The trust you can't build, with Greg Hoffman

Speaker 1 (00:00) Welcome to Building Your Leader Brand. Today on the show, Bob is speaking with Greg Hoffman. Culture doesn't build itself, at least not in a positive way. So if you don't purposely and intentionally build a common culture every single day in an organisation or in a team, right, my belief is a negative culture creeps in. Because what always fills the space is confusion and different approaches, and it's never aligned. And when it's not aligned, it becomes negative, becomes toxic, and it's a really challenging place to work. Speaker 2 (00:44) Hi there and welcome to Building Your Leader Brand. My name is Bob Gentle, and every week I get to speak to amazing people who share their secrets to building, marketing, and monetizing their expertise and the mindset you need for your business to grow and thrive. If you're new, before you start going doing anything really exciting with your hands, before you put your phone down or in your pocket, take a second and hit the subscribe button and the follow button. And for bonus points, bonus bobs bonus points, hit the download episode every time a new one is released button, because it really helps my numbers when you automatically download them. So leadership is a very complicated topic, and some people just have a knack of making it simple, which is a really important thing to do. And when I meet somebody like today's guest, I think it's so important to share them. A lot of the time I have a very complicated, pre-prepared introduction for a guest, but I don't have that today because Greg's somebody I know really quite well. I would say he's a friend. And if there's somebody I pay attention to as a leadership thinker, it's Greg Hoffman. Speaker 2 (01:52) Greg, welcome to the show. Speaker 1 (01:54) Thanks, Bob. I'm excited to be here and get a chance to talk about this stuff. Speaker 2 (01:59) So you have a really interesting background, and I have an old habit of trying to introduce guests and making a bit of a mess of it. So for the listener who's meeting you for the first time, who is Greg Hoffman? Where are you from? And what is it you actually do? Speaker 1 (02:13) My goodness. I, you know, I've, my, my career path looks a lot more like a jagged line than it does a straight line. I grew up in, in North Florida and, and here in the US. I went to law school at some point and, uh, even before I went to law school, I spent a little time working for about 5 years in the, in the car business, in the car industry here. And then I went to law school, spent a lot of time as a lawyer, started a trial lawyer, then became a transactional lawyer. And I really started to live and breathe the business side of business. And I worked for companies like General Electric and Whirlpool, got to do their commercial transactions, spent a lot of time with sales and marketing guys, pricing guys. And I really enjoyed that time. And so much so that I ended up going back to school and getting an MBA and an MS in economics. And I love really microeconomics, the market factors and all the dynamics of the market that happen. And so it's exciting to me. And so I've decided to go study that. So I don't know what I am now. Speaker 1 (03:19) I mean, I guess I'm still a lawyer. I've tried to launder that degree and become something else. But over the course of time, I have kind of risen in organisations and got a chance to be part of the C-suite, got a chance to lead some really, really interesting teams, legal teams, but also other teams. IT, cybersecurity, HR, you know, places that really I don't have a substantive background, but yet I still had to lead these people around a common vision and a common purpose. And that really has impacted my approach as a leader. And it's also helped me discover that my real passion, all those things that I studied, my real passion is helping people and organisations and teams grow. And so, That's really who I am and my background. Speaker 2 (04:07) So there are so many places we could go. And I think something I'm— it would be remiss of me not to maybe begin with is I meet a lot of leadership-adjacent people. And the one thing that really stands out with you is your outrageous capacity to execute on things. At the moment, as you mentioned, you've had lots of corporate roles and now you are essentially starting your own company. And when you described this to me offline, the, the vision was uniquely big. And a lot of people would go from the corporate space directly into consulting and things like this. You chose not to do that. We can get into talking about your your specific leadership philosophy and frameworks and things like that, but I'd love your rationale for why you decided to go this particular route, to go big, I'm gonna call it. Speaker 1 (05:12) Yeah, well, I mean, part of it is I think I'm very entrepreneurial and I like to try different things. And maybe some of it is every now and then a blind squirrel finds a nut. And, you know, I think I was trying a bunch of different things including thinking about the consulting space and how to build out in that area. But at the end of the day, I'd written this book over the last 2 years and through that process of writing this leadership book, and we can get into that in a minute and the background for all of that and whatever, but through that process, it became really apparent to me that out of that book could come a leadership development programme that could really change the approach to leadership development programmes. And so I decided to go build that as a product. And over time, and really even just recently, I've— it's really become clear to me that that's the space where I need to focus. And, you know, as much as I enjoy helping people and consulting and those types of things, that's not the real opportunity. The real opportunity to help people is bigger than that and broader than that. Speaker 1 (06:21) And I can scale that through distribution with other leadership development firms and folks like that. So I'm pivoting that approach even as we speak, Bob, to really get to where Performance Through People, the book, and Performance Through People, the leadership development programme that's launching later this summer, is the focus of this business. And man, the excitement around it is really cool to see. Speaker 2 (06:46) So I'm going to ask what my policeman friend would call the daft laddie question. Why does the world need another leadership book? What is it? I have a feeling I know the answer to this, but I'm interested in your perspective because you're not