Latest / Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza / Ep.63 - System and Soul's Benj Miller Powers Up Founders for Epic Success | Entrepreneurship | Leadership Development | Business Systems

Transcript

Ep.63 - System and Soul's Benj Miller Powers Up Founders for Epic Success | Entrepreneurship | Leadership Development | Business Systems · Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza

• 0:00
  Benj Miller, you help founders, entrepreneurs.
• 0:03
  How do you do that? I primarily work with them in
• 0:09
  conjunction with working with their senior leadership team.
• 0:11
  So we the simplest way to think about it is I facilitate
• 0:16
  quarterly off sites for those teams.
• 0:19
  There's usually a few sessions that we do prior to those
• 0:24
  quarterly off sites that get them up and running with the
• 0:27
  four tools for confident execution just to get their
• 0:30
  business right. And then we spend some time
• 0:33
  getting really clear on a road map, which is just a one page
• 0:37
  document that gets them really clear on what they're trying to
• 0:39
  do as well as who they want to be as well as how they want like
• 0:44
  what is how are we going to operate?
• 0:46
  So people talk about culture in the workplace all the time and
• 0:50
  typically they don't know what that means, but we actually
• 0:55
  start with the end in mind and help them engineer the culture
• 0:57
  that they want to have. So that's on there.
• 1:00
  And then we help them identify the bets that they're going to
• 1:03
  make in order to be the people that they want to be, to get to
• 1:06
  where they want to go. And bets is a great word that's
• 1:09
  not commonly used in business, but it's great because it really
• 1:13
  puts into context that we've got to make bets.
• 1:16
  We've got to take our energy, resources, money, priority,
• 1:20
  leadership, people, time and put those in a direction that we
• 1:24
  believe will pay off. And So what are the things that
• 1:27
  we're going to do to make us more efficient, more effective
• 1:30
  in the future than we are right now while moving us toward that
• 1:34
  destination that we want to get to.
• 1:37
  So it's super fun. It's so much of of leadership
• 1:40
  dynamics ends up as, you know, being the interpersonal stuff
• 1:43
  that gets in the way. So sometimes I feel like a
• 1:49
  therapist as much as you probably are a therapist.
• 1:53
  Sometimes I feel like an entrepreneur, man, maybe as much
• 1:56
  as you are. Yeah.
• 1:57
  So where, where did you learn in that process?
• 2:01
  Great question. I I started my first company
• 2:03
  when I was, I think 24. So I'm twenty.
• 2:09
  Yeah, that's right. I'm 21 years into it.
• 2:11
  I still have my first company. It's still up and running.
• 2:14
  Awesome company has its own leadership team that operates
• 2:17
  without me, but that was a brand and marketing company.
• 2:20
  And so since I was 24 years old, I've been facilitating senior
• 2:25
  leadership teams through brand conversations and there's so
• 2:30
  much when we talk about that one page road map, there's so much
• 2:34
  of that that overlaps the clarity you have when you get
• 2:36
  really clear about your your brand.
• 2:38
  So in some ways I've been doing this for 21 years.
• 2:44
  And then I brought in a facilitator into one of my
• 2:48
  businesses. I merged two of my own
• 2:50
  businesses and it was the perfect time.
• 2:52
  We needed some sort of framework to merge these two.
• 2:54
  So I brought in a guy and he just gave such clear simple
• 2:58
  systems for us to run the business on.
• 3:02
  And my company is called System and Soul.
• 3:05
  So the systems that I stole from him that that worked really well
• 3:10
  paired with my soulful leadership and, and what I had
• 3:15
  learned and grown on the brand and the culture, the leadership,
• 3:19
  the people development side, they just needed to go together.
• 3:23
  And so when I got the opportunity to make a little bit
• 3:28
  of a career transition, I wanted to try to do what that guy did
• 3:32
  in the session room with companies.
• 3:34
  And I, I, I did it and I absolutely fell in love with it.
• 3:39
  It was like, this is what I was meant to do.
• 3:41
  This is where I'm it was meant to be.
• 3:43
  I just have a gift in helping a room get on the same page and
• 3:48
  get really, really focused. Are you?
