In this episode, Jeff Hilimire and I dug into his book “The Great Team Turnaround“.
You can listen to the episode here:
You can find more about Jeff at JeffHilimire.com or Ripples.media.
Full Transcript:
Mickey: “When we measure something, we find ways to work on it. And when done across an entire team or company measurement allows everyone to know how they can impact the goals and even create new ones.” So that was from Jeff Hilimire’s book, “The Great Team Turnaround”. And here to chat about it today is Jeff Hilimire.
So Jeff, excited to have you on here. The second time I’ve had the author come to talk about their book. So great to have you here.
Jeff: I’m honored Mickey. It’s, uh, it’s great to be here and I love the podcast. So yeah, let’s get into it.
Mickey: Yeah, cool. This book, of course, I’ve known about it from, from you and from our mutual friends Adam and Sanjay and all these folks for a while, but I’ve had a few other folks say, you have to read this.
I’ve made sure I already had, but I’m more excited to dig into it because it’s gotten so much acclaim from the local community that I’m in, so. Excited to talk about it, but I guess kind of give us the overview. What, what’s the great team turnaround about? Why, why should someone pick this up?
Jeff: Yeah. You know, it’s interesting.
I’ll, I’ll go back just for a second in time. I wrote my first book, published it in 2019 called the five day turnaround. And that book was really [00:01:00] focused on, um, learning how to lead and, and, uh, act like an entrepreneur, even if you’re not one, and so. That book I thought was going to be the only book and then I sort of liked writing And I liked the characters as you know, since you’ve checked it out, like I write As almost like a narrative fiction.
Um, and so I like Patrick Lencioni and those, so I just write like that. It’s easier for me anyway. Um, and so I started to like, enjoy these characters and then I was going to write the culture turnaround and then COVID hit. And then I said, okay, let me write a book about leading during a crisis. So I took these same characters, more or less put them through a crisis that became the crisis turnaround.
Um, and after writing those two books, I put a lot of purpose, vision, tenants, and values in PV TV, which I know we’ll talk about. And so a lot of people kept asking me, Hey, I’d like more information on PV TV. That’s it. You know, when I would give talks, that would be the thing people would ask me questions about.
So, so I, once again, put the culture turnaround on pause and said, okay, let me [00:02:00] write a book more focused on PV TV. And that’s what the great team turnaround became is a book about putting purpose into a company, um, in the format that I use, which is PV TV. And then adding to that. Something that I’ve really enjoyed, which is the great game of business.
Um, and we can talk more about that. And then to finish the story, then last year I put out, or the year before I put out the culture turnaround, um, which dives even deeper into PV TV. And then later this year, I’m putting out the purpose playbook, which is literally like a workbook for how to implement purpose, vision, tenants, and values.
So. The great team turnaround is really meant for leaders who want to build a team that not only has an authentic purpose that they’re all rowing toward, but also has, um, an interest in the business succeeding. And so the great game of business helps you put that piece of it together.
Mickey: Yeah, it was interesting mix of those two.
Um, before I go further there though, I just finished reading the book bird by bird from Anne [00:03:00] Lamott, which have you ever read that one?
Jeff: That book is on my bookshelf here. Those are my favorite books. That’s one of the books on my bookshelf.
Mickey: I figured, yeah, I expected that much, but one of the things that stood out to me when you were just talking, she talks about how you need to spend time to get to know your characters and build that.
And, you know, cause she’s talking about writing a novel, but. That’s a huge advantage you have is you keep getting to reuse the same characters. And I guess that’s the advantage of writing a series of books on the same topic is you get to know these people pretty well, you know, these, these fake characters, which is funny
Jeff: about that bird by bird and on writing by Stephen King are the two books that I have sort of brought to bear into my books the most.
And, and yet they’re talking about writing fiction, which I’m, which I’m really kind of not, I’m writing business books,
Mickey: but
Jeff: I reference bird by bird and I don’t know. I might’ve referenced it in a great team turnaround, but I definitely referenced it in the, the upcoming book.
Mickey: Gotcha. Awesome. But it was, yeah, Robert on our team has been encouraging me to read it.
