Latest / Steve Azar's Resonance: A Podcast for Leaders, Unpacking the Power of Song, Silence and Strategy / Resonance Season 3-Episode 6: Throwback Thursday-Randy's Origin Story

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Resonance Season 3-Episode 6: Throwback Thursday-Randy's Origin Story · Steve Azar's Resonance: A Podcast for Leaders, Unpacking the Power of Song, Silence and Strategy

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: This is Resonance, a podcast for leaders that unpacks the power of song, silence, and strategy.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: We believe the great leadership begins with deep listening, not just to others, but to the still small voice within.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's not just about being a successful leader, it's about being soulfully aligned as well.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: In a world moving fast, resonance invites you to pause and reconnect with purpose, people, and possibility.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: We'll dive into some cool stories, celebrate with friends, and dig deep into the music too.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: A song has a way of saying what words cannot alone.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: So whether you're leading a business, a team, or just trying to lead your own life with more meaning, this is Resonance.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Resonance, resonance.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Resonance.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Mike Farrell, and I'm joined today here on the island with uh the usual cast of characters.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: We've got Randy the professor, and Steve is Gilligan, and I'm gonna be skipper and take you through it today.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: So today we get to put Randy on the couch.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: The last two episodes, Steve and I have had to go through the ordeal.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: So uh today we're gonna put Randy on the couch and talk about his story and kind of his work over the years.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: And to do that, I'm gonna kick it over to Steve first.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Steve, you can talk a little bit about uh Randy and uh tell us uh a little more about what we're gonna talk about.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, first of all, Mike the monk guy Farrell, I don't know about you, but I'm still recovering from my time on the couch, I can tell you.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: So it's time for Randy, because Randy does that to you and me.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: He's done it.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: You did it to me.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: But Randy's got another level of something that I I I wake up in the middle of the night just shaking my head, going like, what just happened?
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: What happened?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm I'm excited about having uh the opportunity for you and me to drill the wonderful, incredible mind, heart and soul of our brother Randy Harrington.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: Just as consultant, when people talk about consulting, you know, there are people that are probably pretty bad at it, people that are pretty good at it, and people that are great at it.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: And Randy's he's just spectacular.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen it firsthand uh in a live audience with a big room of hundreds and hundreds of people, uh, and uh with the CEO uh just sitting there, all smiles and just proud of the fact that you could tell that he knows Randy is money and he's penetrating, he's making a difference.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: He also does it barefoot, which is another whole thing, and he got rid of his ponytail, so he's no longer Samson.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know about the deal, but I tell you what though, to me, just getting to work with him personally was awesome.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, Randy, what makes a great consultant?
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I think when we were talking to Mike Farrell, the monk guy, uh, we got to some of that.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_03: And what makes a great consultant is a sense of humility, a sense that it's not about us, it's about the client, and it's a willingness to really deeply listen and switch on to what the client's world is all about.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_03: So, good consulting, no matter what kind of consulting you're in, really begins with a foundation of empathy.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, if you want to know more about how to be a good consultant, go read Mike's books because those are really those are really good books to do it.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_03: But it in general's in general, that's it.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, in general, it's just this this sense of being present for the client that is the foundation.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: If that if that's not there, everything else is gonna be so Randy, let's let's dig into your origin story since since Steve and I had to go through that ordeal.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Let's let's talk.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: I know you I know you grew up in Hawaii.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: I know that there's there's that background.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Take us through kind of the you know, yeah, you bet.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's been a good life.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's been a wild life.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: My dad would don't leave out your national championship at O Miss.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we'll get to work that in.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_03: I'll work that in.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, so uh a military brat, my dad was Air Force, uh uh retired as an Air Force colonel.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_03: He flew rescue helicopters.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_03: Before that, he flew B-52s, which is a whole nother story, to go from B-52s.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_03: So here's a story.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: He gets orders to helicopter flight school on one day, and then the next day he gets orders to Vietnam.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_03: Think about that.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, yeah.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: That was a thing.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but anyway, my dad was a cool dude, uh, very intense, very type A, very buttoned up, you know.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_03: And coming out of Vietnam, praise be, he was uh he lived through it, and uh, we ended up in Hawaii.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_03: And Hawaii turns out to be a fantastic place to go to junior high and high school, by the way, especially in the 1970s, which is even by all accounts now on the islands, it was an epic time to be there.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_03: And uh it was it was very formative for me for sure.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_03: I love Hawaii, it is a big part of who I am.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_03: One of the words that I live by is the word pono, and pono is the Hawaiian word that means what is right, what is good, what is appropriate, what is necessary.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_03: And so you'll hear people on the island saying, Man, that's just not Pono, man.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_03: That's just not Pono, or it is Pono, or you were righteous in Pono, you know?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_03: So to be Pono is to live right and well and good.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's where that value really got kind of stuck in.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um What island were you living and growing up?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry, what island did you grow up on?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_03: Oahu.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_03: Oahu.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, my dad was at Hickam Air Force Base, and my wife, Patty, we weren't married at the time, we were in high school, but she lived about a hundred yards from me around the corner.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_03: Her father was a naval commander and he retired a Navy captain.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so we became friends.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: We dated all through high school, and I could run from her house to my house in like nine seconds flat because my dad, if I was one minute late from curfew, that was a day of restriction.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_03: Her dad didn't give a dang because I'd sit there and watch WTBS Westerns with him because Patty was a swimmer and she was asleep on the sofa most of the time.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_03: So that was date night.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_03: But anyway, we ended up getting married after college.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_03: That's another story.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_03: But anyway, Hawaii was magnificent and uh terrific.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_03: And this is, you know, these things, this is a kukui nut lay, right?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_03: And they're often given when to as a sign of excellence and importance.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_03: And it took me years, but it turns out why was the kukui nut such a big deal?
