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Clear Purpose, Consistent Performance: Keys to Business Growth · Unstoppable Success Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Unstoppable Success Podcast, where we spotlight visionary leaders who have mastered the art of growth, purpose, and powerful connections.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Jacqueline Strawminger, connector, high performance coach, and creator of the Leap to Your Success Framework in Two Steps to Yes.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Each week we dive into bold insights, real conversations, and powerful strategies to fuel your growth, deepen your relationships, and ignite transformational momentum.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And why?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because you were meant to be unstoppable.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's leap into the podcast.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hello everybody, and welcome to another amazing episode of Unstoppable Success.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Jacqueline Strominger, and I love sharing amazing people, their insights, their passions, their lessons with you.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we do here on Unstoppable Success.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I have the greatest pleasure today to introduce you to Larry Mandelberg.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And let me tell you a little bit about Larry.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: We've been having so much fun talking before the show, but currently he is the leadership architect.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: He's the author and speaker.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: As you can see, he has written a great book, Businesses Don't Fail, They Commit Suicide, which we'll talk about.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: But Mandelberg Consulting works with organizations to forge new paths through difficult, potentially business-killing environments.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he arms people with the right pieces to help them succeed.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: He acts as a navigator, a guide, and a bridge builder for CEOs, CFOs, and boards of directors that must discover new ways to operate or risk losing their company.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: He uses he is using leading non-financial indicators, and he helps organizations save time and money by identifying and quantifying and eliminating barriers to profitable growth.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, listeners, you know you're going to get a lot out of this because if you want to have unstoppable success, you're going to have to talk to Larry.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, so Larry, welcome to the show.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: That was a mouthful, Jacqueline.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: You did good.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't even read the whole LinkedIn profile, you know.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:21
  unknown: Yeah.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot there.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so Larry, you know, obviously, you know, um, you started in the world basically.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: I know you were in California, you had some great, great um uh expertise and success here.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and you've now written a book, Businesses Don't Fail, they commit suicide.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm I take us how you got to writing this book because obviously there's um there's probably some really great nuggets that you can share.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: There's great stories in everything.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things I'm very proud of is that I'm I'm pretty good with stories, and I have a lot of them, and I love sharing that with my clients, helping them learn how to do stories because it's that's the only way people can really relate and empathize with what you've been through, right?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: Is through story.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a pretty good one.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there was in 2014, I've been doing this for many, many years, and um in 2014, somebody said to me, What the hell is it that you do?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I know you're a consultant, and I know you do strategic planning, and I know you do consulting, and I know you do business plans, and I know you this and I know you that, but I don't really know what you do.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: I know what you did for us, but I don't really understand what you do.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I hired a person who specializes in uh marketing and branding to do a brand equity analysis of my consulting practice.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: And she came up with what she came up with was that everybody, she talked to friends, colleagues, employees, and customers, current and past.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody said the same thing.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I don't know what Tally does.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: I know what he did for us, but I don't know what he does.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: So we were talking and we worked our way through that whole process.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: And almost when we were done, she says to me, I have the title for your book.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: And she showed it to me, and I said, Oh my god, that is fat.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly the right title.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: And she goes, Where did he?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Where did you get it from?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: She said, from you.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: I said, What do you mean?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: She said, When we first met and we were talking, I was talking to you about how businesses fail.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you said, businesses don't fail, they commit suicide.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that was so powerful that I wrote it down, and that was like seven months ago.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't even remember saying it.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but I get mad because people say things like, you know, these businesses, they just fail, and nobody knows why.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, businesses do not fail, they kill themselves, they commit suicide.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it's true.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, no business ever failed because of finance.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody, I have 23 years of primary research in this book.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: I created a hypothesis, I developed a uh a um a uh uh uh the structure that you use to evaluate the hypothesis.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: I I can't remember the the scientific term for it now.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: I just used it this afternoon.