S3, Ep.18 - Growth by Design: How a Car Salesman Turned CEO Cracked the Code on Performance Management

0:00Welcome to Organizational Sherlock's, the podcast where business meets psychology and your organizational puzzles meet their match. Join us for captivating stories and practical solutions to unravel your toughest challenges. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Fleming. And I'm Morgan Ashworth, your guides to a prescription for business success. Let's dive in. So, listeners, most organizations have a growth plan.

0:32Very few, however, have a growth system. And that difference between a plan that lives in a deck and a system that actually challenges how people show up every day is exactly what today's conversation is about. Because the gap between where organizations want to go and where they actually end up isn't usually a strategy problem. It's actually a people problem. And today's guest has built his entire career around closing that gap. So, I'm really excited to welcome our guest today.

1:02Our guest is the author of a book called Strike Zone. I would definitely recommend checking it out on Amazon and grabbing yourself a copy, as well as the CEO of a company called Dual Dash, which is a performance system built for retail automotive that is now part of Google's startup cloud program, which is really exciting. So, we connected through a mutual friend, Daniel Yang. So, shout out to Daniel. And I really have been looking forward to this conversation ever since Stephen and I met. And I'm just thrilled to have you all meet him as well.

1:35So, I would love to welcome Stephen Moore, who, again, is the CEO of Dual Dash and author of Strike Zone. Welcome to Organizational Sherlock's. Morgan and I are thrilled to have you here today. I know I just gave a little brief introduction, but we'd love to hear a little bit more about you, Stephen, and the path that brought you to where you are today. So, if you're open to it, take it away. Tell us what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. First, I always like to start with gratitude. That's one of my core values. I just want to thank you so much, Elizabeth and Morgan, for this opportunity.

2:06And Darian, behind the scenes, thank you for all that you do to make the magic happen. My name is Stephen. I'm the founder of Dual Dash. We are a performance optimization platform, and we're focused on bridging the gap between performance data and adding it to daily coaching so that managers know who to develop, who to coach, and what to fix on a day-to-day basis. Right in our ballpark, Stephen, as I feel like we're always having conversations around performance

2:38management, no matter what part of leadership or even sometimes just what part of the organization. Tell us a little bit about how you got into this and what your history looked like to push you this route. Yeah, yeah. I have a nontraditional path to technology. I started my career in retail automotive. I mentioned it in the book. I sat in nearly every seat within a dealership from sales, finance, sales manager, even did some parts, and then got recruited to a consulting firm to work on underperforming stores.

3:11So we'd work with large retail automotive groups and do quarterly operating review meetings and then facilitate their monthly operating review meetings as well. And during that process, I found a gap and a consistent theme, and that is reports and data lived in spreadsheets, but they weren't operationalized inside of the business. And so that's what pulled me into technology, to create a platform to scale these systems operationally. That's amazing.

3:41And for our listeners probably know this, I know for sure Morgan does. I love spreadsheets, and I absolutely hate when there's a spreadsheet just to have a spreadsheet. Like we should be doing something with it, which is I think why you and I really hit it off and have now been continuing our conversation. So that's wonderful. So yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. When it came to, you know, getting into the technology world, I don't want to get too off track, but I feel like your history is such an important part of who you are and what you do and why you do it, right? Or the way you do it too. So what did it look like for you to get recruited to that consulting firm and to need to optimize

4:16these spreadsheets and, you know, applying it to daily life, getting into the technology side of things? You know, what was that learning like for you? Oh, that's really good. I liken it to three different worlds. So the in-store, almost like making the donuts, if you will, just understanding the processes and being really good at that. And so all throughout my career, I've always been promoted. No matter what organization I was working at, I just found a way to do really good work and then get seen. And that's what pulled me outside of the stores into the consulting world.

4:48And so we were under my leadership and my team, we took a store that was underperforming. We were the lowest rung in our market all the way to the top in one year's time. And that was due to me just being a curious person, reading books and understanding what the best practices were for to be a great leader. And then my team just then showing up every day, running the plays. And that helped us to reach our success. So that was like the first world.

5:18The second world in consulting was looking at the business from a different perspective. And so seeing at a high level, what levers can you pull to change outcomes? And so it was really just, I was a student and a sponge and ran with a playbook that really helped me. And then from there, I actually stumbled into technology. There was an RFP from one of our clients for a survey tool and no one would let me whitelist it. And so I was like, how hard could it be to just build it my own? Let me tell you guys, it's hard as heck.

