Adopt This Bold And Unique Strategy To Build A Winning Team

Jeffrey Madoff: This is Jeffrey Madoff and welcome to our podcast called Anything and Everything with my partner, Dan Sullivan.
 
Dan Sullivan: This is a very special episode of Anything and Everything. And it's special because it involves another project that Jeff and I have been involved in for the last couple of months that started with a line that Jeff just dropped in one of our previous podcasts, maybe in February or March. You know, when you're putting together an entrepreneurial company, you shouldn't think of hiring people, you should think of casting people for roles. Not hiring them for jobs, but casting them for roles. There's a book in that, and Jeff, two days ago, we just completed the first entire draft creation of the book. Casting Not Hiring. And it involves the, what I would say, the terrific overlap between entrepreneurism as an activity and theater as an expression of entrepreneurism. So anyway, what do you think about how this has developed?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, we had each week, I think for five weeks, we had meetings four and a half to five hours with some terrific people from Strategic Coach, contributed questions and responses and so on. And it was really fun to take a very deep dive into that notion of casting not hiring. And prior to the play, I was doing my film work. And that very much is along the same lines. And so the idea of the casting, to me, made so much more sense than, I would say, the rather cold world of hiring. And you sparked on it immediately. And I think the kind of very informal, unscientific, but numerous conversations you had, that people seem to get what that title, Casting Not Hiring, means before you even explain anything.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, and the other thing I want to introduce here right at the beginning of the podcast is that Jeff has invited Bab Smith and me to be companions on the trip of a really terrific play called Personality, which is now going into its third or fourth major growth stage. The target now is the West End of London. We've done New York in a workshop form. We've done Philadelphia in the first full play form. We've done Chicago as a major, major play in Chicago. And now we're at the point where we go to one of the two greatest theater centers in the world, which is the West End of London. And so we've had that as an extra dimension to our thinking about theater and entrepreneurism, because this play is a pure entrepreneurial start-up, and it's a terrific play. And so I gave you a lot of material to contribute to the book that we're writing, that gave it a depth that we could never have given that depth if we were doing just another Strategic Coach book. But my sense is, you've been doing a combination of entrepreneurism and theater for 50 years.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, that's true. And, you know, back when I started my first adult company, which was doing clothing design, when I did our seasonal presentations, I worked with an artist to create a story about that particular season, so that it gave context to what the people were wearing. And it was kind of somewhere between designing and wardrobing, if you will. you know, what do you wear in your life? And so the storytelling aspect goes back to when I was a little kid and I would draw cartoon strips that would get passed along. And the storytelling part of it has been a feature of my life since I was a little kid and actualizing those stories. As when I started my first company, And I don't even know that I knew the meaning of the word entrepreneur back in 1970. You know, it was just a starting company and start-ups by young people. And I was just about 21 when I started my first real company. I didn't think of it as entrepreneurship. And as we've talked about in the past, my parents own their own business. My sister owns her own business. And so my desire was to never get a good job. My desire was to start a company. And I realized as I got older that, you know, being an entrepreneur is a creative act, because you're taking something in your head, some idea, and trying to actualize it, be it a product or a service, whatever it is, and it is an entrepreneurial act. And the arts are very much an entrepreneurial act. Like, as you said, the show, Personality, the Lloyd Price Musical, so as you and I have grown closer and talking about these discussions and so on and dug deeper, I think that we both feel we have unlocked ways of creating a kind of framework for doing business, which can make doing business more productive, more fun, and more profitable.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, and I've been, you know, before we started our discussions 10 years ago, I've been very much of a theater mind. When I started my business, I started later than you. I was 30 when I started coaching entrepreneurs. And right from the beginning, I used skills I had developed. I went through a five-year period from around age 18 to age 23. When I was very much involved in theater, I actually went to drama school in Washington, Catholic University, which in those days was one of the three top theater universities before they had, you know, professional acting schools, and then it became a real industry. But Catholic University and Yale University and Northwestern University in Chicago were the three main University. Ed McMahon, who was the sidekick to Johnny Carson for many years, he had gone through Catholic University. And there was Jackie Gleason's daughter, Linda, who became an actress. Linda Miller, she was known as. She was ahead of me when I went to university.
 
