Stages of Development: Stage 5

Cole Abbott (00:00:09 -> 00:00:10)

Stage five.

Mark Abbott (00:00:11 -> 00:00:12)

Stage five.

Cole Abbott (00:00:12 -> 00:00:18)

It's moving on to the fifth and final installment of this stages series.

Mark Abbott (00:00:19 -> 00:00:22)

Yes. The series, penultimate episode.

Cole Abbott (00:00:23 -> 00:00:25)

Doesn't penultimate mean like second to last technically? I

Mark Abbott (00:00:25 -> 00:00:26)

Don't know. Prob may.

Cole Abbott (00:00:27 -> 00:00:38)

I think I always thought it was like that meant the last one. Yeah. And then I, something I was like, oh, the penultimate game of whatever, and I was like, what? And I looked it up and I could just be completely wrong right now, but

Mark Abbott (00:00:38 -> 00:00:38)

Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:00:39 -> 00:00:52)

If, if I am, that's really cool. <laugh>. So, yeah. Yeah. So stage five <laugh>. I feel like, you know, if you're in stage five,

Mark Abbott (00:00:53 -> 00:03:47)

I think, you know, if you're in stage five, right? I mean, ultimately, you know, as a founder, if you're in stage five, when you're right, when, when, when, I mean, you could, you could stay the CEO of a stage five company, you know, for a long, long, long time. Right. But just also, you know, 'cause you're excited about where the company's going, you're excited about the things you need to be doing in five to 10 years. You're excited about leading the people, you're excited about, you know, all the changes and all the progress and everything that's going forward. So, you know, you could hang there for, for, for, you know, in theory, for, you know, as long as you can handle it, um, uh, from, from a competency perspective and, and a confidence in your competency. Right? But, you know, fundamentally, you know that if, uh, uh, you know, if, uh, if you want to exit, you can exit with confidence, right? Um, and that exit could be either by, uh, passing the baton on to the next visionary leader. Um, and I emphasize Visionary leader because the next leader needs to be able to continue to have a point of view on where the company's gonna be in five to 10 years. And, uh, and I think that's one of the things, uh, this is, could be a rabbit hole for us, but, you know, I think a lot of times, um, you know, there, the, the, the leader wants to pass the baton on to a leader who, who is not them, who's complimentary to them. But, you know, sometimes what that means is, you know, a visionary hands it to an integrator, but then the integrator really doesn't have that vision, right? That driving vision doesn't have all the things that an, that a visionary has, um, going all the way back to visionaries versus integrators. And, uh, and then the problem is, is that, you know, yeah, maybe the companies run well for, you know, a number of years, but it, it starts to meander and get lost because there's not this really strong point of view about where things are gonna be in five to 10 years. And, you know, and, and I think you, you know, so, so that's the, that's one of the challenges getting to, uh, stage five is, you know, is, is, is working on finding an heir at some point who can take the, take the, take the company forward, of course, preserve the, what I call, what we call the forever agreements, right? And, um, and is just genuinely excited about, you know, taking over for you or, you know, if you don't have that person, which frankly happens a lot, right? Maybe it's time for you to sell the company. Um, obviously you could sell to a strategic acquirer or you could sell to a private equity firm. Those are too obvious, you know, solves. But you know, you're at that place where market timing aside, um, you know, you can confidently sell your business.

Cole Abbott (00:03:50 -> 00:03:51)

Yeah. I think on the, uh, I should

Mark Abbott (00:03:51 -> 00:03:54)

Say, you can confidently exit your business Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:03:54 -> 00:04:05)

Exits, right? Right. Yeah. In encompasses, yeah. The things, yeah. Uh, got a great episode on Exit. Yes, we do. Go check that out. We'll link that somewhere. Yeah. <laugh>,

Mark Abbott (00:04:05 -> 00:04:06)

It's called

Cole Abbott (00:04:06 -> 00:05:03)

Exit, it's called. Yeah. Great. Really descriptive name. Um, I, I always, I, I'd argue right, Apple's kind of a currently successful example of integrator or visionary, like Right. Giving the business to an integrator type. Right. Uh, you know, I'd argue that their innovation is very different than it was previously. Yes. And everything operationally is excellent. Yeah. Right down at the product level. Yeah. Right. They went from pretty and fun machines to being like powerhouses. Yeah. Uh, which is good. Yeah. Right. But that's not what made them special in the first place. Right. And, and you look at it, and I think the first real thing, in my opinion, to come out of Apple in terms of something new since Jobs is Vision Pro. And that's not the biggest thing ever.

