Episode #168: Mindset Over Metrics: Redefining Leadership Success with Anthony Coppedge

Leadership isn’t about perfection—it’s about alignment and impact. In this episode, Anthony Coppedge delves into the art of servant leadership, focusing on client-centricity and the mindset shifts needed for sustainable success. Coppedge dismantles traditional profit-first thinking, advocating for value creation as the foundation of all business endeavors. Using real-world examples, he explains how small businesses can leverage their agility to outmaneuver larger competitors, emphasizing the power of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to align teams and strategies.

The conversation spotlights leadership as a balance between clear vision and adaptable tactics. Coppedge underscores the importance of listening to client pain points, iterating processes based on feedback, and saying “no” to distractions that derail focus. Whether you’re scaling a startup or navigating enterprise challenges, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help leaders sharpen their strategies and protect their people.

Want to learn more about Anthony Coppedge's work? Check out his LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/anthonycoppedge.

Key Points with Timestamps

[00:00:51 - 00:01:25] Introduction of Anthony Coppedge, highlighting his expertise in business agility and OKRs.
[00:02:03 - 00:02:30] Exploring the tension between over-planning and under-acting in business.
[00:04:00 - 00:04:41] Why businesses should focus on delivering value over chasing profits.
[00:06:13 - 00:06:57] Strategy vs. tactics: Insights from General Patton’s leadership philosophy.
[00:10:21 - 00:11:19] Differentiating through emotional connections and unique value propositions.
[00:14:12 - 00:14:55] Identifying and solving common client pain points efficiently.
[00:20:06 - 00:21:15] Continuous learning and questioning as tools for strategic alignment.
[00:28:14 - 00:29:12] Leadership through servant-driven culture and sustainable human capital management.
[00:30:02 - 00:31:30] Small business advantages: Agility and the "fleet of tugboats" metaphor.
[00:33:26 - 00:34:50] Closing thoughts: The power of focus and strategic scaling for impactful leadership.

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;30;20
Craig Andrews
I was in a coma for six weeks while the doctors told my wife I was going to die. When I woke up, she told me the most fantastic story. My team kept running the business without me. Freelancers reached out to my team and said, we will do whatever it takes. As long as Craig's in the hospital. I consider that the greatest accomplishment of my career.

00;00;30;23 - 00;00;51;09
Craig Andrews
My name is Craig Andrews and this is the Leaders and Legacies podcast where we talk to leaders creating an impact beyond themselves. At the end of today's interview, I'll tell you how you can be the next leader featured on the show.

00;00;51;09 - 00;01;24;29
Craig Andrews
Today I want to welcome Anthony Coppedge. He is a leading voice for aligning businesses, business leaders and teams to focus on radical, customer centric D and outcome oriented growth. His business models, management systems and team development coaching have been applied across sales, marketing, product support and operations within enterprise companies including IBM and Fidelity Investments, as well as large to medium sized SAS technology companies.

00;01;25;01 - 00;01;32;23
Craig Andrews
His unique approach to business agility and OKRs has been validated at scale with measurable,

00;01;32;23 - 00;01;36;26
Craig Andrews
measurable, sustainable success. Anthony, welcome.

00;01;36;28 - 00;01;39;07
Anthony Coppedge
Thanks so very much, Craig.

00;01;39;09 - 00;01;39;29
Craig Andrews
So,

00;01;39;29 - 00;01;42;11
Craig Andrews
you know, we talked,

00;01;42;11 - 00;01;46;28
Craig Andrews
probably a few weeks ago, and there were a lot of things,

00;01;46;28 - 00;01;58;27
Craig Andrews
it was just an absolutely stimulating conversation. That's why I wanted to have you on. And even though your your experience is with larger companies, I think you have a lot to offer SMEs. I think there's some,

00;01;58;27 - 00;02;00;22
Craig Andrews
some concepts,

00;02;00;22 - 00;02;01;21
Craig Andrews
that, that scale.

00;02;01;21 - 00;02;03;15
Craig Andrews
And so for those listening,

00;02;03;15 - 00;02;30;28
Craig Andrews
that we're going to introduce some tension between two extremes. One extreme is acting too quickly and the other extreme is not acting at all. And there's a tension. And so overall goal as you're listening, this is where we're going to be going today is finding a way. And I think Anthony would probably say a process that allows you to make decisions at the right speed and corrections at the right speed.

00;02;30;28 - 00;02;32;07
Craig Andrews
Is that fair statement?

00;02;32;09 - 00;02;50;12
Anthony Coppedge
I would say my mindset with process, Rick, is that if you if you don't believe something, then you will only follow a pattern, and that pattern will only last as long as you're diligent. So it's kind of like the weight loss industry. If the weight loss industry really worked after about three months, you'd stop using it because it would work, right.

00;02;50;15 - 00;03;08;18
Anthony Coppedge
So the reason, the reason it doesn't last is because if you only focus on behavior change, get people to do certain things that is only as good as as long as you monitor it. But if you change someone's belief. So think about how they think about food. Well then that would change the results of what would happen with their diet and their and their in their weight.

