Maceo Jourdan has a diverse range of entrepreneurial experiences under his wing. For one, he was the founder, Chairman, and CEO of Retire3 (R3) Publishing, a Phoenix-based publishing company that grew exponentially to a topline revenue of $48 million at the time of his decision to retire. Since his exit from R3, he has launched products in CPG, publishing, and healthcare, creating over $80 million in market capitalization for his companies in the last five years. With his wide-ranging career as an algorithmic trader, digital marketer, and CEO, he brings forth unique and exceptional post-transaction expertise.
There is true freedom that can be found in having processes. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not dehumanizing to have them in place. In fact, it actually has the power to amplify the humanness of your business. My good buddy Maceo Jourdan, who himself swears by the beauty of processes, joins me on the show today to talk about how it’s absolutely necessary to simplify with methodologies, building better habits, systemizing creativity, how to get started in crafting a process, and more.
1:08 Maceo shares how he got passionate about processes
3:10 What is a process?
10:46 The beauty of a process is that it forces you to become a good business owner.
15:48 You have to shrink your options to increase your creativity.
20:35 Processes don’t have to be micromanaging.
30:58 Process is a habit for a business.
36:25 Maceo talks about having a process for creativity and why it makes sense
43:27 Start simple.
47:50 Have fun with your processes.
49:14 Maceo’s passionate plea to entrepreneurs
“Integrate more impact to the world with your thinking”
GET IN TOUCH:
MARK LEARY:
www.linkedin.com/in/markhleary
www.leary.cc
MACEO JOURDAN:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/maceojourdan/
https://maceojourdan.com/
Production credit:
Engineering / Post-Production: Jim McCarthy
Art / Design: Immanuel Ahiable
August 25, 2021 | Wednesday
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
process, people, step, business, thinking, entrepreneurs, person, talk, creativity, literally, maceo, habit, training, humanize, methodology, problem, simplify, simple, big, lateral thinking
SPEAKERS
Mark Leary, Maceo, VO
Mark Leary 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 I have a passion, you should feel in control of your life. And so what I do is I help you get control of that business, that business that is, in most cases for entrepreneurs The best way to live their best life. And so one of the ways I help you do that is by letting you listen on these conversations about things you already know something about, but we're going to dig in and figure out some uniqueness and the details that help you unlock those secrets and kind of get past those spots, you're stuck. And so one of the things we're going to do is we're going to talk with my friend maceo Jordan, who is kind of passionate about processing the impact of that. And he's got a background in publishing and as a as an entrepreneur, you healthcare, just a great entrepreneur in general. And so a lot of diverse background. And so let's talk about process. maceo. How are you? How are you, man?
Maceo 00:55
I am, I'm good. The processes are running strong. Which funny the thing that unlocked my moving from wildly different industries was process. And I remember my, my, one of my first big businesses was just beginning to scale. And of course, like most entrepreneurs, I go to seminars and whatnot to figure out what's going on. And a guy on the stage was talking about process, I walked up to him after his talk and said, What the heck is a process? And he gave me this, you know, this look that I recognized. And I said, you're gonna tell me to go get some books. And I just walked off, I think he was flabbergasted right, that somebody would actually go do that. And you know, it's kind of self identify and realize that that's what they needed. And so I set off on this journey to understand what process was I got a guy to mentor me, he created two businesses that were making 100 and 100 million dollars in sales every year, meaning repeatable sales. Which is, which is something different than what most people talk about what most would most people say, yeah, create this business. And it's got 50 million in sales. That may mean they did 15 million total sales over 30 years. That may mean they did that once, but rarely have I seen a business that can, like year, year in and year out, produce that revenue. So here's the difference. 99% of businesses that I've worked inside have wake up every day, what I call broke, meaning they've got to kill something and eat it every single day. And that comes in the form of you know, usually Facebook marketing, or Google marketing or something like that. So truly, if entrepreneurs really want to create an asset, if if entrepreneurs really want to free themselves, in the sense of their business gives them freedom, you've got to start thinking in terms of processes, otherwise, you're just kidding yourself, you've got great ads, or you've got maybe a good digital agency, but you don't have a business, you can't walk away, there really is no freedom. You're just simply chained to it.
