The 9 Essential Characteristics of Great Companies

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

Nine characteristics of great businesses.

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

Love this topic.

Cole Abbott (00:00:05 -> 00:00:16)

Yeah. So we've, we've written about this before. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. You've written about this. Yep. Um, and I always think it's funny that we do things as nine <laugh>.

Mark Abbott (00:00:16 -> 00:00:16)

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Cole Abbott (00:00:17 -> 00:00:25)

Do. Is there, is there a real reason that this is nine? Like, is is that just how many you think there are, like, nine core competencies? Or do we just really like the theme of

Mark Abbott (00:00:26 -> 00:00:36)

Nine? Um, if it works, awesome. If it doesn't work, then it doesn't work, is my perspective. Right. So, um, you're

Cole Abbott (00:00:36 -> 00:00:37)

Not gonna force it.

Mark Abbott (00:00:37 -> 00:00:39)

I, I don't think we've ever forced it.

Cole Abbott (00:00:39 -> 00:00:40)

I don't think so. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:00:40 -> 00:00:41)

Um,

Cole Abbott (00:00:41 -> 00:00:42)

It's just a lucky number for us.

Mark Abbott (00:00:43 -> 00:01:14)

It's just a lucky number. Um, so yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I, as you know, and lots of people know in the company, I don't like even numbers. And so there's, there's, there's that thing. But, um, I mean, I'm talking like less than 20 kind of numbers, right. So every now and then, like, I'll put together a list of eight, and then I'll say number nine is I don't like even numbers <laugh>, and that's the time reason. So, but, you know, so I do play around a little bit, but not much when it comes to something like this.

Cole Abbott (00:01:14 -> 00:01:16)

Seven would be acceptable,

Mark Abbott (00:01:16 -> 00:01:18)

Seven would be acceptable. Seven's a good

Cole Abbott (00:01:18 -> 00:01:35)

Number. I always remember it being like chairs, and then you thinking a house is ugly because there's four chairs outside or something Ridiculous. <laugh>. That's why the odd number thing is very ingrained in my memory. Yeah. But regarding the nine, does the order of these matter before we get into it or,

Mark Abbott (00:01:36 -> 00:02:05)

Um, you know, to some extent. To some extent. Right. But, um, I, and I think when I wrote the, when I wrote the article, um, I tried to put them in, you know, in, in, in the best order that, um, I could. Um, but, you know, it's not like stages where, you know, this is verse and this is second successive. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But we can talk about that as we go through it. Yeah. A little bit. All right.

Cole Abbott (00:02:05 -> 00:02:06)

Yeah. Does it, story number one,

Mark Abbott (00:02:06 -> 00:02:07)

Number one, great

Cole Abbott (00:02:08 -> 00:02:09)

Companies have a reason for being Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:02:10 -> 00:02:56)

Right? So, um, you know, this is the, this is the compelling why I, I, I deeply believe great companies make the world a better place. And, um, and, and, and so, you know, they attract and retain ideal stakeholders who at their core wanna see the company, um, endure. Right? And so, um, so I, I think, you know, they great companies, um, they have a strong sense of who they are and, and how they fit into the world and where the world's going, and how they'll continue to fit into the world, and how they'll continue to help the world become a better and better place. So, um, so yeah. Um, I, I deeply believe that, you know, great companies deserve to exist and should exist.

Cole Abbott (00:02:59 -> 00:03:09)

And when you see companies that are started or around right, that don't have a strong reason for being, they don't have that compelling why. Yeah. What does that look like?

Mark Abbott (00:03:10 -> 00:04:26)

Well, it manifests itself in a number of different ways. One of which is it's harder to attract and retain, you know, great talent. Um, it's harder to grow. Um, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's harder to find people that are aligned with, you know, what you're doing and why you're doing things. So ultimately it manifests itself in, you know, higher turnover, more difficult to, uh, grow revenues. Uh, you know, you, you hit the ceilings, and it's tougher to break through them in terms of the stages of development. Um, it, you don't quite know how to position the company versus, you know, potential competitors or real competitors. Um, uh, you know, culturally, it's, it's, it's, it's got, you know, issues which, you know, tend to end up with some turnover issues or internal dynamics that are not particularly healthy. Um, the, uh, there's not alignment at the senior leadership team. And, you know, as goes the leadership team, so goes the whole company. Uh, so, you know, it, it manifests itself, I believe, across, you know, all the dimensions, the core dimensions of what it takes to be a great company.

Cole Abbott (00:04:28 -> 00:04:42)

All right. And also for like, starting, right? It goes back to that thing of you don't make money because you wanna make money. Make money because people value what you do. Yeah. And if you're just wanna go out and make money, do you think that that's a reason for being

Mark Abbott (00:04:42 -> 00:05:56)

No. No. Right. For the reason you just said, because you're, you're focusing on outputs rather than inputs. And how many times have I talked about, you know, the research on happiness, right? If you want to be happy, if that's what you're focused on, you're, you're not focusing on the right things. You need to focus on the things that actually make you happy, doing, you know, doing things that you are good at doing, doing things that you feel like matter, um, doing things that are, you find interesting. Um, and so, yeah. So, uh, if you're just focusing on profits, in my opinion, you're focusing on the wrong things. Now. You need to have a, a high level of confidence that if you do the things right, that you understand who you are and how you serve and, and how you make the world a better place, and you get everybody ar you know, around the table to be on the same page, then all of a sudden, guess what's gonna happen, right. Especially if you understand why you should exist, right? Is there a need that can be fulfilled? Um, do you have a point of view on how to best fulfill it? And, um, and so, you know, so once you have those things, and if you do them well, and you surround yourself with people who care about what you're doing, um, my experience is, you know, the profits will come.

Cole Abbott (00:05:57 -> 00:06:32)

And I think going back to the happiness thing, and a lot of people don't realize, is dopamine the thing that makes you feel good? Right? Uh, that the, the reward pathway for that is you have a thing that you want, or a area or goal you're trying to achieve. And you, ideally, the healthy way to get dopamine is you progress towards that goal mm-hmm <affirmative>. And then that makes you feel good. Right. That might not be happy, but that's meaningful, that's fulfillment. Right. And you'll feel good doing that over the long term, and that's a sustainable happiness, right. Versus you just going for something a little bit, uh, a

Mark Abbott (00:06:32 -> 00:06:33)

Sugar cake. Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:06:33 -> 00:07:07)

Right. You feel really good in the moment. Yeah. And we've evolved to feel good with that because it's like, we need, we want to, uh, we, there was not an abundance of sugar cake for most of our evolution, so if you were able to get that many calories and it's like, awesome, you're not gonna die. Yeah. Uh, that's not the problem. Right. So, and then all of stuff, and you're gonna feel like not your best after eating that. Yeah. Um, but I do think it's Right. Pick the thing, have a have a goal Yep. And progress towards that. Yeah. And that's the sort of happiness that we wanna achieve in this arena.

Mark Abbott (00:07:09 -> 00:07:13)

Yeah. I mean, once again, you know, I struggle with the word happiness, but Yeah. It's, yeah,

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

I agree.

Mark Abbott (00:07:13 -> 00:08:07)

It, yeah. Yeah. That's, that's the term. Those are the, those are the milestones that give you confidence that you can go from here to there and you're progressing. You feel good about the progress. You can measure the progress, and, uh, and hopefully there are people, you know, cheering you along. Right. As, as, as you're progressing, if you think about it, you know, use a metaphor of, of a, of a marathon as an example, right? You're, you're, you know, it's not just that you're doing it by yourself. There's also people cheering on and, uh, and you're, and, and, you know, you're looking at your times and you're saying, Hey, you know, I'm, you know, uh, like the first time I ran really, literally long distance, um, you know, I was surprised I was running, you know, probably a minute faster per mile than I normally run. And it was easy, right? It was kind of weird almost.

Cole Abbott (00:08:07 -> 00:08:14)

Yeah. And, and there's a, even that reward is even stronger. It's like you're trying to get, what, a four hour marathon, right? I've never run a marathon. I don't know what I'm talking about.

Mark Abbott (00:08:14 -> 00:08:15)

<laugh>, you're trying

Cole Abbott (00:08:15 -> 00:08:39)

To run a four hour marathon, right? And that's your expectation, and then your watch or whatever breaks, and then you finish it in three and a half, you're like, wow, that's amazing. You'll feel so much better because you exceeded that expectation. Yeah. And then obviously that's definitely for people that run marathons as part of a larger picture ambition. Yeah. Um, but that all comes back to advancing your compelling lie. Yeah. Right? That's the stuff that brings meaning, that's has, that's where the reason for being Yeah. Lies.

