Supercharge your Growth by Building a Co-Creative Culture with Chris Deaver

0:01Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the ideal destination for business professionals with great shows like Latinx in power. Today, we'll be breaking down how to supercharge your growth by building a co-creative culture. To draw these value bombs, I brought to Chris Deaver and DEO Fire Studios. Chris is the co-author of Brave Together, which is featured in The Next Big Idea Club with Malcolm Gladwell and Adam Grant as Inc.'s top five books for transforming businesses in Big Think and Forbes. And today, Foundation, we'll talk about unlocking creativity.

0:39We'll talk about the future in 2024, innovating with AI, massive long-term growth, supercharging culture with co-creation, and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Chris and our sponsors. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lands, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business.

1:19Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. Many EO Fire listeners have launched non-food franchises and Frambridge Consulting has guided them. Fran Bridge's founder and frequent EO Fire guest, John Ostenson, has done more placements than any other in the country, and his service is free. Sign up for a consultation with John or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising, at FranBridgeConsulting.com. Chris, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Thanks, John. Hey, Fire Nation. The future is not self-made.

1:59It's shared. Fire Nation, concise, clear, value bombs being dropped. As we talk about supercharging your growth by building a co-creative culture. Now, Chris, we want to unlock creativity. We want to power growth. How the heck do we do that? Well, it starts from within. So a lot of times we think about, we go out and change the world, but really it's about changing the world from within. And it starts by going to our core, being brave. And, you know, most of us experience fear in some form, especially, you know, given the pandemic, a lot of shift and disruption has happened, technologies that are emerging, you know, with AI, what that means for jobs and, you know, work and products and services.

2:52Everything seems to be shifting. And, you know, the plates underneath this, it's like tectonic shifts. It's not small things. And so there's kind of an element of fear that, you know, most of us wake up feeling on some level and it may be subconscious. But really, the key is to, you know, we're told to be brave, you know, work harder, work smarter, you know, hacks, hustle, and all these things. But what the reality has happened is most people have found there's a sense of burnout. And there's a reason to that, which is we can only optimize ourselves so much individually. It's like a clock. These Swiss clocks, you wind it and you can only get to a second or a nanosecond.

3:35It's just wound up perfectly. But what then? And the key is to really get to the next level is to be brave together. And that's the future. You know, the key is to, yeah, work harder, work smarter, but work creatively together with others. Now, Chris, Fire Nation, my listeners, they're not followers. They are leaders. So what is the best way for us to lead the future? Yeah, it's a great question. You know, we're living in a time, it's unprecedented, and there's so many amazing things happening, right? The quality of living is the highest it's ever been. There's a super abundant future at the cusp.

4:14the upside of AI technologies is immense. And yeah, the opportunities are endless. And yet we have these challenges we're facing, we're wrestling with. And for any entrepreneur, any person, anybody that's leading a team, small, or growing their company, the key to this future is going to be looking for ways to really build out the band and strengthen the band, right? We look at the Beatles like, well, they were the best when they were playing together. When they broke up, it was never the same. You two, they've transcended time because they do it together. And so for someone who's leading, the question to pose to ourselves is, is it about building an empire or is it about building an alliance, a rebel alliance?

5:10and it's less about being sharks and more about being dolphins, right? Co-creative, collaborative, you ride the next wave together. And the next wave, it's not, to the point earlier we were talking about, it's not about efficiency. That was a manual worker. It's not about effectiveness anymore. That was the knowledge worker. And AI is coming for them and us, for knowledge workers. But the future for us to amplify is to be connection workers and to be co-creators. And if you see your team as less as employees and more as co-creators, you're going to start to build something that all the best brands, the top companies we admire, we talk about, that's what they do.

5:56They've built a culture that stands the test of time. Fire Nation, let's be honest. If you are running a business today, you probably have a team of some kind. You're probably working with artificial intelligence in some way. So Chris, what are the best ways that we can innovate both with our teams and with AI? Yeah, it's a great question, John. It's unbelievable what AI can do. And we just scratched the surface, right? You know, we're testing things and creating visual content that's just unbelievable. And, you know, the things that you can create that would have taken hours or many, many people to do, you know, or you can do in seconds.

