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Rethink Culture is the podcast that shines the spotlight on the leaders who are rethinking workplace culture. Virtually all of the business leaders who make headlines today do so because of their company performance. Yet, the people and the culture of a company is at least as important as its performance. It's time that we shine the spotlight on the leaders who are rethinking workplace culture and are putting people and culture at the forefront.
00:00:08:13 - 00:00:32:04
Andreas
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. Welcome to another episode of Rethink Culture, the podcast that shines a spotlight on leaders of businesses that put people first. My name is Andreas Konstantinou. I see myself as a micromanager turned servant leader who developed a personal passion for workplace culture, and at Rethink Culture, we help companies build a high-performance culture.
00:00:32:06 - 00:01:00:17
Andreas
Today I have the pleasure of welcoming Andy Bailey. Andy is quite a lot of things. He is a founder of Petra Coach and Boundless.me, where a team of entrepreneurial coaches deploy their no-BS approach to inspire, transform, and scale teams and organizations. As an entrepreneur, Andy started his first company when he was still in college, and he built it into an Inc. 500 company and successfully sold it and exited.
00:01:00:19 - 00:01:25:03
Andreas
And he's written three books. The No Try Only Do book. The Vitamin B for Business. And his latest book, Boundless Life Guide and Journal. And he has two daughters. And he just took delivery of a tractor that he's very much looking forward to playing with. Andy, very welcome to the Rethink Culture podcast.
00:01:25:03 - 00:01:28:04
Andy
Thanks for having me here. The tractor sitting outside calling my name.
00:01:29:13 - 00:01:43:10
Andreas
So we better keep it short. All right. So, you're a coach, and you're an entrepreneur as well. And we were talking before we hit record about...
00:01:43:12 - 00:02:08:23
Andreas
you taking a journey in your life where your first company was all about, or your Petra coaching company was all about performance and business tactics to help companies scale. And your latest company, you know, is all about helping people. So I want to hear about that journey. But was there, like, an inflection point in your life where you said, I have to change my priorities and shift gears?
00:02:08:23 - 00:02:25:02
Andy
Well, I think it comes from a couple of places. The first is the absolute... the greatest limiting factor to the growth of an organization is the people in the organization. It's not market share. It's not access to capital. It's not, you know, a product. You have to have a product. You have to have a service that actually people will buy.
00:02:25:02 - 00:02:48:19
Andy
But beyond that, it's just the limitations of the individuals to deliver on the demands of what's being asked for them to do. Especially if you're in kind of scaling, growing, you know, segment or industry whatsoever. So, that realization was a big piece of it. You know, we were, as a scaling practice, like, we worked with companies to get them to grow because they wanted to grow.
00:02:48:21 - 00:03:04:01
Andy
We kept hitting these ceilings, like, you go, you know, double a business in a three-year period of time, and boom, we couldn't get any farther than that. We had to, you know, rejigger all the people and bring some new folks in and let some people go and upgrade talent. And it was frustrating. It's like, you know, this shouldn't be that way.
00:03:04:06 - 00:03:28:03
Andy
We should be able to grow the people at the same rate. The second piece is I've got a box that sits over here at my desk. I empty it about once every two years or so, and it is full of notes of appreciation that people have sent me. You know, I go do something, have a phone call. Speak to somebody like I've done with you in the past, something that I would share,
00:03:28:05 - 00:03:52:23
Andy
and they would write back to me how much they appreciated it and what the outcome might be, and, at the end of the day, what was the impact on their life. And very rarely in those notes does it not talk about people. It doesn't say, you know, Thanks for giving me more capital. It talked about, thanks for introducing me to somebody that would care for me in this particular transaction or whatever it might be.
00:03:53:01 - 00:04:14:15
Andy
And I felt like I was doing the right thing when I would get those notes. So for me, it was two things. It was a big need, you know; we need to do this. Organizations are going to grow, communities are going to grow, churches are going to grow. Families are going to grow. The people inside of all of those businesses need to grow.
00:04:14:17 - 00:04:35:15
Andy
And they have to understand what they want to grow into, before they can get started with it. And the second was I get a lot of significance. I feel significant in this world. So for me, it's a no-brainer. So when I sold Petra, I sold 90% of it and maintained 10% of it at their behest, not mine.
