Your 20 Minute Podcast With David Brower

Transcript: Thanks Allan, this is David Brower with your 20 minute podcast. Our special guest today Wayne D. McFarland. Author of Tales From the Day, a fellow Coloradan just down the road in Colorado Springs. So we're both kind of freezing our rumps off today. Huh, bud?

Wayne D. McFarland: Boy, you're not kidding. Five degrees. I left Minnesota to get away from this.

David Brower: Well, welcome to the show. My wife got up and went skiing at Loveland Ski Area today, and when she got there it was two below. And I was like, have fun. I'll be here with the dog. Oh my God.

Wayne D. McFarland: Light the fire.

David Brower: Right. Light the fire. That's exactly right.

Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah, heat up the hot chocolate. That's good for me. Yeah.

David Brower: I'm intrigued by your book man. Tales from the day, life shaping events that truth be told all happened under the heading of oops. I wanna read this one paragraph from your book.

It says: Wayne McFarland wandered away from a small Midwestern town some years ago with no planning at all. His history is one of stumbling into one bog after another from the Dakotas to California, from [inaudible 00:01:10] to Paris. His main claim to fame is mostly and surprisingly not being dead. Plus getting involved with a lot of strange stuff. Usually unwillingly or by accident hence the word oops.

Where did this all come from, man? I'm laughing my rear off and I haven't even opened the book yet.

Wayne D. McFarland: Well, thanks. Actually where it came from was that a lot of people who are getting more mature these days.

David Brower: There you go. There you go.

Wayne D. McFarland: Suddenly wake up in the dead of the night and think that the world is gasping with anticipation to hear how life really was, and no one cares.

David Brower: Right.

Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah. I was talking to some of my friends about this stuff. I was like, you know if you can't write about the craziness of life. Not about the old days of playing Kick the Can, or putting skates on your shoes at a skate key. If that's all you got, you don't have anything.

David Brower: Right.

Wayne D. McFarland: Life in my view is full of just a lot of craziness. Most of what happens is you don't plan it, you just kind of wander along. If you get out there, things happen. If you've got the eyes to see it. You know it has some kind of universal appeal I think.

David Brower: Yeah.

Wayne D. McFarland: Even if it's just because it's nuts.

David Brower: Well, yeah and being open to that stuff has gotta be the trick. I mean we all walk through life and don't even see stuff that's right in front of our face. For you to be open to these amazing stories is what fascinates me.

Wayne D. McFarland: Well, thanks so much. Yeah. I used to get free beer with daily people in bars and some of these stores. I thought well, maybe I can regale people on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Yes, David, that was a shameless plug.

David Brower: As it should be.

Wayne D. McFarland: I put these together, and most of them aren't very long. I mean space do you need about blowing town with a monkey.

David Brower: Right.

Wayne D. McFarland: Leaving Minnesota with a monkey. You don't need a lot of room.

David Brower: This will give you the insight to his humor, folks. When you open up a book normally and you get to the copyrighted material page. Of course it has all the legal stuff, all rights reserved, blah, blah, blah. First printing. Then it says, this is a memoir, not a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead or actual events is intentional. I love that.

Wayne D. McFarland: Well, thanks. My publisher gave birth to a live cow.

David Brower: Oh my God.

Wayne D. McFarland: When I did that. Yeah.

David Brower: Right.

Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah. It was not exactly a normal thing. I thought, why ... A. It's all true stuff. I changed a few numbers not on the guest mail there to keep people out of jail. That's about it.

David Brower: When did your journey start? How young or old were you?

Wayne D. McFarland: Well, I think probably the oldest story here was taking a trip with a buddy of mine to Trinidad where he lived.

David Brower: Okay.

Wayne D. McFarland: We ended up after a series of misadventures, his uncle taking us down to the beach one night in the dead of night. And having us take our pants off so we could stand in the surf and shark fish in our underwear.

David Brower: Oh my God.

Wayne D. McFarland: Now, you only do that kind of stuff when you're pretty young. One of the very few pieces of advice I have in my book is, a piece of travel advice is: If you go somewhere and you're doing something that in your own hometown would be considered completely crazy, you probably should not be doing it.

David Brower: Whoops. Too late for you.

Wayne D. McFarland: Whoops. Yeah, no kidding. That evening ended when the uncle caught a huge, I think moray eel. We took it home, and yes we ate it. It was pretty good as I remember.

David Brower: I'll be darned.

Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah.

David Brower: I'll be darned. What's your most recent oops? Your most recent experience.

Wayne D. McFarland: Well, probably one about we recently sold a business we had. We created movies and PowerPoints with audio for corporations and later on wrote software for them, various things. One thing I found out early on, which I suspect you have as well. In you know doing your promotional work is that when you're discussing creative ideas don't do it before you have the deal.

David Brower: Yeah.

Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah. Well, you know. Once you have the deal, and somebody doesn't like what you have to say, they just go well, give me another idea I didn't like that. But if you do it before you have the deal. It could cost you the deal.

David Brower: Absolutely. Always get the deal.

K Wayne D. McFarland: Always. I was this young guy. Give you a source or some friends. I explained all this to them. We had nailed a really juicy contract. I mean one of those involved clackers and overhead shots, and crew.

David Brower: Wow.

Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah. We're going down to get the deal. I explained all this to them. I said, well, just a be a fly in the corner. You're gonna be working with this guy. Remember no discussion of any creative ideas at all until he hands us the contract.

David Brower: Yeah.

Wayne D. McFarland: We get there, and the guy he ran us ... He built the sprinkler company, David from nothing. From being a one person gardener to this international corporation.

David Brower: Wow.

Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah. I liked him very much. We're gonna do this movie about his thing. He has the contract, and he says, well, first thing, let's ink this thing and get started. As he's starting to sign his name. He says, do you know how you're gonna approach this. I started, a doable no. We bring in a team, and we bring in people.

David Brower: Right.

