Jonathan David Lewis

134: Jonathan David Lewis: Our growth stopped. We went backwards

Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast. Where we uncover the leadership like hat that help you to experience break out performance faster and rocket to success. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

The number one thing that contributes to customer loyalty is emotions. So move onward and upward faster by gaining significantly deeper insight and understanding of your customer journey and personas with emotional intelligence. With your empathy mapping workshop you’ll learn how to evoke and influence the right customer emotions that generate improve customer loyalty and reduce your cost to operate. Get over your emotional hook now by going to empathymapping.com to learn more. Okay, Fast Leader legion, today I’m excited because we have somebody on the show today who gives us insights into really what we need to do in order to prepare for the future. 

Jim Rembach:   Okay, Fast Leader legion today I’m excited because as they I have somebody on the show who is wisdom beyond their years. Johnathan David Lewis was raised on the Makah Indian Reservation in Neah Bay, Washington where he watched his mother and father pastor a small mission church while substitute teaching and working as EMTs to make ends meet. He also grew up there with his younger sister Christina. As a child Jonathan was a fearful child who turned to comedy. He was considered the class clown.

Jonathan would learn to draw from his formative experience in Neah Bay as he moved to New Mexico and worked his way up from an unpaid internship to ownership a nationally recognized marketing firm McKee Wallwork and Company. Jonathan honed his skills as a branding and business strategist during the lean years of the Great Recession, helping brands navigate today’s unforgiving new business paradigms. Jonathan’s opinions are highly sought by numerous business and marketing publications, including Forbes, Digiday, and Advertising Age, where helps companies to navigate the ambiguities and dangers of the brand wilderness. As a partner strategy director in McKee Wallwork and Company, Jonathan led his firm to be recognize by industry purveyor advertising aids as a national leader in branding and marketing winning the Southwest Mall agency of the year, National B2B campaign of the year and the National Best Practices to Work awards. Jonathan currently resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico with his wife Kelly and three children Burkley, James and Hazelyn where he hopes to leave a legacy of love, choose seeking and resilience in the face of change. Jonathan David Lewis are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Jonathan David Lewis:  I am ready, let’s do this. 

Jim Rembach:   I’m glad you’re here. I’ve given our listeners a little bit about you but can you tell us what you’re current passion is so that we can get to know you even better?

Jonathan David Lewis:  Absolutely. Honestly, it’s culture and people and how it’s fascinating when you look at how people groups adopts belief, adopts behaviors and how that changes overtime it’s pretty amazing and certainly it’s just something I’m fascinated by in it. It’s relevant to what I do and also relevant to what I believe and just a really interesting part of the world around us. You mentioned my younger sister Christina, she will kill me if I don’t say she’s my older sister. 

Jim Rembach:   Sorry about that. 

Jonathan David Lewis:  She won’t let me forget that. 

Jim Rembach:   And I think you actually have two older siblings as well that we didn’t talk about much but I know all of that family dynamic and grope on the reservation has set a huge impact on you and writing the book, Brand versus Wild-Building Resilient Brands for Harsh Business Environments which I had a really interesting time scheming through the book. I look forward to go back and actually reading the full text because you open my eyes up to a lot of things that I really just didn’t draw connections to and I appreciate that. One of the things that you had mentioned in the book early on was the Leech ten-eighty- ten theory. What is that? 

Jonathan David Lewis:  Yes. Dr. John Leech one of the pioneers in the latest in survival psychology his field and his world and he has the 1-8-1 theory which basically says that all of us react to disruption in of three ways. Ten percent of us react rationally, we react with logic and get through disruption well and lead others, eighty percent of us are paralyzed by an unexpected challenge and we don’t know what to do so we don’t do anything just freeze. Another 1 percent of us panic, we make things worse and that’s where things get dangerous. So really, ninety percent of us according to Dr. John Leech are not prepared for unexpected change, unexpected challenges in our lives and in business and that’s pretty concerting although I would say that’s pretty consistent with my own experience. 

