Adapting to Modern Leadership Challenges with Gary C. Laney

What if mastering the art of influence could transform your business relationships and career? Join us for an enlightening conversation with entrepreneur and author Gary C. Laney, who shares his fascinating journey from a family of entrepreneurs to success in high-tech and eventually entrepreneurship. With insights from mentorship under Stephen Covey, Laney offers a unique perspective on strategic influence—distinct from the fleeting nature of social media influence. We uncover the critical steps needed to build long-term business relationships, particularly in niche markets like the photo industry.

Discover how pivotal leadership competencies are evolving to meet the demands of today's dynamic workplace. We explore transformative ideas from the book "Become a Super Leader," which guides you to develop a personalized list of competencies inspired by Benjamin Franklin's system of self-improvement. Tune in to understand the challenges of managing millennials and Gen Z employees, and how classic leadership values are being reshaped by modern expectations like remote work. We also discuss the potential shift towards independent work by 2030 and the crucial role of collaboration for innovation and success.

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Chapters

• 0:02 Building Strategic Relationships for Business
• 13:15 Developing Competency for Super Leadership
• 14:12 [Ad] The Dark Horse Entrepreneur | Helping Parents Make Money Online
• 14:38 (Cont.) Developing Competency for Super Leadership
• 24:44 Mastering Leadership Competencies for Success

Transcript

Erin Manning: 0:02

Welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast, the photo imaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, Gary Pegeau. The Dead Pixel Society podcast is brought to you by MediaClip, advertag Printing and Independent Photo Imagers.

Gary Pageau: 0:18

ary again and welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast. I'm your host, gary Pegeau, and today we're joined by Gary C Laney author, entrepreneur, keynote speaker and strategic consultant, and he's coming to us from Salt Lake City, utah. Hi Gary, how are you?

Gary C. Laney: 0:32

toda. Hey, gary, great Nice to have this opportunity. Thanks for having me.

Gary Pageau: 0:37

Well, it's always great when Gary's of like minds get together and share ideas. Right, there aren't too many of us out there. It's a name alive somehow. So before we get into your latest projects, can you kind of lay the groundwork for how you got to where we are today?

Gary C. Laney: 0:55

Well, so I'm going to give you the short version versus the long version. I grew up in retail family business. My father was an entrepreneur, grandfather was an entrepreneur. I have a long line of entrepreneurs in my family.

Gary C. Laney: 1:08

I expected I might do that someday. But as a kid my parents emphasized I should go to college, which I did, and I got an MBA. So retail as a family participant. Then I got into commercial publishing. Then I went into high-tech software for about 20 years I kind of consider that to be my most bulk of my career where I spent time. And then, about 2004, I went into an entrepreneurship kind of role. I've been involved in lots of startups. That's kind of my forte learning how to take a company, turn it around and turn it into something.

Erin Manning: 1:42

And I did that in corporate too.

Gary C. Laney: 1:43

That was kind of my go-to kind of opportunities so, and then the last several years I sold off my business assets for the most part and I started writing books and back to speaking, doing stuff I used to do when I was younger.

Gary Pageau: 2:01

So your first book was about strategic influence. It was I was younger, so your first book was about strategic influence. Talk about why you thought that was a great topic, because you know, I guess I've watched some interviews with you where you've talked about that topic and it's not one that I think a lot of people would address on their first book.

Gary C. Laney: 2:21

Well, I wanted to distinguish between influence and strategic influence, because there's a big difference. So social media influence is totally different than what I do. I'm in the people business. I'm in the relationship business, which is really what I'm about, and Stephen Covey was one of my early mentors over about a 10-year period, where I got a chance to not only be one of his students in the university but he became an advisor to my company and so over a 10-year period, I became as I grew up in management, became VP of sales, et cetera got to know him very, very well.

Gary C. Laney: 2:56

And the concepts of even habits of highly effective people which I've taught, extended, extrapolated from and developed new concepts from for over 35 years. So when I decided to write a book, I said I knew it had to be about influence. But how do I distinguish between myself and those out there doing social media stuff? And I said it has to be strategic because relationships are long-term, because businesses should have a long-term focus, and I wanted to be able to show you the step-by-step process of how to access influence, how to use the influence, how to develop your own influence, how to share influence, how to give back influence.

