216 Joe Hart, Global President Dale Carnegie & Associates

(upbeat music) - Welcome back to this latest episode of Japan's Top, Business Interviews. I'm your host, Dr. Greg Story President, Dale Cunningh, your Tokyo training. My special guest today is my boss. Joe Hart is the president, global CEO of Dale Cunningh in Associates, the franchise or for the whole Dale Cunningh organization. Joe is an honor and a pleasure to have you with us again. - Thank you, Greg. - This will the third time in Japan. - It is. - And you've been fundamental in changing a lot of things in Dale Cunningh since you've joined as president. But let's go back a little bit and give us some of the back story on how it is that you came to become the president of this global organization, Dale Cunningh. - Yeah, it's really a pretty incredible story. It's one of those times in life where you don't see how the dots connect until you look backward. And my father growing up talked about Dale Cunningh. My mother was in 1965 Dorothy Cunningh graduate. So I grew up in a house where the Dale Cunningh name was familiar. - And Dorothy Cunningh graduate means that Dorothy Cunningh started a course for women, specifically. - That's right. - Which until that time, that didn't exist. Dale Cunningh had a course, everyone could participate. But then she thought, well, women should get something. And so that's amazing. - That's exactly right. That's right. I've actually got the picture of her. I've got her graduation pen. In fact, this is a side note. But you might be surprised to know they took minutes of the meetings. She's got all the minutes and they've created a newsletter. It was really a little community that they created in that class. - I didn't realize that. That's pretty good. - Yeah, I can actually send you copies of that. But so my ambition as a high school college person was to go to law school, become a lawyer, join a large firm, become very successful. Do that for 40 years. And I was on that track. I was a young lawyer since 1995. And I decided at that time to take a Dale Carnegie course. - Yeah, why was that? I mean, was this through your father's influence? Your mother's influence? Was it someone who spoke to you about it? Was something advertising you saw? What sparked that? - It was two things. Thank you for the question. One was, my dad always really instilled in me that life is about personal growth. You always want to continue to improve and get better. And to me, I was very much into the concept of self-development. And the second thing was the franchise under the sponsor at that time in that territory was Ralph Nichols, who is a legend. - He's a legend. - Dale Carnegie, so Nichols is a coolest. - And I'll tell you, he had radio ads all the time. Ralph Nichols Corporation, Dale Carnegie. So I remember hearing the ads and I kept thinking myself, I just had to do this. I went to my law firm and I said, she, this is a program is going to help me be a better lawyer and which you want to pay for this. And they said, you can take it, but no. So, $890, 1995, I take this course and I walk into this room and Troy Michigan in September '95. And I didn't know what to expect Greg at that time. I walk in, there's 33 people in the room. And that course just had such a profound impact on me. Just a couple of things that really were. One was, as you know, the remembering names, exercise, they went through this exercise. You can remember people's names at each other. - And remember, first and last name for all 33 people in the space of what, half an hour or something. - That's right. - They said that you're going to be able to do that. I said to myself, there's no way. I'm horrible at remembering names. I can't do that. - We all are, actually we all are. - I know. - But I have 31 of the 33 names. And it was this absolute problem. The other thing was the challenge in your vision. Where do you want to be? Who do you want to be? And over a period of time, I started to think about, do I really want to be in law for 40 years? I wasn't necessarily, I was a successful lawyer. I wasn't a happy lawyer. And I decided, ultimately, as a result of that the alchemy course. - I think that's the standard definition for lawyers. - Successful, but not happy, right? I hear that so often. Yeah, I hate this job, but I'm doing so well. I'm going to keep going with it. So you were probably fitting nicely into the spectrum of typical lawyers at that time. But how many years were you in the law as a lawyer before you took the course? - Just a couple. - I started in 1993, it's 1995. - So, okay, two years in, right? - Yeah. - And then two years after that, actually 98 is when I actually left the law. - Right. - But it was deal Carnegie that really kind of inspired me in the courage. I mean, there are many, many lawyers who I talked to at that time who are unhappy lawyers and are still unhappy lawyers. But, you know, it takes courage to leave. And I think that was also something that got from deal Carnegie. But the most important thing beyond that was just interpersonal skills. You know, six months after I took the course, I was thinking about all these deal Carnegie principles that I was not applying. So I said, you know, I just spent $890 in this program. I want to maximize this. - I get my value. - I want to get my values. So every single day I develop a calendar. And every day I started to practice deal Carnegie principles. I'd write down a principle and a quote from the book. And I reread the chapter. And I'd usually work on a principle for a week and then I go to the next principle. In over a period of time. - And there were 30 of these human relations principles and 30 stress management principles, right? So you go to cycle of 60 there if you think about it. So you can actually not being bored with it because it's always going to be fresh. - Always fresh and always hard, always challenging. I mean, you think about things that we say common knowledge, not common practice, right? It's common knowledge that we should give people appreciation but how often do we do that? And I started practicing this. So can imagine seven days in a row when I was practicing Give Honest and Sensor Appreciation, I'm going to people and I'm giving them Honest and Sensor Appreciation. In over a period of time people are saying to me, you really seem like a different person because at that, you know, prior to deal Carnegie, look, I was a little prickly, you know. Not a litigation lawyer, but I was a litigation lawyer as a matter of fact. - That's nicely litigation lawyer. It's a pretty prickly, I assume. - Yeah, it's by design and in egotistical and not particularly empathetic, you know? So my relationships started to get better and people started to notice this. But I ultimately decided to leave the practice of life, went to work for a couple of years at a, in the United States, a publicly traded real estate company. - Just before you talk about that. In terms of, okay, you have as a lawyer, you have colleagues, you work within the, usually partnerships and you have clients. So, you know, you noticed from your colleagues, you were working with, they were reflecting that something's changed with Joe. He seems a little bit different from before. And what about with clients, did you find that, being able to apply these principles in how you related to clients, also changed your business, acumen or your business ability? - 100%. It made me far more valuable to my clients and I was a far more effective lawyer because I listened to my clients more effectively. I really tried to understand their point of view. I mean, it's natural to ask questions, but, you know, the lawyer, I can't speak for all lawyers, lawyers to, at least I would tend to form an opinion very