Dan Barcheski | Right is Right - Even if No One is Doing It

Hello everybody and welcome to Fearless. This is now our 20th episode launching in January of this year, and, uh, I am so excited about our guest today, Dan Barczewski. Dan and I go back to high school, actually. So, you know, 60, almost 60 years, if you will, 50-plus years. And it's kind of like a, almost like a brother growing up. And we played football together. Then we went off to our various colleges. Dan is a graduate of Harvard Business School and the CEO and founder, actually, of a company called Axios. Which means wisdom, I believe, in Greek or something like that. Is that right, Dan?

Worthy.

Worthy. That's what it was. I knew it began with a W. Worthy. Yeah, worthy. So we're going to talk about worthiness today a little bit and integrity and the courage, the guts it takes to do the right thing when you're being pressured or distracted by so many things to pull you off track, so to speak. Dan said something to me, uh, well, 38 years ago when he started his company in May of 1988. I started a month later in June of 1988. And he said, Murph, um, I'm going all in. I'm going all in. And those words really struck me because that's basically what I had to do to, to make it, you know, go all in. And we were laughing at that before the show a little bit, you know. I took a home equity loan out at the time to start my business. I really didn't have much to start with and bought a duplex with it. Why did I buy a duplex? Because I figured if I lose my house, I got to have a place to live. My wife was pregnant with our second child, and you know, it was a gamble, let's just say. But going all in, and then you know, just finding the way, you know, not knowing the way when you get on the road, but finding the way. And here we are 38 years later. Dan, welcome to Fearless.

Thank you.

I'm so excited to see you again and have you join us on this show. So tell us a little bit about your story, the courage it took. You set core values for the company. You grew it into an employee stock ownership plan, an employee-owned company. Just tell us a little bit about how you came along the way.

Sure. Thank you, John. Congratulations on your 20th episode. I'm glad I'm part of that. Thank you for asking my attendance. I'm excited about this. John and I were talking before the show that when I was a young man, I— it's a long story— I found a boat on a lake by where John and I lived. And I turned it into the police department. A year later, they called and said, do you want the boat? No one claimed it. I said, sure. My dad knew some guys at the police station. I put it behind the police station, which was on the lake, some oars under it. And I used to go around every day rowing my boat and fishing, and I'd see these huge, beautiful homes and say, how do I— I got home and I was having dinner with our family, and I asked my dad, Dad, how do you How do you get one of those homes? He said, well, you have to be a lawyer, a doctor, or a businessman. And I knew that I didn't have the great grades at the time or interest possibly to become a lawyer or doctor, so I had to become a businessman. So I said, I think I'm going to be a businessman. So that was kind of how I started out my journey as a young man. Uh, as I I found out it was kind of a shallow goal, but it was what originally drove me to consider starting something.

Yeah, and what a ride it's been. I know Axios was among the Inc. 500 fastest-growing companies at least 3, 4, or 5 years in a row, a long time. Just a phenomenal company. And then I had the opportunity to actually come in and help Dan and help the company with some operational excellence and Lean Six Sigma training. And so we're not just old friends and actually old football players, we played football together, but, you know, business colleagues in a way. And just, gosh, I remember, Dan, one time we were— you had an advisory board that I was part of and we were meeting out in Concord, Massachusetts, near Harvard, you know.

Yes.

With a couple of your advisors. And one of them said, you know, have you ever been through the cemetery here? And I'm like, well, no. He said, well, you might want to take a look. There's some pretty famous people buried in this cemetery going back to, I mean, Paul Revere days and such. And anyway, I remember walking through there with you. And what do you know, there's Ralph Waldo Emerson's gravesite and then Henry David Thoreau's Which just had a little thing that said Henry, just a little, you know, tablet that said Henry among the Thoreau family. And 2 authors, 2 philosophers, 2 people I just, I quote all the time, and I just love their insights. But you also mentioned to me a book by Charles Handy that really got your attention and gave you some inspiration. Tell me a little bit about that.

