0:04

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0:07

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0:26

The Rebel Rebel is a show dedicated to creative rebels and entrepreneurs

0:29

all over the world. It's for those people who think audaciously and act courageously

0:33

in service of making the world a better and more interesting place.

0:36

We want to keep a customer, and we want to convert them

0:40

into an evangelist for our brand.

0:44

Judge people not based on their actions, but their intentions.

0:49

And in order to do that, I have to know the whole story.

0:53

I can't make assumptions and that alone is so mentally freeing.

0:59

Jump in with Wayne Mullins as he explains how true marketing is more than just ads.

1:03

It's about creating a customer experience that extends to every interaction,

1:07

from a small town to a global stage. Wayne Mullins shares the power of turning customers into brand evangelists.

1:13

Welcome Wayne Mullins to the Rebel Rebel podcast.

1:17

Well, welcome to the Rebel Rebel podcast.

1:20

I'm your host, Michael Dargie, and across the world,

1:22

and I can't wait to find out exactly where you are, Wayne.

1:25

But, Wayne, where are you?

1:29

What's going on? Wayne Mullins, what's going on?

1:32

Michael, I am in this amazing town called Alexandria, Louisiana.

1:38

Oh, damn, that sounds amazing already.

1:43

I love it. It is. So most people, they've never heard of the town,

1:47

but they've heard of New Orleans.

1:49

When you hear of Louisiana. So if you if you take the images, the sights

1:54

and sounds that come to mind when you think of New Orleans.

1:57

Yeah. In your mind, get that picture in your mind.

1:59

Crystal clear, I got it. Got it. Yeah.

2:02

Now think polar opposite.

2:05

And that is Alexandria, Louisiana.

2:09

well played sir. Yeah. Thank you.

2:11

100 and probably 50 ish miles.

2:15

We're to the north west of New Orleans.

2:18

Okay, so only 150 miles away, but polar opposite

2:21

in terms of culture and vibe and fields.

2:24

Wow, that's so cool. Okay, so it's kind of like laid.

2:29

Laid. well, I got I was gonna say laid

2:32

out, but, you know, it's laid back and it's just chill.

2:35

Is that what I'm getting? Small town, small community.

2:39

Population 48,000, I believe.

2:42

So, you know, kind of

2:45

country setting, I guess, if you will, to some degree.

2:47

Okay. That's awesome. Well, you're living your best life then.

2:50

It sounds like. I am, I'm, doing my best

2:54

to add a little splash of color and excitement to this town.

2:58

Very nice. So I can see behind you.

3:00

It is very colorful, but when the audience sees this, it's

3:03

actually going to be in black and white, because that's our color treatment.

3:06

So they're not going to get the full effect that I'm getting.

3:08

So, why don't you why don't we start here, Wayne?

3:11

Why don't we, you've got a company called Ugly Mug Marketing, which is super dope.

3:16

Why don't we start there and you can sort of tell us what you're up to?

3:21

you know what's driving you, and then we'll we'll see where the story takes us.

3:25

Absolutely. So, as you said, we have this great little company called Ugly Mug Marketing.

3:30

We are based right here in this amazing little town, 48,000 people.

3:35

But what's so interesting? Michael's from this little town with no connections, no investment.

3:42

No. You know, you need the traditional things you would think of in terms

3:46

of making and marketing agency a success.

3:49

Yeah. we've been able to work with clients literally from around the world,

3:53

publicly traded companies here in the States, New York Times bestselling

3:56

authors, some really big name kind of celebrity people,

4:02

all from this one little place.

4:04

And it has a lot to do with some of our core principles, some of our core beliefs

4:10

about what marketing really is and what marketing isn't.

4:14

Oh, yes. Yes, I've been waiting for this conversation.

4:19

Oh, wicked. So, unpack this for me, Wayne.

4:23

Bring me a bring me, bring me in.

4:26

Absolutely. So I think, Michael, the first place to start a conversation about marketing is

4:31

we have to agree on what is this thing called marketing.

4:36

And what's so fascinating is over the years, what I've learned

4:39

is that so many people confuse marketing and advertising.

4:44

Sure, they use those two terms interchangeably,

4:47

as if they're the same thing. Yeah, and the reality is that advertising

4:52

is merely one piece or one component of marketing.

4:57

So they're not exactly the same thing.

4:59

And so once we understand that marketing encompasses far more than the ad

5:05

we run on Facebook or the billboard

5:07

that we put on the side of the road, or the radio spot that we run.

5:10

Marketing is about everything from the way the front of our building looks

5:14

to the way we answer our phones, to the way we respond

5:18

or don't respond sometimes to emails, right?

5:21

All of these ingredients are part of marketing, and that is the beauty.

5:27

And that is also the scary part about this thing called marketing.

5:31

So big. Wow. Well, so I guess,

5:38

I mean, yeah, it touches all these things, but

5:41

how is it that you've attracted these, these people from all over the world,

5:45

from this sleepy little town that you're in? I mean, it sounds like an amazing story.

5:49

Yeah. So when we think about marketing and defining marketing.

5:53

So we've agreed that marketing and advertising are not the same thing, right?

5:57

Advertising is a piece or a component. We have a game.

6:00

What is this thing?

6:02

This thing called marketing. The way we love to define it is this marketing is your ability to attract

6:09

and to keep a customer.

6:13

Now, when we say the word keep, there's a little bit more to that.

6:17

There's kind of like a sub definition of this key.

6:20

And that is this, that we don't want to just keep a customer for the sake of keeping a customer.

6:25

We want to keep a customer and we want to convert them

6:29

into an evangelist for our brand.

