SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to the Cut the Tie Podcast. Hello, I'm your host, Thomas Helprick, and I'm on a mission to help you cut the tie to whatever it is holding you back from your success. And today, joined by Matthew Person. Matthew, how are you?

SPEAKER_01: 0:11

I'm good. Uh appreciate being on the show today.

unknown: 0:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 0:14

Well, listen, I uh to take a moment, introduce yourself and uh what it is you do.

SPEAKER_01: 0:18

Sure. Uh so I'm the founder of Townsquare Advisors and right now working on promoting thought leadership around the proprietary square management system in a forthcoming publication, a book called The Culture of Alignment, which is around the concepts in that. And it's really designed uh to be an actionable method that executives can leverage and individuals to create high high trust and high-performing teams and just get better culture in companies and get away from maybe some of the mistakes that have been made uh in the past around organizational design have led to disenfranchised uh employees. Uh let's get better at maybe intentionally designing companies in a way that allows for high efficiency, high performance, better outcomes.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01

What uh so I always give people the opportunity to stalk you while you're talking. So I'm sure give them just just give them one link to look at while you're while they're listening to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10

If there's an interest in stalking me on Townsquare-Advisors, I'm all for it. You can learn a lot there, uh a lot of information, uh, free quizzes to take to learn around how you better perform at work or how you can better construct your business. Uh sign up for an advanced copy of the book and also take maybe the full deep dive square management system method, the survey, and learn a little bit more about how to better construct your business.

SPEAKER_00: 1:32

Very, very nice. Um let's start with your let's start with just how you define success. How do you define success for your yourself?

SPEAKER_01: 1:39

Success for myself, you know, I think for me right now is educating business people about how to maybe more intentionally design businesses to achieve better outcomes, as I talked about. Uh, and hopefully push people towards the square management system as uh the right way to think about organizational design. We have, in my view, and I have a disparate background, I've been an entrepreneur, I've been an executive in a small business, I've been an investment banker, and I've also been on the buy side acquiring businesses. I've I've talked to thousands of companies, and I've seen good, I've seen bad, I've seen everything in the bill. What I've noticed along the way is that organizations have common sized culture. Hey, this is the best place to work. I'm gonna copy what they did. And that is what a lot of business books will kind of promote. Hey, we've we've interviewed 500 employee CEOs, we've taught, we've surveyed 5,000 companies, we've taken and common sized and aggregated all these attributes, and here are the best, the lessons you should take away. And that's informative, it's interesting, but it doesn't help you. It's not about your company. It doesn't reflect what you need to do. Those are things that help that company. And so the square management system says, hey, let's stop intentionally copying and let's start intentionally considering how we want to best act, how we want to best operate so that we can reflect those attributes and our own systems, our own processes, and create a better working environment for the people that fit that system. And I think I can dive deep dive into this a little bit further. But the goal here is to get away from that one-sided view of culture where all of a sudden people might say, Hey, wait a second, Matt, you didn't work out here. You're that's a scarlet letter. You're a bad employee. No, there's no bad employee and there's no bad company. I mean, don't get me wrong, there's fraud, something like that. But for the most part, we've got to stop kind of putting that scarlet letter on people and start realizing that maybe as a hiring agent, we didn't really do the best job qualifying the attributes that amounts to success in our own company. And people who come in and didn't work out, that's maybe a little bit more on us than them.

SPEAKER_00: 3:33

I mean, it's completely it's definitely that, right? You of uh of getting the wrong person in the wrong seat, kind of idea, right? Uh I mean, there are some people you shouldn't hire. Let's be clear. There are some people you should hire that you get rid of that would have been much better in some other role. I mean, fair enough.

