How to Optimize Business Operations for Growth, Balance, and Personal Fulfillmen...

Transcript

Jeff Bullas

00:00:04 - 00:01:43

Hi everyone and welcome to The Jeff Bullas Show. Today I have with me, Jhana Li. Now, Jhana Li is dialing in from Salt Lake City, which we know is basically the city of Mormons and it's a great city. I've been there before and Mormons are great people and they're also of the perfect entrepreneurs and that's why Jhana Li is in Salt Lake City because it is the beating heart of startups because the Mormons are really good at startups and entrepreneurship and they're really good at selling. So, Jhana is the CEO of Spyglass Ops. She is an Operations coach and we, like a lot of entrepreneurs think, operations are boring, but they're very necessary. And the quote I like to use on this topic is not only to fall in love with what you do but the process of what you do and so, she's a coach and consultant for online startups. She specialized in helping founders scale their business while scaling themselves out of the day-to-day weeds. She says the keys recognize they are not the best person to fit their own Ops bottlenecks and I would agree with that cause’ I hate detail and Jhana is very good at detail, I'm sure. And instead leverage an Operator to scale their systems and team. The Operations are totally the black sheep of the business family, but it needs to be loved. Jhana is the die-hard nerd for it, and loves making it fun and engaging so entrepreneurs can benefit from the true value of black ops operations for businesses. Thanks Jhana, it's fantastic to have you here and let's have a chat about operations, process systems so entrepreneurs can get their life back.

Jhana Li

00:01:44 - 00:01:46

Right. Let's do it, Jeff. Let's dive in.

Jeff Bullas

00:01:47 - 00:02:32

Okay, so Jhana, for me, operations a process, I started out being an accountant, well, trained to be an accountant and I quickly realized that I was not wired to be an accountant. My brother was but not me because I hated the detail. I was quite good at numbers but just hated the detail and processes and systems. So I did my head and heart in. So let me ask you this question. Why do you love detail? Why do you love operations? Where did that come from? Because I don't think you're trained as an accountant. So where did this come from? This urge to be basically guru of operations for businesses and startups?

Jhana Li

00:02:32 - 00:04:39

It's an excellent question. I have looked at this really closely because part of our job is to help our clients to identify whether they have the right operator and what is it that makes for an amazing operator. And as I've looked at this question, what I've realized is that every amazing operator I have ever met has the same underlying worldview and lens. They have the same way of processing data. I call it level three thinking. It is essentially a way of like complex systems analysis where it doesn't matter what I'm looking at a business, a family Thanksgiving dinner, climate change, like it doesn't matter. Any set of data that I am getting, I am immediately processing it through systems and pattern analysis. I am breaking it down into all of its various parts, seeing how those parts fit together and identifying gaps and identifying leverage points. Every operator that I know thinks about business in that way. They may not even know that that's what they are doing, but that is what they are doing. It is a unique lens. And so what I have grown to believe, Jeff, is that operations, what we call operations is just a set of skills, it's a set of tactical knowledge, right? These things can be taught, that's what we do. We coach operators, right? We can teach these things. But that underlying lens you either have it or you don't. And 99% of the visionary founders I know do not have it, which is brilliant because they have their own unique genius, right? They're busy wearing the visionary founder lens, which is also totally necessary and hugely beneficial to the business. But it is a lens that does not set them up well when it comes to identifying details, identifying gaps, seeing how systems fit together and how they could fit together better and more efficiently. And this is why I advocate for the fact that I don't think the founder is generally the best person to scale their own operations because they're bringing a fundamentally different lens to the business. If they can find the operator with that level three thinking, that person is naturally gifted at doing all of the work that the visionary does not want to touch and does not want to look at and doing a much better job of that way more effectively, way more efficiently and probably cheaper.

Jeff Bullas

00:04:40 - 00:04:44

So when did you realize that this is one of your superpowers?