Gary C. Laney: 3:34

So it was a way of me being able to show you, step by step with with my content and then great interviews with high, high level executives who exemplify what I teach in each of the chapters how you can actually do this. How could you become someone who, number one, even gets access to influence when you're a young guy or girl trying to get into business? Nobody wants to share their influence unless they can trust that you're going to use it well. If you screw up one time, you'll never get their help again because their reputation is on the line. On the same regard, if you've got influence and you make the wrong move, you can lose influence in a day that you spent 20, 30 years developing. So that's kind of how it boils down.

Gary Pageau: 4:18

Yeah, that's an interesting concept because I do hear a lot about that kind of concern people have when they're encouraged hey, I need to go to networking events, you know that's how people do business. I need to go to a conference, I need to do these things as you spread your network out. Again, you're kind of, you are kind of who you hang with, if you will, right, and that sometimes can be a challenge. And you know, like in the photo industry, right, you know you've got it's a very narrow market where people everyone knows each other kind of thing, right, that I think is very interesting, because then you get people who are maybe reluctant to share influence.

Gary C. Laney: 4:55

Yeah Well, let me just say that, since you mentioned networking, networking became a big part of my life about 10, 12 years ago when I became a co-founder of a company called Trust Stagerty. Trust plus integrity equals trust integrity. And our whole game was about how do you develop relationships to the point where you really could trust the other person without any question, and how do we develop and share and collaboratively share information within our career so that we can help each other. So I can become an advocate for you, so I can become an extension of your sales group, so you can trust me.

Gary C. Laney: 5:32

If you introduce me to someone you can walk away and never have to worry about me, and that was a company that I was a CEO of and grew nationally, before I sold it during COVID.

Gary Pageau: 5:39

Okay, so what were some of the ideas or concepts that you share to build that trust and integrity?

Gary C. Laney: 5:48

Again. So I've developed what I call spheres of influence, not circles of influence. Stephen Covey talks about circles. I like sphere better because it's three-dimensional, it's volumeless, it has the ability to be able to get into it from the constructs of what this visual sphere is about, versus a circle where you could step in. You step out very quickly. So I developed six spheres over those 35 years of teaching Stephen Covey stuff.

Gary C. Laney: 6:11

And the spheres begin with a perspective. So imagine we're beginning our journey, whatever it may be maybe a project you're doing, it might be your life or your career you're talking about. The first thing we have to do is we have to count the costs up front, which I call survival mindset. So I'm going to commit to do something. I'm going to jump into something. A lot of people don't do this and they walk away from things before they really actually did what they said they were going to do. I'm not the kind of person I don't like to make commitments. Until I'm ready, no-transcript, and I know I'm going to be put to the test. I'm going to keep going.

Gary C. Laney: 6:55

The second part of that perspective is knowing that people have to be involved with you. You should have a mindset and a focus of developing a network, and I'm going to call it a sphere, a sphere of influence. Don't worry about what that means initially, just know that you need to work on it. It has to be a focus. Then we go to sphere two, and I'm going to go through these quickly. Sphere two is about accountability. So now I've got the mindset about where I'm going. Stephen Covey says begin with the end in mind. I say have a perspective. And basically the first thing we're going to do is we're going to say I'm responsible for the things that happen in my life, no matter what happens. Just like I said, with that survival mindset, I'm going to take ownership for the things that happen, even if.

Gary C. Laney: 7:38

I wasn't responsible for what happened to me. I needed to be proactive, do something to get back on the path and not be in a stalemate position. Sure, the other aspect of accountability is that you have to become self-reliant. So self-reliance means, yes, I need help. I can't do it by myself, but I'm going to take the ball and run with it and I'm going to get things done. So that's sphere two. It's accountability.

Gary C. Laney: 8:11

Sphere three is where we get into what you know I've just been talking about. That's called relationships. Relationships is so important because we have to know that the people we connect with, that we've spent time with, are going to give value back, just like I'm going to give. I'm going to give it to you first. That's my mindset, but I I want to know that I'm with someone who can reciprocate right to a degree, even though I'm not going to be calculated about it. If it's going to be a special relationship, a partnership, and not just somebody I'm trying to help just for the good of it, I need to know that there's reciprocal value for both of us.

Gary C. Laney: 8:35

So, that's really important. So, then, what I'm going to be doing is I'm not only building and focusing on a network, but I'm going to focus on a network that's influential. If you take your influence and my influence and we combine them, it's a synergistic result. There's more than just the one plus one equals two. It might end up being five, six, ten, because it just accelerates our influence, because we're working together. So those are the first three spheres. Sphere four is leadership.

