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Tom DuFore:

Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky franchise team. And as we open today, I’m wondering if you have ever made a decision for your company that just didn’t sit well with you, and then you rationalize to yourself that, well, it’s just business. It’s nothing personal to convince yourself that it’s okay. Well, I know I have, and if you’ve ever thought that you’re going to love our episode today, Jason Scott is our guest who’s an author of, it’s Never Just About Business, it’s about people. And Jason shares about his story of transformation as a leader, helping companies like DirecTV, trader Joe’s, and Sony Pictures, his team’s unique human-centric approach to change his generated breakthrough results and created meaningful jobs. You’re gonna love this interview, and you’re gonna really wanna listen all the way through to the end. So let’s go ahead and jump into my interview with Jason Scott.

Jason Scott:

Hey, Tom. My name’s J Scott. I am the founder of the 120VC brand Community. Uh, I guess my, I mean, my title is CEO, but i, I kind of, that sounds fancy. I, I, I generally just go with founder, uh, and I’m super stoked to be here on Multiply Your Success Podcast.

Tom DuFore:

Great. Well, thank you so much for being a guest here. I’m, I’m really grateful for your time. And, uh, one of the questions I’d written down, uh, to in preparation for our conversation today is to talk about a line that you have and you say, imagine a world where the majority of teams are winning. And I, I really like that quote. And I’m just curious what, what that means to you. What does that look like? What does that mean?

Jason Scott:

So, my, my first business 120VC, I started 22 years ago, and I, at first I thought I was starting a project management company because I, I liked pulling teams together. I liked leading those teams to accomplish the, the outcomes that they felt that they needed. Um, and somewhere along the way I realized that that’s really what leadership is. Leadership is about enabling your stakeholders to define and deliver the necessary and expected results. And then I stumbled into really being able to see the difference in people’s lives when on a team that isn’t getting the outcomes that they feel like they need, versus teams that are getting the outcomes they think they need. So essentially in my career, I’ve taken over multiple projects that we’re struggling to turn them around, and these, these people were stressed out, emailing during dinner, text messaging during dinner, getting yelled at for emailing during dinner, like working weekends.

Jason Scott:

Like their quality of life was terrible and their economic prosperity was not secure. Like, when you’re on a team that’s not getting the outcomes that they think that they need, you’re generally in fear of losing your job, looking bad, your reputation is at stake. And so as I’d, as I’d worked with these, these humans to turn the situation around and help them get the outcomes that they, they and their organizations felt like they needed, I realized the change in their, in their attitudes, the change in their stress level, like people on winning teams are thriving. They’re not, they’re, they’re focused on their, their significant others at dinner. They’re focused on the activities that fill them on the weekends, and essentially their economic prosperity and their reputations are secure. So I like to imagine a world, and it’s what we’re in the business at 120VC of doing is enabling our stakeholders or, or our customers, uh, the, the leaders that we serve to get the outcomes that they need.

Jason Scott:

We’re really in the getting things done business. Um, and you know, the, the thing to me that’s fulfilling about that is that we help teams win. We, we essentially help them live their best lives. And so when I say I, I, I, I’d like to imagine a world, the more leaders that we enable to work with their teams to define and deliver the necessary and expected results, the more winning teams, the more people who have great quality of lives, the more people whose economic prosperity is secured. And, and so there, there’s just this world of outcomes that are lifting people up. And so that’s, that’s basically why I get up every morning.

Tom DuFore:

I love it. I love it. Well, and, and your, your, uh, thank you for that response. And, uh, one of the questions it it leads me to think about here is, um, kind of about how leaders at organizations, the, the people that are, will end up listening to this interview. Uh, most of the people that tune in, they’re, they’re a leader of an organization. They’re, they may be an entrepreneur, a founder, they may be a c e o of a mid-level or a mid-size growing enterprise. And how can a leader help their team members mark, uh, architect their own roadmap and, and how, how could they help piece that together?

