Ep 65: The ESG Mindset Shift Every Founder Needs Before Exit

Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. Uh, so there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch.

Upfront payment of $45 for 3 months, $90 for 6 months, or $180 for a 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent to taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy.

See terms.

Welcome to the Exit Engine Podcast, episode 65. Welcome to the Exit Engine Podcast, where we help founders, owners, and entrepreneurs grow the value of their businesses and prepare for the exit they deserve. I'm your host, as always, Joe Stapleton, alongside with my partner in exit and co-host, John Kniff. Hey, John.

Good morning, Joe.

So every week, John and I break down what it really takes to build a more valuable, scalable, and sellable company, whether your exit is one year away or still just a dream. So today on the Exit Engine podcast, we have a very special guest. John Newman is a strategic leader who helps industrial executives unlock profit and purpose. Over his career, John has driven over $100 million in impact by helping companies in heavy industry transform waste, not just literally, but inefficiency, underutilization, and environmental costs into real profit without sacrificing margins or exhausting teams. With a focus on sustainable transformation and operational discipline, John knows how to get buy-in from stakeholders, execute change in complex environments, and deliver measurable results for both the bottom line and the planet. If you're a founder or business owner wondering how to increase value, improve efficiency, or get ready for exit while staying true to your mission, This conversation will give you both tactical tools and inspirational frameworks. John Newman, welcome to the Exit Engine Podcast.

Thanks for having me, Drew, and thanks for having me, John. Glad to be here.

Okay, John, we're talking about your, uh, you know, I think that we were, we were just talking a little bit about when we, when you kind of came in here about the, about climate change. And obviously that, that's a sustainability situation, right? Where we're trying to basically figure out, hey, you know, the Obviously, there's— there are businesses have to deal with this stuff regardless of whatever the science says, regardless of anything, right? There is an actual actuality. And you were just telling us a story about how farmers in Canada right now have basically their crops and everything else are now an entire month early. They're already done, right? Because the drought and the weather in Canada.

Yeah, in Saskatchewan where I live, we're very much a big agriculture province, very flat. And yeah, a lot of the farmers are done their harvest already, usually about 3 weeks to a month early, which is the first time— the earliest they've ever— usually it's after Thanksgiving in Canada. So usually the 10th of October, they're usually done. So it's concerning, obviously, for some of them. But it's the way it's been for the last few years is the weather has been dynamic in the way they take their crops off.

Wow.

What's the impact of something like this, though, too? Right. I mean, there's got to be a relatively I think the economic impact, um, I don't know if there's impact.

I think the big impact is the tariffs right now because canola is a big, big crop here. A lot of farmers I think are worried about that offset. Um, you gotta remember most farmers are fairly small here. They are a middleman between them and the grain bins, and the grain bins are the ones that get it to the world, right? So I think, uh, the ones that are growing canola, which a lot of canola is grown here in Saskatchewan, I think a lot of them are probably white-knuckling it because of the tariffs and, and potentially put them out of For some of the small guys. The big guys can probably weather the blows a little bit better.

Yeah, the tariffs, a lot of times— I, I've— I don't have that much experience in, in agriculture, to be perfectly frank, but, um, I was talking to somebody who is thinking of shutting down their business because it is— the tariffs seem to be the difference between profit and not profit, right?

Well, small farmers have everybody grabbing at them, right? Government. There's, there's not a lot of— there's not a lot of— it makes a good middle-class wage. Um, a lot of older farmers seeing that their kids aren't taking over the operation. So they're either renting the land out and making money that way, or they're selling it to the big guys, and the big guys are just buying more and more hectares of land because there's more, you know, the more power, the more money, a little bit more profit you can generate.

Yep.

Um, but yeah, the tariffs on the small guys are going to cripple them. It's just like the— it's like having a steel tariff on a small steel company right now, is they're not gonna— the big companies can weather the storm. The small guys make enough to kind of keep their lights on and live a middle-class life. And they're finding that a lot of the younger generations don't want a part of it because of the work-life balance. And just, there's not a lot of big trade-offs for it.

Yeah, it's a really, really interesting point. And I think here on the ExitEngine Podcast, obviously that's important to us because what we talk about obviously is your value and salability and your ability to be able to actually sell the company. And then of course, there are times when there's writing on the wall Right? There are moments in everyone's, in every owner's life where they see these transitions potentially occur, where these are these kind of transformation points, right? The ability inflection points, people where they start to decide, what am I going to do and how am I going to do this and who am I going to leave my company to? And all that stuff. When you talk about what we haven't talked a ton about on the Exit Nation Podcast so far, which is why we're so grateful John, that you're here today, John Newman, is because, um, we— you, you have a— you come from, uh, you come from industry, right? You really come from this, actually from the steel world, right? Um, and, and you're focused now on, on helping people with their, with their, um, with their— with the— sorry, with the environmental, the social, and the government's work, the ESG things, the ability to be able to help these larger industrial companies, right, become sustainable, right? Worry about their, their social responsibility, their government responsibility, and things like that. So talk to us a little bit about how you kind of got your— what your, your background, how did you get into— tell, you know, into that industry, and tell us a little bit about what the— about what these industries are feeling right now, especially when it comes to things like ESG.

Well, I guess how I got involved Is I grew up in a single-parent family, mom, dad. My dad was a big executive for a big trade union in North America, the United Steelworkers. I lived with my mom. Uh, 18 came, I didn't want to go to school. It wasn't in my foresight. So I kind of— there was a big steel mill here, it paid very well. I, being a young kid of the union boss, you know, the C-suite union boss, I got to meet a lot of the executive and all that kind of stuff here at the, at the mill. So I jumped into bargaining unit work. You know, that's how I started. Realized early on that I wasn't very— I was very entrepreneurial, not very union related. So it took some time for me to leave. And I jumped over into management about 10 years after that. So I've seen a lot of changes even the 22 years that I was there when it comes to safety, noise, emissions, lots of big changes, but still not enough. Um, I used to see pigeons. I remember going to work and I used to see pigeons free falling to their death because of just the air quality back in 2000, right? Just because— and there's obviously heat, you know.

Right.

My daughter was born and my daughter said something to me I'll never forget. She said, Dad, you work around lava. And I actually thought about that for a second and I'm like, no, actually steel's hotter than lava. And that kind of made me think about the safety factor and those types of things. Yeah, I got my start. Obviously, it was more of generational, right? Dad being union, and then ten years in, I got divorced, and my life kind of changed. And I think I shared this with you earlier, Julie Matt, is I had a friend of mine that got pancreatic cancer, and he kind of looked at me and said that I was staying stagnant. I wasn't living up to my potential. Didn't know what that really meant. So I went back to school in my thirties and reeducated myself. I went to metallurgy school at. first, and then I went and got an executive mini MBA second. And that was where sustainability really shone. The company that I worked for was Ipsco at first. They were a circular steelmaker. Circular economy was very much embedded in their DNA. It was actually found in their employee handbook in 2001, the word circular economy. That's something that's a key buzzword today. So it was always finding the waste and implementing that waste into our final product and trying to obviously keep your waste and your costs down, right? Your costs stay down, you're lean, you get margin, right?