Mark Abbott (00:05:03 -> 00:05:05)

<laugh>. Yeah. You don't hear much about it at all.

Cole Abbott (00:05:05 -> 00:05:09)

No, I think it's kind of a weird, I mean, it's, it's just, I don't know. Right.

Mark Abbott (00:05:09 -> 00:05:10)

What about,

Cole Abbott (00:05:10 -> 00:05:26)

I do a vision pro rabbit hole thing, but even like Right. AirPods, and that was after jobs and Yeah. And, but that was started while he was there. Right. Same with the watch I was, the watch was Johnny Ive, right. Um, who is more vision visionary, but left, right. Obviously.

Mark Abbott (00:05:27 -> 00:06:20)

Yeah. And then, and then maybe, right. Um, I was just watching an episode on, uh, on, on, on, on an electric car, um, yesterday. And, uh, Apple's soon to come out with a full package, right. For driving for cars. Now the, everything electronically, right? So the, so the basic, the stuff that we all think of Apple as providing in a car, but now literally, it's not just sort of the infotainment system. It's literally everything to drive the car, all the settings, and it's the instrument panel. So that's apparently gonna be here within the next year or so. And so they're at, they're at like 1.5 on that transition, so coming to two, but maybe that's, you know, the next true product. Well,

Cole Abbott (00:06:20 -> 00:06:22)

They've, they were working on a car for a while,

Mark Abbott (00:06:23 -> 00:06:52)

But maybe they decided that the smarter thing would be to actually create the entire electronic Yeah. Interface for cars. So they could be across all these different, and I think that's actually a smart move on their part. Obviously we're digressing immensely right now, <laugh>, but I, but I do think, you know, that's an interesting example of where they're taking advantage of their engineering prowess as opposed to their innovation prowess. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:06:52 -> 00:07:25)

It, it's different, right? Yeah. I I think that they wanted to do a car, right? They wanted to read, invent the way the car is. Right. And I think Tesla kind of did that. Yeah. And then they're like, this doesn't really make any sense. Yeah. And then it might have been a sunk cost kind of thing. Like, well, we already developed all this stuff, might as well make some use of it. Right. I think it's like a very DJ I thing to do. Yeah. Or they, they just like, we have these ingredients, what can we make with it? Right. And they do that and they do a good job with it. Yeah. Um, but it seems like that's more of the thing, whereas historically Apple doesn't really do that. Yeah. It seems like, oh, the project didn't work. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:07:25 -> 00:09:22)

Yeah. But go, going back to the stages, you know, I was just thinking about, you know, one, we talk about exit, um, and you know, uh, one thing that, you know, you know, you're in stage five, um, and, and, and all of a sudden you've got a new, not a new leader. You've got some, some emerging leader within your company who actually has a point of view on stage six, right. And you're that stage five guy or gal, and all of a sudden someone's like, well, I've got a point of view on where we could go with stage six. And you're like, that's brilliant. Right? And I should pass the ball to you. Right. So we obviously haven't talked a lot about stage six, but stage six is literally when your, the time span of the visionary's focus is, is 10 to 20 years. Um, you know, I I, you know, if someone came along and, you know, I, I used, I I've said before, I will gladly give up being CEO when someone's smarter with a better vision. Um, and, uh, and just as much committed energy Right? And cares about the company as much as I do comes along. And so if someone comes along that has a vision for, you know, 10 to 20 years, you know, I have a fiduciary responsibility. If I, if I think that's brilliant and that person, you know, you know, they understand it better than I do. Um, you know, that's a, that's a, that's a, another potential exit for me would be someone coming along with a 10 to 20 year vision that I think's extraordinarily compelling. And obviously being someone who owns a significant amount of money in this significant amount of equity in this company, like, no, this is brilliant. And I'd, I'd love to now pass it to you and, and I'll continue to be here, and maybe I'd be chairman or, or just a large shareholder and cheer you on from the sidelines.

