S11E05: Adaptability and leading change, with Jason Feifer (editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur.com)

Richard Medcalf
Jason, Hi and welcome to the show.

Jason Feifer
Thanks for having me.

Richard Medcalf
Hey, I'm gonna jump straight in. You've just written a really interesting book build for tomorrow and I want to know, how on earth can anybody who on earth start their four part methodology with panic? How can that be in any methodology?

Jason Feifer
That's really funny. Boy. So the for those who don't know, the fourth step methodology, well, it's not a methodology so much as the phases that we go through and then I give you methods to manage them is panic, adaptation, new normal wouldn't go back, you know, it's funny. I, when, when I thought about this, and kind of developed it, I thought, there's something similar. It's like, well, what do you do with panic, but then I realized that panic is the thing that is most recognizable and relatable and it's, it's, it's nice to start with something where people immediately get to say, Oh, I see myself in that I am in the panic phase right now, or I just got through the panic phase and I'm not exactly sure what to do next. So I found that starting it in a way in which it's, you know, as as a guy who comes from media, I think a lot about on ramps is a constant thing that I'm thinking about whenever we're making a magazine, whenever I'm writing an article, what is the on ramp for people? How do people get into this? Is this Is there an accessible enough entry point for people? And and I think panic actually functions as that.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. So I don't know whether you you know, there's been someone over the over the pond, obviously but in Britain, they're they're really famous TV programs, or Dad's Army, which was wartime comedy of all the kind of the old people who would be left behind to form the Home Guard, they will retire people, very famous thing and, you know, one of the corporals is always running around shouting, don't panic, don't panic, but of course, panic, you working himself up into a blind panic at the time. So I don't really hit the deep end there. So we probably want to rewind a bit but I think it's really interesting because like, Okay, so we're taught, so let's find out what this books about what what your work is about at the moment. So phase one, this first part of the process is around, okay, we're panicking. So we need to let's kind of zoom back out, what are we panicking about? Right, right? What's the problem that you've been researching and working on over these last few years?

Jason Feifer
Yes. So right, so let's give some context here. So I, as editor in chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, I used to get asked all the time, when I would, I got this job, I was 2016 and I started going on podcasts, people start inviting me to event and they kept asking me this questions. Question was, what are the qualities of a successful leader or entrepreneur? And I was trying to understand why people keep asking me this one question and I came to realize that if you listen to the questions that people ask you, what you discover is that questions are really people telling you what they think your value is to them and if you can understand how they see you, and see your value to them, then you can anticipate it and be even more valuable. So pretty powerful insight and so I thought, Well, okay, why are people asking this question? The reason they're asking me this question is because they see me as a pattern matcher, as an editor in chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, I get to talk to everybody, and therefore I get to see the patterns across individuals both, you know, incredibly successful and unsuccessful in their own right, but that aren't famous or anything, and, and see what it is that drives their success and I thought, Okay, well, I need an answer to this question and I didn't have one and so I spent years talking to people, interviewing people researching, and came to the conclusion that the most successful people are the most adaptable. It's the thing that drives longevity in business and then the question is, well, okay, well, then what are they doing? How are they doing it? It doesn't seem to be a skill, skill people are born with it's a skill people are learning and so I didn't have an answer until the pandemic because the pandemic was when we got to see everybody go through the same change at the same time and then diverge and that was fascinating and that's when I came to this realization that everybody goes through changes in these four phases, panic, adaptation, new normal one, go back, because even the people who moved fast during the pandemic, they did panic, they just panic for a shorter period of time, or it didn't, it wasn't as debilitating. Or they used that panic to drive action in a way that some people their panic drives inaction and that was what I ultimately wanted to understand was what are people doing? How are they doing it and how can we all move through these phases faster so we can all get to wouldn't go back.

Richard Medcalf
Got it. Okay, so yeah, so so your your book is really about and what you've been researching is really about how to be adaptable, right? And, and you've used the pandemic is one example of that, but presumably phenomics, kind of obviously, hopefully fading out.

Jason Feifer
A unique experience. Yes. Yeah.

