It’s really important for every startup to have a team that has a healthy alignment to the vision and mission of the company. A good leadership mindset can make the company go the distance but the team needs to be there as progress happens. Certified Predictive Index practitioner Bill Flynn gives a simple five-minute free choice test to describe and understand the behavioral tendencies of people in a work environment. He believes that businesses survive because of people, strategy, execution and cash. Learn how the predictive index can be a great tool for the hiring process as well as in company growth. diyarbakır escort

Aligning Your Team With The Predictive Index with Bill Flynn

Our guest has spent the last three decades starting up and growing businesses as well as a decade as a business advisor. He’s a certified Gazelles coach, a Vistage speaker and a certified Predictive Index practitioner. If you don’t know what that means, you will soon. After ten startups, you’d think he’d be sick of us entrepreneurs by now, but he’s nothing of the sort. He loves helping clients. He has broad industry experience and he’s a super nice guy. Welcome, Bill Flynn, to the show.

Mitch, thanks for having me.

Bill and I happen to run into each other at the gym and chat. We sat down and talked for half an hour or so and I said, “You’d be perfect as a guest on my show,” so here you are, Bill. I have a bunch of questions for you but I want to start where we always do. Tell me where you got started in business and how you made the decision to be in business? What was the moment in time that brought you to that?

My start really was with a family member who was an investment guy who took me under his wing when I was in my early twenties and sat me in a room, put me in front of a white board and said, “What do you want to be over the next ten, fifteen, twenty years?” I had no idea but he really walked me through the process, and from that relationship found out that I really liked marketing and sales and the business aspect. He introduced me to a number of companies that he knew and I was sent on my way from an early age right out of college. I really got into startups and entrepreneurs right when I was about 27, 28 and got my first taste of starting new businesses and trying new things. The internet was just becoming something in the mid ‘90s. I worked for a great company called OpenMarket, which around here is pretty well-known. I’ve got a great experience there and really got the fever. I did nine more startups after that, mostly internet-related or digital mobile advertising and other different types of things but based around the internet model. That’s how I got started.

Did you take a job after school?

I actually worked all the way through school. I worked at a pizza joint. I worked at Papa Gino’s. I said, “I don’t probably want to make this a living,” although I certainly enjoyed it. My first job was a competitor to Novel in the late ‘80s in the networking space. My uncle that I mentioned, the family member, got me an interview and they hired me. I think I was 22 years old, 23 years old.

What was the name of that company?

Alloy Computer Products.

I loved Alloy’s products. I still have a screwdriver that says Alloy on it. I had their tape backup systems. I thought they were the greatest company ever. You and I are close to the same age, and back then I was building my software company and we screwed together every single computer in the entire shop. We never paid retail for a computer. We used to put the Alloy stuff in every machine. I thought that was a fantastic company. They just never kept up.

Thank you then. I’m sure you helped me made a little money as well. I appreciate that.

I bet I did. You took this path out of school, you’ve got a job, you worked for a great company, probably a lot of fun doing that. What happened that you took the jump into either a startup or starting your own thing?

I worked at another cool company called Dragon Systems, which is really the forefront of speech recognition technology. I loved working there from a sales perspective. I generally have been sales marketing most of my career. It was probably the best sales job I ever had because I was actually changing people’s lives and I know that’s an important thing in Your First Thousand Clients podcast. Not to be too preemptive, but when you have a product that you sell to someone who can’t otherwise contribute to society and we typically early on sold to people with disabilities, they would call you up and say, “Thank you, you’ve given me a reason to keep going. I now can contribute.” People started companies, etc. People who couldn’t type or couldn’t have access to a computer in any productive way. That really was my first foray and I met someone there who then introduced me into OpenMarket. OpenMarket was really the first real startup. I was the first one of seven or eight salespeople in the company. There were probably 150 or so people when I got there, but they didn’t have any salespeople yet. You go into these meetings and you’re exposed to all of these tremendously intelligent, driven, fun people. You felt like you were making a real difference in the world. We talked about this was when disruptive was the big word, “We were going to be disruptive to the world.”