Jhana Li

00:04:45 - 00:05:46

I stumbled into operations. Most operators I know do, we have showed up this way to everything we've ever done in our lives. And we just found our way into this weird sweet spot within businesses where systems make a lot of sense to us. SOPs and processes make a lot of sense to us. And so for me that I'd like to say that before I found out operations, I was quite literally directionless. I was living in a converted van, full time, driving through North and South America with my boyfriend at the time he was scaling a business, he was the CEO and I was, you know, weighing in, talking things through, answering questions, bouncing things off with him. And it became very clear to me of like, why am I seeing all these gaps in your business that you are not seeing at all? One thing led to another. I ended up becoming that company COO because once I got in there, it was just obvious to me where there was room for improvement. I didn't even know what I was doing. I just went to work on it. And then much later I learned that there's a word for that, that word is operations. And that set me down my current path.

Jeff Bullas

00:05:47 - 00:05:49

So you accidental operations.

Jhana Li

00:05:50 - 00:06:20

And most operators I know would tell a similar story, right? There's no operations isn't sexy. No one's out there being like here's why a career in operations is the coolest thing you could ever do, right? There's not a lot of resources out there. There's not a lot of training, there's not a lot of spotlighting for operations, why it's a superpower. And so that is something that is part of the mission of my business is really to help put operations on the map. So other operators can self identify that this is their secret genius and they can take ownership for that and bring it to the business in a bigger way.

Jeff Bullas

00:06:20 - 00:06:26

Yeah. So it's not taught at high school, not generally taught at university or college are they, is it?

Jhana Li

00:06:27 - 00:06:53

Nope, not at all. So you got into entrepreneurship, right? But there are way more resources, I think, out there for entrepreneurs, right? Masterminds and coaching communities and, you know, thought leaders and books and all these things, operations isn't sexy. We said it, right? It's the black sheep. So when something like that isn't well understood and those people aren't well supported, they aren't able to bring their best value to a business and that ultimately harms everyone including the CEO founder.

Jeff Bullas

00:06:54 - 00:06:59

So you went, so basically you discovered via a boyfriend on a road trip.

Jhana Li

00:06:59 - 00:07:03

Pretty much on a two and half year long road trip, yes.

Jeff Bullas

00:07:03 - 00:08:22

So tell us a bit about the road trip. I'm interested because this is the, I've just read a message from Brian Kramer who's a good friend of mine who's been living in the valley for a long time, Silicon Valley area, just outside San Francisco. He's just sold everything and gone to the, live in another country scenario. He's in Lisbon and he just said, you know, basically loving settling in, enjoying the experience, but my routine's gone to shit. So what I've discovered too, and I've done a little bit of digital nomad. And what I've discovered is that continuing to move, screws up your routine, screws up processes and systems and it becomes more and more important that you have a back office, team, leader that looks after operations and systems so they can do the heavy lifting and you can do the inspiration and strategy and basically be the choir, you know, leader, right? So what did you, so I digress, but essentially, how did you go to two and half years traveling in a van through America, the United States? What was that? Just to have a bit of fun exploring mountains, going hiking. Did you go to Yosemite? Which is one of my favorite places. Tell us about the trip. I'm intrigued.

Jhana Li

00:08:23 - 00:11:00

Yeah. So we went as far north as like Banff and Jasper Canada and as far south as northern Patagonia in Chile. So we were through the entire western hemisphere. Oh yes, yeah. And I learned a lot as you can imagine. I did not speak Spanish really when I started this trip. I had no idea where we were going. There was no route, there was no plan. I just knew I really loved South America. I'd done some traveling there before and I knew that I had a picture of my life and a chapter of my life planned out where I wanted to spend more time in that region. And so when the opportunity came up to move into this van, I said, yes, I will move into a van with you, but only if we go to South America. And so we did, it was chaos totally, right? Like take all of the chaos that comes from being a digital nomad and then 10 X that because every single day you're trying to figure out where do we sleep? Where do we get our water? Where do we, you know, have enough Wi-Fi to make this call, total chaos, in the context of also then trying to scale it and run a business together. That is a pressure cooker situation and I learned a lot from it. But what it really emphasized for me, right? Was the importance of operations. There were large chunks of the day when the CEO and COO of the business were literally offline, cannot reach us in like moving from point A to point B, have no service in South America. Who knows what's going on and who knows when we'll arrive. Can the team continue to thrive? Can the team continue to function? Right? So it was a beautiful forcing agent within the business that said, if the leadership is going to have this level of flexibility, what is the foundation and the infrastructure that needs to be in place so the business can continue to be okay. And I see so many entrepreneurs because they can put themselves at the center of their companies where effectively nothing can or does move forward without them because they're always online, they're always present, they're willing to work for nowadays, they're willing to work every weekend, they're willing to hop on calls with every client, right? Because you're available, you make yourself available and you build a business around yourself that is dependent on you being available. And then those same people turn around and be like, wait, I started my business because I wanted freedom. I wanted flexibility. I had a vision maybe of doing the digital nomad thing. But now I can't feel like I could turn off my computer for a day and be able to step away, what happened there, right? So the very first example of business and operations, I think was a very extreme one in my case but that really set me up to learn how do we scale a company, not just so that it is healthy and able to grow and sustainable, but how to do it in such a way where the CEO is not a limiting bottleneck within that operation.

