Thinking Differently and the Path to Thriving for Today's Leaders with Co-Founders Brandon Smith and Randy Hain

Randy Hain: I think every leader I meet today, most of them, I'd say, uh, and their teams are typically looking for, um, a different way, a different path, uh, new tactics, new strategies. Um, they're looking to grow themselves and the people around them. Um, so this idea of thinking differently about leadership and for leaders to think differently, um, I see a craving for that.

Brandon Smith: This is the Leadership Boundary podcast. I'm, um, your co host this week, Brandon Smith, and joining me is my fellow co host and co founder, Randy Hayne. Uh, Randy, my friend, how are you doing this Friday?

Randy Hain: I'm doing fantastic. It's always good to spend time with you, Brandon.

Brandon Smith: Always good to spend time with you as well. Uh, and so naturally, you know, we catch up about lots of things and trends we see with our clients and, uh, how we can help solve some of those challenges. I, I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge your latest book, A Different Take. And, and we're going to do this conversation a little bit differently today. Normally, we would spend a lot of time just talking about the book. We are going to talk about the book, but I really want to spend some time talking about the, the fundamental difference about this book. Kind of. No, no pun intended. But different is a big theme in, in this book, Randy. And, and I think there's something really, really appealing for that. I think a lot of us are kind of on the treadmill of life and it feels exhausting. Uh, and we want, we want something different. So let's kind of, if you're okay with it, let's go down this path a little bit and explore different. Uh, and so I'd like to kick it off by asking you, so what does different mean to you?

Randy Hain: You know, um, I'm glad you started there because the book was interesting for me. It's like a lot of the things that I write, I often put a lot of content, and then I sort of look back and I think about, what is this about? What is all this content about? And what was really different about this book was that I found myself taking that different point of view on just about every one of the 26 topics in the book. And, uh, if I unpack it to answer your question, I find that a lot of people are beating their heads against the wall with problems that have been around for a very long time. You and I are always engaging with clients and teams, and the problems really don't change that much. Uh, everybody's kind of dealing with the same stuff. And when I think about different, it's, how do we step back and not go down the same path we've always gone down and look at things a little differently. How do we elevate our thinking? How do we try some new ideas, some new approaches? Um, how do we seek out help when we get stuck to get unstuck? So this book, through the lens of your question, is really designed to challenge the reader to look at maybe common challenges a little differently. Give you lots of best practices to go and try. Uh, and there's always a call to action at the end of every chapter that will really get, uh, you to go down these different pathways. So I think it starts again to come full circle with this idea of different. It's okay. What I'm doing is not working. I like to say that sometimes people are so focused, focused on surviving that they forget how to thrive. How do we, how do we get them out of survival mode, into thriving mode? And maybe this idea of thinking differently and trying new ideas is the way to go. So a long winded answer to a great question, but that's where I'll start and leave it to you.

Brandon Smith: I love that, and I want to hone in a little bit more on that. But there's something that you said right there that I have got to ask you about.

Randy Hain: Sure.

Brandon Smith: So we talked. You talked about thriving, uh, and surviving versus thriving. I think everyone, we hear the word thriving and people say that I want to thrive or I'm not thriving. I think a lot of people resonate with what you said. What does thriving look like? Or what, or what could it look like? Uh, what could a picture of us thriving look like?

Randy Hain: So, uh, I'll answer your question again through maybe starting in a different place than what you expected. Let's talk about survival mode. Because a lot of the leaders, a lot of the teams, a lot of the people we engage with are just surviving right now. They're working really, really hard. There aren't enough minutes in the day to get everything done. Their priorities are probably out of whack. They may feel stuck in place. Maybe they're fearful of the onslaught of AI and they're anxious about that. Their careers aren't going in the right direction. Their personal lives are not where they want them to be. They're just not feeling like they're making traction moving forward. So starting with survival mode, that's what a lot of people are doing right now. So when I think about answering your question, what does it mean to thrive? All of us may have a very, very different answer to this. And I acknowledge that but when I think about thriving, I start with feeling unstuck. I want to feel like my priorities are straight. I want to feel like I've got the opportunity every day to move the needle. Getting to a place of thriving is. It's getting unstuck and it's moving forward. It's creating M margin and maximizing opportunities. Now, that's Randy Haynes definition. That's what I think. But I'm really curious to get your take on that as well. That's where I'm coming from now. Where are you coming from on that?

