Podcast Ep 166 | Necessary Endings

“Nec­es­sary End­ings” is a self-help book writ­ten by Dr. Hen­ry Cloud. It explores the con­cept of embrac­ing and ini­ti­at­ing end­ings in var­i­ous aspects of life, such as rela­tion­ships, careers, and per­son­al growth, in order to cre­ate a pos­i­tive and ful­fill­ing future.

The book empha­sis­es that end­ings are a nat­ur­al part of life and are nec­es­sary for per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al growth.

While end­ings are a nat­ur­al part of busi­ness and life, we often expe­ri­ence them with a sense of hes­i­ta­tion, sad­ness, res­ig­na­tion, or regret. But Dr. Hen­ry Cloud sees end­ings dif­fer­ent­ly. He argues that our per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al lives can only improve to the degree that we can see end­ings as a nec­es­sary and strate­gic step to some­thing bet­ter. If we can­not see end­ings in a pos­i­tive light and exe­cute them well, he asserts, the ​“bet­ter” will nev­er come either in busi­ness growth or our per­son­al lives.

In this insight­ful and deeply empa­thet­ic book, Dr. Cloud demon­strates that, when exe­cut­ed well, ​“nec­es­sary end­ings” allow us to proac­tive­ly cor­rect the bad and the bro­ken in our lives in order to make room for the pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al growth we seek. How­ev­er, when end­ings are avoid­ed or han­dled poor­ly — as is too often the case — good oppor­tu­ni­ties may be lost, and mis­ery repeat­ed. Draw­ing on years of expe­ri­ence as an exec­u­tive coach and a psy­chol­o­gist, Dr. Cloud offers a mix­ture of advice and case stud­ies to help readers

• Know when to have real­is­tic hope and when to exe­cute a nec­es­sary end­ing in a busi­ness, or with an individual.
• Iden­ti­fy which employ­ees, projects, activ­i­ties, and rela­tion­ships are worth nur­tur­ing and which are not.
• Over­come peo­ple’s resis­tance to change and cre­ate change that works.
• Cre­ate urgency and an action plan for what’s important.
• Stop wast­ing resources need­ed for the things that real­ly matter.
• Know­ing when and how to let go when some­thing, or some­one, isn’t work­ing — a per­son­al rela­tion­ship, a job, or a busi­ness ven­ture — is essen­tial for hap­pi­ness and success.

In this, the final episode of the Growth Whis­per­ers pod­cast, we talk about the book nec­es­sary end­ings, our jour­ney togeth­er, and why you should con­sid­er what end­ings are nec­es­sary in your life.

Thank you for lis­ten­ing, it’s been an hon­our to help you. From Kevin and Brad. 

EPISODE TRAN­SCRIPT

Brad (00:00:13) — Wel­come to the Growth Whis­pers, where every­thing we talk about is build­ing endur­ing great com­pa­nies. My name is Brad Giles, and as always today, I’m joined by my co-host Kevin Lawrence in Van­cou­ver, Cana­da. Hel­lo, Kevin. How things today

Kevin (00:00:28) — Doing? Good. It’s sum­mer here. Life is good. We’re doing episode num­ber 166 and, uh, yeah. Yeah, I’m feel­ing grate­ful. Life is good.

Brad (00:00:42) — Good. Yep. Episode 166. This is a very spe­cial episode today. Yes.

Brad (00:00:48) — Um, because it’s our last episode, uh, we are record­ing this, uh, in late May, 2023, after 166 weeks in a row, uh, talk­ing to each oth­er, help­ing you to build endur­ing great com­pa­nies. Uh, and this is our last one. We, uh, we have made the deci­sion that, uh, it’s been a great ride, um, but it’s time for, uh, nec­es­sary end­ing. Um, and today we’re gonna talk about nec­es­sary end­ings, and in par­tic­u­lar, a book by some­one who we, we love, uh, some­one who, who has mm-hmm. just nailed this prin­ci­ple of nec­es­sary end­ings, uh, and why they’re impor­tant, why it’s impor­tant to make room for nec­es­sary end­ings so that you can build your, um, busi­ness and your life and con­tin­ue to grow. Because unless we stop some things, we’re unable to grow and to make room for the things that we need to. Yeah.

