Eric Housh

Welcome to the Fast Slow Motion podcast where we share strategies, ideas, and insights to help you build a business you love while enjoying your life. I’m your host, Eric Housh and joining me today is Fast Slow Motion’s CEO, John Burdett.

John Burdett

Eric, great to be here as always.

Eric Housh

John, I’m super fired up about today’s episode. I would love to pass the mic to you, let you introduce our guest.

John Burdett

Yeah, it’s definitely an honor. Cord is a good friend and mentor and we’ve known each other for many years now. We’re not going to share how long that’s been because it’ll make us both sound really old, but Cord is a,  an ultimate entrepreneur. He’s a serial entrepreneur. He’s created multiple impactful businesses. He currently owns and has founded two that are really thriving and doing well. FireSeeds and WildSpark He’ll tell you a little bit more about those in just a little bit, but

Cord

Yes it will.

John Burdett

They’re real passionate about developing leaders. call it multiplying leaders, both helping finding good leaders and then developing those leaders once you get them on board. So it’s it’s a great intersection, intersection of leadership development, culture development, and really business development from growing a company that is successful, sustainable, and built on top of leaders. So cord, welcome to the show. We’re so excited to hear from you and learn from you.

Cord

It is an honor to be here. When you get to  be in great company with those that may buy into what we’re going to talk about today, culture and growing leaders and multiplying people and just knowing that that has been a part of your keys to success over the years as I’ve been able to follow you and your many transitions. So,  love being here and excited for where this goes.

Eric Housh

Yeah, Cord, we’re super excited to dig in with you and talk more. There may be some listeners out there that may not be familiar with FireSeeds or WildSpark. So can we just start right there? Walk us through what each company does and what problems you’re trying to solve for founders.

Cord

Yeah, absolutely. Well, 14 years ago now, started the first company called FireSeeds. And FireSeeds, at the end of the day, I loved culture and I loved helping companies really.

bottle their culture, be intentional around their culture, transform their business success by culture.  And so as I had bought and sold, or I had sold a previous company, I really had the gift of time to kind of sit in, okay, what do want to build? What kind of company do I want to build? And I knew I wanted to do that. I wanted to help companies with culture. I just didn’t know how to build the engine. And so the first thing that I looked back and say, you know, I’m pretty good at finding leaders.

at finding key people, key folks that also really value leadership and then putting them in a strategic position. So I started a recruiting firm. So FireSeeds is a recruiting firm. I mean, we recruit key leaders. We’ve really moved into that executive space now, but we would call them key leaders for purpose-driven organizations. And that’s really our niche. That’s our brand. We work with

with companies where culture really matters. And so that’s our differentiator. And that really needs to be what sells one of our clients is that culture matters so much to them that that would be the value proposition that they would would say is a non-negotiable for them. Because at the end of the day, we’ve got to go sell their story and their culture to other leaders. And that has to be the difference of why they leave a really good opportunity for something else.

Eric Housh

That’s great. You know, we, we’re pretty proud here. Our listeners tell us, you know, they’re all sort of in this space where they’re just trying to scale the businesses, right? Finding good folks are a part of that building those teams as a part of that scaling process. They’re adding layers of leadership. They’re creating complexity zero for a minute on the founder.

as they’re trying to scale, that sort of evolution is happening, what do you typically see happening to those founders during that process?

Cord

Yeah, I mean, think about  the founder, or I’m speaking usually from the entrepreneurial. 

positioning. So usually that founder that started something early, you know, he is the culture, she is the culture. That leader is the culture and they organically, if you will, grow culture because early days you can sit around the table. John, I know you guys have done this in a couple different situations, but you can sit around the table and you get to affect and impact those that are around the table.

But if you do that well, it’s inevitably gonna grow your business. You’re gonna start to grow, you’re gonna start to scale. And then all great leaders know that we have to put systems in place to scale. And so we scale our operations, we scale our marketing, we scale our tech stacks, excuse me. 

