Welcome to Elevate with Elsner. Join us for inspiring conversations with individuals who have transformed their lives and are making a difference through the work that they do. And now, Welcome back to another episode of Elevate with Elsner. I'm your host, Blake Elsner. And today I'm joined by Landon Lynch, founder of Motive People Strategies, a firm that works with growth companies and their investors to help founders, CEOs, and senior teams communicate and operate together as the business starts demanding more speed and more consistency. Landon, welcome to the show. Man, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me on. Absolutely. So tell us kind of who Landon Lynch is before we dive into the whole, um, you know, people's strategies and how that all works. Tell us about who Yeah, I mean, it's funny. I think it kind of grows and Elevates almost year over year. And I actually, because of the kind of some of the work I do, I try to really distill my sense of purpose on a regular basis. And so my last big purpose kind of upgrade almost, I got to a sentence from like, I really do try to get out of bed most mornings. really focused on how do I serve people in order to create clarity, a sense of possibility, and then movement toward action wherever I go. So when I look at my list for the day of the people I'm meeting with, my clients, what I'm working on, my priorities, all the rest, it all just, it goes through that filter. So I think me That's great. I like that. You know, you know, when you look at your background, what, what kind of got you, you know, attracted to the human, I feel like, because as somebody who's, you know, surrounded by, you know, strategies and most, mostly people's strategies, what, what attracted you Well, honestly, it's I think it's the I always kind of followed my curiosity. I mean, I remember all the way back into school and everybody's trying to pick majors and everything. And I'm like, I'm just going to major in the thing that I'm most curious about. I'm going to major in the thing that I'm going to take the next step. I'm going to do a master's degree in the thing that just I can't stop scratching, you know, wanting to scratch the itch of that question in my head. And the more I drilled down as I moved forward throughout all my life and my professional career too, it was I wanted to solve problems. I wanted to be on the problem solving. How do we think of innovative solutions here? But every time I worked toward that end, and especially when I got into team environments, it kept coming back to, well, how exactly did the people operate that are at the center of the problem that was created? And then also the problem's solution. It's just if we can't understand those working parts, the problem doesn't solve itself because we put it on a spreadsheet correctly. The problem solves itself because the person understands it. They internalize it. They overcome limiting beliefs. And then they go and execute on it. And then they execute on it consistently, even when they bump up into roadblocks and barriers and resistant people in their world and everything else, because they saw it clearly enough. They built a plan. They built these kind of internal muscles and sense of resiliency to see through the hards. Like, so it's, once I got down to it and really kept drilling in, and I was being just curious about the next question, I just kept coming back to, man, the most interesting piece about this is what makes people actually the kind of person and the kind of people in a team environment that So inside of like a team environment, do you, do you like dive into like personalities? Do you do like disc Yeah, no, we leverage those tools for sure. I think some people, right, and like more power to them. It's a tool in my toolbox. It's not the thing we do. Some people, that's their whole gig and that's great. I mean, I know some people who all they do is personality stuff and they're like genius Yodas when it comes to the way that they do personality work. Like I want them working on me and that stuff. Um, but, uh, yeah, what, what I try to do is use it as a tool. And so you think about kind of personality, I think about it almost as, uh, uh, as a, as a lens, you know, and so I want to be able to ask, I want everybody in the team gets to function much more, uh, much more healthily and with a lot more effectiveness. If every single person on the team can at least answer some clear sentiment of like, what's it like on the other side of me. And cause if I, if I'm really ignorant to that, if I'm really oblivious, I'm usually making a whole bunch of messes that I and my team have to spend a lot of sideways energy cleaning up instead of driving toward the goal. So like the personality piece, I feel like has to be in there. Otherwise we're going to miss something along the way that. I Yeah, that makes sense. And to, to rewind a bit, you had talked about limiting beliefs and, you know, I think some people. I think a lot of us have them, um, and a lot, you know, have trouble fending it off and, and kind of flipping that and saying, you know, it's the whole thing, like 10 X in your goals, like, Hey, you know, when you ask somebody his goals, they did a hundred thousand, you know, this year they're like, Hey, let's do 120,000 next year. And it's like, you know, that type of stuff is like, because of a limiting belief and it's keeping you kind of grounded, I guess you would say to, Yeah, in myself, right? Well, I just, I don't know anybody who doesn't have them, I guess is my point, right? It's my limiting beliefs evolve, even when I