How To Create A Results Driven Company Culture And Have Gamechanging Breakthroughs - I Love Marketing Episode #215

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish and this is the I love marketing podcast.

Hey everybody, it's Dean Jackson and Joe.

Polish and welcome to Ilove Marketing.com the very best place that you can be right now. No matter if you're driving or you're walking or you're sitting in a jacuzzi.

I guess and another train.

Yeah, I mean there is that. You are at the right place right now and now is the right time. And this is not a setup for a multi level pitch. This is actually the truth. All right, we have a very special guest with us today on this episod. I will confess he is a friend, a personal friend. He is an amazing genius network member and he is a really sharp entrepreneur who has successfully started and sold three different startups for many many millions of dollars. His name is Christian Cattochini. He has over 20 years experience leading startups and high growth technology companies. He is also the co founder of a fantastic company called HeroX. HeroX.com he started PC. He also serves as the chief executive officer of Herox. He founded a company called Absolute Software which is a leader in computer security and asset management. And after going public, Absolute continues to grow and has diversified into a solution for organizations to manage the massive proliferation of Internet devices. And then after Absolute, Christian. Sorry we have to do a little editing here because I still got a cold thanks to Christian when I was in Vancouver the other day. After Absolute, Christian founded Make Technologies. Make enables organizational transformation through the modernization of its clients mission critical software systems and make was sold to Dell computers in early 2012. And while remaining on the board of Make, Christian left day to day activities to join and co founder Shannon Susko on a new startup, Servo, a SaaS company targeted the post 2008 compliance and regulatory challenges faced by the banking sector and sub servo was acquired 18 months afterwards. Christian, did I butcher any of the names of any of these companies that you started or anything or did that sound semi coherent?

Only a little bit, but it's all good.

Yeah, I bumbled my way through it a bit. But you're also an active angel investor and you mentor a lot of startup entrepreneurs and you're just really super smart, cool dude. So for what didn't say in the, in the bios, like how would you describe yourself? And then we'll jump into stuff that will be really relevant to all of our listeners of our podcast.

Well, thank you Joe. You know I love startups like you guys love. I love startups. I would, I would happily work on startups for free. And I just, I'm a wonk about best practices. I love seeing people take an idea and create a business around it. I love seeing employees flourish and create careers around it. I love customers seeing new ways and new possibilities of how to make their businesses better. I just love that whole value creation process and I hope to work in startups until the day I die. Awesome.

Yeah. I have to give a little background about what we're going to talk about today. There's so many different subjects that we could talk about that would be relevant to marketing, entrepreneurship, building and growing a company, managing your time, hiring amazing people. I think I've picked a couple of areas that we're going to ask you questions about that I think will be extremely relevant to our listeners and we'll get them to think about their companies if they're startup or they've been in business for many, many years and run a giant company. I mean this, I think this will apply to, you know, a lot of people that are, that are entrepreneurs. And I was in Vancouver last week and I was on a two week trip in, in Canada. I went to Calgary and then I went to Victoria and then I ended up in, in Vancouver and I spent a couple days with you and right before you were nice enough to drive me to the airport in your new Tesla, which is a very cool car, we had this really great insightful lunch. I mean, out of the entire time I was in Canada, I actually thought the time that I spent with you right before, an hour before I was leaving the country was one of the most insightful and valuable and you talked about your core values and we're going to get to that. We're going to talk about in a way that I've heard this before, but you just happened to say it in a way where it really resonated with me. And I think everyone on the line has heard that. But I swear, I think the way that you have, the perspective you have on this is critical. Now before we get to that, you have a company called Herox and I want to talk about Herox first because this is the second thing that I think will be really beneficial to all of our listeners, which is incentivized competitions. I for many, many years ran incentivized competitions. You worked and co founded Herox with Peter Diamandis who created the X Prize and so forth. People who have never heard of you don't know what you do. Talk about the company Herox and what it does and we'll Talk about that. Those are the two subjects we're going to talk about today. Incentivized prizes which, what Herox does and then your core values.

Yeah, great. Thanks, Joe. So Herox is really simple. We're creating a platform that lets people crowdsource solutions to their problems, innovations that they need, breakthroughs that would change the game for them whether they're a company, an individual or a nonprofit. We basically provide a platform and then the main model is you use a prize to create the incentive and then you just put out the guidelines out to the crowd saying this is what we want to have solved, this is what we want to have accomplished. And the crowd is invited to solve your problem for you. And whoever solves it wins and wins the prize money. It's really, really super simple. It's actually a really old idea that's been used by governments and kings and emperors for hundreds of years. And you know, Peter has modernized it and brought it to leveraging the Internet. And then at Herox we're distributing it and democratizing it to make it available for everybody.

And so Dean, I'm going to give you an opportunity because you don't say any very smart things. And so I want to try to. I've given you an out of things to talk about. It's that would allow you.

I just was before I left to go up to Toronto, London, I was out at McManton's house and saw his movie that he did about. About Peter and one of the things Peter said in the movie was that when he heard about. Who's the guy that did the cross Atlantic flight?

Lindbergh.

Lindbergh. Lindbergh did, yeah. When Charles Lindbergh did that flight, that he did it and won a prize for doing it. And that was sort of Peter saying his or his.

Aha.

That gave him kind of the inspiration for the, for the original X Prize. Pretty interesting. So what I'm interested in hearing is some of the stories of what kinds of things people are getting solved on Herox.

