What we talked about
Welcome back to The PreVetted Podcast, where we spotlight extraordinary people and remarkable talent reshaping our world.
Show notes
John Klymshyn joins the PreVetted Podcast for episode 9.
Full transcript
Federico Ramallo (00:01.131) Welcome to Prevetted Podcast, a blend of tech and leadership. Our goal is to explore the journeys and stories of our guests, revealing valuable insights about engineering and business and sharing them with our community. Today we have a very amazing guest, John Klimshin, also known as Coach K. He’s a Navy veteran, author of several leadership and sales books. Coach K conducts seminars, retreats.
one-on-one coaching to help executives and future leaders to discover, leaders discover their creative potential and leadership. Hi John, how are you doing?
John (00:41.816) Federico, fantastic. Thank you for inviting me onto your podcast. I’m very curious and a little nervous to find out where the conversation might go.
Federico Ramallo (00:52.224) Every time I start recording, I always get nervous for one reason or another. What I realized is you get, you know, you get nervous when you get, you know, on the stage, you know, when you talk publicly. But thing is, what do you do with that? You know, at first I would, you know, have a mental crisis. And now it’s like I process the emotion and move forward. Right. Yeah.
John (00:56.663) Yeah.
John (01:19.918) Absolutely. Yes, I’ve spoken probably close to a thousand times for a fee and sometime between when I leave the hotel and I arrive at where the meeting room is during that period, I will literally ask myself, why am I doing this? that’s creeping fear that either you’re going to forget everything you had planned to say or it’s going to be a crashing disaster.
or you’re going to fail in some way that shows up in your mind and it goes into your heart, right? And I remind myself, I do this for a reason. I do it for several reasons. Number one, I think that what I do is a constant act of service that if I can share 50 ideas over the course of four hours and one person in that room takes an idea and puts it into practice and it works for them, then everybody got their
their time’s worth and their money’s worth. And I’ve been a passionate and voracious student for more than half a century. And there’s a whole bunch of stuff that I have gathered. And if all I’m doing is sharing things that will help people to do something very specific, which was at the end of your introduction there. And it took me a while to realize that this is what I was actually doing.
I am in the business of helping people unleash their creativity. I refer to it as opening a valve. As a creative person, as a musician, as a writer, as a speaker, as a coach, all of the things that I do that I’m so passionate about. Whenever it’s time to get into that, to enjoy that, to go down that path, and I even, I do this, I will…
I will turn it like I’ve got a little valve on the side of my head and I will say, look, time to open the valve. Because I think that creativity is a spiritual experience. It’s otherworldly, it’s outside of us. We didn’t create it, we didn’t invent it. I guess my core message is that creativity is available to all of us. It’s a question of how often and how wide we can open that valve.
Federico Ramallo (03:18.488) Ha ha ha!
Federico Ramallo (03:45.422) Right, right. Yes, and that’s the title of your new book, right? Open the Valve.
John (03:51.032) That’s exactly right. Title is Open the Valve. The subtitle is The New Path to Creative Play. being creative is fun. There are people that it is their job to be creative or it’s their vocation to be creative. And it’s very difficult for me to separate being creative and having a good time, feeling as though I’m in the right space.
a really unique event last night. I guess you could call it a concert, guess you could call it a performance. I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard of this organization called Trans-Siberian Orchestra.
Federico Ramallo (04:34.318) I have not. Can you tell me a little bit more about them?
John (04:35.702) Okay.
and they tell the story with original music and with Christmas music. And it was, as I said, my wife turned to me about an hour into it and she said, this is a Broadway play. It’s just that everybody’s facing the audience. There’s no acting going on, although they did have a live narrator on stage. And the whole idea was to transport people, to get them out of their heads, right? And you’ve got 7,500 people in this room.
just completely caught up in the energy and in the passion of this really talented group of people. mean, eight backup singers, eight people on strings, two people playing keyboards, three people playing guitar, an electric violinist that was running all around the stadium, the performance place. And they keep it interesting with the graphics behind the stage.
just different things that they do that are very theatrical. it was the, and we were walking out and I said to my wife, can you imagine the amount of rehearsal that goes into putting together a two and a half hour show that has 15 people on stage and probably twice that backstage running the sound, the lights, the staging, all of that. So those folks are,
Far down their path to creative play.
Federico Ramallo (06:36.783) Right, right. Yes, yes, I agree. And the the energy that you can you can feel it there. It’s amazing. Yeah.
John (06:45.282) Yes, literally four or five times I tapped my leg because I thought my phone was buzzing. It was the energy in the room, the bass and the sound. And it wasn’t wild screeching stuff. These people are, you can tell that they’re classically trained. They pulled pieces from Mozart. They pulled pieces from classic Christmas songs and the fantasy, what do call the?
fantasy of Bell Carol, dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun, sounds very different when this group of people performs it.
Federico Ramallo (07:23.913) Right. Very interesting. So going back to your book, can you share one of the six elements? I I’ve been reading some part of it because you really share with me.
John (07:26.902) It was cool.
John (07:36.322) Yes, I’m thrilled that you were willing not only to you not only said yes, I’d like to read it. You actually went and did it. we appreciate that. Because I don’t I don’t just freely give out my work before it’s completed. I wanted someone that I’ve known for some time that I know is constantly stepping on to and enjoying his journey down the creative path. You and I have talked about stuff in a lot of different dimensions. So the
The core of the book is that as far as I am concerned, there are six components of life that are crucial. When I first came up with the idea for the book, it was called Mindset, and it was mind period set period to kind of really drive home what I wanted to talk about because creative play is a mindset, right? Opening a valve is a mindset. How are you staging your thinking?
Federico Ramallo (08:26.436) Yes.
John (08:35.022) because the mindset to me is that’s the stage on which our ideas show up, are brought to life, and they go to work. So the original title was Mindset, Six Crucial Components for Life. We changed it because there are several books out there with the word mindset in it. And whenever I was talking with anyone, editors, my illustrator, just anyone that I talked to about creative work, they said, what is that thing you always say about
Federico Ramallo (08:53.633) I see.
John (09:03.02) about creativity and I said, you mean open the valve? They said, there’s your title. So we changed it to open the valve, the new path to creative play and the six components are thought, speech, action, creativity, rest and risk.
Federico Ramallo (09:24.435) Right. Right. So I’ve been reading the part of book, some of the chapters of the book that you share with me. And I was sharing this with you that it has so many layers that I read it. I get inspired. And I feel like I get everything. And then I’m thinking.
There’s something I missed. There’s something I missed. And I have to go back and read it again. So like Disney movies, they have jokes for, or Pixar movies, they have jokes for the kids and jokes for the parents. So as a kid, you don’t see them. And then when you grow up, you see old movies and you realize, there was a joke for adults. So I feel like that with your book.
John (10:16.833) Absolutely.
John (10:22.03) Well, that’s to me, that’s I mean, that’s it makes me feel wonderful. It’s high praise because I’ve been talking to other people about writing for many years because I mean, this is going to be my 13th book. Now, not every single book has been published, but that’s not the point. I have written 12 books up to now and I have some core beliefs about writing and I met someone the other day who is at the very early stages of writing his book.
Federico Ramallo (10:22.482) You
John (10:52.654) And he said, you know, I would love to hear more about what you have to say about writing. And I said, well, I’ve always threatened to do a class called, so you want to write a book? And he said, I’m ready to sign up right now. So I had to figure out an outline and everything. But there are some key beliefs I have about writing. Number one, writing is done, again, as an act of service. It is as an act of opening the valve. It is a very solitary thing.
Federico Ramallo (11:06.39) Hahaha
John (11:22.568) And in my discussions with friends of mine who are writers, we’ve, we kind of agree on this, that when someone refers to solo work as lonely, they’re missing the point. This is your, it’s not lonely because you’re, there with your ideas. You’re there with characters that you’re creating. You’re there with this sense of mission and
I love the fact that you said you read it, you get inspired, you walk away and then you’re thinking, I might’ve missed something. The care that I put into ensuring that the writing accomplishes the work is significant. And here’s one of my kind of, I guess, a Klimtianism about writing is writing is done for the reader, not for the writer.