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: And when we came out of the end of that, we had a theory, and then I spent six years doing proof of concept on the theory, and with theories, you don't prove them correct, you fail to prove them incorrect.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's just a scientific engineering kind of a reality.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I have 29 years in this, right?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: And literally, with all it's it's it's not academic research, but it is statistically valid, it's all documented, and every single person that I spoke to said, every one of them said that part of the reason they were failing or had failed was financial.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: And the problem with that is that you cannot fail because of finances.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: Finances are lagging indicators of prior bad decisions, they have nothing to do with whether your business is operating properly or not, but that's what everybody thinks of.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the things I say all the time is, and I separate wholesale and retail.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: I don't believe in B2B and I don't believe in B2C.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think those are ridiculous terms.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: As a man with 53 years in technology, I bought my first computer in 1973, and I've been very deeply involved in technology for my entire life.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: I have the right to say B2B and B2C are BS.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's wholesale and retail.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: And in retail, the customer is always right.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: In wholesale, the customer is always wrong.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: Always.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: They think they know what the problem is, and all they're doing is looking at symptoms masquerading as issues.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: They play whack-a-mole with these symptoms, fix a symptom.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, pops up over here because you haven't fixed the core problem.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, as you can tell, I get very passionate about this.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: I love what I do, and the thing that makes me happier than anything is sharing this information with people, and that's why I do these podcasts because I'm not looking to make money, I'm looking to give to create awareness.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's all I care about.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: I want people to understand that there's a very clear, objective, measurable, treatable reason businesses fail.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not it's it's complicated, but it's not complex, right?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: There's a difference, right?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Complexity is when you don't understand the outcomes of each of your moves.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Complicated is mousetrap, right?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Mousetrap's complicated.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: If you put everything together and you drop the ball, it's gonna come out where you want it.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a lot of moving parts and pieces, but it's all predictable.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: This stuff is predictable.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's why would you want to start a business and build a business and have that business fail when it's black when it's plug A into B, B into C, C into D, black and white, step by step.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: This is all you need to do.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: And we call it um we call it um there's a new, there's a we've come up with a brand new label.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um it has to I'll think of it.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it has to do with um with with how you grow.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: I can't believe I'm forgetting it.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, one of the things that it seems like you're talking about too is like it's finances are not the thing that make a business fail.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: What happens is that people don't have the right systems in place and process and procedures, and they're not always necessarily, as I like to say, MMA.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: They're not measuring, monitoring, and adjusting as they're moving forward to make sure that they're actually, you know, doing the things right that will actually generate the income because the income is is like the bonus of doing the things right, right?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like you've got your processes and your procedures, and then people try to keep throwing things, they'll they'll try to throw, oh, we need to do more marketing.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, take a minute and understand what's your messaging.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Is that right?
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's um we have to measure, we have to monitor, you know.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's, you know, I mean, I came from the world of I come from the world of direct um direct marketing, where we, you know, you have your control and you have your what you're testing against it.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: But it seems a lot of times people don't necessarily create that part of their business.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, smaller businesses don't because they don't see the value and they don't think that the time required to capture, review, and act on those those data points is is worthwhile.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's called scaling smarter, and that's why I couldn't remember it, is because we we did this through um um a group survey.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: We came up with a bunch of titles, so it wasn't my title, but it's called Scaling Smarter, and it's about understanding because here's what happens when you grow.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, the world you live in is changing constantly, right?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: You have you have a universal conflict that's existed since cavemen.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody wants things to stay the same.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want it to change.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: What I know works today, I want to know it's gonna work tomorrow.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: What I did to get food today, I want to do to get food tomorrow.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: What made me happy today, I want to make it and have it make me happy tomorrow.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want the world to change.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: The world is constantly changing at a faster and faster pace.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: And the only thing that is constant, that is never changing, is that the world is constantly changing.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: So you have this conflict of organizations wanting stasis in an environment that refuses to allow it.
