How Leaders Think with Kenny Lange

Alex Dzierbicki [00:00:00]:
I'm a ruthlessly pursue economic equity via the empowerment of virtues driven business owners. And I'm willing to trade business like if that means that I'm going to make 20% less worth it, worth it a hundred times over. And I'm willing to trade that. But the irony of all of this is that when people hear that, they want to work with me, right? Like they, they people are like, oh, hell yeah, I'm on board.

Kenny Lange [00:00:26]:
Welcome to the How Leaders Think podcast, a show that transforms you by renewing your mind and giving you new ways to. I am your host, Kenny Lang, and with me today is the Alex Zerbicki. He is an investor, he is a business owner, he's a founder. He's just a really smart dude. But he is the founder of Modus and a recovering finance professional. I think we're all recovering from finance professionals. He's only interested in helping those who will help others. He loves long walks on the beach, which is nice and speculative mathematics, so maybe we'll figure out a way to bring that in.

Kenny Lange [00:01:05]:
But welcome to the show, Alex.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:01:07]:
Thank you very much for having me. I'm excited to talk more about the speculative math than the long walks on the beach. But both are good.

Kenny Lange [00:01:15]:
Both are good. And sometimes I would imagine you're contemplating and you're doing like math proofs in your head whilst on the beach. That's just a good time to let the brain expand and ponder. Or you end up looking like that gif where someone's puzzled and then all the math symbols are flying out at them. So whoever is listening, whichever person you are, this should be fun. Well, tell me, Alex, what is on your mind?

Alex Dzierbicki [00:01:50]:
So many things, but mainly I'm. I've been thinking about and infatuated with the fact that a lot of business leaders for profit and nonprofit, they feel like there is a trade off between virtues and profits slash returns. Right. The rhetoric is I can either pursue what I want to pursue or I can make money. And that is a fallacy. That trade off is a fallacy. And I spend a lot of time telling people that they need to like, shatter that paradigm in their head.

Kenny Lange [00:02:29]:
That'll preach. Yeah. So we. This may be turned into a miniseries or something like the Joe Rogan Experience. And we're going to be here for three hours. We'll invite Terrence Howard to join us later in the program, but I'm sure he's got Tell me so. I mean, you've already sort of said what the current thinking or the prevailing wisdom is, but where do you think that sort of thinking of I've either got to do something of value and that is maybe virtuous or altruistic or whatever term somebody wants to use or make profits and have a healthy, thriving business. Where is that rooted?

Alex Dzierbicki [00:03:16]:
Where's it rooted? Ah, this is 100% my opinion, by the way. This is not data, but in my opinion it's rooted in shareholder theory. So the fact that the American economy, capitalism, which is great by the way, I am not anti capitalist, but the American economy, the capitalist economy is rooted in maximizing profit to go to your shareholders, I think is the limiting belief that started this. People feel like their own interests are superseded by that of profit and that of shareholder returns, even if you're not a publicly traded company. But everybody in capitalism follows the publicly traded companies. Right. Like they, they set the pace for the entire economy. So we're all in this era of like having hard ons for these business magnates and the.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:04:11]:
They're probably not living their truth. Some are, some are. I'm not here to attack anybody, but it's this kind of derivative thinking from that all the way down to middle market, small market, micro market, nonprofit market. And I spend a lot of time questioning the assumptions of the people that I talk to around this topic. If you were to pivot and go in this, you know, ethos like heart centered, purpose driven direction, what would happen? And when you really get to tangibly talking about that with folks, it's pretty easy to pull apart those assumptions a lot of the time and they're rooted in nothing more but I don't know, Internet rhetoric.

Kenny Lange [00:04:58]:
Yeah. Or the latest entrepreneur Forbes magazine article that is putting the CEO, founder or executive up on a pedestal. And do I think that we should be learning from those that are seeing a high degree of financial success in their enterprise? 100%. I think that there's something that we can learn from everybody. But do I think that we should go, oh, well, that worked for them, Therefore it'll absolutely 100 work for 100% work for me. And not only will it work, but that is the way I should be thinking about it. I should be doing it. That, that it's almost a form of indoctrination.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:05:43]:
Great word.