It gives me great joy to write. I almost, almost enjoy editing as much as I do writing. Because what editing does is it says, the two or three day ago version of you thought that this was good. Let’s see what the today version thinks. And to me, one of the great tests of effective writing is
If you can read it a day, a week or a month or a year later, your own work, and when you’re done reading it, you say that that’s what I wanted to accomplish. Then you then you’ve done your job. So read writing is done for the reader, not for the writer. So it’s important that I believe that my job as a writer is to keep you reading. You wanting to go back to what I’ve written and read it more than once?
That’s a goal. That is a score. That’s winning the Super Bowl. That is winning the World Cup. Because I will pull my own work off the shelf. I mean, have copies of my own books on my shelf. And every so often, I will pull one of those open, and I’ll go to a random page, and I’ll start reading. And if I get to three pages in, I stop and I say, okay, you got that one right.
Federico Ramallo (13:22.057) I see what you’re saying.
John (13:44.024) We’re not looking for perfection when we write. We’re looking for completion. We’re looking to ensure that what we wanted to say meant something. friend of mine was just listed as one of the exciting new playwrights. There’s a way outside shot that one of his plays will be produced in one of the big cities in North America in the next two years. And he says,
because we talk about writing, he says, don’t write because you want to say something. Write because you have something to say.
Federico Ramallo (14:23.306) interesting.
John (14:26.774) If there’s something in the depth of your soul that you feel you need to express and that you have not only the credentials or the authority to write about it, then pay attention to the quality of your writing and make sure that it accomplishes the job. And number one, to me, the number one job is to make sure that the writer is invisible. I don’t want people seeing my personality in my work.
I want them seeing my ideas in my work. And one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever gotten on a book of mine, I got the opportunity to sit with someone who had not only read it, but had 50 other people that he works with read it. And he said, here’s the thing when I read your work. he put his hand on the top of the book and he slid it toward me across the conference table. He says, when I read what you write, I feel like you’re sitting across the table talking to me.
Federico Ramallo (15:24.332) Right.
John (15:25.644) And I thought that’s, well, you, I mean, you and I met because you had listened to one of my audio books.
Federico Ramallo (15:31.789) Yes, that’s how we met, yes. And the level of intimacy that the book gave me, it was like I knew you, right? It felt like we were close friends forever.
John (15:33.411) Yeah.
John (15:51.276) Wow. Well, look at this. You can’t get rid of me. I mean, we get to hang out on a regular basis. So, yeah. So I could go on and on, as you know, because we’ve had many, conversations over the years that we’ve known each other. Where do, how do you open the…
Federico Ramallo (15:58.168) That’s amazing!
Federico Ramallo (16:12.345) While I was hearing you talking, was thinking about that because I…
So I’m a software engineer and I’ve been writing code. When you write code, it’s different because you’re trying to achieve perfection. But then on the other hand, you’re trying to make it, it’s a trade off between perfection on the code, but also making it work as expected and time. So you have a lot of trade offs.
Basically, what happens is when you write something and then you look at it a year later and you don’t feel ashamed of what you wrote, then you haven’t grown as a software engineer. Because then you realize, I could have done it better. Because now you see what you didn’t see before. So that’s because you’re trying to reach for perfection.
Federico Ramallo (17:20.87) The way that I approach that is I want to write code that it’s elegant, that you can, see it and people say, wow, what a beautiful implementation of what you did, right? You can write, you know, 10, 20 lines to do something, or you can write one line that is doing the same thing, right? And you read it and you realize, wow, it’s clear. I understand what you’re doing, right? You can write one line of code.
And it can be a very obscure code, right? That it is very difficult to understand for anybody, for everybody, including yourself in a year or six months, right? So it’s like, who wrote this? You you did, you know. So it’s, I think about that on the human aspect of things, right? I think about that, the writing code on
John (18:02.222) You
Federico Ramallo (18:19.409) the elegance, the clarity, but also the performance. Because if it doesn’t work fast, then that’s also a big issue when you’re going to scale that. And that is a service for the user. You’re trying to help the user do whatever they want to do. So I was thinking about when you were talking about, I was thinking about the technical writing.
John (18:32.216) Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (18:48.635) Then on the non-technical writing, know, human writing, guess. know, the non-technical writing, I had a lot of issues on starting blank, right? I have a lot of ideas, a lot of things that I want to write about. I’ve been writing recently, I’ve been writing blog posts every day, almost.
John (18:56.355) No.
Federico Ramallo (19:18.364) Right? it’s an effort to get there. starting with a blank page became an issue to me. And then I start having…
John (19:35.032) We call that the tyranny of the blank page.
Federico Ramallo (19:40.112) It’s, you know what it is? It’s daunting, yes, but you know what it is? It’s the freedom. It’s the overwhelming freedom. Because you have the potential to do anything you want. Right? It’s like you take your kids, now they grown up, right? But you take your kids to the park, right? And they stay right next to you.
John (19:41.196) It’s daunting.
John (19:45.208) Tell me.
Federico Ramallo (20:05.641) And you say, well, you have all the parts. You can go wherever you want, right? But they stay right next to you because they are afraid of the whole wide world, right? It’s too big. It’s too overwhelming, right? It takes a while to wear that off, But eventually they do, right? And they adventure towards the world. there is that stage where they get that afraid, right? Whereas I bring the dog with me and he runs around. He enjoys the space, right?
John (20:35.064) Yes, gone.
Federico Ramallo (20:35.34) Like, yeah, yeah, like there’s no tomorrow, right? So he enjoys it very much. And then after he wears off, he comes back and now he sits right next to me, right? So they don’t have that fear. So that’s how I see it, you know, because when you have a blank page, you have all the potential in the world, right? But what I learned is that
John (20:46.22) Right.
Federico Ramallo (21:03.454) you have to do this motion, right? Whatever direction you want to go, right? Just move, go somewhere, right? If you don’t have a direction, a purpose of doing something, then it’s much more difficult. So what I’ve been doing to kind of unblock that is to start having conversations with somebody, right? So we start talking with some of my people and usually we hit record because then…
John (21:11.246) Mm.
Federico Ramallo (21:34.348) Sometimes we don’t have a topic and then we kind of come up with a topic, right? Or sometimes we do. But we get started with that. Sometimes those ideas are unsorted, they’re not very well structured. But then we start bringing them back together and I can go back, review what we said, the video, whatever, and then…
I can start putting those ideas together, right? So that has been working really, really well for me.
John (22:09.176) Well, you just walked us through the first four components.
Thought, thought is we have a blank page, speech, I’m going to collaborate with others even if we start talking about nothing. I mean, that’s kind of the trademark for my circle of friends is, hey, when are we gonna get together and talk about nothing for two hours? Which never happens, we always talk about something, there’s never silence among my friends and I.
Federico Ramallo (22:18.293) Right.
Federico Ramallo (22:33.461) Right.
John (22:40.482) That’s the whole point. don’t go in with, here’s what I want to talk about today. Whatever comes out of their mouth, takes us off in a direction, right? So you think about, you mentioned thought, you mentioned speech, and then you mentioned something very important. said action. What are we going to do with it? And isn’t it funny how sometimes action will spark thought. Action will get you into speech.
Federico Ramallo (23:09.174) Right.
John (23:10.004) And guess what? What happens when those three start operating in harmony? Creativity is already at work. It’s already busy. We don’t, it’s not the flipping of a switch. It’s the opening of a valve. There’s a very big difference, right? Think about a circuit that is either connected or disconnected. The valve, what’s behind the valve is always there. It’s always available to us. And the theater,
that some of us go through to prevent us from working. It’s amazing, right? I read a book, I don’t know if you and I talked about this before, I believe I have a copy here on the shelf. Might take a minute for me to find it out. I’ll look for it later. There’s a book called The War of Art. Have you heard of this?
Federico Ramallo (24:02.068) from Sun Tzu.
John (24:04.374) No, that’s the art of war.
Federico Ramallo (24:08.674) I see.
