Podcasts about colin it

This episode of the Live Better Seller Better Podcast features Colin Specter, Vice President of Sales at Orum. Cold calling is as much an art as it is a science. Colin shares what the data has shown to work in the world of cold calls and how sellers can increase their own conversion rates.There is a mathematical formula that you can use to derive the number of calls you have to make to get to your desired outcome. Colin shares what metrics you should be tracking and how you can tweak your messaging to increase conversion and book more meetings.  HIGHLIGHTSCold call metrics you should be trackingIncrease conversion rates and identify call dispositionsBuy more time and get permission to ask one questionTrends and patterns in landing meetings through cold calls QUOTESColin: "You want to look at your dial-to-connect ratio, you want to look at your connect-to-conversation ratio, how many conversations are you getting out of each at-bats? And then, how many of those conversations are leading to a meeting?"Colin: "There's different openers, there's different ways people love to approach the cold call. It really comes down to tonality and enthusiasm in many cases. But there's all kinds of openers. You could try what works for you. The one that we use here at Orum most commonly is 'hey, KD, Colin with Orum here. Are they keeping you busy today?'"Colin: "It's also not as common that you will book a meeting on the first connect. Most of the connects, we find, happen after that initial conversation after that initial connect. So do you have a playbook to get people back into your call list after those dispositions?" You can find out more about Colin in the links below:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinspecter/Website: https://www.orum.com/ Live Better. Sell Better. is sponsored by our proud partners:Vidyard | vidyard.comDooly | dooly.aiChili Piper | chilipiper.com

00:00 - Intro 02:45 - Meet Our Guest, Colin Reed 05:00 - Colin's Start With Lean Thinking & Consulting 08:00 - How To Be Lean In A Grocery Store 12:00 - The Deadly Wastes That Can Kill Your Business 13:15 - The 1st Deadly Waste - Overproduction 17:00 - The 2nd Deadly Waste - Inventory 21:20 - The 3rd Deadly Waste - Transportation 22:15 - The 4th Deadly Waste - Defects 29:00 - The 5th Deadly Waste - Processing 34:00 - The 6th Deadly Waste - Motion 42:00 - The 7th Deadly Waste - Waiting 48:00 - How We Help Companies Eliminate Waste 52:00 - How To Get Started Quotable Moments “Great benefits come from really small changes – if you increase your gross profit margin by 1%, the avg company in the U.S. will increase its net profit by 14.5%.” – Martin “If you increase your sales by 17% without increasing overhead, the avg company in the U.S. will double its net profit.” – Martin “Everything is a process - you can either spend more time and more money or you can spend less time and have higher quality.” – Colin “The first deadly waste that threaten your business is overproduction. You can only actually work on one thing at a time - in order to prevent work from piling up and idling, you have to have a process and steps.” – Colin “The second deadly waste is inventory. There's inventory that functionally needs to be there and then there's inventory to work on to stay busy.” – Colin “The fourth deadly waste of defects is brutal because when there is a defect, it'll cost you 30-100% more to get that product out correctly and done.” – Colin “With small businesses, accuracy is extremely important.” – Colin “If you were to watch a pit crew, everyone has their job. They are doing things in the right order and they're synchronized.” – Colin “I had my client walk down the aisle in his shop 100 paces while I timed him and found it took him 3.4 cents a step for him to walk around and chase things down That's motion waste.” – Colin “The 7th deadly waste of waiting is exemplified when someone who is ready, willing, and able to work but can't. This person is waiting for approval to go ahead or the right information.” – Colin “We help the management develop the plan but we also train the operators and anyone who touches the process.” - Colin “It frees up management and ownership to focus on things instead of micromanaging processes because these processes will start to run on their own.” – Colin Resources Connect with Colin on LinkedIn Visit ISI's Company Website Call Colin at 918.906.5226 Check us out on Youtube Follow us on social media: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, The Countdown Have questions? Email us! More from Martin theprofitproblem.com annealbc.com    martin@anealbc.com  LinkedIn Facebook Instagram More from Khalil benali.com  khalil@benali.com LinkedIn Facebook Instagram More from The Cashflow Contractor Ask Us A Question Sign Up For A Free Consultation thecashflowcontractor.com  info@thecashflowcontractor.com LinkedIn Facebook Instagram

Athletes, especially long-distance runners, sustain a lot of injuries in their career. Their injuries mainly affect the lower extremities, like the calf or the foot. Wearing the appropriate gear and proper shoes, as well as using orthotics, can make a lot of difference.  Dr Colin Dombroski joins us in this episode to explain the benefit of orthotics to foot health. He also talks about common running injuries and how wearing the correct shoes can prevent these. If you are a runner and want to know more about orthotics and the science behind shoes, then this episode is for you.   Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to  https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. You can also join their free live webinar on epigenetics.   Online Coaching for Runners Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.   Consult with Me If you would like to work with me one to one on anything from your mindset, to head injuries,  to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/consultations   Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.   My Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.   Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Discover the benefits of orthotics and modern imaging techniques in foot health. Learn more about common running-specific injuries and ways to prevent them. Know about the brain-foot connection and the knock-on effect of footwear. Resources The Foot Strength Plan by Colin Dombroski The Plantar Fasciitis Plan by Colin Dombroski Born to Run by Christopher McDougall The Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast SoleScience Connect with Colin: Website | Email | Facebook | Skype: solescience   Episode Highlights [03:14] Colin’s Background Colin designs and manufactures custom foot orthotics.  His researches revolve around general footwear, lower extremity therapy, and how these things interact to make people better. Colin works on 3D printing orthotics, which shows how the foot works or moves in real-time.  He works with people to get them back on their feet and do what they want to do. [04:36] How Foot Imaging Works Colin uses a 3D motion analysis lab to study the workings of the lower extremities. Alternatively, he also partners with the WOBL lab to do biplanar fluoroscopy. This procedure maps out somebody’s foot in 3D space.  It helps understand what is happening to the foot in real-time; it shows feet in a shoe under different circumstances.  Colin looks into the best way to make an orthotic for someone. Imaging helps to see what is happening in the foot when a person is barefoot, in a shoe, or using orthotics.  [09:56] Are Orthotics Generally Good? Orthotics are neither good nor bad; we cannot generalise.  It may be suitable for someone with arthritis but may not be beneficial to someone with no problems.  Orthotics are used as tools to help people with recovery and performance.  Colin’s job is to tell people whether they need orthotics or not.  When they have done their job, they’re removed. [12:57] Rehabilitation vs Orthotics In mild foot aches, over-the-counter devices can work well.  Orthotics are not a first-line treatment for some conditions.  Look at other things first before going down the route of orthotics.  Foot strengthening is very beneficial.  Do simple things that make feet work as feet.  [16:55] Does Wearing Shoes Result in Weaker Feet? Not walking for a few blocks is just as harmful as having shoes that do not fit you.  Poorly fitting shoes can be bad for you.  Women wearing high-heeled shoes for a long time can have a lot of foot problems later on.  Colin recommends we exercise moderation when wearing heels.  [25:15] How to Prevent Running Injuries Injuries usually result in a mismatch between the style of a person’s foot and the kind of shoe they wear.  Footwear should fit into your foot design so you don’t cram your toes.  Some shoes may fit while you are buying them in a store, but they may end up not fitting at all or when you are already running long distances. If you don’t know how the sock liner, width, toe spring, and heel drop of the shoe interact, the potential for injury is more significant.  Listen to the full episode to learn more about the running injuries that Colin has encountered and how to prevent them. [32:42] Running on Concrete vs Running on Natural Terrain The natural terrain is easy to run on compared to concrete.  Mitigate the force of initial contact to avoid injuries.  Listen to the full episode to learn more about what type of shoe you need for different surfaces. [34:29] On Transitioning Your Footwear If you want to go barefoot, do it gradually. Scientific literature has discussed the importance of transition shoes. If you’re going to drop your 10- to 12-millimetre heel drop shoe to 4, you need to have a 6- to 8-millimetre transition shoe.  [37:22] How Often Should We Change Shoes? Do not let shoes sit on shelves for more than two years because the material stiffens. In general, alternating shoes are good after 6800 kilometres.  However, this still depends on how quickly you wear out the outsole of your shoes.  Having shoes with different heel heights for different types of running would be very beneficial.  [42:59] The Brain-Foot Connection When you ignore stabilisers and prime mover muscles, you get a mismatch in balance and performance.  It’s important at the lower leg holistically.  Colin acknowledges that we get a different sensation if we’re barefoot versus when we have socks and shoes on. However, it’s a misnomer to say that putting on footwear reduces your proprioception or sensation. Your brain adjusts to the sensory input being thrown its way. [48:39] Achilles Injuries Achilles injuries result when people change the drop of their shoe or change their running style too quickly.  There is a genetic predisposition for people with Achilles issues.  Using things like heel lifts in footwear takes some load off the Achilles, allowing it to heal. Any ankle restriction can make you use your Achilles differently.  Listen to the full episode to learn about the importance of a multidisciplinary approach in looking at conditions.   7 Powerful Quotes ‘If someone's not getting the right kind of results, it could be that they just need to be adjusted. But then some people don't believe that they need to be adjusted. They believe your foot functions best one particular way’. ‘I think that a lot of people have lost the ability to connect with their brain and their feet and they need to get that ability back’. ‘It's not putting everything into a box of good or bad, you know, but it's looking at it holistically’. ‘We get back to my point where [we do things in] moderation. There's a time to spend time in the sand, there's a time to spend time in the trail, and there's time to get on the road’. ‘If you can get that little bit of variability where you're lengthening some days, you're shortening some days, you're doing different things and your body is used to that, then you're going to be more adaptive. But if you lock into that one pattern, it's going to be so much harder to change’. ‘You also need to have a really good understanding of the whole anatomy of the body because you have to be holistic in your approach’. ‘You know your limits better than somebody else. But I think that there's also a time when you do need to respect the knowledge that someone's gone and spent time attaining.   About Dr Colin Dombroski Dr Colin Dombroski is a podiatrist and a foot specialist of 20 years; he is also an author and a researcher. He works in the world of shoes, orthotics, rehab, and range. He specialises in any feet issues, from plantar fasciitis to Achilles injuries.  Connect with Colin through his website. You may also reach out to him through email or Facebook.   Enjoy the Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can know more about the proper shoes to use for running.  Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa   Full Transcript Of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: You're listening to Pushing The Limits with Lisa Tamati, your host. I have a fantastic gift again for you today. Gosh, I managed to come up with some amazing people. So I have the guest Dr Colin Dombroski, who is a podiatrist and expert on everything foot. He's known as the foot specialist. He is the author of two books, Healthy Strong Feet, and The Plantar Fasciitis Plan. He's a researcher, and also has a shoe—a specialist running shoe shop. He knows everything about the cutting edge of foot health.  So this is a topic that's really important, obviously, for all the runners listening out there. Or if you're having any sort of issues with your feet, maybe you're dealing with plantar fasciitis, maybe you have to have orthotics, or you've got arthritis, or you've got bunions, or you've got problems with your Achilles or further up the kinetic chain, then this is the episode for you because we're going to be talking about the cutting edge of science. Dr Colin is really up on the latest thing. He has all the fancy gadgets in his lab that he does. And so it's a really, really interesting conversation that I have with Dr Colin.  Now before we go over to the show. If you are also looking for—doing a running training plan that fits your life and without having to think about how to assemble the entire plan yourself, then please come and check out what we do at Running Hot Coaching. We have a brand new package that we now offer and there's a fully customised package to you, to your goals, to your injuries, your lifestyle, anything that's holding you back, and we can customise it to you. And you'll also get full video analysis done with this package and a one-on-one consult with me in a personalised plan for your next event. Whether that be a marathon, a half marathon, ultramarathon, 10K, it doesn't really matter that's up to you. And you get 12 months of access to Running Hot Coaching’s whole resource library and all the other plans that are available on me, so it’s a super, super deal.  You also get access to our community of over 700 runners from around the world that we get to coach nowadays and hang out with them. And also we do live events on occasion and do regular educational webinars and so on. So everything running. If you want help with it, then we would love to help you get in—make the best out of your running. Okay, so check that out at runninghotcoaching.com.  Right, over to the show now with Dr Colin Dombroski.  Lisa Tamati: Well, hello, everyone. Welcome back to Pushing The Limits. It's your host, Lisa Tamati here. And today I have Colin Dombroski with me, all the way from Ontario in Canada. So welcome to the show, Colin. Fantastic to have you. Dr Colin Dombroski: Thanks so much for having me. Lisa: It's really, really exciting. So I am going to be talking to you today about feet. You are the foot guy. You are known as the foot guy. Colin, can you give us a bit of a brief background, why are you known as the foot guy? Dr Colin: Well, I mean, I'm a Canadian certified podiatrist first and foremost. So I'm trained in both the design and the manufacturer of custom foot orthotics, foot orthotics in general, footwear and lower extremity therapy care, and how those things interact to get people better. And so, we started that back in 2002. And since then, I've gone on to do PhD work in Health and Rehabilitation Science, and research and everything from the basic 3D printings of orthotics to how the foot’s actually moving in a shoe using things like a biplanar fluoroscopy and CT imaging to really understand what's actually going on, as opposed to just kind of guessing and thinking about it or looking at video without actually being able to see inside the shoe.  And so we've seen tens of thousands of patients. We've worked with people over the last 20 years, really working to get them back up and on their feet and doing the things that they want to do to stay healthy. And for some people, it's as simple as walking around the block and for other people it's going to the Olympics in Tokyo. Lisa: Wow, fantastic.  So you're deep into the science... Dr Colin: Yes. Lisa: ...of the absolute cutting edge of what we can do now for foot issues and optimising foot health. So tell us a little bit about some of the fancy stuff that you can do, like, how that—you said there you can look into the inside a shoe or...  Dr Colin: Yes. Lisa: ...rather than just looking at video. How does that work? Dr Colin: I'll tell you on the research side, there's all kinds of fancy stuff that we were able to do. And so, right now I have an academic appointment through Western University in the School of Physical Therapy. So, I'm lucky enough to be able to do research in what I do specifically. So—and we can do that in a couple of different ways. One is that we actually have a full 3D motion analysis lab at our main business in London Ontario. So it's seven Vicon cameras, much like the way you would see motion analysis for video games or for the movies.  Lisa: Wow. Dr Colin: Well, we use that to study how the lower extremity works in the human body. And so we can either put markers on the foot and cut windows into the shoe, so we can see how things move. That's one way to do it. The other way that we've done it is working with another lab called the wobble lab, and they have two movie x-rays, or what's called biplanar fluoroscopy. And then what we can do is have a CT of somebody's foot, we can take those bones out, we can map them in three-dimensional space. And at 17 times per second, we can move that bone model on top of the actual movie x-ray model to understand what's happening to the foot and the bones in real-time in a shoe, under different circumstances, whether that's no orthotic, orthotic, and we can compare that to their walking barefoot as well. Lisa: That is insane Colin. I have no idea. Dr Colin: Yes. it's a cool thing. And if you go on the website, if you go on—I think we have a fluoroscopy video up on stuff about feet. But if we don't, there's certainly one up on the research section of SoleScience, and you're able to actually watch, you can see what we're looking at through this thing.  Lisa: Wow. Dr Colin: And it's really cool to know. And what's really interesting when we look at this stuff is that we wanted to know when we make somebody an orthotic. What's the best way to do that for someone? There's different ways that we can capture somebody's foot, whether we use a foam or a wax method or a plaster mould of somebody's foot, we wanted to know kind of based on a couple of different styles, which one might actually control the motion of their foot a bit better. And we were able to show that one was more effective than another—made a small amount with a very specific foot type.  So, if you have a flatter foot, there are ways of making it that are more effective. But what was really interesting out of that was to look at what was actually happening with the foot when someone was just walking barefoot, when they were just walking in their shoe, or when we put an orthotic in there? Because you know if I can go on a bit of a tangent, there's lots of scary stuff on the internet these days about how, ‘Oh, you don't want to walk in shoes and orthotics because it makes you act like you're walking in a cast. And why would you want to do that'?  Well, what's really interesting is that when we looked at someone's foot walking barefoot, and we compared that to the most supportive thing that we use, they still kept up to 96% of their original motion.  Lisa: Wow.  Dr Colin: So, think about that for a second, 96% or one motion.  Lisa: Yes.  Dr Colin: So, you're really at that point, if someone's keeping that much of their original range of motion, you really have to wonder, ‘What are we actually doing with these things?’ And I'm going to argue that it's more than just the shoe on someone's foot. It's more than just the device in that shoe, that there could be a lot more actually going on with these things than we fully understand even though we have the best research methods to be able to look at it.  Lisa: That's amazing. I mean, I'm really, really interested because with orthotics, I've recently gone and got my mum an orthotic and you don't know my mum's story. But she had a massive aneurysm five years ago, has dropped foot on the right side, incredible rehabilitation journey, written a book on it. But we're not having such success with the orthotic yet. We are having success with a Dictus where it's helping lift her foot. And I've had in the past two experiences with orthotics when I've had different issues, like, I can't remember now what specifically, I think it was plantar fasciitis. And I've tried different things, admittedly a while ago, and things have obviously moved on. But I haven't had that much success.  So I'm like, as a running coach, I should know more about the latest in science as far as orthotics go. And whether they're my initial reaction back then was, ‘Well, I don't think orthotics are really working for a lot of people’. That's been the feedback from other people as well. So obviously, the science has moved forward and it is offering new insights and you can actually see in real-time what our bones are doing. I mean, it's just absolutely mental, that's crazy and cool. So do you think—isn't it like walking around with a cast on your foot? We've got this whole barefoot craze that's been in the last few years and then we've got brands like Hoka One One coming out with really cushions. So, I think people are a little bit confused as to what they should be doing.  Dr Colin: Yes, and rightfully so. Lisa: Our orthotic is good. Our orthotics in general is—can we generalise when it's very specific. Dr Colin: Nope. Not at all. We can’t generalise it all and that's the problem when it comes to this stuff is that people are trying to fit everybody into a box. And saying that either it's really good, or it's really bad. It’s either of those things? Like, to the end of the day, if you really need them, if you have rheumatoid arthritis, and you're unable to walk around the block, and I'm able to get you active again, they're really good for you.  