Jim Rembach:   And for me that’s thing that was kind of a really interesting point because you did draw that correlation with some empirical evidence I think and how those brands actually respond and then for me I’m thinking like well, those brands are nothing but a bunch of people so if people respond that way and they’re actually measured that way then we have a collective of people within a brand and the brands would act that way. 

Jonathan David Lewis:  And what’s fascinating about this is the book, Brand versus Wild is not just a fun analogy we’ve taken our own proprietary research where we discover there’s seven factors that affect growth in business. Well, he learned that is highly corralled with the latest in survival psychology so much so that I can say something crazy like there’s really very little difference psychologically between a group of people that crash land on the mountain and a group of business leaders trying to wrestle with some sort of unexpected challenge both are going to a very predictable process and how they react to disruption. 

Jim Rembach:   To me that’s the part that was like a huge light bulb going off. And even when I look at the contents and the chapters within your book you made it very simple. It’s like lost, afraid, adrift, wild, savage, stop, orient, focus, flow, adapt and do. Right there it’s a little blueprint in order to be able to get out of or move forward. And the thing to me that was also interesting is you said, you know what, quit trying to predict or reduce risk because especially in today’s world when you start thinking about disruptive not just technologies there’s disruption of all kinds all over and if we try to control this stuff we’ll go nuts. 

Jonathan David Lewis:  Absolutely. This is really I think fundamental to how we get past what I define as the wild where we—Jesus! Look at that headlines today it’s a flood of uncertainly from politics to technology to business—Uber CEO is out, Amazon’s buying Wholefoods, Trump said this, Comy said that—it’s too much. And if we try to deal with that in the traditional way we have in the past which is to study it and to reduce the risk and uncertainly to a degree that I’m comfortable with before I can take an action we’ll go nuts. We will react as many of us are, which is to isolate ourselves and the hanker down and just hope it gets better rather than learning to operate within a much higher level of uncertainly and risk it’s a compete mindset shift but it’s required for success today. 

Jim Rembach:   It is. And for me I’ve always one of those who that has kind of been a nay sayer  and jump on the whole concept of SWOT, strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats because I think that in itself if you use that as a framework in a scoping mechanism to be able to focus you’re going to find threats every single place you look.

Jonathan David Lewis:  Yeah. Danger quadrant is just going to be the longest one today. This is the thing, you can’t plan for every eventuality and there’s not enough resource in the world to prepare for it all. So it’s not about the externalities, it’s not about having enough resources or having the right team or having all this and that it’s about having a resilient core it’s about having a healthy relationship with the team members you have. And when you really break down what are those factors that are—the difference between businesses and group of people that face adversity and strive and get pass it and those that face adversity and decline? It’s not the externalities it’s not the better position it’s those that had better leadership and had healthier internal relationships and that’s where the kind of the aha for us. In our research four of the seven statistically significant factors that affect growth are internal they’re inside of companies things like a loss of nerve, a loss of focus, inconsistency and a lack of alignment. If those things are out of whack, it doesn’t matter how great your marketing is, it doesn’t matter how great your ideas are your plans it doesn’t matter it has undermines everything you do you have to have the internal staff in good shape even in your own life and in your family before you can go and change the world. 

Jim Rembach:   That’s an awesome point as I was looking through and scheming the book I started, as someone’s who is certified in emotional intelligence, I started thinking to myself this is all about emotional intelligence. And one of the big factors in emotional intelligence is stress management. And even when I was reading this book I was like, Okay, so Jonathan’s a marketing guy this is not a marketing book. 