Mark Leary 03:00
Okay, so what does that mean? So when what how did you first start cracking open pry what's obviously a better question, what the hell is,
Maceo 03:09
right? So a process is a set of steps that you do in your business, to get some kind of result. So what that means is, you better understand what all the steps are in your business. Now, I know entrepreneurs are sitting there on the, you know, listen to this, either mistakenly thinking, Oh, I do that already. or thinking, well, that's impossible. And I assure you, it's not right, I have processed out marriage dating, I mean, literally, it doesn't matter what you want to do. I mean, if you want to process out how to be passionate, I have a process for how to be passionate. So anything that you can think of that we are going to do as human beings, you can break down into steps, so that you get a result, right, what a process does for you is number one, it makes you think about your business, it makes you think about your business and all of the different parts. And then it makes you think about, okay, how do I go from step one to step whatever 90, in order to get the result, let's say a coffee shop, it could be walking up to the coffee machine. You know, check to see if there's water, make sure that there's actually coffee somewhere around, make sure you've got a filter, you can you can kind of work through this in everyday life. And you can also start to get really fine grained where you can get into the quality of it, right, because with coffee, some experts would say Oh, it needs to be brewed at 190 degrees Fahrenheit. Exactly. You know, some people say, Oh, no, it's got to start out at 165 degrees Exactly. And go up to 190. Right. So you can even get into things like that, what's the quality, what affects the quality, and then most importantly, you actually have something that you can test a Against, to look at the outcome. And understand Am I getting the outcome that I want is I love this,
Mark Leary 05:08
this was worthy of a snapshot, okay to paint the picture you painted was not training. I mean, there's something you could train. But especially it really landed for me when you said we can test the outcome. It is it is higher level it is it is understanding the significant pieces of the process that are worth measuring. And it means if you're going to do that, you're going to have to simplify it, you're going to have to get it down to something is comprehensible, like your brain has built from a high level zoomed out understand the steps in your mind me the first time I didn't know this at the time. But looking back the first time I understood the importance of process was when a tech on my team, I ran an IT services company and the guy said, upgrading the server, the process stopped and it deleted the database. Okay. Are you going to restore the debate? Here's the database. No, unfortunately, there's no backup of the database. Okay, to help me understand what happened here? Well, I thought the backup had run. Okay, had it? No, there was a step missing in the process, check the backup before you run the upgrade. And and what's important about that is that I don't it's not important that I teach that individual how to check the backup, because if he doesn't know how to check the backup, and he gets to step three, and the step says check the backup, he knows it's a step. And you can say you know, can I get some help checking this backup, and we can solve for that. But if my process is either absent or missing Step three, he doesn't even know to ask, he doesn't even know that it's a step. And he sails right through it. And we have not measured a critical piece of the process, and we pay the price. And that's true. Actually what happened, that's a real case the database was lost, they lost all their email. That's End of story.
Maceo 07:03
Let's see, let's go. Let's go back to training, right? Most people, when they think about training, they're, you know, unfortunately, they're going to go to a seminar or something like that. And what I'm talking about is more fundamental like that, and more fundamental than that, you've got to think in terms of methodology. So in my world, methodology is the how you do something, I think everyone would agree if you're going to grow a business, you eventually are going to be training people. Most people don't think about how they're going to do that. And what winds up happening as a result is you get this tribal thing that goes on, right, you have silos of information. Some people know, you know, some people know how to backup the database. Some people know there is a database. I mean, it's it's very much in a in a subtle, sequestered area that most people don't have access to meaning like, literally, they're kept from it. Because, you know, people kind of do that they get territorial, or they're kept from it just by the nature of the work, right? They don't encounter it enough. They don't, you know, they don't go over there enough. So they think, oh, that's not my area, I don't need to worry about that. So if you have a methodology that says, we'll take let's take a page out of, you know, my buddies and Special Forces, when you get to Special Forces team, eventually you're going to be trained on every job in your 12. Man team. So you've got somebody who takes care of the weapons, somebody takes care of the explosives, somebody who handles the radio, somebody who handles the the medic duties? Well, eventually you're going to do all of that. Why would you do that? Well, because somebody might get shot. Let me just put it bluntly. Well, but in business, the equivalent of that is somebody calls in sick, you know, you've got a big client, a big project, somebody, you know, like, my car battery just died today. You know, somebody's car battery dies, and they literally can't get to the thing. What are you going to do? So if your methodology is that you cross train, yeah, maybe you won't do whatever you're trying to do at 100%. But it's going to be better than zero, which is what it would be had you not cross train. So all of that said, that that's a methodology of training, how we train is, everybody gets cross trained. Right? So with that methodology, you start solving for future issues, which are really the unforeseen, right was Donald Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld years ago, got made fun of quite a bit because he said is the unknown unknowns that we have to worry about? And of course, all the pinheads of the world are like, Oh, that's so stupid. When I heard it, I was like, exactly. So how do you transfer the unknown? Absolutely, how so in business, what what torpedoes a business is going to be the unknown unknown. The way you reduce the risk of unknown unknowns, is you have a robust training methodology. So you have cross training, you have written processes, and then in your trainings you train to the written process. So that you get the result, right. And then you have a feedback mechanism, what's the feedback mechanism? It would be during some kind of review with either a manager or you know, somebody and the person who's doing the process. You just look okay, how many times? Did we get the results that we wanted? You're going to have a number, then you look at, okay, how many times did we not get the result that we wanted? You're gonna have a number, go into the times that you didn't get the result? And then see what happened. What you're going to find out? If you, you know, kind of start, like most businesses do is that you weren't tracking, then you're going to realize, Oh, well, maybe we should track like, compliance, right? Did you follow all the steps? How do we do that? You have a webform? You know what I mean? So you, as the beauty of a process is it forces you to be a good business owner, meaning you're focused on what you're doing? And how do we deliver reliable results, now that you're trying to turn people into robots, but that you're giving people a way to express themselves and their artistry, but inside of boundaries, so that you can be sure to have that end result, which, by the way, is what clients want? Like no client in the world wants their email database, you know, deleted? You know, just 3% of the time, right? It's just 3%. It's like, No, I want 0% of the time, I lose my email database.
