Banjo, Boardrooms, And Beating Blockbuster With Better Basics w/ Jim Bramlett

What if the difference between treading water and compounding growth is four simple buyer truths and a leader who knows how to coach? We sit down with founder and leadership coach Jim Bramlett to unpack how real leaders are made, why culture is a set of behaviors not slogans, and how slow, intentional growth beats shortcuts every time.

Jim takes us inside his seven‑startup journey—the early failures, the board pressures, and the costly mistake of hiring friends—then shows how he rebuilt his approach around coaching. We break down a practical cadence of one‑on‑ones that replaces awkward annual reviews with real momentum, and we explore how clear behavioral guardrails make tough conversations predictable instead of painful. Jim’s take on delegation and imposter syndrome flips the script: the job isn’t to play the tuba faster, it’s to conduct the orchestra—strategy, culture, people, partnerships, and the next horizon.

Then we go deep on organic growth. Jim’s framework explains why Amazon, Uber, and Netflix outran incumbents by eliminating excuses across four buyer drivers: convenience, price with transparency, user experience, and trust. You’ll hear concrete examples—one‑click checkout, visible fares, clean and well‑lit spaces, fast human support, warranties and social proof—and how to audit your top competitors on each dimension. If you can’t win on price, you overdeliver on access, experience, and proof. If you’re attracting copycats, you’re leaving a gap in what buyers value.

Surprisingly, the banjo ties it all together. Jim shares how returning to the instrument gave him focus and recovery, a reminder that leadership is a craft with no finish line. Practice, patience, and play aren’t luxuries; they’re the fuel for clear judgment and steady teams.

Subscribe for more conversations that blend real‑world tactics with human stories. If this sparked a thought or a smile, share it with a friend and leave a review—what’s one buyer driver your team will improve this week?

Chapters

• 0:00 Purpose, Vibes, And Today’s Focus
• 2:07 Jim’s Path From Startups To Coaching
• 4:56 Coaching Over Command: Inspiring People
• 9:32 Balancing Care And Hard Decisions
• 12:25 Listening As A Superpower
• 16:16 Humbling Early Lessons And Missteps
• 20:02 Making Tough Talks Easier With Culture
• 22:45 One‑On‑Ones That Actually Work
• 25:32 From Doer To Orchestrator
• 27:31 Delegation And Trust Problems
• 29:03 Why Organic Growth Wins Long Term
• 31:39 The Four Drivers: Convenience To Trust
• 36:29 Amazon, Uber, Netflix Case Studies
• 41:30 Competing Without Losing Your Values
• 44:39 Banjo, Flow, And Sustainable Pace

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:57

Hi, friends, welcome back to Mind Force, the show where we talk about showing up fully in life, work, and leadership. I'm your host, Nate Scheer, and today's episode is a blend of serious growth and seriously good vibes. We're talking about how leaders are developed, not born, about building a business the slow, steady, and very intentional way, without all the shortcuts. And yep, we're also going to be talking about playing the banjo and what that teaches you about patience, flow, and staying connected to joy while leading others. If you ever wrestled with building something real, whether it's a team, a business, or a life that feels meaningful, this is the one for you. So guest introduction. Jim, tell us a little bit about yourself. What's been uh lighting you up lately?

SPEAKER_01: 1:46

No, um right, trying to trying to help leaders succeed. That's my passion right now. I'm uh I'm uh been in business. I'm uh probably a serial entrepreneur. I've started seven companies over my career. I've spent most of my career in transportation and logistics. That's that always kind of tripped my trigger. I'm known for starting companies, new services, new divisions of companies. Four of those companies I started on for myself, three for other organizations I worked for. So I really I love that excitement of the startup and um you know being able to twist the dial, punch the buttons, and see very quickly, you know, results, be it good, be it bad, and learned a lot of lessons over that time frame, which then led me to writing a couple of books and probably my passion for helping leaders, because I I didn't get a lot of help as a leader, but I didn't seek it, you know, shame on me. I didn't get a lot, and I therefore I made a lot of mistakes, and therefore I really like helping uh entrepreneurs, want to be entrepreneurs. And if I can impart any wisdom on them to help them along this journey, because it's a tough journey. It's a it's a tough road to hope, uh, I I get real pleasure out of that.

SPEAKER_00: 3:04

That's awesome. I feel like one of the biggest things people need in this world is is purpose. And it sounds like you know, you kind of found that. But how? How did you stumble across that you love taking care of and building up people?