Brandon Smith: I think, I think you, you painted a nice picture of creating space for thriving, space for that. So we can, we can, uh, live a life that's more fulfilling. But I would also, when I think of thriving, I also think there's a. While thriving has an energy to it, like I'm thriving, I'm doing. I'm thriving. It has a movement to it or, or action to it. I think about peace when I think of thriving. So I think there's also peacefulness that we don't often get when we're stressed or kind of on the hamster wheel. Um, that. That's just a chaotic, frenetic, everything's urgent all the time kind of feeling, a pressurey kind of feeling. So I, I definitely, when I think of thriving, I think there's a. There's, there's a peacefulness to it, um, which you have pictures of that kind of painted in your book, frankly, towards the end, just being able to be fully present and can be able to kind of recognize, kind of and appreciate the, the smaller beauties in life.

Randy Hain: No, I love that, and I'm glad that you kind of focused on this idea of peace. You know, I generally meet people, and I want to be careful not to generalize, but I generally am meeting a lot of people and have for years now that seem to be in a constant state of agitation. I'm racing to this thing. I've got to get my kids to this soccer game. I've got to get the deadline met for my boss. I've got a client that wants X. Uh, my weekends are filled. It's just running and racing and moving around and going at the speed of light. Well, listen, we all go through those phases, and when my kids were younger, quite frankly, I went through that. But one of the things that I probably equate to thriving at this stage of my life is I have gotten to a place where those peaceful moments are much more frequent. Uh, and I've got the ability to get to them faster. Part of what I convey in the book, a lot of what I convey in the book is there is a path. And if you are thinking about all the different challenges in your life, and the book really covers a lot of ground with all the things that leaders and professionals face. But if you start to make progress, if you get better at those things that you're working, working on, wrestling with every day, you are going to get to this. And I'm glad you said it, this state of maybe more peacefulness, this calmness. And that's a great way to think about thriving. So I'm really glad you said that and I totally agree with you.

Brandon Smith: So one thing that stood out for me when I looked at the table of contents and even went through the book and read the book, you start very early on with thinking differently. In fact, that's the starting place.

Randy Hain: Hm.

Brandon Smith: You and I always talk about practical things we can be doing and steps we can be taking. And that's in there for sure. I mean, it wouldn't be a Randy Haynes book if it didn't have those things in there. But you start with thinking, share a little bit more about why that was the starting place.

Randy Hain: Yeah. So, you know, the book has, I believe it's six sections, and each section, um, is about thinking differently about something. The very first section of the book is about how do we think differently? To your point, then we talk about leading differently, relationships differently, career, thinking about careers differently. We'll get into that in a minute. But this idea of thinking differently sometimes, um, I don't know why I'm going to go there with my analogy, but sometimes I feel like we're all kind of stuck in the matrix and we're all just kind of moving through life and we're kind of doing our thing and we sort of conform to society's call to the same thing. We all kind of gravitate and go in the same direction, and there's very little pushing against that. Well, I'm m. Kind of. I'm really trying to get you at the beginning of this book to not even. Not even look at it as a typical book. I want you to begin by saying, how can I start to look at the world a little differently? How can I change my thinking, how I'm thinking, how I'm showing up, how I'm engaging. In fact, the very first chapter of the book is Seven ways to reframe your thinking. So, um, I find that where a lot of people get off track is by refusing to leave the trodden path that many have gone down before. So, um, you and I not only make a living, but quite frankly, love engaging with leaders and teams at the Leadership Foundry. And most of what we're doing is really listening, asking lots of questions, but then challenging our clients to think differently. If you think about it, almost every engagement we have is about challenging the status quo and looking at life through, uh, a different lens, a different filter. So, yeah, to your point, I think it's really important that we start by just, let's figure out how we're engaging with the world professionally and personally and maybe consider a different way of doing it. And that's why I started the way I did.