Kenny Lange [00:05:46]:
I went to college for these sort of words. My dad would be proud right now. Speech, communication, everybody. It's the future and the past. So in the past. Yeah, yeah. What do you mean about oral tradition? Is that like brushing your teeth? Like oral beat? No, it's not. It's storytelling, friend.

Kenny Lange [00:06:08]:
So when we're thinking about all these things that trickle down, one of the problems I have with it, in addition to what you've said, and maybe these are tied together, is, you know, like, for instance, we're recording this a day or two after Apple's annual like iPhone release. Now those are like little micro holidays for me. I'm an Apple fanboy. I love the products and the ecosystem. That being said, there's so many people who would look to, well, how is Apple doing it? And I was like, you're making half a million a year. Your problems, your scenarios, your environment is nothing like theirs. That doesn't mean you can't be inspired by them. But I think when we look at these publicly traded companies, which are typically very large, but they are in the minority, if, let's just take the US Breakdown of businesses is, and I forget what the exact numbers are, but I want to say it's what, like 80 to 90% of all businesses in the US qualify as a small business, right?

Alex Dzierbicki [00:07:26]:
Yep.

Kenny Lange [00:07:26]:
So our problems and our challenges and our whatever we need to do are not the same as theirs. And do you think that that's part of us conflating that like all business is the same and we should all be doing the exact same things at the exact same time and only doing those things that maybe the, the top 1% wealthiest companies are doing?

Alex Dzierbicki [00:07:50]:
So I think what you're saying is absolutely true. The economies of scale apply to business practices. But else, I'm a big pluralist. So I believe more than one thing can be true here. And I think what's also true is that Steve Jobs and the genesis of Apple was rooted in un compromising ethos and values. They were like, we, we will build this company on innovation and we will sacrifice all else. That's a hell of a trade. And so, yeah, like the, should we be looking at what they're doing for success? Sure.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:08:29]:
But at the heart of that, it's Steve Jobs knew who he was and he knew who his company needed to be in terms of culture and people, and he shamelessly, ruthlessly pursued that. And I think that's a big part of why Apple was successful in the first place. And it's an example of why I'm so resolute in my belief that following the values is the way. It's not either or. You have to start from and stay at that heart center. Now, some people's values are downright rotten. There are some businesses and business leaders that are just doing some bad stuff out there and it's our job as hopefully critically thinking independent business leader folk to kind of read between the lines. Right.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:09:25]:
Like it is.

Kenny Lange [00:09:26]:
Yeah.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:09:27]:
Did this company get rich by doing large scale tax evasion or by gouging the wages of their employees? I'm not saying Apple did that, I'm just speaking in general. But like did this company that I'm reading about do stuff that's really messed up to get their success? And if, if the answer is yes, then why the hell are we even talking about anything else that has to do with that company? Like we right down.

Kenny Lange [00:09:49]:
Right. And this is where in a lot of my discussions with, with clients with prospects is a lot about balancing that, that purpose with performance. And for a lot of them that are like you said, those heart centered, more purpose driven individuals, whether you're for profit or nonprofit. I'm in a for, I run a for profit company. You run a for profit company, like. But I would say that we're purpose driven and not too dissimilar from Steve Jobs in the sense of clarity of ethos and identity and those sort of things. So I think if we can, to use a term that apparently is only prevalent in the south, but chew up the meat, spit out the bone of we don't have being values driven doesn't mean that we have to adopt somebody else's values because they reached a level of success is it's not Steve Jobs's values that led to necessarily to Apple's success, but the fact that he was crystal clear on those values and as you said, ruthlessly adhered to them to the, to where they actually impacted, infiltrated and were integrated in every action he took. It's that that led to the, the performance side of things.

