see it coming, you can plan for it.

It's radical. That, it sounds like a dream company. It doesn't sound though possible for my little business to have people lining up the door wanting to come in here. But maybe it is.

How do I start this transition for,, you know, just a regular everyday small business. Well, well, before, if I can, if I can, there's one more piece to the puzzle that I think can be helpful. So not only, uh, is if like picture, if you can tap into somebody's dreams, all of a sudden you're tapping into an internal personal drive that's significant. But the other part that, uh, we've stumbled into, uh, with Tell Me Your Dreams is we, we've actually, the people who deliver this, this coaching mechanism where we actually ask people, hey, what are your dreams? Who are you? Where are you going? What are your dreams? We actually have brought in mental health professionals to do it, so like marriage and family therapists, people like that. They come in and they work one-on-one and in small groups with people in the company to identify, explore, declare their dreams, and then pursue their dreams until they achieve it. As a result, not only are they getting their dreams to come true in the context of their work, individual dreams that don't have to do with the company, they're getting proactive mental health at the same time. People who had never done the door of a therapist's office, all of a sudden, they're invited to talk about not their issues but their aspirations. The folks that are facilitating the conversation are trained mental health professionals. Not only are you getting a more motivated workforce, you're getting a healthier headspace in all those people. All of those kind of internal existential dilemmas, they have a place to talk about it now, and that's what is the biggest game changer. We've seen this work in— companies, as like just working with executives, like really individual people, to groups of say 15 in a company, to right now we're in conversations with like Procter Gamble, tens of thousands of employees around the country— around the world rather. You know, Zoom, they just went public. Forbes just called us, they want— they think this could be the future of work. Like there's a lot of momentum about mental health, but also tapping into this organic motivation when you take the time to be concerned about not just your interests but the interests of the folks coming in the door.

I mean, this sounds super exciting. I just question if my colleague, if their dream is to, I don't know, to reconnect with old family members, lost family members, how can a business influence that? Is it just an awareness that that's what they want or just something I can do to actually support that dream?

Great question. It all comes down to how do you define a dream? So, the way we define dreams is it's in two parts. The first part is it's an aspirational identity. It's who do you say you wanna be? And whatever you wanna frame that up as, like, people can get really vulnerable with these things. They can say something as light as like, "Hey, I wanna be a piano player." That's great. We've had people come through this program and come out and say things in public in front of their whole colleagues of 100 people in a room, and they'll say, "I wanna be known as a person in recovery from my eating disorder." Wow. Like, and then, which is, you're like, holy smokes. This 22-year-old just said this in front of all of her team. But, but on top of that, she's not doing that in a naive sense. She's doing it under the supervision of like really helpful people. And then she gets to define the second piece of if that's your identity, what are you going to— what's the metric of proof that you're going to get there? And at this company, at CTC, what they do is they then tie— once you're in pursuit, then it's on. You better— your job is to execute on your dream to the same degree that you're executing at your job.. And they'll tie bonuses to it. They'll, they have a dream fund where you can apply for money to support your dream, but you can imagine why do people tell their friends to come work here? It's because they don't just talk about dreams. They actually empower the dreams. So the public relations value alone from becoming famous as a place where if you come work there, you're either going to have your dream job or you're going to have a job where you can achieve your dreams. Everything, everything shifts in terms of how they relate, where they find meaning.

And how they view what it means to go to work. The public declaration— this is exciting, but the public declaration has me a little nervous. Do I have to go in front of all my colleagues and announce this?