Now, I went part-time because I had to work to pay my way through university. But then I was in the Army, and through a series of circumstances, which I will not go into right now, within about six months after I'd been drafted during the Vietnam War, I ended up as the entertainment coordinator for half of South Korea. This is the 8th Army in South Korea. So I was in charge of bringing in the USO shows, making sure the USO shows were, you know, scheduled properly and to all the bases where the entertainers from the states would come in. And then we had a community there that fortunately we had families, military families, so I could put on plays with women and children as well as men. And I put on two major productions. One of them was Beyond the Fringe, which was a British very, very big hit comedy show. And I did Oliver the musical and, you know, the big play, you know, lots, lots of costumes, lots of music and everything like that. And at 23, I ended my military service and I began to see that this was not going to be my professional career, but I really enjoyed all the skills that are involved in theater.
 
And as we got into writing the book together, Casting Not Hiring, I began to see that, consciously or not consciously, I've created the entire structure and process of Strategic Coach over the last 35 years, where we're doing it with large groups of entrepreneurs. It's all theater. Everything about it is theater roles and audiences. you know, projects and what I would say differentiators that we put into the book that's just theater like, and it produces a totally different kind of entrepreneurial result in the marketplace. So your comment in the podcast earlier in the year really struck me that this isn't just a nice way to think about your entrepreneurial business. This is actually a very necessary way of doing it here in the 21st century.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, I agree because I think there's a lot more challenges now than ever before in terms of building a business. And I think there's two major causes. One was COVID and how people had to adapt to remote working situations that they didn't have before. And that still hasn't worked itself out yet. We don't quite know where that's going to land, but that was a seismic change. And there's technology that allows an individual to do a lot more than they did before. And so the combination of those two things has created both more opportunities and more complications. You know, I think both. And I think that what we're talking about is a tried and true, as the saying goes, tried and true framework, because theater has been around a couple thousand years. You know, when you go back to the ancient Greeks and the things that can apply to business and relationships, I think also just makes the process more satisfying and the results better.
 
Dan Sullivan: I have a question, and I didn't ask you in any of our recording sessions. I didn't ask you this question, but you're at the point now where you're creating the next higher version of the play Personality. I mean, if you're in the West End of London, it's equal to Broadway, and Broadway is the destination for this play. But now that we've spent, you know, a very concentrated two months on this book, Does it give you any different dimensions of thinking about how the next jump's going to go, combining theater and entrepreneurism?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: You know, I'm not sure in the sense that the way that we're approaching this, I'm probably more aware because of all the time we spent talking of the vocabulary and how to describe it. And the fact that we've created that notion of the back stage and the front stage, you know, and being immersed in the play. You know, the front stage is, of course, what you want the audience to see, but the back stage is what's necessary to make that front of house the best experience possible. And so I think the way that I'm talking about it has evolved and even gained greater clarity of things that I was just doing. But now that we have questioned each other about how we do it or how do we improve it, I think it's deepened my vocabulary and deepened my thought about how this can apply to any entrepreneurial, any business venture, really.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, the one thing that's really struck me is because the book that we're producing is a means, it's not the end, because we're creating a small book because we're going to take it to a publisher, a major book publisher, as soon as this book is finished. And I was struck by the fact that this small book is opening on the road. It's the equivalent of opening on the road. And that we're just getting the feel for live audience, full costume, full sets, full music, and big audiences with a small book. And then we're going to show the publisher how this already exists. This is a complete production that's ready to go. And I hadn't thought about that if I hadn't been talking to you about the stages of taking Personality from, you know, when I think back, probably five or six stages, growth stages, to get to where you are now.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, it's well, and what we're creating with that small book is a pitch. Yeah, you know, it's helping us or at least helping me both in ways to think about it and how to best present those thoughts in a way that is engaging and can help move the whole enterprise forward. So in a way, we're living what we're talking about in terms of the process of putting this book together and the play for that matter.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, and by the same token, I've been noticing that I'm thinking about our place inside Strategic Coach because we put on a new brand new workshop every quarter and I've done so for 35 years and I'm the lead coach to do it. And it's giving me thoughts, but it's also giving our team members. We had the cartoonists because all of our books are cartooned and we have Shannon Waller, who's been in Coach for 33 years, and she's thinking about all, she creates brand new workshops for team members of the entrepreneurs. But it's kind of like a marriage made in heaven, really, the entrepreneurship and theater. And I think each of them is lacking if they don't understand the other dimension.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, when I'm talking to potential investors, and I've also done some lectures about this, my first statement is creating a play that you want to get into theaters for people to see, that's an entrepreneurial venture. And this isn't to make it harsh, it's just the reality is that at a certain point, you have a product that you're bringing to market. Now, what we really talk about is that process of how you do that in the best possible way to get the best, not only best result, but the best process, and using the talents and engaging the talents of the people, which is what's been so great about those meetings with other people from Strategic Coach, because it has been a casebook example of how we're approaching this whole thing. Now, I haven't been through this with you guys before, and I don't even know if Strategic Coach has been through quite this process before.
 
