← Unemployable with Jeff Dudan
Unemployable with Jeff Dudan
The CEO of the World's Largest Referral Network Says AI Will Make This One Skill Worth Everything
00:44:22
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- [00:00]
A
By 2030, the only thing that matters are relationships. And that's what BNI has been around, I've been all about for 41 years. What we've seen is connectivity. Real human relationships are more important than ever. Especially with the emergence of AI. I think there's never been a better time to be an entrepreneur. And I think AI enables emerging companies to have incredible, incredible capabilities. And the question that I like to think about during periods of disruption is what can I do now? What can we do as entrepreneurs? What can we do now that we could not do before?
- [00:37]
B
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Unemployable podcast. I'm Jeff Duden. If you became a scrappy entrepreneur at an early age, out of financial need, selling veggies, delivering newspapers and furniture, if you performed athletically and academically, earning an MBA from Harvard Business School, if you were a reformed banker and a dot com startup, Buil Builder, ultimately starting a search firm and acquiring Griswold home care franchise system. And today you are the former CEO and current executive chairman of BNI, the world's greatest business to business referral community. With 11,500 franchise chapters operating in 77 countries, serving 350,000 global members. Your name can only be Graham Wehmiller. Welcome.
- [01:25]
A
Thank you very much, Jeffrey. Appreciate being here. Appreciate the words. Not sure I live up to all of those, but I'll do my best.
- [01:38]
B
Well, that's what Chat said, so it must be true. Awesome. Here's an opener. In a digital world, why does networking, connection and referrals still matter?
- [01:51]
A
Yeah, it actually matters more than ever. So I had never heard of BNI before 2014. I got to know the founder of BNI, Dr. Ivan Meisner, and I asked him similar questions and what he told me was, you know, BNI was started in 1985 and by about 1980, sorry, 1997, 96, excuse me, 11 years later, it had 500 chapters. That's about when the first, you know, wave of the Internet models came out. In the next 11 years, it, it grew by 5,000 chapters. And so what's happened paradoxically is that the more we're connected by technology, and we're huge fans of technology, the more value there is on in person interaction and building real relationships. And you know, today we offer online chapters, hybrid chapters, and in person, and we study, you know, very carefully what the experience is across each of those formats. But what we've seen is, is, is connectivity. Real human relationships are more important than ever. And all the research is, is indicating that, especially with the Emergence of AI. I was listening to an influencer recently and, you know, at least his thoughts were, you know, by 2030, the only thing that matters are relationships. And that's what B and I have been around, have been all about for 41 years.
- [03:21]
B
I recently had Jeff Hoffman on the podcast. He's the chairman of the Global Entrepreneurship Network and he has a similar view to you global business entrepreneurs. What are you seeing in entrepreneurship right now in terms of number of startups, different people now starting businesses, having access to resources, AI, creating the opportunity for people to spin up businesses faster than ever before. Are you seeing the impact of that? I consider your organization to be a bellwether to what's to come for entrepreneurship.
- [03:55]
A
Yeah, I think there's never been a better time to be an entrepreneur. And I think AI enables emerging companies to have incredible, incredible capabilities. And the question that I like to think about during periods of disruption is what can I do now? What can we do as entrepreneurs? What can we do now that we could not do before? And that's a possibility question that's all about how do we use these tools to help serve customers and clients in ways that we never could before? And so I think not just because of AI, but with technology more broadly and just the world today, I think there's never been a better time to be an entrepreneur. I think it does require, you know, all of us as entrepreneurs to, to lean in, to continue to be agile, to continue to learn, to dedicate time in our calendar every day to understanding how these new capabilities can help clients, customers, employees, certainly franchisees. How can we, how can it help them be more successful? That's what we're here to do.
- [05:05]
B
Yeah.
