450 | Why Employees Are Unhappy

Apr 8

[00:00:00] James Lawrence: Great leaders adapt to their situation. People say, well, I just want to be myself. It's inauthentic not to be myself. I think there's some truth to that, but I think the bigger question is like, doesn't every great leader understand their audience when a CEO says something like, well, I know that. Having engaged employees is important, but like we have other priorities and I think like what bigger priority is than your humans that work for you every day.
[00:00:24] James Lawrence: If people aren't your priority, I guarantee you your organization is not going to perform well over time. Comes back to time, shouldn't it be good? Shouldn't you want to invest your time in something that like speaks to you right here?
[00:00:36] Chaz Wolfe: What's up everybody. Welcome back to gathering the King's podcast. I'm your host, Chas Wolf. And today we are joined by James Lawrence, the CEO of happy, a platform that's transforming organizational culture from college dropout to industry leader. James's journey is a story of humility, personal growth, and embracing servant leadership.
[00:00:58] Chaz Wolfe: Get ready because we go deep on culture.
[00:01:03] Chaz Wolfe : James Lawrence, welcome to the King stage. How are you, my friend?
[00:01:06] James Lawrence: I'm doing fine, Chaz, thanks for having me on the show.
[00:01:09] Chaz Wolfe : Yeah, man, we, we're going to have an interesting conversation. We always have interesting conversations, but you have a unique business. Not, not like another one that I've had on the show, actually. So tell us what is happy. What do you do?
[00:01:21] James Lawrence: Well, I get the elevator pitch right away, Chaz.
[00:01:24] Chaz Wolfe : on now.
[00:01:24] James Lawrence: So, I, I will ask you a question. Can I turn the tables on you?
[00:01:28] Chaz Wolfe : Okay. All right. I'm defensive now, but okay.
[00:01:31] James Lawrence: Okay. So how long have you been working?
[00:01:34] Chaz Wolfe : Ooh. Like in my life.
[00:01:36] James Lawrence: Yeah. Like first time scooping ice cream is like 14 year old kid, high school.
[00:01:41] Chaz Wolfe : Yeah. Picked up a, a, a concrete hammer, uh, or a shovel or a, uh, a form probably at 13 years old.
[00:01:52] James Lawrence: Okay. So in total,
[00:01:53] Chaz Wolfe : 24 years.
[00:01:55] James Lawrence: 24 years, and then how many different like jobs or bosses have you had, like how many different environments have you been in?
[00:02:01] Chaz Wolfe : Goodness. Um, let's say a dozen.
[00:02:04] James Lawrence: Okay. So 24 years, a dozen bosses. So I'm imagining you've never had in that whole timeframe. Any seen any challenges with people, right?
[00:02:14] Chaz Wolfe : Never, not once, actually.
[00:02:17] James Lawrence: no different ways of doing things.
[00:02:19] Chaz Wolfe : Nope. They've, they, they came all out of the same box, actually.
[00:02:23] James Lawrence: Yeah. So no, no conflict, no, no disagreements about, you know, so, so that's what happy does. And so, you know, we just apply behavioral science and AI. To helping humans work together at work. So that's our elevator pitch.
[00:02:38] Chaz Wolfe : Here's a question for you, James. I, when I think about harmony or as you said, maybe alignment or however, we want to dress this up there. We can work together, but I find that when, when there's a common, common, definite purpose, right?
[00:02:50] Chaz Wolfe : So in, in thinking we're rich, Napoleon Hill defines the mastermind principle as two or more minds working in harmony unto specifically a definite chief aim. And so for harmonies sake or alignment sake, how important is that? Like that one singular focus that we're both working on so that we can maybe overcome some of the conflict or work together in a scenario.
[00:03:10] Chaz Wolfe : How does that play into all of this in your mind?
[00:03:12] James Lawrence : Yeah, that's an interesting question. I mean, I think Where I start answering that is I think everybody knows what a poor team alignment looks like. And I think, you know, I got a chance to spend a lot of time talking to CEOs and we can talk about that later in the show, but I got a chance, uh, in 2020 and 19 to like meet with more than 500 CEOs and like, uh, VPs of people and, and, uh, heads of human resources.
[00:03:40] James Lawrence : And it's like, what you just asked is one of the questions I actually asked. So I have to say it's a darn good question, Chaz, but it was like the way I said, it was like, what does a win look to you? Like, what's a victory look like to you with your team? And. You know, you mentioned harmony earlier, I think like mission alignment is really important.
[00:03:58] James Lawrence : And so I think like that north star of like what we're looking for and whether it's, you know, getting there through the happy platform or understanding, you know, a disc assessment or leadership coaching, but it's what can we accomplish together? And it's gotta be like, 1 plus 1 equals 3, right? Or if you've got 6 people in your leadership team, it's like, we don't want, you know.
[00:04:19] James Lawrence : One plus one plus one plus one equals two. And you know, a team that's not effective is a detractor. And I'll tell you one line real quick. Um, sometimes you hear CEOs say something like, I couldn't do this without my team. Or, um, you know, the team is more important than any one individual, me included. And to me, that's when I know that like a team is going to drive toward good outcomes.
[00:04:46] James Lawrence : And then I think the opposite is, well, I have to make all the calls because, you know, I don't have a very good team or my leadership team isn't right. Or, you know, they're not, they don't have the information they need, or I don't trust them. And so suddenly now you've got a CEO surrounding him or herself with seven or eight people in the leadership team, or you have a manager that's surrounding themselves with people, but they're making all the calls anyways.
[00:05:08] James Lawrence : Cause they don't have the right people or they don't trust them. There's not alignment. And that's really like a waste of human capital, but, you know, that's a team that's not functioning right is, you know, you've got, you know, someone that just is making all of the decisions and doesn't
[00:05:24] James Lawrence : trust the people around them.
[00:05:25] Chaz Wolfe : Yeah. The principle that you're talking about here is, is, you know, known, right? Maybe even cliche, which is like, well, yeah, of course, like the leader who makes all the decisions. Like we know that that's bad. Everything that you said probably isn't hitting the listener going, Oh my gosh, that's revolutionary.
[00:05:43] Chaz Wolfe : But. They still do it. And so what I mean by that is oftentimes I find, even in entrepreneurs who are, you know, 50 or less people you're talking about in corporations that have probably a hundred plus people, both ways, I find it's this person, entrepreneur or leader in an organization, who's, you know, Doing too much.
[00:06:03] Chaz Wolfe : Right. And, and they don't know how to, how to maybe leverage teamwork or cohesion or alignment or harmony. And, and so then therefore they're just a pretty strong individual. That's probably how they got into leadership or business ownership to begin with, and they're just like thrusting themselves forward and everybody else is just kind of trying to hold on and it doesn't really ever work out that way.
[00:06:22] Chaz Wolfe : Can you speak to this for a little while? I mean, why do we keep doing this as
[00:06:25] James Lawrence : Well, I've made all those mistakes,
[00:06:28] Chaz Wolfe : Me
[00:06:28] James Lawrence : I mean, and still, and still make them, I mean, um, you know, there's no perfect leader, uh, but no, I mean, you're right. I don't think any of this is, is groundbreaking. Um, what I do think is, I mean, I want to comment something you said earlier, which is you were talking about like different organizations and like different size organizations.