Jeff Bullas

00:11:01 - 00:12:05

So, yeah, it's very good to have that. And I think for me that and I even think it was, I'm trying to think it was Steven Spielberg said, you know, you could even as a movie producer, as a creator. He said that and here's the one I think said the quote, he might have stolen it from someone else because all these quotes get lost in the noise of time. And he said, yeah, you got only love what you do, but you love the journey and process of what you do. In other words, the whole, for him, is the whole journey of taking an idea, a film script and turning it into a movie, including promotion and everything else. And I went, wow, that's really cool. So, and if you're not good at it, you need to hire people who are good at it. So tell us a little bit about. So when you engage a client, they're basically losing all their hair or they're basically ready to jump off a cliff because they're frustrated and so. Tell us a bit about the process you take people through because we're gonna break this down into a process. What's the steps that you take your clients through?

Jhana Li

00:12:05 - 00:14:20

Yes. So before I jump into that, a thought that sparked for me as you were speaking about that Spielberg quote. I always say that, you know, if running your business is like sliding down a slip and slide, I don't know if you have slip and slides in Australia. So if running your business is like going down a slippery dip, operations is like pouring water and soap. Either way you're going for a ride. Either way there's gonna be ups and downs, it's gonna be a little bit bumpy. But how fast are you able to go? How frictionless is the ride and how much do you enjoy the journey, right? What you just said, like enjoying the process of getting to where you're trying to go. I've seen entrepreneurs be able to absolutely like brute force, strength their way to success, to growth. But every day, they are miserable, every day, they feel trapped by their business. And so yeah, you can grow a business that way. But why would you if the purpose is to enjoy the ride and operations is one of the key unlocks when it comes to being able to show up to your business in the way that you specifically enjoy, are gifted at and ultimately drive the most value and help your business grow as quickly as possible. So you asked about our process to help our clients do that. We generally start with our clients on what we call our ops inspection, which is a company wide audit. And the very first step of that audit is to sit down with the founder and ask them, what do you want? Yes, for the business. What are your financial targets? What are your growth goals, your impact goals? Like where do you want this business to grow and what do you want for yourself? What is the relationship you want to have with this business? How flexible and how much, how many hours do you want to work each week? What hats do you want to be wearing in your company? And do you enjoy wearing them? And what hats do you wish you could take off your head tomorrow? Tell us about your business and your ideal business, but also tell us about the relationship you want to have with that business. And then we will go away for the rest of this week and reverse engineer the systems and the team and the game plan that will be required to get you both. We're not just going to grow your business for the sake of growing it and build a bigger cage. We're going to grow the business in the way that allows you to step into your zone of genius. Enjoy and fall back in love with the process of running your business because you're doing the things that you genuinely love doing.

Jeff Bullas

00:14:21 - 00:16:06

Yep. Exactly. And for me, I've, the team I've got now are just fantastic and because I love to write. So, you know, and I do love, I'm sort of very addicted to the future trends. Where's the technology industry going? Where's the world going? Where am I going? But for me, I've seen my job also with the team is if I see an obstacle for them getting their job done, my job as a CEO founder to go, I've got to put this in place. So I make their job easy. In other words, if I, basically my job is to support the team because then I'll support the customer and the business. So it's basically I've got, you know, and the other thing I've learned too is I end up with a lot of ideas and if I just keep dumping ideas on the team, they get very confused and because you're one paying the bills, they're going, well, that's important. I need to do that and end up. You just bouncing around. So you gotta be clear that, okay, here's a make sure you've got less is more, you've gotta make sure that you're not giving too many ideas to the team and also just get out of the way and let them do it. But yeah, it's really, really good. I've learned a lot over the last few years and that's why, well, Alexandra Watkins, a dear friend of mine, I've known for seven who helped to launch a book. She's very, she's a genius at creating names for business. Alexandra, if you ever, you know, go and read a book, guys, if you ever get to, you know, that some time. So, but yeah, so very much understand that operations and processing systems are absolutely essential if you want to get your life back and also to scale a business.

