Vivid Vision Cameron Herold: Your Business Vision Will Get Better the Moment You Watch This!

Nowadays, I think in business, luckily as CEOs, we can delegate everything except genius. I think what hurts a lot of us is we're trying to get better at stuff. Like, even Joe Polish told me that I had to be good at marketing. I said, no, I don't. Joe. I've had a number of debates with him on this. I need to know the people that are good at marketing, and I need to share with them what my goals and my vision are. And they need to get me there. But I need to know the tactics exist. I need to know that landing page optimization exists, but not how to do it. I need to know that split testing exists, but not how to do it. I need to know that copyright exists, but not how to do it. That's what I want, right? So then I know that all these things exist. Then I can find the who's is.

As the popularity of who, not how is really taking off as an idea. The distinction in how people are going to be successful at applying who not how is their ability to articulate what it is they want the who to do. And I think that's going to be an important skill. So that's kind of the two things that I want to kind of kick off the conversation about.

Yeah, sounds great. I was just coaching a client this morning, and we were talking a little bit about some of the direction of the organization and aligning of people. And I said that one of the biggest reasons to even have a vivid vision, which we'll go into and explain what it even is, but so that everybody sees value in their work, right? Because it's really hard for people to understand if they're just working hard in a business area. How does that work? Like what? What's it really building? What's it making happen? If they understand the full vision behind something, there's more meaning. I told them the story of these three bricklayers. You know, they're over in Barcelona, in Spain, 100 years ago. And they asked the first bricklayer, what are you doing? He said, I'm making bricks. You know, he's making bricks and he's very efficient making bricks. He's not really happy.

He's just making bricks.

And they asked the second guy, what are you doing? He said, well, I'm building a wall and I get to make bricks to build a wall. So he's got some meaning in his work and he's a little bit happier, but he's still making bricks to build a wall. And they asked the third guy, and they're all Sitting beside each other. And they asked the third guy, what are you doing? He said, we're building the Sagrada Familia, this incredible cathedral. And it's going to take us 100 years to build, but I can see what it's going to look like. And I get to build the bricks to make the left wall of the cathedral. And you think about who has more meaning in their day to day, at the most minute, kind of frontline, meaningless, minimum wage job. It's the person that sees the bigger picture of what we're building. And so often as entrepreneurs, we just don't explain the whole picture to everybody. We explain the top line idea and we expect them to read our mind.

I love the example that you gave at one of the Genius Network annual events where you were describing the idea of a picnic specifically, and how as a great illustration of a vivid vision compared to just telling somebody the top line of something.

Well, and that was. So we can even do that right now.

If we just did a quick show of hands. If we had people put their hands up really quickly.

Okay.

Has anyone here seen the movie the Sound of Music?

Just put your hands up if you've seen the movie the Sound of Music.

Right.

So almost everybody.

Now. There's a very famous scene in the movie the Sound of Music where they're having a picnic.

Right.

But who. Who has never seen the movie the Sound of Music? Jeremy. Colin. Colin, like, who has no idea what the movie the Sound of Music's about?

Colin Campbell's too young.

Colin, you've got no idea. Colin, can I pick on you for a second? Just tease you a little bit? Can we go off? Can Colin go off mute?

You can unmute. Yeah, there we go.

So, Colin, there's a very, very famous scene in the movie the Sound of Music. You're not allowed to Google it right now. And they're having a picnic. And I need you to organize a picnic for the Genius Network, and I need you to make it look and feel like the one in the Sound of Music. So should our picnic be in the mountains or at a park or at a lake?

Let me get back to you on that one.

Well, just pick in your mind, where should we have it? At the mountains, At a lake or in a park? A lake. Okay, great. So the picnic is going to be at the lake, just like the Sound of Music. Perfect. And then should we get the food at a grocery store? Should we buy it at a hut at the lake, like with a little food stand? Or should we bring the food In a picnic basket.

The hut for sure.

We're gonna buy the food at the hut at the lake. Perfect. Just like the Sound of Music. Everyone who's seen the movie knows that this is perfectly online. And then the next thing is, Colin, we're gonna bring kids to the picnic with us. Should the kids be playing baseball, dancing, or playing croquet?

Just like the Sound of Music.

Yeah, croquet.

Croquet. Perfect. So just what's amazing is just like the movie the Sound of Music, we're going to have kids dancing and playing croquet or. Sorry. Playing croquet at a lake. Well, in fact, the picnic at the Sound of Music. Where's Patti Ann? Pattie Ann, can you go off mute for a second?

Sure.

Patty Ann, where is the picnic at the Sound of Music?

It's on a beautiful hill.

It's in the mountains. Because the song is the hills are alive. They're up in the Austrian. Austrian Alps. Right. They're in the Austrian Alps outside of Vienna. And Pattie Ann, where did they get the food? Did they buy it at a hut or a grocery store?

Actually, I thought they brought it with them.

They brought it in a picnic basket up into these Austrian Alps. Colin, you've completely fucked up our picnic. And Patty and the kids at the picnic, what were they doing? Were they playing croquet or baseball or.

No, they were dancing and singing with Julie Andrews.

They were dancing with Julie. It's one of the most famous scenes of the movie. But, Colin, as smart as you are, you can't recreate the movie if you've never seen the movie.