quickly and say, okay, this is what we're going to do. But, unless you really dig, unless you really understand, you know, really everything. And so, I became, you know, more empathetic in the end. - And that's a good point too, because as a civilian, you're non-lawyer, it's very complex in the law and your understanding of it is always a struggle. And lawyers, this is their business, so they can be very quick and very confident, but you yourself, you can't make a judgment about that. And to have a lawyer who's really empathetic, trying to really dig into, okay, what's the deeper lay here, not just the tip of the iceberg? - That's right. - That would be, I imagine, for clients, a bit of an unusual experience. - I think it was. And people noticed that, and my partners noticed that, the people I worked for noticed that, and my reviews were very good. And by the way, you know, the fact that I left the law, I know so many lawyers who've taken Dale Carnegie, and it's helped them in their practice. So, actually, one of the partners in my firm, who I worked with, was Dale Carnegie graduate. In fact, it was her, you know, after a couple of years of using this kind of calendar system, she was the one who encouraged me to send a letter to the CEO of Dale Carnegie at the time, Ali Krom. - Yes. - And telling him about the system I had developed that might be valuable to Dale Carnegie graduates. By the way, so, two things were happening at once. So, I'd sent this letter to Ali Krom, and I fetched him a letter in New York, and I waited a day that I called him, and he answered his phone. You know, Ali Krom, I said, "Mr. Krom, you know, say, you know, Dale Carnegie." And I explained him at Dale Carnegie graduate. I've got the system. It's really helped me apply the Dale Carnegie principles. And, you know, is this something you've been just learning more about? He said, "Yes, we ultimately did a pilot with two franchises to test this out. It was actually an internet base. We turned it into a software-based kind of system." And at the end of this, I, he said, "Well, what would it cost to do this?" And I gave him a number, you know, that's a lot of money. We're really not in a position to do that right now. So, I was disappointed. But I said, "I think there's something here." And that something was a process for breaking down content, like Dale Carnegie content, and reinforcing it over time, because, as you know, and he shared me, Greg, you're excellent at this. You know, the reinforcement curve, right? I mean, that knowledge curve just lost over time, but if you reinforce it, you can keep it at a high level. So, I developed a business plan for this concept, and ultimately started to talk to people about it, and some people, I talked to liked it, and ultimately invested it, and I left. At that time, the company I was with, the real estate company, and started my own e-learning company in 2000. - So, you've gone out of the law into real estate, now working for yourself. And what's the space span of time of that period? - So, I left the law in '98. I spent two years at the real estate firm, and while I was there, I was working on my business plan. So by the way, it's phenomenal job and I love the real estate. company. My goal was just to work on this business plan and you know see what happened and ultimately took on the life of its own. So 2000 is when I left and started my own company. And that was for all the people who are entrepreneurial certainly you are one. You know it's daunting to start something from nothing. It's daunting to be on your own in it. Are you single, married by this time? I'm married. I'm the sole breadwinner and we have two babies, two hundred two. Great, two kids wife and we're just going to throw away the law which is not guaranteed but a fairly robust reliable employee and we're going to take a risk here. That's not easy. It was not easy. It was it was terrifying. I'll tell you what the my wife was a key part to this because you know when I raised the seed rent amount funding to start this company the investors had said you know you can you can keep your job at the real estate company if you can find a way to get this good somebody else to do this. We like the idea we've lived in the idea and I went back to my wife and I said Katie I said I've got good news. I can keep this job that I love and find somebody else to run this company. She said that's great. So I got a question for you. If you think you can find someone who's going to be about his passion about this you would be. I said probably not. She's not another question you think. You might regret not giving in this a shot. You know if it doesn't work out and I said yes she encouraged me. If it wasn't for for my wife I'm not sure that I would have done it. You know the responsibility kids and everything else. So I did start and you know and you're a gracious podcast host because this I'm giving you the long story here and you're taking me back through my memories but the long and short of it is I start this e-learning company and I go to Dale Carnegie go back to Dale Carnegie at that time there's a new CEO and new new people there and I basically said look what if I built the system for you you don't have to pay for it just you know let's work with your franchise network and we can create reinforcement programs for for Dale Carnegie courses and they said great so I started a company it was called Info Ally it was an e-learning company and we I work with Dale Carnegie globally we translated our courses into five languages this is early 2000s e-learning for Dale Carnegie so a lot of companies way ahead of the game way ahead of the game at that time and we had other clients and and I ultimately built and sold that company and then became the company a president of a new company that was many ways rooted in kind of the technology from the from the first company the people who bought my company wanted to start something new so we did so I was I was the president of that company for about ten years also but that's also impressive because exiting from a business is not that easy you know you can start a company but then you have to get to a certain stage where it's attractive enough to someone else to want to put up some money and take it off your hands and then for them to believe that they can make it a success and you've got to leave enough money on the table for them to want to do that but that balance is not that easy either so you know when you talk about if you're in business and you hear someone's had an exit you say well congratulations well done you because you know that's not very easy so well done you thank you on managing that first exit it was it was something else I was really excited that we were able to do that and ending in the people who bought it were excited about it because it enabled them and managed to work with them to start a new company is the company still running it is very good it's even more the legacy is there yes it is is not worse than starting something and then the people come after you screw it up or give throw it away or they stop doing it and your whole effort everything you poured into it all your heart and soul just evaporates and you can't do anything about it but say this is great you say well I started that company is still running successfully today you've got some legacy that's great I proud of it yeah it's been 24 years since we started it wow I mean again it is morphed into something else but that seed is what is created what is there today and what is there today continues to thrive so what was the next business you would enter so it was called asset health so the it was a the US a wellness company essentially so in the US the health care system is such that large