Submarine Officer-Turned-Entrepreneur Jon Rennie Reveals How To Build An Unstoppable Team (#427)

427 Jon Rennie
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Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:00] Jon Rennie is the co founder, president, and CEO of Peak Demand, Inc., a manufacturer of critical components for electrical utilities. He's a former U. S. Navy nuclear submarine officer who made seven deployments during the end of the Cold War. Prior to starting Peak Demand, he led eight manufacturing businesses for three global companies.

He's the author of three best selling leadership books and the host of the Deep Leadership Podcast.

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Deep Wealth Nation, welcome to another episode of the Deep Wealth Podcast. And you know me, I love my rhetorical questions. Would you love to take your company to the next level? Would you love to have that lifestyle where your company's running without you? And I'm sure you said yes to both of those.

Let me ask you another question. How's your leadership? And how's the leadership of your team? Do you want to wrap it up a notch or two? And I'm sure you're saying yes to that. Well, you're in for a real treat. We have a very special guest today. Jon, welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. An absolute pleasure to have you with us.

There's always a story behind the story, Jon. So what's your story? What got you from where you were? To where you are today.

Jon Rennie: Hey, it's great to be here. I did time in the military. I spent five years after college in the Navy. I was a submarine officer in the U. S. Navy. I love that. I did [00:04:00] 22 years working in corporate and I worked for three global companies where I ran eight different manufacturing businesses.

And then nine years ago, I said, I'm done with it. I'm done with working for other people, started my own business. And for the past nine years, we've been running a manufacturing company here in North Carolina, supplying parts and components to electric utilities. And it has been one of the most exciting things I've ever done.

And I think for me, my story was, I started out with a passionate dream, which was to be an officer on a nuclear submarine, I was that weird kid that when they asked you what you wanted to do when you grow up, I said, I wanted to be an officer on a submarine and, and like a lot of people want to be a fireman or a policeman or what have you, said, submariner early on and I did it.

And so, And I was able to do it. And it takes a lot of effort to go from the idea of, I want to be a submariner to become one but I did it. And then when I eventually get out of the military, I was something like 24 years old with no future plan for my life. So I had achieved all my dreams.

at [00:05:00] 24 years old. So what do you do next? It, I think a lot of college athletes find themselves there where they, their whole life is a particular sport. They play their final game as a senior in college. They don't make it to the pros. Now, what do you do? It's been your all your hopes and dreams.

And I think I was in that situation. And like many veterans, I went to work in the corporate world, just got a job. I was an engineer. I had an engineering background. So. I started doing design engineering. I was an associate design engineering for a major corporation, and I had a cubicle in the back corner of the design department where the lights didn't quite work, and I got an old computer and I got, it gave me a stapler, and that's where I started my career.

And five years later, I was running a manufacturing, one of their manufacturing businesses, so, I was able to figure out corporate life pretty quick and was able to then start running manufacturing companies, but it really took me about seven years before I really figured out what I wanted to do.

And in my corporate life, I would turn around struggling manufacturing companies. So that was what I was. I was the guy that went there whenever we had a bad business, [00:06:00] they sent me in to help turn that situation around. So I did that for 22 years. And then I just got tired of fixing other people's problems.

I wanted to fix my own problems. I wanted to do it on my own. And I also saw that I couldn't quite lead the way I wanted to lead in corporate. And there was a lot of rules and mandates and. And I just got tired of the rules, I think. And and so I decided that it was time for me to try to do it on my own.

And so, yeah, that's a bit of my story, the story behind the story. And I've been doing that for nine years as an entrepreneur. And in that time, I've written some books. I started a podcast because a part of my mission now is to sort of, Teach some of the leadership lessons I learned along the way to the younger generation.

I also teach college part time because I really enjoy teaching younger people and younger managers, younger leaders some of the principles I learned throughout my career.

Jeffrey Feldberg: I love that story. And Deep Wealth Nation, go to the show notes. It's all there. The podcast, the books, his backstory. It's easy. It's a point and click. And firstly, Jon, [00:07:00] like we're saying offline, thank you so much for your dedication, for the services that you went into for the country and doing what you did.

And my goodness, there's so much that we're going to but I want to ask you this. When you look back at your trajectory and you walked us through very eloquently where you were and how you got to where you are today, I mean, my goodness, you're on a U. S. Navy nuclear submarine, you're an officer there, so how was that in terms of shaping the magnificent leader that you've become today when you look back at that first experience?

In the U. S. Navy.

Jon Rennie: Yeah, I think the submarine is a very unique military asset and I don't think people I really, I didn't think I understood it fully till later on in life. But if you imagine what we did is we would leave for our, typically our deployments were about a hundred days. So we'd leave for a hundred days and we would operate independently.

So we weren't working with any other assets, military assets. So we were. Hundreds of miles from the nearest base, we were hundreds of feet [00:08:00] below the surface, and we had a common enemy, and that was the ocean. The ocean didn't care if we lived or died. The ocean wanted to crush us like a tin can, send us to the bottom of the sea, right?