do. The funny thing I've found for me is that it's like the more I grow mature, whatever, right? Like my limiting beliefs and my ego and some of the stuff that can really get in the way for me, like there's a good sense of ego and a sense of self. And then there's, we all know the, the Bass Ackwards version of it that gets in the way and takes you out at the knees. But for me, I just keep finding that like the more I grow, the more the better disguise my ego takes and the better disguises my limiting beliefs take. So it's almost like I have to work harder to uncover them because they're so much more easy to justify. Like when I'm young and my limiting belief, I don't know, you're 21, and you're trying to, you know, find a mate or something, right? You're just like, I just want a girlfriend and all I want. And it's like, the Limiting Belief feels so obvious, because it's like right there at the top. And it's just neon blinking lights around it. But the more you work, and the more you kind of like grow and everything now, like my Limiting Belief I think I was sorting through this past year was actually around social media and I remember one of my coaches actually pointed it out to me because I actually couldn't see it because it felt so justified was, oh, you actually believe that. If, uh, if you go and spend time and kind of put yourself out there on social media, you're going to get judged as being like hypocritical. You're going to get judged as being somebody who's just all about everybody look at me and now you're a showboat and everything else. And you believe that because that's what you do to other people. And I was like, damn, that's accurate. I've never had it put to me like that before, but it was sitting there the whole time below the surface calling the shots and it was limiting my ability to Yeah, no, that's a, that is a really powerful thing right there. I know. I, I, I think about, you know, these limiting beliefs all the time. And. I'm like every single day, I'm like, there's like multiple throughout the day. Like, and you're just like, come on, like, let's push through, let's flip it. So is there like a way that you like attack this, like for somebody else? Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you the two things that are most effective for me. I translate anything, basically anything I do with clients, I've done with me first. You know, if it's not effective for me, there's certainly things where people are wired differently than I am. So I just, I'll adjust my approach, but most of the time it's gone through the me filter at some point. And one of the things that has been really always kind of this anchor phrase is just who says, like, who says we can't? And I want an actual answer to that. Is it some outside expectation that says I can't? Is it actually like the narratives that I believed for a long time growing up? And oh, that's what says I can't. But that's not actually a can't. That's just an ought or it's a should. It's not a can't. Right. Um, like my, my dad, God bless him. Right. But my dad, um, every single thing for him has to be like tested nine times over and be hyper rigid and figure out all the details before you run. I'm more of a. Start with the vision. And if the vision is good enough, I'll go back and figure out the details. You can imagine that created some friction for us growing up, but either way, that voice is in the back of my head, whether I want it to be there or not, or whether it's helpful in the moment or not. So I literally have gone like, Oh, who says I can't. I'm like. It's not like dad telling me I can't it's that like I that voice is sitting there going is that really responsible? I'm like well But once I identify where it's coming from at least then I can make a choice and then the other thing that's been really helpful is just What would have to be true for? And so that that helps me get me over the hump sometimes because I'm like well I want to do that it feels kind of impossible and then just a pause for a second ago. Whoa, I Okay. What exactly would have to be true for it to be possible? Like, what am I actually solving for here? I'm not solving for how impossible this gap feels. I'm solving for these few items that would put that within the realm of possibility. Like, is that actually within my control? And usually a few of those items that I land on, they So when you, and, you know, do all this inside of a business and you like take these tactics and throw it to, you know, a board, a CEO, and how does that all, you know, play out? Like, you know, you come into like a messy situation, you know, you're the messy middle. Right. And you, you start to iron things out. What, what does that like Well, I'll say, I mean, I'll give a recent for instance, because otherwise, I think talking in big, you know, big terms probably isn't very helpful to most people. But brought in to help navigate a CEO succession not too long ago. And the You know the communication between the board and the CEO and the successor it all just kind of gotten jumbled and there were a lot of assumptions being thrown around and it felt like they weren't making much progress and people were kind of on the verge of like just. really doubting in each other, whether or not I can trust you. Not general doubts, but can I really trust your intent here? And one of the very first things that we do is just go, well, OK, what would have to be true for us to trust that we can actually move through this? Well, I've got to be able to trust the people. And I've got to be able to trust the process. And if I can trust the