A Baseline to Better Value Systems with Jeremy Barr

Speaker 1: Welcome to The Future of Teamwork podcast where we explore cutting- edge strategies to keep teams human- centered, drive innovation, and empower you with the tools and insights needed to help your teams excel and thrive in today's rapidly changing world. Your host is Dane Groeneveld, a seasoned expert with over 20 years of experience in enhancing team dynamics and innovation. Are you ready to embark on a journey towards unlocking the secrets of impactful teamwork and leadership? Today we have a guest who's not only navigated the complex landscape of business but is also on a mission to impact the lives of three billion people worldwide. Meet Jeremy Barr, the CEO of Rocket Mindset, a seasoned operator with the track record spanning million- dollar and billion- dollar companies. Today, he's a dedicated VC investor and founder- mentor with a profound fascination for human psychology and the science of people. During Dane's conversation with Jeremy, they'll delve into his journey and explore three key takeaways. First, Jeremy's vision for impact. Discover how Jeremy's commitment to touching three billion lives drives his endeavor, and gain insights into what motivates him to create lasting change on a global scale. Secondly, unlocking personal goals. Learn how Jeremy partners with clients to help them gain clarity on their objectives, providing with the guidance and support needed to turn their dreams into reality. And finally, they'll discuss the power of nonverbal communication. Dive into the world of nonverbal cues and discover how understanding these subtle signals can enhance your interaction both personally and professionally. Teamwork makes the dream work and we're here to inspire your next collaborative breakthrough. Gather your team, put on your headphones, and let's dive in together.

Dane Groeneveld: Welcome to The Future of Teamwork podcast. My name's Dane Groeneveld, CEO of the Huddl3 Group. And today, joining me here in California, I've got Jeremy Barr, the CEO of Rocket Mindset. And he's got a great story and he does a whole bunch more than Rocket Mindset. Welcome to the show, Jeremy.

Jeremy Barr: Thank you for having me, Dane.

Dane Groeneveld: For the benefit of our listeners, how did you come to be doing all of this workaround making well- rounded humans, driving human success in founders, and in businesses, and in communities? It seems to be a big passion of yours.

Jeremy Barr: Everything I do is geared towards impacting three billion people worldwide. Crazy ambitious. It means I'll need to run, invest, advise in hundreds of companies globally. It also necessitates me to build out the world's largest founder and investor network. So I have a global investor and founder network right now. I'm on 10 to 13 calls a day like this, 300 people a month, meeting people in eight different countries a day, building out that investor and founder network globally and that's a lot of fun for me. So I'm a VC investor and a founder mentor. So once you combine all the money and the founders together, in theory, you still have a problem because a lot of the founders are going to burn through the cash. You know there's not a lot of high- scale companies in the world, therefore heuristically there's not a lot of high- scale, high- quality founders. I run the VC. I have a co- founder, Esther Romanoff, we run the VC Montelier Capital, and we also run Rocket Mindset, the founder and leadership coaching company together. We run both of those companies together. And I use my experience in my background to uplevel founders and leaders. So I've been at million- dollar and billion- dollar companies, D2C, B2B, public and private. Managed teams and teams of people. Been at pre- revenue, one million, two million, three million, 40 million, 65 million, 1.4 billion. D2C, B2B. Wrote AI on a project with the FBI and Secret Service, built the super website. Done$100, 000 a day media buying budgets and the algorithms for that. What are your CTR rates? What are your CVaR rates, copywriting, everything? And I've done and managed nearly every role in a company from copywriting, sales, customer service, analytics, product, engineering, HR, accounting. All at different varying levels, not an expert in all of them, of course. With that, I uplevel founders rapidly and I look at it from a mindset perspective, and a human perspective, and setting goals. And then also looking at a company. What's your tactile ratio? How are you going to hire? What is your org chart need to be like? I focus on all that. As far as how I got to there, that's my... That's a high- level intro of me geared towards impacting three billion people. That is my drive is impacting three billion people. Everything ladders up to that. Everything I do is comprehensive to that. I spend every waking minute going towards that goal. And to do that is obsessing over human beings. That's the high- level intro. To answer your question on how I got there. I didn't start out like this I was getting D's and F's in school. And I wasn't very smart in a school lens. And so my mom was a teacher, she took me out of school for seventh grade, built up my competence confidence loop which I now teach it to founders. In seventh grade got me up to A's and B's, put me back into school. School gives me A's and B's to where it's not just mom giving it to me. That competence confidence group was important. Did a computer science degree, became CTO for five years, built a super website, managed people. Could talk technology and business but couldn't talk normal social conversation with people. You take me out to hang out with friends... I was 27 years old after being CTO for five years. 27 years old moved out to San Diego where I've been for the last six years, I'm 33 now. Go out and hang out with people and they say, " Are you okay? Are you okay?" And I realize I need to talk. Because for an hour or two hanging out in a social situation and me just listening or thinking in my head, not talking was awkward. And so I had to build out a conversation algorithm. Use my algorithm background to build out a conversation algorithm. How do I make a conversation last five minutes, 15 minutes, an hour, 36 hours? And through that I started diagnosing people and understanding well, why are people having conversations. And what is an ambitious person versus non- ambitious person? What about this country or that country or this culture or this culture, this personality that? And so that enabled me to start managing teams of people, and understanding people, and understanding life purposes, and life goals, and everything. That's a little bit about how I got there, a little bit of my intro.