So our job was to keep, keep ourselves safe. And also our adversary at the time was Russia. Of course, we had the Soviet Union. We were in the middle of the Cold War. So we had the ocean and we had the Soviets to worry about. And we realized that we depended on each other as a crew.

we needed each other, right? So there was a shared vulnerability, right? We were all very much in a situation where if one thing went wrong, we would all perish. But we also had a shared responsibility as well to effectively operate the submarine in a manner that we would be able to conduct our mission and get home safely.

So I learned pretty quick that it's, it, that leadership is about the people and the mission and those are essential especially as an entrepreneur and in my corporate life, I learned that those two things are essential. I see some people talk about leadership and say, well, [00:09:00] it's all about people.

And I think that's great until you go out of business and then it's not great for the people, right? And then some people will say, well, it's all about the mission. And then till you, hurt your people so bad that they leave you and you can't get, keep good talent and keep good people.

So it isn't just about the mission. It isn't just about the people. And what I learned in my days underwater was it's about the mission and the people. If you can imagine the tight quarters in a submarine. The people that worked for me. We're next to me every day, 24 7, right?

There was no break. So I got to know them very well. They got to know me very well. And so there was an authenticity behind my leadership. So they knew when I meant something, they knew when I was serious. They knew when I was having, good time and having a joke. I knew when they were serious.

I knew when they were upset because I knew them. I learned very early on that you can't lead people you don't know. And part of leadership, especially as an entrepreneur, we start our companies off, maybe we're a solo entrepreneur and then eventually have a team around us. And we better know our people, especially when you're [00:10:00] a small company, say you have 10 employees, one, one person is 10 percent of your workforce.

So you better make sure you hire right, that you motivate correctly, and that you've got the right resource, because 10 percent of your workforce, Is that one person right now? And so I think what I learned on a submarine, this idea of you have to know your people to lead your people really helped me in my career in corporate and in my time as an entrepreneur.

So those lessons they're embedded in my DNA at this point.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Jon, as you're talking about that, you're actually taking me back in your book. And again, Deep Wealth Nation, go to the show notes, pick up the book, I Have the Watch. This is Jon's first book, Becoming a Leader Worth Following. And in there, it's so often patronized and people talk about it, but they really don't get it.

You talk specifically about the importance of respect and then showing you care. And I know particularly new founders, entrepreneurs, business owners, well, I've got the title. I'm the founder. I'm automatically going to get that respect and that's all I really need to do is show up with that title and it couldn't be [00:11:00] further from the truth.

What would you want us to know about the importance of respect and the showing you care? You highlighted that just now and what you're sharing with us, but let's do a little bit of a deeper dive into that. So what's going on there with respect and care?

Jon Rennie: Yeah, I think it's the number one issue. So I have a list of values that are important to me and my employees and treat everybody with respect is number one on the list. And you say, well, why is that one number one in the list? Well, because if you treat people with respect, right?

Then you start treating them as a human being, right? Their ideas are important. Their concerns are important. their worries are important, right? So when you respect somebody, like a spouse, for example, or your children, when you respect them, you're going to listen to them.

You're going to treat them properly. And so I think, a lot of the problems we deal with workforce management deal with when leaders don't respect the people that work for them or people don't respect each other in the workplace. And so that leads to all sorts of problems in terms of creating a winning culture.

So starting off with the idea that we [00:12:00] win through respecting each other and that we understand. Just like my time on the submarine, that every sailor is critical to the mission. And it's the same thing in our businesses. Every person is critical to our mission, right? And just because you're an entry level person, and maybe you're wrapping insulator around a current transformer, maybe that's the easiest job that we have in the plant.

But guess what? If you screw that up you could cause a major disaster in the field where something could explode and, and destroy some equipment. So every job is critical to the mission and every person deserves respect. And I think that's a great place to start. And, you know, and sometimes we think that, well, you know, I've got a bunch of call center people, these are just phone jockeys.

Well, guess what? Those phone jockeys are talking to your customers Every day in and day out, and I would argue, they are more important to your business than the guy in the corner office because they're physically talking to your customers every day. So when we start to recognize that the people actually adding value to our business, that are actually turning, Raw material into parts or [00:13:00] talking with customers or, making a cup of coffee for our clients.

Those are the most important people in our company, not the person in the corner office. And I think we got to get over ourselves as founders and CEOs.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's so amazing how if you get beyond the title of what's really important because titles can be very misleading and one of the things that we speak about is one of our favorite quotes here at Deep Wealth when people are going through our flagship program, our 90 day Deep Wealth Mastery Program, when the team works, the dream works.

And that dream could be growing your profits today and down the road as we focus on having some kind of liquidity event or a business exit. But you have to have the right team in place and the right people around you, otherwise, it's really all for naught. And so, as you share that with us, and thank you so much for sharing that with us, You're doing a lot of interesting things, podcaster, author, Peak Demand, your company of what you're doing out there, made in America, absolutely love that in terms of the story of what's going on there.

