Stop Chasing Customers, Start Attracting Them feat. Charles Browne

What if your customer growth problem isn’t a product issue but a people one?

In this episode, Alyssa Nolte sits down with leadership strategist Charles Browne to unpack why so many organizations chase the wrong customers, build bloated offerings, and burn out their best people in the process. From his early days in martial arts and the Navy’s nuclear program to leading transformational change at Los Alamos, Charles shares how clarity, consistency, and personal values are the real accelerators of growth.

They explore why high-performing teams start with empowered individuals, how to build trust through decision-making frameworks, and what happens when companies forget their core value proposition.

If you’ve ever added more features to justify your price, or overloaded your customers with choices, you need to hear this.

Key Takeaways:

→ Stop jumping to solutions. If you don’t define the real problem, even your best ideas won’t fix it.
→ Empowered teams and clear values create scalable momentum; micromanagement kills it.
→ Your customers don’t want more options...they want clarity, confidence, and connection.

Key Moments:

00:00 Introduction to Charles
00:07 Charles' Origin Story
02:16 Current Roles and Responsibilities
03:39 Common Blind Spots in Leadership
06:57 Defining Leadership Roles
08:50 Customer-Centric Strategies
11:53 Personal Values and Leadership
16:24 Core Values in Organizations
19:29 Micromanagement and Organizational Values
19:42 Customer, Product, and Operations Focus
20:30 Southwest Airlines: A Case Study in Values
22:06 The Importance of Consistency in Leadership
25:33 Aligning Personal and Professional Values
28:40 Serving the Customer with Integrity
30:37 Identifying and Serving Your Ideal Customer
34:26 Final Thoughts and Resources

It's time to say "goodbye" to the Sunday Scaries.

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Transcript

0:00

I'm so excited to introduce you to my new friend, Charles. Charles, welcome to the show. Thank you. Pleasure to be here. Of course. So we always open up these conversations. I, I wanna hear about your origin story, like how did you get here? Yeah. You know, I, yeah, I, I know we don't want to talk about real specific things, but the truth is what, what made me. The leader and the kind of change agent that I am today actually started when I was a kid. I wouldn't have believed that until I started to look back and reflect on my own life and my own experience. But the truth is I've been learning about human performance and learning about leadership since I started training in martial arts at, you know, nine or 10 years old. Um, and from that, and then through the Navy, specifically as a member of the Navy's Nuclear Power Program. Human performance and decision making. Was such a big part of my training, you know, the technical stuff aside. It really was about making good quality decisions in the heat of battle, literally and figuratively. And then on through really, uh, you know, complicated and strategic projects, the same things applied. It, it struck me personally on a personal level when, um, you know, I did have one of those significant life events where I lost my job and I lost my title, and it was an opportunity for me to either go back and repeat what I had just done and leave myself vulnerable to another layoff, or take that moment to take all that training and all that life experience and really decide. Is this the moment in time where I change my trajectory and I change my path, and actually using a lot of those professional tools, a lot of that decision making and human performance, it's actually what caused me to say, yeah, you know what, I'm gonna take a time out. I'm not gonna rush right back into the job market. I'm gonna think about who I am as a person, as a man, as a leader, as a father, as, as anything, you know, really define who I am and now. Pick what I believe my most valuable, um, you know, uh, um, value proposition is to the world and go after that. So, yeah, that was kind of the big, how I got here to do exactly what I do today, which of course is, is absolutely what I love. So, yeah. So tell us a little bit more about your day job. I guess I'll call it like, what are you working on? Yeah, so, um, I kind of wear two hats right now. Uh, I am the deputy director of a project management office for Los Alamos National Laboratory. So, you know, if, if you're familiar Yep. That's where the Manhattan Project was and we're still doing stuff here. And so I've come up through the ranks, uh, professionally as a, uh, nuclear operator and then a project manager, and then a process improvement engineer master black belt. So now I'm helping. Coordinate and operate all the project management for this national laboratory. But on the side, not really, 'cause it's the same job I've been doing more and more consulting in relation and in context of that, which is, uh, making changes in large organizations, helping them scale, helping them redefine their. Customer value proposition and think about, is this a time to grow? Is this a time to pivot? What is this? So yeah, so I kind of do both of those. And what usually typically ends up happening is then I become a, uh, a consultant, a coach, and a confidant for some of those, uh, higher level CEOs and executives in those organizations. And when you're, when you're developing those relationships with those higher level people and, and having to be that coach, that confidant, that consultant. You know, what do you think is the blind spot that a lot of these leaders are missing, especially when it comes to growing their