Unlocking Leadership with Simon Sinek: The Infinite Mindset | Full Conversation

Simon thank you for joining us today and uh we're going to have a kind of an informal conversation and we might even have some time for for some questions from the audience so absolutely can you can you share your origin story what what's your hero origin story how did you come to be this expert on leadership so I'm not an expert on leadership an authority let's start there I don't think anybody's an expert On anything uh I'm a student of leadership still got lots of learning and still I still got a lot to learn and

still learning um my uh origin story is not similar I think to a lot of people who to our careers which was an accident I didn't expect to be doing anything that I'm doing it started out of pain um I had a small business and um many of the people in this room will know the statistics in the United States which is the over 90% well into the 90th Percentile small businesses will fail in the first three years well I survived three years which means I had now joined a very small Elite group in America

called an entrepreneur and um my fourth year in business uh was awful I for some reason I'd lost the passion and I was very embarrassed by this because superficially everything looked good and yet I didn't want to wake up and go to work anymore and so all of my energy went into pretending that I was happier More successful and More in control than I felt uh which uh if you've ever been in a dark place pretending that you're happy makes you even go even darker and it wasn't until a dear friend of mine came to

me and said something's wrong something's different did I come completely clean clean lifted this huge weight off my shoulders and now all that energy that I went to lying hiding and faking could now go into finding a solution and the solution was that I Found was this thing called the why I knew what I did I knew how I did it but I didn't know why I became obsessed with this thing called the why I learn my why but more important I learned to help others find theirs and I would help my friends and they

would find renewed passion in their Works they would sometimes take entrepreneurial Ventures themselves and people just kept inviting me and I just kept saying yes and the rest as they say is history it is so we Most of us out here are chiropractors and 70% of all chiropractors are small business owners and but 100% of all doctors and healers are leaders so and we also throughout this whole week and we've carefully selected courses on leadership and strategy and how how to improve our our our serve but we also have technical classes but we want to

make sure that we we get this out here so we ow people to become better leaders now Damon John's been one of our our our Speakers here and he's as he usually ask us whenever I gets here he asked me for a two to five word Declaration of who you are like what do you what sets you apart what are the what's your driving passion do you have a a two to five word statement of your purpose of course I mean I wake up every single morning to inspire people to do the things that Inspire

them so together each of us can change our world for the better and I live my Life with a very clear Vision as well I imagine a world you said a little bit of it the up front I imagine a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired feel safe wherever they are and end the day fulfilled by the work that they do and I've committed my career and my life to advancing towards that Vision so what do most of us get wrong in leadership um I when you say

what what do most people get wrong in leadership I Think leadership is a misunderstood uh uh skill set one first of all it absolutely is a skill set there's no such thing as a natural born leader even the leaders that appear to have natural capacity I guaranteed they learned it when they were younger they had a mentor a parent a coach a guardian somebody that helped them learn these skills um uh number one leadership is nothing about being in charge it's the awesome responsibility uh to see those around us Rise it's about taking care of

those in our charge the closest analogy I can give to being a great leader is like being a great parent yes I know you don't get to pick your team sometimes but you don't get to pick your children either and yet you show up with love every day and you work tirelessly to see that they will gain the skills and the confidence to do well and Excel in their lives and great leaders are doing exactly the same thing and a and and Leadership is all about human skills um and leaders who become great leaders it's

because they study leadership they're obsessed with it they read books about it they watch talks about it they read articles about it and when you go out with them all they want to do is talk about it they're obsessed with the concept just like parents no there's no such thing as an expert parent but you read articles you read books you talk to other parents and you solve problems Along the way so in your book The Infinite game you you you call CEOs really cvos Chief Visionary officers so you're not the you're not there to

be the boss as much as you are to share a vision would you like to expand upon that well I I think it's I think the concept of CEO is hilarious um because if you look at all the other sea level uh titles we know exactly what the job responsibility is in the title the CMO we know exactly what they do the CFO the CTO it says it right there yes if you can't read a p&l I'm not making you the CFO I don't need to look at your job experience um what the heck is

a CEO what's an executive officer it doesn't tell us what the responsibility of that human being is and so you get a lot of people in that position who aren't necessarily qualified for that job I prefer the term CV a chief Vision officer someone who is the keeper and holder of where we are going of that Idealized Vision that we striving towards um uh if you just have somebody who's obsessed with Finance in the C in the CEO position um what you'll find is that that organization becomes um much more finite minded much more short-term

focused I want somebody long-term looking Beyond Horizons certainly when I've stumbled into mistakes along the way it's when I've failed to be the provide the vision and tried to be the boss yeah so your book The Infinite game I love it what is in the infinite game and what is a finite game and and what game were we playing so in the mid 1980s a philosopher and theologian by the name of Dr James kse defined these two types of games finite games and infinite games a finite game is defined as uh check check uh a

f there we go uh a finite game is defined as known players fixed rules and an agreed upon objective agreed upon objective football baseball right if there's a winner necessarily They have to be losers but more important there's always a beginning a middle and an end and then you have infinite games infinite games are defined as known and unknown players which means you don't necessarily know who all the other players are and new players can join whenever they want uh the rules are changing which means every player can play however they want and the objective

is to stay in the game as long as possible To perpetuate the game we are players in infinite games every day of Our Lives whether we know it or not no one in here will ever win Healthcare no one will ever win education um no one will ever be declared the winner of your marriage uh if you want to be number one in your marriage good luck with that that that's for sure you can be number two but you can't be number one um and there's definitely no such thing as Winning business and yet when

