Beyond 8 Figures

In this episode, Aaron Hurst discusses how his business Imperative is transforming peer mentoring and corporate relationships. His company uses psychology and neuroscience to help people build more meaningful relationships at work.

Tune in to learn how to assess the value you produce, how to foster an environment of meaningful engagement at work, and how to leverage psychology to gain more market share.

On today’s podcast:
According to a Microsoft study, people’s connections with their immediate team have strengthened during covid. However, it was found that their broader networks have been decimated.
Mentoring usually doesn’t tend to work well because the workplace is asymmetrical.
The only way you scale as a venture-backed business is by building systems and by building a team. As a CEO, you must be the person who plays a major role in defining the vision, creating the company culture and allocating the resources strategically.
Psychology is the biggest economic driver of value. Most successful companies leverage psychology and neuroscience to grow. A good example is Facebook.
Removing fear from our environments helps us build more meaningful and stronger relationships.

Show Notes

In this episode, Aaron Hurst discusses how his business, Imperative, is transforming mentoring and corporate relationships with psychology. His company uses psychology and neuroscience to help people build more meaningful relationships at work. 

Tune in to learn how to assess the value you produce, how to foster an environment of meaningful engagement at work, and how to leverage psychology to gain more market share. 

About Aaron Hurst: 
Aaron Hurst, the visionary CEO of Imperative, leads a psychologically designed peer coaching company, providing invaluable support to business owners and entrepreneurs. As the founder of Taproot Foundation, he created a powerful link between not-for-profit organizations and business executives, offering pro bono work and igniting a transformative movement.

In his book, “The Purpose Economy”, Aaron blends personal memoir with a transformative blueprint. His profound insights illuminate the potential of purpose-driven entrepreneurship, showcasing how businesses, markets, and careers can be reimagined to better serve people and the world. This book serves as an indispensable guide for navigating the evolving landscape of purposeful business and social change.

Visit our curated collection of Business Books for more enriching reads.

On today’s episode: 
  • The 2 existential threats to the world that Aaron Hurst is solving.- 04:00
  • A new way to get career coaching (4 questions). - 06:09 
  • Has remote work strengthened relationships at work?- 08:18
  • Why reverse the corporate culture around relationship building at work (two inflection points). - 09:13
  • Why mentoring usually fails (and how Aaron’s company fixes that). -10:27
  • Aaron’s journey as an entrepreneur in many different spaces. - 11:23
  • What kinds of companies need venture capital and why he chose the VC route. - 13:00
  • How does your role as a founder change when you become VC backed? (the 3 main things you have to focus on). - 14:39
  • What is the biggest driver of value in our economy? - 16:14
  • The dark side of using psychology to grow your company and what needs to change. - 18:08
  • Creating the foundation for grassroots change vs. getting involved in the political world. - 21:45
  • “Repair the world” how that principle guides him and keeps him humble.- 24:53
  • Why you shouldn’t get too attached to the concept of legacy. - 28:54
  • What is your value above replacement? (a good way to make decisions AND assess if you are adding enough value) - 31:03
  • Lesson 1: Looking at your efforts with more detail (more on value above replacement)- 35:35
  • Lesson 2: Removing fear from our environments - 36:35
  • Lesson 3: What are you doing that pushes you on your journey and what do you do to elevate your standards? - 37:47

Key Takeaways: 
  • Sustainability and lack of social cohesion are the two largest existential threats to our human race. 
  • According to a Microsoft study, people’s connections with their immediate team have strengthened during covid. However, it was found that their broader networks have been decimated. 
  • According to an MIT article, traditional mentoring has been proven not to be terribly effective while mentoring that is based on relationship building reaps better results.
  • Mentoring usually doesn’t tend to work well because the workplace is asymmetrical. 
  • When you are looking to make a big change, not just build a x million dollar company, but rather be an integral part of lots of people’s lives you need venture capital to get there.
  • The only way you scale as a venture backed business is by building systems and by building a team. As a CEO, you must be the person who plays a major role in defining the vision, creating the company culture and allocating the resources strategically. 
  • Psychology is the biggest economic driver of value. Most successful companies leverage psychology and neuroscience to grow. A good example is Facebook. 
  • The use of psychology to grow businesses has a dark side where businesses can negatively impact and manipulate their customers. Effectively, it almost makes businesses into drug dealers. Regulation is needed to keep the psychological influence of companies under control.
  • In buddhist belief, you are taught to let go of attachment. The concept of legacy can be an attachment. Getting too fixated on legacy may prevent you from focusing on your happiness. 
  • Removing fear from our environments helps us build more meaningful and stronger relationships. 

The biggest driver of economic value in 2021 is leveraging psychology to capture the market: 
“There is a tremendous opportunity, which we’ve seen across every sector,  to innovate and capture more market by meeting the human need for meaning, the human need for these positive psychological attributes in the market but also exploiting the negative ones...which is the dark side of this whole industry” -  Aaron Hurst (17:57)

How does your business leverage psychology to capture the market? Tell us in the comments and don’t forget to say hello if you would like to share your entrepreneurship story on our podcast.

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Creators & Guests

Host
A.J. Lawrence
Serial entrepreneur with multiple exits, an angel investor, growth expert, and host of the Beyond8Figures podcast.

What is Beyond 8 Figures?

At Beyond 8 Figures, we believe in DELIBERATE entrepreneurship. It means creating a solid foundational framework for your entrepreneurial journey, building from a place of passion, and intentionally aligning your actions with your goals so that you can create success on your terms.

Join A.J. Lawrence, the journeyman entrepreneur with several 7 figure exits, as he shares honest conversations with successful entrepreneurs about their experiences starting and scaling businesses to $10M and beyond, the realities of being a modern-day entrepreneur, advice for practicing deliberate entrepreneurship, and more!