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_03: Because kakuei nuts grow on the islands.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_03: And it turns out that my uh my ukulele teacher, Lono, who you know, Steve, amazing.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: Lono says, Oh, kukui groves were very sacred places.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_03: And why were Kakui groves sacred places?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_03: Because there's oil in a kukui nut.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_03: And if you had kukui nuts, you had light.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_03: So dig it.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_03: This was the gift of light to people, right?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_03: So I mean that's yeah, so it looks like, oh, it just looks like a you know, it's a thing you put on.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, no, no, no.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_03: This was this is the symbolic nature, and that's the kind of stuff when you get into Hawaii, you look at the top of it and you go, okay, there's hula, whatever.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_03: But if you dive deep, man, the world opens up in a powerful way.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_03: So Hawaii.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_03: Then when I was in Hawaii, I debated and did a lot of speech.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_03: And then because of my dad moving around a bunch, I ended up in the Southeast and ended up doing pretty well in debate in the Southeast, and ended up then getting a scholarship to the University of Mississippi.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_03: Howdy.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_03: And Hadi Toddy.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: I got a full ride and uh had a coach there, a guy named Ty Warren, who is still my mentor, an irrascible, tough SOB, but I love him to death.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_03: And he just took care of me.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_03: And he had a he wanted to pull together a group of kick butt competitors and then travel around the country.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_03: We we had not Ole Miss had not been on that circuit, on the main circuit of speech and debate at the time, collegiate circuit.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_03: And then we hit it and we hit it hard.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: And we started just winning and winning and winning.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_03: And we would go there, and people had never heard of us before.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, yeah, we're from Ole Miss.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_03: We're yeah, we're look at this.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_03: You got toilets on the inside here.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_03: Isn't that amazing?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_03: That's just incredible.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: So we can't wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: Hold it down now a little bit.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm getting offended.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: Come on, come on.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_03: But nobody, I mean, everybody looks at Mississippi and they think, Mississippi, that's gotta be, you know, Hickville and not even close.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_03: Slapdash.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_03: And then we would crush them.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_03: And so that was that was very enjoyable.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: You win it all.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: You win it all.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so we did.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_03: We uh we ended up with uh we we had individual national championship winners and team national championship winners, and that would have been like 1980, 81.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_03: A hundred years ago.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_03: Awesome.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_03: And the program still exists at some level today.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_03: One of the things I'm most proud of, actually, in my career, is uh we developed a thing called the Speaker's Edge, which is still running at Ole Miss.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's in its 24th or fifth year, and it's graduate students in business and accounting and law in a Clash of the Titans battle that goes over two weeks.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_03: And these kids are gonna do somewhere between three, five speeches a day, doing presentations and getting hammered by coaches and judges, coaches that are business people that come from around the country.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and having to communicate the pressure.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it is.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's been an amazing thing, and I'm super proud of that effort.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: You guys created that when y'all were there, Randy?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_03: We created it about uh boy, 15 or 20 years after I left.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: I forgot you're 98.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: I forget your age.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm old.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Careful.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: I resemble that remark.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: We gotta stay strong, man.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: We're all we're all getting older.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but anyway, Ole Miss was pretty cool, and Ole Miss really set the foundation for me.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_03: I then went to did a master's degree at Chapel Hill in uh communication, and that's when I really got switched on to communication.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_03: I studied interpersonal and organizational communication at Chapel Hill, got married to my wife.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_03: She was working at Duke University at the time, and so we were we were married when I was 21 years old.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_03: Crazy.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_03: We're still married today.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_03: Crazy, very lucky man.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_03: This guy.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, I mean, we're young when we're young, you know, we gotta we gotta have some luck on our side when we're making decisions based off of what's in front of you, all the trials and tribulations and everything.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, hey, ma'am, grateful.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: I can tell you I'm with you, brother.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh thing that can I just interrupt real quick.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: Please.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: I want to say one thing.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: As you laying on the couch, because here's what what I'm sort of what I'm hearing and feeling.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: And Mike, you can chime in as well.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: You grew up in this incredible structure with two military families as your families, because one they were becoming your family.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: But you grew up with the soul of Hawaii, and it makes all the sense in the world to me because you're able to organize all these beautiful thoughts that you have, and that is to me the magic of Randy Harrington.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I'm saying.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: I just feel like that you were uh a victim of your environment in a beautiful way.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Same for me.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I can tell you that folks, you know, I'm gonna just give a shout out to Mississippi.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: When you were here, that was another place of history that you were coming to.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Incredible culture.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: We had our problems, we all know that, but we're still the birthplace of America's music.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: And you don't have Elvis Presley, Jimmy Rogers, B.B.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: King, Muddy Waters, you know, the list goes on and on and on.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Robert Johnson, we can go forever.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Charlie Pride.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: It never ends.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's the it's so I'm just saying there's a ton of so much culture here artistically as well, and you got to embrace that as well when you were in Mississippi.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I was reading Faulkner books for God's sake, and we have Faulkner's in your backyard.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: It wrote exactly so I I think I remember a story, Randy, something that uh you also had a little uh radio station experience through this through this or FM, yes.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_03: My name was David Summers.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_03: It was one of the first new country radio stations, and uh I worked from seven to midnight.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_03: My roommate worked, he did drive time, uh Jimmy Lamb, and he caused all kinds of trouble.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_03: But it was great, yeah.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I so this was another thing though.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_03: This is what Ty did for me.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_03: I I had a thing called Ole Miss Today.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Ole Miss Today.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_03: Here's what's happening at Ole Miss Today.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_03: That was done five days a week.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_03: I would record two weeks at a time, interview professors and people around the campus, and then that went out to whatever the Mississippi radio station network was, and it would play.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so that was my that was Ty Warren setting me up with that.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_03: And so I did radio all through through graduate school to help make the money and and pay the bills and take care of the babies.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_03: But but that was how I got positioned for success was largely because of Ole Miss and because of Ty Warren.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: I just love the I love that your journey to this point.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: What are you gonna say, Mike?
