How to Lead Without Ego: The NFL & Ironman Secret to Scaling Your Business with Joe Terry

In my first Iron Man, I am struggling on the marathon, and I'm about halfway through the marathon and I'm like, there is no way I'm going to be able to finish this. There's no way. And all of a sudden, everything went white. Everything went white in. And I don't know how long it was because time ceased.

Welcome to big hitters. I'm Larry Weidel and this show is for people who are done playing small. Each week we break down what it actually takes to win at a high level. The decisions, the discipline, the adjustments that separate those who almost do it from those who do it. No theory, no fluff, just straight talk from someone who spent 50, 50 years building winners. If you're serious about momentum, you're in the right place. Let's get into it. Hello, everybody. We've got a treat this afternoon because we're going to be talking to Joe Terry and right live from the Bay Area. Hello, Joe.

Hey, Larry. It's great to be here. And again, I love the energy you're bringing to this. Right on.

Well, I appreciate you here and I appreciate the, the, the endorsement. And, you know, it's fun to win, isn't it? You know, one thing you would know better. You know, I was a mediocre athlete. I was a high school athlete, Joe, But I learned that winning was better than losing. You know, I got the lesson. You know, I've always kept that. And so when, when you're a professional athlete, you know, for people that don't know, you're a lot. NFL linebacker turned CEO from the Seahawks. You went from the Seahawks to the C suite. And we'll get into all of that stuff. But monster athlete, I mean, you had so much athletic ability, you couldn't get it out of your system because 15 times Ironman finisher. Good lord, that is. Talk about energy and, you know, the things that you've learned from those experiences, being able to carry that in to business, which is exactly what you should, you know, do. You know, I wish someone had mentioned to me, Joe, that business is basically sport, another version of sports, because I loved athletics and I hated the idea of business growing up. But you got that, you made that connection and, you know, you brought those lessons over and been able to impact all kind of people. Obviously, I talked to a lot of people. It's like, where did you first get the idea of, you know, the direction you want to go in with your life? But you must have got it pretty early from athletics.

Yeah, I mean, athletics was just one of those Things that I embraced as a kid. And it was one of those things that I learned early on. You put a lot of work into and you get a lot of work. You. You see the results from it, right? And honestly, Larry, I wasn't a great athlete.

I.

And I took this through my whole life. I just happened to be an overachiever through learning and setting goals and achieving goals. And athletics was that avenue for me that I saw the results in growing up. And it was really. This whole thing came together for me in the 11th grade, Junior in high school. I had this teacher, and it was an. I'll never forget it. It was an incredible, life changing experiment experience for me. I had this teacher in high school, in 11th grade, junior in high school, and she had us do this exercise of ideal self and your perceived self. Where are you? What do you perceive yourself as?

Yeah, what an exercise. Wow.

And what's your ideal self? And so we built this collage. And this is when I'm 16 years old, right? And built this collage. And it's like, oh. And then they took that and get this, Larry, she taught you how to goal set. This is like 1981, right? And she's teaching.

Who is this woman? She should be teaching teachers all over the United States.

Exactly. I mean, this should be taught in every school today, right? And she taught a school thing. So she put. I was a junior in high school, and she said, I want you to write down your top five goals for the next five years. What do you want to achieve? Right? So I write down these five goals, and they were all athletic goals for me at that time, because that was my. That was my focus, and is these five goals. And so I took that perceived self, ideal self, rolled it up. It was a collage, and I put it together with that piece of paper and I put it aside and I never knew what happened to it, right? Never knew what happened. And then I go off to college, and then from college, make it to the NFL, right? And I get cut from the NFL. And I come home, like the next day, and my mom's like, okay, here's all your stuff. And I'm getting my stuff together to go move into my apartment and go find a job, because I'm not in the NFL anymore. And I'm going through this and I pull out this paper, Larry. And I said, holy crap, here's the five goals. I'm getting chills right now just talking about it. Like, here's the five goals. And all five of them came through in the top one was make it to the NFL. Like, I was just an average athlete, kid, 16 years old, wrote these five goals for five years, and now I'm 21, 22. And all five of them came true. And I was like, wow, there's something here. And that's when I went all in on, like, if a guy like me, who's just an average kid, can, can work and achieve these great accomplishments, anybody can do it. So that was the day I jumped all into human potential, all about human potential. Like, okay, if I can do this, it's. It's possible for anybody. I'm just an average guy, right? And we all hear the stories of the person that came from nothing and, and, and, and did all these great things, and those are great stories. But what about the 99%? That's just the average person, right, that says, I want to build an extraordinary life or an extraordinary company, or be an extraordinary leader or be an extraordinary father, mother, or husband or wife or whatever you want to be, right? And I'm like, there's. So I went all in on human potential, reading everything in consuming everything possible on how to optimize human potential. And that became my mission in life.