• 3:50
  Able to explain a little bit what those systems are.
• 3:53
  Yeah, sure. So the, the, there's, there's a
• 3:56
  bunch, but the four that we call the four cool tools for
• 4:00
  confident execution is just like the blocking and tackling of
• 4:03
  every business. The 1st is what I often refer to
• 4:07
  as the most underutilized tool in all of business, which is
• 4:11
  simply an organ, organizational chart or an.
• 4:14
  Org chart. Everybody's, everybody's heard
• 4:16
  it. Everybody's like, yes.
• 4:18
  And nobody has one that's actually updated and future
• 4:22
  thinking. They just use it to organize
• 4:23
  their people. What we can do is we're
• 4:26
  literally structuring our business through this tool.
• 4:30
  And when we do it correctly, we, we paint a picture of like what
• 4:33
  is most important in our business with the org chart.
• 4:36
  We, we, in one visual we can illustrate like what is this
• 4:41
  business? What are the functions of the
• 4:43
  business? How does it operate?
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  What, what are the missions of every function.
• 4:48
  So we, we build these functions of the different business, but
• 4:51
  to get clear on what is the mission of this?
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  Like, why do we have it? Why does this mission exist
• 4:57
  within this business? And we can take that down to
• 4:59
  every single seat in the whole organization and point them to a
• 5:03
  mission that points to the mission of the organization.
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  We can get really clear on how does this seat or this team or
• 5:10
  this function win? What does winning look like?
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  It's really easy. Build two or three KPIs, key
• 5:18
  performance indicate to caters, which leads to the second tool,
• 5:22
  which I'll get to in a second. But just that orgy chart, you
• 5:24
  know, just paints a beautiful picture.
• 5:26
  This is what the business is. These are the core functions.
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  These are all the roles that support those core functions.
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  This is who people report to. This is who reports to them.
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  And then we can get into, you know, decision making authority
• 5:37
  and and some other things after that.
• 5:39
  We have some ways of testing if a person's right for the seat
• 5:43
  that they're in and the seat that they're leading.
• 5:45
  But those KPIs, if we roll them up, if you think basically
• 5:49
  you've, if you've got three to 5-6 functions, core functions in
• 5:52
  a business, take two or three metrics from each one of those
• 5:56
  and roll them up. And now you have an
• 5:58
  organizational scoreboard. If these functions are winning,
• 6:01
  then the organization by default should be winning.
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  And so it's really nice that at the end of every week to go,
• 6:07
  hey, did we win this week or not?
• 6:09
  Like, so part of part of what we're doing is building dignity
• 6:12
  into the business. And one of the ways we can
• 6:14
  dignify the people is giving them the clarity of like, did
• 6:18
  you win or not? Hey, you were here for 40 hours,
• 6:21
  did you win, right? Are you going home and winning
• 6:23
  or do we need to like reset and change some stuff up to do
• 6:26
  something different next week? So that's the second one.
• 6:29
  The third one is how we have, we call them weekly syncs, but
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  they're your team meetings. They're highly structured,
• 6:35
  they're highly on point. Everybody's like, no, please,
• 6:38
  not another meeting. But if you do this right, it
• 6:41
  should eliminate probably four or five other meetings that
• 6:43
  you're having in the business right now that are just wasting
• 6:46
  time. So it's, it's for your team that
• 6:49
  you work on. And we're going to keep those.
• 6:52
  KP is on track, right? If they're off track, we got to
• 6:54
  talk about it, fix it. It's a team game, but we got to
• 6:57
  keep our objectives on track, which is the 4th tool.
• 7:00
  So I'll get to that in a second. Make sure that those are on
• 7:03
  track because those are your most important.
• 7:05
  Like our quarterly objectives are OK, Rs or rocks.
• 7:08
  People have lots of different words for them.
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  What are the things we're doing to mature the business?
