Talking Stress, Leadership, and Delegation with Simon Squibb | Ep 229
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So Leila, what's your dream? My dream is to build a business that makes everybody better than when they came in. So to build a business so big that it can fit all the dreams of everybody who works there inside of it. What's amazing about that statement is you're not just saying it, you're doing it. A lot of people have a dream and say they want to do something. You've actually built infrastructure here that's doing it. I walked around your offices today and see all the people getting help.

It's so impressive. Thank you. Yeah, that means a lot. So folks today, Layla is going to share with you her blueprint to building a $500 million company. And if you can't sit down for five minutes and learn what she's about to teach you, I've got some news for you. You're probably not going to make it. So just quickly run me through the six things you want to teach us today. Yeah. So first we're going to run through how to manage stress.

which really teaches you how to lead yourself next we're going to go through leadership which is really leading others then we're going to go over finding talent then culture and how to build one after culture we're going to talk about delegation something i really struggle with delegation and then lastly we're going to do management just to quickly say i was on your instagram today and i absolutely love this which is your mood for other plans

Yeah. Like you're moved for the plan. Just before we start managing with stress, can you quickly explain that statement for those that misunderstand it? Yeah. You know, what's interesting is that when I was, if I rewind to before I ever started my first business,

I was 18, I was overweight, I was doing drugs, I was drinking, I was flunking out of school. And all of it revolved around trying to suppress emotions, which sounds weird saying fucking with fall plan. And then what I realized was that I was doing all these things in my life, I was drinking, I was taking drugs, I was partying to suppress these emotions I felt.

And so to get out of that situation, I had to confront those emotions. But in order to confront those emotions, I also realized that what I was avoiding was the stress or frustration or discomfort it took to lead a productive life. And so it's like either you feel bad and you result in an unproductive life, or you can feel bad and you can be productive and reach your goals. And so what I took on as

a motto for myself throughout the years is like, fuck your mood, follow the plan. Because in the beginning, it would be like, fuck your mood, fuck everything. Then what I realized is it's still fuck your mood. It's just also follow the plan.

It doesn't matter how you feel as long as you are aligned with your values. And I think a lot of people when they hear that, they think, "Oh, are you suppressing emotions? Are you?" And I was like, "No, no, no. It's not about suppressing emotions. It's about acknowledging emotions and taking emotions with you wherever you're going."

I think like you know I shared with you before this podcast, I had food poisoning this morning. I don't feel great, but that doesn't mean I can't follow the plan. - Totally. - Even when it feels really tough and awful, I always know that if I follow the plan, I'm gonna feel a lot better afterwards. And so when it comes to managing stress, right? Like I think you know in building a business, like that's one of the hardest things for people. If I looked at, and this is actually something I did, I looked across my company that I sold, and I said for every person who is a high performer here,

or I'm sorry, for every person here who didn't work out and I ended up letting that person go, what was the reason I let them go? And almost not in any instance was it because of a deficit of a technical skill, but it was always a deficit of an emotional skill and specifically around managing stress. And so that is why that's the first thing I focus on because if you can't manage yourself well, which typically means managing your thoughts and emotions, then how can you manage anything else, including a project, a task, you know, building a company? Mm-hmm.

Why I also love about the saying is that, you know, I can almost add another line, which is follow the plan, fix your mood. You know, because I find that if I'm tired or feeling like I can't do it and then I do it, you feel better. It's like going to the gym. It's like if you go to the gym, don't want to go, you go, you push through the pain and you feel better at the end of it. Oh, that's good. So maybe it's fuck your mood, follow the plan, fix your mood. Yeah. That's cool. I actually really like that. Yeah, it's yours. Yeah.

Thank you. Let's get it on a t-shirt. Taking it. Select to millions. Trademarked. Yours. Right. Let's talk about manage your stress because I think a lot of people don't actually know how to do it. So how do we do it? So there's a couple of steps that I would walk through. Step one is acknowledging what the thought or emotion is that is stressful, right? It might be a thought that's causing an emotion. It could be a situation that is causing emotion, whatever it is. It's acknowledging that thought or emotion.

The second step is that once you've acknowledged that thought or emotion, it's being able to diffuse from that thought or emotion, which I say it more like being able to see rather than looking from a thought or emotion, looking at them. That's diffusion. The third step would be acceptance, right? Because you can diffuse, but it doesn't mean it makes it go away. It just means that you have a different relationship with that thought or emotion.

And so then you want to accept that you don't need something to go away in order to lead a productive life or reach your goals, whatever it may be. And I would say the next step is reorient yourself in the direction of your values or your goals.

And so it's really reorientation. So it's acceptance or acknowledgement, diffusion, acceptance, and then reorientation. So when I think about step one, for example, which is acknowledging the thought or emotion, which is I often ask people this when they come to me and they say, I'm really stressed. Here's and there's this word vomit, right? It's coming out. And I say, well, what's the thought?

Because oftentimes I think of it like a fear hierarchy. You have all of these, I call it like fake fears that keep popping up all over the place because they're almost defending you or protecting you from the main fear, which is like the top of the hierarchy. This is actually in the use in psychology. And I want to figure out what's the main fear. So first question is, what's the thought? The next question is, what are you scared of? Mm hmm.

And oftentimes, if I can ask those two questions, what we can get to is the root, and I ask myself these questions, by the way, first, of what that person or what I am actually thinking that is causing me so much distress. And so that really helps people acknowledge it because if they can't think what's the thought, because maybe it just feels like mashed potatoes going on here, then it's like, okay, at least tell me what the fear is.

Right. Because sometimes when we're so emotional in that state, it's difficult to even think about what the thought is. So what's the fear? Right. And then usually that gets a person to identify exactly what it is. Right. You know, I'll tell you for a lot of people that work in my company, it's I'm afraid if I don't do this well, I will lose my job. Top fear is that I will lose my job. And even beyond that is I will then be a failure like my mother or my father or something like that. Right. Now, the next step is to diffuse. Right.

the best way that I can help somebody do that is I think with visualization. So I have two, I would say two cues that I use with people. The first one is that I imagine all of my thoughts as fish in a pond. So it's like, I have a thought about this random thing. I've thought about this random thing. Oh, there's a light over there. Oh, there's this over here. And then I see like, there's this rotten fish, right? And that rotten fish is the thought that,

causing me the distress. And then I'm imagining myself looking at it at that point. And then that is enough usually to be like, oh, it exists outside of me. It's not a part of me. It is just something that exists in this world, right? And if anything, just like you see, it's okay. It's a fish in the pond. It's a sentence in my mind. It is not the absolute truth. It is not a directive. It is just a thought or a sentence that exists in my mind right now.

