In this episode of The Hero Show, we dive into the importance of aligning business systems for sustainable growth. Discover how streamlined processes can boost efficiency and drive success. Learn actionable tips and strategies to ensure your business systems are working in harmony. 

Tune in to unlock the secrets of growth through alignment and take your business to the next level. Don't miss this insightful discussion!

we look at culture, strategy,

operations, story, and finance

and story is essentially

sales and marketing

and we take a systems based approach

and so often what we see

in organizations is that they're good

at two or three of those categories

and the other two or three

are dragging them down a little bit

and so if you tweak one

if you move one if you shift one

it means you're going to tweak

move and shift the other four things

if you're not paying attention to it

and so we take a systems approach

and one of the quotes

we often use with clients is

you know the system

is perfectly designed to produce

the results that it's producing

which is you know

well yeah of course

kind of a statement

​

Dave Newell: I'm there. It's good to be with you.

Richard Matthews: Awesome, glad to have you here. I know we've been chatting for a little while before we got on talking about our projects and farm life and travel and all that kind of stuff. Why don't we start off, where are you calling in from today?

Dave Newell: I am based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Dave Newell: Yeah, not too far.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. we spent a Christmas up there and I got to say the water in that part of the country is the best tasting water in the whole country.

Dave Newell: Oh my gosh. I'm glad you said that. We have a well and it might be my favorite water. Like more than bottled water, anything you can get mineral water, like our well tap water is exceptional

Richard Matthews: it's one of those things that like, unless you've actually traveled and been around, you don't understand like how vastly different the water quality is as you travel across the country. And then you get into North and South Carolina and you guys literally have billboards on the freeway that like our tap water is exceptional.

And you're like, What? That's weird. Who advertises their well water on their billboards on their freeway? North and South Carolina do, because it's frickin phenomenal.

Dave Newell: because it's actually pretty good. Yeah, exactly.

Richard Matthews: it's worth putting a billboard up about.

Dave Newell: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

So we may not be in the RV in the studio for too much longer, but for now we're still here. But what I always like to start off with Dave is just a quick bio on who you are. So our audience knows who you are and then we'll dive into your story. So, Dave's on a mission to align the misaligned, building a successful consulting business that applies the five facets of business operating system.

Dave serves as a fractional president and COO. Consultant and facilitator serving small businesses and startup leaders to build out their C suite leadership capabilities and provide the systems thinking and operating systems needed to grow and scale a business. So with that little introduction, Dave, why don't you tell us what you're known for, right?

What's your business like? Who do you serve? What do you do for them?

So that might mean that, you know, they're at 3 million in revenue and they've kind of stuck at 3 million in revenue for a couple of years. And they're trying to figure out how do we get to five or they're at 15 employees and they're growing and they're experiencing some of those growing pains. So they're experiencing transition.

And often we try to transition folks from what we refer to as the big dog operator mentality. into systems and structure, right? So in order to scale, you can't, what got you to 3 million isn't going to get you to six. And so we have to think a little differently. We have to operate a little differently.

You know, so sometimes that fractional role consulting advisory, it really depends upon what the client needs, you know, but we've worked with clients across the country. Internationally, you know, we've been really fortunate to have a pretty big reach and continuing to continue to grow in a lot of those spaces.

But yeah, we love what we do.

Which, which we, we just, we didn't like lay anyone off. We just redirected all that energy into more profitable areas. But like The things that you can do when you actually think through and build a system are crazy. And like, I, we were just doing, running some numbers on some of the stuff that we do.

That's it's a tremendous volume of content that's being created. And I haven't touched any of it in years.

Dave Newell: Yeah,

Richard Matthews: And it's all because of what you're talking about, right? Having actual systems in place that, you know, it allows us to grow. It allows us to have a business that, you know, actually provides like the freedom that people get into business for, right?

You know, we travel full time and we run our business virtually and all of that comes from being able to build a business system. So anyways, I am super fascinated to learn what the five facets of a business operating system are, because I'm sure, I'm sure we can make ours better

Dave Newell: well, you know, I'm glad you talked about the systems process piece, you know, and it's often I think we, we build stuff like when you're building a business, you're a startup, or even if you've been around for a while, and you enter the leadership team, a lot of what gets built is reactionary to things that are happening.

And then you try to scale this thing that you kind of made ad hoc at a period of time. And inherently it becomes unscalable because it's custom every time or because something gets in the way. I think the last time you and I talked, you were migrating from ClickUp to a new system.

Richard Matthews: That's SmartSuite.

Dave Newell: SmartSuite Yeah. So we use, you know, we implement ClickUp.

We do all sorts of different things with companies and it's, it's often like, look, there's probably five to 10 activities that you do that create 80 of the results. Let's get really good at those five to 10 things and let's make sure we're measuring those five to 10 things. Let's make sure we understand those five to 10 things inside, up, down, left, right, East, West, whatever you need to do.

And we take a systems based approach. And so often what we see in organizations is that they're good at two or three of those categories. and the other two or three are dragging them down a little bit. And so if you tweak one, if you move one, if you shift one, it means you're going to tweak, move and shift the other four things if you're not paying attention to it.

And so we take a systems approach. And one of the quotes we often use with clients is, you know, the system is perfectly designed to produce the results that it's producing, which is, you know, well, yeah, of course, kind of a statement, but when you really think about that, you know, whatever result you're getting, if that's poor employee performance, if that's missed targets, if that's fires, if that's, you know, internal communication breakdowns, if that's drop in sales revenue, it's like your system is designed to do that.

Let's organize each one of those five things and make sure they're swimming in the same direction.

Richard Matthews: yeah, I love that. And particularly the system is producing exactly the results that that it's designed to produce. I say something similar, right. That is, you deserve to be exactly where you are. And, you know, it's, just that one of those harsh truths that like, if it's doing something, you've designed it to do that thing maybe not intentionally.

And I talk about this a lot and it's the process of mastery is very similar that, you know, a lot of people have reactions, right? They react to things. and a lot of people assume that, you know, if you have a bad reaction, that the, it's the reaction is the problem. And the reaction is not really the problem.

So that when you actually have stimulus and response, you have the reaction that the reaction is the one that you want, right? The system is actually doing what you want to do. And so That applies to mastering your golf game or learning pool or, you know, you're talking about building projects on the farm or doing this.

It applies to everything. But in your business, the result that your business is designed to do, like the decisions,

those invisible decisions are those systems that you've built, right? And the reaction is, if the reaction is, you know, your yeah. Staff is not sticking around and you having to hire and retrain people all the time.

Those are those decisions are the ones that you've built into the system. And so you have to spread it apart, see what those decisions are and design them to get the result that you want and then compress the time back together.