5:50But here we are today. We have some amazing clients, really, really great attraction in the marketplace and just a beautiful platform. Yeah. Wonderful. Sounds like you are your own organizational Sherlock. Finding my way. Yes, yes. Stumbled across it. Yeah. I mean, curiosity is a main value of ours here at Organizational Sherlock. It's why we do what we do. And we're excited that you're going to bring some of your learnings to those that are curious about what you do and performance in general, too. Yeah, me too. Me too.

6:20Well, I would love to jump in and kind of dig into some of those leadership components, if that's OK, because I was hearing you talk about leadership and how you brought this company from or this area to from lowest to highest, which is amazing, by the way. Congratulations and kudos to you. That is so cool. But I imagine that there are some different components that played into that as a leader. And we talk a lot about leadership here at Organizational Sherlock. Specifically, we've talked a lot about psychological safety.

6:53And I'm curious, when you think about psychological safety in your own leadership journey, what role has that played in your team's ability to really hit those growth targets? And I guess, side question, you know, do you do you see that an organization can really genuinely grow without that psychological? Yeah, that's such a great question. There's a book by Stephen Covey titled Moving at the Speed of Trust. And organizations can only move as fast as there is trust within a team or an organization.

7:26And there's a resource that I want to share with your listeners by Dr. Timothy Clark. It's called The Four Stages of Psychological Safety. And it's one of my favorite frameworks. Whenever we do surveys within our platform, we're really trying to uncover each of these four stages. And those stages are, number one, belonging. Number two is learner safety. Number three is contributor. And number four is challenger safety. The first one is foundational. Do I belong? Am I seen?

7:57Do my values align with the organization? That's foundational in terms of establishing trust. The second is learner safety. I really like this one because when people make mistakes, they want to know if I come to my manager, will I be reprimanded or will I be supported? And so just creating an environment where there is learner safety is important for psychological safety. The third element or the third stage is contributor safety.

8:28And that is, am I able to do what I do best? Am I micromanaged? Am I put on assignments where I can shine? And so all of those, those three are really foundational. But the hardest and the one that I find that most organizations struggle with is called challenger safety. And it's its name from the space shuttle that blew up. And what it is, is am I able as an employee to say, I think we're doing things wrong? I think there's a better way that we can do this.

9:00And the story comes from NASA with the space shuttle and their engineers were partnering with consultants, external consultants that they had hired to do some work. And there was an issue with an O-ring that consultants brought this to the, to the leading engineers. And they said, Hey, there's an issue. I think there's something wrong. And the engineers were like, we've tested that O-ring. There's nothing wrong. And sure enough, that, that space shuttle failed because of the O-ring, because they didn't listen to the, the challenge from those consultants.

9:32And so I find that organizations that have psychological safety, they're able to move more quickly and they're able to, to reach their goals. Yeah, no, I think that's a great framework to put out. You know, I always say it, but a lot of people will scoff when the term psychological safety is used. And it's not supposed to be used as a coddling technique, if that makes sense. So as a level of, to build a level of autonomy in your people and a greater meaning and a greater connection to the environment.

10:03You know, I really appreciated the foundational one, the first one that you talked about, which was talking, you talked about values. So values as a retention factor, not just psychological safety, but yes, it builds trust. Kind of the like me type of biases people have, the in-group bias. You're more likely to, to work with someone more easily. If you feel you're alike to them, you're more likely to follow someone who's leading and you have similarities to that leader in some way, shape or form. Right. Yeah. But then the values of the organization themselves, you know, that's just a key, those are key factors when you think of the mission and the vision of the environment.

10:37A lot of times you can build those values into performance management systems. Yes. Not just the value ones. Yeah. Yeah. It makes me think that, you know, and I think this ties together because all of these concepts are so interconnected, right? And we try to, we tend to look at them in these boxes at times, right? Like psychological safety is its own thing. And yet psychological safety is actually a systems thing, right? If it's built into the system in an effective manner, that's where the growth really happens. And so it's not about it being just this one thing that we train people on.

