The Heart of Business
"The Heart of Business" podcast, hosted by Mo Fathelbab, is an authentic and insightful exploration of the human side of leadership and professional growth. Through candid conversations with accomplished business leaders, thought leaders, and peer group facilitators, Mo will delve deep into the personal journeys, challenges, and triumphs that have shaped their careers. Mo Fathelbab's skillful and empathetic approach creates a safe space for guests to share their truths and vulnerabilities, revealing the emotional and often unseen dimensions of success in the corporate world. Each episode offers listeners a chance to glean practical wisdom, heartfelt advice, and a profound understanding of the intricate interplay between leadership, authenticity, and personal growth.
The "Heart of Business" is the official podcast of International Facilitators Organization, LLC and hosted by IFO's founder and CEO, Mo Fathelbab. To learn more, please visit www.internationalfacilitatorsorganization.com.
The Heart of Business
The Entrepreneurial Leadership Blueprint with Andrew Sherman
Discover the remarkable journey of Andrew Sherman, a founding member of the Entrepreneurs Organization (EO), and a leading voice in the world of entrepreneurship. Andrew, whose career straddles both law and business, brings us a wealth of insights from EO's early days and its growth into a global network supporting entrepreneurs. From the pivotal roles of influencers like Vern Harnish and Michael Dell to the unexpected emergence of robust chapters in St. Louis and Vancouver, Andrew shares personal stories and reflects on EO's unique impact. We also honor the legacy of Steve Mariotti for his transformative work in youth entrepreneurship education.
Andrew's career as an attorney and entrepreneur is nothing short of inspiring. His story is one of determination, from meeting his wife Judy in law school to the challenges of starting his own solo practice. Andrew's empathy-driven approach to law, where he invests significant time in understanding his clients' ecosystems, sets him apart in the legal landscape. We explore his passion for writing on subjects like governance and strategy, and how these pursuits compliment his legal practice, offering invaluable insights into business development and client relationships.
We confront the pressing issue of workplace disengagement, where a staggering majority of employees feel disconnected. Andrew shares strategies to foster genuine engagement, emphasizing the importance of authentic recognition and leadership connection. We venture into the role of a "business growth lawyer," exploring how Andrew helps clients navigate growth through mergers, acquisitions, and franchising. Lessons from past challenges underscore the value of client diversification, and we begin to uncover what sets high-growth CEOs apart, hinting at traits that drive entrepreneurial success.
Please visit www.internationalfacilitatorsorganization.com to learn more about Mo Fathelbab and International Facilitators Organization (IFO), a leading provider of facilitators and related group facilitation services, providing training, certification, marketing services, education, and community for peer group facilitators at all stages of their career.
Welcome to the Heart of Business podcast sponsored by International Facilitators Organization. I'm your host, mo Fatalbab, and today our guest is none other than Andrew Sherman, partner at Brown Rudnick, outside counsel to the Entrepreneurs Organization since the inception and author of 26 books, and we will talk about two of them as we dig into our conversation. One of them is Essays on Governance and the other is the Crisis of Disengagement, but Andrew is really one of those people that has been pivotal to the founding of EO. So, andrew, it's an honor to have you with us. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:It's so great to be here, mo. It's just so wonderful to see your face and be communicating. You know we go back, as you said at the intro, many, many, many decades at this point. And neither of us are getting any younger, but I hope we're still contributing to the ecosystem that we share a passion for.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. I think I met you, andrew, in 1989, when I was taking an entrepreneurship class at the University of Maryland, taught by none other than Vern Harnish, and you came and spoke to our class.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes and more yes. You you were our first official executive director. I will never forget that. I think it was a learning experience for everybody, including you, and I just want to say it without embarrassing you on your own podcast, but I am so bleep and proud of you and everything you've done. You know, around the forum, around facilitation, you know you're, if, if you were my son, I would be very, very, very proud of you. So it's interesting If you look back to the late 80s, there's some people that were active in some very important ecosystems and there are people that sort of fell out of it and there are people who came in much later, but a lot of great things were given birth to in the 80s that are still around today, and you were very much a part of that.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, thank you, Thank you, and it means a lot coming from you, because I've always looked up to you, from that very first day in probably September, october of 1989. So, andrew, one of the distinctions you have is you have been the sole legal counsel for the Entrepreneurs Organization, probably 83, 84,. We stayed in touch.