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, and it's interesting that that all three of us have that connection.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Randy had radio, Steve does a radio show now.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: I used to do a business radio show.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and what we learn about radio, and Steve, you know this as well as anybody because you're doing it every week, it has to be pretty well organized and structured and concise to get our thoughts across and be able to talk about the things that we want to talk about.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like you got all day to do it.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you and you gotta hit that mark, right?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_03: You gotta hit that time.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you gotta get to it.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: I always feel like in my show, so you gotta realize I'm as amateur as it gets, I've been doing it in my eighth year, which I think the fact that I was you gotta realize as a guy that visited radio stations to get his music played for all of those years.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like, you know, you do the radio tour is what they call it.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: Before my first hits, I mean, I literally lost my voice.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I had throat surgery after all this, and between the shows and getting up in the morning and no sleep and trying to push, you know, have the record labels and the promotion guys pushing your music, but I had to be there every time.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so watching the good ones do their thing, you know what I mean?
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: There was always uh some nuttiness, but at the same time, some brilliance.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: The morning, morning guys, it drive time, all that, they're they they know about their listeners, what they're feeling, what's going on in their lives.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's way more of them in touch with not just the humorous side of things of life, it's every side of life.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: And they develop a bond with the listeners that's remarkable.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, being around that on the other side and being the artist and the mute, they played my music, which is awesome.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: But when I started my show, I conjured up a lot of the ones that I remembered that had some heavy spots in them, but were funny as well, but entertaining, period.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yes.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_03: They were your friends because you'd sit with them every morning on the way to work.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_03: You know, WKRP, I remember the first time I saw that TV show, I thought, that's right.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: That was a fairly accurate representation.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, life was like everybody was a little crazy, but somehow it all worked out together.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, it was fun because we got to see a little bit of that when we were all together down in Mississippi at Dancing Rabbit Golf Club because Bo Rounds did his show that morning from the from the deck of the clubhouse.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that was, I mean, that was just uh really cool to be able to see him, you know, do that.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And and obviously it's a sports show, but there was a lot of non-sports stuff that they were talking about.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Bo Bowns is fantastic.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: He don't he he is ESPN in Mississippi, and uh he's he's spectacular.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: Very good guy.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: We've had a good guy.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was really jealous of what he was doing.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: I thought, dang, that looks like fun.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: He does that for a living.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: We should get him.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: So he's very awful.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, in sports you can be a little controversial.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: Every once in a while he'll be a little controversial, and they'll be talking about him on the SEC network and all that, and you know, he just glows.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: But he he has an opinion and he says it.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: He gets to do that, you know.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um so Randy, let's get back to uh so okay, so you you go through all myths, you've got the the debate national championship and all those kinds of things.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: How does that get you into the business world?
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I went and uh took a job teaching at UNC Wilmington right after I finished my master's degree at Carolina, moved the wife down there, we had our first child in Wilmington, and uh I did also was a TV news anchor for WJKATV in uh CBS for about three years.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_03: And that was and I kind of toyed with the idea of going in that direction, but and you know this story, Steve.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_03: After I got an agent, my agent's like, okay, here's what we're gonna do.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_03: We're gonna move you to Indiana, and uh, you're gonna get paid a dollar more, and uh that's gonna be the because that market is you know just a little bit bigger, and then we're gonna move you two years after.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, no, no.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_03: I I could just feel it.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, eh, that doesn't feel good.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_03: So I followed my heart and decided to get a PhD, and one thing led to another, and I ended up getting my PhD at the University of Oregon.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_03: Go ducks, and you correctly identified this is Oregon State colors, this is the Beaver's colors.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I, you know, we're not up in the Northwest, we're not like y'all down in the south.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: We we actually get along pretty well with all I can say is that you're a duck fan, and I am a duck.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: I have no Hottie Tottdy fans, and you know this, and no state fans that are gonna wear each other's colors at somewhere in the wardrobe or the closet that you can find these things.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_03: This is my fun polo shirt.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_03: So I just thought uh I thought that would be appropriate.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, so I'm at now I'm at the University of Oregon, I'm doing a PhD, and that was a that's a whole weird story, but uh suffice to say I got through it.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: There were some ups and downs and changes in there.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_03: The woman who I was working with primarily as my my advisor, who is like is like the captain of your ship for that period of time, she left halfway through because of some budget cuts that the state had to go through.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_03: And she went and took a job at Kentucky, and she's like, Hey, why don't you come with me to Kentucky?
