Success Mindsets, with Ryan Gottfredson [Episode 845]

Ryan Gottfredson is the author of “Success Mindsets: Your Keys to Unlocking Greater Success in Your Life, Work, & Leadership.” In this episode Ryan and I talk about how our mindsets dictate the thinking, learning, and behavior that drive success.

Episode Transcript

Andy Paul: Ryan. Welcome to the show.

Ryan Gottfredson: Hey, thanks for having me on.

Andy Paul: So where have you been sheltering?

Ryan Gottfredson: Okay. Hi, I have been sheltering for the most part in Southern California, where I’m located in Anaheim. I’m a professor at Cal state Fullerton, but, just a few, actually, as a couple of weeks ago, I went on a three week vacation with my family and we got out into the wilderness, which is good. We spent most of our time in Southern Utah. We did visit a couple of national parks, went to Grand Canyon National Park and so it was just, that was such a big relief to just get away from everything that’s going on.

Andy Paul: I can imagine, especially since yeah. Orange County LA hotspots these days. yeah. Nice to start. Get out of there. Today we’re going to talk about the importance of mindsets in performance and, you know, I’m fascinated by this topic. And you wrote that, our mindsets dictate our thinking, learning and behavior, which then correspondingly our thinking, learning and behavior drive our success.

Thus mindsets are foundational to our success in all aspects of our life. So I think people probably have a lot of different opinions about what constitutes a mindset versus a personality or character or values or so. And so let’s start with that. What’s a mindset?

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah. And I’m so glad you brought this up because I think you’re right. Everybody has a little bit of a different perception on what a mindset is. And I think that most people consider mindsets to be this fluffy almost theorial concept,

Andy Paul: Hey, I’m optimistic.

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah, exactly. But there’s actually a huge amount of depth and substance to mindsets. And that’s really what I’m trying to bring to the conversation. And I’m sure we’ll dive into this, but at a basic level, what our mindsets are, is their mental lenses that caused us to see the world in unique ways. So for example, how do you see a challenge? Do you see challenge as being a bad thing, something to be avoided, or is it a good thing? Something to be approached because of all the learning and growing that can come because of it. Or how do you see feedback or constructive criticism? Do you see that as a bad thing and get defensive, or do you see this as a good thing and use it as opportunities to learn and grow? And we all know people that see these different things in different ways. And it’s all founded on their mindsets. Which typically reside at a non-conscious level is our mindset, these mental lenses, they’re there. Most of us aren’t aware that they’re there and we’re not aware of the impact that they have on how we think learn and behave because how we interpret our world shapes how we process in our world and then how we navigate that world.

Andy Paul: it seems like one of the key things you’d written about was that I picked up on, I liked was just saying that the mindset is a way of understanding experiences. And you talk about that with processing. And I think that’s, it seems like a lot of the way that people then decide going forward to react to the world. Their mindset is based on past experiences.

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah. One of the ways that psychologist is call this is this idea of how we process the world based upon past experiences. It’s something that’s called schemas. So schema is just a train of thought that we revert back to based upon these past exposures. And even then I think schema, it adds a little bit more substance to this conversation, but we could even dive deeper than that because in reality, what our mindsets truly are is they are neural connections in our prefrontal cortex.

And each of us has a neuro connection in our prefrontal cortex that tells us that challenges are bad and should be avoided. We also have a neuro connection within our prefrontal cortex that says challenges are good and should be approached. Now, which one we have a tendency to steer towards depends upon the strength of that neural connection, because the stronger the neuro connection out of the two, is the one that’s going to fire more rapidly and more loudly.

And so that’s effectively what these neural connections do is they serve three primary roles in terms of how we operate. First, they dictate out of the situations that we encounter, which information gets processed in our brain, because there’s way too much information that we absorb that we can’t physically process it all. So we rely upon our mindsets to filter in select information. So that’s the first job. The second job then is to interpret that information that gets filtered in. And then based upon the information that comes in, how it’s interpreted our mindsets job is to activate the different elements about ourselves, such as our personality, our talents, our strengths, our goals, as a way to facilitate navigating those situations in the best way possible based upon how our mindsets read those situations. Does that make sense?