Kevin (00:01:57) — And it’s some­thing that we talk about with our­selves and our clients all the time, but it’s about mak­ing room for oth­er things in your world. So, we’ll talk today about the book Nec­es­sary End­ings, which is a fit­ting end to our pod­cast. And yes, you know, you could prob­a­bly pick up, if you’ve lis­tened to oth­er episodes, Brad and I real­ly have enjoyed doing this, and it’s been a great project for Brad. If you go back to the begin­ning, you know, we were friends on oth­er side of the world that met through this com­mon inter­est in build­ing endur­ing great com­pa­nies. And dur­ing Covid we want­ed, we were doing a lot of work and brain­storm­ing and shar­ing ideas on how to piv­ot and thrive in Covid, uh, both with­in our firms and for our clients. And the idea of the pod­cast is though we should share this stuff with oth­er people.

Kevin (00:02:39) — And it was an oppor­tu­ni­ty for Brad and I to learn togeth­er and con­nect togeth­er. And it’s been an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence. And, you know, and we’ve con­tin­ued to enhance our friend­ship on our rela­tion­ship, and now we’re gonna free our­selves up for some­thing else, which we don’t know what it is yet, but we just know that it’s time, it’s time for these, this nec­es­sary end­ing, which, and we’ll, we’ll get into that in, uh, the book today. It’s an awe­some book. It’s, it’s a book that gives us per­mis­sion, um, to let go of things. And obvi­ous­ly, like let­ting go of tox­ic things is easy. Like if it does­n’t serve you, like, you know, if you’ve got a car that keeps break­ing down non­stop and you have no emo­tion­al attach­ment to it, well that’s, that’s, that’s an easy end­ing. But if it was your great-grand­fa­ther’s car, or if it’s a car that’s mean­ing­ful for you in some way, uh, or you have an emo­tion­al con­nec­tion, that’s a hard­er thing. And you know, today we wan­na focus on mak­ing those hard­er deci­sions of the things that are fine or good, but for some rea­son it’s time to free up. Before we do that, we want to real­ly thank peo­ple for a hun­dred. Well, some of these peo­ple have not been with 166 episodes, but Bren­dan, our, our back­end pro­duc­er, the pro­duc­er who’s been help­ing us a lot, Bren­dan has been here since the very begin­ning. I believe Brad,

Brad (00:03:57) — Since the very begin­ning. He’s 1 66 down, like you and I.

Kevin (00:04:01) — Exact­ly. And I, Braden, Braden, Lawrence, my son also has been doing it all. And I also believe he’s been doing it since the very, very beginning.

Brad (00:04:11) — I think so.

Kevin (00:04:12) — I think so. So, Bren­dan and Braden have been there all along sup­port­ing us. So Brad and I can do this and they can make the mag­ic hap­pen in the back end. Um, on my team at Loco, Jess has been post­ing these over the last six months. And before that, mark, mark, uh, mark Sim­pli was real­ly help­ful in help­ing us when we start­ed do all the back­end on my end. And you had some­one as well, have some­one who was well help­ing on your end there, Brad.

Brad (00:04:41) — I did Bri­any at our end who’s, uh, been great help­ing to keep me in order and keep things hap­pen­ing at this end. So thank you to Braden, Bren­dan, Jess, and Briney for, uh, all of your helped through this pod­cast. But did we have a fight? I don’t think we had a fight. There’s no fight. We’re No. Maybe we

Kevin (00:05:01) — Should, should we, should we?

Brad (00:05:02) — Alright. Alright. Right. Do you wanna

Kevin (00:05:03) — Have a fight? Do you wan­na have one?