• 7:13
  So your KP is are performing, your objectives are
• 7:17
  transforming, right? If we're not performing, then we
• 7:20
  have no today. If we're not transforming, we
• 7:22
  have no tomorrow. So both companies need to be
• 7:24
  thinking about how are we performing and how are we
• 7:26
  transforming? And then we spend the majority
• 7:30
  of that weekly sync time as a place where we can get together
• 7:34
  and collaborate and we can talk about the biggest opportunities
• 7:38
  that are crossing our plate that are outside of just my function.
• 7:41
  And we need to have a cross functional conversation or a
• 7:44
  corporate conversation about this thing.
• 7:47
  We call them opportunities. It could be things that are like
• 7:50
  in your way, roadblocks, obstacles, issues.
• 7:53
  The reason we call it opportunities is just a mind
• 7:56
  game because everything's an opportunity when we get to the
• 7:58
  other side of it. So if we can bring it to the
• 8:00
  team and solve it together, now we're winning and we're creating
• 8:04
  opportunities for the business to advance.
• 8:06
  So those are the four tools. So org chart, your scoreboard,
• 8:09
  your weekly sync and your quarterly objectives.
• 8:11
  Those are the four tools for confident execution.
• 8:13
  If the team's doing that, they're winning.
• 8:16
  Now there's another side of it, the dark side, which is they've
• 8:19
  got to be healthy. But we get them up and running
• 8:22
  on these four tools for confident execution, and that
• 8:25
  starts to give them the confidence that whatever we
• 8:27
  build on that road map, they can execute against.
• 8:30
  They can actually make progress toward that vision with that
• 8:34
  strategy. Then you have a book, Renegades.
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  What's that all about? Yeah, it's, it's a little bit of
• 8:40
  my story and a lot of the hard lessons learned as an early
• 8:45
  entrepreneur with, you know, not as much help as there is out
• 8:50
  there now. So in a lot of ways, it's it's
• 8:53
  the book I wish I would have had when I was, you know, 21 years
• 8:57
  ago when I was starting. But it's it's, there's two parts
• 9:02
  of it. One, to really let founders be
• 9:07
  feel seen. I don't think many people really
• 9:10
  understand what it looks like to found an organization and go
• 9:15
  through the different levels of growth and how at every level
• 9:21
  your leadership has to be a step ahead, which means it's, it's
• 9:24
  tremendous amount of personal growth to lead a company that's
• 9:28
  growing. And at the same time, you're
• 9:31
  constantly dealing with new things in this business that
• 9:34
  you've never dealt with before. And so how, how do you do that?
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  And, and what do you surround yourself with?
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  What are some mental models for how you think about it?
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  So the, the back half of the book is more kind of some of the
• 9:46
  tools and the, and some of the stuff we've been talking about,
• 9:48
  how to get really practical with having a place for everything.
• 9:53
  And to get really there, we talk about the six shifts that you
• 9:56
  have to make from your like early day thinking to, to go
• 10:02
  from like a renegade founder to a renegade leader.
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  We don't want you to lose your renegade.
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  That's the other thing. And why this book needed to
• 10:10
  exist is because most books tell leaders how they they need to
• 10:14
  stop being such a renegade, right?
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  You, you have this great strength.
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  It was great to start the company, but now it's not a
• 10:20
  startup anymore. So you need to grow up.
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  And I'm like, like Peter Pan's my hero.
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  I don't like growing up is not the goal.
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  It's not fun. It's boring you.
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  You have to lose a little bit of your soul in order to grow up.
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  So we don't need more Captain Hooks out there running
• 10:35
  companies. We need Peter Pan's running out
• 10:37
  there running companies. But the company does need some
• 10:41
  structure. So there's a tension to manage
• 10:43
  there. And how we approach that really
• 10:47
  shapes an organization. So I'm thinking let's do some
• 10:50
  live coaching so people can see your work in action.
• 10:53
  Here you were. It sounds like with with their
• 10:57
  company. I'm just a I'm a solopreneur.
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  So my vision is forming virtuous communities to transform the
• 11:03
  world for good. OK, so I got 3 branches of that.
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  So the one is virtuous leaders because the soul of this society
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  reflects the soul of the leaders.
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  So inspiring other virtuous leaders, creating a network of
• 11:17
  virtuous leaders. I do that through the podcast
• 11:20
  right now. The second branch is values
• 11:23
  first parenting, helping parents form loving families because the
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  family is like the smallest cell of society.