Jhana Li

00:16:06 - 00:18:00

Well, if you don't mind, Jeff, double click on something you just said, which is one of the things you've learned is essentially how to not whiplash your team, right? This is a really important thing in my mind that is an operational issue, right? A well trained, well qualified operator needs to recognize that they're visionary had is like an idea generation machine. That is their genius. That is absolutely necessary within the business, right? And how do we invite those ideas as an asset? How do we invite them into the business in a way that doesn't cause whiplash or demotivation or burnout, right? That's an operational system that can be put in place, that's infrastructure that can be put in place around the CEO so that they're able to live in their zone of genius, do what they do best, but bring those ideas essentially through a filter in such a way that they won't have negative repercussions on the rest of the business. So the job of operations at the end of the day, I define it as any action required in a business to optimize a company's ROI on its time, energy, money and human potential. The CEO is the most valuable resource to be optimized for in that whole business. The CEO’s time, the CEO’s energy, are you doing the things that light you up or drain you? The money that the business is creating, the CEO is pouring into it? And the human potential is the CEO lit up, engaged, excited, doing their best work every day. If so, they're going to drive the business forward massively, if the CEO is having to show up and spend all of their time and energy doing low value, reactive things that they hate doing and leave them really burnt out and frustrated the business is not going to grow as much, right? And so one of the most important elements of the company for an operator to optimize is the founder, highlighting the zones of genius, mitigating, the potential consequences that come from that zone of genius and making sure that the CEO is the most effective asset for their own company.

Jeff Bullas

00:18:00 - 00:18:16

Yeah, exactly. So the other thing that pops to mind there and talking about that is people, team. So how important do you see the team in the operations process and if you see a problem, how do you fix it?

Jhana Li

00:18:16 - 00:19:20

Great question. I, and this is my kind of unique operational philosophy, but I think that the team are the number one most important resource to be optimized for within the business, right? That fourth category is human potential. Your team has all of this energy, all of this creativity, all of this drive, all of this work ethic. Are they bringing that to your business or not? Are they showing up as proactive resourceful problem solvers or are they showing up as reactive B and C players that are coming to you with the same questions every single day? Same people, same amount of human potential. It's just a matter of whether they're bringing it into your business to drive it forward or not. And so I put people at the center as the very first step in my operations methodology. The people create the process and then processes create profit, but it has to happen to people first. And there's a set of systems and infrastructure that you can put in place to maximize human performance and then use that to convert it into systems processes, efficiencies, these sorts of things.

Jeff Bullas

00:19:21 - 00:19:40

Cool. So what do you see is one of the best ways to motivate your team members that could include things like for example, does the company have a vision that they are buying into? For example, tell us a bit about that, how to keep teams motivated. So they're doing the process as well.

Jhana Li

00:19:41 - 00:21:49

Totally. So the resource if you're interested in this topic that I would direct you towards is the book Drive by Dan Pink. And he essentially talks about the difference between extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation, right? Extrinsic motivation is I will give you a pay raise if you do a great job and I will fire you if you do a bad job, right? These are external factors that are influencing me and my behavior and my motivation, all of the data shows extrinsic motivation is a fraction as effective as intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivators also include pay, right? Everybody's like, well, either I can't afford players or if I want players, I have to pay people more. Turns out increasing somebody's pay is not going to be a great way of actually increasing their motivation, their productivity, they're buying. The three intrinsic motivators see that's how to get the highest levels of performance. You systemized the intrinsic motivators across the team and across the business, the three intrinsic motivators are autonomy, mastery and purpose. So you hit on the third one, purpose, which is does my work matter? Am I a part of something bigger than myself? Do I care? Do I just care about my team and myself, the people I am serving and the work that I do in the world that is incredibly motivating. And so that's why companies create things like vision and mission and core values, right? These are tools that help us unlock purpose within our team and get the motivational benefits. The second one is mastery. This is growth for the sake of growth, do your people and this is especially true for more recent generations of workers, right? Millennials and Gen Z, do they see the opportunity for growth? Do they have the ability to grow with your business? If they don't see that for themselves, then they have nothing to work towards. And the first one is autonomy. Do they have freedom, flexibility, agency? Do they have the ability? This is where we saw the great resignation when businesses tried to force their people back into the office for no reason whatsoever. And everybody quit because they're like, don't tell me what to do. I want to have control over my life that is important to me, right? So are you creating these things systematically across your business, autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Jeff Bullas

