Transcript

What are the unique experiences that drive business leaders to keep growing, and how can the lessons learned from those stories enable others to do the same? I’m Joe Mills, and I’m Reid Morris. And together we’re investigating who it takes and the tools to use to build companies and culture. Then we’re sharing those stories with you. This is 1000 Stories, an original show from Element three.

Okay, Joe, so the next individual coming onto the podcast is Mark Caswell, uh, somebody who we know relatively well, uh, but I don’t think we’ve gone into his story in the way that we have, you know, over the course of this show. So I’d be curious to hear from your perspective, what you’re looking to get out of a conversation with an individual who’s really had a really strong trajectory in their career path, so to speak, if you think about it in like the traditional sense and just has really had a lot of interesting decisions over that time period. So, so what are you really trying to get out of your conversation with Mark? Yeah, just to give a quick bit of background to those who may not know Mark, he is the c e O of Resultant who is a Indianapolis based consultancy. And at one point they were K S M C.

So if you know K S M large accounting firm, you may know of K S M C and they’re now resultant. And as you mentioned, Mark’s had a really strong trajectory, really going back to his undergrad days. He was an engineer. He went to Earls Holman, one of the best engineering schools in the country, and then Stanford for his masters. And coming out of that, started working for Rolls Royce was in line to join their upper tier of leadership executive group, um, and made the decision to move into a consulting organization. And the thing that is interesting, I think, is that you can see a repeated experience of Mark really like rising to the cream of the crop of the environment. Obviously, he must have done well in school at high school even to go to such a strong university for engineering. And then he must have done great in undergrad in order to go to Stanford.

These are all, like, if you were to map the trajectory out, it’s the perfect upward linear trend. What’s interesting to me, and I’ll, I’ll let him sort of detail this, is that he made some interesting decisions while like winning, that we’re actually like pulling him off of the upward trajectory in one linear fashion. And so I definitely wanna talk to him about that. We talk to people about that all the time. Why did you make these decisions? What was your motivation in those? The other piece I think with him that is interesting is you don’t get to the top of organizations by just being awesome in a silo. Like, you clearly make impact on people in a really meaningful way so that they are advocates, they will choose to follow you, they wanna be part of what you’re building. What is it that he does consistently that makes that sort of splash in the organization?

Yeah, I wanna uncover that with him. If, if he has a framework that he uses for his decision making, the way he goes about his, his work. And also too, as you think about that, the decisions around career that he made, you know, we’ve talked about a lot of people lean into intuition. That’s been a huge thread over the different conversations that we’ve had. Is that true for him? Or was something that was more calculated considering the background that he’s coming from? Like what were the, the driving factors? How did he go about that calculus of this is the next career movement I wanna make, this is the next thing I want to build. All that kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. Should be great.

But Mark, thanks for coming on the show. We don’t do a ton of, uh, structure, but one thing I do like to do is, um, just give a second for you to introduce yourself and how do you tell people? Like if somebody asks you, mark, what do you do? What do you say? What do I, that’s a very American statement. What do I do? It’s my identity is, um, yeah. So the, what I do part, I’m CEO o of a company called Resultant. Um, so we’re consulting firm data, technology, uh, digital transformation, really anything in that space. We help companies go deliver results using those things. Right. Um, the who I am, I’m a dad. I’ve got three kids, a couple of middle schoolers and elementary school, uh, daughter. Um, life is busy. Most of my day is just driving my children around basically at this point.

When did you become a full-time shifter? Uh, it really was probably two years ago. Yeah. Yeah. I remember early in my twenties, um, seeing these parents drive their kids around and thinking it was the most miserable thing ever. Why would anyone choose to do that? Yeah. And yet here I am and it’s kind of fun actually. I actually have that thought myself quite regularly in my late twenties. What makes it fun? Um, well, first of all, your life is full anyway. Mm-hmm. Like, something is gonna fill your whole life, whether it’s driving your kids around or working or volunteering or whatever, right? Sure. Um, but it’s one of those times where you get to spend time with your kids one-on-one. Mm-hmm. Um, and that doesn’t happen very often anymore. Right. Yeah. You have to be like, very intentional and it just accidentally happens when you’re driving them to things.

Sure. I, uh, Mike Reynolds runs Innovate Map. Yep. Um, do you, you know Mike? Yeah. Great guy, awesome guy. He made a comment the other day to me that, uh, on, on LinkedIn they said that his rule in his car is you can either stare out the window or talk to him, but you cannot look at your phone. Oh. And I, we were, you know, commenting back and forth, so I didn’t, we weren’t having a conversation about it, but I would be very curious about what the reaction from his kids is to that rule. Yeah. And like, is it, has it been ingrained for so long that they don’t like try to fight it? Or is it like a, what do you mean, and put my phone away? Do you have anything like that where you’re like, I have, I have rules in my car, my house, or my, well, so I married a pediatrician.

Okay. Okay. So is it helpful or harmful for those types of rules? Yes. Okay. <laugh>. Um, so we have some very strict rules around that for like emotional development. So like social media is the worst thing ever. No one should touch it until they’re at least 18. I love that. Ever, ever, ever. And frankly, if you can go your whole life without doing it better for you. Oh, wish. So they have their dad’s a tech guy, so unfortunately for them, I can actually like lock stuff down. So they all have iPads, <laugh>, they’ve got an hour a day during the week, once the hour’s gone, the hour’s gone except for their learning apps like DEO lingo. Um, and then on the weekend they get two hours a day and it just is what it is. And they get real good at time management. I, I’m, I’m really curious cuz I feel like the other side of that coin is the sort of like binge cycle of I’m out of my house, I have freedom to try.

It, is like one of the things that, so my wife and I are at that age, we’re, you know, talking about kids and everything, and I ask myself this question all the time of like, I agree with you. I think social media is horrible, um, for a variety of reasons. I will give a shout out to my wife. She uses it incredibly well, learns, it’s like, it’s like her learning app almost. It’s like mm-hmm. <affirmative>, she actually gets community from it. She learns things about, you know, our dog and just all sorts of things from it. I don’t know how to use it. Well, I think it’s terrible <laugh>, but I ask myself the question of if I, you know, like restrict usage for my, for my kids, are they just gonna go like, find it somewhere else and then just like crave it all the time?