Mark Abbott (00:08:39 -> 00:09:18)

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, you know, one of the things, and it probably sounds weird, um, but I'm good at doing that on occasion, right? But it, you know, when you're, when you're, when you're working on stuff that you deeply believe is good for you and all of your ideal stakeholders, and, and, and, you know, in the world, right? You, 90 plus percent of the time, you look in the mirror before you go to bed at night, and you feel pretty good about, you know, how you're, how, how, how, you know, how you're playing the game, how you're participating in life. And so, um, you know, back to 90, right? I think that's a, that's a, that's a great thing.

Cole Abbott (00:09:19 -> 00:09:24)

I think that's a perfect segue into number two, great companies excel at being trustworthy.

Mark Abbott (00:09:25 -> 00:14:03)

Yeah. Well, this one's, you know, um, I know there's a lot of phrases I use all the time that I probably shouldn't use, um, especially when I'm writing. But one of, and one of them is, it's, it's at the risk of stating the obvious, right? So at the risk of stating the obvious, um, you know, you cannot, it has, you know, it's virtually impossible to succeed without other people, just period. Right? We're social creatures, you know, I like to say it takes thinkers, feelers, doers, and critics. It takes a a bunch of people to create something of endur, of enduring value. And, um, and ultimately that means you need, you're relying on other people, and other people are relying on you. And so at the core of that is developing high trust relationships, which we talk about all the time, right? High trust is the trust is around character competency and connection. And so you can't be, you know, you on the character stuff, that's pretty clear. Although, as I've written about a little bit, and we'll share even more on in work, 9.0 and some other articles that'll come out ahead of time, you know, the character stuff is a little bit different. The definition's a little bit different. The way it's judged is a little bit different in monoclonic cultures versus poly chronic cultures, or agreement based cultures versus relationship based cultures. But, um, but you know, ultimately, if you don't trust someone, if you don't trust their intent, if you don't trust their integrity, it's hard to have a healthy relationship with them. That's one competency is people trust that you're gonna, you know, do the things that you said you're going to do. You're gonna provide the value you told people you're gonna provide. Um, and then, you know, the, the connection stuff is, you know, all about, um, you know, the cultural things, including the poly and monoclonic stuff that we talk about a little bit, you know, as well as shared goals and shared interests and, and, and shared behaviors and, and, uh, living up to agreements and, you know, being there consistently and showing up, um, um, you know, when you're supposed to show up. And so, you know, ultimately when you start to break that trust down, it's just harder for people to want to, you know, work with you or buy from you, or do business with you. And so, you know, I deeply believe, and we've talked about this a lot over the, feels like years now, right? That you want to build high trust relationships with all of your ideal stakeholders. But to make that work, you need to get clear on who your ideal stakeholders are, because not everybody's gonna be ideal. And, uh, and so, um, so, you know, it's really a super important to, to really focus on saying to yourself as a company, as a leadership team, ultimately getting everybody in the company to understand that, you know, we're focused on serving and developing high trust relationships with our ideal stakeholders. These are our ideal stakeholders, and these other people, they're not ideal, right? We can't be all things to all people am I usually talk about the, you know, um, the non-ideal stakeholders on the customer side is, you know, it's a combination of people who aren't buying what you're selling, right? They just, you know, well, you know, you're delivering this much value. And they said, well, you know, I only want, wanna pay for this much value. It's like, well, that's not what we're doing, right? Um, you know, we can talk about, uh, I know one of the topics that you and I are geeking out on lately is, um, is luxury, right? And so, um, so, you know, there's, you know, this better than I do that, but there's various levels of luxury. And, uh, you need to be super clear on what level you're, you're, you're, you're providing, and, and how to communicate, not only communicate that, but then obviously on how to deliver on that, right? So that's one example. And the other example is, you know, if you have customers who you know, are just like uncool to your people, right? That's not an ideal customer right? Now. There's gonna be situations where people would get upset, uh, you know, and, and understand that, yeah, we didn't do the best job we could have done, we weren't as competent as we normally are in that, in that moment. And we apologize and we'll do better. And, and you try to, you try to make, you know, um, make up for it. But if fundamentally that person isn't buying what you're selling, or they're just, you know, a bad human to have a relationship with, and they're not ideal unless, and, and, and, you know, take that feedback and just kind of dispose of it, don't worry about it, and just really concentrate on developing high trust relationships with the folks who are ideal. Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:14:03 -> 00:14:52)

And on, on the luxury point, right? Yeah. If somebody goes into a Ferrari dealership, it's like, well, I'd buy the car if it were cheaper. Yeah. <laugh>, they're like, cool, I couldn't even buy the car. If it was the price. It's because, you know, yeah. There's a whole thing there. Yeah. But that's op, right? That's a very extreme example of that's not your ideal customer right. At all. Right? And it's just, it doesn't matter. And we, and we have some of those experiences where it's like, we'd get 90 if it were, you know, half the price and Well, it's not Yeah. And it's not gonna be, yeah. So, right. And people, there's a tendency for people to apologize in those kinda situations. Yeah. But you shouldn't apologize if you have no intention Right. Of altering your behavior going forward. Right? Like, that's instance you, that's an authentic, so don't do that. Right. But Right. And, and you're not gonna earn trust by behaving in such a manner. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:14:52 -> 00:15:25)

No. They're just not buying what you're selling. Yeah. Right. And, uh, and that's okay. Yeah. I think, I think it's, uh, you know, you and I have had this conversation before. I think your generation's actually more at peace with this concept then my generation was Right. My generation tried to, I think, tried to, you know, help, help everybody or at least satisfy everybody. It's like, no. Right. There's don't have guilt. Or, you know, if you, if if someone's, you can't afford a Ferrari and you're a Ferrari dealer, it's like, you know.

Cole Abbott (00:15:26 -> 00:15:27)

Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:15:27 -> 00:15:28)

Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:15:28 -> 00:16:07)

I don't think it's a, like <laugh> more evolved ego kind of thing with the new generation. I just think there's a lot of things going on there. Yeah. We don't need to get into it. Yeah. But, uh, yeah. Some, some of the reasons for that are not, are not virtuous. Yeah. Say that. Yeah. Um, but yeah, it's, it's, right. Yeah. And, and what would you say, wait, it's one of the characteristics of a great business. Yeah. What are the characteristics? You say character, competency, connection. Yeah. But what, what would it look like for if a company is not doing great on the trustworthiness side of things, right? What do they need to focus on?

Mark Abbott (00:16:08 -> 00:18:29)

Well, first of all, obviously figure out whether it's character, competency, or connection. That's the first thing. Um, and then, you know, then it's like, okay, so let's just say it's competency. 'cause that's, that's a relatively easy one, right? All right. So it's like, where are we falling down in terms of de of delivering on what we're telling people we are delivering, right? And is it, is it us or is it the customer, or is it the positioning that we've put out there? Right? So, you know, you were talking earlier about someone, let's just say someone comes along and, and, uh, and they say, well, you know, I only want to pay, you know, five bucks because all I want your meeting tool. Well, we're not a meetings tool company, right? We have an ecosystem, you know, that includes obviously the software, it includes the content, it includes the support, it includes, you know, uh, a collection of tools that collectively enable you to focus on building the things you should focus on, right? And not be dedicating your time to building things that someone else has already built really well. Right? Like I've said before, you know, a a contractor building hammers and saws and screwdrivers at night, that's, that's not what they should be focusing on, or during the days, even worse, right? They should be focused. We have the hammers and straw saws and screwdrivers, right? And levels and all the tools you need, right? So, take advantage of what we're selling, but we're not selling individual hammers and, and, and, and screwdrivers, et cetera. Right? So if you're coming to us just for an individual hammer or screwdriver, I, I get that that's what you're looking for, but that's not what we're selling, right? So, is the competency issue, you know, is it, is it, is it, is it just a mismatch in their understanding? Right? Are they not ideal, but if they're ideal, now you get into, okay, um, is it, you know, are we not doing as good a job of positioning the business? Or is it fundamentally that we've got a bad hammer,

Cole Abbott (00:18:29 -> 00:18:31)

Or you're over promising and underdelivering

Mark Abbott (00:18:32 -> 00:18:35)

Yeah. On what the hammer can do? Yeah. Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:18:35 -> 00:18:40)

Or that you have hammers and it's like, well, I mean, you could use a level as a hammer. It's not a very good hammer. Right?

Mark Abbott (00:18:40 -> 00:18:43)

<laugh>, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:18:44 -> 00:18:55)

All right. If you're under a number three, speaking of ideal stakeholders, great companies know who their ideal stakeholders are and build high trust relationships with every one of them. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:18:55 -> 00:19:06)

So I kind of feel like we, we, we, we, we talked about that. Yeah. I, I do believe you need, you know, we, so we'll go there really swiftly, right? So I believe there are seven types of ideal stakeholders.

Cole Abbott (00:19:06 -> 00:19:08)

There's gonna be a lot of overlap here. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:19:09 -> 00:19:09)

Just

Cole Abbott (00:19:09 -> 00:19:10)

So everyone's concerned.