The second cue that I have for people is to think of it really like, you know, books on a bookshelf. You're looking at a bookshelf and you're thinking like, what do I want to select for the day? And you're looking at all these books and like, oh, that's a scary one. What's that one right there? It's a horror movie. Okay, I'm getting fired. I'm dying. My loved ones are all leaving me. And so I think of it like there's different books on a shelf and the fear that you have or the thought that you have is just a book. Now you can pull it off the shelf. You can look at it, but that doesn't mean you need to open it up and read the whole book. Mm-hmm.

Both of those visualization techniques helped me and have helped a lot of other people that I work with be able to detach from that thought. Because if you walk someone through the exercise, it's just long enough for them to realize, one, they're kind of distracted from the actual thought because they're thinking about the thought, not from the thought. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, totally. Yeah. And so that's the second step is to diffuse.

Now, after you've diffused, the next natural step is that people want it to go away. They're like, okay, I'm diffused. Like that means it goes away. Right. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. It doesn't need to go away. The next step is acceptance, which is, I like to take the thought of if I were to have this thought and it were, if this thought were to never go away and I were to always have this thought, what would I do?

What you would likely do is live your life with the thought. Acceptance to me is I have the thought. There's nothing I can do to make it go away. Taking action on the thought only reinforces the thought for me to have more of those thoughts. So I will take it with me in my purse. I'm sure you carry a purse. And so I imagine it. Acceptance to me is I'm going to put my purse over my shoulder. I'm going to put the thought in there. I'm going to take it with me throughout the day.

I don't need to take it out and look at it. I don't need to check that it's in there every five seconds, but I know it's with me and it's in the back of my mind. It's floating around. I don't need to focus on it, but it can come with me and I can still take action towards my goals, which brings me to the fourth one, which is reorientation.

Oftentimes when you start up at the top where you're not able to manage stress because of these thoughts or emotions, stopping yourself, you're paralyzing yourself, you're not taking action. And oftentimes it's because we try to solve a problem from the same place it started. We are trying to think our way out of the thought or think our way out of the problem

Instead, I want to get into our lives by taking action towards our goals, which is the next question I ask myself is what is an action or what is a behavior I can demonstrate right now that would align me with my goals?

Something that I always think of, and it's a visualization technique for me in terms of reorienting myself with my goals or my values is I think of it like I have a board of directors and it consists of my goals and my values. For me, it's irrelevant what I think, it's irrelevant what other people think, but if I'm asking myself, will this action take me closer or further from my goals and values, I look at it like, okay, here's all my values and here's all my goals. And they're looking at me telling me if it will or if it will not. And if it will,

Fuck your mood, follow the plan. It doesn't matter how I feel. It doesn't matter about this thought. I'm going to go do it anyways. And so those are the four steps that I use to manage stress. And just out of interest, where did you learn this from? This is just instinctive on you or how? Years of bad therapy. You know, I read so many old psychology books. One of my friends told me once because I actually had, I had a very good therapist and I had a very bad therapist. I had to basically undo some of the things that that person had.

spoken over me that really kind of messed with me. And I was really questioning a lot of things in my life at that point. This is about five years ago. And a friend of mine said, you're very smart and very bright. Why don't you just learn psychology yourself? Like behavior science. And I was like, okay. Like I love studying. I love information. I love learning. I started reading some of the oldest like behavioral psychology and just psychology books in general and

And I felt so empowered by it because it made so much more sense to me. Everything that I had ever heard that did work for me. And it also made sense why the other things that say the bad therapist had taught me didn't work. And then what I learned very quickly was that most things don't take a long time to change. It's just that most people do things over a long time horizon. So learning how to change your behavior might only take you two weeks.

It's just that you condense the amount of times you expose yourself to a stressor, a fear, whatever it might be. Most people take eight weeks or 12 weeks or a year because they only try to overcome something once a week during a therapy session. And then I learned, oh, I could do this multiple times a day, every day to myself. And so I was able to get over a lot of things that had stressed me out for a long time very quickly. And then I realized the power of knowing how to do these things for yourself. And, you know, I'm going to say this pretty like candidly, but like,

There's good waitresses and bad waitresses. There's good therapists and bad therapists. Just because someone has the name therapist doesn't mean they're good or bad. And so I look at it like anything else in life, which is like, I'm not gonna hire a CPA without knowing a single thing about taxes. I'm not gonna hire a business coach without knowing a single thing about business. Like you have to know some level to judge if somebody is competent or not. That was my journey to figure that out. And in doing that, I realized how much of this didn't only help me, but helped the people on my team, helped people I worked with. And I was like, holy crap.

this is what they've all struggled with. And if I master this myself, then I can help other people master it too. - Totally. What I also love about this is a lot of people that I meet that have a dream, they don't make it happen because they've let fear take over them and they've not realized that that thing in their handbag can actually power them up as well. - Yes. - Depending on the fear, like if you're scared of not making it, well use that fear to make sure you do make it. 'Cause fear's a superpower.

It was given to us, you know, as a superpower. We're meant to feel fear. It gives us, we can run faster. We think differently. Yeah. But actually fuel, it can be fuel for you, right? Yeah. A lot of people don't keep it in your handbag. Don't try to get rid of it. It's like, use it right. Right. Like you say, like reorientate it. Maybe even think about that as fear is a power. I agree. And it's actually something I say to my team, which is I say, it's the curse of care. Yeah. You know, like they're like, I'm so scared. I'm like, you're scared because you care. Yeah. And caring is a good thing. And caring is something that I think is made to be

It's like cool not to care nowadays. And I said in one of our company meetups recently, I said like, let's make caring cool again. I give so many shits. I care so much. And I'm proud of that because it makes me try really hard on these things. And so I agree with you on that one. I think it's a superpower. Yeah.

Yeah, I've also been to therapy. Best thing I ever did. I actually got a good therapist, so I was lucky. But I really like it. I think because it's like the psychology of how your brain works. People don't know how it works. So sometimes they think the fear is there and it stops them instead of pushes them. Well, it's like if you go to drive stick shift, you don't know how to drive it. Then you think, oh, this thing doesn't work. There's something wrong with it. People always do hear those people who are constantly saying there's something wrong with me.