Right.

So I guess, yeah, in 2020, I went back to school. And that was when I kind of decided I needed to leave. I needed to leave because heavy industry was definitely near and dear to my heart. I have a daughter, and I see a, I see a climate change problem. And heavy industry like steel, oil, gas is a big one. Agriculture is a big one. You know, cement, all these big industries that have these big profit margins, are all struggling because they've been doing business the way they've been doing it for 50 years and it's not working.

Right.

And it's not easy to reinvent those things. And I find in a lot of those, you know, when people think of ESG, they think right away of climate change.

Right.

And that's not necessarily what it is. It's definitely the environmental impact, but it's the social impact is, as a big company, you can put your targets whatever you want. If you don't have that social buy-in from your stakeholders, your employees, Your communities—they all want to be involved in your success, and they don't expect perfection. They expect you to be honest and transparent, right? And they expect you to try, right? Not just yeah fluff, right? Is is actually go out there and fail because you are going to fail. You're you're changing the way you do business. So that comes from innovation, and that comes from one percent daily wins, right? And that comes from involving your bottom line, your front line. And I always. In the steel industry, and the way that I led as a manager is bottom-up, top-down. Is my employees were the ones that put out the fires. They're the ones that saw the fires and they're the ones that had the autonomy to put them out. Not the CEO. The CEO heard about the problems but really has no clue what the problems really are at the end of the day. And that's, I think, a big change that we're starting to see in some corporations is you hear the word culture. Those are the ESG terms that people should be talking about. about. It's not the climate change, because the climate change is pretty simple. You have to just do better at what you do.

It's also not— and to be clear, it's also not about DEI and things like that either, right? So let's just, for the focus of this conversation today, make sure that everybody knows that what we're talking about is defining, you know, ESG and really what it is.

Yeah, before we do that, if we can go back to something else before we go to ESG, the circular economy, can you just Describe that, Jon, because I have to say I'm familiar with the term, but if you could just give our listeners a brief explanation of that would be helpful.

Well, let's use clothes. We all wear clothes. So think of— there's another problem, another industry that has problems, fast fashion. So just think if Gap was able to take all of their waste and reuse it and continue on making clothes, right? That's that circular loop, is you're not wasting anything. You're taking your waste and you're re-putting it in, repurposing it and using it again and not using any more more energy, any more labor. Like, you understood? Okay, so it's, it's that circular loop. Um, not easy to do, right? Right. Like fast fashion, you know. So it's, it's changing the way you do the— your business, and your— some business models are going to go through, um, some significant change.

Yeah.

I always say the only person that you'll ever hear that likes change is a baby getting their diaper changed. That's the only person that's ever going to say they love change.

Right. But even then, the reason they like change is because they are so uncomfortable, right, that they have no choice but to change. And that's actually what it takes for all humans.

And corporations are gonna have to get, I always say, corporate uncomfortable. That's where growth comes from doing— we always hear that phrase, we've always done it this way. We've always done it this way. And I always laugh at that because doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result Einstein quoted what it was. The fact that C-suites still say it goes to show you how far that they're out of touch with their employees, their stakeholders, because most employees and stakeholders do care about climate change. They do care about social governance. Governance is always going to be a part of it. We always need rules and regulations or else things would just be chaotic at the end of the day. To me, the one thing that people don't talk about is I always look at ESG as a 3-legged stool. the E and the G. The S is what holds you up, and that's the social impact. What are your social values? What are your people, your culture? You know, you can use the buzzwords DEI, all those things, but it's, it's more about treating people and letting people be a part of the solution to your problem, not just pointing the finger at them and telling them what to do. They want to be a part of businesses' growth and change toward climate change. You know, we all walk outside, we all see the forest fires, we all see the Climate's changing. People want to be a part of how do we fix that, because for themselves, but for our kids and our grandkids and the things behind us.

They all can see— I mean, everyone can see the change, the changes that have occurred in the last— you know, you, you brought up 2000, but think of the changes in the world since 2000 from an environmental standpoint, right? A social impact standpoint. It's just— it's, it's— if you can't see it, I'm just shocked where you live in the— I'd wonder where you live in the world.

And, and also, I, you know, regardless of whether it's, you know, again, you can even just take out for right now how the long term, when it ha— whatever, right? The, the right now, just the, like you said, the eye test, right? The fact that you can— we know that we go outside and I know that it's going to be 70 degrees right here in Philadelphia until December.

Mm-hmm.

And it didn't used to be that way. Okay. I mean, not 20 years ago, right? It was not like that. And so there's just obvious stuff. But the more important issue, I think, is what do we do about it? And what is the corporate responsibility? And especially in heavy industry, right? And so what you're— what John— what I find fascinating about what John Newman's doing is he's trying to basically help these large, very set in their ways you know, heavy industry companies change, transform themselves into modern companies that are thinking differently, are more innovative, and are helping their bottom lines, right? Because they are looking at things differently.

Well, yeah. And John, the question I have is, did you approach it from the financial standpoint first, or is that a benefit? Like, talk a little bit about, like, how you were able to work with these companies and sort of let you, or how they let you in the door, frankly? Is it a financial component? Is it— how does that start?

Yeah, I think the problem we see with ESG is a lot of people see it as a sunk cost. They don't see value in it. There's tremendous value in it. If you get lean, you're going to generate more green, and you're also going to have a green footprint, right? As you're using less waste, you're going to— your margins are going to go up. The social buy-in, I think, is the key. You look at the employee turnover, most employees don't want to go in. That's where I said the S part being that middle leg. It's— you're not going to drive the environmental impact without the social impact. Those words culture, you know, people want, you know, the high turnover rates and unemployment, things like that, is those are the value drivers, is stakeholders, generations, Gen Z, Gen Y, right? Gen X, all the younger generations are very much looking at I just met with a girl actually in Australia who's a recruiter, and she said the first question that's asked in Australia is what's their ESG stats? That's the first, not salary, what's their ESG stats?

Oh, that's what the candidates ask.