somebody who's going to write another book for the sake of writing a book. Speaker 1 (07:05) Yeah, it's a great question. And, and that I've thought a tonne about how to sum this up in a few words. And, and here's the answer. My approach helps people understand the how. How to build an environment where the conditions for success are present. It leads to a high-trust environment, and that high-trust environment leads to high employee engagement, high performance, high results, and people that can knock the COVID off the ball, whether it's a team or an organisation. But it's the how that differentiates what I do and a lot of other leadership development programmes. And I've been through a tonne of them. People have spent more money on developing me as a leader than I deserve. Of, you know, great programs— General Electric, Whirlpool, big companies, Daimler— and a lot of those programmes do a great job of describing what, what not so good looks like and what really good looks like, and then puts the team through some exercises. But when people go back to work on Tuesday or Monday, a lot of that stuff just lives in a drawer and it doesn't become life inside the organisation or the team. And so my passion is to help people operationalize this stuff. Speaker 1 (08:22) And that's what's different about my programme. It, in the book, really kind of walks through a parable approach of how to do it. But then the programme itself not only helps people understand the how, it actually allows people to work with their real team members. They do real exercises. They come out with a real execution plan. So the programme's designed to actually help people change what's happening in their organisation, not just walk away with some knowledge about how to be a better leader. And I think that's a huge gap in leadership development today. Speaker 2 (08:59) I'm curious on your perspective. I think in order for a company to change, individuals have to change. And individuals are notoriously difficult to change. And obviously you've walked me through your frameworks and things like this in the past, but the operationalization of leadership training by definition would suggest that there are frameworks and structures that can catalyse change on the individual level. What does that actually look like? Speaker 1 (09:34) Yeah, well, I think first of all, there are frameworks and structures. There's a million of them. And there has to be some framework, right? But operationalizing that framework looks different. So I want to get back to the book in a minute and make sure that we come back to the book, but let me run you through the framework really quick. There's really 5 elements to the framework, and I'm going to talk about it in context of both the book where it plays out through storey and the programme where it plays out through learning and experience. But number 1, The very most important thing is you've got to have a leadership-first mindset. That's our first module in the PTP programme. It's a concept that's talked about in the book by Lauren, the CEO who takes over this company and starts to turn it around. You got to have a leadership-first mindset. And so to your point, Bob, you got to want to change. You got to lean into it. You got to do leader work. And so many leaders are distracted by the urgent. That's happening in front of them, firefighting, getting their technical work done, all of those things. Speaker 1 (10:34) Leader work's a different thing. And you got to, first of all, understand that leader work is a leader's most important job. And so we really lean into that both in the book and the programme and try to get people thinking about, how do I come in the door every day asking, what do I need to do to lead today, to lead the team, to lead the organisation, to lead our purpose, to lead our values, all the things, right? What do I need to do to lead today? Not, you know, if you're an engineer, what code do I have to write? Those are two different things. And so that leadership-first mindset's a big deal. It's foundational to making the change. Secondly, there are really two major conditions that have to exist for a high-trust environment where you can really empower people. The first one is operational clarity. And through our programme and through the book, This plays out in the form of what I call purpose architecture. And I learned that from a person who's really been influential in my leadership development journey, Lisa Zingari. And she's amazing with purpose architecture and helping companies find their purpose. Speaker 1 (11:42) And so when I say purpose, I don't mean really the architecture. It's not just the purpose. The purpose is, you know, the why. Why are we all here every day? But in a purpose architecture, there's 4 main elements. One is per— is the why, the purpose, but the second is the vision. Where are we going? Vision answers the question, where are we going as an organisation? A purpose should largely be evergreen. A vision is probably 5, 10, 20 years. It depends on how, you know, long your business cycles are, but you should review it, you know, pretty regularly and make sure that your vision remains set. But a vision is where you're going. Then you gotta have the success formula. What success formula defines, how do you know that you're on track to achieving your vision, right? What matters? What do we measure as a company that matters that we know if we do these things, it will get us through our vision? And then the fourth is our values or behaviours. And, and really that answers the question, how do we all treat each other around here on our journey, right? And when you get that level of operational clarity in place, and operationalize it, not just hang it on the wall or throw it in a drawer or hang it on a cube, but you actually operationalize it, which is what Lauren does in the book through story, she operationalizes this. Speaker 1 (13:04) If you operationalize it, it becomes so powerful because people know they can move fast. And I would argue that in the world of AI, my programme, my Performance Through People programme, is really essential because what it's designed to do is ultimately create a high-trust environment where people can move fast. And with AI, you gotta move fast, right? It allows you and enables fast movement. So anyway, operational clarity is number 2. Number 3 is capability. Well, of course you gotta have capable people, but are people intentional about assessing their teams, assessing their individuals, and doing it across 4 quadrants. 