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18–Adam Wallace – Overcoming Constraints to Capture Value
37 Plays1 month ago
In this episode of The Unfolding Thought Podcast, host Eric Pratum chats with Adam Wallace, who has spent a career solving the puzzle of why good plans so often fail in execution. Adam’s background spans broadway technical direction, multi-billion dollar oil projects, enterprise software rollouts, and now a family office portfolio. Across these diverse domains, he’s seen the same patterns: people aim for the “promised land,” but hidden assumptions, outdated incentives, and unspoken constraints stop them from acting on what they say they want.
Together, Eric and Adam explore:
- From Corporate Fixer to Family Office: How Adam’s narrow skillset in value creation and alignment has turned into multiple investments.
- Pinpointing the “Why” Behind Stalled Projects: Surfacing the real reasons teams say yes in meetings but fail to follow through.
- The Power of Constraints: That New Mexico oil well story—where a manager wouldn’t buy enough belts because of a $100k monthly budget—reveals how small barriers derail big visions.
- Pricing & “Revalue”: Aligning what you do with what customers truly cherish so you can charge more and still deliver better.
- In-Person Experiences in a Digital Age: Why Adam thinks experiential marketing and live events may be poised for major growth—even as AI transforms how we engage online.
If you’ve ever wondered how organizations can remove “foot on the brake” moments or re-align around value instead of just vision, Adam’s practical stories and insights reveal a path to capturing new opportunities—without the usual friction.
Links:
- Adam’s website: https://adamwallace.com
- TGN (Executive Mobilization): https://www.tgn-consulting.com
- (Re)Value: Raise Your Prices and Build Your Legacy: https://amzn.to/4k5ZFcf
- Episode with Andy Hite: https://unfoldingthought.com/14-andy-hite-from-broadway-to-the-boardroom-empowering-leaders-and-teams/
- Episode with Kevin Hughes: https://unfoldingthought.com/12-kevin-hughes-branding-athletes-and-rewriting-the-rules-of-sports-marketing/
- Execution Certainty: https://lumeri.com/execution-certainty/
- GDX Studio: https://www.gdxstudios.com
For more episodes, visit: https://unfoldingthought.com
Join the conversation by emailing Eric at: eric@inboundandagile.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Unfolding Thought Podcast
00:00:04
Speaker
Hi, I'm Eric Pradham. Welcome to the Unfolding Thought Podcast, the show for leaders and deep thinkers who demand more than the usual fluff.
00:00:15
Speaker
If you're the kind of person who moves on from a book, video, or podcast the moment it stops making you think or introducing you to something you can use, I hope you'll feel right at home here.
00:00:30
Speaker
In each episode, we uncover the deeper, often overlooked forces that shape our thoughts and behaviors. So you can see yourself, your team, and the world from a whole new angle, and then actually apply what you learn to grow and do better.
00:00:48
Speaker
On the Unfolding Thought Podcast, we aim for minimal filler and maximal insight, challenging assumptions and sparking new thinking every step of the way.
00:01:00
Speaker
Are you ready to dive deeper? Then let's get started.
Meet Adam Wallace, Corporate Fixer
00:01:06
Speaker
Today, I'm speaking with Adam Wallace, a corporate fixer turned family office investor who spent years helping businesses align day-to-day operations with high-level vision. and Adam has a knack for uncovering hidden constraints like rigid monthly budgets or unwritten rules that keep teams from capturing their true potential.
00:01:29
Speaker
He's also the author of Revalue, a book about how you can raise your prices, realize more value production and acquisition, and build your legacy.
00:01:40
Speaker
And he currently invests in multiple ventures, from executive mobilization to experiential marketing. And now I bring you Adam Wallace.
00:01:52
Speaker
Adam, thank you for joining me. Would you mind telling everyone or all of our listeners a little bit about yourself? Well, thank you for having me. i ah Yeah, Adam Wallace. I'm i'm a businessman.
00:02:04
Speaker
At this point in my career, I own a small family office, so a small portfolio of companies that I help grow their revenue in, usually by optimizing everything how they create value and unlock additional values for their clients. I usually focus a lot on B2B companies and service firms.
00:02:24
Speaker
Prior to that, I had about a decade long experience of as a corporate fixer. So anytime a large corporation was they ah having sort of a gap or a challenge being able to capture the economic value that they were going after, I would usually go in there and help them turn around those situations.
00:02:42
Speaker
Thank you. So it sounds to me like a good portion of your work has been focused on the operations in a business.
00:02:55
Speaker
Yeah. Good way to think about it is there's often a lot of slips between the cup and the lip. when it comes to how do you have a good business plan and then how do you actually get that, see that business plan it through, where you actually capture the value or actually you monetize the value where it actually exchanges the cash for that value.
The Gap in Business Value Capture
00:03:13
Speaker
And often that happens if slips happen in the operation sides of the actual execution of that business plan. You've had quite a bit of your work that has focused on pricing, if I recall correctly.
00:03:27
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, no, no, it was interesting. It was is an an unexpected ah thread throughout sort of the career. But ah essentially, while I was doing all that corporate fixing, like nobody understood what I did. and And even to this day, it's kind of hard to say because it's kind of an abstract description of it.
00:03:43
Speaker
but But essentially, it was always the same pattern that I would see emerge. There was a business plan to capture additional value. And in order to do so, a bunch of really small people put together an executable project or initiative, which were eventual.
00:03:58
Speaker
And the way they put all the pieces together, that alone didn't equal capturing value on it. And so, uh, there was always sort of this white space between good operations, good teams, the way you kind of set it up and the realization of that ultimate business value.
00:04:17
Speaker
And so the more, and and that was just natural. That was like really great companies, companies that they write books about. I, I, you know, got to work with Toyota, like phenomenal company. Same situation though, in certain situations, certain initiatives, certain implementations, always that same kind of tension.
00:04:32
Speaker
And there was like, okay, when that tension got too big, as I've already said, you know, that's when I would go in. But I was starting to do, I was doing that. And then just kind of casual friends or family people kind of just know I did something in business. yeah They didn't quite understand it. And they're like, Hey, come take a look at my business.
00:04:47
Speaker
And then I'd go look at their business and I'm talking about, you know, million to $25 million dollar companies, nothing crazy on it. But I would see the same thing relative to what they were creating, like the value that they were creating or unlocking.
00:05:04
Speaker
And then same sort of disconnect with what the market was willing to pay the most for, that there was white space between it. To be an entrepreneur or business owner, or you're usually driven to create a better product.
00:05:18
Speaker
However, often it's not necessarily the buyer who wants the best better product is your best buyer. They actually buy for what they value, not for what motivated you to build a better product in the first place.
00:05:31
Speaker
And to the degree that there was white space between that, to to the degree that there was a values mismatch was the degree that I found people weren't really able to charge as much because they were charging as much in their frame of reference that they had not really appreciating that the best buyers had a completely different frame of reference.
00:05:51
Speaker
And so I started optimizing to that a little bit. and And it was very interesting, you know, like I could spend five days with my brother down in Texas, like literally out in the field, walking with his teams and seeing how they operate and stuff.
00:06:04
Speaker
And then, you know, like Austin, show him a couple of different financial models and say, look, look, I know you're saying you don't like working for this type of customer profile, but frankly, they're so good.
00:06:14
Speaker
You know, you could actually, and his complaint was, yeah, but they never pay on time. I was like, yeah, but that's so good. You could actually work for them for two days, then take the other two days, drive to their headquarters, sit out in front of their driveway, give them the invoice when they show up in the morning and walk away with a check and still come out ahead.
