The Biggest Culture Killer Leaders Don’t Talk About

Welcome to the Speakeasy Mastermind Podcast, where the real conversations happen behind closed doors with the boldest entrepreneurs, creators, and growth minds in the game. No fluff, no filters, just the raw strategies, personal stories, and mental models that move the needle. I'm Eric Berman. Now let's get into it. Welcome to Inside the Speakeasy Mastermind Podcast. In today's episode, I am so fired up to bring a very good friend and a mentor of mine named Ryan Berman. Who is the founder of Courageous. In this episode, you're going to get a sneak peek and learn a lot about some of the key things he's actually getting hired to go speak at huge organizations like Kellogg's, Procter Gamble, Bausch Lomb. Why is Ryan getting hired everywhere to teach them these amazing things that he knows on courageousness, how to get them to have more courage, known as the corporate fear fighter. And he's going to show you some of the nuggets that he teaches others. My brother from another mother. That was good. Without the, uh, same last name, but no relation. My good friend, Ryan Berman. Ryan, I'm so stoked to have you. Welcome.

It's so funny because only in your world, and let's call this what it is, this is your world. I'm just happy to be a part of it. But any single time I meet anybody in Speakeasy, they're like, oh, are you related? And then you're like, no, like nowhere else. Nobody asked me that question. Every Speakeasy Mastermind Mastermind, I was like, Oh, are you Eric's brother? Are you his cousin? Are you related? You know, like, you know, it's good.

Other brothers, you would have been a great brother. I think we would have gone along well.

I think we still do get along well, right? The question is, I guess I'm little brother, right?

You'd be little. Oh, come on. You're killing me here. Yeah, I guess.

Well, you're the middle brother because you have an older brother.

It'd be fun. We probably would have definitely fought a little bit, but we'd be cool now. We'd be good. Well, I'm stoked because more than anything, I've gotten to know you for shit. You and I know each other for about almost 15 plus years. Out when you came to San Diego from New York, and we'll talk about that crazy story. But the theme for everybody listening today, and it's so cool because we're going to take a little bit of a different spin. I think people need to know this. They're not hearing it enough now more than ever. Really, it's the theme around really you and your brand, which is courageous. And we're going to thread that and talk a lot about courageous, what it means, and some of the massive corporations you talk to out there. I mean, just to kind of plant seed, and we'll get into this in a minute. I mean, You're out there on stage, you're getting hired some of the biggest names out there, right? It's Bausch and Lomb, Kraft, Kellogg's, Tropicana, some of the biggest football teams because they all are afraid. They all need to level up their courage more than ever, right? They need to install courage in these companies. Is that correct?

That's, you got it, man. And it's really, I've been on a journey, you know, you know, we all have. And I now say I get paid to tell the truth. And it wasn't that I didn't get paid to tell the truth before. I just, the amount of like lip biting that's going on where people know the right move and are afraid to share it. And that is the real business is we say we're corporate fear fighters. Like what is the largest fear you have in your business, right? And what fear is festering in your business? Is it a personal fear? Like are you in a watch your back culture versus a got your back culture? Is it a fear of decision making? You've got so many choices and you don't know which door to go through. Is it like fear of a lack of relevance or your relevance is slipping? So any place where fear might show up in the organization, what we're trying to help our leaders do is not suppress that fear, but to address it and not be so afraid of it, but like normalize it. And I think that's the beauty, Eric, for us is that because we're seeing every vertical under the sun, we can say confidently like, you're not alone. Like it feels alone, it can be really lonely to be the leader, but you're not alone. Like every company right now is dealing with some, you know, wild amount of fear and it's causing paralysis in some of the companies that we love. So we try to just be their best friend. We do have a process on how to like actually helping them operationalize courage. Yes, the amount of times I've said the only way to install courage in a company is to instill courage in your people. And there's different ways you can go about doing that. And, it makes work really fun. Although, you know, we both have little kids and I love San Diego, but a lot of our business has me on the road. And so it makes me a little sad that I'm, I'm going to hear, Daddy, you were never home. I'm going to hear that. And that hurts. That hurts a little bit.

I'm going to dig a lot into courage. I want to go a little bit back to the beginning because you and I met on the battlefields of being, uh, somehow we've convinced ourselves that maybe it was fun running digital agencies out in San Diego. I think there's been many regrets from time to time, but you know, it's all part of a journey. So you were, I mean, you did some courageous things along the way and looking back in your life and some things you regret, some things you didn't, some big decisions. And then we're going to really dig into what you're seeing in the big corporations in a minute. But starting with, you grew up in the, on the East Coast, right? Washington. And then you went off to New York and then came to San Diego. And tell me about your journey real quick on how you got to where you are today.