we listen to the language of so many people in business it becomes very very clear they don't know the game they're playing they talk about being number one or being the best or beating their competition based on what based on what agreed upon metrics time frames and objectives and this is a problem because when we play with a finite mindset in an infinite game when we play to win in a game that has no Finish Line there are some very Predictable and consistent outcomes the big ones are the decline of trust the decline of cooperation

and the decline of innovation like when Circuit City went bankrupt Best Buy didn't win anything right um and so we have to play for the game that we're in and if you're in business to stay in business versus if you want to just hit some Target and get out of it and you don't actually care if the business does good work um then you have to play for the mindset You're for for the game you're playing so as a profession we're in an infinite game we want to perpetuate we only have an impact as long

as we survive Parker seminars we only have an impact which has been 73 years as long as we survive and but if if someone built a practice and they sold it the goal was to raise a build up a series of clinics and then sell it y That's a finite game well so let's the uh the infinite game is not the absence of finite games it's the Context within which those finite games exist right so let me give you a better analogy we overuse Sports an analogies in business um Sports is always a beginning and

middle end business NE not necessarily um uh here's a better analogy let's say you want to be healthy so I know there's many things you have to do you have to exercise you have to eat right you have to nurse your personal relationships get sleep you'll never be good at all those things all The time it's a striving um but there's nothing wrong with setting arbitrary goals there's nothing wrong with setting quarterly or annual goals for your business there's no problem with that like I want to lose x amount of weight by X date great

great you do all the things you're supposed to do you stand on the scale every day we love a metric human beings need metrics you can't run a marathon without mile markers right it's actually unnerving so we like to Measure things because it tells us speed and distance and sometimes it goes well and sometimes it goes badly and let's say you hit your goal by the right day on the right time ecstatic but here's the problem you have to keep doing it for the rest of your life the game's not over right um but what

I think is more interesting is what what happens if you miss your goal right what happens if you don't lose the weight on the right day on the right time well the answer is Nothing nothing happens nothing happens in fact you're way healthier now than when you started because you've been doing all the right things you just got the date wrong and we do the same thing in business right you can pick an arbitrary number to hit usually at the end of the year because that's when we pay taxes and you can strive towards that

and if you're doing the right thing and building a healthy business if you hit your goal great it be ecstatic but Keep working working at it but if you miss your goal the question is what's the trend and I think we need to pay more attention to not only if we hit the goal but how we hit the goal did you do it ethically or did you do it by stabbing people in the back cutting Corners you know cutting quality to to to drive margin that will hit you get let help you hit a few

goals but over the long run you're going to do damage to the business um or uh are you Building it in healthy way you just got the wrong date and you got the wrong time you're striving to build a healthy business and so if you if somebody's working to build that business are you going to sell a business that's healthy and somebody else can continue to run and that business will continue to do good in the world or do you just want to cash out and make your money and you put some lipstick on the

pig and you don't care if you're just trying to put Lipstick on the pig that's a finite mindset and I don't know what you've built but I guarantee you it'll be worth less than if you built a really healthy business that someone can can take on take along a nurse once you're gone very in other words infinite mindset still counts got right well I said most of us out here we're all leaders if whether you're having your own business or if you're a provider or if you're leading students what advice would you provide These doctors

and their staff and their families for creating a culture of Excellence changing the culture to reflect a healthy culture where people are valued and that they're they feel valued and they were able to to to get things done in a in a more efficient way so one of the big mistakes we make especially if we're leading a practice practice we see this in healthcare a lot which is if you ask the leaders what's your priority they always say the Patient uh that's not true um the leader is responsible for the people the people are responsible

for the patients and if the people feel taken care of guess what they will do they will exert their energy to take care of the patients if the people don't feel safe they don't feel psychologically safe when they come to work if they don't feel uh seen or heard or understood by their leaders then they will take actions to protect themselves from their leaders which Takes care away from the patients so it is a human Enterprise first and foremost and if you take care of the people internally they will take care of the business they

will take greater Pride they will look for ways to save money etc etc I'll give you a real life example so um I I had a conversation with um the uh the food and beverage director at one of the Four Seasons Hotels Four Seasons is an is a extremely welll organization that understands that You take care of your people and your people take care of your customer um and they uh were telling me that that um uh that when they gave authority to their front line to decide like if they screw something up like do

you comp a drink or comp a dessert or comp a meal um something strange happened which is they found the Frontline staff were stingier than the managers because they were so protective of the business right so they're not just giving away everything Willy-nilly but that's only when the people feel like they matter and feel like they're a part of the business they'll treat it like their own that's great so we as chiroprator know our why to improve human health performance and well-being what advice would you give to us to expand our message how do we

how can we get our message out in a way that would attract people to our practice in individually or as a as an industry let's do them both so individually um Every single human being in here has their own personal why and if you have passion for uh your work then the odds are very high that your work is is helping you advance your own cause your own personal why right so the question is what's your why like I didn't wake up I didn't this is I'm not living my childhood dream here I didn't want

to be a public speaker or an author I don't think any child wanted to be a writer I wasn't that kind of nerdy kid you know Uh um so what kind of nerdy kid were you oh I like science fiction I went to space camp my sister makes fun of me because on when I I went to space camp when I was 13 and when I came back I wore my flight suit to school and everybody made fun of me but I knew they were just jealous so it's okay uh I mean I had wings