Wayne D. McFarland: My new assistant goes well, yeah. Yeah. My heart stopped. You know. Now the guy puts Thomas again, what? What are you gonna do? I started, well, no we don't wanna talk about that now. Whatever. No, no, guy has to say. He turns to the young assistant, and he says, what do you think we should do? He gets up, and he says, okay ... He was a recent grad of USC film school. Right. He gets up and he looks up into the sky and he says, we open with a shot of the sun, the giver of all life. The guy's going, yes. Then we pan down to a green, green field being watered by your products. The guy's going, yeah. Then what? He says, then we pan down through the soil into the good, rich hummus of mother earth.

David Brower: Oh my God.

Wayne D. McFarland: The guy's going. My assistant says, and then we focus in on your mascot. The guy says, what is it? What is it? My assistant says, an earthworm.

David Brower: Oh no.

Wayne D. McFarland: I mean to tell you. If you've ever heard the old question about what happens when you drop dog doo in the punch bowl.

David Brower: Yep.

Wayne D. McFarland: I can tell you what happens is this massive silence. This guy looks up at me and he says, do you mean to tell me that you think I spent 40 years of my life working to be represented by a worm?

David Brower: Wow.

Wayne D. McFarland: That as they say was that.

David Brower: Was that. Exactly. What happened to your assistant if he's still alive?

Wayne D. McFarland: Well, he was the [inaudible 00:08:40] of a very, very wealthy family in the unrated business. I'm kind of ashamed to admit in my entire life, I ran businesses for a while. There's only been one human being I've ever fired when we walked outside of a meeting and that was him.

David Brower: Yeah, understand.

Wayne D. McFarland: I was so heartbroken. It was probably one of the best deals I had ever put together. It could of been really something. He went back home, and eventually he had a mediocre rise and became president of his family's vitamin supplement business. There you go.

David Brower: There you go. End of story.

Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah.

David Brower: Did he have an earthworm as a mascot?

Wayne D. McFarland: I hope so. Either that or an eel, one of the two.

David Brower: One of the two. That's funny, man. How long's your book been out?

Wayne D. McFarland: Well, it's pretty recently birthed. It was launched towards the end of November of last year.

David Brower: Nice.

Wayne D. McFarland: We're just starting to get a word out. I am very pleased to tell you that another shameless plug here-

David Brower: -Please do.

Wayne D. McFarland: Tale From the Day on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, the reviews have been very kind.

David Brower: They have been. I've been reading them. It's all five stars on Amazon. High praise. When somebody references you to Will Rogers, I mean seriously. How does that work?

Wayne D. McFarland: I've made a mental bile that I will never fly in a small plane with a one eyed pilot.

David Brower: Well said. Well said.

Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah, it's only been out for a short time, so we're kind of waiting to see overall how it does. I keep sending copies to the Cohen brothers, but they keep sending them back. I mean-

David Brower: -Well, that's not very nice. Come on.

Wayne D. McFarland: No, you gotta have a sense of humor.

David Brower: I mean autograph it Will Rogers, and then send it to them.

Wayne D. McFarland: Well am I worth No Country For Old Men, right?

David Brower: Exactly. Are you doing any promotions? Are you speaking to people? Or are you just in the let's get this thing up and running mode right now?

Wayne D. McFarland: Well, really my main interest in doing promotions is I was invited to tell a couple of these tales in some theaters in Denver and some other places. I'm mainly interested in finding people like well, you know you. And being able to talk with them. Splitting that between the in the fit of drunkenness the publishers asked me to create, see if I can create a second follow-up book. I'm writing up some more tales.

David Brower: Nice.

Wayne D. McFarland: I'll run out eventually. You know.

David Brower: Are you sure?

Wayne D. McFarland: Well, unless I start making stuff up, which I've already been accused of.

David Brower: Well, when you read through some of the chapter titles, The Day My Grandfather was Tagged as a Psychopath, The Day I Had a Hot Date and We Fell Out of the Sky, The Day We Blew Town With a Monkey, The Day Johnny Cash Hit On My Wife. Let's talk about that.

Wayne D. McFarland: You know, David, I gotta tell you. To this very day she will not tell me what he said to her.

David Brower: How funny.

Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah. We were doing, it was kind of a spin off from some of our corporate work what we did a lot of. Now it's old hat. I mean, you know you're in the professional side. Where you put visuals up on kind of a backdrop screen to band that.

David Brower: Sure.

Wayne D. McFarland: At the time, it was when we were invited to get involved with kicking off a country music show.

David Brower: Okay.

Wayne D. McFarland: It was live to about a third of the country and whatever. It was the production side of it was kind of a hilarious disaster, which yes you have to buy my book to read.

David Brower: Well, of course.

Wayne D. McFarland: The punch line with Cash is that's the only name drop in the entire book. Poor guy, I love his music and he's gone now.

David Brower: Yeah, I do too.

Wayne D. McFarland: Of course. Anyway, he was you know rumored really not to screw around.

David Brower: Right.

Wayne D. McFarland: I got out of the backstage bar following our rather interesting presentation. Which again, is in the book.

David Brower: In the book.

Wayne D. McFarland: And here's this huge group of people standing around something. I couldn't see, so I got up and scaffolded. There in the center of the group this guy in a black outfit and my wife. By the time I get down to it ... Now mind you, Gloria had come out to see the show. I lied really spectacularly to tell her Tulsa, Oklahoma was great. She's getting her PhD at the time in molecular biology. I mean I can hardly even say it.

David Brower: Right.

Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah, my plane doesn't fly up there really.

David Brower: Exactly.

Wayne D. McFarland: She was not exactly into the music scene. I get down, and the crowd's dispersed. I walked up to her, and I said, you know who that was? She looked at me, and she kind of shook her head. I said, what'd he say? She says, just a bunch of nonsense. That's all she's ever said to me about it.

David Brower: Oh my gosh.

Wayne D. McFarland: You know I've been picking on her, yeah. You sure you don't know who that was? She said, no. I said, that's Johnny Cash. She looked at me, and I swear to God, dude. Seriously. She said, who's Johnny Cash?

David Brower: Oh my God.

Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah. She's a molecular biologist.

David Brower: Exactly.

Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah. I said, I told her, well, there's one for the book.

David Brower: I gotta bust your chops on one thing though, man.

Wayne D. McFarland: What?

David Brower: You name dropped two people, not just Johnny Cash. You name dropped Mickey Mouse.

Wayne D. McFarland: God, yeah.

David Brower: You know what I'm saying?

