The WHY Of Make Sense: Cracking Data And Solving Problems With Len Herstein

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually help you discover and then live your why. You see, we believe that knowing your why, that driving force behind every decision you make and every action you take, is the essential first step to really knowing yourself. It allows you to move forward faster and have a bigger impact. If you're already a fan of the show, then you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys, and then we introduce you to somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. This show will be more powerful for you if you've already discovered your why. If you still need to do that, head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. It'll only take you about five minutes. Now let's meet today's guest.

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually helping you discover and then live your why. So if you're a regular listener, you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys, and then we bring on somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. And so this week we are going to be talking about the why of make sense, to make sense of the complex and challenging. So if this is your why, then you are driven to solve problems and resolve challenging or complex situations. You have an uncanny ability to take in lots of data and information. You tend to observe situations and circumstances around you and then sort through them quickly to create solutions that are sensible and easy to implement. Often you are viewed as an expert because of your ability to find solutions quickly. You also have a gift for articulating solutions and summarizing them clearly in understandable language. You believe that many people are stuck and that if they could just make sense out of their situation, they could develop simple solutions and move forward. In essence, you help people get unstuck and move forward. So today I've got a great guest for you. His name is Len Hurstein. He has over 30 years of experience in business and brand marketing and prior to founding his marketing and events company, Managed Camp Inc. Len innovated, managed and grew brands for major consumer package good marketers including Campbell Soup, Coca Cola, Nabisco and others. Since 2015, Len has served as a Reserve Deputy Sheriff with the Douglas County Sheriff's Office in Colorado. And Len, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. Thank you. Great to be here, Gary. Thanks for having me.

This is going to be fun. So very interesting background and very interesting what you are doing right now. But let's take us through your history a little bit. Take us back through where did you grow up, where did you go to high school? What were you like in high school? And how did you progress to where you are today?

Wow. We are going way back. Way back.

We are going back.

Awesome. All right, good. Well, I grew up in New York. I grew up in the western most part of Long Island, New York. So my family's from Brooklyn. I grew up. Everybody kind of moved. A bunch of people moved from Brooklyn out to. To this area where I went to high school in Valley Stream. And what was I like in high school? Man, I wish I could say I was like the coolest kid, but I don't think I was. I was, you know, I straddled this weird line because I was an athlete, so I played soccer and baseball and basketball and stuff, but I was also a student, you know, and, and, and, and was, you know, in kind of like the, you know, the AP classes and stuff like that. So I kind of like walk this, this fine line between kind of athlete and, and academic and just, you know, kind of learned how to get along with a lot of different people and, and. And play a lot of different roles and, and friendships and stuff. So that was kind of, you know, where I came.

At Cornell University in New York and studied marketing and came out of there and went to work in consulting. So I was kind of one of those guys who didn't really know what I wanted to do. So I consulted, right. And that helped me figure it out. So I worked for Anderson Consulting, which was back then called. Well, it was called Anderson Consulting. Now it's called Accenture. And basically in the first year or two, figured out that what I got hired for, which was computer programming. So they take you out of college at that point, they send you to this university. University that they built for themselves in St. Charles, Illinois, and they teach you. And they taught us how to program in Cobol 2, which is an old, old, you know, mythic, mythic language. And so, and it didn't take me long to figure out that that was not what I wanted to do. I was not good at it. I did not enjoy it. So I made the switch over to what was called change management. So I worked on the teams that helped organizations go through the changes that these new systems that we were building, you know, made for them. And so I did that for a couple of years and then went back, got my MBA back at Cornell Again and got my MBA in marketing and made that switch over to consumer package because marketing went to work for Nabisco and Coca Cola and Campbell Soup before I realized that I was going to a lot of conferences. And we found myself coming home early from a lot of them back in the days when we had travel agents that we would call and stuff and just decided to put together the conference that I would actually want to go do. I was having a hard time finding it. And that's what my conference, which is called Brand Managed Camp, became. We just did our 19th annual back in May. This one was virtual, of course, but so we did that. And then. And then, like you mentioned, five years. It was six years ago, almost seven years ago, I. I became a volunteer police officer, basically sheriff's deputy here in Douglas County, Colorado, which was a whole new path for me. It was. And I'm sure we'll talk about that, but it was, you know, just. I was looking for a way to give back and do something. And this just kind of came up and went through a whole academy, went through long field training process and became a deputy. And then I started seeing all this overlap between. I was learning some things that were surprising me. I was learning things that I could bring back to my business and personal life. And that's where this concept of complacency. I learned about how complacency kills, and I learned about how we fight it with vigilance and law enforcement. And I saw a lot of synergy back to business in terms of complacency kills brands, it kills businesses, it kills organizations, it kills personal relationships. And so I wrote my book that just came out is called Be Vigilant Strategies to Stop Complacency, Improve Performance and Safeguard Success. And it's all about specific strategies you can use right away to fight complacency in your own life, whether it be work or home, with vigilance.

Wow.

That's it. That's my life, man.

Man, that was a quick one. I like that. So, okay, so let's dive into that a little bit. So when you were in high school, you were the athlete and the student. Were you the guy that people would go to if they had problems or issues and say, hey, man, Len, can you help me? I got something going on. Can I tell you what's going on? And you were the guy that would help them?

You know what? I'd like to say I was, but I think the honest truth would be, no, I don't think that happened back then. I don't Think. I don't think I had kind of gotten into that role yet. You know, we were more about, you know, where can we find some beers and get down to the boardwalk? You know, it was a simpler life back then, Gary. There weren't. Didn't seem like there was many problems to solve.