SPEAKER_01: 3:49

Oh, 100%. Listen, I think the key here is like it's not binary, right? Um, what I step back and start realizing is that culture is really it's a two-way street between the individual and the hiring company. Now, new employees don't start disengaged, right? They come in all enthusiastic, excited to change the world. They're not disgruntled on day one. Interestingly enough, research will tell you like 50% of new hires quit in the first 18 months. So obviously, that common-sized approach that, hey, we're a best place to work, we're in a copy, it doesn't work. And part of that problem is that hiring managers, has anyone, any listener, gone to an interview and had the hiring manager be like, hey, this is a tough place to work, right? Our culture's not that great.

SPEAKER_00: 4:28

That's you're the eighth person's position last six months. What?

SPEAKER_01: 4:33

Exactly. But it's great, it's gonna work perfectly for you. So how do we do better at that? But at the same time, you're gonna say, well, Matt, my company's not one person. My company's a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand people. How do I, how do I get all these people in the same box? Well, that's the heart of the square management system. Let's intentionally design the square that people fit in. It's not binary, it's a box. You're gonna bounce around that box. What does that box let the employees do? Make micro decisions. They don't have to constantly ask, hey, can I do this? Can I do this? Can I do this? They can move faster. When they make micro decisions, they feel empowered. They can innovate, they can be creative inside that box. They feel like they've had an influence on the outcome of that business. If you know that you're inside the box and you trust that everyone else is inside the box making their same decisions, again, you have a high trust team. They can all move together, they all row that boat in the same direction. You create a more loyal staff. So you're getting speed, you're getting innovation, you're getting uh more uh empowered and loyal and longer tenured staff. And that's how you get to a faster-moving, higher performing business. Now, those that square can be defined and it can be very constrained. You can take all that you know independence that an employee may have to action their own ideas, and you can cut that down. And the degree to which you cut that independence down is the culture, is resulting in culture. And some people need a really tight environment, and some companies need one because of compliance. Other people want a big, wide, innovative space. And you cannot put someone who wants a wide degree of independence in a small, highly constrained environment, they'll suffocate. Vice versa would apply to.

SPEAKER_00: 6:00

Yeah, it drowned in that one. The uh well, let's have your journey a little bit. And you know, you have a you have very thoughtful uh definition of success. So, so in your own journey, just share a little bit about that and and what the kind of biggest metaphoric tie you've had to cut to achieve it.

SPEAKER_01: 6:15

Yeah, I think the there's there's definitely a point in time where I pivoted in a in my career. I started out uh in small business management in the sports industry, building and growing teams and companies and flipping under performing companies. It was a great job. Um, and got burnt out, switched to being an investment banker, complete career change. I ended up being overtly worried around uh I'm being 100% correct all the time. I did that one of my sports days. I had to be this weight, you know, the uh the weight of expectation, the weight of trying to be friendly with everyone, the weight of trying to be the right, the perfect all the time. And it was a tough, it was that's a tough shoulder. When you say cut the tie, cut the constraint. I started realizing that I didn't need to do that. I needed to be 80%. And the 20% is never gonna work. It's a fool errand to be 100% perfect and and and get to that uh degree of success. So it happened when a uh mentor pulled me aside and said, Matt, you need to stop worrying about the details and worry about the big ones only because you're never gonna be correct. If you were correct, you should go play the lottery and go do something else for yourself, but you're never gonna be correct. And so let's, and that's where part of the box came from. Let's just get the big blocks right and not worry about all the details, let people bounce around. And that variability helped kind of calm me down and open up the door to a lot more better thinking, a better way of doing a better readership.

SPEAKER_00: 7:38

I mean, it's it's sometimes hard to hear it. That's what a good mentor does, though. It gives you the information that someone else will. It's one thing to identify and know the moments you know when that happened. Then comes the how. How did they make that happen? Because that's a that's a hard change, right? Then like listen up, people who are perfectionists. This could be important. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01: 7:59