Wayne D. McFarland: I figured as the cartoon character you know there's no slander to be had.

David Brower: That's funny. You got like 19 chapters, 19 stories. It's just funny. I mean, gosh. I just ... Seriously. I'm not much of a book reader, in fact I had an interview with a guy a couple of weeks ago that I was really engaged with, really loved everything about it. He sent me his book. I sat down and read the book. You know, I do audio books. I actually sat down and read the book. I'm going, well, crap. I'm gonna get Wayne's book. This is silly. How can I not have that? You know.

When are you gonna do an audio book?

Wayne D. McFarland: Well, actually they had me do one as the author. Years ago I did a little narration. If you do audio books on an ongoing basis. I gotta tell you, my hat's off to ... that's a lot of work.

David Brower: Yeah, I do audio books.

Wayne D. McFarland: Do you?

David Brower: Yeah. Not very often. I've done about six or seven of them. Yeah.

Wayne D. McFarland: That's a lot. There any particular genre?

David Brower: No. Well, I think they're all pretty much true story stuff. I mean there's one about a biblical thing. There's one about Alex Spnnos who came from Greece and it was his autobiography and how he owned the San Diego Chargers. You know history of the Christian religion from historical point of ... Just really interesting off the wall stuff.

Wayne D. McFarland: Well, here's what I'm gonna do. I get the second book done. Which we're calling, wait for it. Tales Two. There's an innovative.

David Brower: There's an innovative. Yeah.

Wayne D. McFarland: What I'm gonna do is I'm going to mail you the only gun I have. It's a Glock. I'll send a clip. If I agree to narrate it myself, just shoot me and put me out of my misery.

David Brower: Done.

Wayne D. McFarland: I'll give you a call. And I'll say, David, this is yours.

David Brower: Well, at least let me audition for it, man. I would love to. That would be so much fun.

Wayne D. McFarland: Well, I think it'd be like ... I'm hoping ... I'm hoping to have the-

David Brower: -I've got a question about the sequel. Why isn't it called Tales From the Night?

Wayne D. McFarland: I really haven't had any of those kind of experiences. Don't start.

David Brower: Your wife's on line two by the way.

Wayne D. McFarland: Yes, exactly. Saying that's a lot of nonsense.

David Brower: That's funny. That is so funny.

Wayne D. McFarland: That's great.

David Brower: Tales From the Day, and you can go to talesfromtheday.com, you can go to amazon.com, you can go to probably Barnes and Noble. Right.

Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah, that's really true.

David Brower: Where else? Probably all you need.

Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah, that's all you need. They're around in a lot of different bookstores that primarily are online stores. They pretty much feed from the big guys.

David Brower: Yeah. Absolutely.

Wayne D. McFarland: You can leave a review there, or go to my blog and send me an email. The only thing I ask for a friend of my said his worst review was two words. It sucks.

David Brower: Oh my gosh.

Wayne D. McFarland: If someone's inclined to write a review like that, do like three words. It really sucks or something.

David Brower: Yeah. Make it impactful.

Wayne D. McFarland: Yes, exactly.

David Brower: Don't dilly dally. Come on. Just let's go.

Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah.

David Brower: Oh my God. Where can they find your blog?

Wayne D. McFarland: You mentioned it, they just go online to www.talesfromtheday.com.

David Brower: Okay.

Wayne D. McFarland: Yes, my picture is there, which makes the journey worthwhile.

David Brower: It does. Yeah, it really does.

Wayne D. McFarland: I can be contacted through that. Leave emails.

David Brower: Okay. There you go. Interviewing, storytelling, speaking engagements.

Wayne D. McFarland: Which I wish would ... I know they're gonna come rolling in.

David Brower: Well, yeah.

Wayne D. McFarland: Here we go.

David Brower: Here we go.

Wayne D. McFarland: Here we, yeah. Here we go.

David Brower: Hang on for the ride, brother.

Wayne D. McFarland: Yeah, no kidding. Well, this was you know we're just reaching the top of the roller coaster ride with this. I just really, really enjoying this. I got a couple that are pretty off the wall. I don't think I should mention. Let's just say one of them involved flying saucers.

David Brower: There you go. There you go.

Wayne D. McFarland: I wasn't quite sure how to bend the book around back.

David Brower: Yeah, well said. Well said.

Wayne D. McFarland: Yep.

David Brower: This has been so much fun, Wayne. I just really appreciate taking the time with you. And you taking the time with me. It's just been a kick in the butt to talk to you. Talk about your book, your life, and I can hardly wait for the sequel man.

Wayne D. McFarland: Thank you so much, David. I really appreciate it very much.

Allan Blackwell: Listen to your 20 minute podcast with David Brower on the go. Downloads are available on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, iTunes, iHeartRadio, Spotify, any podcast app and our website at davidbrowervo.com/yourtwentyminutepodcast. Until next time, thank you for listening.

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Transcript: Thanks, Allan. This is David Brower with Your 20 Minute Podcast. Our special guest today from Seattle is Ron Carruci, he's a co-founder and managing partner at Navalent. They work with CEOs and executives pursuing transformational change for their organizations, leaders, and industries, and Ron, welcome to the show. Glad to have you here.

Ron Carruci: It was great to be with you. Thanks for having me.

David Brower: Is it a rainy or sunny in Seattle? Those are the two-

Ron Carruci: It's a rare, rare day, it's sun, although typically every year at the last two weeks of February, we have sun. Typically we have sun and 60s. This year we had sun and 30s, and that's on the heels of, I'm sure the whole country heard about snowmageddon. We had-

David Brower: Oh yeah.

Ron Carruci: Two feet of snow here, and the entire city of Seattle just stopped.

David Brower: Yeah, absolutely.

Ron Carruci: Because we don't have snow plows and things like that.

David Brower: Yeah, I have, some of my kids live in Portland and they had the same issue, so I'm going, "Oh, I feel better about living in Colorado, I guess." At least we have the plans of what's going on. So tell me, what started Navalent, and you putting this team together to help the CEOs and executives all over the world make things happen.