Is that part of the process? Yeah, so the process is we look at 5 steps. They start by exploring and identifying. So they meet 4 sessions in a row with therapists and we call them performance coaches, They're all licensed mental health professionals. They explore who they are and what they want. Pretty simple. Then they get to the declare stage. The declare stage is pretty cool. They have to go and sit down in front of a small group of people who've already achieved dreams themselves or the therapist or the coaches or whatever. They have to make the case on what is their identity they want to be, how they're going to get there, how they're going to get better at their job while they do this little sprint, what are they going to sacrifice. They kind of get grilled. It's almost like trying to get into college. They're trying to get over this hurdle of I hope I get picked to go a dream day when I declare my dream to the rest of my team. Then a dream day, they make a big deal of it. We have champagne that we pop. We announce it and people get to tell their stories and it's meaningful and they cry and they share. It's amazing. The funny thing is all they've done is declared their dream. They've not done it. They've just declared it. Now they switch gears from kind of existential inquiry to they're actually practicing execution. Which is what they have to do every day in their job. They begin to align achieving their dreams with executing at their workplace. As they do, as you might imagine, people just get better at everything because their heart and soul is into it. Once you've won their heart, it's really— you try to stop them then, you won't be able to.

They will break down doors. You mentioned these external experts who bring in therapists. Mental health professionals. That sounds amazing. I got a small business. I can't, I can't afford a mental health professional for myself, let alone my employees. Do I need experts to actually pull this off? And is it risky or dangerous even if I alone try to do this with my colleagues as an entrepreneur?

I love that question. I, I wrestle with it because, you know, I'm, I'm not a mental health professional myself. I'm, I'm a performance coach. I, I've been in therapy plenty, but I'm not a therapist. And I'm very sensitive to the fact that sometimes this— we don't frame it as this is therapy. We frame it— this is ultimately performance coaching. But we are trying, as an organization, when we go into a company and deliver this for an organization, like we came into your guys' group and took 8 people through a 12-session sprint as a tester, that's exactly what we would do. But we would— there are moments where someone will come through and they have a serious issue, and it's way out of scope of what you would deal with at work. By the way, they had that before they showed up. So it's good that you're aware of it. But we have no problem having an expert saying, "Hey, this is the kind of thing that you should be dealing with in a therapeutic context. Here are some referrals we'd recommend. We want to encourage you to go take advantage of your insurance and have that paid for over there or get some deeper dive help because our sessions are once every 2 weeks. This is not meant to be an intensive therapy kind of thing. We just bring in the mental health professionals because we know that there are inevitabilities, moments where people will discover things where like, "I need to time out here. I need to create a little space to work on some stuff." But I think the philosophy is absolutely transferable to everywhere, whether or not you hired us, or you just— if you just wanted to have a place where we just generally care about our people's dreams as much as we want them to care about ours. If that's kind of part of your cultural values, you're going to get a lot of mileage. We just think that if you go even further, you're going to become a super performing culture, like the kinds that become legend.

I remember I was speaking at an event, and someone asked me a question, but it was also open to the audience. And in the audience, it was a lot of attorneys. And they said something to the effect like, hey, um, should I do something like this dream management and, and understand what my employees want as personal aspirations? And I'm like, absolutely. And the lawyers raised their hand like, no, breach of privacy, can't do it. And I just rolled my eyes back. I said, listen, you can live in a fearful state or you can live in an empowering state. And I understand the legal consequences that are potentially out there, but we gotta live in an empowering state. That was my response. I don't know if that's the right response. What about privacy concerns? You've done this with so many companies, Dane. What's the risks we run, or do we run risks of getting to know colleagues at a more intimate level like this?

Yeah, I think that it, it really comes down to what kind of a culture do you want to build? Um, and the truth is humans are humans everywhere they go.

You're already at risk just by opening your front door and being open for business. Especially on this show.

