Practice Freedom Leading and Scaling Your Private Healthcare Practice

It’s Not Them, It’s You: How to Delegate What Matters Most | Ali Nasser

Episode Summary

Having a passion for entrepreneurship and growing up in a family of business owners, it wasn’t surprising that Ali Nasser began his journey to business at the age of 20. As a full-time college student, he took out a $30,000 credit card loan to hire his first employee. Ali loves nothing more than supporting those in pursuit of their personal passion and vision, and today, he is the Visionary of AltruVista, a planning firm focused on helping business owners with their biggest financial and life decisions. On the side, he also speaks on topics bespoke to

Episode Notes

As a business leader, you can’t be one person trying to do two things. For instance, you can’t be both the idea creator alongside being the enforcer and the executor, unless you want to achieve business goals half-baked, that is. There’s liberation in focusing on just one. And let’s face it, you want to be a hundred percent and win in what you do. The secret lies in letting go, empowerment, and delegation. Today, Ali Nasser joins me on the show to talk about the fears Visionary leaders have in hiring an Integrator, combatting those fears, and other crucial ingredients to breaking through the ceiling in your business.

7:07 Ali shares his realizations through the obstacles he encountered in establishing a business

14:53 The new visionary mindset: Allowing people to create the same outcome but take a unique path 

19:54 Ali talks about being a serial tweaker and how it affected the dynamics in his team

29:52 The role of the Integrator

39:06 Balancing precision to detail as a leader and trusting your team

41:05 The Visionary and the Integrator have to be philosophically aligned.

52:25 How to find the right Integrator

1:07:37 Ali’s passionate plea to entrepreneurs

“Take the time to be intentional,have a plan for all you’ve built, and bring those pieces together.”

GET IN TOUCH:

MARK LEARY: 
www.linkedin.com/in/markhleary
www.leary.cc

ALI NASSER:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/thealinasser/
https://alinasser.com/

Production credit:

Engineering / Post-Production: Jim McCarthy
Art / Design: Immanuel Ahiable

Episode Transcription

You're Doing It Wrong - Ali Nasser

July 14, 2021 - Wednesday

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

integrator, visionary, people, person, business, vision, built, passionate plea, business owners, outcome, resource, project, team member, call, create, accountability, delegate, clients, seat, nailed

SPEAKERS

Ali Nasser, Mark

 

Mark  00:00

So we're rolling, cool. We are live. This is you're doing it wrong with Mark Henderson, Leary, and my name is Mark. And by now you must know that I have a passion that you should feel in control of your life. And so what I do is I help you get control of your business. And part of how I do that is by letting you listen in on these conversations between me and my friends. Most of the time, I got another great friend with me today, talking about subjects that you already know a little bit about. But today, we're going to dig a little deeper. And so let's get in there and unlock some of the secrets and talk with my good friend, Ali Nassir. How are you my friend?

Ali Nasser: I'm doing great mark, pleasure to be on. 

Mark: Oh, so it's awesome. So you are a passionate entrepreneur, you are a visionary. In an extreme sense, you are a detailed guy, you are such a fine example of a great entrepreneur, truly who's passionate about success, passionate about overcoming their own challenge, and getting out of your own way. Right. Is that something? Sure? Yeah, you have a big vision. And you've seen yourself as an obstacle to that. And you've made huge, huge efforts to that to the point that you were a keynote speaker at the EOS conference in Sydney. It's a phenomenal job that explaining the journey of the visionary and the integrator and how that came about. But just the business you're in just to kind of give us an idea, I want to talk about the journey. But I also want to give you a chance to talk about or to frame the business and mindset you have as a business leader.

Ali Nasser  01:24

Sure. Well, thanks for that kind introduction. I love it, it sounds awesome. So we basically have a firm. It's called AltruVista. And we work with gotcha, tons of visionaries. And our target client is a visionary that built their company up and has now built it to a stage where they've been very successful there and have own established business. And they're trying to figure out how do I bring all the pieces together? My life plan, my balance sheet plan, the tax financial legal, like I've outgrown the traditional ways of looking at this, how do I bring it all together. And we serve as a family CFO, for successful business owners. So for a business owner, you kind of think about what the integrator does. for their business. We're like a wealth Integrator for all aspects of their balance sheet and life planning, got that tax, legal, financial, everything come together. So we refer to that as a business owners, family CFO. And that's what we do for for successful owners. So for almost 1718 years now, I've spent every week with a visionary of some kind, helping them address the biggest decisions they face from a balance sheet and life perspective. And there's so incredible clarity,

 

Mark  02:41

I want to connect two things. And that is the growth of the visionary leader, that from the visionary entre who was crazy enough to start something. And, and, and how that gets character caricature rise to be an individual who wins and loses money and is never potentially really successful. And how that person can be in their own way, they take risks, and they get some gains, and they lose the gains, and they never really reached a sense of success. Now you are on the other side of this in a very tangible way, which is okay, the business makes money. But are you creating wealth? And are you getting getting the rewards from your entrepreneurship? And those those parallels journeys are very parallel.

 

Ali Nasser  03:27

Yeah. And you nailed it there. And an example that I give is that, you know, be a business owner, if you have, let's just say, for example, if you met a person, that $50 million, and it was invested in Apple stock, what would you tell them? Their entire net worth $50 million invested in Apple stock? What would you tell him?

 

Mark  03:48

Well, it depends. It depends on where they are in life, sell it and go and live your life.

 

Ali Nasser  03:54

Yeah, a lot of people say sell it diversified. It's crazy. How could you have 50 million in one stock. But if I introduce you to somebody that has $50 million invested in their own company that they built, and that's their entire net worth, you're probably not going to tell them they should sell, you're probably not going to tell them they should diversify. And you certainly wouldn't tell them. They're crazy. 

 

Mark  04:16

But yeah, having said that, before I heard you say that before, and it is, yeah, you're right, that the framing of that is yeah, like when it's something you seem to hold closely. It seems less risky, right.

 

Ali Nasser  04:25

And that's the control factor. And I think to what you mentioned, like some business owners hit that way, they do so well in their business, but they don't have a way to capture that wealth with their personal planning, and how do I take what's been built, kind of in the business world and translate it to my personal balance sheet, and how does that work? And I think that so many entrepreneurs, I see they do really, really successful, they never capture or monetize, and they sometimes ride that wave down. And in other cases, you've got others that really know how to take that next level and how to capture that success. And I think when you do that, It all becomes worth it because you didn't just build it on the business side, you built it on the personal too. 

 

Mark  05:05

So I realized, Now there are two major subjects I want to dig into. And I think we're gonna have to choose because I think they're two separate episodes. Sure, really. And one is that journey, I realized how important that journey is that you described, to really understanding how not to waste the wealth creation opportunity your business has, and how many entrepreneurs just totally squander that and make bad bad financial decisions based on the risk. And I know, you're very passionate about that. But that's what you provide your clients understanding how to manage the risk of the overhead, and it's very powerful. And so I want an opportunity to get that in front of the listeners. But also the reason we started this conversation was the challenge I want to help people with is visionaries. Who are stuck letting go of their business with leadership, particularly the integrator, that number two in charge, somebody who gets focused on the internal operations of the business, and what do people need to do? And so I'm gonna let you decide what speaks to you right now, where do you want to go?