Ron Carruci: 14 years ago, a couple of friends of mine and I ran a very prestigious and great consulting firm in New York City, doing what we love to do, which is work with organizations in helping them transform. And that firm got acquired by a much bigger firm. And when that happened, that changes the game a little bit and you're more, a little bit more internally focused on feeding the dinosaur and less focused on the craft of what we love to do. And I think at that point we realized, we love this work too much to not do it as often as we want to and have to spend time just driving growth for the firm. So we [inaudible 00:01:53], we can still have our own dream here, we can go and do it on our own.

David Brower: What a gift.

Ron Carruci: I think interestingly, I don't know that we ever said the words, let's go start a firm.

David Brower: Right.

Ron Carruci: But we quickly began to realize, well, if we're going to do that, we're going to have to have people with us to help have larger impact on organizations that are global and complicated in their reach. And so the firm just grew as we began to realize we needed more help and support, we couldn't just do it ourselves.

David Brower: How fascinating. Isn't that great when the, for lack of a better term, the stars all line up and you go, "Okay, we're going to go this way. Oh, you want to join us? Great. Oh, and here are they kept, great."

Ron Carruci: I'm giggling because I thought, yeah, I wish I could look at our 14 year journey as the stars always aligning, but think two of the most accidental entrepreneurs. it's been a roller coaster of some great, great tailwinds and some great headwinds and growing up and starting over and realizing you made some mistakes and having to learn again. So, I don't know that I can say that it was as pretty and neat as I would love to. Revisionist history would say of course, but for the entrepreneurs listening, I would certainly ... thinking about embarking on the beginning of some venture of their own with their friends, I would not want to paint any picture other than "fasten your seatbelt" and grip tight to the bar. It's a thrilling ride, but it's a ride.

David Brower: But it's definitely a roller coaster, definitely a roller coaster. And when you come out on those peaks and reduce those valleys because of all the hard work and networking and consistent ethics and integrity and all those kinds of things, all of a sudden you start getting really excited because then you see, "Oh, this is why our hard work is starting to pay off."

Ron Carruci: Yes. And we've had moments of that. We still have moments ahead of that. I think one of the things ... Again, we came out of practitioners, and a lot of our craft now is people who build firms and so one of the mistakes we did make early on was, we didn't commit enough to "go to market" muscles that we need to create, because we had great reputations in the market place. We had great networks and followings, but that's not a way to build a future and a whole firm. And I think in the last four or five years we realize that our, certainly investing heavily and working hard now to recognize the role changed. And one of the things that` changed in our field was about 700,000 new practitioners decided to come into this field. And that's not even an exaggerated account. When we began our careers, to work with organizations and leadership was a side dish to most people. We just happened to major into it as our main dish. Now everybody's doing it. Doesn't mean they're doing it well. Doesn't mean they're qualified to do it. But they have shingles and business cards hung out and they have websites and they are doing podcasts like yours and doing all kinds of things. And so to the naked consumer who doesn't know the difference, we all look the same.

David Brower: Oh my gosh. What a challenge.

Ron Carruci: And so wanting to set ourselves apart, wanting to help people understand, "Well, no, we actually are kind of the real deal," and we actually, you have other people out there saying they do transformational change and when you dig up behind it, what they do is the Meyers-Briggs. We do transformational change with systems, organizational engineers, and psychologists that understand how to construct transformation. For someone who just googles transformation, you don't know what you're going to get.

David Brower: And here's the t-shirt. Yeah, it has the t-shirt.

Ron Carruci: Right.

David Brower: Important, I would think, part of the other major thing that you bring to the table is your track record. Your success with some of the world's greatest leaders, putting strategy to work, building governance designs. I mean, you've got to have an amazing client list that just blows these wannabes out of the water.

Ron Carruci: David, wouldn't you think that'd be enough? And I think here's the thing, I love you, with this misunderstanding. We thought it was.

David Brower: Yeah.

Ron Carruci: We thought those laurels were enough. They are they price of admission and they certainly get you onto the playing field in a different way When people look, at the end of the day, that price of admission comes with a price tag for your clients. When the client looks at you and your track record and your amazing work and looks at somebody else who's a third of your age out of high school and says, "Well, but they can do it for a 10th of the price you do it for, why would I hire ... "

David Brower: Oh, my gosh, yeah.

Ron Carruci: "Well, okay, yeah. You could, if price is an issue for you, you should hire them. But my question to you is. If you had a severe chest pains, would you be calling the cardiologist and saying, Hey, what, you got a special his week on a stent? OR would you want to know how many times they'd done the surgery?

David Brower: Exactly right, exactly right. I'm a voice actor by profession and so we run into exactly the same thing. Clients who are spending really good money, three, four, five years ago are now shopping for reasonable talent at ridiculously low prices and feeling good about it, which blows me away.

Ron Carruci: Well, and the unfortunate part is that they don't realize that, your way, you can do it in two takes.

David Brower: Yeah.

Ron Carruci: Sure you can pay $50 an hour and get it in three takes. Your call.

David Brower: Wow.

Ron Carruci: And you just wonder about this penny wise, pound foolish kind of thinking sometimes. When people, when levels of talent have commoditized, at what point does that commoditization become a risk?

David Brower: Exactly, yeah.

Ron Carruci: But when your buyers are much younger than you and they're tasked with budget constraints or certain, or their own anxieties over making decisions and they want to play it safe, they're making foolish and short-sighted decisions that, to some people, may not introduce a quality risk, but at some point that approach to decision making is going to backfire.

David Brower: Absolutely right. And I would think, I don't know this for sure in your industry, but I would think that some executive types who are wanting to climb the ladder quicker rather than better are taking that price point option, if you will. And they probably don't last very long in that career. Is that a reasonable scenario?

Ron Carruci: That is often the case. When they begin their ascent and they're not prepared. That's the reason we wrote our book, Rising To Power, was because we saw so many executives heading up the ladder unprepared. And they'd call us as they were about to fall off the cliff.

David Brower: Yeah.

Ron Carruci: And so yeah, they make very shortsighted choices that they try and by popularity. They try and make everybody happy and make everybody loyal to them, at the expense of the performance of the organization they were charged to lead. And that's fine for a steady state world in which you have a lot of predictability about your markets or your customers or your products, but one unforeseen headwind and you're not prepared for that, you can destabilize the whole thing, including your career.

