Mo Massaquoi | On the Homefront with Jeff Dudan #51

If you think your culture is suffering, which doesn't allow you to do the work at a high level, then you have to address it. And if you're a young person and you want that promotion, growth, compensation, and you're not being recognized right now, then you have to ask yourself, am I actually doing the best thing for my own trajectory, being at home, or should I go back to the office? There's always room for growth. So you try to take away the ego, you try to take away the me, me nature. You try to figure out what's in the best interest of the system. And actually, when the system does well, people benefit. If the system's designed well, is there.

Anything else for business owners that you would care to share that you've learned? Any big lessons? That you walked out of an engagement with a client and just said, this is something that everybody needs to know. This is something that everybody could use?

I think the interesting thing is.

Hello, and welcome to on the home front. I'm your host, Jeff Duden. Today we are having a conversation with a former NFL wide receiver turned entrepreneur, philanthropist, and motivational speaker, Mo Massaquah.

I'm all for the guys getting paid, the girls getting paid, anyone that plays to get paid. Do you want the short term win now or do you want the long term win? And so when you get someone that's actually trying to grow, that's open to grow, that becomes really exciting because you see the growth take place and you see the system continue to improve and they buy into it.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the homefront. I'm Jeff Duden, and today we are on with Mo Massaqua. Welcome, Mo.

How are you doing? It's a pleasure to meet you.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm definitely a fan. I remember watching you play in the NFL. So I'm excited to get to share this time with you today. And I know you're a Charlotte native. Why don't we start by just hearing a little bit about, you know, your background, how you grew up, where you grew up, and now we'll just take it from there.

I love it. So my family's from West Africa. We're Liberian, and my mom, dad, they moved to the States to escape a civil war. They had me in Charlotte. I'm from Hidden Valley in Charlotte. So the north, Try and Sugar Creek area is what raised me. We left for a little bit and went to Chicago in the northern part, North Chicago, Waukegan area for a little bit and then came back down to Charlotte. So Charlotte's very Very near and dear to me, where you're doing great work.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I appreciate it. We had William Ward on our podcast, and he also escaped the same civil war. Came over here. Just had his podcast just about a month ago, but, yeah, tough over there. Have you ever been back? Have you. Has your family gone back to Liberia?

Been back a couple times. I'm slated to go next year. My grandma's actually here right now, and so when she goes. Want to go back with her and had been in way, way too long.

Yeah, it's settled down a little now, from what I understand.

Yeah, it's stable. A lot of the countries are stabilizing in the 21st century, and so it's just exciting to see what's taking place. Obviously, there's a lot of challenges, but I think everything's trending upward.

Nice. Nice. Do you have brothers or sisters?

I have four sisters.

Do you really? Where'd you fall inside of that?

I am the second oldest.

Okay.

Yeah. So very, very interesting.

Yeah. To say the least. Right?

Yeah, that's.

That's fantastic. Um, so I spent most of your time growing up in Charlotte then, and you. You played at a. I think an undefeated team at Independence here. They had a great run. Was it. Chris Leek was the quarterback with you?

So Chris Leak started the whole thing, anchored by Tommy Knotts, who's still winning championships down in South Carolina. I think he's up to, like, 15 now or something. Wild. That's. That's right. You know, when you play for a guy like that, his expectation is that you're gonna win every game, you know, and if you're not winning that, you can win every game. And so you. You basically. You go out there and you. You work, knowing that good things are gonna happen, and you work to improve, and the attention to detail and just that experience changed my life. I. I don't know how things would evolve, because you're taking kids. In my case, my family's not from here. Not really understanding how America works from, you know, challenging background, and you're giving them hope and belief, and a lot of guys went on to play pro. A lot of guys went on to get scholarships and continue their dreams of plan, but just the life lessons that you get of, you know, how to be on time, how to be disciplined, how to be accountable, how to set high expectations, how to not compromise in life. What are you actually going to. What are you focused on? How do you strip out all the noise? A lot of that came from TK and, you know, by 100. I think 109 games in a row. Seven straight championships that. That Independence Run. So we. We had a good time. Yeah.

When did you first start playing sports?

I started playing, I think, organized sports in the second or third grade.

Okay.

Yeah, we. We had moved to Chicago for a little bit, and my older cousins were playing, and, you know, I'm probably five years younger than them, so you want to do everything that they do, and I was terrible. I think my first Jersey number was 70. They put me at, like, offensive guard or something like that.

Hey, man, you got to learn the organization from the bottom up, right? Well, hey, no offense to linemen out there, man.

Man. No, but, you know, I'm. I. I was never destined to be an alignment. I think the most I've ever worn. Weight, it was like £215 or something. So that's not material to block anybody, but it was a great experience. Once again, you're learning. You're learning how to get hit. You're learning how to get up. You're learning how to be in the cold. You're learning how to be around people. So, yeah, second, third grade, somewhere in there.

Yeah, I can imagine your. Your families over here, you're working to assimilate. You probably were working. Your family's working hard to make a living with the community. Family. Family members and all of that. And then you. They want you. You want to go off and play. Play this sport, was it. Did your sisters get the same type of opportunities growing up? Did they get involved in athletics and stuff like that?

Yeah, everybody got a chance to do, you know, what. What they enjoy, whether it's cheerleading or their respective activities, me being the only boy having. Having boy cousins. I think our trajectories were just different. But the concept of what sport was made no sense in Africa at that time. There were no, you know, you play sport and then you go be a professional anywhere or you get a scholarship. That's a. Like an American construct that was just foreign. And so you get the typical immigrant parent focused on education, you know, do your school work, you go to school, you know, be a doctor, lawyer, whatever the case may be. But as a kid, you're just like, this is very interesting. I'd rather do this in life. And as, you know, time continue to grow. You get a little bit better, you get a little bit better, and then you get a first scholarship offer. And it's like, oh, you know, you mean, I don't have to pay for school? This is very, very intriguing.

Now, what subjects in school Interested you when you were growing up.

Psychology. Okay. Yeah. That's what I studied. So I have an undergrad in psychology, master's in industrial organizational psychology. And it's really the fascination of. I'm born in America, but culturally I'm Liberian. And so you're always feeling inside out in a lot of places and just understanding how people come into the world, how they present, how they perform, what motivates them, all those different things. Had I not played football, though, I probably would have gone to school to be an architect. Love buildings. Have some family friends in Charlotte who are architects and just very fascinated with the work, both on the commercial side and the residential side. So I just love design. Something in design would have been the route.

Yeah. So then you're going through high school at Independence. You're playing for a coach that demands things at a high level. You've got this incredible run. You've surrounded by great players. And I will tell you. So, yeah, I grew up in Chicago, played in a 6A program there, basketball and. And football. Came out to the Carolinas here. And I really didn't have a perspective for how good the athletics was around here. But just by example, we grew up. I have three kids. My oldest is 26 right now. And I don't think Huff was a thing when you were here, but we got Huff High School. Now, was Mallard Creek a thing when you were here?

Huff wasn't a thing. Mallard Creek, Weddington, like all those schools are within the last decade.

Yeah. So, I mean, huge growth area, but just. Just by way of, like, the quarterbacks that we played with in the same league, dads hanging out. Sam Hartman, who was the quarterback for Notre Dame this year, and he's going somewhere in the draft. One of the first teams I coached with my youngest son, Drake May, who's projected to go number two in the draft, was. Was me and his dad coached Drake and my son on that. We got Will Greer, who was with Dallas, you know, played at West Virginia, played at Florida. So. And these are. This was all, like, this was not in our area. This was our friend group. And I was like, man, these kids are pretty good, you know, But I didn't, you know, I didn't realize, like, we were, you know, amongst all these NFL quarterbacks here. So it was. It's. It's a hotbed of talent. It really is. The Carolinas and Charlotte area in particular.