Kenny Lange [00:11:19]:
And what I hear you saying is too many people have either tried to falsely adopt someone else's identity that isn't their own, or they're chasing performance of somebody else, but it's totally detached from who they are and they wonder why they're not getting the ROI that they expect for their level of effort.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:11:45]:
Correct? Absolutely correct. And shareholder theory, which I mentioned earlier, it holds profit above all else. So shareholder theory says chase profit ahead of employee wellbeing, customer wellbeing, personal and professional values. Right. Like when it comes down to it, profit reigns supreme in that model. And the basically the thinking is do everything you can within the bounds of law to maximize profit. And if we really get down to the nitty gritty there, that means we trade stuff for profit. And I think that too many people don't realize that profit and returns should be a positive outcome.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:12:34]:
That could, should be a positive externality, but it should be the focal point. If you say, if I say, what's your infinite pursuit? What is the thing that you will pursue always in the business world?

Kenny Lange [00:12:44]:
What would you say for me?

Alex Dzierbicki [00:12:48]:
Yes, you.

Kenny Lange [00:12:49]:
Oh, okay. I thought maybe we're just asking the general listener. I was like, we may be waiting here a while to hear them respond. Unless you're like Superman, you can hear, I mean mine at a very high level is, is going to be impact ultimately with that. If we're just putting this into the context of business, is going to be significant and positive impact on kids from hard places.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:13:16]:
Amazing. That has no finite timeline on it. That has no numeric benchmark on it. That is just, you can't save all the kids, but you're going to run in that direction and damn it, you're going to save as many as you can for as long as your ticket, right? That is an infinite pursuit. Profit, returns, scale, growth, those are not infinite pursuits. Those are finite pursuits. And businesses need both. So like for me, I want to create economic equity by empowering virtuous business leaders to win the game of capitalism.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:13:51]:
I'm going to do that as long as I've got air in my lungs. But I have finite pursuits too, right? Do I want to make a certain amount of income and have a certain amount of clients next year? Absolutely, you need both. Like we have to do both. And the problem with the shareholders theory and part of why the current thinking is limited on this is that people say that Our mission is 10 million in revenue. Our purpose is 10 million in revenue. It's not, that's false. That's a non compelling, that's not an infinite pursuit. Our infinite pursuit should be something else.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:14:19]:
And then along the way we want to get 10 million in revenue or a thousand clients or whatever.

Kenny Lange [00:14:24]:
The thing is, right, I have a lot of clients when I'm working with them. And as a matter of fact, I was running a workshop for a CEO group and was just doing like a short version of what normally is like a two day experience. And we come to this place of what in system and soul, in that framework we call the destination statement. It's not meant to be necessarily the infinite pursuit, but it is that sort of like if we pick up a stick, we throw it a long ways away, it's that long term, that 10 year, that, that big thing. And I had them all write it down and this one guy who's a VP and he he said, well, we want to be a $100 million company. I go, great. Why? He's like. And he happened to be the VP of sales.

Kenny Lange [00:15:19]:
So that, that made, that made sense. But he, I said, okay, what's significant about that? He goes, well, because that there's more than we're making now. And I was like, okay, that's great. I have no problem with you making more money or making $100 million or $1 billion. I said, but why does that matter? He goes, oh, well, I guess if we had profit, you know, more profit, we can invest more back into the people and everything. Because I was asking, I was like, why does your frontline worker care about you being $100 million company? And what I come back to is this phrase that my coach shares a lot of times is as business owners or even business leaders, like you could lead a department of division or something like that and still lead from this place, even if those around you don't. Is we've got to create a story where everybody can find their role in it. Because when we talk about it's got to be 10 million in revenue or we're going to be a 30% margin or we're going to do this.

Kenny Lange [00:16:26]:
Well, typically that's really only interesting to the executive suite, to the shareholders. To those.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:16:32]:
To the shareholders.

Kenny Lange [00:16:32]:
To shareholders, right? Yeah. It's only if you're public. Right. Like to those shareholders, if you have a board. Right. And whether or not they're taking distributions or anything like that, then that's important. But that's not compelling, it's not motivating. Now, he happened to have a colleague in the room who was catching what I was throwing out and she talked about being a hundred million dollar woman owned company.