Mark Abbott (00:19:10 -> 00:19:31)

<laugh>. Um, so, you know, so obviously we've got the customers and we have the employees, and then you have vendors, and then you have strategic partners, and then you have investors. Um, and then you have the community, right? Um, and then who did I miss? 'cause I know there's seven, right? Uh,

Cole Abbott (00:19:31 -> 00:19:36)

Team members, customers, vendors, investors, strategic partners, strategic

Mark Abbott (00:19:36 -> 00:19:36)

Partners. Yep. Employees,

Cole Abbott (00:19:36 -> 00:19:38)

Uh, and communities. And

Mark Abbott (00:19:38 -> 00:19:38)

Communities, right?

Cole Abbott (00:19:40 -> 00:19:42)

I don't think you have employees on this one. Okay.

Mark Abbott (00:19:43 -> 00:21:56)

Whatever. Yeah. And so that's a good one. <laugh>, and so and so, yeah, those are, those are important. Those are important. So, you know, it's, it's, you know, getting back to the cus team members. Team members, yeah. Getting, getting back to the, um, you know, defining each of them core values and culture, right? Are these the right people? Um, when it comes to your, to your, to your employees, um, defining the psychographics and geo geographics and demographics associated with your ideal customer looks like. Um, you know, when it comes to investors, uh, I, you know, I deeply believe that you wanna find investors who really, truly appreciate you know, who you are, where you're going, how you intend to sort of get from here to there. What's the speed? Are you growing at 50%, a hundred percent, 30%, 40%. Right? What's the value you're delivering? Do they just, are they buying into, into the vision and into the plan? Um, strategic partners, I think they, they, you know, they, and, and by the way, all of them should be aligned with you culturally, generally speaking. Right? Um, and so, you know, getting, getting relatively clear on, on what the definitions of each of those things are is super helpful. Uh, because, you know, if you don't have definitions, then, um, you know, you're gonna find yourself being surrounded by some non-ideal people. Um, and, you know, and if you don't have definitions, um, and it's not just you'd have definitions, but everybody in the company has a general understanding, relatively speaking Right. Has a general understanding of what those definitions are. So ultimately, you know, I, I, I think it's really important to define them. It's really important for everybody in the company to have a decent understanding of them, uh, to do everything they can. Once that they understand who they are, what the definition is. Then if they are an ideal stakeholder, remember we're working on building a high trust relationship with them. And that's a long game. That's an infinite game. And, um, and then, you know, if we mess up, we mess up and we, we, you know, hopefully we've developed a decent high trust relationship with them. And, uh, and, and, and, and they'll forgive us, you know, because they know that we're trying to do the right thing. Does that make

Cole Abbott (00:21:56 -> 00:22:56)

Sense? Yeah. And I think the important part of that is that, uh, when you, when you, when you have that trust right? Sort of humanizes your business. Yeah. And I like to think of trust as when you really trust somebody, you trust them for all the things that are wrong with them and everything, and it's, yeah. In your mind, your subconscious, it just simplifies the thing that you trust, right? You're not trying to figure out their little fringe things. You, you know, you have a lot of friends where it's like, you've known them for forever. Right. And you have no idea what they think about politics or whatever. Yeah. Because you're just like, oh, yeah, I trust them. And you don't, you're not worried about that. You're not trying to investigate that. Right. Or you may not even know how old they are, like, at all, and never thought to ask. 'cause you trust them. Yeah. And I think that's something that Apple, for example, does a great job of where they just keep everything really simple. Yeah. And so you trust them. Yeah. And, you know, there's a lot of things going in the background. Like, I don't care. Right. That's cool. And, and that's one of the benefits of earning that trust.

Mark Abbott (00:22:57 -> 00:24:46)

Yeah. And, and, and the other thing is that, you know, Trust when you understand, when you have a decent understanding of the concept of trust, and then you go out and you do the work that's necessary to develop high trust relationships, right? Then you and the rest of your organization are a trust first organization, right? So you're not engaging in, well, I don't know if I trust you and 'cause that's, um, I'm gonna send a signal. And that signal is, you know, basically it's, it's oxytocin based. And so it's like, well, if you don't trust me, I don't trust you. Right? And so, I believe it's really hard for companies to scale and develop just, you know, a broad, you know, collection of, of high trust relationships if you don't position everybody in the company to sort of approach the ideal customers on a trust first basis. And so, when, you know, when everybody in the company is approaching your customers, your ideal customers in particular, on a trust first basis, then, you know, we, we've seen it for years and years now, where, you know, we get lots of people who say really nice things about us, right. Customers wise. Um, and, and, and across lots of other ideal stakeholder sets. Um, you talk about strategic partners, you talk about, you know, our, our partnerships and our relationships with the coaches as an example, they know we're, you know, we're trying to do, do, do right by them. And, um, and everybody in our company knows that these are people who are important to us, and they approach them, you know, with a trust first orientation. I mean, you see it every single day,

Cole Abbott (00:24:47 -> 00:25:09)

And there is a, contagious is not the right word, right. But there is a contagious effect of everyone internally putting trust first Yeah. And having those high trust relationships Yeah. And how that actualizes in the, in the market with your stakeholders externally, right? There are benefits that ripple out of that.

Mark Abbott (00:25:09 -> 00:26:19)

Yeah. I mean, I had a relationship, I coached a company a long, long time ago. Um, and the CEO, the founder, the CEO is 1000% not a trust first human being. Right. And, um, and, you know, I, I worked so hard to help him, you know, see the power of all this, and he just never, ever got over it. And, um, that company was the most dysfunctional company I've ever worked with. Right. And those dysfunctions were everywhere. And they weren't just internal, they were actually with their customers as well. Because, you know, if, if, if, you know, if you're working in a toxic place, and then that toxicity, it manifests itself externally as well. It's like, well, I, you know, I, you know, they don't care about me. I don't care about their customers, our customers. Right. And so, but it really is more their customers, right? So it just like, it's, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it spirals,

Cole Abbott (00:26:21 -> 00:26:26)

It's foundational, and you don't wanna have a weak foundation. Yeah. You don't have a, you're not gonna have a healthy tree with bad roots.

Mark Abbott (00:26:26 -> 00:26:29)

Right. Yeah's an impossible thing. Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:26:31 -> 00:26:38)

So, moving on. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. We touched on this, but <laugh>, great companies don't try to be all things to all people

Mark Abbott (00:26:38 -> 00:30:35)

Once again. You know, it's, it's, and that's a, and, and, and, and once again, while it sounds obvious, right? Um, it manifests itself in so many little areas too, right? So we've ex we experienced this right, where we've got great people, um, who really want to take care of our customers. And, um, and, you know, as a, as a product led company, you know, we get a lot of feedback from our users. And while all of our users are super important, some of our important, some of our users have who opinions matter a lot more than other users. And that sounds harsh to say, but the reality is, is that you know, someone in, uh, so let's just say someone, you got a company with 150 people and it, and you've got sort of entry level people working in the company and, and for whatever reason, right? Maybe the company's not as advanced as it should be, in my opinion, but for whatever reason, they don't understand why, you know, KPIs exist. And so they look at that k this KPIs as a micromanaging, controlling thing, right? Um, and so they get, you know, it's like, I don't like your software because you guys are, you know, you guys are making me update my, my, my, my my numbers every single week. And, and so they'll, they'll complain about, you know, some part of the, they'll complain about the nature of the system. And, you know, part of me is like, you know, ooh, man, I really want to help that company, help everybody in the company understand why they do the things that they do. I help them understand that the big idea here is these KPIs exist, uh, and the best way to do this is they're, they're here to help us see when there's an issue. Because otherwise, we just wanna let you run and do your thing and solve problems the way that you're uniquely capable of solving problems. So they're not a micromanagement, they're a micro letting go, um, uh, piece of the piece of the framework here. So, you know, you, you, you, you get that feedback and it, you know, and, and you can do one of two things with it, right? You can sort of try to explain it to them, but that's not our job. Right? Um, it ultimately, what we'd love to do is let the leadership team know that, hey, right. Um, you know, we're, we're getting a lot of this feedback from your folks and I, you know, we, we would encourage you to help them understand, help them understand the context around why you do the things that you do, and how you're trying to create this organization where things are working super well from top to bottom so that you can continue to make the organization stronger and, and grow faster and give people more opportunities and have a super safe, you know, uh, vessel for lack of a, for a metaphor that, that, that, that, that, that they're riding in and on. Um, and so sometimes the feedback is like, it's like, okay, I get it. But what you really care about for us is making sure, you know, the feedback that comes from a founder as an example. 'cause the vast majority of our clients are founders, right? That's super important feedback. And then as you sort of work your way down through the organization, right, we care. But, you know, there's so much context above that makes it like less and less useful for us. Whereas the really, the pinnacle of the feedback that we focus on is feedback from the senior leaders, right? Uh, founder integrator, super, super important senior leadership team. Pretty darn important as well. And then it just gets a little bit coaches. Coaches, yeah. A hundred percent. Then it just gets a little bit, you know, less important, um, as we, as we, as we make our way down the hierarchy of competencies,