business, building relationships with customers or building a high performance team? I. Yeah, yeah, no, there, there's some really common ones. And the first thing I would say to anyone listening is this, I, it's kind of funny, I didn't plan this, but I had a friend of mine kind of gimme a little bit of a guff the other day about this very common military phrase, which is, slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Okay? It's pretty common. And you could just take that on the surface and go, aha. Yeah, okay. I get it. So slow down, but I, I really, really mean this. What does it mean to slow down? And here's where I mean it. For every one of those organizations, every organization I work with without fail, every executive that I work with without fail is under so much schedule pressure and such a time constraint that they're very, they're way too quick to jump to solutions. Now, arguably that's what we get paid for. We get paid for solutions, we get paid for strategy, we get paid for fixing things, removing obstacles. Yep, yep, yep. But far too many of us are not spending enough time defining the problem. I. So we're out there doing a ton of work, creating a bunch of solutions for things that aren't broken, or solutions that don't fix the original problem. So the number one blind spot that I have to point out to every one of these leaders is take a breath. Do the due diligence to really figure out what the problem is because your team is gonna come into the room and they're gonna say, we had this problem and you've always told us to come with solutions. So solution, solution, solution. But if you haven't taught them to do proper root cause analysis, if you haven't taught them to use the five why's, if you haven't taught them to really stop and think about what that initiating event was, and that initiating trigger was, they've come to you with solutions that are very superficial. And if you don't provide the sounding board there to say, okay, I appreciate the work you did, but did you ask this? Did you ask this? Did you, did you research this? Then so many organizations just spin their wheels, uh, again, implementing solutions that aren't relevant to the actual root cause, and it's just a lot of busy work. So that, that's the number one. Shot to the heart because you're describing my entire day. So I just got one of these like, um, smart rings, right? Okay. And it tells me like, you know, the sun comes up at 11 today, so you should go spend an hour outside and, you know, it'll give me like movement breaks. And I just, I had this thought this morning, I was like, I think you just need to look at my calendar and see that none of that is possible with everything that's on my schedule. Um, so to your point, you know, we're, we're super over schedule. We filled our calendars with. Stuff. Right? But is it the right stuff? But the point you just made about the, the surface level insights from your team, right? Because they want to come to you with solutions. They're trying to do the right thing. And I literally just had this conversation a few weeks ago where someone came to me with a bunch of ideas and they felt very like. Unthought through and didn't really consider everything that we've got going on, everything that I've got going on and what our actual mission is. Mm-hmm. And it sounds to me like you're saying like, yeah, okay, they need to think deeper, but I also need to teach them to do so. Absolutely. And uh, you know, so much of that comes down to what do you think your job is as a leader? And, and in my space, like in my professional space, without, without exception, every leader that I deal with is a technical leader, right? They have deep technical acumen, PhDs, master's degrees, engineering, technology science. Very technically competent. And even in a couple layers below that, even in the trades and in the crafts, right, I'm gonna take my best electrician and it just makes sense to make them the foreman. Does it, does it make sense to take your best technical person out of the field and make them a foreman who's doing the paperwork? Like it's a completely different skillset. And if you haven't stopped to think about for a moment, what is my job as. Um, this, you know, this is pretty common. I'm sure this, that I'm not gonna blow anybody's mind with this, but I will literally sit down with an executive and say, okay, just let's just brainstorm everything you do in a day. I. Now let's sort those into$20 an hour tasks, $200 an hour tasks, and $2,000 an hour tasks. And if you as CEO are doing anything that is in the $20 an hour or $200 an hour category, you are messing up. You are me. That is not your job. That is not your lane, and that is not what you're supposed to be doing for your organization. So it'd be really easy to step back and say, well, what are $2,000 an hour? You know, roles and, and tasks, what it's strategy. Mm-hmm. It's strategy. And believe it or not, it's mentoring and coaching and going out and seeing, I've gotta spend more time with this person. I definitely need to. Elevate or, or highlight this person, right? Those are two that because you do that and you're talking about an exponential effect across your organization. So you're working with CEOs, you're helping them, you know, to understand their business, how to build those high performance teams. What about like their customers and the people that they serve? Because at the end of the day, like, it's cool if my employees like me, but if my customers don't care, then what do I have? Yeah. Yeah. So the, the, they're kind of twofold on that. Firstly, I'll look at organizations that have kind of grown over time, and it's just layers