4 quadrants is really important because where most people focus is subject matter expertise, right? Is Bob a good marketer, right? Is he good at doing marketing work? That's one thing. So subject matter expertise is one thing and leadership expertise is the other thing. And so you gotta both ask, does this person and this team have the subject matter expertise to make us successful, the technical skills we need? And you have to ask, and can they lead themselves? And so a leader should be assessed on both, can they lead themselves and can they lead the team? Speaker 1 (14:27) Whereas an individual should be assessed on those values or behaviours that we've defined and can they lead themselves within the boundaries and the goals that we've set up for the company on how we all treat each other around the hallways. And so it's a 4-quadrant analysis, individual on one axis, Team on the other axis, technical expertise or subject matter expertise on one axis and leadership on the other axis. And I'm saying axis, but that's not actually right because it's a four quadrant, right? So it's two of those, if you will. And so then once you have operational clarity and you have really capable teams and individuals, that in itself builds a high trust environment. Trust isn't something, I mean, I love all these leadership programmes of like, here's how you get people to trust each other. No, you build the conditions, the environment in which trust emerges, and that is where it comes from. It comes from that clear alignment around operational clarity and clear capability to live in that world. And those individuals, that trust just emerges from that environment. When you have trust, we get to our, we get to our fourth element, which is empowerment. Speaker 1 (15:36) And we spend in the programme a lot of time on empowerment. Because here's the thing, empowerment's a dial, not a lever. And you turn that dial based on how high your trust is, right? If you got low operational clarity or you got low capability, well, it's actually negligent for a leader to entrust those people because what you're going to do is you're going to create mistakes, you're going to create frustration, chaos, all kinds of things, right? And so you've got to create that environment. And when you get it, optimised, then you can fully empower people. And that's when, frankly, when the leader kind of becomes a wall fixture, right? The leader turned it over, all the control to the team. And that really brings us around to the fifth thing, which is I call impact. And so back to leadership mindset, what I want people to do is be intentional about setting the conditions for success and building the environment where teams thrive. And so then the question becomes, if that's the impact we're looking for, did we get it? And so impact becomes a feedback loop. And what the programme teaches people to do is not just look at why did we miss our sales numbers? Speaker 1 (16:48) Did this competitor kick our butt? Or, you know, why did we have this cyber breach? Or why did we, you know, whatever the thing was, We asked them to look back at the system and ask, is there something that in the system, was there lack of operational clarity? Was there lack of capability? What was missing? And I'll give you a really good example. You have a cyber breach. I mean, it's easy to blame the Russian hackers, right? But those people got in somewhere and there was a vulnerability. So did we create an environment where people felt they could raise that vulnerability and talk about it. Because you can't prevent cyber breaches, right? You can't. I've led these teams and you can spend all the money that's on the planet and somebody will figure out a way around. But the real question you always ask is, do we know about the vulnerability and then we make a conscious choice to address it or not address it? And you know, you got to have a trusting environment where people have some level of psychological safety to raise those issues. And if you have good operational clarity and you have good capability, your trust should be at a level where people are not afraid to raise risks and talk about them. Speaker 1 (18:00) And so, you know, that's just an example off the top of my head, but there's many, many examples in the book where that level of trust doesn't exist and operational risks can get buried. And those operational risks impact product launch and things downstream. They get tech debt that builds up in the product.. And you know, that again, it's, it's just, it's an innovation killer when you have that kind of, of, of environment. So those are the 5 elements of the programme, and I'll run through them one more time. Leadership first mindset, operational clarity, capability, empowerment, and then impact. Speaker 2 (18:35) So what I love about that is, so if, if anybody listening has ever done a psychometric test like the StrengthsFinders and all of these, The challenge I always have afterwards is you get the report, you read it, it's very interesting. You're kind of looking in a very complicated mirror and then you walk away. It's very difficult to retain that report. And I had Nick Smith on talking about the Game Changer Index, which is for me, one of the best I've ever experienced because I can retain and continue to retain, not just looking in the mirror, but I can see how this applies very quickly to other people in their situations. What you've just described gives me a very similar experience. It is so logical and clear and representative of reality that I can immediately see situations that I've been in and diagnose isn't quite the right word, but I can see where things went wrong and how they could have been adjusted very, very quickly. By using these, I hate to say, very simple levers. Obviously, every single one of those levers has a million buttons on it, but you know what I'm talking about. Speaker 2 (19:50) And when I see somebody who brings that level of simplicity to something, what I'm actually seeing is a craftsman at work. It's like whenever you have a carpenter in and you want him to do something, And he just makes it look embarrassingly simple. It's only embarrassingly simple for him because he spent 30 years learning how to do that thing. It's that level of virtuosity in a topic that makes it look easy. Speaker 1 (20:19) You know, Bob, I don't have much hair up here and you probably see a few scars from where I bumped my head here learning all this stuff over 30 years. But it's been a journey and it hasn't always worked right. And it won't always work, right? But I have never found another system that works as well as this approach. And it really, people respond