00:06:31
Speaker
And so what was he started of seeing kind of the trade-offs in the different markets that was making between what he really loved to do as well as what, which part of the market really valued the service offerings he made.
00:06:43
Speaker
Then it wasn't about convincing him to always go after the money or whatever the case is but it was about making a deliberate trade-off in that business model and more aligning motivations to the capital.
00:06:55
Speaker
And so I've, I found most people. It's a very easy sell to be able to say you should be charging more. Most people are very eager and feel like that. And they tell themselves that. But then part of even even writing the book that I wrote was provocation to say, OK, great, do it.
00:07:10
Speaker
Because in order to do it, you're going to have to really break through your own perception of value and start really embracing what your customers actually value.
Overview of 'Revalue' by Adam Wallace
00:07:19
Speaker
And I find that's a you know, that's a transformation or journey for most people in and of itself.
00:07:25
Speaker
You mentioned the book and I know, or I hope that we'll come back around to this, but I want to make sure earlier rather than later that we mention it. So I've read your book.
00:07:37
Speaker
The book is called Revalue, Raise Your Prices and Build Your Legacy. you know, give us a little bit of a description of the book and then, you you know, we will come back around to it, but I want to make sure earlier rather than later that people hear both what the description is and also I'll throw in here At the moment, this was a five-star read for me.
00:07:56
Speaker
i really liked both the information, I guess, you know, the guidance that you provided. And also you have a fable or whatever it is.
00:08:07
Speaker
You have this story that you break up throughout it. And I thought it really was very good. So I hope that people will go and find this book, Adam Wallace, Revalue. But please, I suppose, give us a little bit of description of the book.
00:08:22
Speaker
but Well, no, no, thank you. it It really was just... I had, considering I grew up extraordinarily poor, I was on the wrong side of the tracks with a family, sort of dirt poor farmer.
00:08:35
Speaker
Dirt poor, alcoholic farmers for 200 years, literally in the same house. The house was built in the 1790s before Tennessee was a state by my greatgregreatg great, great, great, great grandfather, Joseph Wallace. Father, son, father, son. My father still lives there today.
00:08:48
Speaker
um And he he would be the first one to tell you, you know, you come from ah from a whole whole line of economically challenged and self-destructive. um was As I started out kind of in that that mentality and over the years, you know, fortunately, I got some good breaks and got lucky.
00:09:05
Speaker
Um, and then ended up at a place where it was like, okay, finances isn't an issue anymore. And the real kind of question to me was, ah you know, I'm having this question, looking at my little, little one and a half year old son, right. Starting a family as, as like a 40 year old and beginning to say, okay, what is it that I learned about the way people value that I knew I didn't know when I was young and it was like a language I didn't speak. And I want to just be able to like capture it down.
00:09:35
Speaker
And set it aside. And so another one, i another way of kind of saying it is I wanted to understand, well, like understand, it seemed like I was doing something that made sense because I would do it over and over again. And I would, I would see it over and over again, but I wanted to be able to like, what is that picture that if I could just put at arm's length and be able to describe it as simply or best as I could, like, how do people really value things?
00:10:01
Speaker
And how does that relate to what they're willing to spend the money on? And then just dive into that and then, okay, if that's the axiom and that's the premise, what is the challenge that gets in our way of running companies to reliably deliver and capture that in situ to the reality of the way you have to operate a business day to day.
00:10:22
Speaker
And so the book is both sort of an exploration of how, how, you know, what does value actually mean and, and how do, how do we, how does that shape how we perceive the world? applied to, okay, well, if those are the underpinnings of value, that like the way it lives day to day in our life, then what does that mean for my company?
00:10:43
Speaker
And then what does that mean for how I could optimize to that the values of my customers, because they're the only people that can pay me money for my products. yeah and then And then what makes it so hard to actually optimize my company to that value creation and capture on it?
00:11:01
Speaker
And so it's a bit, the second part of the book is a bit of a life cycle of like the challenges and the common pitfalls and the obstacles that get in the way, even if you know what it is. And I, I feel like a lot of people, lot of owners really kind of know their market and they know their customers well.
00:11:17
Speaker
But then you even ask them and say, okay, are you really honed well? Like, are you a well-oiled machine to be able to now capture and deliver that repeatedly reliably? And then, you know, like there's an immediate smoke and laugh of recognition. No, no, we're off base here and I can't get these people to do that and this.
00:11:33
Speaker
And it's almost our own team is working against them sometimes. And so it was sort of an exploration of, of what is that phenomena? And then what are those common things that get in our way so that we could actually be able to really optimize our businesses. And, and it was a bit of, you know, myself being and my client, it was my transition between, uh, corporate fixing to right, now I have multiple stakes in companies. And it was kind of like pre-running it as well as saying, okay, what is it that need to let me learn from the lessons that I saw when I was dabbling for friends and family?
00:12:05
Speaker
And really codify it for myself and my business as I go forward as to what are the pitfalls I need to remember. you Remember in two years, remember in five years, because each time we tend to, I find every time those nuances that it makes it very easy to, to try to persuade yourself that, oh, oh, this one's different. Oh, it's not really that universal thing that you already know.
00:12:27
Speaker
This one is unique and it's a very special circumstance. And then yet again, and I think that's where the narrative and the story kind of helps come into play because it's very easy for the notes to be different or the situation to be different or the environment to be different, but it's the same melody. It's the same parable over and over and over again.
00:12:47
Speaker
So, you know, distilling it down to what is that parable? What is a simple way to talk about? What's a simple way to communicate it? honestly, it was a reminder to myself and to my son, you know, and it's a nice bedtime story for my son, but, but, you know, to my, uh, self as well as to just remember, don't get fooled.
00:13:04
Speaker
This is the way it works, you know, say true to that path. Am I recalling correctly that I believe you told me this and or maybe it's early on in the book that you did sort of write this as ah a story or a book that was for your son, right?
00:13:26
Speaker
Yeah, chris precisely. i That it was both dedicated to him and then then the final part of the final pages was... And it was something that i recommend to everybody. It's a little vain and selfish, but frankly, it was sort of asking the question that that if I died tomorrow and never got to see him grow up, what is the one thing I would want to make sure to tell him?
00:13:45
Speaker
You know, that there's a lot of things that I don't know yet to tell him. And hopefully i have a long life to be able to be there no matter what and how that goes. But it was kind of clearing the cash on being able to say, okay, that those three things I really learned. And if there's anything I could say, the most valuable thing I could say to you about you and your own journey, here's what they are.
00:14:04
Speaker
And we'll see how they hold up. And hopefully I'll be there to be able to say them in person to them in 20 years, in 40 years, maybe even in 60 years. But in case I did it, I wanted to go and get those documented as well.
00:14:16
Speaker
I can imagine if someone has not gone and looked up the book again, the book is called Revalue. I'll have a link in the show notes, but if someone has not gone and looked it up, when they hear the subtitle,
00:14:29
Speaker
raise your prices, just that portion. And then you talk about writing for your son, they might think, um I wonder what it is. What sort of information did you feel about pricing was so important for your son?
00:14:41
Speaker
I can tell you, if you're listening to this, that it makes sense when you read the book, especially the story that is woven throughout the book. But One thing I want to add to this is you told me this when you were working on the book that you wanted someone to be able to read the entire book in a typical domestic flight.
00:15:06
Speaker
And I think... One of the reasons, more or less, even if I don't get the specifics correct here, was because there are a lot of books that are stretched out to two, three, four hundred pages, whatever it is, and they really don't need to be that long.
