How Leaders Think with Kenny Lange

John Hofmann [00:00:00]:
For anybody that is in business, if you're not working on yourself on a personal level, I think it's really difficult to be working on yourself on a professional level. So I had a lot of blind spots when it came to a lot of things. So now I firmly believe that it's my job to be like a servant leader if you would too. Like, I'm here to support my team as best that I can to help them achieve their goals.

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 think think. I am your host, Kenny Lang, and with me today is the John Hoffman. He is the founder and operations manager of fusion marketing. He's one of my people. He is from Detroit, Michigan. Along with Eminem, he overcame significant early life challenges to become a seasoned professional with over a decade of experience in marketing and branding. And a decade is, I don't know, 70 years and marketing years. Like dog gears, his passion for inspiring others and bringing dreams to life is matched by his commitment to community service, demonstrated through his family's urban gardening organization, which is really cool.

Kenny Lange [00:01:10]:
That supports underprivileged families and educates children on sustainability. His journey exemplifies resilience, creativity, and the profound impact of giving back. Welcome to the show, John.

John Hofmann [00:01:22]:
Hey, man, thank you for having me.

Kenny Lange [00:01:24]:
Absolutely. It's not every day I get a mohawked friend on the podcast, so I'm glad to have you firmly rooted in the driver's seat there.

John Hofmann [00:01:35]:
Yeah, maybe you have to change that, right?

Kenny Lange [00:01:37]:
I might. I don't know. I'll have to just let people know. Hey, I was like, do you have a mohawk? I already got that position filled. You're gonna have to find someone else to be friends with, pre qualify them. Do that. Tell me, John, what is on your mind lately?

John Hofmann [00:01:52]:
We're getting into the warmer season and I've really been thinking about my upbringing and we won't spend a lot of time on that, but I grew up extremely poor over on the east side of Detroit. Through a series of events, I've gotten to where I am now, right where I'm comfortable, and having. Having that experience firsthand has like, really shaped everything that I do. And over the years, I think it's been like 21, 21 years I've been in business. Now it's really like, it's shaped the way that I approach things, like the things that are important to me or my ability to empathize or connect with people. And really seeing that firsthand really, really makes helping people is at the core of my entire being, as you mentioned, community garden. That's the big thing that's been eating up all of my time recently. What's grow time now? Last year we did about 1000 pounds, 1100, and this year we're going to be shooting for a ton of produce.

John Hofmann [00:02:48]:
So 2000 pounds that we grow, log and distribute to the most vulnerable in the community.

Kenny Lange [00:02:54]:
That is phenomenal. It sounds like you're purposed towards being the kind of help that maybe you wish you had when you were growing up.

John Hofmann [00:03:05]:
Yeah, for certain. It wasn't until maybe it was recent. So it was maybe like three years ago that I really figured this out. Like the whole Simon Sinek. Like the whole what's your why? And looking back, first come. Like, my background is in alternative nutrition, right. So I opened up a health food store and I was trying to help people take control of their health. And then I transitioned into marketing where now I'm overseeing an agency and we're helping people take control of their business and chase their dreams and all of that.

John Hofmann [00:03:34]:
And then we have the nonprofit and all of the other things that I've been involved with from community service and domestic violence, et cetera, et cetera. I would say yes, like really trying to. Really trying to show up and be there for everybody else, much like I needed.

Kenny Lange [00:03:48]:
What's always fascinating to me is when people, regardless of age, really they go through hardships, how do they come out the other side? Or even if it's not, it was all stormy and now it's all sunshine. I think that it's not always as polarizing as that, but do they do similar to you and say, I don't want that for anybody else. And I now have insider knowledge of the gaps in systems and accessibility or whatever it is, but other people are like, I just want to focus on never being there again. And I climbed out and so you can too. You're on your own because no one's coming to help you. That, that's always fascinating to me. And I'm curious, how have you seen others who maybe you grew up with, like, what's their lifestyle like now? Are they purpose towards reaching back and extending a hand or just making sure they don't end up there again?

John Hofmann [00:04:54]:
Yeah. So to make sure that I understand your question correctly, for people that have faced hardship or been at the bottom are like, does that change their perspective where they want to help others and give back and have a different perception? Or are they still just living in a capitalistic society? They're just a cog in the machine, like, moving through it as themselves.

