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Lights that spark Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like Goal Digger. Today, we'll be breaking down the process of becoming disruption per roof to drop these value bombs. I have brought Brant Cooper into EOFire studios, the New York times bestselling author of The Lean Entrepreneur and Founder of Moves the Needle brands serves as a trusted advisor to startups and large enterprises around the world. And today Fire Nation ,we'll be chatting about what does disruption proof mean for businesses, exploration behavior. We'll talk about why you need that.

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And two things you can do to get started right away and so much more. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, looking for a business coach who has helped thousands of entrepreneurs increase profitability by an average of 104% annually, all for less money than it would cost to hire one minimum wage employee all on a month to month basis. Schedule your free consultation today with Clay Clark, a former SBA entrepreneur of the year at ThrivetimeShow.com/fire. The My First Million podcast features famous guests, discusses how companies made their first million and brainstorms new business ideas based on the hottest trends and opportunities in the marketplace. One recent app was all about how venture capitalists make money.

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Listen to My First Million, wherever you get your podcasts, bird rant, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1 (1m 38s):
Shout out to the nation, happy to be here, John, thanks for having me. I think that people are execution minded and we love to say, you know, a failure is a failure to execute and we love to talk about, we've got to execute this and execute that. And we're in execution mode. And I don't know that everybody would disagree with this, but it's not. Top of mine is, is learning, is being an exploring mode. And I think this is true of, of all entrepreneurs is embracing the learning exploration side in order to be better executing.

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I love saying, be curious, like Fire Nation, just be curious, like be adventurous, like actually wants to learn to educate yourself to peak around that next corner. I mean, why not? I mean, this is a very exciting world. If you let it be and most people Brandt, they seem to be screaming from the rooftops, disrupt your industry. If you're not disrupting your industry, you're dying, but why would we want to become disruption proof?

1 (2m 49s):
I think it's because our daily lives feel disrupted. So even from a business sense, if we look at the pandemic, we look at global supply chains, stucks a ship, stuck at a Suez canal that disrupts supply chains. If we look at ransomware attacks brought down a healthcare system here in San Diego, if we look at the mass resignation that the big corporations are talking about, we have these disruptions because of the interconnected world that we live in and the speed of information. And even the speed of disinformation, John, we live in a more complex world than we're used to, and that we face so much uncertainty that we actually have to start thinking about in my view, managing and structuring our companies differently, to deal with a world filled with uncertainty.

1 (3m 44s):
And so that's what disruption proof means. How do we actually build into our processes and into the very organization of our companies, the ability to be resilient, aware of all of the changes, dynamic, able to change what we're doing based upon new information. What does this mean?

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I mean, for businesses, I mean, what does disruption proof mean for those people that are listening are entrepreneurs or small business owners? What does that mean?

1 (4m 10s):
So in practice, it means this ability to delegate decision-making it means empowering our employees to solve problems. It means teaching them not to wait for us to tell them what to do, but to drive impact in their daily lives. And so it's a, it's a different mindset it's even gets back to the learning or the exploration mode that we were discussing earlier. It's building into our daily work, this ability to be curious, and to look outside of ourselves and take in new information and to solve problems as we run into them.

1 (4m 54s):
And mostly what we teach entrepreneurs and startups is how to look and act like big companies. And we structure them in particular ways. We, we, we organize them based upon functions and we, we, we begin to structure them as if they are a big company, instead of that curiosity and that entrepreneurial spirit that got them into business in the first place. And so that's the Fs that we need to maintain. I think that what's different is that we actually have to build it in. We have to purposely build it. We can't just declare that this is what we want to be. We actually have to create this agility among our team members form teams around this concept of agility and, and, and build that spirit into, into the work that we're, we're managing

0 (5m 39s):
Well at the top of the show. And then just a little bit right there, you know, we talked about being curious about being adventurous about exploring. Let's talk about that exploration behavior a little bit more, like give us maybe a specific example of what that would look like in the real world and tell us why we need it.

1 (5m 56s):
I think that's the part of it for the owner of a business for a founder is this idea of admitting what we don't know. And so again, we, we sort of get back to that execution mindset. We become leaders, we, we grow our teams, we have this responsibility to execute and we, we fall into this trap of I'm the one that's supposed to know. And, and so if you put on this other hat, you put on this exploration hat, that it means what is it that I don't know, where is the bottleneck in my growth? What is it that's stopping me from getting to the next level? And so that requires a certain amount of self-awareness and vulnerability.

1 (6m 39s):
And once we're able to ask ourselves the question, then we can go into this exploration mode. It could be, it could be something as simple as I need to. Maybe I need to run experiments on updating a sales script, or it could be, you know, I feel like my particular market segment has run its course. So maybe what I need to do is an exploration days, sort of what I call it is pull the

0 (7m 5s):
Team together. And we're going to run some experiments on trying to figure out how we can leverage our existing products into a new market, into an adjacent market segment, or perhaps there's tweaks that we can make to our offering in order to go after a completely different market. And that this doesn't happen just inside our heads, but that we actually can then run experiments, specific experiments to test our assumptions about how do I overcome whatever uncertainty is facing facing our business in a daily basis. And I think that this is the, to me, John, this is what sort of the pandemic drove home was that suddenly our consumers don't have the money that they used to have.