Speaker 2:And what some people don't realize is that EO or YEO back then grew out of the fact that some of these collegiate entrepreneurs, like Neil Balter and Michael Dell and others that had literally founded businesses in their dorm rooms, had graduated college and they didn't have businesses quite big enough for YPO, the Young Presidents Organization, but they also didn't want to stick around to an organization that was driven by college kids. So Vern very deftly saw that, opening that gap and we were modeled in part off of YPO in terms of certain products and services. But it was an important distinction that companies were beyond startup but they weren't big enough for YPO. Back in the late 80s we had no chapters, we had no regions, we were really a ragtag group of entrepreneurs, probably half of which paid their dues and half of which didn't. I remember you know I wasn't at the very first meeting that Vern convened, but I was at the second one at South Padre, and that's when really the group started thinking about becoming a group and, you know, thought about incorporation formally and you know it's really grown from there.
Speaker 2:We, you know, we've had people along the way that have been significant contributors. I mean, certainly Peter would be one of them, and it was very strange way that the organization developed that two of the most largest and most active chapters were not in places like LA and New York but were actually St Louis and Vancouver. I mean, who knew right? Who knew? Who knew those were the secret pockets of entrepreneurship from the late 80s and early 90s. I would have to say you know, 38 years later, that this is, hands down, the proudest professional accomplishment of my life. Nothing's even second, you know, nothing's close in second place. I mean my wife, my children and now my grandchildren and daughter-in-law and son-in-law or grandchild I should say no plural. Yet that's tough.
Speaker 1:I didn't know you had a grandchild Wonderful.
Speaker 2:Jackson, three years old. I can even cheat on the podcast and show you the pictures in the background oh, love it, love it, love it yeah.
Speaker 2:Thankfully, you know he's just an amazing kid in New York. But the point being that everyone in life and I know you feel this way everyone in life should have at least one professional accomplishment that they can look at and that not only set their career on the trajectory that it's on, but to look at that accomplishment with such pride. And that's how I feel about EO. It's how I feel about a few other organizations I had mentioned to you before we went live. A very somber piece of news I got yesterday from Julie Szilard, who used to run the DC region for NFTE. But Steve Mariotti, may he rest in peace passed in his sleep Sunday night at 71. Steve was also part of that.
Speaker 2:Late 80s builders of an entrepreneurial ecosystem, one parallel between Steve and Vern. You know. Vern saw the gap that existed between collegiate entrepreneurs and young presence organizations. Well, steve saw the gap that existed for youth entrepreneurship education. That didn't apply, it seemed like, to inner city youth and disadvantaged youth or handicapped youth. You know all of the programs like Junior Achievement, which had been around for years before NFTE was formed. They really focused on, you know, a primarily white suburban audience back then, and so both Steve and Vern saw very important holes in the entrepreneurial ecosystem or entrepreneurial educational ecosystem, and effectively filled those holes with organizations that are now still around and still thriving, decades later. So I offer a moment of silence for Steve and a tribute to his memory.
Speaker 1:Yes, let's take that moment of silence. So I did not know that we lost Steve until you told me just today. But he started the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, which, if I told me just today. But he started the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship which, if I recall, took kids off the street and taught them entrepreneurship, and so it really changed a lot of lives.
Speaker 2:Kids to this day. I was a judge at a DC event recently that was held at American University my law school alma mater and a kid came up to me or not a kid anymore, I mean someone in his probably late 30s, early 40s and he came up to me and said you probably don't remember me, but I was a student in one of your NFTE classes. That put me on the right path. No more street crime and drugs. For me it was all about building businesses. Crime and drugs. For me, it was all about building businesses.
Speaker 2:He's got three successful businesses to this day. I mean, if you don't get a chill down your spine when someone comes up to you and reaches for your hand and shares that with you, then you know I would submit you're not breathing or you're not normal. Because you know, even in the teaching that I've done at University of Maryland and at Georgetown, there's no greater pleasure that I get professionally than running into an old student who says truthfully, you know, I still remember your class, or your class was one of my favorites, or I still remember something you said in the class and you know, I don't know how many hundreds of businesses have been birthed over the years, but I know that I played some role in that and I'm very, very proud of it, just as I've watched your career flourish.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, and you should be and listen 26 books is impressive and amazing. I've only written two, andrew, so you have. You know, you have time to catch up.