Brad (00:05:05) — Uh, yeah, let’s talk about, um, why, why the, I, one of the things I remem­ber why we should move the US to the dec­i­mal cur­ren­cy and, uh, uh, why we should, uh, maybe, uh, just get, get the us to adopt the met­ric sys­tem, some of those good things. Mm.

Kevin (00:05:28) — Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s some­thing we don’t talk a lot is about pol­i­tics or any of that kind of stuff, so No, I might, no, we don’t. It’s, it’s, and that’s, again, those are are the hard changes to make. If we did­n’t like each oth­er, did­n’t respect each oth­er, did­n’t get along with each oth­er, well those are eas­i­er deci­sions. Yeah. But we’ve gone in back and forth over the last month or so going, you know, I think it’s time to do some­thing different.

Brad (00:05:51) — Yeah. Yeah. And, and look, we’re great friends. We’re hop­ing to catch up again soon to catch up reg­u­lar­ly. Yeah. And you, you know, we’re not rul­ing out that we might or might not do some­thing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly in the future. Um, so yeah, every­thing is good, but some­times we need these nec­es­sary endings.

Kevin (00:06:12) — Yes. And there’s a prin­ci­ple of my part­ner and I were talk­ing about is, is that you got­ta hold things light­ly some­times, and in life, if you hold things too firm­ly, you can get stuck on paths for longer than they’re serv­ing you in this one c e o uh, Kate, um, I was just talk­ing about her today with this and you know, she said there’s it, she called the beau, you get a beau­ti­ful short-term rela­tion­ships and, and it’s just that, it was a phi­los­o­phy of like, in life and busi­ness, when you make a great friend, you think you should be a great friend for decades. Yeah. Or when you hire a great team mem­ber, they should be with you for life. And I mean, some­times there’s peo­ple that are in your life for an hour and have a mas­sive impact, or there’s peo­ple that you work with for three months or three years or 13 years. But human nature is, we wan­na hold onto those good things. We can’t help our, some peo­ple wan­na hold onto the bad things as well. That’s a, a chal­leng­ing thing. But we wan­na hold onto good things. And some­times those aren’t the best choic­es. And, and, um, you know, it’s as, as Jim Collins says, you know, good can be the ene­my of great.

Brad (00:07:24) — Yeah. Yep. So, so, uh, you would know that Steve Jobs, who was the founder of Apple, start­ed Apple and then he got famous­ly fired, um, fr from Apple, uh, by the per­son he appoint­ed to be c e o, uh, and, and chair­man. So, uh, he then went out and start­ed his own busi­ness­es and did some oth­er things. And then after a while he came back to lead Apple once again. The first thing that he did when he got back is he assem­bled every­one. And he said, this is what we’re going to do and we’re going to stop doing all of these things. One of those exam­ples was the print­er divi­sion. So the print­er divi­sion was one of their most prof­itable areas with­in the busi­ness, and peo­ple were shocked. I

Kevin (00:08:13) — For­got about that. Right.

Brad (00:08:16) — Yeah. And they were shocked. And he drew a two by two matrix and he said, we’re gonna do busi­ness and per­son­al com­put­ers and we’re gonna do them in a low and the high end, every­thing else is done. And that deci­sion to make that nec­es­sary end­ing from all of the prod­ucts that weren’t con­tribut­ing to their main, uh, their, their main dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion or the main thing that they could win at in a mar­ket meant that’s, that was part of the gen­e­sis of them begin­ning to become the suc­cess­ful com­pa­ny they are today. So they could­n’t grow unless they let go of those things. An exam­ple of nec­es­sary endings.

