#295: Shawn Johnson & Andrew East, Olympic Gold Medalist, Former NFL Pro – Experiment and learn by doing

22:45and I would just like go, go, go, go, go. But Sean has capped our pace at a pretty healthy clip. And also our work has, it's not been chasing trends. It's not been something that we've done just to please the audiences. Like when we first started, gymnastics videos were the number one performing genre of content on YouTube. And I was like, oh baby, we won the game. Sean, we're gonna make gymnastics videos. And she was like, I'm not going to do anything to do it. I want nothing to do with gymnastics. And so we didn't make any gymnastics videos. And our short-term success and growth suffered as a result.

23:25But long-term now, I look beyond just that first six months and I'm like, oh man, it's because we've always made videos that we felt comfortable with that we've continued to make videos and we've continued this process. So I would say just being in your sweet spot, right in the pocket has allowed us to do it for a long time. It sounds like you've developed one of the things I've learned from great companies is you've got process and discipline around what really matters, the consistency of what your real brand is. And is that something you articulated, you put down on paper, or did you just work your way into it and you both know it?

24:03David Novak:I think we learned it through failure. I think we found ourselves in the YouTube world truly just playing and having fun and not doing it for a business. And then we saw quickly that it could become a business. So then we took the bait of let's do what makes money and let's do what people click on. And probably after six months of that, we found ourselves feeling just empty. And like, what are we doing here? We're early married. We have these goals and dreams and visions of having like a intentional life, but yet we're doing slime videos on YouTube. It just felt very empty for us. And so after those six months, we ended up doing just what you said is we sat around a table for an entire day and wrote out what we want all of our life to look like now and into the future and what our dream business looks like and what we're actually selling to people.

25:00David Novak:And what's the story? And do we want to be authentic? Do we want to fabricate something? Is it a character development? Like whatever it was. And from that point forward, we just decided we wanted to be our authentic selves, whether that's sold or made money or not. And we can always go find a different job if we want. And we just stayed consistent with it. And it built a purposeful, you know, fulfilling career for us. Sean, do you share that document or the things that you wrote down with your third party, you know, your partners that don't necessarily report directly to you? Yeah. Yeah. We've actually, we have this whole system that we do.

25:40David Novak:We call it vision setting or goal setting, where we see, we look at every single aspect of our life, philanthropy, business, finances, our marriage, our faith, our children. And we really approach it from a 30 ,000 foot view. There's some details in there. Yeah, we probably haven't shared with like our team, but we do the same exact exercise with our team. We share what our personal goals are and we want to know what their goals are. making sure that, again, nobody finds themselves sitting at the table feeling empty, but they're actually doing what they're meant to do. And here you are now, you're experts in content creation and you coach Fortune 500 companies on how to create great content.

26:22What's the number one thing that companies get wrong? Or, you know, what do you see that just, you just say you never let that happen? Yeah, knowing what your brand is, is really important. And just to define that word and double click on it. I think I used to think of a brand like the packaging. And then I kind of understood brand is like, oh, this is the style that it has. But really, a brand is a really important thing to be aware of and to responsibly steward, I think. So I've seen Sean go out in public and there's people who come up to her and will break down crying. To them, Sean's brand is their childhood hopes and dreams of sports.

27:11Their childhood understanding of what a woman could do. Them being nostalgic watching with their parents. And so a brand is all of these associations that people have with the thing. And I think a lot of people like I think a lot of companies with content try to just like jump on the trend of like, hey, this is a funny meme or whatever, as opposed to pressing into why people would even resonate with what they're putting out at all.

27:39David Novak:Yeah, I would say we work so heavily in the marketing world. And so we work very closely with companies every single day on trying to sell a product. And I feel like the ones who get it right, sell a story. And the ones who get it wrong, sell an individual item. And I feel like humans relate to stories. Like, why do I need this? What is it going to do in my life? What kind of life benefits from this? And I think a lot of times our frustration and the selling ad space is inauthentic, you know, intentions where they're just like, buy it, you know, here's the product and that's it. I don't know. I mean, that's vague to say, but people have souls.