Brandon Smith: So now we pivoted to leaders. Why is it so important that they start to think differently, view the world differently, act and move differently in the world today?

Randy Hain: There will be people that will look at the contents of the book, maybe pick up and read the introduction, maybe see, uh, an advertisement about it and say, you know what, I'm doing great. I don't need any help. Great. That's fantastic. In my experience, though, and I'd love to get your take, that's maybe less than 10% of the leaders I encounter. I think every leader I meet today, most of them, I'd say, uh, and their teams are typically looking for, um, a different way, a different path, uh, new tactics, new strategies. They're looking to grow themselves and the people around them. Um, so this idea of thinking differently about leadership and for leaders to think differently, um, I see a craving for that. I see a real hunger for that out there. Uh, one of the big motivations for me to write the book was how do I respond to what I think is a need that is not being given a voice. So I think the people out there that are watching the show that might come across the book that are just wondering, is there a better way? I think they may find some real comfort and help in the book. And listen, you know, you and I say this all the time, and we both mean it. We stand on the shoulders of giants. This book is not the answer, but it may be the answer. Uh, maybe it's a catalyst to get you going down the right path. And then when you're done with the book, go on to other great resources that can help you. I only promise that the book will help you get started on the journey, if you're interested.

Brandon Smith: So if we kind of stay on this topic of leaders for a minute, sure. Uh, how much of this is going back to some just old school leadership Best practices that maybe we've lost as we've kind of. You and I see it all the time. I, I was, in fact, I was, uh, kind of guest lecturing at UGA yesterday, and I was spending some time with some students and we were talking about trends and leadership and those sorts of things. And I said, you know, most, most leaders today aren't leaders. Uh, a lot of us have titles that say leader. We're not leaders, we're firefighters. That's an important job. But that's not leadership. That's just a reactive posture. There's a fire put in front of me, I figure out how to fix it. Congratulations, you're an excellent firefighter. But it doesn't have vision, it doesn't have culture, it doesn't have moving people, you know, to a forward, better place. It has a reacting, uh, to this demand that's kind of come my way. So some of it, to me feels like going back to some old school best practices of shifting from firefighter to leader and getting a little more proactive on some of those old school things like setting priorities and holding strategy and keeping those and not changing them every day and building a developing culture. But I'm sure there's some other things that maybe aren't part of that old school playbook. So I'd be curious on your take. When you think about that mix, how much of it is going back to what's tried and true that we've forgotten, uh, and then how much of it is showing up in a different way because the world's a little different today?

Randy Hain: I love that question. And I think this is going to be a very robust exchange. Uh, we're about to have. You know, if you're looking for, um, writers and leaders and speakers and consultants that are going to help you go out and constantly invent something brand new and blaze brand new trails. I don't think you and I are the guys for that because I think that we value innovation and we are constantly trying to innovate. But I think that, um, you and I, and I certainly did, in this book, really value mining for gold in the lessons of the past. Because I think that in leadership, there's so much that we've forgotten that we've abandoned that we have moved on from because it, it doesn't feel like the sexy new hot topic. It's not the great, it's not the great idea that everybody's talking about, but sometimes prioritization and clarity and candor and amazing communication and building trust and all the things that we teach and talk about in the leadership foundry. Those basics being done with excellence is the rocket fuel for great leaders today. So my book absolutely is going to mine those lessons of the past and really great lessons that we all should learn. And they're definitely there because I don't really feel the need to reinvent the wheel. I just want to help you maybe come at your leadership a little differently, take some of these valuable lessons. Maybe I present them in a different way, use them, but there's also some innovative new ideas in the book and they're scattered throughout it. But I keep coming back again and again to simplicity and clarity and how I lead. And I try every day to implement those timeless best practices. I call them virtuous best practices that everybody should master. In some ways, Brandon, this book, A Different Take is the next step after the book I wrote last year, which was Practical virtue. The subtitle of that book was an actionable guide to help you become a leader worth following. So in many ways this is 26 new discrete topics, all new topics that help you on that journey to continue becoming a leader worth following. So, um, yeah, I think we can all find great value in the timeless lessons that have worked for centuries. Um, and I really love them and value them. Hey, listen, there's always an openness that I've got and you've got to the new, but sometimes it's the past that can teach us the best lesson. So long winded answer to a great question. I'd love to get your take on what I just said and your own thoughts.