And a lot of employers are seeing the pain is right now in a lot of big corporations, talent is one of the biggest costs and you pay for it. And if you lose it, it's even detrimental. And a lot of, you look at me, I spent 22 years in my career. That doesn't happen anymore. You're basically, corporations are renting employees for 4 or 5 years if they're lucky. And employees my age, lower, younger demographics are looking at what's your social stance? What's your environmental stance? What are you trying to do? Are you just playing the status quo? Are you actually trying to change? And people want to be a part of that. So it's showing companies There's huge benefit. There's benefit in doing business differently, innovating and growing. Now, innovation and growth is not easy. Apple, you remember Apple and the Mac? I like to use Apple as an example. Apple made computers, right? They weren't a cell phone maker and they weren't the first one to make a cell phone. They innovated. They, as a team, they innovated. They spent some money. They got dirty. They got uncomfortable. They did things that they didn't do before. And now look at them. Yeah, I even look at Apple as even another case, you know. Furthermore, is, is, is what's going on in the US and kind of the walking away from ESG. Apple's still sourcing sustainable materials for their phones. The question I always ask people is, why do you think they're doing that?

Hey, I'm Joe Stapleton.

And I'm John Kniff.

You know, John, most founders put everything they have into building their business. Years of sweat, sacrifice, and problem-solving. But when it comes time to exit, many are shocked to learn that what buyers value isn't what they thought.

Here's the truth: buyers don't pay for potential, they pay for proof. Proof that your business can grow without you. Proof that your financials are clean. Proof that your processes are clear and repeatable.

If you wait until a buyer shows up to think about these things, you're almost guaranteed to leave money and control on the table. ExitEngine was built to change that.

ExitEngine is the first readiness platform that helps founders design their ideal exit step by step, combining education, coaching, and support and access to an elite network of business specialists and capital. ExitEngine empowers you to build a valuable, transferable business and exit on your own terms.

It's not about selling tomorrow, John. It's about making sure that when you're ready, your business is worth what it deserves to be.

Don't let your life's work get discounted. Control your business destiny today. Start preparing now while you still have time to engineer the exit you want. Visit myexitengine.com to learn more.

Who buys their cell phones? It's younger generations that are buying their cell phones, so they know if they don't have those sustainable materials, Those younger kids are going to go elsewhere, whether it's Samsung or whether it's someone else, that because that's what people want. And that's the social value is there's a there's value in the environmental and changing your ways. But there's it's your social it's your brand value that's really that's really going to take off. And that's where, like Joe said, they're stuck in their ways. A lot of people don't think about brand value anymore. They think about shareholder return.

Right.

And that's the wrong way. That's an archaic way of thinking of things in today's market. And we see a lot of C-suites that are up in age and they're, you know, they're holding on for dear life to keep their jobs and they're not willing to change. And it's really just hurting them.

It's hurting them too. And here's why. Because the reality is that if they were able to, if they were actually able to make this right, to actually make this change and start this and be able to actually push it. It would— it wouldn't take that long, right? But the reality is, is that I'm— what I'm saying is that they would be raising their value, okay? And right, as a— whether it was a private company or a public company, either way, okay, that it's raising their value, you know, and, and eventually, and, and therefore their salability at whatever point, okay? Whether they're, again, public companies, we're, we're talking about You know, we tend to focus on private companies, but the, but the notion is the same, right?

100%. Here's an example, I guess. Let's say there was massive layoffs in the tech industry as we've, as we've come. Let's say, let's use Mark Zuckerberg as an example, prime example. Let's say Mark Zuckerberg was willing to take a 40% wage decrease to keep employees and not lay off. What would that mean, do you think, for the future of his company?

Right. Seems like it'd be a huge investment.

It would be obviously something for him. Does he need the money? No. Right. Probably not. But it's changing the way you do things and not, you know, taking greed out of it and giving. And that to me is what leadership is about. Um, and it's still something that society— it comes with change. It's not something that, you know, there's companies that are doing it, Joe. Yeah. We don't hear about them because they're not worth $3 trillion.

Well, the guy, the guy who took a huge pay cut, I think it's Gravity Payments or something, he, he took a pay— he took a pay cut to ensure that all his employees would make like $40 grand or something. Um, and, and like, look, he got a ton. I'd never heard of Gravity Payments before, you know. I don't know, just Gravity Payments, but I never heard him before. It's like, wow, he's gonna do this, and he took a crazy pay cut. It's like he got all sorts of flowers and all sorts of laudits in the, in the news.

It's not only just press too. I mean, the reality is, is that we talked to Judy Schramm a couple weeks ago, who's a kind of an expert in the CEO, you know, and personal branding space. And her thing is saying, look, when you do this stuff, people want to work for you.

Yeah.

People want to come work there, right? It's not just about getting an article or the press or whatever. It really is a way to be able to now get the best possible talent, which also is a way of growing the value of your business, right? So, you know, again, it is a— it is— I feel like, especially in heavy industry, because I think, again, there are so many moving parts and so many ways of looking at profit and, you know, and operations and the ability to be able to— there's so many areas where you can improve and where you can kind of turn screws, right? That it feels like it's a cop-out. Right, to, to not want to look deeper into this ESG stuff to make sure that you are, you are maximizing the value and, you know, and even the profitability of the company?

I think heavy industry, we've all heard the triple bottom line, the 3 Ps: people, planet, profit. I think in a lot of those heavy industries, they've just, they've always looked at a triple bottom line just from a different lens. They've put profit first Maybe planet second and people third. And it goes back to the word change, is people want to be a part. They want to have, you know, your values need to be aligned from the CEO down to your customer, right? They have to believe in your product. They have to believe in what you're selling and what you're doing. And that social brand value is very much instrumental in the next 10, 20 years on how companies are going to be successful. A lot of these old companies that aren't willing to change are going to get left out to dust. I always like to use, you know, um, think of the internet and AI right now. Look at the people that don't use the internet that we look at and we're like, how do you not use the internet? Now just think of the change that's going to happen with AI. Is a lot of these companies, yeah, they, they make some profit, but they're going to be left behind because they're not willing to change and they're holding on to these old archaic ways. That, yeah, they definitely make some cash for their shareholders, but investors are even looking at companies today and they're not giving money unless you have a green plan, you have a sustainability initiative.

Because, I mean, it's like we say in our business, we have, you know, we're working not exclusively, but we're working with founders and entrepreneurs who want to sell their business. And we always preach that Hey, good exit planning is just good business planning. And I think it sounds analogous to what you're saying in the sense of, look, like to have an ESG plan is just good business planning, just like to have a good exit plan is just good business planning, right? It's sort of like having to have to think, to consider ESG in your plans is like table stakes at this point. And if you're not doing it, you'll get questions from investors about, hey, are you thinking about the long term here?

Yeah, and I think the big thing to that point, John, is ESG plans right now, a lot of people think of the ESG frameworks, and the ESG frameworks are tied to accounting standards. They're a glossy slide deck. They're like almost, I always tell people, they're like a university thesis paper. You write the thesis paper, now you've got to go live it.

Yeah.

So these frameworks are just the step of the tip of the iceberg. These are just saying, this is what I want to do, Now you have to go put that into theory and figure out trial and error and innovate continuous improvement and do those things. You know, if you're going to say, I'm going to get 30% reduction in emissions, well, putting it on paper is just putting it on paper. You actually have to go do it.