SPEAKER_01: 3:18

Just because I think I failed. And it and it's you know, when you put so much into something and it doesn't work out the way you envision, and it kind of busts your dream, it's it's crushing. And therefore, as I got older, I actually I actually tried retirement several years back, lasted about three months. And you you mentioned the word purpose. I found there's no purpose in golf, pickleball, and tennis. That's sports I like to play. There's no purpose there, and I've got to have purpose. And I found, man, if I can help any leader avoid some of the pitfalls and mistakes I made, that gives me purpose. And so that's that's why I I really am doing now what I'm doing. It's kind of my second career in helping leaders, and and I love it. I absolutely love it.

SPEAKER_00: 4:06

That's awesome. Okay. So, out of curiosity, Jim, where are you calling from?

SPEAKER_01: 4:12

I am calling from a suburb of Kansas City. Nice. Yeah, I had to be in the middle of the country.

SPEAKER_00: 4:19

See where everyone was calling from because I had Australia and Africa and lots of fun stuff. So I was like, maybe I should start keeping track of where everybody's from. First uh warm-up question for you, Jim. What's one leadership skill you definitely didn't have when you started, but you couldn't live without now?

SPEAKER_01: 4:36

Being a a learning how to be a coach, and I emphasize this to my leaders, you're you're going to be able to go a lot farther if you learn how to inspire people. And that's what coaches really do. Because you can't force them to improve, you can't force them to do their best, you can't force anybody to be motivated, you got to inspire them. And and I've learned that that's a skill set. And and learning that skill set, boy, I wish I would have known that a long time ago because you know, I think pretty much any business you're involved in, it's a people business, whether it be your employees, your customers, vendors, you you gotta really understand and know how to deal with people and being a coach and asking open-ended questions, being, you know, very into their background, what their dreams are, all of those things, making them a human and not just somebody who punches the clock. I wish I wish I would have learned that a long time ago.

SPEAKER_00: 5:37

So what do you think the key to inspiration is then?

SPEAKER_01: 5:41

I think uh start start with the company purpose, but then translate that into the individual's purpose. And I even I even joke, I said, I tell some of my leaders, I wouldn't call it a job description, I'd call it a purpose description. What is their purpose? How does that fit into the bigger purpose? And and with that, that gives them inspiration. If they can connect those two, make it make it inspirational for them so that they're achieving their purpose and the company's achieving their purpose.

SPEAKER_00: 6:15

So you'd mentioned taking care of people. I'm curious like what your thoughts are on balance, because I had a guest that said you should never say like we're all family because there's going to be cuts, there's gonna be things that happen. So how do you balance taking care of people? But then at some point you have to take care of the business aspect. So one kind of feels soft and you know, fuzzy and fun, and then the other one's kind of difficult. How do you balance those two things?

SPEAKER_01: 6:40

Yeah, it's that's a very difficult thing to do. But I was taught several years ago when I was learning to be a coach, a wise person told me, listen, in today's environment, it's very rare that you're gonna get an employee show up and they want to spend 40 years with you. It it yeah, maybe I'm a boomer, maybe back in that day. But in today's world, you know, it's just done very uncommon for that to happen. So one of the things you should do as a leader is is sit down in a one-to-one with them and and ask them this question what is your dream? And if they're if they're being honest with you, they're they're gonna tell you what your dream and from there you should be able to do. So how long do you think they're going to be here? What's their path? Do they have a a plan? Uh and and is there a way that you can help them uh achieve that plan? And so I think I think that's probably but it's you know you gotta be realistic. The this world changes, you run into pandemics, you run into tariffs, and businesses fluctuate, and and therefore you have to sometimes make those hard decisions as a leader that you've you've got to reduce. And so I agree it's not a family, but it's gotta be a cohesive team. And when those tough times come, you're gonna you're gonna keep your A and A plus players. And hopefully, as a coach, you've inspired them, they've taken that inspiration, they've applied it, and they they've distinguished themselves from the others so that the decision isn't maybe necessarily all that hard. I'm gonna keep my A and A plus players, my B and C players. We'll see where that falls.

SPEAKER_00: 8:29

Yeah, it makes sense. You got to figure out what motivates people, get behind that. Before we go any deeper, Jim, I'm flipping the mic. What's one question you'd love to ask me?