Lisa: Yes, absolutely. Dr Colin: Right? But if you have no risk factors, if you have no biomechanical abnormalities, if you have no foot deformities and no other issues, then what's the benefit of wearing them at the end of the day? And so to that end of things, a lot of the time, I feel as though we're missing the middle ground. We're missing the fact that people can use these things, either as a tool to help them with recovery and performance that we can then work to wean them off, if they so choose, or if they need to be, or we use them because there's a real thing where structure dictates function and injury.  But again, why are we looking to see whether or not people are either yes or no, off or on? It's more of a continuum. And I kind of like to look at people and the fact that over on this end of the spectrum, here, you've got people who are so gifted biomechanically that they can do anything they want to do, despite doing it wrong. They can go couch to marathon in old worn-out shoes with poor sleep with bad nutrition, and they can do it and they don't get hurt. And you've got people on the other end of the spectrum that can do everything, right, and work with the best coaches and get the best equipment and eat and sleep and everything else. But they're plagued with injury, right?  Most people are going to be somewhere in the middle, the question though, so, which side of the spectrum do you lie more towards? And that's where I feel my job comes in, is to figure out where that is, and then how to appropriately apply these things, whether or not you actually need them. And I build a business on telling people when they don't need them.  Lisa: That's brilliant.  Dr Colin: And when they don't need them anymore. So, it's actually quite shocking when someone comes into my office for their ninth orthotic, and I say, ‘Well, tell me about it'. And so they—we talk about stuff, and we come to the conclusion that they just don't need them anymore.  And they're shocked, they think that these things are like a lifelong sentence. And they're not. For some people, they are the difference between being able to be active or not. And for other people, there's simply a tool, and we use that tool appropriately, and we remove it. Lisa: That is absolutely gold, Colin. And what a fantastic approach in, like, working with people with disabilities and stuff, I know there are definitely times when we do need them, and they're going to benefit and it is very much about the skill of the person who's fitting the orthotic and knows, obviously, what they're doing. And there’s a lot of advertising out there; rubbish sort of advertising that you see with different standard gum, pick it off the shelf type things, what's your opinion on those types of orthotics?  Dr Colin: Well, I mean, if those—so, if something like that, like if an over the counter device works for you, for—let's say you have a mild case of metatarsalgia. Let's say you have a small ache in the front part of your foot when you're active, and you've done all the rest of the conservative therapy things. You're strong, you're flexible, everything else is ticked off, and you're still not doing well. Sometimes removing that little bit of mechanical stress can be enough that allows the tissues to heal and you can move on. Right? So in those cases, yes, they work quite well.  But in some cases, if you have a foot type that doesn't match up with that shaped plastic that's pushing against your foot, it might not work so much. And kind of to your point where you were saying you had them for plantar fasciitis before, and they just didn't work for you, it could be a multitude of reasons why they didn't work for you. And we see that all the time.  And if someone's not getting the right kind of results, it could be that they just need to be adjusted. But then some people don't believe that they need to be adjusted. They believe your foot functions best, one particular way. And they say, ‘Here, this is for you. This is the way it should be, get used to it'. Lisa: And then it's the whole side of: you should be doing strengthening exercises and rolling and stretching. What's your take on the whole on that side of it? So the rehabilitation side of it as opposed to the orthotic side of the equation? Dr Colin: Well, so my—the way that we teach about orthotics is that orthotics for some conditions are not a first line treatment unless you have significant risk factors. If you're diabetic, then yes, 100% we're making you orthotics. But for a lot of people especially let's take plantar fasciitis for instance. If you come to me and you've had plantar fasciitis only for a few weeks, there is a whole host of other therapies that you can try before you even need to think about that. Is removing the stress off the tissue, the strain off the tissue with the device and footwear appropriate? Heck yes, it is. But there are other things that you need to look at first before you even go down the route of orthotics which is actually why I wrote my first book. And it's to tell people the things that they can do at home to be able to get themselves better for four to six weeks before they have to see somebody like me to think about orthotics.  Lisa: Okay, so what was the title of that book, Colin? Dr Colin: Oh, it's called The Plantar Fasciitis Plan.  Lisa: The Plantar Fasciitis Plan and that is available on Amazon? Dr Colin: Yes.  Lisa: Okay, so in New Zealand, we might struggle with Amazon, but we don't have Amazon down here, believe it or not.  Dr Colin: I have no idea. Lisa: We can access it, but some things can ship from over the air and some not so. But we'll put the links in the show notes for sure for those listening who are overseas and want to read that book. Okay, so you mentioned... Dr Colin: And to speak to your last question...  Lisa: Absolutely. Dr Colin: ...which was, what do you think about the whole foot strengthening part of it?  Lisa: Yes.  Dr Colin: I think it's very important, I think that a lot of people have lost the ability to connect with their brain and their feet, and they need to get that ability back, it's shocking how many people I see that can do something as simple as move their toes, or lift their arch, or do some of the simple things that they need to do to make feet work as feet. Right? And so, getting them back to that foot connection is only a positive thing. Like, the only good things are going to come out of that. Lisa: So, is this like, is this a problem of the modern human because we've walked around in shoes. Did humans, before shoes come along, did we all have great feet? Strong powerful feet because we were barefoot from the get go? So is this a problem of the modern human but like with—I've just done a couple of episodes on breathing and the way that we are chewing is affecting our structure of our mouth and therefore we're not having such good breathing and so on. Is that similar sort of case? Dr Colin: I really think that when you talk to a question about that, it's really hard to compare those two things because we're just not there right now. You know what I mean? So, yes, if we didn't wear clothes, and we didn't drive cars, and we didn't eat the way that we did, yes, things would be different than where they are. But like, we drive our cars to go five blocks down the street to get to Starbucks, we don't walk. So, that alone is just as deleterious as footwear that doesn't fit you properly.  So when it comes to shoes, again, there's lots of scariness out there on the internet, talking about how these things, again, make you walk like your cast or is deforming your feet. And yes, I would agree that a poorly fit shoes that are way too tight cramming your toes, putting stress on nerves and tissues certainly can be a bad thing for you. But do I think that there's this gigantic conspiracy out there that's making the collective feet of the world less strong and everything else? No, I really don't, to that end. And again, as a recovery tool, they can be marvellous things if done correctly. Lisa: Yes, it's a really good approach. I mean, it reminds me of my dad's feet. My dad who recently passed, unfortunately. But my dad had the most amazing, strong, powerful feet, he grew up in the first 13 years of life and not wearing shoes. Came from a very humble background with eight children, and they only had one pair of gumboots in the family. So he grew up with these incredibly powerful feet.  By the time he was in his 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, he could walk around barefoot all day, never have any sort of problems. The state of his heels weren't the best. But muscular feet, really strong powerful feet, because he didn't wear shoes until he was older and then still like to go barefoot whenever possible, actually connected to the earth, weed garden all day, and their feet at the most jungles. So I did see it in that. Quite the effects of having that real connection to Mother Earth if you like in developing those sort of strong muscles in our feet.  And then on the other side of the equation. I see people with diabetics or close to being pre-diabetic problems with extremely tender feet and poor circulation in the feet and their feet are just not moving well and have always been in shoes. So it's like opposite ends of the scale via. So, where was I going with this? There's a real broad range of where people are at. Another thing that I think is to consider is women in high heeled shoes, what's your take on that sort of a problem? Like, were lifting your heels up and having a shortened calf. And that's sort of a problem. Dr Colin: Well, I mean, that for too long of a period of time just gives you a whole myriad of problems from metatarsalgia, and progressing bunion issues, and nerve problems, and chronically short Achilles because of that shortening specifically, yes. I mean, we see that all the time. I'm very much a fan of moderation when it comes to these things.  And so for a lot of my patients, if they want to spend an evening, every now and again, where they're primarily sitting in a pair of heels, then I feel as though the trade-off for what they get out of that is okay, comparatively. Again, it's not putting everything into a box of good or bad, but it's looking at it holistically.  Lisa: Brilliant. I think it's a really good approach. Dr Colin: Yes, if you're a retail worker, and you're spending 10 hours a day, on your feet, heels are definitely not the thing you want to be wearing. Lisa: Yes, you've got to sacrifice the elegance, ladies. Sometimes you help that little pushes. Dr Colin: A little bit sometimes. And you know where I end up seeing that a lot? It’s in lawyers. A lot of my patients who are lawyers. There is definitely a culture of dress code and professionalism that comes from wearing heels. And I see a lot of injured lawyers because of that, specifically.  Lisa: Isn't that interesting? So yes, really take heed because I do think doing that on a daily basis, yes. The odd night out in a pair of heels to look elegant is fine, but not doing it every single day, were you really shortening, I mean, just, I'm always sort of relating things back to my life. But with mum having aneurysm, being bedridden pretty much for 18 months before we could get her standing. And I didn't understand at the beginning about drop foot, I missed the boat. And by the time I realised what drop foot was, that had happened very, very quickly, that her foot was now dropped until we're still working on that right through now, to be able to lift set front of the foot up and having to use a Dictus in her case, which lifts the front of the foot up. So it happens very—it happens quicker than what you think. Dr Colin: It can, certainly. Yes. Now the brace that your mum's using, do you mind if I asked you a quick question? Is she using an over-the-counter one or a custom one? Lisa: So it's an over-the-counter Dictus one as I didn't know there was such a thing as a customised Dictus. So it's just a leather strap that goes around with a rubber that goes over inside these two little hooks at the bottom of the shoes that pulls the shoe up. So is there something better, Colin? Dr Colin: Well, so, take a look for something called an Allard ToeOff AFO. And we use them a lot in clinics for patients with drop foot and they're actually designed to be to run marathons and events and they're quite robust.  Lisa: Okay, I’ll take note of that. Dr Colin: And it might be a great training tool too. They're very light. You should wear them under a pair of pants. A lot of people like the fact that they don't see the direct brace.  Lisa: Yes, yes. Yes, exactly. This one's quite ugly. So, is it Allard?  Dr Colin: A-L-L-A-R-D. Lisa: Oh, brilliant.  Dr Colin: So as in Allard ToeOff.  Lisa: Allard ToeOff, I will check that out. See, this is a selfish reason why I get to talk to experts.  Dr Colin: There we go.  Lisa: Because you never know when it's gonna help somebody you know? It's fantastic. I'll check that one out. Yes, because that is a real problem. And there's so many—this is not a rare thing, drop foot. It's a very, very common thing with people with strokes and aneurysms and the like.  Dr Colin: It is. Lisa: So, there's a lot of people dealing with it so going into the rehabilitation side of things. We have a shoe that has a rocker so she's able to toe-off slightly better in that rocker and keep her center of mass moving forward. Rather than sitting really back which she was doing. So yes, so I'm always looking for the next best thing for my mum from the show. So, appreciate that. Dr Colin: No problem. And since you're a runner and all that stuff, the Asics Metaride is my favourite carbon shoe rocker. We've got so many people who really require surgery, fusions, things like that because of osteoarthritic toes or ankles or mid feet that can get into a shoe like that.  Lisa: Wow. Dr Colin: And for people who are that age, they're not nearly as flashy looking as some of the other carbon rockered shoes that are available. Lisa: Yes, but who cares as long as they function properly. Okay, Asics Metaride. Okay, we'll check those one out too. Now let's jump ship and change direction a little bit and go into running specific injuries. So we did touch briefly on playing to the shortest. But what are some of the common injuries that you see? And what are some of the ways that we can prevent? And how does it have a knock-on effect? Like what happens in your feet, knocks on the kinetic chain, doesn't it? Dr Colin: Of course. Yes. So what I take a look at, the one of the biggest things are going to be mismatches between the style of foot that somebody has and their mechanics and the kind of shoe they wind up getting into. And so there's nothing like being able to mismatch the way that your foot wants to move, and then a shoe that's going to either work completely and pushing it in the same direction. So for instance, if you're a supinator, where your foot rolls to the outside, and then you get into an anti-pronation shoe, which a lot of people are—there's actually been research to show that runners are poor judges of their own foot type.  Lisa: Right. Dr Colin: And if they get into that kind of footwear that makes them into more of a supinator. I can't tell you how many lateral column foot pain problems we see and perennial overuse problems and things like that. So simply mismatching your footwear to what your foot is doing can be one of them.  Lisa: Okay. Getting on and off the shelf is not, and diagnosing yourself is probably not a good idea if you're a serious runner who wants to do some serious racing. Dr Colin: Well, maybe it's a good idea to run your findings by someone else who can take an objective third-party look at you. And so some people think, ‘Oh, my foot is so flat, I need to get into this kind of footwear'. And that might not always be the case when it comes down to it. So the footwear component of it is so big. Making sure that it actually fits the way that your foot is designed. So if you have a particularly wide forefoot and a narrower rear foot, looking for things that actually match up with that, so that you're not cramming your toes into a pair of shoes. Lisa: As a run coach, if I can just pipe in there that has been one of the biggest mistakes that I've seen so many athletes buy. They go into a shoe shop that does foot analysis, and they proceed them on a treadmill and so on. So they may have the right type of shoe, but they're after buying the shoe in a cold state. So i.e., they've just walked into a shop, they haven't been on their feet all day, they haven't been running for 30K's, their feet are not swollen.  And then they go and if they do marathons, or especially ultramarathons, their feet are swelling. And especially I've seen this in women where we tend to swell tissues in my opinion, not scientifically-backed or anything but my observation is that women's feet swell more than men. And the size of the shoe is then way too small, especially in the toe box. And this often leads to pain on the top of the foot and the cutting off of circulation there. And I've seen problems with the shins and so on.  Have you—is it a thing? Have you seen this sort of a trend as well, where they're going into the shop, and it's fitting in the shop on the day that they buy it, but when they're long-distance runners, that becomes a problem, especially when they're running under heat? Dr Colin: 100%. Yes, I mean, fatigue is one of those things that wrecks everything. But at the end of the day, when you're not fatigued, and you're ready to take a pair of shoes, and you're trying it on, you don't know how the inside of your ankle is gonna rub against that shoe until you've spent 30, 40, 50k in it to really understand what's happening there. So the idea that something is going to ‘break in’, in quotation marks is something that I like to try to shy away from as much as I possibly can.  The biggest issue that we see from most people is they just fit them incorrectly, right? They fit them too short. And so if things do swell, if there's movement or any of that stuff, you're going to get problems along with the feet, whether it's friction and blisters or black toenails, or what have you. The length of that, and then especially the curve of the toes, makes such a big difference.  And so, a lot of footwear stores these days might not carry the full breadth of width available. And so for instance, New Balance comes in ladies from a 2A to a 2E and everything else in between.  Lisa: Wow. Dr Colin: So it comes in a 2A, and a B, and a D and then a 2E. So when you have to carry four widths of shoes from a size 5 to a size 13...  Lisa: That’s expensive.  Dr Colin: ...including half sizes, that's expensive. And that's only for one colour.  Lisa: Wow.  Dr Colin: Right? So when you think about that, you understand why you might not be able to find the full breadth of width in a lot of these things. Because shoe stores will have a hard time selling through and if they can't, they can't make money and stay open. So, but if you're one of those people that are on either end of the spectrum, then you need to find a place that will cater towards those kinds of things and that understand the nuances and the differences within brands. So, I mean I've seen people go up a full size in between different models of shoes within the same brand of a company.  Lisa: Wow.  Dr Colin: So, for instance, the New Balance 880 and the New Balance 840 fit completely different. The sock liner is three times as thick, the width is more, the toe spring is different, the heel drop is different, all of that stuff. And if you don't know how each one of those things interact with someone, then the potential for injury is just greater.  Lisa: Wow. And yes, I can definitely relate to that having had—I've had many different sponsorship agreements over my career. And some of the companies, a couple of them, I had to actually leave because I just could not wear their shoes and they were so different in other ones that I just absolutely loved and were able to stick with. And I've got a very wide foot. And so I have to be in a men’s shoe. But when I was doing desert races in extreme heat in Death Valley and the likes, I had shoes that were two sizes too big for me.  Dr Colin: Wow. Lisa: So, that's what I worked out was the sweet spot. So at that point, I wouldn't get the blisters and I wouldn't get the black toenails, and I wouldn't get the foot just swelling so much that it's boosting out the sides of the shoes and putting pressure on top of the foot and causing—and I've had it all awful shin problems by having that circulation cut off at the top of the foot.  I remember a race I did in Germany 338 kilometres in five days. So, we're doing 70 kilometres a day. And after day one, my shoes were just way too tight. And by then the damage was done. And an old-timer, who was in the race, said to me, ‘Hey, you need to cut your socks and open your shoes right up'. And that was a piece of advice that I carried with me being from the norm because, and I ended up doing that very often. So even something like a pair of socks that is too tight around the ankle can cause shin problems. I mean, I've experienced that firsthand, and on the top of the funnel as well. So it really makes a heck of a difference, isn't it? Dr Colin: Oh, it's so does and you know, when you're looking at the trail shoes and things like that, the choices become even more frustrating.  Lisa: Yes, yes, yes. Yes, let’s talk trail because what trail—we weren't as humans, like, we didn't evolve to run on concrete and pads. So what's your take on how bad is it to be running on roads and concrete versus the natural terrain of a trail so to speak? Dr Colin: Well, I mean, certainly the natural trait of a trail is going to be easier for you to run on versus concrete and asphalts and those types of things. And when we looked at the literature, and some of the research said that it's—there's been a lot of fun running research that's come out in the last 15 years. But a lot of our initial contact strategies, so whether you stride on your heel, your midfoot or your forefoot, a lot of it has to do with mitigating the force of that initial contact. And so if you're running on an incredibly hard surface, you might adapt to changing your initial contact to be able to mitigate those loads of that initial load.  Whereas when you have a softer, spongier service to do on, you have a bit more leeway to be able to stride in a different pattern. And so for people who are rehabbing from injuries, yes, getting into something that's a little bit spongier is certainly going to be more forgiving. Now, you can take that all the way to running on the beach, and that causing some problems as well just from the increased biomechanics that that causes too. So to get back to my point where moderation.  