John (24:09.294) This is the War of Art and it’s written by this guy who was inspired to tell the truth about creative work. Now, there’s a reason that the subtitle of our book, and I say our book because, you know, whatever feedback you give me is going to show up in there somehow, some way. And I’m going to ask you on the podcast right in front of God and everybody, would you consider translating it into Spanish so we can collaborate it on it together?
Federico Ramallo (24:39.117) I would love it. I would love to do it. Yes.
John (24:39.278) Would you? Okay, cool. Great. Now we just opened up another 90 % of the human race that can get have access to this. So the the war of art is about how we how effective we are at avoiding getting to the work. Now, I believe that it’s play. And it is intimidating play. Because immediately we start thinking whether or not it’s good enough. Good enough is not the issue.
It’s never going to be good enough first time out. I mean, I’ll ask you because you use three words earlier about writing code that are 100 % applicable to writing books, short stories, essays, music. You want it to be elegant. You want it to be clear. And you want it to be useful. Well,
And you also said you could write 10 lines of code, or you can write one line of code that gets all of that work done. That’s exactly my approach to writing. I have aspired to what I call muscular language. And muscular language gets a whole bunch of work done with very few words. We get to the point.
I want it to be fun. want it to be accessible. I want it to be stuff that people talk about. So I go at it with a hammer and chisel. And what Stephen Pressfield in The War of Art, not The Art of War, but The War of Art, what he talks about is something that we all experience, all creative people. And it’s you embodied it by saying, there’s a blank page. And the blank page is, it’s freedom, but there’s too much freedom. Because I have no starting point. I have no objective.
And those are the two things that really create the environment to go down the path of creative play. As long as I have a starting point, I can move in the direction of the objective. People sit down and they say, I’m going to write a book. Great, what’s it about? well, I haven’t decided. Okay, you’re not ready to write a book. You’re not even close. So what he talks about, what Pressfield talks about is something he calls resistance.
John (27:02.048) and resistance is embodied in this. says, we all say that we want to write. We all say that we want to create. And we’re very busy doing a lot of other stuff. And he says, here’s how we say it in our minds. I am absolutely going to write my great symphony. I’m just going to write it tomorrow.
Federico Ramallo (27:26.92) Hahaha!
Federico Ramallo (27:32.261) Right, right. That’s why there are so few symphonies, right?
John (27:39.214) That’s right. And you can walk into a library and say, every novel that has ever been written, that ever needed to be written is already up on the shelves. Or you can say, none of them view the world the way I do. None of them have the experiences that I have. None of them have my voice. And that is, that’s bold. It’s risky. There’s another one of the components.
There’s again, thought, speech, action, creativity, rest, and risk. And every creative act is a risk. And guess what? Life itself is a creative act.
Federico Ramallo (28:24.047) Life itself is a created act. How so?
John (28:32.202) I’m sure because I know you.
Federico Ramallo (28:35.784) you
John (28:36.862) I’m sure that your wife is beyond thrilled to have you around every moment that you show up in her day. I’m sure that there is nothing else she thinks about but making you happy. How accurate is that?
Federico Ramallo (28:54.92) 80 % accurate. Yes, I mean…
John (28:56.416) Okay, so it’s only 80%. Well, then you’re doing way better than I am, But here’s the thing. We are when we when we love someone, not only do we want to figure out ways to communicate that and saying it is huge, it’s important. That’s a small part of it. Right? We we want to demonstrate that we want to remind them of that we want to in some way, shape or form show the world. Right?
take someone out to dinner, create an experience around what they want to do. I heard a great joke the other day. I don’t know if everyone will find this funny, but I found it funny because my wife and I, now that we have grown children and we are alone, it’s the two of us, we enjoy going out to dinner. Not every night. We go out probably more than most of our friends. And you know what? That’s our choice. So the comedian said,
I’m going to start my own restaurant and I’m going to call it I don’t care. So the next time I ask my wife where she wants to go out to eat, I can take her there.
Federico Ramallo (30:06.468) hahahaha
John (30:14.274) When you ask someone, where do you want to go to dinner? You already have the answer. You know what you want to do. The question is, what do they want to do? So life is a creative act. Listen, you and I, in the businesses that we have operated in, I’m self-employed. You’re an entrepreneur. To me, what’s the difference? Well, I continue to make work for myself, and I get paid for that work. You create work for other people.
and get paid for the work that other people do. Now you compensate them, of course, that’s what business is about. So to me, that’s the distinction between someone who’s self-employed and someone who’s an entrepreneur because you have people that are working throughout the day that are generating revenue for you. I do not. And here’s the thing about that is that every single morning you and I have got to figure out a way to make it work again today.
Federico Ramallo (31:10.431) Yes. Yes.
John (31:11.586) There is no such thing as a business that runs itself. People that want to buy a franchise, doesn’t matter what it is. It could be a private school, could be a fried chicken place, it could be a tennis instruction. Don’t know, don’t care. Anyone who wants to buy a franchise, hope they understand they’re going to be working about 80 hours a week for a long time. Nothing runs itself. So
Federico Ramallo (31:38.624) They sell the idea of you have these processes that are repeatable, blah, which some are, but there are so many variables that you cannot control, and you have to build the team that can execute. That takes a lot of time.
John (31:55.672) Not only do you have to build them, you have to maintain them. You have to keep them fed and watered and happy. And you know, what’s the old joke about the problem? The biggest problem with churches, nonprofits and companies. The single biggest problem in all three of those is that they’re full of people.
Federico Ramallo (32:14.406) Hahaha!
Yes, yes. But in a way, I…
I do it for the people. I came to that conclusion that I do it for, I do all the work that I do, all the hard work that I do for my people, right? And I mean,
John (32:36.994) Well, notice you said my people, not my employees. So that means that you have a heart for them.
Federico Ramallo (32:40.491) Right.
Federico Ramallo (32:45.227) Yes, yes. the, you know, like being part of their life stories, right? When, you know, somebody buys a car or, you know, they get married or they, know, all of those things that are, you know, important part of their life, right? You know, we have people that have babies, right?
one of our female employees got pregnant, right? So, you know, we experienced that as employer, you know, but, you know, it’s how can we support her throughout that process, right? And making sure that she feels the support from us, right? And there’s a lot of, you know, there’s a lot of things going on around it all the time, you know.
you know, customers requesting things, you know, and life itself unfolding, you know, in our eyes, in front of us, right? So it’s not easy, but then when you see that, right, when you see that we are helping people to have a happy life and that they are living a good life, then, you know, that for me is like, it’s worth it.
John (34:08.333) Hmm.
Federico Ramallo (34:13.787) all the sacrifices we make, it’s worth it.
And going back to that comment, the…
Federico Ramallo (34:25.487) I know you, so I can take the risk of saying that we’re both on the same, we are where we are because we make those decisions. We had the freedom to make those decisions, right? So that gives a lot of purpose on what we’re doing.
John (34:53.282) And purpose is huge. The why runs very deep. And the deeper the connection between you and your people around the why, the longer their tenure, the more they are. They’re not just willing to contribute. They’re not open to contributing.
they look forward to contributing because they have a sense of participation which bleeds into possession, right? Not that they’re a part owner in the company, but they own what they do. And people want to sit around at night talking positively about what their work day was.
I don’t know anyone that looks forward to going home and moaning and complaining. You know, in the book that introduced my work to you, I’m sure you remember this, that it says, from the day that you become a named leader, and for the rest of your life, every single night, you will be the topic of somebody’s dinner conversation.
Someone’s talking about you tonight, whether you like it or not, and you have no control over what they’re saying because they are in the privacy of either their own home or they’re sitting across the table and having a drink somewhere. the awareness of that says, is an important relationship in my life. This is an important collaboration in my life. And this is, mean, if they leave your company, they’re going to talk about you in the future.
Federico Ramallo (36:13.699) You
John (36:41.03) I’ve never been in the business of trying to protect my personal brand. I’ve been in the business of saying, what’s the right thing? How can I serve this person? Because I was a leader in corporate America for some time. didn’t just all of a sudden wake up one day and say, I’m going to go teach people how to sell high dollar transactions. I’m going to go teach people how to scale their companies. I earned my stripes.
