The Power of a Growth Mindset in High-Growth Businesses

Join us in a riveting discussion from the Modern Elder Academy in Baja, where leaders who attended the Inc 5000 conference share their experiences and insights. This episode delves into the pressing challenges faced by entrepreneurs, the crucial role of a growth mindset in business innovation, and the transformative power of stepping out of one’s comfort zone. The dialogue underscores the importance of clarity, elevation, and fostering a strong sense of community among forward-thinking leaders. Listeners will discover how continuous learning and personal growth are pivotal in crafting not just businesses, but great companies. Tune in to uncover how resources from the Inc 5000 and the Modern Elder Academy are shaping the landscape of leadership and entrepreneurship.

Takeaways:

• The Inc 5000 leadership conference at the Modern Elder Academy in Baja serves as a critical platform for leaders to exchange challenges and insights.
• Embracing a growth mindset enables innovation and adaptation in a rapidly evolving business environment.
• Venturing beyond comfort zones is vital for both personal and professional growth.
• The Inc 5000 and the Modern Elder Academy are invaluable for providing resources and networking opportunities for entrepreneurs and leaders.
• Commitment to continuous learning and personal development is essential for building outstanding companies.

#ModernElderAcademy #Inc5000 #LeadershipConference #GrowthMindset #Entrepreneurship #LeadershipDevelopment #BusinessInnovation #PersonalGrowth #ProfessionalGrowth #Networking #BusinessLeaders #ContinuousLearning #BuildingCompanies

