(upbeat music) - What's the bananas all about? What do you think that you remember about bananas? - I thought there was something he quoted as Steve Jobs. - Steve Jobs and bananas? - I think so, yeah. Sounds interesting, right? - Y'all, listen up. - I have no idea how bananas would get into this. It could have been. So, hello, everybody. This is Unleashing Leadership. I'm Travis Massillo of Seed Planning Group. And this is my co-host Dave Nerci, chief operating officer of Seed Planning Group. And yes, I'm losing my voice today because we've been having employee events, the great beef low caravan of 2024 is just completed. And I can't talk 'cause we are too much fun. So, but welcome to our podcast where your host can't get through a sentence today, which is about the same as normal 'cause normally a trip up on the words anyway, so. - No, you have an excuse. - Right, exactly. But this podcast is all about how we implement takeaways from great books into our business, into our day lives. We work on personal and professional development. We work on our teams, we work for our clients, trying to make things bigger, better, grow in a positive way. And we're talking about the book, Build from Tony Fidel. So, probably gonna be working on this for about three months. We're about a half a month in. Our big takeaway for today, without experience, you never get three-dimensional. The best you can do is two dimensions. And somehow there's bananas all mixed in this. And Dave's gonna try to work this through with Dave. He's got bananas on the mind. As always, those favorite like or subscribe to us wherever you are listening or watching. And if you don't normally do that, make us the exception. Be a superstar for us, help other people get to hear and see this show so that they can improve on their journey and leadership and professional personal development. Every time somebody likes to subscribe to us, other people can find us. So just to help us out, we appreciate it. We'll keep trying to help you out as well. Our sponsor for today, I actually didn't even get that far. So I have no idea who it is. (laughs) Cutthroat College planning and podcast, helping people avoid going broke 'cause it costs college, check them out at NQRMedia.com or wherever podcasts can be found. So check them out. One of their stories they were just talking about the other day is they helped a family keep their kid from spending $70,000 a year on college because he liked the cookies that they were serving when they visited the campus. So I mean-- - That's a new one. - Apparently, that's a real thing. So check out that podcast. It'll help maybe you keep your kids from choosing a college because of the cookies. - All right. So bananas and cookies. - Yeah, food. - Just talk to us about the bananas. - And beefalo. - Yeah, and beefalo and beefalo. Do we wanna take a second to talk about the beefalo? - I think we have to. - I think we do. It'd be like an inside thing. Nobody would know where we're going with this. I think it goes with the leadership thing. I mean, we had pretty phenomenal time bringing the team together. So we did this, the great beefalo caravan. I had heard about this actual real breed of animal called beefalo. It's a mix between a beef cow and a buffalo. And it's a whole USDA thing. It's grass-fed, all that kind of stuff. Organic is from a farm in Franklin, just south of Nashville, Tennessee. And it's really healthy for you. I think it's something like, well, I don't know exactly the reasons. - More protein, more vitamins. - Like 40% more vitamins or something like that. - Yeah, less cholesterol, less fat. - Yep. And it's all organic. So when you get it, you can just see, look at the steak. And it's like the deep red color. - Oh my gosh. - Yeah, amazing. And so it's a lot leaner. - And not dry because it's the mix. It's not like full bison, right? It's like you still got the-- - Right. So it's not gamey. You don't have a gamey thing. - Right. - Yeah, 'cause we cooked-- - 106 per-- - We cooked something like 80 pounds of hamburgers. - Yeah. (laughs) - Yeah. - Really great. - Which was completed. So what we did is Dave, a bunch of our crew from New York, they got down here to Tennessee. We did a huge barbecue, a huge party. We had a Southern Rock band come and play for us. It was an awesome night. We invited the community. We invited close friends. Just a really great eight, a lot of beef low. We got 900 pounds of beef low in the freezer. If anybody wants a recommendation on A, where to get beef low and B, where to get it processed, I can give some shout outs on that. But it was just a completely awesome time. So we're recovering from that right now. It was, we packed a whole week into a weekend. - Yeah, absolutely. It was awesome. - And the band was dirty gospel, right there. - They're, it's shout out to dirty gospel. - Yeah, shout out for them. They did a phenomenal job. - Yeah, and you guys made the drive. Dave, you were some of the ones that made the drive down. Pretty good drive, right? - Yeah. It did not feel like 12 hours. We had good company in the car. No kids in the car. Most of our kids. - Those kids, kids, kids. - Yeah, yeah. (laughs) No, it was great. And it's an easy drive, good sight scene along the way. - Well, well, well worth it. We'll do it again. No hesitation. - And shout out to the team, 'cause we had a bunch of our people there. We had a lot of cool B-flow shirts we had made up, but we had an awesome compliment from somebody that was attending. And he was just like, you guys have an amazing team. He's like, I can tell you an amazing team. And to get these people together like this, and you guys are, you can tell you guys really enjoy each other and like each other. And it's just good. There's a lot of good camaraderie and stuff like that. So we get some awesome shout outs afterwards people coming up to me and talking about our people. So, I mean, complete, you know, and this podcast is all about leadership and stuff. Leadership doesn't begin and within the four walls of the business. You know, we talk about life and work balance. You know, it's, you gotta build these opportunities for this camaraderie for your people. - Yeah. And one thing to suck out, I remember the lead singer in the band when he was kind of ending the night and gave his thank you the, you know, he thanked Travis for having them and hosting