Mark Leary 11:20
Yeah, so that there's a lot goes into that. And so I actually want to kind of rerun through that as well. There's, there's two ways people can approve. See, Think about this. And one is, if you're in a relatively sophisticated already process oriented culture, say it's a healthcare organization, you've got process, right. So in what you described, let's just check, check and analyze the critical steps. And you want to minimize the choices and the phrase is escaping me right now. But it keeps coming up a lot about the tyranny, but it's the what's the issue? When you have too many choices? It's it comes up Dan pink talks. Oh, yeah, I've heard it. I've heard people talk about the ternary choice. Yeah, so I'm getting the phrasing wrong. But essentially, it's what you've got 20 options, you're likely to not make any choice. Yeah, you got two, three options, you're likely to make it make a choice quickly. And so if if you're, if you walk into a process in healthcare is a good example. So you are given a patient with a situation. And you you're having to figure out like what the next step is, Who should I bring into this? How do I diagnose? What's the first question I asked? You're all your brain cycles are going to figuring out the next step? And what's the next step? And what's the next step? If on the other hand, you are handed, here's the five step process, we collect this information, these are the questions you get these questions answered, and then you make a diagnosis. And you hand it off to one of two ways, and it's left or right. And then and once the process is simplified, all of those cycles, all that brainpower that you could be using now goes to what matters most. And that's making the best decision in the constraints you've got. And so that the essence of this is taking away all those damn variables that just are slowing people down and confusing people and give them back all that energy to make good decision. But I will get the other end of the spectrum on this is if you're a sophisticated process driven healthcare business, that makes sense to you, and you got a suicide attack team or something or the special project to kind of figure out what's going on and triage or whatever that makes sense. You just sort of assign an owner and go, if you're a company who's really new to process, you're imagining this training you described as two people walking into a room and material training materials and a test and a three week course. And it's like, I can't see that. For you, it might be 30 minutes with your sales rep, to go through the five critical steps of the sales process. And that might be your training. And so start somewhere and simplify it down to you know, three to seven, three to eight of you, that's your rule of thumb, by the way, the size, that size, a team size of process size, anything three to three to seven, three to eight, that's a very efficient number of things that than a human being can manage. So think of that in terms of process, think about like how do we how do we simplify this so people can remember the critical steps?
Maceo 13:54
Yeah, absolutely. So the I think the the deepest I got into this was my elearning company. And I hired a woman who actually did this did process for a living. And she had worked for several public publicly traded companies. And I told her I gave her the business total what we did, you know, introduce her to our stuff. And then I said now write me all the processes that you wish your CEOs would have done. And she came back with literally a complete diagram of the company he or she had she interviewed the employees figured out what the overall steps were interviewed me. And that's really I think one of the best ways to do it. Which by the way, that's not like a subtle pitch for my you know, business. I don't do that. The funny thing about this is everybody thinks, Oh, I'm not process oriented. What you're probably saying is in your daily life, you're not somebody that like regularly check stuff off. It would probably it's probably crazy for most people to think about neither am I. I can come up with processes. If you give me a you know, a problem or a business I can develop you a system suited In probably two hours, like it's how my brain works, I'm very fast at it. But I'm not the guy to like oversee it or design it for somebody in the sense that she did. And so she gave us all the, you know, the diagrams and everything else. So this, this is also not something that you need to burden your entire team with you. So what I wound up doing was dividing all the processes up the bias specific roles. So my graphic designer had his set of processes. Now that people might think that's a little bit crazy, like how can you give a designer limited choices? Well, that actually comes from Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, all the great artists in the past knew that you had to shrink your options to increase your creativity. Yeah. So if if you've got 90 different ways to draw a human hand, it's probably not going to come out so well. But if you've got one way, when
Mark Leary 16:00
you're stuck drawing a human hand, and you get the whole rest of the thing you do,
Maceo 16:03
you got the Sistine Chapel, it's like, come on, Michael, you've been on the hand for like three weeks. So you can, Michelangelo knows, based on the proportions of the human body, how to appropriately draw the thing. Because in that instance, processes are there to get a result, the result that he needed was that the people who commissioned him would look up at the ceiling and be able to identify people, right? They didn't need Picasso to have you know, an ear five feet away in a shape, you know, a head that was kind of the kind of looks like a clown. That's not what they wanted. Right? So again, this is it, this is very much bottom up thinking, start with your customer. What does your customer want? How do you reliably deliver that? then break what they want into pieces? If it's a physical thing, how now we're in the manufacturing process? And so all the engineers like, yeah, amen. But then you have to also think, okay, but what about the delivery? What about the timing? What about the vendors? What about the sales people, right? So you can begin to chunk outwards? And they're saying, Yes, as an engineer, you're delivering a physical product into somebody's hands, but somebody's got to sell that product. So then you have to think about, okay, if there's what's the lead time on sales, once you sell something, and then you deliver it to the factory, what's that lead time. So then, as an engineer, you can stop only thinking about the one object that you're supposed to make and deliver. And instead think of it as part of the overall system, which is really the the bigger piece of this is, once you've broken your company down into individual processes, all the steps that you need to do to deliver your thing, what you'll have is a system, alright, so business is a system of processes. Once you chunk up to that level, as an entrepreneur, that's where my opinion, the real meat is, particularly if you want to grow and, and build a really big business, because you'll start to think about the way your company interacts. And then you as a leader, will then have your processes, right, meaning you can go to somebody whose job is to, you know, run manufacturing. And you're going to be able to think about manufacturing, as it relates to sales as a delivery as it relates to your deliverables, right, you're getting crap shipped to your factory, when, like, when do you need it? How many do you need? And then how do you integrate the pieces really becomes magical from the leadership standpoint at that point?