Yeah. I mean, I'm a DMV kid. Those who don't know what the heck that means, DC, Maryland, Virginia is called the DMV. Grew up in Maryland. It was an awesome place to grow up because when I was growing up, there was only one real screen and on that screen were three real channels. And when you grow up that close to Washington, D.C., national news, international news was your local news because everyone around you, you know, worked in D.C. or politics or were lawyers or doctors. It was an awesome place to grow up. It was being cultured and knowing what was going on was very much important in our family. But you weren't like scattered like we are now, and there's 18 screens going on and you have a, like a goldfish for attention span. It was a great place to start. And let's see, I went to college in upstate New York, television radio major, and moved to New York City. My first mentors were all the crazy madmen. My first, and it was awesome, honestly, I was at a 700-person agency called Messner, Vetteri, Berger, McNamara, Schmetterer.

It was really like the show, huh? Is it? There's a lot like the show?

Oh, it was, yes, it was a lot like the show. You were terrified to go into your boss's office. It actually forced you to like, already it was a competitive environment, but like it was a top 3, maybe top 4 network on the planet. And here you are as a 22-year-old kid, you realize how lucky you are to start your career there, but you want to make a name for yourself and you want to figure out a way. Like I was like, I am going to stay whatever. I will live here if I have to. Like, that's how committed and competitive I was. And then you collide into all these amazing writers and thinkers on how to like, just tell us a single story. But my first 4 years there, Eric, I remember someone, I came outta school with a portfolio as a writer and the CEO, Ron Berger at the time, looked at my book and was like, we need a writer on our business development team. And I'm like, yes, I'll take it. And it took me 4 years to get into the creative department and I, I sort of describe it like, imagine getting into the college you want, but not getting your major at first. 4 years to work in. And now looking back, that those 4 years taught me business. Ron Berger also used to say, you're not in advertising, you're in creative business. And that always stood with, stuck with me too. I've always seen myself as a creative business guy. I'm not a, I'm not just a creative and I'm not a business guy. It's a being in the creative business businesses was my learning ground. So imagine 4 years in, I'm working my way up on one side of the business, on the management side, and I'm at a roadshow in Arizona for Subway. Okay, this is like a 13-city tour to go see the franchisees and to showcase the latest campaigns. And the creative directors of Subway hear I'm in school at night to be a creative, and they're like, Ryan, client wants to see jingles. We heard you're in night school. Do you want to take a cut at it? You know, and you're like, yeah, I do. And they're like, it's like a Friday. They're like, great. Share what you have on Monday. And I remember like the first one I presented was, it was a gospel because it was about the bread rising. It's rising. Oh yeah. All different types. Right. This is why I don't sing. Right. But they looked at me like I had 10 heads and I ended up presenting 4 or 5. They liked all of them. They realized that I couldn't present the work because I was running the business. So they're like, okay, here's what we're gonna do. You have to run the business. We're gonna collect all of the work from all of the writers and we'll present it that way. The client doesn't need to know. And so I'm in the room as they're presenting my jingles that they can't know I wrote. And like first 4 the client picked were all mine. And you're like, okay, this is going well. I think this is going well. So it took about 6 months of me writing and the client didn't know. And they ended up picking my Subway Jared campaign where Jared finally spoke on camera. And I was on set writing for another client when I got the call that I had been redirected from Toronto to LA to go shoot the campaign. And I was officially a creative and I could turn in my button-downs for t-shirts. And so my first 8 years was like 4 years on one side of the business, 4 years on the creative side. And it was an awesome learning ground. It's like getting your PhD in creative business. It gave me a lot of confidence actually to then I'm like, well, well now what? Let's start to study longer story structure. So, you know, you mentioned the word regret earlier and the amount of times I've said, you know, courage is regret insurance. I do think that's true. My initial plan was to write screenplays and I'm 29 at the time and in my head I have this little quip that I keep telling myself I'd rather entertain 2.2 million people and have 2.2 kids. And I go to, I'm now in night school for longer story structure. I ended up knocking out 3 movie scripts. I think the stories are good, but the dialogue needs work. My best friend and his wife had moved to San Diego after 9/11, and she, my buddy's wife was a strategist. She basically said, hey, why don't you come out here? I'm trying to turn a photography studio into a branding firm. Why don't you help me do that? And the deal was I was gonna live rent-free with them for 3 months, be inspired by the beach, tighten up my scripts and go to LA. Yeah. And I think I was here a week. In the first week we got a huge new business lead from a healthcare technology business. We end up landing the business. The 2 of us end up starting our own with this client, which we're, and we end, it's 4 of us out of a house is how we start. And it was kind of one of those things where it's like, follow the opportunity. Like, oh my gosh, like, how do you say no to this? And so the next 6, 7 years of my life was growing an agency and saying yes way more than we should have because we had to say yes because no one was investing in us.