00;03;08;24 - 00;03;17;26
Anthony Coppedge
So you have to really focus on mindset first, because if you if you change someone's mind, anything's possible. But if you don't, you're probably going to go right back to where you were before.

00;03;17;29 - 00;03;21;29
Craig Andrews
Yeah. And you know, it's it's funny you mentioned dieting. There's

00;03;21;29 - 00;03;38;16
Craig Andrews
you know, as a marketer, I say it's easier to sell diet pills than gym memberships. And and it's frustrating. It's frustrating because I want everybody to have the gym membership. I mean, I told you I was I was at Camp Gladiator at 5:15 a.m. this morning in the cold.

00;03;38;18 - 00;03;38;26
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;03;38;26 - 00;03;41;23
Craig Andrews
It wasn't fun. I went through my morning,

00;03;41;23 - 00;03;48;23
Craig Andrews
list of excuses why I shouldn't go. Right. And and thankfully, I was able to exhaust the list and get back out there.

00;03;48;23 - 00;03;57;19
Craig Andrews
But so many people want diet pills. And what you're saying is we got to change the mindset. How do you change that mindset?

00;03;57;21 - 00;04;18;27
Anthony Coppedge
Your business does not exist for you to make a profit. So the first thing you need to do is, is disassociate that thinking. Wait, we all think, well, I got to make a dollar and I got to be successful. Well, that should be an outcome of creating and delivering value to others. That's a natural byproduct. Yeah. So as long as you have a good product or service and you're fairly priced, you should be profitable, right?

00;04;18;27 - 00;04;41;22
Anthony Coppedge
This is just a byproduct. It's not the point. And so if you want to change your mindset you have to really start with why do we exist? What value or values, what things we want to create and deliver for the benefit of others? How do we help others either stop having pain or reduce pain, or have a new growth opportunity or escape an issue, whatever that looks like.

00;04;41;25 - 00;04;59;15
Anthony Coppedge
But there's only two reasons people purchase their it's pain or opportunity, pain or growth. And sometimes if you reduce pain, you can then grow. Right. But but ultimately that's a belief system. You've got to help people think differently and believe so in your own business, it starts with you. How do you think about your business? Why does your business exist?

00;04;59;15 - 00;05;20;29
Anthony Coppedge
And it's not to generate a profit. That should be the outcome natural by product of the thing that you're doing that benefits others and that others is the client. Client centricity is about realizing and focusing on what's in it for them, before or over what's in it for your business? Should you have goals? Should you have KPI? Should you have profit margin targets?

00;05;20;29 - 00;05;32;04
Anthony Coppedge
Sure. As a natural byproduct of first creating and delivering value for others because one should lead to the other, not the other way around. I mean, Craig, think of it this way when was the last time,

00;05;32;04 - 00;05;39;21
Anthony Coppedge
can you imagine a scenario even when when someone, you know had to deal with you and they called their boss and go, man, I really helped Craig make quota this quarter.

00;05;39;21 - 00;05;57;11
Anthony Coppedge
I'm so excited that we were able to close the deal because now Craig's going to do great. No, they're not thinking about what happened for your business. They're thinking about what's coming for their business. They're thinking about themselves and their organization as they should. So why do we focus on the KPIs around did we get a profit? Did we?

00;05;57;14 - 00;06;13;04
Anthony Coppedge
You should measure them, but they should not be your motivation. They should be the byproduct. And so that first shift is how do you scale? You don't scale based on the systems and processes of generating revenue. You scale on the things that create and deliver value for the benefit of others. That is client centricity.

00;06;13;06 - 00;06;26;17
Craig Andrews
You know, years ago I had General Mantra and I was talking to him about market share, and he just looked at me and said, Craig, quit focusing on market share, said focus on serving the customers. Market share will sort itself out.

00;06;26;20 - 00;06;39;19
Anthony Coppedge
Exactly right now. You could be smart about that. You can have strategies and tactics to execute in the market. You should, by the way, right. We're not saying this is all willy nilly. It's like that patent quote, can you do the patent quote real quick.

00;06;39;21 - 00;06;42;03
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So yeah, one of my favorite quotes is by,

00;06;42;03 - 00;06;48;07
Craig Andrews
General Patton. He said a good plan violently executed today beats a perfect plan executed next week.

00;06;48;10 - 00;07;11;10
Anthony Coppedge
And I would generally agree with that. I would think better to move now than wait till it's perfect, because it's never going to be perfect, is really what he's saying, right? So what we're getting at is what is the tension to manage what not what the problem to solve as a business owner, as a business leader, what are you doing to put enough of a plan or what I would call your strategy, your vision and your mission, your why together?

00;07;11;15 - 00;07;28;25
Anthony Coppedge
And then what are the ways the strategies you would accomplish that you know, you don't know because if you knew for sure, business would be up into the right hockey stick every time. It's not so you don't know, but you have educated guesses or you have a hypothesis. What we want to do is test that, measure that, evaluate it, and then repeat.

00;07;28;25 - 00;07;47;00
Anthony Coppedge
So it's a cycle, not a not a linear start middle end. We don't want to achieve profitability. We want to get to a place where profitability is this natural flywheel effect. And we want to get faster and better at that. So the way to do that is to say we do have plans, but we plan in very short increments and we think very near focus.