Kenny Lange [00:05:15]:
Yeah. I would almost maybe boil it down to, were they able to keep their heart soft, or did their heart to where. And I would say you'd fall into that category to where you didn't let the hard times beat the humanity out of you, so to speak. Or are you seeing that that's rare? And most people, they come through and they become hardened, and they're not really looking for those opportunities to fix systems or processes or create opportunities for other people to get a leg up.

John Hofmann [00:05:50]:
Yeah. So I think there's a lot of different layers to that, probably more than we could even dig into today. I do know that, like, I'm really jaded in a lot of aspects of my life. Like, my faith in humanity is so little. I don't trust that. However, I do know that I can do what I can do today, so I can do that. I can't change policy. I can't change the world.

John Hofmann [00:06:17]:
I can't do any of these things. But I can hold the door for somebody. I can smile at somebody or a treatise a person at the restaurant with respect. Right. And I've seen one of. One of my favorite stories was when I was. I used to feed the homeless every weekend over the train station over in Detroit. Just got a facelift that's been national news.

John Hofmann [00:06:38]:
So we used to do it right in front of that. There's a park, and we would feed the homeless every week. And there was a. There was a gentleman, I won't name him. And he was strung out on heroin, and he was like bottom of the barrel. And he was coming there in this assembly line of getting food every weekend. And through a series of events, the organization I was working with ended up renting out an entire complex, all of the rooms inside of it, and putting all of these homeless people up for the winter. They leaned on the community.

John Hofmann [00:07:11]:
They did this. Everybody had someplace warm to go for the season. It didn't solve any. It made a difference for a lot of individuals. It didn't fix any of the systematic issues that exist.

Kenny Lange [00:07:21]:
Right.

John Hofmann [00:07:22]:
He ended up going into rehab. He ended up getting a job through, like, a temp agency or whatever that was. He ended up getting hired in there the following season, the next year, the next spring, we're there. We're doing it this time. He shows up, he's on the other side of the table, and he's so grateful for the opportunity. Like, somebody. Somebody gave him that hand up when he was, like, when he was off of his feet. And then he was there every weekend, giving back, acting as an inspiring.

John Hofmann [00:07:49]:
Everybody else saying, hey, I was where you are. This is my journey. I'm not better. I'm still struggling. I'm doing all of these things, but I'm here. So I think it depends on. I think it's fair to say that most humans want things to be not terrible. Yeah, I don't think anybody.

John Hofmann [00:08:10]:
I think that's such a small percentile of people, that's. I just. Doom and gloom. I want everything to, like, get out of my way. I think everybody, like, we have different methods of maybe getting there or different ideologies behind that, but I think. I think we want it to, like to suck less. Right?

Kenny Lange [00:08:24]:
Yeah. It doesn't have to be marvelous, and I have to have a private jet to feel okay. It's just. Could. Could this suck a little less? Could it. Could I take a next step? Because there's a. A psychological concept known as learned helplessness, and unfortunately, they had to use dogs in that research. I won't get into that.

Kenny Lange [00:08:48]:
Please don't email me. I didn't conduct the research, but I know that even in times of hardship in my life, and I would say I lead a fairly blessed life, it's not free from problems or pain or anything. You and I were chatting a little before we turned on the recording about a couple of those things that are recent, so it's not free from any of those things. But there are times when I'm. I don't need to just be, like, standing on top of the world. But I would love this to be maybe a little easier in this. In this moment. Although somebody listening could take the opposite stance of without resistance, you'd ever build the muscle and the resilience and your hardships and adversities can turn you into who you are.

Kenny Lange [00:09:34]:
And I'm a firm believer in that. I think that's something that you and I have probably talked about on a previous conversation of just the act of starting building, growing, sustaining a business and what that does to you, that may also shake your faith in humanity as well.

John Hofmann [00:09:52]:
True story.

