Well, welcome. This will be a discussion around something that is very near and dear to my heart, and that is our values. And, and I think that, long ago several years ago, I had a Vistage speaker come in, and he said something. It was actually funny because he was speaking about strategy, and we got into this discussion around culture and values. And I believe for him, it was kinda like a throw away remark. He did it wasn't really central to his presentation, but he said your values aren't your values until they cost you something. And that just stuck with me, and I've used it over and over and over and over again. And and I hear in the work that I do, I hear lots of people and lots of companies talk about values, mission, and vision.

Now we have to recognize that most of the time, that's what we do with them. We talk about them, And we fail to understand the leverage that having values provides when we're trying to build something that's scalable and sustainable. They're they're actually tools that need to be used and operationalized, not just words. Now here's here's what values aren't. They are definitely not something to be painted on a wall. They're not something to be used as marketing. They're not something that we need to hand out to people. Now you can, that but that's not the objective.

They're also not a project for the leadership team to do and check off their box. It's not just, oh, we got values. We're done. We did the mission and vision. We're done. I can't tell you how many times I've walked into an organization, and I've had a meeting with the leadership team. And I've asked them, do you guys have values, company values? Do you have mission and vision? And they all nod. And then I say, okay.

What are they? And everybody at the table kinda stumbles and mumbles, and they all go searching through their notes for something. To which I say, okay. Understand. Not not a problem. But let's just say you don't have any at this point. Because if if the leadership team doesn't know them kinda right off the bat and can't isn't using them every day, then they they they might as well not have them. Alright? Because these things are meant as, they're they're really points of leverage in an organization, and I'm gonna I'm gonna explain what I mean by that. But the other reason I say that we shouldn't put them on a wall is is based not on my understanding, but I also, and I'll put this in the show notes so you have the link.

It's, Andrew Huberman's podcast. And he he says that anything in our in and he's a, doctor of ophthalmology, I think, as as well as a neuroscientist. But he said that, science will tell you that anything that is repetitive in our visual field, we ignore after a couple times of seeing it. And so, for instance, one of the companies or several of the companies that I've, that I've asked this question to actually have their values painted on the wall when you walk in the office. So all of the people sitting at the table walk by that wall every day, and those things are big on that wall. They're not, you know, painted small. They're they're, you know, 12, 18 inches tall, and yet none of them knew what they were. Now this this is also back to the theory of I'm gonna put my goals on a sticky note and put them on my bathroom mirror or whatever, and that'll help me achieve my goals, which is also a fallacy.

Now what Huberman does say is that if you move those every couple days to a new spot, okay, that'll help you because it's new in the visual field. But if it's on your bathroom mirror after about the 3rd day, you're not even your your brain is not seeing it. It's comp it's it's normal in that field, and it's it's a routine that it doesn't notice anymore. So when I say don't put them on the wall, don't I'm not meaning you should never do that. I think that the best way that people can leverage values is to use them. And I tell everybody that that I work with, if you're gonna have company values, which mission and vision are important, I will say people spend kind of far too much time arguing about which is which, mission and vision. They're like, was that the mission or the vision? I prefer to go with purpose. So I prefer to have in a company, I prefer to have values and purpose.

Why do we exist? It's easier. Right? But for a human, for an individual, I think there's 3 things. We need values, we need whatever our intention is, and we need to have a shared vision of the future with those that we care most about. Those are the three things I think we need. And and I think the lack to be honest with you, I think the lack of having clarity around this as a hue as an individual, as a person. Every person should have these down for themselves. I really think this is why we see so many people moving from job to job. And my rationale for that is that if I join a company and I haven't really clearly defined my own values, my own intention, and my and my my vision of my future state, my my vision of my future reality with those I care about, then when I go into an organization, am I adopting theirs? Like, is that the theory? The theory is I'm just gonna align with whatever they believe.