Dan Sullivan: No, you're a first.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, I'm honored. Because the thing is, when we had our final of these meetings, you know, with Shannon and Hamish and Margo and us, I was saying what's so interesting is that, you know, you hear the phrase about, you know, we're building the airplane as we're flying it. And in a way, we are the textbook example in process of what we're doing. And the process has been a blast. It's been really fun. And we were just talking before we started today's podcast, about this friend of our friend, Joe Polish, who is an actor and that, you know, works all of the time. And we're talking about how, you know, it's also a really smart business decision because he's a supporting actor. You know, movies got one, maybe two stars, but there's lots of supporting actors. And if you're in it because you want to act and you want to do that sort of a thing, you realize, you know, there's a lot more opportunity over here than there is over there.
 
Dan Sullivan: And that's true in entrepreneurial businesses, too.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Exactly. What's the competitive landscape? How can I make my entry? What's my point of entry to this? And how do I get invited back to that ensemble to be a part of it? Yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: And I think the big thing, you told a wonderful story from your early business days, picking at random someone in the yellow pages and proving to the person you were talking to, you know, I don't know what they're selling, but I can certainly sell myself to this person. And how you picked it and they answered the question and they, you know, they had a fairly rare kind of business. And you said, what a fascinating business. Boy, it seems to me that this is really a crucial product that you're making for the world. And, you know, I was just so interested that you were in this industry. And he said, you know, I wasn't looking for anybody to hire. I wasn't looking for anybody to hire, but you're so interesting. Why don't you come and see me? I'd like to talk to you. And it was kind of like you did an audition in front of a director, and you said, see, I show you. I can sell myself in any situation. And that was pure theater, as far as I'm concerned. What you did is just pure theater, you know. As a budding entrepreneur, you just showed, look, there's a trick to this. There's a magic to how you actually do this. And I think we've really, in our book, we've really, really gotten into the depth of how that magic actually happens.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes, we did. And the thing is, every job interview, every time you are pitching, whether you're looking to establish a banking relationship, a sales relationship, whether you're trying to get people to invest, it's all performance. It's all performance. And to use the term that you just did, you're auditioning. You're auditioning for investors. Are you going to buy this? Are they going to get involved in this? Have you told a compelling story that attracts them and makes them want to get involved in it? And I think that we've all sat through really boring presentations, which you couldn't wait to be over. And I've seen people give them where it's clear that it's stone-cold boring and it's never going to get any better. And so you say, no, I get the idea. Well, let's skip to the next step. So they have their 55-page deck, and by page three, you're ready to slide into a coma. So you try to bring it to an end. So it's not superficial to call it an audition or a performance, because in fact, it is. Because if you can't engage them, they're not going to think that you can engage their audience either.
 
