The Exit Engine Podcast Episode 38: Meet Shaun Lee & Joe Olwig from 6 Levers

Welcome to the Exit Engine Podcast, episode 38. Good morning, John.

Good morning, Joe.

How are you today, man?

I'm doing great. And yourself?

I'm doing really good. I'm doing really good. You know, we've been talking a lot about the— this is your, your one of your favorite quotes, right? Is, uh, Why don't you just give it to me? Because I know you know what it is. What's your favorite thing to say about exit planning?

What got you here won't get you there.

Bingo.

Exactly.

And it's not my line. Just to be— I have to give credit.

It's Marshall Goldsmith.

I worked with him a little bit a while ago, and he made an incredible impression on me.

Yeah. And look, there's not— very little is more true than that exact statement when it comes to exit planning and trying to sell your mid-market business.

Right.

And so As John, we talk about this all the time. We want to talk today a little bit about more about leadership, okay? And what it takes to go from kind of like a founder into like a CEO, because they're not always the same thing, right? And it's going to take that transition. We believe it's going to take that transition for you to make that transition, really to be able to get the company to a level at which it is the you can maximize its value and salability, you think?

Yeah, exactly right. The things that founders, you know, that make founders start companies and do things and get them to a point where they need a true CEO, the skill sets are just so different. And yeah, people can bridge the gap. But man, those are unique individuals when they can really do that.

It's from my perspective. Absolutely. I've been in situations, the whole thing, where I started out as the CEO of a startup and the whole thing, I quickly moved out of that spot, because it was, at the time, was not the right role for me. And, but knowing that and getting to a place where you can kind of understand that is really important. So the great news is we've got a couple of experts today, John.

Yes.

And they're gonna, we're gonna talk today with Joe Ulwig and Sean Lee. And they are from a, from a company called 6 Levers. And they are leadership experts. They have written a book, John, It's a really good book called At the Heart of Work, and it's a leader's guide to building a resilient and high-performing organization. And they have this framework they've built similar to, you know, in a way to the framework that we have with our Total Exit Value framework. But this is about leadership. And so I just, without further ado, I'd like to introduce Joe Ulwig and Sean Lee. Hey, guys.

Hey, how's it going? Great to be here. Thanks for having us.

Excellent. That's Sean's voice, just so everybody knows. And Joe, if you'll just say hi and so we can recognize your voice too, and then That would be great.

How's it going, fellas? Thanks for having us. Excited to connect today.

Excellent. No, great to have you guys here. What a great topic. And you guys have literally written the book on this kind of modern take, right, on founders kind of becoming CEOs, which is not, again, as we said before, it's not a— there are a lot of things founders are good at. And there's also a lot of things founders are bad at. And again, it's a very individual personal thing, right? But, but very few people are good at everything. So how do we get people to be founders to get to be better CEOs?

Yeah, well, I'm happy to kick us off here. It's a great question. I say our perspective in answering this question is both from the lens of all of the different organizations we've worked with. many entrepreneurs and also some nonprofits, but also just the lens of, you know, we are also entrepreneurs, right? We are also founders.

Right.

And we know these struggles firsthand. And I'd say that we're— what we try and do with founders is to help them understand the power of systems, right? So maybe 2 ways to think about this is the power of systems in both growing and running the organization. And then the other one would be the power of leading through a team. Right? And so often, like, as y'all started out saying, the culture and just like the feel of an organization, in particular, like smaller organizations that are, that are led by founders, is so synonymous with like just their personality and their way of working. Right.

Right?

And, and there's limits to that. There's limits to growth and success, certainly limits when you, when you talk about exiting in time for that. So we developed the 6 Levers framework in part to say, how do you, how do you evolve and grow beyond just leading through like sheer grit and determination and personality and being able to have a common set of systems that really offer an invitation for not just the founder to create a better way of working, but to invite a team to really to evolve into growing through a team and then to make that more possible for them all to participate in creating better ways of working. So I'll just pause there and see, Jo, anything you'd want to add to that?

Well, you know, I think, you know, if you're a founder, you— it oftentimes begins with a belief or an idea about something that you want to bring to the world, right? And for a certain amount of time, you can get away without having structure, right? A cohesive team and deliver on that idea, that, that, that belief. But there, there, there's a crossroads, right? As we're all familiar with, where to deliver on that requires a team, right? Other people, right? And once we start coming together as people to work, if we don't define the ways in which we're working together, It's gonna, it's gonna get messy, right? And so I think when we, when we also make that transition, that's when we start to, to make the transition from founder to CEO, right? Because now as the CEO, we are a people leader, we're a team leader, and so our, you know, our role changes. So a lot of what we, we address in the book is, you know, the, the more deliberate intentional way that you can go about that transition, right? How can we actually build a system and ways of working that are effective, right, that are where we have common language, where we have framework, so that we can, we can continue to deliver on this belief, this idea, but now with a team, you know, driving that work.

Quick question about that is the timeframe or the place Is it a revenue or a size or employee size of the company that you've typically noticed that, that where that transition needs to start and end?

Yeah, it's almost like, well, you know, I'll start here. We haven't talked a ton about this, but I think it's, it's less of a revenue; it's more of a people, you know. And I think it's once, once the group of people is not, you can't just sort of see around a small table, and it becomes 7, 8, 9, 10. As soon as that happens, you need to take the first steps in further defining what we refer to as your organizational operating system. And it's incremental, right? When you're just making the move from sort of a core, maybe leadership team to, we've got this leadership team, but now we've got some functional or departmental teams as well. That's when we need to start saying, OK, there are some small steps that we need to take to begin further defining our system. And the sooner the better, right? Because then we've sort of named, this is going to be an important part of our growth. And it's not something that we're doing, you know, haphazardly when we get to 100 employees and trying to figure this all out.

Right. So talk to us a little bit about the framework that you guys have developed and the 6 Levers framework and stuff. It's got to, first of all, it's a great name. You know, it's the kind of thing that just really kind of makes you want to know more, right? Right away, which I think is great. So congrats on that. What is, what is the framework and kind of how do you apply it? And how did you, how did you come up with it?

I really appreciate the compliment on the name. That's great. We don't always get that. But yeah, there's a little bit of intrigue. And oftentimes, are you sure there's only, only 6 lovers? Is there 7? Should there have been 5? Yeah, I can start. You know, the, the, the 6 Lovers framework is a framework. Y'all are familiar with those. They exist Everywhere we look, we see frameworks. They help us bring structure to conceptual ideas. And the conceptual idea that the framework addresses is this idea of an organizational operating system. Oftentimes when we share that you have one with teams that we work with, they say, you know, no, we don't. Or what's that, a piece of technology? We say no, right? We would suggest that every, every group of people who come together toward a shared purpose has an organizational operating system. We define it as the norms, structures, routines, practices that define the way the team works. And really, the difference to think about yours versus another's is just the degree to which it's been designed and implemented more sort of accidentally or by default versus more intentionally or more deliberately. And so the, the 6 levers are sort of the 6 macro components to the organizational operating system framework that we've defined. So, Sean, I'll let you fill in the gaps for me.