[00:06:47] James Lawrence : So it's like, when I first started talking to CEOs, like I was a CEO myself for 20 plus years and mainly in the automotive space, and I worked with a lot of, CEOs already, but, but in 2019, 2020, when I was researching happy, one of the things that I, I did was I made a commitment every day. I put probably 30 or 40 small groups together, kind of like many little mastermind groups, but mainly for research purposes.
[00:07:13] James Lawrence : And I said, like, I'm going to talk to five CEOs a week and I'm going to ask them some questions because I was really passionate about creating happy back then. That's when we really started doing a lot of our research. And I thought I had this perception, like, you know, big businesses have figured this out.
[00:07:28] James Lawrence : So if you're like a fortune 500 company, or you're a big fang company, uh, you're in Silicon Valley, you know, you've been in business 30 years. Like you figured this people thing out. Like people, Oh yeah, you're good. Like little companies, a hundred, 200 employees, small businesses, startups, like they've probably like trying to navigate through this people thing.
[00:07:47] James Lawrence : So I'm like talking to these CEOs and I'm talking to CEO of fortune 500 company. And I go, well, tell me a little bit about your people. And you know, you've probably got this all figured out and tell me about like. I asked one question, which is like, so when your people get hired, like, tell me about your onboarding process, like the work relationships that occur between your different employees, like, is that up to them to figure out or to like, do you have an entire process of like onboarding someone? And it's like, you know what, these big companies. They're way more screwed up than the little ones. I mean, the CEOs were like, no, it's, we're too big. I mean, and so in a lot of cases, these larger organizations had bigger problem, bigger people, pop people problems than the companies that were 500 people,
[00:08:36] Chaz Wolfe : yeah,
[00:08:37] James Lawrence : and I think it comes down to a very simple thing, people are messy.
[00:08:41] Chaz Wolfe : yeah,
[00:08:41] James Lawrence : it's hard. Like the people business is not easy. And in big companies, largely employees are just left to figure out their work relationships on their own kind of dependent on their department head or whoever they're, you know, whoever runs that division, but it's not always pretty.
[00:08:56] Chaz Wolfe : no, I would say most times it's not unless I have been in situations and built companies of my own even where it's, it's more put together stuff. I wouldn't call it pretty, but maybe a little bit more organized. And so let's, let's use this as a transition to talk about happy. I mean, it starts with a simple assessment.
[00:09:13] Chaz Wolfe : Like there's many others that you mentioned, but this idea of being able to take a look at someone and their traits or who they are, there are so many benefits to this and the rest of the show, we're going to go deep on this because this is how I feel like for me personally, like if I can identify why individually Chaz Wolf has been successful one, it's been from personal development, but inside of that, I know who I am like truly to the core because of assessments like happy.
[00:09:41] Chaz Wolfe : I can just not only self reflect, but I can just be honest with myself and then I can modify. And so we're going to talk about this, but give us an idea. What's the happy assessment look like? Why, why does someone take it? What do they do with the results? Let's start there.
[00:09:56] James Lawrence : can I talk about myself in the
[00:09:58] James Lawrence : third person? Cause if I can do that, I'm going to be
[00:10:00] James Lawrence : happier in this
[00:10:00] Chaz Wolfe : Let's go. Let's go talk about this amazing guy named James for me. If you don't mind,
[00:10:05] James Lawrence : Oh my gosh. So yeah, you know, what's funny is, you know, we, we have developed our own assessment. It's, you know, based on disc, um, which is, you know, probably the most popular behavioral assessment in the world. It's used by three quarters of the fortune 500, most of the branches of the U S military, but there's a lot of great assessments out there.
[00:10:24] James Lawrence : And, you know, we started working 20 years ago with disc from a company called TTI. And, you know, TTI has got great assessments. And so, you know, assessments are kind of like a religion. Like if I started convincing you that my assessment was better than your assessment, it's like, you know, we're kind of getting into like, you know, you're Protestant.
[00:10:40] James Lawrence : I'm Catholic. Like, well, let's, let's, let's go toe to toe on this. Um, so it's not a religion like that. We're all that interested in winning. The fact that anybody uses assessments as a win, like you talked about self awareness self awareness is. A really critical part of becoming a great leader or a manager or developing your own business.
[00:10:58] James Lawrence : And so, I mean, the 1st thing is like. I think assessments are fantastic tools, you know, if, if you're invested in them, happy art, we've got a little bit of a unique view and I'll kind of just explain it to you like this. And it takes about 30 seconds, but you know, we are a technology, a platform that a company installs and all of their employees go into the happy platform.
[00:11:22] James Lawrence : And everybody takes this 10 minute assessment. It asks you, you know, 30 or 40 questions. It doesn't take very long. And as part of asking you those questions, uh, you know, it understands your work style and once it understands the work style of everybody in the company, it can then render advice, insights, and guidance to each person that's personalized and contextual to them.
[00:11:44] James Lawrence : And I'm going to give you an example, which has, give me somebody you work with at
[00:11:48] James Lawrence : work every day or every week,
[00:11:50] Chaz Wolfe : Yeah. Sandy Elliot. She was just on the
[00:11:52] Chaz Wolfe : screen here a few minutes
[00:11:53] James Lawrence : Sandy, I love Sandy. So if you and I, and Sandy work together. And you looked up Sandy's happy profile and you looked her work style up and I looked up Sandy and looked up her work style. We would see some of the same things, but the insights and guidance that it would actually show up on your screen and the insights and guidance that would show up on my screen would be different.
[00:12:15] James Lawrence : Because you and I are different people. And so the way happy works is because it understands everybody's work style. It provides personalized guidance and insights. So it's essentially like an assessment, but that's personalized and contextualized to each person. So it actually gives you unique advice because you need different advice on working with Sandy than I do.
[00:12:36] Chaz Wolfe : Interesting.
[00:12:37] James Lawrence : that's the first thing that sometimes people don't really understand about happy is the secret sauce isn't really in the assessment per se. But it's in the contextualization, because I'll give you an example. If you're a type A personality, which I'm not saying you are, but let's say you're a type A personality and, um, Sandy, um, wants somebody to be, you know, the right thing to Sandy is she likes honest, candid conversation and the advice to you in Sandy's assessment is, Chaz, you need to be, you know, honest and transparent and bold with her.
[00:13:13] James Lawrence : Well, you're already that. So now you turn into a crazy person because it's telling you to go even more, you know, type A on her,
[00:13:21] Chaz Wolfe : right?
[00:13:21] James Lawrence : right? That's bad advice. What it might actually say is. Um, Chaz, you're already pretty transparent and candid with her. Um, make sure to do, you know, but she also likes data. So it might say something like, we know you're going to be candid, but make sure you bring a few pieces of data to the table when you have a meeting with her. Now, I might be a data person. It doesn't need to tell me to bring data. I do that naturally. So it wouldn't be like James, remember to bring a bunch of data to your meeting with Sandy, because it's like, I already do that. But it might say like, Hey, James. Make sure that you're frank and open with Sandy.