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, oh no, I'm gonna stay here and finish this doggone thing.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: So why can I ask you real quick, why did you choose Oregon?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: What was there?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_03: Well, this this particular professor heard me do a speech in Chicago, and I was delivering an academic paper, and it was a weird paper.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not gonna go into what it was about because it's very deep and bizarre.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: And there was like nine people, nine nerds listening to this in the audience, and this one woman who was a professor, and she came to me after it was over and she said, You've got something there.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_03: You should you should come and talk to us at at uh Oregon if you're looking for a PhD.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I looked at Austin and I looked at some other places, but when I came out here, I landed on in the second weekend in July, uh, would have been 1989, I guess.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_03: And I got off the plane.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_03: I was coming from Wilmington, and I got off the plane.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_03: So in Wilmington, it's like 119 degrees, and then I get off the plane here, and it was like 78 and no humidity.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, oh my god, this is amazing.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: So I instantly fell in love with the Northwest, and uh the university here is quite fantastic.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_03: We still live here in Eugene, Oregon.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_03: It's like a comfortable old shoe to me now, just feels good.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_03: So, so there we go.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_03: I think we may have lost Steve somewhere, but that's hopefully he'll he'll join us back.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so the Northwest is uh was beautiful, is beautiful.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_03: I'd love for you guys to come out here.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Steve, you've been out here, you've seen Astoria.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, that's where I met you originally, Astoria, Oregon, right up there on the north.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: One of my favorite towns in America, no doubt.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_03: It's a beautiful place, and uh, you really can't describe it.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's like uh you're in another country when you're out there.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's just gorgeous.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely fantastic.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: So we're here, we raised both of our kids here, and you know, just fantastic.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_03: They want to come back, which is also a fantastic thing.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_03: And it was out here that I started doing consulting in earnest.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: So I finished the PhD and realized that the the teaching jobs were not so good.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_03: And then almost immediately I got consulting work, first consulting gig at the FDIC, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_03: And my job, my job was to uh coach examiners who were so bad that they that they pissed off the board of directors or they pissed off the CEO so much that that CEO called their congressman and complained about the examiner.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_03: And so I went in to do that.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_03: And so the first thing I would ask is, well, give me the presentation that got you into trouble.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_03: And so by doing that, I learned a whole bunch about banking and how banks can fail and so forth.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what got me into financial services.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_03: It was also a really interesting gig.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Which has still been a big part of your consulting.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: It is, yeah.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: It's foundational.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_03: So I sort of just you know hit the ground running, a lone wolf consultant for a long time, and then started a company called Extreme Arts and Sciences back in around 2000.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Was that in Oregon or Seattle?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because you didn't have an office in Seattle or no.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we started it in Oregon and uh was supposed to be oriented toward financial services, but it didn't take long before we got the eye and ear of some people at Microsoft, and then Microsoft became the gorilla in our life for probably for me anyway, about 12 to 15 years.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: What years was this, Rant?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_03: So this would have been uh maybe 2003 or 4 through uh 17.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: This is the heyest of A days for Microsoft.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_03: Man, oh man, and it was one of those things where you'd work for 40, you know, hours a day, it felt like, and then uh we would always we would put in these these bids that were to me pretty big money, and then after everything settled out, we'd make a dollar.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it was one of those guys.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_03: I did.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: I needed to hire Mike earlier on.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't realize that at the time.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, anyway, so so explain to me.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: So when does like uh was it uh GoDaddy?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: Then you work with them?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: So all this starts to sort of come in around the same.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_03: That whole that whole world started to, you know, they all connect and and so forth.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_03: We did a little work with Amazon and all the other sort of big uh monsters that were in Seattle.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_03: And I would go to Seattle on a Sunday night and then drag my sorry took us home on a Friday evening back to Oregon and just lay on the floor for two days trying to recover.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_03: And it was just wild because they work 24 hours a day, and so you're there, you're up early, you're cooking with gas, and then at seven o'clock, somebody decides you should go to dinner.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_03: So then you go across town.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_03: No, there's never a restaurant near you.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Of course not.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_03: No, no.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_03: We have to go to the cool restaurant that's 45 minutes away in traffic, and then we're there, and then we come back, and then somebody wants to go get cigars in bourbon at eleven thirty.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so most most people don't know what that life really looks like.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: They think it's it's glamorous and you don't work very much, and that kind of thing, but you know you and I both know and and and Steve you know from your entertainment and and music experience you know it's it's a nonstop deal.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean you go uh I I can remember going to uh uh I had to do back to back trade shows for clients in New Orleans and it was about ten days straight the French quarter.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah and you know it was like Groundhog Day.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: You wake up every morning it's like oh my God I gotta do this again.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: No and there's and you you have new people with you just about every day.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember they expect the party to be coming to town.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like you know they've been waiting on you you're just hitting rewrite rewind right that's so funny that y'all went through that.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah but that's you know that's part of the building these relationships that we talked about.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: You had to do it you just had to do it.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a good thing in most cases and you also got to decide who you didn't want to do it with another time that you go, you know that's that's taking up too much time.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't feel good to me you know I tell you I still think that all of the times that we've served and uh and over our careers and had to do things with people we didn't want to do it with the most difficult times of my life.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely yep yeah you just you know it just hurts.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: It hurts yeah yeah yeah I got hired one time by a person uh I won't even say the state and they're they they hired me to find out why their turnover was so high.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I'm gonna give the guy the name Roy.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't his name but I'm gonna call him Roy for the purpose of this.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so I go and I talk to the the first group of employees which were line employees and uh I say so you know blah blah blah what do you like about working here?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_03: What do you not like about working here?
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_03: And people go Roy okay that was it all right so very good.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_03: So then I talk to the middle managers how you know so your manager here how long you've been here about eight years what's working what do you don't like Roy and then I talked to the senior leadership team was uh Roy and then I have to go make a report to Roy about what's wrong in the organization and that was a tough conversation to have and one of my one of my biggest regrets in my whole career was that I prevaricated I did not bring the pain in that report the way I should have I was like oh well maybe you know you're not coming across this way or people or so I gave it there was all these little outs and I remember thinking as I was driving back I had about a long drive back from that gig and I was just like I blew that you softened the you softened the blow because I softened the blow I did not look him in the eye and say you are the problem.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: There's your compassionate side compassionate side battling with the structured and you know what you have to do side.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_03: Well but I didn't I didn't honor the people that told me the truth.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah that's the more important part was that was that a learning moment for you that's the reason I called my company Extreme Arts and Sciences was because I wanted it to be I wanted I wanted it to be the kind of thing where it was intense.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_03: And that strangely enough through a bunch of other things opened up another big door in my life which was developing relationships with largely retired but occasionally active duty U.S.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_03: Navy SEALs and particularly the officers.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so uh if you look at the last 15 or 20 years of my life it's been profoundly informed by these these Navy SEAL retired captains and we've started another happy little company called Happy Tiger which is these retired Navy captains that go out and do all kinds of different consulting work.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_03: And they're just good guys.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_03: Now I I will be clear I am not a SEAL.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_03: I've never been a SEAL don't want to be a SEAL would quit ring the bell I walk in and ring the bell on day one just go ahead and get that done.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_03: I would just get it out of the way but I learn from them I understand a lot from them and I and and we get along very well together largely I think because I don't want to be a wannabe that's that's that's not what I'm about what I'm about is understanding how do teams of six people accomplish the effect of a hundred people that's what I like so I'm all about what's going on there?
