Scott Miller, EVP Franklin Covey | 30 Years of 7 Habits of Highly Successful People

Welcome to the success story podcast, I'm your host, Scott Clary. On this podcast, I have candid interviews with execs, celebrities, politicians, and other notable figures, all who have achieved success through both wins and losses, to learn more about their life, their ideas, and their insights. I sit down with leaders and mentors and unpack their story to help pass those lessons onto others through both experiences and tactical strategy for business professionals, entrepreneurs, and everyone in between, without further ado, another episode of the success story podcast. Thanks again for joining me today. I'm sitting down with Scott Miller, executive vice president of Thought Leadership at Franklin Covey. Parent company to Stephen Covey's original property, IP and work. So Dr. Stephen Covey wrote the book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Now Dr. Stephen Covey is passed, but as long as he lives on through Franklin Covey, so I just want to teethe that up so you understand. So Scott at Franklin Covey is the EVP of Thought Leadership. He runs a podcast, a weekly podcast called On Leadership with Scott Miller, speaking about different leadership topics, interviewing business titans, authors, and thought leaders. He also writes a weekly leadership column for Inc. magazine, Scott leads strategy, development and publication of Franklin Covey's bestselling books and thought leadership, which provide the framework for the company's world-renowned content and solutions. He is the author of Franklin Covey's Management Mests to Leadership Success and co-author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller. Everyone deserves a great manager. He is a spokesperson for the new edition of the number one most influential book of the fifth century. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which has been redone for its 30th anniversary with insights from Dr. Stephen Covey's son, Sean. So Scott, very excited, I'm super excited to understand your career, how you got to working for Franklin Covey and then also some of the things that we can learn from the book and the original works and what's happening now. So thank you. I want to hear more about your career. I want to hear how you got into a 25-year stand. That's not really that normal anymore for most people. I'm a dinosaur, Scott. In a good way. No, but in a good way. You're tenured. You're tenured. There you go. There you go. Thank you. So walk me through your career and then we can sort of understand what you're working on now. Sure. Well, thanks for the invitation to join today, honored to be here. Let's see. I'm 52. I live here in Salt Lake City, Utah with my wife, Stephanie, and our three sons who are six, eight, and ten. So if you see one of them behind me with their underwear on a sword running around, it won't be unusual, right? It's the new COVID work from home reality. It's highly likely. One of them will hit me over the head with something. I did a Franklin Covey company for just shy of 24 years. I actually am from Orlando, Florida, born and raised in Central Florida, worked for the Disney company, Walt Disney company for four years. They're a nearly four-year stint there. They invited me to leave, which is the nice way Disney says, get out, we don't want you anymore. So here I am kind of 26. I'm looking for a new career and Franklin Covey comes calling, right? The firm founded by Stephen Covey, as you mentioned, the author of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and I moved to Utah, which is if you've been to Utah, it's a lovely state, but a single Catholic boy from Orlando moving to Probo, Utah was an amazing cultural ship. Not like being Jewish and moving to Vatican City, right? Maybe good for a couple of weeks, but not 25 years, but it's been a great ride. 25 years in the company started as a frontline salesperson selling our leadership development solutions, became a sales leader, went to London for a year, Chicago for six years as a sales managing director, came back and Scott, I was the chief marketing officer for eight years, and brought the executive team, and then about two years ago stepped away from that role after eight years, and now I'm leading our thought leadership. As you mentioned, I lead what is now the world's largest leadership podcast in the world, called on leadership with Scott Miller, what a few books, got a few more books coming out, and just trying to learn along the way and share some of the mistakes that I made in my career as a leader, and as you mentioned, I'm privileged to be a spokesperson for now the 30th anniversary of the Seven Habits book. You believe this book has sold 40 million copies, and Dr. Covey's son Sean Covey, who wrote the book The Seven Habits of highly effective teens, which is the best selling teen leadership book in history, added some new insights and applications. I'm honored to be here representing Dr. Covey, who passed about eight years ago as a result of a head injury from a bicycle accident, but the book continues to sell 10,000 copies of the week. It's insane, and I'm honored to be associated with his brand. That's an incredible organization to work for, and I guess when we first connected, I was just very curious to understand how you go into a position in a leadership organization, the pressure must be extremely high because the standard and the bar has already been set and to be successful in that environment. That's an understatement, right? I mean, in one aspect, you've got the concept of the cobbler's kids have no shoes, right? And do you really live your own content? And the other side is this extraordinarily high culture of high trust and high performance and high execution around strategy and goals. I think we do a superb job of attempting to live our content. Hey, we're a collection of humans, right? So