But what we don’t think about scaling along with that is the culture of the organization. And because now it’s not just a few folks around the table, but you usually have a second and even working on potentially a third generation of leader, if you will, that’s no longer connected to you.

And so you connect to that second generation but can no longer connect to that third level of leader. And if you’ve not thought very intentionally about scaling your culture, that’s where you can lose the secret sauce of what got you to where you are.

John Burdett

Yeah, I think one thing you’re so good at and have done both on the recruiting side and also on the WildSpark side of developing a tech platform that helps develop leaders. One of the most fulfilling things as a business leader is developing leaders and probably the most difficult thing is our developing leaders. So when you talk about multiplying leaders,

for growing scaling business. What does that really mean? Like it’s definitely a multifaceted challenging process for sure.

Cord

Yeah, no, absolutely. at the end of the day,  as I was leaving my previous company and making that transition, we were out of Atlanta. And we had built a great relationship with Dan Cathy, with the Cathy family, with Chick-fil-A.  And I had an incredible opportunity to spend time with him,  mentored myself and my previous business partner for a while. 

But At the end of the day, he said there’s two things. He asked, Dan, what’s the key? What’s the key to your success? You’ve had so much success. Really on both sides of that equation, on the business side, I their business is one of the fastest growing franchises in the world. But then they also are known as the culture gold standard. And so, hey, what is it? If you were to boil it down, what’s the key to success? And he said there’s two things. Number one, you have to hire leaders that fit your value.

The most important thing you do because when you get to a point where your business grows you have to know you can scale the vision mission and then values of your organization. That’s where most companies get sunk. And then he said number two you need to build your culture around growing and developing your leaders.

And so in 2012, I started FireSeeds, which is a recruiting firm, but always had this passion. want to come alongside our clients and really help them scale a leadership development philosophy and, and, uh, if you will, initiative that could scale with their business, that could scale their culture. If growing leaders was, was something that was valued by them. And that’s typically what they did was they grew leaders quickly and they allow them to grow their company. Then how could we help them get leadership development to that third

generation

in the heart of the organization that they don’t connect to anymore. And so that’s where we built WildSpark and it became a sister company to FireSeeds. And at the end of the day, we wanted to scale this leadership development initiative  through technology, through a SaaS business, a software as a service business, so that they could continue to help their leaders that the founder grew continue to grow and develop more leaders.

And so that was the whole idea, that was the whole vision, that was the whole, really from the beginning was that’s what I want to give my life to. And so how do you create, if you will, a monetary system that fuels that and grows that? And so early on the recruiting firm, if you will, funded and invested in this Wildspark platform and then they became two separate independent companies.

and the rest is kind of history. But yeah, that was the whole idea, that was the whole philosophy of how we then would create multiplying leaders. In some seasons of your organization, you need to find that leader and place that leader into a key position. And then you want that leader to be a spark, to be a catalyst that will grow other leaders underneath their influence. And so that was the…

That was the mad scientist hypothesis. Could I grow a company, build a company that did those things? That’s what I’m passionate about. And could those companies actually make money and be profitable and healthy? And it’s been a neat ride.

John Burdett

you were way ahead of your time. mean, things you’re talking about now are kind of cool and everybody’s talking about them, but you were, you were thinking about these things and developing businesses around them when nobody else was, which I think is,  you know, makes you an innovator and a, and a, and a founder and a lot of these, these critical things that we know now work. And I love how.

you highlight the principles around intentionality. These things don’t happen by accident. And your culture is who you are at the end of the day, and it will evolve to something you don’t want it to be if you’re not intentional about it. And if you’re not intentional about growing the next round of leaders, number one,

Cord

That’s right.