What's the second curve? The reason it was important to me is because he was pointing out that each person or corporation goes through product life cycles. And during the first product life cycle, you show growth if you're, if you're feeling successful. And somewhere prior to reaching the peak or the plateau of that growth, that first growth curve, They called it point A. At point A, somewhere just prior to that, all indications are you should continue to do things the way you're doing them. But they— and so there's nothing telling the senior executive team or the individual in his career or her career that they ought to make a change of some sort because it's going so well. He suggests that because you have momentum, that you should, And if you're a business, the cash flow and momentum within the organization, you begin to consider change because what happens is at point A, you dip back down just as you would at the beginning of a company, and you then accelerate back out of that first curve into the second curve. And that's how successful people make decisions in their careers and in their lives is through taking the chance when it seems sort of silly to break out of that. If you wait till you get on the back side of your first curve, calls it point B. At point B, you've lost momentum internally. You may have lost some credibility, and your cash flow is now declining, and you now are in trouble. That's when most people make the decision to change. And because of Charles, I have followed his wisdom for my entire career. And of course, our business has gone through multiple cycles and had to make that decision many times. And so it's been a defining moment for me. He's a great author. I'd highly recommend his books to anyone.

Yeah, I— but yeah, it's, it's so important to think about that. So before, when everything's going great, you know, we don't really need to change. We, you know, we just keep riding the wave, and then wham, you're on the other side of that curve on your way down. I mean, to the point where some businesses completely evaporated. I mean, major businesses. You look at Kodak and Sears and Circuit City and some of these Blockbuster Video. Wow. And then all of a sudden it's too late. So to get in front of that, it reminds me a little bit of one of the blue zones in the world where people live to be well over 100 years old. They've been studied for a long time about how do they do that. And one of them's in Japan. And one of their secrets is when you're 80% full, when you're eating, when you're 80% full, you stop. You don't go to 100%. And I'd never heard that before, but it's kind of like before you hit that top of the curve, you know, make a change, you know, make decisions. I should do that and stop.

I'd be better off. Yeah.

Oh yeah. Anyway, so yeah, it's something I do. I study these Blue Zones just 'cause I think it's fascinating. You know, just how they live so well and so long. But now talk to me about, you know, you set values for your corporation and—

Yes.

I help companies set values and really clarify their mission and their guiding principles and to use to cultivate a very trusting, high-performance culture. You've done that very well at Axios. We've probably both seen, and I'm looking at it right now with a board of directors that's so misaligned and dysfunctional There's no core values written. And it's reflected back by the employees and by the shareholders. And it's, you know, there's just no executive, so to speak, alignment. But now you've done an exceptional job pulling people together. Tell me a little bit about your, I believe it's 4 core values that you speak to, starting with integrity.

Well, Early in my career, I was very unsophisticated, but I knew one thing, that I wasn't going to make a dollar off of figuring out how to take advantage of someone or some business. I was going to do it through actually adding value for them. That was my first step. The other was my upbringing. I went to a parochial school when I was a young man. It highly influenced me in terms of doing the right thing. And so even if I knew There's a couple times in our company's early history where I fired 50% of our company's business. It was— that's how small we were. You know, it was half our company's business with one client. But in both cases, they were doing things that we found to be unethical. And each time I came back to our team to tell them, I just terminated X, and they would say, you've got to be kidding me. One of the women ran up the hallway. to go to the bathroom because she couldn't believe I fired half of our revenue. But in each case, what happened, I, you know, someone's watching out for me or not, I, we replaced that business and then some a few days later. And it was just the momentum we had already created, of course. But then, you know, again, I don't know if someone's watching out for us, but John, the work you did with our business was very critical because I was an informal company and you helped us formalize a lot of our systems and processes. And I— one of my goals was to become more professional as a human, as an executive, as a leader, and then also the systems and processes in our business. We had to outperform the nationals and we had to be more local. than the nationals and outperform the smaller companies. We were a very dispersed industry we compete in. So we wanted to outperform, outlocal the nationals and outnational the locals. You came in, helped us with that entire process, and we still use a lot of your tools today. And so it's been a long time and it was a high value for us.