Yeah, yeah. So just maybe just to keep building on that, we really saw the levers and, you know, we've worked with hundreds of organizations and then our own experiences to say, like, what are these common, you know, big set of issues that we have observed, right, that almost universally all teams seem to face, right? We were facing them over and over again. We might have just been engaged in a strategic planning engagement, or maybe, you know, more traditional leadership development or team building. And regardless of our engagement, or sometimes just executive coaching, right, we would see these issues over and over and over again. And they were things like— probably the most common one, which is probably gonna sound very familiar to y'all, is just teams and founders' inability to stay focused. Right. And we hear this, we hear this all the time from actually the other people in organizations who are sort of complaining about the founder, who are saying, gosh, you know, we love the vision and excitement, but it would be great if we could make some momentum for 2 weeks before they come in with another big idea. Right.

Right.

And so, so we bucket all that as what we call like the focus lever, as an example. And, and I'll go through each of them. But before, and Jo and I can do this together, but before I do, just to say, we really saw them as both an indicator, meaning what I just described would be like, you know, a team or someone from the outside could just do a quick diagnosis to say, like, y'all don't really have a way to set priorities as a team. Like, or maybe you do, but you do it at the beginning of the year. But then you get 2 months in and sort of the, the rigor falls off, and you don't have a way to—

Right.

You don't have a way to do it throughout the year. So it's an indicator where you could say, like, we need to work on our ability to set focus as a team. And there's other things other than priorities, but that's just an example. But then it's also a lever, in that there are very practical and actionable tools that you can say, well, once you know that, and once as a team, you've got that common language indicator where you can look at each other— Jo and I even do this after all these years now, where we could just say, hey, I think our focus might be off in this moment. Like, let's go back. Like, this thing is for later. Like, we need to be focused on, on this and this right now.

Mm-hmm.

And it's such a simple idea, but it can be really empowering and liberating, like shorthand. I know what he means; he knows what I mean. Right.

Right?

And so with more complexity, we need more, we need to make it simpler to make, to go forward. So there's tools and resources there to be able to actually drive focus. And I shared this a little bit earlier, but one of the things I just want to really emphasize is, one of the reasons we built the framework is because we wanted everyone to have the invitation to be able to design the way they work. Meaning, like, I think another founder problem is like the founder is dictating, right? Even if they don't, that's not in their personality, they just don't know any better versus saying like, team, how can we do this together? And we believe one of the things a framework does is make that more possible. Like, I see it, I know it, it's not a mystery. I don't wonder like, how does Joe come up with his priorities? Like, I know the way that we do that and the agreements we have about doing that together, right? So now I can be a better participant. And contributor towards that.

Because you know what the ground rules are.

You know what the ground rules are.

You know, you know how, what to work within and what's in bounds and what's out of bounds or whatever.

That's right. That's right. Oh, maybe I can move on to one other lever. John, did you have a question there?

No, I did not. No.

OK. So the, the, the, the, I was gonna say the first one, but there's no linear order here. But oftentimes where we start is the lever of identity. And identity is just clarifying like the deep purpose But not just that, but also has to deal with how are we going to measure success? How will we know if we're successful? And also like the pillars of culture. We call these values, which is, we lean quite a bit on like the way Lencioni would think about them and The Advantage. It's like behavioral, like what we're aiming, how we're aiming to show up and collaborate with each other. And then we have another thing that we call tenets, which are really the principles that inform our systems and ways of working. So we have these 6 components of identity. And it really works to— I mean, what's interesting, Joe, as I heard you talking earlier about the beliefs of a founder, as time goes on, those beliefs often are not known, right? Like those convictions that— what was the early thing that you were responding to? Like every founder saw a problem, saw something they wanted to respond to, but then time moves on and very few people even know that like origin story, if you will. Right? So, so we actually helped to document something we call Beliefs. And we really think about this as just like deepening the mission, right? And we say that, we believe that beliefs preceded the mission. Like our beliefs about why we're even doing this then informed our overarching purpose we were going to now pursue.

Right?

But something preceded that. And that thing that precedes it is often not known. Right? It's like we've got, we've got different vague versions of it. Right.

Right.

So, so we, we work with teams to really unpack like a deep sense of who they are and how they want to work with each other. Oftentimes, that work is foundational to all the other parts of, of the work we do with them. So I'll pause there and see if you have any questions.

No, I mean, I think it's, I think it's fantastic. I think the thing that's jumping out at me right away is the fact is that this is an empowerment situation, right? And I think one of the things that we come across a lot, or you've got founders, leaders, business owners, we'll call them. I'm not necessarily going to all call them a CEO at this point, but who are, you know, my way or the highway, right? Even at some certain point, you've gotten to a point where you have done a lot of it yourself for the first year or 2 or whatever it is. Maybe you had 1 or 2 other people helping you do stuff. Many times we've, as we have, we've kicked stuff off by using outsourced, you know, you know, outsourcing certain elements of things and whatever. And so maybe there's not even a team for anything you could really call an actual team for a couple of years, right? And there's a lot of bad habits get created in that time, right?

Yeah.

So what jumps out at me, though, is that, is the fact that the framework here that you guys are offering isn't a top-down situation by any means, right? It's a, it's an empowerment situation. How does that How does that matter?

Yeah, well, I mean, I think what— so one of our core beliefs at 6 Lovers is that when people are involved in shaping how work works, they're more engaged, and the organization is more resilient. So there's sort of an example of a behavior. And so how is that a part of the framework design is simply, Delivering on that, suggesting that as we create how we're going to work together, we're not going to think about this as the executive team, you know, sort of determines this on our own. We're going to bring others in, into that process and, and be a part of it. Super engaging and empowering for employees to be a part of that work, as simple as it sounds. And oftentimes, it's sort of just like lightly referred to as, you know, we need to get buy-in, we need to invest the group. Sure, but actually, when you authentically engage people in designing how they're going to, you know, run meetings or what systems and structures we're going to, you know, use to determine how we work, and you do that in a genuine, thoughtful way, it's an engaging process. We like to be a part of that design piece, right? And so the likelihood of that system working, of there being ownership over the system, just increases dramatically. So bringing that mindset into, you know, your day-to-day work is, is one important part of that.

And also, the interesting thing is each one is different by definition, right? But the way that you're describing it is, is there's, there's that framework that you have, or that those sort of, not loose rules, I don't want to say that, but there's the rules, but then they get customized to a degree to each entity, because, again, each organization is different. in how it grows. And, you know, I can imagine you guys see that all the time.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, I think, I think that that was, you know, a core design principle because of the work that we, we did. And, you know, Sean and I, we, you know, we're the type that like to create frameworks, right, and ways of working. It was why we, why we built it. And, you know, as we reflected on some of the work that we were doing with teams where we were consistently seeing that they wanted to have ownership over the ways that they were working, and that if we just brought our way of working, it just wouldn't, it just wouldn't work, right? I mean, for the short term, it might bring clarity and now, okay, they've got some structure. But if it's not, if they're not a part of that, right, it's less meaningful. So core design principle was, you know, this needs to really be designed with and for people. So we're not going to provide you with this just plug and play playbook for, you know, adopting the framework, which, you know, there's a lot of opinions about whether or not we should have done that. But for this, this reason that you bring up, John, is why it's, it's intended to be more of an invitation, right?