11:10It's about integrating into all those different pieces, you know? And I think that's what I really love about, I mean, one of the things I really love, I guess, about what you're doing over at Dual Dash. And it's not just looking at things in these silos, but really breaking them into or pulling them together rather than breaking them apart. And I'm wondering if you can say a little bit more about kind of your philosophy or your vision for Dual Dash and where you see this systems perspective really coming into play. Yeah, that's such a great question.

11:41And it's the challenge. You're exactly right. A lot of these processes that we have in place in organizations, that they're fragmented. And so our goal is to bring them into one system that leverages data and artificial intelligence to scale those insights to better equip managers to make better decisions and to give employees information that they need to know whether or not they're doing a good job and staying on track and build their bench development over time as well. We use, we believe that the foundation to make all of this happen is the one-on-one and specifically a structured one-on-one where both the employee and the manager can collaborate on the agenda together.

12:24And then we don't stop there. When there is psychological safety, we have this saying called troop welfare mission accomplished. So we want to make sure that we're checking in on our troops, checking in on the employees to make sure that they are better supported. And so we do a sentiment and stress check at the end of our one-on-ones. And it's just a quick check-in to say, how do you like working here at ACME? And what's your current stress level? And what we found is that there's a relationship between sentiment and stress when you're monitoring those over time.

12:55And so if those two tend to cross, where sentiment starts to diminish and stress level rises, you can, through the assistance of artificial intelligence, we can prevent quiet quitting and early exits as well. Wonderful. How often would you say these one-on-ones are being done? Does it depend on the organization, I assume? Yeah, yeah. There's a good, better, best approach. And so we think the ideal for most organizations is every two weeks.

13:27If you could get to every week, that would be like a rock star cadence. And at the minimum, you want to meet with your team once a month just to make sure that they are on track. But two weeks is really the sweet spot. Yeah, I would say, you know, something I see within smaller organizations that Elizabeth and I have worked with is, you know, if they can't do those like weekly or bi-weekly one-on-ones, they might have like a team, like bi-weekly, and then they might have like an individual monthly type of thing.

13:58What's your thought there? That's a great formula. That's a great formula. Yeah, I know. I like it. Yeah. I just feel like depending on the organization, obviously everyone's different. And, you know, some organizations have the time for meetings and their management is truly like all they're doing is that leadership and that focus on people and the success of the individual people. But then you have those leaders that are truly managers and overseeing other technical projects and that those are the individuals that might have less time. And then, you know, it's the idea of like don't meet to death in a way. It's simply like the framework of the organization will dictate those meetings in which frame, like what you would recommend.

14:35Yeah, yeah. And in our industry and retail automotive, we have a lot of deskless employees that we serve. And so you think about technicians or service advisors or sale people, they're typically away from their desk if they're being productive. And so how do you pull them away from that productivity to have those meetings? We want to be really mindful and make sure that everyone is aligned and that we're using that time as effectively as possible. And so that's where those collaborative agendas come in place. What things do you need support on and what directives do I need to share with you or information to help us to reach our collective goals?

15:10Yeah, yeah. I really like that. Sorry. Well, it's okay. It reminds me, I actually just had a coaching session this morning and it reminds me a little bit of a conversation we had. And we talked about structure and we talked about intentionality when it comes to team meetings, right? And kind of the idea of, well, you know, meeting overload, right? Like what are we actually here to do? And I think that even just starting with that, you know, we're here, like to your point about having the structure and knowing that you're going to have the sentiment and the stress part as a part of that.

15:42But it also being very collaborative is so important. And the coaching session I had this morning, it was very much a challenge with that, kind of this feeling that the meetings that they were having were not what they could be, right? Or that it was just because we've always done it this way. And I think that is an area where organizations can grow and where growth comes from. You know what I mean? Just kind of being open to trying something new, to be honest. Yeah, yeah. What we do with our group meetings, how we support that from a technology standpoint is in our group meetings for every agenda item, we have a tagging system.

16:18Where the person who adds the agenda item, they can say whether this is just informational only, which means that I need to be ready to listen at this agenda item. Or is this going to require some input from me, meaning that I have this agenda item ahead of time. I need to either do some research or come to the meeting prepared to present. And then lastly, we have the voting option. So we know that for this particular agenda item, we're going to vote. And so we leverage technology to be able to better facilitate those meetings so everyone feels like it's time well spent.

