Latest / Stronger Business Together / E20 Journey to Reach 8million with David Powell
Transcript
- Granger Forson: This is the Stronger Business Together podcast, where business owners learn from each other. No theory, no gurus, just real journeys and overcoming real hurdles. Today I'm joined by David Powell of The Golden Thread. And like every business owner, he's in the middle of that building things, fixing things and growing something that really matters. So David, welcome. Thanks for spending your time with us today. We're on a mission to make business owners stronger together. If this conversation helped you, please comment, like and follow on whatever platform you're using. About 60 % of you have not done that yet, and these small actions will help us reach more business owners just like you. David Powell: Thank you, Granger. Thank you, sir. Granger Forson: Brilliant. So, Act One, your business. In plain English, what does your business do? If you want to join the conversation as a guest, or if you have a hurdle question for us to tackle, reach out to us at info at strongerbusinesstogether.com. ⁓ make this week really successful and we'll see you in the next one. Cheers! David Powell: I was thinking when you said welcome, that I'm sitting here in Australia, Sydney, I probably should have said, good day mate, how are you? But because I'm English by birth, want to say hello, Granger how are you? Granger Forson: Ha ha ha. David Powell: Okay, the business provides people skills, relationships, and principally at but obviously out into the world of families, none of which is included in the education system. That's the basic business to help the people perform as individuals and together. and for the organisations to improve performance and results, is what the management of every organisation wants. Granger Forson: Excellent. Okay, so it's about helping people develop and to grow. So who do you love helping and what are they typically dealing with then? David Powell: that's a good question. Over the last, I started my business in 93, so over the last 33 years, the requests have come from quite literally five continents, 30 plus countries, know, all sorts of organizations from individuals to SMEs to large corporations, government departments. It's always Granger to... always in the end down to the people. guess that's my passion. You wherever we are in the world, whatever the religion, whatever the culture, and there's huge differences, it's at the end of the day, I get my kick out of firing the people up or helping them to fire up go out and make a better difference at work and in their lives. Granger Forson: Wow, fantastic. mean, at The Stronger Business Together, we focus on our is ⁓ grow your people so help grow your business. And I totally, totally agree ⁓ in that. We can lost as owners in how we support our people because we're involved in the day-to-day ⁓ so much as small business but actually your people are amazing assets that can do that. So that's fantastic. That's great to hear. ⁓ So ⁓ you said the started years ago. Wow fantastic. So what was what was that original spark then? David Powell: Well, do you mind if I describe what led up to that? It's a few sentences. It's probably at the best explanation. So ⁓ I said, I from the UK. I went to school in London, the city of London, and I studied chemical engineering at Edinburgh University. I actually got a first class on as a chemical engineer. It's not easy to do. But the point of that story is it gave me a good understanding of the physical world, matter, energy, space, and time. After university, some colleagues and I drove a land rover over land all the way from London to Australia, which was a pretty hairy thing to do physically. But what blew my mind was all the cultures we drove through and the religions, ⁓ know, say you go all across Europe, which is basically Christianity, into down to Syria, all across Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, which is Islam. a down onto the Indian subcontinent, which is Hinduism and Jainism, Nepal Buddhism, later on Thailand Buddhism, then you get down into Malaysia and it's Islam and you touch the Chinese Taoism and then when we got to Australia, the animism of the Australian Aboriginal people and it sort of went, ⁓ wow. And so one of the things I did when I got to Sydney was I studied psychology at university because what got to me was that I understood the physical world, but I didn't really understand anything about what I now call the metaphysical world, know, our consciousness, our thoughts, our emotions, our values, our ethics. And so I got, I worked in the oil and gas industry here and my, my wife, My partner and I started on what you would call these days self-development. So we went and learned yoga. We lived with a yoga teacher in Sri Lanka for three months and we studied with Tibetan Buddhist monks, of workshops, loads of books and consets as they were back then. But it was all about self-development. When I got into general management in computer industry and then the computer industry, was the first time in my life that my income depended on the 150 or 250 people who worked for me. So I thought, well, what I'll do, I'll get them all trained up. And of course, the companies go, well, that's a great idea, David, but we don't have any training budget. So I quite literally took my general management hat off, put my training manager hat on, and started using all the tools I'd learned in self-development. Good