Over the last couple of weeks where you had a bad relationship with somebody for a week, and now you're kind of frustrated with them, or, you know, we kind of call it like exhibiting your toddler behavior, right? Every, everybody's a five year old at some point in the day. Like I was a five year old.

Richard Matthews: five year old. I feel that.

Dave Newell: Exactly. Like I had a five year old moment earlier today. Nobody's immune from that, you know, but when we make decisions from that place, it's rarely the best decision, right? And so that idea of container setting, you talked about this, you know, prior to the show about Putting some rules in place for yourself.

Like, what are some of those decisions? Like, what's the boundaries in which we make decisions around process? Or what's the boundaries in which we make decisions about behavior from a cultural perspective in our organization, having those boundaries then allows it to make more streamlined, consistent decisions that don't feel personal to your team, right?

And so, you know, Seth Godin defines culture as people like us do things like this. And I think it's this beautiful, simple, clean, clear, you know, description that's only Seth Godin can do. But people like us do things like this. And if you think about that for each facet of your business, people like us do things like this.

People like us is, what's the design? What's the frame? What's the container? What's, how do we define kind of what people are and then do things like this? And these are the activities that we do that make that part true. Right. And so the third prong to that wheel is then what are the leadership behaviors?

Richard Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. It reminds me of of an example that we were talking about with our, with my ops team recently. And so it just ties right into, into what you're talking about there. And it was about. Disciplinary actions of all things.

Dave Newell: Yeah,

Richard Matthews: And disciplinary actions are I think a lot of people as particularly when, you know, CEOs and people who are running small companies, right, we have that very reactionary mentality of like, they're not doing the thing that I want, they're the problem.

And then I need to fix that problem. And so when, when I started sitting down with my ops team, I was like, listen, the problem always starts with us and the design of the system. And so the first part of that is, did we design. an SOP that makes sense, right? Do we have a documented process? And so if the process is well documented, that's the first step.

Do we then have a way to track and measure their activity on that? And if not, That's still our problem. Right. And if all of those three things are satisfied, then we start getting it to the point where maybe we have to have a discussion with employee. Right. and you realize that like, it's all in the way that you're building the system for it.

And what I've found and then this is just experimentation on my part, cause I've only built one business, well, I built a few, but this is the biggest one I've built is that if you do all of those things first, you very rarely get to the point where you ever even have to have disciplinary actions,

Dave Newell: Right? Yeah, we call it. Are we creating the conditions for them to be successful? Right? And so conditions that you, you know, you kind of articulated. Do we have good process? Are we measuring? Well, like, you kind of stated some of those, like, do we have a good design? Those are the conditions in which an employee can then be successful without those things.

Richard Matthews: Yeah I Wanted to pull up

one other thing that I think would be useful to talk about. And this is just for, cause you mentioned finance being one of the big categories, one of the five categories or the five facets of business. And how, well, you know, what's got you, I think what you said earlier is what got you to, you know, 3 million, we'll get you to 5 million, right?

We're not that big yet. But one of the things I've noticed and it's one of the reasons why we did like our switch over from ClickUp to SmartSuite and everything is we built all of these systems for a certain sized business. Doing certain, a certain number of like a certain volume of things with a certain number of employees.

And like everything that we built in ClickUp it was actually easier to switch to another system than it was to rebuild it in ClickUp for the volume that we were doing with the number of team members that we had and everything that we had. So it's not really a system dependent thing. Like, you know, it wasn't dependent on which project management system we were using.

And now we're starting to get to the point where, you know, because of the economies of scale. Our systems are producing more than they're costing. And now we have more resources available to put into things like designing better systems or hiring, you know, hiring, you know, better hiring processes or, you know, better marketing and better storytelling and other things.

And so like, if we continued to operate the same way that we were, we would, we would not have, we would not be leveraging the resources we have now. And we, we, we wouldn't do a good job of, you know, taking care of our business.

Like they're not necessarily forecasting forward and then making a plan for, okay, you know, if things go really well, here's what we're going to do. Like, you know, let's say our, our forecasted target is a million dollars. If we get to a million two, here's the things we can do. If we're at a million, which is what we think it is.

Here's the decisions we're going to have to face. And here's what we're going to have to do. And if we undershoot the budget, let's say we hit 800,000 or 750,000 here's the difficult decisions that we're going to have to make. So even to go back to your point earlier of how can I separate myself in time from the decisions I might have to make nine months from now, if we're forecasting our budgets forward, right?

And you start making those decisions earlier. So forecasting is a huge part of it. Most people think like, are we going to make payroll this month? Are we going to make payroll this month? And they're just trying to like get through the month. And it's like, that's worthwhile thought. Absolutely. Make sure you get through payroll, but that narrow scope then doesn't prepare you for the long run.

And the second piece we often pull forward is Mike Michalowicz wrote a book called profit first, and I think it's really profound in many ways. You know, but it's this general idea of pay yourself first, like put profit in the bank, like make sure that profitability is happening. So the general idea is instead of, you know, profit or revenue minus profit, sorry, I'm saying this wrong, revenue minus expenses equals profit.

Should we take on this client or not? Should we hire this employee? It starts to shape, it's a, it's a container for making decisions, but the container is what's our profitability and are we committed to a certain percentage, whatever that percentage might be. And I think if you can shift those two things mentally.

That we're actually looking ahead. We're forecasting, we're kind of pre making difficult decisions before we get there. And we're actually really committed to profit. Not only are you preparing yourself to have a really healthy business in the long run but you're also preparing yourself to be attractive to potential buyers in the long run, right?

Like you can create a very sellable business if you're organized and if you have a plan around profit and forecasting.

Dave Newell: Oh, you do. Amazing. Amazing. He's, he's a great dude.

Richard Matthews: yeah, they're really cool. It's a cool team to work with. And, you know, I actually have a whole profit first, like dashboard that we keep track of everything.

And so it's got like it, if you like change the number of clients that we have, it actually like will automatically adjust the scale of, you know, you know, if you're between one and 10 million and, you know, 10 and 20 million, like all the way through and the percentages and everything. So it all like lays out for us and it goes all the way down to like the individual amount of hours it takes for a single person on our team to complete an episode. So like, if you change the number of episodes, it adjusts the profitability across the whole thing, because. I'm super nerdy about that stuff. And I said, we're still, you know, we're, we are still a low profit, low profit business. We're working through that first couple of percentage points of building the profit stuff.

Dave Newell: Yeah,

Yeah. I mean, I think it's a great testimony to the mental philosophy. And obviously you've put some tools in place. you're a good mechanic and a good builder, right? Like, you like putting the tools in place and having the right tools. And I can't tell you how, how many organizations I've worked with where.