28:24David Novak:And when you remove that, it's very evident. And I think we need more storytelling to come back. You know, you've both been, you know, on great teams. You're both great athletes. You know, what have you pulled from those experiences and experiences in team sports that you've used to create your own team culture at Family Made? One of Andrew's favorite books is Who Not How. And we very quickly tried to acknowledge the things we're not good at and honor those qualities in other people. So no matter how big the dream, we are firm believers, we can't do it alone. And it takes a village and it takes a whole team.

29:07David Novak:And we celebrate the team atmosphere. Yeah, athletics is so wonderful because you're getting constant feedback and criticism, hopefully constructive criticism. And so there's kind of this idea of like, okay, hey, we're striving to be the best team possible. And part of that is me being the best player possible in my role. And there's gonna be someone who's gonna help me along that path. And I think that idea of including outside perspective and seeking and receiving feedback is something that we were conditioned to do as athletes. And like, instead of taking something personal, like, hey, that video wasn't good enough.

29:51And here's why can be a really helpful process and like put everyone in a better spot professionally, as opposed to like being really discouraged or shot down when someone gives you feedback. So I think criticism, healthy critique is really good. You know, one of the things I love learning about you guys is that it was similar to something that happened to be when I was at Yum Brands. When we first started the company, we went out and we best practiced the best companies, what I call them dynasty-like companies because they got consistent performance year after year. You have a version of that in your world where you, as I understand it, when you really got into the YouTube, you contacted 200 companies or so and went out on a best practice.

30:39Tell us about that process. What'd you do? And what made you do that? I mean, you know, what was it about you that said, hey, I'm going to learn from these people?

30:47David Novak:We were in such an interesting place. We were newly engaged. We had both kind of hit the peaks for athletic careers. And we wanted to learn something new. We wanted to really dive headfirst into a new area. And we knew very well that we weren't going to start it, you know, at the top. We were going to start it at the bottom and have to climb our way. and we said what better way than to humble ourselves and just go cold call some of the best in this industry and say hey I've never had a YouTube channel before I've never made a YouTube video but can we come learn from you and it was really cool to see and we traveled all over the country all over the globe honestly meeting a lot of these people who are now considered family and they held our hands and taught us the ins and outs of the industry and became family to us, which was really cool.

31:43David Novak:But we did. We just, we wanted to learn. And we had enough humility to say, let's start at zero and work our way up. And you sent notes to the top 200 YouTubers and how many answered you? How many came back to you and said, we'll give you some time? My answer to your question is almost like some type of, I don't want to say desperation, but like an eagerness and excitement. When I was getting recruited for college football, I was not highly recruited. And so I wanted to take the initiative and I emailed every single D1 college special teams coordinator because I was like, I'm eager. Like, just check me out.

32:26Give me a chance. And it was kind of the same spirit that we did that with YouTube where we didn't just ask to sit down for coffee or like, hey, can you give us tips? We said, hey, we have this unique story. I play football and my wife's a gymnast. We could do this. You do trick shot videos and we could do a gymnastics trick shot video. So we were like, in a sense, like offering some type of value back to them. and in that process of like filming that video, the collaboration, the collab, as they say, then I would learn and we would learn so much in that process. And so you got to be comfortable with taking some no's, but it's a really good thing to seek advice and learn.

33:06Speaking of learning, for someone just getting started in content creation, what do you know now that you wish you would have learned sooner?

33:14David Novak:Just do it. I feel like I was the worst at that. I, in my head, I needed every single ounce of a business idea to be perfectly thought out and executed before I ever started. It needed to be flawless. And I needed to know what hurdles I was going to face and how I was going to overcome them. And I would leave no room for flexibility. And because of that, I would never start anything. Because in my mind, nothing could ever be perfect. and Andrew was very good at that. He's like, let's start anything and we'll figure it out as we go. And I would say, especially within this industry, just start, post, figure it out as you go.

