Ep. 21 | Managing Complex Change

What's up, guys? Welcome back to the Lead Fast podcast. My name is Daniel Joined with Tommy Wofford. Hey, guys, I'll be your host today. We got some stuff to talk. We got some stuff to talk about.

It's gonna be a good day. I'm excited about the content today.

I am excited too. We have our hip hydrate in front.

Of us here and so excited about this. Thanks, Danny Rodriguez, for hooking this up. It's nice having, like a little show sponsor, but it's the best water ever. It's got 3 milligrams of hemp extract in it. So it's got a little CBD oil in the water so you takes care of headaches and body aches and you know, when you're 40, it starts coming.

I didn't ask him, but it's. It's. There's a little bit of like witchcraft, black magic, and how he does it. Because it's. As far as we know, it's the only one that has hemp at a molecular level, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So that's pretty incredible. They're the only people in the market to do that because hips and oil. Yeah, oil and water. I remember the old.

Yeah. And the somebody puts oil in a water thing in kindergarten. You're just fascinated by it. But this isn't that. This is.

Yeah. They break the CBD down to the molecular level and you shake it a little bit like Daniel's doing, and it mixes it up really good and then it's. It's just water after that. It just tastes like water.

Oh, look at that tornado. Look at that. Yeah. Actually, if you wouldn't told me there was CBD in here, I wouldn't have known. I would. Just thought my back stopped hurting. But it's really good. I'm going in for the kill.

It's PH neutral. I don't know. It says that on the back of the label. I just read that.

I know what that means. PH is your acidity level. And neutral is like where water is. So it's not like overly acidic or.

Then it's good that it's water.

Yeah, it's good that it's great that it's water. Some water can have a high PH balance. I think that's what alkaline water is.

Right, sure. So Danny Rodriguez, Daniel Rodriguez, Danny Ray is a friend of the program and is one of the co founders of this company out in la. But he was a Clemson football player, play for the Rams. Purple Heart Bronze star winner. Oh, I don't know you won't win those recipient. He's a bronze star recipient. He wasn't.

You know, his story about those medals is he's got here.

Yeah. So he's going to be a guest on the program and a couple of weeks and so we're excited about that.

Yeah, I know. Good stuff. And we're gonna get into something. So we're into a bigger topic. But I want to start, I have, I've had some people talk to me, you know, about what we're doing. And because we do so much, you know, like if you're watching Lead Fast, you see us do a variety of things. And I love that. I absolutely love it.

We stay busy.

Yeah. We have talk about how many, like what all companies are. Like what are we doing? I mean, like what are we.

So there's Lead Fast. Right. Just by itself and it's core form, which is content that we create things that I think about and then we, we go film the content and then we put them out either on podcast or social. But then we take the larger concepts and we create hour long classes so that entrepreneurs can be trained for next to no money. So it's, you know, it's a subscription service and you can go to Lead Fast co and sign up and you get an all this, you know, free curriculum and content. And then part of Lead Fast is being that missing link for some businesses. And so we are all things business. And so we will have, you know, McKenzie come in and sit in a meeting and help you square away your marketing. You'll help with some of the creative, I'll help with strategy. Drew helps with technology. And so if your business is suffering through, through some sort of lack, we can in general step in and fill that lack for you and help you get around those hurdles. And that's just leefast. And then our production company that we formed here is the executive producing production company for multiple programs at this point. And so uncut experience. And then on top of that, we are as we travel a lot in film, we are meeting more and more celebrities and more and more artists in the music and sports and even politicians. And politicians. Yeah. And we're doing some sort of outsourcing production for them because that's one of the things that you bring to the table is your creativity and skill set. And so we're doing that. And then we have Three Oaks Farm which is opening in a few months and just a couple like 60, 90 days, which is our 145 acre retreat center in Edgeville, South Carolina. Yeah, it's going to be so cool. It'll be an event space, but it'll be a place where you can, as an executive, get away with your whole team in a safe and sanitary environment and have plenty of distance to be socially distant but still be together. And then on top of that, we have the company called crowdsafe, which is revolutionary sanitization for all environments. It will keep your environment Covid free for 90 days. With spring one time, it's pretty incredible. So we're doing that. It's just a lot of things. And on top of that, all of those things are constantly changing. And so it's, it's like, oh, well, today we've got to focus on, you know, getting an edit out for the uncut experience. And then the next day we may be on the road to Nashville to film a live concert. And then, you know, who knows? But everything changes every day.