Just, just being on this show, I'm at risk. Yeah. But, but so given that, it's really not about are you at risk, are you not? It's not binary. It's just the degree to which you want to actually shore up things. And in my view, I would rather live in a transparent context where I know what's going on rather than, uh, have things going on underneath the hood that could really damage and hurt people. Like at the end of the day, we're just talking about people going about their labor trying to create a meaningful life. In this case, this is not— in most of the cases, like 99% of the time, people are high-functioning professionals who no one has ever created space for them at work to think about what they care about. Well, no kidding they don't have much meaning at work because no one has ever asked. But just by asking, just by creating that space, people discover a sense of motivation that is just— they didn't even know they had. They don't have to hold back as much to kind of dream late at night. Now they can actually do it in a contained context. By the way, the most progressive companies in the world, the Googles of the world, the Facebooks of the world, they do this already. Google, they give you one-fifth of your workplace time just to work on private projects. Well, what is that? That's a dream. That's the part where it gets interesting. The other part I should say too, this is fascinating. I'll tell you one case study. Initially, we thought people would just go after personal selfish dreams. Inevitably, some smart employees begin to think bigger picture and they go, "Wait a minute. I spend 8, 10 hours a day of my life at this job and they're giving me an opportunity to innovate, create a dream that might actually help me with a third of my life? What would that look like?" One example was there's this woman. She's not married, has a boyfriend who she loves. But no kids. And she loves her job so much that she decided that when she has a kid, after she's been married, she's interested in not having to give up her job. So she's spending the next 2 years at this company doing all the research, going to Patagonia and cool companies like that to see how they do daycare at work. And she's installing a daycare at work so that when she gets married and when she has a kid, she can bring her kid to work. Like, it's stories like that. Are you kidding me? Like, so the value of the organization is actually improving. The asset itself is improving. And you have to measure that risk for sure and decide. But my view is like, well, give it a test. Try 12 sessions to see what you think if your culture shifts in a positive way. And my sense is people don't—

once they start tasting the value of that, they don't, they don't want to go back. That's super cool. Tell me about— I mean, you got your data there. I don't know if you have the results. Side. What do you see when, when businesses start managing or helping employees with their dreams? How does that align with this? I think you said 70%, uh, or 12% are actively disengaged, 70% are disengaged.

How do the numbers turn? Do you know? Yeah, so it's a good question. In fact, we're trying to do primary research on this at USC, University of California's School of Business, they have a center there on science of performance. There's a professor there, a guy named Dr. Ben Holtberg, researcher guy, psychologist, and he's very interested. He used to be a pro runner himself and he works with Seattle Seahawks and Brooklyn Nets and a bunch of other organizations that are calling him in saying, "We need to find better fuel for people." If you think of pro sports as a helpful metaphor, a lot of these young athletes, they come in especially if they came from a context where they didn't come from wealth, but all of a sudden they have a ridiculous amount of money and power to both disappoint and really make happy their— They make one shot and they get glorified online. They miss one shot and they get brutalized online. You can imagine the psychological impact. Ben's interest in research, both in sport and in business, because he sees the corollaries, is that we need to figure out One fuel could be like fear of failure. Another fuel could be like, I want to be my best. One guy's playing to lose, one guy's playing to win, or a woman is playing to win. And in that perspective, what you're going to see is, or he's seeing, is good fuel gives better results over and over and over again. So, oh, interesting. So it really comes down to what, what is the fuel you're motivating yourself with? Because there's no question fear is a powerful motivator, but there's better fuel out there. You can upgrade your octane pretty easily. But to answer your question, We're working with Ben and others. A lot of folks, they care deeply about this, like just the relationship between mental health and work. If you just look at the news any day of the week these days, there's some story about mental health and work and people trying to figure out how do we crack the code here. Every NFL franchise right now has mental health professionals working with their athletes. Every NBA team has mental health professionals working with their athletes. These are the richest environments in the world where they bring in the best coaches to get the best performance.

Why aren't we not taking a nod from that and figuring out how we can do it in our workplace? You know, this reminds me of something I just noticed recently in our town. There's one of those speeding signs that has like a radar built into it that if you go over the speed limit— and when you pass it initially, it just said slow down. It's a 35 mile per hour speed limit. The second you go 36, it starts blinking red. It says slow down. They recently, in the past month, when you're hitting 35 or less, it goes green and a smiley face appears. And I am convinced, at least my own behavior, but I'm convinced people are driving to get that reward of the smiley face. They're gamifying it. So brilliant. They're gamifying it. So the cars in front of me, like, everyone's getting green. And it never used to be that way. Actually, when you saw the red, you almost wanted to, in spite of it, speed up to teach it a lesson. I'm almost hearing the same thing here with employees. It's a reward, form of reinforcement through reward or through consequences.