So one star. One star Picnic service would not recommend.

Yeah. So the problem for most of us as entrepreneurs is our employees can't read our mind. They don't know what our business is going to look like in three years.

They.

They don't know what customer engagement is supposed to feel like. They don't know what marketing is. What. They don't know what our meeting rhythms are supposed to be like. They can't describe the office environment and the use of the technology. And we have it all in our head, and we get frustrated with them because they're not as intuitive. You know, Darryl Sutherland, as smart as you are as an entrepreneur, you're no more intuitive than your employees. But the reason you feel so intuitive is because you see the vision in your company clearer than they do. But if all of our employees could see exactly what we can see, they can then recreate our vision without ever asking us what we're building. So the Example of this would be building a home. And let's say that I'll just do this example, Dean, and then we'll come back to questions. But if we were building a home for a second, the homeowner is really the CEO of the project. Right. The homeowner knows what they want the home to look like. They know how they want their friends to interact. They know where they want the kids to. They have an idea whether it's going to be four stories or one story or modern or craftsman style. And we meet with the contractor, and we keep explaining it and talking about it and showing pictures and diagrams and sketches until the contractor can read our mind. And the contractor goes away with our vision and creates blueprints or plans to make our vision come true. And then we, the homeowner, sign off on the blueprints, they sign off on our vision, and they hand the blueprints to the employees. And the employees can build our home on budget, on time. Exactly. To spec, without ever speaking to us as the CEO. Imagine if your employees never had to speak to you because they were so clear on what you were building that they never had to ask you for more ideas, and they could then create the plans to make your vision come.

True instead of people. I think the natural thing is that CEOs go, you know, build me a house, and I want it to be great and make it 5,000 square feet and go, we're in a hurry kind of thing. And not really give any more direction than that. And get frustrated when people come and ask questions or get frustrated at the end when they build completely the wrong thing.

Yeah. I could have hired a contractor to build my home and given them 2 million bucks and said, come back in 12 months.

Yeah.

And it would have looked nothing like. And it could have been the most amazing home.

Yeah.

But it didn't. Why? Why do we have five bedrooms? And why isn't the kitchen open? And why is there no views? Like, I don't understand. Well, because my vision wasn't communally clearly communicated. Even though they were the best employees, if they're not aligned with vision, then at best, we're herding cats.

So where did you first start this? Where did you, like, come up with the idea that this is a good thing?

So I actually got exposed to this idea back in 1998 in Vancouver. I was a part of the Entrepreneurs organization, which was the first mastermind group I ever got involved in. And 120 entrepreneurs got invited to the lunch, and only 16 of us showed up. And we were meeting with a high performance Olympic coach and sports psychologist. And he talked about looking into a crystal ball. And we thought this was the stupidest analogy we'd ever heard. We're like, God, this is going to be the biggest waste of our two hours. You know, it's going to be a day I'm never going to get back. And then he talked about how athletes, how high performance athletes would visualize themselves performing the event and how they would literally picture themselves performing the event. And we've all seen the athletes. Like a high jumper is the one that I always remember in the Olympics. And you can see them out at the edge of the track on with their eyes closed and they're kind of like. You kind of see them going up over their mind. Like they're literally in their mind going up over the bar and they do it one or two times and then they kind of open their eyes, they go back on their heels and they run. And they're literally now recreating the vision that they've done thousands of times in their mind so that when they're performing, they perform completely on instinct. So he explained how athletes did it, then we talked about how contractors did it. And then we understood if we could take this idea and bring it into the business world, our employees could actually recreate our goals as well. Is that Michelle Partridge Lane on the call?

What?

Michelle is a former.

I don't know if you're a former.

Or still a franchisee with 1-800-God junk.

Well, imagine that. I didn't want to spoil the surprise, but we've got Brian here, Brian Scudamore with us. I was texting him this morning telling him we're doing the thing with you and he's got hard out at 3:00'.

Clock. So Brian and I were at that very same lunch together.

I wondered if that was exactly the thing. So let's.

Brian and I were at the same lunch with a third friend of ours and Brian is the one that really put it in place better than anybody calling it a painted picture. He actually. Brian, do you want to tell your story of how you took this idea and ran with it?

Sure. Hey, Cameron. Surprise. I know we were chatting the other day. Cameron and I are still best of buds and so it's nice to see you in your home and hey Dean, I see you got a horse for sale.

I got a horse for shell.