Build a Better Business Using Psychology with Aaron Hurst, Imperative

[00:00:00] A.J. Lawrence: Hi, everyone, thank you so much for listening beyond eight figures. This is A.J. The journeyman entrepreneur with another beyond eight figure episode for you. On the show, we talk with top entrepreneurs about the realities of building an eight figure business, what success really means to them and hear from them about some of their winning strategies and tactics. Tune into each episode to learn how to grow your business beyond 10 million and more importantly, create your own personal legacy.

[00:00:37] A.J. Lawrence: Hello everyone. We have a very special guest to me on the show I've never met or spoken with our guests. We did email about nine years ago, a little bit, but nothing ever happened from that email. But our guests today create an organization around 2000. That has had a major impact in my life. Our guests created a not-for-profit called taproot foundation that provides pro bono services and [00:01:00] volunteers for various not-for-profits after the.com crash in 2000 and then nine 11.

[00:01:06] A.J. Lawrence: I was pretty much washed out. And I had to call them from a paper millionaire a couple of times, over to pretty much living freelance job to freelance job and doing whatever it took to keep the lights on. And by volunteering and taproot, I was able to continue developing my own project management, my own development and other skills.

[00:01:26] A.J. Lawrence: So then later when I did get an offer after a couple of years of wandering in the wilderness, those actions as volunteer were actually part of what was called out and why I was hired. And then very quickly created a lot of value for them and realized, oh, I should do this on my own, but still, if it hadn't been for taproot foundation, I probably would have gone a different route.

[00:01:47] A.J. Lawrence: And I would probably not be an entrepreneur. Like I am. So this was amazing. Aaron has continued his journey nine years ago. He started an another organization that I think has the opportunity [00:02:00] to be even more important imperatives, a court B company that helps large companies fortune 1000. Provide peer to peer leadership development throughout and create inclusivity and connection through employees by being able to guide their communication and their efforts to develop more on a peer basis, more meaning in their work.

[00:02:23] A.J. Lawrence: The value that brings to organizations I think is pretty amazing. I'm really looking forward. And I think something for the audience is something is how his journey as an entrepreneur has changed and how his focus and his efforts and the way he thinks about these things. Because not only has he built this amazing not-for-profit and.

[00:02:43] A.J. Lawrence: Totally skipped the whole fact that he's a bestselling offer for the purpose economy, really amazing book. And he is a social impact venture partner, but his work with imperative in getting into the root of large companies and how people engage with each other and understand what it means for each other [00:03:00] to build purpose and to build meaning in their lives, I think is truly amazing.

[00:03:05] A.J. Lawrence: And now with the venture backing, I think that's going to even accelerate and we should see such amazing things from the. So please join me in welcoming Erin Hurst to the show. I am beyond tickled to have you here. Hi Aaron. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. It is really such an honor.

[00:03:25] A.J. Lawrence: You've had in the past with taproot, you had such an impact on my life because as a volunteer, it allowed me when I was out of. Back 20 plus years ago got 20 issues ago. Now taproot was something that allowed me to keep current with my tech skills. If it wasn't for taproot, I think I would've come a teacher or done micro finance.

[00:03:44] A.J. Lawrence: Thank you so much for coming

[00:03:45] Aaron Hurst: on the show. Thank you accomplishment to prevent you from becoming a teacher. I don't know if I've done my job, but I'll take it

[00:03:53] A.J. Lawrence: now that I live in Southern Spain, my kids may have. You've had this amazing [00:04:00] journey. You've started at an iconic company and then imperative is also something amazing you and I, when you were starting imperative, you and I had a small email exchange, but it was just about the time that I was looking to sell my company.

[00:04:14] A.J. Lawrence: So it never really went anywhere. But, so I remember you starting imperative and now the research you guys are doing and working with all these amazing companies, we love to talk about the journey we go on as intrepreneurs to kind of get to these larger things. Would you like to share where you are right now as an entrepreneur and building imperative and taking over the world as.

[00:04:36] Aaron Hurst: So this imperative is recently venture backed tech startup, and we have built out a platform that I really think addresses one of the two existential threats to the world. The first existential threat is really sustainability in the environment. And my wife is the vice president and head of global sustainability for Amazon, which is really leading the charge in terms of sustainability from a corporate perspective.

[00:04:58] Aaron Hurst: And the other fundamental [00:05:00] existential threat to society is our lack of social cohesion. This is causing us. Pull apart and which in of itself is incredibly dangerous, but it's also leading to an incredible level of isolation, which is mean just fundamentally destructive to our soul, to our health, to our wellbeing.

[00:05:15] Aaron Hurst: So the ripple effects of this lack of connection is what we're focused on at imperative and really creating a new model using data science and behavioral science to help at scale, reconnect people through shared purpose. And we built up the platform and now deployed at companies from Microsoft to target, to Hasbro, to Boston scientific, starting to help people inside companies serve as peer coaches for each other.

[00:05:36] Aaron Hurst: So we basically taken out the need for a coach and allowing peers to coach each other, which creates all the benefits of coaching, which people really need. But perhaps more importantly, it's building long-term relationships between people across race, gender, and marketing and engineering, which may be the biggest divide in society.

[00:05:52] Aaron Hurst: So it's just helping to really, I think, reconnect. As people. And right now we're in market. Our next major milestone that I'm shooting for is wanting to get [00:06:00] to a million conversations a day happening on the platform to get to a tipping point, which we see in a three to five-year horizon for us. So everything

[00:06:07] A.J. Lawrence: is facilitated on your platform, the introduct, the choosing of the peer group, the tracking and the conversation.

[00:06:15] A.J. Lawrence: If I remember, cause I've read this over different periods of time over the years also, it's the questions that are being prompted, but it adapts over time with the peer.

[00:06:25] Aaron Hurst: Yeah. So it's the way it works is every employee creates a profile and we've determined psychologically what the questions to ask to determine what someone's purpose is.

