How To Be A Crappy Leader
What does it take to be a good leader and how do you avoid becoming a crappy one?
This week on Growing a Fruitful Brand we are talking with Jake Brown, author of Leadersh*t: Tales & Tools to Survive a Bad Boss and Have Fun at Work.
In the episode, Ben and Jake dig into the bad bosses who inspired the book and how employees find ways to cope with toxic work environments and create joy in their workday.
For those who can relate to having had a soul-sucking job or narcissistic boss, Leadersh*t offers up a humorous approach to making your workday more tolerable and combating toxic work culture by bringing a little bit of fun.
For the bosses out there, it’s a cautionary tale of how not to become a horrible boss, and how to create space for comradery and fun at work without sacrificing client satisfaction and deliverables.
Check out the episode and commiserate over your current or past bad bosses, or just take some pointers on how not to become one yourself.
Don’t miss an episode, subscribe where you listen to your favorite podcasts.
You can get yourself a copy of Leadersh*t and find Jake Brown at leadershit.co.
Ep. 47:
How To Be A Crappy Leader
Automated Transcript
Ben Lueders (00:00):
Have you ever wondered how could I become a crappier leader? If so, today's guest has some great answers for you. Welcome to Growing a Fruitful brand where we discuss how to create and grow a brand that makes the world a better place for you, your customers, and your employees. I'm Ben Lutter, founder and art director of Fruitful Design and Strategy. And right off the bat, I'm going to try hard not to swear on this podcast, but it might be difficult because today we're talking to Jake Brown, the author of this hilarious, practical little book called Leaders Hit. Except those two words are not hyphenated at all in the title. They're combined into one naughty, memorable little typo. See, it turns out Jake had a terrible boss for about a decade, and in this book he shares how he survived and thrived in the most toxic of work situations with humor and creativity as his guide. This episode is definitely for those who find themselves stuck in a soul sucking job or with a narcissistic boss, but it's also for leaders maybe like me, who desperately don't want to become crappy bosses themselves. So Pulpa chair or a toilet seat, and enjoy my conversation with author Jake Brown. Jake, welcome to Growing a Fruitful Brand. Thank you so much for reaching out and letting me know about this amazing little book. How do you say that Leaders hit
Jake Brown (01:39):
Something like that. It's leader
Ben Lueders (01:43):
There it is. There it is
Jake Brown (01:44):
Like leadership, but with a T at the end.
Ben Lueders (01:48):
So how did you come up with this, the title? We were just joking offline. Neither of us are the most, we don't really swear like sailors, we're Air Force kids. That's not our thing.
Jake Brown (02:01):
But
Ben Lueders (02:02):
How did you come up with this little snappy title?
Jake Brown (02:07):
Yeah, sure. So in the intro of the book, I explain why, and I am getting some pushback about the title, but in the intro I talk about how we had a leadership meeting. I was working at an agency and we got together as the leadership team to kind of go over the notes or whatever, our weekly meeting, but one of the main people wasn't there. She had to put out a fire. She was on the phone with a vendor and couldn't get in there, which in all transparency, she was on the phone with a vendor that the fire was caused by the boss, by the owner of the agency. She forgot to send an email. So this other person's there trying to make good on that. So anyway, get out of the meeting. I go to my desk and I just fire off real fast.
(02:48)
She sent me a message and she says, Hey, what did I miss at the meeting? And I just real fast send her a message and I try to say leadership meeting notes, but I have a typo. So it says leader, it says she's a leader meeting. And so I send her that and she just starts laughing out loud and I'm like, what happened? And she was like, oh, I needed that. We all just started laughing hard at this typo. It was a really, really a bad day, just tense. People were already upset. This meeting that I just came from, I didn't have any notes. I spent over an hour in this meeting with nothing good that came out of it, just more questions. And I was frustrated and I came out and my team was looking to me to lead them, and I'm like, I got nothing. But we all just laugh at that. And from there I was able to go home and I told my wife, and it was the first time I had laughed and had fun at work in a while. It was just a really potent moment in the memory of working there. So that's the story. It was a typo that really defined the way that leading was happening in that environment, and it kind of grew what it meant to me over the next couple of years.
Ben Lueders (04:01):
So this book kind of chronicles your experience working in a toxic, bad work environment, but really it's not just about the environment, it's really more focused on this boss that you had. These are real stories.
Jake Brown (04:17):
This
Ben Lueders (04:18):
Isn't like a fiction Chronicles of Narnia version of allegorical stories. This is real.