33:57David Novak:It's going to morph into a million different things and you'll figure it out. I think this applies for the content game as well as life more broadly where it's like, you look at the internet, it's like, oh man, well, no one needs to hear my podcast. There's already so many podcasts. We're like, what makes me different than anyone else? And I honestly believe that everyone was placed with a story and a message that no one else can replicate. No one else has had David's experience with David's expertise, with David's mentorship in David's place. And so your story, even if you're saying the same thing about leadership or whatever, us talking about commitment, it's going to look way different because of your experience.

34:39And so I would say, yeah, just know that and try to understand what that is for you.

34:44David Novak:Hello, friends. I hope you're loving this conversation. Be sure to stay tuned to the very end of the episode. As always, David and I are going to debrief some of the concepts that he talks about with this week's guest. So stay tuned to the very end, and I will see you soon. More and more leaders are being asked to show up on social media and share about their lives. You know, I mean, their real lives, their personal lives. You know, how have you navigated what to share publicly and what to keep private? Well, first, I would start by saying, I think it's unfair that all these leaders are being pressured to do that.

35:22David Novak:I think that should be completely up to each individual. And I don't think leaders have an obligation to show their personal life. I do think for us, since we have chosen to show our personal life, we have implemented a lot of boundaries to protect our marriage and our family over everything else at the end of the day. and we've learned that by failure, by posting something that we're like, oh, that felt too personal or that felt too intimate or that felt like, you know, we were sharing too much or whatever the issue was. But we've just kind of learned through practices that our rules are everything has to be shown from a parent's perspective about us as parents.

36:02David Novak:It's not about our kids. It's about us. So at any given point, our kids could not be in it and nobody would care because it's about us. No topic can be shared unless it's been lived, thought through, and conversed at home. So everything that we share is truly, you know, it's happened before. It's not live. And Sean, as I understand it, one of the things that really took your presence to a whole different level was you just opening up about miscarriage. Could you explain or talk about that? That was right in the transition for us of like doing filming and posting things that felt very unfulfilling and kind of empty.

36:46David Novak:We film a lot of stuff at home anyway. It's just home videos, kind of like the old days on a VHS tape. But for us, it's on our phones. We make a lot of very personal videos for ourselves that we can look back on, you know, birthday parties and Christmases. And that was something that we had filmed for ourselves that we had no intention of sharing. and I remember just feeling in that moment very desperate and isolated and I didn't even know how to communicate with my husband about how I felt so I very uncharacteristic to me proposed to Andrew I was like I I feel called and like I need to post this and I don't know why that was very outside of the realms of what we did and he he was like okay so I posted it and it was um through the responses I wasn't sure if anybody would see it but through the responses of hearing from women all over the world who had gone through the same thing that healed me.

37:37David Novak:And it was the first time that I saw a different side of the internet that wasn't just selling, but it was actually a two-way street of a community. And I saw people as human and not just like, you know, robots behind a keyboard. And that's kind of when we shifted things and did things more personal and more vulnerable in a way that still felt protected for our family. But because I truly could not have gotten through that moment if it weren't for all these women around the world. Yeah. And that's the time when you really followed your gut and your instinct, right? You went with your heart. How challenging was that for you to get to that point?

38:14I mean, have you always been, you haven't always been this open or?

38:20David Novak:Never. Oh my gosh. Back in the day, I, especially then, I was still very robotic from my time in sports marketing from the Olympics. I had a very, very specific image, very tailored. I knew what to say, how to say it, how to be politically correct in everything that I did. It was all perfect. So showing a vulnerability like that was never an option for me. So that was a very, yeah, that was just me in a very desperate moment, not knowing what to do next and thinking like, maybe there's someone out there that has gone through this that I can hear their story. And it was a growing moment. You know, authenticity is one thing that everybody talks about in leadership.