we do things that are wrong. We gossip occasionally. We drop the ball occasionally. But really, we're a disciplined organization when it comes to our commitment to live what we teach. Yes, we fail, but I think with our chairman and CEO Bob Whitman, who's led us for over 20 years, we have a very high standard for ourselves. We have a pre-forgiveness culture. We're going to make mistakes. But I think we set each other up for high accountability, and at the same time, we recognize that we're going to make mistakes given our standard. It's a great place to work. I've been very privileged. People ask me all the time, why don't you leave 25 years? You'll never get a job. Well, I won't get a job again. I'll probably go right and speak and interview. But the reason I stay is our chairman, Bob Whitman, he loves me. He loves our employees. He loves my wife. He loves my boys. He loves my future. So as long as your leader loves you and you feel that, most people tend to stay. That's probably one of the most, just such a simple point, but I think it highs over into so many different use cases or just examples of why companies don't work or can't maintain or retain that talent. But we can get into that. I don't want to go into that just yet. So I want to just understand, walk me through the story of the book. So when the book was first written, how did that manifest and how did that lead into the organization that is today? What was the story behind that? So gosh, you know, about 40 years ago, Dr. Stephen R. Covey was a professor here in Utah, had received his doctor or a master's in MBA from Harvard, received a doctorate here from BYU, and was really studying literature around success. So he spent a decade performing what was kind of a 200 year success literature review back before the internet, right? What really made successful people over time influential? And he came to discover these two concepts called the character ethic and the personality ethic. He invented this kind of concept, is that there's a certain level of leader that really focused on what he called the character ethic, who they were, their values, their mission, their purpose, whose lives were governed by principles. And then there was the personality ethic, and he didn't dismiss this, but he said, this more kind of came into the 70s and 80s and even 90s around kind of what kind of car you drove and how you spoke and how you dressed. And he didn't dismiss these things, but he said too often leaders in the latter part of our generation became too focused on this personality ethic. So in the course of this 200 year literature review, he decided to write this book called the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, had multiple names, had many habits, finally he settled on that. And he did not invent these habits, right, he kind of uncovered them, he discovered them, he named them, numbered them, sequenced them, they're all quite rudimentary, which is probably why they're so profound. He sequenced them in a very smart order and the book exploded. Now he, I think, hit the right time, he had a great name, he paid the price to research this and write these amazing stories around his own successes and struggles. He was a religious man, so he had studied multiple religions and principles that all of the spiritual leaders had taught for thousands of years. And he also had a good public relations team and a good branding team, quite frankly. And the book has stood the test of time, it turned into this leadership development company. About 24 years ago, his small boutique company, the Covey Leadership Center, merged with the Franklin Quest Company, that was a public company in Salt Lake City, kind of the art rival of Stephen Covey, and they merged to become the powerhouse, the Franklin Covey Company. Actually, there was no Franklin. A lot of people think there was a guy named Franklin, well Franklin was Ben Franklin, the famous discoverer, if you will, and inventor, and Franklin Quest, Franklin Quest was a time management company based on a lot of the teachings of Benjamin Franklin, you know, an American hero. And so they merged and now have become really the world powerhouse on leadership development productivity, time management, strategy execution, and building a high-trust culture. As I mentioned, Dr. Covey wrote, gosh, 20 plus books, numerous bestsellers, and passed away eight years ago at his 80th year. But his legacy is, you know, phenomenal. The book sales, as I mentioned, is still about 10,000 copies a week, actually sold 20,000 copies two weeks ago. And that would put you at number one on every list for 30, you know, years. So it's a great read, it's a thick book, but it would transform your life as it has, you know, lily countless millions over a decade. Well, I think it's probably one of the most referenced leadership books still. Like when I asked at the end of every interview I do, I asked leaders, you know, what is a piece of literature that recommend, and this has been recommended often. So it's not, it's not like an unknown book, this is something that's been around and has been referenced and has been used for leadership practice quite literally since it was written. And I think that I'm curious when it was first written, was there the same emphasis on, on this type of organization that would, would help with, you know, leadership consulting? Or was this something that was sort of disrupting or blue ocean when it was first written, when the, when the team was first created? Was there the type of leadership, I guess, thought leadership and, and consulting that there is today, do you see a lot of it now? But I don't know if it was back then. I think he was an early pioneer. I think he was a Johnny Apple seed, right? Coming on the heels of, you know, Drucker and other work. I think, I think there was in the late 80s and explosion with Ken Blanchard, you know, Gallup came