00:04:35:17 - 00:04:52:08
Andy
I pulled all of the intellectual property that had to do with the personal side or the Boundless side out of the transaction. Kept it. And now I'm growing Boundless as a separate entity. And I spent really about the last eight months focused on that pretty heavy.
00:04:52:10 - 00:04:57:01
Andreas
What's stopping a person from developing and so stopping the company from growing?
00:04:57:13 - 00:05:21:05
Andy
I think the first is they're lazy. You know what I mean by that is all of us are inherently lazy. We are... We are a creature of comfort. We get hot; we want air. It's too cold; we want heat. Like, it's too sunny; we put... like, we're a creature of comfort. We chase it. Our brain is wired for protection and comfort.
00:05:21:05 - 00:05:44:14
Andy
It's not wired for let me chase that because it scares the crap out of me. So people automatically fall into a lazy category. They have to figure out how to get out of the lazy category and fall into a place of discomfort in order to actually grow. So I think first is we're just built for comfort, which causes us to not chase discomfort.
00:05:44:14 - 00:06:04:10
Andy
And discomfort is where growth comes from. I think the second is, and it may not be the biggest, but I think the second is they don't really know what to go do. They don't know what the end result is supposed to look like. A lot of times I'll say, like this, I don't understand who I'm supposed to become in order to achieve what I want to achieve.
00:06:04:11 - 00:06:22:20
Andy
I'm not clear on who I'm supposed to become in order to achieve what I want to achieve. So I think I know what I want, I think I know what I want, or at least I know what I don't want, which is what I have today. I want something different, but I don't really understand clarity around, I can't see myself in a place of abundance personally.
00:06:22:20 - 00:06:43:18
Andy
Therefore, I don't make the first step. And the third is they don't believe they can. And that may be the greatest of it all. And it takes people like you and people like me and people like other leaders or other people who believe in somebody to give them a little bit of, Hey, I believe in you. Before you believe in yourself, just take the first step and let's see where it goes.
00:06:43:20 - 00:06:50:05
Andy
And we do that a lot. We talked a little bit about mountaineering. I'm sure we'll come back to it, but we use that philosophy a lot on mountains.
00:06:50:05 - 00:06:54:01
Andreas
So what's that philosophy? How does it apply to growing personally?
00:06:54:02 - 00:07:12:13
Andy
So, when we, when we do mountains. So we take groups of people every year out to Colorado, and we climb these mountains. We call them fourteeners. They're 14,000ft in elevation. There are 54 of them in the state that just all happen to be about 14,000ft. And we choose easier ones over harder ones depending on the groups and so forth.
00:07:12:15 - 00:07:33:04
Andy
But everybody knows, like, you get a trail map, you know, you're going to start at this place, you're going to end at this place. You know how far it is. You know what the elevation gain is. You know all the stats, so there's no questioning what you're there to do. Like I'm here, and my goal is to be there.
00:07:33:06 - 00:07:56:19
Andy
But when you get started and you're already at 8000ft elevation, which lowers the amount of oxygen in the air, which makes it harder to breathe, all of a sudden it becomes very uncomfortable. Or maybe you're four hours into this hike and you're at now, 12,000 ft., and it's really difficult to breathe. Your brain starts telling you, Comfort, comfort, comfort, comfort, quit, quit, quit, quit, and you start stopping.
00:07:56:19 - 00:08:15:09
Andy
So what we do is we use this stop thinking about the summit. I don't want you to think about selling your company for 40 million. I don't want you to think about the long term. I want you to think about from here to that rock. Can you make it from here to that rock 40ft away? Yes, of course I can.
00:08:15:09 - 00:08:30:03
Andy
Well, let's go to the rock, and then we'll talk about it again. So once we already got clear on everything that we're going to go do, we know what the end result is supposed to look like. We know exactly what the path is, exactly where we're going, and exactly how long it should take, we know all the stats.
00:08:30:04 - 00:08:47:07
Andy
Now we just have to get the belief that we can actually do it. And sometimes the belief and what's way far away is not there. But that's okay, because that's still where I'm going. I just have to have the belief in these spurts of from this rock to that rock, from this rock to that rock, from this rock to that rock.