Why don't you share with the audience what's going on with Peak Demand of who you're serving, [00:14:00] what's going on there, and how you've taken these leadership principles and the difference they've made in Peak Demand and your stakeholders, your customers, your team members, and everyone else in between.

Jon Rennie: Yeah, I think the genesis for our company became when we, I had, I had some co founders with me and we, kind of looking at the industry itself and we were seeing the way most utilities are treated by the big suppliers in our industry. So there are, essentially two large suppliers which have the lion's share of the business and they treat most customers like a number, right?

They love. They're elephant hunters, so they're going out there to find the large investor on utilities and they want to get their, they want to land these big accounts and then they wine and dine the purchasing manager of these big accounts, right? But what I noticed and what my co founders noticed is that the little guys, the small municipal utilities and the co ops were sort of being ignored because they're, they were smaller customers and they didn't have necessarily the resources to, they didn't have the professional supply chain, they don't have the professional engineers.

And so, they were often [00:15:00] treated just like a number, and we said, well, there's an opportunity there. What if we provided world class service to the smaller utilities, and be able to give them short lead times, be able to give them technical support, be able to help them solve their problems and and really make it easy for them to acquire these very complex products and so that's what we did.

We targeted sort of the smaller utilities and we worked with the municipals and co ops and what we found was they responded really well to that value message where we're helping them basically solve problems that are difficult for a small utility to solve just because they don't have the resources.

And so, yeah, so it turns out that not only did they respond well to our message. They were willing to pay a premium for the products and the service that comes around with it. so we found like an ideal customer set. So instead of hunting elephants we sort of, we were gatherers of small game, I guess, small game hunters, I guess.

and it's worked out really well. And what it means is that, though, I have to have a technically competent team. They have to be able to [00:16:00] answer the phone on the first ring. They have to be able to answer technical questions. We do a lot of training with our customers. And so, yeah, so we took the role of a, almost a, yeah, we sell the parts and the components that you need, but we do it in a way that we support you and your business.

And so I think we took a different approach. And we, sort of the idea was that we wanted to be a different kind of supplier. We wanted to make acquiring these difficult parts much easier. And so that's what we've done. And that's what my team does every day.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's so amazing how, when you really authentically go out there, see what the pain points are, and then address it in a way that it just works, people, customers will come to you. Even though you're up against, I would imagine your competition massive in terms of their budget and probably across the country, maybe even international in terms of what they're doing and relative to them in their books, you're a rounding error, but you're really making a difference out there of how you're approaching things and what you're doing.

That's what I love. really about the whole entrepreneurial spirit [00:17:00] and how you're approaching that. And so again, when you're looking at what you're doing at peak demand or what you're doing with your team, how much of that goes back to your Navy days in terms of what you learned? Probably, I would imagine you saw leadership that you liked and probably leadership that you didn't like, but is there a link?

Is there a tie between the two?

Jon Rennie: I think so. I look back at my corporate career. One of the jobs I love the most, was my first manufacturing plant and I had 140 people and I just absolutely loved it because with 140 people, a crew of a submarine is right around 155, right? So it was like a submarine crew, right?

And I felt really comfortable in that kind of role when I moved up in corporate, I had larger and larger teams where I had more than 600 people working for me and that was fun, but I really liked being in a smaller group. And so I like. The idea of being an entrepreneur and having a smaller business, I really enjoy that.

I know my employees very well. I spend a lot of time on the shop floor. I would say that my employees see me as much as my sailors did in the Navy days because I'm always [00:18:00] around. I'm talking I know how to do every job in the plant. Mentally, sometimes I'm drained, and so in the afternoons, I'll just push my chair away from my desk, and I go out, and line for a while, and we tell stories, and we joke, and we laugh, the community in my company is so much a crew of a submarine.

we laugh together, we worry together, we talk. And so we have very genuine, authentic relationships out on the shop floor. And that's what I love about it. And, I recently have a young intern, college intern he's actually a student in my class and now he's an intern in my business.

He was saying that he's interned number of different companies and he just loves working at peak demand because it's just so much of a fun place to work. I say that we take our jobs seriously, but we don't take ourselves seriously. And I think that makes it fun place to work.

If people left my company, they can more promotions, more money, more bonuses, international travel, can't offer any of that. But people stay with me for years and years because they like the atmosphere, they like the culture. They feel like they belong to something and they feel like they're doing something that's bigger [00:19:00] than themselves.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And it's interesting that you mention that because survey after survey has shown the same thing. It really comes back to culture, that people either stay in a company or they'll leave a company, go to another company. You would think money is at the top of the list, it's actually towards the bottom.

What's the leadership like? What's the vision of the leadership and the company? How's this culture? And that's really what's keeping people there. So speaking of leadership, speaking of culture, you had an interesting stint where you were going out, and you're really the rainmaker. Okay, Jon, this company is near bankruptcy.

