Month: December 2020

Episode 113: The Office After COVID with Anthony Vaughan

Post author By syntax
Post date December 22, 2020
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Anthony Vaughan is the host of the popular E1B2 podcast show, a strategic advisor to multiple companies, and he recently launched the E1B2 Collective, where his team is focused on helping startups, improve their employee experience and put their people first by launching people operations divisions. Vaughan joins Jon Tota to discuss the post-COVID working world, the focus on a return to work, a new working normal, and how to make the employee experience even better than before.

Learn more about the E1B2 Collective

Listen to the E1B2 Podcast on Apple Podcasts

Follow Anthony Vaughan on LinkedIn

Check out this episode!

Transcript

Jon Tota (00:00):

Hey everyone, Jon Tota here. I want to thank you for tuning into the show each week. We love our Learning Life community and are so grateful for your support. We’d appreciate it. If you would take a minute to rate us and write a review for Learning Life, wherever you’re listening right now. Your ratings and comments help new people find the show so we can keep growing our community and bringing great interviews on the topics you care most about. Thanks for being here. Now on to the show.

Anthony Vaughan (00:25):

Ask yourself objectively. No emotions. Can these things get done with the current structure that we have now during the COVID-19 crisis? The way that we’ve had our employees working currently are things getting done? And let’s really test ourselves to ask ourselves these really tough objective questions.

Intro (00:44):

Welcome to Learning Life, where top experts share their business knowledge and personal journeys each week. “And the thing that I realized from the CEO to the NFL football player, to the janitor – we’re our toughest critics, and we’re hardest on ourselves.” – James Lawrence And wanted to bring education to the market. I wake up in the morning and I am constantly learning.” “The only way to grab somebody’s attention is with a story” – Cal Fussman. Happy learning. And now your host, Jon Tota.

Jon Tota (01:12):

Welcome back to Learning Life with Jon Tota. My guest today is Anthony Vaughn. Anthony is the host of the popular E1B2 podcast show, a strategic advisor to multiple companies, and he recently launched the E1B2 Collective, where his team is focused on helping startups, improve their employee experience and put their people first by launching people operations divisions. And with all of us business owners dealing with this post-COVID working world, we need to focus on a return to work, a new working normal, and how to make the employee experience even better than before. So I’m really happy to have Anthony with us today. Anthony Vaughan, welcome to Learning Life.

Anthony Vaughan (01:48):

I really appreciate it. How are you?

Jon Tota (01:49):

I’m doing great. I am really happy to have you with us today because this is such a unique time where we’re all dealing with this challenge of this kind of new normal in the working world. And you’re an expert in all of this, so really great that you could find the time to be with us. Why don’t you share with our audience first and foremost how you got into this whole world of employee experience? What was the genesis of it for you and where did you begin this journey?

Anthony Vaughan (02:15):

I’ll try to keep it brief. At 19 I decided to leave university. I was a former former D-1 [Division 1] athlete, had a lot of connections with, with Under Armour executives and a few other high-level skills and agility type coaches and professionals. And I decided to start a brand. It was a year round football academy. At the time, the only comparable type of brand that was out there to what I was trying to build was an academy called IMG, which is huge now. So I started the brand partner with Under Armour, partnered with a guy named Seth (I’ll leave out his last name out of the picture for a couple of different reasons). Then I partnered with a facility that was known in the Baltimore area that was very big and popular at the time.

Anthony Vaughan (02:58):

And we built the brand over 18 months. It grew and a lot of great things were happening, but Seth wanted to have ownership partnership in the brand. And frankly, he was the sole reason of why the brand was connected to every single student, kid, school, and program. And I declined that for a multitude of reasons that were not valid, honestly. I was not aware of succession planning. I was not aware of employee experience and I was not aware of how to be a great leader and kind of dive into what an employee wants. And he left the brand. 27 days to the T after he left the brand, the brand went to literally zero. Now for a business perspective, I built the brand on a horrible framework and I was 19-20 years old. But from an employee experience perspective, what I didn’t understand is I didn’t understand how to design and orchestrate and organize the brand from an employee experience centered perspective.

Anthony Vaughan (03:56):

I later realized that it was not a good idea to organize and structure the relationships that I had within the brand from a level of just transactional. I realized that I needed to dive deeper into people’s overall perspectives and background. And so the long story short of the story is I decided to go on a long journey to dive into employee experience, succession planning, figure out what I did wrong, figure out how I could change. And that’s been my life’s work from that moment.

Anthony Vaughan (04:26):

To give you the rest of the background briefly, I went on to then start a partnership design agency where I helped the brands kind of organize and structure partnerships. Went on to do some speaking, advising, some consulting. The last four years, I’ve held positions of VP of people for our startup, as well as a nonprofit. The long story short here, Jon is my entire life has been dedicated around employee experience for the last 10 years because I made a really poor decision. This guy, Seth we’re talking about is now the agility coach for every single NFL team in the off season. And it’s sitting on a very, very big business. So I made a mistake.

Jon Tota (05:03):

Well, thank you for sharing that because I think that’s one of the things that our listeners always love to hear is when people can kind of look back at their entrepreneurial journey and say, wow, had I done things a little bit differently, could I have made my business in my life easier? And it’s not easy to share that and to recognize it, but thank you for really being vulnerable and sharing that experience because it’s, I think is not that unique. As an entrepreneur, when you start your business and you’ve got a start up that’s just starting to get some traction and scale like yours was, it’s sometimes easy to lose the focus on what’s truly important. Now I think this is cool because you’ve kind of come full circle. And I think where your focus is now, particularly with the E1B2 Collective is helping startup founders know that, recognize it and not make those same mistakes that you did way back when. Is that kind of where your passion is now?

Anthony Vaughan (05:59):

Yeah, so that, that is my passion, right? Because if I’m being frank with you, Jon, I was in a really dark place, a really depressed state, and it really took a lot for me to kind of go into the perspectives and to unpack what I did wrong. Again, briefly, what I’m trying to do with the E1B2 Collective is a few different things. The main core thing that I’m trying to do is I’m trying to help brands, like you said, not make the mistake that I made. You know, if you’re a 40, 50, 60 people deep in a company like I was – cause my brand was about 35 people deep at the time-and so if you’re at that position and you are thinking about hiring a first-time HR leader to come into your business and, and really shape and mold the experiences of your employees, there’s a lot there, right?

Anthony Vaughan (06:45):

And there’s a lot of mistakes that you can make that can maybe not end your business like mine, but it can put you in a tough spot where you’ll have a lot of churn. You won’t have as much productivity as you need. You won’t have a lot of retention. You won’t have people that are satisfied and happy and really look at your brand in the best light, which inevitably can lead to a decrease in income, a decrease in productivity, you know, products that are not efficient, products that are not developed well. So there’s a lot of negative things that can happen. So, yeah, I’m here trying to build a brand to help brands that are in that startup phase; that beginning, let’s call it the first two to five years phase, where you’re still starting to try to grow the brand. I’m here to help. I’m here to pretty much make sure that you don’t make the mistake that I made because I learned a really, a really, really hefty lesson. Let’s keep it there cause I probably could go on a lot. I learned my lesson and I want to help other brands not make that mistake.

Jon Tota (07:38):

Hey, listeners, Jon Tota here. As businesses everywhere are struggling with the new normal of hiring and training new employees virtually, do you know if your company’s on-boarding program is setting up your employees for success? It’s more important than ever right now when new people are joining your company and learning your culture while operating almost entirely from remote locations. eLearning Brothers has the answer for you in their brand new virtual onboarding handbook. Download a checklist to see how well your onboarding program stacks up. Then read the free handbook that covers the four pillars of on-boarding and includes a sample template for a fully virtual on-boarding program. Visit learninglifeshow.com/ELB to download your free checklist and handbook today. Provided by eLearning Brothers – the industry leading provider of eLearning solutions. eLearning Brothers has everything you need to launch your own virtual on-boarding program to keep your business scaling and culture growing during these challenging times. Get your free handbook today at learninglifeshow.com/ELB. Now back to our show.

Jon Tota (08:39):

Because you’re so rooted in employee experience, as we’re coming out of this kind of in the post-COVID time now where businesses are cutting back, the local states and cities are starting to reopen businesses are getting back up and running. And I, and I read a lot about how our perception of employee experience or what it might have been in the past is now evolving to something different in this post-COVID work workplace. So tell us a little bit about one. How do you see this first, what do you see changing in employee experience from, you know, just a few months ago, we never saw this coming if you went a few months back in early March and February, and now this world has completely changed, what are you seeing on the horizon for us?

Anthony Vaughan (09:31):

I see the perspective of micromanagement and the way that you develop talent and manage that talent changing. I think, I think there were a lot of perspectives that leaders and brands had where they felt that you needed to either be inside the office, literally have your eyes on your team, have a really good gauge of what they’re working on, how it’s being developed. And I think a lot of brands are starting to now realize that we can give our people a little bit more autonomy and a little bit more flexibility from not only the times of day that they work, but it’s okay to make certain mistakes and it’s not going to be as detrimental as we thought. And it’s okay to let our people be a little bit more human. So that’s a couple of things that I’m starting to see and notice where a lot of brands were so tight, and their behaviors were so consistent with micromanaging. Now they’re starting to ease up a bit to a certain level and not be so tight on certain time windows and structures and the way that you go about the work and when it’s delivered and turned in, or when you work versus when you don’t work. I think people are starting to ease up a bit because they’re realizing that real life is an actual thing. They’re also realizing that more than ever, if you were one of those brands that had the ability to kind of hold on and still maintain business, your employees are more important than ever now because frankly, you know, due to what the government was doing to try to help employees out and more importantly, due to the employees, kind of realizing that there’s so much more things about life that are more important than just our work.

Anthony Vaughan (11:10):

The employees kind of had a little bit more of an advantage if you will, from, from the leverage perspective, which is look, you know, I’ve got to care about my, my sick father, potentially. I need to look out for my kids. I have to make sure that they’re okay. I have a lot of other things going on in my life, other than just work. And brands and employers are finally starting to realize that employees are humans, not just resources. Yeah, there’s a lot of things happening there that I’d be definitely willing to unpack for sure.

Jon Tota (11:40):

This was probably the way we were all headed anyway.

Anthony Vaughan (11:44):

Yeah.

Jon Tota (11:44):

Because technology has changed the way that we are always available. We don’t have to be, you know, in that specific location to do our job, but it still, might’ve been another three years, five years before the working world caught up with us, right. And, and like in three months, all of a sudden, it’s like, you look out and you’re like, wow, we’ve changed. Are you seeing with some of the companies that you’re helping right now- Are they changing that policy and saying, Hey, maybe don’t need to be in the office every day like, like we thought you needed to be. Is that one of the big changes for you?

Anthony Vaughan (12:20):

Yeah. They’re changing the policy of when they, when they, again, first they’re actually changing a lot of policies on the workflow itself. So that’s something I’ve been really big on even before COVID-19 hit, which is, I’m a big fan of brands saying, look, Jon, tell us how you like to work. Well objectively here’s what needs to get done for the brand, and we all can agree that this X needs to get done, but tell us how your brain works. Tell us in your schedule, in your life, the way that you’d like to go about the work, let us know how you want to get to X being completed. I’ve always been a fan of that. I’ve always pushed the employees that I had with my consultancy and my very first brand. I’ve always kind of been that guy that kinda liked to give people that autonomy. Now, more than ever, that autonomy is here.