I had my name patch you know American flag on the on The shoulder um yeah but the point is I don't think anybody here was was doing Chiropractic work on your teddy bears right like you're not this is not your childhood dream sometimes you fell into it by accident or sometimes you discovered it along the way so the question is what's your why and how does this help help you bring your why to life so if you want there are many ways to find your why I've written about it I've spoken about it but here's

a fun Way you can do it right it's called the friends exercise call a friend or sit down with a friend who one of your best friends the kind of person you love they love you you would be there for them at 3:00 in the morning if they needed you and you you know that they would be there for three for you at 3 o'clock in the morning if you needed them do not do this with a spouse do not do this with a sibling do not do this with a parent uh Those relationships are

too close do it with a best friend and ask them the simple question why are we friends and they're going to look at you like you're insane because the part of the brain that controls our feelings our lyic brains like trust and loyalty and love doesn't control language and so that's why it's hard to put our emotions into words and so they won't be able to answer the question so you stop asking why you say come on what specifically is It about me that I know that you'd be there for me no matter what and

they're going to struggle to answer the question and so they'll start saying things like I don't know uh you're a good person I trust you you've always been there for me and you play Devil's Advocate you go great that's the definition of a friend What specifically is it about me that I know you'd be there for me no matter what and again they're going to go through a few rounds Of this don't help them don't let anybody else help them it's frustrating and eventually they'll give up and eventually they'll stop trying to describe you and

they'll start describing themselves and they'll this is what my friend said to me they said Simon I don't know all I know is that I can just sit in a room with you I don't even have to talk to you and I feel inspired and I got goosebumps and that's what will happen to you which is they Will say something that will tap you emotionally you'll well up with tears you'll get goosebumps something will happen and that's when you know that the value you have in the world your why is the thing that they value

for from you most and so you'll you'll get in the ballpark and then your ability to put that into words your ability to talk about what you believe not what you do is the thing that inspires people to want to come and visit your practice Over another practice so for me for example if I were a chiropractor or maybe I fell into this field and didn't follow the path that I did but my why would be the same I would say something like every single day I driven to inspire people to do the things that

Inspire them and that's one of the things that I love not like love emotional word about being a chiropractor I know that people struggle when they're in pain I know people Aren't at the best selves when they don't have Total Mobility and what I have found is by simply giving people the freedom to move the way that they that they want to move they can go off and do the things that they've dreamed about doing and I'm actually fulfilling my life's Purpose By Doing It Right that's very good well said we've got 500 students here

and I always tell my students when they come to Parker seminars go talk to the Chiropractors in the field go talk to them ask them if they like what they do ask them about their passion and you all are the best recruiters I have for for our our University it's the passion in in helping people but getting the message out and and then why do my patients come here will they trust you you have care that and if you're struggling with patients it might be that you need to evaluate you know some of your behaviors

and and make sure that You I don't know meditate be more mindful with people would is there a way to you don't want to contrive who you are for business purposes you want you're asking people to be authentically authentic people at the end of the day it's a human Enterprise right which is you'll get clients that'll come and go for whatever reason but the ones who are loyal the ones who recommend you to others it's it's because they like you can they find somebody who does about The same work as you about the same quality

about the same price yes to some degree there's a commoditization of of the skill set you know is someone slightly better at some things than others yes of course but they come back for you do you make them feel seen and heard and understood do you have listening skills right if somebody comes in grumpy are you just telling them to cheer up or you can you meet do you have the skill set to meet them where they Are right and the more that people can feel like you care about them like a human being that

you're not just going through the motions of doing the things that you've been taught that you're qualified to do the more they'll want to come back you know it's the same when we go shopping or go to a restaurant right we give big tips when somebody makes us feel like we matter we give small tips when people make don't make us feel like We matter regardless of the actual quality of the service you know whether something came out on time or not and so I think everybody has to remember you're interacting with human beings you

more than anybody else can't do your work online it is a human Enterprise and the better you are at human skills the more you will comeand 11 loyalty and recommendations from those who come to see you so as we as we're we're we're growing in this manner and you and I Talked about the emyth when we're behind stage is that something that might be a barrier to a chiropractor to grow the emth is is well maybe you can explain what the emth is and how what having relying too much on me being and the person

the front person would interfere with us growing our practice well I'll tell you me personally it was the single biggest barrier to my own company's success to my own my own personal growth which is um I had to be in every meeting And make every decision I was the chief cook and bottle washer and I had employees but I empowered nobody and and I had to have all the new business I was I was the most qualified right I mean it's a highly stressful situation um and uh nothing gets done without me it's just not

scalable uh you can have a job that way and this is what the emth Michael Gerber's book The emth he talks about this entrepreneurial myth the number of people who start a business They work harder and make less money than if they just had a job like what's the appeal well I want to be my own bus I I get that but you're making less money and working harder why don't you just go get a job right there has to be a real reason and the single biggest lesson that I learned that was a profound

shift not only in my business business but in my own my own uh my own person my own confidence was when I learned to say I don't know and I need Help those are the two single biggest things and to accept it when it was offered the amount of times people offer us help but we turn it down because we feel embarrassed or we don't want to bother them or we don't want them to think that we're struggling um and by the way this this degree of vulnerability saying I don't know I don't understand a

lot of people are they first of all the word vulnerable scares them nobody wants to admit Weakness now you don't have to be insecure when you admit vulnerability you can own it with confidence I'll give an example um yeah I love um I love being a chiropractor but I got to be honest with you I'm no I'm no good at the numbers um I find that really hard and I it's it's killing my practice and I really need help okay not not confidence inspiring right versus I love being a chiropractor my absolute favorite thing what