Awesome. Yeah, maybe the quick painted picture story for me. So I was in a doom loop as Jim Collins describes it. That meant some depression and just wondering what the heck was going on in my business and if I wanted to grow, grow my business or if I even could. So 1997, 98, I'm at my parents summer cottage. I was a part of eo. You had to have a million in revenue to get in. I got in even though I didn't finish high school, didn't finish college, this was going to be my education was EO and I was in a doom loop because I thought took me eight years to get to a million in revenue. I don't necessarily love the junk business, nothing sexy about it whatsoever. And I saw people in EO that had way bigger businesses. So I was comparing myself to others. I don't recommend you ever do that. It's not healthy. And so EO says, if you're trying to solve a creative problem, go somewhere that inspires you. I go to my parents summer cottage. I sit on the water, I pull out literally one sheet of paper, double sided. And I started talking to myself. I said, brian, no more doom loop. Think of pure possibility. You're an optimistic, happy person. What could the future look like if only you could imagine it. So very Jerry Maguire ish. But I started to feverishly write this one page and I never changed a word. And it started with, we will be in the top 30 metros in North America by the end of 2003. Five years out, we would be the FedEx of junk removal. Clean, shiny trucks, friendly uniform drivers. We would be on the Oprah Winfrey Show. I described in vivid color what the business would look like. And as I started to reread my painted picture, it was just a. What the. I looked at this and I'm like, I inspired myself. I could see pure possibility. I got jazzed and excited. I got goosebumps. And I said, okay, I can see this. No more doom loop. But I didn't know how to make it happen. So fast forward a little bit. I started sharing it with people around me, people like Cameron. We sat on the back deck of my, of my house at the time and had a couple of Boddingtons, some beer. And I remember, you know, Cameron and others said, you're on crack. You're smoking some Hope dope here. You're not going to get on Oprah and have top 30 metros. And a lot of advisors said it can't be done. But the magic was Cameron and I in, in 1998, 99, we start working together. I bring him in. He's, he's. We were in the same eel for him. And I said, I can see the vision. He read it and felt it. Others could read it and wanted to be a part of it. And Cameron's role became reverse engineering. He became the implementer. He became the guy who said, okay, let's make this happen. And Cameron took us from 2 million to 106 million. We hit the top 30 metros, we got on Oprah, we had shiny new trucks and became the FedEx of junk removal. And it all happened as if it was magic. I'm happy to put it Painted Picture and a link to it in the chat just before I run, but Cameron used to say to me, I can't see visions. And I remember Cameron, I don't know if you remember this, but I where I lost you here. But I'm like, that's bullshit. I go, if you could go on a vacation anywhere in the world tomorrow, where would you go? What are you drinking? Who are you with? What does it look like? What's the weather like? We can all imagine where we would go if we were actually allowed to travel today somewhere in the world. And it's imagining that possibility. Cameron calls it the Vivid Vision. Painted Picture. Vivid Vision. Whatever you see for your future, dream about it in full Technicolor and then take that sheet of writing and share it with everybody around you. Because I think I heard Cameron when I first came on. If people don't know what the entrepreneur is thinking, they're going to go in every direction trying to please you. But true leadership is having a vision, what it looks like, sharing it with the world. And those people are who are going to get you to greatness. So that's me, kind of in a nutshell. And thanks for having me, Dean.

That is so great.

Happy to.

Really glad that worked out. I love your hack.

It's great.

And it's funny, the only reason I.

Even changed the name from Painted Picture.

To Vivid Vision was I had a.

Number of coaching clients that thought the painted picture was a vision board with lots of pictures on it. So I tried to create something that took away from the idea of it needing to be pictures. Because it's okay to have a vision board for yourself, but a picture says a thousand words and different people can interpret pictures differently.

It's the same concept. But what Brian's Painted Picture did, or the Vivid Vision was we then shared.

That with potential employees like Michelle, who I got so excited about seeing the name. Michelle was one of our Early Stage franchise partners and joined partially because she read the vivid vision of the painted picture and Liked what it was coming.

Nobody in their right mind.

Brian and I were talking a couple days ago.

No one in the.

In the first 10 or 15 franchisees, they must have been smoking dope, because.

If they only saw what we had at that day, they never would have bought.

But they bought in because of the future vision. And it was so clear they saw how they could be a part of that.

It's interesting too, how a vision, you can take one little thing that you see and describe it in such detail to others that that's all it needs to get someone excited. So a second business we went into, which we franchised, called wow. One Day Painting. We have 1, 800, got junk. Wow. One Day Painting and Shack Shine, which is windows, gutters, and so on. Wow. One Day Painting. We go paint people's homes in a day. And I remember when I looked at acquiring the business after they painted my home in a day and I was so wowed, I started looking around and asking people, what do you think? And I went to people with painting experience. A guy, James Alish, who used to be a senior guy at college pro, like Cameron, was back in the the day. And I remember saying to him, what do you think? And he's like, you're freaking nuts. You're stupid. Don't do it. I listened to him, all the reasons why he said it wouldn't work. And I said, thanks, and I went and bought the business. Several years later, I shared a painted picture, I shared a vision with James. I shared our new branded logo. And James is like, oh, my gosh, I'm in. And I said, in for what? He goes, you need somebody to run the business. I'm going to be your manager, managing director.

And.

And I said, let's be clear. You thought I was freaking nuts. He goes, until I saw the vision and understood what it looked like that made the difference. And James is with us today and phenomenal, Phenomenal leader, even.

I sat with Brian on his back.

Deck before reading his first painted picture and said, you can't franchise junk removal.

When we were sharing those Boddingtons, I remember where I was sitting on the back deck right by that old screen door.

Amazing.

Oh, no, it's. So when you got to read the vision of what the future looked like, I'm like, no, now I can see it. I can help you make that come true. That can be done. I get that.

Totally. You know, it reminds me because it goes all the way back to think and grow rich, conceive and believe and achieve and conceiving is the, that's the thinking of it. If you can imagine it, you. You can't achieve something you can't imagine. That's where it's all got us.