[00:14:03] James Lawrence : And so really what happy is all about is contextualized, personalized advice. And one of the things that, um, is interesting about learning in humans is when you really study, like how people learn, like I'll, I'm going to play a little, uh, play along with you. Can I ask you another question? So
[00:14:18] Chaz Wolfe : Yeah. Love this.
[00:14:20] James Lawrence : tonight at 8 p.
[00:14:22] James Lawrence : m. Chaz,
[00:14:24] Chaz Wolfe : Uh huh.
[00:14:24] James Lawrence : would like to ask you if you would like to participate in a three hour seminar on negotiating with Japanese business people,
[00:14:34] James Lawrence : seven o'clock
[00:14:35] James Lawrence : tonight. Are you interested?
[00:14:38] Chaz Wolfe : Possibly. 7
[00:14:39] James Lawrence : Okay. It's it might be four hours, seven to 11.
[00:14:42] Chaz Wolfe : 11.
[00:14:43] Chaz Wolfe : Hmm. It, less possible, but still possible.
[00:14:46] James Lawrence : Okay. So maybe your intellectual curiosity is like, Hey, that'd be pretty cool. Like I'd like to, like, I'd like to actually learn how to negotiate better with Japanese business people. But you're like, now I can't watch NCIS with my like spouse. I can't play with my kids. Like it means I have no dinner.
[00:15:01] James Lawrence : Right. So like, but tell me very plainly, what is it about what I just asked you that made you go like, man, that's a waste of my time.
[00:15:12] James Lawrence : Why would, why would you, why don't you think that?
[00:15:15] Chaz Wolfe : Uh, well I didn't know the context of the situation or more specifically what I would be learning there. Although I was open to whatever it was.
[00:15:24] James Lawrence : So let's say you and I were flying in the morning to Tokyo. And we were negotiating a 10 million deal. With two Japanese business people that we'd never met before. How attractive would the four hour seminar be tonight that we were going to have?
[00:15:45] Chaz Wolfe : Oh yeah. I couldn't get enough of it.
[00:15:48] James Lawrence : Right. So the difference is context, right? So the way the human brain works is it learns it's, it's fascinated by learning when there's an application. And you and I just wrapped on that. Like, you know, that to be true anyways, but you really know it. Cause we just went through a little, little exercise on it.
[00:16:04] James Lawrence : So learning how to, for example, learning a little bit more about, let's say, Tom in accounting, uh, if it's like, Hey, uh, you know, would you like to spend some more time learning about how Tom and accounting works? You might be like, eh, maybe, but when Tom has rejected your expense report for the sixth time in a row, and you're like ready to, you know, march into Tom's office and freak out.
[00:16:29] James Lawrence : It might be really useful right at that moment for you to learn how to work through a conflict with Tom.
[00:16:34] Chaz Wolfe : Yeah,
[00:16:34] James Lawrence : That's what HAPI is all about. It's not the unique secret sauce in the assessment. It's contextualized learning. It's like, how do I learn at the moment I need it and apply it to like something at work?
[00:16:48] Chaz Wolfe : Right. And so using this example here of Tom, uh, in accounting, I'm frustrated. I log into my happy platform and I like type in there somewhere that I'm going to go meet with Tom and I'm frustrated and kind of like chat GPT. It's going to send me some advice. Is that, is that what I'm understanding or is it a little different than that?
[00:17:07] James Lawrence : Um, yeah, I mean, it would, it does do that. But actually more likely is if you're in Microsoft Teams. It actually knows you're meeting with Tom because it monitors your calendar. And it actually about an hour before your meeting sends you tips on meeting with Tom before you actually have to do anything. So the way the tech works, yeah, the way the tech works is, you know, we have this little saying, which is like the right piece of advice at the right time, at the right moment. And to the right person. And so like, I will say like our technology is relatively new, we're about a year old. Um, so some of this is like an ideal state, like a lot of what I'm talking about, what we have, but in the perfect world, you know, we're anticipating You know, the human interaction you're having.
[00:17:55] James Lawrence : So the technology happy's platform already understands who you're already, who you're working with. So you can go through and like build a team and go like, Hey, I'm going to follow. Sandy. I'm going to follow Tom. Like I'm going to go follow a few people, but we use some technology called smart follow. And so it's kind of our own proprietary technology.
[00:18:11] James Lawrence : And we understand who you're working with in the organization. So if you're using team Slack, email, Google products, like we understand who you're interacting with. And so we're delivering coaching to you and insights already on the people you're working with.
[00:18:23] Chaz Wolfe : Yeah,
[00:18:24] James Lawrence : And so, yeah, so the technology is smart enough to like, understand who's in your cohort and sometimes it'll give you coaching on somebody.
[00:18:31] James Lawrence : You don't want, it'll make a suggestion. You can be like, Hey, I only work with Tom for a couple of months and then I don't work with Tom anymore. So you can like unfollow Tom for coaching, or you might have somebody new in your team that gets hired and you might be like, well, I just want to proactively follow them.
[00:18:46] James Lawrence : But I mean, the ultimate goal here is this technology works in the background.
[00:18:50] Chaz Wolfe : yeah, yeah,
[00:18:53] James Lawrence : you're going to go have a review with your boss. And you're like, Hey, or I'm like, I have a really important meeting. You can go like, or I want to pitch an idea. Let's say like you're meeting with the CEO and you're like, Hey, I got a, I'd like to prepare for that.
[00:19:07] James Lawrence : You can like go to the coach tool and go like, Hey, I, I'm going to pitch an idea to the CEO and it'll give you guidance on how to do that. But a lot of it's just like, how naturally can we integrate into
[00:19:18] James Lawrence : the flow of work?
[00:19:20] Chaz Wolfe : yeah, I love the, the technology piece there. I have not seen another platform do that. So kudos to you. I love that you're spearing, uh, this into really all the assessment world. Cause the assessment world has changed, uh, leadership and people communication and all that. I want to, I want to use this opportunity to go, okay, so, It's an hour before my meeting.
[00:19:40] Chaz Wolfe : I get this little note, right? Personally, Chaz Wolf right now doesn't have this technology, so I can't do that. But what I can do is I can go to my assessment. I can go, okay, I'm going to meet with James. Here's his, his assessment. Based on my knowledge, I can kind of, you know, maneuver this thing together.
[00:19:54] Chaz Wolfe : What's our topic? So manually I'm doing this. You have it in technology, which is amazing, but
[00:20:00] Chaz Wolfe : I've called this the scenario modification, but you're, you're sending me information to tell me how to adjust or adapt or modify in that meeting. What we think is a good outcome of like working together and conflict resolution and, you know, harmony, but.
[00:20:18] Chaz Wolfe : It is telling me to change what, what if I don't want to change? What if I don't think that that's authentic? Why can't I just be me? Why can't I just show up to the meeting? Help me understand.
[00:20:28] James Lawrence : Yeah, I'm going to answer that in two parts. So the first part is, you know, you brought up a great example of you doing this manually. And I would say like, that's how people have been doing this for a very long time. Right. It's like, Hey, I'm having some conflict with someone and like, can I pull up, can I get access to their disc assessment or their culture index or whatever assessment that exists.