00;07;47;00 - 00;08;04;08
Anthony Coppedge
So we're very clear about what's happening the next seven, ten days, 14 days, 15 days. But we're we're pretty unclear about three months, and we're very unclear about a year from now. We may have a notion of something we would like to have happen in a year, and it setting a goal for it is fine, but you can't know that it's going to work.

00;08;04;08 - 00;08;22;23
Anthony Coppedge
So the key is to not stick with a plan that's not working because dang it, it's the plan. No use data, use insight, use feedback to validate if it's working and change as you go. So this means and it implies that there is planning, which is what Patton was talking about. Go execute. But we don't want to focus on the plan being perfect now.

00;08;22;23 - 00;08;37;06
Anthony Coppedge
We just want to be we want to be very clear with our why and our way. But then the what and the win and the how got we're we're very open to what that can look like. And we should be paying attention and measuring the things, including feedback that tells us if it is or isn't working.

00;08;37;08 - 00;08;39;16
Craig Andrews
You know, one of the interesting things about Patton,

00;08;39;16 - 00;08;50;10
Craig Andrews
he was one he was the only Allied commander that Field Marshal Rommel feared. Rommel wasn't worried about any of the other Allied commanders except Patton. The other thing is,

00;08;50;10 - 00;09;03;08
Craig Andrews
Patton was impulsive. He wasn't. He wasn't an analytical. And so he's fighting a the most analytical culture on the face of the earth, the Germans.

00;09;03;10 - 00;09;20;25
Craig Andrews
And he would go off and do something, and the Germans would just sit there and start analyzing. And they're like, that doesn't make sense. And. Right. And that's what ended up being a key strength to him was while the Germans were analyzing, he was attacking.

00;09;20;27 - 00;09;36;28
Anthony Coppedge
So the analogy that I would that I would take from that is in business, I think what we're trying to do is figure out what is the greatest advantage you can give someone else. And that sounds strange, because you're always thinking about what's the distinct advantage we have over our competitors. Don't. I'm not worried about my competitors. I'm really not.

00;09;36;28 - 00;09;55;11
Anthony Coppedge
I'm thinking about what is my customer need to solve for. And you can have two basic approaches. If I were to oversimplify, one of them is give them what they expect. In other words, just be really good at the thing that that makes it easy for them to do business with you. The other is to surprise and delight them, which is really what you're talking about.

00;09;55;11 - 00;10;21;02
Anthony Coppedge
You have this element of surprise and an unexpected thing. It's riskier, but the upside of that is it can be much stickier. So when you find a way to create, unique value proposition, something that is differentiated in the market, but more important, it's differentiated for their benefit. If I can make the person who's in pain at that organization a hero, that's a win, because a sale is always an emotional trigger, always an emotional trigger.

00;10;21;07 - 00;10;39;28
Anthony Coppedge
There might be data and reason and price to consider, but ultimately people want to make a decision because they feel good about it, right? They think about the decisions you make. Even if you go to Amazon or whatever, you're still making a decision not just based on what was the price. In X versus Y, you will sometimes go, I just, I like the way that's packaged or I like that better.

00;10;40;03 - 00;10;59;04
Anthony Coppedge
That's an emotional response. So part of it is understanding what is the emotional response. And it doesn't matter if it's a commodity widget that you produce or if it's a service that's very much tied into who you are and the people that you surround yourself with. Ultimately, there's got to be something that differentiates, that makes people feel safe and secure or even excited or happy.

00;10;59;04 - 00;11;19;00
Anthony Coppedge
That differentiation, that way of doing that is, is what's going to generate that surprise and delight. And if you can do that consistently. And then here's the key we'll talk about at scale. That's where you really achieve breakthrough results. Because again, you're you're just optimizing your business to benefit others, not just how do I make my business more successful?

00;11;19;07 - 00;11;23;12
Anthony Coppedge
That mindset at the beginning comes right back into play again and again.

00;11;23;15 - 00;11;24;22
Craig Andrews
So a couple of things.

00;11;24;22 - 00;11;36;01
Craig Andrews
Something you've brought up a couple times is the word pain. And when I talk about that, I find a lot of people have trouble understanding that. They think of pain as a physical pain.

00;11;36;01 - 00;11;45;25
Craig Andrews
What's an example of a pain that business is experiencing that that's not, you know, not a physical, you know, I hurt my ankle or, you know, hurt my knee.

00;11;45;28 - 00;12;07;25
Anthony Coppedge
Think the last time you said, why can't we xyzzy in our business? Why can't we x whatever that is. That as a pain. What if we could would be the follow up question? What would it take? Well, you almost always have to subtract before you multiply, because multiply is the scaling injured. But subtraction that the art of subtraction is how you get there.

00;12;07;27 - 00;12;11;10
Anthony Coppedge
So what you have to say is what's preventing it. Okay, well let's do it. An example.

00;12;11;10 - 00;12;32;20
Anthony Coppedge
You find out that in order to go from your marketing thing that you did and you ran some ads on Facebook and LinkedIn and you got your thing, how do we translate those into leads? Well, we have to export them to excel, and then we take them from Excel and we pass them out, and then we put them into our our Salesforce or whatever your CRM is, and you're manually doing all those things.

