1197: The Superpower of Curious Leadership: Develop a Growth Mindset and Culture of Psychological Safety with Lateral Solutions Founder and CEO Jon Bassford

Robert Plank 0:00 Jon. Welcome back to the podcast. Jon Bassford is here from think-lateral.com and Jon is a JD, MBA, cAe, but more importantly, he's a curious leader, and he has a book coming out soon, and a TEDx talk, and he's here to teach us about how we can be a curious leader, and what this whole curiosity driven leadership idea means. Jon helps organizations and individuals innovate change and grow through adopting curiosity as their superpower. He is an operations professional and entrepreneur driven by his curiosity. So we're going to find out about how important curiosity is. Being a curious leaders, mistakes, founders, perhaps sometimes making so much more So Jon, glad to be speaking with you.

Jon Bassford 0:49 Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.

Robert Plank 0:52 Glad to have you. And so this whole idea of like curiosity, it has unintentionally served me well, especially these last few years. Like we're on a podcast here, and you can imagine, like, you come across people in different aspects of your life, on LinkedIn and podcasting and life, and it's really tempting to say, like, oh, I don't care about what that person does. They're not interested in that idea. But then if you can kind of give a little bit of curiosity oomph and like, be genuine and pay attention to someone, then you let you learn things that are kind of outside of your box, outside of your comfort zone, and then maybe days, months, years later, you're like, hey, you know that little idea, that little just offhanded, I think that, like, I didn't think was that relevant at the time, it served me later in life. And so that's just what comes to mind for me, as far as curiosity. But from you, what are you all about? What do you focus and passionate about?

Jon Bassford 1:39 Sure, so, I mean, I can tell you a quick story about my discoveries of curiosity as a superpower. I actually learned this 10 years ago. I worked with some academic who His specialty is helping you define your superpower. And curiosity came out of it. At the time, I didn't do a lot with it. And fast forward a couple years, I was working with a company on my brand, for my company and personal brand, and it came up again, and that's why I really begin to think about curiosity and how it affected my life. And I can, I can trace it back to when I was a kid, through school, through college, through law school, through my career, and curious has really always been there. And for me, you know, Curiosity is what brings about change, and changes what you need to do in order to fuel innovation, innovation and growth, right? That. That's the whole concept. For me. It's about, how can we constantly think outside the box, challenge the status quo and grow as individuals and organizations?

Robert Plank 2:37 Well, let's do it. Let's get some people figured out. And so what, what I want to do is, I'm I'm all about like, okay, someone's got this keyword, someone's got this idea, right? So I just it real quick. I searched in Google. What cure curious means, right? Curious means eager to know or learn something, and that's the official dictionary definition, but in your own words, to get us on the same page, curiosity, what is it? What does it mean for you? What are we missing about it?

Jon Bassford 3:03 Sure. So curiosity means having that desire. I mean, I kind of follow that division to learn and grow, right is to constantly be pushing and moving yourself in a positive direction. And part of curiosity means you're putting yourself out there at risk, which you know, for an entrepreneur, for an innovator, it means accepting failure at times too. So it's about accepting this, this, this notion of constantly moving forward and constantly challenging and doing new things, even at times, risking failure, and accepting failure as part of the process.

Robert Plank 3:35 Okay, so failure is part of the process, but we need to say, like, hey, what could happen? Let's try this. Let's make some attempts. Let's do some experiments and take some calculated risks, and let's make some small mistakes. And like you always hear about these shocking statistics, like, there's something like 40% of people after high school, they don't read another book, they're not open to new ideas. And so how do we wake people up? Like, what should we know about? Like, being curious and tapping into our curiosity.

Jon Bassford 4:02 Sure, I think there's no doubt that certain people curiosity is a little more innate, right, that they just have that inquisitive nature. I've always kind of had that throughout my life. You know, I was a philosophy major in undergrad and went on to law school, so just, just questioning and challenging things is kind of secondhand to me, but really it's just, it could be instilled in people and taught to people, coach to people in the sense of just just getting them to think outside the box, right, getting them to to look at things from different perspective, looking looking at, you know, not having a fixed mindset. In a fixed mindset, meaning like, you know, us as individuals, as organizations, this is what we're meant to be. We can't do anymore. This is, I'm just stuck this. This is the way life is, versus a growth mindset, which is, we can always learn, we can always grow, can always challenge things. We can always do more, be more, go for bigger heights. And that's kind of the start of it right is, is having that notion that a growth mindset. Allows us to say, look, there may be more out there. There may be more possibilities, more perspectives than what I've, you know, taken in in my life and executed in my life.