Anthony Vaughan (13:09):

Maybe we were three to four years away from that being here. No, we’re here now. And it’s going to be interesting to see brands allow people to stay in that pocket, right. Because I don’t know, you know, where you are, what things are happening, but here in Maryland things are probably 60% open by the end of the summer. I think we’re going to be full fledged open probably. And so it’s going to be interesting to see brands keep this up or revert back to their old ways and our old behaviors. So, yeah, that’s just one way that I think COVID-19 has affected things. The actual workflow, it’s being put more on the employee and the autonomy is a little bit more flexible there than ever before.

Jon Tota (13:50):

I think that that’s such an important point, the autonomy, and just having that trust in your people. I think when you see people sitting at a desk in your office as a business owner, there’s a certain comfort level that, okay, I see the heads at their desks. I know everybody’s working, but you don’t really know how much work is getting done either. Either you trust your employees or you don’t. And if you do, why does it matter that you’re able to see them? Why wouldn’t they be able to work from anywhere and still get the job done today? What are your recommendations for businesses looking out to September and saying, okay, what do you do over these next couple months of the summer to prepare for that? Are you helping them rewrite their employment policies? What would be your recommendation for a business owner looking out two or three months and saying, Hey, be prepared for being fully open and having a new policy in place? What’s what’s step one for someone who’s got to deal with that?

Anthony Vaughan (14:45):

I would say get all of the decision makers together in a room and take ego, take opinions, take personal perspectives and desires and put them to the side. Cause you know, I hate when people coined the term emotions and personal perspectives are not involved in business, and business is a black and white thing. That’s BS and we all know it. At the end of the day, throughout the last let’s call it 30, 40 years, the people, the executives that have been sitting at the top, their opinions, their perspectives that are not objective have always played a part in the workflow or deliverable or the products that are rolled out or the things that are happening. They’ve always had an opinion on what should be happening and what shouldn’t be happening. And it’s never been super, super black and white and objective.

Anthony Vaughan (15:33):

So, you know what I trying to help some brands understand and what I’m asking anybody listening to this understand is get all the decision makers in a room and ask yourself, what do we want to get accomplished in the next 12 months? Lay them all out. What products do we want to know, what new products that we want to roll out? What current products do we want to try to increase the productivity on increased sales, on whatever the, whatever the goals are, right? Whatever the KPIs are going to be, ask yourself objectively, right? No emotions. Can these things get done with the current structure that we have now doing the COVID-19 crisis? The way that we’ve had our employees working currently, are things getting done. Did we have a time window on certain deliverables that were made up by us? Was it made up by the consumer’s desire? Who made these [deadlines] up?

Anthony Vaughan (16:18):

And let’s really test ourselves to ask ourselves these really tough objective questions, because in most cases, Jon- and we all know the couple of brands that don’t have that luxury- but in most cases, the answer is probably going to be, you know what? We can either keep things how they are. We can try to flex it out a little bit, right? We can have a flex situation where they come into the office two days a week, because maybe there’s something that needs to actually happen in person. But for the most part, we can keep it pretty flexible where they can work from home and give them some of that autonomy. Because again, if they’re being objective and real with themselves, I’m quite sure there hasn’t been that much of a drop off on productivity and deliveries and deliverables. And in certain cases I’ve read some articles and some case studies where things that actually spiked because now employees feel comfortable. Now employees feel like, wow, that little burst of energy that I get between eight and let’s call it 9:30 at night, I can utilize that burst of energy to get something done, to answer an email. And now my, now my creativity is even more. And I can answer something with a little bit more juice or answer something from a little bit of a different lens or work on a project that I probably would have been forced to work on in my office at 1:30 pm after I’m done lunch and I’m super tired. I can put that off untill 9:30 pm, I can put that off until the kids go to bed. You know, there’s, there’s a little bit of a flexibility and autonomy that I think brands need to just live into and dive into. But the most important part, you get tactical, get everybody in a room and let’s say, look, guys, we admit it. We’ve all had our opinions. We’ve all had our personal perspectives, um, involved in here.

Anthony Vaughan (17:57):

I remember Gary V actually quoted this recently and said that he actually likes being in the room with everyone. And he admitted that he had considered not letting, not having the policy adjust, where he was going to give people the autonomy and the flexibility to go into work whenever they wanted and kind of give them that space to deal with the situation at a one-by-one personal level. He admitted it was because of not the objective black and white deliverables that were happening. It was really because he just likes seeing everybody. And he likes being able to give people daps and hugs, and see them working and laughing with each other. And he realized that ‘I have to strip my ego out of this and focus on the black and white. Will the deliverables occur? Will the brand continue to grow, and can we be productive?’

Anthony Vaughan (18:41):

And if the answer is yes, then you need to live into people’s comfortability, people safety, people’s opinions because not to coin, what I’m doing here, Jon, but you know, employees come first when it comes to that. They are the foundation at a literal level. If they were to walk away tomorrow, if you were to have to try to figure out a way to hire a thousand people overnight, I’m quite sure you wouldn’t be able to do it. So those are my thoughts on that. I don’t know if that’s helpful or valuable to other people, but I think that will be a nice structure to try to implement.

Jon Tota (19:13):

Yeah. Yeah. I definitely get it too. Like Gary V, I realized that that while my team has been working from home, we’ve been getting everything done. They might be working harder than ever before; they certainly seem to be working at all hours. But I think what I was most excited to get people back in the office was just the personal connections, like just kind of working together, collaborating. And you know, we’re doing our meetings outside right now. We’re not meeting in the conference room, and we’re giving everybody the flexibility to come in or not. It’s up to you if you feel comfortable. And I think it’s this issue of safety. Every employee kind of sees their safety in a different way, or they’ve got a different tolerance level for their safety now with what we just went through. How much are you seeing that as an issue that all of us business owners need to look at that, Hey, you’ve got to now not just put the employee first, but their health and their comfort in the situation of being in an office together- that’s got to now be a priority. Where does that rank in the whole scheme of things for you now?

Anthony Vaughan (20:24):

I think it ranks pretty high as well. I think you have to go one by one by one. And if that means you’re a company of a thousand or 2,000 or 5,000 or a hundred thousand, it may take a long time and there’s tools to help you get those answers. But I think you need to go one by one and ask people what they personally want and what they personally desire. And I think you need to do everything in your power, as hard as it may be, to try to build an individual experience for everybody because more than ever, it’s really important. At a real legal level now, HR, HR law is not really my cup of tea, but I do have some people in my collective that that is their niche, and they’re telling me that things are changing at the policy level, from like state to state, city to city, and around the country, things are changing due to this COVID-19 situation where you can’t just fire someone or discipline someone if they elect to not come in anymore. Let’s go back before COVID-19 hit. Imagine if one of your employees said, yeah, I’m just going to work from home today, Jon, you would have you, I don’t know. I’m assuming let’s, let’s give you the benefit of the doubt. Your leadership style is probably amazing. So you may have given them a little bit of autonomy, but in most cases, people would have probably said, are you crazy? You’re not telling me, you know, you’re not telling me that you’re going to just come in whenever you want. You’re going to come in. Those things are changing now. You know, you can no longer discipline or let someone go because they want to flex their options. So it’s something that a lot of brands and to be thoughtful of.

Jon Tota (22:00):

Yeah. You’re a hundred percent right with that because in the past you might’ve allowed it, but you’d be like, well, I didn’t like the way that they requested that. Like, it wasn’t a question. It was, I’m going to work from home. And in this state, like three months later, if someone says I’m going to work from home, you wouldn’t even question it. You say, whatever makes you comfortable, whatever makes you feel safe. And maybe that is one of those silver linings of all this, that we needed to jump forward as a business society and give people that higher trust level and say, listen, you’ve earned that right. The work-life balance has been all lopsided because I can reach my employees on a Saturday, at nine o’clock on a Tuesday night, first thing in the morning, and you can hit them with Slack or email, or, you know, any one of, you know, your different tools and people feel, the employee feel like they have to respond. They have to give you an answer regardless of the time. And it’s no longer confined to nine to five. So is that kind of the compromise that’s like the give and take is that, Hey, we’ve had this luxury of being able to reach our employees at any time, day or night now, which we didn’t have before. So now the flip sides coming into play in the employee’s favor. Right?

Anthony Vaughan (23:18):

I think so. I think so. And then again, to get super practical and tangible, I gave some advising to a brand that we’re working with the other day. And I said, look, just go one by one. And this is a little bit easier for them. I think they have like 80 people. I said, just go one by one and have people there are tools out here that will help you, you know, have people fill out their availability calendar because now the calendar is going to be wide. Like now, Susan, that likes to wake up at 5:30 in the morning and doesn’t have to do the commute anymore. She can get her workout done from 5:30 am to 6:15 am, and maybe she’ll like this, maybe she wants to sit down and welcome a call or answer some emails between 6:15 am to seven o’clock before she hops in the shower.

Anthony Vaughan (23:57):

Then she went, then she’s blocked off again from 7:30 to 8:10 am to eat her breakfast. And then maybe she’s ready to go from eight until that, that 4:00 pm, 4:30 ish window. Then maybe she wants to spend time with her kids from 4:30 ish to 7:00 pm or 7:30. And then maybe from 7:30, till 10, she’s open again. You have to do it at a one by one basis. You have to have a tool, a calendar that allows people to fill out what works for them. And the biggest thing is you have to make sure that, as long as it’s a win-win on both sides, as long as objectively, what you set out to get accomplished is getting done and what they’re setting out, which is to be comfortable and to also get it done, as long as those things are matched up, then you really, as a brand need to live into just being a human being and doing the right thing and making it flexible.

Anthony Vaughan (24:50):

But on the behalf of the brand, guess what? Now you have so much autonomy. Like if I were being an employee right now, I could, I probably, I know me. I get a burst of energy between like nine and 11:30 pm for some reason. I stay up pretty late. I get a burst of energy. So I would keep that option available, you know, hit me up, Leader, give me a call. We can do some strategy calls at 10 o’clock. I have a burst of energy, but I know other people don’t have that. So I think you got to go one by one by one. And there’s ways that you can block that out on a calendar so that you know, that those windows and those times are available for them. And that’s when they would like to work and get things done.

Jon Tota (25:28):

It’s just such an interesting time to live and operate a business. Tell us a little bit about how your collective set up and the way that you guys are engaging with companies now.