I’m just curious about what your experience has been like with that. Yeah, so there are certain kids that will follow rules because the rules exist. They’re relatively rare, right. Um, most kids will follow rules because they have to, and then find ways not to if and when they can. Right. And so, I mean, we’ve all heard if the first time your child gets independence is when they leave the house, that’s probably not gonna go terribly well. Right? Yeah. Um, we were all that age one time and, you know, let’s not discuss all of those mistakes we made, but there were a few. Um, so I think like sharing the why of those things, um, is really helpful to kids because like, everyone will do dumb things. Everyone will make decis. It’s just part of exploring and growing up and finding out who you are. But if you understand some of the why behind the rules or the things you were told, then when you encounter those situations, you can go back to that and say like, oh, okay, well that’s why they meant this.

Mm Right. Um, because ultimately they’re gonna have, you know, for most of your life you navigate it yourself. You don’t have your parents standing there telling you how to navigate it. Right. That’s actually a very short time in your life. Yeah. Well, and the amount of time that you remember that happening is even shorter than the time it is. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. I mean, there’s something, I’m gonna completely screw this up, but as the ceo, you don’t have to be right. You just have to, you know, say it with confidence <laugh>. Um, it’s something like by the age of five almost all of your child’s personality has been formed. Really. And by the age of nine or 10, almost all of how they’re gonna navigate life, like your ability to influence how they navigate life has been formed ing I mean, in middle school you’re, you’re really just kind of helping them, you know, reminding them of certain things, kind of guiding them.

And as they go through high school, those, those guardrails come off more and more. So by the time they leave, they’re fully independent ish. Um, but it is a sh it is a shockingly short amount of time. Yeah. As a parent. Scary. It does, it does go fast. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The cliche is definitely true. That’s true. I loved your comment about just have to say it confidently. I’m just gonna pull that in as a non c e I don’t do. Right. I’m just say with confidence, it’s both a consulting thing and a CEO o thing. <laugh>. Um, actually, you know, this, this conversation about who you are reminds me of a, something you wrote, um, a couple years back where you talked about doing the people work during, um, acquisition periods. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And you mentioned a, hey, in the Western way of thinking, we tend to go logic, facts, figures.

And then you mentioned that’s a very American comment to ask me mm-hmm. <affirmative> what I do as an identity statement. I’m just curious cause it seems like something you, you think about where did, where did that, um, sort of understanding or awareness of our own bias toward identifiers with work identifiers with numbers and logic and like reason for everything Yep. Start to come to you. Like, did you study other cultures or what was the, where did that come from? Uh, it was a little bit of luck, to be honest. I mean, I’m an engineer Sure. By training. Right. Um, and I started my career in aerospace and you know, we, engineers are not known for our people skills. Right. It is generally the cliche, generally <laugh>. Um, but, uh, I worked at Rolls Royce, jet engines, um, here in Indianapolis. I also got to live in England for a little bit.

About six years into my career, I moved into what I kind of vaguely called the international business side. And so I got to manage customers in Japan, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, south America, of course all over Europe. Right. And I got to travel a fair amount. And each of those experiences, what you, you realize is different parts of the world just operate and think completely differently. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Right. Um, there was, um, an author, her name was Erin. I can’t, I can’t remember, maybe I’ll think of it as we’re going through. But she, she had these 23, it was, the book was called Culture Map. Okay. And it was after I had managed a customer in Japan for a couple of years, and she talked about the differences, um, in how people communicate. There were these 23 different kind of cultural things. And one was communication style.

And I, I remember this kind of changed a lot of how I thought about communicating with people. She said in Japan, it’s a high context communication culture. And what that means is everyone has this shared context and it makes sense for Japan. Right. It was a very insular culture for hundreds of years. It was only very recently that it opened it up to the rest of the world. And so in Japan there’s this shared context so that when you, you may have heard in Japan, they rarely say no. They just say yes in such a way that, you know, it means no <laugh>. Right. And, and what happens is it’s actually very rude to overexplain yourself in that culture. Oh, interesting. Right. Um, and so you’ll find people say, say less and it is your job as the listener to understand. And therefore you kind of read all the cultural context to know Exactly.

And even when you ask a question, you ask it in a very subtle way so that you don’t sound dumb. Um Right. Whereas in America, we’re a low context communication culture, which again makes sense. We’ve come from literally all over the world to this country. Right. Um, and it, it is the responsibility of the speaker to make sure the listener understands. And so you explain a lot Yeah. And you look for all the cues like, you know, as you’re holding your body right now, like, does he understand what I’m saying? Do I need to say something else? Do I need to explain it in a different way? Right. Yeah. Um, and I go back to my time in Japan and I just thought, you know, these meetings started flashing into my head. I’m like, oh my gosh, what an idiot. I was explaining things way too much.

They already understood. They did say no in this context, even though they said yes. Right. Um, so I probably why it stuck with me cuz I was mortified. <laugh>. Well, it’s, that’s fascinating. It, it’s very interesting because in my head when I hear high context, it would mean I’m going to give you all the context, but that’s actually not, it means that you’re supposed to, the environment creates the context. That’s right. And you have to navigate it. What, what portion of communication happens through existing context versus not mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So in a high context culture, everyone already has all the context. You don’t have to explain it. Interesting. Was what’s another place that was just something completely different. Um, a another example from, so I worked a lot in France and Germany and, um, both of those cultures to Americans have reputation of being rude.

Hmm. And for sure there’s, there’s probably some of that. I experienced some of that. So, so do we, um, yeah. In a different way, but yes. Um, I think arrogant is the reputation we get. Oh yeah, that’s true. But in, in both German and French culture, it’s, it’s actually polite to be very direct with someone. So, um, for example, teachers in France will give you very direct into us. It sounds like cruel feedback, but it’s just, it’s efficient and it’s direct. Right? Yeah. Germans in work, they’re very direct at work. Right. Um, they don’t actually answer the question of tell me about yourself with work. They answer it externally. So while they’re at work, they’re very efficient. Um, and therefore very direct in the way they do things. So to us it sounds weird because we, um, we don’t do that. So when we give, you’ve heard of Oreo feedback?