Mark Leary 18:39
So So let's talk about the magic. So even going back to the Michelangelo analogy, a lot of people I talked to in the early stages Do they have a fear of that process is going to humanize the business. And we see the exact opposite of that. And I think about like, we take away options, we need ability to have flexibility. Well explain. Show me Show me artists whose name most people know, who are historically significant, who were versatile to do anything. That's not it. These are the artists we remember, they're artists that were in Super inspirational, how to style they had a way and they weren't trying to be like each other. They had their thing and so you don't need to be able to do anything you need need to be able to do your thing at the highest level. And to making it make it real practical. When I talk about process, I always refer to the Four Seasons approach, which is you must systemize the predictable, so you can humanize the exceptional. And that is you know, if you need to know your client's preferences for wine or not drinking, you should ask that question. And that's a process. The human aspect of that is what's the answer? do how do you fulfill their preferences and if you if you haven't built into the process that at check in and you've got a database and you've got a way that no Anybody in the hotel can look at their phone or the kiosk and find out this person doesn't drink or whatever the preferences. That's a process that allows people to exceed beyond comprehension, the the exceptional ability for human to really do something powerful with that. So they have to go together, you can be artful, creative, powerful human, by simplifying the parts of the process that just don't need to be discussed. And there's a handful of them that you could really make automatic and give people back their creativity and their ability to contribute.
Maceo 20:35
Yeah, right. And processes don't have to be micromanaging. Right? So in the Ritz Carlton, they basically divided up all of their responsibilities to floors. So everybody that's on a particular floor, that's their zone. And basically, each floor sometimes in some hotels or properties, individuals will have the authority to spend up to $2,000 to make something right for a customer. So the very simple processes, you know, when problem occurs, spend up to 2000 to fix it. That is a process. It's got two steps in it.
Mark Leary 21:16
it's crystal clear. Absolutely, absolutely empowering, with a lot of without right question, lots of options.
Maceo 21:23
Yeah. Which I mean, that includes running down the street going to Tiffany's, you know, I mean, it's like, as long as it's less than two grand, I don't care where they happy. So what's the result? The customer says, I'm happy? Nope, it's as simple as that with the process. Now, I do want to want to give a cautionary tale. What drives me nuts about American Express, is, when I call with a problem. There people are obviously reading off of a script. So let's talk about dehumanizing. Here's how you dehumanizing a process. Call Center employee answers the phone via computer on the computer screen is their process, ie a script, that person then reads, Oh, I'm sorry, maceo, that you are having this problem? We will endeavor to fix it today. Which is how they basically sound I mean, because you know, these people are they're not native English speakers, probably. You know, so sometimes they get the inflections wrong. But there's a lot that goes into that, you know, using using other cultures, especially when talking about scripting. But the main dehumanizing thing is, as the customer, I could care less if you're, you know, a Filipino, you're in India, I don't care. What I care about is that you really care that I've got a problem. And when I hear you reading a script, and every time I call in, it's the same script, I know that this person who's talking to me doesn't really care. And in fact, sometimes I'll even say that to them. You'll say, Well, I know you don't really care. But here's my problem. And on occasion, the other person on the other line will kind of laugh, right? Because they know that they're just reading a script. So that is exactly what most people think about when they think about process that, yes, that's a process. Yes, a script is a process. And that's process done badly in a really big organization. Yeah, so even an Amex, you don't know how many billions they've gotten in the bank. But they still do it wrong. But here's why they do it wrong. They do it wrong, because the management never calls in with an actual problem. Right? So if I, if I'm in an emotional state where I'm upset, what I want you to do is authentically empathize with me if you're going to go there at all. Right? So that in English or so to a native English speaker be something like Oh, man, maceo. That's, that's horrible. Right. And so what's happening is that the person who is saying that is actually picturing an experience that they had, right. So, like I said, I could process anything. So if you want the process for empathy, when someone comes to you with a problem, then on the step one on your person sheet should be think of a time when you had a similar problem. Pause. Now read this. It I'm telling you just that simple thing will change everything,
Mark Leary 24:19
because I've gotten those call or I've made calls and it's like, oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Leary. I'm sorry to hear that you are suffering with such this difficult situation. It sounds very horrible for you. Please hold on what?
Maceo 24:35
Exactly right. Very close. Exactly. Right. It's just this and I, you know, I know the person on the other end of the phone doesn't want to be that way. So anyway, like I said, I could process anything out it because it is possible, right? As humans, we we live our life in in discrete steps, right? We go from one thing to the next. And so what we're really what we're tapping into is something that we You automatically, but the example that I gave is a way to really unlock thinking about process. Yeah. And then also understanding how to train for process.