of paint, right? They never really scrape the old paint off and put a fresh coat on. So what they create is. They create this decision fatigue for their customers, and they think more is better. That makes us better. That's a differentiator from our competitors because we have this, this, and this, and we have this, this, this, and this, and we have more colors and we have more sizes, and we have more shapes. That becomes decision fatigue for your customers, especially. If you and your organization don't understand your own product services and unique selling proposition, right? So now you've put all the responsibility on the customer, bloop, here's everything we have. What do you want? I have no idea. One of the conversations that I have almost immediately with anyone who's gonna help me with my business. So I, I have a fractional CTO, my chief technical Officer, and my interview process for that was, I do not want to have to make any decisions. About the technical aspects of my business, my website, my lead, all the integrations that go on with a digital business, right? Do not ask me, here's here's my color scheme. Here's the logos, here's a folder full of of headshot. Like, my expectation of you as a professional is you are going to advise me. I have to give you my strategy. I have to give you my USP so that you know who I am, but my expectation of you as a professional is now you take that and, and you deliver a product that matches that. Our customers have the same expectation. I don't, I don't know. I don't know which of your products I need. Here's the problem I have. I didn't come to you for a product. It came to you for a solution, right? Um, one of the things that I see all too often is people think that more is more, right? So they'll propose a project, right? I, I do a lot of consulting work. They'll propose a project and then they add this layer and that layer, because if we add more things and it's more impressive and it's more like we're doing a weave of something, then it's probably worth more money, and then they'll pay us more. And what I see time and time again, nine times outta 10. They get like that buffet feeling of like, I'm standing out a buffet. There's too many choices I need to get out of here, rather than a really, really nicely curated, you know, dinner of what I think you should have with the wine pairings that I've, I've selected for you. Yeah. And I, I think that comes from a, a place of almost insecurity. Like, you don't believe that your core product is good enough, so you have to add all these bells and whistles onto it. Um, but how can we, how do you get through to people who need to hear that, that you can just do what you think is best instead of just piling on. Yeah, listen, I, I'm gonna take this super, super basic and I'm gonna make this really personal, which, which is totally applicable. I don't care if you have 10,000 employees, you can do this for yourself and for your business. Um, when I described, you know, that crossroads in my life where I can decide, okay, I can keep going on the road that I'm on. Which is starting to feel a little repetitive or I can take a shift, but a fork in the road is easy, right? Either or two choices. The reality is, at that moment in my life, I had infinite choices, right? I had infinite number of roads in front of me. Oh my gosh. You want to talk about, right? If you, if you're going, if you're going anywhere, you're going nowhere. Right? Right, right. So the real deep work I did that helped me. Uh, define the strategy and the path for the rest of my life. My personal life was understanding who I was as an in individual, and that was defining my values, and there's kind of a tiered approach that I apply to that. Most importantly, those top three to five non-negotiable personal values. Okay. These are the things that I will never compromise on. I need to know that. I need to know that for myself. And if I am leading an organization, I need to know that for my organization. Uh, the other piece of that puzzle is, you know, my needs and specifically my emotional needs. Uh, I'll, I'll give just a short story. When I worked for General Electric, I created a, a tool, a database that was kind of operating experience and lessons learned database. And I kind of assembled that in a really different way, such that it was searchable. So most project managers are required to perform a pre-job brief before they do any work. And one of the little check boxes in there is, did you review operating experience and lessons learned? It's like, yep. I did a keyword search on this exact transformer and nothing came up. So we're good, right? Everyone is right. But truthfully, if you use better metadata and better keywords, you're gonna come up. Okay? So I kind of designed that program and it was very successful and I was approached by GE and they said, oh my gosh, we wanna roll this out across the, uh, entire organization. Congratulations. We're gonna make you a product manager. You're gonna go around the world, you're gonna set this up, you're gonna teach the other organizations how to use this and wow, congratulations, right? So for anybody, they'd be like, holy cow. Yay. I hit it jackpot. But I knew enough about myself at that time to go. That is all significance and uncertainty. A ton of variety, a ton of travel, new people, a lot of attention. The spotlight. All those things, not only do they not fulfill me, they repel me. That is not what I want. What I want is contribution. Which I typically experience in this format or in a, in a small team format, where I can actually take something from beginning to end and certainty, which is why I built a meta, you