00:08:47:09 - 00:09:03:08
Andy
And literally we will stand there with somebody and say, Can you make it to there? Yes, I can make it to there. Well, let's go there, and we'll talk about it again. It don't take us all day, sometimes all day, but we get those people to the top of that mountain, which they never believe they could ever do that.
00:09:03:10 - 00:09:21:15
Andy
I believe they can, because I've taken people up there that you would think would never be able to do it, but did it. But they did it in these small, progressive, short bursts as opposed to, oh my gosh, I have to go for 12 hours to the top of this mountain.
00:09:21:19 - 00:09:25:03
Andreas
Is it a limiting belief, or is it a physical limitation?
00:09:25:03 - 00:09:52:08
Andy
It's both. But the physical limitation, the limiting belief, is a greater limitation than the physical limitation. And you know this, we've all seen videos of people that have no legs running races. I mean, you know, there is no greater limitation than running a race with no legs. I mean, we all know it gets done or believe that they can't.
00:09:52:10 - 00:09:55:22
Andy
Because of whatever, whatever it might be.
00:09:55:22 - 00:10:13:23
Andy
So first thing is they have to have a little bit, a little bit of belief, or they have to have somebody that has some belief in them that will show them. And I call it revealing our potential. Which is the core purpose of the organization, is reveal unrealized potential.
00:10:14:01 - 00:10:20:03
Andy
But once we begin to reveal it, then they get a little bit of confidence about continuing to reveal it.
00:10:20:03 - 00:10:33:11
Andreas
How about teams? What's often holding back a team from delivering its potential? Even if you have high performance in a team. There is the case where the team isn't actually performing well.
00:10:33:11 - 00:10:35:00
Andy
Those are tough.
00:10:35:00 - 00:10:35:22
Andy
I always say that...
00:10:35:22 - 00:10:52:08
Andy
The leaders on the call or on the podcast are going to be mad at me. But I always say that a business, that a leader gets the business they deserve. If it's going well, they did something to cause it to happen. If it's not going well, they did something to cause it to happen.
00:10:52:08 - 00:11:22:06
Andy
They have to take that responsibility. I think the first thing that fails inside of a team, if it is supposed to be high performers but they're not high performing, is that the leader, him or herself, is actually not a high performer. And the easiest way I know to describe that is if you're the leader of an organization, your team will always only perform to right here.
00:11:22:12 - 00:11:37:01
Andy
They're never going to perform above you. They're not going to run faster around the track than you are. They're only going to run as fast as you're running. If you're showing up early, they're going to show up early. If you show up late, they're going to show up late. If you do two extra calls, they're going to do two extra calls.
00:11:37:03 - 00:11:57:21
Andy
If they know that you got your kids on the weekend and you don't want to be bothered, then they know they can have their kids on the weekend, they're just going to be what they're going to be as close to you as they possibly can. They're never going to be up here. So if we want a higher and higher and higher performing team, then we have to have higher and higher and higher performing leaders of that particular team.
00:11:57:23 - 00:12:09:21
Andy
I've worked with companies all over the world and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of companies, and many of them, many of the leaders, are the type of leader that they will say,
00:12:09:21 - 00:12:19:23
Andy
we want this. This is what we want. We're going to go do it. But they won't show up. They'll be late to the meeting. They'll take the next vacation.
00:12:19:23 - 00:12:44:20
Andy
They don't, they don't, they don't sacrifice anything. They just expect other people to do it for them. And they're not going to do that. The only way that people are going to follow you, is if you do more than they do, period. Now, they may follow you for a period of time because you have a title, you know, you hold the checkbook, and you write the checks, but they're going to follow you out of respect,
00:12:44:22 - 00:12:47:18
Andy
they're going to follow you out of fear.
00:12:47:21 - 00:12:52:17
Andreas
When you're coaching people what are the common issues you see?
00:12:53:21 - 00:13:16:10
Andy
Lack of expectations is really, really something. Leaders of businesses, whether it be, you know, the VP of sales or the CEO or the founder leader, they have a generalized idea of what they're looking for. Most of them have some sort of a number... We're staying on the business side here, but most of them have some sort of a number like 40 million or 17% gross margin.
