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Telling the stories of startup founders and creators and their unique journey. Each episode features actionable tips, practical advice and inspirational insight.
Greg Moran (00:01.7)
Welcome back to the next edition or current edition, I guess it actually is of the Founders Journey podcast. Thrilled to be back again for another great episode. Awesome guest today, Peter, good to see you.
Peter Dean (00:17.151)
Yeah, I'm glad to be back. I'm really excited to interview Carson. It's a really important one.
Greg Moran (00:22.436)
Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. So as we as we get into it, want to introduce our guest here. Carson Tate is our guest. And Carson spent her entire career really empowering executives to help build their leadership impact, lead transformational growth, high performance teams. They she's done this for some of the top brands in the world. She's also done it for some of the top private equity firms in the world, which actually is how I got to know.
Carson, so really thrilled to have her on the podcast today. She wrote a couple books in that not too distant past here. Work Simply was one of her books that released in 2015. And then more recently, then that was Own It, Live It, I'm sorry, Own It, Love It, Make It Work, and that came out in 2020. So she's been featured in every big.
Publication there is, she's a huge name on LinkedIn with I think what, like a million followers or something like that, Carson. So thrilled to have her on today.
carson (01:28.418)
Yeah.
carson (01:32.482)
Thank you. I'm excited to be with both of you.
Greg Moran (01:35.044)
Yeah, yeah, well, thanks for joining us. So we're going to be talking today about really helping to kind of build performance, right? And it's really around, you know, not only, obviously this podcast being the Founders Journey podcast is really focused on founders and high growth startups, but the work you're doing really extends pretty far beyond that. You've worked with a lot of really leading brands, like we said, a lot of leading PEs. Give us a sense of your background.
carson (01:45.678)
I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.
Greg Moran (02:05.136)
get into this kind of whole area of performance and productivity.
carson (02:11.71)
I was fortunate, I started my career in financial services in HR and OD function in a bank. And there, our sole objective was really how do we amplify performance from the teams and our employees in doing that with training, with coaching, with systems and with processes and getting to watch some of the best of the best, I think, in the world, build those cultures was phenomenal. And then when I went into pharmaceutical sales.
the whole shift around that personal building your own personal business, but also following through and driving your own personal productivity. So those worlds intersected. I decided that I wanted to start my own business. And then in graduate school, I did research looking at cognitive thinking styles, because one thing that is so important if we're talking about performance and productivity is there's no one size fits all.
It's based on how we think and process information. So graduate school was so helpful in that and helping me look at the space differently and then offer individuals and teams a solution that hadn't existed before.
Greg Moran (03:18.584)
Excuse me, so sorry Peter go ahead Meet myself, but this is what I was talking about Garson a second go ahead Peter
Peter Dean (03:22.909)
So why I said this is
Peter Dean (03:29.291)
So why I said it's so important you're here is because you're talking about founders that are pretty weird people. Like they're a little flawed, right? And so I'm a founder, Greg's a founder. Just because you're a founder. All right, come on now. I know I've worked for you a long time. You know, like there's an individual that is a founder. I mean, executives also, they're probably a little, they're a lot better than we are.
Greg Moran (03:43.356)
Speak for yourself, man. Ha ha
Peter Dean (03:58.459)
regarding personal performance. And so some of them come in with, you know, there's a whole different range of personalities and then approaches to work. How do you, what are some of the mistakes you see and how do you get us out of our own way as a founder?
carson (04:08.302)
Mm-hmm.
carson (04:14.326)
Mm-hmm. Well, I think first what I've seen with founders, and this is both what helps you win, but it's also your Achilles heel, that insatiable drive. So you will move mountains and walls to get things done, regardless of if they are the high impact, high ROI task. Right. And this, so it's how do we get that over rotation back in alignment. The second thing that founders will do is they will build a team that looks just like them.
Peter Dean (04:22.353)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (04:37.27)
Mm-hmm.
carson (04:44.03)
And I get it, I totally get it, right? We wanna work with people that work like us and talk like us, but the problem is you have unique strengths and we've gotta counterbalance your blind spots with a team that fills you out.