[00:20:49] James Lawrence : And I'm going to read theirs and look at mine. And I'm going to kind of like do some jujitsu to figure out like how to work better with them. Right. Um, But I think the ideal state's a little, yeah, mental jujitsu, but I think the ideal state is a little different. I think you just hit on it. Which is you ask, like, what if I don't want to change?
[00:21:07] James Lawrence : And I think the first thing is, is that there's different levels of self awareness, right? And what you just described is like, you have a real commitment to where you've seen value. Like you've seen value in the jujitsu, right? Like you have challenged yourself to understand yourself and then ask yourself, okay, I've gotten good outcomes by learning how others like to work.
[00:21:28] James Lawrence : And then maybe adapting to their style. And so you've gotten some really good outcomes. And so you continue to do it because it makes your work output better. It helps you build your business. Um, and that's a beautiful thing. I think how I want to say one thing is I think happy is trying to solve a little different problem, which is trying to get rid of the jujitsu and just kind of giving you like the, uh, karate kid approach.
[00:21:53] James Lawrence : Like. You know, uh, you're not having to think about, um, necessarily what to do because happy is kind of doing seeing around a corner for you. And then over time, you're going to start learning how to work with those around you, like, because you're getting good outcomes. So for example, I'm going to give you a quick example, and then I'm going to answer your original question.
[00:22:16] James Lawrence : Have you ever walked into a meeting and had the person in the meeting be relatively quiet?
[00:22:22] Chaz Wolfe : yeah,
[00:22:24] James Lawrence : So a lot of people that are outgoing or extroverted or like me, I talk with my hands, I might've walked into a meeting at the age of 25 and had somebody be very quiet and analytical and think I might've walked out of that meeting and said, Chaz, I don't think. Betsy likes me
[00:22:44] Chaz Wolfe : yeah.
[00:22:45] James Lawrence : and all Betsy did was just listen like Betsy was being Betsy, which was being an analyst and listening and observing.
[00:22:52] James Lawrence : And I was being, you know, a core D and disc Mr. Super extroverted and going, well, she didn't talk a lot. I don't like think she really gets me. And that's a fatal flaw. That's thinking everybody looks at the world like I do. And so in a happy world, we don't have to give you all that information. We can just say something really simple to you before your meeting.
[00:23:16] James Lawrence : Betsy tends to listen a lot. Don't be surprised if she takes a lot of notes in the meeting. That little nudge to us is the difference in building relationships, because it's giving you a little context on who Betsy is and how Betsy likes to look at the world and you don't go into that meeting. You don't walk out of it going like.
[00:23:37] James Lawrence : Man, Betsy doesn't like me.
[00:23:39] Chaz Wolfe : yeah,
[00:23:40] James Lawrence : And so hopefully, you know, it's, I know you didn't like graduate college at 21 and become super emotionally intelligent. Like you've probably been through some pain to get to where you are.
[00:23:50] Chaz Wolfe : Yeah.
[00:23:51] James Lawrence : So I think solving that equation, like that's the real, that's like the heavy lift, right, is like, how do we make it so you don't have to necessarily like wake up and be like, man, I really want to change and I want to be self aware.
[00:24:04] James Lawrence : It just like. It's like cliff notes just makes your life easier. So I know I answered your question with a very circular question. I don't know if you found that interesting.
[00:24:14] Chaz Wolfe : no, no. It was super good. I think the the, the feedback there for the listener is one, not everybody looks at the world like you do. Like we know that, but in situations that you just gave super plainly, we forget because we're seeing things through our lens only when we have the ability to see things from the other person's lens, it.
[00:24:35] Chaz Wolfe : It basically just gives them permission to be them. And now we can take it a step further and go, okay, now we're not just coworkers. And maybe like, you're giving me a little tip to like work better as a leader. I've always taken it as my responsibility to not meet them in the middle, but to hop over the fence and come all the way to them.
[00:24:53] Chaz Wolfe : It's my responsibility. Right. And so what that has meant for me, you know, in this case right here, like I'm leading this show, I am not an extrovert. On a piece of paper, I'm a learned extrovert or I'm modifying as we talked about before. Right? So what, how boring would this show be if, if I just didn't have much energy, right?
[00:25:13] Chaz Wolfe : And maybe there's shows, there's shows like that, but not about success. And so as I'm coming over the table, wherever you are now, you're an expert. So it's easy, but it's my responsibility to come to you. So let's talk about it from a leadership perspective. Right. So it's not just like the little tips to give like the other person like room, but it's like, now it's a responsibility as a leader, in my opinion, to like, make this meeting the best it can be.
[00:25:37] Chaz Wolfe : And if that requires me to modify so that Betsy can listen and take good notes and whatever, cause she's going to get the same tips that you are about me, but as a leader, I still think it's my responsibility to talk about from a leadership perspective is what I'm trying to get you to get to.
[00:25:49] James Lawrence : Well, you're totally right. I mean, great leaders adapt to their situation. And it doesn't mean that like, Hey, there's always that moment where you've got to have that goat on the mountaintop moment where like, you know, you might have to, um, Motivate, inspire. And, and, you know, you hear this a lot of times, Chas, when people say, well, I just want to be myself, you know, it's inauthentic not to be myself. And I think there's some truth to that, but I think the bigger question is like, doesn't every great leader understand their audience
[00:26:22] Chaz Wolfe : Yeah.
[00:26:23] James Lawrence : to me? Great leadership is about understanding what someone needs from you. And like, I know this isn't super in vogue, but like, I'm a big fan of like, historical great leaders like, like Vince Lombardi.
[00:26:36] James Lawrence : Um, like I'm a big, I love football and um, like I really am a student of Vince Lombardi and like a lot of people didn't understand Vince Lombardi. Like he kind of over time, kind of got this reputation of a hard ass coach where he drove his players really hard and. You know, kind of like in cultural folklore, people are like, well, you know, you can't coach like Vince Lombardi coaches anymore.
[00:27:02] James Lawrence : Like, you know, players today are different. Well, if you actually go back and look at what Vince Lombardi said about his players, I don't remember how many players were on a football team back in the sixties, but let's just say it was 50 or 80. There's many quotes where Vince Lombardi said, I have 50 men on my football team.
[00:27:19] James Lawrence : And I treat them as 50 unique people and or saying something like my team is comprised of 50 individuals and in one of the, uh, biographies on Vince. It said, you know, he knew he had this art of knowing when to put his arm around somebody and quietly talk to them and when to light them up in front of the team.
[00:27:39] James Lawrence : And he said, like, I forgot the name of his, like, famous offensive lineman, but he had, like, two offensive linemen that, like, he said that I knew after a bad game, I had to, like, in front of the whole locker room, I had to dress those guys down and they would come out the next game and they would just dominate, right?
[00:27:56] James Lawrence : But his quarterback, he couldn't do that with. If he did that to his quarterback, his quarterback would go in the tank, you know, wouldn't perform. And what he had to do with his quarterback is put his arm around him, go for a walk around the. You know, stadium and talk to him and that's no different, right?
[00:28:11] James Lawrence : That kind of leadership is no different than it's happening in 2024, know your people, right? If you invest in knowing your people and treat them all as individuals, like you're just going to get better performance, right? Are you going to,
[00:28:23] James Lawrence : you're going to win more Superbowls.