I suck at is the Numbers and what I really need help with is just somebody to show me how to run a piano and then I know that this thing will will Thrive it's the same thing one you own it and one you're embarrassed by it just own all the weaknesses own all the things you suck at and ask for help I can relate to that totally at College I I'm not an academician so I come here I I have World Authority on that I hired so then they they run it better than I could

ever run it we've Even hired a vice president of culture strategy someone to help us it's so valuable that our goal is to have our our culture be a competitive Advantage love how are organizations getting it right with culture how big organizations getting it wrong you can either have a culture by default or by Design and most people think about cultures most Business Leaders think about culture usually after something bad happens or when they're struggling with something Or they they're they're they're hiring but no nothing seems to work out um ask yourself what kind of

culture you want and it's going to be based on your why I wanted my culture to be place that in is inspiring to come and work at my at my company and and that we want to do work that inspires other people that's that's why I get out of bed in the morning right um and again it goes it's like it's like parenting no one will ever you'll never be an expert at this it's 1% better every day I'll give you one example so um most of us give feedback the way we like to get

it or we take the advice from people on stages like this you know given uh you know a compliment sandwich you know tell them the good then tell them the bad then tell me tell them the good the don't ever give me a compliment sandwich okay I hate them because you tell me some at the beginning then you tell me the real thing and then you tell me some At the end and I'm supposed to like receive it better that way right but the problem is I like blunt feedback so I tend to give blunt

feedback turns out not everybody likes blunt feedback so I I had a I had a a team member a colleague that I worked with that I would give her blunt feedback in the moment because heck that's how I like to get it and I tell you sometimes screaming matches ensued right like I we would have screaming matches over me Giving her feedback and at one point I'm realizing it's going nowhere and I interrupt I go this is not working clearly can you please tell me how to give you feedback because clearly I'm failing and she

said yes I just need to be prepared so ask me can I give you some feedback or schedule a time with me and tell me it's going to be a feedback session and I can put it in my calendar I said I can do that so I started scheduling it or I started saying can I Give you some difficult feedback now and she would say yes and I could be completely blunt and she could take harsher feedback than almost anybody on the team so long as I prepared her for it and so we have to

learn how to give and receive feedback things like that the point is there are these skills listening skills how to have difficult conversations this is a skill of good culture I saw this happen after the murder of George Floyd right the number Of leaders after George Floyd you know what they did with their teams nothing they did nothing not because they're bad people it's because they were so afraid of talking to their team about race that they would accidentally trigger someone or inflame the situation that they opted to do nothing this is because they lacked

the skill set of how to have a difficult conversation let me teach you how to have a difficult conversation I need to have a difficult conversation With you I'm worried I'm going to get some of this wrong but I need you to work with me I may say things wrong I may accidentally trigger somebody but having this conversation right now is more important than me getting it perfectly right can we have that conversation and now you've just enrolled people to say we're going to have a difficult conversation together and we're not all going to get

it right and by the way if you can learn the Skill of how to have a conversation about race for example you can have a conversation about pretty much anything performance or anything else that's going on in your team that reminds me of of what happened at the last presidential election year that's when George Floyd was murdered that's when um so many we had cities that are in fire divisiveness we at at Park University we we had those conversations and but for the most part we're we're doctors in Wartime if someone sees Dr rosenbom they

brought an enemy and combatant into his Opera room he would treat them with the same respect as and and care as if it was one of his Marines we're outside of the we're outside of the conflict we need to be as doctors separate from the conflict and be the be the healers and we're there to be the calming Force it's going to happen this year it's going to be a a cont contentious time and I just Challenge you guys be the light in the world that we're going to see in the next next five months

so so we we hear a lot about hiring the right people and not micromanaging them but you talked about people coming into the workforce unprepared possibly yep and so how should we work with these people to maximize their con their contributions so again um we're there to see those around us rise that's what leadership is so if you want people to Be honest about their shortcoming so that you can help them train up we have to be honest about ours right about our shortcomings one of the greatest things that I ever did was open up

to my team about the things I'm struggling with the days that I'm having a hard day um if I'm in a bad place I ask my team to be patient with me and it turns out the more risks that I took to be open the more risks my team took to be open to me so if I talked about a skill set I Didn't have or where where I suck then they told me where where they suck and I could be there to support them and more important they see me doing it for others so

um are we yelling at people when they get things wrong or are we saying all right try again like how are we responding when things go wrong um I remember I had a boss named Peter and tagio was the best boss I ever had in my life annoyingly he would never answer a single question sorry yeah he would Never answer a single question I'd ask him something and he'd say well what do you think we should do I'd be like I think we should do this he goes well why don't you try that and um

uh if if I screwed something up he expected us to be fully accountable he expected us to walk into his office and say I screwed up and you never got yelled at he said okay so what are you going to do to fix it and because we didn't get yelled at we were we were encouraged to be honest And we were rewarded for being honest in other words he held space for us he he he was supportive in us trying to fix something we never feared for losing our jobs if we screwed something up and

I screwed some big things up um but he he was just there to to to support us and so the more that we felt that the the the the more not only risks were we willing to take which is good um but the more we took full accountability so sometimes I think we we have young People come into our practices or come into our companies and we expect them to be us or we expect them to have been raised the same way we were raised they raised differently it's a different time it's a different generation

it's not better or worse it's just different so a little bit of empathy and a little bit of support goes a long way and if we hire someone who's just like us one of us is not need it that too yeah and some something I that it's common in Chiropractice I is chiropractors become successful they their patients are coming in that it's time to hire an associate they hire the associate patients start seeing the associate and then some of the patients prefer the associate and the and the doctor gets jealous and and so again they're

freeing you up and they're they're actually jealous of their associate I I've seen people eventually fire the associate Because they feel they're competing against them as they're making them more money I mean that's you know that sounds like a dream scenario to hire people who are better than you um that means you can stop working and people will love coming to your practice um and and and you can make and you can make money when you're lying on a beach like why wouldn't you want that that's the e that's but but you're right I mean