16:55Yeah, so funny enough, we had a conversation like months ago now, I think it was. Can't hone in on which episode it was. Usually I can, but this one I can't for some reason. And we were talking about the importance of agendas before a meeting and how it really prepares people to be in this meeting. So you're not going into this meeting blind. Thus, the meeting stays more purposeful and actionable. So I really like that additional point of adding, are you supposed to be just listening?

17:26Are you supposed to be giving information? Are you ready to be collaborative, to vote on something? You know, and also letting them know to be collaborative or letting them know to vote also gives automatically writes it into the system and shows physically, visually that you care about the employee's opinions, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Great point. And I wonder about, like, because I love the voting system, and I feel like even more, and I would love your, like, experience on that, or whatever, the experiences you've had with this.

18:02But I imagine with the voting system, you actually get more data that can help the individual who put the agenda item on there. Because if everyone votes a different way, like, that's data in itself, right? And it gets rid of those assumptions. Yeah. Do you have any examples or thoughts on that? Well, before this technology, what we found was people would rely on certain other group members to guide their vote. So if I know that, for instance, Cheryl, we're pretty much aligned.

18:35I'm just going to wait until Cheryl gets up to her vote in order for me to raise my hand, yes or no. Whereas with technology, now you have to go in on your own without that guidance. And so it gets to the truth of the matter of what you really believe the best strategy or outcome will be for whatever item that you're voting for. That's amazing. And I love that. And I think it creates some equity among the group, too, right? Where it's not just the loudest voices being heard. Everyone gets heard. Or the most powerful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

19:05Gosh, that's so cool. Great point. How would you say that, like, working with these people systems and the everyday performance management then applies to the overall well-designed organizational growth? How do they connect for you? How have you seen them? Where have you seen them be most successful, too? I'd love to hear about that. Yeah. Yeah. We typically come in when there's some deficit. So we know that there's some point A, whether it's gross profit or customer satisfaction numbers or EEI.

19:43And so we have that baseline, that starting point. What I found is if you don't have one system that coordinates all of these activities, then it won't be as powerful or potent. And so having your action plans in one system so they don't fall through the cracks, having your one-on-one, which is really the driver that feeds into that. For the employees, keeping retention high through growth plans, having that feed into the one-on-one, having all of these systems in place, having a place where I can share ideas inside of one system.

20:19So I have one place to go when I want to move the score. That is what I think helps organizations reach their new hire, is not having these disparate tools, but having this one go-to place to provide the input when I get that prompting. Yeah. Could you tell us more about the technology behind what you're working on and what you implement into organizations? Just give our listeners a little bit more descriptors on, you know, what are they using, when are they going into it, how are they utilizing it, and still connecting it back to the people side of things.

20:53Again, we don't want spreadsheets that are just there and not being used. Yeah, yeah. Our tool starts with a simple scorecard. And so what we do is we give everyone an individual scorecard, and we come up with the most important key performance indicators for their job. And the goal is not to overwhelm a person with the KPIs, but just what are the most important, and we like to focus on leading versus lacking indicators, what are the most important leading indicators that will help me to do a good job in this role?

21:26And that's actually where the basis of the bookstrike zone came from. We wanted a clearer way to communicate what a good job is for everyone inside of the organization. So that's where it starts. The next step is creating benchmarks. So once we have these KPIs, what are the areas of performance? I know all managers want to be 100 or hit a home run every time, but that's just not practical. And so we want a more effective way of measuring performance through variance, and that is what does good look like?

21:57Where am I not meeting expectations, and where am I exceeding, and where do I fall? And once we have that information, then managers can go into the system, and they can add a particular KPI to that one-on-one, so then I can get support when I need it. The second tool is, a lot of times we focus on redirection as managers, but we also want to do recognition, which is share some praise for a job well done. And so we have built-in recognition tools where, I know it's kind of cheesy, but when someone gets a star, they get the confetti, and then the great words that are said about them inside of our system.

22:31And so all of those things are feeding together. Collaboration was important. Yeah. I think we had a whole episode on gamification, Stephen, and it is a motivator for people. So sorry to interrupt you, but we are with you in this. I'm a big fan of confetti, and so if you're on my Slack channel, I will give you that reaction every time. Recognition is super important, and so we have that built into the system. But one of my favorite features of our system is our growth plans.

