The Power of Peer Networks in Business
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In this conversation, Bill Vick, a Vistage Chair, discusses the importance of peer networks for business leaders, the role of accountability in driving growth, and the challenges faced by business owners today. He emphasizes the value of strategic planning, community connection, and the impact of AI on the business landscape. Vick shares insights on how Vistage helps members navigate these challenges and highlights the importance of caring for employees and fostering a supportive business environment.
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Introduction to Vistage and Bill Vick
The Role of a Vistage Chair
The Power of Peer Networks
Accountability and Growth in Business
Strategic Planning and Business Valuation
Common Challenges for Business Owners
Navigating Regulations and Employee Relations
The Importance of Community and Connection
AI and Its Impact on Business
Final Thoughts and Recommendations -
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Jonathan Mahrt (A):
This is on the Flywheel, a podcast where each week we talk to entrepreneurs and professionals about the practical things they do to build and keep momentum in their personal and professional lives. Hello and welcome to on the Flywheel. I'm your host, Jonathan Mart with Flywheel Consulting. And today I'm excited to talk to Bill Vick, a Vistage chair in the North Bay of California. Thanks for being on today, Bill.
Bill Vick (B):
Good afternoon and thanks for having me, Jonathan. I'm looking forward to our conversation.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Thank you. Me as well. And so let's jump right into it. First off, what is Vistage? Can you explain that for folks?
Bill Vick (B):
Gosh. It is a peer network. It turns out to be the largest peer network in the world. 45,000 members in 35 countries. Started with seven old white guys like me back in 1965 in Minnesota. All CEOs. They ran their businesses, all different businesses, and like most business owners, similar challenges, isolation, wondering why they are the CEO, why not somebody else. Imposter syndrome, we call it. And the inability to really share their concerns with their company. I mean, you're in charge. You don't want to act like you don't know what's going on.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Right.
Bill Vick (B):
And also with their family. So they were pretty isolated. They would meet once a month, have lunch and talk about what's going on in their businesses and found out that they could meet every month, pretty much an all day meeting, and work on their issues. In that meeting, they called themselves the executive committee. Well, fast forward to today. It's the largest peer network in the world.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah, that's super interesting. I can really see the value to that because sometimes it's being a little bit dramatic. Right. But it's lonely at the top.
Bill Vick (B):
We know it's a cliche because it's true. It really is. I mean, who do you talk to if you're the leader and you show weakness? Do you show it to your board, who you're paying?
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Right.
Bill Vick (B):
Okay. Do you show it to your employees or what are they gonna do? Well, gee, Bill's worried about what we're doing. Maybe I should look somewhere else. Now all those kind of issues come up. The concept behind it is, can I work on my business and not be buried daily in my business?
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I totally understand that. That's what I try and help business owners with as well.
Bill Vick (B):
There you go. I know you do.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
And so how did you happen into becoming a vist?
Bill Vick (B):
You know, I was really very fortunate. I was retiring from financial services and I had a great career in that. Loved It. But when I was retiring from that, I was thinking, well, I could play golf all day long and go fishing and travel and so forth. But after probably six months, my handicap wouldn't go down that much. I wouldn't catch that many fish. And people say, well, you know, he's here again. What's he doing then? He has something to do. So I was fortunate enough to belong to a group called Provisors, a networking group. I was fortunate enough to be a group leader in San Francisco. And one of the members was a Vistage member. And we were talking one day and he said, well, Bill, you'd be maybe a good Vistage chair. So I didn't know anything about it. I reached out to some other people I knew and Provisors that had been members of Vistage, they said, we'll put you in touch with the Vistage leadership in San Diego. I contacted them and very fortunately for me, there was an acquaintance of mine in Sonoma county who was running a Visage group. He also had a group in Reno. And he said, bill, that's too much for me. I now live in Reno. Would you consider running my group here in Sonoma County? So in many ways, two good things happened. One that I had the introduction to Visage and then I had an opportunity to help, as they call, transition a group from one chair to another. But I love it because of the mission, the intellectual capital and just the ability to work with people. So it's very exciting for me.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah, I think that's got to be such an interesting experience because you're sitting there right in the middle of all these people trying to run their business and your job is just to facilitate.
Bill Vick (B):
Them, their growth and lead too. You can't just facilitate. That is a high skill I'm not particularly good at, but I try to get better at it. But the main thing is the right questions and the key to Vistage success is what we call issue processing.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Okay.
Bill Vick (B):
The very reason that those seven guys met in Minnesota is because they had issues and not all issues. We call them issues and opportunities. Okay? There'll be a chance to change my business or buy a competitor from my business over my family. Whatever I want to try to do, I will have questions about that. So the business community goes through that process in a very detailed and I would say structured way to bring out the right kind of questions and not junk to solutions to find out is the opportunity really an opportunity? Is the issue really the issue or is it something else? And that process enables the group and that's the power, the peers to say, okay, Jonathan, we found out what your opportunity is. And does that sound like the right opportunity for you? Yeah, I confirm that that's the right opportunity. Well then when are you going to take action on it? Well, I think I can get that done by January next year. Well, when in January? Well, how about January 15th? What time? It's not quite that I was going.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
To say you're really nailing them to the table, the wall there.