It didn’t work every time. However, when it did work, it was very exciting. And I’ve said for many years, and you know, I might be a little self-deprecating here, but I do believe this, that if you somehow, someway, if you could find someone who used to report to me when I was in corporate America, I don’t believe that they would say, he was such a great guy. I will tell you what they will say. They will say, man, I never.
made more money than when I worked for that guy because he never let me get away with anything.
Federico Ramallo (37:45.698) Right.
John (37:46.4) I never let people give up on themselves. If I saw potential, I was there to figure out a way to focus it and get it to work. you know, like you said, someone buys a new car. Well, you have a salesperson who comes to work for you and they’re taking the bus to work. And six months later, they’re taking you out into the parking lot to show you the car they just bought. And a year and a half later, they’re showing you photos of the home that they’re going to buy to build their family in.
There’s nothing like that. There’s nothing like that. Your entire business is about elevating people. I mean, I remember that for the first time you and I spoke, how important it was for you to take the engineers and say, you know what, I want to give them the opportunity to build a quality life and make a solid, reliable income. that is, to me, that’s a great act of service.
Federico Ramallo (38:16.061) That’s amazing. Yeah.
John (38:43.894) and you’ve made sacrifices to make that happen. I know you have. And you don’t go out with them on your shoulder so everyone can see. It’s your business.
Federico Ramallo (38:58.594) It’s a silent sacrifice, you know.
John (39:04.098) Well, there’s a very old book that says when it comes to charity, when it comes to service, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. And the meaning behind that is, if you’re going to do something good for someone, don’t go running down the street telling everybody about
Federico Ramallo (39:23.837) Right.
Federico Ramallo (39:27.977) the
Federico Ramallo (39:32.168) What we’re building now, it’s this platform where we’re automating a lot of the things we’ve been doing for the last 10 years, right? Which is the platform called Prevetted AI. Basically, we have pre-vetted software engineers for hiring managers to…
choose, interview, hire, very quickly. And we’re implementing a lot of AI in the process of screening, recruiting. We’re about to run background checks. you know, we increase the trust on the people that we have on the system. So one of the things that, one of the feedbacks that we got is, you’re using AI to…
automatically discriminate, you know, faster.
Federico Ramallo (40:28.412) Again, know, AI is a tool, right? You can use a hammer to build a house to kill somebody, right?
John (40:37.838) Well, that’s a dramatic example, but yes, it’s true. I hope that’s not what you were thinking about doing with a hammer this weekend.
Federico Ramallo (40:39.767) It’s true. What we’ve done is we’re using automation to reduce the time that we spend on every candidate. Yes, but we’re also keeping this value of elevating people and we’re committing to give feedback to everybody that goes through our process. We reject 98 % of the people. So all those are going to get
some sort of feedback from us. My view is those folks in six months, they’re going to be ready. In a year, they’re going to be ready. Or they can take another shot. I want them to become the best 2%, whether it’s for us or somebody else. So we’re trying to help.
John (41:32.707) Right.
Federico Ramallo (41:39.838) And we’re using AI to automate those recommendations to provide more accurate feedback, but also, you know, with AI. Having said that, I don’t trust AI.
Federico Ramallo (41:57.204) Right? And here’s the reason why. I trust my people. I trust our process. Everybody vouch for every stage of the process. AI doesn’t do that. So how can I trust? And AI has bias and sometimes has hallucinations. Right? It goes crazy. Right? So how can I trust?
John (41:57.612) Okay, tell me why. Okay.
Federico Ramallo (42:26.775) Somebody like that, right? So what I do is I double check everything, all the output that comes from AI, right? So it’s AI assisted, not AI replacing humans, right? And I’m talking about creative, right? I know we’re going, you know, different topics, but talking about creative.
I think of AI as the most pure form of creative. You have a creative person there. It can tell you something that it’s irrational, it doesn’t make sense, but that’s because it’s a very creative person that can do lateral thinking much…
wider than any of us, right? Tell them one topic, anything is going to have an answer, right? So that’s the way I think of AI when I use it for writing to help, like I have some ideas and I say, okay, challenge me on these ideas or support me on these ideas, right? Be the black hat, be the white hat, right?
Federico Ramallo (43:55.002) Give me other ways to do whatever I’m trying to do, right? Help me find other words or help me rewrite this phrase. I want five different ways to phrase this idea that I have, right? Expand that idea, compress that idea, right? There’s so many things like that that you can do with AI. 80 % of what he says, I reject it, right? But that’s the beauty of it, yeah.
John (44:18.808) But that’s the beauty of it. here’s, you know what, you know what never occurred to me before? Is that you can reject those ideas and no one gets their precious feelings hurt.
Federico Ramallo (44:28.057) yes, yes, yes. He keeps, that’s why I said pure form of creative, right? It’s like, it.
John (44:32.894) E? E? It.
Federico Ramallo (44:40.281) It’s like a dog, know, he’s always happy, he’s always there, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John (44:40.29) I don’t think it’s a key.
John (44:46.818) You could not hurt a dog’s feelings. I mean, you you yell at it, it’ll, it’ll, it’ll, but the second you stop, it’s like, I forgot about that. I’m cool. They don’t call grudges. My wife came across this thing on Instagram. She said that crows will hold grudges against human beings for up to 12 years. said, and really, and who conducted those interviews? Who asked the crows? How do you feel about down the street?
Federico Ramallo (44:54.829) Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Federico Ramallo (45:12.577) Ha
John (45:15.96) But anyway, back to pets, they will never hold a grudge. They won’t hold something against you. They won’t carry around the emotion. I I stepped on my cat’s paw earlier today and he, you know, two seconds later, he’s rubbing up against the, he’s fine. So, think about it.
Federico Ramallo (45:38.229) Right.
John (45:40.108) You can reject ideas all day and you’re not hurting anyone’s feelings and you don’t have to explain why you’re rejecting it. Right. So ultimately, you know, you’re that that that I think is the distinction of AI assistance in that you’re not going hands off saying go go fill these roles or go interview these people. What you’re doing is you’re saying how well does this this person background, skill, training and experience fit this particular role?
Federico Ramallo (45:47.738) right.
John (46:08.13) Because we tell the world, your company tells the world, Density Labs only provides the top 1%. And now, you can say, and it is, there is completely no human bias because we double check our work using what everyone else out there in the world is using now, which is AI.
Federico Ramallo (46:32.414) Right. Yes, that’s the idea, right? So we’re not using it to automatically discriminate, although a screening process is a discrimination. It’s a discrimination, but based on performance. So performance or skills, right?
John (46:59.02) Right. Well, a combination because the thing about recruiting and I, know that I spent several years in recruiting. The thing about recruiting is that there is a, there’s a level of nuance. There is an arena of gut that comes to the table because effectively what you’re selling, at least when I was a recruiter, I was convinced that what I was selling was, was intangible and invisible.
Federico Ramallo (47:01.937) Yes.
John (47:27.166) And that is called potential. This person here, here’s a resume. Here’s you know, Federico the the code writer. And and here’s a job. Here’s a job description. I would pretend that I could match people and that it would work. I had no idea whether or not it would. No idea. Right? But
Federico Ramallo (47:50.331) Ha
John (47:52.814) After a while, you start to see, what is the interview process like? How do people perform on interviews? What is that interviewer like? What do they listen for? What do they not, you know, what tells them, I don’t know if there’s gonna be a cultural fit here, whatever. And once you start gathering all that, now you’ve got this universe of ideas, what I call a circle of ideas. You’ve got this circle of ideas spinning in your mind. And the…
the high functioning mental work that goes into effective recruiting, most people never get close to because because it’s until you do it, you don’t really get it. It’s kind of like running the marathon. I don’t understand why anybody runs a marathon. However, right, but millions and millions of people do. And until I run a marathon, I will not be able to speak intelligently about what that experience is. Does that make sense?
Federico Ramallo (48:52.307) Yeah, what you’re selling on recruiting is, as you mentioned, potential. I used to think that when we’re screening, we could have certainty. Certainty is like, I can guarantee that this person is going to perform and it’s going to be a good fit. It took me, you know.
A short time, but longer than my ego would like to, you
John (49:23.184) That’s like telling your friends when you drop your son off at their house that you guarantee he’s going to behave.