Cause he’s, he’s a prolific writer as well. And so that was a good one to finally, you know,
Jeff: it’s fun too. You talk about these characters. Um, as I went to [00:04:00] write book five, um, the purpose playbook coming out, um, in three or four months, and. I had forgotten a lot about the characters. And so I was just like, Oh my gosh, am I going to have to reread all these books and start making notes?
Like, you know, some sort of like, I can imagine a game of thrones, you know, he had like all the characters and all that. And then I was like, wait a minute. And I use chat GPT, I uploaded all the books as a PDF and I created what I called the turnaround universe in chat GPT. And now I can ask it any question about any of them.
So as in book five, as I had characters like having interaction, I literally went. Did these two characters ever meet before? And if so, what was, you know, what was the scene or has this character ever been in this coffee shop? Cause I was about to write, you know, her, you know, Oh, the interesting that this coffee shop.
And I’m like, wait a minute, I can’t be sure she hasn’t been in this coffee shop. So I was able to ask. So anyways, yeah, it was pretty, pretty fun.
Mickey: That’s a good use of it. You have that custom GPT and just call on all through the process to, yeah, very cool. Um, so PVTV purpose, vision, [00:05:00] tenants, and values. Um, I think that that’s kind of the main, I would say that’s the main focus of the book is unpacking those.
So let’s unpack those a little bit. So purpose, vision, talents, and values. So start with purpose. So tell us kind of what, where does that fit in here?
Jeff: Yep. So purpose, you know, is the why that your company exists. Um, I’m a, just a massive believer that business should be a force for good in the world. I’m also believer that, um, the more.
Team members feel like their work is important and understand why this company is good for the world. Um, the better work they’ll do, but also the happier they’ll be. Um, and then circular, they do better work, happy employees. So it all starts with like unearthing. What is that purpose? Um, my current company.
Purpose group is a holding company in which we buy businesses and help them run this playbook, the purpose playbook, help them put, you know, PV, TV into action, the great game of business into action. And a lot of people say to me, Oh, so you’re buying companies and then putting purpose into [00:06:00] them. And I’d sort of say, not really, I’m trying to help them unearth their purpose.
So the first company that we bought is, uh, uh, Print apparel and signs company that’s been around for 40, 45 years in Bowling Green, Kentucky, 75 employees. And we just went through the process with them this last January, where we brought the entire company together and did a full day having everybody sort of draw out, you know, what’s important to them.
What are the moments that they’ve been working at this company? Some of which have been working there for 15 years. You know, what, what is the, what are the exciting points? What are the parts they feel the most proud about? And From that comes this, you know, what I hope is an authentic purpose that everybody in the company has had a chance of, of helping create.
Mickey: Gotcha. I like that. Yeah. I think from the book, you said something like purpose is the reason you exist, the change you want to make essentially. So yeah,
Jeff: that’s right.
Mickey: And then for me, and I’ll hit, I’ll pull this quote in later, but purpose and vision in my mind kind of get a little. Messy, but you did a good job of breaking them out in the book.
So what does vision look like compared to purpose?
Jeff: Yeah. And I should, um, I should say too, like, I’m not trying to [00:07:00] say, um, this is what vision is in the broader landscape of business. Like I use vision a bit differently than some use vision. Um, I don’t even use mission. I don’t, I don’t, I haven’t yet found a use for another thing to put into this.
So to me. If you sort of think about purpose, vision, tenets, and values, purpose is at the top and values are at the bottom and they’re evergreen, um, your, your values are how you, and we’ll get to that, but they’re how you’re going to behave. And your, your purpose is why you exist. What I found as I developed this over the years, um, and I, and I started it and sort of workshopped it through dragon army.
Um, but it started with engage actually before that. I realized that not only do people, um, crave that. You know, that bigger vision for why they exist and why they’re doing this. They also want a roadmap and they want a, and leaders often struggle with doing either side of this. So either I’ve, I know many leaders that struggle [00:08:00] with, how do I give people a, you know, a bigger reason for this company existing other than, you know, them making money.
Um, And then at the same time, I’ve also found many leaders that struggle as their company grows with keeping everybody on the same page as to what we’re trying to accomplish and where we’re trying to get and how we’re trying to get there. So. My construct is a bit different. It’s not all Simon Sinek.