39:03Now, one of the hot buttons is vulnerability. And, you know, in terms of, you know, show yourself, you know, do you have any insight or learning about being vulnerable in the right way? Is there a right way? I mean, how do you think about vulnerability? The internet's a tricky place because people kind of reward you for this emotional rawness, like an unfiltered, I'm going to cry on camera and oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm like, I'm wrecked right now. That's definitely vulnerable for sure. But in some ways it's like unhealthy for the individual it seems. So we have tried to always be vulnerable with like sharing how we actually experience something, but after we've already processed it.

39:54So like not being raw and just like emotionally vomiting everything as it's happening live online, but more like, hey, let's make sure that we're in a good place individually and like together as a married couple, and then we can share it and share what we learned, share what was good and bad, but not do it live. Because other people's feedback who don't know you as well online, they might steer you in a direction you don't necessarily want to go. And so you should probably understand that before you go ahead and just share it. I now have a new learning, a new phrase, emotionally vomiting. Yeah.

40:34I love it. You know, but you guys are very candid. And that's one of the things that really makes you the brand that you've become. And, you know, one of the things that you've talked about is just the challenge of transitioning from elite sports and moving into a whole new world. You know, what's the insight that you can give to other leaders when they go through a big chapter, you know, and they got to move on to the next one? I mean, you had to create a different life after sports. So, you know, what's the big learning about how to work through that?

41:08David Novak:It's very difficult. It's very, very difficult. To start over is very hard. And I would just say, humble yourselves and don't be afraid to truly not be good at something again and build your way up. But I do think asking for help and asking for wisdom and mentorship is incredibly important. And you don't have to do like a transition to a new career path on your own. For us, we tried to find the best of the best and learn from them. So I think it's just about finding out, yeah, assets to help you. It is hard, but it's also exciting. It's like a new frontier. You know, like, Sean went from being the best in the world at one thing, and then she had to no longer be the best in the world at something after that.

41:55You know, like the next thing she was going to do, immediately off the bat, she was not going to be best in the world at. And that's daunting. And it can be like disheartening in a way. but uh but it's also like the beginning of a new path of like hey we're now we're starting a new journey i'm going to put reps in in a new field you can choose i would say like try and fail and and experiment and then like explore what other talents do you have and that's pretty awesome now you're authors you've written this great new book called the courage to commit what did you guys learn about yourself just going through the book writing process we're very different

42:32David Novak:We have very, very different voices and we believe the same thing and we say it in completely different ways. I feel like the hardest part for us was figuring out how to blend our voices for a book. And so we ended up giving up on that and separating them. So Andrew has his chapters and I have my chapters written from emotion, written from statistics and all converging around the same idea, which is that if you stick with something long enough, it's going to give you a depth and a fulfillment and joy in life that you can't reach through anything else. But it is really cool to see that, to even go back and read it.

43:08David Novak:We're so different. It's really cool to be so on the same page about something. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. And this has been so much fun and I've loved it so much. Because I always find it interesting when you see couples, okay? And you guys look like a couple. Do you find that same thing? I'm just curious. When you look at other people, do you say, hey, they just kind of look like a couple? Yeah, I get that. I'll take it. You'll take it, but do you see it? I feel like the flame gets to hold the Mona Lisa day. Oh, there you go. Man, you've got game. There's no question about you. Can I do something?

43:50I feel like it would be a huge missed opportunity. I mean, you are a generational leader. and you have done it at a scale that very few ever will. I'm curious what lessons in leadership you learned while doing it at Young Brands, but also beyond since you've been having these conversations. Maybe it's the same, maybe it's different. I think the biggest learning that I got is the real formula for success is you got to put people first. Too many people start out saying, I want to make money, but they don't realize how you get there. And you get there by putting people first. That's how you satisfy more customers.

44:30That's how you get more subscribers. That's how you get more fans. And then that's how you ultimately make money. But people start out too often thinking about money. And then the other thing I would say is the secret weapon that you have as a leader, the most powerful thing you can do is catch people doing things right and recognizing them for them and giving them value and worth. And, you know, as I've done my podcast, you know, I've found people say it in different ways, but the people capability is pretty profound and real. I like the idea of catching people doing things right. You know, I had a lot of fun with this.