Right.

The book and the framework to design with that common language. And, you know, ultimately, if you read the book, you'll see lever by lever, we offer a lot of ideas for how you can bring identity, you know, strengthen your identity, bring focus, bring rhythm, and those, those sorts of things.

And it's alignment, right? I mean, I think, again, when I think of the heart of work— by the way, the name of the book is At the Heart of Work: A Leader's Guide to Building a Resilient, High-Performing Organization. We're talking with Joe Owyer and Sean Lee, the co-founders of 6 Levers and the authors of this book. What I love about this, and again, you know, we have, when we designed Exeo, advisors, you know, our company, this was the, you know, one of the founding principles behind it was this, this nature of the fact that everything that goes on in a company is actually about human beings. We get so caught up in the non, you know, no emotion, it's all business is business, it is what it is type situation where we're supposed to completely remove ourselves or disengage in any kind of like, you know, a subjective way. And any kind of an emotional way. And the reality is, this is not possible, right? This is a— these are human beings. And I find the fact that you guys are like this, this notion of aligning people is really seems to be what the— really what the book is about.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think, Jo, this just reminds me, I think one of the— just to build a little bit on what Jo was just saying about like what really motivates people, and it sounds like y'all were trying— you're all trying to aim for that as well. We've seen, there's this tension between even designing a framework and, and trying to say, like, what's going to keep people truly motivated and engaged, right? And oftentimes, when you just run the play of a framework, it works, it can work against that, right? And so we tried to find this balance of we want it to feel possible to engage and to build healthy ways of working, and yet to offer, like, real flexibility in how you do that. And maybe, maybe a story I could share from a friend who, that, who is a VP in an automotive group who had like 7 dealerships. And they were, they were kind of vetting a framework. And, and I'll just say what it is; it was EOS. And we're grateful for EOS. Like, we have some, like, strong disagreements about some, some of it, but we also have some strong alignments and agreements with, with some of the core aspects of it. So But one of the main disagreements is just sort of the lack of flexibility in it compared to what we were trying to do and our really just beliefs about how people are engaged and what makes a resilient organization. So for this story, this automotive group, they were— the CEO meets with an EOS implementer and he's excited, right? And does not go to his team, share anything about it, right? Just comes back in, makes the introduction. Team, we're doing this. Like, we're on, here it is. First meeting is with the outside person now showing up in the room, and the team's sitting there, as you can imagine, sort of like— What's going on? What's going on? Like, how did we, how did we get here? And, and they get through it. And, and then I, the report back to me is sort of like the meeting after the meeting, right? So what's going on? And my friend is the VP of HR, is sort of saying, like, he's turning to his CEO, and he's a, he's a person who's not afraid of stepping into conflict. and being direct. And he says, you know, hey, Mr. CEO, what about our, the way in which we set OKRs every year? Right? And how does that fit within this new thing? Right? And he goes through a couple. What about the way that we do performance evaluations? And he goes through these 2, 3, 4, 5 things. And really what he was saying is, without having the words, like, we actually already have some strong components of an org OS. that are working for us.

Right.

Right? And what it feels like you're suggesting is that we just kick all that to the side and plop a new thing in here and just run that without an appreciation for the things that are already working really well. Right? And so what we try and do is to say, well, like, what's— if things are working well, that is awesome. Let's see if we can fit it in. Like, if a team loves OKRs and they're setting them annually and they're doing it, we'd say, like, wait, let's position that as part of the way that you set focus. We love that that tool is working for you. If it's working for you, that's phenomenal, right? Let's, let's make it make more sense and be more coherent and scalable. But if it's working, let's keep it going. And then let's work on the things that aren't working. So in some ways, it's more challenging to do that work. But when you do it, it's much, much more resilient on the other side.

Right, right. And the point of resilience, I think, is awesome too, because I think we talk about this all the time that that one of the things that the sustainability of your business, right, especially as it transitions to a new owner, new ownership or whatever, is imperative in terms of the value and salability. And the notion that a resilient company is a company in our minds that has planned for these potential events, right? Most people exit their companies one of 5 ways, right? We call them the 5 Ds. I don't know if you've heard this before, but basically it's like it's death, divorce, disagreement, disability, and dissolution, basically. Right. So the idea here is that that's how most people look at their companies. But those things can be hedged against. You can't necessarily prevent yourself from dying. Right. But you can plan what happens to the company in the event that you do. That is something that— right. And that makes a company more resilient. Right. Talk to me. Talk to us a little bit more about the importance of resilience and why are you guys actually picking That, because you don't have to, you didn't have to pick resilience. Like, that's something that I think is obviously purposeful, and I'd like to know your thought, the thought process behind that.

Yeah, well, I mean, I think it starts in our mission statement. So, you know, our mission is to make enduring organizational health possible for every team that seeks it. So the idea is that with the work that we do with organizations, we want to ensure that the ideas, the learning, the systems and structures that are put in place, the culture that we help to hopefully nourish and develop is enduring, right? It stands the test of time. It's resilient, right, for that organization. And really, the only, the only way to there, that sort of path, is through people and systems, right? And so that's sort of the core idea of the book, right? At the heart of work What does that mean? At the heart of work are people and systems, right? That's the core idea of the book. That's why, that's why that's the title. And so it's through this deep appreciation for, Jo, what you shared, you know, people, people are sort of the lifeblood of organizations. If you ignore this human component of it, you're never going to get to this place of resilience. But if we only think about the people component, we don't think about the role a system can play, and also building that resilience, we're missing a huge part of it, right? And that's oftentimes this misdiagnosis. So, you know, it's people and systems in pursuit of resilience and enduring health. And ultimately, that's grounded in this desire to, to, to, you know, increase the joy and engagement that people have in the workplace, right? And if you join an organization where they're on this path of enduring org health, they're, you know, they're embracing these, these principles, they're in this more resilient state, You're gonna probably want to go to work there, right? It's gonna be something you wake up in the morning and you're excited to do. And unfortunately, that's just not the case for a lot of people.

Like you said, it's empowering. And I think, again, one of the things that we see is that the companies that do best later on when they are ready to make an exit or ready to be bought out by a strategic buyer or whatever are the ones that could go on forever. Right?

Yeah.

They could go on without the founder. They could go on because they, and it's because most of the time it's because they have these things in place. They know, everybody knows what to do, what direction to row, and everybody understands what happens if, if X happens. Right?

Yeah.