6:40It's incredible. And so, yeah, I think first is having a lens or mindset of embracing the change, not resisting. I think that's good. and then thinking co-creatively with the technology and with others. Because who's going to power these technologies? And generative AI is different than coding. It wasn't just a few years ago. We were talking about everybody needs to code. And that's become less true because, yeah, we're going to still need architects who can code. But really, AI is doing that now, or it can. And so where is the value? Where is the highest impact? and the thing that hasn't changed that won't change is you know and i i look at it like perpetual motion right in science you know and back in high school or middle school you know they say well you know teacher always say well there's no you can't create a perpetual motion machine and i always felt like i wanted to disagree with that but i didn't know how and uh i studied it you know leonardo da vinci tried to create one uh he created a self what call a self-fulfilling flask and you know we haven't seen you know we don't know what that it looks like it didn't really succeed Nikola Tesla attempted to create a perpetual motion machine and you know he was a person who an engineer that actually would iterate the his designs in his head in advance of putting anything on paper and so he would actually do all the quality assurance beforehand before actually creating his inventions and as we know you know 86 different patents you know things that reinvented entire industries and a lot of things that are yet to be known pretty amazing technology this was one thing he brought to his mentor this idea of the perpetual motion machine his mentor said oh this is a waste it can't be done and at first Tesla believed him but later he re-analyzed you know his his his designs and he said he said to himself no actually this is doable.

8:37Now, we don't know what happened to that design. After he passed away, government swooped in and grabbed all his documents and who knows where that is. But it remains an interesting question, which is, what is a perpetual motion machine? And I'll say this, if you were to ask Steve Jobs, what is the greatest product or your favorite product that you've created? Most people would say was it you know uh ipod iphone right these are great products he would actually say the culture um ed catmell who started pixar same thing and why because the culture is the perpetual motion machine that creates continuous growth um you know look at pixar they just launched inside out too it's incredible movie um and it is because you have a set of people who are in a brain trust and they're building incredible things together.

9:29And Apple, one product after another, name the company, right? NVIDIA is on top, but why are they doing it? They're operating as a brain trust when they're at their best. Fire Nation, there's a reason why everybody was saying that Steve Jobs created a reality distortion field around him. It's because A, he did, and B, people bought into it. And the reality that they may have thought when they joined Apple was no longer the reality after Steve Jobs implemented what he knew was possible. And that was what was really exciting about that. And it's cool to see those other examples with Pixar and NVIDIA and what they're bringing to this world.

10:06And man, we have a lot of cool things to talk about around this topic, Fire Nation. And when we get back from thinking our sponsors. Being a small business owner comes with a lot of challenges, especially now. It seems like everyone is working with smaller budgets, shorter timelines, and sky-high expectations, and that can make growing a business feel pretty painful. Thankfully, HubSpot can help. HubSpot just announced dozens of major product updates that'll make impossible growth feel impossibly easy, like Breeze, a suite of new AI-powered tools that deliver personalized insights to level up your work, plus AI agents designed to automate your work for you.

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11:58John has served as an Inc. 500 franchisor and is a multi-brand franchisee himself, and he helps more entrepreneurs than any other consultant in the country. Sign up for a free consultation call with John today or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising, at FranBridgeConsulting.com. That's FranBridgeConsulting.com. Chris, we're back and listen, Fire Nation's tuning in because they know that you are a successful, motivating entrepreneur and our listeners want to achieve massive long-term growth. what's the best way for them to achieve this goal? Yeah, that's a great question, John. I'd say it's being very intentional about building culture.

12:40As you're building the business, as you're looking to grow, as you're looking to get to market the best product, best service, and it's having a mindset that is towards building a culture and doing it on first principles, right? You look at like Tesla or SpaceX, and they want to create a self-landing rocket. well they don't start with just hey let's throw a bunch of aluminum at it or you know whatever element or material what they do is they start with what are the first principles for building this so if you're an entrepreneur and you're you know you have you know you're starting something right now or you have something you want to grow uh you know and all of us want to want growth right that we have that in common um and if and and most of us would say well we want it to grow as much as possible, you know, that in a way that is sustainable.

