Ethan Martin: Episode 802

Transcript

[0:00:28] DA: Nothing in business is more challenging or important than finding and retaining the right employees. When you’re scrambling to keep up with turnover or expansion, sourcing dedicated talent seems like an impossible ideal. In his new book, The Mentorship Engine, Ethan Martin offers a repeatable system to recruit and retain excellent talent and drive business growth. By mentoring and empowering your employees in specific ways, this proven methodology can attract and develop the talent your company needs. Developing world-changing talent that is excited about your company is not an impossible ideal and allow you to build genuine trust and accountability for an exceptional employee experience. As a company leader, you can build a better future today for your people, your company and your community. Hey Listeners, my name is Drew Appelbaum and I’m excited to be here today with Ethan Martin, author of The Mentorship Engine: How CEOs can leverage vision and purpose to recruit, develop and retain world-changing talent. Ethan, thank you for joining, welcome to The Author Hour Podcast.

[0:01:37] Ethan Martin: Thank you for having me, Drew.

[0:01:39] DA: Kick us off, can you give us a brief rundown of your professional background?

[0:01:43] Ethan Martin: Yeah, I’ve been very fortunate to be able to start and sell several companies but I’m having more fun now than ever before. For the last 10 years, I’ve been a coach to CEOs all over the world, leading what we call our mission-driven companies. So, they’re building great companies, they’re hiring really good talent that they’re mentoring and developing, and they’ve got this mission element to their company. It’s beyond just the financials, it’s really, how can they invest back in their people and how can they invest back in their communities and it’s so much fun to work with them.

[0:02:16] DA: Now, why was now the time to write this book? Was there something really inspiring out there, have you seen enough change where you want to just spread the word to more people who can read the book or did you have an "aha moment”?

[0:02:30] Ethan Martin: Yeah, one of the things we get to see as we’re working with these great leaders and that leadership team’s all over the world is, sometimes, they have limiting beliefs. Many times, an entrepreneur is only going to run one, maybe two or three companies in their entire career. They get to know their organization really, really well but they don’t get to see inside a lot of other great companies and organizations. One of the things that we see that’s just so key for success, is having a senior leadership team that’s enthusiastically living your core values and performing. When you only see your own team, sometimes it’s really hard to just know what’s possible there and especially right now, we’re seeing more demand for top talent. The Wall Street Journal came out and said there’s about 10 million jobs that are unfilled right now and so how we treat our people is more important than ever. And that’s we’ve really tried to do in this book, is not only show great leaders what’s possible but give them a great framework of how to recruit, develop and retain the absolute top diverse talent that they’re going to need for their business and their life to flourish.

[0:03:41] DA: Now, you’ve been doing this for a long time, sure you have systems and formulas but when you came to writing the book itself, did you find that just by digging in a little bit more or maybe by doing some additional research that you actually made some new discoveries along the way?

[0:03:58] Ethan Martin: I think one of the discoveries is, writing a book is probably the hardest things I’ve ever done. Far harder than running a company. Been really grateful to be able to partner with Scribe and all the great team members at Scribe to kind of guide us through this and was very blessed to have one of our team members, Emily Harper, really help me write the book because this is one of the largest projects we’ve ever – I would say, undertaken. The learning was just, this is a huge undertaking, I’m so glad we did it, we’ve really done it with a focus on service. It was really fun to kind of reach out to a bunch of former employees and team members as well who really got to experience a lot that we talk about in the book many, many years ago and see how it’s served them throughout their career. That was really fun and in terms of the tools and everything else, they’re pretty refined at this point so there probably wasn’t as much learning on that side.

[0:04:45] DA: Now, CEO is in the title of the book but is this book for more than CEOs, can any hiring manager or other leadership have takeaways from the book as well?

[0:04:57] Ethan Martin: Yeah, we’ve really written this book for the CEOs and their leadership team. It is very much a collaborative effort to grow a scaling up company. I mean, it requires a lot of good people to do it but one of the common things we see, Drew, is if the CEO isn’t setting the right culture, if the CEO isn’t leading from love and service to the whole team, it’s really hard, if not impossible to do this. Patrick Lencioni has got so much great work on people and culture, and he’ll talk a lot about the foundation of trust, which is so key for everything, is vulnerability. If you have a CEO who is not modeling that vulnerability, isn’t kind of confidently humble, it’s really hard to build the kind of culture that’s going to change the world.

[0:05:43] DA: Let’s dig in and I want to talk, because you started the book in the introduction and just digging into what happened to the world in 2020. Tell us how did 2020 really change you and how did it your mindset in the way that you look at how successful businesses are functioning?

