David Horsager: The welcome to the trusted leader show. I’m your host, David Horsager. Join me as I sit down with influential leaders from around the world to discuss why leaders and organizations fail top tactics for high performance and how you can become an even more trusted leader.

Kent Svenson: Welcome to the trusted leader show. I’m Kent Svenson producer of the trusted leader show. And today we have a very special episode for you. This is the 62nd and last episode of 2021. We have thoroughly enjoyed sharing each of these 62 episodes with you. We have people be listening from all over the world across almost 70 countries, 50 states and six continents. And by the way, if you or someone you know, is gonna be going to Antarctica, we would love to make it seven outta seven continents. But seriously though, on behalf of David, myself, and the entire team, we just wanna say, thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing each of these episodes with your family, with your friends, your employees, customers, and clients. Thank you for reviewing the show and thank you for all of your feedback and comments. We could not do this without you.

Kent Svenson: So thank you. But as this is the last episode of 2021, we thought it’d be fun to take a quick look back on some of the best moments from the year. So we put together a compilation of best moments from some of our most popular episodes and from some of the episodes we’ve gotten the most feedback and comments on and put it together in a compilation for you. So sit back, relax and enjoy a compilation of best moments from the 2021, the trusted leader show of first, we have Horst Schulze from episode 20, where he talks about the three universal expectations of the customer.

David Horsager: You talk about three universals. Tell us about those.

Horst Schulze: Well, the, the, the expectation of the customer, I guess that’s what we talk about. Yeah. The, well, yes, let’s say universal the market. You can look at the market over there. What is a market of potential market? And you, there are two or three things for sure they want, so you better have processes and systems on measurements if you deliver it. And that’s a subconscious expectation, like what you have anybody has, you want the product to be defect free. You know, te I always use an example of bottle of water. If you buy a bottle of water, you don’t want anything to swim in there. You expect, subconsciously is defect free. Number two, very important, by the way, and you have to underline it 10 times. It’s timeliness. Everything today is very important that your timely responses that you, you, you want that bottle of water when you want it.

Horst Schulze: And you want an immediate answer to your email, et cetera, that timeliness. So not effect timeliness, and number three, what you want the want, the people that give it to you, the bottle of water or whatever it is to be nice to you to care for you. Now, here’s the, here’s the crazy thing. I mean, and I, and why businesses don’t get that? The greatest driver of eventual satisfaction, even loyalty is the caring piece, which means you have to, you have to process and make sure that there’s excellence and relationship between your employees, between you and those that buy from you. The, the product is not creating loyalty. Loyalty is nothing but trust. They trust you. They they’re three times of customer. Very first I said, they wanna distrust you, who are, who are, uh, who are terrorist against your company. Now they going social media, did whatever destroy you. Then the loyal done it, the satisfied one, they got night next door. If they, they think there’s a better deal. And then there’s the one that are loyal to you. Why they loyal, they’re trusting you and trust is not created with a product is created with the relationship moment.

David Horsager: Only the relationship.

Kent Svenson: Next up from episode 46, we have M Gasby Brown, where she talks about the importance of racial literacy, humility, and sustainability in bringing about change and diversity that allows each of us to be able to enjoy the great benefits of diversity.

David Horsager: Let’s jump to DE&I, it’s a big topic, DEI and justice, some say in belonging the, these days, but diversity equity inclusion. Um, you know, we talk about trust and it’s you, you can’t, it seems like you can’t have the best kind. At least there was a, there was a study on diversity, uh, har massive Harvard Putnam study that showed kind of diversity that diversity, many kinds on its own tends to pit people against each other, unless you increase trust. So we’re all about how do we increase trust to get the best of that? We know there, you know, we know there is greatness in diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, justice. So how do we increase trust, uh, so that we away the best of this beautiful array of diversity, but I’d like to talk to you, how do you, how do you tackle the E and I in a way, or how can we as leaders maybe even think differently about it so that we increase trust and get the best of diversity?