• 11:19
  unknown: Yeah.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: So as you grow, everything you do has to be rethought.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: You can't manage 10 people the way you manage 50 people, and you can't manage 500 people the way you manage 50 people, and you can't manage 5,000.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: You see what I'm saying?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's all different, right?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's oh it's always it's it's we are you know, and and you actually know this, it's also based on where you're doing business.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be different.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Business on the East Coast is gonna be different than the business on the West Coast versus where you are in France.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, we were, you know, we were talking about this um actually just before I got on the call with you, um, talking with um a client who is um starting one of our hubs, and she's talking about doing it virtual, you know, because she's in um congestion California.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's hard to get from point A to point B.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so what works in one place is not always gonna be the same as what's gonna work in another area, right?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so you have to look at that, and same thing, things are always changing and evolving constantly, yeah.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the things that I talk about is this thing that I call the arc of success, and this is something that came out of my research, and it's how organizations mature.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: There are three stages of maturity, and the process of maturation has to happen three times.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and as you move from youth to adolescence to adulthood, and sometimes it can happen fast, and sometimes it takes decades.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's not about speed, it's about getting the maturity to be able to move to the next stage.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: So the way it works is you you you traverse this arc of success, and it starts when somebody has an idea, and that idea is implemented, and if it's successful, it creates growth.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Growth creates complexity.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: Complexity creates the need for rules, controls.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: Rules and controls create a loss of flexibility, and that's a problem because everything that you've been doing has been through a very flexible, malleable environment because it's new, right?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: But as that happens, it's and people I say that to people and they go, Well, I never quite thought about it that way, but that's exactly what happens, right?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the same thing with with with youth, you know, with youth, adolescence, and adulthood.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the the overarching model is very simple.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's the three P's.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's only three things that any organization has to accomplish to be successful.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: You have to have clarity of purpose, you have to have consistency of performance, and you have to have engagement of people.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: Purpose, performance, people.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I say this to people, and what happens is everybody thinks they got the purpose down.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: I know what our purpose is.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: So they try to move into adulthood.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: They try to do things that are adulthood stage things, but they haven't actually completed youth, much less adolescence.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: So they struggle and they never get there.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: So what I say to these people is, so you know exactly what your purpose is, right?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, they then they say, Yeah.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: I say, okay, I want you to grab anybody from different areas of your organization, and I want you to ask them what business you're in.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: What's the purpose of your business?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Now, before you do that, you tell me, do you think you're gonna get the same answer from everybody?
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh whether it's three people or 30 people, you're gonna get the same answer?
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Then how can you tell me you know what your purpose is?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: If your staff doesn't know what your purpose is, how can you how can you let your staff, how can you know your purpose and not let your staff know what that purpose is?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's insane.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: So don't tell me you know because you don't.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: You think you know, you know what you sell, and you think you know who your market is, but you don't understand your purpose.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: You don't understand the value of your product, you don't understand why it's of value, you don't understand who values it, you don't understand how they want it delivered, and you don't understand the culture that is required to create that environment so that you can actually do those things.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: And in the long run, what's that gonna get you?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: You don't understand those things, and if you don't have them documented, and if everybody in your organization can't answer that question, you don't have clarity of purpose.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't have consistency of performance, you can't make commitments and have people expect you to live up to them because you can't perform consistently.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: And people go, I mean, literally, they're just like, because they want to say, of course we perform consistently, and they're then they start thinking, it's like, oh yeah, well, we screwed up that order, and oh yeah, that client, we had a problem, we had a communication problem with that one, and yeah, maybe we don't perform consistently.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, right, this this stuff is so basic, but people don't understand it.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it's literally a color by a paint by numbers coloring book for leadership teams in a very specific state of maturation.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's not designed for startups, it's not designed for publicly traded companies, it's designed for a very much a mid-market uh organization that has autonomy, that has the ability to make decisions independent of outside investors.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Larry, what you're talking, you know, it's it's when you're sitting here talking about this, it's I'm I've like a few things that are going through my head.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, I'm thinking about when I first, my first few jobs, right?
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: When I first got out of college.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I recently have said this to people.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that I was I was chasing, and I didn't realize in chase, I was chasing it until like I was able to look back.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was chasing purpose and leadership.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And part of that was that no, none of the companies that I worked at, I was in magazine publishing.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: I knew at the magazine I worked on what it basically was supposed to be doing.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I never heard from any of the higher-ups talking about the purpose of the company at all.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's something very interesting.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Company number one that I worked at doesn't exist.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: They sold off the magazines.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, right?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Company number two doesn't exist.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: They sold off the magazines.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Company number three, the magazines exist, but the company doesn't, and it the magazines work in different capacities and they were sold off.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, right, like so very disappointed, those companies don't exist.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I was just like, oh, right.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I literally have just been talking to people about one of the biggest things that leaders need is clarity.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: They need to understand who they are as a as a human, as a purpose, right?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like they need to know who they are before they can actually lead others.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: And lead a company.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: You need to like define that, but then you need to bring that into your company.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it and that is so fundamental to the whole concept.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's shocking.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: And when people start to come to grips with it, it completely changes their mindset.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: So so here's one of the tricks.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Here's one of the tricks when you have clarity of purpose.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: When you try to hire somebody, you don't hire them based on their skills.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: You hire them based upon what their vision is.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: What do you want to do?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: What do you want to be a part of?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: What is the biggest?