Andy Paul: So what, but one things that when you talk about it, and sort of physiological terms, then it makes you think that huh, mindsets are given and not necessarily learned behaviors.

Ryan Gottfredson: So that’s one of the reasons why I love focusing on mindset so we could stack all the different attributes about ourselves on a continuum at the bottom is very malleable aspects. And at the top is very stable aspects. So at the bottom, these are things like moods and emotions at the top. So moods or emotions, things that we could change relatively easy at the top are going to be things more like intelligence and personality.

I’m not saying we can’t change our intelligence or we can’t change our personality. They’re just harder to change. And they’re one of the hardest things to change about ourselves. Our mindsets and I guess, let me point out while I’m talking about intelligence and personality, is that much, much of the reason why they are so difficult to change is they have a high degree of heritability to them. That these are innate to us as opposed to learn. And again, I’m not saying they can’t be developed, can’t be learned there. They just have a stronger degree of heritability to them.

Mindsets, if we’re looking at this continuum resolved right in the middle, this means that our mindsets and these neural connections are things that we could change. In fact, we could change them fairly easily and when we do change them, they have a tendency to stick around for a while. So we actually would classify mindsets as not being innate all really in any way, maybe a small degree, but for the most part, what our mindsets are, is learned traits. That our mindsets, the current mindsets we have are brought about based upon our life’s experience and not necessarily on genetic factors. And so that’s one of the reasons why I love focusing on mindsets, because these are things that we can change once we change them, then it can impact.

How we operate and then, you can imagine, let’s just say charisma is a common personality trait that people talk about. We could have a person, two people very high in charisma.But depending upon their mindsets, but one with the more positive mindsets is going to get more out of their charisma than the one with the negative mindsets. And so the, these mindsets play together very well in terms of thinking about it across different attributes about ourselves.

Andy Paul: Okay. And that all makes sense. So you know, the fact is you have you paint this spectrum from the more malleable to less malleable and, mindsets also sit on this continuum, but it’s yeah, one is personality. So the personality does affect mindset to some degree.

Ryan Gottfredson: Actually, what we see and what psychologists see is that our mindsets activate our personality. So let me give you an example, to make that come to life. So I’m naturally an introvert. I’m not an extreme introvert, but I’m naturally an introvert. So when I go to a party where I don’t know anybody, what happens is my mindsets pick up on the cues that I don’t know anybody there. And then what it does is it activates more of my introvert. But if I go to a, if I go to a different party and there it’s family members and friends, people that I feel comfortable with all my mindsets will pick up on those cues and it won’t activate my introversion to the same degree. In fact, it might activate whatever elements of extroversion that I have. And so the basic ideas are our personality and how we manifest our personality is not the same across situations. How we manifest our personality is based upon how our mindsets read, the situations that we encounter. And similar situations are going to activate similar personality attributes. As we move across different situations, it’ll activate different elements of our personality.

Andy Paul: Yeah, I like that. That’s a great way of thinking about it. Is the mindset activates the personality, huh? Okay. Yeah, I like that. I like that. Hadn’t really put that together. So you’ve mentioned you’ve written that you believe we don’t focus enough on the impact of mindsets on performance, because you were saying the research and mindset occured outside of management and organizational domain. So talk about that. Where has this research been done on mindsets?