“You’re going to disintermediate,” right?

That was the word, disintermediate, which we never did but it was great. It was really encouraging. It was inspiring really and you just felt like this was something that was going to make a huge difference. It did. It didn’t do it there but over time eCommerce and the like has really become prevalent and much more of a factor in everyone’s lives. It was really great to be on the forefront of that. I just love the process of making it up as you go. It was the white sheet of paper. I remember sitting in a conference room with a big white board 7:00 at night. We’re going to meet with a customer. We had a brand new product and we didn’t have any pricing. We just made up the pricing at 7 PM. I presented it at 10:00 the next morning to the CEO and he said, “Sign me up.” That was just the coolest thing.

In a sense, it’s like the Wild West. When we started out just like you, we did everything on the fly. Nowadays when people get deep into it like that, if they’re smart they bring in guys like you to try and really put together a plan as opposed to just wing it. Those were fun days, weren’t they?

Yeah, it was totally fun. That really got me going. What was really nice is Matrix who’s a big investor in this area and certainly now in the country, but in the ‘90s they were East Coast, they liked about three or four of us. They just put us from place to place to place. I went to four different companies with Matrix and did it. We were three for four, which was pretty amazing. We had an IPO or some acquisition of substantial amount. I got spoiled very early on.

That’s so rare. You were spoiled. I have a friend. His name is Steve Taylor. I haven’t been in touch with him in a while, but we both started our careers at the same time. I started my little software company and he went to work with a Silicon Valley company, Mentor. They built workstations for chip design. He had this huge bale of stock and he was getting all this money. He got a payment for coming in a company and then got a huge commission and all this. I was so jealous. It was funny because here I was, steady Eddy doing my business, building it and building it, and what ended up happening is that company crashed. He went to another company and that company crashed, and another company. It’s unfortunate that for him it’s been a series of failures that have nothing to do with him. He’s a great guy. In some ways, you could say it’s luck of the draw. I know better. It’s just the path that you got on. Here you are, you went through three or four of these companies. You were placed there by a great VC. I know Matrix as well. We pitched them several times for some of my clients. What it comes down to at the end is what value do you bring to the table? That’s what any VC wants to know. What is the value you bring? How do you bring it? What are you going to do? Those are the questions I love because that gives all of us a chance to understand what everybody’s role is. Let’s fast forward a little bit into your current day stuff. Before we get into exactly what you’re doing, I said that you’re a certified Predictive Index practitioner. What is that?

This is usually a controversial topic for many. I’m actually a bit of a skeptic but I think there’s value in it to a degree. There’s a thing called personality test or behavioral assessments like Myers-Briggs or DiSC is another one that most people might know. Predictive Index is another one of those. I’ve always stayed away from Myers-Briggs and DiSC, although I went and certainly taken the INTJ thing with Myers-Briggs and I’ve been through DiSC as an executive. I think they definitely have value. Predictive Index was a little bit different for me. It’s much more scientific-based. In essence it allows you to understand what are someone’s natural behavioral tendencies when they’re in this relaxed environment. Usually with family or friends, you’re going to act in a certain way. When you’re in a work environment, you usually modify your behavior to an expectation of that environment. That’s what the Predictive Index does. Through a really simple five-minute free choice test as they call it, you’d pick words that describe you in those environments. It gives you a really interesting view of yourself.

I’ve done this probably 30 or 40 times with people and I’ve heard things like, “Have you been speaking to my mother? How did you get in my head? I only gave you 30 words.” I like it. I’ve shown it to a number of companies and a number of my current clients use it as part of their hiring process and as part of their growth process within their organization so you can understand how you interact with each other. For instance, if you’re an introvert who really likes to focus in your own detailed work, it’s probably not a good idea to just run by, knock on their door and try to interrupt them because they can’t transition that quickly and then they might get frustrated. Whereas someone else who’s much more extroverted and loves to be interrupted, you can do that. If you can understand your neighbor or your colleagues a little better, it can also create a better environment to be in. You know what to expect from each other a little bit. It’s another one of those personality/behavioral assessments, which I think can be beneficial as part of the hiring process and then as a growth process in the company.