Kevin (00:08:54) — It’s great. You know, and I was think­ing about too is that, you know, I’ve had it with some clients that I’ve worked with for like a decade or so, and, and I enjoy work­ing with ​‘em. And a prob­lem is I’m so loy­al to peo­ple, my loy­al­ty, and I love those rela­tion­ships, those rela­tion­ships where you know each oth­er and, and, and, and want to help each oth­er. And I had one client and I could feel it was time for some­body else on my team to work with them. And, and thank­ful­ly I have peo­ple on my team that can take over and, you know, it was inter­est­ing. I I, I was ago­niz­ing over hav­ing the con­ver­sa­tion with them. We planned it over like nine months. Like, Hey, I’ll hand it over, you know, in nine months to give them lots of time. Cause I respect them and wan­na sup­port them.

Kevin (00:09:34) — Yeah. And you know, my team mem­ber, um, my team mem­ber Tim, uh, took over and on his first Strat plan­ning ses­sion he did with them, he got like 10 to 10 feed­back. And so I was thrilled that the client was well tak­en care of. Yeah. I was thrilled for him. And I felt a bit of a, you know, they did­n’t miss me that much , but it’s like, I, I knew it and it was hard to have the con­ver­sa­tion and it was like, actu­al­ly, and Tim had a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence tak­en over a cou­ple of my oth­er clients as well. And those are just hard. They’re, it’s hard for me, but it’s also good. Like, in that case it was good for the client because for them they’re gonna get dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives and dif­fer­ent things, which they did get with him. Um, and for me, uh, I, I was ready for some­thing new and I’ve got a firm to work on and books to write and I can’t, you know, I have to let go of things if I’m going to do it. It’s just, it kind of goes against my grain some­times and it’s hard. But yet when I do, uh, it seems to be like a win-win win. Well,

Brad (00:10:41) — We need to cre­ate the space for us to be able to grow. That’s the point. Yes. So, so with­in the book, again, it’s nec­es­sary end­ings by Dr. Hen­ry Cloud, there are five main areas that we want to talk about today. Mm-hmm. . So the first, the first area is that end­ings are not inher­ent­ly neg­a­tive. They’re essen­tial for prun­ing and allow­ing new growth. So he used the, he uses the metaphor of a per­son who’s prun­ing a rose­bush and a rose­bush. Mm-hmm. every year has to be cut right back. And I’m talk­ing about six, 12 inch stems from what might have been, uh, you know, a five foot, excuse me, for Yeah. Advo­cat­ing for met­ric ear­li­er and now talk­ing impe­r­i­al . Um, but, uh, you know, a large, a large bush trend right back almost to the ground. And that’s how you get the best growth in the next year. And that’s the metaphor that a user, so it’s not neg­a­tive, but it’s essen­tial so that we can allow new growth.

Kevin (00:11:45) — Yeah. And again, it, it makes sense in nature. We’ve talked before how for­est fires are healthy cuz it burns the under­brush. It just feels hard. And if you’ve ever seen some­one prone back a rose­bush or grapes in a vine­yard or any­thing, it looks almost vio­lent some­times and, and harsh how much it prunes back, but then it grows back stronger. So the first thing, end­ings are not inher­ent­ly neg­a­tive. There can be lots of pos­i­tive ones. Now, some­times if you leave a nec­es­sary end­ing too long, it can go neg­a­tive if you, yeah. Just imag­ine a Rose Bush just being left wild, that’s gonna have a hard­er time. And they talk. The sec­ond thing they talk was there’s three types. It’s a very like, lib­er­at­ing, refresh­ing book to read. I real­ly, real­ly enjoyed it. Mm-hmm. Um, three types end­ings, obvi­ous ones, like the ones that are no brain­ers, like some­thing that’s tox­ic or bro­ken or does­n’t serve you dif­fi­cult, but essen­tial ones.

Kevin (00:12:48) — Um, and those, you know, obvi­ous­ly the ones that we’re talk­ing about, they, they, they take a lit­tle more work. Um, but you, you know, deep down inside, I, I know it’s worth it. And then those need­ed to pro­tect one­self. Yeah. Those are ones that again, are, um, tying back into more of the tox­ic type things. The things that, you know, you’re, you’re get­ting injured or hurt or drained or as a result of those and you need it, whether you’re pro­ject­ing your ener­gy or your mon­ey or your san­i­ty, what­ev­er it hap­pens to be. So yeah. Obvi­ous, dif­fi­cult and essen­tial. And then almost self-preser­va­tion or self-protection.

