Entrepreneur Intel

Join Host Wes Mathews on Entrepreneur Intel as he sits down with Jonathon Hensley, CEO and Chief Product Officer at Emerge. Jonathan shares profound lessons on leadership, strategy, and leveraging AI in business. Learn about his journey from Silicon Valley enthusiast to successful entrepreneur, and get insights into building a strong vision, fostering team alignment, and driving business growth. This episode is packed with valuable advice for both new and seasoned entrepreneurs.
 
Takeaways:
  • The most important lesson in entrepreneurship and leadership is to ensure alignment between your company's vision, team's work, and market offerings. Help every individual understand their impact and contribution towards the company's goals.
  • When it comes to AI, it's essential to understand the cycle it is in and the potential it holds. As we move beyond the hype, focus on leveraging AI to enhance expertise and human connections.
  • Embrace challenges and seek opportunities for growth in areas where you feel uncomfortable. Adapt and evolve your business to align with market and technological changes for long-term success.
  • When building a team in a startup, it's crucial to understand the outcomes needed for each role and hire individuals who share the passion to achieve that success. Clear goals and aligning roles with outcomes are key to effective team building.
  • Entrepreneurs should focus on creating a vision that is both inspiring and measurable, ensuring that it provides clear direction and purpose to the team. Aligning the vision with specific objectives that serve a greater purpose can motivate the team and drive success in achieving long-term goals.
  • Every entrepreneur needs to understand the fundamentals of strategy, and planning is not strategy. Strategy necessitates knowing the problem you are solving, and the value you bring customers. From there you can strategize what you will bring to customers. 
  • The core of a successful product revolves around value. Before you start building, step back and assess the value you are creating, and how what you are building is going to actually deliver on the value. 


Quote of the Show:
  • “It fundamentally has to start with what's the problem that you want to solve, right?” - Jonathon Hensley


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Creators & Guests

Host
Wes Mathews
KC
Producer
Kyle Conover

What is Entrepreneur Intel?

Welcome to Entrepreneur Intel, a podcast where we discuss the most important strategies for success from amazing entrepreneurs. Host Wes Mathews sits down with business owners to learn about how they got started running their own business, what helped them succeed and the biggest lessons they learned along the way.

Be sure to catch new episodes every Thursday morning, and to make sure you never miss out on any insights, don’t forget to subscribe to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, You Tube or wherever you get your podcasts.

This show is sponsored by Stealth Consulting, your Fractional CMO. Stealth provides the roadmap and accountability to reach your business and marketing goals. Learn more at https://stealthconsulting.com/

Wes: I am super excited, uh, to be on the podcast today. I want to introduce today's guest. Uh, he has spent over 20 years helping B2B companies develop and produce products that drive results. He transformed business strategies and user needs into something of real and lasting value. He is the author of the book, Alignment, uh, CEO and chief product officer at Emerge.

Welcome Jonathan Hensley.

Jonathon: Thank you so much for having me, Wesley. I've been really looking forward to the discussion today.

Wes: Awesome. I've been so excited to talk to you. I first have to dive in and ask you the question I ask all of my guests here at Entrepreneur Intel. Uh, so your company has about 11 headcount. Uh, you do about 2. 5 million in annual revenue. You've been an entrepreneur for a couple decades. What's the most important lesson you've learned thus far on your journey?

Jonathon: I think the most important lesson that I've ever learned is the importance of how you take your vision as a company and how you close the gap between how you execute, um, in your organization. And to really do that, you have to understand How you build alignment, how you help every individual in the team understand how their work matters, their contribution makes a difference to the customers, the people that you serve, how you build teams to solve problems and bring their unique discipline and experience together.

And how then you fit that within your vision and goals for the company and how you actually develop the resources and services and products that you offer so it aligns with the market. It's, it's such an intricate web of things that have to be considered and that, that level of alignment so people understand the why behind what they're doing has been, I think, really number one or most profound lesson in entrepreneurship and leadership that, that I've ever learned.

Wes: Well, I love that your answer aligns with the title of the book you authored, which we're going to get into in a little bit, but I want to go back, right? The early days for, for Jonathan Hensley. Like, did you always know you were going to be an entrepreneur or how, how did that come about?

