Larry Robertson on Rebel Leadership

Welcome to Peer Innovation, the podcast with Leo Bottari and me, Randy Cantrell. Building on our previous shows, The Year of the Peer and What Anyone Can Do, we turn our attention to helping business leaders build high-performing teams. We'll talk with a diverse group of thought leaders who will share stories and insights that will help you and your teams achieve new heights. If you believe there is strength in numbers and that meeting the challenges of the future can only be achieved if we do it together, then join us for the conversation. Joining us today is author and speaker Larry Robertson. Larry is the author of two award-winning books, A Deliberate Pause and The Language of Man. His third book is due out in June of 2021, Rebel Leadership: How to Thrive in Uncertain Times. He is the founder of Lighthouse Consulting, has over 25 years guided organizations and their leaders through uncertainty, change, and growth to lasting success. We welcome Larry to the Peer Innovation Podcast. Welcome you back to another episode of Peer Novation. I'm surrounded by authors. On one side of me, I would point, but I'll get it, I'll get it wrong. Leo Bottari, uh, leobottari.com is the website. Peerinnovation.co takes you to the same place. You can find all about Leo and his work and his books. And our guest today is Larry Robertson, author, also author Um, get my tongue working here. We're glad to have you on the show, Larry. We've been looking forward to this and planning this really since late last year. So welcome.

Yeah. Thank you very much, Randy and Leo. And I've really been looking forward to it as well. Yeah.

I always love our conversations, whether they're part of the podcast or they're just, uh, offline, uh, always learn something and, and it's always terrific. And so here you've got this new book. Rebel Leadership. And we'll start with a simple question: why this book? Why now? And what, what can our listeners gain from this book that you've got coming up pretty soon?

Yeah, thank you, Leo. I think it's a good starting point as well. And I mean, let me break it into those two parts. And I'll actually start with the why now. And I think the best way to answer that is to talk about it from a the listener's perspective, what is going on right now that's worthy of our attention? And the obvious answer is uncertainty. But the reality, and this is where it ties to the book, is that it's not quite as simple as that. I mean, it's now obvious to everyone there, there is uncertainty in the world and it can have a significant ripple effect. But that leads us to conclude things like uncertainty equals the COVID pandemic and its ripple effects. Which is certainly true, but in reality, this uncertainty trend has been increasing for the last two decades, all of this century so far. And what it's telling us is that the world is more complex, more interwoven, more unpredictable than it has ever been in recent history. Some refer to it as by this acronym VUCA. So VUCA stands for volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. And what's unique about this period in time is that we are, we are living in a VUCA world not just in a moment, but ongoing. It is not your everyday garden variety kind of challenge. And two of the, the things that I like to point out that give you kind of a flavor for, well, what does that really mean? What does it mean to us individually? And specifically, what does it mean to organizations and their leaders? Is that for the past 15 years, various groups like PwC and EY and other professional service firms have done these leadership surveys. And they survey thousands of leaders across sectors and across levels of leadership too, from the top down to the middle and the bottom. And what's astounding is that when they ask them, what is the landscape like that you're dealing with right now that you have to contend with? Every year when they ask that, for 15 years, their response has been overwhelmingly the same, and it's one word. They say it's unpredictable. And to me, it's really an astonishing admission of these leaders of these very elite organizations, and the survey is done confidentially, so they are acknowledging something they might not publicly. And they're saying that everything, everything from how they hire to how they innovate, how they incorporate technology, how they make money, is unpredictable right now. So that's one thing I like to point out to say this is real and it's everywhere. But the second is, even when we recognize that something's unpredictable, there's a question about do we understand and recognize the full effects? And I always point to the World Economic Forum, and they put out this annual risk report. And a couple of years ago, they always talk about the risks that are out there, and they interview leaders to get this information. But about 2 years ago, in 2018, they put out a report where they dedicated extra time up front to say, I know you know the world is uncertain, but let us draw a distinction here. And they focused on risk. And they drew a distinction between how we tend to perceive the risk of uncertainty. And they called that conventional risk. So if you were to think about it, it's the kind of risk that while it surprises you when it initially arrives, Eventually, you can get your mind around it, and then you can get your arms around it, and then you incorporate your response to that risk to establish a new status quo, to oversimplify. And what they were saying is that the real increase in risk right now is complex risk. So complex risk is where all the systems in which risk occurs at our individual level, at an organizational level, a societal level, even globally, and even in the environment, These things are now overlapping and interweaving with one another. So they're causing these ripple effects of uncertainty that sometimes we don't even see. So the bottom line is that this new century isn't about riding out a short wave of uncertainty, like hopefully this pandemic will turn out to be a short wave, to arrive at some new and stable status quo. Instead, it's what I call our new abnormal. And so that answers the first part of your question of why now. And the why this book Rebel Leadership is because our definition and views of leadership, particularly in this climate, they're outdated. And they simply don't match the times in which we live in. You know, in the past when we faced uncertainty as leaders in organizations, it was something episodic or occasional. It came, we got past the disruption, and we went on with our lives. It's a slight overstatement, but not by much. And we tended to do that by one of two means, either leadership out of disruption, or boldly innovating our way out, or some combination of the two. And this book reflects the fact that there are positives in both of those things, positives to leadership and positives to rebel thinking. There are also negatives. So how can we combine the best of the two? And that's why I think of rebel leadership as a new term. And also a new mindset. It just happens to be backed by 20 years of a whole range of organizations and leaders understanding the times we're living in and approaching it with a rebel leadership mindset. And they're as diverse as you could imagine, but they follow similar patterns. So that's why this book right now.