Yeah, well, you know, one of your core values I know is excellence. A commitment to excellence and ongoing improvement. And, you know, that's essentially the field that I'm in. You bring integrity to that. I mean, saying no is not always easy, especially when it's a revenue-paying client or group of clients. You know, I've walked away from deals where it just wasn't gonna work. There was one time when I was being asked to come in to do team-building training for a meat company, hot dog, sausage meat company. And they had been to— some of them had been to a Pulling Together workshop I was giving back then and said, we need you to come in and help us with training. And so I went in and I met with the CEO and the COO and the head of HR. And I said, have you done any team-building training before? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we did it last year. I said, and what happened? Well, it didn't work. Well, so you're going to try again? I mean, what difference is this going to make? Long story short, I said, that's team building training. It's like taking a shower and thinking you never have to shower again. That's not going to work. What you really need is to look at the systems, to use your words, the systems that that people are operating under. They had 400% turnover at the time, employee turnover. I mean, people would leave on their first break. It wasn't an easy condition to work in. It was wet and cold in a meat plant. Anyway, I walked away and I said, that's not what you need. And I left the CEO with a Harvard Business Review article by a competitor company, Ralph Steyer at Johnsonville Foods, about how he— changed culture. It's called Flight of the Buffalo. Talk about inspirational books. And the buffalo metaphor was they have one alpha buffalo and everybody else just does what the alpha buffalo essentially tells them to do. And so if the alpha buffalo keels over or gets hunted down or whatever, the buffalo don't know what to do. And Ralph Steyer said, I was the buffalo, the alpha buffalo. And in my culture, it was— I call it the dependency syndrome. where problems are delegated up to the boss and they're overwhelmed with problem solving because it's just nonsense. The metaphor was I need to get Buffalo to fly like geese, Flight of the Buffalo, because geese take turns leading, they're very adaptive, and you've probably seen that. Anyway, I left this article and I said, team building and training isn't going to work. You've got to redesign your systems. And 2 days later, he called me back and he said, would you come back in here and talk to me? But I mean, talk about like integrity. I had to have the courage to say no, 'cause a lot of consultants would just say, oh yeah, I'll take the money and I'll train your people and then go on to the next gig. That wasn't for me. So anyway, he did ask me to come back and we redesigned the systems, put in a pay-for-skill system. That turnover went from 400% to 40% in less than a year. And it actually led to one of my books called Get a Real Life. So it was an interesting experience. So, you know, you also talk about relationships as a core value and growth. You want to comment on that just a little bit, Nan?

Sure. All of the executives that come into our company today go through a training We kind of indoctrinate them. I tell them, before we poison you with all of our brilliance, you've gotta come in here and help us first. Explain to me what you see and don't like. And a lot of that's the fresh eyes we're looking for. But part of the thing I say is it's also a personal branding issue, is we don't want you to sacrifice your own integrity for this business. And so if we're doing anything that you feel is wrong, Or that would violate your personal values, don't do it. Quit. Or come to me, come to your superior people, the people that might be overseeing this area, and ask them and talk to them about your problem. I said, but in the end, if you don't get anywhere, please come to me and I'll make certain that it's taken care of because No one's life, no one's personal brand is worth sacrificing for dollars. It's just not. In the long run, those types of things wear out and people become really unhappy with themselves and their lives. And so don't sacrifice. So I openly encourage people to talk about it first. And if they don't see a resolve that they feel, and we haven't had people, I believe, leave I'm sure we have, but not, not many over the 38 years due to what they considered a value or issue for themselves. So that's kind of our approach. I tell everyone that comes in the company the same thing. Please don't sacrifice your own values and the things you hold dear because for a dollar, and we won't ask you to, I don't think, but And if we do, they should quit. I don't know. Yeah, but that's what we do.

Yeah, well, you know, I use the word alignment all the time because it's like aligning the tires on your car, right? If they're not aligned, you're going to burn them out faster. It's not as safe. It's not certainly not as economical. And so starting right at the very top, let's make sure we're aligned. Well, how are you going to be aligned if you don't have focus if you aren't clear on the mission. You've got to start with a clarity at the very top on just why we exist, what's our reason for being here, and then what's going to not change in a world of continuous change. That's those core values. We're not going to negotiate honesty and integrity. We're not going to undermine one another. It starts at the top because again, culture— reflects those values at the very top. You've set that right from the start. You use a term, it's irrational persistence, I think is what you called it. Talk about irrational persistence a little bit.