Nothing. Everything was easy to figure out. And so then off to college and then. So getting into programming was not really your direction. You thought you were going to go. You just kind of were forced in.

That direction, you know, I wouldn't say I was forced in that direction, but that, you know, that was at the time, you know, so we're talking 1991 at this point. At the time, you know, consulting, those gigs out of college were pretty high, relatively paying, you know, I think, I think the number was like 33 grand. Was, was the, was the starting salary. That was huge. Man, that was, that was enormous. So, you know, it was one of those things where I didn't really quite know what I wanted to do. I figured I probably wanted to go back to grad school at some point, but I needed some years to figure out what that was going to be about. And so, you know, I took that job and, you know, that initial thing in terms of programming was just turned out not my thing, but, but it was good because it helped me figure that out and it helped me figure out I went down this path of change management, which is helping people solve problems that are brought on by change. And then during those jobs, I ended up doing some consulting work with, you know, some of our clients were, were. Were marketing companies per se, like Pepsi and AT&T. And that's when I started getting really excited about marketing. And that's. That kind of then gave me the, the, the confidence that I knew kind of what I wanted to do. And that's when I went back for my mba.

Yeah. So as a change management agent, I guess. What, what did you do? What, what was that?

So, I mean, basically what would happen is we'd be working a lot of time. A lot of the time I spent working in the government sector. So we were coming into, you know, state tax departments, state, you know, dmv, stuff like that, mostly tax stuff, putting together new systems for them, new computer systems to help them manage the flow of information, you know, manage the data that they have, basically do the things that they had to do. And so when those new systems would come in, there would be enormous changes to workflows and to jobs and to what was required of people. And so the change management Job was really about mapping out where are we today, where are we going to be in the future, and how do we get people between there with the least amount of pain. Right. So there's a lot of, you know, you know, reorganization, re engineering of jobs and processes and then coming up with the training to help people get the skills and the knowledge they needed to move forward.

And that sounds like it fit you pretty well.

It did. That was kind of right up my alley. That was right up my alley. And now that, you know, now that you told me I'm a make sense guy, that now it makes all sense to me.

Exactly. And that's why I asked you about. It'd be interesting when you go back to one of your high school reunions to find out if your classmates felt that way about you. Like, you know what? Len was somebody that I could talk to. Len was somebody that if I had a problem, that's where I would go because he'd help me figure it out. It'd be interesting to ask your classmates that question because I bet you they're going to tell you, yeah, you were that guy. I mean, yeah, you were partying and yeah, you were an athlete and all that, but if I had something I needed to talk to, someone I needed to talk to, I was going to go talk to you and it'd be interesting.

Yeah, it's possible.

I would. Based on your why, I would bet that's the way it is. But. So you were in change management and then you decided to go to Cornell. Now, how did you. Why did you switch from change management to marketing? And why did you feel you needed an mba?

Yeah, so like I said, I started doing some work within companies that were, you know, what I would consider marketing driven companies. And I started to see that within certain companies and it's a certain type of marketing. So, I mean, you know, everybody has a different definition of marketing. I talk more about brand management. And to me, brand management is, you know, like running many businesses. Right. So when you would run a brand for Campbell Soup or Coca Cola or something like that, you would, you would touch everything, the P and L, you know, sales, manufacturing, research and development, advertising, you know, which would be the traditional way people would think about marketing. But there's all these other elements that go into what I would consider marketing or brand management. And that just really started to excite me, being kind of at the hub of this wheel and kind of influencing everything and driving this business forward towards more profitable, more innovative, more successful future. And so once I saw that I started thinking about, how do I get there? I started processing the information and say, okay, here's where I want to be. What's the way to get there? And it became fairly evident to me that if I was going to do that type of job at the type of company that I wanted to do it at, which was, you know, like a Coca Cola, those types of things, I really did need to go back to school. I did, I did need to get my mba. It was going to get hard. You know, if I wanted to come in through like maybe a sales role or something and then kind of work my way over into marketing, I could have certainly done that, I'm sure. But the quickest way for me to get to where I wanted to be was to go, you know, use that advanced degree as my pivot point and, and move into a new area.

And so then you did that. And then through that, you learn that the type of education that you're going to get at these events was not. Didn't make sense. I was bored to death and couldn't. Wanted to leave. So you created your own.

Yeah, so I mean, I would, as a brand marketer, I'd go to a lot of conferences. I'd go to several a year. You know, you know, when I was at Campbell Soup and I was working on some soups that we were marketing to kids, I would go to kids marketing conferences. You know, they were all very, very niche and specific, right? And they would, they would look great on paper and I would get there and, you know, they would serve me a cold bagel for breakfast. And then, you know, you'd show up and, and it'd be sitting there and it's, and it's, you know, maybe a bunch of people trying to sell me things as opposed to telling me anything useful. And then, you know, this was back in the days where if someone showed up with a Mac and nobody had a dongle, like, everything broke down, right? And so like, you know, there was just like, you know, execution wasn't great, the content wasn't great. I wasn't getting anything actionable. I was walking away with. And I just, you know, in general felt like they were a big waste of time. And so literally this is, you know, it's a cliche, but it's 100% true. This will date me and tell you how old it is. But I was on a US Air flight from New Orleans back to Philly and started writing down on a cocktail napkin what the next conference I was going to go to had to Offer me and I couldn't find it. I couldn't find, I couldn't find anything that matched those requirements. And my wife got tired of hearing me talk about it and told me to do something about it. And so I did. I generally do what she tells me. That's how we made it this long.