Brad (00:13:30) — Yeah. The obvi­ous ones, uh, uh, are kind of easy. Look, we’re los­ing so much mon­ey here. Uh, yeah. It does­n’t make any sense. But the prob­lem is uh, there’s, there’s one team that I work with and recent­ly they were try­ing to, uh, find a way to, to stop a divi­sion that is, uh, bleed­ing cash, like hem­or­rhag­ing cash. Uh, and all the mon­ey that’s made in the prof­itable divi­sion is pay­ing for the unprof­itable divi­sion. Yeah.

Kevin (00:13:59) — That’s a com­mon scenario.

Brad (00:14:01) — It real­ly is. Um, and, and so that kind of falls across all three of those. It’s obvi­ous, it’s dif­fi­cult, but essen­tial and it’s need­ed to pro­tect. But that’s, you said the before, I like the bush, the book because it’s refresh­ing and that’s the same rea­son that I do. Yes. Because it says it’s okay. It’s a human trait. It makes me think about this in a dif­fer­ent way. And then when you embrace that, cuz I read this sev­er­al years ago, you think every­thing has a begin­ning and a mid­dle and an end, and it’s okay. And then as a coach, we look at these sit­u­a­tions more than just being tough. And we think this is just, this is just a part of nature that, that things have a begin­ning, mid­dle, and end. And if this divi­sion can’t be turned around, it’s clos­er to the end than the begin­ning and there­fore it, it, it, it needs to have some kind of action.

Brad (00:14:57) — So mov­ing on to num­ber three, the fear of end­ings stems from the unknown and poten­tial loss­es asso­ci­at­ed with change. Uh, humans don’t like change. Uh, it is, it is coun­ter­in­tu­itive. We like the sta­tus quo, but the sta­tus quo may not be the best thing for us. The sta­tus quo may not enable us to, to, to, to under grow the next phase of growth, per­son­al growth or finan­cial growth that we need. Um, and so how many times in your life can you look back and think, well, I was forced into that change or that end­ing, like I left it too long and then when I think about how that end­ed, I prob­a­bly should have end­ed it ear­li­er and I let it go too long.

Kevin (00:15:49) — Almost always. And that’s what, whether it’s, maybe it’s mak­ing a, we’re talk­ing about phys­i­cal move of your home or a friend­ship or a rela­tion­ship or a client or, or any of those, and a team mem­ber or an employ­ee or you leav­ing and doing some­thing dif­fer­ent. It’s like, and it’s always fear because it’s fear-based, because we’re com­fort­able. And gen­er­al­ly the hard part about this is we’re more moti­vat­ed by avoid­ance of pain than we are plea­sure by nature. Yes. And so there’s a per­ceived poten­tial pain from mak­ing these kinds of changes, which caus­es peo­ple not to. So, um, there are peo­ple who are in real­ly, real­ly chal­leng­ing envi­ron­ments. I was talk­ing to some­one once I remem­ber, and they were talk­ing about how, um, they had, uh, a friend of theirs and there was a lot of bru­tal and tox­ic things around that friendship.

Brad (00:16:47) — Yeah.

Kevin (00:16:48) — But it was their only friend and they did­n’t want to be friend­less. And so they hung, and this is when they were young, like in, you know, grade school, but they hung on to the friend because they did­n’t want to have no friends and one bad friend was bet­ter than zero friends. Yeah. And, and again, it’s not like these things are log­i­cal, it’s fear and anx­i­ety and all the stuff that comes into our brain. And I’ve, I’ve seen it myself many, many times. And gen­er­al­ly things gen­er­al­ly will work out, but the, the, that that change in let­ting go is hard.