job we didn't have any videos back then. But the point of the story is that... ⁓ Granger Forson: Ha ha ha. David Powell: We did about 200 % of budget two years in a row and other general managers started saying, well, David, will you come and train my people? And the companies go, absolutely no way. So in 93, it's a long way of saying, I realized my passion was empowering people. So I just quit my corporate job and formed my own business. And I mean, when I think back, The last thing I expected was a phone to go from all over the world. People said, how are you selling workshops in China, in South Africa, across Europe? I said, I'm not selling it, it's just happening. And so there was this period, what, from 93 to when COVID arrived, when I was just traveling the world, running workshops, strategic facilitation, executive mentoring. The only thing I would say to help people understand, I always see, because I guess I've trained as an engineer, people like 16 cylinder engines. The body, which you've got to go after, is three cylinders. The mind, and most people's mind rampage seven days a week, 24 hours a day, is three, because how we feel, the emotions I found was worth five cylinders. And then I talk about the inner being, the spirit being. and that's another five cylinders about which we get taught nothing. So my metaphor, I explain to people, look, we're all 16 cylinder engines. You talk to most people, how many cylinders we own today at work? ⁓ I don't know, five, maybe six, seven on a really good day. So I said, my purpose is to give you the tools to fire up the 16 cylinders of every employee, which you're already paying for. And people go, ⁓ how cool is that? So that's basically what happened and then of course when covid arrived don't know what the lockdowns were like in the uk but in australia it was awful we couldn't go anywhere no flying no travel and and clients yeah so clients all over the world said david you've got to put some stuff on video because we need it had i known how long it would take and how much it would cost i probably wouldn't have done it but we spent time ⁓ so we set this golden thread business up with videos on how to empower Granger Forson: Yeah, same in the UK. ⁓ dear. David Powell: individuals, how to empower relationships at work and in life, and how to empower teamwork. It's worth just saying that, to us, we did a very powerful early in the UK, ⁓ and unknown to us, videos got back to who had teens who were in trouble, Unknown to us, they watch these videos. And this is the point, within three to five weeks, we learned later, they changed completely. And so we ended up calling the program for the workforce, crew, competent, resilient, engaged workforce. Because, I often use the metaphor, if you're going to sail into stormy waters, you've got to storm rig the vessel and storm prepare the crew. We then had the separate program called LEO, Life Education Online, Life Skills for Young People. Granger Forson: Wow, fantastic. David Powell: So now, if you like, there's two markets, Granger. There's empowering the workforces of the world their families. So that's basically how this thing came together. Does that make sense as a story? Granger Forson: you It is fantastic. What a fantastic journey. I love that. I I'm an engineer myself and I've come to growing and developing people through, you know, my sort of engineering, but moving into management and then moving into helping business owners. So, yeah, I totally understand that sort of journey. But yours is a lot more metaphysical than mine. Mine is still grounded more in process rather than just those other ways of thinking. But that's brilliant. So what does the business look like today? David Powell: Brilliant. Granger Forson: in terms of shape and size. David Powell: Well, ⁓ days. There's has been quite a few people exposed to the programs and the from older people is ⁓ why in name was I not taught this at school? How come nobody ever gave me this early in my career? And it's the same with young people. Why aren't we taught all this at school? So ⁓ I would say, Granger, is I think the education system designed with purpose, ⁓ and it doesn't include empowering up the metaphysics of people. So I think the basics of what we've got ⁓ is unusual. We did a pilot with a technical consultancy in the UK and people ⁓ were as I just said, how cool is all this? What they said is, ⁓ we we got some sort of coaching, regular coaching. So what we've done recently is ⁓ so, let's organize group coaching, keep the cost down, once a month for an hour with five people with a coach. Granger Forson: you David Powell: What has been interesting is the number of coaches who have verdict commas shown up and go because you know the principle of what we're doing what I say to people is most training, the stats are pretty amazing, 95 % of training out there fails to have any long-term effect because it's basically do have, Granger, if you do these things you're going to have these results. Do have, it's called first order. Granger Forson: Yeah. David Powell: What we do is go deeper into the second order, be, have. In order to get the results, you've got to be the person capable of doing what needs to be done, however turbulent the storm, then you can have the results. And a lot of coaches have gone, ⁓ would really like to be involved with this deeper be, do, have coaching. And think it would be fair to say, ⁓ that the way we've set it up with online video programs and online regular group coaching, affordable, is almost globally unique value proposition because obviously a lot of people do online videos and you can get coaching, but it's mainly for management. So the idea of being able to coach a workforce to fire them all up on 16 cylinders is pretty mind-bending. I guess ⁓ got enough experience to know what we're talking about. A lot of people showing up we basically now got the system to support tens of thousands of employees, which we didn't have a year ago. Granger Forson: Yeah, well... Firing up on all 16 cylinders, mean that's one heck of a size of an engine to drive people forward in life. That's fantastic. I'd love to see that in a vehicle somewhere. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, no, I can really see that and fully understand that. And I can see through what you're talking about, that change from not just doing, but actually being in order to understand. I think that that's fascinating. So I'm sure we may drill into that a little bit more. talk about journey, let's move on to act two, let's talk about the journey of your business. Building business, ⁓ there real highs and lows over time, you've been going for 33 years, know COVID has caused you to pivot and to change ⁓ as ⁓ what some of the highs and what are some of the lows of being a business owner that you've experienced? David Powell: would say the biggest Job for me was I made the decisions to leave the corporate world. You know, it's pretty easy to go, I'm going to form a business. But the staggering of of how the hell do you do that? So maybe many of your listeners it out. for me, actually for me, I guess it was naivety. How many systems, know, ⁓ accountant, okay, you're going to be contracting with people, you need a lawyer. ⁓ it's not rocket science, but it just struck me. And then of course, once you get rolling, okay, got to run a workshop in Saudi Arabia. How do I make sure they've got flip charts and flip chart paper? Will they BluTAC? There were back then there were some countries had blue tag. So there's all there was all the logistics and then the I'd never obviously I traveled but I hadn't as much as I traveled. I reckon I could go through almost any city airport in the world with my eyes shut and know, you know, where to go. All this travel and then what's the time zone? And then of ⁓ once you get into the culture and the religion, ⁓ suddenly realize there are huge force fields at work that nobody's ever taught us about. I did a lot of work in Egypt, which is a mixture of Islam and Christianity. but across Middle East, there is this tilt towards male being having a stronger voice than females and the ability to go, OK, ⁓ some of these women are pretty smart so I introduce these tools well it's worth talking about one of them I introduce this tool called I feel like saying and I explain it to people I say look we've got this tool I feel like saying if anybody in the room says I feel like saying whether they say it loud or soft everybody else has got to shut their big mouths and open their big eyes and ears and there was this incredible woman in this meeting And I could see it, I said, what is it? What do you feel like saying? And she looked at me as a, you idiot. And then she said, it's nothing. I'm going, come on. And in the end, she goes, well, I think what people have seen the five issues is the six. And there's this wow. you know, that's one example of working with cultures across the world and getting everybody contributing. So I think it's a learning journey of markets, are the features and benefits, you know, it's standard for any business. And I don't know any other way of getting into a market and just having a go and learning. Granger Forson: Yeah, no, it is the only way. of our other principles is growth through challenge. It's not growth through ⁓ the answer, I'm just going to tell you it and it's all going to work rosy. It never does like that. The only way to find out is to ⁓ involved, is to experiment, ⁓ to practice and see what works and see what doesn't work because as much won't work as will work. So yeah, I totally agree. You just have to get into those markets and going and finding out. Maybe what's sort of one decision that changed the trajectory of your business? David Powell: One decision. that many, inputs. I'm great fan of Buckminster Fuller who's passed now, but he was a scientist and a metaphysical expert. And he used to say, when the course is just, the right people will show up. at first was really scared, but what I found is the support I needed, inverted showed up. And I remember ⁓ uh... listening to a... in fact think it is in one of the videos, Steve Jobs talking at Stanford University to graduates and he said, look he said everybody looking out ahead of them he said if you look behind you over your shoulder, your life behind you he said you can see what he called the dots the formative experiences that you think, oh wow that yeah that changed my life, that changed my life And what he said is, you need to trust, because you can see the dots behind you, that the dots are going to show up in front of you. He said his quote is something like, somehow your heart and your intuition already know what you truly want to become. So you don't get to be asked to run workshops for Lloyds in London or Rothschilds or IBM by being an idiot. They're tough cookies. I learned. I think the basic learning I had was both the business and the running workshops was to run off intuition. so