Jake Brown (04:28):
Yeah, these are real stories. I'll say the names have been changed, obviously the names of the,
Ben Lueders (04:34):
That was my follow question. And
Jake Brown (04:35):
Guilty have been changed. And I will say that some things had to be blended because when I first wrote them out, I had somebody like an editor look over it and she was like, there's too much happening. So for instance, there's a character Cher in the book, Cher's actually like eight different people. But it's one role. It was one role that had a revolving door, and there was one client that was heavily attached to that role, and the boss was so involved in meddling all the time that people were constantly running off. And I actually had to simplify that role to a character named Cher because it kept every chapter, it would change the person that was in that seat. So that did happen. But yeah, they're all real stories that went down.
Ben Lueders (05:24):
So Jake, I ran into Jake actually at a conference a couple years ago. Was that last year? Last year? I guess it was last year. Yeah, Jake, he was giving a presentation really using Legos. And so as soon as I saw that Legos were going to be involved in this breakout session, I was there. If anyone knows, I'm just a huge Lego fanatic and it was a really, really fun experience. So when he was writing this book, he reached out to me for an endorsement and I got to read it ahead of time. And you see this book on leadership gone wrong. And I immediately just thought it was just going to be your typical kind of self-help, kind of a book businessy kind of a book. I didn't realize it was going to be just so many. It's just all story-based and true stories.
(06:18)
And so it was one of these things where it was hard in my quote, I say it was hard to put down because it just kind of sucks you into these stories and they're very relatable. You can kind of picture yourself if you've been in a bad work experience. I think all of us have been in some, maybe not, hopefully not to the level that you have. I'm going to say there was some pretty terrible stuff going on, but I was just really compelled by just the style of the book, just how accessible it was. And so the other thing I just wanted to say real quick here is I haven't had a boss in a long time. I've been my own boss for a long time now. And so as I'm reading it, I'm immediately thinking I want to not be like Jake's boss. And so I'm curious, do you have, what's your advice for anyone who might be afraid that they are a crappy boss?
Jake Brown (07:18):
Alright, well, to answer that real fast, I want to say there are three audiences in mind for this book. As I was writing it, I've really connected with three people. One of them is the person that's in a bad situation, and most likely they're going to have to have the book given to them as a gift. It's like there's hope. And really if they jump to the back and get those tools at the end, I think that's the best part. If you have survived a bad boss, like you said, we all have one somewhere in our past, it's kind of fun to read it and it almost reads like a sitcom. You're reading it and you kind of just laugh at it because you're not in the pain, but you can relate to it just enough to where it is humorous and it is fun to read and talk about.
(07:58)
And then the other one is specifically early managers or people that want to be a good boss, but they don't want to fail their people. I think that's really what it is, is people, they don't want to fail their people, so they tend to meddle or overreach or things like that. And the back part, the framework in the end is really to help either manage yourself, start there, and then learn how to manage people. But it's the difference between manage them and allowing them to grow themselves and report up. You're supporting them as they grow themselves is the idea that I really, I fell in love with because I had to grow myself. And then that's how I was training my people. And now as I'm coaching, that's what I'm teaching people to do is take ownership of your own growth. And the leaders there really, like Donald Miller says, every morning the leader stands up points at the horizon and says, we're going there. And then they make the path. You open up path, you make it easy. You train people how to grow. So if you're worried about being a bad boss, there are lots of things you can do. But I think it's Tim sure who says he might not have made it up, but he's the one that taught me. He said, you can either have growth or control,
(09:18)
And if you're trying to control and manage and contain things, you're on the path to being a bad boss.
Ben Lueders (09:25):
But
Jake Brown (09:26):
If there's growth, the idea is growth is ugly. Think about your lawn. I mean, not in Texas, ours is all dead, but in spring your lawn is growing and it's all going crazy and wild and nasty, and that's when you have to come back and mow it. But you have to let it get a little bit messy. You have to let it try and grow.
(09:43)
And when it comes to delegation, that's a big part. People overreach and stuff. And when you're delegating to people, there needs to be room for messiness because that's growth. If it's controlled, then you're just meddling and holding too tight. That's when you micromanage and everything. And one thing, if you're leading and you're worried that you're not leading well or you want to make sure that you're reading well, I would highly recommend the wipe framework at the end. It's real simple, the two questions, four different roles, because my idea is when I learned to bad bosses leave marks, that's kind of the idea. They leave marks. If you learned to wipe yourself, clean yourself off, how do you grow? How do you take ownership for that? And then the people that are working for you, how do you train them to take ownership? Because if you can train them to grow and then you allow them to grow, because one of the two questions that I ask in there, but you want to allow them to grow so that you're leading them as opposed to controlling them.