Robert Plank 5:11 Okay, so a growth mindset to me, from what you're saying here is it means that we should be humble to a degree, right? Like saying, like, well, I know some stuff, but I also know there's, like, so much more that I don't know, and not to the extent that I'm, like, beating myself up or having low confidence, but saying, like, Hey, I'm aware that I don't know everything, and I'm a win tomorrow. And like, you always hear about the failure stories like how Netflix went to blockbusters and said, Hey, do you want to buy some blockbuster? Said, you know, the internet, it's some new thing, but in a few years, it'll be gone. So well, don't worry, we'll write out the right the rest. And you hear about how, like, Myspace came and went, but then Facebook and all these other social networks kind of ate through lunch. And so, I mean, tell us some cool stories. Like, have you been, like, woken up in a way? Have you transformed, changed your ways? Or is there someone that comes to mind, as far as, like, you know, they went from a to b because of this whole curiosity as a superpower idea,

Jon Bassford 6:06 sure. So, yeah, I actually write about Blockbuster and Netflix in my book, and so that's all in there. And yeah, like, even my first job coming out of college at a law school I saw with just small little tweaks and changes, how can greatly impact an organization. I came in, I was trained for this organization, and I was being told to deliver a certain message to the people I was working with. And I went back and said, you know, where is this located? Like, like, I get, you're telling me to do it, and I'm telling them, but like, where's this written down in a manual handbook, you know, some kind of guideline that shows this is what you should be doing. It was buried, buried somewhere. And so I did just a small thing of bringing this document out, putting in the forefront, making it part of every communication I did in the time I was at this organization. They had a 20% increase in revenue. They had a 500 increase in programming just really just exploded from one little change building a communication strategy at one one around one little document that already existed just wasn't being communicated.

Robert Plank 7:07 So what's the lesson there? Do we all have, like, the raw materials within us? Do we have documents like this? Is there's like, some magic to be extracted. What's the lesson?

Jon Bassford 7:17 Yeah, I think part of it is being able to ask questions and asking the right questions. So that whole story started with me being able to walk into my boss's office and said, Hey, I'm being told this. Where is this at? Where can, where can, where can you show me that I can show others this is what you're supposed to do. And through that, he said, Let's it's back in the back of this manual, I'm like, so if I, if I go, don't go to this conference, we'll ever see this again, or wherever I see it, period, the answer was no. If I leave my manual at conference, Will I ever see it again? The answer was no. So this is through a series of questions, I got to the point of like, this is buried back that no one's ever going to see it, and if they are going to see it, they're going to forget about it, and just and then I said, the most important question is, can I change that? So just that one little thing of changing how this represented, where it was presented, and bring it to the forefront, changed everything. So you got to learn to ask questions. You've got to learn to, like you said earlier, have some humility and be dumb, right? Questions are coming from, usually a place of ignorance, like, I don't know something, can you teach me in gathering information? So there's got to be that humility there of coming to a situation and and not knowing all the answers.

Robert Plank 8:34 Okay, so, so not knowing the answers and questions in particular is it's a powerful tool, and kind of a weird, like, underrated, and it's kind of hard to grasp, right? The magic of questions. Like, here we go on a podcast. It's me asking you the questions and you answering them. And even, like, anytime I'm stuck with the writer's walk, like, you have your TEDx talk, you have your book. Whenever I'm stuck as far as, like, well, what should chapter seven be? I tell myself, like, Well, hey, well, what's the question that this chapter is answering, and then you break it down and like, Well, hey, this page is answering this question. This is answering this and it like, the end result ends up being like, something that's a little more like focused and has momentum and even is more like accessible, right? Because, like, if I'm just going to stand up and give you, like, a two hour lecture, and I'll go, but, like, that's not exciting. But if someone says, Hey, I've got this problem, here's my question. Once the question is answered, then the problem is solved to some extent. And so it's like, I'm kind of, it's like, a friendlier shape, as far as, like, getting the information across. And so it's cool to think about. And so as far as putting this to use, right? You say that you you turn around this one company, you said you found this document and brought it to light, and you were able to, like, ask questions and say, like, hey, well, what about this? Your how does this help me? As far as like the mistakes you're seeing and like people going wrong with their businesses, like, tell us about that. What have you seen, as far as correcting them? Sakes,