SPEAKER_01: 8:39

Nate, you talk to a lot of leaders, and I always get this question. You know, I get this question well, what's the number one piece of advice you would give to any other leader? So, given all of the interviews you've done, what what piece of advice has has resonated and stuck with you for a leader?

SPEAKER_00: 8:58

Oh, geez. Uh, that's tough. I think I'm on episode 65 or something. Um, but I think it'd probably have to go with uh General Retired Dragon or John Tikert. He was my uh commander out at Edwards Air Force Base. Uh amazing human. Uh, hopefully he'll listen to this episode because I think he's amazing and he's got lots of good advice. But one of his core things, I think that's super important, is they asked him when he went to leave from his position there, they said, What was the best decision you made? And he, without a skipping a beat or anything, he said, listening to all of you. I'm not the smartest person in the room. I collect all the information, I make the best decision based on what comes in and through me. And so I think that's probably the biggest thing. Either that or like self-reflection, but I think if I had to narrow it down to one, it's just gathering all the information and getting information from the person that does it. Because I think a lot of times as leaders, especially higher leaders, it feels like we think we know what's going on, we're gonna do it, and we're getting all the information and missing out on the person that's on the front line that does the thing. That is just a huge uh injustice. And so I think that would be the biggest thing and collecting it from all sorts of different things. Like one of my favorite things he did was we have a system to submit up what's called a waiver, which is where you don't want to do a certain thing so it can be waived for whatever reason, you know, in the military. A lot of times they try to make their way up, and there's a lot of red tape, and it goes through all these different people, and they don't make it to him. And so he had this thing called the winter of waivers. It started as something else, but he said, I will look at all of them. No one will stop them. I will look at them and tell them if they're bad or good. And that was one thing that was really amazing. He spent the extra time, blocked in the calendar, and looked at all these things, and some of them probably weren't good, maybe, but at least he was able to see him because I think a lot of good ideas get stuck along the way. It's someone along the way, that's not good. We're not gonna show him, let's not bother, it's too much. And he found a lot of ways to get a lot of those things accomplished by delegating the task down to him from a higher level, just him at his authority level could just say, We're not gonna do it. And so he did some amazing things there. But uh just taking that the information from your people. Is that that makes sense?

SPEAKER_01: 11:01

Well my yeah, uh absolutely I have a a leader, I coach, and uh the the company had been in business for six years, never turned a dime. They were owned by private equity. He was asked to come in and lead the company. It was a machine shop. He'd never stepped foot in a machine shop before. So what'd he do? He went in and did a one-on-one with every machinist, every employee, say, hey, you've been here 20 to 30 years. You know this organization. What should we do? And he listened. And he turned it around. He absolutely turned it around. So I buy in 100% to what you're saying.

SPEAKER_00: 11:43

Yeah, you gotta listen. Well, Jim, we'll move into your first pillar, which is leadership development. What's one early leadership lesson that totally humbled you, but shaped how you lead today? Hopefully a cool story.

SPEAKER_01: 11:58

Yeah, it's a it's a it's a sad story, but I I started seven companies. Uh, the first two were total failures. The third I started in the dot-com uh hysteric era, era, and uh I I thought it'd be easy to raise funds. Number one, it wasn't, but I I was successful and and I became the CEO, but I had two co-founders, and the co-founders were former colleagues of the company I was I left to start this this company. Number one, uh I really didn't have much leadership experience, but now over time, I've got 35, 40 people and families that I had this response. And now I have a board of directors. My board of directors were investors. The first mistake I made was having these co-founders who were colleagues and friends. You don't hire friends. And that was the first, and I had to let them go because they weren't qualified for doing what needed to be done. The second lesson I learned was as the CEO, you don't take all your issues toward the board of directors because they're just gonna say, I don't know if we have the right person in the chair. And so, well, gosh, you know, my wife doesn't want to hear about it. How do you how do you deal with all these issues and when you don't have the leadership experience that you you need? And I really struggled with that. And so that's another thing that drove me to working with the leaders I do today, because we act as a peer group, and each other's helping each other based on their perspectives, experience, and knowledge. And I go, boy, I wish I would have been smart enough back then to say I need to align myself with a mentor, a coach, peers, somebody to just clear away the fog and and you know, help me understand what the direction and the priorities I should be addressing. So that's a whole lot, but I I learned a lot uh I learned a lot because I did the wrong things, you know, hiring friends and having a board and not really having that leadership experience and then not reaching out to somebody who could help me coach me be a real leader.

