10MINMC.Ep17.V1.AUDIO (1)
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Trey Sheneman: [00:00:00] You want to grow faster than 99% of the people that you meet. Then here's the plan. Be someone who feels like you can learn anything from everyone that you meet.
Welcome to 10 Minute Masterclass, your weekly mic drop for business breakthrough. I'm your host and lead mc Tray Sheneman. It is my goal each and every week on  10 Minute Masterclass to teach you timeless business principles that can help you unlock today's business problems. Now, the typical way we do that is through something we call the core four drivers of growth, because no matter when I was taking my own start ups to market like I'm doing right now with our company Herald, or Running Growth inside of some well-known brands, one of which we're gonna talk about here in just a minute.
I always saw [00:01:00] growth functionally slow down when we encountered problems or bottlenecks in one of these core four drivers, marketing, sales, operations, and leadership. Now, before we jump into today's leadership lesson, I do wanna remind you if you hadn't heard yet, I. If you've been listening, you've heard, but if you hadn't heard, Jeff, this is your first episode, you're just joining us.
We did get our first sponsor. It's amazing. And it's in the travel vertical. So if you're somebody who likes to travel, um, you can travel flexibly, you're self-employed, or, um, you know, maybe you guys don't have children yet, or you, you know, you have children and they've moved out. Like whatever it is, you're not beholden to a set schedule and you can travel whenever you want.
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As a, as a thank you for listening and, uh, subscribing to 10 minute masterclass. All right, so let's, let's jump in. In today's [00:02:00] episode, we're gonna talk about leadership. Specifically. We're gonna talk about the greatest leadership lesson that Brendan Burchard ever taught me. Now, I worked for Brendan for, in a really short period, a little bit less than a year.
Um, uh. Nothing against Brendan's phenomenal leader Growth Day, the his, his current company, phenomenal organization. I love that team. I had just started my current company, Herald, on the side. And Herald was growing a lot faster, honestly, than I anticipated. It was gonna grow at the time. And so what was originally gonna be a three to five year run in my brain of helping, uh, work at Growth Day ended up being short-lived just because of being able to step into being an entrepreneur and.
Those of you that are close to me, um, know that we've had some health issues going on with our son. And so entrepreneurship has been a very flexible vehicle for us. So anyways, my time at Growth Day was a lot shorter than I really went into it thinking it would be, but man, was it packed with wisdom at every turn.
Working with Brendan was an incredible opportunity and I remember in the early days of being there, Brendan and I were doing [00:03:00] one-on-ones and he. Taught me this concept that I'm gonna share with you guys today. And man, it just hit me square between the eyes and I think it's gonna do the same for you.
And Brendan was talking to me about mentorship and he, uh, made this remark 'cause I, I was telling him, I had told him a story about this mentor I had early on in my career and he said, most people chase one perfect mentor. Um, but in his experience, the best leaders he had ever learned from and been around are the ones who could mine for wisdom anywhere.
Man, I just thought that was like, oh, mining for wisdom anywhere. Uh, and the phrase that he uses to talk about these kinds of leaders is he calls 'em mavericks with mentors. Uh, it means you, you're a maverick. You kind of have your own way of leading, but you're willing to learn from anyone that you meet and kind of be.
Open-handed with that way you lead. And that one principle man I, that, that really shaped me, especially now stepping in my own startup at Herald. Um, and I genuinely believe it helps me grow faster in [00:04:00] business. It helps me lead more empathetically when I carry a posture of being able to learn something from anyone.
Uh, and it also allows me to not burn out by thinking that I have to do it all alone. That there are other people out there who have been where I want to go. Uh, there are other people out there who have done things I'll never do, and, uh, those people might be in the grocery store down the street or at the golf course.
You know, I like to play golf, um, in an, in an airplane and they randomly sat beside me on an open seating Southwest plane. And so there's just a posture there to being able to learn from anyone. And, and ultimately the posture to me is a, a little bit two sided. The first side is staying humbly curious. Um, the way we, we actually keep this as a core value inside of Herald.
We call it humble discontent, and the idea of humble curiosity in this manner is that I can learn from anyone at the same time. On the other side of humble curiosity is intentional generosity, which is I'm also [00:05:00] willing to mentor anyone. I'm not going to keep the things that I've learned to myself. I'm gonna share them with the world.
And one of the ways that I step into this, and I, and I hope that I do a decent job of it, I really, really do take it seriously, is making this podcast. This is a, a way for me to mentor anyone, anyone could listen to this podcast and hopefully learn something that's very applicable to their business. Uh, another aspect of the way I try and stay intentionally generous is I do mentor people, offer to mentor people a lot.