Dane Groeneveld: I'm glad you went into that background. It's a cool story to think hey, it was a bit awkward, the conversation wasn't happening so I built an algorithm. And I'm assuming that algorithm's in your head not in a code string somewhere. That's a huge leap of personal development, challenge, whatever you want to call it that you overcame there.

Jeremy Barr: It was a lot of fun for me. And so now that enables me to take anyone who is maybe not as smart in an area per whatever rating metric, right, that like I was and make them whatever they want to be. Or make them from antisocial to social, super social. Super nerd to super social if they want to. So that really bakes into the founder and leadership coaching that I do.

Dane Groeneveld: Very cool. Okay. Tell me more about three billion people. How'd you come up with that number?

Jeremy Barr: So I figured I wasn't responsible for seven or eight billion people, there's other impactors in the world, so I didn't take on the whole world. And then I figured given my experiencing technology, AI, networking, people, understanding how companies run to a very deep level, that one billion people wasn't going to be sufficient for me to just die with and be like I impacted three... One billion people, right? So I picked the three billion number, and I committed to it, and I'm passionate about it.

Dane Groeneveld: Nice. And is there a theme in terms of what that impact looks like for the three billion people? You're attacking it through the lens of founders and startups, but is it increasing access to education? Does it tie into the United Nations development goals? How do you at least picture success of impact?

Jeremy Barr: The measure of impact will be when three billion people have at least 80% of their life impacted in their value system. So I'm not out here to put a value system on somebody. Let's go solve cancer like my mom passed from four years ago. Let's solve world hunger-

Dane Groeneveld: Sorry.

Jeremy Barr: Anxiety, depression, race gaps, gender gaps. Let's solve a lot of those things, right? I list those off randomly on a lot of the podcasts that I'm on. But as I get closer and closer to driving that impact... Right now it's founder and leadership mentoring to create great companies, then fund those great companies, and then we start to drive the impact from there. The analytics department of each company will track towards the three billion people ultimately.

Dane Groeneveld: That makes sense. So that allows you to be pretty open, pretty agnostic as far as the categories that you're supporting founders and startups in.

Jeremy Barr: Yes.

Dane Groeneveld: That's awesome. Founders are so rarely successful on their own. So what is it about your coaching this confidence competence loop and really unlocking the power of the leader that then translates into their teams? Is there something that you're seeing right off the bat with these early experiences?

Jeremy Barr: So for me, when I was building out the conversation algorithm and then analyzing people too... When I get onto a call, I will read eye contact, body language, tone of voice, and microexpressions to a millisecond by millisecond, second by second detail on somebody. So in the first five to 10 seconds of meeting somebody I already know a lot about. Because I've talked to so many different people from so many different countries, age groups, education levels, income levels, et cetera you start to see different patterns. And you don't make a judgment based on that at all, but you make it as a heuristic oh, this might inform a question I'm going to ask, and then you use the question in the verbal space to confirm. Prescriptive is key. Because a lot of people will go out there whether they're mentoring, advising, whatever, and say, "Here's a 12- week program, here's a six- month program." You can't do that with every human. You have to start by asking questions, you have to start by listening to them. And that means listening to the nonverbal. And I teach founders to listen to the nonverbal of their team as well as the verbal because a lot of people are not really good listeners. Listening is one of the most important human traits to create a well- rounded human. And so I start by listening. And I start gathering information about their company, about themselves, about their past experiences, about their goals. A lot of times if they don't have goal clarity then we help them reach goal clarity. What do you want over the next two years or five years or 10 years? How clear are you on that? And how do we go through the discovery process? When we figure out more of what they want and how they want to get there, I can help them with week- by- week setups, goal... Month- by- month setups. And we can start setting out actions and things like that.

Dane Groeneveld: That's neat. You're clearly operating at a super high level, you personally, Jeremy. How do you scale that? Are you training the trainer? Are you using technology to build some of this stuff into your workflow?

Jeremy Barr: So both. So I do videos, they're all over my LinkedIn right now. And then there's video libraries that essentially people can pay and get access to it, it's not very expensive. But that scales me, inspiring people in different countries watching those, right? I just take 10 minutes and it... Now a million people can watch a 10-minute video and I only took 10 minutes to record it, right? So video scale me. AI will scale what I'm doing, what me and the team are doing. And then I'm also training up other leaders and founders to do it in the unique way that I do it, right? I've partnered with multi- exit founders from around the world, and they have their experience, but then I also share the way that I uplevel people, the way that I can analyze somebody, and then the step- by- step approach that I can... I uplevel them. And because I've trained teams of teams before... Managed and trained teams of teams of people before... I have that for the last 10 years where I will... I'm now doing the same thing. So I have week- over- week calls with people I'm mentoring directly as well with the leaders and founders that I'm training to scale what we're doing so it will scale. Everything will scale to a billion scale.