Yeah, people don't pay attention to it. You kind of leap over it when you talk football or talk sports in general. You get down to Florida and Georgia and Texas and California, and I think they just have just bigger cities that. That they anchor on. But if you go through the Carolinas, there's a lot of talent. You know, we. We. I went to Georgia. There's a lot of talent that came from North Carolina, you know, with the Girlies of the world and Keith Marshalls of the world, the Daniel Ellerby's of the world. And if you just spread it out holistically, you know, Hakeem Nix, he won a Super bowl, who's from Charlotte. That's right. A vital member of that Giants team. So there's a. There's a lot of. A lot of guys making noise.

Yeah.

You know, claim Steph Curry and Chris Fall as well. So.

Oh, man. When Davidson was making their run, it was crazy here. I mean, it was. It couldn't be like, and I live, like, two minutes from Davidson College. It was. It was off the chain when he was. I'd never. We'd never seen anything like it. Town was on its head. It was great.

I love it.

Yeah. Yeah. How'd you pick Georgia? As a school? You had a lot of. A lot of offers. Georgia has always been a powerhouse. What was. What made the difference for you to pick Georgia?

You know, it's interesting. I had, once again, I had no connection to any of these schools, you know, the Ivies versus the SEC versus the Pac versus the whatever. No knowledge of them. And so a lot of it, honestly, is just feel. You go visit a lot of these places. You understand, do I like the town? Do I like the city? This is before nil and before, like, all the other things that take place in college sports now. And it's a gut reaction, to be honest with you. Georgia had a situation where it's not actually that far away from Charlotte. About three, three and a half hours, depending on who's driving. They had two senior receivers graduate. You read through that. Yeah, they had two receivers graduating so there'd be time to play early. Athens. UGA is a great school, great school. So you try to factor all those things in. But in all honesty, when you look at some of the other schools, they have great things, too. And so it's very confusing because every week you want to say, I'm going to this school, I'm going to that school, I'm going to this school. And eventually your mom's like, you know, just figure it out over time. But all things considered, Georgia, Georgia was the best decision for me.

So you show up as a freshman Actually, I was a walk on. So I walked on to the University of Northern Iowa, man, and I'd only played two years of high school football, so I really, I wasn't very. Wasn't very good, and I wasn't very polished. I mean, I played receiver as well because we got a coach that wanted to throw the ball. So I was a basketball player. So he recruited me and said, man, you should try this football thing. And I was like, all right. I was about 6, 2, so I'm not going anywhere in basketball, so. So I'm like, yeah, I'll try it. And, you know, I went out, I ran out, caught a lot of passes and fell down. I mean, just, I mean, you know, but, but I liked it, right? And, but when I showed up there, for me, especially being a walk on dude, it was, it was hard. Like, it was, it was stressful. I didn't feel apart. You're. I, I, you know, I was getting beat, like, beat. This first time, I was really up again, you know, as they said. Okay, well, you're a tight end now and you're on the scout team, right? So here you go. What was it like for you walking into Georgia? You were obviously highly recruited. What was that experience like for you? Was it stressful? How long did it take you to acclimate to the life of. Of student athlete?

Oh, I mean, great question. There's different layers to it. There's the football side, there's a student side. There's just a navigating campus side. I remember when I first got on campus, you know, Athens, 30 something, thousand people, and you got these bus systems all over the place. And so you're trying to get to class and figure out how you survive. And I called my coach that recruited me, and I was like, hey, you know, what bus am I supposed to take? And he's like, listen, freshman, figure it out. All this recruiting stuff is over. And so you're like, okay, you know, the court period is over. But on the football side, I think coming from a place like independence was helpful because we had a, you know, already a kind of sophisticated offensive system. We lift all the time. And so that part of it was just continuing the momentum and really paying your dues and so not coming in with the big head, not coming in like you knew everything, but, you know, but also being confident, like, I want to play as a freshman. I want to contribute early and just believing in yourself. So it was. The school side was more complex than the football side. And you, you know, you get your kinks as a freshman when you, you know, you miss assignments and you miss plays and you get hit but over time your body just kind of builds up and you, it's like second nature.

Did you, did you play as a freshman?

Yeah, yeah.

Just straight out on the field.

Yeah. So in camp actually tore my hamstring and so pulled it really bad. So missed the bulk of camp and so played the first game, second game, played more and then I think by the third game we were off and running.

Nice. There's a lot going on with NIL today. You probably wish Nil existed back when you were in college. Do you have a view on that as to the impact that it's making in the college game? In as much as people being motivated to move around from college to college and people making decisions based on, you know, grabbing their money now because you don't know what's going to happen.

Right.

I mean one ACL and you know, you, you'd be thankful you got your money. What's your, what's your view on that, looking back at it as an athlete, that it didn't exist when you were there?

I mean, it's complicated and it's very complicated because when we were there we were poor. And.

I remember, I always, hey, never a better weekend when the Pell Grants came out. Right. I mean.

Pell Grants and bold gifts kept us afloat.

It was a long weekend.

Yeah. And, and you saw it. We had a couple guys at our program who, you know, star, star type players that they were just, literally just trying to survive because they didn't have resources and they got jammed up for it.

Which doesn't seem right. I mean it doesn't seem right when you're bringing in a hundred million dollars for a school and you're 1,000% and you're, you're, you know, you're, you're stuffing stuff from the training table in your pockets for the weekend.

1,000%. So I'm all for the, the guys getting paid, the girls getting paid, anyone that plays to get paid. I think where it's very complicated, those people aren't making wise long term decisions that they may leave for 5,000, 10,000, 25,000 dollar bump. There's only a certain crop of individuals that are really getting like the real, real Nil money and then everybody else is making, you know, decisions that may cost them or. Whereas do you want the short term win now or do you want the long term win? And part of the complex, the challenge with NIL is people are moving around so much and they're chasing the nil that they're not really tethered to an organization, a university. And so when you call app state home, there's kids that have been to 2, 3, 4, 5 schools and they don't really have a home. They haven't developed relationships. And so whenever the game is over, it'll be over for everyone. They don't really have a community that they can, that they can pull on. And so I'm all for them getting paid. I just hope that individuals use a lot more wisdom when they're making decisions to say, what do I actually need? What is my fair market rate? And then where is also the best place that I should be to accomplish the thing I actually want? Whether that's great education, play professionally, be connected to a great university, all of the above.

Yeah, you don't. Foundation is important in lots of different ways. Relationship the school in the area. People build a life on top of where they go to school and can leverage that. Two things I have learned. Number one, people will almost always work to their comp plan. And so they will. And then two, every. Any system that gets created gets exploited to an extreme. So, you know, you put it, I mean, I've created like, I've been building businesses since college, man, and it's like, okay, I put a system in and then sure, there's somebody's going to take it to an extreme and leverage that the way it wasn't necessarily intended to be leveraged. And so you have to be really careful. Anytime you create, you create three rules that creates 10 loopholes for people to exploit those rules. And now you've got. So it's all right, well, we're going to have this transfer portal and we're going to have nil. And then, you know, get a situation out in, you know, in Colorado where it's like he walks in and says, everybody needs to leave because I'm just bringing all new players in. And it's within the rules you're allowed to do that. I don't, you know, I, I think I, I was fascinated by what Deion Sanders did out there at Colorado this year, and he's actually coming, speaking at the ifa. So I'm excited to get to meet him out there in Phoenix in about two or three weeks and interesting to hear what he's got to say when he speaks and stuff. And, you know, but I mean, it's like there's, okay, here's the new normal, here's the new rules. Now we're gonna you know, we're gonna use that to the extreme and you know, because if, and then if you don't, somebody else will. So when you're, when you're in a, when you're in an environment where the margin of error between players is so small and the competitive advantage is so material and important, then you have to take full advantage of every, every thing that you can possibly come up with. And that's what the great coaches do. Saban does it, Belichick does it. I mean they, they come up with, you know, any little loophole that they can to create any advantage that they can. Because great coaches, like I've coached a lot and I've always talked to our staff and I've said you are responsible. You know, if the players play the game even and we as a staff can create one extra score and one extra turnover, then we will win the game, you know, assuming that our players, you know, if they, if they can play it even. So we have to give an advantage. So we would, we would rack our brains to come up with, you know, and when you're talking about 12 and 13 year old kids, you can train them pretty quickly over two quarters of football to look for something and then not look for something else in the fourth quarter.