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah, so it’s, there’s different disciplines and I’m not saying it hasn’t been done in management. It’s just been really very limited in the management literature, in the leadership space. And that’s one of the things that I’m trying to change. And in fact, I recently published, an article in leadership quarterly as a way to introduce mindsets more fully into the leadership domain, but for the mindsets have been studied for the last 30 years across primarily psychology and education, and then a little bit less in management and in marketing and in each of these disciplines, they’re each attaching themselves to kind of their own pet mindsets. And across this 30 years of research in each of these disciplines, they’re finding that mindsets dictate, as you mentioned, how we think learn and behave and they largely don’t talk to each other. And so what I’ve done is I’ve come across studies that show that our mindsets dictate how we think learn and behave and I found these across these different disciplines. What I’ve done is I’ve pulled these together and created a framework on mindsets, which I think is, based upon my knowledge is the most comprehensive and research based mindset, framework to date. And so usually in my coaching and consulting practices, I focus on four sets of mindsets, not because there aren’t other sets of mindsets. It’s just because these are the four that we have the most research backing on. And the ones that I’m most confident in terms of presenting to business leaders, as a way to develop themselves and their business.

Andy Paul: Yeah. And we’re gonna go through those because, you know, this is largely a sales audience, sales management leadership, but yeah, I thought they were relevant to who the people are listening to the show and anxious to learn about it. So you have this sort of, you call them pairings of mindsets. Cause you’ve got four continuums let’s say perhaps of mindsets. How do you refer to them?

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah. Four pairs and that exists along a continuum. That’s yeah,

Andy Paul: There we go. Yeah. And I sort of started thinking about, I was thinking like, the thing with the mindsets is, as you said, since they exist on a continuum, we are a mix, right? We’re not all one thing or all another we’re somewhere in the middle. And I sot of, it called to mind like Herbert Simon’s work on decision-making with maximizers and satisfisers. We sit on the spectrum at some point, in fact, And maybe contextual based on what we’re trying to decide.

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah, I think we have a dominant mindset and I’ve got a personal mindset assessment that I’ve developed based upon validated measures. And it’s actually free on my website at Ryan  dot com and what the assessment is designed to do is help people identify. essentially where they stand along this continuum currently. And I think we generally take a stance. That doesn’t mean that we can’t, be at a different place based upon the situation. But for the most part, this is where our mindsets resigned at the current moment. And it’s really interesting because what I found is I’ve had about 11,000 people take my mindset assessment.

And I think in general, I think in general, that most people think that the mindsets that they have are really ideal, maybe even the best mindsets to have. If they thought differently, they would probably develop different mindsets. And so I think most people feel like they have really positive mindsets, but then across these 11,000 people, what I’ve found is only 5% are in the top core tile for all four sets of these mindsets. So most of us have got some work to do and as we start to discover our mindsets and the current quality of our mindsets, what we’re doing is we’re deepening our self-awareness at a level that we probably never been before, which is a really cool experience to walk people.

Andy Paul: Okay, we’re going to walk through these four pairings and the first one is, as I said, I was 11,001. I took the assessment and we’ll talk about my scores as we go through this. First pairing fixed and growth mindsets. You said growth mindset is the belief that you’re able to change your talents, abilities, and intelligence, and that others are able to do it as well and the fixed mindsets are being the inverse of that as you’re unable to change your talents, abilities intelligence.

Now this is critical in sales rashes  everywhere, but to me, sales has always been about curiosity and self-improvement learning how to do different things. As you go through your career, different challenges, different companies, you work with different products. So having a fixed mindset seems like it’d be a real disadvantage in this environment.

Ryan Gottfredson: Yes, it is, but it’s not uncommon. In fact, as a whole 50% of the population has been found to have more of a fixed mindset. And when it, when I look at my coaching clients, the majority of those are sales reps with a fixed mindset. And I think they’re hiring me to help them coach because they realize how it hinders them.

And so how this plays out for, let’s just say a sales rep is when we have a fixed mindset, don’t believe that we and others can improve, we have a tendency to see the world in terms of haves and have nots. And if we fail to us. We interpret this as though we are a have not, and nobody likes to be a, have not.

And also simultaneously because of this fixed mindset, we don’t believe that we get ever become a half. so when we fail, this is demoralizing. It is defeating because this says that we’re a loser and we can never become a winner at least in this area. And so those are the fixed mindset. Just the way their brain is wired is primarily focused on looking good and simultaneously avoiding problems and failure.