Brad (00:17:20) — It is, it is. It makes me think about a c e o that we work with. And this per­son, uh, kept a sales­per­son, a, a a a senior senior sales­per­son for I reck­on five years too long, uh, which is a very long time. Right. But the c e o kept jus­ti­fy­ing it by say­ing, this per­son owns the rela­tion­ships for our, our biggest clients. Yeah. Like, if I, if I exit this per­son, um, I don’t have a rela­tion­ship with those clients. They trust that sales­per­son. And, and they real­ly, it when, when the per­son did leave, it was­n’t any­where near as bad as they thought it would be, but it was dri­ven by the fear of the end­ing. What will hap­pen, what if.

Kevin (00:18:06) — Cor­rect. And I’ve seen it again and again. We had in one com­pa­ny some­one that need­ed to move on after a long time with the com­pa­ny. And, you know, and some, some, some CEOs and lead­ers are con­cerned about law­suits and every­thing else. This per­son was­n’t, they were con­cerned about doing per­ma­nent dam­age to a rela­tion­ship that they had. Yeah. Because they actu­al­ly real­ly cared about the per­son. And I, you know, it’s inter­est­ing. I always remem­ber advice that Jim Collins gives to this about end­ing rela­tion­ships with employ­ees that you have to let go. Mm. And he always said, which this helps it, um, is you got­ta allow them to main­tain their dig­ni­ty. Mm-hmm. , when you need to end a rela­tion­ship with an employ­ee, you’ve got, you’ve got a stake in it too. You, you’ve got a hand in it, whether you hired them or man­aged them or pro­mot­ed them, you’re part of it, you’re part of the orga­ni­za­tion for sure that, that, you know, may have made a bad hir­ing choice or pro­mo­tion choice or who knows what.

Kevin (00:19:04) — And he’s always said is that, you know, you should, you should allow them to main­tain their dig­ni­ty. And to him, what that means, if he calls them on their birth­day a year lat­er Yeah. They, they’d answer, they would answer the phone and take a call from him if he was send­ing good wish­es. And so, you know, it, it’s still, there’s still anx­i­ety about end­ing, but how do you, how do you do it grace­ful­ly? How do you end it? Well, if at all pos­si­ble, um, again, peo­ple st that’s in a rela­tion­al sense, but stop­ping any­thing, peo­ple are still like­ly to be fear­ful of the repercussions.

Brad (00:19:39) — Yeah. Let’s move on to num­ber four. Nec­es­sary end­ings lead to new oppor­tu­ni­ties, improved per­for­mance, and increased hap­pi­ness. Um, I talk about this in my book onboard­ed, where we say, at the end of 90 days, when you’re onboard­ing a new employ­ee, we want the sys­tem to force a deci­sion that they’re either a suc­cess­ful fit or an unsuc­cess­ful fit, and that deci­sion to be made by the new hires man­ag­er. And if they’re not a suc­cess­ful fit, that they would either exit them or in an unusu­al case, maybe extend their pro­ba­tion. But the point being, we, we want to say this is the end­ing of the, uh, of the first 90 days. And that end­ing means that a deci­sion must be made. Because if we don’t do that, we won’t have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get some­one in who could be a suc­cess­ful fit and who might pro­duce bet­ter per­for­mance, even though it’s going to be Yes. Dif­fi­cult to fire them or exit them. And it’s gonna be dif­fi­cult to hire again.