Speaker 2:I've only written two, andrew, so you have, you have. You know, you have time to catch up. I've paused, so you got to knock out 24 books before I decide to write again. Now I've written them all out longhand on a pad and every time I'm being interviewed and someone says the number like I get a hand cramp. You know like I can literally remember being up in the middle of the night writing and then handing those legal pads to my assistant at the time, and that's how the books got created.
Speaker 1:I love it. So, andrew, one thing about you that was always very inspiring and interesting to me is, as an attorney, really, you've always been an entrepreneur, and, in fact, not only an entrepreneur but an incredible salesperson. I've watched you in action for so long and, in fact, not only an entrepreneur, but an incredible salesperson. I've watched you in action for so long. I'm just wondering where did you learn your craft, so to speak? Not the law part, but the entrepreneurial and salesy part.
Speaker 2:Well, okay, I hope there's no salesy salesy part. I don't mean it that way. No, no, no, no, no, no, I'm just giving you a hard time. So two things. If you'll let me share a personal story, I think a lot of the business development and rainmaking side will make sense.
Speaker 2:So you know, judy and I my wife of now 40 years coming up in June we met in law school and we both came from difficult situations. Her parents were both Holocaust survivors and my dad had some trouble financially as a kid and tried different businesses that failed. And I always knew deep, deep, deep in my heart that I was going to either be an entrepreneur or at least represent and support entrepreneurs, and I shared that with Vern when we first met and some of the things that I had seen. I had actually dropped out of college and started a business before I even knew what the word entrepreneur meant, and I had to look it up in the dictionary when the Baltimore Sun ran a story on me and called me an entrepreneur. So when I got to law school, I had a lot of business experience but I didn't have family contacts or networks that I could tap into and I got a job offer from a solo practitioner in Old Town, virginia, and went to work on the first day and he kind of casually wandered into my office and he said, just FYI, I don't really have enough business to pay you, so you're going to have to generate your own clients. And I hadn't even sat for the bar exam yet and I started thinking well, how am I going to generate clients? I don't play golf, I'm not a member of a fancy country club. That's all I knew about lawyers. And now they did business development. So I started giving speeches and I started writing and I thought the best thing I can do to attract clients is to openly share my knowledge. I think I was the predecessor to open AI. You know I was open AI as a new being and I always felt like, no matter how many books I wrote, no matter how many speeches I gave, if people needed me they would call me and I didn't have to hold information close to my chest. I could open up and share that information and share my knowledge and expertise that way.
Speaker 2:But, to answer your question very bluntly, my early days of business development were out of necessity. We had bought a small house in Arlington and I had a mortgage and soon thereafter Matthew was born and I had a son, and then Judy stopped working and business development was not a casual choice for me. It was a necessity if I was going to take care of my family and be a good provider. But the second part of the answer to your question is I always felt that you know, empathy is more than just an emotional issue. Empathy should be a part of the attorney-client relationship. Empathy should be a part of the attorney-client relationship.
Speaker 2:So if I'm going to represent you, I need to know what your shoes feel like after walking a mile in them. I need to know what's keeping you up at night. I need to know what challenges you have. I need to know how your ecosystem is built. How will things that happen in your ecosystem affect your ability to feed your family and to have a wonderful life and career?
Speaker 2:So for every single matter on my desk, I can honestly say I know who the clients are. I know something about their family situation. I know what their business challenges are. I've probably read their business plan and I don't bill for that stuff. You know, my feeling is the time I invest in our relationship to get up to speed on who you are and how your business operates. That's my investment in our relationship. So I think the issue is understanding business well enough to talk business with the client and not always have that horse-blind or legal view that many clients have of their lawyers, but also knowing that I take nothing for granted, and every new engagement that comes in I'm still very grateful for, because I'm still wired as if it's 1991 and my son is born and my wife's not working and I gotta, I gotta, find business to feed the family. Uh, even though that's not true anymore, I love staying in that mindset.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, uh, first of all, thank you for your vulnerability and for your openness. Uh, it's funny, you know. These podcasts, uh, enable us to talk about things that we may not have discussed casually before, including your history with your growing up and Judy's. I didn't know that either and, gosh, I feel remiss to not have had a conversation with her about that, but hopefully we'll have an opportunity in the not too distant future.