(10:51)
And the two questions that I ask in the framework, are you aligned? And that's really, are you rowing in the same direction with the mission of the company, with the ownership, with the clients, with the staff? Are you aligned? Are you aligned with where this is going? And the other one is, are you able to do your job? And I define that as are you skilled? Do you have the capability to do your job and are you allowed to do your job? Those are two very different things. And if you are the manager, if you are the leader, the boss, you have to sit back and go, am I allowing people to be aligned? Am I leading them toward alignment? Am I making sure that they're able, do they have the skills to do their job? And then the last one, the one that really is the gut wrench is am I allowing them to do their job? And I would say if you're willing to ask those questions, you're on the path to being a good boss. But
Ben Lueders (11:47):
Well, Jake, you're already kind of getting into it.
Jake Brown (11:50):
Sorry, you're
Ben Lueders (11:51):
Getting No, no, you're already getting into it. I want to dive into this. It says right on the cover introducing the white framework, and that stands for W I P E. What are those four quadrants of the white framework?
Jake Brown (12:10):
Sure. So ask those two questions and it's a two by two matrix. You end up in one of the quadrants and I call 'em roles. And the idea is at any given point, something can change, but where are you when it comes to alignment and the ability to do your job? You're either a winner, an intern, a prisoner, or an expert. And depending on where you find yourself, I talk in the chapters about, there's a chapter on each one and it kind of tells you this is where you are, this is how you can move toward winner is really where we want to be. And the point of being a winner is that you are moving other people toward winter. Now I'm just going to do a shameless plug right here. If you're wanting to be a good leader, another great book is Tim Sher, the Secret Society of Success. I know you guys had 'em on a while back. It is one of my definite go-to books. I'm handing that thing out, tic-Tacs to people.
Ben Lueders (13:05):
So good. So good. That was a really helpful one for me as a leader for sure. It really kind of challenged a lot of the paradigms that we fall into. But as I was reading your book, which is from a different perspective,
Jake Brown (13:24):
My book is not for the winners. If you're in one of the other three quadrants, my book's for you, if you find yourself in the winner, Tim's book is a great go-to.
Ben Lueders (13:32):
Would you describe yourself through most of the book? You're in the prisoner category?
Jake Brown (13:38):
I definitely started in the Prisoner. So as you go through the book, every chapter, it kind of shifts. I moved through all of them through all the different quadrants as the book goes on, there was a point where I was even in the winter square, I was really, my job was great. Things were going, I still had the bad boss, but I had figured out how to survive and even grow and enjoy that space. My job was really moving people toward the winter square. And then as you get to the end, there's a chapter called My Beef where really the bottom falls out. And what happened is I really basically, I was not allowed to do my job and there was absolutely zero alignment. And that was the point that I was like, okay, well what are my options? Do I stay and fight for something? Do I wait and see if it gets better or am I done? And when you read the book, I think it's really clear I was done. I needed to be somewhere else.
Ben Lueders (14:36):
Yeah, I was curious as I was reading it, and you have a little disclaimer right at the beginning, a little message to people that find themselves in an abusive, he says, no, if your bad boss is immoral, abusive or doing illegal things, please get help and out of there. So it's kind like, Hey, don't try to fight for change when you're in a clearly bad situation. But as I was reading your book, I was like, it seemed like a pretty bad environment. So do you look back on your story and feel like, man, I should have gotten out of there a lot sooner, or do you feel like you needed that whole kind of journey to get to that final beef? I guess?
Jake Brown (15:20):
Yeah. I look back at it, if anybody else was in this situation and I had people who were working for me that I was constantly, if they got to a point where they couldn't survive under the protection or whatever I could offer and some other people could offer, I was definitely helping them build an exit ramp. And looking back, I'm like, I would've advised anybody else get out. But I actually mentioned early on, I think in the author's note, survival blurs lines, and I was trying to survive and I was trying to help other people survive, and I wasn't really thinking of life as much as I was sustained survival.