Well, yeah, because— and they have to put it in their goals, right? To your point about these frameworks, it's— if you don't put it— if you don't assign someone or put a project behind it, than it is just sort of lip service. But if you put a— if you give someone a task, someone like Joe, you're responsible for lowering the emissions by 15% by the end of 2026. Miraculously, he will start a project because if his compensation and all those things are tied to that goal, it's amazing how those things sort of just happen.

Yeah, it's accountability. And I think the biggest thing is transparency. And really, you know, people realize that you, you may say 30%, you may get to 26 or 25, and that's okay. Um, it's showing that you're actually doing something versus giving that lip service. And that's what I think a lot of companies are still in that mode of more of a lip service ESG score for, for investor, you know, for investor capital for their project. I always, um, oil gas, you know, Saskatchewan, Canada, big oil gas producer, right? People say to me, you must be against oil and gas. No, like, you have to to look at the reality. My coffee cup, my microphone, all these things are made from oil and gas. You can't just get rid of them. You have to ease your dependence on them until you find something else and clean up how you're making oil and gas right now and how you're drilling for it the best you can until new innovation is there. You can't just— everyone looks at this as an instant gratification thing, as, well, tomorrow— You're not going to have these things tomorrow. it's going to take maybe a decade, maybe 2 decades for some of these innovations to come up. There's a steel company in the US talking about nuclear fusion and creating energy from nuclear fusion. Still, you look at Tesla making robots. All of these things have taken time. Even AI. I'm only 44. I never would have guessed that 2020, we would have been talking about AI, but innovation has got there. In 1990, people would have thought, We're talking about the Jetsons. Yeah.

So some of us are disappointed that it's not more like the Jetsons yet.

Yeah. And we're only getting started. And that's— change takes time. And I think that that's the big thing is people want instant gratification with that change and it's all or nothing and it can't be all or nothing. It has to— there has to be an ease and a grace period. And it's called energy transition for a reason. It's not just shut off the oil and gas light and turn on a different light. We don't have nothing in place.

Yeah.

And by the way, all our— every piece of rubber, every piece of plastic, every, every consumer face product, whatever, has petroleum in it. Right. So, I mean, it is— you're right. It is not— it's not— it's not an option to even consider getting rid of oil and gas. That's never been— I mean, my mind is never— should have never been the goal either. But what it has to be is it has to make sense to the bottom line, and it has to be provable, because the business, right, the pain either has to be, I need to find new ways of making more money, and so therefore I'm willing to look into these areas if you can show me a model that says this is how I'm gonna grow or how I'm gonna change the bottom line, right? Or it has to be so much pain from a regulatory standpoint, or I'm gonna be losing money somehow that I can see.

Or Or competitors are doing it differently, right? Competitor— if your competition is doing things that appeal more to consumer preferences and tastes and you're not doing them, then they'll vote with their pocketbooks and wallets and go to them and buy their products as opposed to yours. I mean, like, I don't know if this is happening with oil companies, but like, I know that when I'm driving down the street and I have a choice between Gas stations. I— there's a preference that I have for gas stations. I'm not going to say which ones, but like the ones I avoid, let's put it that way.

Right. You mentioned Gravity earlier, that CEO. Just think about how many people started buying his products or their products, whatever they make, after that announcement. That probably boosted their ROI intentionally because here's a leader, here's a leader thinking outside the box and trying to change for the better.

And recruiting, right? To your point about like people will want to go, will gravitate to working for those, those companies, you know, and stay.

And they won't just clock out, and they won't just clock in and clock out. They're going to give you 123% because they know they're cared about, because they know their leadership, when push comes to shove and the earnings per share aren't there, is they know that their leaders, well, Yeah, and I mean, again, you can say a lot about Elon Musk, and, you know, you might not like his political preferences, but like, man, the dude can do—

can build companies, right? He's building rocket companies, he's building a Boring Company, he created effectively an industry with Tesla, or really dominates the one in the US. It's just sort of an amazing transformation that this is where we are with— we didn't get flying cars, we got electric cars. I was hoping for a flying car just like Joe was, But hey, we get Teslas everywhere, so what can you do, right?

Did you get my impression? I have to do it for everybody.

Is that a Tesla?

That's the— no, that's the— that was the Jetsons flying car.

Sorry, Doc's not coming through.

But I, I even saw somewhere not that long ago, I think it was Dubai maybe, that, that's created some sort of like self-driving helicopters. Yep.

Yeah.

They've got all kinds of drone things and like manned drones now and stuff like that. Yeah, I mean, the battery packs, the battery power is getting better, everything's getting lighter. You're seeing, we've got, they've got full-blown, full-bore fly, self-flying, like, uh, you know, jet planes now. I mean, everything is like, it's just, it's incredible. Um, but I think again, it's from an innovation standpoint, right? There's always going to be innovation and, and there's, and the way that But to your point, a lot of these older, more staid kind of industrials, right, are— they want the next thing. They're always looking. I'm sure that they are always looking for the next thing, the next way to innovate. Are they looking in the right places?

No, I think they want the quick fixes. Yeah, they want the duct tape answers and they don't want to get uncomfortable, right? Because they're very much tied to that EPS. That seems to drive their— the way they think. And I think the problem in a lot of those heavy industries, you have a lot of IQ, not a lot of EQ in leadership. And that's a huge disadvantage for them is I always say, you know, whenever I network with people, they'll talk about we have a good culture. And I always ask this question. I'm like, you know, when you're in a meeting, your board meeting for the month and your CEO has this idea and it's dumb. You're sitting there in your mind, this is a terrible idea. This is not going to work. Can you put your hand up and say, I don't think this is a good idea, and this is why? And they all stop. They hesitate. They never really give an answer because the answer is obviously no. And that's, I think, the problem in a lot of corporations is we have a lot of people that just give answers, and it's okay not to know. I think Ray Dalio says it best: one plus one equals three. The power of collaboration. That's what a lot of CEOs and big corporations need to really incentivize in these board meetings is not just— just because you're the leader and the chief commanding officer doesn't mean that you have the right answer all the time.

Yeah. And let me ask you a question about sort of the difference. And I don't want to make excuses for big industrial companies, but tell me sort of, you know, why this shouldn't be the case, right? Because I imagine that industrial companies have to have capital budgets. They have to have long-term plans to invest in those assets and buy them and improve them and make sure that their useful life is sustained. And it's so their machines and their products and their plants are up to date. How hard is that to do in the context of what we've been talking about so far? Like, what would you like to see more companies do In that industry, in that area of making sure that they're keeping up to date with all their assets?