And so what is it you wanted in a conference? What did you write down?

Yeah, so I wanted something that was going to deliver actionable insights that I could use. I wanted something that was going to be a broad look at brand management. It wasn't going to be so narrow that every topic kind of overlapped and was repetitive with each other. It had to have speakers that were, you know, everybody needed to be keynote quality. I didn't want, you know, like one great speaker and then a bunch of people from industry who, you know, look good on paper. You know what the thing I started to see, at least in the conferences I was going to, so I'm not making, this is not a broad thing, but in the conferences I was going to, there was this kind of move towards multi track events, right. And a lot of panel discussions and a lot of it was built around getting a lot of speakers in there, right, who had big titles and big companies that they can then use to pad their attendance list with like, oh, look at all these great companies that are going to be here. And then they could sell sponsorships. And so it was all about the sponsorship money. It was all about the sponsorships. And so what I was looking to do is I was looking to create a conference that was simpler and easier to go to that delivered actionable insights. A single track conference where there was no choices to make. It wasn't super complicated to figure out what I was going to go to. And I wanted it to be attendee focused, not sponsor focused. So I wanted to be focused on delivering actionable insights people could use right away along a broad range of topics. And it had to have great food and it had to have, you know, had to be executed flawlessly. So I mean, other than that it was pretty, pretty, pretty simple things.

Yeah, it's hard to find one like that even today. Right. And so sounds like you created that. Is that what your events are like now?

Yeah, yeah, that, that's exactly. As we focus heavily on execution, we focus heavily on making sure everything runs smoothly. That, you know, we value the fact that people are taking time and more importantly, money, sorry, money, and more importantly time away from their families and their offices and stuff like that to come spend it with us. And so we value that a lot, right? And so we want to make sure that not only do they get a great learning experience, but that, you know, seating is comfortable, everybody can hear everything. You know, when they break for lunch, there's hot, you know, food and great choices and healthy food available. Just, you know, every step along the way, we wanted to make, you know, a lot of people, especially in marketing, talk about experience. We have a lot of great speakers who have talked about customer experience and things of that sort. But, you know, what I found was the conferences weren't living that, right? They would bring in speakers to talk about it, but they weren't actually living it themselves. They weren't actually creating a great experience. And so that's really what we set out to do.

And so then, tell us about your first conference you met, you through.

The first one we threw was in Philly, and it was in 2003. So we were in this kind of post 911 time frame where, you know, the travel industry had just been decimated. Hotels were hurting, you know, everything. Everything was really hurting. And so we were able to come in and get this, like, sweetheart deal on a contract with a hotel, which was a big deal because, you know, in the conference industry, you have to put a lot of money up front, and you got to guarantee a lot of things in order to get space and hope people come. And so we were able to create this. We were able to get this great deal so that our risk was really low. I was still working for Campbell Soup at the time, so for the first four years of starting my business, I still worked full time for Campbell Soup. And so I was trying to kind of build the proof of concept here. And so it was in Philly, I think 90 people showed up is what happened. And it was in this small ballroom. And, you know, we had great food, we had sushi, we had all these, you know, things. And. And, you know, we thought we had a great, you know, experience. And then we look back at, you know, 19 years ago, how different it was in terms of, you know, what the AV capabilities are now and the things we can do with, you know, with, you know, the stage and the slides and everything that's going on. So it was pretty interesting. It was right. It was there. And I think we had. I don't know if it was the first year or the second year. I mean, we. We really. What we were able to succeed on really early is we were able to get speakers at our event that were well beyond our budget. And somehow we were able I was able to negotiate it. So we had, you know, got. My name is Seth Godin, who's written a ton of. A ton of marketing books and is a huge deal. And then, you know, we had a guy by the name of Malcolm Gladwell I'm sure you've heard of. Right. You know, who maybe, you know, probably doesn't speak for less than like 75 to $100,000 now. And, you know, we got them for next to nothing back. So, I mean, those types of things up front really help us get started down this path. And so, you know, we, we, we, we. A lot of things kind of lined up for us that, that, you know, went in our favor back in those early years. That helped us kind of learn. Learn quickly and learn cheaply.

So what was the title and topic of your first event?

You know, it's. So, it's interesting. Yes. Because as we moved on, we stopped having topics. Right. So. So the first event, I think, was Marketing in Turbulent Times.

Okay.

Like, it was something about marketing and turbulent times. Right. And, and. But I started to realize that what happened because the first, like two or three years, we changed our theme every year. Like, it was always a marketing conference, but like you said, we, we kind of like marketing turbulent times or something else. And then we realized, well, gosh, because of that, we kind of have to rebrand every year. Like, we have to convince people that this is the topic they need to come to hear more about. And the more that you kind of focus in on a specific topic, the more you have that problem where you have overlapping things and people talking about the same things and maybe contradicting each other and all this. And so after a couple years, after a few years, we moved away from kind of re coming up with a new topic every year. And we just, you know, the kind of the tagline for the event has been and still is fresh thinking starts here. So, you know, for brand marketers who are looking for fresh thinking for their brands, for their organizations, this is the, this is the destination each year. And so it kind of made it a lot easier for us. We didn't have to come up with a new, you know, we didn't have to, like, brainstorm a whole new thing. You know, like, what would it be this year? It would be like, marketing and turbulent times. Right. Like, it's. Every year is marketing and turbulent times. It's never not turbulent. Like, like nobody, Nobody ever wakes up and they're like, you know what? Like, marketing is easy. This year it's gotten easier. Like, they're actually giving us more money to do less. It's fantastic.