John Burdett

as the founder and business leader, they started the whole thing. You’re going to be miserable because you’re, not going to be able to grow and scale the business and you’re going to, you’re going to get burned out.  but, but number two, you’re being a huge disservice, to your potential and the impact you can make. And I love how you kind of creating that, machine of generational and,

multiplying leaders, meaning it goes down to the next round of leaders, the next round of leaders to the next round of leaders. So essentially that, that mindset of we’re growing people, we’re growing and we’re staying true to who we are, perpetuates.

you know, Pat passed the, you know, the,  know, Truett Cathy, right? I mean, he’s done that better than anybody else. I would say where he, know, he’s no longer with us, but I mean, his, his impact is still being made today through generational leaders that he’s, started the development of in his perpetuated arm.

Cord

Yeah. That’s right. That’s right.

That’s right.

That’s right. Dan had given me and Truett had just passed when kind of I had my opportunity with Dan. And so there was a lot of, this is what my dad said. This is what Truett said. is true. know, dad would always do X. But he gave me this this this business Harvard Business Review  and it was called  Building Talent Factories. And it said, you know, the companies in the 21st century  that are going to be successful, their advantage is going to become as

John Burdett

It’s too bad.

Cord

going to come from the fact that they build talent factories. Now alongside their service or their product or whatever they’re producing, they need to be a really good company. They’ve got to do business well, but those that have the advantage will create alongside of that efficient company, they’ll create a talent factory. Where as they grow in scale, they get to produce the one asset that you have to have to grow and that’s leaders ready.

And so, you know, it’s a long play. He would say it’s a long play. And so those of you that start that way as founders and you build that into the core DNA of who you are, you’ve got the greatest chance at down the road, passing up so many other companies that never made that investment. Because the larger you get, the harder it is to put that into the core of your company.

But it doesn’t mean you can’t, right? It doesn’t mean you can’t be a company right now that says, man, I’ve never done that well. so I’m going to start now. I’m going to start building in systems and processes around culture and leadership development that will build me this talent factory so I can build my own leaders. And it’s amazing when you build the opportunity for young leaders to come into your organization, those that get to invest in those young leaders, guess what happens to them?

they get better and better and better and they become masters of their craft.

Only when they get to teach right who who learns the most you have the teacher or the the recipient the pupil No, the teacher grows and so actually even with us, you know, we’ve always said we’re gonna always have and I realize we haven’t had an internship Program in the last year and a half for various reasons. We got really busy And we started hiring at a different level But then just recently we’ve come back and said okay one of the keys to our early success Was we would always hire interns not necessarily because of how

much we got out of the interns and what they added to the company, but what they allowed to have happen to some of our other leaders, who young leaders in our organization, that it gave them an opportunity when we didn’t have the bandwidth to create a huge team underneath them, we let them lead interns. And so as they were leading interns and training interns,  it made them better. It helped them sharpen their saw that became master craftsmen and women. so 

Building this pipeline of leaders throughout your organization does a lot of things. It’s a great ROI. It just takes a ton of time and investment.

John Burdett

Yeah, I love that in today’s, the context of today’s world too, because everybody’s so scared of AI replacing jobs. And it’s definitely disrupting businesses and giving us more powerful tools to do our job and stuff like that. But leaders will never be replaced by AI and  AI will never function well in your business without leaders. And now more than ever, I think what you’re talking about

should be more important to businesses than ever before because there’s still a huge leadership gap in all areas of society, but especially in business. And if you really want to differentiate yourself and be able to leverage AI properly or any other disruption in technology that’s going to take place.

It’s all built on the foundation of a solid culture, a solid purpose of who you want to be built on top of leaders who execute and stay true to that culture and develop more leaders. And all of those leaders are going to be elevated by AI, but not replaced along the way.

Cord

Yep, absolutely.

John Burdett

And now more than ever, I think it’s time to double and triple down on those leaders and developing leaders so that you can take advantage of these opportunities that exist right now.

Cord

Ugh.