Cole Abbott (00:09:24 -> 00:09:26)

Yeah. And it feels like that's a rarer

Mark Abbott (00:09:27 -> 00:09:28)

Yeah. Case.

Cole Abbott (00:09:28 -> 00:09:30)

Yeah. Um, right. Where someone comes in and is like, I wanna do this thing,

Mark Abbott (00:09:31 -> 00:09:35)

And I've got, and I, and I can see further into the future, and, and I'm confident I can explain

Cole Abbott (00:09:35 -> 00:09:39)

It, I understand the context well enough to understand it well into the future. Yeah. Right. That's like a, a really rare thing.

Mark Abbott (00:09:39 -> 00:09:47)

And this is what's gonna preserve all the forever agreements, right? This is, um, um, and, and, and so that's another thing,

Cole Abbott (00:09:48 -> 00:10:08)

And I think there's more likely or more common situations when you have a CEO with like a conditional exit. Yeah. Like, I will, right? I want to do something here, I want exit, but I need to make sure that somebody's in the right position to take this. Right. Uh, not let it fall into the wrong hands. Right. But also Right. Carry out that vision. Yeah. But

Mark Abbott (00:10:08 -> 00:12:05)

I, I think one of the things I really want to emphasize as we talk about stage five in particular is I, I deeply believe having, you know, 40 plus years of studying companies, um, I deeply believe that way too many visionaries hand the leadership off to an integrator. And this is why companies tend to do this, even very good companies, um, is because they, you know, they're looking for the, they, they have the yin to their yang. It's been great, right? They have the inter the integrator. It's like, I should be able to be the CEO. And you're like, you know, but I don't really think you've got this vision like that's, that's driving you or you're passionate about that. You understand. And, and so I, I think that's part of the reason you see companies do this. And, you know, we were talking about Apple earlier. Um, I think, you know, cooks done an amazing job, but Apple left, you know, jobs left him, no pun intended on Cooks, done an amazing job. But, you know, jobs left him with a really good, in a, you know, the company in a really great place. You know. And, um, you know, when I, you know, this sounds self-serving, but you can only talk from your own experiences. You know, when I left one of my old jobs long time ago, you know, you know, I had a, I I had a 20 year vision for where the business would be. Um, and, and, and to this day, I still think that vision has held, stood the test of time, um, that was a, uh, a less dynamic industry, right. Lending and investing and, and you know, ultimately, um, also being involved in m and a, but, um, but it was just, you know, it doesn't have the near the, the, the, the degree of Dyna Dyna that we have in, in, obviously in a technology company like ours, in a space like ours with AI and everything going on right now.

Cole Abbott (00:12:06 -> 00:12:21)

Yeah. Just that's the way it is. Yeah. With some things, and Yeah, I, there is, I mean, it's very easy to understand the appeal for a visionary to hand something straight off to an integrator. Yeah. Right? Like, oh, they get it better than anybody, and they're granted

Mark Abbott (00:12:21 -> 00:12:21)

Execution,

Cole Abbott (00:12:22 -> 00:12:42)

They can do it. They already have the plan, they just need to execute on it. Yeah. It's like, okay, well, you got the plan for 10 x 10 years, and then okay, over five years from now. Right. Different plan. Right. Best case scenario. Yeah. Uh, but the other thing is right, when you put the integrator or that, that personality, that type of person within the vision role, yeah. They're gonna change the nature of the role.