00:13:16:11 - 00:13:44:00
Andy
They have numbers, but they really don't... They don't understand, or they don't have the ability to communicate the vision of what the expectation of the role is. And they don't do a good job of that. The second thing they're really bad at is what I call performance management. Now that gets a bad rap. Performance management is not just about finding what somebody who's not doing, but it's also finding what somebody is doing well and giving them reward and recognition for it. Doesn't have to be cash.
00:13:44:00 - 00:14:08:08
Andy
It could be just an appreciation, a hug, and a high five. It doesn't have to, you know, that's a take it to extremes, but you have to manage the performance. We were talking earlier about sports teams. Watch a sports team sometimes, a professional... I mean, hell, a middle school or mid-range sports team. And watch how that sports team is run. When something happens on the field of play
00:14:08:08 - 00:14:25:06
Andy
that's good, man, they're all in there. Hey. Nice work. Good. And when something's not good, man, they're pulling together trying to figure out how to do it. Got some jackass on the team who's shown out not doing their job. He won't be on the team very long. He'll be on the bench. Right? So run it more like a sports team.
00:14:25:06 - 00:14:31:01
Andreas
How do you give feedback to people? Well, how do you coach your leaders to give feedback?
00:14:31:01 - 00:15:00:03
Andy
Immediately. Immediately. Immediately. Good or bad. Immediately. Immediately. Immediately. If you see something, you'll say something, good and bad. Not just bad. We are trained to look for... We're a fight-or-flight species. So we are trained to look for something that's going to eat us in the woods. So when we're in our business environment, we're always looking for what Johnny is doing incorrectly. And we are correcting Johnny.
00:15:00:05 - 00:15:18:08
Andy
Well, that's a crappy existence for Johnny and you. Why would you just want to live in a space where you're walking around trying to find something wrong all the time and pointing out to another human being that that's wrong, that's wrong, that's wrong? It just isn't good for anybody. So you have to... because you'll find stuff that's wrong.
00:15:18:09 - 00:15:39:12
Andy
You'd been doing it for 25 years. They've been doing it for 25 minutes. They're going to do stuff incorrectly. But they showed up today, tell them, Good work for showing up today. You can find something that they did really well, but that's performance management. Do it immediately. Don't hold it for the weekly meeting, or hold it for the annual review, or hold it for the quarterly.
00:15:39:16 - 00:15:43:22
Andy
Like, do it constantly and always.
00:15:44:18 - 00:15:48:03
Andreas
And what's an anti-pattern, something that
00:15:48:03 - 00:15:50:12
Andreas
CEOs shouldn't be doing when it comes to feedback?
00:15:52:05 - 00:16:10:03
Andreas
Or performance reviews. Because we touched on performance reviews. So, you know, a lot of us CEOs are leaving feedback for performance reviews or are judging people solely based on what they achieved. And using that to infer, you know, to inform their bonus and so on.
00:16:10:04 - 00:16:32:13
Andy
Everybody's measured on two scales. One scale is performance. Right? So did they... Are they doing the job at the level that we hired them to do the job? That takes a good set of expectations in order to know if it's true. The other thing that we rarely ever measure but is equally as important is, are they a core value fit?
00:16:32:15 - 00:16:34:14
Andy
Are they a good team player?
00:16:34:14 - 00:16:52:10
Andy
Are people better or worse because they're here? All that stuff goes into account, but it typically goes into account and intuition state by one person, not by a group, and certainly not by the individual that's being actually judged on it. So we always encourage organizations... You need two grading scales.
00:16:52:10 - 00:17:09:21
Andy
You need one on performance. Absolutely. And you also need one on core value, team fit. You can call it whatever you want to call it. But you have to define what are these attributes of this other fit, and you have to performance-manage people to that as well. And if you have a good set of core values, that's what we use in our practice.
00:17:09:21 - 00:17:36:01
Andy
But there's terminology for everything. Mission, vision, whatever you want to call it. And that becomes your yardstick of measure for behavior. Somebody who's repeatedly late to meetings, you don't have to go, John, you're repeatedly late to meetings. You go, John, we have a core value. Do the right thing. Do what you said. How do you think being late to the meeting aligns with this particular core value?
00:17:36:03 - 00:17:53:19
Andy
Now, as a leader or manager, I just remove myself. I'm not the person that's calling you out, John. The core value says, Do the right thing. Do what you said. You knew the meeting was supposed to... You guys talk. How do you think that lines up with this value? This thing that we said was one of our standard rules.