I would love. I'd love to find that one and see the other lives that she touched. Can you imagine, you know, the trail of success that she unleashed? What are the other teachers doing?

I mean, what.

You got kids, and this couldn't have taken a whole long time. I mean, you know, it's kind of a brief, you know, one exercise. You do?

Yeah, and it was one semester, you know, it was one semester in my whole educational career of elementary school, high school, and college. One semester changed the trajectory of my entire life.

Okay, Abby, that does it. We're going to start making a list now of things when we redo, we take over education in the United States. A checklist. List of things that have got to be covered with kids on the way up. Put. Put that at the top of the list. You know, one is money management, you know, budgeting. And it's not what you make, it's what you keep. And things like that, you know, that. You know, but the idea of, you know, to get, you know, just the exercise of getting you thinking in that direction and waking up that side of your brain. What. What a payoff for you. I. You know, you'll have to forgive me there, Joe. I see I have the tendency to see the hand of God behind a lot of people's stories.

Absolutely. 100%.

You know, it's just like, he was no accident. No, it was like, how, how could you go any other direction, you know, other than, you know?

And so I became a habitual goal setter in business and in life and pass it on to my kids and my wife and my family and every business I've been in, all the way from an individual contributor up until a CEO, it's always been, okay, here's our vision, here's our goals, here's what we're going for.

Well, you got, I mean, it's these. It's the starting point that most people never get right. And then they wonder why they can't stay focused. They wonder why can't make the effort and why their people are not engaged and everything. Well, you never said what we're all about.

Exactly. And that's what we do for companies now. And that's our foundational piece that we start with. Because think about it, Larry. Like, there's CEOs and leaders out there that are trying to achieve objectives and they're like, why is my team not aligned or have clarity of purpose or understand our strategy? And it's like, well, do you understand it? Have you done it for yourself? Like, like, you know, put your oxygen mask on first. Like, your life needs to be structured in that way, you know, before you can apply it as a leader or as a CEO and running a division, a department, a team, a company. Right. You've got to get it set with yourself first.

Well, I want to hear about your choice of the word culture and culture architect, because the thing is that you don't really need. You talk about the values of a company, the mission of a company, it doesn't need to be complicated, but people need to know what it is and they need to stay on track. And the great thing is, the more you make it clear to your management team and let them know it's their job to keep the people underneath them on track and explain to everybody underneath them on a regular basis what we're all about, why we're doing it this way. What happens is in a teacher learning situation, you make your managers really buy into your theme and your culture and your mission, because they're selling the people underneath them on it. And the more they explain it, the better they get at understanding it. And then they can't forget it because they're always reinforcing us with the people underneath them. And it's a theme that ties everybody together. And you can't have a train if everybody's not on the same track, you know, and so where did you get, you know, you get started out in your career? What was the, what was the first significant thing you did, job you got and experience you got from that coming up.

