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EP619: TL Nuggets #184 - Marty Strong - Be Different!
38 Plays5 hours ago
“How do you learn something from the past, but then say, what if the future is completely different? What if it's what if the whole industry takes a hard right turn in two weeks? Are you even thinking about that or even anticipating? Are you looking around to see if it's going to possibly happen?”
Have you ever considered how creativity can play a crucial role in strategic planning and long-term success? What if tapping into your creativity could unlock the growth potential of your business or even transform your leadership approach?
In both business and life, we often find ourselves stuck in routines or frameworks that limit our creative potential. Many of us start with limitless imagination, but as we grow older, rules and conformity restrict that innovative spark. What if we could reclaim that creativity and apply it to our strategies for growth, leadership, and success?
A powerful connection between creativity and strategic planning. Learn how creativity, often overlooked in business, can become a game-changing skill to solve problems, scale teams, and prepare for the future. Fostering an open, creative culture in your organization, one where ideas can flow freely, and innovation thrives. Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a leader looking to transform your approach, this conversation will help you break free from the limitations of conventional thinking and develop strategies that inspire growth and success.
Marty Strong is a former Navy SEAL, CEO of a mid-market healthcare company managing 90 doctors and nurse practitioners, and the CEO of a management holding company. He’s also a best-selling author of nine books, with his 10th book launching soon. With his unique blend of military discipline, business leadership, and creativity, he shares how bending the rules and encouraging innovation can drive success in any organization.
Website: MartyStrong.com
Books: Be Nimble
Expert action steps:
- Intellectual humility. Purge yourself of your ego.
- Intellectual curiosity. Look 360 degree for insights from all kinds of sources.
- Intellectual creativity. Honestly and holistically look at the true situation related to your goals.
Visit eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.
Transcript
00:00:03
Speaker
Most businesses, business leaders of all sizes just kind of go down the down the railroad track and they don't look around. There might be a locomotive coming from the side. It doesn't need tracks. It's going to hit you because you didn't anticipate it. So it's about how do you how do you learn something from the past, but then say, what if the future is completely different? what if it so What if the whole industry takes a hard right turn in two weeks? Are you even thinking about that or even anticipating it? Are you looking around to see if it's going to possibly happen?
00:00:28
Speaker
the brain Chemically, biologically isn't any different from six years old to 60 years old. You have the same ability to be as creative as a six year old. It's just that it's been pounded out of us. Obedience and compliance and conformity pretty much every step of the way from when you get into say first grade all the way forward, you know, where to eat, where to park, what floors you can't go on, you know, when to raise your hand, stay in your, stay in your pay grade, you know, stay in your lane. And so what happens is you shut all that down. That means anybody.
00:00:56
Speaker
can relearn how to do this. Anybody can relearn how to be creative and innovative and how to apply it.
00:01:05
Speaker
Welcome to the Thought Leader Revolution with Nikki Ballou. Join the revolution. There's never been a better time in history to speak your truth, find your freedom, and make your fortune. Each week, we interview the world's top thought leaders and learn the secrets of how they built a six to seven figure practice. This episode has been brought to you by eCircleAcademy.com, the proven system to add six to seven figures a year to your thought leader practice.
00:01:37
Speaker
Welcome to another exciting episode of the podcast, The Thought Leader Revolution. I'm your host, Nicky Baloo. And boy, do we have an exciting guest for you today. Today's guest is a repeat guest. He is a former Navy SEAL. He's a CEO. He's a bestselling author. I'm speaking, of course, of none other than the one, the only, the legendary Marty Strong. Welcome to the show, Marty. Hi, Nicky. I wish I had half your energy.
00:02:08
Speaker
Brother, it's good to have you back. You're a repeat guest. It's an honor to have you back again. And I understand that you got a new book coming out. So tell us all about it. Sure. So there's there's three books in the series. Each of them starts with a the word B. So there's B Nimble, which is about leadership, primary leadership in crisis, and how to run teams and build teams in crisis. And I don't mean crisis like hurricanes, but crisis like scaling businesses and things like that. And the second book is Be Visionary, which is about strategic planning and thought leadership within your organization, try to transform it for the future. And now this one, Be Different.