Those that are really committed to the data and to the numbers and putting numbers first and paying attention to the numbers and how the numbers weave together. The most successful businesses I work with that are small businesses are super hyper vigilant about hitting the numbers and they know what the numbers are.

And they're super committed to the numbers like that, even that alone transforms the way you approach and address your business. You remove anecdotes, you remove guessing, you remove hope as the strategies, and you start to make very informed decisions. And you also really target your people towards something tangible.

Like this is the number we're going for. And there's something very motivating, compelling, and engaging about that.

Cause I'm like, I'm never getting good at this. I'm just good at whatever the last stage was. And the whole next Like a toddler again. But the the, on the numbers thing, like we've gotten to the point now where like, we, like most of my staff is on salary including our contractors and whatnot, they're all on salary, but they all still track their hours on a per task basis.

And then the other day so we're, we actually follow the same sort of profit first mentality in hiring employees, and so like we were working through with my ops team, how do we adjust, you know, our post production teams, we're going to have to, you know, as we're starting to, you know, Get more consistent with closing sales every month.

We're going to have to get more consistent with hiring people onto that team. And so my ops manager was like, how she hit, she asked, the team lead, she was like, how many hours on average does it take someone on your team to accomplish something? And I was like, we actually track all of that.

Or I think one of the, one of the numbers I've recently started tracking because of Alex Formosy's book, the, uh, is the the ratio between your cost of customer acquisition and your what's the other one, the lifetime gross profit. And so like, we're at like 3. 45 to one right now. And if we can extend our, our Man, what's it called?

The number of months that a customer stays with us by like three months, we'll turn it into like seven, right? Like seven to one ratio, which is legit, right? That's like really good number. So we have targets that we're running towards.

Like you get a lot of, you know, clients, if you can, you know, the, the first three months of a client, you basically break even. Whatever it is that you're charging it because the amount of time it takes for your team to onboard, get them up and running, to figure out the percentages, how the ad spend works, how creative, you know, you get creative involved, etc It's like where the gravy is, is month nine through 12, right? Like that's where your profitability kind of skyrockets, but it's really difficult to keep a client around for nine to 12 months if you're not hitting some of those results. And so, but if you may, so for example, if you make retention, your focus, right?

So acquisition is almost always the most expensive way. Right. Like just acquiring new clients is really difficult. It costs a lot of money. It's a lot of time, energy, and effort, especially with onboarding, etc kind of depending upon what your industry is. Retention is where the margin is. So if you think about it, you kind of anchor yourself in a strategy of retention.

It changes the way you think about onboarding. It changes the way you think about the first three months of their engagement. It changes the way you think about the results. It changes the way you communicate with your customer because the goal is retention, right? The goal isn't let's acquire and then hope it works down the line.

Let's be really thoughtful about our strategy of retaining the client, right? So we talk about it as a strategic identity. What, is the one thing that we're going to do differently than everybody else does? So one of our marketing agencies that we worked with picked the strategic identity of retention is transformed their business from a profitability perspective, because they're not thinking client acquisition is the target.

Because they're working really hard to keep clients around longer.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, yeah for our audience, who's paying attention, if you want retention as a huge part of Joey Coleman's book, never lose a customer again, is really, really good on, on talking through those things. And we've been looking at that ourselves because it's like, we know that, you know, onboarding is like breakeven for us.

And and it's like we start to be profitable, you know, on month two, three, four, five and, but it's like, it's minor, but like if they stick around for more than a year, it's crazy how much more valuable that customer is to us. And so, you know, we've been looking through like, well, you know, Just as a really simple example, again, we're in the podcasting space, something like 3 of podcasts never make it past episode 10.

And so we're trying to come up with strategies of like, how do we create, you know, more content and how do we make it so that like being here is just, it's a stupid simple decision for them to say, yes, I want to continue working with you.

Dave Newell: Yeah.

Richard Matthews: so,

Dave Newell: Just out of pure curiosity, again, I'm breaking format here a little bit, but why do you think, why do you think it's hard to sustain podcasts, podcasting?

One of my favorite examples of that is like, I have a, a water flosser. Right. And I had put it by my sink for a good long while thinking that, you know, after I got out of the shower, I would use it. And then I never did. But I moved it like three feet into the shower. Now I use it every day, right?

Cause I take a shower every day. Right. And so it's just learning how to set your environment up for success. Cause podcasting works when you can do it consistently, right? When you consistently put the effort in. So that's the first one. The second one is. They don't know what to talk about, right?

Because you have, you know, you have your topic for your show, right? We're talking, you know, we talk podcasts all the time and there's not a lot that goes into a podcast. So you're talking about the same five or 10 things in 100 different ways. So we do we do something we do call a content planning session.

We help them map out how to. Talk about their topic for an entire year and then how to turn that into multiple years worth of content so they can approach the same topics with fresh new ideas. Um, And then the third one, rather than knowing what to talk about, is knowing what to say. When you hit start record, right?

So just as a very quick example for anyone who's in the audience listening, we have, we follow something I call the win formula. What, why, how now? And so here's what we're talking about. Here's why it's important. You know, a couple of reasons. Here's how we're going to talk about it, right? Might be a set of criteria, might be a set of steps or something like that.

Might be the interview questions that we're going through on here. And now is your perspective on the topic, right? Which is like a story, a case study, or an example or something. And with those four things, what, why, how, now, you have the baseline for a, Really good podcast or YouTube video or really any kind of content creation, but it helps solve that other problem.

Dave Newell: Yeah. Cause they start to see impact, right? Like I would imagine, you know, the people that do 10 episodes probably have a higher need. It's your point. Like. Is it simple? Is it easy? Is it something that they can do from a habit based perspective? It's not so time consuming, but also it's unlikely that you're going to get, you know, any significant number of subscribers in your first 10 episodes, right?

So there's a, there's a bit of a delayed gratification as well, you know, that you're combating but giving some of those tools for, you know, here's, here's what satisfaction looks like. Like, what's the podcast for? Like, what are you trying to get a clear on some of that? Imagine matters.

we did $250,000 in revenue, Just from partnerships that came from the podcast last year.

Right? Like you get a few years, you get a few years into it. And you consistently put the effort in, it'll, it changes the game. Right. So,

Dave Newell: it's a time. There's a time based element to it. I mean, to your point around retention, too, then it's like the longer you retain a client, the great act that you have for them. And so, you know, going back to kind of the piece before this. If that's your strategy and you kind of build yourself around it.

Part of the reason why I asked the question is because you know the answer to it because you're paying attention to retention, right? Cause you're like, it's a thing you have to solve for. If you want to keep people around, you have to know what their pain points are and you have to solve it. I think that's a really good example.