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  It's the smallest society where the family goes, their society
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  goes. So for that, what I'm thinking
• 11:36
  is like live webinars or online courses.
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  And then lastly values first therapy too because society is
• 11:45
  made-up of individuals, individuals are suffering, then
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  society is going to be crippled. So helping individuals to
• 11:53
  achieve mental health and well-being while respecting
• 11:55
  traditional values. So I got my private practice for
• 11:58
  that. So I, I don't know if that's
• 12:02
  enough detail, but I wonder just as a solopreneur, where, where
• 12:05
  would you take this? What advice would you give
• 12:06
  someone in my situation? Well, that's what's fun because
• 12:10
  when like the first thing we'd have to explore is getting
• 12:14
  really clear on what you want out of it.
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  And that is both a personal selfish and at the same and
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  equally A missional impact kind of thing.
• 12:25
  Like what? What actually do you want out of
• 12:28
  it? I I don't know if we can tease
• 12:30
  that out right now. Let's let's give it a shot.
• 12:32
  OK, OK, that first of all, I just want to say that's a really
• 12:35
  great, that's a really helpful framework, but which I haven't
• 12:37
  really put into words. But there's like a personal, but
• 12:39
  then there's also the mission, which are sometimes sometimes at
• 12:44
  odds maybe. OK, so.
• 12:45
  Well, they're usually not. We feel like they are until we
• 12:48
  can get really clear and then we see how they fit together.
• 12:50
  OK. What most people aren't willing
• 12:52
  to do is be ridiculously selfish about what they want out of it.
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  OK, OK, good. I like that.
• 12:58
  I like the fact that they're not at odds.
• 13:01
  All right, So personal. I want to be friends with
• 13:06
  amazing, inspiring people. That's why I'm talking with you
• 13:09
  right now. That's why I started this
• 13:10
  podcast. I want to have a lot of
• 13:13
  flexibility and I I genuinely want to make the biggest impact
• 13:17
  I can. So I think that that does
• 13:19
  require having money to have flexibility and support my
• 13:22
  family and all, but also dedicating a lot of time to
• 13:26
  study, whether it's reading books or talking to smart,
• 13:29
  experienced people like you. So then in terms of mission, I'm
• 13:34
  just thinking, well, how do I, how do I have the base impact?
• 13:39
  How do I help leaders help those who help the most?
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  So help help leaders 10X their impact that they're already
• 13:46
  having. Help form loving families so
• 13:49
  that I'm not the one who's like individually helping everyone.
• 13:52
  Like in my therapy practice, that's what I'm doing.
• 13:54
  But how can I scale it so I can reach more people?
• 13:57
  Yeah, Yeah. OK.
• 13:59
  So you're going to lead us into another.
• 14:02
  You brought something up. I don't think what you this is a
• 14:06
  small subtle shift, but in everything in there, I think
• 14:09
  what you're looking for is scale for impact.
• 14:14
  But there's another idea that we haven't introduced yet, which is
• 14:17
  boundaries. So if we can create really clear
• 14:21
  boundaries and your, your boundaries are which I, I need
• 14:25
  to do this, but also maintain enough time for my intellectual
• 14:31
  curiosity for learning and friends.
• 14:34
  All right, So if we said, hey, how, how many, how many weeks?
• 14:39
  How many hours a week do you like to work?
• 14:41
  What? What's great?
• 14:43
  Probably like I'm shooting for 35.
• 14:46
  OK. And does that include your time
• 14:48
  that you want to put toward learning or?
• 14:51
  You learn? Yeah, it would.
• 14:52
  Let's say. Yeah.
• 14:53
  So how much of the 35 hours do you want to put toward learning?
• 14:57
  I think a good goal would be one day a week, so that'd be 7 hours
• 15:02
  where I'm just reading, talking to people and just thinking
• 15:06
  about the business. So working on rather than in the
• 15:09
  business. OK.
• 15:11
  So now we have 4. If we reserve that as a
• 15:14
  boundary, now we have 4 days or maybe it's only three.
