1,000 Stories Podcast Trailer

Reid: Okay, Joe, why are we doing this podcast called 1,000 Stories?

Joe: Why are we doing this? Maybe the better question is, why am I doing this? Why am I, a sales leader at a marketing consultancy, spending hours of my time on this podcast? Right now, just to be honest, anytime I'm not in active new business conversations, I'm working on this show.

I'm interviewing leaders from around our community, connecting with the people they say I need to talk to next, and exploring the various threads we're seen in the conversations. So seriously, why am I doing all of this? Because we're making the show to answer the question I keep coming back to over and over again.

I'm Joe Mills.

Reid: And I'm Reid Morris.

Joe: Welcome to 1,000 Stories. A show from Element Three.

For you to understand my question, you really have to meet Reid.

Reid: My own head trash. Take two.

Joe: Reid is the reason to my rambling.

My co-host, my coworker, and the person you heard at the top of this episode.

Reid: When you are in an environment and around people who choose growth every day, you sort of can't help, but get some like osmosis from that and do the same.

Joe: More officially. He's the marketing manager here at Element Three and he's like me and frankly, like almost all of us at Element Three, he's got an insatiable hunger for.

Reid: I'm a growth minded individual, ambitious person that feels a little bit self-serving, but I feel like on some level I need to just sort of step into that and own it. And I know that because it was definitely not always the case.

Joe: This guy is crazy disciplined. He runs every day. He's the first one into the office and often the last one to leave.

And he's always pushing himself past his own limits and trying new things.

Reid: I've always wanted to be the person that knew a lot of things about a lot of things, or maybe a little bit about a lot of things.

Joe: So when we talk about this ethos of people at Element Three, he's really the archetype, but that's the thing.

This company is filled with people like Reid, myself included.

I think of myself as a  type "A," high dominance, whatever you wanna say, that's my personality type. There's almost this cultural thing that's like, if it's not hard, it's not working. And if it's not hard, it's not progress.

We're growth hungry, never satisfied. We're sometimes obsessive about it and our leadership not only fosters this hunger for growth in us, they're the exact same way themselves. So, this is where the show comes in. We started with wanting to answer the question, what does it take to build companies that foster growth in people and business?

And then we realized the real question is who does it take? So let's pick up where we left off.

Reid: Okay, Joe, why are we doing this podcast called 1000 stories?

Joe: The uncovering part is really the focus of this show, right? Choosing growth is harder than plateauing and staying where you're at. You can keep doing the same thing over and over again and getting the same results. Choosing to go outside of that comfort zone, choosing to find where the next step is and put yourself out there. It takes courage. It takes some bravery and it requires an essence of just being obsessed with what is the next step forward to realizing what I can do for the world around me, the impact I can have, how much I can build myself up.

Reid: I think an interesting place to start there is sort of give some context as to element three in this puzzle. So at its core Element Three is a marketing consultancy, but we have a company purpose of fostering growth in people in business, so they can change the world. And there's a lot that you can sort of dig into there and it feels like this big thing, right?

Changing the world through people and businesses, the community that we interact with, but to make that more tangible, the leadership team at Element Three, came up with the idea of writing 1000 stories of growth by 2029, which was our 10-year target at the point that that was crafted. So what that means is whether it's the employees that work at Element Three, whether it's the points of contact and the businesses that we work with, the businesses themselves, or any of the broader community that interacts with Element Three.

We are an organization filled with people that are all about growth. And so that's how we came to this podcast of an opportunity to help tell some of those stories and talk with and interact with people who are also growth-minded as a part of that journey of uncovering these stories of growth.

Joe: The point is that if you can leave an impact around you by growing, you can't help but bring others with you.

On this season of 1000 stories, we start with some of the leaders at Element Three.

Tiffany Sauder: I think it gives me this urgency in my own growth to be like the more I have, the more I've soaked up, the more I've learned, the more I've seen, the more I've experienced, the more I have to give.

Joe: Why do you choose to be in an organization where that is the focus?

John Gough: If you define freedom, as in, are you doing the thing that aligns with your values? Are you doing the thing that you said you care about and you're doing it intentionally then? Yeah. I feel like the design, the life that I said, I want, let me just learn as much as I can soak it up.

Joe: And then we expand from our four walls and start talking to other people in the community.

Sara Croft: I've gotta figure out how people work.

Joe: What makes them tick?

Kevin Bailey: Two mindsets. You have the creator mentality, the victim mentality. We talk about abundance and scarcity. It's much better to be in the creator mindset.

Lindsay Boccardo: I want to see if we can find ways to help teams understand each other and take care of each other and get the mission done, whatever the mission is.

Joe: And then pulling on the thread that brings those together and what learnings we're happening inside of each conversation and letting that guide where the story goes.

Reid: Alright, Joe. So what are we gonna talk about?

Joe: The investigation begins next week.