Leadership For Entrepreneurs: A Proven Way To Level Up Results Without Corporate Fluff

It really begins with a basic premise that leads into the five laws. And that premise is that shifting your focus. And I think this is really where it all begins, shifting your focus from getting to giving. Now when we say giving in this context, we simply mean constantly and consistently providing immense value to others. Understanding that doing so is not only a more fulfilling way of conducting business, and it's the most financially profitable way as well. And not for any kind of way out there. Woo woo. Magical, mystical type of reasons. Oh, just give and good things will happen. It's actually much more rational, much more logical than that.

I truly am excited to talk with you for a few reasons. It's not just that the principles are sound, it's that you and John David Mann found a way to get people to reframe, which is very difficult. Changing our mindset like you guys almost entice people to change how they think about things. And so I just thought we start with just talking about the five laws and what are those? Because I don't think people can hear them enough.

It really begins with a basic premise that leads into the five laws. And that premise is that shifting your focus. And I think this is really where it all begins, shifting your focus from getting to giving. Now when we say giving in this context, we simply mean constantly and consistently providing immense value to others. Understanding that doing so is not only a more fulfilling way of conducting business, it's the most financially profitable way as well. And not for any kind of way out there. Woo woo. Magical, mystical type of reasons. Just give and good things will happen. It's actually much more rational, much more logical than that. When you are that person, and we often talk about it in terms of entrepreneurship and sales. But the same with leadership. When you are that person who can take your focus off yourself and place it on serving others right, discovering their needs, their wants, their desires. When making it not about you, but about helping them overcome their challenges and problems. When you can take your focus off yourself and make it all about moving them closer to happiness. People feel good about you, they feel great about. They want to be in your world, they want to be in relationship with you, they want to get to know you better, they like you, they trust you, they want to tell the world about you, be your personal walking ambassador. And as someone maybe in your organization, they want to follow you, they want to buy into your mission because you've created that context and that's really where it all begins. And the five laws, the laws of value, compensation, influence authenticity and receptivity. The Law of Value says your true worth in the business sense, of course, your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment. Now, again, we're talking about it first from an entrepreneurial or sales vantage point, and it sounds almost counterintuitive. Give more value than you take in payment. How do I do that and survive in my business? It sounds like a recipe for bankruptcy until we understand the difference between price and value. Because while price is a dollar figure, a dollar amount, it's finite. It simply is what it is. Value can be defined as the relative worth or desirability of a thing, of something to the end user or beholder. In other words, what is it about this thing, this product, service concept idea, what have you, that brings so much worth to another human being that they will willingly exchange their money for this and be glad they did while you make a healthy profit? Now, in the story we talk about Ernesto Eafrate's restaurant, and it's a very high end restaurant and it can be a hefty investment, right, to eat there. So while you check, might be $100 or more, what are you receiving in value, right, from his staff, from the. And from the. So let's just say from the moment you walk in there and you see the two people open the door for you and you're greeted by the host who walks you over to the maitre d Sal, who eloquently takes you over to your table and introduces you to the team of waiters who are there to serve you and who have just a wonderful way about them knowing when to be there when you need them, but otherwise leave you alone to dine. The food is presented wonderfully and tastes great, the ambiance is terrific. And when you're through and they escort you out and you come in, it may have cost you $150, $200 to eat there, but you feel like a million bucks. You got much more in value than what you paid. Meanwhile, of course, Ernesto, the owner, did very well. He made a very healthy profit because his cost of goods, sold, his staff, his keeping the restaurant open, obviously cost a lot less than what he charges. And of course, the waitstaff who gave their time and energy, but received nice tip as well as what they paid. So everybody wins. And so in that when you, when your focus is on providing so much immense, immense value, right, then everyone, both the buyer and the seller, come away better off afterwards than they were before, right? And that's really what the law of value is all about. Now As a leader. Right. What kind of environment do you create for those in your team that allows them to work in your organization and feel so great about it? And whether it's that sense of autonomy, that ability to grow and to learn and to be equipped quit for success, even more success down the line. The relationships that are built, the feeling they get of being something, part of being something bigger than themselves, as well as what they're paid in terms of salary and other benefits at all, at all. You obviously you can't pay them more in cash value than what you receive in use value, but you can give them so much in experience value in terms of the overall experience of working there that they're receiving much more than what they're giving, while you're also receiving much more than what you're giving. And so as the leader, your job in this case is to give much more in value than what you're receiving from them, while of course you're still receiving a whole lot. So that's just the law of value.