Gary C. Laney: 9:03

Leadership depends on your reputation, reputation which you're developing during those relationships and, by the way, relationships, I think, go to the next level for a handful of people. So, every day, you should be connecting. I connect with people every single day of my life and once in a while, somebody bubbles up, something happens, there's a chemistry and all of a sudden, I want to go further than just having this initial connection. It means we should be doing stuff together because we have the ability to do that, we have the chemistry, we have the makeup, we have the background. I'm going to call those partnerships. So that's part of the relationship sphere, but I just wanted to bring that back to you. So, once we're in leadership, we look at it and say, okay, as a leader. I need to assume the role as a leader. Am I a leader? Leaders have to assume and be proactive about what the responsibility means to be a leader, not just take the title. I'm going to say, okay, this is what I think a leader should do and I'm going to work at it.

Gary C. Laney: 9:56

And then the second part of that is there's an opportunity. How do I create a plan, a perspective, a vision that allows me to reach the potential? If you will, even though I think you never can define potential, let's call it master, or let's call it become proficient. Okay, it's hard to define that stuff.

Gary Pageau: 10:16

Yeah, exactly Because it's different for different people.

Gary C. Laney: 10:19

No, that's really true. So the proficiency means I'm going to do the best I can to become the leader, the best version of myself, right. The next sphere, which is opportunity, is what this new book I have called Become a Super Leader is all about.

Gary C. Laney: 10:32

That came from this sphere of opportunity. This book could be called the sphere of opportunity if you want it. What it means? There's two aspects to it. The first one is something, if you want to remember this in the future, is called PDF. You know what a PDF is From Acrobat. My PDF is called Personal Driving Forces. Right, it relates to your purpose, your motivation, your passion, so you should describe in detail the roles you have in your life and what motivates you to do those roles well.

Gary Pageau: 11:02

Right.

Gary C. Laney: 11:02

The secondary part gets into my book. This super leader thing which is competency Leaders never can accelerate, can never become a leader the true potential of what they are as a leader unless they aggregate competencies in many areas. Well, let's say I'm the CEO of a company and I may or may not have done many of the roles that I'm managing.

Gary C. Laney: 11:31

So maybe I've got videographers over here for things we do in marketing. I've got accounting. I may not have ever been an accountant, but I need to know enough about it so I can relate to them, look at the numbers and say, okay, I think we're on track. You can't do that. People are going to say leaders are dumb, they don't know what we do, they don't get involved with us, they don't have no idea.

Gary C. Laney: 11:49

The last one is called strategic influence. That just means we're going from a leader with these competencies to say, okay, I'm at the point where I can really give back, I'm at the point where I can become a center of influence and help and impact a lot of people. So it's really a circular effect. We start off with that kind of mindset I want to help people. At the end, when you've made it, you've arrived, you go back to doing the same thing. So that's book one.

Gary Pageau: 12:17

So one of the things I want to touch on was something you talked about when you talked about relationships, and I want to jump to the stuff you were just talking about now. But kind of I want to go back a little bit you talked about when you are working with somebody or you come across someone. There's almost a feeling that you know how do you avoid, like I said, transactional partnerships, right, like if you don't do something with me, I'll do something for you, or vice versa, because that seems to me like that's almost counter to what you're saying, but it is sort of where a lot of people are these days with you know, I'll do this for you if you will do x for me, and I'm not sure that goes to the values of what you're talking about when I talked about this company that I I co-founded called trustegrity yeah we were not a referral group?

Gary C. Laney: 12:59

we weren't. You know, there's great referral groups out there, BNI you know, other ones and their sole purpose is to get together.

Gary C. Laney: 13:07

It's transactional. I'm going to give you referrals, you're going to give me referrals and it's a good business. It's good for people starting a business. The next level doesn't say that. They say let's develop a relationship of trust and we will help each other in whatever matters. Right, referrals might be part of it, but maybe me introducing to someone, maybe providing a resource for you, maybe me being supportive of you, maybe me extending you. So I mean all those things get strategic. Transactional is not what I teach, right?

Gary Pageau: 13:38

But it seems to me like that's where people are these days, is what. I'm saying it is yeah, so there's definitely a need for what it is you're saying, because I think it is actually from a long-term business perspective, it's more valuable to do the kind of thing you're talking about.