It’s not all, you know, big idea and, and big, big purpose. It’s also the playbook. So I, I consider the vision and tenants to be the playbook. The vision is where you want to take your company over the next three to five years. That’s how I think of it. Like what, what kind of company do you see yourself being three years from now?
And then the tenants are how you’re going to do that. So it’s almost like there’s a, there’s a map to where you’re going in the middle of this structure that allows people to say, Oh, I’m here for this bigger reason. But here’s what I’m doing today and here’s how I’m working to get there. So that’s how I see vision over time.
You should evaluate vision every year. And so it should shift and [00:09:00] change. And then if it changes, your tenants change. Your tenants are the, the, how you’re going to achieve that vision.
Mickey: Gotcha. I like that. So in the book, two of the characters were talking and one of them asked the other, what is a company’s purpose?
She thought for a minute and said, I believe it is the reason for being. It is meant to be larger in scope than their vision, which is the company they wish to become. Right. And that’s exactly what you said. Yeah. Purpose doesn’t change. I guess that brings an interesting question then too. So you go purpose, vision, tenants, values, and purpose and values are the ones that don’t change.
Why not have values be the first, first V. Why not hit your purpose, hit your values and then unpack the tenants and vision. I’m guessing you had a good reason for that. So
Jeff: yeah, um, it’s, it’s a, it’s a great question. I like the visual as I think about it in my mind and oftentimes as I whiteboarded of your purpose and your values.
Yeah. Perfect. Sort of overriding everything. And so there are the top and the bottom, or if you drew a circle, oftentimes I do the purpose in the center and then on the outer ring is the values. So I kind of feel like those two things keep [00:10:00] everything in check. So that’s, that’s really how I, I think about it.
I will say, um, when I originally was developing this, um, the initial seeds of this concept, um, this would probably have been. At 2010, 2011, 2012, when I had sold my company to private equity and I was no longer able to sort of infuse the, the idea of why we’re doing this just naturally as an entrepreneur, I was looking for, you know, more language and more things and, and actually struggled really hard with.
Um, for a long time, I, I found it, unless you’re like, uh, a Bombas socks or, um, Tom shoes or something where like, you’re literally doing good through your actual business. Um, uh, Patagonia, like I could see how they would have an authentic purpose, but it was really hard for me to figure out that an agency could have an actual purpose without it sounding like BS to be honest.
So I re I say that to say I originally just had [00:11:00] VTV. Vision tenants and values. Um, and then through a lot of conversations and, and, uh, soul searching, I ultimately, um, found a path to finding a purpose for my companies and then I think for others. So then I put them to me, purpose is the big, the big one.
So I put that right on top. So that’s really sort of how it happened. But over time, again, I’ve liked this idea that, you know, in the middle of it is, is the purpose and on the outer edges of the values, which guide you along the way. And that vision and tenants is sort of tucked in there to, to give you a roadmap.
Mickey: Gotcha. Well said. Yeah. Purpose is a tough one. We struggled with that for years to figure out our purpose is to make money, but really what’s the bigger, bigger purpose behind it. We’ve kind of discovered again, we didn’t create the purpose. Like you said, we didn’t inject it. We kind of figured out what our purpose really was.
And for us, it’s building a brighter web, like trying to make the web a better place, you know,
Jeff: through
Mickey: kindness and authenticity and doing things the right way, especially as the web seems to be. Crumbling more and more around us. We want to hold even tighter to, to doing things the right way. There took us a while to figure that out though, because [00:12:00] ultimately we are here to make money and to make sure our employees get paid and can feed their families, but yeah, having that bigger purpose behind us.
Difficult, but essential. Uh, you mentioned tenants a little bit. Anything else you want to say there? So you have vision is who you want to become, but the tenants are sort of what you do. So is that like the task list? Like, how do you, how do you see the tenants? I think it’s bigger than tasks. Yeah.
Jeff: What we do is once we’ve identified the vision.
For a company, you know, so in, in three years we want to be the market leader in this, or even some, some of them are very specific. Some companies I’ve helped, um, consult on this have, have said, okay, um, in three years we want to be 10 people or a million dollars in revenue. It can be very specific. Then you go, okay.
What are the three to five things that if we do them, we will hit that, right? So then you start coming up with you whiteboarding and coming up with all these ideas and ultimately they’ll fall into certain buckets. Um, oftentimes that’s, you know, some sort of bucket focused on growth, some sort of bucket focused on operations.