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to leadership talks in Baja. And this is going to be different. We're not going to dive deep into Greg's life and his journey, but we're going to over talk or talk about what happened here in Baja on this incredible week at MEA or Modern Elder Academy with our host Chip. Well, it was a great week. It's really good to get to meet you. Absolutely. For those of you that may not know, Inc 5000 invites some of the fastest growing companies and the most interesting companies to various leadership conferences throughout the year. And both of our companies were fortunate enough to be on the Inc 5000 list this year, new entrants. And this is the first opportunity I've had to... engage in one of these events and it was a very powerful opportunity. We just spent a few days with leaders from other companies that are having some shared experiences, some shared challenges and those that are having actually new or different challenges that they hadn't thought about. Absolutely. And Greg is very modest. But Greg comes from large companies and the advice, this is why I wanted him on here, the advice that he brought to the table for over the week was amazing. And he's a man that just never stops smiling. He's a CEO at a Therese, Thereseo? Thrasio. Thrasio. But spent 18 years at Amazon, amazingly large company. And I think you have a lot of advice that you brought to the table. But the MEA group this week from Inc 5000 was an amazing group and very diverse. And to me, when we were just chit chatting about it earlier, it was like having a very diverse advisory board for one week where none of us were really focused on one issue or personal issues, but it was really open table. And I personally got a lot out of it. And one word that I would use to describe it was very clarifying. Yeah, yeah, I would agree. One of the things I don't attend a lot of conferences, most of the people that were here, like, you know, similarly don't attend a lot of conferences. But when I do, I always try to set down goals and objectives of what I'm trying to accomplish. And certainly getting clarity around some of the business decisions we're looking to make some of the personal decisions me as a leader looking to make and some of the frameworks we're using. inside the company to help our teams do the best people they can be were the type of things that we were talking about here. Yeah, absolutely. And Chip Conley, obviously a book author, has written many books, led the way. And the funny part was when we all got here, I don't think anybody knew what to expect. That was like the... The going theme, Inc 5000 definitely put together a great event for Inc Masters. And Chip hosted it amazingly. Had a very exhausting week to really get your mind going and open up. And yeah, it was very uplifting. That would be another word I would use for me. and re -energizing. So, yeah. Well, I can't say enough about Chip Conley and what he has done both in his career, but what he's doing in this stage of life with the Modern Elder Academy, which is really a leadership forum and helps companies as well as individuals work through their transitions. And I was very fortunate to get to work with the president of Airbnb and was very fortunate to get to work with Chip Conley. during that time Chip Just to put a plug in there as a founder of Joy to V Hotels and as a hotelier built out the second largest critique hotel network in the US and I was actually an average Joy to V customer and I appreciated the platform before I ever met you Chip then wrote an amazing book called peak how great companies get their mojo from Maslow and I happened to early on kind of really appreciated the Maslow hierarchy of needs and the framework there. And Chip interestingly put that framework towards business, business situation and has needs for employees, for customers and for shareholders. And it's one that is very revealing when you apply it in that way. And we had an opportunity here. to not only hear Chip talk about the inception of that idea and how he's applied it at various companies, but for us to then think through how we would apply that kind of peak framework to our companies. It's something that is very powerful and something that I will certainly appreciate from this time. Yeah, absolutely. And I also like the touch where he would also touch on the fact that it's not only about the company, but there's... things in here that you can apply to your personal life. That can be really life changing and lifting your company up with it as well. So, yeah, as we all know, great companies are really because you have great people. Great people that have the right, you know, are aligned on serving a great mission and the framework helps to kind of highlight that, that, you know, kind of make sure you're going through the checklist of. the needs for the company, for your employees, for your customers that allows you to really start elevating all of those dimensions in unison. So it's a great labor and business. Yeah, and I know that Chip mentioned that his prior to MEA, he was here in Baja. And as he likes to call it, he had a Baja aha moment. And next thing you know, MEA was created and he's booked out quite a lot. And to give him a plug, if you're looking for something that's a little bit different than any other conference, any other networking, don't expect that. Even though you're going to get it as we're networking right here, you're going to get a lot more from it. It's a deep. one week of relationship building and I highly recommend MEA. Yeah, and it's also built on some of Chip's experiences in a book he published called Wisdom at Work. And what Chip's looking to outline with that book Wisdom at Work is his experiences as he became more mature and became more of a mentor in the working environment and really outlining those simple steps to help people create happiness and success in their business and more broadly in life. And so it's appreciative of the ING5000 for kind of marrying those two experiences where we can meet leaders from some of the fastest growing companies in the world and marry that with some of these frameworks that help us think about how to build great companies. Absolutely. And give us the push to get back on the list. Well, from what I can tell, all of these founders that were here and CEOs, working incredibly hard and super successful in what they're doing with their companies. So it's great to be able to rub shoulders with some of them for a couple of days. Absolutely. Very diverse group of leaders, for sure. How would you summarize one sentence? your one week experience here. Well, I would say. In one word, you'll need to edit this out because I can't think of a word. I know you had mentioned clarifying, and I think elevating is the word I would think about because we're really challenged to not only think about how we can better elevate our employees, better elevate our businesses, but also elevate our own health and well -being. And that's something that obviously all leaders are trying to strike that balance between those challenges. And the ink team and ship really left us with some tools to go do that. Absolutely. And we were talking earlier about Zappos and I think leaders as leaders, we get caught up and we pour out so much and we want nothing but the best things, at least the good leaders, right? sure not everyone does that. But we give so much. And I can't remember who, but somebody in the group mentioned, you can't just keep withdrawing. You have to get a deposit back. And now that I'm thinking about it, this was a good deposit of a lot of positive and a lot of clarity. And yeah, I needed it. Yeah, great. Yeah, great. Well, certainly, when you think about, Every business is in some sense or another on a hero's journey where you're going to see successes, some challenges, and