Ben Lueders (16:04):
So
Jake Brown (16:04):
Looking back at it, yeah, I should have definitely gotten out sooner, but I was overworked and stressed and I had very little to give when I got home from work, and I didn't have time to look for a new job, but I was dependent on that income. So I was definitely trapped in the beginning, and I was definitely in that prisoner trapped role. And looking back at should I have gotten out earlier? I believe I should have. I would advise future. Jake would tell past Jake, what are you doing? Get out. But I had found when I found a way to bring joy back in to the workplace and I was able to do my job and I was causing alignment within the team and with the work that we were doing and for our clients, I jokingly say we found a way to work around through and despite the boss,
Ben Lueders (17:00):
We
Jake Brown (17:00):
Found a way to do it was just there was this rock in the way, and we never knew where the rock was going to be.
Ben Lueders (17:07):
Well, I think that's one of the great things about the book though, and that is so inspiring and fun to read, is here you have this clearly mean clinically narcissistic leader who has all kinds of issues, and it's all about your coworkers, just fun and humor and creativity, drawing inspiration from the office, Jim Halbert and stuff like that, and in order to survive. And so I wonder if you wouldn't mind just sharing maybe a couple different instances of ways that you used creativity and humor to survive and inspire others in the book.
Jake Brown (17:54):
Yeah, so for sure, one of the first ones is the chapter hallway assassin. And that one
Ben Lueders (18:01):
I was hoping you're going to tell that if you didn't start with that, I was going to ask because that's a
Jake Brown (18:06):
Great one. That's awesome. That was the first one where it was a very controlled, cold, sterile environment. And in the hallway one day, I mean, it was just sheer accident. One of the other employees, I just kind of pointed at him like a kid and pointed at him like a gun, and he covered his heart and fell down. And it was this moment where he smiled. I laughed in the hallway, and again, there was a connection that was a human fun, and I'm an Enneagram seven, which means fun is kind of my fuel. So
Ben Lueders (18:38):
Me too, by the way, when
Jake Brown (18:39):
We did that. Nice. So as we connected over that moment, later that day, I go to leave and when the door opens, his name's Huck in the book, the door opens and he stands there and he's like, I can't do as good as him, but he's like, just has this amazing laser sound and I fall to the ground. It just became this moment that there was fun. There was this little spark of hope somewhere in the day. And then from there it went to the parking garage in the hallway. Every time we went to the bathroom, we would lay and wait for each other, and it became this actual game with three rules. And you would attack each other in the bath or not in the bathroom, in the hallway to the bathroom, and whoever had the most creative one. So if I said, if I'm coming down the hallway and you step out of the bathroom, Ben, and I'm like, I say slingshot or something like that, and you look at me and you're like, you poison frog dart, you just yell something random.
(19:41)
Whoever had the most random creative one wins. So that was one, and that's the point where I realized that we needed life somehow in the workspace. We all needed that, and we had fun. Our work got better, we got more efficient. No, don't tell Raj because I know he's the control and get back to work person. But we actually got more work done because it was like we were having fun, we were excited, and it's almost like, I don't want to say we would rush in a bad way, but we were more efficient to cross those finish lines on projects so that we could almost bribe ourselves to get to the brakes, if that makes sense. Oh
Ben Lueders (20:25):
Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, you're creating a work as a place just that you want to be at. You want to have fun at, we have Nerf guns here and stuff. We need to have more Nerf battles. There was a while there where we had not a coworker, but a collaborator that was ing with us. And so he wasn't actually on our team, but he office in a part of our office. And when he was stressed out or just needed to blow off some steam, he would come blazing into our side with a Nerf gun, and it was just like, oh man, we had to get under our desks and grab our, it was so fun. Those are the good old days, but there was, there was a lot of stress that we were letting out. We don't have as much stress now. We don't have problems anymore. So we figured that out.
Jake Brown (21:11):
That's awesome. Yeah. And you mentioned the Nerf guns. That's another chapter called The Maverick, where we had one of those suction cup Nerf guns, and we created a way that if there was a tch situation, we actually found signs around the office and you basically scored points by hitting how many signs on the course that we created. So we weren't allowed to shoot each other, but we would kind of settle these arguments or these disagreements, which way do we need to go? Well, hey, you just grab the Maverick and we would relieve tension with a kid toy.
Ben Lueders (21:44):
No, that's awesome. And the book is full of great examples of just that kind of thinking, and I don't know, I think it's really cool. Now, did your boss ever play along? Your boss
Jake Brown (21:58):
Think
Ben Lueders (21:59):
This was really great and just wanted to, how did that dynamic work?
