2340 - Discovering the Real Issues Behind Business Challenges with Venture Management Consultants, Inc's John Murphy

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0:58With us right now, it is John Murphy. John, you are the founder and owner of Venture Management Consultants. You are a serial author. You have written 20 books in total. Your newest book is Miracle-Minded Manager. I'm excited to talk about that. Your website is johnjmurphy.org. John, it's great to have you. Thanks, Josh. Great being here. Before we get into talking about your superpowers and a lot of your domain expertise, piece uh you always love just kind of hearing what you know our high-level leaders what they do for fun and i don't know if you've been geeking out on anything or if you've kind of into any activity or fun lately but um what what have you been into lately i guess yeah well it's i've got so many things i could say but i'm a i'm a nature boy for one thing so i absolutely love just to get out and hike and climb i just climbed uh climbed whistler out in uh british columbia uh salt spring Island out in BC in the San Juans.

2:00I just love the woods up in Michigan. So I love to get out and hike. I live here on the beach in Palm Beach, Florida. So I go out at night and watch the sea turtles come up and lay their eggs. A lot of things like that. And then the last thing I'll say real quick is that I'm a grandfather now. I've got three grandbabies. So I'm loving my time with my four children and my three grandbabies. My wife and I just, we're in Orlando, so we're just kind of up the road from you. So if people don't realize there, there, there aren't any too many hills and there are definitely no mountains that I know of in Florida.

2:34So if you want to get up in the elevation, you're going to have to go drive a bit. And, but my wife and I just went up to Seattle. So we went to Mount Olympus and Mount Rainier just so we could get out, do some hiking. And what is it for you as someone that's been professionally successful? Why do you prioritize your time? And it sounds like a silly question, but I'd love your take on it. Why is it that you prioritize time in nature? And it sounds like, you know, you appreciate unplugging and completely just kind of communing in that environment. What does that give you? And by the way, I think this is going to be a good segue to your superpowers, which we'll get into.

3:13Yeah, well, one of the things I do, Josh, with my work is I integrate universal spiritual laws with modern day management issues. That's like Miracle-Minded Manager. And there's no better way to learn about spirit than in nature, because in nature, nothing tries hard to do what it does. Trees don't try to grow tall. Plants don't try to blossom. They do because it's their essence. And so by observing nature, we can learn a lot about life. Our nature as human beings is to blossom. And the problem is, as we get in our own way. So by communing with nature, I learn a lot. Nature has a lot to teach us.

3:51And then I bring that into my body of work. Yeah. Well said. Well, John, I'd love to learn a little bit more about your work today. So obviously you're a prolific writer. Are you working? Do you work with clients? Oh, I do. Yeah. I run, Josh, what are called Kaizen events all over the world. Kaizen, K-A-I-Z-E-N is a Japanese term. It's actually two words made into one. Ka, K-A-I means to take apart and make new. And Zen is that spiritual nature thing about harmony and balance and rhythm and flow and peace and grace. So a Kaizen event is where we take a process apart and put it back together in a much more elegant way, whether it could be any kind of process in businesses.

4:39So the way we do that is I go in and train a team a month in advance, and then we collect data on the targeted process. And then in one week, we make real changes. So it blows people's minds that we're making changes in a week that have been taking months and sometimes years that we've struggled with. Policy changes, process design changes, innovations things like that and because we do it so quickly uh it's a different it's a demonstration of a different culture within a culture so what do i mean by that a lot of cultures are slow and divisive and siloed and dysfunctional and who pays for that the customers and of course the shareholders you know if it's publicly held and so by demonstrating a different way to do things, a different culture within a culture, you actually teach.

5:31It's like Gandhi said, be the change you want to see in the world. You teach through demonstration how to be different and how to get decisions made quickly and how to make improvements quickly. And in this day and age, that's priceless. I mean, you cannot wait too long these days or you're out of business. Yeah. Yeah. I'd love your perspective, John, on some of the challenges that you see among high-level leaders that you work with. And what I'm curious about is the connection between where they might complain that it hurts or where that pain point is and where you ultimately lead them to discover maybe the true source of that pain.

6:17You mind no pining or giving us a mini Ted talk on that question? Yeah, sure. Well, the blind spots at the senior level are they really don't know frequently what's going on on the front lines. You know, I know you were in the military and in the Navy. And unfortunately, a lot of the senior execs don't really know what's going on. If you ever saw a show called Undercover Boss, where a CEO goes undercover to find out just how messed up things might be in their own business, that's what we reveal. So I form a team and we get facts and data that basically wake up the senior leadership to things they didn't even know.