along shortly thereafter. You had a lot of work from a lot of different people in that space. Marcus Buckingham came later, obviously. So I think Dr. Covey was on a fourth or four front of personal effectiveness. I think he was one of the first people to put a stake in the ground and really define what leadership looked like in organizations and to teach behavior change, mindset change inside of organizations, aren't really as clients, right? We're proctor and gamble and Toyota, Disney, you know, big clients for Dr. Covey was passionate around changing the landscape of how leaders behaved inside organizations. And a lot of that then transferred over into communities, churches, families, your personal life. But he was a pioneer that way. And it's still today, you know, I think the content is one of our most adopted contents we've got into organizations because I think a lot of people have been taught in their graduate programs or their PhDs, process, systems, strategies, what they haven't necessarily been taught is, how do you treat people? How do you behave in a trustworthy way? How do you make sure you are, to quote Dr. Covey, a model, not a critic, a light, not a judge? Because we know leaders are the linch pins of cultures and organization. Stephen Covey was evangelizing culture long before it was talked about in boardrooms as valuable as, you know, EBITDA, right, or supply chain or whatever it was. So he was before his time and will continue for generations to come. I think that's probably a better way of phrasing it. It was an awkward question asking if there was leadership consultants when he first put this together. But I like the fact that he mentioned he was before his time in terms of focusing on culture within organizations because that really drives it all. It's everything, right? I mean, I think it was kind of a cliche buzzword, you know, I don't know, five years ago. And now engagement and culture, recruitment, retention, behaviors of leaders is trust me on the discussion of every risk committee and every boardroom in the world right now. Are our leaders behaving in alignment with our mission and our values at are they creating opportunity or they creating risk for our organization? And do you see more organizations because I've worked in large organizations before? And even though it seems to be something that leaders want to focus on, when it trickles down to frontline individuals, you still default to some of those, probably not so good practices. Yeah. So do you see? I think, yeah. I think it's an obsession in organizations right now. It has to be. I mean, I heard yesterday where the CHRO of Adidas, after I think a 25 year career steps down because, and perhaps she was misquoted, perhaps she was tired. She'd mentioned that, you know, this idea around diversity and Black Lives Matter was kind of a passing phase. I have misquoted her and I hate that that that's what's going to be remembered from the totality of her career. I don't know her, but I'll pre-forgive her on perhaps her statement. But I think companies are obsessed with culture and leadership right now. And let me tell you why. To your point around first level frontline leaders, Harvard Business Review published Scott a research study a few years ago that said, the average age that someone receives their first promotion into a management position is age 30. Yet the average age, they received their first formal leadership development training, age 42. And so for 12 years, they're well-intended people that were usually highly productive individual producers, right? They're promoted into a leadership role, which really no awareness or training of what it now takes to be a leader of people. And they're wrecking havoc across cultures. Not because they're sociopaths or bad people. They're just bad leaders because they haven't been trained. So I think there is a sea change. I'm not trying to evangelize our products at all. We're on fire because organizations are seeing the liability, the litigation, the lack of speed that comes from not investing in your frontline leaders, which by the way now, the vast majority of people in organizations report to frontline leaders, right? With the digitization of information and with Salesforce.com and Adobe, other tools, you don't need nine layers or 12 layers of people anymore. You need like three layers. Now you've got tens of thousands of people reporting to first level leaders who a week ago was the individual producer. Now they're promoted. You don't have the skills. People are going to quit those leaders. We know this HR, you know, adage. People don't quit their job. They quit bad leaders in crept cultures. So I think organizations around the world are recognizing if we don't invest in our leadership. From the top to the front line, people are going to flee our company and we're going to be having turnover that is unacceptable. I think it isn't a nice to have. It is an imperative to make sure that your leaders are recruiting and retaining the best possible talent. I think the average 10 year now is like less than three years of a new associate. It depends on this unit, but it's very low. It does. It does. It's not going longer. It's going shorter in most cases. And let's also remember that before COVID happened, we were at the lowest unemployment. Oh, my God. And he didn't have the luxury of having three and a half percent in the US, right? And it'll come back there. And then I think of the next couple of years or so, it'll be hard, but we'll do that hard work. So where do it? So say you do want to upskill yourself as a professional or you want to start your own venture. And now you're seeing more and more companies focused on leadership, but it's not taught in your university or college program. Do you read a book? What's the resource you go to to actually get those base skills that you need to be effective? I'd say three or four things. I