It sounds like reward is far more effective. Again, I don't want to suggest that— People do amazing things. You can think of people in popular culture who you don't like, who have a disposition that you wouldn't prefer, who seem to be moving the needle in categories that that you might even be bummed at that you're benefiting from. Like you want them to lose and they're not losing all the time. Why is that the case? And that's the case. Like I'm not saying that there isn't fuel that works. I just know that if I think about my life and the people that I'm responsible for at work, I want them to be fueled by the best stuff. I want them to look at like that season of my life when I was at that job was the best season I ever had. 'Cause not only do I want that just as a human, but it's more than altruism. There's also the pragmatic benefit— they're gonna always be the one that points and says, "That place made me. I'm gonna always refer it. I'm always gonna encourage it. I'm gonna recommend that people get a job there if they can somehow pull it off." It kind of reminds me of the old stories of like Zappos when Tony Hsieh used to bring people on. The first day they'd say, "Hey, we have to hire really quickly. We don't know if you're the right people or not. Would you take $1,000 and go away?" If they took the $1,000, they knew that was money well spent. Because they didn't have the heart. They weren't Zappos people. And I think this is the kind of thing where if people aren't up for achieving their dreams, are you sure you want them to be up for achieving your dream? I don't know if that's the case. So you end up discovering a whole bunch of other beneficial information about the character of your people and who they could become if only they were given the chance to do it.

Dave, this is great stuff.

Where can our listeners find out more about the work you're doing in this space? Yeah, so tellmeyourdreams.com, tellmeyourdreams plural, is the space. We're jumping all over the place on social. We are in the startup mode, I should say. We researched this for 2 years in one company and then have been methodically rolling it out to other companies since. So these are early days, and I think we're going to continue to iterate. We have plans around— we do this 12-session sprint that any organization can have us come in. It's a great way to test things out. But we actually have interest. We've had a lot of folks who've reached out and said, uh, we'd like to actually have a kind of a— you mentioned dream manager, like a dream manager in our place. Would you train someone in our company who could do that? Like maybe do a sprint with them and then train someone. We'll do that. Uh, there's folks that are, uh, mental health professionals who are like, I'd like to open up my marketplace and work with higher functioning people. We'll, we'll train them to go do that. And I, we have plans too, to create a publicly facing workshop that anyone could attend. And they would, um, just go through the process of going like, what, what self-discovery, what do I want and how can I get there?

Dane Sanders, my friends. The every single time, Kelsey, that I go to the Bahamas, Dane Sanders and I are drinking together. Let me just say a sec. I've only been to the Bahamas once though. So, uh, Dane, thank you for joining us today. Thanks everyone. And Dane, don't drop off because we have a game we're gonna play. You got it. Second. So, Kelsey. Yeah. We're gonna talk about what we learned. We're gonna do a fun game today. I want to do Dead or Alive. Is that cool for you guys? Yeah. It's the only one I have available right now. But first, I want to thank our corporate partners. Do you mind rolling through them while I clear up my sinusitis, whatever I got going on here?

Sure.

Not on the air. I'm gonna kind of— So our favorite sponsor of all time is Nextiva, a voice over IP phone system. That's right. Who we adore. They have wonderful technology like TrueVoice, and it comes in this brand new color called Black, which is amazing. They're coming out with— Spelled B-L-A-C-K. Amazing. They're coming out with an awesome CRM system. Even the old one I've heard great things about, so the new one can only be that much more amazing, right?