6:32

Nice in in that one little phrase is the secret

6:36

to how we've attracted clients from around the world.

6:39

It's how we've attracted, you know, some big name

6:42

celebrities, how we've attracted New York Times bestselling authors.

6:45

It's because we understand and we buy into this principle

6:49

of turning existing customers into evangelists for us.

6:54

You know, we've all heard of this thing called you know, like the six degrees of separation. Yeah.

6:58

How we're all connected to someone within six degrees of separation.

7:03

And that is so true. And yet, as marketers, as entrepreneurs, we don't think about how can we leverage

7:09

the connection that other people have to grow our own businesses.

7:14

And so we can dive into all the specifics on some of the things that we do,

7:18

the creative ways that we convert our customers into evangelists.

7:22

But that is the key, right?

7:24

So I'm not advising this, but people could stop listening.

7:26

Stop watching right now. No, don't go listen to they could go sit and ponder

7:31

what are some things that I can do to turn my existing

7:35

followers, my existing customers, into evangelists?

7:38

For me, and just that exercise of thinking through those things and implementing

7:43

those things will begin to transform all of your marketing.

7:48

I love it. yeah. I'm in.

7:50

I drank the punch a long time ago. I think that this is

7:54

the connection. The human connection is so critical to it all.

7:57

The truth behind what it is that you're doing that attracts the right people.

8:00

Because you're not going to attract everybody. Not everybody's going to love you.

8:04

and I think that that's great. That's. I think that's awesome.

8:07

I'm I'm really curious, though, when if we could let's

8:11

let's do some time travel. Let's go back in time to, and you can pick

8:16

the first place that we stop in this epic trek.

8:20

But I'm curious what it is that drove you to create this agency, like,

8:25

And we can go back. As far as you know, you're seven years old

8:27

and you're sitting with your toes dangling in the in the bayou.

8:31

I don't know, like, what does that look like for you?

8:34

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, there are a lot of bayous around here.

8:37

So you're pretty close. Yes. But you it.

8:40

My story doesn't involve the bayou.

8:42

At least not that I can think of. my marketing

8:46

journey actually began when I was in school.

8:49

College? I was pursuing a degree in business,

8:52

and I really didn't know what I wanted to do after I graduated.

8:56

And about midpoint through my career there, my journey there as a student.

9:01

Yeah. someone introduced me to this gentleman of the name Zig Ziglar and.

9:06

Okay. Yeah, for those not familiar, I would highly recommend googling him

9:11

checking out some of his. You know, I'm sure you can find a lot of his stuff on YouTube at this point.

9:15

We'll put some stuff in the links, in the notes and stuff like, yeah,

9:20

he so I was introduced to him

9:22

and he was really big about sales training.

9:25

That is kind of what he was known for.

9:27

Well, he convinced me through his training programs that I should pursue a career in sales.

9:33

And so that's what I did. As soon as I graduated from school, I decided to go into sales

9:38

in the most amazing thing happened, Michael, when I, when I got out,

9:42

got this job, you know, I'd been listening to zig, I'd started listening.

9:45

Tom Hopkins, I'd started reading, you know, a lot of other books on sales.

9:49

So I just knew that I was going to be successful whenever I started.

9:53

Okay. And that was it. My story.

9:56

My story was lots of door slammed in my face.

10:00

Lots of rejection, lots of

10:03

paychecks with not very much money on them.

10:06

But because of, I believe, my stubbornness, probably most of all,

10:11

I kept at it. I kept showing up, I kept learning, I kept having door slammed in my face.

10:16

And over time, this amazing thing happened.

10:19

I started getting good at this thing called selling.

10:23

and so it was during this journey of selling that.

10:26

What I noticed was that as I got better and better

10:29

at selling the amount of revenue that I was generating for the company

10:32

I was working for started going up at a much quicker rate than it had previously.

10:38

But as their revenue as the amount of things I was selling for them was kind of skyrocketing.

10:44

My pay, on the other hand, was barely trickling up.

10:47

It was going up, but it was just barely trickling up.

10:51

And I had this dangerous thought.

10:54

And that thought was this what if I took

10:57

my sales ability and I went and did something for myself?

11:01

What if I went and use these skills to sell something for myself?

11:06

Well, at that time, Michael, I didn't have any other skills,

11:09

any other things I could sell other than all growing up down here

11:13

in Louisiana during the summers, I would cut grass for money.

11:18

That's how I made money all through high school, all through college,

11:21

and so much to the dismay of my parents, some colleagues, some friends,

11:25

I decided to lead this really great corporate sales job 8

11:28

to 5 money to rowdy and start a lawn and landscape company.

11:33

I took my sales skills. I took, you know how to cut grass, make a yard look nice, combine

11:38

those two things together, and decided to start a lawn and landscape company.

11:42

But there's a key point in distinction when I started that company,

11:46

and this is what I want people to think about.

11:48

If you're in your journey, if you're on your path

11:51

and you're about to start something, get crystal clear

11:55

about what role you want to play in that endeavor.

11:59

So for me, there could have been the role of the founder, the CEO, the leader, the

12:05

the head, you know, supervisor, whatever the role could have been,

12:09

there's a lot of things it could have been for me.

12:11

But in my brain, I viewed myself as the chief marketing officer

12:17

from day one, from the very first day when it was me

12:20

sitting on a lawn mower by myself with no employees,

12:23

I was thinking, I am the chief marketing officer.

12:27

Yeah, how am I going to market? How am I going to position my company in such a way that we scale rapidly?

12:33

I didn't want to just grow. I didn't want to just, you know, add a few accounts each year.