think I have lots of messages, right? What a book called, Management and S. But the things that I'm actually successful about, I'll use as a bit of a model. I came to become an executive officer in the leadership development company. So I got some credit on this particular topic, asking about six sigma or lean manufacturing I had nothing for. On this, I got some street cred. One is an insatiable curiosity, right? It is reading. It is just, I'm a voracious reader like yourself. I probably read two books a week. I subscribed to 40 magazines. I still read print newspapers. I know I'm a dinosaur, but I'm a voracious and curious reader. That's the first thing, right? It's constantly be challenging your mindset, your paradigm, your belief system. What I think is being self-aware, nobody's self-aware, there's degrees of it, right? None of us are as aware as we think we are. Look around your organization. Look around the people in your life, professionally and personally, and ask people, what's it like to work with me? What's it like to be in a meeting with me? What's it like to launch a product with me? Go home to your partner's spouse and say, what's it like to be married to me? The more you are seeking feedback and information on what's it like to be around you, the more self-aware you'll be, the less you'll have blind spots. Because we all have blind spots, right? We don't. Our breath doesn't smell as good as we think it does. We're not as funny or as punctual or as gracious. Our jokes don't land. You get the point, right? We're not as talented or as encompassing or welcoming. Make it safe for people to tell you the truth about what it's like to work for and with you. Here's the third thing I'd say. And I want to phrase this carefully because sometimes people misunderstand it. I think the one thing that I did that's been most impactful in my career next to reading is friending up. My entire life I have friended up from being a teenager. My friends were always a decade older when all my college buddies were out at the frat house. I was down at the mayor's office behind her desk learning from her or him. I've always friended up people who were smarter, older, more successful, more cultured, more well-traveled, had more bankruptcies, had earned and lost more fortunes. And it was fundamental to my life. I'm 52 now. Most of my friends are in their 60s and 70s. My wife is actually 12 years younger than I am. And she always wonders when she met me, why are all her friends so old? Why are we going to Greece with people who are 50 and 60? We're in our 30s. That's how I was so successful. It's because these people took me under their wing and I learned to avoid so many messes. I did not avoid a few messes, but I avoided a lot because I was always friending up. That's very good advice. I think that's something that we default in the wrong direction when we friend up at. We do. For our peer group. We default to a peer group. We default to people that have less taxing, mentally taxing, you know, past times and hobbies. It just seems easier. It seems like a friend should be at like a release. And I feel like that's not the right equation for success. It has not been for me. The opposite has been true. I look back at my impact. It's because of the older wiser, mature person who's put their arm around me and taking me into a competition that's got you can't say that. You got to stop doing that. The best advice I ever got was from the then president of Franklin Covey Bill Bennett. He came to my office in Chicago. I've been just promoted to be the youngest venture director in the firm. And he said, Scott, you're standing at a gas station and you're holding a match. And then he sat me down and talked about some specific behaviors that I was engaging in. And mainly it was around keeping confidences and not holding things that were confidential. Confidential. It's been a problem a lot of my life, less so now as I'm an officer in the firm. But it's conversations like that. The CEO once took me aside and said to me, Scott, you make too many declarative statements. And that's all he said. And he walked away. This is my boss. The CEO. And I'll never forget where I was standing, what day it was, what time it was. But sometimes it's those more effective people than you, typically they're older than you that have a great investment in you and kind of see where you're headed, even when you can't see where you're headed, and they help you, of course, correct. Now this is a huge question, but I think that you are qualified to answer this in the age of COVID and remote work and work from home. And I'm sure this is on you probably covered on your own podcast. What are the traits? How do you effectively lead? How do you keep people engaged? How do you replicate that in office culture? Two things. First, leaders have to have the right mindset, right? This is your paradigm, your belief system. All of us have deeply inculcated belief systems that come from our parents, our kindergarten teachers, our sixth grade principal, whoever it is, right, our first boss. And none of us have complete or whole or accurate paradigms about ourselves, about our company, our culture, our industry. Our work ethic of people now who are working virtually, right? We have assumptions. We have warped paradigms, belief systems. So a leader's mindset is someone who's willing to challenge what they think is true. I'm asked all the time from people, well, I'm frustrated because I'm not quite sure my people are working from home, and I say, that thought has never crossed my mind once. I lead a team, a small team of about nine people. And four months, I got other issues. Are they working? One of them, because if they're not working, that was my fault a year ago, because I had not set the culture, I'd not set the standard, not modeled whether you're in front of me or not in front of me, what it is you're supposed