- [05:06]
A
And so, yeah, I, you know, there's just an article in the journal yesterday talking about, you know, early career professionals making significant changes in their trajectories, you know, kind of out of a fear of eventual sort of disruption from AI. And I've talked to, you know, kids in college that have always thought about doing something and they're making a right or left hand turn to, to focus on some new trajectory. And I think, I understand that. What I would encourage entrepreneurs to think about is not to do it from a place of fear, but to do it from a place of opportunity. And I do think AI is a unique innovation. I think we would all agree, but what we've seen throughout history is that for those that lean in and adapt, these disruptions can present significant opportunity.
- [06:05]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Our unemployable audience is particularly interested in your story is There anything you care to share about growing up and the side hustles that you did and ultimately how that got you to William and Mary, got you to Harvard, went on a backpacking trip for seven months, and then came back and started the search firm. I mean, it's the classic entrepreneurial journey, starting in a scrappy environment and, and then performing, winning one opportunity after another. And then ultimately the cat Daddy is your acquisition of BNI, your leadership of B&I, the growth of BNI, it's just been an incredible career. Graham, can you share with our audience a little bit about what you learned growing up and then all the way through kind of the backpacking trip and what you learned there?
- [06:53]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Let me start by just being grateful for terrific mentors along the way, starting with my father, and he passed away in 2019. I learned a lot from him, including, including a really hard work ethic, you know, ethics in general, structure, and, you know, from my mother, who's still alive, just compassion and trying to help others who are in need. So I have benefited from great parents and other great mentors. And, you know, I think any entrepreneur who is successful, you know, they did not do it on their own. There was other people around them that, you know, shared insights in various ways. And I would just encourage any entrepreneurs out there, you know, if you don't have a network of mentors, not just a mentor, but a network of mentors, I would encourage you to go out and, and, and to build that network. And I can tell you as someone that just turned the clock on, on, on 50 recently, you know, when you reach a certain point, you really want to share your experiences. You really want to look back over your life and to share those with others. So when you're reaching out as a early career entrepreneur and you're building a network of mentors, you're really giving them a gift as well as benefiting, of course, from their insights and their advice. But, you know, no person is an island, and you shouldn't try to do it on your own. Build that network of entrepreneurs. So I've had great mentors. There was a period of my upbringing where my father was coming out of the military, the military was downsizing, and it was really hard for people to find jobs. And so for an extended period of time, for a variety of reasons, my father didn't have a job, my mother was working at home. And so we were really in financial distress for a period of time. And for me, that was a big gift because it, it, I didn't mind it at all. But I did, I did see how much stress it put on my parents. And so one of my sort of life goals is to help others either avoid financial distress or get out of financial distress, you know, if they're there. And one of the things I say about financial distress is, you know, you go to bed with it and you wake up and it's still there. And you go to bed and you wake up and it's still there. So it's kind of omnipresent and becomes kind of a cloud and it can present a lot of stre. But again, for me, it taught me to be really scrappy. And so, you know, we couldn't fill up the car with gas, our plumbing was broken. For most of my childhood. We, you know, sometimes when there was a lot of rain, etcetera, we couldn't use the bathroom, we'd go to McDonald's, etcetera. And sometimes, you know, have to sort of take buckets and take the water out of the bathtub, that kind of thing. So I didn't think anything of it at the time, but I think it taught me to be resourceful and scrappy. And it was really a gift. It was really a gift. And so even today, one of the things I talk about with teams that I work with is this notion of being scrappy. Now it's not just being thoughtful about the application of resources, it's also about being very close to customers, being close to the need. And I think, you know, organizations where the leadership is far from the customer, far from the need, and this is organizations of all kinds, but when there's too much, too many levels, they tend to go off track. They tend to make decisions that aren't really serving those that they need to serve. And so, so scrappy. That whole mindset came out of it. And you know, I worked as a kid, like a lot of us, I mean, I had paper routes, I had all this kind of stuff. So I learned structure and systems. And for me, entrepreneurship has not really been about the financial part. It is great to get to a place where you don't feel day to day scarcity. So you know, when you tell someone that's in day to day scarcity, you know, hey, you know, money's not a big deal, they're gonna look at you like you're crazy. So if you're in day to day scarcity, hour to hour scarcity, then money's a big deal. But once you get to the point where you're not an hour by hour or day Today, scarcity. The thing I want to mention to folks is I think many have experienced, it's not a satisfier or a delighter after that. It's not that meaningful. What is meaningful are the relationships, the people that you're working with, the causes that you're working for. And so I mentioned that because the best way that I think entrepreneurship works is we learn from others that have come before us. We're grateful to them for what they've enabled us to do. We do our best with whatever talent, skills, hard work that we have, and then we pay it forward to the next generation of entrepreneurs. But we also, you know, share in various ways the skills, the resources that we may have been able to develop. That cycle, I think is the most fulfilling thing I've seen out of entrepreneurship. And so I was able to go to William and Mary on a lot of financial aid. I would not have been able to go there.