Lisa: Yes.  Dr Colin: There's a time to spend time in the sand, and there's a time to spend time in the trail, and there's time to get on the road. Lisa: And this trend it transition times, like when the barefoot craze hurt when my friend Chris McDougall’s book came out Born to Run and it sort of revolutionised everybody's thinking was like, ‘We gotta go barefoot because Barefoot Ted was doing it’. And we saw a lot of injuries come out of that. And no, no, no detriment on the book. It was a fantastic book. But people just went too fast, too far too fast. And we really need a transition time if we wanting to go barefoot. Would you agree with that? Dr Colin: Oh, it's not a matter of me agreeing with it, that that's just a matter of scientific fact.  Lisa: Yes.  Dr Colin: I mean, if you want to go from—which so I do agree with it. To that end, yes. There's nothing that's going to increase your risk of getting hurt more than taking off your footwear and going for a barefoot run. If you're used to wearing a maximalist style of shoe, taking it off going barefoot for 21K, you'll be lucky if you don't come back with a stress fracture. And certainly, my practice has been a mirror of that, right? I mean, at the end of the day, I see injured runners all day every day. That's what I do.  So, I like to joke that the greatest predictor of running injuries is running. But to that end, if you want to make these changes, I think they're great for people. And I think that they're able to make these changes in a proper informed way. And so even looking to what some of the scientific literature says they talk about a transition shoe specifically, right? If you're going to go from a regular 10 or 12 mil heel drop shoe to 4, 0, having a 6 to 8 mil transition shoe wouldn't be a bad idea.  There's one company that will remain nameless that when they changed all their heel heights from 12 mil to 8 mil, and no one really understood what that meant. I can't tell you the number of Achilles problems and things that came into the clinic two years after that.  Lisa: Wow. Dr Colin: Because making even that 4-millimetre change in someone who puts in 60 to 80 kilometres a week, and they're used to loading their tissues in a particular way when you all of a sudden change that with up to three times your bodyweight up to 10,000 steps, that's a huge change for your body all of a sudden. Lisa: Wow, that is insane. Just from a very small change. And look we all—lots of people just swap different shoes ‘Oh try those ones, or this time, I'll buy those’.  Dr Colin: Yes, exactly. Lisa: And so is it—and this is the other thing, brands keep changing. Dr Colin: Yes, every season. Lisa: ‘Ugh, damn. It's something new, it was perfect. And now it's gone again, I can't get it’.  Dr Colin: Yes. Lisa: So by a couple of pieces, when you do get something that's right.  Dr Colin: 100%. But even that, don't let them sit on the shelves for more than two years. Lisa: Oh, okay. Why is it? Do they degrade after that you sort of leave them?  Dr Colin: Actually the materials get stiff, the longer you leave them there. And so, that pair that felt really cushy a couple years ago, they let them sit for a couple of years, they're going to be harder...  Lisa: Oh, gosh. Dr Colin: ...when you take them out of the box.  Lisa: Oh, okay.  Dr Colin: So you can't just let them sit for years on the shelf. Lisa: And onto that note. How many kilometres? Like, how often should you be changing? I've always said between six and 800 kilometres max, what's your take on that? Is there a new science around that? Dr Colin: Science is interesting when it comes to that. I mean, there isn't a lot of actual hard science on that. The soft science of it is to look at the bottoms of your shoes and see. If you're a heavier person, at your initial contact, and I don't mean heavy, like actually just a larger BMI. But some people, my wife is a light woman but she sounds like she's going to come through the floor, two floors down when she walks. And so she'll wear out the outsole of a shoe much faster than somebody who strikes the ground a little bit lighter. And so if you look at the bottoms of your footwear and let's say you're only 400K into a pair of shoes, but there's an angle now where the lugs are totally sheared off one side, that shoe was now forcing you to walk that way. And it's not helping your biomechanics at all.  And so yes, I think as it—as a general rule, 6 to 800 kilometres is okay. But if you're not, if you're training on consecutive days, and if you're training in one pair of shoes, you're going to break down the EVA material much faster because that material needs about 36 hours to rebound fully, before it's ready to go again. But if you're training 24 hours, you're going to break down your shoe much faster. Lisa: Wow, that's a good point. I knew that. And I'd forgotten that fact. Thanks for reminding me of that because yes, alternating shoes on different days is something that I used to say, and I’ve forgotten completely about that one. So, that's a really good point. So, having a couple of pairs of shoes on the go, is a really, really good idea. Dr Colin: Yes, 100%. And to that end too we were talking about, with transition shoes, and whatnot, having them even a different heel heights for different types of running would also be great. I mean, so while you're doing a fartlek training, or tempo run, or a long day might be different than what your ratio is, or the all day everyday shoe. And so that little bit of variability, I think, is a really positive thing.  When you get locked into one movement pattern all the time, then your body comes to predict that. And if you can get that little bit of variability where you're lengthening some days, you're shortening some days, you're doing different things, and your body is used to that, then you're going to be more adaptive. But if you lock into that one pattern, it's going to be so much harder to change. Lisa: That seems to be the thing for everything in biology column. It seems to be a push and pull in a variety. You don't want to starve for too long, you don't want to eat too much for too long, you don't want to be too cold or in a thermoneutral zone for too long, you want—the body wants variety change. Not the same diet every day, not the same everything every day, and just by varying things up, we're giving our body a chance to get what it needs, and to have that variation—that push and pull that biology in all levels that I've been looking at seems to be cycling things. Cycling diet, cycling supplements, cycling shoes, cycling, changing in variety keeps the body guessing and keeps it changing, and keeps it so it doesn't go, ‘I've got this. And it's a piece of cake'.  Actually, I thought it just popped in my head. What do you think of Kipchoge shoes? The sub-two-hour marathon, the Nike shoes. Dr Colin: Oh, yes. Yes, I mean, wow, there—this is a fun time to be alive for nerds like myself. So yes, I mean, there's some really cool stuff that Nike’s doing in some of their footwear. And they're—I mean, one of the leaders. But I mean, everyone now is coming out with a carbon plated shoe, and really aggressive rockers, and a lot of this stuff from a performance standpoint. And it'll be interesting to see how it's controlled and how it's covered. And to what lengths can we go to be able to increase the performance of humans? We developed things like oxygen deprivation to be able to increase your red blood cell counts, to be able to increase your performance. Changes in footwear like this are not that dissimilar from that. It's just a question of, how much can we use them? And how does it work with you?  Lisa: Yes.  Dr Colin: Yes, and what's gonna be legal.  Lisa: And at the moment, it is, isn't it? Like it's...  Dr Colin: It is.  Lisa: Yes. And I had a friend, who's a holistic movement coach, I had on the show, actually, a few weeks ago talking about feet as well, the health of feet. And he said, ‘I didn't want to like those Kipchoge shoes', but I— because he's very much into barefoot when possible and developing strength in the feet. He said, ‘But I put’...  Dr Colin: Well, that certainly is the opposite.  Lisa: He said, ‘I have to admit, I run a hell of a lot faster when I'm soaked’. Dr Colin: Sure. Yes. But that comes back to the point of moderation, right? Is that there's a time for that shoe, just like there's a time to be barefoot. And it's using it in the appropriate fashion. Lisa: Wow, that's brilliant. And okay, let's talk about the knock-on effect of how the feet which have and you know this 100 times better than me, there's just a ton of nerves, a ton of bones as most complex structure that we have, the proprioception, and the connection between the brain is just so important that we actually have that neurofeedback from our feet. So, what sort of a fix do—what sort of things can we expect to have happen on a good side from proprioception when we're doing lots of activity? And we're doing lots of different movement types and varieties of training? And how does it help our brain? The brain-foot connection, I think, is what I'm trying to ask you here. Dr Colin: Well, I mean, anything that's going to make you more aware of what your foot’s doing in space is, again, only going to be a positive both from a balance and a performance perspective. It's striking to me that I can see some people perform incredible feats of athleticism, but then can't balance on one foot to do a pistol squat.  Lisa: Yes.  Dr Colin: Do you know what I mean?  Lisa: Yes. Dr Colin: Because they just don't have control over their ankle. And so when people think of their feet, that's one thing. But I mean, the actual foot itself, though, those deep intrinsic layers of muscles are more stabilisers than they are prime movers, right? The prime movers are going to be higher up in the leg, and the tendons of those larger muscles in the leg support the ankle, right? They're the ones that are tibialis posterior, and the perennials and the things that actually wrap around the ankle. So it's a matter of looking at the lower leg holistically, not just the foot itself.  Yes, those little foot muscles are important. But I think oftentimes, some of the higher stuff up is overlooked as well as the actual prime movers and the actual real good stabilizers that way because those things are going to fatigue out relatively fast, and then you're left with the larger muscles to be able to do some of those things. But when you're not paying attention to one of those two, then you're going to get a mismatch in balance and performance. And so it's a matter of being able to look at more. It's about being able to use your abductor hallucis appropriately, being able to use all of those intrinsics to raise up your arch a bit and reduce some strain in your plantar fascia.  I would never go as far as saying you're going to change the structure of your foot by making your foot muscles strong, but certainly, you're going to get a better grip on the ground and you're going to be able to use your feet like feet and not just like a meat slab that hit the ground to be able to get to the next step. Lisa: Yes, is it a bit like if I was to go around with gloves all day, and I wouldn't have the dexterity that I would need to do typing and learn to play an instrument or anything like that. Is that what's happening with our shoes, when we’re in shoes all day, every day, we're just taking away that connection to the brain and the brain's ability to be able to make those subtle adjustments with those little tiny muscles doing their thing? Dr Colin: You can look at it two different ways, right? Because one might say that yes, if you're barefoot and you know you've got skin on the ground, you are going to get a different sensation than if you have sock and then something else between you and the ground. Right? There's just different feedback when it comes to it.  But to say that putting footwear on reduces your proprioception, or your sensation completely, is a bit of a misnomer. Because if you have something that's, let's say, a little bit squishier, and your foot’s moving around a bit more, well, that's also a signal to your brain too in terms of where to fire muscles, and how to fire muscles and using those muscles on top of it. So, I think we can go in both directions. And again, there is a time when it's going to be appropriate. And there's a time when you want to be barefoot and getting that sensory input in just a different fashion to say—because, at the end of the day, I just don't think it's realistic in the society that we live in that we're not going to be out of it completely.  Lisa: We don’t want to come from class, and you know... Dr Colin: And so yes. So it's a matter of figuring out how to do that, in a fashion that's most appropriate, given the circumstances that you find yourself in. Lisa: A bit of a left-field question and a bit of a non-scientific well, oh well, there's probably stuff coming out now. What's your take on having though the connection to Mother Earth and grounding? And that type of thing, and being in the dirt, so to speak, and having the actual contact with the earth? Is there anything to that side of things? Or is it just no scientific data really around that? Dr Colin: There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, at the end of the day, and from a data and a science standpoint, I'm the first one to tell you that I'm not 100% up on that. Lisa: Yes.  Dr Colin: But I was listening to another podcast. It was Ben Greenfield recently.  Lisa: Yes, I like him. Dr Colin: Who was talking about some of—yes, yes, yes, same—as some of the science around that specifically. And I believe that there might be some science that has come out, I just haven't read it to be able to be up on it to be 100% honest with you. Lisa: Yes. I mean, I've heard various things and even like getting your hands on the dirt and gardening and how much of a good effect that can have on your body and your mind and your mood and things like that. Dr Colin: Yes. Lisa: And I mean, we are in science starting to actually see why is it important to go out and have early morning sunlight and circadian rhythms and all of these sorts of things...  Dr Colin: True, true. Lisa: ...and connection to the ground and the effects of the medicine, and I don't think we're there yet with all the science. But my take is—on that is yes, go out and spend 10 minutes a day with your hands and the dirt and connect with the ground. And if nothing, the being in nature is definitely going to calm you down and make you feel better.  Dr Colin: 100%. Lisa: Yes, so that's already, I think—okay, so just looking at some most common running injuries before we sort of wrap up the call. If we can look at like plantar fasciitis and perhaps Achilles and calf muscle injuries and perhaps knees. It's a picture you will cover in a few minutes, isn't it? If we want, the second podcast, Dr Colin. Dr Colin: Yes. We can do a podcast on each one of those actually. Lisa: Well, actually, I think I will be getting you on because your knowledge is next level. Dr Colin: Thank you. Lisa: So let's talk a little bit about say Achilles.  Dr Colin: Sure. Lisa: It's one of—it's a very common problem.  Dr Colin: It is. Yes, yes, it really, really is. And Achilles is a difficult one. Again, depending on where things are at and what we know, whether it's insertional, or midportion, there are definitely are two different protocols when it comes to it. So, from the physio side whether you do eccentric loading, which is raising up on two feet, lowering down on one or whether you're doing a different kind of strengthening programme that really is sort of the physio side of that end of it, where I tend to come in on that and where I tend to see a lot of Achilles injuries are people who wind up changing the drop of their shoe too quickly. And so they're used to running in something that's either too low or too high and then make it an abrupt sudden change, or they change their running style too quickly.  So, it's very common to see people who go—who are heel strikers who want to try forefoot running for the first time and if they do it improperly when you load the ground with your heel, I mean, yes, we know that if you overstride braking forces and everything else are really bad for you and smashing your heel into the ground might not be ideal for everybody.  But if you're running on your forefoot, you're striking, your initial contact is with your forefoot, then you touch your heel. Then you push off your forefoot again, right? So, one is heel midfoot toe, one is forefoot heel, forefoot. So, to that end, you're going through a much larger cycle of Achilles loading. And so for some people, especially who—if gene, you were talking about genetics earlier, we know that there is a genetic predisposition for some people, or Achilles issues specifically if you're one of those people, then that can certainly be a bad thing if you do it too quickly.  And so to that end, we talked about the very first thing we do is deload the Achilles. So using things like heel shoe, heel lifts, and footwear, to be able to, for a short period of time, take some of that load off the Achilles, allow it to heal and then gradually reloaded it as they've been working with their physio to be able to gain back strength and mobility and everything else. The one thing that I like to look at everybody who comes to my clinic because I think it's so incredibly important, is their ability to move their ankle appropriately because their calf musculature is flexible enough.  Lisa: Yes.  Dr Colin: And I'll get into trouble there because some people say, ‘It's not coming from your calf, it's coming from your hip'. It can be coming from your hip certainly if you have things that are changing your pelvic tilt, and it's lengthening your hamstring, and it's doing that, and then you're getting the effect of change that comes with it, it's a matter of just looking at it to understand where that change is coming from. But any ankle restriction in your range of motion can make you use your Achilles in a different way, the simplest way for your body to compensate for that is to out-toe and pronate more, well, you're going to get a rotational stress on your Achilles, for some people that's just going to be too much combined with the kind of running programme that they're doing. And so one thing to think about for sure. Lisa: Wow, this is like, you're a foot specialist, but you also need to have a really good understanding of the whole anatomy of the body really, don't you? Because you have to be a holistic in your approach because, and then this is one of the issues that I have with the medical world in general, now speaking is that they’re so siloed. If you've got a lung problem, you go to the lung specialist, or the pulmonary, if you've got a heart and then the ear, nose and throat are separate, and yet it's to do with your lungs, like, we need to have a holistic ‘Look At It systems’ in the body or the—not even systems, but the entire body, so everybody has to have it.  Dr Colin: Yes. Lisa: And it's difficult because you have to have a specialised education in feet, you can't be an expert in feet and an expert in hips.  Dr Colin: Yes.  Lisa: But you do need a general education to be able to understand: what the roles of the other therapists or doctors or whatever it is in order to have a good understanding. And I think that holistic approach were possible, into sort of disciplinary communication, is really, really important. Would you agree with it? Dr Colin: Oh, that's the only way that I work is multi-disciplinary. And so if there's one specialist that thinks that they can fix everything, then that usually makes me want to run away screaming. And because there's just isn't enough flexibility in your thinking to understand that, maybe what you're doing won't be enough for somebody. And again, can't tell you the number of people that come in to say, ‘I've seen my ex-specialists who said, there's nothing else that can be done. We get them back running within six weeks'.  Lisa: Wow. Dr Colin: You know what I mean? It's only because we were flexible enough in our thinking to be able to say, ‘Yes, we're gonna change this little thing over here. That might be the thing that's going to get you back to what you want to be doing'. So, it’s so... Lisa: I could go in a rant on that, really. I could go on a rant about the amount of times that people have been told, ‘You can never run again'. I was told I would never run when I broke my back when I was a young lady. And that were wrong, 70,000 kilometres later.  Dr Colin: Yes. Lisa: If I'd lifted up to so-called experts who, with my mother who had a massive brain aneurysm five years ago and who said that initial, ‘You’ll never have any quality of life again’. She's got massive brain damage. They were wrong. I spent five years rehabilitating her, but they were wrong, and she's completely normal again. So, it's not just accepting—what I think is important to realise is the limitations of your knowledge and saying, ‘Hey, I don't know, I'm at the end of my abilities'. You might have to look somewhere else, or outside the square, or try something else to talk, to so and so.  Dr Colin: Yes. Lisa: And that's fine. That's good if we get there but not blanket saying, ‘Well, you can never run again because you've got a knee injury.’ The amount of times, amount of runners who have come on doctors said I should never run again because I've got some slight knee problems, and I was like, ‘Really?’ Dr Colin: Yes, no, I agree. So, a case in point in my own life, I have congenital arthritis. That's so bad. I had my first hip reconstruction at 17.  Lisa: Wow. Dr Colin: That left me with a four-centimetre leg length discrepancy. So I've got some real orthopaedic problems. And was racing mountain bikes at almost the pro-level in Canada in downhill at the time, and wanted to pursue that. And I was told, ‘Never ride a bike again', this kind of stuff. And I'll be doing a half Ironman in Muskoka in July...  Lisa: Wow. I love it.  Dr Colin: ...25 years later.  Lisa: Exactly.  Dr Colin: So, ye