Yeah. Lemme tell you something good about yourself. Let me tell you something you need to work on. Let me tell you something good. Uhhuh, <affirmative>, all of us know the actual feedback is the thing in the middle. Yeah. <laugh>, right? Yeah. Um, but to, well the French people for example, that would be rude because you’re wasting all this time when what you need to know is in the middle. Just say that. Yeah. Right. So I’m curious, as you traveled about tons of different countries, I’m imagining extended periods in some and back and everything, what were, what were a couple of the big moments where you were like, oh, that that’s different? Or that, that opened my eyes in a way that I hadn’t really thought of before all over Europe and, and you see slightly different versions of it, of the lesson that, um, in order to be highly productive, you don’t necessarily have to commit a whole bunch of hours mm-hmm.

<affirmative> right? Now, let’s not confuse time with energy. To be highly productive, you have to work hard. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, right? We say this in consulting actually. Um, I mean, some consulting organizations, you work insane amounts of hours. That is a thing. Yeah. But in, in most, actually, the hours aren’t necessarily bad. Right. It’s not a 40 hour week job for sure. But they, you’re not working 60, 70, 80 hours most of the time. But what it is, is it’s mentally very difficult. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, by definition in consulting, you’re solving problems that no one else knows how to solve. It’s going to be hard. Right. And so all day, every day you’re thinking really hard about these problems. Right. So, in kind of a similar way, what I experienced a lot in Europe is, is, you know, I think I use the term efficient, you know, there’s just not a lot of fluff in people’s day.

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So, you know, in Barcelona, if they’re working from 9:30 AM to six, uh, in, in general I experienced a lot of people, they’re just working very efficiently and very hard during that time and they’re getting a lot done. Right. So, so that was interesting to me because I’ve got this term work-life congruence that I talk about, which I think is better than work-life balance. Um, which is a bit of a lie. But, um, I’m just setting you up for another question, just realized. Yeah. No, I it is. We’re going there <laugh>. Um, but it was, it’s interesting thing to me cuz I also had grown up, you know, my father worked four jobs. Hmm. Um, he, he was probably both hardworking from a time perspective and an energy perspective mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but it was an interesting thing. It’s like, Hey, here’s a whole set of societies that have figured out how to have a high productivity without dedicating their entire life to work.

Yeah. That was new. Yeah. Right. Um, and it gave them the ability to have an identity that was different, do other things, um, that were different and meaningful. Um, I also experienced, um, in Japan, not everywhere, but some folks where it was the opposite. Where, um, I remember with this one person telling me it’s actually a sign of a good worker to fall asleep at your desk because it means you’ve been working so much and so hard you haven’t had time to sleep at home. Wow. Yeah. And, and people would literally just stay at the office as a sign that they were working hard, but not necessarily be productive. Right. Right. You, you would see, um, there wasn’t this tie between time and productivity. And so you thought, well man, that’s the opposite side. Right. You can spend your entire life at work, you know, um, never see your family in the aim of your career and still not be productive.

Right. Um, so there’s a difference between time and energy, between time and productivity, um, which of course you can translate through to success. Right. That, that was, I mean, that was huge. Yeah. Did you feel like your definition when you were coming outta school, how did you think about what success meant? Like what were you looking for? Yeah, somebody asked me this the other day. I, I don’t know that I was smart enough to think about it. I don’t know. Yeah. Um, you know, I grew up in a really rural community. Hard work was meaningful, helping the people around you is meaningful. Um, it wasn’t the pursuit of money and I don’t, I don’t know if anyone, you know, my father was a school teacher is is primary job. Right. I don’t know if it was this, but for me it, success always kind of felt like learning something new.

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, I just like to learn. Um, it meant doing a great job at the thing that was said in front of you. Um, I don’t know that I had some sort of long-term plan for my career. I mean, I almost feel bad for a lot, a lot of people I mentor in their twenties, like they’ve just been lied to. They’ve been told that their job is to change the world. It’s not, you’re not going to change the world, change yourself. Oh, let’s go into this. Then you can maybe change your tribe. Then you can maybe have an influence on your community. And Sure. For a handful of people that will add up to a change in the world. But man, if you’re, if your goal is to change the world, that’s a hard goal. You just set for yourself, you’re probably not gonna end up fulfilled it.

Um, it is definitely the overriding message of content to at least it was when I was coming outta school. Um, so I graduated in 2015 and there were two things that I remember just seeing everywhere. Number one, everybody’s meant to be an entrepreneur mm-hmm. <affirmative> and have your own thing. That was number one. And number two sort of to that, if you don’t leave some sort of mark on the universe, you have failed. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it’s just a lie. So when people say change the world, uh, it’s not from a bad intent. No. Right. Like, make an impact and all that. And, um, I think the idea of living a life that is meaningful is really, really good. Right. Where you get a little off track is that meaning is only defined by changing the world. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Well, how many people cha So first of all, most of the people that you could name right now that have changed the world did not change it for the better.

Yeah. Right. You know, it’s funny, where my head went was Yeah. Pretty much negative. Yeah. Yeah. Like most of the people that have changed the world that you, that you know of, um, did not change it for the better. Okay. So let’s, let’s not do that. That seems bad. Um, now there’s some small fraction of the people that have changed the world for the better. How many is that? What percentage of the population is that? Right. Are, are there, you know, five people over the last century in America, five people over the last century that what would be be remembered 500 years from now maybe mm-hmm. <affirmative> maybe. Right. If that’s the only measure of success, five of us in the next a hundred years get to achieve it. Well, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s also interesting, I, I’m curious how you see this.

Where my head just went was even the people that I would say we were like the greatest inventors or left products that really revolutionized society have bad side effects sometimes as well. Like unintended consequences. Right. We were talking about the social media. Social media. Yep. Well, I, I I imagine one of the people that we could say actually changed the world of steep jobs and what they did at Apple. Like, he will probably be remembered in a few hundred years. I doubt it. You don’t think so? No. Okay. Interesting. Because what I was gonna say is that while the iPhone seems like a wonderful invention, without the iPhone, we wouldn’t have the social media culture that we have now. So, and the technology addictions that we have. So there’s a negative even to a thing that was true. Like a positive, a positive thing. So it’s, it’s sort of interesting when we put value statements on the impact somebody had mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Who, who do you think of when you think of people who might be remembered in the next 500 years?