There's nothing wrong with you. You don't know how to work it. You don't know how it's supposed to work. So you don't realize that this is normal. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Well said. Okay. Leadership. Something I'm always trying to be a good leader myself. So I'm really excited to hear leadership. How does it, how does it work? Demonstration. Everybody wants to hear the secret to leadership. And I think that I have come to this time and time again, which the only way to lead people is you, you,

you have to go to the way to show the way, right? And so you have to demonstrate what it looks like to people. And so I have really three steps that I teach, which I think actually this will link into one of them, which is like,

In order to properly delegate, you have to properly lead. Because in order to delegate, you have to demonstrate. In order to lead, you have to demonstrate. And so what I look at it is true leadership is being able to create an environment that makes it easy for people to hit their individual and group goals. In a company, that would mean that you create an environment that makes people want to achieve their own personal goals and the business goals by consequence. So you arrange people in a way

that allows them to achieve their personal goals. And because they all achieve their personal goals, the business goals also are achieved.

And so it's like, if you can arrange people in that way, then I think that it's a win-win for everybody. John Mackey from Whole Foods talks about this and this resonated with me when I read his book, it was like four and a half years ago, where he talked about like, he will not make a decision unless it's a win-win-win for everybody. A win for the customers, for the environment, for the community, for the employees, for him, for the investors. And so every time I make a decision, I think about how can this be a win for every single person? And how can I make sure my team wins so that the business can win?

rather than the other way around. - I think the beautiful thing about that is, and I'm personally building a company around purpose, you can hire people around purpose because they have the same purpose as you, that also demonstrates the same goals, right? Because if someone isn't interested in fixing the education system and they're working with me, it's harder to manage them. It's harder to motivate them. But if we're aligned and I can demo that I care about it and then they also care about it, it makes life so, I don't manage people, I manage purpose.

I've stopped managing people. You can't motivate people if they don't have, if your goal isn't aligned with their goal, to your point. - It's the same as, and I think going with this is that if you have the same, if you share a mission and you share values, everything else is easy.

It's just like when people ask, how do you work with, because I think at the very top, why is it that myself and Alex are able to be business partners? Because we have the same, we share a vision, we then have aligned mission, and then we have shared values.

And so it's like when you look at a group of people, what makes it easy to lead people, I think, is the shared mission, shared values. And then even I would say the third piece is shared interests. Because if people have things that they're interested in together, I think that gives them more common ground for there to be. Because if you have one thing in common, I think that's amazing. But if you have multiple things in common, I think that makes for camaraderie.

How do you check on the value side? How do you make sure people listening like, okay, I love the idea of shared values. How do you determine that is true? Yeah. Shared values are just shared behaviors. So culture is what you do, not what you say. And I think that this is where it gets very misconstrued. So I always use the term operationalizing values. And I think that's the job of leader is to teach people how to operationalize values. When I say operationalize values, it means operationalize.

People are like, be honest. Well, what the fuck does that mean? So I'm supposed to go into an interview and be like, hey, are you honest? He said yes. Oh my God, he's honest. Amazing. He should be on the team.

And so I think that, again, when I it all goes back to demonstrate, which is did they demonstrate honesty? So something that I like to ask people on interviews, for example, is I like them to tell me I always kind of like level with them. Like, listen, let me tell you something about myself. That's not so good. Right. And then I'm like, I'm kind of a control freak. Here's something that I actually fucked up really bad yesterday on this thing. And I try to share something vulnerable with them that I've messed up on.

And I say, "Great, so here's the thing. We all have shit. You've just told me all the stuff that's amazing about you. I want to know the shit though, because I want to know if it's shit that I have a strength to match with so I can help you." And in that moment, because we have a value of sincere candor, if somebody opens up and tells me the truth, I don't really care how bad it is, because everyone has shit. It's just like, to what degree do you have shit?

It's the people who tell me they don't. That tells me they just demonstrated they don't have sincere candor because everybody has some stuff that they're bad at. So that is operationalizing a value. It's not asking a question, do you have this value? It's getting someone to show you if they behave in a way that exemplifies that value. You know, the next piece would be if you look at competitive greatness, that's another value of ours. How do I operationalize that value? Well,

putting someone in this situation, and this is a question I've asked people on interviews, which is if you worked at a restaurant and we served breakfast until 11 o'clock and a customer came in 11:15 and said, "I wanted to have breakfast."

What do you do? Serve it to them. Right. And so competitive greatness is like, I will fucking figure out a way. I will go make it myself in the kitchen. I don't care. I'm going to do anything right. They're going to find a way they make shit happen. And when somebody doesn't have that, they're like, well, the rules say that ends at 11. So I would respect the rules of the company. Oh no, I need people who break rules. Right. Make the rules for them to break the rules. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And so, um, when I talk about operationalizing values, um,

I'll tell you another one that I would say, like, I talked to my team about a lot within this building, which is having a physical headquarters. How do you operationalize values on a daily basis? You know, for example, we have our coffee maker and every once in a while I would come and it would be out of water. And I was like, because our other values unimpeachable character, which is like doing the right thing and being the kind of person that somebody would want to associate with when nobody else is looking at it.

I wouldn't want somebody who doesn't refill the coffee maker, doesn't refill the fridge, doesn't clean up after themselves to be on this team. And so I was like, I took a picture of it and I was like, the next time that does enough water, I'm going to shut, it's going to be unavailable for people to use. Right. I walked in the next day and found a teammate. Nobody was around refilling the water. Right. She was demonstrating unimpeachable character. And so I think that when you look at leadership, it's being able to demonstrate those values and,

being able to live them out and being able to creatively find ways to test if others hold those values really just by watching and seeing if they demonstrate them rather than taking people's word for it. And I think a lot of people, when they think of leadership and culture, it's just a lot of like, well, if people say the right things, but it's not about what we say, it's about what we do. Totally. When people aren't looking. Exactly. Yeah. Really powerful. Anything on a leadership before we move to finding talent? I would say that the only other thing I will say is that

Great leaders are multipliers. And so when I think of somebody who's a leader, you have to have influence. And people who have influence influence the behavior of others. And when you influence the behavior of others to be like yours, you create more of you. And so there's two things I think that go with that, which is with great power, it's Spider-Man. Yeah. I never will forget that line because it just, with great power. We can use it. Really? Yeah. It's not trademarkable. Okay. With great power comes great responsibility. Yeah.

They will do what you do to such a degree that it's scary sometimes. So if I ever want to know where my deficits is as a leader, I look at everyone who reports to me. What are their deficits? Okay, those are my cracks I have to work on. This happened to me recently. The second piece to it is that when you're hiring for leaders, when you're hiring for people on your team, ask yourself, would I want 10 more of this person on my team? And if I did have 10 more of them, what bad would occur? Hmm.