Anthony Vaughan (25:40):

Yeah, so the E1B2 collective is split in two different directions, so it’s a holding company. Um, so, in an ideal state, my goal over the next 10 years is to create 10 or so internal brands under the E1B2 collective banner and then we’re going to have tons of products and services and offerings. Currently right now, the service that we have is like I told you about prior, if you are a startup or small business, 40, 50, 60 people deep, you’re just considering hiring your first HR person for 45, 55, 65,000. Don’t do that, send us that 65,000, give us that 55,000. We have 15 people in our collective that are ready to work with you over nine months and build out everything you need versus, and I’m sure you can attest to this, Jon, versus having that one person try to just immediately jump into your business, try to understand the culture and then try to do a multitude of different responsibilities and are in work up to their neck in the weeds. Don’t do that. We have a team of people here where we will allocate the 45, 65, 70 grand, whatever your budget is, we’ll allocate that how we need to with our collective and we’ll get it done.

Anthony Vaughan (26:53):

There’s another company we have inside the brand called Monday Anticipation, which, and the product under that is called Beyond Resume, which is for the employee. If you’re an employee and you want a brand to know a little bit more about you beyond your resume, so that you can make sure this is a good fit for not only you, but also the employer going into things like your ideal workflow, going into things like projects you need to work on that are going to be important for your long-term career track, going to going into things like types of leaders, leadership styles that you work well with, and the reasons of why, explaining stories of your past and experiences that are personal level so that the employer can learn a little bit more about you beforehand.

Anthony Vaughan (27:36):

That’s the product for you. And then for the Collective we have, we’re ever growing this. I realized that I didn’t want to try to compete with the HR consultancies around the world. I didn’t want to try to build the biggest podcast, be the biggest brand from like a Gary V style and just try to steal business that way. I said, let me form a collective. So right now we have about 15 people and it’s going to continue to grow. If they have any projects or initiatives they’re working on where they feel like the 30 to 40% of things that we do here at E1B2 we’re the best at doing, they’ll reach out to us. And then for us, like I said, working with the startups or with Beyond Resume or other things that we’re doing, if we need their services, which we will always, we have a collective where they’re experts. They already have the tools built. They already have the workflow built. They know how to do it. We can, we can immediately jump on their backs of their reputation and what they do well. Um, so that’s why we call it the Collective, because it is a group of us that look out for each other and work on collective projects together to get things done. So that is the structure.

Jon Tota (28:46):

That’s very cool. Yeah. And I do know that too, is that you could never afford it. And I know the quality of people that you’re working with in the Collective, and you could never afford to hire all those people, particularly as a startup, but to be able to leverage them and be able to fit them in at the exact moment that you need that expertise. I think it’s an awesome solution. For anybody who’s listening, who wants to learn more about the E1B2 Collective, certainly check out the E1B2 podcast. I’ve been listening to it. I think it’s awesome. But tell us, where else should they find you on the web to learn more about what you’re offering to people now?

Anthony Vaughan (29:24):

The website is on the way, you know, we’re, we’re three months into this project here. Uh, so the website is still being built, but in the meantime, you guys can check me out on LinkedIn at Anthony Vaughan, V a U G H a N. Incredibly responsive. We’ll always answer, or you can send me an email to, um, [email protected]. And I’m also on Twitter at @E1B210; don’t ask me where the 10 came from. That was the only option they gave me on Twitter. I can engage with you there. So, um, and then, like you said, the podcast as well. I’m always trying to pump out some good content. Um, and then Monday Anticipation, we have a new podcast there as well, where we’re talking directly to employees, founders, and first time people leaders.

Jon Tota (30:07):

That’s great. And we’ll put links to all those resources in the show notes. So all of you listeners can follow up with Anthony and just find out what he’s been up to. Definitely really good follow on LinkedIn. I think, you’re very committed to putting good content out there. Definitely for all of you who are into new podcast shows and particularly in this space, check out the E1B2 podcast and Anthony, thank you for taking the time to be with us today. It was really fun talking.

Anthony Vaughan (30:33):

Thanks so much. This was a pleasure.

Jon Tota (30:35):

And to all of our listeners, thank you for being here every week. As you know, we have a new episode that comes out every Tuesday, so wherever you’re listening, be sure to subscribe, leave us comments. We’d love to hear from you guys. And until next week, happy learning!

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Post date December 15, 2020
No Comments on Episode 112: Make Your Own Luck with Neal Taparia

Neal Taparia might have saved you in high school or college when you needed to quickly format the citations on your term paper. While in high school in 2001, Neal Taparia and his friend created EasyBib to make citing their sources well… easier.
After gaining popularity, Taparia and his partner sold EasyBib to Chegg (another lifesaver) and stayed on to help Chegg scale their business operations and the company 10x.

Taparia then founded SOTA Partners where they incubate new businesses and invest in and advise startup teams.

In this episode, Taparia and Tota discuss the challenges of growing a business through high school and college; the marketing strategies that worked; and the benefits of a CEO mentor.

Check out his latest investment endeavor Solitaired at solitaired.com.

Check out this episode!

Transcript

Jon Tota (00:00):

Neal Taparia (00:24):

It turned out that teachers were more or less influencers for us because once they know about the product and they like it, they’re able to tell their class of 20. They’re able to tell other teachers about it who will tell more students and teachers, et cetera,

Intro (00:40):

Welcome to Learning Life, where top experts share their business knowledge and personal journeys each week. “And The thing that I realized from the CEO to the NFL football player, to the janitor – we’re our toughest critics, and we’re hardest on ourselves.” – James Lawrence And wanted to bring education to the market. I wake up in the morning and I am constantly learning.” “The only way to grab somebody’s attention is with a story” – Cal Fussman. Happy learning. And now your host, Jon Tota.

Jon Tota (01:08):

Welcome back to Learning Life with Jon Tota. My guest today is Neal Taparia. Neal’s the co-founder of SOTA Partners, where they incubate new businesses and invest in and advise startup teams. But I met Neal a long time ago as the co-founder and co-CEO of Imagine Easy Solutions, a business he and his partner scaled really well and ultimately sold to Chegg- a public company that creates all types of products and services for high school and college students. Neal stayed on to help Chegg, grow their business unit and the company as a whole 10 X in just a few years, Neal is also a regular contributor to Forbes and all-around excellent person. So it’s an honor to have him on the show today. Neal, welcome to Learning Life.

Neal Taparia (01:45):

Hey Jon, thanks for having me. Excited to be on the podcast.

Jon Tota (01:49):

So it’s really fun to have you and I, you know, we haven’t connected in a while. You know, we just caught up a little bit before we started recording. So great to hear about all the success you had. So our audience has a ton of entrepreneurs listening. You’ve had that success story that everybody’s looking for. Tell us a little bit about kind of how you got started with Imagine Easy because you know, going all the way back, how you even thought of the idea and tell us a little bit about kind of what those early days were like getting started for you guys.

Neal Taparia (02:18):

Sure. So we have a bit of a unique story. We started our business when we were high school students. This was when I was 16 years old in the suburbs of Chicago. And as high school students, you know, we saw the world from the problems we had as high school students. And I don’t know if you remember doing this, but when you wrote papers, you had to create bibliographies and cite all those sources. Does that ring a bell at all?

Jon Tota (02:44):

Yes. No one liked doing that.

Neal Taparia (02:46):

It was a pain in the butt and my buddy and I, we were a bit nerdy at the time. This was 2001. So it was relatively speaking, early internet days. And we happened to be learning how to build websites. So we thought, what if we built a website where you take all this bibliographic data, find ways to grab this data in an automatic fashion and then find ways to automatically format it.

Neal Taparia (03:11):

Wouldn’t that just make our lives so much easier? So my buddy and I, through the course of two months, working at each other’s places after school whipped up this website called Easy Bib- easy bibliography- to really solve our own problem. And it turned out we were solving problems for all our classmates. And if you fast forward 15 years later, we were solving that same problem for over 30 million students. So that was really the origin of how we came up with the idea and it ended up leading to other opportunities when we focused on the business full-time with grammar, plagiarism, research, note-taking everything that students might need help with in the writing process.

Jon Tota (03:55):

You guys had some really unique strategies to scale your business and to grow the exposure. You were obviously in a very competitive space at the time. What are some of the things you guys learned, some of the practices that you guys developed to help scale the business back then?

Neal Taparia (04:09):

I would say there’s really two phases of growth. One was let’s call it the naive phase of growth. This was when I was that high school student and we didn’t know anything about marketing. We just knew what we knew, but it also gave us this element of being a bit cavalier. And we would just try everything. So early on, it’s easy to find teacher email addresses online. And I would just spend hours on hours finding these email addresses and emailing teachers about this website that we had built. It turned out that teachers were more or less influencers for us because once they know about the product and they like it, they’re able to tell their class of 20. They’re able to tell other teachers about it. We’ll tell more students and teachers, et cetera. So I would spend tons of time emailing teachers. And one time my principal called me into his office and said, Hey, a teacher notified us that you might be sending suspicious emails and viruses.

Neal Taparia (05:08):

It was absolutely not the case, but it told me that my strategy was working. People were actually opening up my emails and I ended up doubling down on the strategy so that, you know, just as hustle and really naivety played a big part in at the early stages of our growth. The other big success factor was when I just reached out to a bunch of the Chicago area newspapers. And I told this story that, Hey, we’re students helping other students. And a few days later, photographers from the Chicago Tribune showed up at our house and they featured us on the front page of the business section of the Chicago Tribune. And that’s a national newspaper and it ended up getting syndicated across the country. And we just saw those stats spike up as a result of that. So we were a bit lucky, but we were also trying to make our own luck.

Neal Taparia (05:55):

And then I’d say in our more mature stages of growth, you know, we were really focused on creating an awesome and intuitive product experience. Students were our end customers and we just wanted the best experience for them and really ourselves, you know, having understood what it was like to be a student. And we found that the easier product was, it would increase metrics like our net promoter score, and it just led to more word of mouth growth, which was great. But then we also started learning about search engine optimization. And it turns out that as you get more people talking about your site and linking to it, you’re able to capture more keywords and Google trusts you more. So we would work with educators to create comprehensive guides on the writing process. We would try to be thought leaders in the writing space and a space called information literacy and really positioning ourselves as an authority allowed us to create a lot of links and social chatter, which Google then interprets as a site that commands a lot of expertise and authority, which really helped us with our search engine results, which was another major factor in growing.

Neal Taparia (07:05):

And then the last part that we did to drive growth was really inorganic. And once we figured out how to monetize our audience, we ended up consolidating our space. Then through a series of four acquisitions, we brought all those learnings to those new properties and, and grew them. And all those combined allowed us to reach over 30 million students yearly.

Jon Tota (07:26):

That’s awesome. It’s interesting to hear you tell that all because you were using strategies back then, cause I think you started the company back. Was it like 2001 when you started Imagine Easy?

Neal Taparia (07:37):

Yep. 2001.

Jon Tota (07:39):

So, you know, like going almost 20 years back now and you were using some strategies of like content marketing and thought leaders and influencers and things like that, that people are endorsing today and that have become just the way of life on the internet, but you guys are doing that way back when it probably was pretty innovative when you guys were doing it back then, right?

Neal Taparia (08:04):

Yeah. Today there’s a lot of noise. A lot of people are replicating those same strategies, but back then it was a wide open space, which was a competitive advantage for us. And we’ve always tried to, you know, look at the market and ask ourselves, well, how do we not necessarily become better, but how can we be different? And, you know, as more people adopted those practices over time, that was still our guiding lens. So how can we continue to be authoritative, but be different in our approaches in doing that. And I think that played a large part into our success.