 

Ali Nasser  06:08

I think 100% the latter. Primarily, because that's the direction that you want to take. And that's really, I think, what the audience needs. And I think there's a unique perspective, given the talk that I did at EOS around that, when you mentioned entrepreneurs rising and not capturing that capital. It took me obviously to an instant place of Hey, we'll save that for another episode.

 

Mark  06:34

Cuz I'm glad you brought it back to this powerful. It's really good stuff. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Let's do it. I'm excited. So tell me about your journey. Because you told them incredibly vulnerable path or story, from the stage of your humbling of feeling like a badass leader with a full vision and encountering obstacles that were potentially life threatening to the business and having to do that. So walk us through a little bit of those first kind of realizations?

 

Ali Nasser  07:07

Yeah. So from 2012 to 2016, we were the fastest-growing wealth advisory firm in Houston. And we were just, I mean, we grew substantially, I mean, we went from like a $20 million firm to a 200 plus million dollar firm and a four, I think, four or four year period or so. And we had what we felt we'd figured out the secret sauce to what we did. And business was growing and booming, and I had every vision of what the next five years would look like, and this is gonna, we're going to do this, we're gonna do this. And I was talking with one of my most accomplished, experienced, and wise clients who had a personal exit, a half a billion-dollar exit with his company that he built from scratch. And just one of those people that every time he spoke, it was like, somehow, he just knew what was going to happen in the future. And he's one of those clients, I was always excited to see. And I was talking about what's going on and, Mark he asked me, he's like, well, what are your plans for the future? And where are you taking this company? And what's next? And I started to tell him about everything that was going to happen in the future. And he said, What does your team think about all of this? And I started to tell him about the struggles that we had, translating the vision, how some team members got it, and other team members didn't, but I was having a really hard time translating the vision. We had a lot of stuff start on projects, and basically shared with him a glimpse of our challenges. And he knew my team because he'd worked with us as a client. And he said to me, I have a prediction. In the next three years, you're gonna lose all your employees. Now this is, what is that? Like? Did you think he was full of it? Do you think it was totally wrong? I was stumped. When I heard this from someone I really respect as a mentor, almost like an uncle kind of figure to me in a way. He scared me when he said that because all I could think of was every encounter we ever had. And where he would have assimilated this information to come up with this. Because he's in possession of the information. He's like, yeah. Oh, man, you got it. You know, there's certain people and it's like asking him, oh, well tell me exactly why you feel that way. And I could discuss that too, if you'd like. But I knew knowing visionaries you don't. They don't always have an exact pathway as to how they came to this conclusion. But they've seen enough information that intuitively with their experience, they know where you're going. And I knew in that moment, the answer even if you answered the question as to why it wouldn't matter. It doesn't almost doesn't matter why that's what's probably gonna happen. And then the interesting thing is that over the next four years, that's exactly what happened. We had 100 Centrum. Now, it was the toughest four year period of business ever for me. And as always, it slowed that down.

 

Mark  10:09

Because when you talk about difficult periods of people's lives, it just a number for years. For years, like that's a long journey through the desert.

 

Ali Nasser  10:20

It was a long journey. And I tell you, Mark, I got a gift at the end of 2017 of a journal, a little really nice leather journal, I'd never journaled in my life, I've never been a journaler. But I got this really nice journal, I was like, you know what, I know that one of the big regrets of men on their deathbed is not spending enough time in self reflection, and I'm gonna start journaling. And it happened to be 2017, when I got this, and I have, I don't know, probably 100 entries over the past four years. And when I was preparing for that talk, for the EOS conference on the journey, I could actually go back and revisit this, and it is real, how hard that period was. And I love that I have this written all my thoughts, where I was, how I was feeling what I was doing, I have a record of all this because it really was the shift from to building leadership, the shift from going, from doing, and being that owner founder that knew how to do everything, that everything did it right themselves, you know, carried the wins, or the losses on their back to building a team where you go from doing to leading, and doing the hardest thing on earth, which is to trust other leaders and not get involved and let go. Doing that trust process. What goes into that is just so unbelievably challenging, because our natural DNA as owners, founders is we're going to get involved, we're going to do it ourselves, we're going to push and lead always. And oftentimes, that leads to a lot of mistakes. And what Mike saw was a gap in leadership. with not having enough leaders on the team. I had a gap in team mindsets where they weren't understanding the vision. And it was some wrong people on the bus that shouldn't have been on there. That's when I stopped starting on projects, which is a telltale sign of a lack of a clear plan, when there's constantly stop, start, stop, start, there's a lack of clarity of vision. And then he said to me, I'll you know, every once in a while, when a business owner becomes successful, they get their head in the clouds. And they get so caught up in the future vision of their company that they lose sight of the ground, and where reality is. And he said the one line that no one likes to hear, don't take this the wrong way. But I think you might be in that spot right now. And when Mike had this prediction of the future, he kind of recognized and it's coming from someone who I know has built something far greater than I've ever built, you just get humbled and you go, you know what, I'm gonna shut up and tell me what it is that you see as the issue and make me aware of my blind spot. Because I'm like the fastest growing firm in Houston. You know, things are amazing when you have a future vision, everything's happening. And then you get one of your best people tell you, you need to come back to Earth. And it's, it was humbling experience. And the five years that followed were absolutely the biggest growth challenge years ever. But today, now looking back at what's been built the last five years. It's worth it. Because you have a different business, you have a completely different business, you have a completely different leader, I'm a different visionary. And my mindset and approach towards so much has changed so drastically.

 

Mark  13:50

So I think you're such a great example for this because I don't want this to sound like bad, but you're kind of an extreme example of detail orientation. You have a way to look at you to know you is to understand that precision matters to you and every little sense of brand and consistency and punctuation is you sense it and it's driving me nuts and OCD. But you know, it's a good observation, isn't it? Maybe it's me, because that's me for sure in different ways. And I think you may wear it better. And so maybe it's common DNA, because you think you always look sharper than I do. Maybe that's where I noticed. But that makes it hard, right? So you're like, if you're going to delegate, you're used to producing content and quality that matches not just a level of precision, but it's your definition of precision. Yes. which keeps you locked in to the belief that you couldn't possibly give up control in some way.

 

Ali Nasser  14:53

Yes. And you nailed it with that comment, because that's exactly what had to change. That was a problem I had, and still continue to have in some ways is that my level of precision, my level of quality, my style were what I was constantly looking to deliver consistently. And the experience that I had created for our business owner client community for so many years, all of a sudden, couldn't be scaled any further being my way. And I had to break that shell, to say, Ollie, you've got to stop making it your way. And you've got to start making it your desired outcome. And there's a delicate difference between saying, I want you to do this the way I did it, versus I want you to do this that creates the same outcome that I created for these clients. And there's a huge difference because what one of my leadership team members can do when they first got hired and he said to me, I've really got to study what it is that you do. So I can replicate this and do the same thing for our clients, because I don't want to lose the way that you did it. And I said, Hey, I appreciate that. With all due respect, you're never gonna do it the same way as me. And his face was stumped. When he said it to me. He's like, Well, what do you mean, I was like, I don't want you to do it the exact same way I did it, because you're not me. What I want you to do is to create the same outcome. So being visionary, my old visionary mindset would say, I want you to do this, and do it this way, do this and do it this way. The new visionary mindset is, I want the client to feel like this, I want this outcome to be accomplished, I want this result to be accomplished how you do it has to be your unique path, right. But as long as you're generating the outcomes, I'm not going to tell you how to cook the food if you make a great meal. And my goal is I want an amazing, seared ahi tuna for dinner, I don't want to watch you make it. I want to know that the tuna tastes good. And if at the end of the meal, I'm going to say hey, this didn't taste right, and let you fix it in the kitchen and go put more salt. And I think that's what trips up a lot of visionaries.