So given this uncertain world, leaders, as you said, can tend to fall into kind of adopting kind of a fence strategy. To deal with that kind of the complexity and ambiguity that's going on out there. So tell us what that is, number one, and then tell us how we can avoid it and what we need to do instead.

Yeah, it's interesting. And in the book, as you know, I tell this story about two different approaches to ranching in Australia. And one is called the fence strategy and the other is called the waterhole strategy. So the fence strategy is this idea, whether you're a rancher or you're a business person, or you just, you manage a team, you're the coach of a team, How do you keep everything that's valuable to you together? How do you make sure it doesn't get away from you, that you can monitor it, and so on? And the simple answer in ranching is, well, I build a fence. In Australia, that's tough because Australia is a very dry and, fitting with the theme here, unpredictable climate. And to allow your cattle to graze, you have to allow them to do that over a really, really wide expanse, much much greater than we would know in most cases in the United States. So to build a fence starts to become, at the very least, difficult, if not impossible, to put it up in the first place, to maintain it, and so on. So there's another strategy to ranching, which is called the waterhole strategy. And the idea is you dig a waterhole or a well, and the cattle will come to it. Why? Because the climate is dry and they not only need to graze, they need water. So do you possibly lose a few cows here and there? Yes, but also not for very long. There's less infrastructure to it. You let the assets work for you. You let them think alongside you. And that's really— it really defines the two ways that we look at leadership right now. The old way, which is no, top down, put a fence around it. The person at the top will tell you what to do and how to do it. And the open way, which is much more that rebel leadership mindset, this goes to the part of your question of, well, how do we get there? And so it's this whole idea of letting leadership move across an organization, realizing that culture isn't just something that we talk about and say, yeah, that's really important and great, and we get to it later. It's actually your chief competitive advantage. You're embracing everybody in the organization to not only define what you do and how you do it, but who you are and how that fits in the environment. It's taking the longer view that we talk about in terms of mission statements and 5-year plans and putting it in this moment. How do we use that to filter the kind of decisions that we're making? And there are other things, but that's what leads to this open strategy, this waterhole strategy, where you let the disruption come and go, and you are ready to adapt and deal with it as it does. And it's really interesting, So one of the things the book does is not only talk about organizations and leaders who are doing it right, but it looks at the science behind why do these patterns across the rebel leadership mindset, why do they work? And how, why is it we all relate to them as humans? And it looks at across the sciences, but also management science and creativity research and so on. And one of the most interesting pieces of information I include in the book comes from two guys, Steve Magnus and Brad Stulberg, who have been focused on peak performance. Why do humans perform well and at their peak in a variety of settings, from athletics to business to just life in general? And they say it boils down to two things: openness and comfort with extreme disruption. So here we are again saying that openness, open to new ways of doing new challenges and dealing with them in new ways, and the discomforts that naturally come with that, like, oh my God, I no longer have a fence around my cattle, but getting comfortable with that because of the positives that come through it. The science actually says this works in addition to the ranching and the effective management over the last 20 years.