00;12;32;22 - 00;12;41;02
Anthony Coppedge
Well. The pain is there is that there is a delay between something happening and social and your ability to follow up from,

00;12;41;02 - 00;12;54;22
Anthony Coppedge
from a sales motion that delay is important because what you're doing is you're making the person wait to get the answer or wait to find out if the value is good. So they're interested. They're they're they have a hand raising moment.

00;12;54;25 - 00;12;59;18
Anthony Coppedge
But now there is this delay. So a pain might be we're not very good at,

00;12;59;18 - 00;13;12;04
Anthony Coppedge
our marketing. Well, no, your marketing works. Well, it's you're you're marketing to sales. Motion is the problem, right? So what are you doing to connect those two worlds? Maybe your services that you help come in and,

00;13;12;04 - 00;13;14;15
Anthony Coppedge
strategize on better processes and systems.

00;13;14;15 - 00;13;36;20
Anthony Coppedge
Maybe you're good at APIs and you've got people that can connect the code. And now there's an automated process, and now you have automated follow up, and then you have lead scoring. And so you get become much more sophisticated with it. But the problem that you're solving was not your infrastructure. Solving was for their benefit. Why? Because when they show that interest, you want to strike while the iron is hot.

00;13;36;20 - 00;13;55;02
Anthony Coppedge
We all know that. But what's the reality? If you're waiting 2 or 3 days to respond because you're a system and process is manual and slow, that's a pain you're introducing for the client experience. Their pain might be I need to know how to do X and you still not told them because they're waiting to hear from you.

00;13;55;08 - 00;14;12;01
Anthony Coppedge
So you've amplified their pain. So you're not looking like a very good service provider. You're not looking like the person they're going to trust to solve them. If you can't even help them understand if you're the right solution or you're the right choice quickly. That's just a very simple example of the kinds of pains that we might experience in business.

00;14;12;04 - 00;14;19;15
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, and when you said put leads in an Excel, I was like, oh my, I mean, it's it raised the hairs on the back of my.

00;14;19;16 - 00;14;20;17
Anthony Coppedge
Well right. Yeah.

00;14;20;19 - 00;14;28;29
Craig Andrews
And like I might listening if you have leads in Excel call me call Anthony. Call somebody that's in

00;14;28;29 - 00;14;30;07
Craig Andrews
Morrow.

00;14;30;09 - 00;14;36;22
Anthony Coppedge
Yeah. Right. Now pick up the phone because you have to. There is I like what you say is the,

00;14;36;22 - 00;14;37;10
Anthony Coppedge
author

00;14;37;10 - 00;14;50;24
Anthony Coppedge
acquisition authority automation. You know, the three things that you focus on automations in a very important part. But but automation is dumb, right? AI is dumb. This is not a popular sentiment. AI is only as good as the programing and the input you give it.

00;14;50;29 - 00;15;11;05
Anthony Coppedge
So if you want to throw a AI at something, you better scale the right thing because anything done faster isn't necessarily better. So I always use the example and it's it's over the top silly. But if you wanted to say we are tactically very good at executing at our company, I go, great, come to my neighborhood and pick up all the dog poop in people's yards where the dogs don't get picked up.

00;15;11;05 - 00;15;27;22
Anthony Coppedge
And then let's, let's, let's do that in a very quick fashion. Let's put it into pretty little bags and let's put bows on them and let's, put it on people's doorsteps like, like you could get really good at that, but why wouldn't you? It's like the wrong thing to get good at. That's an obviously a crazy example on purpose.

00;15;27;24 - 00;15;46;00
Anthony Coppedge
You don't want to get good at something you shouldn't be good at. You want to focus your effort strategically on what's going to create the greatest value in the greatest impact, not what do we get faster at speed is a byproduct of creating delivering value. Well. So how do you get faster? Figure out what's in the way. James Clear in his book,

00;15;46;00 - 00;15;50;28
Anthony Coppedge
Atomic Habits, as if you want to create upside, the first thing you do is you get rid of downside, right?

00;15;50;28 - 00;16;07;27
Anthony Coppedge
Stop the stuff that sucks. And I always like to say, look on the journey to not sucking at all. Craig sucking a little less as you go is actually winning, but it's okay to just suck less at something until the point where we no longer suck at it. You can't look at perfection as well. We have. We sucked.

00;16;07;27 - 00;16;30;24
Anthony Coppedge
We don't suck. Well, now you're probably going to be on a journey to get there, and that's okay. Give yourself permission to take steps towards it, but be very consistent and learn as you go. That's part of this. This thing that I see both in huge business and in SMB. It's the same thing. People need to be thinking about what's working, why is it working, and how do we how do we, how do we iterate on that, that loop?

00;16;30;24 - 00;16;54;26
Anthony Coppedge
It's that virtuous cycle that says there's a way to get better over time, and there's a way to measure and understand and get feedback so that we make the right pivots, not just pivot, because we can we don't change in order just to change. You change because you learn something. So ultimately, the most successful businesses, whether at scale for a like a huge company like the ones I've worked for or a small SMB is, did you get good at learning to scale the right things?