Peter Dean (04:55.711)
Mm-hmm.
Yes, like we probably go and move a mountain that we didn't need to. I think you were kind of saying that, but you didn't.
Greg Moran (04:58.864)
How do you?
carson (05:04.55)
Yes, yeah, you move them out and you didn't need to and then you're gonna pave a road up to it We didn't really need and then you're gonna ski down it and have a great time But all the way like over here is where we need to be
Peter Dean (05:11.979)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (05:16.359)
Yeah, yeah, totally.
Greg Moran (05:16.472)
Right, right. Yeah, you know, it's, it's a really good point, I think, because that is the founder mentality, right, is like, I mean, that is that, that innate drive, you take that into everything you do, right? Everything to I actually, I had this conversation with somebody over the weekend. So funny, we're talking about this, Peter, you'll get a kick out of this. I was talking about meditation, right?
And I was talking about the challenge I have with meditation. And I think it's a wonderful thing, don't get me wrong. I'm talking about my ability to meditate, right? Turns into this ridiculous thing of every day I've got to add a minute and add a minute and add a minute and add a minute. And it's like, this is like the opposite of meditation. This is like a weird grace now, right? But it is that kind of founder's mentality, right? You just take it.
carson (05:52.91)
Mm-hmm.
carson (06:06.36)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Moran (06:12.58)
you take that drive into everything, regardless of whether it needs a driver or not.
carson (06:18.09)
Exactly. And you take it into everything without the governor and the over rotation is on output versus impact. And so when I start with my founders and their teams, we've got to get really clear. I need to know what drives revenue and how you're going to control cost. Everything else we can capture. But those are the two things because that or answers around where to say yes and where to say no. And they're still going to fight me. Well, but this is a great idea.
Peter Dean (06:26.603)
Yeah.
carson (06:46.774)
You know, we could pursue it. No, you can't. You've got 168 hours in a week. You're gonna burn yourself and your team out and we have to drive for that maximum impact. And we're in a short timeframe. I mean, you guys are investors. Like we have to show you a return pretty quickly. So the intensity and focus of the effort has to be focused on the results you want to achieve.
Peter Dean (07:00.008)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (07:08.868)
Yeah, yeah. You know, it reminds me, I've had this conversation with a lot of founders recently and around just narrowing that focus, right? Narrowing down, it's the opportunity cost of, they're all great ideas, right? All those things that they wanna go do, because I'm the exact same way, they're all great ideas. But...
it's narrowing down that focus to something that you can just go achieve, achieve it, move on to the next thing, right? And I think, you know, I know in your books, in both work simply and own it, love it, make it work, you talk a lot about understanding your own personal style, right? To really understand like what is it about your own personal style that can bring out the best in you? Can you talk about that a little bit?
carson (07:55.15)
Mm-hmm.
carson (08:03.322)
Mm-hmm. So my research looked again at cognitive thinking styles. And these taught, when you think about what that is, it's how you process information, it's how you organize your work, it's how you think about time. And so I have four different styles. There's the visualizer, which is a lot of founders, big picture, ideation, innovation, what's next, why not? So they like a lot of ideas. They're your adrenaline junkies.
So structure and list feels like a straight jacket. However, we need them to keep pushing, but we've got to balance that with the planner, which is around process and details and playbooks and systems, and they're very sequential. And then the two other styles that we need are the prioritizer. That's your analytical, that's the quantitative thinker, that's the one who's gonna put together the budget, what's the goal, what's the objective. So here's the big idea.
Peter Dean (08:41.278)
Mm-hmm.
carson (09:01.134)
planner, how are we going to get there? The prioritizer's going to make sure we stay on budget, really focused on what's the goal. And then the fourth and final style is the arranger. And this is about the people. This is about who is our client, who are our vendor partners. And they are much more connection before content. They tend to be intuitive. They are the who people in this framework. So our visualizer, big picture, asking the why questions. Our arranger.