Dane Groeneveld: That's awesome. And I've seen this in other organizations when we brought in coaches or org development people, and someone's using NLP or whatever it is that they use, and team members feel a little bit like I'm being measured, these folks are manipulating me to do what they want to do. There is a dark side to some of these practices. How do you keep the human element, the human obsession, the impact in mind when you're helping these founders, helping these teams to be using these practices in the right way?

Jeremy Barr: I don't come into a company and I have... Let me do what the company wants because I'm paid by that or whatever, right? And right now I'm mentoring founders and leaders directly I'm not actually hired by any companies to come in, although I can. In any case that I come in to meeting somebody, I'm listen to what they want in their life first. And this is part of my brand and my values, and people see that online from me before they even want to maybe book me for mentoring them as a CEO, or as a leader and director, VP, whatever. And they know that, at the end of the day, I'm not incentivized towards anything but their value system. I don't have an agenda except to impact three billion people, but that includes helping you in your value system because that's from the very core of the definition, an 80% impact in that person's value system. And my whole life is dedicated to this. From the very start, I am here for them, not for any company, not for any payment source, not for anything else. I'm beyond money and attention at this point in life. I made these goals because I already had enough money, attention, friends, everything. When I went from super nerd to super social, I had a point where I was six months straight I was out every single night snowboarding, surfing, racing Armiger's, shooting a machine gun out of a helicopter, kickball, volleyball, game nights, dinner nights, festivals. Six months straight out every single day, every single night for six months straight. And then there was a point where I was snowboarding down the mountain with 12 of my friends. Out of state, we were on a four- day Airbnb trip, snowboarding during the day, jacuzzi at night, fun game night, whatever, it's fun. Halfway down the mountain, on one of those runs, I was looking and I go... And it's a really pretty view and I had two thoughts. One, I'm bored. The second thought was, I'm meant for more than this. Given skillset sets that I've adopted and everything I was like, I'm meant for more than this. And I had this analogy in my head where I was like, I don't want to be in a mansion on a hill with the rest of the world burning. And so I committed to let's go after three billion people, right? And so that bakes into when I'm helping somebody in front of me that I'm beyond these different things, that a lot of humans will initially chase, and I really just want to genuinely impact the world. Knowing that when I come into a conversation with one person or 20 people that I'm here for you, I have another agenda than what you want, that's how I go about it.

Dane Groeneveld: Very powerful. When you run into someone where their value system is maybe not aligned with impacting other people's value systems, do you just call, hey, time out, we're done this isn't going to work? How do you make that assessment?

Jeremy Barr: I mean, I think of things in terms of countries, and politics, and all these things, and right? I want to do it in people's value systems and so their value system doesn't need to be aligned with mine for me to help them. Two totally different, say political spectrums they totally disagree and I can still help both of them in their value systems, right? If you were running governments, right, you can look at it and just say... When people have two different value systems you can... They can separate geographically. But if they're going to choose to be in the same geography, a same city, a same country or a state, whatever, then those two people, by choice of being in the same geography, have to start to merge their lenses, right? But, in general, you can have people of different value systems and totally respect both of them, right? The grading metric for me is when I've achieved meeting their value system. I can help somebody in their value system 100%.

Dane Groeneveld: Interesting. So you're not trying to go too far downstream either. There was a Indian entrepreneur that was just in the news today that the community's backlashing because he's replacing call center staff with AI. And they're like" Oh, this is so inhumane, you've cut all of these jobs." You're not thinking about the immediacy of that impact in their community you're thinking well, what are they building? What's important to them? What might it do in the future? But not getting too caught up on any of, I guess, the collateral damage that may be on the way to innovation which is only just a... It's I guess a condition of innovation in many respects.

Jeremy Barr: I take an overall approach to things so I'm looking across time, right? There may be, in some instances of things, short- term cost but the long- term gains, right? And if we take short- term costs or short- term investments in any company, we know we're not going to get the biggest value. And so I'm always looking for the biggest value over the longest time span over... Across the widest number of people, and I do that in a very calculated approach.

Dane Groeneveld: Okay.

Jeremy Barr: And where there needs to be education and explaining a perspective to somebody... Just like I teach leaders, right, when they're sharing something... You memorize the phrase, here's a lens, here's a perspective, what are your thoughts? There is no should or shouldn't, there is no right or wrong, everybody has their own value system. So you just say, " Here's a lens, here's a perspective, what are your thoughts?" And so I will share my perspective on what does automation do for the world. How does it help? How does it hurt? How should we be looking at this? Because not everybody's going to have the full perspective so let's just share some lenses, and perspectives, and talk through it.

Dane Groeneveld: Well, maybe we play that one out, Jeremy, if you're open to it. So I'm the entrepreneur that's going to replace 600 jobs with automation, what conversation do we have? Or do you have with another member of the team?

Jeremy Barr: Am I having it with the person who's the advocate for the automation or the conversation with the person who's not the advocate for it?

Dane Groeneveld: Oh, good question. Which one do you think's going to be more fun for our listeners?