And what what my belief is, and this isn't scientifically proven, is that oftentimes what happens is we work for somewhere and after a series of after after some months of being there, we start to feel like there's a mismatch. And it's typically around these things. There's a mismatch in your values. Now you haven't declared your values, but remember this, if you're gonna write down your values, you're not creating them. You're simply getting still, getting quiet, and asking yourself what you already believe. There your values are already there. You can look in your past behaviors and you can find your values because you behave in a way that aligns with your values. That's what values are.

So this isn't an effort of creating ones. It's an effort of thinking about what they are so that you can actually write them down and codify them. But if you haven't done that and something happens at the company, it's typically the we get crossways with values. Somebody did something that is contrary to what we value or an intention that we have about what we want or our our shared vision of the future. And most often, people are gonna leave organizations when those things don't match. So what we could do on the front end as a person to take some personal accountability for this and really drive this process is be clear on those things and then make sure that they at least align with the company that you're gonna go to work for. They don't have to match exactly, but they have to at least align so that you're striving towards that same future. Because ultimately, you are inviting them in to somehow be part of your future vision for yourself, your shared reality.

Typically, if before you work for a company, you're gonna have that with your spouse, with your family, with your friends, whatever that group might be, the people that you care most about. And then at some point, yours needs to align with where you want to work so that you're both moving in that same direction so that the organization's vision of the future includes you, includes what you want, and is moving you closer to your shared vision. Again, none of these have to be the exact same. They just have to be in alignment. Because when you're out of alignment, that's when things go haywire. That's when we feel like things aren't right. And so I I think that it's really hard to make a decision if I wanna work for a company if I haven't really thought about those things. Otherwise, I'm making a decision based probably on salary, I'm guessing, Or if I can work from home or some other not unimportant component, but ultimately not the thing that's gonna drive me to stay there.

Those are important. They should be part of the conversation, but those should be the secondary things after we have the fit, after we have alignment. And this and and I have to make sure too that we that we take the accountability for this. Right? This is on us as people. We can do this. We we don't have to rely because absent that, we're relying on somebody else's values, somebody else's vision of the future, somebody else's intention. And it isn't a business exercise. That's the other thing.

When I work with companies, this is not a business exercise. This is a human being exercise. And it is one of the toughest ones that people do, and I know this for a fact because I've worked with a number of companies where we've gone through the we've either started because they had no values, they didn't have any values that they had shared with anybody, or they had ones that were not a fit anymore, and we redid them. And it is labor intensive. It's a heavy lift. It's frustrating. It isn't quick. People get aggravated.

They wanna just okay. Just let's just use these and move on. They wanna get out of the discussion, and they wanna get out of it because it's meaningful. It's important. Because once we have those, again, I wanna go back to a leverage point. This goes, you know, macro, micro because I believe Miyamoto Musashi, who wrote the book of 5 Rings, there's a little clip in that book that says, from one thing, no 10,000. And that's a leverage point. Right? So if we have something we can apply at a at an individual level, at a team level, at a divisional level, at an organizational level, that's that's valuable.

Something that that scales up and down, and this is that. Because if I have my values, if I know that we stand for certain things, the goal as a lead if I'm leading in an organization, if I aspire to be someone who leads, the verb not the noun, if I aspire to do that activity, then what I wanna do is make sure that I'm leveraging those values because that's scalable. If somebody comes to me with a challenge, an opportunity, a problem, call it what you will, I wanna figure out how we apply those values as the solution. Because if I can do that over a period of time, those people start to understand that's a tool they can use to reach their own conclusion without coming to me. So now I'm I've created scalability in the organization, and I've created confidence, and I've created predictability. Because now I know how they're gonna arrive at a decision. I'm I'm not gonna judge the outcome because the outcome is often out of our control. So we don't wanna do that, but I do I do wanna talk about how did we what is the quality of the decision versus the quality of the outcome? Those are 2 separate things.