I think that it's easy for people, too easy today to go, ah, yeah, it sounds good. I've seen this in the real world so many times down to the Iafrate story.

There's.

I don't know if you've ever made it over to Galveston, Texas, but shout out to my people from Galveston, Texas, there's actually a restaurant very well known called Gaido's there. Shout out. Gaidos started as a hamburger stand and everything you describe at Efrates is exactly like that growing up. And they've continued the tradition. They just made you feel like you're at home. Fantastic food. So not just that micro story is real, but what I've seen with leaders. And the leaders I've certainly worked for and the leaders I see be most successful even when they're giving feedback that's constructive feedback versus saying atta boy, it's an act of giving. Hey, I want. I know that you're committed to improving here. Here's this feedback I need to give you. I know that we're all committed to getting the company from X to Y. Here's what everybody needs to understand. Let's talk about where we are and what needs to happen versus When I was coming up, there was very much that kind of shark, shark. You just gotta go. And I always thought, I know that there's a better way and what I've seen play out. And you can look at some of the entrepreneurs I've interviewed here. They're very much go givers they're very much go givers in how they do business development. I can think of two cases that went from zero to tens and even hundreds of millions in record time because they were go givers as salespeople. And then their leadership style is the same.

I think you just beautifully summed that up. And I think it's naive to think that a customer is going to buy from you when your interest is simply in the money you're getting as opposed to the value you're providing. And I think it's naive for a leader to think that someone is going to give their all for you and to the company when you're not treating them with great respect and so forth. And so it's always interesting when someone says, oh yeah, all that stuff, that touchy feely stuff is all. And there's nothing touchy feely about it. Okay, this is, this is real world proven that those companies. I think of Bob Chapman from Barry Wehmiller, a manufacturing company, he wrote a wonderful book called Everybody Matters. And he tells a story that, oh, what a great book. And when he first started, it's a huge manufacturing firm that he took over. And you think of manufacturing basically commodities, right? How does the human touch, how does that run? Well, he said when he first was running it, he did things, he came out of school and was taught that same way, the command and control, the type of leadership. And he said they had some good times, but they also had bad times. And it was. You never knew as well. They certainly didn't have a loyal team. It was people who came to work, they did what they had to do and what have you. But once he got his epiphany about what leadership really meant and he began to value people as people and he realized that you build people and that people build companies. Once he. And I think I first heard that from Zig Ziglar, that's not an original, I don't want to take credit for that. But. But that's basically what Mr. Chapman, that was what he came to realize. He started focusing on his people in creating that magnificent environment. And there was nothing soft about it or touchy feely about it. It was just a wonderful, fantastic culture that he began to build his company. Wow. Just went through the roof. And Even during the 2008 financial crisis where people looked around and said, okay, now let's see if he's going to really walk the walk instead of just talk the talk, and he did. And they came back and they bounced back stronger than ever. And you see this with high functioning companies all over. So yeah, I think it's been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. And again to think that it could operate sustainably, successfully in other any other way, I just think is counterproductive.

The command and control kind of archetype is military. Right. But the veterans I've met and I'm we've spent time been fortunate to spend time with former Special Forces officers. They're the most personable go giving people and epitomize go giving even after they're getting out. They're doing just a mind blowing amount of things for the community and everything else. But through some work with a nonprofit I did, I got to have just a quick zoom meet. Hi, nice to meet you. With General Stanley McChrystal who's former head of Joint Special Forces Command. Right. Over all of it. And what was fascinating and humbling and what struck me most about that call, we're on Zoom. And he would stop and if it was you, he'd say Bob, it's such a pleasure to meet you and something just to acknowledge you. And it was you felt seen and heard and not that I'm usually evaluating that. I was just like wait, what? I didn't expect that. And then I watched him do it. It was a Q and A session. So shout out to Warrior Rising. Fantastic non profit for everybody to check out. They help veterans start businesses. General McChrystal came on to do a Q and A session. And the range of people you had, people that like had knew nothing about business, asking questions where I remember thinking that was left field. And yet he would say again Scott, first of all, thank you for your service. I really appreciate you. And not an. I mean it just you felt it. Right. And then no matter how mundane or potentially silly the question was, he would talk the person through the answer. And this is one of, I think one of the greatest leaders like I ever got to be around. But it was shocking, Bob. It was shocking. Like I really reexamined myself heavily. When do I ever deserve to not give it that level a leader if this guy's going to do that?