00:17:53:21 - 00:18:09:03
Andy
And you guys figure it out. I remove myself from anything negative in that and now it's just a core value conversation. So that works really, really well. But you have to be strong enough to have both of those areas. Expectations and performance management.
00:18:09:03 - 00:18:17:15
Andreas
Right. And so a lot of CEOs will leave high performers with a poor culture fit on the team because they're afraid to lose them.
00:18:17:15 - 00:18:29:05
Andy
Yep. And they will leave eventually. And the CEO will always… I've never not seen this happen. Will always appreciate the fact that they're no longer there.
00:18:29:23 - 00:18:31:03
Andreas
And everybody else will.
00:18:31:06 - 00:18:50:09
Andy
Oh, everybody else will. It ends up being the CEO that becomes appreciative because everybody else is a appreciative. I have never seen somebody in that position leave. I've seen them leave and, like, take accounts, and, you know, we get a dip in business for a period of time, but there's always a bit of a celebratory, We got rid of that.
00:18:50:11 - 00:19:23:11
Andy
And here's the reason. When I work with teams, I always say this: Every single time leadership got into a room when Steve the jackass was working here, the first ten minutes of every meeting we spent talking about Steve. We talked about all the shit that Steve did and all the shit that Steve didn't do, and how all the feeling was about Steve. Like, we spent hundreds of hours every year talking about this one person, this one person over and over and over and over and over again.
00:19:23:13 - 00:19:31:18
Andy
And we will wait until, we'll wait until they actually quit before we fire them.
00:19:31:18 - 00:19:44:01
Andreas
Yeah. If you're listening to this, I hope your name is not Steve, by the way.
00:19:44:05 - 00:20:12:05
Andreas
So the one I heard something that was like an aha moment for me. You said, when you were referring to core fit, core values fit, you also said, Make everyone else a better player as a result of them being there, which is really what values fit is there for, right? And it's, we often forget to hire for those kindergarten skills.
00:20:12:07 - 00:20:42:13
Andreas
Which is, you know, one child helping the other child. There was this podcast a while ago with Rich Sheridan, who they are hiring two people in parallel. So they're testing people side by side with, like, parallel programing paradigms, and they tell them that your job is to make the other person win, and you are judged by your kindergarten skills, not your performance skills, which is a great way to test it on, you know, interview zero basically.
00:20:42:15 - 00:20:56:09
Andy
Yeah. And, you know, the greatest way to know if you have knowledge is to teach somebody else the knowledge. Right? So the greatest way to gain the knowledge is to have to teach somebody else the knowledge. So you'll know if you know it if you can teach it to somebody else.
00:20:56:09 - 00:21:05:00
Andreas
Exactly. What makes someone a good leader? What are the components or qualities of a good leader?
00:21:05:00 - 00:21:21:20
Andy
So, I do this exercise when we lead into some of the work that we do in Boundless, especially if I have, like, the executive leadership team or even a forum group out here at the farm for a whole day. Typically we'll start with this exercise, and I just ask people to take out a piece of paper and write down what they think.
00:21:21:22 - 00:21:44:08
Andy
What is leadership? Define it for me. You know, what's your definition of leadership? And I get all kinds of different answers. And I always go back to Jim Collins' definition of leadership. And the way he says it, I may not get it exactly right, but he says that leadership is the art of getting people to want to do what must be done.
00:21:44:08 - 00:22:09:22
Andy
Very simple. The art of getting people to want to do what must be done. And then he goes on to say the first thing that the leader has to do is define what must be done. I can't even take that to the... I have to define what must be done. But he takes it a step farther, and he says, The leader must define what must be done and take responsibility for it.
00:22:10:00 - 00:22:28:05
Andy
And that's where most leaders fall down. They don't mind coming up with this must be done. We have to go from 20 million to 40 million. No, we have to go from 20 million to 40 million and that leader is responsible for ensuring that that actually happens. It is not somebody else's full responsibility. It is that leader's responsibility.
00:22:28:06 - 00:22:51:15
Andy
Once defined, they have to take responsibility for it. Many leaders point the finger outside at somebody who's not doing something correctly, and it's the other person's fault that we missed the number again this year. No, it's not. You're the top of the damn organization. It's your fault until you realize that you'll be stuck forever. You have to do something differently.