Hey, Kings and Queens, Chaz Wolf. I want to talk to you about something that's super important to me. We put a lot of time and effort. We meaning myself and my team into this podcast, into the content that goes out every single day. And if you have been getting any sort of value or insight from this, we want it to be able to reach other business owners too.
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Together, we are building a community of like minded entrepreneurs who are committed to growing their businesses to new heights. So let's do this. Let's help each other. Let's help each other grow.
[00:29:14] Chaz Wolfe : Yeah. Well, I love that. Well, let's, let's talk about this unique, I haven't had a chance to bring this up in a podcast yet, but since you're a football fan and a, and a Superbowl, uh, mentioned there, we've got, you know, Travis Kelsey yelling at, uh, Andy Reed in the Superbowl just a few weeks ago. I'm in Kansas city.
[00:29:31] Chaz Wolfe : Um, Chiefs fans love what's going on, but the rest of the world was like, who is this maniac? And, Talk about the, the moment there, uh, that happened and then the subsequent moment that happened later where Andy then followed up with it with a little bit of, you know, uh, shoulder bump to, to, to Travis a few minutes later.
[00:29:50] Chaz Wolfe : Talk about that.
[00:29:52] James Lawrence : Yeah. I mean, that's, you know, I coach football, youth football. And, you know, you wouldn't want to see me on the football field. Sometimes Chaz, you know, it's, it's like how the sausage is made. Isn't always the prettiest thing. Um, there's a beauty of the game of football, of a mixture of strategy, passion, effort, motivation, technique, physical skill, but football games are won by teamwork.
[00:30:19] James Lawrence : It's not collections of people. Right. And I actually think a football team is a great analogy for a business. Right? Like, you know, your CEO and your leadership team develops a playbook. So to coaches, you walk out of the locker room, hopefully everybody's sees eye to eye on the playbook. They might not all agree with it.
[00:30:41] James Lawrence : There might be, there's 20 coaches, they might not all agree with it. When they walk out of that room, they coach that playbook, they coach their players, they're in alignment. That's what a great leadership team should do.
[00:30:50] Chaz Wolfe : Yeah, it's good.
[00:30:52] James Lawrence : it's not like there's not going to be any disagreements. I mean, what you just mentioned.
[00:30:55] James Lawrence : Like, Hey, there's a lot of passion on the field. Right. And, you know, football, maybe it's a little different than, you know, the average business, but Travis Kelsey cares. And one of the things that I love, look, I have to warn you. I'm a LA chargers fan. I've had charger season tickets for 22 years. Um, but I am huge, a huge fan of what the chiefs.
[00:31:22] James Lawrence : Have done their dynasty. I hate to say it, but I've got a quote from Bill Belichick on the back of one of my race cars, cause we race cars too for fun. And, um, you know, there's, there's the most important thing is passion and engagement and like, sometimes it's not the prettiest process, but like. There's a lot of respect that underlies those players relationship with Andy Reid.
[00:31:48] James Lawrence : And, you know, a lot of people didn't understand that one of the reasons that Andy Reid is so respected is because he's created an environment of psychological safety for his team where they can be honest with him.
[00:32:00] Chaz Wolfe : Yep.
[00:32:00] James Lawrence : And that's a big thing.
[00:32:02] Chaz Wolfe : Yeah.
[00:32:03] James Lawrence : And sometimes safety is about honesty. And in the moment. And it's not always the prettiest thing, but would it have been better if Travis Kelsey hadn't said Chisa won that game if he hadn't said anything or he hadn't had that moment?
[00:32:16] Chaz Wolfe : Maybe, maybe not. Yeah, it's tough in those moments as leaders because, um, it takes probably experience, but. Then tools like happy to be able to really train this in us. And, and so even just keeping this example here with, with Andy Reid, it's like his initial reaction wasn't to turn around and, you know, tackle Travis and bite his head off and tell him, don't ever embarrass me in front of the world.
[00:32:42] Chaz Wolfe : You know, he basically allowed space, right? Knowing Travis's profile, whatever that big, excited, passionate, outspoken, you know, dominant winner profile is that he has. He gave him space, he let him do his thing. It even caught him a little off guard, like physically. And he kind of just did his, you know, walked over, but then later he came up to him like a good leader, like a good dad, like a good, like, Hey bro, don't ever do that again, but you know, go freaking win.
[00:33:12] Chaz Wolfe : Like the reason why I called that is because you probably made a knucklehead move or whatever he said, you know, like they got back into alignment. And he, he drew that passion back in, he let it go out of the lines a little bit, but then he, he refocused it. And so I find myself doing that as a leader, myself going, whether this person is introverted or extroverted, you know, that neither here nor there, but I'm, I'm going to a modifier.
[00:33:34] Chaz Wolfe : I'm going to allow space or autonomy even for this person on my team or in my businesses to be able to maneuver and be truly them. But if I'm being honest as a driver, as a big personality, I kind of have to like. Be aware. Not kind of, I have to really be aware of me so that others can shine. Just like in that example.
[00:33:54] Chaz Wolfe : Can you speak to that for a quick second?
[00:33:57] James Lawrence : Yeah, I mean, that was a master class from Andy Reid on leadership.
[00:34:01] Chaz Wolfe : Yeah.
[00:34:03] James Lawrence : Um, I have handled that. If I go back to my 1st, 10 years as a leader, I have made every mistake in the book and I have. Not done what Andy Reed did. I mean, I had one scenario in my early twenties where, you know, I got, you know, somebody that kind of Travis Kelsey'd me and instead of building space, you know, I lost my marbles and reacted inappropriately for a CEO, got really upset, had a confrontation.
[00:34:39] James Lawrence : And I remember, you know, just really thinking about that later about the shame I had. Of being reactive in the moment and not, um, being the person I wanted to be. And, but it takes time, right? Like I guarantee you when Andy Reed was 25, like he didn't know how to handle that. Right. And then, so it really, to your point, it's just about understanding, like.
[00:35:07] James Lawrence : What tools do you have at your disposal? And so like, you know, I don't think you're going to see happy on the football field anytime soon, but not like for me, I'm a type a personality. I'm a D a D I. So in happy, we call that a catalyst because we kind of give everybody a persona, but I've got a lot of fire.
[00:35:27] James Lawrence : And so, you know, knowing where to not react for someone like me is really important. And it's funny. You should bring up making space. Cause like for. For type a personalities. That's like a really big thing. And I had a business coach in my early, probably like early thirties, which I mean, his name's John Delmatoff.
[00:35:50] James Lawrence : And ultimately, like, he's the one that I owe, like all of my passion for coaching came from John. He helped me in my career and he gave me probably some of the best advice that I've ever gotten in my life, which was, I kind of was saying to him, like, God, I'm like so frustrated sometimes. Something happens and I'm like so frustrated.
[00:36:13] James Lawrence : And I just like, can't, you know, I have a hard time like controlling my emotions. And he's like, well, you're going to have to build a coping mechanism. So what could that be for you? And I'm like trying to think about, and he goes, how about I'm going to give you one? He's like, you're going to go for a walk, a 60 second walk around the block.
[00:36:31] James Lawrence : And he goes, I don't care where you are. You're in the middle of a meeting with like your leadership team. And you're literally like, Hey guys, I got to go to the bathroom and no go to the bathroom, walk past the bathroom and just walk around the whole building and come back. That changed my life, Chaz, like 60 seconds.