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_03: How does that occur?
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_03: And so I've spent a huge amount of time working training living with with these guys and it's influenced my whole family we had two SEALs that lived with us for about a year.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_03: We were doing work for law enforcement back in the early 2000s back right after Columbine happened and law enforcement was dealing with the idea that a SWAT team is going to have to respond to active shooter situations.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_03: Believe it or not that happened that much before and so how do we go with automatic weapons to a place where there's one or two bad actors mixed in with innocence how do we change our tactics and so we brought in SEALs to have that conversation with these law enforcement people and so these two young men lived with us for about a year and at the time we had a 10 year old daughter and a 13 year old daughter and that was just the funniest thing in the world because my youngest daughter in particular Dana she just she brooked no crap from these guys she was like no no this is the way it's gonna be and they were like okay I was like wow yeah so anyway but there that's been a very formative part of who I am and what I bring to uh you've come full circle in your life so it's interesting because you're talking about growing up in the military families you and Patty and now sudden and you then all of a sudden even though you guys weren't but but your grand your daughters got to know their grand grandparents, right?
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah yeah oh yeah they were able to experience that but then seeing the age that your grand the grandparents were when they were in their fighting time.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know in their you know when they were enlisted and and in the military almost you coming back into the military world and using all these things that you've learned over your life and career it all adds up to me that makes total sense that you and the Navy SIELS get together.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: Especially after I had y'all on my show.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: Understand just the it was a major camaraderie that you guys you could tell that you guys had been in some sort of foxhole together and they and they accepted you.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like you were one of them.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: You were one of them.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I just I think that's interesting how you gravitated basically back to your beginning.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah it is interesting and it surprised even me because my my kind of informal nickname with them was Gandhi and and appropriately so you know I'm I'm not that guy.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not I'm not gonna kick in a door and and do the thing but I am going to support them.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna do everything I can what they're doing is outrageously impossible.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_03: I mean that's the thing that these guys get fired up when somebody tells them you can't do it right or no way you can win.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_03: And and what they've taught me is that there's no magic.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_03: You know one of the other groups that I've loved over the years when I was doing work at Microsoft we worked with big wave surfers coming out of Mavericks in California these guys that go surf the 50, 60, 70 foot waves.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_03: You know, insane.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_03: And when I interview them here's what they tell me no it's not insane.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's only insane if you don't train it's only insane if you don't figure out how to do it.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_03: We spend years working out how to get out there, how to wrap our chests with saran wrap and shrink wrap so that our rib cage doesn't implode.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_03: And and so we go out there not with the death wish we go out there believing we're gonna do okay we're gonna survive this because we've trained for it and we've prepared for it and the SEALs are the same way.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's only impossible if you're not prepared and you haven't thought it through but they learn to kind of cheat they learn to change the rules in their favor so that it optimizes their strengths.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah it's just amazing.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well what what do you call it preparation meets opportunity and when those real opportunities come then if they're prepared you don't know if you're prepared until you have that moment.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah and they probably've had a ton of moments you know and if you're prepared if you're prepared you get to use you get to do my word of the year is capitalize.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: You get to capitalize on that on that opportunity.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: Mike you got a word of the year I don't know I want to I got a word of word of the year look at this wait what here you go right no Mike Randy Randy I feel I want a word of the year.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: I know I gotta I gotta work on that capitalize hey Randy can you talk about your book in a minute I know you may be heading somewhere else but you you have authored a book co-author yeah uh co-author too I want to mention Carmen Volicke that I've worked with now for I don't know a couple of decades.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_03: Right she's the one she's just like she's the Mike Farrell in my life because Mike and you'll you'll con cop to this Mike is the guy who organizes this whole thing Mike is the guy that chases the cats around like hey you guys you got to get in here and do this.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_03: Come on let's do it and that's what Carmen Volake is as well as being like super super smart.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_03: That's the challenge plunge I'm a big fan I bought a plunge cold plunge.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: I give it a big thumbs up wow and if you want to know more about that we can talk about we're gonna we got a bunch of episodes coming we'll talk about we may even we may even film this from you in the cold plunge.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah there you go I think that would be an awesome thing.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: I want to hear your you talk with no chatter.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_03: Okay keep I'm sorry so let's talk about your co-authored books with your gut your so uh the first book we wrote was a book called Evolutionaries and as consultants we go into organizations and we meet these people and there's always this person and Mike tell me if you think this is true there's always this person when you talk to them they have a little mischievousness in their eyes they like working there but they are frustrated because they could do things so much better.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_03: If if you gave them a little bit of room they could fix a lot of the things that were broken but they've been had their hands slapped sometime along the way or something and so they're sitting there kind of you know with sitting back and they're not they're not engaging with this magic they could bring.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_03: And so there is this we've we've discovered there is this person who can't not change things right no matter what you do they're gonna want to tinker with it they're gonna want to fix it.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the first evolutionaries we met direct head on we was was being shown a brand new piece of software that took a year to build and a million dollars in a hospital he looks at it he boots it up and in one second he goes I want to put this over there I want this to be blue and it's like no you're not you we just spent a million dollars on this we're not changing anything but they can't not change things so I know Cecilia your daughter works in a restaurant right in swanky restaurants.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_03: So how about my daughter yeah yeah she's a chef she's a chef okay so she if she's cooking a dish she does not want an evolutionary in her kitchen she does not want somebody going well I think I could make this a little bit better if I put a little more of this on it or a little more consistency becomes the thing.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so what we tried to understand is what is the organizational dynamic that can leverage the power of these evolutionary people these people who want to change things no matter what.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's what that first book is about.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_03: And it turns out Navy SEAL are evolutionaries because they will shoot down plans that the general will bring to them or the admiral and they'll go that'll never work in a million years you dumbass.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_03: You know and they'll say that and they can't because that's their role in the in the thing and then they'll they're the ones who are going to go fix it and do the things that make it act actually but you know I'm I'm gonna back up now and talk about chefs real quick.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: They are constantly learning I think that they are open to a lot of ideas that a lot of people may not be open to I think they're so creative but there there's an there's a time for it and a time when you don't even think about it because it gets intense in there.