Brandon Smith: Well, I would love to extend that a little bit, but I don't know if I can, other than saying I agree 100%, uh, because I think mining some of the, I love the analogy of just kind of mining that goal, those best practices from the past because, you know, people have been leading people for a long, long time. I mean, that's part of the human, human survival mechanism and condition. And so, uh, we've kind of learned how to do that and we've learned how not to do that. Uh, and as, uh, mentor shared with me many, many years ago, we all hold a piece of the truth. I think that's very true for different industries and organizations. And someone's always doing it right. And, and, and I think what is so good about the work you do, Randy, in the world, uh, and I think that I always aspire to as well, is we're always trying to look for those, those great tactics and strategies and, and approaches and points of view that come from all the different uh, organizations we work with and come from those uh, clients, both present and past, uh, that can help us get better today and then thrive tomorrow. So I, I agree 100. I don't know if um, we've tried to work in um, technology as a proxy for leadership. I, I'm not a, I'm not a believer that that's going to work.

Randy Hain: Right.

Brandon Smith: Uh, you know, if I, if I, someone I, I, a person comes to me that I trust and says we need to go down this path, I'm going to follow her or him. If I get a really intelligent kind uh, of AI bot that tells me we need to go down this path, I will be skeptical. I uh, may or may not trust uh, that because frankly I don't know its motives. Uh, and so I do think there's something in kind of that, that pulling from the past which we, we all can get better at. Uh, and I think uh, we'd be hard pressed to find somebody that says oh yeah, today's, you know, it's a lot easier to thrive today than it was maybe 50 years ago. Uh, uh, more tools available to us. But we just seem to be so frenetic, uh, and so anxious. So I think there is something that we can, we can learn.

Randy Hain: So we're drowning in the tools. We're drowning.

Brandon Smith: We are, we are, we absolutely are. Um, so extending this.

Randy Hain: Can I give you one quick example? I, because there's, there's something I'll share with you that's really an interesting way to marry this, the disparate parts of this conversation together. There's a chapter in the book, uh, well actually, let me tell you about a section of the book. It's called how to Serve Others Differently. And I took um, my thinking and what I believe about servant leadership, and there are I think four or five different chapters in that section. But in one of the chapters I talk about how do we actually serve others differently? How do we think differently about servant leadership? So I took a very established idea that we are all familiar with, giving our time, talent and treasure, uh, to serve great causes, our faith, our causes, the people around us. That's been around for eons. But I simply took a very established idea that I believe in, um, and I added one additional thing to think about. So instead of time, talent and treasure, I talked about time, talent, treasure and influence. And I talked about as we grow in our careers, in addition to the ability to write the check and give our time and talent, we also have the ability to wield influence to affect great causes and bring about really good positive change. So that's an idea of taking the established in the old and simply adding one new dimension for you to think about. Again, think differently about servant leadership. So I wanted to give you that example because for me, that kind of marries honoring the old and established. That works, but maybe adding a slightly new twist. That's just an example that came to mind.

Brandon Smith: I love that. Randy, uh, when you said that immediately, not only did I feel a little level of conviction from you around that, but also, um, this image came to mind that as leaders, you know, we need to have kind of one hand kind of leading and guiding, but we should have the other hand kind of holding all this noise and distractions and anxiety at bay. We almost need to be creating a healthy bubble around our teams. Um, and what does that look like? It means telling no. Executives come back saying, we now need this new initiative done tomorrow. No, we're not going to do that. Um, um, we. We now need you to change your priorities. And then we changed them last week. We're changing them again this week. No, we're not. We're not going to do that. Um, we need you. We need you to be doing the work instead of your team. Because I don't trust your team. I trust you. So I need you to get on the playing field and do all the work that happens to a lot of our clients. Um, the answer is. The answer is no. And. And that sounds flippant. Um, when I say that, people say, oh, yeah, sure, Brandon. Yeah, like I'm going to tell my leader no. Uh, but what we're doing instead is we're just kind of being the screen door or the sieve, and we're just letting all this noise, all this anxiety, all this hot sauce just get dumped onto our teams, and we just sit there and just watch it all happen.