employers typically pay for they self-insured the medical cost for their employees it wants their employees to be healthier so they put programs in place that teacher employees about the benefit system and how to heart health diet nutrition exercise those kinds of things so we created e-learning around health programs using that original system and and also we acquired a company along the way so we had nurse coaches and other kinds of things we would do biometric screenings so our clients were typically a thousand employees was a small client and the largest client we have was about a hundred thousand we were doing at one point a hundred thousand so we were doing work for general motors for Johns Hopkins for major health systems in companies in the US surprises major because you know your American health system is let's use the word unique complex is another good word to describe it and there's a lot of money tied up in that so it's interesting to me that you're able to come up with a new idea and have companies of that that caliber where General Motors is actually buy your your company services you know what I imagine is an incredibly red ocean of a crowded competitive marketplace so how did you manage that we were we were very fortunate and I'd say a couple things we partnered with another company that had been doing some work with General Motors and they brought us in there to do some work with them in other cases we were initiating we had a very effective sales and marketing team and that type of thing and and a pretty compelling product so how many people were in the company at that time I was it was not huge I'm trying to think back 70 something like that 70 people it's pretty determined you know I wish we had 70 people here that have been ice but that's that's to build it up from zero to 70 people in what space of time let's see we started that in 2005 and I left in 2015 so that was about ten years so you put ten years hard work in there yeah and did you sell the company did you have another excellent no I saw that was the thing when the prior CEO of Dale Carnegie retired I was contacted by some people I knew who were still in Dale Carnegie and they said hey you know you should apply for this role as CEO and I thought it was it was an absolutely mind-blowing thing to me to think about this program because one thing we what I haven't said is that Dale Carnegie continue to be a part of my journey every step along the way when I was starting that first company I always had how to win friends and influence people was on my desk you never left my desk it was always within three feet you know and I looked at it every day and I try try to build the company with those kinds of principles the stress and worry principles when 9/11 happened we were in the midst of a funding round that that completely collapsed looked like we were going to buy a business but you know the stress and worry principles helped me I think about you know I graduated in 1995 and met what my wife in 1996 I was telling all about Dale Carnegie got her to take a Dale Carnegie course that's good and I it's we both agreed that we wanted our kids to take Dale Carnegie courses even before I came to Dale Carnegie I had my two oldest daughters take teen programs now all six of my kids have gone through Dale come so so when when in 2014 I'd heard about this opportunity to potentially be the CEO of Dale Carnegie I mean it was both exciting but also I I mean I was leaving something that I had helped built I was the president of this company and I was excited about you know the company that we had and I don't think if it was a company other than Dale Carnegie what it considered moving my family to New York which we did from Midwest United States to New York but you know I I did it partly because this is a company that transformed me I was passionate about and I was committed and am committed to the idea of building the brand and trying to reach just exponentially more people because the world needs Dale Carnegie you know this I mean because it is transformative in terms of the ability to give confidence and help people lead and it was trusted worry and communicate and have better healthier relationships so so I was into this very competitive rigorous process for the CEO selection and after that process it was I mean I guess the rest of the story I got the job I got the job about nine years ago almost now is an April of started line by started full time in May of 2015 so nine years ago so you know when you're entrepreneur like yourself you've started two companies and you're operating within the realms of the United States and the legal system the business culture there the language is English that's one level complexity now you join to become the president of Dale County is not the president of Dale County America it's a president Dale County global you know where countries all around the world have Dale Carnegie and so different cultures different languages so now there actually aren't too many American business people who ever have to take on that challenge now in the sense of they're running a global operation they might be sent by their firm maybe to talk your or psychopaths for a couple of years on a posting two three maybe four five years and then they go back or they go to another country but in this case your base in the States but you're running a global organization so when you took on the job and you said okay I'm going to stop working over here as a president of this health bonus company I'm going to take on Dale Carnegie what was your thinking about approaching It is a global operation. How did you think about that? It's interesting. One advantage I had, maybe over any other candidate who's applying for the Dale Carnegie CEO role, is that I had about 10 years of experience working with Dale Carnegie franchise. He's all over the world. I knew the business. And I knew the people. And I understood many of their dynamics because, again, I mean, when Dale Carnegie and Associates, the franchise or agreed to work with us, they basically opened the doors for us to work with franchisees. The franchisees were my clients. I was going to franchise my franchise. And we had translated into five languages. So that was throughout Latin America and Europe and different parts of Asia we're using our programs and so forth. So I did have a sense of really the global nature of Dale Carnegie. And I also had a passion for the franchise owners because I understood that they, like me, were entrepreneurs, they were taking all the risk of hiring and running a business and so forth. And they were the ones who were delivering these transformative experiences that had impacted my entire life. So you talk about connecting the dots. I go back. It was a Dale Carnegie franchisee, or that's a sponsor that made all the difference in my life. So I had great appreciation for those people. And it also, and of course I still do, and that gave me that perspective about just the global nature of the business. And really when I started the first thing I did was rather than coming in and saying, okay, I'm a man with a plan, I said, I'm not a man with a plan, I've got some ideas. In fact, I presented to the board proposed plan. I told them my thoughts. And then I said, I need to go talk to the franchisees, I spent about six months really just talking to people and saying, what do you think, Reg? What do you think we need to do to really advance this business? What are the most important things? How do we serve our customers most effectively? And so all that input from the franchisees came into what became our first strategic business plan, which was called our foundation plan. And that guided the things that we did really for the next five