David Brower: in a heartbeat. One of the articles you wrote in Harvard Business Review, "executives fail to execute strategy because they're too internally focused." Does that mean they're too focused on themselves rather than the big picture?

Ron Carruci: I think based on themselves and their own emotional needs. For many executives the anxiety toll of having to make hard tradeoffs is really hard, but they're also organizationally internally focused, they're not focused on the marketplace.

David Brower: Yeah.

Ron Carruci: One of the critical things in [inaudible 00:08:58] strategy is you know the context in which you're executing it, the competitive context, the technological context, the regulatory context, and understanding how the consumers you're trying to reach and the markets you're trying to own will metabolize what you're bringing. But you still have lots of larger, especially larger more mature organizations, in that "if I build it, they will come" mentality.

David Brower: Right.

Ron Carruci: They've got way too many consumer analytics but no meaning behind those analytics to make good choices, and so they're just forcing their way into markets or buying market share or buying competition and acquiring it so you just minimize competition. And then really don't know how to compete. It's so common when I walk into an organization and they'll tell me, and I ask, tell me, tell me your strategy. I get every counterfeit possible. I get the mission statement, I get that year's objectives, I get their operating financial plan, I get the product quotas, I get the sales quotas. I get all kinds of metrics, tons of what you want to accomplish this year. But nothing that tells me who you are.

David Brower: Exactly.

Ron Carruci: And when I ask them, "Okay, well, so why would somebody who you want to pay you money pick you over the other people up the street doing exactly what you do?"

David Brower: Exactly. What?

Ron Carruci: They can't, they have no idea.

David Brower: Isn't that crazy?

Ron Carruci: David, I'm like, "This is 2019. Are we really, was there a memo that you missed?"

David Brower: Oh my god.

Ron Carruci: How is it that we're still understanding the fundamentals of how businesses work and how you compete to win. But I think the reality is, and that's what I wrote in that article you mentioned, is that to make those commitments of distinction and differentiation and building the capabilities to keep that differentiation and saying no to everything else that is so much harder than most leaders sign up for.

David Brower: And sometimes, I ran into this recently, I don't know, probably in the last three or four months really, and maybe it's just because I started paying attention to it, but I've seen people in organizations start paying attention to the why.

Ron Carruci: Very true.

David Brower: And does that-

Ron Carruci: The purpose.

David Brower: The why. Why are we doing this? What's the purpose?

Ron Carruci: Well, I think people are not only asking, they're broadening the answer. Used to be, well, if you're in a public company, it's for your shareholders.

David Brower: Sure.

Ron Carruci: And they were mostly economic-wise. But I think people are now recognizing there's still interesting bifurcation out there in the debate over "Are businesses responsible to serve a greater good? Are they responsible to their communities and to society and to the environment, and to serve the countries they do business in? In philanthropic and social justice ways." And you have a huge clamoring of people who say the answer's yes. And you still have people who are on the side of no. You are here for your shareholders, here for your benefactors, that's it."

Ron Carruci: I have a feeling that the former side will eventually when, simply because you're not going to try ... You have generations of people in the workplace who don't want to work for organizations without a sense of purpose. The problem is, if you answer the why without answering the who and the how, you really get a little bit of a short lived campaign.

David Brower: Yeah, yeah. It's like a three legged stool. You've got to have the who, the where, the how, and the why, and one of those legs fall off the stool and you're done.

Ron Carruci: Well, and I think even the harder part beyond the stools, David, is you have to, they all work for the same company. And so if you don't answer those questions as if they're part of the same organization, you look like one of those people who had way too much cosmetic surgery, you just nipped and tucked in too tight. But I can't tell what kind of company I'm looking at.

David Brower: Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

Ron Carruci: And keeping those things integrated as you scale and grow. It's not easy. It is definitely a high wire act with no net and it's definitely not for the faint of heart.

David Brower: So when you're leading organizations, you're doing transformations in organizations, do you work with their teams? Do you start at the highest level? How do you start that work of yours in motion?

Ron Carruci: Well, so like any good effort to seize an opportunity or get out of a ditch-

David Brower: There you go.

Ron Carruci: Treatment without diagnosis is malpractice. So we start with a good MRI. I need to know what's happening under the hood of your organization. So we do a pretty forensic assessment of how the organization works and what story it's telling itself. And we put all the voices you send out of the room back in the room so you hear what we heard. And really we have pretty sophisticated analytical tools and data coding tools that help us stick together a story that creates a collective story of your organization that no single one of you is telling.

David Brower: Yeah.

Ron Carruci: So, it's forcing a level of self-honesty and forces a level of looking in a mirror and forced listening to your organization in ways you would not otherwise normally be required to do.

David Brower: Fascinating.

Ron Carruci: And once we have a shared story, we can align on, "Okay, well what is it you want the next chapter to be? Now that you have an honest understanding of the chapter you're in and what's reasonable, what's possible and what do you have to say no to, to make that chapter work?" And then we can make choices around how to construct that journey. But starting from a place of honesty is always important. You wouldn't walk into that cardiologist with that severe pain in your chest and have that cardiologist say, "Oh yeah, that's your left ventricle. You just need a stent. Let's go put one in."

David Brower: Yeah, exactly right. So when you do the initial MRI, for lack of a better term, and you lay all this stuff out to these people, do you ever find leaders, companies, whatever, just freak out? They're scared and there, "Thank you. But no thanks"?

Ron Carruci: No. I think once or twice we've had to say to a client, "So it turns out you're the problem. We'll find you somebody else."

David Brower: There you go. Oh my gosh.

Ron Carruci: Usually I think there's a great sense of release.

David Brower: Yeah.

Ron Carruci: It's that, "Wow. Now it's all out in writing. I've been thinking these things," or "We'd been whispering in the hallway about these things, but now it's in black and white in front of us. We can all get around it." It hurts. It's hard to see it, but people are rarely shocked. People are rarely like, "I didn't see that coming at all." Sometimes it's a self-justification mechanism to make themselves feel better.

David Brower: Sure.

Ron Carruci: But for the most part, and there's a minimization of issues, in which case we can bring a little bit of heat to say, "Here's our point of view," but we never give our take on the data until they make sense of it themselves. So we sit people in a room for hours and hours to work through that data, to work through hard questions, to have hard debates and say honest things to each other they have long avoided saying.