[00:36:46] James Lawrence : I made a lot of laps around the building that year. People are like, where the hell is James? It's like, the dude's walking around the building. They're walking me while they see me just walking around the building.
[00:36:55] James Lawrence : I still have the same emotion, but I like modified my response to it. And I'm not always good at it.
[00:37:02] James Lawrence : Like I'm still, I still love my moments, but that was really good advice. Like, and so I think, like, that's what, to your point, like, Andy Reid did, he couldn't walk away from the sideline, but he built, like, that space for himself.
[00:37:16] Chaz Wolfe : Yep.
[00:37:17] James Lawrence : And then he was able to come back and, like, be responsive. And that's, like, what a real, that's what real leadership is to me, is, like, not reacting in the way you would.
[00:37:26] James Lawrence : Instinctually do it, but like thinking through, like, how am I going to respond in a smart way
[00:37:31] Chaz Wolfe : Yeah, I want to give a practical, uh, piece on this. We talk a lot about family here on the show as well. I think that family and even marriage plays a huge part into success in business. And so I want to ask you a question on that here in a second, but to tie this in, um, even with my kiddos, I've got a four year old son who is fiery, like firey, He's ready to go to war.
[00:37:50] Chaz Wolfe : Like, he's been shooting a bow for about a year. He's, he, I went on a helicopter hog hunt last week and he's like, Dad, like, I got my stuff. I'm ready. I'm like, You're four?
[00:37:59] James Lawrence : that's what we do with our four year olds, we give them weapons when they, when they're firing.
[00:38:03] Chaz Wolfe : Yes. give them weapons
[00:38:05] Chaz Wolfe : He has, he has many of them, uh, which has led me to has how to use them, not necessarily stay away from them, how to use them, but, um, regardless, I digress. He, he's this, he's this individual who's going to get angry or frustrated. Maybe that's just him being four. And maybe all four year olds are like this.
[00:38:23] Chaz Wolfe : My girls weren't quite like this, but he knows to count to five. Now he doesn't always remember. And so when he's exploding all Julie or I have to do go, Whoa, Tatum. And he goes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then he usually smiles and laughs and thinks how ridiculous that this scenario is that he even got upset about it hugs his sister and they go back to playing and it's like, wow, if I had been not one self aware to aware of just the functionality or the emotional piece that was happening inside of him or my other children.
[00:38:59] Chaz Wolfe : How could I lead him to even be the best version of himself? And this is really what we're talking about in organizations. It's like, okay, as a leader, I'm going to a take responsibility for being self aware. And that means to study myself, to really learn the nuances of how I think or how I act my emotions.
[00:39:14] Chaz Wolfe : And then how can that interact best with my wife, my team, my, my kids, my team, my businesses, people on a podcast, whatever. And I think we've given the, the listeners a lot of practical on that. What do you think about just assessments, maybe even happy in marriage and kids? How does that help maybe a high performing entrepreneur or CEO?
[00:39:35] Chaz Wolfe : Maybe balance things out a little bit. I don't like the word balance. I like obsession, but how, how can I lean into someone like that with even a tool like yours
[00:39:45] James Lawrence : Boy, you're, you're queuing me up. Perfect. Chaz, you've done this before.
[00:39:49] Chaz Wolfe : just a couple of times,
[00:39:52] James Lawrence : I'm going to, I'm going to do, since I've done this six times in this podcast, do this for the seventh time. I'm going to turn the question around. So. I think what you're saying is like, you've discovered the value of self awareness, and then the assessment is a tool that you use as part of your arsenal.
[00:40:09] James Lawrence : And then that modifies your outcomes, right? Your behaviors, even you're describing with your family, right? Like, if you didn't have that self awareness. You probably wouldn't even be able to talk to your son about it. Right.
[00:40:21] Chaz Wolfe : Right.
[00:40:22] James Lawrence : So I think the first part of unlocking the key, whether it's your family, your marriage, your business, your organization is I think some CEOs.
[00:40:34] James Lawrence : And I think right now this is really important for a CEO or leader. Because the world's changing, the future of work's different. Like workers expect more flexibility. They want to work from, they don't all want to work from the office. They want to have a hybrid experience. Um, you know, our Gen Z is looking for totally different things at work that like maybe you and I looked for.
[00:40:55] James Lawrence : So I think the first thing is like, what is a CEO or leader or someone, a family? Like you start thinking about it and they go, well, what could I get? With a great marriage. Well, you get happiness. What do I get if I have my children, uh, that can be adaptable and patient and listen, will you get hopefully kids that will be higher performers in life.
[00:41:21] James Lawrence : But there's one really thing that I think that I think, and it's a controversial thing, but I think a lot of CEOs that don't get it or that haven't gotten it yet, say the following words. I know that, you know, having a good culture is important, or I think that, you know, having engaged people is, you know, that's important, but I have other priorities right now.
[00:41:46] James Lawrence : And it's usually followed by like, my board's asking me to grow profits by 20 percent or I have a new product line, or like I have some other initiative. And it's this like, this kind of, I call it. You think people like getting people better as like a vitamin. It's like, well, that's just like good. It's like a multivitamin.
[00:42:04] James Lawrence : Like, you know, do I want my people engaged? Sure. But it's like, you know, it's like a bonus. But I really need to have a company that performs.
[00:42:11] Chaz Wolfe : Yeah.
[00:42:13] James Lawrence : And that's ridiculous because the data it's not even close. The data shows that organize that companies that have engaged people and that have high levels of organizational culture and happy employees, they are way more profitable.
[00:42:31] James Lawrence : They are way more productive. They have way more retention. They have better customer reviews, but some people can't see that. And so. Whether it's your family, your job, your work, you know, your career, your wife, your kids. You've got to start with like, what's your outcome. And, you know, cause how many times have you, and look, we've all done this as a parent, you know, your kid has done something that makes you super frustrated and you overreact
[00:43:06] Chaz Wolfe : Oh yeah.
[00:43:07] James Lawrence : in the moment.
[00:43:08] James Lawrence : That's. Maybe like, you're so frustrated that you just like yell at your child or you're not, I don't mean a mean way, but you're just like, you know, you're frustrated, but then, you know, what are you teaching your, your family? And I think of it the same way when a CEO says something like, well, I know that having engaged employees is important, but like, we have other priorities.
[00:43:32] James Lawrence : And I think like, what bigger priority is than your humans that work for you every day? Like, I don't care if you buy happy, but like, if people aren't your priority, I guarantee you, your organization is not going to perform well over
[00:43:46] James Lawrence : time.
[00:43:47] Chaz Wolfe : Yeah. We've found the same thing even with, um, you know, clients, you know, and you're, and you're dealing with, you know, really enterprise level. And we've got kind of a little bit of a smorgasbord of size companies inside of a gathering, the King's mastermind group, but it's the same thing. It's like when you, when you.
[00:44:03] Chaz Wolfe : When you can, I don't know, uh, take the focus off of the thing that you think the focus is like the result of what culture and happy people and joy and fulfillment and all these things in the workplace or inside the team are the things that you're actually after. But, but we do this in life, right? Like I, I want a great marriage, but I'm not willing to date my wife or I'm like, I'm too busy for that or whatever the scenario is, especially as entrepreneurs, because.