And I, I try and publish really great content on LinkedIn. I take my LinkedIn profile very serious. I try and teach from that platform all the time. Um, you know, I'm not some huge influencer or anything, but I just take it seriously because I want to embody this concept of being math fix with mentors, of living out this balancing act of humble curiosity and intentional generosity.
So let me. Let me unpack those, kind of, those kind of postures a little further and really walk through the levels of this mindset that I think of how, if you're thinking, well, how do I actually do [00:06:00] that, Trey? Like, how do I, how do I live those things out? I actually think it's pretty simple. So the first step to living this out is you have to value curiosity over certainty.
Um, it's being able to ask the right questions and not the desire to be right. That's the balance. 'cause great leaders, the best leaders I've ever worked with, they ask more questions than they give answers. They enter every room thinking, what can I learn from this person's experience, perspective, or pain When I meet someone, um, I.
You know, I, I, I've certain I've learned some of the best marketing ideas from people that have 500 followers, not 500,000. Um, I had an intern that worked for me one time at a past agency, and that was the hardest working individual I've ever met in my entire life. I've worked with thousands of people in person at this point.
This 19-year-old kid blew me away with how hard he worked. It challenged me. Because I was being a little bit of a bum, if you know what I'm saying. And so I would say a way that you can practice this curiosity over certainty is, especially if you're a [00:07:00] person of rank, if you're the owner, find someone junior on a team and the next time you have a question, ask them their perspective first.
I. Don't push back on their answer either. Just take their answer and say, thank you so much for that perspective. That's one way you can start embodying curiosity as you carry yourself on. So that's number one. Uh, another way to think about embodying this mindset is to turn your ego off and to turn your ears on.
Um, insecure leaders block growth by pretending to know it all. You don't really, you don't. Alright. I don't either. It's okay to not know it All really confident leaders can drop that act really fast. And because they're willing to drop that act and learn from anywhere, guess what happens? Man they level up so much quicker than the people who cannot drop that act.
Um. I remember, you know, when, when I was learning this concept from Brendan, I was just an independent contributor. It was the first time in my career in like nine or 10 years that, I mean, I kind of had some people that were somewhat reporting to me, but it was a [00:08:00] little bit of a different kind of a setup there.
Um, and I remember thinking like. I'm not really leading here, but Brenda's remark was like, you're leading here, like you're leading here because everyone's learning from you. That sort of thing. And so turn your ego off. You know, my ego was kind of get in the way of like, I don't really have the responsibility I'm used to.
And he's like, you know, turn your ears on. Listen for the opportunities where you can step in and add value. And so that was really good. So one way to me that I think you can turn your ears on is to keep what I call a mentor map. Have people in your life that you're learning from spiritually. Physically, emotionally, personally, professionally.
Now, that might be one really good mentor that's doing all those things, or it might be five, but keep a mentor map so you can make sure that you're being challenged and you've got your ears onto the right people. The last way that you can practice this curiosity, this, uh, this concept around being a maverick, a mentor, is to be teaching.
You have to give to grow. So even if you're not being mentored right now, mentor someone else and teach them. When you mentor someone, [00:09:00] even if it's informally, you're reinforcing your own beliefs in your brain. Those are being cemented in you, is sharpening your thinking, and more importantly, it's creating a legacy.
And legacy is powerful. So. Go through your text messages, find somebody that, that strikes you and text 'em and say, Hey, I was thinking of you. If you ever want to jam on X, y, Z topic, like my text might say on business growth or strategy or something like that, I'd love to take you to breakfast one day and just hang out.
You'd be really surprised by how blessed someone would feel if you were sending them that message. So as you're stepping into this and you really wanna learn more about mentorship, being mentored and, and, uh, having a, a mentee, somebody you're leading and being a mentee. Uh, from a mentor yourself, just keep in mind there's different levels of mentorship.
Like right now in my life, I would say there's kind of three different levels of mentorship. I haven't even been practicing. There's direct mentorship, like I'm mentoring two different, uh, young men right now. I. There's indirect mentorship. That's where you're learning from people's content, their podcasts, their books.
I'm being indirectly mentored. I've got three books I'm reading right now. I follow four or five pods [00:10:00] pretty regularly. Um, I'm, I follow a couple of creators on LinkedIn, so that's indirect. And then there's situa situational mentorship, which is where you're in the moment with people and you're able to put value right where you are.
So all three of those matter. They all three that they all three, help you grow. At the end of the day, if you want to be a great leader. Which I think if you're listening to this, that means you wanna be a great leader. It's really simple. Learn from everyone. Learn from everyone. Be generous with what you know, and never forget.
It's not about being the perfect guide, or finding the perfect guide, or being the perfect mentor. It's about the posture of being open to learn anything from anyone, anywhere. I hope you got some value out of this. Thanks so much for listening, and until next time on 10 Minute Masterclass, we'll see you on the flip side.