They say that laughter is the best medicine. For Colin McIntosh, it’s also been a pretty good business strategy. After a couple of fits and starts in business, Colin found himself with no job but quite a few domain names in his possession, all of which were pun-based. So he cycled through what he owned and formed a plan to build a company in a disruptable industry where he could make a splash and earn some market share. What he landed on was Sheets & Giggles, a direct to consumer bedsheets company with a social good component that became the most successful bedsheets company to launch on the crowd-funding site, Indiegogo. Since then, Sheets & Giggles has grown to millions of dollars in sales. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Colin gives the behind-the-scenes story of building Sheets & Giggles, including how he worked backward to build an email list that led to an unprecedented 45% conversion rate. Plus, Colin dives into the pros and cons of selling on Amazon, and gives an exclusive preview of some of the ad copy he’s working on to bring more humor to the Sheets & Giggles campaigns across channels.   Main Takeaways:Going Backward: In order to meet your goals, it’s sometimes useful to work backward. Define what it is that you want to achieve and then reverse engineer the steps you need to take to get there. Navigating the Amazon Waters: DTC founders agree that Amazon is simultaneously the best and worst partner you can have. There are pros and cons to working on the platform, including massive discoverability but also deep cuts into profit margin. It’s important to weigh all the pros and cons of selling on the platform and find the strategy that works best for your brand and that leaves you with more of the pros than the cons. Laughing With You, Not At You: Selling with humor is an effective strategy if you can actually get potential customers to engage. Consumers are reading less and less, so if you are going to use humorous copy, it needs to really resonate, grab the attention of the customer, and get them to keep going along the customer journey. It’s easy to be funny just for the sake of being funny, but you have to remember that the ultimate goal is to sell the product, so there needs to be a call to action.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Hey everyone, this is Stephanie Postles, Co-Founder of mission.org, and your host of Up Next In Commerce. Welcome back. Our guest today is Colin McIntosh, the Founder and CEO of Sheets & Giggles. Colin, how's it going?Colin:Pretty good. Thanks so much for having me today.Stephanie:Yeah, thanks for coming on. I was very nervous about messing that name up. I'm sure you get that a lot.Colin:MacIntosh, McIntosh. Yeah, [crosstalk 00:00:28]-Stephanie:Oh, I meant your company name.Colin:Oh, Sheets & Giggles. Yeah. No, of course. Yeah, sorry. I feel like I've gotten so used to it now, I don't even register it anymore. But yeah, you can call it S&G for short, so that way you're not laughing every time.Stephanie:There you go. I like it. So, before the show started, we were going a little bit through your background, which I think people would like to hear before we get into Sheets & Giggles. So, I'd love for you to kind of start there. How did you come to founding Sheets & Giggles, and what came before that?Colin:Well, a lot came before. It depends on how far back you want to go. I graduated from Emory University's business school back in 2012, and I started my career at the world's largest hedge fund in Connecticut, a place called Bridgewater Associates. And, the founder there, a guy named Ray Dalio, is pretty famous nowadays. And, I got fired in about five months, which was great being 22 and losing your first job in a strange state that you don't know anybody in. And then-Stephanie:What happened?Colin:Well, I was terrible at my job. So, [crosstalk 00:01:33]-Stephanie:Five months is not enough time. How did they even know?Colin:No, Bridgewater is usually... They're famous for two months or two years.Stephanie:Okay.Colin:And so, I kind of had a weird little in between stay, where after two months we were all pretty sure it wasn't going to work out, but they were like, "Ah, this should work out," and they didn't want to really pull the plug. And then, eventually I remember, they were arguing in front of me one day about... I'll never forget this. They were re-interviewing me for a different role inside of the company, and... That's how they do it. You lose your "box," and then they try to find you a new box before they totally get rid of you, because they think you're a culture fit.Stephanie:Yep.Colin:And so, they were arguing in front of me. I'll never forget, these two guys, the two managers. One said, "You know, I think Colin is a six for this role," and the other manager says, "Well, I think he's more like a seven, and I think we should hire him into it." And, they're arguing six, seven, six, seven out of 10. And then, the arbiter goes, "Look, guys. He can't get hired into the role if he's not a seven. If he's a six, we can't give him the offer." And then they agree, "Okay, he's a six-and-a-half, and we'll need to have another meeting on it." And, I just remember I raised my hand and I go, "Guys, let me do this. Today's going to be my last day at Bridgewater." I just couldn't deal with that type of [crosstalk 00:02:50]-Stephanie:Yeah, rating you.Colin:It was crazy. Yeah. And so, that was my first job experience. And, from there I became a recruiter, a third-party agency, recruiting for banks, and hedge funds, and startups. That's where I got into technology, and startups, and software. Taught myself a lot about software development and software engineering, and ended up hiring a bunch of different engineers at a bunch of different companies. And, I ended up hiring myself at one of my clients in Seattle, in a really interesting B2B software space called Application Virtualization, which was really hot in 2014; it's still pretty hot.Colin:And I ended up moving up to Seattle. And then, about a year and a half later, I got an opportunity at a company that I helped co-found with some friends called Revel R, which was a wearable tech product that got into Techstars, which is for those listening, a really famous worldwide accelerator for startups. They give you a $100,000 for 6% of your company, and put you in a room with nine other companies for three months, and give you all the training, resources, connections, and mentorship that you could possibly need.Colin:And so I dropped everything I was doing in Seattle, drove 19 hours down to Denver on a week's notice, and became a Coloradan about five years ago. And, that company... I ended up working there for about two-and-a-half years. We all got laid off at 1:00 PM on a Sunday, as startups unfortunately go. And, it was really sad. We had raised millions of dollars, and we're in Target, and Brookstone, and HSN, QVC Deals, T-Mobile stores. But, that product, unfortunately, didn't have all the legs that we thought it did. And, three weeks after I got laid off xI incorporated Sheets & Giggles, and now it's been three years since that date. And, it is now the longest I'd ever worked anywhere in my career.Stephanie:That's great. So, what is Sheets & Giggles, and how did you have the idea to start it?Colin:Well, for anyone who hasn't heard of us, it's okay; although, I will hold it against you.Stephanie:Very rude.Colin:Very rude. We sell bedsheets that are sustainable, and they're made out of a material called Lyocell, which is made from eucalyptus trees. And so, if you Google or Amazon eucalyptus sheets, we're generally the first results. Lyocell sheets is another query we rank high for. And what our sheets do is, they actually save up to 96% of the water that cotton sheets use, which is about 96%... sorry, 1,000 gallon reduction. And then, they also save in energy, they use no pesticides, no insecticides; whereas, cotton can use 16-24% of the world's insecticides just by itself, as a crop.Colin:They also biodegrade faster than cotton, they're hypoallergenic, they're zero-static, and they're naturally softer and more cooling. So, if you're a hot sleeper, they're the best possible material. The eucalyptus Lyocell is for hot sleepers. And so, it's a really wonderful product. We began manufacturing at about two a half years ago, and we now have shipped tens of thousands of orders. We raised a couple of million dollars in capital, although we are mostly revenue funded, and we grow according to our revenue. And, we are just loving life right now. We're a very socially conscious company, and it's really wonderful to be able to have fun, do good, and make money at the same time.Stephanie:That's great. So, with your company, did you see an opportunity in the market from doing research, or did you just wake up one night sweaty like "Oh, I need to build better sheets. This is [crosstalk 00:06:32]." How did that happen?Colin:So, whenever I hear founder interviews from Brooklinen, or other bedsheets companies... And, I hate to throw Brooklinen under the bus. They're a great company, and I really respect... No, I really respect what they've built. They get $100 million dollars in trailing 12 months revenue. They're a wonderful company. But, their co-founders go on these-Stephanie:However.Colin:... podcasts, then they're like, "Oh, we were staying in these hotel sheets, and we were like, 'Oh, they're so lovely. And, let me find out how expensive they were,' and we were like, 'There had to be a better way.'"Nobody starts a company because they stayed at a hotel. They saw a really good business model. They found a manufacturer who would make really good products for them at an affordable price so they could resell it a higher price, and they went from there. And that's great, and they should be proud of that.Colin:And so, that's sort of, more or less, what happened with S&G, where it was actually a business model play first. And, I'm a big... a big, big advocate of sustainability, and climate change is one of my hot buttons. I've always had a bleeding heart. I've worked at startups trying to end animal euthanasia. My last startup, the wearable tech startup I talked about, we were trying to fight sexual assault and violence. We actually sent out 60,000 emergency alerts, saved a bunch of lives, which was really a wonderful... wonderful thing that the company did. But you know, this company, I really wanted to have a sustainability mission. And so, I kind of sat down and I wrote out my perfect business model with a sustainability mission.Colin:This is a true story. I looked at all the domains that I owned, and I owned SheetsGiggles.com because I thought it'd be a funny name for bedsheets company. I have a lot of pun-based domains that I own.Stephanie:What's some other ones? I want to hear them. Any others come to mind?Colin:I've got a few really good ones, Bodcasts.com...Stephanie:Oh my god.Colin:... B-O D-C-A-S-T-S.com. I love that. I would love to do podcasts for exercise, where you don't have to watch YouTube videos, and you can just have a platform for exercise physiologists and personal trainers to do listening-only routines. I also own SunglassesHalfFull.com for a sunglass company, GiraffeCarafe.com for carafes in the shape of giraffes. I own WorkFromRome.com. Why work from home when you can work from Rome? That's a travel company for remote work. I buy a lot of domains [crosstalk 00:09:13]-Stephanie:So many companies to start, so little time.Colin:Yeah. Romanhemperor is probably my favorite one that I'll probably start one day, a CBD company.Stephanie:That's good.Colin:My nephew's name is Roman, so he'll be my little CBD mascot.Stephanie:Perfect. I like it.Colin:Yeah, I'm sure my sister will love that.Stephanie:Yeah, I think she will.Colin:Yeah. But yeah. To answer your question, a lot of them. I owned SheetsGiggles.com. I thought, "Does bedding fit my criteria?" and it fit perfectly, $12 billion U.S. market growing 10% year over year, highly fragmented, the top five players only own about 27% of the market, and it wasn't fully online at that point. It was still mostly physical retail. I kind of just put my head down, and I fell in love with this brand. That was the other thing, is I just fell involved with the idea of a funny brand in a very boring space, especially if it's a sustainable, premium product and you can still do a funny brand. That's a really hard tight rope to walk, and I really fell in love with the branding challenge.Colin:That was kind of when I put my head down in October 2017. I created a brand, Identity Map, for this pun-based bedding empire, is what I would call it to people. Me and a couple of contractors just designed a logo, and I built my own website, wrote every single word of copy myself, would stay up until four in the morning, writing, wake up at 8:00 AM, start writing again, and just totally fell in love with this weird, little company that I was creating in my bed, in my underwear. In May 2018, we did our crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, raised $284,000 crowdfunded, love those crowdfunders and have a very special relationship with thousands of people who brought the company to life, and it's all been history of since there.Stephanie:That's really fun. What was your experience on Indiegogo? How did you get found? Because a lot of times on those crowdfunding platforms, it seems like there's so much noise nowadays. In the early days, it was [crosstalk] to get found.Colin:Yeah.Stephanie:Now it's like, "Oh my gosh, if I put something up there, there's thousands of other people trying to raise money for something." How did you make sure that people found your potential product?Colin:Yeah, absolutely. Even in 2018, it was still a pretty difficult task. There were still thousands of projects being launched every single day. 2013, 2014 would have done prime time to do a crowdfunding campaign. That was actually when, fun fact, I'm going to brag a little bit, Brooklyn did their Kickstarter in 2013 or 2014, and they did $236,000. We did ours in 2018, $284,000.Stephanie:Hey.Colin:Yes.Stephanie:Hello.Colin:Basically, there's a few hacks for crowdfunding campaigns. If anyone out there is thinking about doing a crowdfunding campaign, generally speaking, you want to do a few things. First and foremost, you want to set a goal that you can hit on day one because their algorithms reward percentage of goals hit in a period of time. They don't reward dollars raised. You don't want to go too low because then you've set expectations for people that, "Wow, you've blown away your goal, and now I expect the world from this company," but you don't want to go too high either and have a goal that takes you the full 30 days to hit because then you won't trend. For us, for example, internally, we wanted to do $100,000. Externally, we set our goal as $50,000. We thought that we could hit that in a couple of days based on our preparation.Colin:The second thing you want to do in order to come out of the noise is prepare. A lot of people... It's kind of sad. I see them launch a crowdfunding idea for something that maybe is a really cool idea or a cool project, but they don't do any preparation whatsoever, and they don't stop the think that even if they have 1,000 Facebook friends and 30 friends and family and 500 connections on LinkedIn and whatever it is, you just got to always assume a 3% conversion rate with anything, even your friends and family. If you have 1,000 people that you think you can count on, you're talking about 30 people that are actually going to pull the trigger and give you their credit card information when you end up buying. You don't want to rely on the friends-and-family model for crowdfunding. It's just not a good way to do it.Colin:What you want to rely on is an email list. I get asked all the time, "Where do you find your email list? Do you buy it? Do you build it?" The answer is, "You build it." You want to build it and get people to give you their emails who are interested, qualified leads, who are interested in buying into the brand that you're building. What we did was we worked backwards from our goal of $100,000 and said, "Okay, $100,000 in 30 days, generally speaking with the crowdfunding math, you want to make 30% of that on day one." That's just the way the crowdfunding works, big boost in the beginning, plateau in the middle, boost at the end. You want $30,000 on day one. We knew our sheets were going to cost $70 on average, which was a really low price. I really under-priced them. We knew our average order was probably going to be 1.5 units, so $100 average order value. If $30,000 on day one at $100 average order value is the goal, that means we need 300 customers on day one.Colin:If an email list converts at 3%, then that means that we need 10,000 emails in order to get 300 customers on day one. That became our singular focus, singular goal from February through April of 2018 was gathering those 10,000 emails, doing it at an affordable price that would end up translating into a low cost of acquisition, and we ended up spending about $9,000 to gather about 11,000 emails, converted at about a 45% rate, which was really unheard of. That was the first time I was ever very, very-Stephanie:That's really high.Colin:Yeah, I was very, very excited and confident that the crowdfunding campaign was going to go well when we saw the 45% email capture rate. We ended up converting at 4.5% on our email list on day one, and we had a $45,000 day one just like clockwork. Then we [crosstalk 00:15:05].Stephanie:That's awesome.Colin:Yeah.Stephanie:I like the idea of working backwards. I think enough people don't think of, "What do I want my end result to be, and how do I make sure to get there?" Like you said, they rely on, "I have enough friends who will buy," which I've also experienced does not work. Friends and family [crosstalk] can only go so far. Yeah.Colin:People forget. People get busy. They have busy mornings. They forget. You need a big boost all at once to come out of the noise on crowdfunding. We ended up being the number two trending topic on Indiegogo.Stephanie:That's awesome. How did you go about building your email list? Because acquiring emails for the price that you did is very good. Conversions are very good. You can get a ton of emails these days, but a lot of them probably wouldn't be qualified if you don't do it the right way. What kind of tactics did you use to get good emails who are qualified buyers to make sure that they actually ended up converting when you launched?Colin:That's a great question. First and foremost, if you're going to do a crowdfunding campaign, I would recommend hiring a digital agency that specializes in crowdfunding, but I would be very careful about whom because there's a ton of sharks and predators in this industry who will take your $2,000 set up fee, and they'll promise you the moon, right? Colin:There is one agency I'd recommend, my buddy, Will Russell, he's the man, Russell Marketing in New York. And I trust him with my life, so I hired Will. I had known him tangentially through the last place I worked at. And he basically flew out the boulder. We sat down and we white boarded things out February, 2018 about our plan for the crowdfunding campaign. And basically the method was he had these emails from past campaigns that were early adopters, right? There are people who had backed Kickstarter campaigns before, and you can get lists like that in other places. Then you begin to build one, two and 3% lookalike audiences on Facebook. From those lists, you're able to advertise to other people who are likely early adopters. You build a landing page. We use kickoff labs as the software for our landing pages that hooked into our Google analytics. We did a photo shoot all in for $500 with me and all my best friends in Denver, Colorado. We were smoking cigars, drinking whiskey, having fun in bed, playing with dogs, eating pizza.Colin:Basically, whatever makes us laugh is what put on camera. And so, that was what we did in February 2018. We built those landing pages and that content with our first photo shoots, and all the copy that we wrote was just coming from my two fingers or 10. And then we just basically ask people, Hey, do you want to walk into the best price you're ever going to get on the best bedsheets you're ever going to feel? And we had three core value propositions for any crowdfunding campaign. You generally need three core differentiation propositions. One was that it's literally softer and cooler than cotton. And I led with that because I think that people are selfish and won't buy a sustainable product, if it's not better than the unsustainable version.Stephanie:Yep.Colin:Value prop number two was that it was sustainable, and value prop number three was that because I knew how all these retailers worked, and I know the margin share that Bed, Bath and Beyond takes from this category, which was about 40%, the price that you're paying is going to be traumatically lower than the price you pay for comparable luxury, sustainable options in the store. And those were our three value props and it really resonated.Stephanie:That's great. So what is your customer acquisition strategy look like now that's different than maybe what you did with Indiegogo?Colin:Now? I mean, now I have an in-house marketing team, a four person team. They're absolutely wonderful. And Sarah, our VP of marketing, is total genius, and she is someone who on the performance marketing side I think is unmatched. And I basically give her, to be completely honest. I give her free rein at this stage because a founder's skillset is fundamentally different than a CEO skillset. And I'm doing my best to transition from founder to CEO. And part of that is not micro-managing. And frankly, being okay with a much more boring job of facilitating, supporting, financing and managing versus being the creative, being the brand voice, being the copywriter, being the photographer and the videographer, and the Facebook data analyzer, and the Amazon ads creator. I can't do that anymore because it just doesn't scale. And it's also a good way to get talented people to leave when they feel like they're being micromanaged.Colin:So in terms of our actual strategies, basically, it's all direct to consumer on our website, sheetsgiggles.com and Amazon. And we've got a core channels of Facebook, Instagram, Google, and Amazon as our digital spend. We do some podcasts advertising, so definitely get in touch about that. And we also do radio advertising on Colorado Public Radio and a few other stations. And then we've tried direct mail, we tried a few other funky things. Nothing has the [inaudible] that digital tends to have.Colin:And in terms of email strategy nowadays, we actually don't email people nearly as often as we used to. In the very beginning, when we launched them Indiegogo, we'd email people maybe once a week. Now we're probably emailing people once a quarter, which is really crazy for a direct to consumer brand. Like every direct consumer brand in my inbox blows up my inbox four times a week like, buy more of our shit.Stephanie:Yeah.Colin:And so, the amount of sandal emails that I get from my sandal company is ridiculous. And so we email people only when we want them to take a very specific action. And that leads to open rates of high forties on emails, which is really, really stellar for open rates on emails. And we make sure that we use that wisely and we don't over innovate people.Stephanie:Great. So what are your favorite channels right now? Of everything that you just mentioned, is there any channel that you're maybe putting more budget into, or that you're seeing higher success with?Colin:I can find a row ad that beats Facebook, I will pull all my Facebook tomorrow, but they're definitely the highest row ads. Branded search is obviously the thing that's going to be best in the long run. So we spend a lot of time building up our brand recognition with people and our brand affinity, and then just earned media is really good too. We have a PR agency that we employ and we got covered yesterday by the Daily Beast, and we've been covered by Real Simple and Forbes and Apartment Therapy. We are Apartment Therapy's Best at 2020 picks, and a lot of other publications. We've been on today.com and Amazon gives us a lot of shout outs because of the philanthropy that we do.Colin:And so that's been really helpful to have Amazon as a big partner in our PR and in our discovery and exposure. So overall I would say Facebook and earned media are probably our two biggest ones. And then I do love radio and podcasts advertising, and I'm trying to figure out how to make that funnier for the listener. And so I'm currently recording a few new podcast ads that I think are going to be really funny and not in a really bad Geico, not funny at all way, but actual bits on the radio.Stephanie:Oh, give me a bit. What are you working with it? [crosstalk] You can practice in here. There's no judgment.Colin:Okay, great. Great. Great. So, I've got one that I think is pretty funny in a meta sort of way where I want to go on a podcast and be like, hi. Have you ever the CEO of Harry's do his thing?Stephanie:Yeah.Colin:I'm not famous, but I'm the CEO of Harry's.Stephanie:Yeah.Colin:So, I'm like, hi, I'm Collin, the CEO of Sheets & Giggles. That's probably means nothing to you, which is depressing, a little sad. We're a young company, we're based in Denver. We do some good stuff. Oh, we sell bedsheets. I should probably lead with that. God, how does the Harry CEO do this? And basically go with that. And then, somebody in the background goes 10 seconds. 