Ego is a thing and um and you know we want to be loved and we want to be the star and that's the mistake I made remember when I was when I was the bus and I had to learn to say I don't know or there are other people better than me or smart than me um that's the dream and to own it remember it's your practice and the more that you create an environment where they feel loved and they feel like they're growing that you're teaching them skills not just Technical skills but human skills

that they will leave better versions of themselves because they worked for you you're in a new job your job is not to be the world's best chiropractor anymore your job is not to be the world's best leader so start studying that that's it that's wonderful now I know you have strong opinions about certain leadership styles like Jack wellsh she would f the 10% of his bottom performers every year and then expect the other 90% to be Loyal and happy yeah um what can Insight can you do for us to bolster and reinforce our spirit of

loyalty with those who work with us and belonging and security oh boy you went right for the Pandora's Box yeah yeah I I have devoted my career to undoing everything Jack Welch ever did um no I mean that very very seriously that period of leadership in America you know starting in the late 70s but really coming really sort of growing during the ' 80s and 90s it it Broke capitalism the capitalism that we have now is not the capitalism that made this country great it's not the capitalism that Thomas Jefferson believed in it's not the

cap capitalism that Adam Smith wrote about um uh capitalism when it works is good for the customer it's good for the employee um the capitalism that we have now is good for the leaders and it comes at the expense of the employees and sometimes even the customers um You Know Jack Welch popularized using mass layoffs to balance the books that's profitable companies who use people's livelihoods to be more profitable when they're already profitable we're not talking existential here we're not talking about a sinking ship that needs to use layoffs to just survive we're talking about

we're just not as profitable as we wanted to be there were no such things there was no such thing as mass layoffs in the United States Prior to the early 1980s didn't exist it was used for existential reasons only it was popularized in the 80s and 90s short-termism quarterly results wasn't really a thing shareholder Supremacy wasn't really a thing even involvement in the stock market used to be for the middle class not really a thing anymore so yes um I want to see a return to the the capitalism that made America great where we take

care of our people our people take care of our customers and Competition is good for business so how can leaders apply the your your golden Circle concept to inspire their teams and organizations so the the the two things I would offer that really profoundly help in an organization and they they're both religion for me um and it changed the course of my life changed the course of my business number one I learned to start with why right so I gave you the example before I I didn't tell people What I do I tell people what

I believe right so when you're flying home on the flight you know after this event you know you'll probably sit next to somebody on a plane and you have plane conversations where somebody turn he goes what do you do and you go I'm a chiropractor and they go cool and except for the 10% of people who like want to talk to a chiropractor that conversation is over because nobody cares about what you Do and by the way if you said what do you do and they go I'm in marketing they go you're going to go

cool right I I so the two things I did number one I stopped talking about what I did and I only started talking about what I believed right you you you heard the hypothetical example I gave a moment ago he say I love what I do every single day I help people find ways to live a more inspiring life oh my God how do you do that believe it or not I'm a Chiropractor and I then you can talk about you for the next you know two hours if you want right so number one was

I learned to start with why I learned to start with what I believe not what I did the second thing is the law of diffusion of Innovations it became my a religion for me right really really quickly law of diffusion of Innovations all populations sift across the standard deviation the bell curve if you have high performers you have low performers You have an average always right like I know in this room there's a percentage of people who are just nodding their head going ah I love Simon I know there's a percentage of people in this

room who go he's an idiot right and then I know there's an average who kind of open-minded right I know that coming in so the law of diffusion tells us that the first two and a half% of any population are your innovators these your big idea people Richard Branson Steve Jobs Elon Musk right then you have your early adopters these are the people with a a higher risk tolerance they're willing to try something new be a part of something that reflects their own beliefs they're willing to spend more money make more effort travel further to

see you go out of their way because somehow you reflect their beliefs then you have the early and late majority more cynical more practical what's in it for me will I get my money back if it Doesn't work out right and then your lagard is the only reason they partake in anything because you have no choice they have no choice anymore clearly we all want Mass Market success or mass Market acceptance of an idea in other words we all want the bell and usually what we do is we we throw all of our efforts at

the Bell right which is why we have promotions and sales and guarantees we're talking to people with low risk tolerance and what I learned is That in with the LW diffusion if you can get 18 to 15 to 18% Market penetration there's a social phenomenon that happens called a Tipping Point and it just goes if you ignore what I'm telling you you'll always get about 10% I guarantee you 10% of your patients they love you oh I you love them rather oh I love them they get it right that's not enough to make the system

tip and so I got extremely good at figuring out who was an early adopter and who wasn't so People would call me up and they say I heard about you convince me why I should hire you not an early adopter so I would say don't and this is at a time where I needed every dollar I was living paycheck to paycheck I had no money in the bank and I would turn down business with people who were the wrong fits I'd get I'll get you later the people I said yes to were the ones who

believed what I believed because I started with why and they would say things to me like you're On to something I don't think it's perfect but you're doing something and I really like it I'd say yes to those and they did more to build my practice than I could because they believed what I believed that they would tell more people about me and my work than anybody else and so my work spread with zero dollar in marketing because I started to get really good at working with people who believed what I believed and they told

their Friends that's great I remember when I was in practice I I was going through my notes one day and I'd seen all these referrals from this patient I couldn't remember who this patient was and then I got his chartred out looked at it it was I remember the visit I walked in the office he's all his body language was all scrunched up and I asked can I help you my wife wants me to come here and what your wife want you she I don't know if I believe in stuff so I I did my