13:28And, you know, we worked with a team, you know, of entrepreneurs, they had a 10 million, it was$15 million business. And they wanted to grow the one of the co founders said, he, you know, was having some challenges with his other co founder, the team of about 100 people, we're not that committed. And we asked him, you know, what's his vision of the future? And he said, Well, three years, I want to get to 45 million and then sell, right? Exit strategy. And so it's like, okay, well, do your people know that? He said, well, yeah. He said, well, you said they're not committed, right? That you feel like they're not committed.

14:05And, you know, do you see the, like, is there, do you think those are related? It's like, well, yeah. Do they, so, because they knew, right? They knew that they saw him, you know, sipping a pina colada in Key West in his mind. And, you know, they weren't going to benefit in the same way that he was, right, from that, you know, the success of the company. So, you know, it's not bad to have a vision of the future. I mean, it's great, right? Be successful, all that. But what we did was we stepped back and said, he said initially, like, we want us to do some team building. We said, no, let's zoom out and let's focus on these first principles of your culture, right, of the future, right?

14:42Think in terms of interstellar, right? Matthew McConaughey, the future version of you, the future version of this culture. What is it? Oh, it's, um, people love working here. It's a talent magnet, right? At the time they were losing people, people were not committed as he said. And so they were leaving. It's like, okay, what else is it? It's high growth, right? Uh, the company is, you know, 10 X what it, what it is today. Okay. So we, we took, you know, took that into account and, and, and he built a brain trust around this, which was bringing people together to wrestle with these principles and to really anchor, anchor them into the culture.

15:15And they did this. And fast forward a year later, you know i'm sitting watching the warriors game on my couch and uh my business partner ian pings me and you know we just launched our website for brave core it's brave core.co and you know one of the first people he tells me he's like hey have you been on the website like no and he says look and tim cook you know ceo of apple was one of the first people to download our ebook on our website uh which was cool and then i so i sent that screenshot to this uh client of ours and he He's like, hey, can you talk right now? I was like, yeah. He calls me and he says, hey, this culture work we did, it's unbelievable.

15:52He said, we just had a million-dollar day yesterday. And they went from$15 million to$150 million in a year. They went public. They sold the company. But the best thing of all is that they have that perpetual motion of, he said, people love working here. They love it. They're in a culture they love. It's growing. And all those things that anybody wants with something that they're building, they have. And of course, now he's reaping the benefit of that. Now he buys houses in Hawaii, spends his time, a lot more time with family, his kids. But the main thing was, hey, built a culture that lasts. Fire Nation, are you doing that?

16:35Are you building a culture that lasts? Speaking of that, our whole focus today is about supercharging culture with co-creation. Can you speak directly to that, Chris? How can we do that? Yeah, there's simple ways. And these are we've extracted through beta test work we did at Apple where we helped bring that culture from thinking different to working different together and just amplifying a lot of the stuff we talked about earlier, collaboration, co-creation. and in working with other companies like, you know, Disney, Pixar, we've extracted and through a lot of observation, really, what are the three kind of key building blocks of culture?

17:17It breaks down very simply. The first is shared wisdom and shared wisdom is about listening, you know, more than talking. And as a leader, that's a challenge, right? But what we saw in, for example, Ed Catmull, who started Pixar, you know, he told us initially when he started the company, he would go around and just throw answers out. People had a lot of questions, right? He was just spitting out answers. And he said, I realized two things very fast. He said, I wasn't empowering anybody and I always felt exhausted. And so, you know, he talked to this about with his wife and his wife said, go on this.

17:51He went on a meditation retreat for seven days and all he could do there was ask questions and listen. And he said the first couple of days drove him crazy, right? Right. He's a smart guy. He's a PhD. So he likes having answers. And so but this fundamentally changed his life and it changed him as a leader. And so he learned the power of leading with questions. That's key for any culture. And what he did was he was empowering. He started empowering people at Pixar like, well, P. Doctor, who runs the company now, he was one of those people. And so leading with a question that helps influence shared wisdom, that building block of culture.