Federico Ramallo (49:30.303) Yeah, it’s exactly the same thing. So now I realize that I cannot guarantee that, but I can statistically approach, be close to it. In statistics, you cannot guarantee that the next card is going to be red. You can say the probabilities that it’s going to be red is very high or low, whatever.
So it’s something like that. The next flip of the coin is not, you don’t know what it’s going to be. But if you have enough, you know that it’s going to be half and half.
John (50:12.462) Well, here’s the thing about what you offer is that you, if I were to engage you to find me an engineer, you will have saved me the time of 99 interviews because you will bring me only the top 1%. So the question is, what is someone’s time worth? Who do you want to interview? The people that are ready, willing, able to do the work or people that are out shopping?
Federico Ramallo (50:30.785) Yes.
John (50:42.459) I just thought I’d go into the interview just to find out what it’s about. What a waste of time that is for an employer and there’s no way to stop it. There’s no way to filter it out.
Federico Ramallo (50:55.03) Right. Right. And you don’t know what you’re getting into until you start recruiting, right? And if you don’t know the quality of the candidates that they’re getting filtered out, then yeah, we spend around 250 hours for every candidate that we add to the, And we have, right now we have 200. So yeah, I don’t know. That’s a lot.
John (51:23.883) lot of interviewing.
Federico Ramallo (51:25.804) Yeah, yeah, We try to optimize it. Every time we try to, every step on the process has a why, a reason for it to be. Every time we try to improve or reduce the time we spend by cutting corners, we realize, no, no, that has to be there, right? We’ve been running this for so long that we realize.
You know, this works, right? There’s so much stuff that we can see that, you know, if we start cutting corners, we miss.
Federico Ramallo (52:10.145) It is very interesting because then you see it as as I mentioned, as statistics, right? You don’t see the individual, although I care about the individual, but what I see is the forest, right? I don’t see the tree, I see the forest and I see that the forest is healthy, right? Yeah.
John (52:32.833) Okay, I get it.
Federico Ramallo (52:37.037) Great. So tell me about serving the Navy, from serving the Navy to becoming a coach and an author.
John (52:37.102) What else do want to talk about?
John (52:50.626) Well, it’s a long journey.
Federico Ramallo (52:52.867) You
John (52:59.542) diving was when I was in Guam. I was part of something called a Naval Mobile Construction Battalion and believe it or not that’s me. couple of pounds lighter and a whole bunch of hair. Well in the Navy I didn’t have a bunch of hair but this is this is a group that is made up of three Navy SEALs that I did not know were Navy SEALs when I met them.
Federico Ramallo (53:09.633) Wow.
John (53:25.804) because Navy SEALs don’t go walking around and everyone, hey, did you know I’m a Navy SEAL? And most people know what level of discipline and focus and the training and the demands of that role. Well, in the group that I was in, which was a construction battalion, we were in Guam to build a building, that’s what they do. And I just…
We gravitated to each other. The four of us spent a lot of time together. We laughed, we had beer, we would talk about life and all this stuff. And one day, was off one day, and they come knocking on my door and say, hey, Clemson, come on, we’re gonna go diving. And I said, well, I don’t wanna sit and watch you go diving. They said, no, no, no, no, we are going diving. And I said, I’ve never been before. They said, cool, you’ll dig it.
Federico Ramallo (54:13.548) you
John (54:17.078) So I’m getting dressed and I said, listen, don’t you have to be certified to go diving? And they said, you’re with us, you’re certified.
not a single bit of training. We went down and this was many, many years ago. We got the register, we got the mask, we got the tanks, we got the everything necessary. We got the, what do call it? The flippers, we got the belt with the weight, you know, to keep us underwater with all that stuff. We got it for $8 for the entire day. And…
Federico Ramallo (54:42.489) the flippers.
John (54:53.198) Yeah, and we went out and I saw some amazing stuff. So I grew up on the East Coast of the United States. I had been to many beaches and had swam in the ocean. I’d never seen anything like this. mean, Guam is out in the middle of the Pacific and you go down two and a half feet in the water and all of a sudden tropical fish are swimming in front of you. So the Navy was a great experience for me because I had grown up
Federico Ramallo (55:19.141) Amazing.
John (55:23.102) as a musician and I had, I don’t know where it came from Federico. I don’t know who gave it to me. I think it was probably a lot of different influences and inputs, but discipline has been a part of my life, my entire life. So being a musician and deciding that I wanted to really change my life and see if I could see the world and I didn’t really have the money for it, joining the Navy was a great path for that. So
Federico Ramallo (55:52.06) Right.
John (55:53.102) I joined the Navy and went on a ship and we went around the Pacific Ocean. saw Singapore and Korea and Hawaii.
Philippines and then I got a year and a half later I was transferred to that construction battalion and we went over first deployment was to Spain. We were on the Costa del Sol and I had when I was coming up in school I had demonstrated oddly enough an affinity and an ability with languages. So when I was in sixth grade
They came to me and said, we want you to start studying a language in seventh grade and you have these five to choose from. It was German, French, Russian, Spanish, and I think it was Italian. Maybe it was only four. Anyway, so was German, Russian, French, and Spanish. I know that was the case. And I thought, I think my family has some connection to Russia. I’m gonna go ahead and choose Russian.
And I did well in it and I studied it for five years through high school. When I was in the Navy, they learned about this and they asked me to take something called the D-Lab, which is a test called the Defense Language Aptitude Battery. And what they did was they sat me in a room and they gave me two pieces of paper. And one piece of paper said, here’s a made up language.
These are the verbs, these are the nouns, these are the prepositions, and these are the adverbs. And then on the other paper, it had a whole bunch of sentences in this made up language. And I looked at the two of them and the guy came and he took the one with the instructions with the words off it, he took it away from me and he says, translate those sentences.
John (57:52.492) And I went and I translated them. And he went into another room to grade my test. And he came out and he said, this is the highest score I’ve ever seen on this.
Federico Ramallo (58:03.302) Wow.
John (58:04.428) Yeah, so I’m very proud of that. I don’t tell that story a lot, but I certainly have told it before. So there’s been these two threads in my life throughout my life, as you can see in my studio here. Music is a very big part of my life. You and I have spoken about that before. I’ve got a piano over there. oddly enough, it took me until…
Federico Ramallo (58:09.576) Thank
Federico Ramallo (58:23.41) Yes.
John (58:26.666) much later in life, way after the Navy, to find that the great intersection for me, the two things that were the spark of everything that I’m interested in, is the intersection between language and music. Every language on earth is music at its core. You speak Spanish.
Federico Ramallo (58:41.065) Right.
John (58:47.598) I speak English, I speak a little bit of Russian, I have spoken Spanish, I have learned a little bit of Italian, learned French when we went to France some years ago. I have an ear as a musician, right? Not just the physical ear, but I have the ear that can tune into intonation and pronunciation. mean, my first teacher in Russian,
Federico Ramallo (59:05.673) Right.
John (59:14.166) She said, speak Russian like a Muscovite. She said the way you pronounce things, it sounds as though you grew up in Russia. And I attribute that to my musical training. And here’s the thing, what are the common things between language and music? Well, tone, tempo, rhythm, dynamics, emotion, right? know, every language has a way of expressing those. I…
Federico Ramallo (59:18.911) Yeah
John (59:43.136) I gravitated to jobs in the Navy that had nothing to do with what I was in the Navy and trained to do. I was trained to be a cook in the Navy and I was proud of that and I loved that job. But I would talk to officers and I would talk to other people and they’d be like, no, no, no, you’re not working in the galley. You’re going to be the communications officer. You’re going to talk on the radio and help us get coordinated. You’re going to supervise this stuff. You’re going to work with, you know, people when we’re doing war exercises, you’re going to be part of the translation team.
So I had some great jobs in the Navy. And when I got out, the first job that I could find was delivering singing telegrams.
Federico Ramallo (01:00:24.884) Singing telegrams, I did not know that. interesting.
John (01:00:27.651) I would show up at your place of work or I would show up at a restaurant where you were there with your friends and I would break into song in front of God and everybody. And many times they were specifically custom written. it would be a song that was very popular at the time and everybody was familiar with, but we would rewrite the lyrics and it was called Tailored Tunes. And I would show up in a white tuxedo.