Kenny Lange [00:17:03]:
And I was like, okay, well that's interesting. Let's talk about that. It's that there were some significance. It was a family owned business that had been handed down and it was owned by her father. And I was like, okay, well that's cool, because you want to create some significance for women executives. And it was in a manufacturing space which obviously the vast majority of CEOs and owners are not female. And I was like, okay, that's something significant. You want to show other females, you want to show, I think they have at least one little girl, the CEO, she wants to set this example of, look, you can go and do and build something that is huge and you can try to take care of people and you can do it in a space that maybe isn't historically female owned.

Kenny Lange [00:17:51]:
I Was like, if you're chasing that, then let's get on board. Like, let's do that. That's compelling. That's, you know, I'm sure that there's some finite isms about that. So I hear a lot of what you're saying where shareholder theory is an either or and there are trade offs. I talk to people about that all the time in coaching. I'm sure you do too. Especially if you're getting into the world of finances.

Kenny Lange [00:18:19]:
You can't spend all of your money on this and this equally. Like there's not an infinite amount of cash or capital. There's trade offs everywhere. But I hear you saying something and maybe you can help me and the listeners reconcile this of if we're saying that there are trade offs, how do we have a both and mentality? Which is what I hear you saying. How do you balance trade offs with both and thinking.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:18:50]:
Great question. And I think it's the mental dilemma behind everything we're talking about here. The trade off should be, I guess, part of the ethos and the awareness. So Zuckerberg's a great example of this, right? Their mantra when they were scaling right now, for what it's worth, I don't really care about Facebook or Zuck, but like he's built a really big business and. But what? One of the things he said was their mantra during their scale was move fast and break things. And somebody asked him about that and he was like, if you're gonna say, if you're gonna lay out your mission statement for your company and you say we want to be the highest quality and the best customer service and the fastest and the most economic and the blah, blah, blah, that's aspirational, it's garbage. But if you lay out your vision and you, you are going to say in your vision or your mission, whichever one, what you're willing to trade for the thing you want to accomplish, that's compelling, it's true. So he didn't say we want to move fast enough to maximize speed without breaking anything.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:19:54]:
That's not compelling. That's not interesting. He said we are going to move fast at the cost of breaking things when that happens. Right. Like we're, we're willing to incur the cost of doing stuff wrong to prioritize speed. And then if so if we take the central message with disregard, move fast and break things. But if we take the central method message and say I want to take a women owned business to a hundred million dollars, like you're the person in your Workshop. What are you willing to trade for that? It means that number one we probably have to change the way that we think about the ownership and who the shareholders are.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:20:33]:
But it also means we probably have to think about who we hire and the people, everybody we hire is probably going to need to be compelled by that message. Like all right, I love women owned businesses personally. I think the culture is notably different and stronger a lot of the time. And I would, I would love like Kendra Scott. I don't care about jewelry, like I could not care less about that industry. But she's out there. She built a billion dollar business in, in a competitive market where you know, women, women live in there. But she, she won, she won that game.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:21:08]:
And like that's really compelling to me. And so bringing this back to trade offs versus either or if you say we are going to ruthlessly pursue, for me, right, I'm a ruthlessly pursue economic equity via the empowerment of virtues driven business owners. And I'm willing to trade business like if that means that I'm going to make 20% less where my book's going to be 20% less, smaller, worth it, worth it a hundred times over. And I'm willing to trade that. But the irony of all of this is that when people hear that they want to work with me, right, like they, they people are like oh hell yeah, I'm on board. Right. And, and so the, the irony, the, the, the reconciliation of the trade off and the bulls am thinking is profits will come if you ruthlessly pursue what's right for you. If you do it right and you execute, profits will come.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:22:04]:
And I'm not here to say I'm not prosperity gospel. I'm not saying it's all going to work out but I am saying that the most notable returns come from businesses and individuals who ruthlessly pursued whatever that value statement is at the cost of something else. And then they got both right.