00:22:51:17 - 00:23:21:09
Andy
So, step number one, define what must be done and take responsibility for it. The second step is inspire people. He uses that word, inspire. Inspire people to want to do what must be done. The key there is people have to show up and want to go do it. You can't make them go do it, there's an argument, and I've seen this in a lot of businesses where... can we make somebody want to go do it with a paycheck?
00:23:21:09 - 00:23:41:13
Andy
Yeah. You can. Yeah. For a little while. For a little while. Can we make them want to go do it because we'll, you know, take them out back and hurt them really badly if they don't? Yeah. You can. Right? Yeah. You can for a little while. The trouble with that is it's not repeatable. We have to go back and do it again and again.
00:23:41:13 - 00:23:56:06
Andy
We were talking about giving a raise. You raise. You've got to give another raise. You've got to give another one. You had to do it over and over and over and over and over again. But if you can inspire somebody to bring it into their soul and their heart and their being, to want to go to war with you every single day, and there are lots of things you can do to do that,
00:23:56:06 - 00:24:29:04
Andy
but you just have to inspire them to want to go do it for themselves and for you, not because of you. And then lastly, he says, it's an art. It's art. It's not perfect. It's not science. It's an art. It varies by every person. And then he says, it must be practiced but never perfected. Meaning if you're going to be a leader, if you're going to be a leader, it is a never-ending learning game.
00:24:29:06 - 00:24:53:17
Andy
And it's always... I've gone into organizations in the past where somebody will say to me, I've got 27 years of HR experience in big Fortune 500 businesses, and I know what I'm doing. I'm like, no, you don't. You are so far outside of your... you're in a 40-person entrepreneurial organization, come out of a Fortune 500 business and just go, so you've been doing it 27 years.
00:24:53:17 - 00:25:21:08
Andy
You think you know what to do here? You're wrong. Anybody who shows up and says, I know exactly what to go do, has nothing to learn. We have to show up with, this is practice. I'm going to test some things. I'm going to go outside of my comfort zone. I'm going to figure something else out. If it's not working well, I'm going to take responsibility, then test something else. And I'm going to have to learn and practice and learn and practice and learn and practice.
00:25:21:08 - 00:25:27:11
Andreas
You were telling me about a story earlier on about what matters at the end of life versus
00:25:27:11 - 00:25:50:19
Andy
We talk about business. I know this podcast is about business. I recently made a transition out of my coaching practice, where we help companies grow, scale, to more of working with the individuals. So today we work a lot with learning leaders. You know, you, me, you know, that kind of learning leader. We work with forums. They come to the farm. We're in Tennessee,
so they
00:25:50:21 - 00:26:07:15
Andy
come to the farm. I'll do it virtually, or I'll go to a city and do a workshop or something like that. Typically it's learning leaders. But more recently, in the last couple or three years, we've started working a lot with families so that, you know, that becomes a gap between two individuals in a household,
00:26:07:15 - 00:26:25:04
Andy
if one's a grower and one's not a grower. Over time, the gap gets larger. So we want to, you know, narrow that gap a little bit. So we work a lot with families and even with kids, you know, we've got a nonprofit now that works directly with underprivileged kids, but that same content gets delivered to kids.
00:26:25:04 - 00:26:58:11
Andy
So we're hosting, like, family days. And when I get a forum, forums are, hopefully your listeners understand a forum, but it's just a small group of very tightly connected people that kind of know each other pretty well. When I do get a forum, this is the only place I do this exercise because it's really emotional. And I ask them, and this usually takes about 4 or 5 hours to do, but I always ask them to write their last letter.
00:26:58:13 - 00:27:25:06
Andy
It sets up a little something like, you have an hour left to live. It's all you have. And you're like, you can choose one person, not five letters, one letter, one person. So you have to pick the person first, which is difficult enough. And then you have to write everything in one hour before you die that you would like to convey to this person or anybody else through this particular person, because you're only writing a letter to one person, and they go off somewhere in the farm, and they find a spot, and quietly they write the letter.
00:27:25:06 - 00:27:51:16
Andy
Then we bring everybody back together, and we read the letters to one another. And that brings the forum really, really tightly together. And interestingly enough, when I speak to business groups, I kind of go through and tell this exact same story; not one word has ever been written in any letter that I've had read in those rooms about business.