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Our small business customers are going out of business. And so the very core business that we're in maybe has changed and it's no longer there. And if we're just in that execution mode, if we're just going to do today, what we did yesterday, then that's going to lead to failure. And so we have to go back to that, that exploration, that learning mode, in order to tackle whatever uncertainty faces, faces the business in the current situation, the new world Fire Nation, we need to learn. We need to explore. We need to, again, just really get excited about what's next, because what's the alternative. I mean, why not be excited about what's next? Cause it can be new. It can be unveiling. It can be, you know, just something that you may never have thought of if this, the fork of time, if we weren't experiencing currently what we just experienced over this past year and a half, two years.

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And we have a lot to talk about when it comes to scaling, when it gets, you know, all about focusing on starting the right way, as opposed to the wrong way. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, your customer's experiences, everything. When it comes to building and scaling your business and with multiple customers onboard your marketing team likely has conflicting priorities to juggle. Unfortunately, this means that customer oriented tasks can often fall through the cracks. But what if you had a system that allowed you to bring your customer's experiences to the forefront so that your marketing team isn't stuck in the weeds of operations and can instead focus on building targeted, meaningful campaigns, start giving your customers what they deserve. Campaigns built in a scalable way with responsive designs and a little extra TLC with a HubSpot CRM platform, a HubSpot CRM platform helps you tackle the most challenging part of creating content scalability with intuitive visual workflows and bot builders.

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You can create robust, automated campaigns across email, social media, web, and customer chats, and using new design tools. You can seamlessly adapt your content for multiple device types. So your customers have a great experience, no matter where they're viewing from, learn more about how you can transform your customer experience with a HubSpot CRM platform at hubspot.com. Looking for a business coach who has helped thousands of entrepreneurs increase profitability by an average of 104% annually, all for less money than would cost a hire one minimum wage employee all on a month to month basis. Fire Nation meet Clay Clark. Clay has been coaching businesses since 2006. Yep. Even through the great recession and he does it for less money than it would cost to hire a minimum wage employee Inc magazine reports that by default 96% of businesses will fail within 10 years.

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Yet Clay's clients grow by an average of 104% annually. How's this Hema possible Clay only takes on 160 clients. So he personally designed your business plan. Plus Clay's team helps you execute that plan with access to graphic designers, Google certified search engine, optimizers, web developers, ad managers, videographers workflow, mappers and accounting coaches visit ThrivetimeShow.com/fire to watch thousands of testimonials from real entrepreneurs who Clay's helped over the years. Do your research. If you thousands of documented success stories from real people, like you thrive time, show.com/fire, then schedule your free consultation with Clay himself to see how he can help you with proven business coaching on a month to month commitment basis, thrive time show.com/fire brands.

0 (11m 4s):
We are back and we hear people talk about scaling about leveraging, but how we need to scale and leverage every aspect of our life. It's just something that you just seem to hear on. Repeat does disruption proofing scale.

1 (11m 20s):
Again, we have to be able to ignore some of the advice that we get. So, so oftentimes the people in our lives, mentors, advisors, investors even come from a world that was not filled with so much uncertainty. They come from this industrial age mindset where we knew if we produced a product, that there was a market for it, and that just doesn't exist anymore. Customers have so much power. They're all running around with computers in their pockets. And they know so much about businesses and about products and services. And they have this power to be able to switch from one vendor overnight to a different vendor. And so that again, it adds to the complexity and the uncertainty of this digital age.

1 (12m 4s):
And so, so we need to build that exploration into, we need to maintain that even as we scale. And so the trick really is, is to form your teams based around accomplishing missions. And so those missions, if you aggregate all of the missions that your teams inside your company have, then you roll that up and that's what your strategic priorities are. And so you can imagine a structure of an organization that is based upon aggregating missions towards this, these priorities, instead of the current way of organizing our businesses around function and that tasks that individuals do well, you can't really draw a straight line from somebody that's repeating a task a hundred times within a hundred days to actually achieving an outcome.

1 (12m 54s):
And so part of the dealing with complexity and uncertainty is diversity, interdisciplinary teams. Cross-functional empowering smart people to solve problems. So instead of us just telling them to go execute and go do these things, it's allowing them this time and space to explore, and then building that into the processes and structures of the business. And that's how you scale it. You, you scale, not based upon adding more marketing people necessarily, or more product people or operations, we don't think about it in terms of the function, but where we think about it in terms of what is the outcome that we desire.

1 (13m 35s):
So imagine a special forces team, special forces team in the military, you have a specific mission. You're going to go in and take out this particular objective. You actually assemble the team based upon the functions that are required in order to accomplish that mission. And if you're going to scale that, then it's based upon all of the missions that you need to accomplish. Not based upon this idea of, of, of simply scaling a particular part of a company. And so it requires this mindset shift to think about continuously, think about outcomes and how we're going to measure the progress towards outcomes instead of measuring people's tasks. And so then it's inherently scalable.

