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<v ->Part of my core thesis around particularly leadership,</v>

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and I think it's true for every function today,

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is you've got to stay a student.

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You know, I'm fond of the refrain leaders are learners,

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but I think we're in a critical moment in time

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where things are changing so fast

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that it's incumbent upon all of us

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to really it's the idea of a foot in two worlds, right?

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It's like you're executing and performing.

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You're running your business.

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I'm running my business.

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But at the same time, we also need to continue

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to expand and grow and adapt and invest ahead of the curve.

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And a big part of that is learning.

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You know, we're all so busy, stressed, overwhelmed,

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self included, that we're not carving out

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the appropriate and adequate amount of time, one,

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to learn and grow, and two,

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to prepare for what's next and new.

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(light music)

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You know, things are changing so fast,

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but they're never going to be this slow again.

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And so learning agility is a critical skill and competency

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to be a high performer.

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The high performers don't stop learning.

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They stay students and it's iterative.

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So you've got to stay in the learning lane.

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You know, artificial intelligence and generative AI,

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it's changing so fast.

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And I can't even keep up with the news cycle,

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let alone my own skill and competency

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and how it's being leveraged in my business.

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And I just realized, like,

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I actually have to stop and get somebody

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who's a lot smarter than me about this to teach me.

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And so we have somebody in our community

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that worked for Google.

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He's like an AI aficionado.

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He was an executive at Google,

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and he talks about this and writes books about it.

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And I'm going to have him come to Minneapolis

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for two days and give me a two-day workshop.

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And the age-old entrepreneurial idea of,

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you know, you're working in the business all the time.

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You've got to work on the business.

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That's not just true for business owners.

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That's true for everybody.

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(light music continues)

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If I'm a sales leader, so a couple things I'm doing.

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One, I think you have to create time and space

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for knowledge transfer in a sales organization.

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And even you think in a distributed sales organization,

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there's so much institutional knowledge

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that happens in the field each and every day,

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but you have to create the time and the space

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to come together and transfer that knowledge

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and share those ideas.

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So I think that's one critical thing.

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The second thing as a sales leader I'm doing is,

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I've got to be coaching.

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I've got to be with my team, in the field,

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in the work, providing real-time, direct feedback.

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And that's role-playing, and it's analysis,

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and it's auditing, and it's co-creating on a call,

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and it's feedback.

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And so that's got to, you know, that needs to be happening

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on the spot, real-time.

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And then I think you have to look

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at the individual contributor.

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You know, and that gets into the development plan.

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But if you had a specific development plan

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for each member of your team,

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if you looked at, if you assessed their skill,

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their capability, and what their biggest opportunity was

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to create the next breakthrough in their career,

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in their year, you would actually customize

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some of that development accordingly.

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You know, everybody's at a different place

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and everybody has different needs.

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And so I think thinking about it through that lens,

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and then mapping it, mapping the learning journey

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to what somebody both needs and wants.

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You know, you may have a producer that wants

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to go into management and wants to understand that.

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Well, start developing that competency.

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You know, leaders build other leaders.

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Give people some line of sight

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and some additional responsibility.

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You may have someone that's very clearly

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never want to do that at all, but they have an opportunity

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to develop their capability another way.

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So it can't be a blanket approach.

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I think learning increasingly needs to be customized.

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And you know, and I was just reminded of this

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in the meeting that I went on, great, great company, API,

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I was meeting with here in Minneapolis, just so focused,

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just one of the most robust leadership development agendas

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and approaches that I've ever seen.

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And they sort of unpacked it for me today.

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And one of their axioms was that, you know,

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your development is your responsibility.

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So take agency over your own development.

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We have a lot of opportunity here.

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We have a lot of resources.

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We have a lot of pathways into expanding learning

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and your knowledge and skill.

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But you got to own that and you got to take responsibility

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for your own professional development.

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And obviously, this is true of a small business,

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but even in a large organization.

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So I think those are, as a leader,

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those are some of the things

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that I would want to continually reinforce.

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This is how I'd approach it.

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(light music continues)

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The whole idea that, you know, success breeds complacency

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or you arrive at a certain destination in your career

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and you can kind of stay there, right?

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And that just isn't the case anymore.

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Like, I get that you've been a great financial advisor

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for 25 years and you built a great book of business.

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But you have to keep developing your competency.

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Your clients are changing.

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You know, we're approaching the great transfer of wealth,

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and now you've got agentic AI who actually can mitigate risk

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in a portfolio 10 times faster than you ever could

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in 30 seconds.

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And it's actually more accurate.

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And so like, the idea that, you know,

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you're not going to continue to develop that

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and sharpen those skills and competency

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and understand how things are changing,

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I think is, it's not just a missed opportunity anymore.

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It's a recipe for being disrupted.

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And that's true for an individual

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and it's true for a team or an enterprise.

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So embedding learning and development

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and learning agility in a business, crucial.

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(screen whooshing)

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(light music continues)