Bill Vick (B):
And so that's the whole idea behind Peers is the power of peers. Who am I accountable to? Because you're going to show up every month and you'll discuss with, well, how's it going, Jonathan? How's your opportunity going for January? What steps have you taken? And so forth. And so that is a very powerful and I think it's classic reason for peer groups to exist.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
I think the one thing that I, and I've talked about with other people on this podcast is it's amazing how much value there is in paying for accountability.
Bill Vick (B):
Oh, absolutely.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Especially for people that are like high achievers or people that are really busy and have a lot going on because you get so lost in the minutia and the day to day of running your business sometimes that unless you're paying, it doesn't necessarily have to be paying. But that's to me often the most compelling accountability is when you're paying for someone to bother you on some frequency about the things that you know you need to get done but are really easy to push off to the side.
Bill Vick (B):
And the ROI on that is very high as well. Yeah, I mean the average Vistage member's revenue increases by 2.8% over, you know, a year or two period of time. Because you are now more productive. You're making sure that your employees, the people that work for you are C suite, are doing their work and you're working on yourself. Vistage members are driven by growth, growth of revenue, growth of profit, you know, growth of their knowledge and personal growth. And so that's the main driver behind membership in Visage, growing my business. I think 70% to 80% of our members are growth oriented. The other 20% are communicators. But the ability to step away. Okay, think about the opportunities, the issues. And here from world class speakers. We have about a thousand speakers all around the world and we have like our latest speaker, Alec Hudnut from Vici Partners. Well, here's a man that had a background with Goldman Sachs and he's a McKinsey, Harvard business MBA has owned four companies, sold three of them. And he talks about how CEOs make decisions. Well, how valuable is that? Sit in a meeting with somebody for two hours and personally ask him, well, how do you decide? How is this done? He had a beautiful platform of, you know, making decisions with world class examples. And then one of our speakers, Philippe Vuissu of Blue Dots Partners. And Philippe talks about the four, you know, dots, the blue dots that you connect. But he had, he was a direct report to Steve Jobs. Well, he has an incredible, you know, skill set, knowledge and background. And spend two and a half, three hours with Philippe talking about is my company aligned properly or not? That's invaluable. That's really quite a bit of access. That's one of the things that I love about Visage is that intellectual capital comes and sits down with you and talks with your group for a couple of hours, three hours, has lunch with you and you can follow up with them and you know, add more to the value of what you're doing. So I'm a facilitator of that and I connect people and so I like to say to people, it's not what I know certainly, but it's who I know that you need to know that makes this so much fun for me.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah, that's, I mean, that's such a great opportunity to, for continuing education because I think that's an important part of.
Bill Vick (B):
No, I thought AI had all the education I'd ever need. I could just turn it on and let you read it and say this is what I would say, that's what I would do.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah. I've personally been able, I have the opportunity to be a guest at a few meetings and the speakers are always really good, very, very insightful and, and it's, you know, it's a win, win. I know they're not explicitly supposed to be selling to the audience, but lots of times it's, it's good exposure for them and then it's great for the, for the members as well to get access to the insights that they have.
Bill Vick (B):
It's critical because you don't know what you don't know.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Right.
Bill Vick (B):
Okay. And as we speak about AI and the impact is having on the world all the time. It's like AI gives you all the knowing, but your group and Vistage gives you the doing. Okay. I think that I heard somebody say there's around 38,000 business books published every year. Every year. Every year. So I've missed about 37,990 of them. I know this past year. But the thing that is important is that it's not the knowing, it's what do I pick? Okay. And so your group will help you pick if you have a certain issue. And AI can help you pick as well, but you need a director. And so the whole concept behind Visage is that your group leader, the chair and the group will help you pick out of all of that. Because I think it's sometimes as your point that if you have a speaker and then somebody chooses that speaker as their consultant and six months later we'll have you change. Well, no, it didn't work. Well, why didn't work? Because you did not push the group, didn't push you to do it. And you asked the consultant, well, why didn't it work? Well, he didn't follow my advice. These are very smart people, very, very capable. But it's the doing and being incented to do by your peers, I think that makes all the difference.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah, that's powerful. I mean, there's a lot of smart people in the world. There's a big difference between. It's not necessarily the smartest people that are the most successful. It's the ones that can get things, actually get things done.
Bill Vick (B):
Well, history is made up of people that took action. And, and there's lots of books written by people that never had success. But they were smart. Yeah, they knew a lot of things, but they never did the doing.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah.
Bill Vick (B):
And the doing, as we know, is what makes all the difference.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Absolutely. You, you mentioned the difference between the business owners in Vistage. You said that there were those with a growth mindset and then there were communicators. What did you mean, what do you mean by the difference between those two?