Examination and I told him you know I don't think I can help you no charge for today he went out and I years later he was my number one referral source a patient I never even treated because and and uh it's don't chase after money don't chase after the wrong patience there's certain people that they not going to get it and don't be finite minded like this is like learn from lawyers right a lawyer charges you for your first time consultation yes right So right off the bat you hate them right because they haven't done

anything yet they're charging you to for you to discover that you don't want to work with them right so we're not using that as practice management by the way he's giving away free care so in your opinion what's the most common challenges that leaders face when trying to inspire our teams you call us Visionary officers but how how can we Inspire them because you Don't want to just like get in front of the parade and follow me it's there's you how do you get the message out to inspire people okay so talking about inspiration again

if you start with why you're going to be more inspiring right it's also a recruiting tool it's it's a reinforcement tool when you're in but uh but remember you're there to see your people grow think of them like like like your children right find out where they're strong encourage them and and And catch them doing things right we so often catch people doing things wrong right catch people doing things right reinforce the behaviors you want rather than constantly punishing the behaviors you don't want change your incentive structures to get the behaviors you want I'll give

you so this happened to me very young in my career um I worked at a big Ad Agency early in my career and um new business pctures were usually done by the senior people and it was Christmas time so all the senior people went off to uh vacation we had a big pitch sometime in January and I was left back at the office because I I didn't have vacation and um and they told me and another Junior person prepare the War Room which I apologize as a marine it basically means hang the research on the

walls right well that took an hour and we had a week to kill so we decided to do the whole pitch ourselves we did the strategy we comb through the Research we came up with an Insight we wrote the whole pitch deck and the senior leaders came back we showed them our work and they actually used Our Deck in the new business pitch and we lost the business we did not win the pitch and my boss gave me a huge promotion they moved me up two levels because he wasn't rewarding My outcome he was rewarding

my initiative and guess what he got more of initiative you know this as a marine I Learned this when I went to OCS and watched them do the lrc um basically this leadership reaction Court leadership reaction course these mini obstacle courses right and I stand next to the drill instructor when they have to do these things timed like take all your Mena material over the water hazard which is what Marines call a pond uh uh with like planks of different wood three of different Siz of wood you know and nowhere on the grading List nowhere

on the grading list does it say if they made it to the other side or not and I asked the drill instructor how come you don't care if they have Mission success he says well we understand that good leaders sometimes suffer Mission failure and bad leaders sometimes en Joy Mission success so if they succeed or fail doesn't tell us what kind of leader they are well said well then how do you know what kind of leader they are they said if they're exhibiting the Characteristics of a good leader and so they you know this you

get drilled into the characteristics of what it means to be a good leader and individual Mission successes don't necessarily matter because they know the Marines know that if you reward the good behaviors that you want to see repeated good leaders will enjoy Mission success more often over time and that's the point more often often over time but if we just ding people every time they fail we're Going to get nothing out of them so is everybody happy how we're we're doing this we we got a little time left would you prefer to have some questions

for the audience or keep this conversation going okay so CLA and I we have one of our sons is is in the uh Army Special Forces and during his training and it's took about three years to get his Green Beret and they'll put them on these these horrible um events where they're Carrying loads and things like that and they have psychologists hidden along the way watching the reaction and with it is that person's letting the other people through the load they're all this one's collaborating and and they're looking for not just leaders but people who

because you hit everybody being a leader they'll pick up the load they also look at which ones are the load um and along the way it was it was really Innovative how they they really not it's not just About Brute Force they they they need people to work together and that's how a team is Built Well I I've done work with uh the seals and Dev group and it's the same for the Rangers the same for for Recon Marine Recon uh they asked a former seal um uh what kind of person becomes a seal so

I think we can all agree that seals and and the other special operating forces are some of the highest performing teams on the planet right so what are you agreeing with that George 100% Okay so so they asked the seal what kind of person makes it into the seals and he said um he said the Star College athletes um who've uh who've never really been tested to the core of their being none of those guys make it through he says the preing leaders who like to delegate everything none of none of those guys make it

through he said these guys that come in with huge hulking muscles covered in tattoos because they Want to prove how strong they are none of those guys make it through he said some of the guys who make it through are skinny and scrawny he said some of the guys who make it through you actually see them shivering out of fear he says but every guy that makes it through when they're physically exhausted when they're emotionally exhausted somehow some way they're able to dig down deep inside themselves to find the energy to help the guy next

to Them it's about this incredible level of care and teamwork that makes high performing teams and what's so funny is all of the work that I do I talk about high performing teams and yet people try interpret that interpret that to individuals there's no such thing as a high performing individual right because we know what they are they're they're Spotlight Rangers there's these people who they they're the Stars leave me alone but when push comes to shove they Don't help anybody nobody wants to help them and there are so many of us that have toxic