12:37

I wanted to scale the business in an amazing thing happen

12:41

within three years, we'd gone from just me in a lawn mower

12:45

and a pickup truck to we were the largest in our region.

12:49

So I had multiple crews, multiple trucks.

12:51

We did multiple types of services, from traditional

12:54

lawn care to landscaping to sprinkler irrigation.

12:58

And so I'd grown this thing into a very sizable company.

13:02

And it was during that process, during that growth process,

13:06

over a very short period of time, a three year period of time

13:09

that a lot of people in the community, other business owners started coming to me

13:13

and saying, hey, we see how quickly you're growing your business.

13:17

What are you doing? How are you growing so quickly in for for a lawn company?

13:22

You do have the advantage of, you know, it's a very visible type of business.

13:26

When you have multiple crews with multiple vehicles with, you know, your number and your logo

13:31

on the sides of them all, your crew wearing your logo on their clothing,

13:35

and you're maintaining a lot of businesses.

13:37

It's just a very visible entity.

13:39

Yeah. And so I started getting phone calls,

13:42

and these phone calls began getting more frequent.

13:45

And that is what led me down this path to consulting around marketing.

13:50

And I guess you could really say those were the super early days

13:53

of what would become ugly mug marketing. Wow.

13:58

Oh, boy. Okay, well, I got to just because you said it.

14:02

I've got to leap further back into your past, and I'd like to I'd like

14:06

to have a look at Wayne as a as a young man mowing lawns in Louisiana.

14:12

Like, just paint me that picture. Like, I'm just so curious because I've never been to Louisiana.

14:17

Yeah. So, Louisiana, you know, right now in the, you know, online

14:23

world, kind of in the fitness space, one of the latest craze is going around

14:27

right now are saunas. You know, people get in the saunas and they love to sweat.

14:31

And, you know, they post pictures of themselves all over social media drenching wet.

14:35

Well, that is what it's like to work in Louisiana in the summer.

14:39

Outside you just because of the humidity

14:43

at 8:00 in the morning when you're out on your first job,

14:46

you are literally soaking wet because it's so hot and it's so humid.

14:51

So that is what the days look like.

14:54

You know, as a young man growing up,

14:56

I was very interested, not necessarily in hard work, but I was interested in money.

15:00

Yeah. And I was willing to do hard physical labor in exchange for that money.

15:06

I was I was more motivated by the outcome.

15:09

The money, than I was, the pain that I was going to go through in the process.

15:14

That's awesome. Oh, man, that's really cool. So,

15:20

Oh, okay. So many questions. Jump to jump to mine.

15:23

not the least of which is, talk to me about your favorite piece

15:27

of art.

15:30

Interesting question.

15:33

yeah. So I don't I don't recall his name.

15:36

so I'm very eclectic.

15:38

Yeah, I, I tend to jump from team thing to thing.

15:42

Yeah. But right now there's this artist.

15:45

You know, I wish I could think of his name, but

15:47

he takes glass and he actually chisels the glass, breaks

15:53

the glass and makes these amazing pictures from a piece of glass

15:57

that is nothing more than broken and chiseled cracks all in the glass.

16:02

And you get these massive exhibits where I'm talking like

16:05

huge exhibits the size of a room out of these glass pieces.

16:10

And what I love so much about the work is that we take something

16:15

a form, you know, a window, a pane of glass.

16:20

Yeah. That in our minds has a certain use, right?

16:24

We don't think of it as a canvas for artwork necessarily.

16:27

Yeah. And then we certainly don't think about the cracks

16:31

and breaks in the glass as forming something beautiful.

16:36

Right? So often we think of a paintbrush stroke, we think of ink, we think of,

16:41

you know, maybe it's clay. The different types of media, that medium that can be used to form artwork.

16:47

And so that's why I love that artwork right now.

16:50

And so if I had a favorite in the moment, that would be it.

16:53

Oh that is so cool. Oh well we'll we'll figure out who that is.

16:57

Also put that in the show notes because I want to see that too.

16:59

That sounds fantastic. so, are you like a driven entrepreneur

17:06

that's doing working on an in his business 24 seven?

17:10

Like, what is what does that look like for you? Have you found some balance or do you say, you know, no, that's not for me.

17:17

So I you know, my journey I think would be a one of a traditional entrepreneur initially.

17:22

So all in, you know, seven days a week working,

17:27

you know, I typically would, would start work at, you know, seven in the morning, work until around suppertime,

17:32

come home, eat dinner with the family and then start working again.

17:36

Once the kids were in bed, work for another few hours, get up and do it again.

17:39

Yeah, and that was pretty much a seven day a week pattern for me

17:43

for probably the first 5 or 6 years of this agency.

17:49

Yeah. Since then, what I've discovered is I've discovered

17:54

that I am my greatest enemy when it comes to leadership.

17:59

And when it comes to growth. What I discovered was what I now call mirror leadership

18:04

and how the person that looks back at us in the mirror

18:08

is the person who's going to always be the most difficult person for us to lead.

18:14

And until we learn to lead that person well,

18:17

yeah, we will never learn to lead other people well.

18:21

And so that was a transition point for me.

18:25

And really where that came from,

18:27

it came from this launch I went to is an entrepreneurial luncheon.

18:31

And I had a really good friend of mine who at the time had a business in.

18:35

He had one employee, and he had someone, he had someone approach him

18:39

and offered to buy his company.

18:41

And I was attempting to convince him to hold on to it a little bit longer,

18:45

to continue the growth and the momentum that he had for another couple of years.

18:51

And then his company would have been worth at least ten times

18:54

what it was in that moment, because of where he was in the trajectory of that company's growth.