Jake Brown (22:05):
Yeah, so one of the rules for hallway assassin was don't get caught. That was one of the three rules. And in the end of that chapter, I explained the day that I did get caught, I'm actually running down the hallway and I go to dive just full on matrix style dive, and it's actually the boss stand comes out of the bathroom and looks right at me, and I try to stop and man, I slide on this nasty carpet, big old rug burned down my arm, and he just looks at me and he's like my office now. And it's one of those times where you're just like, well, hallway assassin's, done. It was just one of those moments that it was like you just felt like, I mean, yes, I hit the ground, the air was knocked out of me, but kind of my spirit at the same time, just, oh, that was just taken away. So no, Stan, the boss was not involved in the games. There is one chapter where I talk about what if that's called what if, and it's the idea that I would just started asking, well, what if this? And one day at lunch, we went to grab a quick lunch and we were gone for over three hours because Stan started telling a story. And I said, well, what if that doesn't happen? Well, what if this? And we started fanning the Flames
(23:21)
And got, honestly, a lot of what's in the book I'll say is it can be disrespectful, some of the stuff that we were doing but didn't really realize it at the time. Looking back, I'm like, oh, man, I don't want people to act like that work for me, but if you care for them, they won't, is what I've come to realize. But anyway, so we're sitting at this lunch and Stan just starts into this story and I'm like, well, what if you did this? What if you did this? And we totally play off of his ego and how far he will take this story and keep expanding it, and we're leaning into the story and everything, but at the same time, we find out that we can use that as a tool between any of us or with clients to unlock potential or to be like, we did it in kind of a bad way.
(24:15)
We found a really great tool. We were able to use it for growth moving forward. And even when we found out that Sam's really, really good at this game, at the What If game. So if we needed to get into a project and we really needed to just blow the top off of something, get into that conversation, well, what if that law didn't exist? What if this didn't matter? What if we didn't have to do this? What if the client is asking for the wrong thing? And then you just start that daydream story of where it goes, and some of it's going to be ludicrous, and you're not going to be able to do that when you say, what if that law doesn't exist?
Ben Lueders (24:49):
You're probably
Jake Brown (24:49):
Not going to be able to do anything past
Ben Lueders (24:52):
Chasing that rabbit. We'll do the rest of this project after we've abolished that law tomorrow.
Jake Brown (24:58):
But there are times you say, well, what if this law doesn't exist? And then you go 1, 2, 3 skips, and then you realize we can get to that outcome a different path. There are ways to get there, but we were just, we're not going to look left because that rule exists. So we're going to focus over here, but every now and then, just what if this? So that is one that Stan was involved in hiding the can. There's a chapter called Canned
Ben Lueders (25:25):
That
Jake Brown (25:25):
Stan did get involved in. We had an expired can of soup that we would just hide in people's offices,
(25:31)
And Stan played in that one. So there were some that toward the end that Stan did start getting involved, as I would say, as the culture shifted. And there's a line in the book that a lot of people, I just wrote it and I didn't really think about it, but a lot of people have brought it up and emailed me about it. And it says, we can't find happiness in work, but you can pack joy like a sack lunch the night before and bring it with you. And when I started doing that, and when other people started doing that, our culture started to shift, and Stan became more a part of that, never fully engaged, but became a part of that in and Out. By the way, Stan is not the real name. That is
Ben Lueders (26:13):
The book name. I've been trying to find him on LinkedIn. I've looked at all the stands. He's not out there.
Jake Brown (26:21):
So Stan, as we created growth, people are attracted to growth and fun and joy. They're attracted to those things.
Ben Lueders (26:29):
But
Jake Brown (26:30):
One thing I mentioned in the book later on is if you are doing that, if like you said, you have that narcissistic boss who I think they build fan clubs, not just companies, but they're trying to build a fan club.
Ben Lueders (26:44):
And
Jake Brown (26:45):
When you start to build that community and people like coming to work and they're laughing and stuff, you will end up, there's a good chance you'll end up with a target painted on your back because you are leading their fan club, you're turning their fan club into a community.
Ben Lueders (27:02):
Yeah, I can see why, how those two things can't really exist together. It's like a threat to the fan club that they're trying to establish, which is very, so I wanted about, one thing I wanted to talk about is just kind of the structure of the book is really cool. One of the things that I found really helpful is we've alluded to there's these little stories, these very kind of fun personal stories that Jake shares. And then at the end of every chapter that he'll kind of summarize it in almost like a little moral of the story, kind of a section, here's what the application that you can take from it, and then there will be a little link, a little URL and a QR code to this go kit that you've created, leadership.co/, and you've basically created all of these different deliverables that people who buy the book can have access to. And there's a lot of really cool stuff in there. Do you want to maybe talk about some of the stuff that you can have access to if you get the book?