10 seconds? And I'm like we sell eucalyptus bedsheets. They're sustainable, they're softer than cotton. Go buy them at sheetsgiggles.com. And that's the end of that. And then-Stephanie:That's actually catchy. I like that because a few people were like, "What is this dude going to say?" And then [crosstalk 00:24:12].Colin:And then I want to record four or five versions of that, that run on different roles. And basically, it moves from okay, they gave me a second take, I got it this time, I'm calling, CEO Sheets and Giggles, again, we sell bed sheets. I feel like that's obvious, maybe not that obvious. I don't know. If it was just called sheets without the giggles, it'd be a little more obvious. And then somebody's like, "10 seconds. And I'm like, "Oh, my God," and then get back into it again. And so, I think that those little bits and the nonsequiturs and stuff is very much our comedy and the trailing off and the tangents. And so, I really want to write a few different bits like that, that really flow with one another.Stephanie:Yeah. That's pretty great. I can't wait to hear this on radio or other podcasts as I think those will all do well. How do you-Colin:Well, you heard it here first.Stephanie:Yeah. You heard it here first everyone. This is special. Do you ever feel like selling through humor, like that could hold you back in a way because sometimes I see some brands where that's so much their angle that it gets away from the product because they get so funny where you're like, "Wait, what are you actually selling again?" So, how do you guys balance that to make sure you're still selling, but in an innovative, new way, that's setting you apart from others.Colin:It's actually a stellar question. I see that all the time when I see an Instagram brand that's just pure, pure, pure, funny without ever talking about their products in any way or ever talking about their reviews or their sustainability. It's just, "Buy our shorts because we're funny." It's like, "Dude, they're polyester shorts. I'm not going to buy your polyester shorts because you're funny."Colin:But the thing that we do, I think, that is not unique, but I think is smart is we basically let our reviews do the talking for us. So, we always say we're not serious, but the sheets are. And that's our mantra is, "We don't need to sell the sheets. Our reviews sell the sheets. Our stats sell the sheets." The amount of water we save, the pesticides and insecticides we save, we plant a tree for every order. We've got 3000 reviews on our website, 4.8 stars and we don't hide our one star and two star reviews like a lot of other consumer brands do. We have 845 reviews on Amazon as of this morning, I check every single day. I personally, as a CEO, read every single review that comes in, we have a Slack plugin that pulls every single review and puts it in front of my face. Every time we get one in live time on Amazon, we're four and a half stars on Facebook. We're 4.7 with 116 reviews, I think.Colin:And so, that type of cross channel confidence in terms of review score is really important for the consumer. And then the sustainability, the planting of a tree for every order, we give you 10% off if you donate your own old sheets to a homeless shelter, we pledge 1% of our profits, time products and equity, to local Colorado charities, we've donated $40,000 this year to Colorado COVID-19 emergency relief. The stuff that we do, I think, really speaks for itself and we don't have to really broadcast it and advertise it, even though I just obviously did. Instead, we just lead with the humor and then let people read more if they want. And truth be told, I think the most limiting thing, and you kind of touched on this, is that not everybody's a reader, especially when you're talking about Americans, no offense to... I'm a red blooded American, but we don't read.Colin:My old mentor at a toy company told me with the packaging that they made, their mantra is, "If you're asking people to read, you'll lose." And so, that's probably the biggest limiter is that a lot of our comedy is very copy heavy. A lot of other people are more visual or meme based or slapstick and video and we're much more copy heavy. And so, I like to think about us as sort of like the Seinfeld of bedding brands, which is probably the first time that's been uttered in the sense.Stephanie:Was that your Techstars YC type of thing of I'm [crosstalk 00:28:24]?Colin:We went to Techstars. They were like, "Why should we have a bedding company in Techstars?" And I think I was just like, "Why not?" And they were like, "We never thought about it like that." I was like, "You're in." But yeah, the Seinfeld of bedding companies was the way that I always thought about it. It's a brand about nothing. And by being a brand about nothing, it really is a wonderful way for us to be a brand about everything. And that was the beauty of Seinfeld, which has been my favorite TV show obviously, is that every episode was about its own little subtopic and it didn't have to have this overarching theme or story arc and that's great with us.Colin:As one day, we can donate $12,000 to the world wildlife fund to save koalas, another day we can donate 40,000 to COVID-19 relief, another day we can donate thousands of dollars to Black Lives Matter organizations, another day we can plant 20,000 trees for last year's orders. And we don't have this kind of overarching thing that we push on people. Instead, they can just discover it if they want to keep reading. And then we just try to make the copy entertaining for them to find their way through our website.Stephanie:Cool. Yeah. That a good way to explain it and yeah, it makes sense how you guys do it. So-Colin:It is limiting though. Yeah. When you're building a brand, you want 20% of people to really viscerally resonate with it and 80% of people to either be mad or react poorly to it and then that way you just don't want indifference. That's the biggest thing is I see so many direct to consumer brands that are the next shiny thing like, oh, the best apparel you'll ever buy or the best makeup or the best food or... They're all the same exact brand and it bores me to tears. The white stuff on the white walls with the white curtains and the white room. It's like, "Oh, just kill me."Stephanie:Yeah, completely agree. So, how do you encourage reviews? You were mentioning that you have a ton of reviews. How do you get people to follow through and actually take the time to give you your reviews?Colin:We, again, brand about nothing. We give to people who leave reviews free pizzas every week for no reason. It's just like, why pizza? I don't know. Pizza's good. You like pizza.Stephanie:Okay.Colin:Does it have anything to do with bedding pizza? People eat pizza in bed, I guess.Stephanie:I guess. Yeah. Not on my nice eucalyptus sheets though I'm not going to.Colin:But they wash real easy. So, it's okay if you spill on it. No, but that's how we incentivize it is we just say, "Hey, if you leave a review there's a chance that you'll get two free pizzas this week," and who doesn't like free pizza? Communists that's who. And so-Stephanie:That's good.Colin:Actually, we say capitalists that's who. And so, we do bits like that and it's stuff like that, that I think really drives people into the brand and we get people who are like, "This is insulting. I'm a capitalist." And I'm like, "It's a bit. It's just a joke about free pizza." And so that's how we incentivize it mostly. And then again, really engaging copy. The subject line is good, we have high open rates on our review request emails, we make it so you can leave the review directly in the email-Stephanie:Oh, that's a good one.Colin:We don't overpay for review software. I can't stand the stuff that's thousands of dollars a month. There's really good, affordable review software out thereStephanie:Okay. Cool. How did you think about moving on to Amazon? Because we've had a couple of [DVC] companies on here. Quite a few. It's been kind of mixed where, some were very excited about Amazon. Some were like, "Oh, I pulled it off because it kind of walked down the brand and they could end up just copying us and making a white label," and so there's been a lot of mixed thoughts around working with Amazon. So what led you to wanting to utilize their platform? Obviously they're featuring you and helping you guys. What are your thoughts around having a DVC company on Amazon?Colin:Amazon is Amazon. It's the best partner you'll ever have and the worst partner you'll ever have, and exists simultaneously in the same platform. That's why you hear this sort of debate or dichotomy amongst founders where it's like, "Do you want to go on Amazon?" And the pros, right, are that 54% of Americans. I think it got up to 60% of Americans now start a product search on Amazon. They've trained the American populace to, when they're looking for a thing, go to amazon.com. Google has lost that battle. So it's a massive channel that you really... It's hard to avoid. You have discoverability. You could have channel dominance. If you rise to the top of search returns for a high volume query, you can just rack in cash with no marketing spend whatsoever for years, until somebody tries to come beat you.Colin:It's a really solid platform. The negatives are, of course, that Amazon is extremely impersonal as a company. It's hard to get people on the phone there, although we do have account managers now. It is expensive. They take 25 to 30% margin share all in when you end up calculating all the fees from most companies, which is a really, really difficult thing for a lot of small businesses to swallow. And then you wind up paying them more to advertise on their platform to give them money when you make a sale. And so they're really a good partner in a number of ways. They do a lot of really great things for their companies, especially the small business partners, but, overall it's a love, hate relationship for sure. And you can do one thing wrong and get your whole listing pulled. And that can be really devastating too. So overall for me, it's a no brainer because if more than half of your audience is starting a product search on a specific channel, you have to be on that channel, period. End of story. Even if you're only doing it for branded searches.Stephanie:Completely agree. So earlier you were talking about working with PR firms and different efforts to bring new people, new customers, your way. How do you guys have your backend set up to be able to handle fulfillments? What does your tech stack look like to be able to handle any surges in demand?Colin:Surges in demand are actually difficult because we... forecasting demand is extremely difficult. Forecasting inventory becomes extremely difficult and then you put those two things together and you have to forecast the amount of people that you have working on your warehouse team at any point in time, which is extremely difficult. And so when it comes to surges and spikes, we use a 3PL, third party logistics provider, to ship out all of our orders, both on our website and on Amazon. We do FBM on Amazon, instead of FDA. And so we are basically able to get probably 99% of orders shipped out within a 24 hour period. But when we do have big surges and big backlogs it can slip to 72 hours.Colin:Because we are paying for that 3PL service, they have a finite amount of people that they've forecasted to work on their thousand brand partners that use that share of the warehouse space. And it's a really good way to lower the cost overall and then, from a small warehouse operation, if you're running it yourself, because you're sharing that square footage with so many other brands and you're sharing a labor with so many other brands And it's a pretty straightforward process nowadays in terms of hooking up a 3PL. In the beginning for the first six months of the company, October 2018, through March 2019, I was shipping out almost every box myself, along with a three person team in Denver, Colorado. We had our own warehouse space. We had 1,000 square feet. We were packaging. We could do maybe 250 orders a day maximum. And we were just trying to burn getting through holiday 2018 on our own.Colin:It was crazy. It was so [crosstalk] hectic. I think I shipped 3,000 boxes in a three week period at one point in time with the rest of my team, working eight hours, 10 hours a day in the warehouse and buy everybody lunch every day. And it was great. I had my customer service team and they're working with me. But yeah, it was definitely a lot easier when you can scale up and use the 3PL. I do have some companies that run their own warehouse space that actually wind up with all the headaches that it comes with and migraines that it comes with. They do wind up having a lower cost per unit in terms of fulfillment than we do, so there's certainly something to be said for that. But I think that right now we're at the 3PL stage for sure.Stephanie:Yep. That makes sense. All right. So we have not too long left, so I want to jump into the lightning round because I think you're going to have some good or funny answers. Lightning round is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud, our sponsors. They're amazing. This is where I'm going to ask you a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready?Colin:Okay, I am ready.Stephanie:The first one, what is the biggest fail that comes to mind when starting a DTC company that you experienced?Colin:Our packaging was white in the beginning.Stephanie:Were they white walls, white sheets, white, everything?Colin:Well, the inside of the packaging was purple and the outside was white and our packaging was lovely. We've got knapsacks to wrap the sheets. We've got free eye masks in every box. It's lovely, but a white exterior box sent through any postal service is going to get absolutely destroyed. And so that was our biggest fail was we had boxes just showing up, just beat the hell from FedEx and UPS. And so we moved in, I believe, mid 2019 to purple exteriors and that's allowed us to be much more efficient with our shipping and have much better customer experience.Stephanie:That's good. I can imagine getting a white box knowing that my bedding is inside it going, "Ooh."Colin:So dominant. And so to protect them, we had to put them in polymailers and in brown cardboard boxes, which was a huge waste for the first six months of the company. Then we had people call us out on it. And I was like, "You're absolutely right. This is so dumb. Why are we doing this?" And so now we just slap a label on the outside the purple box, and it's so much better. Additionally, minor thing, a major thing, minor thing. We had plastic in the packaging for the first six months. We had a little plastic sheet around the sheets, inside the knapsack to keep them safe from any water damage during transit. And we got a couple of complaints from people, really peaceful, nice messages saying, "Hey, I expect better from a sustainability company to put plastic in the packaging, even if it's recyclable." And we said, "Okay." And so we removed the plastic and we put in tissue wrap now for a final piece of protection.Colin:So there's no markings on the sheets and I'm thrilled to have eliminated that plastic. And now we've shipped out tens of thousands of orders since then with zero plastic packaging. In fact, we're the only bedding company in the world that does not vacuum seal our comforters. And they ship in the box, ready to go directly on the bed straight from the box, no [crosstalk]Stephanie:That's a good one. I hadn't even thought about that and I was wondering, are you having issues so far? But if not, more people should be doing that.Colin:Oh, we had issues. We just replace them. I mean, it costs us money. Like, FedEx will rip a box and then they'll get damaged and they'll leave it outside in the rain and it'll get waterlogged, so we definitely have that. But I think it's worth it to eliminate the amount of plastic that we're saving.Stephanie:Yeah, I like it. What's up next on your Netflix queue?Colin:Oh. I just started Ratched last night.Stephanie:How is it? It looked too scary for me. I'm a baby.Colin:It's really good. You know, I like stuff like that that's a little trippy, and I'm also a huge Marvel nerd, so I'm still waiting for the next Marvel series, but that's a Disney Plus queue, so I cannot wait for WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier and the Mandalorian is in two weeks as well, so I'm really excited for that.Stephanie:You've got your whole queue set up. I like it.Colin:Yeah, I love that stuff.Stephanie:Well, I know you said people aren't readers, but do you have anything coming up on your reading list?Colin:Yes, I just started The Everything Store.Stephanie:Oh yeah, that's a good one.Colin:And I'm surprised I haven't read it yet, actually. And then I'm trying to read things from a different cultural perspective because I'm a 30-year-old white male who mostly hangs out with other 30-year-old white males, and so I've got a book called Well Behaved Indian Women that I just started, and I'm really enjoying it. It's a totally different cultural perspective. It's so foreign to me and it's really, really great to immerse myself in that. I'm trying to think if there's anything else up next, but those are the two big ones.Stephanie:I'll have to try that out. What new E-Commerce tool are you trying out right now or having success with?Colin:Oh, it's something called Gives, and I should get a referral fee for this. So basically, it is this really cool thing we're doing to allow people after check-out to, when they buy something, donate a percentage of their order to the charity of their choosing. So we just tested it this week for Prime Day because we had our Prime Day deal on Amazon and we had a lower percentage off on our website, but you could donate another percentage of your order as well, so it actually ended up being a lower price but part of that was donated versus just going into your pocket and it's really cool.Colin:So now, our customers moving forward, and we're trying to decide if we want to do this on only special occasions or on every day type of thing. We already plant a tree for every order, now we're going to be able to let our customers donate 10% or so of their order to a cause of their choosing, which I think is a really, really, really cool thing. I just don't know if the dollars and cents work, so we're testing it out to see what that looks like.Stephanie:Awesome. Yeah, that sounds like a good implementation. All right, the last one. What one thing will have the biggest impact on E-Commerce in the next year?Colin:I mean, COVID. COVID.Stephanie:Yeah.Colin:No doubt. It's blown up E-Commerce on a five to six year type of acceleration. The amount of people that are shopping online versus in-store has just grown dramatically, and I think that we're probably in this environment for another six to nine months, until a vaccine rolls out. So I think that this trend will only continue, and I think that that's been a huge, huge driver of E-Commerce, and I think it's both good and bad, obviously. It can be good for some industries and horrific for others, so it's also a logistics issue and everybody listening out there, when you order stuff online right now, it's not the brand's fault if it takes 14 days to get to you. FedEx is trying to hire 70,000 people by Christmas and they're not going to hit that, they're going to hit like 50,000, which is still a dramatic undertaking. But the amount of packages going out right now is just overwhelming the system that we built.Stephanie:Completely agree. All right, Colin, this has been a fun interview. Where can people find out more about Sheets and Giggles and yourself?Colin:I'm a pretty private person. I do have a public Twitter, Colin D. McIntosh. Sheets and Giggles, you can google us. SheetsGiggles.com is the website, no "and" in the URL, just SheetsGiggles.com, and then we're also on Amazon if you want to search for our sheets there, Sheets and Giggles. [inaudible] the sheets. And yeah, pretty easy to find. And then our social media, SheetsGiggles, so it's just at SheetsGiggles everywhere. On Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. We're a good follow, we promise. We don't just post pictures of our products all the time and people buy them. And we just hit 10,000 followers on Instagram, which I'm really excited about. We've never paid for a single follower, so it's fun to build this organic following over time.Stephanie:Oh, that's great. Yeah. Nice work there.Colin:Thanks.Stephanie:All right, Colin. Thanks so much for coming on. This has been a blast and we'll have to have you on again in the future.Colin:Thanks so much for having me. Hopefully when I come back on next time, we're a much bigger company and everybody's like, "Oh yeah, I've heard of that brand."Stephanie:They will have heard of it. Don't you worry.Colin:I hope so.