23:02And just having a structured approach to my development improves retention, but also helps me to see a path forward. But then, again, a structured way to get from point A to point B. I'll never forget, I had a salesperson that wanted to be a used car manager, and so this was a management role. And I always knew what they wanted, but we didn't have a system in place to get them there. And so with our technology, we're able to work on what are the skills, the technical skills that you'll need to step into that role,

23:33and then what are the soft skills that you need from a communication lens or managing others to get to that place. And so our growth plans are a way to structure that process so that way when a seat opens up, it may not be at their store, but at another opportunity, they can step into that role because they've been working on those skills over time. Yeah. You know, Steve, I wish we connected four months ago. It's the first quarter of the year. I was focusing on an updated performance management system. Funny enough, everything you can see about, it's similar to what I was implementing with the system,

24:07but it's specifically based off of the annual metric. And then there's like the different like quarterly self-check-ins and peer check-ins. And then the general like meetings are expected and there's different KPI management on spreadsheets. Yes, they're used. No, they're not ignored. I wish we met a while ago because I just find reorganizing a performance management system, funny enough. Well, this is actually where Steven and I, so just we met and we just just chatted for a very long time.

24:37And which is probably not atypical for our listeners to hear because Morgan and I do that all the time as well. We just kept chatting about like growth and what that means, because I think from like a value perspective, that is something that, you know, Appaday, you know, my company shares with with Steven's company. Like there is an emphasis on growth, but it's also about sustaining that growth, you know, and not seeing growth as something that that people have done wrong or not good at or it's a weakness. But really, it's just a natural part of being human and doing more and striving for more.

25:13Because so that motivation piece, right? Students are normally looking forward at the next thing, right? And so if you can build that natural tendency into the environment and into their job, into their role, into the organization, then why don't you make it more purposeful? So, yeah, I mean, I think it makes it part of the whole, like it just, it's more holistic, I guess. It's not just something you do, but it's a way of being, you know. Yeah. And as humans, there's a book that I love by Dr. George Land, you either grow or die. As humans, we are driven toward growth.

25:45And it doesn't necessarily mean that I have to want to move up a rung. I may want to just grow in my current role. I may be happy where I'm at. And that's okay. What skills can we work on to get you to that next level for your current position as well? Yeah, absolutely. I actually love that book. It is something I've, I've, I listened to. I love my audio books when I'm driving or commuting. And that's, I've listened to that one like three times alone. Oh my goodness. We can learn out all the time. We've got tons of resources for our listeners today, which is great.

26:16But I do want to kind of go back to that part about the sustaining growth, if that's okay, Stephen. Because I think sometimes what I see are the best intentions in organizations. We want people to grow. We want to give them opportunities. And they, they pull for things, right? That tools that will work, right? Whether that's a disc profile or, you know, coaching for a couple of months or whatever it is. But then it's like, what happens after the fact, right? How do we sustain that growth? And I think that's where the systems perspective really, really can have a profound impact.

26:50And so I'm just kind of curious from your perspective and your experience working with your, your clients, like what do you see are some of those biggest threats to sustaining this growth? And then how can our leaders that are listening really protect against that? And then I guess added layer, you know, how does the system help with the, the sustaining of the work that they're doing? Yeah. No, and I'll, I'll try to try my best to get to, um, I think the answer is the system.

27:21And that's the reason why, why I built dual dash is because it was a missing in the marketplace. How do we, I love that you mentioned disc. Um, and it, I can't wait to show it. And I hope that your listeners will sign up for a demo, but in our one-on-one tool, you have your agenda, but in the upper right-hand corner, there's a box for communication tools. And so we have, um, list of tools like DISC, Myers-Briggs, Platinum Rule, California Psychological Inventory.

27:51All of those tools are inside of our system so that once the assessments are complete, there's a list of do's and don'ts. And so when I'm communicating with this person, how can I leverage their strengths? How can I lean into what their, what, what their, what their goals are? And then compliment those two items to reach whatever goals that they have. And so communicating effectively is super important. So we have that communication box so that doesn't fall through the cracks. The second is, um, uh, having, having your, what we call work plans.