Yeah, that's great. And yeah, let me go through some of them because we're really excited about the traction that we've got in the marketplace. And we have over $7 million of prizes that we've launched on our platform and we've got over a million people that we have links to through social media and our website that we're. That are coming to solve these problems. So a couple of them that are really cool so one is great is the Integra Gold Prize. So Integra Gold is a gold company that is looking for new sources of gold. And they purchased an 80 year old defunct gold mine in Quebec. And the reason they purchased it was because they're pretty sure that there's a ton more gold there because it was mined out based upon the technology that was available 80 years ago. Okay. And so it was mined out. They believe there's way more gold. And they've, so they've got all of this geological data, some of it old, like over 80 years, all this geological data. It's six terabytes of data. And so that's like almost an overwhelming task. And so they were looking at this and they're saying, you know what, why don't we just put this data online and we'll put a prize up and let's let the crowd help us find the gold. So the prize, and you can go to HeroX.com to see the prize. The prize, basically it's a million dollars is up for grabs for somebody who can help identify that goal. And we've had already over 150 people register to participate. And you know, what's likely going to happen here is they're going to start joining forces into teams to work together and you're going to see, you know, a data scientist pair up with a geologist, pair up with a hacker and they're going to join forces and they're going to figure out how to parse this data and how to look for the right stuff and provide that data to Integra Gold and win a million dollars. It's pretty straightforward.

Yeah. Can I mention this too, in case it's not crystal clear for anyone listening. So to all our listeners, there's twofold here. There's a platform just like Kickstarter or Indiegogo is a platform for crowdfunding or Crowdfunder.com or things like that. Where we've interviewed, I'm friends with the CEO of one of the founders of, of Indiegogo, Slava Ruben. And also me and Dean recently did an interview with founders of Crowdfunder. Yep. Those are platforms for crowdfunding. Herox is a platform for incentivized prizes. And so for whatever your enterprise is, if you actually want to launch a contest for profit, nonprofit, anything, you can utilize that platform. And if you want to win one of the prizes as a income opportunity, as a innovation, as a way to solve something, do that. I mean, you know, we've had, we've had calls with Tony Robbins regarding the contest we're helping him with. Which part of it will include something with Herox, and part of it will include something with my better, your best model. We also have a prize that we're going to be launching with my friend Natalie Imbruglia, the singer, to help with Fistula with women that have this condition called fistula, because this is a big problem that causes enormous amounts of suffering for a lot of women and girls in mostly, you know, third world countries. And Herox is a platform where that's going to be made available to help find a solution to this. And so I want all of the listeners to go check out Herox because it will totally get your brain thinking about different ways to solve something. I mean, to go back, you know, Christian, I mean, I can tell that I've told this story, but I'd rather have you kind of share some background. You know, you linked up with Peter Diamandis, who's also a Genius network member and a dear friend. Private space travel would not exist in the current form that it is had he not launched an incentivized prize and put up, you know, money for that. So tell that the brief version of that story for people that have not heard it before.

Yeah, it's a. It's a fascinating story. And as, as Dean mentioned, Nick Manton has done an amazing documentary on it which hopefully everybody will get to see.

Soon, called we're gonna preview that movie at our Genius Network annual event that we have coming up. Oh, nice. And I think the best part of that movie is I think I'm at the very end of it. That's why I say like 50 seconds to me. I think that's the only reason people should watch that movie.

But that's so they can.

That's just a hint. They can turn it off then and they're not going to miss anything, right?

Right. No, they're not going to, no. But it's. Yeah, but it's great. But this is all built around that wouldn't exist if had he not launched incentivized prizes. So I want people to really understand why this is important.

Yeah. And so what, you know, what happened? Peter has loved space since he was a boy. And his dream has always been to get to space. And, you know, as, of course, we've all seen, as the space race happened, NASA was launched and created. And what ended up happening was the governments had a monopoly on space. And so basically, unless you could qualify to become an astronaut, which is extremely hard to do, your chances of getting to space was zero. And so while he was pursuing as an entrepreneur different Space based ventures and doing all sorts of crazy things. He received a copy of Charles Lindbergh's biography from a friend of his. And much to his surprise, he found out, as Dean had mentioned, that Charles Lindbergh flew from New York to Paris nonstop for the first time ever to win a prize. It was a $25,000 prize run by an entrepreneur who was frustrated because he had businesses both in New York and Paris. And he was frustrated by the fact that it took basically four days to cross the Atlantic on the fastest steamship you could get. And he knew planes were the future. And so he put up $25,000 prize for that. And that opened up and accelerated the modern commercial airline industry. And Charles Lindbergh, by the way, when he won the prize, he became the most famous American for about 10 years, you know, from having won that prize. And it was the eighth attempt, and another important point is that it was the eighth attempt by different teams. And, you know, Charles Lindbergh had to design his own plane, customize it and practice on it. And all of this was done to chase after a prize. There was no grants, there was no government funding. You know, these were just people with a passion. It's really an amazing story. And so Peter heard about this and he said, you know, why can't I do the same thing for space? So he came up with the idea of the original X Prize, which is a $10 million prize for the first private reusable spacecraft. And to just put that in perspective real quick, when he announced that prize, it was illegal to fly a private vehicle above a certain altitude. It was full on, go to jail, illegal. So he announced a prize to do something that was technically impossible. It was perceived to be technically impossible. There was no market for it, there was no investment sources, and it was illegal. You go to jail. And so it's just a great example of the power of incentive competitions that all he did was he just put up and said, I'm gonna pay $10 million to somebody who creates a reasonable spacecraft. And then the whole world changed. The government changed their rules. The FAA created a new certification level for private spacecraft. There was a huge amount of pressure put on the world. 26 teams competed. The winning team, run by Bert Rutan, succeeded on their first attempt. And Richard Branson ended up buying that company and starting Virgin Galactic. And now there's an entire sector of entrepreneurs and startups that have received billions of dollars of financing to create private space ventures. And they're going to do more in space than the governments have have Done. And we're going to be, you know, 10, 15 years from now, we are going to be amazed at what we're doing in space as a society. All from a prize, right?