I think a lot of companies, what they're not doing is they're running their businesses top-down, right? The CEOs are making the decisions versus utilizing your bottom frontline staff, your bottom managers that see those fires, those problems on a daily basis, but they're probably too scared to bring them up because no one wants to change and they're scared to have that uncomfortable conversation because it's usually not one that people want to have. And that's what sparks the change. I think the assets are still going to be there. There are liabilities, sometimes there's sunk costs. You're building— you're not just going to build a new building because someone said to. You have to use what you have and make it better. And that to me is by involving your stakeholders and most importantly, your employees. And the employees are the— we talked about circular economy. Earlier. It's a certain— you know, you think bottom-up, top-down, that's a loop. You have to keep that loop open. And that comes with collaboration, communication. And you have people that are thinking outside the box, and that's where innovation comes in. And that's something that a lot of companies should really— instead of having all these wasteful meetings, have sandbox meetings where employees can go get creative and figure out ways to cut their weight. to do things that are, you know, solving problems for the company versus wasting time in another meeting that talks about what we didn't get accomplished in the meeting before.

Well, it's so funny because like a lot of these innovations, I think, and this is obviously a broad generalization, but like it's almost like innovation by necessity, right? The smaller companies or the smaller entities often come up with these innovations because they can't compete with the big guys, right? They can't compete with the giant firms. And they must do these types of innovations, and then they grow bigger to say, like, oh, wow, look at— I mean, look at whatever. Chick-fil-A is probably a bad example, but like Chick-fil-A was nothing 15 years ago, right? And look, they're ubiquitous now. They're everywhere, at least in this country. And not that they had to break in and do something different, but it seems like a lot of these companies, you know, a lot of these big companies, to your point, they don't want to change. And almost like There's just that— there's that hesitancy to change because I'm in a position of power. Why would I ever want to give that up?

I, I think that, and I think a lot of them want, um, they want government assistance, right? As they want— they almost want government help to change. As they'll change, but if someone's going to help them, they don't want to take it out of their own bottom line. And obviously with the pandemic and the things that have gone on, you know, There's not a lot of cash around for governments to help companies. I always say here in Canada, we still have an oil and gas cap. They call it a production cap. It was actually just yesterday, one of the MPs announced TC Energy, which used to be called TransCanada Energy. It changed its name because of the political system, is building a pipeline in Vermont, I believe. I don't know the exact state, but I think he said Vermont. You look at those types of things, a lot of projects are, are moving away because the way things are seen. Um, I think though it comes down to ESG though, is yeah, a lot of companies don't want to change and they're not going to change unless they drastically have to. You look, look at the pandemic for an example. Did companies want to mandate vaccines and change the way they handled their employees? No. They eventually had to, and that change was difficult, but it was a change that was almost vital because of what was going on in the world at that time, right? Every, every— and we always forget that the world has a lot of different culture, and that's tough to find harmony and alignment along beliefs for organizations, right? And company DNAs are changing drastically. And a lot of, you know, I always say a lot of companies that are still acting this way are almost acting off the Blockbuster business model, right? Right. Not willing to change. They're still stuck in that way. And look what Netflix— you mentioned earlier, John, you know, small company. Think of Tesla, right?

Mm-hmm.

You know, Tesla was small. They were competing against GM, Ford. Now look at them. GM and Ford can't even replicate what they're doing because they don't know, because A company was small, they took a risk, and they went and innovated.

Yeah, no, you're exactly— that's a far better example than the one that I gave. And it's amazing to me that companies like Ford and GM frankly allowed, and I'm putting allowed in quotes here, Tesla to get big. It's like you saw what they were doing, you didn't agree with them, or you didn't think that they would be able to do it. I mean, I frankly didn't think he'd be able to do it, but I don't know anything about cars. But The fact that they've grown as large as they've grown, it's, it's, um, it's an amazing story.

And it's, it's changed the way we think of things. Like, you know, people, you know, I don't want to test the person, it's because of the battery life. But yeah, it's, it's, uh, I would have preferred a Jetson car as well, probably. I think that would have been neat. But you look at the idea and the concept, it's out of the box. Yeah, it's not in the box, it's out of the box. And People love it. You know, you look at the they look at the Cybertruck. It's you know they look weird, but it's it's a brand thing, and and it's it has that green tag kind of associated to it, and it's innovation. Um, you look made.

I mean, he made Hummer go into the electric car business. Yeah.

I mean, well yeah, it's a joke, right?

I mean, that's the right. He took Hummer, right, which was the emblem of I don't care about gas, blah blah blah. I'm gonna be this, and I've got a giant truck, and now I'm totally electrified. Yeah, right? Like because because of that influence. I mean, all the other car companies are trying, right? It's all there, and it's all because of what he pushed and what he pushed and his ability to be able to get everybody, you know, get consumers, right? Moving that direction. What?

Yeah, sorry, I just want to, like, and talk about generations, like generational differences. Like, I have teenagers now, and they are— not that they're obsessed with cars, but one of my daughters is actually fairly obsessed with cars, and she's always looking at like, oh, is that an electric car? Is that a new Tesla? Is that this? Is that that? It's amazing. So that they know that obviously these— that I still have a gas car, and like, oh, well, they have a Tesla, they don't need to get gas. It's like, oh, they don't care about the price of gas. I'm like, well, they don't worry about other things like the price of electricity. So it's funny, but younger generations are way more tuned into that stuff than I ever was.

And I'm glad you brought that up because let's talk about the balance of power. We have a lot of baby boomers that are still in these C-suite executives that have all the money. The world wealth is very much tied to baby boomers. Where's that money going? That generation, that tipping point hasn't happened yet.

No.

But just like you said, why is your daughter looking at Teslas? It's probably because its footprint, it's a good thing. It mends with her values and her mission and the things that she wants to probably see for the world. So it's a— it's what people buy into. It's not people just go buy because GM was the only thing that was there. Now there's choice, and people want it to symbolize their values and who they are and reflect them, because the car is kind of a reflection of who they are, right? It's People don't buy an electric car just because they want to plug it in. They buy an electric car because of the statement that it makes.

And I think it's an excellent point to bring up too. That's very, very true, especially about the two, the two younger generations who are the two younger adult generations, right? Millennials and Gen Z, right? Who, who, who are unlike their— us, our Xers, and the— and certainly not the baby boomers, right? Have grown up in a social responsibility world. They have grown up in a way in which this stuff was talked about. They care about this stuff. They they do vote with their with their pocketbooks. Look what happened to you know again just as an example, look what happened to the with the Jimmy Kimmel stuff over the last 24 hours, right? The ability for people to go to Disney and go I'm I am you know I'm canceling your app. I'm canceling both your apps. I'm canceling, right? I'm gonna, I'm gonna boycott Marvel or whatever, right? This, this whole thing turns on its head because they go, oh my God, we lost— they literally lost a billion dollars over the weekend, right? So, but so the point is that these— we, we think about us and the baby boomers as we're looking up here, but the reality is, is the millennials and the Gen Zers right now that are really driving all of this.