00:15:21
Speaker
You know, the the phrase or meme or whatever it is that is somewhat derisively stated about a lot of things now, a lot of books now, is that it's a TED talk stretched into a book.
00:15:34
Speaker
or something along those lines. And so despite the fact that your book is very thin, you know, my copy, it looks like it's just under 100 pages or so. And so it feels like it's not as substantial as other books. And yet,
00:15:55
Speaker
at least for me, you know, you hit on exactly what you needed to hit on without having too much. I think you probably also recall when I read the book that I said I would have loved to have more.
00:16:09
Speaker
But for everyone listening to this, This book is tight and you can get through it very quickly. So if you're the type of person that reads the first two chapters of some books and then feels like I got it now,
00:16:26
Speaker
This is a great length for you to actually be able to get through the entire story and the information that Adam is trying to convey to you without having to give up two chapters in.
00:16:40
Speaker
Well, I also have to say thank you for that because I i think... ah Just so people know, Eric provided some of the best feedback as an early review that that I got across the board. it was It was both broad trends, but then very specific and digestible.
00:16:53
Speaker
And I do credit you with a lot of the minor call-outs that made it more cogent and readable all the way through. as opposed to, I think it was like a little bit clunky or a little bit tighter in the beginning and then kind of a whack-a-mole in the back. And then you put it out of couple key threads that help pull the whole thing together. So one, thank you for that.
00:17:13
Speaker
Two, you know, it's the old saying that I apologize for a long email but the long or the long letter. I didn't have time to write a short one. It really is the, okay, if we can't say it simply, can do is it really worth saying?
00:17:27
Speaker
And especially in today's world, just as an interesting aside on a business model, a lot of publishers, the value is in the back catalog, which is unheard of, yeah you know, 20 years ago, 40 years ago
The Art of Concise Writing
00:17:39
Speaker
or something like that. You know, it was the opposite.
00:17:41
Speaker
It was like, you know, you made your money on the front. the front sections for the season's releases and stuff. But now it's just the reality. Like you're, you read a whole lot and and you, you know, you, you just digest it regularly. But for most of us, it's like, if if I get one book on vacation or maybe three through the entire year or so,
00:18:01
Speaker
you know, it's so hard to be able to take a risk on something that doesn't come with 12 thumbs up or like, oh yeah, now, now it's time. You know, I should go back to blue, blue ocean strategy. You know, let let me revisit that. Or like, let me, let me quickly see if everything's kind of there as to like, I'm going back to like a proven entity that, okay, maybe I know the lessons, but let me go back and reread that one because, because your time is just so valuable and yeah it's harder and harder to take a risk on. and ah Plus it's even depressing. Like, like you said about you read in two chapters, right? Like of the actual people who buy the book and then the people who read the book and then the people who read past the first two chapters is such a depressingly small amount. I wanted to be able to help just provide something that if it was worth, it was interesting enough for you to be able to get it, then interesting enough to be able to finish it. So then you also could just get that little bit of the dopamine hit and the accomplishment.
00:18:58
Speaker
of knowing you got the full picture of what this person is trying to say. Well, I said it already, but I think you definitely produced a product that was well worth the time. And yeah, you know, you mentioned that I read a lot.
00:19:15
Speaker
We're recording in January of 2025. Last year, I think I read about 190 books or something like that. And I forget the exact timeline from reading a preprint version versus reading the final book. But It really did stand out to me.
00:19:34
Speaker
And I recommend that a lot of people purchase the book. And, you know, most authors... write a book not because they tend to believe that they're going to write the next harry potter or you know the next start with y or whatever it is in their particular field certainly a lot of authors hope for things like that but a lot of people that write their first book in particular have something inside of them that
00:20:08
Speaker
they really want to get out and they feel is valuable. And plenty of these books, you know, aren't right for you or for me, but I think that you can find some things where the ah ROI on every page, you know, that time spent is really quite high. And I think you did a great job.
00:20:28
Speaker
So, okay. You know, I, I want to go back a little bit though. Just to make sure I flesh out some things. So I think if I heard correctly and I've understood about your story before, the what you referred to as corporate fixing was essentially the your job or the early portion of your career.
00:20:54
Speaker
You were working in... consultancies, if I recall correctly, and you were mostly working with international businesses. Is that right? Or can you flesh that out a little bit for me? Oh, sure, sure.
00:21:04
Speaker
Absolutely. ah So actually, my first career, curl ah you're talking about operations. I was a technical director in the entertainment industry. So that was my official first career. And so that that one is like if you go to Broadway and you see like a Broadway show or or now with like the Cirque du Soleil shows out in Vegas.
00:21:23
Speaker
And i was in I was a technical director or technical supervisor depending on union or non-union. But basically all that meant was the five departments of the sets, the lighting, the automation. uh, the properties, paints, all that reported it up to me.
00:21:36
Speaker
And so I would work with the designers and I'd work with the directors to be able to bring that vision to life with all the technical elements, but also constrained with the local unions and fire marshals.
00:21:47
Speaker
yeah So, so, you know, I got really good. It was a like a proving ground to be able to hold a vision for something and harsh realities at the same time. And it was a proving ground because that industry, there was no such thing as being late because, you know, mostly if you think about most people in projects and stuff like that, well, there's just a cost to being late, but we're always late in construction and stuff.
00:22:07
Speaker
Well, in that industry, you've already sold opening night tickets. So truly it was a culture of, you know, the show must go on. Well, you've already sold tickets and it's a small industry. You get a reputation really quickly. i think, again, I got lucky early on, but it was one of those things. If you go over budget a couple times, your reputation shot, no one's going hire you.
00:22:25
Speaker
So, so it was one of having to navigate those different values and those different perspectives really easily. And so that's what I did in my teens as I was kind of paying my way. I started college when i was 16 and then i was paying my way through all the way up until my late twenties when I was heir apparent to the job I'd retire in in that industry.
00:22:45
Speaker
And then it was like, okay, that was fun, but not, not far from ready to retire and fall, far from what's next. And then, yeah, I had a whole bunch of ah friends and they were just consultants, boutique consultants, like these old school guys.
00:22:59
Speaker
Um, most of them were like 20 years, my senior. And, you know, I was always picking the brain because it was always kind of interesting because I would see the overlap of what they were dealing with, with what I did kind of day to day. And they would share some of the techniques and then I would use them and then I would innovate on their techniques and stuff like that and share with film.
00:23:16
Speaker
And so at a certain point, I made the the leap into that and then did that for a while. And then, yeah, it it was just large, large companies. And it was very practical. like You would end up kind of going into certain segment and do a lot of very similar things.
00:23:32
Speaker
So for three years, i did large scale enterprise IT t implementation in the fintech services industry. So insurance providers, when you call to be able to get your clients,
00:23:44
Speaker
insurance renewals. Now it's mostly moved online and there's a lot more self-service, but they would always have to put you on hold and then check something and then like put you on hold. Well, that was always a reason because the systems behind it, depending on the state laws, are not allowed to talk to each other.
00:23:59
Speaker
But then they also just had byproduct of, you know, combining multiple companies over 30 years, just had legacy systems that should be talking to each other, but not talking to each other.
00:24:10
Speaker
So it's like, how can you, you know, claim you're an insurance company who treats you like a neighbor when they can't even get one view of who you are? They literally are going through 50 systems.
00:24:21
Speaker
And most of those systems can talk to each other, but not all the systems talk talk to each other. ah so a lot of the times they quote unquote, put you on hold. It's because they're going literally from one window in the computer to another window the computer entering the same information and one to be able to see what that now can tell you about, you know, life insurance or fire insurance versus is auto insurance, because it can't be in one system.