 

Mark  17:00

My time like a, somewhat of a minor point. But I think it's a huge point, I want to unpack it really well, because I think there's a lot of gold. Well, you just said. First of all,in my experience, and what you're trying to prevent is when somebody comes to you and tries to replicate you, and your recipe is so complex. If they try to do that, the compass is you. And they are dependent in every transaction for your validation.

 

Ali Nasser  17:28

You nailed it. And, and validation. And even they're dependent upon your involvement. And the thing is you client, right, yeah,

 

Mark  17:38

Yes, it is approval, and it might be actually an interaction.

 

Ali Nasser  17:41

Yes. And then I become the crutch. And in this case, I created a niche.

 

Mark  17:46

That is totally dependent upon you. And that scale. And if you're not around, they're useless.

 

Ali Nasser  17:51

Yes. And so something that really triggers here with what you're saying is when I look back in life, and I'm gonna use Mike as an example, who gave the prediction about the company, Mike helped me so much with one conversation about letting me know where my issues were. And then I was left alone to figure out the solution to my problems. So he helped me very little. But he helped create the greatest outcome ever. And I think a lot of us, when we look back over life, we say the people that helped us the least actually helped us the most, because they made you aware of something, they told you, Hey, you know what, Mark, you got this opportunity of this, but they said it to you, not as a co worker or a partner, but some random person or mentor that made a comment. And then you took that and changed your life from it. And when you're the person giving the input, and then saying, well, here's how you do it. And then here, I hope you hear and then let me all of a sudden, you're the crutch. And the people that are the greatest managers and leaders, in my opinion, are the people that can say, it is your job to figure out the solution. I trust your ability to get it done. If you're stuck, and you truly have exhausted all resources, I may be a resource to you. But you got to figure this out on your own and not come to me with every step of the way. And I think that ends up becoming where managers get stuck. And I have no time because my team is taking all my time. Well, you're a crutch and and I was a crutch for years and you can't be the crutch. 

 

Mark  19:23

I'm guessing hoping that first attempts at doing this and that didn't go great, because this is so conceptual and I think even now, people listen to this going, you're right. Oh my gosh, and light bulbs are going off and people are getting fired up. I gotta eat and then they're going to go try it, and it's not going to go great, and then they're going to get distracted and back into their old habits. So I want to prepare people for the next set of toast topic. What was your toaster oven like?

 

Ali Nasser  19:54

There's so many toast. So many. Give me a second here. Let me think of a good one. Okay, so I am a serial tweaker. I love to tweak things. So if you get me involved in a project if I meet with you on Monday, and I look at the the prototype, and you say, hey, any input that you've got on this prototype, I'll be like guys, yeah, I think you know, this is good, this is good. But we tweak this, tweak this, tweak this, and it's not awesome anymore. Now, it looks great. It's awesome. If you come back to me on Thursday, and you say, hey, Ollie, here's the prototype, again, any other tweaks, I can guarantee you, I'm going to come up with more tweaks. And if you call me every week, and you ask me, hey, what inputs you want to give, there'll be another tweak, because my brain is constantly going to think of something. Okay? When I've gotten involved in team projects in the past, and I've said, Hey, you know what, guys, this is the success criteria for this project, I want these five things to be the case. And then they come to me somewhere through and they own it. This is not a collaborative project that we need to work on together. And they come back to me and they say, hey, Ollie, I really want your input on this thing. It's entering a dangerous zone. Yeah, you asked for this input, then. So sometimes, if it's a project where I don't need to be involved, I'll push back and say, Hey, do you really want my input here?  Do you want me to be in here? You're just asking for validation? Are you asking for it? I need to know what gear because if you give me free rein on every gear, I'm going to go into first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth. So keep that steady. There have been projects where I have not done that. And I've jumped right in. So recently, there's a story where we were working on a specific workshop for exit planning, like business owners, or want to maximize value of their company potentially have a say, or what does that three to five year process look like? And we're building a workshop. So one of my, my LMA for planning is a exit advisor and advisor, 20 years seasoned guys who are rockstars at planning. And he owned this rock to put together this workshop and I was collaborating with him. And when we were talking about building the content, like actually building the PowerPoints, the content pieces, tools for the workshop, and everything, my head's going, I'm not involved in this, this isn't my rock, it's like, well, you know, do you think we have everything together in order for you to put together the content? No, I was like,  I'm not gonna put together the content. Ali, if I put together the content, this is the magic line, he said, If I put together the content, I know you're gonna look at this, and you're gonna make 20,000 tweaks and the day before the presentation, you're going to  want to change three things in this. So all of a sudden, he's insinuating now you own the content, because you always want it to be your way. And I realized, holy crap, I have created a monster. Because by me making those adjustments on other people's projects. Now, no matter what they do on their own, they're always going to feel it's not good enough, because he's gonna tweak something. Because I always jump in and do something, I'm now being that crutch to the project where they're like, you know, what, it doesn't matter what work I put together. Because he's going to end up adjusting something, versus allowing me to own this content and working or running with it. Does that make sense? Is that a good example?

 

Mark  23:25

It's a good example. And I got one more thing I want to unpack on that. Because when you delegate, there's two things you have to have. And that is, and this is EOS stuff, for sure. You have to have the willingness and faith to let go, which is what you're describing. But you also have to have the right person in the right seat who is actually capable of doing the work you've handed them, you know, so talk to me about that piece. How did you get comfortable with the fact that you got this, this will be fine, even if I'm not involved?

 

Ali Nasser  23:55

Well, so candidly, this project is going on right now. It was a fresh one, on my mind. So the workshop that actually this fall, and this is what we're laying out content for. Now, as far as in this person? Are they the right person, the right seat for their role? Absolutely fantastic. At the role, have they ever built a content presentation like this? No. Do they know that they don't have to build it? And they can have team resources that they can use internally and externally to get this right and to build it right? I believe so. Kind of like we talked about a coaches like Dan, why don't you have that courage to let go? But do I have the confidence that they're going to bring in the right resources to build it? Or are they going to try to somehow create a new skill set of their own to build it themselves? I don't know. But I'm pretty confident that the person is going to do that, and time will tell. And the thing is, you got to let go enough to say hey, you know what, that person is gonna have to figure it out. Because if I'm in there jumping in, then all of a sudden on the crutch again, so I've given you the key pieces you need. I am trusting you to take this to the finish line. And then I need to make some commitment in there to go. Either I'm not gonna tweak anything or you give me one opportunity, one meeting where we talk about this if there's input that you really need, and then I'll work with you on it.