I don’t actually know. That’s the thing. Yeah. So, so Steve Jobs, as your example, has made a huge impact in the moment mm-hmm. <affirmative>, right? It’s hard to say the PC side. What do we really mean when we say that? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, when there’s a lot of seminal design and stuff that came out of Apple. A lot of that actually came out of idea. But, um, do we mean the iPhone? That was probably the thing that changed society the most. That’s where my head goes. Yeah. I, I don’t know. I just don’t know that we would be remembered. I mean, when I, when I think of the inventor side of things, you know, who do you remember? Not from the last a hundred years. I think we would say Edison and, you know, Henry Ford and things like that. Graham Bell. Yeah. Yeah. Um, who do you remember from 250, 500 years ago?

Right? Uh, I dunno. Gutenberg. Yeah. Right. There’s just not a lot. So I, the the point of all that is, is if you wanna live a meaningful life, the world will often lie to you about what meaning is. And you kind of have to figure that out for yourself. Most people, you know, I’m solidly middle-aged, right? So I think about this probably more than some people do. But if you look to, to the end of your life, um, most people say, I want to have made an impact on my friends, on my family, you know, my children. Um, boy, it would be great if, you know my church or my city or things like that were better off because of me. That’s the kinda stuff that actually adds up to meaning usually. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and once in a great, great while, um, someone will impact bigger than that, but hard to set your sights on.

That is your only goal of success. Uh, you, you have a very communal like sense when you talk about things. At least I’m experiencing that you talked about like my church, my family, my community, my people. America as a whole is a very independent society in the way that I think we are taught. Did, yeah. Was your upbringing more communal than that? I don’t know. I’ve never thought of that. Maybe it was a very small town. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, everybody knew each other. Um, you know, when we got a light that was a big deal. Not a stoplight. A a blinky light. The four-way, the four-way stop. That’s all red. That’s, that’s right. Well, two, two were yellow, but Okay. But still, you know. Yeah. <laugh>. Um, I’m sure that had an impact. Um, you know, I also, I also had a brother with special needs mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So, uh, you know, I got to see the struggles my parents went through raising him. They did just an absolutely amazing job. Um, and Kevin is, does great, has a fulfilling life today and contributes to society. And, um, just a great guy. I’m sure growing up in a small town had some sort of impact on me.

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I candidly struggle with the idea of like, community and bringing people along and, and then the messages, I think that I naturally get fed for whatever reason, whatever algorithm is giving me this are very, like, do it yourself. You are the engine that drives you and the results that are around you. And I remember Tiffany and I were having lunch, Tiffany’s our ceo, um, were having lunch the other day, and she said, Hey, I’m, I’m observing something in you where you see yourself as the engine that has to take on mm-hmm. <affirmative> all responsibility. Is that, is that normal? Like, do you see that with, with people that you’re leading? Y Oh yeah. It’s very normal. I I it, some of it is just human nature. Some of it is cultural in the us I think it, I think the US at the very least, exacerbates that part of our human nature.

Um, in, in, I I detected in the way you talked about it, a little bit of guilt. Like maybe I’m not supposed to be that that way. Right. But I, I do feel guilt about it. <laugh>. Well, I mean, give yourself a break. Um, it is appropriate at it for a certain part of your life to be, I call it achievement oriented. Hmm. Right. To wanna do more, be more, achieve more. Right. Like in general, that, that’s the beauty of capitalism in a political system that’s kind of aligned to capitalism. I don’t, it seems like we figured out on purpose. Um, all these people go and pursue, you know, their version of greatness and achievement and it adds up to benefit on average for us. All right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, that’s really good. Right. And, and I don’t think you should be ashamed of like going and achieving now if you’re stepping on people’s faces to achieve your own success.

Yeah. Maybe don’t do that. Right? Yeah. Um, but what I will say, and I, and I, I saw this in myself and I see it in a fair number of people who say progress through, you know, call it the first 20 years of their career, at some point you can’t do it all. Right? You just can’t. In the irony of having a great career on all this is those are individual achievements that add up to these accolades. People tell you, you are smart. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, they give you congratulations, you get promotions, you make more money, you get new opportunities. Right. And that feels really good. And for some portion of your life, it’s really just is individual. And then what happens? Like, where does burnout come from? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Well, I’ve spent 30 years of my life on my own individual success. I’m just gonna keep working harder and harder and harder in every problem I come across.

I’m going to solve it. Right. Harder and harder and harder. And like eventually that gives out. Some people can go longer than others. Um, but eventually that gives out. Like you have to have a tribe. You have to have people with you to go achieve eventually the things you’re trying to achieve. Um, it’s just a question like how long does it take you to figure that out earlier? You can figure that out. Generally, the better <laugh>, <laugh> things tend to go well. This actually reminds me a little bit because one of the things that is in my head is like, am am I falling behind my peers? Am I like far enough ahead? Am I am on the right path? You know, it’s sort of, yeah. 29, it’s like I can feel like I’ve been working for a little bit of time, but in reality it’s like, it’s much time, you know, been working here for six years and that’s been my job and that’s like no time at all.

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, but the, the path question sort of spins sometimes my right path. And do you have an interesting story in that sense? Because you were, from a paper standpoint, you know, Rose Holman, Stanford, Purdue, really high level engineering programs, but you like went off path intentionally at Stanford. Can you just tell that story for a second? Cause there’s some learnings in there that I want to navigate. So my dad was a math teacher. There were 13 of us in physics. He told us to be engineers. So some large fraction of us went, went to be engineers. For me that meant go to Rose Holman in Indiana. I grew up in Michigan, went to Indiana. So I got to Rose Holman. I figured out, I loved to teach. Um, just something about it. I don’t, you know, maybe my dad was a teacher. I, but whatever. I liked it.