Richard Medcalf
So what? So here's the question, why do we keep panicking as change hits us? I mean, what is that about?

Jason Feifer
That's about confusing, change with loss. You know, and this is, this is something I came to recognize as a pattern throughout history as I studied the history of innovation, which I'm fascinated by and also about how entrepreneurs and individuals navigate change and then I found it rooted in psychology which is loss aversion theory, which is that you know, sort of decades old, long confirmed theory that that we are naturally more focused on protecting against loss than we are in gain we will we will obsess over what we might have lost rather than what we what we gain I remember it myself in this is a slightly dated reference now, because Bitcoin is in the is in the toilet, but but when, but when Bitcoin was on the rise, I bought it very early and I bought it at $4,000 a Bitcoin I sold it at $16,000 a Bitcoin and so I made some nice money, not a lot. I mean, I bought to Bitcoin. So we're not talking about riches here but then I just was sour as it like, reached the 50s and 60s, you know, 60, because $60,000 Mark, because I just kept thinking about all the money, I could have earned, all the things that I perceived this as a loss, even though it was a gain, I made money and we've all experienced some version of this, we always focus on loss over gains. So when change happens, the first thing that we do is we identify the thing that we're going to lose, we say, because this is changing, I will no longer have access to this thing that I am comfortable with or familiar with, or the way that I've always been doing it, and that I experienced as loss and then because we want to know the future, we extrapolate the loss. So we say because I have lost this, I will therefore lose that because I've lost that I will lose this other thing and now I've lost my status, or I've lost my connections, or I've lost my relevancy to my consumer, whatever the case is, we focus so much on loss that we don't even begin to try to hypothesize or seek the game that will come from the change and that is ultimately what we need to do.

Richard Medcalf
I just found it fascinating. Yeah, so I can see that plays out so often. Now, in terms of this podcast, and the audience, but many people on this Listen, are already successful. Business leaders, entrepreneurs, they're probably thinking, you know, hey, I don't have any problem with changing.

Jason Feifer
Tires. You know, this? Yeah,

Richard Medcalf
I thrive with change. So, and they probably also thinking, you know, what, the people, the people around me in my organization, my teens, my people, yeah, they're the ones who seem to be resisting my vision and, and, and the, the evolution we need to make and I've many of my clients are like that. So I'm wondering, what what would you what would you say to those people, you know, is there something that you've learned through this, which either might be an aha for them? Or a different way of looking at it? Or? Yeah, what comes to mind is I kind of paint that picture of that kind of already entrepreneurial leader.