once I realized that there was a flow of intuition, I would strongly urge your listeners is to think about their intuitive channel. I like quoting the original words, intuition is from intuary. Granger Forson: Intuitive, yes. You can definitely feel changes. We've done the same in our business as we were in our... another organisation and we decided to leave because we could feel the friction against what we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it. then since going alone my partner and I setting up Stronger Business together, ⁓ things much better. ⁓ There's friction, there's less activity and our instinct was our intuition was ⁓ based four years of experience leading up to that and also then all our previous experiences. And we actually sat down and ⁓ brought all of that together. you're absolutely right. Steve Jobs is absolutely right and you're really, there are times when things get really tough. You ⁓ get under within business, maybe it's self-imposed, maybe externally imposed. what sort of goes wrong the business when you all come under pressure? ⁓ What do you struggle with? David Powell: When I was traveling the world, think the toughest one was jet lag because got to be ⁓ there. And know, if you've just come from the other side of the world and then client goes, ⁓ let's all go to dinner. So by the time dinner is on, it's 3 a.m. on your time zone. ⁓ So ⁓ there are some pressures that it's a traveling you avoid. ⁓ I think there is an issue with your personal integrity. A few workshops I've run over the years, I certainly won't mention names. I came to conclusion during the workshop that ⁓ people were lacking what I would call ⁓ And I remember, I think it was a three day workshop, the second evening, sitting in my room in the hotel thinking, Am I going to go home or am to finish? So I think there are challenges when you get drawn into areas that clash with your own values. So I think the basic challenge is because you've got no idea where the path is going to lead you, of how does David or how does Granger stay true to your ethical models of the world. Does that make sense? Granger Forson: very much so. And when gets when things need focusing how do you work as a business to remain healthy as a business and healthy as individuals? David Powell: Yeah, that is a good point. my life I've liked running. And so I found that ⁓ running, know, along the banks of the Nile or through the desert in Saudi Arabia or wherever you end up running. But that's my thing. But ⁓ as I earlier with my partner, ⁓ early on the piece, we discovered and learned meditation. And so I ⁓ would, for people who don't practice meditation, would say the ability to regularly still the mind. So I think there are these tools. I guess you'd say what's at their physical fitness and metaphysical fitness. And to always try and elicit from the client, what is the success vision that's out there? What are they trying to work towards? like what's their horizon because I've found over the years it's much easier to get people to describe their horizon vision and then plan back than it is to try and plan forward. first two are about us, physically and metaphysically fit, and then anchor the client on where they want to go, their success horizon, and help them plan back from that and then enact the plans forward. Granger Forson: Brilliant, yes, I love that. That's really a wonderful thing to think, keeping yourself fit, keeping your mind fit, ⁓ then focusing on the future and working back from there, how are you going to get there? Well, that moves us then really nicely on to Act 3, our hurdle conversation. So ⁓ have you picked ⁓ your hurdle right now that ⁓ a business you would like to talk through? David Powell: Yeah. Yeah. one of the things Imelda and I are finding, we're talking to people all over the world. And you don't need me to tell you or listen, it's pretty turbulent out there. And what are the stats is 365 million businesses out there or something with 3.5 billion workforce. Most people, the management get trained, there's, workforce can get. trained in skills, but they're not trained in people's skills. It was Maharishi, a transcendental meditation in the 60s, who said, can bring a community up tone if you bring one in a thousand people up tone. And he obviously was talking about meditation. But I remember thinking, there's no way you and I can do anything about the leaders in verticals, the leaders of China, the leaders of Russia, the leaders of the world. that that's there's no point taking that on. But if we could get to in a thousand quote normal people, Maharishi going, ⁓ we bring the whole community up to tone So there's ⁓ now 8000 million people. So if we could get 8 million people and bring them up tone that will change the whole of humanity. Now, Some people may go, well, that sounds a bit pompous. But it's a genuine, heartfelt, spirit-built goal. We go, OK, how do we get to 8 million people? And you go, that's a damn good question. So the origin Granger of that vision is to get the empowerment tools, self-relationships teams, out to 8 million people. And the long-term goal is then humanity, one in a thousand, and they can go, let's bring the whole thing up tone. You've seen these astronauts came back, you know, from the moon yesterday or day before, whatever. It's just like in 69, they're going, look guys, we're on one little blue ball in the middle of black space. Can we please all get our act together? You know, that's what apparently