00:21:50 - 00:23:18

Yeah, I totally agree with you. And I think operating from a space where you're driven internally intrinsically and that comes down to questions like, why am I here, some really existential big questions. And we don't talk enough about these big questions either, both of ourselves and also of our team and our friends and family. We're about to launch a new website blog that it's just gonna be my personal fun place, but we're, I'm calling it Unsaid. So it's about basically all the things that are unsaid all the time. But it's very important that we understand what they are because we don't have these deep conversations and I do like to go to dinner parties and ask very simple things like what brings you joy? In other words, what brings you true happiness and wrapped around that are questions like, okay, so I've got enough money now, I'm either retiring or I've sold my business. What should I do next? And what would I want to do if I had all the money in the world and didn't need to worry about anything financially? What would I do? Because if I go, well, I'm gonna travel the world. Well, that's okay for a while. And you lived in a van for two and a half years. So did you have an existential crisis in the van on the travel bit?

Jhana Li

00:23:18 - 00:25:01

I think I got tired of the stress, the constant problem solving. I think when it came time to start my own business, I did realize the need for and the importance of routine or not even routine, but just stability, right? If I've got finite decisions that I can make every day of finite energy to put towards this company. If that energy is instead being distributed across, where do I sleep? Where do I eat? Where do I get water? You know, like these basic human needs, it's just deficient, it's energy being allocated towards problem solving. That doesn't need to happen and could be allocated towards the business. Now that the business is up running. I have a team, I have my operations. I am back traveling again. I was rafting the Grand Canyon for three weeks last year and I was totally offline and out of service and my company and my team did great, right? So for me, it is to your point about enjoying the process. I really believe in something that I call work life harmony. I don't like work-life balance. I think balance implies that these are opposite ends of the spectrum. And to get one means less than of the other versus harmony is two things that work together and feed each other and each is greater as a result for working with the other. And for me, work life harmony means the flexibility to go to the Grand Canyon, which is a once in a lifetime opportunity on two weeks notice because that's when the cancellation permit came in and that's when the opportunity presents itself, right? Like success to me is the ability to say yes to that opportunity. And so long as I am running my business and growing my business in such a way that I always have that autonomy, that flexibility and that ability to enjoy life's richest experiences as fully as possible. Then I'm enjoying the process and the process can take as long as it needs to because I'm enjoying every single step of the journey.

Jeff Bullas

00:25:02 - 00:26:17

Yeah. That's, I love the term work life harmony. I've made a note of it. I think it's great work life balance means that they're both, you know, you've gotta be 50-50. Yeah. And it doesn't need to be so work life balance could be that you're doing exactly what you love doing. Good at doing. That's your genius. That's your superpower and you might spend 14 hours a day doing that. So but I have asked people, I'm gonna ask you too, I ask two questions at the end for every guest. Number one, what brings you deep joy in other words, what would you do if you didn't get paid for it and had enough money to live off? And what, next one is what challenges I provided the biggest learning for you. So, we're gonna wrap this up at the end. But, yeah, think on that. So I'll let you cogitate, let that per, you know. So, just a little bit just to wrap it up in terms of what you do, how do you engage with people in terms of, you know, do you basically sit down with them, do a Zoom call, collect data, hand’em a checklist? Okay. How do you engage with your customers? I know and other people I'm sure would like to know.