Jason Feifer
So it's a great, it's a great question and it's one that comes up a lot, I do a lot of speaking to executive groups and let me give you two answers to that. The first one is, I think leaders often forget that they have had a lot more time to think about and adjust to whatever new idea they have, or new changes coming than the people who they're introducing it to. Right, it's not fair to expect that your team get on board much faster than you got on board because there was so much time before you introduced a new idea to your team that you were thinking about it. You were adapting to it. I mean, Haven't we all done versions of this in our own work? I sure I sure have myself where I have an idea for something new. Or maybe I say, You know what this thing that I've been doing, I don't think that it's working as well as it should, and I should change and that idea feels terrifying and it doesn't leave my brain. I haven't articulated it to anybody else. I haven't done anything about it. I sat with it for a while and eventually I got to see a way through it. I adapted to it and then eventually got to the point where I introduced it to other people. Now, I need to give those people that same grace and time to recognize the hidden value of this that I myself didn't see at first. So let's let's not forget that we had more time with the change than the team that we are introducing In a job, that's an important recognition. Next, here's a problem that we have as leaders, introducing new ideas to our teams, but also a mistake that we, as producers of a product or service have, when we are introducing something new to our consumer, it's the same problem and here it is, we are so familiar with it and this is similar to what I was just talking about but let me take it a step further, we are so familiar with it, that we cannot and do not recognize that the people that we're introducing it to do not understand it nearly as well as we do and therefore there is this gap and what we need to do is build what I like to call a bridge of familiarity. That is to say that we need to recognize where people are right now and how what we need to give them is not the sense that we are taking away things that are comfortable and familiar to them, but rather that we are giving them a new way to do something that they are already comfortable with, right? What are their goals? What are their needs? What are their problems? They already have some kind of answer to all those things. So instead of ripping that answer away, how can we upgrade that answer? You know what people don't like? They don't like new things, you know what they like, they like better versions of old things. So we need to build a bridge of familiarity, which starts with where they are and then we build the bridge, not from us to them, but from them to us. I'll give you a just the tiniest example but one that I just love because it's so colorful and fun. Which is there's a there's a snack food brand called Wild brand y wy LD, and they used to, they used to make a product that taste tested very well. People loved it when they tasted it. It did not sell, put it on shelves. Nobody bought it. It was called Chicken chips. It's they look like potato chips, but it's made out of chicken and it's called chicken chips and people wouldn't buy it. You know why? Because that sounds disgusting. That's just disgusting. Got it? I wouldn't eat that but the product is really good. So how can we fix this? Well, here's the thing. Nobody's ever eaten chicken chips before. It's foreign. It's weird. It's asking me to step out of my comfort zone and do something that I'm unfamiliar with fur on unclear value, so they rebranded they stopped calling a chicken chips. You know what it says on the on the back now really big. It says Protein Chips, that one little shift? Because Protein Chips sounds like protein bars sounds like protein powder sounds like protein shakes, we know protein. There's an audience of people for protein and where did the protein come from? Well, in this case, it comes from chicken. But that one shift unlocked growth for this brand and now it's selling very, very well. How? Because they started with what is my? What is my customer familiar with? What problem am I solving that is already being solved for them, but that I can solve better? Let's start with them and build a bridge from them to me.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, yeah, fantastic example. It reminds me of a phrase which I quite liked, which is that people don't actually give a don't resist change, they resist being changed. Yeah, it's quite a nice thing, because you're speaking to that point there is that when people get to think about things and experiment and introduce, they will actually change and I'd say anybody who thinks people resist change, just need to look at what happens when you give your teenage daughter, her first mobile phone or whatever. I mean, people can adapt very, very quickly when they want to, and they see the value. So...

Jason Feifer
Yeah, that's right and look people, people they like, why is your team resistant to change? It's because the images, think about the loss that they're going to perceive, right? They're going to see that some change inside the company is possibly going to be destabilizing to their job, to their status, that they used to know how to do something very well and they may not be as valued anymore because of some shift. They don't. They're not resisting the new idea that you have. They're resisting all the effects of that idea and so what you need to do is make sure that you understand what is important to them, and what helps them feel stable and then make sure that this new idea gives them an upgraded version of the things that are most important to them. This is I think the problem is is is not that people don't want to do better. The problem is that they don't want to lose footing and we have to make sure that we tell them the story and show them the path so that they you'll like what we are introducing, we'll help them be successful, too.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, nice. So we started off this, this framework that you have around adaptability and prepare a good transition of transversing through change and we talked about panic at the very start and then I know you also referred to it, this wouldn't go back, which is the the fourth step or the fourth phase in this process. So don't just kind of zoom forward to wouldn't go back and explain. What what's that about right in this people have this change? It feels difficult. People might, we started to make we stopped by panicking about it. How do we get to a stage where we don't want to go back? What did you find?