And so, uh, I wanted to go get a PhD. I wanted to be a professor. I was really interested. Um, you know, if your listeners don’t know, I’m a nerd already. Here we go. Deep space rocketry. That’s what I wanted to do. Right. Um, so I mean, that’s pretty cool. You’re gonna do a three and all that. Well, okay. In the world of nerdy. That’s pretty cool. Yes. Uh, I think it’s cool. Um, so there were two programs in the us. One at University of Michigan, uh, one at Stanford that kind of excelled in this. And, you know, I was lucky enough to get into Stanford and I had this fellowship where, um, I came with research funding tuition, um, a little bit of a salary all the way through my PhD. It was like phenomenal. Frankly, it’s the best how it happened. It’s best thing you can, it is like the gold standard.

Um, it, yeah, I was, I don’t know how it happened. <laugh>. So, uh, so I got out there and it was great. Right? And, um, I worked with this professor, John Eaton, one of the most phenomenal human beings I’ve ever met. Um, and I started doing, uh, research as the, that’s what you do in engineering. Um, you start doing research, and I didn’t like research. It was very interesting research. It was, uh, supersonic flow through turbine engines, which to me was cool. Um, I just didn’t like research. Right. And I, and I kind of figured out what, what did, what did it miss? What was it lacking that didn’t scratch it for you? It lacked, um, kind of tangible reality. Mm. It it was just too academic. Mm. I guess like, I loved to teach. I loved that part of being a professor, but what I hadn’t realized is that most engineering professors do a lot of research.

That’s actually kind of the primary thing. Sure. I don’t know why exactly I didn’t like it, but I didn’t. And so I had this moment of, okay, well there’s this phenomenal path that I would be stupid not to take. And yet I’m not sure I like where that path leads, so I guess I’m gonna step off the path. And, and on paper it seemed really, really silly to do that. Maybe it was really silly to do that, but, um, but I just knew that wasn’t the path I wanted to take. That that’s sort of the thing that is, is interesting because you see things like take the leap, start your business, you know, like you get that sort of content. But I think the really circle of influence around people that they’ll actually listen to are oftentimes like, they, they are well-intentioned on like, no, no, no.

Like, this is a great thing for you. Stay there. This is a great thing. Don’t go off that perfect path. Did did you ask your little circle when you were considering stepping off that path? Or was this just like an internal decision? Um, well, back to your independence saying, I don’t know that I talked to anybody <laugh>. I, I don’t, I honestly, I don’t if it’s Yeah. Not smart, but I don’t think I talk to anybody. Well, no, but I don’t know that it’s not smart because you are the one who has the context Yeah. For yourself. Right. You know, wisdom takes time. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, you can’t, you can’t rush it. I don’t, I don’t know that I was particularly wise then. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it just, you know, I hadn’t experienced much. Right. Well, it’s, it’s sort of mirrors your path at Rolls Royce Right.

In a, in a way, in the sense that you had a really good path on paper and then you stepped off of it. Yeah. Yeah. What, what was that transition like? Um, well, you know, actually it’s interesting you say that because part of my calculus on leaving the PhD path was I’ll be a better professor if I go work for a while anyway. Oh, interesting. So even if that ends up being the right path, I can always come back. I don’t know that I would’ve said that was the, that was the plan there though. But at Rolls Royce, it was the plan actually to go back. Um, I’d spent six years really technical, you know, classified stuff, uh, r and d stuff. And then I spent six years in the international business world that I mentioned, and I’d kind of gotten to this place in my career where, you know, it was interesting to me to try to be an executive at Rolls Royce.

It felt like something I could go achieve, but I also kind of knew, I didn’t actually know how to run a business. Mm-hmm. I just knew how to be a part of a business inside a 50,000 person global company. Mm-hmm. Those are two different things. Right. And I think the phrase I used was, I, I don’t wanna be a living example of the Peter principle where I get promoted to my level of incompetence, <laugh>. Um, and so I better go figure out how to run a business. Yeah. Well, I, you know, what better way than go to a small business? So when I came to resultant, um, it was KSM Consulting at the time, right? It was, you know, it was 18 people. It was really small. I had this entrepreneurial founder, uh, Charlie Brandt, who still, to this day, it’s one of the coolest, most interesting people I’ve ever met.

Right. It’s like, well, this will be great. I can go work for him, learn this entrepreneurial thing. Um, he, he, you know, started a couple of businesses, right? And it’s just consulting. So I get to go work with all these other companies and learn their businesses. Right? What better way to really learn how to run a business. Um, and so I figured I’d go do that for a couple of years and then I’d go back. Um, it was true. I did learn how to run a business and I would’ve been much better at my job. Um, but I also fell in love with consulting mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And, um, so that was just kind of this new path that opened up. What, what was it about the consulting piece that really spoke to you? Um, maybe this goes back to your, your comment on communal. I mean, consulting should be the humblest profession in the world.

It’s literally never about you ever mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it is always about helping someone else. Right. And at least in, in our world and consulting you, you get handed some of the most interesting, difficult problems that exist. Right. But like, by definition, people solve the easy problems themselves. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, if you’re gonna pay a consultant to come help you, it’s gonna be a hard problem. Yeah. Right. And that was just fun. It was just really fun to get handed some of the, of the most difficult challenges and go figure those out. But it was also fun to do it in a, in a way that impacted real human beings. Two weeks into employees starting with a company. I’ll often share the story of kind of where the business came from and why we do what we do and all that. About 50% of our work is in the public sector, 50% in private.

And they’re, you know, there are literally businesses that exist that wouldn’t exist had we not helped them outta the ashes and it thing. Right. Hundreds of people with jobs that can support their families and do what they wanna do. 113 babies, uh, got to live through their first year of life in 2018 and 19 because of work we did on infant mortality led by the state of Indiana. I’ve had kids standing in my living room that found foster parents with my friends because of work we did with Department of Child Services, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, like, like real impactful stuff. So at least the way my brain works, once you get access to really interesting problems that you get to go solve, and you get to do it in such a way that it impacts people that much. I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s kind of the thing, right?

