They probably just don’t know
Audio Transcript:
So I have a story for you today that has nothing to do with the actual topic of the podcast we're going to talk about.
But before that, just want to share with you those either watching on video, those of you on the audio stream won't see this obviously, but those of you watching on the video, we'll see, you know, my background's changed a bit.
It's been a while since we've done video. I really don't prefer it. You know, I'd rather just kind of talk into a microphone or whatever else or when I'm doing something we've got mics on.
That said, it's probably worth showing you the space I'm in. This is an apartment that's above our garage. And it's been really great for me because I do work from home when I'm traveling, but I do work from home.
And this has been great because it allows me to have some separation with my house, my home, my family and work. But I'm just right there. So it's cool.
It's not just down the hall. I've tried that. I've been in the basement before.
And I know many of us who are working from home are having to navigate that. And it is, look, it can be done. It can be done in wherever in a side room.
It can be done whatever. Probably not best to just be sitting on your kitchen table trying to do something. I know we've all tried that.
But anyway, this is where I'm at. So you'll see video here. Maybe we'll try to change.
It's not the best looking thing to see, but whatever, right? That's not where you come. It's certainly not for our dashing good looks.
So anyway, let's get on to the story that I wanted to tell you, and then we'll get on to the podcast. So first of all, surround yourself with people who love you. That's just, I can't say that enough in this example.
And then, bummer, I actually let some folks down that I love just recently, but their response to it, there's just two things I can take from it.
Well, there's lots of things, but what happened is I have a call every couple weeks where we call it walk it flat, where we're taking an issue. It's something in my head.
I walk all the time, and that's when I think and process a lot of the challenges we're up against in the market or opportunities. And it's got a lot of strategic thinking there.
And years ago, we just decided, if you want to come along, you can come along. And so there's no real structure to it. It's topically based.
There's no real takeaways. And we just kind of grind through things. Whoever's interested in having those kind of discussions joins.
Well, it's oftentimes half our company, a third of our company, maybe a little more or less. Just depends on what's going on that week and what people's schedules are like. And the most recent one, the kids had had a two-hour delay.
And so it kind of threw the schedule off a little. I usually go down at a certain time in the morning, and I usher them all out and hugs them all the way and wish them a best day. And then I get back to my work after my morning session.
And this time, because it was a two-hour delay, I ended up working through what I normally would. I went down, they were getting ready to leave. I went down to say goodbye to them.
My wife had a task for me or something. Well, in midst of that, I left my phone up here. And normally, my watch will tell me about it.
I'm far enough away where the Bluetooth wasn't there. So I had no connection to the world for the most part. And I'm just doing little things.
And then I look at my watch, and I realize I'm two minutes past the end of this call, where about half our company is on there waiting for me to come on and lead this call. And yeah, so I'm like, ooh, that's a problem. Well, so two things.
One, first of all, it can go two ways here. One, I actually was was pleased to know I have been able to rely on tools like calendaring and whatever else. So it's not in my mind.
I'm not trying to juggle everything I'm doing in a day. That would fry my brain. It just doesn't make any sense.
The modern world we face, we've got to use these tools. Now, the flip side, you say, well, you're such a slave to your calendar. Well, I see it completely opposite.
I was able to be free without having to worry about my calendar. Now, the challenge is I wasn't connected. I didn't plan ahead, and here we are, I left it.
So, you can take it at how you want. I'm okay with being reliant on those systems that I put in place, because they rarely let me down. And then I don't have to worry about it.
I do my day plan. I look at it. I plan my weeks, that kind of stuff.
And then, man, in the middle of fire, I just let it roll and run my day that way. So that's me. Your mileage may vary.
But the second thing is, and this, I feel bad, but I'm also warmed by it. It's kind of a weird thing. So people were worried about my health, because I don't miss, I typically don't miss anything like that.
And that's not common. And they couldn't get home because my phone was up here. So they were texting me, they were emailing me, they were slacking me, they were every which way.
I was getting it from all the angles, but none of them was coming to me. And they were just concerned for my well-being. And it's just, I would not feign something like that or fake something like that.
So you get that outpouring. But it was just nice to know that the people I work with also really love me. And that's cool.
And I love them. And it makes it awesome. And so anyway, that has nothing to do with today's podcast.
It was just a part of the experience. And you're along with this journey. That's what we talked about in the beginning.