Mark Abbott (00:12:43 -> 00:12:43)

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>,

Cole Abbott (00:12:44 -> 00:13:07)

Right? And it's like, there's certain people that, that's just not how their mind works in terms of figuring that out, thinking about what's going on ahead, and then, right. You're gonna have another integrator behind the integrator, or is the integrator into both roles. Right. There's a lot of other things there. Right. If you wanna do the yang to the yang thing Yeah. Then you invert that it doesn't really work. Right. And you just spin the, spin it around. But that changes a lot more than Yeah. You

Mark Abbott (00:13:07 -> 00:13:12)

Can't, you, you, you can't have an integrator CEO with a visionary COO

Cole Abbott (00:13:12 -> 00:13:15)

Yeah. That does, doesn't work. Doesn't work. Right. So you can't have a yin yang. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:13:15 -> 00:15:08)

Yeah. Be, yeah, because, because the visionary Right. Is the one who's supposed to have the vision and, and be seeing, seeing farther out. Right. Um, and so, you know, in that situation, what would be better off is, is for the visionary to be the visionary and the integrator, you know, the new visionary to be the visionary and the integrator to be the integrator. It could be that you're just looking for someone to replace you as a five to 10 or even cooler. Right? Now, all of a sudden you're, you're able to find someone who's got a 10 to 20 year vision, and you can hand that off to them. And then obviously, you know, the interesting thing is now you have an integrator who's gotta be able to do the five to 10 thing. So that's an interesting dynamic as in and of itself, right? Um, and, uh, if you have an integrator right now, the other option obviously is that you have the c-suite, right? So, um, so we, you know, so you've got, you've got that going on as well. But, um, you know, back to, you know, the situation here, it's really about leadership and being able to transfer the leadership at stage five is to have confidence that that next leadership group, um, can take what you've built and continue to grow it and make it bigger, stronger, better, faster, um, you know, more successful in terms of obviously creating enterprise value, uh, reducing the level of risk associated with, you know, um, with the organization and, um, and continuing to build a company, hopefully, right. That could sustain a great culture sustain, you know, great leadership at the Stratum four level, at the stratum three level, at the stratum stratum two level.

Cole Abbott (00:15:12 -> 00:15:23)

So stage five, what are the main challenges, right? Right. Us exit aside, right? What are the main challenges being faced, uh, for leaders?

Mark Abbott (00:15:24 -> 00:15:32)

Well, at the risk of stating the obvious mean, having a strong point of view about where the world's gonna be in five to 10 years is, you know, this is not easy stuff.

Cole Abbott (00:15:32 -> 00:15:34)

And leading tons of people

Mark Abbott (00:15:34 -> 00:16:50)

And leading tons of along that journey and leading tons of people along that journey and continuing, continuing to, um, sustain their confidence in you as a leader. Right? Uh, we talked about it, I think in the last episode, right? About, you know, knowing more and knowing before. And so for people genuinely believing in you as the leader, uh, for the leaders that report to you, to continue to be genuinely good leaders who are developing other leaders, right? So that you are an organization that's multiplying leaders, right? If you look at the, you know, if you look at a stage, you know, three company, you have 3, 4, 5 leaders, you look at a, you know, as you look at a stage five company, you look at, let's look at our company right now, how many leaders within the organization do we have? Right? You, you know, obviously me plus five in the c-suites, six plus 16 department leaders. Now we're up to 22. And then how many leaders are, how many team leaders are there? I want to, I, I gotta believe 40 or 50. I should know this number actually. I feel, I, I'm, I'm embarrassed. Do you count? No, not right now. <laugh>. That, that'd be a great use of our time.

Cole Abbott (00:16:50 -> 00:16:52)

You just do, just monologue and I'll just keep looking

Mark Abbott (00:16:52 -> 00:17:19)

<laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, but the point is, we probably have 50 leaders, you know, at least in our company right now, 50, 60 leaders in our company. And so, you know, part of what we've, and, and, and our head of people, Meg and I were talking about this yesterday, um, I believe that we are weaker than we should be in terms of leadership development.