My guest in this episode is Colin Gray, he's a podcaster, international speaker, PhD and founder of The Podcast Host and Alitu: The Podcast Maker. Colin started out in Astrophysics, before realising, to his dismay, how much maths you had to do. Podcasting has less maths, but just as many puzzles, and fun ones at that.He started ThePodcastHost.com in 2011, and it's now one of the biggest and oldest Podcasting blogs on the web, dedicated to helping you create a successful show.He went on to found Alitu.com in 2018 to help podcasters create their shows more easily. It's a web app that takes care of the tech, by polishing, branding & publishing for you. It offers a custom set of tools for building and editing epic podcasts.Episode Links and Mentions:https://alitu.comhttps://www.thePodcastHost.com/academy/Did you Enjoy this Episode?Subscribe to this Podcast Here Prefer to Read? Here's the Transcript:Stephanie:Hello, thank you for joining me. You're listening to the profitable content marketing show. In this episode, I talk to Colin Gray about podcasting. If you've not heard of Colin before he is known as the podcast host, and he is a speaker, as well as the owner of a podcasting school. I met Colin in London around three years ago. He was speaking at the Youpreneur summit event. I believe it was actually the first event. And I got talking to Colin after his speaking gig. And I just love his down to earth approach. And the way his tips are just so doable. And this interview, we talked about, you know, how to stay consistent and how to improve your productivity as well as you know, it's not just the tips very often. It's also the tools we use. So Colin also shares this amazing tool. So if you are planning to start a podcast or you're podcasting already, but want to get faster and more productive, well, this episode is for you. So thanks for joining. Let's jump right in and hear what Colin has to say to him.Colin:Hi there. Thanks for having me on,Stephanie:Thank you very much for joining us. So Colin, I know that you actually teach podcasting, so you have a wealth of information to share with us. So I wanted to start by asking you one of the most common questions I hear, as you probably know I work with a lot of bloggers and content creators, so, and business owners. So we talk a lot about finding your voice when it comes to writing and making sure that you are authentic. Whereas with podcasts, of course, the actual voice can be heard. So we're talking also about, you know, perhaps excellence or lack of accent sometimes. Yes. What kind of advice do you give about this? Usually?Speaker 2:Yeah, it's, it's a tricky one and it's one of, it's definitely one of the most common things that come up. Like you say, it applies to just any content out there, but with podcasting, obviously voice, voice is so important because it's your voice that's actually been recorded. The advice I generally give is that podcasting is such a great medium because just about anyone can find fans for their voice. They can find somebody that will like the way they speak, the way they act, their ethos, their personality, all of those aspects. So the key thing really is to be yourself. And it's easy to say that I know, but the being yourself thing is so important because it's so much hater, so much harder to hight behind the mic. And it's so much easier, to be honest, transparent, open behind the making. I think the thing is with, you know, with blogging, you're kind of, you're hiding behind your typewriter.Colin:It's hard to get your typewriter by going back to the 1950s ranger keyboard. And...

PRESSURECAST: Destiny 2 Looks Great…Sounds Terrible (EPISODE ONE-HUNDRED-EIGHTY-TWO) Which One Is It, Colin? It’s Just a Press Event. Why is Everything So Complicated On This Show? I’m Unsubscribing. Leave Us A Voice Or Text Message 954-947-7377 Email Pressurecast@gmail.com Twitter: @VGADumb YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/VideoGamesAreDumb

Colin Pidd engages Jaap Jonkman, a consultant with decades of executive experience in the financial industry, in a conversation about leadership in the landscape of global finance. They discuss the importance of instilling shared purpose and empathy in organizations ranging from banks to correctional facilities, and the roles that both shared purpose in the workplace and a growing shared economy will have on the future. Highlights The lay of the land in banking is vastly different depending on geography and the strategy each country’s banks used to deal with the 2008 financial crisis, but what stays the same is the need for purpose. Instilling purpose is the future of banking, and it hinges on the ability to relate both to your customers and your employees on a genuine, empathetic level. In order to work toward being a successful banker or CEO, thinking long term and having the bravery to stand up and do differently is what will set you apart and ahead. Catering to customers and making money are not mutually exclusive aims. In fact, the more seriously you consider your customers and employees, the more superior your returns. The bridge between empathy and success in business is matching the purposes, concerns and circumstances of the other party with your own to meet a common end. Purpose is considering what it means to be human, what your opportunity is here and how you live that every day. From the Netherlands, All Over the World 0:43 Colin: With me is Jaap Jonkman, who spent a lot of time until recently in banking and finance. Today we’ll talk about the connection between purpose and empathy, which you don’t usually associate with finance and insurance. But first, Jaap, what made you decide to go into banking? 1:13 Jaap Jonkman: In university, I did economics with the purpose of getting out of the Netherlands as quickly as possible to see the world. I applied to many companies and the one that would send me abroad most quickly was a Dutch financial institution by the name of AMRO. So really, I joined banking because AMRO was the first to send me abroad. 1:56 Jaap: I worked in many countries. As the son of a diplomat, traveling was already in my blood. We went to Pakistan, Amsterdam, Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, Bangkok and many other places. 2:25 Jaap: We came to Sydney and Melbourne after I left AMRO and joined the National Australia Bank (NAB). I spent twelve years with them. The Global Banking Landscape 2:38 Colin: What do you see in banking right now and what is it time for? 3:23 Jaap: Because it’s difficult to see from a global perspective, it’s useful to split up into four different groups. You have American banks. America’s economy is going better than most of the others and what they did in 2008 was very rapidly take all their bad loans, put them into a separate vehicle and start again. You can see those banks starting to move back to the returns that were there before the crisis hit. They won’t get back to the same levels of return since 2004-2007 were quite extraordinary, but they will get to decent levels of profitability. 4:22 Jaap: If you look at Europe, it’s a different story. The countries went to austerity. The banks did not write off all of the loans and kept them on the books. As a result, their returns are dismal at this point. 4:59 Jaap: In the Australia system, there are four pillars so we came through 2008 quite unscathed. Our returns have been high—the highest in the world. 5:18 Jaap: The fourth category is the Chinese banks, which have been lending to a lot of state-owned companies, so it’s very hard to see how many loans are performing and how many are not. China’s economy has boomed, but it’s been a credit-fueled boom over the last few years. Purpose-Fueled Banking 5:51 Colin: As we speak to CEOs of banks all over the world, they talk more and more of this notion of purpose. 6:08 Jaap: Purpose is the future of banks—or at least some of the banks. Without banks, the economy would struggle. As an example, I was running a business bank for New South Wales in Australia and it was such a privilege to see the customers who had built small businesses from scratch. 6:40 Jaap: When we would visit, they were so proud of what they had built and said they owed some of it to their first bank manager twenty years before. When I was feeling down, I would go visit these customers. What is the decision I can make today, the value I can add today, that someone twenty years from now will talk about that silly Dutchman who had confidence in them? 7:30 Colin: Beyond what drives you, tell me about organizational purpose. Is it the same thing, and how do you use it? 7:41 Jaap: Purpose has an economic element to it, and banks play a very important element in that. There are two other elements: customers and employees. 8:01 Jaap: Currently, not just in banks, but in organizations we both work with, customer satisfaction and employee engagement are seen as methods to get more shareholder value. But if you think about purpose, they’re actually fantastic in their own right. If you ask the people who work in an organization, “What makes you tick?” it’s not that we had 12% ROI; it is really that they made that customer leave with a smile on their face or the community they work in is more of a community than when they began work there. 8:36 Jaap: To hold onto all of those elements at the same time is where purpose comes in. For humanity, our opportunity is to live and banks can help us do that. The Respected Banker 9:19 Colin: There’s a bank CEO in Australia who talks about wanting to make bankers more respectable, so people are proud to be bankers. Is that possible? 9:31 Jaap: It’s definitely possible, and it’s very important that it happens. The key question is, what is the timeframe? If you think you have to outperform this quarter or this year, then it will be much more difficult. It’s fun to work for a respected bank. It’s great to be a customer of a respected bank. And it’s great to be the shareholder or CEO of a respected bank. 10:06 Jaap: The first week Paul Polman arrived at Unilever, he went to the different hedge funds. He told them their plan to go longer term and that, while he understood the role that the hedge funds played, he said Unilever was not the right company for them to invest in because they had the longer-term view. There’s bravery in standing up and saying the type of shareholder you’re looking for are the ones who want to be around for the long run, with the promise to repay those returns over that period of time. Trying on the Customer’s Shoes 11:10 Colin: What does it really mean to be purpose driven and customer-centric? 12:01 Jaap: There’s a need to do something that’s right for the customer that’s a very heartfelt and genuine intent. It is perceived as bullshit if people say they’ve looked at the analysis, and to outperform the market, they have to focus on the customer. 12:30 Jaap: The wider view is to come back to purpose. Do you really want to add to your customers or do you just want to make more money? There is room for both. They do not have to be in conflict. 12:40 Colin: What you’re saying is being in community together. 12:57 Colin: That means you have to walk in the shoes of your customer, but that requires extraordinary self-awareness to become empathetic and neutral at the same time. 13:20 Jaap: When we talk about conversation, the fundamental premise we start with is if I have your best interest at heart and you have mine, we will feel that from one another. If I know about what you’re concerned about, what your purpose is and what your circumstances are, and you know mine, then together we will create something. 13:34 Jaap: This ability to step into each other’s shoes is the starting point for creating value. If bankers step into the shoes of their customers or the people that work for them, there’s huge progress to be made. 13:45 Jaap: And vice versa. Customers can be asked to understand the position of the bankers at times. It comes from both sides. You can’t expect a bank to support requests that are not worth supporting. 14:35 Jaap: I was reading a book the other day that talked about three things that define success, one of which was mutuality. These are principles not to live up to, but to live into. How can we, in any transaction, begin this together so it’s best for both of us? 15:14 Colin: It’s not about true altruism, is it? It’s actually what Peter Block talks about as “enlightened self-interest.” You’re self interested, but there’s a connection inside of it. 15:30 Jaap; If you listen to astronauts or people who do a lot of meditation, they say we are all one. So the idea is if 6 billion people are in a bad space and I’m in a good space, how does that feel? Mutuality can bring us together one-one-one, but also humanity as a whole. If banks start thinking, “What is our role in bringing forward humanity?” then over the long term they will get superior returns. Empathy as a Source Hope 16:06 Colin: Besides banking and finance, you’ve also worked in corrections. There’s the balance of issues of safety and protecting people through the notion of rehabilitation. What have you seen that gives you hope around that sector? 16:44 Jaap: It’s such a difficult place to be and comes back to empathy. If you’re in an environment where you feel physically threatened every moment, how do you strive for mutuality? 17:05 Jaap: What gives me great hope is that I’ve seen two expressions. The first one is the therapeutic (over punitive) approach. How can we help people move in the right direction beyond punishing them for what they’ve done? 17:32 Jaap: The other one is people who deal with difficult kids. They talk about trauma-informed learning, which also comes back to empathy. At any point in time, when you have direction with someone, you immediately put yourself in their shoes and think, “Where does this come from?” Instead of taking it personally, you understand the trauma this person has gone through. To step into these shoes takes so much patience, awareness and understanding, and the results are extraordinary. 18:48 Colin: That’s not just going to take a quick orientation program. What are some of the methods used in that kind of organization to get to that point? What can we take from that self-awareness, patience, discipline and courage in that kind of correctional organization into other places? 19:24 Jaap: The word that comes to me is integrity, which comes back to purpose. I’ve never comes across someone who doesn’t believe they have integrity. Everyone has integrity, even though our opinion of other people’s integrity is much easier to be negative about. Integrity is asking, “How do I want to live my life? Who do I want to be as a leader? What contribution do we want our organization to make to society?” 19:58 Jaap: The leaders that have inspired me are ones that have a high integrity in what they are trying to do in life and they way they showed up in every minute. Purpose is considering what it means to be human, what your opportunity is here and how you live that every day. 20:34 Colin: Another thing about working in a correctional facility is if you feel like an island, it’s really hard. But if you’re together, that is a source of integrity and purpose as well. 20:53 Jaap: Absolutely. And integrity is considering what the intent of the collective community is, what the strategies are, and how individuals behave inside that. A Shared Economy and the Future of Banking 21:50 Colin: This whole shared economy—Uber, Airbnb, etc.—what’s the future of that in banking? 21:58 Jaap: With crowd funding, you mean—people coming up with great ideas and other people supporting them? It will flourish. Everywhere we see any sharing going on it seems to work really well. 22:14 Jaap: The only thing I can’t get my head around is (probably because I’m an institutionalized banker after twenty years) is the idea of credit worthiness. There’s so much effort that goes into bank systems to identify what is a credit worthy activity to get into and what is not. For novices to do that on the web…I think there would be a lot of tears. So that’s the only thing I’m not sure if I can reconcile. 22:44 Colin: We also know that if I’m vulnerable with you and I trust you, I’m more likely to be accountable. 22:55 Jaap: Absolutely. Look at micro-financing, for example. People were skeptical about that. 23:05 Colin: What about the future of banking in a more general way? 23:08 Jaap: There will be commercial banks and I think there will also be another breed of banks that have the purpose of adding to society as much as they can. People will make a distinct choice to work there, bank there, and invest there. 23:44 Jaap: You’ll see a sharper delineation between the two, and there’s room for both. The question is where do you want to work, and where do you want to be a customer? 0000

Despite how many leaders habitually approach cultural change, force is not what is needed for evolution within an organization. Intentional thought and action is needed to effectively co-create the future of any company, starting with examining the stories and patterns we fall into that have us follow purposes that don’t serve us. We must look at the chasm between where we are and where we want to go, with actionable changes in our daily behaviors to get there. Highlights There is no such thing as “no culture” at an organization. Humans and culture go hand-in-hand. Culture change becomes a legitimate concern either when the organizational fails to evolve or when two disparate companies or parts of a company merge together. To effectively lead the evolution of a culture, first ask, “What new purposes cause our culture to be out of date?” Consensus does not allow the citizens of a culture to co-author the future. Co-creation is actively working with people as stewards of the culture. A real steward is willing to tell the truth about the mismatch between the mindless default purpose and the one that we say we want to aspire to. To change the culture, first look at what the stories and rewards are that support the present way of operating. Then see what new behaviors align with the purpose you aspire to. Fish Can’t See Water; Humans Can’t See Culture 0:33 Colin: Fish can’t see water. Just like human beings can’t see air. I’m hearing a lot about culture change and transformation. To some extent, culture is hard to see. I’ve been wondering about this notion of cultural transformation. 1:03 Colin: We play in that space. We help people shift how the work gets done and how people connect, but at the same time we see an enormous amount of waste. 1:27 Mickey: I feel strongly that the whole world of culture change has become over-intellectualized. Every time that happens—when people are more erudite than they are effective—they’re infecting the enterprise with waste. 2:14 Colin: Culture always exists. People say, “There’s no culture here.” Really? That’s like fish without water, human beings without air. 2:26 Colin: Culture is always there. You can be intentional about it or let it be how it is. The struggle is how to be intentional about it. Well-intended actions and thoughts in leadership are dangerously close to causing waste and worry, rather than this beautiful sense of “being” at work. The Two Causes for Why Culture Becomes a Concern 2:27 Mickey: When culture actually comes up as a legitimate or important concern, there are two reasons why. Part of the health of any organization lives in its ability to evolve. When the organization has not evolved consist with its strategy, there is a mismatch between how works gets done and the work that needs to be done now. 3:22 Mickey: That’s usually because the organization has been habituated to protecting its past and holding onto yesteryear without being conscious of what it’s costing them for today and tomorrow. It’s a failure to evolve. Cultures will evolve, if the people in them stay connected to their own aspiration and how they need to live and work in order to fulfill their own dreams. Organizational revolution is an act of desperation for people who are bad at evolution. Culture change is needed when there is a failure to evolve and now the company has to deal with it and accelerate their way through the evolution or putting together two vastly different elements of an enterprise coming together to create a culture that befits the strategic reason for their marriage. 5:08 Colin: It’s an act of morphing the culture. You don’t stop one culture and start another one. You might need a short-term engineering solution, but it has to come naturally really fast. Cultural Evolution as Co-Creation, Not Force 5:32 Colin: A great culture is allowing us to be truly human and the best of who we are as human beings. Culture is not a forcing exercise; culture liberates. 5:49 Mickey: The way that you’re able to lead the evolution of a culture where it’s an act of co-creation instead of force is to start with, “What new purposes now cause our culture to be out of date?” 6:15 Mickey: This question fits both the first category of needing to evolve and the second of merging organizations. If you don’t get to that question first, then culture change tends to be forced. If you actually do the work to reveal the purpose of two organizations merging, what contribution to customers are you now able to make that you couldn’t make separately? 6:54 Mickey: What new possibility are you now able to offer the world together that you couldn’t have separately? We have to take the time to get at what the purpose is that explains the cultural challenge. When you have the people who inhabit the culture who are authors of that new purpose, they will be co-creators of the new ways of working that make that purpose possible. 7:57 Mickey: You don’t want to start without purpose. You’re trying to push a demand for behaviors into people, so you’re taking away choice. There isn’t a purpose holding everyone together, so you’re taking away community. It’s being done to people rather than something they are the authors of, so you’re taking away their opportunity to contribute. Consensus vs. Co-Creation 8:17 Mickey: The idea of culture change—I don’t even like that word very much. Cultures evolve, because their reasons for existing and their aspirations evolve. 8:31 Colin: Cultures will evolve regardless. How do you have cultures evolve on purpose? The notion of co-creation intrigues me, because a word I’m allergic to is “consensus.” Co-creation is not the same as consensus. The challenge of consensus is that you finish with the lowest common denominator that’s very rarely inspiring, even if it’s “collaborative.” 9:07 Mickey: Consensus, like many dysfunctions, has a worthy intention buried in it, which is that we’re all in it together. The problem with consensus is that it does not require people to fully understand points of view outside of their own. To participate in consensus, all you have to do is say whether you like it or not. What is the takeaway when everyone has a power of veto? When you have some purpose at stake, and that purpose guides you instead of the opinions of individual people, you’re looking at what people are contributing that forwards the purpose. Stewards of Purpose 10:10 Colin: Co-creation and consensus are often mistaken to be the same thing, which begs the question, “Does a culture need stewards or is it a naturally fulfilling process?” 10:27 Mickey: There is the overall reason for the existence of a business or a product and inside of that there could be purposes that serve it. There do need to be people who are stewards of that purpose, because with that under the stress of reacting to the demands that are thrown at us everyday, we will lose touch with the guiding intent. 11:19 Mickey: That is when waste gets into the system fast, because people make choices in isolated ways, in “silos,” not conscious of whether they’re helping or hurting the overall purpose. 11:41 Mickey: The stewards are the guardians of what the guiding purposes are that you are going to stay true to and not betray. You are going to have those purposes produce value for your customers, for your investors and your colleagues. There have to be people who are devoted to the purpose and will not compromise. If you don’t have any, then that purpose isn’t real. Changing the Culture Starts with Seeing It 12:14 Colin: I’m reminded of work we did a few years ago with big global sportswear company, and there was a COO there who did think of himself as the steward. He used actors who wandered around the organization and were given complete freedom to walk around anywhere. Every three months, there was a two-hour play back of the culture of all of the things that the actors had seen. 12:54 Colin: The COO’s way of stewardship in the culture at that point was to have a way for people to see the culture. People were gobsmacked. Initially there was denial: “We don’t do that around here.” Then someone in the back of the room said, “Bullshit. That’s exactly how it is.” You could feel the room full of 50 global leaders freeze with horror, and the COO said, “I agree. Bullshit. That is what happens around here.” 13:44 Colin: That was an instance of truth accelerating the future and possibility. If we’re clear about purpose, we’re more courageous if we see something that damages that purpose. 14:50 Mickey: There always has to be purpose running a system or it wouldn’t stay together, but it could be default or dysfunctional purpose. 16:20 Mickey: If you have a system that says it has a purpose and yet the results are inconsistent with it, you can bet there’s another purpose that’s ruling the system. A real steward is willing to tell the truth about the mismatch between the mindless default purpose and the one that we say we want to aspire to. The Stories Told About You 16:32 Colin: Where I see people taking care of the culture, they share stories of those moments where teams talk about what they feel really good about and where they fell over and then distill the DNA of the stories. Sharing stories can be a way more potent measurement of accomplishment than surveys (well-intentioned as they are). 17:30 Mickey: If you see that there’s a mismatch between the way work is getting done today and the way work needs to be done to fulfill a new aspiration, you have to identify what the purpose historically has been. What are the stories and rewards that support the present way of operating? 18:02 Mickey: Everything improves by starting with what’s present. Look at the purpose that is running the place now. Then look at what the purpose is for your future that the current way of working cannot achieve. 18:31 Mickey: As an act of co-creation, the representatives of the system come together saying, “Is that really our aspiration? Are we really here for that purpose?” If so, then what behavior does that new purpose require? You’re creating the culture standing on what your past contributes to the purpose and what you have no been reliable for that is needed today. 19:18 Colin: The challenge is not to see culture as some artifact “over there.” Each one of us is a fractal of the culture. You bring the down the personal. What are the stories people really tell about you when you’re not in the room? And what do you want that story to be? 20:24 Mickey: Focus on, “What new intention do we have?” Find pieces of the system that have lessons inside them that will affect the whole system. Then go make that happen, behaving the way that aspiration requires. Then let the stories unfold from that. 20:46 Mickey: The well-placed accomplishment of a new possibility authored by people who are citizens of the system (not consultants who are brought in to change them) is the fastest way to seed and grow a culture that fits the strategy.