Is this where you click on a link, you answer a couple of questions and then in a minute or two you get a report in the email and you now have those answers or is it more complicated than that?

It’s not complicated but it’s not quite that way. There are no questions that you answer. All it does, it asks you two questions which is, “When you are feeling like yourself, what are the words that describe you best?” You have about 80 somewhat choices of words and you pick as many or as few as you like. Then it asks the same question, “When you’re at work how do you describe yourself in terms of what you believe is expected of you?” There’s usually a difference between those two things. Then you hit submit. I’ve taken it and I’ve had dozens and dozens of people take it. It takes about five minutes total. What they do is they don’t send it directly to you, they send it to the practitioner whose link you used. For instance I’m the practitioner, if I wanted to give it to you, Mitch, I’ll just send you my link. You would hit submit, I would get an email, and I would call you up and say, “I got it. Here it is. Let’s talk it through.” I can then go into a little more depth than the summary if you want. That’s the process.

It sounds like it would be useful to just about anybody who’s building a team, right?

Yes.

Do you have a link to this test on your site? How does this work?

I don’t because it’s a limited amount that I can give out.  If someone wants to do it, then I’m happy to. I get a refresh every year of about a hundred or so. I’m happy to give out my contact information if they really are interested. I’d be happy to send them out to a few folks.

Thank you for the offer. I appreciate that. Now you are a certified Predictive Index practitioner. You’re also a certified Gazelles coach. Verne Harnish and I have been friends for at least a decade. He was very helpful during the period of time when my dear friend, Chet, was dying. He stepped in and he helped me bring some vital information to the family, which was so appreciated. Verne and I built a friendship and one of his team members was one of my clients for a while. His name is Marco. He built the consulting division for Verne. I helped him with that as well. I have some ties to Verne. What I love is I love the Gazelles system. I think it’s brilliant the way Verne has structured this. I know you’re certified. Tell us what you would do. Let’s say that I came to you and I wanted to get you going or hire you or bring your team in, what would you do? Do this like it’s an engagement so that my listeners can understand some of the value that you provide to people. Show us if you can some of the things you would advise people to do.

I don’t know how Verne has so much time in the day. He does so many things. He has so much energy. I’m glad you get to know and you get to benefit from his servant attitude. He loves helping people and you’re lucky to know the guy. What I would typically do from an engagement perspective is very process-oriented. What I really want to do is I want to find out if I can help you. Initially, I have a phone call with folks, have you talk about your business, really talk about your top number one or top two challenges in your business because I don’t really like to go much deeper than that. I’d want to learn a little bit about you and your team and how you interact at a high level. That gives me a good sense of at least initially, are you a good candidate? Because someone who works with a coach has a certain mindset and I’m really trying to figure that out as well. If it looks like there’s a good fit, we get along people on the phone call, I come in and I do a 90-minute assessment. I typically go through what you’re familiar with, which is the ten Rockefeller habits. I’ll sit down with the leadership team, which is typically five or six people and we’ll run through those as an exercise. They can actually see in reality how it would work, how I act, how they interact with each other.

At the end of that process, we decide if we mutually want to work together. Then I send off an agreement. If they agree to do that then we go into more depth. I’ll probably do more assessments of the team to try to really figure out what’s going on. Then the CEO and I will come together with an agenda of things that we want to cover probably in the next few sessions maybe over the year. I’ll come in anywhere between five and ten times a year physically and meet with the team. I also do calls in between. If we do quarterly, I’ll do calls in between each session in the quarter with the CEO just to check in and really hold them accountable. I will know what they said they would do and where they are, and I’ll ask some questions around that. Then I act a little bit as what one might call an executive coach with a one-on-one relationship. Here she might be having some struggles between the last time we spoke and might ask my advice or ask me to think it through with them, and I’ll do that as well. It’s really a broad spectrum. At a high level, that’s the process.