Jeremy Barr: I mean, if I just agree with the person with automation we agree and the conversation is done. But I think the most interesting conversation probably is usually the people that haven't seen the benefits of automation or are only seeing the near term. And so if you were to ask me-

Dane Groeneveld: Let's play that out.

Jeremy Barr: If you're about to get displaced by this automation, right... We've already been automating things for the last 100- plus years. Before we had Wright brothers building a first airplane, before we had horses then we had cars. Before we had smartphones and now we have smartphones. And this changes things, right? The world runs on expansion theory, everything's expanding. The universe is expanding, humans are expanding having kids, bank accounts, experiences, everything's expanding. And so based on this expansion theory, the world running on expansion rails, you know the world's expanding, people are expanding at different rates, and so you can't control that. And when somebody else expands faster than you, and they're making more money than you, or they're choosing to do automation, they're going to take up more of the market share, they're going to make more money because they're providing value to someone somewhere that somebody wants it, right? In our value systems, we're always going to choose what is better in our value system. You want better food you're going to choose better food. You want a better person, a personality who developed themselves you want that. You want a better experience you're going to do that. And so who's going to then provide that? Well, then you have to have a company provide those value systems. So based on every human just wanting something that's better, right, that's not going to go away. You have your own value system you, of course, want better. That I want better as a value system for every human drives innovation in the world. Until you change that, which you won't and you shouldn't really, that drives the innovation world because somebody's going to come out here and say, " Let me serve that better." When somebody comes and says, " Let me serve that better," whoever's going to produce more with... If that's with automation they're going to produce more, right? So you have to understand the world's moving at a rate. And you don't necessarily all have to be as ambitious as each other, right? I'm very ambitious., You don't expect people to be as ambitious as me. But you have to understand that the world's moving at a rate. And so if you drop off that expansion and you don't improve yourself with more skills that are less automatable... And that's always a moving target. If you don't commit your life to constantly growing then by your choice you're choosing a different path in life. We want to be aware of these things. As people that are driving maybe automation, right, we can go out there and share these lenses and perspectives of everybody's going to have to educate themselves more. Or, learn how to use the automation to where you are then augmented like a car augments you, a smartphone augments you. Automations can augment you. They're not necessarily full replacements, they can augment you, right? You have a choice. Everybody has a choice to... Do you want to be displaced by AI and blame the AI, and blame somebody else in the world, or do you want to take ownership and responsibility and move your life forward at some rate, right? You can find a company that's moving slower, but at some point that company, that doesn't do the automation, is going to get put out of business by the company that is doing the automation or is hiring top talent, or is managing better teams or is managing better operations. And so you just have to look at your life. What do I really want out of my life? This is the way the world's going. So at some point, I'm going to be able to find different pockets where it's a little bit slower for me, and that's fine and that's great too. I think every human is beautiful, and I don't think we have to have some sort of absolute rate or absolute system it's just about finding where you want to fit in. And just understand that all the world's expanding at different rates, find your pocket where you can. But automation is going to happen. Do you want to be one driving the automation? Do you want to be one driving how the automation is done, and how AI is done, and that it's done morally, and ethically, and in a way that beneficial to humanity? I would suggest, take part in the conversation. And I would again, just share the lenses and perspectives with people, or with you, who's maybe anti- automation right now, and say, " Here's some options we have, what do you want to decide? I won't decide that for you. I am deciding for this company." If I'm the one running this company and making automation, I'm saying for this company to stay alive we have to build automation because it produces more. Now, the other perspective about automation is you may be displaced from that job or that role but you could still stay within that company. Numbers show that companies that scale more... And the logic of this shows. The companies that use the automation hire more people. Because guess what? With the profit margins, they get to hire more people. So automation actually drives more hiring. And so as long as you're willing to upskill to another role in that company, or even to another company, you're going to be employed more, and you're actually getting get paid more in the companies that automate because they actually have more profit margins to pay more. So I'm just going to use lens of perspectives and then let somebody make that decision.

Dane Groeneveld: That's neat. In this particular case that I was referencing, it's in India maybe that community doesn't have quite the same upward mobility to jump into other white- collar jobs. The call center was already a skills leap. Sometimes you're going to run into timing issues or geography issues. And I guess that is a little bit Darwiniany too. That company's not going to be able to repurpose some of that talent right now in that location, but maybe that's someone else's treasure. Another company comes along and sets up in that community and takes those individuals into a whole new platform or business model.

Jeremy Barr: And the other thing is, if that company somehow says, " We're not going to do the automation because we're going to evaluate our employees, in six months or a year," that company's dead and you lose your job anyway. Because if they don't do the automation-

Dane Groeneveld: Great point.

Jeremy Barr: They're out.

Dane Groeneveld: Great point.