If I think about in my career and where this was a big transition for me, you know, as an individual contributor, Larry, you don't have to, you know, I came out through sales, right? And, and so I, I knew I wanted to be a CEO. I knew that was. I wanted to run a company because I wanted to apply this philosophy in a broader group and impact as many people as possible. But I started as an individual contributor and, and it really first started where I was like, okay, as a salesperson, how do you apply it to your client? Like, looking out for the client first? Like, I don't just want to sell stuff to sell stuff. Like, really be intuitive and understand the goals and objectives the client's trying to achieve. So I, I took this philosophy and applied it in my sales career, like, looking out for the client and tell me what your objectives are and what you're trying to achieve. Because as you just articulated, that's foundational. Like, that's where it starts. And, and, and, and so I did that in my sales career. And I would, I like to say I was a pretty good salesperson. You know, I, and, you know, and I was one of the top sellers in every company I've been in, and a couple companies, I was the top seller, right? But then the big shift was because I was a top producer, I got placed into a leadership role running sales, and it's like, oh, how do you shift that mindset from yourself to apply it to the team? You know, and that was, that was the big aha moment. And again, going back to this philosophy and then applying it to a team, and I, and I thought to myself, if I didn't have that, that foundation, I would have really struggled on how you. Because the first thing you think about is to tell everybody to do it. Like you did it because you were good at it. Well, everybody's different, Larry. Everybody has different challenges they're dealing with day to day, and they have to be connected to their own purpose and their own drivers. And so I applied this philosophy to the team, you know, and, and I was like, wow, okay, isn't it interesting? And this is what our book coming out in January, Surrender to Lead, is about. This is about surrendering to win, but surrendering to lead. Like, how do you let go of the results and focus on the process and let the results take care of them themselves? Because if you think back, Larry, when I was a junior in high school and that teacher made me put those goals together, I put them away and I surrendered to the result and I focused on that process and ended up at the result. Right? So this is all about putting this process in place so people can every day achieve the results and the goals and the objectives from their heart in their head and be driving towards them and ultimately get to the result of the team. Right? And so laying this process across the team helped me in my career and obviously I became a successful sales leader and then that led to being a CEO and this is my fifth run at a CEO.

By the way, if you're still listening right now, you're different. You don't just consume content, you're actively looking for an edge. And that's who, who I build the big hitter community for. Not people chasing motivation, people chasing momentum, not theory. Proximity. Proximity to operators who are actually in the arena making real decisions and winning at a high level. Inside Big Hitter, you get conversations we don't have in the podcast. Direct access to people who build what you're trying to build in a room that holds you to a higher standard every single week. This isn't a hype group. It's not networking. Networking for the sake of networking is where serious people go to sharpen their thinking and compress their timeline. If you're done just listening and you're ready to be in the room where it actually happens, head to join big hitters.com or click the link in the show notes. The right room changes everything. I'll see you inside. The thing is, of course I'm going to mention this, but I really want to get into, into how the Ironman fit into this. Cause that's a significant thing that very few of us have a chance to see what lessons that have. But the transition from top salesperson to sales leader is something that pretty much every top salesperson is gonna have the opportunity to do if they want to or not is another thing. But the mentality of being a top salesperson, highly disciplined, no nonsense, you have a schedule, you, everything is designed around you.

Being a top performer, I bounced around and you know, you, you, you talked about it. I don't even know if we were live when you were talking, but winning and losing, you know, I, I've, we've lost a lot. You know what I mean? I've been beat up pretty good along the way. If you're not striving to be the best, you know, when you are striving to be the best. You fail a lot. You know, you get beat up a lot. And so trial and error. This has been developed over many, many years of trial and error. And so I'm still learning. I mean, the last five years as the CEO of Culture Partners, I've learned so much. I saw one of your podcasts where you were talking about feedback, how important feedback is right, and feed them is critical to what we do as a company and what we teach other companies to do, and that's how we get better. So I. Never stopping, Larry. I mean, I'm still failing and I'm still telling people. Last week I had to tell somebody I'm sorry, because I screwed up royally. You know what I mean? I'm still making mistakes, but aware of those mistakes and trying to get it better. So I won't say I figured it out, but I keep optimizing.