18:59

And so I invited him to come with me to this entrepreneur luncheon,

19:02

a mastermind that I was a part of. And we go into the room and the topic of the day

19:07

just so happened to be employees and employee engagement.

19:11

And so we get in the room and the question that the the facilitator started with

19:15

is, I want you to introduce yourself, your company

19:17

and the number of people who work for you.

19:20

And so we start going around the room and everyone knows

19:24

this one gentleman, and he is the most successful in the room.

19:28

Seasoned entrepreneur. At the time, he had about 600 employees working for him.

19:33

So extremely successful private plane, all the other stuff.

19:38

And so we're going around, everybody's waiting out to be his turn into it

19:41

gets to to this gentleman and he says, you know, my name is, my company is.

19:45

And in terms of the number of people who work for me, it's about half of them.

19:50

And so everyone burst out laughing.

19:53

You know, it's kind of the joke that only half the people who show up actually want to work.

19:57

Most of them don't want to be there, all this stuff. So for the next hour and a half,

20:01

the entire conversation in that room was about how terrible employees are,

20:06

how they don't want to work, how all they want to do is get out of work,

20:10

and how there's always drama with your teams.

20:14

So I left that meeting.

20:16

I call my friend, ask him, you know, when he thought about it

20:19

and he said, well, that made my decision easy.

20:21

And selling the company, I'm not going forward because if I go forward,

20:25

I'm going to have to hire more people and I don't want to deal with more people.

20:28

Yeah, but I walked away from that meeting

20:32

really hopeless, Michael, if I'm being honest, like

20:35

I was at this critical point in my own company, we were growing.

20:38

We'd grown year after year in the agency and I was dealing

20:43

with all those same things. Right. I didn't think people wanted to work.

20:46

I didn't think they want to show up. There was always issues with employees

20:51

and I looked around and reflected on that luncheon, and I was like,

20:55

is this really what I have to look forward to?

20:58

Is this the reality that I'm going to be facing?

21:01

Right. Because in my head, I kept thinking, someday in the future, I'm

21:06

going to have enough money and enough time to fix my broken culture, right?

21:12

But it was that day that I decided that I'm going to figure out

21:17

how to build a high performance, self

21:20

accountable team, and that was a day that transformed my agency.

21:24

Oh man, talk to me about this.

21:27

How did how did you how did you get there?

21:30

Like, what is. And I know it's a that's a big question to ask.

21:33

But I mean, you know we've got a we got a little bit of time.

21:36

Let's let's dig in. Yeah.

21:39

I think, you know, it boils down to number one, kind of the idea of mirror

21:43

leadership that we talked about earlier, before it was always everyone else.

21:48

Right? I was looking at them, trying to fix them, trying to address their issues

21:52

instead of first looking at myself.

21:54

And here's what I know to be true about really, all of us, but

21:57

particularly entrepreneurs, is that we judge

22:00

other people based on their actions,

22:03

but we judge ourselves based on our intentions.

22:07

Oh, so let me say that one more time. We judge other people based on their actions,

22:11

but we judge ourselves based on our intentions.

22:15

So let me give you a scenario so I'm supposed to be

22:17

here, let's say, at 8:00 in the morning. So I show up and it's 815.

22:23

Well, you know, the people in the office don't know the fact

22:26

that my kid was up all night sick, not feeling well, all these things.

22:29

But I had wonderful intentions, right?

22:31

My intentions were to be here. I had everything laid out, set out.

22:35

But I had to take my kids temperature. I had to give them medicine, had to do all these things.

22:38

So my intentions were right.

22:40

So I judge myself. I give myself a pass based on the fact my intentions were right.

22:46

Now flip the scenario.

22:48

I'm sitting here working. Someone supposed to be here at 8:00.

22:51

I see them meandering in at 815.

22:55

Yeah, immediately I'm making a judgment

22:58

based on what their actions.

23:02

Right. And so then we begin down these stories, and we have to be careful of the stories

23:07

that we choose to tell ourselves and that we choose to believe.

23:11

So that's another key thing that I had to learn to do was judge people

23:17

not based on their actions, but their intentions.

23:20

And in order to do that, I have to know the whole story.

23:24

I can't make assumptions, and that alone is so mentally freeing.

23:30

When we give up the stories, when we give up the things that we believe

23:34

to be true without knowing the full context of the story.

23:38

And that is a foundational piece of having a great culture,

23:41

because at the core, a great culture centers around trust.

23:48

It is built on trust. In other words, if we're in a business relationship,

23:52

if we're going to have a great working relationship,

23:55

I have to trust that you're going to do the things

23:57

that you say you're going to do, and you have to trust that I'm going to live up to my end of the bargain

24:01

and do the things that I'm say, I'm going to do.

24:04

Yeah, but in business, that is where the breakdown begins.

24:08

We by default, particularly here in America,

24:11

our default stance is not of trust.

24:14

It's of suspicion. Right?

24:17

Right. We're suspicious of every action.

24:19

We're suspicious if someone comes in late.

24:22

Oh they're lazy. They're this they're that. We're.

24:24

Are they looking for another job? If somebody is on their phone, you know, I'm suspicious.

24:29

Are they scrolling social media or do I trust by default.

24:33

And again that is not something that you can fix in other people.

24:37

That is something that begins with you.

24:40

You have to learn to default, to trust.

24:44

And so a very first conversation that we have with new team

24:47

members is, is exactly that in this organization.

24:50

Our default is to trust

24:53

I trust you, I trust that you're going to do the right thing.

24:55

I trust that you're going to keep your word, whether that's explicit.