Kenny Lange [00:09:54]:
I love the story about that guy. He's just taken his next step. It sucks a little less. He's not out of the woods, but maybe seeing someone a few steps ahead may give that person on the side of the table he used to be on just a leg up, or give them hope that they, too, could make it a little further, make it a little better, make it suck a little less for themselves, that there's opportunities I'd be curious, as you have done, you've done this sort of work for a while, even though three years trying to do this, when he said you found your why, that could still be a long time, but it wasn't the first time you thought about it. Where do you find the motivation and the resilience to keep reaching out? Because in my experience, even reaching out and saying, I'm going to do a good thing, I want to help. Even though maybe you feel jaded about humanity, maybe you see people that are unwilling to do some of the basic things to help themselves. Like, you're okay helping them, but you would say you got to be a participant in your own recovery. You have to be a participant in getting out of this hardship.

John Hofmann [00:11:08]:
Sure.

Kenny Lange [00:11:09]:
How. How do you sustain motivation when seeing that? Because you are on the other side. You are a great example of what's possible if you claw and scratch and stay determined and stay grounded.

John Hofmann [00:11:23]:
Yeah. So I. Fortunately, unfortunately, I know the answer to this, and it's childhood trauma is what it is. I had a really, really rough time. Both of my parents were alcoholics. I spent a lot of my childhood without running water or electricity. Essentially. I lived in a condemnable house.

John Hofmann [00:11:42]:
There was rats and all of that. So I've seen that. Right? Like, I remember during the winter when there was no heat, taking all of the clothes that I owned and putting them on the blanket to make it heavier so that I would stay warmer at night. It was really messed up. Right? Those are rough. I don't want to minimize that experience for myself and all those terrible. Yeah, but, like, that. Really, like that.

John Hofmann [00:12:03]:
I have, like, so much trauma from that experience. It really fuels, like, it scared me into wanting to help everybody else. Never have to do that. If you can think of a mount parent that has had some sort of. That was bit by a dog, you're going to want to protect your child from dogs. Like, you don't ever want your child to experience that. Right. So it kind of scared me into.

John Hofmann [00:12:27]:
And, like, I'm not even sure exactly how to articulate that. I think you get what I'm throwing down, though. Like, I've seen it. I don't want anybody else to have to see that. Right.

Kenny Lange [00:12:35]:
It's not an intellectual practice for you to imagine what it's like to do that and what it might be like for a person. You desire to help what they're going through. You. You can have a visceral. You have a visceral experience with that condition, and that has helped motivate you to say, I want to try to take that away if at all possible, if it's within my power, like you said, maybe not change the world. I love the phrase. I don't know who to attribute it to, but you probably can't change the world, but you could make a dent in the universe. That's all you're trying to do is make your dent.

Kenny Lange [00:13:11]:
And that's what I hear you saying is at least in the universe known as Detroit, Michigan, you can make a debt for some people for as long as you're able and willing. I would be interested in knowing how has that taking it out of just the giving back and personal side bring it into the world of work and being a professional, how has that experience along with the giving back, how has that informed and shaped your leadership?

John Hofmann [00:13:43]:
Yeah, so I was. I was a toxic leader for a long time, right? Like I was coming from a place of scarcity and it was rough. Through personal growth, like me growing as an individual, I was able to learn more, how to better help and better provide for my staff and my people, my clients. It's a matter of growth. Like, if you are for anybody that is in business, if you're not working on yourself on a personal level, I think it's really difficult to be working on yourself on a professional level. So I had a lot of blind spots when it came, when it came to a lot of things. So now I really try to, like, it's my job. I firmly believe that it's my job to be like a servant leader if you would, too.

John Hofmann [00:14:24]:
Like, I'm here to support my team as best that I can to help them, help them achieve their goals. Like Gary Vaynerchuk preaches that there's lots of. Lots of different personalities that kind of preach that similar content and methodology. Yeah. If I can help you get to where you're going, then we're like, we're going to be a team and we're all going to win together.

Kenny Lange [00:14:44]:
Yeah. I love what you said about if you're not working on yourself personally, you're skipping a step. If you just try to work on yourself professionally. And I was, maybe it was this morning, I was having a conversation recently. It seems to come up as just growing and developing the whole person. Right. There's not a business owner John and then husband John and then dad John and than just community leader John.

John Hofmann [00:15:13]:
It'd be cool if I could take the hats off every once in a while, right?

Kenny Lange [00:15:17]:
You could just have a different mohawk for each of those different yeah, yeah. But it sounds like you really, see, I gotta develop the whole person and take myself wherever I'm at. That person follows me around. In the wise words of my mother, wherever you go, there you are.