Yeah, you know, I know Randy's got some questions for you, but I just want to make one comment. It's funny, the parallel with this, and that is is oftentimes attendance can be an interesting challenge for people in CEO peer group meetings. And when people's attendance becomes something of an issue, members will often say, well, we need to fine them if they don't come to the meeting, which is essentially, if you think about it, it's defense strategy, right? However, if when I say to them, hey, tell you what, instead of fining them for not making a meeting, why don't we make the meeting a can't-miss experience? Which would be effectively the waterhole strategy, right? It is the idea of you want to create a meeting that's so amazing and so much value there that you're always going to be drawn to it in the same way that the cattle is drawn to water, which is kind of funny. But I think, and it's one, by the way, a small one, but one of many parallels that we've talked about in terms of, you know, what conclusions and what findings you had in Rebel Leadership versus peer innovation, which is It's kind of a fun thing as well.

It really is. And I'm going to build on what you just said, because if your listeners aren't aware of it, you wrote a very powerful article recently, which also is a piece of the book, Peer Innovation, about one of those peer groups and a member who wasn't there all the time, came and went, and sometimes when they came, wasn't sure they saw the value or why should I be spending my valuable time here? Really, really powerful message. And it really relates right back to that waterhole strategy. It's not the waterhole that matters so much. It's the need and the purpose of the waterhole that both the ranchers and the cattle are aware of. They know, I mean, it's instinctive for them. And what you tell in that story was how you helped this individual to realize that it wasn't just about them and their participation and what they individually might miss. If they didn't come to this open forum, but what others missed by their absence, that they had a shared purpose in being there, and that that was something meaningful and material to all of them. And that's very, very true of the rebel leadership mindset and why openness works. In the absence of something important like that, in the absence of that shared purpose and that shared value, the waterhole is just a waterhole.

Sure, absolutely. Great, Larry.

Everybody tends to feel that they are open. I mean, we all have this great capacity to overestimate ourselves and some to underestimate themselves. But if openness is the central key to rebel leadership and rebel thinking, then what's the enemy? What's the number one enemy to that for us?

Yeah, so I tell— there's an example that I use in the book because I think it's relatable and it answers your question. So pretend that about a decade ago Tiger Woods was one of those people walking around saying, "I'm open." Okay, it's one thing to say it, it's quite another thing to not only pursue it but to pursue it knowing that you might have to let go of what makes you so strong and confident right now. And so in Tiger Woods' case, it was, gee, I've won all these tournaments. But what I really want to do is beat Jack Nicklaus's record for tournaments for key championships. I have bigger aspirations than just winning a few more. I want to win for years ongoing. The only way that I conclude, and my coach and I conclude I can do that, is to change my swing. To rebuild it from top to bottom. Well, in the process of that, you give up what's comfortable. In the process of that, as you try the new stuff that is, that is guaranteed to work, it doesn't work right away, and you have to work with it. There are ripple effects to change, like his back injuries increased in their intensity and the way they affected his games when he changed his swing. And overall, there is no guarantee of what the exact outcome will be, meaning he continued to win tournaments but with longer dry stretches in between. And there were other factors that contributed. But I would say those are the things that tend to undo the openness, coupled with one more thing, which is as soon as I see a drop in my performance, as soon as I feel a rise in my level of discomfort, or as soon as the promise of making this change and being open doesn't deliver, I abandon it. That I think is the biggest enemy. This being open is a practice. And what's more important, and this is, this is again one of those crossovers with the whole peer innovation idea and conversation, is you are safer and better equipped to be open and to make those changes if you're not doing it alone. And even individual athletes recognize that, and their, their trainers and their coaches and their families and all that, when they are involved in the support of those changes, That's when you reap the benefits of this openness.

How have the last 20 years trained us to better handle uncertainty?