them. And he said as Travis and his family is how he, how he said it, which I thought was really cool because it was, like you said, it was a mixed bag of everybody, right? It was some friends, some neighbors, some people in the community, you know, and then all of your, you know, your colleagues and everything. And he just kind of saw it as one big, fun, great event of everybody there. So that was really cool, that's how he said that. - Proud dad moment from me there, looking at everybody that we've been able to bring together and just being proud of everybody and being able to have everybody enjoying themselves and getting some healthy food. - Yeah. - Which is, you know, I mean, and introduced to something new, you know, I mean. - All around huge success. And now actually, this topic, since I don't know where the banana was going, but as we were talking about that, this is perfect. So it says without experience, you never get three-dimensional. The best you can do is two dimensions. So this experience we had this weekend. - Yep. - Before that, you know, all the Knoxville, through our Knoxville office has grown, you know, quickly, right? We've added people and I haven't, before this weekend, I haven't met any of the, besides Travis and Steve, who came from New York, I haven't met any of the staff in person. So I only saw them on a screen, right, in two dimension. And I never got the person. - Wow, okay. - And really knew them, right? Outside of a meeting or a chat here and there. But now, after meeting them and, you know, hanging out, meeting their spouses, their families, getting to spend some time just doing activities and the personalities and everything that came out, right? There's a new relationship and understanding and jokes and all of that when now someone pops up on the screen, it's a whole different feeling and understanding that it was prior to that, where it was like solely a work relationship. So it kind of went from that two to three dimension. And that was the, from the experience that we all had, you know, being a company event there, but being much more than like your typical company outie and how I would view it. - Yeah, and I would say that's one of the things, you know, as people are battling about going back to the office or why do I, you know, why can't I just work remote and all that type of thing. Kayla was the host of our cutthroat college planning podcaster that we talked about in the intro. From the first day that she started working with us, she's always talked about eating together. And then company culture, and I mean, I'm gonna credit this to Kayla, I believe this was from her, but I'm thinking five or six years ago now. But the idea is if you eat together and you spend time together, you're going to work better together. - Yep. - And why it's so important to bring people together and have them together in the flesh to have those experiences and, you know, back to your point that you're making there about the three dimensional first, two dimensional, three dimensional is about getting immersed into something. Two dimensional is looking at something and thinking you're an expert because, you know, you've observed it. Three dimensional is literally getting into it, right? Getting inside of it, getting behind it, getting around it, getting over it, getting under it, understanding how it exists in space, not just that it's there. Most people stop with, I know it's there. You know, they're not necessarily curious enough or they won't put the work in enough. Think about any preconceived notion that you've ever had. Normally, that's because you stopped at, I see that it's there. And boom, here's my opinion. We'll get involved, get in the middle of stuff, you know? Stick your nose in once in a while, get out there and play with the guys, you know? Go out there and sit with the ladies, you know? Do whatever you got to do to be a part and be immersed into whatever it is that you're working at. I think, you know, the book is more about work and everything, but it's the same in life, right? You are not going to understand a problem unless you pull that damn thing apart and put it back together. They talk about inventors all the time, these kids that, you know, go on to invent incredible things. What do all the kids have in common? They all took the family microwaver toaster apart. - Right. - Just to see how it worked. - Yep. - Yeah, they're looking at it three dimensionally. - Yeah, it's taking it beyond the, we've talked about this a lot, just reading about something, right? Or in a traditional education setting and just kind of the theory behind things, it's the actual action behind it. And like you said, immersing yourself in it. So you have that experience to learn from, you know, fail whatever it is and then learn and get better. And that's, you know, we're given the half step here on the podcast, right? We're talking about books. So you could read, anyone could go read this book then we're talking about our experiences with it. And the hope would be that anyone listening kind of takes both of those and goes and takes action themselves, right? - I can't tell you how many books I read. And I did it when we did "The Infinite Game" with Simon Sinek and I went out and got some of his critics and some of the bullshit that they were talking about. Long story short, looking back on that, now that's exactly my frustration with the critics. You're sitting there reading a book, talking smack to a guy who's saying, "This is my experiences, this is what I've done." You haven't done shit in your life other than read somebody else's book and tell them whether or not they know what they're talking about, right? You go do it, you try it, you learn it, you figure it out. Then you can come back and say that guy doesn't know what he's talking about, right? But until you've actually done it, you being a critic by looking just, you know, straightforward at something and not actually immersing yourself in and understanding all the nuance, you know, just makes you look like a child, you know? It's, if you want to talk about something, man, you've got to go do it. You can talk about leadership, you can talk about books. A lot of people, they read a book. Like, yeah, but that's not real life. How do you know, did you try it? - Right. - That's why they say action speaks louder than words. (upbeat music)