to it. And I've built teams that have been described, you know, legal teams, whoever says the legal teams, you know, the most customer-friendly, customer-focused team in the company. You know, I've built that more than once and it all comes out of this philosophy of these people feeling like they're empowered to go help the business. And, you know, when we built that purpose architecture in those places, we went around and asked our internal stakeholders, key stakeholders, what they wanted to see on it. So it's not really surprising, right? I mean, to your point about being simple, you ask the internal customers how they want you to behave and what they want you to deliver. You document that on a purpose architecture. And you operationalize it with capable people and empowerment and you get it. Speaker 1 (21:30) And it's unbelievable how effective it is. Speaker 2 (21:34) I've been in large legal organisations, in rooms full of senior partners. You tell me if I'm wrong, but they all, and it might be different in the US. And if you're a senior legal firm in the UK listening to this, I'm not talking about you. They can be the most cynical people. They, they're not the kind of people that you would typically imagine being receptive to leadership training of any kind. Are we talking about the same people? Speaker 1 (22:04) We can be. And, and let me, let me just ask you a question. In my framework, okay, let's, let's assume we have a hypothetical in-house legal department and we've, we've set our operational clarity. And you have somebody on the team who's lawyer, not lawyer, cynical, doesn't want to live within the bounds of the operational clarity, what do we have? We have a capability problem, right? Speaker 2 (22:30) Yeah. No, that's measurable. Yeah, I love it. And I think from a lawyer's perspective, it's also very clear. They know where the lines are. They know what's expected. They know what the agreement is. Speaker 1 (22:42) And some of those people, you know, I've had those people on teams and some of them have opted out. You know, most have leaned in and said, this is amazing. What an amazing work environment we've created. What an amazing team we've created. But there's people who, you know, for whatever reason, just say, yeah, this isn't for me. And, you know, you can even use your purpose architecture in interviews. And I do. I share with people, this is the environment you're stepping into and this is the way the team operates. Speaker 2 (23:14) I think one of the things I'm very aware of at the moment is the cultural layer in an organisation. I think the culture of an organisation exists between individuals and then collectively. It's like the connective tissue in an organisation. If it's flexible and dynamic and kept supple, the organisation can thrive, it can exercise, it can it can function. If it's not, it's liable to, as is the case with my body a lot of the time, the connective tissue has problems and you get pain, you get an inability to act and it becomes stifled. Those aren't organisations people want to work in. Where was I going with this? A very sensible place, I hope. Speaker 1 (24:01) Well, let me jump in for a second just because it spurred something in my mind. First of all, culture doesn't build itself. Speaker 2 (24:10) No. Speaker 1 (24:10) And not, at least not in a positive way. So, if you don't purposely and intentionally build a common culture every single day in an organisation or in a team, right? My belief is a negative culture creeps in because what always fills the space is confusion and different approaches and it's never aligned. And when it's not aligned, it becomes negative, becomes toxic, and it's a really challenging place to work. So that's back to that leadership-first mindset. And I've kind of intentionally avoided the word culture in all of my stuff. And it's not because this isn't about culture, it's because it's about— culture's a natural result, a positive culture, or at least the culture you intend is a natural result of this programme and what comes out of it. But culture's become one of those things where there's 8 million books on it and everybody's got an opinion, but does anybody tell you how to go actually build this environment? And that's what we're doing here. And I'm not telling you what culture to build. I didn't say what has to be on the Purpose Architecture. There's a whole process to that, and it's a long, hard, arduous process of a couple days of people in a room and bantering about, and it kind of It all plays out in the book, right? Speaker 1 (25:39) You actually get to watch this play out in the book, but it's for every team to decide. It's for every company to decide. It's for every organisation to decide what their purpose architecture is and what their values are, right? And that's going to result in a culture if they operationalize that well. And what I would say, and I'm going to go back to your other question, your question about the guy that doesn't want to accept the leadership development and thinks this is all a bunch of nonsense and wants to go back to doing things the old way, if you build the culture, the culture spits that guy out. Either ops out, self-selects out, right? Or you have to exit that person, but you have a capability problem where that person's not capable of leading themselves inside the culture that you've built and executing on your values. Speaker 2 (26:32) I think if you're going to have more than one person in an organisation, you're going to have a culture whether you like it or not. Speaker 1 (26:38) Yeah, 100%. Speaker 2 (26:39) And I think culture in an organisation is a lot like the weather in a planet. It's kind of dictated by the geography. Culture in an organisation is very similar. Culture is dictated by the behaviours and expectations of a leadership team. And When you were speaking about culture failures, or looking at the cybersecurity breach, for example, I've had very brief holidays in my life where I've worked inside of other people's organisations. And yeah, you can have a negative culture, but you can also have an absolutely ambivalent culture where it's neutral. That's a terrible thing as well. It is. Particularly In an increasingly virtualized, automated world where people are feeling more and more vulnerable and more and more commoditized, the point of difference in an organisation is going to become its people. Competition for the very best people is going to become even stronger. And where people feel like they can move to another company for a dollar more, you have a huge problem. The only thing that's going to