00:02:46
Speaker
A subtitle is how Navy SEALs and entrepreneurs bend to break or ignore the rules to get results. It's about creativity and innovation and how to excite and ignite that within your organization and kind of things that I've learned by being on the board of directors of Best Robotics and another ah technology board about stimulating adults, getting adults kind of reengaged with their creative capabilities.
00:03:13
Speaker
Marty, you know, these books all sound amazing. So what made you decide to want to write a series in the first place and why this particular book now? Well, I wish I was so I wrote a book on strategy, but I did not have a strategy to write a series. I wrote the first book.
00:03:32
Speaker
Anybody that's ever heard any of my interviews knows that I have a very nonlinear professional pass. I tend to stumble into opportunities, you know, that I think it was, oh, heck, I just forgot his name. Anyway, Chance favors the prepared mind. I've always believed that, so I tend to stumble into an opportunity, and I see it, and I jump through that window. So in this case, I had lots of friends, lots of associates that were using me as a mentor, CEOs, presidents of companies, and I was helping them with leadership, different elements of leadership, kind of high-end leadership issues and challenges. And so I wrote the first book.
00:04:14
Speaker
After years of doing that pro bono and just just doing I thought I'd codify it and put all my thoughts and kind of my my philosophy into one book and When I was writing that book one of my beta readers who's a CEO said one of your chapters refers to strategy And the fact that strategy isn't taught in in school, you know, it's not taught in the university. It's not really taught anywhere to include in business. Very rarely does anybody sit somebody down and start to tutor them from middle management to top management on the art of strategy. Strategy today is basically do what you did last year and throw 5% growth as a stretch goal on top of that and just keep going in a linear direction. so you know So I wrote the second book based on some of that commentary and and then I got done with that and I didn't think I was going to write another book and then because of my activities on the
00:05:06
Speaker
the board of best robotics, talking to brain scientists and talking to a lot of people that are that are helping understand how the brain mechanically is creative and innovative. And stumbling on the the concept that the brain chemically, biologically isn't any different from six years old to 60 years old, unless you have some kind of brain damage or a disease, you have the same ability to be as creative as a six-year-old. It's just that it's been pounded out of us by obedience and compliance and conformity pretty much every step of the way from when you get into say first grade all the way forward to include the first job you're in and the last job you're in and the job you're in now. You know, where to eat, where to park, what floors you can't go on, you know, when to raise your hand, stay in your stay in your pay grade, you know, stay in your lane. And so what happens is you shut all that down. And I was exposed to all this information. I said, well, heck, you know, that means anybody can relearn how to do this. Anybody can relearn how to be creative and innovative and how to apply it.
00:06:05
Speaker
and It's not something like ah puberty that just goes away when you're 12 or 13 years old, you can't be creative anymore. So that's why I ended up writing the third book. So each one was kind of a, not planned, but but ended up just being something I thought i I should do when somebody brought something up or I stumbled into some new experience. You know, that's interesting. I yeah watched um a yeah speech Steve Jobs gave in I think 2007-2008 to the graduating MBA class at Stanford University, right? And in that speech was a lot of gold, a lot of wisdom. But one of the things he said, which
00:06:50
Speaker
ties into what you just said, is that in his life, he experienced that he could never connect the dots looking forward. He could connect the dots looking backward, but he could never connect the dots looking forward. It's a different way of saying that he stumbled into opportunities, and then when he looked back, he could see how they could all tie in together, but he never had a forward-thinking plan, I'm going to do this at this time, and then this, and then this, and then this, and it sounds like your professional path, certainly your authorship path was very much like that. you You didn't connect the dots looking forward, but you did connect them looking backwards. What say you to that? Well, I think you know the going backwards is called causal analysis, the and the cause and effect and the historical measurements and metrics and observations and you know lessons learned and all that.
00:07:41
Speaker
um That is, I think it's it's taught, that is taught in universities, that is taught in business. That's why we have super enabled software now that can give you a dashboard to compare yesterday against three yesterdays five years ago. It's crazy how good our rear view mirror works because of technology. But we also end up thinking and managing and leading that way by looking in that rear view mirror. So I did strategy development at a lower level when I was in the Navy.