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm only thinking of profane words.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, outrageous goal, right?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: The outrageous goal, right?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: The big, hairy, audacious goal.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: B-H-A G.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Big hairy audacious goal.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: But that you can't do by yourself, but you have to do with other people.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: It can only be done with a group of talented, driven, purpose-driven people.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't have that, how can you hire the right people?
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: You can't.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't have that, how can you work with the right customers?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: You can't.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: One of the companies that I highlighted in my book, which was a client, was incredibly successful for a couple of decades, and in in no time, in a three-year period, in a two-year period, went from 20 years of profitability to two years of loss.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: A couple of hundred thousand in the first year, half a million in the second year, and by February of the third year, when they hired me, they were on pace to lose 800,000.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: This is not a small company.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: This was uh roughly 40 people, 40, 50 people.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: Small-ish, but but not a micro company.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: And basically, what they didn't have was clarity of purpose, and they were trying to sell everything that they could sell to anybody they could sell it to.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: And we fired two-thirds of their clients, and they made more money, they sold more product, and ended up with more profit.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: And by the end of that third year, they were they were even.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't make a profit, but they didn't have a loss.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: So we've we flipped that$800,000 path to neutral, and they just have been going there ever since.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely love that.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's I mean, that's but it's also, you know, um, I think one of the things that what you just said to pull that out is, and I know it's a not to be cliche and having like sayings, but like you know, you hear people say the riches are in the niches, right?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot sell, you cannot be everything to everybody.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be able to drill down.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: You might reach more people by sharing, but when you're specific, right?
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm gonna talk to X.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: I want to sell, I want to sell coffee mugs to just to coffee stores or coffee shops, right?
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not selling them to.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody, I just want them to go to coffee shops.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like, you know, you have to break it down so that you can do that.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: But the but the niche has to be driven by the customer's sense of need and value.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's not your selling coffee cups to the coffee shop.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's why does the coffee shop care about mugs?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: What's the value of the mug to the coffee shop?
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: And how do you enhance that value for them so they want to buy from you?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: So they want to keep buying from you.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: And in the long run, what does that do for your business?
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: What's that long-term vision?
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: One of the interesting things that comes up a lot, and you talk about these trite phrases, and they're they're trite for a reason.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's because they work, and they're trite because people repeat them over and over and over and over and over and over again.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: But they're that but they're they're they're they're true, right?
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: So when you, as you can see, I got the arc up behind me, yeah, trying to get out of the way.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: The transition from youth to adolescent is the most difficult, particularly for entrepreneurs.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is a tongue twister, so let me say it slowly first.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's the point in time when you have to shift from more is better to better is more.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: So youth is getting clear on who you're selling to and why they're buying from you, your purpose and your long-term goal and the culture you want to create.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's all tied together, right?