Jason Scott:

All right, so I’m gonna try <laugh>, that’s a really que good question. That’s a really good question. And I’m thinking through like how to contextualize it in, in short, because I could go on for hours on this one. So the, the first thing is whether it’s an entrepreneur in a startup, a mid-size company, a billion dollar company, a Fortune 1000, I get calls constantly where the patient has diagnosed the problem, meaning they’ll call me up and say, our approach to project management’s not working. Our, our, we implemented Agile and Agile’s not working. Um, like, uh, we’re, we’ve got Lean and Six Sigma and it’s not working. And what’s interesting, it, it’s like what we do when we’re sick, right? We go on the internet before we see the doctor and we like Google it, we go to the doctor and we say, Hey, you know, I’ve got, I’ve got Monkeypox, I’m sure I have Monkeypox.

Jason Scott:

And the doctor’s like, well, hold on, let me, lemme get your blood pressure. Lemme take your temperature. It, it’s often much simpler than what they’re thinking. And so the thing that I, I’ve learned over the years is that, you know, these, these disciplines like project management, program portfolio management, uh, scrum Agile, lean Six Sigma, these are like brown belts, right? And nobody, nobody starts with a brown belt in martial arts, they start with a white belt. And so what I, what I’ve learned is it, it’s not that those things are or are not working, if an organization isn’t getting the results that it thinks that it needs, really what they, I generally find they’re lacking is a culture of discipline. That’s an ugly word, right? Everybody hates that word. Uh, a culture of discipline, trust, transparency, and accountability. And it, it really starts with the leaders to, to bring it all back to the question that you just asked me.

Jason Scott:

If leaders are running from meeting to meeting, to meeting to meeting winging it, essentially, that’s exactly what their team members will do. An environment where everybody’s acting like a account, a cowboy is an unfocused environment. And when people are not focused, they’re just chasing the scariest thing or the coolest thing, or the latest shiny new object, they’re not absolutely not optimized for getting the results that they think that they need. So it really starts with developing some discipline about how you show up as a leader. Are, are your goals clear? Are your goals measurable? Have you communicated these goals, these expectations to your, to your team? Are they excited? What do they think about these goals? More importantly, back to helping them architect their own roadmap to a shared goal. There’s this thing that we’re taught to do where we go and we set the goal.

Jason Scott:

We, we say, Hey, Tom, uh, I, I, I’ve got this great idea and I, I think it’s right in your lane, Tom, it, and then I describe it and I’m like, is this you, you the guy for this job? And maybe you’re even excited ’cause we’ve all been taught to be as inspiration as possible. So I get you ins inspired. You’re like, yeah, man, that’s me, J. And I’m like, cool. Then I ask a rookie question, do you know what you need to do? And so generally speaking, when you ask a yes or no question in this moment, the intelligent human being does understand something not necessarily what you’re hoping they understand. And so you get a yes. And then they go off and they work for three days or four days to deliver this thing. They bring it back, they drop it on your desk, and you look at it and you shake your head and you’re like, God, you know, that’s not, no Tom, that’s, that’s not what I need.

Jason Scott:

Now this could get really ugly from here. Then there’s the, the managers that are also humans that, and all humans seek pleasure and retreat from pain. So they wanna blame because if it’s your fault, Tom, like if you weren’t listening or, or you weren’t paying attention or you didn’t care if it’s your fault, I don’t have to feel bad, it’s your fault. However, whenever I ask somebody how they felt in that moment where they worked really hard for three days and then they delivered the thing and it wasn’t right how they’d feel, it’s always terrible. They’re frustrated. So the reality is that first, as the leader, I asked a rookie question, which was, do you understand something? Well, yeah, we all understand something. And, and now, so, and now you’re crushed. And my job is to lift you up and figure out how I can be a better leader.

Jason Scott:

And the way I can be a better leader is instead of assuming we’re on the same page or we have alignment and you know, every, you can’t pick up a magazine without reading that leaders need to ensure we have alignment. That we set clear expectations, that we enable our team members, that we set them up for success. So instead of asking, Hey, Tom, do you know what you need to do? I’m gonna, I’m gonna ask you this question, Tom, now that you’ve, you’ve acknowledged this is you and that you’re excited about it, can you walk me through how you’re gonna get it done? And how you see it creates value for the organization. This is called active listening. You’ll engage and you’ll start describing this. And so if what you’re describing sounds like it’ll accomplish this shared goal, see, you’re architecting, you’re telling me how you’re gonna do it.