And, and I think it's something that people get into business thinking they'll just figure out. Um, but again, I think that, I think the, the, the difference between that 80% of people who are able to, to, who do, can't, cannot sell their businesses. And the 20% who do, it may be that one, you know, maybe a lot to do with that one particular facet.

Yeah, it makes me think, you know, we, I know y'all, y'all thankfully and gratefully put so much focus and are offering so much around healthy succession planning. But I think there's maybe like multiple ways to think about succession planning, certainly in the way like the 5 Ds and having something documented for you know, something that's unexpected is prudent and wise. Like, right, here's what we will do upon something that's dramatically out of the blue, and we know we need to know what to do here. But what's interesting is I think oftentimes we're, even though we do not promote that we like are your, we are your succession planners, right? We get people, as you can imagine, just like y'all are seeing the connections to succession planning in our framework, that ask us to engage in that work.

Sure.

And, but what's interesting is we find that they are, the frame they're offering and what they're asking us to do is to like create something that's a bit more static, right? And it's a bit more like not alive and not really about systems. Like they really want a plan, right? They're saying like, hey, can y'all guide us through a plan? And again, that's valuable and meaningful. But when we think about the topic of resiliency, like we would argue like the best thing you can do is to begin adopting some really strong ways of working that are, can work regardless of the leader personality. Right? Right. And that's, that's longer work, right? This is, we have, Jo and I often joke that we're, the stuff we sell is really hard to sell because we're, we're saying like, hey, there's no quick fix. Like we're gonna have to buckle in for a couple of years.

This isn't a 3-month project, right? This is an ongoing thing.

Yeah. Right. It's just like, you know, you want to get in shape. Well, hey, bad news. You got to eat well and work out every day.

Right?

So there's no—

50th rush hour.

I mean, this is the same thing.

I mean, it's the exact same thing in terms of it. You got it. It's the kind of thing that you don't really want to face, but in order to— because it's the kind of thing that gets kicked down the stream, right? Well, I like the idea of it, but I'm doing this and I'm busy and blah, blah, blah, whatever, and having the time to do it. So I mean, yeah, I totally identify with, with, with how hard it is to, to get in there and, you know, make people aware of the fact that this is like— this could be like game-changing if they give it a shot.

And at the heart of it all that we've all been sort of talking about, I don't think we've even mentioned the word is communication, right? Is, is that, is that the fundamental heart of all that you're talking about, guys, is communication that, and sort of making sure that it's not the leadership team, that it's not the, the other people other than leadership team, right? Can you talk a little bit about the importance of, of communication and how that fits into either implementing the framework or the framework itself?

Yeah. You want to go, Jim?

Well, I mean, I think that a couple of just initial things are, you know, a couple of the levers address this directly. So the Cohesion lever is one of the levers where it really appreciates the, the, the fact that, you know, organizations are a team of teams, right? It's people working together. And what, like, at the, if you break down, you know, to the granular behaviors that are happening when we're working together, it's communication. Right? It's, it's sort of verbal, written, nonverbal communication that sort of makes up the actions that, that ultimately drive cohesion or break it down, you know. And so, you know, we get into the deliberate ways in which you can improve that, you can be effective in that, and you can strengthen cohesion across an organization, but also at the individual team, team levels. But I think, I think more broadly, what you're getting at here too is, yeah, just this idea that, you know, cohesion, I mean, excuse me, communication is going to, is going to play a role forever, right? It just, it's, it's something that never goes away. And that if we're not being thoughtful in how we're, you know, communicating around the core work that we're doing, it's, it's going to fall short.

Yeah. And the reason we, the reason I bring that up is, you know, a lot, the The companies that we work with oftentimes are, again, they're founder-led, they're on a mission, as you mentioned earlier, and they're building a product or they're delivering a service. And they get caught up, we found that they get caught up in doing those things. And sometimes they don't communicate enough to the team about where they want to go, right?

Yeah.

Again, what got them here won't get them there is they've gotten to this point of success. And they haven't communicated what the ultimate goal is or what the next step is.

Yeah, a couple of things come to mind here, John, and the way we see the same thing. And one of them is that what we really try and do with the systems that we, that are in the framework and that we train teams on is help, help leaders see the connection to meeting human needs, like fundamental human needs, right? And I think this is where a lot of frameworks go wrong, right? If it's just about operational excellence, then—

Right.

Some people, some weirdos are going to get excited about that. You know, we might be a few of those weirdos.

Not quite.

Sounds good to me. But yeah, I know what you mean. Not all the way.

Not all the way.

Right, right.

But not everybody is. If that's like the only compelling reason that we're going to like have a great scorecard with clear annual goals and clear quarterly priorities and vital metrics that we're indexing for and have clear definitions of, Some people will get excited about that for just at face value because they like that stuff. Other people are going to say, why are we doing this? Why does it matter? Right? And I think to your point about communication, we'd say there's something, there's a human need often underneath the need for better communication. It's the need for clarity. Right? So like humans just, we would say like humans just have a fundamental need for clarity and we need to acknowledge that. And then we say, so how do we build systems that help to meet that need? And there are other human needs, connection, a need for autonomy as entrepreneurs. We all probably have a very high need for autonomy. Other people will be looking to get more of a sense of belonging in the workplace, right? And so we all have these, but they're indexed at certain levels based on, you know, the way we're formed or the way we come out of the womb. And we need to know these to like build a diverse team that ultimately appreciates the different needs that we have. But the bottom line there is tying the systems to ultimately meet these human needs. And like, that's the way we do it. So that's one point. The other one, like another lever we haven't talked about yet, is rhythm. And rhythm has to deal with both synchronous forms of meeting, like, or collaboration, right? Now, this would be like where you think about designing effective meetings. That's where the rhythm lever is. But it also has to do with asynchronous forms of collaboration and communication. So a lot of regular, like, thoughtful, intentional communication shows up In well-designed rhythms, right? So how do we— like, what's the— if you have a recurring meeting, what's the objective of that time you get together? Like, it's probably not a surprise to y'all, but most teams cannot answer that question, right? They wouldn't— they would have different answers to that question. And so how do you bring intention and design to those regular meeting rhythms for the purpose of increasing communication? Certainly other intentions too, like being strategic and And other things. But you can also do that in an asynchronous way. We often have to work with teams to help them understand, like, there is more to the rhythm lever than just meetings, right? There is, there are ways that we can design strong communication and collaboration that don't require us to be doing synchronous. We can work on the same task at different times, and depending on what the task is.

And, and there's got to be also, in those times when you're not meeting, right, which is Ostensibly, where the work's getting done, the meeting of whatever you need to be able to have done for the meeting, right, and stuff like— we see this all the time. I mean, people showing up to meetings without anything, like, even ready or, you know, I mean, understanding what the meeting isn't, the place where the work gets done, right? The meeting's supposed to be the place where, where we, we check in and make sure that we're all on the same page, etc., etc. Or as to your point, whatever the definition of the meeting is, right? But the, but this, yeah, but the idea of being able to say, look, you know, rhythm to me sounds like it's like we've got something going on here. And there is a mixture of times we meet together and times we don't. And, and how is the, what are the operations? What's the order of operations or whatever that we're, that we're trying to, you know, go through in order to achieve the thing so that when we show up at the meeting on Tuesday, we've got the thing done, right? I can't tell you how many meetings I've run in my life and the whole thing where people were just not Didn't know what the meeting was for.