Yeah. Isn’t that what we’re all searching for? Right. Um, I think the added benefit with our business, I mean, we’ve had ups, we’ve had downs, like everybody over the last couple of years we’ve struggled. Um, we’ve grown really fast. We’ve done some really good things. We’ve made some mistakes. But also what’s been fun about our business is like, it’s just a good group of people. And it’s fun to build a business that matters with people that care. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> as you transitioned into, you know, went there, you were a consultant, right? And then you’ve built, and now you run the business, have you gotten farther away from the impact because you’re not hands-on with the clients? So when we were 25 people, everyone saw everything, right? It, it was, it was kind of this beautiful chaos. We’re all working together, but there wasn’t a lot of structure and process and things like that.

Right? And then from 25 to a hundred, you start to introduce like, okay, well this is your role and this is your role, and here’s a process for this one thing where we need to do it the same every time. So you get a little more structured there, and then at a hundred people, you kind of go in next level down on that and everything. But there’s this thing that happened around 250 and we went through it fast. Cuz we, we grew three x in about two years. Um, I call these the entrepreneurial valleys, right? Yeah. Like right around 250 people. The closest like engineer thing my brain is connected to this is Dunbars Law. So Dunbars Law, one of them says, you can have about 150 good, right. Relationships mm-hmm. <affirmative>, right? Okay, well what does that mean? That means up to 150 people, you know, everybody in the company, everyone knows everyone.

Right? Then you start not to and around 250, 300 people, that means at least half the people in your business, um, you’re one step away from, right. Well, that means you don’t even know it, but you can’t run the business or do your job through relationships anymore. You have to start to rely on the corporate structure to do things for you. It’s really weird for people that grew up in the beginning of the business to go through that transit. It’s hard. It’s actually emotional at times. Right. But, um, you know, there’s like an assumption that like, you know, mark has those three little letters, c, e o by his title, mark must see everything. I don’t see everything. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> not at all. Right. Um, we’re big enough now. We’re almost 500 people. Um, all the pieces work together. Hopefully <laugh> in the right way for the whole.

Um, but no one sees everything anymore. And it, it’s weird. It’s really weird. Yeah. When you were in the entrepreneurial world, there’s a lot of, I think in the United States you see a lot of, um, corporate is bad. Corporate is less than the 25 person stage. It’s not as fun, doesn’t have as much meaning behind it. You don’t know what people as much, but you’ve, you’ve stayed through the whole thing, continue to find it fulfilling. I imagine since you’re still there, how do you keep the getting to build a business with a group of people that are love, that are awesome to be around? How do you keep that energy through the fact that you’re growing beyond the size at it, which you can do that like mm-hmm. <affirmative> individually. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna say a phrase that sounds fairly clean cuz that’s where I got to, but it was not a clean process to get to this phrase.

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, what I realized is I was trying to drag the past kicking and screaming into the future, and that’s not where it belonged. Mm-hmm. Um, we had created this amazing business and it was fun and we made an impact. Right. And by the very nature of doing that, well, we’d now gotten to the next phase, but the next phase wasn’t the same as the last phase. And so I had to kind of like, like grieve as too strong of word because that makes it sound like it was just all like a bad thing. Yeah. Like the, the past belonged over there. It was, it was good and it was fine and it was like, that’s where it should be. Yeah. But I had to leave it where it belonged and I had to like, kind of, it, it felt almost physical. It was mental, but almost physical.

Like turn myself to look at the future and say like, okay, is that what I wanna do now? And what does good luck like over here mm-hmm. <affirmative>, like all those core values and things, what does that look like on this side? Right. Um, and that was hard, but I think people think of that as bad. I it’s not bad. It’s what should happen if the thing you’re doing in the world is right and successful. Right. And valued. Um, you, you should kind of be a victim of your own success and have to go through these personal leadership moments in corporate, all of us together moments where you have the change to be successful in the next thing. I had a good friend shout out Casey Krause, if you’re listening, said we were talking about something that we’ve both experienced and, um, kind of lamenting the difference of what it was versus what it is.

And he said, you know, things, things need to evolve. Yeah. And it was just a, a one off sort of statement and I was like, that’s profoundly wise. Things do have to evolve. And the thing going through my head right now is you don’t graduate from school and then like, turn around and try to bring your college into your life. Or at least maybe you should not. For most of us, that would be a bad idea. <laugh>. Yeah. But you see people do it. Um, and it’s interesting that that idea of that was right mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and I really loved your phrase around, I was dragging the, the past kicking and screaming into the future. It was like, that was great and I can appreciate what it was. And now how do we make something great again in different time and place in people and, and everything else.

I think that applies to almost all of life. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Right. Your life is not one thing. It is many things. And as you kind of go through, whether it’s parenting or you know, you’re in fitness and health or these different things, you know, you, you go through these phases and that that’s okay. Right. Um, are, are you intentional about recognizing like, the season that you’re in? Like do you have any sort of process that you use where you’re like, where you use it as like a reset to notice that things have evolved or how have you implemented that throughout your life? I do not have a process, but I can’t help but think about it. Mm-hmm. Fairly often. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I, I, it is just kind of how my brain works, I guess. Yeah. That’s like how I think of things. These kind of big sweeping pictures.

None of the exercises I’ll do with folks sometimes, um, from a coaching perspective is kind of this backwards planning. It’s really hard to think about two or three decades from now for folks. Right. But if you can spend a second, you know, um, take you Right. What do you want your sixties to look like? Mm-hmm. Right? Like, just imagine that and, and actually write it down. Right. Um, you know, I wanna be able to hike, I wanna be able to travel. Um, I wanna have these relationships with my kids who might not exist yet mm-hmm. <affirmative>, depending on where in your life you’re doing this exercise. Right. And you kind of write all that out and then you say, okay, so from that like step backwards through the decade. So if you, if you want your sixties to look like that, what do your fifties have to look like?

If you want your fifties to look like that, what do your forties have to look like? Right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And it creates this kind of grand sweeping picture of your life that is wrong. You know, most models are wrong, but some are useful. Yeah. <laugh>, um, it is wrong, but it’s useful. Yeah. Right. Because it kind of points you in a direction. I don’t know what it is about my brain. That’s just kind of how it tends to work is in those big sweeping visions. Well it’s, there’s potentially that you’ve done it a few times and so you can naturally start to see the pattern recognition of Yeah, okay. It’s time, it’s time to let that thing die for lack of a better or softer term time to let that thing die. Set. Set. We’ll set you over there, <laugh> put you on the shelf.