• 15:19
  Is it 3 or 4? Four, Yeah.
• 15:21
  OK, let's, so let's go 4. We have four days that we want
• 15:26
  to scale to create as much impact as we possibly can within
• 15:30
  that boundary. Is that fair?
• 15:32
  Yeah. OK.
• 15:34
  All right. So now you have your three.
• 15:37
  I wasn't taking notes quick enough.
• 15:39
  You've got your podcast, your courses, and your practice
• 15:41
  correct. Yes, right.
• 15:44
  So practice is hard to scale. Right.
• 15:49
  Yeah, yeah. That's.
• 15:50
  Where you started and why you started the other two, right?
• 15:53
  Yeah, yeah. It's also the the only form of
• 15:55
  income I have. Yes, OK, OK.
• 15:58
  So it sounds like, you know, like the, the I, I love how
• 16:08
  clearly I'm going to mess it up. But Dan Martel says the, the,
• 16:12
  when you're working on your first $1,000,000 as a business,
• 16:16
  you should not move out of one product, 1 channel 1 conversion,
• 16:22
  1 product, like it's just one, like master one.
• 16:27
  And a lot of us want to diversify too, too early because
• 16:30
  it it helped, We think it helps us reach our goals faster.
• 16:34
  But the reality is it dilutes our focus.
• 16:38
  So really what you have is the practice that is your revenue
• 16:43
  stream. So you can't just cut it off.
• 16:45
  That's real life. So now, now the question becomes
• 16:49
  how much income in those four days?
• 16:52
  How much of the four days do you absolutely need to make the
• 16:56
  minimum income you need to make so that you can spend the rest
• 16:59
  of your time on the scale for impact?
• 17:03
  OK, cool. And as soon as we do that, the
• 17:06
  next step is, all right, I've got, you know, let's call it 8
• 17:10
  hours a week that I can put towards scale for impact.
• 17:14
  And then you have to get really smart about what is the number
• 17:17
  one channel, the number one product, the number one way that
• 17:21
  you can scale for impact. And it might be the courses and
• 17:24
  you might end up taking the podcast and saying, well, this
• 17:26
  is part of my intellectual time, meeting new people, having these
• 17:29
  conversations, right? So we're not even going to count
• 17:32
  that. It might be part of your
• 17:34
  conversion funnel and your intellectual time.
• 17:36
  So now you're double dipping with, but it gives you even more
• 17:39
  purpose and clarity about why you're having podcast
• 17:42
  conversations, right? And you're then setting goals
• 17:47
  for how you're going to, over the next 1-3 years, scale the
• 17:52
  courses, grow the courses that that scale side of the business
• 17:58
  that has scale to it so that you can start to whittle back your
• 18:02
  private practice hours. That's how I would be thinking
• 18:05
  about building what you're talking about.
• 18:07
  That that's super helpful. And when you say 1 product and
• 18:10
  so does that have to be something that actually builds
• 18:12
  revenue? So in other words, like it
• 18:13
  couldn't be the podcast because I don't have any way.
• 18:16
  Not unless your podcast was your ultimate goal.
• 18:19
  And if it was, you know, the podcast can build revenue.
• 18:23
  It's it's a red ocean. It's very bloody, but you can
• 18:27
  get it to the place where you can get sponsorship ship, you
• 18:31
  know, people paying for placements and product
• 18:35
  placements and commercials. And that could be the thing
• 18:39
  which would then give you a triple dip.
• 18:41
  But if that's the case, then stop doing the courses until you
• 18:45
  have so much demand from your audience because of your podcast
• 18:50
  that they're forcing you to do something like that, right?
• 18:53
  So you already have the demand because your podcast is so big
• 18:58
  that you've got revenue coming in from sponsors because your
• 19:00
  podcast is so big and you're making them money.
• 19:03
  And you go, hey, I could make me money too if I have my own
• 19:06
  product instead of selling somebody else's product.
• 19:09
  OK, so then it it's a decision point of well, what what is my
• 19:12
  one product? Is it going to be podcast
• 19:14
  course? OK, cool.