And I wanna focus on how they're making the decision, not the outcome of the of the decision they've made. Because you can you can have a great decision and a bad outcome, or you can have a bad decision and a good outcome. You know, I run a red light, bad decision. I don't get a ticket or an accident, good outcome. Doesn't mean I should run a red light all the time. Right? So if we and this also is a process, not an event, especially for for individuals. Because I can tell you now that there have been some slight there are slight changes in my values over the last 30 years that I've been thinking about this. There have been distinctive changes in my intention and also in my my wife, Lisa, when we have a shared vision of reality.

That has changed. You know? 20 years ago, it was something completely different than it is now, and that's okay. But you have to revisit this in some in some cadence. Right? We'll get to that in a little bit. So I thought in order to make this kind of real, I'm gonna share my own experiences of how I've used them personally lately to make a couple decisions. So my values, if you if you go to my website, they're there, are evolve, roam, provoke, ponder, and appreciate. Right? So real and then also whenever you do this, one thing, always make them verbs, never nouns. The one thing that I see over and over again is I see companies that come up with, with values that are nouns.

You can do that, but the challenge is values are action based. That you want them to lead to somebody doing something. It's hard to do that with a noun. Like, when somebody says, let's say quality. That's our that's one you see all the time. There's there's a couple things to think about here. Things like quality, honesty. Those okay.

So they mean something, but they mean something different to everybody. And the second thing is, would any of your competitors or anybody else not claim those as their own? And if they can, then those are, I think, calls them table stakes. Those are just things that everybody expects you to be. You can't really claim them as values because quite honestly, as a company, you want your values to be a differentiator. You want you want them and and to be, you know, another level, you probably want them to be somewhat exclusionary. You want it to be a strong enough word and action that not you don't want it to be all inclusive. You don't want everybody to agree with it. That's one of the challenges we have too is we want everybody to like us.

And that's not the way this works. You wanna find the group of people that are that believe what you believe if we go to Simon Sinek. Not everybody's gonna believe what you believe. And if you cast a net that's too wide, you're gonna end up with trouble on the back end. So evolve, to develop slowly, often into a better advanced state. So my statement around that is, I will seek out challenges that align with my values and remain in a constant state of learning so that I may become the best version of myself. That's what I mean by evolve. Learning so that I may become the best version of myself.

That's what I mean by evolve. And Rome, to purposely travel unhindered through a wide area. And And so I said to that one, I will seek and serve and allow my purpose to arise from those efforts, and I will savor the relationships, experiences, and journey without regard to the particular end. So for me, it's it's more about the action than it is about the outcome. Provoke to stir up and arouse or to call forth, I will feel deeply and engage with others who desire the same because passion is what makes life a worthy endeavor. That's my belief. I will ponder, consider, or think especially quietly, soberly, and deeply. I will be comfortable not knowing and curious about all people and situations as each of them presents me with an opportunity to learn.

And finally, appreciate, to recognize with gratitude and grasp the nature, worth, quality, and significance of. I do not deserve anything and will treat each person each day and each experience as a gift because things happen for me and not to me. So I want to appreciate everything. Now my intention this has been my intention for the last several years. I wanna take up less space, consume less, have a smaller footprint, and be free and create more than I consume. So in all things, I wanna I wanna be smaller, I guess, is what you could say. Take up less space. Now this means physically, emotionally, and also space in a conversation or a meeting.

I wanna because if I take up less space, it creates more space for other people. And I don't wanna have a bunch of stuff. There's a consumer piece of this as well. I wanna scale down what I have because I'm not big on maintenance. And the more stuff you have, the more stuff you gotta take care of. And to be quite honest, I'm not really good at that, and I have other things I wanna do with my time. And so for me, those are that's my intention. Now my shared version of my shared vision of the future and my shared reality with Lisa, we we find places that feed our soul.