You're on the hamster wheel now. You don't grow up saying, I want to run an agency. You back into it. You're walking through a story like you said, next thing you know, you're like, you're chasing the—

right? And so I got a cover right now.

Oh shit. Yeah, we could do that.

So we, we got to about 20 folks there. I ended up buying her out. Again, television radio major, had no business in business. I feel like now I've done the business bingo card. Then I merged—

I mean, at this point, I mean, are you frustrated? 'Cause you had this dream of writing scripts and you're like failed on LA thinking it was gonna be a quick journey. Now you're out here, you're like, I don't have time to think about that. I'm doing well and I'm enjoying this new thing.

Yeah, no, I'm so like locked in on like not failing and like, you know, I just, my roommates are like fear and stubbornness at this time.

Yeah.

Right. Like, how am I gonna survive? And oh my gosh, we're actually doing this and this is pretty cool. And we were kids and we had like, and we had a good product. And so we just kept going and we kept our heads down and chopping wood and figuring. But, and I always said to myself, like, you know what, I, LA will be there. Like if there's another time for that, there's another, like, and then I have to do this now. And then you have families that work for you and you wanna like take care of those families and they believe in your mission, they believe in what you're doing. It really wasn't until But I was still grinding, man. I, once we merged with the social media and PR firm and launched IDEA, we took that to about 80 people. To be honest, it was probably a decade of 6 days a week. I will not fail. Where I finally was finally able to like kind of get out of the day job and, you know, really focus on like I hired an executive creative director. I had hired a head of design. And so the calls that I were then getting were more like, hey, biz dev calls, can you help us with this or can you help us with that? And at that point I'm like, well, we're big for San Diego, but who kind of cares? It's like, we're like in tennis no man's land. Like we're not LA, we're not New York. And could we get there? And that's where we had landed on the premise of courageous ideas are the only ones that matter. And the original plan was I was gonna go write this book and it was a devious strategy, right? Interview all these companies that we wanted to work with. This would be the business card and make 'em look good in 3 years. And you hope that some of them are clients. And 2 things happened. One, I mean, I did go on the journey, but the first big insight from sitting with these folks, and I'm talking like Eric Ryan, who's the founder of Method, Steve Wilhite, who's hired by Steve Jobs to run Apple, Loretta Hidalgo, a founding astronaut.

Well, I gotta catch up with this though, 'cause I wanna make sure I catch the story. So you're at the agency and you're thinking, you're running it and you're saying, Let me write a book on courageous as a way to fight. This will get me in the interviews to essentially, it was a way to get new leads for business from the high—

yes. So like, again, like how do we compete with LA and New York on creative ideas? And as I go out and meet all these amazing leaders, John Assaraf being one of them, shout out to John because John gave me his mind and his time and I learned so much from him as well. He's also in the book. The big aha I had was like, wow, yes, I thought I was going in thinking courageous ideas are the only ones that matter. And I kind of came out of that journey going, oh shoot, courageous ideas die without courageous leaders. And without the courageous leader, you have good luck selling the courageous idea. Now, Eric, you know, 'cause you're with me in agency world, like when you're in the Kevin Bacon game and you're 6 degrees away from the actual decision maker, and that's sort of that VP of marketing, and this is not to knock you if you're a VP of marketing, but like that VP of marketing reports into an SVP of marketing, reports into the CMO who reports into this. I felt too far away from the actual decision maker and there was too much fear. And so when I started to look at my own life, moving to New York City, starting my own business, writing a book, how do you do that? I've never done that before. And I actually was like, wow, I never used the word courage to describe the decisions I was making because I was just doing it.

Mm-hmm.

Now, like, then I'm studying and I'm like, wow, it was courageous of me to become an entrepreneur. It was courageous of me at 30 to move 3,000 miles away from my family to California. And it was courageous of me as a 22-year-old to end up in New York City. And then I'm like, how can I write a book about courage and stay if I know in my heart, like, you kind of have to be courageous if you're gonna write the premise on the book. I remember going to my two partners. And at the time it'd be like, so the good news is the book is done and the bad news is I'm firing myself. Like it's time for me to go.

I mean, talk about a courageous move right there. Shit. I mean, you're walking away from income. You know, you got a monthly nut, family.