to do, I'd not set clear expectations. So first, I think is the mindset. Your job as a leader is to get work done with and through other people. That's profound. It's so simple. If you believe your job is to get work done with and through other people, everything changes. The questions you ask, how vulnerable you are, how much you coach and mentor and slow down and build capabilities, it comes to the next point. If you believe your job is to get work done with and through other people, how you treat your virtual team is, are you checking in rather checking on? And again, that's rudimentary. But when that becomes your mindset, I'm checking in, how are you doing? What can I do for you? What are your struggles? What are your fears? I'm scared also. I'm nervous also. I'm struggling with distraction also. My three boys are interrupting my productivity also. I'm working 14 hours a day also. I haven't taken a vacation day in four months also, right? And you can relate to your people by checking in versus checking on. They will feel that they will see it, they will hear it. I think Zoom, Skype, meetings, rooms, whatever your platform is, is vital for this face-to-face connection. I think they should see you in your environment. You should see them in their environment and make it safe for them to tell you their truth, right? What is it they're struggling with and how can you help to cut the red tape? How can you empathize with them? How can you show empathy? These are small things, not epiphanies, but I think they're culture changing in the new reality, which is massive distraction, virtually no life balance, fear gripping everyone. Am I going to be seen as being productive? I'm going to be seen as being a vital, necessary part of the team, right? Am I learning anything? Do I have any boundaries? I don't know about you, 12 hours is a new norm, it's not healthy, it's not healthy, we're going to burn out, and leaders have got to set the standard, right? As I mentioned before, be a light, not a judge, be a model, not a critic, I hope that's helpful. I think it is. I think it's very helpful. I think it's what leaders should aspire to act like. I just find that a lot of leaders have trouble letting go, placing that confidence. I don't know how the leader even trains his or herself to let go and to allow people to feel that psychological security. That's something that I'm really, because it all starts. It always starts from the leader and how their own mindset and how they perceive themselves and their own effectiveness, and if they can go ahead, no, no, no, please, got finished. That was really where my thought was going, just how do you change your mindset as a leader, how do you trust as a leader? I think first is you look inside, right? I mean, it's an inside-out approach, and again, this may sound like Pablo, but it's not. It's 30 years of research and success stories and failure stories. Great leaders are vulnerable leaders. Great leaders don't try to be the smartest person in the room. The best leadership book I've ever read is she isn't ours. It's called Multipliers from Liz Weisman. This is a profound leadership book. Franklin Covey has acquired the rights to a new course on it, but Liz Weisman was a leader at Oracle for 20 years, a decade ago, she wrote a book called Multipliers. And the premise of the book is that every day as leaders, we are accidentally diminishing people, the natural kind of tendency, and our job is to move out of these nine diminishing profiles to become a multiplier, a multiplier of intelligence, a multiplier of creativity, a multiplier of contribution. And when you stop believing that you are as the leader, the smartest person in the room, when you stop being the genius, but rather the genius maker of others, you transform your culture. Virtually or in person doesn't matter. So I think as a leader, if you are vulnerable and you share your own fears, your mistakes, your concerns, and you balance that with humility and clarity. Like for instance, the nine people who work in report to me, they are uber clear on what I expect out of them, deadlines, contribution, quality level, there is no ambiguity. You know, one of my talents and one of my weaknesses is you don't need, you don't need help predicting what I'm thinking. I will tell you what it is I'm thinking, I am very clear. I am extraordinary clear on expectations and outcomes. My challenge, Scott, is I sometimes do it too courageously, right? I say it too harshly. I have to work on my diplomacy, my consideration, because you can be very clear in doing ways that are respectful. So one of my challenges as a leader is to make sure that when I am uber clear, I am not saying it in a way that is diminishing or offensive or to firm or stern, because I have a funny personality, but I also have a bit of a stern personality. And I don't know always what it's like to work with me. So I try to create a culture where people can say, Scott, that was a little bit harsh. Or Scott, that was a little offensive when they say to me, I don't get defensive. I say, thanks for saying that. I didn't realize that. I'm sorry. That's an incredible culture to foster, because the feel of the safety of being able to communicate that with, like that superior, is something that I don't think, you know, thinking back to my career when I've worked in different organizations, I don't think I've ever felt that before. And that's something that I think we should more, you're mentioning, you know, this is where the future of leadership is going. This is how you, that's how you be effective both inside or remotely. This is what leaders have to focus on. To that point, I'm going to just add to that point, I used to think that humility was a weakness, that it was your shy retiree. Humility is actually born out of confidence. Confident leaders can be humble leaders. Errogant leaders are incapable of demonstrating