[00:06:33] Aaron Hurst: You can actually take an individual purpose and break that down into psychological predictors. Mr. Able to determine that which helps us match people effectively, but it also enables us to dynamically create the scaffolding for the conversation. So that as we're asking questions and evolving it, as you said, we're able to insert insights about themselves that normally a coach would be providing, but we're able to do that because we have those insights built into the platform, which had never been done before, but it's an hour conversation.

[00:06:56] Aaron Hurst: Each time you're answering four questions, each I'm going back and forth. So you're [00:07:00] sharing your stories with each other. And at the end, you're pledging an action. What's one thing you're going to do to make your work more meaningful. What's one thing you can do to be more successful. And then when you meet again, two weeks later, You're asking whether or not you did that thing.

[00:07:10] Aaron Hurst: So it's holding you accountable to your best self all the time. And you do five of these conversations with a partner over a quarter. And then the next quarter you get a new partner. So every quarter you're getting a new accountability partner to help bring your best self forward in your work and in your life.

[00:07:24] Aaron Hurst: And in that process every year, you're building four new best friends that are transformational on under themselves.

[00:07:30] A.J. Lawrence: I love that concept because I've done masterminds with other entrepreneurs and various levels from idea generation all the way to people running companies that are like EO and stuff like that.

[00:07:41] A.J. Lawrence: So this is bringing that concept and then the data science that I think is the really interesting thing. It's almost like young lady's primer when Neil Stephenson's book, where the book keeps adapting, the learning,

[00:07:52] Aaron Hurst: anything. Yeah, choose your I'm a member of EO as well. And I think about like with EO, which is entrepreneurs meeting in [00:08:00] groups to support each other super powerful, but if you're a 21 year old accountant PWC, that doesn't exist as infrastructure.

[00:08:06] Aaron Hurst: So what we're able to do is bring that to scale to every employee, as a continuous support mechanism, not just for the CEO and leadership team. And that's just so critical, especially now during the pandemic and all that's going on in the world, just to have people to have that kind of support. So. And dismissing, it would seem very much that

[00:08:23] A.J. Lawrence: your tool, given that every article about the reason why we need to be back in offices or every company as someone who, the moment I sold my company back in 2012, it was like, oh, please never own an office.

[00:08:35] A.J. Lawrence: Again. It was to be remote, but now so many people are talking about the idea of how the connect and how to develop it. Your imperative seems built for this. Yeah, it's

[00:08:44] Aaron Hurst: absolutely critical for remote work because it's enabling people to have that connection. And Microsoft did a study and found that people's connections during COVID and pandemic with their immediate team have actually strengthened, but their broader networks inside the business have been decimated.

[00:08:56] Aaron Hurst: And I think that's a key place where we're adding values are creating that ability to [00:09:00] network inside the organizations that you're getting to know people across different parts of the business, which is really critical to career mobility. It's really critical to innovation. Et cetera. So critical need there.

[00:09:10] Aaron Hurst: I guess you start seeing people moving back to the office. I think one of the things we've realized is that a lot of the people we work with actually, aren't in the same physical office with you all the time. And a lot of people you need to interact with are not there. And the people don't have the interpersonal skills to build relationships effectively at work because we've been programmed to not build relationships at work.

[00:09:27] Aaron Hurst: So in a lot of ways, what we're doing is a reprogramming of the corporate culture to make real relationships possibly. And then I would just add like another piece, which is the whole black lives matter movement and the increased investment in inclusion, but what we've really become as the first real inclusion platform, because we're building meaningful connections between people of different backgrounds and helping people build confidence to show up as their best selves in the workplace.

[00:09:50] Aaron Hurst: So just very transformational power in the inclusion space. And there's actually just an article yesterday on MIT about how it's these kinds of connections are the ones that actually [00:10:00] help with inclusion. Whereas traditional mentoring ones have been proven to not be terribly effective. That

[00:10:04] A.J. Lawrence: concept is really interesting.

[00:10:05] A.J. Lawrence: Cause I, my ideas I worked on a few years ago, it was a mentoring platform and it's really, I am you start off with this cool idea and the realization, there's huge amount of people that want mentoring, but not a very large pool of good mentors, especially ones who don't want to get paid. So I changed it around and then I ended up chasing Bitcoin.

[00:10:24] Aaron Hurst: Yeah. Mentoring itself doesn't tend to work well because of the marketplace is asymmetrical because you have to have a, to your point, there's only a subset of people that can do the mentoring. They have the skills. And then on top of that, they have the mentoring skills. And because each is different, not only matching them, but you have to figure how to do quality control and quality control.

[00:10:38] Aaron Hurst: And that kind of a diverse environment is a really challenging. We've been able to bring it down to psychology and peers. So it becomes a fully symmetrical market. I like that, the benefit,

[00:10:47] A.J. Lawrence: it was really those connection points across an organization. That over time you allow your organization to be deeper integrated, and especially as people rise through it, that lovely thing where someone who's brand new to your company, they're great [00:11:00] because they're adding value to what they're do.

[00:11:01] A.J. Lawrence: But two to three years later, all of a sudden they understand and they live. If you do it right, they live your story, your mission. I love this concept. And I remember I loved the concept when we were talking about it, but you've evolved. I want to say almost 10 years, nine years ago. Time does fly, but where you're taking it now is really interesting.

[00:11:18] A.J. Lawrence: How do you see yourself now that you have this larger one? Cause I remember you were out when you were starting this year out, reaching out to people, having people trial, reaching out, but you had the book, you were building awareness and trying to gain interest. Where do you see yourself now on the journey as the entrepreneur?