Yeah, exactly. What a great example of leadership. The it it brings up that people skills is such a differentiator. You can get to a certain level of success through raw talent, through hard work, through showing up, through resiliency. Absolutely. And those are very product knowledge. Those are very important. Okay. And you can get to a certain very legitimate level of success through those. But in order to break through to that next level. Okay. That stratospheric level, if you will. You've got to have people skills and they've got to come from the heart. They've got to be sincere. You just can't fake that for too long. You can fake it for a little bit. Okay. But not sustainably. And he has those kinds of people skills. And, and I'm sure he worked at it because it's something that some people come by them pretty natural. But naturally. But I think it's a whole.

Yeah, there's the mental shifts and everybody I've, everybody that I admire that I've read or gotten an interview all talk about, I had to learn this. There, there might be some basic dealing with people skills that some evolve earlier. But shifting into that place of I'm now, I'm. Now I'm leading and it's incumbent on me to make decisions for a larger group of people than myself. You know, I find the best leaders are humbled by that and take it very seriously and have to work at.

Yeah, yeah. And their focus has to be outward. You, you can be. You know, my feeling is we should be internally motivated but outwardly focused. And when we talk about influence and the great leadership, speaker and author John Maxwell said, leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less. So what is influence? Influence can be defined as the ability to move a person or persons to a desired action, usually within the context of a specific goal. By definition, that's influence. But I would say, and John David Mann coined this John Mike, my co author of the Go Giver series and I. He's such a wordsmith. It's amazing, wonderful. But he said, but the substance of influence is different than the definition. The substance of influence is pull. Pull as opposed to push. We've all heard, can you push a rope? And the answer is not very far. At least not very fast or very effectively. Which is why great leaders, great influencers, they don't push. They don't push their will on others. They don't push their ideas on others. They're not push. He. Instead, they pull. What is pull? It's an attraction. Great leaders, great influencers attract people first to themselves and only then to their ideas. How do they do that? Again, it's through that outward focus. It's asking yourself questions such as, how does what I want this other person to do, how does it align with their goals?

Yes, a hundred percent. We do a lot of work with founders and CEOs that have gotten themselves to that ceiling where you can only drive people so far. And the transition to remove that Leader as the bottleneck is you've got to start giving away like how you think of things, how you empower others to, to raise the business up and not hold on to those things tightly. It becomes an act of giving. And I don't feel like when I say that it makes it again sound too, but really is you're not going to do everything for the business anymore. You're going to build a team and you're going to build a business and set people up to raise that up because that's aligned with their goals.

Yeah, exactly. And we were talking about command and control earlier. Stephen m R. Covey, Dr. Stephen Covey's son, Stephen Mr. Covey, just brilliant leadership person. He wrote the Speed of Trust, which is one of my all time favorite books. But his newest book is called Trust and Inspire.

I remember check out he talks about.

Yeah, and he talks in this book, you know, about moving in the subject of how truly great leaders unleash greatness in others. And his whole thing in here, you know, the theme throughout is moving from that command and control to that trust and inspire. You cannot do both. It is one or the other. You are either leading through command and control or through trust.

And yeah, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. You literally. We have a video coming out today where we talk about how you'll cap your ability to take yourself out of the operations and always have to jump back in unless you find the framework mentally and with your actions to create the trust. Yeah. What do you see hold people back in particular in leadership positions from the go giver. Just the go giver by itself. If you guys hadn't written another book, you'd have gotten the good job badge on authorship. But I felt like the go get the go giver leader took it to another, took it to another level. What do you see hold people back making that mental transition.