And, typically, those are gonna be places that are more outdoors. And as I shot her a text on my way in here, warmer. I'm like, I'm I just got we just got back from Florida. It was in the nineties, and I texted her on my way here to record this and said, you know what? I need to go south again because this mid seventies stuff is for the birds. It's not near warm enough. We're looking for smaller, more active communities where there's people that create. There's artists because my wife's an artist. Innovative encounter culture types where everyone's welcome.

It's it's inclusive no matter where you're from and where you're never judged, but your contribution is always valued. You know, someplace that's welcoming where you have people from all over and they're not there's no judging that goes on. It's all about contribution. And then the last thing is, years ago, I came across this quote by they attribute it to Michener, a couple other people as well, but it's called the master in the art of living. And it's always stuck with me because when I think about how I wanna live my life, this is essentially it. So the master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing.

To him, he is always doing both. And about 9 years ago, I came across that quote and it just stuck with me. Because I think about the last sentence, he simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him, he's always doing both. And that's much how I feel now. I'm on the phone with a couple people this week, and they're not they're not clients. They're not paying me. They're just people that I know who had a challenge.

And I said, hey. Do you wanna jump? Happy to talk to you about it. Jump on the call. So we'd be on a 30, 45 minute phone call. And they're, like, so I'm I'm you know, they were very appreciative. But to me, it wasn't wasn't work, wasn't play. I was just doing the thing that I do. And most of it's based around service.

Somebody has a problem. If I can help, I help. I'm not a cab driver. I don't start a I don't start the the meter running when somebody starts talking to me. It's just a matter of, can I help? And if I can, then I will, which is another part of kind of the values that I have from my upbringing. Now with that in mind, I had a few recent decisions to make. So one of them was my, I have a I have a a office, down here at, Versa in Columbus. Had it for several years now.

I've worked down there. I did open co working for a couple years, and I had an office. And it was time to sign the lease again. Last year, I thought about it, and I resigned it. And this year, I talked to Lisa about it, and I was looking at my values because I thought this is a great opportunity. Right? I'm gonna go back and think about this. So I looked at my intention, my the shared version of reality, and my values. So my values, if you think about this, evolve in Rome.

So let's pick a couple. So I wanna roam. I wanna I wanna get out, and I wanna move. Right? I don't wanna be sedentary. I also want to evolve always. I wanna always be thinking about what's the nest next best version for me. And with that in mind and also consuming less, taking up less space. Right? And allowing the and this is where it gets back to the original statement I made about your values aren't your values till they cost you something.

This will cost me something. Now it'll actually save me something from a monetary standpoint, but it'll cost me inconvenience. It'll cost me in ways I haven't figured out yet. But it also allows for my work, my message, and, I guess, you call it my brand to evolve. Right? I think that it's important, and it also serves as a forcing function or a liberating constraint, if you would. Because now I'm gonna take the step to go back to open coworking. It'll it'll, you know, I'll have I'll have a little more work to do in some aspects. But in others, it can be a little it'll change the way I work.

I don't know in how many ways, but to me, it made sense because it aligns with my values and my intention. And my intention is to take up less space. So do I need an office? I don't need an office. Was it convenient? Yeah. It was very convenient, but I don't need it. Right? So we're gonna we're gonna do this experiment, you know, explore experiment evolve. We're gonna run this experiment. I have no idea what'll happen.

It'll it'll work. I'll learn something from it, and it'll be okay. But it's gonna be a little uncomfortable and bumpy at first. But it does align. It felt right to make the decision. The second one of these is that I recently had to do was, decide about my decide about the brand. You know, I've gone through iteration after iteration, for me over the past 8 or 9 years around relentless leadership, potential leader. There's all this stuff.

Right? There's been multiple multiple, iterations of it. There's been a lot of money thrown at it, a lot of gnashing of teeth, and, discussions with different people about what it represents. And so then I finally decided something had to change, and something had to change because something had changed. Something had changed in me. Something inside of me had changed. And so it had to be reflected in what I do and how I approach the world. It had been kind of bubbling for a little bit. It had been coming out here and there, the the the thoughts and the the insights and the the kind of the messages that I would talk to people about.