Right.

Didn't even know why they were in the room. Where do I work again? You know, whatever the things are, it's credit. And I think I've also— have you guys— how much resistance do you guys encounter when you're implementing this stuff with people internally? Because I can imagine that any, like any system, even with the approach that you're taking, which is obviously not neglecting the old system and whatever, and kind of you know, examining everything holistically, there's got to be a lot of pushback that you get, you know, at certain times during the process.

Yeah, I mean, the one that comes to mind for me right now, Sean, because we're talking about rhythm, is just the leadership team meeting and actually working to revamp that leadership team meeting. Because it's, it's very common for organizations we work with to be in one of two places. One, they have a leadership team meeting; it's not effective, but they don't want to do anything about it. And they, they generally know it's blah. But they don't believe any meeting could actually be that effective for them. Or they don't really have a cadence at all. It's like they do come together. I mean, shocking, but like they do come together. And so they sort of claim to have a cadence of some sort, but it really is, it's not a cadence at all.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right. So, so, but we know that a high-performing leadership team meeting is the engine, right, for that team that moves things, moves priority work forward, addresses conflict in a regular, you know, way, enables feedback, does all these strategic activities. We, you know, we refer to them as strategic activity, including like conflict resolution, right, feedback, those sorts of things.

Right.

All happen inside of a high-performing leadership team meeting. And so we know, you know, how impactful that can be. And yet, oftentimes, the resistance initially is, eh, I don't know if we need that piece. We're like, no, no, no, right? Let's get in here. Let's align, right? Let's co-design, align. We train on, this is a model for a leadership team meeting; it's not the model.

Right.

And so let's see how your, the team responds to that initial design of that meeting. Let's co-design and iterate over the design as as it best meets their needs. And then let's run that. And oftentimes, we, you know, we facilitate a few, or we immediately are there at the meeting doing real-time coaching, supporting that. And, and pretty quickly, we start to see the work comes to life; the value is there. But tons of resistance up front with that one, and arguably one of the most impactful things, you know, a team can, can adopt early in the process.

Right.

And can you talk a little bit about like that, you know, when you're meeting with, when you're working with companies, is it sort of a requirement of yours or is it a request to work with the entire management team? Right. Because I can imagine it's way more important. It's obviously important to have the CEO aligned, but right, you're really, you want as many people involved with you guys as possible. Is that fair to say? Or where do you draw the line between who's involved with you during a project and who's not?

Yeah.

Talk about that a little bit.

Well, this is, this is a great question and one I think Jo and I are probably both excited to talk about. In addition to our, to the 6 Levers, we also have sort of a mini-emerging framework that we just think of as like the 10 Characteristics of High-Performing Leadership Teams. And one of those is a strong sense of shared ownership. Like it's a foundational mindset, right? Not, I mean, you could argue, like, I'm not talking about like ESOPs and literal Shared ownership, although certainly there's a connection to shared incentive structure. But we're just, for now, we're just talking about the mindset of it. In order to get there, we believe you first have to have a strong shared sense of understanding, right? So understanding and common and shared understanding precedes like actual shared ownership of like financials, strategy, operation, culture, right? That's probably what every founder would say they want. Right? But they're trying to short— they're trying to short-circuit or skip a bunch of steps required to get there. And so we work with the team because we believe that the experience of learning and growing and designing together is so meaningful, right? It's gonna— if you go back to the Cohesion lever, even just the experience of learning how to design a high-performing leadership team meeting and helping them to see the connections to how it will lead to more clarity, how it will allow them to be strategic every week, how it will lead to better connections so they get to know each other on a personal level in a more meaningful way, how you can actually carve out space to work through your most pressing emergent issues that weren't even on your agenda before you showed up in the meeting.

Right.

And do that in a way that is productive and doesn't derail everything, right? There's ways to do all of this. So the team needs to— we believe the team needs to learn how to do that together. and have a strong sense of shared ownership to uphold, and not only just keep it going, but continuing to improve it. So the short answer is, we, we want to, we believe the, like the fulcrum point for the levers to gain access and make change is with the senior leadership team. OK.

Yeah, I mean, maybe just to zoom out on that a little bit, there's, you know, there's a handful of entry points that are common that we begin this, this journey with orgs. And they're, you know, strategic planning, leadership development sort of at the, in-depth focus on the individual leader. But what Sean's getting at here is sort of the, the most foundational and where we'd love to start with teams, which is driven from this belief that the No. 1 driver of organizational health and performance is the effectiveness of the leadership team. Right? And so when we share, I don't know that there's ever been a person who hasn't agreed with that belief.

That's right.

And we often say, So how's the performance of your team right now? And, you know, what are you doing to continue to grow? And oftentimes after that, it's sort of like crickets, like, well, you know, it's not, it's not very great. You know, it's not very great. We're struggling over here; we're struggling over there. And it's like, OK, well, you know, and so what, what, that's where we like to start. And so Sean spoke to these 10 characteristics; that's sort of the roadmap. But how do we come alongside that leadership team? To, yeah, in a journey of shared learning, but also, you know, implementing these, these tools, practices, skills, you know, on the fly, so that they're strengthening there first.

Maybe one thing to add to this is that some, sometimes in bigger organizations, you know, we hear what Jo is suggesting, right? Like, what have, what have you done, or what are you doing to strengthen your leadership team? Their focus tends to be on all the other teams. in the organization, right? Like, oh, there's something wrong in sales; the marketing department really needs this; the, you know, the manufacturing or operations or whatever. Like, they, their mind goes there, right? They're fixing, and they're not thinking about the effectiveness and cohesion of the top leadership team, right? And I would argue even for, for the CEO, oftentimes, or founder, like depending on how they see themselves, as they're building a team, they're rarely thinking about what it would take to build a strong cohesive team and more just about, I need a— I don't want to cuss. I need a great leader. I need a great sales leader who's going to crush over there.

You can say kick-ass if you want.

I need a kick-ass sales leader over there. And that's my focus. I want the track record. And sure, we're not going to argue against that. You want the experience and the track record. But you also need to think about how they're going to fit and contribute to the team and the degree to which, if you're bought into these ideas that we're sharing, like you're a leader who wants to be running an organization that is very resilient because the leadership team is running it, like you need to be checking for that. Like, is that person going to be about that, right? Or do they have no experience with it? Or are they, at the very least, like, do they have enough curiosity And of a growth mindset to be open to it, right? Right.