Yeah, because here’s the deal. There’s going to be an ever increasing gap between what AI can provide and just our natural

movement towards the least friction of growing something. And so what are we, what are more and more folks cutting out? They’re cutting out.

the long play of leadership development. And so the gap’s only gonna increase  from their ability to have leaders at the highest level that really are the ones that are gonna continue to.

compound the growth of their organization because they’re trying to, AI is incredible and we need to leverage AI, but it can’t replace leadership development. And there are those organizations that have always built leaders  and I think they’ve got a much greater chance, but if you’re one that’s, we haven’t done that well and we’re just gonna wait a little longer because we think AI can replace that, it’s gonna be a death cycle eventually.

because you’ll run out of leaders. at the end of the day, at the top, you’ve got to have leaders that are running leaders that then are leveraging AI to be as efficient as you possibly can be.

Eric Housh

You talk a lot about identity and truth in leadership. What does identity actually mean for a business owner?

Cord

Man, that’s a great question and that’s something I have dove into in this past year. It’s a place I’m really growing And it goes back to, I’m a big Patrick Lencioni fan. He’s got a book called The Advantage that’s just, mean, how do you gain the advantage through culture? And he says this, says there’s two aspects of organizations that drive success. One is you gotta be smart. You gotta be a smart business.

That means you just you can have all your ducks in a row and all the different categories of business that any business would would would need to do well But then you got to be healthy And and to the degree that you focus on being healthy and that’s where your culture comes into play Is the degree that your advantage on top of being a smart company takes you past everybody else? And so At the end of the day the way you’re healthy Ultimately is it all comes back down to one word and that’s trust

It’s at what level does your leadership team trust each other? At what level do your people trust your leadership team? mean, everything comes back to trust.  And so at the end of the day, trust is built on whether people believe you’re telling the truth or not. And at the end of the day, 

I mean, I’m learning and I’m going to say this, going to be a powerful statement and it has been to me, but someone mentioned this to me and it’s like, we are all liars and we’re conditioned to lie and to continue to lie throughout our life. And we think it’s for the sake of others. Like we’re not going to really tell them the truth about what we really thought about.

Fill in the blank, that presentation,  the  preparation for that sales call.  How many times do we really speak, we think into our own minds and ask, what is the absolute truth?

I want to tell this person, then how often do we regulate that truth? Because we think it’s going to be kinder for the individual. And the more and more we do that, we live in a world of fiction that’s not even real. And we begin to believe that that’s the way people are led. Versus, and it’s something I’m really trying to  really think about literally every day, is in every conversation. And I mean every conversation, whether this is with my wife,

whether with my kids, whether it’s with a team member, what is the real truth? And they know this, and so I say, hey look, you know I’m learning to tell the truth, and so I’m gonna tell you my truth right now. And it’s brutal honest. It’s just honesty that’s really, really, it’s pretty brutal if you’re not used to it. But what I’ve seen is that as I am really, really honest,

They’re like, wow, thank you. And maybe not the first time. The first time, that was hard, Cord. But I haven’t done that that well. And so over time, they’re coming back and saying, wow, that means a ton to me because I never have to wonder if what you’re saying is really true. And so it is radically changed. And I’ve really challenged my leadership team to this. We are going to tell the truth.

That means we’re going to be brutally honest about the hard things in our organization, the hard things in our relationship.  And we had some transition recently with some leaders that we just didn’t have a lot  of honesty. We didn’t have a lot of vulnerability based trust. You couldn’t come in the room and say, you know what, I really screwed this up. Can I get you guys to help me?

And so Pat Lencioni only talks about this vulnerability based trust that ultimately is at the core of super healthy organizations because they rigorously and ruthlessly tell the truth in every situation. And people love following truth tellers because they never have to wonder is that really what you meant? So that’s just a little bit, I mean, just to unpack a little bit of what I’m learning right now. And so much has to do with 

Eric Housh

And then.

Cord

The reasons I don’t tell the truth, as I look at them, they’re all selfish. They’re about me not wanting to be exposed in certain areas of my life, that if I’m truthful here, maybe they’ll ask for truth in other areas. And so what I’ve found is even when they do ask for truth in those other areas, we just get closer and closer and closer because there are no secrets. We’re not hiding anything anymore.