Jonathan David Lewis:  Yeah, I think that’s a good point. That’s something I’m hearing a lot lately is that this—certainly they apply to marketing but the reason they applies to life and other areas of business is because it’s rooted in human truth. It’s rooted in human nature and what we’ve learned as a company, our whole niche is turning around stall, stocks and stale brands that’s what we do, that’s what we’re obsessed about that’s the reason I’ve written this book. But what we learned is that we’re very creative we can come up with excellent solutions all of that is been undermined whenever we have an unhealthy relationship with our client or the HR rep hates the sales rep hates the COO, when those things are out of whack it completely undermines that we’re trying to do to turn around this brand. So, yes, when in your in that moment doing with disruption of price war, Uber whatever it is that you’re dealing with that the actual differentiator between you and the company that won’t make it is the internal emotional intelligence. Can you have healthy conflict? Not unhealthy conflict or not avoiding conflict. Can you deal with these things in a healthy way? 

Jim Rembach:   I had the opportunity before we signed on to be ready with the interview and I saw somebody and I want to say it was a promo for a master class with Allan Sorken who is an award winning screenwriter and he was talking to a group of people and he said, Okay, we’re going to do something unorthodox here. He goes, give me all of your bad ideas. I want your worst idea you could possibly think of and he start to collect all of those worst ideas. In order to bring everybody together because too easy in our own environment talking about the threat peace and that fear piece we’re so driven by that, is that that’s how we focus on—so you know what? Let’s get on the table right now because there’s actually some good idea within that.  Have you found companies do some things that are unorthodox in order to help them find the way?

Jonathan David Lewis:  Absolutely. What is at the root of not sharing ideas it is your fears your insecurities it’s the environment you work in that it’s not acceptable to have a bad idea or to fail. And that goes back to what we talked about before where our job today as leaders and marketing managers etc. it isn’t to reduce uncertainty or risk anymore that used to be most of what we did in our jobs. We would conduct studies and research and analyze the heck out of things and ask everybody their opinion all we were doing is trying to reduce risk and cover our butts. Well, literally there’s so much risk and uncertainty in every decision today that it’s just not possible anymore. So, the idea that you have to get comfortable with that uncertainty is fundamental for all of our jobs. We have to learn how to operate with a lot of uncomfortable risk. 

Jim Rembach:   Well and you talking about that whole fear piece and risk piece and one of the things that I found interesting that as I was reading, you talked about how we react to fear and that it causes a lot of things. I would dare to say that a lot of people when they see those things or they experience those things they wouldn’t even talk about those things I don’t know if they really know that they originate from fear.

Jonathan David Lewis:  Absolutely. One thing we learned in the survival psychology piece of this book is that there’s a very predictable physiological response to fear of any kind. That could be a bear in the wilderness or that could be your boss you know coming in your office and yelling at you regardless you have a physiological reaction of fear where the logical part of your brain kind of gives up control and your illogical emotional part of your brain takes over. Your blood pumps your adrenaline goes you have these three hormones that pump through your body and all of that kind of adds up to you making very poor decisions. Something we saw in the research is if you’re lost in the in the wilderness like many of us have been camping we know what it feels like we don’t recognize how crazy we can become. There’s research showing that people will throw down their supplies people will begin to run they don’t know where they’re going they’re just running there’s even research showing that people who are lost will hide from rescuers that’s how illogical we become. So if you think about how in many ways we have react in a very similar way in business environments and in our own life we’re making bad decisions in a marketing sense that usually manifests itself by a reluctance to narrow our target when we’re afraid or drifting as a company we don’t want to turn anybody away we’re desperate. The research shows in order to succeed you need to define your target very narrowly. And we also have a lack of investment in ourselves in our R&D and marketing where the research says when things are bad that’s when you need to market that’s when you need to invest in R&D. We make all of these bad decisions that feel right because all we’re doing is operating out of feelings.

Jim Rembach:   That’s a good point. So, from the people side we stop training and developing we cut that out. All of those things are undermining and sabotaging behaviors that are caused by fear but we don’t even realize that it happened. We just say, oh well things are slow so we had to look for ways to cut. 

Jonathan David Lewis:  It’s a vicious cycle and undermines result. 

Jim Rembach:   Totally. So, people got to move forward and get out of this. One of the things that you talked about is a technique to help people do that was the bearing cycle, what is that? 

