1651: Innovation Leadership and Breakthrough Growth with Ted Santos

Robert Plank 0:00 Most companies don't need another consultant fixing yesterday's problems. They need someone who can uncover tomorrow's revenue. And we're here with Mr. Ted Santos from Turnaround Investment Partners, and he acts as an outsourced chief innovation officer, helping leaders find untapped markets, expose hidden organizational risks and create the right problems for breakthrough growth. And we're here to discuss it on the Marketer of the Day podcast with Robert Plank. We are brought to you by dfypodcast.com, where we handle the editing, the publishing, and the promotion, so you can focus on the interview. And today's interview that we're focusing on is with the professional troublemaker himself, the man, the myth, the legend. And when I first came across this guy, Ted Santos, I found he has a book called "Here's Why You Can't Find Love, and I was like, okay, that's that's one thing. And then I found these YouTube videos where he was talking about how important it is to be a professional troublemaker and how for the leader of a company to intentionally create problems, and I was like, "Who is this guy connecting the dots with with these outrageous but cool opinions? We have to have this conversation. So here we are, Mr. Ted Santos. How are you?

Ted Santos 1:14 I'm fine, thanks for having me. Looking forward to the conversation. Maybe I'll make a little trouble for for you and your listening listeners today.

Robert Plank 1:22 Yeah, make some waves. What's the point of being passive and succumbing to peer pressure? It's important to stand out and make a difference. And so, how does that relate to you? Like, what are you all about, and what makes you stand out?

Ted Santos 1:37 Sure. So, as as you said, you know, lots of people they hire me. They hire people who are looking to create solutions for them, solve some kind of problem. And I say that if you're the CEO of an organization and you are not intentionally creating problems for your organization to solve, you should be fired or retrained immediately. So, people may maybe the fastest way to get that across is look at an example, and there are lots of them. So Steve Jobs is perfect. Imagine when he said, "Hey, I want you guys to put 1000 songs on a listening device. People are wondering why are we making listening devices. We make these great computers that ad agencies. We have like this almost cult following, and now we want to, you know, we have iTunes, but why are we creating a listening device? When they create it, you have the iPod, but no one knew how to get there. And then he says, make that iPod into a cell phone. Why are we making cell phones, Steve? This makes no sense. But those are the problems. When your people solve them, they are breakthroughs. They are innovations that you you create things for which there are no blueprints. And you can look at John F. Kennedy saying, "We'll send a man to the moon before the end of the decade. How do we do that? There's no blueprint. We have to invent the whole thing. So creating problems requires people to think and become something they've never been. They develop new skills, new competencies. Your people tend to galvanize this team and work together because when you're working on something that no one knows how to accomplish, you you tend to rely very much on your ecosystem, whether it's your your suppliers, your your coworkers, and other departments. And and when you accomplish, usually when people accomplish something that's very difficult. It it brings them closer, like we did it, you know. And you have a a sense of pride for accomplishing something. Can you imagine the first team that put 1000 songs on a listening device? They walk around saying, "I, you know, I was part of that team, that first team to do that.

Robert Plank 3:58 Yeah, I love it. And they they throw out these these good types of buzzwords right disruption innovation and taking a calculated risk and kind of pursuing that business growth entrepreneurial path where you say well I could play it safe and do more of what's been working and it's like well how did that work out for Montgomery Ward Sears Blockbuster they played it safe versus maybe like doing something that's a little bit crazy, and you know, saying, "Well, let's combine a phone with a with a device, or let's have a cell phone with no keys on it, or let's have a TV remote with no off button, no power button on it. It's like all these kind of things that we take for granted now, but before it, before fax machines existed, before cell phones existed, it was just kind of like a a weird dream and and pie in the sky. And how do we know if we are pursuing worthwhile disruption in a. Versus like doing something weird and stupid that maybe we is taking us off our focus.