And at that point I was married and had little kids. And again, I'm not pretending to know. I wasn't pretending to know how it was going to turn out. I just knew in my heart that it was the right move for me. So that was 2017. At that point, I felt really good about the process that was laid out in the book on like, oh wow, we have like the wrong idea of courage. We confuse it with like a reckless move. I think a lot of people confuse it with a resilient move and it's not either of those things. And again, that's, this isn't like Ryan Berman has jumped onto a soapbox. Like this was what I learned from my leadership lab, talking to people like John Assaraf, talking to people like Steve Wilhite, And I didn't know when I launched, so in 20, so I had a 2-year non-compete in 2019, launched Return on Courage, launched Courageous, and I wasn't sure if it was gonna be, I'm like, am I just gonna go keynote and talk about the book? Is it gonna be in another agency? Is it gonna be a consultancy? And gosh, here we are 7, 8 years. I remember the first days just testing material and like Snapchat brought me in early. That was amazing. I did a talk at Logitech. I remember I had a friend who was running travel for Google in Atlanta. I had a keynote in Florida and I'm like, hey, I'm in Florida. Does it make sense for me to come up and share the book? And he didn't ask me. He just put it on the calendar. And the next thing you know, it was like 700 people on the invite from Google.

No way.

Because people could like Zoom in and he's like, oh yeah, you're on at this time on this day. We'd also want to buy 400 books. So like, that was the one for me that I knew was my— you're almost testing and tinkering. And I'm like, that's my 400-level class. Like, if this goes well, we've got something. And I remember the talk. I remember still being nervous. And I remember that it landed. And Google then ended up taking me with them to their clients to talk about how to operationalize courage and how you actually do it where you're not going to kill your company, or do something reckless. And that's when I was like, okay, we've got something here. Let's, let's see where this takes us. And, you know, as you mentioned, now we're working with all these crazy companies.

That's amazing. Okay. So I wanna, I wanna, you know, unravel that a little bit. So first of all, I think there's something brilliant. And again, it's obvious for people, hopefully people get there. Hopefully it's obvious for people listening here. I mean, what you also did is you took a word that is a word everybody wants to feel like they are or become. You almost kind of like you turned it into an adjective and a noun and everything all at once. And then you also put your brand behind it. I mean, we talk about branding, I mean, you're a branding genius, you know, at the end of the day, I mean, if you could be branded as the something guy or gal, you're winning. And you clearly have done that in the world of Courageous. And that, like you just said, I'm just visualizing back that email that went across in Google. It's like, hey, there's a speaker on Courageous. I'm in. Like everybody wants to be more of what you are teaching. So there's a brilliance in that. I know you thought, I know that wasn't just by accident. Yeah.

So there was many people that we both, you know, there's people in there's people in Mastermind that when I first told them this, they're like, you can't sell courage. Like, I don't see, it's not easy enough. It's like, it's too hard to sell. People that we deeply care about that are like, so I don't say that to vilify anybody. I say that because at the end of the day, whatever path you choose, entrepreneur, you're going to get so many nos. You have to have the conviction to believe, you know, again, imagine like at that point, I've come a long way since when we met, right? Like I've come a long way as the rock skips across the pond, right? Like the first skips are very different than this version of me. And so I'm proud of me because I had conviction to go, no, I think there's something here. I have to follow this story more. I can't totally explain why, but something below the neck is telling me to continue to go down this path. And I think anyone that's probably part of this community has said that to themselves, felt that. You're going to be met by so many nos, so many doubters, so many non-believers, which is not other people's faults too. They believe in other stuff too.

Right.

To your point. Yes. Now I hear a lot like, you're just a little bit more, who doesn't want to be more courageous? And like, you know, courageousness is a muscle, right? If you're going to build your courage muscle, and I definitely think there's a connection between, you cannot be courageous when you're cloudy. Like, you know, we talk about in brand, I mean, every business should know their true north. Every business should know their north star. Well, can you see a north star on a cloudy night? No. And so you can't be courageous when you're cloudy. You gotta be clear. And so again, I think that's where we start is like clarity is a rarity. How clear are you? Have you nailed your values? Have you nailed your purpose? It's still thinking through that. And if that, you've deep conviction for that, then you kind of pass go on the Monopoly board to what comes next. And it's like, okay, this is who we are. This is how we wanna show up. You know, even for us, we say we're a courage company.

And that's a good segue cuz I really wanna dig in deep cuz I mean, I get to cheat cuz I know some of the answers to these questions, but you know, I think it's fascinating, you know, what you're teaching. And I remember, you know, there's different levers you and I talked about different stages. You know, you look at a corporation, all right, well we gotta, Stage 1, 2, 3, where you at first? Let's identify that. So can you talk a little bit about the different stages, levers, and then like some of the tips of what you get into a little bit?

So the first 6 months of writing my book was just, could I come up with a better definition of courage? If you look at the dictionary definition of courage, it is the ability to do something that frightens one. Okay. So if you're still here and you're listening, let's agree, what a surprise entrepreneur, you're probably in the 5% of people, maybe if it's even the 1%, you know, that can, feels the pressure and does it anyway. But let's say you grow, let's say you get to 20 people, let's say you get to 50 people. So the science says 95% of us are freeze or fight, 5% of us are fighters. So if you have a company of 100 people, the data says that 95 are not interested in doing something that frightens them. You've got 5 that are like pushing the boulder up the mountain. And the other 95, it's just the way they were wired. It's not, it's just human nature, right?