know, specific database.'cause I want to be able to search and repeat, and repeat, and repeat, and repeat. So knowing that about myself, I said, thank you very much. I'll just take a certificate and a plaque and maybe, uh, you know, a, a, a gift card to Disney. I, I, I don't want that because I know that within months, that is not for me. It's very important for you as a leader to understand who you are as a person. Because it is going to affect your leadership, whether you think it is or not, consciously or unconsciously. Those needs and those values are absolutely defining your messaging, defining your leadership style, defining your decision making. And if you're not aware of it, then you're getting very frustrated with your organization because you're not getting the results that you want. And partly is that okay? So. It's a very personal thing where you as an individual need to know that, how does that equate to a larger organization? An organization is just, it's just that it's made up of all these individual cells that create this. Organ, uh, organism, right? So a corporation, a business, a company, it's an organism with its own attitude and its own personality. And if you're the head of that and you're making those decisions, your culture is that, that I just described. So that organization has a set of values and it has a set of needs. And so in, in leading that organization effectively, those are really important things to know about yourself individually, and then how they apply to the larger organization. I. There's a lot that I wanna touch on in there. Specifically, I wanna talk about the values that you talked about, because I think a lot of us who've worked for large organizations have seen the core values written up on the wall, right? But we know that they're not. They're not real. They're a marketing campaign. They're pr, they're not like a strategic governance. But, um, I have a small company that I'm working on. It's, it's TrueView, uh, is what it's called. And we're doing like customer turn prediction software, which is something that excites me. Like we're a company of five. Right? Right. And one of the first things that we had to do was set our core values. Um, that's, you know, that's what you do when you start a company. You set your core values. Sure. Yeah. Um, and I sat down and I tried to figure out. You know what? What were my core values as the CEO? What did I want them to be? And I could go and I could get input for the rest of my team, and I did. But I had to do that work first to figure out that, okay, our core values in my mind are trust, customer success, and pay it forward. Trust, because we're dealing with a lot of like sensitive customer data. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. Customer success in that we want to be easy to work with and want people to actually like. You know, wanna spend time with us and enjoy that process. Not like you mentioned where it's like, let me just make you do all the work. Right? Yeah. Yeah. But the third one, and my favorite one is pay it forward. It's that we give more than we get. We give first and we give often. And I think it's really important that me as the leader truly believes in those things. Those are external values that our customers should experience, but they're also internal values that our team should experience. And if we have an opportunity to do something that breaks the trust of our customers, then we should absolutely not even consider it. Yep. Yep. And what you've also done in doing that is you've created a decision making matrix. So when you're not sure, hey, what should we do about this? I. What, what should we do about this exact problem? Should we do this or should we do this? Well, our values say we're gonna pay it forward, so we're gonna take one step backward for our organization in order for our customer to take two steps forward. That's what we're gonna do. Right. So you've created the decision making matrix in that, so good job. Yeah. Well, and then with the rest of the team though, like I, as the leader can say, okay, these are a decision making matrix, but empowering them to call out the BS if I miss it. Yep. Yep. And listen, successful organization, I don't understand why leaders aren't getting this message or aren't believing this message or aren't internalizing this message, but every successful organization, one of the key indicators of their success is the level of empowerment of their organization. So again, kind of back to my space, very technical, right where we hired you because of this resume, 'cause of this work that you did, because of this thought process, this intelligence, and thi this. And then we're gonna dictate how you do your job every day. What. That's insane. Not only is it wrong for that individual, and you're gonna lose that individual in a matter of moments, but think about now the responsibility and the load that you've put on leadership, because nobody can make any decisions for themselves. Everything has to be approved. I mean, that, that is quintessential micromanagement. I, I don't need you to think. I need you to push this button every time the light comes on. Like, dude, I know. No, that is not what you hired me for. Right? But, but if, if you're an organization that doesn't have a set of real values, that doesn't have, you know, all, all businesses kind of fall into three categories, right? They're either customer focused. Product focused or operations focused. So you have to decide because that's another form of a decision matrix. Do you know it? Um, classic examples, four Seasons, customer focused. Absolutely. Apple product focused. Without question. We're