Mark Leary 25:11
Right? Yeah. So the training example I was, when I talked to people about process, I tried to make a distinction between work instructions and process and an even procedure for that matter. And so in I've loosely copied that what I believe are somewhat standardized definitions of those two, and processes as you're describing sort of these checkpoints, procedures, and sort of like, you know, there's there's a few bullets, there's a kind of as a way, this is done as a sequence of each of the steps. And work instructions is really down to like, this is where you enter their name and type their name here, and this is the website you go to. And, and that's important for training when you're ready for it. And it sounds kind of like, you know, in those call center situations, they've given given them some work instructions that we don't particularly like. And so I think I would like them to improve that. But we're talking to entrepreneurial companies now who have the ability to avoid that pitfall. And they probably don't have the level of scale that's going to require them to prescribe work instructions have that detail, and they're gonna get a lot of bang for the buck out of process, which is, you know, here's the step, here's when you find out you have empathize with them, you know, reflect back to them what you've heard. And that's the end of the details, right? Because if you say, like, reflect back to them what you think you've heard in your own words, like most people, if they're, you know, in this in the same culture as the, as the caller, they're going to be able to figure something out about that. Right. And so what what is going back to the concept of what is process I kind of listened to you described, you know, there's some, when people are thinking they don't really follow a process, and they're in their life and I not process oriented people, are you everybody is whether they know it or not. And I started by maybe I just sort of challenged myself to figure out why that would be the case. And here's what I came up with, that we're all creatures of habit, the data, and we're all creatures of habit, and habits happen in sequence, our thoughts happen in sequence, when something happens when somebody cuts us off in traffic, we automatically think they're bad drivers, and we automatically do something. And that's kind of out of our control. As much as we like to think that we can, that we're, we're really conscious in those moments, the odds are really high. We're not suffering from consequences of all of our past history. So habit is something if you want to develop yourself, you've got to sort of figure out what habits are better for you. And if you want to study habits, I'm happy to talk about that. It's a phenomenal subject. But to me, the light went on with a process is a habit for your organization that is intentionally built to provide a very specific outcome. And so if you want things to automatically get that specific outcome, design the habit, make it simple, make the sequence of events very predictable, and you have the opportunity to intervene and tell people what is step two look like when we typically get the best results, and make it possible that success is no longer an accident, and give people back the best fighting chance of having a great outcome.
Maceo 28:07
So I'll I'll give a process for lessening your road rage. Hmm. All right. In fact, just yesterday, I was driving get my daughter from daycare. And here's what drives me nuts. People that are in double turn lanes, right? So there are two lanes that can turn right. And so people that are in like the right most lane. So imagine you've got two lanes, one, one on the left one on the right, you turn and then the people on the right one across like four lanes of traffic, my thinking is to just get in the friggin left lane. Right, then you're not like jamming in between everybody. That's that is the way to get maceo into road rage. Which of course is like a judging everybody else. Right? They should imagine
Mark Leary 28:53
that you do it like I do. I'm not having I'm not having any trouble imagining you in road rage face. That's not it's not. It's not a stretch.
Maceo 29:01
So here's I break through that. When somebody is cutting over, and you're they're wanting basically, you know, as part of it is I don't like being controlled. And so somebody is now forcing me to put on my brakes. I didn't want to put on my brakes in that moment, man. So what I do is, like I said, with the rep manager imagining a certain situation, what I'll do is imagine a time where I was that person, you know, I was late for something I was rushing. You know, I had an emergency. And so what's amazing about this is as soon as I do that, all of that angsting anger just disappears. Well, why? Well because I've just empathized with where that person may be I mean that effect that turn actually yeah, most people are trying to go into a hospital. This is the level of my ignorance towards other people's plates. They're probably going there because like someone's on their deathbed. You know what I mean? I don't care. Get in the left lane dude, plan dinner. Yeah, exactly. plan better when you're going to somebody, you know, death throes. Oh my goodness, the better process. So anyway, that's how blind I can be personally, I see that once, once I get into that situation, and I go through that process or that habit, I now release it. Well, what's what's amazing about that is I've started to do it earlier in my drive. Right? So I tend to drive fast, which you can probably imagine. So, my habit now is, as I'm getting on the freeway, you know, maybe doing a little bit over the speed limit just a couple of miles, you know, nothing excessive, of course, I started thinking, I start prepping myself, right. So I started thinking about those other kinds of situations, meaning, you know, the times that I was able to think about somebody else's situation when they were trying to, quote unquote, cut me off. And so again, when we're talking about, you know, process is a habit for a business. You can also think the reverse, right? a habit is a process where a person is what my point in this is, you can harness the power of this kind of thinking for quite literally every aspect of your life, right. So if you're a typical guy, you're going to get off of work, you're not going to take any time to decompress. You're literally walking in carrying whatever else you know you had with you. And so you may not show up as the best possible version of yourself as the way we like to say today to your kids, your spouse, right? Yeah, not the best possible not yours. All right, it's an understatement. For sure, yeah, you can access the same thing in that moment, with with a similar process. So it could be you know, whatever your pet peeve is, like, maybe you want to come in, you just want to sit down or you want to do something. And somebody interrupts that, if you, especially if it's your kids, if you access some of your memories, like in your need to go to painful memories, but if you access some of your memories, like when you were excited for your mom or your dad to come home, like that feeling that you if you access that in that moment, let me tell you what you are going to be a completely different person, it like in an instant, as we're getting into that product into that process, that habits, you don't need, like you don't need a ton of prep, you don't need, you know, 57 years of therapy, you can literally do this in that moment. But then, of course, the process would be, you know, when family member comes up excited, access, you know, memory of being excited when you were a kid, your body and your brain is immediately going to feed you that information. So what's that information, the feeling, the joy, you know, the wonder, the excitement, the togetherness, all the things that we talked about, that, you know, breed intimacy, and breed good marriages and good families. So the beauty of processes is, rather than being constrained thing, if you think about it in the in terms that I just described, the process is actually what unlocks all of that freedom and all of that creativity. So I think too often is entrepreneurs. You know, we we tend to think that we've got our business over in one corner, and we've got our family in another corner, we've got our friend somewhere else. I'm saying no, humans are humans, wherever you are. So if you if you can perform in your business, you can take the skills that you're learning over there and apply them directly in your family, you can apply them with your friends and your sports teams. And overall, not only is your performance going to be better, but your your relationship relationships are going to be better. And you are going to become a better leader in your environment. Because it's just obviously this is a big deal for me, but I mean, yeah, this is a truly magical thing.