Gary C. Laney: 13:52

So transactional's got its place. It's just like social media definitely has a place, but it's not about relationships and it's not long-term so let's talk a little bit, then, about the new book.

Gary Pageau: 14:04

This isn't just stuff that you came up with out of your head. You actually went out and talked to a bunch of leaders on this. Can you talk a little bit about that process?

Gary C. Laney: 14:30

Yeah, so Become a Super Leader is from my fifth sphere of influence in my first book, which talks about identifying and leveraging your competitive competencies, your assets, which can become one of them, can become a superpower. So think about that in terms of in the future. If somebody asks me what do you want people to remember about you when it's all over? Okay, and maybe even more so, what should and will become your legacy when you're gone? Will people remember you? If they do, what did you leave behind? So that's what that book's all about. How do you develop a competent leadership platform where you add value wherever you go? Can't do that without competencies. I mean, I need competencies from from starting with integrity, uh, to the ability to understand people, to include people, to become, uh, emotionally intelligent. I mean, there's still. There's a gazillion competencies you could acquire.

Gary Pageau: 15:29

You need to focus on just 13 now I was gonna say you needed it because you talk a little bit about, you know about all these companies, but really what are the? And again, I, I encourage people to check out the book so they can actually, you know, review these things. So, but you can go through a few of those that are maybe the top line things, because you know, and again, this is not one of those things where you just plow through a checklist and you know, huzzah, you're a super leader, because that's not how this works okay, well, no, let me.

Gary C. Laney: 16:00

So. First of all, I have some uh, this is a ship's will, because I like nautical things yeah and it has 12 uh categories or competencies and the middle it's the middle.

Gary C. Laney: 16:13

It's where your super competency exists, your main competency, your super power, if you will. So you mentioned the survey. I did a survey for my first book with hundreds of leaders in the US and came up with the top 10 list. The second book. I wanted to share the system I've been teaching for 35 years, which requires 13 competencies. The survey was done globally, over a thousand leaders. We came up with 50 competencies. We could have had more and I narrowed it to 40 because I don't want you to have to be required to use my competencies that I think I should be working on.

Gary C. Laney: 16:52

You should have your own list and you don't have to use any of it. But the idea is, you should create a list of 13. Guess why we have 13? I have no idea how many weeks are there in a year? 52. How many times is 13 going to 52? You're making me do math. Thinking would that be four-ish Four, exactly four. Thank you, good job.

Gary Pageau: 17:17

So this didn't-. Math is not one of my competencies. I'm just going to you right there, okay.

Gary C. Laney: 17:23

Well, math was a good subject for me, but anyway. So I learned about the system when I was in my 20s, 21, 22 years old, about Benjamin Franklin, one of my heroes. I've been studying for many, many decades, and when he was only 20 years old in 1726, he was born in 1706. In 1726, when he was just starting his career as a publisher writer, which became very successful, he decided that he wanted to figure out a way to improve himself as a person. So he called them virtues. I call them competencies Minds for business and leadership. His was for himself, and some of them actually cross over. Somebody asked me the other day well, can't some of these competencies also be virtues? I said, well, yeah, integrity and humility those things are. They can kind of cross over because the same thing that Benjamin Franklin had, benjamin Franklin created a masterful genius program that's perpetual. And I've been using the same system, but in a practical business manner.

Gary C. Laney: 18:23

You start with 13 competencies. You focus the entire week on competency one. If it's Benjamin Franklin, it was virtue one. Then the next week, after you've made a little assessment and said, okay, I have a lot to work on this competency, but here's my notes, my goals for the next time I do this. The next week is competency two. Okay, and that competency I'm going to focus on it. It's my mindset. I do lots of things during the week, but my mindset for that week is that second competency.

Gary C. Laney: 18:52

So you know, here's a few of the ones that are included that were from the top 13 ranked from all the people I surveyed over the world. Sure, integrity was number one. A leader must have integrity. That was number one ranked in competency. Number two is emotional intelligence.