Jon Bassford 10:00 yeah, I think for a lot of startups, small businesses, even small nonprofits, you know, some of the biggest mistakes they make is the CEO, the owner, is falling into the DIY dilemma, right? Of doing everything yourself. You're low on resources, you're low on this and that. And so they believe that the best way to get things done is take it all themselves. And there are a couple of things on that, right? Is, if you ask someone, do you want to build a C team? Everybody like, No, I want an A team. Well, if you're doing everything yourself, you are not good at everything, right? You might be a in some things, being some things D and F, and other things. And so, by accumulation, you are building a C team by doing everything yourself. You got to think outside the box, right? You got to get to think about, what is I'm good at? What is it I enjoy doing? What can I What can I outsource at a nominal cost that's going to keep things moving forward? That's one of the biggest things I see, is founders and CEOs trying to do everything themselves. And the other thing I see is a lot of times what they do is the first place that they get help is in the external pieces, the marketing, the sales, the product development, which is usually that person's zone of genius, and they don't outsource operations and these other factors that aren't their zone of genius. And that what happens is the owners get sucked down into that and get stuck there, which, which causes them to not be able to focus on innovation, growth and strategy

Robert Plank 11:29 that's powerful, just that some of these ideas that maybe these, these business owners or these leaders, they're not even asking these questions, right? They're afraid to. They tell them to sell stories like they don't have enough time. And then when, maybe, if they do, kind of break through to that next level and say, Okay, well, I know that I can't sustain this. I know that I need help. I don't want to have the C team. I want the A Team. Then they, they're afraid to give up the territory, right? And it's like, and it's relatable, right? We go through these phases in business where first we're just trying to make it work at any cost. But then, hey, once it's time to grow, once you hit the bottleneck, then okay, well, the important lesson is give up some of your your ownership of these tasks that you're doing, and get back to your zone of genius. And it seems easier said than done, right? Like you say, Okay, well, you know, focus on your zone of genius. But like, emotions are tricky, and sometimes people just say, Oh, I there's no way I can do that, right? No, no one else can do this better than me. Or there's the growing pains of getting up to speed, like, what do you say to that? As far as going through the painful transformation of change?

Jon Bassford 12:36 Yeah, it's tough, right? And the egos are at play, and sometimes the hardest thing I have. I have to do is break down that ego, and one of the best ways to do it, just show them the numbers, right? Show them the math. Show them of you know what their time is. Ask them what they what they believe their time is worth, where they're putting their time, how much they could save from their time if they did X, Y and Z differently, in what that would bring to their company, right? You got to show up. You got to show them the numbers. Make it about their success if they were to make the change versus what they're giving up or they don't.

Robert Plank 13:11 I love it. So show them the data, break down the problem, and then kind of show like the the before and after, right? Like here's here's where you're at. And with that before you, and without your help, it was maybe just like a black box. Like, well, I'm doing all this stuff and I'm I'm miserable and I'm stuck and I'm in mediocre land. But like, How can I change you say, Well, hey, I'm problem solver. I'm breaking this down. Here's some numbers. Here's what the real like, time for money exchanges now versus, here's what it could be if we just made, like you said at the beginning, some little, small changes. And so it seems to me this is kind of like the business owners entrepreneurs mindset, right? You kind of have your natural instincts, which is to avoid conflict, avoid con, you know, confrontation, avoid problems. But then entrepreneurs are like, hey, the problems I want to solve that. I want to go after that and fix it, knowing that there'll be even bigger problems, but I also want to fix that. And so as far as, like, the proper mindset to have, can you tell us about some do's and don'ts, like, where are people maybe thinking incorrectly, and what's a better way of going about this?