I appreciate you breaking form with me and letting me ask you a question.

And it's a really interesting discussion because a lot of people get into, you know, just like Michael Gerber's e myth, right? People get into business because they're good at solving a particular problem, not because they're good at running a business. And so what you're talking about is like, these are all the skills you have to learn in order to take that problem that you know how to solve and turn it into a scalable solution for the marketplace. And so like, it's like a masterclass in learning how to grow, to grow a business.

Dave Newell: Yeah, you know, I mean, we like to use the phrase like you have to work on the business, not just in the business, right? Like the, the business itself is a problem to solve and it's a continually evolving problem. There's always going to be conditions that are outside of your control. There's going to be things that are inside your control.

We don't know all the details, right? Like I, I routinely have outsiders looking at our company. Because I can't see what they can see, right? I can't see it with fresh eyes every time because I'm in it all the time and I'm thinking about it all the time. Do I zoom out and do I follow our own philosophy?

Absolutely. And at the same time, it's really difficult to do on your own sometimes. Sometimes you just need an outsider saying, Hey, why do you do things this way?

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Dave Newell: It's never an appropriate answer to say, Oh, we've always done it that way. It's like, no, you haven't. Somebody made that up. Somebody invented that at some point in time.

We can move that. We can fix that. We can change that.

Richard Matthews: I call it it's my, little bit of dark humor coming out, but I call it the bus principle, right? If Richard gets hits by a bus tomorrow how does my, my team get, make payroll three months from now? Like not tomorrow, but like three months from now that they're still making payroll, whether or not I'm here.

Cause we, my sales staff closed the first two sales that I had nothing to do with. And by nothing, I mean, like, I didn't have anything to do with the marketing. I didn't have anything to do with the lead generation. I hadn't done anything to do with like the operation, like to getting people through the sales process, my first interaction was when I got the calendar notification that they were on my calendar for like a first call.

And I was like, that's a big thing because that means that system.

Dave Newell: That's huge.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, now no longer needs me to run. Right. And that's, that's where, you know, I've been out of the ops for a while. And now I've gotten out of the sales and marketing. And so like my next stuff, like I know what my next things are.

Dave Newell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which I mean, it's kudos to you. I think that's an amazing feat because you're, you're combating the thing that we talk about the most with clients is the big dog operator mentality. And that mentality is like our identities as business owners, as bootstrappers, as people building a company is often wrapped up in our ability to go around and solve problems and be good at the thing that allowed us to build the company in the first place.

What we have to be really good at is letting go of that identity of I have to be the one to fix up. I have to be the one to run this because I'm good at it. And it's not just the founder that has that. It's often the first 5 10 employees that you have in your company who all kind of carry that mentality.

Because it's what got you to a million or two million or three million or whatever you

Richard Matthews: I like,

That's how you scale. That is, that is the mentality for scaling. And you've been a good example of it. It sounds like,

Richard Matthews: I like sales as an example for that because as the founder, I have a couple of like benefits, right? I know everything really well. I've also been professionally trained in sales, but like there's, there's some special benefits of being the founder and doing the sales that like my close rate can be like 80%.

Right. 85 on a good day kind of thing. Like I talked to 10 people, eight of them become clients. My, you know, your best sales guy, like, you know, a good sales guy is going to close average of, you know, 20 to 30% but even if they suck, right.

They close 5 of their deals. They can talk to a hundred people and outsell me all day. Right. Because they have more time to put into that and I can hire five or six or 10 of them, right? If I hire 10 people and they each have a 10 close rate, guess what? Our sales volume is higher than if I'm doing the sales.

Dave Newell: Yeah a 100

I want to be, I don't know what I want to be, but it's not the big dog. I need something else.

Dave Newell: I want to be the one that walks the dog,

Richard Matthews: Yeah, there you go. I'll be the one who walks the dog.

Dave Newell: That's right. We got started dog walking business. Maybe that's a new, that's a new way. We'll frame that create a dog walking business. Yeah

Richard Matthews: Awesome. So we've been talking for a little while here. I want to get in and talk about your origin story. How did you get into what you do now, right? Every good comic book hero has an origin story. It's the thing that made you into the hero you are today. And we want to hear that story. Were you born a hero?

Were you bit by a radioactive spider that made you want to get into business? You know, the five facets of business. Where did you start in a job and eventually become an entrepreneur? Basically, tell us a little bit about where you came from. All

Dave Newell: Yes I actually came from Minnesota farm country, you know, my 1st work was, you know, driving, driving combine. We didn't live on a farm, but we had relatives that did it. I was driving combines and doing some farm work did a lot of maintenance work growing up had kind of hard working middle class family.

Everything's gonna be fine. We'll figure it out. And I think that mentality is kind of permeated everything. And so I wouldn't say I have a superpower necessarily, other than The idea of we'll figure it out, right? Like fairly unflappable. But the, origin story, you know, I went to college. I didn't really know what I wanted to do in college.

I'm the third of three. Both of my brothers are highly successful people. And, you know, I kind of came out of college, like, man, I never really had a direction. I never really had like a clear path in my mind of like, this is the thing I want to do. I ended up, you know, kind of out of college getting into some community organizing work, getting into leadership development work and higher education.

And they taught me so much about, all right, you know, well, this government entity sees it this way. These farmers see it this way. And this, you know, nonprofit environmental agency sees it this way. They all want different things, but they all have to work together to get to the same target. How do we do that?

I actually came from a teacher and a facilitator perspective and an organizer perspective. And so, you know, those skills translate really well into getting. Leadership teams into getting, you know, teams following and operating in a system because that's really what this is.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, yeah I love it. So you got a, kind of a, a storied past going from farm to college to, you know, I don't want you to call that like translator work. Almost you're translating what the farmers want with what the government people want and into the uh, consulting. So all over the place, I do I do, however, take issue that you don't have superpowers because I think you do.

And so, so we talk on this show, every iconic hero has a superpower, whether that's their fancy flying suit made by their genius intellect or the ability to call down thunder from the sky. In the real world, heroes have what I call a zone of genius, which is either ace, ill, or genius. Or a set of skills that you were born with or you developed over the course of your career that energize everything else that you do.

Dave Newell: Yeah.

Richard Matthews: there is probably a common thread that ties a lot of those skills together. And that common thread is where you're going to see your superpower. So I have some ideas before I say what they are.

I want to get your thoughts. What do you think? But that framing your superpower is in your business

Dave Newell: Okay. That was helpful context. So, so zone of genius is helpful. I can speak from there. You know, honestly, the thing that I think separates myself from other consultants is I'm not running the same program every time to a T what I think my zone of genius is, is taking really complex problems and making them simple, right?