always looking to see what their next product is, and Walmart and Amazon are operationally focused, so when they make decisions, that is absolutely. The, the deal buster and the majority stakeholder, 51% of their decision has to come from, well, are we focused in one of these three areas? And that's what decides it. We just saw, um, Southwest changed a bunch of their policies. Right? And that's a great example of a company going against kind of what they professed to be their priority, right? Customer obsessed was kind of their conversation. And yet, when the. CEO was talking about why this change was being made. It was all operational decision making, not customer decision making. And that can be true. We're businesses, we gotta make money, right? Yep, yep. But if you are going to say that you are the customer focused, customer obsessed airline, and yet you couch all of your decisions and you, and you explain them in terms of operations, they could have very easily said, you know, we gotta get rid of the two bag policy because we want to keep prices low. For you to come fly with us. Right. And it was, it was, we'd have to increase costs and because we care about you, the customer, we'd rather keep our costs low, right? Instead they said, we gotta make more money. We gotta operationally succeed. We gotta pay the shareholders. Right? Um, so, and that really has hurt them in the narrative because they had this, this persona and the cognitive dissonance just hit as immediately as they started to change the way they were talking about themselves and about what their priorities were. Yeah, and, and it, and it doesn't just impact their customers. Think about their frontline employees. What a nightmare to about, right? They have to be getting so much like heat. Absolutely. And they have to literally now paint on a fake smile. Part of what made Southwest so successful was their authenticity. Like they were actually that company. So no one had to fake it. Everyone was happy to come to work every day, but now all of a sudden you start to question that and that absolutely listen. Uh, here's, here's what people want most out of their leaders, trust and consistency. Consistency. I'm gonna put a underline on that. Consistency, right? Not perfection, but consistency. When I come to you, can I count on who you are going to be, or are you all over the place? Some days you have great days and you're super happy and you're cheerful, and you're pat people in the back and we don't recognize you. And then the next day you're coming in and you're throwing staplers and flipping out. Right? No, no, no, no, no. People will not stay in an uncertain environment like that, so it's, it's not great, but hear me out. It's better to be consistently grumpy and grouchy and, and, you know, removed and detached than it is to be back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. People will rather, okay, at least I know what I'm getting right, and I can adapt to this, and it doesn't change every day. I'm okay with this. They want consistency. If you are not consistent as a leader. Which you can achieve through knowing your values. By the way, good callback. Um, if you're not consistent as a leader, no one is going to trust you. And if they don't trust you, get game over. Done. Done. You don't even need to go to the next round. You failed right here. I. I agree a hundred percent with you. I've worked for a couple of people and I've encountered other people in other organizations where you just never knew what you were gonna get. And it was almost like a hostage situation.'cause like some days it'd be really great, they'd give you everything that you could ever imagine. You're living high, and then the next day it's like Jekyll and Hy and you're like, wait a minute, who are you? I don't even recognize you in this moment. Um, but not only consistency in how they treat people internally. But I've seen leaders where they'll say one thing to the world and then they practice an entirely different 'cause they know what the right thing is to say. Right? Right. But they don't actually have those values. So when it's in practice, we don't actually see that person that is standing up and professing to be that thing. Yep. Yep. There's, there's a lot there too. And, and psychology. And what, what's going on in your head? It, it, you know, that's pretty indicative of an external locus of control, right? Like, I know the right answer for this audience. So I'm gonna give them this answer and I'm gonna give this audience this answer. And this, that is a hundred percent. That's an external locus of control. If you, when you see good leaders and we can recognize them, you don't have to study business. You don't need an MBA to be able to recognize good leaders. So clearly good leadership has nothing to do with your resume. Good leadership has to do with emotional intelligence. My ability to know, like, and trust you. And guess what? That you, you don't, you can learn those things. I don't, I don't mean to imply that you can't learn those things, but they're not inherently in, in and, uh, endowed in you when you get a degree. That's not it. That's not what makes a good leader. A good leader is the person that will stand up in front of different audiences and say the same thing because it is the truth or because it is what we have decided is our message. Right? And so there, there's reasons for not telling the full truth, of course. In, in, you know, a corporate setting for, for intellectual property reason, whatever the case may be. There's, I don't mean to imply to our listeners that it's okay to lie, but you know what I mean. Sometimes we have to, you know, kind