Yeah. And I love that. I love that about it. It keeps everything fresh. I think everybody here, that's their personality, like they just, they operate like that. But we didn't, we didn't start out like that, obviously. And I think that's what people see when they look at Instagram.

You know, I mean, the podcast isn't the same week to week, right? Yeah. I mean, we're always adding, we're always innovating, we're always adding in new things, new concepts, new thoughts, new delivery, everything. Yeah.

And that's what, so that's what I had a question sent to me about was is it okay to change my business model? And I don't really know what this person does, but they were talking about they've already established their business, they've launched their business, and, you know, I think it's because of COVID but they're having to pivot. And I know we've pivoted a lot here. Yeah, a lot. And, you know, Andrew's coined the term pivot fatigue because we've pivoted a lot. And you just, it's, it's draining sometimes. But what's your advice on that? How would you, how would you advise somebody about pivoting or if they even should pivot their business in a time like this or anytime, really?

I think the deadliest words that a business can say is that's not how we've always done it. I think that's the same about any organization. I think that's the deadliest thing a church can say is that's. We've never done it that way.

Yeah, we.

Well, okay. Well, if you do the same thing that you. That's not, it's not true that if you do the same thing you've always done, you'll get the results you've always gotten. There's a law of diminishing returns. If you do the things you've always done, you'll progressively get less. Yeah, it's a law. You'll progressively get less than what you got originally. So it's science. It's science. Right. And so you, if you want to maintain the status quo of results, have to be willing to. The status quo for your execution has to be change. Change has to be the status quo. Which sounds a little counterintuitive because status quo means normality and staying the same. But change should be your status quo from an execution standpoint, if you want to, at a minimum, maintain status quo from a harvest standpoint, from a result standpoint. What that means though is, is that since you know you have to change, you should be strategically changing to increase the status quo, increase the expected results.

So strategy, keyword strategy.

Strategy. Yeah. If you've got it, if, you know, if you can just accept I've got to be always evolving, I've got to be innovating, I've got to be changing, which you do. If you can accept that, then it just becomes a question of what's the best change.

Right.

You know, what's the. It's. It's choosing from. It's choosing the best thing out of all the good things for you in that moment. In that moment, whatever fits strategically. So the answer to should I change my business strategy? Is always yes.

Okay. I like that.

It may be incremental, right. It may be a tweak, it may be a logo change to update or freshen, a look or brand. It may be branding, it may be complete and total breakdown of the business. There are so many people that would have said, my restaurant will never do like takeout only. What in the world. And now in the COVID era, have really like grown a takeout business and are now really contemplating like, you know, instead of opening that second location, maybe I could hire two guys in a van and deliver meals and actually cut back on my overhead, produce the same amount of secondary meals, still have a full dining room. Like there are a ton of restaurants in the US right now going, maybe this meal delivery isn't so bad.

Yeah.

And if I can not rely on third party vendors for delivery like Grubhub or, you know, DoorDash or any of those guys which provide a great service because there's no way for them to know if that pivot works without them. But now that they know the pivot works, then it's a matter of changing and saying, alright, well, what's the best thing for me to what's the best execution of this? So it may cost me a million dollars to open up a new restaurant, it might cost me $25,000 to get a new truck and be able to deliver faster without relying on a third party getting dedicated delivery guys so that my food shows up better, fresher and I'm in control of the experience. That's a complete pivot. Hashtag pivot, pivot always.

I bet there's churches out there too that wish they got into the livestream game. Because I know there was a lot that were anti livestream and I've even heard of some that were kind of unwilling to do it. They thought, we're going to ride this out and it just, they got washed away.