00:08:11
Speaker
And you know, the art of looking around corners and kind of seeing what's out there is really nothing more than freeing your mind up to storyboard the possibilities forward. So if you think about it. So I've got, I just finished my 10th novel. And when you write fiction.
00:08:26
Speaker
You're doing just that. You're creating a possible future for the characters, for the story track, for you for all the different subplots. It doesn't exist yet. it doesn't it's no It's not laying around someplace. You have to create it. And that's the same way mission planning is in the SEAL teams. You storyboard out in first and in kind of block phases, and then you take the phases and break them down into little microsteps of execution.
00:08:49
Speaker
and you project lots of different possible paths, possible futures. Now that isn't strategy writ large like a corporate strategy, but from a from a practice, from a brain practice, it allows you to kind of get out of the to-do list, stop looking at the tips of your toes, look out there and say, okay. And what all also thing that does is it allows you to be creative because who knows what the future holds, right? So you can make up any storyboard you want. You could have the industry collapse, you could have the industry take off,
00:09:19
Speaker
you know, um ah in a ah and i get a hockey stick kind of fashion, you can have competitors eat your lunch, you can discover something, you you can write anything you want, just like a novelist. But then once you lay that out there, a strategy, potential strategy, potential future path, then you can use the causal analysis. Because now you've got the story, you can actually back plan and back analyze, even though it's made up,
00:09:45
Speaker
each of these different forward paths. And you can start grading them and judging them for risk and opportunity. You can start, if you like one or two, you can start loading them up with resources. So you can see how much is it going to expense. And it costs you how much ah much people time, or you have to buy something and buy a company. You're going to have to do something to ah position yourself in a new market way in advance. And when you finally decide to pick that path, now it becomes more like operations planning. So you back plan from the horizonal objective,
00:10:14
Speaker
You fill in all your milestones, you load up all your resources and everything and boom, you got a plan. And then you just kind of steer towards the North Star and make adjustments as you go. That essentially is how you put the two, the causal analysis looking backward skill set together with a forward looking skill set to create, you know, actionable strategy. And creativity is really more about the future look. It's about how do you how do you learn something from the past but then say, what if the future is completely different?
00:10:42
Speaker
what if it's What if the whole industry takes a hard right turn in two weeks? Are you even thinking about that or even anticipating it? Are you looking around to see if it's gonna possibly happen? Yeah, and most most businesses, business leaders of all sizes just kind of go down the down the railroad track and they don't look around. There might be a locomotive coming from the side. It doesn't need tracks. It's gonna hit you because you didn't anticipate it. So anyway, that's another way to to apply all those elements and also to be creative at the same time. Let me ask you this.
00:11:11
Speaker
You wrote these books in a very non-strategic way, as you said, and you wrote them for entrepreneurs and their teams. um If someone was just being introduced to this body of work that you've put together, where would you have them start and why? I think it's a great question. I had somebody in the neighborhood to ask me that question this weekend. um They bought B Nimble.
00:11:42
Speaker
It's just a neighbor of mine that I hardly ever met, but his son has just left one profession and he's a really good leader and good manager operator, but he doesn't know anything about long range planning. And so when he explained all this, he goes, can I get another copy of B Nimble? And I said, you know, I bet to be visionary is probably a better thing for him. If he's already got the mechanics of the, the first book kind of down, the part that's really going to open his eyes is learning how to think big, dream big, and then turn it into an actionable plan. So.
00:12:12
Speaker
You can read, you can read them in order if you want to, but you could read them in any order. I think it has more to do with where you like the guys that the guys are my beta readers that said I should write a book on strategy. All loved the second book on strategy loved it because it was unique and they wanted their people to read it because they had not had that type of information kind of tutorial.
00:12:38
Speaker
when they were in middle management. Now they're CEOs you know and they're, okay, here I am and I learned all the hard lessons of big picture planning and being um being surprised and ambushed by Murphy's Law and the fact that everything's changing. I've already been through all the pain, but these other people haven't been there yet and they need to learn from some some source. So for those CEOs, that was, the second book was the most valuable thing for them. But I found that people that are in management and trying to lead and trying to understand how to mentor and coach and tutor different levels of of the talent in their organizations or even a structure of the organizational design so it's optimized and ready for success, being able is a better book. And be different just kind of cover covers all of it. You can be creative at every level of employment. You don't have to be a CEO to use creativity to your advantage. No, it's interesting what you're saying because
00:13:34
Speaker
i'm I'm listening to it from my own perspective. I yeah i just wrote a book myself with a co-author about podcast guesting. It's called Get Booked and Get Paid, how to generate six figures plus a year through podcast guesting. We've also done workshops about this. And our message is different from what everybody else says about podcast guesting, very different. So it's a blue ocean.