[00:13:00] Um, oftentimes the work, so you ultimately get three to five core things that you’re going to focus on. And that becomes like a lot of, you probably have used rocks before and you’re like, yeah, we
Mickey: do traction in our company. So yeah.
Jeff: So similar to EOS and that, you know, you’ve got, um, rocks, but that’s really what sort of you, you can break down from the tenants and you, and a quarterly basis, you go, okay, how are we going to make forward progress on this tenant?
Um, so it really, the tenants are bigger
Mickey: than rocks though.
Jeff: Yes. Right. The rocks would be those steps. I don’t know. Monthly quarterly that you’re working on in order to achieve those different tenants.
Mickey: Gotcha. I like that. And then, okay. So the outer ring here now is values. So I think values are something, I think most companies have this probably better than the others, at least in theory.
I think if you ask most companies what their values are, they’ll have to look it up to
Jeff: another. Great.
Mickey: Well, let me find it. But how do they fit in the PVTV with values compared to everything else?
Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The values are really, again, they’re the behaviors that are going to guide you along the way.
They’re the, uh, the lens by which you’ll evaluate yourself, [00:14:00] your team members, future team members, um, customers, you know, it really is, um, probably the most, uh, used in business of the things I’m talking about, but also the most ignored. Um, and so
Mickey: exactly. Yeah.
Jeff: Yeah. So I would say that you can develop your purpose or even a mission statement or vision or values or all these things.
To me, that’s 1 percent of the work. 99 percent is the execution. Everything comes down to execution. My kids, I’m, I’m such a buzzkill when my kids have the. Million dollar idea. Um, I don’t know how many times they’ve come to me and said, Hey, we’ve got this great idea. It’s, you know, there’s going to be a million dollar idea.
And as much as I, you know, that’s a good idea. Yep. I, I try to remind them the only thing that’s going to take that from an idea to a million dollar idea is the execution of it. And any, anything you see out in the world that you’re impressed by, it took A massive amount of execution to make that happen.
So to me, I oftentimes when I, um, [00:15:00] cause I’ve done a lot of consulting around PV, TV as well. What I tell people that I’m working with is I’m like, look, if you’re not going to follow through on this, you’re better off not doing it at all. Bringing everybody together and getting them excited about this new path and this reason for being, and then not doing anything with it is worse than never bringing it up.
So it’s all about the execution. And so I would go back to your question about values. Like you got to put these values into action and there’s so many different ways to do that, but, um, that that’s the least rocket science y part of this whole equation. The values part, everybody gets it, but it’s how are you really actually living to those on a daily basis?
Mickey: Yeah. I love that you tell folks to not waste their time doing it. If they’re not going to really do it. Cause yeah, we see folks do that all the time with so many different things, you know, where they just feel like they have to do something. So let’s do something. And then it’s just, yeah, you didn’t have to do anything.
You could have just not, I did this a couple of months ago with a potential client of ours, they said, You’re pricing a little more than we want to spend, which, okay, that’s fine. So we’re just going to, we have this guy that can build us a new website for five grand. I said, [00:16:00] don’t do it. Like, if that’s all you want to do, you’re going to have the same site.
You have now the same messaging. You’re not going to accomplish anything. So if you want to save your money, cool, you know, save your money, but don’t just do that because you have to do something like, yeah, really, really make sure it’s, it’s making a difference. So it’s a PV TV purpose, vision, tenants, and values.
Yeah. Fantastic. Look in the book, they’re kind of walked through all that stuff. I do want to take a minute. I always say in these podcasts, this is not about the guest. It’s about the book, but in this case, I do want to talk about you just a little bit. Um, when it comes to writing books, you know, you have your, your handful of books up, talk about ripples media a little bit and what you’re doing with X.
I think that’s a fascinating way for. People will potentially get some help getting that first book off the ground.
Jeff: Oh, I appreciate that. Yeah. So when I went to write my first book, um, I wrote the first draft in, uh, middle of 2018 and then I started looking for a publisher and it was incredibly hard to even figure out how to get that process started.