This is authentic. And I'm sharing with you as I'm going. So to that, I want to thank Asher last week for putting out a podcast of an interview I did with Mike Cuff.
That was a great interview. I enjoyed talking with him. Great guy.
And hopefully what we talked about there was of value to you. Hopefully the challenges that we've been doing that you went through were great.
I know for me, they were, and I wanted to share a little bit about the most recent challenge, the feedback challenge, where I had some experiences that I think are positive, and I wanted to kind of share with you how that went.
And I'd love to hear from you how maybe your challenges went if you took advantage of that. You know, overall, I did, so I had already told you, I had sent out my feedback survey.
If you haven't listened to the previous episodes, I sent out a feedback survey to a few people that I work with routinely and looked for kind of specific questions of how to get that back. And that's outlined in a previous episode.
And I also put it out to the entire company. I threw a link in Slack in our open channel. I said, hey, if you're interested, I don't want to put it on anybody's if you're interested.
So I got a few more that maybe I wouldn't have sent to them specifically, but I got a few more back that was kind of cool and added a little magic to the thing.
So for me, that was a successful piece or a successful challenge that I got direct goodies, but I also have kind of an indirect goody, and that's what I want to talk about today.
Before that, let's go through some of those kind of direct goodies that came from that. These surveys that we do in this way and as a leader, and it is what it is in this organization. I'm the founder.
That's the role I play. Somebody else can play it. If they can play better, they will.
And that's fine. But as a leader in this organization, it's oftentimes hard for people to be honest with me. And I hate that, and we run this culture in a way where there's a lot of our team that is, but some people aren't.
And maybe there's newer people, or maybe it's just their personality or posture. But generally, people can be honest. But some aren't going to be as honest.
And these things allowed me to get really good responses. But, you know, one side of that, it's not just like, hey, what you're doing wrong.
A lot of people don't want to seem like they're blowing smoke up your ear end, or being a sycophant, or a suck up, or whatever.
And so this allowed, I got some really nice comments about things that they appreciated about what I've done for them, or at the company, or whatever else. And they were, I was blushing in a couple of them. It was really, really cool.
And I'm not bragging. It just, it was really nice to get that kind of feedback. And I'm not sure all those folks would have done that outright without being prompted and without it being an anonymous survey.
So anyway, so that was cool. And I also did get some feedback of things to work on. And as I take a breath now, one of those things was sometimes I can talk too fast.
I know, shocker, if you've been listening to this podcast, many of the podcasts I listen to are books on, you know, audio books, books on tape, almost dated myself bad. Audio books. You know, I will listen to them at two, two and a half speed.
No big deal. And I don't think you can do that with this one, probably. So maybe I need to slow down.
Maybe that should be my goal. Slow down so that you can listen to this podcast at a high speed. But anyway, it is what it is.
But what I think that's done is I was always the kid in school and I would miss problems or miss things on a math test. And oftentimes, I would skip a whole... I mean, I've done it, right?
You skip the whole problem and go from seven to nine. And eight didn't even get an answer. You didn't even see it.
You just move fast. Or I'll skip words when I was writing in language arts or whatever. So here we are.
My brain's moving fast and my mouth is moving fast enough to keep up with it. And sometimes I talk fast, I skip words. So I'm sorry.
If you've been listening to me in this podcast, you probably had that experience. My apologies. But it's something I got to think about, right?
But I think listening to those podcasts really quickly and the audiobooks really fast, I think it's kind of jaded my relative disposition towards speed in terms of speaking.
And so I have to think about that, and I probably need to slow the heck down. I don't know how I'm going to do that. But anyway, it's great feedback.
And I've noted it, and I'm trying to take advantage of it or take advantage of that feedback and make a change. Also, another one that I thought was interesting, and there's so many. I'll give you a few.
But another one I thought was interesting, that the feedback was really positive, but it was also, I say yes too quickly sometimes. And I want to believe in my team. My team.
I hardly ever say that. I want to believe in our team, right? And that's not just words that I use to our team, my team.
It's not play. That's important to me, and it's easy. Of course, I'm the founder.
I'm the CEO. Yeah, I get it. But I don't own these people, and we're doing something together.
And so, our team, right? And basically, they come to me, and they're always saying something, and I believe in them. And so, I'll ask some questions.
I'll give them some feedback. But I trust them, and I let them go. But it's really good insight.