Jhana Li

00:26:17 - 00:28:24

Yeah, totally. So I spoke a little bit about our ops inspection process. Essentially what it is a company wide audit. We sit down with the founder, we get clear on their goals, personal and professional. But then we go away for the next week and we are essentially a fly on the wall in their business observing how they are currently doing things and then we present what we call our ops report, our 12 month road map that says you told us Mr. Founder that you, I wanted to be here. Well, here's all the bottlenecks currently stalling your growth and holding you back from that. And here's all the bottlenecks that you're going to encounter as you grow towards your company goals. You tell us you want to double in size. We've worked with many companies that are double your size. We know what the operations need to look like at that stage of growth. So here's all the bottlenecks you are going to encounter and all the systems you need to build in order to successfully scale to that point. So that's where we start is we're mapping out what the next 12 months of operational scalability and growth look like we're giving them the step-by-step road map to get there. And then we say, cool. So who is your operator that we can then hand this to? Right? And we are interviewing their team as part of this audit. And we're identifying that level three thinker. I can't tell you how many times we've come into a client's business and we found an account manager or an executive assistant or a project manager who has amazing operational talent. They've never called it that, the CEO had no idea. And we just let them know, hey, did you know that this person could be an amazing operator if you chose to uplevel them in that direction and give them that training, oftentimes they'll say yes, and we'll plug that person into our coaching programs or they'll have an office manager or head of operations that has knowledge and skill gaps. And we need to close those gaps in order to double the size of the business, right in this case. And so we can either coach up the operator that is already in house or if we don't, that person or they don't want to invest in that person. We also have recruitment services to bring that operator in so that they can plug one way or another. We're plugging that operational gap. So the operator can be the person to implement the systems, the meetings, the team, the structure required to scale the company towards their goals.

Jeff Bullas

00:28:25 - 00:28:37

So in terms of that, you either say provide a road map after doing an audit effectively. Is that correct? And you can provide other services as needed after that?

Jhana Li

00:28:38 - 00:28:47

Correct. Yep. And we always custom build those proposals of, here are your problems, here's the best way we could support you as effectively as possible. You get to decide whether you want to work with us or not.

Jeff Bullas

00:28:48 - 00:28:54

So what's your perfect profile for your customer, your target audience?

Jhana Li

00:28:54 - 00:29:59

Yeah, who we do our absolute best work for are companies that are anywhere between the mid six to mid seven figure run rate in US dollars, right? So they have a core product, they have a basic team, they know how to sell that product, they know how to fulfill it. They have the basic building blocks of the business, but now as they are trying to scale it up, the CEO who has historically been the person that moves everything forward is suddenly trapped in the weeds, spending more and more time working in the business, not on it and feeling more and more reactive. So that founder who's got this big goal for the company and for themselves, but are finding themselves stuck and unable to reach it. Those are the people we are able to do amazing work with and amazing work for by either finding or training their operator. So the operator can turn around and unlock the CEO. The CEO’s who work with us, it's 60 minutes a month for them to achieve and receive the transformation because all of the work is done through their operator so they can spend all their time living in their zone of genius and doing what they do best.

Jeff Bullas

00:29:59 - 00:30:17

Awesome. Cool. Alright, last two questions which I've given you a little time to percolate on. So if you had all the money in the world, what would you do each day that would bring you deep joy and you would do it without getting paid for.

Jhana Li

00:30:18 - 00:31:12

Yeah, I would probably make all of my services free and I would continue to do exactly what I do today. I would hire a bigger team so we can reach more people and I would lower the barrier to entry for working with us so that more people could find the information that unlocks themselves in their vision and their impact. Like I really maybe that sounds facetious, but I genuinely love what I do, Jeff, it was hard for me to start my own business. I didn't think I was going to be an entrepreneur. I did this because it is the work that I feel called to do in the world. And if money was no object, I would still show up and do exactly what I do, I would just do it at a bigger scale and I would make it available to more people. And we're trying to do that now, right? Like we've given away essentially 20% of our revenue in the form of scholarships and discounts so that we're able to make our work more accessible. But I would just double down on that and do it for everyone.

Jeff Bullas

00:31:12 - 00:31:20

Well, to me, it sounds like you're very much on purpose. And as the Japanese say, you've discovered your ikigai.

Jhana Li

00:31:20 - 00:31:26

Yeah. At least for this chapter of my life. I find this a fulfilling work.