- [12:06]
B
That's a great school.
- [12:08]
A
Thank you. I, I, I would not have been able to go there without a lot of financial aid. And I was an in state student. And so then recently I was able to start giving back and I did a scholarship in my dad's memory. He was so grateful that I was able to go with their assistance. So, um, great experience. I had a chance to do some interesting internships and I would encourage everyone to do externships internships their whole life. Their whole life, if they can. And I spent some time on Wall street and then I started a company during the dot com phase and that was a very interesting up and down experience for many folks. Out of that experience came one of my euphemisms that you know, you, you learn on your first, you earn on your second. And so for those that are, you know, struggling trying to make an entrepreneurial endeavor work, if for whatever reason it doesn't work out, it's okay. It's okay. You will learn a lot. You will have learned a lot more than you realize and you'll be so much more successful when you do it again. So entrepreneurship is a journey. It's not a kind of one stop or it's not a, a one time event. And so I started a company, I ended up learning a lot, but selling it, in other words, kind of gave it away when the dot com sort of market imploded and it didn't matter what model you had, it really didn't matter. When markets move like that, lots of companies get kind of caught up and so, um, but I, I built some great relationships with investors And I was very transparent, communicative. They knew I was working hard. I slept in the office for weeks on end. I wouldn't suggest that, by the way, it's not a healthy or good thing to do. Um, but that's what I did early in. In my career. So after I sold that slash, gave that company away, I went backpacking. I had a chance to go around the world. I had zero money. This was just on a credit card. I generally would not recommend it. I knew I was going back to business school, and I would be able, one way or another, to pay off, you know, a small amount of credit card debt. But I knew I'd never have that time again. And so I went out, and I was out for six or seven months. I asked the. The graduate school where I went if I could stay out for another year. And they basically said, you're lucky you got in the first time. You better get back or you're out. So that was probably good. And then I went back to business school. I created a lot of great relationships. I learned a ton. And then it gave me exposure to this idea called a search fund, which I'd never heard of before. And I wasn't ready to do it right out of business school because I had to pay off a bunch of debt, you know, to be able to go back to school. I went to bank of America. I worked with some great leaders, learned a lot, became a Six Sigma black belt, was trained in Lean, enjoyed all those kinds of things. But then I reached a point where I was a principal, bank of America. I was working in New York City, and it was the time to either go back and. And go out and launch a search fund or kind of put that dream away. And I wanted to go pursue that dream. So I launched. I launched a search fund.
- [15:37]
B
Excuse me, would you mind walking through what a search fund is, how it's set up, what the model is? Because. I'm sorry, man.
- [15:47]
A
That's okay.
- [15:48]
B
Jen will have to edit that cough. There we go. All right. She's coming off of bronchitis. All right, Graham, would you mind talking through what a search fund is? What is the business model? I become familiar with them. We are engaged with various ones for various reasons throughout the businesses that I own and the businesses that I operate. And generally, I found them to be affiliated with Harvard. Is that a Harvard invention, and is it bunch of Harvard guys that have kind of spearheaded that particular business model?