45:12I always do a lightning round of Q &A. So you guys ready for this? Yes. Bring it on, baby. Sean, you go first. What three words best describe you?

45:22David Novak:Adventurous, loving, quirky. Andrew? Playful, unqualified, and curious. Oh, my God. Sean, your biggest pet peeve? People being late. Andrew, if you could be one person beside yourself for a day, who would it be? My kids. One of my probably sons. Yeah, just to see how I treat them. Sean, who would play you in a movie? My daughter. Andrew, aside from the sports that you've competed in, what's your favorite sport to watch? Yeah, it's still football. I still love watching football. Sean, what's something you've been absolutely curious about that has absolutely nothing to do with work? Chickens. We just got chickens, and I have to keep them alive.

46:19Wow. Andrew, the one thing you do just for you. Read. Sean, besides your family and friends, what's your most prized possession?

46:28David Novak:Oh, that's so hard. I try so hard not to value monetary items. I would say our house. I would say our house. Gosh, I can't. If I had a gold medal, I would have to say gold medal. You have definitely moved on from gymnastics. There's no question about that. Okay. Andrew, if I turned on the radio in your car, what would I hear? Oh, country music, baby. There you go. There you go. Sean? Or mariachi music. I also love mariachi music. Is that after a lot of margaritas? Or is it just, you know, you don't like it by itself, do you? Come on, you gotta have a few margis before that happens. All right. Sean, what's something about you few people would know other than the fact that you've forgotten the fact that you have a gold medal and three silvers?

47:16David Novak:I can't throw a ball. Andrew, what's one of your daily rituals, something that you never, ever miss? I say the Lord's Prayer every night before I go to bed. Oh, that's awesome. All right, we're out of the lightning round. Great job. And I just got a few more questions. We'll wrap it up here. You guys have three kids, Drew, Jet, and Bear. How do you think about leading at home? by example, which is the scariest part. But we try very hard to check in with each other every week and make sure that our schedules and our actions and our words reflect our values and our priorities as a family. So that if we miss the mark on verbally teaching them, at least they'll see it.

48:07Man, I used to think leadership was like this bullheaded, like I'm out in front of the pack and I'm leading and I'm the loudest and the most vocal. And leading at home has shown me, I think a little more of what that servant leadership concept is about, where you're like, oh, okay, this isn't, I don't need to have it my way. I think we all need to be unified in a vision and a mission and let's be accountable to that, but it doesn't need to be one above the other in any sense. So got to ask you, the dog's name there.

48:40David Novak:This is Oakley. Okay. So what do you, what do you guys say to leaders who they, let's say they hit their plan, they blow it away. They're, they, they, they had the best year ever. They're standing on their podium and they don't feel anything. You know, what are they missing out on? I mean, it's like, you know, because they're so intent on getting to the next thing or what do you say to leaders like that when you have that moment? The actual moment of receiving the gold medal is quite small. I mean, it's a tiny fraction of everything I put in to get there. And some of my absolute favorite memories of the entire process was the process, not the outcome.

49:36David Novak:And I would say to a leader standing, you know, at the end saying, I did it. It's not necessarily about the accolade. It's about all the work and, you know, trials and tribulations that you went through to get there. So for me, my gold medal, though it's so cool, and it's a pinch-free moment today I have an Olympic gold medal, it's just a representation of everything that I did. It's not just the one moment. How about you, Andrew? It's so hard. First of all, I'm all about celebrating the small wins. I don't like the taste of champagne, but recently, any small win that we have around the office, I'll pop a battle of champagne because I think it's important to celebrate You know, we once were there and now we're here and man, that's progress.

50:23So let's celebrate it. So I definitely think like, enjoy that moment. But yeah, I would say it's important to know who you're becoming while you're going and achieving what you want to achieve. And so be diligent with and strategic with where you want to go, but also strategic with how you're getting there and who you're becoming. Fantastic. last question here for both of you. You know, what's one piece of advice you'd give to anyone who wants to be a better leader? I remember walking into the Vanderbilt football locker room my freshman year and feeling like I had no place. And I felt that way for the next two years.