[00:44:33] Chaz Wolfe : You know, I'm not organized or I don't time block or some of the very basic things that help us just look at intentionality a little differently. What I'm hearing you say is look, the thing that you actually want, if you would just take a different route, not only do other people get the benefit, you actually get what you want.
[00:44:51] Chaz Wolfe : And am I hearing you right?
[00:44:54] James Lawrence : Well, it's funny. I mean, I would say I spent at least half my life getting this wrong, Chaz. Which is just something really simple, you know, everybody, you mentioned the word like intentionality and like that, like, that's a beautiful word because if you don't live with intention, it's very hard to find a North star every day.
[00:45:17] James Lawrence : Like, you don't walk around and just, it doesn't hit you in the face of like, Oh, what's my intention for my life, the most difficult exercise I ever went through. Um, I mentioned that business coach, John, so I was going through kind of like a difficult part of my time in my life where I was kind of like confused about my direction of what I wanted to do for the next 10 or 15 years.
[00:45:38] James Lawrence : And I actually had also like an Ayurvedic doctor, which we'll never have time for this, but I had like asked some people I really respect in my life. Like to give me some, some sage advice about the rest of my life. And I kind of got the same advice for both of them. Go take a blank pad of paper, walk into your backyard, sit down on a blanket and write down, throw money out, forget money.
[00:46:06] James Lawrence : How do you want, what are the kind of outcomes you want for the rest of your life? Like, what do you want to do with the rest of your life? Think of the things that are important. Make a list of everything that's important. And I'm like, this is easy. I can throw money out. Money doesn't matter. Like my salary doesn't matter.
[00:46:20] James Lawrence : I'm going to take this pad of paper and I'm going to like, you know, this blank pad of paper, and I'm going to like walk into my backyard with a pen. And I'm like, this is easy an hour. And I'm going to like have everything written down. Chaz, I sat back there with this damn pad of paper for three, four hours, dude.
[00:46:38] James Lawrence : I had like. It was like a bad, you know, nightmare. I'd like, there was nothing left of the pad. It was down to like four pages. I had scrumpled up so many papers. They were all
[00:46:48] James Lawrence : writing your life story.
[00:46:50] Chaz Wolfe : Yeah. Wow.
[00:46:51] James Lawrence : a lot of hard work, man, to do that. And that's that intentionality that you're talking about. If you don't have a North star for yourself, how can you really live your life to its true fulfillment?
[00:47:02] James Lawrence : Like you can't.
[00:47:03] Chaz Wolfe : you can't.
[00:47:03] James Lawrence : But people, it's hard to do the work, it's really hard and I, and that's where happy came from. I like literally wrote all this stuff down and, and both of my parents were psychologists, which is explains a lot about my crazy brain. What I ultimately wrote down on that piece of paper is like, man, I want to do something big to help people work better together. And like that, I just thought about it a lot. I'm like, I got to do this somehow. And that's what eventually drove the next three years of my life. But like, if I hadn't sat in that. Stupid chair in my backyard for like four hours, by the way, it wasn't just one day. It was like a week's worth of this over like three months.
[00:47:42] James Lawrence : I've just felt like a total idiot. Like who can't plan their life. Like you can put anything you want. You want a speed boat and go to Mon, you know, Monaco, but when you can do anything, like really it's hard. I don't know if you've ever done anything like that, but it's a hard exercise,
[00:47:58] Chaz Wolfe : I think that you're you're spot on first off, I have to say, yes, you're right. It, the intentionality, you know, uh, sitting down and, and creating space again, here we are being intentional about time really is what it is and going, okay, well, if I'm calm in the moment and I'm not caught up with the passion or the money or the, whatever it is that we're, we're talking about, And I'm just thinking and creating space for that and what, what's processing.
[00:48:24] Chaz Wolfe : Cause really what we're allowing in that moment, like truly, and you probably know this from your parents, but I'm, I'm allowing a different part of my brain to operate, right? I'm, I'm allowing the deeper parts of my thoughts to, to, to come out and it's not just the things that are happening underneath that I'm, I'm unaware of, but I'm, I'm being conscious of those things now.
[00:48:42] Chaz Wolfe : And so. The things that came out of for you, anybody can do, you know, they can, they can take that exercise. And then the intentionality of going, how do I execute on that is obviously what you're doing. It's what I'm doing. Gathering the Kings is that for me, I have multiple companies, but gathering the Kings is part of what that exercise produced in me, which is going, okay, what, what's, what is this all really about?
[00:49:06] Chaz Wolfe : You know, I've got some skills, I've got some background, I've got some history, I've got some family, but what, What is this? What am I supposed to do on this ball of mud, right? What's the purpose here? And I think that we will eventually all come to that conclusion as long as there's created space, which is driven from intentionality.
[00:49:26] Chaz Wolfe : And now that I have that, now that you have that, now it's intentionality that carries us through to the completion of that definite chief aim, right? Um, because there's going to have to be persistence and a push through and there's going to be conflict and things that we're going to have to overcome.
[00:49:41] Chaz Wolfe : But we hold on to those moments that you create and it's like, Whoa, this is powerful and I'm going to do it. We are doing it. There's no question on whether happy is going to be an amazing tool for thousands of thousands of employees. You've already decided that. Right.
[00:49:55] James Lawrence : you know, I'll give you, you're right. And I don't tell a lot of people this, but I'm going to share this with you. So, you know, when I did that exercise in my backyard, what I ultimately came down to is like, so I'm 47. So I, this was probably four or five years ago. So I was in my early forties and I realized that like money didn't really matter.
[00:50:19] James Lawrence : Which money is great. Like, I mean, it's like a nice thing to have. And I'm not trying to say like, I know you've talked a little about getting to the point where, you know, self, I'm not saying self worth isn't important. I do think it is. I think having goals is important, but ultimately it's not like what the money brings, it's like the value of time and freedom and let's like, but really like, you know, I've spent all these years and I've got a nice house and I've got a nice view and I live in a wine country in Temecula.
[00:50:44] James Lawrence : And so it's like this, you know, it's like. We live a nice life, but time was the one thing left on that piece of paper. Like, I'm not going to take the rest of the crap with me, but like the time, how the intentionality of like how I spend my time, that's like the one thing. Cause I could get to 60 and have a hit product and make a bunch of money, but maybe only have 20 years left to live.
[00:51:07] James Lawrence : Right. So I write something on the top of my to do list every day, Chaz. And that is how many days left I have to live. And I estimated my dad lived to 92. My mom lived to mid eighties. So I split the middle and I, I, I have 85, I put 85 years. So I'm 47. I write down every day. I subtract one day from my likely life expectancy.
[00:51:32] James Lawrence : And there's nothing that has driven the value of time for me more than writing that number down. Because if you really want to think about like, how do you invest your time in your life? Like, that's the one thing is like that, you know, death does not escape any of us
[00:51:50] Chaz Wolfe : Yeah.
[00:51:50] James Lawrence : and whether it's building, gathering the Kings or happy companies or anything else we do in life, like.