24:59

In other words, you told me you're going to do the thing

25:01

or implicit meaning because you work here

25:04

because you understand the expectations and the mission of the organization.

25:07

There's certain implied things that you've communicated to me.

25:10

I trust you're going to live those things out.

25:13

But here's the thing you have the power through your actions.

25:19

When your words and your actions don't align,

25:23

you have the power to begin feeling my trust with suspicion.

25:28

Your job is just to maintain the trust that I've already given you.

25:32

So I could go on and on about little things like that,

25:35

but there's so many things that encompass

25:38

building an organization that is centered around trust, building an organization

25:43

that has a high performance, self accountable team.

25:46

It's very, very doable. And the things required to do it are easy.

25:53

They're easy little things to do, but it requires the daily disciplines

25:56

to do them. How do you how do you manage, burnout for yourself

26:00

and or your team, like when you when you say high, high performance?

26:04

I mean, and I know creative agencies and I know high performance.

26:07

I know there's a lot of brain that goes into stuff.

26:11

Yeah. So I think first of all, there's a misnomer maybe around high performance.

26:16

So when we talk about high performance, we typically think of the people who are,

26:20

you know, are up drinking coffee at all hours of the night

26:24

trying to get the report out, trying to get the the paper out.

26:27

Not calling you out there might just, you know, we have this dismissed.

26:32

Yeah. Yeah. We have this misnomer that it's the people who are working 24

26:36

seven that are the high performers and in reality, if we step back

26:40

and we say, what does high performance actually look like in this organization?

26:45

And we get clear about it, it removes

26:49

the time constraint.

26:51

So for example, in what we do high performance means a couple of things.

26:55

Number one, it means that we are delivering phenomenal results for our clients.

27:00

So if you're managing a client, if you work for us and you're managing

27:03

a client, I can quickly tell are you a high performer or not?

27:07

Based on the results that you are getting for your clients, right?

27:11

If you're not getting phenomenal result, you're not a high performer,

27:15

you're struggling, and we've got whole processes and systems around

27:19

how to get you to the place of high performance.

27:22

The other that ties into that is the amount of money

27:26

that you can actually manage. In other words, the number of client dollars that you can manage.

27:31

And so until you get to that certain threshold,

27:35

then you're not a high performer. And again, we have systems and processes built in place

27:41

so that performance is not tied to time.

27:44

You know, on average our people here work right around 40 hours a week.

27:48

I personally work probably about 45 hours a week.

27:51

And so there's there's the again, the misnomer between

27:56

high performance and the amount of time required to do that.

28:00

Interesting. That's really cool.

28:02

I'm glad you made that distinction because again, you hear that thing

28:06

and you instantly go to, oh man, these people are getting whipped like.

28:12

Yeah, it's you know, I talk to my team often

28:15

about this idea of work life balance, and I don't believe in it.

28:19

I don't believe that that exists.

28:22

Now, often when people say they don't believe in this idea of work

28:24

life balance, it's because they want you to work a lot more, right?

28:28

They want you to put in more hours.

28:30

What I believe is that we go through seasons of life.

28:35

We go through seasons of work. So there are going to be seasons in your life where you're unable

28:41

to put in as much time, energy and effort here.

28:44

But there's also seasons of your life where based on the client load that you're

28:48

that you have, you may have to put in a little bit more time, energy and effort.

28:52

Right. And so when we have this, this idea that it's always got to be perfectly balanced,

28:57

then we're always frustrated when one side leans too heavy

29:01

and the other one doesn't share. So it creates frustration.

29:05

that's interesting. Where do you do any team building stuff like what do you

29:09

what do you do with a team to keep them cohesive?

29:12

Yeah. So, you know, one of the most challenging things for us, Michael, is we have a hybrid team.

29:17

So, you know, the majority of the team is here in the office in Alexandria.

29:22

But we do have a portion of the team who works remotely.

29:25

We've got somebody in Michigan, we've got some in North Carolina,

29:27

and then we've got somebody down in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

29:30

And that has created a very unique challenge

29:35

because the people here get certain privileges, certain

29:39

benefits, right, for being in office, for the people who are remote,

29:43

have different privileges, different benefits than the people here.

29:48

But the challenge is how do we cohesively, you know, build this team together

29:53

and build the culture where everyone feels heard, everyone feels seen.

29:57

And again, the culture is about high performance and self accountability.

30:01

some things that we do is we're all together once a quarter,

30:05

so we fly in the other team to be here in person once a quarter,

30:09

every single week, every Monday from 145 to 3 p.m..

30:13

We have every person on the team team meeting.

30:16

And there's some there's some magic things that take place in that meeting that

30:20

we've shaped and sculpted over the years that tie back into accountability

30:24

and goals and performance, all that kind of stuff.

30:29

and then we also do one on one. So I meet with the leaders of each department every single week.

30:34

They meet with their direct reports every single week.

30:37

So, you know, there's a lot of things that we do

30:40

together as a team to build that culture,

30:43

learning time. We are reading books together as a team, discussing books together as a team.

30:49

So lots of things like that.

30:51

That's we get a book club. I like it.

30:54

Yeah. That's great. Okay.

30:56

all right. I can allow me to take a right or a left turn.

30:59

Yeah, whichever. I imagine, if you will,

31:03

when it is a beautiful sunny day in Alexandria, Louisiana.

31:08

Yeah. I don't know exactly where your studio is, but we'll say you walk,

31:11

you walk out the front door and you decide to go for a walk along the Red River.

31:16

Is that a thing close to you?

31:18

Yeah, two blocks that way. All right. Cool.