Well, uh, so obviously you have to sit there and tell yourself, you have to have the constitution. Okay, I'm gonna make this change. I'm gonna listen to what was told to me, even if I didn't like hearing it, right? Um, and and just give it a try. And you're gonna fail along the way, and you just pick yourself up and say, No, I I know I'm gonna go do this. And I think that's true of all the things I've ever endeavored, whether it was, you know, my poor, poor college career career in athletics for, you know, an effort as a failed D1 athlete, all the way across to anything else I've ever done, the risk you take um in trying to better yourself is probably not as great as you think it is. And the risk of not doing something is probably greater. And so I just made a decision that I was going to let it go and stop worrying about being perfect and let the variability flow and realize that if something on my team and my company didn't go perfectly, I knew I caught the big blocks and the small things that were missed weren't going to kill anything. And I started being okay with that. And um, and I've told this story about being pulled aside and told not to worry about the small stuff to a lot of people because it was probably the most helpful thing for me. And it's helped me mentor and educate and guide colleagues around maybe not making those same mistakes, not trying to be perfect about everything, uh, so that we can move faster. Like you know, you have to work inside the box, and the box is not binary. And if you can't do that, it's gonna suffocate, you're gonna suffocate yourself.

unknown: 9:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 9:18

And that's a hard transition because you're you're wired in a certain way. And it's not right or wrong, right? I mean, there's there's you know, if you look broader, there's uh what the world says normal people who can get shit done, and then there's the ADHDers. Um, and there's always that riff between the two, like, well, you were normal, or the you, you know, if we the world didn't have us normal people, nothing would get done. And we're like, well, if we didn't exist, you wouldn't be doing anything because you wouldn't have thought anything new to go do. And so we go back and forth, and so you have this like, well, if we don't perfect it, we've never gotten to the moon. Like, well, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 9:48

The concept random to fill that gap because you're gonna get that natural attention, right? There's always that any company, you're always gonna have the people who are so perfect, and the other people are too wild, and you know, the cowboys who know think about the ramifications. And I've settled on the 80-20, and let and that concept's not new uh to me. I didn't innovate that the 8020 concept is is something that's been around for a while. But I think when you step back and you realize that you just can't worry about the 20%, there's gonna be someone who doesn't like you, there's gonna be someone who doesn't agree with you, there's gonna be something that you miss, there's gonna be an error. And you start accepting that and just say, hey, that's it's just part of life. It's okay. And you let that 20% go to focus on the 80% that you can and want to and should focus on, uh, it's freeing. And and really, I think if there's a message there, that's why the square management system works, is because it built around that 80-20. It's it's designed to have flexibility to make sure you're not perfect on everything. It's it's impossible. That is an impossible way to manage. So give people this flexibility and you can control that size and scope because listen, you can't be super unconstrained in healthcare. Someone's gonna die, right? If you're manufacturing something, there has to be quality and compliance standards for the efficacy of that product. You can't make a car that's inferior, right? You can't do that. So there's there are environments where you have to be tight. But for everyone else, that degree of constraint, that degree of freedom can vary. And that's how you can get the right people on the box because the people who are super innovative and super wild, they're gonna need a company that allows them to do that. Yeah. And then and the people who really want to be told what to do, they kind of need a company that's gonna do that. And there are ways to define that. I think the problem I've seen is that everyone says, well, this is just an amorphous way of doing. And no, it's not. You can intentionally design the company, the output of those systems. There's 40 elements that all make that square. You can know what those are and you can and implement them your way to affect the outcome you want, to get rid of that 20% that's holding you back.

SPEAKER_00: 11:35

You know what's interesting uh is I always found it funny when leadership would have an innovation group led by a non-innovative, with the idea that they'll keep the controls in it.

SPEAKER_01: 11:46

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 11:47

Happens all the time. And you're like, is the worst person because they'll shoot down every idea that doesn't have a business plan. You're like, well, that's not what the point of the group is. It's to innovate. Anyway, there's a there's a monetization group. I I I've saw that in multiple companies that I've been in and part of that. They have a non-innovative leader leading an innovation group for balance. Like, what happened?