Cole Abbott (00:30:38 -> 00:31:03)

We kind of touched on this Yeah. But I don't think we were as explicit as we could be on the sort of the four value propositions, right? Lowest cost innovation Yeah. Service and, uh, status. Right? We kind of touched on those a little bit. Yeah. Do you wanna go over those quickly in terms of Right. The idea that you're gonna excel at one of these if you try to excel at all of

Mark Abbott (00:31:03 -> 00:31:55)

Them? Yeah. I, and my thinking on this has evolved a little bit. I think, I think that You can, you, you, you have to decide what your primary value proposition is, right? So, um, you know, some companies are, you know, have to continuously evolve the, the efficacy of their offering. So they're highly innovative. I mean, open AI right now, and everybody in generative AI is, has to be very, very focused on continuing to evolve the, the, um, their product. Because, you know, you can see how it could become better and better and better and better, right? And, and, and you're like, well, if you give it to me, right? Or if they give it to me, right? You're gonna lean towards who's ever continuing to advance the efficacy of that particular technology, right?

Cole Abbott (00:31:55 -> 00:31:57)

It's very quantifiable in that case.

Mark Abbott (00:31:57 -> 00:32:33)

Yeah. It's, I mean, and I, and I have a number of different, uh, frameworks, lenses, since I'm dealing with it all the time through which I look and judge, right? So I, I really have a pretty darn good sense of how things are progressing. So that's on the innovator side, right? Then, you know, the classic is Walmart on the lowest cost right now. Um, and then, you know, we used to talk about customer service, and it used to be Nordstrom was amazing. Your, your, your, your best example doesn't feel like they, they own that anymore. Um,

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

I have no idea.

Mark Abbott (00:32:35 -> 00:32:42)

<laugh>, right? Um, so I don't know who owns, you know, great customer service, um, um, exceptionally well these days. Uh,

Cole Abbott (00:32:42 -> 00:32:45)

Lexus is a car company, used to have

Mark Abbott (00:32:45 -> 00:32:51)

Great service. Yeah. They were amazing. Well, and then Tesla was actually amazing early on. Um, uh,

Cole Abbott (00:32:51 -> 00:32:55)

I think a lot of, you know, at a higher end, luxury things like they take service very seriously.

Mark Abbott (00:32:55 -> 00:33:19)

Well, we're gonna get into that in a second, right? And so then we have status and, and, and, and, and status may not be fair, right? But the big idea behind status is people that are pursuing quality, right? Um, like we were talking about earlier, right? That, you know, the people who buy a Ferrari, or they'll go to who's, who's the, uh, luxury resorts folks we talk about a lot.

Cole Abbott (00:33:19 -> 00:33:20)

Amman.

Mark Abbott (00:33:20 -> 00:33:24)

Amman, right? Um, is a good one. In, in luggage.

Cole Abbott (00:33:25 -> 00:33:32)

There's a lot. Yeah. I like, I like ramoa. Ramoa. I would argue that's premium, ultra premium, right? Exactly. Luxury. But yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:33:32 -> 00:33:32)

And so

Cole Abbott (00:33:32 -> 00:33:37)

In terms of luggage, the other offerings, like their Yeah. Slings and stuff, those are, those are

Mark Abbott (00:33:37 -> 00:34:27)

Luxury. And, and, and, and, and so, and then you have, so, so we, so you have these primarily these, these four categories, and you, you, no one can be great at all four. So you need to sort of decide, you know, what your, you, your, your compelling value proposition is the, where my, where my thinking has evolved over the last decade or so is, um, you need to be really, really good, if not the leader in one of those. But I think you also need to be pretty damn good in service period, in of discussion. Yeah. Because, because service is where you hear from your ideal customers, right? And so I think you, you need to lead in on, on one of those things, and then you need to be damn good in service, right? But you can't be the lowest cost status.

Cole Abbott (00:34:28 -> 00:34:30)

Well, you can't be lowest cost in status, period.

Mark Abbott (00:34:30 -> 00:34:35)

Yeah. Period. Right? And you can't be innovation and, and, and, and lowest cost and lowest cost period. Yeah. Right?

Cole Abbott (00:34:36 -> 00:35:56)

I, and I have my, you ready to go through the, we did our principles on Tive brands thing Yeah. And going through the research of Right. What resonates with everything mm-hmm <affirmative>. Like what can apply to everything and in the harder or the higher you go up in those things. Right. In this case, speaking of loving your stages of ego development Yes. Um, which we should do an episode on. Yeah. That'd be, we'd have to do a lot of research on that, but it'd be really fun. Yeah. Um, right. Lowest cost is probably not gonna be in there. Right. And I, I think the version that you could argue would be like, convenience. So I, I think that's one of them. Like Amazon just sells convenience, right. And kind of lowest cost. Right. But that's not, the main point is not lowest cost. Main point is, yeah. Convenience. Yeah. And I, I think that that is long and of great service, and I think that long term works, but if you're just doing lowest cost it and sacrificing customer service, it's like that's not a great long game. Yeah. That's gonna be, that's gonna be a grind. Yes. You're just like, I want to sacrifice five years or everything. Right. And try to build something off lowest cost. Like, great. Walmart's realizing that's not a great plan. Right. Which is interesting to see that McDonald's abandoned that forever ago. Right? Like a quarter pound is like eight bucks now or something. It's probably not, but Right. It feels like last time I went, it was like, wow, this stuff's gotten Yeah. Expensive now a few years ago. But

Mark Abbott (00:35:56 -> 00:36:06)

I, I, I think I, part of it is, um, I probably haven't done as much teaching on what lowest cost means. 'cause it's not just the price. Yeah. Right.

Cole Abbott (00:36:07 -> 00:36:23)

In the, on the market side of things. Yeah. There are people that just whatever the cheapest option is. Yeah. And so we, we know on the business side, internally, or for those listening to this, your version of internally Yeah. It's a lot more than just price.

Mark Abbott (00:36:23 -> 00:36:23)

It

Cole Abbott (00:36:23 -> 00:36:28)

Is. But on the consumer end, just a lot of people that are just like, what's the cheapest thing? Yeah. And that's all they care about. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:36:28 -> 00:36:40)

And, but, but ultimately when, when you lowest cost, as an example, does take into consideration convenience as an example. It's, it's 'cause it's not just the cost of the product,

Cole Abbott (00:36:40 -> 00:37:08)

Right? There's some people that don't even, it would take lowest cost over convenience. Right? Right. If you're going somewhere, you're bringing a bunch of coupons in to save a dollar on deodorant or something, for example. Right? Yeah. It's like that's less convenient than you just spending the money and nap park. He has a, a great, uh, standup bit on this. Yeah. Yeah. But it's like, some people will take that because they really value the lowest price Yeah. Over convenience. Yeah. Which is very fascinating to me. And I want to just take it down that rabbit hole, but

Mark Abbott (00:37:08 -> 00:38:47)

Right. Yeah. But, but when you're, when you're going through trying to figure out, you know, your compelling value proposition and you're trying to think through, you know, what your, your number one and your, you know, and, and your second most important, um, um, propositions are, um, when I, if I am dealing with someone who's wants to go down the lowest cost route, it's like, you need to understand your ideal customer and you need to understand what goes into the definition of lowest cost for them. Right. 'cause it, because, because it's, is it lowest cost at the, at that moment they buy it? Is it lowest cost because, you know, is a good product and it will last a long time. Um, is it, is it, is it, you know, convenient to get, et cetera? There's more that goes into that stuff, but there are definitely companies out there who sell, you know, something that relatively speaking is not expensive. And then there are other companies that have the same thing. You know, I used to use, it's kind of weird now that I think about it out loud, but, um, I did a, uh, um, a I, I looked at investing in lending, investing in, and lending to a toilet manufacturer a long time ago. Right. And it was fascinating to get it into that industry and see how, you know, how people positioned themselves. 'cause there, you know, there were, you know, back then probably six or seven different toilet manufacturers, right? Toilet bowl manufacturers. And, um, you know, you, you can think of some high end guys and, and, and, but then there was like, there was like some people really right down there, just, it was a super basic porcelain, you know, throne.

Cole Abbott (00:38:47 -> 00:38:56)

Yeah. And basic is right. If you wanna do lowest cost is what are the things we have to hit and just focus solely on that. Yeah. Don't add anything else that's gonna drive the cost.