Ted Santos 5:05 So I'll give you another example, and this is from Starbucks. So what's his name? The founder Howard Schultz. Howard Schultz, right? So he was working with a team, and they were looking at how do we want to brand it. And so Schultz said, "Well, and these are my words. Like he created a problem, and he said, 'We're we're what we are going to be known for. Starbucks will be synonymous with the third place, and no one really thought about like creating a third place. I'm I'm going to ask you, what's the first place people have in their life? The first place to be, home, right? Home. Second place, work. Yeah, and then a third place was Starbucks.

Robert Plank 6:01 Yeah, so it used to be the the local mall, but that went away, so that's needed now,

Ted Santos 6:06 Right, so Starbucks, when it start when they first came out, that was like they stood for being the the third place. So to be the third place, you have to create an environment where people want to be. If I'm not home, if I'm not at work, where do I want to be? Like, where's what's the next place that you want to go to? And now Starbucks has a lot of competition, but if you think back 20 years ago, people would have meetings and say, "Let's go to Starbucks. Like that was such a common thing to do because it literally was the third place. Hey, I don't want to meet my office. Let's go to Starbucks, or you leave home and you go with your laptop to Starbucks. So, creating. So what you have to do is create an environment where people want to be, and no one had done that. You know, maybe it was the mall, maybe it was this place, maybe it was the local bar, but Starbucks filled a gap that people didn't even know was missing. So you know, it's it's looking at where the gaps in the world. So Steve Jobs says, "Oh, there's a gap. You know, people have a Walkman and they put a cassette in, and then they turn it over, or then they put in another cassette. Let's just have 1000 songs, and they don't have to change anything. Like just continuous music of that many songs that that hadn't been done. There was a gap. So when you're filling a gap, you may not even have proof that it's going to work because there's a rumor that someone asked Steve Jobs, "Hey, Steve, you're you're not have it. You don't have a keyboard. People have to touch the screen. People are not accustomed accustomed to that. And the word is, he said, "They'll get used to it. Yeah. So, so it's not being afraid to do something, but it's it's really inside of this sort of platform, something you're standing for, you're accomplishing something great, but more important, you're you're providing people with value that perhaps they hadn't considered. Like, why would we want to go to the moon? But look at the amount of technology that came out of going to the moon. Like, it it provides all these other benefits that are not easily recognizable, like that you were just mentioning a few few minutes ago. Look at all the things that we have that we take for granted now, but we enjoy them. If you took them away, we'd be like, hey, hey, you know, don't take that from me. So so inventing, Creating-it's not always saying, "Oh, I can see what's in the future, or it's moving this way. You're just creating new possibilities. And if you look at the job of a CEO, perhaps that's the number one job. CEOs are in the business of inventing, creating new possibilities. So if you're in the weeds every day in operation, solving all the problems, there's no one at the helm of the ship inventing and creating these new possibilities that turn into problems for your organization to solve. And once created, you have these breakthroughs. So, dedicating time to really think about where you are, where you like to be, where are the gaps, and what's possible beyond where you are. Not like a pipe dream. So Apple never said, "Oh, we're going to go send a man to the moon next month. That would be a pipe dream. That wasn't their business. But building computers and then miniaturizing the computer into an iPod or an iPhone or an iPad, that that was still the computer business.

Robert Plank 9:46 Yeah, that's beautiful. That's wonderful. So stretching ourselves slightly in a and maybe maybe like a just outside of of reality, not too far move, so that way we can stand out and. We can say, "Hey, we did it, and then we can have all these other unexpected byproducts that then can, you know, lead to other things. And so it all seems like it's like an experimentation process, right? Try something crazy and see if we can do it, and and then iterate on that. And I'm really curious about your accomplishments and these companies that you've helped, because I know you have quite a history with the the being in like the D.C. area and like a little bit of politics. So I mean, what are you all about, and who have you helped?