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: Once you get that clear, it's no longer about more.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's about now let's do what we know to do and do it better.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: So at the beginning, more is better because the more we do, the more we understand, and the more we can learn about what people value and why, and whether they're valuable to us and whether we're valuable to them, and we can learn who to say no to.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: But once we get clear on that purpose, we have to stop focusing on more and start focusing on better.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: We want to do a better job of delivering, not deliver more.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because as we do better, first of all, you'll stop losing customers.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: Second of all, your customers will become your marketing tool.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: And third of all, you're stop losing people because they're having fun doing what they're doing and they're doing really good work.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's better, and they're worth praise, they're praiseworthy, and the clients love them and the vendors love you, and you love your staff, right?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's the transition from more is better to better is more.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: And you got to say to people, you gotta fire those clients.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: And they go, I don't think you understand.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no, I I understand.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: You really need to get rid of these people that aren't in your sweet scot because they will keep you from being able to improve your processes and systems and delivery, they will keep you from being able to fulfill the commitments and promises you have to make to create long-term relations that support sustainability.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: Make sense.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, it totally makes a lot of sense.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I absolutely love it because you know, it's it, I totally see the whole cycle.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I'm like, I'm like watching it in my brain.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm like thinking about where I like where we are with like with missing link network.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, okay, like we we really need to, we we were like always like let's get more, more, more, more, more, more, more links.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we're we're almost like in this like little phrase where we like I am a little anal on our website because I want it to be great so that when people come in and as a as a link comes in, they have a great experience.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: I want to make sure that so that's the you know, that's where we want to be better.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: The better is more because they're gonna have a better experience.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm see, I'm like hearing this, I'm like, oh my God, this is like, you know, and we're part of it still youth.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I every time I see hear the word youth, I have to think of, you know, my cousin Vinny, and I think the youth, I'm sorry, you know, if you like in some parts of the business, we've we're we're still in the youth freight part of it because we're in the expansion, and some parts of it we are we're teetering on on teenage and the adolescent, you know, exactly, right?
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this is exactly the problem is that people get a whiff of this success, and they're like, I can move in this direction, and they don't have my terms, but we I have an assessment tool, and um there are three components, three objectively measurable components that identify whether you have achieved the first objective, clarity of purpose.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: There are three for clarity, consistency of performance, and there are two for engagement of people.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: So there's eight components that are pieces of of the three um the three um you know mandates for leadership teams, the operational imperatives, I call them.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: So you take this assessment and it's literally just yes or no.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's yes or no.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not almost.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's like if it's not a yes, then it's a no, even if you're 90% there.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: If you're 90% there, you're not there.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it ranks all eight of them from weakest to strongest.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because everybody wants to do everything all at once.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we gotta fix this and this and this and this.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: No, you've got to run your business.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: You've been successful, we're gonna do one thing at a time.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: So you the first time when I start with a client, we look at the first three, the three weakest.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: And depending upon the sense of need from leadership, often it's we've got cash flow problems.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: Occasionally it's we've got new client problems, right?
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: Occasionally it's things like we've got product development products, or we've got new market segments that we're just running our heads into the wall.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: Depends on where your sense of pain is, but we always look at the top three, and no matter how strong any of those are, the with the three weakest, and whichever one will solve that emotional sense of need the best, is the one we start with.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: So we focus on that and we fix it, and it's like you fix that, and it's I'm just getting fluttery.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's like every problem, you know, you know how you go through the day and it's like, I'm gonna do these seven things.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: These are my seven priorities for the day, and you get the end of the day, and you've finished one, and you got the number one second one almost done, but you spent the day putting out fires.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: Those fires go away, they just disappear.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: They just go, it's like where did I get this time?
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's and I wish I could say that I was brilliant, but this isn't me.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: This is data, this is data.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: All I did was collect the data personally, this is primary research, put it together, came up with a theory, a hypothesis, yeah, developed a theory, you build a construct.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: That was the other phrase.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: You build a construct to test the hypothesis to come up with a theory, and that's all this is.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um 80% of what's in the book is data, 20% of the what's in the book is my opinion and my approach and my thoughts and my idea.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like the arc of success was something that I created.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: That wasn't anything that I got, but I got it by studying the data, right?
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's like people don't think that way, right?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: But data, you know, we talk, um, I I just came back from a conference, and one of the biggest things that came out that was like an underlying theme, and I shared some of this too, which is that you have to be measuring the the things in your business because without measuring and collecting the data, you don't know where you are and you don't know what to change or to do or to do.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: So data is so important, and we you know we need the data so that we can see like where we're going.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: And if we need to make a change, right?