[00:51:57] James Lawrence : That's a, that's the one commodity that like, can't be bought.
[00:52:00] Chaz Wolfe : Yeah. That's
[00:52:02] James Lawrence : I think to your point of like really being able to like dial into like where you invest your time, like that's the biggest investment decision you make. Right. And like for you, like this podcast and trying to build like Gavin and the Kings for you, it sounds like it's part of your vision of how you want to be intentional about spending your time.
[00:52:25] Chaz Wolfe : Oh yeah.
[00:52:26] James Lawrence : Like it's part of your vision for your life. And like the fact that it takes a lot of discipline to do that. That's beautiful that you're doing that, right? Like the 20 year old version of Chaz probably doesn't do that.
[00:52:36] Chaz Wolfe : Right. Right. Yeah. Um, it's interesting and we'll circle up with this, um, but I had a, I had a buddy, I don't know, maybe year and a half, two years ago, he, he tipped me off to a, an app called parent queue. Um, and parent queue, you put in your kids names and their age or their, you know, their birth date and, and then pops up their profile and it gives you the days left until they turn 18.
[00:53:03] Chaz Wolfe : And it's just like, wow, Whoa. And you see it counting down every day, the days left until they're 18. And obviously 18, they're, you know, adults and on and doing their own thing. It doesn't mean that their life is over, but it just means like they're under your care and time's moving. And so that same effect that you just described, um, I had that a couple of years ago with that, but time, uh, purpose, intentionality, what would you say to the guy, just to kind of as a last little piece here, what'd you say to the guy or gal listening, going like, I want that, but like, I don't, I don't even know where to start James.
[00:53:39] Chaz Wolfe : Like I hear you, uh, you know, working, uh, learning myself and working inside of an environment using tools like happy and like, all that's good. I'm like, check, check. For me personally, for you, James, how did you like get to that place where you're just like, okay, something's got to give, I got to do something different or next level.
[00:53:59] Chaz Wolfe : What was it? What can they do? What would you give to them?
[00:54:01] James Lawrence : It's simple. Figure out what you love. I think that one of the biggest misconceptions about success is I think people put money ahead of love and doing what they're passionate about. And my experience has been, if you find the craft that you love, whatever you love, it could be snowboarding, it could be music, it could be whatever it is that just you wake up in the morning and like, that's what you think about. You can make a career about just about anything. Some people love cleaning. And if you love cleaning, you might own a cleaning company. Like you like organizing, you might run a company that organized, organizes projects. Um, if you love wine, you might go own a winery. Um, I just think that tapping into this, into whatever motivates you and gets you up in the morning, that's what I think makes for a great life. Like there's a, there's a phrase. And I've hated this for years in any of my employees or anybody in my company has ever said this,
[00:55:10] James Lawrence : I worked for the weekend or something like, you know, this is just a job to me when I get home. I'm, you know, such and such as my passion and I'm like, what are you doing? Do what you love every day.
[00:55:23] James Lawrence : Like, if you love surfing, that's what you should do. Like figure out, just do surfing every day. Like go work in a surf shop, go build surf boards, go make wax, go write for a surfing magazine. Like do the thing that do whatever that thing is, whatever, like, just gets you jacked up about life. Just go do that.
[00:55:42] James Lawrence : And it makes all the other stuff. Like we talk about happy and self awareness and all that, and all that stuff is great, but it's really hard to get motivated to like become self aware and build better work relationships when you walk into work every day. And you're like, well, this is just a job and I don't even like what I do.
[00:55:58] James Lawrence : And this is just, I'm just like going through the motions. Cause it's hard to get jacked up and excited about self awareness and your coworkers when you just don't give an ass, like you don't care if it doesn't motivate you all the rest of it doesn't even matter, but when you actually care and you're motivated.
[00:56:14] James Lawrence : Every day to do something you love, everything else starts falling in place. And now you're like investing in my self awareness matters, investing in my coworkers matters, and like investing in learning and education, all that stuff matters because you actually care about what you do. And I think a lot of people, I know this has nothing to do with happy, but I think a lot of people just forget how important it is to like find what they love, whatever their craft is. Remember it comes back to time. You and I talked about time. Shouldn't it be good? Shouldn't you want to invest your time in something that like speaks to you right here?
[00:56:50] Chaz Wolfe : Yeah. Yeah. I think there's something unique, especially for entrepreneurs, but even for those that are. Uh, working inside of a, an organization, um, their, their role in that, uh, can be exactly what you're talking about. It can be something that they love. And I love how you've given that direction. , James, where can someone find happy?
[00:57:08] Chaz Wolfe : Uh, they want to sign up. They want to use the assessment. They want, they want the AI tool to tell me how to work with my boss. Uh, where can they find you?
[00:57:16] James Lawrence : Happy companies.
[00:57:17] James Lawrence : com.
[00:57:17] Chaz Wolfe : We'll put that in the show notes as well, and any other contact information that you want to give to us, it'll be right there in the show notes for you, uh, for you to be able to click on and find James, you have been incredible here today. Um, I cannot wait to see what happy does and how it continues to revolutionize.
[00:57:32] Chaz Wolfe : Um, and for the assessment that we use, we need to get you attached. It sounds like, cause it doesn't even sound like you're in competition. It sounds like you're an overlay. We need to figure out how to get this working. Cause they're right here in my backyard and we need to get it done. So we're making an introduction, James.
[00:57:46] Chaz Wolfe : I appreciate you being here. We blessings to you, your family, businesses, all the things that you're touching in 2024. Thanks for being here.
[00:57:51] James Lawrence : Thank you, Chaz.
[00:57:53] Chaz Wolfe : Thank you for listening to Gathering the Kings today. I hope that you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply into your business right away. More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by yourself, doing it all on your own, carrying the weight all by yourself.
[00:58:11] Chaz Wolfe : What I have realized, not only in my own journey from multiple businesses and multiple different industries, and now interviewing to over 200 or 300, Other very successful seven, eight and nine figure business owners is that it's tough to do it alone. And so gathering the Kings exists to Bring together successful entrepreneurs.
[00:58:30] Chaz Wolfe : In fact, we are putting together 1, 000 Kings specifically. Who are grateful, but not done. We're intentionally assembling Kings who fight tooth and nail for their business, family, and communities. And here's what we believe that in the pursuit of excellence in those areas. That it ignites within us the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy.
[00:58:55] Chaz Wolfe : So if that relates in and resonates with you, and you know, that you need people around you, sharp, qualified, other very successful business owners. I want you to go to gatheringthekings. com. I want you to take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you to be part of our pursuit to 1000 Kings talk soon.

Host Chaz Wolfe sits down with James Lawrence, CEO and Co-Founder of Happy, a groundbreaking platform that's changing the way organizations think about culture and leadership. From his early days as a college dropout to becoming a respected CEO, James shares his journey of personal growth, servant leadership, and the power of empathy in the workplace. Discover how the Happy platform uses behavioral science and AI to enhance communication and manager effectiveness. Don't miss James's tips on building a thriving organizational culture and the importance of finding your passion in work. Tune in now to this inspiring conversation!

James Lawrence:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesflawrence/

website: https://happycompanies.com/

Chaz's favorite morning drink to fuel him for his day

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