[00:11:34] A.J. Lawrence: Now you're the co-founder and CEO here and the chairman of the board. Where do you see yourself? On this journey as an entrepreneur,

[00:11:41] Aaron Hurst: I started my first business. When I was 16, I've created a small SMB, a creative, a Tapper to social impact movement and organization comparative wasn't really two different cycles.

[00:11:52] Aaron Hurst: The first is really is a thought leadership platform. So publishing the purpose economy, getting purpose on the radar of corporate America and [00:12:00] frankly corporations around the world as not a charitable concept, but actually. Profoundly important one on terms of value creation and both the workforce and consumer markets.

[00:12:09] Aaron Hurst: And with that really being an advocate and being out there generating revenue from keynotes, generating revenue, from supporting companies in that transformation. And then this new chapter for imperative is really moving from a thought leadership platform and advocate for the movement around purpose to the technology.

[00:12:24] Aaron Hurst: That's going to enable that to scale and becoming a venture backed entrepreneurs. So I feel like I've had the opportunity. I've been really lucky to be an entrepreneur in a lot of different settings. The little, learn about myself and learn about business and learn about change through each of those different applications.

[00:12:38] Aaron Hurst: So, as I look at today, I think we're at the early days of this venture journey venture and finding is a very different kind of, it goes without saying, but very different journey than anything I've done before. So it's exciting to be able to be challenged in a new way. And then after this, who the hell knows, but I feel like we're still in the early days of the venture, the venture backed entrepreneurial.

[00:12:56] Aaron Hurst: One

[00:12:56] A.J. Lawrence: thing we've had previous guests talk about is they had built some [00:13:00] foundation with earlier efforts. You have this great background again, and then when it came, they had looked at inflection points for opportunities. How did the conversation to decide to go around being VC backed and kind of accelerate your growth as this technology platform?

[00:13:16] A.J. Lawrence: How did that happen? Did you see your role or your focus changing, leading up to it or. Just it happened. I

[00:13:23] Aaron Hurst: think major disruptions, when you want to do something on a massive scale and you want to fundamentally disrupt society, you need, in most cases, a significant amount of capital very quickly to make that happen.

[00:13:33] Aaron Hurst: And there's really not another model for doing that unless you have the personal cash to self-fund it. And which coming out of being an entrepreneur in the social. Sure. There's no equity in that. So there's no accumulation of wealth that you can then redeploy for your next venture. So when I look at what was the path to making a large impact and given that I only had time and limited capital, I could contribute to it to venture made a lot of sense, because I think venture also shares the aspiration for the level of success.

[00:13:59] Aaron Hurst: I'm not [00:14:00] interested in creating a $10 million business. Am I interested in the $50 million business? Like we're looking to create a platform that's going to become at the core of the culture of every company on the. And as part of everyone's life journey as is continuous access and building relationships and anything short of that to me is a failure.

[00:14:15] Aaron Hurst: So InVenture provides a clear. Process that's aligned with that level of ambition. My ambition is financially motivated, but it's much more. So I think motivated as what I am at my core, which is an inventor and a social entrepreneur and inventing things, no one use is not terribly interesting. So when you invent something, you want to see everyone using it because you see the potential for its impact.

[00:14:37] Aaron Hurst: Do you see your

[00:14:38] A.J. Lawrence: role, your focus changing as you took this on and became venture back? Did you have to be more of the managers here as the event or in this voice, this presence? Do you see yourself changing?

[00:14:50] Aaron Hurst: It changes every week, frankly. Like it's a continuous evolution. So it's hard to talk about it in terms of these bigger changes that said, I think there's a couple of areas where I would point [00:15:00] to, I think one is when you're venture backed as a CEO early on, you can do a lot of invention and a lot of experimentation.

[00:15:08] Aaron Hurst: But the only way you scale is by building systems and building a team. Anytime you find yourself getting involved in the details of it, you're likely actually preventing growth, which doesn't mean you don't have to keep a close eye on things. Doesn't mean you have to be a strong partner to your team, but it's all about getting incredible executives.

[00:15:24] Aaron Hurst: No, how to, and have scaled similar ventures in the past. Men who know how to lay that track and then being the person who is really about the vision and culture and resources. So it's the vision. Here's where we need to go. Making sure everyone's always very clear on that. Here are the resources, which is the cash and the people that are necessary to achieve that.

[00:15:43] Aaron Hurst: And then the culture building a culture, especially given what we do that is authentic to our aspirations and our values. The role work should play in our lives and what healthy successful organization looks like. So those are the three things that I see as my responsibilities first and foremost, when we put taproot and [00:16:00] other ventures where the scaling is not at that speed, those things are all true, but the role is a little bit different because you're not moving as quickly and you are able to be more involved in some of the.

[00:16:10] Aaron Hurst: Well,

[00:16:10] A.J. Lawrence: now that you're on this journey and you're the author of the purpose economy, your whole company is built around the idea of purpose and blocking and creating communication and connection. So this next question, I think may be leading here a bit, but what do you see overall in the economy that you think is very important?

[00:16:31] A.J. Lawrence: Other people do not because they haven't seen it or they just don't

[00:16:34] Aaron Hurst: understand the importance. I think that I would have a much more robust answer for you two years ago. I think the pandemic has actually accelerated the market's understanding of a lot of these issues, so that there's less of a divide between me as like a futurist and visionary to the actual market itself.

[00:16:48] Aaron Hurst: So, you know, the biggest thing that I see is just psychology as a economic driver of value, but in a lot of ways, if I could rewrite the purpose economy, I might call it the psychology. The economy, because if you [00:17:00] look at a lot of the technology that's been developed over the last 10, 15 years, it's really just all built off of psychology.

[00:17:05] Aaron Hurst: I mean, in positive and negative ways, right? So Facebook is using neurochemicals to build addiction to its product. Its product works based on neuroscience and psychology. You look at what's going on in the workplace. The workplace has been dominated by build skills, engage people. Have clear tasks have clear goals.