I mean you.

So we'd spend half a game training these kids to, you know that we're going to do this and then, you know, when we needed it, we would come back with something else.

We did.

I am, I am embarrassed to say though that we. One practice that I did discontinue that one of my coaches, we would kick off sometimes and like.

Should.

I don't even want to say this mo. This guy would overinflate the football. So it was so hard and it was one of those plastic ones, it was so slippery. And that's what we would kick off with and sometimes they would fumble it. So like that's again like you're allowed to do it but like that's bending the rules to an extreme. Shame on that man for, you know, doing that to 12 year old kids. But that being said, you know, that was the one how he decided he wanted to create a turnover. But, but anyway, so, so do you have any, any, any vision as to where this nil stuff is going to take things or what to look out for?

I think the market corrects itself, okay? Monetary standpoint. The, the only if you're contributing, you know, to these collectives or nils if it's not a reputable player, if you're just like Paying kids, you want to return on that investment. And the only real return that you could maybe say is a national championship, maybe a conference title. Outside of that, even if, you know, player ABC goes first overall pick, that does nothing for the person writing that check because you know, it's for bragging rights to your respective schools. And I just don't know how a person continues to contribute to a war chest like that. If you know one, your school isn't successful, but after you win, it's like, okay, do I want to. Are those boosters at Michigan going to pony up, you know, the alleged $13 million that their rival school is, is contributing to next year? So I think that starts to level out where the, the novelty of this space of just throwing money around and participating in it isn't going to make sense for people writing those, those checks over time. I think that the kids that learn how to be marketable and branded a certain way, they'll be able to get the true name, image and likeness benefits. But outside of that I just can't see because the operations to run these programs are already high and not a lot of schools are profitable. And so you have a non profitable entity trying to raise money for something else. The top premier schools, yeah, they're profitable. But if your football program's not profitable, chances are the rest of your, your programs aren't profitable either.

That's right.

And so it's a double loss there. But yeah, I also think that. Go ahead.

No, I was going to say, yeah, so if they're, if they get a Nike sponsorship or you know, Under Armour or something, that's going to go with them wherever they go, more than likely. So you're saying that those are. The kids that are marketable are going to be able to get those outside deals and then the nil stuff from the universities, the university money will be, be less or, you know, it'll, there's no cap on it, but it'll even out at some point.

Yeah, it's, I would say if, if the player isn't a name that everybody knows their NI UP deals will continue to streak significantly and then the transfer portal, they're going to get a grip on that, which I have mixed feelings about because coaches leave all the time and they leave these kids in situations that he. You're not always buying into the school, you're buying into the coach and the leadership. Mark Rick had a lot to do with me coming to the University of Georgia, not just the University of Georgia.

Right.

And so that's challenging. I Think the window in the number of transfers has to get figured out. So it doesn't. You don't have kids transferring during bowl season. You don't have kids transferring multiple times to different things. But then, then it becomes a little, little more chaotic. Like the, the average student wouldn't transfer. Three, four schools just, you know, take sports out of it. Right. I think everybody should be able to transfer. But just how you transfer starting to get a little complicated because a lot of these kids are probably being recruited into situations that seem greener and they may not have the right guidance to actually make the right decision in the long term interest of themselves.

And you know, the quarterback position, they're going to be a little bit more surgical too because you can see who's on the depth chart. And it might be a situation where you might not want to go to Alabama because who's, who's already there and you're going to be looking for a spot where you're going to have the best opportunity to get on the field. So I know the DJ from Clemson ends up out at. Where was he at, man? Oregon State.

Oregon State, yeah, he's going to Florida.

You know, so the quarterbacks and they, you know, I mean, you've seen it. We, we see it here in high school. Kids will move around high schools based on, you know, quarterbacks. So they'll, they'll go somewhere else in high school to get in the program that they want to get in to get the visibility and the reps that they need. So. Well, awesome. Well, I certainly, for whatever everybody's doing in college football, God bless them, because I love watching it.

I love it. Would not want to be in it. Yeah.

So then second round draft pick, do you go straight to Cleveland out of Georgia?

Yeah, Cleveland. You get drafted and three days later you're on the plane. Yeah. It's a fascinating thing. I've never been Ohio, never been to Cleveland. You know, kind of geographically where it is on a map but have no real connection to it.

Yeah.

And so it was a, a different experience because you're coming from the south. I'm coming from the south and then I go to Cleveland. The weather's different, the culture's different. All of the above. But one thing I will say about Cleveland, they have some of the best people in the world. Like if you meet a person from really Ohio, they're some of the most loyal, honest, hard working people in, in the world. You just have to get, get ready for the code and the elements. You learn what a lakefront Is really quick.

Yeah, that's great. You had a great career, put up great numbers and all of that. And then people may or may not know, but then you had an accident and you were, what, five years into your career, things were going well. How much of your career do you think you had left at that point? Was it. Do you have any sense of that? I'm sure you've thought about that quite a bit.

So it's. So I was actually retired. The thing that shut down my football career was I kept getting concussions. Okay, the big concussion in 2010 against the Steelers. And then after that, I just kept getting them. You know, I got two the next year. First preseason game, my fourth season, I got one, and I just stopped shaking. The concussions. And so I retired from football after concussions. And had it not been for concussions, how I think my rookie season started. You know, you never know, you know, if you break another bone or have another body part injury. But I definitely think I probably could have got, you know, double the length of time.

Yeah.

From a just pure athletic standpoint. So retired from football, went into finance at Morgan Stanley. Didn't really love finance, but it wanted to get like a real, real job, per se, after playing sports. And then I was a few years in at Morgan Stanley and was riding atv. I'm here in the south, got a lot of land, and unfortunately, this ride did not go well. ATV ended up flipping. Shattered my left hand, you know, trying to brace the. The. The fall after tumbling off the atv and then that shattered. They just couldn't put my left hand back together. So that ended up getting amputated in 2017.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's tough. And you've got a prosthetic now that you use?

I do.

At least what I've seen online and in the videos and stuff like that. And you were working at Morgan Stanley at the time. So did you. Did your career get. I imagine it got interrupted in a way there from the accident, or did you kind of. Were you able to get back to work within a few months? Tell us about that time.