00:24:43
Speaker
And so, so I was working on the badge as a consultant, but then being deployed for one of the early enterprise software companies, when everything was migrating to the cloud, they were putting the systems in the cloud. And then almost always ways you run into business process redesign.
00:25:01
Speaker
problems so somebody sold the the dream of the software the team comes in okay they're making 25 million a year on license fees they're putting the system in place so but then that means a vp of operations has to adjust the way the team is actually operating and and then they're not making the decision required so the implementation is not going on on time so then the executive is yelling at the vendor who i'm paying you this amount of money to get the implementation on time and then the vendor is trying to politically navigate and be able to say yes but it's kind of your team and vp's are not giving the answers to the questions we need to be able to do it and so that was that's an example of the situations that i would go in to be able to just navigate and and quickly they navigate that but instead of it just being navigated to like solve the issue
00:25:49
Speaker
If you went into that situation and you just looked at it through the lens of value creation, well, that's unites everybody around the table. Like you need no big or sort of motivating narrative. Now the narrative going to be a little bit different for each individual, you know, and they're, they're contributing part is going to sound and talk different because everybody talks a different language, right? Like a data architect is going to have a completely different language than the VP of compliance.
00:26:18
Speaker
And that's usually what would get happened is you would actually get the right people in the room, but they were talking passive each other because they didn't understand what was relevant. So they were actually talking about the right things, but the implication or the meaning of how that is actually relevant to me and my team and what we're trying to do, there was a mismatch.
00:26:39
Speaker
And so I found i was I was able to excel in that because if I saw it as value And I just saw that a lot of the instantiations of that value wasn't being communicated because that, that expression didn't actually communicate the risk to the person who cared about the risk or that expression or that, that expression of the risk.
00:26:59
Speaker
The person just didn't have any appreciation of what that really meant on it. And if you could kind of break it through to what were they trying to do? ah okay. Create value for themselves and their customers.
00:27:12
Speaker
Oh, okay. That could actually unite them. And then we could solve those issues way, way, way faster. And so then that was, that was quote unquote sort of my value. capture as an outside consultant is they were struggling with something that was costing them a lot of internal frustration and money.
00:27:29
Speaker
But all of a sudden I could actually solve that problem in six weeks when they've actually been upset by that problem for six years. And so then that was a good return on investment and they were happy to pay well for that.
00:27:40
Speaker
It's interesting to me that, you know, I know we're talking about the past at this point, and this was earlier in your career.
00:27:51
Speaker
We're not talking about a hundred years ago by any means, but you know, this wasn't just five years ago. So it's interesting to me, as you're talking about this, that even though I suspect that you and I are familiar with different ways of getting different stakeholders or different people who are horizontal or lateral to one another in an organization to collaborate, even though we're
00:28:24
Speaker
different or to get them to buy in is another way to say, ah even though you and I might be familiar with different practices, that you're still kind of speaking to something that I hear from a lot of people that I talk to from different backgrounds. And I suspect you hear as well.
00:28:45
Speaker
You know, I, have an episode that will have come out before we release this one. it hasn't released as of this recording, but it's with a coach, Andy Height. And one of the things that he talks about is with one of his clients that she was progressing in her career and ran into some sort of hurdle. I forget the exact details.
00:29:09
Speaker
But in one of his coaching sessions, they uncovered that she was actually protecting another value that she had.
00:29:20
Speaker
And so what that brought to mind for me when I was talking to him is that there's something called the immunity to change x-ray. And this came out of Robert Keegan and Leahy, I believe is her name.
00:29:36
Speaker
Essentially, the idea is that, Adam, you or I say, it's January, I'm going to lose weight, I'm going to get in shape. And I think it was in a recent Apple commercial that they even talk about it's Quitters Friday or something is, you know, most people stop going to the gym by the second Friday or the second Monday or something like that of January.
00:29:58
Speaker
And one of the things that they found with their research, the immunity to change research was that Very often we intend to collaborate on moving everything to the cloud, for example, but we might not follow through on everything that we need to do because we have something else that we are protecting.
00:30:23
Speaker
So in your particular case, so I'm going to fill in some gaps here, so it might not be perfect, but let's just imagine we have a CIO or someone that's in sort of that realm of the business.
00:30:36
Speaker
Maybe we have a CTO, maybe we have a COO, CFO, or directors. you know It could be in different departments. And when you paint a picture of the promised land,
00:30:50
Speaker
They all say, of course we want that bigger business, cheaper, faster, who knows what. Our reps are on the phone, customer service people or whatever are on the phone, and they can get answers immediately or who knows what the benefits are.
00:31:05
Speaker
They all say yes. And then three weeks later, you find out that very little is moving and everybody's pointing at everybody else. And more than likely, some of the participants aren't following through on what they need to do because they value other things that are conflicting.
00:31:24
Speaker
That's right. And so then it sounds like while I would be familiar with, okay, we have some alignment work that we might do it and I would go about it in one way because I'm familiar with certain practices.
00:31:36
Speaker
you either through just your work experience or because maybe you studied some other things, you came upon something similar, which is everybody sees the promised land is over there and they want to go there.
00:31:52
Speaker
But for whatever reason, they're not willing to take the steps to get to the promised land. And that is what then you ended up practicing a lot in your corporate fixing days. Is that right?
The Pursuit of Value
00:32:04
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no. Very well said. And and i would I would even go a step further and it might be a little controversial because I don't mean this in the extreme thing of it. But people don't change. I mean, that's that's the problem with one of the solutions will one of the tactics to be able to do that is, oh, good change management.
00:32:21
Speaker
But like people don't change, meaning why would I do something different? So maybe we can kind of break it down a little bit because I think this this is a really great example to dive into. Each of us pursues what we value.
00:32:36
Speaker
Okay, so technically we can't pursue what we value. What we're technically doing is we're pursuing a local instantiation. That is the embodiment imbued into something that it means something that we value.
00:32:51
Speaker
Okay. So awesome. That becomes very, very interesting because in order for any human to do anything, right? Like when was the last time you woke up and you said, you know, my life's pretty good. and Why don't I deliberately make a choice today that makes my life worse?
00:33:08
Speaker
We don't do that. And I'm not saying people don't make decisions that make the life worse. Empirically, that happens all the time. But nobody at the time of making the decision, until you get extraordinarily sort of bitter and resigned and, you know, there's a whole hell that you're living through in and of itself.
00:33:24
Speaker
You're always making a choice because from your idiosyncratic ladder in a value, you see by making that choice, you're going to end up in a better place than where you're predicting based on where you are today. You're going to end up.
00:33:39
Speaker
Now it's a little bit more interesting because it's like, OK, well, I can pay attention to what you pay attention to. Okay, and what does that tell me? Well, it tells me an inference as to what you value. Because you're not going to, none of us pay attention to the things that we don't value.
00:33:54
Speaker
And it's transparently obvious. and And we can go into the physiological underpinnings of it and stuff like that. But basically, long story short, you know, our brain is two pounds of our body, but takes 20% of our energy.
00:34:07
Speaker
Our human, if you benchmark against other mammals and stuff like that, we're actually born three months early than what we should be. Because if we did it, our heads wouldn't come out. Like we would, you know, have too many steel bolts because our heads are too big.
00:34:20
Speaker
So basically we can't get it our brains any bigger without evolutionary costs. So we're very highly, highly optimized to optimize our perception of the world, our perception of opportunities and obstacles based on what we value.