[00:17:25] Aaron Hurst: What we've come to understand the last 10 years is that none of that matters. If you don't have the right mindset, if you don't have a psychological safety, if people aren't fundamentally showing up able to engage and taking ownership of that, and there's been no psychological layer built within companies to help support that.

[00:17:40] Aaron Hurst: And it's been taboo in the past. And I think what we're seeing now is people recognize that actually without that you're really limiting your success as an organization and that there's a need for this psychological layer to be inserted into the culture of a company. And that there's also tremendous opportunity, which you've seen across every sector just about to innovate and capture more market by [00:18:00] meeting the human need for meaning the human need for these psychological positive attributes in the.

[00:18:05] Aaron Hurst: But also exploiting the negative ones, which I think the dark side, if you use the star wars analogy of this whole industry, and there needs to be, I believe a lot more thought at a political level, at a legislative level about what do you do in psychology becomes part of the economy in a very overt way, because the whole model of freewill economics, which is the basis for modern day capitalism, doesn't fundamentally add up when you have the ability for companies with significant resources to manipulate.

[00:18:33] Aaron Hurst: The chemical and psychological response people have to their products when suddenly like at some level, every company is a drug dealer. You have to have a very different model for how you go about governing that system. So what we've seen is in the political environment, a discussion around what do we do with Facebook?

[00:18:52] Aaron Hurst: What do we do with these companies that are creating issues in. Democracy and truth. I think the more fundamental question is how are [00:19:00] we needing to, as a culture set up ways to govern the use of psychology, the use of neurochemical release in the markets. And it's really no different, and this is not a case study in effective governance, but I think sugar is a great parallel to this.

[00:19:14] Aaron Hurst: And just thinking of. People become literally addicted to sugar. And yet there's no real governance over it. And the cost to society is massive. Like we're all paying taxes every year to address the health and societal impacts of sugar. And the counter narrative is always like, oh, freedom. I have the freedom not to pay taxes to pay for someone's medical needs because they drank six sodas a day for their whole life.

[00:19:33] Aaron Hurst: No. I don't. So like, where's the accountability cause like with freedom, you also have to have accountability. So anyway, I'm going on and on. No,

[00:19:40] A.J. Lawrence: I really do like it because as an ex media buyer, that was what a lot of my focus of the agency, I was sold. The understanding that it really was a fine tuning of little tweaks and things and burst of light and calls to action.

[00:19:55] A.J. Lawrence: Targeting. I've talked with a couple of people after the Russian stuff hit with the elections. And we were [00:20:00] like, wow, they were so unsophisticated in the tools they use and the efforts they did yet. We never thought we could be taking over countries. And the

[00:20:07] Aaron Hurst: media in front of these things we used for nefarious ends and the lions often making the economy blurry because.

[00:20:14] Aaron Hurst: Capital creation is often seen as a positive, but if you look at the actual cradle-to-cradle cost of something, it's very different math, the

[00:20:21] A.J. Lawrence: concept of tension between ultimate self and society, that seems to disappear to a large degree. It's like, yes, you should be trying, but you need to have some cons or there needs to be some structural return of your responsibility to those around

[00:20:36] Aaron Hurst: you.

[00:20:37] Aaron Hurst: Let's say these things are necessarily wrong. It's just, it's an evolution. Process. So each of these models make sense, but then when technology adapts with it, the model has to change and that hasn't happened yet. And unfortunately, the way our democracy is set up, which is, I don't know, a better way to do it.

[00:20:52] Aaron Hurst: Our governance systems are glacial and technology is getting faster and faster when you have the Moore's law, accelerating change in government and frankly going in the opposite [00:21:00] direction because the Moore's law is being applied to slow down change. I think government level, it strips the system at some point.

[00:21:06] A.J. Lawrence: It is funny that you're saying yes, because technology and the tools and the way we can deal with things is so fast and fast and fast. And yet governments are more like, oh, we like it, how it used to be or how we understood it to be when we debated it. X period of times,

[00:21:24] Aaron Hurst: the age of people who were elected, which tends to skew older.

[00:21:28] Aaron Hurst: Perception technology is moving so fast. So if you legislate what's currently happening, it will be obsolete by the time of the ink is dried. So how do you develop more of a guiding principles? Almost like our constitution in the U S to guide those that can create a framework that can be more sustainable, more valuable, longer term.

[00:21:43] Aaron Hurst: You see

[00:21:43] A.J. Lawrence: yourself given your family history with your uncle and from founding Pisco. And so do you see. Part of your journey as imperative grows and becomes more of a part within corporate America. Do you see yourself taking on a larger voice or at least attempting to build a voice in that [00:22:00] space? Also,

[00:22:01] Aaron Hurst: maybe, but I think it's, as I look at it, I feel like the bigger opportunity remains with what we're doing at imperative.

[00:22:06] Aaron Hurst: I don't think going head on, into. Political environments right now is terribly constructive. And I care too much about rational thought to be able to weather that I've got a lot of family and politics most I'd say at least half my family is in politics and I don't know how they put up with what they put up with.

[00:22:20] Aaron Hurst: I don't know that I could do that, but maybe I would adapt. Maybe it wouldn't. I just have a lot of admiration for their patients in that process and the stakeholder and. To me. I want to be able to address the core across society, that if we can remove a lot of the fear, that's underlying a lot of the bad decision making because we help people become psychologically safe to develop a purpose mindset, to be able to have close human connection with people that aren't like them.

[00:22:41] Aaron Hurst: Those are the things that are going to create the foundation for that change to happen. Otherwise it's just MSNBC and Fox news yelling at each other, and we're not getting anywhere. What

[00:22:49] A.J. Lawrence: do you mean those are constructive voices. We need John Stewart on every night of news that sometimes feels like just destroying crossfire on every news thing on a regular basis.