Federico Ramallo (01:00:36.892) Hahaha!
John (01:00:54.082) So it was kind of hard to miss me. Plus my voice projects. So every so often I have the opportunity now when we know that there’s someone in our circle of friends that is having a birthday, we will be at a winery or we will be at a restaurant and I will stand up and I will do the singing telegram that I did all those years ago.
Federico Ramallo (01:01:16.46) Amazing and that’s it. That’s the toughest audience right because everybody’s looking at you, right?
John (01:01:17.219) Great fun.
John (01:01:22.016) Everyone. You get the attention of the entire place. So when I got out of the Navy, I did that because I enjoyed my time in the Navy and I thought, you know, I’ve been a musician my whole life. I have a songwriting partner in New York. I’m going back to New York and I’m going to become a famous songwriter. Because that didn’t pay very well at the outset, my songwriting partner had a job in sales at an employment agency.
And he had me interview to be someone that would sell that potential. And I had no sales training. They didn’t offer any training. It was basically, here’s a desk, good luck. And I was fortunate enough to be sat right in front of a guy who was one of the top producers in the office. And I listened to him and I listened to him interview and I listened to him describe candidates over the phone. And I listened to him ask for job orders and
started doing it, just started hitting the phones, literally. And that kind of started my trajectory in business and in sales and in communication and in the intersection between language and music and my understanding of human nature and all of that stuff. And that led to me, was plucked out of a, you know, not a real exciting job to lead a team.
Federico Ramallo (01:02:36.0) the
John (01:02:50.222) by someone that I had worked with a couple of years before. we ran in the San Fernando Valley outside of Los Angeles, we ran a very profitable agency where this group of people were putting people on what we call permanent, can’t call it permanent anymore in the United States, because that indicates a guarantee on full-time jobs. Yeah, yeah, And then the other side of the room were people putting folks out on temporary jobs, whether it was a day, a week, or a month, whatever.
Federico Ramallo (01:03:10.357) I see.
John (01:03:19.926) And I was leading both of those teams, the sales team, the delivery team. And it was, it was a busy place, man. It was exciting and it’s fun. And, and that was where I got one of the first true kicks in the most sensitive area of the body emotionally, because Terry and I were at the point where we, wanted to buy a home and we had qualified for a loan and
Federico Ramallo (01:03:27.65) Ha ha ha ha!
John (01:03:48.556) the company that I had worked for, they gave me all the support and the documentation and in the few weeks right before we were going to find out whether or not we got the loan, our company was purchased by one of the biggest employment agencies in North America.
Federico Ramallo (01:04:07.566) John (01:04:09.066) At quarter to five on Friday, my phone rang at my desk and it was the loan agent and he said, John, pack your bags. You’re a homeowner. Had a great weekend, was absolutely ecstatic, walked into work the following Monday morning. My regional manager and the president of the company were there in my office waiting. They didn’t work there every day. They brought me into a conference room and they put a document in front of me with a check on top of it.
Federico Ramallo (01:04:31.31) John (01:04:39.34) and fired me.
Federico Ramallo (01:04:42.208) No, bad timing, super bad timing.
John (01:04:45.535) my gosh, really bad timing.
Federico Ramallo (01:04:48.75) You
John (01:04:50.462) And you know what? What happens as a result of that? You learn resilience. You learn that you do what you need to do. You learn what a partnership between you and your wife really means. You, you know, and I ended up in not too long a period. ended up getting another job and I learned over the course of job after job that my ego was such, and I’m sure this is going to shock you.
Federico Ramallo (01:05:00.099) Right.
John (01:05:16.62) My ego was such that I was convinced that I knew the right way to do things. And if my bosses didn’t agree with that, I took it very personally and not sure I responded as professionally as I could have. So sometimes that cost me. And I’m, I’m now 26 years into private practice. This is the third time that I attempted to be self-employed and I do this like
Because the first time I had no idea what I was doing, Federico, we had no money. And I thought, I’m going to start my own business. Without cashflow, you don’t have a business. Without customers, you don’t have a business. Well, I figured I’ll work it out. Well, it didn’t take too long before I realized I needed to go get a job. Then the second time. Well, that’s right. That’s right. Yeah. So the second time I
Federico Ramallo (01:05:57.381) Right, it sounds…
Federico Ramallo (01:06:06.006) You have an LLC and that’s it, right?
John (01:06:14.966) I made some really bad decisions with a partner.
cost me significantly. And then the third time, and this was the opposite of getting kicked in a very sensitive area of the body. was working with the woman who first made me a manager years ago, and she wanted to create a very specific niche in recruiting. She wanted to provide animators to all of the motion picture and television studios in Hollywood. We were located in Burbank.
which was literally the seat of it. mean, Nickelodeon was right down the street. Classy Chupo who created Rugrats. They were, you know, five blocks away. the, Disney studios were, were about two miles away. And I would, for about six weeks, I went out with, with portfolios under my arm of all of these animators. And I would find myself walking into the HR office.
and they had exact copies of those portfolios on their desk already. So they weren’t going to pay us a fee to find those guys or girls. So I went to, I went to Jennifer and I’ve told, I, know, I can name check her because I have, she and I have spoken about this many times since. And I said, Jennifer, I don’t think we have a business here. I don’t think we can make money doing this. And she got up and she closed the door to her office and she sat back down and she said, John, do you, you understand you could have,
Federico Ramallo (01:07:20.049) John (01:07:44.95) milked this company for about six months without us knowing that the business wasn’t going to work and you could have gone home with a paycheck and I said I know that she said so what you’re telling me is is that you’re you’re telling us now that there’s no business here and that you probably shouldn’t come to work anymore I said yeah she says I’ve I’ve never found anyone who talks about integrity and lives it the way you do
And I said, well, thank you. And she says, so what do really want to do? And I said, what I really want to do is I want to teach people how to sell in a very human way. And she said something to me, Federico, that to this day, I count as one of the top five reasons that I have been successful being self-employed. And here’s what she said. I don’t think you can make it on your own.
Federico Ramallo (01:08:43.403) John (01:08:46.838) And I looked at her and I looked at the wall and I looked back at her and I said, really?
John (01:08:56.278) And on February 1st of 1999, I came home and I looked at my wife after two times trying it and failing. I said, I’m going to try it again. And she said, Well, what if it doesn’t work? And I said, then you and I and the kids will live in a car.
John (01:09:16.448) I made the decision that day. I don’t care what it is going to take. I am going to do this. I am going to make this work. I found a folding table which this stand up desk is standing on. I’ve had the same table for 27 years. I found this table. I put a phone on it. We added a line coming into the house that I could do cold calling over.
Federico Ramallo (01:09:16.628) Fully committed.
John (01:09:45.324) I put a computer on my desk that is the size of a bookcase now. I mean, you know, it had the CPU that was this monstrous big thing and a monitor that deep, right? And I sat down on the following Monday morning and I started making cold calls. And I made 40 in the morning and 20 in the afternoon every day, five days a week for six months.
Federico Ramallo (01:09:51.311) Hahaha
Federico Ramallo (01:09:56.367) It was huge,
John (01:10:13.504) I was on the phone at 7am. by the way, the table was this far away from the end of our bed in our bedroom.
Federico Ramallo (01:10:21.586) Right.
John (01:10:23.21) And I woke my wife up and I said, I’m making cold calls. You can stay in bed if you want. Because we didn’t have zoom back then. It was strictly over the phone. I said, you can stay in bed if you want, but I’m about to do a 20 call burst. And I would do 20 dials in a row without stopping. I would get some breakfast. I would do 20 dials in a row without stopping. Walk around the block, get some lunch. would do 20 dials in a row without stopping. And I set a goal for myself of being booked 30 times in the next 12 month cycle.
In six months, I booked myself 52 times.
Federico Ramallo (01:11:00.171) Wow, amazing.