Jonathon: You know, I fell into it, honestly, I, you know, my, my love started at a very young age for technology. And so I was, you know, growing up in Silicon Valley, you know, and playing around with like, you know, building circuit boards and computers and, you know, being, Eight, nine years old, uh, going over to Hewlett Packard's campus to be in software meetups with all these really smart, you know, grownups that knew way more than I did.

And, uh, you know, for me, it was, it was completely an area of passion and joy. And, you know, Then as I got older, I found this really interesting intersection for me, which was here. I have this passion for technology and now I really want to understand the psychology of it. Like how does technology actually change and influence our lives?

And so that led me to choose a career path that took me into the digital product space and working with, uh, CEOs and leadership teams. Which eventually was the catalyst for, for starting Emerge.

Wes: Which is kind of crazy to think about in the sense of like, how much has technology changed since that idea you had then to now? Now I look at everybody has a cell phone. I mean, my kid's school now has slots. Like everybody has a phone that they have to put away. You have AI. But when you were starting down this journey, like what did, what did the technology landscape look like?

And how did you see that vision of how things were going to change?

Jonathon: Yeah. I mean, when I got started just, you know, for context, you know, I mean, this was pre internet, this was, you know, pre all of these, you know, amazing technologies that we're capitalizing on today. And so. You know, it really was about, at that time, the personal computer. What could you do with the personal computer?

How could you extend that into the way that you live and work? And I found that absolutely fascinating. Fast forward a few years later, all of a sudden you have the early emergence of the internet. And this is one, really, the internet wasn't public yet. This is one, like, the internet was still being used.

in academia and institutions, and they were using it to exchange and do research. So I was lucky enough to get early access to some of these terminal, uh, um, points for the early internet, um, as a kid, uh, through, um, universities. And so, you know, I had this exposure of, You know, what might be possible. And then all of a sudden you, you know, saw the com boom just take, take place.

And those were completely transformative years for me that shaped my perspective on technology and. You know how, you know, when we think about it from a people perspective, right? Cause at the end, it is still all about people. These technologies are just tools is how, you know, we would have these incredible expectations of how technology would transform the world.

Our expectations would usually get missed. Uh, and then all of a sudden the technology would, you know, have it take a quantum leap forward and then we're all catching up to what's really possible. And I think AI right now is just a phenomenal example of that same exact cycle. AI has been talked about for decades.

We're now seeing a massive inflection point in how it's now transforming the way that we're thinking, uh, and working. in technology and it's starting to percolate into every industry in the world.

Wes: Since I got you here and you're a technology guy, I get to ask you, cause you're going to have more knowledge probably, but. Where are we at in that cycle of AI? Like you mentioned like 10s or 20 years, we've been talking about it. So I'm, I consider myself like I'm pretty hip with technology, but there's a lot that goes on that I have no idea about in the entrepreneurial world.

I mean, I see chat GPT, I can put in some inputs and get some outputs, but where are we at in this cycle? I mean, are we about like the first version of the iPhone, you know, or like, I look at the old gateway computers that were like this thick, right. Yeah. Where are we in that cycle? Cause it's pretty interesting right now and scary what it can do.

Jonathon: Yeah, I think, candidly, in my opinion, I think we're really There's two, two parts of the cycle that we're in. One is that we are the actual capabilities of AI and what's starting to happen. We are very much in that early stage. Think iPhone one, you know, that is very much the reality of where that technology is.

It has, I think of the level of potential that we haven't seen, um, since the industrial revolution. As far as what it can actually potentially do. that being said, I think it's also important to understand where we are in the overall market cycle. And so the last 18 months, we've been in this huge hype cycle around what AI and what it's capable of.

And inside of the tech industry, we're starting to exit the hype cycle. And it's really looking at now we're in a space of land and expand. We're trying, it's, it's, it's a land grab right now in AI to, and we're seeing consolidation. You saw a lot of With the excitement, huge investments from VC, you see tons of companies now positioning themselves as AI companies.

How much of that is really, you know, AI driven products and services? Very, very small percentage. There's a lot of underlying technology that enables AI. And I think so as that, as we exit the hype cycle, uh, in the tech space, you're going to see that other industries are now going, okay, we've heard about all these things that.