make the difference is a place where aligned people feel like they have a sense of belonging. That is a competitive advantage. And as a leader, you should be judged on that. Speaker 2 (28:06) 100%. Speaker 1 (28:07) 100%. And I would— the biggest compliment I think any organisation could have is that people are chasing their leaders to come for leadership position, right? Because you've done such a great job leading that organisation and that organisation's doing so well as a result of those leaders. And I worked in an organisation like that where we were known for exporting leaders and people came to us and actually that culture and that CEO gets a book credit actually on my book. But, you know, he built a place where I didn't think it was possible. I'd worked in, you know, big, you know, Fortune companies like General Electric and Whirlpool. And this is a big company, a $30 billion financial institution, but, but the culture was amazing. People cared about each other. We had such clear vision, such clear leadership standards. And as a result, we had great results. People liked working there. Engagement was high and people were recruited out of there to go lead other similarly situated organisations and try to bring that philosophy to them. And that was a huge compliment. And we said, we weren't upset about it. We were proud about it. As a company. Speaker 2 (29:17) I could imagine it's very easy to look at that kind of situation, like, well, why would we invest in making the best people? Because they'll just leave us, they'll get poached, they'll disappear off. It's a lot like people like me saying, well, you should keep all your best information because if you give it away, people won't come in and hire you for it. It's a byproduct of a high profit margin, I think, is ultimately what you're describing there. Speaker 1 (29:41) Yeah. Speaker 2 (29:42) We should talk about the book. So the Performance Through People method, framework, programme, it all kind of has a home in the book. So who is the book for? Who should read it? What can they expect from it? Speaker 1 (29:56) The book is really for people who either, you know, are coaches, consultants in the leadership space, or they've worked in the corporate space, right? Anybody who's worked in corporate can read the book and I think get something out of it because, and I'll tell you, Bob, I started to write this book 2 years ago and it was sounding a whole lot like a textbook, right? I wrote a couple of chapters and it was kind of instructional and frankly, I'm uncomfortable with that anyway. I don't like kind of being the expert in the room, if you will. On stuff like that and just telling people kind of what my thoughts are. I pivoted at some point and decided to write it in a parable style. And when I did that, it just seemed flowing out. And I realised I had all these experiences over 30 years where I'd sat in meetings and, you know, and saw dynamics play out and So I created it in this parable style. And I will also say, you know, one of my favourite leadership books ever was Five Dysfunctions of a Team, not because of the programme, but because the way Lencioni wrote it as a parable. Speaker 1 (31:11) And I enjoyed reading it and listening to it. And so when I did that, it really changed the game for me. And so the book is a fun read. It's an easy read. And I think anybody who's had any level of exposure as a coach, as a leadership development partner, you know, as an employee in a company would love this book. And they're gonna see, there's gonna be many, many times they're gonna go, I sat through that meeting. I know I did. Because it's real. I mean, it tries to bring it to life. Speaker 2 (31:46) I think the nice thing with a well-put-together allegory is they are universal constants. And sometimes just somebody illustrating a method through a universal constant, they can just suddenly make sense. I'm, I'm really looking forward to it. When is it coming out? Speaker 1 (32:05) June 3rd is kind of the launch week or the launch day, and then we're going to make a big push towards the end of that week, um, out on social media and stuff and, and really get it out there. But I— it should be available for purchase, uh, on Amazon on June March 3rd, and then we're gonna follow that with a, with an audiobook, probably a couple months out as well. Speaker 2 (32:24) And so I guess I'd kind of like to look at the business model side of things a little bit, because you haven't done what, like I said at the beginning, what most people would do, which is— Speaker 1 (32:34) let me talk a little bit more about the book for a second before we go, because I'm afraid I'm gonna lose it. I'm afraid I'm gonna lose it. And I want to tell a little bit of the storey about the book. It's First of all, one of, you know, one of my graduate degrees is from Purdue University, and I have an affinity for Purdue University. So this storey originates at Purdue University, and there's a, there's a competition there for ag tech. And so they have engineers come out. Purdue's big in engineering and they're also big in agricultural located in the Midwest. And so they have this, this competition kind of Shark Tank style. Engineers come out and present a product. And they invite, you know, money bag investors and PE guys and venture capital guys and whatever to judge the competition. And so Zach comes from Moonshot Ventures and he's one of the judges and they roll out a, a, a robot that essentially is a sustainable approach to eliminating weeds. In fields. And so the robot cruises around the fields on its own and it identifies, it sees, it identifies weeds and it uses a laser to pinpoint and eliminate those weeds. Speaker 1 (33:53) And so this is a student's idea. They've created this very rudimentary prototype and they present it. They don't only win the competition, but Zach is excited. So he invests in this company and that company was just, you know, started with a few engineers, so they needed all the components to build it and they go out and they acquire 3 other companies. Laser Tech's the primary one. They do lasers, but then there's a couple other components that get bolted on because you need the technology and the talent to, to, to bring this thing to life. It's a huge investment for Zach and his firm. And so you, you, you've got 3 companies coming together and anybody's been through M&A, knows that when you bring 3 cultures together, you get a lot of culture clash and you get a lot of challenges with alignment and things like that. So the company's really struggling to get this product headed in the right