00:27:51:17 - 00:28:11:08
Andy
Not one single word. No one has ever written, you know, Hey, Annie, I just wanted you to know that I loved every minute I spent in the company. Our company did it... We grew... Nobody talks about that shit. And it's not a prompt to do anything. I never say, Don't talk about business. It just comes out that way.
00:28:11:08 - 00:28:34:20
Andy
But that's how we start the day of not focusing on our business and only focusing on our lives, knowing that the business is going to creep in there. I get it. The entire goal is if I build a plan for my life, then I can build a business that better serves my life as opposed to steals my life.
00:28:34:22 - 00:28:57:15
Andy
But I have to set this aside because this is where I spend most of my brain space, and I've got to spend my brain space on my life. But I've always found it interesting, nobody ever writes, you know, there's nothing in those letters. The last one you write to convey everything that you want to convey. Nothing in there says, I'm really proud of myself for hiring people. It's not in there.
00:28:57:20 - 00:29:02:05
Andreas
What gives you motivation and passion for this stage of your life?
00:29:02:05 - 00:29:05:00
Andy
That's a very easy question.
00:29:05:00 - 00:29:21:14
Andy
I have, like, three areas that have a lot of meaning to me. The first is stability. The second is preparedness. And the third one is significance. So the things that mean a lot to me. The first is stability. I need to have some level of stability.
00:29:21:14 - 00:29:39:22
Andy
It's like I have to have it in my life. If I'm a little bit unstable then it gets to be stressful for me. And the second being preparedness. I'm the guy that will do things two weeks, two months before they actually need to be done, just because I want to completely prepare and stacked and loaded and, like, ready to go.
00:29:39:22 - 00:30:10:16
Andy
My forum looks at me like I'm crazy. And then lastly, a significance. I have a strong desire, and this goes all the way back to my personal childhood and a lack of significance and a lot of other kind of stuff that I went through. But I have a desire to feel significant on this earth. So for me, when I can get in a room with people or work one-on-one, or do, you know, when I can, when I know that I have made a difference,
00:30:10:18 - 00:30:28:17
Andy
because they tell me, to something in their lives, I feel significant. So it feeds me in that regard. So it gives me energy, it gives me hope, it keeps me moving, it makes me do the things that are uncomfortable for me to go do just so that I can, you know, fill that desire for significance.
00:30:28:17 - 00:30:31:14
Andreas
If you were to speak to,
00:30:31:14 - 00:30:37:22
Andreas
to whisper to the ear of a leader who was not intentional about their people, what would you say to them?
00:30:37:22 - 00:30:41:04
Andy
Tell me what you mean intentional.
00:30:41:17 - 00:30:47:13
Andreas
Who considered only performance and numbers.
00:30:47:19 - 00:30:50:21
Andy
Get ready for a long, long, hard career.
00:30:50:21 - 00:30:52:21
Andreas
And why is that?
00:30:52:21 - 00:30:55:16
Andreas
They would turn back to you surprised, and would ask you, why is that?
00:30:55:16 - 00:31:00:00
Andy
You're going to have high turnover in your organization. You're going to have to replace people a lot.
00:31:00:00 - 00:31:07:05
Andy
You're going to have to keep the pressure on. Nobody's waking up in the morning going, Let me go fight for you today.
00:31:07:07 - 00:31:40:07
Andy
You're like, Oh, shit, I have to see him again. He's going to ask me about that number. I better get my number. People won't live that way very long. Unless they just are in a remote location and have nowhere to go. Which happens. But you're going to... You are going to be one tired S.O.B. at the end of your career, because all you're going to be doing all day long is, you said micromanaging when you started, but you're going to be keeping the pressure on, checking in on people, probably making them feel badly about themselves continually, like it's not a good place.
00:31:40:09 - 00:32:03:10
Andy
And believe me, I've done everything I'm saying right now, I've done too. You know, I know I have a tendency to fall in that particular place. It's a lot easier place. It's a more immediate space to get results. I was always amazed in business and in life how much shit got done when I got mad, like, why do I have to get mad for
00:32:03:11 - 00:32:24:05
Andy
all the stuff to get done? But I'd have to get mad again, and then all the stuff would get done, and then I'd have to get mad again, and all the stuff would get done because the cycle that just continues continued. But if we can get people to respect us at a higher level, want to achieve it with us, right, then, we don't have to do...