of massage our message and give, you know, some talking points to that. But consistency is a really strong indicator of an internal locus of control, which is, I know who I am, I know what makes me valuable, I know what makes me a good person and a good leader, and I'm okay with that. And I understand that that means that I'm ultimately gonna upset some people. So going down, let, let's take it out of the C-Suite for a moment. We're talking to a lot of people who work in customer facing roles. We just talked about the Southwest, right? People who are in those roles. How can you be authentic to yourself?'cause odds are good. Your values are somewhat different than your CEOs, right? We're individual people. Absolutely. How can you balance being authentic to yourself and being aligned with your company when you're talking to customers, when you're dealing with difficult situations, or when you have to ask hard questions? Yeah. Yeah. So this is, this is actually a really big one, and so we'll kind of zoom outta the business for a minute and take that on a really personal level, right? So if I was coaching an individual, um, and, and, and, you know, mentoring them, they reached out to me, Hey, I don't, I don't know about my job, I don't know about my career. The most important part about a values misalignment isn't that, and this, this is true of every, this, you know, romantic relationships, professional relationships, family relationships. This is true. You don't, you don't get along best with the people who have the same values as you. That's a common misconception. These are my five values. So I'm looking for someone who has the exact same five values. Nope, nope. That is not compatibility. Compatibility is. A ton of violations don't exist, right? So I might have these five values, you have five completely different vi different values, but if they don't conflict with each other, you and I can get along just fine, just fine. So you have to think about that in your professional role, and you really do need to step back and do an assessment and say, do I feel that my job causes me and requires me? To violate my own values every day. And if the answer is yes, you already knew the answer was yes because you feel like crap right here every day, you're, you don't want to go in, you don't want to do the job. You can't wait to leave. Those are, those are visceral indicators from your body and from your nervous system that you are violating your own values. And that is absolutely, you can't overcome that. That's not gonna go away. Uh, and the more we continue to violate our own values, we send a ton of signals to our subconscious. Well, if that value doesn't matter in that circumstance, then none of our values matter. And this is why so many people are completely disenchanted and unhappy in their lives as a whole. Okay? So you have to do that assessment first and foremost. Does this job cause me to violate my values? Yes or no? Okay. And if the answer's no, okay, good, good. That means you can do the job and not come away less than at the end of the day. But what if my value, and I'm trying to think of a, a good example right off the bat, right? What if my value is, you know, honesty and integrity, but the company policy is, you know, you should really encourage customers to do this instead, even if they don't need it because there's such high margins on this product. Okay. Only two familiar story. I mean, how many times have we. That should resonate with anyone who's ever worked in a sales role. Yes. Yes. So you have to ask yourself. And you know, one of the things that I do love that, that I think is, is really becoming more of a wave within sales is this idea of, you know, serving the customer. It's out there. I completely understand. Not everybody does it yet, but if you're in sales and you pride yourself on being a good salesperson, I promise you there's an organization. Within which you can flourish by serving the customer. Okay. Conscientious capitalism is alive and well. You can find an organization that appreciates your integrity and recognizes, yes, this, this product has a very high margin. We love to sell these, but. Uh, that customer kind of has to have these requirements in order for that to make any sense for them. So you make that judgment call, oh my gosh, that is a very successful organization, whoever they are. That is a very successful organization. If that salesperson is empowered with that knowledge, but then has the ability to look at that customer as an individual and say, will this really serve you? And there's. I think the future of of growth and customer success and customer relationships is building truly human relationships. Even though we're living in the age of AI and technology and like my company is a data company that tries to, to help you basically be superhuman, but when you're looking at what truly works. We have to let the technology do the technology things so that we can do the human things, which is looking at the situation, understanding who they're as people, and making an emotional decision.'cause our customers are making emotional decisions all the time, and they're less loyal than ever. It's easier to walk away from whatever you purchase than ever before. Mm-hmm. So what is a differentiator? Probably not more bells and whistles on your product. Probably just that they emotionally are connected to who you are as people. Yep. And that's never going to change.'cause we're still emotional creatures at the end of the day. Absolutely. And if you're an organization, be very, very careful that you're not chasing clients, trying to make them connect with you. What you need to do is