I don't think they have. And the reason I say that is I think most of us have spent the last 20 years waiting for the uncertainty and change to stop, to settle out, and then we can either return to what we had before, which, I mean, think about even just in the first, uh, three-quarters of this pandemic so far, people use the language about returning back to normal, returning to what we knew before, almost without exception. And it's only now that people are starting to shift to, to realize that maybe the future won't look anything like it did in the past, or at least not in the ways we would like it to. So So in terms of training, I think of training as we've actually embraced something and we're preparing ourselves to deal with this new uncertainty or to take advantage of it because there are huge advantages in it if you approach it the right way. But we've done our best to ignore it in many ways. We've done our best to say, yeah, that affects somebody else but not me. It hasn't reached my shore yet. We talk about it being temporary, or we talk about the kind of changes we need to make in order to embrace it, even if we say we accept it, even if we say we're open, are tweaks at the edges kind of changes. And they're not, right? Right now requires bold changes. And it isn't just me saying it or these leaders I talk about in my book. The research from firms like McKinsey says those that embrace these kind of bold changes in total across their entire organization and in everything they do are the ones that are coming out on top. But bold changes are hard, and, and the key thing is to look back at the lessons of these first 20 years and get ourselves going. So I think that's the only distinction in what you asked.

You know, for leaders today too, what's the balance between trying to strategic plan and be adaptive to the quick-changing environment that we're in at the same time?

Yeah, it's a really interesting question, Leah. So I'll tell you an interesting story. One of the things that I point out in Rebel Leadership, because I think it opens up to what you're talking about, and then I know you have really important views on that too. So maybe we can all plant the seeds from here. But there's this pattern out there in the last 15 years in particular, of organizations substituting the strategic plan with the one-page plan. So, um, for example, Airbnb reportedly has their one-page strategic plan. I mean, let's, let's all acknowledge what a strategic plan typically looks like when we put it down in writing. It's 30 pages if it's nice and trim. It can go up to 50, 100 pages, whatever it is. And then it's a perfect paperweight, or it's great as a bookend on the shelf, but it really doesn't get touched or talked about from there. So organizations like Airbnb have said, no, no, what, what is our strategy mixed with what is our shared purpose in one sheet, in something digestible, but most importantly, something we'll use, something we can actually attend to. What that has meant is that The organizations that are using that, and there are plenty of them, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Pixar, even Warren Buffett has one-page contracts that he's known for. Why? Because it tells us what's most important. It tells us strategically where our strengths lie and where we're headed. Everything else after that in strategy and a strategic plan is really about the details of the environment in which you're trying to apply your strategy, in which you're trying to pursue the value that you want to create. And right now, all that other stuff is changing. So it doesn't mean that we don't have to have operational plans. It doesn't mean that we don't have to have specific targets. What it says is, those things in this environment become much more on the tactical end of things, and less about the strategic. And the strategic becomes more about how do we create a framework for ourselves of why we do what we do, and why it's important, and where it will get us, that is flexible and fluid, and allows us to change those details. Details. That I think is the difference right now, is realizing what strategy is in this new environment.

Yeah, I think in some respects, I always felt like Eisenhower had it right when he talked about it's the, that maybe the plan is not so important, but the planning is essential. And what you're talking about is how you go about planning in, in this world right now, which I think is, is really powerful takeaway, you know, for people to think about how we plan. We had Jen Thornton on the show a number of weeks ago who talked about— her quote was, "Expectations are the thieves of joy," which I thought was really brilliant. But it also speaks to how it can get in the way with regard to strategy and expectations. And, you know, we've got this plan and we think this is what we're going to do. And it's like, kaboom, the world changes right around us in ways that, you know, and we have to pivot. We've got to have a comfort level with that. And, you know, as you kind of pointed out before, it's really helpful not to be going through that alone. It's helpful to be around other people that can help us out in that regard.