And it's not even that. It's like how, how many churches that were already live streaming are now doing it at such a great excellence level? Because it's their main interaction, right? It's their main interaction. And now as people start coming back, that experience is more meaningful. And if they continue to do what they're doing right now, then they have the ability to be more meaningful online and have their people there. And so their online thing will be more effective than it ever has been, for sure. But because they didn't value it, they didn't strategically approach it. They didn't approach it strategically. It was the thing that they had to do versus the thing that they got to do. And I think when you look at things as things that you get to do, it does a weird thing because it frames everything in the framework of opportunity. Something you get to do is an opportunity. Something you have to do is an obligation. And so people don't strategically approach obligations. They just want to get them over, check the box, check the box and move on. But if you look at everything as an opportunity, then change becomes something that you have to deploy strategy to because you want to take advantage, make the most of the opportunity. And most churches looked at, or most organizations that were streaming that that wasn't their business model looked at streaming as an obligation. We have to do it to stay connected if they're not here. But really now it's like we get to do it because we get to reach a group of people who may not ever be here. And that's an opportunity. That's a new way to approach it. But framing, I think that's a huge thing. As you start thinking about the wrote in. Should I pivot my business? Well, the answer is always yes. But I do think that you look at. Do I. You always have to pivot into opportunity. You don't just pivot for the sake of pivoting. You have to identify the largest opportunity and then pivot first that way, you know. And so I think that's the. That's the thing that you have to identify. That's the execution that has to happen before the pre. Like that pre work, that homework. That has to happen before you take the test of pivoting.

I said, I told him I would get a Tommy answer on that. But I did say, the one thing I do know is that no matter what, everything changes. You can count on it. Everything changes always and forever. And I mean, I don't know if any, like, even farming, you know, like, we've been farming for centuries and it's changing, you know, like, it's always changing. And so my advice was. I would assume so. But let me get a Tommy answer on that. So thank you for, for jumping in on that.

It's. It's so good. I'm not even. I'm not even playing. I don't know.

You hear that? It's like asmr.

We're all like, I'm relaxed now just because I got to hear that. But I do, I do want to stay on the topic of change, though, because I think that change really becomes something that you have to focus on at scale. Right. Like, so I just, I just left my position or guy asked to leave or dropped out of my position. I don't know. I got laid off. Let's call it a combination. Yeah. So, but it was, it was all Covid related. But I was the senior director of business development at Heartland School Solutions, which is a huge provider of software to schools in the US Probably a third of all the US Schools in the US Are. Oh yeah, in the B's. Billions of dollars of revenue. And a large portion of that revenue is from software related to school lunch and payment processing for school lunch. And because of COVID all school lunches are free. Well, what happens when a large chunk of your revenue just disappears? Yeah, it just goes away as a business. No one saw Covid coming. No one, least of all, like, principals and software designers for schools. Like, we're. We're not even. We were like six months ago, we were talking about ticketing for events and all this other, like, really cool like before and after care and places. We wanted to expand. Nobody expected our core business to overnight dry up. That kind of change. Sometimes change happens to you. Right? So it was a forced pivot, but it wasn't just a small incremental force pivot. These are hundreds of people's jobs and billions of dollars of revenue and, you know, a publicly traded Fortune 500 company that, you know, has shareholder responsibilities and has to make hard decisions. And I, you know, and I'll say this like it was a hard, like we, they did everything. They reduced pay, they furloughed people like they are a great, phenomenal company. I would work for them again tomorrow. I loved my leadership. Phenomenal. They made hard decisions that I totally support and I'm happy to be well taken care of in my exit. So they were very gracious.

But.

That change happened to them. Right. And so, like, they didn't see that coming. But it was, it wasn't a, oh, we should get a new logo, which we did recently and labored months over what we should call it and how we should change the name and what color should we use, and months and months and months of picking a small change. And now the entire paradigm of business for a huge billion dollar unit is gone, just gone. That's a complete reinvention of everything. So that's like systematic change on a large level. And I think there are sort of things that you can do to manage through that to like be able to like navigate that kind of change, because you really don't have change, I think, unless you sort of manage these. A couple of areas. And I, I can't remember where I saw this, so I can't accurately reference, but drop it in the comments. I'm not trying to make this up as if it's my own. If you know who said this, please share and we'll credit them. But there are basically five different things that make up change. There's vision and skills. So that's the first two. Right? So vision. Does everybody know why we're doing this? Does everybody understand it now that we've all agreed why we want to do it and that we need to do it? Do we have all the skills necessary to pull off this change? Then there's incentives, which is the next thing. And so incentives are important because they are sort of that first proof that what we're doing is the right thing to do. We understand why we need to do it. We all agree that this is what we need to do. We all have the right skill sets. But what's going to be our gain. Why is it a good thing for us to make this change? And then do we have adequate resources to put into this? Right? Do we have everything we need to make this really happen? And then if you've got all those four, then you sit down and create an action plan. And if you get an action plan to those four things, then you get change. Change comes out. So you get vision skills, incentives, resources, and an action plan. So that creates change. That equals, to me, that equals change, if you get all those things. But most companies that you wouldn't, you wouldn't look at, like, I think here, we don't do that always very well. And so I think. And you've probably been in some of these environments where you get some, some things, some, some results that you didn't intend as you were trying to get change, you wanted change, but you probably. So have you ever been in an environment where you got confusion?