SPEAKER_00: 14:18

So I'm curious, Jim, with uh letting go of your friends and things like that. One thing that I struggle with, and I think a lot of people do, is you know, those difficult conversations. Do you have any tips on it? Sounds like you probably had quite a few. Is there a tip of like how to set the room or rehearse the night before? Or do you have any tips on those difficult conversations we need to have at work?

SPEAKER_01: 14:40

You know, I think that's a work in progress. I think any leader has to have a number of those, and and it's it doesn't come natural. But I think the best piece of advice that I've ever gotten is those difficult conversations shouldn't be so difficult if the person you're conversing with knows the the the basics and the surroundings. In other words, it shouldn't be a surprise, right? So if you've got a poor performing uh employee when you have the most difficult conversation, it should not be a surprise because you should have been coaching them. The one thing I've I've learned here in the last year is is the intentionality of culture. And culture is a set of common beliefs that translate to behaviors. And when you document those in detail, here are acceptable behaviors that we as a a team espouse, then those difficult conversations become less difficult because you're preaching those, you're coaching them on these behaviors, and then typically the difficult conversation is somebody went over the guardrails on the behaviors we accept. And so I do believe, like if you have to have a difficult conversation to let somebody go, it really shouldn't come as a surprise because you've had conversations leading up, and again, as a coach, you're not judging, you're asking them open-end question what happened here? What caused this? You know, how did that happen? Is that something you agree with? This, you know, you're getting them to talk, you're not judging, getting it out of them, and then saying, then you're explaining, well, this is contrary to our culture, our beliefs, and our behaviors that we endorse. So we've either got to clean that up or there are gonna be consequences. I in my early days I had this thought process. When there was when there was an issue, was we Nate, you and I, we have a problem. Let's talk about it, okay? When there's a second time, Nate, I I got I got a I got a problem here. I thought we discussed this and and so what what's going on? And then on the third time, Nate, you got a problem. We had the problem, I had the problem now. It's it's you. So it's kind of a three strikes. You've had these conversations, so by the time it gets to be the most serious conversation, there shouldn't be any surprise.

SPEAKER_00: 17:19

Yeah, it makes me really wonder. Uh in the military, we have a very specific feedback system, but I'm curious, you've been at multiple different companies and things like that. What have you seen to be the most successful? Is it, you know, you kind of self-evaluate and the other person does at 360? We've seen, we've seen different things. What have you seen be most successful in in feedbacks?

SPEAKER_01: 17:39

I think the most successful what I don't like are the annual performance reviews. And and that's what I lived with for too many years. Uh, what I really like are the one-on-ones. And and I believe there's a cadence there there should be the weekly one-on-one, just a check-in, 15-minute. Okay, here what do we got going on this week? Here's what's important, right? What's important for you? What can I help you with? Then monthly, you do an hour-long one-on-one. Okay, where we're raising it up from 3,000 feet to 15,000 feet, and then quarterly, it's a 90-minute one-on-one. Now we're talking 30,000 feet career, what's you know, and the more you do a one-on-one and do it well, asking again open-ended questions, getting them to talk, then then that that in my opinion is the most successful. And of course, the great leaders, the great coaches, how can I better coach you? How can I better help you? My job as a leader is to ensure I'm giving you all the resources necessary for you to succeed. And so having that kind of dialogue, I think, helps. But the performance reviews are just the annual, especially, even six months. It's like you are compelled. Well, here's the great things you did. But uh, wait a minute. I've always got to find this one negative, no matter what. And I just think it's it's they're not real, they're not genuine, and I I don't encourage those.

SPEAKER_00: 19:13

Yeah. We do uh initial, midterm, and closeout. So we only meet, unfortunately, three times a year. I try to do it quite a bit more, um, but I work in a smaller section now. But three times a year probably is not quite enough, probably needs to be a little bit more developed. And I think back to the difficult conversations, when you're having an ongoing conversation, I feel like it's so much easier to just say, hey, could you work on this or do that? If you're only seeing them every couple months and it's like, oh, then it feels like you're really, you know, stabbing them. But if you kind of have that ongoing conversation, it's easier to and I think the rapport comes along with it too. If you're meeting enough, you know, there's a little bit of rapport. If you're meeting three times a year, I don't know if there's really much rapport unless you're finding other ways or other times to meet, but it's pretty, pretty difficult. To close out this leadership development, Jim, what do you think about growing leaders, not just managing people? What's the secret sauce?