Well, and at the heart of that is— and all of these things, I think, will continue to weave the parts of our conversation together. But so we think about this. For a long time, there's been a heavy reliance on planning. And don't get me wrong, planning is critical. It's just— it's supportive. And it has to, it has to happen in context. And here I am on the other side saying, well, things like shared purpose and openness and being able to think about your strategy, you know, in the context of a single page, that's important. Yep, both things are true. There's something in the middle though. And that something in the middle ties back to this others element, right? The thing that makes a one-page strategic plan work, the thing that allows you to turn shared purpose into a tool, into a competitive weapon, if you will, is A, that you use it, that it doesn't just get written up and it sits there, but B, you allow everyone to use it, that it becomes part of not just your culture, but of every single thing you do, even how you start your day each day, no matter who you are in the organization, no matter at what level you lead. In my last book, The Language of Man, which focused more on creativity, I interviewed nearly 70 MacArthur Fellows. These are the folks who received the quote-unquote genius award for creativity. And one of the people that really stood out for me was an education reformer. Her name is Deborah Meyer. And Deborah Meyer talked to me about how she approaches not just new projects and the uncertainty they bring, but the uncertainty of just the day-to-day world in which she does her work, even the uncertainty about a new employee joining the team and how you onboard them. And she talks about how she and her teams practice what they call the 5 habits of the mind. And the 5 habits of the mind are 5 questions that they're actively asking themselves every single day with whatever they do to see if, are we on the same page? Is there a potential threat or opportunity out there? If there is, how do we approach it? And all of that is bringing them together. So these 5 habits of the mind, no surprise, are questions. Because questions, when they're treated in the powerful way that they exist, they remain open. Questions aren't just about getting an answer. Questions are about how they get you to think, how they put you in that mindset. So her 5 habits of the mind, the 5 questions are, first, how do we know what we know? Which is a quick check-in with, is the way we're thinking and the way we're doing things, does that still line up with the assumptions we made even yesterday, or are those assumptions starting to shift? The second question is, is there a pattern? Because sometimes an anomaly is out of line with the assumptions we made and how we're doing things, but when it becomes a pattern, that really speaks to something, either a threat or an opportunity or something larger that deserves attention. The third habit of the mind is what she says is some form of the question, what if? Knowing what we know, knowing what the pattern is, what if? And then you can pursue how do we solve a problem? How do we take advantage of an opportunity? How do we bring ourselves together more when it's very clear we're making different assumptions about how we should approach something? So how do we know what we know? Is there a pattern? What if? The, the fourth question is the one I love. It's is there another way? And this is really a way of saying there's always another way. Right? Before you fall in love with your idea, what are the other ways that we should give serious consideration to? And the fifth and final habit of the mind is the question, who cares? Because no matter how observationally astute you are, no matter how brilliant your idea might be, if no one cares about what it offers them, if it doesn't connect to the values, the shared purpose, not just to the people in your on your team and in your organization, but the customers you serve, the community in which you do it, and so on. If nobody cares, then it really doesn't have much value at all. So I think of that as how do you bring people together? How do you start to build a culture that is constantly referencing this shared purpose over here, but also can get to a plan of action that goes somewhere, that results in something?

So for people who may not have read your previous books, which I actually would recommend they do, the first being A Deliberate Pause. Um, I know the second, um, really is about the language of man and learning to speak creativity. Um, but you described this third book, um, which is why it's important to read the first two, but I think each of them are standalone. But yet you also described that you've now essentially created a trilogy. So on purpose, something that you intended from the start, or something that has evolved over time, or Um, tell us about that.