[00:22:58] A.J. Lawrence: But no, I really [00:23:00] do like that concept and I can see sort of the direction of imperative because it does change society, how people so much. The concept of not just our lives, but just society is around how people work together. And as imperative in those forward, that is really a positive way. Like my wife were worked at McKinsey.

[00:23:18] A.J. Lawrence: Thank God she got out now is that bane. And she recruits senior level people into these organized and built. Processes and teams, but like they're pure, they're mentoring, repeatedly scores, credibly poorly. So I like that idea of, okay, how do you make it? So the company actually understands because of the data, all of a sudden asking your people can say, oh, things are.

[00:23:41] A.J. Lawrence: Connecting we're seeing this. It's not just, oh, we had X conversations. It's well, what happened? What goes down to the people? Where do they go? What's their quality of life? How long do they stay as employees? How likely are they to look for better things within the organization versus trying to leave all the things that is becoming important in talent [00:24:00] managers?

[00:24:01] Aaron Hurst: No, absolutely. And I think it's a parallel of my wife's work is the whole technology around carbon capture. So it's like, how do we reduce carbon? But then also, how do we capture it? And are there ways of doing that? And I think a lot of what pure coaching does, it's a fear and stress capture mechanism because fear and stress are at the core of so many of our social problems and healthcare issues in society.

[00:24:18] Aaron Hurst: And that when people have a meaningful, vulnerable conversation, you're actually pulling some of the fear and stress out of someone's psychiatric. Experience and that if we can do that enough, we just start to remove the amount of fear that's sitting inside our ecosystem that right now is driving so many problems.

[00:24:36] Aaron Hurst: So I see the need for a parallel sort of fear capture system. And I see that in our conversations that we're capturing and removing fear from ecosystem. I like

[00:24:45] A.J. Lawrence: that concept a lot. We're gonna have to play around with it. Thank you for sharing that. Another question you've built a not-for-profit that has had a huge impact.

[00:24:52] A.J. Lawrence: And as someone who's been impacted, let alone the not-for-profits and I've talked to people, not for profits, you've had work done. And just the [00:25:00] amazingness in that like, oh my God. Literally a phrase because I was on the board of the Brooklyn community service. I spoke with someone, they were saying just how amazing it was to feel transformed because their ability to pay for services, these digital logo and brand had been very limited and that it just felt like a whole new awakening for the not-for-profit when they were able to get a rebranding done from a taproot team.

[00:25:24] A.J. Lawrence: And I was laughing, I said, I had worked on the four, eight. Team. And then I think it was a health center, but yeah, those things were just so fun as someone who's already built something and imperative is now becoming such an interesting and growing company. How do you think about the concept of your own legacy?

[00:25:41] A.J. Lawrence: Not about like your name on a building. To you, what a legacy mean?

[00:25:46] Aaron Hurst: That's interesting question that I think a lot of people, especially my age struggle with, I struggle with it and probably a different way. I think one of the things that has been challenging is the taproot was very successful. And I left when I was in my late thirties and I started it when I was at 27.

[00:25:59] Aaron Hurst: So at some [00:26:00] level I had made a contribution before 40 that at some level. And as I think about the high school quarterback, it's like you peak early and then it's like, what do you want to do? So I had that early success, which caused me to reflect a lot on what is the next contribution that I want to make, or what is priority for me.

[00:26:16] Aaron Hurst: And I think writing the purpose economy, it was a big piece of wanting to be part of helping society as a whole advance in its maturation. So that was a major contribution is to create the language, to create the framework, create the data and research. At this point, thousands of companies shift how they were thinking about work and markets for the imperative.

[00:26:34] Aaron Hurst: I think about how do we have hundreds of millions of people suddenly having relationships and meaning in their lives, having the ability to collaborate. And that's really powerful. So that's really important. I think about my family and what kind of father I am. How am I being a mentor to my kids? I think that one's much more challenging because sort of torn between they've been incredibly privileged.

[00:26:55] Aaron Hurst: And their life and a lot of different ways. And I feel like with that sealed Spiderman line, like comes [00:27:00] much responsibility, but at the same time, why do they need to be held to any higher bar than anyone else and just their happiness. And it might just projecting my stuff on them and they need to find their own journey within that.

[00:27:10] Aaron Hurst: But it's hard to let go of the push for social impact, which I think they both have themselves and innate to their values and have been raising them as vegetarians, et cetera. Just as reinforce responsibility. Yes. But I come ultimately from a Jewish culture where the idea of repair the world is sort of the goal.

[00:27:25] Aaron Hurst: And then what I love about the concept of repair the world is it's absolutely right goal and it's never achievable. And there's a humility baked into that, or just realizing that whatever you do best is going to have like a tiny little impact. In the world. And you think about it today, a hundred thousand, 10,000 year cycle.

[00:27:40] Aaron Hurst: If you think about it from the perspective of one day, I'm going beyond the Jewish concept or a pair of the world, like the earth isn't gonna exist forever, just even at that level. And then it's like, why does it even matter? And trying to like put that into that context. And if you think about it from a fan perspective, if you're a Barack Obama, Donald Trump, whoever it is 500 years from now, no one's going to know who those people are.

[00:27:58] Aaron Hurst: And 500 years is a [00:28:00] blink. So there is no real potential for success at that level. Once you truly have the humility to look back at it. And at that point, you just have to sit back and just look at your kids. You look at the people you see every day and just try to minimize their suffering, be able to bring joy to their lives.

[00:28:14] Aaron Hurst: So that's my very complicated answer to your question. No, I

[00:28:17] A.J. Lawrence: love it because it is the tension I come from a mixed background, so Catholic and Jewish. So it's a combination. You must do this and this would be really good if you did it. You should be must and should that's that fine line between, so it was just the balance point between trying, because that's all we can do.