David Brower: The ultimate-

Ron Carruci: So that before we say, "Here's our point of view on this, because it's your story and it's your story to own and take responsibility for." So if we short circuit that opportunity with "Here's the expert's take," you're now off the hook from owning your own point of view and so we make sure that doesn't happen.

David Brower: Wow. Your book, Rising to Power, it's an Amazon number one best seller and you coauthored it with Eric Hanson, does that help these high level execs get a pinch of what you can do for them?

Ron Carruci: That was part of the intent. It was initially born of some pain. So we've known for 20 years, David, that more than half of the executives rising up to senior levels of leadership fail in their first 18 months.

David Brower: Yeah.

Ron Carruci: When it happened to somebody we were working with, it was personal, and we wanted to understand why. Why is it that we've been okay with this statistic from decades? Why does it keep happening? And how could somebody suddenly be identified as high potential, extraordinary promise, going to go the distance, become a disaster within a year. How does that happen?

Ron Carruci: And I wanted to uncover every rock we could find. I wanted to leave no stone unturned to help make that pathway of ascent less risky. So that people could stick the landing. The great news was that one of the things data uncovered was, if the other half were sticking the landing, if the other half were thriving at the higher altitudes they were arriving on, what were they doing? How is it they were making it work there and doing so well? So we were able to isolate the things that they were doing that can be learned and replicated.

David Brower: Nice. And they can't, at some level, they can't fake it until they make it.

Ron Carruci: Yeah, and that's a problem, David. People are trying to do that.

David Brower: Exactly.

Ron Carruci: It's too late because one of the things people don't tell executives is that it when you get to a higher perch, say you've gone from director to vice president, or whatever the higher altitude is of your organization. One of the forms of altitude sickness no one tells you about is your life is now on the Jumbotron.

David Brower: Yeah, absolutely.

Ron Carruci: There is a megaphone strapped to your mouth, 24/7. Everything you say is scrutinized, meanings attached to it. Everything you say is amplified and has meaning. You can't walk into the elevator and have small talk with somebody. You can't walk down the hallway quickly without someone attaching meaning to it. You could just be going to the bathroom, but someone's going to say, "Oh my gosh, something's wrong."

David Brower: And you don't dare put something on social media because it'll really blow up.

Ron Carruci: Yeah, you're totally screwed. And I love the notion, it's very innocent, "I want to just be my authentic self." That's great. But the problem is there are 30 versions of you out there, which authentic version do you want to be? But you got to control that messaging so that at least you can minimize the number of versions of you that there are out there to a manageable amount. But people don't begin to realize those are the realities about that whole world until after they get there.

David Brower: My goodness gracious. The website for Ron and his team is Navalent, N-A-V-A-L-E-N-T, N-A-V-A-L-E-N-T, I can talk, dot com, and you can learn about the organization and leadership transformation and how that happens on three domains simultaneously. You can download Leading Transformation In Organizations as an owner's manual. You can really get your feet wet in learning what Navalent can do for you and Ron and his team. It's just a fascinating process that you guys have and you've been hitting the wall and hitting success and just keep pushing forward. So hats off to you, man.

Ron Carruci: David, thanks so much for that. It was a pleasure talking to you.

Allan Blackwell: Listen to Your 20 Minute Podcast with David Brower on the go. Downloads are available on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, iTunes, iHeartradio, Spotify, any podcast app, and on our website at davidbrowervo.com/your20minutepodcast. Until next time, thank you for listening.

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Transcript: Thanks Allan. This is David Brower with Your 20 Minute Podcast. Our special guest today, from League City, Texas, is Lola Scarborough. Her and her husband, Kevin Post, called themselves social entrepreneurs of the first order back in 2008 as they opened up a wellness center in League City, Texas.

Kevin is, by all accounts, an actual real rocket scientist. He's a systems analyst at Boeing, does all kinds of moon and Mars things there, and he's got a BS in aeronautics, theology, as well as a master's. You have a BA in political science, all kinds of education, yoga, meditation, and so on.

I'm fascinated. Lola, welcome to the show.

LolaScarborough: Thank you so much, David. I'm really glad to be here with you and your listeners.

David Brower: You bet. You bet. Let's go back to 2008 when the world first started to change for you guys. You're there in Texas, you look at your husband, and you go, "Hm. I think we should open up a wellness center." How did that all happen?

LolaScarborough: Well, I had lived in Stafford, and Kevin lived in League City, and then when we joined families, I moved here. I was working as a project manager at a software company, and I had just finished getting my yoga certification as a teacher. I'd been practicing for about 15 years, and then finally decided to get certified. I told Kevin, I said, "You know, I'd really like to open a yoga wellness center. We'll build it really slowly." It would become like a retirement dream for 20 years later-

David Brower: There you go.

LolaScarborough: ... or 25 years later. But the universe had different plans.

David Brower: As often happens, yeah.

LolaScarborough: Very different plans. About six weeks after we closed on the yoga studio, first we had Hurricane Ike come through.

David Brower: Oh my.

LolaScarborough: Which created a lot of devastation for people. And then my company started laying people off of work, and I was one of the ones that got laid off.

David Brower: Oh my.

LolaScarborough: We were in the middle of a recession here in Texas, and nobody could find work. It was just awful. I suddenly went from being a well-paid project manager to an impoverished yoga studio owner.

The place that we purchased was kind of like in the middle of nowhere, and it was beat up and run down. I'd purchased other places that I've rehabbed, but now, all of a sudden, it became very important to get the place up and running. I was out there with a pickax removing the manna trees and yucca plants-

David Brower: Oh my gosh.

LolaScarborough: ... and painting. It was quite a different career for me.

David Brower: No kidding. I mean, think about it, folks. When you have ... Life is rolling along, right? And all of a sudden, "Well. I got laid off. Well, there's a recession here. Nobody can find work. Well, Hurricane Ike." I mean, my gosh. Talk about the trifecta of challenges. You guys just jumped in, and it sounds like you just got together and looked at all this frustration as an opportunity, huh?

LolaScarborough: Well, yeah. A forced opportunity in my-

David Brower: Right. Right. Yeah, that's right.