What was interesting about that time is it was the first time I probably just stopped in taking inventory for where I was at. Because the gift and the curse of being an athlete or being competitive is that you're trying to go. You're trying to compete. You approach everything like a competition. And so transitioning from sport was like, okay, what's the next challenge that I have to go figure out? Whether I like it or not, I'm going to go Hunt it down. And so this pursuit of Morgan Stanley and getting series seven, series 66, you know, doing the best job, that was the thing. But I hadn't really stopped to say, okay, is this where I actually want to be? And the accident was a very painful experience. But when you're losing body parts and you're recovering, I think I had about 10ish surgeries. Some that remove things, some to clean things, some that, you know, go, go, go back in. It's just a long recovery time. Mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually. Anything that you want to pull on has to get addressed. And it was that, that time right there where I kind of returned back to the core, who I was and the fascination with, you know, psychology and performance and how to do things actually interact while I was at Morgan Stanley. That was actually the thing I was more fascinated with. I wasn't fascinated with the markets. I was fascinated with what people did in their business, how they led, how they align strategy, how they put people in the right position. And in a lot of ways, it's kind of sport where that's where you're trying to do on a week to week basis, game to game, season to season basis, where you have a game plan. How can we execute it from a team standpoint for whatever this goal is that we're trying to achieve. And so went back to school a couple times, got a master's in Industrial Organizational Psychology from the University of Georgia, went and did like an EMBA program from Harvard Business School, program for Leadership Development. And that was the thing that kind of gave me the itch that sport had, where you're looking at business from the business aspect of what is this business actually doing? But then you're also looking at it from the people stack standpoint of how do these employees lead this business to success? And a lot of that is with alignment, A lot of that is with role clarity. A lot of that is sharing institutional knowledge, developing employees really in a cohesive way so that the system can continue to move forward seamlessly.

Was it during this time during your recovery from the accident that you had the thought about starting your own business?

Yeah, I had. I had. You know, it's interesting. I'd never really. History crazy. I never really knew what I wanted to do, even if I were to. I'm not one of those people that say, you know, growing up, I always wanted to be a football player or I always wanted to be a professional athlete, because I just had no context to how America worked. My family didn't. And I'm Learning all this stuff on the fly. And so it was never really a, a thing. And then I just seen the problem a lot of times. And when my accident happened, a lot of companies will reach out and say, hey, can you come talk to us about change management? Can you talk to us about resilience? Can you come talk to us about performing under pressure? We're going into a new season. It'd be some type of fundamental change. They'd have a new leader, they'd be merging business together. There'd be disruption in their business. And so the more that individuals would ask me to come speak to their organizations, I'd ask the next question of, after the speech, how do you solve for it? And they would have an answer. And so they said, hey, can you come in and, you know, work with us? And so it just kind of gradually grew from adding value and word of mouth, spreading that, you know, I, I could provide solutions in this area. And so it, it was kind of birthed organically. But if you were to ask me, I'm sitting in a hospital bed, you know, I get my last stitches out, I get my prosthetic device, is this the path that I'm going to choose? I didn't know existed, to be honest with you.

Right. So it was very organic. And you obviously had a heart and a passion for leadership, you know, because you're, what you're talking about is like the people piece of business. And it's people, observationally, people that do the people piece well and that are disciplined and intentional about culture building and communication and change management. We all need to be served and satisfied in a certain way to be our best. And in a lot of ways, the locker room is a very, is a very raw environment for leadership and how leadership manifests itself. And, you know, who steps up, who talks, who talks when the coaches aren't talking and how does that person get nominated to do that and who follows? And, you know, how does everybody get aligned? I mean, it's the difference between a championship team and an almost championship team is, is, is very small in terms of but, you know, subtle but significant difference in the way that they approach their organization and their accountability and obligation to one another. So it's, you know, it's, it's not surprising that you would gravitate towards that based on your background. So it just started organically. People started calling you and obviously, as a high profile college and professional athlete, you get a lot of opportunities to speak in front of people, people like you to show up and, you know, get you to sign their stuff and, and, you know, say a few words. And so for you, that you did well enough at that to where people started reaching out to you and saying, can you, you know, can you engage with us? Come talk to us. Is that kind of how it happened?

Yeah, because it's, you know, a lot of people are familiar with my story, and a lot of people have really dynamic stories. And what you start to understand is this person has a challenge that they're trying to solve. And while the story is cool, they also want to know, can you take it a layer deeper? And that was actually the reason I started going back to school, because I was in situations where I get asked questions and I had an opinion on it, but I didn't feel like it was rooted in the substance that it needed to be. I didn't understand how the business worked. I didn't understand the financials. I didn't understand the strategy behind it. And so, okay, I want to go figure out, at least get exposure to how to think about this in a sound way that was the reason for going to Harvard. And then you say, okay, what is engagement? What is motivation? How are you crafting jobs that people have clarity of what they're doing, that they have enough autonomy, that they care about the work, that they like all the, all the, like the true structural things that you can actually measure and put data to. The ability to combine those two things gives a very unique view of how the business works, how the people work, how they function together. And leaders, they just hadn't had that approach where you're looking at it from a true. Org site perspective while also speaking in a language that they understand, because you have to understand what is the business trying, trying to accomplish and sometimes, you know, making money because we have shareholders regardless of all the other things that, that we care about. And so I think it's the trust that a good job is going to be done. I think it's the understanding that I'm, I'm passionate about the work and I'm going to continue to grow and develop. I think it's a sound approach rooted in science, rooted in, you know, good theory, sound, sound practices, and over time, word of mouth spreads that, hey, this person was able to add value. Hey, this person came in behind XYZ organization and they were able to add value. So the organicness of how all this continues to evolve is something that I'm really thankful for and something I don't take for granted, because the flip side of that is I live in Atlanta Having played at Georgia, get a lot of opportunities from the Georgia network. If I do a bad job.

That's right.

It also goes from here to there really fast. And so there's an extra layer of, you know, just making sure that I always add value or tell the person this is outside of, you know, my scope. Here are three names that may be able to accomplish what you're looking for.

The name of your company is vessel, correct?

Correct.

And who is a typical customer for you?

Yeah, that's a really good question. So it splits from a consultant standpoint, working with companies that are under 500 employees, probably under $100 million of revenue. And that's where you could really go in. Help them design their vision, their mission, their goals. Help them design how the organization functions, role clarity, workflows, how you really share institutional knowledge, work across silos, understand what is the strategy. If it's larger than that, I get a chance to go, you know, whether it be the Microsofts of the world, the TRS of the worlds, the, you know, Louis Vuitton of the world. Do a lot of workshops and off sites with those teams. They're too big to, like, actually consult with, but from a training standpoint, you can go in and provide solutions for them. And so those are the two areas that I play in. Smaller companies able to consult, kind of take them from A to Z. And then for bigger companies, you're coming in more, more on a, you know, focused basis to train in a construct that they care about.

Yeah. What types of tools do you. Maybe not necessarily by specific name, but like, what. What types of tools do you walk in with your toolkit in terms of being able to analyze the people or. I mean, do you have some go to stuff that you incorporate into your process?

Yeah, it is the measurement of, okay, how. Not how engaged your people are just for the sake of being engaged, but how much do they believe in a strategy, how much they know the strategy? How much do they feel they have the resources to do their job? How much do they have coworker support? I think sometimes we get caught up in the fluff of people, like working here. But, like, are your high performers likely to leave, you know, or is it your low performers? Are we measuring the things that actually move the business forward? And so usually going to go in, do some type of focus groups to get a. A diagnostic of what is taking place. But then you. You want to dive deeper to understand how these things are being impacted across different regions of the business, different demographics of the business, different roles of the business. And that gives a comprehensive picture because if you don't know what you're dealing with, you could say, hey, I'm having XYZ problem. In reality, it's something else. And I think that's where the org site becomes very helpful to like, truly diagnose very precisely what we're dealing with. But then if you look at a lot of businesses and you ask what is the business actually trying to do? You'd get a million different answers. And so some businesses actually have good fundamental strategy.