Yeah, great deal.

So as. So your. You got out of actually working with Campbell Soup and the event was your business, or was there a different business besides the event?

No, the event was the main part of the business. We also did consulting work. Okay, so we also did consulting work, but the event was the main part.

And so then we move forward to Covid and no events.

Yeah, no, the things got shut down pretty quick there. We actually. So it was, you know, 2019, end of 2019 is when this all started coming, right? And we're like, oh, this is no big deal. This is a, you know, this is a China thing. This is not a us thing. Right. It was back what people were thinking back then. And then we were like, you know, it came in then, you know, we had our 2020 event planned for September, and we would generally start promoting that in January. And we did. We started promoting it. So January, February, we're promoting it, and things are starting to get a little bit more dicey, and some people are signing up, but we can see that things are slowing down. And then March hit and everything shut down, and. And we're like, I don't. Like, we don't. I don't think we could do a live event. You know, it was back before that realization had settled in. And so quickly we realized, hey, we've got to pivot. We've got to pivot to something different. This is going to move to virtual somehow. But we don't know how to do the virtual because we've been complacent. And we've, you know, figured, you know, 18 years of doing it live, it was always going to be that way. And so we never built our kind of virtual capabilities. So we had to do that real quick and pivot around and create our first ever virtual conference.

Wow. And so from 90 people in 2003, how did it grow? And what was it like before the pandemic and now? What is it like today?

So it was always what I would consider.

An intimate conference. So because we're not focused on sponsorship, we're just focused on attendees. We didn't have, like, hundreds of sponsors and hundreds of speakers. And so we would only have, like, 12, 13 speakers. We'd have maybe two sponsors, and then everybody else was attendees. And so we were in, like, the four hundreds. We get to, like, the four hundreds is, like, where we were at. Yeah, that was per. For us. It was. It was, you know, we're able to deliver a Good experience to everybody that way. And you know, it was plenty fine for us. You know, Covid hits all that's out the window, right? And so now we're in this whole brand new world of virtual and you know, everybody's giving it away for free and nobody wants to pay for stuff on, you know, the virtual stuff anymore. And whole value proposition has changed and, and so yeah, number, you know, you can't even compare it. It's like apples to oranges. So you know, we, you know, right now our, our goal in, in this kind of, you know, virtual time frame is just to continue our relationships with people and stay out there with, with content and ox. And honestly like my, you know, I've been spending a lot of time on the book and so, you know, we kind of, we did our, our, you know, 2021 brand manage camp back in May and generally we do one a year. So that kind of buys us. Right now we're just kind of sitting around, sitting back on that side and waiting to see what happens. We've, we've learned over this last year and a half we just can't predict what's going on. We have these ebbs and these flows in terms of, you know, events and, and quite honestly, my event and our event is, is probably among the last types of events to come back. You know, there's trade shows, there's industry and association events. There's, you know, those things are, you know, where people need to get out and sell to each other are different than my event, which is a learning event. And so it's probably going to be among the last ones to come back to the Live Forum. So we're just kind of, you know, because, because so much goes into planning a live event and there's so much financial commitment. We're just kind of waiting to see how these next few months play out before we plan our next one. But you know, I took that opportunity all throughout that time to write my book and I've been spending a lot of time doing the, the law enforcement stuff as well. So that's been keeping me busy.

So how was it for you? So there's going to be people listening to this that have their own events and they've been doing them just like you have, and then they had to switch to virtual. So what was it like for you to go from live to virtual? And how do you think the effectiveness is a virtual versus Live?

You know, there's pros and cons. There's definitely pros and cons. I think in Terms of the convenience of it, in terms of the cost of it to the end user and the ability to have stuff on demand and kind of see it on your own time frame. There's a lot of positives there. The inability to get together in person, I think a lot is lost there. And the, you know, inability to kind of carve out your time. When you're in a live event, you kind of put your, your, you know, your phone on mute and you, you know, put on your out of office email answer and you sit there and you listen and you learn. And when you're, you know, sitting in your home or sitting in your office and you're watching a virtual thing, there's a million other things competing for your time and your attention. And so you just, you know, just by nature, I mean, it's not anybody's fault. You just, it's just nearly impossible to, to put the same amount of attention into one of those things as you do live events. So I'm a, I'm still a big believer in live events. I think they'll be back. But you know what we, the way we approached it is kind of, again, makes sense within. This makes sense thing is that, you know, we took a step back and said, you know what, we're going to approach our pivot into virtual the same way we did our, you know, when we first started our live conference was, was to, to take a look at things and figure out what's missing, what are people getting wrong, you know, so we kind of sat back for a little bit and we saw that a lot of people were just trying to take their live events and turn them into virtual. Right? As if there was no difference other than the delivery mechanism. And the reality is that's not true. Right? Like people learn differently, people have different attention spans to people, you know, do things differently. The other thing is that people were diving in to this virtual world and they were not, you know, understanding the tools that they were using and, and the best way to use them. So, you know, the way that manifested itself for us is that we looked at it and said, you know what? We're going to do this virtual. We're going to have all these speakers, right? We don't typically do Q and A in the middle of a speaker session, right. Our speakers get up and speak for, you know, in a live event, 50 minutes. Well, first thing we said is 50 minutes is way too long. Like we can't do that in a virtual world. So we're looking at 20, 30 minutes. Right? But the other thing is, you know, what I saw was there's a lot of this people calling things conferences that ended up looking a lot like webinars, right? Someone was like a talking head in the corner. And, you know, the whole screen was a slide. And you're looking at the slides the whole time. And I was like, well, that's not, you know, our. We hire our speakers because they're engaging and entertaining and energetic, and we don't hire them for their slides like we hire them for. For them. And I would never, you know, have them, like, if I was doing a live event, I would never have them sit off in a corner somewhere and just have everybody stare at the screen. Right? And so, you know, what we did is we spent a lot of time and energy working with every one of our speakers to put together. We pre recorded all of the sessions, right? So we pre recorded all the sessions, but we did it with professional production, right? So slides coming in and out, only being shown when they needed to be shown. But, you know, you know, having our speakers stand up and move around and be active, right? And doing all these things that, you know, are not just someone sitting in front of a webcam. Right. And then what we did is our conference platform allowed us to then have our speakers attend while we were airing their session. And then they could interact with attendees in the chat room, right? And answer questions in real time. And then we would bring them in on a live stream as soon as their session ended to do a live. Live action Q and A. Right. So it was kind of this hybrid of, you know, why not pre record so that we could guarantee quality, guarantee that everybody could hear, then guarantee that, you know, that they didn't like, you know, crap out because their Internet went or something like that. And so we have that guaranteed quality of session. And then you have this other thing that we've never been able to have before in live, which is a live Q A with the speaker as the session is happening, so they could clarify so they could, you know, expand on stories so that they could hear from the audience. Right? And then we would carry that over into this, you know, basically what you and I are doing right now into a live conversation and an interview afterwards. So that was pretty cool. That was pretty cool. And that was kind of, you know, how we took this and said, you know what, we're going to take a look at all the information. We're going to come up with the best solution, not just take what we did before and just do it virtually.