So yeah, what do you, what do you guys see as— yeah, and I know that you guys were saying, joking about before about how hard it is to sell this thing, you know, in a way. And again, we can relate because again, I think we're both, you know, selling, you know, things that, you know, I'd rather not have to deal with if I didn't have to, right? I mean, that falls squarely into that bucket, right? But the— what does success look like for these companies. And so when you're done and you've done, you've, and you've implemented 6 Levers and you've done the whole thing and gone through the process or whatever, what can, what, what the, what can a company, a CEO, a founder, a leadership team reasonably expect to be the outcome? And how's that going to affect it from a business standpoint?

Yeah.

It depends.

What's that, Joe? I said, I started with, it depends.

Of course.

Yeah. But maybe I can start with maybe going back to the, the the program that we call Leading Together, where we do start with that leadership team. It's a 6-month journey, at least the first phase of it. And what you can expect coming out of that is to have developed strengths across each of the 10 characteristics, which, you know, we rattled off a few of these, but, you know, these are things that we've seen be patterns for, you know, teams for decades, right?

Mm-hmm.

They've had the same team in place for a long time, and they've never been effective at resolving conflict. They've never had a culture of feedback. They've actually, you know, their, their identity still looks like it did in 1972, and they haven't really, you know, done anything to nurture that. So the core outcome that we're driving toward there is strength across each of the 10 characteristics. And that, and the theory of change here is that if we can get them set up to have developed proficiency against those, and have the system now in place, and the, and the language through the framework in place, that they're going to be able to endure that, that level of performance, and then impact the organization in healthy ways. We've got tools and assessments to sort of, you know, measure org, org health as well. But that's, that's sort of the core outcome that we're driving toward in that, in that primary engagement.

Right.

Good job.

Yeah, just to build on that a little bit, I would say that, you know, there's great, there's been some great research from HBR that talks about like high-performing leadership teams are, have 3 times higher revenue and profitability, as well as much lower retention. I'm sorry, much higher retention and much lower turnover. And we certainly see that. And so those are some of the, like the financial gains and organizational health and engagement gains that you will see. And maybe just kind of a quick story to say that there are very successful, like we've worked with an organization, I'm thinking of an organization that we've worked with recently who, very profitable, like very strong financial model and very enduring, like a big subscription business. I mean, relatively, it's only an $8 million business, but relatively to their top-line revenue, the overwhelming majority of it is subscription with extremely low churn. So they have a very resilient business model. And yet, all the finances of the company have been almost entirely held in the founder's head. And so what I've been working— this is a client I've been working closely with— I've been working to get that out of his head and to share that with the entire leadership team. And it's been hard, right? You have to overcome some beliefs and fears about You know, he's been doing this way for 30-plus years. And in the very first meeting where we unpacked some of the key aspects of the business model, one of the key leaders looks like at the CEO and said, I had no idea we were making this much revenue from that particular little product. I thought that was just like some little one-time thing. Now she's like, now that I know that, I will process those tickets so much faster. Right.

It's so funny.

Right? Because it will allow us to increase that revenue line more and more. They sort of accidentally been making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year and nobody is even aware that it's there. And now with the awareness, they're like, let's crank through that and we could probably easily double it. Right? So, yeah.

No, you're hitting something on the head. We're laughing just because it's less— we exactly the stuff that we see all the time. You know, we call it latent value, right? The idea that there's this thing inside your company that's making you all this money and you're not even sure how it happened or how to harness it and that nobody is even aware of, like, you know, and you and we come in looking at like books and, and the operations and stuff going, you know, you guys are making a lot of money here. And it's like the same, like, we are.

Yeah.

It's like, it's incredible because you do, you get one thing that companies get. And I think this is what founders, you know, part of it is kind of strategic, or at least you rely on it, is that you get momentum. Right. And that momentum kind of, kind of come whether you're, you know, you push the ball really hard at the beginning down the hill and then the ball just kind of goes down the hill. Right. And then you're just, you're there. A lot of your job, you know, when you're in these size companies is just like trying to chase that, chase after that ball to try to make sure it doesn't like roll off the thing. But in terms of actually guiding it or doing anything, a lot of it's kind of left up to chance. And I think that's what you guys are, one of the things that you guys are kind of bringing to the table here is that. We could be so much better, right, if we could just all kind of come together and be on the same page, row, you know, singing from the same sheet music, and that our processes and our operations and the way that we go about our business, right? One of my favorite, my favorite quotes is keeping the main thing the main thing, right?

Yeah.

And keeping everybody on that page is hard, but everybody has to— you have to communicate what the main thing is. Right.

I'm gonna steal that metaphor that you shared there, Jo, because I think that, that, that the visual that that created for me of this, like this ball sort of getting bigger and rolling with more momentum down the hill, is ultimately what everyone, you know, within the organization is sort of feeling in these different ways. And that's sort of this bulky system that is so powerful, right, that can feel, how do I, how do I impact this? How do I slow this thing down? How do I change the You know, the, where it's going. And that's why it's so important to start with the leadership team, right? That's where, why our conviction has only grown stronger that we have to start with that team, because they're ultimately the team, no matter what sort of org structure matrix model you have, that is the ultimate steward of the organizational operating system, right?

Right.

Is the steward of, you know, the team accountable to slowing that down, shrinking that, right, or letting it go, right, and the team just having to continue to react to it. So I love, I love that, that visual. And it's just, it's, it's why beginning with that, that first team is so important.

Yeah, well, and—

Yeah, good job.

I was gonna say, you mentioned momentum. Momentum is one of the 6 Levers. And, and really what we're trying to do there is what you described, is saying, well, how do we, how do we harness, how do we gain momentum? How do we harness momentum? Because we believe it's sort of like the underlying idea is like the progress principle. Like we're so— human beings are so motivated by seeing progress, right? So how do we begin to make momentum towards progress in a really meaningful way? And so there's, there's, there's a lot of this is, is it's very entrepreneurial in spirit, right? It's like running experiments and learning and pausing and running retrospectives, and it's having a strong culture of feedback. All these things that are just providing insight and information to help you continuously improve and gain more and more momentum. So just wanted to share that since you— that's a kindred word for us, mentioning momentum. It means a lot to us in our work with our clients.

Yeah, and you mentioned learning there in that last comment, Sean. What, you know, in the framework and working with so many companies, what's your biggest or most impactful learning that you've had, or either that you've, that has changed your thinking or changed the way you work with future teams?

Oh my gosh, that's a good question. Well, I think I'll start by saying, Jo and I are, are learners. Like, we are lifelong learners. We're sort of always reading. And, and I think we view the framework as something that is, that is intentionally alive and evolving. So yeah, I actually, I'm, I'm kind of blanking here. I'm gonna raise my hand here for this one and collect my thoughts. It's a great question, though. I want to be more—

There's, yeah, I mean, part of the challenge is the answer is there's like been 1,000 things, right, that we've sort of learned and iterated over. I think we've shared a couple of them, though. And I think one is the growing conviction around beginning the work with the senior leadership team because of, because of that role that I just described, but also just because You know, in that same HBR article that came out back in the fall, somewhere around 20% of leadership team members report that they're on a high, that they think their team is high-performing, right? And so we just know that there is this, there's this tremendous gap. There's, as there's this—

Everybody has a sense of humor. It can't, can't be true, right? They can't all be good at this.