years. And in terms of, for yourself, you get a chance to start visiting franchisees outside of America because, you know, the vast concentration of franchises are in the states, naturally, because dial kind of he started their 1912. And you know, it's been very successful, of course. But you know, getting the time when you're taking on a new job like that to actually travel, that's very difficult for a start because your time frames are always tight. But you know, if you've got a global organization and it probably helps to visit some of these places. So how long did it take you before you could start traveling, trying really immerse yourself in what's going on with those franchises today, because you dealt with them some number of years ago. And you know, they made those franchises and turned over as well and people retired or they'd sold out or whatever. And new people are there. How long did that take? Not long. I mean, first was there was, of course, a zoom, which I would do right away, but actually getting in the field late. My first international trip was in September of 2015 and that was to our Latin America region, Panama, and that was in Brazil a couple of weeks later. And then it was in Europe, I was in Spain, and then my first Asia trip was here to Tokyo. So it was, which is a terrific opportunity because we had all of our Asia Pacific franchises meeting here in Tokyo in 2015 and hosting the Asia Pacific Convention here. Yes, you were. And so that enabled me in one trip and for each of these trips, there were regional events that we had where franchises were coming together. So in each of those cases, I was able to meet, you know, depending on the region, 2030, 40, 50 franchises all at the same time. I was able to meet all of our Asia Pacific franchises. And in that, those meetings I set up one-on-one time with, I tried, my goal was to have one-on-one time with every person who was there. Well, because we alter it down. We have a national convention, we have a regional convention. So by attending those, you're sort of capturing a lot of things at one time. And in terms of your business model is interesting because you're actually not a training business yourself, per se, as a franchise or you are in the franchise business as a franchise or overseeing franchises who are training companies. So it's a bit of an interesting animal, isn't it, because you're actually, it's a training industry. But you, yourselves, as Dalken and your socials basically, although these days you are doing some teaching, that's sort of change. I should rewind my words there because you are actually delivering stuff internally, which wasn't the case probably when you started. So it was probably the franchisees that were delivering the training. You're looking after the franchisees as a franchise or. So how do you find managing that difference between how franchisees would see their world and how you as a franchise or see that world, because there is a balance needed there, isn't there? There's definitely a balance, and I think the fact that I had started working with franchisees and had so much personal familiarity, people had divided me into their homes and at dinner and that type of thing. So I felt like I had a really good perspective. And so as you said, I think at Dale Carnegie Associates, we have really maybe four roles. One role is a franchise or, I mean, clearly, and that is really supporting our franchisees. In fact, our strategic plan, one of our core parts of our strategic plan is how do we help our franchisees have a strong franchise network? So that was and remains a real priority of the business. We also, the only territory that we operate as a franchise or is our New York City Center of Excellence, which has been in the Dale Carnegie, that's where Dale Carnegie started. So we operate that territory. And that's got a new location now. I think just remind me, which street is that a New Yorker in for people who might be visiting New Yorker? A 70-3rd Avenue, which is right between 48th and 49th on 3rd Avenue, right in Midtown. My town, OK. So the third part that we are involved in, which is what you're referring to, it actually was before my time, was a sort of a digital operation. So in fact, it's interesting because that was delivering live online training to different territories, primarily North America. And that really came in, it was critical during COVID. Well, let's start it in the roots of that start in 2010. So actually, Dale Carnegie was way ahead of the game in terms of understanding how to deliver content digitally for 10 years before COVID suddenly made it mandatory for all of us. And I remember ourselves, when we, in February 2020, I had a conversation with John Louis Pandon, who takes care of all the franchises, and he was relating what was going on in China. Because in Japan, we were sitting here thinking, well, Asian flu, we missed that, and never even got to Japan. This will be the same thing. So we didn't think anything about COVID, right? Coronavirus. Nothing. And then he mentioned, well, actually, our Chinese colleagues are telling us, this is really, really bad and really, really serious. And so we got that early warning. So from that period, it was like on the 20th of February or something. Within about 10 days, we completely certified everybody in how to deliver digitally, because in Dale Carnegie, you have to be certified to do any sort of teaching. And also producers had to be certified as well, so we went through the whole program. And then we started our first classes in March, because clients were canceling classes all over the place, you know, face-to-face. I remember. Yeah. Everything's booked for April, cancel, cancel, cancel, cancel is a nightmare. But fortunately, because Dale County had the foresight to start in 2010, we got to 2020, we had a solid base of expertise, and also we had a lot of content. I remember, you know, we could go and get the manuals, which were designed for digital delivery as opposed to classroom delivery. That's exactly right. That was a life-sight. You know, if that hadn't happened, I don't know what we were doing. It really, it really did. I mean, the fact that there were, first of all, we had a process for certifying trainers. We knew what worked and what didn't work in live-on-line delivery. We had 70 programs and content and manuals and everything all ready to go. So as you said, in our priority as a franchise, where we started, of course, Asia was the area that shut down first. So it was like, okay, we've got to get our Asia-Pacific franchise, he's certified as fast as possible. Then it went to Europe in Middle East, Africa, then it went to the States and then it went to Latin America. And as the lockdowns progressed from place to place, of course. And again, I don't need to tell you that was a harrowing time, I think, for all of us. I mean, for me, it was interesting. I'll relay a conversation I had with our CFO, you remember Andrew Reuben. This is in October of '19 and we were doing budget forecasting and preparation for the board. You know, you always do pressure testing. Hey, what happens if we, you know, at that time, I think the world was kind of anticipating potentially a recession for the next year because there have been a number of years of dis-economic growth. And we'd run some scenarios about what if the business is down 10 percent, 15 percent, 20 percent? I remember saying to him, I said, is that it? Is that it? Are we forecasting enough? You know, he said, I can't imagine a situation in which all of our regions shut down at the same time. Who could imagine such a crazy idea? So because in the past, one region might have an issue with other ones or okay. So you have, you know, kind of this balance. But