I, you know, asking those questions and basically just being that, I don't want to say interrogator, because that's not what you are, but really challenging people around you in a good way so that they're there.
I may be not be doing that enough, at least to at least one submission that came through, and that's made me think about that. That's really good feedback. You know, feedback, sometimes it isn't always right, but I feel like that one might be right.
I think this respondent is probably on to something that sometimes I might just trust you maybe enough where I'm not being valuable to you as a champion, as your champion, as I would want you to be as my champion.
So anyway, so I thought that was a good one. And then, you know, one other one was that I need to be more involved in, and this is always, you know, juvenile way, but I can't remember who, spreading the company DNA. Let's put that, put it that way.
So spreading the company DNA and what is meant by that is, you know, how you look at something, especially if you're a founder, you know, this was your vision. And it doesn't mean your vision doesn't change.
It doesn't mean your vision, that you take on more visionaries along the way, of course, but you are still primarily likely in your role as a founder, unless you've ceded that role to someone else who's better at it, you're primarily the vision
setter. And for me and my role in the company, it's foundation and direction. So I'm setting the vision for who we are and where we're going.
And so it's important if it's easy in these roles sometimes because you don't want to micromanage, or maybe you're a control freak and you're doing too much yourself, where you don't give a chance for others to be doing things, but you being there as
a sounding board and kind of laying out some of that vision along the way. And for me, I sometimes will again trust the team and defer.
Maybe I won't be engaged on, let's say, a sale or a customer account or some kind of project because, hey, there are smarter, better people to do those things. And there are. And I don't want to get in their way.
However, and now those are either micromanagers, you need to probably think about going the other way. But for me, I got to think about maybe being more involved at times and sharing my perspective so that that DNA can be spread.
Because when you hire new people, and I may need to come up with a different phrase than that. But anyway, when you hire people, they come in with their own experiences and their own perspectives of how the world works and how companies work.
And that may align with what you have, great, but oftentimes it won't. Your culture is unique to your company. And so anyway, that's probably something that I'm going to think about more.
And I've already done a few things. I've already engaged where maybe I normally wouldn't have. And I've seen great value.
So I've got to be thoughtful there. So here's the last piece. And this is kind of an overarching thing.
This wasn't specific feedback to me, but generally in the experience of this whole thing, which, you know, there's lots of goodies again, but the whole thing, I kind of looked at it.
And then now I'm going to tie in, you know, as we've talked many times, my role is a founder, a father, and a friend, right? So as a founder, you know, there's lots of these specifics I can take out of this.
But I also found, and we'll start with, let's start with as a father, as a husband, your significant other or your kids may not know what you think they know. And so I do a lot of assuming because I have, I have smart kids. They're brilliant.
I love them. They're great kids. They're great humans, but they're also 11 and 14.
And they lure me and they don't lure me. And I get lured in because I think sometimes they're, they know more than they know about things. And I'll assume that they know stuff.
And then I can get either disappointed or frustrated or think, you know, they're just being coy about something. And they really don't know that thing because I haven't told them well enough. Maybe I was talking too fast.
Or maybe I wasn't engaged as much as I should have. And that one's hit me. I'm thinking about that a bit.
My wife, for instance, in any relationship, there are things, I'm like, are you kidding me? Of course.
You begin to think, well, you almost begin to think, well, they're doing that on purpose or they're a bad actor or whatever else, whatever phraseology you want to use. And when, you know what, they may be. So I don't know.
That's up to you and yours. But with mine, I think oftentimes it's just, she didn't really know. She didn't know.
She doesn't, she's not in my brain. I think about a lot of things, just like I was talking about math test. Maybe I skipped that problem and didn't share that with her.
Or maybe I'm talking so fast or so much. Maybe she's tuned me out, which that can happen. But I think there's a big piece of this.
I've got to remember that the people around me sometimes just don't know. I haven't shared with them what my expectations are, what my thoughts are. And that just helps me.
Because this whole thing, getting that feedback, helps me to realize I need to take a compassionate approach when something's not as I expect it to be. Was I clear? And maybe I was.
That's OK. And it's not about everybody doing anything for me and what I want to do. But maybe I wasn't clear.
Maybe they're just operating on their own experiences and their own perspectives and their own learnings, and that's why they're behaving the way they are. Not because they know what you want and they did something different.
It's that they didn't know. And that's sometimes a hard thing for me. So yeah, I'm just, hey, man, it's authentic here.