They are the ones that are that relational who question folks, our planner process, how are we going to get there and our prioritizer that analytical what goal objective data and finances.
Peter Dean (09:44.545)
Ha!
Greg Moran (09:44.56)
Just to follow up on that for a second, because it strikes me as if you think about a founder versus a corporate executive, right? Just intuitively, it would seem like the style of the founder, what's gonna make a great founder is gonna be very different in that, when you think about those quadrants, right? What's gonna be very different than what makes a great corporate executive. Is that fair?
carson (09:51.48)
Yes.
carson (10:11.834)
Yes, and so now I sound like your attorneys, which is really annoying. Yes. And so if we, okay, so let's think about corporate, we're going to say publicly traded every quarter, you've got to report earnings. So in that environment, the thinking style that's most favored is that prioritizer. What's the goal analytics, finance and planner process, risk mitigation in a startup. We're on the opposite side. What's that big bold idea that visualizer.
Peter Dean (10:21.281)
Mm-hmm.
Peter Dean (10:31.83)
Mm-hmm.
carson (10:41.442)
And then who's the customer? Do we know our customer? Are we building for our customer? That's the arranger. However, you need all four and we have to access all four, which we can. We're not a one-sided fragment. And this is that team component. So Visualizer is going to hit the wall without what's the budget, what's the process. And I actually worked with a big company and they were designing a new video game. They'll remain nameless.
And they had focused on what the goal was, staying on budget and making sure they had a really ironclad process where their game was miserable, the teenage boys thought it was terrible, no innovation, and they'd forgotten that they're programming for 15-year-old males. Oops, right? So they forgot. It was a colossal disaster and a huge waste of time and money.
Peter Dean (11:13.771)
Thanks for watching.
Hmph.
Greg Moran (11:23.704)
Right.
Peter Dean (11:26.72)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (11:30.724)
Yep.
Peter Dean (11:30.827)
Hmm. How can you, how can an individual like identify what their style is? Like how, how do you do that?
carson (11:38.638)
So there's, yeah, so there's, how do you do that? So there's an assessment in my book. There's one on the website. But I think the first thing to think about is as you are approaching a problem, what's the first question you ask yourself? Ooh, why this? Have we thought about this? What might this think about? Or ooh, who's impacted? Or hmm, how might I solve this? Or.
I don't know, what's the data I'm gonna use? So we can access it through that primary question you ask yourself. I also can assess clients pretty quickly by listening to them talk, because they're gonna speak in this language. They'll ask those questions, but I mean, your visualizer, I love it. They paint pictures and it's visual imagery. And our prioritizer, I mean, they're gonna send me an email with two words. Okay, thanks, if I get that.
Greg Moran (12:34.752)
Peter and I are definitely prioritizers by the way. Ha ha
carson (12:37.302)
Uh, off the charts would agree with that. And both of you are looking at me like, why is she still talking about a visualizer? She needs to land that plane. Land it.
Greg Moran (12:48.396)
We think that's the only one that actually matters. That's why.
carson (12:52.97)
Right.
Peter Dean (12:53.483)
I do have to say, and again, Greg and I have worked parallel for a long time. Like I've watched Greg do it and I've learned to do it. And we talk about this often. Like, um, you kind of have to learn how to do some other stuff. Even though you're, you may be one person, you kind of have to fill in the gap. And you know, like Greg told me before, you hire this person. It's the best person you can ever hire because it's going to solve the other half.
carson (13:11.342)
Absolutely.
Peter Dean (13:21.555)
Right. It's going to fix that other piece of yours. Right. Or call this person. They're going to give you a ton of levity and information that's going to help balance out your lopsided one side that you're on. Right. Those are conversations that we have as, you know,
carson (13:25.402)
Mm-hmm.
carson (13:36.974)
Absolutely.
Greg Moran (13:39.131)
Yeah.
carson (13:40.994)
And I would encourage you to keep having them. And here's the other piece of this, is that we use and access all four of these styles. But think about if I asked both of you to write your first and last name with your left hand. Both of you could do it, no problem. But, and then I'd say, okay, write with your right hand. Which hand is your preferred hand? It's your dominant hand. However, you can.