Like, where are their deficits? And if you multiply a person, you can see those, which is why being a leader in a company is one of the most important and hardest roles. Because if people ask what is leadership, it's very difficult to say what a leader is because it's 100 micro skills bundled into one term. So it's one term that if you actually looked at leadership, it's probably 12 different descriptors. And each of those 12 have 30 skills attached to it.

it. So when people say write a book on leadership, I'm like, what the fuck? I would need to write 15 books on 15 different things because leadership is the bundling of all those things into one term. And so when you look at the multiplier effect, the reason that you hold leaders to such a high standard is because if they have any sort of crack

It multiplies with all the people that they influence, which is why you hold them to a higher standard. Yeah, I really love it. I recently became a father, so I've got a son. And my business skills came into effect when I realized my son doesn't do what I tell him. Kids don't do what you say, they do what you do.

you know i think that's the same with leadership yeah you know you can say all the time come in early care and you're not there and you're out playing golf but how can you expect people to not just do what you do you know so that that you know my seven-year-old has me around his little finger but but

But conceptually, I try to act like I want him to be. I don't just tell him, I show him. In my last company, we were completely remote and I got a walking treadmill desk. And I remember I got one and people were like, oh wow, you're walking a lot more, whatever. I'm like, yep, I want to stay healthy even though we're working a lot and all this stuff. And it was within two months, I took a screenshot, half the people on the call had gotten treadmill desks. And then all of a sudden it's like lost 10 pounds, lost 15 pounds. And I was like...

Yeah, that's everything. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I think being a leader is the word leadership is probably a bit misleading, isn't it? It's like it's kind of a guide. Yeah, I think the point is a new word. You could write a book about a guide as opposed to leadership because it's not that's a misinterpretation of what it actually is. Right. Yeah, I do agree with you. And I think it is at the core.

that uses influence. Right. Right? Yeah. It's just a matter of are you using the influence to get people to achieve their goals or to achieve your goals? And the best leaders lift people up so that they don't have to do all the work. You know, like if you think leadership is you at the front doing it all, good luck. You know, you won't build a team and you'll burn out pretty quick. Yeah. The best leaders are the ones that

You do it. You're better than me or you know, they lift other people up. You let people borrow your confidence. Yeah. Before they have it for themselves. That's how I look at it is like if I think of the best leaders that I've ever had that influenced my life, they believed in me so much that I was able to do the thing and then I did the thing and then I believed in myself, but I didn't believe in myself before I did it. They believed in me first. And so I try to give that to people, which is,

I, if anything, have too much confidence in people's abilities sometimes. And so I actually will overestimate what they can do. And then when they can't, I'm like, oops. But I tell everyone, I'm like, listen, I would rather you fail, you try and fail. And I always make sure that I reinforce the fact that they tried. I'm so proud of you for trying. They're like, I ate shit. I'm like, that's okay, you tried. That's why I'm so happy about it. I always think if people have thought about it, made the effort, then you can't ever fault them. It's the people that don't try that are frustrating or assume they're going to fail.

I think it's also a beautiful trait as a leader to believe that your colleague can do anything and you find out what their real ability is by giving them that free reign, right? Yeah. I would rather try. I say test and learn. Totally. Like test and learn. It's a test. It's never, we're not going to commit to anything. We're not going to change your job. We're not going to change the company. We're going to test something. And that also relieves so much pressure because if I'm like, we're changing everything. It's like people are like, what the fuck? But I'm like, we're going

I'm like, we're going to test something. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's great. I was just talking to your editor who's doing your YouTube channel, which is amazing, by the way. And she was saying the thing she loves the most about working on that, apart from working with you, is that she gets to experiment. And I think that's a really nice thing to be at that stage where you can experiment. Sometimes in businesses, we get so stuck in our ways. Once something's working, it's like copy and paste, copy and paste. It's the innovation that's actually the fun bit, especially if you're allowed to innovate. You know what's funny is we always say this.

anytime we repeat something we've already done, we say, what's one thing we can change each time? Because if we don't change one thing, how will we ever learn if anything ever works better? - Yeah, so true. - And so we always say, well, we shouldn't do it exactly how we just did it. We know that works, but let's try. And so because of that, do we have more Ls? Yes, but we also get more outsized wins because we'll learn that something works so much better every four times. - Yeah, totally. I was with Zach King, who's got the most popular TikTok video ever a few days ago.

And he's literally killing it on social media, like an incredible creator. And we created a video where he was like, well, I've learned something there because you've done a different ending. We always do a different ending to the story that you've done. So, you know, even the most talented people can, the reason they're so talented is because they accept that they don't know anything, even though he's got the most popular TikTok ever.

with 2.2 billion, he's still like, I've learned something from a much smaller TikToker like us. That's the real leader. You realize that your formula is not the best formula, even when you've got the most popular thing out there. - You know what's funny is I was just talking to my team about this because a lot of them think there's this common misconception, especially with new leaders, that experienced leaders don't ask for help.

And I was like, you know, you've got this completely backwards. If I'm in a room with anybody that I could learn anything from, I act dumber than I am. And they're like, well, why would you? Because how else will I learn? If I can tell somebody, this is the line I always use. I say, okay, so say I'm talking to you and you're a,

I don't know, an attorney for, you know, overseas trust funds or something. And I'm like, listen, I'm going to level with you here. I'm like golden retriever level when it comes to these trust funds. So if you could just break it down like I'm five years old, that would be amazing. And then you learn so much because somebody simplifies it down. I actually think one of the biggest skills to success is learning to ask for help. It's one of the hardest things to ask for help, actually, as humans. It's not natural for us.

If you can learn to do it, you can learn to accept that in the room you're embarrassed for a minute, but forever you're going to get the answer you need. Like be embarrassed in the room for a minute. I don't know how that works. Can you explain it again? It's like one of my favorite things in a meeting when someone says it, because I think shit, they're going to be brilliant over time because they're willing to be embarrassed for a minute. It's funny you say that because the number one thing when I promoted a guy, his name was Cale, to be CEO of my last company.

I said, there's one thing that you've got to learn. And he was like, what? I was like, you have to be okay with falling on your face. He was like, what do you mean? I was like, on every meeting, I was like, you don't challenge, you don't ask, you don't do this because you're afraid of falling and looking like an idiot. And I was like, how often do I look like an idiot? He was like, yeah.

And actually people like it too. It's quite an endearing thing when someone sees that you don't know it all. Yeah. And actually you have a respect for someone when they say they don't know something. Oh, 100%. When people pretend they know everything, I'm always like, it's impossible. I'm like, I don't object to it. People are like, oh, you're great at content. I'm like, I don't feel like I know anything. I'm just winging it out here, you know? You are good at content, just for the record.