Geniuses in our companies they're so good but they destroy the uh they destroy the performance of everybody else because everybody hates them and worse is when we know who they are and we say why don't you get rid of that person they're clearly uncoachable and we go I know but their numbers are so good so all we're promoting but the Here's the detriment not only are we reinforcing that that person should keep doing what they're doing we're sending a subtle message to everybody else in our company which is if you act like them you'll do

well at this company when we get rid of them not just because they're difficult people but they have they they are uncoachable uh they've proved themselves to be uncoachable it sends a message to the rest of the team which is I don't Care how good your skills are if you don't work as a team you don't help each other you have no place here and guess what you're going to get more teamwork and teams are always high performing than individuals anyway you talked about the concept of leaders eating last and I would add to that

that leaders can you quot the Marines how the leaders always eat last leaders also usually eat the crappiest food in the in the Marines they would we turn the SE R boxes upside Down there' be 12 Meals and people memorize which one's which and there 12 12 people in a squad so the private picks first and gos all the way up to the platoon platoon Commander so they always get the crap meal but um your concept of Leaders Eat Last extrapolate on that well I got it from Talking Marine yeah I said what makes the

Marines so good at what they do he said officers eat last they always they they take care they always do yeah you know They're going to take care of know as well as I do that when an officer or leader puts themselves first what they're doing what they're going to accidentally do this is what I said if you can have a culture by default or by Design if you always put yourself first and you take the best of everything then you're creating a culture whether you know it or not of stab each other in the

back and dog eat dog and be selfish that's what you're going to get because People will always follow the leader they'll follow the example of the leader always right do you know in the United States remember in the we used to wear men used to wear hats for fashion right do you know when that stopped you know when we stopped wearing hats for fashion in the United States when John F Kennedy was elected because he didn't wear a hat leader sets the tone Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers normalized Mass layoffs for economic Reasons

we follow the leader whether we agree with them or not politically we follow our leaders right so it's the same in your company if you put yourself first and everybody can see that you will create a culture of selfishness right give you one example right so this is a common one right the the the phone rings some front desk receptionist whoever picks it up they ask for you and the the your your your colleague says uh Dave's on the phone and you go tell them I'm not here congratulations you have just condoned lying inside your

company that's what that is that is a lie everybody knows it's a lie and you just allowed it so I had an assistant who I I had a very important important phone call with the senior leaders of a of a of a pretty significant organization and I forgot and I just didn't show up on the phone call I just forgot and so what she she emailed the all and said so so sorry Simon had Another call that ran long can we reschedule and I had to sit down with her and say I'm so grateful I

know why you did that you did that to protect my reputation and I'm super grateful for your intention you can never do that again because that's a lie and we don't lie you can say Simon missed the call sorry you don't have to tell them I'm an idiot but you can't say that it's because I was in another call when I wasn't because we don't condone lying Here it's called Integrity it's called integrity and so these micro things that if you allow for them to happen in the micro they will show up in the macro

and don't be surprised when somebody in your company starts lying it's because you allowed it and so in in in a culture you will always get the behavior you reward and you will always get the behavior that you model so when you choose to eat last and you set that example and you know this as well as anybody who's ever Served right what ends happening is when you run out of food your people will all give a little bit of their food to feed their leader you take care of your people you eat last your

people will always take care of you and make sure you're fed and I know everybody who started that's very good everyone he started to practice when you're starting off there's there's there's months where you don't get paid but everybody gets everybody else gets Paid we've all of us have been there where you're you're living on your credit cards and you're but you always take care of the team and I will say our our vice president of culture is very mindful of all of our employees not just the high paid ones but the ones we we

really worry about we the ones the lower wages if there's something a glitch that happens it affects them much more than if there's a a snafu and and where the where the paychecks come out late well If you're you're high a high paid executive it will mean less to them but your staff your will it'll really a big big big factor to them so being very mindful of that is important so what advice would you give to leaders who want to implement like maybe they have a vision and they're being they're met with resistance and

skepticism along the way and you're and that that what's the word it's just a resistance to change which is so common My friend Bob Chapman when he was younger he he he he was having a crisis of faith and so he went to his priest and he says um I I uh I don't think I believe in I don't think think I believe in God and His priest said good thing God still believes in you people come along at different times like you can't force someone to have a conversion or you can't force somebody To

believe if we we don't know what their story is we don't know that maybe they've worked for horrible people in the past maybe they've come from companies that had terrible cultures maybe they've been twice Once Bitten Twice Shy like maybe they're coming with their guard up like I don't know what their experience is I don't know what their story is so just because we are well-intentioned we're all like chipper chipper and studying leadership that we Expect that they come in in the first three weeks of their employment how come you're not all in everybody else

here is all in like you got to meet people where they are some people jump right in head first and they're really excited when they come into a new culture um and some people are slower just let them come at their own pace but you just keep doing the right thing and mo most importantly you got to be consistent right you can't just do it once or twice you got to do It all the time and it's the little things that add up more than the big things so I always think the balance of intensity

versus consistency so intensity is something like this you've come in for three days it's an intense time it's intense education you're on this this is and anything intense is easily measured um and and and captured in time right but consistency is the little stuff that is innocuous and doesn't seem to do anything like saying Good morning you know in the hallway well that does nothing if you do it once but what if you do it every day you know like how long did you know when did your wife fall in love with you like I

don't know like it wasn't because you remembered her birthday day or border flowers and Valentine's Day those are intensity it's the little things you did like when you went to get a drink from the fridge and you just brought one back for her or the game was on and she said Honey can I talk to you and you hit pause on the game and you said sure what's on your mind right like little things like that that in in a vacuum do nothing but when they add up people fall in love and it's the same

in leadership it's the little things it's the brushing your teeth not going to the dentist you have to go to the dentist twice a year that's intensity but if that's all you do your teeth full out so you can't just Rely on the big rahas the big leadership things the big coaching things very important you got to brush your teeth for two minutes in the morning and two minutes in the evening every single day and it only works if you keep doing it and that's what leadership is it's the boring mundane daily little things and