I’m familiar with the process. Here is where I think is valuable for listeners, for people who are getting started and people who are building companies. First of all, here is the Rockefeller Habits Checklist, so that everybody can download the list for themselves. I believe that if you study this list and you think about the answers, then you will get enormous value just from understanding what the Rockefeller habits are. You could Google Rockefeller habits and get lots of information. Listeners, this is important because what we’re hearing about is you’re hearing it from a guy who’s a certified Gazelles coach who actually implements this system for other people. You don’t need to hire him to do it yourself, unless you’re big enough and you want a professional involved then you would. The core value stuff about how the Rockefeller habits work is available to all of us. Let’s get into this process a little bit further, Bill. Let’s say you go through your 90 minutes and you get information. Be broad enough so that people can make use of them. What are the type of suggestions that you would offer to a small company who’s really struggling to get to the next level?

Small or large, I think this applies to any size of company. There’s a Four-Decision framework as it’s called. What I’ve learned over my 30 years of experience and really as a bit of a business historian over the last 20 or 30 years is that I like to apply the Anna Karenina principle of business which is, “Every happy family is alike and each unhappy family is unhappy for its own reasons.” I think that if you just replace happy with successful and family with company, it’s relatively true. Most businesses had failed for a myriad of reasons. Most businesses that survived really do a few things really well, and that’s around what we call people, strategy, execution and cash. People make all the decisions. They spend the money. They make the money, etc. It’s really important to have a healthy aligned team. That’s what we really focus on primarily especially at first because if you don’t have a healthy aligned team, you probably don’t have a very good strategy, you’re probably not going to execute very well, which means you’re not going to have a lot of cash. Really upfront is make sure that we have the right people.

One of the things that we talked about is having a compelling question. My favorite question, maybe of all but certainly of the Gazelles is, “Would you enthusiastically re-hire and then fill in anyone on your team, your customers, your partners, your suppliers?” The answer is almost always no.  That’s a great place to start, “What are we going to do next? How do we address that?” Especially at the leadership team level, you have to be able to have trust among those five or six people that are running the business. If you don’t, then everything else underneath that is typically impacted in a negative way, which is affecting your business. We really focus on the people as a primary thing. They’re all interacting with each other. You have good people that help you make a strategy. You have to execute an exit strategy which is about relentless repeatability, which then makes you more profitable. It drives more cash so you can grow a little more, then you can have more people.  It’s just a nice virtuous circle that you can work on.

I’d like to unpack a little what you just said there because first of all, a lot of us are working in virtual teams. As I wrote in my book, The Invisible Organization, the beauty of a virtual team is that you are no longer individually dealing with people on a personality basis. To some degree you are, but you’re mostly focused on performance. If people perform they get to keep their job and they make money. If they don’t perform then it’s not very emotional, they’re basically out. Nowadays with all of us starting companies using VAs and all these outside people, how applicable is that to a company that’s scaling in that way from a remote perspective?

Lots of our customers are remote. I had a session about a month or so ago where one of the guys is in South Africa. It was 2:00 in the morning or something wherever he was. I have another client that’s a travel education company. They have people all over the world. It’s actually even more important because we’re really all about making sure that you connect with each other, but connect in really simple ways. All the things we talked about Predictive Index is terrific, but just make sure that you check in. The daily huddle is one of the tenets of what we talked about especially with execution. That’s really getting together for eight to ten minutes on average every day, and all you’re doing is focusing in on today, “What are we going to do today?  How am I doing against what I’m getting measured for my success?  Where am I stuck?” Then we always like to share good news is part of that as well. I’ve heard so many great stories about, “I just implemented the daily huddle and it transformed my company.”