people, their intent toward me, and if I can trust the process that like this process is good, it's not. completely messed up. And then I can trust the outcome. Because if I trust, if I trust the people's intent, but the process is broken, it doesn't matter how great the people are, the process is jacked up, and we're never going to get to the right outcome. And if I trust the, if I trust the process, it's really good, but I don't trust the intent of the people. It doesn't matter what the process is, if you have crappy people trying to execute it. Cause they're going to be looking for every loophole and everything else. So it's like, how do we establish trust in both of those areas? And so we set out a process that would help rein in some of our, you know, just some of the places we could go sideways. Some of the places we could maybe break trust unnecessarily because of lack of clarity. Cause I always say like when you leave people in the dark, they see monsters. So like really being explicit about the process is kind of a way of turning the lights on for everybody. And then we just, everybody on a whiteboard, it was really like flip charts, right? Stuck up to the wall, but it was write down your definition of success for this process. Like, how would you know this is successful? And then we just started talking about, okay, well, this is their definition of success. It's actually not too far off from yours. And then as everybody looked at everybody else's, they actually got to raise trust with each other because they got to see everybody else in the room saying, I want that for you. I want you to ride off into the sunset. I want you to have a really good experience your last handful of months here. I want you to leave a legacy. I want you to be set up for success. I don't want to leave you with a pile of crap to have to clean up. And I actually want there to be a good return for board members. I don't want to make any big decisions as I'm on my way out that compromises that, right? Like everybody just be able to explicitly say, I want, I want, and people to be able to hear others say, I want that. for you. Okay, great. With that in view, now, what are the most important things we need to accomplish to hit those definitions of success for everybody on the way to the end goal, which is, you know, the transition point in a handful of months? And then with that anchoring, and everybody being explicit, all of a sudden, I get, I get to walk in with a lot more clarity. And, you know, we can, we can establish and raise trust and drive through it. Because a Yeah, that's so when you look at like the founders, right? So a founder of a company and then the leadership teams, would you say like trust and transparency is kind of the common breakdown that Certainly, yeah. But it's not, I think the tricky thing is, right, people go, well, right, like employees a lot of times to their supervisors or to the senior team will say, well, I just wish they would trust us more. Well, yeah, of course, but I'm like, make it easy for them to trust you by being clear and by being explicit. I mean, it's, we always, everybody always wants trust, but they, but they very rarely want to do the work of getting clear enough to make it easy for somebody else to trust them. People feel very, I don't know why, but entitled to trust without having actually walked through the steps of building it. And so when you can kind of pull back the curtain and create Steps on here's what trust is and what it isn't and here's how trust is built now here the outcomes that we want to walk through this and check the boxes that would allow us to trust each other along the way so that a lack of trust doesn't get away and create unnecessary friction here and then. That is often times what happens because there's a lot of assumptions coming in when you have a founder coming in with a board because. They do have a desire. They do have a definition of success. And oftentimes, because they're a founder and they've only run in this one lane all the time, they don't even know necessarily how to articulate. their definition of success yet. And a lot of times the board, they're making a bunch of assumptions about what that definition is. They know their own, they've worked with so many other founders in the past. And so a lot of times that exercise of just drilling down onto this new, this founder who's beginning to take on investor money for the first time, drilling down onto their definition of success can Uh, yeah, that, that makes, makes complete sense. So if, what would you give it, what would you say to some, you know, a founder who feels like, I guess their board would be like working against Like if they feel like they're getting worked against, the worst thing you can do is walk into the meeting and be like, what the hell guys? I think one of the best things you can do is begin with observation as opposed to judgment, right? Like, hey, here are a handful of things that have happened. This is actually, this is just a tool I use with people all the time. We just call it the functional feedback loop. And so it's like, look, I got to learn how to give good feedback, especially if I'm leading an organization. So I've got to be able to give good feedback to my board if I expect to be able to get good feedback from the people who report to me. So what's your observation? Just call it nonjudgment. Hey, we've we've had this number of conversations over this amount of time. We still haven't landed on anything that's really actionable in this area. And I wonder if that's because and then start with what