Straddling the Worlds of Front and Back of House | Curtis Bateman | 516

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Curtis Bateman. He is currently Franklin Covey's VP of International Direct Offices. He's got over 25 years experience in the training industry. He's an internationally recognized presenter. Content developer, change consultant, business leader, and coach. His passion for enabling organizations at change resulted in the co-creation of transformative industry-leading solutions, including Change Element, Leaders in Change, Managing Millennials, and Millennials at Work. So before we could talk more about his CV, let's just talk to Curtis. That would be more fun. So welcome, Curtis. How are you today?

I'm doing really well, Peter Winick. It's nice to be with you.

So I wanna take this in a little bit of a different direction for a moment. So you are one of the few folks from a thought leadership business perspective that have been sort of on both sides of the house, what I call sort of back of the house and front of the house. So Stephen Marr is one of the probably most well-known, but it's an unusual transition, right? Usually, and, and I'm again speaking in a general term, people are either back of the house, right? Where they are developing programs, selling programs, marketing programs, delivering programs, etc., or they're more the face of the brand, the creator of the thought leadership, etc. Tell me a little bit how you, you sort of straddle both worlds, because it's a, it's a rare thing.

Well, first of all, I love straddling both worlds, and I think it's important because it increases relevance, right? You, you actually get to practice what you preach, and then you get to talk about things that are working. So The way I balance it is I invest a lot of time and passion in it, and I've been working on— right, there's no hiding that.

Oh, there's that.

Yeah, it takes a lot of time and effort to do it. You know, developing the training programs, writing the book is easily an extra 20 hours a week for years on top of doing regular work. And I think that's important, right?

A lot of young people— but let's just stop there for a minute. 20 hours a week on top of regular work, and I'm assuming your regular work isn't 20 No, no, no.

It's a lot of commitment. But I think that's just the reality of if you're trying to do both sides of it, right? To do the backend work and to do thought leadership, to write and to create. You gotta invest your time.

So stay there for a minute because I think that's a critical point. Not only is it more work, but it's different work. Like when you are in—

Very different work.

Business mode and you're writing proposals and serving clients and you know, that's different. And you can do things in fits and starts. Got a half hour, you'd like to pick up this. You can't just schedule, you know, 2 to 2:20 on Tuesday, come up with breakthrough idea, right? Like, how does— it's a totally different—

that's right, if you will.

That's right.

And it probably elongates it because I'm doing both in terms of writing.

Sure.

One of the things I found that really helped is I had a couple of brain buddies or thought partners that, that would really help me get into that space, working with co-authors or writers that help to make sure the writing is good quality. That helps you once you get into that space because you're asking them to commit time. So it's 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours, or it's an evening call for several hours, and it allows you to get into that space. But if you try and sneak in, you know, 20 minutes here and 20 minutes there, you don't get very far unless there's a very specific task you're trying to accomplish.

Well, and I, and I want to expand on the concept of, you know, brain buddies, thought partners, etc. Most people think that writing, being a thought leader, has to be a solo sport. Typical vision of an author is Hemingway sitting there with a pipe, probably a couple bottles of scotch or whatever, pounding away at the keyboard. And there are plenty of people where that's how they roll, they're introverts, et cetera, et cetera. But I find more and more that it's a bit of a— everybody's got their own personal buddy list of brain buddies to do it collaboratively. One is it holds you accountable, but it also sharpens your tools. Tell me how that works for you.

Yeah, this was a new discovery for me with this, and it was pretty special actually. So I had my co-authors, but then there was this other team we assembled that I was really clear on what, what's the arc of the book and the message. I'd been doing enough work for 20 years to, to know what we were trying to convey. But how you do that in an engaging way and with the stories is where I brought these other people in. So we would be on calls and say, "We need a story that illustrates this." Well, there's a couple of researchers that go help find stories like that. Or, "We need a draft of this." And, and I would spend 20, 30 minutes talking that through, and one of the writers would go write it up, and then we would review it and talk about it and debate it amongst the co-authors. And in all candor, we rewrote the book. We wrote it 3 full times before we felt like it was publish-worthy because it just required that much effort to really make sure the message was clear, it conveyed the experience. And all of those thought partners, researchers, I would never want to hide them in the background. They were remarkable and such an important part of the work we did.

So let me flip it because you're, again, one of the, the rare folks that has that business savvy, the business acumen, specifically in the thought leadership space. How does that impact what you're creating as a thought leader and how? And what I mean by that is oftentimes, and, and it's, it's a little bit sad, I see thought leaders come up with some amazing, amazing, beautiful models and great stuff, et cetera, but they've never pressure tested it in the marketplace. Yeah. And it's really good and it's really solid. But is it really solving a problem that anyone cares about? And the answer is no. So they've done a great job of solving something that nobody's really staying up late worrying about. How does, how does your sense of, you know, having your nose in the marketplace every day impact what you're creating and developing as a thought leader?