Yeah.

But how the strategy is being executed is just chaotic because people aren't always working on top of mind things. And so then it becomes my job to understand, okay, how does this strategy live in the organization? How do we make sure that we communicate this so that everybody's on the same page? And how do we give people the tools to then execute on that strategy? A lot of times that sharing institutional knowledge, where it's not me coming up with something new and innovative, it's Jeff already knows this. Madison is trying to figure it out. Jeff and Madison never work together, so they don't know how to share that. And so how can we make sure that everyone that may have this particular challenge put them conversely, Madison knows something that Jeff doesn't know. How do we cross pollinate that? Which is a lot of what we do in sports, is where I may see one of my teammates doing something well, and then I'm going to adopt it. That's because we see each other. Business isn't always that transparent. But I'm seeing the behavior through the lens of what the coach is trying to drive for the game plan. And so that. That's a lot of the work of just understanding the strategy, communicating the strategy, helping people implement the strategy in a way that isn't a commodity. It's a unique ability of the organization to create a competitive advantage.

Yeah, man, you said a lot there. So when the third person walks into a room, that's when politics starts. And organizational health ignored leads to fake work. And Fake Work is a book that I read. And I just, I love the concept of fake work. When the right hand doesn't know what the left hand's doing. And simple communication cadence would have solved it. But now you've created latency inside of a business because something, you know, anything know part of my job is the things you said that I wrote down. Clarity, belief and engagement. Like that is that sits right on the lap of leadership. And it's our job as leaders to do nothing. You know, if we don't do anything else. Make sure that there's clarity. We're, we're working on the right problems. There's belief that people actually believe that what we're doing matters. So they're going to be passionate and committed to it. And, you know, they're not just punching a ticket and leaving things undone. And then engagement. Like, is the, is the, is the, is it too many meetings? Is it not enough meetings? Is there an avenue for people once there's an insight or an action that's apparent that it needs to get done? Is there latency between that awareness and that action? Because I think my job is, you know, my, and I've done a lot of startups. Like, I don't, you know, we're not Microsoft over here, I can tell you that. Uh, so we, we work in a lot of scrums. We work with a lot of franchisees. There's small groups, you know, four, five, six people or less even sometimes starting up a business. And like, okay, well, you've got to, you've got to start right at the beginning and you've got to start this business here. Franchisors are relatively small in staff in comparison to the reach that we have. I mean, we're not an open national company with several hundred locations, but we only might be 60 or 80 people here at the home office. So, so, you know, that's, that's a small business really, that we're managing here. And you know, fake work happens when people's activities and their focus has gotten misaligned with what the ultimate goal of the organization is. So, and it happens all the time. I mean, things go off track if you're not focused on the outcome. And then, you know, somebody created the project and now the project is the, is the deliverable. But the project no longer has anything to do with what the organization, the vital few things that the organization needs to be brilliant at to help its, you know, customers or franchisees or whoever succeed. So, you know, what you're talking about is there is so much work to be done in organizations and, you know, conversation I had this morning with one of our executives was, you know, is this the right place for everybody? You know, culture? I mean, it might be that, you know, somebody might be a better fit elsewhere in a different type of organization. I mean, if, if we're, I mean, we're kind of in this phase where we're in a super hyper growth phase. So it's kind of around the clock where if you go to a $2 billion healthcare organization, you might be able to put a more def. More, more definition around. You know, one's, when's work time, When's not work time? When does it start, when does it end? What, what the projects gets delivered. You really don't know where it goes after you deliver it, but you assume it goes somewhere. As long as you deliver it, you're going to get a good review. Like there's some people that are more comfortable in a structure like that where we're super entrepreneurial and you've got to really have a thirst for the dynamic. You've got to have a passion for helping new business owner after new business owner after new business owner get started. You got to care about these people and their families. Like, and if, and if that's not the level of engagement that you want, then this is probably not the best place for you.

Yes, it's what becomes interesting is that, you know, companies have these values, they have these missions, but they don't always live them out. That's the other challenge. And so you, you may incentivize things that are actually against your mission and values. And I learned a valuable thing. You don't, you don't get credit for hard work. You get credit for the right work, but you don't get credit for just being busy. It is. And you don't get credit for individual performance. You, you, there are no moral victories that the organization isn't succeeding. Your good accomplishment isn't. It doesn't push the needle forward. And I think, you know, when people are looking at performance reviews that are just looking at certain things, they're not looking at these behaviors that actually push the business forward. And so that's why we're starting at the foundation of mission and values and goals of what is the organization trying to accomplish. And these individuals are feeding into that mission and they're living out these values to accomplish these goals, not their individual goals unless they're, they're aligned. And if you look from a sports perspective that that is the thing that, that makes good teams succeed. That like everybody, regardless of compensation, role, clarity, everybody's trying to do their job from the walk on to the star player, to the training staff, to the equipment manager, to the people in marketing, like the system all works very cohesively and if you do get somebody that's operating out of that system, they're called out on it. There was an NBA player recently who, who had 60 something points and the team lost and that the coach was getting on them because the way that this individual was going about getting these points wasn't in the best interest of team. The same thing happens in organization. Whether you have a person that's loafing, you have a person that's not carrying their weight, a person that's only in it for themselves. And so you have to be able to identify those things with precision to see where they're coming from, who's contributing to it. Because those things don't actually push the business forward. And so the more you, you allow these things to, to go unchecked and you're. While we are in dynamic environments, you still have to organize the chaos in a structure that allows your organization to thrive because it's not, you know, clean, which like on Friday we're always going to do this, on Monday we're always going to do this. Things ebb and flow. But you do have to create situational awareness and values that people can have. As a reference point of if we do these things, it gives us a higher likelihood to succeed. Not 100%, but we have a higher percentage of winning in the way that is sustainable to us than not. But if we do these things for sure we may have success, but we're not going to maximize our output. And that's a question that we start with. On everything is, you know, is this system, has this system reached its potential? The answer is always no. Unless you're dealing with a narcissist. You've never hit your potential. There's always room for growth. And so you try to take away the ego, you try to take away the me, me nature and you try to figure out what's in the best interest of the system. And actually when the system does well, people benefit, you know, if the system's designed well.

So business athletes want freedom within a framework and creating the conditions where discretionary effort can happen and be rewarded. It's, it's a, it's nuanced in designing organizations that are going to attract and retain people that really are up to something and going somewhere and want to give that discretionary effort. All great teams are built on discretionary effort. I mean people doing more than is expected because they're just driven to do it. And that's why like the sports team, I wrote a book called Discernment. It's the business athletes regimen for a great life through better decisions. But that term, business, what I've observed is some people, they don't care about a lot other than doing their absolute best. And they get, you know, hyper focused on winning whatever opportunity that it's in. And I tell young people all the time, you, you win the next opportunity by succeeding in the one that you're in. And that's where the sports field is the perfect example of that. Because if, if you don't give the great discretionary effort, you're not hustling down the field. You're not, you know, you're not getting that extra, you know, getting up to the second level. You're letting your blocks go or whatever. Guess what? You know, it's. There's no performance review. You're going to sit down at the end of the quarter like it's tomorrow in practice, like you are now second. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's immediate, and it's tough to do that in the business world, you know, because we've got processes and laws and all of that kind of stuff. But, you know, creating as close to a meritocracy as we possibly can where, you know, people that do the extra and deliver on the results. I love what you said. There's no credit for hard work. You get credit for delivering the right work. And that's, that's. But that is stolen. Mo, thank you for that. That will, that will be appearing frequently in my talks going forward.