John Hofmann [00:15:35]:
Right.

Kenny Lange [00:15:35]:
And how have you tried to, I guess two things. One, what helped you turn the corner? You said you early on were a toxic leader. And then you saw, oh, I got to work on these things to become a better leader and have a sustainable, profitable business. So what turned the corner for you? And then how have you passed that on to the people that you lead?

John Hofmann [00:16:01]:
Yeah, so my, my wife was adult diagnosed with autism, right? So I don't know if you know a lot about autism, but it's usually diagnosis is our for little boys. So women are commonly like, the females don't, they don't like our testing isn't for them, let alone for an adult. Okay.

Kenny Lange [00:16:19]:
So differently.

John Hofmann [00:16:20]:
Oh, absolutely. So we figured this out, and through the journey of learning, learning about what this is and what this looks like and all of that, I started to learn that the different ways that her brain works as opposed to my brain works, we started to learn a lot about being neurotypical versus being neurodiverse. And I realized that being in a creative space like marketing agency, every single person that I employ or that I contract is neurodiverse. So I started accidentally, I started this journey to learn about my wife and to better understand her and the way her brain works. And I ended up learning more about my entire team. So that's really, it was this eye opening experience where it can show up the way that I have been showing up for Kenny. And I'm not being the best John, or the best support or the best whatever that is for you, but if we just shift some wording or the way that we're approaching some, some topics or handing projects off to you or whatever that looks like our check ins or huddles. Boom, something clicks.

John Hofmann [00:17:28]:
Now you're getting what, what you need in order to be the best Kenny.

Kenny Lange [00:17:33]:
Yeah.

John Hofmann [00:17:34]:
And I'm not. I don't have the answers. I'm no place, I'm no place finished with this by any means.

Kenny Lange [00:17:39]:
Sure. But it sounds like you're meeting your team where they're at, and in order to communicate and work effectively, not in a manipulative sense, but I think that that's if you get into sort of the definition of, of EQ or emotional intelligence, which has been popular for a little while, but really it's that self awareness. How do I show up? And then the other half of it is. And how do I impact those around me? And it sounds like you really got a. Some illumination or insight into, oh, the way I'm, by default, just naturally communicating or saying some things. Maybe explain some of the friction points I experienced. And it's not serving these people and coming from a place of care and concern and compassion for those you lead. You say, I can tweak this about how I communicate.

Kenny Lange [00:18:39]:
Right. Like you held it with an open hand, like you weren't saying, I'm just me. Y'all gonna have to deal with it. Cause I'm the owner. Right?

John Hofmann [00:18:47]:
Right. Absolutely.

Kenny Lange [00:18:48]:
How. How have you seen that beyond increased productivity, how have you seen that affect those you lead? And if you feel comfortable with it, how has that impacted how you have related to your wife?

John Hofmann [00:19:05]:
Yeah, I mean, having a better understanding of someone or understanding where somebody's coming from. I guess as long as you're doing this from a place of curiosity or willingness to grow, that's real. I don't think that if you meet somebody where they are and you try to have a better understanding of what's going on, what they're going through or what they're experiencing or how things are working or not working, for that matter, I don't think that there's any negative that can really come from that, regardless of who that is. It could be. It could be a homeless person on the street. It could be somebody that's in jail or somebody that's on drugs or a drunk driver. Like anything, like, to understand where they're at, where they're coming from, as long as it's from an open mind, I think that there's something to take away from any. From any type of a deep understanding of people.

John Hofmann [00:19:57]:
We're so simple and so complex all.

Kenny Lange [00:20:00]:
At the same time.

John Hofmann [00:20:01]:
Right, right.

Kenny Lange [00:20:01]:
I'm drawn to something you said about just if. If we come at this from a place of curiosity. And in my agency, when I had it, that was actually, curiosity was one of our core values, because as I tried to dissect, just gaining some self awareness, like, what makes me good at creating marketing strategy and helping people. What's helping? And I discovered through a process that curiosity was one of those things. And one of my favorite books by Michael Bungay Stanier, the coaching habit, which is phenomenal. He talks about just staying curious a little bit longer. What has helped you stay curious a little bit longer? Because obviously, at this point in business, you got more than a decade, so you could almost say, been there, done that, got the t shirt and read people well, what helps you stay curious even though you're well experienced and intelligent?