Like I think in

Richard Matthews: on the lower shelf.

Dave Newell: Exactly. Like I see the system pretty fast. And so somebody could give me 10, 15, 20, you know, bits of information. We're dealing with this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this, and what I hear and what I see is, Oh, so what you're saying is this thing. And I can see the input. I can see the influence.

And so it's that getting to insight piece. That I think is really the superpower that we bring. Like I can candidly say, you know, you talked about your sales ability. Like I don't view sales calls as sales calls. I view them as coaching opportunities. I view them as an opportunity to give that person a gift, right.

Which is this gift of insight. It's like, it's all the stress of like, I need to close this deal. I need to close it. It takes all that away from me. And it's more of like, look, I'm trying to just help you see something that you haven't been able to see before. And if I can do that and our solution matches what you need, great.

Richard Matthews: Yeah it's not often I get people on the show that I think have the same superpower that I do,

Dave Newell: All right.

Richard Matthews: me, gives me my follow up question is you are probably interesting to watch movies with

Dave Newell: Hmm.

Richard Matthews: and here's why, and I'm just curious if you do the same thing I do, I can't watch a movie and enjoy it the way like my wife does, like when I'm watching a movie, I'm like, Okay.

I'm seeing the lighting scenes. I'm seeing their scene selection. I'm seeing the camera shots and the angles that they're putting together. Like I see the whole system that's happening and seeing the system and everything that's making the story and like seeing the story arc and the types of story arc that they're using and how that it's functioning and flowing together.

I'm just curious if you do something similar.

Dave Newell: Yeah, absolutely. On the second part of that. I mean, honestly, my favorite movies are the are the movies where I haven't been able to predict the ending. Like where, where I got a little bit, you know, bamboozled so to speak, right? Like where the ending twisted. And I was like, oh, okay. That is not what I like.

You got me. I love it. So like, I like those movies because it's not predictable, but this the same thing. I'm always like, if a, if a moment comes up or if they introduce a little, you know, funny thing. Like, Oh, he put a hat on in this scene. That's where they put this hat on. I'll be like, I bet that hat comes up in 20 minutes from now.

And I bet there's going to be a story around this. And I bet this is what's going to happen. Like, that's, what's happening in my brain. Like, why would you introduce the hat? Otherwise that doesn't make any sense to the story

Richard Matthews: you don't put a gun in the scene if you're not going to pull the trigger. Right

Dave Newell: a hundred percent. Right. So yeah, I'm always predicting in my brain, you know, what's happening and to

And I'm like, I don't, I don't see What you see, right? The world I see is very different than what a lot of people see. And there's, you know, there's plenty of people like us that are, you know, the systems engineers and nerds and whatnot that see the world that way. But it's definitely not a super normal like a regular superpower.

And so it's interesting to see where you've gone with it. And it makes a lot of sense, right? The consulting world is a great place for it. And you know, I, I did consulting before we started push button podcasts and, you know, helped several people, you know, build, you Crack that million dollar, you know, stuff on their business.

And so, yeah, It's definitely an interesting, interesting superpower. And it's something that. Has its own set of struggles that go along with it as well. Which leads me to my, my next question, which is your fatal flaw. And I'm interested to hear your answer. Cause I'm curious if it's similar to mine.

But you know, every Superman has this kryptonite wonder woman can't remove her bracelets of victory without going mad. And you've probably got a flaw that's held you back something you've struggled with for me, and this comes right out of that systems thinking it's perfectionism. Right. I can always make something a little bit better.

I could change the system a little bit more. I can make it a little bit stronger before we put them to market or before we put it in front of our team and, or publish that issue or whatever it is. And, you know, cause there's always more tweaks you can make. And so that's one of them. I got a few others, but I think more important than what the flaw is, is how have you worked to overcome it so that you can continue to grow and hopefully sharing your story will help our listeners and learn a little bit from your experience.

Right? Like, sometimes me applying my zone of genius is the perfect solution to whatever's happening in that space. And sometimes me applying my zone of genius is the worst possible thing that could happen in that space. Because it's the wrong fit for the environment and what it's asking for. You know, my fatal flaw is often kind of maybe two fold, but complementary.

One is, I have a tendency, because I can simplify things, I can see things relatively fast, I also have a quick start, and I want to go now. Right. So it's like, no, no, no, this is what we need to do. And we need to go. And sometimes for my teammates, or sometimes people that are on my team or the people that surround me, they don't see it that quickly, or they're not seeing it fully, or they want more details and what's going on.

So the way I manage that is actually, I surround myself with people who don't have my same zone of genius, very intentionally, and I trust them. And I give them a lot of responsibility and I want them to challenge me. And I want them to push and I want them to say, Hey man, slow down a little bit. Like we gotta, we gotta actually walk through this.

It's going to help us understand it. My job in that is then to say, Hey, you know what? You're right. I'll pause. I'll kind of push the pause button. I'll let you do your genius, right? Like I'll let you live into your zone of genius. So my, you know, my number two, our general, our general manager in our company, her and I are very aligned in terms of how we think about things, how we see things.

designing things. I want to be solving big problems and paying attention to the big stuff. I don't want to get into the weeds. That's, that's not my space. And so we're a pretty solid one two punch and we have a lot of trust with each other because we're not trying to play in each other's spaces because my zone of genius doesn't need to be her zone of genius, right?

In fact, it should be the opposite. If I surrounded people, If I surrounded myself with people who were like me, we'd have a pretty, we'd have a fun company. It would be great

Richard Matthews: Justice League would be boring if everyone was Superman.

Dave Newell: but we wouldn't, you know, we wouldn't put a lot of things out the door.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. And so the Justice League would be boring if everyone was Superman.

Dave Newell: It's a 100

Richard Matthews: And it,

And I don't mind getting into the weeds a little bit on stars, like helping to build the system and whatnot, but like the most I can ever take it is 80%, right, I can take it to 80 and then I need to give it to someone else. To take it that last 20 and actually like do the rest of the stuff with it.

Because one, I will just continue going. And I need someone to be like, Nope, like it's good enough. Let's get this going and get it off of the, you know, out of development and into, into the thing. And then the other part of that is. I like to, to figure things out. Right. That quick start is like, I've got a big problem.

But like, I already solved it. Like it's done. I need a new problem.

Dave Newell: Yeah.

Richard Matthews: I'm just not engaged.

Dave Newell: to the choir, man, I, I couldn't agree more. I'm the exact same. Like if it's, it's part of why consulting really works for me. And why we're good at it, right? It's because it's, we can get in, we can fix things, we can take it to the, we can take it to the end, and then I get to go on to the next one and the next one and the next one.