some of it is so easy some of it is so easy right let let me show you one of the easiest things you can do can I borrow someone's phone can is any phone I can borrow yeah thank I'm G to show you something I'll show you a little thing right so here I am I'm sitting in my office and you walk into my office uh and while I'm sitting here just now right do you feel I'm not I'm not making a phone call it's not buzzing it's not beeping I'm just holding it do you

feel like you're the most important thing to me right now no right there's a deep-seated psychological reaction to the device I'm Not doing anything so when we show up to a meeting and we put the phone phone on the table and by the way putting the phone face down is not more polite right how do you think it makes people feel makes you makes them feel that they're not the most important thing right now if somebody walks into your office and it's just on the desk how do you think it makes people feel employees or

patients uh or worse when somebody looks Away and you're on it for 30 seconds how do you think it makes people feel right put the phone away when there's another person that you want them to feel like they matter it's so easy put it in a back pocket put it on a shelf put it in a drawer eye contact thank you very much can you catch well done so eye contact right uh facing your body towards somebody hey can I talk to you sure what's on your Mind right little little things like I said these

things in a vacuum do nothing but if you do them over and over and over again I can tell you how power ful they are a marine once told me he says his test for being a leader is if you ask somebody how they're doing you actually care about the answer how are you it's been a hard day okay cool well I'll check you after lunch right no how are you not doing so good what's what's going on right these are Skills they're very easy to learn they're very easy to practice but you got to

do them and over the course of time sometimes quicker for some people sometimes slower for others you will build an environment you will build a culture where people feel seen feel heard feel like they matter and you will watch them give you their Blood Sweat and Tears to help your business grow that's how it works so we've spent the last three days as a family getting Together educating but being motivated and we come every year and we we leave on fire Monday morning is an awesome day how can but it's the the the buzz is

not what carries it through it's the dis discipline of carrying it on what advice would you give to these 5,000 people to take what they've learned and and use it throughout the the year so especially when you've been gone from work for a few days you're not going to just start on Monday and be like all right back to Work like tell them what you learned like you have notes you took notes for yourself like set a meeting and say I want to share some of the stuff that I've learned that might be valuable to

you be super and open and honest about your own leadership Journey I've always recommended like be don't don't just hide it say hey I learned a bunch of stuff that I can do better I'm going to practice being more open I'm going to practice these little things hold me Accountable watch me but you'll start to notice a difference don't be alarmed I'm just practicing and I'm learning leadership I realize I'm a great chiropractor but I could maybe I could be a better leader right um and so I'm going to start doing these things and I

and I and I hope that you can join me on this journey as well but I'm going to be the example and and and I might stumble but tell them specifically I'm going to practice my listening skills I'm going To practice giving and receiving feedback you know and then go learn about but be really open about it on Monday communication Integrity humility I just G came back from a leadership um training and one of the things they really were were're we're pushing was basically authentic Communications but then talking to my cabinet like these are the

things I'm learned we're going to I'm going to you're going to hear this from me and this is the Conversation how we should do good and meeting the expectations and and also um I had SBI it's the situation we were sitting at at the table and the behavior you did and the eye would be how I interpreted it and instead of you may you were arrogant when you said that it wouldn't be that would be inappropriate it would be I didn't feel as significant by the way you treated me and having those conversations and that's

what it sounds like you're doing is having those Honest Communications I have one more got it this one's a huge one as well which is narrative um especially if you have Partners or other senior people we start to create narratives about some of the people who work for us that's the lazy one that's the annoying one that's the underperforming one right oh what what what do they what does he want now oh he's so annoying oh my God is she in the meeting again she negative Nelly GH I Hate having meetings with her and the

problem is when we talk about narrative in front of other people if they're Senior People we're now labeling that person that thing and we will treat them as the lazy one we will treat them as the underperformer we will treat them as the negative one and there's for them there's no getting out of that narrative but by the way they do the same thing for us like you're the toxic boss right they have narratives about us too but we Set the behavior we he's making an example yeah yeah that hypothetically yeah hypothetic so so but

like but we set the example so and we're all guil of this we are all guilty of it we are all guilty of it of creating narratives about other people we work with and so you have to nip that stuff in the bud so when somebody says oh they're so lazy they go it's imp it's incumbent upon us to say maybe or maybe they're stressed out or maybe they we've given them a job They don't know how to do it or maybe they're um out of bandwidth or maybe they got stuff going on in their

personal lives that we don't know about you know they could be lazy but it could be a bunch of other things as well so why don't we replace judgment with curiosity and learning to replace judgment with curiosity and give people the benefit of the doubt it's amazing how it will transform a culture because the way you will talk to people simply Because the narrative you've changed is profound and one of the things we encourage at Parker is and we have I think five or 600 Casa here we have other business staff we had business packages

groups of doctors would come when you come together and you learn I certainly come together for the Keynotes you come back everybody you don't have to explain everything you learned you already you can discuss what you learn together and that's why we go out of our Way to make sure that we have the packages for the office we want to transform your P your practice you guys know this is not a seminar just a seminar this is an event that we want to make sure we equip you to succeed and you're better succeed if you

bring your whole team with you we've created another track that is is designed the beyond the biohack so even if you just you bring your friend your golf partner people who you refer Patients to you other Physicians we want you to come together so you can interact and you carry it back and by having somebody else with you you're G to actually be able to grow and let's get together a couple times this week and talk about that so amen well we've come to the end of our time I'd like to thank Simon for joining

us today and I we I hope you all enjoyed our time here um we we have we have several other seminars this year But I I would like to applaud you as well that was great