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm telling you right now you've got a better shot at Cecilia and convincing her of something like that than my grandmother she would have you had no shot at my grandmother.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: You were in and out of the kitchen I'd go in there and tell her I'd tell her look Mamo your dumplings they need to be a little thicker you better you better get out of here boy yeah I'd go in and try to give her advice and all this and I you know I got to the point where it got to be like I knew I was getting to her a little bit.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah I was that I was that guy you know and uh she would block it off I mean she'd block the kitchen off where I couldn't even get in there.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: I love it yeah yeah she you got no shot and you know it's interesting too I think and Steve you bring up a great point there because and Randy I know that you talk a little bit about this in the book because I've had a chance to to read it the difference between learning to change and change for change's sake.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: Very very subtle but very different that you know when you're learning to create change it's one thing but when you're just you know trying to upset the apple cart because you think you can do something better that's a little different story.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_03: Randy have you ever gone into a situation where the company was doing really well and they're wondering why you're there what I'm saying is like why we're we're good how'd you get here and why are you here and what is that struggle like yes oh yes and I think Michael head nod to this as well oftentimes you'll get hired and you get hired usually by the CEO and so then you have nine conversations with the CEO and then you appear on on the site you know and I have no idea really what the communication between the CEO and their senior team has been.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so now I'm sitting with the senior team and they're looking at me with daggers in their eyes going who is this guy?
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_03: Why is he here?
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_03: What's he gonna do?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_03: Who's getting fired?
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_03: You know and so yes there's a lot of what the heck is going on and one of the things that I've been very clear about from the time that that I've been coaching and communication is you could be the greatest communicator in the world and you can still get better.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_03: You can still improve and you can you can be terrible and you can get better and you can get to be not so terrible.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_03: So no matter we can all get a little better.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_03: Now I will tell you just like if you could imagine going and working if you were going to be a fitness coach and if you go in and you see somebody and you go okay well we I can see what we need to do.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_03: We need to start with the basics get some flexibility or whatever it is.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_03: And it's very different than if you go in and you're looking at some elite athlete and then then it's like oh God what am I going to do with this person?
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_03: You know then then it's a little tough.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly if you're dealing with the whole different right right right right right yeah hopefully it's really cruising and they're really working yeah then you you really don't want to want to do any harm.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_03: That's the first thing you don't want to screw things up.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_03: You want to better understand why that is working and then try to amplify it.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: Capitalize capitalize but you got to work I just don't get it it's a little it's a little bit about like the golf swing Steve you know if you're a if you're a 25 handicap well there's a lot of things we can work on you know if you're a if you're a two handicap we're gonna get really really specific.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: I I do want to I do want to say something y'all both have brought up some points and I know you were a God pro for a while Mike and in a in your own way you're a God pro Randy you just don't know it.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a different game of God but no great God pros that I've had that have worked with me over my lifetime they sit there and they watch you hit boss and they don't say anything forever.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going like I'm out here you come on fix you know I want to but they're they're they're taking the time to listen and pause as we talked about earlier.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: They have a great coach has a great sense of pause and really wants to before they talk they're they're absorbing all this and they they want to have something to say rather than just run their mouth and and then everybody's golf swing no matter what you say is a little different so they're probably trying to figure out the perfect swing for you in business.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know you can't just go in and coach everybody the same right you're dealing with personalities.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I would imagine that I mean like I've had three or four different drummers over my career that I can tell you that the ones who were a long time they were all very different.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: Very very different.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: They were all amazing but every little way the the when they hit the snare and how they hit the snare and the rhythmic value and all this they all had this certain way of doing it that was very exciting for me.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: But when you had to have a conversation with them about how you know because I sort of things have to move around how I'm feeling right and that's not necessarily the best thing sometimes but the show isn't on a click track ever.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's on it's on real time how your emotions feel and that drummer has to you have to feel like you're he's perfect.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: But so the way I've had to communicate with different drummers over my life were very very different.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: But the outcome you have to be specific but then you also have to take care of their their identity and their sense of face I don't know if I could have done it the extreme way like extreme I think that the way you handled the first way which you were disappointed in yourself is the way I've always handled musicians.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_03: Well and you you know and that's because that ultimately ends up working because you know it's not going to work at all if you just blow it up.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah yeah well we're probably so you know it's not it's not in a big business moment but you know you won't it's big business but and it's business to us but it's just a different game.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: So you could you gotta do it with kid gloves and a big hug and love and all that.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_03: One of the biggest things I'm working on right now with some clients is this concept of pulse or rhythm the rhythm of the business.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_03: One of the things we learned at Microsoft was everything is about the ROB, the rhythm of the business.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_03: Microsoft corporate has an ROB and so if I'm working at Xbox my ROB has to align with their ROB.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_03: I have to connect with that.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_03: So this idea of rhythm and and the rhythm of the calendar one of the things I learned from Microsoft was when you say June 30th, June 30th is gonna happen.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_03: June 30th is inexorable.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_03: It will occur.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not about when the project's done it's about June 30th.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_03: And so you know that deadline is like solid.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_03: And so the calendar ends up being this way that you keep time.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_03: That's the click track of their organizational life.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_03: Woo that was kind of a thought that's amazing.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you the other interesting thing about that Randy is if we look back 1500 years the Benedictins have been talking about this idea of rhythm since day one because everything if you read the rule of Benedict everything is scripted.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: Everything happens at a certain time for a certain reason it's very very programmatic.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: This happened this is when we do prayer this is when we eat this is when we work all of those kinds of things it's that rhythm of the day and rhythm of the the community and it it ties directly into what you're talking about as far as the rhythm of business.