00:34:38
Speaker
Okay, you put that back into that work situation. Of course, we're all aligned on the vision for the future. But then I walk out of the room, and there's also another kind of compounding element in there, which is if I don't perceive a viable way to get to what I value.
00:34:56
Speaker
So just think about it. This is like hunter-gatherer. Oh, okay, i see I see a beautiful bunch of ripe cherries. but they're so high up on the edge of a tree, on the side of a cliff, throw a couple of rocks at them, I get nowhere close. i you know' like I try to climb and then fall down.
00:35:13
Speaker
Evolutionarily wired to sit down and not waste the calories on a full errand. as opposed to going after it. So if you don't have a viable pathway, at least at the time of it, even if you really want it, you're not going to be motivated to do it.
00:35:31
Speaker
Now you add another compounding element into a corporation. Most corporations are built to kill good ideas. And that's not anything wrong, but like if you think about a corporation, you found a gold mine of value creation and harvesting,
00:35:47
Speaker
And as it gets bigger and bigger, and especially if the company is above a couple billion, you have different departments who are what?
Challenges in Corporate Change
00:35:55
Speaker
Arguing with each other about exactly where to put that X of that extraction in order to help optimize the entire system.
00:36:04
Speaker
So any sort of like major deviation of doing something different, truly, truly creative people, people that I used to work with, like in the entertainment industry, they don't show up at a meeting at nine o'clock.
00:36:15
Speaker
Literally, they don't work for a corporation. They don't even show up at a meeting. You tell them you're going to have a meeting. They might show up two days later. Sure. randomly. And those are incredibly creative people. And we, you know, we kind of laugh about them and you kind of have the archetypes and stuff like that, but you have to really appreciate within the humans that are operating that system.
00:36:33
Speaker
It's what is people who are highly conscientiousness, people who get the job done, people who will shut up and suck it and keep on trucking to be able to capture the fruit that's right in front of them.
00:36:44
Speaker
And it's been so honed that you're getting that constant dopamine hit day in and day out. to be able to do what you need to do. And then all sudden you're telling people in that system, oh, well, we need to completely operate differently.
00:36:56
Speaker
And then you're expecting just because you say that once and everybody is profoundly aligned that then anything is going to move in a different system. and And so actually one one of the companies that I own, part of what we're building is ah is a leadership approach to deal with situations like that called executive mobilization, because what happens is executives see it and know it's predictable. So then they go to their HR department.
00:37:21
Speaker
And then the HR department says, well, it's a communication problem. Spend the next six months communicating the strategy battle, you know? And it's like the executive who's trying to capture the business value. I just want the trucks out by Tuesday.
00:37:33
Speaker
And so fine, fine. You tell me it's communication. Let me do my roadshow. Let me do my town halls and everything else like that. I get down the end. The trucks are still going out on Wednesday and not on Tuesday. The team still aren't operating differently. yeah And so it keeps on being one of these kind of compounding challenges, whereas again and again and again, we found if you actually go in there and just look from the perception of the person doing the action or not doing the action required for the business value, it makes 100% sense their point view.
00:38:02
Speaker
from that point of view Oh, this is the fad of the month or, oh, you're asking me to own the PNNL, but you still have to have me sign off on two, you know, two supervisors for $200 expense.
00:38:15
Speaker
Yeah. This is a fad. You it's going to by the wayside. Right. Or you go in there it's like, no, this is genuine. And all they're looking for is the right signal that is going to actually be different this time where there's actually a viable pathway to go, go do it.
00:38:31
Speaker
So one of the other industries I worked in was oil and gas, and I was working with a mature asset company. Mature asset meaning, you know, the old, the old mental model of like a pump jack, you know, an oil well.
00:38:41
Speaker
This was this company. There's not many of those. There's a whole bunch of pump jacks that are still on operations, but it's not what you go build for new oil and gas extraction. They don't look that way anymore. But there's hundreds of thousands of them from back in the day.
00:38:54
Speaker
And the mature ones will still pump out five to 10 barrels a day. But that's very little oil compared to one pump can do hundreds of thousands. So it was a mature asset. So those old pump jacks in New Mexico.
00:39:07
Speaker
And this, this was years ago when oil prices were on a terror, was above a hundred, hundred dollars a barrel. And they needed to keep their promise to wall street on capacity. And the issue with any oil well is you open them up and start and they slowly decline with age.
00:39:23
Speaker
And so the company was buying old assets because they also had a good technology that they could go in and actually get them to produce above what everybody had under underwritten those old assets to produce that.
00:39:35
Speaker
And so Wall Street loved them and they kept on growing and growing. And in the companies they would buy them, love, love them because they would be able to get off the books, these old wells they no longer wanted and they didn't really.
00:39:46
Speaker
you know It wasn't their prime business. And then this small upstart was like, hey, great. we We're getting twice, three times as much oil out of each one of them. And it was like win, win, win. Well, anyways, they they went to and they bought a new acquisition of of New Mexico.
00:40:01
Speaker
And New Mexico is like the worst of the worst when it comes to these old leaky wells. They were built, i don't know, they might have been built like Rockefeller himself. I mean, they these, you're talking about ones from the 1920s, the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, and they're in rough shape.
00:40:15
Speaker
But they would still be out in the field and, again, pull up five barrels a day. It's like, okay, five barrels is five barrels. That's $500 a day. and if you own 100,000 of them, okay, well, that's still an asset worth managing.
00:40:27
Speaker
They needed more production. So I go out there and into the field with one of the VPs and it was the local, the local guy. Now I'm a young baby face consultant and he was like a grand poobah type. hed He'd been in the community his entire life. He'd worked for this company or that company and he'd worked for the government supervision, writing the policies and he worked for a leading company and all of these different things. And, and it's his hometown. So he's now at the the person in charge of that asset locally for it.
00:40:55
Speaker
And so was one of those classic alignment sessions, right? Here's the vision. We need more production. So the question is, we're coming to you. You know your land, you know your wells. Instead of us coming from the top down, we want to hear from you.
00:41:08
Speaker
What should we be asking you for? You know, we have $100 million dollars to invest in extra production. We don't want to tell you how to run your asset because this notoriously a difficult asset to run.
00:41:21
Speaker
You're the locals. You tell us how to do it. Now, this is like they've been bought and sold like five times in the past 20 years, right? So this is just a new owner of the month, literally in some cases, coming in to do that, facilitate the session and everything.
00:41:38
Speaker
And i could just tell that local guy, one, really hated me as a consultant. And then two, as we were talking, he kept on saying like, yeah, we'll absolutely do it. We'll be able to come up with some ideas and the brainstorming.
00:41:51
Speaker
but We just have to operate within the constraints that we have. And that kind of became this mantra. And it was like, just, you know, it stood out as like a little bit of a weasel ward, a little bit of an asterisk, like he was totally game and well polished and almost like a politician, totally game on board.
00:42:07
Speaker
And then he he would keep on adding that. So anyways, we did some breakout sessions and stuff like that. So remember going to the warehouse behind the meeting room. We're sitting there I'm sitting with the next to the VP and then he's sitting next to the VP.
00:42:19
Speaker
And the VP is starting to get like a little upset because they're not giving him anything to like... What could you do? So he starts throwing out ideas on like, what could you do, you know, to do production? Because, you know, he's an old guy as well, all over, all over the U S and all of the different different assets. You know, he, he knows some commonly good best practices that they could be doing.
00:42:40
Speaker
And then same thing, the local manager would be like, yeah, yeah, but we have to do it within the constraints. We're all obligated to. And so finally was like, I'm going to burn myself by doing this. but I think it's worth it.