And then it finally dawned on me that it was a it was always about relentless. Right? So what's interesting, there's a couple things, and there's a couple of definitions I use for relentless. 1 is oppressively constant. So you think about that, oppressively constant. A lot of people might not like that definition. I kinda do. And then the second one is, it's a state of mind that can give you the strength to achieve, to survive, to overcome, to be strong when others are not. This last sentence, it means craving the end result so intensely that the work becomes irrelevant.

Craving the end result so intensely, the work becomes irrelevant. And that's what I feel most of the time. That's why that word has always been part of it. From the very beginning, it was the word that always stuck out, not only for me, but when other people described me. And so now I took a I stepped back away, and I thought about the scope of what I was what I was passionate about. And it and while I am passionate about leading, I'm actually much leading to me as a component of living. And so the new way that I'm gonna approach my work is under the umbrella of living relentlessly. That's gonna be the way I talk about things.

Because to me, it's always been about the human, never about the business. And that felt good because the reasons we wanna live relentlessly is to create a better world for the people that we care most about. And to me, there's 3 things we're gonna do. There's 3 activities, learning, loving, and leading. And they're all action verbs because they're all activities we can get better at. They're not nouns. They're not titles. They're not labels.

They're activities, and they're activities that if we're gonna live relentlessly, we we must do well. And so, both of these decisions were not easy to come by, and they'll ultimately impact the kind of work that I choose to do. It's a work in progress. What I do wanna do is evangelize living relentlessly for people. The reason the main reason is because I think we need a more positive message in the world. I think we need to understand that none of us gets out of this alive, and we don't accomplish things alone or at the expense of other people. We only accomplish meaningful things together. We can't do it any other way.

We can never move forward at the expense of somebody else. It's not sustainable or scalable. And until we are willing to embrace that and figure out how to come together around something that's meaningful to everybody, we're we're never gonna make a difference. And if we all do this individually, then the entire world is impacted. We can create a better world for those we care about. We can create that world for each other. And if everybody's focused on doing it for their piece of the world, then by default, the whole world gets better. If you're creating little pockets of the world for you that's better for those you care about deeply, for your community, your church, your company, your family, your friends, whatever that is for you.

If you're focused on living relentlessly to create a better world world for those you care about, ultimately, that tips the scale. Because what I've always tried to be about and what always really moves me is is helping people unlock their own capacity. Is helping them understand, helping individual people understand how powerful they are, how much they can accomplish without anybody's permission, without anybody's help. Because if you decide to do it, that's the liberation you need. It's self efficacy, and we have to restore that in people. Because somehow, we listen to the world tell us all the things we need, and we think we're deficient. And we think, if I had this, if I did that, I could be this. When in fact, you can be whatever it is you wanna be now.

And if you be that person, if you will be that person, then you would you have to do the thing first. You can't you can't have something and then be something and then do something. You have to do the thing first. You have to simply believe first that you're you have the capacity to do it, and you have to be willing to take the risk. Once you do that, yeah, you're gonna fall down. It's gonna be, you know, 1, 2 steps forward, 3 steps back. But then sometimes it'll be 5 steps forward and 1 step back. There's no there's no promise.

There's no guarantee. It's not it's not gonna be easy. If it was easy, everybody would do it, but they're not. Right? Most people don't because they want freedom from that. They want freedom from risk. They want freedom from the downside. They don't want to they don't wanna cost. I mean, to be quite honest, everybody nowadays wants something for nothing.

We wanna hack. We want, we want a shortcut. We don't wanna have to put effort in. There's there's tons of it. You just look around. There's tons of examples. There's tons of examples of things that we're seeing now that we don't have to put the work in, but we still want the benefit. And and I don't I have no idea what this is gonna cost in these two things that I'm doing.