Jason Scott:

And I’m not listening thinking, is this how I would do it? Because how I would do it is not optimized for you, Tom. How you would do it is optimized for you, right? So you’re creating your own roadmap. And when we both think it’ll achieve the goal, I’ve set you up for success. We have alignment. I know what you’re thinking, I know what you’re gonna do. I’ve ensured that we have a greater degree of likelihood of getting the expected outcome. Now, the opposite side of that is, if what you’re saying isn’t, doesn’t sound to me like it’s gonna achieve the goal, instead of making an assumption and a judgment and saying to you, Tom, I don’t think that’s gonna work. Because first that’s not a fact, it’s an assumption. Two, it’s the judgment and it just shuts the conversation down. ’cause you’re gonna be like, well dude, why did you ask me?

Jason Scott:

Then just tell me what you wanna do. And that’s not leadership. ’cause I basically tricked you into asking me how to do your job. And so now I just get to tell you how to do your job. Bad leadership, in fact, not leadership at all. That’s command and control. That’s, I tell you do. What I’m gonna say is, and this is a fact, Tom, I don’t get it. I do not understand how what you’re describing is gonna get there and I need you to help me figure out what I’m missing. And so we just kind of go back and forth and I ask questions like, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? And if in asking you these questions, trying to figure out which thing that is in your head that I’m missing, that will make your roadmap clear to me, I might just get to a point where I’m still not getting it. And I’m just gonna say, Hey, Tom, listen, this is what I’m seeing. And in that I’m either gonna tell you something you didn’t know, or I’m gonna tell you what I’ve, my universe in my brain is seeing, and you’re gonna identify the thing that I’m missing and you’ll shift your strategy and we’ll get to alignment, and then you’ll go get the work done. So that, that’s essentially the active listening technique is how we help or we enable our stakeholders to define and deliver their own roadmap to a shared goal.

Tom DuFore:

Interesting. Well, thank you for sharing that. And it, it, this kind of leads me to the next question. It’s really about what you describe as or or your experience. What I gathered is, is really focused on this human-centric approach to business leadership to change management. And so I’m curious, uh, our, our primary business that we help companies go through is to, is really a change management process to help them franchise their business. They’re going from operating whatever business or service they’re offering, whatever product offering they have to, now they’re in the franchise business and they’re selling and, and franchisees and training in sport. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s really a shift and they’re doing something similar. And so I I I’m just always curious on how this human-centric approach to change management and some things that you’ve maybe done in your career or examples you might even be able to share of, of clients or your own experience on, on what that might look like.

Jason Scott:

Sure. So let’s start with it’s never just business. It’s about people. In fact, that, that’s the title of one of my books. That, and it’s obviously a, a riff off The Godfather where they do, they do terrible things and they say it’s just business. It’s not personal, right? Um, because there’s, there’s, there’s this illusion that, um, there, this company is good and this company is bad, or the government is lying to us, um, when in fact there’s no such, the company is just a legal entity that without the humans inside that entity can accomplish nothing, right? And so, like leadership and business is, is deeply human in that organizations, and I mean, the people in them are optimized for the results that they’re getting. If they wanna get different results, they need the humans in that organization to do their jobs differently. And in order to get those humans to do their job differently, the humans need to have a good attitude or even be excited about doing their job differently.

Jason Scott:

Gallup performed a study and found that what motivates people in business is not money. When you pay people enough to take money off the table, what motivates them in the workplace is mastery, autonomy, and purpose. A k a mastery of something, getting things done, being purposeful, getting things done, uh, and having the autonomy to architect their own roadmap to a shared goal to figure out how to get the things done. And as where leadership comes in, we help them figure out how to get the things done. And so, you know, we’re taught that we need to be professional, which I always interpreted as a robot that is perfect in every way and never makes a mistake. And here’s the thing, that’s not human, right? And it’s, it’s also like bss like it’s not reality. What you end up with in that model is a whole bunch of people pretending like they’re perfect and not taking any risk and not taking any chances and spending more time protecting their image than getting things done.