That are happening. We want to be, make sure that we're modernizing and staying, you know, um, competitive, what does that actually look like for us? So I think the kind of, there was almost this pause that took place in the market where like, everybody's like, Here's AI, what do we do now? And it's like, okay, what AI can really do and how it can be transformative is now coming down to some fundamentals in your organization, um, outside of services like ChatGPT, where you're doing generative, you know, AI content, you know, great for a lot of reasons, but it doesn't ever replace expertise.

And I think the great way to analogy that I've heard is think of like those types of technologies as like having your, a personal research assistant, but your own experience, then the way that you connect and build relationships with people is fundamentally, you know, still needs to be layered on top of that.

And so there's very much a. a symbiotic relationship with AI where it's not going to take away a lot of the things that I think people talk about. It's more about how it allows us to do these things more efficiently and focus on that higher level of expertise and connection with people when it's applied well.

Wes: Yeah. You bring up a good point. Cause I think that's, that's where I live and I see, right. It's, it's, you, you have people that are fearful that it's going to replace and get rid of all these people, but then you have the other school of what you just explained about. It can kind of 10X my thinking for me.

I feel like it's training wheels for ideas. Like it's a good idea generator. I need to have the right inputs to get the outputs, but I find myself arguing with Chad GPT or kind of getting frustrated because it's just. Not quite there yet.

the question I have, so you mentioned people and tools, you know, you mentioned early on, you know, as you're starting this pursuit and as an entrepreneur, like you hung around Silicon Valley and Hewlett Packard, what would you recommend for entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs today in existing businesses?

There's so much information on AI out there. Like, where do you even start? Right. Cause everybody now is like, how do I implement AI into my business? And I can save money on people or scale my business. But how do, how do people prepare themselves?

Jonathon: I think it fundamentally has to start with what's the problem that you want to solve, right? You know, AI is, is just that it's another tool. That's a very powerful tool, but it only fits in certain use cases, uh, in, inside of what we do. So I think that we have to understand what. Problems are we trying to solve as a business?

And does AI have a role in helping us solve that problem in the most effective and scalable way possible? A lot of times I find that, you know, for, and this happens with small, you know, startups and, you know, um, first time entrepreneurs and large scale organizations too, quite candidly is that, you know, when we're focused on these things, we need to make sure we can answer some key questions, right?

It's like, well, What is the underserved or unmet need of the people that we're trying to provide our product or services to? And what value do we need to provide them right in, in that context? And so, and there's two types of value that are, that are really important to, uh, to have an understanding of.

One is the psychological value and one is the functional value of what you provide. So, you know, it's like, are you providing the You know, if you're providing financial services, what do your customers need from you? Trust, confidence, peace of mind. Like what are you actually selling them in a, you know, with the functional benefits of your financial expertise?

You know, if you're Volvo, you're selling safety. And they make cars, but they've been selling safety for decades.

Wes: Yeah.

Jonathon: The functional value of their vehicles are changing all the time. Um, and I say that because it opens up a really big conversation, but in a nutshell, it's really important to understand that because when you start to look at where AI applies in your business, AI, like any tool, can add and amplify the value you provide to your customers, or it can erode it.

And we need to be very strategic with how we apply AI to increase value. And so, you know, I see this in the digital product space all the time, you know, all of a sudden there was in the, in the, you know, peak of the hype cycle with like chat GPT, people like start like, okay, we're going to insert this. And our tool is now going to help you write your content.

Okay. Well, now the main thing I'm using, like a, a messaging tool for I've got this AI. thing on the side that's overriding and now I can't even see the screen I'm supposed to be creating content with. Like it's almost in the way of me being able to accomplish the task that I need. Um, it doesn't understand the context in what, what I'm, you know, applying.

So this is where When these, when it's applied incorrectly, it actually is inhibiting the business and your operations. And so I think it's, it's really important to focus on that core first and then ask yourself the question, where does AI fit? How does it help us amplify the value we deliver? And how does it help us, you know, be more efficient and responsive to our customers so that we can, you know, serve, you You either better or we can serve more people effectively.

Wes: That's a great response. I mean, you really cover everything there holistically. I mean, I hope that anybody that's listening can, can take what you just said and incorporate that in their business, because just to piggyback off your content statement, there's a lot of digital marketing companies, web companies that.