And so when it comes to sales reps, and I’ll just speak to a couple of my coaching clients is when they’ve got a fixed mindset, how this plays out for them is I ask them what their goal is and they’ll tell me their goals. So for example, one guy says, I want to make $5 million in sales this next year. He’s a benefits broker. And I say, what are you doing or not doing? That’s preventing you from making these sales? And he says, honestly, I’m not picking up the phone and I’m not making phone calls. I think most personal development folks will say, just start making phone calls. It’s that easy. And to a certain degree it is that easy, but there’s a lot of depth behind that. And so I asked him, why aren’t you making phone calls? And when he opened up was vulnerable, this, he says, I’m afraid to fail. I’m afraid of people saying no to me. And what that says about me. And so as a way to help him feel safe, he’s not picking up the phone and this is foundational. And so what is bringing about this fear of failure? And then these fear of nos will ultimately it’s what we found out through his assessment and other discussions is he’s got a really strong, fixed mindset. And what we need to do is if we’re going to get him to start picking up the phone, we don’t set goals, pick up the phone a hundred times this next day or whatever it might be is instead we focus on having them engage in exercises that activate and strengthen his growth mindset neuro connection. And as he shifts his mindsets more to a growth mindset, he’ll naturally develop much more healthy fears, much more healthy commitments. And then behave in a much more effective way. And so I think most development work, overlooks mindsets yet they’re the most foundational element for why we do what we do. And so if we can add mindsets to the equation, not saying we need to ignore everything else we’ve been focusing on, but if we could just add mindsets to the equation, we’re going to be much more successful and making breakthroughs and developing our people.

Andy Paul: What I found interesting, was sort of two points on this one. a lot. People with a fixed mindset prioritize looking good and being validated. So they, since they think they can’t improve, they think it’s worth it for them to be seen as someone who possesses, talent, intelligence and so on.

You know, to me, it brings to mind like the Dunning Kruger effect, is they not only believe that they can change, but they also presume they don’t need to change. And, Scott Galloway wrote his newsletter a couple weeks ago, as these are, people are too dumb to know they’re dumb, but it’s not that it’s just that, they lack the self-awareness that’s so critical. and so that’s the thing I found sort of interesting is this conundrum is, as you point out what the fixed mindset is that, yeah, they want to look good they’re afraid, desperately afraid on one hand, they’ll be exposed, but they can’t ask for help because there’ll be exposed.

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah, even let me, and I think, let me give you an example. I think everybody can relate to, and that is, with my college students. So when I look at, and even ask my college students, what is your primary focus as you take this class? Is it on getting good grades or is it on learning and growing?

And the vast majority of them say it’s on getting good grades. And so they prioritize that over learning and growing. But the best approach is to focus on learning and growing because the more you learn, the more that you grow, the better grades you’re going to get. Naturally, it’s a natural byproduct.

And so when we go and I can relate to this myself as somebody who used to have a fixed mindset is when I was going through college. I just cared about the grade. And so I was often taking shortcuts. I don’t ever remember cheating or anything like that, but for me, I was trying to take the most direct route to getting a good grade and in the process, what I was doing is I was bypassing the learning. Like I look back on some of the college classes that I took. I can’t remember a thing for most of them. So this is what happens. And this is what has come out of my coaching calls with these sales reps is they say, man, I’ve just been taking shortcuts my whole life, and I’m done taking shortcuts because it ultimately, while it’s put food on the table, it hasn’t gotten me where I want to.

Andy Paul: And I think taking your story about your students and extending that as is for many sellers is, and I think this is an issue I’m not think I know it’s an issue is that they focus on in the interactions with the customers, with getting the order, as opposed to helping the buyer make a good decision.

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah,

Andy Paul: if you focus on the former, yeah, you may, you’re going to get some orders, but you’re never going to achieve to the extent your code. When you focus on helping the customer make a good purchase decision.