Yeah. You know, early on when I first started on this journey of working on change, I was in my own little boutique shop and we joined Franklin Covey part of the way through. So in my own boutique business, It was create it, go out and pressure test it, talk to a CEO. So there was this constant cycle of feedback and it was with large companies, it was with global companies, it was with military, nonprofit. It got tested everywhere. And I'll tell you what, there's something that really sharpens the mind when you're, you're building it and then the next day you're out teaching it and you get feedback. It's got to work.

And well, for me, it doesn't.

Or if you've got to change, yeah, then you've made minimal—

you know, you might have spent a week or two putting together something and you put it out there and it's, you know, crickets. It doesn't work. It's not relevant, whatever. Yeah. I would say, wow, thank God for that. Because if you put, if you put in 2 years worth of work for a book and it landed like a thud, you know, that's right, that would be far more depressing or less of a good use of resources. So I always think that And I don't know if everybody thinks this way that thought leadership is really a series of experiments. And then the market will tell you, particularly social media, whatever, really quickly, hey, that's a good idea. And hey, Curtis, not so good. Yeah.

So for us, the underlying framework was pressure tested over years. And then the book we pressure tested as well. The first chapter is a parable. We went out and had 30 people read the parable and tell us what they liked and didn't like. And we completely reworked it. And with the rest of the book, we had other experts on change, people from the military, people from corporate life, read it and tell us what was good and bad. I mean, it gets your attention because they'll tell you, but that's good. We want it to work, right? If it doesn't work, I don't want to spend a moment on it. So let's make sure that—

that sounds good, but in practice, oftentimes, and I understand it, when someone tells a thought leader, "Mm, don't really like that," thing you put in front of me, Curtis. It's hard to separate that from saying, Curtis, I don't think you're that smart. Right? Because two different things, right? Like, how do you separate the ego from, you know what, that was an idea I had. Maybe it wasn't my best idea. It doesn't resonate, whatever. Move on to the next one. There's a better one there. Because I think, you know, the only way to respond to that is with gratitude to say, okay, that's cool. Let me go work on something else that's going to resonate.

Well, you either have to develop that ability to take the input And if you can't get to that point, you probably shouldn't be doing it because you need feedback for it to be great. And I mean, it's not always easy, right? There were times when people said, this doesn't work. And I'm thinking, wait a minute, I've used it, it works. And so then the question is, is it how I'm writing about it or is it they don't agree with the way the idea works? And you have to sift through all that and figure it out and then retest. But yeah, you gotta put on some thick skin and get ready for the feedback.

Yeah, yeah. If you're enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. .com/podcast. So I want to touch on a little bit, we've been spending a lot of time talking about sort of creating the thought leadership, teams, being market savvy, whatever. Flip to the business side. Give me, I mean, you're in a really great position in that, A, you had a boutique firm, you had an exit. You exited to Covey, clearly one of the greatest firms in leadership development, probably in our lifetimes, right?

Yep.

I wanna take it from the having your own firm, 'cause there are a lot of boutique consultancies out there that, that, you know, they're ba— you know, based on the IP of one person, two people, et cetera. What are the things they need to have in place to even be considered as an acquisition target? 'Cause I think people have a, not a, a true sense of what it might look like.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's a great question. And there's, there are, there are a lot of answers. Let me tell you my story, which is only one example. Because for some it's like revenue, some it's client acquisition, some—

yeah, yeah, that's it.

But for us, it was 3 things that showed up as being relevant for Covey to look at us. Number 1, we had some content, the change content, that was principle-based, which matched the style of content Covey likes, right? It wasn't just skills training, it was actually foundational, and there was, there was a set of principles underlying it. That are true in every circumstance.

So that was really principles, because that— I mean, right, think about that, obviously lines up to the company that started 7 Habits, right?

That's right, that's right.

Yeah.

And so if we didn't have that, we would have never been a Covey candidate, right?

Okay.

Um, a second thing we had was we had a Fortune 50 client that they didn't have on their list of clients. So we're like, oh, that's good. Um, and that helped a lot, right? It was helpful to have a Fortune 50 client that they had never really found a foothold in.

But unpack that because now they're looking at, okay, so if Curtis and Co has client X and they're selling them chain stuff that they like, wow, we could 10x that client because we've got all this other stuff.

That's right.

Because I think that's important because clients, there's a self-selection with clients. You know, this is sort of the before the algorithm. People that like Covey like principle-based content. Curtis has principle-based content. Therefore, you've already got the beachhead there. So I think that's important.

Yeah, it was a big, big idea. Um, and you're right, you don't want to overlook that because the value of a client that's that large and significant— tremendous opportunity.

Yep.