Mark Leary 33:48
No, I love it. And it is some light bulbs are going off for me, because I've said so many times that this is a way to humanize the process. But what I realized I stopped short of is that if you've never done it, you don't know what the process steps could really look like. And one of the things that you're highlighting brilliantly is that you get to choose what the step is. And you can choose a very intentionally humanizing step if that's what you need, or you can do something very procedural if that's what's appropriate as well. And you can triage and you can approve and you cannot approve and you can do things that need to be happened and a decision decisive does admit them hit the metrics if we're going to approve alone does it need to hit some metrics and there's no human component that that might be part of the process or you might really put a human part of the process because you if you really need creativity, you can put the step that says ideate you can you can say get in a room with three other creative people for one half hour and this and and brainstorm ways to solve a problem. If you're in a design firm, you have a crystal you have a clear you need a clear process to get somebody a proposal on time with a price that makes sense you have no you have no choice about having a process. And so, of course intuitively saying it now, you one of your steps in the process would be get creative. And maybe you got to say between one day in three weeks was going to take us to create the creativity but but in but you size that and make sure that that general needs to happen at step two. And after step two goes to step three, someone has to go and price it. Yeah, you got to price it. So what you decide what's in the recipe, this is about understanding that especially if there's a human process, especially or human element that needs to be in there, you need to make sure it's always there. And make sure that if it's a critical ingredient had never gets stepped or it never gets skipped over. And it's an it's protected, especially if it's something that is judgment related like that. So I love what you're doing with that.
Maceo 35:46
And you probably wouldn't be shocked, I've actually got a process for creativity too. Which, which here's this, it drives creative people nuts. But the drives him nuts because a certain portion of what they want is to mystify their creativity. And what they believe is that if you if you make it mundane, that it somehow takes away from from there being a quote unquote creative. Now that's a really esoteric, you know, thing. It's very tribal. Again, it's how human beings are and so I get why creatives don't like me talking about it. But Edward de Bono is the the author's name. He's got a wealth of books on this, so I won't, I won't pretend to be the expert that he is, I was actually trained in some of his techniques really young. One of the easiest and best is called the thinking hats, which is literally process for creativity. He uses different colors for the hats isn't seven hats. Is it seven hats. It could be mine hats as if I cut it down, right? I use about three of the hats, okay, just because it's like, okay, you don't need and he even says it in his book, he's like, let me give you a complete system, you can, you know, pick and choose what you want. That's all use the thinking hats as a concept. Another way to think about it is lateral thinking, if you really want to make it simple. Here's all you have to do. Because break, I hate brainstorming, I'll just say that upfront, because not everybody deserves to have an opinion. In brainstorming, I love it. If you have people who are qualified to have an opinion, what you do is get them to come up with the craziest idea first, doesn't matter if it's going to work. So the reason why you want to start with people who, you know, have the experience to have an opinion, is you're going to get you're going to get crazy ideas, but crazy ideas that actually might work. Whereas with inexperienced people, it's like you get a lot of stuff that's just like, okay, that's never gonna work. Like no matter what we do is never gonna work. So well actually,
Mark Leary 37:50
I think it's a packaging thing. Sometimes the expertise is knowing how to tie it down. So it the experience is like my idea is no more or less crazy than the inexperienced, inexperienced person. But when the inexperienced person describes it, it has it's like not packaged, digestible, the experienced person can say, and here's kind of why this could work. And so that that's Don't underestimate the importance of the believability. Could be I'm not, I'm not so all right, again, I am. First my personal experiences, I'll tell you my personal experience, I've dismissed a lot of ideas, some people who package their ideas, and I'm like, you're not right, that couldn't be possible, you don't have the credibility to do that, only to find out that I was wrong. And so what I what I learned in that those people who really have the experience, they have a better vernacular, they have a better way of describing things. And they can bring more nuance, and maybe that's just my personality, I have a complexity bias. And so what I do a lot is help people simplify that because I have the complexity disease, I can see all the neat nuance and details and, and science and technology. And in sophisticated complex businesses have a lot of details. And so a powerful discipline is to simplify that. So if I'm in a complex mindset, and somebody brings me a simple solution, I'm like you're out of touch. So a really experienced creative person in that space can bring with it the credible details that allow me to say like, Alright, this is this is in a context that's relevant, you're not completely clueless to what we're trying to do here. I don't see it quite landing yet, but but you at least earn more airtime for me. And then and then we can go from there. But the person who shows up with no contextual nuance I'm not listening to I'm not good. That's a weakness of me.