Go, go for it. But those are the type of things that are contributing to engagement. Like, do I have autonomy? If, if you're just telling me everything that I can, I have to do, you know, person's going to check out. Is this task actually significant? You know, do I feel like if I contributed to it, I'm getting rewarded in the right way? Like, all these things are the things that factor in. If, you know, there's a big asterisk by it. If you've recruited the right talent to begin with. Now, if, if you have people that aren't going to buy into this, it's like a very talented player that wants to be selfish. It's. There's nothing that you can get this person to do for the team. But if you have people that are bought in and you give them these elements that keep them engaged and they believe in where you're taking them, and you have a sound strategy and the system is actually working cohesively together, I mean, the output of that is exponential, and that's what becomes exciting. But let me back up. The thing that I've actually learned to do is give grace. Which sounds crazy because a lot of times leaders aren't thinking about these things. They're thinking about running their business. They're thinking about the industry that they're in or they have domain expertise in a particular thing and they've just grown organically and they never really wanted to manage people. They've never been trained to manage people. And so it's not all the time that they are intentionally doing these things. They're actually doing the best that they can. And so when you get someone that's actually trying to grow, that's open to grow and they're trying to figure out how do I create this environment to accomplish the thing that we all want, that becomes really exciting because you see the growth take place and you see the system continue to improve and they buy into it.

Yeah, I mean they can, anybody can refine skills and grow skills if, if they're motivated to do so. The best athletes that I've worked with do not want to be micromanaged. They want that autonomy. They, they take pride in what they do. They like to, they like to deliver. They, they like to win. And, and you know, and it, and it's, and, but it's. No, not, you know, talking about Grace, I was, it's funny you said that because that was what I was going through my head is it's like. But that's not for everybody. Other people have things in their life going on or you know, it just doesn't, you know, maybe the, the work doesn't matter that much to them because there's other priorities in their life. And I would encourage those people, if they're not passionate about where they are and what they're doing and they can't get passionate about it, that you know, they might be delivering some work and they might be punching a clock but I would encourage them to really take a step back and do some soul searching and say what is it that I'm passionate about? I was listening to a Huberman podcast and I don't remember the author but he wrote a book called Mastery and he was on Andrew Huberman this morning. And I got, I got. And what connected me to listen to it. It was like three hour podcast. I think I got about 45 minutes in. But was that he was going to talk about like how people find their purpose. And Andrew Huberman said that at the end of every semester when he taught, he gave out three book recommendations that he thought and he should would change students lives. And this book Mastery was one of them. I need to look and see who the author was but sure people can find it. We'll put it in the show notes. But you know, he was, he Was talking about saying, you know, like, he was. He had a career and then he went into publishing or something. He had. And he just said, you know, I just never really that passionate about. I didn't, I didn't want to do it. And then, you know, when he started writing and doing the things that he's doing now, he goes, I get to. I am so passionate about what I do. I'm so happy that I get to wake up every day and do exactly what I want. It just fits me. And it's, you know, he didn't want to work for somebody, didn't want to go into an office. He didn't. All the stuff was. The work was interesting to him, but the setting wasn't necessarily interesting to him until he put himself in a place that was uniquely special, that served who. Who his identity. Then he never. He didn't really blossom, grow and develop, and do his best work. So, I mean, people need to find their tribe, and they need to find their tribe, and they need to find their purpose, and they need to find their passion.

I agree with everything I've. I've seen it in, in my own life with the, the joy and expression of football and then going into a court, corporate environment, wearing a suit and tie. You're like, this isn't. This isn't really me. And then now I'm more aligned in what I want. But I think, you know, some of that is on the business as well, where they, they sell something that's not realistic for the. The candidate, and they get a candidate that comes in and there's just a misalignment. And so the more you can be clear on the front end to help the right. Because you don't want everybody. And that's not a knock on everything, but it's okay. I don't want to play in the cold or I don't want to work outside. Yeah, sports is probably not. Not your thing.

Yeah, you don't, you, you don't want to know. You don't want to work on Sundays. Well, yeah, well, the NFL is out for you.

That. The NFL's out for you. You know, it's, it's a, it's. It's this alignment of, you know, hey, you know, there's certain industries that we were with a group in. The guy said they literally say in the job description, expect to work above and beyond for certain things. They're. They're more of the private equity type type mindset. And you look at that and you say, okay, we can ask these people to change that or we can understand that. They're, they're like actually defining what you're getting into, which you should be thankful for because now you get a chance to make the decision, I'm going to sign up for this because I'm wired in this this way or I should probably go somewhere else else. And that clarity on the front end is so important just to help get the right talent in that the talent that's actually going to thrive and put in the work. Because it's not always sunshine and rainbows. You know, there's challenges that people face, there's hard work to be done, there's a lot of competition. And so you want the team that you suit up with to be ready to attack that.

Is there a particular method or a tool that's a go to for you that really turns the lights on to management team and their organization where they're like, wow, you know, this was so simple, but it was just right here in front of us and we were just too busy or not paying attention enough to see it.

You know what's interesting? It is the, it is the listening is what a lot of people don't do. It is the, it is the spotlighting what is said that is actually very beneficial to the complete group. And it's not always like someone says stop, I'm about to say something profound, it just gets lost in conversation. And so the tool ironically is literally paying attention to what the group wants and understanding who inside the group already has that answer. And if you can find an answer from within, what happens is it already lives in the knowledge of the organism. It already resonates with the individual because they know who said it, who has a firsthand experience on it, who they can go to when they need this insight. And so the more I can actually not come up with solutions, the more beneficial it is, the more I can already live in the organization. I was with a bank in New York and there was a process that one of the leaders was trying to figure out and they're like, this thing is really thorny for me, you know, I can't figure it out. And another person was like, you, you know, we did this thing over here and our group has been thriving in it and it just did. Once again, they just didn't know. And so here's the thing that is already solved for in the organization. It just hasn't been communicated and spread throughout the organization. That is, that is the tool. And the more you can do that, the more you get easy wins, the more you get momentum, the more you get more engagement because everybody feels like they have a stake in improving the system. That is a thing that, as common, as simple as that is, people don't make time for it because they're always putting out fire. They're always putting out whatever the top priority is. They're always responding to email, they have personal challenges, they have home, you know, life, you know, things that are taking place. The ability to slow down and just listen and gather insights that can then be spread is super valuable and it just doesn't happen for whatever reason.

Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm stretching my mind to think about an example where a company has systematized listening. I will tell you the closest example that I'm coming up with is Ray Dalio and his radical transparency methods where, you know, fact check here, fact check this people, but I'll tell the story the best to understand it. So he has a huge, he'll be in a meeting and it'll be all different levels of people. And then they've got this huge wall that basically has everybody on it. And so if you say something in the meeting, everybody has the ability to like rate you live in the meeting, whether they like your point and they don't like your point. So as the meeting's going on, there's you know, 35 people that are basically thumbs up in you or thumbs downing you in the meeting from a sentiment perspective. So you're getting a live representation on this board to say whether people think you have a good idea or a bad idea. And then the interesting thing about it is it takes all the positional power away because you can have a first year analyst that doesn't like something that Ray Dalio said and he basically thumbs downing it. And so, you know, the best ideas are like live bubbling up to the top. Now, you know, he's a pretty smart guy and has a lot of resources to do stuff like that. But you know, that's a way where they, you know, there's, they've taken, they've stripped away positional power, influence. The whole, I'm going to support my boss because he's my boss and he's looking out for me type thing. Like those are the types of things that, you know, that I'm, they happen in every company. And I think that's why I have such an affinity for small business and small business growth is that, you know, the bureaucracy of large organizations is absolutely unavoidable. And that's the way that you play the game. And that's the way it needs to be. But it's really not performance in its purest sense. You know, a scrum of people getting together, everybody knows their role, there's only one football, and everybody's got a different job to do. And if we all do it on the same play, every play is a touchdown. But it doesn't happen that way because we got other people that have something to say about it. And, you know, that's just.