Yes.

Like, so you were working on it as a group, as a whole organization, you were working on getting one result, but everybody was confused about it. Like, I'm sure, like, I'm not alone in this. I've been in that organization. I mean, I've probably caused it here.

Yes. No.

That's funny. You're fired. So I think anytime you're in an organization and you get confusion, you've got a lack of vision. Because the vision is supposed to explain to you why we're doing it.

Right.

And what we're gonna do about it. Like, this is why we're doing it. This is what we're gonna do about it is the action plan at the end. And so, but you've got to understand why. So anytime you get confusion, it's always, I think it's always a matter of, like, vision leaking. Right. Andy Stanley says that vision leaks, that about every eight weeks you have to recast the entire vision to everybody in the organization. That's crazy.

That's ridiculous.

Like, every eight weeks. But that's, that's how crucial vision is. Because if you lose sight of the vision, then you create confusion. And confusion is the birthplace of all things bad. It just is. And so I think that's what you get when you don't have vision. Another environment you can jump in and tell stories. You've got a lot of military stories. I know we still live in the community for the last place that you worked, so you might not want to tell all the stories. But have you ever been in an environment at an organization where you had anxiety? Yes. Yes, obviously. So I think anxiety happens when there's a lack of confidence and skills. You may have vision, but without the right skills, everybody knows that, like, you're not going to be able to pull this off, you know, like, including you. And it creates so much anxiety, man. Like, so you can have vision and incentives and resources and action plans and all that stuff, but if you don't have the skills, you just becoming, like, it's a weight for sure.

Absolutely.

It becomes a weight. Like, you know, if I were to say to you, like, hey, I want you to produce a Netflix show next week and your job depends on it, you would. You wouldn't sleep.

I'll start shaking immediately.

Yeah, you absolutely would. But it's because you don't have that skill set yet. Right. And so that would create anxiety for anyone to be asked to do something in a very small amount of time to shepherd change over time without the appropriate skill set, it just creates anxiety. And so when we start helping business leaders figure out what's going on in their environments, I always, like, start asking, what is the over? If you had to give me one word for how the environment feels, what would it be? And then when they give me those words back, if it's confusion, it's probably a lack of vision. If it's anxiety, it's probably a lack of skills. And then the other thing that we get to a lot is resistance. Now, I've been that guy. Like, I'll just own it. I've been in organizations where my lead has come and said, hey, we want to do this new thing. Here's this new initiative, here's this new change, here's this new pivot. And I've pushed back. You've gotten resistance, you've gotten pushback. Right? I always feel like pushback is a lack of incentives. Like, if you can make it worth my while, I'll do anything. But the moment I push back, it's really because I don't see what's in it from my department, my people, that I lead, me personally, us, as an organization. If I have ownership and I really believe in what we're doing, when I don't see the incentive, I'm going to always push back on your change, no matter how little it is. I mean, if it's, hey, I just want to let everybody know we're changing out honey buns to granola bars in the break room. There's this little change, and you're going to get someone that goes, why are we worried about what we're eating? Like, everybody seemed to be happy already. But if I go in and I go, hey, guys, listen. We are deeply concerned about the overall health of our organization. And so in an effort to, you know, make a healthier environment where everybody feels nurtured, we're gonna take away some of the, like, ancillary sweets because we want you to quit. While ago, you were fired. You can't quit.

You can't fire me. I quit.