Jonathan David Lewis:  This is really important. There’s research that that shows us that people walk in circles when they’re lost and this is one of those things everyone kind of wanders you see it in movies. if I’m in the desert while I walk in circles well a researcher decided to go test this. They draw people in the desert they drop people in the forest and they put GPS on them they said, okay find your way out try to walk in a straight line. They discovered that a portion of the people in fact walked in circles in pretty tight circles and the key difference was whether you had your bearings or not. If he was overcast and you couldn’t see the sun you couldn’t see a mountain in the distance you tended to walk in circles. If it was nighttime you couldn’t see the moon you tended to walk in circles so having your bearings is really absolutely vital to make your way out of the wilderness in this analogy. 

But the bearing cycle is very simple yet pretty hard to do in practice. If you’re lost if you feel lost and you’re trying to find your bearings first thing you need to do is define your short-term goal. You can have your lofty long-term goal you know you want to get to X amount of profitability by five years whatever but what are you doing today? Where are you leading your team today? So, if you’re in the wilderness—I need to get perspective I want to hike to this mountaintop in a distance. Okay, define your short-term goal and then don’t do anything now don’t focus on anything else. Devote your entire resources to get getting to that goal. Along the way though to avoid walking in circles you need to stack your stones you need to pile your stones. If you’re familiar with a lot of the hiking tradition or adventure tradition then you probably know what a cairn, it is an ancient practice of stacking stones in the wilderness usually it’s a navigating tool but it’s also has some emotional side of it where if you’re in the middle of the wilderness and you see stack stones you recognize somebody else has been here before there’s some comfort in that. 

So as you define your short-term goal and you’re making your way there you stack stones and what you do is you turn around every now and then and if your stones are not aligned if they’re all over the place you’re probably walking in circles they need to be in a straight line. Then once you make it to that mountaintop this is something a lot of leaders avoid and or don’t even understand once you make it to the mountaintop you need to confirm and celebrate. Confirm to your team that you made it and then devote the time even if feels silly devote the time to celebrate it because morale is everything when you’re in the wilderness. And this is something that Ernest Shackleton one of the great explorers understood better than most. I have some of his story in the book where he would use any excuse while he and his crew were lost in Antarctica trying to find their way out. He would use any excuse to celebrate. They have festivities and this is about 20 dudes barely surviving in the middle of Antarctica and they’re singing and celebrating anything any excuse simply because team morale and an uplifted spirits is actually a key difference between those that face those hardships and survive and those that face those hardships and disappear or die.

Jim Rembach:   I think that’s a good point, be mindful of that and that should be in the forefront of your mind for sure. Okay, there was one thing that you had mentioned as well that for me as I’m getting more and more research about brain activity the way that we decide the way that our motions calls us to take particular actions is that you put in here and I’m beginning to learn that it’s a common—it’s folklore because there doesn’t seem like there’s a whole lot of scientific basis in it. But you talk about that humans are hard-wired to avoid change, why do you say that?

Jonathan David Lewis:  Human nature like safety likes comfort like stability and so whenever you threaten that whenever you are forced to move outside of that we don’t like it and it’s pretty natural. It’s not that we can’t do it or that we’re not actually good at it, humans are actually very good at change, but only when we have to. This actually goes back to a conversation I have with my colleagues quite a bit. Fundamentally, can companies disrupt themselves from within? That is a big question that we struggle with a lot. At the end of the day can any of these companies outside of some sort existential threat disrupt themselves? I’m not sure you can unless you have to because it’s so painful to change yourself. That’s why we all deal with working out and having a diet and all those things because it’s hard to change yourself and get new habits.