Randy Hain: Right.

Brandon Smith: Um, that's not. That's not using our influence to create healthier bubbles or dynamics for our teams. It's just. It's just being a screen door. Um, and so part of being a good leader is also, you know, providing those that resources and support so our teams can thrive. And in many ways, that also means, you know, creating the space for them to thrive, which means reducing all those noise and distractions. I can't tell you how many conversations I had this week with leaders that are coaching clients where they said, I got this challenge. We've got all these initiatives and priorities, and then we just keep getting more and more of them kind of dumped on us at the last minute and then it's throwing off our bare broader timelines and the leaders want all of it done. And frankly, it's not possible unless I go ahead and just sacrifice myself to the company and work 100 hour work weeks until I drop, um, which seems to be the expectation. So I do think there's a, there's a courage underneath everything that you're offering today, Randy, that is required. It's a conviction and courage. This is not going to be easy, but anything noble is not easy. So I think you're calling us to, to a, uh, to a higher standard.

Randy Hain: You know, I am. And everything that's in this book comes from a lot of hard fought wisdom, not theory. And you know, I was a senior business leader for 25 years before I started my coaching practice 15 years ago. And I've been in the trenches and led those teams and seen firsthand. And something you said really struck me and I want to come back to it. Um, and you talked about how we have an opportunity and an obligation to protect our teams, maybe provide that bubble to give them the chance to thrive. Let me go even more granular with that. So as a leader, if you're listening to the call today, uh, or you're an aspiring leader, doesn't matter. We want to challenge you to own your own development, but go further and think about owning your own thriving. You should care deeply about your growth, but you should care deeply about your ability to thrive and grow. So that goes back to what I said earlier. Stop surviving, start thriving. But let me go a step further, and this is kind of getting to Brandon's point. Not only should you care deeply about that for yourself, but you have an obligation and an opportunity to care about it for those around you, for your team, your peers, uh, your family, friends, you should be thinking. And we challenge you to think about not only do I want to thrive, but I want to help those around me thrive as well. You know, one of the things that I started with the book is there's also an initiative, a project that we put together called the Thrive 26 project. And it's very simple, it's very basic. But all the project is is we challenge you to commit yourself to thriving for the rest of this year and beyond. And not only for yourself, but also invite somebody else to go on that journey with you. So again, as you think of what Brandon said, you know, you have an opportunity and a responsibility to, you know, help your team thrive. Well, think about committing to that for yourself. But Definitely committing to bring at least one other person with you on the journey. Now, a different take. Uh, the subtitle is, um, thoughtful insights to help you thrive at work and in life. The book can be a very helpful tool and catalyst to get you going down that path. That's why I wrote it. But I do want you to come back to this idea and think about, after this podcast, am, um, I willing to sit for a minute and make a commitment to myself that I am going to start thriving and. And I want to bring as many people with me as I can. So I wanted to make that point, Brandon, because I'm so glad you brought up what you said, but I wanted to get people really dialed into this idea of thriving for themselves and others.

Brandon Smith: I think that's great, Randy, and I think that's one more thing I would want to kind of highlight on this. Um, and I love that we're. This, uh, isn't meant to stress out anyone listening to this. It's just meant to really elevate the stakes and let everyone listening understand the stakes of what we're talking about. Because if we don't do this, we're not really leading. We're firefighting. We're just letting all that pressure just fall down on our teams.

Randy Hain: We're going to.

Brandon Smith: We're not showing up as our best self. We're not really making the contribution in the world and building something and creating something that's noble and worthy as much as we could be. Um, so I think there's a lot, A lot here to this. Um, and I think that also, what is true for me in all this, when you talk about some of the way we want to show up as leaders, is it even expands beyond leadership and expands even to our relationships. You have actually have several sections that talk about relationships and managing those. Uh, and m. A lot of them is professional relationships, but I think we can even extend that into personal relationships. So my question for you, Randy, is, as you're thinking about how this plays out in the world of building and developing and nurturing relationships, uh, how does. How do we want to approach those? Either differently or, again, mine. Some of those best practices from the past.