Again and again, organizations are expending way too much effort, while still causing very little positive change to show for their work. More engagement surveys haven’t been the answer, so what is? Leaders need to foster the natural circumstances that make people want to do the work to create measurable results. Learn which key promises to make (and keep) to accelerate vitality and productivity in your workplace. Highlights Many responses to breakdowns in performance assume that people don’t want to do the work, but in reality they’re just disappointed in the impact they’re making. What if wholehearted effort is natural state for humans? And if it’s natural for people to want an environment of community, contribution and choice, then perhaps it’s also natural to create that environment. When leaders keep the seven vitality promises, wholehearted effort is a normal part of the work. The promises are: presence, empathy, purpose, authenticity, wonder, timing, and surprising results. Cultivating authenticity is based in truth: giving it, receiving it, and holding true to what you stand for. Wonder is about resilience and being tough enough to hold possibility in the face of unfriendly conditions. Too Much Effort for Too Little Return 0:13 Colin: G’day, hello, bienvenue, ni hao. Nice to be here, Leaders, Bosses and Bastards. Mickey, what’s been on your mind? 0:21 Mickey: Many things. What I’ve really been thoughtful about is how much effort we keep seeing in companies per unit of result. 0:35 Colin: Smart thing to talk about. We’re going to spend time talking about waste, value, what the difference is, and what causes one or the other. 0:44 Mickey: I want us to get into where we see a lot of big organizations unhappy with the results they’re producing and how much time, money and effort they’re putting in. Most culture change initiatives take way too much time and money per unit of impact. Change management in general has way too much time, money and stress for the rate at which positive change occurs. 1:16 Mickey: Most leadership development investments are so weak in terms of their return on investment that it has to be source of frustration for a lot of people. We see performance systems management, measures, a lot of effort, and yet not a lot of deeply satisfying results. Massive amounts of money that has been put into assessing, understanding and explaining employee engagement—compare that with how satisfied people are with their ability to cause employee engagement. 2:02 Colin: We’re not saying these aren’t good things to pay attention to. We’re saying: are we paying the right kind of attention? 2:11 Mickey: I mention these because they’re all places worth our attention and that people we know and admire care about. But the way we’ve gone after change management, culture change, leadership development, performance management, employee engagement means we’re spending too much time and money per unit of impact. 2:37 Mickey: If you want to take waste out of organizations and repurpose those dollars (and time) in a way that’s more beneficial for investors, for customers, for colleagues, we have to take those areas on and look at them because they’re places where huge time and money is expended. People Don’t Fear Hard Work 3:01 Colin: I want to clear a bias: I don’t think people fear hard work. People don’t mind putting in discretionary effort. So it’s not about lack of resilience, it’s about saying, “What are the conditions that help me thrive at work?” 3:28 Mickey: That’s related to employee engagement. If you ask people why they care about employee engagement, they’ll talk about discretionary effort. We actually have found that’s a natural state for the vast majority of people who work in organizations. People enjoy giving wholehearted effort. 3:50 Mickey: The problem is not that people don’t want to do the work. That’s why a lot of responses to breakdowns in performance are really off, because they’re not dealing with the truth. It’s usually that people are disappointed in the impact they’re making. Not only don’t we mind effort, but we love to be tired from a worthy cause, having given all we have and seeing a brilliant result. The stress that comes from continually expending huge amounts of energy and not getting a result is what fatigues. 4:33 Colin: If you go back in history, we had satisfaction surveys, commitment surveys, and since the early 90’s we’ve had engagement surveys. They’re well intentioned people trying to understand something about the nature and conditions of work that have us be at our best. 4:53 Mickey: As well intended as that all is, there are some habits that have come from those surveys. One habit is thinking that spending money on surveys is the same as investing in employee engagement. That’s turned into a frequently thoughtless habit. 5:15 Colin: It’s a habit we’re now seeing in more organizations than we used to that have decided to no longer do, because they’re not actually returning anything. Those surveys become a small problem solving exercise rather than creating a great place for work. 5:38 Mickey: Still, people are out there spending a lot of time and money assessing something rather than causing it. We should notice that one does not necessarily take care of the other. What’s flawed about various tests that say whether people are wholehearted, for instance, is that many people relate to it by thinking, “I have to change something in people for them to be more wholehearted.” What if people are already wholehearted and what do we have to do is stop the things that interfere with that? 6:25 Mickey: That’s something that intellectually people can get pretty quickly, but not practically—in terms of how most of the big organizations that we go into run, their habitual way of operating. What Links Community, Contribution, and Choice to Surveys 6:43 Colin: Let’s talk about how we might change that habit or what can be done that has us pay the right attention to creating value in organizations. Last time we spoke, we talked about the notion of community, contribution, and choice: “If I feel like I belong, that people have my back, like my contribution is valued, and I get excited by what I’m contributing, and I have a place to make smart choices for myself in service of my community and what we care about, then I have a sense of vitality and wanting to contribute.” What’s the link between community, contribution and choice and what we’re trying to achieve with engagement surveys? 7:25 Mickey: That leads me back to something we said last time: We believe most large organizations are being run inconsistent with the nature of being human. 7:38 Mickey: It’s natural for people to come together and for them to feel safer and more satisfied together than they do separately. That’s where community arises naturally. And as we were talking about a moment ago, people love seeing a high return on effort. They loving seeing they made a big difference, and that’s contribution. And people love being treated like they have the dignity of making choices and being trusted that they are here for the community and making a valuable difference. If it’s natural for people to want that environment of community, contribution and choice, then perhaps it’s also natural to create that environment. 8:18 Mickey: What we’ve looked at over the last 10 years are the ways that people inside of organizations operate that help or hurt that natural state of community, contribution and choice. If you want to see whether engagement is present, all you have to do is check whether people feel a sense of belonging and trust in one another, whether they’re pleased with the difference they’re making, and whether they’re doing the work out of their own love for the work rather than out of obligation. If that’s all there, don’t worry about engagement. Just go help them do good things. 9:11 Colin: Think about your own experience at work and what was there for you and how people were to you. Think about when you’re in a conversation with a boss or a colleague and you’re actually in a real conversation because you are present with each other and you’re in the work together. Being together and present is basic. The Vitality Promises 9:42 Mickey: That is the first of the seven vitality promises. Last time we didn’t specifically mention those promises. 9:55 Colin: These promises are conditions that leaders promise to create. 9:57 Mickey: You named the first promise, which is presence. We’re fully with whom we’re with in the present moment. We think of presence as awareness without prejudice. When you have so much of yourself given to this moment and the people you’re with, your awareness of what is happening is rich and clear and heightened. You bring openness, a lack of prejudice, and curiosity. Presence is a promise to be fully present rather than being distracted, fragmented, annoyed and biased. 10:38 Colin: The limit of prejudice is empathy in the sense that if I am truly in your shoes I am aware without prejudice. 10:45 Mickey: Which is why empathy flows from presence, and it’s the second promise. The first promise is presence; everything starts there. And if you’re fully with another human being, you get pretty quickly they want to be understood and valued and for someone to appreciate “what it’s like” for them. There’s an extraordinary body of research over the past fifteen years where people have taken what we’ve previously believed to not be business, but “soft stuff,” and we’ve found out it’s actually affecting the P&L, the balance sheet and the cash flow. 11:35 Mickey: To say “I don’t have time for empathy” means, “I don’t have time to understand the motivations, desires, and capabilities of the people I work with.” If you say that out loud, it’s irrational. Especially in an environment where you have less supervision, there are people who are working under their own recognizance and separated from their formal supervisors logistically. They really do need to be understood and the more people are fully respected, understood and appreciated, the more it’s natural that they give that effort. 12:22 Mickey: Let me go ahead and say the rest of the seven promises, so I don’t belabor them and they come up naturally. Here are the seven promises that when leaders keep these promises, wholehearted effort is a normal part of the work: presence, empathy, purpose, authenticity, wonder, timing, and surprising results. 12:38 Mickey: The first is presence, which is real awareness without prejudice; the second is empathy, which is appreciating the purposes, concerns and circumstances of others; the third is purpose, that people have a reason for work they find important, inspiring and useful—why we work, not just what we do; the fourth promise is authenticity, that we live truthfully with one another, which we’ve found accelerates success through contribution; the fifth is wonder, the promise that you keep an environment of possibility, creativity and openness to curiosity; the sixth promise is timing, to help people get the most out of every moment while learning to answer the question, “What achievement is it time for now?” and putting resources behind that, so instead of doing everything you do the things that make a difference; and the last promise is surprising results, giving people the support they need to surprise themselves making the difference they want to make. Those promises are all keep-able promises and they give rise to this natural state of community, contribution and choice. 14:16 Colin: Are the promises learnable or are they just inherently true? 14:22 Mickey: There are things that I think are inherently possible for everyone, but we are not present enough in order to be true to the nature of them. For instance, everyone wants to be understood, so that means we probably have within us some capability of empathy. But if we’re not conscious and present, we don’t bring it to bear in the right moment. All of these promises are learnable, and they’re “wake-up-able.” For the vast majority of human beings, these promises are part of our nature and we just need to be awake enough to actually cause them. The Three Facets of Authenticity 15:57 Colin: This morning I was buying coffee early and I bumped into the CFO of one of Australia’s larger organizations. He was talking about this notion of purpose, how it was taking so much time and how he was okay with that. What intrigued me is that he saw the commercial value in what would take a one or two year process, and he also said, “We needed a poet in the room.” 16:30 Mickey: There are things that have gone missing for a couple of generations in the way that we design supervision of employees in large organizations. Right now we’re working on taking the waste out of organizations and getting the design of work to be more consistent with the nature of humans. The nature of humans includes the poet and the kind of longing and joy and sadness that everyone experiences all the time. The poets aren’t afraid of any part of being human and neither should an organizational leader. 17:16 Colin: David Whyte, the poet, talks about how great poetry is the truth. It’s undeniable truth. As you said earlier, the truth accelerates success. What’s that about? 17:40 Mickey: “What does truth mean?” is a question that’s big enough to not ever trivialize by finishing the answer. There is telling the truth: are you saying things as far as you know them to be true? There’s also being able to hear the truth. Another part of authenticity is, “Am I able to put aside my own bias, preference and prejudice to allow the truth to touch me?” It’s extraordinary how with our own ears we can pervert what is said to us, to help us avoid harsh truths. A third form of truth is staying true to something. Authenticity is telling the truth, it’s hearing it, and it’s adding to it. 18:33 Mickey: There are so many things we see inside of big companies that are tried but never authenticity devoted. “Oh, we tried that purpose thing. A purpose-driven company, yeah, one or two quarters we stayed with that.” Even when we ask what they did those one or two quarters, their efforts are not wholehearted. There’s a failure to be true to something. 19:02 Mickey: When you’re talking about authenticity, you have to—minimum—include those three things: being able to give the truth, receive the truth and stay true to something. 19:12 Colin: That’s important. I have seen way too often that people sometimes use truth as a weapon—colloquially called “front-stabbing”: “I’m telling the truth and it’s tough, but you have to suck it up.” It’s brutal, and it’s not the kind of organization you want to be in, even if you want to hear the truth. 19:40 Mickey: This notion of front-stabbing has been very hot of late. When you front-stab happens, that is telling the truth of my perspective without being willing to hear yours. You have to have both. Front stabbing is making you responsible for dealing with my opinion. 20:10 Mickey: If you’re a real leader of community, whether you have a formal position or not, causing people to gather together and assemble stronger together than they are separated, then one of the things you’re really good at is telling the truth in a way that actually connects with what is valued and legitimate for the other. 20:33 Mickey: We’ve done a lot of work in this area, and there is a real art to being able to tell a connected truth rather than attacking truth. Wonder 12:45 Colin: What you’re saying is truth has to have empathy with it and the other promises we’ve been talking about, because they’re so interconnected. Some of them you’re reasonably good at naturally and some of them you have to work at, but the one for me that I really delight in is wonder: this notion that you can play with the possibility of a different future without evidence to start with, delighting in the childlike notion of, “What if we did this? How about that?” We’re seeing such rapid prototyping, experimentation and disruption that without wonder you’re going to lose your advantage. 21:40 Mickey: Wonder is a strength for me. Most people when they talk about possibility or creativity or wonder don’t speak of it in the domain of strength—and even toughness. Are you tough enough to wonder in the face of unfriendly conditions? Who can wonder well enough to turn disappointment into return on investment? 22:18 Mickey: Wonder is extraordinarily important. As we said earlier, these promises are not “soft.” To those that say they are: I would invite you to have a cup of coffee with me so we can discuss it. 22:31 Colin: Wonder in an act of oxygenation. It enlivens your work and all of the sudden a way forward appears to emerge. 22:47 Mickey: Let’s look at where we started this conversation: we see way more wasted effort than we are willing to stand by and not do anything about. We see all of these organizations with people trying really hard and ending up disappointed. Some questions that would be really good for anyone who is listening to think about are: “What’s interfering with my sense of community, belonging and trust? What’s interfering with my natural desire to contribute? And what might be in the way of me expressing a choice rather than an obligation?” 23:52 Colin: That picks up the last two promises, which are “What is it time for now?” and “Why shouldn’t we always be in the presence of extraordinary results?” I’ll come back to something you said at the beginning: the question is, “What are we causing?” Pay attention to moments of, “What did I cause just then, just now, and yesterday? What do I want to cause tomorrow?” Think about cause rather than engagement.