M. Gasby Brown: Boy, that’s a great question, David. Um, the onus is really more on the learn than the learn it in this case, in my mind. And so it really comes down to, and I will deal with the racial part of it because there’s so many moving parts to de DEI and justice. Uh, there needs to be, uh, racial literacy, a curiosity that, uh, to learn and openness to learn and to be a lifelong learner about the various historical issues that have led us to where we are now with regard to racial equity, there needs to also be in my mind, I kind of deal with three RS, RS, and CS, and what have you. But another R would be, uh, racial humility. There are some people who feel that they have read a few books and they have watched a couple of movies and documentaries, and now they know all they need to know. And they maybe attended a couple of DEI trainings and they know they feel that they know all there is to know about, uh, racial reckoning and what’s going on, but that is the wrong attitude. The attitude has to be humility where you are putting yourselves in the position to always be open to learning new things and more. And then the, the racial sustainability that you’re in this for the long haul. This is not just a flash point in history, but this is an opportunity

Kent Svenson: Next up from 50, we have Jay Baer where he talks about why word of mouth is critical for business growth and why every business needs to have a word of mouth strategy.

Jay Baer: Dave, the, the premise is this. We trust people more than we trust any leader or organization or government or media. Um, we trust each other most. And we always have going all the way back to caveman days where somebody said, well, who, which caveman sells the sharpest? You know, arrowheads like, well, you know, glog, he’s the man, right? I mean, it’s the, it’s the recommendations from, from your peers are the ones that carry the most weight and the fundamental premise of the book. And while it’s really written for, for a, a business kind of company, uh, perspective, it applies to individuals and, and, and speakers and parents and spouses as well. The premise is that the best way to grow any business or any audience or trust is for your customers to do that growing for you. And I think we all know that to be true, right?

Jay Baer: Like if you ask businesses, Hey, how important is word of mouth to your business? They will all say important all of them yet. And this part is the thing that makes this book so important. Nobody has an actual strategy to do it. That the actual data from John Jan is that fewer than 1% of all businesses have an actual word of mouth strategy, fewer than 1% yet you’ve got a strategy for everything else, right? You got a, you got a, a leadership strategy, a trust strategy. If you follow Dave and you should, you’ve got a PR strategy, crisis strategy, hiring strategy, you know, diversity strategy, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, marketing strategy, of course, social media strategy. But the one thing you don’t have a strategy for is perhaps the most important thing at all of all, which is why should people tell your story?

David Horsager: I think the most, something really interesting that seems like almost a, a contradiction at first, we’ve got this guy, one of the, one of the most sought after thought leaders in the world on digital and marketing mm-hmm and you hear so much, you know, Shaza in those spaces and hear, Jay bear is saying, it is all about word of mouth. That’s the, as much as you’ve done in the space of digital, and by the way, you can use digital. Uh, but it, this whole, this whole piece of kind of what I loved about it is that it got back to truth, to authenticity, to know what are real people really saying, not, um, we did it, you know, in our study, we found that continually like reviews online reviews are tanking because people don’t trust them. Whereas, uh, what you hear from someone specifically that, you know, is that trust is going up immensely. And I, I think that’s just, it it’s really interesting in this space, right? Yeah.

Jay Baer: You’re exactly right. There is more, uh, online word of mouth now, uh, than ever before, because of social media, the prevalence of ratings and review sites, et cetera. So, so mathematically, the volume of online word of mouth is higher, especially in the pandemic, because there’s just not as many occasions for offline word of mouth than there, uh, compared to pre pandemic, however, the impact of offline word of mouth, uh, somebody you actually know at your kid’s soccer game, or what have you is higher because you have that existing relationship with the person who was passing the story along. And, and people ask me a lot, Dave, like, well, okay, I don’t get this. If, if businesses know that word of mouth is important, how is it then that they don’t have a strategy for it? Like what, I mean, you know, this it’s 20, 22, almost like, you know, word of mouth’s been around for thousands of years.

Jay Baer: How is it that people don’t have a strategy? And, and here’s why almost every business or leader makes the same mistake. And the mistake is believing that competency creates conversation. That if you run a good organization or you are trusted, and you’re good at execution, that that naturally people will notice that and will talk about it. And that seems right on paper. It does, but it’s not actually right in the real world because that’s not how human beings behave. Every person in the world, including you and me and everybody tuning in is wired the same way. We are wired to discuss things that are different and ignore things that are expected.

