Jaymes Cloninger: Trust | The Business Blast Podcast #245

Welcome to the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.

All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have James Cloninger with us. He is the managing director and founder of Motif. So welcome to the show, James.

Glad to be here.

Glad to have you on, man. We'll, we'll dive in. The first question I have for you, James, is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?

French. No, I love this question. It made me think about so many events in my life, but I think the one that probably most resonates with this question was when I was in the process of starting Motif. I went to Switzerland. At the time, one of my partners was there. I was staying in a hotel, and I left my cash in the hotel, went down, and just thought I was going to go I was actually looking for fondue. When you're in Switzerland, you get fondue. And the fondue place that I knew about had closed for the season. And so there was an Indian restaurant there that said, you know, Indian buffet. And I was like, well, Indian and Switzerland, I don't know, but I'm going to try. I went in, I went through the whole buffet, filled my plate, and got up to the counter. And they told me, You know, it's cash only. I said, well, I got a credit card. And the guy smiled and said, no problem. You know what? Just enjoy the food. It's on me. And next time you're in town, come back. And I thought at that moment, you know, I'm trying, I'm trying to think about what the values of this new company are going to be. And, and trust is a really important factor for me. And I thought, wow, this is amazing. The guy, just trusts me implicitly. He's never seen me before, but he thinks I'm going to come back. And he gave me something for free. And because of that, I love the food. And the whole time I was there, I probably went once a day and just realized that, you know, in order for you to make trust, you have to give trust first. Something like that.

Yes, I love that. And what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?

Well, I'm going to go back to trust. I mean, you know, building a company from the ground up, particularly one that works in professional services, it's all about trust. And I don't know if this, you know, falls into the exact definition of, you know, my industry, but My master's is in anthropology, studied cultures a lot, and looking back at it almost 20 years later, I realized that that education is really powerful for business because business is a culture and pretty much all cultures are built on trust. So again, that's the foundation. I think if you can build trust with your clients and with your partners and with your team, then everything else comes easily.

And it might tie in, but what is your best piece of overall business advice?

I would say to trust first, just like with the Indian restaurant. And, you know, if it doesn't work out, you know, shame on you. But it's always better to trust somebody going into a relationship, trusting from the start.

And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?

Well, I was looking back at my younger self, and I like my younger self. That guy was trying to do all kinds of things. I was traveling around the world. I was making a lot of mistakes, but I wouldn't be here without the mistakes I made. I wouldn't be here without the relationships that I built. But I paid off my student loans. I worked in 36 countries. And, you know, I, I like that guy. He was hustling. So I think the main thing— and it's not a business thing, but I think the main thing that I would tell my younger self is to marry my wife earlier. She turned out to be the right— definitely the right person for me.

And in your opinion, what's the key to happiness?

Well, in my opinion, I'm a unique person, but I think the key to my happiness is self-determination. Whenever I worked for other companies and, you know, they're pigeonholing me or trying to put me into a box, it just didn't work out very well. So as long as I have the ability to kind of chart my own course and control my future, it's gone pretty well. And certainly starting a company and being responsible for now something like 88 people, it's a lot of self-determination.

And I'm excited for your answer on this one. What is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?

You know, I'm an avid reader, so this is another good one. When I was a kid, I probably read it too early, but the first book that really resonated with me was Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. About this guy that was exploring the world, and there are a lot of things about him that resonated with me. Later, there was another book called Narcissus and Goldman that I read when I was doing Language Exchange in Germany, so it was one of the first books I read in German. Again, it was like about this self-exploration by this kid. Those ones still resonate, like books that were profound in my history. You know, when I sit down and read a book, I usually read the whole thing in a day or two. I don't— I'm not like a person who can put it down and read a chapter a night. So I can't read Dostoevsky or anything long like that. It doesn't work for me. I think the one book lately that's probably been a key book is a book called American Nations. It's kind of the history of settlement of North America and how rival populations settled different parts of especially the East Coast and how those cultures are still with us today based on the kind of original settlers of those areas. And, you know, I'm kind of a demographics nut, so seeing how patterns from 200 years ago are still influencing the way that we do business I think today is pretty interesting.

And what is your favorite quote and why?

My favorite quote is one that we put on Motiv's website. It's, uh, "Blues is easy to play but hard to feel." I think it's Jimi Hendrix, and I think it applies to the kind of work that we're doing. You know, consulting is easy to talk about, but hard to feel, and a lot of the stuff that makes, uh, differentiates us or makes us better than the next is, um, not as quantifiable. So it's, it's maybe not feeling, but it's more about the human, um, human approaches that we take.

Yes. Thank you, uh, so much for coming on, man. The last question I have for you before we let you go is, where's the best place for people to find you online?

Well, that's our website, motif.com. And if you want to find me or see more about me, it's motif.com/about. And a little secret, if you really want to contact me, just click on my name there on the about page and it goes to email. I don't think my email is advertised on the page, but for the listeners to this show, there's the secret.

Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us again, man. We really appreciate it.

Thanks, Tyler. It's been fun. The podcast you just heard was recorded with Anchor. If you want to make your own, download the Android or iOS app completely free from anchor.fm/podcast. That's anchor.fm/podcast.