humility. That's why when you get on your phone or get on the Skype, resume with your team, admit, admit you're in your shorts. You know, it took a hour, four minutes ago. It meant that you two are having struggle focusing. You're not lowering the standard. You're building trust. You're building relationships. Right? I'm going to bust my butt today, but like you, I took a shower, probably an hour later than I would have, you know, five months ago, right? My team's going to get my, they're all out of me. People, people cleave to leaders that they can relate to. Gone is this sort of chasm. You know, unrelated ability of the leader is here and I'm down here and no, no, no, no, no. That's all gone. Leaders are just people that were promoted a little bit in advance of you. And they're being held to enormous account and they're trying their best to keep you engaged. But that's the huge fallacy, right? As leaders don't create engagement, leaders create the conditions for others to choose their own level of engagement high or low. Settle but prophetic. Well, it's just, it's just changing the, the onus from the leader trying to instill motivation to understanding the motivation is internally motivated and that leader is just enabling. Really? No, you said it well. Don't, don't, don't give me any, you're a masterclass in leader shifts here. You let me, I interrupted you and that was rude, I apologize. So thank you for letting me go on that tie rate. No, it's not a tie rate. This is, this is incredible stuff. And, you know, sometimes when I find myself doing these podcasts to be quite honest, I'm learning from you and I'm listening to you and then I'm like, oh, I have to ask a question after this because the staff you're saying, I, for me, is just very interesting because I think that it's so, so profound and so important and hearing it come from somebody that works for a leadership organization. I'm just, I'm grateful that you're, you're sort of speaking about all these things. Seriously. It's very, it's very good and I hope a lot of people listen to this and can internalize it as they grow through their own careers and what not because this is the way that leadership has to be. And this is, again, this is going to be, there's significant KPI, you know, revenue, shareholder advantages of this. So it's not just that high level, you know, esoteric, nice human being, take away, there's like, there's significant, there's significant tangible benefits to leading an organization like this. But. Can I share one, one thought on that too? Yeah. My, my, the biggest takeaway, I, the biggest takeaway from Stephen Covey was actually in the title of his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It's often misquoted as The Seven Habits of Highly Efficient People. Now, he was very deliberate because there was a difference between having an efficient mindset and an effectiveness mindset. And one of my biggest struggles, Scott as a leader, I love to have your leaders, your listeners identify with or just repudiate, is that I'm a very efficient person. It's actually served me very well in life, right? I like to get things done, check things off. I'm the kind of guy that gets up at three in the morning and writes my ink column, writes my books from, from four and five, I'm a dad from six to eight. I'm an officer from eight to six and I'm, I'm always on a treadmill. It's actually been a key contributor to my success in life, this efficiency mindset. The problem is, people like me, leaders like me that have this productive efficiency mindset, we try to use that same efficiency in our relationships and it causes havoc inside organizations. You cannot be efficient with people. You can be efficient mowing the lawn, efficient washing the car, efficient managing your social media and typing out a memo or an email. You have to be effective with people. I think that's why the book has been such a famous leadership book is because people like me that built their whole brand on efficiency, doing it fast and smart, they try to move that competency into their relationships and they implode with their partners, their friends, their spouse, their employees, their boss. There's a time to be efficient and there's a time to be effective. And I hope that your listeners and viewers think about that today. For those of you who see some of yourselves in me, probably very few of you, be thinking about this quote from Stephen Covey. He said with people, fast is slow and slow is fast. And that can fundamentally transform some of those relationships in your life that might be suffering because you try to speed through them like you post on Facebook. There's a huge lesson for me. It might be like a no brainer for some, but it's something I struggle with every day, kind of bringing my sense of productivity and efficiency in place when it comes times in meetings, one-on-ones, in conversations where I'm actually trying to build trust with someone, but I'm trying to do it too fast. I don't think that's common sense or common knowledge or common practice. I think that that's something that we all have to work on. I know as you're saying that, it rings very true for me because I try and develop processes for everything. I think the way that we structure our days, it sounds like very similar. I'm very robotic and logical in the way that I structure my day, but the second I try and carry that efficiency over to my partner, to my girlfriend, it doesn't work. You think that everyone's going to fit inside this little box and you want your life to run just so, but that's not the case with people, it doesn't work like that. I didn't want to ask a little bit about, I think it's topical to speak about what you're doing with the book now. What is going on with the book? What is Sean doing? What is the new messaging in the book or just maybe not new messaging, but expanding on original messaging? Yeah. Thank you for