All these secret meetings you had on the side or the meeting about the meeting or whatever stopped happening because everyone was very clear on what they had to do and how they were going to be measured. It’s one of the things that a lot of it is performance. We should talk about fails as expectations are just not set well, “I think I’m doing a great job and then my mentor gives me a bad review.” That’s a disconnect. Did the person perform badly? Yes, but they actually thought they were doing great. They were just performing the wrong things. We talk a lot about that and making sure there’s alignment not only at the top level but all the way down. You know even at the frontline exactly what your contribution is to the entire strategy of the business. You know when you’re doing a good job that day, that week, that month. There’s no guessing. That really makes a huge difference on performance.

The simple way of describing what I just heard is this: If you’re a team, remote or not remote or partially remote, stay in communication. Meet once a week at least. Get together for that daily huddle or weekly huddle, whatever works for you. Understand what everybody’s goals and objectives are. Just make sure that you know as the leader of your organization exactly what you are expecting. Make sure they know what you are expecting of them. At the same time, stay in sync. I have two core tools that I use whenever I step into a management position, whenever I manage my own companies.  It’s the same tools I recommend to all of my clients and all my listeners. It’s Slack and Trello. If you use Slack, you can be in regular communication, at least from a chat standpoint, all day long with your teams. You can get updates, you can exchange files. I just love Slack. I think a lot of people do. The other part of the picture here is Trello. Trello is an interactive, simple to use, visual database. The thing that I love about Trello is that you can create a set of tasks and each of these little tasks become blocks that you could pick up and move into someone else’s lane. They call them swim lanes. It’s so easy to establish tasks and move them around in terms of priority or change who’s supposed to do them and responsible.

Listeners, if you haven’t checked out Trello, go do that now.  They have a short video that shows you what it’s about. Go through that and you will start to get ideas about how to manage your team. The rest of the checklist itself is a gold mine for information on understanding how to structure your own management. I have to admit to stealing some of these ideas when I wrote the first two chapters of my book because we talked all about the difference between being a virtual CEO and a bricks-and-mortar CEO. What it comes down to actually more than anything else is communication. You’re absolutely right, Bill, it’s critical. Here you are, you’re doing all these cool stuff, you’re getting involved with teams and companies. What do you see is the future here? Where is all of this going? Can you give us a feel of what it looks like to you?

I think we do summits all over the world with Gazelles. We get between 800 and 1,000 business people at this. We have great speakers. If you hear more about culture, people are really getting that these employees are not just ponds or tools. They’re really understanding if you take care of two constituencies as a leadership group or as a leader, then you have the best chance of really making that organization as successful as possible. Really helping your own people internally, being a servant-leader as they call it and helping to make them better, and also making sure as they like to say in the entrepreneur world is, “Never fall in love with your idea. Always fall in love with your customer.” When you’re empathetic and curious, you’ll really build things that they want and that they need to progress their lives forward. I think that’s where we’re headed. We’re getting out of this mindset of the idea comes first and then we make something and then we put it out there and then we iterate, iterate, iterate, which is fine. You also have to remember you’re doing it on behalf of two major constituencies. One, the people who are helping you do it in terms of the team members, etc. and then who you’re doing it for. I’ve seen more and more people talking about those types of things when I go to these large conferences about how do I treat people better?  How do I have it so I can have an organization that not only serves the needs of me and my shareholders, but also really serves the people who make it all happen?

I think the world is trending very rapidly in this direction, which is such a welcome change from the way it was maybe just ten years ago when the focus was on nothing but profits on the company comes first, the people are third. They used to say customers first, company second, employees third.  Now, it’s completely reversed. Now, employees come first because without great employees that are happy, you can’t have a company or customers. That’s I think the way the world is changing but I think it’s changing in a little different way too, Bill. Maybe you’ll agree maybe you won’t. I think we’re getting away from the type of jobs we used to have. I think now what’s happening is that people are more interested in building a life instead of a career. It used to be that if the boss asked you to be in Shanghai on Friday and Venezuela on Sunday, you did it. We’re seeing now that  it’s more important to make sure that people’s families are intact and that they’re happy more so than pushing people all over the world, forcing them to do stuff that ultimately is not directly in their best interest and just the company’s best interest. Are you seeing any of that as well?