SPEAKER_01: 20:07

I think the sacred sauce is a great question because I I work on that a lot. I work with CEOs who have a somewhat of an identity crisis. They they can't believe they're the CEO. They don't, you know, they imposter, maybe call it imposter syndrome. They don't know what the job really entails. And I constantly have to tell a few of My members in my one-to-one coaching, I don't need you to be the tuba or the violin player. I need you leading the orchestra. And don't be tempted into leaning in over here because that's where your expertise is. Like I've got a CEO who used to be a CFO. Well, he leans into being, well, I can just do that faster and better. And no, I need you in charge of strategy. I need you in charge of culture. I need you to be the head coach. Do you have the right people in the right seats? Are you are you developing your team so that you have a succession plan? You're the ambassador for the company. You're the what I call the tip of the spear. And you're out investigating AI. You're out looking at strategic partnerships. You may be looking out at acquisition. And you've got to have the right team under you where they're doing what they're supposed to be doing so that you're freed up to work on culture, strategy, being a coach, ambassador, uh, and tip of the spear. So I talk a lot about that to my members because they can they they can stray off into taking on a role that they really should have somebody else doing.

SPEAKER_00: 21:38

I think that's one thing that's super difficult. Uh it's come up in multiple different things, but delegation, I think, is really difficult. You came up through and you've done the thing, and like you said, I could do it better and faster, and I could do it myself. Um, and I think feel like there's almost like a dirty kind of feeling where, oh, I'm just delegating, I just give everything away. Do you have advice that you give two people to kind of combat maybe the imposter syndrome, which is another common thing, and then also that delegating, I just give away all my work.

SPEAKER_01: 22:06

Yeah, I agree with you. There are leaders who have delegation issues, and it means some it typically means one of two things to me. A, you don't trust you have the right person in that role. So you're, you know, you're you're taking it on, or you again, you don't trust that the job is gonna get done the way you want it done. So it's a trust, it really becomes, in my mind, a trust issue. And I, you know, I really encourage, and it's a work, you gotta trust, you gotta work on trust. They got to trust you as the leader, and you got to trust them, but you're a team. Again, you're the orchestra, you're the orchestra leader. But I agree, delegation can be a real challenge for some leaders.

SPEAKER_00: 22:51

It's a tough one. Well, your next pillar is organic business growth. You've built something without chasing gimmicks. What's the heart behind growing your business organically?