Jon Tota (08:37):

Well, yeah, I love that. I love it. So now I’ve had a number of college, I think maybe one or two high school entrepreneurs and a number of college entrepreneurs on the show as guests. I love talking to them and just hearing about how they’re starting their business and in school and balancing the business and school and social life. And so as a result, we have a lot of those listeners now as well. What would you tell some listeners now who are college age entrepreneurs trying to do this? Any best practices that you’d share with them?

Neal Taparia (09:11):

Sure. Well, first of all, I would say college is a great time to start a business because you don’t really have those same real world responsibilities that you might have after college. So you don’t necessarily have a job or you don’t have to keep the lights on for your family. You’re solo in college, which makes it a little bit more easy to take risks. You know, for us in college, we would try to fit in every waking minute working on our business. So for me, it was like my number one extracurricular activity. So I wanted to make sure I did a good job in school, but in my spare time, I would be working on Easybib and exploring ideas on how to grow the site. So it was, it was really like me treating it as if it was another course. And it was another course that I was trying to get a good grade on. And it’s so turned out that I was just more passionate about this self-taught entrepreneurship course. And I think that that made a huge difference at the end of the day. It’s tough because you’re balancing college life, even social priorities that come in the way, but if you’re able to be serious about your business and, and treat it like a priority, like everything else, I think that’s when you’ll see some differences,

Jon Tota (10:27):

It just taking advantage of that time. It’s a learning process that you can fail during those years. And you’re not gonna, you’re not going to cause as much damage as you might do in your thirties or forties. So it’s a good time to try new things. So now after you guys had a lot of success and I, and I think it’s really interesting to see that you, even, as you had more resources at your disposal, you acquired competitors and inorganically, you know, got more growth and then got on the radar of a major player like Chegg, who ultimately acquired Imagine Easy. What was that experience? All, all like for you guys,

Neal Taparia (11:03):

That was a rollercoaster too, to put it in a succinct way. You know, we knew the team at Chegg for a while and we really liked them and what they were doing. We ended up pursuing a formal investment banking selling process just because we wanted to maximize the value of our company. So, you know, during the process, Chegg came out to be the company most interested in us. And we also liked them culturally and what they were doing with their company. So when we joined them, it was, it was pretty tough. You know, at first we found a lot of attrition on our team. A lot of people were nervous about their job. They didn’t understand what the acquisition would mean for them. Some didn’t necessarily want to work for Chegg while they were very content working for a smaller business. To each their own, they just had different preferences. And we also experience all sorts of other challenges around how do you properly level employees. Chegg is this public company in the Bay Area. They have their own criteria on how to level employees by seniority. We were a small startup. We didn’t really know how to do that. So there were all sorts of struggles early on. And that was a big challenge emotionally for us, because we had always tried to create a really awesome culture on our team and to see people leave after the acquisition was very disheartening. And everyone had their own reason. So within the first six to nine months, it felt like we had to really rebuild the team. It required a lot of heart-to-heart conversations with everybody to help them understand what Chegg is, what their role is going to be, why this mission is even bigger and greater.

Neal Taparia (12:53):

So we had to constantly reinforce messages like that, you know, for those who didn’t buy in, we have to find ways to move in separate directions, but do so in the most amicable way possible. But eventually after six to nine months we landed on our feet and our culture turned around and we found that the team was engaged and excited to be at Chegg. And we were thinking Chegg first. So from a cultural perspective, that was huge. And then I would say operationally, it was a huge shift to, you know, we were used to being scrappy entrepreneurs, but suddenly we were thrown into a public company. We had P& L responsibility. They offer guidance to the street and the revenue we generate plays a meaningful part of that.

Jon Tota (13:37):

Hey, listeners, Jon Tota here. As businesses everywhere are struggling with the new normal of hiring and training new employees virtually, do you know if your company’s on-boarding program is setting up your employees for success? It’s more important than ever right now when new people are joining your company and learning your culture while operating almost entirely from remote locations. Elearning Brothers has the answer for you in their brand new virtual onboarding handbook. Download a checklist to see how well your onboarding program stacks up. Then read the free handbook that covers the four pillars of on-boarding and includes a sample template for a fully virtual on-boarding program. Visit learninglifeshow.com/ELB to download your free checklist and handbook today. Provided by eLearning Brothers – the industry leading provider of eLearning solutions. Elearning Brothers has everything you need to launch your own virtual on-boarding program to keep your business scaling and culture growing during these challenging times. Get your free handbook today at learninglifeshow.com/ELB. Now back to our show.

Neal Taparia (14:39):

So early on, we started developing daily forecasts on our business, which was something I was totally new to. And at first I thought it was insane to have daily forecast for all our different revenue, but there were some really amazing silver linings from it. You know, the forecast tied in all our KPIs and whenever we were above or below plan, it would really force us to understand what the heck is going on with our business, which led to a lot of good ideas and good decisions. So that was definitely an improvement. And it also forced me to learn how to delegate really well. So I would really depend on my team to learn how to execute on plans and ideas while I would really be that ambassador to say, okay, this is the right thing to do, but also find appropriate and elegant ways to communicate that to the rest of the team at Chegg. So my role really changed going from scrappy entrepreneur, where I was doing a bunch of things to really being a leader depending on his team to execute and working with the rest of the management team at Chegg.

Jon Tota (15:44):

Yeah. It’s kind of a, a whole new learning process. You probably feel like you’ve gone through schooling over and over again with all the, all the changes, right?

Neal Taparia (15:54):

Absolutely, man. And I really enjoyed it because it really taught me about operational discipline. Whereas when we were running our own business, we were doing things ad hoc often times, but it taught us a lot about good planning, a good roadmapping and what it means to stick to that plan and executing. So I think it made us a much better operators looking back.

Jon Tota (16:18):

Yeah. Yeah. And obviously it was really successful there. You guys scaled your business unit quite a bit and Chegg overall, I think it scaled a huge amount in that period of time. What was the, that whole experience of that? And then you guys eventually exited Chegg, I guess at some point, right?

Neal Taparia (16:39):

Yeah. So when we were at Chegg, there were some really interesting insights while we were there that pushed us to scale the business. The first one was that they really pushed us to think big. The CEO, Dan Rosensweig, when he acquired us, he said, I don’t, I did not acquire you so you guys can continue to grow at the rate you’re growing. I acquired you to figure out how we can accelerate this thing. And to us, we thought it was crazy because we’d been running the business for 15 plus years. How much can you accelerate a business at that point? So we thought about that pretty skeptically, but he said, tell us what 50% growth looks like. And it forced us to put together a plan of ideas on what that could potentially look like, what are the initiatives, how we prioritize it, what are the resources that are required to make it happen?

Neal Taparia (17:30):

And then he said, listen, I’m going to support you guys in that plan, go for it. And let’s see if you can make it happen. And it turned out by having laser focus on it, we were able to really execute on that plan and exceed our expectations. And I think underlying that underlying that theme of dreaming big is just having laser focus on how to do that. And by failing and learning as fast as possible to execute on that plan. So having them hold us accountable for growing and hitting those numbers, I think played a huge difference in our ability to execute and really exceed our own expectations.

Jon Tota (18:09):

Yeah. And I, I guess a big piece of that too, is having great leadership when you join a company like that you know, after you’re required to have great leadership above you, that believes in the product and gives you the resources and the opportunity to grow it to another level, it’s gotta be a pretty cool feeling.

Neal Taparia (18:27):

Yeah, yeah, it absolutely was. And before, when we were running our own business, it was just my friend and I, we never raised outside capital, but suddenly we were in this corporate environment where there were high expectations. And I think it taught us a lot about accountability and what we learned in terms of accountability and how Chegg pushed us, we also tried to take those lessons and even push our team in the same way. So that culture really infused not us, but the rest of our team.

Jon Tota (18:56):

Yeah, I think that’s great. That’s great. And so now fast forward to today and, and you and your partner now have started SOTA partners where you are incubating new businesses, advising businesses or startup teams as they’re scaling and growing. What’s that been like? Are you guys taking all those lessons you’ve learned along the years and, and you’re starting to be able to use that, to help some of these younger companies now?

Neal Taparia (19:19):

Yeah, exactly. You know, we are fortunate to have a good network where we come across a lot of earlier stage companies with younger entrepreneurs who don’t necessarily have the same battle wounds as us. And it’s really interesting to see these brilliant ideas, but they don’t really understand how to execute and focus on them and to really pay attention to I like to call what’s big enough to matter. So they might have all sorts of different fringe ideas around a main idea, and they just need a lot of guidance to really focus on what will really move the needle forward. Entrepreneurs are so optimistic that it’s a double-edged word. It also means they could be scatterbrained. To be methodical and focused and to learn to fail fast is so important because you’re racing against time and resources. So we found that we oftentimes bring a perspective that can offer a lot of guidance to these young entrepreneurs. And it’s been a lot of fun to share some of those insights. And at the same time we get to learn from them too.

Jon Tota (20:21):

Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s an interesting point too, is that every idea when you’re an entrepreneur and you’re coming up with new ideas, every idea sounds great. You think they’re all going to work. And then the next thing you know, you look back and you’re like, how did we get eight different products here?

Neal Taparia (20:37):

Yes.

Jon Tota (20:37):

You know, with all the work that you’re doing now, I know one of them is Solitaired and you were telling me a little bit about it before, and I’m an education person. I’m always in the and development space. You’re kind of more on the higher education side. I’ve always been on the corporate side, but I love what you’re doing with this because you’re really thinking of the role that traditional games can have in learning and development. Tell us a little bit about Solitaired and why you guys are so excited about that.

Neal Taparia (21:03):

Yeah. So we had this initial idea of how can games be used outside the traditional medium of entertainment. And as we did research, we found that there’s all sorts of benefits to games, you know, in the education context, of course it makes learning more fun and engaging, which really caught our eye. But we even found that it could be used for brain training and even mental health. Games are often used as a way to reduce anxiety or to allow people to escape from a lot of the stresses that they have. It could also be used for team building. So there are all these interesting facets around gaming that we thought were interesting that often went under-recognized. So we knew we wanted to do something in the gaming space and tie gaming to education. So as we did more research, we found that classic games continue to be really popular.

Neal Taparia (21:57):

You know, we oftentimes think of the more popular games like Fortnite, but your Rummy’s, Yahtzee’s of the worlds, those classic board games and online versions of them are also just as popular today as they were 20 years ago. So we thought that could be an interesting category to start in because it’s an already established space and it’s already really popular. So our goal with Solitaired, which right now is just a solitaire site, is to get some scale and then eventually layer on features and tools that enable brain training and ideally support mental health efforts as well. So we’re still a long way there, but we think there’s a lot of interesting things to learn from it.

Jon Tota (22:36):

I think it’s great. And, and how are you thinking of this in traditional, like corporate learning or more for education or I think you mentioned also like mental health, where do you see it fitting the best?