I don't know. We're just just us friends, right? So that's one for me.
So you take that from your significant other as a father or a wife or whatever, you know, to your kids. And again, I don't want I've realized my kids a couple of times. I just think I think the world of them and they are.
They're awesome people. I'm whatever. It feels like I've been bragging this whole stinking podcast.
But but I love them and I do expect a lot of them. But I also just expect they know lots of things and do lots of things because they are so capable and they are so awesome. And that's not I mean, that's fair.
And you want to push them, of course. But it's not super fair when they're sitting like, I genuinely didn't know I was supposed to act a certain way or whatever. Now, we've all been kids.
We know. Oh, I didn't know. You know, I get it.
But I really want to be thoughtful about this going forward for me and with my family is maybe they just didn't know. Maybe they didn't know. And then I go to, you know, at work, right, as a founder.
And there are so many things. When you're a founder, oftentimes I will be worried that I've said something too many times. They're tired of hearing this thing.
And there's an old quote. I think it's for the LinkedIn founder or somebody where, you know, when and it's probably been said many times, nothing new under the sun, right?
But where the quote was, when you get tired of saying something is when they just start to hear it. And that's always stuck with me, but that's stuck with me in theory. It's hard to execute.
And here's an example. We have certain cultural tenants that are important to our company that I have talked about, I feel like every day for the last 15, 20 years, when in reality I may not have talked about it in three years.
Well, we have a lot of employees that aren't with us three years ago, right? And so how can I expect them to know? Now, we've codified a lot of our culture.
And so, but the point is, things that you think you might have shared and everyone should understand, maybe it's been a while. You know, you say, well, just the other day we were, well, that was 10 years ago or whatever.
And so it could be that for you. I don't know. Or you've had a few side conversations, but somehow, and as you scale your organization, sometimes that data doesn't get around like it would.
And we spend a lot of time on communication, communication, but everybody's busy too, right? So it's hard and no system's ever perfect. And so sometimes those things you're sharing, they only get into a small part of your company.
And so I tell you, as my role, that's one of the things I really work hard to, is make sure we're communicating as clearly as possible. But it just helps my disposition. If I come to a situation first with a maybe they didn't know.
Now you find, again, trends. As you know, if you've been listening to this for very long, any one moment thing, I'm not as concerned about that. I'm willing to learn, you know, win or learn, but trend over time.
If somebody's always like, I didn't know. I didn't know. Okay.
All right, buddy. This is history MO. This is something different.
But you know, I think generally for me and my posture, I'm going to try to take, try, to operative word. It's hard, but I'm going to just try to make that a primary reaction to something when I'm like, are you kidding me? It's, oh, wait a minute.
Maybe they didn't know. And then try to understand, how did this data miss you? Are you not paying attention?
Maybe. Is it that this thing didn't get into the right channels? Maybe.
Is it that I really haven't talked about it in five years? Maybe. All those things could be true.
So anyway, with that said, that's it for today. We're not going to do a challenge this week. We'll pick those up here and there.
I've got some thoughts in my mind. Love any feedback from you. I met with Ash and we were talking about different approaches with what we've done and some feedback.
You guys have really been helpful. And I do have some questions that I'll get to and answer at one of these points. But today, we're back in the booth.
We're recording, and we had to get our audio right. We've gotten that over the last few months.
And now video is, yeah, it could be better, but it's still better than me where it looks like I'm maybe mailing it in from a jail cell or some captive location. So now you see I'm in an efficiency apartment that's here, ready to record.
So anyway, I hope this stuff's valuable for you. This is a little more of just a hodgepodge of things happening to me and where I'm at. That's a dangling preposition there, but hopefully it's valuable to you.
I'd love to hear what you'd like to like to hear from me otherwise. And yeah, so anyway, I hope this week's been a great week for you. And you take this weekend, do what you got to do.
Unless you work on weekends, then do that too. But hopefully you get some rest and some relaxation and restoration so that you can hit it again next week. So anyway, as always, wherever you may be, I hope you're flourishing.
Alex Reneman is the founder of Mountain Leverage and Unleash Tygart and host of Flourishing w/ Alex Reneman. For 20+ years he has worked as CEO of Mountain Leverage, honing the concept of flourishing and experimenting with it in the business. In July of 2024, he decided to begin to share this idea with others, which led to his podcast, social content, and the plans for other initiatives in the future.