Maceo 39:34
Well, the lesson there is don't invite maceo to your brainstorming sessions. Anyway, again, the the simplest process for creativity is start with the craziest ideas first, and this actually is from one of the Bono's books called lateral thinking. Right. So what he what he does in the lateral thinking book is unpack like what is creativity? Can we really understand it? And obviously, you're gonna Get people from all camps. De Bono's position, and obviously mine as well, you know, for the most part, like 80% of creativity is going to be in lateral thinking, you know, how can you run something out to some extreme? How can you go to some, some crazy level and then from there come backwards. What you wind up doing is you you, you have a simple process for thinking outside the box. Right? The problem was saying that, you know, in these seminar cliches just drive me nuts, it sounds great from the stage, I'll just think think outside the box. That's not how human beings are, like, are we are designed to be in boxes, because the world is sharp, it has teeth, and you can fall and kill yourself. And so you don't want to think outside of the box. In a world like that. You want to be very much boxed in, because that's how you stay alive. So we have to be very deliberate about thinking outside the box. But that doesn't mean that it's super complex. Just go with something go as far afield as you can, I tend to do something that's really silly first, because I think humor unlocks a lot of creativity as well. So that's where like, it's counterintuitive, where if I'm in a brainstorming session, I'm going to when I start I'm going to start throwing out like really stupid and silly stuff. So you might say, well, maceo, doesn't that mean, you're not qualified? You know, aren't you giving stuff that's not going to work? It's like, Well, yes, for a specific purpose. So again, the rule here is, don't invite maceo to your brainstorming session, but start with lateral thinking, because that's Edward de Bono's idea that my idea
Mark Leary 41:37
was it I've seen methodology around innovation that is based on the idea of start with the opposite of what you think works. And and what you find is when you literally reverse it, you fail, and you know, people want to have fresh food delivered quickly. And okay, well, people want non fresh food delivered slowly, like what is that? All? Maybe somebody wants a frozen meal scheduled weeks in advance? For some reason? Oh, my God, nobody's doing that. Like, what is the utility of that? And so so just you know, that's, that's the idea of really getting outside the box, intentionally create some integrate some new context and maybe possibly what they call remote associations. And these idea of like, linear thinking of what we're trying to do is adjacent thinking we're trying to improve a little bit and what's kind of in the ballpark? And step one, step two, step three, maybe we can add a step 2.5. You know, that's really linear thinking, remote associations, what's what is the relationship between the price of bitcoin and an AR, you know, healthcare, like, I have no idea like, suddenly, there is actually something there and right remote associations are those lightbulb powerful moments that most of which are useless. But occasionally, they're life changing.
Maceo 42:54
I don't know me started on quantum entanglement, and, and all of that. But I mean, their
Mark Leary 43:00
topic topic for another day. So hold on to that, you know, right there, we might do that another day, for sure. So, actually, we're getting on time here. So we've covered quite a lot. What have we missed? What else you want? Make sure we get into this conversation, because I've actually got some notes that I think I would would bring up in future conversations and might exceed our time right now.
Maceo 43:17
Well, I mean, there's obviously a lot to unpack. But I think out of everything, you want to start simple, right? So to cap this all off, you don't, don't start off with these really complicated systems, or even think that you need complicated systems. It's literally sitting down with someone here. Here's the test that Scott gave me when he was training me and this is it, you go through the process, first, write down all the steps, and then sit down with someone that's never seen it before. And just hand them the steps, resist the urge to give them any coaching or any help. And then see what they come back to you with. If you if you want a simple process for testing your process, it's that so step one, you go through all the steps necessary to get the result. Right, those steps now, at some point, either while you're doing it, or after whatever, hand those steps to somebody who's never seen it, never done it. Don't coach them, and just wait to see what they give you. And Scott said, Look, if they give you something that's about 80% of you know what you could do being the person that knows it, then he said, you're done. Like, don't tweak it, don't try and because the juice that you get out of the remaining 20% isn't enough to justify the effort. Because remember, processes are there, so that you get freedom, right, the last thing you want to do is to start getting chained down and become a slave to your process.
Mark Leary 44:44
Now I love that actually, that's a big lightbulb for me too. Because I talked about the 2080 it's you know, 20% of the processes drive 80% of the value. So let's start there. If you go 100 100 you're never gonna finish, but I think you're exactly right with the perfectionist thinking like you're actually not Going to be inefficient with your time, you're going to start taking out valuable autonomy. You actually want people to have to figure that last 20% out. That's their magic, right?
Maceo 45:10
Yep, absolutely. And that's where you get something improved. And there might be some steps that, you know, you brushed over, that actually works better for somebody else. But it's also some of it's also in the quality of the results, right? So at what the 80% means is, did they get 80% of you know, whatever your 100% is, you know, so if there's an actual rating system, obviously, that would be like a four star instead of a five star, right? So what this what it forces you to do is to have some kind of measurable thing at the end. So what would 100% be? And then, you know, if you don't really know how to get to 80%, look, just pick it, right? Pick something that would be about 80%. So it's, again, you don't don't try and we don't really get it exactly right.
Mark Leary 45:58
If you said I think better what I was trying to say, it's your 100%, give them 80% of you, and let them add their 20%. So it's now they're 100%. And that's how you personalize humanize, empower and really build something that is scalable, and real.
Maceo 46:16
Yep. And that comes down to scripting, you know, especially sales scripts, cuz sales, people hate scripts, you know, so you definitely don't want to get 100% there. But even if you're talking about like, let's, I'll leave people to hopefully, with a simple example, let's look at Starbucks. So in Starbucks, you may not process out making coffee all the way to the point where, you know, you you write somebody's name on the cup, and you put a little smiley face. But let's so let's say you left that out, well, what that leaves then is, an employee can do that, you know, they can write the name, and they can put a smiley face or a flower or whatever they want. It's, that would be a version of 8020. So you could say, well, my 100% is they better have a sticker, and a flower and a smiley face if you don't have that. That's not 100% was like, dude, you want stickers and flowers and smiley faces maybe shareen. And john don't maybe john wants to put a little army guy in a, you know, shooting somebody, I mean, that might be a little bit hostile for
Mark Leary 47:16
Starbucks, but you get the point how many how many pieces of flair how many flair is enough flair, if you see office space, or if you prescribe the number of pieces of flair anymore.