[0:06:03] Ethan Martin: Yeah, I think leading through the pandemic was just an incredible period of learning and growth for all of us. I’ve heard it said many times and saw it firsthand, we probably saw 10 years of change and innovation happen in 12 months. That’s both really exciting and it’s really scary. If you don’t have the right people, if you don’t have that high trust culture, it’s hard to be agile and if you’re not really close to your customers and understand how are their needs changing during the pandemic, it can bring all kinds of risk into your business. With that as kind of a foundation, we also just saw so many inspiring moments where great leaders did this really well. They had built a really strong diverse leadership team and they were able to do things together that they had never done before and that was just really inspiring to see.

[0:06:58] DA: Tell us a little bit about your keys to success during the pandemic both in your own firm and when you look outside and have you seen success at folks you’ve coached in their companies?

[0:07:08] Ethan Martin: Yeah, for me personally during the pandemic, it was a huge growth period. One of the things that I love doing is teaching people how to fly as a hobby on the side and that became little harder to do during the pandemic. Things like morning hot yoga in a room full of 40 other people, six inches apart didn’t seem like quite the right way to start the day and yet, self-care is so key and so I think it was kind of a combination of what do I want to hold on to going forward, things like our core values and how we treat our people. We actually hired new team members on our team during the pandemic as well. So, we were going to make sure we stayed true to who we were, but also innovating. What was I going to do for self-care? I’m blessed to live in Colorado and so I spent a lot more time in the mountains, a lot more time camping with my family than I would normally get to do, and we also had all these new tools to use and ended up being quite effective as well. Kind of this combination of putting self-care front and center because if we’re not taking good care of ourselves, it’s really hard to lead and take care of our teams and our families and that’s not a selfish thing. It’s actually the foundation to make everything else possible. Another pattern I saw across all of our great CEOs we get to coach, is they all either started or really upped some kind of a hobby that had nothing to do with business and that was really great to give them outlets and stay physically and mentally sharp as well.

[0:08:29] DA: Now, I like that you actually compare it to a previous crisis, which is the 2008 financial crisis. Can you talk about the mentality of what happened then, what you learned and how that brought about change for your outlook and mindset in 2020?

[0:08:46] Ethan Martin: Yeah, I was very grateful, looking back on it, to have had the chance to help lead the company through 2008. We were in an industry that was really impacted by the great recession and so there was just tremendous learning in terms of what works and what doesn’t work. One of the things that I think we did a much, much better job of this time around, is being just totally transparent with our team and supporting our clients through the same with their senior leadership teams, in terms of what’s working and what’s not working. Jim Collins has this great framework he calls The Stockdale Paradox and it’s this combination, Drew, of making sure all of the brutal facts get surfaced and we never lose sight of where we’re going, because so much of what we talk about in the book is the importance of having that vision, of having a team unified around, “What mountain are we climbing together?”, right? It’s really important. But, if we step over key things, that can be very risky, but it also takes a lot of pressure off of the CEO because, as the CEO, you don’t have to solve all this. You can really empower your leadership team to kind of co-create a lot of the solutions, a lot of the creativity and so much innovation came from other leaders on the team, for us and our clients and that was great to see.

[0:10:06] DA: Let’s actually dig into that and what the CEO role can do. As a CEO, how do you decide whether you take your time and you want to focus a lot of your time internally with your employees doing coaching and mentoring or what you think that a CEO is only making big moves, thinking bigger ideas or being the face externally to the world?

[0:10:29] Ethan Martin: Yeah, the CEO of a middle market company has a truly special role because they are kind of the one person where everything flows through internally and externally and they truly are the stewards of the culture and I think what we’ve seen is the CEOs that really invested in their culture flourished throughout the pandemic. The ones who didn’t treat their people well, especially now that recruiting is so much harder, they’re going to be paying the price for that. That CEO lens is absolutely key and yet, we only have 168 hours in the week, all of us. We only have a certain amount of energy and so one of the things that we really support our clients in, is freeing up the CEOs to do those functions that only the CEO can do, in terms of protecting the culture, in terms of making sure they’ve got the absolute right senior leadership team for that stage of growth that fits that culture, that they’re speaking at conferences, that they’re taking that kind of longer term view, but they’re also not trying to be a whole bunch of other functions, right? There is actually a tool that we love teaching called The Function Accountability Chart that came from Verne Harnish and it’s a really powerful way to drive transparency on the leadership team and have every leader be very, very clear on what are they accountable for and what are the other leaders accountable for, which is then so, so key to have a great teamwork, to be really collaborative. A lot of what we work with our clients on is, while each leader is accountable for their functions, they’re also constantly working in a really collaborative way to do what’s best for the company and that’s really important as you grow. Because, if you lose control of the culture, that starts getting really political. If you make one or two bad hires, it can be next to impossible to get that culture back.