Jeremy Barr: So it's only buying yourself more time, that you will eventually be fired and everybody will lose their company. So it's like you have to stay alive. And this idea that companies have to be responsible for their employees... To a degree you have a responsibility but not for their whole entire life. If somebody joins they're joining. And then when that company starts to automate they can either upskill or they may have to find another job. Saying that some availability for them to learn is or is not available isn't necessarily that company's job to say, " I'm responsible for every employee's life and all your goal setting everything." In management, I do want to help everybody, I do want to help them goal set but it doesn't... We joined you on for you to provide value to the company, us to pay you, us to upskill you, and everything, but it wasn't an agreement in the hiring interview that we're going to take care of your whole entire life, and all of your job lives, and everything else. When we have to do things to stay alive, because otherwise all of us lose our jobs, then you have to also... Just like we have to take responsibility for the company's survival, you have to take care of your survival. And yes, the world is hard, but when we take responsibility, and positivity, and AB test and fail through things we learn and we grow. And no the world's not easy, but you can get a really highly valuable life by failing, learning, growing, and having a bit of that stress and then value receive.

Dane Groeneveld: I like that, I like that a lot. Well, that was a great exercise, thank you, Jeremy. If I take a little bit of a different direction... Everything that we've been talking about is around founders and startups. Why pick that environment over going into the tens of thousands of existing businesses at scale and looking at digital transformation or other ways to lift to uplevel just to regular mom and pop business, or even a decent sized PE backed business?

Jeremy Barr: I play in a lot of spaces. When I look at the founder and leader development... A great founder is a great leader, a great leader is a great human. And so when I release content, when I talk on podcasts, when I talk on videos, when I go and do founder leadership coaching and I talk to just other people, in general, it's about... It's ultimately about human development. I am involved in the PE space, I'm involved in the VEC space. I'm involved in helping entrepreneurs and ICs at all- size companies, small mom- and- pop, et cetera. I happen to spend more of my time with the highly ambitious people. Again, everybody's beautiful, and more ambition does not equal more beautiful that just happens to be more aligned with me. And as far as where my personal time is spent versus say my team's time. My personal time is spent with more ambitious people, but my team and my companies as an entity or entities can spend time with everybody at scale. And it's scaled through videos and Team. We are spending time with more than just founders, and leaders, and just highly ambitious people, we're working with everybody and looking at how do we... Not how. We're sharing how to develop as a human being to become better.

Dane Groeneveld: And if you're personally energized by those highly ambitious founders. What is it that you find you enjoy in spending time with those individuals? Or where you see impact from those highly ambitious individuals?

Jeremy Barr: The impact and then the enjoy part. When we uplevel the really ambitious people they become even more impactful, right, they're running a much more scalable company. Than we use the analytics department, like we talked about, to track the impact that they're driving towards humanity in whatever metric whether it's cancer, world hunger, anxiety, depression, whatever we want to talk about, right? That's how the impact happens. By me upleveling that single founder or that leadership team, the company then runs better and drives the impact to the customers which could be cancer survivors, right, like my mom passed from, right? That's the impact part. And then what do I enjoy is... I mean, anybody is on the expansion theory. Our brains, at a neuron level, love the novelty of a new experience, of a new person or personality or whatever. And so for me, because my brain is so... I like to be fast moving. I'm burning through what I call dilution rates, right? When you have an experience, you snowboard a million times, you're like" Okay, I'm bored I want to do the next thing," right? Now, maybe I want to snowboard and jump out of a helicopter or whatever, right? It's always moving, right? So you got to find your own expansion rate which is diluting old experiences and you wanting new ones. And so for me, the ambitious people gives me more of that anti- dilution rate growth that allows me to be in these novel experiences and fast- moving conversations. There's some times where somebody's maybe just talking a little bit slower on a call and I'm thinking about all my other investments and all the other companies that I'm running, and then they finally finish one sentence, right? I just got off a call with another woman and she talks super fast like me, and we cover a lot of ground, and that's just really a lot of fun for me because we both can talk clearly, succinctly, and quickly. And that happens to be fun because then we're covering a lot of ground, we're making a lot of impact, and we're having fun together. As opposed to if somebody is talking about a concept that is 10 years old for you, you're like okay, we talked about that before you don't want to talk about that one again, right? So that means people happen to be on that leading edge of dilution rates and neuron function for me.

Dane Groeneveld: That's cool. And leading edge makes a lot of sense. I read an article this morning talking about the word quake. And I think the author was suggesting that for most professionals at about 2. 85 years they're ready for a new challenge, some variety. So that ties into what you are talking about. Maybe not at the same order of magnitude but it's right there. That's cool. And then teams. You talk about when you're working with these highly ambitious founders you can really crank it up and have massive impact. When you do get down to that next level with teams... I know you do some group coaching too. What are you seeing as maybe... Not necessarily silver bullet, but tips and tricks for getting teams to be able to move in this direction?