 

Mark  25:14

So take me back to the earliest time you can that comes to mind quickly where you had to really make the decision. Am I handing this off to somebody who can handle it or not? And how did you figure that out?

 

Ali Nasser  25:31

Hmm, an early position where I had to delegate something and had to have the courage to delegate is

 

Mark  25:39

The razor's edge question. Should I do it? Or can they do it? Or should I just take it back? Every visionary has that situation. Like, you know, you should do it. And never mind. I'll do it. And, and just that faith of like, I'm gonna keep it in your hands, and you're going to handle it. And part of the question has to be answered is, can they handle it? Right? And I don't think are skilled at answering that question. They're skilled at taking it back as soon as they get scared.

 

Ali Nasser  26:07

Yeah, absolutely. And usually, I feel like it's a doubt in the person. Or it's an impatience thing. Or it's perfectionism, actually, a combination of all we wanted to do perfectly.

 

Mark  26:18

Terrible at hiring, I think they bring in somebody who's under-qualified, somebody they trusted to be in the role. And they're not good at judging the person. And they're like, Well, no, no, why didn't you handle that 2525 step process? Well, well, they've only ever handled a three-step process before you, you didn't delegate, you abdicated. And then of course, it went like a disaster. And I think that visionaries have to develop a sensitivity or certainly, the integrator has to have the real skill set to really assess. Can these people do the job? And if not, fire them? Yeah, I can fully empower them. So I'm taking the whole conversation back to you, as a visionary. When you're having to answer the question of like, I know, I need to let go. And like, but is this the right person to do it? And how do you decide whether this is the right person or maybe confess that this is not the right person and take it back or move it to somebody else?

 

Ali Nasser  27:09

Okay, sorry, I think I'm a little more clear on that now. So I evaluate the right person and right seat at a different time mentally than it is with the specific activity. But anytime I am nervous to let go of something, it's probably because there's a trust issue with that individual. And if I'm not letting go of something, either there's a trust issue or there's a personal one, I'm having a hard time. There's something I need to be involved in, in this way. And if I have a person that's the right fit, and I still want some type of involvement, then there needs to be a conversation as to hey, and the way I do it with the visionaries I work with is, Hey, I'm seeing you still get involved in this. What is giving you anxiety? And when you ask a visionary if we ask anyone, but I can speak to visionaries, because you deal with them all the time. When you ask a visionary, what is giving you anxiety on this project? Why are you not letting go? Usually, a brainstorm instantly comes up with these  three to four things that are giving me anxiety. I feel like if they're honest, I feel like if I give this to you, I'll never get to see it again. And I won't get to put my fingerprints on it. Well, I feel like this could go wrong, I really want to make sure this person and this person in this project are handled in a special way. And you kind of get that download to let go of that anxiety. And at the person that owns the project, they should be asking the visionary on every project, hey, anything, anything? Is there anything giving you anxiety on this project? Are you able to let go? Is there any place where I need to touch base with you in order for you to feel like we're in a good spot? And that alone gives the visionary or in my case, has given me so much comfort to let go because I'm like, I know they've got it. And when they're not doing things like that, and I'm nervous to let go and maybe a right person, right seat issue. And I don't have the right person on my team. And if they're procrastinating it, anytime I've had a team member that procrastinate action on a project, there's like, oh, there's not enough time for that, or I've been overloaded with these other initiatives. If they're procrastinating it, they're not built for that project. And you've got the wrong resource working on it. 

 

Mark  29:22

That's gold. You know, and so I think that a lot of visionaries, I keep putting visionaries into the spot, but it's really anybody who's making excuses for the delegation. It's like, you know, you're always making these people make excuses for their folks, like, you know, they're trying, you know, we're all kind of overloaded. We're all so busy. Everybody's behind on their rocks. And that becomes the default standard of excellence, which is not excellent at all. Everybody underperforms and there's no accountability.

 

Ali Nasser  29:52

Yeah, and I think it ties in earlier when you talked about the visionary-integrator. Like I know what I want my coach to look like at the company, I have no idea how to build it. And I think a lot of visionaries go, okay, I can figure out how to build it. I'll read a book on culture. Well, at what opportunity cost, you're going to go invest 200 hours to figure out how to build a great culture. And then you're going to take 200 hours away from what you could be doing that could be more accelerative. If you bring on the integrator and say, this is the culture I want. If they're the right integrator, they're gonna go yeah, I know how to do that. And they're off to the races, building that culture. And if the integrator is coming here, I don't know how to build that culture. And then three months later, the culture hasn't changed. you probably haven't got someone skilled in building culture, and

 

Mark  30:44

digging into this,

 

Ali Nasser  30:44

You know that's where you've got the people that know what they're doing in a role, are not going to procrastinate, and will take action and movement. It's gonna be part of their DNA.

 

Mark  30:57

And this is super gold, that procrastinate, they go to work on what matters most. They get it, they understand it. They're not looking like deer in the headlights. That's your integrator.

 

Ali Nasser  31:06

Yeah. And it's just that every role, whether it's an integrator or anybody.

 

Mark  31:12

Agree, agree, but what I realized is going through the conversation, there's kind of two levels of visionaries, the skill set to delegate. And it's all of that delegation, you have to do on your way to get into the point where you've earned the right to hire the integrator. And that's sort of like your real master level up. Once you've done that, you're in another level and your leadership transforms at that stage. But most people can't do that on day one, some, some can't. And they've got to kind of piecemeal their way to manage a team half-assed and they got to do it better and not otherwise, the business never gets to earn the right to hire the integrator.

 

31:48

Exactly. It's paying your dues? Yeah, yeah, for sure. And you will look, what you learn is that you suck at it.

 

Mark  31:57

And you really need that integrator. And so you get it time to dive off the edge of the diving board into the deep end of the pool and get that integrator. And there's a lot of fears there. Money is a part of it. But I think money is mostly a masking fear of things not executing. And I have a friend who specifically says that he's afraid to hire the integrator because he's afraid that integrator is going to come in and fire the people he loves because they've been underperforming rather than let's react to that because I'm yeah, behind that.

 