00:42:51
Speaker
So I kind of like interrupt him and it's like, I'm sorry, must be because I'm the consultant here. But you keep on referencing these constraints. Could you just tell me an example of a common constraint that you have to do this within just so I can appreciate what you're talking about?
00:43:06
Speaker
And he took the bait. he He was so happy to tell off this consultant who doesn't know anything about the constraints. And he said, with not missing a word, mincing a word on it, it's like, well, yeah, it's really simple.
00:43:19
Speaker
I have a hundred thousand dollar monthly budget to hit for maintenance. And I can't go over a hundred thousand without getting fired by, you know, and he pointed to the VP next thing. And the VP's job jaw is just getting open law wider and wider. So much a fly could have come in and landed on his tongue at the moment because literally the VP is sitting there with a hundred million dollars saying anything and everything for production.
00:43:45
Speaker
It's yours. The manager is sitting there saying, and yeah, I might have 20 belts that break, but I won't buy in another. I only buy 10 belts that month because otherwise I'm going over my maintenance budget.
00:43:58
Speaker
And then I'm going lock in the oil production on the other 10 wells while the guy's got $100 million. dollars So he was optimizing to to your point about values and what is you care about.
00:44:09
Speaker
He was optimizing to the integrity of a monthly operating budget. Because that's been the name of the game of how his company has survived when everybody else's company got shut down, went bankrupt for 20 years.
00:44:25
Speaker
And then, you know, VP and a consultant show up one day, literally with with a bank account of $100 million dollars if they need it. And what's he going to do? All sudden pivot on a dime and actually he'll, wait a second, all I have to do is give you a proposal and say, yeah, I need 200 belts.
00:44:42
Speaker
And he'll authorize it that moment in the room. You know, and 200 barrels is like, I don't know, $250,000 or something like that. It's not, oh no, no, that would be 500,000, but it still it's like 500,000 to then turn back online an extra hundred wells that can produce two to five barrels a day.
00:44:59
Speaker
Right? So the business model, it was like, that's a good example of like the day-to-day gap or kind of the stoppage or where you have your foot on the brake and the gas at the same time misaligned within the same operating company.
00:45:12
Speaker
But it doesn't require a lot of these larger interventions. It requires just figuring it out from the actual person who's not taking the action that you're expecting to unlock the value. Well, what's going on?
00:45:24
Speaker
And then taking that to the person who actually has the authority to authorize something different or to walk out the issue or like more ability to change the quote unquote rules that they're operating by in order to capture that value on doing so.
00:45:39
Speaker
And it's time after time, it's some variation of that same sort of story as to when I say close that gap or do that value capture. It's like in a million years, you couldn't tell that guy to now violate his budget and until he said it out loud.
00:45:53
Speaker
And the other person's like, oh yeah, I can double your budget for the next three years. Would that help you? There's you know another thing that I have come upon from Robert Keegan's work, and I believe he had collaborators, could have been Lisa Leahy or others.
00:46:10
Speaker
But this thing, i believe the way that they phrase it is Inside of every complaint is a conviction. And it sounds to me like without necessarily going for the complaint, you were able to surface a conviction, which is the budget is important.
00:46:31
Speaker
If I can put it very simply. And i found often if you can surface the complaint and bounce it back to someone and say, it sounds like this is what you're saying, even if it is complaint language, you can also then bounce back to them Essentially, if this is what hurts or what you're complaining about or what you have a problem with, this other thing, let's flip it over, must be what you really care about. it must be what you're really convicted about. That's right.
00:47:08
Speaker
And again, without necessarily surfacing the complaint, it sounds like you were able to bring that to light. And in my experience, in my recent work, in recent years,
00:47:20
Speaker
It has been really inspiring when I've worked with groups and you have some of the people who they perpetually will just torpedo a project because when you do a project, some big change in a business, you're going to implement an yeah ERP or who knows what it is. Nowadays, you're going do some change around generative AI maybe.
00:47:42
Speaker
And everybody, when you say, does anyone have any input? everybody says nope and especially the haters or you know your er's who become a problem later on they'll say nope but if you can bring out of them what they care about you know the conviction then what i've experienced is very often these people who were skeptical and they were against you will feel like and express to you, that's exactly what I need to protect or what I care about. And now I feel heard.
00:48:22
Speaker
And I don't know in this example, but I would like to think that whether it's in that story or others that you've been through, when your VP, when your client was able to say, oh well, if that's your problem,
00:48:37
Speaker
I can take care of it. You know, it's just, it was never surfaced before. And so now that I say I can take care of it, hopefully that gentleman that was from the location expressed, well, if you can do that, then of course I'm on board.
00:48:52
Speaker
You know, those, those constraints are changed or alleviated Yeah, that's so good. I want to under-sign a couple of things that you kind said in it. From what I've learned relative to diving into the underpinnings of it,
00:49:08
Speaker
You're exactly right. But I would even say it's more primordial than that. Like you value something and then you recall it your salience landscape, like basically just the way the world occurs for you as like well what's coming into your space in any given moments starts to organize itself as opportunities and obstacles to achieving that thing that you value.
00:49:31
Speaker
So often one of my consultants call them the curmudgeons. And i put myself in the proud card carrying curmudgeon group. Like I'm very much a curmudgeon as well, where it's like, no you win or die by the initiative is going to win or die by your curmudgeons.
00:49:46
Speaker
Why? Because they're going to see the obstacle. Like the only way you can see an obstacle to complain about is you're actually looking from the place that you're being asked to look from.
00:49:59
Speaker
So that's like, to me, it's like a really good indicator. Like when I can actually get the team to go from sounds good to this is a terrible idea because It's like, I've already won half the battle because now I've got them hooked on actually really aiming at the same thing in a way that they're actually considering it.
00:50:21
Speaker
They're not entertaining, like not pacifying and not things, but actually thinking what would actually look like. Well, immediately have an obstacle in the way. Okay, cool. So then the next step in that moment is ah you usually find like this interesting distribution, the content of those obstacles.
00:50:38
Speaker
Well, I find they that they fall into three different buckets all equally. One bucket is the problem actually was solved.
Identifying Business Obstacles
00:50:46
Speaker
You know, sometimes it was solved two years ago. It used to be a problem. It's just not a problem. We've actually implemented something. It just doesn't exist.
00:50:53
Speaker
But that person doesn't know that that problem has actually, you know, it's more of a historic concern or constraint or consideration. And as soon as they say it out loud, other people can just tell them, oh, no, we've already fixed that.
00:51:05
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, we did our business process two years ago. It's working smooth. It's like, that's no longer an issue. It's like, yeah, that's no longer an issue. Like super, super easy. That's one thing. The second third is things that need to be addressed and actioned, but like, i that not actually that complicated. it's It's just kind of like, oh, yeah, that ah you need to hit, you know, all interface now needs to go from step one to step two and a half. We actually don't have a two and a half.
00:51:33
Speaker
Let's take that offline and figure out how we're going to do that between our teams. And it can be very sort of specific. We just need to be able to go from state A to B. You get the right people in the room to look at it from a 360 perspective.
00:51:45
Speaker
Like maybe they need to report out to everybody else. Okay. We've closed the loop on that. But it's like, generally speaking, if you have a competent management team, you'll be able to solve that lower issue. And that's sort like another kind of a bucket of three of them.
00:51:57
Speaker
And then the the third bucket, that's my finest bucket. Because it's the ones that's been on the flip charts at every offsite for the past five years. It's the same variation of the same thing, the systemic inhibitors, the broad things over and over again.