Peter Dean (13:50.465)
Mm-hmm.
carson (14:08.49)
right with your non-dominant hand. It's just slower, it takes longer, and the output. So when we flex from prioritizer into innovation, it's slower, it's a little messier, doesn't look great, you can do it. But that goes back to building this high-performing team where we can start to offset.
Peter Dean (14:10.09)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (14:16.328)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (14:22.165)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (14:28.991)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (14:49.85)
Right. Yeah.
carson (14:50.699)
No.
Greg Moran (14:56.668)
And that's probably about what you've got. So that luxury isn't really there. So the ability to say to yourself, and I think this is something that I've seen founders do, it's almost like, hey, I'm really good at this. I'm just not good at this. So I'm not gonna do that thing. And you can't operate like that. I mean...
Peter Dean (15:07.383)
Thanks for watching!
Peter Dean (15:20.916)
No.
Greg Moran (15:21.444)
Yes, you may be, in your words, you may be very dominant on the visualizing side, but you still do have to actually hack your way through to the prioritization, you know, or any of those other quadrants. So I think, and as you get bigger, you start to get the luxury of kind of filling those other areas, you know, but it's not, but you have to find the way to access it right at that early stage.
Peter Dean (15:26.935)
Thanks for watching!
carson (15:51.982)
Absolutely, you absolutely do and it's working a muscle that you don't really want to work and The other piece here though is we're not going to force Strategies that would really work well for you to that are going to be very linear or very analytical on my big-picture thinker So I would challenge them to start to look at prioritization through mind mapping I would use a series of oscillating interesting and boring
to keep this rhythm going throughout their day. I would use a timer and really crunch them to give enough of an adrenaline spike and focus to help them start to think about what is the priority. That's where the nuance comes in around how do you start to use your strength to move into that other quadrant.
Greg Moran (16:41.124)
Yeah, I think time boxing is a really interesting approach there, right? It's something that I've played with because again, we were obviously joking about the Peter and I both being great prioritizers. I mean, I couldn't prioritize my way out of the room I'm standing in right now if I had to, but I could tell you how to rebuild the house to make it better, right? So, but I mean, that's the thing. But what I found has worked for me is just sort of, okay, for the next 10 minutes,
lay out the steps of what actually needs to happen. And it's 10 minutes. That's all I'm gonna spend on it, but at least I've got something to start with. And that 10 minutes usually turns into, far longer than that. But that sort of time boxing exercise, I've found kind of helps me get through that. It's just not enough.
carson (17:27.645)
Mm-hmm.
Peter Dean (17:28.145)
Yeah, and to simplify it a little, because you're going to overthink it and go on all these tangents, but just make it simple. Do that. Don't move the mountain. Don't need to move the mountain. Just get that piece done. It's fine.
carson (17:39.65)
No. And pave the road.
Yeah.
Greg Moran (17:44.256)
So to kind of pivot over to specific founders, and obviously not names here or anything, but sort of when you think about founders you've worked with, you've obviously worked with some great ones, you've worked with a lot of some of the top PE firms out there. What differentiates those really successful?
whatever measure you want to, right? But those really successful founders in terms of their ability to get things done that others that just don't get the same results in your mind.
carson (18:20.134)
radical self-awareness. So they know who they are and how they are oriented in the world, I'm going to say with thinking style, and are willing to look at that and then look at how do I leverage that in service of the goal that I want. The folks that do not achieve their goals either as quickly or sometimes don't at all are not radically self-aware. So they aren't sure how, they don't know they're showing up.
Greg Moran (18:22.393)
Interesting.
carson (18:48.662)
And they're also not willing to really do the work to take strengths to move them over to accommodate for those growth edges.
Greg Moran (18:58.812)
How do you develop?