Or people are like, Hey, now chat GBT can just deploy all this content. Well, if you're paying attention out there, Google just rolled out a massive update, which basically says, yeah, if you do, uh, AI and input spammy content out there, we're going to penalize your website. That's it. It's actually going to do more harm than you thought your AI would do good.

Um, so yeah, I, I, I love the advice. I love the feedback on your strategy. Cause that's definitely a winning strategy. Uh, so talk a little bit about, so like you have a, From an entrepreneurial perspective, your background, and you kind of go through your process, like how did you come up with the concept or become CEO and chief product officer in your company Emerge?

Like what, what started that idea?

Jonathon: Yeah. So, you know, I started Emerge at a, at a very young age. Um, I have a kind of an interesting entrepreneurial journey in that, um, I grew up in a family with entrepreneurs and so I didn't plan to start a business in any essence, but it was a very natural path for me to do that. Um, and I got to You know, I would challenge myself, you know, when I was in, you know, high school and college, like, you know, I'm uncomfortable on the phone.

I'm going to go get a job at a call center. You know, I'm gonna, I'm really, you know, I don't know how to do, you know, project management the way that I do. And yeah, there's a course at school. That's great. Uh, you know what, I went and got a job for running, you know, government software. Transformation for the Y2K conversion for those that remember that, you know, there was all these things that I did.

It was like I have gaps That I'm aware of I need to start filling those and as I started filling those I recognized that there is a huge opportunity to actually bring this holistic thinking and expertise around technology and how people use it Into the space. And so what I did is I decided to start Emerge. Um, and Emerge has gone through probably five evolutions since, you know, it's inception, uh, in 1998, where, you know, we've had to evolve as the markets evolved, as the technology landscapes evolved, as it, you know, as it evolved. You've had an explosion in the internet and digital transformation and, um, software as a service and all of these major inflection points that have changed the landscape in, in, in the market.

Um, for me though, it, it, we're still focused on our initial. The initial need, which is how do you not just build a thing, but how do you build things that people need and use? Because that's what drives the business economics of everything that you're doing. That's what drives success and what drives relationships.

And I think, you know, understanding what value is and how we deliver it. You know, in, you know, business, whether you're working on digital product or not, it's just a, such a core thing. And it's it on the surface, it can seem easy, but it's such a complex thing to do. Um, and so there it's really important to, you know, To sometimes have guides that can help you work through that process and show you when it's done well, what that looks like.

And that's really been the catalyst for, for Emerge.

Wes: So to me, it sounds, you know, it could be many different things, but like, how do you typically start an engagement or like, what's a good opportunity for Emerge? Can you get a little bit more specific on. Is it just, Hey, company has problem A, you come in and consult and strategize, or like what's a good opportunity look like for, for you guys?

Jonathon: There's usually two specific cases that are happening. One is there's a company that's decided. We want to build a digital product or service. We've never done it before. We want to make sure we do it right. So they'll bring us in to help guide that entire process going through, you know, from helping, you know, take their idea and look at, well, how does that idea fit into the market?

How do we develop an effective product strategy? You know, how do then we think about designing and then delivering and bringing that product to market, uh, and all of the steps and pieces that go underneath that, the, the other side of that, which is really common is somebody has a product. They, they built it, they've been working on it.

It's not working or getting the results that they want. Um, and so we'll come in and we'll help assess what's going on and we'll look at it holistically, not just at the product itself, but we'll look at the product culture. What does the team have? Do they have. For example, a really clear and strong product vision.

Do they know what they're working towards and do they have an effective strategy that can actually guide them towards the success that they are looking for? And then we'll look at all the nuances that are happening between how customers use the product, where they're getting stuck. And then we'll look at, you know, what needs to change.

And that might be in the product itself. It might be in the processes. It might be looking at, you know, how leadership is. You know, structuring some of the things so everybody's empowered to do their best and bring their best capabilities and expertise to the table. So there's a lot of pieces that fit under it, but it's really comes down to net new.

We've got something and we want it to perform better. Um, and that happens whether it's a small company or we're working with fortune 100 brands.

Wes: So going back to the intro, you authored a book called Alignment, uh, that was your response to the big question of what you've learned over this, you know, duration of the time you've been an entrepreneur. So like how, basically it sounds like, you know, alignment was just so important in your business.