Jason Feifer
Well, so what we write the phrase wouldn't go back to me is that you reach this moment where you say, I have something so new and valuable that I wouldn't want to go back to a time before I had it and that often comes out of discovering that there was a better way to do the thing that you maybe didn't think could ever be upgraded. Just a quick, small business story that I love that that illustrates this is there's a woman named Lena. She has a wig shop in Baltimore, Maryland, called Llinas wigs and Lena it was a storefront which is operated like a storefront people come in off the street shop for wigs and then the pandemic arrives and Lina cannot operate as a storefront anymore because there are these lockdowns people can't come in off the street. She's trying to figure out how can what can she do? How can she continue to operate business? Well, the only thing she can think of is not some radical idea but rather, it was something that she had always been aware of, and always thought was a bad idea for her business and that was to move to appointment only to only allow people to come in if they make an appointment online first. Now, why would that be bad for her business? Well, for obvious reasons, because she's thinking, I don't want to create friction, I don't want to make it harder for people to shop with me and online, or online appointments means that someone has to think about it in advance schedule a time come in later but she has to do it and so she does and here is what she discovers two things. Number one, sales and profits rise. Number two, customers are happier. Why? Well, because here's the thing, you know, who doesn't? You know, who doesn't buy wigs, people who walk in off the street, you know, buy wigs. They browse wigs and you know who does buy wigs, people who are buying for very personal reasons, generally religious or health reasons, those people are actually incredibly happy to have a personal experience where they are not shopping surrounded by a bunch of randos, who walk in off the street. Lena didn't recognize that because she thought there was one way to run her business and as a result, she was paying somebody a staffer to greet the people who come in off the street and don't buy wigs at the expense of people who do buy wigs and it wasn't until she was forced to make this change, that she discovered that there was a much better way to run her business and now her business is primarily appointment only. It has a heavy digital presence that it never did before. She is selling more and she is working less she has reached wouldn't go back and...

Richard Medcalf
So let me interrupt because that is fascinating but I'm what's going on in my mind is well hang on Jason but that means that the only way to improve our business is to wait for crisis situation.

Jason Feifer
Right

Richard Medcalf
It's gonna force us to rethink.

Jason Feifer
Right, but no, because or and that's a great, that's a great point and that is I think what a lot of people think, I mean, this is if you want to understand the dysfunction of government, then you just watch that idea that you just articulated play out in real life, right, which is to say that nobody takes action until there is a crisis but that's not how it has to be. We don't have to do that. We can instead be constantly asking, What would improve this? What can I do today? That would improve the business? Alright, what what change could I make? That might seem anathema to the business, but that would actually improve the business. So where do those ideas come from? I think that they come from being in incredibly close contact with our audience so that we know what their evolving needs are. I mean, just just think about what would have happened had Lena asked her customers not just about what they liked about her her business but what they don't like or what you know, what would what would make their lives better. She might have started to hear people asking for more private experiences, she might have started to experiment with ways to give people more private experiences, then she would have discovered that actually All of her best customers are asking for these private experiences. Now who, whose? Where is there? Is there any money coming in from people who are not asking for private experiences? No. Well, what is it going? Why do I Why am I doing anything but the private experiences, right? This could have this could have been there by by constantly asking, you know, there are some questions that we can and I think should we should be asking ourselves on a regular basis. One of my favorite ones is this. What is this for? What is this for? Because when you ask that, and you try to draw out function from every thing that you're doing in your business, you start to realize that actually, the the function may change over time, or there may be no function at all, in my line of work, for example, you know, I, I've worked in traditional media for the majority of my career, national magazines and newspapers, and what had you asked, what is content four decades ago? The answer would have been very clear, what content is for is content is for monetization. You can sell ads against the content right adjacent to the content and content or you can or and you can sell subscriptions to the content, right? But now, that is much harder, is much harder to do not say impossible, but the the the available advertising and subscription dollars are shrinking rapidly and I don't think that they're ever going to reverse course. So then you must ask yourself, well, what is content for now? If it's not for monetization? Is it for anything? Should we all just like close up shop and the answer is no. To me, content is for relationships. That's what content is for. Now, with that answer, I can start to think of entirely different business models. If content is for relationships, then what is the relationship for? Well, the relationship is because it's for trust, and people will buy products and services you from you, because they trust you because of the content, which means that immediate company needs to start expanding outward into products and services that will deliver upon the trust that they have built, because the content entrepreneur, for example, is doing that right now, in all sorts of ways. I mean, we're not structured as a product business. So it's slow, going to be honest, but but we're starting to think about what would people trust us with? Is it is it consulting? Is it tools and resources? Is it is it is it help with writing and distribution of ideas and those are already turning into a very interesting and in some cases, significant lines of business and that we don't need to wait for a crisis. In order to do that. We just need to be constantly asking questions like what is this for and then taking the answer seriously,

Richard Medcalf
I say that's, that's any one of them, my only role was in consulting and the company that was that had a publications business. This is a couple of decades ago, right publications, business, and consulting and the publication business was much, much more well known but never really made that much money, right in the scheme of things but the brand value and recognition, and everything was massively valuable to the other part of the business and so it was like, well, we can't really close this down, even though it doesn't make any money because it's actually generating value in other ways. So it's great, interesting.