[00:28:38] A.J. Lawrence: It's this idea that look infinite choice and the privilege we get from even just being able to sit here is very high. But what we can do to make it just that much better. That is

[00:28:49] Aaron Hurst: something that we strive for. Mike tension is a Jewish, but also I was raised Buddhist. And I think within Buddhism was a very different mindset towards a lot of this, at least as it was communicated to me.

[00:28:58] Aaron Hurst: And the key in [00:29:00] Buddhism, which is really important is the idea of letting go of attachment. I think legacy is an attachment. It's not a real thing. And that actually prevent you from being happy because you're focused on something. That's actually not real something that is largely. Self-defined and subjective and has no inherent meaning in and of itself.

[00:29:15] Aaron Hurst: So I look at that piece and just letting go of that. And I'm also just reminded of that. Cheryl Barth, who was our CFO at taproot for a long time, she was older 20 years older than I was. And she talked about when she was over 56 people over 50 become, they're not scared of dying. They're scared of not living.

[00:29:32] Aaron Hurst: And that's, as I get closer to the 50 market really resonates for me. And. The fear of death is what creates legacy mindset. Fear of not living is more about every day. Like this is your last chance to be in this moment. In this day, it's a scarcity around the time you have to enjoy life. And I go on walks every day and I look at a flower like quite literally, and there'll be a point where I'm no longer able to look at a flower.

[00:29:53] Aaron Hurst: This is not something that I will always be able to do, and to be able to find appreciation in that moment. I love [00:30:00] that

[00:30:00] A.J. Lawrence: concept. I had a coach who calls himself a back in the day, a born again, Buddhist, Jerry Colonna.

[00:30:05] Aaron Hurst: And she was my coach as well. And he was great.

[00:30:08] A.J. Lawrence: Oh yeah, Jerry, I really wish I had focused more attention at the time.

[00:30:11] A.J. Lawrence: There was this great poem, how it was so much about the idea that as you get older, you would be going through doors knowing that you wouldn't be able to open them in. And let me say he made me read it the first session.

[00:30:22] Aaron Hurst: That's cool. I think I was in my mid thirties, so I don't know if that was the issue before me at the time, but no, I think that's a great metaphor and they absolutely see that.

[00:30:29] Aaron Hurst: Now when I travel. This may be my last time seeing this, whereas before it was this idea of infinitive adventure,

[00:30:36] A.J. Lawrence: I'm on the other side of 50 as you approach it. It is that funny thing where it's like all of a sudden I had this teenage kid and it's like, you're a God, you can do anything. And all of a sudden my inner ear is like, no, we don't want to climb that.

[00:30:48] Aaron Hurst: The cliches that were annoying is when you're younger, it become true, including the one I liked least, but now relate to is that youth is wasted on the young, which I always thought was a great, great. It sounded

[00:30:58] A.J. Lawrence: stupid when we were young. [00:31:00] Now I like the idea of focusing on our children, their ability for them to live their lives.

[00:31:06] A.J. Lawrence: I want to do everything I can to give you what you need and the ability for you to create things. But I don't want to just give you stuff to exist. That balance important. And I like how you're taking it further and having a value to society.

[00:31:22] Aaron Hurst: I think, especially as Americans. Jewish having had success in career, they're given an awful lot to going to private school, et cetera.

[00:31:29] Aaron Hurst: And I do for better or worse do judge sort of a career that would be fully just commercially oriented. For example, that doesn't have a fundamental diet, a society, and that isn't leveraging that to enable more people to, to move forward. Something

[00:31:43] A.J. Lawrence: must be given backwards. That idea that there is more than.

[00:31:47] A.J. Lawrence: The accumulation of monetary value in the game.

[00:31:51] Aaron Hurst: I don't know if you're a sports fan, but they have the value above replacement, which is sort of a measure of compared to someone else playing that position. It's not like if you didn't play, there'd be no home [00:32:00] runs like someone else would be batting for you.

[00:32:01] Aaron Hurst: And they would hit home runs, but like what's your value above a typical replacement and ask them to think about that as like a frame for. What does one's value above replacement and how much over that to want to achieve. And it's also the thing I use to think about. Should I stay in my current job, like a taproot?

[00:32:15] Aaron Hurst: I realized my value above replacement wasn't that high. And therefore, like it's better to then be replaced because I can go to something else. Or my VAR is going to be.

[00:32:25] A.J. Lawrence: I like that a lot as a Yankee jets, new Yorker background. Yeah, I definitely, and then I, the only team I've ever given up on and switched is next because the Dolans are just

[00:32:37] Aaron Hurst: getting to.

[00:32:38] Aaron Hurst: Yeah. I went to the first games at the Barclays with the nets and my kids are raised and that's fans, but I watched the next and I can't help, but they're like so ingrained in my soul. Like, it's just,

[00:32:49] A.J. Lawrence: I mean, even during the lens, I like that concept because yeah. I left the board and because it was like, okay, I'm.

[00:32:55] A.J. Lawrence: Um, helpful, but you know, the reality is I'm only really helpful as a [00:33:00] check writer because there's so many better people here for this. I liked that concept and really kind of coming to that. Where are you at? Where are you? Not just in your current situation, but where would you add above your placement value?

[00:33:13] A.J. Lawrence: Oh, it is a sports, but I never thought of playing it here.

[00:33:16] Aaron Hurst: I think that's a good way just assessing whether or not you're making your optimal contribution and whether or not you're just sort of coasting because if you're at or below value add replacement, then you're actually defacto not adding value to the world because that's, he could be taken by somebody else.

[00:33:28] Aaron Hurst: Someone else could be just

[00:33:29] A.J. Lawrence: doing this and. I like that. Well, alright. Thank you so much for being here on the show and thank you once again for, for building so much of what you've built. Like I said, taproot really came at a time where I had wiped out of the tech industry and it gave me a way to showcase and build on my skills, which gave me an entry back, but did allow me to get where I am now and go on my entrepreneurial

[00:33:55] Aaron Hurst: journey again.