yeah, that was something else. And of course, globally, as the business shut down, but then, again, and thank goodness for you, Greg, and our franchisees and our trainers around the world because, you know, We forget that for people who deliver their entire careers in a person. and Dale Carnegie being as animated and active of a program as it is, people were skeptical. He is just gonna work. What are the results gonna be? But then when we got the net promoter scores, the voice of customer scores saying, hey, these were as high as they were in the classroom. So now we came out of COVID with greater capability, far more competitive. And in fact, the single fastest area of growth for us as a business has been on large companies that are still present, summer remote, some are in person, but they've got operations in different places, and how do they reach those people effectively? So that those global accounts have continued to increase dramatically and expect they're going to in the future because Dale Carnegie, we have this huge competitive advantage that other organizations just don't have. - Yeah, we copied something from the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, triple nuclear meltdown disaster here in Japan where we were running stress management classes free for our clients and also for our public. And so we said, okay, we're feeling a lot of stress because of Corona and what's going on in the economy, other people are about to be feeling it too. So we made our very first classes, we ran online around stress management. But in this room, we're sitting in the Mochi-Ziki room at the moment, but we went through five full-blood rehearsals, full massive rehearsals, and we were looking at it, we were looking at the tech, we were, how did that go? We were looking at the trainer, how did that go? The engagement, we're analyzing all the stuff. Five full-blood rehearsals before we went live for a free event because it was so new and it was not something we'd ever been anticipating. We weren't trained for, and being Japan, of course, there's not such a thing as a minimum viable product in Japan if it has got to work perfectly. And in fact, we blew up the tech because we didn't realize we had 150 people signed up, but the tech couldn't take 150 people, we had all sorts of tech issues in one of the, not the first one, but one of the others. And then we discovered, okay, there's a limit on how many people assisted on whole. So we didn't know that. So yeah, we learned from that. But coming back to, again, you've got your own team in Dalecunning Associates and you've moved everyone basically to operating remotely. You have the headquarters in New York for the team that operates there, but fundamentally, mostly everyone else is operating remotely. Now, how have you found that transition to go from having people together in a place you had your headquarters on Long Island? And Dalecunning had been himself on Long Island for a very long time. He operated from there when he was alive. And we always had a presence there. And then you don't have a presence on Long Island anymore. You have the place in New York, but that's not where the, well, people are gathered. So how is that transition being to having people running remotely from your point of view as a person running the organization? - Yeah, it's been far smoother than anyone would have anticipated. And part of the reason is, as a franchise who were half of our people were working remotely even before COVID, because of course, with our franchisees in the field, in supporting our franchisees, we've got people who are in the field were franchisees. So literally half of our people were remote before our digital team was remote. So we had three offices. New York City, Long Island and St. Louis. St. Louis was a very small product office. New York City was our operational team and some of our marketing team. And then, but really the leadership team and I were in Long Island, the finance and accounting team IT. So when we switched to going remote in March of 2020, but the preparation we had was, we laid a foundation for it and it was, we found ourselves very productive, really in the years that followed. And that was ultimately what led us to say, do we really need this Long Island office? We've got another office, it's an hour away. We had people coming in a couple days a week and it just didn't have that kind of cultural chemistry that it had before when people were in every day. And we really couldn't bring ourselves saying, yeah, we need people here every single day. They've been productive before. And they really, for us, wasn't a stronger action now. So we basically said, we're gonna continue to be remote. We sub-lease that space. We consolidate with our New York City office. We closed our St. Louis office or when the lease expired, we didn't renew it. So what we've worked very, very hard to continue to have a stronger culture. I'll tell you, our team engagement scores have continued to go up significantly. And part of the reason is we really make a very intentional effort to check in on people, to have teams get together, to do things that are fun. Just last week, we had two half days in a row from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. of an all company retreat. That's just for the DC team. We were in this physically and personally. This is online. - Online. - This is our virtual, all company retreat. We actually had done an in-person one and we'd like to do one at some point. But just the logistics didn't work. But this people had such a great experience. I mean, this was about learning and development and also fun. We had, by the way, this a magician come and do this. Have you ever been a mentalist? I've never heard of this. - I've seen the, I saw the program on YouTube about the mentalists. The Aussie, very handsome Aussie actor was the lead in the show, but no, I don't know. - I've never ever seen magic like this guy was doing. I mean, he was interactive with us and it was just absolutely mind-blowing. But people had such a good time. But those are kinds of things that we do to try to help build culture. As well as really trying to, the best we can, live the values that we teach as, you know, with the Dale Carnegie principles. We had whole sections, by the way, on how do we serve our franchises more effectively? How do we really be responsive as possible? So there's a lot that we do to build our culture and it's worked very well, notwithstanding the fact that we're remote. - If you want to be successful as a leader, do the leadership training for managers course. All companies need people who can both manage and lead. Leading people screams out for real skills in communication, dealing with all different types of people, being excellent at innovation, planning, delegation, handling mistakes, doing performance reviews really well, and inspiring and motivating the team. Do the leadership training for managers course now, you know, the Japanese or English. Are you doing business with Japan? Do you really know how things work? Japan Business Mastery provides the answers. Do you have the right networks and know how to create them? Do you know how to get on the same wavelength with Japanese buyers? Do you know what being trustworthy looks like from the Japanese perspective? Japan Business Mastery is based on more than 30 years experience in Japan and will become your go-to guide. Wanna succeed in Japan? Buy Japan Business Mastery now. - I must say, I was always incredibly jealous when I visited the headquarters, the new one in Melville, and you had your own green screen or lighting in the ceiling studio set up because you do a lot of videos, and we do a lot of videos too, and I always looked at them one