Peter Dean (18:59.007)
That's amazing. Like that, like I just think of going through all my work history with all these founders and it's pretty accurate. I mean, you think about the ones that are just so like tied into whatever they're good at and aren't thinking, OK, no, I know this is a flaw. So how do I temper this? You know, they're the ones that get into trouble fastest, right? Like the quick problems happen.
carson (19:27.15)
quick problems and it's that blind spot that literally blindsides them and they don't even see it coming. And it's coming and coming, coming. And then there is a reticence to look at, hey, what was my piece of the action? Because you did contribute. And if we can't even look at how you contributed, I can't start to clean it up and move you to a place where you start to move forward.
Peter Dean (19:31.156)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (19:36.448)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (19:44.808)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (19:52.647)
Yeah. Amazing.
Greg Moran (19:54.608)
Can you develop that, Carson? Can you, I mean, is that a skill, like that kind of radical self-awareness, is that a skill you can develop or is that something that's innate?
carson (20:05.522)
My personal opinion, I believe it absolutely can be developed. Um, I think anyone, yes, I think you two might have it. I think we're okay. So I don't think we need to do any exercises now for you to.
Peter Dean (20:17.866)
Okay. Yeah, it took years. It took years.
Greg Moran (20:20.216)
Yeah, the way that the two of us operate though is probably a little bit different. If Peter's not aware of his faults, I'm going to point them out. Like I'm going to be on that. He's going to do the same thing to me. So we'll be aware of for each other. But anyway, that's probably not a good functional thing. So we'll, I wouldn't advise that approach for most people.
Peter Dean (20:28.181)
Yeah.
carson (20:30.146)
Right. Okay, so it's...
Peter Dean (20:38.123)
No
carson (20:38.722)
No, you absolutely can cultivate it because what you start to do, and here's the benefit of what you guys just said, we all have blindsights, and unless someone is willing to call those out for us, friend, colleague, partner, employee, we are still in the dark. So change always starts, so the beautiful thing about change is it's a predictable process, but it always starts with awareness. And that insight often
Peter Dean (20:54.495)
Hehe.
Peter Dean (20:58.496)
No.
carson (21:08.47)
for my founders who are really new in their career does come from someone else. It could come from their investor, their board chair, it could come from another partner. But then the second step in change is acceptance. Oh, hmm. You know, when you're angry, you tend to shut down. I mean, you shut down and you will not open the room or the space for anyone else. You control it. Okay. I get to accept.
This is how I'm showing up. And then am I gonna choose to do something differently? Because the third step in change is starting to develop a new skill, a new system, a new tool. And then we start to move to integrating that into my next meeting. And then we move to unconscious competence, which is mastery. I've mastered that change. But this is a process that occurs over and over and over again. But you gotta be willing to look at it.
Greg Moran (22:05.816)
Yeah, I think you've also, I think your point, is really important when I think when, and I think Peter, I think you're probably the same way, right, at any point in my career where that kind of, this never ends, right, but you always have to be developing that awareness, but I think, having people around you that you trust, that are safe people to be able to share that.
I think, you know, I just think back to a lot of people I've worked with in my career that, you know, have been able to kind of point things out, but still point it out with a kindness or a, you know, a safety to it that wasn't just, you know, just abusing stuff.
carson (22:50.19)
Great, so I coach my clients on feedback. It's about future performance. It's based on facts, and it's either to amplify extraordinary performance or adjust it. But it's given in a way that's direct and kind. I can tell so much about the health of an executive team around if they're even giving feedback. No feedback is data. We've got a problem in that culture.
Peter Dean (23:16.871)
Mm hmm. So like, it sounds like I think I know what your answer to this is. So what's your piece of advice that you would give like a founder to kind of start that process? How would they how would they do that?
carson (23:30.567)
Mm-hmm.
carson (23:34.654)
I think it's really important to ask for specific feedback. So maybe the founder has some insight into, their early stage, they're still fundraising and they've had a series of nos. I might ask a very specific question to someone who's in the room with me around clarity of message. Is this landing? Does the data make sense? And invite that feedback in a very specific way so I can then start to develop a new skill around.
Peter Dean (23:37.985)
Mm-hmm.