Well, and I'm glad you mentioned that. You, you think about that as, is, is, yeah, Disney is a good example, and it goes to show you that you can make as much money earnings per share, your social brand value takes a huge hit, all that goes away fast. And, and, and like within days, right? Is now— how long is it going to take him to make up that $4 or $5 billion that he's lost? I don't know the exact number, but it's not going to happen in 2 days, right?

That definitely does not come back as far— as fast as it goes out.

And that reputation is always going to be there, and people are always going to remember that. So you have to build trust.

Yeah, like what— like it'll be interesting to see, and there'll be stories about this, maybe there are already today, but like There'll be stories about what happened over the weekend, right? That, oh, you know, was this a financial decision? Was this a brand decision? Like, Iger made the decision and obviously, you know, with, with, after consulting with the board. But I can just imagine what those numbers look like on Sunday night or whenever it was when they said that he was going to return on Tuesday. I know myself, I was sitting down. I sat down with my wife. I sent a text around to my family and said, after I had talked to Joe about a couple of things and said, Hey, I want to cancel the Disney— I want to, I want to cancel the Disney app. Um, and, uh, you know, or at least talk about it. And then it's like, oh, like, we didn't have that discussion, but, you know, it, it, it was interesting. So it was the first time that ever happened in my family, by the way.

So we went through the— by the way, we went through the same thing. It was the exact same thing. It was like, should we do this?

And we're like, because of you, like, we talked about it.

So that's why I was like, I should probably do the same thing. Yeah, yeah, it was a, it was a major discussion in our household about what to do and, and how to face it. And of course, you are dealing with the realities of the, of the here and now versus the principle, you know, that you do. It's a very difficult place to be. Very, very, very hard. It was not a fun weekend.

It's a good, it's a good example, I think, of the social, the social lens of ESG is social brand, social impact, the things, your views, your values. Those things are even more vital than your, than your pocketbook in today's, in today's economy.

Well, it's a good, it's a good point because if, you know, and I don't want to criticize Disney here, I'll just make this about a bunch of companies, but I can imagine that it would be an easier decision or it would have been, it would not have been so fraught if they had a stance on this beforehand, right? Like if your example of Australia beforehand, like if that's really the first, and I'll take you at your word that that's really one of the first questions that people ask, then I would imagine every company in Australia has an ESG plan and has it out on the web and like can easily articulate it like this. And if it was that case in the United States, then all these companies should have a plan and they know how to— they should know how to deal with situations like this, right? It's the decision goes or the talk goes to the Chief Sustainability Officer or whatever it happens to be like, well, we're weighing these 2 things. and we're, we're committed to this, so we have to go this way. And it probably would have cut out all of the whole weekend baloney that happened at Disney if they had that plan, right?

Yeah, I'm gonna circle around to the difference. Let's look at the Astronomer case. Yes, the Astronomer case was a good one, and this was a people problem with Disney. This is a people problem and, and more of their rules and regulations and their governance issues, right? People on Astronomer, the case— remember everyone was posting on LinkedIn, Twitter, you name all the social media channels, people were trying to go viral with But what people were not talking about wasn't about the fact of what he did and what she did. That happens every day, right? People go out on their wives and there's adultery, things like that. It's those types of behaviors existed and accompanied that, and they were tolerated. Because you think that no one knew this was going on internally? Of course they did.

Right.

And it allowed. And it goes to show you that sometimes, you know, a little bit different than the Kimmel thing, but at the same point, it's the internal culture. And it's the thing. Stephen Bartlett is an entrepreneur from UK and he posted on LinkedIn not that long ago, but 95% of companies do not understand the word culture. And I think he's actually being generous.

Yeah, he's probably right.

And that's a scary thing because as we were just talking about, that's not just a buzzword. A lot of young generations want to feel belonged. They want to have those behaviors. You know, if you have toxic employee, get rid of them. Right now you have trade unions, you have all these things that kind of protect that kind of stuff, and it makes it hard and difficult, and there's a lot of red tape behind it. But society is changing, and it's changing fast, and companies need to adapt to it. And having those archaic models of what stance do we take— well, how do you not know? Like, freedom of speech— someone has a right to say what they want, whether you agree with it or not. Right? You— everyone has their individual opinion. We don't know— me and my wife, me and my wife, for example, um, we have individual opinions. Do I have to love what she thinks? No. But do I love her? Yes.

Yeah.

But she's entitled to think what she thinks. And that's, I think, goes back to the 1970 archaic business. The blockbuster business model still exists in a lot of big corporations, and obviously Disney is one of them.

Well, yeah, you— I mean, you could find speech despicable and horrible and, and completely and totally inappropriate, but you know what? People have the right to say it, right? I mean, turn it off and walk away and do something else.

You have control over yourself.

Turn the knob, as someone said over the weekend. It's like, you can— there's 2 knobs on your radio. Back in the day when there's knobs on radios, you can turn it up, you can turn it down, or you can change the channel.

Like, you can't— you don't like the way that Disney acts? Cancel the app.

It was—it's funny because I was listening on the radio the other day, and it was something about Dana White from the UFC was at a press conference, and someone had asked him about the Kirk situation and their thoughts. And he said, "You know, I don't like you just because of the—if you have some bad thoughts, I can choose not to like you. But I'm gonna like you regardless of your views. Not just associate your views to who you are as a person. Is how you stand outside of your views is what I judge you." on. It's not necessarily what you say, it's how you act. And that's a thing that, you know, big corporations are in the limelight. We have social media, everybody has a camera, everybody has, you know, it's real time now. Everything is in real time, and you have to be very careful what you do and how you tread. And the younger generations are very much keen on that. And like I said, Sure. Once you hurt your social brand, It's a tough, you know, you look at Astronomer, right? Like their social brand. Yeah, a lot of people didn't know who they were, um, but they have to regain that trust back. That's not easy, right?

Yeah.

I'd love to see what's going on now. We don't hear about them now because the 2 culprits are gone, but I'd love to hear how their business model is looking because I'm sure it's probably not great. I'm sure there's a steep hill for them to climb because of that social dialogue that was missed. And, and Disney, unfortunately, you know, it's a huge family business, right? It's— we all love their theme parks and the things that they've done, and this, this, this one little thing could set them back years.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a lot of value to lose all at once. There's no question about it. And again, you know, what we talk to— try to focus on this show too is that you're— we're talking about your overall value and salability as a mid-market company, right? So let's just try to bring all this back, right, to a level of— because again, public companies, there's all this stuff. But let's talk a little bit and focus this back to the culture discussion, but as it relates to kind of mid-market private companies, because I think that it's an important, definitely worth kind of bringing up again, which is to say that your culture as a mid-market company is even more Than your culture as a Fortune 500, right?