Jake Brown (28:18):
Yeah, for sure. Do you mind if I tell a quick story before we get there?
Ben Lueders (28:21):
Absolutely.
Jake Brown (28:22):
Okay. So the idea, I call 'em nuggets at the end of each chapter, and to let you know where they came from. Do you remember the TV show, Anna Maniacs?
Ben Lueders (28:31):
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Jake Brown (28:32):
At the end of the show, they're like, wheel of morality, turn, turn, turn. Teach us the lesson that we should learn. That was going in my mind. Every time I'm like, what is the moral of this story? What do they need to know? So I am still a kid and I'm trying to ungrow up. That is one of my goals.
Ben Lueders (28:48):
Well, I really appreciate it. I love when you summarize it, I'd be reading this, this is a really fun or interesting story, but I'm like, how does this apply to me? Again, it seems so personal. And then it's like, oh, that's exactly how it applies to me. Perfect. Thank you.
Jake Brown (29:01):
I'm glad to hear that. Thank you for that encouragement. But talking about the Go Kit, these are resources and just random things that as I was telling the stories, I was like, this is the worksheet. These are the fun things. Some of them are fun and some of them are actually pretty deep or useful tools for sure.
Ben Lueders (29:21):
These are my favorite right here, real quick. So because his book title is just so profane and explicit, he created these little graphic designed covers that make them a little more work friendly. If you have a bad boss, he's not going to complain. If you're reading a book called Leader's Hit, and here's another
Jake Brown (29:44):
One here, and they're poorly designed to be clear, they're designed to look bad so that nobody will walk over and talk to you.
Ben Lueders (29:50):
Your boss will be like, yes, that's exactly how a book cover should look. And so, yeah, this is so much fun. I need to, actually, I should have printed these out and put 'em on while I was reading around my kids. They just loved that I was reading this book, but this is a really great cover, so I don't really like to cover it up with these guys, but that's one of the fun things you have on there.
Jake Brown (30:16):
And real quick, what I did on my cover to Be Kids Safe, I'm going to hold up for the video people right there actually put a little bit of white out to make it a capital H. That's so great. Just so I wouldn't feel like a bad dad. But you can do that. You can download the covers, whatever, get the ebook. Nobody can read it. Nobody can see it anyway. But yeah, so the Goki, there's definitely those fake covers that you can just print out and cover up the cover. I've got some of the fun things. There's some airplanes, paper airplanes, and these are Intenses my seven now. He's eight loves. I mean, you can print them out. So they've got doodles that I drew on them and everything. So you can print 'em out, fold 'em out, fold 'em up. Your kids will love them. I promise you'll love.
Ben Lueders (31:00):
Oh my goodness. I hope my kids are smart enough to put 'em together. I was trying to follow, there's a link to, you might have to
Jake Brown (31:05):
Fold them into the hero.
Ben Lueders (31:07):
Yeah, these are advanced guys. I mean, we were joking offline that we were both Air Force brats and he has an F 16 Thunderbird, and I mean, it's amazing. I've never seen a paper airplane that is like this detailed.
Jake Brown (31:26):
We sat in a lot of bad meetings and we discovered how to make airplanes. But yeah, there are directions in there, and this is one of those things that it takes a few times, but they're really fun to build. There's a doll. I created what I call a stand doll, and what we would do is we created these, and then we would have rubber band wars where this chapter didn't make the book, but we'd make the dolls and we would shoot rubber bands at the dolls to try to pick 'em off or knock 'em off the top of a cubicle or a wall or in the kitchen or something. So that became one of the toys that we already had that I dropped into the book. Oh, man. What else? There's all kinds of stuff. If you ever have a fantasy football league and you need a team, I have the down under pecker tools ready for you. That is a chapter. You can download that artwork and use it. Made that available. I have, there's a Zoom background for Scope Creek because
Ben Lueders (32:18):
Oh, yes, that was
Jake Brown (32:19):
Favorite Scope
Ben Lueders (32:20):
Creek. I was laughing. Yep. Oh, man. Yeah, instead of Scope Creep, said Scope Creek, and you looked it up, and that's an actual place, and it's just that I smile and there's a picture of it in the book. That was a favorite part. Now, there's also, I printed off some of these things. So you also have this whole a bunch of joke resignation letter templates, and he has a good resignation. There's a one template one
Jake Brown (32:48):
That I recommend.