00:52:15
Speaker
But what's kind of fun about that bucket is if you get enough stuff up on the map, you find, oh, oh interesting. These are all variations of the same systemic inhibitor. And usually, you know, that can be sort of three to five things that, you know, the company knows we really suck at that or we haven't done anything or we kind of done.
00:52:36
Speaker
And it's really good because you can actually impact those, but you're going to have to impact them by leadership from multiple directions with each person kind of moving something forward in a new creative, different way.
00:52:48
Speaker
So so that's that's a whole other strategy of how do you break those open and implement them and stuff. But the reason I love them is because they honestly almost always boil down to a handful of underpinning issues.
00:53:00
Speaker
And they go across silos, they go across accountabilities. It doesn't actually roll up to one leader until you get to the CEO because everything rolls up to them. But the CEO can't be able to actually implement or change them effectively.
00:53:12
Speaker
So it just requires good leadership to kind of come together Figure out how they're going to solve and solve, but they're actually pretty solvable relatively quickly. I mean, they're not like within weeks solvable, but usually you can solve them within three to five months.
00:53:28
Speaker
And when you do solve them, it's such a loud message to the company called, wait a second. We can operate like that now. Now we're operating in a different world.
00:53:39
Speaker
And that wins over lot of times the old curmudgeons along the way as well. So that's the content side from the orientation of the human side. I find when you're talking to a general population of people in a company, you know, you have the 20% who are always on board before you even open your mouth, they're on board for the new new thing.
00:53:58
Speaker
Then you have kind of like the, the sort of more like sort of 30% who are generally on board, they just kind of need to to hear a little bit more about it. And then you have the kind of curmudgeons on the other side, which is like, if you have a good case and this is real, I'll be on board.
00:54:16
Speaker
And then you have the 20% who are never will be on board no matter what. And if you just focus on, in those early days, building a critical mass, because you know the people who will be on board, they're not going to give you any feedback anyways, because they don't think that critically about it.
00:54:31
Speaker
And if you're really talking about the people in the middle and that first group of genuine people people who like see the problem with it and it bothers them. And if you can actually solve it sufficient enough for them to be on board, then you don't have to worry about convincing everybody else. They'll convince everybody else.
00:54:48
Speaker
Because even if you think about it, if you're sitting in the room with the curmudgeon then all sudden the curmudgeon says, no, no, but this one, this is a good idea. Actually, like that sells everybody else more than anything you can do as a leader to really focus on what is the obstacle they'll until they see themselves.
00:55:04
Speaker
Oh crap. We have a pathway. And and so that can take some while. But I remember one of my colleagues years ago on another oil and gas project, they were building an asset. think they wanted to build it for like $7 billion.
00:55:16
Speaker
But the issue was most of the time recently, the lowest quote they could get was like $9 billion. But the reality is most of the ones when they were all said and done came in at like 12 billion.
00:55:28
Speaker
And it was like, the question was, what could we do to make it possible for it to come in at 7 billion? And it took them about a year of exploring different options and stuff like that. But it really was each person had that aha moment where they went from yeah, yeah, yeah, know you say on paper we can theoretically do this too. And remember one guy's aha moment was like, oh, this is adjusted for inflation. This is what we used to build them for in the 90s.
00:55:56
Speaker
what's What's changed with how we build things in the 90s and this? Obviously, we want to keep all the safety things that have changed, but what about these other ones? And then they just kind of saw they kept on adding more quote-unquote reliability,
00:56:08
Speaker
Like nobody wanted the short straw of their engineering stamp be the one of why it was under capacity. So they started bumping up all of the standards until also the costs ballooned by an extra 30% versus a willingness to actually design two spec of what they needed without any extras.
00:56:26
Speaker
And, and yeah, they, they ultimately ended up executing that project and like, oh, step changing. And then the reliability was amazing as well because everybody was so nervous about cutting corners on reliability.
00:56:37
Speaker
They actually doubled down on reliability, but they had the right trade-off conversations as they were doubling down on reliability between cost savings now versus flexibility later.
00:56:48
Speaker
But it was that same thing. but each one Each one of those people had to go through that thing until they saw a viable path. And once they saw a viable path, they were to actually execute that and over a five-year project.
00:56:59
Speaker
Is there something you might recommend? You know, a leader is having a hard time getting their people actually acting on a change or working together or we're finding we run into the same similar hurdles year after year.
00:57:16
Speaker
Is there something you could recommend that they check out or that they email you? Yeah, no, absolutely. But, but yeah you know, I'm going to be talking my own book here because I'm fascinated by these problems and thus I've created solutions to the problems over the years.
00:57:30
Speaker
but But I would say in two buckets, if you're a general organization interested in this, I would go to TGN.llc and I'll redirect you to the full company website.
00:57:42
Speaker
That's the company I'm working with now that's that's building an approach to mobilize executive agendas. So when a company like a very large consequential company, you know, they've done some work with the Pentagon and other Fortune 100 clients is having to make a pivot and they can't tolerate the slow bond for the ship to slowly turn on and they need to do a step change pivot to be able capture additional business value.
Executive Mobilization for Value Capture
00:58:06
Speaker
That's where this approach applies. And it's a systematic way to go in and really diagnose quickly what's going to get in the way at whatever phases, usually kind of starting with a small team because you recognize, okay, this team is kind of our problem, but long-term clients, they're in there constantly, they are mobilizing the agenda or the new strategy.
00:58:27
Speaker
To be able to capture additional business value because, you know the world changes and, you know, we're organized and set up and our culture is set up based on the old business game. And now tomorrow we cut a new one and we've got to pivot, but we don't have the time it would take to do all of those sort of best practices that are now becoming more of a weight and an arbitrage.
00:58:49
Speaker
So that that's executive mobilization, TGN.llc. I think we'll be directing to you there quickly. ah The other one, I would say if it's a project, capital projects, a lot of the oil and gas was the creation of an asset somewhere well or digital product of like the implementation, all of that was execution certainty.
00:59:07
Speaker
And so you can go to, think, executioncertainty.com redirects there, or the company the company that company has had an exit on it. So it's owned by Lou Mary, but they're part of Ankara Consulting, which is a sort of larger group of consultants who provide a bunch of very content expertise solutions. So legal experts or like how do you structure the component itself?
00:59:32
Speaker
contractors under you know a $7 billion dollars arrangement and stuff like that, but they now own that approach. And I would say that one's really, really good if it's an actual project that has a beginning, middle, and an end, whether it's a physical project that you're actually building, like a construction of an airport or something like that, or a digital implementation, because it has a similar element, whether there's a beginning, a middle, and an end for being able to migrate everything over.
00:59:57
Speaker
And both of those use cases work really well with that. For anyone listening to this, I will put links in the show notes. So if you didn't capture it, you can check there hopefully.
01:00:10
Speaker
Now, Adam, you mentioned very early on that you sort of run a family office and you referred to the business that you are working with now.
01:00:25
Speaker
that one aspect of it, I think, is executive mobilization. I think that was tgn.llc. So I think in the most common cases, when I talk to someone about things like this, the call to action, a call to action might be,
01:00:46
Speaker
well, send me an email or check out my website. But it kind of sounds to me like you have had the opportunity to become involved with a few organizations. I don't know exactly how how many businesses this is, but it sounds to me like you're able to, through your involvement with multiple businesses and many people, to increase your impact.
01:01:14
Speaker
So people might contact you, but they have the opportunity to contact more than one person or to work with more than one person because you're involved in in a few different things. Is that correct?