Peter Dean (23:47.861)
Mm-hmm.
carson (24:04.003)
Feedback can get overwhelming if it's not very targeted. And then you've got to practice it. So ask for the feedback around an area where you want to grow. It's the first place I would start.
Greg Moran (24:15.852)
One of the, you know, so a great example of this not long ago, right? We had a founder pitching, you know, Ira, my partner in the fund and Ira and I were, you know, we had a founder pitching us.
carson (24:23.627)
I do.
Peter Dean (24:25.727)
He's definitely a good... That's a great example of a good balance. You described him, like, Ira's over here, and Greg's over here. It's like a perfect group. Yeah. Grouping.
Greg Moran (24:29.348)
He's what?
Greg Moran (24:35.588)
Oh yeah, totally, yeah. Absolutely, totally different, totally different areas on that quadrant. But we had a founder who went through, went through the pitch, we were listening, and it was pretty good. I mean, it was, you know, there were like every presentation, every funding pitch we've ever seen, some of it landed, some of it didn't, and we got done. And then the founder actually said,
carson (24:43.512)
Hmm?
Greg Moran (25:04.796)
And can you just tell me what, I'm not asking you because of your investment decision or anything, but what worked? What did I say that didn't make sense? What did I say that did make sense? Can you just like tell me what actually landed for you and what you didn't say anything but you were confused about? And you know, I just thought, wow, I mean that is, it was totally done in the right context. It was at the right moment. You knew that
They legitimately, this person was legitimately just trying to learn. And I think we probably end up spending the next 30 minutes helping to rebuild a presentation, which was already pretty decent, but it was like, hey, take that out. That didn't make any sense. You crushed it over here. Here's maybe a different way to say that. And just asking, right? I think so much of this just comes down to asking for feedback in a way that's actually authentic, right? And...
carson (25:32.792)
Mm-hmm.
carson (26:03.486)
and actionable. I, this, this makes me want to invest in this founder. If they're willing to do that and be wildly uncomfortable, I'm like, okay, this tells me you can receive feedback. You probably can act on feedback. There's an openness. We have this self-awareness and you got a growth mindset. So I know that there's always an edge. There is always something to learn.
Greg Moran (26:03.532)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (26:08.388)
Dear, absolutely.
Peter Dean (26:09.343)
This is what I was gonna say.
Greg Moran (26:12.261)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (26:28.991)
That's right. So as we kind of.
Peter Dean (26:29.087)
Well, you just described checks for box. So that checks for box for like saying that's a founder who has that radical self-awareness. And that's where success is found. Yeah.
Greg Moran (26:32.784)
The third-
carson (26:39.83)
Yes.
Greg Moran (26:40.312)
Yep. You know, so much of our so much of investing, right, is done. And, you know, when you look at it from an investor lens, but you also look at it from an operator lens, right. So much of this is just the ability to try to figure out a way to just get it done. Right. Find, you know, I and I talk all the time about the find a way founder, right. The founder who there's stuff getting thrown at you constantly from every direction. The analogy I use all the time is like, you know, a startup is like it's like
carson (26:42.37)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Moran (27:10.032)
being on American Gladiator every single day, right? You don't know where the thing is gonna hit you. Like all of a sudden there's like a guy out of nowhere, it's like smacking you across the head, right? And it's every day is like that. You're just running this gauntlet trying to somehow survive, right? And so it's, but it's the founder who can kind of ask those questions and take a step back and sort of reflect from it. I think that, you know, to your point, I mean, that's the founder you're gonna invest in all day long, right? The one who's...
Peter Dean (27:15.979)
Yeah
carson (27:21.794)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (27:39.172)
telling me how they figured it all out. I don't know what they're getting wrong, but I know they're going to get hit by the guy flying out of nowhere with the big pillow thing that's going to hit them in the back of the head when they thought they cleared it, right? And that's the thing. So sorry, go ahead, Chris.
carson (27:57.246)
Right. Yeah. Now let me say one thing about this, another framework that you're talking about is victim versus victor. I'm always hit by the guy with the pillow versus I was hit once and I figured it out and now I'm going to be the victor of this segment of this terrible race.