day when I go up, I want to be like, they're all cutting in social, and my own special studio fully equipped just for doing all the shoots. We use this room, we set up green screen in here, but it's also used as a training room. So it isn't a dedicated space like you had, oh, still, that was fantastic. - It was ironic, I love that space. It was a fantastic thing. - We had built it specifically to be a studio, we had great equipment and everything else, but ultimately that was, I guess, a casualty of our decision to move on out. But we've still been able to make things work. We still are able to produce video and audio and podcast and all kinds of things. Look at what we're doing right here. - Yeah, we've also got your own podcast, take command, and I don't know if I can take any credit for you starting that Joe, but I do remember encouraging you. - You've got a few number of years ago. I said, Joe, let's think about a podcast and you're the president, you're a fantastic presenter. You should do it and you did it. So that's great. And how many episodes are you up to now? - Gosh, I'd say 70. - 70, yeah. - So we actually, we don't refer to them by number, and some people do say number one, two, three, four. But I'm guessing we started this in January, ironically January, 2020. - Yes, we are timing. - And continued it. But it's gone really well, it's got a global presence. I mean, what a year in Japan. I mean, there's a very significant number of people. - So for our viewers and listeners, certainly check out take command, podcast by Joe Hart, president of Delkanie Associates, definitely required listening. And it's done, it's done audio. It's not done video. We do audio and video, but we generally focus on the audio. - Audio. - We have to start to change that a little bit because what we're finding is a YouTube is becoming a top podcast platform. So, who knew? - Yeah, well, that's true. I guess, you know, video is always going to be powerful communicator. In terms of, we think about building trust. Now, we go through something like Corona. - It's very hard on the training industry. We certainly sort of met. of drop in our revenues immediately from Corona hit. And this happened globally through the whole training industry. So, you know, people have to size down organizations to cope with that change. And then, you know, things turn around, you can scale it back up again. And I'm just thinking, what did you find worked well to build trust in the organization when you're going through those hard times? You know, when things are rocking along and everyone's, I mean, it's all milk and honey. It's all great. But when you hit hard times, and you know, in business, we'll always hit hard times. So what are some lessons you took away from that experience of how to get through the hard times and keep the trust and build the trust with people? It's interesting. People talk about trust. And we think about that. And at the same time, I mean, trust really comes down to individual relationships. Do I trust this person? Do I trust you? Do you trust me? Etc. And you know, the things that we teach in Dale Carnegie are just critical in terms of building trust. Am I, do I try to see things from your point of view? Do I try to listen? Am I, you know, attentive? All the different things that we teach, I found in COVID, there was no substitute for actually reaching out to somebody and saying, just, how are you doing? And what can they do to help in those kinds of things? And I think it was a very valuable process. And also for me to understand what people were going through and to think how do we help and how to be as effective as possible. So, you know, but I think that's, you know, we gave, I gave two talks just to the NAI that you were kind enough to organize two terrific events with the German Chamber and the Tokyo American Chamber. And, you know, right now, companies struggle with trust. In fact, I had on my podcast, Richard Edelman is the CEO of Edelman the largest PR from the world. And he does the trust barometer, which is a internationally known measure. And we both agreed. I mean, there's a trust, across the trust crisis around the world. And at the end of the day, it does come down to, am I, is there just a believability, do people do what they say they're going to do? Do they care? How do they follow through those kinds of things? So, and you talk yesterday too about transparency, as leaders needing to have transparency. And it's difficult, you know, when you're a leader and times are tough, how much transparency is enough? Because, you know, at some point, you don't want to scare people and alarm them about the viability of the organization, even though you're going through a very, you know, hard time financially because of the industry being in the doldrums. But at the same time, you've got to be open about what's going on. That balance is not that easy to plumb. So, how do you plumb that balance? It's a tough balance. I mean, because there are things that you, I mean, as leaders, we can't say, not from a confidentiality standpoint, but something you can't say. And then there's other things that you can't say. So, my rule of thumb is say as much as you can say and just try to treat the other person that you're communicating with the way you want to be treated. If I was in the receiving end of this information, what would I want to know? And try to share what you can share. And I think people understand that you can't share everything. There's just, I mean, certain responsibilities that we have in what we're doing. But share what you can. And, again, trust is something that it's a really tough thing, right? It takes a long time to gain trust. You can lose it very quickly. I've talked to my kids about that all the time. Just remember, it's like you can lose trust in an instant. And so that means, as it relates to transparency, we were talking about AI, right? So how do companies introduce this? People are, there's fear. And that's the other thing that factors into this. Where is the recipients emotional state? And sometimes, do people assume positive intent? Are they afraid? Are they insecure? Where are they? And, you know, all you can do is the best you can. But over a period of time, if you're consistent and you're demonstrating, hopefully that is a fact of building trust. And with AI, I mean, you go a great talk on those two venues yesterday. And the audience for today won't have been able to attend those, of course, necessarily. But for the people listening or viewing, what be some takeaways from your thoughts on that presentation that's sort of for leaders, will be some sort of hints or some direction or some suggestions for them to deal with this, because it's coming. Well, it's coming. It's here. It's just going to elongate. It's going to accelerate. It's going to complicate. There's going to be a lot of things changing and how we work and how companies function. So as leaders, what are some hints for us and what we should be thinking about doing to accommodate those changes? Well, it's a great question. And I know from our high impact course, I shouldn't grade your questions, but that was a great question. All your questions have been great questions. But the first thing is that AI is a technology. It's a technology that people will use. And frankly, to use it effectively, people have to be really engaged with it. It's an imperfect technology. It makes mistakes. They can read biases and different kinds of things. And ultimately, people are going to roll it out. So the effectiveness of people being engaged really goes to, are they motivated to be engaged? Are they confident? And this is the three factors that are research that we came to that are the most important ones for