Cole Abbott (00:17:20 -> 00:17:21)

I, I would agree.

Mark Abbott (00:17:22 -> 00:17:23)

Yeah. Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:17:23 -> 00:17:26)

We need to get into that <laugh> Yeah. As to why that is,

Mark Abbott (00:17:26 -> 00:17:42)

But yeah. But I mean, so that's part of, that's, that's part of, you know, when you get to the stage five, I think, you know, may maybe we're just, you know, normal, right? It's like we gotta get better and better at leadership development and, uh, you know,

Cole Abbott (00:17:42 -> 00:17:47)

It's a big thing when you see companies that have endured for decades. Yeah. That's a huge part of it. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:17:48 -> 00:19:22)

Yeah. And, and, and then ultimately it's not just about developing the leaders, but you know, ultimately being at peace with developing leaders who want to go and take, you know, leave the company and go do, you know, go start their own companies. Right. Um, you know, I'm, I'm, I've, I think I've said this before, uh, I think I have developed people who have, I think I, I think I, last time I counted, which has been years, maybe 20 of my di 20 or more of my direct reports are running companies now from my career. Right. People who reported to me. Um, I'm sure the number's actually higher than that now, right? Probably 20 or 30 or 40. I'm proud of that. Right. And, and, um, and it's hard, right? I mean, you think about, you know, it's, it's, when I say it's hard, it's hard to think, it's easy for me to be proud of that because a lot of the, almost all of those leaders are be, became leaders by, not by leaving me, but after I left, they went and did something else. Right. Um, that's easier to deal with than it is when someone leaves you and it's like, you know, yay sad, you know? Um, but I think we ought be, that's, that's part of stage five I think for us is, is developing leaders who can develop leaders. Who develop leaders and being, and being proud of it and, and, and, and, and, and being ready for some of our, you know, leaders to go and start their own companies or get recruited to be, you know, a CEO of, you know, some other company. Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:19:22 -> 00:20:02)

And that's like I always say, you look at, uh, in terms of coaches, like football coaches, yeah. Right. That's Saban obviously is the greatest. Yeah. But you look at his tree and everyone that's, you know, come out of from under Saban, and it's like, that's a really good group of coaches right there. Yeah. Whereas I don't think you could say the same thing about Bill Belichick. Yeah. But I'm sure other people will disagree with me on that one. <laugh>. But that's, you know, that's, that's cause any Yeah. The same versus Belichick Generat any haters right now is the greatest coach of all time. It's like Right. I think that that's pretty, pretty clear on the two of them. Yeah. Saban, you know, you get a lot from Saban and Belichick is Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:20:03 -> 00:20:40)

And the cool thing self-serving for us, right. Um, I, it, I I hopefully everybody knows I, when I, if I'm being self-serving, I'm self enough aware to know it's gonna come across as self-serving. But, you know, part of, one of the things I love about what we do is, um, you know, we're gonna lean into, uh, Megan and I were talking about this just yesterday. We're gonna lean into developing our leadership development, you know, curriculum. And ultimately, you know, we're, but, you know, we eat our own cooking Right. Or our own dog food. Right. So ultimately, you know, we're, we're creating this ultimately to also share with all of our clients as well.

Cole Abbott (00:20:41 -> 00:21:09)

That's most Right. We wanna do that with pretty much everything that we do. Everything. Yeah. Right? Yeah. We're, we wanna learn so we can understand, so we can masters that we can teach. Yeah. And Right, that's part of walking the walk Yeah. That we're gonna teach them. We better be able to do it internally. Yeah. Obviously, right? Yeah. But Right. I think it, you gotta flip it around there and you, like, we have to do stuff so we know what it is and we know the nature of everything. We know it really well, we know it scales, right. So that we can actually teach and, and help others Yep. Along

Mark Abbott (00:21:09 -> 00:21:46)