I was speaking, I was speaking yesterday with a coach or a CEO that I coached. I coached him, his COO and his four directors for four years. His name is Ben Kirschner from Elite SEM. It's now called Tinuity. And they just sold the company for the second time. And 25 of their employees are now millionaires in cash. And one of his visions was to make his leadership team all millionaires. And I was crying talking to him over zoom yesterday because I was so excited for that part of this vision that we worked so hard for for four years came to fruition. But it's because everyone is all focused on that same goal.

Cameron and I had this can you imagine wall, this massive wall in the office that was blank that we needed to do something with. So we created. I put up at the top. We put up at the top. Can you imagine a big vinyl decal? And then we wanted people to put their name and a goal of something they were going to make happen for the business. So I started with, can you imagine us being featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show?

Oh, first, first you had 100 franchise partners and we only had 20. And I was like, 100 is a big fucking stretch. And then you asked me for something, I said, how about our logo on the space shuttle?

And you go, that's crazy.

I'm like, well, what do you got?

And then Brian goes, how about being featured on Oprah? I'm like, that's as crazy as our.

Logo on the space shuttle. He goes, no. And he explained the episode.

Yeah. I'm like, fuck yeah. And that's how it went on the wall was you.

You had such a solid vision for.

What it would look like that it.

Was easy to make that come true.

Yeah, totally.

And so we got one last comment real quick and then I'm sorry, I have to run for a company wide meeting.

So glad you could come.

Yeah, I know. Thank you. This is awesome. I wish I could hear from all of you. I feel strange just one way, but. So can you imagine, Walt? We had this concept, we started Shackshine and we decided years ago, let's put up a can you imagine wall for Shack Shine. We had our franchise partners put things up there. And one of the ones that I tried to lead with again, leading with the Oprah one for one, 800 got junk is I said, could you imagine if Shaq. Shaquille O' Neal shined? You know, we shined. Shaq's Shaq and we wrote it up. Yeah, I forgot about that. And next week I'm interviewing Shaquille o'.

Neal.

A fireside chat at our annual kickoff, which of course this year is virtual. And somebody sent me the picture of the can you imagine Wall, one of the franchise partners and said, you made that vision happen. And I said I forgot about it, but it was planted in my mind. So my one sort of takeaway or leave leave behind, write everything down because you never know when magic will conspire to happen. And off you go. So all the best of all of you, if I can help you in any way, stay in touch. Thank you, Dean.

Link too. We had. We had a great. I think we have an I love marketing episode with Brian that will put up too. So thank you.

Awesome. Thanks to all of you. Thanks, Cameron. We'll chat soon. Okay. See ya.

That's amazing. That's fun. That was good. I'm glad he was able to. To make that happen in perfect timing for what you were just talking about right there.

It was so building out the 2003 vivid vision was so easy because I'd done those before. I'd already built a few franchisors and we could reverse engineer it all right down to. We signed Minneapolis was our 30th metro. No, Milwaukee was our 30th metro. And we signed it December 16th of 2003. So 14 days before the end of the year, we signed our 30th metro. We chased down every sentence of that vivid Vision. Then Brian handed me the 2006 vivid vision. He dropped it on my desk and he ran away and laughed. And the reason he ran away and laughed was to go from 2003. We'd done 16 million in revenue. 2006 was 100 million in revenue. He was like, I don't know how you're going to pull this one off. And then he ran away laughing. So I was never a part of building the vision and Brian was really never a part of figuring out the how.

We.

We just really understood our lanes that way. And we actually came out at 2006 at 106 million in revenue. So we really were able to reverse engineer all aspects of things.

This is exactly what I'm talking about now with the who, not how that. The Even if you're not inherently a visionary, that being able to be able to go through this process, at least to create what it is that you really want without any limitations. And I should say, even if you do it and forget about it, in a lot of cases. Do you want to talk about Andre Agassi? Because this is a. That's a really good thing of subconsciously how things can work, even if it's not your vivid vision.

I'm going to tell you. Yes, I will tell you the Andre Agassi story. I want to tell you one of mine very briefly before I forget.

Okay.

My first vivid vision for my business.

Of my group of companies that I wrote right after leaving 1-800-got junk.

I wrote down that by December 31, 2010, I described my companies.

And one of the things I said.

Was that I own a home in Whistler. It's a family home where my kids hang out together. And on about December 5th of 2010, a friend of mine sent me a note. He said, congrats, you got the chalet. I said, how did you know about the chalet? He goes, dude, it's in your vivid vision. You've been sharing it with thousands of people.

He goes, we've all been wondering which.

Ones you're going to make happen. Amazing how you forget.

Not only did I forget that it was in there in a way, but I forgot how many thousands of people.

I shared it with, because I share my vivid vision with everyone constantly. Right.

So the Andre Agassi one. When Andre Agassi was married to Brooke Shields, Brooke didn't like her legs. And she had a picture of what she wanted her legs to look like up on the refrigerator. And the picture of the legs was actually a photo that she would look at every day, imagining what these perfect legs would look like. And Andre talks about this in his book because the picture on the refrigerator was a photo of Steffi Graf. And Andre Agassi got divorced from Brooke Shields, ended up marrying Steffi Graf. So the visualization worked. Unfortunately, it worked for Andre, not very well for Brooke.