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah. And that taps into, and if it’s okay to just, at least briefly skip ahead to one of the other sets of mindsets, which is the difference between an inward mindset and an outward mindset. So when we have an inward mindset, we see ourselves as being more important than others. Which causes us to see others more as objects.

Whereas when we have an outward mindset, we see ourselves as we see others as being just as important as ourselves, which allows us to see others as people and to value them and such. And so what, and just going back to the same guy that I’ve been coaching is because of his fixed mindset and he’s so focused on looking good and succeeding and to your point is saying, taking the shortcut is how do I get this sale so that I can win and look good to my peers and my supervisors? What a natural consequence of this, at least for him is that he’s now has this inward mindset. The sale is all about him and it’s not about his customers.

Therefore he’s more focused on himself getting ahead as opposed to lifting and adding value to those that he’s working with. And so the, the, secondary consequence, at least in this instance of him having a fixed mindset is it’s now making himself focused as opposed to other focused.

Andy Paul: No, I think  that’s good. A and so along with that, because this issue comes up again with the inward mindset for us, our mindset is, studies have shown that the most effective way to have an uplift on individual sales performance is through effective coaching.

But if you have managers that have growth most who doesn’t have a fixed mindset, they are seeing people as being unable to change. Then that obviously has an impact on how they coach them as opposed to managers that have a growth mindset, but they see that, yeah, I can work with this person and help them improve and so on, which is similar to the inward outward, mindset and sense that they’re in a coaching. If you’re an inward, mindset, then you’re most likely, it’s this person’s, this person is a problem. I need to get rid of them. There’s too much risk working with them. They’re never gonna be able to change as opposed to an outward mindset where it’s yeah, I can understand what it’s preventing. They’re trying to help this person understand why they can’t perform at a higher level. And I can actually help them improve.

Ryan Gottfredson: So what the research has found, because what you’re talking about is spot on in terms of what has been played out empirically. And most people don’t know if they have a fixed or growth mindset, but we can assess that. And we’ve done that with leaders. And what we found is that those with the fixed mindset, Give a lower quality and lower quantity feedback than leaders and managers with the growth mindset.

And so it just adds hopefully a little bit more weight behind what you’re saying there. and again, this is not something that the individual that the leader or manager is probably aware of. my guess is if we go back to. The fixed mindset leaders and the growth mindset leaders say, are you giving adequate feedback to those that you’re leading? And they probably both say yes, but the reality is one is, and one isn’t as much, at least as much.

Andy Paul: Okay. So let’s move on to the next pairing the open and close. Actually, I saw on your scale of one to seven, seven being growth, one being fixed, I was 6.5.

Ryan Gottfredson: And that’s pretty high. So on this scale of one to seven, the mean, and the core tile breakdowns is different. So these scales weren’t developed so that the middle point in the mean for everybody, is that a four. So with that being said, is that would put you in the top core tile there for a growth mindset.

Andy Paul: I think I’m one of those top 5% people always striving. You know. Okay. So open and closed mindsets. So you wrote that when leaders posess an open mindset, they’re open to the ideas of others are willing to take those ideas seriously. And most importantly, in my mind at least, they’re open to the possibility that they could be wrong.

Whereas a person with a closed mindset is not open to ideas of others and is nearly always right. And we have examples of that in public life these days. It seems like we do see more of that these days, maybe the influence of the internet, the more people gravitating to tribal closed mindsets.

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah. And there’s a gravitation towards certainty, which I think influences this. one of the things that you described was great. So why would anybody have a closed mind to begin with, why would anybody be close to the ideas and suggestions of others? But a fundamental level, the reason why they would be closed minded is because they believe that what they know is best.

So to use an analogy their mind to them is a bucket and their bucket is full. And what happens if you pour something into a full bucket? it just runs off the side and nothing gets absorbed. And this is where you mentioned. And this is key. Is that those with an open mindset, they can have a really full bucket. They can know a lot. But they’re just leaving room in their bucket for the idea that they can be wrong. And when we leave that room, what happens, and this is a huge shift between those with a closed mindset. And those are the open mindset because when we believe our bucket is full, our focus is on being right.