approach, approach that equation from the other way, which is the way we just talked about, who are we, what are our values, what do we bring to the table? And then let those customers self-identify. Let them choose you by being honest and consistent with who you actually are. Um, I, I love, love this analogy. If, if, if you have ever watched a, a nature program, you know, I, I'm old, so I watch Mutual of Omaha, but anyway, um, it, whenever you watch a lion or a big cat hunt, right, they stalk in the tall grass and there's a herd, dozens, if not hundreds of gazelle or whatever they're hunting, right? We don't really notice, but we're, we know that this is true. They have picked. A very specific target. Okay. And predators in particular are really, really good on picking up subtle signs of who their ideal prey is, right? Sickness, lethargy, just you name it, they can pick it out. Now, obviously animals aren't doing this on a checklist level. They're doing this on an intuitive level, but their intuition is spot on, but they pick one target. And then they pounce. And it doesn't matter what runs in front of their face, they do not get distracted. They zone in on their one target and they stick to that. Now, that sounds very predatory because of the example I gave, but if you're an organization and you don't know laser focused who your ideal customer is, and let's, let's define what that means. But if you don't know who your ideal customer is. Then you're just, you're chasing everything and you're trying to connect with, oh, yeah, no, no. We love the planet. Oh, no, no, no. We love whales. No, no. Oh, actually we love, right. Stop, stop, stop, stop. You're never gonna connect with anybody because even the least informed customer has enough savvy these days to recognize BS when they hear it. Okay? But the ideal customer is you. You have to create that kind of backward. It's not who do we want, it's who do we best serve? That's a really important piece. And back to that analogy of just layers of paint. So many organizations just, uh, it's a new year. It's a new thing. It's a new year. It's a new thing. They never really stepped back. And this is really powerful exercise that I do with organizations is what, what is your unique ceiling proposition right now? All this, does anybody care about that anymore? Right. We built our entire business on being this. Does anybody care anymore? Who are you serving with that is this now the time that you need to pivot, you need to evolve and you need to change? Are you paying attention? When is the last time you sat down and asked yourself, alright, based on the skills and our strategies and um, all of our assets, this is who we can best serve. When's the last time you've done that? And I promise you, if you haven't, you're missing huge opportunities. So organizations that are trying to scale exponentially do this on the regular because our skillset and our assets are constantly changing. We just lost Mary, but we got Jeff. That changed the landscape of your organization. Have you considered how that is affecting you and how. Who cares, how it affects you, how it's affecting your customer, how it's affecting your delivery to your customer. And if you're not doing that, I promise you, you're missing opportunity. And you know, you're, you're trying to turn wheels in the mud here, so, um, immediately, you know, after this call, I'm gonna go, go do exactly that.'cause yeah, it's been a while, um, since we did that. Um, yeah, and I, I think I could literally talk to you all day, but, um, unfortunately we are running out of time, so I do wanna ask you. You know, thinking about all of the incredible people that you've had the chance to meet over the years or that you, you listened to or learn from, who is really changing the way we think about our relationships with our customers. Um, yeah. Major, major influence on me and a real focus. A lot of my study right now is the Singularity University. Um, the work that they're doing there. If, if any listeners aren't familiar with them, um, I'm sure we can put a link to the website in there. Get on their newsletter, get on their mailing list, look at their events. Um, buy. By exponential organizations right here read this book. There's actually a, uh, workbook that goes along with it where you can exponentially and Dr drastically and dramatically change the face of your organization in 10 weeks. Awesome. Okay. Um, if someone is really connecting with you and wants to learn more, where can they find you online? Yeah, uh, I mean my website is the real charles brown.com and you'll see that it's brown with an e. Uh, you can find me on LinkedIn or YouTube and um, you know, I'm happy to provide those links, but really that's the only place that I mess around. A lot of what I do is very much I. Relationship based and conversational based. So I don't have a huge funnel out there or anything like that, but, um, I do have a lot of resources on my website. A couple of assessments that might interest your audience in particular, which is a leadership assessment that you can take. It's, uh, it's pretty short, but it'll give you an idea of where you fall on my scale of, of leadership based on everything that we just talked about. Thanks for joining us on taking back Monday where we say goodbye to the Sunday scaries and hello to meaningful and fulfilling work. If you enjoyed today's episode, let's connect on LinkedIn. I'd love to hear your thoughts, and if you found value here, share the podcast with your network. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a review. It helps us inspire more leaders to join the movement. Until next time, let's take back Monday.