Jay Baer: Let me tell you about this experience I had last night, it was perfectly adequate said nobody in history, right? If I went over here and inflict the switch and these lights went off in my office, I wouldn’t be like, Dave, you won’t believe what happened when I hit these, the switch, the lights went off. You know why? Because that’s how lights work. And we all know that. So there, isn’t a story there. Word of mouth is just a story and you being good at your job. Isn’t a story because that’s what they expect, right? That’s why it’s really, really hard for restaurants, for example, to create word of mouth around food quality and sort of tastiness, unless it’s just a beyond, beyond crazy, because guess what? If you’re buying a meal and a restaurant, you expect it to be good. That’s the whole point, right? So you do, don’t get conversational credit for doing exactly what customers expect you to do. And that’s the mistake. Everybody makes. They just focus on competency, which is important. Don’t get me wrong. Competency keeps your customers, but competency doesn’t create stories cuz it’s just like, yeah, of course they do that. Right? Sure.

Anne Engstrom: Hey everyone, a quick interruption here to share some big news, April 12th, through the 14th, you are invited to the trusted leader summit. What makes a powerful event is bringing together amazing people in a way that actually makes an impact in the world. We’re talking about a get together that is packed with immediately useful content. You’ll hear from top leaders like John Foley, the former lead solo pilot for the blue angels, Harvard profess us are Allison Shapira and more incredible global experts. Get your tickets before they’re gone at trusted leaders, summit.com and join us in becoming even more trusted leaders. We can’t wait to see you there.

Kent Svenson: Next up from episode 22, we have Susan Sly where she talks about how to lock in the desire to actually build a new habit.

David Horsager: So take, let’s go back to habits. One step, you know, how do you build a new one? Like if you’re, if you’re starting with a new habit, like feeling like, well, I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna start running every day, but then they get to tomorrow and it doesn’t become a habit. As you know, um, most people wouldn’t do what you did. They’re gassed after a hundred yards and they went back to bed the next day. So breaking through and building a new habit, any tips?

Susan Sly: Sure. That’s a, an amazing question. It’s it really starts with desire and, and here are my tips for locking, uh, you know, really locking down that desire. It’s number one is ask yourself the question precisely, what is the habit? Define it. Clearly I wanna run for 30 minutes a day, not I wanna running, um, you know, I’ll chase you down the street, you’ll start running, but it might not become a habit. Like be very clear. Number two is what is the benefit to you of developing this habit and, and list as many as you can. And then number three is what is the detriment? If you don’t develop the habit and then number four is who in your life is suffering because you don’t have this habit.

Susan Sly: And then the fifth thing is what will this habit mean to you? Five or 10 years down the road? Because it’s the compound of fact like Darren Hardy talks about. So I’ll give you an example. So if viewers can see me, I’ve got, in my hand, it’s a glass made the USA glass bottle. It’s empty of groupy green stuff. So last year I decided David I’m like, you know what? I need to have more fresh fruits and vegetables. The framing he study, um, is the longest study done on cardiovascular health. But as an ancillary, um, finding, they found that if you consume five to seven servings of fresh fruits and vegetables a day, it reduces your risk of cancer, uh, all kinds by 70%. So I was going through my day, eating, you know, eating, having protein shakes and, you know, raw all and all that good stuff.

Susan Sly: But I realized I’m like, oh my gosh, I’m not getting enough fresh fruits and vegetables. So I decided what I was gonna do on Sunday is I was gonna take, um, you know, greens. I was gonna take organic celery, lemon juice in the vitamin mix. I was gonna mix this all up and I was gonna, um, fill five jars one for every day of the week. And, um, I was gonna grab them and, and that’s what I did now. It was really inconvenient because I had to like dedicate that time on Sunday to making this Gloo green drink. And then the second thing was I had to figure out a way to make this a habit that it was so convenient that I had no excuse, like even running outta my house to my office. I could just grab it outta the fridge and I, I could go. So that was a habit I developed last year. And now it’s so ingrained in me because I’m going, the detriment is the benefit is I reduce my risk of cancer. And then the detriment is, if I don’t do this, I’m not getting enough fresh fruits and vegetables. Maybe I could get cancer. Right. And you think about all the people in my life that benefit. That’s just an example.