Mark Abbott (00:38:56 -> 00:39:55)

But, and then when you went and investigated those right? Where you sort of created a competitive matrix, you know, one of the things that went into the, the, the ones who were doing well, it, they had a pretty good price point from a, you know, lowest cost perspective. But they also had, you know, they had a good reputation for it, not falling apart for it, not, you know, the porcelain and the painting and the coloring and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right? So the industry knew that there was more than just the price that went into, um, and then, and then it was the, and then there's the distributors, right? Who sell it. And then it was like, you know, did they have a decent relationship with their, with their, with their distribution channels? And so there's a lot that goes into it. Um, but, um, but you know, this model, this framework that we're talking about is, you know, it's a decent framework to start thinking through, you know, what, what your value proposition is.

Cole Abbott (00:39:56 -> 00:40:13)

Yeah, I agree. I talk about the lowest cost thing for like an hour. <laugh> so many, so many things to go down there. Yeah. Right. Since we don't have that much time. Right. Moving on, great companies play the long game or more likely the infinite game. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:40:14 -> 00:41:43)

So, um, this is a huge one for me, right? So, um, you know, we talk about forever agreements. I don't know if we talk about 'em every single podcast, but we talk about them a lot, right? And so great companies, you know, they're focusing on some things that are virtually infinite. So, you know, we've talked about, we focus on helping ambitious leaders of small and mid-size, you know, companies, you know, organizations build great companies. And I believe that, you know, that you're gonna have small and mid-sized businesses for, you know, virtually ever. So our ideal customer, I think they're gonna be out there for a hell of a long time, right? Um, and so first of all, it's, you know, are you serving a forever market? Right? Are ICPs a part of a forever market? Um, is the value proposition that you're focusing on, right? Is that, is that set up to be sort of a forever game for you to play? Right? Can you compete on that forever? And if not, right, why not? And is this the value proposition then you should play? Um, so that's a, so that's a part of the infinite game. Um, the cultural stuff is part of the infinite game. Are you building a culture that you believe could endure for, you know, know forever? Right? Is this the type of culture that you could see, um, being successful for 20, 50, a hundred years

Cole Abbott (00:41:43 -> 00:41:46)

And being capable of evolving throughout that time period along the company? Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:41:46 -> 00:41:58)

Um, with, with, with Nominal Change. With Nominal Change, right? I mean, we've, over the years we've tweaked a, a word here or there in terms of the, you know, our, our, our six, uh, core values. But for the

Cole Abbott (00:41:58 -> 00:42:09)

Intent hasn't changed. It's just the way that we express because we're like, oh, okay, this resonates a lot better. Yeah. Or we make, set it up so it's more cohesive. Yeah. And then through doing that, we can make it more explicit. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:42:10 -> 00:42:56)

And then, and then the compelling, why is that something that is going to last forever? Because whether it's internally, all this is very explicit, externally, it's more implicit, not everybody knows, right. Obviously, you know, our customers, all of our customers do not know our forever agreements. Um, on the one hand, on the other hand, they certainly, I, I believe can feel that, you know, we're focused, uh, the experience they have with us is very consistent. Um, and they have an implicit sense that, you know, who we are and how we do things and why we do the things that we do, um, is it's not changing.

Cole Abbott (00:42:56 -> 00:43:18)

Yeah. It's like going back to the trust thing. We want the cohesive resonance to be intuitively felt. Yes. Right. Because we don't need to burden them with, like, this is all the things we do. We don't need to shout that. Right? Right. So all, all of our actions, our behaviors, our products, all of our relationships should all be cohesive and evidence of those things. Yeah. And you'll get a sense for it. You'll

Mark Abbott (00:43:18 -> 00:43:19)

Get a sense for

Cole Abbott (00:43:19 -> 00:43:20)

It. It, it doesn't Well,

Mark Abbott (00:43:20 -> 00:43:20)

And it's what

Cole Abbott (00:43:21 -> 00:43:33)

A lot of the stuff, it's like, if you want know is you go find it. Yeah. We'll, we'll make a lot of the, as we go through it, we'll make a lot of that more, uh, public and external facing. Yeah. But most people aren't gonna care. No. And that's

Mark Abbott (00:43:33 -> 00:44:41)

Cool. No, but if you want, if you wanted to go and find out more about us, you can go into, you know, onto the website and learn more, you know, about why we do the things that we do and, you know, if you're interested in it. But, you know, this is an area where you and I, I think are, are, are, are, are highly aligned. Um, every now and then, we know we have great people, but you know, they not, you know, sometimes people, um, they think that because they really appreciate who we are internally and explicitly, sometimes they, you know, they'll, they'll communicate it externally and it's kind like, no, don't do that. Right. Just because don't, don't, you know, because to the point you were making earlier, we don't need to push who we are on people. We just need to be really good at doing what we do and understand why it's important internally. But don't sell. We're, we're here, we're about them, not about us. Yeah. And I think we, we, we, and you and I both know we could be better at that.

Cole Abbott (00:44:42 -> 00:45:14)

Yeah, yeah. And, and, but it is, it's nice. It's a weird thing to complain about that. Yeah. But it's, it's nice to have people being very passionate mm-hmm <affirmative>. About things, um, and that, that love is is tangible. Yeah. But it's, there is a difference between you just appreciating the thing and, and that, uh, positivity Yeah. Reflecting in your actions Yeah. And you kind of boasting a little bit about it. Yeah. Uh, right. It's like a humility is just thinking of yourself less kind of an idea. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:45:14 -> 00:45:14)

Right.

Cole Abbott (00:45:14 -> 00:45:28)

Yeah. It's like, cool, great. Yeah, appreciate that. Yeah. But then do the thing that you need to do. Yeah. And in, in ideal sense, that is helping you do the thing that you do.

Mark Abbott (00:45:28 -> 00:46:26)

Yeah. And I think, I think like the people who were responsible for, you know, marketing and putting us out in the world, um, and to, to be fair, right? They're not doing it. You know, it's a bunch of our colleagues who are doing it, and I, and it's it, like you say, I love it. It is cool. Right? And so that, so I just think we, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm not talking about us as much as I'm trying to help, you know, founders and ambitious leaders when they're thinking about this stuff, right? It's, you know, you, you should be thinking about the things and, and talking about the things, the things that you're intentionally, that you're literally paying for, or you're, you know, when I say paying for, it could be either pay per click or it's your advertising, or you're promoting or whatever. Um, you should be focusing on, you know, what the customer cares about. Right. And that's the, that's the, that's the angle. Don't be selling who you are. Like all that stuff.

Cole Abbott (00:46:26 -> 00:46:48)

Don't fall prey to LinkedIn syndrome or <laugh>. There's gotta be a name for that. Yeah. That sort of a both bashful and obsequious behavior. Yeah. Which is, yeah. It's a fun spectator sport a little bit. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, yeah. Refrain from doing that. Yeah. And it's just a, it's a discipline consistency.

Mark Abbott (00:46:48 -> 00:46:56)

Yeah. And, and, and, and if your people are, you know, they're, they're, they're, you know, they're saying great things and obviously you know that you should, that's, that's awesome. Yeah. Right. Okay. Anyway,

Cole Abbott (00:46:57 -> 00:47:02)

All right. So we s so we strayed a little bit from, uh, the infinite game here, so,

Mark Abbott (00:47:02 -> 00:47:08)

Well, the, the, well, but back to the infinite game. So those are the four things, right? So compelling, why,

Cole Abbott (00:47:08 -> 00:47:11)

Right. See that as a segue, but Sure. We continue <laugh>.

Mark Abbott (00:47:11 -> 00:47:13)

Alright, I'll let you, I'll let you segue.

Cole Abbott (00:47:14 -> 00:47:15)

No, no, no. You, you started right.

Mark Abbott (00:47:15 -> 00:48:38)

So culture, right? That's an infinite game. Compelling. Why is an infinite game, your ideal customer's an infinite game? Um, and then, um, and then your, your compelling value proposition, those should all be part of your infinite game, right? They, they, because that they're the soul of your company. And as we've talked about in, I think in the founder's mode series, um, you know, that soul attracts and retains your ideal stakeholders, and particularly right. Your investors. And it attracts and retains your employees. And, and, and obviously it should be attracting and, and retaining your customers. And if someone comes along and sort of changes one of those things, it's that you're, you just change the contract with a lot of people. So be very, very careful. Um, especially if you're, you know, not a non founder, CEO and you're coming in and you're like, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna put my stamp on this company. Well, you know, chesterton's fence, right? Um, don't rip something down unless you under really truly understand why it was put up in the first place. And, and, um, and if you really, truly understand whether it's a positive or a negative thing, and if it's a, if it's a positive thing and it's part of what's attracted tons of people to you and retains tons of people for you better, you better think, you know, a hell of a long time before you change that thing.