Yeah. Because what you're selling is, Hey, you might be really good, really smart, but how do you engage others? Right. You have 11 other individuals that have to think like you be passionate, like you to deliver, like you, how, how did you start to piece that company together? When it, when it became more than Jonathan, like how do you as an entrepreneur, like how did you take that first step to get alignment, uh, with, with like your first hire?

Jonathon: Yeah, so I was really fortunate. My very first hire is also now my business partner. Um, we started working together and then he, you know, became a full partner in, in Emerge, uh, And in the beginning, I think like any startup, you're trying to figure out like, where, where do I need somebody to fill my gaps?

Where are my strengths and where are my weaknesses? And then how do I compliment that? Um, Julian, my business partner is incredible. He comes from a, with a technology background that's much deeper than mine. I'm more focused on the business strategy side and how we drive. Engagement these days, he's very much that leader on the technical and the operational side.

And so it's very, very complimentary. But I think when you're building a team, you really have to like understand and what I learned early on is you have to understand what are you hiring for? And I think that there's a lot of examples of like, well, your first hire should be in this role or, Oh, I really don't like doing finance.

So I'm just going to offload that. And there is something to be said for that. But I think more importantly, um, As you're building a team, you know, you're, it's really essential that you understand, well, what is the outcome I need from this role? What does success look like? And do they share that understanding, that passion to achieve that success?

All the tactics, all the roles and responsibilities you have are to generate an outcome for the business. And you need to be really clear on that as an entrepreneur. And you need to then be able to hire for that and say, okay, this is the outcome that I need. Can I find the best person to help us produce that outcome? And I think that's, you know, fundamentally when you start growing a team, that's important. We do, we think of the same thing in whether we're, you know, Hiring at Emerge or as we become part of, you know, other organizations where we're working on, uh, you know, products that may have 50 or a hundred people across the team.

And we all need to know what we're there to do and how we do it effectively. You know, through that, I've also made all the mistakes that, you know, somebody can make. So, you know, I say that now, um, I didn't have that, you know, that experience 25 years ago. That was something I, you know, made all the mistakes and, you know, uh, hiring and, and building a team to, to figure out, but, you know, fundamentally today, when I think about how you hire great people, it has to start with that clarity.

As an entrepreneur of, of what you need to be successful so that when you're, you know, thinking about how you build your team, how you build collaboration, how you think about comp plans, all the things that come up in building a business, you need to understand. that what you're working towards is that shared outcome.

Wes: And it's so important as an entrepreneur to think about because On one school of thought, you have a vision of you're deliverable for your client, right? Like that's kind of what leads a lot of people down this entrepreneurship path. But then what you just talked about is this whole other animal and a beast of, you know, align, alignment within an organization.

Like how did the book come about or like what triggered, what triggered that for you in the business, uh, to put that book together on alignment?

Jonathon: Yeah. So gosh, it's, it was such a long journey to write that book. And so one of the things that has really always frustrated me in my career is seeing so many great ideas and great companies, um, deal with failure. And so about 15 years ago, I just became obsessed with understanding why do so many businesses and products and services fail.

I mean, what, what's really happening behind that. Um, and the most common, you know, thing in tech that's talked about anyhow is, you know, lack of market fit. And that's certainly true. That's a, that's a, that's a big issue. Um, but a lot of failure is, you know, comes from internal sabotage and just not knowing some of the things that we need to consider.

And so I started researching this. I started interviewing a lot of people and I was really inspired, um, by Steven M. R. Covey, who wrote the Speed of Trust, who I'd had an opportunity to spend some time with, uh, early in my career. And it was clear that, that there was something deeper here that needed to be, understood and explored.

And so I started researching the book. I started interviewing people all over the world, um, about failure. And as I started going through that process, this theme kept coming up with those who had beaten the odds, not just once or twice, but again and again, through their careers, those who had built really successful businesses who had scaled in many cases, multi billion dollars in revenue, uh, who had, you know, You know, built lifestyle businesses who ran product teams, who were working in every facet of an organization.

And they had one shared trait, which was they were intuitively focused on building alignment. And so the book, when I, it started was all about understanding failure. And I was going to write this whole deep dive into the root causes that can happen that cause businesses and products and services to fail.

