Speaker 1 00:00:05 Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt in required, where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100% inbound in your industry over the next 6 to 8 months, with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years, and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to up my influence. Com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to up my influence. Com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you. With us. Right now it's Carl Martin. Carl, you are the founder at arable. Your website is arable. Com. That's a r a b l e c o.

Speaker 1 00:01:17 Com. Carl, it's great to have you.

Speaker 2 00:01:20 It's great to be here. Well, wherever we are, it's great to be wherever we are.

Speaker 1 00:01:23 Yeah, he is. Especially with our friend that's decided to join us on our conversation. listen, I would love to get a quick overview of the work you do with arable, who you work with and, and some of the impact you've had in the world.

Speaker 2 00:01:37 Well, we do leadership and culture, and what we tend to do is work with CEOs. Then when we, get some trust with them, we work with their team and then we work throughout the organization. And basically our thinking is that there are two major faults in leadership in the world. One is that we don't teach it. So we assume people are going to somehow grab leadership by looking at other people or making mistakes. and so, you know, our kind of one of our basic beefs is that leadership should be on the curriculum of every school. You should learn to lead yourself.

Speaker 2 00:02:14 You should learn to lead other people very early on, because it's the sticky stuff that everything flows from. That's the first beef, and the second beef is that if we teach leadership, we teach skill sets, we don't teach mindsets. So we basically teach people how to do math. We teach people how to, to do profit and loss. We teach people how to do who had to sell things. But we don't teach character. We don't teach people how to be true, brave, kind, and curious. and if you don't have that, you're creating a little monsters in the world by giving them skill sets. Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:02:48 Well, you know, and I think, you know, if we think of, you know, most of our academic backgrounds, I don't know how much of that curriculum is really focused on leadership. So it's just kind of not necessarily baked into our quest for knowledge, at least from a traditional academic standpoint. So it's it's understanding that this can be challenging for most of us.

Speaker 2 00:03:13 Yeah, totally. And what we then tend to do is freak out and then create leadership schools or, or masters in leadership or PhDs in leadership. And it's completely the wrong approach. What we need to do is put leadership across the whole spectrum. You want great doctors who are great leaders. You want great accountants or great leaders. And please, Lord, we want great presidents are the great leaders, right?

Speaker 1 00:03:36 Because please, Lord.

Speaker 2 00:03:38 Well, because it's fractal, right? It's your your behavior as a leader is going to spill out into your teams. Behavior is going to spill out into your organization's behavior is going to spill out into your culture's behavior. And so the quality and character of the individuals that we're following is not inconsequential. In fact, it's foundational.

Speaker 1 00:04:00 You, Wrote the book Carl, which I neglected to mention at the beginning the cave, the road, the table, and the fire leading from a deeper place. Do you mind just kind of giving us a little bit of a mini Ted talk on the thesis of of your book?

Speaker 2 00:04:15 Yeah.

Speaker 2 00:04:16 I mean, it's it's basically the thought that leadership is spatial, that you find leadership in different spaces, and that my plea is that we would find the leadership in those spaces on a daily basis. So it's about creating a cadence for your life. you know, work life balance is overrated and flow is is occasionally found, but it's everything is found. The other side of cadence is that the other side of habit, the other side of rhythm, the other side of pattern. And so we're looking for four qualities. True, which is about you showing up authentically, you showing up with integrity, you knowing what it feels like to be the other side of you. We're looking for brave, which is about you finding the the point of view. What's the point of you, Josh, and why do you exist in this world? And and can you focus on that in a way that actually pushes beyond comfort zones? We're looking for, kindness, which many people think, particularly in corporate America. As I travel around and teach, many people think it's a really weak thing to be kind.

Speaker 2 00:05:18 Actually, I think it's the strongest of all leadership qualities, the ability to prefer someone else, the ability to be empathic in a room, the ability to build a team, which isn't about self-interest. And then finally, we're looking for curiosity, which is about the ability to catalyze and grow. It's the ability for every day to be a school day, every every experience that remains unprocessed stays unlearned. So it's the it's the experience of being able to process your days and walk and become better next day. So this is just a way of saying, I can do this in every day of my life. I can wake up in the cave and find my true. I can pause in the middle of the day and recover my brave, because the world will come at you and will disorient you. I can talk with people towards the end of the day and reflect around what's going on in the world, and then at the end of before I put my head on the pillow at night, I can leave behind some stuff that I don't want to take into tomorrow.