Fix it. And so you're going in there and fixing that, and I know every situation you'd be right to say, well, Jeffrey, every company was different. Everything that I did in the company was going to be different from one to the other. I did not have the same playbook. That said, though, one of my favorite questions in this kind of situation, is it like an 80 20 principle or a Pareto's law?

Yeah, you know what, Jeffrey, even though it was different industries, different companies, The same 20 percent of these actions or lack of actions created 80 percent of the challenges that these companies face. [00:20:00] What would you say to that? What were some of the patterns that you were seeing when you were this rainmaker to turn these companies around?

Jon Rennie: Yeah, well, it's interesting. So, I often say that a crew brings a ship to life and I think people bring our plans to life. And I think it's always been about people. and one thing is, is like, when I come into these businesses, what I found was usually the people didn't know what was going on.

Like, why are we losing money? what's happening? And there was a lot of finger pointing. There was a lot of us and them attitudes throughout the business. So one of the big things I had to do was bring everybody together. Basically, get everybody together, make sure everybody's on the same page, that they understood our current situation very well, like how difficult our situation was, like, we may have to close this business, I mean, having those frank discussions, but on the other side, Giving them hope, like here's a plan, here's what we are going to do to turn the situation around.

So, again, it's not sugarcoating it, giving them the true facts, but also, this is how we are going to turn it around. So, Napoleon famously said that leaders are dealers in hope, and part of our job, [00:21:00] part of my turnaround situation was giving them some hope. Here's how we're going to do it, but I need your help.

And so, and I think, enlisting them in the support of the business. I'll give you an example. At my first manufacturing plant, I noticed there was a big us and them difference between the people in the office and the people on the shop floor. And the people in the shop floor didn't know what the people in the office did.

And the people in the office didn't know what the people in the shop floor did. Everybody sort of stayed in their own world. And the only place they met was either in the break room or the bathrooms. And that was it. Otherwise, everybody sort of kept separate. And so I was trying to figure out how to bridge that gap.

And I created a system or a process I called Fridays on the Floor. And it became something that I adopted through all my businesses. And so what it was for half a day on the first Friday of every month, I would work on the shop floor and every month I would rotate to a different apartment and I would take note of what was going on.

Where were the procedures wrong? Where were the tooling wrong? Where were they having parts problems? I would learn a lot about the problems, but not just from a management perspective, but from the ground up, where are they dealing with problems? [00:22:00] And I remember the first time I was at a work on a shop floor and this one employee was hammering this part with a mallet.

But the mallet was so worn down that it didn't look like a mallet and I asked him, I said, what is that? And he said, it's a mallet. And I said, well, what's wrong with the mallet? He said, well, it's really old. And I was like, why don't we get a new mallet? And he said, well, the people in the office are really busy.

I don't want to bother them. And I'm like, that's when I realized that everybody was sort of dealing with their own problems and they were just getting by. And we had to make the problems that people had in the shop floor more aware to the people who can make a difference. And so instead of just doing fries on the floor with just me, and so actually this was a lot like, if you've ever seen the show, Undercover Boss, this was sort of similar to that, but this is long before Undercover Boss ever made the airwaves, right?

So then I just said, it's not just me. Cause I would come back from these trips, and I would tell my management team, we got to do this, we got to do this, and they would look at me with blank stares like, you're gone crazy, Rennie's gone crazy. What I realized was that they weren't experiencing what I was experiencing, so we made it [00:23:00] mandatory that every first Friday of every month that everybody in the management team would work in different places on the shop floor, and then after the four hours, we would meet in the conference room.

We'd bring in pizzas and we'd say, what did we learn? and then we started attacking all these problems and things that we knew were problematic. And and that it was sort of like almost overnight that people recognized that we were listening, we were caring, and we were making a difference and we're helping them be more successful.

We were removing obstacles so they could improve their performance. And so everything turned around in a matter of. Six months, nine months, productivity would pick up, quality would pick up customer complaints would go down, on time delivery was getting, everything was getting better in these businesses, and so, but it was a matter of us listening and being able to respond and react, and so, the role, I think, of leadership is to remove The obstacles that are in the way from our people being successful.

So instead of being, the guy in the corner office where everybody has to, [00:24:00] bow to, and support, it's just the opposite. I'm the one that needs to go out there and remove the obstacles to help my people be high performers. and that's the main thing was to sort of engage the workforce and turning these businesses around.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow, I absolutely love that. You know, as you're talking about that, you're taking me back to my e learning company days where we would have everyone in the company, particularly the leaders, they would rotate through the different departments, particularly through our technical support department. This was the front lines.

They were answering the phones 24 7 because we wanted them. To do two things, one, to empathize with support of what was going on and were there things that their department was doing that was adding unnecessary work to the department. And then during our busy times, they'd be like reserves. So instead of going out and hiring all these extra people, we'd call up the reserves, the Embanet reserves, we called them, they would go into tech support and they'd help out.