31:20

So you're walking along, and, I don't know,

31:23

maybe you got a path system there or whatever, but,

31:25

you know, as a creative soul, you're probably like water.

31:27

And you're sitting there thinking to yourself,

31:30

Wayne, you say to yourself, I really wish the world knew this one thing.

31:34

What is this one thing that you wish the world knew?

31:38

That consistency creates miracles.

31:43

Ain't that the truth?

31:45

Yeah, I you know, we live

31:47

in this world where we know the things we should do.

31:51

We know the things we shouldn't do, right.

31:54

We know that we should eat healthy. We know that we should get some exercise.

31:58

We know that we should surround ourselves with, you know,

32:00

good people, positive people, people who encourage us and build us up.

32:06

we know that we should call and check on the people we love and care about.

32:09

We know all of these things that we should be doing.

32:12

Little, tiny, tiny things.

32:14

And yet it's those very things that we neglect.

32:17

It's those very things that we don't do consistently.

32:22

And so I just firmly believe that if we can learn to be consistent

32:27

in those little things, it will create miracles in our lives.

32:33

And on that kind of topic,

32:35

one of the things I was out walking,

32:38

I didn't make it to the river, but I was out walking just yesterday

32:42

and I was thinking about this whole idea, this whole notion that,

32:47

you know, how long does it actually take to form a habit?

32:51

Because when we talk about changing our lives or changing organizations,

32:55

people often talk about, you know, I've got these habits

32:57

I either need to break or these habits that I need to create.

33:01

Right. And one of the things that I've reflected on in my life is that,

33:05

you know, we hear the researchers

33:08

say it takes, you know, some say it takes, you know, 30, 30 days.

33:11

Sometimes it takes 67 days. There's, you know, all kinds of stuff.

33:14

You'll hear from all the quote unquote experts on this.

33:17

But one of the things that I thought about in reflecting on my own life

33:21

was that it only takes today.

33:24

That is all it takes to live a completely different life.

33:30

So an example of that would be for me, six years ago,

33:34

I decided I wanted to start running, right.

33:38

and what I discovered

33:40

was that if I set a goal that I'm going to run X number of miles

33:45

in a month, I would never hit the goal, ever.

33:49

I would just never hit the goal.

33:51

It wasn't until that I decided that I was going to run six days a week.

33:56

The distance didn't matter. Yeah, the time didn't matter.

34:00

The only goal was I had to run six days a week.

34:03

And so every single day I would just wake up and say, I'm going to run today.

34:08

That's it. I don't have to commit to doing it tomorrow, but I'm going to run today.

34:13

Yeah. And so I would wake up every single day with that same notion that I'm going to run today.

34:17

And so for me, it's this idea that I don't have

34:22

to set a commitment to do 100 pushups for the next 30 days.

34:26

Yeah, I can decide to do push ups today.

34:30

That's it. Just today and then tomorrow make that same decision just today.

34:34

That is it. I'm going to do the push ups

34:37

and before long that consistency will create a miracle day.

34:41

Wayne. That's awesome. I had no idea where you're going to find this place in this in this show.

34:46

That's so cool. Thank you for that bit.

34:50

That's wicked. And when did when does your book come out?

34:54

And I don't know. Yeah.

34:57

well, so speaking of books, talk to me about books

34:59

that you read or books that your team is reading. Like what are the things that inspire you?

35:03

what do you've got on your shelf? What do you always go back to?

35:06

Any one of those questions?

35:08

Yeah, I love the question and I hate the question if I'm being honest.

35:12

And the reason is this I'm an avid reader, and usually it's the book I'm

35:17

currently reading, Michael, that I'm like, oh man, this is the book.

35:19

Everyone needs this. The one they've got to have. Yeah.

35:22

so books that I go back to

35:25

on a regular basis, the Art of Living by Epictetus.

35:29

Okay, I go back to that book over and over again, time and time again.

35:34

the mountain is you is another one.

35:37

That book had a profound impact on me.

35:40

I think I read it two years ago, maybe in last year, if not two years ago.

35:46

that book, it's a it's about overcoming self-sabotage.

35:50

Phenomenal. Phenomenal book.

35:54

that's a great when I go back to one that always sticks in my head.

35:58

although I don't necessarily return to the book

36:01

and reread the book is a book called The Choice.

36:04

Okay. Excellent book.

36:06

It's a story about a Holocaust survivor telling her story and

36:13

yeah, just I don't want to mess it up for people who read it.

36:16

It's not just about that journey.

36:20

it it's so such a fascinating book.

36:22

She became a counselor later on in life and just talking through all of that.

36:26

Fascinating. So those would be three that definitely come to mind.

36:30

Oh, those are great. Thanks, Wayne. I'm going to put those.

36:32

We've got a little bookshelf in our on our website where I put recommendations.

36:37

And people can just click on the link and buy them right there.

36:39

I'm going to go buy those today. Excellent.

36:42

I don't think you'll be disappointed. I don't think I would be either.

36:46

That sounds it sounds right down my alley. okay. I,

36:51

I when I was growing, I grew up in a place just outside of Toronto in, in Canada.

36:56

So north, much, much further north. You.

36:58

But we would go, hunting for crawdads to play with.

37:04

Do you have crawdads? You have to have crawdads right there.

37:08

Little lobsters. That's a thing for you, right?

37:10

Yep. Different. Different name here, but same same thing.

37:14

What do they call down there? Crawfish. Oh. Crawfish.

37:17

All right. Yep. It's a huge it's a huge thing here to eat crawfish right.

37:23

Yeah. You pull off their heads or something like that or. Yeah yeah yeah.