you see from the moon. So that was the vision. Granger Forson: Yeah. Yeah. David Powell: And then you go, how in goodness name do we do that? Does that make sense as the hurdle or the challenge? Granger Forson: So the challenge is how do we get to eight million people? as, yeah, so as a... David Powell: How do we get to them? Yeah. Granger Forson: as my Japanese master engineer in the 90s I worked with, he used to say, Granger-san, that is nice big pizza, but how do you eat one slice at a time? yeah, let's first of define, where are you today? So you're building the online course, how many people have you interacted with that online course to date? David Powell: we basically, yeah, it's worth a minutes. So when we started filming in 2020, the young English videographer guy, Rob, his father was a senior manager in the BBC. I'd never met his father. And his father said, tell David attention spans are dropping and dropping. So don't do a video over 10 minutes. And then, so we go, okay. will do to nine minute videos. then who's going do your animations? And because I'm so sophisticated, I go, what's an animation? And Rob's partner, his from South she did animations. Took a long time. The first platforms we were on, once we started to get people dialoguing, the platforms started to wobble. So it took a Emelda of time to find a platform. Then, Granger Forson: You David Powell: how to structure, because there's about 144 videos, to structure modules, what's most important, what's the best sequence. So ended with Crew and Crew Plus, Leo and Leo Plus. And then this arrival from this pilot that only concluded in late 25 that we've got to get online group coaching. So we've now got a team of 14 coaches who are ready to go and there's about 20 more going, can we come in? So it's ready and what we're finding, doesn't speak to everybody, Granger. I would say probably we're finding about 70%, maybe a bit more going, this is super cool. And ⁓ people saying, no, no, look, I'm a sophisticated professional, I don't need this, but. you should give it to every younger person in our business because the younger people need it. So the reason I say that there's a model of the market that is coming out of the mist and then there's this, we're dealing with some educational people around the world, there's this, you've seen it, I'm sure, there's this absolute problem out there with the education system. know, something like 65 % of parents are concerned and well over half of teenagers have got some real deep issues which shows up with few to go to school. So we're ready for business and ready for education but it's not easy. Granger Forson: Yep. Okay. Okay. Yep. Okay, so you've got sort of an education focus, you've got a business focus, there's quite a lot going on there at this current situation. Again, so how many sort of businesses have used your online platform to date approximately and how many people have sort of gone through it? David Powell: Well, very, very few. because ⁓ this is one of my training colleagues, Jeff Hearn was a long term manager former the largest training company in world. When we started, he said, look, David, he said, not do multiple pilots. He said, do one pilot because he said, if you get 10 out there and you stuff it up, you may well damage the brand irretrievably. Granger Forson: Okay. Yeah, good. David Powell: So we got this one pilot and by golly, I'm so glad we did. Actually, I think now I'm talking to you, I think this is a very important point for people. wanted more than one pilot, but when I look back, Steve Jobs and the dots, the we got out of one pilot was incredible. And now we're engaged with these high tech companies with one person. we realized that senior management don't give a stuff about people skills. They want performance and results. And so we are learning and ⁓ only now this week, I'm glad we're focused a rather than because we have, if you ask me how many companies we've talked to and failed to sell, ⁓ Granger Forson: Yes. David Powell: It's dozens and dozens. ⁓ Granger Forson: There are two models for marketing that we need to think about maybe here. One is the diffusion curve. So we've got to find those early adopters, those first few people. we've got to find the first majority. So these are the people that will be excited. They want to promote it and want to take it forwards. And then we get to the chasm. ⁓ the chasm is then how do you cross the chasm? How do you get to now the early majority ⁓ people? But a lot of us try to focus our marketing on that early majority. ⁓ David Powell: That's it. Granger Forson: need to do is find those early passionate adopters, those people that when you put something out there in your marketing they put their hand up and say yes please. Now they may not be the perfect target market, they may not be the perfect that you want, but actually they're the people that have ⁓ triggered by whatever you have said about doing that ⁓ they're the people that you ⁓ with, you make them really excited through your courses, through your delivery and they're the people because you need that groundswell first of all of feedback as you say that that first trial and then you need those first few people that will you know they're not going to spread the word massively because there's not many of them but they're they're really passionate about it they they communicate with you they listen to your updates etc that are going on ⁓ ⁓ are you at the moment trying to find that that initial