[0:12:20] DA: Are there important questions you should really ask yourself before you make the decision to either really go hard and start mentoring internally or, you know, when you’re recruiting and sourcing new employees to bring in?

[0:12:36] Ethan Martin: I think being authentic is really important. The approach that we talk about in the book is not for every leader. If you don’t truly care about your people, if you’re not going to consistently do the right things for them, it is almost worse to maybe promise some of this and not follow through on it. People can really tell if you care and what we find too, is that if you authentically lead and do all of this, it works every time, but it requires that fundamental commitment, I would say, a real love of people to make this work.

[0:13:03] DA: Now, the title of the book is here, it’s The Mentorship Engine. You actually have a mentorship engine framework that you’ve built. Can you discuss the framework, what’s in it, and maybe what can people expect when they really embrace it?

[0:13:17] Ethan Martin: Yeah, you can expect to have more fun than you’ve ever had scaling every company.

[0:13:22] DA: Done.

[0:13:22] Ethan Martin: Which is really important. Life is short, I think it’s really key to focus on those things that matter most to each leader and do it with people that you enjoy doing it with. In terms of the framework, what we find time and time again is having that vision is so, so important. To being really clear, what is your core purpose as an organization that goes beyond profits, what is your BHAG? This comes from Jim Collins, where do you want to be 10 to 25 years out. And a BHAG isn’t right or wrong, but we tend to work with CEOs that really want to change the world. I mean, they’ve got really, really big ambitions and having a bold BHAG is important to attract that kind of top talent that you want. At the same time, if the sandbox you want to play in is more local, that’s fine. The BHAG should help clarify that because then everyone can align to it and make the right decisions when you’re not with them, because it ultimately comes down to driving the right behavior. Tied to that is the core values. The core values for each company should be different, they should be unique and valuable just to that team, just to that organization. It’s a really key differentiator and it helps attract top talent, but it is really important that these core values be very, very clear throughout the organization and it’s not an aspirational set of core values that reflect, you know, how they act on their absolute best day. There should be all kinds of stories tied to this and so that’s really important. It takes a lot of the CEO’s time but once you get it right, it will fuel the next 10, 20, 30 years of growth. It’s really key for kind of protecting that culture. Then also, while we really focus on impact, the economics are really, really important and the financial literacy of the team. It’s this thing we call — having the economic engine being really clear on how do we make money, right? We want to make sure we’re creating value for our customers and one of the things we think about is, profit is a great validation of doing all of these things well. I love the book about HP, it is titled The HP Way, and talked about HP in the 1950s. As they were really helping to define Silicon Valley, it had a really strong lens for their community, how can they be great stewards of Silicon Valley and beyond, right? Of course, they ended up doing very, very well and those go hand in hand. Then the other tools we kind of talk through is being really clear with the leadership team, “Where do we want to be in three years?” “Where do we want to be in one year, where do we want to be at the end of the quarter?” and doing that in the simplest way possible and over-communicating that throughout the entire community. The importance of having a really diverse team leads to much better innovation, a much healthier culture. It takes a lot of work, and we share a lot of great creative tips on how to source diverse talent and then really having a lens on the employee. Where do they want to learn? Where do they want to grow? What are their natural strengths and talents and how does that intersect with this vision that we have for the company? So that, ideally as leaders, as mentors, we can have them in that sweet spot 80% plus of the time. Then we talk about hiring: the importance of being really, really clear. What are the outcomes that that person is going to be driving in that role, and how do we screen to make sure what we’re getting is what we think we’re getting? Because hiring can be really, really challenging. Once they’re on the team, how do we coach them? How do we give them great feedback? I love another Scribe book done by Monty Moran, a fellow pilot here in Colorado, and he talks about the importance of truly loving our people and holding them accountable in the book, Love is Free. Guac is Extra. I think that is a notion that may not be natural for a lot of leaders. They tend to kind of air towards one or the other, but actually both together are incredibly important. That we’re coaching our people to their strengths and we’re driving total transparency. Everybody knows where the outcomes are expected, how the different department is doing, so they can all help each other. It just eliminates all politics. And then finally capturing this impact and storytelling. Because the companies we work with end up having these great cultures, they also tend to be very humble, and this should not be the best kept secret. It is so important to have these stories of your core values, to have these stories of how you’re serving others not only get throughout the company, but also get throughout your supply chain and throughout your community, because it will end up serving as a great magnet to attract the talent that you need.