• 19:16
  And some of that's just follow your passion, follow your
• 19:18
  energy, like what gets you most excited?
• 19:20
  Do you want the pressure to have a million people listening to
• 19:23
  your podcast? Like do you, are you driven by
• 19:26
  that game to grow that? Or are you driven by, Hey, how,
• 19:31
  how could I drive a, a digital product, a course?
• 19:36
  They're both going to require a ton of marketing because you you
• 19:39
  need a ton of scale for for either of those.
• 19:43
  So, OK, this one product idea is at odds with kind of the way I
• 19:47
  was looking at it, which is going for a synergy.
• 19:52
  So for example, I do, I do public speaking and with the
• 19:56
  podcast, with public speaking, with the the webinars, whatever.
• 20:01
  They, I, the way I saw it is it kind of like feeds off each
• 20:03
  other. Like when I'm, when I'm
• 20:04
  speaking, people hear about my therapy practice so that they
• 20:07
  may come to me through that or that may inspire them to get on
• 20:12
  the podcast to follow my podcast.
• 20:14
  Or it builds my ethos so that now when I'm pitching the, the
• 20:18
  course, people are like, trust me more.
• 20:22
  But it sounds like you're saying that that's the wrong way of
• 20:24
  looking at it. I wouldn't say wrong.
• 20:26
  I would, I would say not the most optimal.
• 20:29
  So right now what you're talking about is like, I just heard like
• 20:34
  this spaghetti mess of stuff. And if we could, if we could
• 20:39
  untangle that then and we can put it in something, we can look
• 20:44
  at it like a product ladder. And so you're, you know, super
• 20:48
  easy accessible to everybody. I've got my podcast and that I
• 20:55
  then want to capture some emails and I want to do, you know,
• 20:58
  weekly e-mail with best thought of the week, whatever it is.
• 21:03
  And from there, I want to move people into my therapy practice
• 21:11
  Now, OK, now we've got a straight line.
• 21:13
  Go back up to the top. Well, the podcast is one way
• 21:15
  they get in there, but I'm going to do public speaking and public
• 21:19
  speaking. The goal of that is also to get
• 21:21
  people on the e-mail. OK, so now I've got 2 avenues to
• 21:24
  grow my e-mail list. My e-mail list is the thing that
• 21:27
  gets me into the, it grows both of the other two 'cause it grows
• 21:32
  the podcast and grows the speaking.
• 21:34
  But it's the people that get people into the, the private
• 21:37
  practice, the counseling practice.
• 21:40
  If you play that out and just like untangle the mess, each one
• 21:44
  is going to get clearer on what's the objective?
• 21:46
  Why am I doing this public speaking?
• 21:49
  You can't get off stage and say, hey, I've got a podcast, I've
• 21:52
  got a private practice and hire me for coaching and take this
• 21:56
  course like it's just too, what's the one next step you
• 21:59
  want everybody to do? And if each thing has A1 next
• 22:02
  step, now you can see how they all fit together.
• 22:05
  But you also might have to be willing to say, Hey, I'm not
• 22:09
  going to do this thing yet because it's really hard to be a
• 22:14
  world class podcast. It's really hard to be a world
• 22:17
  class speaker. It's really hard to be a world
• 22:20
  class practitioner. Like those things are all hard.
• 22:24
  So now you're saying, hey, I'm going to be I'm going to be
• 22:26
  world class in five things, right?
• 22:28
  So really saying for the next however long year, three years,
• 22:34
  I'm going to focus my craft on this thing and here's how it
• 22:38
  builds into that product ladder that I can move people along in
• 22:42
  a relationship with you. It's not just selling them more
• 22:44
  stuff, but deepening the relationship because of the
• 22:48
  value that you have to give. That product ladder is a super
• 22:51
  helpful concept. It's almost like a org chart for
• 22:54
  your product. 100%, yeah. So in in that example that you
• 22:59
  gave, what would be the product? Well, that's what you get to
• 23:05
  decide. What is the ultimate game?
• 23:07
  If the ultimate game is to be a massive podcast, then you're
• 23:11
  there. If you want to, you know, have
• 23:14
  $50,000 speaking engagements, sorry, $50,000 speaking
• 23:18
  engagements, then that's the end game, right?