51:06But in that process, I was like, I was like trying to find where I belonged. And so I realized that, you know, I became a long snapper in college, which is not the most glorious position. It's not out there calling the shots. But I realized even if it wasn't on the field, I could lead in other areas. So the weight room became my domain. And I was bringing the energy and encouraging people and pushing people there. And so I would just say, realize that your form of leadership might look different and be placed differently than other people's or where you think it should be. But that doesn't mean that it's any greater or less than what you initially expected.

51:44expected.

51:45David Novak:I agree with that. I was also going to say, in an interesting way to answer, I would say find really good mentors. I think my best advice for anybody who finds himself in a leadership position is if you're dishing wisdom, you better be getting some really good wisdom and having people to keep you in check. good well I want to thank you both for taking the time to be with me I've loved it and it's great to see two people working so well together congratulations on your new book The Courage to Commit and just keep it up man you're doing good in the world and you know it's successful because of it and that's always the best possible combination thank you it's very kind treat to treat to meet you I can't wait to hear your music

52:40David Novak:David, I have to say, for the first episode where we've had a couple on the show, I think Sean and Andrew knocked it out of the park. And I absolutely adored this episode. They're so endearing. Oh, yeah. And, you know, I love the fact that they're both really good athletes and beyond good athletes. You know, Sean was a gold medalist. And, you know, when I asked her about what it was like to be a gold medalist, she said, geez, you know, she realized it was kind of fleeting. You know, you've worked so hard to get to that point and then it's over. What are you going to do? But then she really, I think, drove home the point that it's so important that you enjoy the ride along the way, the process of getting there.

53:24That's really where the magic happens. And then the outcome occurs and then you got to get back up and figure out what's going to be next. But, you know, while you're working there, celebrate the first downs and enjoy that ride.

53:37David Novak:David, I'm excited to get your take on some of the concepts that really stood out as part of this episode. And the first one is, you know, Andrew and Sean, it's really clear that they just complement each other. Sean talks about how Andrew is the dreamer and has a bunch of ideas that she's admittedly thrown in the graveyard. And Sean is kind of the realist and keeps everything on track in the business. And it's really interesting how they complement each other. So I'm just curious what stood out to you about how they do complement each other and what's the real lesson there for our listeners and how they can complement the people around them that they lead with?

54:12What do they say? You got to have the yin and the yang to really get the best possible result in any kind of partnership. You know, I think it's finding people with complementary strengths. You know, I always talked about the importance of creating the super milkshake. You know, you get every talent that you need and you put it in the blender and you turn on the blender and you come up with this super milkshake that gives you this great team that gives you the results that you're really looking forward to. The other thing that I thought was really good is they understood each other. They understood what each other's strengths was.

54:48He is clearly an entrepreneur, startup type of guy, big dreamer, and she's more pragmatic and looks at the executional side of things. And she kind of controls a little bit of where they're heading in terms of their focus. And he appreciates her and she appreciates him because they give each other their own specific lane that they're really great at. And as a result, they've got not only a great business, they've got a harmonious marriage, better yet.

55:20David Novak:And they do just have a ton of fun together. I love when they were talking about, you know, you ask them, how do you protect that? And they set really strict boundaries around how they run their business because they are creating content all the time. And so being really straightforward and clear about what those boundaries are and getting alignment on that, I think is what's really allowed them to continue to flourish in those specific lanes at their end. Yeah, they focus on their brand. They understand what their brand is. They understand who they are as people, how they want to come off. They understand what brand they want to have in terms of family made.

55:55It's all about the family. For example, Sean, she didn't want to go out and do content by doing gymnastics. That almost just broke her soul. She looked at that as a cheap trick that they didn't need to have because they really wanted to have more of a substantive content machine where you really focused on the family. So they understood that. And interestingly enough, when she shared very vulnerably the fact that they had a miscarriage, that's when the business took off. That's when it went viral because people felt their authenticity, the vulnerability that she had, and the fact that she would share.