Yeah, and what we were talking about was. The thing is, we were talking about the fact I never made it to the NFL. In fact, I never made it to college. I was a high school athlete. But I did learn the important lesson that winning is better than losing. And so that's what my athletic career served for me, other than having a lot of fun. And the thing is that one thing about sports is, the great thing about sports is you get feedback right away. You can't ignore it. You know, people can live in a dream world in politics, and they can say this and say that and yak, yak, yak, yak, yak. But when you're. When you're in a sport, you're in a competition, and you go out there, you get. You know, it's like Woody Hayes said, that there's nothing will clear your head by going out and having your ass kicked by the other team. You. So it's like 100%.

100%. Yeah.

And there's nobody that's ever played. There's nobody that's ever played sports that hasn't been a part of having their butt kicked. And, you know, the thing is that you. You learn. You know, you learn all those kind of lessons, but it's into. Is as a team, but as an individual. You go out there, where did you. When did you get going on your Ironman competitions? And what did you learn from that? You know, why. Why was that important for you?

I. You know, Larry, I don't like. I was a football player, so I don't like to swim, I don't like to bite, and I don't like to run. Like, none of Them never had, you know what I mean? Like that was the worst thing possible is to have to run as a football player.

I couldn't agree more. Yeah.

And so, so, you know, my sister in law, I was looking for something to do outside of work that would challenge myself from a physical perspective. And I played basketball and done all these other, I played all these sports. But I wanted something that kept me in shape and it challenged me. And my sister in law went out and did this little short little triathlon called a sprint triathlon. And it's a 500 yard swim and an 11 mile bike and a 3 mile run. Right? It's a small little triathlon.

That sounds tough enough.

Yeah. And I'm like, what the hell, try it. You know what I mean? And so I went out there with not a lot of preparation and I breaststroked through the 500 yard swim. I got on my mountain bike and did the 11 or 12 run and then I ran, you know, three miles a five Kenya and I came across the finish line on that little triathlon and I'm like bawling my eyes out. I can't believe I did that. Right? And, and I was hooked. I was hooked. And, and so I, I, I, I didn't know how to fight formally, swim like a, you know, real strokes. I'd grown up in the water my whole life, so I had to go learn how to swim because I'm like, I want to start doing this. And then I did the next one which is called an Olympic distance, which is like a little less than a mile swim and a 25 mile bike and a 6 mile run. And I did that and I got a little better. And I'm like, well, I want to do a half Ironman. And a half Ironman is obviously half of, of a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike and then a marathon, right F and I did that. I was like, wow, this is pretty cool. And then I did my, I trained my for my first Ironman and again I came across the finish line bawling my eyes out because I couldn't believe I finished this thing. Right? And it was the most incredible personal accomplishment of my life. I was like, wow. And from that time I was hooked, Larry. And here's why. Just training for an Ironman, you can't fake it. You gotta get up every day and do the work. Consistently doing the work, you gotta do the work, right? And then you get to this race and literally during that 10 to 11 hours you go through highs and lows like you wanna quit 50 plus times, like, what am I doing? This is the stupidest thing in my life, right? What am I doing? And people, by the way, are quitting all around you, Larry. Like it's getting in your head and you're like, oh my gosh, am I going to be able to finish this thing? And so to make it across that finish line and complete it after all that work, I looked at that and I said, damn, that was life compressed into 10 to 11, right? That was life. You have highs and you have lows. Literally you're in the marathon and you're like, I feel so good I could run for days. Another mile later, you're not sure you can take another trap, right? And you go through this. And so it taught me it's self imposed adversity. Self imposed. So what happens? You train the mind and you train the body that you. I am never going to give up on you. You personally, right? But now I apply that to my life and I'm like, I'm never going to give up on my wife, I'm never going to give up on my kids, I'm never going to give up on my company, my team, my leaders, my employees. I will go through hell and back for you and I won't freaking quit. I will never quit on you. I am all in on you and I'm all in on our mission and our purpose. They're going to have to drag my ass out of here.

It seems like the answer is obvious, but is everyone different? And is every, you know, you think you know, can you get yourself where, okay, I'm an ironman person now. Got it. I can do this. And you just go in there and toss it off. Or is everyone a struggle in a fight?