John Hofmann [00:21:05]:
It's. It's problem solving. It's a. I would attribute that to part of my personality. I really like debating. I really like challenging opinions. I will. I will argue against my beliefs for the sake of arguing.

John Hofmann [00:21:18]:
So, like, my favorite color is blue. And I will argue with you on why blue is not the best color. Because. Reasons. Just because I like. I like that mental exercise. And, you know, I spent a decade inside of the retail industry, and it was. I ended up living inside of, like a, like a groundhog day where we were doing the same thing over and over again.

John Hofmann [00:21:38]:
I was like, show up, do the thing, et cetera, et cetera. It was on repeat, regular autopilot when I got out of that. And this, luckily for me, it's always a new problem to solve. With every client. We may work with a. With a law firm, and then we may work with another law firm, and they're trying to accomplish something completely different. Even though they're both inside of family law, inside of the same county, they're still, like. They're still trying to do two different things.

John Hofmann [00:22:04]:
They have two different missions. They have two different goals. So that's what holds my attention at the end of the day.

Kenny Lange [00:22:10]:
Gotcha. Is taking into account the different variables at play in any given situation.

John Hofmann [00:22:15]:
Absolutely.

Kenny Lange [00:22:17]:
Yeah. Yeah. Gamify it, which is always fun. And then you can give yourself some points. We'll create Hoffman points. I scored ten today. No, I was always fascinated by that. That's why.

Kenny Lange [00:22:29]:
One reason why I liked being on agency side as opposed to in house is I got to see so many different businesses, even if they were same industry. I got a different set of variables. They had a different goal, those sorts of things. And I think you can. It sounds like you've applied that as well to the people you employ, is you've got a different person in front of you that is wired a particular way and different from their co worker. They have a different set of personal and professional goals that you're trying to understand and help them take steps whilst also achieving the service agreement with the client. So has that helped you, as you have recruited and retained talent, to almost see them the same way as, what are the variables here? This is a bit of a game. Not in a rude way, but how can I figure this out to help them advance?

John Hofmann [00:23:26]:
Yeah. So we maximize, we squeeze every drop out of our staff, and we do so in a really cool way. We don't have a hierarchy inside of the agency, which is really weird for a lot of people coming into it. So everybody can delegate tasks to each other, everybody can call meetings, everybody can, like, there's no hierarchy. I mean, yes, yes, there's a hierarchy on paper at the end of the day, right? Like, that's just the way that works legally. But inside of that, like, my team is sending me tasks. They're telling me, you need to go do this, or I can't do this because reasons, and I need to pull you into it because whatever, whatever. Right? So that's really cool.

John Hofmann [00:24:09]:
I've empowered all of them to really take charge and this shared leadership space. And the other thing is we are constantly working towards figuring out what you're bad at. We celebrate whenever we're bad at things. So if we biff a project for a client and they let us know that's an opportunity for growth. We ask for anonymous feedback all the time, so they're comfortable giving it to us. If they're inside of a long term relationship, you don't want to say, Kenny, you're stinky, but if it's anonymous, I might be more likely to say that. So that's amazing. Same thing for my team.

John Hofmann [00:24:40]:
Like, you really hate writing out emails and sending them off to people. Let's talk about it. Let's figure out a way to either, like, boilerplate that or template it, or get you as far away from having to do that as possible because you're going to do it slower, you're going to be less productive, it's going to be like a lower quality, whereas you would rather pick up the phone. Let's do that. Let's figure out how you can pick up the phone at all of these opportunities because you're going to make five more phone calls per day than emails you would arguably send.

Kenny Lange [00:25:12]:
Yeah, yeah, right.

John Hofmann [00:25:13]:
And it's a really weird shift and it takes, on average, I would say it takes people around six months to a year to actually understand that it's not like company culture on paper, and this is actually the way we're doing things.

Kenny Lange [00:25:27]:
Yeah, I've experienced that too. Where somebody comes in, is this really how it works? I'm not totally sure I'm going to relax into this.

John Hofmann [00:25:36]:
Yeah, it's a trap. I don't trust it.