John (01:11:03.714) Discipline is an amazing thing. I took discipline from the Navy. I took discipline from what’s required to be able to perform an instrument with proficiency. And that served me. I’m insatiably curious. I I read about all different kinds of stuff. I listen to all different kinds of music. I go to all different kinds of movies, right? And…
John (01:11:36.142) People think that discipline is the enemy of freedom. It’s the key to freedom.
John (01:11:46.956) I don’t want to do that. Good. I’m going to be busy doing it. I’ll see you later. that’s really hard. There has to be a better way. Okay, when you find it, let me know because I’ll be here doing it.
John (01:12:02.19) So you asked me about that path and I give you a very, very long answer and a very long story that I’m sure you’re going to edit parts out of. But you know, the Navy was a real turning point in my life. Being told that someone that I knew and liked and respected did not believe that I could handle things on my own. Put those two things together and the willingness and the desire. Because Federico, when I first started doing
half-day sales seminars for companies. I didn’t have any books published. I had not graduated college. I had no certificate. There was no proof that I could do it. So… Which they couldn’t see over the phone. Because there was no video. So, it’s been a hell of a ride, man.
Federico Ramallo (01:12:44.277) Right. It was you and your smile. Right.
That’s right.
That’s right, yeah.
Federico Ramallo (01:13:01.497) Yes, amazing. It’s a very interesting journey. Yes, it is.
John (01:13:07.478) It has been great. And I’ve earned every one of these wrinkles, Every one of these gray hairs. I’ve earned every single one of them. And lost what hair I did have. Which is okay.
Federico Ramallo (01:13:19.353) Right.
John (01:13:27.694) Sorry. We’ll edit that out.
Federico Ramallo (01:13:28.963) It’s part of life, right?
John (01:13:33.571) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (01:13:41.657) So I wanted to ask you about your coaching style.
Federico Ramallo (01:13:52.654) You describe your coaching methodology, I think your website or somewhere. What sets your coaching style apart from others?
John (01:13:57.773) Yeah, probably.
John (01:14:06.636) It is very much about the head and the heart and everything is driven by shaped by and focused on language. You and I spent so many hours talking about questions that your salespeople could ask that would prevent them from talking too much. When we talk about leading people, you and I talked about what the, have every client go through an exercise I call four.
and from, F-O-R and from. And I say, I want to know what you want for each person who reports to you. And I want to know what you want from them, because many people confuse the two. Well, what I want for them is for them to hit their number. No, that’s what you want from them. What do you want for them as a person? What do want them? Where do you see them growing in your org if they’re going to grow at all? So the
I think the best way I’d describe it is that there are certainly many sources of business advice, business coaching that will tell you what to say or what to do. What I do is I teach people how to think.
I want them to think about their philosophy and be able to articulate it. I want them to not only articulate it, but make sure that they are getting people to not only understand it, but respond to it in a positive way. I’ve met with people like yourself. I have a client now that runs a $100 million, 10 location restaurant company in Chicago. He’s got 1400 employees.
Federico Ramallo (01:15:48.793) well.
John (01:15:53.538) He’s got people that aren’t really sure why they show up every day. Well, we’re going to fix that. So this way we have less turnover. So my coaching is about getting into someone’s head, figuring out what the most effective language is going to be for them to deliver, what great questions they need to ask of their direct reports of their peers, and maybe their boss, but most.
Most of my clients are in your role. They’re CEO and or founder. And again, this person that I’m referring to, he started with a partner going out, trying to find money to start a restaurant. And 10 years later, they have 10 locations. Every single one of those locations is a completely different concept. They don’t franchise. Yes, they have a Greek restaurant. have a French steakhouse. They have a
Federico Ramallo (01:16:41.176) wow.
John (01:16:49.418) an Italian steakhouse. They have a casual bar that’s based on food from a specific region in Italy. I said to them, I don’t think that you guys are a restaurant company. I think that you are a platform to launch restaurant startups. Because every restaurant has a different decor, different glassware, different dishes, different menu.
Federico Ramallo (01:17:09.704) Right.
John (01:17:18.796) I mean, it’s really cool. I’ve been to three of the restaurants. Next time you’re in Chicago, let me know. I’ll get you real good meal.
Federico Ramallo (01:17:27.98) Yes, Argentinian steakhouse, if they have. Italian, I love it.
John (01:17:32.138) I, well, my goal is to get them, yeah, I want them to open a restaurant here right near me in Boise. I would love that.
Federico Ramallo (01:17:42.92) With great power comes great responsibility. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That sounds lovely. Yeah.
John (01:17:45.39) Responsibility, 100%. That’s true.
John (01:17:53.356) It’s fun.
Federico Ramallo (01:17:56.346) I think you, I know how successful your coaching style can be, right? But I wanted to ask you, can you share a success story? You shared a little bit about this person owning so many restaurants, but what is a success story where your coaching significantly impact the client career or business?
John (01:18:22.136) Well, I’ve got a company in the tech space. I’ve spoken to you about them before. are effectively what they boil down to is a brokerage service. They what they do is they consult with major companies and they will find three vendors that will supply a specific piece or platform of technology for them. And then the client will choose one of those.
they don’t get paid by the client, get paid by the vendor. So let’s say they’re going to provide a customer experience solution, a CX solution for 1,500 seats. The company that supplies the software in the backend for that will pay my client a percentage of that revenue every month for the length of the contract. So when I started working with them, I think they had six consultants.
And it was probably about, I think the total company was 12 people. They just had one of the most significant tech events in the Midwest. Just two weeks ago, they had hired Damon John from Shark Tank to be the keynote speaker. They had over 500 attendees. They now have, I think, 18 consultants. And the, the conversation that I have with the founder and owner is about
the constant demand of making sure that people understand, going back to what I was talking about with the restaurant company, getting people to understand why they show up every day. And now what has occurred is that there’s, up until now it was Matthew’s company. Now it’s C3 technology advisors, and they are this force of nature in the Midwest. And that…
They now, I mean, they’re being written about in magazines, Federico, think about that. They’re not paying to be placed. There were people from the media that had heard about it and they are being written about in magazines, in LinkedIn, in channel news, and just the way that they innovate and the way they go to work every day is just phenomenal. because they have told me this, I feel comfortable telling you.
John (01:20:43.64) that I have played a significant role in how they have grown. He said, I never want to grow for the sake of growing. I want to grow because I’ve got great people that understand what it is that we do and we all care about each other. And that’s a trifecta.
Federico Ramallo (01:20:43.872) Yes.
Federico Ramallo (01:21:00.383) Wow. Yeah, it’s difficult from your perspective to be an honest reviewer of yourself, right? So yeah. So there is a, right.
John (01:21:08.788) Yeah, absolutely. I’m so great at what I do.
John (01:21:14.956) Listen, I bring my heart and soul to work every day. I’m walking down that path to creative play.
Federico Ramallo (01:21:25.698) Right, you leave it. You leave it and now you put it in writing.
John (01:21:30.008) Yes, yes, it’s very satisfying.
Federico Ramallo (01:21:35.455) So there is a Spanish cartoon, not cartoon, but a TV show, old TV show from the 60s, where there is a small community. And you have like five, 10 characters. And they all have different representations. So you have the homeless boy, and then you have the…
John (01:21:35.502) It really is.
Federico Ramallo (01:22:03.193) the spoiled brat, right? And they all live in the same mini community. And they are adults playing children, right? So you can see that they’re adults, right? But they play their character. They’re children, right? And then you have the lonely widow. Then you have the, know, the…
Federico Ramallo (01:22:31.055) broke cheap guy, So many characters. So the spoiled brat would congratulate himself, right? So then he will take his hand, kiss his hand, and then put it on his cheek, both cheeks, right? It’s like, I am so great, you know? And it has things like that all over the place. They run it for something like
John (01:22:50.274) Uh-huh.
Federico Ramallo (01:23:00.045) eight seasons and they had reruns all over Latin America. Everybody knows this Mexican TV show from the 60s.
Federico Ramallo (01:23:10.961) So, yeah, it’s, you know, being a judge of your own work is kind of like that guy, you know. So, having the confirmation, it’s a great way to confirm what you’re doing, yeah.
John (01:23:18.572) little bit.