6:53And we start with the customer and work backwards. We work upstream. So what kind of problems are customers experiencing? Dig down into root causes. And a lot of times it's not where anybody's looking. They're hidden. They're in the gaps. So we uncover these things and it's it's a form of awakening that's the spiritual component you know um we're just so unaware sometimes so i teach mindfulness mindful leadership and what does that mean it means minding the facts minding the business minding our own minds minding everything that's going on and being present so a lot of times people are so not present their minds are spinning into the future they're you know they're struggling with things that happened you know in the past that they're missing the most important time that matters, which is now.

7:45Again, this is why nature is so fascinating, because it's always in the now. And so, I mean, I see resistance a lot, Josh, because people, what we resist is uncertainty. And when we resist uncertainty, what do we do? We repeat the past, because it's the only thing that we know. And that's a huge mistake in business and in life is we just keep replaying the past. So it takes a degree of fearlessness and inspiration, which means in spirit. And when we're in spirit, we're not afraid of anything. So I teach that by showing people a much brighter way. And we use tools like risk mitigation, failure mode and effect analysis tools so that it's not fearless change.

8:34And so change mastery is all about learning to master the continuous flow of change. I'll use this metaphor. Try to stop day from becoming night. You're going to be exhausted and you're never going to win. And that's what happens, Josh. People try to resist what is. And they're angry about what is. And they fight what is, which is a losing battle because what is, is. It is. So stop fighting it and start using it as an opportunity to make things better. So that's a huge shift in energy from resistance to things that we can't change. Watch the news and people get all angry and upset. You see things and you're angry about what is.

9:22Guess what? You can't do anything about that. So I come in and I show people, here's what is, but we're not going to get angry about it. What we're going to do is fix it. We're going to fix it. And that's a huge shift in momentum. And if you don't know anything about sports, when momentum shifts, watch out. You know, the team with momentum wins. I help a lot of, you know, kind of folks at that six and seven figure territory. They've started businesses. And, you know, a lot of times, you know, it can be really easy to blame ourselves or think that there's something wrong with us when things happen that are outside of our control.

10:02We don't get a sale. And it's not really even the founder's fault at all. It's the other person. They had some things going on. They're just not ready to engage. But yet how much of that, you know, let's say it's a consultant, you know, owns that. And it's understandable to be disappointed, but, you know, I think sometimes it's that meaning that we apply to that. You know, for me, I think in the past, I may have said, well, you know, successful business owners don't have a problem with payroll or cash flow or something like that month to month. And so then therefore we think, well, I must be a bad business owner or there's something wrong with me.

10:46Right. And that's just so patently unfair. And I think part of this, and John, I would love your perspective, is there are personality traits and things that drive us to achieve highly that are really valuable. But I think that value often carries baggage that also makes this life a little tough.

11:17Sorry, that was my question or my thought. You're welcome to, I don't know if that was, I can come up with something else if you like. Oh, okay. I didn't realize that was actually a question. Sorry about that. Most people are wondering that when they're around me. It's no big deal. I'll say this is an observation I've seen for many years, and that is that we confuse problems with effects. So for example, you know, somebody says, well, we lost the sale, to use your example. That's a problem. We lost the sale. And I'll say, no, it's not. That's not. What do you mean that's not the problem? Of course, it's the problem.

11:54We lost the sale. No, that's the effect of something that caused you to lose the sale. The problem is the cause, not the effect. And they're like, well, what are you saying? Why did you lose the sale? Let's get to that level. So, Josh, what I do is I teach businesses how to get to root causes. And incidentally, the root cause is frequently multiple levels deep, which is why I use a tool called the five whys. It was made famous out of Toyota many years ago. And the five whys is asking five levels deep. Why? So we lost the sale. The customer is upset with us. Why? Well, because we didn't get the product to them on time.

12:34Why didn't we get the product to them on time? Well, we ran into some difficulties in our distribution chain. Why did we run into problems in the distribution chain? Well, because our systems weren't communicating very effectively. And, you know, we had some conflict, some disruption. Why did we have that? Why are our systems not communicating with one another? and so but my point being is we get down to a level where you say you know what losing the customer is just an effect losing money is an effect okay the fact that we're out of shape physically is an effect but the fact that we have a headache is an effect we have all kinds of effects that people are calling problems and they're taking aspirin for the headache which just doesn't do anything except make it you know your your liver fall apart perhaps so we solve one problem and create three more because we haven't really solved the problem.