Good or bad. It just is.

These are just facts, right? So this is the data. So I'm like, wow, the ability to do something that frightens you, who wants to do that, let alone at work. And so I was trying to find a definition with more utility. And so where we landed after 6 months of asking these questions was, well, the first lever is knowledge. The second lever is faith. And the third lever is action. And how often have you known the right move? By the way, the data folks sometimes love this, sometimes hate this because I know, I don't think you can wait for 100% of the answer from the data or you're gonna get passed by a competitor you see or you don't see.

That's right.

So how often have you known something and then you have enough knowledge where you feel it too? And that's the faith piece, right? That's the conviction piece. That's the inner belief piece. And then now you know and now you feel, but how often do you actually do? How often do you actually leap? So it's gotta be, there's gotta be knowledge, there's gotta be faith, and there's gotta be action. And if you remove one of the levers, then it's something else. So knowledge and faith without action is paralysis.

That's right. Yep. Yeah. You know, you could do it. You've got confidence, but you're not doing it. You're just thinking you're not doing it.

You're like, we're like talking about doing it is not doing it. Like it's paralysis. Faith in action without knowledge is a reckless move. So you're leaping, you believe, let's have a little bit of data before we make that call.

I mean, us quickstarts, guilty, you know, just like, all right, let's go. I feel good about it.

Ready, fire, aim, right? The whole—

Ready, fire, aim. Yeah, well, it's easier when you're smaller. When you're a big company too, that's dangerous stuff, yeah.

And then knowledge in action without faith, if you're numb on the inside and you're just going through the motions, you're working on safe. You're working on status quo, right? If you don't feel anything, you're like, just another day. And look, let's call it what it was, Eric. Like, there were times with your last business that you kind of felt, I know you felt like that numbness. You felt like you're right. It's like, that was safe. That was status quo. So if you're not, you actually want that little voice that's like, this is crazy. Oh my gosh, what am I doing? Like, that is this imposter syndrome. You want that little voice because that's just a data point. That there is faith in it. So the way we look at courage is knowledge is the think, faith is the feel, action is the do. And if you have knowledge, faith, and action, you are being courageous. Right? And if I saw that on every brief, I would be very happy. What do we think about this? How does it make us feel? What are we going to do about it? So that's, that's what we do with our clients. Our process is knowledge gathering, faith building, and action taking.

I love it. Okay. That's brilliant. And then once they're, once you find a company, there's different stages you would go through when you teach them. One is just like, you know, where they're at. One is about to create, I think it was about creating a product. One's, so walk me through the 3 different zones sort of you see in the company.

Yeah. So, so there's really 2 ways we work with a client and one's called courageous leadership. So it's unlock the potential of the leader or the team. And then there's change missions, which is we're actually rolling up our sleeves and it's unlock the potential of the business or the brand. And, you know, it's almost, it's the old meet them where they are. Like, so for some of our clients, I don't think I'm breaking any NDAs here. And if I am, well, I'll deal with that in a minute. But like 2 weeks we're with Kohl's. Okay. We're with Kohl's. We're going to, we are hired by the chief people officer. She's amazing. They're going through so much change right now. Like to me, this is just, I would call it an injection of courage. It's a, it's actually, it's inspiring courage. It's like a little drip in. We're just trying to inspire the people. We're almost putting down the Pepto-Bismol coating that courage is possible with her team. Like, that's right. It's a keynote and a workshop. And it's like, your future is safe with change. You're not alone. Here's our definition of courage. How do we want to show up? Right? Like, let's start just to talk about this stuff that we don't talk about. Those, it's courageous conversations.

Are you typically talking to the leadership team or their employees at the staff? And it seems like step one is you gotta get the leadership team on board, like you said earlier.

Both.

Okay.

It depends. So like, for example, New Belgium Brewing is another company we're working with, and it's, we're sitting with the CEO looking at all the ways that they can implement courage and have the conversations or make the decisions or inject different types of ideas inside the business to optimize and maximize the team. Versus Kohl's, it's the chief people officer's top 60 or, you know, 60 leaders on her team. right? And we're engaging in that conversation and they're making that investment in those people. So you've got like workshop versus actual consulting.

Very different.

Then we're working with Caesars Entertainment, specifically Harrah's in town. You know this, we're working with Fire California again, and that's a true courageous change opportunity where we're looking at both, hey, how are we bringing this courageous idea to life and how are we delivering at this at the property level. So I'm kind of back to where we started, where I have my old mentor boss saying, you're not in advertising, you're in creative business. And I think if I'm a business leader, I wish more business leaders understood what creativity could do for the bottom line. And if you look at like how C-suites are put together, you know, CEO, CFO, COO, CIO, C, chief security officer, chief tech officer, I've just rattled off 6 that live on one side of the brain. It's emotion. 80% of decisions are made on emotion. You've got one chief marketing officer who's trying to rebrand as a chief growth officer, which I think is interesting.