Kevin (00:20:50) — Yeah. That’s a great exam­ple. Um, the final one is devel­op self-aware­ness, um, for rec­og­niz­ing when end­ings are nec­es­sary. And, you know, you made me think there, Brad is in my book, your Oxy­gen Mask first there’s a chap­ter called Lick Your Toads, which is deal­ing with all kinds of lit­tle built up things that you’ve been pro­cras­ti­nat­ing and putting off. Mm-hmm. And often, and, and, and in a book, it breaks it down into all these dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories that these things can exist. And often, um, we have a bunch and these, these become toads because I con­sid­er it a toad, like if you’ve thought about it more than three times and you haven’t act­ed on it, that means it’s start­ing to burn up spray space in your brain and it’s gonna cre­ate a dis­trac­tion loop. Yeah. And as a whole metaphor, the toads, but you know, this, this toad list of things, and gen­er­al­ly you know what you need to do and you just dread deal­ing with it. That’s hard. So, for exam­ple, I had a, a friend that had, uh, a finan­cial advi­sor and they had invest­ed in some­thing that they intu­itive­ly kind of knew was­n’t the right choice,

Kevin (00:22:00) — But they did­n’t wan­na deal with it because they had such a great rela­tion­ship with the finan­cial advi­sor. The finan­cial advi­sor had been so help­ful to them in a chal­leng­ing time. They did­n’t wan­na let the per­son down. Yeah. But they kept think­ing about it and talk­ing about it and think, and if you’re think­ing about it and talk­ing about it, you know, you need to do some­thing about it. You’re just, in this case, afraid of let­ting anoth­er, anoth­er per­son down. Uh, even though the per­son was a, you know, a sup­pli­er to you . Yeah. Which is, you know, but the, the, but if you care about peo­ple, you could care about that. So going back to the toads, this toads list, and I reg­u­lar­ly do that, and we have it as part of our quar­ter­ly goals, what are the toads that you’re not deal­ing with? Obvi­ous­ly the big ones are the ones that we’re talk­ing about. Not I need to, you know, touch up paint on the cor­ner of a wall in my office.

Brad (00:22:45) — Yeah. Yeah. It, if there’s a mod­el that I use that, that touch­es on what you’re say­ing there, imag­ine the yin yang sign, like a cir­cle, uh, with a black and a white side. On one side we’ve got intu­ition and the oth­er side we’ve got loy­al­ty. And so we’ve got­ta under­stand or think that, that our loy­al­ty some some­times is real­ly valu­able, but equal­ly, our intu­ition is some­times real­ly valu­able. And if our intu­ition is telling us some­thing, uh, we need that self-aware­ness to say, okay, when am I gonna end this? When am I gonna sell this car? Or when am I gonna stop this pod­cast? Or when am I, yeah. What is it? And then so that I can con­tin­ue to make room for future growth and so and so. Yeah. Uh, it’s such a good book, Kev. I mean, and, and I’m actu­al­ly, I love it.

Brad (00:23:40) — I’m real­ly proud that we’ve end­ed with that book because it’s, it, it, what do we look for in books? Some­thing that gives us a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive and, and enables us to become bet­ter and, and cer­tain­ly nec­es­sary end­ings by Dr. Hen­ry Cloud has did that for me. And, and, and obvi­ous­ly for, for you. So we’ve got anoth­er episode that’s relat­ed to this, uh, episode num­ber 65, Jim Collins stop list that you may be inter­est­ed in there. So it’s not the end of what we’re doing indi­vid­u­al­ly. Of course. Um, , so Kevin, um, you have your book, your Oxy­gen Mask First. Peo­ple can, can read that, and there’s just some great tools inside there. You’ve got anoth­er book com­ing out. Um, is that, have you con­firmed that title yet?

Kevin (00:24:33) — At this point? It looks like the Four Forces of Growth. Yes. And that’s the work­ing title. I think it’s prob­a­bly gonna be, uh, the final, the final title, but that should be com­ing out end of 23. And then obvi­ous­ly Scal­ing Up, which I was a key con­trib­u­tor to as a, let’s almost call it a half, half book from my perspective.

Brad (00:24:53) — Sure, sure.