Jason Scott:

And this is in a very productive environment. And so if you consider that first and foremost, all of our decisions are not made by our neocortex. So like our logical brain, they’re actually made by our, our ancient brain, the limbic brain. And this is our feeling brain. This is the brain that has no capacity for words. This is the brain that feels all of our emotions, and this is the brain that makes all of our decisions, which then are interpreted by our neocortex. So to not acknowledge that first and foremost humans are emotional creatures, and second, it’s humans that make all of the outcomes happen. You that then basically you’re operating on a premise of control. Like people are robots, which will never, ever, ever achieve optimal outcomes. In fact, people in those models are not motivated. They’re clocking in, they’re clocking out, right? There’s somebody telling everybody how to do their job.

Jason Scott:

The team’s collective IQ is not very high. We’re in an environment with a leader where that leader is pulling people together and helping them collectively architect their own road back to a shared goal. Like the collective IQ is very, very high. Innovation is possible. This is how we go to space. This is how we build ginormous dams and, and satellites and have breakthroughs in, in technology, uh, medical technology. It, these are from environments where they’re, they’re bringing humans together and collectively raising up the team IQ by engaging with them instead of telling them how to do their jobs. So, like I said, it’s never just business. It’s about people.

Tom DuFore:

Yeah. I I I love that. I, I, I love that statement and we’ll make sure we link back by the way, to your, to your book and, and information on that as well in the show notes here. Um, well, J, one of the things is, is this great point to transition here. And we always ask every guest before they go the same four questions. And the first question we like to talk about is a answer or two you’d like to share about your, in your career that or personally and something you learned from it.

Jason Scott:

Um, I have, this is easy ’cause I have so many, but you’re asking for one. So let me, let me try to give you a good one. I, I would say that my, my biggest miss was that I grew up being taught and believing the exact opposite of everything I just said. And so I grew up in Gangland, Los Angeles, which is very command and control. My father ex-military, he was very command and control, which is the, I tell you, do model. Um, it’s about compliance and the illusion of control. And then the first thing I did out of high school was join the Navy. Um, and so I, I thought all of these people in positions of authority were leaders. Um, and so when I left the Navy, that that is the type, and I, and I got my first team, that’s the type of model that I, uh, employed, meaning motivating outcomes with authority.

Jason Scott:

And then when I left, uh, universal Studios after delivering some of their large largest global projects and started 120, my reason, my literal purpose was because I was gonna be the best because I was the best and I was gonna make a lot of money. And so as I did deliver for my very first client was Sony Pictures. I killed it. I delivered their projects. But the problem is, my motivation was I was delivering these projects for the glory for me, because I was awesome. And I didn’t feel guilty about this or bad about this in any way because my clients clearly benefited. But there was friction. And what I didn’t realize at the time is that it could be better. And so, somewhere along the way, as my humanity developed, you know, I matured. I was 27 years old when I started the company.

Jason Scott:

Um, and I, I, I, there were times where I had truly human conversations with people, right? ’cause I wasn’t a bad person, I just wasn’t playing like in fact, you know, and at work they called me a bulldog outside of work, everybody was like, J’s a cool guy, let’s hang out with J, right? Like, so it’s not that I was like a bad person. Um, I just was not going about getting the things done in a way that lifted my team up or put their, their them first or where they did anything that I just described in respect to helping them architect the roadmap. It was, I’m the smartest guy in the room. Let’s all do it J’s way. And it, if, if they didn’t wanna do it my way, how could I convince them to do it my way? And so, uh, like I said, along the way, I ended up having some human conversations, some connecting conversations, and just being very introspective, I realized that not only did those interactions feel a lot better, but I, I got better results.

Jason Scott:

And these people didn’t just get the job done. They, they thought about, they were thoughtful about the way that they got it done, which included my success as opposed to the old way, which was they were just gonna get it done because they felt like they didn’t have a choice. And so, you know, it, there was no teamwork at all. And so this is where I, I learned, or I heard somewhere about servant leadership and I, I sort of started exploring it, and then I realized that we are not called leaders because we are on top. We are called leaders because we are the first to go into the unknown. And by the way, this is Simon Sinek that I’m quoting right now. Um, you know, that, that we, we are not in charge, that we have a responsibility to care for those in our charge.