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: I talk to organizations about that all the time.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yes yes and it's so the reason I'm using the word pulse is because pulse is something you feel sure and so the the trick is how do we align the pulse of the employee with the rhythm of the business and and how do we account for the pulse in the rhythm of the business in other words how do we make people a part of the success of the equation and what we find and I'm sure in Benedictine times that that what that was about was if we have all of this this is the way it is then I don't have to think about that anymore.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_03: My mind is now free right I don't have to worry about that.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_03: I can now concentrate on what is really more important.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yep and and Benedict would even say it allows us to be the best of what we can be there you go.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's as simple as that I've got a word now what's listening.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: Ah there we go listening listening that's what I'm gonna be my word of the year.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_03: Now y'all can't see it but Steve he has the name Steve on his notepaper.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_03: Well no I've actually that's the kind of rock star Steve is right yeah exactly got two names there.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_03: Look at that and that's why he's allowed to wear sunglasses on the podcast right now I've had a hat I just want you know I want to show y'all that I do have hair.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_03: Mine's pretty blank but it matches my shirt.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: I had to bring this in we have a a gear closet where we keep stuff for hiking and camping and everything and every time we open it up we see Steve A Wow I didn't get one of those I'm kind of jealous I I ordered this from Azar Enterprise before I ever met him to include in a basket for my wife because I think she had a little crush on him back then she saw that picture with the holes in the jeans and she said I I really think I think Randall this this little hangs up with some pride but no I had been driving through Mississippi and I heard some of your music and I said who is this guy who is this guy and I uh came to find you you were definitely more you weren't a pretender because you knew some of the deep cuts yeah because I you know I you you tested me early like I was going oh he knows empty spaces there's no way he knows empty spaces now that is my kind of guy yeah well I I I'm one of those people if I like something I like it a lot right so as soon as I find an artist that I like I'm I'm all over it.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_03: If it's an author I think you met me and then just said dang it he's nothing like the music I was really nervous to meet you and it was my wife who said get your sorry ass over there and talk to him and I was like no no no I'm not gonna be that guy I'm not gonna do that.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_03: And so she went over and talked to you.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: No but but our son Strach because we were celebrating Strach's graduation from Chapman you know out in California and he was about to go into the you know he was been doing the film thing forever obviously but uh we were celebrating that and we had all our kids with us.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: So Adrian who was about to go to OMS oh Adrian was at OMS Cecilia was still in high school and I remember Strach going hey dad I think that man at the bar wants to talk to you and why are you saying that he goes I think he does and so I said okay so that was my memory it was amazing that he noticed that.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_03: And I think I think Patty said to you let me buy you a drink and you said no I'll buy you a drink and that's that's how it all nice is that yeah no hey wait wait would you call Mike would you call that profound hospitality all right you score a pH you get a pH I gotta be real honest with y'all I don't like people buy I love buying things for people drinks.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yes I'm that guy I my dad was that way you know My wife a lot of times went and go, look, you can't just keep ar you can't argue with it for like ten minutes.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: You already split it at some point.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: But um I've always always feel uncomfortable for some reason.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's sort of my and it's probably cost us um it's very expensive to be me, by the way.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: I love hearing the story.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: I know the story, Randy, but you've enlightened me for some things of just growing up, and I forget sometimes about the military background with your dad and your father-in-law, and then love and the Navy sales.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: I just think that's sort of full circle, and and you've got other things that's gonna happen.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think Mike will tell you as well.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: I just think you're just sort of getting started.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like there's great energy with both of y'all.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I hope that y'all see this with me.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like, you know, they're saying, like, oh, you're gonna put us out to pasture at some point.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: But man, I feel like the pasture is, if that's what it is, there's a whole lot going on over there that wasn't going on over our careers in the heyest of days.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's just really interesting.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so how have we all prepared ourselves for the tw the later years?
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now where I passed, what do you call the when they're not the wonder years or the what are what are what years?
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: The golden years?
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: What are we the golden years, yeah.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: As my dad used to say, they're not for sissies.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, I know, it's right.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: Getting older is not for sissies, but don't y'all feel like that we've we are all at a point of there, it just feels right.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_03: So I I think that what happens is that as we engage with the environment that we're in, it's a dance kind of.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_03: And we're we're we have to be elastic to the situation that we find.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_03: We have to be able to conform to whatever the demands are of that piece.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_03: So one of my mentors says that you know, when you walk up to a staircase, you adapt to the staircase.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_03: The staircase is the staircase.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_03: You know how to go upstairs, but you have to adjust.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_03: So suddenly you probably don't even notice it.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_03: So, and and and he was saying you do this with everything.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_03: And by doing that adaptation, all of a sudden you see new possibilities.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_03: And so by doing more, we've seen more potential.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_03: And the potential couldn't wasn't even visible to us when we started.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_03: And now, oh my goodness, there it is.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so some of the things that I'm seeing right now, holy smokes, what's going on right now in the world of quantum physics and physics, the and science and astronomy, uh, and in in general.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, theories that we've had for 500 years are falling left and right as as uh uh Hubble and and and the deep space telescopes are uh showing us whole new views of reality.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_03: I I want to start over.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_03: I want to go back to college, I want to go back through a whole astrophysics uh degree because this is this is like Newton who's walking around, you know, and and same thing with AI and everything else.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's just like wow, it's popping.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and I think that's a great point that you want to go back, because I think the other side of this that I talk about all the time is that we need to go back.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: We have the future in front of us, but we have to understand the foundation that we came from.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: Really, those ancient principles and ideas that maybe have fallen by the wayside over the last few decades.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, if you if you think about grounded to, you know.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_03: If you think about Benedict in particular, I mean, if you think about this guy who's writing in 500 and 530, okay, well, guess what?