Jon Bassford 14:16 Yeah, I think there's a big shift today in how we manage our organizations and how we manage our teams. And I think a lot of times it gets kind of wrapped up in in a lot of people view as New Age type stuff, right? And you hear this a lot about in discussions with the younger generation. You know, the younger generation only want to do what they want to do. They don't want to work hard all these type of things, but I'm reminded of Napoleon Hill and Carnegie had a conversation 100 years ago. It's been turned into several books, right? And in that book, they talk about how you should get to know your staff, find out what winds their clock, what makes them excited to come to work, get. Is done, and you create this, if you ask one outright, without prefacing with with help they see the negativity of this. You said you want a person who's excited to come to work every day or who doesn't it's excited for work every day. So give them 90% what they want to do and like to do, and 10% they tolerate, versus other way around. Right? So it's a whole, concept of rethinking how we manage and creating an environment and a culture where people can ask questions, they can push back, they can bring new ideas from from any place at any time. Example I like to give is, you know, if you think about sitting on a conference room or team meeting and the boss asked for, you know, who's got a thought or feedback on something, and the new person raises their hand. What's the first thing that goes through one's head? Why the hell are they talking? There's nothing that they've been here for two weeks. They know nothing about this organization, but the truth is, they're the best one to talk because they're not bogged down by the traditions, the status quo, the unspoken rules and everything could exist in organization. They're they're open to to look at things from a fresh, fresh perspective, and really bring a different dynamic, which is, I think there's a lot of that happening in innovative industries, but industries that are not innovative, I think there's still kind of an archaic way of looking at management and who's allowed to speak and where ideas come from, and we got to start breaking down those walls

Robert Plank 16:25 100% I agree with you that we need the fresh perspective, because there's your perspective, which is great, and you've been in in the business, and then there's this perspective of your existing employees, who's been in there, and man, they're, they'll, they'll, they'll answer your questions, right? They'll tell you what it will take to get them excited, just have these conversations. And there's also the conversation to be had with your new people, and just kind of get these different opinions, get these different perspectives. And so when you know, when you have been kind of writing about some of this stuff, right, you got your book, you got your TEDx talk, and boy, that's a transformative experience, if there was anything right, just to kind of figure out what your ideas are and what they aren't, and what people's kind of first impressions are, and beating up your ideas. And so what's what kind of comes to mind here about what you have coming up in these coming months, is that, you know, we have our ideas, but we need to get them out there, and we need to maybe, like, repeat and refine them. And so, I mean, tell me about your strategy. Here. You got your TEDx talk and you got your book, but then also you're doing this, like, you know, you're on podcasts as well, to kind of refine your ideas, but also kind of get them multiplied. So I mean, what's that adventure been like? And what's the kind of ongoing strategy, as far as getting your ideas out,

Jon Bassford 17:41 Sure. So, I mean, it's been a it's been a journey, right? Like even this kind of brand, the stuff that you're talking about, the book, TEDx, podcast, it's been an entrepreneurial journey, just amongst the self, right? When I at first, I try to do some of this all by myself, right? And I'm busy running my business, trying to grow my business, doing the brand stuff, and it was all too much. I ended up working with it with a team that kind of helped, maybe help me look at all this differently. They kind of helped me, you know, write the titles and bios and in talking points for the TEDx. They're there. They kind of help lead the book thing forward, which end up hiring a great company I'm loving working with right now, where we just finalized our final developmental edit, and moving on to, you know, line and grammatical so it's on, on path to be released. But I had to step back. I had to step back and say, Look, I'm not an author. I'm not I'm not a, you know, speaking placement individual. I had to rely on help from other people, right? I had to learn from them. I had to trust the process. And there was times where I was ready to give up, especially with TEDx, it is kind of shooting, you know, throwing. Darth said dartboard blind at times. There's hundreds of people that apply for, you know, eight to 12 slots, and a lot of them want someone who's local. And I was about to give up, and then I came across one. The topic was just so aligned with what I talked about. I applied and got accepted. And it was, it was, it was a game changer for me. It really lit a fire underneath me, and it helped me move forward. Helped me move further further forward with my book. And really, it's just about, you know, trusting that that you're on the right path, trusting to work with other people and just keep moving forward.

Robert Plank 19:24 Wonderful. What I get from your story is that the like, what you see in your daily life, that you just don't give a second thought to so much work went into that, right? You turn on TV, and there's like, just one random TV show that's like hundreds 1000s of people's jobs, and it took, like, who knows how many months, right? You drive your car past, like, one McDonald's, you think like, man, the the payroll, the the employees, the equipment, the the real estate, like anything that you just see that maybe when you were a kid, you just like, oh, well, there's, there's a building right there, right there's someone who made them some book. There's. Company. There's some, you know, accountants office, like, there's, there's way more work going into it than you maybe expect. And if, and if you have that ignorance of like, oh, this will be easy, then maybe you won't give it enough attention, and you'll try to do so much yourself. But if you're like, Well, hey, there's all these, the strategy involved, right? There's the competing against hundreds of people with the TEDx talk. There's a follow up. There's the I've got my book. We need some sounding boards of, like, the titles and the revising and the line by line and the grammatical like, there's way more layers of making it right. But that's okay, because you just need to, like, have some time management, have some focus, have some communication, have a team, have some people working with you, and so it's so much to think about. And so I in these last few minutes, I want to make sure that we cover the bases right, and we talk about what you want to talk about, and being a curious leader and all that cool stuff. But since we just met, I don't know exactly what to ask you. So is there like a missing, hidden, invisible question in our conversation that I should be asking you, but I just don't know what's the question I should be asking?