Jeremy Barr: At a high level for human growth, you want to identify where are you going. That's the first thing I'm looking for with everybody. I start a conversation with somebody and I say, " What do you want to do over the next two, five, and 10 years of your life?" And I say, two, five, and 10 specifically. And people that have more clarity will answer two, five, and 10. Some people will just answer" Oh, here's my goals for my life." And then either I re- ask, what do you want for two, five, and 10, or I just realize they don't have that clarity yet and we're going to go through discovery, right? So we start with step one with any human being that we're managing, or just is that in any level, ambitious or not doesn't matter, right? We start and just say, " What do you want out of life? There are people that are less planned in life too. They're like" I just want to plan one week at a time or one day at a time." Totally fine and totally doable, right? So we find out what level of clarity they want. And sometimes they want that super clarity, whether it's over the short term or long term, two years or five years or 10 years. We help them get that clarity to the degree that they want that clarity, and then we start to set up the tools of how to get there best for them, right? Because if somebody says, " I want a goal of three billion people," I'm going to give you way different tools than if you say, " I just want to impact my five or 10 family members" which I've heard, right? I've done a lot of the coaching and mentoring over the years and so there's a lot of different people. We understand what they want and that now becomes the incentive that anchors every other conversation. So the same thing when we're hiring somebody, we want to know what they want. And then every weekly one- on- one that a manager should be doing with the individual contributors on their team... The weekly one- on- ones of, what'd you do last week, what are you doing next week, how can I help, and where are you at personally and professionally, this particular week, is anchoring on what happened in the interview where you establish their goals. Now, people are going to evolve and their goals are going to have slight alterations over time, or more larger alterations if they're still in the discovery phase of their life. And discovery phase doesn't end but you have a high amount of discovery in the earliest parts and it'll reach a settle rate. We identify where they want to go and then we help them get there. Listening is really, really important. A lot of people don't know how to listen to other people. And especially listening to nonverbals: eye contact, body language, tone of voice, and microexpressions, those four. If one takeaway I can take to any human, I... Is being able to listen better and especially listen to nonverbals. Read a new baseline with every person, right, because cultures, countries, personalities, age groups, educational levels, all of it's going to be different. So in the beginning of a conversation, you can establish a baseline in the first 15 seconds to then read the next 45 seconds properly. Or you can establish a baseline in the first two minutes of a conversation of somebody's eye contact, body language tone of voice, microexpression movement. And then you can use that first two minutes of baseline to understand the next 60 minutes of conversation, right? Because people's smile depth, people's distance that they nod their head when they're understanding, is it an inch when they're like okay, I get that concept, not that hard to understand versus when it's a really insightful thing that you said and they're nodding like three to four inch of chin movement, right? Again, I'm algorithmic mind. Nobody's doing this algorithmically but a lot of people are doing it subconsciously. I've measured it all out, right? The one- inch baseline for one person, whereas three to four inches on chin movement of a head nod is a baseline for one person where you know okay, this is a concept I just shared with them that they already understand, it was a quick nod, right? You even see me doing quick right now, right? But when it's really insightful I'm like" Oh, that's really interesting," you see a deep nod, right? One to three inches was the baseline for one person, whereas somebody else I have seen it be from three centimeters to 12 centimeters.

Dane Groeneveld: And culturally that's very different. Some cultures of the world are big head nod. I'm certainly a big head nod. And now I'm sitting here starting to think, what's Jeremy reading into me when you said that baseline ages ago? That's very cool. And there's naturally some people, in our communities, that we work with who aren't great at the nonverbal. We've got a lot of high- functioning autism in and amongst my family, nieces, et cetera. What I've begun to learn around neurodiversity is that some people just don't... They don't perceive some of that. So are there hacks and tricks for those individuals that may be not as capable or not as naturally able to pick up the nonverbal cues in other humans that they're interacting with?

Jeremy Barr: Yeah. The reason why we set baseline is not just for culture, and personality, and everything but it's also for ADHD, it's also for neurodiversity. It's to where you're reading properly. Once you do a read, in a sense, or a full listening is the better way to call it, you're then going to ask a question in the verbal space to confirm what you might be seeing, right? So you're never going to make judgments based off those reads to where you're never going to be improper because you're always asking a verbal space question. The read influences the question you ask. And then you need to make sure it's a non- narrowing question, and you make sure it's open, and you get your information there that way that person is telling you what they want to actually say and you're making assumptions or projections. Okay, if somebody's not great at reading well... I would say even outside of neurodiversity or anyone else who maybe has not been doing... I think most of the world does not read nonverbals. Most of the world that I've interacted with does not read nonverbals. To even share it with everybody that's not reading nonverbals I'm giving them that awareness, I'm giving them examples of here's how you can read and here's how you can learn to-

Dane Groeneveld: You're giving the others a baseline, a way to measure it. That's cool.

Jeremy Barr: I'm giving people examples, right? When you tell somebody something and they look up for three to five seconds, they're really thinking about that something, and then their eyes come back down to look at you, right, that's a little bit of a brain speed. Whereas some people they're like okay, up one second and then down back to you. And they're like" Okay, cool." And you know that they have a fast brain speed, right? So it's just showing people different examples of what can exist, of possibilities of what those things mean because they won't always mean the same thing, and then telling that person, " Go out and talk to a lot of different people all around the world. Different ages, different income levels, different education levels, different everything, and then establish your own baselines and read, and learn, and then ask questions and get good at that. And practice it. It is something you practice, it is not something that people are born with. I practiced it, I built it.