Randy Hain: Yeah, you know, you and I talk a lot about, um, the power of relationships, the necessity of it. You know, we've talked a lot about the need to, you know, get back in the office, show up in office environments so you can build those relationships. We've. We've covered a lot of that in past episodes. But I, you know, I worry greatly that We've got generations that are entering the workforce, um, that have a lot of gifts, but one of the things that they've been very focused on is a relationship with a screen. They've been coming up through college, through high school, college, getting into the workforce, and they haven't really either seen for themselves or been taught by others the value of building effective business relationships. So, um, now that's not a, that's not a, ah, something that can't be undone and fixed. But the book really goes to great lengths to capture the attention of all generations about the importance of building effective relationships. I have a chapter about finding your tribe. How do you identify with the people that can help you grow, that can nurture you, that can stimulate you? Uh, we've all got different interests. How do we find people that share those interests? I call them tribes. I have a chapter about, um, how do you add meaningful value to your relationships? A lot of us think about relationships as a transaction. Relationships are, um, not a transaction. They're a reciprocal exchange. How do we not only get what we need, but also give others what they need? How do we add value? I talk about the relationship economy and the need to make deposits. So I really went, uh, very deep into that section about mining the lessons of the past, but also being mindful that we really need to reintroduce, reinforce, remind everybody in the workforce today that you can't get anything done in a company without human beings. AI is all the rage, but at the end of the day, people still have to make key decisions and they need to have relationships with each other to do it well. So that section really dives into that and I think a very powerful way.

Brandon Smith: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, Randy. I know we're getting short on time, believe it or not. So there was, as we're kind of honing in on this a little bit more. Um, I want to kind of end with kind of one final kind of question for you, and we can talk about kind of what, what listeners can do kind of going forward around this. So, you know, we're talking about showing up differently. And even if we say it's going to really not be that different, you're mining some of that gold and best practices from decades prior, uh, or maybe, maybe even centuries prior, it's still going to show up as different and the world is not kind to different.

Randy Hain: Right.

Brandon Smith: So there's a, there's a. For those of you that have seen the movie Ratatouille, uh, it's a Pixar movie and it's, you know, the theme is funny. It's about this rat in Paris who's like a famous chef in Paris, or at least he's the best chef in Paris. But no one knows it's a rat who's doing all the cooking. And in the movie there's this food, uh, critic named Ego, and he loves to go in and just tear up restaurants. And he ends up going into the restaurant where the rat, uh, is doing the cooking. And he has the best meal of his life. And there's this best. There's this great monologue at the very end of the movie. This is one of the best parts of the whole movie. And he's sitting there by himself at his desk and he's reflecting on what it means to be a critic. He's just being a critic is fun. You're tearing up other people's work. But what really takes courage is to embrace the new, to embrace the different. And I think that that is going to be part of a call for all of us in this. Because as a therapist, you know, when you think about setting boundaries, we always, we always talk about boundaries in life. And it's kind of a former therapist, you know, boundaries are so important to us. But when you set boundaries with people, they don't say, oh, wow, look at you go, Congratulations to you with that boundary. No, no, no. They go, what's this thing that's you put in my way? I, uh, my first job is to tear that down and then yell at you for doing that. So. So here's my question to you, Randy.

Randy Hain: Sure.

Brandon Smith: Resistance is going to be a common reaction to people that choose to embrace all of these best practices and noble principles. People aren't going to say, look at you, we want to support you. They're going to say, no, you can't tell me no, you have to now do my priority. I said that your team has to do tomorrow. And I don't care if your team works 100 hour work weeks. How can we have the strength to stay true to what we know is right in the midst of that resistance?