Jason Feifer
And as long as you have that answer, then you understand what to do with it. I mean, why does Red Bull produce the amount of content that it does, right? If you love extreme sports, then Red Bull is your place. They they have all these events for you. They have a magazine, their website, they have videos goes on and on and on. They don't make any money off of that. They make money on energy drinks, if people buy because they like that content.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so this is great. So let's just kind of zoom back out a little bit. I'm talking about this, this this journey of adaptability and you talked to the start about why you can why you wrote the book, the people were asking you about what makes a great entrepreneur or business leader. Why did you really write the book? I mean, what I mean by that is, you could have picked all sorts of things that people were asking or things that are going in conversation, but there's something about this topic, which fascinated you resonated with you spoke to your past, I don't know something probably was there because yeah, but to really do the work that you've done on this book. So what was it that lit? lit a fire in you?

Jason Feifer
Yeah, I love that. I mean, look, there are two answers to any question, right. There's the there's the public answer, and then there's the strategic answer and, and you heard the public answer. So I'll give you the strategic answer. The strategic answer is this. Years and years ago, when I first became editor in chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, I came to this realization about a year in which was that this is a, this is a massive opportunity that goes beyond just doing a good job at the magazine, although, of course, I want to do a good job at the magazine but this now puts me in a public role and people have expectations of me but also are interested in me in a way that they weren't before i before this, I was a, I was a, an editor at other magazines, but nobody cares about the editor unless they're the editor in chief and, and so I started to explore speaking, it seemed like a really good business but I was struggling to get any speaking gigs outside of like, yo, yo, entrepreneur, organization and YPO and stuff and, and I was talking to somebody in the industry and they said to me, you know what your problem is, we'll tell you your problem. Your problem is that the majority of the best gigs in speaking are like corporate gigs, because they're endless, and they pay well. The problem for you is that as the editor in chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, these corporate event, Booker's are all going to think that if they bring you in to talk to your, their team, that you're just going to tell their team to quit their jobs and start their own businesses and I realized that the challenge that I had was that I hadn't defined myself outside of my job title. Two people didn't know me as anything outside of just that I had this role and so then they were just going to make an assumption about the role and I started to think, well, what could I be known for? What do I have to offer that is uniquely me in this space that I believe in? That, that excites me, that I have a personal connection with? But that also let's be frank, has a market value? What is that?

Richard Medcalf
We could drill down into that strategic answer, which I think it's great that you're giving but I want to pick up on what you just said about why it resonates, right? I believe in this topic. It resonates with me. So I suppose that's why I want to go because there is cheating answer and which is very clear. As you said, you need to have a public persona for something, I get it but you chose this topic of adapting. So what was it that was significant to you personally about that?