And we’ve started to touch on something I wanted to come back to, and you mentioned it earlier, is now we’re starting to weave work and life together a lot. And obviously the term is work life balance. And you mentioned I don’t like that term, I like work life congruence. Can you just unpack, when did that term, when did you start thinking about it that way? Um, yeah, it was probably about five years ago. Okay. So, so the reason I don’t like the term work-life balance, let me start there. So balance implies opposing forces. Mm-hmm. Right? I think, you know, first year of engineering school, you actually do these calculations. Like how do you power equilibrium, right. Equilibrium. Yeah. Right. It, it implies opposing forces. And, and by definition opposing forces mean that this force is opposite this force and they work against each other. Mm-hmm.

<affirmative>. Well that’s not actually how life and work works. Right. Work is fulfilling. Right. We are, we are creative beings. We like to achieve, we like to make things work, fulfills that for us mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Right. We like to be proud of the things we’ve done and work provides the resources money for sure. And relationships and knowledge, skills and all these things. Skills to go do a bunch of other things you might want to do. I wouldn’t travel the way I like to travel or learn other languages today had I not worked at Rolls Royce and they’ve flown me around the world doing stuff. Right. I, I grew up in a cornfield basically. Yeah. And so if you just make the assumption that work in life are opposing forces, you will come to a set of conclusions, they’re really toxic. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Right. If you instead say that, what’s the conclusion that you see somebody draw when they think about it that way?

I’m gonna work 40 hours a week and I’m gonna clock out. I’m not gonna put any more into work, um, than I absolutely have to. Which is a natural conclusion. If you think work is opposed to life, most people would say in that equation, well I need to maximize life. I like the term work life congruence because it allows for a couple of things. One, it allows you to kind of recognize and interweave those different parts. So right now, like a lot of days for example, I can’t take meetings after four. I can talk on the phone some Right. But I’m driving my kids around. Yeah. Right. Well, well that’s great. That means I have to start work at six and sometimes it means I have to work in the evenings after the kids are in bed. Which is, it’s fine for me, but I can like weave all that together.

So it all works. The other nice thing about work life, um, congruence is a concept is it allows you to have seasons of work that flex up and down. I think we talked earlier like you don’t get to be successful if you’re not willing to work hard. Yeah. It’s just a fact because someone else will be willing to work hard. Even if you’re really smart, someone else will outwork you and they will be more successful. Right. Um, success defined as relative success between people. Yeah. Um, so you have, you have to work hard, but certain seasons of life will require more and certain seasons less. And if you think of it as congruent, it’s okay to flow between those. If you don’t think of it as congruent. One other conclusion you might come to is, okay, well I need to work 120 hours a week for the rest of my life.

Well that’s probably also not going to go well, but you might need to work 120 hours a week for three months. When we sold our company. Yeah. It was 120 hours a week for three or four months. Right. So you had a lot of things added to your normal plate that were still Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Um, it was fun. I learned a ton. It was a blast. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Um, but I couldn’t do that forever. Yeah. Right. And that’s okay. That was a season and my family knew it and my wife and my kids knew it and I knew it and that was okay cuz it was congruent with other things. It’s really interesting. I keep having this image and it’s sort of cliche and dare I say a little bit douchey, um, but that’s a technical term.

(47:25)Yeah. It’s a technical term. <laugh>. I’m catless one of the few millennials with zero ink on their bodies. And I have contemplated putting a ying yang sign on my wrist because the thing that keeps coming to me over the last like year is the idea of like, the way I think about it is balanced, but that’s not the actual right term. Like congruence is better. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and I, I actually distinctly remember one of my passions is life in life is fitness, played college soccer. I’m happy when I’m an athlete. Being an athlete is part of who I am and where I put that into the world now as I’m a CrossFit junkie, which means that naturally I prioritize training a lot. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And there are times where that’s really hard. And I would say for just randomly, like people getting married gotta travel for it.

My friends live on the east coast, I wanna go see them. Work is busy, whatever. There will be a point in time, most likely, where kids are taking attention and time and they deserve it and need it. And I used to fight it. It used to be like a, oh, I can’t train today. Or like, I can’t train the way I want to train, so I’m gonna like make this thing everything’s hard and I’m gonna like talk myself into trying to like rip things apart and make it fitted in. And then sometime in the last like six to 12 months, it’s just been like, oh no, this is just a busy season. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it’s how this is going to be, what’s the best thing I can do inside of this season? And then just give yourself the greatest to let it go. Yep. And I also experienced it on the flip side where maybe it’s a slower season at, at element three, for example, like right before a holiday.

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, like, I work in sales if people are not in the office attentive to what they’re doing and have the capacity to talk to somebody outside of it. Yep. They just can’t buy things. And I used to like freak out, like, I gotta fill my day with things so that I feel productive. Yeah. It was like, oh, actually this is the opportunity to spend more time with my wife or hang out with my friends more, or spend more time training because that’s what I, I have time to do it. Yep. And I used to go through a lot of guilt in those moments where I didn’t feel like I was working enough or I wasn’t doing enough. Yep. And it’s just like when every time I talk to somebody much wiser than me and they talk about this like congruence and like flow of things and seasons, um, it’s just, it’s a good reminder of like, it’s okay.

You don’t have to feel it, you don’t have to feel this kind of guilt, this sort of trappings of your own. If I’m gonna get where I want to get to, I have to work this hard. It’s a, it’s a thing. Yep. Yeah. There you go. Um, you got it. I’m gonna go back and ask you the coaching question you ask other people. As you look forward to your next decades, what do you see? What do you wanna grow into? Well, it’s a lot closer than it used to be, but my wife and I have, uh, this thing we call freedom in our fifties. Oh, cool. And it’s basically to structure our life in such a way that we can do whatever we want from a career standpoint, from a kid’s standpoint in our fifties. So that, that was kind of a big thing for a long time.