Yeah, so it's, it's funny, Leo, because I've, um, just started to use that expression that, you know, the, the books for me represent a trilogy. And there— and that kind of answers your question. The fact that I've just started using it is the answer that no, this was not intended from the beginning. In fact, you know, the first book was almost a challenge to myself. It was— I, I've talked with others, I've, I've talked to myself about wanting to write a book forever, either put up or shut up. I mean, that's what really got me into the first book. The second was when I had completed the first book about entrepreneurship, when I had put it out into the world and played with it in different ways, I felt new information coming back to me. I felt like there were things beyond and beneath even what I'd written about in A Deliberate Pause that needed exploration. If I just stood —on what I'd concluded in book 1, everything was going to suffer in some way: my thinking, the thinking I was trying to spread to others, and so on. So the second book was focused on creativity because really that was a peel back before entrepreneurship. What is it that makes us look at the world differently? What is it that makes certain creative pursuits and creative acts work where others don't? And what are the patterns when we start to spread out across applications, industry, people, their backgrounds, and so on. That's really what drove me to that second book. What I came to recognize in all of these books— so, so what's interesting, and, and you know this too from the books that you've written, one of the great power sources of information for the book is not just what's in my own head, not even what's in the research out there, that a lot of which has not been touched by the mainstream but is really important to get out there, it's the people I talk to. And as I talked to those people, what I was seeing was a whole range of leaders and leadership. And while they initially, they looked to me all quite different, certain patterns started to emerge about what they were all seeing that allowed them to succeed in times that were uncertain, that allowed them to succeed as they kept innovating and changing what they were doing. And I really felt that completed the picture. How do you take that entrepreneurial mindset? How do you encourage and thrive on that creative, that creative skill that we all have, we just most underutilize? And how do you forge it through leadership, not just your own, but leadership across an organization? So now as I look back, it's a trilogy because those three things, that entrepreneurial mindset, creativity, and leadership, really go together in every organization and in every human being. And they tap into things that all of us have a capacity for, even if we don't believe it, even if we don't play around with it. Or as I say in the second book, most of us have been wrongly taught that we don't have those things.

Yeah. So regarding the trilogy thing, so I very much feel that I backed into a trilogy also. And I look at it very much as, you know, the first book is about groups. The second one is about how individuals are in are influenced by the people around them. And the third one is really about how the power of we begins with me and how we can be so impactful to our teams, right? So it follows this interesting story in one respect, but I think what it really speaks to, and I really applaud you for this, is that I think your trilogy emerged, you know, as beautifully as it did because you remain a student of what you do. You're constantly curious and constantly interested in learning more, and once you do, being able to share it as you do, I think, is pretty amazing. So, and Randy may have another question too, but I did want to—

No, go ahead. I was going to ask you to read what you—

I want to, yeah, I do.

By the way, Leo, I just, I want to amplify what you just said about the student part. I talked to leaders across a wide spectrum for this book. And one of the people I talked to was Terry Malone. So Terry Malone has been a coach on the coaching staff at both the college level at Michigan and Bowling Green and at the NFL level with the Saints. And he's been hugely successful as a coach, even though he's never been the head coach. And the reason why, I mean, there's a lot of reasons why. One is that he sees himself as a leader no matter what level he's at. But he's also been in environments where he's allowed to be that. But I think from his own vantage point, he says, you know, when people ask me what I do, I don't refer to myself as a coach. I refer to myself as a teacher. And in order to be a good teacher, I have to continue to be a good student. And his whole career, and the reason I think he's uniquely had success on these different teams and at these different levels, is that he's never stopped being a student and never stopped trying to pass that on to make others great leaders of at the same time. So I just, I just wanted to amplify that because I feel like that's a theme you touch on. It's not just the being a good student and an ongoing student, but it's taking that knowledge and then connecting it to others to help them with what you've learned, but also to help them become students.

And I think this is why it's important that they look at Rebel Leadership, because I think if you think you've read all of these books on leadership, and that you've kind of gotten what you need out of that. I think that's fine, except what you're going to get out of Rebel Leadership are some concepts that in some respects are going to overlap and in some way and in some aspects are going to touch you in a very different way. And I hope in a way that really inspires action. And, you know, one of the things I had mentioned, I told you I wanted to do this because I did endorse the book and I want people to know how heartfelt I feel about not only this book, but about your work in general. And I said, over the past 20 years, no one has done a more thorough job of exploring, discovering, and explaining the relationship between creativity and leadership. In this narrative, Larry Robertson challenges leaders to embrace uncertainty, foster a culture of adaptability, and address challenges and opportunities that meet short and long-term goals. Robertson brilliantly blends What's proven with what's next. A terrific read for leaders and aspiring leaders of all generations. And I double down on that, and I really do. And again, love your work. I think it's incredibly powerful and valuable for people. I know that, you know, Rebel Leadership is available for pre-order right now. And if I were you, you know, I wouldn't wait. It's a, like I said, it's a great read and you'll order it today, and before you know it, it'll be, you know, arriving either on your Kindle, I would imagine, or your front door. And that would just be great. But, you know, Larry, you want to tell us a little more? Just because I want our listeners to be really clear about where they can learn more about you, more about your work, and kind of take it from there. Sure. I—