Yeah. Not to be too much in agreement, but I see those things as connected. I think that now our focus is much more on people. You realize that you don’t need them in the physical building to keep an eye on them and making sure they’re doing their job. You trust that they’re doing their job. It’s amazing. When you trust people, Mitch, they will surprise you and do wonderful things that you just didn’t expect. When you don’t trust them, it just creates a little bit of an environment of fear. When you’re not in a place where you feel safe, you don’t do your best work. I think because we’re moving culturally towards employees first. Richard Branson has been saying this for ten years or twelve years. You get people like Bob Chapman, the Truly Human Leadership guy and such. These leaders said, “When I treat my people this way, this is what happens. What happens is my business is even better than it was than I treated them before.” It’s not only nice and touchy feely, but it has great bottom line results.

We’re finally realizing, as Americans and as the culture of business anyway, that this is a better way to work with people. Let them work where they want to work. Let them be most productive wherever it is, be it there. What I also hear is this whole work-life balance is changing too. It’s not a work-life balance, it’s a blend. I heard Alan Mulally speak about a year or so ago. He ran Boeing and Ford. He was giving how he worked at Boeing and that he was asked by Bill Ford to take over. It was a complete disaster. They lost $17 billion the year he took over. He said, “I have these four kids.” People are like, “How do you do it all? When do you make time for your family?” He said, “I make time for my family because they’re connected to my business. When my daughter has a soccer game at 4:00 in the afternoon on a Tuesday, I leave the work. I leave the office. I go to my soccer game. Maybe I’ll come back in the evening or maybe I’ll work a little more that night.” Now, it’s a mixing of those things. Especially with remote, we can now do that. We can be at home and know that maybe, “I’ve got to go visit my kid’s teacher for an hour in the middle of the day.”  You just go do it. You’re just less stressed about the whole thing. I think those two things are connected.

There’s one more element that I want to bring to the table here, and listeners have heard me talk about this before. I have a friendship with a gentleman named Yanik Silver who wrote a book called the Evolved Enterprise. I read his book and I totally fell in love with the concept. I look around me and I start noticing there are many evolved enterprises all around us. If you ever bought a pair of Toms shoes, that’s an evolved enterprise. If you ever see a company offering, “If you buy something from me, we give something to charity.” That’s an evolved enterprise. This tends to increase the value and velocity of a company’s growth. What I am also noticing now is that there is more heart. It’s not because of it being nice or warm or fuzzy, it’s because it makes more money if you support another group or outside organization. If you can connect your company to a cause that people believe in and particularly if you have competitors, then you will win every time because people would rather buy from a company that helps others visibly than a company who just makes a profit. I don’t know if you’ve seen a lot of that going around, but ever since I read that book and interviewed Yanik on my show, I am seeing it everywhere and I love it.

I’m a huge Simon Sinek fan. When people believe what you believe, they’re much more likely to buy your products, to pay you more than someone who doesn’t quite believe what you believe and there is much higher profit. When you talk to people like Apple who have 25% of the market share, but 50% to 75% of the profit because people just want to be part of that. When you add these other human element to it, it just enhances it even more. You feel even more connected to this company and you just want to help them in some ways. You might just even by more of some things because it makes you feel better because you’re part of it. I think if you do it sincerely, people get that and they will jump on board with you.

Here is a link to Simon Sinek’s incredible TED Talk about knowing your why and what that does to trust and loyalty among the customers in your company. I think you really nailed it when you talk about Simon Sinek being almost at the center of this beginning as a revolution. 

One of his mentors is Bob Chapman. He talks about Bob a lot and how he really helped him to think about because he was going through his transition of not really liking where he worked then he met Bob. I didn’t know that until recently and I could absolutely see it. You can see a lot of what Simon says in what I’ve heard Bob say. I’ve heard Bob speak now twice. There’s a lot of connectivity there. It’s a fun fact.