Gary C. Laney: 19:08

Number three is humble confidence, and people say well, how do you get confidence when you're humble? How do you be humble when you're confident? I mean, it seems like they're opposites, but it's really true. A leader that doesn't pay attention to other people, that thinks he or she can do it all and they can't, and is not humble enough to be able to admit that, but still has the gusto and the ability to drive and provide confidence, is what we're looking for. That's what that means. So I could go through these, but each week you're going through one, your mindset is on that particular competency, and then, when you finish 13 of them that's one cycle out of four for the year. It never stops, though. Then you go right into week 14 with the first competency and you do it and you get to the end of the year.

Gary C. Laney: 20:00

You do an assessment and you use the feedback that you came up with at the end of every those weeks to improve on those. I'm here to tell you that Benjamin Franklin not even he wasn't perfect and he said every year or two I would swap out one or two of them because I wanted to, because I felt like I kind of gained proficiency in one. I need to bring in these others that I really have a problem with he. He had a lot of personal behavioral issues we all, as do we. He drank too much, he talked too much. He loved women too much. Too many things in his life he wanted to have a better control and be have a good reputation about, and so at the end of his life he this guy lived to be 84 years old, gary.

Gary C. Laney: 20:38

Yeah, at 84 in 1790, when most people were dying at 39 in the 1700s.

Gary Pageau: 20:45

Yeah.

Gary C. Laney: 20:46

The guy had become very proficient in a lot of these, but at the end people asked him did you achieve your perfectness, did you perfect all these? And guess what do you think? He said Well, of course not. Well, I think people expected him to say yeah, but he said no. He said but I'm a much better and happier man because I tried to do it Right. That's the whole point.

Gary Pageau: 21:08

I mean it's sort of the old continuous improvement idea, right Almost to the standpoint of you know, are you ever going to actually get the thing perfect? Probably not, whatever the process is. But it's more important to do the incremental improvements as you go.

Gary C. Laney: 21:21

You know. The problem, though, is that most people start the year. If you want to equate to it, if you don't have a system like this and it's not about business you have resolutions every year, right, and the resolutions for most people don't make it even to the sixth month and majority, and there's a very few percent that actually make it even to the sixth month and the majority, and there's a very few percent that actually make it through the whole year. So imagine doing this for a whole year and then continuing it for the rest of your life for 64 years, like he did. The kind of things you could do, the kind of person you could become. It's kind of cool, so that's what the book's about.

Gary C. Laney: 21:52

Then there is this one thing in the middle that says, okay, I've got this will, and there's 12 things around it, but you said there were 13. I said, yeah, the 13th is in the middle, it's the one you focus on. It's where you have the most proficiency and natural, probably ability to develop. I mean, tiger Woods would have put golf in the middle, because he was a prodigy. Most of us are not prodigies, though, so you have to work at it over a lifetime.

Gary Pageau: 22:19

Sure. Well, and here's the question, though, is how do you assess yourself honestly to figure out what that is? Because I think that's one of the challenges people have, especially in business, right, where are they determining what that wheel, what that hub is right, really, what they're best at, and how can they develop that?

Gary C. Laney: 22:43

Well, so I, first of all. I teach in the book to be very hard on yourself. Right, there's only five levels. So if you want to become a master, we're trying to master. Mastery means you're one of the best in the world at it, okay. So you don't jump there in a year, you don't jump there in two years. It's probably going to take you decades to get to the point where you can say I mastered this, right? Okay, even people who are prodigies have to work still really hard. They just do it faster, right? You know, tiger Woods didn't become who he was in one year. It took him, you know, a career it's like it's about accountability though.

Gary C. Laney: 23:16

So, what you do, you have five levels after. If you're starting at one with something and you want to get to five, I'd say after one year you might be to two. If you got to two and you doubled your proficiency, that's amazing. But I think the best thing to do is actually go up other people and have an accountability partner, right? So I teach accountability in my first book. So, uh, you can ask other people to give you a fair assessment, you can do your own assessment and you can divide and conquer, you know, together.

Gary Pageau: 23:43

Yeah, actually you mentioned Covey earlier and I think I went through the four roles of leadership program and that actually does that, where it actually asks the people your peers, the people who are above you and people below you to actually rate you, and that's kind of an eye-opening experience.

Gary C. Laney: 24:00

It is because they, you know, if you think they don't like you, they're going to rate you poorly because they don't like you. That's a risk, but you know, I think it's still good.

Gary C. Laney: 24:09

And I think there's nothing wrong with going to people you trust. I'm going to go to people I trust and say be hard on me, but give me a break a little bit because I'm working hard at this, you know. So don't pass me until you think I'm past. But I think you go to people that you trust. They trust you, they can be honest with you.