13:27So genius and brilliant solutions get to what I call leverage points where we get right down to, you know what, the problem isn't the headache. The problem is your hips are out of alignment. And because your hips are out of alignment, you're favoring one side. And because you're favoring one side, you've got inflammation in your shoulders and your neck. And because you've got inflammation in your shoulders and your neck, you're not getting good blood flow to your head. and that causes you a headache so you need to fix your hips now when you say that to somebody in business they're like wait a minute you know you're saying the problem's in engineering and we're adding more customer service reps to call centers over in cambodia because we can't stop the calls from coming in from the customers that that's how dysfunctional a lot of businesses are and and i'll just i'll quote ef shoemaker because i love this quote i use it in my workshop Shoemaker said, any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex.

14:22It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to go in the opposite direction. What do I mean by that? A lot of very bright people are good at adding stuff, adding space, adding equipment, adding people, adding training, adding capital. And the real solution is deleting. We need to delete a whole lot of waste, a whole lot of dysfunction. And when we lean things out, it's often known as lean, we get a lot better flow. And I'll call it the closet space syndrome real quick, because what happens when we fill up our closets? We think we need more closets. We think we need bigger closets. Well, the reality is what we have to do is eliminate a whole bunch of stuff in our closets because it's waste.

15:06It's junk. And we do that with time. We fill up our schedules and then we think we don't have enough time. So I come at it with a very different paradigm. Instead of adding, we need to subtract. Instead of doing more, we need to do less. Instead of going faster, we need to slow down. And this is not just paradoxical, but it's counterintuitive, which is precisely why a lot of businesses and very intelligent people, by the way, don't get it. and that's my differentiator. You know, in 37 years since I started my practice, I've never made a sales call. Well, that's not a bad position to be in. John, do you mind just sharing a little bit more now for our friend that's been listening to our conversation?

15:54They love what they're hearing. I know you've obviously got some great books, you know, certainly welcome to prescribe that. And I'm just kind of looking for some next steps for someone that's been listening to our conversation. How do they get more John Murphy in their life? And then as well, very important, too, if you could share just a little bit about what engagement, like how do people work with you and what does that typically look like and where might they start on that? Yeah, well, that's a big question, Josh. So, you know, I work with corporations, again, all over the world, some very large organizations, even the U.S.

16:28military. and but I also work with individuals uh one-on-one now the way I do that is with individuals um I've got books that that people can read I've got I've got my own podcast I'm a guest on a lot of podcasts I have a YouTube channel with with over 250 very uh quick tips on on high performance self-help type stuff which is all free uh people go to my website they can find me on social media And here's the newest thing with AI, which a lot of people are afraid of. I have a bot, a GP bot, a GTP bot being developed where people can access me, thousands of people at a time with thousands of different questions all at once and get instantaneous answers in multiple languages.

17:13So that's because I'm a faculty member at MyFuel.io, which is a fascinating company, redefining education and performance training. And Fuel is doing some fascinating things to help people like myself reach not just, you know, hundreds of people or thousands of people, but hundreds of millions. Fuel, that's only about 18 months old, is now in 52 countries. And I'm a part of a very esteemed faculty. And we are our whole mission, Josh, is to help people around the world prosper and grow. And the secret to that is is surrounding yourself with brilliant minds. I've been a self-help junkie since I started.

17:58I mean, I actually didn't know what I was doing when I got started, but I had this passion and this calling to teach and to write and to share. and so I've been learning all along by by very bright people who joined me in my car on audio or you know 40 years ago you're reading books and there was no internet no google things like that to rely on but these days I mean if I was going to give anybody a tip it's pay attention to who you pay attention to surround yourself with brilliant people because brilliant minds think alike. And that's really the solution. If you get to the fifth level of why for any problem on the planet, you get to a level of ignorance.

18:39We just don't know any better. We just don't know any better. So how do you solve that problem? With education and with knowledge. And so that's the business I'm in. John J. Murphy, thank you so much for joining us. Your website is johnjmurphy.org, of which from there you can connect to about all of your work, everything that you're doing, including all of your books, all 20 of them, including your newest one, Miracle-Minded Manager. John, it's been a great conversation. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Josh.

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