David Horsager: I love it. Great, great five step process.

Kent Svenson: Next from episode 25, we have Bob Stromberg where he talks about the two words that describe creativity and why all of us can be creative.

David Horsager: Tell us about this. How did you become so creative and, uh, give us a little window into that slice of your life.

Bob Stromberg: Five or six years ago. Um, uh, well, it was, it was September 15th of, uh, 2015. I was right here in the basement of this house, digging through some boxes of books and, uh, looking for some books. And I found some old work calendars, a pile of ’em about like this and the Earl one went back to 1975. And I thought to myself, I wonder what I was doing on September 15th, 2015, 40 years to the date earlier. And so I opened it up at to 2015, I mean to two to 1975, which was 40 years earlier. And there was my first professional booking with my friend, Michael. And, uh, I CA I came upstairs. I said to my wife, Judy, Judy, this is like a celebration. I mean, the anniversary we should be celebrating. And she said, huh. And that was the extent of the celebration right there.

Bob Stromberg: That was . That was all there was. But I, that got me thinking when I realized, oh my goodness, I have done this. Full-time self-employed never had a job, never had an employer who paid, well, I thousands of them, but never, never an employer that I was working for steadily. Uh, how have I done that? And I realized that I have been utilizing this thing called creativity. And I also realized I had never given a lot of thought to what it actually is and how it works. And I started thinking about all these plays that I had written all recently, uh, been writing a screenplay and the comedy material and lots and lots of music that I’ve written through the years, all these creative things, what do they have in common? Where did they come from? How did they come to be? And I realized that, and this took a, this took a number of months of thinking about this, really working through it.

Bob Stromberg: I realized that every thing that I have created came from a place and through a process and the place that the place that these things came from, the songs, the plays, the comedy routines, the bits, the one liners, they came from what I call my creative reservoir, which you have as well. And they came through a process, uh, and the process is called creativity. And I believe that, uh, that there are two words. You, you need two words to really describe what creativity actually is. And I believe that two words are gift and craft. Usually we think of creativity being a gift. People say, oh, I couldn’t be creative. My, my brother was, is sore. He really had a gift of creativity, but I just never had that. Um, and, and I say, well, you, uh, you, you had something because when you were a child, you demonstrate it that here’s the deal.

Bob Stromberg: I really believe that the gift, you, you you’re born with something creativity, but you’re not born creative. Here’s what I think the gift is David. The gift that, that we are all born with, all of us is a, a desire and a capacity to experience creativity. So I, we come out of the womb that way with a desire and a capacity to experience it. And we open up that gift immediately when we’re born. I mean, the first thing that you within weeks, you’re, you’re learning that you can roll from. I don’t know if it’s weeks, like can’t remember, it’s been so long since my kids, even my grandkids were that small. So I thought you were gonna say, it’s been so long since you rolled over for the first time. that’s right. But to roll from your back to your front boy, that was exciting.

Bob Stromberg: You couldn’t wait to do that. It’s a little scary to do that. You can see, you can see the baby’s eyes just, did I just do that? That’s experience in creativity, getting up on your knees and rocking back and forth. Oh boy, that’s fun. And then piling up blocks at some point, and then knocking ’em over. It, it, all of this was play or, or, uh, taking that Cray and rubbing it across the paper, making those marks on the paper was so fun or is it was the case in my family with our four year old, who is, who is now a remarkable artist and was then to take that pink magic marker and coloring in all color in all the, the white flowers on mom and dad’s new couch. That was an exciting, that was an exciting day at our, our family. All of this was what we refer to and what psychologists call and, and child development people call play.

Bob Stromberg: It was just play, but it was all creativity. It was all creative, incredible, um, um, demonstration of creativity. So the question is, well, where does that go? Because so many people say, I’m, I’m not creative. I couldn’t create anything. I mean, I’m, I have no idea what I would do. I can’t create anything. You know, I’m just not a creative person you used to be. So where did it go? And I believe, um, and, and I, I, I believe it gets educated right out of us in the Western world. I think it’s just, it’s just the downside of our educational system. A lot of good things about our educational system, but not in this regard of creativity, because in school we learn very early on when we’re taking a test or a quiz or an exam, we have to write in, in the right word, in the fill in the blank, it’s gotta be the right word.

Bob Stromberg: Or if it’s a multiple choice, you have to, you have to circle the right answer. Or if you, if it’s a math problem, you have to add those numbers all up and divide it and do this and, and the POTUS of whatever. And it’s gotta be to down to the, down to the right decimal point in number. It’s gotta be perfect. And if it’s not, it gets a big red mark on it. And we deal with our feelings about, uh, about getting those red marks on our paper. And we very early, um, realize, um, that were not as creative as we used to be. Things are not as fun as they used to be. Creativity does not work that way. Creativity is not about finding the right answer. Creativity is about trying many, many potential answers. Some of them, which are really not good answers at all, but to try them, um, and something else comes out of it.

Bob Stromberg: Uh, you, you almost can’t fail with creativity because you’re not looking at the outcome. You’re looking at the process. So to, to engage in the process, um, even if it’s to try lots of things. In other words, you don’t need to get the one right answer. So therefore, I think there’s another word. This necess sir, gift is the first one. I think the other word to describe what creativity is and how it works. Then the other important word is craft. Creativity is a craft. It’s a process that you go through. And as you go through this process, you begin to, this is a wonderful side benefit. You begin to fill up your creative reservoir. So there’s, there’s always something there you don’t need to worry about. Writer’s block. You don’t need to worry about not being able. What am I gonna do now? It’s all, you’ve got lots of stuff ready to go. And, but you need to understand what the process is.

Kent Svenson: Next up from episode 59, we have Ryan Leak where he talks about why all of us should be chasing failure.

David Horsager: You know, if I look at your life and what you’re about, you’ve done some amazing things, but it is marked by this risk, taking this willingness to chase failure. And I love what you say in the book. Even basically the, the only people you admire, the people you love, the people you look up to, they all failed. And yet we’re all sitting here thinking we wanna get around the failure. We wanna, and, and you kind of make this, this point of let’s chase failure. If we wanna be like that.

Ryan Leak: Absolutely. You just, I think we all, if let’s say we’re a songwriter, we all wanna write a hit song. You only wanna write hits, but you gotta write some bad songs to get a hit song. You gotta miss some shots to make some shots. I mean, it’s all a part of, it’s all a part of the process. No matter anybody in this world that wants to do anything, uh, they have to try things. And I think the last three years, somebody said this to me the other day, they said, I’m not sure if I’m ready for my junior of COVID. And I just thought, has it been that long? It really has. But I’d like to say the last three years have really taught us that if, if you’re not innovating, if you are not thinking outside the box, you may not survive in this marketplace that, that we work in because things are constantly changing. And most people don’t like change. And COVID 19 did not ask us for permission. Right? And so I think people now more than ever have to be willing to try some things and take some risk.

Kent Svenson: Next from episode 43, we have Cheryl Bachelder, where she talks about why we should be training leaders to be stewards.

David Horsager: I, I picked this up in, in your book and it’s a subtlety E but it, it, it’s not, I’m gonna get into some principles in the book, but it’s a subtlety of how you say things that made me just so impressed with who you are and the word, um, you said it already, oh, you said stewards. It’s it’s, it’s not this feeling of these are the people I lead. It’s. These are the people. In fact, you said in the book several times, I can’t remember the wording, but something like these are the per people I’m, I’m charged with leading, or I’m I’m given to lead, or I’m, I’m kind of called to steward and it’s, it’s like the investor I’m, we’re there to steward. We’re not that it’s, it’s, it’s such a different feel of humility. And I, I know you’ve been influenced by, uh, you said it there with Collins level five with a, you know, humility with ambition, but, you know, tell us where that, that humility came from. That seems genuine. And that is something I see missing in the leaders. I walk, you know, alongside that I’m consulting or working with.

Cheryl Bachelder: Well, I, I agree, uh, it’s largely absent. It’s culturally absent to, um, honor and uphold, uh, stewardship as a leadership trait, in fact, so much. So today I was being interviewed by a large, big four, um, accounting firm that you would recognize then on the subject of ESG, uh, which one of the aspects of ESG is governance in board rooms. And he said, what thing are we not measuring in the boardroom that we should be measuring? And I said, you should be measuring the steward. The development of leaders as stewards and reason is because we have very few people with that mindset. And yet we’re entrusting huge groups of people and huge amounts of resources to leaders in large companies or institutions, any institution you pick, right? And there’s no training up of stewardship, belief, values in behaviors, right. And our leaders. So why are we surprised that they don’t steward it?

Cheryl Bachelder: Well, why are we surprised that they don’t create an environment where people feel treated with dignity? We shouldn’t be surprised we’re not training it up. Uh, we’re not expecting it. We’re not measuring it. Like we do everything else in the business world. Right. And so I, I use the word entrusted. I believe people and resources have been tr entrusted to my care as a leader. And my responsibility is to steward them well. Um, and if I steward them, well, maybe I should get paid well and do well in life, but that’s not the motive. The, the motive is I, I am a leader who, uh, has been entrusted with much and, and should steward it to its best possible outcome. I’m not in control of everything so far. Right. But I should steward best I can, uh, to a better outcome. So what does that look like in practice?

Cheryl Bachelder: I think it’s real important to say, how do you do that? Not just philosophy. Um, and my whole premise that Popeyes that the, that the book is written around is what if we led this company as if the franchise owner who invested in the store, the people, the community was the center of the universe. And we were to take care of them and set them up for success. And I said, a million times we will measure our success by their success. That’s the only measure of my team’s success is whether those franchise owners are more prosperous when we leave than when we got here. Um, now why is that rocket science? I really wonder, right. I mean, it is a business model. They need to perform well to continue to invest in the business, to build more units or to innovate or all those ways that we invest. So why wouldn’t I as a leader, think of them as the point of service, the point of stewardship, um, but you know, franchisees in many, many organizations would tell you they are not valued. They are not created with respect their, um, prosperity’s not measured as a measure of the business success. I mean, I, I don’t get it.

Kent Svenson: And lastly, from episode 42, we have Bobby Herrera who talks about why we should always be giving more. Then we take.

David Horsager: Number three. I could pause on each of these and be, uh, moved and thinking of my, my own I’m processing as I have before with your work. But am I giving more than I’m taking?

Bobby Herrera: I think probably the best way to describe that is, uh, you know, I’m gonna borrow a quote from a gentleman whose work I’ve studied quite a bit, um, is that Jesuit priest name, Anthony Demme, uh, very, very wise, you know, spiritual and, um, uh, you know, teacher of, of just good principles. And, you know, he has a metaphor that he uses, you know, every day the son comes out and it shines and not once does a son ever say to the earth you owe me, it just gives. And, you know, I believe that one of the single most important characteristics in leadership and this applies to fatherhood to friendship is just giving more than you take. You know, you know, when you truly give, you don’t wait for a third act, you know, you give the person receives. And too often, I believe, you know, we wait for a third act, we keep a scorecard, or we want something in return, but that’s not really giving, you know, our cup should be full by shining. And just knowing that in giving, there are two acts giving and receiving. And when you learn to eliminate that third act, I think that’s when you’re really living and appreciating the power of giving.

Kent Svenson: That’s it for this week’s episode, be sure to check out trusted leader, show.com for all the show notes and information on anything mentioned in today’s episode. And if you haven’t already, we would greatly appreciate a review on apple podcast or your favorite podcast platform as this is a great way to help support the show and to help other people to discover it again on behalf of David, myself, and the entire team. We just wanna say, thank you for being a part of the trusted leader show. We can’t wait to share with you the incredible guest we have lined up for 2022, but in the meantime, thank you for being a part of the show, have a happy new year. And until next time stay trusted.