Kenny Lange [00:22:24]:
But, and it wasn't even necessarily pursuing both. It was, it was the first thing led to the, it was the big domino that got pushed and people think no no, no, skip, skip all these domino, I just want this last one right here. And you just keep pushing and pushing and pushing and it never falls over. Whereas if you would push over identity, the infinite thinking, kind of like Simon Sinek's the infinite Game, all those things like if you push that domino over, then the other dominoes that you're wanting will get pushed over. Most people aren't connecting the through line of those things and understanding that you might have a You might be leaving some money on the table and would you be okay with that? Because I think you know money and I know other people have different relationships to money and that's fine. We look, money is the most tangible measurement of, I'm going to say of scale. I don't think it's of success because you could screw people over all day long. Like you said, is, is grow unethically or I mean you could operate inside the bounds of ethics like you mentioned.

Kenny Lange [00:23:42]:
But then you get into the battle of ethics versus morality. Like is it a ethically and morally sound decision? Like it may be legally an okay and acceptable thing, but morally or socially, was it the right thing to do? Like ethically you could never give a return on things, on products that are defective or whatever. Like maybe you had it all in the fine print and lawyer eased your way into something. But was it, were you doing right by your customers or your clients or anything? And you say no, then that's where you tread into this weird ground. Something you said about those trade offs made me think of and I don't know where it got started, but it's like you can have somebody had put it up in their store. It's like you can have it fast, cheap or good and you only get to pick two of them.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:24:41]:
Yep.

Kenny Lange [00:24:41]:
Right. And I think it's, it's number one coming to terms. What I hear you saying is coming to terms with that reality. Number one, it's just you can't be everything all the time, especially early on. You just do not have the resources. But two is, is not just accepting that reality is not just saying that is reality. But two saying. And you know what? That, that trade off is the one that I'm, I am okay and willing to make like I, I understood having.

Kenny Lange [00:25:14]:
You know, we were talking about, I don't know if we had recorded this but you know, talking about I have kids and, and you were saying, well, I'm not, not a parent yet, but I can imagine these things is. Well, I've chosen to have like five kids in the house. Therefore I have accepted that I will not have fun. No, I'm just kidding. Sleep baby.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:25:35]:
But won't sleep, baby.

Kenny Lange [00:25:36]:
Yeah, sleep. But I, I've accepted that that means that I'm, I'm probably at least for right now not. I'm not going to have like the nicest car. I'm not going to have the cleanest house. I'm not going to have the least complex schedule out there and there's a lot of Control I'm not going to have, but because part of mine and my wife's ethos within our family of doing hard things and loving kids from hard places and doing things like that has meant that not in addition to our three bio kids, we fostered 18 kids, we adopted two kids, we've brought chaos into the home and said we're okay with this trade off because of what is true to us. Which I love that you're using the word ruthless like that resonates with me. Other people may choose to interpret that as you could be ruthlessly authentic. Which actually in my opinion speaks to the term integrity, which I normally steer people away from when they're choosing their core values is like we value honesty and integrity.

Kenny Lange [00:26:43]:
Well, I sure as hell hope so. Like you're not going to value dishonesty and two facedness, but integrity meaning really being of one. Like there, there is an alignment between word and action. And I hear you saying like there is a ruthless adherence to the integrity of who you are and what you do.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:27:06]:
Yeah. And why you do it.

Kenny Lange [00:27:07]:
And it sounds like that's what you are not just advocating for but also the way in which you're choosing to engage with these business owners. And I'd be curious and saying that on the surface I can't imagine a single person going, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Alex, who in the hell wants to do that? Everybody. Even those who don't operate that way would probably be, yeah, absolutely, that's a great thing. You know, they're probably virtue signaling, but that's amazing. But if everybody was doing that, you, it would take all of the sort of the teeth and the urgency out of your mission. So what is, what is this way of thinking? What is it costing people? And then why, what is the bridge you are helping these people to cross that may give lip service to that level of ruthless integrity or authenticity, but they're not crossing it for whatever reason and maybe they want to.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:28:15]:
Great question. What's it costing people? It's costing them gray hair and stress. Yeah, totally. And again, for what it's worth, I think you're living in integrity. But it is really stressful to live in like the ruthlessly profit seeking world. Right. Like it is, it's hard. And you see people, you know, even the people who win the game of capitalism, like you see a lot of them got a lot of gray hair, got a lot of dark circles under their eyes, they don't want to do it super long being a CEO of Fortune 500 companies super hard.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:28:59]:
So what it's costing them, in my opinion can't be measured in money unless you wanted to go down. Like the healthcare and self work type of budget thing. But it's more qualitative and it's more felt. But more importantly, how to bridge the gap. Being ruthlessly profit seeking is squashing everything that stands in your way of making money. Being ruthlessly values driven is questioning your own assumptions and stories that you tell yourself, right? So if you say we value integrity and honesty, great look in the mirror and tell yourself without anybody around how you do that, like if, is that a guiding light in your organization? Do you, if you screw and this is not you, but like in general, if you screw up with a customer or an account and your, your employee or team member comes to you and says, what should I do? And you say throw it up. Like, do you, do you really value integrity and honesty? Like is that written in? Or do you say, hey, go wear that, go own it, take responsibility, give up. Like stand in that moment and say, I was wrong, we were wrong, we messed up.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:30:15]:
And you know we're going to do our best to make it up to you. But like, we really appreciate it if you like took a discount and we could like continue this. You know what I'm saying? Like if you're not questioning your assumptions and you're not questioning the stories that you're telling yourself and others, you can't build this thing outward. It lives in there with you and the stories that you tell yourself.