We want to have our ideas supported and we want to be the one providing all the answers. But if we’re leaving some room for the idea that we could be wrong, We no longer care about being right. Instead we want to find truth and think optimally. So we’re much more inclined to ask questions, to seek feedback, invite new perspectives and see disagreement as an opportunity to learn and grow as opposed to a threat and get defensive.

Andy Paul: Yeah. You quoted an article, you wrote, Shane Parrish, the quote was closed-minded people would never considered that. They could actually be closed-minded. In fact, the perceived open-mindedness is what’s so dangerous. And to me, I was just like, Oh yeah, thats spades today?

Ryan Gottfredson: and it’s everybody, right? I look back 10 years ago. And if you would’ve asked me 10 years ago, if I was open-minded, I would have raised my raise my hand and say, yeah, I’m top of the class, but I look back 10 years ago, I think. Oh my goodness. I was so close-minded. I was so rigid in my thinking and I think a lot of people are closed minded in a very justifiable way because they, one, they want some certainty. They want to hold onto some notions that they, what they believe is true. And if it’s not true, then that maybe disrupts their world a little bit and they don’t have the space to deal with ambiguity. But then also it’s just simply, it’s not socially acceptable to be wrong.

And to admit that you’ve been wrong. and so that creates a context in which it’s very difficult to have an open mindset, because we are so socially incentivized to have this desire to be right. And this fear of being wrong, that we get wrapped up in this closed mindset, unknowingly.

Andy Paul: And isn’t this really a challenge for back to the business world and for leaders and for managers and so on is that is they’re presumed to have a certain competence. By virtue of the fact that I promoted you must be an expert in these things. This is a problem in sales that we have, as we promote people in the management and we presume, you’re an expert on mindsets.

You’re an expert on performance improvement. You’re an expert on these various aspects. They need to be in charge of the metrics, sales skills. I go down this list of 20 items and they certainly havn’t been trained to be that way. They haven’t been given the training or the support to be that. So in order to not look bad is they have to exclude any challenges that presumption that they don’t have that competence. So therefore they can’t be wrong.

Ryan Gottfredson: Yep. You’re so right. And then here’s the consequence of that ultimately is it destroys psychological safety in the workplace. And psychological safety is something and psychological safety is your belief as an employee that you could speak up and take risks without fear, negative repercussion. And Google did a massive study back in, I think it was 2011. It’s called project Aristotle. If you want to look it up. And what they found is that they studied their top performing teams and they had the question what makes our top performing teams top performing. And they couldn’t find anything for the first year. They were looking at all of these factors, such as what are the personality dynamics of the team?

What are the, gender or ethnicity dynamics? And they weren’t finding anything. But they were cued onto something, then they spent another year researching that. And in fact, effectively what they found is that the number one factor that fuels top performing teams, at least in Google, but I think it’s generalizable, is psychological safety.

And so if we, as a leader are so attached to what we know, and we’re not willing to take in the ideas and suggestions of others, then we’re going to destroy that psychological safety and ultimately limit the effectiveness of our team. And hopefully this analogy is helpful.

What we’re saying when we have an open mindset, we’re not saying we need to run with everybody’s ideas and suggestions. We could always have a stiff back. We can always take a stand, the key to having an open mindset. Is that we just simultaneously have a soft front we’re able to take in the ideas and suggestions, roll those around a little bit and validate those with others. Because what that does is it creates that safe environment.

Andy Paul: Yeah. One of the things I swung to mind as I was reading this as well as thinking about it was that, people oftentimes mistake, people have a lot of self-confidence for being closed-minded, but I was wondering what you’re finding your research. To me, it seems like somewhat self-confidence has the confidence to admit they’re wrong.

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah, and this is where authentic leadership is so key because there’s the facade and there’s the authentic aspect about this. There’s let me cue your readers on somebody else. Who I think is doing some really cool stuff in this space. And the guy’s name is Shane Snow and he focuses on what he calls intellectual humility. And really what we’re talking about a fundamental level is open mindset is being intellectually humble. And if you were to go to Shane Snow’s website, he’s out, he’s also got an assessment just for intellectual humility and he breaks it down into different components, which I think there’s a lot of value in doing that.