- [16:19]
A
So, truth be told, as. As much as that HBS was involved in the early formation of it I think the actual credit goes to Stanford. But for a long time it was really Stanford and Harvard. And back when, when I'm talking 25 years ago, it was only out of those two business schools. It was only a handful of people that would do it a year. A lot of people would be interested and the vast majority would, Would not do it, and only a handful would do it. And just to give kind of a. And then I'll explain the model to give a flavor for how things have changed. When you were out to raise the money from investors, you were sleeping on couches, you were, you know, Greyhound bus, wherever, you know, and, and today it's really changed quite a bit. But so, so let me start with what a search fund is. So a search fund, the basic idea is where you take a capable manager, capable leader, and investors come together to provide some, we'll call it seed capital. And that manager basically gets two years to go out and find a company to buy. And in return, those investors have the right, but not the obligation to invest in that particular deal. Their seed capital, even if they don't invest, gets stepped up. So the idea is they get some return for the risk of someone not finding a deal. Most of the time, if it's done right. When the entrepreneur finds a company, most of those investors end up investing into that company and then that person who was out searching, that's why it's called a search fund. Usually they're searching for between one and two years, they become the CEO of that company. And there's a lot I could say about search funds. They're a fascinating and exciting way for generally an early career individual to get into a leadership seat. And typically they will end up adding a lot of value because they're usually coming into a smaller company where maybe there's, you know, not the systems and process or intentionality or analysis around certain things. And so typically, once they get into a company, if they have the right mentorship and board, they will typically, you know, create some value. It's not easy to find a company to buy or to conclude a transaction. There's a lot that goes into it. But I find I call search funds one of the extreme sports of business. Along with startups and turnarounds, I find search funds are one of the other extreme sports of business. And as an asset class, they have been really successful for several decades now. More recently, there's been just kind of a lot of people getting into search funds. I mean, I go into some of these conference rooms where search fund conferences are happening and it's massive. So these days it's kind of a well established asset class. I think it's important that everyone that's kind of getting into it understands what's involved. And so I know recently there's some efforts to codify some research around, you know, what it takes to be successful in search. It certainly takes a lot of serendipity, but what does it take otherwise to make sure people are making the right decisions for themselves and for investors? But when it works well, it works, you know, really well. But, and the last point I'll make on it, the, the, the origin of the model was successful operators, in other words, business leaders who wanted to kind of pay forward their success. It was right. They would call noblesse oblige. It was, it was more about the mentorship and kind of the fun of mentoring an early career CEO. And I think that part is really important and I hope stays a part of the search fund community forever.
- [20:26]
B
Well, look, as an investor myself, You're looking for certain fundamentals in a deal, but more than anything, you're looking for committed leadership and you're looking for talent. And you've got to have the right, first of all, you've got to have great finance people. You have to have people that are going to crunch the numbers and immediately get down to what is the data really telling us, not what does the founder think the secret sauce is. You've got to have objective analytics and you have to tie that directly to finance and make sure that you're building a model that is going to be putting the right weight on the right priorities. And you need real talent, you need real educated talent to be able to do that. So if I'm an investor and I've found what I perceive to be a real man or a woman who is just a stud in what they do, I want to, I want to back that, I want to back that person. And if you can couple that person with the right mentorship team, the right board, the right controls and then the, and then a right opportunity, maybe an off market opportunity, make maybe a value based opportunity that needs some work, that's a great situation. Like that's where returns can really become exceptional there. So for you kind of moving into the Griswold deal, like what makes a good deal for you and what are some tips and tricks for closing deals? What's the most important thing when you're closing a deal? To make sure that it doesn't get undone. Every dial, every deal dies three times, right?
- [22:06]
A
Yeah.
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B
You know and, and you've got, you've got Q of E and you've got all of the things that you've invested in. And then you got to make sure that like, unless, unless you're the one that's killing the deal, you want to make sure it closes.
- [22:19]
A
You know, I think both, whether a deal happens or not and also post the deal closing. In terms of creating value, I think it's all about the people and the relationships. Now, of course, as you mentioned, and I would agree, and I think most would agree, there has to be a good business model in place. You know, you can have great people and great relationships, but the model itself just might not be one that's going to, you know, be.
- [22:46]
B
You can't scale dysfunction.