Kenny Lange [00:25:38]:
Right. I love that because you're spot on when I teach my clients. When you're evaluating somebody for a position, you look at fit, and that's an acronym for fuel, impact and Timeliness. And within fuel, the simple definition is the intersection of what you're good at and what you love to do and what you're energized by. Because there is, to your point, like a productivity multiplier. If they're good at it, they enjoy it, they like it, they're energized by it. And in return, I would imagine that's allowed you to run maybe a leaner organization than some other agencies of similar output simply because you're now maximizing for that sweet spot.

John Hofmann [00:26:26]:
I would. I mean, I've never run other agencies, so maybe so maybe not, right? It's antidotal at best. I do know that it's working really well for us. And from a culture fit, everybody likes it. We don't do time clocks. We just. It's. It's different, in my opinion, and a lot of our.

John Hofmann [00:26:47]:
A lot of our clients opinions, we end up getting a better product because of that. Right. Like, it's kind of like the happy cows make buttermilk, or there's like, something about that. It's like a gimmicky thing. I feel like that kind of applies to this, like, happy people make better product.

Kenny Lange [00:27:01]:
Yeah. And I would suspect, and this has been my experience, when you're working with creatives, that and neurodiverse people is leaning into that really allows their truest, most authentic self, the best version of themselves, to come into their work. Similar to what you were working on for yourself, is you bring your whole self to work, is you're sort of enabling them to do that instead of the traditional, hey, check your stuff at the door. Get this done the way I would have done it or the way it was written originally, and we're going to take no account for how you're wired.

John Hofmann [00:27:40]:
I love all of the opportunities. When I can be wrong, those are the best. I don't have all the answers. Right? Like, I have my experiences. I've done the things that I've done. So to have Kenny come in and be like, hey, I know this is how we've been doing it, but maybe this makes more sense because reasons, I love that. Let's do that. Let's constantly concentrate on evolving and being more efficient so that we can really try to get away from this whole hustle culture.

John Hofmann [00:28:08]:
That's such a big thing. And I was sucked into that for a long term, 12 hours a day, seven days a week. I'm so prideful on never having a vacation. And no, like, that doesn't. There's more to life than just punching the clock or working or chasing somebody else's. Dream.

Kenny Lange [00:28:23]:
It's almost like, woohoo. I'm headed to an early grave. In some ways, once you finally stop and slow down and look around, you realize that's really what you've been doing. I've been wrestling with some of that myself because it's easy, especially when you are an owner, is you feel the weight of payroll and responsibility is it's an easy place to float into because you believe it'll all fall apart if you're not constantly working. So if someone's listening to this, a leader, maybe they're an owner, maybe they're just a senior leader. And they say, man, I'd love to work in that environment. I love that. The curiosity, bringing out the best, really figuring out how people are wired to, even if they're motivated by just saving money on payroll, because you'll have to hire less people.

Kenny Lange [00:29:17]:
Obviously this, you've been able to explain it in roughly 30 minutes, but that didn't happen. You didn't get here overnight. What would you tell someone who wants to move in that direction to do? They want their version of that in their company and they want to take a step there. They're not going to get there overnight, but they want to take a step there. What would you advise them to do as that first baby step? That is something that could be done in the next 24 hours, depending on.

John Hofmann [00:29:49]:
The size of whatever your structure is for your company. So we'll just assume that you have in house employees. I would schedule meetings with them, with all of your staff, one on one meetings, and ask them how they're doing. It's not, you have friends and you have family members, right? You have people that you care about and you have people that care about you. Why are the people that work for you or the people that you employ or manage, why are they any different? Right? And maybe you need to do some soul searching and dig into that. Maybe it's from a place of scarcity, maybe it's from a place of toxic leadership that has been just projected on you for however long. I don't know. But I think that's a just check in with people like, we're all humans, and I don't think that we were made to work.

John Hofmann [00:30:43]:
I don't think that's our purpose is to go and punch a clock and make widgets and then die. But also like, comma. Also, I think that people like to have meaningful work, people like being engaged, people like being a part of something bigger than themselves. And I guess case in point, we're attracted to community, right? Look at organized religion, look at political parties, look at college alumni, look at friend groups, right from high school or college. People like people.