Yeah. Um, I’m kind of looking beyond that now. My, my big thing lately is like, do I want my seventies to look like mm-hmm. <affirmative> and it mostly comes down to health. Mm. Right. And I mean, you mentioned CrossFit. I did that one time and it did not go well for my body <laugh>. Um, but I had this doctor tell me, it was probably a year ago now, he said, show me your body when you’re 50 and I’ll show you the rest of your life. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you said in the US we have this assumption that there’s this kind of slow slide that starts around 50 years old until you die in your like eighties, hopefully. Um, and it’s just kind of this downward trend of health and capability. It’s like that, that actually doesn’t have to be that way. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, you can stay very fit and enjoy things, uh, well into your seventies and even beyond.

So that’s been the biggest thing on my mind lately is like, how do I do that? Because fifties not that far away mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So how do I get to that milestone in a way that would show that guy the rest of my life looks good? Yeah. Um, and just, you know, how do I wanna structure my life after that so that my seventies look good from a health standpoint? That’s a solidly middle-aged thing to say. No, no, no. You know, even, even I think about it, I was, this morning, I, I did like a 30 minute ride just as a Thursday’s sort of recovery day. I like to start my day with movement and I got off. I was like, man, my hip flexors tight. I’m getting old. You need to start working on this a little bit. Um, but it, it, no, I think to your point, it’s, it’s, it’s very get better.

Yeah. No, that’s the thing. I was like, well, I better just start building habits that allow me to not Yep. Feel creaky and the amount of training I do, borders on the edge of bad for longevity, good for performance. And so how to like walk that line and think about it a little bit. Um, mark, I really enjoyed the conversation. I could keep going for a very long time cuz you have, you have many pearls of wisdom and they’ve been great. So thank you for spending the time with us and coming on. Yeah. Thanks for having me. It’s fun.

Okay, Joe, so we just finished up with Mark as always a really great conversation. Was there anything specifically about how he went about his career and his story that stood out to you as something that really had some takeaways? I think the overriding piece that I felt from him was this constant, um, flowing between, okay, now it’s time to work really hard. Now it’s time to focus on something else. Now it’s time to value this versus this season he navigated and continues to navigate the different lines of thinking between what we’ll call Western thought and eastern thought. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> really well. Like, where is this framework or this way of thinking really valuable and adding to my environment and where is a completely different viewpoint way of life perspective valuable and, and not getting caught up in everything must be this way or everything must be this way.

But rather recognizing this is it recognizing what is intentionally important right now. How can I add value to this environment? How can I positively impact the person I’m next to in this moment in like a really interesting way. Yeah. I think there’s something to be said about the sort of international experiences that he had and all these kinds of things and that, you know, I was talking to John on our team the other day around how you really can’t replicate the learnings from time abroad and experiencing other cultures and people with different priorities and like, it’s such a different mindset and being able to then after you’ve consumed that balance, like, oh, I understand how we do things here. I understand who, how they do things there. And it can allow you to, I feel like just have more holistic mindset and even going to that idea of balance versus congruence and work in life.

Right. I think having exposure to those different ideas can sort of arm you to think about things in, in that healthy way and how some of these things are seasonal and that’s okay. And, uh, it’s, it’s just a really different take on things. Yeah. And also the idea that of leaving something behind that should be left behind. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it was just, it really spoke to me. Um, there are areas of my life that I have done that too much and too little. And then we’ll come back to him and be like, oh, that should have come with me. Like, I only just started admitting to myself, if you will, like, oh no. Like you need to, you are better when you identify as an athlete. And when I say better, I mean like I show up better for other people. Yeah. That’s just part of who I am.

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And I don’t need to like be ashamed of that feeling. Uh, I used to feel like that was me being a washed up former D one athlete who just wanted to keep being cool. Living in the glory days. Living in the glory days. Exactly. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, which is like the terror of my existence. Um, but No, but it’s good that you know that about yourself. Right? Right. Yeah. And so him talking about what needs to be left in the past versus what doesn’t was really interesting and like a really good good thought. One thing that he said as well that stuck out to me is when he said work is fulfilling and such and such and such and such. Right. And that stood out to me as it’s for a lot of people it is, it isn’t. It isn’t. And we are in a lucky place and he is in a lucky place where work is fulfilling and you are productive and you are able to be creative in all those things.

And just for like, another sort of drop in the bucket of if you are not in a place that fulfills you listen to these conversations about people who are and, and make a change about it. And I think you won’t, if you can’t find that you won’t reach this thing that you’re chasing mm-hmm. <affirmative>, like you keep mm-hmm. <affirmative>. I, I think what we keep hearing, we heard it from Lindsay Picardo really well, like when he was talking about having fun, I was like, oh, this is a Lindsay B combo again. Yeah. Um, like on some level we talked about this with will, like you work to make money. And he talked about that like, work needs to fulfill your resources so you can invest in things you care about and you think I’m gonna go get paid a lot. And that fulfillment and it’s just the, it’s just the inverse.

Maybe you, you might get paid well, but somebody will always be paid more. Whatever. Yeah. Um, but it’s is that I hearing these people who have, um, achieved objective success Right. In the way that it is typically measured, talk consistently about, I just have fun solving the problem. I just have fun working on that. That was just fulfilling to me is like, if you are not hearing that, if you’re like an aspiring leader, you’re somebody like us. If you’re not hearing that and going like, hello, alert, find the fun thing. You, you’re missing it. You’re missing it. And a lot of the people that we’ve talked to over the course of this podcast also share this idea that it’s not work-life balance. Yeah. And they haven’t used the same phrase of like work life congruence. Right? Yeah. But there’s been that same concept of it’s more fluid, it’s not black and white.

Yep. And there’s an overlap in that these people don’t see work and life as different things. These people are very fulfilled in their work. And I think unlocking those two pieces of the puzzle, if you are doing something where you are allowed to be creative, you are fulfilled, you are making change, having impact that unlocks the ability to not see these things as one is positive, one is negative, let me do this to feed the other. And that allows people to then be in this space where both and they feel good and they’re both positive and that kind of thing. Yeah, a hundred percent. So I really enjoyed it. It was a great conversation. Yeah. We need to, having back 1000 stories is brought to you by Element three with production by Share Your Genius. This show is part of our company mission to foster growth in people and business so they can change the world. If you’re finding the show helpful or inspiring, please help us by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify. If you’d like to stay in the loop for more updates from our show and to hear other stories of growth, please head to element three.com/podcast.