Exactly. So what do you think of that, Dean?

Well, I think, you know, you think about all the things that are happening in space right now. With you've got all the things that Elon Musk is doing on the, you know, back end of that. You've got planetary resources, the plan to mine asteroids. I mean, all of that stuff, one, it all comes back to all those trails kind of come right to, right to Peter and the X Prize. And it's pretty amazing. Joe, you always use a quote that Napoleon, his whole life changed when he realized that a man would die for a blue ribbon.

Yeah, it's a great Napoleon quote for people to think about. I mean, it can be used in useful ways or medieval ways is he had this quote where my life changed the day I realized a man would die for a blue ribbon. And when you can figure out what is so important for someone or groups of people or communities culturally, people will literally go to war for something that is meaningful. And people will go to war to win. I mean, imagine sporting events if there were no prizes. Imagine the Olympics if there wasn't a gold medal. It wouldn't exist. I mean, it wouldn't exist in the form that it does. So there's this built in part about human nature where they want to win, they want to compete. And when you put in the pressure of, see the beauty of it. If you just take Peter's X Prize, where he put up $10 million for Spaceship 1, which was won by Anoush Anissari, the Anasari family, they actually put up the $10 million prize. And it was called X Prize because he was trying to get a sponsor, someone to put up the money and their name would have been in front of prize. But it took so long for him to get the money in the backer that the X just stuck. And it ended up becoming the name of xprize. The brand just stuck. But he ended up putting up $10 million, which he didn't even have when he first announced the prize. But he, you know, he was such a believer in this that he was literally gambling that I'm going to pull this off. Which of course is one big belief in any entrepreneur. Can you pull it off? And if you can't, you crash and burn. So he put himself in incredible, you know, risk, but he believed that he could do it. And what happened is he put up $10 million. But I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, Christian, the, the 26 teams that originally entered to win that, I think they spent 120/something million trying to win $10 million collectively.

And the hours and the team members and all that stuff. Yeah, you're right, Marshall. All of Those resources, like.

10 times.

More resources for the, for the prize. It's, you know, Christian, it's, it's interesting like when you talk about things like, you know, space prizes and, and you know, really complicated geology prizes, are there any examples that you can think of that are like, I don't know what the right word is. Not, not practical isn't the right word, but more like, you know, more. I don't know what the right word is. More sort of down to earth. There we go.

Well said. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In fact, in fact, our, like, I like, I love the large prizes on our platform, but I'm actually far more excited. And the reason we really started Herox was not, not to be a platform for million dollar prizes, but to be a platform for a thousand dollar prizes. Yeah, and, and crowdfunded prizes where groups get together and you know, maybe you only have $50. Like maybe, maybe you're upset about something and you want to get $50 away and you got kind of, you know, a couple of choices. You can basically, you know, pick a charity and give your $50. That way we hope to create a new, a new way. Which is, hey, why don't you, why don't you think about what breakthrough you're committed to and if you could come up with a great breakthrough and you can define what the guidelines would be, what the rules would be. Like if somebody does this, they'll win my $50. It's almost like you're daring the world. I dare you world, to make this thing go away and I'll pay you $50. Well that's, that's cool, but you know, there's not a lot of leverage there. But, but if I go online and I talk to 10,000 other people on the Internet and say, here's my vision, here's the breakthrough I know we can get, and I'm putting $50 up. And I'm asking you to put $50 up. Well, all of a sudden that's half a million dollars. Now you've got a half million dollar prize. And a half million dollar prize will attract hundreds of researchers, competitors, entrepreneurs and inventors who will start working to solve that problem. So all of a sudden you've taken one guy and $50. And you've con and you've converted it into a movement. And I love that because this is what the Internet was really, you know, like, this is what the Internet's for. It's. Why wait until the nonprofits or the governments sort their shit out and solve problems. You know, I don't know if you guys have noticed, but they're not the best at driving innovation. I mean, they do good work, but they're not the best at finding those crazy breakthroughs. You know, when Charles Lindbergh did what he did, he was called the flying fool. He was ridiculed because people thought it was impossible. So, you know, you're not seeing nonprofits funding projects based upon impossible. Right. And yet that's where innovation comes from. And so we're creating a platform that lets people, whether you're one guy with a big check or whether you're at a company like the Integra Gold guys that can write a big check, or whether you're an individual who has the power of the crowd behind you. We want to create a platform that disintermediates all that stuff and allows you to tap into the power of the crowd. It's amazing. To answer your question, Dean, yeah, we've got smaller thousand dollar and $10,000 prizes that are doing some amazing things. I've got entrepreneur, a friend of mine who's, who's. I talked to him and he's like, hey, can I, can I, I want to come up with a name for my product. You know, can I. And I was gonna hire this like, agency to help me come up with a name. And I'm like, well, why don't you just like, how much do you want to spend on a name? He goes, I don't know. I was, I, you know, it's pretty expensive to hire an agency. Well, I said, well, why don't you just put up a $10,000 prize on our platform and ask your customers and the crowd and your potential customers and say, hey, here's what I'm building. I need a name. So you know, give me. And then give me a name. And hey, why don't you vote for the winning name too? And best name will win ten grand. So we're doing stuff like that, which I think is, is, is, you know what I get really excited about is that. That crowd based stuff.