That journey. And, and, and then the other thing is because we are, you know, really focused on an infinite game, um, you know, we'll have, you know, version one then version two, then version three, what we, you, our curriculum, our compendium, our, all of the stuff that we teach will evolve. And, and, and, and there's something freeing about that because we're not looking for perfection. Right. But, you know, hopefully the stuff that we put in the world is 90 plus percent, you know, strong for that moment in time for the, like, the world that we live in today, obviously

Cole Abbott (00:21:46 -> 00:22:03)

Going to be great considering everything that the circumstances of the moment we release the thing. Yeah. Right. But obviously, we're gonna become wiser. We're gonna know more, we're gonna have more experience. Yeah. And so we'll gonna change things. Yeah. Um, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't put things out ever. Right. That's just not a right

Mark Abbott (00:22:03 -> 00:23:54)

Mentality. And there's a lot, and there's a lot of the things that we teach and believe that, um, uh, you know, I, I, I, you know, I I believe is gonna stand, you know, stand the test of time for literally decades. I think structure, you know, as much as, you know, people like to say Hierarchies of competency don't matter. And these, you know, hollow crossy and, and all these matrix organization things, as much as that's, you know, people are trying to push against structure, um, formal structure, I, you know, I deeply believe that the core elements of it will stay the same. Um, you know, I believe that, you know, leadership and coaching is an evolution of leadership and management. Right? I believe it's more about coaching today than managing. I believe the world moves too swiftly to manage. Right. You need to be able to coach people and help people and develop the skills. Um, and so, you know, there's, there's areas where I, I think, um, you know, what we teach and, and, and in terms of leadership is gonna evolve. I think, you know, one of the things we're really focused on is being better, helping, helping ourselves and helping others be better and better, better at, at, at, at, at coaching the individual as opposed to coaching, you know, everybody the same. Right. You, you know, you just, you get every, each of us is unique and being able to meet people where they are and based upon who they are and sort of their values and their preferences and their skills and their experiences and things like that. So, um, you know, getting back to the stage five, I think, you know, part of stage five, um, and obviously you work on it in stage four, but I think in stage five, you know, my gut is one of the things you, you really work on is, is becoming much better at leadership development.

Cole Abbott (00:23:55 -> 00:24:27)

Yeah. It's, it's like the, uh, this is a very fresh thought, so it's gonna sound weird, but it's like when you reach a certain stage of maturity Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, right? You go back to figuring out who you were in the first place and then reintegrating that, that thing that you've lost during this growth, during this apprenticeship Yeah. Back into yourself, right? So you make sure that, okay, I am this way, right. I act this way as a leader, right. And now it's my turn to pass that down and bring everybody else back up. It's not really a great way of putting that, but

Mark Abbott (00:24:28 -> 00:25:23)

Yeah, I think, I think, yeah. I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, I think maybe it's a, related to the comment we, you know, we make all the time, which is, you know, we're exactly where we're supposed to be learning lessons. We need to learn. And, you know, you become, I think the wise, you know, as you become wiser, you become more at peace with who you were and why you were the way you were. And it's, and part of leading and coaching is helping other people evolve and become, you know, more self-aware. And part of that self-awareness is also extending your awareness of others and extending your empathy for those people and what they're going through. And recognizing that we're all not the same, you know, as a junior leader, I'm trying to get everybody to solve situations just like I would. And that's just, obviously I know better than that now, but that's how I was, you know, 20 years ago.

Cole Abbott (00:25:26 -> 00:25:59)

Yeah. I mean, it's different. And part of that is when you are even more junior that Right. The other side is that you think like everyone above you has their stuff figured out, and you're right. Trying to piece it all together and that little bit of imposter syndrome, right. <laugh>, I still think it's like older you get, the more you realize that it's like a lot of people just, you know, they don't, no one has everything figured out. Right. And, you know, I like the saying it's, it's just idiots all the way up <laugh>, right. 'cause it's kinda like, no, you talk to people who are, you know, running big things and it's like, oh yeah. Like they're just human. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:25:59 -> 00:26:42)