Maceo 47:30
crusted with this, like you can't even hold on to it. So that of course, if I were brainstorming, that'd be like, we have to put like 5000 you know, little sticky beads on this cup of coffee, I want them to have to hold it with two hands. You know, as they carried away, we want massive bling. Anyway, that and I think lastly would be to have fun with it, you know, the lateral thinking especially like if, as you're thinking about these process, the main idea, you know, is introduce some fun, some levity. You know, as as crazy as I may sound sometimes, you know, humor, having fun is, you know, really a big part of thinking creatively, and also being open to possibility. You know, so we're talking about entrepreneurship, right? I mean, if anything encapsulates possibilities, entrepreneurship, the way you are, if you want to process that out is come to work. Come to situations with more humor and levity. And you're going to find yourself more creative, you're going to find yourself you know, falling into more opportunity and possibility it again, it's magical.
Mark Leary 48:30
You're exactly right and your version of fun. Your version of levity is for you to decide your culture has some stuff that's rewarding to it, they build it in, you know this sometimes creation of processes a little bit of a grind, it means sometimes workshopping and processes slow and unfun process, but you're committed to that process should be make sure what we ended up with rewards the people who use it and use it Have fun is absolutely an entitlement. If you want more quality, more consistently lower cost more profit, and more fun for your team because you need people to enjoy the work, man great stuff. We've covered a ton of stuff. What is your a truly I love it? What is your passionate plead entrepreneurs right now? Wow, passionate plea. Do you can you muster some passion? Can you can you dig down and find some passion for me?
Maceo 49:22
You know, my, my passionate plea would be to, in integrate, integrate more impact on the world into your thinking. Entrepreneurs think way too small. You know, that could be you're getting kids into your business. It could be conservation, it could be ecology, but it entrepreneurs think so much on their business. We forget how wide our impact can go. And entrepreneurs we also see problems everywhere. So the last thing would be when you find yourself complaining about something more than two or three times, start with looking in the mirror. Think about how you not that you're going to solve the whole thing because we're not you know, Dr. Doom, we can't just take over the world as much as I would like to. Yeah, but but we can start with responsibility. Like, what can I do to do that? So I'll give you a real weird, real weird one. Okay, good. I wear I wear my socks and my blue jeans for like, basically a week. Why would I do that? Yeah, cuz we're gonna do that friggin drought in Arizona man. Like our if you look at Lake Powell, one of the biggest reservoirs of water in Arizona, it's it levels like we have literally haven't physically seen in 150 years. Well, so I can talk about that and complain about that. So well, California is taking our water and those dang hippies, whatever. But if I'm also, you know, like, washing my clothes five times a week, if I've got my grass getting watered every day, because I like the way my lawn looks. If I'm not doing something about that, then I'm the one that's contributing to it. And so that that kind of thinking, if you bring that into your business, in the sense of what can you do to change the world, I don't care how small your business is, or how small you think your business is, you have no idea the impact that you can have. So stop thinking of yourself so lightly, entrepreneurs are quite literally how this country was built. Contrary to what Obama said, the government is not why we are where we are. We are here as the greatest country on the face of the planet. Because entrepreneurs were innovating. They were doing the you know, the plumbing and the electricity, just like, you know, they were also doing the trains and, you know, building bridges all the way from the big to the small, is that entrepreneurship that creates jobs entrepreneurships that create opportunity. It's entrepreneurship that gives people the ability to lift themselves out of the muck in the mire. I mean, what we do is absolutely revolutionary. And so I would implore you to start thinking of yourself in that way, but in a way then your obligation is to have a bigger impact on the world because you are one of these people that can't be an entrepreneur. It's like you're a freakin superhero. start acting like it.
Mark Leary 52:14
Awesome. I love the lead like it matters because guess what it does? It does awesome stuff. So man, if somebody wants to continue the conversation with you find out what you're doing keep up with you haven't what's the easiest way to keep to find you what when we'll have some details in the show notes. But what's the simplest way to find him
Maceo 52:32
maseo Jordan calm, you can get in touch with me, I actually spent some money to make it look a little bit better than the author website it was. And if somebody wants to connect with me, you know, I'm on Twitter, Max, you're on there a little bit. That's at maceo Jordan calm and then finally connected, calm. You know, that's our, that's our healthcare company that we're currently raising money for.
Mark Leary 52:52
Awesome, awesome stuff. Well, but that's our time for today. We will see you next time. This is Don't forget, of course, if this was useful to you valuable, share it with friends, share with people who you think could get some value out of this because if this is useful, and the people who could use it aren't in possession of it. It's no good. We got to share it information. So do that. And of course provide some feedback good and bad. We'd love to hear everything and helps us be better. It feeds our ego when you say something nice and it helps us improve the content and quality when you tell us something real about what you what you don't like as well. So that's it for today. And we'll keep this rolling and see you next time on you're doing it wrong with me marking.
VO 53:28
This is you're doing it wrong with Mark Henderson Leary for more episodes and to subscribe, go to lyric.cc