It's.

But it's pure, man. It's pure. When you're, when you're scrumming up a business like that, and then the complexity comes in when the people come in, and the more people you have, the more complex and the more silos and the more that things like fake work, miscommunication, clicks and all of that stuff starts to manifest.

Yeah, but if, if, if you were to ask most people, what. What are your top priorities for this week or any given such set time period? Not, not like, you know, I. I got to respond to this email. Like, what are the big things that you're actually trying to accomplish? That in itself is you would think that you would know what you're fundamentally trying to accomplish, but that doesn't happen. And if you cascade that throughout the whole team, you have 10 people working on 30 different things, like, how does this happen? And everybody's trying to defend the territory for why they're working on the particular thing and how important it is and how it moves the needle when actuality, like, all that takes away from whatever the highest priority items are for the organization. And so the more we allow the system to reward loosely connected individual efforts, the more you get that bureaucracy, because now everybody has a say.

So.

But the more we can channel it back into. On first down, we're all running this play like it is. And if you contribute to. If I'm a receiver and I'm supposed to block and I go out for a pass play, like, no matter how open I got, I did not do the thing that was in the best interest of the team and the organization. And you have a lot of that that's taking place in organizations where individuals just aren't doing things that are pushing the business forward. There's no way to measure it. There's no way to hold it accountable. The more we can kind of like streamline that, put some parameters on that, while giving autonomy of how people do the things that contribute to the system. I think you start to clean up a lot of that. But right now, it's just, you Know, it's the wild, wild West. It's. It's chaos for chaos sake versus organizing all of it or organizing it to the degree that, that, that makes sense. And that's a question that I, that, that I ask a lot is, okay, what are y' all trying to accomplish? Like what? Name the top three things that you're trying to accomplish right now. And you go out and you, you once again, you hear however many people at the table, there's probably going to be, you know, multiple, multiple, multiple versions of different things. It's like, well, y' all can't work cohesively together because you're not, you're not working as a team. You're working as a bunch of individual contributors that all kind of share the same banner. But you're not. This, this is freestyle basketball.

Yeah. A better team will beat you every time.

Every time. We. I'll tell you a funny story. We're at Georgia and we're playing rec. We're in our rec center, you know, so you have all these football players, and we're going out there, you know, we're most athletic people on campus, you know, maybe second to the gymnasts, were the most athletic people on campus, then maybe the football players. But we're out there and we're playing, you know, pickup basketball with the regular student body. And we would have games that we would lose. Not because we weren't better athletes, is because you'd have these kids that were on the same high school team and they were running real plays and they were running screens and they were doing all these things. And all we wanted to do is leak out and go like, dunk the basketball. Yeah, we'd lose the game. And so, yeah, you get this one highlight, but then you gotta wait two more games, your turn to go back and play because you just lost. And so you, you forget the main reason why you're there is to win and play as long as you can versus having this one off highlight or doing this thing. And business is kind of the same way where everybody's trying to do their own thing a lot of times versus what's in the best interest of the system and then the system actually rewarding that to making sure you promote people the right way, you compensate people the right way, that you recognize people the right way. All the things that keep people. People engaged and not feel that they're taken advantage of. Yeah.

During your consulting career, one of the things that's really changed a lot in the workforce is remote work. What have you observed about Remote work in terms of its impact in organizational health, the ability to build community and teams inside of companies. Has there been anything that you have encountered that is noteworthy here?

This is a big one. I think it's a depends. Can work get done from anywhere? Yes. Most people are remote in some capacity anyway. Whether you're working on site from a client or you're in bis dev and you're running around, work can be done from everywhere. Now, how are you understanding what people are doing is challenging. How people are connected not just through the work, but just the things that make culture rich. Like how do I actually know you as a person versus we get on this call, we talk about our business, and then we drop off this call and I don't see you again for, until we need to do that. And then I got another zoom meeting exactly when this ends. And so I'm not even comprehending what we just talked about. The deterioration of that is real. On the flip side, from the employee standpoint, especially if you're young in your career, how you actually learn, kind of through osmosis, how you get visibility into the work that you're doing because no one can see it when you're by yourself. And so I think you have to ask, what do you want on both sides as an organization? If you think that your culture is suffering, put the work aside. If you think your culture is suffering, which doesn't allow you to do the work at a high level, then you have to address it. And if you're a young person and you want all the things that you, a career may afford you, whether that's, you know, promotion, growth, compensation, and you're not being recognized right now, then you have to ask yourself, am I actually doing the best thing for my own trajectory, being at home, or should I go back to the office? And so these two sides had to really figure out how to identify work. What is good work, what are people actually doing? And on the flip side, is working from home going to give me the opportunities that I want in my career? Those are big questions that are different from each organization, different from seniority. I don't, I, I don't actually know how to answer it.

Yeah, I'm not sure either. I, I, you know, I'm an older guy, so I'm used to just going into the office and being engaged with people. And I, I know that the, so what do you do in a crisis? When you're in a crisis situation in a business, what do you do? You call everybody in and you sit around in One room. And you're like, okay, we've got a crisis and we need to solve it. And you go into solve mode and you stay really, really tight with everybody who's involved in solving that problem until it gets done. So if that's true, then, you know, maybe our best work, our highest pressure work, gets done when we're. When we're together, when we're in a group. The only time that I prefer to work remote is when I have a project where I can't be interrupted, which. Or I don't want to be interrupted. I've got to get something out. It's a piece of deep work. Annual shareholders report message I want to write. You know, okay, well, there's going to be five pages. It's going to have to be very thoughtful. I just, I want to go to my studio above my garage, and I want to sit out there and, you know, just turn the phone off and, and focus on this and that. But if I'm looking to be engaged with now, I will say we have a very, very effective franchise development team that's scattered all over the country. But if you put something in teams, the people are on it. So it's, you know, they're not in the same room, but they're in the same app and they're cl. They're clicking things back and forth. So they're. They're all focused on the exact same goal, and they're highly, highly engaged and highly accountable. And, you know, if somebody doesn't get back to you on that channel, you know, relatively quickly, you know, something's, you know, something's odd about it. So, you know, it's just. But it's not an exact science. It's not, you know, what's. What's the answer when somebody comes in and they're looking for a job and they say, I want to work from home for three days. Well, okay, but, like, why is it. Because, like, is it, you know, you don't even know the people that work here yet. You don't even know what you can possibly get from having proximity to the executives. And you know, what, what the. You know, what you might be able to get out of it? It's just, maybe the answer is, well, you bought a dog during COVID so you need to be home for your dog. You don't want to pay, you know, the extra three days of dog sitting or whatever it is.

The thing that, That I do find interesting, though, is now that we are on the other side of COVID and people have experienced Work from home. And we. It is what it is. Whether you think work goes up or down. Redefining what the office is supposed to offer is also challenging because I've gone in offices with commercial real estate individuals where they're in the space of leasing office and people are in the bullpen, people all are not collaborating, people are behind their desk, people are still taking zoom calls with people that are in region. And so it's a very confusing thing when you're in office and the things that people say that are supposed to happen in office aren't happening. Where is the developmental time that's carved out? Where is the collaboration? And so it's. Everyone's trying to figure out what to make of it. And what it's supposed to be still hasn't been defined for companies. And how it actually lives hasn't been defined because it's. If I'm on zooms all day, they said, well, I can do that from home. If I'm not going to interact with my colleagues anyway, maybe just for lunch or if I'm here and my manager or leader is traveling all the time and I don't see them. And so I'm not getting, you know, that development anyway or. Right. And so it's each. It's a case by case situation depending on the organization and what the talent and leaders want to get out of it. Which that's why I struggle sometimes where you see these statistics of, you know, return to office is definitely this. You know, work from home is definitely this. And it's like, it depends.