18:30The other one is deep empathy, the power of compassion. We see Microsoft as a company that's transformed, but this could be any company. It could be your company. It's a smaller setting. It's just a few people. And what is going to be the difference? You know, we know that there is an edge to business that, you know, there's a bottom line and we have to be growth focused. There's also a lot to be said about growth mindset and how people grow. And having compassion, that's something that when a leader does, you know, listen with empathy, build compassion into the culture, it changes a lot. It fundamentally is an accelerator.

19:09And then the third one is being powered by principles. and there's principles that are timeless that are a source of energy that's continuous and I think when we pull back the curtain on these great brands and companies they have a lot of those things in common there's a humility to them there's a sense of purpose integrity all the things that we aspire to in terms of humanity are part of their culture or at least they're striving to be so those are the building blocks shared wisdom, deep empathy and being powered by principles that can really supercharge your culture. Fire Nation, I really hope you're absorbing those three and you're thinking about how could I apply that to my life, to my business, to my day-to-day.

19:55Now, Chris, I really want to end with a specific point and a real topic. I mean, we've mentioned Steve Jobs multiple times, Apple, but let's get real about how Apple did it with AirPods. I mean, we're talking zero to$24 billion in growth. I'm actually holding a pair of AirPods in my hands. I literally use this device every single day. I actually panic a little bit when I can't find it. Thank God the Find My Phone feature will make it beep, and I can always pick up a pillow, and there it is. But man, let's talk about that. Yeah. No, they're incredible products. And they just work, and it's a wonder what they can do.

20:39and yeah the amazing part is too behind the curtain on the first iteration of airpods and actually most people don't know the stem that they had it's first of all just creating that technology right to be wireless uh you know or to not have um you know wire connecting them that was a big deal you know they hired phds into the company they'd written white papers about this and you know they were saying it's impossible you can't do it uh but they'd said no we this is what we hired you for. You're going to do the impossible thing with us. And, uh, you know, it was interesting though, because that first iteration was a real challenge.

21:13There's a lot of pain points and they found themselves in six to eight hour daily meetings. There was, uh, people felt exhausted. Some people were saying, I'm going to leave the company. I don't want to work with that person anymore. Door slamming and these kinds of things. And so we unpacked that. We asked ourselves, well, what, okay. First of all, these are key talent too. We can't lose these people. These are rock stars, as far as building this technology. And we unpacked it, and what we realized was there was a lot of silos, and the dots connecting across these teams weren't as strong as they could be.

21:49And we looked at the brain trust approach that Pixar takes, and we found that same approach we applied with camera technologies at Apple. And so we applied this to the AirPods and created basically an AirPods brain trust, which is this is where you pull together. You can do this in a smaller setting, too. It's people from different functions coming together as a cross-staff meeting. And it's a team. And so in this case, it was hardware, software, design, operations. Everybody had a voice. And it's a commitment to that meeting every week. and so you know hour hour and a half two hours a week whatever it took right to get through and it's it's by the way it's also egos off the table building blocks on the table and this was transformative uh it strengthened the relationships it powered uh the work they did together and it accelerated the iterations and innovation of what's become an incredible you know an incredible products.

22:56So AirPods Pro emerged from that in the iterations since then. And yeah, it's become a $24 billion business. Who knew? But it's part of the ecosystem. And the greatest thing of all is that those teams are in a rhythm. It's like watching the Golden State Warriors in their prime. Not this year. But there's a sense of shared flow. We talk about flow and stepping out of time, doing something that makes your heart sing, right, that you love. It could be art, could be sitting on the beach. The best experience of all is when that's shared. And, you know, we see this in teams when they're playing at their best.

23:35We see this in bands and the Navy SEALs see it. They don't exactly know what it is or how to recruit for it even, but they know there's something about when a group is moving as one. And so then the question becomes, well, what if you could do that at work? And what if you could do that in the teams that you're in? And what kind of products would that create? And AirPods Pro is one of those products. That's one of those stories that I just flipping love. And I will be honest, if I was that individual running that team, I would have taken out my iPhone and recorded every single person that said, this can't be done.