John (01:23:26.252) And I learned that very early in my career. know, people say, well, how do we know you’re any good at what you do? And say, well, listen, the best I can do is tell you what former clients have told me. Back in the day, I used to collect testimonial letters. I would ask people, how would you feel about writing a letter telling me what your folks got out of working with me and put it on letterhead? Back then, we had letterhead, right? It was printed. It’s on nice paper and whole thing. I have a stack that’s this thick.
Federico Ramallo (01:23:49.572) Right.
John (01:23:53.952) Every so often, every five or six years, I will go and I’ll dig it out just to remind myself of, well, you know what, I guess I did know what I was doing back then. the several people said, you know what, why don’t you just write what you want? I’ll print it on my letterhead and sign it. I was like, So then I had to be careful because I didn’t want to do that, right? I wanted to be genuine.
Federico Ramallo (01:24:12.035) Hahaha
Federico Ramallo (01:24:18.639) Right.
John (01:24:19.81) You know, you and I talked about this, you know, the big three words for me, authentic, transparent, unapologetic. In getting into the business that I got into, and I did not start as a coach. One of my clients created my coaching practice. I was, I was doing seminars for not even a year. And a gentleman out of, out of Washington, DC, I’ve always loved the man for this. His name is Phil Meany.
He and I were standing in the front of the room on one of the breaks and he says, all of this stuff that you’re talking about, all of this is fantastic. I would love half of my folks to do 10 % of this and we will blow our number out next year. He says, so my question to you is, what do I do when you leave?
And because I’m a mercenary salesperson.
Federico Ramallo (01:25:12.112) the
John (01:25:13.452) And I was on fire because I had just been speaking for two hours. I said to him, well, you have me come back in 30 days and I will sit with your people while they make cold calls. And then I’ll talk to you about how effective I think they’re being and I’ll give them suggestions. I’ll give them some notes. And then in another two months, you’ll have me come back again. He says, I love it. Let’s do it. I just doubled, tripled my fee with that one client.
based on something that he created for me. He created my coaching practice. Never thought about being a coach. I thought about being an NFL coach because of course, after watching the game for 20 years, I’m convinced I know more about it than anyone. Right? I know you don’t watch football. I know you don’t watch soccer, which is just weird being an Argentinian, but we’re gonna let that go for today.
Federico Ramallo (01:25:46.247) right.
John (01:26:09.066) Most sports fans are absolutely convinced they could be a better coach. Now, I had the opportunity in my early 40s to coach a football team, non-profit for one season. I couldn’t sleep. I was so excited. was making notes and I bought a whistle and it was fantastic. But Phil Meaney, in that moment, he opened up a window in my mind. He moved me along.
on my path of creative play. He increased my income because he was part of a national organization that had 35 offices and he was only the second office I had been to. And by the time we got through the third part of the cycle, I was getting calls from offices I had not called on. And they said, we’re hearing about what you’re doing in DC, when can you come here?
Federico Ramallo (01:27:04.43) nice.
John (01:27:05.74) And then the following year, my fees went up.
Federico Ramallo (01:27:10.633) Right, right. You could afford to increase the fees because now you had a lot of demand.
John (01:27:17.332) Well, I always could afford to. The question was did I have the balls to?
Federico Ramallo (01:27:22.023) Yeah, I mean, every time you increase your fees, then some people are going to say no, right? So.
John (01:27:30.848) And you know what? Over the course of 26 years, I’ve increased my fees probably six times. It has never cost me business.
Federico Ramallo (01:27:42.365) Right. Amazing.
John (01:27:43.566) I’ve never had someone say, coach, we can’t pay you that next year. No, no, you prepare them. You say, listen, we’ve been working together for a year and a half. Want to let you know as of September 1st, my fees are going to be going up. Okay.
Why? Because I deliver. I’m not going to go pat myself on the back saying I’m great. Here’s the thing. I know what I do and I know that it’s effective and I know how to get people to be willing to accept it. I shape how they think. I teach teach them to think. I take thought, turn it into speech, move them to action, have them open up the valve of creativity. I emphasize how important rest
is and together we take a lot of risks and here’s you know this better than anybody and so does your wife that your willingness and your need to take risks has gotten you where you are
Federico Ramallo (01:28:43.351) Yes, yes that’s correct. It’s not easy but it’s very rewarding.
John (01:28:49.132) Hey, my father used to say, John, it was easy, everybody would do it.
Federico Ramallo (01:28:53.58) Right.
John (01:28:56.876) He also used to ask me, John, why do you find the single hardest thing to do?
John (01:29:04.012) I don’t know, keeps me interested,
Federico Ramallo (01:29:07.659) Yeah, I always say that, you when people ask me about that, I always answer that it’s because I’m a masochist. I want to suffer, right? But it’s actually the challenge, right?
John (01:29:15.468) yeah. I have to have a dark night of soul. Otherwise, I don’t feel alive. I have to be scared to death. It’s not going to work. That’s what that’s why I perform. You know, I pack up my guitars and my amp and I drive out to a winery and I sit there and you know, I have that same experience. I’m in the car and I’m about to take the equipment out and I ask myself, why are you doing this?
Federico Ramallo (01:29:24.684) Right.
Federico Ramallo (01:29:41.773) Every single time.
John (01:29:45.718) every single time and the voice comes back well number one because you’re being paid to number two because you made a commitment and you can’t leave these people hanging and number three by the time you get into the about the 28th second of the first song you’re going to be in such a state of joy
Federico Ramallo (01:30:05.751) That is worth it, yeah.
John (01:30:09.178) It’s such a privilege.
Federico Ramallo (01:30:13.389) I hope I can go and listen to you live sometime soon. Yes. Yes. So I think we should wrap it up because we’ve been for a lot of time. Yes. Yes. Yes. It’s amazing. Yes, we’ll try to cut it out to two episodes. Yeah.
John (01:30:20.936) Hey, of these days, one of these days we’ll work it out.
John (01:30:33.742) An hour and a half?
maybe this will give you two episodes.
Federico Ramallo (01:30:42.965) So one thing you can say after I write, no, I do the voice for your book is that you have Argentinian accent. You’re going to be able to say that after I do the voice of your book. It’s like actors.
John (01:31:07.618) Really? I can’t wait.
Federico Ramallo (01:31:12.727) have their translator, Spanish translator, Italian translator. So people associate the person and the voice actor. So the Simpsons in Spanish, they have their own jokes, their own things. And they changed the voice team once. And it was a big moment for all the audience because
they changed the voice, right? So they didn’t recognize the voice, right? So what I’m trying to say is that that’s the type of, I don’t know how to call it, that creates. So I take that responsibility very seriously.
John (01:31:43.32) They didn’t recognize the voice. Sure.
John (01:32:00.11) Well, I’m very excited about the idea and the prospect that it will take some work, but I know that you’re not afraid of work. As we move forward into doing this, there may be some opportunity for you and I to speak at an event where I will, you know, we’ll deliver part of it in English and part of it in Spanish. That’d be wicked fun.
Federico Ramallo (01:32:21.809) would be fun. That would be so much fun. I mean, yes. Awesome. So John, thank you very much for joining. It’s been lovely to speak with you. I hope that our audience learned a lot. And where can they reach you? What’s your website?
John (01:32:28.709) Cool.
John (01:32:44.686) best thing to do is to email me in today’s world. It’s john j o h n at clinton. I’ll spell that it’s K L Y Amazon Mary s is in Sam h y n.com. I do have a website but no one is ever happy with their website. No matter what people are looking for. They’re not going to find it on the website but I have a website. I also if you go on either audible or amazon.com and you type in
my last name, you’ll see my author page. And that shows all of my hard copy books as well as my audio books. And this one that you and I are discussing, we are going to publish the electronic version and the audio version the same week.
Federico Ramallo (01:33:29.361) Great, great. So when they are published, we’re going to put them on the notes.
John (01:33:33.508) And then about two months after that, we’re going to publish in Spanish.
Federico Ramallo (01:33:39.949) Amazing!
John (01:33:43.201) you
Federico Ramallo (01:33:47.505) Sounds good, sounds good. So thank you very much.
John (01:33:51.042) My pleasure. Thanks for having me.