28:23If you are working on projects, having those embedded so that we can, we don't have to do the, Hey, is it done yet? What's the status on this? And so the system will do that for us. And then lastly, those growth plans, growth plans, I would say, when we look at our prioritization, typically growth and development becomes a lower rung or a lower priority. And so if we embed that into our one-on-ones, it stays top of mind. And then we can get those status updates as a part of our regular coaching rhythm, again,

28:53to reach our goals. Yeah, I would say it's so important though, like first and foremost is obviously a company is more likely to come or a leader in a company is more likely coming to you than you going to them all the time. There's a level of like natural buy-in to, to improvement and to, and to want to use your system. Um, and I really feel like that implementation of the system into their environment and the adoption of it is the most critical part of ensuring it continues to get used is because once people learn it.

29:25Once they use it, it becomes a part of their role. It becomes a part of their job. How long would you say it takes for a company to fully adopt the system? Or do you think it's different, obviously by company? Yeah. In terms of our user, we've designed it so that on day one, it's really intuitive. They can go in and, and complete their growth plan, go in and set up their first one-on-ones. And once that rhythm's in place, adoption is secure. What happens is we need to focus on the front end where we're focused on implementation with

29:58the leadership team. And so doing all of the background work will help set up the rest of the, the tool for success. And so a focus on creating your surveys. So we do employee lifecycle surveys. What onboarding questions do you want to ask? What employee engagement questions do you want to ask? What exit questions do you want to ask along the entire lifecycle? And then for the scorecard, looking at every role within the organization and understanding what are those key performance indicators for this job? And where would, when we're looking at our, our growth plans, what skills and technical

30:32skills do we want for this particular role? So if we do that front end work, the rest of the system just becomes second nature and it's really easy to, to operationalize. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like definitely adoption, you know, rolling out to leaders, usually with these bigger ideas, like these bigger systems, these bigger changes, it has to be rolled out to the leadership team first because it has to be top down. You, you have to have your leaders bought into and have the expectations of them to use it so that they drive it down for the expectation of the general staff to use it as well.

31:06Hopefully, hopefully is for the continuation of growth, these leaders are consistently using it and the organization as a whole has truly built the expectations of utilizing this. Have you ever had to be brought in again after the initial adoption, the initial implementation have you ever been brought in again to kind of re-implement it, to re-teach about it? Oh yeah.

31:32Organizations are busy and that's what I chalk it up to. And they're in different places. And so they may come to us at different phases of different projects. And so there may need to be some reorientation to the system. And with technology, things are always changing. And so we have a university.dual-.com where employees can go in and see the most recent changes. We do change log updates so that, again, they're staying up and running with the latest changes. But re-implementation is a process.

32:03And it's just a sign that either the timing was off or receptivity of the leadership team wasn't quite there when we started the initiative. And so giving it a second go is okay. There's going to, these are new processes. And so we call walk, run is the goal. And so we're going to have stumbles and that's okay. Yeah. I imagine too, though, you, I mean, we talked earlier about, you know, folks who maybe want to, you know, stay in their role and get really good at it. But there are people who also want to, you know, get into different roles, maybe a leadership

32:36role. And the use of a tool, right, from a leadership perspective may differ from their experience as an individual contributor. So when that transition happens, I imagine there is an opportunity for maybe not reintegration, but just, I don't know, I'm going to use calibration because you used it, but like recalibration of like, how do you use this tool now? Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly it. Because your needs are different based on where you're at in your career and, you know, what role you're in. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that actually like follows your transition.

33:08You originally founded Culture Booster, earned your strong market reputation, and then you noticed that dealerships needed more and that's when you built DualDash. So I feel like you can see this translation and this continuation of implementing new and different processes. You know, you're saying you're adding things to DualDash and you give those synopses of what's new about the system. I really appreciate that because every system will grow and develop as the science and the backing and the information that we have available to us increases.

33:41And so it's our job as IOs, as organizational Sherlock's, to then apply that to the systems we have that we're using that are in organizations. And it sounds like you and your team are doing that. Yeah, and it really comes from listening. We have some good ideas from our team, but our clients, they sort of guide us. And so if we're doing a good job as listeners, then that will develop our roadmap so we know what to build over time. Yeah, you have that listening point in your agendas. Yeah. I love that.