SPEAKER_01: 12:05

Right. Oh, you mean the ideas? Uh it's a balance. I'm going through it right now. Uh, you know, we have the visions, the visionaries, the people who are like, hey, we should go do this. Uh, and they do forget a little bit the how, which matters, you know. And then you have the other side of the house that's the uh, you know, the people who are like, hey, this is how we need to get this done or the return against that vision that we need to affect. And somewhere in the middle, the both people gonna hail it out and balance it out. You know, the uh the joke, uh big stand-up comedian fan, you know, Nate Bargazzi, you can't have two dreamers, somebody who broke and homeless in a in a couple days in a marriage. You need one person who's no fun, the other person's all fun, and they balance each other out. I think that's the way it works in companies too. You gotta have these the the the dreamers and you gotta have the people kind of really back and be like, hey, we can't spend two million dollars on this idea. It's kind of a bad idea.

SPEAKER_00: 12:49

I like I like the one. There's those who do the dishes and those who soak them.

SPEAKER_01: 12:55

I'm a soak one.

SPEAKER_00: 12:56

You know why? Because in the morning I will wipe it in like no time, no effort. And my wife can't stand it. She's like, just scrub it. I'm like, why? The water could do all the work overnight while we sleep. Let someone else do the work, right? No, I was like, just let the thing do the work. No, I'll do the work. Let me do it the way I want to. No, we have to so that's we're not gonna get it myself. Like there's a couch here, but you're not qualified to talk to me about it. Uh if you could uh if you could uh describe maybe the one tie in your business today that you can't cut or you're struggling to cut, what what is it?

SPEAKER_01: 13:29

Oh, uh, you know, I honestly I think it's it's awareness and visibility. You know, you you with it when when you're a startup and you're a smaller business and you're you're kind of trying to make a case for why your view should be more readily adopted. You know, they always joke it's it no one can ever complain you bought sales force because it's out there, it's big, it's known, it's understandable, it's digestible, and and you know, the people who go on the edge and try to do something different, you know, need to get that that foot in the door. I think that's probably the the uh the tie that holds back a lot of people is trying to figure out how to get more known, more visibility, more credibility for something that might be a little bit different than the way of thinking. You know, it's it's that's why we defaulted to the the best places to work copy, right? And no one can complain when you said, Well, how do you why did you do this? Well, you know, I looked at all the best places to work, these would be attributes. Oh, that makes sense, right?

SPEAKER_00: 14:18

It I mean, well, as a as an owner of a growth consultancy agency, this is what we deal with every day. You're right. That's it. Billion dollar companies down to solar prumers like you and me for the most part. Uh they struggle with the exact same problem set. Uh we anyway, I know a guy you're talking to him. We can talk offline later how to get around that. Um, because that's that's a real problem most people face because it's not their core competency. Right. And and in and I think you can extrapolate not that because I don't want to sound like it's a pitch for me, but like the truth is that core competency idea is something that lots of people struggle with. And oftentimes, if your core competency is finding getting you know the word out there, finding leads, growing your business, it's generally you're not then building a business of any other kind because you're just like, yeah, I'll build a business of showing people how to do it, because that's what I do well, right? So that's what we built. So it's like I wouldn't be out there doing like the square framework because I'd be like, well, why would I? I don't know. That's not a core competency, anyway. So sticking to your core competency, but knowing who and how to go trust to get out of it uh is I think a big piece. Are you struggling with that as well? Where you're like, how do I grow but not kind of break the bank or lose my brand? Or like you're struggling with some of those kind of ideas of how to address it?