So how did You. That's a great way you did that. I really. We had. This year, we had to do our annual event virtual as well and learned a whole lot along the way and obviously saw some things that we could do better, that being one of them. That was really great to hear. How did you prerecord the sessions? Did you have them show up and do it live on a stage with no audience, or was it a zoom thing that was recorded? Or how did you do that?

You know, it depended on the speaker. Right. So because we only have 12 speakers or whatever speakers we had, I think it was 12 this year because we only have 12 speakers. I have, you know, part of our brand is I have a, you know, I form a personal relationship with every one of our speakers. Right. We don't hire 100 speakers, and I don't know who they are, and they do their own thing. So I was able to work. We were able to work, you know, individually with each speaker. So a couple of speakers were here in Colorado, so they were able to come over to our. To our, you know, offices, and we shot it in our studio. Right. A lot of. Most of our speakers have. Are, you know, they're all professional, so they have their own studios and stuff. And so some were able to just produce them themselves. And then we had a couple that needed a little bit more help that were more remote, and we, you know, set them up with equipment. We, you know, walk them through it. We would, you know, we gave. We gave them all sorts of tutorials and instructions, and, you know, some of them we had to do a couple of times to get. To get it right. But it was kind of a. It was kind of a mix depending on what their experience level is, what their comfort was, what their capabilities were in terms of lighting and. And, you know, sound and video and all that stuff.

So I can see how you gave people a better. You helped them make sense of this different way to do it and created an experience that was better than expected. Right. I'm sure you allowed them beyond what they thought they were going to get in a virtual seminar or virtual, you know, workshop.

Yeah. And that. And that's. That's the feedback we got from folks, which was like, this is the best virtual event we've been to so far. We got a lot of that, and we got a lot of folks who were, you know, because we were. It's interesting because at the beginning, my immediate thought as we were thinking this through was, you know, how do we pre record this without, you know, letting people Know it's been pre recorded. Right. So we were like, we were gonna, you know, have the speakers wear the same things when they recorded as they did on the day, you know, the comments. And then like it took me like two minutes to then fig out, you know what? That is so disingenuous. And it's basically a lie. Like I don't want to ever lie to my customers. Right. That was, that was a terrible idea. Such a bad idea. And so we very quickly said, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna like be totally upfront about this and honest and let people know. And you know, there were some people afterwards who were like, you know what, I was like, very skeptical of this pre recorded thing and if I was gonna get value from it or if I should just watch it later or whatever. But the way that that happened where I was able to have a conversation with the speaker and then, you know, the live Q and A afterwards, like that was so much more value than I would have gotten if it was.

So you were saying it was so much more value?

Yes, it was more than they expected. Yeah.

Yeah. So now tell us about your book, Be Vigilant. Now how did that come about? What is it? What prompted you to write it?

Yeah, so I've been working with best selling authors for the last 19 years and I always thought I would write a book at some point, but I never had an idea that I felt was good enough or book worthy. You know, I didn't want it to be a kind of a me too book, so. And so I just never did it. And then, you know, when I had this opportunity to become a reserve shares deputy, which basically means that I'm a full fledged police officer, I just do it for free. I go out on patrol. Yeah, it sounds crazy, right? Like it's, it's.

Hold on. I'm not going to let you get off the hook with this one. Why did you do that? And I mean like, were you drunk one night and said, hey, you know, I think I'm going to be a cop for free?