And it turned into this book around alignment because that was the theme. And that was the story that needed to really be told. It's like, okay, we've all experienced the pain of failure, but what are those that are succeeding doing differently? And so the book really focuses on that and then helps.

Really unpack, you know, what does alignment look like? What are some of the key things we need to be thinking about as leaders? What are the fundamentals of strategy that are not discussed, uh, often, or there's a lot of confusing information out there when we think about building alignment and how that drives team performance and effectiveness.

Um, and so that really became the, that was the path to getting to, to the book.

Wes: Now, does your book go in specifics? I think a big question I have from that, which is, which is great. How do you begin to do that as an entrepreneur? Right. There's so many things out there. There's so much information. I have familiarity with EOS, which is, you know, for entrepreneurs, it's, it's, it's a framework for entrepreneurs that may not have gone down the path of traditional MBA, you know, business school.

EOS was super important to my business because it gave me a framework. And what I realized in the tool in EOS was the, the VTO, the Vision Traction Organizer. So I use that for alignment, like helping push my passion on a piece of paper, which I think is really hard as an entrepreneur. But then once people saw that, they could see the mission, sort of the North Star for the business.

Is that sort of like, what do you recommend for entrepreneurs? Again, I think there's a lot of people that they're passionate about, like they're owner operators, they're passionate about an idea or service. They're not quite thinking about, Oh man, now I have five, 10, 20, a hundred people that I have to create alignment with.

Right.

Jonathon: Yeah, I think there's, I'm a huge fan of EOS. I've gone through that, uh, myself, uh, and, but I think there's a lot of really great frameworks and ways to approach that, that help as an entrepreneur to kind of go through the critical thinking of structuring, you know, all the thinking that needs to go into building alignment with.

In your team and organization. know, one of the things that I find to be probably one of the most difficult points is when we think about within that right vision, well, what is a great vision look like, and there's an anatomy to it. And that's something that EOS and a lot of these other things don't talk about.

Um, we spend a lot of time in that on the product side, because we have to align what we're building as products with an existing culture. A company that has a mission and values like, where does, what does that actually look like? And so, you know, a vision has to fill in the context and it's sometimes it's talked about a lot.

It has to be, you know, a, a statement and it needs to be inspiring. And you know, it's aspirational. It's like, it should do those things, but a really good vision also is measurable. It's also specific. And ideally, I think if you really think about, you know, if you've ever had challenge, like motivating a team or what you're doing, you might be missing some of the fundamental elements of how to articulate that.

And I'll give a very specific example that I run into all the time, which is often I'll see a vision and it has some sort of business metric on like total revenue, or it has a certain metric around maybe Scope of, of, of customers. Well, what's really important for your team is to understand what in that vision, how are we serving people do that?

And what do they, what can they control and how do they contribute to that? If I say, you know, my goal is to help feed, you know, 100, 000 families and move them out of, you know, poverty. I am giving a very clear picture of everything that we're focused on doing that's measurable. And that now based on where I sit in the organization, I can understand how I contribute to fulfilling that vision. If I instead say something like, well, our goal is to make 10 million next year and see 20 percent growth year over year. No one knows what to do with that vision. No one knows where to, how that matters to them. It's so we remove the purpose in vision when that happens and we, it becomes aspirational versus specific towards.

A clearly defined objective. And I think when we pick any framework, it's important to. Look at the examples that they provide and say, Hey, is this really getting to something that is going to help me build that alignment that you're looking for and be a catalyst for the momentum and building the culture that we need to have in order to achieve the objective that we're setting for ourselves as an organization?

Wes: Now your book, does it give a general overview? Are you giving like step by step action items? Cause I see in my brain, I'm like 40 percent of companies probably have the purpose figured out. Like it's, it's, you know, purpose has definitely come up a lot more in the last five to 10 years. But the other 60 percent still has that 10 million, you know, very measurable type of purpose.

Like how can a company like, where do you start? Right. If you're a visionary or entrepreneur, that's just, that was me in 2014. I'm like, yeah, I don't want integrity, honesty on the wall. Like we don't need to invest in posters. Like, come on. It was really hard for me to buy into this concept myself. I went through EOS and they're like, first of all, it's a two year journey.