Boy, Murph, you've done your homework here. I just believed that almost any problem can be overcome Through persistence and, and desire, if grounded in the right things. So if we are doing the things that we believe are the right things, and we're working hard at that and smart at that, then we should in the end come out on the backside in a positive way. And a lot of people quit partway through because they don't see the result right away and they don't believe in the result will come if there's no positive feedback, at least in their minds for that. And, but I've told our people, in the end it will come around. We have a perfect, great example of that at our company now. We've had a software system we've been building for 2+ years. It's been nothing but frustration, but we were doing it for the right reasons, literally the right reasons. It was for the health of the people that work with us and our client companies that work with us. And it's allowing the two of them to coexist much better together and provide them today's type of workforce. And so that, that people wanted to abandon it. And just in the last couple weeks, we landed a very large client company with that new software system. And we're thrilled. We're nervous because you know how that goes. You land that large client, you better produce. But I have every bit of faith in our team. We've got the best team we've had. I might say that every year, but it really is a wonderful team. So that type of irrational persistence is what I'm talking about, is we wouldn't survive without that. We're still a lot— we're considered a large regional, but that doesn't— You know, in the scheme of things, we're nothing. We're probably a couple days revenue of the large players in the world or in the nation. So that's okay. We have our little niche.

Yeah. So yeah, well, that, yeah, that makes a lot of sense, especially when you start running into the unexpected. Now we both have run our businesses through the 2009 recession, you know, the greatest recession, as I understand it, since the Great Depression.

Yeah.

You know, my business was shut down for a couple of years and then the whole COVID thing. And, you know, as a consultant who travels and gives keynotes and does, you know, live events and workshops and things like that, to suddenly be just stopped, it's kind of like being, you know, I don't know where that fits on Charles Handy's curve, I think the, the curve just broke in half temporarily or something like that.

It did.

But, uh, you know, yeah, but it's pivot moment.

I call—

I think of it as a pivot moment, you know, where you've got to just— what are you gonna do? And so I wrote some of my best books during those down periods because I, I had nothing else to do. And, uh, and then in with COVID you know, that led to all kinds of online lessons. So when you talk about ongoing improvement and a commitment to excellence and that kind of a thing, I see these as opportunities. When we get setbacks, when we get hit with adversity of some sort, the loss of an employee who's moved on to take on another role or the loss of a client, you know, the end of a contract, things like that, what are you going to do? You got to persist, right? You got to get through it.

Yeah.

So how did you handle things like that, like the recession and COVID, where things really came, came to a halt?

The recession was devastating because I had to remortgage my home, my cottage that I thought I was brilliant because I paid both off, and now they were now back in hock. Whatever cash we had that we could afford to give back to the bank, and we just got upside down real quick because over a matter of months Things shut off. And that was a really tough period. I'm not a good one for laying off executives. And yet we, we had to do some of that work. Our team was prepared. In 2000, we also had a kind of a tough go. I tried to keep everyone through that period and it almost cost us the company then. So I came home and I told my family. that we were putting everything back on the block and because it was necessary to stay in business. And if we had not done that, of course, we would have probably not been around. So yeah, that type of commitment is necessary at any level, whether it's individual or company level, to survive these things. COVID was a different beast for us. You know, you talk about a month, this is weeks. Maybe a week, and I lost 50% of the revenue of the business. And that— we were told it was only going to be a matter of weeks. So at that point, I didn't panic. And we had fortunately been conservative and had cash, and we were able to survive even that time period. But boy, those were some tough gut-check moments. And John, you and I played football together. I refer back to those guys a lot in my head, especially during those rough moments of the lessons they taught us about having courage and overcoming fear and doing the right thing. In my case, I was playing against a guy that got a full ride to Michigan State at middle linebacker, and he was destroying me. And I Came over to the sidelines and said, uh, what's wrong with you? And I said, he's big, he's fast, and he's really strong. And they said, I don't care if you can't get the job done, you're out. So I thought, well, that's okay, I'll go back out there and figure something out. At the end of the game, I think I had cleat marks all over me, but, uh, we, we survived it. It was a lesson I learned. It doesn't matter how good or fast or strong those people are, you can still compete with them. That's led a lot of my life decisions throughout.