But if you did that and you said, here's the upside, you know, and. But I do know that sweets are important, so every Friday, I'm gonna bring cupcakes in as a special treat. But by and large, we're gonna have healthier snacks in the break room, well, then you don't give anybody room for pushback because you've sold them the incentive. Most leaders, because they don't lead, they pronounce. You get pronouncements instead of leadership or provocation sometimes, depending on how good the leader is. But because they're really sometimes despots or dictators, instead of leaders, they make announcements, and we're going to do this. And then they get pushback all the time because they just expect you to go follow without explaining incentive. And that may be an okay thing for you to expect as a boss, but it is not an okay thing for you to expect as a leader. And every day you get to choose, do I want to be a boss today or do I want to be a leader today? And. And you can be both and not be the other. You know, you can be one and not be the other. So every day I walk in, I'm the boss because I signed the paychecks. I don't do anything to be the boss. Being the boss takes zero effort. It takes some effort to get to be the boss. But once you're there, keeping that job is just a matter of, like, following the rules, really, and making sure everyone else follows the rules. But being a leader takes effort. It takes planning. It takes insight. It takes courage and bravery to be a type of person that is candid and vulnerable enough for your people, to be there with them in their pain and in their struggle and provide them not only vision and not only make sure they have the necessary skill sets and eliminate anxiety, but you have to be able to give them incentives. They have to know what's the upside. And outside of that, you know, that's what. That's what takes away resistance. That's what takes away pushback. And then I think the last, like, the last two are fun for me because, you know, we Talked a lot about former employers and employee being employees, and McKenzie has as well, and Drew and everybody here in the office. I think when you miss resources, you get frustration. Like we've talked about, the fact that there's no. We've talked about on here, I think there's no worst frustrated place to be in the entire world than to know what to do and not be empowered. You know, it's that. What is a leader? A leader gives opportunity and empowerment, and empowerment is. Do you know? Do you know empowerment? Empowerment is authority and opportunity. I said it wrong while ago. Authority and instruction.

I didn't know what you were asking. What? I knew I wouldn't have got that, but I didn't know what you were asking.

So a leader gives empowerment and opportunity. And at leadfast, we define empowerment as authority and instruction. And so to know what to do but not have authority, you haven't been empowered and you get frustrated because there's an expectation. Because I told you what to do, but I didn't empower you. I didn't give you the authority to go do it. And so not giving them resources, what they need, giving them the empowerment and giving them the tools necessary to go do the thing that you expect of them just creates frustration all the time. Right?

Yes, it does.

Yeah. Right. So, for example, here in the office, and I'll just use a real life example between us. If you've seen our flagship stuff Daniel does. Daniel produces all that and does a phenomenal job with, like, we. We use a service called Film Pack, and we use all this B roll and all this other stuff. And our subscription to that ran out. And Daniel, because he cares deeply about our bottom line and our business, like, no. Yeah, I think I can probably piece it together with these things. And I was like, no, just here's my card.

Yeah.

Go spend the. What is it? A couple hundred bucks a month?

200 bucks?

Yeah. $2,400 a year. Go spend this money right now because I want you to be resourced. I don't want frustration. I want you to have every. If Daniel comes to me and says, hey, can I get a light? What's my first answer?

Most of the time it's yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

I don't ever ask, well, how much is the light? Daniel used to bring us all.

You've never asked that. I mean, if anything, you're like, where are we putting it? You're just probably excited to know where it's going to go.

Yeah, I know that if you're asking me, it's a Resource that you need.

Yeah.

And I don't say no to needed resources. I'll figure it out. If I had to buy you the light out of my pocket, I would figure out how to get you the resources, because I know for me to get your best work, I have to do it without frustration. Now, there are. I've had to say, wait, and. Because we had other. But it was only because, like, oh, I know I'm going to shift. I know I'm going to change. And this thing that he wants us for is not going to be a priority in 10 minutes.

And so we're gonna have 10 new lights.

Next episode, 10 brand new bananas. We have a neon banana. 10 brand new bananas in the background. We're gonna have a bunch of bananas.

We have a lot of. They can't see all of them. We have a lot of lights. Like, a lot of cool new lights.

You check out my Instagram.

But the banana is my favorite one so far.

Yeah, me too.

This one, the banana. That one.