And so one of the greatest quotes I’ve heard lately is, the most powerful and peaceful man or woman in the room is the one who has nothing to hide. And so man, I am learning that right now in a lot of different parts of my life and it is so freeing as a leader. So a little bit of what I’m doing in my own personal leadership journey.

Eric Housh

Cord, let’s go off script here a little bit. Stay there for a moment because it strikes me that that commitment to truth, to brutal honesty, that’s really uncomfortable for a lot of folks. How do you coach leaders to lean into that discomfort? And what’s your approach there?

Cord

Yeah, so if you were to ask me, know, what is, if I could look at one area of your culture and tell you if you are healthy or not.  We do a culture benchmark, we’ve got eight areas of culture and there’s three, subsets to all those different areas. But there’s one area, if I could just see one thing, it would be how regularly do you ask for feedback?

It’s how regularly do you give it, but really how regularly do you ask? Do your leaders ask for feedback? And so at the end of the day, being able to give, and so if we kind of back into that question, because that’s what we’re trying to get them to do, we have to help them see how valuable feedback really is. But it’s most valuable and really only valuable if it’s feedback that is true.

And so, if we can all tell the truth and give true feedback all the time, then that allows others to begin to get comfortable around the areas they need to improve in every day.

And that’s not something you do once a year at an annual review or even twice a year. We do what We do formal reviews twice a year. But we want there to never be surprises in those. Our greatest way we evaluate our evaluations was there ever surprises that our people felt when we get into these mid-year and end-of-the-year reviews. No, because we’re really working on trying to give really, really consistent feedback. And then here’s the key question we always ask. All right.

Did you go the last 10 %? Most of us go, we go, some of us don’t go 50%, but some of us that think we’re telling the truth, and this was me, I would say I go usually 80 to 90%, but I don’t say that one thing that’s the last term, 10%.

And so in all of our feedback sessions, and I mean that, I want those to be daily. If you interact with somebody on any kind of engagement, the leader needs to take responsibility to say, hey, give me feedback. One thing. What’s one thing I did well? What’s one thing I could improve? And then if you can build that into the core of how you engage, you just get so much better within a week’s time, within a month’s time, that the companies that are giving ongoing feedback like that,

They win because they become new versions of themselves two or three times over in a year because there’s so much feedback being given. But to give the most powerful feedback that opens the door for me to always want to ask for it and or give it, I got to know you’re willing to tell the last 10%. What’s the last 10 %? We call it the second margarita 10%.

Right? Like, okay, sometimes you need to get together and you just need to have that second margarita and really have the conversation.  so that’s a little bit of the key  to how we get there. Another thing is they know there’s a unrelenting commitment to deal with conflict.

And so literally that is something I see as one of my main jobs as a CEO is to be able to give a very safe place for people to help me help them engage with conflict. A, to know when to come. And we would say, know, and I love Ramsey. Ramsey’s big on this whole principle of zero tolerance for gossip. And he’d say, gossip is any time you have a negative conversation with someone that can do nothing about it.

And that means that’s anybody parallel to you in the organization and especially somebody underneath. He said the only place you go with negative things is up.

 And when you want to share and ask for for how to deal with conflict and so so we talk about conflict all the time I always end or do you have do you have any conflict with anybody in the organization or do you know of any conflict that might be brewing anywhere on any team I ask that all the time and they know I’m gonna ask it and so it and I’m always someone that can can help them deal with it because I’m I Have the top position in my organization and I think with that comes this responsibility the

The number one thing, if you’re a culture company that can start to erode culture is when you have individuals that aren’t dealing with conflict. And then you start to have silos in your organization that aren’t dealing with conflict. And so at the end of the day, feedback and just second to it is how you deal with conflict. that’s, if you do those two things well in your culture, in your organization with your culture, everything else kind of falls in under those.

those two principles, if that makes sense.

Eric Housh

let’s spend a little time talking about the broader concept of a company. once we as founders, we as leaders, we have that commitment to truth and transparency and honesty. We’re vulnerable, we crave feedback.  Once you have that degree of  getting healthy internally, how does that shape like how a leader  finds and develops other leaders?