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_03: A whole lot of stuff happened three, four, five hundred years after that.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, with the whole the Enlightenment and the whole thing and and uh Gutenberg and uh industrial revolution and yeah, just everything changed, and those principles have held.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you know, for you know for me.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: So for me personally, you know, my sites, I don't know if they were set on it, but you get through these moments of climactic moments of you're it's Madison Square Garden, not some club somewhere, right?
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's Rose Garden, it's the Boston Garden, it's all the places that you in your mind could you could you be there, and then you're there, and then you have your hits on the radio, and then you have number one music videos, all this stuff's happening, right?
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what happens after that when radio passes you by a little bit?
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you got streaming all that.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying there's a time in your life, especially when you're mutt like me, there's a time in your life where what's gonna make you that happy?
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm that happy with everything that's going on.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it's all music related or arts related or whatever, or people in my life related, and I'm very grateful.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm extremely grateful, and I'm getting to do it on my home turf, where the home turf is the greatest music, the birthplace of America's music.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: So to be recognized on my home turf like I have been and have the official state song after 60 years and going in with children and all that, like we've talked about, it's another level of excitement, and it just keeps it's it's so uh it's surreal.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: I can't it just doesn't make any sense.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm that happy.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm that happy, is what I'm saying.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_03: Take a tuning fork and you whack the tuning fork and you hold it up near another tuning fork, the second tuning fork will begin to vibrate.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_03: So that first tuning fork is putting this stuff out there, and the second tuning fork is picking it up, and it starts vibrating.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what's going on here is you, dare I say it, maybe this is too on the nose, but the reason you're happy is because your experiences of life are resonating.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_03: There is resonance with your soul, with with with what's in your heart, with with with what Benedict would say.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_03: You're listening with the ears of your heart, with your life.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's why it feels good.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I've gone through phases recently where I could all of a sudden feel the resin that was not resonant.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_03: It was like, you know, it was like, that ain't happening.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_03: That's not what I want or need right now.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_03: And so as I look at the page turning around retirement or not retirement and all those kind of things, I'm really trying to understand how to find that vibe that you're that you're experiencing right now.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_03: And that I think, Mike, you are too.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_03: I'm looking at you.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_03: You're as happy as I can imagine you could be.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I don't think there's any question.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really, you know, I think, and kind of to put a bow on this on this episode, you know, Randy, you you talk about this idea of residence, and we're kind of like three tuning forks right now, you know, and and they're all they're all vibrating.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what's so cool about us doing this podcast, and certainly us expanding beyond that and and being able to to work with companies and organizations going forward because it really we bring these ideas of the power of song, the creativity, the listening, the transformation, all of these ideas that we've talked about over these last three podcasts, and be able to bring those on a podcast every week and uh in in other work that we're gonna be doing.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and so I think that's the exciting part for me as I enter, I guess what we call the the final chapter, and really look at okay, now this is something that's gonna be really fun.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: That I get to do it with two guys that I highly respect and truly enjoy.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, I think that aspect of it really is uh is is cool for me.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I I will say that the music piece of this is not insignificant as far as it's on there yet, so we're just obviously just introducing it.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_03: I would say listen to Indianola 38 times, and your world will change.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I love your music, but that album really got under my skin and I kind of wore it out.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: I was you know what's funny about that?
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: I was I've written, I don't know what's happened a lot uh in my lifetime, but I write these things and I don't know where they come from.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: They just sort of fall, and I don't understand where I'm at and why am I writing that, right?
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like it's a particular thing that's inspired me.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: It just sort of takes over me, and I've caught myself writing myself into the future multiple times, and all of a sudden I I'm there at that point in my life, and I go, Oh my gosh, I wrote that about me.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like that I wasn't, I was 10, that was 10 years ago.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_01: And how did I get here?
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_01: And there's the song, and it's exact, and maybe it's my interpretation, right?
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_01: I gotcha, and it could be a little bit, I could be getting a little deeper, whatever.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_01: But the bottom line is I'm positive, and I've done that so many times in my life that it's I can't count anymore.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I've and I so I gotta be careful.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like this killing it, killing me thing, I don't want to be writing myself into that.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm gonna segue for that.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good segue to end this because I think in our next podcast, we're actually gonna get that guitar in Steve's hands, and we're gonna hear about killing it, killing me and uh really talk about that idea of the power of song and and uh and certainly, you know, certainly talk about the struggles that all of us have gone through, you know, in our careers.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: So uh with that, I'm gonna I'm gonna wrap things up, fellas.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it's been a great episode, and we will see you next time.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks everybody for joining in.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that you can get the Resonance Podcast at all of the popular podcast places Spotify, Apple Music, all of those spots.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: Get your Google Play, Amazon.com.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_00: Stop that.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_00: I gotta get a new picture.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_00: And as you go forward this week, capital in her own.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening to Resonance.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: Find us at resonanceleader.com.