Yep. And I'll be launching, I'll be launching some contests related to addiction that are on Hero X. And what you just said is the whole point. Like you, there are People that are listening to that are spending a lot of money trying to get stuff done, created, figured out, written, edited, produced, manufactured, that are going to spend 10 times the amount of money and get 110 of the effectiveness compared to if they could actually formulate the right sort of prize and put it out to people that would be interested in winning it or creating it or completing it or participating in it. And so that's the whole point now. So what I'd like to see is that this is this great company that Christian has built and he's also. It's one of several companies that Christian has built. It's his current focus. It's probably something he's going to be doing for a very long time. And it is this really awesome platform that I'm a big supporter of and turn a lot of people onto. And I think all of our listeners would be very well served to go check it out to one, see if you want to win any of the prizes, because some people that are listening can probably win the prizes and make money. Secondly, if you want for whatever your enterprise is, by going there and looking at it and studying it and thinking about it, you'll get a whole much different perspective about it. I mean, hell, I gave away cars every year for over a decade for my Better your best contest. So I've got a whole contest model and we're integrating that into some of the training with Herox because there's entrepreneurial contests that I'm a master at doing because I did it successfully for so many years. I was Bill Phillips marketing consultant who did Body for Life contest in the late 90s is when it first started, you know, the EA. It actually was the EAS physique transformation contest when which ended up becoming the Body for Life contest. And then he sold that company. You know, eas, blah blah, blah. But I've been around, you know, contests for damn near 20 years because my first introduction to them was in 1996. And so, you know, I'm a huge believer in it now. How Christian has successfully built these organizations is because he has a set of values that guide his company. And that's where I want to switch to next is first ask you, Christian, how do you think about values and why is it so important for organizations to have them? Because what you have today is a byproduct of this understanding. And that's where I'd like to focus our time now. Because my lunch that I had with you when I was in Vancouver and you went through your core values, just gave Me a perspective about core values I've never had before. So.

Bam. Okay, great. Yeah. And so we have. Our core values are written down in a chart, and you can go to HeroX.com values to see it, or I'm pretty sure you guys can put it in your show notes. Correct?

Yeah, we can do that.

Great. And so we've created these values, and this all started from. So, like, this is my fourth startup, and what I've learned over that period of time is it's far more important as an entrepreneur to empower people and to have a group of people in a company that have a shared vision, that have shared passions, and rather than just managing and supervising and having to do items and goals and all that stuff. And so you know what we.

Darth Vader, could you put your mask on? Silence there, Jeff. You got heavy breathing going on here.

I'm breathing heavy, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

You see, I'm telling you that.

Wow.

You know, I'm just getting excited here.

Yeah, I just thought you were getting. I thought he was just getting all excited about my values.

Well, yeah, I shouldn't be writing on my treadmill desk while I'm doing a podcast. I mean, you know, what the hell? Okay. You know, this marks a special moment. I love marketing history because this is the first time Deeds ever called me out on heavy breathing because I'll be like, dean, shut the hell up.

Can you please?

Okay. All right, continue. By the way, if I get a little too noisy, just. You guys feel free to just point it out publicly. Don't send me a silent text or anything. Just say it. You know, just say it.

Hey, guys. This is why I was so honored when you invited me onto your to. I love marketing. Because half of. Half of the awesomeness of your podcast is the comic relief.

Well, you know, yeah, yeah. I mean, I tend to think of it as sheer professionalism, but, yes, I totally hear what you're saying, though. Thank you.

You're welcome. Okay, so. So there's a. There's a great quote that. That I use a lot, which is which. And it's by this friend. I think it's by a French philosopher. And it goes, basically, it's, if you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood, assign them tasks and manage their work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. And that is, as an entrepreneur CEO, that's a very powerful quote because it really goes to the heart of the difference between people following their passions and people working Their jobs. And if you want to create an amazing company, I don't want to be around people. I don't want to create a culture where we are managing tasks and work and people are here because of paychecks and, you know, and all of that stuff. I want to create an army, a tribe of passionate entrepreneurs and leaders and aspiring careerists who are turned on, who are jumping out of bed to tackle stuff, and that we're winning and doing amazing things together. And I'm learning from them. And it's a company that great people are regularly coming to and saying, I heard about your company and I want to be part of it. That's the environment that I think I would argue that all of us would love to create that environment, to be inspired by the people that you work with every day, to see them grow and flourish and develop. And so as an entrepreneur, you know, I ask the question, well, how do I do that? Because that sounds all wonderful, but how do I actually do that? And what I've learned is it starts with creating an amazing culture, and an amazing culture starts with core values. And so what I've learned, I've learned a system of implementing core values in a company. And the sheet that you have, the Herox core values that, that everybody hopefully is looking at right now represents the output of that process. And we, as an organization are deeply committed to this. We hire people based upon our core values. And when people need. When we need to let people go, it's based upon our core values, and we're really making our decisions based upon that.

Can we go ahead? Keep going. After I really interrupt you right here in the middle of what you're saying. What is the link? I mean, we'll have this@ilove marketing.com as part of the show notes, and we'll have a link there. But what is the link in case people are not there and they happen to be near an electronic device and they want to go look at it? Other than ilovemarketing.com, where do you have it on HeroX.

HeroX.com values.