We talk about the football days. So many lessons I learned playing football and other sports. particularly football, are things like irrational persistence, if you will. Somebody's bigger, faster, stronger, whatever. What are you going to do, give up?

Nope.

Sorry. You got to figure out a way. I think that's a great metaphor for business because you don't have everything figured out. I laugh about this now, Dan, is that when I started and I wrote my original business plan in 1988, I didn't write it on a typewriter, but it was close. I mean, the thing I had, a desktop computer, I had a ready-to-assemble desk that I went out and bought at Builder Square, which no longer exists, but like a Home Depot, built this desk, had a phone with a cord and a built-in answering machine and no internet, no Google, no YouTube. I actually read books like Charles Handy's book and such. And but there was an irrational persistence and commitment there. It didn't make sense to do what I was attempting to do, but it was a heartfelt calling. It was just like, John, this is what you're meant to do. And you referenced, you know, I don't know if somebody's looking out for me or not. I truly believe that someone is.

Totally.

I've been at wit's end a few times, and what am I going to do? And then an answer shows up. And you're like, well, all right, we're going to give this a try. And now to fast forward 38 years. So this Fearless is a production of Fuel, a company that just started a couple of years ago, a couple of really intelligent and successful entrepreneurs, Todd Duncan and Alex Kershishian. And they contacted me through a third party to see if I would be a faculty member. And now I've got an AI twin, an AI bot. so to speak. And this— and I've had conversations with my bot numerous times. I've interviewed other people's bots who are faculty members there. Dan, it's incredible because my bot is essentially downloaded with 40 years of my work, hundreds of articles I've written, hundreds of videos and interviews, speeches, my books, you know, 20 books. This bot—

Wow.

And it has perfect recall. So you can basically ask John Murphy a question. It's going to think for a few seconds, not long, and come back with a better answer than I can. In some cases, it's incredible. And it's not Googling anything. It's not, you know, it's me.

It's close. That's great.

It's, it's, it's got the potential to speak up to 100 languages, and it's 24/7 access. It's truly remarkable. Now, did I think of that 38 years ago, you know, right in that original business plan? Not a chance. I mean, so, you know, we just continue to learn and grow. I know lifelong learning is one of your core values, and, uh, I'm a huge believer in that, to just continue to learn. And sometimes, Byron, you could comment on this as we wrap up, uh, your best lessons are from your biggest mistakes, you know, and that's where you really gain wisdom, right?

No question.

So—

The biggest mistakes I've made in my life were very expensive. I mean, going back to the beginning when a few— $100,000 would make or break me, $50,000, $20,000 make or break me, up till today where we have invested in this software and we just kept saying, is this a black hole or going to come out the other side? And so, yeah, no, in my case, I look up to you. For adapting, continuing to adapt. We're trying to continue to adapt. You're talking to a dinosaur here. So my first piece of equipment, Murph, was a typewriter that I was missing the dot above it. It's an electric typewriter. I thought it was the most unbelievable piece of equipment you could ever have. We're talking AI bots here. So that's evolution, that's adoption. I think it's impressive to hear you say that.

Well, yep. So, Theodis, it's been great. The time flies by. I mean, there's probably 100 questions, more questions that I could ask you or we could talk about. But can you give just one major takeaway to our audience about working through fear and growing and learning from mistakes? You got any particular gem you want to share?

Just have faith in yourself. If you feel you're correctly— and we all know the total saying is right is right even if no one's doing it, and wrong is wrong even if everyone's doing it. You know where you stand there, and if you're doing the right things, have faith in yourself. You will come out the other end in this crazy world we live in, and, and I have total faith that that'll happen for you. So That would be it.

There you go. So thank you, Dan, so much for being on Fearless with me. What a great conversation and tips, and what a great story you have to share. Truly, truly inspirational. So next week on Friday, which happens to be Juneteenth, we've got a phenomenal guest, Roderick Jefferson, and There's a reason that it's titled Stroke of Success, and I'll let him tell that story. Truly inspiring, a remarkable human being. So that's, that's next Friday on Fearless. With that, I wish you all well. Please visit us on YouTube, like us, share us, and share this message of fearlessness with anybody that you feel can use it, which is Probably just about everybody from time to time. All right, thank you so much. Uh, we'll see you next week.

Thank you.