Speaker 2 00:06:18 I can I can extract the gleanings or the learnings from this day and become better and show up the next day with greater intention. So that's there you go. You don't need to buy the book now, Josh, you got the the whole thing.

Speaker 1 00:06:30 I want to I'm hoping, Carl, you could talk a little bit more about kindness and especially, you know, thinking of kindness as being among the strongest of all leadership traits. some might consider that to be antithetical, as you pointed out earlier. but but how might kindness look, in our role as a leader, you know, if you think about the typical, you know, schedule of, of activity that we might spend in a week and, and engaging you know, with our core leadership teams and our clients, our shareholders, etc..

Speaker 2 00:07:05 Yeah, I think I think it starts with the perspective. And the perspective is that people people are your business. They're not people that they're not, vehicles that help you do your business. They are your business and that your job is not to grow followers.

Speaker 2 00:07:21 Your job is to grow leaders. And so as soon as you begin to realize that, you then begin to realize that the currency of, of building a team is trust, and trust is built by kindness. Kindness is about me saying, Josh, I see you, I hear you, and I honor you. And and it doesn't mean that I let you get away with things. Niceness. Nice is not kind. In fact, nice is antithetical to kind. It's the opposite. Nicest, nicest kind of brushing over problems. My kindness to you is being able to support you and challenge you. It's, I guess, Josh, it's the way in which we raise kids as much as the way in which we build businesses. It's the same thing, you know, when when you're raising kids. I have four, so I kind of know a little bit about this. When you're raising kids, you you have to create a safe place for them. And that safe place means they belong. Doesn't matter what they do, they're always going to be part of our family.

Speaker 2 00:08:18 We love you, we love you, we love you. But that's not the end game. The end game is never safety. Whatever. Whatever I tell you, the end game is stretch. The end game is if I can help you become so safe that we can begin to provoke you, catalyze you, and stretch you into your best life. That's the end game. And so kindness is about that. Kindness is being able to say you're the most important part of our business because you're the people. You carry all the stuff of our purpose towards our vision, and actually me getting the best out of you and seeing some things in you that you don't necessarily see in yourself is going to catalyze our business. And it might even be the force multiplier in our business in becoming everything we might be. Because leadership, as I said earlier, is fractal. Like if, if if in my organization. If in your organization the person it the person who touches the people doesn't carry the values, doesn't carry the purpose, doesn't carry the vision, then give up and go home.

Speaker 2 00:09:18 If you're the founder and you've got all these great ideas. So if I want to go in and find out what a culture is like in an organization, I walk straight to the front desk and find how I'm greeted. Am I honored? Am I seen? Are people? Am I looked after my cared for? And that will be the culture of the business and probably the culture of the CEO. Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:09:39 Carl, with parable, you've had the opportunity to work with organizations like Sotheby's, the office of secretary, for, of state, for Scotland, NBC universal, Toyota, BBC, DHL. what are these, larger enterprise level leaders? What are they concerned about, do you think over the next year or two ahead? you know, as you've had these intimate conversations with them? What are they worried about?

Speaker 2 00:10:13 Well, the smart ones are worried that the world went and changed on them. And, and therefore, rinsing and repeating the same old tricks is not going to work. People changed.

Speaker 2 00:10:25 the culture changed. the pandemic has a lot to do with it, but it's not the only thing. And that actually going back to first principles around things like why do we exist? Let's remind ourselves why we exist. Going back to principles like what are we actually shooting for? What difference are we really going to make in the world? And understanding that, you know, Peter Drucker once said, culture reach strategy for breakfast. And and actually, I think that's like 50% right and 50% nonsense. Like, I know what he was trying to say, but basically culture and strategy. Sit down for lunch. You you cannot do a good thing in a bad way and call it great. So your spirit, the spirit of your organization, is as important as the strategy of your organization. And everything is your culture, everything you do, everything you think, everything you say, every artifact you produce is your culture. And so people are beginning to realize that actually, well, here's here's my play.

Speaker 2 00:11:23 Every organization that's worth being part of starts off with a bunch of great and compelling values. You want to be part of it. That's why you joined. It wasn't just the money you joined, because I want to be part of this within one iteration of that, that original organization, you have created a whole bunch of vehicles. You got to have people got to be paid. They've got to have a building, they've got to have structures. They got to have systems, they got to have policies. The problem occurs in the third iteration when we forgot the values and we're obsessed with the vehicles. So it becomes about the building, it becomes about the policies. By the way policies are organizational scar tissue. You know that right? Right. Every policy you have in your organization is because someone screwed up. And the problem is you put a policy on top of a policy on top of a policy and an organization that used to be entrepreneurial, used to break ground, you used to do something different, is now become suffocated and stifled and can't do the things that it used to do.

