1 hour and 30-minute listen
Portsmouth, New Hampshire and Phoenix, Arizona
Have you noticed, as I have, that some private companies successfully transition through all of the evolutions and revolutions they have over the years in leadership management, separate from leadership, even ownership? Some in changing environments end up with terrific new majority owners, moving gracefully into the next interesting and rewarding chapter of their lives, surrounded by friends with their positive legacy assured, and their independence powered by the fortune they just realized. Others’ outcomes can look more like a train wreck. Is it luck? Or is it more than that? We think it's more than luck, and for over 40 years I've had the fun of meeting with thousands of entrepreneurs and working closely with hundreds of them. So, in this podcast I interview some of the most high-performing, successful Entrepreneur Owners-Managers (EOMs) on the planet from both the for profit and not-for-profit sectors to learn about their experiences.
Today I have the great fun of interviewing my friend Joe Polish. Joe almost needs no introduction, but I'm going to give you a little one anyway. He's the founder of Genius Network, one of the highest level CEO peer-to-peer groups in the world for entrepreneurs. Joe also has an organization called Genius Recovery, where his mission is to change the global conversation of how people view and treat addicts with compassion instead of judgment, and to find the best forms of treatment that have efficacy and share those with the world. Joe has taught me a lot about how the very character, the temperaments of EOMs working within this mass popular culture, can sometimes make us feel isolated, alone, and lonely, even. And how we are susceptible to reaching for self-medication.
I had the fun of interviewing Joe online and talking about our businesses together. You'll hear us talk about some of the work we've already done together and some of the work that we are going to do together. Joe is also the author of a number of terrific books, the most recent of which is called What's In It For Them? (2022), a book that absolutely changed my life in terms of how to think about relationships, both personal and professional. I've been trying to get Joe on the Positive Enterprise Value podcast for over a year, so I'm thrilled that he's here with us today and I hope you enjoy every minute as much as I did.
Listen below or on Soundcloud here.
What I am Reading / Listening to
Greenlights (2020)
By Matthew McConaughey
Contributed by Dan Rehac
Greenlights is Academy Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey’s memoir, or “approach book.” He spent 52 days exiled in the West-Texas desert without electricity writing Greenlights, where he looks back on his experiences and lessons learned over the past 36 years.
He shares interesting stories from his somewhat bizarre initial upbringing in rural Texas, the self-realization that drove him from wanting to be a lawyer to wanting to be in the entertainment industry, his first big break with Dazed and Confused, to his more recent and well-known roles in Dallas Buyers Club and Interstellar.
He offers both a unique outlook on life, as well as insights from his early mistakes—he views life and the “art of living” as a product of how we perceive and respond to situations. When we accept an outcome of a situation as being inevitable, we can either: 1. persist in the current path; 2. attempt to pivot; or 3. concede and live to fight another day. His concept of “Greenlights” refers to signals that we should proceed and go on in life, whereas “yellow” and “red” lights are indicators we should be more cautious or stop. “This is a book about how to catch more yes’s in a world of no’s and how to recognize when a no might actually be a yes.”
I really enjoyed Greenlights and would highly recommend it.
Entrepreneur Owner-Manager Quote
“I think one thing that is a really important thing to strive for is being internally driven, being driven to compete with yourself, not with other people. If you compete with other people, you end up in this mimetic trap, and you sort of play this tournament, and if you win, you lose. But if you’re competing with yourself, and all you’re trying to do is — for the own self-satisfaction and for also the impact you have on the world and the duty you feel to do that — be the best possible version you can, there is no limit to how far that can drive someone to perform.”
— Sam Altman, American entrepreneur and investor best known as the CEO of OpenAI since 2019
Energy Creation
One of the things we know absolutely about unlocking our potential is this: Spend all your positive energy, spend it, shoot it, play it, lose it all, right away, right now, every time.
Don’t hoard what seems good for a later time or when it’s more convenient. Give it, give it all, give it now.
Our very impulse to save some positive energy or potential for a better place or time is exactly the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise later, something better. These things are unlocked from behind, from beneath, like well water.
Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful—it is destructive. Anything you lock away or do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.
–Inspired by and paraphrased from Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life