direction. Zach brings in a new CEO named Lauren, who's a turnaround expert, kind of later in her career, and she agrees through her relationship with Zach, come in and turn the company around. I won't spoil the book. Speaker 1 (34:58) But what I will tell you is Lauren uses the PTP framework to turn a book around, and you as the reader get to go along on the journey of both the company, all the characters that, you know, ultimately are part of the leadership team and some of them down in middle management. Because one of the things I really wanted to convey in the book is the way the company operates, it really impacts the middle management level of folks as well, both, you know, personal lives, you know, their decisions to stay at the company, their engagement, all of those things. It's that all that cultural stuff that you were talking about, Bob. And so anyway, it all plays out through the story. It's a very interesting story, I think, but others have told me the same so that it's not just about— I love my favourite thing about this is when people call me and say, Greg, I read the book because I have a bunch of beta readers, right? I read the book and they have questions or questions are about the characters and what happened, some backstory or how, you know, how did I make this decision to have this character do this? Speaker 1 (36:01) Because what that tells me is they didn't just get— they didn't just get absorbed in the framework, if you will. They— the storey actually hit them. And that is my highest compliment because it was hard and I've never done anything like this before. And so when people are sucked into the storey enough that they want to ask about characters, it's a huge compliment. Speaker 2 (36:23) Yeah. There's so many places I could go there. And I'm having ideas for you and I'm trying to restrain myself. We mentioned at the beginning we were looking at licencing rather than going out and selling consulting, as would be the most obvious thing. I'm curious to hear what the experience of moving towards that's been— look, what the experience of moving towards that has looked like for you and what the the hurdles have been and what your vision is, I guess, for the business in the medium term. Speaker 1 (37:00) Yeah. My vision is that Ascension Performance Group, which is my anchor company, becomes a distribution arm for PTP, the book, and PTP, the programme. And my hope is that we will certify facilitators, you know, all over the world, any place anybody wants to present this programme. We'll certify facilitators. We'll provide all the materials for the course. We will have, we're in production right now with a facilitator manual. There's some games because the course itself is very experiential. It's almost comical, like, you know, the content is not, the content that the participant has is not that much because a lot of it are workbooks and things. They're going to work with their own team members to do, you know, capability assessments and different things. They're going to that there's games that they play with, you know, we have a card game that we play that kind of plays out how it's a proprietary card game with, we put cards together that essentially come together to make a product. And so they realise the power of purpose and vision through that game where they're building the product with the cards and why it matters and how much faster they can do it when they have the right vision and the right the right purpose architecture. Speaker 1 (38:15) It's all experiential. There's posters that go on the wall for folks, and then they work with a virtual coach called Lauren. So Lauren is the CEO of Laser Tech, and she's also now become a virtual coach. And that virtual coach is going to do a number of things. And number one, Lauren's going to help do some assessments for the participants in the class. To help them understand kind of where they are on the 5 core competencies of leadership in the programme as part of their reflection for the class. Lauren's going to also help them build personal growth plans where they're going to make commitments after every module as to how they're going to lean in and operationalize this in their organisation when they go back to work on Monday. So that's really important because it's a level of accountability. They can't just put it back in a drawer. And so Lauren will help them build that. Lauren will do follow-ups with them. Lauren is also going to be a virtual coach where she's available for consultation through chat using the framework, the programmes, and concepts that we teach in the class to help the people troubleshoot problems. Speaker 1 (39:23) Hey, I'm having this problem on my team, and Lauren will help them troubleshoot it, which is really great because I try to solve two problems with that, Bob. One, the accountability problem, right? The problem that people get training and they don't actually go back and operationalize it. And then two, coaching has generally been available for people at very high levels in the company. How do you scale it? And in this case, I wanted Lauren to be able to scale that for people to actually, so they had support after the programme. And so back to the question, right? Those leadership development firms or companies that decide to licence this for their own internal facilitators, They would get certified, they would get access to the materials that they need to teach the class, put on the class. They would get, uh, access to Lauren, the virtual coach, to help them facilitate all those other pieces of the programme. And then we're also working on some lesser programmes because I've, I've, I've, the, the firms that I've talked to, the, the main programme, the core programme is 2 days. And they're like, look, some of these companies are not gonna wanna spend 2 days. Speaker 1 (40:27) And I'm like, okay. So I'm going to try to develop some other pieces. It's just hard because really you got to operationalize the whole system in a way that to really make the big impact, but we can take pieces of it and, you know, teach operational clarity, for example. It's just very difficult because you can't operationalize it if you got capability problems. So we're trying to figure out how to give them what they want, which are some smaller bites. And so I think we'll have some alternative products there as well. Based on the programme. But the, the hope is Essential Performance Group just becomes a distribution arm. It has had consulting services. We're gonna, we're gonna de-emphasize that and really just start leaning into being the marketing and distribution