Jason Scott:

Um, and so I realized the shift was, it’s, it’s not my job to make my team work really hard so I can be successful. It’s my job to help my team be as successful as possible. When they’re successful, we get the outcomes we need, and then I’m successful. And in this model, my team members are much more motivated. My team members see that I care about them, therefore they care about me and the way that they go about doing their jobs. Um, and innovation is possible. So I would say the biggest miss in my career is I spent the first 25% of it telling everybody what to do, which is the exact opposite of everything I just shared with you that I found is much more successful.

Tom DuFore:

Yeah. Wow. Thank you for sharing that. Well, and, but at, at to a certain extent, you, you recognize that, right? So it, you know, I I the flip side is it was only 25% and not 45% of your career, right? <laugh>? Yes. Yes. Uh, well, great. Well, the second question we ask everyone is ha have, has there been a make or two you’d like to share that you haven’t had a chance to talk about

Jason Scott:

A make All right. Gimme a quick second to to think on that one. A make, this is hard. I’m, I’m much more focused on where I can be better than where I feel like I’ve succeeded. Um, but I’m obviously stalling. I I would say that my, well, how, how my biggest make, I, I’ve got it. I’ve go, I’ve got one. Okay, got it. My, my biggest make really is my, my relationship with my wife and my children and the way that she and I have gone about architecting our lives to like be present for our children. I, I come from a very, very, I’m gonna say very three times dysfunctional family, um, to the point where everything I learned from them was incredibly valuable in that I wouldn’t wanna repeat it in my own family. And so I, you know, in this model that we have in our minds of family, I, I had none of that growing up.

Jason Scott:

And so I really wanted to find a, like a good fit wife. I wanted to engage with my family as if they were my best friends. And this is actually what made, made my wife wanna marry me. She was like, why do you wanna have kids? I was like, ’cause then I could come home every day and hang out with my best friends. Uh, I wasn’t trying to trick her. I, I really like, I wanted this because I did not have it. I had no idea how I was going to achieve it. But, um, you know, and so we’ve, we’ve raised our kids like a little bit, um, uh, different than I, I think most of society in that we, we expose them, we expose them to things. And so, uh, IMEX Navy, which means I, you know, I, I occasionally will drop the F-bomb and instead of like, pretending to be these perfect adults in front of our children, just the adults that we are in front of our children, and then we talk about these things with them and, and, and then, you know, we travel a ton.

Jason Scott:

And, um, like next Jump Outfitters is also one of the companies in the 120VC brand community. And that’s all about living the life of adventure. And so my kids cruised on a sailboat in Mexico, both before they were one years old. And, you know, they, they’ve just been exposed to so much and, and where this, this is playing out, they’re eight and 10 right now. And, um, so this was like an experiment. I, I clearly don’t have a degree in parenting and I didn’t have any good examples, but just recently my wife and I got validation that this was a really good idea because at eight and 10, in second and fourth grade, they are hearing all kinds of things on the playground that we did not expect. And so we realized like, if we are not teaching it to them, they’re gonna learn it on the playground from other children who are way less qualified than we are to be teaching them these things.

Jason Scott:

And so it’s just, it’s been really great because one, they talk to us about it, so we know that they’re talking about these things. But two, there’s been some really hilarious conversations where, uh, they had heard, and I, I probably can’t get into it here on your show, I, I do think that some of your listeners would be amused, but just where they share these things and they don’t have it even nearly correct, and it’s kind of hysterical, but it then allows us the opportunity to kind of have the conversation and let, really let them decide, right? And so I, I feel like the parents that try to shelter or protect their children, um, their hardest in the right place. But what we’ve just recently learned that reinforced our decision to expose them to things was if we’re not exposing it to them, they’re gonna learn it on the playground. And the the coolest thing, and this is my make, um, is that because we expose them to so much, they feel very comfortable sharing things with us and talking about things with us. I mean, frankly, sometimes I wish they were a little more scared of us, uh, <laugh>. ’cause you know, like, Hey, don’t do that. Doesn’t always fly. You know, like, hey, whatever, it’s just dad, you know? But yeah, that, I think just the way our decision to expose them and teach them has, is paying off.