Ali Nasser  32:27

Yeah,that is often. So it comes back then that was the title of the speeches, who do you want to be for the US conference? And that question resonates so deeply when you say, I feel like this person is going to come in and fire the people that aren't performing. Did you listen to that question or comment? They're going to fire the people that are not performing? Hmm. Well, what is your ultimate goal? Is it to maintain relationships with underperforming employees, because you feel that you're indebted to them, or you feel that somehow, them being in an underperforming position getting you in less than adequate results for the company is somehow a good thing for the both of you?  If you're in that mindset, that's somewhat concerning. I think anyone that thinks about that might strike them. Well, although I can see how you get there. Or is your goal, I want the best outcome for the business. Because if you have to be anchored to your biggest vision, and your best outcome, and if your best outcome is I really want to grow this company, and I'm anchored to this vision of what we will be as an organization. If that's the primary thing, then all of a sudden, there's an easy solution. It may be painful, but it's a clear solution. Easy is not the  clear solution. For that underperforming team member, it might be, hey, thank you for your 10 years of service, I want to make sure you find the right home, I'm gonna help you find the right opportunity, I will be a resource to you, will be a reference. But I want you to wake up every morning knowing you're performing. And I want to wake up every morning knowing I've got a performing team. And maybe it might just take an integrator to come in, in order to figure out if that person is someone that could have adjustments that can be made to where they are performing employee or adjustments can be made to bring them out of the organization. And part of the visionaries and AI. I say this as an empathetic visionary myself. I'm really high on empathy. I care about people, that empathy, and that care to talk to a culture index consultant, they will say Ali, that will be the death of you. Because you care so much about your employees and your people, you will go take out personal money from your bank account to loan them or help them and you will always hear their excuses because you feel emotionally where they are. And that is why you're a terrible manager. You can be a great leader but you need a manager that's not going to fall for the BS excuses as to why we weren't delivering the results we needed to and you need that enforcement. Think of two books that come to mind on this particular topic that are just golden books for this exact example you gave about integrators coming in and firing. The first one is by Henry Cloud. It's called "Necessary Endings". And it is an unbelievable book. I remember the tagline that's under the book was necessary endings, the people, relationships and businesses that need to end in order for you to move forward. Now, he's not saying cut off everything in your life and end it. He's saying you need to prune your life, just like you prune a tree. If you don't cut off the dead leaves, they're going to create problems for the tree, right? So prune your life, and he's got a pathway in there that addresses if you've got a person you're unsure, are they the right fit? Can they perform? Here's the pathway to know if can they perform and be great, here's what needs to happen. And if they can't, here's the exit strategy. And he makes it really clear. I love that book. And the second book is "Predictable Success", which talks about the business cycle, and how people and as you have changes in an integrator role, you have changes that come in what happens within the company, before and after those changes, and how some people will naturally flush out of the organization, and they will no longer be a part of it. And other people will pay, hey, all of a sudden I've got a new strategy and structure, I'm going to lock and load on that. And I'm going to be your best performer in the future. And it's a natural part of business to have to make those tough decisions. But just as a visionary, personally, I lost about I shouldn't say lost, I had about 50% turnover on my team before I hired the integrator and had 50% turnover on my team after I hired integrator. And today in 2021, I've got 1010 team members. And they're an entirely different team than the 10 team members I had in 2016. There's a 100% difference and the business is multiples better than it was five years ago, because of the strength of leadership and quality of integration and team that I have today versus five years ago.

 

Mark  37:05

So that actually is a maybe a third wire on this because I wanted to connect the two concepts. One was the culture alignment, you're the right integrator, and I really want to slow this down. So people listen to this. The integrator that's right for you is not Harvey Keitel and Pulp Fiction doesn't knock on the door, kill your people and leave and clean it up the matter actually is not exactly when you get the coin that hits somebody it doesn't come up and do the dirty work in some cold-blooded way. Is this a cultural match, your great integrator or the right integrator has core values, what matters most, I, you know connected with you now has the style opposite has operated. Totally opposite, but is aligned 100%, on where we're going and can follow the wishes and dreams of you and the business and will help force necessary endings when they're necessary when they're ethically aligned with you with in them. And that is a hard concept to digest and empathy is so high. And so I guess to the point of the third wire, which is when that locks in, when you have clarity of vision, clarity of culture, clarity of purpose, and the ability to execute even when it's hard. It still is sometimes and it's organization by organization, sometimes it's a 10% turnover. Sometimes it's 100% turnover, right, and you got kind of a hardest edge example of that. And I think I would attribute that to some extent to the degree of precision you bring to the culture. That is you as the leader of the organization, very precise outcomes and a little bit of misalignment is a ton of friction. And so as you execute, I'm the same way

 

Ali Nasser  39:06

Hopefully not taking a face of respect for Mark. I very, you know, to me, stating things like that is not offensive. Unless someone says it in any kind of derogatory degrading way. In this case. I'll laugh about it with you. Because I was having a call once I think it was with I think it was Gino Wickman. And we were both Regina. And we both are six. Follow through on our Colby. Oh, really? And we're both we're both six follow through on both hi quickstart and here are my six figures. So you've got a healthy level of OCD and you as well. And in that moment, every historical is like this flash of 1000 memories of yes, you are completely OCD about how things need to look and be if you're involved in a project. And the magic from you is if you're involved if I'm not and people just tell me hey XYZ was happy, we had this great event, everything was awesome. I'm just over the moon happy, I won't get in the weeds. And it was kind of an eye-opening moment to know that yeah, you're gonna drive OCD if you get too involved. So how do you get out as quickly as possible, set the clear vision, and then step away and let the team be and for me it was getting out of team meetings. I only attended one team meeting per week now. And I used to be on like four or five, it's one. And that gets me out of all the stuff to be as OCD as you describe. 

 

Mark  40:32

Well, I love you dug into that, because it gave me some clarity. Here's my advice to people listening to this, if you self identify as OCD, detail-oriented, locking into your vision and a great integrator is likely to bring with it necessary endings, a lot of them. If you're not that concerned, if you're an emotionally laidback individual, you're probably not going to have that many changes, you're going to need to focus on execution, but you're not going to be as worried about how it gets done, you're going to be more concerned that it gets done.

 

Ali Nasser  41:05

Okay. So you just nailed a really important point that I think every every listener needs to know. It's that when you have same page meetings with your integrator, you  must align philosophically on how people are going to be, how the culture and the employees, hiring, and  firing is going to be. That not how I'm like, how are we hiring people but the way the spirit in which things are being done. So philosophically, we have, we have one team member right now, who is a great person, we don't have an appropriate seat where she's going to shine and thrive in her role. But an amazing person, we love her, one of my favorite humans out there. Philosophically, my integrator and I are completely aligned, no matter what happens, we're going to take care of this person. We don't know exactly what it's going to look like. We don't know if it means we keep them an extra few months, we don't know if we help them get a new job, they find a job we support, whatever is necessary. But we're philosophically aligned, we care about this person, they've put their heart and soul into this business, we're going to find an outcome where they are happy and we're happy. That kind of alignment, you have to be able to have with your integrator, yes. And if you're aligned with the integrator and the same page that this is philosophically what we're doing with this person, they're gonna have their own plan on how they do it. But you're aligned on the fact that we're going to take care of this person, it's going to be done right and not in a way of like, you're terminated. And here's two weeks pay, and you're done. It's love. 

 

Mark  42:36

So I love that because when I draw on the board, the integrator and the visionary I say, this looks like two leaders, right, makes two different people. But what it is, is one leadership position, absolutely aligned with one person's job being focused on the big optimistic future with nothing but amazing possibility, and one back to back, but focused on the same vision, but focused inward to the organization, stewarding the plan, handling the obstacles and making make sure it's actually happening. And it's just like, you've got two eyes in the front of your head, and there's none in the back. So we need a whole other person to get to more eyes. And so that's why you have two leaders, two eyes facing forward and two eyes facing back and you get them standing together. And you got all areas handled, man.