01:01:29
Speaker
That's very correct. It's probably less fortunate and just more recognition of my own weakness. Like I a very, very, very narrow specialized skill set. And so it makes a big difference, but you want applied specifically to where it adds value and narrowly focused. And so when I find other companies existing and they've always been existing companies, so where you have very talented, extraordinarily wonderful practitioners in something, and then it's a combination of that in my CL set helps them grow and take it to the next level. That's what's kind of helped fed that and built that business model on it.
01:02:05
Speaker
For me too, it's just I really enjoy being able to create that larger impact at scale well beyond what I can do because now I'm working with a team of actual rightfully content experts in that industry.
01:02:18
Speaker
Uh, very different for my, my, I, again, I think it's rather weakness of agnosticness as to like value creation. Yeah. You know, it's, it's really kind of cool. And one says, cause I'm fascinated by it, but it, but at the same time, yeah you know, it has to be anchored in specific expertise and knowledge and stuff like that.
01:02:35
Speaker
So I kind of consider each one of these, you know, very, I'm lucky enough to have a very, very good partners who are well outshining in every other dimension possible in those realms. And I will say for those of you listening to this, that over the two or maybe three years, something like that, couple of years that Adam and I have known each other, in addition to a personal draw, because I think we've enjoyed talking to one another,
01:03:02
Speaker
I also have been able to use Adam to help me out, to advise me because I've done work on the operations side of businesses, even though I come from a marketing strategy and analytics background, and I do have an interest in culture and you know this podcast and all of these different topics, but coming from ah space that was not coming from a training or experience that was not operations, one of the things that would be easy to write down as sort of like a line item or that I was able to check off was I could go and talk to Adam about, this is how I'm trying to structure things or are we too early to try and move the business in this direction? And I've been able to get a lot of valuable feedback
01:03:57
Speaker
in what I'm referring to at the moment as operations, but I think maybe I could call it business strategy and broader business consulting. So whether it's executive mobilization, whether it's pricing or any number of other things, is there somewhere that you would recommend that people go, whether it's social media, emailing you a website or something else that people can check you out beyond the book, which of course I'll link to?
01:04:28
Speaker
Oh yeah, no, no, absolutely. If you want to go to adamwallace.com, then, then those, uh, those landing page and has the links to all my links as well as a contact form.
01:04:38
Speaker
on that website that goes directly to me as well. Yeah. So that, that's one, one centrally located part that has all the podcasts books and interviews are compiled together. Awesome.
01:04:48
Speaker
Well, thank you for that. Well, I think there is a lot that we can talk about. However, I think that there's also the opportunity to encapsulate, you know, one kind of thread or one topic within each episode, let's say. So we may very well talk again, but I suppose before we wrap up, is there anything that you want to promote any of the businesses that you're involved in?
01:05:17
Speaker
We talked about the book, but we can promote that again or other things that are top of mind for you, Adam.
Experiential Marketing Success
01:05:23
Speaker
No, no, I will just share one giving you a background because it's one I'm still negotiating my stake in, but it's experiential marketing.
01:05:32
Speaker
I'm finding very similar disproportionate return on our investment. ah And again, for their clients relative to what they offer. So classic experiential marketing, driller marketing, yeah you know, like, like the company that I'm working with, uh, GDX studio here in San Diego, you know, like they made it, snow in LA.
01:05:51
Speaker
it's in the middle of the mall. it But like my son is four in Southern California. He's never seen snow. So it's like one of those things that you come out and you end up taking a lot of photos and stuff like that. So, you know, and a quote unquote event that costs you $500,000 to put on gives you earned media a $5 million dollars in exchange because so many people actually engage with it at a completely different level.
01:06:15
Speaker
And part of what they also offer is being able to get insights into what customers actually motivate them to buy real time, as opposed to just their observable habits online, which is huge. I mean, there's a lot of great insights I've done.
01:06:29
Speaker
But it's kind of an interesting thing that's been so over-optimized being able to get back to the in-person experiences. And there's also a model in there too around large fan base activations we for events that have limited tickets for in-person.
01:06:45
Speaker
um So they're the marketing firm of record for doing the fan activation of the Ryder Cup next year. And so it's like, you can only get like 10,000 people at the Ryder Cup in person, but you can, you they're going to take over all of, uh, in, in the, what, what is the Christmas tree in New York in the, the central? What's that Rockefeller central? Yes, you got it. They're going to take over Rockefeller central for seven to 10 days.
01:07:09
Speaker
and be able to do the actual Ryder Cup experience of teeing off at the first shot and being able to sit down at the broadcast booth and be able to go through the locker room remotely on there because it's another way to, in places where you have like really tight, constrained environments that you've already maximized the amount of promotion and ticket sales and sponsorship within that footprint.
01:07:35
Speaker
It's a way to actually expand and grow that footprint for those venue owners. And so I ah still not not fully, fully like dialed in on the exact business models, 360 on everything, but it's one that I've been exploring for about a year now.
01:07:50
Speaker
Just again, it's one of those disproportionate value creation opportunities that I'm kind of seeing in there ah along those lines as well it as another one that has my attention going forward. I will underscore or support what you're saying because just as one example, I released an episode with this gentleman, Kevin Hughes, who runs an agency called Walker Miles.
01:08:17
Speaker
A lot of their focus is on collegiate sports. The thing that he said that I believe is not in the episode, but he said separately, was that sports are going to hold a unique position in humanity's future.
01:08:33
Speaker
And I even think... based on what he's saying, we may think about live music, Taylor Swift concerts, or who knows what else, Broadway shows.
01:08:44
Speaker
These things may be unique because, or special, because as we have generative AI that is able to produce images, you know, yeah you may not have to have s stump people for a lot of TV shows or movies anymore, you know, as a lot of our digital experiences become cheaper to produce these things and we can rely less upon them being quote unquote real, that a real live human experience may become more valuable. And even if we can't say it's more valuable, it's just very unique.
01:09:20
Speaker
So I think that The work that it sounds like you're getting into in this space is probably... highly valuable or ripe for explosion or taking off because of that argument that he was making.
01:09:39
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. No, no. I think that's a great teaser because that's right in line with the investment thesis. We've already seen the trends. The numbers kind of show it that way. And then the question is like, how how far do those trends hold up or sustain?
01:09:51
Speaker
But people are willing, from a monetization point of view, for sure, people have been proving to spend their time and money more and more than ever for that in-person experience. yeah Maybe another podcast in the future.
01:10:05
Speaker
Yes, I think we're going to have to talk about this in the near future because there is a whole line of thinking around, let's say not necessarily predicting the future as much as making the most of the human experience, and even just skating where the puck is going.
01:10:29
Speaker
But let's leave it there for today. Adam, I really appreciate you joining me. I'll have links in the show notes. And for everyone listening, please do check out, I think it was adamwallace.com.
01:10:43
Speaker
Please check out the book. I really do recommend it. For me, a five-star review great. unique out of 190 or so books last year. I bet you I gave five star reviews to less than 10 and Adams was one of them. So thank you for being here and thank you all for listening.
01:11:01
Speaker
Hey, thank you for listening. I hope you got a lot out of today's conversation. If you enjoyed the episode, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe. and please share it with someone you know who'd appreciate this kind of information.
01:11:14
Speaker
If you want to bring this kind of thinking to your own business, please check out mine at inboundandagile.com. We specialize in helping leaders with challenges around marketing, communications, and leadership, so they can inspire real action in their people and audiences.
01:11:32
Speaker
Thanks again for listening, and I hope you'll come back for future episodes.