Oh yeah.

Right. And then you've got a chief people officer, CHRO officer. So it's like 75% of your C-suite is still on the analytical side when decisions are made with emotion and creativity. So we're trying to get ourselves, hey, as a friend and an ally with that team to remind them that it's still story. It's still, what is the story coming from your lips? How clear is that story coming from your lips? Hey, here's why we're making this decision. Let's IV drip this decision out. And if we're clear, right, we have the knowledge and we're getting people to believe, then we could take action on that and people will buy in and stick around and hopefully we'll continue to be relevant down the line.

Amazing. I mean, it's so cool to be able to talk to you because you played a different world of duck dealing a lot of these corporate types and, you know, see what you see out there. A lot of our listeners, some there and some are a little bit more of the, you know, the entrepreneur, smaller companies, some solo, some grinding with a, you know, staff of 10, 20. What kind of a, what's the biggest sort of, when you think of courageous, what are the biggest things you see that we're maybe not doing that should be more courageous? Like what would be the biggest advice you have for us?

I would say, and again, I'm going off my focus group is the San Diego Right. The San Diego team.

San Diego group. Yeah, sure.

Right. So I would say that if you looked at me as a, like a business mechanic and I just looked under the hood, it doesn't matter if it's a 2-person company, a 10-person company, a 30-person company, a 50-person company, I still see the same problem. So go back to your knowledge, faith, and action idea, right? Let's look at that. The next question is, well, which, which knowledge should you follow? How do you actually build faith, team faith? And where should we take action and where shouldn't we take action? So I think this is the time to go back to the basics and actually look at your, the values of the company. How valuable are the values? I actually think you're so focused on, again, this is, I'm not saying this is not for, if you just wanna stay a 2-person company and you're like, we have revenue to add, this is probably not the advice for you. But like, if you think you're gonna get, if you're looking to scale and you want to get to, You want to add people, then these better be tight and operationalized. The only way to install courage, right, is you have to know your values. The core values to me are not eye rolls around the exceptional role. But I'm telling you, somebody right now is listening to this and they're eye rolling because they, they haven't realized how important it is from a hiring standpoint, from a rewards and retention standpoint, assuming, and again, I'm not going to sit here and say get your product straight. Of course, get your product straight. But like what I love most about a company like Patagonia is they're trying to save our human planet. Every decision they make is through that lens. Every decision. Hiring is run through this. Is this person really here to help us save our human planet or not? Yes, they need to be talented, of course. But it's like, if you show up in a Hummer on day one for an interview at Patagonia, you've already lost the interview unless it's one of the electric ones. That's different. So I think where I come at it, Eric, is words really matter. The number one value at Creatis is sacrifice. So we're helping companies keep the most important thing the most important thing, right? Two is magic because decisions are made emotionally as much as we think not. And I think that's the other thing, that's the other differentiator that I don't think I've done a really good job of sharing or being successful inside of the, this mastermind, it's so full of many analytical minds that are excellent at looking at the data and they're missing, well, what works with you at home? What makes you laugh?

Right?

What makes, you know, moves you is usually what moves us is it's not like numbers. It's a feeling where, you know, no feel, no deal. I always say no feel, no deal. Right? So, you know, to me, the magic piece, it's helping, I think, thinking through the emotional realities of how you collide with people and how you're like bringing them peace of mind, or maybe you're bringing them relief, or maybe it's confidence and making sure you're really stepping into the shoes of the audience and not just getting stuck between your neck and your brain, but really between your neck and your soul. And like, what's the emotional connection? Which is the world I came from, right? Like that's, I, that's what I learned from all the storytellers.

I love it. And taking away some things you just said, which is obvious as you say it, it's like KFA doesn't matter what size you are. KFA formula works on knowledge, you know, in order to create an action, didn't matter. And so I think a lot of us probably, you know, you just mentioned a lot of are probably a little bit K and A. We're all just taking actions on stuff.

Some of the— here's the other suggestion. I would say if you're a K, go find your F. If you're an F, go find your K or your A. Right? Like, to me, you don't have, like, it's not about you doing this alone. And I think that's my favorite part about Speakeasy, frankly, is that there's enough collisions, right? Once you get out of your own way and you let your fear go away and you actually trust the process to have the hard conversation, the scary conversation with somebody, like, you're like, oh my gosh, I wanna work with that person. Like, that person gets shit done. They are in action. They, they're the action team. Right? Or, wow, that person is, their knowledge is off the charts. I don't think there's a knowledge problem in Speakeasy. Like there's some brilliant wizards that are so good at looking at the knowledge, but the feel side, right? One of my little fancy keynote slides, I did this in Florida earlier this week, was I asked the audience, are there any thought leaders in the house? You know, you could imagine the response. I'm like, I'm like, no, like raise your, if you're a thought leader, I mean, you're the, these are the Top leaders in the restaurant business. And you're like, any thought leaders in the house? And then I'd get this. And I'm like, no, no, that's not courage. Like, this is courage.