Yeah, 123%. Culture is not just a buzzword. It's more important than cash, right? It really is. If you want to talk about 2 C's, culture is very much important of cash. That people component is so vital in today's organizations. What you'll tolerate, you know, what you'll accept, the behaviors that go on, those safe spaces where people thrive and they feel that they belong and they have an input into what you're doing.

Because you're gonna have it. Like, it's like someone described culture to me. It's you're gonna have a culture at your company no matter what. You can either define it or you can have someone define it for you. And which do you want, right? Which one, which one do you prefer?

Yeah, that's a great point. It's, it's a thing that's changing. A lot of people don't have the grasp of it, and a lot of companies, I think, unfortunately still check the box, right? It's a checkboxing activity for a lot of companies and they don't want to let go of some of that power potentially in, you know, the big C-suite kind of, or even the nonprofit, that top-down hierarchy is, I think, necessarily the problem is you have that point of that one person at the top has all the power, but all of the things at the bottom, right? All your— And that's to me where I think bottom-up is having your employees be there. Obviously, as a CEO, what's your job really? Your job is to hire great people and capital allocation and implement the strategy for the shareholders, nonprofit or for-profit, however you want to look at it. It's not to have all of the right answers. You're one human being. You can't have all the right answers. You're going to make mistakes. But that's a change. Sorry, go ahead.

I was going to say, and as you get down the road here, we talk about your exit, you start looking at the fact is, can I sell this business one day and exit it? Right? Your ability to be able to step back from that stuff, we talk about it all the time, right, is probably the most critical piece, right? And so you guys, you being the point of the spear in the whole thing and involved in every decision and doing all that, right, in this kind of top-down situation is not going to fly when you've got a buyer sitting there going, no, no, no, what we want to do is buy this repeatable process that you made without you.

Or when they interview people, right? When they interview— when the private equity firm interviews the manager, the CEO, or other people, they don't want people giving answers like, oh, I gotta ask Joe about that. Oh, I gotta ask Joe about that, right? They wanna know that they are the ones that are making decisions knowing the knowledge. Sorry, I was gonna interrupt you, Joe.

No, it's a great point because I think it's— you deal a lot with founders. How many times do you see The founders obviously usually become the CEO, and how many times do you see they're the wrong person in the wrong seat?

You know, it happens a lot.

A lot, right? Because, because you have the idea doesn't make it that you're the person that should be in that seat. And it takes a great leader just to check his ego or her ego at the door and say, hey, you know what, this is what's best for the company. Is maybe my strong suit is being the chief people officer. I'm a people person. I'm not a chief executive officer and stepping down in terms of those things. And it's a problem that is growing. It's not getting any less. And it's really tied to, I think, that top-down hierarchy where a lot of people are, ask Joe. I don't know, because Joe's making all the decisions and they don't want to upset Joe and what they say. And, you know, when they're sitting in their boardroom meeting, they can't speak up because Joe might not like them or after or might penalize them for something they did say behind closed doors. And that's, once again, it goes back to the social lens of ESG is the E is something we can all see, the environmental impact. The social is no one really wants to talk about. It's the stuff that's in HR. It's those paradoxes, those deep secrets in HR and and the way companies, you know, culture and all those, you know, if you were to actually have an open conversation with most companies in this world and where transparency was welcomed and they wouldn't get any repercussions for it, what do you think people would say about their bosses? Do you think there'd be good feedback or pretty terrible feedback?

Well, what they say is that people don't leave companies, right? When they leave jobs, they leave bosses. Yeah. You know, but the culture, the value of the company, right, is so directly tied to the way that you that the way that you— the, the, this cultural aspect of it, right? Because again, it's going to be a matter of— it's not just about— look, if you're going to have a bad culture, boy, you better be profitable, man, okay? I mean, if you have any hope of being able to do anything with this company, okay, and your culture is terrible, right, you better, you better make a shit ton of money, all right? Because the only way that you're going to get picked up, the only way you have anything to be able to do with this is by, by being like this, right, is, is, is that angle, right? Because you're gonna miss out on the value of the culture. You're gonna miss that. And I'm talking about the monetary value, okay, of the culture you have. It has a monetary value. It's an asset. Your people, your— and the way that you— and the way that you build your company in terms of its culture, that culture, it can be a liability or it can be an asset.

You choose. Yeah. Yeah. Because look what happens in the stock market, right? When there's a scandal, and there's something that happens, and that's in the news, and the company's public, it gets hammered, right? It gets hammered. And that's how you know that culture is important to every company is when, is when something happens in the market, and it's bad, and the stock goes down by 9%. I can't think of an example here. But like, you can look at CFO does this or CEO leaves or something happens. Yeah. So, you know, you're right.

And people are, are the greatest asset that a company has. They're what drive your profit. And you treat them well, you give them a place to speak up where they're belonging, they're included, the profit will always come. It's just, like I said, it's a different way of thinking for a lot of corporations.

And by the way, you'll get better at hiring better people.

Right.

And so you get better people, you attract better people, and now you're in a situation where everything you do is just better, right? Your innovation is better, right? Your profitability is better. You're finding people that are smarter and they want to work here and they want to solve it. And if you allow them to be bottom-up, like you said, right, allow them to be part of the decision, right, invite them to the table. And I think we kind of also glossed over this because, you know, for John to be able to move from— John Newman to move Okay. From a, you know, from the union into management. Okay. We kind of glossed over this, but it's like moving, it's like the military, it's like becoming an officer when you've been an enlisted person in the Navy. It's really hard to do. Right. And, you know, and to do well. Okay. And I wanted to, I just wanted to call that out because I think, again, John's got a unique perspective in that he has been the rank and file.

Right.

He has been the union employee that that did this stuff, that saw and felt what it was like to do that. And once he got in— when he got into management, the first thing he tried to do, right, was bring management together with, you know, with the rank and file to be able to help everybody do better.

Yeah, you— I, I'll use something. One of the first meetings I ever had with union after, you know, because I— my dad being a big executive, obviously it was a big target on my back, actually. More than anything, people usually don't get buy-in. And I remember growing up, I always heard us versus them, right? Them and us. And I'm like, the company is you. It's all of you. It's not just them. You're very much a part. You're the people. You're the one that brings the union employees in. A lot of these heavy industries are the ones that are actually bringing the profit. And I always, I think I said to the union president, I said, you see this table we're sitting at, a boardroom table? Like, yeah. And I said, this is an oval table. It's not two-sided. And he looked at me, he didn't know what I meant. And I said, it's, it's us. It's not us and them. I, we, it's us.

Yeah.

This has to work together. We're gonna— it's like a marriage. You're gonna disagree. You're not always gonna get along. You're not always gonna have the same views. And that's okay.

Right.

But it's working together for a collective better future for all. And, and that means sometimes checking the ego at the door. Which is a tough thing in leadership to do. And I always, I guess one thing to add, I find the term leader is very used, is very used very loosely in today's world. Right? We have a lot of people in management positions that they're called leaders. Leadership is about people. It's it's it's it's not about a title. It's not about what stature you hold in a company. It's about how you impact people. People aren't going to remember. They'll remember that gravity guy that you.

mentioned.