Dane Groeneveld: I like it, I like it. I'm going to take you back, Jeremy, just quickly. You talked about when you sit down with these individuals you first say, " Where are you going? What's important to you at the two- year, five- year, ten year? And then you give them the tools. If you've got a team of individuals, whether it's on a startup or in a function of a larger organization, what happens when the individuals are going in different directions? Not everyone's going to be aligned. Are you trying to overlay their personal why with the company why? How does that play out?

Jeremy Barr: There's two ways we look at that. One is it's a mapping exercise. When I'm managing somebody and they say they want to go travel the world... And maybe they're less productive at work because they're just thinking about their travel trips which I've had and that's fine. Right, right. As a human, you have your value systems and you pursue it, and that is absolutely beautiful. Do you to travel more than six times a year, maybe 12 times a year or whatever? Maybe more than two times a year, you want to go six times a year, right? Okay. And you're wanting more money. And they go, " Yes, okay." Well, then the next salary band is available based on completion of these three projects. So here's how you complete these three projects. Right? Then you get that salary brand in this timeline and then you get more travel more, and then they become really invigorated in work. So we do a mapping exercise.

Dane Groeneveld: Interesting.

Jeremy Barr: A leader should map people's goals. A leader is a mapper, a leader should be mapping goals. Now it sounds intuitive. A lot of leaders they've done this well, that's how they got into leadership, they understood how to map A to B and get there. And that's why they don't actually think of themselves as mappers because a lot of the rest of the world has not learned to map point A to point B which is why a lot of people haven't achieved their goals yet because they're not good at mapping. So leaders can help people map. And that way when you have these seemingly different directions, when you map it you actually still get a coordinated direction. When you're hiring for people, your job as a hiring manager is to find out who at a high level is aligned for the projects you have over the next three months, six months, 12 months. That's what your job is to do in the interview is say, " What do you want out of your life? Okay, I have this for you over the next 12 months, does that sound good to you?" If you don't do that then you're going to have five or 10 people in the organization who are joined in and then they want something else. Well, that's bad on you for doing the interview.

Dane Groeneveld: Got you. I like the way you bring that back to interviewing that's really key. I've seen some people in interviews saying, " We're going to turn this around. It's not just me asking you questions I want you to ask me questions around what would make you a successful member of the team." And you need to like the answer otherwise this isn't going to work. So there's some good approaches there. Very cool. I've got so many different things running through my mind. Given that you get to look at a lot of new and emerging technologies, are there any tools either that you and your team are using, or that you see some of your founders bringing to market that are really, in your eyes, game- changing for getting teams to be more in control of mapping their purpose or objectives or goals?

Jeremy Barr: I mean, I see tools and everything but I don't see that as really the game- changing part. The most game- changing thing for any human to a significant, other relationship, to a friendship, to somebody you're managing, et cetera is being able to get on a video or get in person and listen to somebody verbally and non- verbally, and then add value to other person. Too many people come into a conversation, they don't listen, they have an agenda. The manager has an agenda, a salesperson has an agenda with the customer. Based on their own insecurities, they're trying to fill their insecurities, and they're not actually taking care of the person in front of them. One of the biggest things you can do to change the world is just make everybody aware that listening to other people, and then adding value to them based on what you heard, that changes the game in companies, in personal relationships, in significant others, in everything is just to be able to really listen to people.

Dane Groeneveld: I like that. It's very accessible, it's very universal. You don't need any deep subject matter domain to be able to help a wide range of people in that setting. We'll go a little deeper on technology there. What are your thoughts then on listening and adding value on the way that AI is moving, the way that computer vision's moving? Could we be in this conversation and there's a little bot up there saying, " Hey, Dane, I just saw Jeremy do this, or I heard Jeremy say this, ask him this question? Do you think we'll be augmented by technologies that help our listening, help our value- adding sort of efforts?

Jeremy Barr: I have candidate portfolio companies that have already pitched me on software that they're building that does exactly that.

Dane Groeneveld: That's pretty exciting.

Jeremy Barr: So that is coming.

Dane Groeneveld: Because if I think about some of the big mistakes I've made in my career, whether it's with a customer, a vendor, a team member, an investor, I look back and I go, gee, if I was just a fly on the wall of my own conversation I probably would've saved myself from that one. Particularly if you could start to almost make a digital twin of yourself so it's... You've actually got another version of you in the room helping look, and watch, and respond in questions that are more your tone and language than some faceless bot, that would be a very cool add.

Jeremy Barr: How I train some of my team on being able to read nonverbals and how to uplevel other people like I do is I'll hop them onto a Zoom call and we will... I will then go over how I read, and how I analyze that person. And how smile depth and everything changed a lot of the time. And how that mapped with the nonverbal and the verbal space and everything. The AIs that are being developed that I've seen are doing some of that as well. Where basically the AI would just be a person that hops on your Zoom or your Google Meet or whatever, and it just analyzes even yourself. Oh, you were a little bit strong in your tone there. Oh, you used that word there, that could be triggering with this personality that's on the other side of the call. And the AI is just helping you become better as a human being and rounding it out like a mentor, like a parent would, like anything else. I think these things can be great for society. Make sure that they're taken care of like privacy, and not evading anybody's privacy. But at the end of the day, if we're listening to other people and adding value I think that's a great thing.