- [22:49]
A
So there needs to be a good model and then you layer on good people and good relationships, good mentorship, the things that you mentioned, and you tend to have good outcomes. In terms of closing. Yeah, one of my euphemisms, similar to what you just mentioned, you know, a deal needs to die several times before it lives. So that's really important to kind of recognize going in. I think the relationship and the communication between, you know, in this case, the searcher and the seller are really key. And it should be frequent in person. It should be completely open and candid about the things that both sides are excited about and both sides might be a little bit hesitant about. I think really once, you know, a searcher and someone that is looking to retire or change their role in a company, I think once they kind of have a meeting of the minds, they're both, you know, on the same side of the table, so to speak. It's not a zero sum game. This is all about creating, you know, fun fulfillment value for all involved. And I think it works best when they kind of walk alongside each other in the process. That goes for before closing, but also after closing. And you know, with the founder of bni, I am working on a pretty major book and the whole midsection of it is around this topic. And I've been on all sides of this equation. And I think, Jeff, I think you have too. You know, whether you've been CEO of a company for a few years or for a few decades, you know, you put your blood, sweat and tears into that organization. It really matters a lot has, you know, setting all the financial stuff aside, you know, there is a big part of you that's invested. Certainly the case for founders and folks, you know, selling companies that searchers are often buying. And so the reason I mentioned that Is I think it's important to always edify the founder because their while why you are in that position, I think involving them in a way that's meaningful and fulfilling, maybe not in day to day operations. That gets hard to do from a kind of relationship standpoint because there's going to be different points of view, but involving them in ways that are meaningful. Maybe they want to continue with some training, maybe they want to continue some speaking, maybe they want to hand out awards at the annual convention. Those kinds of things are real and they're meaningful. What I don't like to see is situations where you know, there's a breakdown in the relationship and all of a sudden the founder, you know, is not involved anymore because, you know that was a big part of their life and that's kind of something. And then also for the new leader leadership team, you know, there's things that that founder knows that you know, could be really helpful. And so I have a lot of passion around trying to help founders work, you know, within their passion, within their flame after a transaction has been done. And I think they, I think it becomes a new meaningful chapter in their, you know, in their support of the organization. So there's a lot that goes into having a, you know, identifying the right company and having a transaction happen and everything that happens post closing. But if I had to highlight one thing, it would be the really important relationship between the incoming leader and the prior leader, probably the founder.
- [26:16]
B
Well, Graham, hearing you say that, it makes me wish I had sold a company to you.
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A
I appreciate that.
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B
I appreciate that because you hear all the stories. So making sure that there is absolute clarity around what that relationship is and what it isn't. I have so many, this is small community, we all know each other and you know, somebody sold a material, material business to one of the big platforms and he would, he was put on the board, this seller was put on the board and he would go to the board meetings and you know, he wouldn't necessarily agree with some of the things so he would voice his opinion and ultimately they stopped inviting him to the board meeting because they really didn't want to hear it. And, and then when the company was sold, the only way he knew was that he saw a huge wire go into his bank. So at that. And this was a, this was a 35 year incredible, you know, probably one of the most notorious, like positively thought about CEOs and franchising who had built many very, you know, household names and things like that. But you know, it's not his job to run the company anymore. And so no understanding that, you know, maybe consulted, but not necessarily. You're not going to be informed, you're certainly not going to be accountable or responsible. But it would be nice to be consulted once in a while just on things that, like what, what really is the secret sauce here? Why do you, because people, new buyers will make an economic decision to unwind something that they don't really understand the importance of it culturally or from a, you know, the, the way the business operates and why it matters. So maybe it does need to be unwound if it's something that's not necessary really ultimately. But other times, you know, there are things that are really important to the business that I think, you know, to the, the kid that they put sitting on the deal, the 26 year old kid, whiz with the spreadsheet isn't going to understand. He's going to look at that spreadsheet and say, we need to just stop doing this. And you know, I think those can be a little bit shortsighted. But look, here's the thing. This is what my investment banker told me. I said, hey, this was one, one deal. I said, you know, I should probably mention this to him about this particular item. And he said, look, you know, sometimes there's a method behind the madness, but most of the time it's just madness. Leave it alone.