you can own from a judgment standpoint. Then figure out how you can take responsibility for what comes next. Just go, hey, I'm going to make sure I own my part of this. I'm going to come ready to board meetings with answers to these three questions. I want to ask you, before we get to the next board meeting, if you all can sort out these two items. And then I'm going to check in with you in two weeks just to make sure we're actually getting traction on that, because that's a real differentiator for me. It's a deal breaker when it comes to long term, us being on the same page about creating the successful outcome together, right? I want to trust you. These would be things that would help help us like really accelerate because we did trust each other, right? So obviously, you got to get situationally specific for that to have the most impact. But it's a lot of times people start with, you know, like, hey, you guys got to stop doing this because that's messed up. Instead of Hey, here's a couple of things that just haven't gotten across the finish line. And here's my part in it and what I can own about that. And then talking about, you know, Hey, what are the one, two or three things we can do very practically as far as next steps here, instead of here's the laundry list of things you need to fix before our next meeting. Well, I know you, I know you would iron that out. So that's, that's why I was just, I was bringing that up because you never know. Right. Might be something that you're, you're working on. Right. So say that's all good. The, you know, that's all great. How do you build the next, I guess, layer of leaders from, you know, like what's the founder's role, um, inside of a company that's moving super fast. What's the founder's role in, in develop, helping develop leaders. Yeah. I'd say. Really really two things if they have a team if they have an lnd team it's going to do the kind of functional work with it and developing a. An academy or a pipeline or whatever language organization will see you for that but. The founder needs to go first because if the founder isn't speaking the language if they're not being coached if the founder isn't. If they're not beating the drum and they're beating some other drum and they expect people to pay attention to something they're not willing to pay attention to, it will not get traction. It doesn't matter how great and charismatic your L&D team is, but if the founder, if the CEO isn't saying, this is essential, it's so essential that I'm involved. Yes, I'm at my level involved, but I'm involved, then everybody's going to go find out what the founder actually thinks is essential, and then they're going to commit their time there. So they've got to go first. Leaders always go first. And then I think the second piece is just to make sure that they're allocating the right amount of resources to make sure that it's actually special and additive toward people and not just something else people have to do to prove themselves. I think that's where when you think about an actual employee development program, as opposed to, hey, we're just going to ship you off to this academy. How do I help track where people are, where they want to get? What are the manager touch points along the way that actually facilitate that? What are the outside training and facilitation and coaching that they need to supplement that? Why does that matter to them? If we don't have a lot of those dynamics happening in the middle, it can be really exciting, but oftentimes for short bursts instead of actually creating a new normal that really creates a pipeline of Okay, so we got leaders, so what separates leaders who want to scale with the company and those who don't? Well, some it's just not their desire, right? I think there are plenty of leaders that just go, look, this is a This is a nice asset. I like exactly where we're at in the market. I'm happy with the products that we put out. I'm happy with the customer service we provide. And this is the lifestyle that I want. And so some leaders go and take investor money and try to scale and do all of that. And they're just not built for it. They don't actually have any desire to. And so I think first, they've got to be honest about what they really want. And I think that actually takes some work because there's a lot to sit through to actually identify what I really want a lot of times. So that's oftentimes I get brought in during due diligence to just help sit through that because a founder that's clear on what they want is a lot easier of a founder to actually work with. And then I think the second piece is, A lot of times the founders that say they don't want to scale are really in a slow decline, so they've got to acknowledge that. It doesn't mean I need to go to be a $100 million company, but if you're not growing and evolving and developing, you're usually atrophying in some way. I think there's a lot of founders that could take on money, they could take on a partner, they could take on, you know, maybe private capital of some other sort, just to get them into a new market or a new product or something that allows them to expand their reach. And It will mean A, either they have to learn a new skill set, and some just don't want to learn a new skill set at that point in their career, because maybe they've been doing it for 30 years. Or B, they have to learn the skill set of just kind of creating a succession plan and letting go. Take on the money, develop your successor, and then you get to enjoy the lifestyle that you want, but the company gets to continue in a healthy path moving