Greg Moran (28:08.297)
Oh my god.
Greg Moran (28:20.312)
Yep.
carson (28:22.37)
which is another piece around the whole productivity and performance, because a victim is stuck. They have an external locus of control. The world happens to me. And if they tour internal locus of control, I'm an agent and affecting change in my world.
Greg Moran (28:41.04)
There is nothing more pronounced, I think, than when you are dealing with that kind of a victim mindset and any kind of leader, right? There is nothing, to me, there is nothing that compromises that person's ability. It doesn't take it every day. It just takes a little bit of it and man, it's deadly. I mean, it really, really is. I've dealt...
with some situations like this.
Peter Dean (29:13.319)
It goes into the. It goes into the company, right? It like it permeates the company. How you act and how you think. Even if it's not fully said, definitely the company feels it so.
Greg Moran (29:13.444)
you know, over the past few years. It really is.
carson (29:20.502)
Yes.
Greg Moran (29:30.82)
Yeah, well, and they start to take it on, right? And I think that's where you start to see it is these cultures that become this victimized culture of all these things keep happening to us. And people don't understand us. And I wrote on LinkedIn about this the other day, right? It was like, nobody understands us. People don't understand our product. They don't understand who we are. And it's like, nobody cares. That's the problem. Nobody gives a crap.
carson (29:31.298)
Thank you.
Yeah.
Greg Moran (30:01.722)
And that's the fundamental problem. Like you actually do have to get beyond that point to make yourself matter, right? It's not, nobody's ever going to care, you know?
carson (30:12.298)
No, and can you, okay, no one understands your product. That's great data. What do you choose to do about that?
Greg Moran (30:18.972)
Right, exactly, exactly. Yeah, yep.
carson (30:22.798)
How are you gonna turn that around? And I think one thing that I would call out and I'm seeing this with more of my founders who are later stage growth, it is really important around performance. At times we conflate two things. As humans, we will always assume it's a people problem. That's just Greg, that's just Peter, it's called fundamental attribution area. That's just them. What we don't think about, which is the culture piece, is the context we put you in.
So I had a PE firm in California, we're main nameless, who reached out about the productivity of their analyst. And I was like, mm-hmm, tell me more about your culture. Oh, you know, we need a lot, we send a lot of emails. I'm like, well, do you have a strategic plan, do you use EOS, one page plans, what are you doing? No, no, we don't have time for that. I was like, well, I can tell you that I can't help you because I can create an incremental improvement in your analyst productivity, but they're swimming in a culture.
Peter Dean (30:53.792)
Mm-hmm.
carson (31:23.046)
that is absolutely completely unaligned with results. I didn't get on with the client.
Greg Moran (31:27.013)
Yep.
Greg Moran (31:30.726)
Well, you could probably go for the better sales pitch. I'll give you that. But you couldn't be more honest about it, right? And that's the thing.
carson (31:35.115)
Might need a better sales pitch. We'll do that after the call. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Peter Dean (31:39.143)
I think it's important.
I'm down for honesty. It always comes back to you. At least she doesn't have someone going, why isn't this person so much better? I'm like, well, I told you, why? You didn't do anything about it.
carson (31:43.006)
Yeah. Yes. Right. Yeah. Yes. Yes, but we don't.
Greg Moran (31:46.285)
Absolutely.
Greg Moran (31:55.452)
I'm gonna go.
carson (31:57.911)
Right, right, right. We have to work on your system, the system, the macro and the micro. I can absolutely change the micro. My team and I are really good at that. But if we can't work on the macro at the same time, we're back to it's a person problem versus the context in which we're asking them to perform.
Peter Dean (32:03.496)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Greg Moran (32:15.992)
Yeah, and that is a brilliant point, right? Because it's the essence of when you look at high-scaling companies. What is the difference between a company who's really built to scale and really can get the growth versus the company who struggles with it? It's exactly that. It's not, look, the people are the difference maker in that equation, but it's the processes, it's the systems that you're building that actually allow it to scale. You can actually have...