Ted Santos 10:30 Sure, so you know, a lot of people may think that what I'm talking about is positive thinking and affirmations, and I'm just going to be really positive, but there are really two sides to my work because you can talk to people about breakthroughs, except if you never address what derails breakthroughs. And most breakthrough initiatives fail in organizations, and so it seems like organis because that has continued to happen. They're not dealing with why they fail, and they fail because of what people already know. And so people know about the limits they have for themselves, and that's that's kind of factored in unspokenly into the breakthrough initiative. So, when you say, "I want you to put 1000 songs in this, I've never done it. Why bother? I'm not doing it. Let's just figure out how to kill this initiative, so Steve doesn't come back to us with something crazy again. So, building a culture where people can get beyond their limiting beliefs, beliefs, their mental roadblocks, and their blind spots. So, being able to train. So, my job is to work with people to unlearn those blind spots and limiting beliefs. And one of the I'll speak specifically about a client gentleman, very smart. Early, his age was early 60s. So you know they say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. But this guy's in his early 60s. He his education was CPA. He worked for the one of the largest CPA firms in the country, and then one day decided he wanted a career change, and he went into the mortgage industry. Well, he started out doing okay, and then he hit a slump, and there was no way he didn't know how to get out of the slump. So he hires me, and what we discovered is he had a blind spot, and he told me that he was able to get meetings with investors, he called them heavy hitters, and this guy had I'll call mastery around breaking the ice. He'd make a joke, everyone in the room laughs. They're all comfortable. They let their guards down, and people are ready to engage him. Except he made another joke, and another joke, and another joke. So he basically joked himself out of deals. People liked him, except they didn't want to do business with him. They'd happily go have a beer with him, but you know they're not signing deals with him. So why was he doing this? And it was like he couldn't stop himself. And what we discovered is when he was 13, he was in the back seat of a car with a bunch of guys who were like 1718, and someone looked and said, "Hey, what's this kid doing in a car with us? How old are you, kid? He made a joke. Everyone laughed. They put their arm around him and said, "Are you cool? You belong. So, this is what happens to people when you're young. You get into a situation where it something's not right, or you feel a little helpless, or you don't belong, or I'm by myself on my own, and whatever you do to survive that situation, that at that age, at a five-year-old or a 12-year-old, you see that as success. Like I successfully avoided getting kicked out of the car, so that becomes part of who you are, and because it worked, and you have proof it worked. I didn't get kicked out of the car, so now you're stuck with that. And here's this guy, 62 years old. Now, 49 years later, he's still operating of the premise of to ensure I I belong. I make jokes and I make everyone comfortable, and they like me. So once he could distinguish that, and we worked on him unlearning. So now we're reverse engineering. He's unlearning it, and he and and at the same time we have to fill that void because we don't want to take away his capacity to be an icebreaker. That's a great skill to have. We don't want to kill it. We just want you to be able to manage it when it's appropriate. So now he goes into a deal. We we gave him sales training so he would know what questions to ask. So he goes and now he's still the icebreaker, people laugh they're comfortable, and then he starts asking them questions and discovering what they they need, and if he wants to crack a joke somewhere sparingly in between to keep the momentum, he can do that. Would not he's no longer stuck with it. And what was the result? His first three months of working with me, he doubled his productivity, and his the next three months, he doubled that, and so he went from going to work every day expecting to be fired. Like these are his words: "I'm waiting for them to fire me. I don't even know how I've made it this long. So he went from waiting to be fired to they call him in the office and said, "Hey, buddy, you're doing really well. Tell us what support you need. We'll give it to you. You need an assistant? Do you need this? Whatever you need, we'll give it to you. So he had his organization giving him what he wants, and three of his competitors are now courting him to hire him. And eventually, he did take a job with what he thought was a better opportunity, so that's you know that's a guy in his early 60s and was able to have a break to break out of a slump and become a high performer, and that happened because he had a blind spot that was killing his productivity, and he couldn't see it because it worked 49 years ago. So why is it not working now?