Speaker 2:I hope so. Just bring your girlfriend and we'll set it up. Sounds good?
Speaker 1:Sounds good. So, andrew, you mentioned two books in particular. I want to talk about them just a little bit. I know you've written books on mergers and acquisitions and franchising, but in particular the two that you mentioned as we were having our prep call Essays on Governance and the Crisis of Disengagement, maybe if you could take a minute and let's start with essays on governance, sure, so of all the books I've written, I would put them in two buckets.
Speaker 2:One bucket is hardcore strategy and that's, as you said, the M&A book, the franchising book, the raising capital book. Those are all. Hey, you're an entrepreneur or leader of a growing business or a gazelle or whatever you are, or however you call yourself emerging growth company, and you need to learn more about topic X, and most of my books are that way and I wouldn't say they're dry, they're not a summer beach read or anything. Then you have three books I've written that are me identifying a problem in our society or something personal I wanted to convey, and the first time I did that was in 2008, when I wrote Road Rules, which you may remember was a fun little book on 12 life lessons around living a good and wholesome life, but all tied to the metaphor of driving a car, and it didn't make Oprah's list or anything. But the people I know who read it, who know me, thought I did a good job, at least in capturing my life philosophy. So I thought I would check that box. But a couple of years later, I kept seeing these horrible examples of corporate governance and people not taking their fiduciary responsibilities and their stewardship responsibilities seriously and you saw boards failing their shareholders and their stakeholders, and so I would get angry and I said well, the way I get angry is I don't punch somebody. The way I punch these board members asleep at the switch was to write a book called Essays on Governance, which was all about a series of 43 chapters. I think that were different topics and subtopics of governance. I wrote about 25 of them and then I had guest authors write about different areas of specialty. I think the discipline of governance has gotten better since I wrote essays on governance, not solely because I wrote the book, but people are taking it a bit more seriously.
Speaker 2:But we're not there yet. We're not there where we should be either in the realm of corporate governance and, dare I say, political governance has got its own problems right now. I mean, the divisiveness between the two parties is disgusting to me as a proud citizen of this country. The choices that we have in many elections I'm not going to talk specifically about one that is going to get decided in a couple of weeks is disappointing, to say the least. You know. I mean, how many times have you and some of your listeners sort of scratched your head and said is this the best that our country can offer? And the truth is, the smartest minds want nothing to do with politics. I mean they're at universities, they're leading companies, they're they're IFO members. I mean they're at universities, they're leading companies, they're IFO members. I mean they're doing other things that can be more impactful. And so what we're getting is people that are running for office either to feed their own ego or running for office without embracing notions of stewardship. And that's not to say all politicians are that way, but enough of a chunk of them are wired that way that we're having problems.
Speaker 2:You know governmental breakdowns in governance, corporate breakdowns in governance. You know, if I borrow something from you, I am a steward of it and I am to treat it at least as well as you would treat it during the time it's in my possession. You learn that in the fifth day of law school, and yet it's a lesson that I think we still need to embody. And yet it's a lesson that I think we still need to embody. Similarly, I wrote a couple of chapters and essays on governance, on the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion in the composition of boards. Are we making headway there? Yes, are we done making headway there. No, we have a lot more work to do, and it's not just including people in leadership positions and on boards, it's.
Speaker 2:You know, my attitude towards diversity is. I have just always been naturally curious. If you look like, if you look different than me or speak different than me, or have an upbringing different than me, I want to learn as much as I can, selfishly. Selfishly, I want to learn. You may have learned some life lesson from your grandfather that I will find very helpful and interesting, but if I look at you and go, well, mo doesn't look exactly like me, so what could I possibly learn from him? That's the most ridiculous. It's selfish to be inclusive. It's selfish to want to learn about other people and their cultures and lessons they've learned along the way. So you know, even if people can't get around the concept of DEI for the right social reasons, embrace other people just for selfish reasons. I mean, it's OK, as long as it's genuine and authentic. And so I've never really understood the pushback on DEI, either culturally or in board composition, because it yields more productivity, more innovation, more creativity and it's reflective of the customer base that most of these companies serve.