56:37And I think that that focus of understanding who they are is one of the reasons why they have so many followers.

56:47David Novak:What advice would you give to people leading businesses that might not have a really clear picture of where they want to focus and how they define their brand? I think you have to take the time to articulate it, write it down, and make sure it's understood by everybody. And, you know, as someone once said to be, a road that leads to nowhere is hard to build. So I think it's very important for you to really articulate, you know, what you're all about and, you know, what you want to achieve and how you plan to go about doing it. Sean and Andrea are really open in the conversation about how they've experimented a ton to get to where they are.

57:28David Novak:They've really developed that muscle of experimentation, and they're willing to try stuff, even when it's not perfect. And they're humble enough to learn from it all, even when something doesn't go as they had planned. David, how can we as leaders encourage that same kind of behavior in our people? You have to get started. You know, if you try to get to perfection, what is that saying? Perfection is the enemy of good. You know, it's like when everything's gotta be perfect, you gotta have all the I's dotted and the T's crossed. you know, it almost paralyzes you when the reality is, is you got to get started.

58:04Then when you get started, it's never, ever really perfect. You know, it's like it might get perfect over time, but it's only after you evolve it because you get learning that allows you to make it better and just keep, you know, getting better and better and better. It's like that compound effect of really just, you know, working on something that you believe has merit. it. You know, I remember when we were at Taco Bell, we wanted to get into breakfast. It was like, oh man, we could have done the economics forever, you know, that this was going to be so difficult to do that we'd have to do, you know, so much volume.

58:40We'll never get there, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, we got started and we started out and we learned a lot. We totally went after breakfast in the wrong way. In fact, we had positioned Taco Bell breakfast as the most exciting breakfast in the world that would really wake you up. Nobody wants to wake up and get jarred in the morning. You want to work your way into the morning. So we learned that we needed to have basic new ways to eat eggs, new ways to eat pancakes, new ways to eat muffins, you know, but do bring some uniqueness to a known quantity, but don't scare the hell out of everybody in the morning.

59:15And, you know, we learned that we didn't have a good enough coffee and we started out with crappy coffee, we ended up with a good coffee. And at least we've worked it into the point where Taco Bell could have a profitable breakfast and, you know, leverage its asset, you know, 24 hours of the day or close to it. But you have to get started.

59:34David Novak:That's so true, David. And I know that I speak for many people in the world. We are grateful that you experimented with Taco Bell breakfast because that fourth meal really hits when you need it. The fourth meal is late night. Breakfast is breakfast. I got breakfast for late night many times. But you tried. You tried. You tried. You tried. Well, David, as we wrap this episode, what are some of the things that are really going to stick with you from this conversation with Sean and Andrew that our listeners should really be thinking about as they go into today? You know, there are three things that really stand out for me from this episode.

1:00:07One is you need to have a team that complements each other. That team can be two people or it can be 10 people. It can be a thousand people, but make sure you have all the skills that you need to make your business really tick. OK, the second thing is focus on your business by focusing on who you are and what you want to be and stay consistent to that. You know, when you're true to who you are and what you want to be, you know, you stand for something over time. When you break departure from that, you know, it's like a person that all of a sudden, you know, isn't the same person you thought they were, you know, kind of jarring.

1:00:42You don't want that to happen. You want to stay true to who you are. And the last thing is, is that, you know, experimentation is a good thing. Get started. Don't wait for everything to be perfect. And then start it and then get better and better at it. And sometimes you might find out as they found out that it's a bad idea, then you kill it. Okay. And then you move on to something that's a good idea and you build off of that.

1:01:07David Novak:Well, David, thank you so much for another excellent conversation. Thank you to Sean and Andrew East. And thank you, of course, to our listeners for tuning in to another edition of How Leaders Lead. We will see you next week.