Where were we? What were we talking? We were talking about resources. Resources. Yeah. So resources always create frustration. But here's the last one. And this is we. This is where lead fast falls on its face more than anything else is that if you have all those things right, if you have vision and skills and incentives and resources, but don't have an action plan, what you create is false starts. You get going really fast, and then everybody goes everywhere, and no one goes anywhere. Old Chinese proverb, right? Man who goes everywhere goes nowhere. Also, man who stands on toilet is high on pot. That's the other Chinese proverb that I know. I know two. The first one's better. The man who goes everywhere goes nowhere. And that's. It's true about your teams, too. So if you have all those things, all those prerequisites, but don't have an action plan, you're not moving together. Then everybody goes everywhere, and the vision goes nowhere because the vision is carried sort of unilaterally on everyone's shoulders, right? And it can only make the progress that you make cumulative. And so if you look at it as, like, the vision starts here. Well, if all of us go together, then the vision's on our shoulders, but everybody goes out. Then the vision sits still because it can only go the cumulative distance of everyone else. And if you're going this way and I'm going that way, then it zeros out. So that's how vision transports itself. And so you have to be able to go the same direction. And that requires an Action plan I'm really bad at. So I'm very polarizing in the change management because I'm very, very weighted to the vision side of things. And I'm very, very not weighted to the action plan side of things. But that's why we have McKinsey, because. And I just. I mean, literally, guys, just this morning, spent two hours with Mackenzie sitting next to her going, okay, listen, I need you to understand some things. And the first thing is that you're in charge. I don't want to be in charge. I'm not in charge of getting things done, because if I'm in charge of getting things done, nothing gets done. And had a very hard talk with my co founder yesterday. We're driving out to the property where our retreat center is going to be, and Andrew goes, hey, listen, so talk to me about lead fast where we're at, because there's too much vision. It's like you are. You are a year, some days, five years, some days, 10 years, out most days. And you're telling everybody where we're going, and that's great. And we will be all those things one day, but you're not telling them what we are today and what we need to be tomorrow. And that's where we're falling down. And I just had to, like, gulp real big. And by the way, mine and Andrew's relationship should scare most people because he speaks so bluntly to me. A big jerk face. No, actually, it's great. He's the only person that talks to me like that in the world, and I need it, but for more people. But he, like, legitimately was like, you've got to slow down. You've gotta. You've gotta give less vision, and we've gotta get to more execution or we're never going to see your vision.

Wow.

Yeah. And it was great. And I did the one step of execution that I have to do, which is let go of the reins and gave them to someone else and said, it's your job. And so. Yikes, yikes. She's over there with her headphones in so she can't hear us. But, like, legitimately, that's what we had to do this morning, was say, all right, let's recap what we've talked about in the last week. How much of this is still valid? All right, now go forward, and you make it happen. And I don't want to hear about it unless you have questions, because I'm gonna be over here trying to figure out how to make my life happen. And that is going to be the best thing for us because it's gonna help us as a group better manage the evolution of lead fast and what it's becoming. And so that I hope is super helpful for. And you have talked hardly any. I feel like I've talked 30 minutes solid.

32, actually.

32, 31. There we go. But I think those are, like, those are the things. If you want change, then you've got to have vision, skills, incentives, resources, and an action plan. If you want change, you gotta have all five things. Outside of that, you're gonna get confusion, anxiety, pushback, or, you know, resistance, frustration, and false starts. Those are the things you're gonna get outside of those things. But, man, if you can get all five of those things together, then it comes really, really powerful. And your organization seems to just like clip along and nothing like those. Those organizations where nothing stops it. Like Apple in the early 2000s, when iPhone first came out and it was like, who is ever gonna stop this company? And their stock prices were tripling every month or every two months, and everything was going crazy. And I was to stop this company. No one, ever. And then the hurdle. The first time Apple saw a hurdle was when the figurehead of vision left died when Steve Jobs passed away. And they had to hand the mantle of vision over to someone else who wasn't Steve Jobs, who could probably carry on with his vision. But, I mean, looking at what they've done, it does not seem to me as an outsider that Tim Cook has his own vision for Apple. He seems like he has been put there as a caretaker of the vision of Apple that Steve Jobs had. Right. And so Apple was still living with the ghost of Steve Jobs vision rather than having someone who has a vision for the future. And if you don't have a vision for the future, you can't manage a ghost by nature. They'll go through walls. Like you can't. You can't put your hands on them. They're too ethereal. Like they're too up to subjection. They're too up to conversation. They're too. No, you've got to have a concrete vision. And when they lost vision, it seems like there was some confusion. What are we going to do next? Because they had. I mean, you can only get cameras on a phone. So good, we're going to be seeing the moon and sending messages to Martians. Pretty soon the whole back of the.