Kenny Lange [00:31:13]:
You reminded me of a saying that one of my pastors would say a lot, and he would remind me of, this is, you work to live, you don't live to work.

John Hofmann [00:31:26]:
Do you think that is true for a lot of people?

Kenny Lange [00:31:29]:
I don't think most people can accept that.

John Hofmann [00:31:31]:
It's hard.

Kenny Lange [00:31:33]:
It is. It's almost a daily battle for me to stay in that place. So I don't say that as, oh, that's a cute little thing that you just flick it out there, put it on a poster, and suddenly you're magically better. Like, that's tough. When I wake up and I see a wife and five kids that all have different needs and we got to eat and do this and go to school, and it sometimes feels like I'm living to work, and occasionally I get a break from work to go enjoy 30 minutes of something and then it's right back to the grind. But I personally believe that is not how we're wired and engineered is to, to be a unit of productivity.

John Hofmann [00:32:21]:
I don't think so either. And I think that, like, being in America, right, like, where we're fueled by capitalism, a lot of us are exploited by, by the machine. And I get it. Right if my people aren't doing the things I don't eat. So, like, I like, right? Like, that's just the way that it works in this type of a society. I think we need to, like, I think it's important to check in with yourself. Like, why are you doing the things that you're doing and check in with the people that you care about? Or like, you're, like you said, you have the kids and your, your family that you're trying to take care of, so you're, you're doing that. So if you'll, you'll work on a Saturday because you're trying to give them these things, check in with them, make sure the, make sure the, the problems you're trying to solve are actual problems for them and not just something that you've concluded.

John Hofmann [00:33:11]:
I was guilty of that for a long time. Like, I guarantee you when you are old and your kids are grown, they're never going to say, I wish we had the new phone or the new video game system or whatever it is it's going to be. You remember when we played catch? Do you remember when whatever. And I forgot my lines in the school play? Do you remember when we went to the zoo and the whatever. It's experience is not stuff and myself and probably you and anybody listening to this, I think it's easy to get caught up in the I need to do the thing to collect the coins so I can go buy the boxes of crap nobody cares about or remembers, when in reality you're treating those times with your children that Halloween or that Sunday or whatever it is, right?

Kenny Lange [00:34:05]:
Yeah. I would drop a mic if it weren't so expensive to replace that. That was well said. John. I'm sure that we have many more topics that we can cover when maybe we need to spin up a mini series. But if somebody wants to know more about you, your agency, the community work you're doing in the Detroit area or anything else, where would you send them? How can they connect with you?

John Hofmann [00:34:29]:
Yeah, fusion marketing. We're on all of the social media platforms. We're based in Detroit, Michigan. You can find us at try t r yfusionmarketing.com. i like connecting with people on LinkedIn so that they, they can see all of my short form video and my rants and it's fun for that. I'm very authentic and I cuss a lot, unlike on here, but. So there's that. And as far as the community garden goes, it is a registered 501 C three.

John Hofmann [00:34:53]:
We are currently serving the Macomb metro area right outside of Detroit, Michigan. And if somebody wanted to, if they were moved to say, make a donation or something like that, they can do that from the website that is urbanseed dot in Fo. And they, we share weekly updates. For anybody that wants to follow along or learn about gardening or urban agriculture, they can do that through Facebook. And again, that's going to be urban seed.

Kenny Lange [00:35:18]:
Okay, we will link all of that up in the show notes. So if anybody was really interested or moved to donate, which I hope you are, go check out those links, visit, and then if you have any questions, obviously you got multiple ways to go and connect with John, thank you so much for being a guest today. I hope to have you back in the future. If for any reason you got, and I'm not saying that like, I'd be mystified if you got value from this conversation. And Lord knows there were plenty of opportunities for you to, or any of the other episodes, I would be grateful for you to rate, review, subscribe, whatever the button and the thing and the stuff is on the platform, you're consuming this. I would be grateful not just for the feedback, because I'm always looking to improve and make this a value to you, the listener, but also get it in front of more people. This may be a free, low cost way for you to impact another leader's journey by helping them hear the conversation they need to hear to unlock their next step. So that that's an easy way to pay it forward.

Kenny Lange [00:36:17]:
But until next time, remember, change the way you think. You'll change the way you lead. We'll see you.