The Business Philosopher Within You

Can you give someone ownership, or can you only invite them to find it?This episode is about psychological ownership, the feeling that something is yours, and why it is stronger than the legal kind.Equity, options, profit sharing, a bonus tied to the numbers. None of it is a mistake. "Those things are fair. They're often the right thing to do. And let's face it, in a lot of companies, they're long overdue." They are also all outside the person, and the feeling we are after is inside them.Here is the stake. "I don't think the performance you're looking for is outside your company waiting to be hired. I think much of it is already there." It is sitting in people who could bring far more than they currently bring, and what is missing is often not effort. It is the relationship they have with the work.In this episode, we explore what happens inside a person when something becomes theirs, why that changes how they think, feel and behave, why the usual ways of manufacturing ownership do not work, and one twenty minute conversation you can have this week with a single direct report.In this episode, we explore:Why "a share certificate is a legal fact" and nobody has ever defended one the way they defend themselvesWhat actually happens inside a person as "this is mine" quietly becomes "this is me"Two questions to ask a direct report, in the order that makes them workWhy "you're not collecting answers, you're watching what happens to them"How the same ownership that makes somebody formidable can make them territorial, defensive and unable to hand anything over"Can you give someone ownership, or can you only invite them to find it?" is not only a founder's question. It belongs to the manager whose team does the job and goes home, to the executive who cannot work out why a capable group is only half present, and to anyone who has watched someone treat a side project or a parent teacher organization as though the place were theirs. It is also a question to turn around. You legally own your company. Do you psychologically own it the way you did in the first year?If you want people who think, feel and act more like owners, without becoming possessive or territorial, this episode offers a place to start that has almost nothing to do with money.A note on the term. Bhavesh arrived at "psychological ownership" independently, in his own work, without exposure to the research. The same term had already been in use in organizational research since the early 2000s (Pierce, Kostova and Dirks, 2001). What he presents here is his own, original thinking.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Chapters0:00 Why Your People Don't Feel Ownership the Way You Do0:33 Who Acts Like the Place Is Theirs?1:11 What's Your Biggest Problem?2:59 Do You Need All the Answers?3:34 What If Money Were Off the Table?5:29 What Are You Actually Watching For?7:01 Can Equity Create Ownership?8:07 Does This Feeling Have a Name?9:29 Do You Still Own It the Way You Did in Year One?10:21 What Happens When Something Becomes Yours?11:52 When Does Mine Become… Me?13:22 Formidable… or Territorial?14:43 What Changes When You Can See It?16:48 How Can Two Odd Questions Do Anything?18:37 Who Asks You the Questions?19:16 Where Is the Performance You're Looking For?━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Episode Show Notes and Deep Dive📚 https://www.awayre.com/psychological-ownership-why-employees-dont-act-like-owners/Follow Bhavesh Naik🔗 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhaveshnaik/Be a Guest🦸‍♀️ https://www.awayre.com/business-philosopher-within-you-podcast-guest/Take Founder Dependency Snapshot📸 https://www.awayre.com/founder-dependency-snapshot/Music by Yrii Semchyshyn (Thank You!)https://www.patreon.com/yuriisemchyshyn

What do you do when the company you built becomes you?And what happens to your identity when you sell the company you built? In this conversation, John Hutchinson shares practical strategies he implemented for "zooming in and zooming out" of his business which led to successful business and a subsequent exit. John co-founded CARE Counseling with his wife Andrea after a third of her doctoral cohort left the profession within two years of qualifying. The company grew roughly 70 percent a year for a decade with no debt and no outside equity, reaching more than 300 employees serving 60,000 clients before it was acquired by Optum, a UnitedHealth company. Along the way it earned recognition from Inc. 5000, Fast 50 and Best Places to Work. Today he is a Venture Partner at Headwater Ventures and the author of the forthcoming Forbes book, The Nuance Effect.In this conversation, we explore why a founder cannot see his own company from the outside, what it costs to find out, the deliberately strange things John did to borrow other people's eyes, and how he worked out which group of people the whole business actually rested on.In this conversation, we explore:Why he told his competitors what had failed, to the irritation of his own leadership teamWhat happens to a service business when average tenure goes from eighteen months to thirty-sixWhy he spent five years taking acquisition calls he had no intention of accepting"It's kryptonite and a superpower." What a company becoming your identity gives you, and what it takesWhy Jersey Mike's is the business he points to, and what "compound interest is a gift from God" means for a founderWhich group in a service business quietly carries everything, and why favoring them leaves everyone else better off"What do you do when the company you built becomes you?" is not only a question for founders who have sold. It's also a question for anyone still building who can already feel the work taking up more of them than they meant to give. And it is worth sitting with if you run something you have not been able to step away from for two weeks.If you are building a company you hope will outlast you, this conversation is about the part that rarely gets said out loud. Not whether the company can survive without you. Whether you can.CHAPTERS00:00 What Do You Do When the Company You Built Becomes You?03:29 What Would Make Your Best People Quit the Profession?11:58 Is Work Part of Your Life… or Part of You?18:17 How Long Before a New Hire Pays You Back?20:23 Would You Tell a Candidate What You're Bad At?22:39 What Happens If You Give the Answer Away?28:16 Do You Sell When It's Right… or When You're Done?33:09 Would You Let a Buyer Audit You Five Years Early?38:13 Which of Your People Actually Moves the Needle?45:08 Where Can You Actually Win?50:29 How Big Does Your Company Actually Need to Be?55:08 Who Tells You What You Don't Want to Hear?56:21 Who Are You Once It's Sold?━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Episode Show Notes and Deep Divehttps://www.awayre.com/too-close-to-see-founder-identity-blind-spot/Connect with John Hutchinson🔗 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-j-hutchinson/🌐 Headwater Ventures: https://headwater.vc/🎙️ The Nuance Effect, John's podcast and the research behind his forthcoming book about how the smallest, most human leadership moves produce the biggest business results.https://www.youtube.com/@NuanceEffectFollow Bhavesh Naik🔗 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhaveshnaik/Be a Guest: https://www.awayre.com/business-philosopher-within-you-podcast-guest/Take Founder Dependency Snapshot📸 https://www.awayre.com/founder-dependency-snapshot/Music by Yrii Semchyshyn (Thank You!):https://www.patreon.com/yuriisemchyshyn