asking that. So the book, just we launched on this 38th anniversary about eight weeks ago, not quite eight weeks ago, and we didn't change a single word that Dr. Covey wrote, not a word. I mentioned that Sean Covey, who is the president of our global education division in the firm, he added new insights after each of the seven habits and beginning at the end and at the beginning of the end. And so what Sean did was say, okay, habit one, be proactive. Dr. Covey's dad wrote that section and then he added about a thousand words on, here's how I saw a school principal, be proactive. Here's how I saw a receptionist or a parent. And so he uses broad examples at the end of each of the seven habits on how this principal is still as relevant today as it was 30 years ago when his dad wrote the book. A lot of tangible stories, a lot of some stories on his own life. And Sean lost a daughter to depression and suicide about maybe eight years ago. And he shared some tender heartfelt stories about his own children. He shared stories about his dad and his mom, and also just, you know, in good business international examples of leaders who begin with the end in mind, leaders who put first things first, leaders who seek first to understand then to be understood. Here's how Sean has seen it happen in their business and their platforms. That was his contribution. And I think it's going to take the book into a new relevancy for the next 20 years. People who missed out on Dr. Covey, right? There's about a 10 year decade of people where either Dr. Covey had passed or was aging was in the public eye that didn't have a chance to appreciate his profound wisdom in his research. Again, Dr. Covey didn't invent any of this. He just did a discipline job of uncovering sequencing, naming it and then speaking about it, writing about it nonstop for 30 years, and it's built a seminal book with an endless legacy. But that's also, I think that's also important to note that the idea is that shape, leadership and business, like nobody, nobody is reinventing the wheel in the practice that we do. But again, it's always like common sense isn't common. So we need these types of playbooks and blueprints to be effective because knowledge is lost so quickly, unfortunately. And I think that we have to keep going back to people that, that's why you read leadership books from, from leaders that were not just around 50 years ago, but a thousand years ago. Right. Because those practices can still be drawn out, but it's just that naivety and just like that ignorance of, of how things have been done effectively before that leads to bad leadership. And perhaps writing about it or speaking about it in a way that's relevant to a new generation, right, with sometimes I think things could be too easily dismissed, some of the classics, right? I mean, I think Peter Drucker and Clayton Christensen and Jim Collins, if they don't keep their brands running and relevant, then, you know, 10 years ago, no one will know who Peter Drucker is. Because quite frankly, I'm telling you, although it's one of the greatest minds of our generation, there is no organization to keep his writings relevant, right? I'm not sure that 18-year-olds know who Peter Drucker is. I fear that 10 years from now, no one will know who Clayton Christensen is. One of the greatest minds of our generation, he passed about six months ago, a friend of mine on our Board of Directors, Harvard Business Professor, right, wrote, innovators dilemma, innovators solution. And I don't think that his organization will be enduring like Dr. Covey built an organization to keep his timeless principles that he wrote about relevant for kindergarten students and relevant for high school students and first-time leaders and board members. All these principles are relevant to every year of your life. What we've done well, I think, is to keep writing about them in ways that are current with new generations. I think that's smart. And I think that's what you have to do because it's not going to be, unfortunately, that wisdom doesn't transcend time the way it really should. So you have to have somebody that's going to bring it to the people that you want to who should be consuming it, like bright young minds, but consuming it in a way that they consume information now. It's about marketing, it's about brand, it's about positioning, it's about tapping into the resources and yet, as the people consume knowledge now, you have so many different ways that people are conditioned to consume information than they were 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 40 years ago. So you have to sort of tie it into that as well. But that's more of a brand and a marketing and just understanding, again, the times and how people learn and assume and whatnot. One thing I wanted to tee up, I have just two rapid fire questions to bring out some insights from yourself. But before we go there, was there anything that was in regards to the book or any of the messaging in the book, some leadership traits, anything that we didn't touch on that you wanted to go into? You know, other than this, I would say probably not. I think a lot of people, of course, have read the Seven Habits, right? People have it in their shelf, but I think it's one of those books that you come back to. It's kind of like, you know, I don't see a lot of movies, but I see Austin Powers multiple times. I love Austin Powers. I know it's kind of crazy, but I was obsessed with Mike Myers and I loved Austin Powers. I've seen it way too many times. But I think this book is kind of like the similar movie for me. Revisited. I don't need you to buy a new book. We don't need your $9, right? Your $15, although we'll take it graciously and with great appreciation, but it's kind of book. You have to re-purchase it because what Sean Covey added to the book in terms of new insights, I think can help you supercharge your own effective