You know what, I was just trying to keep up with my wife, you know, I mean, so she's, she's been, she's been heavily involved in girl scouts. We have two daughters. And you know, for the last 17 years she's been heavily involved in girls, like beyond just being like a troop leader for both of my daughters, but also like just all sorts of volunteer stuff and just, you know, super heavily involved in it. And I was, you know, I never had this kind of volunteerism going on in my life. And I, and I just felt like I was something that I wanted to add in. I was looking for something to do. I wasn't. I didn't grow up wanting to be a cop or, you know, thinking I wanted to do that or anything like that. And honestly, you know, it was around, you know, December of 2014. Facebook post. So the sheriff's office here, we've got a big county sheriff's office, runs most of the law enforcement within this county, put out a Facebook ad saying, hey, you know, we're looking for people to go through a reserve academy to become reserve, you know, sheriff's deputies. And I was like, man, that looks pretty interesting. That sounds kind of cool. And, you know, this is. We have a unique, you know, department in that, you know, this is not, you know, for like, parade duty or, you know, something like that. This is like you, you know, you go out and you work, you work and you do everything that, that, you know, a full timer does. You just do it for free. And so I was like, man, that was. That sounds really cool. And I asked my wife and she didn't really understand it, so she said yes. She didn't really know what she was getting herself into at the time. And. And I went off to this kind of like informational hearing or informational meeting. There was like 120 people in the room and there was like ex military and ex cops and, you know, and all these people and, you know, most of them younger than me. And I remember walking away from that being like, you know what? They're never going to pick me. Like, why would they pick me? You know, this marketer is 45 years old, and I filled out the application or thing, and they actually, you know, I got chosen, which was crazy. So. So I had to go through all this stuff. I had to go through the same psych evaluation, the same, you know, physical testing, the same, you know, testing, and, and, you know, and all that stuff. And then, you know, got accepted and had to go through an academy that ran from like, May to November. And then. And then after that, I had to do 440 hours of field training out on the road with a field training officer before I got certified to do patrol. And yeah, so that was that. That was, that's why I wanted to do it. And I was honestly, the other piece of this is that this was, you know, we all are, you know, everybody's aware of the difficulties we've been having in terms of relationship between community and law Enforcement in the last couple of years. But this is not new. Like, this was, you know, back in, back then, it was like Ferguson. Right. And it was, you know, that was going on. And, you know, I just got really tired of, of seeing friends and acquaintances argue and complain on Facebook or whatever social media you're on. And I just wanted to, I wanted to be part of the solution, you know, and the best way that I could see to be part of, of, you know, creating a great relationship between the community and law enforcement was to get involved and to do it. And so that's kind of my purpose there is to just, you know, you know, protect and serve and, and, you know, help people be safer, but also, you know, help strengthen that relationship in my little piece of the world. That I can do it.

All right, two obvious questions I'm sure that the listeners or viewers are thinking right now. And the first one being, what did your partner think when they first met you and thought you did what? And you're doing this for how much? And why the heck are you doing this? And the second question is, what's the craziest thing that's happened to you out there so far?

Ah, let's see. The first one will be. So when you say partner, you mean like, like, you know, someone else? One of the other cops?

Yeah. So you sit, you get into a car or whatever with, you know, I guess your partner for the day or the one that you're doing all your, your hours with and they're looking, talking to you and they're like, so, yeah, you're a marketer, huh? Okay. Makes a lot of sense that you'd be in here with me and you're. How much are they paying you for this? Oh, you own it for free, huh?

Yeah. So the interesting thing is for the first six years of this, I patrolled solo. Like, I didn't have a partner. I would go out and do it, do it by myself. I would work a district. We have 11 districts in our county. And I would fill in for people who are going on vacation or they, you know, there's, you know, short staff. And so very recently we've started going to two man cars for that. But before that it was, it was all solo stuff. But I get your question. We were, you know, we're in briefing or whatever. You know, the, the, the great thing is, you know, I spent so many hours doing it, so I, and I would, I would spend most of my hours working on a specific team, which is, we would call the swings B team. So Swing shift and it's on the B side of the week. And in fact, my, my book, which I'll tell you about in a second, the publishing company that I created for the book is called Swings Be Publishing. So it's because that's, that's my team, you know, and so I got, you know, very close with those people and they just consider me part of the team. But I get all the time, like, you know, like, why are you doing this for free? Like, I barely want to do this for money, you know, and so, you know, people don't, people get it, but they don't get it. But there's, there's just a lot of respect. I think they, they appreciate the help, are always short staffed. So they just appreciate the fact that I'm there, you know, and I think, you know, I think probably, you know, they're coming in assumption before they met me and the way that a lot of people look at, oh, here's a guy, he just wants, he wants to run around with a badge and a gun and he want, wants to, you know, like, have some power and stuff like that. But you know, I think like anything in life, the only way to prove people wrong on that is to prove people wrong on it, right? And to go do the job and do it, you know, as good as anybody else does it. And so that was always, always my goal. My goal was always to, you know, to not be treated differently because I'm doing it for free. Like, if I mess up, you know, I want you to come down on me the same way you would come down on, you know, someone who's getting paid, right? Because at the end of the day, we're talking life and death on a lot of these things. So, you know, there's no benefit to being, you know, treated differently. And so I think that that earned a lot of respect. And you know, people just look at me as a regular deputy, you know, they don't look at me any different. But every now and then I still get to like, what, you know, like, especially on a rough day, like, why are you here? What are you doing? Like, why, why are you doing this?

The craziest thing that's happened so far. Golly, that you can probably talk about.