Jon Bassford 21:05 Yeah, yeah. I would say the overview of talk about curious leader, because I say it requires three shifts. We've talked about some of these a little bit throughout, but I'll lay them out a little more detail. One is that shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. I think it's absolutely necessary to as the precursor to curiosity and being a curious leader is having that shift. The second one is really dialing in your operational excellence, making sure that the things that you are doing on a day to day basis are driving the intended results. And the only way to do that is continually check what you're doing, evaluate what you're doing, allow people to poke holes in what you're doing, and making sure that what we're doing is be the most efficient, effective possible. And then lastly, the growth mindset and the operational excellence is great. But unless you want to be the leader of a one man band you're a one person band. I should say, you can't do it alone. You have to bring the team along with you. And that's where that curious culture comes into play, where you create that atmosphere of questioning and everything. And actually, Google, I don't think we talked about this yet, Google actually did a study on what drove teams and made them successful, and they had their hypotheses of what that would be. And after surveys and interviews, they came back with psychological safety, creating an environment that allows people to be open, be honest, ask questions, bring forth new ideas, is the pathway to make teams more successful.

Robert Plank 22:38 So we need that, that fear based culture that's very 1950s right? It's very outdated. It's very like that the mean Grandpa and I mean that's that belongs in the past. And so I think we we take for granted. And this is a very needed message, especially in this day and age of the apps and the AI and the automation and all the computers. You think like, oh, well, you know, things are automated. The customers just run thing. I've got the sequences automations, but then even these apps we use, like, how many times sometimes you open up Gmail or Twitter and there's some kind of error? Right? Doesn't happen a lot, but like, things still break. Things still need to be managed and improved and pulled tolls at and so in their last few minutes of our conversation here. So, like, you mentioned about this, Google did this study with psychological safety. It's so important. Like, how does that break down? Like, what does that mean and like, like, you know, what are the sub pieces of this psychological safety idea?

Jon Bassford 23:33 Sure, I think there's, there's two examples or two parts I'll mention here quickly. One of them is, getting to know your staff. And I don't mean just high at the water cooler, high getting a coffee, but truly getting to know your staff. You know, having meetings where you learn what inspires them again, what why they enjoy coming to work, what their goals and ambitions are. You know, having an open dialog is the first step in showing them that where they want to go in life and what they're doing in your organization matters to you, and have those open questions in person to get them to elicit ideas and problems that they're seeing. They're more likely to do that in bigger settings. And speaking of the bigger settings, there's something I talk about my book called leaders speak last. You know, Simon Sinek wrote, leaders eat last. And I started using I got to change that, and said, leaders speak last. I've since learned Simon Sinek is also using that phrase, so I got to give him credit for that. But I actually was using that before I realized he was. And it's this whole notion that if you think about a staff meeting or board meeting, and the leader gets in there and they start telling people what their view is on a certain topic, you know, an event that just happened, or program whatever, or they're saying their thoughts in what they just did in that room was bring every. Everyone's thoughts, ideas and problems about that issue, towards the CEO's direction. You know, unless you already have this culture where people can speak up and speak out, you just moved everything that direction. Now you might still have some people who are somewhat honest. It gives someone of a different opinion, but it's going to be, it's going to be watered down. So the best thing to do is let your team speak. First, get their ideas, let them be honest. Don't, don't bring it your direction, and then have that very honest conversation. Then you can kind of express what your thoughts were and work as a team to solve the problem