habits for your roles as parent, neighbor, son-in-law, partner, spouse, leader, colleague, friend, and just really get your own life centered around what your purpose and mission are. It's probably the book of its generation around helping reorient you to what you said, right? Common knowledge isn't common practice. After Covey was fond of saying to know, but not to do is not to know. And we know these principles inherently, but I think reading them and revisiting them probably every year or so can continue to keep you grounded on your true purpose and make sure that you're living in accordance with what you know to be true, but you're tempted to sort of separate from because there's so many demands or some distractions in life. Very good. Very well said. Okay. So, so rapid fire. I asked these to everyone. So, first question would be, what is one life lesson that you would tell your younger self? Shepard, your credit score better is from early in life, resist all of those things that are outwardly focused, right? For the lady who kind of purse you bought, for the guys, what kind of sneakers you have, the Mercedes or BMW, you really can't afford is be very thoughtful about your long-term reputation, your credit reputation, and also your personal reputation, right? Your reputation is really just a collection of all the decisions you make in life and next to your soul, if you're a spiritual or religious person, it probably is your most valuable asset. So, manage your credit score well and manage your reputation well, additionally. Very good advice. And the last question would be, what would be one resource outside of this book? You've actually met one, but another one that you would say would go check out. I said, multipliers by Liz Weissm, which I think is a phenomenal book, David Epstein, what a book called, Range, about nine months ago. This book talks about the difference between people whose careers are those of specialists and those who are generalists. And for me, it was a prophetic learning around, I'm a generalist, right, at a cocktail party. Am I an author? Am I a speaker? Am I a podcast host? Am I a salesperson? A sales manager? What am I? Versus I'm an anesthesiologist, I'm a commercial airline pilot, I'm a dental hygienist. And that I think a lot of specialists, later in life, might have wished they were generalists and a lot of generalists wish they were specialists, but he gives license to how generalists are probably going to be the future of innovation and creativity, generalists. It isn't just one or the other, but to me, I found it to be a prophetic understanding of owning and appreciating being a generalist, and I think in our 20s and 30s, a lot of generalists are insecure when we look at the podiatrist or the patent attorney, right, or the person who's got a specific chemical engineering degree, like my brother has. And then I think later in life, I really come in to appreciate, oh my gosh, I'm so glad I was a generalist, because now I can be on your podcast, because my knowledge base is so broad. And I hope somewhat useful because of the generalist insecure path I took in my 20s and my 30s. And I think that generalist path that David writes about in his book range comes into itself in your 40s and your 50s and your 60s. I think most C level people, perhaps other than a CFO, came there through a generalist path. I'm very interesting, that's an interesting perspective, but I think that it's manifesting itself in the amount of side hustles and career transitions that people are going through in their 20s and 30s, right? Yeah. I think most CEOs in the 70s, 80s came up through engineering, came up through product development, came up through sales. And I think as you're looking at the entrepreneurs that are just crushing it, they weren't specialists, they were generalists, they learned to do this and do this and do this, and they learned about that. It had this sensational curiosity, and they could sell them, they could market, they could develop, and now together that built this unprecedented range of skills that David Epstein writes about. Read this book, and it will fundamentally change which path you choose to go down, and maybe how you even as a specialist choose to better appreciate generalists and vice versa. Very good. Good recommendation. Thank you. Where did people, yeah, I've never, I've never had that recommendation before, so I appreciate it. But now, and I'll get a, I'll get an audible going. What's the best place to go, go learn more about, you know, the 30th anniversary launch of Seven Habits. Yeah. Go, what's your social website? All that stuff. Yeah, it's all easy to find, right? Visit FranklinCovvy.com. We have, you know, it's easy to find the Seven Habits, you can buy the book anywhere. We'd love to partner with organizations on a build their cultures and their leadership skills. You can find me on LinkedIn. My wife said it's hard not to find me, and that is an accompaniment, but you can find me on Twitter, Facebook, I'd love to have you connect on Instagram. And if you Google on leadership with Scott Miller, that's the name of the podcast I host. You can subscribe to that as well. That's all for today. Thanks again for joining me on another episode of the success story podcast. You can download or stream this podcast wherever podcasts are available, including iTunes, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, I Heart Radio, and many others. You can also watch this podcast on YouTube. If you haven't already, please subscribe and share this podcast with your friends, family, co-workers, and peers. Please leave us a rating on iTunes, it takes about 30 seconds, as it allows other people to find our podcast, and let's our amazing guests reach even more people with their message. And remember, any rating is fine, as long as it contains five stars. I'm Scott Clary from the success story podcast, signing off.