 

Ali Nasser  43:19

You nailed it. And it makes me think of when I read the book "Rocket Fuel". I was looking for a solution. You know, Mike had told me you're gonna have 100% turnover, I started to see some things unravel on the team. And I was looking for like this solution. And I read "Rocket Fuel". And as I read it, I'm like, definitely the visionary. And I'm reading the integrator. And I'm like, well, you know what, there's a lot of integrator tendencies here. Like I know how to execute things, I can get things to the finish line. I've been that Integrator for my clients tax and legal advisors like bringing them together and facilitating meetings and getting like the whole picture put together. Like I can do a lot of this. And I work with visionaries every day. So I know how to consult them and be their integrator. So maybe I can do both. And then it hit me, as I'm saying this going, maybe I could do both. If I'm an A, as a visionary, and a B is an integrator at best. And I cut my time between half on each. I just took an A and a B and I made them both failing grades, because I'm watering down my ability. And I said if my biggest competitor had a separate visionary and a separate integrator, one with eyes as you said, looking forward and one with eyes on the back who's going to perform better. Yeah, it's probably going to be them. And I know personally from from hiring great people and having great teams in the past and currently, that when you've got two people with great skill sets that complement one another, the net outcome to the business, that potential is much higher than one person trying to be two things. So that night I made a commitment. It was part of my who do I want to be by asking myself if I could wake up every day and be one person, the visionary or the integrator, who do you want to wake up every day and be? And for that 10 out of 10 times, it's the visionary. I never want to be the integrator if I can't be the visionary, so that made the decision and I never from that day or this, I'm never ever ever stepping in to an integrator role. I am the visionary is always going to be an integrator that's there. And that's it. I'm done with with trying to be to things to people or to try to be to, I'm done trying to be to people.

 

Mark  45:34

Yeah. Well, I think to add to that concept, I've got a handful of integrators to turn visionary. Gino is an integrator turned visionary. He's an integrator in his dad's business, which makes sense if you have the ability to integrate, and you're being fed fuel from the visionary, and you've got everything you need, you don't need to do the visionary work can integrate that when it transforms, and now you are the visionary fuel, which is a misnomer, right? The vision isn't only coming from the visionary. Most of the fuel for the vision comes from the visionary, but the leadership team will align all together and create an amazingly crystallized vision because of all the ingredients. But I have people who were integrators before and their visionary, either retired, that's one case, or just lost their passion. And the integrator gained new passion. And what they found was that their ability to be the integrator just started plummeting, because the energy and the direction of where they were going, they didn't want to do it, they were distracted, it wasn't as interesting to them. Now, they were very very capable of it until the vision took over. And you can't look forward and backward at the same time. 

 

Ali Nasser  46:43

That is gold to use your terms right there. I could not be the integrator for my vision. If I was the integrator for somebody else's vision, I know absolutely, I could do it. If I had somebody that had a clear vision that I was bought into, and I love that vision, I can make it happen. It's the same way that when we deal with the visionary entrepreneur, and they come in with their vision, and for all their personal planning, and we help create that vision, and then we integrate it, we can, but you can't be the one that's the idea creator, and then the enforcer and the executer. Because it's that is for nice back and you nailed it. Because there's not a way to be. The best example I can give you is if you take an honor, this is not a video podcast. But for those listening, if you put one thumb in front of your face, and one thumb with your arm fully stretched out, okay? Try focusing on both thumbs at the same time. You can't do it, you can only focus on the thumb in your face or the thumb in the distance. And Amelie, I could do it.

 

Mark  47:49

Two different things. Yeah.

 

Ali Nasser  47:50

If you try to put them both in the middle of they're both up front and are both in the back, you can do it. But that's kind of like the visionary-integrator is that one is looking at the immediate short-term execution, where are things going, let's get the trains running on time holding accountability, and the other one is focused on that bigger, more strategic vision is where are we going as an organization, and when you try to do both, you will dilute your effects. And it is so empowering. And liberating is the word Mark, it is liberating when you can focus on one. And for those that haven't experienced that liberation is one of the most incredible feelings on Earth.

 

Mark  48:30

Yeah, so I deal with that a lot myself. And that liberation. I don't want to take away from the point. But there is a caveat to that the big obstacle to that is what I call accountability leakage. And that is, when you keep letting the person you're trying to give accountability to you keep letting them believe that you're, you still got part of it, you're still doing piece of it, what you really to get that liberation, you have to fully give the accountability, this is entirely your job. I am not coming to rescue you. And I'm in some ways you can rescue from such situations that are explicit. But don't think that I have a hand on this or with you all the time. And that if you get tired, I'm just going to pull it, you need to know this is actually entirely your job. And like you said, don't bring me in to give feedback on this when you can get that full clear guidance that changes the game for the recipient of the accountability. And then it gives you the sense that like it's crystal clear that they own the outcome and if something goes wrong, they're going to respond, and they're not expecting you to respond to it because you will never have that liberation. If in the back of your mind, you think you're gonna go check that email box, you're gonna get the escalation, you're gonna be the backstop. A liberation is not yours to have.

 

Ali Nasser  49:50

Very, very, very well said, very well. So looking at okay, you got two people accountable. No one's accountable when you got one and it's clear and that's when results can happen.

 

Mark  50:01

Well, so that's a really good point because I, that's, that's a light bulb for me. Because I teach that on the accountability chart, like you can't put more than one name in a box. But what I realized now is that there's implicit names in the box, there's you give Joey, the head of sales,  his responsibility. But everybody knows that visionary John will pick up the slack and head of sales doesn't do.

 

Ali Nasser  50:25

Yeah, that's not workable. And that's crap. And I had, you know, had a conversation recently with someone on my team who said, you know, something about the word accountability with me to some sales items. And I was like, whoa, whoa, hold on a second. I'm here to support, I'm here to backup, I'm here to provide, you know, input and support where I can, but accountability to the outcome of sales needs to be with the LMA for business development, I can be an accelerator, I can do certain things to collaborate and be involved. But the word accountability to the net result of those sales, eight falls on that person on the accountability chart, I'm happy to provide it. But I don't want to end up being that in a situation where all of a sudden, he can fix the problem. So he does. And then if it doesn't get done, while he didn't do his thing, it needs to be built where we're generating the results by that role. If I can be an accelerator to some way have moved past goals, great, but it needs to be accomplished by that particular role. And man, you nailed it there that that's a recent story.

 

Mark  51:34

That's awesome. Awesome, man. So I promised we would kind of get you out of here on time, we've heard a ton of stuff as a pure goal. It's been fun. The time has flown by. Is there anything we missed you want to make sure we get into this conversation?

 

Ali Nasser  51:51

And I kind of want to ask you the same question. You heard the talk at the EOS conference and is there any part of that talk that you feel for your audience your listeners would resonate with them in that you'd you know that I can be helpful? They're supportive of you.

 

Mark  52:12

Nice work, buddy. That was great. And the answer is, talk a little bit about the journey to find the integrator. How did you know it was the right person?