[0:17:44] DA: I think when CEOs want to start, you know, everyone wants to create this big utopia, right? But how do you just really building step one, brick one, the foundation to put all of that on and creating that vision and cultural foundation of where does that start, who should be in the room, how do you get the ball rolling?

[0:18:07] Ethan Martin: Yeah, that’s a great question Drew, where to start. I would say this is very much a co-creation with your leadership team all together, ideally in some kind of an inspiring location and working through these cultural foundation questions, especially your core purpose, what is your why. One of the things I watch for when I facilitate these sessions is, is there a real pull there? Is this something on a Monday morning and after we’ve all had a great weekend with our families, with our friends, however it is that we recharge, we’re just as excited to come back to our team at work and go take on this really important problem. I was just listening to a great podcast interviewing the founders of Atlassian, who have built a 50 billion dollar software company out of Australia. The first one to achieve that level of success. It was on the podcast How I Built This and the interviewer asked them, “You know, you guys have achieved all kinds of great success, why are you still working in the company? You don’t need to work, you don’t need to do this again” and they both tied it back to their core purpose of enabling great teams to flourish and they’re like, “There is nowhere else we could be to have this kind of impact on the world than part of this team, part of this company”. Right? That’s the level of excitement and passion of the core purpose that really ties everything together in our experience.

[0:19:26] DA: You did mention before that you should have benchmarks for certain times and a timeline, so I know that every CEO, you know, you want change quickly but something like this is a pretty big overhaul. It might take some time, but if you had to give an estimate of when something like this can happen when you could start expecting to see change, what does that timeline really look like?

[0:19:50] Ethan Martin: Yeah, it’s going to be different with each organization. What we typically see is almost this exponential return. The first offsite, the first time they kind of start working to these questions, it is a great discussion. There’s all kinds of really good aha’s, they start really getting clarity around where do they want to be in three years, for example. This comes from my good friend, Shannon Susko: there’s such power in simplifying, “What does success look like three years out?” Oftentimes, the team — they’ve never really simplified and it’s very, very complicated. If it takes five or 10 minutes to describe the strategy and where we’re going, the entire senior team is typically on very, very different pages and then, as that cascades out into the organization, you’ve got hundreds of people that are all trying to climb different mountains. So, we see that alignment get literally better after our first, first or second offsite quite quickly. But then, as they are building this muscle, it is like going to the gym, the more times you lift the weights, the stronger and stronger you get, and it just becomes more and more fun, and we see it almost like an exponential journey as we work with our clients on this.

[0:20:50] DA: Now, you have a companion website along with the book, can you tell us what, first, the name of this ideas and then tell listeners what they can expect to find there?

[0:21:01] Ethan Martin: Yes, we have created a site, thementorshipengine.com, and we’ve tried to just share key lessons from the book, other tools, other resources. We really see this as a movement, the more great leaders that we can support in doing this, the more jobs will be created where people are really seen and appreciated. We just really believe that everything begins with a great job. When you are able to do that at work, you come home to your family and friends and you’ve got energy, right? I think many of us have also been in the other, that kind of toxic work environment where you come home and you’re exhausted and so we’ve tried to put a lot of great tools on the website that people can use and be inspired by.

[0:21:41] DA: Well Ethan, you know, we just touched on the surface of the book but writing this book to, you know, help CEOs and executives build this long-term foundation not only for their company but for everyone inside of their company is no small feat. So, congratulations on going through the process and having your book published.

[0:21:59] Ethan Martin: Thank you so much Drew.

[0:22:01] DA: I do have one question left, it is the hot seat question. If readers could takeaway only one thing from the book, what would you want it to be?

[0:22:09] Ethan Martin: Permission to radically invest in their people and let them surprise you.

[0:22:14] DA: Well Ethan, this has been a pleasure and I’m excited for people to check out the book. Everyone, the book is called, The Mentorship Engine, and you could find it on Amazon. Ethan, besides checking out the book, besides checking out the website, is there another place where people can connect with you?

[0:22:27] Ethan Martin: They can also go to our coaching page at pfd-group.com.

[0:22:34] DA: Well, thank you so much for coming on our show today and best of luck with your new book.

[0:22:38] Ethan Martin: Thank you so much Drew.

[0:22:41] DA: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Author Hour. You can get Ethan Martin’s new book, The Mentorship Engine, on Amazon. Also, you can also find a transcript of this episode and all our other episodes on our website at authorhour.co. For more Author Hour, subscribe to this podcast on your favorite subscription service. Thank you for joining us, we’ll see you next time. Same place, different author.