LolaScarborough: ... in my circumstances. But it was like, "Okay. Here we are. We secured the property, so let's makes this work." Well, at that time, yoga was an unknown in this area. Truly an unknown. We were in the land of beer, and barbecue, and beef.

David Brower: There you go.

LolaScarborough: You know? It's Texas, right?

David Brower: And football. Don't forget football.

LolaScarborough: And definitely football. They love football, too. Yoga was pretty much an unknown, and a lot of the nutritional ideas that I'd learned and that I was taught were kind of contrary to what people in this area saw as a well-balanced and healthy diet.

David Brower: Right.

LolaScarborough: In the beginning, I had this dream of, "I'm going to do yoga in there, and people are just going to be profoundly influenced by the different things that we teach." But what we found was that, first of all, nobody was interested in yoga.

David Brower: Well.

LolaScarborough: And secondly, the kind of life coaching I did, and I also do [inaudible 00:04:30]. Some people know it as Reiki or other types of things like that.

David Brower: Right. Right.

LolaScarborough: This was not something that people around here really had ever heard of or experienced-

David Brower: Little alone a well-balanced meal.

LolaScarborough: Yeah, and well, what I would consider a well-balanced meal, from my training. There were a lot of different things. By the end of the first year, we had something like three students. I'd go home, I'd come home, and say to Kevin, "Oh wow, I had a big class today. I had three students."

David Brower: Good for you, though.

LolaScarborough: Yeah. We hung in there. We dug in. We hung in there. We put our shoulder to the wheel, and with persistence, and patience, a lot of hard work, a lot of personal sacrifice-

David Brower: Sure.

LolaScarborough: We began to see it grow, and people started coming to us, and our reputation as a studio spread. We changed some of our offerings to make it more suitable for the area. For example, the yoga that I teach is very spiritual in nature. But we realized for a lot of people, that's not what they were looking for. So, while I still teach that yoga, we added in other kinds of yoga that are more fitness-based, so that people who are more into just fitness, and they're not looking for the spiritual component of yoga, have a place to go, and at least get a beginning introduction to what yoga is and what yoga means.

David Brower: Very smart.

LolaScarborough: Yeah, and then we scaled some of other offerings, as well. I kind of grew from just nutrition to many other different types of coaching offerings. That has allowed me to kind of grow what I've offered to people here, and it meets more of what the culture here requires.

David Brower: I think it's fascinating about your store. There's a lot of it that's fascinating to me. But, I think any business owner, mom and pop, whatever, who has struggled in business, and thought they had the fortitude to stick it out, but really didn't, or chose not to, is probably a better choice of words.

You guys were hit with a trifecta of challenges in the beginning. You hunkered down. You figured out a way to be optimistic, to push forward, to be in a community that literally knew nothing about you or what you were doing, and going, "You know what? We're going to do this, damn it, and we're going to make it work." And by gosh, you did.

I think what's cool about that is that you set such an example for people starting in business, frustrated with business, frustrated with potential clientele, frustrated with what you have to offer. "Oh, we're going to change what we have to offer to meet the customer's needs." What a concept. I think it's fascinating, and I'm sure you change your business plans four or five times a year just to figure what your target is going to be next week. Right?

LolaScarborough: Absolutely. I've also done, like I said, additional training for things that we could bring into the studio that suited the culture that we're in better than ... You know, initially, there was no role model to base what we were doing on. None. Nothing.

David Brower: It was foreign to your community, right?

LolaScarborough: It was foreign to our community. We just had to kind of learn along the way. We've taken some pretty hard knocks, but we're always excited that we can look at each other and say, "You know, it's been almost 11 years now, and we're still here." We've touched, over the last 11 years, at least three to 4,000 people's lives.

David Brower: Gosh. What a gift. Wow.

LolaScarborough: What a gift. And a gift to us, too.

David Brower: Right. Right.

LolaScarborough: I mean, we didn't understand the emotional gift that would unfold for us. The financial gifts, those are hard won, but the emotional gifts, they're freely given. I mean, watching people's faces light up with new knowledge, watching the common experience where they get a sense of something in their body, or their mind, or their spirit that they've never touched before.

David Brower: Right. Oh my gosh.

LolaScarborough: It's just beautiful beyond words.

David Brower: I got goosebumps on that. I love that stuff, and especially when it's, I guess, organic, for lack of a better term. There's no, "Okay, we're going to chart this course, and we're going to give this lady goosebumps, and here we go." It's organic, and it happens, and they light up like a Christmas tree, which makes you light up like a Christmas tree. I mean, you've got have the money to pay the bills, granted, but that's the payoff, right?

LolaScarborough: It is. That really is the payoff, and that's why we're still doing it. We live in a world where there's so much anxiety, and distress, and fear. To be able to even go somewhere for just an hour and slough all of that, and just breathe, and move. It's a gift.

David Brower: Absolutely, it is. I started a chair yoga class-

LolaScarborough: I love chair yoga.

David Brower: ... probably four or five months ago. Never been a fan of yoga, Pilates, any of that stuff. My wife loves it, and I'm going, "Yeah, whatever." And so, I heard about this chair yoga class, and I'm going, "I'll check that out." And, oh my God, after the first day I was hooked. I look forward to every week. It's like you're moving, you're learning how to breathe, you're stretching, you're working on balance. It's not competitive. It's healthy, and it's just, "Oh."

It's fascinating to me all the different levels of education that you've had that you're able to pass along to people to meet their own individual needs, I guess, is what I'm getting at. Right?

LolaScarborough: Yeah, because everyone is different, and the beautiful thing about yoga is you can scale it to meet any need, from the needs of someone who is in a wheelchair, to-

David Brower: Exactly.

LolaScarborough: ... someone who is a triathlete.

David Brower: Wow. I can't imagine all the education you've done. I mean, we've got yoga, meditation, wellness coaching, nutrition, and that doesn't even cover half of what you do, right? You've studied herbs, nutrition, all kinds of stuff, and all of that in an effort to not only gain knowledge and help you improve and stay engaged in your profession, I assume, but also to create different opportunities so that when one person walks in the door, you have something to offer them.