 

Ali Nasser  52:25

Sure, sure. So I'll start by saying it's not easy. And you have to put in the work. I think a lot of visionaries just feel like it's just going to magically happen and they don't want to put in the work. And you got to put in the work to find one. I was looking for my integrator back in 2016. This was before visionary integrator was the full household name as it is today. Back then, people were just learning about EOS and "Rocket Fuel" and it wasn't what it is now. I mean, if you're a business owner, and you haven't heard of EOS, you've been living under a rock, no pun intended. So I put out, I mean, I wrote LinkedIn notes, Facebook notes, I've told everyone in my network, I probably had 200 people go in the funnel. And it ended up being a referral effect. Our EOS implementer referred me to my integrator at the time that was just a contact. And that's how I found my integrator, it was through a direct referral. If I were to find an integrator today, which is actually for my second company, which is an IP company connected to the first business, I'm actually in the process of starting to find an integrator right now. So I'm on the hunt for another one. Now, knowing what I know today, I would go straight to one of the expert staffing firms that deal specifically with these relationships. And I would say, hey, I want to figure out what this person looks like, what this ideal fit is, and I'll call it Dan Sullivan's concept, who, not how, who can generate this result for me, versus how can I figure out how to do this myself. And I think finding a resource that knows how to find integrators that have expertise in finding integrators, that cost is going to be far outweighed by the benefit of you getting your time and having that resource help find the integrator. So that's one way. The other thing is looking internally within your team, you might have a great integrator on your team. But as a visionary, you might not have enabled or empowered them to be that person because you were doing too much. That was a mistake I made. There's one particular team member I had years ago who was just I've never had better results with any one team member ever. I mean, she and I, when we work together, she was part of that four or five year massive growth spurt rehab where we have come back at 10x growth. That particular team member I know had I known what I know today and had some of the wisdoms in my background, they probably would have turned into my integrator. Maybe, maybe not, who knows. And that person could have been a huge part of a longer-term vision. But at that time, I didn't know. I was too involved, creating too much chaos, trying too many new initiatives. And that person didn't end up working out. But I think you should look internally, it could be great to find someone from your team. If you're going to look externally, find the right resources to help you get that. And then once you meet the person, you've got to have a philosophical alignment, they may think extremely different than you, they will probably think extremely different than you. My integrator has an entirely different pattern to come up with a solution than me. If we ever collaborate on building the solution together, we literally want to strangle each other during the meeting. We cannot stand coming to a conclusion together, because she has a different way of doing it. But if I said, hey, this is our challenge, go think about it. And I'm gonna go think about it. And we both spend our own time and come back with the solution. They're 80% the same. In fact, I'd say 95% the same, but just don't have us follow each other's thought pattern because she thinks I come up with it out of thin air, and by the seat of my pants and on a napkin. And it's not the case at all. I actually use spreadsheets and come up with dots and draw them out. But it's much more high level where hers will be built by Excel modeling and pivot tables and all that. But we come back at the end going, here's what I think we should be here. And it's nearly the same. So you just got to make sure that philosophically what you want is the same but how you get there will probably differ. And don't be scared of that. In fact, it's good. Oh, the last thing, you need to have someone that when at the appropriate time, and knows how to push back and will push back at the appropriate time. You don't want someone who's gonna push back too much on everything, because then there may be too much of a conflict. But at the appropriate time hey, you know what, I appreciate you're going this direction, we can't go there yet and have the strength or personality to say, I need to put the brakes on or we need to push the clutch here and go to the next gear. And I need more budget or more resources, you can't have someone that's just going to do exactly what you say and go execute it. That's not an integrator, that's an executer. And integrators are of a higher caliber because they're going to know  when to put on the brakes, want to be the clutch, and sometimes want to be the gas. So um, yeah, I think great integrators use all three pedals if I'm using car analogies.

 

Mark  57:37

Yeah, for sure. Well, yeah, you're a car guy. Could be another podcast in and of itself, too. But I think it's worth calling out this significant distinction between the integrator search process, which is very driven around alignment. In the internals process, where you select somebody with the presumption that there's already a great deal of alignment. And I think you nailed something that needs to be called out. And that is what I want you to weigh in on this. But what I teach people is that if you have somebody in multiple seats,my old assumption about having somebody in a high seat and a low seat was that ego would take over the high seat and would be their natural gravity. That's not what happens. What happens in real life is that I have somebody in a high seat and a low seat in terms of tactical individual contribution versus leadership and management, the urgency of the individual contribution takes over and there's no bandwidth given to the actual leadership seat that they've got. And so if you are trying to elevate somebody into an integrator function, and you still got them writing proposals, or doing the books, not likely to be great, speak to that.

 

Ali Nasser  58:46

So philosophically, I think people gravitate towards their unique abilities and their best strength. So my experience has been if I have a person that has the ability to do strategic planning and thinking, but also loves managing and mentoring people if their natural tendency and their love and their passion is managing and mentoring people, but they're really good at strategic planning, too. They're going to constantly focus again and again on managing and mentoring people. Then the strategic planning gets put on the backburner.

 

Mark  59:23

And you're saying the truth speaks for itself. I have somebody in two seats. It's not just about the urgency, it's about there actually might be someone better to do it.

 

Ali Nasser  59:30

Yeah. And some people are. So I have this strategic ability. But I really, really, really want to, well, if you have that strategic ability, then you should know you're getting sucked into mentoring and management. So why not create a plan where you say I'm not doing any mentoring and management on Wednesday and Friday. It is off the grid. It's only for strategic planning. And I'm going to spend Tuesdays and Thursdays doing mentoring and managing Wednesdays and Fridays are not available. I'm giving just an example of the house. Right. And they're saying, I'm going to make sure the strategy gets done. And I'm putting boundaries around it. If someone has the capability to do both, and they're just to burn, then they need to execute a plan like that and say, guess what, guys, things are getting blocked. I'm focusing on strategic vision, I'm gonna go do that. But if they're just constantly  I keep them, the team needs me, I keep needing to be involved here. I'm writing proposals, I'm writing contracts, I'm always getting well, then maybe their best ability is they love to do and execute. And maybe they have great skills there. And the strategic thinking and planning may not be there, their natural best suit, maybe it's something they just do 25% of the time. And there's a gap there. I mean, I tell you, Mark, there's a lot of things I do pretty well that I say, oh, yeah, I could do that exceptionally well. But I'm not doing an exception where continuously. And it's because yeah,  it's not  because I can do it, it doesn't mean it's my highest and best use. And sometimes crocheting and change can change that. And sometimes it's realigning. But to me, I feel like people are going to naturally gravitate toward where they really want to be. And sometimes they have this aspiration to be one level above. And sometimes it's a skill set gap. And it can be bridged. I'm not gonna say it can't, it can be, but I think a lot of times, it's just that. That's what they want to do.

 

Mark  1:01:24

Well, and I've also observed this phenomenon where visionaries are being impatient, they want the future now. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a vision worth pursuing if they thought of its weight. Fair enough, right? It's not good weight, then why would I? Why even bother? And so when we get the sense of the needs, in the short term, like, I need a leader, I need an integrator, I need whatever. And there's somebody on my admin team who looks like that could be an integrator, I'm not really open as a visionary to the idea that that might be wrong. I like it, I see a short path to getting somebody an integrator seat. I'm like, I see the  integrators or visionaries I work with tend to justify it. They say I know you're telling me you don't like it, but you're wrong. You're gonna love it when you get good at it here soon. Just give it a little more time. And I think there's some rationalization too, if you're taking over like a broken integrator, see, the culture is a little bit broken and resources isn't managed, right? And it doesn't look attractive to take over something that's kind of broken, you could logically say, well, as we're getting some clarity of the functions and the resources getting mapped out, it'll be a lot more fun to run this organization. But there are frequently situations where a leader says, you know, I'm not really sure that  running this serving team is my thing. I think I'm a surveyor. And the visionary is like, no, man, you're almost there. And he's like, no, I've been here three quarters trying to beg you to let me out of this management job.