early ⁓ adopters ⁓ David Powell: Yeah, this is a really powerful conversation I I had marketing roles in the oil and gas industry and in the computing industry. So, you know, you got the innovators, the fast followers, mature and the laggards even in the computer industry. It's you get it. It was a much job to then to the senior management of ⁓ the prospect or the client, look, is the benefits. Granger Forson: Excellent. Yeah. David Powell: In this business of workforce empowerment, because that's how we're aiming to get to 8 million people, you can have a middle manager. We've had a middle who goes, ⁓ this is super cool. Let me train up my 30 people. And the 30 people start, they're on turbocharged. And then this has happened to us, the senior manager, the MD, goes, no, no, no, no, no. What we're going to do is strengthen our leadership. courses so the leaders are better at telling the workers what to do. I don't want the workers in that. I want them to do what they're told to. Granger Forson: Yeah. Yeah. Yes, but you're not going to affect those because they are not your early adopters, they? They're not going to become your fanatics. That middle manager is that person who's become the fanatic because they've seen what can happen within their team. They're the people that would spread the message more. It's those people that just said, need to fight against those ⁓ management laggards at this moment in time. What you need to do is find if we're successful, ⁓ instance, little middle managers, we're successful at turning them, then focusing your energy on finding more of those would be more beneficial than spending your energy fighting against the senior managers. Yes, you could spread it across a bigger company, but at that time, not ready to adopt it. You haven't got the of case studies, you haven't got the strength of ⁓ thousands people involved, you haven't got that movement online yet that could help influence those. at that time because you've got to get those first people really fired up and loving it and making that happen. where are you with those type of people? How do you communicate to those people today? David Powell: Yeah, that's a very good question. no doubt ⁓ as some of our colleagues talk to people, the middle manager or whatever goes, ⁓ how super cool. What I find, and you look out the window, as the baby boomers retire, the market of employees is dropping. Younger Gen and Gen Z people are extremely different in the way they see the world. ⁓ Granger Forson: They are, yes. David Powell: and this AI tsunami, you haven't got what we call HI, human intelligence, you're going to find it very hard. And working with an AI provider and they're saying that 95 % of the AI projects they're involved with are either wobbling or failing because the HI people. so yes, ⁓ find the motivated What I'm trying to say is I'm finding the HR and L &D and senior management handbrakes be really challenging to talk to. And part me feels like saying, look, have you looked out the window what's going on out there? And Gen Y and Gen Z if they don't feel involved, they don't feel motivated, they don't feel growing, they'll leave. So I think what's happening, Granger, We're going through a huge paradigm shift. I totally agree with everything you're saying about marketing. All I'm seeing is where it's easy to find the excited innovator, the dampening forces that seem to show up. That's part of our challenge, major challenge of getting to 8 million people, but that's what we're working on. Granger Forson: Yes. Absolutely, and that will exist for a long time because they're going to be your, potentially even your late majority rather than even your early majority. ⁓ a passion for a book called Two Second Lean by Paul Akers and ⁓ use it, ⁓ say ⁓ very few books that change your life. That book changed my life and my background and everything, was an engineer. ⁓ it inspired me so much ⁓ I have a community where people can come in and we share our experiences. And this conversation often comes up. It often comes up. So as a, a lean implementer. I'm just, I'm a middle manager. You know, my managers don't support me. They don't want anything to take place. So that's why we built this community to help each other, to support each other mainly. And we have this conversation on a regular basis because, and I say to them as this, said, stop worrying about your manager. This is something I had to learn and it was very difficult to do. I fully appreciate David Powell: Brilliant. Granger Forson: I that it's not easy but I had to stop worrying about the my manager and just enjoying what I was doing. I enjoyed how I was transforming me, transforming my way of working at work and at home by using the concepts and the ideas of Two Second Lean, putting in practice. And through that I met my partner, through that I met other people, through that I started influencing people around me at work, through that my boss said, oh maybe we should start an entire organization with Lean Transformation. Through that I ended up taking over failing departments. So often it starts with yourself and put that in place, but you need that support. Now I had some fairly good mental support myself because of my background of what I had. But putting that community together to support those middle managers is what we now do. And Paul Akers in his community ⁓ There are people David Powell: Yeah. Granger Forson: reach out and say what about this and he says just do it yourself just focus