Speaker 1:So anyway, I'm not. I'm not on that one, but I listen. There's so many places I could go with this, but I could just nod and say I love it and I can't wait to read it, Because in fact, I am seeing everything that you're saying as it relates to this, this, this disconnect, and we have slipped. I mean, one of the things that I've always appreciated about this country is knowing that you could count on the rule of law and due process. And you know, I'm not sure. I'm not sure if you can still count on that in every instance, and I see it trickle down and governance lapses for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm still a half glass full kind of guy. I do believe that the due process and justice is better here than in most countries. I won't say all but how it gets enforced and when it gets enforced and removing our biases from the enforcement and protection of due process. There we still have some work to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. Let's talk about the crisis of disengagement, because that one is also very interesting to me and I'm hearing certainly a lot about it through my work with SHRM Society of Human Resource Management and their research.
Speaker 2:I've spoken a few times for SHRM. I've not spoken as many times for SHRM as you have, but when the Crisis of Disengagement book came out pre-COVID, I was able to do a couple of SHRM programs and also NACD National Association Corporate Director one of its blue ribbon commissions. Prior to that their view was culture was an issue for the C-suite, not for the board. But culture begins to melt down if you've got disengagement. And what I had read a couple of years before COVID hit was the Gallup study on the degrees of disengagement and the extent of the workforce populace that were disengaged. And I almost had a heart attack.
Speaker 2:I could not believe how, on the one hand, how disengaged our society had become and I say pre-COVID because I think it got worse during COVID, not better. But I was also, you know, particularly concerned about that. Only 4%. 4% of the population define themselves not even by their boss, but define themselves as highly engaged. And you know, most of the people you and I meet every day are highly engaged. But we're not meeting the representative demographic of the Gallup studies, you know. So I always thought, oh God, probably half the people I know are highly engaged, but that half the people I know are 4% of the overall population.
Speaker 2:So it really irked me. Why is this the case? What impact was it having on my subject matter areas like innovation? I had written a book a couple of years before that called Harvesting Intangible Assets and talked about the importance of engagement and culture and teamwork and collaboration and communication, and those things were on the decline as a result of this level of disengagement. A person who's highly disengaged is not only a negative impact on the company's culture, but they're not up at night thinking about new products and services and innovative business models. If they're up at night at all, they're thinking about how to either screw the company that they're working for or how to move on to their next job. And it's even worse when they stay, because when they stay they're like an active cancer cell just looking for other people to become disengaged with them, and the consequences are serious. I don't know if you remember the movie the Office where the guy is like he's in the cubicle and he keeps getting moved and moved, and moved.
Speaker 1:He's in the basement at the end.
Speaker 2:yes, but then, you know, the not funny part is he ends the movie by committing an act of workplace violence. Like you know, you can only push someone disengaged so far before you know incidents will happen that are of extreme consequence. So it was the first book I've written where, literally the first paragraph of the book, I say I don't know what I'm talking about. I am not a subject matter expert. I'm writing this book merely from the perspective of a concerned citizen and as a business lawyer that represents companies who probably have deeper disengagement issues than they realize. So it is an issue of leadership, it's an issue of facilitation. I'm sure it comes up quite often in forum where people are talking on a peer-to-peer basis about how few of their employees seem to give a you-know-what anymore about anything. And it's not just a youth issue. There are plenty of disengaged baby boomers who are just literally looking at their watch and counting the days until their retirement and they just check out.
Speaker 2:I mean, we had a former colleague, not here at Brown Rudnick, but you know, every time I walked in his office he was playing solitaire on the computer, you know. And then I'd ask about deadlines on a document to a deliverable and he says, well, I'm very busy, so well, you can't be that busy if you're playing solitaire on a document to a deliverable. And he says, well, I'm very busy, so well, you can't be that busy if you're playing solitaire on a computer. Every time I see you Sometimes he would like scramble to get the screen off, you know so that you didn't see the solitaire screen.