Man, there's just, there's just so much, I think, you know, and there's been so much bad and there's been so much good. You know, everybody has a different definition of crazy. I think the funniest thing, I would say the funniest thing was I actually was When I was in field training, we actually got a call about a chicken crossing the road. Okay. And I thought it was a joke. I thought it was like somebody, you know, because while part of our county is rural, the, the part that I work in is not rural. You know what I mean? It's, it's a typical suburb. You don't have chickens running around. And so we got this call about a chicken crossing the road and we were just like, this is not happening. Like somebody's playing with us obviously, but you know, we still got to go check it out and whatever I get there and lo and behold, there's that chicken. You know, like we're looking around for a little while and I actually had to call out on the radio. You know, if you're unable to locate, you'd call out utl. So I actually got to, you know, go like, you know, two or two atom UTL on the chicken. And my computer started, you know, just lighting up with all the chat messages that everybody laughing and stuff. And like, literally, like 10 seconds later, this chicken saunters across the road in front of my car. And I was like, oh, my God. And I actually caught that chicken and returned it to its owner.

So it's not easy to catch a chicken.

It is not easy to catch a chicken. They are, they are ornery.

And hopefully nobody had a video going while you were out there chasing a chicken.

Oh, my field training officer got a good picture of it. Didn't take any video, but he got a good picture. I got some good ribbon. It was fun.

That's awesome. All right, now tell us about your book.

Yeah. So basically I started this thing thinking it was going to be completely different than anything I'd done before, which it was. But very quickly because I was coming in with this lens. That's different. I'm not a 21 year old who's this is their first work experience or something like that. I'm a, a 45 year old at that point in time who's had, you know, 25 plus years of work experience. And so I can't leave that at home. I'm definitely coming with that point of view. And we started learning about from the very first day how complacency kills, right? And this is something we talk a lot about in law enforcement because, you know, 95, 98% of our day is pretty standard and uneventful. And then things can go wrong really quick, right? And so if you allow yourself to become comfortable, you can be in some pretty big trouble. And so we Talk about complacent, and we talk about what it is and how to combat it. And then I started thinking about, you know, how there were things that we were doing every day that we don't talk about in those. In those words, but there are things that we're doing in law enforcement to. I started making that connection. We're doing this to keep us present, to keep us from getting complacent. And then I started paying attention to the fact that complacency as a word is, like, used a lot in culture, but it's kind of a throwaway word. People just use it thinking that, hey, let's not get complacent out there, you know, or like, oh, they're getting complacent. You know, I see headlines during COVID you know, complacency is. But nobody ever talks about what it is. Like, what is it? And like, how do you actually fight it? As opposed to just saying, well, I'm not going to be complacent, like, as if it's that easy. But it's not that easy. Right? And so that last piece of it was like, I started thinking, you know what? Complacency kills law and law enforcement kills businesses, it kills brands, it kills personal relationships. And so I saw, man, here's an opportunity where I can write this book that kind of brings some of these lessons learned and translate them into the personal and the business world to say, you know, what are some things that we can do every day to help us fight complacency? Right? And so, you know, the idea is that complacency is not laziness. Complacency is overconfidence. Right? And it's self satisfaction and it's a smugness that. That makes us unaware of dangers, makes us unaware of threats. Right? And so the opposite of complacency is not paranoia. A lot of people think that, like, how do you know? So I have to be looking over my shoulder all the time. No, because it's not. The opposite is not paranoia, it's vigilance. Right? And so, you know, the difference is that paranoia is based in fear, the fear of potential threats, and vigilance is based in the awareness of them. And so, you know, this book then, is about how do we remain vigilant? What are specific strategies that we can use that will help us fight complacency every day, you know, in business and at home.

Love it. And so what are. Give us an example of one.

Yeah, so it's like I said, there's like, there's there's 10 of them. There's 10 different ones. Each one is a chapter in the book. You know, the, one of the simplest ones is this idea of threat awareness, right? Understanding where your threats could come from. You know, one of the things that I talk about in the book is like law enforcement or military, if you've got anybody like that in your family or friends. We are notoriously difficult to go out to eat with because we are very specific about where we want to sit, right? We want to have our eyes on where the potential threats could be. Not because we're paranoid, but just because we want to be able to see what's coming if we have to. And, you know, the parallel to that in business and life is how do you get a 360 degree view of your threats, right? How do you look beyond the overconfidence that you have in terms of what your threats are, right? So a lot of times in business we, you know, if, you know, if someone was asked you who are your competitors and you can rattle off two or three right away and what your strategies are against them, I would start to think maybe you're a little bit complacent because what you're getting is, you're getting that kind of tunnel vision, right? You're focusing, you're becoming what I would call, you know, I call it the Roadrunner effect. You know, Wiley Coyote becomes so focused on the roadrunner. But what gets Wiley Coyote every time is never the roadrunner. It's always something else, right? And so, you know, that can happen to us, right? We can become so focused on the competition as we've defined it that we miss new competition. We, we miss, you know, different industries coming into our industry, you know, or if the same thing can happen at home, we could become so overconfident that we understand what's happening in our life that things kind of blindside us. They feel like they blindsided us, but they haven't. They've been coming for a long time. We just didn't have eyes on them. And so, you know, I have a whole chapter where I talk about threat awareness and how do you build that threat awareness and how do you do it, not in a paranoid way, but in an awareness way. I'll give you one more. You know, so another one that we talked, that I talk a lot about is debriefing. So, you know, we all, we all know kind of the brief and the debrief, right? And we all, we all do some level of briefing, whether it be, you know, Weekly meetings or, you know, one on ones or, you know, whatever it is, we do some briefing. But if you talk to most people in business and you ask them, do you guys do debriefs right now? They might say yes. But the reality is they're debriefing things when things go wrong, right? They're debriefing things when there's blame to find or, you know, some disaster has happened. We got to figure out why. What we do in law enforcement that doesn't happen a lot in business or in personal life is we debrief big, big things, whether they were successful or a failure, right? So at the end of a mission, at the end of something of importance, we'll sit down and we'll say, what went right, what went wrong, what went right, but went right by accident. What went right? Because our competition or whoever we're against just made a mistake and we benefited from it, right? And so when we don't question things because things are going right, that's when we miss these little micro issues that are coming up. That's where we miss these things that we have the ability to fix early before they become something bigger, right? And so, you know, I talk a lot about the value of debriefing in terms of fighting complacency, because the biggest thing that leads to vulnerability from complacency is success, ironically. So the more successful we are, the more complacent we become. We start believing the hype, right? We start believing that we are successful because of everything that we've done and all of our actions have led to that, when the reality is that's not always true. So I tell people, you know, be. You know, in Denver, I would tell people, be a Peyton Manning, he just got, you know, the ring of fame in the Broncos stadium or, you know, anywhere else in the world. I'll tell you to be a Tom Brady, right? And so, you know, neither one of those guys at the end of a win, just sit back and say, hey, we're going to party till next week, right? Every one of them immediately start thinking about, what could we have done differently? What could we have done better? What are some vulnerabilities that maybe our competition didn't take advantage of because they didn't see them, but the next time, somebody will see them. Debriefing is a great way. And you can do it in your family, too. You can do it at home. Like, how many times do you only kind of talk to your kids when things go wrong? How many times do we actually Sit down and say, hey, what went right today? You know, like, you got to. You got to. You got a B plus on a test. That's awesome. How can we get it to an A, you know, or what? You know, what. What can we emulate? You know, what can we build on? Right. You know, we don't do enough of that. Talk about our successes and try and find learnings in them. And so that's another way to fight complacency with vigilance.