00;16;54;26 - 00;16;57;02
Anthony Coppedge
Not did you just get faster?

00;16;57;05 - 00;17;12;29
Craig Andrews
Yeah. There was there's another pattern quote I think ties in to something you you've mentioned a couple times. The tri measure or, you know, test, hypothesize test, you know, measure, measure and

00;17;12;29 - 00;17;13;13
Craig Andrews
learn.

00;17;13;15 - 00;17;14;29
Anthony Coppedge
Wait and repeat.

00;17;15;01 - 00;17;37;21
Craig Andrews
So Pan had another quote and he wrote a letter to his wife during the war. He said, I've been trying to teach my men the difference between strategy and tactics. And for strategy I say be a steamroller. You set a direction and you don't change. But for tactics, don't be a steamroller. Instead grab them by the nose, you know, attack weaknesses, grab them by the nose and kick them in the pants.

00;17;37;24 - 00;17;40;23
Craig Andrews
And I imagine that was very vulgar in the 1940s to say that.

00;17;40;23 - 00;17;42;03
Anthony Coppedge
Sure, it was.

00;17;42;06 - 00;17;42;28
Craig Andrews
But

00;17;42;28 - 00;17;53;13
Craig Andrews
as you were talking about that, you know, that quote just kept coming to mind as I was processing some of the things that you were saying, do you see that fitting into your your.

00;17;53;17 - 00;18;18;11
Anthony Coppedge
100%? So we talk about OKRs. OKRs are objectives and key results, and the difference between an objective and a goal and a key result and a KPI is the focus. So a goal is what's in it for my business I want to achieve something by this time, at this, to this amount, by this date. Okay. That's measurable. In time bound a KPI is what would we measure to see if we are achieving that goal over time, and which means it has to exist in the market.

00;18;18;11 - 00;18;34;00
Anthony Coppedge
You have to measure it as you go to see. So it's always a lagging indicator, an objective and a key result is what's in it for the client. What's the value that we hypothesized? Wouldn't it be great for the client if we that's the objective. And then the key results are these are the things we think that are going to do that we're not sure.

00;18;34;05 - 00;18;58;13
Anthony Coppedge
But these are our directions. We do those pretty much quarterly. I mean, it's a it's a quarterly motion. So that for that quarter we steamroll towards that. And what we do is we look at the things that we're doing, all the tactical stuff, all those tactics, grab them by the nose, kick them in the pants stuff, and we say, hey, is this leading to this desired outcome that we described, or is it doing something going over here because we don't want sideways energy, we want to go directly to the thing we ascribed ourselves to.

00;18;58;20 - 00;19;16;13
Anthony Coppedge
So in that sense, you do have a steamroller effect for that quarter, but you evaluate as you go in at the end of the quarter, you go, hey, was that the right target? Did we go in the right direction? Should we pivot or change, or should we keep steamrolling in this direction? And every quarter you do this. So there's always a planning an execution of measure as you go.

00;19;16;20 - 00;19;33;06
Anthony Coppedge
And then you you reflect and you say, what do we think? Okay, ten degrees this way. Let's go. But we steamroll again for those three months. The key is that there is a both. And you sense the fact that there is that hey strategy is we're gonna go in this direction. Tactics is we're going to pivot

00;19;33;06 - 00;19;35;27
Anthony Coppedge
and not just do a straight line right towards enemy gunfire.

00;19;35;27 - 00;19;58;22
Anthony Coppedge
Right. We're going to go around and flank him or whatever. We're going to figure out the best way to achieve that. But we don't necessarily want to be mindless about doing it. So it's a both and and it's a tension to manage, not a problem to solve. So what I say is if you know what your objectives are at the end of the quarter, then your quarterly goals and your annual goals should be a reflection of did you create that value in deliberate or not?

00;19;58;25 - 00;20;06;18
Anthony Coppedge
Does your customer have more value? Do your prospects a sooner? Do you have more people?

00;20;06;18 - 00;20;25;00
Anthony Coppedge
Less people churning and more people renewing or whatever your metrics are around that you can know how you're doing as a lagging indicator, but your leading indicators is what you learn as you go. That's what the killers work for, OKRs. So between the two, what you have is a way to look forward and a way to measure afterwards and a way to look forward.

00;20;25;00 - 00;20;40;00
Anthony Coppedge
So it's a tension that you manage between strategy and tactics. And at the end of the year you see how you did, but you don't plan a year's worth of work. That goes back to the original pattern quote. You know, you want to perfectly plan things, take a year to plan, and then the next year to execute is too slow.

00;20;40;00 - 00;20;53;18
Anthony Coppedge
Market moves too fast, so you want to move much, much quicker, but you want to do that in a cycles. You want to figure out how to loop those things so that you get better at that, and then you eventually get to where you want to be. But it's a learning curve.

00;20;53;20 - 00;20;58;15
Craig Andrews
Well, and let's tie this back into the pain. So I live in constant fear, whether it's

00;20;58;15 - 00;21;13;10
Craig Andrews
my own business or my one of my client's businesses, I live in constant fear that I don't have the pains. Right. And and so using this model that you're talking about, how do you constantly evaluate if you're going after the right pains?