Okay. Yeah, I just wanted to have you say that again. Herox.com and by the way, what I'm doing for the show notes, that was this morning. My excuse, since you said comic relief earlier, since I didn't pay proper attention the first time you said it. I'm writing it down now so that I can give this, this is a little backstage logistics to my editing person and all the highly engaged individuals that follow our core values at I love marketing. The Ones that Dean has not written up to actually put this online. No, we actually, I have a great team over here. Dee just deals with my insults and then I try to make stuff happen. But yeah. So if you're anywhere near where you want to go and look at these, because I'm going to ask you in a moment, Christian, to go through them because I think they're awesome.

Yeah.

Great.

Yeah. And so I'm going to go through them in one sec. The last thing I want to say about it is, in terms of the process is that what matters about core values is that they're lived every day by the people. And what the pits, the trap that I see so many people fall into is they'll go into some type of off site planning meeting and then they'll come up with what they think their values should be. Okay. I call them aspirational values. Right. And aspirational values are about as powerful as, let's say, saying, you know, I want a hot body. Right. Well, saying I want a hot body doesn't make a hot body show up. Right. It doesn't even give you the behaviors that's going to get a hot body. Okay. It doesn't do much of anything other than make you feel bad. Right. So setting a goal of wanting a hot body without the infrastructure of supporting the achievement, the obtainment of that is actually creating anti value because it's just going to make you feel bad. And core values, if you do implement them the same way, are just going to make your team feel bad and you're going to have this nice set of core values framed on your wall and it's not going to link up with reality. So what's really important with core values is that you're living them and that you're discovering them from the actions and the behaviors of the people. And so every quarter, every 90 days, as a company, we would do, in our planning processes, we would do a core values discovery exercise. And it takes about 30 minutes. And every 90 days where we would look at the last 90 days and ask that question, what? When did you see somebody on the team do something awesome that you feel is a value? And then we would listen and somebody would say, hey, listen, I saw, you know, I saw Joe, you know, he stepped up, you know, the deck didn't work and he stepped up and, you know, and did this and did that and, and pulled it off and it was really awesome. And that's, that's an action. That's a physical action. And that's how we discovered Our core values. So over eight quarters, we started with post it notes. And our, you know, our first set of core values was just like a. Just like a mishmash of random things. And then every time we did it, we would tweak and tune, tweak and tune. And after eight cycles, here we are with this sheet. And if you're looking at the sheet, what we have is five fundamental core values. And each of them have five expressions that we particularly favor, that we particularly celebrate and reward at the company. That makes sense.

Makes total sense. Are you lost at all, Dean? Are you?

No, no, I'm looking at the sheet right here. So. Well, we say at the top, hungry to learn and grow.

That's the.

That's the core value. And that these, everything to the right of this is how we can demonstrate those or how they actually manifest themselves.

Yeah, yeah. There are five expressions that we particularly care about. So we train our people on those five expressions. They're not the only expressions. There's an unlimited, infinite realm of expressing that core value. But those are the five that we train people on is the way to think about it. Yeah. So let me walk you through them real quick. And so I'm particularly proud of them. I think that I'm really proud of the team and what we've accomplished here. And I'm really proud of us expressing this and pushing it out not only to our team, but out into our users and the crowd and our customers and sponsors and partners. So the first one is Hungry, Learn and Grow. And the reason for that is because, you know, if you think about it, if we have a group of people that are passionate about learning and growing, then they can discover all the other core values they're willing to learn and grow. So that's one of the reasons why that's the first, most important one. And then of course, at Herox, we are creating a platform. We're creating a marketplace for problem solving that doesn't exist. And of course we have to learn. Our growth is linked to learning because we have to learn how to create value for the world and how to make it work. It's not about our ideas. It's about learning what the world needs and how to meet that need. So that's the first one. The second one, which is a big one for those that have heard Dan Sullivan on your podcast. This is a big one for Dan, which is courage precedes growth. And this is one of my favorite ones, because it's the rarest in corporate environments that if you think about it, if you have a group of people that are learning and growing, then the next thing you're going to need in order to be successful and grow your business is you need courage. Why? Because all growth comes from getting outside your comfort zone. Anybody who's learned something new, a language, learned to ski, learned marketing, they all know that it requires a lot of courage. If you want to master something, you can't master it unless you're committed to courage, right? So that's the second core value. The third one is, you know, be happy and have fun. And, you know, the reason that's so important is, well, think about it. If you've got a bunch of people learning new stuff and they're encouraged all the time, you know, that could become a pretty toxic environment pretty quickly if you're not careful. And, you know, it's really important that we're constantly, you know, being positive and that we're attracting people with. With positive attitudes. And so we want to make sure that we're always having fun in everything that we do. And we actually go out of our way to make things fun. We make our meetings fun. Like we do. We do good news as our first agenda item in every meeting. And so just start. Start a meeting on positive front by, you know, people can share what's going on in their lives, can share an awesome thing they did on the weekend, you know, or something great that happened at work. And so we make sure that we are, you know, always having fun. You know, my personal philosophy on that is that, you know, the journey is the destination. And, you know, business and entrepreneurship is a game. It's a, you know, it's a somewhat serious game, but it's a game. It's not like, you know, it's not like life or death. And if you're not having fun doing it, then you're doing something wrong. My humble opinion.