And I suspect you probably saw the same thing when they did that, there was a new camaraderie. That developed from that. It went to a whole other deeper level. There's more of an [00:25:00] appreciation, dare I say, respect of my goodness. I never realized that it was quite so hard. I thought I had it hard until I was in this position.

You couldn't pay me to do that. I really respect the people that are doing that. So I love how you're doing that. So when you had everyone start to do that and follow your lead, you did that first. I love that. What were some of the, I'll call it the spillover effects, into the culture that you saw?

Jon Rennie: Well, I think the biggest thing was unity. So then realized that can we kind of, the name of my second book is called All in the Same Boat. We literally got all in the same boat together. Like we realized that we're not, it, I used to say all the time, the enemy is outside the four walls. And it was reminiscent of my days in the submarine, the enemy is outside the hull, right?

And it was a reminder that everybody inside the four walls are critical to our mission. And so. I don't want to hear you talking about blaming marketing or blaming sales or blaming quality or blaming production. So the blame game goes away. We have to solve the problems. The enemy is outside the four walls.

and the other thing too is one of the things that I really, I think was helpful [00:26:00] was helping people understand what they did. So when I first went out in the shop floor, when I started manufacturing, I would ask people what they did and they say, well, I plate this part, or I paint this part, or I grind this part.

And I would say, well, then where does it go? What does this part do? What are we making here? And people didn't really connect what they did to the bigger picture. So the other thing that I was able to do is sort of connect their work to something really big in the world. So my first plant, as an example, we said we let them know that, No, we were making circuit breakers in that plan.

I said, you're not planning a part. You're not painting a part. You're building a circuit breaker and you're helping keep the lights on. So you're helping keep hospital lights on and your kids elementary school and in the supermarkets. And we, you know, in the office buildings downtown we connected them to a bigger thing, which was we keep the lights on.

And I think it was almost like. Again, there was a sense of pride with the team that they realized that they weren't just here to make widgets or to make parts, they were here to make a difference in the world, and that was to keep the lights [00:27:00] on. And then it was like, oh, our job is really important.

This job is essential. For our society, for our state, for our city, I think connecting them to the bigger picture, that, that's the job of leadership is to let people understand, because people want to be part of something that's bigger than themselves, and I think that's our job, is to let them know how their work makes a difference in the world.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's interesting, and we've actually been talking about this, but I'll come up very specifically to it. So in I have the watch, I know we're bouncing around between the different books here. It's interesting. I don't know if this was deliberate or it's just how I'm seeing this, but I love how I see one chapter really builds on the next chapter.

So towards the end of the book, you talk all about, okay, stop being a jerk. And then from there, you're going immediately into building an unstoppable team. And I know for most entrepreneurs, yeah, I want that unstoppable team. But unknowingly, they're being a jerk, and they're not going to get that unstoppable team.

I would just love your insights of what you're doing at Peak Demand, or in your leadership programs, or even what you saw [00:28:00] in the Navy about the being a jerk part and the unstoppable team. What would you want us to know?

Jon Rennie: I think it's a big thing with entrepreneurs. I interview a lot of entrepreneurs on my podcast. And so one of the areas that we struggle with as entrepreneurs is letting go, right? So we become good because we're smart and we have an idea, or we're very good at one or two things and so we start our company in a lot of times we're solo entrepreneurs and we have like tight control over everything. And. We have a hard time letting go, right? Because that gives us value. that's what we feel important to do. And that's why many entrepreneurs complain. They never take any time off.

They're always so busy. I can't trust anyone. And so, and the people that work for them, hate working for them because They never get the opportunity to have the ball in the fourth quarter. So, because the CEO is always stepping in or the founder or whoever is always stepping in to save the day.

And I think just the opposite. think especially young people that come to your company, they have a degree or they have some experience. And they want the ball in the fourth quarter. They want to be given an opportunity to do difficult things. And so when we don't [00:29:00] give them those and we give them menial tasks, go get me coffee.

I'm the smart guy. You go keep my coffee cup filled. Then they never get to reach their full potential. So I'll give you an example. I have a marketing manager who's working for me. He's relatively young and we're working on a new brochure. And he says, well, how do you want the brochure to look?

I said. I want it to look just like you want it to look. And he said, well, I don't know what I want it to look like. I said, you know our customers, you know what they want, come up with something really creative. And here, work with our intern, who is super, great with graphic design and everything, work with our intern, you guys figure it out.

And he keeps coming up, it's like, how about this? What do you like? I said, I don't want to make this decision. I want you to do it. Because I want him to get the opportunity to learn, to struggle, to try to find the right answer. And I don't want him to get the answer from me, and I think what the answer is.

I've been doing this for 30 something years, but I don't want to solve it. And I think When we do that, when we empower our people, we give them the ball they're going to become bigger and we can become [00:30:00] smaller. And then we can take those vacations and then we can relax a little bit and know that I have other people in my business that are just as capable as me.