Everyone is a struggle in a fight. Because think about athletics, Larry, or in your sales career or in your business career. You're always trying to advance the ball. So I'm always trying to optimize my training to get faster and do it better. And all 16, including the three in the world championships in Hawaii, which is the most brutal ironman on the planet, all of them have had their ups and their downs and their struggles and knock on wood, my desk there, I finished every one I've started, you know, including half ironman, every race I've started, I finished. Right? But everyone has its unique challenges, just like every business, and you said it early, each person. So like I'm dealing with someone in finance or I'm dealing with my top salesperson or my head of strategy, they all have different goals and objectives and things that they're looking to achieve in their life that I'm trying to connect to the things that we're trying to achieve, right? And so everyone's different. And every ironman I do is different. And that's why I love it. Again, I don't, I, I do not like to swim, bike or run, but it's that process and then it's surrendering to the result. I don't know what the day. You don't know what the day has in store for you, but you did everything possible leading up to that day. Now you throw it all out there and you can only control what you can control, right? And you have to surrender to the result. Your nutrition may not be on point or, you know, the wind may be strong or it may be hotter or colder. And you just have to deal with those in the moment. And so maybe the result could be different, right?

You have to deal with it in the moment. And whatever it is is what probably you didn't expect it to show up. And you know, one thing I like about what I'm hearing about your book that's coming out and you know, one of the themes is focusing on the process, the activity, and not worrying about the result because you can't, you know, you can't control the result. You know, what that is, is you, like we tell people in sales, you focus on what you can control, which is activity. You know, the farmer can plant the corn, you know, you can do the certain things. But at some point, you know, if it's not a great season, you know, if it's not going to rain much this summer, you know, whatever, it's out, you know, you're just, you know, you put your fish, you know, you know, it's like fishing. You know, there's a certain amount you can control, but a certain amount that you can't control. And my son went bow hunting for deer this morning up in Kentucky. And he said, this is the most. I've sat in a stand for years and I saw one doe. You know, it is supposed to be a place that are full of trophies, and that's why he's up there. But he could go out tomorrow and see some monster bull, you know, some monster deer. But the thing is that you can't control the result. You control your activity. And the thing, what I want you to talk about for a minute, which you're uniquely experienced with this, when you talk about controlling your activity and your intensity in the moment, you had to have had some really weird things happen to you in the midst of doing some of these Ironmen that's like, oh, Lord, I didn't know I was going

to have to deal with that in my first Ironman. I am struggling on the marathon, and I'm about halfway through the marathon, and I'm like, there is no way I'm going to be able to finish this. There's no way. And all of a sudden, everything went white. Everything went white. And I don't know how long it was because time ceased. And I'm getting the chills again. I'm trying not to get emotional on this. And I'm running this marathon, not really running. It's a. It's a very slow jog, and I'm. And I'm like. All of a sudden, there was this presence next to me, and. And I was like, God, is that you? Are you here with me? And. And I thought, oh, man, am I passing? But is something happened to me that I don't. You know, I'm like. I'm like, okay, if it's my time, it's my time. Right? Yeah. And. And. And it was this warm, comforting energy next to me that said every. And I keep getting chills as I say this, and it's hard to explain that everything's gonna be okay. You're okay. You're Just keep going. And. And I was like, oh, my gosh, God's real. Right in that moment, right? And I experienced it, and I came through it. And. And. And of course, Larry, I'm. I'm now crying because I'm like, wow, you know, I. I can believe that. And so I just believe that I went to a place that was so deep that I experienced the Creator for a moment. And it was. And there was. You know, we talked about. You talked about earlier. Everything for a reason, right? And this was something to keep me going because there was a reason I was doing these, and I needed to impact other people's lives with this experience. And so I say that because the only thing we can control is the experience we create for other people as leaders. Remember, we talked about. Everybody's different. It's the experience I create for my finance person. It's the experience I create for my strategy officer. It's the experience I create for my salesperson, for the county manager or the customer service. It's that experience is what I can control as a leader. I can't control the results, but I can create an experience to help optimize that person's potential towards the Results. And so getting back, that's my long winded answer to that was the greatest experience I ever had as doing Iron Man. And I'm like, God wants me to do these even though I don't like doing them. And so I'm going to keep doing them as long as I can do them.