Gary Pageau: 24:26

So then, once you figure that out, right, your core offering, I guess, if that, if you consider your personal process right or a product, if you will. So then, when you were coming across the, the research for this book, did you discover anything super new from, or cause? It sounds to me like it was more of a extension of your first book, right? It's sort of a the step beyond what you did in the first book, the research. Then you take the sphere to a new level. Was there something new when you did this additional global research that you that you discovered that wasn't there before.

Gary C. Laney: 25:03

Well, yeah, so I mean, the first one was a chapter. It wasn't a deep dive. This is a deep dive.

Erin Manning: 25:08

Yeah.

Gary C. Laney: 25:09

And I also provide a system a daily, weekly system that allows you to be able to get on track and stay on track. It also after you go through the and I didn't just give you a glorified glossary- Right, yeah.

Gary C. Laney: 25:21

Competencies, which I could have done. I glossary competencies, which I could have done. I could have just put a little definition. No, we delved into this. I have a team that helped me find stories and things that I either knew or we discovered. That helps you understand what the competencies really are. In fact, I challenge people don't just look at the list and pick 13. Spend weeks at this before you ever start this whole process. And look at the terms research the competencies. Find the ones that you really need to be working on. Don't work on ones that are easy, that you already have a bunch of proficiency at. Work on the ones that you need that are good for your career, good for your industry, good for your relationships.

Gary C. Laney: 25:58

So the deep dive first of all goes into a program to explain what it's all about in the first part of the book. Part two is the description of all the competencies and where they came from, what they mean why, they're in certain what I call anchors. So you notice I had people I interviewed for book one and two. Book two, I interviewed four people people nando cesaro, president of ups us. David melzer, ceo of, former ceo of lee steinberg sports agency that used to control all the great quarterbacks when he was a ceo and it became the movie, the reflection of the movie jerry mcguire.

Gary C. Laney: 26:38

so that's where that movie came from. Two great women, uh, jody richards, who's the CEO of Process Technology Anytime you see manufacturing with chips, semiconductors, her company's involved. And then Cindy Bigelow, who was a classmate of mine at Northwestern, who's the CEO of Bigelow Tea, where they own 26% of the tea market in the US. These chapters are complemented by these parts, these anchors. An anchor is 10 different competencies in each of the anchors. First anchor is character. When you think of the best leaders you know, do they have good character?

Gary C. Laney: 27:13

Anchor two is mindset Do you think it requires a very focused mindset that survival mindset I talked about earlier to become a good leader. Anchor three is about learning and innovation. Do you think leaders need to be innovative and they need to keep learning? Does their company need to do that to be competitive? And fourth is about influential relationships. So the best leaders I know are great at developing partnerships and connecting with the right kind of people in their industry or out of the industry that can help them fill the gaps of what they don't have in their company and their leadership. So that's kind of how that all works. And then the last part of the book there's three parts is about how you really accelerate to become the leader you want to become. There's 10 aspects to that, and the last one is what you can do just by yourself to influence, impact the world.

Gary Pageau: 28:09

So that's in a nutshell, that's kind of what it's about. So I have a question, because certainly we're. You know, when you talk about Benjamin Franklin you're talking about, you know, classic values, classic kind of thing, and then modernizing them and bringing them into the 21st century. But you know, certainly in today's workplace leadership styles and leadership approaches are far different than they used to be from, say, even 10, 15 years ago. Right, the expectations of you know, the emotional intelligence of a leader, what they have to be, and all of that's kind of changed. So can you talk a little bit about, like the challenges people have today, managing, you know, the millennials and the Gen Z people who, managing you know the millennials and the Gen Z people who you know maybe have far different expectations than people of you know Gen X or boomer or whatever?

Gary C. Laney: 28:52

So I give a keynote where I talk about traditional classic values that leaders used to worry about for a hundred years. And then, all of a sudden, covid happened and enter millennials, enter Gen Z, enter work at home, enter all these things that we could mandate they couldn't do, but now they mandate, they want them. If you don't do, you don't get to hire anybody.

Gary Pageau: 29:15

Right, exactly.

Gary C. Laney: 29:16

So it is a different world, and Gallup does polls all over the place, and one of the polls they did was to say what do people really think of leaders today? I believe it's 82% or 84% of them said that they don't feel their managers or their leaders actually manage. They don't influence them, they are not motivated by them, and so that means only 18% do, and so that's a big problem we have today.