- [28:48]
A
Yeah, I, I, I, look, I've seen, I've been, I've been involved with situations that have gone well and I've been involved with some that have been bumpy. And I think with these handoffs of leadership, I think with succession plans of all kinds, I think there's a certain grace that everyone involved needs to have. And so if you're the prior leader, you want to provide some input, but not be a bottleneck and be open to the idea that prior things that were tried, that failed might now succeed or vice versa. And then if you're the new leader, you want to really authentically listen to the input being provided and you always want to edify, you know, who came before you because again, that's why you're there. And to the greatest extent possible to keep them involved in a way that's meaningful for them. Again, probably not day to day operations that usually doesn't work out, but can be many other ways to keep them involved in a way that's fun and meaningful. And so I do have a lot of passion around that particular topic. And if I can share just one best practice, and this is from Dr. Meisner, the founder of BNI. And this is one of the reasons, you know, 12 years later, we're working together every day or every week really well on different projects, and he's still really actively engraved, engaged, and doing amazing things for bni. He had this idea of three buckets. And so when I would meet with him, and the best thing is to meet in person and frequently with the founder and I would lay out something that we're considering, and he would. He would have these three buckets, and he'd say, well, that's kind of a bucket one item. And that would mean that, you know, we tried, didn't work. You're totally at liberty to try it again. No big deal either way. Bucket two was. You may want to really think about that one before you make that decision, because that one could, you know, cause some ripples in the water. And then, you know, the third one was really don't advise you to do this decision. It could really put the organization at risk or the reputation or both. And the grace in it was not that construct, but it was how few times, how few, through all the decisions that were made over a decade, that he would put something close to that third bucket. In other words, he gave me great advice and freedom to try things and to sometimes, you know, make mistakes and totally fail. That's part of leadership. Anybody that thinks you're not going to make mistakes, you know, as a leader, you know that's not the case. You're going to be making lots of decisions, and, you know, hopefully more than half are the right ones. But anyway, that grace of me listening to his great advice and also his generous way of not using that third bucket was really important in that relationship. And I'd encourage folks to think about that, whether they're founders who are looking for a new CEO or whether they're new CEOs, considering becoming a CEO.
- [32:11]
B
Where's the great idea bucket? You definitely should do that. Is that number four or.
- [32:16]
A
Oh, the great idea. Definitely do it. Well, there's lots of encouragement. Yeah. And I think that's something that, you know, founders can. Can really provide to new CEOs. You know, I. I think one of the things that's in shortest supply in entrepreneurship in general is encouragement is encouragement. And so, you know, that's a great thing to provide teammates, but it's also a great thing for a founder to provide to a new CEO. It's just, hey, that's a fresh idea. Yeah, go check it out.
- [32:47]
B
Look, while we're here and just two minutes I've heard you really drop some wisdom about your leadership style, about delegation. About your main job is to get other people hired and not to do their work and not to get too deep into things. And my experience is that's the only way businesses scale. If you get. If you get locked into some operational role, then you're really not doing your job. You're doing a job you're supposed to find somebody great for. Can you just give us a couple minutes of some of your leadership? Tenants, as a CEO, you've been very successful in scaling these opportunities with great professionalism.
- [33:24]
A
Yeah. And anything I'm sharing here, I either learned from someone else or did wrong myself. And so let me just be clear.
- [33:30]
B
There are new. There are no original ideas. There's 8 billion of us on this planet.
- [33:34]
A
Yeah.
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B
It's all out there. I mean, just go. You just got to. You have to just be curious enough to go find it.