34:11I mean, what is the future for DualDash? And like, where are you guys headed? I'm curious to see, you know, as it grows, you know, where do you see it going? What's your vision? Right now, our focus is on partnerships. And so there are two major DMS providers, Techion and Cox Automotive. And integrating within their platform will allow us to scale and to be able to serve more dealers across the nation. And then one day, hopefully one of those providers, they purchase us and we can go and have pina

34:45coladas one day instead of our Zoom. We'll do a pina coladas on the beach one day for our next podcast. But up until then, we want to leverage AI the best that we can. We want to be ethical about it by making it an opt-in only. I know some organizations that we work with, they deal with sensitive information. And so even like things like meeting notes and trackers and things of that nature, we want those to be opt-in versus just automatically embedded in our tool. And so just looking at meaningful ways to leverage AI is also important for us in the short

35:18term. Wonderful. That sounds great. I mean, I can see it going a lot of different ways. I don't know, knowing you, I wonder if pina coladas are maybe just like a side gig though, because I have a feeling you'll just find another gap that you want to fill and then do that. But I will speak for Morgan and I both, we would love to have pina coladas in our next episode of day. So we will meet you at the beach for that. It's a deal.

35:47Instead of Zoom calls or pina coladas, it's going to be both combined. Oh my goodness. You know, I love it though, because it's not, I think sometimes when we get into these organizations and even as leaders, the mindset, it's like, well, I need to do this. And it becomes like a thing that we have to do. And what I love about our conversation is we're talking about these big topics that are so impactful for organizations, for scalability, for all of kind of all the things we've talked

36:17about, KPIs, everything. And yet we're having fun. And I think that's a really important message, right? Or at least I'm having fun. It's an important message that like, even though that it's so impactful, we can still, it can still be something that's enjoyable. You know? That's right. I give amplification, you know, it can be meaningful and purposeful at the same time. Yeah. That's right. That's right. Yes. Oh my gosh. This is such a great conversation, Stephen. I'm like, I'm so excited. I hope that our listeners run out and grab a copy of Strike Zone.

36:52I think it's a great, the way you described it to me when I was talking to you the other day is just such a cool way of looking at it. And I think it's really kind of a tangible way of just looking at growth and looking at all of these different pieces that we sometimes kind of try to operationalize too much. I think it's just a nice way to ground it in the reality we all know. And so I hope you grab a copy of that book. We will, of course, post all of the resources that Stephen's shared with us today for our listeners. And I would be, I'm so excited for our continued conversations.

37:26Me too. Me too. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to share today. I do want to leave your listeners with one quote because I talked about goals and it says, no one stumbles all the way to the top of Mount Fuji, single-mindedly going forward, sweeping aside the pebbles in the path. And what I take away from that is there's a process. And if you follow that process just day in, day out, you'll reach your goals. The goals are what it's all about. You have heard me talk about that all throughout the entire podcast.

38:00What's your goal? What's your outcome? We can reach our goals, but we need to do it one step at a time. Absolutely. Oh my gosh, I love that. I literally said this morning to someone, what is your next right step? So I could have used that quote for you today.

38:16From someone who's seen Mount Fuji personally, I did not climb it because it was wintertime. Oh my goodness. From someone who's seen Mount Fuji personally, it is huge. It is beautiful. And that quote is just as beautiful as the nature around Mount Fuji too. That's awesome. Thanks. Well, thank you so much, Stephen. We appreciate you being with us today. We just, I feel like we were put into each other's lives for a reason. And I'm so excited to see what happens next for all of us. So thank you again.

38:48We appreciate you. Is there anything you want to leave listeners with? Anything more we didn't touch on that you think is really important for our listeners to hear?

38:57No, just that it's the process. And if you follow the process, you'll reach your goals. And so thank you all so much for having me. Morgan, thank you, Elizabeth. And Darian, behind the scenes, thank you for all that you do and your listeners. Thanks for taking the time to take in what we shared today. Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you. Well, with that, listeners, this concludes another intriguing episode of Organizational Sherlock's. I'm Elizabeth Fleming. And I'm Morgan Ashworth reminding you that the journey to success is an ongoing investigation.

39:27We've talked about this a ton today, but stay curious, stay strategic, and keep utilizing insights to decode your business mysteries. Join us every Friday for your next whodunit. This is Organizational Sherlock's closing today's case. We will see you all next time.

39:46All right. Yay, that was... Yay, that was... Yay, that was... We will now look at the room outside. We're going to use the green light. We're gonna use these two cores. We're gonna use them. We're gonna use these three cores. Now we're gonna use these two cores. This is the upper cores. We are going to use the to operate. This is the box compender.