Cord

Yeah, I mean it’s… First of all, it frees you up.

Right. It frees you up to not have to have all the answers. I think that’s, that’s one of the biggest roadblocks to thinking I really need to become a top tier leader is I just got to learn and have all the answers. And the opposite of that, that is actually true to the degree that you come. I mean, think about great coaches, right? Great coaches don’t come bring the answers. Great coaches, they know how to just simply ask a lot of great questions. And so leadership at the end of the day, great leaders ask great questions. Great leaders very rarely have to

you

They don’t have to teach a ton. They don’t have to come in with the answers. They don’t have to be right. In fact, it’s more powerful when you’re not right. And you come in and say, you know, I don’t know the answer to this. Let’s talk about the best solution to figuring it out together. So it’s this whole idea that we as leaders, it doesn’t mean I have to come and have everything it takes to have all the answers and lead the individual to whatever it is we’re trying to accomplish together. Again, that vulnerability-based

where you can come in say, man, I’m here to support you. I’m here to help you figure this out. Let me ask you some questions to kind of see where we are.  That’s what I see across the board in great leaders is you come out of a conversation with them and they haven’t really talked a whole lot outside of just asking questions.

Take the pressure off. Take the pressure off your shoulders. And just start learning to ask a lot of questions. Be curious. One of my favorite statements that I’ll make is tell me more. Man, that’s really, really interesting. Tell me more about fill in the blank. And it just breeds, again, a culture where we’re all growing each other. And it’s not like I’m up here teaching you down here.

I’ve got four boys, one son’s 23, one is 18, one’s 16, one’s 13. And I think early on I thought for my 23 year old, I had to be the dad that was up here teaching him all the time. And I realized that I missed out. What I’m able to do with my 13 year old is come next to him. It’s not completely parallel.

But it’s not up here as a father speaking down to his son. It’s a father coming in and saying, let me tell you where I’ve struggled, where I’ve really dropped the ball, how hard it has been for me. And then let me ask some questions for you. And it changes everything in the relationship. And so  just some thoughts around, you gotta take the pressure off.

If you’re just real and again you tell the truth, it frees you up to be a leader that doesn’t have have all the answers. People love to follow those kind of leaders.

Eric Housh

I imagine a lot of founders as they’re scaling their company, there’s just some hesitation to get things off of their shoulders. They want to, they want to carry the whole burden. John, you could probably talk to this, but what happens, Cord, if, you know, a leader doesn’t step back with some intentionality to develop their team and develop their leaders and instead they just kind of keep their nose to the grindstone chasing that growth.

Cord

Yeah, they miss out on successional leadership. At the end of the day, what we crave in the innermost parts of our being is successional leadership. We desire for someone to sacrificially invest into us. And when that happens, I ask, anytime I go and speak with a group or come into a company, one of the questions I always ask is,

tell me who your multiplying leader was. Like who’s the one person in your life? And I did it think at your, when I got to speak with you guys. Like who’s that one person? Could be a coach, could be a teacher, could be, that has invested into you.  And how many of you had to think about it? Nobody has to think about it. It’s like, I know who that person is. Because we were so impacted by that person who sacrificially invested into us.

But what we get thrilled inside of our souls about is when we also then get to invest in others and we get to see someone else grow. And so I think when you don’t have a successional mindset as a leader, as a founder, you miss out on…

a lot of the joy and morale that comes from being invested in and investing in others. And then, part of that leadership conversation we just had is you allowing your people to invest in you by saying, wow, teach me more. You’re so much better at that than I am. You want to talk about them running through brick walls for you. So this whole success, I mean, I’m a big, big proponent of success in leadership. I there’s three mindsets you gotta have. I think I shared them when I spoke with you guys as well. I you gotta have a growth mindset, number one.