37:26

You do tell me you know, people try to eat sometimes the little

37:30

the little claws on them, all that kind of stuff.

37:33

It's it's a huge thing here. Okay.

37:35

Well, and to that end, how is the cuisine in Alexandria?

37:40

It is good. you know, I've had the privilege of traveling a decent amount.

37:44

Yeah. And the way that we season foods here are very, very flavorful.

37:51

Very. You know, I don't want to say spicy

37:53

because it's not necessarily spicy, but just a lot of flavor in the food.

37:58

It's it's different than you can really get anywhere else in the country.

38:02

I mean, it's it's unique. Our food here is definitely unique.

38:05

What's the what's the place to go grab a bite in Alexandria?

38:09

If I rode in there on my motorcycle this summer, where would I go?

38:14

man, there's so many options.

38:17

We'd have to do a little food tour. Okay? We'd have to do. Yeah, okay. That's fair.

38:21

I mean, you have to go try some crawfish, I'm sure.

38:24

yeah, I don't I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.

38:27

We we. Yeah, I don't know. Oh we'll see.

38:31

That's really cool. Okay. So you mentioned travel. Where what's your favorite place to travel?

38:38

man, I just love getting outside of, you know, it's very small town.

38:43

Yeah. so I love getting out, exploring other places.

38:46

there's there's no where I don't enjoy going, at least for a day.

38:50

Right? I mean, I just love being in new places.

38:53

I love experiencing,

38:55

kind of downtown areas.

38:58

Typically. Yeah, I love coffee, love coffee shops, love sitting

39:03

and just observing people watching people drinking a cup of coffee

39:07

and just the sights and sounds of people coming and going.

39:10

That's that's my thing, I love it.

39:12

Do you, do you journal or do you have a sketchbook, like, is there,

39:16

are you a pen to paper type tactile person?

39:19

I am, yeah, I do journal, every single morning.

39:22

I do a little bit of journaling and, I even use sitting right in front of me.

39:27

I use a physical paper planner.

39:30

I do have a, you know, I use Google calendar, but everything gets transferred to my paper planner.

39:36

Here is sketching notes everywhere.

39:39

And you know. Absolutely.

39:42

Yeah. I'm also I am the same way.

39:45

There's a you can't beat it really?

39:48

No, not at all. it for me the pin to paper connection.

39:53

Yeah. Right. There's something about that.

39:56

I don't know what it is. I'm sure somebody smarter than me

39:58

can tell me what that is, but there's something about it. Yeah, there's something about it, for sure.

40:01

I've even tried drawing on my iPad, which is really nice,

40:04

because you can do all this cool stuff on your iPad and like,

40:06

all these different brushes and stuff like that, and you get paper, like put on top,

40:10

big plug for paper, like, feel free to sponsor the show.

40:12

But what I find is that it's just not the same as,

40:16

you know, an actual pen or pencil on the paper.

40:20

Yeah, I like that. That's awesome.

40:23

What is a what's something that you do just for you, Wayne.

40:25

What's a what's a Wayne Mullins guilty pleasure

40:29

and probably some time on the motorcycle.

40:32

Are you right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

40:35

my people dealing with dealing with a dead battery right now.

40:38

So working on getting that resolved, because the weather here is getting

40:42

really nice motorcycle weather. And, I enjoy, you know, going out again.

40:47

We live kind of rural area, but going out on a lot of these backroads

40:51

and just going for a few hours, making kind of big loops

40:55

around some of these back roads and there's something about that

40:58

that, you know, you can't enter the phone, you can't look at a text message

41:03

you can't like, it's just you, the road, the wind, your thoughts.

41:07

Yeah. It's beautiful. And the smells always the smells are.

41:11

Oh, that is so cool. So you're poor bike with, with a broken battery.

41:15

What? What do you ride? I have an Indian scout bobber.

41:20

Oh. Very nice, very nice. Yeah.

41:22

So just a little, you know, it's a around town type of bike.

41:27

It's one you're going to take on a huge cruise somewhere.

41:30

It's just. Yeah, it's too uncomfortable for that to go on super long distances,

41:34

but for, you know, scooting around town and, you know, short trips.

41:39

It's great. Oh, that's so cool.

41:41

I applaud you. And I'm hoping to go for a big ride this summer, so maybe I'll swing

41:46

down your way and, knock on your door, take me on that food tour.

41:49

Yeah. Show me the Red River. You.

41:52

You've got, BMW?

41:55

yeah, I've got a BMW, TT

41:58

1250 and, Suzuki Boulevard, 1500.

42:02

But I love riding the BMW for a long distance.

42:06

Yeah. It's like. Yeah, it's kick ass

42:09

like a like a Cadillac. Well, I don't I don't even know how to explain it.

42:12

It's like it's an extension of me. Like it's not even.

42:15

It doesn't even feel like a vehicle. Just feels like I'm part of all of this.

42:19

Yeah. The environment around you. Yeah. And you don't have to think about it. You just.

42:23

It just does it. And. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

42:27

It's a it's a great bike. Certainly.

42:29

And great for distance.

42:32

Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. You should do the, you should take the podcast on the road.

42:37

I'm thinking about it. I'm supposed to be down in Vegas this summer, which is going to be hot as hell,

42:43

I imagine, but, yeah, throw all the kit in the back

42:46

and and head down and just interview people along the way.

42:50

Yeah, that's a super cool hell of a good idea, Wayne.

42:53

All right, all right, well, put you on the list.

42:55

If I get down that way, let's do it.

42:57

We'll get some food. Yeah. Right on.

42:59

okay, so one of my favorite parts of the show,

43:03

of course, is the advice that we give to others.