Isn't that amazing? I mean, it's just so. Our minds are amazing that when you just plant that seed that often your mind's going to go to work. Your subconscious doesn't know that this isn't possible and it's going to get to work looking for. What do they say? Your eyes only see and your ears only hear what you're looking for.

Yeah. Well, you said earlier the conceive, believe and achieve. That was one of the phrases that we had in one of our meeting rooms over the whiteboard. We named each of our meeting rooms and the one that we called Vision control or our can you imagine room that was up above it was conceived. Believe and achieve.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

So I'm fortunate that I learned about visualization. You know, early on I used to be a elite tennis player and that was, you know, a big thing. And I learned from, from Rick Macy who I was training at the Rick Macy Academy. And he's the, you know, he's a. I don't know how many time USDA coach of the year coached Venus and Serena Williams and Andy Roddick and seven, five number one tennis players. So he taught us this whole thing of visualizing exactly. Like at night when you're, you know, you would always get us to before you're going to bed in that twilight thing or when you're there, just play perfect points in your, in your mind, play your sequences, play the first, you know, play. Imagine yourself hitting complete a perfect game where you're acing every serve and just imagine that.

I played competitive tennis as a teenager as well and was a part of a bit of a Russian military style program where they'd hand selected 25 of us and we had to play. And our tennis coach one time took us into the tennis center and turned the lights off, but we in the service court, we put six tennis ball tins almost like bowling pins.

Yeah, yeah.

But then he turned the lights off and we had to serve until we knocked over a tin in the fucking dark, man. Like, that's like I'm trying to visualize where everything is.

And yeah, like.

And as soon as you knocked over the tins, which was probably half luck at 16 and half a little bit of visualization.

Right, right.

But he was trying to teach us that you can place things where you focus on.

Yeah, yeah. That's amazing. I love to hear. So that's, you know, I think that going into this who not how era you guys are, are a perfect example of that, that this really fits into what you are, what you're talking about. I don't know Brian that well. I know him and no, he's an amazing visionary. But you would know whether he's a operator, you know, or whether that. So you look at it that you Even though you admit right in the beginning you didn't have the vision for, you didn't see what was there, but you were able to take that vision and make that happen.

As an executor, Brian is admittedly admitted, like self admittedly, and has written this in his books and on stages. Is a horrible operator. I am a horrible visionary. I am much better at reversing. So my core purpose is helping entrepreneurs make their dreams. Dreams happen.

Yeah.

When I know what an entrepreneur's goals are, I can make those happen. Brian's amazing at being the cult leader, at stirring a Kool Aid. He's amazing at being the chief energizing officer. Amazing at pointing people in direction of vision. And he's really, really good at finding out where people may need mentoring or support. And then he's really good at like driving urgency. You know, it's always. It's a lot of like. And very good at like 80%, you know, minimum viable everything. Forget about minimum viable product, like minimum viable everything. It's just momentum creates momentum and the flywheel. Obsessing about the flywheel. So he's all good at that stuff and he knows when to stay out of his lane. Right. Whereas I was horrible at it and finance, Brian had a better mind for details. In fact, the new COO at 1,800, got junk. I've been friends with Eric Church for 34 years. We started a fraternity together in Ottawa in 1989. Wow. Eric would have been horrible as a COO. From a million to 100 million. Brian fired me at 107 million in the middle of 2007 because I was the wrong guy to go from 100 million to a billion. Even the who, not how guy there. Pretty amazing that you can see our energy together as friends today. Took a while to rebuild some of that. But I was the wrong guy to go from 100 million to the billionaire.

I think so much of this is self awareness too, isn't it? I mean, having your vision for what you're in, every category you think about, what do you really want your life to look like? I look at the, you know, I talk about, I know I'm being successful when as a kind of. I use that as a shortcut for the vision for what I want kind of thing for myself. Even though I'm clear on the bigger picture of what they all mean. Having that self awareness, I think for what your perfect vision looks like, regardless of where the business is going, I.

Think yeah, for your perfect vision and also for what you're really good at. Even if you get into the who, not how, it's really understanding your own strengths and weaknesses. And the school system, frankly, messed up 95% of us in a serious way, right? If you're in the top 5% of students who did well in all of your classes, the school system was fine. But for the other 95%, for 27 out of every 30 kids in class, for 27 of those kids, school fucked us up forever. I went to school from kindergarten until fourth year university and basically had 16, 17 years of being told that I was a C student, that I would work hard, but I'd never do well at grades, that there were other people smarter than me. So I was emotionally getting destroyed in school. What the school system should have said to me was, wow, you're really good at these three areas. You suck at these seven. Don't worry about those seven. Let's get other people to do that stuff. Why don't you do this stuff? Right? And nowadays, I think in business, luckily as CEOs, we can delegate everything except genius. I think what hurts a lot of us is we're trying to get better at stuff. Like, even Joe Polish told me that I had to be good at marketing. I said, no, I don't. Joe, I've had a number of debates with him on this, right? Know that I need to know the people that are good at marketing, and I need to share with them what my goals and my vision are. And they need to get me there. But I need to know the tactics exist. I need to know that. I need to know that landing page optimization exists, but not how to do it. I need to know that split testing exists, but not how to do it. I need to know that copyright exists, but not how to do it. That's what I want it, right? So then I know that all these things exist. Then I can find the who's.