arm for PTP, the programme, and the book. Speaker 2 (41:14) And for the listener, I think, I think this is probably quite an important question for you. What's the hardest part about being internal in an organisation to having to do things yourself? I mean, I have a particular emphasis on the, the visible personal brand, leadership brand, sales and marketing side of things, but that may not be the big event for you. How does that— Speaker 1 (41:43) Man, Bob, that's a great question. I mean, we're, we're a small business right now and I can't wait to scale because I, I would love some help. Right now, because, you know, launching this thing on your, on your own, I mean, setting up your IT or accounting system, you're like, all the things, you know, is, is a huge challenge for an individual that, you know, has spent, you know, 30 years in companies where people did that for you. And so it's been, it's been a lot. And yes, I have worked with you on personal branding and understanding kind of how to get out there and, and market myself to generate revenue for the company and through me. But I don't know if that's been the hardest. The hardest has been managing all the logistics of all the backend stuff and frankly doing it on a budget that's pretty tight. So scaling this thing, then that's one of the things. I could go at my own and go try to deliver this in companies and whatever. But that's not what I want. What I really want is to get PTP out there for everybody. And to create some scale around it. Speaker 1 (42:51) And I'm excited about doing that. And frankly, you know, if you're a leadership development firm that's listening to this, I think there's two things I want you to know because I know there are things on your mind. But number one, you're putting your credibility on the line with your clients every single time you take a programme in there. It's a trust issue, right? Do you trust my product, my methodology, my, my materials, the things that I have?, and it's still in development, but let me tell you, it's going to be first class. It's going to be first rate. And we're going to lean in with our initial partners. We're not going to scale too fast in '26. I want a couple of key partners in '26 where we can get out there and do some courses. And if we got to make some pivots or adjustments, we will. But you never met anybody more obsessive about the client relationship and the quality of the product than me. And so that's really important. And the second thing is you're thinking about revenue opportunity, right? And this licencing arrangement allows you to have a good revenue opportunity here because I'm not going to tell you what to sell the product for. Speaker 1 (43:57) I'm going to give you some suggestions. But, you know, from my perspective, what we're here to do as Ascension Performance Group is help you get certified, help you understand how to deliver the content, let you own your client relationship, let you own your client pricing, let you buy the materials from us to go do the course, and we're here to support you in that. And so it's those two things. I understand it's revenue and trust, and we're really trying to make sure that we address both of those in a way that's positive for the leadership firms that are going to lean into this, or even the companies that want to lean into it. Speaker 2 (44:32) And there are people all over the world in exactly those spaces listening. If somebody's listening, wondering, am I a good fit? What is a great fit for you? Speaker 1 (44:42) I think there's two answers to that question, right? I think early on, a great fit for me is someone who is a really good partner that's willing to come together, lean into understanding the programme, and really become an advocate for it because they believe in it. And ultimately, I hope everybody does that. But 2 or 3 years from now, you know, I hope this thing is so scalable and so fleshed out that we can— it's just a, you know, you want to be a facilitator, we got a process, we facilitate it. You go out and you've got those client relationships and you go out and you put it in your client's hands because you know it'll make an impact and a difference. But it's obvious, right? Right now we're trying to get our brand positioning out there, get out there. And so Right now we need those people that are willing to dig into it with us and say, hey, I understand the programme, I see your vision, I see what's happening. And, you know, I'm, I'm willing to go, go do that, be an early investor, if you will, in this product and get out there with my client because I think it'll make a difference, number one. Speaker 1 (45:53) And number two, I see the potential for my own firm to really lean into PTP and make it a big deal. I mean, you, you look at other programmes, Bob. I mean, you know, and I don't, I don't want to pick on any or name any, but you don't have to go far to see other programmes that people have leaned into and built an entire business on their programme. And I do think PTP is that kind of product for people that are, that are looking for something different, because some of those programmes have been out there 20 or 30 years and, you know, they're getting— the market's getting smaller for the people that haven't done them. Speaker 2 (46:25) Yeah, no, I absolutely agree with you. And I think also where we live right now with the way society has been adjusting over the last 10 years, and particularly with AI, there is a space for a much more humane leadership layer. And I think your performance through people speaks directly to that, which for me is very exciting. I very selfishly, I look at my work in the corporate space, a lot of the time it's about transmitting vision, transmitting purpose. But sometimes you get the sense that it doesn't actually exist to transmit. And that gap is a problem in a lot of organisations. And I'm very, very excited for you. I really am. So yeah, I'm, I've almost got goosebumps. I'm so excited to see what the future looks like for you. There's a few names that popped into my head as we've been speaking that I want to connect you with, but we need to get into your 3 amplifiers. So these are 3 things listeners can go and do, take action on, read, listen to. It could be anything from your favourite podcast through to a framework through to everyone should meditate or hug a tree. Speaker 2 (47:51) No rules. Greg Hoffman, amplifier number one. Speaker 1 (47:57) First of all, care about and care for those people around you. That's really important to me, and it really is at my core of who I am. I went, I went