Speaker 2:It was like it wasn't even funny anymore. It just, it just. I think there's a lot of people and COVID made it worse that were in YOLO mindset. Yolo doesn't mean that you just quit everything and live on a beach. Yolo just means that we have to engage in a daily meditation and reminding ourselves that we won't be here forever and that we accomplish the things that we want to accomplish. And it should technically make us want to work harder, not check out of the hotel, but I don't think that YOLO got interpreted that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what are some of the solutions that you suggest for dealing with this disengagement?
Speaker 2:I think I would start with something that's much nearer and dearer to your heart, which is authentic leadership. You know a feeling that you really do care about people, and that's not just putting a ping pong table in the break room and you know upper end sodas and coffee drinks. I mean that people have come to expect a break room that's fitted with good drinks and it's different ways to show empathy. You know, one client I was talking to, cash flow was kind of tight and he said I don't know what I'm going to do to engage my people. The Christmas bonuses are going to be smaller and we just started building a checklist. What do your people value? And he said, well, you know, I know they value FaceTime with me. I said, great, let's come up with, you know, some employee award that gets them a lunch with you, you know. And then he had been giving away some like cruise to the Caribbean, which he had to cut out that year. But he said but I have this ski lodge. Maybe, you know, I could use the ski lodge this year. I mean things that open up your home, open up your life and your access. Internal recognition, peer recognition. You know all the Gallup studies, as much as they were articulating how disengaged people are. We were saying people still to this day will value peer recognition that's authentic and real more than they will a $50 gift card or $100 Christmas bonus. Are we recognizing our people enough? Are we rewarding them for innovation, going back to systems where, if they come up with new products and services, maybe they get a revenue share, a royalty, for helping invent? You don't have to do it, but you can do it, and if it's based on sales, it can be a win-win for everybody. So at the end, I will tell you a funny story about this.
Speaker 2:So the Crisis of Disengagement manuscript was submitted to the publisher without the last chapter, and I'll make sure I get you a copy of the book so you can see how funny this story is. Well, the publisher reads the manuscript and said this is very well written, we like it. Blah, blah, blah. But you haven't offered any solutions. You just identified the crisis. I said, yeah, I guess the book would be better if it had some solutions. So I added a chapter at the very end before the book went live, with like 34 ideas, and I've got 34 more since the book came out. But I almost published a book that identified a problem and didn't offer any solutions. I should know better by now I'm a veteran book writer but I was like oh yeah, I think I forgot something.
Speaker 1:There you go, 27 more books for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was funny.
Speaker 1:Love it, love it, andrew. What a great, great story. So let's talk about your work today. So I know that you have been involved in a lot of different companies and you've helped people in many different ways. What is it that you love to do? Is it M&A, is it franchising? Is it something else? Tell us a little bit more.
Speaker 2:So the way I think about my practice, rightly or wrongly is there's this umbrella called business growth and under business growth no one introduces themselves as a business growth lawyer. We really should have that category, but I've been trying for almost 40 years. It hasn't stuck. So most people say I'm a corporate lawyer or I'm a corporate lawyer with a specialty in M&A. My feeling is I'm a business growth lawyer and my lawyering ties back to various ways that companies grow. So if they grow through M&A, if they grow through raising capital, if they grow through joint ventures, they grow through the harvesting of their intangible assets. They grow through franchising or licensing.
Speaker 2:I want to make sure that when a client has hit a growth ceiling, I have the power and the intellectual biceps to break through that growth ceiling and know how to execute that strategy. It's very hard to stick that on a business card or even a LinkedIn profile, but if I had to summarize my practice, it would be as a business growth lawyer. And if there's a component of business growth that needs some lawyering, I'd like to think that we're among the best of the best, not exclusively. There are other great lawyers, but they probably don't introduce themselves that way. But to answer your question more authentically or with more transparency. I get excited by the process of business growth. I live vicariously through my clients' successes and their failures, unfortunately. But I get very excited when I can help a client develop a growth strategy, watch them execute it, be there for legal and strategic support and then point to it and go wow, I helped do that and that gives me a lot of professional pleasure.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so, Andrew. Having done this podcast and having worked with the thousands of CEOs and entrepreneurs, I know, and you know, nobody comes out to this point of career success without some hiccups along the way. What might be a hiccup or two that you would be willing to share with our listeners here?