And I'm like, two years, can't we get this done in like two weeks? This is crazy. Yeah. But until I actually went through the process and spent the time on the VTO, I started to see stuff to take root within my own organization and there's clarity and we all had goals and rocks and a common purpose and why everybody, and I'm like, holy cow, like why didn't I do this sooner?

Like how, how as an entrepreneurial company, where do you begin?

Jonathon: Well, I think Well, there's a couple of actually very specific things. I think one is when you, you have to understand, like when you establish that vision and you're starting to build a strategy for your organization, you have to understand the fundamentals of strategy, right? And this is a very, difficult thing.

There's a lot of information. It's really confusing. And a lot of things are labeled as strategy that aren't, you know, planning is not strategy. You know, oftentimes we don't have enough information to effectively plan, right? We need to be able to articulate You know why we're going to do this thing, what it is, and then the planning is the how, how we're going to achieve it.

Um, but if we don't have the why and the what, it's very difficult and we have to make sure we have enough information. And so when we look at the foundational elements of strategy, if you, you know, as, as through the course of, of my career and even writing the book, you know, I probably went through 150 interviews with people.

Leaders doing, working just on strategy and reading as much material as I could get my hands on. And there's, there's some fundamentals that have to be in place. You have to have a really good vision. You have to understand what is the problem we're solving for our customer. And, you know, and then what is the value that we're bringing to that customer?

What value do they need to get to either try your product and switch from the current options that they have, or, you know, how are you going to offer something new that can be introduced into that space? And then you have to be really clear on. Then out of the audience, your possible audiences, right? You know, again, fundamentals of business here.

This is probably not, uh, you know, uh, surprising to a lot of people, but focus, relentless focus, like out of that, if you really understand the value you're providing, what part of your market would get the most value and benefit from what you're offering? And if you're an entrepreneur getting started, that's absolutely where you've got to focus.

You can't be all things to all people. Um, and so you really have to get super tight. Well, who gets the most benefit? Is it the small business? Uh, is it the, you know, the, uh, the single person? Is it, is it the, you know, the family with three kids? Like what, what does that look like? Very, very specifically. And then how are you going to make that connection?

And when you think about that, then you have to really understand, well, what actions do you need to take and to solve that problem? And how can you measure forward progress? So you have something to guide you along the way, and you're not just waiting three or four years or until you run out of money to figure out if it was right.

You know, you have to have a way to, to, to do that. Um, so you can be iterative and adaptive and really recognize that. you have that foundation established, I think the next piece that entrepreneurs. That's mission critical that also gets skipped a lot is You need to start going spending more time with your customers. Um, and I think this is, this is one of the most important things that an entrepreneur can do. And I see this in really big companies and how they build this into their culture as well. You know, it's important. You got to spend time, meet customers where they're at, understand when they're working with your firm, what is their ultimate goal?

You know, are they coming in from a point of like in healthcare? We, we deal with a lot with our clients that are there. It's like their clients, their, their patients, they're in distress. Like you've got to meet them where they're at. Like, you know, if you come in with, you know, just complete optimism, you're not really hearing or seeing them with where they're at, like you've got to be pragmatic, you need to be empathetic.

Um, So, you know, based on your business, what does that look like? You know, it can be very simple things. This is not complicated, but you have to make sure you understand, you know, customers what's influencing their decisions. If it's a B2B company, they're having to build consensus, get validation on the solution, they're having to make decisions.

Usually a group decision on, on how they're going to, you know, what they're going to purchase and what they're not, you know, that's not one decision maker. That's how do you support the organization and making the decision. So really getting into that with your strategy so that your plans are feasible is, is really, I think, uh, important and it's hard work.

It's really hard work. Um, and it's. You know, our customers, our markets are never on our schedule. So it's, it's always a frustrating thing that I hear, especially in early stage founders, you know, it's like, well, you know, I just, I need to get this done. I'm like, I get it, but we, we don't control, you know, the people's time.

So we've got to figure out how to, you know, get that time.

Wes: well, yeah, I'm curious around that because everything you're saying, I'm like, Oh, John's like this wicked smart guy, right? And for you to be able to sit down with any type of company in distress or like whatever challenges they face, but how do you and your firm emerge, get swings at the bat? Like what you're talking about is really, it's, there's so much value, but it's very complicated where I can see an entrepreneur being like, wow, I'm so overwhelmed.