24:10And I would have saved those videos. And then when, of course, it was done years from that point, possibly, I would have then compiled them and made everybody sit in a classroom and watch that video of themselves saying that it couldn't be done just because I think that would have been funny. Yeah, it would have. Chris, let's talk about the one key takeaway that you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our entire conversation today. You know, we're put on this earth, each of us, to not just be a creator, and that's important in your life. The best way to predict your future is to create it, as Stephen Covey would say.

24:51But even more so is to be a co-creator with others. And that just takes whatever you're doing to a whole other level. You want to break out of the limits or the box and shatter what you perceived as limitations or things that might feel like they're holding you back. will be get co-creative be more co-creative and you know we talk about being proactive versus reactive and that's important uh but uh the real the real future that that wave the next wave is about co-creation just a shorthand example of that at marvel uh before before marvel became what it was john favreau who reinvented the star wars universe with mandalorian um he's a big believer in co-creation and the interesting thing is the backstory to iron man uh you know this was this was a movie that everything kind of depended on there no iron man no no mcu no marvel universe uh and the interesting thing was is here's 200 million 300 million dollar budget going into this thing everything's riding on it and they're finding themselves in a trailer it's john favreau robert downey jr who technically wasn't supposed to be in the movie john convinced this say the suits um the people that you know this is a comeback story for for him personally and then jeff bridges who as an actor he would always say you know i need a script and and they show they show up and they don't have a script and rock and john says well let's let's improvise and you know what what do you think this character would say and jeff said it was so uncomfortable this is crazy like how are we doing it why are we doing this the 200 300 million dollar movie you know this is crazy and then the suits are in the room you know presumably kevin feige or others they're saying wait that character wouldn't say that it's not how the comics work but john was so convinced that there's something here that we have to co-create and they did and so jeff said he stepped out of his own comfort zone he said i said i saw how john and robert down in general were just riding this wave he said so i just i just rode the wave and look what it produced right and what that's produced for that whole universe and then now for star wars john did it the same with mandalorian and that's true in your business, right?

27:06That's true with your team. That's true with the brain trust that you have that you create with your co-founder or just yourself and your team, that the best things happen when they're co-created. Chris, if Fire Nation wants to connect with you, wants to learn more from you, what is your call to action for our listeners today? Yeah, we'd love to connect with you. I'm on LinkedIn. We have a book out called Brave Together. It's on Amazon. We have actually a video book version of that uh just launched on lit lit video books uh it tells the story of co-creation this movement of co-creation uh this next big wave and uh you can also connect on our website www.bravecore.co uh there's a lot of tools and resources that are free there you can access to get to know you know this this co-creative version of you of the future and i would just add this other thought, which is quite simple.

28:03And I think of the moment, you know, the movie X-Men, when Dr. X is a little, he's very, he's a mess, right? And I think we've found some of us, you may feel frustrated. You may feel like you're in a struggle. You may feel like, hey, the financials aren't working. It's crazy, right? AI, these things that are looming, it's just an unbelievably challenging situation you may be facing. But like in that movie, you know, Days of Future Past, It's Dr. X from the future talking to him. And what does he do? You know, he's the one that it's a dystopian future. It feels like it's a wreck there, but he's actually filled with hope.

28:42And so what he says to his younger self is, we need you to hope again. And I'll tell you this, there's a future version of you and of that culture that you've built that is incredible. And so it's just having that conversation and being open to the possibility that you can hope again and that we need you to hope again. What a great way to end the episode, Fire Nation. I hope you're inspired as am I because you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with CD and JLD today, so keep up that heat. For links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com.

29:17Just type Chris in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up. And Chris, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we will catch you on the flip side. Thanks, John. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Chris for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation's successful entrepreneurs. They accomplish big goals, huge goals. That is why I created the Freedom Journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in 100 days. And we're talking step-by-step. Visit thefreedomjournal.com and I will catch you there or on the flip side.

29:52The next wave, your chief AI officer hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lanz, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. Many EO Fire listeners have launched non-food franchises and Franbridge Consulting has guided them.