I mean, you know, hopefully I exhibit this all the time. I'm like, you know, I don't know. Right? Yeah. Or, or I made a mistake and you just, you know, I think part of, um, you know, back to stage five here, I think, you know, part of stage five leadership, um, as an example is, you know, sort of being at peace with who you are and who you're not, not being hard on yourself. Right. Because those who are hard on themselves are almost always hard on, on other people. And I'm hard on myself, but I'm much less hard on me than I was 10 years ago. You can attest to that. I know that. Right. And I'm, and I think I'm less hard on other people than I was 10 years ago. It doesn't mean that I'm not pushing everybody, including myself. Right. But, um, I think there's just, you know, there's more wisdom in the leadership.

Cole Abbott (00:26:43 -> 00:26:52)

Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, I th I, the more you experience, the more you see things, the more you understand and accept the way that certain things just are.

Mark Abbott (00:26:52 -> 00:26:53)

Right. Right.

Cole Abbott (00:26:53 -> 00:27:16)

Like, people are different. We're gonna see things differently than you. Yeah. And that's a good thing. Yeah. Right. So Zach Bryan quote of a, you know, I hope to experience hard things and that will make me gentle to the ways of the world. Right? Right. Yeah. It's like you just, you, you go through it and you take those experiences and then you just learn. It's like, oh, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And that's the go into the whole rabbit hole and you ego development there. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:27:17 -> 00:27:17)

Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:27:18 -> 00:27:21)

But that's, you know, right. It's that, that maturing stage. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:27:21 -> 00:27:44)

And I think, you know, when you get to, when you, when when you get to stage five as a leader, um, you know how you allocate your time, you know, I'm starting to allocate more and more time towards, you know, uh, you know, I've been wearing the CMO hat and hopefully, you know, we've got a new CMO coming on board here in, um, not too many weeks. And so I can finally get rid of that, hopefully

Cole Abbott (00:27:44 -> 00:27:45)

By the time this is released,

Mark Abbott (00:27:45 -> 00:28:56)

<laugh>. Yeah. By the time this is released. Right. And, and, and, and now I can get rid of that, you know, accountability. And so now I can spend more time on, frankly, things that I really think I'm better at. Um, you know, I will, I will, I will, I will continue to read and write and, and, and, and, and, and, and work on all the vision stuff. But I think, uh, you know, I'll be spending more time, um, you know, out, uh, being an ambassador, you know, of the company. Right. And so the nature of the, the, the, the, the, the, the roles, accountabilities and responsibilities of a stage five leader are different than the stage four and obviously different than the stage three, stage two, stage one. But I, i, I, you know, to sort of conclude here, 'cause we've talked a lot about stage 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, um, I think getting to stage five as a founder is like, is like you get to the point where you've self-actualize isn't the right word, but directionally speaking

Cole Abbott (00:28:57 -> 00:28:59)

Kind of works, right? When you look at the hierarchy of needs a little bit.

Mark Abbott (00:28:59 -> 00:29:57)

Yeah. Yeah. You've gotten, you've gotten to the place where you can finally spend 90% of your time doing you, doing the things that you're great at, doing the things that you love doing, and doing the things that have hopefully the biggest and longest and most enduring impact in terms of the value of the company. Um, and it's not just from an enterprise value perspective. It's not just revenues and profits and margins. It's solidifying the brand, you know? So, um, and, and, and, and, and that should be, you know, that should be a really rewarding place to get to. And I think it's a place that I'd love all founders to get to. I know it won't happen, but, you know, part of what we're here to do is help more and more founders truly get to stage five and feel like, you know, I love this company and if you pass it off, I'll continue to love this company. I'll love it forever.

Cole Abbott (00:29:59 -> 00:30:01)

That's a great way to cap it off.

Mark Abbott (00:30:02 -> 00:30:02)

Cool.

Cole Abbott (00:30:03 -> 00:30:10)

We will have the links to the guides and briefs in the description. And, uh, thank you.

Mark Abbott (00:30:10 -> 00:30:15)

Thank you. Should be a good one. Yeah, I like that. I like the.