I'm wildly insecure as well. Yeah, finding talent out of interest. The insecure thing is really interesting, by the way, because, again, I think that comes back to just accepting you don't know everything. I'm actually also insecure. I don't think I'm the best YouTuber. I've got a very successful YouTube video. It doesn't mean I'm a good YouTuber, but I think that can spur you on to be good. Yeah. If you think you're good enough, you just... I see people think they're brilliant, and they don't grow.

It doesn't last long. I think that humbleness is actually really important to keep it. Because you're always like, did I provide value? Did I do a good job? You're not resting on your laurels. Totally. The people that think that they're the best at something, I'm always like, oh, be careful. You're not going to survive. Nothing fails like success. Totally. I love that. Nothing fails like success. I'm going to write that one down too.

There's loads of t-shirts here you're making, you know? At least there's another t-shirt. - T-shirt? - Yeah, t-shirt brands. You see, all these could be t-shirt brands, right? - I need to make swag. - Say that again, nothing-- - Fails like success. I don't like to invest in a company that the founder hasn't had their first failure. - Totally.

then they act like this. - Totally, I've invested in 78 startups and the ones that have done really well are people that have failed quite a few times before I invested in them. - They don't think they're invincible. - Yeah, do you know what's really interesting? I invested in someone who had a really big success in their second company, they didn't realize, but they didn't learn much from their success.

because you learn so much more from your failure. - It's very true. - When you actually break it down, and I even think for myself, my success is like, oh, luck. You know, PwC bought my business. Oh, that was actually really lucky. But I look at the ones where it failed, I'm like, oh, wrong partner, put too much money in too quick, didn't do enough on the sales. You can see where it went wrong so much easier. - Yeah. It's funny because my first company, I knew it was luck because it just blew up. And I was like, I definitely, it's not me because I'm not talented. Then I feel really lucky because then COVID hit.

And all of a sudden we couldn't do business in any one of our three businesses. And then I learned what it's like to eat shit for a year and a half. And then I feel like I got, it was like nice because it didn't completely fail, but it definitely, I mean, it completely changed the business forever. We're still able to have like a successful exit. But like what people don't know was the business was getting valued at 250 million before COVID. And then we were like, oh, I think we could make, they were like, well, if you wait a year, you might be able to get 350, 400 million for it. And then we waited a year and then we got 50 million. Right.

One in the hand is better than the bush. Yeah, 100%. It's so funny, isn't it? Finding talent. This is something I've personally, honestly, struggled with over the years until recently when I put purpose at the front of the business. But how do you find talent? You have to know your employee value proposition. Right. Just like you have an offer for the marketplace, you have to have an offer for the talent place.

I'll tell you what mine is, for example, growth. That is the number one, like, for example, when you're a product on the market, there's like good, fast, cheap. Pick one to lead with. The same goes for when you have like an employee value proposition, which is like, there's tons of money. There's tons of growth.

There's tons of status. Which one do you lead with? For me, lead with tons of growth. I would say that status is a close follow-up because of our brand. Pay is like we pay on the top end, but it's not like astronomical compared to what you get from a different private equity fund. And so I would say that that's my stack in terms of doing what my employee value proposition is so that I know when people come here, the people I'm speaking to, because if you don't know who you're trying to attract and why they want to work for your company, then you cannot market to them.

So when I'm writing a job description, I'm orienting it towards a director of customer service who's looking to grow. They want more skills. I'm looking, when I build my organizational design, the way that this company is designed, for example, I have it basically where people can be deployed into any project at any point in time. It could be in our portfolio division, our $100 million series division, which is also the content, or it could be in our workshops division.

And so people are always learning because they're getting deployed on different projects. So everything is to support this one number one value proposition, which is growth. It's just like when you have a product strategy, it has to revolve around the main value of the product. Same with your talent strategy. It has to revolve around the main value for the talent. I orient everything towards growth.

When that comes to an employee value proposition, the value that they get from the job is how much they're going to learn. So it's the trainings that we conduct here. It's the experience they're going to get here. It's the upwards momentum that we're going to provide them with. So we like even at a very small stage, it's like working on career pathing and career development and talking about where someone's going to be going and providing a clear way to get about that. So a lot of people have like performance management plans and

But we have performance development plans, which is we're not just looking to manage people's performance. We're looking to develop people's performance. How do they get better? Love that. I'll give you an example. As we have people that come in to work on our portfolio companies and they're experts in, let's just say an expert in sales. Well, now I'm going to say, I'm going to take you and you're going to run these three workshops.

well, in order to run workshops, you have to learn how to present. You have to learn. And so then we're going to put you into the presenter training curriculum, which is led by one person who's going to be constantly greeting you, giving you feedback, giving you assignments. And so I have people that were solely working on my portfolio that now sound like, honestly, like world-class at speaking.

And it's been like the coolest, most insane thing to watch. But what's even better is that it just drives this. And so then when I'm speaking to people who want to join my team, I get to use those instances to explain to them, here's what you're going to get to learn. Here's all the different types of things you can learn in each division. And here's how I'm going to facilitate that learning. It's much harder to do this as a company. But the reason that I chose growth to be our number one is because people watch our content and they say,

I want to become like that. I would love to be able to lead a company one day. I'd love to be able to have a company like Agnes or Tom. It's usually they're very aspirational, right? And so I don't think it makes sense for us to just throw a bunch of money at people. That's not why they want to come here. That's not why companies even wants to invest in them. Every single person, whether it be an employee or company wants growth. Hmm.

And the great thing about growth, people pick this up, is that one of my personal biggest achievements, when I sold my company Fluid to PricewaterhouseCoopers, said, what's your biggest achievement? There was one particular person, Jessica was her name, and I put a development plan in front of her. And she worked so hard for two years, she got so good, she ended up being head of Wall Street Journal content in China.

You know, she went from working for me to working in this incredible job, doing an incredible thing. And that's one of my biggest achievements. She's not working for me anymore. But that feeling that you really, you invested in someone and they took the challenge and went and became brilliant. So, you know, I think that that's an underrated thing in leadership that a lot of people don't realise. It's like, if you can develop talent, you also become friends for life, kind of, as well. I know, you know, friendship and businesses are where people say, you can't say they're friends, but I

I consider her a friend now. And I think because she put a lot into the company, she helped the company, but at the same time, she got something out. I think that's really important to make that. This is sales as well, by the way. A lot of people, when we're talking like internally how to build a company, this is sales, what you're doing here too, right? If someone, and I've spoken to a lot of your team, they're here for growth.