you're going to go through and come back and eventually solve those and tackle a new set of challenges, celebrate and tackle a new set of challenges. And that's one where along that way, if you keep making deposits, if you are both in your employees, with your shareholders, with your customers. those goodwill deposits definitely help you get through some of those more challenging times. Absolutely. Paul, anything else we want to add to this? Let's see, what else could we talk about? I do think it's one where the Inc 5000 and the Inc team in general is really building out a place where the smaller, medium-sized, high -growth businesses can... Look for them for some tools. Lean on them for not only pieces like the great journalism that exists in the ink magazine, but the conferences that they have made available, the networking that's available. And I always encourage leaders to take use of those resources. Absolutely. And certainly, Markin and I have both done this these last few days to be a great opportunity to. leverage that and challenge each other. Yeah. And, uh, ink masters, I think is a great program, um, in any way, shape and form, uh, everything from just being in that network to having the opportunity to write articles and give them back to the ink and let them give them back to the world. Um, and that's where, for those entrepreneurs that haven't made the ink 5,000 list, the reality is one, it's a great goal to go after. Yes. But two, those resources are there available to you. And certainly, Inc. has been a great resource for leaders for decades. And I'm more and more impressed with the work they're doing to help ensure that their readers are getting good, salient advice on the challenges ahead. Yeah, absolutely. It is a great platform. It's a great network. And... Like Greg said, if you haven't made the list, put it on your to -do list. Because if it's not going to be on your list, then there's no goal to be achieved. I know for us, it was on our list to be able to accomplish that. We applied year after year after there's certain qualifications, and we finally got it. And it is a good feeling. It is a great network to be part of. And yeah. I'm glad we did it. Yeah. One of the things that came up during our discussions with Chip and the other leaders is that, you know, small entrepreneurial businesses that are need to grow, that are innovating on behalf of their customers, really have basically adopted a growth mindset. And, you know, it's really, I'm a big believer in having a diverse leadership team. where people are bringing in different experiences, people will challenge each other. But it is, I think, important for anyone dealing with a high growth business or enterprise is to have that growth mindset, where maybe you come in with experiences from your prior role or your prior company that has given you some, what I'll call fixed mindset where you're... you're less open to new ideas or really kind of fixated on doing something one way. And one of the things this conference really highlighted was how we need as much as possible to give our teams permission and ourselves permission to really pursue a growth mindset in a meaningful way so that we can be kind of more open to the rate of change that's out there in business. And there's lots of books published on the difference. between growth mindset and the fixed mindset and how to manage that. I think that's one of the things I'm taking away from the conferences, to make sure that we're being really clear with our teams about when we want to be pursuing a growth mindset. Yeah, definitely. That was a good discussion. And discovering some of the fixed things that you have in your mind, even though you didn't think you did. I mean, I... I always thought I was super open -minded and discovered there are some things you can get fixed on without knowing. So that was definitely good. And that's the beauty of high -growth entrepreneurial activities is you're usually inventing something new, either a new process or a new product or a new service and leveraging that. And it becomes an advantage if your competitors or if the incumbent is... really on a fixed trajectory or has a fixed mindset, this gives you an opportunity to go innovate on behalf of the customers that aren't otherwise getting that innovation from the incumbents. Absolutely. Yeah, that was really good. What else was on our list? See, I was going to do tenants, but I'll introduce that when we do our deep dive. Tenants is something that's very driven. The conferences hold together, push each other, it could be clarifying. We talked about that. your business, know the why that was really more than you know. You talked about peak. Discomfort. How about pushing people out of their comfort zone? Oh yeah. So another thing that I found within the circle of people that we had here for a week, not everybody was as comfortable as others. I'm pretty easy going. I've done conferences. I've spoken on stage and gotten used to it. Wouldn't say I'm perfect, but I found out I'm an explorer. So I say yes to a lot of stuff and I go and explore. What I saw was not everybody here was like that. There were some people that were a little bit closed off, came with the mindset of, I don't know if I belong here. I don't know what I'm doing here. My wife included. But it was an amazing experience for me to literally after one day see the difference and then day two see the difference and then the final graduation day was I almost felt like everybody was in the same black hole. When I think about pushing people outside of their comfort zone, it's actually an important characteristic to foster within your leadership team. And you could really see it here as Martin was saying. Some people just aren't naturally, not they're not naturally curious, but they're not naturally comfortable getting out of that comfort zone, to say the obvious. And I think it's something if you foster that in your leadership teams, be intentional around finding opportunities to push each other, figure out where those edges are. and encourage them to challenge each other, have long debates around important topics, introduce the contrarian view and debate that. It helps people get out of that comfort zone and realize that it's okay to stretch yourselves and get out of that. And certainly a conference like this where you get a room full of smart leaders that are assigned with... How do I push you, even though I don't know much about your business or about your team, how do I challenge you on identifying those opportunities where you can get your business, your team, your leaders, even yourself out of that comfort zone? Absolutely. And very amazing when you do get out of that comfort zone. Yes. It's a good feeling. I always think that's where a lot of innovative thinking happens, right? When people live running large. enterprises, there's so much that you need to have repeatable processes. And you want those mechanisms that help ensure you're sussing out defects and addressing your customers in a very repeatable way. But once you get those in place, you then need to, you want to kind of push yourself to say what other innovations can you be driving? Yeah, have more bah -hah -hah moments. Exactly. Which was great to see. Everybody had a great time. great Baha moment, my band. So that was pretty awesome. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you, Martina. It was a very interesting week. It was great to meet you and hear about your business and, and confident that those listening to this podcast, if you're, you are sampling Martin's kind of work on an ongoing basis, you're going to find this very insightful and one that will help. challenge you as you're thinking about your personal career, your company's evolution, and the advisory work that's required. So get on the INC 5000 list and we'll see you guys next year.