If you’re going to come work for me, hey. If you don’t wanna grow a whole lot.

and give a lot of feedback and us give you a lot of feedback, not gonna be a good place. You’ve gotta have a growth mindset. And then two, you gotta have an ownership mindset. From day one, like I want you being a steward here. You gotta own this. You gotta own this with me because I need your help. So own this with me. And then third, you gotta have from day one, a successional leadership mindset, a successional mindset. Is it from day one, I’m gonna think about how can I start investing in others? And that’s never gonna be day one typically down.

It’s going to be typically horizontally and to others that I’m working with and collaborating with. And then as that happens and you start living out those three, we’re going to give you people, we’re going to give you teams to lead and you’re going to be able to pass that down. So it all comes back to being healthy.

so that you can spend the majority of your time successionally investing in other people, especially as the CEO. Like you get to, mean, if that’s how you see your role as the founder and CEO is I just get to go and all the pressure’s off. I don’t have to have answers. I don’t have to be the one to grow the company. you said, what I pride myself in is I am

least smart guy in the room.

And I know, there are plenty of CEOs that are really, really smart. John, you’re a lot smarter than I am. But I believe I’ve been able to completely make up for that and then cash in on that because I’m willing to elevate others in a place that some founders, that’s hard, right? It’s hard to delegate. And it’s hard for me in certain areas too. So I don’t think I’ve got this, the corner on the market. But again,

everything I’m learning right now is I can be so freed up to just think about the successional part of my leadership and that’s the most important thing I can do for my company right now. It’s going to give that ownership away, if you will, from running the company and thinking for the teams and just think about how can I pour into my highest leaders and make sure they’re successional doing the same.

Eric Housh

that’s super powerful. And I know somebody out there listening right now is identifying with this problem, this evolution that has to happen. So for those folks that are listening that may realize they’ve drifted, they haven’t been focusing on developing leaders. What’s their first move? What do they need to do right now?

Cord

Yeah, I mean that’s why I built Wild Spark. You’re in a place now where you’re looking at your organization

level three, if you will, or the third generation is so far out of your reach, you kind of throw your hands up and say, where do I start? Well, for some, they need to hire a key leader that can kind of meet the vision in the middle, is what I’d say. A leader that…

you can hire that comes alongside you and wholeheartedly believes in the vision, mission, and values of the organization that can be the middleman to that third generation or that fourth generation. so whoever that key leader is that you want to bring in on that executive team, that you need to bring on that executive team, make sure they, if you were to get hit by a bread truck, they would pass on the vision, mission, and values of the organization. Now, hopefully you have a whole executive team that’ll do that.

But if you don’t, that’s what you need. And you need to begin to champion them to do that successionally. But then hiring those key leaders, the next round of key leaders that you hire, make sure, and this is kind of what we do on the fire seed side, is that they are a multiplying leader. There’s an intrinsic value and drive inside of them that just naturally says, wherever I go, in whatever role I play,

Along with doing my job excellently,

a value system that invests in building other people, that grows other people. I didn’t know, are there enough of those type of people out there to sell a whole brand around it? And I’ve been blown away by the level of leader that is out there, that is in a job right now.

making great money, being super successful. But when I cast a vision of a company that really wants to use all of that leadership, but then has a value to want to be investing in others, they say, man, I’ll take a pay cut for that. Because they realize, and most of these leaders are getting into the middle parts of their life, or even on the backside, they’ve had a half time moment, and they’re like, man, this is not about just climbing the ladder and making money.

want this to be significant. And it’s only significant when you start seeing the lives of people change.

So that’s really what we offer. And we have to have clients that really wholeheartedly, that’s who they are. But that’s been the beautiful thing too. There’s a lot of those out there too. They really do. These CEOs, these leadership teams, know, eventually they know, like my legacy is gonna be left, yes, with my family, but it’s gonna be left in my organization. That’s where I’m most gifted. That’s where I have spent the majority of my life leading companies, leading people, growing a staff of 50 to 500.

families it just just makes sense I need to be very intentional to leave my legacy there so I get pretty fired up about this stuff so when I see a CEO leaning in around that or an executive team that man we we want that it can happen even if you’ve lost it or if you’ve never had it

But you’ve got to start with making some investments, and that might be in a key leader, or that might be in a system and process that’s going to help you scale leadership and leadership growth and your people being able to grow leaders in your organization.