They want to learn. They want to be the best. So that's an incredible sales pitch. And salary is important. You've got to be competitive. But people overrate salary and they undervalue growth. And most people leave because they don't see anywhere to grow anymore. 100%. That's what I see most people leave companies to do.

I agree. I think we follow up the close second with status because what I've explained to them is that if we invest in Acquisition.com's brand, then they get, by proxy, they get to be associated with it, which gives them status as well. I think status is a really interesting one too. And I see it with my team. My team have helped me build up my personal brand. I wouldn't have done it without them.

And they leverage it by saying they built Simon Scribb brand. And I love to see it. I think it's getting this status that they deserve because of their hard work, I think is, again, a value that not a lot of companies can give people as well. You can build this in. You can actually give status to it. That's why people want to be lawyers and doctors when they're young. Whether they dream jobs or not, it's status. I'm a lawyer. I'm a doctor.

There are a lot of businesses, traditional businesses, that are competing with that. You want people that could work for you that could go just be a lawyer in a law firm or you want to come and work for you, you better give them status. 100%. And I think a lot of places lead with one of these two, but this is like a third. But I think that especially for bootstrapped, self-starters, et cetera, this is actually the one that you have the most

control over and usually can be best at because a lot of people are so growth oriented and that's why they get into it and it's being able to you know disseminate that down so you know employee value proposition managing employee development rather than you know i would say performance development not performance management and then i would say the last thing is uh creating community if you think about like what creates raving fans

it's often when somebody can create a community. Everything I've learned about creating community has actually come from creating teams. So anything that I understood worked on my team, I said, what if we did this for our customers? And then it's always the unscalable things, right? Where people say like, what creates a community? It's like, well, community is really built off of brand and brand internally is your reputation, right?

And so what is my reputation as the CEO is probably like the stemming point at which we create that community because it's like my brand is people don't, I'm pretty sure my team would say like Layla cares a lot. She probably can stress because she cares so much sometimes. But like she's personable, she's funny, she's not gonna yell at you. Like there's probably like a brand like that. And then that is what builds the community. And so I'd say, you know, for me, it's how do I create an environment where people

Everyone has shared values. And so they can start to add value to each other rather than just from management down into people. That's where I look at how you create the community because I think the community is the retention and it's also an attraction piece, which is, for example, when somebody comes in here to do an interview and they get to talk to different people on the team and they say, wow,

You don't just have like one person, like this is not BS. Like you guys actually live by your values and like every person here is a killer. And it's not just, oh, you get to work for Layla now, but oh, you get to work with all of these very talented people. I think it's also continuing to hold those standards that you create that community that other people want to be a part of. I think community is one of the biggest business hacks that big companies don't do very well that gives people a competitive edge on all levels, both from your customer point of view. Like I think of all the big brands, what communities do they have?

Like Google even. There's no other than the campus and the staff, which you can argue is just a place to work. Actually, Google has no community. Some of these big brands externally have no community. This is like the biggest way of disrupting the big guys in the future, I think. It's probably one of the hardest ones to create too. Because I think community, in my opinion, is where also a lot of the shared interests come in, which is like, why do I have a gym in my headquarters? Right.

Because it creates a sense of community. People get to commune in the gym with each other. People get to commune in the snack areas with each other. It's creating opportunities for people to demonstrate their shared interests in the work environment, but not in the actual work. And so it's like, what are the...

Other activities that they have in common that approximate work, but are not work. And then how can you facilitate them doing those things together? And so I see a lot of people working out together. I see a lot of people going and filming in their free time together. I see a lot of people going and they actually study together, study your materials together. So it's all of the other things that occur outside of that one thing. Because if you think about a community, it's usually like,

some of the strongest communities like CrossFit, I will say that they created a very strong community-like feel. Why is it that CrossFit's such a shared community? It's like they literally eat the same food. They do the same workouts. A lot of them have the same jobs. I mean, it's like they have so many similarities. And so I look at it the same way with community, which is like if you don't have the similarities, you can create them to a degree with the environment. You know, I think there's a lot of people who didn't work out until they started working here. Oh, there's a gym down there. I'll start working out. And hey, I'm going to start working out with three or four people.

That goes back to like shared values as well, right? Like your core value as a company has to be inside people themselves, which means of course that creates, you can't force a community. I think a lot of people try and, right, come on everybody, come on my platform, we've got a community. And we were like, well, I'm not naturally there, you know, I'm not naturally doing it. You've got to go with, it's got to be natural. Back to the hiring process, you've got to make sure they have the same values. Do they want to be healthy? Do they want to be the best versions of themselves? Are they willing to push themselves to be the best versions?

Then they'll go to the gym. Yes. You know, if they don't have those values, they won't. It's the two things, which is like, if you ensure that everyone is aligned with the mission and the values, and if you create an environment, that's step one. Step two is create an environment that makes it easy for them to interact. Hmm.

like within the sphere of those values or interests, then it's like, there's not much else you gotta do. You know what I mean? - Yeah, yeah. People make it too complicated. - People value being healthy and there's a gym, they're gonna use it. - Yeah, that's very true. Right, we're gonna do delegation, which I am brilliant at. I'm absolutely brilliant at delegation. Can you hear my sarcasm in my voice? - Yeah, I'm like, what? - I always wanna do it myself, and then when I delegate it, I realize that people barely, I delegated running my last company to someone else,

Best thing I ever did. They did a better job than me. They made it four X bigger than I did. - Wow. - Yeah, so I'm glad I delegated it, but it was so hard. It was like giving my baby over to someone. - I know, I know that feeling. - So how do we delegate? - Yeah, so it's really three steps, which is, it starts with one of the similar ones from leadership, but it's, first we demonstrate, right? And so I think a lot of people, they skip to the second step, which is document. So the first thing you wanna do is you want to show somebody what to do. The step after that is you want them

to document what they just watched you do this is where most people fuck up they say i'm going to demonstrate and then i'm going to make an sop of how to do it to show the person there's so many psychology studies around this which is the person who documents the process learns the most so why would you keep that to yourself by being the one to document it and so the way that i build a customer success department or service department for example is that i have somebody come in

And I say, great. So the first thing I want you to do is I want you to document all the customer inquiries that we're getting. And they're like, we don't already. I'm like, just do it. You know, I'm like, yes, we have it. But and then I say, OK, great. Now I want you to document all the responses that people are giving to each of those customers.

And what you see is that by doing that, people literally teach themselves what is already happening and what the process is. And though I already have some of these things done, they learn it so much faster doing it themselves. And so first you demonstrate it, you show the person, they get to watch you do it. Then you ask them to document what you just did.