Robert Plank 16:47 That's wonderful. So, and we all have those kinds of blind spots, don't we? And it comes from who knows where, right? Generational trauma, money habits as a kid, like just even one situation where some some by pure accident you survived a situation and then that carried through and I love this idea of personal growth and becoming the person that you were meant to be and should be and like developing the self awareness so that way you're not you're not like avoiding your strengths you're saying hey I've I've got this I've got this strength that you know just kind of came about one way or another, and I'm not ignoring it. I'm just kind of better harnessing it, and I'm I'm using it along with some other training that I've developed. And I mean, what what a great example there of like turning the raw talent or those skills into something that's then useful and then gets gets you unstuck and unblocked and kind of on that next level. And so you're you're a man of many amazing ideas and and somehow like like kind of deadpan funny. I can't really quite figure it out. But as far as all these things that we've talked about and maybe what we haven't discussed, what do you think might be the missing question in our conversation? What should I be asking you? I just don't know what to ask you.

Ted Santos 18:03 Sure, so you said it that I wrote a book. Here's why you can't find love. So here's a guy who focuses on working with advising executives in organization, middle market companies, and now I'm writing a book about love. So makes no sense, except corporate America is losing $300 billion in workplace productivity every year. Do you have any idea why? I don't know why. Divorce, and no one's talking about it. All right, it's I know the numbers 300 billion because there's an organization called Life Innovation that they pulled out all the CPAs and and they sat down and they they were able to look at the numbers and what this is costing us because they also found that when a person is going through divorce, their workplace performance drops by 50 to 75% and you know we have an over 50% divorce rate. So that's a lot of people who can be distracted by divorce, and it's costing us, and we're ignoring it. So, so I wrote the book because relationships are not working. Marriages are at an all time low. Divorce consistently year after year has has remained 50% or more, and we haven't worked out how to do that. So you know, in the example with the mortgage broker, people have blind spots even in their their marriages, right? So how do you resolve conflicts? That's an important skill to have at work, but it's even more important to have at home with your spouse and with your children. And so, my work secretly does. It inadvertently trains people in conflict resolution. So the guy in the mortgage industry would have a conflict because he's making jokes because he's uncomfortable. So now he's in conflict. So avoid the conflict. You make jokes. So people do this in their marriages, and they they end up in a divorce or even a an engagement or relationship, they fall apart. Now they are distracted at work. So I wrote the book to support to to take the reader on a journey of transformation, so that they have a few things, better ways to navigate themselves through life, through relationships, but also a way to better understand self, so that when you choose a spouse, you you are more capable of choosing someone who's compatible with you, not someone who just makes you feel good. Because all the research shows people who are do a great job of knowing who's compatible with them, they have lasting marriages, and they have great marriages also. So, I wrote the book to look at the impact of our social culture of of marriage and how that's impacting our divorce life. And when you lay people off, well, now that goes back to impacting people in their homes when you do layoffs because one company lays off and another one and another one and the whole economy goes in a downward spiral. So that opens the door for another conversation that most people don't know to ask me, which is we have organizations that operate in two gears. In good times, hire people, and bad times. You fire people. No one has looked under a rock for a third, fourth, or fifth possibility outside of that. And I've had this conversation with a former CEO of Dun and Bradstreet, which is a Fortune 500 company. And we spent-I'll spare you the details-but we spent at least 10 hours over the course of about six weeks, an hour here, two hours there, you know, 90 minutes there, and we we were peeling the layers to understand why why are companies hiring and firing and having no other way to manage the the workforce because the impact on the entire economy is negative. So, how do you make your employees so valuable that it costs more to lay them off than it is to keep them? So, if we built organizations like that, we would have to develop people beyond just skills and the skills and comp or or Product knowledge, let's say project management, it would be beyond the skills and competencies that are relevant to your industry. You'd have to develop them in other things, like more effective communication, being able to deal with chaos and problems effectively, as opposed to trying to avoid them. And if you could train your people effectively in that, they take that home and they become better with their spouse, with their children, and we create a better world. We can drop the divorce rate, but what what becomes more important is you become you create more innovative employees who become much better at creating new products and services that are in the best interest of your customers.