Dan Sullivan: One observation I have is that I, because you've talked about how you were in your twenties, and now you're seventies, and I just started my eighties.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: How did that happen, by the way? Where did all those years go so fast?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, they were well-used. They were well-used years. But it really strikes me that your early understanding of the overlap between theater and entrepreneurism has actually kept you very, very young. Because it certainly kept me very young. It certainly kept me very fresh. I mean, I know on the calendar and I know according to my birth certificate that I put in a lot of years, but I feel as fresh and as excited and ambitious at 80 as any previous time in my life. And I sense the same about you.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, it's true. It's true. You know, I got together the other day with a cousin of mine, I hadn't seen her in person in 12 years, and wonderful woman who was a doctor, and we were talking about it, and she says, well, you've undertaken an awful lot at your age, you know, she's 67, and you've taken on an awful lot at your age, and see, you know, I don't look at it that way. I look at it as this is something I wanted to do. I don't weigh that, you know, it's, I'm too old, and I quote you, and give attribution, by the way, so I don't have to pay a royalty check at some point. Make your future bigger than your past, and as long as you maintain your health and you can stay vital and do that, that's great. I guess it makes me want to ask you a question, so I'll ask it. How do you define youth?
 
Dan Sullivan: One of, I think, the disadvantages of youth is that you have no past. But one of the great advantages of youth is that you have a lot of future. And that's just given to you. I mean, there's nothing meritorious about this. There isn't anything that you've actually created through your own actions. But if you're still the way you are, you know, a childlike curiosity and alertness, and we call it, you know, responsiveness and resourcefulness, at 75, as you had at 15, that wasn't given to you, you develop that capability.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And I think that capability is also, in some cases, nurtured by those who encourage you. And which I think is an interesting aspect to it. Because if you are not cowed by the risk, because you have a certain degree of self-confidence that hasn't yet become a capability, possibly. As we've talked about, and I think it bears repeating, that confidence is a capability, and risk is the ability to act before you develop the confidence. You know, I think that's the most succinct way to put it.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I had a first sergeant in the army when I was drafted in the ‘60s, and we did live grenade practice. And they showed us how to do it just before the end of the previous day. They showed us you're going to stand in a hole with an instructor, and you're going to pull the pin on the grenade, and you're going to throw it over this mound. And he's there to see that you don't make a mistake, okay? And so I thought about that overnight, the live grenade. And so we got there the next morning, there was 40, 50 of us. And he said, now who's scared here? Who's scared here? And I raised my hand. And he says, you know, Sullivan's the only one. He actually called me shit for brains. He didn't call me Sullivan. And he said, he's the only one I really trust because he can be courageous now. You can't be courageous if you're not scared. And he said, I'm going to tell you the difference between fear and courage. He says, fear is wetting your pants. Courage is doing what you're supposed to do with wet pants. And I really struck it that each of us in our own way in our normal business are constantly taking risks. We're committing ourselves to a higher level of capability, which we do not yet have. And we have to take commitment and courage and magically produce a new capability, which then gives us the confidence as a reward. And I think to go back to the question, what keeps you young? It's that willingness to always be doing this, regardless of what your age is, that actually keeps you young.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And I would couple that with fueled by curiosity, that you get pleasure out of learning and knowing more.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And by the same token, I think the desire not to have any more risk in your life ages you very, very quickly. I think you get old very quickly when you don't want to have any more risk.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I mean, I think that's right. I mean, there's, of course, certain risks that I wouldn't undertake now that I would when I was younger. But none of those have to do with having ideas challenged or putting ideas out there. You know, there's certainly physical risks I wouldn't be willing to take now. But in terms of intellectual … creative risks.
 
Dan Sullivan: Exactly. I would say this is the biggest risk that you've taken in your entire life. And I'm in the midst of taking the greatest creative risk that I've ever done in my life.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And when you say you're in the midst of that, explain that a little further.
 