Kenny Lange [00:30:39]:
I 1 maybe we just found the title of the episode Ruthlessly Values Driven. I love that maybe we'll title that as a course, but I think that there are. Man, there's so many different directions. I want to take this because some of it is hitting on some conversations outside of this that have I've been having with people. The founding pastor of the church I go to has said many times, and so it's lodged in my head is that squeezing a tube of toothpaste does not create the toothpaste, it simply reveals what's inside.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:31:18]:
Great, great metaphor.

Kenny Lange [00:31:20]:
And what I hear you saying is when we get squeezed, it's not if, it's when we get squeezed in business. Are we still willing to be ruthlessly values driven and adhere to these things and understand the trade off even in those more painful moments that we didn't choose because those are different. And I think that there could be a part two on contrasting those. If someone is listening and they say, hey, I want to be I want to be this way. I want to live this way. I want to operate my business or department this way. What's the first step, A baby step someone can take in the next 24 hours, little to no money to make progress towards this way of living?

Alex Dzierbicki [00:32:09]:
Absolutely. Write down somewhere your infinite pursuit, your finite pursuits, your personal and professional values, and then how your operating method, whatever that might be, informs or doesn't all of the ethos elements. If everything that you do is aligned with your ethos, that's awesome. It's probably not. And that's okay. Be kind to yourself. But question. But question if, if those things are aligned and if they're not, spend some time reflecting on what you're willing to trade to get them aligned.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:32:49]:
And if you're really clear on those elements, you can make a lot of progress really quickly without any technical stuff or platforms or anything like that because you will have clarity of vision in mind.

Kenny Lange [00:33:02]:
I, I love that and that that is simple. Simple, maybe difficult to confront, but simple to do. If people want to know more about you, more about modus, like where should they be connecting with you and finding those things out. Yeah.

Alex Dzierbicki [00:33:17]:
Thank you. Best places on LinkedIn. Search my name, get on LinkedIn and check me out. I talk about this stuff quite a lot and feel free to send me a message. I'm happy to, happy to pontificate further.

Kenny Lange [00:33:30]:
And we'll make sure that that's all linked up in the show notes. Well, Alex, thank you so much for being a guest. I hope it's not the last time. I think we got a lot more to talk about that would be helpful to those virtues driven people. For those listeners, we appreciate you, we hope you were entertained, but we also hope that you learned a little something and that you're going to do something different. If this was impactful for you, I'd appreciate rate like subscribe, whatever the right button is on your platform of choice. One gives me feedback. I want to make this as valuable as I possibly can for you.

Kenny Lange [00:34:03]:
I enjoy doing this, but ultimately I'm here to make sure that this is valuable. The other thing is you can make this easier for some other leader that is on their own journey that is trying to figure things out. You can make this easier for them to find. You never know what conversation is going to unlock another leader's next step in their journey. And that's a free and easy way to pay it forward and make a dent in the universe. But until next time, change the way you think to change the way you leave. We'll see you.