Randy Hain: I've mentioned this. It's a great question. I've mentioned this before in other episodes in different ways, but I want to, I want to kind of draw on something I've shared before. Um, it's really important that you've got the end game in mind. And let me give you a stark illustration of the end game. You need to ask yourself before you pick up the book or think about change of any kind, like Brandon's talking about, because the world and our culture does not deal well with people that are not interested in conformity. And what we're talking about in the book and other things is deviating from that a bit. So think about, at the end of your life, do you want your tombstone to read, he or she had a great career? Think about that for a second. Do I want my tombstone to say, he had a great career? I hope not, because that would be a very sad existence if all you're ever known for is just great career, worked hard, that's it. I want my tombstone to read, he was a good husband and a good father and gave back to the community and served his church and, uh, was a good friend and a good son and a good brother. I want my tombstone to read that because those are the things that really matter. Well, if you're going to have a tombstone that really connects to your values, that really looks like your values, you've got to find a way to tap into that earlier in your career. You've got to find a way to live out those values and do the things that are really important, the things that are right, the things that are noble, things that are worthy. So my encouragement to you is the book is not some radical agenda to just abandon the world. In fact, it's the opposite. The book is about how do you show up in a number of different ways, a number of different areas that I cover, and just approach old problems differently. And I encourage you to read the book over six months, not a weekend, take a chapter, sit with it for a week, do the best practices, reflect on it, because this is kind of getting to what Brandon was talking about. The change will be very subtle, it will be lasting because you'll have thought about it, you'll have practiced it, because I challenge you to practice everything I teach in the book. And those, those changes that you're making will be subtle, they'll be sticky. And they're going to help you have that courage and that strength to really make the change permanent so you can resist the pressure from the outside world to just conform. Because there will always be companies and people that expect the 100 hour work week from you. But if you stick to your guns, live out your values and make these subtle changes, one day you're going to wake up and say, either I'm going to push back on that and I'm not going to do that anymore, or I may decide to go somewhere else that really values me and aligns with my values, and you may just leave the company. So these are all things that you can do. I mean, jobs should never be a prison sentence. Uh, we either change and we reform it internally because we've got the courage to do it, or we decide it's not really in our best interest, we're going to move on and do something different. But getting back to what Brandon said, you will feel pushback, but the book is going to give you the tools, hopefully the courage and hopefully the ideas to make these changes permanent sticky and help you survive and thrive. Even more importantly.

Brandon Smith: Randy, uh, fantastic. Thank you, my friend. So we're going to land the plane here and you've, you've already hinted at this question, but I'm just going to throw it out there very directly. What's a starting place for us? So if someone's listening to this conversation today and they say, okay, I want to take this on, I want to show up differently, I want to operate differently, think differently, I want to start building a life that is one that is noble and worthy and worthy of my tombstone. What's the first step down this path?

Randy Hain: You know, um, I think the first step is to sit, just sit in a little bit of reflection and ponder this. If you're a person that values journaling or taking notes, write down a few thoughts that you've got about what kind of life do I want to lead. Let me reflect on it, but let me start to visualize where do I want to be at the end of my career. Now, I know this sounds self serving, but I believe in it, so I'm going to say it. Go to Amazon and pick up the book. Um, it's called A Different Take. Thoughtful insights to help you thrive, uh, at work and in life. The book and the ideas in it and the reading that you'll do and the reflection that you do is going to be a really good starting place. And when you get done with the book, I hope it really gives you that courage and that excitement about going forward and continuing the journey. And then pick up other books. Uh, Brandon has written some amazing books. There are other books out there that we both admire, other leaders we talk about all the time and we encourage you to get those books as well. But reading is not enough. You've got to apply what you've learned. I know my book and Brandon's books as well. We always give you a concept and best practices, but then we give you a call to action. This book does that. So that's a good starting place. Reflect, think about where you want to go. Journal it if you want. Write down some ideas and then go out and get the resources that will help you engage in this very meaningful journey that could transform your life. My book is a starting place, but there are other resources as well. That's my answer.

Brandon Smith: Yeah, Randy, thank you. Uh, and thank you for the conversation here today. And for those of you listening, uh, I'm going to echo and second what Randy said. Pick up a copy of a different take. The world needs all of us to be showing up differently today and to have that courage to operate in a way where we're prioritizing the right things and we're helping ourselves and the ones around us live better, nobler lives. So I hope this conversation you found to be very helpful, uh, challenging and convicting, uh, and we would invite you to be part of this journey so you can start the process of having a life of thriving today so you and the ones around you can be thriving even more tomorrow.