on yourself so probably more a case of rather than ⁓ the senior managers because yes they could unlock hundreds of thousands of people across organizations ⁓ if that one individual ⁓ could 50 people over a year your courses ⁓ and you can support them and they turn on those 50 people and somebody someone in the in the business usually David Powell: Yep. Granger Forson: HR will go, what's going on here? Because that's what I found and that's what I find with the people that I support and help. So maybe that's some thinking rather than thinking about how do you switch senior managers on, how do you instill even more passion, more drive, more ambition in these middle managers to make their people amazing through the materials and the training you do. David Powell: see, remember what I said about Buckminster Fuller, when the cause is just the right people show up. You and I are talking, this is what we've been grappling with, with the last three, four, five weeks. Because, you know, Jeff said, don't do 10 pilots. and don't spray out and try and sell to 30 organizations. So that actually is gold dust, Granger, what you just said. Because I think... ⁓ Granger Forson: Yes. David Powell: And I guess because we're struggling a bit, you said, what's the hurdle? I think what you just said may be the key to it. It's go where the path is flowing. So, you know, if the organization's got 12,000 people or 17,000 people and we can only land a pilot with 50, let that pilot of 50 shine as a light and then move on to another pilot of 50 rather than try and... Granger Forson: Yep. Yep. David Powell: sell the 17,000. Granger Forson: Yes, yes, but keep contact with that pilot person, the person that keep supporting them, keep helping them. don't mean every single day, but nurturing them to keep them going, to keep that 50 amazing within that organization. And that way you also learn how to stop ⁓ it out, how to... ⁓ David Powell: Yes. Granger Forson: to have to build on it even greater maybe you learn more and build more through those of the next experiments that will then come along. David Powell: Yes, that's very interesting. And in this organization where the senior management shut the thing down, even though the people in the pilot were electrified, have said, well, competitors know who to go and hire because those people, know, they competitor goes, mate, if you come over here, we'll try, they'll all leave in an instant. yes, that is actually Gold Dust Granger. Thank you for that, sir. That's really, really helpful. And you're talking to me. Granger Forson: Yeah. There you go, yes. David Powell: and how to get to 8 million. But I think there's a lot of wisdom in that, the voice of your experience. Whatever your marketing, find the early adopters and go with them. Granger Forson: Yes. Yeah, yeah, and make it special for them. They'll build that energy in yourselves as well. They'll build that energy to help it grow and to take it forward. So, fantastic. Well, just about out of time now. ⁓ through what we've talked about, ⁓ one experiment do think you could ⁓ and talk about with ⁓ partner and maybe try in the next week? David Powell: Yeah. Yes, wow. Yeah, I certainly think because, ⁓ as were talking, I thought, yes, we know the ⁓ energized early adopters, the single questions really, have you got budget for your people? And in these days, ⁓ most have. So I think if they got budget, what you're really saying is, well, let's just do a pilot. Let's just plant the seed, shine the light. And I that's the question I will now add from like it's evening here in Australia, from tomorrow morning, shall, in talking to my colleagues around the world, is let's find the pilot. If they've got the budget, let's just do the pilot and let that light shine out. Granger Forson: Brilliant. Really excited to see what happens next. So let's do our wrap up and close now. So David, did you hear yourself say today that maybe surprised you? David Powell: Thank you. Sure. I understood the journey and I understood at some level the 8 million. What got, I'm not very visual, if somebody me tomorrow I'd say what Granger helped me to do, I'm seeing this landscape in front of us, ⁓ it's not moonscape but it's certainly not lush pastures, and what Granger's got is a whole, whether you call it lighthouses or candles. I can see all these pilot candles glowing shining a light forward and it's a pathway forward to get eventually to the 8 million. So that's what ⁓ I talking to you, which I'm deeply appreciative. Granger Forson: Pleasure. No, fantastic. I love that analogy. Absolutely awesome. So finally, how can people get hold of you and follow more of your journey? David Powell: Well, we've got the golden thread www.thegoldenthread.com. email me David at the golden thread.com. And anybody wants to ⁓ experiment with pilot in their inside their organization or market it to another organization, you we can do revenue shares. yes, I would ⁓ anybody who wants talk because if they can help get a lighthouse. out there for either themselves or clients or whatever, we can all help get to the 8 million and then the whole thing will come up to. Granger Forson: Brilliant. Well, David, thank you so much for being so open and honest and having a fantastic conversation today. I know our listeners will get an awful lot out of this. So it's been fantastic. Thank you. David Powell: Thank you. Thank you, Granger. I look forward to talking to you in a year and we can compare notes and see where we all got to.