00;21;13;12 - 00;21;31;21
Anthony Coppedge
So you have to ask so at the between the goals and the KPIs and the objectives. And the key result is what I call that North star or guiding star. Remember at the beginning of this conversation I said, there's a vision and a mission your way with your why that's most important. And then ninja, what in your win and your how that you figure out and you learn about.

00;21;31;23 - 00;21;53;03
Anthony Coppedge
So that is what you align to. So your statement might be we exist for the purpose of doing X for this type of client so that they have y outcome whatever that looks like. And so you describe that based on what you know. And then you have a whole model called the Odom model which is outcome driven alignment model, which is a way to map all this out and figure it out.

00;21;53;03 - 00;22;13;10
Anthony Coppedge
Who are your personas? What are the pain points? What are you solving for? ET cetera. But the point is, is when you do this, even as a very small one person operation, much less an enterprise, what you're really saying is we are believing we know something about what they think is valuable, they being the client, and we're addressing all the things that we can to make sure we're aligning to that.

00;22;13;12 - 00;22;32;15
Anthony Coppedge
But you don't assume for very long because you have to go ask. Now, you could do this in a number of ways. One might be a survey like an NPS. How likely are you to recommend us to your data? Another might be, hey, of the thing that we just gave you on a form that you just told us was this useful, this download, you just said, how would you rate that on a scale of 1 to 5?

00;22;32;18 - 00;22;49;27
Anthony Coppedge
Or it might be when you're talking to a prospect, hey, what do you think about this? Does this really speak to the thing that's keeping you up at night? And you're asking all the time you're soliciting this feedback because what you need to understand is really what's going on in their minds. Because the better you can understand your audience, the better you can serve them.

00;22;50;04 - 00;23;07;21
Anthony Coppedge
So there's always this questioning motion that you're doing to understand and not not just at the end of the year, not just at the end of the contract. You're doing this continually, and what it gives you is insight, which is data, right? So if you have data and you have a way to manage that data, this is where our tools like AI are amazing.

00;23;07;23 - 00;23;08;29
Anthony Coppedge
Of all of these,

00;23;08;29 - 00;23;12;19
Anthony Coppedge
things I can put it into, you know, ChatGPT or Watson,

00;23;12;19 - 00;23;24;13
Anthony Coppedge
natural language processing or whatever. And I could say, hey, take all of this feedback across these 400 people and tell me the common themes, patterns and trends and what it's going to do is look through that and come back. It seems like these are four things.

00;23;24;16 - 00;23;43;15
Anthony Coppedge
Okay, now I have something to go ask. More specifically the next time. Hey, is this as big an issue or would you rate this issue over here higher? And now you're being more scientific about it, and now you're being more advanced about it, but you're still always asking questions. And you never stop. You never stop asking questions because how do you know?

00;23;43;19 - 00;24;03;16
Anthony Coppedge
Not just by the revenue but by the feedback? Because what if you're successful? Craig, in spite of what you're offering rather than because of what if they're buying it? Because it does solve, but it's one tenth of what it could be. And if you just knew the other 9/10, you would go do that. But they keep buying. So you're successful.

00;24;03;23 - 00;24;30;18
Anthony Coppedge
Well, you can be successful in spite of I want to be successful because of. So I'm always going to continue that that questioning motion to ask. And you can do this with surveys and polls and you can give away a gift card for feedback. I mean, there's lots of ways to do this, but ultimately, what you're looking for is for people to tell you the truth, their pain, their what's keeping them up at night, what's causing them the biggest headache that you can help solve and realizing if you can't or can't and telling them the truth.

00;24;30;20 - 00;24;51;11
Anthony Coppedge
I can only do this. I can't really do that. But but for this, here's what I think I can do. Is that valuable for you? Would it be great if we did this? And sometimes they'll tell you yes, sometimes until, you know, either way, that's a win. Why? Because you're never going to want to direct yourself to the point of trying to be something you're not and said you want to stay in the wheelhouse of what makes you great, because that's what's going to keep them coming back time and again.

00;24;51;18 - 00;25;07;19
Anthony Coppedge
And you can grow from there. But you don't want to try to pretend to be something and have a half hearted or a poor effort in the market, because that then affects your entire brand. So no matter how good you were at the thing you're great at, all they're going to remember is the thing you suck at. So you it gives you really great data to make better decisions.

00;25;07;20 - 00;25;09;03
Anthony Coppedge
The leader.

00;25;09;05 - 00;25;25;12
Craig Andrews
Yeah. And I think when people are doing that, one of the challenges that I see and I mean I have it myself, we fall in love with our own service. We fall in love with our own product. And me, as a marketer, it's easy for me to say, oh, people just went great marketing, you know, that's why I'm out there to solve people.

00;25;25;14 - 00;25;29;25
Craig Andrews
No, nobody cares about marketing. They care about revenue growth.

00;25;29;27 - 00;25;53;15
Anthony Coppedge
And they care about things like, hey, it's just making it where I don't have turnover as high. Does this integrate with the rest of our tech stack? Did you solve something that made it easier for us to do business with our clients? There's all kinds of ways you can ask questions to understand the value you create, deliver, and you need to be very clear about what that is so that you understand how and why you would adjust your strategies.