There's no way, you know, I had this conversation recently with somebody saying, well, I don't hire anybody but eight players. Well, that's complete bull, right? You, of course you're hiring people who are, nobody, it's because it's all contextual. Right? So, but if you, if you've got the right systems and you've got the right process in place that actually allow it, you don't need to hire the superstar who's going to do the Herculean things every time. Right? You just need to hire the person to follow the system.
carson (33:00.611)
Yes.
Greg Moran (33:14.692)
You know, and you look at like what every great, I'm not a big sports analogy guy, but like you look at what every great sports team has done and they'll say the exact same thing. It's not that, you know, Barcelona, you know, is like only hiring the greatest players on earth. It's because they fold them into a system or the, you know, the Super Bowls this week.
carson (33:14.882)
Yes!
Greg Moran (33:41.884)
the Chiefs or whoever it is, right? They're folding them into a system that makes an above average player a superstar.
Peter Dean (33:44.148)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (33:50.891)
Really good, yeah.
carson (33:51.606)
Absolutely. So if you ultimately want to drive performance, you shape the path, is exactly what you're talking about, Greg, to make the right behaviors easy, to make the right outcomes really, really simple. But the challenge that you get, and you guys see this with your founders, and oh, we can predict when it's gonna happen, to get to this place to create these conditions where you can have unbelievable high performance consistently over and over again,
Greg Moran (33:54.609)
So.
carson (34:20.714)
requires systems and processes, which feel a little bit bureaucratic. And we've lost that luster of, oh, we're a startup and we're out there and ideation. And now it feels like, oh, man, we're just a business.
Greg Moran (34:34.52)
I had a situation recently where I stepped into, and the mantra inside the company became, oh, these people are just trying to make us corporate. Well, look, I mean, having KPIs and a dashboard, and like, it's not exactly GE, right? I mean, let's just do some basic things so we can track some data and see what actually is occurring here. And I think...
carson (34:47.241)
Right, yes.
Greg Moran (35:03.512)
You know, but it is, it is easy to fall into that trap and it is a culture shift.
carson (35:08.882)
It's definitely a culture shift. Yeah, what get measured, we know what get measured gets managed. So if you wanna drive performance, I have to know what great looks like. What does it look like? And it usually is some type of metric. I mean, quantitative and qualitative, we need both. But what does outstanding performance look like? Don't make me guess. You're not ever gonna get the result you want.
Greg Moran (35:15.825)
That's right.
Greg Moran (35:31.96)
Yep, absolutely. Well, Carson, this is awesome. We knew going in this was gonna be a really fun one and it certainly lived up to it. What's next for you? What do you got going on? How do people reach you? What should we know about your business now?
carson (35:36.91)
Thanks, everyone. Thank you, guys.
carson (35:45.526)
Yeah.
Yeah, so I've got a couple of spots open right now for executive coaching for folks who really want to do that deep transformational work to get to the next level. Um, and working with a couple of executive teams, really helping them optimize performance. Couple of them are getting ready for an exit, which is really exciting and can reach out to me via email. Carson at Carson take consulting dot com.
Greg Moran (36:12.112)
Cool. And are you still active on LinkedIn? I know, can people reach out to you?
carson (36:15.751)
Yes, there is. Yes, LinkedIn is there. Absolutely. And there's some content there that folks can find as well.
Greg Moran (36:20.132)
Alright.
Awesome. Well, this is great, Carson. I really do appreciate it. Carson and I have worked, you know, sort of tangentially together in some of the stuff that we're doing around Evergreen Mountain. And certainly, you know, if you're thinking about executive coaching, you're not going to find a better person to work with. So definitely reach out.
carson (36:25.028)
Okay. Thanks guys.
carson (36:45.934)
Thanks, Greg.
Greg Moran (36:49.924)
That's it. That's it for this edition of the Founders Journey Podcast. We will see you next week on the next edition.