Tom DuFore:

Great. Oh, what a great story. Thank you for sharing that. Um, and well, uh, let’s talk about a multiplier. We get a such a broad cross section of responses from guests to talk about a multiplier you’ve used and growing yourself personally and your personal development, your professional development or, uh, maybe growing businesses or enterprises you’ve been involved with.

Jason Scott:

That’s easy. Um, intentionality. And this goes back to discipline. I, you know, again, early in my career, I’m reading all the magazines, all the entrepreneur stuff, and I sold myself this, this bag of rubbish that like, you know, I was successful because I am talented. Well then I wasn’t successful <laugh>. And so did that mean that I wasn’t talented? Trust me, that was really hard to work through. Um, and what it really was, was I thought like if I build it, they will come. Well, this is a flawed concept, especially today because there’s, there’s so many businesses out there, there, a lot of them are virtual. It’s like, you know, it’s, it’s like the needle in the haystack, right? Like, so you, you have to, you can build it, but if you don’t make people aware of the possibilities, no one is inspired to take action.

Jason Scott:

And so being very, very intentional, like becoming this human really started with me realizing that this human interaction thing created better outcomes, like treating people like people as opposed to treating them like cattle created better outcomes. It was more fulfilling to me. And then going on a search to figure out like, what did I want my contribution to be? And so as a, as a student and an alumni at the Stagen Leadership Academy in Texas, I figured out what my leadership purpose was, which was to inspire others to reach for their potential. And so in that, I live every day to do that. But more importantly, I’m also very disciplined about identifying what my objectives are for me personally as well as my organization. I work what’s called a two by two prioritization matrix. It’s one of the, it’s one of the methods that we employ for our clients to help them develop the discipline before we try to give them the brown belt of project management or program or portfolio management.

Jason Scott:

And, and so it allows us to prioritize acknowledging that we have multiple number one priorities in different categories. Um, and, and then I time block every week. So every Thursday I spend, I spend two hours going over my two by two. So I’ll just create it and put it in a drawer, right? Like what happens in most consulting engagements, I work it. And which means my calendar every week is completely filled by Thursday of the week prior, which, which the second I say, this causes so many people to panic. But the reality is it makes my life and handling all that incoming ’cause we have incoming the chaos. It makes handling that much easier in that my calendar is filled with all my number one priorities. Very few people can say that this is the case when then something comes in that’s a higher priority.

Jason Scott:

You know, something tactical, like something client facing and an emergency with a team member or something like that. I can take these strategic things that are my number one priorities and instead of skipping it or deleting it, I just move it to the next week. And then I can insert this higher priority in there. It also makes realizing that something coming at me isn’t necessarily that urgent. My team members will go, Hey J, do you have time? It seems urgent to them, but when they say what it is, Hey, do you have time to work on this? I realize this isn’t a higher priority than anything that I already have on my calendar. So I say, Hey, can you find time on my calendar for next week? Now if they, if they feel that it’s truly urgent, they’re then gonna voice that and buy. So instead of just leaving an open spot on my calendar for anybody to take, because they will take it, it forces people that have things that they actually think are critical to raise them up. It also allows them to think through, do I really need to do this this week or can I do it next week? And so it really fosters healthy behavior throughout my organization and it really makes deciding what is a higher priority than what I already have planned. Super easy because I’ve already planned it. So being intentional and being disciplined is game changing, to architecting a life that you, you hopefully would feel like is your best life.

Tom DuFore:

Yeah, that, that’s fantastic. I love the detail you shared with that too. Thank you. And the, the final question we ask every guest is, what does success mean to you?

Jason Scott:

This is an easy one ’cause it plays into what we were just talking about. For me, success is living your best life. So the hard part, so it’s an easy answer, but the hard part is first figuring out what’s your best life. Uh, I grew up super poor in a really bad neighborhood in Los Angeles. And so when I was young and successful, I thought my best life was multimillion dollar home, Aspen Martin DB nine, like all that glitzy stuff. And you know what I found after living that life for like 15 years, I was miserable. So my first step was realizing I was miserable. And then my wife and I, we decided we didn’t wanna raise our kids in Los Angeles, and so we were gonna move to San Diego and we ended up in Tacoma, Washington. If somebody had asked me two months before moving to Tacoma, Washington from the Hollywood Hills, would you ever consider Tacoma, Washington?