Like I'll get to that when I can. Yeah. I want to avoid all that, like the play, cause it's hard work. I mean, so how do you guys engage? You're like, how do you guys find your opportunities? Where do those come up for you guys? I'm just curious.

Jonathon: Yeah. You know, it's really shifted for us, you know, just sharing with anybody listening to this, you know, we used to be in a market where. Being in product, digital product, you know, you would have all these companies kind of, you know, just, just find you, uh, and it's very different. And, you know, and now it's very traditional in the sense that, you know, what we offer in order to make that connection is, you know, if you're an early stage company and you are, you know, you're a founder that's, that's struggling with, it's like, I need to get this right.

What are the steps? How do I go through that? What we'll do is we'll come in and we partner with the founder and we say, Let's talk about your idea. We're going to help you flush it out. We're going to help you explore, you know, where's the opportunity space? How do you optimize your business model for that?

Then we can start tackling. The product, you know, and in some cases, what will happen is, you know, myself and the team will come in and as a fractional leadership into the organization, you know, and this is where, you know, I'm CEO of Emerge, but I'm also this, uh, chief product officer. And so I will come in and I'll be like, I'm going to help you get through this process.

And we just get in there. We roll up our sleeves and it's hands on and we're helping you making sure that all the gaps are getting filled. And that might start, you know, just why. Okay, well, what is that vision? Is it an effective one? Is the way that we're framing this going to enable the rest of the organization?

Yes or no? Let's fix it. Sometimes I can do that in 20 minutes with a founder. It's just, they have all the pieces. They've just never known how to put them together. And it's very quick. Um, in other cases, it's like, well, we've made a lot of assumptions and we kind of, you know, what common thing is like, we've gone to build first, you know, and that's very common.

We get an engineer and we start building things. Um, And it's a little bit of, you know, like a field of dreams, right? Build it and they will come. Like it doesn't, doesn't work like that. So we need to step back and go, okay, well, what value are we creating? And is what being built actually deliver on that value?

You know, you can't sell a Volvo without safety. You know, you can't sell a Toyota without reliability. You know, these are, these are fundamentals and how you craft your offering, how you market yourself and go to market and how you, you know, create your service and product offering are very much contingent.

On understanding that value, um, because how you deliver that, how you produce those things, um, are all going to be influenced by understanding that relationship with the customer. So we'll, we'll really deep dive into that when we're working with folks and helping them flush that out.

Wes: That's really cool. I think a big misconception around entrepreneurship is. It's, it can be super lonely as a visionary or an entrepreneur and you need good teams and and third party people, smart people to give you non biased feedback, right? I mean, I've had situations in my experience where, yeah, I mean, if you're an entrepreneur and you have a team of people, you still have to understand that you're employing the team of people.

So when you're getting feedback, they're like, yes, like, this is great. You know, there, there's also that fear of like, they don't want to say the wrong thing. So I think it's super important to have the right consultants or resources where you can hit them straight between the eyes and say, Hey, like we have your best interests, but you got to think about X, Y, and Z.

So a couple of things I picked up on from you right away, you offered a lot of information, a lot of great nuggets, but relentless focus I think is huge. Um, I think that there's a lot of noise out there with COVID just being out. I mean, there's a million things that can get people distracted and then just spending more times with customers.

I remember watching, um, Oh God, what's the show on TV undercover boss. Right. We're just even the simplest businesses. The CEO is walking in. They're like, who told you to do that? And they're like, well, it's in our manual. And we've been doing this for 15 years, really great feedback. So I want to thank you, uh, John, for providing all your insight.

Uh, but where can people find you? Like you're a wealth of knowledge. Super impactful to businesses. Can people get your book? And then how can people access you and reach out to you if they want?

Jonathon: Yeah, absolutely. So the book's available on Amazon and also, uh, off of, uh, Apple. Um, and then, uh, if they'd like to get in touch, you know, definitely, um, you can, uh, find me on LinkedIn and, uh, you know, send me a connection request and say hello and, you know, would, would love to, to make that connection and have that conversation.

Wes: Well, cool, man. Well, Hey, John, I really appreciate the time. You offered a lot of value, uh, wish you nothing but success. And thanks again for your time.

Jonathon: Thanks so much for having me, Wesley. This was great.

Wes: Thanks, man. We'll see you later.