Dan Sullivan: Just where I am right now, the risks that we're taking on right now, in other words, committing ourselves to a bigger result in the marketplace, and we don't yet have the capability to pull that off. It's the biggest right now. It's always the biggest right now. And yours is the biggest you've ever done in your entire life is happening right now.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah. And that's interesting, too, because, you know, I've mentioned to a few friends the book we're doing, and they said, how did that happen? That's cool. How did that happen? I guess the bottom-line answer to that is because Dan and I wanted it to happen. We are both interested in the same thing, we both sparked on the same idea. And so we wanted to happen. So we're the only two making that decision. So we're able to make that happen. And you know, we haven't worked together before on anything like this. And you have done books before. So I feel like it was such a natural evolution that it's not really where it started other than goes back to what you had said before about being interested. When you're interested, that propels a lot of interesting activity. And it almost seems like this was a natural evolution of what we both do and how we both look at that world.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, and it was a treat too, because of both of our previous experience, we have built in production capabilities of how you create anything, you know, and everything else. And this was a chance to bring the two of them together. You know, what I created over 50 years and what you've created over 50 years, we were able to bring that together and produce something new that's never existed before.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, which is neat. Which is very neat. I mean, it's a fun opportunity to do it. I like, you know, your description of youth is having little to no past, but a lot of future. And we added to that the curiosity. And then you season that with some risk because you're not trying to replicate something. You're trying to create something new, which is always a risk. But that's a great mixture of ingredients, creative, intellectual ingredients to make something new. And that's fun. You know, that's exciting. That's fun. And, you know, I think that going back to the topic of casting not hiring, that creates a lens through which to view how you're already doing things. And, you know, it's interesting because we've both talked about our mission isn't to convert people to do it this way, but it's to help make them aware that you can view this structure, idea structure that we're putting together through a particular lens that has the potential to make doing what you do more fun and more productive and more profitable. And I think it also, if you look at the world this way, I think it opens your eyes to much greater possibility with whatever it is you're looking at, because you understand the dynamic of getting things done.
 
Dan Sullivan: One thing that I wanted to hear what you had to say, we have a tool that this book is based on, which is called the “4 x 4 Casting Tool.” Okay. And I wondered what's your take on this? Because our entire Strategic Coach is a, what I call a thinking tool universe. You know, over a 50-year period, I've observed different kinds of situations that entrepreneurs get into where they can get confused, they can get discouraged, they can get sort of paralyzed. And I've shown them that any one of these situations, we have a thinking tool that if they go through the thinking tool, they'll see clarity for the way forward and they'll feel very confident about doing it. And so we've made this tool the backbone of the book. So in the book, you can download the tool right at the start when you either start reading this or you start listening to the Audible portion of it. And it just shows you how when you have the opportunity to add somebody to your entrepreneurial team, this is the way to communicate to them what the actual role is. Not what the job is, but what the role is. And I just wondered what you thought of this as a thinking structure.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I think it's great. You know, the 4 x 4 sets up kind of extremes on both sides in terms of, you know, what success looks like. best result, worst result, and how to achieve that best result. And I think that what's interesting about it, first, foremost, and most basic, is it gives you a tool, and that tool allows you to get your arms around the topic. Because I think a problem a lot of people have is, how do I even start? How do I even start? How do I even think about what I'm doing? So I think that it provides a terrific aid, if you will, to thinking. And it makes you think about your thinking. How do you define a good result? How do you define a bad result? What are the steps you have to take in order to achieve that result that you want? And I think that that kind of help from the get-go can allow you to springboard in a way that you just can't do yourself.
 