Jim Rembach:   I would love to go deeper into that and talk about some of the science that they’re reading in regards about how we go about deciding and the way that our brain actually starts. It wants to preserve energy so it starts chunking things and in order for us to make a decision quickly it immediately relies back on to past memory. Well, if we don’t have a past memory that creates and yet a different issue but the thing is our brain is built to be efficient and so when we think about change it inherently causes inefficiency. And so the hardwiring is a little bit different that I think people often default to and say, well nobody likes change, that’s not really it. It’s a little bit different than. And so maybe we’ll have another episode just on that particular piece and we’d love to have you back to talk about that. Okay, so gosh! We’ve talked a lot and I said in the beginning you know there was a lot of wisdom that’s going to be shared and we spend a lot of time doing it but we got to move. One of the things that we look at associated with all of the things that we’ve been talking about is—you talked about passion, fear or focus all of those things is we look to quotes. And we’d love to share quotes on the show, can you share one with us that you love?

Jonathan David Lewis:  Yeah. It’s actually by a business partner of mine something that he says quite often and I take really to heart. He has said to me, “You’re going to disappoint somebody so who are you going to disappoint?” and really when I think about a lot of the tough decisions in my life where I’m balancing my wife and three beautiful kids and really helping them and guiding them and supporting them and all of this pressure at work you know leading a company while writing a book and all of those things I know at the end of the day I’m going to disappoint somebody because I’m only me I’m not endless there is a limit to me. So, it’s really been important to me in both kind of admitting it’s going to happen and then giving me permission to do it when I have to but the key is who am I going to disappoint and we have to answer that for ourselves but I have decided I’m not going to disappoint my family if it comes down to it.

Jim Rembach:   Thanks for sharing that it’s a really interesting point. One of the things that you talked about in the book in order for a company—you talked about that bearing piece and what they have to go through. You also talked about a stop analogy and we don’t have time to get in that but the thing is you mentioned the word humility. In that particular quote and what you just explained I think there was a lot of humility in that knowing that, hey, it’s just me I need to well not necessarily be okay with that but know that it’s going to happen and give myself some forgiveness and grace.

Jonathan David Lewis:  And not to give away the book which I’m about to do but that’s really the ultimate conclusion of the book which is selflessness and a degree of humility is the underlying differentiator between—even the iconic leaders that we look to like Steve Jobs and others we don’t associate humility with him but if you look at his almost obsessive focus on serving his customer there was a humility and understanding that that people wanted to do things in a better way in a simpler way. All of the great brands all of the great branding all the great leaders have some level of humility to understand when they failed, when they need to change and understand that it’s not all about them that there to lead a group of people who need nurturing and support. And if you’re just focused on yourself if you’re just focused—pride kills in the wilderness, so humility is throughout every solution there has to be an ounce of humility or it’s probably not the solution.

Jim Rembach:   Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. You’ve talking about humility unfortunately that’s a learned behavior that’s not hardwired. And in order for us to get gained some of that humility we have to have experiences that we go through that cause some turmoil and strife and those are humps that we have to get over. Is there a time where you had to get over the hump that you can share?

Jonathan David Lewis:  Yeah, gosh, there’s been a lot. Honestly, one of the most relevant ones is just this last two years of writing this book. While leading this company it was extremely difficult and the only reason I think I was able to make it through and actually achieve this thing is simply because beforehand when I knew it was coming I sat down with my wife and with my business partners and we agreed to how we are going to conduct this. We agreed together that we see this hard time coming we’re going to sacrifice this amount of time. My business partners agreed to cover me where they needed to cover me and we all got through it together. Even more so I think in terms of marketing and branding and thinking of my own company this entire niche that we’ve developed and our are two national studies and the books that we’ve written they actually came out of our own wilderness are our own difficulty which over ten years ago we made the Inc. 500 fastest growing companies list. And we thought we made it, I mean watch out world nothing can stop us now. And as soon as we made that list our growth stopped we went backwards and over the next two to three years we experienced almost 98% turnover which is just deaf for a professional services firm it was a very difficult time for us so, it was humbling to go back to our point. But the silver lining throughout that was because we made the list we had access to years of these companies who had made the list and we were able to conduct this first round of research which led to everything else. There was something of value that came from it but that in itself was very difficult. And that’s why we can speak with passion and really believe in what we’re teaching and preaching here because we’ve gone through it ourselves we know what it’s like to live through a malaise or to be lost in the wilderness. 