And for me, that is exciting and interesting. And, and I love the opportunity to serve folks. I love the opportunity to get in and help folks see things that they couldn't see, but I don't want to maintain it. I don't want to be the one running it day in, day out, you know, seeing those types of things.

And there's people that are, are more in that maintainer mindset and they're incredibly valuable and important and necessary. That's just not me.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. We hire people that love that stuff.

Richard Matthews: It's just not that I don't want to do it. It's that I literally can't, I'm like, I can't do it. I do not have that skill, um, Or I can, but it, you know, one of the things I've learned as I've gotten, you know, as I'm grown up as an entrepreneur, That the most important resource I have to protect is my energy.

And things that sap my energy are more dangerous than things that I like, then almost anything else in my business. And so I need to find what are the things that energize me and do more of those.

And same kind of thing with our, our team and our staff. How do we find work that energizes you?

Makes you come alive.

Dave Newell: Yeah I think it's a really, it's a really astute thing to know.

You know, we do, we do an exercise, we call it the dad exercise.

But it's, Delegate, automate, or delete.

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Dave Newell: It's like, okay. So to do that exercise regularly to say, okay, so what do I need to delegate? What do I need to get off of my plate?

And what are the things that I hate to do? And it doesn't make sense for me to keep. And if I just look at all my responsibilities, it's like, okay, can I delegate automate or delete this thing? Right? So if I don't like it, but it's important, can I delete it? Can I delegate it? Or can I automate it? If it's I hate it,

Richard Matthews: in category for me.

Dave Newell: Yeah. It's like, can I, can I automate that? Is that something I can get rid of? Is there a 300 a month company that can do that for me? It's worth that time. Like if I'm not spending my time doing that or whatever it might be.

But that exercise, you know, we often take our clients through that exercise a couple of months after we engage with them.

Let's give you that time back. It's not, it's not about hustle, right? It's about, it's about working smarter.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about your clients.

Right. And so we talk about your common enemy, right? And every superhero has an arch nemesis. It's the thing that they have to constantly fight against in their world. And so in your world, we like to put it, like I said, in the context of your clients, and it's a mindset or a flaw that you're constantly have to fight to overcome.

So you can actually get them the result that they came to you for in the first place. So in this world of helping people, these five facets of business, what is that common enemy that you regularly have to fight against in your world?

Because that's an idea. That's pride. That's ego. That's identity. How do we get that out of the way? Well, we do it by making the transformation really small. So like one of our, one of our leadership philosophies is make it small. How can I make it just one thing that you have to do once? And how do I make it easy?

But we might, or. You know, I'm a recovering yes person, right? Like just, yeah, I'll do it. Yeah, I'll do it. Yeah. I'll take it on. Yeah. I'll try it. And for me it was, okay, how do I say no once this week? Just once I don't have to say no to every meeting. I don't have to like transform the way I operate and just become a no person all the time.

But how do I make it really small? It just build the capacity and the propensity to do that. When I need to do it. And so when we think about kind of ego pride is the arch nemesis, so to speak, that we can bat in an organization that I, that like my identity is wrapped up in this thing, but you need to be something else in order for your business to accomplish what it needs to accomplish.

Our job is just to make that as small as possible and to encourage movement. So we don't talk about outcomes when it comes to those things. We talk about movement. Like we're not looking for the end. We're just looking for to go do something different. Yeah.

Richard Matthews: the thing I love about that is,

And here's, here's the reality.

The reality is you are the sum total of the actions that you take. Not the thoughts that you have or the dreams and beliefs that you have. You are the sum total of the actions that you take on a daily basis. And so the cool thing about that is you get to choose your actions, right? Which is, you know, we had earlier in this conversation, the idea of what, you know, a reaction, a reaction is, basically an action that you, you haven't chosen the decisions, right?

They've, they've happened automatically. And so if you can learn to spread those things out and make those decisions ahead of time,

Right, you can change your reactions, but your actions define who you are. So by taking the mentality of like, Hey, we're not going to change who you are. We're going to change a small action that you can take today.

You're slowly changing the identity of that person by changing the actions that they take. Right.

Dave Newell: Yeah.

We, we, and I have to credit this to,

Pete Mack, like a Dean Hires, the guys that I first started working with when I did the consulting work, but they said the same thing, like, they hate the phrase fake it till you make it, but they would say, be it till you see it. And I really like that, right?

Because be it is like calling you to do something like be it, try it. Like, don't fake it, just be it, like try it in a small way. And then as you start to see it, then it starts to creep its way into like, Oh, actually I am somebody that can do this. And like, you start to transform that identity. So the idea instead of fake it till you make it, which I totally agree feels disingenuous is be it till you see it, take those actions, try it.

And pretty soon it starts to become your reality. And now, you know, you'll never remember. Or unless you look back on, you know, some historical data or something like you won't even remember the old version of yourself because you're living a whole new one. And we've all formed throughout our lives at some point in time.

Like universe.

And it wasn't, I wasn't fit before but we're taking these actions, you know, four times a week with a martial arts trainer who is pushing us really hard.

And we're taking those actions every day. And I wouldn't have looked at myself a year and a half ago and told you I was a fit athletic person. Right. I wouldn't called that as my identity.

I wasn't unfit. I wasn't like unathletic or anything, but it wasn't something that I would have called out as part of who I am, right.

As an identity thing. But I've been taking these actions every day and now it feels like it's part of my identity, right? It feels like it's part of who I am, that I have, I have strength and capacity and.

fitness that I just didn't have before because it's, you know, the result of the actions I've been taking, right?

And, and it changed my baseline, not because I was like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to become a fit athletic person. I was like, nope, I'm going to go and do a, I'm going to go do this hour long session four days a week with an instructor.

And yeah, it's the, the actions that change who you are.

Dave Newell: Yeah. You know, it's interesting that you say that. Cause I often think, I often think about, well, what are the spaces in my life that I think about all the time? Right. So I think about family all the time. I think about work all the time. Like those are two things that just consume my, consume my brain space.

Right. But I would imagine, you know, you weren't necessarily thinking about it from a health perspective. You were probably thinking about it from like, I want to be there with my son. I want to support my And as isn't ever, I'm thinking about that from the perspective of being a dad. Right.

And now being a dad and being committed to that part of your life has had a positive impact somewhere else in your life.

I'm trying to put stuff out because that's what I do from a work perspective. But I'm, I'm actually just reading and writing for me to learn, to grow, to etc And when I do that, every other aspect of my life starts to get better. And so I mentioned that because sometimes, sometimes the making it small and sometimes that incremental growth that we're talking about isn't always in the thing that we think about all the time.

It's this other thing that has outweighed impact that when we, then when we do it makes everything else better. You know, so part of it is kind of pushing into, you know, so being a dad, it's like, well, you got fit because you were actually being a focused, committed, caring dad. That's pretty cool.