Let me say something to that, too, because I think this is critical. Like my buddy Dave Kekich, one of his credos is enthusiasm covers many deficiencies. And I've always loved that because along the way, if you take the same individual with the same skills, the capability and intelligence in one is grumpy and bitchy and moody and just very critical versus the same person who's enthusiastic and fun and courteous and collaborative. It's just a hell of a lot more enjoyable to do what you need to do with that sort of personality. And when I am functioning at my best and people enjoy being around me is when I'm, like, really fun. And when I'M you know, the most annoying or I'm tired or whatever. It just isn't. And so, you know, my whole thing about having a health business, something that's easy, lucrative and fun versus, you know, a half business, hard, annoying, lame and frustrating, you know, it makes, it makes all the difference in the world. And when we were having lunch, you actually mentioned about a very capable individual that you, you know, knew, but the person just simply wasn't fun. They would always bring like just a attitude to two meetings. And you mentioned that the meetings are about problems. I mean, we wouldn't be having meetings if there wasn't problems. And I thought that was just such a great distinction, like, oh, we need to have a meeting. What you really think is that we need to get together and talk about some problems because we have to solve, we have to solve shit here. We have to figure shit out. And how many companies would be having meetings if there wasn't any problems or things that need to be solved. So since we're all going to have continual problems to solve, solving them in as much of a fun game that you can design completely changes the experience of how you run and grow and build a company. And since everybody listening, if they're ever going to make any money, is going to be working in some sort of result producing enterprise, you know, the more you set it up. So this is a game that is, you know, best played when you're having fun. I mean that to me, it's so obvious that I think a lot of people miss it.

Exactly. And I think, look, I could, I could, we could do a whole podcast just on fun. I think it's one of the most misunderstood core values for exactly what you're talking about, which is like, we were like, we're human beings. We are emotional, spiritual human beings. And you know, I would argue that half the time when you're choosing a product, like when you're looking at your options as a, as a consumer, you're choosing which, you know, travel agent to use or airline to fly or phone to buy. I would argue that the fun in it is a massive factor in your decision. You're just not being honest with yourself. You know, you buy, you buy a car because it's fun. You know, you, you pick an airline because it's fun. I mean, I think fun, I think fun is a competitive advantage. I think that if I want to create amazing experiences with partners, customers and sponsors. Yeah, well, let me, let me, let me summarize it. I mean, I think that fun is the most Misunderstood value, I think. Yeah, I think it's hugely important. And it's, you know, like, have you ever been in a grumpy mood and then you. You show up with a group of your friends and they're all having a great time? What happens? You're having a great time, too. And have you ever done the opposite? Have you ever, you know, come home from work or whatever and you bump into a grumpy person and they just start picking at you, and before you know it, you're in a terrible mood, too. It's. It's an. We're human beings. It's an infectious thing. And if you create an environment where people are always having fun, they will work harder, they will be more loyal, and they will attract amazing people. They will treat their customers really well. Everything's better when people are having fun, period.

Yeah, I swear. I mean, I think what, like, a lot of people have told me about Genius Network is they're like, the reason I like your group is because it's just fun. I mean, I've heard that a million times because I'm, of course, kind of a goofball and a jackass. And my office is eccentric and weird, but people walk into my office and they're like, this. The energy of this place is just really cool because it's ridiculous. But it's like, if you're going to do work, I hate corporate environments that are stuffy and sterile, and everyone attempts to, like, you know, try to pretend to be at a level that human beings really aren't. You know, when they leave work, that's not who they are. And it's like, let's, you know, create an environment that is, you know, fun. I mean, it's awesome. And so, yeah, yeah, we could do a whole episode on this. And maybe we will. Maybe we will in the future. Because I love this, and I'd love, you know, people to give their comments about how they think about this. But, yeah, let's have you keep going through this, because if not, then I'll, you know, be here all day.

Yeah. So doing it the easy way is another one. And, you know, that sounds so simple. And a lot of people have heard of kiss. Keep it super simple. And, you know, I believe that if you're not making things easy, then it's impossible to create value in an entrepreneurial environment. We need to be, you know, if somebody asked me, what do I do? Like, what do I do? What's the fundamental thing that I do as an entrepreneur? Here's what I would say. I would say my job is to make the impossible possible and then build a team around me that can make the possible easy and eventually effortless. Right? And that's what entrepreneurs. That's a nice progression. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, I don't have the attention span to go from making it impossible to effortless. I need a team around me. I can make the impossible possible as an entrepreneur. And now I need to create a great team with capabilities and unique abilities that have the wherewithal to see what I've done as an entrepreneur and now go and say, okay, let's systemize this. Let's create tools, let's communicate it properly, let's come up with a marketing plan. Let's. Let's do all this stuff. And then their job is to make it from barely possible. Because anybody who's been in a startup knows that, you know, you, You. You kind of. You claw at winning your first client, right? Or building your first product. And it's like you. It's like you're in the realm of bare, barely possible. And. And then. But if you want to scale your business, it's got to become effortless. You know, anybody who's used Uber knows the power of effortlessness, right? You know, you know, finding a taxi, flagging it down, sitting in the stinky back with the bulletproof glass in front of your face, you know, being chatted out by the stupid screen with the advertisements, and then you've got to pay with your credit card, but the machine doesn't work, and then you got to tip the guy. You know, that's a hassle, right? Uber.

But it's kind of raised the bar for everything around it, hasn't it? Like, I just posted. I just posted on Facebook a couple of days ago that the new Starbucks app has an order now section in the app, and you can place your order and send it to your Starbucks, and then you just walk in like a boss and pick up your order at the pickup counter, skipping all the lime, skipping shipping, paying, everything like that. And it's. It just dawned on me that it had. I said, starbucks has Uberized my coffee experience now.

And.

And it's become a verb, really. I've heard other things, you know, that you were trying to Uberize something, because there's nothing as perfect as the Uber experience of pushing a button that a car arrives at your feet, and then you get in and go where you want to go and get out, and it's just that simple.

Exactly. And so, yeah, what.

Whatever, Whatever.