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: I I I agree with you a hundred percent.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not big on these 110% people or 100 and 200.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not big on that.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you're either giving it all you got or you aren't.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's this 110% stuff is BS to me.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I agree with you 100%, and it's really important to remember that every piece of data you collect is a lagging indicator, not a leading indicator.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to be very careful about how you use that data, and it's like lies, statistics, and percentages.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: You can make them say anything you want.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I agree with you, and they have to be treated with great, great caution.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: The best thing you can do is create a rock solid foundation that's based on, first of all, a very clear purpose.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: And out of that purpose, what you and what you'll see in the in the background again, you'll see youth is narrow and shallow experience.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: Adolescence is narrow and deep experience, adulthood is broad and deep experience.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: So the more you do it, the more experience, the more depth of experience you get.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then as you start getting depth of experience, you can start expanding out and getting more breadth of experience.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: And people are always trying to jump to that breadth of experience before they get the depth and they don't understand it.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's like people that want to be um that want to be uh um a master or uh uh like a Jedi, but they don't want to learn the basics, they don't want to spend years going through the basics and learning and training, and you know, they don't want to apprentice.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, no, I got I got I got the idea, I can go do it.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: So again, this is stuff is just not rocket science.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: It just isn't.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's easy to do.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're investing your life in a business, doesn't it make sense to to to at least look at somebody's research that says this is bulletproof?
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and what you just said though about the basics, yeah, right.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: I've I think I I've said this all so many times.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's always we always need to go back to the basics, and I'll do a sports analogy, right?
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, um basketball players.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've read lots of books, right?
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um my son um really interested in basketball, okay.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: But the guy who's getting to the gym earlier, what is he doing?
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: He's before anybody else.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: The guy who's always working on the the key things you need to do, it's the basics.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's the basic footwork.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Footwork matters.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: You're always looking at your basics.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: You have to go back to the basics.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: You have to go back to it's not about the fancy shot, it's about can you do the freaking basic layup?
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Practice your layup, practice your layup.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, I feel like you know, I'm like a, you know, I I used to, you know, feel like I was hitting it over the head.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was like the basics, business can actually be rather boring.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's about doing the basics, but doing the basics consistently.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's the problem with entrepreneurs is that they get bored.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: And there's other reasons, there's other reasons why they make lousy leaders as you uh progress into adolescence, which we we can go into if you want.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: But I do have a little basketball story I want to share with you.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, share.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: Michael Jordan was once asked, and this was back shortly after he retired.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: He was once asked, um, what do you think about coaches, business coaches specifically?
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: This was a business environment because he was into a lot of businesses, right?
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Many people say that I am the greatest basketball player ever.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it's true, but I can tell you this.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: I needed a coach.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't mean the coach of the team, I mean a personal coach.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I needed a if I needed a personal coach and I'm one of the best players in the NBA, everybody needs a coach.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because you need to be reminded that you need to master the basics.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's your that's your foundation.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's what will always get you home.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: That is so true.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely love that.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely so Larry, how can people get your book?
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: How can get people you know, take your assessment?
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a free assessment, or is it uh um if they want to dive into more about business and and you know not committing suicide?
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: I want to I want to give you the subtitle before I answer your question.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay because the title of the book is always meant to get grab your attention.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: The subtitle of the book, any business book, is always meant to tell you what the book's about.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: So the subtitle of the book is How to Survive Success and Thrive in Good Times and Bad.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's really cool.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: So the the easiest thing in the world to do is to use the internet and search for something you can remember.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: Mandelberg is easy, suicide is easy, but suicide gets you a lot of other stuff.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: You kind of have to remember businesses don't fail.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: But if you just do a search in Google and businesses don't fail, you're gonna find tons of references.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it's on Amazon and it's on Google Play and it's on Apple Store, and it's I mean, it's in all the electronic places.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: And my email is on the website, and I give everybody um a um relatively short uh like a 20-minute discovery session.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm driven to give this information away as much as I can.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: If I could give the book away, very famous artist who's name I won't repeat, was once asked about if he worries about um about um piracy of ebooks.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Oh, why shouldn't I tell you?
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's Malcolm Gladwell.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: And and he said, um, I don't worry about piracy, I encourage it.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: The more people that read my book, the happier I am.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: If I could give it away for free, I would, but it wouldn't have any credibility then.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm happy to give all of this stuff away.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: Just remember, businesses don't fail.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's one that usually gets very focused results.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: Go to Amazon and it's Mandelberg.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's not a lot of Mandelbergs out there.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: So you can buy the book, you can look on the blog, you can a lot of this information is available publicly.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: And you cannot take the assessment without having the book.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: The URL is in the back of the book.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: But if anybody reaches out to me and sets up a discovery session, this is all free.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: There's I'm not I'm not chilling for customers.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't take very many customers.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very I don't do, I haven't done any marketing for 25 years.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: So you got to be the right person for me to take you on as a client.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: And um uh if you do that discovery session with me, I'll give you what you need to take that assessment, and then I'll help you analyze it.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because it it people don't want to believe it.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: They see it and they go, yeah, I get that, but what about this and what about that?