Yeah, yeah, so their CRM, the new CRM called NextOS, it uses artificial intelligence to diagnose the people that you're having a dialogue with on their online kind of activity. And if someone on the phone is like, oh, I love working with your business, but online they're saying, you know what, not having a great experience, it'll actually flag them so you know. And it even does, because it's connected to the phone, it can do, I think it's called voice heuristics. I'm not sure if that's the word, but it listens to the tonality of your customer to tell if they're telling you the truth or not about what their sentiment It's a little bit freaking crazy.

I know it's creepy, but it's creepy awesome. And I almost feel like it's the wrong thing to put out there, because if it's wrong and you're basing something on that—

It's like your mom telling you, "I really love you," and you say, "Mom's lying!

Mom hates you!" The customer gets the, "Liar, liar, liar!" He says it on the phone, "Liar!" Yeah, and we also now have Process Street, which I personally super like. They have a workflow system task manager. Um, so you can integrate different technology and it helps you keep all of your tasks in order and work cohesively with, let's say, a virtual employee or a virtual bookkeeper in our case.

Um, and just a great way to streamline all of your processes. Yeah, you can get a 20% discount with them right now. Go to mikemichalowicz.com/processstreet. So that would be 3 S's in the middle. Process Street. Correcto. Go there, get 20% off, and nextiva.com is visible or accessible, I should say, at nextiva.com. Um, okay. Dane, do we still have you? Yes, sir. All right. So here's the game. These are gonna be 4 entrepreneurs. Oh, do I have 4? Yes, I do. 4 entrepreneurs. I'll tell you who they are. I'll even tell you the business they own or owned because one of these people sadly has passed away. The question is who passed away? So I'm gonna read off all 4, and this is a challenge, Dane, for you. You're gonna vote. Kelsey, for you, and Jake Blone, you're gonna all vote on who the deceased person is. Okay. You guys ready? We're gonna start with an easy one. All right, start with an easy one. Martha Stewart. Martha Stewart is an American retail businesswoman. You know that. She's a writer, television personality. She's done so much. Is she dead or alive? Next person is Reed Hastings. You may not recognize the name, but you definitely know the co-founder of Netflix. Reed Hastings is an American entrepreneur, philanthropist, or was, and co-founder and chairman of Netflix at a certain point.

Dead or alive?

Next person is Wally Amos. Amos. Amos. That's it.

Amos?

Amos?

Yes!

Wally Amos was the inventor— oh, I said was— the inventor of Famous Amos cookies. You remember those commercials? Well, is he dead or alive? And then there's one more. Douglas Tompkins. You may not know that name, but you definitely know North Face. He was the legendary inventor or is the legendary inventor of North Face, dead or alive? So here's the 4 people: Martha Stewart, dead or alive; Reed Hastings of Netflix, dead or alive; Wally Amos, Famous Amos; or Douglas Tompkins. Who's the one that's dead?

Dane, we're gonna start off with you because you like to talk about it. Do I? I don't know. I don't know. Well, you know, I, I, uh, it's got to be one of the last 2. I got to believe that. So I'm going to go with, did Douglas fall off a mountain or did Wally eat too many cookies?

I'm going to go with Wally. That's funny. I'm going to go with Wally. Wally is okay.

We got one vote for Wally. Okay. You're up, Kelsey. Okay. I'm going to just for the purpose of differentiation, I'm going to say Douglas Tompkins of the North Face. Interesting choice. Yeah. Well, I liked because the fella from Segway who fell off that cliff, I feel like it's a similar situation that could have happened.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I shouldn't laugh, that's really awful. Yeah, it was weird. The founders— not the founder, the owner of Segway, different than the inventor—

was using a Segway, fell off a cliff, and literally died that way on a Segway, right?

On a Segway. It was like the cross-country Segway. Yeah, well, that was a horrible day in her life.

All right, Jeremy, your guess, uh, who's the dead person? Martha Stewart. Come on, dude, seriously? No, uh, yeah, I would go with, uh, Famous Amos.