• 23:21
  So you've really got to build from the bottom up.
• 23:25
  What's the most efficient way to get people into the end game?
• 23:28
  OK, so then even if the the that end game is like the one
• 23:32
  product, but that it can have like multiple avenues to get
• 23:36
  there so that that doesn't conflict with the one product
• 23:39
  idea I. Think so, I think.
• 23:40
  Well it does. It does conflict with the one
• 23:42
  channel and one conversion. Oh, I got you OK.
• 23:45
  But if that's the one place you deviate, I'm not going to hate
• 23:48
  on you If you get really, if you can get clear on what your your
• 23:52
  one product the bottom is, it's going to make everything else
• 23:56
  clearer. I just want you to be willing to
• 23:58
  say not yet to some of the other things that you want to do.
• 24:02
  Yeah, yeah. That, that is super helpful.
• 24:04
  Is is there anything that we haven't covered there that I'm
• 24:07
  missing? I don't think so.
• 24:10
  This is the Al Reese in his book called Focus.
• 24:14
  Al Reese was a great like brand marketing positioning thinker,
• 24:18
  but he talks about focus and he talks about if we go outside, we
• 24:22
  have millions of kilowatts of energy of, of light from the sun
• 24:27
  and about as bad as it does, it gives us a sunburn.
• 24:30
  But if we take just a few kilowatts and focus it really
• 24:35
  tight, it can cut through diamonds, right?
• 24:39
  So it's literally the power of focus, you know, and, and our
• 24:42
  lives are energy, right? Just like the, the rays from the
• 24:45
  sun. So if we can focus that energy,
• 24:49
  it becomes exponentially more powerful.
• 24:52
  I just want to highlight what what you just did for me here.
• 24:55
  So first of all, you've clearly read a lot.
• 24:57
  You, you know what, what works. And then, but you had a very
• 25:00
  clear kind of way of directing me towards the answer in in a
• 25:05
  way that was engaging and fun and encouraging while also being
• 25:10
  like challenging that like, OK, I need to actually do the work
• 25:13
  here. I need to get back to the
• 25:14
  drawing board and think about this.
• 25:16
  Yeah, yeah, I love that. I, I love those moments where
• 25:19
  just sometimes it's not a new idea, it's just thinking about
• 25:24
  something in a new way. And that that comes, like you
• 25:28
  were saying, with time with people that inspire you, you
• 25:31
  know, to have these intellectual conversations.
• 25:35
  A lot of this stuff's really hard to do for ourselves.
• 25:38
  Like I'm on my system installs my 10th business.
• 25:42
  It might be my hardest. It's so stupid.
• 25:44
  It's like, shouldn't it be getting easier?
• 25:46
  Like, I've already done this, I've already learned all the
• 25:48
  lessons, but it keeps getting harder.
• 25:50
  Maybe it's because I'm playing a different game, a bigger game,
• 25:53
  but I still need outside coaches for myself.
• 25:58
  Even though I'm like, I feel like I can help out anybody, I
• 26:01
  can't help myself. It's really, really hard.
• 26:04
  So just having somebody to like see your thing through their
• 26:07
  perspective can be so helpful. So 10 businesses what?
• 26:12
  What is your personal vision dream to accomplish in your
• 26:17
  lifetime through your professional work?
• 26:19
  Yeah, well, most of those businesses were accidental.
• 26:22
  I did my first one kind of accidentally, fell in love with
• 26:25
  kind of the game of business. I'm really good from the zero to
• 26:29
  1. So stand something up that
• 26:31
  didn't exist. Bring together the team, create
• 26:33
  a brand, a little marketing presence, and then I love
• 26:37
  transitioning that to a team to take over and see if they can
• 26:42
  scale it. Sometimes they can, sometimes
• 26:43
  they can't. Had all kinds of different
• 26:46
  levels of success in that. But it wasn't until system
• 26:52
  installed that I could have given an answer to your
• 26:55
  question. And it's super, super clear.
• 26:58
  We are on a mission to impact 25,000 companies by the end of
• 27:02
  this decade. Why is that?