Jeffrey Feldberg: As you talk about that, and I couldn't agree more. In the back of my mind, though, I'm thinking of some of the entrepreneurs that are in the Deep Wealth community when they first started going through the program. We speak about this, and we hear things such as, well, how can I really set them up for success?

Or, I tried this before, it didn't really work. I'm hesitant to do it. Or, they're really going to drop the ball. I'm going to lose business. I'm going to lose a client. And we're going through all those things. And then I'm just making this a hodgepodge of a question for you. But I'll throw into that, Jon, that I've seen some owners Not delegate, but abdicate.

Okay, Jonny. Okay, Mary. Here you go. Just go figure it out and just go do it. And they leave it at that, not really checking in or providing that mentoring or that coaching or that support. So, in your experience, how is really the best way to approach this? What should I be doing to set someone up for success, even if they don't cross the finish line quite the way I had hoped?

What does that look like to get them off [00:31:00] to the right path?

Jon Rennie: Yeah, so I think one of the things I learned in the Navy is that you can delegate authority, but you can never delegate responsibility. So what does that mean? So it means that when we're doing a project like this, we give our people full authority to get the job done, right? So, and then, but if something goes wrong, We're there to back them up.

So the responsibility still lies with me. So to, to make sure, so that brochure, it better be right. And I'll, be the final say on it. But I'm giving them the authority to make a lot of decisions. So what ends up happening with a lot of bosses, we give people responsibility. But we keep all authority ourselves.

So we say, you're responsible to get this done. And if it doesn't come out right, you're fired, or we get rid of you. And so, but we don't give them the authority to actually make the decisions to get the thing done. So we make that, screw that up. And so what I would say is delegate authority but then you have to retain responsibility, make sure that you do it. The other thing is, okay, guess what? If they screw it up and things don't go well, you have just had learned a valuable lesson. And they learned a valuable [00:32:00] lesson so this person is not yet up to speed to be able to do this particular task so either it's a training issue or maybe the person's in the wrong job, but you just have, you've achieved another important data point with your employees. You've learned something together and you may find, and I, as I found, is that some employees say, you know what, you gave me this task. I didn't really like it.

I didn't really like calling customers. I felt uncomfortable. I'd rather be in the back doing the QA checks. I really feel more comfortable. That's the kind of thing I want to do in my career. So you learn some things. People come to you and say, well, I want to be a salesman. Okay, go sell. And then they say, I didn't like it.

Right. And but if you never give them that opportunity, they're maybe sitting in the back and QA say, I never get a chance to sell. I want to sell. I want to be a salesman. And so they're complaining all the time and no one ever listens and never get the opportunity. I think if even with failure, You learn a lot.

And so I think that's one of the things I learned in the Navy, which was they gave us opportunities to fail in a controlled manner all the time. So we would stand these watches called [00:33:00] junior officer of the deck and junior officer of the deck was you had a real officer of the deck who was qualified and knew what he was doing, then it was you, right?

And so they gave you the watch and then. Everything would go wrong. So they would throw all sorts of drills at you and they would do it to the point where it was impossible. You could never get it all done. And so eventually they would stop the drill then they would secure the drill and then they would take me off into another room and say, what did you learn?

What went right? What went wrong? So it was controlled failure. So you had someone right there watching you and making sure that if anything went wrong, we've got it. But we want you to fail so that you can learn because failure is deeply emotional and we have to give people the chance to fail so that they get that feeling of, Ooh, I never want that to happen again.

So that's where you learn lessons is through failure.

Jeffrey Feldberg: couldn't agree more. And as you're talking through that, I'm looking at my team's journey, my journey, and as much as I love success, and Jon, I know you love success as well, my best teacher, for better or for worse, for better, was failure. It was through [00:34:00] failure, that's where the team, that's where I learned, okay, this didn't quite work out as planned.

Why? What went wrong? Let's make sure that doesn't happen again. And so often, particularly Today, and we'll talk about this with social media, and we're seeing one snapshot out of probably 10, 000 pictures that someone's only curating the one, everything successful, everything works, they just wake up out of bed, and they roll out of the door, and boom, they have that huge success.

Well, it doesn't quite work that way. It seems that we've lost the North Star of the world. Yeah, you know what? You're going to go out there. Things aren't going to work. You're going to learn from it, but you're going to pick it right back up, apply those lessons and try, and you'll try again and you'll try again until you do get it.

And it's something hopefully that we'll get back into that North star. But it's interesting that you talk about that. And I would imagine, Jon and you can tell me, you know, Jeffrey, look, off base or on base, but I would imagine that for your team, particularly the new recruits that are coming in through the company, they're trying something.

Hey, didn't work out. Jon, didn't work out. Don't ever want to do that again. [00:35:00] The confidence that they must have and the trust, okay, I can speak up in this company. And say, I don't like something or I don't want to do this and they're going to respect me. So I'd imagine that's the gift that keeps on giving in terms of your culture and the dynamics that's going on with the team.

Thoughts on that?