That is a leader. They will remember the guy from Gravity because of how he made people feel and what he did. He sacrificed something for his people. That's what a leader— a good manager gets you results, processes, systems, they get you results. They don't— and leadership is kind of like 10x-ing that skill.

Right.

Right, is when you have leadership on top of management, you have a visionary leader or someone that can really get buy-in And really move that bottom line needle because people collectively believe in what you're doing and they'll follow you. Yeah.

And it's a different skill set, right? Like, it's a very different skill set because I was a manager and then I was a leader. And when you, when you sort of transform into becoming a leader, you know, you're not doing the day-to-day things that you were doing as a manager because you can't, right? Because it's like, as you were saying, and I don't want to break— this isn't like a clean break, but You have people, or you have process and product on one side that's sort of done with management. Really, leadership is, as you said, John Newman, about— is about people, right? It's leading people to do things they either didn't think they could do or didn't want to do or thought was impossible. I mean, that's not a definition of leadership, but yeah.

I used to tell my employees, my job as your leader is to get on an elevator with you and be almost like an elevator conductor. I ask you to hit the button on what floor you want to get off on. And let's say it's New York Empire State Building has 101 floors and you pick 94. My job is to see if I can push you to 101 and get— because I see that talent in you to get— you might not see it in yourself. That's my job as a leader. My job is not to tell you what to do. It's, it's exact opposites, for you to tell me what to do and how I can help you be better. I like that. And that's the thing that is, I think, missed in leadership is people get these C-suite or mid-senior level jobs and they forget where they came from. One of my best, one of my favorite mentors said to me early in my career, and I'm glad he said it, he said, you were given 2 years and 1 month for a reason. Yeah, I say that to my kids all the time.

I try to say that same thing. Yeah, listen twice as much.

And I think in leadership, when you go to every— a lot of boardrooms that I've ever been in, it's usually the leader that's the first one to speak. Like the CEO is the first one to speak. And that's really the backwards way of thinking. It should be the last person is you want all of your people speaking up because that's where the innovation is going to happen. That's where the collaboration, those safe spaces is really going to shine for you to grow that strategy and think outside that box because you can't just You know, look at Blockbuster. I'll go back to Blockbuster. They kept doing the same thing over and over again. Netflix was doing the same thing they did. Netflix said, you know what, we're going to stop renting DVDs, we're going to start streaming it. Blockbuster decided not to. Look where they are today. They didn't want to change. You don't want to change, the market and your customer base will always show you where you belong.

Yep, absolutely. And look, in that story, remember how Netflix started. Right? Netflix started in the— right, with the business, with the, with the Blockbuster business model, shipping DVDs around. Yeah, right. Yeah, I mean, the idea— so I mean, the reality was, again, that change and that ability to see that coming and, and the ability to harness that, all that stuff. Again, it was a matter of just focus and belief, right? In some cases it was Blockbuster. I'm sure they had those conversations. Right? Ah, it's not going to turn into anything. It's not going to be a thing. They'll never get this, blah blah blah. You know, if you couldn't see the internet coming, and some, you know, people couldn't see it coming, man.

You know, um, it's like AI now, right? Yeah, exactly. I think AI, if people aren't using AI in their businesses, especially when it comes to ESG where you need people to be, you need, you know, ESG is a lot about data, right? It's finding the right data and using it. Why aren't you using AI to leverage Leverage that so you can free up your resource, the most important one being the people to actually do the great work. And companies are scared. You know, it's change. No one likes change. Most people are using AI as a way to hold on to their jobs. I think a lot of executives are saying, I'll have this AI project to keep their 5-year and their big compensation bonuses.

Right.

You know, at their job because they've been there for 50 years.

Right.

Versus like, no, let's embed AI into what we do, how we do it, to kind of take the grunt work away.

To make everything better, to be able to be more profitable, to be able to find stuff. And by the way, you can apply it, right, not just on the processes and stuff inside, but even in policies and things like that, right?

Yeah, well, just like the internet, right?

We've talked about this before on other podcasts, Joe, like, right?

You know, the internet is not— there's no internet department at any company, right? There's no AI department in any company. There won't ever be, right? Maybe it made it Anthropic, I should say. But like, every company, every entity, every person in the organization will use the internet, and they'll use— and the same people will use AI in their own job to make themselves more valuable, more profitable, more efficient, whatever it happens to be, because AI can do all of those things depending on what you need it to do. So that's right.

Yeah, we're given tools and processes, and AI is just another tool. It still has to have that human lens through it, and how you use it is how you determine the results from it, right? Is if you're just gonna let it do your work for you, okay, that's probably not a good idea. But if you're gonna let it help you be more productive and free up your time to do the bigger thinking tasks and the more important tasks and use your brain for some of those harder How do we curb our emissions by 50%? How do we improve our culture? Those are big-ticket items. Those are things that don't just fix themselves overnight. They take, you know, I always tell people the word change management exists for that exact reason, is you allow a bad culture, like go back to Astronomer, that took one night at a Coldplay concert. It's going to take 10 years to undo that.

Right.

Yeah, it's true. Yeah, it's true. Well, John, really fascinating conversation all about ESG and about culture and about change. And I think that those are the— these are things that are all of those things together, right, individually or together, are ways in which that founders can grow their value and salability, right? It's understanding that it's not just about your profit, it's not just about your top-line revenue, but it's about all these things and that your— the impact that you're making in terms of the environment, your social, and your governance, uh, you know, all those areas in terms of employees, the way that helps you recruit and retain employees, right? It grows value in ways in which you may, may not yet understand. So this is why you need to talk to somebody like John Newman. John, let our listeners know where they can get in and where they can reach you if they want to have a conversation with you.

Uh, the best place is LinkedIn, just my name. LinkedIn is probably the best place, or look up my company profile, JT23 Impact Labs.

Excellent. Great. And we will have all that stuff in the show notes. John Newman, thank you so much for being here today. We really appreciate it. Um, this is, uh, again, guys, when we think about our value and salability, it is not just about our profit, right? It is not just about our top-line revenue. Everything that goes into your business potentially has an impact on it, and it can have a positive impact or it can have a negative impact when it comes to selling it one day, right? We're going to try to focus all— this show focuses on all the positive ways you can do it. And the thing that we've learned today was that your ESG and your culture, right, all have an impact, John, right?

You— there's a famous saying that a lot of people talk about. It's, if you build the people, the people will always build your business.

Excellent. I like that. Very well said. I like that. That's exactly what it is. We talk about this all the time. John Newman, thanks so much for being on the Exit Engine Podcast.

We really appreciate it.

Appreciate it, guys. Thank you.

Thank you.