Cool

Richard Matthews: Um,

Dave Newell: It was,

Richard Matthews: it was interesting because when my martial arts instructor sat down with us at the beginning, he was like, what's your goal? Like, what do you want out of this?

And what I told him was I wanted to be fit and young forever.

Right? He's 14 and I'm, You know, when we started, he was like 13, whatever it was like, they grow really fast and they get really strong and really fit really quick as I go through their teenage years. And I was like, and I want to be to not, I don't want to be outpaced by him and not be able to do the things that he wants to do because I haven't done the work I needed to do.

Dave Newell: Yeah. Right.

Yeah

Richard Matthews: out of it. And, you know, we're getting that out of it, which is really cool.

To your point, there's all sorts of things that like in your life that are like that. Like, so one of the things that,

I have. I mentioned before, I've got a piano sitting under my, under my desk.

I pulled a piano and I can actually play here at my desk.

I was having a really hard time getting my left hand to work with my right hand. So I learned to juggle, right?

Because I actually hired a juggling coach and learned to juggle because I wanted to get my brain to be able to operate with my left hand.

And you know, it's, it's weird how there's always little things like that when you take the actions. It impacts lots of other things.

And it, it has just really. Like, I guess the word would be like visceral, like visceral, like you can see them and touch them and feel them impacts in other areas of your life.

And yeah, so everything sort of connects together, which is really cool.

Dave Newell: Yeah. No, it's a really cool story. I like that.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. So I only got a couple more questions for you.

I know we're going a little bit long here, but, Fascinating sort of conversation. So I'm going to talk about your driving force, right? So the flip side of your common enemy is your driving force. And just like Spider Man fights to save New York or Batman fights to save Gotham or Google fights to index and categorize all the world's information.

I want to know what it is that you fight for your mission, so to speak. What is it that you're, you're trying to accomplish with your company?

On communities and lives feels really important to me. It's part of why I felt really connected to business and why I left higher education, because to me part of higher education had such a delayed effect on kind of the larger scale of life where business to me, I could walk in and within four hours we could transform the way a team operates in a significant way.

People, you know, it helps businesses and the people in them flourish. And when we say flourish, we mean like they can just live a better life because they're living a better life. So are the people around them and the people that they're connected to. And so, you know, our outweighed impact, when we say aligning the misaligned, you know, it's a very specific approach to what we're trying to do, but the impact is, you know, people's lives get better really fast.

Richard Matthews: Yeah,

I'm a huge fan of that And we have a similar sort of philosophy over at our company.

But what I want to sort of call out of that is the idea of the increased capacity you create in the people you work with to show up for their community.

And I have realized recently.

And having those lessons to pass on is not just a would be nice if it's almost feels like there's a bit of an obligation to show up for my community the way that my community showed up for me and allowed me to do get where I am.

And whether that is, In being a dad. Or that's running a business or that's traveling.

Any of the things that I have have put the work in for over the years. I have some sort of a feeling that like, Hey, there's, there is some sort of a social responsibility to show up in my community and help in the ways that I can.

And one of the things that I realized has allowed me to do that is having as much as I can aligned in my business.

Dave Newell: Yeah.

And the more of my business is going, the more everything is working well in my business, the more I can show up for my community. And,

Like this year has been especially like, there's been a lot of stuff where I've had,

The opportunity and the privilege to show up for my community in ways that would be unheard of for a lot of people.

And it's just because the business is working the way that it is. And so anyways, I think that's it's a really worthy goal.

And it's, it's very real, For, for people.

Dave Newell: Yeah I mean, I think it speaks to, it speaks to both pieces for me, right? Which is, I want to make sure that. I'm aligning people, right? So like the coaching, the like working with leaders, working with behaviors, like I want you to be aligned with who you are, how you operate, like, what's a good life for you.

Back when I was employed by other people and I mean, it's what all I talked about at night. I'm sure, you know, my wife's a therapist, so that's, you know, that's,

You know, a fortunate thing to have at that point in time and she's very good at it. But, you know, it's good to talk about other things too.

Not just how crappy work was that day or how frustrated I was about this employer, this situation or that issue, like our, our lives and our relationships get better, you know, when things are good at work, because a lot of us work a lot and it consumes us and we think about a lot, especially entrepreneurs and small business leaders, it consumes our brains most of the time.

So if we can create some space and reduce some of that anxiety, You know, we're just creating space for people to make good dad choices and good mom choices and good partner choices and good community choices because we're creating the space for them to flourish in all aspects of their life.

Yeah.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. And it's one of the things that, you know, I talked about this a little bit.

Right. And we're one of the few creatures that do,

If not the only one that builds it, especially the level that we do.

And. Yeah, one of the things that fascinates me about,

I believe it's, you know, like the study of ancient people, right? the ancient societies is that you can, you can trace the beginning of civilization back to the healing of broken bones,

Dave Newell: Hmm. Interesting.

Yeah

Richard Matthews: And

so, because. If, you know, Joe breaks his leg and he doesn't have community, Joe dies, right?

Dave Newell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Richard Matthews: But if Joe has

his

leg mended and he's, someone helps take care of him and helps feed him and whatnot, Joe lives. Right. And, and so like that very baseline of like taking care of the other people in your community is like a baseline fabric of society.

It's what makes the fabric of society better.

Dave Newell: Yeah. Absolutely. And then in return, when your leg breaks because stuff happens, right? You've created the conditions and the reciprocity for that person to want to do it for you. You know, I think that's a, it's a, you know, kind of universal pathway to building a better place, right? Like in every business I've ever been a part of is a community, whether they view it that way or not, they are right.

Like they're, they're a small group of people that, that has impact on each other whether that's positive or negative and how they show up and how they're committed and, you know, And, you know, even to what you were talking about earlier, if we can create the conditions for everybody to be successful in that organization, we're increasing the likelihood that they're good people in other places to,

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Richard Matthews: so that brings me to my last question for you today, and that's your guiding principles, right? One of the things that makes heroes heroic is that they live by a code. For instance, Batman never kills his enemies. He only ever brings them to Arkham Asylum. So as we wrap up the interview, I want to talk about the top one or two principles that you live your life by.

Maybe something that you wish you knew when you first started out on your own entrepreneurial journey.

Dave Newell: yeah. I have four, so I'm not following your rules. I

Richard Matthews: That's all right. I'm fine with four.

And so for us, leveraging tension is to go to the hard place. Like where most of the good stuff is in this world is when you lean into the hard place instead of running away from the hard place. And so we often use the Buffalo story, which is, if you've never heard it, I know it's become a little bit of a popular thing.