SPEAKER_01: 15:25

Yeah. I mean, it's it's a risk-reward factor, right? And uh, I think a lot of companies struggle with that. And it's, you know, um yeah, I think you, you know, this take, you know, the background is it's actually taking me quite a few years to get the book developed. You see, you know, there's a degree of uh imposter syndrome that I think a lot of people suffer through when they're starting something. Is this is this real? Is this actionable? Do people think this is you know uh valuable? Is this gonna sell? How do you you know you gotta take that leap of that risk at some point and put yourself out there and just say, hey, you know, that's that 80-20, you know, the 20% holding you back, the doubt, the fear, the the constraint that you put on yourself. And so um, sometimes you try to leap forward and say, hey, this is worth it. Uh, but a lot of small already suffer from the risk. It's like, do I take out a loan? Do I not pay my mortgage and ball and do this? You know, is my wife gonna yell at me because you know, all of a sudden I'm spending my savings on something that no one wants, right? You got to balance those things to get yourself out there. And I think sometimes it's easier in tech or because you've got a productizable, skewable widget, you can probably tan, but thought leadership, uh consulting type stuff is a little bit harder to digest because it really comes down to opinionated value. Does the someone else think that my thought is correct versus something that works, right? A car can work, a car, uh radio can work, but but a book may not be, or a management style, it's a little harder to digest.

SPEAKER_00: 16:40

What I do like about yours, and we've applied almost the exact same, it's a different idea, but it's the same. I use a framework. And the reason is because frameworks allow you to discover the right solution in a methodical way. And I think whenever people are buying for us, it's lead generation, people think, hey, I'm sending DMs. Well, then that's like one line of box six of what we need to do to build a lead generation system. That's just the outreach piece, right? And it's like if you don't have a framework, then you're meaning prescriptive, and then that's probably not going to work as well. So you might as well just sell that as a digital course. Because unless you're intimate with services, they will fall flat almost every time because there's no way you can cover the nuance and personality and other things. So I love the fact you have a framework that allows for discovery, that allows for consultation.

SPEAKER_01: 17:22

Yes, is this designed to be an actual diagnostic. Again, what's the biggest problem with other business books? It's a philosophical approach to a couple attributes that kind of like, well, what do I do with this? This is designed to be actionable, implementable, operationalized. I, you know, really want people to go online and take the surveys and dig in. Um, read, you know, the book is coming out, you know, read it, write on it, action it, because that's the biggest problem we have is that these things aren't immediately digestible. It kind of leaves you with that. Sounds great. It worked for Company X. What do I do? How do I do that?

unknown: 17:52

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 17:53

Um, if you go on and do the methodology, this is going to tell you all 40 elements of all four sides of the square that will create the constraint that you're looking for in your business. And it'll tell you the attributes for a heavy level of constraint, a moderate, and a light. So you can sit there and see, well, how would I apply this? Here are some ideas of how this looks in these different levels of constraint so that you really understand how. Because I've always said if you understand the why and what you're trying to get to, and then it's easier to identify the how and you can actually do something with it. Um, and at least that hopefully that approach comes across to a lot of the people. It it really wants to be, it really needs to be in uh intentional, but it needs to be actionable. And uh, and I think we've missed that in a lot of books.

SPEAKER_00: 18:34

But books should be guides, make you think, right? They can't be, I don't think they can be pretty prescriptive and I agree, agree right out, but I agree with that as well. Um go back in time, uh anywhere in your timeline. When when would you go back? What would you do differently?

SPEAKER_01: 18:50

Uh if I had to go back, I think I'd probably go back to my beginnings in the in my sports tenure and try to educate myself more around the ways of you know just learning more. I I was self-taught through my sports tenure in terms of how to manage how to lead. I made a lot of mistakes. Those mistakes are helpful. I think everyone will tell you that there's courses in education and there's real world. The real world got me somewhere, but I needed more of a framework. I need to your point, I needed more frameworks, I needed more of a base to look at to understand how that I could go and do my own as opposed to just trying to figure out my own because I missed a couple of things along the way. I probably would have would probably still be in the sports world, maybe if I uh if I had that at that time.

SPEAKER_00: 19:28

I like that. Um, you know, if um if you know it if you could go back there, what would you stay in the same sport?

SPEAKER_01: 19:37

No, because I was in professional baseball on the business side, and it's just it's demanding. You know, the number of games, uh the I you know I think the MB is this is like NFL, you know, it's like eight home games, you know, they don't have to do as much. Um it's a little bit easier of a schedule to digest. You know, or I go to the league level and manage something at the league level.