Right, right, right. So, so yeah, so there's just this real opportunity to get in with that group. And, and really, you know, start to have those moments like Sean described with the, with the understanding of the financial model or actually beginning to, you know, build these, this, this muscle memory around addressing tension in healthy ways, right, of being accountable to your colleagues, right, and being, and knowing how to do peer-to-peer accountability well. So I'm sort of starting to name off of these different, you know, characteristics of of high-performing teams. But starting there, I think, has been, you know, maybe a recent learning that we've just grown more and more conviction around.

Cool.

Yeah, maybe just one other thing to add here is I think we, we are increasingly investing in and developing the ability to like support, like the relational side of leadership and around connection and leading people in a way that deepens engagement. And I think it's just our learning here is like, as Jo and I both have like a good amount of executive coaching or founder coaching relationships where we're spending one-on-one time with them and we're working through a lot of emergent issues that they're facing. And so many times, sure, some of those issues are strategic in nature or like business model, financial in nature, but many times they are just big people problems, right? And so we, I think we've, we've been only investing more and more in the ability to equip teams with tools that they can access to, to just better be a stronger, more cohesive team. And I think one example of that, where we've invested a lot in the last year in equipping teams, is just deepening— how do you deepen trust and a sense of real psychological safety, seeing that it's like a really a foundation for anything else to be able to work well? It's not the only thing, certainly not the only thing that equals a high-performing team. But it's like, you really have to start here. Because if you don't, you know, you're just not going to see great results in everything else you're trying to pursue.

It's like in the old days, we'd have people come in and do like trust falls and stuff like that. I remember back in the old advertising, we're gonna get the leadership together on an offsite, we're gonna have a guy come in and hypnotize us, you know, whatever.

And to what, to what end, right? I think there's a lot of decent intention there. But if it all ends at the workshop, the, you know, the retreat, There's then, then, OK, good engaging moment. Everybody gave it a 5-star on the survey. And yet, if there's no plan for doing something about that, that's it.

No, there's nothing that comes in and actually is an actionable thing that you take forward. And now I can practice this and we can get better at this. And of course, the measurability, as you, as you pointed out before, is so key because, you know, a lot of this stuff is a matter of just saying, well, what's this going to do for me? And what am I really going to get out of this? And, you know, we've been doing so well, look at how much money I've made, and blah, blah, blah, right? And that's so much of what you're dealing with. Who do you find is the sponsor of this inside an organization most of the time? Is it the very top, or is it HR, or, you know, who do you see as the ones who are kind of the enlightened ones in the organization who are bringing you guys in?

Well, I mean, this is maybe a recent, fairly recent learning, where the, the sponsorship of, ultimately, the CEO, the chief leader, right, is essential. And, you know, we, there's this role that we talk about within the framework and also within, you know, the Leading Together program called the Navigator, which is sort of the role of of the point person of, of the framework. And oftentimes, like a facilitator-type role as well. Maybe it's of meetings and certain processes. It's not a, it's not a full-time role, right? You are that, you play that role while you're also the COO or the CPO or whatever it is. And so, you know, for a little while, we were comfortable with just that leader being fully bought in, understanding, right, and being the steward of, of the work.

Yeah.

And sort of relying on them to be our partner, right, in that initial, you know, investing process, understanding process. But I think over time, you know, ultimately, the whole leadership team needs to be bought in. But oftentimes, if that CEO is only over time becoming bought in or over time further understanding what it even is that we're getting into, we're just, the trajectory is different. Right. And so we want the trajectory to be, you know, as steep as possible in terms of growth. And so getting them involved early in the process, having them, you know, fully aware, clear on what, what we're prioritizing, and ultimately a steward of the engagement— so important.

Yeah, and maybe one thing to add on the HR question. I think some of this just depends on the dynamic of the organization. But Many times in smaller organizations, like if there is a full-time HR person, you know, their, their role— and I don't mean everyone, but oftentimes— is more around compliance and, you know, risk mitigation and our legal grounds are covered, right? And they're not necessarily taking the lens of, we want to build strong, healthy systems; we want to think about learning and development for our people. That tends to exist as the organizations get bigger.

That's true.

And what I'd also say is, it can also be a bit of a signal for us if we're getting passed off to that person, to the degree to which the exec, you know, the CEO really believes in it. Now, there's 2 cases here. Sometimes they can really believe in it and they trust that person so much that that's healthy, right? But other times, it's sort of like, if we're beginning to sense that they're just seeing this as a function of HR, Right, then we're just like, no, right? Because back to shared ownership, like the whole team needs to take responsibility for performance, culture, results, right? And if you're viewing that as that's HR's job, now we're kind of back to silos and as opposed to like a real sense of shared ownership.

Right. So I want to— we only have a little bit of time left, but I'm curious to know this. I'm gonna take this in a little bit of a different direction. You guys have written a book. You guys are consultants. You guys obviously came out of corporate, you know, America, right? In terms of jobs like that, you've found your way into the consulting space. And what I'm interested to know is how much of your own medicine are you drinking? And how do you guys look at the consulting world in terms of running a business and growing that business in terms of your trajectory and what you're trying— what are you trying to accomplish You know, as an organization yourself.

But, Jo, maybe one thing to share here is that we actually didn't come out of corporate America. We're kind of a couple of odd ducks here. I started as a social worker, and Jo started as a teacher. And, and so, so we have some, you know, we both have MBAs, and we both like became entrepreneurs later. But in many ways, I think the spirit of the framework, like the real focus on people and the focus on, like, just heart-centered systems are the result of where we began our careers and the things that really matter to us, which are just having a deep impact. So I think we've kind of shifted our focus away from, like, deep impact on kids or deep impact on people in health and human services to, like, having deep impact on people that work in organizations. So I just want to clarify that.

It's a great point. It's very different.

We have a I think it's a unique aspect of how we got here.

It changes your perspective. I mean, there's no question about it, right? And again, to come at this, at this, this thing in this way, no, it makes— this actually makes perfect sense. I think, you know, the notion of being able to, to, you know, come out of the areas that you came out of that are— and I love this, this heart-centered thing. I just, you know, it's one of those things that I think, again, is it's, it's a part of a larger movement, I think, that we're seeing. In general, but in business in particular. What I'm interested to know, though, is, again, as a consulting firm, essentially at your core, right? How do you view your business and its trajectory and its growth? And in terms of, you know, moving forward and stuff like that, is it a, hey, look, this is going to be the Jo and Sean Show and this is what we're comfortable doing?