 

Ali Nasser  1:02:48

You nailed it, and the optimist in us, the optimist in us will always see what someone's best ability is, and back off, you just did this and this, you'd be there. And it's like, would you realize they've been working on this and this for four years now. And it's the same thing. And that's where the eternal optimist and the visionary come in. And that's why we need integrators is because I would do that with each. That's why I had all these team members longer than I needed because I kept seeing what they were capable of. And I kept believing and what they could do, but I wasn't being realistic about the results of their efforts. Now, if someone is making their results, and I've met every quarter, you have gotten better and better. And you are, hey, maybe they're there. They're capable of it. There's just a gap in skills, and then you need to be patient. But I think that's the exception, not the norm.

 

Mark  1:03:41

Well,  I think visionaries from the perspective, in particular, and ICS, and other people were just bad at sizing that we know there's a delta and we know we can figure out that there's a way to evolve, buy your way out of the problem with time, but we do a terrible job assessing how long that's going to take and at what cost. And the integrators gonna be a lot more pragmatic. It's like, we don't have six quarters to get this person to leave. We've got six weeks. And so yeah,

 

Ali Nasser  1:04:08

Yeah, you're spot on, man. It's painful. It's painful, and we feel it as a human. You know, like you mentioned the person that didn't want to let go of team members that that weren't performing. I mean, you just feel because you care. And I think that's that care that makes the business successful. But it's also that care that sometimes we have to put guardrails around in order to grow because care is important if you need it, but without guardrails, care can bankrupt the business.

 

Mark  1:04:35

Absolutely. Yeah, they go together. Absolutely. I mean, you can't you can't serve the cause if you're failing. You've got to know that there's been success and failure.

 

1:04:43

Is the whole ship sick, right? Stephen Covey. Right, no margin, no mission. Yeah, yeah, no. Yeah.

 

Mark  1:04:52

Well, man, time together. I love this. You shared so much. Anything you want to add to this?

 

Ali Nasser  1:05:00

From this particular content, yeah, no, no,  I think, from what I'm gathering with your audiences, it sounds like there are some visionaries that might need to bring in that integrator or let go a little more, just given the framework of what we've talked about. And one thing I would tell them is that if you're looking for confidence before you hire an integrator, you're probably not going to get it. And I'll tell you why. When we make a leap of faith, a lot of people see an entrepreneur who is so confident, they just leaped into their business and took this huge risk. It actually wasn't confidence that had us take the leap of faith to start our business, it was courage. We had the courage to take a leap of faith, that kind of jumping off a cliff, the first time you jump, you may have the courage to do it. But you don't have the confidence like you're terrified, right? But you jump, you have that courage to take that leap of faith, and then you hit the water, and you're like, I'm good. Now you're confident I just did, I'm gonna do it again. And again. And again. When you're hiring somebody, and you're letting go, you have to have enough courage to say, you know what, I've seen how this has worked for other firms. I believe in this person, all the checkboxes are there, I've got to have the courage to take a leap of faith and bringing somebody into my domain, to take the reins on some things, it takes courage. Once the person is on board, and you see the results, and you feel like you're being heard, and your vision is being implemented the right way, then you get the confidence. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs want that confidence first. And that's what gets them to not pull the trigger. And I can't tell you enough, that the same way you started your business, it's courage. If you have the courage to take that risk and hire that person, you're probably going to get a great outcome. And heck, if it's not the right person, you're probably going to know in 90 days and cut it off. And it's not even their full salary. It's 90 days of their salary, tax-deductible, it's a risk worth taking. You know, if you know you need it, you know, you need it and follow that courageous path to take that leap. That'd be my last. My last comment. Awesome.

 

Mark  1:07:19

I mean, I was gonna ask you what your passionate plea for entrepreneurship is right and around entrepreneurs is right now I kind of take that's it. Is that fair?

 

Ali Nasser  1:07:26

I think from this topic, for sure. For sure, yeah, I do have a passionate plea in general. But

 

Mark  1:07:35

Hit me with it. Do it on your passion, passionate freedom.

 

Ali Nasser  1:07:37

So I've had, I've had almost two decades of spending time with business owners, and what breaks my heart is how business owners that build successful companies, but never have a pathway to capture that success the right way, personally, and bring all the pieces together. And I watch businesses that grow to 50 million to 100 million of value and pass it on to the next-gen 80% of the time, it fails. They don't monetize the right way. They don't have perspective over how to capture that wealth and bring together their financial tax, leave all the pieces. And my passionate pleas so to speak is all of you business owners that have built successful companies that you have the cash flows that you once dreamt of, and you're building that thing, have a strategy, find that who you're talking about who versus Hi, found that who they can help bring all those pieces together and get you to capture your life's work. So that you can live the life experience that you want, whether that's a lifestyle, or travel or that life impact that you want, whether that's family or social or charitable like wealth is not the end, it's a means. And most business owners never figure out what that end is. And my passionate plea is to take that time to be intentional and have a plan for all that you've built. And bring those pieces together. You know, I've seen it for years, I've done it for years, I've seen the outcome of doing it versus not doing it and whether it's on your own or with an outside resource, or with us, like find that way to capture what you've built. That is my, my passionate plea and your words. 

 

Mark  1:09:19

I love it. And I agree and I've struggled with it. I think visionaries defer to the future, there's always more time, there's always a bigger opportunity. They'll sacrifice for the greater good investing in the future and on and on and on and on. I love that and I encourage people and I've been mentored on that and so I love it. Look man, this is an incredible conversation. If somebody wants to keep in keep in touch with you, keep track, and continue the conversation to some capacity. How do they find you?

 

Ali Nasser  1:09:46

Just the easiest way to connect with me is to hop on LinkedIn. Alia Nasser usually has a lot of us in the world. Put an Ali Nasser comma Houston and obviously Mark and I will be connected, but drop me a connection on LinkedIn and put in the message Mark Larry's podcast. So that I know. So we've got we know who you are and we can accept you and have you connect and anything that I can be a resource to or help on. I've got CEO job descriptions, integrator job descriptions, how I time it anything that could be helpful in this vi search or a resource, just drop it in the message. But make sure you put the Mark podcast in the LinkedIn connection. And that is the best way to connect with me. And from there, you can see anything we've got going on, but that's the best how

 

Mark  1:10:37

Awesome man. So we are out of time but this was pure gold. This is a blast that time flew by and we will have future conversations about all kinds of stuff. But everybody's listening to this. Please don't forget to subscribe and share it. If you  know somebody who can use this information. It's no good to them if they don't get a chance to listen to it. So get it in their hands for it to them. And also give us feedback. If this was good. We want to know about it. And if this is not what you were expecting, like we want to know that too. All the good and bad are so grateful. I'm so grateful to have that. That's it for our time. We'll see you next time you're doing it wrong with me. Mark Henderson Leary.

 

1:11:14

This is you're doing it wrong with Mark Henderson Leary for more episodes and to subscribe, go to leary.cc