00:14:02
Speaker
and We've done a good job of getting people in our own sphere of influence to come and buy the books and come do our our courses, right? And we've done well with them. But we'd really like to get this to a way broader audience. I want to scale it. I want to think big. I want to go from having you know eight to 12 people in a workshop to having 100 to 200 people in a workshop.
00:14:31
Speaker
and listening to you talk about how you've laid all that out in the three books makes me think, I ought to probably read all of these myself. I ought to think about how to think bigger and how to execute on that because obviously I haven't so far been able to do that. And I also got to think about how to become even more creative than I am. And I think creativity is one of my strengths. But if we're going to go beyond being a platoon sized type of a organization to being more like a company or a battalion size type of an organization, then I need to learn some skills that I currently don't appear to have.
00:15:19
Speaker
First, congrats on the book. That's great. Thinking big or dreaming big is It's hard for people just because of the points I made earlier and this has been proven in research that we've all been taught not to do that. We've been taught to think smaller. Even if you think you're a big dreamer, you're actually thinking a lot smarter than you could because you've been told, you know, from the time you raised your hand and they said, what do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be a lead rock guitarist and lead the lead guitarist in a rock band and everybody laughs at you. And then next year, hey, what do you want to be? You know, I want to be a fighter pilot and everybody laughs at you. Pretty soon you don't raise your hand anymore.
00:15:56
Speaker
you know because Yeah, because you don't want to be laughed at. you're not You're not being rewarded for coming up with crazy crazy possible ideas, right? And in in business, it's it's just as bad. If you're an organization, you raise your hand and say, hey, what about? And nobody stares at you. You have three heads. So as an organization, you have to have a decision to have a culture. You have to make that decision and say, everybody's going to be able to have an open mind, an open voice, and we'll let it all kind of slump all over the floor like like spaghetti that's been spilled, and we won't try to organize the thoughts, but just let it happen, right? And the seals do that. The seals, they mission plan. Everybody throws everything in like it's nail soup, and you see what works. And eventually, because you have a timeline, you then storyboard out all the different possibilities, and you have to pick one and go. um The thing about planning out to the horizon, picking a point on the horizon, the thing you want to be, what you want to look like, that's how I kind of pictured in my mind.
00:16:52
Speaker
What do I want to look like personally? What do I want to look like ah professionally? What do I want my organization that I lead to look like in a year, in two years? And then once I have that kind of vision in my mind, I say, OK, what's going to stop that? What's what's going to impede me? Or what could help me? And then I start adding down, writing down all the things that might stop me. I don't have enough money. I don't have enough allies. I don't have a big enough network. and And once I get all that down, I say, OK, so the preparatory stuff I need is kind of my list of all the things I think that are going to be obstacles.
00:17:22
Speaker
And as long as I think that that horizontal goal is is worth getting to and value and valuable, then I said, okay, so I got to work out the books. Now you're back in planning and execution, which most people can do fairly well. The hard part is just even having that first long range big picture thought. But once you kind of you know galvanize and crystallize that horizontal point of ah of goal setting, it's easy to work that work the space in between on the calendar.
00:17:53
Speaker
And you can be creative in trying to figure out how to solve the problems and all that, but you're not really going to change. You're going to go north. You're going to go 300 degrees or 345 degrees, and that's what you set. That's the course. And you may do this all the way, but you're going there, and you're going to end up there. You're not going to get distracted by shiny objects. You're not going to have a lack of planning. You're going to storyboard and plan all the way back from that, list all the things that you have that can help you, all your resources, all the things that may impede you.