Speaker 2 00:12:19 So it takes smart leaders. And I think this is a moment for leaders. Take smart leaders to be iconoclasts to go. We got to break some of this vehicle stuff to get back to some of our values for two reasons. One, the world changed and we're stuck. Secondly, the people we're trying to employ right now don't buy into the vehicles. They definitely buy into values. And we have to we have to we have to start thinking differently about the way we operate. So that's some of the stuff that's going on. And people are thinking smartly and particularly they're buying into the the relational piece to say, look, leadership is relational. To be a great CEO, it's not just about being a strategic architect or a brand evangelist. I have to be a relational magnet. I have to learn how to speak the language of my people. I have to learn how to grow them because that's the future. So some of that stuff is what's going on. Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:13:14 so Carl, your website is arable co.com.

Speaker 1 00:13:20 and so do you mind maybe sharing a little bit about the programs that you offer. What is engagement look like? also to it looks is that, you do have some great resources, on your site. So if you want to share any of those, that would be really interesting to learn. And, and it looks like you're our podcaster as well. So the arable leader with Carl Martin.

Speaker 2 00:13:42 Yes, sir. Yeah, we just started the podcast. We're trying to feel our way through stuff. but the. No. It's great. yeah. So what we tend to offer is our business is very bespoke. We're very anti is probably too strong a word, but I'll use it. We're very anti the kind of cookie cutter. Our system will work with you everywhere we go. You know we want to go into an organization and say, so what's the problem that we're we're being asked to address? you know, a problem only continues to exist in the absence of the right conversation. So what's the conversation that we need to have to help you move from here to here? And how can we partner with you? So I tend to work with founders or CEOs of organizations who recognize either they've got stuck or they've got a problem they can't answer, or they just need someone to oftentimes just someone to be able to talk to that isn't their partner or their business partner, because that's not that helpful sometimes.

Speaker 2 00:14:37 So we then we will then build a program for them based generally on those four qualities true, brave, kind, curious, which we then ladder up through an organization to be about purpose, trust, development and connection. And, and we build something that I think in the past many organizations would have said was a lot of soft skills. I think people are beginning to realize that the soft skills are actually the hard skills, that they're the things that bring return on investment. And and so we will help them build a system for their organization which will they'll be able to measure over time and see whether they can grow individuals who become great leaders, who lead great teams. So yeah, that's what we do. Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:15:21 So terrible code. Com for someone that's listening or conversation and and they'd like to maybe kind of continue on to the next stop where they can learn more. Or maybe a conversation is appropriate. What do they do or what would you recommend they do?

Speaker 2 00:15:36 So you just need to email us and we will have a conversation with you and and probably start a diagnostic process where we say, well what's the problem in these fixed? How can we have a conversation? Who would we best put in touch with you and and and what do you need from us right now? Also you could read my book because probably that's probably that's the way in which I nearly forgot.

Speaker 2 00:15:58 I'm not very good at selling the book, but I actually, to be fair, that's the best and simplest way to understand whether you like me. And if you don't like what we're doing, then. Then why call us? But. But if you. If you like the cave, the road, the table and the fire, you like the concepts that are at play there. You like some of the exercises in the book, by the way, the book is a book you need to read with a pen because I want you to scribble all over it. I want you to disagree with it. I want you to rip it up. I want you to throw it in the corner. I want, because it will provoke you to think in different ways about who you are, why you do the things you do. Why do you have the same repeated reactions in your organization? Why do you continue to make the same mistakes? how do you really build trust what you know, so those kinds of things will be things that you'll have to address when you when you read the book.

Speaker 1 00:16:48 Carl Martin again, CEO of arable, your website arable co com the podcast, which our friend can can listen to or look up right now. It's called The Arable Leader with Carl Martin. And again Marable's arable and of course your book, The Cave, the Road, the table and the Fire Leading from a Deeper Place. It's available on Amazon and again, you can get to that from Arable Code. Com Carl Martin, thank you so much for the conversation. I've enjoyed.

Speaker 2 00:17:18 Josh. It's been brilliant. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 00:17:26 Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up my influence. Com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from.

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