Jeff Bullas

00:31:26 - 00:31:50

I think the reality is that as humans, it does change over time and different stages of life. So, and that's why I think people realize, need to realize is that your life purpose is not necessarily set in stone, it will evolve, guarantee that. Okay, last question, what is some of the biggest challenge or the challenge that you've learned the most from? And what was that learning?

Jhana Li

00:31:51 - 00:33:22

So there are a couple of moments that stand out to me. The first one was the failure that inspired me to get into business in the first place. Which is right after college, I joined an international mediation company. I believed in this company so hard. I loved them, everything about them. And within 12 months they went bankrupt and the entire company exploded. And it was a really important failure in my life because it taught me that if I ever want to have a good idea that I believe is going to change the world one day. Having the idea is not enough, you have to understand the rules of business. You have to understand how to build an economically sustainable vehicle around that idea in order for it to ever come into the world and reach the number of people that you want to reach. And so up until then, I had a lot of limiting beliefs about business, a lot of limiting beliefs around money and capitalism and all of these sorts of things. But that failure reset and made me humble enough to recognize that actually, I didn't know anything about business. And if I ever wanted to make a positive impact through business in my life, I needed to learn the rules of this game. That was right around the time that I met the guy that I moved into the bandwidth and that sent me and my life down a totally different trajectory that I don't think would have happened if that company had continued to be successful. And I had pursued that track of, you know, international mediation in that work.

Jeff Bullas

00:33:23 - 00:33:44

Fantastic. But I think people, especially in western culture need to see failure, not as a problem but to see it as an opportunity. In other words, it's an opportunity to learn. And I think it's a learning opportunity. And if you change that mindset, then you don't necessarily welcome it, but you maybe embrace it and going, what can I learn from this?

Jhana Li

00:33:45 - 00:35:08

I actually really internalized that and codified that within my own business. One of our core values is own your opportunities. And it's exactly what you just said, right? When something goes wrong, whether it's me, my team member, whatever. When something goes wrong, you lose the second you say, oh, it was his fault. The second you point a finger and you externalize the blame, you have lost because you can't control him, you can't control anybody other than yourself. And so when you say, you know, this problem, this is their problem. I had nothing to do with it. You've robbed yourself of the opportunity to learn and grow from that. The only time you have that opportunity is if you take ownership for it. And so that radical ownership is a really important core belief of mine now, especially as an entrepreneur. And it's one that I hold my team accountable to. And I always tell them like I don't care that you mess up. In fact, I expect you to mess up because it means you're innovating, you're trying things and not everything is going to work out. But when you mess up, there is only one right answer. And that is, here's what happened, here's how I contributed to it, here's what I've learned and here's what I will do differently next time. And in that way, failure becomes ROI positive. It doesn't even like if we lose a client or lose a sale because of that mistake. So long as you learn from it, you will more than make up for the cost of the mistake with the improvements that you're making to yourself and to the business.

Jeff Bullas

00:35:09 - 00:35:18

And I think that's fantastic. And that attitude mindset is very important to entrepreneurs and people generally in life.

Jhana Li

00:35:18 - 00:35:44

And it's very important to your team, right? Like if your team feels like they can't fail because they perceive you as never failing, then they will still fail, but they just won't tell you about it. They will sweep a bit under the rug. They will blame someone else. You will be robbing your team and your company of the potential learning there. And you're probably going to be slowing down the whole process over the like to begin with because everybody's too busy pointing fingers versus learning from it and moving on.

Jeff Bullas

00:35:44 - 00:35:58

Fantastic. Jhana, thank you very much for sharing your story. It was great to hear, you know, look under the hood of what led you to where you are today.

Jhana Li

00:35:58 - 00:35:59

Thank you for having me on, it was fun to share.

Jeff Bullas

00:35:59 - 00:36:13

Yeah. And thank you very much for your insights as well. It's been great to chat and you never know I might bump into you in Salt Lake City or in the Grand Canyon.

Jhana Li

00:36:13 - 00:36:16

You never know. I might disappear in Australia tomorrow. You never know with me, Jeff.

Jeff Bullas

00:36:16 - 00:36:24

We've got some great adventures here, so. Alright, Jhana, thank you very much and look forward to catching up in real life as they say. Thank you.

Jhana Li

00:36:25 - 00:36:26

Absolutely. Thank you.