That's it.

That's.

That's who it is. That's what I was kind of trying to encourage people to stay in that. What you need to know what those things are, what's possible.

But 30 years ago, that was different, right?

Oh, absolutely.

Because we didn't. We didn't have the Internet and we didn't have the ability to network. So we had to be the smartest people in the room. We had to be the best at all these things, otherwise we couldn't scale. But now we just have to know them.

This is what I say. There's never been a better time than right now that virtually every capability that you could imagine is commoditized. And I mean commoditized in the good sense of the word in that it's available for sale, that you can buy and tap into as much or as little whenever you need it, any capability that you can imagine. And that's what's really, I think as we're going into this migration we've been calling the migration into Cloudlandia, this whole new digital world that we're living in, that the opportunities to collaborate even from a distance in groups is like never before. So there's no need to have everybody in the same building or everybody from your town. You can have a global, you know, network of people all working independently and collectively towards your vision. As long as everybody's clear on what the, on what the vision is. That's a.

And unfortunately that's, that's what happens more often than not is people aren't clear on the vision so they don't really.

Know how they fit with everything.

Right.

And it's funny you mentioned about our school kind of screwing us up that I remember talked about my report card, my amalgam kind of comment of everything. My mom passed away about five or six years ago now and I found all my old report cards. I was looking back at them and I found one from third grade and the handwritten comment in the things was Dean is able to achieve excellent results with what seems like little effort. Imagine if he applied himself all the time. Imagine if he applied himself right. Do you think like that's screwing you up that somehow it's like you know, able to. That's been my winning formula for all through life is achieving excellent results with what seems like little effort.

Nine word emails.

Exactly.

I just sent one, I just sent one out today to my entire list. Another nine word email about our we're running an in person COO alliance event which no entrepreneurs are allowed to come. It's only second commands and it's all about building a world class culture which I'm like known for globally. I'm like I'm not going to write a long form email. It's just like I sent a very brief email if you're interested. Let's get on a call and talk about it. We're getting hit with all these responses.

Of course, so great. Yeah, I love that. But that's, you know, it's kind of like it shames you into like I realize now looking back that a lot of those things that's kind of a workaround I've been add from the Beginning and have always found shortcuts because of my inability to get myself to focus for a long period of time or to put in that kind of.

Let me explain how I visualize a company.

First off is I visualize every company.

I'll show you this. I visualize every company like a jigsaw puzzle. So I see every company like a jigsaw puzzle.

And the four corners of the jigsaw.

Puzzle are your vivid vision, your core purpose, your core values and your bhag.

And then I see the four sides.

Of the jigsaw puzzle as being all the people systems. So the recruiting, interviewing, selection, training, onboarding, leadership development of people, which ties into a course that I'm launching next month around growing your leadership. And then the strategic thinking system around strategy and goal setting and planning.

And then all of your meeting rhythms.

Which tie into your annual meetings, quarterly meetings, financial review meetings, one on one coaching meetings, daily huddles, etc.

And then your financial systems, your culture.

Emerges from the alignment of all of that with your people.

So for me, I flip the org chart upside down where I have the CEO at the bottom supporting the leaders who are supporting the frontline staff who are supporting the customers. Everyone can see the vivid vision and you build your business inside your core purpose and your core values. If I think about 1-800-got-JUNK, we have the C level team supporting the managers who are supporting the employees, who are supporting the franchise partners who are supporting the customers. We all saw the vivid vision, we lived our core values and we understood our core purpose.

That's so great.

And then you break down that vivid vision into your annual goals, your quarterly goals. For me, my goals are employee net promoter score first, customer net promoter score second, profit goal third, and revenue goal fourth. If my employees are super engaged and happy, they're going to take care of my customers. If my customers are super engaged and happy, then the profit comes and the revenue comes. But if we're always talking about the customer, then the employees feel second rate. If we're always talking about revenue, the employees feel second rate. But if we obsess over our employees, everything is easy.

Yeah. This is amazing. So like that whole. You could see. Anybody can imagine the immense value in going away to creative place, spending some time thinking about that. How long do you encourage people to dedicate for this? Like to give themselves that process, the vivid vision process.

Yeah, so. So let's say that you're writing a vivid vision for your business. The first step is you've got to get out of your box you can't sit in your office and write this thing because you get distracted by how and you get distracted by who as well. You need to get away from your laptop. No technology, no iPhone, no iPad, no nothing. You take a good old fashioned notepad and a couple of pens in case one runs out. You put your earbuds in. You go somewhere where you're inspired, somewhere around nature. You go near the ocean. You hang out in the mountains. If it's wintertime, I'll go to a big chalet and I'll hang out somewhere with a beautiful view of the mountains. And I start doing a mind map. And I mind map my company. Almost as if I hopped into a time machine. Let's say that like you know the Doc and Michael J. Fox and we, and we hop into the DeLorean and we travel out to December 31, 2023, and we get out of the time machine and we look around and we're like, shit, I'm in my company. 3. And then you describe what you see. You don't know how it happened in three years. You just describe it in its finished state. So I want you to describe every area of your org chart. Describe operations, describe it, describe finance, describe marketing, describe customer service. You talk about what your customers are saying about you. You talk about what your employees are saying about you. You describe what your employees are writing on. Indeed. And Glassdoor. You talk about your culture and the buzz and the fun activities and your reward systems and your leadership team meetings. And you put three or four bullet points around every single aspect of your business that you can think about. You describe what the media is writing about you and you end up with a whole bunch of points on these mind maps that might take two, three to four hour sessions. That's it. Just enough to get out. And again, you're not worrying about how and you're not worrying about who.