And then the third step is that you ask them to duplicate what you just showed them. And when they duplicate it, you want to make sure they duplicate it by following the document they made. Right. So think about it like this, right? I'm going to make a sale. So I'd say, cool, I want you to watch me make a sale. Okay, great. While you watch me make the sale, now I want you to go document the script of what I just said.

Okay, great. Now I'm going to watch you make a sale using the script that you just wrote off of me making the sale. You'll find the flaw quite quick. You will find the flaw very quickly. And so you continue to repeat this process until somebody is able to match the

Or I would say match is the standard. Match whatever metric or qualitative measurement determines success, right? And so for sales, for example, I said, cool, I'm closing 80%. This is when I had my first company. It's nine years ago, right? If you can close 80%, like from a call to close, then you can take over, right? And then of course what happens is, you know, they have more time and resources. So they close 80% and then eventually even more because they're not doing 17 other things like me.

And so this is the process I've seen has worked the best. I think what most people do to delegate something is they skip right to, I'm going to document something and somebody should know how to do this based off of a spreadsheet. I mean, it's like, how many processes can we actually like properly do by just reading instructions? Now I'll say this as a caveat to all of this, more intelligent people require less specific direction.

The more intelligent somebody is, the more they can take vague direction and get it right. Think about your smartest people. You're like, dude, sales is on fire. I need you to handle this. He's like, I fucking got it. And you're like, yeah, he's gonna figure it out because he's a smart dude. If somebody is less intelligent, they require more specific instructions or less intelligent on that specific topic. So if you hire a very experienced person and bring them in, you might actually be able to just give them very vague direction, not have to do many of these things at all.

But if you bring somebody in who is less intelligent or less intelligent in a specific area, then you have to do this even more times. And so it's not even, do you delegate or not? But it lies on a spectrum, which is like, to what degree do I delegate? To what degree do I run this process with this person? If I, you know, for example, I hired my first CFO, I brought her in, I was prepared to do this. And she's like, wait, I know how to do all this. What do you mean? I've been doing this for 30 years. And I was like, okay. So now I just said,

skip one and two. Okay, show me. And then I watched her. And so I do think that there is a little nuance to it, which is just, again, the more intelligent someone is, the more they can take vague direction and get it right. Hmm.

- Hmm, person's experience there, sales in particular, some people can wing it. - Yeah. - You know, based on the experience of a document they probably created in the past in their head. - Yes. - What about like delegating in particular, like for example, I like certain things. I've applied to all the comments on my own posts. I've tried delegating it, no one is quite my voice. I keep doing it and I kind of like it. - Yeah. - So I'm kind of like, okay, I'm accepting that I like it and I'm not gonna delegate it. But how do you decide what to delegate, what not to delegate? Is there any process you have for that? - Yeah, oftentimes I think there is

There's, if we made like a little quadrant, right? There's what you suck at, bad at, what you're good at, what you like doing. And I think that most activities fall into some end of this quadrant. And so what I try to do is I try to say, cool, the things that I suck at doing, or I'm sorry, this is dislike. Oops, that was my bad. So the things I suck at doing or I dislike doing are,

Those are the things I'm gonna look at first, specifically the things I suck at doing, right? And so if I suck at doing something, then I want to try and delegate it as soon as possible to somebody who's good at it. If I'm good at doing something, so I'm gonna add a second layer to all this, if I'm good at doing something, I'm probably gonna hold onto it first. If I like doing something, I'm probably gonna hold onto it. If I dislike doing something, I might say, "Oh, I think, you know, now I've delegated things I suck at, let's look at the things I don't like doing."

I'll put a caveat to this. Sometimes there's things we don't like doing that we should do, right? That are important and have, are hard to reverse. If there's something very important and it's very hard to reverse and has a very high dollar amount tied to it, even if I don't like doing it, probably going to do it. There's always nuances to this. Firing people, for example. I can do it. I dislike it, but you have to do it. A hundred percent. Yeah.

And so the second I move on to is dislike. And then I would work my way to things that I'm good at doing and like doing. And so it's like you start on this end and say like, what do I suck at that I also hate that also I would say like dollar per hour is the lowest. So if I want to delegate when I'm first starting, I would say if I suck at it, if I don't like it, and if it's cheap to hire for, that's the first thing I want to get off my plate.

Um, the second thing I want to get off my plate are things that are, I'm like mediocre. I could even be good at, but it's still low dollar per hour. So I'm saying, okay, I'm good at doing it. I'm good at doing customer service, but I can pay somebody $15 an hour to do customer service. And it's not the highest ROI of my time. And so I work my way all the way to, I want to do things that I like doing.

and are high dollar per hour. So it's like this produces, you know, $500,000 an hour for the company when I work on this or whatever it might be, which is really where you wanna get to. Yeah, and so that's the overarching, like, I would say you lay that over everything, which is like, what's the dollar per hour of this task worth? And that's something that people have to ask themselves. Now I would say responding to comments though, the question is, 'cause I actually am in the same boat as you, which is I don't have other people respond to my comments,

And the reason I think is because it's also, well, what kind of brand am I trying to build? I'm not going for quantity of comments responded to. I'm going for when I do respond, they know it's me. And so they always know that they can trust that Layla is the one who speaks from her profiles. You know? It's fascinating. That's a brilliant framework. Thank you. Yeah. I'm going to use it. Right. Management. Last but not least, management.

So I look at management as being the glue that ties the vision of where we're going to the day-to-day activities. Management is bridging the gap. And so I look at it as a manager's job is to constantly ensure that the day-to-day operations are leading us towards the greater vision or goal.

Now, how do you do that? It's usually people, process, projects. That's usually what managers are overseeing.

Because you can manage people you can manage processes and you can manage projects and I look at that as the job of a manager and so management is figuring out how to bridge the gap using The least amount of resources possible and the right ones So you want to use the right resources and the least amount needed to achieve that goal now management

as a, again, like it's a term that is many bundled terms, like management is communication, management is resource allocation, management is accountability, management is because to do all of these things, you have to have so many other skills that allow you to do it. For example, like when I first started, I knew how to communicate well, I knew how to allocate resources, but I didn't necessarily know how to track and measure things.

And so then I was doing all these things, but I couldn't effectively tell you how fast I was going to get us towards that vision. And so I think that there's a lot of different pieces to it.

However, I think that the best analogy I can give is that you are that glue that gets us to the vision. So it's like somebody's making sure that the day-to-day operations are leading us towards the greater vision. So if I am managing marketing, for example, and I know that the vision is that we are a marketing department that is able to produce both organic and paid content that leads to, maybe I'm a service business, 5,000 booked calls a month.