I love it. I love it. Well, Lynn, if people are listening to this and they want to connect with you, they want to follow you, they want to find out what you're about, they want to get your book. What's the best. You know what? Actually, before I ask you that. Yes. Last question I always ask people is, what is the best piece of advice you've ever received or the best piece of advice you've ever given?

Okay, I love that question. First of all. Second of all, I think there's been two pieces of it. Can I give you two pieces of advice? They're both really quick. So one of them is from a guy by the name of Bruce Trickell. He is a speaker I've worked with. He's written a couple of different books. I just wrote a really cool book that just came out called Is that All There Is? Which is pretty awesome. But the thing was from a previous book, and it was this idea that it's all about them. Okay. So it's the concept that I think a lot of us mess up with, both in life and in business is making it about us when it should be about them. Our customers, our constituents, our vendors, our employees.

You know, when we're marketing our products and services, are we. Mark, are we telling people what we want them to hear, or are we telling them what they want to hear and what they need to hear? Right? And it's that. It's that nuance in terms of making sure you're always thinking about things in terms of making it all about them and not all about me. And it's something I think has been great for me. I come back to it a lot in terms of whenever I'm putting together, you know, materials for people to read or writing my book or whatever, you know, how is this. How is this for them as opposed to what I want people to hear? You know, it's the difference between doing a, you know, a presentation at work that's filled with 100 slides of all the work you did, because you need everybody to know all the work you did as opposed to the two slides of the conclusions. Because that's really what the people in the room need. And if they want to hear about all the work you did, they can come get that later. Right. And so, you know, that to me is a great mantra for a lot of different things in life. The other one was when I was back working at Coca Cola, there was a guy by the name of Steven Boyd. He told me this thing. One's a dot, two's a line, three's a trend. And so it's something I go back to a lot in terms of making sure I don't read too much into one off events and making sure that when I'm making decisions is based on an actual pattern and not based on something that's an anomaly or something like that. I think in life, and especially in this world that we're living in now, people are way too quick to react to things without really understanding is it a dot, a line, or a trend. So two pieces of advice.

Love it. That is awesome, Lyn. Okay, so now I'm going to ask you, okay, everybody, people are listening to this or say, man, I really like Len. I like what he's about. I totally agree with his book and how do I get a hold of him, how can I work with him, how can I go to his event? What's the best way to connect with you?

Yeah, so right now the best way is just go to my website, lenherstein.com L E N H E R S T e I n.com it's got everything about me. It's got everything about my book. If you're interested in the conference, you can just go to brandmanagecamp.com and that's the conference. But if you're interested in a book and where you can buy it, which you can get on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, anywhere you buy books online or whatever, you can get it there. But if you want to learn more about me and what the book is really about and get some free swag too, you can get some free swag there.

Nice.

Go over to lenhurstine.com awesome.

Len, thank you so much for taking the time to be here. Really enjoyed our conversation and hopefully I don't see you in your sheriff's gear anytime soon because I do go by you all the time.

I don't work the highways a lot. So if you're staying on the highways, you should be good. You should be good. Yeah, no, I'd be. I appreciate you having me on the other thing. I forgot to mention is, you know, I encourage anybody out there. Just reach out and connect with me on LinkedIn. Okay. I love connecting with people on LinkedIn and we can just have one on one conversations there. But. But yeah, thanks for having me, Gary. This is awesome. And thanks for like, letting me go through, you know, the, the process of figuring out what my why is. And I have a whole chapter in my book about why and purpose and all this stuff, so it's such a great, great connection for me. You know, this is a different use of it, but. But I love it and, and it's spot on, so.

Sounds great. Thanks, lan. I appreciate you.

Thank you.

I really hope you enjoyed today's episode and that through today's guest, you heard how important it is to know your why and how impactful it can be in your life and the lives of those around you. Be sure to head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. Remember, the more you know about yourself, the more you'll know about others. I'm Dr. Gary Sanchez, and I'll see you on the next episode.