1 (14m 16s):
It's just thinking about it in, in different terms than what we're accustomed.

0 (14m 21s):
One of my big takeaways from what branch has shared is it's thinking about it in different terms and why would we not want to think about it in different terms? We live in a different world and everybody, by the way, lives in a different world in the present moment, we're going to live in a different world a year from now than we're living in right now. And why not be evolving? Why not be open to change and adventure. And if Fire Nation listening and they're like, this is something I can really dig. I'm really into this. I get it. What are two things that we can do right now to get started? Number one

1 (14m 51s):
Is have a bold experiment day, but this is what I mean by building it into our work, instead of just sort of trying to generate this ethic. So this culture of people need to be an exploration mode. You have to actually put it on the schedule. And so on this bold experiment day, you assemble a number of challenges based upon, you know, the resources that your decide your organization. You want to form teams of four to six people, and you are assigning each one of those teams, a mission. And the mission challenge has to do with some sort of uncertainty that's in your business. And again, it doesn't have to be like, oh, I'm going to go, you know, disruptive world. It could be something as simple as updating a marketing plan or, or testing a new marketing idea or testing a new product or service or updating a sales script.

1 (15m 39s):
So it's any challenge or it could even be operational. It could be that my engineering group is not, not working very well with my product management group or my design group. So it could be any sort of challenge that's inside the business, either customer facing or internal processes. And you have a number of those challenges and you assign those to the teams. And during this bold experiment day there, their goal is to go and seek understanding of the stakeholder, whether it's a customer or an internal leader, develop empathy and then run some or design, and then run an experiment on how to overcome that challenge. And this way, I think what, what your audience will find is that they're able to accomplish these challenges.

1 (16m 25s):
They're able to solve these problems that normally would just be put on the back burner or would maybe keep you up at night and you just don't have the resources to tackle it. And the idea is, is that in the end, you will see that number one, your team actually has the ability to do this. So maybe they need a little bit of training. Maybe they need, you know, they'll make some mistakes along the way, but fundamentally smart people solve problems. And we just have to sort of get out of their way. And the second thing that you'll find is that your execution work becomes more efficient by building this exploration into, into the work.

0 (17m 3s):
Th that's really what I want you to take away. It's in the work Fire Nation, you get in the work. So brand we've had a pretty solid theme throughout this entire interview. I mean, we're talking about adventure, being curious, being in the work we've been talking about, you know, essentially let's become disruption proof. So what is the one thing, the key takeaway you really want to make sure a Fire Nation gets from our entire conversation today, give us a call to action about how we can learn more about this in you and anything else you want to share. And then we'll say goodbye.

1 (17m 37s):
The number one driver for me to write this book, disruption proof. John was that weak choose capitalism because capitalism is the best way to solve problems and what we need to do as owners, as founders and startups as business people is to focus on creating value for human beings in the world. And the more value that we create for others, the more that it comes back to ourselves. And, you know, if we focus just on creating wealth, then we've create wealth for a few. If we focused on creating value for other people, for customers, then this value gets spread to all including ourselves.

1 (18m 20s):
And so that's really the big takeaway. And in order to do that in this new digital world, that's filled with all of these uncertainties and these disruptions that roll across the economy, we have to use structure and manage our companies differently. We have to attach ourselves to this ethic of developing empathy for customers and for our colleagues and our workers for, for committing ourselves, to creating a value in it for, for people in an ethical way. And then building into our institutions, this idea of continuously being, learning and exploring in order to accomplish that objective. And it creates a virtuous cycle. This, then this is then what ripples through the economy is this idea that we can, that we can raise the standard of living and create value for all and be successful for ourselves.

1 (19m 11s):
So I think if you're, if you're, if your audience is interested in learning more, please come to BrentCooper.com/fire, and they can get more information on, on, on the book and how they might engage with me in, in learning more, how to apply this to, to their business in their everyday lives.

0 (19m 32s):
And you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with BC and JLD today. So keep up the heat, head over to eofire.com type brands in the search bar. The show notes page will pop up with everything that we've been talking about today. BrantCooper.com, go check it out, go learn more about everything he has going on right now. Fantastic stuff and brands. Thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today, for that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation today's value bound content was brought to you by Brant and Fire Nation.

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If you've ever thought about creating a podcast of your own, the podcast journal is for you. It is gorgeous. It is full leather, and it will guide you step-by-step in the creation and launch of your podcast. In 50 days, visit the podcastjournal.com, the PodcastJournal.com and I'll catch you there, or I'll catch you on the flip side, looking for a business coach who has helped thousands of entrepreneurs increase profitability by an average of 104% annually, all for less money than what it cost to hire one minimum wage employee all on a month to month basis. Schedule your free consultation with Clay Clark, a former SBA entrepreneur of the year at ThrivetimeShow.com/fire.

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The My First Million podcasts features famous guests, discusses how companies made their first million and brainstorm new business ideas based on the hottest trends and opportunities in the marketplace. One recent app was all about how venture capitalists make money. Listen to My First Million, wherever you get your podcasts.