But if you've ever been, I know you've been across the Midwest, you've traveled a bunch. I don't know why I was going to say if you've ever been, of course, you've been across the Midwest. I've been to all of them but if you've ever driven across like Nebraska, South Dakota, you know, Iowa, like you can see for 25 miles, right?

And these are the Great Plains. And as the Buffalo

Richard Matthews: of the earth.

It's the fastest way through the storm is to actually walk through it. And so our general idea there is that leveraging tension. It's where most of the movement takes place. And so if we can turn our hearts towards the storm, we can get through it quickly. If we avoid it, you know, the, the less we deal with our issues, the more powerful they become.

And so we want to make sure that we're the people, myself included in my family life, like we're going to lean in, right? Like we're going to go towards, we're going to go towards the hard parts. Earning trust is all about, I'm going to meet you 51 or more. Right. Like I'm going to earn it. I'm not going to assume that we have trust, but I'm going to at least go 51%.

Add value is it should be better because I'm there. If I'm there, the environment should be better. I should be having a positive impact. I should be making it better. And if I'm not, I probably shouldn't be there. Right. So our general idea is. If I'm there, I should be serving people. I should be making it better.

Richard Matthews: I love that.

And I have just a few comments on it. So the first one the uh, you know, leaning into the, the hard we always, I had my, my first mentor used to tell us all the time, he said, hard things first, if you do the hard things first, everything else will become easy. And so that's always been a similar philosophy, right?

That if you do the hard things first, then you can, You can really accomplish anything. And we talk about that with our kids. We talk about that with our team members. I talk about that with my clients. Like, let's get the hard things out of the way. And because if you do the hard things, the rest becomes easy.

The second one that trust, trust is interesting because I have I like you've said, you know, I'm going to meet you 50%, 51 or better.

meet you. 51 is you're

basically saying, I'm going to give you my trust first. And then you're going to see what happens with it. Right? And they're either going to keep that trust or they're gonna lose it.

And the idea of giving trust is if you give first, you know, Then you receive back, right? That's part of, it's part of the whole operating system of our universe that we live in, right? And so I, I like that as well. And then it's better because I'm there is, That's huge. It's huge. And they are our family philosophy is we talk about this all the time with my kids because we, you know, we go a lot of places and we do a lot of things.

We visit a lot of people and we, you know, so we're always in new places that are not ours. And so we talk all the time about leaving it better than you found it. And the leave it better than you found it for us is, you know, Everything from if you meet a person, leave them with a smile, right? If you're on a hiking trail, pick up the trash.

And the thing that comes into my head is the idea of I call it the texture and contrast of life. And a lot of people, if you look at like life, like a sign amplitude, like an amplitude wave most people are trying to compress the amplitude so that, that, that, that their life is as close to, you know, I, I don't even know what you call it, like medium as possible.

They want to avoid as much negative stuff as they can. So they reduce the amplitude and they don't realize that like, they're taking away their opportunity for great experiences and other things as well. And so pursuing purpose. For me, like, one of the things that, like, I talk about with my wife, my kids is like, I want to live a life that's worth telling a story about, right, which fits right into one of your, your five tenets is learning how to tell a story.

Dave Newell: I really like the metaphor you use of turning up the amplitude, right? Like instead of, instead of trying not to get harmed, right? Like instead of, instead of avoiding and turning it down so that you don't have pain, it's like, you're going to have pain either way, right? Might as well turn up the amplitude and make a story out of it, you know?

And then also have some really cool experiences along the way.

Richard Matthews: And that's that's one of those things like people are like man your life is cool You travel all this stuff and i'm like, yeah But you know the same experience that allows us to you know, i've jumped off of waterfalls with my son and you know my daughter and whatnot and all sorts of cool things like that also comes with Being dead on the side of the road and screaming into the desert kind of thing.

pain and bigger failure and bigger risk, but you're also opening yourself up to better rewards, more impact and, you know, more, more like positive change in the world. So, anyways, there's a lot behind pursue purpose.

Dave Newell: Yeah, there is. There's a lot behind it. There is a lot behind it. And you know, it's interesting because when I say that, you know, everybody has, everybody has their own unique reaction to it in many ways, right? Like it kind of strikes people differently. Like what it means to me might mean something different to, to other people.

But I really like what you, I think turn up the amplitude would be a great teacher or something.

Richard Matthews: I should make that a teacher. That'd be good.

Dave Newell: Yeah, absolutely. I like that.

Who are they? First names are fine. And why do you think they should come share their story with us here on the hero show?

Dave Newell: Yeah, actually, it's interesting though. The person that pops into my mind first is a guy named Steven Freeman. He is based in Jacksonville, Florida. He runs Kairos Digital. Steven, we often joke that we're, we're each other's spirit animals. Like we just, we just, we met and it was kind of like, Oh, great.

Like we're just going to be friends for life. But he, speaking of like a values based leader. Like he has just done such an incredible job of, of. Not only just being a really good human, but also infusing his good humanness into how he runs his company and how he wants to impact people and how he's built up values and how he, how he makes decisions about, do we work with this client or not, or, you know, do we hire this person or not?

Richard Matthews: Awesome. Well, I'll see if we can reach out later and get an introduction. Maybe we can get them on the show. They don't always say yes, but when they do, we get to cool, cool interviews here. So Dave, again, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story today. I know we went a little longer than usual, but you know, anytime they go longer, they always tend to be on like my favorite episodes.

So I appreciate you taking the extra time to do that with us. You have any final words of wisdom for my audience before I hit this stop record button?

Dave Newell: Honestly, just appreciate the conversation, you know, just a couple of nuggets that I thought were really, really good in the conversation. You know, the, the mega small B until you see it, the operational aspects, right? Like it's, you know, knowing what to measure the PC you talked about with, you know, really focusing in on process.

So I would just encourage folks to be to be paying attention to and listening to, and thinking about what are those, what are those 20 of the activities that create 80 of the results? And how do we lean in there? And you're a good example of it. So I appreciate all you share too.

Richard Matthews: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on today. One last thing at the end of all of comic books, there's always the crowd of people who are cheering and clapping at the uh, the end, and our analogy set on this show is where can people find you if they want to light up the bat signal and say, Hey, Dave, I could use your help.

Right.

Dave Newell: Hey, that's great.

Richard Matthews: where, and then who, who are the types of people to actually, you know, light the bat signal up and ask for your help?

And they're feeling stuck and they're feeling a little bit confused. Like they've hit a complexity threshold and they just need somebody to walk alongside them and show them the way.

Richard Matthews: Absolutely. Dave, thank you so much for coming today. Appreciate you.

Dave Newell: Yeah. Thanks so much. I really appreciate your time.