D. When you make Doing it the easy way. A core value. Yeah, you're incentivizing everybody to do that at multiple levels of the company. Because I had a. One of my. One of my senior people came to me when we were in a growth hump, and she, you know, she was like, okay, I've got the stuff done. I've got this. All this stuff done. And she'll know who she is when I share the story. And it was hard. It was hard. And it's. It was. It was a struggle. And. And I need, you know, hire people. I hire a bunch of people because this is gonna be hard and a struggle. And I looked at her, I said, you know, you do. You know, you don't get to do it that way. And she, like, her pattern was interrupted. She looked at me. She was. I go, no, I'm not approving that plan. She had a little plan with a budget and hiring plan, all that stuff. I said, I'm not approving that plan because it's not fun. You need to go back and come back with a fun and an easy. Right. An easy version of this. And as soon as she thought through, okay, how can I make it fun? And how can I do it the easy way? Right? What's the easy way of doing this? You know, Here a crazy thing happened. First off, she got really excited and empowered and started coming with really creative ideas. We had to hire half the number of people that the original plan had, Half the number of people. And the results of that project has exceeded our expectations. The confidence level of the team has gone up. It's been great. We reward laziness is one way to think about it. I mean, literally, if you want to really be committed to doing things the easy way, you've got to really be committed to doing things the easy way. But it turns out the lazy path is actually usually the best path. The path that doesn't require any work at all, you know, or you can just take a task and ask the question, like, why do we even need to do this task? Why don't we just not do that task? Right? How can we. How can we outsource it? So we provide an environment where we're really rewarding people to learn how to do things the easy way. And we do that multiple levels beyond the scope of what I could talk about today, but, you know, we don't track vacations time. Everybody in the company has, you know, as much vacation time as they want. They can take it when they want it. They don't have to report about It. Why? Because it's dz. Who the hell wants to track vacation? And why would we track. Right. Anyways. Right?

Yeah.

And. And by the way, when you have somebody who wants to take vacation, they're, you know, they need to delegate and systemize stuff. Like we want to be able to have a company that's doing, accomplishing its goals, and somebody wants to take a month off, guess what? They're gonna have to figure out how to systemize. They're gonna have to figure out the easy way. And so, you know, that's what we do. And then the final, the final value, which is, which I think is the foundation of all of it, is, is to be humble. And to be humble really is about. Is about love, right? Because if you think about it like, you know, a lot of people in Western cultures, the word humble, they associate it with weakness in a way, or being passive. And it's not that at all. It's really about knowing your place in the world and having a worldview of wanting to bring out the best in other people, create value for other people to share your celebrations and your results and to live and love and not fear. You know, I mean, I think everything in the planet is either love or fear. Like, fundamentally, not to get all touchy feely in this podcast, but I think everything in, if you drill down to anything, it either comes from love or fear. And so being humble and creating an environment where we celebrate our humility and we create a culture that's, that's foundation is in humility and how we, how we celebrate rewards, how we fail, how we're willing to be wrong, how we're willing to admit that we're wrong, how we're willing to let people talk and listen to them rather than waiting for them to stop talking so we can tell them what we think. That underlying culture is a really important and the fifth component of our core values.

I could see how having these core values too, and people fully ingrained and embracing them, that it empowers them to make their own decisions or to figure out what to do in any situation. Yeah, well, let's do this because of.

Timing and because we happen to have another person that we're doing a podcast episode with right after you, which is always challenging. What are some of the mistakes that leaders make that everyone listening to this should watch out for when it comes to defining their values inside their company, their organization, their whatever it is?

I'll give you one, because this is the most important one. And it's a pretty, in my opinion, A pretty profound one to really get, and that's this. Every company, every organization already has 100% of their core values. There's no such thing. Even a company that's never talked about core values ever once. There's no such thing as having 50% core values or 30% core values. In fact, core values is just a corporate version of a culture. And if you go to, like a little French farming village and see how they live, or you go to a town in Africa and see how they live, you're going to see the power of culture in human beings. We all live in 100% culture, and we all live 100% core values. It's just that if you don't intentionally focus and celebrate on a set of values that you as a leader are amplifying and committed to, then the random behaviors, the bad habits even of everybody around you and the leader, they're going to fill in the void. And so if I walk in any organization, they've got 100% core values, and if they're not intentional about it, they're just going to be there. And so one of the big mistakes that people make is thinking that we can just, you know, you listen to a podcast like this or you read a book about it and you go, okay, core values are important. Yeah, that's the next thing. I got to bolt this onto my company. And then you, you sit down with your team in an off site meeting and you come up with your core values and you post them on a wall and you order people to want to want them. We order you to be honest, you know, and then you just assume that that's enough. But the reality is that they already have 100% core values. So unless you have a systemic way of pouring out the crappy stuff from your glass and filling in the good stuff and just doing that over a long period of time. Unless you're hiring or firing based on core values, you know, unless you're doing that stuff, unless you're you. Like, like, by the way, I have this on my wall, in my desk, in my office. And every time I have a meeting, by the way, I also carry it around with me in my notebook. So I always have it beside me all the time. And every meeting I have with my team, I look at it and I ask the question, did, did I see learning and growing? Did I see that in the meeting? Did I see courage where people happy? Did we have fun? You know, were we coming up the easy way or were we defaulting too hard and suffering you know, were people being generous and humble, and if I don't see that happening in my meetings, it's a bad. It's a bad meeting. It's not acceptable. And so you got to have that practice of putting it into action. And you've got to start identifying the core values, or, sorry, the values that have crept in inadvertently from the bad habits of the leaders of the company. And you have to identify those, call them out for what they are, apologize for them. Okay. As the leader of the company, I'm a source of a tremendous amount of patterning, which is also known as culture. So my bad habits become acceptable behavior to the rest of the team. And so I need to identify those and apologize for them and say, look, I'm late a lot and I'm really sorry. Like, that's. That's arrogant for me to just run around not caring about your guys's time. And I acknowledge it. It's a. It's a weakness of mine, and I'm sorry. And it's not acceptable. It's not acceptable for me, and it's.