Cole Abbott (00:48:38 -> 00:49:19)

And in those things we define as infinite games, you're focused on continuous improvement. Yeah. Right? You're not trying to rewrite the whole thing every time. Right. 'cause it's the compounding effect, consistent incremental improvement on all of those things. Yeah. And Right. You wanna win the games, you're not gonna win all the games. And so when you don't, it's like, cool, are we improving? Good. Alright. That's good enough for me. 'cause you want to win the summation of all the games. Yeah. Basically. Yeah. Like, that's the meta game that you're playing, right? So if you do that, and, and a big part of that and the social component is you have to get invited back to play the games. Yes. So if you win and you're, you know, not a great winner, you don't get invited

Mark Abbott (00:49:20 -> 00:49:20)

V about it. Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:49:20 -> 00:49:31)

Yeah. It's like, well, you lost <laugh>, you're out of the game. Right. So you lost Yeah. That doesn't, right. Right. And so it's being very clear on what those infinite games are so that you can play them appropriately.

Mark Abbott (00:49:31 -> 00:51:07)

Yeah. And, and, and, and I'm glad you brought up compounding, right? Because that's the, that's the power of it all. Right? It's, it's, it's, it's, yeah, you could make these in incremental improvements, but because you're not changing things all the time, you get take advantage of compounding, compounding, understanding, compounding the strengths and the capabilities and the insights. And just like, you know, everything becomes second to nature. Um, and you're focusing on, you know, doing the things to expand and improve and progress as opposed to, you know, thinking about which leg of, you know, of my pants do I put on every single day or worse, right? Um, and so the pound power of compounding comes out of that. I also think that, um, uh, that, you know, resiliency comes out of that because you, because you know, you have confidence. It's been working for a long time. And so when you get hit, you, you, you say, you know, okay, exactly where I'm supposed to be. I'm learning a lesson I need to learn, but it doesn't cha this isn't, doesn't change who we are, right? So we get back up and then, you know, finally, I do, I do believe that when you have, uh, uh, a long-term vision, not an infinite vision, but like a long-term vision on compelling audacious goals as an example, plus you have the forever agreements, those things make it, um, make it much more possible for you to become an, for you to be anti-fragile. Right? Because if you, if you don't know where you're going and you don't know what, what matters, right? Then how do you learn the lesson? Right?

Cole Abbott (00:51:07 -> 00:51:32)

You have nothing to judge it against. You have nothing if you don't have the ideal. It's like you, oh, just such a great quote about this, where it's like, you, you can't, it's like if you're on earth and you're trying to advance things, but you can't ignore heaven, right? You can't ignore the ideal. But if you're only focused on heaven, but you ignore earth, right? It's like you have no bearing on what is actually working. Completely butcher that <laugh>.

Mark Abbott (00:51:32 -> 00:51:32)

But

Cole Abbott (00:51:33 -> 00:51:41)

The idea, right, you have to have the context of the present and then also a vision for the future. Yeah. And if you just try to focus on one or the over the other, you're just lost. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:51:41 -> 00:52:25)

Yeah. Because, because if you don't know where you're going, if you don't know what matters, right? Then there's no direction. And without that direction, how do you, how do you benefit from anti fragility? How do you learn? Right? Whereas if you have direction and then you, you get knocked down, and I'm just gonna make a stupid metaphor here. You know, you're climbing a, you're climbing a, you know, a a 14 er right? A 14,000 foot mountain, and you learn a lesson, it's like, well, you know, next time I should bring more water. I'm just making this up. Or next time I bring this or I bring that, or I bring that 'cause God, I want to do this again. Right? And so, um, so that's anti fragility. It's learning from your mistakes and growing from 'em become better. Yeah. And

Cole Abbott (00:52:25 -> 00:52:29)

Better is that you're gonna climb more than one mountain. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:52:29 -> 00:52:31)

Right? Well, just as we, I like the trying

Cole Abbott (00:52:31 -> 00:52:33)

To become a better mountaineer. Yeah. Not just climb a mountain.

Mark Abbott (00:52:33 -> 00:53:04)

Well, and then, and then, you know, I like, I, I like the mountain metaphor in terms of the stages of development, right? So each stage of development is a bigger mountain, right? And so, um, so you learn from each of these stages, the things that you need to learn, what you need to understand to climb a 4,000 foot mountain is very different than what you need to understand to climb a 14,000 foot mountain, which is very different than you need to understand, obviously, to climb Mount Everest, which is what, 28, 30 2000, I don't know, way, way up there. 29,000. Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:53:04 -> 00:53:13)

Like, you just drop somebody on K two, like have fun. Yeah. That's not gonna work. <laugh>. That doesn't, you can't do that. No. Right? But you gotta work your way up,

Mark Abbott (00:53:13 -> 00:54:10)

Right? And, and, and as you're working your way up, right? And, and you're going from one sort of level of intensity, one level of sophistication, one, one level of, of, of, uh, of, uh, of challenge to the next level of challenge, right? You want to make sure that the people you're surrounding yourself with are people who've, who either have been there and done it. Right. Or you're highly confident for a host of reasons, have what it takes. Right. So, and, and, and specifically, let's go back to the bloody mountain, uh, metaphor. You know, if you're climbing a fourteener, um, you know, you want to be with people who've at least climbed a 12 or, you know, but you don't want to be with people who've never climbed, you know, never gone on a hike for, for an hour, as an example, right. Just know. Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:54:10 -> 00:55:22)

And I, right. For those who have seen 14 peaks, right? Nims Perge, who's completely blown that whole thing outta the water since that was released. Uh, but like his, his team is so important to that thing, and he stresses out all the time. Yeah. It's like, you can't do it without that team. Right. And the backgrounds of all them, where it's like, no, they can carry everything and more. And so when they are doing these crazy, it, it is a crazy challenge. Right? They trying to do that in, what, six months or something? Yeah, seven months. I think he did six something. I don't know. I haven't seen it in a while, but it's like they're, they're at the point where like, oh, this is just, this is fun now. So we'd go out, we're gonna party like the night before we climb Everest. Like, that's crazy. And then, uh, or, or on, I forget what Mount it was, but like somebody was dying, right? That they came across. Yeah. And so it was like you had to give them auction, someone else, uh, do the auction, right. Where it's like they're operating within their limits and he knows everyone on the team is doing that. Right. Instead of when they do come into a, a situation where they have to help others. Yeah. Right. Where they have to burden someone else's or bear someone else's burden. Yeah. They're capable of doing that. Yeah. And I, I, I tie that back into the core value side of things, where it's like, extra mile means that you have a little bit left in the tank. Yes. So when we need to tap into that, yes. You're willing and able to

Mark Abbott (00:55:23 -> 00:55:23)

Yep.

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

Lean

Mark Abbott (00:55:24 -> 00:55:34)

In. Yep. And it's our responsibility. It's part of our culture, it's our responsibility to make sure that everybody does have some extra in the tank. Yeah. Right. That's just, that's part of leadership

Cole Abbott (00:55:35 -> 00:55:42)

After that 10 minute tangent. Yeah. Great. Companies are focused. <laugh>, you talked about a lot, but

Mark Abbott (00:55:42 -> 00:57:11)

Obviously, right. So, um, and, and, and, and, and throughout. Right. So it's, it's, it's the big obvious things, the vision, all the things we've already talked about. It's really understanding structure, understanding how we do the things that we do, understanding, you know, the goals that are in front of us, uh, not throwing, we, as we lovingly say, non rock rocks in the middle of a quarter. It's, um, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's not overstressing, you know, a company is, um, is this, this big machine? Um, hopefully a healthy loving machine, right. A machine, that organic machine, but Yeah. An organic machine that everybody cares about. Yeah. And we recognize that we're only as strong as our weakest link, you know? And, and so, you know, you're mindful of all these things and you create this complex adaptive and growing system, and you have all of the pieces that they understand how they fit in, and they're focused on doing the, the, the work that needs to be done that, that they're responsible for. They're focused on, uh, on the objectives to the extent they have objectives for the quarter. And, um, and then as leaders, our job is not to all of a sudden throw a bunch of crap in there that creates all this, um, tension and anxiety and chaos.

Cole Abbott (00:57:11 -> 00:57:51)

Yeah. Because you don't wanna overwhelm the system. No. And if you think about it, right? If you're trying to increase your level of fitness, and you, right. You wanna work, you wanna work out, you wanna train. If you overtrain, you're only gonna make the system weaker, right? Right. And so we, if things are anti-fragile, but to an extent, yeah. Right. So if you go beyond that, you're only hurting the system. And so if you're like, more better, you're like that Goggins mentality, who's gonna carry the boats and you do that 24 hours a day, that's not gonna work. No. No. So, right. But focusing on the things that matter, eliminating things that don't, and really letting those embers turn into fire. Yeah. Bonfires.