I saw him, he was on TV a few years ago, but—

Yeah, I feel like that's a logical one. Yeah, yeah. So, uh, 2 of you are wrong, one of you is right. Martha Stewart is, uh, you know, she's 78 years old, alive and well, served time in jail. She's built publishing companies, she's done it all. She's gotten the full spectrum from convict to, uh, extraordinary entrepreneur.

Reed Hastings, he's only 59 years old, the founder of—

Reed Hastings? I thought you were saying Rita. Yeah, that's funny. Oh, would that change your opinion? No, because men live shorter lifespan.

Okay.

Wally Amos is alive. Wally amos is today 83 years old, is born in 1936 Talus in Tallahassee, Florida. He is the famous TV personality and chief cookie chef at Famous Amos Cookies.

He also started a company called Cook what? I'm actually glad he's alive. Like, is this. Is this a game that we're hoping there to be going to be dead?

Because I like, I.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. He's a. Yeah, he made Famous Amos. He also made Cookie Kahuna and Aunt Della's Cookies. He really was a cookie— yeah, and honestly, I've had some Famous Amos cookies.

I didn't think they were that good, if I recall.

I mean, I don't think any of those, like, processed—

yeah, yeah, like Keebler's.

I'm sure the real thing that he actually made is probably delicious. Poor Douglas Tompkins, only 72. He was the entrepreneur behind the legendary North Face and another company called Esprit Clothing Brands. Oh wow, he passed away a few years back, so, uh, sorry to hear that. And, uh, sorry that the only person that cares enough was Kelsey. Dane and Jeremy could care less. So, uh, thank you for doing that, guys. All right, Kelsey, it's time for us to get out of here, I think, right? Are we going to talk about our takeaway? Oh no, yes, let's do that. Give me your take—

I can't believe I skipped that.

Give me your takeaway.

This is our favorite part of the show. I know, give it to me. I love this so much. Um, so I guess my biggest takeaway is aligning their goals with the work execution or the natural alignment that happens when they actively pursue their goals and you hold them accountable for it. It crosses over into execution at their job. I think it's super smart and probably really effective. Um, but just on a kind of big human level, I love when he said I want them to be fueled by the best stuff because I feel like that's the ripple effect that we all want. We want them to walk out into the world happy and then treat the people around them with kindness and generosity because that's what they feel from us, you know?

Yep, juicy, good. Uh, the whole thing reminded me of Elon Musk because, you know, like you're talking about dreams, you think people are going to be selfish, but he had all this money and what's he doing? He's trying to change the face of space. Yeah, right, tunnels and face of space. Yeah, all kinds of stuff. So I think, you know, that's a good message to know that, you know, people do positive things when they're given an option to actually.

Yeah. Faux show. Faux show. I like that Dane elevated it from a dream job to a job that creates dreams.

Yes.

That was a great way to reposition that. There's a higher level. We also want to know what you learned. Oh, and did we get that record? I think we did. We got that recording. Dane, you don't know this, but one thing we do occasionally is we will send in like a secret shopper equivalent. And I know your firm goes out and actively works with people pursuing their dreams. And we actually have one of the guests that was at the event, an employee, secretly recorded it. I forgot to tell you that. So here's recording. This was Dane. This is you yourself. Your client said, your customer said, I have a dream, but I don't know how to do it. Here's your response. Do it! Just do it! Do it! Just so you know, we caught that on tape. Okay. All right.

Let's get out of here. Uh, Kelsey, take us out.

Please don't forget to subscribe and comment and review wherever you're listening to us.

Great.

And, uh, one more thing. Go to mikemichalowicz.com. That's our website. We have free tools and resources for you. That's mikemichalowicz.com. Click on the get the tools option. We'll hook you up with free copies of free resources. I have free chapters for my books. I just write for the Wall Street Journal. You'll get all that stuff for free, but you gotta do it now. Go to mikemichalowicz.com and click on Get the Tools. All right guys, we're out of here. Hope you enjoyed the episode.

See you later.