Robert Plank 25:33 you're giving me flashbacks too. I used to go to like a once a quarter mastermind, and I'd stand up in front for 45 minutes, or like, less than but then there was, like, a time for questions at the end, and the person leading the group, he would speak last. And I remember at the time thinking like, Okay, well that's the only part that matters. Like I'm waiting for the last five or 10 minutes. But then after a few repetitions that I realized that, like, if he had spoken first, he might have, like, shut down some other stuff. Because, like, you don't want to be the person to speak right after. And maybe he kind of, like, you know, already, already got to some stuff. But like, everyone else had kind of the randomness. And then the the guy leading at the end, he might say, like, Well, hey, such and such said something that was kind of Passover, but like, that's really important. Or like, let's combine this and this. Like, there's something valuable in just, like, kind of letting everyone do their thing and then being like, All right, well, let me, like, kind of clean up the mess a little bit and have some focus in what matters here. And so this is, like, a cool idea that we're talking about, right, being a curious leader and everything that entails. It's a new take on it, because this whole idea of, like, leadership and emotion intelligence. It's so needed, but it's also like, easy to get overwhelmed with all, like, all the Simon Sinek of it, right? People have all these catchy, cutesy phrases, so it's great to have a new take on it. And so if people got a little bit of a taste of it because of a podcast, and they want to check out the TEDx talk when inside and the book when it's live. And your website and your company, give us some next steps. What's the call to action?

Jon Bassford 27:05 Sure, yeah. So you go to my website, think dash lateral.com, or also my personal brand site. Jon Bassford with, with, no, H, J, O, N, fast forward, B, A, S, S, F, O, R, D.com, I'll be be sharing information there. Also you can, you can contact my social channels and follow me there, and there's going to be a lot of great updates and announcements that are happening over the next few months. And so yeah, definitely feel free to follow me and we'll keep you updated.

Robert Plank 27:31 Very cool. So Jon Bassford, the curious leader, think dash lateral.com as people are going there in order to stay up to date with what you have going on, it's time to stump you a little bit. Put you on the spot. I like to ask my guests near the end here about a fun quarter lesson that has helped them, that they can pass along to help us. And as a guy that just wrote a book did a TEDx talk, it's always helpful to have the catchy sound bite. So I'm sure you have something. So what comes to mind as far as a helpful quarter lesson?

Jon Bassford 27:58 Yeah, yo, something. I don't remember the exact quote, but get going back to Napoleon Hill and think or grow rich. Reading that book, it helped me redefine what purpose was. I was at a place I'm kind of a jack of all trades when it, you know, throughout college and everything else, and just diverse knowledge and abilities, but not having that, that that one thing like I meant to do, right? And so I was constantly searching what was my purpose, as though it was something to find and reading, think or grow rich. What I learned was look at purpose as a verb. What do I want to do? Right? So they get your purpose can change. You are not the same person at 23 you are 3555 65 right? So your purpose is what I want to do right now. And just, you know, have the, have the grit, tenacity to go after it, but, but really think about, stop thinking about what am I meant to do, and just think about what it is I can do and want to do right now and go after it.

Robert Plank 28:56 Very cool. Purpose is a verb, and I am all about Jon embracing their perpetual every six month. Cringe, right? Because you think like, I want to evolve as a person, but I don't want to go in a loop, I don't want to go backwards, and also don't want to be too crazy. So I think like, Okay, if I look back at the what I something I said or did six months, 12 months ago, and I cringe now. I'm like, Okay, well, I'm I'm always evolving at a person, as a person. I know I'll never quite be complete, but I am definitely learning from my mistakes, and so that's very helpful inspiring for us to think about purpose as a verb. It's not what you are, it's what you do and who you're becoming, and just becoming that person that is better and more evolved and more enhanced and more aware. So that way, you can be the person you need to be in order to create that do bigger and better company or solve better problems, and it helps to be a curious leader on that path to success. So think dash lateral.com and also, while you're at it, add Jon Bassford on LinkedIn. That way you can see his post, see his update, and stay up to date on his TEDx and book post. Location, journey, Mr. Jon Bassford, think dash, lateral.com. JD, MBA, cAe, very pleasurable. Speaking with your friend.

Jon Bassford 30:07 Thank you for having me. I enjoyed the conversation.

Robert Plank 30:13 Deal, why podcast.com? Forward, slash, free. Go there right now to see what you could be missing in your podcast. Maybe you aren't active enough on social media. Are you writing and broadcasting an email for every episode of your podcast? Do you follow up with your podcast guests? Do you do things to make your podcast interview and content creation easier? Go to dfy podcast.com/free, to claim your gift right now you. Transcribed by https://otter.ai