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A
Yeah, that's exactly right. So let me give you an antidote around what you just mentioned with delegation. So when I first became CEO of Griswold Home Care, I had, you know, come out of bank of America. I had my process mindset. You know, I was ready and willing and able to process map every single kind of thing and, you know, collect all kinds of metrics, and those were good things to do. And I remember just being in the parking lot outside of the headquarters and being exasperated, and I was talking to one of my mentors, and he said, you know, you really have it wrong. And he was pretty direct, and I needed that. And he said, your job is not to go fix these processes. Your job is to go find all stars that will fix these processes and go even further than you ever could conceive of. And he was exactly right. And, you know, they're two very different things. You know, fixing a process yourself or hiring the people that can fix that process and go much further. And just to your point, you mentioned before, any great organization is about finding great people and giving them lots of Runway to go do what they can do. And that will result in a organization that is able to succeed and grow with in a way that just otherwise, you know, a lot of organizations end up getting kind of choked by the. The CEO because they need to be the traffic cop. And I've tried that. And the other part of it is that will exhaust the CEO. Like, you might be able to do that for a few quarters or even, you know, a couple of years, but you will not be able to do that, you know, for 10 years, 15 years. It just. You will not be healthy and well, and you won't make. You won't, you won't make the right kind of decisions in your team. And. And it took me a while to figure this one out, too. It's not only that you can't scale it and all the other things I mentioned, you will actually push away high performers. So high performers want autonomy. You know, they want support and they want some guidance and they want to understand the vision. But that's imperative if you have to be willing to empower folks to get the best talent.
- [35:58]
B
Yeah, 100%. And everybody works to their comp plan. And if you want great players, you got to have great comp plans that are aligned with their sense of autonomy, giving them control over the things that matter. Look, they're going to make mistakes. Probably the same mistakes you would have made. That's right. I mean, we don't bat a thousand just because we're doing it, but man, when you get the right team working together at pace, on time, on the right issues, everything moves fast. I was talking to my son. He's an engineer. He's going to be with GE this summer. Internship. His friend works out at Tesla and one of the plants. And he's like, things that take six months to do in the world, they give him three weeks. It's just, you know, it's. We're going to do this in three weeks. Oh, we're not making the Model X anymore. You know, we got one month to change the factory over to make Opti Optimus. Okay. You know, and I'm thinking about, you know, we're trying to roll out a Claude bot. It's taken three weeks. You know, it's like.
- [37:04]
A
Yeah.
- [37:04]
B
I mean, I. So, you know, organizations, you know, like Drew Brees, one of the greatest things I heard him say is he's. All I do is count. Three step drop, one, two, three. Five step drop, one, two, three. Everything working out, everything is on time. If he knows that he has to move faster, he counts faster. If the ball's got to come out, if he sees a certain look. But every, you know, organizations, well, first of all, time based metrics create high performing organizations.
- [37:32]
A
Yeah.
- [37:33]
B
And then organizations that run on a clock and run on time and everybody's down with that, just move through things quicker and there's just no time. And then if you mix in a little bit of candor and people, the ability to have critical, hard conversations when somebody. Something didn't work and people not get hurt by like, you've you've got, you really have something there.
- [37:52]
A
Yeah, yeah. We call it race to the conflict. And I got that from someone else. Race to the conflict. So yeah, there are in, in human organizations, every organization's a human organization. There are going to be conflicts. So Race to that. Have a productive conversation. Move, move on, move beyond it. Incentives you mentioned. I'm a big believer in, you know, the late Charlie Munger saying, show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome. And, and the right incentives end up reducing the burden on leadership to kind of oversee things. So the incentives are. But, but I think above all of it, it's, it's, it's, it's hiring people that, and I don't mean it in a religious way in this context, but hiring people for whom their work is a mission, you know, they will not fail. Like they are all about, you know, serving those that the organization serves and, and then recognition and culture. I think those things, you know, if there's one basket to focus on the right people, you know, the right culture and then layering on incentives and recognition.
- [38:55]
B
Yeah, grim. I want to spend a few minutes on franchising. You, you started your search fund and you put a, you had a thesis of, of looking into the franchise space you were successful in there at Griswold B and A B and I, obviously one of the largest global franchise organizations in existence today, if not the largest. I'm not sure, uh, what, what was it about franchising that attracted you to it?