Mark Abbott (00:57:51 -> 00:59:49)

And, and, and it gets back to, you know, one of the reasons why the companies, you know, we're called 90, it's like amazing. Great companies are marching 90 days at a time with, you know, the leadership team, the departments, the teams, the individuals. Everybody's marching 90% of the time, 90 days at a time. They're hitting 90% of the, the, of, of the things that matter. And they're keeping the system basically, you know, performing super well across 90% of all the things that, you know, all the, all the systems and all the processes and all the KPIs and, and, and that they're obviously, you know, and, and they're progressing those 90 days against a vision that includes a plan that includes, you know, maybe, uh, 10 year goals and three year goals and one year goals. And just this, this progress through focus, this progress, understanding what's important, this progress that also is built upon understanding what's not important. Right. What are we not gonna worry about? Yeah. We've got lots of stuff that we know we would love to do better, but we just can't, you know, we, we care enough about one another and we listen well. So it's like, yeah, we can't, we can't, we can't do these things right now. Right. And, um, and you know, I was talking to, you know, our wonderful CTPO, Greg, the other just yesterday, and we were talking about how much we have going on right now and all these parallel activities, and, um, you know, and I just looked at him and I said, is it too much? And he said, no, but you know, this getting there, this is, this is about as much as we can do. Um, but it's, you know, you're at that, on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being overload, you're in the red in terms of stress and challenge. Um, and, you know, five being, yeah, it's all good. And, and three being on board, right. We're like right at eight, which is where we don't want to get, we don't wanna get above eight. Right?

Cole Abbott (00:59:50 -> 01:00:27)

Well, we, we have the stuff on us. I dunno what I'm supposed to talk about it, but it seems like seven is is where we're running things, but Right. I think it was four to seven, it might not be seven, whatever, it could be eight. Right. But in that range of like, you're engaged, right. But you're really getting close to, you know, you're, you're in eustress, you're really getting close to distress there. Yeah. Right? And so it's a good place to run it. And we're, we're we running a little hot right now? Probably, right. Get a lot of change coming. Yeah. Uh, which is uncomfortable. Yep. And a lot of things have to move around to facilitate that change. Yeah. But it's, uh, it is, I think like we're run, we're running it hot, we're running it.

Mark Abbott (01:00:28 -> 01:00:37)

We're, we're, we're, we're. So I we're, I there's no question then it, it depends on every single, you know, it's, I, it it's gonna be a little bit different across the organization. Yeah. Every

Cole Abbott (01:00:37 -> 01:00:37)

Department's gonna,

Mark Abbott (01:00:37 -> 01:00:48)

But, but yeah, we're in the seven to eight range. Right. And you'd like to, you know, you don't, if it hits eight, that's okay. You don't want it going over eight, you know, eight to 1, 8, 2, 8, 3. It's

Cole Abbott (01:00:48 -> 01:00:49)

A little red line. Little

Mark Abbott (01:00:49 -> 01:01:23)

Red line. Right. And ultimately then, you know, that's, this is part of the cool things that we're working on right now is that, you know, we have the assessment tool now. And, um, you know, and I, I, I want to have a meter on where we are, company-wise, department-wise, team wise, individual wise. Right. And, you know, I would love to every single week to kind of know at the end of the week how things are, you know, where are we on that meter? We will build that. Right?

Cole Abbott (01:01:23 -> 01:01:41)

And then you apply like a me cycle system to that, where it's like, okay, we're gonna run at a seven this quarter, but then we know that the next quarter with the next quarter, we're gonna be running, like, we're, we're gonna run eight. So say we're running eight. And it's like, okay, well then the next quarter we're gonna run it at a six. Yeah. Now we're gonna recover. We're gonna get all those things going and, and apply that system.

Mark Abbott (01:01:41 -> 01:01:50)

Do you remember? So what was it, it was after the, um, after the new 90, right? So the 90 that, that we,

Cole Abbott (01:01:51 -> 01:01:54)

The rebrand the re 20 beginning of 23.

Mark Abbott (01:01:54 -> 01:01:55)

Yes, exactly. Gosh,

Cole Abbott (01:01:55 -> 01:01:56)

It feels so long ago.

Mark Abbott (01:01:56 -> 01:02:37)

Yeah. So that, so that when after we went through the, all the issues with EOS and we came out of that, right? That was supposed to be that first quarter, and that second quarter were supposed to be recovery quarters. But because of all the work that was done, the response to all the work that was done was pretty intense from our customer base. Yeah. And so we, so the team didn't really have the recovery quarter that it, it wanted. And so, you know, um, it it, and, and I've been reminded of that on occasion. So we always say this that we want to have a recovery quarter, but we haven't had one

Cole Abbott (01:02:38 -> 01:03:45)

<laugh>. I think we can do it departmentally. Yeah. I think we, I this is so whatever far out kind of a thing. Yeah. So I don't know anyone that's doing this. Right? I'm sure there are people that are doing this, maybe not explicitly, but Right, right off of instinct, but really applying that schedule and Right. Because it's, it's like if you're an Olympic athlete Yeah. You're gonna be operating on those meso cycles. Yeah. And so you can't just be in your peak quarter. Right. Because usually it's like 90 days, right. It's a season. Yep. You, you're not gonna be in that all year. Right. It's like you, you perform, then you go to recover, then you build Yeah. Then you prepare, then you perform. Yeah. That's definitely not the four things, but it's something like that. Yeah. And so I think most of the departments could follow that yearly thing. Yeah. Or at least a, you know, semi-annual Yeah. Style of like, perform, recover, perform, recover. Right. We'll figure it out. Yeah. Uh, but it'd, that's one of those things sort of, that'd be really interesting to have the data on it Yes. Be able to test it, prove it, understand it. Right. And then eventually like teach that. Yeah. Right. As as the goal with pretty much everything. Yeah. Um, so Yeah. Well, that'd be fun.

Mark Abbott (01:03:46 -> 01:03:47)

Well, I will do it.

Cole Abbott (01:03:47 -> 01:03:53)

Yeah. It will be fun. Yeah. We'll do it. I don't, yeah, we'll

Mark Abbott (01:03:53 -> 01:03:53)

Figure it out. Yeah.

Cole Abbott (01:03:55 -> 01:04:06)

All right. <laugh>, we are going, so we going slower than I'd like here. I'm sorry. No, it's not your fault. <laugh> great. Companies are well run day to day, week to week, month to month, quarter to quarter and year to year. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (01:04:06 -> 01:04:50)

Right. And I think we just talked, we just, you know, sort of, sort of, you know, got in, broke that down a lot, broke that down pretty well. Right. And, and then the question is, you know, are you, you know, are you the senior leadership team? Are you mindful? Do you understand, you know, how you're doing day-to-day, week to week, month to month, quarter to quarter, year to year. Right. Um, and I, I don't believe you can be a great company. I just don't, um, without having discipline around the week to week, month to month, quarter to quarter, year to year, I don't know, you know? Yeah.

Cole Abbott (01:04:50 -> 01:05:17)

You have to have quarters, a quarters made up of months. It's, it's the compounding. If you slack off on the compounding Yeah. You're like, we have a great vision for the year and in like three weeks go by, haven't done anything or on the company level. Right. But that's, and that's small. Right. But the effects of that are significant as you, if, if you extrapolate it, but also, even if you start on week four Right. And try to get back, it's like, well, you lost three weeks, you're probably gonna take six weeks to get back to where you were at week zero. Right? So you just lost nine weeks. Right.

Mark Abbott (01:05:17 -> 01:05:20)

And you've lost all the power of the compounding. Yeah. Number one

Cole Abbott (01:05:20 -> 01:05:28)

Lost all the, so right now you're at three quarters. And then in terms of Right. If we look at the compounding, it's like you just wasted half the year almost, and

Mark Abbott (01:05:28 -> 01:06:07)

It gets worse. I know, I've, I've shared this story right when I went over and many, many decades ago when I took over a regional office, um, they were investing in lending and, and, um, if they had a great end of the year, they kind of sloughed off at the beginning of the year, really for the first two quarters. And, and then they scrambled to put out additional capital over the last two quarters. And every year that they scrambled, they had bad deals. And the years where they didn't scramble, they had good deals. Right. And so they had this really bad cycle.

Cole Abbott (01:06:07 -> 01:06:10)

Volatility does not lend well to the benefits of compounding.

Mark Abbott (01:06:10 -> 01:06:23)

No, no pun intended. Right. So in, anyway, it's just like, no, don't do that to yourself. Right. Don't. Right. I think it's, it's, it's, it's the 20 mile or the 25 mile march. Yeah.

Cole Abbott (01:06:23 -> 01:06:59)

And I think most of us are a lot, I don't know. Me going through a school you do that where it's like, oh yeah, I did fine in that test. It's like, it's whatever. And then usually you cram and then you get by and it's just, that's the whole cycle. It's like, you don't do anything for two weeks and one week you're like, ah, well, and then the night before, you're like, ah, I gotta do something. And sometimes that works. Sometimes you show up to the test and you don't even know how to guess on it. You don't know enough stuff, which is Yeah. Uh, because it's, all those things are there for a reason. Yeah. Um, yeah. I don't need to keep going there. Yep.