Eric Housh

extremely powerful. Cord, one thing we like to do with each of our guests is ask this, what’s one quote or one piece of advice that has made a significant impact on you personally as a leader?

Cord

I would say so much of what I’m learning right now is just around the freedom that comes from telling the truth. I gave you one of my favorite quotes earlier around the most powerful man or woman in the room is the one who has nothing to hide. But the quote that I’m holding onto more than others right now is one out of a book called Living Fearless.

And it talks about the difference of living your life fictionally and living your life lined up with the truth. And so for me, when I’m telling the truth in every area, I’m not living in a fictional world, I’m living in a real world. That doesn’t mean things are all going great. In fact, right now it’s kind of a hard time in my life. And so there’s some real, real things about me  that are hard in my life. And so I’m able to put those real things up against what’s true.

and see what are the truths about who I am and my identity that I need to believe and what are the ones that I need to capture and I need to disintegrate.  And so the quote that I’ve loved, said, what is real is not always true, but what is true is always real. And so…

What is true, I might be feeling in certain times in my life that, I don’t have what it takes. Or, wow, I feel shameful about something I’ve done in my life. That’s a real feeling. Now, is that true about who I am and my identity? No. But if I put that along with my truth that comes from my personal relationship with the Lord,

then I can then adjust and know that, what is real is not always true, but what is true is always real. And then I can make the decision to live in light of that. And that’s radically having an impact on me at just turning 50 years old.

Eric Housh

Amazing. John, any final thoughts?

John Burdett

Cord, so much thank you. mean, there’s so much wisdom. And as you were talking, I was just realizing myself as the self-awareness is a superpower in so many ways. And I think as leaders get distracted by perhaps performance results and stuff like that. And the reality of, as you kind of move up the leadership food chain, you have less and less control of any of the day-to-day things or any of the end results or the performance of the company.

And I think the true leaders that really multiply themselves change the game. They change the game from like just winning that, that one run, getting that one run on the scoreboard to,  making sure you’re developing people that can score more runs than you ever thought possible and staying aligned with the right scoreboard. So you went at the right thing. And,  you know, one thing I’ve been personally kind of just working on and thinking about is like, how do I.

develop and mentor discernment across leaders. Cause that’s what I really want. I want to help them stay aligned to where we’re going and stay aligned to our culture, but I can’t make their decisions for them. And I definitely can’t make their decisions for their team members all the way down to the tip of the spear to the people that are really impacting the customers and making a difference in the day to day of the people that we serve as a business. But I can help them make wise decisions.

and learn how to make wise decisions, which at the end of the day, truly perpetuates the culture, the values of the company and make sure the company wins long-term, even though they may lose the inning, they end up winning the game. And so I just, I really appreciate you for all your wisdom, how you do things and how you’ve invested majority of your life into developing leaders that do these kinds of things and also developing great software.

and content that allows us to help teach that to our team members and grow the right kinds of leaders so that we really build a company with intentionality. And at the end of the day, when we’re done, we were a success on the things that really mattered and not the thing that didn’t matter.

Cord

Hmm.

Yeah, at the end of the day, 80,000 hours. We spend a lot of time at work. majority of our life is at work. We might as well align it with what’s gonna really matter in life, and that’s impacting the lives of those that have given us so much of their own time.

John Burdett

That’s right.

Eric Housh

Powerful Cord, just to echo John, thank you so much for being here, for sharing your wisdom and your insights and for being a friend. For those listening, if you want to learn more about Cord or FireSeeds or WildSpark we’re going to include links and  resources in the show notes. As always, want to catch past episodes of the podcast? It’s fastslowmotion.com slash podcast or on your favorite platform. If you have a question or topic you want us to dig into on a future episode.

you can reach out to us via that same website and drop us your ideas in there. Thank you so much for listening. See you next time.