Kevin (00:24:54) — And for you, for you, um, onboard­ed your most recent book, obvi­ous­ly, which you’ve, you’ve ref­er­enced here today, um, which is, you know, impor­tant for Bring onboard­ing new peo­ple. I’m talk­ing about it all the time, you know, because the dis­tinc­tion from that, inter­est­ing­ly, is, uh, in a meet­ing last week down in the US and they’re talk­ing about, yeah, yeah. We got an onboard­ing plan mm-hmm. and can I see it? And it, it was the, it was the, and I for­get what you exact­ly call it, but it was the admin­is­tra­tive check, the box onboard­ing, induc­tion, com­put­er. They’re on the ben­e­fits. Yeah. Right. Induc­tion and ver­sus, well, what’s the plan to make sure they get ful­ly up to speed and suc­cess­ful in their job? Yeah. They’re like, oh, yeah, yeah, no, we don’t have that. Okay, good. Well, maybe you need to read this book and look at it.

Brad (00:25:41) — . Thank you. Yeah.

Brad (00:25:43) — Yeah. So that, uh, onboard­ed, that’s, that’s, yeah. Exceed­ed my, my, my hopes in terms of how suc­cess­ful it’s been. Um, uh, and the oth­er book, the first book was, uh, made to Thrive, which is the five roles of a c e O. Um, and so you can obvi­ous­ly con­tact, uh, or you can learn more in there then, um, newslet­ters. Uh, we, the, the way to, to, to con­tin­ue to get insights from both of us indi­vid­u­al­ly is our newslet­ters. Uh, we can­not under­es­ti­mate just the val­ue that we’re pump­ing out each and every week, uh, through that medi­um. Kev­in’s you’ll find@​lawrenceandco.​com, uh, and mine, you’ll find@​evolutionpartners.​com.​au. It’s real­ly, uh, more so than books or, or oth­er areas or social media. It’s real­ly the spot where all of our think­ing and, uh, every­thing goes. So I encour­age you, if you’re inter­est­ed to, to go and sub­scribe to each of our newslet­ters there. So what else, Kev?

Kevin (00:26:48) — That’s it. I just wan­na, again, thank all the lis­ten­ers that, that, first of all, thank the peo­ple that have sup­port­ed us. We did upfront, but thank all the lis­ten­ers that have been part of this, right? There’s, there’s, you know, thou­sands of peo­ple every month are down­load­ing and lis­ten­ing to episodes, and we appre­ci­ate the peo­ple that have been a part of it. And hope­ful­ly you’ve got good val­ue out of it, you know, and if you’re new in lis­ten­ing to this, you can go back and lis­ten to the old episodes. There’s all kinds of great con­tent, and we share our best thoughts, the best things that we know and learn from oth­er peo­ple. So thank you to the lis­ten­ers. Thank you to the peo­ple that sup­port us. And Brad, thanks to you. Like it’s been a great col­lab­o­ra­tion between us and a great way for our own growth and our own clar­i­ty as we’ve debat­ed dif­fer­ent prin­ci­ples. Usu­al­ly we’ve pre-dat­ed them before we record them , but to get aligned around our best think­ing about what does it take to build endur­ing great com­pa­nies, which is this pod­cast has been about.

Brad (00:27:44) — Yeah. Thank you Kev, uh, as well. Um, obvi­ous­ly y yeah, we come at this from dif­fer­ent angles and, uh, I’ve great­ly appre­ci­at­ed the effort that you’ve put in the time that you’ve com­mit­ted. And al also your Yeah. Your, your dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, as I’m sure. Thank you. Uh, I thank you as well to the audi­ence, uh, who’ve, who’ve endured, uh, as we’ve spo­ken about build­ing endear­ing great com­pa­nies. Well, that’s it. This is our nec­es­sary end­ing. Um, thank you every­one. Yes. Um, yeah. Uh, I do wish you the best, uh, and we’ve giv­en you the con­tact details. Um, enjoy. Um, and I hope that from here you’re able to, to go on and thrive and build your own endur­ing great com­pa­ny. Thank you.

Kevin (00:28:34) — Yep. Sounds awe­some. Agree.