We've talked quite a bit on this podcast about founder dependency: what happens when a business becomes dependent on its founder for decisions, problem-solving, direction and leadership.But there's another side to that relationship.What happens when the founder becomes dependent on the business?For identity. For accomplishment. For status. For security. For a sense of being needed.When the business depends on the founder and the founder depends on the business, I've been calling this Founder Co-Dependency.And this relationship can have structural consequences.The way a founder identifies with the business can influence where decisions are made, how authority is distributed, how responsibility is assigned and how people throughout the organization learn to operate.In this episode, we explore how Founder Co-Dependency develops, why it isn't necessarily a bad thing, where it can become limiting and why changing the founder's relationship with the business may need to happen alongside changes to organizational structure.You'll also get a simple 20-minute exercise designed to help you create some space between yourself and your business and begin seeing your organization from a different perspective.And we end with another question:Can you own something without allowing it to own you?━━━━━━━━━━━━━━CHAPTERS0:00 Why Your Business Can't Grow Beyond You1:43 What If the Dependency Runs Both Ways?3:32 Who Asks the Better Questions?4:09 Can You Leave for Twenty Minutes?6:48 Are You Playing the Game… or Inside It?8:38 When Does a Role Become Who You Are?9:36 What Does the Business Give You?10:32 Did You Ever Decide Any of This?11:18 Is Your Identity Running the Org Chart?13:34 What Can a System Never Decide for You?14:35 Where Does Authority Actually Live?15:23 Who Else Does Everyone Depend On?16:24 What Fits in the Gap?17:29 Why Would Twenty Minutes Change Anything?19:55 Who Really Owns Your Business?20:42 What Will You Change This Week?━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Episode Show Notes and Deep Dive📚 Deep Dive, Show Notes and Reference Reading: https://www.awayre.com/founder-codependencyFollow Bhavesh Naik🔗 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhaveshnaik/Be a Guest on The Business Philosopher Within You🦸‍♀️ https://www.awayre.com/business-philosopher-within-you-podcast-guest/Take Founder Dependency Snapshot📸 https://www.awayre.com/founder-dependency-snapshot/Music by Yrii Semchyshyn (Thank You!):https://www.patreon.com/yuriisemchyshyn