Jason Feifer
What was what was significant about it was I, I spent, I spent the first maybe year or two as editor in chief of Entrepreneur Magazine trying to figure out what was the overlap of my experience and my audience's experience? Because I will be totally honest with you. I, well, I've already given you the answer. Actually, I have a media background, I don't have a business background, I have never built and sold a company. So what on earth am I doing telling other people how to run their businesses? It's It's absurd. It's absurd. It's gross but I'm and it's the reason why, by the way, when somebody hires me to come in and talk to their executive teams, the first words out of my mouth, as soon as I get up on stage are, I'm not here to tell you how to run your business, you know how to do that and then the next thing I say is, is what what I am here to do is tell you how incredibly smart people think, because that's what I'm good at, I'm under, I'm good at understanding how people think and, and that's, that's true, like I, what I am good at is sitting down with people, and understanding the decisions that they've made and the rationales of those decisions and then figuring out how to communicate those ways, it those those ideas in ways that are going to be like coherent and attractive and memorable to others. That's my skill set and the way that I have built my career is by taking a lot of risks and reinventing myself and running into a lot of dead ends and, and, you know, I mean, I've bounced around everywhere. I've worked at men's magazines, I've worked in local news and I constantly forced myself to build different skill sets, reinvent, rethink, be uncomfortable, and I found that entrepreneurs do exactly the same thing and I realized, that's where I can relate and that's where I can speak honestly, and, and somebody else can tell them the exact way to 10x their revenue. I can't that's not my skill set but I can definitely tell you how people think because I've done it myself and I know that my audience does and struggles with it too and like that's the space where I can live so that's where I thought I could be I could be strategic but also authentic and that's the pairing you want.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, I love it. It's the I talk a lot in my own business about strategy leadership and purpose and are and I love greater strategy. I've been born strategist right I mean, my career right? You know, I've always been strategic but I realized that you have to be moved yourself before you can Move others and you have to have something which is deeply meaningful for you to be strategic about otherwise, it all gets very political, right? Not bringing people with you and that's what I wanted to kind of try and just start diving a little bit deeper to find that thing. Just like yeah, this is what I've done this all my life, I've always been adaptable. I've always been understanding how people think and that's the gift that I can bring, which is what, which is why I can hear from you.

Jason Feifer
Yeah, you know, I was to say, I really appreciate that and I love that that's you just kind of drove towards that analysis, just offer one other thought on top of what you just said, which is that I've come to this theory that everybody in the world, every human being in the world has the exact same skill and that skill is pattern matching. The difference among us is what patterns we are good at matching and some people I have met people who have discovered that the thing that they are best at in life, is walking into a failing business and figuring out how to save it. That's that's just, that's they are really good at that. It's what they do but then after that, they gotta leave because they're not good at scaling that business. They're good at saving, right? And, and so once they figure that out, they know exactly what their value is, I have figured out that for me. Like, the pattern that I'm really good at, is how people think through problems. I've just, I understand it, I talk to people about it, and I see what they've done and I can overlay it with what I've learned from other people and I thought once I realized that about myself, I thought, well, that's where I can live. That's the space that where I can provide the most value.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, I love it and that brings me on to another question as we start to think about winding up here but I love this question, which is about to talk about pattern matching and to do that, it made me think about, I've been getting tuning up my own sense of mission in the world and what actually I do is always thinking about what how I want to describe what I do, I realized that what I'm about and what exploration is about is helping entrepreneurial leaders create and seize breakthrough opportunities that are changing the world and what I mean by that is, it's when you need an exponential kind of thinking, right? You can't stay with the incremental because these are breakthrough opportunities that are beyond the realms of our of our, of our current reality, I suppose you'd say so I want to ask you. You've done this week, you know, you've done this deep work of coming up with the book. You've got your day job, you've got your speaking gigs got everything else. What are your breakthrough opportunities that are just that this year? What's coming to mind, as they say that you might not have thought about? I'm putting you on the spot but what comes to mind when I talk about what would those be breakthrough game changing opportunities for you, Jason?

Jason Feifer
Coming or that have that have already?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, well, let me know what you think, in your field of vision.