In a sense it, it always comes down to belief systems, right? Those unconscious beliefs that we grow up with and that we, and that we see from everywhere around us. And I remember once when I was, I, I think I was 19 or something and I was working at a convenience store. It wasn't a 7 11, but it was one of those we had near where I was growing up. And I remember the manager, nicest, sweetest guy, right? Just a great guy. And I remember we were talking about. And he asked me what I wanted to, to do when I got older and I talked about business and this and that and he goes, just remember if you're going to get to a. A big position in business. You've got to be ruthless and you've got to take no prisoners. And you've got. I'm thinking, really, where did this just happen? This is like the nice guy in the world. He's the store manager. And it's like all of a sudden he's telling me that I have to be basically Junior Ewing. That's my. A lot of people won't even recognize.

I live in Dallas. I know. Junior.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I'm thinking no. Is that really. Actually, I don't even think I said no. I thought, is that really true? Do you really? Because what did I know? And but you think how dangerous that is really? Because when you watch tv, when you watch movies, when the stories that come out about people that's reported, you would think that people who are captains of industry or leader, top leaders, they're horrible and terrible and ruthless and. Right. And there are some, of course, because the world's big and there's different people. But. So I think it goes back to that, though, because somebody comes up and that is there. Or somebody who was leading them was like. And yet they still attained a certain large level of success and they think that's how I have to be. That's just how the world is.

I think that's exactly what happens.

Yeah. Now you think logically, with all the teachings out there, the books from people who've been fantastic, huge leaders who have proven beyond a doubt that's not the case. You'd think it would. That people would grab onto that, but no. Beliefs die hard. And so I think that's what it is. We still hear. I don't know if this is true or not, because you know what they say about statistics, but you hear a lot that 75% of corporate employees feel disengaged in their work. Again, I don't know if that's true or not, but I. It could be because you talk to enough and you hear.

Right. And I talk. I get to speak with a lot of employees and always have through the years, just because of the roles I've been in and I've experientially, I've seen nothing to refute that. And when.

Yeah, anyways, no, and you say it, but I agree with you and you say, but why should that be? Because the leaders, even if for no other reason than just for them to succeed themselves, would think if that's the case and we know there's a better way to do it, and you'd think that they would want to buy into that. But again, unconscious belief systems, it's that what I call unconscious operating systems, they die.

I think there's another element too, because I experienced all those things coming up, especially when I first moved to Dallas, and it was crazy cutthroat. And I worked for some people who were cutthroat that did very well. And I was just like, is this the only way things work? I think when you swing to the opposite side of that sometimes, which is I'm gonna just do everything. So opposite, it's easy to fall into. The opposite of that is just being nice to everybody and having everybody like me. And one thing that's helped me to understand is the game isn't to get people to like you. The game is to give them value. Ah, yes. And if my ego needs to be liked, that's a taking, not a giving.

Boy, that's beautifully stated. That really it's per.

It's. What's the word? It's insidious, though, because you don't realize that's what's going on. And so when we coach leaders, a lot of times that's what's at the bottom of it. And that was my own reflection. Okay, wait a second. I have to be comfortable whether this person likes me or not. I have a job to do, and if I'm not willing to do that job, why is it. And so you can't. You can't have both.

But yeah. And being a go giver or go giver leader, if you will, does not mean being a pushover. You know, it doesn't mean being self sacrificial. It doesn't mean being ineffective. And it's not right. It just means you're doing things in a certain way. You know that realistically speaking, your job as the leader is really as the head server is to create an environment where the people in your organization can thrive.

Yeah. And now that I'm thinking about it, Pindar. Was that what Pindar had his rules for? If you're going to engage with him, these are the rules of engagement. If you don't do the rules, like, I can't help you.

That's right.

So that's awesome. I know we're coming up on time. This has been wonderful. It's such a delight. Is there anything you'd like to share in particular before we log off?

No. I'm so grateful for people like you who not only online, you're so very encouraging and always have great, edifying words to say about everybody. And that's such a joy to see, but I just love the work you're doing in leadership because I think that to the degree the word continues to get out there, that's the degree it becomes normalized.