00:18:20
Speaker
And you you put it on a board, you can brainstorm it with a bunch of people that know a lot about it. You can ask strangers how they would do it. You can look at somebody else who's done something like it. I'd ask everybody and anybody, and just like you're going to go to some town in Spain for the first time and you'd never been there and you want to know as much as you can so you get the most out of the trip. And then you just start the path. Start one foot in front of the other. And it'll feel like normal management and leadership when you're doing it. It's the first part that's the hard part, picking the point.
00:18:51
Speaker
Amen. Amen. Marty, you're a smart and thoughtful man, and I appreciate you coming on the show, talking about the things that you are a thought leader and an expert in. um So if people want to get your book, I'm assuming they just go to Amazon, they pick up a copy ah in in that regard, correct? Yes, but the they can also go to martystrong dot.com. That's my, I do motivational speaking, I've got all my books on there, I've got a lot of material, and the books will link right to an Amazon ah point of sale. Or if you can go to Amazon, just put in Marty Strong and it'll pop up. We'll we'll make sure we put that in the in the show notes. Tell us about some of the other things that you do in addition to writing books that people can find out about. So my day job, I'm the CEO of a health middle middle market healthcare company. So I have about 90 doctors and nurses, nurse practitioners, so those are RNs with master's degrees,
00:19:49
Speaker
And they're scattered over most of the state of Virginia. The the original business was acquired in 2016. It was just one employee and a handful of doctors and nurses, and we've grown to that thatt size. I've actually been the CEO of a ah management holding company up until February of this year when we spun out the last companies um other than this healthcare company.
00:20:17
Speaker
And I said, i'll I'll just lead the healthcare care company for a couple of years because it used to be like five companies. and Now it's down to the one. So that's what I'm doing right now is my day job, which puts me cool on the street in contact with the market and the economy and, you know, um sales reality and all the things that I used to have to do a long time ago. And like I said, I just finished my 10th novel. So I'll be shopping that to agents and everything probably in the next month. And, uh,
00:20:48
Speaker
And then I'm on these boards and I and i do the speaking to herself. So I've written 11 books, but I wrote my first novel and I got a ah got a guy who's pretty famous and he's told me he put his name on it, but he wants me to make wholesale changes to it. And I have not made those wholesale changes, even though I said I would. So I got to get that sorted out with myself, but this is it. This is what it's called. and so Wow.
00:21:17
Speaker
i'm excited to I'm excited to get my first novel out there myself, so I'd love to chat with you separately about novel writing. I think that'd be a cool conversation to have. um It's been my dream since I was a little kid to be a published novelist, and I got to do it. I got to do it. I absolutely have to do it. um Yeah, I started with the novels. I think I had i had eight novels published before I did Be Nimble.
00:21:47
Speaker
And I really like the novels. The novels are, they're fun. They're, I can freewheel, you know, I can, I can make the character go left, right, or get hit by a bus. You know, there's no, there's a lot less rules, but when you're writing a nonfiction business oriented book, it's like you're putting together a classroom syllabus and lesson plan that will be out there forever. So you remember have that ah feeling in the back of your mind the whole time you're writing. Yeah.
00:22:14
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's what Get Booked and Get Paid was. it was a it's It's short and compact, but that's exactly what it is. um ah yeah I like to read a couple of your novels. I read a lot of novels. Actually, I love reading novels. It's high, relaxed. I just finished reading um Don Pendleton's Mac Bolan, one of his Mac Bolan books. I don't know if you remember those. They were... Yeah.
00:22:42
Speaker
Really, really cool books from the past. I love Mickey Spillane, Dashiell Hammett. I love guys like um Tom Clancy, Vince Flynn. um I've become friends with Don Bentley, who's written both for Tom Clancy and Vince Flynn.
00:22:58
Speaker
And he's got his own series as well. So all of this, all of this is super, super cool stuff. I have a podcast I do for men. It's called the Solver Men podcast. And we talk about issues that are relevant for men in this day and age. And I'd love to have you come on that podcast to talk about your experiences as a SEAL for men, but also just, I'd love to just freewheel with you about novels, novels, novel writing. I think that'd be a really fun conversation. If you're up for it, I'd love to have you on.