Neal Taparia (22:50):

Right now, we’re really thinking about it from a direct to consumer perspective. That’s where we have a lot of our experience. So we want to reach a lot of people at scale and then offer features where we can prove that it can help with memory or attention training. And then our larger vision is to see how we can really create a platform of gaming and wellness that could be tied to corporations, but that is more of the three to five-year roadmap. We still have to accomplish some plans for the next year or two years.

Jon Tota (23:21):

Yeah, I think it’s super cool. So if our audience is listening and they want to find out more about Solitaired, what’s the website that they can go to.

Neal Taparia (23:28):

Yeah. It’s just solitaired.com that solitaire with a D at the end. And right now it’s, it’s just a fun solitaire site, but in the background, we’re running studies to understand how we could put on some of those learning components. So they can have some fun with the site right now, but hopefully six months down the road, it’ll be a unique experience when it comes to classic. Yeah.

Jon Tota (23:50):

I think it’s awesome. And I know in my work now, we’re, we’re really adamant about really building gaming into the e-learning process so much. There’s so there’s so much as you’ve found, there’s so much research that those traditional games and all the different forms make such a difference in retention and and just development overall. So I, I think it’s super cool what you’re doing. And I know you’re contributing to Forbes, I think. You still do that on a regular basis. Right?

Neal Taparia (24:17):

Well, I do. I really enjoy writing. I find that it’s a good way to learn myself when you articulate the thousands of thoughts you have in your mind and put it on paper, it’s a fun way of synthesizing and learning yourself. So I try to write weekly as much as I can.

Jon Tota (24:34):

So if our audience wants to find out more about you and your writing with Forbes, where should they checking you out?

Neal Taparia (24:42):

If you just Google my name, Neal Taparia Forbes, it’ll Google will show you the Forbes column I have, and there I’m posting some learnings and insights weekly.

Jon Tota (24:53):

Awesome. Awesome. And we’ll put those links in the show notes as well. So all of our listeners can check you out and find Neal everywhere you are online. And Neal, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your experience. You just, you learned a ton along the way, and you shared a bunch of it with us. So thank you so much.

Neal Taparia (25:09):

Likewise. Thanks for having me, Jon. I appreciate it, man.

Jon Tota (25:13):

And to all of our listeners, thank you for being here every week. As you know, we have a new episode coming out every Tuesday, so wherever you’re listening, make sure you subscribe, leave us comments. We’d love to hear from you. And until next time, happy learning.

Podcasts

Episode 111: Let’s Play a Game with Trent Howell

Post author By syntax
Post date December 8, 2020
1 Comment on Episode 111: Let’s Play a Game with Trent Howell

Trent Howell is the vice-president of marketing at eLearning Brothers and has over 25 years of experience in information technology and the training industry specifically. But he’s not here to talk about that – Trent is here to talk board games!

Trent’s family love board games so much they have a day of the week dedicated to playing them. They decided to turn their love of board games into a knowledgebase for everyone else with The Board Game Family (theboardgamefamily.com). They rate and review all types of board games so you can make the right decision when looking for something non-screen-related to do with loved ones.

Check out their 10th annual holiday gift guide to get the board game lover in your circle the best present!

https://www.theboardgamefamily.com/2020/11/board-game-gift-guide-2020/

The most popular post over the years on The Board Game Family site has been Mom’s favorite games:

https://www.theboardgamefamily.com/2015/10/favorite-board-games-mom/

And the Family Favorites is:

https://www.theboardgamefamily.com/family-favorites/

Check out this episode!

Hear more from eLearning Brothers!

Transcript

Jon Tota (00:00):

Trent Howell (00:24):

They would want to do something fun. And so we would play a game. And then that morphed into kind of Sunday afternoons being kind of the game days where we kind of turn other things off and get some of that face-to-face time. And there’s something different and tactile about seeing it physically on the table, that that gets you more engaged.

Intro (00:42):

Jon Tota (01:10):

Welcome to another episode of Learning Life with Jon Tota. My guest today is Trent Howell. Trent is the vice-president of marketing at eLearning Brothers and has over 25 years of experience in information technology and the training industry specifically. Prior to eLearning Brothers, Trent led global marketing teams at industry leaders in the training space, such as CompTIA, Certiport, and TestOut. Now I’ve done a ton of work with Trent in his role at eLearning Brothers, but I didn’t ask him here to join us today to talk about marketing, but more importantly, board games. Our regular listeners know that I’m pretty passionate about board games, collecting them, playing them, and best of all, getting my kids into them as an escape from all their screen time nowadays. And for the last 11 years, Trent and his family have reviewed hundreds of family board games as The Board Game Family. Their video reviews have been watched millions of times and their written reviews help families all over the world find fun games to enjoy playing together. They’ve got their 10th annual holiday gift guide out right now, so I thought it would be an awesome time to learn more about the joys of board gaming from Trent himself, Trent Howell, welcome to Learning Life.

Trent Howell (02:12):

Thanks, Jon. I’m happy to be on board here. Great to talk to you.

Jon Tota (02:16):

So, as you know, I am super passionate about board games, all aspects of them from selecting them, unpacking them, learning the rules, and then of course playing them. But I wanted to know from you, you started this over a decade ago and you got your whole family involved in the reviews. What was the genesis like? Why did you feel that it was so important to get this site up and running and to start sharing these reviews with the public?

Trent Howell (02:43):

It was funny at the time our kids were young and they were just starting to get where they could be, I would say competitive in a game where they started to realize that there’s some strategy or they could make some choices so we weren’t just playing games based on luck. And as I looked at other games to play, I found a couple of video reviews of a game and I would watch that. But what I discovered is there was only a couple of reviewers doing it. And they were typically old man that owned a game store, talking about a game and it wasn’t fun. And I thought, well, what parents want to know is what their kids are going to think of a game. And my youngest son was five at the time. And he described, he explained the rules for a game before we played it as a family.

Trent Howell (03:26):

And I thought, you know, he said that pretty clearly. So we filmed it and that turned into some video reviews that we started doing. And that was our first one. It was our, five-year-old doing a review talking about how you play a game and why he liked the game. And we thought, well, this will be fantastic because now parents can hear from the kids on what they like about a game. So a parent could figure out, Oh yeah, my kids like that. He might like that game as well. And so we took it from a completely family angle and, and it took off.

Jon Tota (03:53):

Yeah. And I, I have to say, I, you obviously got me turned on to this probably about a year ago I started following your website. And I think that aspect of family aspect is what’s so important, particularly to me, because I’m looking at that to say, will this actually work with my kids? I got, you know, six, 10 and 12 year old and you got varying different gaming levels there. So now you’ve really got the whole family involved. Today how do you do the reviews? Is everybody pitching in to do these reviews? Is it a real family, like kind of team effort?

Trent Howell (04:23):

Well, you know, the funny thing about kids is they grow up, [laughs] which is interesting. So when we started doing reviews, our oldest was 12 and he did the video editing himself. He wanted to learn about video editing. So each of the kids would take their terms, reviewing a game take their turn. And they would talk about games that they enjoyed the most. And so we took just a lot of our games off our shelf and would rattle through each one talking about it. And then our oldest with edit the videos. And then we would post that. And I typically write a little recap and post that out. As the kids have grown, they get involved in more activities, be it sports, be it scouting, be it dating. So the amount of in front of the camera screen diminished over the time and I would then spend more time doing the writing. And also from doing a number of surveys there’s a mix of people that like to watch videos, others like to read it at their own pace. And so it’s, it’s morphed over the years into more of a written review. So over the last couple of years, there’s been less videos and a lot more written because that’s, that’s fallen on my shoulder is they’ve gone off to college.

Ad Break (05:27):

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Jon Tota (06:28):

And I got to say, I love the reviews. I, I, and I think like you, I was struggling trying to find recommendations on games. I had a good friend who had come on this show, learning life probably a year and a half, almost two years ago. And he got me turned on to a number of games and we just loved it ever since. But exactly that reason was that it was really hard to find good recommendations and guides like you guys are doing. So I love what you’re doing. Tell me why board games? Why are they so important to you as opposed to reviewing video games or just any other things?

Trent Howell (07:07):

Yeah. And don’t get me wrong. I enjoy playing video games now, and then, but I find those as very solitary activities even if you’re playing someone online; but what I like about board games is it gets you face-to-face with someone sitting around a table talking a lot of times you’re talking about the game itself, but it gets some interaction and face time with, with my family and with my kids. We actually started doing it when they were little on Sundays just being quiet days of spending some one-on-one time with each kid and they would want to do something fun. And so we would play a game. And then that morphed into kind of Sunday afternoons being kind of the game days where we kind of turn other things off and get some of that face-to-face time. And there’s still something nice about physically the tactile element of physically touching and moving, moving pieces. Yes. You could push a button on your phone to roll some digital dice, but there’s something different and tactical about seeing it physically on the table that, that gets you more engaged.

Jon Tota (08:04):

Yeah. Yeah. And I agree with you a hundred percent. Cause to me, I think that artistic side of the game is part of what I enjoy the most. And as I was telling you, my wife gets upset with me because I buy and unpack more games than we actually play, because I just, I love the construction of the game and how they how they create the pieces and the, the board. So what one, what is your favorite part? Cause I love that aspect of it for you. What’s your favorite part of the whole process of getting into a brand new board game?

Trent Howell (08:37):

Yeah. I have discovered that I, that I like the discovery. There are so many different ways that games are being developed and designed nowadays. It’s fascinating. I hear from a lot of people that say, well, I don’t like games or, Oh my friend, he doesn’t like games. I think it’s because they haven’t experienced the breadth of games that are there. I think it’s a matter of finding the right game for the right person. Because there’s such a variety and I’ve loved discovering the variety. There’s I really like tiling games where you’re building something. So at the end of the game, it, it looks different each game to game there’s card games that are trick taking games on I’ll throw out a few terms at deck building games where you’re buying more cards for your deck and making it bigger over time. There’s what they call now legacy games where you’re putting stickers on the board and writing on the board.

Trent Howell (09:26):

So your copy of the game is going to be completely different than somebody else’s copy of the game, because it becomes personalized as you play through a series of games. And I liked binding how people come up with new ideas of mixing and matching other types of game mechanics that dice rolling with the cards that it just continues to fascinate me. Now, on the other side, my wife loves familiar territory. She doesn’t like having to learn new rules or new games. She just wants to play games that she’s already familiar with. That there’s a comfort level for her. And just say, I don’t want to have to think additionally and I found for me, I liked the discovering a new strategy of, Oh, this is going to play this way. What’s going to play out strategically. And so her and I have a little bit different interests. I have to be a little bit more judicious at what type of games I introduce her to. Because I know of her aversion to learning new games, but there’s so many, there’s about 5,000, well there’s over 5,000 new board games published every year. So the amount of variety out there is just tremendous. And so I can’t even tell you, what did you say? How many games I’ve got on my game shelf now that I have yet to play, but great anticipation to do so

Jon Tota (10:38):

I think what’s fascinating to me. And I was just thinking about it this weekend, when we were playing one of your recommendations, we got Planet, which my kids love. It’s like everyone’s favorite game now and all they’ve done. And I think this is what’s fascinating is that it’s a tile-laying game. Is that what you call that category? Tile-Laying?