SPEAKER_00: 19:55

Yeah, I was thinking like baseball is gonna be tough because it's like especially if an events planning is like area. Thing. It's like a new concert every day, sometimes twice a day. It's like, man, no.

SPEAKER_01: 20:05

It's a lot of hours. It's a great game. It's a great atmosphere. But I think overarchingly, the number one pull is that there's nothing better than a sellout. The atmosphere, the buzz, the energy that comes out of being in a stadium. Um, that is addicting. Uh, it's great to be the person who helped facilitate, you know, that moment in time for those people. Um, so you know, getting back to that is always, you know, in the back of my head.

SPEAKER_00: 20:27

Is there a is there a book you think every entrepreneur should read?

SPEAKER_01: 20:31

Uh, you know, there's so many different books out there that I've read that I think other people probably would have, you know, Chris Voss's, you know, negotiation book is is highly influential. I I have a copy of a book called The Pivot Year on my desk uh by Brianna West, um, which is around how you can make small changes on a daily basis to really change your life in a year. And I think that's been profoundly influential for me. It's not really a business book per se, but it is one that helps you know motivate and give you perspective uh when maybe you need it. Uh I think those two books are really worth reading.

SPEAKER_00: 21:01

Yeah, I think Never Sput the Difference is fun with Chris, Boss, and and I'd love to do that, just like mess with car dealers now. Just text them online and be like, hey, how much for the Jeep? And I'm like, that doesn't work for me.

SPEAKER_01: 21:13

Yeah, oh, they get so frustrated. Yeah. I love negotiating car deals. You and I are very much similar on that.

SPEAKER_00: 21:19

I'm I'm I don't buy a car. I buy I bought more houses and sold houses than I've cars in the last 15 years. I have the same car, same minivan from 2000, whatever. I don't buy cars, but I'm gonna have to get one next year. And I'm already starting the process of how do I negotiate these guys?

SPEAKER_01: 21:31

So I just saw I love I've been I will both say proud, but I've been asked to leave two car dealerships on the basis of not getting always pushing back on the terms to get what I want. Um, you you know, at the end of the day, I think you have more power in a car buying scenario than people realize. My wife would go in and just sign the dialine. This is how much it costs, perfect.

SPEAKER_00: 21:49

You know, warranty too and like car washes. And I'm like, I go in, I'm like, you have to tell me with the fees. I'm like, what do you mean you can't remove? We always leave that fee. And then all of a sudden they're like, we'll take it off the price. I'm like, and by the time you're like, hey, I thought you said we're at our bottom and now we're 2,000 in on stuff. I go, what else is in there? There's some smart holes. Come on, this doesn't work for me. Like, you're not really making a deal here. And then you'll call them back like three months later. Is that car still there? Yeah, I'm like, how much did that cost you to have that car sit there?

SPEAKER_01: 22:12

You could have oh, they pay taxes on that. It costs them a lot to have it sit there.

SPEAKER_00: 22:15

Every month it's sit there. I'm like, you know, you could have moved that car to me for the price. I'm pretty sure you bought it for$14. I'll buy it for$20 right now. Yeah, off your lot. You moved your car, it's great. You do all get my services with you. Come on, that's where the money's mad made. That manager screw over that uh sales guy all day long. You get a hundred bucks out of this, buy next, sold.

SPEAKER_01: 22:32

Well, it's interesting. They don't make as much money per car as I think people realize. I think on used cars they do for sure. They make their most of their money on used cars.

SPEAKER_00: 22:39

New cars, somebody didn't know we're on a tangent, but the truth is cars people don't realize they make it in the services shop. That's where a car dealership makes money a hundred percent in all services. Like it's because it's yeah, it's ridiculous. Actually, they should audit them. Like, there's no many, you can't put that many hours out of human into a car. Anyway, we're gonna drop that right now. Uh if there was a question I should have asked you, Dan, I didn't.