Jim Rembach:   Well thanks for sharing that. You’ve come out the other end you have the book out but now you have to start the even more gargantuan task of promoting it and that’s one reason why you’re on the show, and I’m glad you’re here. You talk about three kids, family, business, you’re a young man, I’m envious you have hair no one can see that but I don’t, is that you’ve got a lot of things going on so if you talk about one goal, what would it be? 

Jonathan David Lewis:  Don’t screw it up. One goal, I want my work and my life to have meaning and that means that I need to have to purposefully sacrifice. So, my one goal would be to provide meaning in my work and in my family without disappointing the wrong people. I think I’m learning that myself. I think certainly this has been a overwhelming and stressful period of years, the last couple of years that I’m making my mistakes, but I’m also hopefully learning from them. I want this to build into something more not tear me down or undermine the fundamental parts of my life. One thing I certainly have learned, I work in a very creative industry obviously marketing it’s all about creativity, and it’s really hard to be creative if you’re kind of the fundamentals in your life are out of whack. If you have unhealthy relationships in your life and your family and the people that are important to you that’s out of whack it’s hard to come to work and focus on other people and focus on breaking the rules and coming up with something brand new. I think my goal really is to protect that and keep that healthy so that I can do my job. 

Jim Rembach:   And the Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor: 

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Jim Rembach:   Alright here we go Fast Leader Legion it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Jonathan, the Hump Day Hoedown is the part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So, I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Jonathan David Lewis, are you ready to hoedown? 

Jonathan David Lewis:  I’m ready. 

Jim Rembach:   What do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

Jonathan David Lewis:  Insecurity. I would say insecurity is both fundamental to my ambition and my success but also the very thing that holds me back in a lot of different ways. 

Jim Rembach:   What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

Jonathan David Lewis:  The best leadership advice I’ve ever received is to say no. And it’s so simple we hear it over and over we learn about it everywhere but as a leader if you don’t know when to say no and what your criteria for saying no is in your life and in business and in focusing your company you will not succeed.

Jim Rembach:   What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

Jonathan David Lewis:  Absolutely fundamental of my success is consistency. I may not have—while success or go down in the valley of failure but I am very consistent. I show up and I I’m here to work and I show up every single day and I’m very consistent in my own routine.

Jim Rembach:   What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

Jonathan David Lewis:  My time by myself most days. Right in the morning I center myself in my personal life I look to God and I listen to podcast and I go for a run and it really prepares me for the day.

Jim Rembach:   What would be one book that you’d recommend to our listeners, and it could be from any genre, of course we’re going to put a link to Brand versus Wild, on your show notes page as. 

Jonathan David Lewis:  Easy answer. Going to the heart of what this is all about, the book you need to read today is, Getting Naked by Patrick Lencioni. It goes to the heart of what business is all about. It’s about relationships and it’s about dealing with healthy conflict and finding a way to do that. 

Jim Rembach:    Okay, Fast Leader listeners you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going too fastleader.net/JonathanDavidLewis. Okay, Jonathan this is my last hump day hold on question. Imagine you were given the opportunity go back to the age of 25 and you’ve been given the opportunity to take the knowledge of skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything back you can only choose one, what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why? 

Jonathan David Lewis:  I remember getting pulled over on my way to work when I was in college. I was speeding and I was late and so on and so forth, the one thing that stuck with me was the officer walked up to my window handed me a ticket and sais, slow down young man. And I’ve really taken that to heart, patience. Be patient. It’s always greener on the other and yet that consistency, that patience will get you so much further. 

Jim Rembach:   Jonathan it was an honor to spend time with you today can you please share with the Fast Leader legion how they can connect with you? 

Absolutely. So you can find me at jonathandavidlewis.com, you’ll learn more about my company, my book Brand versus Wild, and of course you can find all my social platforms there as well. 

Jim Rembach:  Jonathan David Lewis thank for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader Legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over a fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster. 

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