Dane Groeneveld: Sweet, sweet. Final question then. You talked about doing data analytics or your analytics department so it sounds like you are tracking a lot of this. If we roll forwards five years, so you're now really taking a chunk out of the three billion impact, what do you think a couple of the more exciting data points will be for the way that teams are working together from the work that you're helping with founders, the technologies you're helping bring to market get funding? What do you think might translate for just people showing up to work and getting work done and helping the average worker?

Jeremy Barr: So if I've done my job well we should have a certain number of customers impacted towards the three billion people goal. We should have a quantified number there from the analytics department saying how many customers have been impacted. We should see companies getting funded sooner and faster. This normal three, six, nine month VC funding timelines can shrink dramatically.

Dane Groeneveld: It's painful.

Jeremy Barr: It can shrink into days. I already have one company that's working with some other top VC firms. I won't name the names but they're things that everybody in the space knows, that's working on AI due diligence software that does it in 24 hours, not three to six months. So this is already stuff that's reality, right?

Dane Groeneveld: Wow.

Jeremy Barr: So for number one is customer impact towards the three billion people should be happening. Number two, companies will be getting funded faster because founders are prepared faster because due diligence is done faster. I will be hitting on all those facets. Number three would be anonymous surveys in companies like Pulse Software's that rank managers and rank other peer employees as well. Instead of an average six out of 10, you should start seeing a lot more eight and nine points out of 10 on people's happiness scores, all these anonymous rankings of our managers, et cetera. There's a lot that dives into that number three of just all the different ways that you can use those anonymous surveys to grade people's happiness, et cetera, you should be able to see that. We'll see more customer impact, we'll see companies funded faster, we'll see companies launched faster too with AI and mentorship. I'm already working with Nobody Studios, it's one of the largest venture studios in the world, headed by CEO, Mark McNally, he's had 5 billion in exits. I will be doing the mentoring for his founders, him and I partnered up. He's been at some of my events, speaking at some of my events. He's going to be speaking at another one I have coming up this Friday. I have 8. 6 billion worth of speakers speaking this Friday on the Top End Marketing. It'll be on Zoom on my LinkedIn. So what he's doing is launching companies every 30 to 45 days. With AI, and the setup of a Venture studio, and the right mentorship provided by me, him, and everyone else you can launch companies much faster because all of this is... There is art but there's also science to it. And we've talked about that, and we align on a lot of things too. You're going to see companies launched a lot faster too. And we're already doing that but at large scale. You should be able to see that at scale.

Dane Groeneveld: I love that. That actually creates a lot of accessibility too. Because in the past, getting finance and having a deep tech team were really important to getting startups to actually start having impact. With generative AI, with some of these new social practices you've got to think more people get to take more shots on goal. There'll still be some failures but people will learn quickly and will likely roll into the better team, the better product, the better market. That's a real accelerator, isn't it?

Jeremy Barr: Yep, yep, yep.

Dane Groeneveld: Cool. Well, it's been a wonderful conversation, Jeremy. I really appreciate sort of your unique story and just the speed, the drive, the human- centered approach that you're bringing so thanks for sharing that with our listeners. Maybe we've got some founders listening on the show that would love some of the coaching or love to come along to one of your events and listen to some of those speakers... You mentioned LinkedIn. Are there other good places to find you online?

Jeremy Barr: LinkedIn is the main place right now. I will grow onto more social media platforms in different places online over time. People can search my name, Jeremy Barr. You'll see videos up of me and you'll be able to identify me from the other Jeremy Barr's. Right now on my LinkedIn, as far as today, there's the blue suit that you'll see at least for now.

Dane Groeneveld: Cool.

Jeremy Barr: And people will see the three billion goal, I list that in a bio. Wherever you see my social media presence you'll see CEO, VC, building the world's largest investor and founder network. You'll see the three billion. You'll be able to know that's a marker profile of me. Reach out to me, at least as far as right now, LinkedIn, that's the main platform where I'm doing everything. That's where I post the Zoom links for the different events that I'm doing, the pitch competitions where founders can pitch me and other investors in the global network that we're building out to be the largest. And then, obviously, I'm showing up on a lot of different podcasts. I think I've been on 10 in the last two weeks.

Dane Groeneveld: Nice. Well, thanks for putting the time in to spread the message, and the good work.

Jeremy Barr: I hope that this is helpful for everyone. And I'm excited to change the world. So if you want to change the world ping me.

Dane Groeneveld: Sounds good. Thanks, Jeremy.

Jeremy Barr: Thank you, Dane.

Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us. Remember that by embracing vulnerability, trusting our intuition, and approaching challenges with compassion, we not only strengthen our teams but also pave the way for a future where collaboration thrives. If you're hungry for more insights, strategies, and research on collaboration head over to the futureofteamwork. com. There you can join our mailing list to stay updated with the latest episodes and get access to exclusive content tailored to make your team thrive. Together we can build the future of teamwork. Until next time.