Or is there, you know, what's your growth Yeah, I can start and go back to also the question about, like, you know, the degree to which we're practicing what we preach. You know, we sort of think about ourselves as the testing lab, right? So, you know, over the years, we've brought a lot of the practices underneath the different aspects of the framework into our own internal practice to test and learn. And how does that feel? And what tweaks do we need to make to the different practices? But You know, full stewards. We, you know, we talk about the framework within the context of our own, you know, organization, you know, just as often as we do with our clients. And, you know, see how important it does, it is for our team, even being a small team, to adopt the framework and the principles. You know, and I think, in terms of trajectory, I'll start, Sean, and I'll let you build off of it. You know, there's, There's a couple of core things that we're, we're focused on, and it's meeting the needs of leaders. And how can we design solutions, relationships, partnerships in ways that appreciate, right, what leaders are faced with? And how can we, you know, further enable those leaders? And some of that is through more traditional consulting sort of types of engagements, right? Right. And others are through, you know, programs and leadership development, you know, training, and, and more creative, innovative uses of, of even technology to try to enable that, you know, that, that work. But a real focus on sort of the people and with a focus on leaders as the, the audience that we're studying, right? all day, all the time, reflecting on it in our own, you know, work and, and trying to understand how can we best enable these leaders to create these, these types of cultures where people want to run to work and they never want to, you know, they never want to leave, right? So that's, that's one important part for us.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

There are certainly limitations for, to scale in a consulting, a traditional consulting business, right? And I think, you know, I will say, I think Jo and I love our consulting work. And so I think we imagine we will always have, at the very least, a handful of projects that we are engaged in. I mean, well, for one, like, we love the impact, we love the learning. But we are, we are very mindful of the ways in which we can deliver the content that are more scalable and are, are, are, have some ideas. Some things we're already doing, like we have a course called Leading with Intention that we run about 5 times a year now. We're, I think we're just finished our 10th cohort of that. And, and anybody can drop into that. So that's, that's been a really impactful way for just like any leader to drop in and like learn the relational side of leadership. And, and then we have some cohorts that we're starting, where we're basically— Jo mentioned the Leading Together program as a way where we come alongside kind of a very immersive journey coming alongside one team. But we also have something we're launching in July for for many teams, right, for, to walk multiple leadership teams through that journey together. We're really targeting that for smaller organizations that might have some budget constraints around, you know, the one-to-one work. And just the value of like peer learning that we know, because we ran, we've run plenty of other cohorts in the past. Yeah, and then, you know, we're also dabbling in like a small consulting community where we actually license our our content to other consultants. And, and that's a great little group. I think we're, we're kind of, it's very like, we're not, we don't promote it much. It's just people in our networks. But we're, we're, we're learning, and we may more actively promote that and seek more people that become, you know, practice— practitioners of the 6 Levers framework. Right.

No, that's excellent. And the reason I, again, we've got all kinds of listeners to this. And, you know, a large part of our audience, we know, too, are people that are trying to figure out how to scale their thing and get over that hump, that million-dollar hump.

Yeah.

There's a million-dollar hump and there's a $5 million hump and there's a $10 million hump, right? And so, but the reality is that this crossover is important for people to understand about what they can do to move forward because this work is so interesting and so important and we've seen it delivered. But, you know, when you get into, like we do, to seeing the insides of all these different kinds of businesses, And of course, being one ourselves, right, is the, you know, I ask selfishly because the reality is, is that it is, from the beginning for us, it was something that we thought of from the very beginning because we had been consulting for so long, right?

Yeah.

And we know how hard it is to grow that business as a, you know, to scale that thing as a consultancy, that we knew we needed to, you know, figure out some other avenues here that we're gonna, you know, gonna be able to be, you know, You know, some other sources of revenue besides just the kind of what we call the lumpy consulting.

Yeah.

It's fascinating. Guys, we've been talking today with Joe Ulwig and Sean Lee. They are the co-founders of Six Levers. You can find them at sixlevers.co.

Yep, .co.

And they are the authors of a book called At the Heart of Business. It is the— sorry, At the Heart of Work. It is the leader's guide to building a resilient and high-performing organization. It's using their 6 Levers framework. This book will equip leaders to align people and systems, fostering purpose-driven cultures where teams thrive. And I think what's, what beautiful thing about our conversation today, guys, is that you guys are obviously the heart of what of this framework. But your ability, your individual, I can already tell your ability to be able to bring your own, you have very calm personalities. And that may just be because you're on the podcast today, but my hunch is that this is a large part of what makes you successful in this space.

Mm-hmm.

Is that you are probably also bringing that sense of calm and security and that kind of thing to You know, to, to the people you're working with.

And I'll add genuine and authentic too. The authenticity comes through. I mean, it's, it's, it's blaring.

It's great.

So, absolutely. So, guys, thank you so much. Anything that we haven't, that we haven't touched in that you wanted to get out, you know, that we felt was important today?

Maybe. I mean, well, one, we're just really grateful. And thank you for those kind words at the end. That really, that means a lot. You're hitting on some values that I think mean a lot to Joe and I and that we aspire to be. So to hear that it feels that way to be on the other side of us means a lot. Maybe just the last thing is we love to hear from people. So if you do have questions about any of this, you can reach out directly to us at joe@sixlovers.co or me, Sean. Mine's shaun@sixlovers.co. Pick up the book. We'd love to hear what you think about the book. And yeah, thanks for listening and thank y'all for having us on.

That's great. Awesome, guys. Thank you so much. Joe Ulwig and Sean Lee from Six Levers. Again, the book is At the Heart of Work. Check it out. You can get that pretty much anywhere, guys, anywhere you buy books.

Yeah, Amazon's the best place to get it. Soon on Audible. That's awesome.

Awesome. Who's gonna— by the way, who's gonna read the book on Audible?

We already did it. We split it.

Oh, nice.

You did it.

Yeah, we both have pulled that off, I could tell.

We did half and half. It was fun.

That's awesome. Good for you guys. Excellent. Sean Lee, Joe Ulrich, thank you so much for being on the Exit Engine Podcast today. Really appreciate you guys. Thanks so much, and we'll catch you down the road.

Thank you.

Thanks, guys. Awesome. Hey, Jon, these are the kinds of people, right, that are making differences right now in small and mid-sized businesses. This is the way you grow. Yeah.

And their expertise, their experience, and all the things they've helped other management teams, you know, there's so much to learn from Joe and Sean.

Absolutely. Anyways, great guests. Awesome. Remember today, this is the Exit Engine Podcast you've been listening to. My name is Joe Stapleton. That guy over there is John Kniff. We are the founding partners of Exio Advisors and Exit Engine. You can find us Basically, wherever you get podcasts. You can find us on LinkedIn at Joe Stapleton, or at, sorry, at ExitEngine at LinkedIn. And of course, we also love to hear from you as well. So you can also email us directly with questions on anything that has to do with exit planning and selling your business. That's jo@myexitengine.com, or john@myexitengine.com. Guys, thank you so much for joining us today. Jon, another great episode. Really, these guys are awesome. Check out, again, check out sixlevers.co and see what you can do about your leadership teams and making you guys a— making yourselves a high-performance leadership team.

All right.

Thanks, Jon. Have a great day.

Thanks, Joe.