forward. I think both of those are just really challenging for most founders, because operating as a founder, you're making the calls, you're the center of the universe. And if you haven't worked those muscles, it Yeah, no, that it's interesting to hear you kind of frame that in a way, because, you know, being, I guess, a business owner, you know, you call your own shots, I'm not in control of people. But it's interesting to hear how, you know, it can I can see how it'd be. difficult to, to try to change or adapt to a new, like you're saying, a new, um, succession. So I guess what would you say the hardest, uh, inside, you know, a founder leader, I mean, what's like the hardest conversation you That's probably a mix between what do you really want out of this? and helping them drill down because even most founders I want, if they're good people, I think really well-intended people, everybody else's needs, I've carried those for a lot of years. I want to provide for people. I want to provide for my family. There's a lot of oughts and shoulds to sift through. Actually, what do you want? What does self-actualization look like for you? What does meaning out of this actually look like for you? What does satisfaction look like for you in all of this? And so I think there's a lot of that to sift through. because it really does guide the way that we behave, whether we're explicit about it or it just comes in at inconvenient times and derails things because it really is what we want. It's calling the shots from the background. It's that or it's what's it like on the other side of you. And a lot of times the assumption that gets made is, and it's not something people will say explicitly, it's just the thing that gets acted out is, Well, I'm the owner, therefore, people need to adjust to me. Or I'm the leader and I have the title, therefore, everybody should adjust to me. Instead, the much better mindset and the only mindset that will actually scale and maintain your culture and your identity and all that with it is, I'm the leader, therefore, I have a unique and greater ability to adjust to everybody else to make them successful. And so that should be one of my first prerogatives, is not lowering my standards, but adjusting my approach to make them successful is Yeah, no, that's powerful stuff. And I, you know, all these even I love that you're giving, you know, real case scenarios to that you're like thinking of, because this clearly is what you do. So when you give real case scenarios, clearly other people have these same scenarios that curried and their business or their founder, their board, their leaders, and are probably going, wow, I need that same, same advice over here. So where would you say people could Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn or Instagram. You can go to motivestrat.com. And actually, I think probably the coolest. way to connect right now is just I've got a bunch of different clients who have pulled me in and started having conversations about, how in the world do we think about the change management reality of integrating AI? Because we know we have to. We don't want to fall behind, but it just feels like this, I don't even know how to begin. I put together this four-day AI accelerator. It's MotiveAIAccelerator.com. And so the, but the accelerator is free. And then we can obviously have more conversation about that, because the change management of it all, and the leadership of it all, that's the real challenge. It's not the tech, the tech, yeah, that's the tech, but you can learn the tech, it's the change management. That's the real leadership opportunity or, you know, issue that people are coming up against. So those would be great Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. Anytime you can give somebody something, a free accelerator, that's, that's tremendous. Cause yeah, AI is obviously we didn't touch on it, which is perfect. You can obviously expand on AI with them on a phone call or a call on zoom or however you do it. But yeah, that's awesome. We'll definitely put that accelerator in the show notes so that way people can go on there and get that. And we will obviously put at Landon C. Lynch in there on your Instagram. like you said on his LinkedIn, also at Motive Strategies. You can find all about it there. Any final advice for founders Yeah, I just I think we can come back to the drum we've been beating if there was one piece left. I think getting really curious today about what it's like on the other side of you is a great place to start. And the best people to help you with are the people you spend the most time with. So I think if you get an opportunity to walk around and just going, hey, ask one question like, what's it like on the other side of me? And just see how they respond and then add on the layer after they've given you a response. Okay, now when I'm under stress, what's it like on the other side of me? And listen to their response and then just start working through a few thoughts on like, what do I wanna do about that? To just make me a little more effective, increase my influence just a little bit over That's powerful stuff. I, you know, I feel like that couldn't be any better of advice. I appreciate you coming Absolutely. That's a wrap on today's episode of Elevate with Elsner. This resonated with you, share it with a founder or operator who needs to hear it until next time. One Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you consume podcasts. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. And if you feel so inclined, please leave us a review and tell your