Jon Rennie: Yeah, no, it's exactly right. So there's a high level of ownership because they've given the opportunity, I hired a new plant manager recently and he says to me, how do you want it laid out? you know, these, we were talking about this one particular line. I said, I want you to lay it out the way you think it should be laid out.

And it was like, He looked at me and I was like, you're the plant manager. I want you to be a plant manager. so he laid it out in a way I never would have come up with. And quite frankly, we can put a lot more production through our production line because of what he did. Now, if I had told him what I expected or wanted, I would have missed out on this kind of innovative way he looked at the production line.

Like he was a newcomer and he looked and he said, wow, I think we can do it this way. And I was like, oh, so he blew my socks off. And I think. A lot of times we think we're the [00:36:00] smartest person in the room, and I think We are not. So our people will surprise us often with innovation that we wouldn't have come up with on our own, especially when we give them the ball.

We said, Hey, I want you to lay it out the way you want to lay it out. And not me. I've been doing this for 30 years. I'm setting my ways. I've seen so many things fail that I have this, weird view of things and you are unbiased by that, so, and I love that and and it happens to me throughout my entire career is that when we give people the ball, they're going to surprise us with it.

Solutions that we never would have come up with on our own.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. And I'm wondering, Jon, when you're putting someone in that decision making role, okay. Go do this. Are you setting up big picture wise the outcome that you want? I'd like to achieve this and you figure out, so here's the what, you figure out the how. Is that more or less how you're doing that?

Jon Rennie: Yeah, that's exactly right. And that's where we came about it. Cause I was saying that we've got to get the line set up to do on this particular one, 3000 units a month. I need to be able to get 3000 units out of this line. [00:37:00] And that was the challenge, and so I think you're right. And the boss the owner the leader has got to set the goal, and then the other thing we do is we set, sort of set boundaries of what our expectations are in terms of the way we treat each other, how we want the culture to be. So we set the barriers and we set the goal.

But I think then we have to let go, I often, I came up with this phrase one time after interviewing so many different entrepreneurs, I said, you have to let go if you want to grow. So if you want to grow your business as an entrepreneur, you have to learn to let go. You have to get other people empowered.

You've got to give them the ball and you got to let them run with it. And I think that when we do that, say the collective wisdom of a team. It's so much more than the ideas of just one person. So we've got to bring those collective ideas together to solve the kind of problems that we deal with in the work environment today.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Couldn't agree more. And to that point, then again, you may say, Jeffrey, on base or off base, one of the pushbacks that we often get, well, Jeffrey, I'm world [00:38:00] class in this. If I'm doing this 110%, somebody might come in and only do 80 percent or 75%. And our viewpoint is, that's terrific, fire yourself, get someone in there because that's all they're going to be doing 24 7.

You're now as the founder, the business owner, the leader, you can go on and do really other areas that you're strong in, where your superpowers are, that other people can't. Thoughts about that?

Jon Rennie: Yeah, no, that's exactly right. if you get somebody that's running at 85 percent and you can let go of certain things, then yeah, you can spend time doing other things. I mean, we should be working on our business, not in our business.

And I think too many entrepreneurs are working in their business. And I think we need to be able to have that opportunity to be able to step away. And I think people say, Oh, I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs. I could never take a day off. I take time off all the time. I feel very comfortable with my team.

Now, if you can't take any time off, And if one of your listeners is listening to you and say, oh, that's, I can't take any time off as an entrepreneur then, I don't know that you're empowering your people enough.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah. Hey, Houston, we have a [00:39:00] problem here, if that's the case, absolutely. And let me ask you this before we start going into wrap up mode. There are some who say, well, you know, Jon, that's great. And that's been your journey. Times have changed. We have technology now, we have AI, a lot of these things are just outdated.

And I suspect you have a different answer. So it could really be from any of the books, from I Have the Watch, to Deep Leadership, as you look at where we are today, and where things are heading in the business environment next year, the year after that, how do you find these principles are stacking up?

Jon Rennie: I think with, technology, with AI, with globalization, technology, You know, it really comes down to people. It still comes down to people. I think we want authenticity. I think we can start seeing, we're starting to see AI, in different things. Oh, that's an AI response.

You know, We roll our eyes, right? People want authenticity. They want other people. Guess what? Your customers want people too. And your employees want to deal with people. So I think I often say that leadership is a people business. It comes right down to it. If we want our business to succeed, we have to be all [00:40:00] about the people that are running our business or are in our business because our customers are people and they want to hear from us people.

They don't want to hear from technology. they don't want to hear from AI. They want to hear from a person. So I think, as much as the times are changing, there are some universal truths that people do crave other people and they crave authenticity. And I think that.

Even with all the emergence of technology, we're still going to get back to those basic people tenets.

Jeffrey Feldberg: That's what I love about best practices that you very openly and kindly share in all of your books, or even your podcast, Deep Wealth Nation, again, go to the show notes, check out the podcast, listen to the Deep Leadership Podcast, yes, I know, deep, deep wealth, deep leadership, but listen to the Deep Leadership Podcast.