- [39:21]
A
It's a team sport. It's a team sport and it enables franchisees to create their own businesses but not do it by themselves. And I think that is a magical combination. I think it's why franchising has been so successful. You know, I got interested in kind of multi location businesses back when I was learning Six Sigma and, and then I started to really study about franchising. I mean I, I worked in a Baskin Robbins as a kid and I got to know kind of the, the franchisee and you know, I saw it kind of growing up, but from it maybe didn't fully understand it. And then when I really figured out what it was about, I fell in love with it. And I think for those that have been in franchising for a long time, yourself included, when you think back, you think about, you know, franchisees that achieve something they never thought possible. You think about these great collaborative efforts with, you know, franchisees and achieving some initiative that, you know, was kind of game changing and it was just fun. It Was that interaction, the energy. And so I love franchising, you know, for that. And I'm a huge fan and always will be.
- [40:29]
B
Awesome. Okay, I've got two closing questions for you, but before we do that, do you have a working title for your book yet?
- [40:38]
A
Yeah, it's called Garage to Global. And we're selecting a publisher now and we're cautiously optimistic it'll be out either late 26 or in 27.
- [40:52]
B
Oh, it's going to be great. And where can people get in touch with you, keep up with you or keep up with the business?
- [40:58]
A
LinkedIn's fine. Yeah, LinkedIn's great. And also if they go to Pioneer Equity.com, they can see a little bit more about one area of focus these days.
- [41:10]
B
Okay. PioneerEquity. Com. That's awesome. Okay, Graham, I've got a curveball and I've got a fastball and here comes the curve. Fastball is going to be right down the middle. But here's the curveball. Gun to your head. You've got to start a new business in 30 days. You have to do it. You're forced to do it. It can't be anything that you're doing right now. Where do you see the opportunity in the market?
- [41:39]
A
Man, there's a lot of opportunities out there. I'll come up with one. I have some passion around. I'm not doing anything substantive on it at this point, but it's an area that I think there's a lot of room for. Innovation, Preventing fraud against seniors.
- [41:55]
B
Wow.
- [41:58]
A
Yeah.
- [41:59]
B
I was on the phone with some business partners and I shared with them that my father in law had gotten his bank information stolen. And let's just tell you who I was in business with. They're like, give me his number. What's his number? They wanted to call him and see if they could get any money off of him. But yeah, but I mean it's, it happens all the time. I mean I've. In the last two months I've clicked on something that looked like a docusign that I was just going too fast. And you know, then I noticed my password had been taken out of my banking and I put my people on it and they're like, yes, you picked up a malware and that kind of thing. So I can't imagine being a senior today with all of the things that are going on, how easy it is to take advantage of these people. Especially now with AI and all of the things that are coming. Do you have an experience with that?
- [42:46]
A
I do. In a maybe similar way, this is years ago, back when, before AI and all this stuff, my father fell victim and, you know, he had really saved, you know, most of his life, you know, for. For my mother's well being and the idea that, you know, someone is sort of targeting a veteran and in that kind of way and, and who'd been so frugal and, you know, that happens all the time now. And so I don't think we're doing enough to. To prevent that. We should really be protecting these folks and we should be doing a lot more to. To prevent that kind of activity. Yeah.
- [43:21]
B
And I mean, these people pick up the phone still.
- [43:25]
A
Yeah.
- [43:25]
B
And they. All they need is a little bit of information. And, you know, this is the irs. This is your bank. This is, you know, something, and I need you to do this. And, you know, they'll. They'll do it.
- [43:37]
A
Yeah. It's a big deal. It's a big deal. So I think we'll. There'll be some developments there somehow, but I think sooner. Sooner is better, so. Yeah.
- [43:46]
B
All right, very cool. Fastball right down the middle. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be?
- [43:59]
A
I will pass along something from my. The head minister at our church. Remember who you are.
- [44:09]
B
Okay. Perfectly said. Graham, thanks for being on today.
- [44:13]
A
Absolutely. Thank you. I appreciate it very much. Thanks, Jeff.
- [44:15]
B
Yep. I'm Jeff Duden here with Graham Awaymiller, and we are on the unemployable podcast. Thanks for listening.