SPEAKER_01: 23:03

Yeah, I I've written two books on the topic. I got infatuated with Amazon, Uber, and Netflix. And I go, how come, how come they surpassed their competitors like they were standing still? You know, Amazon just blew past Walmart. We all know Netflix put Blockbuster out of business, but then they had what I call Netflix 2.0 and kept Amazon at bay, and then Uber destroyed Uber and and Lyft destroyed the cab business. So what why was that? What happened? And so I just did a lot of study, reading, and just thinking about it. And I and I came up with a formula that I think those Kita companies adhere to. They dominate in their space. And it it boils down to I think they understand buyer psychology more than anybody else. And I explain it this way you know, Nate, you and I are buyers. We buy things every day. We're all buyers, maybe not professional buyers, but we buy things. So what triggers us to buy what we're buying and from whom we buy that? And I believe it can be broken down into four categories. Number one is convenience. If all things were equal, where, for example, I use this example. If you're driving down the interstate and you need gas, you pull off. Well, guess what? The gas is gonna be the same price at the station on your right side that you just pulled off on, or you can go across the overpass and go to the other one, same price. You're gonna opt to stay on the right side because it's gonna save you time, it's gonna save you effort. Part of convenience is simple and easy. We're not looking for anything to make our lives more complicated. We want it simpler and easier. So convenience is number one. Number two, what we buyers like is a competitive price. We don't necessarily have to have the lowest price, but we want competitive price. But I think more importantly, under the price category is transparency. We want to know what we're spending before we make the purchase. We hate fine print. This is why we dislike dealing with airlines to mean. Oh, you don't know about that$200 fee. We don't like dealing with attorneys. We know it's$400 an hour, we just don't know how many hours. You go into a doctor's office or a hospital, you have no idea what you're spending. We don't like that. Somebody's not gonna come and say, Well, Nate, tell you what, I'm gonna paint your house for$100 an hour. But how many hours? I'll tell you when I'm done. No, we wouldn't buy that. So we like competitive price, we want transparency. The third is user experience. So we want to be treated like we're the only customer, even though they might have hundreds, thousands, or millions. We want answers, probably not from a bot, but from a human. And we want that commitment. If you say you're going to do something, I want you to do that, or it's a bad experience. And there are different experiences, whether you're in a retail, you know, you're in a store, an environment, or online. But if it's retail, we want well lit, clean, well staffed, well stocked. Again, pull off the interstate, there's a 20-year-old gas station with dimly lit, not clean. Then there's a brand new convenience store. Your head might go, well, I'll bet the bathroom in that new clean one's better than the 20-year-old. So that user experience is very important. And the fourth is trust. We want to, how can we trust that they're going to deliver what our perception or expectation is or what their brand promise is? Okay. So I get testimonials, references, warranties, guarantees, number of years in business, all of that adds up to I can trust they're going to deliver what I expect when I buy. Now, when you do all four, convenience, price, user experience, and trust. I don't have an excuse not to buy from you. All our excuses are around those four items, but unfortunately, most companies have a conscious trade-off. And I use this example, even though they're an awesome company, Walmart, everyday low prices, rollback America, and they're price, price, but the user experience. Hope you like checking yourself out. Not as well lit, clean sometimes as, say, a Target or another option. Jiffy Lube here, you know, you're going to get your oil change in 15 to 20 minutes. No appointment necessary, but it's going to be costly. Same thing with Nordstrom. Great merchandise, beautiful stores, personal shoppers, but price. I got an excuse, though it's cost too much. And so there are all these companies who I believe have this conscious trade-off, which now gives me an excuse. So I believe Amazon, because they're a marketplace, and the user experience is great. Pricing, very competitive, and one-click buying, very convenient. Don't have to leave your home. All of those things. That's what drove them to astronomical. I mean, you know, Uber, you get to ride in a car you're probably used to driving yourself. There's not that typically not that hard plexiglass. You're not sitting on an ironing board. You're you're probably talking to your neighbor if you want to have a discussion. But the best part is when you get you get to see when they're going to come pick you up at your location. You see exactly what it's going to cost. And then when you get there, you just walk away. In the old days, you would argue with the cab, the cabbie's wanting cash. No, I don't have cash, credit card, credit, all of that nonsense. And and then we all those of my age remember the disappointing Friday and Saturday nights when you'd walk into the Blockbuster new release aisle and it's all gone. I don't want to see Jaws again. You know, I mean, no. And so they created, well, you don't have to go to the store. We'll send it to you with one day's advanced notice on Thursday night, planned for Friday night. We have unlimited, you know, DVDs. And then when you're done, you don't have to drive back to the store. Just throw it in the mailbox in our prepaid envelope. And 2.0 is when they came up with streaming. Now you get it instantaneously, no waiting at all, unlimited. They changed the pricing plan from per movie to subscription based. And then what really set them apart from a user experience, they created their own content. Nobody can match the content they now create. And so, had they not done 2.0 in streamlining, Amazon may very well beat them, say, hey, you can now stream with us. So those are great examples of them, you know, companies who use all four convenience price, user experience, and trust to say, hey, we don't we don't like excuses. We want you to buy from us. So in my books, that's what I write. I in my first book, I just talked about those companies. In my second book, called Stop the Asshole, wanted to share more experiences so any company can use those to grow. And I preach understand your competitor. You know, in the military, you don't go into a war not understanding, you know, your enemy's strengths and your enemy's weaknesses. And you're constantly studying that. And the same thing applies in businesses. Understand your competitors. How do they stack up against you in convenience, price, user experience, and trust? And it's a constantly evolutionary thing. You have to constantly be working on making it more convenient, making a better experience. And that's why you attract competitors. If you're attracting competitors, it's because you're weak in one of those areas that we buyers like. And so constantly be working on that. Understand your competitors, beat your competitors. And then there's a cultural aspect of that. I maintain that most companies should have an RD function. You need to be researching your competitors, researching new technologies that will help what we buyers like. And have that culture that's focused on constant innovation, where you're cutting time out, you're making something simpler, you're cutting costs out that translates to price. You're able to create even a better user experience or more trust. When you're able to do that, you're going to grow organically. That's what I've I've written my two books on. I've created an audit where anybody can come in and uh evaluate themselves and their competitors and see where they need more help or where they need to tighten the ship. So that's what that's going to be.