43:06

So, you know, we can call them rebels in waiting.

43:09

We can call them, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs,

43:14

big business CEOs, people that are just like, oh, I got to make a choice.

43:18

But whoever these people are, they're standing on on the precipice of something.

43:23

And I really just love getting people's

43:27

advice for how to how to navigate that.

43:30

How do you make that choice? How do you what do you do?

43:32

So what advice do you have for these people when.

43:36

That's that's a tough question.

43:38

Yeah. It's a question I love. It is it's a question I love.

43:42

you know, so my context for answering that question comes from,

43:47

you know, my environment and the people who come to me with similar questions.

43:53

And one of the things right now that is very, prevalent

43:57

is this idea of figuring out your purpose.

44:00

So I have a lot of people coming to me saying, you know, I've got option

44:03

A, option B, but I just don't know if it fits into my purpose.

44:08

And I really don't know what my purpose even is yet.

44:12

How do I find my purpose and what I've discovered for myself is that,

44:17

first of all, purpose

44:20

and usefulness come from the same root word.

44:24

They come from the same Latin word.

44:27

And so when we think about trying to find our purpose,

44:31

we have to remember that purpose really means usefulness.

44:35

How do we find what we are useful at?

44:39

And there's two important things about that. When we are useful, we are typically serving others.

44:46

We're using our innate gifts and abilities and talents

44:50

to help other people accomplish their goals, solve

44:54

their problems, fix things, solve things, whatever it may be.

44:58

And the interesting thing is,

45:01

we can't discover our purpose, our usefulness.

45:05

Sitting in a room with a journal and a piece of paper.

45:10

We can't do it that way because we don't know how we can be useful

45:15

until we begin experimenting, until we begin putting ourselves out there

45:19

testing our skills, testing our abilities,

45:22

trying to figure out how do we serve other people?

45:24

How do we give back to other people when we jump in with that perspective?

45:29

In that approach, it's amazing what happens, right?

45:33

I think we often get hung up

45:36

on the decision.

45:38

And I love this analogy of doors.

45:42

So we think about a door. There's a one way door and there's revolving doors in more often

45:50

than not, the decision that you or I are facing it is not a one way door.

45:55

In other words, do I leave my job, my current job, and pursue this other job?

46:00

For the most part, that is not going to be a one way door.

46:04

Meaning if I were to leave my job and go take another job,

46:09

could I come back to work for the same company?

46:12

Maybe so, maybe not. But could I probably get another job

46:16

doing the same type of work in the same field that I was in before?

46:20

There's a pretty good chance, if I was decent at it, that I could do that.

46:23

So in that example, that's a revolving door.

46:27

But in our brains, we view that decision

46:29

to leave my job and try something new as a one way door.

46:33

We think if I leave this job and step out and try something

46:36

new, I'm never going to get my life back to the way it was.

46:39

If it doesn't work out right and reality

46:42

most often it is just a revolving door.

46:46

We may not be the same job, we may not get in the exact same situation,

46:51

but we can get back pretty close if things don't work out.

46:54

Damn, that's outstanding.

46:58

You know, when I've had a lot of moments

47:01

in this short period of time we've had together.

47:04

So thank you for that. Thank you for really, really appreciate that.

47:10

talk to me about and I guess sort of I'd like to leave it here.

47:16

yeah. The weekend's coming up, and your your,

47:21

beautiful Louisiana.

47:24

What plans? What would you do with your family on a weekend?

47:27

Like, what's kind of the the decompression Mullins

47:30

family adventure time?

47:33

so that's been different for us of recent.

47:36

we're in the process of building a house, selling our current house.

47:41

And so we've been doing a lot of weekend projects.

47:44

Yeah, on both the existing house and on the new house.

47:49

Yeah, but outside of that, we are we are very, I would say, adventurous.

47:56

for the most part, we love outdoors.

47:58

We love, you know, hiking, being out on some trails.

48:01

We have some wonderful national forest around here that we can hike through.

48:06

all, you know, within 15, 20 minutes,

48:09

bike rides as a family.

48:12

you know, we love going out to eat as a family.

48:15

That's one of our favorite things to do is go out and enjoy a good meal together

48:19

as a family. I love that. So, you know, just it's all the it's all the,

48:24

we're active. So, I mean, we love, you know, last night, for example, it's not the weekend,

48:29

but last night our family does kickboxing, so we're all in a kickboxing class.

48:34

So yes,

48:36

it's, I will say this, that

48:38

it is a great form of marriage therapy and counseling.

48:43

So when my wife spar against each other, it's a wonderful,

48:46

wonderful therapy session. That's awesome.

48:51

Isn't that the truth? oh, yeah, I could see that.

48:55

And there's nothing like just sweating it out.

48:57

And you know, pummeling on each other a little bit to, you know,

49:02

to get the juices flowing. I guess that's great.

49:04

Yeah. Wayne, this has been an absolute pleasure, and it's been so lovely

49:09

having you on the show. Thanks so much for joining us today.

49:13

Thank you so much for that opportunity, Michael.

49:15

And the invite. And again, if you if you make the motorcycle trip, definitely let me know.

49:19

Oh yes sir. It will.

49:22

Thank you so much for listening. I've been your host, Michael Dargie, and this has been the Rebel Rebel

49:25

Podcast as a podcast for creative rebels and entrepreneurs all over the world.

49:29

And hey, if you're a rebel or you know a rebel,

49:32

why don't you head on over to the rebelrebelpodcast.com and fill out our guest

49:36

request form. We'll get back to you within 24 hours, and maybe we can share your story with you.

49:41

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