00:32:24:05 - 00:32:45:15
Andy
We don't have to stay in that space all the time. There is always a space for that. It never, I don't think, completely goes away. There needs to be a little bit, kind of like childhood fear of Dad around that you could lose your mind at any second, but they need to respect you at a very, very high level and want to follow.
00:32:46:12 - 00:32:47:15
Andreas
And…
00:32:47:15 - 00:32:51:21
Andreas
Question I don't get to ask often. What's stopping you from doing the best work of your life?
00:32:51:21 - 00:32:53:05
Andreas
If there's something stopping you.
00:32:53:05 - 00:32:56:01
Andy
Yeah, it's a good question.
00:32:56:01 - 00:32:57:15
Andy
I'm in a brand new space.
00:32:57:15 - 00:33:10:09
Andy
I went from having a team of people that did things for me. I got just me. So, you know, I wrote out... I wrote checks yesterday. Like, when's the last time you did that? Like, 10 years ago maybe?
00:33:10:09 - 00:33:12:00
Andreas
I'm in the same shoes right now as well.
00:33:12:00 - 00:33:26:01
Andy
Yeah. So, you know, that's a weird kind of space. And I'm also in a space of spending large amounts of money, like big chunks of money, to create this retreat center
00:33:26:01 - 00:33:51:06
Andy
and, you know, all the stuff I want to create here. So I've probably got a lot more, like, I'll use the word fear or inhibition. You know, I've got, like, a little bit of, I'm not, I'm hesitant more than I have been in the past because I don't know, I know, I know what it's supposed to look like.
00:33:51:06 - 00:34:10:05
Andy
I think I know how I'm going to get there. I know what the plan looks like, but I can't really claw it back if it doesn't work. Right? So it's a little bit of a trust until it's verified piece. And anytime somebody starts a business, this is where you start from, it's not new. But it has been a decade since I've done it.
00:34:10:05 - 00:34:13:09
Andy
So I've forgotten some of these feelings.
00:34:13:09 - 00:34:17:10
Andreas
Right. Right, you're, like, a second-time parent.
00:34:17:10 - 00:34:19:12
Andy
Yeah.
00:34:19:12 - 00:34:24:07
Andreas
Where can people find out more about you, Andy, and your work?
00:34:24:11 - 00:34:49:21
Andy
So I would start with, go to boundlessfarm.com, that's our retreat place. You can get a good picture of what we look like out here in Tennessee. And then boundless.me is where we have our content. That website is being redone since we moved from Colorado to Tennessee. And it'll be a little more green and more rocky brown-looking.
00:34:49:23 - 00:35:09:05
Andy
The farm is already completed, but you can check it out. Either of those two places. And I do some every month, ten months out of the year, summertime, we do all those adventure trips where we go climb those mountains in Colorado. But ten months out of the year, I do a two-hour online workshop
00:35:09:07 - 00:35:29:09
Andy
that's based on the Boundless content. Always free, never charge anybody. Anybody can jump on anytime that they want to and send anybody that they want to send. That's a really good place to come in and do a workshop. If you are somebody who's on the other side of the world and the time doesn't work for you, if you send me an email, I'll get up in the middle of the night, and do one for you.
00:35:29:11 - 00:35:35:13
Andy
If somebody will show up for something where they're going to get better from it, I'll do anything I can to help.
00:35:35:13 - 00:36:10:18
Andreas
Andy, thank you for inspiring us. You're one of the very rare people that goes out of their way to empower others at scale. And, Godspeed in that mission of yours. And to everyone that's been listening, thank you for giving us your undivided attention here. I hope you enjoyed and got inspired from listening to Andy as much as I did.
00:36:10:20 - 00:36:22:00
Andreas
And if so, you can leave a five-star rating, which is how more people get to find out about the podcast and listen to it. And you can also watch us on YouTube if you've just been listening to us.
00:36:22:00 - 00:36:34:01
Andreas
Then that's it from my side. And keep leading and keep creating more inspiring workplaces for you and especially for those around you.
00:36:34:03 - 00:36:34:13
Andreas
Take care.