Dan Sullivan: So in the use of the 4 x 4 tool, you as the owner of an entrepreneurial company, or you as the person in the company that brings on new team members, this is a go-to tool that there's things that the person has to have skill-wise, they have to have certain experience, and everything else. But what this says is how from day one, when you take on your new role in a new organization, as a member of a new team, this is how you can be successful from day one. You can immediately be growing, you can immediately be creating results, but you can also be in the spotlight. We tell you how you can really shine, how you can really distinguish yourself in this new role. And then we tell them, and by the way, there's four ways that if you do any of these things, it's not gonna work, okay?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Don't drive Dan crazy.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And you're telling them, because they're working, you know, in the example we give in the book, and this is the downloaded book, we actually have the person, Gord Vickman, who happens to be the manager of podcast, who will edit this video that we're doing. And he talks about what it was like, even before he started, he knew exactly how to be successful. And so we believe, and all that you've talked about, Jeff, about your experiencing of all your theatrical productions, going back right to the beginning, you want to put them in the best possible situation where their talent can really come out and be useful to everybody else from day one.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: No, that's right, and I think those other things that you mentioned, like what drives you crazy, I think the more you can define certain things, the more time you're going to save or signals you'll be able to read that you want to avoid because it just sets up obstacles that ultimately those are obstacles you set up yourself. If somebody's gonna start an exercise routine, somebody says, you know, I wanna start exercising, Okay, great, that's a good idea. Regular exercise is terrific, good idea. What do I do? And so you go to a trainer or you do your own research and you get a basic structure that can allow you to start. And you're gonna, by going through that initial structure, asking yourself those questions, it's not gonna only allow you to start, it's gonna change the way you look at everything else you do along that path. And so I think it's a simple, elegant way to just help people orient themselves. Because that orientation, I mean, people have said to me so many times in the last few years, well, how do you do a play?
 
So I think that when you have, and they truly are thinking tools, when you have to think about what you're doing before you actually do something, oftentimes the first response of people is just they're overwhelmed, they don't know how to get their arms around it, and they don't do it. But if you use the tool that helps you answer the question, get you engaged in the process, you can go a lot further, a lot faster, and it doesn't seem so overwhelming. And I think that's really what's so important, is just having some kind of a guide, some kind of a framework. And I think we're providing one that's quite unique and also fun. I mean, even reading your tool, I was inspired to write that worst case scenario and then presented it in our last meeting to a lot of laughter, which was the idea, and it was just fun. So it even inspired me to do that, which was cool.
 
Dan Sullivan: Jeff, I just want to tell you from my standpoint, I'm so pleased that we found a structure where we could combine 50 years of entrepreneurial experience on your part and 50 years of entrepreneurial experience on my part with a common focus of theater. And it was a very fortuitous meeting in the first place when we started to chat with each other. But oftentimes you can go back and forth and you have nice breakfast, you have lunches, but you don't actually create something out of common interest, you don't create it out of friendship. And this was just such a wonderful opportunity to pack all those things into a project that has a much bigger future than it had in the past. And I think this book is really going to go places. And just like your play is going to go to big places, I think that this book is going to go really, really far.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, as my grandmother used to say, from your mouth to God's ears. She had a Czechoslovakian accent, so it always sounded like she was saying, from your mouth to Godzilla. But, you know, I feel the same way you do. And the thing about it, I'm grateful for the relationship that we've formed, but it's also a huge ingredient of it is that we enjoy each other's company and make each other laugh. The best idea in the world for me, the best idea in the world, if you're working with a stiff, I can't do it. I can't do it. You know, I mean, this has become like a testimonial for Strategic Coach, but it's true. I mean, I told you this the other day after our last meeting and told the people there that, you know, this has been nothing but fun, you know, and along the way, we have, I think, harvested some really useful knowledge and innovative framework to help people do what they want to do that is applicable to so many things. And having a good time doing that is paramount to me, and it's fun.
 
And we're still at the beginning, which is also very cool. So thank you for saying that, and I feel the same way. And I've expressed that to you, and I expressed it to, well, to Babs, of course, also, and then to the group we were working with, because I think that's another thing, it's so weird in business where people are, I don't know why they're often reluctant to be open enough to say something with true meaning about another person that is favorable, that you're working with. And when you support each other, you can push a much bigger rock up the hill, because all entrepreneurship is, a good amount of pushing that rock up the hill. But when you've got a team that's helping you do that, and everybody is contributing to that effort, it makes a hard task a lot easier, and I believe ultimately more gratifying. And that's my re-enactment of the myth of Sisyphus.
 
Dan Sullivan: Thanks a lot, Jeff. Thank you, Dan.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Thanks for joining us today on our show, Anything and Everything. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. For more about me and my work, visit acreativecareer.com and madoffproductions.com. To learn more about Dan and Strategic Coach, visit strategiccoach.com.