And then I realized after months and months to get a, you know, to get a publisher in most cases, you have to have an agent. So then I switched gears and started trying to [00:17:00] find agents and one after another declined me. Finally, a woman who had a small boutique agency in Virginia took me on and then she helped me put this massive quote unquote book together, like the, you know, the, the sort of proposal.
Um, and then she sent it to all the publishers and one by one, they turn me down. Um, and that’s fine, except the main reason they turned me down was because I’m in Atlanta. Which is insane. First of all,
Mickey: what does that mean? Even? Yeah.
Jeff: Well, what it meant was you’re not going to sell enough books cause you’re in too small of a market.
Um, saying nothing of the fact that my book had nothing to do with Atlanta. Wasn’t mentioning Atlanta. Um, I had one of them tell me they would take me on if I, um, bought pre bought 10, 000 books for them. Um, so I had to buy 10, 000 books from them at 1250 a book. Right. Now here’s what I know now that I run a book publishing company.
You can print quality paperback [00:18:00] books, especially 10, 000 of them at like three bucks a book. So, so it turned me off there. Um, a lot of, um, the people I spoke to that had published with an actual, you know, traditional publisher. Um. They just had terrible stories about it. It took 18 months when it could have taken six months.
They lost control of the title. They lost control of the cover. Um, I just, all these things. And then at the end of the day, the game with traditional publishers is 15, 30, however big their agent, you know, their, their publishing company is a year, 30 books a year, and then basically do the bare minimum with them and, and focus on the three or four that take off.
And I actually know this to be true because that’s how the game publishing industry works. Um, as Dragon Army was an early game studio and I spoke to lots of publishers, I found out. So anyways, I got to the point where I’m like, all right, I’m just going to self publish and do it myself. But I’m going to create an LLC to put it under a publishing sort of house to put it under, but it’s just going to do my book.[00:19:00]
I didn’t even think I’d do more books as I kept writing books. I had friends in town that were like, Hey, I’ve always wanted to write a book. So as I stood this business up, um, It became apparent to me that there’s a whole lot of stories out there that want to be told, and there’s a whole lot of people who it’s their dream to publish a book.
So what I’ve stood up is a way for people to do that, for them to retain control, um, it’s much more entrepreneurial for the author, um, and I’ve built a community of authors around it. So instead of it being more of a solo, scary, daunting path to go through, cause it’s hard to write a book. We have a community now of over 20 authors.
And so when we sign a new author, they immediately have this group of people that are in the process, have completed the process that can help them, that they can talk to, um, if they’re struggling with their book title, we’ll get six or seven of them on, on a zoom and we’ll, we’ll talk it through and get ideas, but They all promote each other.
So we’ve created this new model of, uh, I think a publishing, uh, company, [00:20:00] and I don’t often throw the, the word disrupt around. Um, I certainly don’t do it with any of my other businesses, but I actually think there’s a chance that we can be part of a new, uh, Way to, um, work with authors and have them publish books that I don’t think is being done because I think it’s being run by what I’ll just call the New York elite that think they’re in this, you know, private club that nobody has access to.
And there’s so many diverse and authentic stories that I, I want to help be told. So. That’s the story behind ripples. So yeah, any, anybody who wants to write a book, including you, sir, um, I’d love to have you, uh, be a part of it. It’s a great group and there’s no shortage of authors that, you know, you can talk to, to go, you know, how is it working with these guys?
Um, but I’m really proud of it and excited about the future.
Mickey: Awesome. Very cool. Is it tell the folks a bit where they can find you? Where can they find ripples? Where can they find more about the book? More about you? All the links you’ve got.
Jeff: Sure. Yeah. The easiest place is, is my website. JeffHilimire.com.
And Ripples. If you want to go directly to it [00:21:00] as ripples.media. Um, is the website and yeah, you know, I would love for anybody to, you know, sign up for my mailing list and be ready for the next book to come out. But, um, you know, probably the great team turnaround is the one that’s being passed around the most.
Um, so that’s a good place to start if people are interested, but, Hey man, I appreciate you having me on. Did, did the format resonate with you?
Mickey: Yeah, no, it was fantastic. For sure. Yeah.
Jeff: I appreciate that. Good. I’m glad.
Mickey: Cool. I appreciate it, man. Thanks much. We’ll talk soon.
Jeff: See you soon.
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