00;25;53;20 - 00;26;15;09
Anthony Coppedge
Not your why, not your purpose, but your strategies. The way the steamroll or effect where you would aim the steamroller before you try new strategies, before you try new tactics, you have to have something to align to. So if you have that mission and vision, our why with our way, then anything that comes in, even if it comes from a big client who's like, hey, I want you to do X, but you're like, that would take me 90 degrees off of my focus.

00;26;15;11 - 00;26;34;14
Anthony Coppedge
I know they want that. We're not the right people to do that. I'm going to tell them no. Even though one of my biggest clients. Why? Because that would divert divest you from your strength and it would make you weaker. Even though you're trying to solve for something, if you're not able to absolutely make that work, then you're going to have to say learn to say no.

00;26;34;15 - 00;26;48;18
Anthony Coppedge
And in fact, no is the most important thing to say in business. And it's saying no to the people. That's hard to say it, too. So whether you're in an enterprise and I got to say no to an SVP above me, or if I'm saying no to the teams that are like, we want to do x, y, z, I'm like, show me the data.

00;26;48;18 - 00;27;07;19
Anthony Coppedge
Give me the reasons if I don't have good insight. Well, we just think. We just think, okay, let's do a small test with the small sample size. Let's figure that out. But I'm not just rolling it out because you have a whim, right. So we need to have that that way to manage that. Does this align. And with my teams I had 26 teams on day one at IBM, for example.

00;27;07;21 - 00;27;24;08
Anthony Coppedge
You know, how do I know 26 teams are doing well because we set a shared set of objectives and goals. So we knew what our North Star was. We knew what our focus was, and then anything that came in I would go, does this help us achieve that? Does this directly align to that? Because if it doesn't, we're going to say probably not yet.

00;27;24;10 - 00;27;41;23
Anthony Coppedge
And we would hold off and go next quarter. Let's evaluate that. But for now we're going to say let's focus. Because what you want to do is align people to the 2 or 3 things that we can do Excel well, or stop sucking at or suck less at. And you want that focus because focus is what gets you results.

00;27;41;26 - 00;27;57;07
Anthony Coppedge
Not time, not speed, focus. So how do you focus where that also means I got to reduce distractions. I've got to get crap out of their way as a manager. I've got to remove the impediments. I've got to figure out what does it look like to create the conditions for that success. There's a lot to this. This is why management and leadership so hard.

00;27;57;09 - 00;28;14;23
Anthony Coppedge
But what we want to do is serve our teams, serve our clients. At the end of this client centricity is everything. And the way you do that is servant leadership. And that's what I believe. And I will go to my grave, you know, defending because I think that's the best way to do it, because it's the healthiest, most sustainable way that cost,

00;28;14;23 - 00;28;16;22
Anthony Coppedge
that doesn't just not cost human capital.

00;28;16;22 - 00;28;20;29
Anthony Coppedge
It actually protects human capital. You can you can be very successful and

00;28;20;29 - 00;28;36;19
Anthony Coppedge
get rid of people. Motion, you know, then the books do mass layoffs. That does work. But the cost to the culture that you leave behind are huge, not just the people that you let go of. So as a really great leader, what you want to figure at is how do I protect the culture that we have?

00;28;36;19 - 00;28;49;11
Anthony Coppedge
How do I grow the culture that I have? Because that's what's going to make us great, is when our people are aligned and believe and feel safe, and that they can disagree, and it's safe to disagree. And we can get better by pushing on each other. The axiom of,

00;28;49;11 - 00;28;53;28
Anthony Coppedge
you know, iron sharpens iron. Well, have you ever seen what happens when iron sharpens iron?

00;28;53;28 - 00;29;12;20
Anthony Coppedge
That's loss because there is loss. Something is being taken away for it to become sharper. So there's always loss in order to get that. So if you're not experiencing some sort of pain, if it's not hard to do, you're probably not sharpening the right things. It should be painful. It should be hard to do because that's how you get better.

00;29;12;22 - 00;29;15;21
Anthony Coppedge
And learning to say no is key to that.

00;29;15;24 - 00;29;18;03
Craig Andrews
So let's let's wrap up with this. The

00;29;18;03 - 00;29;37;17
Craig Andrews
so there's some people that are listening and I think they, they're like, this all makes perfect sense. I wish I had $1 billion company that had the staff to execute on these things. What would you tell the business owner that's running, you know, five $1,015 million business?

00;29;37;20 - 00;30;03;08
Anthony Coppedge
You don't have the same pains that they have. So when when a new technology like AI, some of these two tool AI tools are coming out, your team can start experimenting with them today. You can't do that in an enterprise. Why? Because they have governance policies. They have security policies. Nothing happens. Quick. So your ability to adopt new technology or to try new things, your ability to pivot and and move very quickly, they can't do.

00;30;03;10 - 00;30;27;22
Anthony Coppedge
So it's like an oil tanker. It it is big. It's impressive. Takes miles to turn around. Tugboat much much smaller can spend on a dime. Right. So you have if you want to grow your business, don't don't envision building an oil tanker. Build a fleet of tugboats. Right. You can have the same size, same much smaller barges. Whatever you want to do, you can still have capacity, massive capacity, but you want the flexibility.