Robert Plank 23:26 This is amazing. I think you're really onto something. I love the the parallels, the transferable skills, right? Of like thinking better and coming up with better options, and then that applies at work and at home. And you hear all these cliches about how many divorces are about money or marital conflicts are about money. So it's an interesting feedback loop, right? How if you can figure out these skills that work in relationships of any kind, it's it improves the situation at home, improves the situation at work, and everybody wins. So I think you you have an amazing movement on your hands sir.

Ted Santos 24:03 Thank you.

Robert Plank 24:04 Wonderful. And so we want to know more about all this, right? Want to know about the book? Here's why you can't find love, and about your company, which is Turnaroundip.com. What are some next steps here? Where should we go?

Ted Santos 24:18 So if someone wanted to learn more about what I do and and have a conversation with me. First, I'll say that anyone from your show that contacts me, I will offer 30 minutes free of of executive coaching so that we can see what's what's possible beyond where they are. So I I offer that to anyone who contacts me, and they can find me on Link. Sorry, they can find me on LinkedIn under Ted Santos or my website, which is turnaroundip.com. And IP is like intellectual property.

Robert Plank 24:53 And, and it's it's like intellectual property, but it stands for Turnaround Investment Partners, correct?

Ted Santos 24:59 That is, that is correct.

Robert Plank 25:01 Very cool. So there's the double meanings, and so that's turnaroundip.com, and at turnaround investment partners, they redefine leadership, transform corporate cultures, and drive breakthrough growth. So mr. Ted Santos says you go to turnaroundip.com, click the button to get that free consultation, and have that 30-minute conversation to discuss possibilities and find those blind spots. And he also said that you can find him on LinkedIn, Ted Santos. You find the one who's in New York, United States. And then we also said that his book is called "Here's Why You Can't Find Love, which is such a a silly and a good way, but also a cool idea that he's a a leadership and business advisor. But then also he has things to say about your own personal relationships. And so whether it's coaching CEOs of mid-sized to large companies looking to create a breakthrough or advising individuals on how to have successful partnerships, mr. Ted Santos uses his understanding of human behavior in this book. It's called "Here's Why You Can't Find Love, and it will help you discover counterintuitive approaches to creating interpersonal breakthroughs in love, work, and play. That's "Here's Why You Can't Find Love" by Ted Santos, and then the company, the business is TurnaroundIP.com, disruptive leadership and breakthrough growth. And before I let you go, Mr. Ted Santos, you've been so much fun to speak with, but it's time for one final scary question where I try to stump you. I try to put you on the spot by asking about a fun or interesting quote or lesson that has served you. So, what comes to mind as far as a fun or interesting quote or lesson?

Ted Santos 26:45 An interesting quote is, I think, is Don Markey is the gentleman who said it, and he said, "If you make people think they they are thinking, they will love you. If you make people really think, they will hate you.

Robert Plank 27:00 How does that apply to you?

Ted Santos 27:03 My work revolves. I mean, it requires people to really think.

Robert Plank 27:09 Okay, so so they might hit you temporarily, but that's okay, growth is painful.

Speaker 1 27:14 Right, right, because you're thinking things that you've never thought, and you're navi, and that requires you to navigate some level or a high level of uncertainty. So I'm intentionally putting people in certain uncertainty, which could seem chaotic. But as as we train through that, what you find is you become much better at navigating uncertainty throughout your life in general, work or personal.

Robert Plank 27:39 Interesting, an important skill, and you can only imagine how many people were mad about going to the moon in less than 10 years or having 1000 songs in their pocket. So it's okay to be angry a little bit because we need to stretch ourselves and get to some better goals.

Ted Santos 27:54 Sure, breakthroughs are good for good for the human being.

Robert Plank 27:58 I love it. Well, Mr. Ted Santos discussing breakthrough growth. Thank you for being here. Thanks for taking the time.

Ted Santos 28:04 Oh no, my pleasure. Thanks. Great questions. Thank you.