companies to take in a consideration. Number one, is there trust of leaderships handling around AI? Is there transparency? And do people feel like they have the skills to succeed in the years ahead? What does that mean? The trust in the leaders handling of AI? Is that code word for you're not going to get fired and replaced by AI? Is that what that means? I think it means trust really relates to, and again, we could look at trust at any particular point in time, but in relationship, there's a period of time over time that trust is built or lost. So setting aside AI, what is the employees to the employees? Trust leadership, as leadership and trustworthy and small things, and then inconsistent. If they do the things that they say that they're going to do, so over a period of time, people could say, I have trust in leadership. Well, now you've got this new change management initiative, which is AI. So if there's already a foundation of trust in when you come to introducing AI, then you're in a better position. On the other hand, if the company has been inconsistent in what is done, leaders have said one thing and done another over a period of time. Now here comes AI. Why should I believe what you're telling me about this when I haven't believe what you've said about other kinds of things? This goes fundamentally to engagement overall as well. I mean, how do we engage people and people want to work with leaders that they trust and they believe in? There's also the issue too of communication. I mean, you know, classically as a leader, you think, well, I told them, you know, I have a town hall or I sent out the email, they know. Done. Check that off the list. Check that off the list and move on because there's a ton of other things, right? But as we know, and to our chagrin, you find out they haven't understood it or they haven't read it, or they've forgotten about it. And so this need for constant updating of the communication, I think is also critical with something like AI, which is evolving very fast. You know, it's a moving feast really. So that I think the impetus is on us as leaders to keep communicating and not think that we've shot one gun off here and we're done. We're never going to be probably done. 100%. I mean, and I think that's a good rule of thumb for all communication, which is, you know, we think about even people in the workplace today, their expectations of their roles and of leadership are different than they were in the past. They expect to be more engaged in things than maybe in the past. It used to be if you go back even decades where you had more command and control leadership, you know, you'd do something and maybe that was it. Now people have the expectation that they're going to be included. We always teach Dale Carnegie that people support a world they help create. So, you know, how do we drive engagement and how do we really have people engaged even in AI? Well, part of it is involved in a little bit in the process. Ask their opinions. Understand what their concerns are. Ask them what would be important to you in rolling out this technology? Well, they may say I need I need training in this or I need, you know, I'm concerned about this. So what is the training there? Is this are we all going to become so-called prompt engineers? Is this what we're looking at? What do we talk about? We talk about training with AI. What does it actually think that means? Yeah, for me, it really is around soft skills training. Less so than hard skills training. And let me explain what I mean. Part of the benefit I think AI is going to bring to the workplace. Certainly in the shorter term, you know, people are concerned about displacement of jobs and that that may be a real concern over some period of time. Where we are right now is AI is something to make our jobs even better. I use the example yesterday of salespeople because in our own Dell Carnegie world, we're seeing our salespeople become more effective. Why? Because they can leverage a tool to summarize meeting notes, get key bullets and follow-ups, do their research more effectively. They can learn more about companies faster than they ever could before just by using Google or whatnot, generating proposals faster. So things that were mundane wrote types of things that were. Which salespeople were testing. They hate. Absolutely, they hate the happens. So now, let's just say that a salesperson can open up 3, 4, 5, 10 hours a week of time that was previously done and those things. Now, if they can. redirect that to what stronger client engagement and improving their skills so that they can better understand what their clients need, anticipate what their needs are, communicate more effectively, have positive influence, those kinds of things. So, but to, in a world where they're competing against other sales people, they've got to really strengthen those skills. So that's an opportunity for them to work on the people skills. And the same thing is true of other areas. People are still going to be involved in AI. But they're going to work together as a team. They're going to have to work together to have a high performing team. Are we aligned? Can I communicate my ideas effectively? Can I inspire? Can I influence? How do I influence that? If I don't have a title, all of these different things, those types of skills are going to become more and more important as AI takes on some of the more rote algorithmic kinds of things that frankly we probably rather not do anyway. From a sales point of view, if you think about it, the preparation before meeting a client previously would have been maybe check media resources for any currencies where they've been reported or press releases they put out, check the annual report. If it's a listed company, if it's a non-listed company, you start to struggle straight away to get information because it's held privately. But with AI, presuming they're not hallucinations, and you should tell that hallucination story about Dale Cunningham's quote in a moment because he told it on your sales fantastic. The downsides of AI is you can't necessarily always trust what it's telling you, but presuming that what it's giving you about the company is true, and you can check the sources. That saves so much time. I mean, to actually get a snapshot of this company, where are they today? What are their major aspirations? What's their strategy? What's their financial picture? Any acquisitions, anything that's sold off, change of direction, change of leadership? I mean, 30 seconds, you've got it. Whereas before, you would have spent hours running on trying to get into the meeting with the client to have a more intelligent conversation, but please tell that hallucination story. Well, I mean, you said that was fantastic. Well, it's July of 2023. We're having our first in-person Dale Cunningh associates board meeting since January of 2020. And I'm preparing for our board dinner the night beforehand, and I want to give a toast. So I go to chat GPT, and I'm asking, I'd like to give a good toast to this board around teamwork. I'm looking for a Dale Carnegie quote on teamwork. And so chat GPT gives me a great quote. I'm like, I've never seen this quote. This is a really, really great quote. It just doesn't sound the way Dale would talk. And I went back, are you sure this is Dale Carnegie? And in chat GPT said, yes, this is Dale Carnegie. So I then cut and pasted the quote, and I dropped into Google, and up came Andrew Carnegie. It is, the steel baron. That's right. I went back to chat GPT and said, this quote came from Andrew Carnegie. And I got to know a little, basically a little-- I can do it with you, I have to. It differed. Yeah, it was going to die on the sword on that one. So it's true that you can't