Jason Feifer
Great question. Well, okay. There are there are a couple, there are a couple of things. Number one, I Okay, so one of the things that I do in addition to what we've already described or discussed is podcasting. I have these, I have these shows that I've been hosting for by myself for a while, what I do with entrepreneur, what I've been doing by myself, it's a complicated show and I've really struggled to scale it i people who listen to it, love it, they I have people who have been listening to this thing for years and years, but I just can't seem to scale it has, like it's plateaued and it's it's killing me and I have made the decision this year to put that on hiatus and shift my energy towards another show that I'm doing with a friend who has built a team. That friend is Nicole Lapin, she is a she's a money ex best selling money expert, we have this new show, it's called Help Wanted and it's it's about helping people. Like it's so new that I don't have the like one liner but what we you know, what we want to do is we want it we want to help people achieve the things that they want to achieve and, and we're going to do that by a lot of times by kind of digging into real world examples. So you know, we talked about how to build connections, I'm going to go through my inbox and and talk about and sort of share good and terrible emails that I got. We talk about how to set boundaries, we're going to bring one of her employees on on mic and talk about how we're all texting at 11pm and how do we set boundaries here and anyway, it's been it's been a lot of fun, but I'll tell you like one of the breakthroughs that I really want from this is what does it look like when I partner with others? Because I've been doing things by myself too long and I want to see what it's like when I take a step back. Don't do everything by self, allow others to do a lot of these things and, and become part of something, obviously I do that with Entrepreneur Magazine, but that's different. It's an established company, this is this is something that's fresh new mind, but that is now going to be others too, I think and expect it, that's going to be real revelatory experience for me and that, I'm going to discover that a lot of the growth that I was missing in my solo shows came because there was just never enough energy available to figure out what was required to grow this and that, and that having the right team is going to is going to help. So that it's like team building is is is a big breakthrough for me and then you know, another one is thinking about, you know, I have had years of people asking me, what's the plan? Now, I, here I am I'm Editor in Chief, this magazine, which I've been doing since 2016. Got the book, I've got the podcast, because speaking of a bunch of other things, I used to start revising what's the plan? And I don't have a great answer to that. What's the plan, the plan is to keep building but you know, like to what end and, and I've I've been having and this is so fresh that I don't have any details for you. But I've been having some interesting conversations with people not about like leaving entrepreneur right now, but just about like, how to think about myself and how to understand like, where am I going and what am I doing? I sat down with a CEO of a very large well known company recently, and we just got talking very personally and, and he was pushing me to think about, like, what I am in different ways that I was I just found really energizing and so I think part of this year, the breakthrough for me will be to have a better answer to what the plan is.

Richard Medcalf

Yeah, that's great. So I'm gonna let you off the hook for my next question, which is how do you want to change the world, right? Part of that that phrase, but I am respect you for it. Like don't calling yourself on that and saying, You know what, I need to have this planet for me, it's a lesson might not be a plan. The way I like to describe it is a 25 year vision spread about that if you only have to do 1% Every quarter, so take the pressure off.

Jason Feifer
Right, that's great.

Richard Medcalf
But what is the 1%? Right, that's gonna move towards that thing, which is that exponential goal that feels the way I'd say it's gonna put a stupid grin on your face, because you're so embarrassed to talk about it, but it lights you up. Right?

Jason Feifer
Yeah.

Richard Medcalf
And that's, that's where some of the magic lies. Well, hey, Jason, it's been really fun conversation, before we leave, kind of just tell people where they can find you and just say, like, just remind us what the books called where they can, you know, best find out about that?

Jason Feifer
Yeah. So you know, thanks. This has been great. I, you know, I always enjoyed chatting with you. So the book is called build for tomorrow and you can find it on Amazon or wherever you get books, there is a UK edition as well. So I know what's out there. People told me that they've seen it in bookstores in London, which is very cool but you know, wherever you books, it's also available on audiobook, I read it myself, or ebook and and then if you want to reach me, you can do so at jasonfeifer.com. That's my email, or that's my website address, but you can find my email in my social media handles in my newsletter, which is which is about adaptability, as well. All there. So anyway, jasonfeifer.com and I would love to hear from you.

Richard Medcalf
Well, Jason, hey, it's been fun. I really love your insights about about the the concept of adaptability but also, you know, as we got closer into your, you know, yourself and your own journey, there towards the end, I actually think you know, your comment about partnerships and joint ventures and that kind of thing is really well taken. I think it's one I'm trying to learn as well. I've mastered that I try and do a lot myself and realize that it's not actually always the best way of doing it but that's also a great reminder for me. So Jason, it's been a pleasure. I wish you all the best for the book and it stay in touch.

Jason Feifer
Oh, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Richard Medcalf
Take care.