SPEAKER_00: 31:29

Yeah, those are some pretty good examples. I do have to say I did enjoy that Friday evening, you know, strolling the aisles of uh Blockbuster. It was it was an experience. You got your game for the weekend, maybe some candy. But yeah, when all the boxes were uh empty, it was a little sad. But I do find it really interesting the human experience that you mentioned. I'm a hospital administrator by trade, and so I try to make sure the hospital is set up. And I was reading a study, you can actually get, you know, a poor diagnosis or even maybe a misdiagnosis. But if the customer service was good, the building was clean, like your overall experience was good, you're still okay with it. And so kind of shocking. Like you could get something bad, get you know, something that could change your life. And as long as like all the steps and everyone was friendly and gave you education and talked, you know, through it, and the overall patient experience was, you know, okay, like the bad news or whatever goes with it, they still rated those higher than like getting good news, or things went really well, but the patient experience wasn't very good. So patient experience or customer, I guess, uh experience is super important.

SPEAKER_01: 32:35

Well, I think it's interesting, you know, there's been this plethora of urgent care facilities pop up. Okay. Why? And I've been to them because I can't get in to see my doctor. I don't want to go to the emergency ro it's not so severe. I need to go to the emergency room. And and, you know, they're springing up all over, so they're more convenient. So it points out there's a problem somewhere else that forcing these, you know, urgent care centers to pop up everywhere.

SPEAKER_00: 33:09

That's interesting. The last question in this pillar, Jim, what advice would you give to someone who's trying to grow without losing their voice or values in the process?

SPEAKER_01: 33:19

Uh like my my advice is write down your top three competitors and then find out if you even have to buy from them, find out how how do you stack up from a convenience standpoint. How is you how are you from a price and and a transparency, user experience, etc. You know, I've been uh I grew up in uh transportation and and logistics, and there are a lot of companies out there that oh, I want you to haul something for me on from one side of town to the other, and you have to fill out this massive form. No, I'm not taking the time to do that. So if you understand what we buyers are really looking for, we want to save time, we want to save effort, we want simpler and we want easier, value it yourself, how you stack up against those three competitors. If you're at a price disadvantage, why? Now, not everybody can hit all four. For example, it's gonna be very hard for anybody to compete with Walmart on a price standpoint. All right, so when you when you have a disadvantage in one of those four, you have to overcompensate in the others. You've got to give a much better experience. You have to be much more convenient, you have to be much more trustworthy, you have to give guarantees, warranties, testimonials, all of that. You've got to make me feel like, man, when I make this purchase, yes, I'm going to uh 10%, 15% more, but look at the time I save, look at the experience. Man, they call me by my first name. They called me afterwards. Hey, how'd the purchase go for you? What else can we do? All of those things add up to where I go, man. You know what? It was worth that extra 15%. So that's that's what I believe they need to do. Really understand the competitive landscape, really understand what it is we buyers are looking for and meet those needs.

SPEAKER_00: 35:21

Yeah, knowing your audience, knowing your buyer, that makes sense. Your last pillar is the banjo and slow growth. So let's talk music, Jim. What's something that learning to play the banjo has taught you about leadership or maybe life?

SPEAKER_01: 35:36

Yeah, good great question. Let me divert and tell you uh how that came to be that I decided to play the banjo. Number one, I had a cousin who played, but he played all kinds of musical instruments. But I decided that everybody plays the guitar. I don't want to be everybody, and I love the sound. And I started that journey um 40 43 years ago, but then I had my first kid and now no time to play. So it it went in the closet for uh a long time, almost 20 years. And when I started that first real company where I raised some venture capital, and and I know this happens to almost every leader, I'm on up here, 24-7 by 365. The business is never leaving my head, constantly thinking, reviewing, what if, what can we do? What about that? What about this? I had to have a diversion. Well, my diversion at the time was my 15-year-old daughter, and she was doing sports and other things, and and that was my one diversion where I turned off the business. Well, she got she got a driver's license at 16, and then boom, she's gone. No longer my diversion. So I decided that you know what, I'm gonna take that banjo out of the closet, dust it off, I'm gonna get it restrung. And and I didn't really learn it the first time. I'm gonna learn this because I decided if you're learning something like a musical instrument, it takes your full attention, it takes discipline. And and especially the banjo. And I sat for the very first year on weekends, I would do nothing but practice my right hand technique, and I couldn't think about work. I had to think about what are these fingers doing, what order, and the timing, and then I later worked on the left hand, but it gave me an escape, which I needed from being turned on, plugged in to work all the time. And and so it's a discipline, but it's also a release. You can't, it'll ruin your life if if you as a leader are turned on 24-7, 365 by sacrificing your family time and other sacrifices, uh, it it will hurt you if you let it. And so that that's how I got to doing it. Um and and now 20 some years later, I'm I'm I'm not I'm not saying I'm good at it, but I play with a couple other people. We've formed our own little band, we have a lot of fun with it. But it's like leadership. Learning a banjo or any musical instrument is like leadership and golf. You're never gonna perfect it. You constantly have to work on it. I took lessons from uh I went to a couple camps from a a professional banjo player who still practices every day. And that there is no finish line on leadership, on golf, on playing the banjo, and so many things in life. And so I work on matter of fact, I'll be playing tonight. I've I've got some guys coming over, we're gonna practice around, play, and see what we can do with it.