The dead serious people. And so we'll talk maybe some specifics in there, but as you moved into business, how did you come up with this thing, this game plan and you use this Scaled Culture Partners. Where did that form from?

I've just been hired and I'm a steward of this company. Again, God puts you in place. And Roger Connors was, was one of the founders. Tom Smith was the other founder. And they founded this company 30 years ago. And it was, it's wonderful, it's a wonderful, wonderful intellectual property that they founded. And so I was just lucky enough to be chosen as the CEO of this company five years ago to take it, to take it to the next level. And so one of the things. That you talked about and that we talk about in our book, Surrender to Lead, that talks about this process and scaling and scaling because you talked about sometimes God rips your arm off and hits you over the head. So, so what it comes down to, it's this simple and, and, and people are going to think I'm crazy. And it's this simple. You either lead from a place of love, abundance and gratitude, or ego, fear and scarcity. It's only those two places. Those are the only two places. And remember I talked about experiences. What experiences you want to create and you want. That doesn't mean you can't bring tough love. That doesn't mean you can't drive results. I'm just saying you come from this place of abundance, gratitude and love when you're driving that. Right. Opposed to fear, scarcity and ego. And there's only two places to do that from. And the only thing you can control as a leader is those experiences you create for your team, your department, your company, what have you. And so four months ago, five months ago now, I think, yeah, five months ago I was in a extremely serious bike accident. I still don't know to this day what happened. I was riding on the road and I went down and I was doing about 27 miles an hour. And the next thing I do, I wake up in the ICU with a concussion, eight broken ribs, broken collarbone, broken scapula, broken pelvis and a collapsed lung. That's it. Right? Wow.

Wow.

Yeah. How long ago was this, this Was in May. In May.

Wow. May.

Good. Yeah. And so this was your rip your arm off, beat you over the head moment for me.

It sounds like it, yeah.

It's like we as a company were in a very important time in our life. We're private equity owned. We're going through a sale process. So results and performance are everything when you're going through a sale process. So all of a sudden, I'm in this accident right in the middle of it, and I can't work, Larry. I can't focus. I'm in the hospital for seven days. I come out of the hospital and I can. I can. I can't even sleep. You know, I've got all this damage to my body, and I didn't want to take medication for about two months. I could work maybe an hour a day, maybe. And I had to surrender to my team. I had to. I had to let go of everything and support my team as best I could. And my team went out for that period of time, and we just finished one year of absolute record crazy results and achieved all of the results we were looking to achieve in half the time. I couldn't even partake in it as the CEO, right? And it was like God telling me, joe, you can't control everything. And you don't need to, like, remember the love, abundance, and gratitude part, you know, don't lead from fear. Scarcity, right? And ego. It's not there. And I had to let go. It was forced for me to let go. And we did better than we ever did as a company. And that was my rip your arm off, beat me over the head moment. And again, remember I said, I'm learning. That just happened, right? I like to think I'm an involved leader, but that just happened.