Bill, we’ve covered a lot of ground. We’ve talked about a lot of different things. What I know people are interested in is, how do they find you? How would they get in touch? How could they learn more about what you do? How can they learn from you? 

I’m a certified Gazelles coach so my primary thing that I do is I help small and medium businesses to grow their companies in a healthy and thriving way by using what’s been called a leadership operating system. In essence, teach that to them and allow them to make better and more efficient and effective decisions. I do that and I talk about that on my website which is www.CatalystGrowthAdvisors.com. It’s a simple little site, four or five pages. I put a lot of business resources on there because I’m really about helping people. The reason I became a coach was because I really love the helping part and helping people grow in startups and in organizations. I want to do it for more companies. If you love to learn more about what I do, you can certainly go there as well.

Bill, it’s been a pleasure, but I have a couple of questions. This is a question I love to ask because it’s like the test that you talked about. It’s not quite a Predictive Index but for me it resonates with the way a person thinks. Who, in all of space and time, would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch or an intense conversation with?

I’ve interviewed hundreds and hundreds of salespeople and I’ve found that it’s really hard to interview them well so I used different questions. I ask almost the exact same question to them because I want to get inside their head and see how they think. I guess it’s like, “Great minds think alike,” and maybe so do ours. I really have two and I think they’re similar but at different times which are Benjamin Franklin and Leonardo da Vinci. These were true Renaissance men or people. You think about da Vinci and he was an artist, which we certainly all know, but he was a scientist too. He was a mathematician. He had such great curiosity. He designed the first tank hundreds and hundreds of years ago. It’s amazing. I just love that passion, that drive, that curiosity. I’d love to get in his head and understand what made him that way and how did he come to do that and just learn from his thought processes. That would be I think a great conversation to have with someone like him.

I’m going to invite myself along with you on that conversation. Even if I’m a fly on the wall, I want to know. I’m with you, I love that guy. I have admired his work since I’ve been a little boy. I didn’t really get into his art honestly until later in life. What I got into was his inventions. I started looking up the number of inventions this man created. It’s astounding the things that his mind conceived of back in the 1400s.

He also dabbled in medicine. He did a lot of medical experiments. He was just fascinated with everything. When you see da Vinci, you see that yellowed thing with the man with hands, that was basically about medicine. How does man work? What’s going on in there? He was curious what was happening inside. He’s a fascinating guy.

Here’s the last question, Bill. It’s the change the world question. You can answer this any way you like, it’s totally okay. What is it that you’re doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to literally change the world?

I’m a pretty pragmatic person. What I’m doing today and what I did really is the way I’ve been trying to change the world. It’s that entrepreneurship, innovation, all those things, really drive business and it drives jobs. As we know in terms of, “Is the economy, stupid?” which has been around forever, since the Clinton era. I like to help really great people become great leaders and really great ideas become great businesses because that has a rippling effect. They’ll hire really good people. They’ll treat them well. That will grow the economy. Everyone wins. I’ll do it in my little small corner and hopefully get there. I’ve certainly worked with companies where I think I’ve helped create thousands of jobs already and I hope to continue to do that until I’m no longer able to.

Count me in with you on that one. I love helping entrepreneurs. The more, the merrier as far as I’m concerned and that’s what we’re going to do then. Bill, a pleasure spending time with you. I really, really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much for being on the show. I can’t wait until we talk again. 

Thanks for having me, Mitch. Take care.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Gazelles
• Vistage
• Predictive Index
• Bill Flynn
• OpenMarket
• Novel
• Alloy Computer Products
• Dragon Systems
• Matrix
• Slack
• Trello
• Alan Mulally
• Evolved Enterprise
• Simon Sinek
• Simon Sinek TED Talk
• www.CatalystGrowthAdvisors.com
• Rockefeller Habits Checklist
• Four-Decision framework
• Gazelles Summits
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