SPEAKER_00: 39:06

Yeah, and I think it's important. I I read a lot of you know, self-development and leadership books and whatnot. My wife's like, oh, you really need to read fiction. And so I actually saw a study where that's really powerful, the fiction, the other part of your brain, and you know, thinking about it and creating the images in your head and you know, not thinking about work and things like that. So I think that's definitely something that's pretty important to use your whole brain. Because even for the podcast, like I was kind of nervous about writing scripts and coming up with questions and things like that. But that's actually been one of the things I find really fun at work. I'm doing spreadsheets, I'm more analytical, and then I come home and this is more creative, trying to think of fun things and you know how I splice the videos together. And that's you know, the more artistic and creative side. And I think it helps really balance it out because I was really doing a lot of analytics and things like that. So I think it's uh a good reminder uh for fun, Jim. If leadership had a soundtrack, what would it be? What song would it be?

SPEAKER_01: 40:03

My gosh, that's a great question. I haven't given that one any thought. I I I almost think it'd be like dueling banjos, where you can't do it all alone. You've got your plan, and then you're you're listening to somebody else, and then you're trying to match that and and you're collaborating back and forth. So that that's probably my answer. Dueling banjos.

SPEAKER_00: 40:22

Dang, that's a good one. Uh the devil went down to Georgia, back and forth. Um Um well, Jim, I'd like to try to bring together all these three things kind of together. What does a good leader feel like to the people around them?

SPEAKER_01: 40:37

They feel like somebody who's who's got my best interest at heart. They're inspiring me, inspiring me to bring my best, but they care about me. And I think that's what, even though the leader really absolutely cares about the enterprise, the organization, and and the success of that, but when they can translate that into say, hey, they really care about me, that inspires me, and I'm gonna do my best. That's that's a real strong part of leadership, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00: 41:12

That's a good one. And finally, what would you say to someone who's leading but quietly wondering if they're cut out for it?

SPEAKER_01: 41:23

I believe some people get cast into the to leadership roles where where they don't belong. The old adage, well, you were the very best at sales, so now we're gonna make you the sales leader. And there's you know, yeah, you gotta have a certain skill, but but the the real skill is how do you inspire, engage, and motivate people. And just because you had a certain technique at something, you're the best accountant, uh, that doesn't mean you should be in in in charge of people. And I think I see that mistake all the time. I look at people who found companies and because they've got a skill or an expertise, but now all of a sudden they've got people. They grew, they were successful in getting traction, and they got people, and and a lot of them aren't good at it. And they they they're toxic, the turnover's high, they don't give their people a path to succeed. And so if you are becoming a leader, try and get help. Work with others and and learn the key parts of being a leader and a coach.

SPEAKER_00: 42:33

Get some coaching, absolutely. Well, Jim, this has been a rich conversation. Thank you for sharing your journey, your wisdom, and the rhythm of how you lead. Before we close out, work and listeners go to connect with you or learn more about what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01: 42:46

Very active on LinkedIn, so you can connect with me there. Uh, my website is jimbramlett.com. My name is jimbramlett.com. I also have a uh a site called strategies to grow. Strategiesto grow uh dot com. So anywhere is an easy way to connect with me, and I I love connecting with uh anybody who's interested in learning more.

SPEAKER_00: 43:12

Perfect. Well, to everyone out there, thank you for joining us today. If something here made you think, smile, or breathe a little deeper, share the episode, leave a review, and keep building with heart. This is Mind Force. I love you all. See ya.