Like, raise your hand.

And then I said, well, thought leadership does nothing without do leadership. Where are my do leaders? Who's a do leader? And their hands went up. And I said, and do leadership does nothing without feel leadership. And so like, so there's a role, like the perfect team, there's thinkers, there's feelers, and there are doers. They're aligned on values, but then they're each good at bringing their own little expertise.

And they gotta be able to let everybody do what they're good at and trust each other that we're all gonna do it together. We all have a similar role and let's, it's, we're all equal to that degree. That's great. I want to turn over to Ryan, the amazing author, because you are an amazing author. I've, you know, it's gone through some of your books and not just an author, but author of all types, which makes it really fun. And we're talking, uh, you're writing a biography for the famous Landon Donovan. You have your own two books that you've written, Courageous and what was the other one? Head of Mentals? Or that's coming out.

Head of Mentals. This is, this is this guy right here.

That's coming out?

So, so Head of Mentals comes out at the end of October and it's all about how you can crack negative self-talk. And I think the more leaders we've spent time with, the more, and ironically it's a three-headed monster, right? Yeah. There's three of us who wrote it, Dr. Susie Burke, Rhett Power, and myself. And we've all seen all sorts of size companies and leaders and it's like, if you want to move ahead, if you want to get ahead, the only way to do that is to understand your head. And so Headamentals, it gives you 4 steps on like how to actually, you know, what's the problem, what's the process. Then we get into like practice and then the Plutonium. And I think the idea is self-talk will impact team talk. You get the self-talk figured out.

You gotta love Ryan's names. You haven't figured out, he's brilliant at, if you ever get the chance to come to a San Diego meeting too, he comes in there and people are talking ideas and Ryan just like listens to all this shit. He's like, you gotta just say this. And he just gets, distills it to all 1 or 2 lines. So that's a brilliant name. Love that. And then when you get that done, let us know. We're all gonna support you in the community. Obviously, you have the Courageous book, which is a great book. Everybody should be reading that as well. It talks a lot more what we're talking about. My child is a big fan of yours because you just sent me this book and signed it. She loved it. It was called Opposite Town. Such a cool kid's book. What was the inspiration? You and your kid put that together?

Yeah, my, so I have a 12-year-old and a 10-year-old and we just, I can share this on this show because we're all entrepreneurs, right? So, yeah. So the way my brain works, it's like if I fester on an idea and I still And thinking about it the next day and then the next day, then like, can I get the URL? You know, it's like, there you go. I can get the URL. So I bought opposite-town.com and we just started to create the world, that universe. And it was something that was fun that my kids and I did together. And you're born old and you die young and men carry the babies and it's not storks, but it's the vultures that are bringing the babies. And maybe the kids are on the cell phones, but the grown downs are not. And you gotta be this short to ride this ride, right? Like, and again, 61 to drive. And so we just had a lot of fun. And the lesson of course is, you know, I don't want my kids to fit in. I want them to fit out, right? I want them to, to be themselves. And I think for adults, it's like sometimes the opposite happens in life. Like, think about how we started this convo. Like, I don't really have regret about the LA thing. Like, I'm very happy with my life. I love living in San Diego. I'm still wildly curious about content and like, working those channels, right? But like, I'm very happy to be in the courage business. And so sometimes the opposite happens in life for us adults and we're better off for it. So those are the lessons of the book.

I mean, my kid's 4 years old. I think she's maybe just turned 4 when she read the book and she was laughing nonstop. So anybody again, listening as kids, you got to check out that book. Your child will get a big laugh from it. And then coming up, we even talked about this, maybe doing something fun at our event, but you are a huge soccer fan. Are you a huge sports fan? You and I, big Padres fan. Go Pods. Yeah.

I'm not Pods.

Well, and then you have been able to really be a mentor slash, you know, author for Landon Donovan, famous World Cup soccer player. And you're working on his, the bio right now, right? Is it done? And you're launching it soon or tell us about that story real quick. Yeah.