Ben Lueders (32:49):
So if someone really needs to get out of their crappy job, you actually have a template you can follow. But then there's a bunch of these fun mad lib versions that are in the style of a pirate or in the style of a Shakespeare. So that's a lot of fun. You also have this personality quiz that, I haven't even done this yet, but all this to say, there's a lot of value here. There's a lot of fun stuff. And so it was really cool to see, not only are you creating this book, I'm sure a very cathartic memoir, just helping you process this stuff, but hey, what are some practical things, materials that you can connect people with to maybe actually help them navigate their own crappy jobs or get out of their own crappy jobs, or to just understand themselves better?
Jake Brown (33:39):
I was challenged as I was just telling the stories. Somebody said, if you just make people laugh, you're going to let them down and you'll let yourself down in the end. So that's when I started pulling out these resources and started sharing with people. So like I said, some of them are fun. And you mentioned an actual real resignation letter. How many times do we not leave somewhere? We just don't know where the exit is? Well, here's an exit. This is how you resign. And then we have bingo cards for fun. There's actually a worksheet that I use. It's called Gold Metal Delegation, but it's, oh,
Ben Lueders (34:12):
Yeah, over here. Metal is M
Jake Brown (34:13):
E D D L E. And that one, it's actually, I like it as if you're taking on a project from somebody, if you can fill this out, then it's a goalpost that you can go back to and say, these are the things you told me to do. This is what I did. And you can build that trust. A lot of times, people who are really bad delegators, it's not that they will think that they can't trust the other person. They actually don't trust themselves to hand it off well, so they hang onto it or they meddle because they don't think that they did a good job. They might not realize that, but I found we created this worksheet and it, I mean, it was amazing for us. We'd be like, oh, gold medal delegation. And the boss is all happy and everything. Didn't realize that we were spelling it differently.
Ben Lueders (34:57):
Spelling it differently. Yeah. First of all, I really relate to that. I mean, think I've said that. I know I've said that in my head when I'm like, I should be handing this off to another designer, to another team member, but it's easier if I just do it. I don't trust myself to be able to pass along the information. It's not that they're not capable. It's not that they don't have skills themselves and that they couldn't do it. It's just like, yeah, there's something about that handoff.
Jake Brown (35:30):
And like I said, if you're receiving it, it's great to fill out the form and be, okay, I'm taking this on. This is what I'm agreeing to, and you feel safe about that project. Or if you're needing to hand off something, if you look at this worksheet and just fill it out, then I mean, you're going to be at least 80% good and 80 percent's honor roll, the honor roll y'all. If you can hand it off at 80% good. That's great. And then there's another one called the Council of Elders Worksheet. And on that one, it was kind of like there was nobody investing in me. This was early on in the journey. There was nobody investing in me. So I found kind of like fake mentors, virtual mentors, people like authors, books, musicians, that I could, in my mind, think, what would they speak into this? What would their words be in this situation? So I could kind of go to them for advice from the things that they had written and the wisdom that they had when the boss wasn't developing me, wasn't leading me. I had somewhere to turn, even though it is kind of like imaginary friends. But that's what it was.
Ben Lueders (36:32):
No, actually, I'm glad you brought that up because something that I wanted to get into, I loved that chapter. He has a whole chapter on this council of elders kind of idea. And if you're in a place where you don't have anyone really investing in you, I mean, the good news about where we are in our society right now is like you can hop on YouTube, you can find books, you can find communities. The funny thing is, as you were listing out some of the people that became your council of elders, we actually share some, like Andrew Peterson is a huge inspiration to me, John Foreman. Oh, awesome. But these aren't, and Donald Miller, obviously, but not all of them are just necessarily business leaders or something. These could be, like you said, musicians, artists, other types of influencers or educators, people who teach online. It could be guys like Jake Brown, you might read this book, and now you've got Jake Brown and your Council of Elders and his book and the other materials, and maybe you'll see him do some Lego workshop at a conference or something like that. And I love that idea because it is definitely been true in my own life. I just hadn't had it ever assembled in that way. Formalized it is like, oh, yeah, I really do. I subscribe to these different channels and these different newsletters and different things. And I think you talked about Michael Hyatt and Full Focus and stuff like that as well. And it's like there's all these people out there that are sharing amazing wisdom and willing to invest in you if you just buy their book. But that's amazing.