Okay, are the day-to-day operations leading to that? Well, that means if I want to know that, then maybe that means I need 100 booked calls a day. Maybe it means, okay, how do I produce 100 booked calls? I need 17 ads. Okay, how many ads do I have to create every week? And so that's where you start with all the measurements and basically developing KPIs and performance metrics because it's really hard to hit a goal that's 12 months out or ever reach a vision if you're not measuring incremental progress towards that vision. Mm-hmm.

And so I do think a lot of the management comes from through the people process and projects, being able to measure the effectiveness and progress of each of those things. I would say that it's a lot less sexy than leadership. The difficulty of management, I would say, and where most people falter is

Managing process, I think a lot of people are really great at. Managing projects, I think a lot of people are really great at. What's hard is managing people because how do you get a person to do a process? How do you get a person to complete a project? That is where I think there's management and there's leadership. I don't think that they are exclusive. I think that they have a lot of overlap. I do not think that you can be an effective manager without also being a leader because people, if they only do things out of threat,

of losing their job, then they will give you the minimum effort required to maintain the job. But if people do things because you've aligned their personal goals with the business objectives and they're doing things to achieve their personal goals and by consequence achieving the business objectives, they give you discretionary effort and therefore you get more from the people on the team.

And so I think a lot of management comes down to, it's a phrase that I use, which is just like the philosophy of positive reinforcement versus punishment. Because a lot of managers, if you look at it, they basically continue to raise the bar over and over and over again with, hey, if you don't continue to meet the bar, I will fire you. And that gets people to perform when the manager is present. Wrong KPI as well, right?

Right, exactly. Hit these KPIs and you will maintain your job. Whereas when I walk out of the room, it's kind of like a dog. If I hit the dog every time the dog jumps on the couch, then the dog, when I'm there, won't jump on the couch. Probably won't come to anymore either. Right. But then the moment I leave the house, the dog's going to jump on the couch. Most traditional management is this way. And I'll say this, which is the reason it's this way is because think about this, right? People are like, well, Layla, why would people ever want to manage like that? Well...

how hard is it to say, you know what? I would like you to manage with positive reinforcement. Versus, I would like you to yell at people if they don't do their job. - Right. - It's a lot, again, like intelligence.

It's a lot easier to teach people how to yell at people than it is to teach people how to positively reinforce people. It's more effort, positively reinforce. Exactly. I think the best measure is like, you're not getting where you want to be. How can I help you get there? Exactly. And people don't frame it that way. Like, you haven't met your targets. What's wrong with you? Exactly. They misunderstand. You know, they think management is that. It's not. Well, it's kind of your fault if someone hasn't met a target. Yeah. You hired wrong. Back to the list. All this interlinks, doesn't it?

You've hired wrong. You haven't put the systems in place. You haven't got the right culture. You know, if you are literally shouting at someone, I think you're the problem. Oh, 100%. And it's what I tell people all the time is it's the main like takeaway is tell them what to do instead. Somebody does something wrong. They already did something wrong. We're not going to reconfigure the past. Tell them what to do next time. Like, what do you, the question is always this. I asked managers specifically, I said, what do you want to have happen?

And they're like, well, I want them to do it right the next time. Okay, well, yelling at them doesn't do that. No, it makes them want to quit. Do you know what yelling at them does? And they're like, what? And I'm like, it makes them feel bad. And people who feel bad are less able to change because they're distracted by the feeling bad about the past mistake. So they cannot focus on the new behavior to move forward. Totally.

But you will find that lots of people do want people to feel bad. Yeah. Well, that makes them feel better somehow that they've done their job. Yeah. But when you shout at someone, I've done it a few times in my career, by the way. I've accidentally shouted. I've been stressed when I was younger in particular. I wasn't managing my emotions right. I had other things going on in my life. I was shouting at them, but I was really shouting at my own problems. Of course. I think there's a real interesting thing around being careful with your, back to what you were saying earlier, regulate your own emotion when you shout. And I think when you do it, you, you, you,

you don't realize basically people instantly go into fight or flight. Oh yeah. Basically when you put someone in fight or flight, they're no longer working with their logical brain. They can't learn anymore. Yeah. And someone's in fight or flight, they don't learn anymore. So you put people in a defensive position, their brain changes. If you were scanning it at that moment, they're no longer learning. They're literally, how can I survive and not get killed in this situation? Back to a basic human instinct.

So shouting might make you feel good, like you've somehow done your job. You're putting that human into a fight or flight and they'll never learn from you and they'll be scared in the future to repeat that same pathway. And they won't be loyal. And they won't be loyal. And back to the dog analogy, they won't sit with you at night when you need them to. No. Right? I don't know how that relates to this, but general idea. They won't be there at night with you when you need it, helping you when you're having a tough time. Because you become the threat. Yeah. Yeah.

Because you become unpredictable. And so then they constantly feel like there's this looming threat. They never know when it's going to strike. And so because of that, then they grow resentful because they're resenting you for the fact that they're constantly feeling this like wavering anxiety when they're around you. And then they start to do things to almost sabotage even. But you've actually made them that way.

So it's just a very interesting concept. I like that you see things the same way because it's, I think, beyond a lot of people's comprehension. I'll say this, which is if you use positive reinforcement in the workplace, there's not concrete evidence on this, but if you look at the studies, people are likely to stay about three to five times as long in a workplace that uses positive reinforcement than punishment. I've seen in companies, I've done a lot of consultancy in the past for big brands that are losing staff. Mm-hmm.

And when I used to dig into why because it's internal marketing right part of his internal marketing when you dig into it It's like you'll find that in a company that's doing quite well with a bad manager You'll find that the low-level no title person is keeping the team together the person's it's there at night with them working hard They got no title Yeah But you're the companies that somehow survive when they have a bad culture like that because it's quite a few of them in big corporate world The manager is the problem the staff are working together like I'm not gonna let my colleague down Yeah, I think you saw a clip recently of some guy who was off a lot of money to quit his job at McDonald's

He said, I can't. I don't want all that money. I can't leave my colleagues. There's only two of us here today.

You know, like that is a golden human being, you know, like, and that sort of person is actually a naturally a manager because they're not willing to leave their team. It's like the kind of battle scene thing. You don't go on a battlefield and leave your troops and shout at them from a distance, go and kill those people over there. Right? No. Yeah. So all of this ties together. Everything you've described today, all of these points, I hope people have listened carefully because they all actually interlinked. Um, and it's, thank you. Well, it's funny because what you just said makes me think of this line, which is, um,

If you want to know who the leader is, don't look at their title, look at who people listen to. Yes, totally.