SPEAKER_01: 23:00

Oh, great. That's a great question. Um, I think why uh why does this matter is probably the question that I get the most. Why why should I care about this versus other systems? And I I really think it's my answer to that is uh I've seen thousands of companies. I've I've I've helped, I've seen where value gets captured as an investment banker. I've acquired businesses and I've passed on companies for X and Y reason. Um and I think that what it's taught me is where value sits. And uh where it sits is in the stability and continuity and the and you can see and you can tell an aligned business versus one that's not. And that is what this book endeavors to try to achieve for companies is let's get to organizational alignment. Let's get to an alignment between your staff and your system so that you can be a high-performing team and continuously. Because a lot of companies might arc and they look good, but then they can't sustain it. Um and I've just seen so much good and so much bad in the in the in-between that you know there is a better way. And it's not amorphous, it's it's identifiable, it's understandable, it's in and it can be intentional. And uh, and I think I feel like we as leaders of businesses have missed the boat on how to properly construct a high performing high trust organization. Um, so that's that's the question is why does this matter? This is why it's it's it's really an effort to get people, people should take this is not just for businesses, this is for individuals too. You need to know who you are as an employee. We chameleon ourselves so much uh to fit a job. And don't get me wrong, do people sometimes just need a paycheck and need a job? Sure. But when you do have the luxury of choice, when you are in a position to to kind of look on your own, understand what makes you better. Don't if you're in, I'm not an open office environment guy. I love having a closed office. Um, why would I take a job where I have no desk or I have a laptop and I just find a beanbag in the hallway? I wouldn't, I would suffer in that environment.

SPEAKER_00: 24:52

I'd be like, no.

SPEAKER_01: 24:54

Oh, I love working. I love working from home. It's great.

SPEAKER_00: 24:58

If I don't have two hours of driving, yeah, I could use it for personal benefit, but it's still two hours of driving in my life. I'm giving away for something I could walk downstairs, look professional, and knock it out the same and like that. I work more hours because I just don't take breaks. And here, I'm like there, I'm like trying to escape the office every two seconds if I was doing that.

SPEAKER_01: 25:14

Anyway, yeah, so it's a two-ways three. We gotta just be more open and honest around who we are, what we do, and why and stick to it. Have a constitution to stick to it. We we break companies break the rules all the time. Oh, I don't want to let go Jim. He's such a high performing, high revenue guy. If we let him go, we'll suffer from sales. You're doing more damage to your business keeping him there as a, you know, someone who's maybe a cancer on the club ass to go back to sports cliches than you are probably getting someone else who could probably fill that role and sustain the same amount of revenue, but maybe in a more culture-fitting way.

SPEAKER_00: 25:41

Wonderful. Thank you so much for coming on today. Uh, once again, how should people get a hold of you? Um, and who should get a hold of you?

SPEAKER_01: 25:46

Well, uh, you know, anyone who's looking in into the thought leadership, you want to reserve an advanced copy of the book, Culture of Alignments, uh, can do that on townsquare dash advisors.com. There's two free quizzes there uh for people who are interested in learning a little bit more about themselves from an individual perspective or executives who want to understand a little bit more about how to how to create a high trust, high performing organization. And then you can deep dive into the full 40 point methodology. There's a link to do that there as well. If you really want to get granular and understand, you can do that there. Townsquare dash advisors.com.

SPEAKER_00: 26:15

Thank you. Repeat the uh URL one more time there, just a bit because we had a little peep in the middle of it.

SPEAKER_01: 26:19

Oh, townsquare dash advisors.com. Appreciate that. Thanks for coming on today. Appreciate it, Matthew. No problem, appreciate having me.

SPEAKER_00: 26:26

It's an and listen, anyone made it this point in the podcast show. Thank you so much for listening. Get out there, go cut a tile, whatever's holding you back. But first, define your own success. You have to do that. Otherwise, you just won't mean anything when you get there. Thanks for listening.