Yeah.

And then you organize all your rough points into a rough draft, like a three page word document where they're all organized into rough points. And then what I would suggest you do. I don't know if Jennifer's on our call today, but Jennifer Houde, who's been a genius network member for five years. Jennifer and her team have written 250 vivid visions for clients of mine of theirs from all over the world. They'll take the rough draft and they'll ask you more questions and pull ideas out of your mind and they'll literally make their vivid vision come to reality. I'll put some examples in the chat for you right now so you can see them. But Jennifer and her team have done a spectacular job at polishing it. And then you add design elements to it to really make it pop off the page. Yeah, so, so that's the starting point is get away from the office, do your mind mapping, do your rough draft and then get it to a copywriter.

That's amazing. And then the next, I think this is where a nice transition then is. Let's say that this is your solo operator right now that you're just starting out or you're, you know, running a business, that you've got a vision like this, but it's going to require whose. And so I sense right now what's happening is that people are very excited about this idea of who, not how. They're like, wow, that sounds amazing that I can focus on what I want to do, but I'm going to need who's. And then the immediate next question that comes up as well. How do I find a who? How do I who? So I think that's an interesting. I joked with Dan the other day, we need to write a, a manual called how to who. That's how to who. The last how you'll ever need to master what it is. There's one, the only one how you need to know is how to who.

Well, the first part of that is.

To remember that it needs to get.

Done, but not by you. Yes, right.

So when you realize it needs to.

Get done, but not by me.

I used to coach a woman, Suzanne Evans, that had a huge coaching program. So she had, she coached about 600 women entrepreneurs. And I was coaching her on building her business. And Suzanne said that every Sunday she would sit down and set her goals.

For the week and make a list.

Of all the core projects that she needed to do for the week.

Then she would think about how many.

Hours every project would take and then she would delegate 80% of the hours before she allowed herself to check an email or start on a project. Wow, that was fucking brilliant. Like she delegated 80% of her work every week.

So the way I would start with the how is again, very clear objective on what the finished product looks and feels like. What does the project look like when it's completed? How much time and money do I want to spend on. Almost like you're doing a creative brief for an ad.

Right.

If you can describe the project on a post it note in enough clarity, then you can turn, then you can turn to your network and figure out who's done this, where I Think most entrepreneurs get sloppy is they take the very first referral that comes along. And it's not that referrals are bad, but it's sometime that we're all so hardwired as humans wanting to help everybody that we refer the first person that comes to us, even though we've never used them or we're not quite sure, but we're so what we want to help, so we want to give a referral. If you're hiring a human, you do a lot of interviews to hire the person. If you're going to spend $100,000 on an ad campaign, you do a lot of thoughts about what the budget's going to be and what the results are going to be. If you're going to hire a who to do a project, please talk to two or three of their former customers and ask the tough questions. Please make sure they're clear on what you're doing. Please interview them for core values and how they respond to you as an art. Like, treat it like you're. Like you're spending 100 grand on a marketing campaign or hiring somebody. Don't get sloppy at hiring your who's.

That's abdication, Right? Like jumping in, just thinking, oh, finally. Yeah, you'll do. Yeah, you'll be my who. That's really something.

Well, it's interesting. I turned to Joe about a year ago and I said, do you know anybody who's doing. And I won't say that. The area who's doing xyz? And he goes, yeah, we've got this person who's doing stuff. I'm like, how long have you been working with them? And he goes, actually, yeah, just about six weeks. He goes, give me six months and I'll let you know how they're doing. I'm like, perfect. Because Joe really wanted to help him make the intro, but he didn't have enough data to know whether the guy was really good or not. Right, right. For Jennifer, like, as an example for me with Jennifer, I was hopeful five years ago that she could write vivid visions because I was trying to find a writer who could help me get some of these done. And then she did a couple and she was good. And then she did a few more and she was great. Then she did a few more and she was world class. And now she and her team. No kidding. Have done more than 250 finished vivid visions for companies.

Well, they may have done more vivid visions than anybody in the world, for sure.

By a landslide.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's great. And that's the kind of thing. That's what I mean about commoditized now is that the ability for you to get all of that experience at the opportunity. It's so amazing. You look at these putting it out in your network, and that's part of the real value of being a part of something like Genus network, where you've got this. We've got so many different people in so many different areas that always were one degree of separation from usually the best people in the world at anything.

Exactly. But again, I think my call and Dean, the who not how like your concept that then Dan and Ben Hardy wrote the book about. You're brilliant for coming up with the idea. I haven't read the book yet, but I hope the book talks about making sure that you are hiring the right who. You know, don't get lazy with that stuff, man. I had a CEO that I was coaching years ago. He's gone from 40 people up to 700 in the years I was coaching him. And at one point he said, you know, it takes about 90 days after I hire someone to know if they're the right fit. That's because your company sucks at interviewing. If you're really good at interviewing, you know everything about the person before they join you.