Yeah, I like to give great people freedom to be great. And I like to run an adult workplace. And I don't want to manage people by the back of their heads being at their desk, because it doesn't matter. They might, they could be. They could be being unproductive sitting right there across the room. So it's really more about delivering the right. Your quote. Right. Delivering the right work. And I think that, I mean, if people are thinking about the business because they like the business and they're engaged with the business, it doesn't matter if they're driving somewhere because when they get to wherever they get to, they're going to log in and make the play that needs to be made to move the business forward. So now I just think habitually, I do notice generationally that people that are more advanced in their careers tend to want that tender, you know, have that habit of coming into the office and sitting in the office and being available. And then I think some of the the younger generation is, you know, wants more flexibility and they're more adept with, you know, they pick up apps and tools and, you know, they're used to looking at screen screens and all of that where. And, and you know, it's kind of the generation in which they grew up. So they're like, well, I mean, I. I'm plugged into this Instagram friend group. I'm plugged into my high school buddies on this app. I'm plugged in over here. You know, it doesn't matter. You know, just the fact that you want to come in my office and look at me, to talk to me is ridiculous. So. But it's. Yeah. So. Okay. Well, well, interesting. I don't, I don't have. I don't have a. I know.

Don't.

A strong opinion. I just, I know what, I know what outcomes and results are and you know, them when you're getting them and you know, when people make plays and people don't make plays and so. Interesting. Okay. Is there anything else for business owners that you would care to share that you've learned any, any big lessons that you walked out of an engagement with a client and just said, this is something that everybody needs to know. This is something that everybody could use?

I think the interesting thing is there's a lot of times we don't have the answers.

And.

As simple as that is, you know, 2024 interest rates, you know, what are we going to do with staff? What is the industry going to do AI this that like, there's a lot of people that don't have the answers. And rather than projecting that you have the answers or, or not letting anyone in to get the best answers, I think is something that a lot of leaders, a lot of leaders struggle with because they're in the leadership position. And a lot of times the old leadership frameworks and models say that the leader is supposed to have the vision and lead the way. And really taking the ability to step back and understand I may not be the best person for this and having that vulnerability, having that honesty and transparency and allowing the, the creating the environment where the best answers and the best solutions can come, regardless if that's from you, that's from your team, but creating that environment is probably the best thing that I've learned. Because once again, usually if you've hired right, insights are somewhere within the system. And it's the leader's job to just find where it is within their system. Not to always come up with it, not to always dictate it, but to create the environment where you can find the best solutions. And that requires you to be vulnerable, that requires you to ask questions, that requires you to create the environment where individual can come to you and ask questions or can come to you with solutions. And it's not to say that anything that comes at you is going to be 100%, but at least creating that fertile soil so that you get to the right answer, if you don't start with the right answer, is probably the biggest thing that I continue to see as I do the work.

Nice mo Fluke. If you look into the future and is there an area of your practice that you are particularly interested in growing or is there something that you're not doing now that you really aspire to make part of your life?

Ah, to be honest with you, there's a handful of things. There's strategic alignment in companies is an area that a goal is to make that more tech enabled so that as we wind projects down, things don't deteriorate. But to really have a way to continue to organize what is top of priority, organize how you get feedback from things that move the strategy forward, organize how you get visibility into what work is actually taking place. So that's a big 2024 goal and really just to continue to do the work and be confident in it. Being further removed from accident, further removed from school, further removed from COVID There's just a comfort and a freedom. There's not any imposter syndrome of being out in front of the work when you first start. Especially when you, you kind of anchor from, from an athlete mentality and you're walking into these, these corporate boardrooms just to. You just realize that you're, you come from different worlds, but in now doing the work, you know, people actually want that different perspective because if you are, are the same as them, then it's your commodity, you don't add any real value. And so those two things of just, you know, just growing the business, adding tech to support things that clients have expressed interest in will be the two goals for 2024.

Nice. What do you do when you're not working?

Love all my family. Try to be very efficient and effective with my day so that I can always come home and do dinner so I can take my daughter to school so I could be with my wife, try to work out. So I still feel like I'm in shape in case, in case I gotta flip off one of my daughter's gymnastics bars or something like that. Yeah. Hurt myself. And recently I've gotten back into, you know, at the end of the night, just really winding down, whether that's watching TV or reading a book, but not always being on just to. Just to feel recharged going into the next day. Yeah.

You sleep well?

I do. I'm trying to get eight hours of sleep, probably.

Wow.

10 to 10 to 6, you know, ish.

Somewhere in there.

Yeah.

Enjoy it now. Man. When you get older, I don't know what happens, but, like, those nights get really short.

Yeah, I, I was watching your, I.

Was watching your videos this morning about 4:45, and I woke up, I'm like, what's on my calendar? Oh, I better, I better brush up on mo a little bit more.

And here's the thing. I, I crash if, If I. Yeah. Because I'm in different industries, I'm in different thought process until my brain is going. And if I don't have a full tank of gas to start the day, I could feel it in my speech, I could feed it, like, you know when you just can't find the word that you're looking for?

Oh, yeah.

And so I try not to ever present like that. So it's kind of my, my pregame ritual to be hydrated, be, you know, I got my big, big thing of water that I'm probably gonna fill out multiple times a day. It's almost like the same discipline of, of being an athlete of your, your body is the output. And so my mind, my body, I need all those things functioning at a high level to be able to attack the day.

Yeah. I mean, observationally, the best business athletes I've seen, man, they, they tend to have disciplines outside of work that, where they're preparing and they're training, taking care of themselves, making sure that they're, you know, they're, they're, they're at their best. Mo, this has been awesome. I really appreciate the time that we've spent together today on the home front. Final question. If you could speak one sentence into somebody's lives to make an impact, what might that be?

Oh, that's a good one. You know, there's a quote that I always reference, and I'll give context. I got a buddy who's in real estate, and I remember when he was starting his business, he was raising, raising money for it. And long story short, I basically ask him, are you nervous or are you. Are you scared? You know, it wasn't too far after, you know, 2008, when real estate got hit. And he looked at me and he said, you know, the unknown opportunities excite me. More than the future makes me nervous. And I, I, it just always jumps out to me. And so for the person that's scared, the person that's nervous, the person that feels that they have imposter syndrome, person that's worried about the future, just go like, you have no idea how, how life is going to shake out for the better if you just put your best foot forward and really adjust as needed along your journey. So that, that would be what I would. It's a sentence, it's a phrase, it's a quote. So I think that, I think that fits in a bucket.

I love it. Fantastic. I appreciate it very much. Mo Massaquah, with vessel, how can people get in touch with you?

They can find me on LinkedIn. I'm one of the only ones. They may get to my dad, but he'll reroute up to me. So Mohammed Massaquah, or they could go to the vessel. My website, T-H-E-V-E-S-S-O l.com would be happy to connect with them and wish everybody the best of luck on their journeys as they continue to make impact.

Thank you, Mo, and thank you for being on the home front today. We appreciate your time.

Pleasure to join you. Keep up the great work.

Absolutely. Will do. And thanks everybody for listening out there. We'll catch you next time. This has been Jeff Duden on the home front.