To be clear, like I've learned more from Landon. I mean, he could be my mentor. When you're 15 years old, And you're kind of being ragdolled across the world on behalf of US soccer, right? His school was— schooling was going to Australia to play at the Olympics or playing at the Under-17, you know, World Cup in New Zealand and winning youngest— the Globe's Youngest Player. Like, nobody knows. They went up against Germany and they went up against Brazil and he won, like, I think it's called the Golden Boot, right? So I've learned, like, what an amazing human and what a life he's had, but I think most people who haven't had the luxury of spending time with Landon, they just, they know him as Landon Donovan, and Landon Donovan is very different than Landon. And so the book is, yes, of course we cover the rise of this duct tape soccer world that they all, he's lived in, but it's also a story about mental health and, you know, a lot of stuff that Landon, people don't know about Landon. I think they just assume he's, you know, another wealthy white kid that grew up and played soccer, but grew up with no dad. He would describe himself as American poor. His dad didn't show up really until soccer contract showed up. You can imagine those conversations. It is an honor of a lifetime to help him tell his story to the world. And, you know, again, I'm, like you said, I'm a big soccer fan. So it was also a pinch-me project where I got to relive all of these stories and ask questions that any fan would want to with their, one of their favorite players. I'm, I told Landon, I'm like, I'm a fanboy, Landon. Are you sure you want me to like be the one writing this book?

My conversation when I walked into Brian Tracy's office and started partnering up with him, I'm like drilling Brian, I'm a huge fan of yours. You, you know, I get to work with you?

I said, anyway, so that comes out in end of March with, and again, the World Cup being in America next year and he's finally ready to tell his story and there's a lot in there, man. And there's. Some crazy in there that I know people will be surprised by. And sure, we talk about his relationship, or lack thereof, with Jurgen Klinsmann, who cut him. I'll bite my lip from there.

Wow. Well, maybe we'll get to share the story and bring him out to a Speakeasy Mastermind someday, and that'll be awesome.

I'm all for it. Uh, let's shoot for like, you know, when the book comes out, maybe April. But I'm like 90% sure. I mean, I don't have like— if he's not, you know, covering the World Cup in America, I'll be super surprised. So if we do it, it'll have to be in April, but let's figure out a way to do an event.

That'd be great for everybody listening. It'd be great to have them out at our big annual event if we can pull that off. Well, as we wrap here, is anything I didn't ask that I should ask for relation to all the amazing things you do right now and your teaching?

No, I, how about I just thank you for doing what you're doing and honoring your courage. It's not a plug for my work. I think, you know, you've had to make some serious pivots. You're following what you think is the right move for you. And I think we're all benefiting from it. And you're the perfect personality for it, Eric, honestly, because like, I know you're, it's in service of all of us and you just want it to like continue to grow and go, but for the right reasons. So dude, mad props. I think a lot of us feel this way about you. We will support you any way we can. And like, it's also very cool to see other markets see the value of what this is. And I can't think of a better word. I'll use a different C word. Uh, which was collisions. I think the collisions that happen at Mastermind, and for me it's never that I need something right in the moment, but like then I'll be up against something that I don't understand. Like I did a talk in Pittsburgh for the American Advertising Federation and I, I called it HI, HI as in human intelligence instead of, you know, artificial intelligence. HI. And then the whole idea was like the 5 ways we can stay human. Our human advantage is what makes us different. And look, I've been friends with Brad with for years, so I should give him a shout out. Brad, I wanna call him Costanza, but you know, of course, yeah, they call him Onzo. Yeah, Costanza, Costanzo. And Brad was my first call and I was like, Brad, I'm doing this talk. Like, what do I need to know? What am I missing? And like the next thing you know, we were on probably for 90 minutes just shooting it up. And you're like, wow, you're just surrounded by so many smart people and like talking about AI and he's teaching me in the moment. My talk's like in 36 hours and I'm changing my deck as I'm learning stuff from Brad. I ended up, of course, giving him some love in that presentation as well, letting the world know who he was. So that is the best part, is that whatever city you go to, nobody knows everything. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in Brad's space. I learned so much just by sitting with him and the fact that he would even be willing to get on a call with me, like at a second's notice, and like, he is like amazing. So Bravo to you. Keep the collisions coming and, you know, same thing, however I can help.

I appreciate that. And you always are there to help me and everybody listening as well. Please definitely do yourself a favor. Check out some of the amazing work Ryan has done. We talk a lot about a lot of his books, a couple of books that are coming out, a couple of books that he's had. Plus, if you're looking for a killer corporate speaker, somebody to come out there at any of your events, or if you have friends that are big companies that need a big dose of courage. And courageousness. Please call Ryan, get to know him. If you're out in San Diego, come visit or come to a Padres game with us. We'll definitely have you come join us. Ryan, thank you so much for the time today. So great to see you as always.

Thank you, brother from another mother. Appreciate you, man.

And that's a wrap from the Speakeasy Podcast. If something sparked for you, don't keep it to yourself. Share it, review it, and pass it to the one person who needs to hear this right now. Want in on the real mastermind? Tap the link in the show notes to apply. Until next time, keep scaling, stay sharp, and don't be the smartest one in the room.