Jason Scott:

I would’ve been like, uh, what are you even talking about? That’s not even a city, it’s a truck. Like, is that a place? And I could tell the story about how we ended up in Tacoma, but it’s irrelevant. Uh, it’s clearly not a fancy place. It’s a rad place, by the way, but it’s, it’s clearly not considered a fancy place or a glitzy place, and it’s not, it’s totally a little bit gritty, uh, and beautiful and green. Um, and, and so we just, we just started experimenting and it turns out I’m not like a fancy guy. I just wanna wear t-shirts and drive a truck and spend time with my family. I go to, I go to drop off for with my kids every day, which I only get to do in elementary school. And I, I wouldn’t have done this in Los Angeles because their, their private school would’ve been like 45 minutes away in traffic.

Jason Scott:

And I was a, a busy businessman, and I mean, I guess I’m still a busy businessman. It’s just the things that I prioritize in my life are, are different than what I was sold by Hollywood. And so for me, knowing that there’s multiple options than the traditional path to living your best life, right? Like, like my kids, they talk about what, what jobs are they gonna take when they’re older and, but we spend a lot of time teaching them like how to make money without a job. And that’s, if they don’t wanna be an entrepreneur, that’s cool, but like if, and so if you wanna go to a nine to five job and be middle class, that is a perfectly acceptable option as long as that’s what you want. If you wanna be fancy DB nine drive in Hollywood Hills, live in person, that’s a perfectly good option as long as that’s gonna be your best life. And so knowing first of all who you are and what you wanna be is the first step, and then really committing to living your best life. So having the freedom to me successes, creating a life that allows me the freedom to live it my way, this is where Frank Sinatra definitely had it. Right.

Tom DuFore:

Jason, thank you so much for a fantastic interview. And I know your book is a phenomenal resource. So we’ve got that linked in the show notes for anyone who might be interested in checking out his book to get more in depth on his philosophy. So let’s jump into our three key takeaways. Takeaway number one is when Jason talked about how all of our decisions start as an emotional decision and then get processed to become more of a logical decision. So it goes from our limbic brain to the neocortex of our brain. So everything starts emotionally and then gets interpreted by our neocortex. I thought that was a great takeaway. Take number two is he talked about using active listening to help accomplish a goal. And so when you’re talking with your team, team members or people who are working with you, help them ask by asking questions, ask things like I don’t understand, and help your teammate to explain to you how they would accomplish the task or the goal.

Tom DuFore:

And remember, it’s about what’s best for them and how they would approach it. And if your employee is asking you how to do their job and you’re telling them, as Jason said, that’s command and control management, that’s, that’s management not leading. And takeaway number three is when Jason shared how leaders can archetype their players’ success. And he said, you do that by not diagnosing your own problems. And I thought that was just a great takeaway. Don’t diagnose your own problems as you’re thinking about how to assess and do things. And now it’s time for today’s win win.

Tom DuFore:

So today’s win-win ties directly into the show title and really into the title of Jason’s book as well, that it’s never just business, it’s about people. And he shared how Gallup did a study and found that people are motivated by three key things. Number one was mastery, two, autonomy, and three, purpose, mastery, autonomy, purpose. So when you’re thinking about motivating your team, these are all intrinsic motivators, mastery. How well are they gonna do something? Autonomy? Do I have control over what I’m doing or in how I’m doing it and purpose? Do I feel a sense of belonging or a compelling reason why I’m doing what I’m doing? Those are intrinsic motivators, not extrinsic. So let’s keep focused on those three. And tying into that is when, when Jason shared how success he describes success for him is living your best life. And the hardest part of that is figuring out what your best life happens to be and sorting that out.

Tom DuFore:

So I thought that was a great takeaway and a great win-win because if you are helping your team develop and recognize that it’s not just business, that it is about people and how you’re doing business, you’re gonna go a lot further faster and make a far greater positive impact on the people you’re leading on your customers, on the community you work in, and the community you serve. And that’s the episode today. Folks, please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. And remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise our business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at big sky franchise team.com. Thanks for tuning in and we look forward to having you back next week.