through, uh, executive coaching a couple years ago, and it was different from everyone I ever did. And I, and I found out my purple personal purpose, right, at a very high level on a scale of like 0 to 100, like 90% is that I have to have a moral platform. And that moral platform, as you dig deeper in that assessment, is helping people, helping people grow, helping companies grow, having organisations grow. Like, it is such a burning desire inside of me. I don't know, maybe, maybe that's not the right advice for everybody else, but for me, if I was giving advice, I would say look around, see who is in your org, or in your sphere of influence that you can invest in and go help them do something great, invest in them and help them do something great. So, that's number 1. Speaker 2 (49:01) I love that. What's amplifier number 2? Speaker 1 (49:05) Go read Performance Through People when it comes out. Buy it, buy it, buy it on Amazon, but go read it because I think it will help you do number 1. Right. I think it will. I really do. That's why I wrote it. I wrote it to help people realise that companies, teams, organisations, shoot, man, even families, right? Don't have to be in chaos. Right. And there's a way to invest in the environment that you're creating for those people to live in. So it's not just invest in the people, it's invest in the environment around them to help them grow. And Performance Through People tells a storey of how to do that. Speaker 2 (49:45) You can have your own book because I think it is particularly pertinent. Side note, is it available for pre-order yet on Amazon? Speaker 1 (49:53) It's not. I don't think we're going to do a pre-order, Bob. I think we're just going to launch it cold on the 3rd and let it roll. Speaker 2 (50:01) I believe you'll do better with that strategy anyway. Amplifier number 3. Speaker 1 (50:06) I'm trying to figure out how to say this, and I know you can edit, edit this. Go live your why. Go live your why. Um, I spent many years, um, living other people's whys. And, uh, the cool thing is it all had a purpose in the end, right? It all had— it all had a purpose in the end. And I've learned, and I couldn't have done any of this without the experiences that I've been through. But I've also given up a lot over time, living in different places, chasing different jobs, doing all of those things. And so, you know, there is a season in your life where you can look back and say it's time to go do something different and to make a— take a big swing. It might be where you live, it might be publish a book, it might be develop a leadership programme. I don't know. What's your why? For me, it was all of those things, right? And I will tell you that I've gotten a taste of that and I'm excited. I'm excited about where this thing is going and excited about being able to lean into helping people and doing the things that I love to do in a new way. Speaker 1 (51:24) And while I could say I wish I'd have done it sooner, the truth is I wasn't ready to do it sooner. It was exactly the right timing, but I'm glad I didn't wait till I'm 70 years old to look back and go, I wish I would've done it. So at some point there's a place to jump off and go live your why. Speaker 2 (51:41) I think regrets are very unproductive. Something I've been paying attention to recently is what causes frustration and what causes enjoyment and trying to move away from things that cause frustration and towards things that cause enjoyment. And I think what you described there was If you allow joy to be north on a compass, it will never steer you wrong. Speaker 1 (52:03) Love that. Love that. Wish I'd have used that word. That's a great word. Speaker 2 (52:07) You can have it. But more important than this, your attitude to service with a big S has an unintended consequence. I think you are somebody who is very impact-driven. What that leads to is becoming somebody who matters to other people. And for me, and for the listener, I want them to probably recognise that opportunity tends to come to those who matter to other people. And some people go out of the way to intentionally matter to other people, and others matter to other people because of their character. And I think you're one of those. And where character and effort combine, you have an irresistible force that tends to, tends to attract abundance. And I think this is one of the reasons you excite me so much to, to watch, because you're one of these people that the world rises up to meet, to an extent. But I think everybody needs to understand that that is achievable. It comes down to self-leadership, which is what we're really talking about. You can't lead others until you can lead yourself. There are tools and there are strategies for this. And you don't just teach it, you embody it, which is why it works. Speaker 2 (53:31) Absolutely. I got the goosebumps again. So if people want to get closer to you, if they want to find out more about you, where do you like people to connect with you? Speaker 1 (53:41) Yeah, I mean, shoot me an email. Greg@ascensionpg.com. Always happy to chat with you there. Catch me on LinkedIn. I'm out there all the time as well. And then on my website, ascensionpg.com, which I have to tell you is undergoing some transformation. There is a PTP section on there, but the book hasn't even launched yet. We're 2 weeks out. And as the book launches and as the programme gets closer, that website's going to very much transform and you're going to see that it take a, a PTP branding. Approach and some of the consulting stuff that I've been doing is going to kind of take a backseat on that, on that website. Speaker 2 (54:18) So it's a good thing we don't print websites, right? Speaker 1 (54:22) For sure. Speaker 2 (54:23) So that does bring us to the end of another episode, a nice gentle descent back down to the ground. If you're still listening at home, well done. Thank you very much. I really do appreciate you. If you did enjoy this, you will love the Personal Brand The Business Roadmap, 50 pages of everything you need to start, scale, or fix your expert business. Before you disappear off to listen to another one of my episodes, which I'm sure you're doing next, take a breath and a moment and leave a 5-star review wherever you listen to podcasts. It's 5, like the toes on your feet. I'm going on holiday next week and I may be wearing flip-flops where I'm going. Who knows? I'll be counting my toes and there are still 5 on each feet. Thank you very much, óim, for listening. And Greg, you have been awesome. Thank you so much for your time. Speaker 1 (55:11) Thanks for having me, Bob.