00:23:27
Speaker
um yeah So the martystrong dot.com, we're gonna make sure we send people there. Great job on taking your company from one employee to over 90, that's fantastic. And great job having your 10th novel out, brother. ah I will take a deep dive into all things Marty Strong, literary wise. I'll buy your nonfiction and your ah fictional works and and and delve into them. I think that'll be fun.
00:23:55
Speaker
um God bless you, man. Thank you for the service that you've put forward in the cause of freedom, and thank you for um leaving ah the service of the cause of freedom and becoming an entrepreneur and helping take the promise of freedom and make it come alive, not just for yourself, but but for all the people that you you've served over the years. It's ah it's a beautiful, and noble thing, Marty Strong. Thank you.
00:24:23
Speaker
Yeah, you bet. So Marty, we wrap up every episode by asking you our guest expert, what are your top three expert action steps? So bullet point, what are your three best pieces of advice for my listener? What say you? That's easy. So I have a three step process that I think works for a lot of things we've already talked about, whether it's just an immediate challenge or or a long-term challenge. The first step is intellectual humility. So I explain that as just If you had a challenge, something to put in front of you, a new a new concern or a new plan that you're about to put together, to be intellectually human humble, you have to basically purge yourself of all the baggage. You want to get rid of all your accolades, all your rewards, essentially everything that makes you arrogant and makes you kind of ah puffed up and and feeling like you've got control of the universe because you really don't.
00:25:16
Speaker
The other thing you do is you have to get rid of and and and set aside all the negative things that have happened to you. So if you got a bonus and you got a raise and all that, so what? If you if you got a divorce, you lost your girlfriend or something else happened, you wrecked your car, so what? Don't carry that in your mind into the challenge. Clear your mind so that you can take everything, the ground truth, the reality, the facts, completely clean. ah The second thing is intellectual curiosity.
00:25:43
Speaker
And I define that as one, you have to have the humility, else you won't listen to anything or or understand or believe anything that you that you really get access to. True intellectual curiosity is looking 360 degrees for insights from all kinds of people, all kinds of industries, all kinds of sources, because Most people just sit there and they kind of breathe their own their own air. but Their team talks the same way. They hire the people to kind of be like them. So now you get a whole bunch of people that are cloned like you or nod their head every time you open your mouth and say something because they think that's what you want to hear.
00:26:19
Speaker
That's great to you get their information, but you really need to get complete outside of that sphere. And you get to hear something that maybe you don't agree with, but you got to listen to it. And once you've got all that information and you've been curious enough to honestly get all that information um on the table, that's when you can do the third step, which is intellectual creativity. Now you can honestly and holistically look at the lay of the land, the real world, the facts. You're not going to be tainted by old football plays and formulas.
00:26:46
Speaker
um Sensations of grandeur or depression whichever way it was and and you're off to the races trying to do the best job you can creating something Those are the three ability curiosity and and creativity I love it. These are three great expert action steps. Thank you. Folks, Marty Strong is the real deal. Go check out his website, martystrong dot.com. Go check out his three nonfiction books, Be Nimble, Be Visionary, and Be Different. um And do what I'm gonna do. Take a deep dive into all things Marty Strong literary literary wise. Buy these books, buy a couple of his novels.
00:27:27
Speaker
Best way to get to know a serious thought leader's work and let yourself be influenced by their brilliance is to dive into their work. This is what I suggest you do. And if you enjoyed this episode, give us a like, give us a rating, give us a review. That helps us with the algorithm. It helps get this in front of more people who need to see it. And if you have a friend who needs to hear this message, share the episode with them.
00:27:52
Speaker
That is the greatest way you can say thank you to us for doing the work to bring you this incredible episode and this incredible show. Pay it forward by sharing the episode with somebody. Marty Mann, thanks for coming on the show. Great to have you here. Thanks for having me, Nicky. It's great seeing you again.
00:28:10
Speaker
Always great to see you. And that wraps up another exciting episode of the podcast, The Thought Leader Revolution, to find out more about today's amazing guests. The one and only Marty Strong. Go to the show notes at thethoughtleaderrevolution.com or wherever you happen to listen to this episode, be it iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, YouTube, Rumble, or what have you. Until next time, goodbye.
00:28:34
Speaker
This episode has been brought to you by eCircleAcademy.com, the proven system to add six to seven figures a year to your thought leader practice.