Can you lead a culture you didn't create?Most leaders are told to put their stamp on the culture. Eric Giesecke inherited one and did the opposite. He never tried to make it his.In 2015, Eric acquired Planet DDS through a search fund, with no background in dentistry and none in software. The company had 25 employees, a go-to-market team of three and one customer that accounted for 15 to 20 percent of revenue. Ten years later it serves over 13,000 dental practices across North America, employs roughly 350 people, works with more than half of the 60 largest dental organizations in the country, and its revenue team alone has grown from three people to 75.In this conversation, we explore how an outsider earns credibility, why a company's values should be a reflection rather than an imprint, what breaks when a CEO can no longer meet every new hire, and how culture survives once one person can no longer hold it.In this conversation, we explore:Why the famous culture decks are the wrong place to find your own company's valuesWhat a CEO loses at employee 100, and what has to replace himWhy "middle management is the death of motivation," and what comes after itHow culture ends up carried by the people at the happy hour and the pickup basketball game rather than by the CEOWhy a company is safer when its next leaders step up from inside than when a new CEO is brought inWhat a leader should refuse to compromise on, even in a culture that was never his"Can you lead a culture you didn't create?" is not only a question for leaders who bought their company. It's also a question for founders who acquire and absorb other teams. It's worth revisiting for anyone whose company grows past the point where they know everyone in it.If you are building a company you hope will outlast you, this conversation offers a different place to start. Not with what you would put into the culture, but with what was already there.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━CHAPTERS00:00:00 Can You Lead a Culture You Didn't Create?00:03:34 Would You Buy a Company You Know Nothing About?00:06:12 What Happens When Nobody Chose You?00:10:19 What Were You Really Buying?00:13:13 What Exactly Is a Search Fund?00:17:30 Do You Lead First… or Listen First?00:21:57 Can You Inherit Values?00:30:40 How Do You Know a Culture Is Real?00:36:44 Can One Customer Change Everything?00:40:34 Does Leadership Get Harder… or Lonelier?00:43:47 Can the Company Run Without You?00:47:25 How Many People Can One Leader Actually Carry?00:51:00 Which Decision Changed Everything?00:54:53 What Breaks After Employee 100?00:59:53 Getting In Touch With Eric Giesecke━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Episode Show Notes and Deep Divehttps://www.awayre.com/founders-span-of-culture/Connect with Eric Giesecke🔗 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-giesecke-5657513/🌐 Planet DDS: https://www.planetdds.com/Follow Bhavesh Naik🔗 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhaveshnaik/Be a Guest on The Business Philosopher Within You🦸‍♀️ https://www.awayre.com/business-philosopher-within-you-podcast-guest/Take Founder Dependency Snapshot📸 https://www.awayre.com/founder-dependency-snapshot/Music by Yrii Semchyshyn (Thank You!):https://www.patreon.com/yuriisemchyshyn

Can emotion make you a better founder?Most leaders spend years sharpening their intellect. Mike LeBlanc believes the learning that changes a founder runs deeper. It's emotional.After serving 13 years as a Marine Corps officer, Mike co-founded Cobalt Robotics, which grew to a $360 million valuation. Today, he is co-founder of Foundation Future Industries, building humanoid robots with a long-term vision of creating a $50 billion company.In this conversation, we explore why founder growth is deeply personal, how emotion shapes leadership, why startups become bureaucratic, and what it takes to keep evolving as your company grows.In this conversation, we explore:Why Brian Chesky believes companies grow only as fast as founders learnWhat Aristotle understood about emotion that many leaders still missHow a startup became "more bureaucratic than the Pentagon" with only 60 peopleWhy emotional growth often matters more than intellectual growthWhat founders must become as their companies evolveIf you're building a company that you hope will outlast you, this conversation offers a different way to think about leadership, growth and organizational evolution.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━CHAPTERS00:00:00 Learning Is Emotional, Not Intellectual00:04:05 Why Did Aristotle Change the Way You Thought About Emotion?00:12:17 When Did This Philosophy Get Tested in Real Life?00:19:13 Brian Chesky's Lesson Every Founder Should Hear00:22:24 When Did Learning Become Painful for You as a Founder?00:27:36 How Did a 60-Person Startup Become More Bureaucratic Than the Pentagon?00:37:42 How to Continuously Reinvent Yourself?00:43:42 How Do You Lead Founders, Investors and Brilliant Engineers at the Same Time?00:51:36 What Does It Really Mean to Build a $50 Billion Company?01:02:30 Are Great Companies Built More on Emotion Than Intelligence?01:08:18 Why Is Building a Company a Spiritual Journey?01:09:45 Looking Back, How Has Mike LeBlanc Changed?01:13:22 Getting In Touch and the Book : "What If Anger Is the Answer?" 01:15:07 Behind the Scenes Thoughts━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Episode Show Notes and Deep Dive📚 Deep Dive, Show Notes and Reference Reading: https://www.awayre.com/learning-that-changes-founders/Connect with Mike LeBlanc🔗 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-leblanc-20783b114/🌐 Foundation Future Industries: https://foundation.bot/🌐 Mike LeBlanc: https://officialmikeleblanc.com/Connect with Bhavesh Naik🔗 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhaveshnaik/🌐 Website: https://www.awayre.com/The Business Philosopher Within You Podcast🎬🎙️📖 Website: https://www.awayre.com/business-philosopher-within-you-podcast/🦸‍♀️Be a Guest: https://www.awayre.com/business-philosopher-within-you-podcast-guest/Explore how self-awareness can help your build a self-sustaining organization that outlives you🧙‍♂️ ⁠https://www.awayre.com/hire-a-fool/Take Founder Dependency Snapshot📸 https://www.awayre.com/founder-dependency-snapshot/Music by Yrii Semchyshyn (Thank You!):https://www.patreon.com/yuriisemchyshyn