Leaders, bosses, and bastards: we all know them, we’ve been them, and we’ve probably been all three at some point in each of our lives. What sets a leader apart from a boss or a bastard? Mickey and Colin dive into the distinguishing pair of features that lead in conjunction with one another: care and sense of direction—neither should be mutually exclusive and both can result in extraordinary economic value. Highlights The labels “leader,” “boss” and “bastard” are triggering across cultures, because you’ve met all three and it’s possible for each of us to be all three at the same time. The connection we have with one another affects both the enjoyment and the productivity of work. It’s economically rational to care. It actually saves time. In terms of business results, caring creates extraordinary value. People don’t fear change; people fear failure. People are not fatigued with change. They’re fatigued with badly organized and designed change. When people feel endangered it is often because they believe people in leadership don’t understand their situation. They begin to question the direction of the organization. Care is not “touchy-feely.” Care is noticing where the organization might risk squandering a chance to profit from the talents of its people and addressing it in a timely way. To move from bastard to leader, change your focus from deciding that everyone should see what you see and think understanding that everyone has different things to give. If you care enough to cause the connections that allow the organization as a whole to build a bridge together, you will produce a measurable impact with less time, money, and stress. The Origin of Leaders, Bosses and Bastards 0:06 Colin: Thanks for joining us. “Leaders, Bosses and Bastards,” are you Americans so rude? 0:16 Mickey: We are, in many parts of the United States, masters of rudeness. In other places, we are much more decorous. But I think everybody has something get triggered when you hear those three words: leaders, bosses, and bastards. Ah, I have known them all. 0:37 Colin: Have you been them all? 0:39 Mickey: It’s early in this. I didn’t want to get to the self-flagellation so quickly. Yes, there is evidence and there are many people who could testify that I have been all three. And you, sir, have you found yourself leader, boss and bastard, or are you somehow more cleansed? 1:01 Colin: Well, I like to live in denial, but I think of course it could be said. It’s interesting, but the phrase is the truth of many of our experiences as being led by some people. 1:21 Colin: I was really fortunate to be part of a really significant study in the early nineties. Here in Australia we went to look at organizations and why people would want to do more than the normal and breakout, with a really smart guy called John Evans. When subjects talked informally about what leadership was like around them, those words came up again and again and again, as if they were truth. 1:48 Colin: I began to realize, the words were true. There’s something about them that spoke to everybody. I loved it from that point: that you could categorize people, and once you really get underneath it, play with what it’s about. What makes a leader, what makes a boss, what makes a bastard and what’s the differentiation? The confronting reality is that you can be all three. 2:15 Mickey: There’s something to revere about images that seem to resonate across cultures, across time, across generations, because they are a window to something truthful. When so many different people laughed, they had this smile of recognition, followed by some painful reminiscence when they kept hearing those words or same them for themselves. 2:44 Mickey: That’s what opened the window to: if this is so reliably a trigger, what’s the truth of that? How does it work? What has somebody show up as a leader in my life–somebody who I’m grateful for and we’ve gotten to a place where we might not have otherwise arrived at? 3:06 Mickey: Or a boss–somebody who seems rich with instruction. Or a bastard–somebody who I can’t tell cares a whole lot. 3:17 Colin: Well, they care about themselves, quite often. It’s careless, it’s not all that altruistic. 3:23 Colin: The other thing too as I began to pay attention to this language and this notion, which on one level does sound so unsophisticated, the more I looked at it, I thought, “There is some depth here.” A leader could be a bastard for one person, a boss for another person, and a leader for somebody else. You could actually be a leader, boss and bastard at exactly the same time, for different kinds of people. 3:59 Colin: That starts to do your head in, when you start to think about how you can become better at leading and less a bastard. The Art of Connection 4:06 Mickey: That brings us to the reason we even care about this “Leaders, Bosses and Bastards.” It’s a large, lifelong, pretty-darn-rich-so-far investigation into how the connection we have with one another affects both the enjoyment and the productivity of work. 4:36 Mickey: It could be all three, because I could be well connected to you, distracted and semi-connected to somebody else, and completely disconnected from a third. Do the same thing, and that difference in connection gives me radically difference results. 4:54 Mickey: One of the things I hope we get to with some enjoyment and a little rigor is, “How do you keep managing that quality of connection?” so I’m not accidentally a bastard when I thought I felt so “leaderly.” 5:20 Mickey: If you ask people, “Who was someone in your life who made an enduring difference? Whether they would call themselves a leader, you know they provided something that was a leading edge for your life that you still thrive on today.” Some of the things we’ve arrived at that create leader, boss or bastard, they report. 5:53 Mickey: Because this is so resonant, so archetypical, and it seems to get the attention of a lot of different people, you and people you respect looked into what explains that these archetypes seem to resonate so quickly. The Balanced Need for Direction and Care 6:13 Mickey: You got to something I find to be both simple and really productive. What organizes our thinking to be able to tell, “Am I occupied in the bastard spot, boss spot or leader spot at a given moment, with a given set of people?” 6:40 Colin: Where you saw a leader who had a sense of direction, a sense of movement, and where we’re going, but was disconnected at the heart level, the care level, people were interested in the direction but were still observers of the direction rather than participants. 7:18 Mickey: Also, tentative about the direction. They respected it, it made sense, but they didn’t find themselves wholeheartedly pulled into it. 7:28 Colin: That’s what I call a good boss–a kind hearted he or she who’s thought that out; however, when we saw a boss who actually understood “who I was”–not just what I could contribute–the need for detail on that sense of direction could be a lot less. 8:00 Colin: When you think about that given the world we’re in, into prototyping and emergence where there often isn’t the detail, with sufficient and the right kind of connection or care, you can live inside that complexity and keep moving and enjoy it as best you can. The boss just needed a shift of adding care into the equation. 8:29 Colin: In other words, it’s economically rational to care. It actually saves time. It’s not some touchy-feely crap that nice people do. Just in business results terms, caring creates extraordinary value. 8:58 Mickey: There’s something innately human and needed about being connected as human beings who deserve to be heard and understood. That’s in this care domain. And in that other domain you talked about, there is this sense of direction, of destination, and some notion of how we might get there–not all laid out in perfect detail, because as you said, we go through these cycles of discovery and we can fill out our plan as we live our way toward it. But all care with no semi-pragmatic understanding of how we might get there, that can cause damage too. 9:50 Colin: When we first began playing with this notion, we had four categories, which were: leader, boss, bastard and silly old bastard. What you just described is a “silly old bastard,” which is the person who cares with no sense of direction. In the end, that decays. You get dithering, paternalism, and there’s no growing up occurring. 10:22 Colin: The sense of direction without any sense of care, that’s boss-like. You can’t fault it in the sense of direction, but you don’t liberate the capacity to live inside complexity. All care without direction is dithering and patronizing. In the end, you want to go somewhere else because you want to make a contribution. 10:50 Colin: We know from your research, if there’s not a place for me to make a contribution, then I’m actually tired and withdrawn. Looking Forward with Care and Destination 11:03 Mickey: In the work we’ve done with senior leaders using horses, one of the early things we want them interested in is to care about what it’s like for the horse. You have to learn to speak “horse” and how the horse processes information, thinks, and feels. That’s the care part of the equation. Early on, people are enamored with how if they connect well with the horse that way, the horse actually becomes less resistant and more cooperative. 11:49 Mickey: The next thing we add in is to create something to do with the horse. The earliest thing we do is to have somebody take the horse away from the herd and have them walk to a distant tree. What would happen is these people who were all caught up with feeling for the horse would start looking down on their horse. What would happen? The horse would stop. All you have to do is lift your head up and look at the tree, and the horse can feel the sense of direction and destination. 12:31 Mickey: Now you have those two together: care for the animal and a bridge to your destination. Fear of Failure, Not Fear of Change 12:42 Colin: What does that look like in strategy terms? Let’s take it inside an organization, because I don’t think everybody wants to think of themselves as a horse. 12:55 Mickey: I think of it mostly when there’s change in an organization, when you get new senior leadership coming in, a new CEO, chairman of the board, other significant leadership turnover, or when there’s a major divestiture, an acquisition, or merger. When there’s significant change in a business both direction and care come to the fore. A lot of people say that people fear change, but I haven’t found that to be the case. People fear failure. 13:33 Mickey: If the change threatens their ability to make a useful difference and be valuable, people get very resistant. If you want people to thrive in the face of change, they need people who care about what it’s like for them to go through it, and they also need something to contribute to. 13:55 Mickey: Maybe in the early days we don’t know the next three years, strategically; however, we do know we have to integrate our IT systems, we do know we have two completely different and incompatible management systems, etc. There are some things we do know. Let’s take those on and we are going to in the next 90 days take the best from each and build our new system. 14:32 Mickey: Treating people with dignity (that’s the “care” aspect) and giving them a job to take care of (the new system) gives them momentum and a chance to make a difference. In that, you discover a lot about the future. 14:48 Mickey: Almost all strategy now is emerging. It’s not known ten years out, but we always do know something. If you give people that destination, but they don’t sense you care about creating an opportunity for them to contribute to, you drop the care part. If you get people together and tell them how much you feel for them going through the tumult and change, but you don’t give them some place to go to, then you’ve lost the bridge. There are just cycles of that. We do what we need to meet the known objective and let what we learn keep illuminating what the strategic opportunities are. 15:36 Colin: You just alerted to something else that sits inside of that. And I agree with you; I hear a lot of people say, “Our people are change-fatigued.” And I don’t think people are fatigued with change. They’re fatigued with badly organized and designed change. Transformation, done well, can be invigorating and enjoyable. And it can be tiring, but name one thing in your life that you’ve felt good at that hasn’t been a little bit of exhaustion. Why Followers Seek Answers about Direction 16:15 Colin: And the reverse is true in thinking about it from the other side. If you’re taking care of leading people and you’re getting lots of questions about detail, that’s also a signal of insufficient care. 16:32 Colin: The number of times I get asked, “Can you come and help us with role clarity?” But when I hear that again and again, the first place I look is not is there insufficient information, but is there lack of care causing that request. 16:50 Colin: It’s very difficult to ask for care. You can only ask for information, for clarity of direction. So the asking for care can come in the form of “I want more information.” 17:10 Mickey: This notion of care deserves more than just shallow consideration. It’s not just the personal and emotional concern for another human. It’s also concern for the situation they’re in. If people don’t think that I really understand what they’re in, how it works, what its opportunities are, what its risks are, they experience that as a lack of care and it will have them feel like they’re in danger. They’re endangered because someone who has power doesn’t understand their situation. 17:47 Mickey: That will have me ask questions. I want assurances about how the future is going to go, because I can’t count on you to know what I’m actually in, so maybe you can give me more detail on where we’re going. Care is caring about the conditions, the circumstances, and the people who occupy those. 18:08 Mickey: It’s amazingly inconsistent with the nature of being human, to act like clarifying the plan can in any way make up for having a connection with people in which they feel respected, included, and regarded. 18:38 Mickey: People are also constantly looking for “what’s the path forward?” We need both. We need care and the destination. We need the path and care for the people who are trodding the path. Care and Confrontation 18:57 Colin: It’s an interesting challenge here, because care is scary. You can read books, you can work out how to use Gantt charts and all of that, but the care thing can be confronting. 19:16 Colin: “I’m introverted. I’m not someone who has high emotion. Does that mean I’m never going to be a leader? Is it impossible because I don’t have those things?” We’re not asking we become teddy bears, are we? No, in fact care can be confronting. 19:30 Mickey: Three months ago, I saw a relatively new CEO, who is in his first six months. The question is, “Who’s actually running this company going forward?” Some people were going to leave and some people were going to stay. 19:57 Mickey: There was someone that the CEO thought was really talented and had a whole lot to give and he was getting in his own way with his apparent disregard for view of others. Intellectually brilliant and he keeps occurring to other people on the executive team that if they ever say anything inconsistent with his point of view that he’s disinterested. 20:32 Mickey: The CEO sat him down, in an act of care, and he said, “There are two things I want you to know: you’re one of the more talented people whom I’ve met in my thirty year career; and you are one of the people most at risk of not making it through the transition of this company. I want us to talk about that, because if you don’t make it through, it will be us squandering a chance to profit from your really unusual talents.” 21:13 Colin: That is a beautiful act of care. That’s not “touchy-feely, blah blah.” No, this is about 21:28 Mickey: It’s not to be shallowly understood, this notion of care. And also, what you said earlier about change—it’s so difficult to discuss change because there are so many hackneyed things said about it. There is no question that life itself is dynamic, and just about the time I think I’ve got it all together and things are working brilliantly and beautifully, something in the conditions changes. 22:10 Mickey: We know that life is dynamic; it’s constantly moving. Do we help people profit from that movement, actually enjoy that movement, keep discovering new things we can do given the movement? It takes both–care and bridge–to be able to do that. If you don’t have both, you end up having people who don’t engage in the change as a chance to make an even bigger difference. 22:41 Mickey: Organizational revolution is an act of desperation for people who are bad at evolution. What you said hit me—this care and bridge duality is important to be able to lead evolving enterprise. No Care, No Bridge, All Bastard 23:03 Colin: Let’s take this thing with bastards: I say “bastard” and others say, “b—.” Bastard is the identity and act of no care and no bridge. 23:17 Mickey: There are people who get trapped in a way of being that is demand without care or bridge. Usually the way you find out what is important to that person is after you do something wrong in their eyes; you lack that information ahead of time, so you are constantly in danger of being a disappointment. 23:54 Mickey: A bastard is a person who has their own ideals and notions of what great looks like, but they don’t actually do the work to work with people. If they did, those would be shared ideals, which would be an act of care. And they don’t do the work to have a sense of the journey and know if they’re going to be on that journey with others, it will be shared. “No, I’m just going to sit over here, with my right to judge.” 24:27 Colin: I used to report to a CEO who I think fits pretty much in this category. In many ways this person was good at care and actually was brilliant at seeing the future, but was very inconsistent, around the “care” piece particularly. 24:54 Colin: I began to know this person was a bastard and I didn’t want to be there anymore, because he would walk into a meeting and the first thing that would go through my head was, “I hope he’s had a good day.” The moment that’s gone through your head, what is the capacity for anyone else in that room to be brilliant, smart, brave, connected? Zero. 25:14 Colin: He was only connected to his own circumstances and fears. 25:19 Mickey: There are a lot of people who occur as bastards, who in their own minds just think of themselves as having very high standards. Frequently, it’s people who don’t stop and consider that maybe they have some abilities that are unique to them. Making a Measurable Impact as Leaders Rather than decide we should all see what they see and think what they think, maybe understand we all have different things to give. If you care enough to cause the connections that allow us to build the bridge together, we could produce some amazing things. 26:01 Mickey: That’s what I care about as we go forward in our podcast. The thing that we’ve both lived our way to caring about is proving you can produce bigger results faster but managing both care and direction. 26:29 Mickey: I like what you said about the economics of care. Caring actually has economic benefit, as does helping people clarify the bridge to where you’re going. This is about making a measurable impact and doing it with less time, money, and stress than a boss or a bastard. 27:00 Mickey: What’s the leader doing? Getting a lot more done with less time money and stress— 27:05 Colin: —for themselves, as well as for others. And if they happen to have a family, it will include their family, by the way. There’s a whole lot here about wellbeing that we don’t even want to get into today. Please email info@conversant.com for questions or feedback

From The Two Ronnies to Blackadder…from Benny Hill to Marty Feldman… the golden years of British television comedy produced some of the funniest shows and larger-than-life characters the world has ever seen. Garry’s guest tonight COLIN EDMONDS has dominated British television comedy writing for four decades – and he knew them all… the stars, the monsters, the legends and the lunatics! Click to buy from Amazon If names such as Les Dawson, Lilly Savage, Paul Daniels, Julian Clary, Barbara Windsor and – of course – Bob Monkhouse – evoke fond memories… then you’re going to love tonight’s show! Of course, the tradition of bawdy British comedy goes right back to the world of the music hall… from which Colin draws his inspiration for his new novel, Steam, Smoke & Mirrors: with insights and extracts from the secret journals of Professor Artemus More PhD (Cantab) FRS. Set in a Steampunk vision of Victorian Britain Steam, Smoke & Mirrors is “Victorian science fiction”, says Colin: “It’s so sexy! Men in top hats and women in thigh-length boots! Steampunk is on a roll!” >>>>>> Download the show as mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes

From The Two Ronnies to Blackadder…from Benny Hill to Marty Feldman… the golden years of British television comedy produced some of the funniest shows and larger-than-life characters the world has ever seen. Garry’s guest tonight COLIN EDMONDS has dominated British television comedy writing for four decades – and he knew them all… the stars, the monsters, the legends and the lunatics! Click to buy from Amazon If names such as Les Dawson, Lilly Savage, Paul Daniels, Julian Clary, Barbara Windsor and – of course – Bob Monkhouse – evoke fond memories… then you’re going to love tonight’s show! Of course, the tradition of bawdy British comedy goes right back to the world of the music hall… from which Colin draws his inspiration for his new novel, Steam, Smoke & Mirrors: with insights and extracts from the secret journals of Professor Artemus More PhD (Cantab) FRS. Set in a Steampunk vision of Victorian Britain Steam, Smoke & Mirrors is “Victorian science fiction”, says Colin: “It’s so sexy! Men in top hats and women in thigh-length boots! Steampunk is on a roll!” >>>>>> Download the show as mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes