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Mastering Timing: The Invisible Skill of Great Leaders
6 Plays1 month ago
In this episode of Voice of Growth, Manny Teran challenges the modern myth of immediacy and reframes leadership through a more enduring lens: business as agriculture.
Some seeds grow in months. Others take years. Some cycles reward action. Others reward restraint. Drawing from Stoic philosophy, real operating experience, and hard-earned lessons from building companies through downturns, Manny explores:
- Why timing is inseparable from strategy
- How strong leaders prepare during good times for inevitable downturns
- The difference between strategic patience and tactical urgency
- Why dry powder, war chests, and optionality separate survivors from winners
- How to build a culture where dissent, safety, and long-term thinking coexist
This is not advice—it’s perspective. A reminder that great leaders don’t confuse favorable conditions with permanent reality, and that luck is rarely accidental—it’s preparation meeting opportunity.
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Transcript
Introduction to Timing in Business
00:00:04
Speaker
The Voice of Growth, Mastering the Mind and Market. Welcome back to the Voice of Growth podcast, Mastering the Mind and Market. My name is Manny Turan and I'm your host.
00:00:16
Speaker
Do not underestimate the power of understanding timing. Timing is crucial in deploying your vision.
Misconceptions about Effort and Reward
00:00:29
Speaker
A lot of business folks think that Effort equals immediate reward. That's simply not true. We've been conditioned over the past number of years, maybe a decade, to have this crazy idea that we put effort in and in a day or two or maybe a week, you would get validation for that effort.
00:00:53
Speaker
That's simply not the case. If you think about social media, You put a video out, you put a post out, you get likes, you get comments, you get instant validation. And that does not necessarily equate to the way business actually operates.
00:01:10
Speaker
Business
Business Cycles and Patience
00:01:11
Speaker
operates more in the agricultural cycles. The idea that we find some land, that we prepare the land, that we sow the seeds, we figure out what to grow and when to grow it.
00:01:24
Speaker
We plant the seeds, we water it, we fertilize it, we tend to it, and eventually we can cultivate and harvest what we planted. Some things are a quick turn.
00:01:36
Speaker
Some things we can cultivate in three months. Others take years. For instance, a walnut tree I learned today takes 15 years to bear its peak and ah that's a long time.
00:01:51
Speaker
So there's two elements here that I want to discuss today.
Strategic vs. Tactical Timing
00:01:54
Speaker
The first of which is the strategic side of timing. These are the long cycles. These are the things that are your vision over three, four, five, 10 years down the road. what are you trying to build for yourself, for your family, for your business, for your community? These are the big rocks, if you will.
00:02:13
Speaker
Then on the other side is more the tactical timing. This is the trench warfare. This is the things that like fighting fires. We all know people, you might be this person that's constantly fighting fires in their business. There's always things to put out. There's always this, something always pops up. There's an email that pops up in the morning you got to deal with.
00:02:32
Speaker
And so when these things occur, there are certain elements that need to be taken into consideration because you don't know ah you don't want to run your business that way. On today's podcast, we're gonna cover and talk about sort of elements of both.
00:02:47
Speaker
And I'm gonna share with you some insights as to how you might look at the world so that you can actually take better command of this time. I'll also take this opportunity to talk a little bit about this podcast and and my role here.
00:03:03
Speaker
My
Role of the Podcast: Education and Inspiration
00:03:04
Speaker
role is not to give you advice. My role is to educate and inspire and and provide insights. That's it. I got some feedback recently about the idea of, what well, you're always giving advice, no one's asking for your advice. And you know what?
00:03:18
Speaker
no We're here with this podcast. I'm sharing my experiences, my insights. My team works on behalf of creating a ah an understanding of certain elements in business. We have a stoic l ah the lens that we apply to all these things because I've learned in my life, in my career, that it's served me very well.
00:03:40
Speaker
we bring We bring guests on as well that show their experiences, their life, and they're talking people um from their perspective as a means to educate.
00:03:53
Speaker
And so that's the beauty of social media. You're gonna be able to to tune in to this, understand if it's useful for you. If it is, fantastic. If it isn't, fantastic. It's great either way.
00:04:04
Speaker
And there's a lot of things on social media today that are there and provide insights. And there's people that are talking smack. there are There's a lot of click bait and things that are conspiracy theories and whatever. So irrespective of all that, I'm here because I believe that there is some value and service that we're providing to our audience.
00:04:24
Speaker
Just wanted to make that a quick note based on some feedback I received recently. So let's talk about the the two elements of these this time that I mentioned.
Understanding Business Cycles
00:04:35
Speaker
We'll start off with the idea that business is seasonal even if you pretend that it's not.
00:04:42
Speaker
whether it's market conditions, market cycles, whether it's business cycles, buying cycles, whether it's regulatory cycles, maybe it's things in your particular industry, growing cycles, maybe you're in the in the ag world. So there's certain cycles that you need to adhere to. And the better understanding you have of these cycles, the better for your business, your own personal um endeavors.
00:05:06
Speaker
And when you understand that timing plays a crucial role you'll begin to understand how you can apply principles that we talk about on this podcast and others in order to advance your vision to the next level.
00:05:22
Speaker
The mistake that a lot of folks make is that we plan as though these cycles remain the same. We plan as though there is a a low maybe a very low grade cycle when in fact there is such volatility in all these markets I mentioned, whether it's the the buying, the growing, the deployment cycles, there's there's things that happen at the the government level, all these things at play.
00:05:48
Speaker
So when you actually apply the idea of the power of timing, you also need to understand a heavy dose of scenario planning. There's scenario planning involved.
00:06:00
Speaker
There's also the more stoic idea that we can't control the cycles. We can only be tolerant and adjust our own self and our own processes, our own execution of these, of whatever we're doing to adapt to those cycles.
00:06:16
Speaker
Let me bring it home a little bit with respect to the long game here and give you an example. Many
Resource Management in Good Times
00:06:22
Speaker
businesses, when times are good, when there's money rolling in, where customers are are buying and things are going well, there's this tendency to go out and spend.
00:06:33
Speaker
And revenue's up, demand's high, and you're spending. You're getting new things. You're giving bonuses. And you are seemingly growing. But there's a lot more power in the idea of holding back, waiting till there's another cycle where there's things that are downturn, now you've got a couple of things.
00:06:56
Speaker
You've got dry powder, meaning you have the ability to feed your family. You have the ability to give your employees a salary. You have the ability to pay your bills on time. You have the ability to buy things when the dollar or your money goes further.
00:07:16
Speaker
You have the ability to buy out your competitors. I've seen it happen both ways. And I've been sort of also party and leading companies that it happened both ways.
00:07:27
Speaker
In my younger years, times were great, so we're spending. And so I've seen situations where the market's up, people take that money and they they put it away for a rainy day.
00:07:39
Speaker
Doesn't mean they don't invest, just means that they take a good portion portion of that and they put it away. So when the market turns, they've got that dry powder, they've got that war chest to go out and hire people that have been fired or let go by your competitors.
00:07:55
Speaker
You have the ability to negotiate. You're gonna buy $150,000 machine Times are rough, you get on the horn with one of these companies, you say, listen, I understand you got this machine for sale. We got a quote two years ago for 150 grand.
00:08:10
Speaker
I believe that we the offer will be 135,000. you have more leverage when you have that war chest during those soft times. so These elements are all part of the scenario planning and part of your strategic vision and application.
00:08:29
Speaker
Strategy's great, but unless it's actually applied and unless it's actually made real, it's just a word. Strong leaders do not confuse favorable conditions with a permanent reality. We understand that things change constantly.
00:08:45
Speaker
We understand that our vision is different than those of our team members. So figuring out a way to reduce bias when you have these conversations.
00:08:58
Speaker
If you're at the at the helm of your company, one of the smartest things you can do is have a meeting with your staff ask some probing questions, and then listen.
00:09:10
Speaker
And you wanna create a culture where your employees, your team members feel safe to share their unadulterated thoughts and perspectives.
00:09:24
Speaker
When you do that,
Communication and Company Culture
00:09:25
Speaker
when you create an a culture where people are speaking their minds about the decisions of the company and they understand that you as a leader are actually taking the time to listen and even the even though you might go in a different direction, you at least acknowledge that perspective and you even spend some resources to exploit it and look deeply more deeply into it.
00:09:51
Speaker
Huge game changer in my book. When I created my my Creed, which I did a podcast a number of months ago about Creed, one of those for the company Creed was safety.
00:10:04
Speaker
The idea that my employees could could freely speak their mind and share with with the rest of us, hey, you know what? I see something here. I don't know. It feels weird. It looks weird. What's what's going on? And then we all jumped in and could figure out, okay, what's the actual truth here?
00:10:20
Speaker
And that saved our hide so many times. So let me let me go back into the the discussions of preparing when times are good for times are bad.
00:10:34
Speaker
So a lot of this is about resources and resources in the in the business domain come in many forms. Certainly capital is a big resource. Human resources, partnerships, government partnerships.
00:10:49
Speaker
You have the idea of vendor partnerships. and having ah brand um grow. if you look at these the big brands today, these top Fortune 50 companies, Fortune 100 companies, the Googles, the Microsofts, the Netflix of the world.
00:11:08
Speaker
If you carefully study when they started and how they grew in times where the rest of the economy was was slowing down or rough, that's where a lot of these actually started.
00:11:21
Speaker
I started
Starting a Business in a Downturn
00:11:22
Speaker
my company in 2000, at the end of 2009, going into 2010. The situation was in full swing by the time i was started my company.
00:11:33
Speaker
And I took advantage of all these things I mentioned. I was able to hire two amazing engineers that at the time, one was delivering pizza and the other was working at a gas station. These are an optical engineer and the other one was an electrical engineer.
00:11:51
Speaker
I was able to to bring them in and say, listen, I'm starting this new company. I can't pay you market rate just yet. stay with me, work with me and together, but by the way, I'll be able to pay you more than you make now.
00:12:03
Speaker
Stay with me, work with me, partner with me. And in no time when the the market shifts and we're actually in the right place at the right time, then I can bring you up back to market rate and we can actually begin to to cook with gas as it as it is. So that happened, I can attest to it, lot of power in it.
00:12:23
Speaker
We all know people that are seemingly lucky. They walk into these opportunities or they they buy a house at the right time or whatever. and they're always getting these things. and And we look at them like, all right, well, you got lucky.
00:12:35
Speaker
Well, if you think about luck, it's when opportunity meets preparation. When you are ready at the right time, that's when you're lucky. So i've really i take that...
00:12:49
Speaker
as a kind of a personal credo of when I look at how can I prepare myself for when these market conditions change to be the lucky one, to be the the one that's prepared and ready for when that opportunity steps through the door.
00:13:06
Speaker
It's happened to me. It's happened to some of my closest friends.
Luck, Preparation, and Opportunity
00:13:10
Speaker
And i ask you to think about in your life, how can you be preparing for whatever might be coming down the road?
00:13:18
Speaker
And We've talked about trends before. Trends are a very powerful ever-present force in business and life that help to um drive the direction we should be working to change our identity. We've talked about goals in the past to accompany a leader that has the success that we want from the efforts of our of our vision.
00:13:44
Speaker
um A couple of things I might also say. is messaging. When it comes to messaging with respect to your business, if you are in the executive level, or if you even have a very small team,
00:14:02
Speaker
When you discuss and share with your team, your vision, your grand vision, but then you also discuss how you actually intend to get there.
00:14:13
Speaker
And you are very clear that when there's going to be times of abundance, that you're going to be saving lion's share of that for their future.
00:14:25
Speaker
Then they'll begin to understand that you have their best interests in mind. Not to say you're not gonna be giving raises or actually investing when you do have the capital, but keeping some for reserves, it helps with so many elements.
00:14:43
Speaker
I don't know about you, but when you make decisions, when you're in ah in a place of lack When your company, I remember years ago, i had my company and there was a few moments where cash flow and accounts payable, accounts receivable, all kind of conspired against me as the owner of the company.
00:15:05
Speaker
I felt as though like the timing, quote unquote, was just such that I didn't know if I was gonna make payroll. there was There was one time when we got really close and there was another time where we actually
Stoic Principles in Business Planning
00:15:19
Speaker
did go negative and I had to write a personal check to cover payroll.
00:15:23
Speaker
And that was not a popular idea with with my wife at the time. So we made it happen and we got through it all, but that was one of the hard lessons I learned about when to save, when to spend, how to manage the idea of timing.
00:15:39
Speaker
And we do these things, especially I do these things now ah out of sheer experiences. The idea of of saving and and working with timing correctly really ties down back to the stoic principles.
00:15:57
Speaker
Tolerance is one of the four virtues. Tolerance means that you don't go out there and you just spend all your money or you don't blow it on some new thing you want to bring into your shop or some new machine or you want to hire that hotshot whatever.
00:16:11
Speaker
Not to say you don't do it and um in a measured way, but at least have the idea of when things are soft, when when the the market is down, how will you be able to fund your operation?
00:16:23
Speaker
I'm a huge proponent of glass half full. I mean, I'm ah i'm like always very optimistic about business. I've had so many near misses that I just see things maybe differently than than most, but I have people around me my team members that are cautious.
00:16:43
Speaker
They are more operators. They look at what are the risks? What are what could happen here? And I could be a brash, ego-driven, you know bravado kind of guy and just over you know go a different direction.
00:17:00
Speaker
But no, I take the time, I listen, and I make sure that I understand that that's their perspective and and it's my bias and my ego that's holding me back.
00:17:10
Speaker
So I'm going to take some time to actually internalize these things and look at how their perspective might add value down the road.
00:17:22
Speaker
So great leaders aren't just decisive. We're also patient. We understand when to push, when to pull, when to conserve, when to strike,
00:17:35
Speaker
when to open up to the market, when to recede into um design mode. These things come with time.
00:17:46
Speaker
They come with with ah wisdom based on experience. They come with
Leadership: Decisiveness and Patience
00:17:52
Speaker
communication and talking with people. I've spoken many times about vulnerability and why it's so important to at least open up to your inner circle.
00:18:04
Speaker
And um if you don't have a board of directors officially, have an unofficial board of directors. I myself have people in my circle that ah vehemently do not agree with me most the time.
00:18:18
Speaker
Politically, how they run their business. And as frustrating as it is sometimes talking with them, I take a break. I take a breath. i I go in there and I i listen to them.
00:18:30
Speaker
I absorb it. I try not to be defensive. I lean on those stoic principles as much as I can. and at the end of that, I take what they shared with me as a very strong, um unbiased perspective of how I might look at taking my business.
00:18:46
Speaker
Doesn't mean that i that I follow it. I probably follow it 10% of the time, but at least that ah I'm aware of it so that as I'm deploying my strategy, my vision into strategy into actually execution and process and making it happen, I can keep their perspective in mind to make any adjustments or to look at what might be around the corner.
00:19:10
Speaker
A lot of this comes from a certain level of pattern recognition. It comes from emotional control and it comes from detachment from our egos. There's this myth about leadership, that leadership is a hammer.
00:19:28
Speaker
that leadership is loud, that leadership is a roaring fire. When in fact, leadership is soft, is kind, is quiet, it's decisive, but it's also patient.
00:19:46
Speaker
These are elements that I've learned over the years and as I've interviewed so many people and actually with intent studied this, it's one of the things I've learned about leadership.
00:19:57
Speaker
The best way to lead is by example. The situations where you don't maybe have the ability to lead by example, you allow the space that people around you need in order to grow into that space.
00:20:11
Speaker
You provide provide guardrails. I really like the idea of guardrails. I'm not the kind of leader that is going to have a tight leash on people that work for me and with me.
00:20:22
Speaker
I'm going instead provide guardrails. This is your your area of of opportunity of focus. And if you fall, I've got you. But make sure that you try not to fall.
00:20:35
Speaker
It's the idea here that you want to give them um the empowerment to make these decisions, but also the accountability that if their decisions are wrong, they own it, but without the fear of getting fired.
00:20:54
Speaker
It is a harmonious situation that needs to be put in place, in my belief, in order to create the the kind of company you want and When you're operating in this way, there is there is peace, joy, happiness, abundance.
00:21:11
Speaker
Not to say you're not gonna have ah the the moments where that are difficult or hard to go through, but ultimately there's a certain peace that comes with this. I've worked almost 25 years in the market, which sounds ridiculous, and from a year ago,
00:21:29
Speaker
um my early years to now is a huge difference. I have people in my circle that are half my age that are executing at these high levels. And I know people that are 25 years older than me that are still struggling with getting off the ground.
00:21:44
Speaker
We all have our own journey. And in my opinion, it's up up to up to us as leaders to help pave a way, shine a light, give insights and share with them ways that they can actually ah create some some momentum and and ah being a dynamic motion towards getting to the place they want to get to.
Evaluating Business Seasons and Resources
00:22:06
Speaker
There are three practical questions. these These are grounded questions I want to ask um you to ask yourselves. The first of which is, what season is my business in?
00:22:18
Speaker
not just the ones we think it might be or what we hope it might be, what but what actually, what are the seasons that our business is in? And I want you to think about seasons from all levels.
00:22:29
Speaker
I want you to think about this agricultural sort of idea that some plants don't grow well in the summer, some plants take six months to cultivate, some plants take the years, some plants take a lot of water, some plants take very little water. So use the same thing in your own business. In your business, what is the market cycle that is at play here?
00:22:47
Speaker
Are there any regulatory issues that will slow down or speed up your your company? Are there grants? Are there government issues?
00:22:58
Speaker
Who is the... 800 pound gorilla that can derail you? What can happen if you are on the front page of the Wall Street Journal? um And so all these elements, like like think outside the box. you know My former business partner, Adam Hartung, his saying was, get out of the box, then think.
00:23:18
Speaker
So that really blew my mind when I heard that because if we're if we're thinking outside the box, we're kind of still in the box. Get out of the box. Get in a place where where bias is left at the front door.
00:23:29
Speaker
It's hard to deal with sometimes. and ah And I've done things when I was with Spark Partners regarding bias. And I'm actually going to do another one here soon regarding the power and the and the detrimental effect of bias, the power of understanding bias and the detrimental effect of bias so that you can use that as a playbook yourself to create a more clear vision um of what is really happening without bringing ego, without bringing all your your baggage to the table.
00:23:56
Speaker
The second question is, What seeds am I planting today that won't pay off in six, 12, 18, 24, and 72 months?
00:24:08
Speaker
So I wanna create some like plot here of what are you doing now that won't actually turn up any fruit for these periods of time? By doing so, it gives you a better idea of where you should be spending your time.
00:24:25
Speaker
If you're constantly just working in the business, you are turning the crank and you're you're making the the monkey dance around and it's all you're doing, you're you're never gonna really get to that that place where you have that massive abundance.
00:24:40
Speaker
But instead, you spend some time working on the business and as well as in the business, because you still still have to make a a living, but if you work on the business, what is it it's gonna take for you to get to the next level? What's a new product?
00:24:56
Speaker
that you're gonna create that'll take your revenues and triple them in 24 months? What is that? Who's the organization out there that can derail you? I mentioned that earlier. These are all these are all questions that need to be asked in order for you to create that momentum you need.
00:25:13
Speaker
And the last
Strategic Acquisition through Resource Saving
00:25:14
Speaker
question I want you to ask yourself is number three, what resource am I consuming now that i should be conserving?
00:25:25
Speaker
Is that cash? Is that some some cogs you've got? Is it human resources? is are you Are you costing, are you um spending your political capital where you should be conserving it?
00:25:39
Speaker
These are all elements that are going to be important when there's a downturn or when there's an opportunity to really strike. I've seen just recently a situation where a particular company began to, they're in a space that's being heavily regulated right now. I'll just say that.
00:25:58
Speaker
And they were actually able to buy their competitor because of the fact that they had a war chest of money. They weren't owned by giant corporation. is a small company, but they were actually able to buy their biggest competitor because their competitor was bought by a bigger bigger company and they didn't meet the the guidelines they had from the parent company. So they wanted to divest and they divested. This other company came in, picked them up, was able to not quite double the revenue, but pretty close. And now they have all the resources. Now they have this team that also has its own set of market intelligence,
00:26:42
Speaker
And so I'm happy to report that they're just they're just kicking ass. I mean, they're just killing it right now because they had the resources. When times were were great four years ago, they saved up some money, they invested it.
00:26:54
Speaker
And when this came to the past six months ago, boom, they made it happen.
Effective Vision Deployment through Timing
00:26:59
Speaker
So to close out, think about timing as a ah secret weapon in being able to deploy your vision into the world.
00:27:09
Speaker
um There's lots of of other resources you can go to. There's certainly just conversations you can have with trusted people friends or or board members. you know Talk about, hey, listen, you know what do you think about we do this? Or what could actually um what is a resource where we're spending too much right now that we should conserve? like Bring these things out and and have an open conversation and be ready to hear whatever message you're going do.
00:27:37
Speaker
criticism you might hear, take a step back, take a breath, take a break, and then go back figure out with your team how you're use that to your advantage. Thanks for listening today.
00:27:48
Speaker
I wish you the best. Cheers.