Speaker 2:Wow, I'll give you a hiccup. That was not far away from when we first met. It was early in my practice. I had met a entrepreneur that was growing very, very quickly. Being curious, I was trying to kind of pry into how and why they were growing as quickly as they were. By the time I figured it out they were the cover story of a Washington Post and the subject of an SEC investigation. I had allowed my practice to be too concentrated in that client so when that client was shut down by the SEC which they were not only were there, you know, uncomfortable consequences and having to be deposed before the SEC, never as a matter of defense but as a witness.
Speaker 2:But what I had also allowed to happen to my practice that I've never done again, so I did learn it was allow for that amount of client concentration. The only time it happened again, but for good reason, I was retained in the 2000s by Walmart and helped them with their India transaction and for a while there I was Walmart, walmart and more Walmart, between trips to Bentonville, trips to Delhi. The project had gotten so large that it became very consuming but I was able to maintain my practice pretty much with no sleep and keep a diversity of clients. But it's an interesting strategy because I have partners, including down the hall right here, that will have one gigantic client and they seem to maintain that relationship for 20, 30 years. I could never be that way and number one I learned my mistake early on in my career. Number two I love the diversity of clients. I'll be in one industry from nine to 10. I'll be in another industry from 10 to 11. I'll be a different problem or strategy and I love the variety of my day.
Speaker 2:But for any professional service providers that are listening and I'm sure there's many, whether it's law, accounting, facilitation, whatever your profession may be, be careful of the big kahuna client. You know that will eat up all of your time Because if God forbid, 100 times you lose them. You're thinking how did I let that happen? How did I have to now rebuild my practice from scratch? That's the biggest hiccup, I mean. Other hiccups are probably just sometimes you try very hard to align deliverables with expectations but there will always be 10% or 15% of the clients that think they heard something different than what you told them, even if there's emails back and forth.
Speaker 2:And I guess you and I are very similar in many ways. And one of the ways we're similar is we enjoy pleasing people. We enjoy pleasing clients. We take pleasure from a happy client. So when you're built that way and wired that way which I know we are a disappointed or disgruntled client you're going to take harder than most people.
Speaker 2:And even if it's only 5% or 10%, you know my daughter, jennifer, you may remember. She has her own business and you know sometimes we'll sit and talk father, daughter and she'll say well, you know this one client's upset with one of my deliverables and I'm like, if you can keep it to one client and one deliverable, you're doing fantastic, you know. But I know that she likes to have very, very happy clients, just like you and I do. So you know it's a good trait and a bad trait at the same time, because some of it is inevitable. But the fact that you're up at night worrying about it means you're a good person and good provider and you do want everybody to be happy, and that probably is unrealistic. It took me to get to 63 to figure this out that not everybody's going to be happy all the time and I can't please everybody. But God knows, I tried.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what a rich conversation, Andrew. What do you think? I want to turn the page here slightly, having worked with all these businesses and entrepreneurs and CEOs and high growth companies. What do you think it takes? What is it that separates those high growth CEOs, those successful entrepreneurs, from the rest of the people out there?
Speaker 2:Detached, which actually I have a chapter. There's a chapter in that book about me which I haven't seen the final book yet. But Bob wrote a book a few years ago called Just Enough Anxiety and here was his theory. His theory was if you had no anxiety then you were probably complacent and a couch potato and probably going nowhere in your life, at least nowhere fast. If you had too much anxiety, then anxiety froze you like a deer in the headlights and you become dysfunctional and unfunctional because you're letting anxiety take over your life. So what Bob wrote in the book was there's a middle level of anxiousness, wrote in the book was there's a middle level of anxiousness.
Speaker 2:You know, the founder of Intel, andy Grove, wrote similarly about paranoia. You know, like you have to be a little bit paranoid, you have to be a little bit anxious. The best entrepreneurial leaders I find they're anxious about success and about the outcomes of their business plans, but they're not so anxious that it freezes them and they're not so complacent that they're sitting around kind of assuming the world will just happen no matter what they do. So I would say that's the trade I've seen and if you think about some of the most successful EO members, that's probably their personality makeup. They've got just the right balance of stress, just the right balance of anxiety, and they use it as a fuel and an energy source, rather than something that's destructive, and to keep them working the 12 to 18 hours a day that they need to to be successful.