From a time standpoint, a client standpoint, a revenue standpoint, an expense standpoint, I can't I can project, but I don't know. But I do know they align with my values, my intentions, and and Lisa and and I have a shared vision of the future that these all align around. And here's the other thing, and this doesn't apply to everybody. I I hope that I actually hope that you'll consider it no matter what your age is. But I tell people pretty regularly now, I see the end much I'm closer to the end than the beginning. And as you get to that point in your life, a sense of urgency is created. A sense of urgency to care less about everything and care deeply about a few things, because time is precious. And, I was listening to a guy talk not too long ago, and he said, you know, any kind of meaningful project you're gonna work on, on average, takes 3 to 5 years.

He said, so think about how many years you have left to work, do the math, divide by 3 or 5 depending on how, you know, how much urgency you have, and think about how many projects that means you have left to work on. Because we definitely overestimate what we can do in a year, and we severely underestimate what we can do in 10. But seeing the end closer than the beginning is a great clarifier. I mean, it there is nothing more clarifying for humans than death. It is the great clarifier, and I don't say this to be morose or or negative. I I am very liberated by that constraint. It is very empowering to think about what are you gonna care about. What are you truly gonna care about? What are you gonna put your time into? And be intentional about.

Because you don't have 30, 40, 50 years. In fact, none of us know how much time we actually have. I have a dear friend of mine I was just texting with yesterday. Several weeks ago, I was we were talking, and, he said his dad went to the emergency room because he was having trouble breathing, and, they found cancer. So went on vacation, came back yesterday morning, texted him, said, hey. How's your dad doing? He said, oh, dad passed away last week. From the day he went to the emergency room to the day he passed was 15 days. Went to the emergency room just having trouble breathing just like, oh, I'm gonna go in and see what's wrong.

Cancer, 15 days. Now, 20 days ago, 25 days ago, nothing. All it you know, 10, 15 years. I can do this. I can do that. I got time. None of us know that equation. So it it serve us all back, you know, stoic philosophy tells us, memento mori.

Memento mori. We all will die. And it's not, again, morose. It's just, are you intentional? And how can you be in how can you not be intentional unless you know what you value? So here's what I'll leave you with. Here's what the challenge for everybody. I'll give you a I'll give you a to do list. Let's call it that. Create your list of values.

Now just between you and me, make sure there are always verbs. Like, figure it out. Figure out what your values are. 3 to 5, not 20. Then second step, set your intention. What is what is your intention? What what means something to you? There's no right or wrong answer to any of these. You're not trying to find the right ones, you're simply trying to find the ones that that speak to you. The things where your soul takes a deep breath after you think about it.

And then create your shared vision of your future with those you care most deeply about. Gather those people around and say, what do we want 5, 10, 15 years from now? What what are we what are we doing all this for? Now it's gonna take some time. Don't rush it, but at the same time, ensure you get it done. Keep revisiting, do the heavy lifting. It's gonna be painful, it's not gonna be quick, it will be worthwhile. Then begin to use these things. These things that you come up with, let them guide your decisions. I'm firmly I firmly believe that thinking about the future and talking about the future changes the present.

Because the more you have clarity around what you want, you'll make different decisions in the now. Because your brain is is making an effort to connect those two things. But if you never talk about what you want in the future, then now is all you have. Now the last thing, review them on a regular cadence. Right? Figure it out. Is it gonna be monthly, quarterly, biannually? At least do it annually. Now I think if you do this, you'll feel better, and you'll be able to move yourself and those you care about confidently in the direction that aligns with who you are and what you believe. And at the end of this, isn't that all we can strive to do, is look back and align our actions with our thoughts and beliefs, which is the very definition of integrity.

It's all we can do, and we should. We owe it to ourselves and and the rest of the world. So with that, take care of yourselves and take care of each other. And remember that this is not about what we accomplish in our lives, but who we become along the way that matters. Take care.