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, no, no, you're playing whack-a-mole with symptoms, buddy.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta stop.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta let that go.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: You're not dealing with problems, you're dealing with symptoms.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: Let's focus on what you need to build a sustainable organization.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: And these are the things, these are the eight things, and these are the things you need to do.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: And in the book, those eight things are eight chapters, eight of the 12 chapters, right?
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: The 12th one is about the survey to help you understand how to use it.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: But each of those eight chapters talks about the benefits of doing this.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: It there's a there's a there's an anecdote, a story, there is uh examples, and then there's uh how to create it, how to deploy it, how to implement it, and how to maintain it.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: So everything you need is right there.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: If you if you need more than that, then you you can hire me, but you don't have to.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: I I absolutely love it.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, listeners, do me the favor.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, I will put the link to the the book in my in the show notes, so it will be in there.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: But do me a favor, reach out to Larry, connect with him because the wisdom he has is just this is just absolutely phenomenal.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: And each and every one of us, whether you want to believe it or not, has a is a business, but you have a business.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have a business, we do not want you to fail.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want you to have that, we want you to have the most amazing, unstoppable success.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: And this book will help you do that and be there and sustain it too.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: And connecting with Larry, he's got great information.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: So, so can I give you a, you know, I like to leave my audiences with one little gem.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: Can I do that?
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: Please.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: So delegation.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: Most people hate it.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: They don't like giving up authority, they don't like giving up power, they don't like training.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a process for delegation.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: I've trained baseball teams on this.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: And um there's there's one very small secret.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: People learn to delegate.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: Most people learn to delegate by watching their parents, which just is the worst possible way to delegate in business, right?
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever heard of a delegation class?
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: I do delegation training, I do ethics training.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the gem.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: When you delegate a task to someone, and I don't care how risky it is, how much money is involved, or how much experience this person has, I care not.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: Before you tell them how to do it, ask them how they think it should be done.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: All you give them is the objective.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: The problem with delegation is most people don't understand what the objective is.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: All they know are the steps to do the work.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: So, what that does is it forces you to get clear on your mind about what the objective is.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then you find a delegate and you say, I want to delegate this task to you.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: I want this office kept clean.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want the trash emptied, I don't want the stocks, the shelves restocked.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: I want this office kept clean, whatever that means to you.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's the goal.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: Clean office.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's a goal, it's not a task, right?
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's an objective.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: Now, before I tell you how we do it, you tell me how you think it should be done if it was your responsibility.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's the gem.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: That is a great gem.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, because it also gives people a sense of ownership.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's ownership.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: If you aren't hiring the right people, they have no information to give you.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: If you're hiring the right people, they should be smarter than you and they should be giving able to give you very creative ideas, which they're not gonna do if you tell them what to do or don't ask them how to do it.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: Before you give them a framework.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I absolutely that that is a great gem.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, an absolute amazing gem.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so listeners, this is an amazing nugget.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is how you have unstoppable success.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: So please do me a favor, reach out, connect with Larry, and then please do me the biggest favor of all and share this episode with your friends, your family, your colleagues, your business associates, people that you know in business, if it's an entrepreneur or or not an entrepreneur, share this with them because I'm sure they will get something out of this.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is great information.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: We are here to help you have unstoppable success.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Jacqueline Schuminger.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Larry, for being an amazing guest.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: May I see beaucoup?
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: And uh please again hit subscribe and share.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for listening.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry we went so long.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for joining me on the Unstoppable Success Podcast, where we don't just talk about growth, we leap toward it.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: If something today lit a fire within you, sparked a new idea, or gave you the extra push forward, please don't keep it to yourself.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: Share this episode and podcast with a friend, colleague, or friend.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Fellow high achiever.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review, and most importantly, connect with me, Jacqueline Strominger, at LeaptoYour Success.com for coaching, community, and your next bold move.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: Keep leading with intention, keep building your network with purpose, and most of all, keep leaping because you were meant to be unstoppable.