Trent Howell (10:55):

Yes.

Jon Tota (10:55):

Where everybody, each player has got their own board that they’re building as they go, it’s just, they did it. They kind of turned it on its ear a little bit and you’re building a planet so you’re holding a globe in your hand. And I think like to your point, it’s really interesting to see how they bend the, or press the boundaries of a certain type of game. But are there a finite amount of game styles? Is it dice rolling card game, tile-laying… Have you done that analysis? Are we kind of at the end? Are there new ones coming up?

Trent Howell (11:26):

I don’t think so. There are new ones coming out all the time. And when I look at really the resurgence of board games over the last 15 years has been because it’s so easy to share published information and to find communities that have like-minds. So, like I mentioned, when we started doing video reviews, there was maybe a handful. Now there’s hundreds of people that are out there doing video reviews of games and finding ones that tend to your, your likes. For example, ours focuses continually on, on the family focus. But as far as the type of games, deck building is a whole new genre of card games. The legacy games is a brand new thing of changing the game as you go. Tile-Laying games, I I’m blown away with the different ways that you can put tiles together. These Tetris like pieces that you can build out into your own board or a community board, they continue coming out with new iterations of it that fascinate me. So yes, you could say they’re group into trick taking or tiling or deduction games, but the variations on each of those are, are wide very, very wide open. For example, deduction, games, hidden information, or solving puzzles together, like a, an escape room type game, which is a deduction in a different way versus deducing what’s behind somebody else’s hand of cards or deducing what tiles that they have hidden behind their screen, things like that. So yes, you could call them a deduction game, but even within that, there’s, there’s a wide range of types of deduction.

Jon Tota (12:57):

I’m always fascinated by how many ways they kind of evolve the model and take something that was just kind of a standard mechanic of the mechanics of the game and then keep pressing the boundaries. If anyone’s listening now and they’re thinking, ‘Hey, I’ve got an idea for a game. I would love to be able to make a game.’ Have you ever thought about either going out and developing games, do you have ideas for, what would you recommend if someone wants to, you know, get out there and build their own game? How do you go about doing that? Do you any ideas?

Trent Howell (13:30):

Oh, tons of ideas, because I’m getting messages from people that do such things on a daily basis. One of the biggest, I guess, benefits nowadays has been Kickstarter or these, these crowds sourcing avenues that people have, that they can take their ideas, post their idea that they have for a game, do some prototypes and then go to a crowdfunding source and get people to essentially give them money to, to build those first production copies of their game and get those out. So Kickstarter has just gone huge with board games, the amount of people that can put ideas out there. And some of those fail, some of those don’t work out well. And the ones that I’ve found don’t work as well as when somebody has, they’ve got a great idea for a game, but they haven’t exposed themselves to a lot of other game types yet.

Trent Howell (14:20):

So they still think in their minds of Monopoly, okay. I grew up playing Monopoly and that’s what we refer to as more of a, a role-and-move game. I just rolled the dice and I moved to the space that it tells me to. There’s not a lot of choice. There’s not a lot of strategy. I just go. And somebody that has exposure to just Monopoly or a roll-and-move type game, they’re going to produce a game, which is same thing. It’s a board with a track around the outside. Then I move my piece around the board. Well, those don’t, those don’t do very well. Because they’re not engaging people’s choices. That’s what I’d say. If somebody’s got an idea, first thing to go is jump out on Kickstarter. Another great resource is a site called boardgamegeek.com. They are a repository or a database of essentially every game that’s ever been published.

Trent Howell (15:05):

And if you’ve got some idea, chances are there’s something out there that has been developed similar to it. So check those out first. But even within that, you can expand beyond it. A theme of a game can take it to another level. You may take just a simple two player back and forth game, but then put a theme on it. Like one of the games I love a two-player game is called Santorini. It’s an abstract strategy game, but they, but they put it around like Greek gods on the Island of Santorini and because of the theme and the style they put to it and the design and the, and the colors on the board and the artwork, it’s just a, a fun game to play visually as well as mentally and strategically because of that. So you can take a basic strategy concept and put a theme around it and have a new idea.

Jon Tota (15:51):

So checking out Kickstarter and you’re right. Some of some major games have started as Kickstarter campaigns, right? Yep. Yeah. Yep. And it’s a great place to get the prototype out there and know if there’s interest in that. And then what’d you say it’s a boardgamegeek.com. Yes. Yep. Yeah. I know I’ve checked them out too. And so that basically will give you an idea because every mechanic of the game has probably been done in one way or another. And it’s a matter of how do you have your own spin on that? How do you, how do you make it creative?

Trent Howell (16:21):

Yeah. And I, and I help people, people have reached out to me with questions and ideas and, and I’ll see an idea and it’s like, Oh yeah, that’s very similar to X, Y, and Z games. And you know, let them go check those out first before they iterate their ideas.

Jon Tota (16:34):

I want to ask you some different types of situations and what game you would recommend or some of the top ones, but first I know you’ve got the holiday gift guide out. It’s the 10th annual edition. Tell us a little bit about that. I’ve already got a number of games in my cart off of your gift guide. So I want to make sure our listeners know to go there. It’s a perfect time to buy some board games for the holidays. Tell us all about the guide.

Trent Howell (17:05):

Yeah. So we started doing this really the second year we’ve been doing reviews because we had done so many. We thought, well, let’s compile them together to say, Hey, here’s, since we’ve played hundreds of games this year, we’re going to narrow it down to 30 to 40 games in different categories. So I’ll typically put four games per category, and they’re usually games that have been published within the last two years. So they’re going to be new and fresh. And people may not have heard about them before rather than some of the old tried and true. So we’ll have a category of children’s games of dice games of two player games family games, of party games, and of cooperative games and probably four or five in each category that we’ll recommend. So you get a list of 30 to 40 games each year that are new games that we’ve played and really pass our sniff test of having a good balance between luck and strategy at different levels that we can see families can enjoy playing together in different situations like you mentioned.

Jon Tota (18:03):

And I know one of the things that you always touch on in your reviews, and I think it’s an interesting concept is replayability just tell our listeners, because that’s such an important piece of your reviews. I think what do you mean by that?

Trent Howell (18:14):

Oh, absolutely. It’s how many times you’re going to play the game or how open it is to replaying. So for example, there’s a bunch of a new trend has been escape room games where you’ll play a game and that’s pretty much a one and done type game. I’m going to play this escape room game. I’m going to learn the puzzles in it, but it’s not easy for me to play again because I know the answers to the puzzles versus a game that’s driven a lot of times on luck with the roll of the dice. It’s going to play out different every time. But the choices in the, in the game are interesting enough that I want to try it again, or I got close enough to winning last time that, yeah, I want to play that again. So that’s where we look for in replayability is something that we’re going to pull out again and again. Some games we’ll play and we either put it on the shelf or they go into our trade pile because we have hundreds of games that are in our game shelf so we’re ready for any situation. But a lot of those, because we’ve touched so many a year that we trade off and those are the ones typically that really aren’t engaging enough or compelling enough for us to say, Oh, I got to do that again.

Jon Tota (19:19):

I guess the only issue I’ve run into is that the replayability for my six year old is not necessarily the same as what I would see. [both laugh]

Trent Howell (19:28):

That’s true. That is true.

Jon Tota (19:32):

They play the same one over and over again. And I’m like, Oh man, we’ve just done the same game 20 times in a row, but it never gets old.

Trent Howell (19:38):

And what’s interesting though, at that age, they’re learning so much at a young age that they by re by repetition. They’re going to zero in on some of the things that they’re learning, some of the choices that they’re making in a game, you know, you start out with a game like Candyland, where they’re just learning to match their colors and move to the next space where then they move on to the choices that they can get in a game by how they move or whether they want to press their luck and roll the die one more time to see if they’re going to get the answer, you know, things that they’re learning that they don’t realize they’re learning like probabilities. Well, they’re not going to, you know, mathematically divine it, but intuition is coming about, Oh, what is my chance about, you know, going bust if I press my luck one more time.

Jon Tota (20:19):

Yeah. Yeah. And I, I’m always fascinated by how well they design these kid versions of the adult games that we all know like, like Catan and Carcassone and, and games like that, that everybody knows and plays like as an adult. And then they make a really good, easy version of it for kids, which is, which is always so great. So now I have to ask you, I’ve got five categories and we’re just going to go like lightning round. You tell me number one, favorite game at this moment in each of these categories. And for listeners, you just have to write these down as quickly as possible or, or rewind to listen, to try to answer it. All right. Number one, dice game?

Trent Howell (20:59):

King of Tokyo.

Jon Tota (21:00):

King of Tokyo. All right. Number two. Favorite co-op game?

Trent Howell (21:05):

Pandemic is a big one right now. There’s no doubt about it, right?

Jon Tota (21:08):

Yeah. That’s a good one. That’s a good one right now. Number three, your favorite party game. And specifically for the holidays, can people get together party, game?

Trent Howell (21:17):

Telestrations.

Jon Tota (21:19):

Telestrations. Number four, popular one favorite couples night game?

Trent Howell (21:25):

Code Names Duet.

Jon Tota (21:27):

Code Names Duet. And final number five best family game for kids of all ages?

Trent Howell (21:35):

Oh my goodness. There are so many, but I’m going to go with Forbidden Island.

Jon Tota (21:42):

Yeah. I love all the, I know, cause there’s a couple of different versions of that too, right?

Trent Howell (21:47):

Yeah. And what I like about that with that we haven’t touched on is it’s a cooperative game. So many people have bad memories from their childhood of playing games like Monopoly, where you get sore losers or winners, but cooperative games are another one that’s come on, really big in that it’s everybody against the game. You’ll take your turn and then you’ll do something that the game reacts back and something bad happens, but you all need to work together. And you typically have, uh, special abilities that you can move around. Forbidden Island is one, that’s approachable by kids as well, where the Island is flooding and sinking. And you’ve got to move around to find some treasures. But you talked about that as a group. It’s like, okay, well, what if I go over here and I do this on my turn, then you can do that on your turn. Okay. Yeah. Then we’ll solve this problem. Um, and it’s fun to do because there’s not a, a winner or loser. So if you’ve got someone that’s a child, that’s having a hard time dealing with how to lose and how to become a good sport, cooperative games are a great way to get started.

Jon Tota (22:42):

Yeah. You know, and it’s funny because I always try to guide my family games to the cooperative games, just so that my three sons don’t end up fighting, but it’s like, they don’t always want to do the cooperative game. They really want to beat each other. You know, like, come on, man. I don’t want it. Someone ends up in tears every time. And so, but yeah, so I love it. And so now the holiday gift guide is out now on the website. If our listeners want to just read all the reviews, get to the holiday gift guide is theboardgamefamily.com the place to go?

Trent Howell (23:17):

It is, yep. That’ll be right at the top of the page. We also keep a link in the navigation for boarding gift guide, which has the list of our past guides. So you can click back through if yeah, if you’re, like I said, 30 to 40 per year, and if you want to look over 10 years there, it gives you about 300, 400 games right there that are kind of our top of the tops to say these are all great games or would recommend.