Mark Abbott (01:06:59 -> 01:06:59)

All

Cole Abbott (01:06:59 -> 01:07:01)

Right. Great. Companies are built on agreements.

Mark Abbott (01:07:02 -> 01:07:08)

Yeah. So, you know, this is my classic discussion around expectations versus agreements. Right.

Cole Abbott (01:07:09 -> 01:07:14)

I feel like we're talked about this entirely, but, but, but it is a, it is a new rule in the list.

Mark Abbott (01:07:14 -> 01:07:19)

Yeah. But it's, but it's not one that's we've talked about today, right? Um, talked

Cole Abbott (01:07:19 -> 01:07:26)

About value agreements, but we haven't has been an explicit chapter Right. This episode. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (01:07:27 -> 01:08:52)

But, but, you know, get rid of the expectations. They're cowardly, they're toxic, they're bullying, they're lazy. Right? We need to create agreements, and as I say, agreements are everywhere. Right? Your core values are agreements, your compelling value propositions, agreements, your ICPs are agreements, your structures and agree the roles, accountabilities and responsibilities associated with your CEDE agreements, your KPIs, our agreements. These are the things that help us understand whether things are going really, really well. The targets associated with Yes, there's an issue. No, there's not an issue. If things are going well, our agreements, right. They're just, agreements are everywhere, in my opinion. Um, you know, it's funny, uh, Chris Snyder, our chief revenue and officer and I were talking yesterday, um, and, um, you know, uh, he's, he's now, um, just as bad as I am about saying it's all math, right? But to me, it's, you know, it's all math and it's all agreements, right? Math and agreements. Math and agreements, math and agreements. Right? And, um, if you understand the math and then you put in place really good agreements, and then you live up to your agreements. If you don't live up to your agreements, you have a conversation. Was it you? Was it me? Is it something else? And then if people don't live up to their agreements, then that's an easy conversation. Hey, it's really tough for me to have a healthy relationship with someone who doesn't honor their agreements. And so, um, but you know, it's like everything slow is smooth, smooth is fast. And so it takes time to enter into agreements

Cole Abbott (01:08:53 -> 01:09:05)

And make things math. Yeah. Right. There's a lot of things where it's unknown. It's like, okay, we have a theory on how this is gonna work mathematically. Yeah. Logically. But you have to explore that territory before you actually can make it explicit. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (01:09:05 -> 01:09:50)

Yeah. So, yeah. So I see, you know, agreements are everywhere and yeah, there, it takes time to enter, you know, figure out what the good ones should be, what's really important. But, you know, as we say, a lot of times, um, all the time, maybe, right? None of this is that complicated. I get it. It's hard. Right. Um, but, you know, I really, really, really, really want people to become great company builders. Right. And I want, I want leaders to become, you know, great leaders and, and I think to be great, you gotta do great. And sorry, but I want you to do that. Yeah. I want you to do it for yourself. I want you to do it for your family. I want you to do it for your employees. I want you to do it for all of your ideal stakeholders. Right. Just, you know, just do it.

Cole Abbott (01:09:50 -> 01:09:53)

Yeah. I'm not sorry about it. <laugh>. <laugh>.

Mark Abbott (01:09:54 -> 01:09:54)

Yeah.

Cole Abbott (01:09:54 -> 01:09:58)

Alright. Finally. Yeah. Great. Companies are built to last,

Mark Abbott (01:09:59 -> 01:10:32)

Right? That's everything we've just talked about, right? It's, it's, it's, it's, you are playing that infinite game. You're doing, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're doing the hard work to make sure everybody understands what's important. Make sure that we're having great, healthy conversations. We're creating a great culture, we're creating high trust relationships. We're, we're, and we're playing an infinite game that we want to play. We enjoy the game. Right. And you said it earlier, right? If you're, you said, you know,

Cole Abbott (01:10:32 -> 01:10:36)

Well, it's like, don't hate the player. Hate the game. Don't hate the game. Love the game. 'cause you're in it. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (01:10:37 -> 01:11:24)

And, and if you don't wanna play the game, then don't play the game. Yeah. Right. But, but, but go find a game that you'd love to play. Go find a game where you, you know, you, you know, you, you wake up the next morning, right? You go to bed, go home at night, and you're like, you know, 90 plus percent of the time I love the game I'm playing. Right. Um, you know, Michael Jordan, you know, k Kobe, lots of different people. Right? They, they had, you know, they just had such intense passion for the game and, you know, Jordan had the Jordan rule, which was he was allowed to go pay pickup ball. Right. And I would, I, I, you know, I was around in those days in Chicago, right. And I would go to the gym and there's Michael Jordan playing pickleball in the gym. It's like, this is crazy. Right? But, you know, but he loved the game.

Cole Abbott (01:11:25 -> 01:12:02)

No, it's like max for staff and being allowed to do sim racing or whatever. Yeah. Like the night before race. Yeah. So if he's gonna do it, yeah. He'll be fine. Yeah. It's on him if he Right. But he wants to do that 'cause he loves racing. Yeah. And it's like, he's gotta do a 24 hour e race before, which is objectively stupid from a, it's like, you're probably not gonna perform as well, but it's the love of the thing that makes the difference. And so you're not gonna tell Jordan that the thing that he wants to do, you can't do. You're gonna tell Kobe that. You're not gonna tell for staff in that. Right. It's like, you gotta let them do the thing and, and there's an overabundance of love and passion for the game that they're playing. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (01:12:02 -> 01:12:51)

Yeah. And so, you know, find a game that you just want to come, you know, you just want to continue to play. Continue to play. Continue to play. Right. And I, I think that, you know, it's, I'm, I'm genuinely sad that lots of people look at work as something that they've got to do. Um, they haven't figured out how to find work that they just, they haven't figured out how to find a game that they just love to play and get better at. Right. And, um, and to, to, to, to find that game where, you know, you, you, you generally like, like Jordan Right. You just love playing it. Right. And when you love it

Cole Abbott (01:12:51 -> 01:12:54)

Is the Right, it's not a means to an end, it is the end in itself. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (01:12:54 -> 01:13:35)

Life is long. Find a game that you're good at, that you're, that you want to become even better at, find other players that you want to play with, right. That you respect and that you can learn from. Right. And then, um, and then just, uh, you know, and, and then, but then, you know, approach it with humility because Right. You are going to get knocked down. You're gonna have a moment, you're gonna piss someone off. Someone's gonna piss you off. Right. But, but have the perspective that No, I, you know, I'm learning from all this. I'm not perfect as I like to say. Right. You have your definition of humility. Mine is, you know, in three short years of I'm not a little bit embarrassed about who I am today, then I haven't grown. Right. There's

Cole Abbott (01:13:35 -> 01:13:36)

A lot, there's a lot of definitions. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (01:13:36 -> 01:13:38)

And they're all, they're all good. All good.

Cole Abbott (01:13:38 -> 01:13:47)

Yeah. But it's all those challenges are helping you become better at the game. Yeah. And you becoming better at the game helps others become better at the game. Yeah. It makes it a better game. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (01:13:47 -> 01:14:15)

Because, you know, if you, if you, and we could do a whole nother, there's lots of research we'd love to do on this, right. But, but if you don't find a game that you enjoy playing Right. Then the chances are you're kind of gonna be miserable because Right. Then, then, then, you know, it's like, well, I don't love if anything I'm doing, I'm, you know, kind of mopey and Yeah. And, and, and, and who wants to go through life like that?

Cole Abbott (01:14:16 -> 01:14:37)

I don't know. I I think there's an overabundance of apathy at the moment. Yeah. And, uh, obviously we're working on addressing that. Yeah. We're trying, that's not gonna happen <laugh> anytime soon. Right. But we're working on it. Yeah. Because I, I think Right. We agree that that's a significant issue. Yeah. And, uh, doesn't have to be,

Mark Abbott (01:14:37 -> 01:15:13)

Doesn't have to be, it's part of what we're trying to do is trying to help people thrive, help organizations thrive, um, help people create communities that make it easier, not easier, right. But, but help people thrive and be, be, be, you know, there to support people. And, and, and, and, and we all go through moments, right? We're all, as I say, we're all gonna get knocked in the face and, and just, um, you know, if you're enjoying the game and you're learning and, and for the most part the people you're playing with are people you love playing the game with, then you know you're gonna get back up and you know you're gonna get back to it.

Cole Abbott (01:15:16 -> 01:15:17)

Nine characteristics.

Mark Abbott (01:15:17 -> 01:15:18)

Nine characteristics.

Cole Abbott (01:15:18 -> 01:15:19)

Thank

Mark Abbott (01:15:19 -> 01:15:19)

You. Thank you.