first of all, I'm I'm enormously appreciative of both you and Randy for your friendship, for your, your good advice, and for this opportunity, and for the support you've been giving me. So I just thank you for that. You know, it's really nice when you don't just get people to back you up, but they're people that you respect and that you feel like you have a good connection with. So thank you for that. In terms of where you can learn more about not just Rebel Leadership, but everything I'm doing and how I come at things, I think the best place is my website, lrspeaks.com. So the L and the R for Larry Robertson, and the speaks are speaking in different ways, in writing, in person, with clients, and so on. So lrspeaks.com. What you find there is not only information about the new book, there's press kit, there are reviews by people. You'll find that for the other two books as well. You'll find links to my columns in Inc. magazine and the Creativity Post and elsewhere in there. More than 100 different short bites of how I think and how I come at things. So that's one reason I always point to that. And then you can also see videos and further information. So there's a lot there, but it's digestible. I think that's the best place to go. So thank you for letting me share that. Oh yeah.

Before we say goodbye, I've got to give a shout out to your Instagram follow. If you don't follow Larry on Instagram, you should. So I got to ask you about the photographs because He posts some really unique photographs, and it's been a long time since I've seen one that I didn't like. So I want to know more about that.

Oh my God, I'm so glad somebody finally asked that, and I'm not the least bit surprised it's you, Randy. So, um, thank you. I started my Instagram account when I released the last book, so it was related to creativity. One of the questions I was constantly asked was all these things you write about in creativity, these patterns about how you can see it the right way, how you can actually get going, how you can materialize the value that everybody believes is in creativity was, you know, what do you do? How are you incorporating those things into your everyday? So my Instagram account is called Photos Finished. It's under my name, but it's called Photos Finished. And so what I do is I post a photo and a little tagline, a little idiom, a little something to go with it that doesn't say everything about the photo but kind of gives you entry into it. So the photos are my way of looking around at the world and constantly trying to apply a creative eye no matter where I go. They're all my photos, and as Randy pointed out, they're all distinct. Then I'm forcing myself to go a step further, which is to say, okay, well, what do those photos mean to me? What do they say to me, and what could they say to somebody else? But how do I leave that opportunity open for other people? So how do I make it a gift rather than just come see what I've taken pictures of and what I say about it? It's a super fun account. It's something I look forward to, which I can't say about, you know, everything you do to maintain your business or, or to be out there in the public. And it's visual. And I think just about everybody can relate to something visual. The funnest part about it, Randy, is that people send messages back to me with alternate titles or comments that they would put with it. So I know that they're getting into it too, and I'm glad you are.

Yeah, it's a, it's a great follow. So we'll put links to all of, uh, all of Larry's social media stuff in the show notes as well. You can go to the website, L-E-O-B-O-T-T-A-R-Y, leobottari.com. The company is Peer Innovation. He's Leo Bottari. He's Larry Robertson. He's been our guest today. It's been great. And I'm going to give you the last words, Leo.

Well, I could tell you, as you know, we didn't even scratch the surface, um, to talking about this book. I will say that. And, um, you know, I know that, um, uh, it comes out in April, I believe. Do you have a date on that, or is it just the month?

Yeah, it actually comes out June 1st. So, okay, so if you pre-order, you— it should arrive about June 1st. It's like giving yourself a gift now and getting one then.

And it's like a free book by the time you get it. Exactly, exactly. And so thank you for clarifying that on June 1st. But yeah, I would just obviously highly encourage everyone to have a read. And, you know, and by the way, in the meantime, if you haven't read Larry's two books and you want to get prepped for it, that'll be great. It's, you know, it's kind of like Lord of the Rings, you know, except it'll be shorter.

You know, we can only hope there'll be movie versions.

All right. Hey, thanks so much for joining us today. And by the way, you know, if you're up for it, I think it would be terrific as we get closer to release, and let's have you back on and we'll take a, you know, a deeper dive into some of the things we hadn't got a chance to talk about today. So let's think about that.

So I would just love that.

Thank you. Thank you.

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