LolaScarborough: That's right. To just kind of widen the scope of who I am, I have a two-year degree in Ayurveda, which is the predominant medical system in India. It's a lifestyle, nutrition-based approach. They use herbs, and they have medical treatments that are not common to the U.S. But there's so much that you can do with Ayurveda.

Of course, we're not doctors here. Here we're just practitioners who support people in a nutritional journey, and then, lifestyle choices that benefit their health. But I learned so much about herbs, and I've studied Chinese herbals, as well. Just learning what a pharmacopeia God has offered us through the plants, and through the trees, and through the sunshine, and the fresh air. It gives you a whole new appreciation for the absolute intelligence with which this universe was designed, and how truly good our nature is to us.

David Brower: Absolutely.

LolaScarborough: I mean, it's mind-blowing, and humbling, and it fills you with awe.

David Brower: I couldn't agree more, and you don't have to go back far. I mean, if you just go back to when the Native Americans were allowed to be Native Americans. What a concept. They were blessed by the Earth, and they lived, they fed themselves off what was available, whether it was plants or animals. They built homes. I mean, and now it's like, "Okay. Where's my immediate gratification? I've got to get on my Smartphone. If Google can't tell me, I don't know anything." It's just, holy crap.

LolaScarborough: Well, we've lost our connection to nature.

David Brower: Absolutely.

LolaScarborough: And we've lost our connection to resources [crosstalk 00:13:19]-

David Brower: Absolutely. My wife is, I call her the stud of the family, because she does all that yoga, Pilates, stuff. She gets up at 5:30 in the morning and goes, swims 3,500 yards, because she wants to. We live about 30 minutes from Rocky Mountain National Park, and so that's her heaven is being-

LolaScarborough: Oh, beautiful.

David Brower: ... up there, and being in nature, and going out to hike or ski with the grandkids, or whatever. So, I totally get what you're talking about. There's so much in our own backyard that if we'd just take a couple of hours and look around, and breathe, and ignore all the chaos. I mean, gosh. You'd feel so much better, wouldn't you?

LolaScarborough: You would, and to marvel at the absolute magnificence and ordered intelligence that nature brings with it from ... You know, it knows. It has its own innate intelligence.

For example, nature lives inside our bodies. The heart beats. Our liver functions, if we're lucky. But, you know what I'm saying. Our eyes blink. We breathe. These are things that are just given to us, and they are a part of nature, they operate. They know what to do all on their own, and when we don't mess them up, they operate really well.

David Brower: Well, if there was a doctor back in the day, God would have been the first recipient. You know? I get goosebumps just thinking about it. I mean, when you look around, and you take a few minutes to honor, and respect, and enjoy a blade of grass, or a flower, or a kid riding by on a bicycle, or the fresh air, whatever it is. I'm a big gratitude fan. It's just world-changing, when you can find time in this chaotic world to breathe, and feel blessings, and feel gratitude about the smallest of things.

LolaScarborough: Yes, your heart feels a lot better and your health benefits.

David Brower: Oh my gosh. Absolutely right. I see you guys are both working on PhDs in comparative religion. Tell me about that.

LolaScarborough: We are. The one that we're working on is through the University of Sedona. My husband, his background is in theology, so he's done a lot of studies in the Christian religion. And mine is kind of smattered across everything. One of the interesting things that we're finding, because we're taking this journey together, is he is really able to teach me a lot. I was raised Church of Christ, so I know the teachings, but he knows the teachings. He knows. He can recite them from memory.

David Brower: I love that.

LolaScarborough: But I know a lot. I studied a lot of different religions, because I'm fascinated by what spirituality brings to cultures, and the way spirituality kind of adapts to whatever culture it's in. We're finding we're really able to cross-talk a lot of things, and really go into a deeper understanding of, "Wow, look at how similar all of these different things are." And how similar the teachings in one spiritual tradition are to another spiritual tradition. Without having a background in the different spiritual traditions, it's hard to see that. That's one of the things that we've been able to really gift each other with, and it's created a real nice bond for us.

David Brower: What a wonderful gift for your marriage, huh? Wow. I love that. We're just about out of time.

LolaScarborough: Yes. It's a bond.

David Brower: I want to let people have an idea of how they can get a hold of you. I know you have the LolaScarborough.com website, your book website. Really quickly, let's mention the book that you have out there, and let people know about that. Because, there are so many people in the world who either have, have had, or think they might have breast cancer. Let's talk about your book, briefly.

LolaScarborough: The name of my book is Fighting for Our Tits. And the reason I used the word "tits" instead of "breasts" is to kind of wake people up. It's kind of like a wakeup call. So, it's when people see that word, they wake up.

David Brower: Oh, for sure. Yeah.

LolaScarborough: But what the book is about is, it's about so many different ways that you can approach your health care, in general, that then translates into breast care. There are also different chapters where breast care itself is exclusively addressed. And then I have a chapter where I put in an amazing different number of modalities that can be used to complement any kind of healthcare practice. For example, acupuncture, sweat lodges, working with crystals, working with color, meditation. That sort of thing. It covers a whole range of natural methods to not only heal yourself, but to stay healthy, vital, and vibrant.

David Brower: What an absolute gift. And folks, you can find it at LolaScarborough.com. One in eight women develop breast cancer. You can learn tools that can help defy those odds. There's blogs, your mission, book reviews, all kinds of stuff, so definitely, definitely, a must read.

Lola, thank you so much. This has been like the world's fastest 20 minutes on the planet. I wish you and your husband continued success. If people want to reach out to you to learn more about your book, to learn more about your teachings, your healing, learning center, and all that kind of stuff, what's the best way for them to find you?

LolaScarborough: They can find me through my website, or through Lola@YogaLola.com, and our yoga website is YogaLola.com

David Brower: Perfect. YogaLola, L-O-L-A, .com. Absolutely great. Well, continued success. Continued blessings, and it's been a real treat to talk with you today. Thank you so much.

LolaScarborough: Thank you, David. It's been a pleasure.

Allan Blackwell: Listen to Your 20 Minute Podcast with David Brower on the go. Downloads are available on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, iTunes, iHeartRadio, Spotify, any podcast app, and on our website at DavidBrowerVO.com/Your20MinutePodcast. Until next time, thank you for listening.

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