00;30;27;28 - 00;30;44;26
Anthony Coppedge
This is what software as a service did. Software as a service made it possible for people to have as a service the use of something, and they can have it with one license or 5 or 10, and it's just a matter of spinning things up and it's automated and it's easy. That's the beauty of that model. So they can build a fleet of tugboats.

00;30;44;26 - 00;31;02;05
Anthony Coppedge
They never have to go build an oil tanker, ever. So that's the big advantage if I were to try to make that. So you have a huge advantage. Go be a first mover. It's very hard for an enterprise to be a first mover. When the market begins to change. You can be go. Is that am I hearing did I did I sniffed that out.

00;31;02;05 - 00;31;30;18
Anthony Coppedge
Let's go try because you can. You have a huge advantage. Leverage your nimbleness. Leverage your your size to go try new things that that's that flow. We talked about. Right. I have an idea. I have a hypothesis. I want to figure it out. I want to experiment and I want to measure how is that working. And I want to, you know, understand that when I have my learning and then I want to have a new one and you never, ever stop, you have this huge advantage to do that.

00;31;30;20 - 00;31;47;08
Anthony Coppedge
You have the disadvantage of not being able to just have income come in, regardless of if you're performing well or not. And if you're a publicly traded company, your stock price is what really makes you great, right? So ultimately, your products and services need to rock if you're a small business. That's why. Because you don't have,

00;31;47;08 - 00;31;50;08
Anthony Coppedge
some fund coming in from from the,

00;31;50;08 - 00;31;51;07
Anthony Coppedge
from the stock market.

00;31;51;07 - 00;32;08;04
Anthony Coppedge
Right. So you have to manage it differently. They have a whole other set of headaches. Very difficult to compare the two because they're just worlds apart. But what I would say is look at the advantage that you have of being smaller, nimble. Now the upside to is that you need to be the kind of leader. And I was saying this to Craig on,

00;32;08;04 - 00;32;09;01
Anthony Coppedge
before we started.

00;32;09;01 - 00;32;27;16
Anthony Coppedge
This is you need to be the kind of leader that says, what can I do that only I can do? Ask yourself that question because that's something anybody or anything I could do. Why are you doing it? Well, I'm the owner. I'm the chief cook and bottle washer. Look, I've been the chief cook and bottle washer for two businesses.

00;32;27;16 - 00;32;45;23
Anthony Coppedge
I understand, but what I had to learn was there are certain things I should not do because I'm a not good at them, and b they take me longer to do than it would someone else. And so you're like, well, yeah, but cash flow like, okay, got it. But if you're always working in the business you're very rarely working on the business.

00;32;45;27 - 00;33;03;23
Anthony Coppedge
But if you're always working on the business, you're very rarely working in the business. So instead of trying to split that 5050, don't find people in services to do things that anybody or anything could do so that you free yourself to do the stuff only you can do. That is the beginning of scaling. Why? Because people don't scale.

00;33;03;29 - 00;33;26;11
Anthony Coppedge
Systems and processes do. So even as you grow your business and you have more employees, congratulations. But you still want to protect the people. Why? Because they will never scale. You want to build better systems, better processes. That is the key to scaling. And then with tools like yeah, you could have exponential scaling. So there's a lot to be said for the advantage that you have as a small business owner over a large enterprise.

00;33;26;14 - 00;33;31;12
Craig Andrews
All right. Well that's excellent. Lots of nuggets of wisdom here.

00;33;31;12 - 00;33;33;23
Craig Andrews
Thanks for sharing among leaders and legacies.

00;33;33;25 - 00;33;35;13
Anthony Coppedge
Glad to be here. Thanks, Greg.

00;33;35;16 - 00;33;38;20
Craig Andrews
On how did people get in touch with you, I forgot that how did people reach out? You know.

00;33;38;20 - 00;33;40;10
Anthony Coppedge
The easiest thing is LinkedIn.

00;33;40;10 - 00;33;52;29
Anthony Coppedge
You know, my you'll have the link, I'm sure, but it's just linkedin.com/n/anthony Carpenter I'm super easy to find there. I do have my own website, but I think LinkedIn is just the easy common place. I just drive people there.

00;33;53;02 - 00;33;56;03
Craig Andrews
It's excellent. All right Anthony thank you so much.

00;33;56;05 - 00;33;58;25
Anthony Coppedge
Thanks so much.

00;33;58;25 - 00;34;25;21
Craig Andrews
This is Craig Andrews. I want to thank you for listening to the Leaders and Legacies podcast. We're looking for leaders to share how they're making the impact beyond themselves. If that's you, please go to Alize for me.com/guest and sign up there. If you got something out of this interview, we would love you to share this

00;34;25;21 - 00;34;27;16
Craig Andrews
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00;34;27;18 - 00;34;50;28
Craig Andrews
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00;34;51;00 - 00;34;59;05
Craig Andrews
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00;34;59;05 - 00;37;01;12
Craig Andrews
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