Jake Brown (38:10):
Another thing is it can be fictional characters. There could be a fictional character. There's something that I want to take from them. There's something that inspires me. What would that fictional character speak into my life? How would they answer this question? How would they react in this situation? And to be honest, where I am in my life right now, my dad, my father-in-law, my grandparents, all my grandpas, I don't have men in my family to look up to. They've all passed away,
(38:38)
But I'm carrying their wisdom. And I constantly think there are times something happens and I'm like, what would grandpa do? I need to know what grandpa, what would grandpa tell me right now? And just taking that thinking exactly right. Bracelets, man, that's my next marketing thing. But we all have, there is wisdom available to us. We don't have to feel alone, especially if you're trapped in a bad situation or if you're a manager, especially if you're a middle manager where there's a boss that maybe you don't have what you need, but you're a great example. You maybe were a really great creative or a really, really good designer, and now you're a creative director and you're in charge of managing and leading other people, but you don't really have training for it. You can build this council of elders. You can find that wisdom and access it and start to grow yourself and answer the question, not based on your limited wisdom, but the wisdom that you have access to. That's the point of it. And it honestly
Ben Lueders (39:35):
Takes
Jake Brown (39:35):
Less than an hour to do that workbook.
Ben Lueders (39:38):
Oh, yeah. Totally. Totally. Yeah. No, I thought that was really ingenious. Just that even when you feel like you might be alone in this situation, you're not really, there's always going to be resources and voices. And we've all had those, Raj and I have, sometimes we'll see a little YouTube short or reel from one of our Council of Elders, people just saying something really brilliant about business or about leadership, and we're always slacking it or texting it to each other, and it's like, dude, my mind is blown about this one thing. And it just, it's like, oh, yeah. You feel like a little bit of camaraderie too, of like, man, someone out there gets it. Like, yes, this is the problem that we're having, and this is how they articulated the solution. And it's just like it blows your mind.
Jake Brown (40:31):
Even like you said, you take what somebody else said and you pass it on to somebody else. You're sparking hope and growth. It's that simple to spark hope and growth in others, and to build that community that camaraderie, like you said. But being alone or thinking that you're alone, sometimes the best way to get out of being alone is just to help someone.
Ben Lueders (40:54):
Yeah. Oh yeah. Totally. Totally.
Jake Brown (40:56):
Or go out in the hallway and pretend that you shoot. Pretend that you shoot. Yeah,
Ben Lueders (41:00):
That's right. Do
Jake Brown (41:00):
Something funny. Some kind of a joke. Just if you ever, kids have never met a stranger. My daughter all the time is going to a playground or coming back or something like that. She's like, oh, I made a new friend. Well, do you know their name? No. Or, we'll, she'll like, Ooh, that person's going to be my friend, or That person's my friend. Do you know them? Not yet. And she runs over there and starts playing with them. And I'm like, how did we forget how to be nice to people and engage community that way? Especially at
Ben Lueders (41:27):
Work? Yeah. Well, I mean, everyone, you need to get this book. How can folks find you? How can they find this book?
Jake Brown (41:40):
For sure. Yeah, if you want to look up the book, you can go to leader.co or leaders hit.co. One word. You can go there another way. You can go there. You can reach me there. We'll just keep it simple. One place. You can go there. You can definitely get ahold of me there.
Ben Lueders (41:58):
Awesome. And we'll definitely drop that in the show notes as well. Yeah, keep in mind you get this book. You also have access to all the online materials as well. It's super, super, super exciting stuff. Thanks so much for being willing to come on and talk about this, Jake. It's a pleasure. Yeah. I've just been honored to learn from you, and for those of you who are in a crappy job right now, you've got a crappy boss. I think that this resource would be really, really helpful to you to help just learn how to survive and then even learn how to get out of the situation if it's time to get out. So thanks again, Jake, for being on today.
Jake Brown (42:45):
Ah, man. It's been blessed. Thank you. Thanks for joining us today on
Ben Lueders (42:48):
Growing a Fruitful Brand. If you found today's show helpful, don't forget to subscribe and consider
Jake Brown (42:52):
Sharing it with
Ben Lueders (42:53):
Someone who might also enjoy it. If you'd like to work with Fruitful on a branding website or messaging project of your own, you can always reach out on our website Fruitful Design. But until next time,
Jake Brown (43:05):
Don't forget
Ben Lueders (43:06):
To grow something good.