Jon Tota (23:39):

Yeah. Yeah. And then to all of our listeners, I couldn’t recommend the site more. It’s it’s where I find all my games. And as I was saying to Trent earlier, I read the instructions on a game and then I read your review because I sometimes get a better set of instructions almost anecdotally from you guys explaining it than I get from the book in the board game. So thank you for doing it every time.

Trent Howell (24:02):

I appreciate that.

Jon Tota (24:03):

Yeah. It’s great. Well, listen, man, it’s great to have you on. Everyone- definitely check out The Board Game Family.com. Get a copy of the holiday gift guide. And Trent, thank you for taking time to be with us today.

Trent Howell (24:13):

All right. Thanks John. Glad I could be here.

Jon Tota (24:16):

And to all of our listeners. Thank you for joining us every week. As you know, we have a new episode that comes out every Tuesday, so wherever you’re listening, be sure to subscribe, leave us comments. We love to hear from all of you and until our next episode- Happy learning!

Podcasts

Episode 110: I Own Me with Faith Jones

Post author By syntax
Post date December 1, 2020
No Comments on Episode 110: I Own Me with Faith Jones

Faith Jones is back with a new book and valuable insight into human rights and the intersection of morality and legality.

Faith’s new five circle framework, called I Own Me, is a result of the first 22 years of her life spent within a religious cult called The Family. You own the rights to your own body. She encourages us to find the true power in owning yourself.

This framework applies to every facet of daily life. Whether someone is harassing you at the gym or someone is defaulting on your contract, the I Own Me framework can be applied.

Get Faith Jones’s book and learn more about her at faithjones.com or search for her on LinkedIn or Instagram.

This episode is sponsored by eLearning Brothers.
Visit www.learninglifeshow.com/elb for more information.

Check out this episode!

Download the PDF below.

Transcript

Jon Tota (00:00):

Faith Jones (00:24):

When we understand this concept, it gives us a different kind of clarity because I know it doesn’t matter if I leave my wallet out on the table or I paint my car, you know, a hot red that in no way, justifies somebody stealing it.

Intro (00:38):

Jon Tota (01:07):

Welcome to another episode of learning life. I’m your host, Jon Tota, and we’re happy to have you back this week. So any of our regular listeners will recall- we had an excellent guest on the show with us this past summer. Faith Jones is an acclaimed attorney, business strategist, and high-performance coach. She began her career as a corporate attorney for Skadden Arps in Los Angeles and Hong Kong; then went on to head up Walton & Walton’s corporate practice, helping startups to fortune five hundreds on expansion, joint ventures, mergers, and other growth activities. Today, Faith works directly with entrepreneurs on both their legal matters in their business and on a personal level as they develop as business leaders. But even more impressive is the movement Faith has created called I Own Me, which is about women’s empowerment, but it’s also rooted in her framework for property rights, which can be applied to all individuals and even our organizations today. Since we last spoke, Faith’s Ted Talk on the topic has released and quickly picked up almost 60,000 views. So we wanted to invite Faith back on with us to tell us what’s going on with ion me and how we can all implement this important framework into our own organizations. So Faith Jones, welcome back to Learning Life.

Faith Jones (02:15):

Hi Jon, thank you so much for having me back on. I’m excited to be here and share these ideas that I hope can help all of us gain more clarity in how we see ourselves and how we relate in our world in a healthy way.

Jon Tota (02:30):

Yeah. And so I am so impressed obviously with the Ted Talk, I’ve listened to it a few times. I think it’s been a huge hit. Can you just for context for our listeners, tell them a little bit about the Ted Talk and kind of your whole experience, what’s happened since you gave the I Own Me talk on the Ted stage and what’s going on with that? And then we’ll jump into the framework and, and how we can all use it.

Faith Jones (02:55):

Yeah. So be- having the opportunity to do a Ted Talk is of course, very exciting. And it gives us a way to get out our message to a larger audience. It was incredibly difficult to take these principles and cut them down into, you know, 10, 15 minutes, but it was an excellent exercise to do that. And since then, my book called I Own Me has also been published and it’s available on my website. And the, in this particular talk, and in the, in that book, I’m dealing with specifically with issues of how do we deal with sexual harassment and abuse and a number of different things that mostly women, but some men also experience. So it’s been wonderful for me to see the reaction and the number of people who have reached out to thank me for putting that up there. I’ve actually been surprised at how many men have said that it helped them a great deal. And I think that’s because there’s a lack of clarity in a lot of these areas around this topic and men appreciate having something concrete that helps them to see where the boundaries are.

Jon Tota (04:14):

And now I think- obviously it’s rooted in very much your personal experience and, and for everybody listening, we’ll in the show notes here, you’ll be able to link through and look at the Ted Talk, watch it firsthand so you have reference and also any of the, the framework graphics and things like that we’ll have available because this is very much rooted in, in the way that Faith delivers this on stage. And so now since the talk and the book has been out, what are you doing primarily to get this movement forward? And, and as you said, it’s really rooted in property rights and that can apply to everyone, not just women. How what’s the experience been since you’ve gotten so much more attention on, on I Own Me?

Faith Jones (04:58):

Well a number of people have come to me and said that they see this as an excellent foundation for organizational training and helping organizations to think through and impart to their people, these concepts and principles of really ethical principles of how do we live our lives and how do we operate in business. And also specifically giving people clarity because of the way the talk was designed around that sexual harassment issues. But I think it might be helpful if I just kind of break down for people a little bit more of the concept of the, of the framework and just to understand the concept of property rights in your body. Cause it is a little bit of a different way to look at this.

Jon Tota (05:52):

Yeah, let’s do that. Let’s talk about the whole concept of property rights from the ground up, because I think most of our listeners probably have an idea of what we’re getting at, but haven’t, they don’t have any context yet.

Faith Jones (06:04):

Yeah. So basically a few years ago I came across, I mean, I’ve been an attorney for over a decade, but I came across a unique idea of property rights as the foundation for morality. And that seed sparked my creation of this simple framework. And it gives me so much more clarity in how I see myself and relate in the world. So the basic concept is that I, as an aware, conscious being have a full property right in my own body. So in legal speak, my body is my property exclusively to control and benefit from. And that means that no one has a right to access it without my freely given permission. So when I’m talking about property here, I’m talking about personal property. A lot of times when we say the word property, people immediately think about what we in the law consider real property or land, but this is really about your personal property. It’s a slightly different category, I guess you could say. Now, some people object to my use of the word property in this context because they feel it demeans the nature of the body. But to me and in the law property is anything which has value. So it can be completely intangible. Like your reputation is your property, which is why slander, which is a violation of that is a violation of your property right in your reputation- something that has value that you’ve worked hard to build.

Jon Tota (07:34):

And so can I ask you a question on this? So now again, I think what’s interesting to this is that you’re almost applying the letter of the law to your own being your own body. And when people step over a boundary, whether it is through sexual harassment or as you mentioned, slavery, anything that violates your property rights to your own body, that legally by the letter of the law, you’re in violation of that. And that’s kind of the way that you’re looking at it or kind of the way that you’re basing this framework. Right?

Faith Jones (08:08):

So it’s interesting you asked that because this is actually what underlies the law. I’m not basing it on the law. I’m looking to how we, what under what lies under the law. So these are the principles on which we built the law, the law was to codify these principles. So and it does codify them, which is why violations of any of these principles are crimes. But we all recognize that we have this inherent right in our body. And that’s what we have built the law based on.

Jon Tota (08:44):

And like you’re saying like historically, they built these laws based on these principles, but when you’re talking hundreds of years ago, they left some important people out of the law in, in some cases because of, of what was, you know, the beliefs of the times. And now it’s almost looking at and saying, okay, well, if this is what the law was based on, and now fast forward to today, this is really how we should be looking at property rights in current day. Right?

Faith Jones (09:15):

Yeah. I mean, in this sense, so what happened is that, you know, especially for women and certain groups, what happened was women were considered property or for a much longer period of time while our laws were being written and built and while our societal customs were being created. And so that sort of underlying implication still exists in our society in many different levels, and even though it’s not currently on the books, so to speak, right. I mean, the fact that we haven’t passed the equal rights amendment and that our constitution does not say that all people are created equal instead of all men, right. That’s a big issue, but I think we as humans recognize that that’s not right.

Jon Tota (10:07):

Right. Right. And, and, and now when you talk about your framework, as it relates to property rights, take us through that a little bit, because this is where, when you give your talk and, and certainly in your book, this is where you’re kind of suggesting the, a new way for us to look at our own body, the ownership of our body, what we decide to do with it, or allow other people to do to us. Tell us a little bit about how the framework plays into that.

Faith Jones (10:35):

Absolutely. So for this particular, in, in the first circle where, which is the body violations of our property right in our body are crimes like assault, murder, rape slavery, and also even small acts that seem seemingly small acts of sexual harassment, right? Like if somebody grabs my butt. Why? Because they’re intentionally trespassing on my property without my permission for their own benefit or pleasure. I mean, this one concept released me from years of guilt and self blame when I was faced with sexual assault and harassment in my personal life. I now know that I never have to justify my right to the exclusive use and protection of my own property. So it doesn’t matter for instance, if, when we understand this concept, it gives us a different kind of clarity because I know it doesn’t matter if I leave my wallet out on the table or I paint my car, you know, a hot read that in no way, justifies somebody stealing it.

Faith Jones (11:33):

And I also have a clear, logical way to express that right to men, which gives me a lot more confidence in what can be very uncomfortable situations. We all think that everybody has the same understanding of right and wrong. But how can we, when we come from totally different family situations, cultures, religions, backgrounds. What is considered “normal” quote, unquote behavior can be vastly different. I lived in China for years and in China, children are taught to copy the teacher or the master over and over until they can do it perfectly. But when they come to America and they copy a paper they’re plagiarizing, right? We have a totally different standard for behavior that doesn’t translate unless we have a way to express it. So this framework is a tool it’s really just a set of simple, clear principles that even an eight year old can understand.

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Jon Tota (13:27):

We’re becoming much more of a global society where it’s so much easier to interact. You know, whether you are physically traveling around the globe or doing video calls and remote sessions with people in different parts of the world. And as you interact with people, cultures are so different, as you said, but with China and, and all cultures around the world, the way that we think about property rights and the way that we interact with each other individually and as organizations that it’s probably even more important today to have some common framework that really is bigger than just one culture or one society. And are you seeing that now that there’s more need for this because of the amount of the amount that I guess this generation particularly is becoming more and more global?

Faith Jones (14:20):

Absolutely. And it’s, it’s not, we’re more global, but there’s also less of a sense of objectivity perhaps in right and wrong, where it’s like, ‘Oh, well, that’s based on that religion and I don’t believe in that religion’ or, you know, whatever. It’s, there’s less at this place where people feel like they have a really clear standard or framework that they can defend based on a logical foundation. So that’s what I’m very happy that this can provide to us. And I also use it interestingly enough, as a backbone of the personal development training that I give to leaders. So for instance if I own my own body, I also own everything my body does, which means I own my thoughts, actions and emotions. And what does this do? One young man came up to me after my presentation. He was like, Oh my, I get it.