Phone is going to be just covering cameras.

Yeah, it's going to be. There's going to be 27 cameras on the back of an iPhone and it still won't make good calls like that. But that's the innovation right now. Right. It's so like their innovation went from giant leaps to stair steps to inchworming it. And that's the innovation. And I mean, and they're great. I still have a lot of stock in apples. They're a great, they're a great company as far as business goes, but they've really lost, I mean, if we're being candid and honest, they've really lost a sense of direction and identity when Jobs passed because they lost their vision, you.

Think they'll pick it back up?

I think they need a Jobs esque leader.

Not Tim Cook, but somebody. Yeah.

And Tim Cook's maybe amazing. I don't, I don't know Tim Cook from Adam. Right. And so I've never had an opportunity to meet him and I don't, I've never, you know, Tim, call me. I mean, Tommy Fest code. Let's make this happen. He seems like a phenomenal human being. He does a lot for a lot of communities in need and I would love to meet him. But he's not the figurehead everybody can rally around. One vocal vision guy, he's not, he's not the sales pitch guy. Right. And Apple by and large is a company that run or has ran historically on vision. It was gasoline for them. Right. And the loud, sometimes abrasive, brash Steve Jobs type of vision that says we're gonna go change the world and if we die doing it fine, and if you die doing it fine, if I kill you to change the world, that's fine. We're not. No one is. No one is secondary to the vision. No one is above the vision. And so I don't know, I think that that's a great example though of a major company that did not navigate a sea change very well because they didn't replace vision with vision and they got confusion. But you can do all of it. We like. And I'll just say, I don't know which camera I'm looking at right now. Look at the top one. You can fix it and edit. This is why we do what we do at leefast. It's why we believe so strongly in the local entrepreneur and leaders in general. It's why we put so much emphasis in what we do. Because we believe that you have to change, not should change, but have to change. Like if you're not changing, you're dying. We believe that for you to be successful, you have to change and the magnitude of scale there may be huge. You may have to rewrite the entire business overnight. You might have to figure out. It might not be just get one more employee. It might be like, oh, I need to fire everyone and start over. Or I need to take my online business into brick and mortar or my brick and mortar business into online only. And you might have to shut things down and deal with the pain of losing what you thought something was going to look like. Listen one, I've been there. I've shut businesses down that I thought were going to be super, super wildly successful. I get it. There are very few things that you are facing in business that even Covid that I haven't lived through, navigated through with a team and probably have some insight on. I'm very fortunate to be connected to some very amazing people. So if I don't know it, I'll go find the answer because I want to know it. Because it's likely that I'm going to face it as well. But it's why Lead Fast exists. It's why you can get our content for next to nothing. It's why we spend so much time connecting personally with entrepreneurs that write in and call in. It's why we spend thousands of dollars traveling the nation to meet with professionals on their level. Like being able to find out how to. How do you rise through the ranks of a giant corporate company like Procter and Gamble? How do you go from being an undrafted free agent to a business coach? How do you go from being a kid from Bamberg, South Carolina, to the starting pitcher for the Red Sox? How do you like all these? You know, the professional mindset. It's the reason we put so much effort into bringing you content that we think will matter and impact your life because we believe in you. And it's. It's the whole point of this podcast.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And we love doing it, too. It's fun to do it.

Yeah, man. And we have been talking for a long time.

We sure have.

Let's hit the magic button.

Let's hit it. All right, guys, that's gonna wrap it up. Don't forget to check us out at Instagram. On Instagram eadfastco.

How do you get into Instagram?

I don't know.

Is there a door? Should I not? Is there a secret knock?

Actually, I don't know anything about Instagram anymore. I don't ask me. I'm not the expert. I've been shadow banned. But our Instagram is@lead fastco. And check out our website leadfastco.com we got lots of great resources, lots of really cool stuff there, and we'll see you guys next time.