It's all in there. I love it. Best practices are best practices. They go across industries for a reason. They work and they tap into human nature and all those other things. And in so many ways are really timeless. Well, Jon, let me ask you this before we go into wrap up mode. I know there are so many questions that I have that I didn't have a chance to ask.[00:41:00] 

Is a one question that I didn't ask that you wanted to address, or is there a message? That you want to take out to the Deep Wealth Nation or even some kind of a theme that we haven't really spoken about that you want to get out there.

Jon Rennie: Go back to the idea that a crew brings a ship to life. If you think about it, before we commission a ship we put the crew on board and, before that crew gets there, it's just a hunk of technology sitting in the ocean, right? It's useless.

It's a cold hunk of steel. But when people come on there, they bring that ship to life. A crew brings a ship to life. Our people bring our business to life and we can't do it alone. And you need people and you need people, engaged people if you want to bring your business to a high level. So I think, coming back to the principle of leadership as a people business it's really about how are we taking care of the people that are taking care of our customers it's really that simple.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Waleuska said, hey, if we take care of our team, they're taking care of our customers, they're going to take care of the business. They're going to take care of ourselves with our goals, our dreams, the lifestyle that we want. And we're so interconnected. It's absolutely amazing when [00:42:00] you look at it from that perspective.

I just love how all the stakeholders, when we do the right thing with the right people, that's where the magic really happens. And that said, Jon, we're going to go into wrap up mode. It's a tradition here on the Deep Wealth Podcast. It's really my privilege and my honor where I ask the same question to every one of our guests.

It's a really fun question. Let me set this up for you. When you think of the movie Back to the Future, you have that magical DeLorean car that will take you to any point in time. So Jon, it's tomorrow morning. This is the fun part. You look outside your window. Not only do you see the DeLorean car there curbside, the door is open, it's waiting for you to hop on in, which you do.

And we're now going to go to any point in your life. Jon, as a young child, a teenager, whatever point in time it would be, what are you telling your younger self in terms of life lessons or life wisdom or, hey Jon, do this, but don't do that? What would it sound like?

Jon Rennie: Yeah, I think that It probably would be that things work out, that time has a way of working things out. And and so I think most of my life I've been an impatient person. And I've always been pushing. And I think you can enjoy the ride as [00:43:00] well.

things over time will work themselves out. And so, don't forget to enjoy the journey along the way. And so don't just always be pushing for the next level. It was definitely some advice that came from an employee one time. He said, Jon, you always push. You never stop take a break at any sort of point and look back at how far we come.

so I think over the years, I've learned to sort of stop and take a look and enjoy the progress. So don't forget to stop and smell the roses every once in a while in your life.

Jeffrey Feldberg: I love that. Hey, enjoy the journey knowing that things have a way of working out. Absolute gold, actually not gold, platinum in terms of what you're sharing. And Jon, you shared something that most entrepreneurs don't realize. It took me a very long time to realize what you just mentioned right now, that our fulfillment, our happiness doesn't come from what's next.

It comes from looking back to realize where we started. and where we've come. Because if we're always looking forward, we'll never catch it. It's impossible. But when we look back, we can really see the progress that we went, wow, look where I started. I didn't know anything. [00:44:00] And now look at where we are all the short time later.

It's a small little flip of the mindset, but it makes all the difference, and I love that you're sharing that as well, so thank you so much for sharing that. And before we wrap up, if a listener, they have a question for you, they want to reach out, maybe they want to get some coaching, maybe they want you to come in and speak to their team and their company, where would be the best place online to reach you?

Jon Rennie: Yeah, everything is at Jonsrenny. com.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Perfect. And again, Deep Wealth Nation, it's all in the show notes, it's a point and click. Well, Jon, it's official. Congratulations. This is a wrap. And as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. Thank you so much.

Jon Rennie: Thank you. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: So there you have it, Deep Wealth Nation. What did you think? 

So with all that said and as we wrap it up, I have another question for you.

Actually, it's more of a personal favor. 

Did you find this episode helpful? 

Have you found other episodes of the Deep Wealth Podcast empowering and a game changer for your journey? 

And if you said yes, and I really hope you did, I have a small but really meaningful way that you can actually help us out and keep these episodes [00:45:00] coming to you.

Are you ready for it? 

The dramatic pause. I'll just wait a moment. Drumroll, please. Subscribe. Please subscribe to the Deep Wealth podcast on your favorite podcast channel. When you subscribe to the Deep Wealth Podcast, you're saving yourself time. Every episode automatically comes to you, and I want you to know that we meticulously craft Every one of our episodes to have impactful strategies, stories, expert insights that are designed to help you grow your profits, increase the value of your business, and yes, even optimize your post exit life and your life right now, whatever you want that to look like.

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So all that said. Thank you so much for listening. And remember your wealth isn't just about the money in the bank. It's about the depth of your journey and the impact that you're creating. So let's continue this journey together. And from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for listening to this episode.

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Thank you so much. 

God bless.