The good and the bad management style there is. You could come across as tough either way, but tough when you're in scarcity scare, you know, tough coming from a scarcity. And you know, it's gonna come across as intimidation and unease is what you like. You referred to this earlier, you know, creating experiences for your people, you know, and you know, you know how you can. The frame of mind you can put them in. Well, the toughness, you know, bear down, let's go for it. Can either be intimidation. I'm worried, you know, I'm a nervous wreck. And I had this in construction for my first four years out at Georgia Tech building houses. I was with a. Worked with a monomaniac on a. On a, you know, you know, a psycho, basically. And it was like every Sunday night, when I felt like I had to, when I finally dawned on me, oh, you got to go back to work in the morning. You know, after playing with the kids and everything over the weekend, it was like someone turned over a quart of acid into my stomach. You know, that's what coming, you know, that's, that's when you're going back to that kind of environment. But on the other side, coming from an abundance and encouragement, the toughness can come up as inspiration. You know, it's either going to come up as intimidation or inspiration. And you get a whole lot more out of people, a whole lot more out of people when they're inspired. And I think what happened was it was a testimony to what you had done before you had that accident that where your people felt they took that as a thing and to be inspired. Now we're going to go and show Joe, you know, what we can do. And rather than just kind of duck, duck and see what they can get away with. And so, by the way, I hate to bring this up, except I will tell you that I'm 17 years recovering from a cycling accident in the middle of Palm Beach, Florida, going 27 miles an hour into a curb that they had suddenly put up right in front of the stupid police station with no lights. So I can relate. But you know, the thing is that you do come out the other side and so you made an amazingly better recovery than I did. So anyway, let's talk about who came up with the word culture architect, because it's an interesting thing. Let me just tell you how they word it here. Builds high performing organizations by aligning purpose, strategy and culture to deliver sustained business transformations. That's what every leader, I think, and CEO should aspire to do in their role. To build high performing organization by aligning purpose, strategy and culture to deliver sustained business transformation. That means you win and you keep on winning. And so that term, I just haven't ever heard that term culture architect before.

What we call this is the results equation. That's what it is. So the results equation is your purpose, why you exist either in a project, why on the project, why on the department, why on the team, or why on the company. So think about that. The purpose plus your strategy, what are the drivers, what are the things you're going to execute on plus culture. Culture is the activation of those two equals results. That's the results equation. Purpose, strategy and culture drives results. And the problem, Larry, is people think of those things as separate things. We got results, we're driving to We've got a strategy, somebody's developing our purpose. Oh, and our culture is, you know, parties and, you know, unlimited vacation. And that's not culture. Culture is not that. And so what culture is, is how your people think and how your people act to drive results. That's all it is. We don't tell you your culture's good, your culture's bad. You know, every company is like an individual where some people may love working at SpaceX for, for Elon Musk and think, think, oh my gosh, that's the greatest thing. Because there other people may think that's the most toxic place in the world, right? And we don't, we don't say your culture's good or bad. It's all about why your company exists, what's your strategy and developing a culture to activate that, to drive results. It's all about the result, Larry.

All about the results.

The culture is the piece that pulls that through. It's not parties and off sites and things like this. It's all about the results. So it's all about getting clarity, alignment and accountability for your team all around your purpose, your strategy and your culture to drive results. That's the equation that, I mean, I

can see how that works and why it's been so successful. I do want to ask you some specifics about how you've seen that turn around companies, but we'll do that in our locker room behind closed doors on our session that we have for our big hitter community, which I'd invite you all to join and, you know, be around winners all the time. And so, Joe, this has been spectacular. Do you have a. I know you do. Give us, give us a parting final word for our, you know, this first part of the podcast and you know, for people that have been listening to this and they want to. What you want them to take away from this, that would kind of tie it up in your thinking.

Yeah, there's two things I would like them to take away. Number one is if you can live your life and lead from a place of love, abundance and gratitude rather than ego, fear and scarcity, if you can live your life and lead others from that place, you're going to be wildly successful if you do nothing else, number one. Number two, put your oxygen mask on first. If you don't know what your purpose is and what your strategy is to a successful life and the goals and the results you're looking to achieve personally, you need to do that for yourself first before you can do it for a team, a department or a company. So get clear on what your stuff is first so that you can lead others to that vision as well. Those are the two things I'd like.

Fantastic insight. Right on the money and right on the money in terms of helping people get on track for what you've talked about, which is bigger results, the results that they want, the results that will continue. So thanks so much, Joe. This has been fantastic. That's it for this episode. If this resonated with you, do me a favor. Share it with someone who's ready to level up. Winners, find winners, and the right conversation at the right time can change everything. Want to go deeper, Burke? Join us inside the big hitter community at join big hitters.com that's where the real work happens. And if you haven't already, subscribe so you don't miss the next one. Remember that you're either growing or dying and there's no standing still. Keep winning and I'll see you next week.