Yeah.

Like, even Michelle, who, you know, bought a franchise for 1-800-got junk. She had to go through two very tough interviews to be awarded a franchise. And I'm sure she was showing up feeling like she was gonna get sold all day. And those were probably two of the hardest interviews she's been through.

Yeah.

Because we wanted to know everything about the person because we built the business and we didn't want to hurt the brand by hiring somebody that would hurt us. But when you hire the right people, then it just. It explodes, Right?

Yeah. That whole thing. And I think that the. You're not thinking about your vivid vision as, like, this one thing that you only do. This you only. You only need this skill set once every three years to do it. Because I think that the principles of what you're talking about work for any directive that you're giving to anybody. Having a vivid vision for the directive that you give to a who to describe the what that you're hoping they're going to bring the how to complete.

And it's a lot easier to get your who's. Yeah.

When you share your vivid vision, they.

Want to help you make that come true.

Your company is more exciting.

Yes.

Right. When I share the vivid vision for what the COO alliance looks like acts like and feels like in three years it's a lot more exciting and inspiring for people to be a one of.

Part of either joining or building that.

Because they're excited about the future much more so than they're excited. Like, even though the current state is really good, the future is so exciting that everyone wants to be a part.

Of making that happen.

Mm.

Right.

I love it, I love it, I love it. You know, this whole, I think that, you know, the idea of creating different vivid visions for all the different areas for yourself. Like, I think people starting with yourself, even if it's not organizationally starting with your vivid vision for what you want for your life so that you know that you're organization that you're going to build is going to be complementary to the life that you want. So many times I see people go down the wrong road and they end up with a business that they got the vision that they wanted for the business, but it sucks for the life that they wanted.

Well, they didn't think about the life they wanted. So I'll give you a few examples of personal vivid visions and how they lock and load. First is I'll actually share with you my personal vision for what I look like, feel like and act like in three years. Patty Ann, you'll enjoy reading this because you and I have done. Patty Ann did 52 calls with me as a therapist helping me get through my divorce and was extraordinarily powerful. She's also done work for about six of my clients as the CEO and COO and helping them strengthen relationships. She's literally world class in that space. So Patty and I'd love to you to read this now and see how I'm doing towards what you saw me at, you know, three years ago when I was falling apart.

But Dean.

So I'll walk you through this. The best example or one of the best examples I've seen of a personal.

Vivid vision was Brian in 2004. And remember, I've known Brian by that point for 10 years. He was my best man at my first wedding. Probably three months before I joined him. He was my best man at my wedding. By the way, there's somebody else on this call where Sayda said, who's on this call right now. There she is. Saeeda and I met the same year that Brian and I learned the vivid vision process back in 1998.

Wow.

Pretty crazy that she's seen me 22 years later. See me grow companies, seen Brian. So that's how long we've known each other for 22 years. So Brian in 2004 was getting a divorce and I had known Brian for years and he won't have a problem with me telling the story, but his ex had a miscarriage and then he stayed and then she had another miscarriage and he stayed and she had seven miscarriages over a period of a few years. And I went, Brian, like stop having sex. Like if you're trying to leave, stop having sex. Anyway, he finally gets up the courage to leave the marriage and he finds out his wife is pregnant again, but she's now at term. And he writes a letter to his wife like he's going to be getting divorced. She hates him at the time. They're very, very, very good friends today. But she hated him at the time. And he wrote a two page personal vivid vision of what their relationship would be like post divorce. Going on vacations together, being friends together, having dinners with each other, celebrating events like stuff that she is like, you are a fucking madman for even writing this down. Like you are a lunatic for thinking this. Lisa and Brian are such close personal friends. Lisa's new husband Dan built Brian's house. They go on vacations together. They've like co raised kids together. They have an incredible extraordinary relationship together. Because he was so strong on what the vision for this would look like and he shared it with her, he shared it with his friends, he reread.

It, he focused on it.

When you conceive, believe and achieve and it's really powerful on that. On the marriage side of things, or let's say you're a family, whether you're a traditional relationship or a new relationship, two people raising kids together. Why don't you get both of you to go off site for a half a day and describe what your family unit looks like. What are your friends like? What are your, what's your faith like? What's your sexual preference like? What are you doing for activities? What are you doing for finance? How do you co raise the family? How do you have pink jobs and blue jobs? Both of you describe what it looks like and then come back and merge that together and have a joint family. Vivid vision that finally gets both partners on the same page so that you're both building towards the same goal. Really, really powerful stuff.

That sounds exciting. A lot of people would be scared that they would have completely different visions.

Well, and if you do have vivid visions that are different, wouldn't you rather know that now versus three years later? It's very similar to having co owners of a business. So I used to coach a group called Nurse Next Door in Vancouver. And I got Ken and John both to describe the vivid visions for their companies and before they started franchising, before they were doing anything. Then they merged their vivid visions together and there were parts they disagreed on, so they just kept them out. But all the stuff they agreed on became the real locked and loaded vivid vision for the company, which then they shared with the board. And then we started franchising and then they shared with the employees. And sure enough, you know this massive home healthcare company now.

Okay, I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here.

Go ahead. They're over here. Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you.

Watch them.