So if anybody wants to dive into this deeper, that’s a fantastic resource, but in order to be a, an effective leader, We don’t need to be focused on being right as socially incentivized as we are to be right. We need to be intellectually humble. And I love that. Phrasing it to me. it brings out it makes me want to be at my bes and I feel like it brings, tries and incentivizes others to be at their best.

Andy Paul: I think it’s, I agree. I’ve been reading more about that intellectual humility and incorporating it into some of the things that I’m doing because in writing about, because yeah, in sales, we talk about having these authentic interactions with our customers, and oftentimes people talk about the need to be vulnerable. Great. And to be humble, but people are taking that to mean, so are humble in a self-effacing type way, as opposed to being intellectually humble, which I think is really the critical way they want the humility they want to show with customers is, yeah, I’ve got this open mind to what you’re telling me, because the trend, the trend to see trends that make, create a war between trend and tenancy. The trend in sales over the last several years has been as, is much more rigid sales processes, compliance based sales processes. I have defined a persona of the buyer I’m looking for, you’re it, you’re going to fit this, corruption I’ve created of who you are and what you want and how you think and what you like. And I’m not going to accept information outside of that. And it’s that lack of intellectual humility that I think prevents a lot of people from achieving what they need to

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah. And it’s a great case study of mindsets as a whole, but this particular mindset set as well is Microsoft. So Microsoft from 2001 to 2014 was stagnant in terms of market capitalization and stock price. Aye. Everybody else was flying past them. And in 2014, many experts were wondering, is Microsoft dead in the water?

something happened in 2014 that led to the ship being turned around. And that’s something that happened was Sachin Nadella came in as CEO. And since he became CEO, Microsoft’s market cap and stock price has quadrupled. it’s just been huge growth and it’s been amazing. And the one of the things, or what’s led to this, his end. He talks about this in his book, Hit Refresh that he says the C and CEO stands for a curator of culture. So he knew right away he needed to shift the culture. And what have you learned? And what he recognized within Microsoft was he felt like everybody needed to be know-it-alls. And so what he said, and they put it on all employee badges that said from Know-it-all to learn-it-all.

Andy Paul: Yeah. I love that.

Ryan Gottfredson: And then the other thing that he did, and it ties into even a couple of different mindsets here is he said, we’ve got to stop thinking that we know what is best for our customer. And we’ve got to start meeting with our customers face to face, asking them what they need, what would make a difference in their life.

And then we just need to fulfill it. And so prior to him, the Microsoft was out there primarily either developing products based upon what their competitors were developing or developing products that they thought customers want, but really didn’t know. And so a lot of these products ended up flopping. And so as they’ve connected better with their customers, they’ve totally changed their business. They’re much more agile. They’ve been able to adapt and develop products that actually matter to people. And we see the benefit of that as their growth has skyrocketed.

Andy Paul: Yeah, great example. Hey Ryan, unfortunately we’re running short on time and we’re not gonna be able to get through the next, we’ve talked about inward and outward, but, prevention promotion left to leave for another time. But I really appreciate you coming by. If people want to connect with you and learn more about what you’re doing, where can they do that?

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah, the best place to go is my website. RYANGottfredson.com. There you can get. My mindset assessment. Also, you can, if you go through my website to get my book success mindsets, which recently hit the wall street journal and USA today, bestseller lists, there’s a bunch of freebies and there’s opportunities to dive deeper into mindset, such as a digital mindset coach or an online coaching, program. So a happy for anybody to go there. Of course. And then if anybody wants to connect with me on LinkedIn, that’s probably the next best place.

Andy Paul: Perfect. Ryan, this has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate you taking the time.

Ryan Gottfredson: Yeah, thank you so much. I really appreciate the great questions. Great conversation.