Speaker 1:You know, I love that. It reminds me of a speaker we had way, way back in the day at EO called Clayton Barbeau, from California. I don't know if you remember, I remember, yeah, and he talked about the difference between de-stress and eustress and he said de-stress is the bad stress, the stress, but eustress is the get up and go energy. It's what motivates you, it's what gets you going.
Speaker 2:And also I'm just going to give you a compliment here I think the most important product to ever come out of EO and YPO is form. You know, I can't tell you how many hundreds, if not thousands, of members have told me over the years the ability to sit with their peers and to just talk openly and confidentially and transparently is invaluable. Okay, but there's a rule of forum that not everybody may know, and that is you can't give advice. You can share experience. Think about the meaning of those four or five words.
Speaker 2:You know how many times in our personal lives and our business lives do people give advice that's not based and rooted in experience? And technically it means nothing. I mean, it's as much as the advice you get off the guy on the street. But sharing experience, that's very powerful. You know if I can look you in the eye with empathy and authenticity and say, mo, I've been there. That happened to me. Here's how I navigated through it giving you some advice from something I heard on TV or something that I have floating in my head somewhere but isn't rooted in experience and facts.
Speaker 2:And that little forum rule in many ways is how we should live our lives Before you open your mouth and say something that's going to set somebody down a course of action, make sure that it's rooted in genuine experience, and I think we've given that gift to you. Know, I mean, if there's what 18,000 members now and including all the ex-members and former members, and I mean so at least 25,000 entrepreneurs who took the forum experience know that rule and have had those circles of peers to talk to and to share with, and many, many, many forum members will say I say things in forum that I couldn't say to my own wife, to my own business partner, to my own parent. That is invaluable and you know you are a huge part of all that.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that, andrew. Thank you, andrew. What a pleasure. Last question, andrew what is on the horizon for you? What's the next big thing for you?
Speaker 2:Well, I got to tell you I'm going to share this link. I hope, with my family you'll send it to me when it gets uploaded. Everyone told me how excited, how exciting it is to become a grandfather. And don't get me wrong, I love Matt and Jen till the moon, but there's something about that little guy, jackson, that so I'm excited to be a grandfather for him. I'm excited to be a grandfather for any future grandkids that either of them produce, and I am excited to be a good provider to my family in a way that my father and even my father-in-law could not have dreamed of.
Speaker 2:And whatever is next for me, beyond the practice of law, will be a continuation of sharing knowledge in some way, whether that's as a professor, continuing to write, doing a little more speaking. I'll be sharing knowledge till I'm six feet in a box and I hope that I will continue to share knowledge from the crypt, which is the easy way, through book writing and doing podcasts like this. I mean the beauty of this lives forever. Now it could outlive you and I, which I hope doesn't happen for a long time but creating content, having genuine, authentic, enjoyable conversations it does give you a chance to have a life after life and to continue to influence people in a positive way. And that's what I'm a positive way, and that's what I'm here to do, and that's what I've been here to do since the day we met.
Speaker 1:I love that, andrew. You know my grandfather was instrumental in my life, and so to hear you speak of your grandson in this way just says to me how much he it is a he right, yes, yes, how much he Jackson, max, sherman, jackson, that's right how much he will appreciate you and how much of a role you will play in his life. And so thank you for that moment of connection to my grandfather, because he was a special man in my life.
Speaker 2:I'm sure he was. I'm sure he was and you know honoring him like you just did. I'm sure he was and you know honoring him like you just did. I don't know how metaphysical you want to end with, but he just heard you, I'm sure of it.
Speaker 1:In whatever way, I don't know what way, but he just heard you and he's smiling. Thank you, I believe that I believe that as well, andrew. What a pleasure it has been. Thank you, I believe that I believe that as well, andrew. What a pleasure it has been. I'm going to thank you once again and I want to thank everybody for listening. You can follow the Heart of Business podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Also, podcast reviews have a real impact on a podcast visibility, so please give us a review if you like this episode. Finally, you can hear all our episodes at our website at internationalfacilitatorsorganizationcom. Thank you again for listening and have a wonderful day.