consistently rely on the information we get from chat GPT. Well, I don't know, maybe over time that will improve. I don't know exactly why it has hallucinations. I don't understand the technicalities of that, but hopefully that'll get fixed. But still, as a investigative tool, as a prep tool, for sales, fantastic opportunity that I think. And also people worry about giving presentations. They think, well, you know, everyone is going to be so great at giving presentations now, because they can just go to chat GP or some other mechanism. And it's all produced for you. And so the red ocean of competition around that area, trying to represent your firm, represent your self, publicly, is going to be a nightmare. But when you think about it at this point, anyway, what makes people's presentations really interesting is their personal stories. And we talk about storytelling in Dalcane, of course. But it's unique to you. And chat GPT or any other mechanism won't know that. And when you can wind that and weave that into your presentation, it's very much authentically you. It's unique. It is drawing a lesson out of that. And that, I think, will always protect us from having sort of, you know, harmonization that everyone's basically the same standard presentation. Because the stuff you get out of chat GPT is very generic. Like, when you actually ask it to produce something, it's good, but it's generic and a bit boring, frankly. So I think there's still an option for us as human beings to stay ahead of the game here. Because we, authentically ourselves, have got insights, experiences, tales to tell. And if we good at that, and then there's also the delivery component. So you can have the greatest presentation put together by chat GP. You just got to get up on your hind legs at the liquid dam thing, you know? That's a different kettle of fish right there, isn't it? It absolutely is. And I think what you're highlighting, too, is the importance of each person continuing to sharpen their skills. Because that's what they're going to have. You know, Warren Buffet talks about the investment that we make in ourselves being the most important investment. And particularly over time, you know, it's for us to focus on the things that make us unique and authentic. What's the most compelling speech that we hear? It's something that really speaks to us from a person's own story. What are they sharing? It's not just that they're going out. They're going to read something from chat GPT. But it is that essence of who they are. So going back to your original question about kind of skills and developing, you know, and even the salesperson example, a salesperson has an opportunity to demonstrate caring and understanding toward their customer, their client, in a way that they've never been able to before. That can make them more effective in helping their customer. This is a special time, it's a really opportunity. But if people look at it just as a lot of work now, like a chat GPT, I mean, those people over time, I think are going to be much less successful than the people who are focusing on the technology and themselves and their development. Those people are going to thrive. - And the irony too is, you know, I got a phone call on my landline in the office the other day. I was thinking to myself, where was the last time I got a phone call on my landline because it's always mobile, you know, or it's text. And so particularly with young people, they are very, very much text oriented. And we had some research done here in Japan recently that quite a large proportion of young people are fearful in the workplace to pick up the phone. That is amazing, they are fearful to pick up the phone. They don't answer the phone. And because they're used to texting each other. And so you start to think about, well, okay, what does that mean about their communication skills? What does it mean about their confidence to communicate with other people? Why couldn't they pick up the phone, have a conversation? What's holding them back? So that skilling up component, I think, you know, one of the big areas, I think opportunity will be as a training industry and ourselves as a training company is to make sure that people really maximize that opportunity to have succinct, clear conversations in the workplace that are effective and not be scared to contribute and participate in those sorts of conversations and not be scared to pick up the phone and talk to someone. So I think there's still, you know, we may be leaping ahead on the technology one side, but we're sort of going backwards in some cases. Now, what do you think about that? - I mean, it's a 100% correct, it's ironic because we can talk about how socially connected we are and yet how truly disconnected we are, how we may be spending all kinds of time following people or feeling like we're connected to them, but really we're disconnected. And so much of what is out there makes us unhappy, makes us down, makes us fearful and so forth. So, in one level, we might expect an increase in confidence, an increase in people feeling, you know, courage, but what we see is high levels of anxiety throughout, not just, I mean, throughout multiple societies, young people, mental health is a real, real challenge. And I don't think that CHENCH EPD is going to solve that. I don't think that AI is going to solve that. I think this is the kind of thing that people need to develop levels of courage, and confidence, and emotional intelligence through doing, and through taking risks and so forth. And the kinds of programs that we teach, of course, put people in those safe environments where they can take risks and build their confidence. And that's a critical competitive advantage for people these days is that confidence, confidence can be a game changer, and a lack of confidence can ruin a career. Well, yeah, this term, psychological safety, that popped up, I don't know, three or four years ago, I guess, I can't remember exactly when it popped up, but I always thought to myself, well, that's ironic, because dial Carnegie ourselves as an organization, we've been doing psychological safety from 1912, you know, where there's no critique in dial Carnegie, if you're giving feedback, what is the person doing well? How could they do it even better? So it's always in the positive going forward, vice versa, you miss this, and that was bad, and you made a mistake there, criticizing people, dragging them down. So we should have come up with a sexier title than what we're doing, called it psychological safety ourselves, but the essence is. That's what we've brought up to what we've been doing. So we thought about that when that term came out, I thought, wow, we already know about that. And I think your point about encouraging people out of their comfort zone, young people particularly, [BLANK_AUDIO] - Where does that confidence come from? And that is very hard to generate yourself. It's very hard to suddenly become super confident 'cause all the things are dragging you down or dragging you down, you can't dig yourself out of that hole. And I think that's where the training industry in ourselves, particularly, we play our role there. - 100% - And I think with the darkening principles and how we, I think about how we treat people and the insights we give people and the practice we can give people and the coaching they can get. I think we will always have a big responsibility and obligation to help future generations as well as Dale Carnegie study in 1912. So Joe, thank you very much. - Thank you, Greg. - We have to have another event coming up. - Okay. - We'll pull it up here. But please join us again for our next episode of Japan's top business interviews. 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