[00:33:56] Aaron Hurst: No. Thank you. And thanks for putting this venue for people to understand the entrepreneurial [00:34:00] journey and for fellow entrepreneurs. It's so helpful just to hear how other people's challenges and wins and just some of the peer coaching just makes you clear that you're not alone in the journey. So thank you for creating that.

[00:34:11] A.J. Lawrence: This is fun because I get to speak with such great people like yourself of just like, okay, what's your thought process around it because it's easy to in a gallery. But the reality is we all come from different areas and different perspectives and we look at things differently and want different things.

[00:34:27] A.J. Lawrence: So hearing from the horse's mouth, why this is important and what you're going into, it changes the way that I'm going to go look and talk to my team about different things or ways I'm going to try and build things. And I know that happens for audience a lot too. So, thank you really. I appreciate this.

[00:34:43] A.J. Lawrence: What we'll do is everything will be in the show notes on to imperative, to your book, to your social network. So everyone can find more out about this and how to follow you and how to engage and how to bring a little more purpose to what they're doing. Sounds great. All right. All right. Now I look [00:35:00] forward to seeing some amazing stuff from imperative and hopefully getting big enough with my new company that we actually can utilize something as amazing as.

[00:35:08] Aaron Hurst: Sounds great to me,

[00:35:10] A.J. Lawrence: that was a lot of fun. I hope you in the audience, new listening, God, as much value as I did from talking to veteran. And like I said, it's such a huge thing to meet someone. Finally, who's had an impact on my life and basically because of what he did with taproot, I get to live the life I have now.

[00:35:29] A.J. Lawrence: So that was really the. But I think even more important is the things we can learn from this and value above replacement. That's just, something has frequent Monday morning quarterback. I've talked about that concept a lot, but to look at it in our own personal lives, instead of other people to look at our own life and to engage with that concept.

[00:35:51] A.J. Lawrence: What we're doing. And I think it's actually more than just as entrepreneurs, but in all aspects, I think that's something really worthwhile. I [00:36:00] know in the past that type of mental model and looking at situations where I was in, not that I would have hold someone in per se replaced myself, but I think I would have.

[00:36:11] A.J. Lawrence: At my own efforts, a little bit more detailed and try to focus more on what my own special craziness is in creating value. So that's a concept I think we all can play is really just asking what value above replacement are we bringing and what value above replacement. To create. I also love his idea of imperative moving towards this concept of removing fear from the equation.

[00:36:39] A.J. Lawrence: And yes, most of us have smaller companies, but we all are trying to build companies that will be big enough to have imperative come and help us build our team and our culture. But this is something that is entrepreneurs. We really should bring more into because I know I complain about the noise and the anger and the [00:37:00] stupidity that I say out there.

[00:37:01] A.J. Lawrence: But looking at our own environments, looking at our own teams, our partners are the people we interact with to remove fear and this basic concept of what would bring more meaning. To your work to your efforts, to what you do, and maybe not all the days signs and the deepness to it, but definitely we can bring this peer to peer basis, not as boss or business owner to employee contract or whatever, but person to person.

[00:37:29] A.J. Lawrence: And then between our teams to build that understanding of what is meaningful to you, to them and grow definitely something. I think I'm going to spend a lot more time. Thinking of, and I think it's worthwhile for everyone else. And then lastly referenced a little bit around that concept of value above replacement, but what we do as we go on the journey, as Aaron said, he created an iconic not-for-profit and taproot foundation really was a different concept and it really [00:38:00] is creating a lot of that.

[00:38:02] A.J. Lawrence: Not only have abandoned unemployed in my life, but I've also been on the board of not-for-profits not at the same time. That was much later on my journey. But the way taproot is talked about in many not-for-profits is incredible. It has created such value. He could have coasted on that. He could have been like, all right, I created something and I'm done, but he decided to go.

[00:38:24] A.J. Lawrence: Deeper the purpose economy, but his book writing his book, building up the platform of imperative, but now taking on the venture capital to take imperative even further and deeper and grow it faster and be able to provide even more value and remove even more fear from the marketplace, I think is something that we as entrepreneurs need to read.

[00:38:46] A.J. Lawrence: I think about is what are we doing that is pushing us on our journey? Are we on this journey just to collect a lot of these things, whatever type of currency you lift by then? Yes, I probably a little too much on little technical, [00:39:00] digital tokens and all that other fun crypto, but the reality is why are we doing this?

[00:39:04] A.J. Lawrence: And are we ratcheting up the value we create above just anyone other person going through? This journey of our life, let alone the entrepreneurial journey. Are we holding ourselves to a higher standard as Aaron did from going from taproot to social impact as a venture partner to then imperative. And of course running the book, are we holding it?

[00:39:29] A.J. Lawrence: The standard where we are bringing more value, are we pushing ourselves to go there? And that's something I'm going to add more thought and more effort as I evaluate where I'm going, what I'm doing with my new business and my new efforts. So I think there was so much in there's so much more than listening to.

[00:39:49] A.J. Lawrence: The episode that we can all take from this. So look, let me repeat. This was such an impactful on me episode, and I think now that you've listened to it, I would [00:40:00] love to hear the parts that resonate with you. Thank you so much for listening. I can't wait to talk to you again. I hope you have an amazing day and goodbye.

[00:40:14] A.J. Lawrence: This episode of beyond eight figures is over but your journey as an entrepreneur continues. So if we can help you with anything, please just let us know. And if you liked this episode, please share it with someone who might learn from it. Until next time, keep growing and find the joy in your journey. This is A.J. and I'll be talking to you soon.

[00:40:33] A.J. Lawrence: Bye-bye.