Gary Pageau: 29:45

That is a big problem.

Gary C. Laney: 29:46

That's the reason. Great resignation happened, people leaving left and right, and Gallup had the last poll. I want to just share it quickly. There's lots of them, but they said by 2030, 50%. Think about this. 50% of the workforce could be independent. Right, that's a problem, because I think innovation would be hurt by that, because there's no collaboration like we have today. Historically, collaboration has been a huge element of our success. I've worked remotely a lot, but I still have to get in front of a person. I want to have a partnership. I want to have a good relationship and strategic.

Gary C. Laney: 30:22

We can do a lot of it. I think it's a valuable aspect, this remote stuff, because I do it where we're doing it right now. But if you and I were going to go to the next step, I guarantee we'd have to meet, we'd have to have experiences together and we'd have to get to that point so that these building blocks towards trust actually happen. Otherwise, I think it doesn't happen.

Gary Pageau: 30:41

That's interesting, because I think there is sort of this idea that you know you can do so much remotely now and outsourcing or whatever, but I do think that does lead to fragmentation of maybe a corporate mission or, you know, product delivery or service support or all those areas I think are inhibited by that sort of belief.

Gary C. Laney: 31:06

Yeah, it's really true. I mean, listen, you mentioned styles, that they're changing, but the things that don't change are these competencies. Integrity is integrity. You know you can't be dishonest and deceptive and still stand on the podium and say I'm your leader, follow me.

Gary C. Laney: 31:23

People won't follow people that are dishonest for the most part, Even if there's money involved, even if you're going to promise me lots of money, in the end I might be worried I'm going to get caught or I just don't want that on my resume. So I think that they're timeless. The things that were given from leaders so you want to know this is up to date.

Gary C. Laney: 31:41

These were given in the last two years, three years, from people around the world who said, this is what a good leader, and those leaders that I interviewed started in their 20s and went up to their 70s. So in Spanish, it's a good mezcla. It's a good mixture of something that you have to have to know that you're current, but then the style comes to you figuring out what's good for you, what a leader can do what's your best version of yourself could actually do.

Gary Pageau: 32:14

Well, this sounds like a great book. I've been through it, so it is. I can recommend it. Where can people go for more information on the book and your consulting business?

Gary C. Laney: 32:25

Well, so thank you, gary. So this book, easy to find. It's on Amazon. You can go to other stores that will order it for you, but Amazon's the best. You can get free shipping if you have Prime, whatever.

Gary C. Laney: 32:36

I'm only selling the book right now for $20, $19.99, and the e-book I'm selling for $2.99. So that won't be there forever. My other book sells for $2.99. So that won't be there forever. My other book sells for $25. So I think it's in that range.

Gary C. Laney: 32:48

But the book listen, if you get one tip, one benefit out of this book, one, it's worth $20. It's worth a lot more than that. One of the policies that inspires you to go out and build a legacy will not only impact you but thousands of other people. So it's worth it. You can also go to my website, garyclaneycom or GaryLaneycom. You can also, if you're on LinkedIn and if you are, please request to connect with me. I'm happy to do that Go to my leadership books.

Gary C. Laney: 33:22

Just look up influential leadership books and you'll find my page. You can also go to my newsletter called Influential Leadership. There's lots of ways to find me. Just Google me. There's not too many Gary Laneys in the world. Gary Laneys, I've got websites, but hey, I consult, I speak, I advise small companies all the time. I've been involved in 20 businesses, I know a lot about business and I've got a three major MBA from Northwestern Kellogg policy, finance and marketing. I have two marketing degrees. So if you're interested and you need help with your company, you need hand-holding a little bit to get into this program so you can become the leader you want to become. Just just reach out to me. I'm at info at successmasterscom.

Gary Pageau: 34:11

Awesome. Well, thank you, Gary. It's been great to talk to you and definitely recommend people check it out. I will have links to all those places in the description and all that, so look looking forward to hearing more in the future.

Gary C. Laney: 34:23

Gary, it's been an honor, Thank you.

Erin Manning: 34:29

I really appreciate it. Thank you, nice to get to know you. Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixel Society podcast. Read more great stories and sign up for the newsletter at wwwthedeadpixelssocietycom.