• 27:07
  What drives you to do that? Well, here's the honest answer,
• 27:11
  honest answer. When this business happened, it
• 27:14
  it I have no other way to say it was divine download.
• 27:18
  I was kind of in a moment of prayer at my desk in a
• 27:22
  transition fork in the road kind of moment.
• 27:26
  And the name, the system is sold, the name, our model, a
• 27:33
  mandate on my leadership. And that mission for 25,000
• 27:36
  companies all kind of was just, I think I blanked out for a
• 27:41
  minute, blacked out and there it was on my desk, my own
• 27:44
  handwriting. But I don't remember coming up
• 27:47
  with it, creating it, working on it.
• 27:49
  It was just there. And I think the relevance of
• 27:52
  that number is that it's so big it leaves me naked because I
• 28:01
  have no idea how we're going to get there.
• 28:04
  That's how I was going to ask. I have no idea.
• 28:07
  Every once in a while I get some ideas I can see this or that
• 28:11
  I've got, but it's it's becoming more clear as we go and it's
• 28:17
  still really, really muddy. I've probably learned what's not
• 28:19
  going to get us there over the last three or four years, and
• 28:23
  that's starting to shift how we think about what are the things
• 28:26
  that are going to get us there. But as a company, we are, you
• 28:30
  know, we're stable. So our, our mindset is shifting
• 28:36
  from like that is a lens of things we say yes or no to like
• 28:40
  is there any chance saying yes to that is going to move us
• 28:43
  closer to that 25,000 number? And if it's not, we have to
• 28:48
  weigh that against. Should we be doing that?
• 28:52
  What can I do to help you man? Oh man, well, this, this, this
• 28:57
  was fun. I, I've never been invited into
• 29:00
  just a straight like, let's let's coach conversation.
• 29:04
  So that's my happy place. I do that all day long.
• 29:06
  Love those conversations, You know, spread the word system in
• 29:10
  soul is a business operating framework that really helps
• 29:15
  leadership teams get aligned and healthy so they can execute
• 29:20
  effectively. But part of what we're doing is
• 29:23
  really helping a lot of founders find their way and find their
• 29:27
  freedom. We tend to start off with, you
• 29:32
  know, rosy colored glasses, and then we end up building our own
• 29:36
  prisons. And we have a really nice paying
• 29:40
  job that we're in control of. But we don't necessarily have
• 29:44
  the control to be the person or live the life that we thought we
• 29:47
  were going to lead and that can trap us in.
• 29:50
  I just want to help those founders get out of that prison
• 29:54
  as much as I can. And I truly believe that small
• 29:57
  business is it's the lifeblood of our communities.
• 30:01
  They're better places to work, better places to develop people,
• 30:05
  better places to create leaders. I want to create businesses that
• 30:10
  people, if they leave, they're not leaving, they're launching,
• 30:13
  right? Because they're so capable of
• 30:15
  doing something huge in the world that they have to go do
• 30:17
  their own thing. So that that's the mission we're
• 30:20
  on. I don't know how you can help,
• 30:22
  but I appreciate you having me on the podcast to have a
• 30:25
  conversation. That's great start.
• 30:27
  How can people follow you, Benj? You can go to benjmiller.com
• 30:31
  that's the easiest way. From there you can link over to
• 30:33
  system install. I have a daily leadership
• 30:36
  e-mail. It's super short.
• 30:38
  You can read it in about 1020 seconds, but it's a great daily
• 30:41
  reminder or question or thought or tip.
• 30:45
  It's all stuff we need, we already know as leaders, but we
• 30:48
  need, we need reminded a lot. So I even read it sometimes I'm
• 30:51
  like, oh, Dang, that's good or I'm convicted, whatever.
• 30:55
  So that's that's a good resource for for everybody out there.
• 30:59
  And then I'm pretty active on LinkedIn if you want to have a
• 31:01
  conversation. And again, you can link find all
• 31:05
  that from benjmiller.com. Bench 25,000 companies, you're
• 31:10
  going to get there. Thank you man, I love that.
• 31:13
  Thanks for the belief.