Um, the third thing was there were three of us that had a significant amount of industry experience that they wanted to bring into the business because they saw us as capable of making a contribution inside the organization.

Well, let's do just a quick— to keep people— so you've got solid IP.

Yeah.

Alignment on principles, client, and then they're buying talent.

Talent, right?

So it's also an acquisition of talent, right?

Yep, that's right. That's exactly right. And 3 of us moved over, and it was brilliant, right? It was brilliant for 2 of us, really thrived. One of us didn't, but that's, I think, normal in an acquisition. It's not always 100%.

Yeah, stay there for a minute on the talent. Oftentimes there's talent on a timer, right? You're going to acquire the talent and everybody knows without saying it out loud, maybe, okay, this will be 24 months to do the transition, whatever. But it depends on where that talent is. That talent might be someone that's just designed to be more of a solo. They might be later in their career and this is the sunset. Or, and in your case, I would say, I don't know if I would say it's unusual, but it may not be typical. That you're making a transition from an entrepreneur to an employee that is entrepreneurial, which is different.

That's right. In, in a publicly traded company, which was a big shift. I, I said to my wife, I said, we're gonna try it for 2 years because I came out of VC-backed, PE-backed. Yeah. Really entrepreneurial. And I thought, can I do this? And I've had to be really clear to define what success looks like because it's very, very different inside a large public company.

So yeah, absolutely.

That is an interesting— and you're exactly right. One was way too entrepreneurial and transitioned out quickly. The other really had a really nice run as a leader for about 8 years, and then I'm still here, right? So, and I think that's normal with talent acquisition, which is why the other pieces had to be in place, Peter, to make it viable long term. But that's where we land. It's been great.

That's great. And I think the other thing is when you are an entrepreneur, smaller business, et cetera, the resources, the reach, the breadth that a larger organization brings to you is kind of mind-blowing, right? Like in terms of how there's people that just do X, social media, there's so many things that you have to do. And by definition, at best, you're going to do them at a mediocre level because you're probably not a social media guru or whatever.

That's right.

Yeah. How did you make that adjustment?

Well, it was needed. Part of my issue was I saw the potential for our content and knew that it was relevant. We had done work all over the world with our content in our boutique firm. So we knew it played well, it worked, it made a difference, and we needed a louder microphone to get to the world at large. And we really believed our content could make a difference.

Yeah.

So it seemed like a natural progression for us to get it onto a bigger stage. And so I welcomed it. I thought it was, I thought it was exciting to have all this other expertise that the company could bring. What you give up though, if you're an entrepreneur thinking about this, you give up being involved in everything.

Yeah.

You don't get to touch everything. So that means you're trusting others and it doesn't always come out the way you would say it and you have to be okay as long as it's not incorrect with others doing it and saying it in their way. And that's where that specialization starts to give you some leverage or amplification. Yeah.

Yeah. I, I, I think that's right. The last thing I wanna comment on, and we didn't even touch on it, but I think it's important, is that your IP was not only principle-based, but it's method model framework-based. And what I would say not, and I don't mean this in the wrong way, personality-based. And what I mean by that is lots of thought leaders It's really selling charisma or energy or so, wow, that person's off the charts and it's not replicatable. And when you have models, methods, framework, systems, et cetera, that are baked into your intellectual property, not that Curtis becomes irrelevant, but you're not the only— you're the creator of it. There's something extra special when I get to experience you delivering it.

That's right.

It is replicatable. And I think that's the key piece because a Covey or any other organization doing an acquisition, is not looking to acquire a personality. They're looking to acquire scalable solutions to embed into their large organization, their clients.

That's a great insight. And not everybody wants that, right? Some people want that brand built around themselves. For me, yeah, it came back to personal mission around helping every individual that the content or that I touch to be better off, to be more capable. And it was less about me and more about the delivering on, you know, my end in mind or my mission to help other people. And it's thrilling to watch somebody else that I've never met, but that's been trained at Franklin Covey stand up and use the content. And I think, you know what, they're 90% on point and it's making a difference for others.

Which is pretty cool, right? When you're seeing someone that you didn't meet, you didn't personally train, you didn't personally mentor, deliver the stuff that you created and you're like, that's pretty good.

I love it. I think that makes me as excited as anything else, right? I saw a social media post for somebody in like Colombia and I saw them teaching and I'm like, that's it, you got it. And it's just so fun to see.

Very cool. Well, this has been great. I appreciate your time and sharing your story and lots of insights that I think are important relative to, to things that people should be thinking about when They're either putting thought leadership out there or thinking about growing and scaling and potentially an exit down the road because they're important things to think about. Appreciate your time, Curtis. Thank you so much today.

You bet. Nice to talk with you. Thanks.

To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at thoughtleadershipleverage.com. To reach me directly, feel free to email me at peter@thoughtleadershipleverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.