Faith Jones (15:13):

If I own my body and emotions, then I alone am responsible for my happiness and choices. So if I blame somebody else for my current emotional state, I’m putting my happiness and the power over my own emotional state in their hands. I can only take back my power when I accept full responsibility for my own happiness, regardless of what someone did or didn’t do. So I use this framework when I coach leadership, because before I can deal with a CEO’s issues in their management of their employees, they first need to accept and learn self-management. So they first have to accept responsibility for their own emotions and actions. And when they do, they’re more open to learning like emotional intelligence techniques, and that ends up having even a far greater impact on their employees.

Jon Tota (16:02):

And, and so on that point, cause I know you mentioned this in your, in your Ted Talk and what I kind of had the immediate reaction to that was that when you are acting in a certain way or you’re in a certain situation or potentially that you are overstepping the boundaries of someone else’s property rights, that you have to take ownership of your own actions, responsibility for your own actions, acknowledge it and understand what you’re doing. And, and like you said, you know, own your own happiness and all of that too, but is it also the other side of it is that people need to know what they’re doing with their own body, whether it’s good or bad and accepting the responsibility.

Faith Jones (16:46):

Absolutely. So if I fully own something, right, yes, that’s great. I get to direct and control it and decide who touches it and who doesn’t, but at the same point, I’m also fully responsible for it. So but basically I’ll take you quickly through the, we’ve talked about the first one. I’ll take you quickly through the next one, which is principle three- I own what I create. So if I own what I do right then I also own everything that I create. If I own a fruit tree, I own the fruit it produces. So I own the services I provide as a lawyer. I own the products that I invent. I own the books I write. So while nobody else can own our body, we can license the use of our body, mind time, expertise, right? For agreed upon periods in exchange for something else we value. That’s basically what an employment contract is. And violations of the property right, this particular property right in our creations are crimes like theft, slander, which we talked about, copyright or patent infringement. And on the personal development side, this also shows why I must accept ownership and responsibility for my results. So I’m responsible for them.

Jon Tota (17:56):

When you’re referring to the things that you create, like you said, it’s the results that you create. It’s not necessarily always, like, I think most people probably automatically think tangible things you create, but you can also create byproducts just because of the way you’re acting and things you do. There’s the, there are things created out of that and you have to own all of that.

Faith Jones (18:18):

Right. And that what you’re talking about is the effect, and that’s the fifth circle. That’s the fifth circle, which we’ll get to. And that’s a very important element in the law and in our day-to-day practice. But before we get to the fifth element, we’ve got the fourth one, and this one is huge because this is when I own something – this is the principle of deals and relationships because when I own something, I can exchange it to get something else I want. So law school taught me something that I think every single person absolutely should know. And these are the five elements of a valid deal or contract. And they’re critical because our entire society is based on property rights and exchanges. Every relationship, every business deal, every contract you are entering into contracts continuously all the time, all day that you probably have no idea of. When you take a ticket from a parking garage meter, that’s a contract.

Faith Jones (19:13):

So the five elements of a contract are an offer with clear object, willing acceptance, an exchange of value, mental ability to understand the deal, right. And no undue pressure. This is something I think should really be taught to every employee because you don’t want them accidentally getting the company into hot water. Basically. I see it all the time, you know, in the companies I work with, they, when they send me contracts and I’m like, Hey, do we have to fulfill this? Can you review it? Right. Like sure. But if they all understood the basic elements of a contract, it would make my job a lot easier. Right. So violations of this thing are things like blackmail fraud, breach of contract, those all fall into that that category.

Jon Tota (19:57):

And, and this is you know, and I think this component, you think of the deal circle is pretty timely right now, considering that at the time that we’re recording this president Trump was just acquitted you know, on the impeachment charges. But a lot of that was, or based on overuse of his power of potentially overstepping a boundary there and implying that you wouldn’t get certain things on, in a deal if you didn’t come through on something else that he wanted, whether or not anybody agrees with the terms of all this. But that’s kind of the same thing of forcing someone into doing something without maybe necessarily saying it, but just using the leverage of who you are.

Faith Jones (20:42):

Yeah. So that applies very strongly in a concept of the that’s the undue pressure concept or the manipulation concept. Right? So whether or not, you know, that whether or not any of that happened or not, I’m not going to debate on a call, but but when you think about the, the, the principle of undue pressure, right, what does that mean? It means applying negative pressure to force someone to do something they would not otherwise do. And if you violate that you’re violating the laws of the deal. Okay. Now in a relationships and emotional exchanges, if we’re using things like guilt lies, peer pressure, to try to get someone to do what we want, we’re actually stealing from each other. So rather than looking at the big political picture, I think if we even look at just in our day-to-day interactions, you know, if I demand, somebody helped me at work. So rather than demanding that someone helped me at work, I recognize wait, they own themselves. They don’t have to do it. It’s not in their job description. So if they can’t help me, I’m not angry, right. If they’re too busy or something, and if they do help me, then I have a lot more gratitude to them for actually doing that. And, you know, I might also think about incentives rather than demands. Right. I might incentivize them with some donuts. [laughs]

Jon Tota (22:06):

Right, right. And it changes the way that I guess this implies a little bit along the lines of how you persuade someone to do the things you want, rather than using leverage and power or guilt trip. It could be as simple as, you know, you’re a parent guilting a child into doing what they think is right. But instead, trying to get people to make the choice on their own, because they have to choose to do it with their body on their, on their terms to do the right thing. And whether they agree with you or not is up to them.

Faith Jones (22:43):

Yeah. Creating positive incentives and clear explanations of the benefits can help that rather than just kind of anger, demand or guilt. So people who are in good people who are really good at interpersonal relationships, they seem to sort of naturally understand this balance.

Jon Tota (23:02):

Right.

Faith Jones (23:03):

But not everybody grew up with good examples of give and take or of healthy exchanges and boundaries or of creating win-win outcomes. So for those of us who didn’t grow up seeing that all the time, this gives us a roadmap, it gives us a little help. What do those look like? What underlies those kinds of healthy relationships and tell you what it gives you so much freedom because you’re not falling for the guilt and the manipulation anymore. You recognize it. You recognize, I recognize I’m free to pick the option that’s best for me, as long as I’m not violating the rights of others. So it just gives me so much more freedom in my daily interactions and allows me to really pick the things that are going to contribute the most to my own success.

Jon Tota (23:49):

Right. Right. And now, now let’s talk about the final outer ring of effect.

Faith Jones (23:55):

So in the law violations of this principle deal with how much responsibility you have for something you contribute to, but are not fully within your control. So for instance, if a leader tells his followers to go kill somebody, even if he doesn’t pull the trigger himself, he also bears responsibility. If in product liability, if the company knows that there is a risk that the product can be used in a way that it will hurt people and they don’t take steps to reduce that risk, right. Then they are also, they’ve violated this principle, right? They’re not fully responsible for the harm. Maybe the person was driving their car too fast, but if they know that if they’re driving their car too fast and they hit it at a particular point on the bumper, or the car is going to explode instead of just, you know, getting a dented fender, then that is something that they are responsible for as well.

Faith Jones (24:48):

See. So it gives you a way to explain that to people in a clear way. So this ring really addresses what is our overall impact for either good or harm for our creations and our deals that we make, you know. Not just what is the impact we intend, but what is the actual impact? And the interesting thing is, as you notice, as you move outward in the rings, your individual control lessens. Your full ownership of the outcome and the reward decreases. You’re basically sharing ownership and responsibility with others. So it gives us a clear way to like, think about this visually as well.

Jon Tota (25:23):

Right. Right. And, and, and they, it’s kind of all cause and effect in a way, right? Because it, as you go out each ring it’s further and further extended to your interpersonal interactions with everyone around you.

Faith Jones (25:39):

Right. So it starts first with your awareness of your consciousness. That’s the, you know, that’s fully within you, right. And then you’ve got your body. And then the things that you create where you might need inputs from other people to create those things. And then the deals, once you start making a deal or an exchange, and there’s at least two people in that scenario. Right. And then impact can be massive. It could be worldwide. Right. So that’s how it gives us a way to think about us in our responsibility and relationships to other people as well. But there’s something really cool about this that I saw when I first created the diagram. Violations of each of these spheres of property rights are crimes. And these are crimes all over the world in every country, which means there’s kind of a universal set of principles of how we think about this. Now they’re not all applied the same; cultures are different. But these types of crimes exist everywhere. So with this understanding, I realized I could simplify the law onto a single piece of paper.

Jon Tota (26:40):

Yeah. I think, I think it’s fascinating too, for that perspective. Exactly. Like you said, is that the one thing that is consistent across all cultures is that violations on any one of these rings, it would be a violation or a legal violation, a crime in any society. And so why wouldn’t we act within this framework in all cases?

Faith Jones (27:07):

Exactly. It gives us a way to kind of, it gives us a really clear logical standard that we can teach our kids and that we can use when we’re making decisions. It acts as a kind of a lens to assess each of our actions and make better decisions because that’s what we’re all trying to do. We’re all trying to make better decisions.

Jon Tota (27:26):

Right. Right. And I, and I think you’ve done such a nice job of summing something up that could be really complicated and hits on so many different levels, but you can consume it in one graphic like this and really understand it. So I, you know, I thank you so much for coming back on because we didn’t get to talk about all of this stuff in the first episode that you did with us on Learning Life. And I love this now for all of our listeners who are interested in what you’re talking about. Obviously we will have the links that they can jump right over to the TEDx talk, listen to that. Then also download the framework and start to understand it better. The book, I think is obviously core to all of this. If they want to get the book find out more about you and what you’re doing as far as consulting workshops, things like that. Where’s the best place for them to go to know more about Faith Jones?

Faith Jones (28:19):

Please reach out to me on my website. It is just faith jones.com. So very easy. I have a contact form on there if you want to reach out to me about doing keynote speeches or workshops or gaining materials or training your HR people and the people who are in charge of organizational development, feel free to contact me from my website. Just, you know, there’s a contact form on the website, fill it in, send me a quick email and I will definitely get back to you.

Jon Tota (28:49):

Awesome. Awesome. So for everyone, definitely check out faith jones.com and your book it’s available obviously through the website, but also Amazon or wherever else people are getting books?

Faith Jones (29:01):

No, it’s only available on the website.

Jon Tota (29:03):

Cool. So if people are interested in the book website and on where’s the best way to follow you on social media is LinkedIn the best place for you?

Faith Jones (29:12):

Okay. Yeah. I’m on LinkedIn and also on Instagram. So you can reach me there. Faith Jones – I Own Me, if you just look up that it’ll pop up.

Jon Tota (29:25):

Awesome. Well, Faith, thank you so much for coming back on and sharing all of this and congrats on all the success. It’s so great to see the traction that you’re getting with such an important topic.

Faith Jones (29:36):

Thank you so much, Jon, for having me on and giving me the opportunity to share this with your amazing audience.

Jon Tota (29:44):

Yes, and for all of our listeners. Thank you all for coming back every week and listening to these episodes and wherever you’re listening, be sure to subscribe and leave us comments. We’d love to hear from our listeners and until our next episode, happy learning.