Not acceptable for you guys.

And so by doing that, I've just eliminated the core. The value that would have been created otherwise called being laid around here. So is okay, and being sloppy is okay. You know, that's a core. A core value called sloppiness. So just when you acknowledge that Every company has 100% core values already, whether you like it or not, whether you're willing to acknowledge it or not, that's there. That's the first step to being able to be intentional about designing new core values.

Yeah, no, that's fantastic. If you had to give one or two action steps beyond what you've said, that would help everyone that is listening to this have just more success. What would those action steps be? And then I'd like you to do a final, you know, download of if anyone wants to get involved with Herox and start an incentivized prize, what do they need to do in order to do that? Because I want to make sure we cover that for all of our listeners. So, any other action steps that you would recommend?

Yeah, so, I mean, like I said, it's an involved process that, you know, that I've kind of talked about bits and pieces of it, I think, at a fundamental level, as you know, to speak to the entrepreneurs and the leaders out there. And by the way, anyone can be an entrepreneur or leader at any level of an organization. Okay. Leadership is simply. Is the act of standing for a better future. If you're willing to stand for a better future. You know, as a mail clerk, you're a leader, okay? So if you're a leader and you. And you, you know, feel passionate about creating a culture in your company that you care about, then you just need to observe and ask the question, what am I seeing that's creating value? And that's awesome. And what am I seeing that sucks. And you need to get into a dialogue about that stuff. And it's not about results. It's not about actions and tasks, but who people are being. It's about how people are thinking. It's about their behaviors. And that's really core values. And then you want to start celebrating those core values. You want to call people out and acknowledge them when they're doing great core values when they're doing great things and acknowledge them for the way they're being, not for the result they produced. Enron rewarded people for the results they produced. You want to reward people for how they produce those results. And that's how you're going to amplify your core values.

Awesome. Awesome.

Very cool.

And I would recommend to all the listeners, if you really found this valuable, let us know. I mean, I'm happy to track down Christian and elaborate on this. And I actually think it would be awesome for you to put together even to what degree you would be willing or able to do this put together, even like a book course program training on the continual development of core values. I mean, you've given away so much useful value here. And I think if everyone just went and read your core values and then think about what you said. My buddy Cameron Herold, who's also. You've met him, he's in Genius Network. He wrote this great book called Double Double and His Vivid Vision, which I'm working on, the vivid vision of my company. It's chapter one of his book Double Double, which is a great book. And after having the conversation with you, original originally, and now this one on core values, all of that ties in together about the vivid vision of my company, my organization, and just living it out, knowing that this is not something. You just sit down one day and you just put it on paper. You actually have to live into it. You're lying about the leader being an enormous source of patterning. There's a lot of things that I have done in my own company. That or me just being Joe, but it's not very productive. I mean, being late is an example. I mean, I'm late more than I really. I don't ever want to be late. You know, there are certain situations where emergencies come up. However, you know, if you don't acknowledge that, you become known as a person that can't be counted on and that can't be reliable. And so taking a look at your own shit, I mean, I'm a very coachable person. I mean, at least I believe I am. And so I'm always looking to point at how are my patterns coming, because as that line says, the fish rots from the head down. And if someone has an organization that isn't working well or you can't keep good people or whatever, I mean, you can blame other people all day long, but it's like, make yourself responsible for it. I mean, be responsible for your company. Your life is where it's at because you designed it. I mean, it's, you know, it has a lot more to do with you than anyone. And so, Christian, with Herox, so people have this amazing platform available to them. How do they get started with it? What do they do?

Yeah, so like we talked about, we have a number of prizes on the platform, so you should definitely come and check them out and see if there's one that you think you could compete for and win. We are also looking for people who have ideas for prizes and so for challenges. And so if you have an idea, if you see a problem, come on, come on the site and create a challenge. And we've got crowdfunding capability there already. So, you know, we're working with people who see challenges that they want to create. And we're, you know, and we're also going to be launching some new collaboration features that I can't talk about yet, but we're going to be announcing them in a little while. So come online, create an account, register, and there's going to be lots of really cool projects we're going to be launching and announcing in the coming days.

Perfect for all of our listeners. Give us your feedback and your comments on this. If you know someone who literally has a problem they've been trying to solve and they have not been able to figure out how to do it or fund a company or whatever, maybe the way to do it is through an incentivized price. So introduce them to Herox. I'd love to hear your comments about the Core Value conversation with Christian. So post them@ilovemarketing.com and share this episode with anyone in a company or organization that you think could utilize this because it could be transformational. And let us know how you're utilizing what it is that you're learning here and you can subscribe to I Love Marketing. So you get one of these episodes delivered to you on every regular basis. It'll be like just every week you're going to be getting a new gift and you can do that on itunes, or you can do it off of our site, wherever this podcast is available and anything else that either one of you would like to say before we call it a wrap.

Christian, that was awesome. Thanks so much for sharing.

Yeah, thanks guys. Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it.

You are welcome. So thank you. And thanks everyone for listening. And we will talk to you on the next Episode of Ilove marketing.com Take care. Care.

Bye. Bye.