Bill Vick (B):
I would say that let's look at communicators. These are people that have a vision of a business or a concept and they're almost missionary and they tell people about it. We can do this. Let's make this happen. Okay. And that's their, their motivation. Others are more, I'd say pragmatic, not more pragmatic. Let's say they're financially motivated. They want to have success, financial success and success as a business. One of the things I love about Vistage is that it is the small mid sized business engine of America. I mean most people work at small mid sized businesses in America. I mean, it's the greatest source of our wealth, greatest source of our jobs. These people run the communities, they run their own, the chamber of commerce, they're doing the business, you know, funding the events in the community, the Boy Scouts, all the things that take place in the community. So the Vistage experience helps these individuals empower each other so that they're better leaders. Growth set, growth mindset. Growing my business, that means what to me? I'm growing more employees in my business. My employees are satisfied, they are happy. There's more money going into the community. Okay. Which makes the community better. So if we can have that kind of, you know, dynamic. And those are people say, I want to grow this. Well, I've got a $10 million business, I'd like for it to be 15. I got a $50 million business, I want it to be 100 million. Got 101 be a $500 million business. Here's a way to go about growing that. That makes me better and people that are similar to me that can make that better, or is there a better way for me to communicate that so that I get, you know, people knocking on my door say, I want to work with you.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
That's really, that's really, that's really interesting. I think the spending, spending time working, carving out that time to sit down and work on your business on a monthly, on a monthly basis, on a regular cadence feels really important.
Bill Vick (B):
It's very important, but it's interesting. Oftentimes for potential new members, they'll say, well, I can't possibly.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Right.
Bill Vick (B):
It's been one day out of my work. I mean, so busy. Well, the first thing I think about, why are you that busy?
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah.
Bill Vick (B):
Okay. I mean, don't you have employees and a C suite and people to run that for you if you stepped away for a day?
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Right.
Bill Vick (B):
And then there's also a psychological aspect to that. There's a lot of. Not a lot, but there are people that feel like the busier they are, the more productive they are.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Right.
Bill Vick (B):
And no, that's not the case at all. It generally is not the case. And so what you're looking for is that person that can step back and really focus on what's important. Just recently, Visage outlined what we call our strategic planning concept. Just ruled out this month. But if this is an in depth year long or longer period of looking deeply into your business, your progress, your growth, to make sure that you have a strategic plan to meet the future and all the challenges of that, that's really quite compelling. Another thing that Vistage does is we have what's called the transition group. And in the transition group, you can de risk your company by knowing its value. About 90 plus percent of business owners Small mid sized businesses really have no idea what their business is worth. And here's a way to find out. Yeah, and we have a method that's worth that. I mean, a lot of times that process loans cost five, ten thousand dollars a year. And with the new addition of strategic plan, I think our CEOs are going to know more about the value of their company and more about the future of their company. What can we possibly be. And there's a step by step process to do that. So I find it very exciting and I, I enjoy sharing it with my group.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah, that's, that's a really cool value add because a lot of people, if they don't have it, it's hard to figure out how to transition your business because it's not like, you know, most aren't huge organizations. It's not easy to value them. You may not have enough, you know, you, you may want a clean break and so you don't want to, you want to separate completely from it, but you want to get the value of whatever the business is because you've worked in it for 30 years.
Bill Vick (B):
Well, like for example, one of our speakers, Brett Simon, is an attorney and merger and acquisition attorney and she has a presentation called the seven Ds and they're all about how you will leave your business. So 100% of our owners will leave that business one way or another.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Okay, that's true.
Bill Vick (B):
So do you want to leave it on your terms? And what she goes through is like death, disability, you know, all kinds of, of, you know, things that can happen, divorce, all that. And how are you prepared in that case? Another thing that you want to be prepared for, for example, is that if you need to borrow money, you want your business to be absolutely pristine so that the bank or lending institution, oh, happily would lend you money.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Right.
Bill Vick (B):
Because you're so squared away.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah.
Bill Vick (B):
So it's all about running your business properly. Quite honestly. You'll be more pleased. And guess what, you have some friends with you say, good job, Jonathan, you're doing great, man.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah, no, that's also important. That's also an important part of it. So I really want to talk about, because you're getting to talk to different kinds of business owners in different situations. What are some of the common themes that you're hearing in terms of challenges business owners are facing?
Bill Vick (B):
Certainly the tariffs and the economy and the stability of their company employees are a big issue. We recently had one. It was written up in the North Bay biz. We talked about the Personal Attorneys General Act As Paga we call it. And that's a real issue for many CEOs and business owners. The challenges that this can present to them by not knowing how to deal with that effectively. So we dealt with that. We talked about, well, what should you do for your employees and their paychecks, their time off, their hours worked, et cetera. So you don't create an issue like that.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Can you explain what it is that is the concern?
Bill Vick (B):
Well, the concern is that you could have an employee not take their lunch breaks.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Oh, okay.
Bill Vick (B):
Okay. At the time designated and for whatever reason they don't. But if they don't do that or if they don't know what their time off or their sick days are, if they don't know how much, you know, education, enough vacation time they have, their paycheck doesn't reflect certain things, then they have a grievance against the company.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Okay, yeah, I'm with you.
Bill Vick (B):
And it can be really quite onerous. Yeah, I think the statistics on that were off the charts. It was like the average Paga suit was about a million $100,000 in costs for the company on average in California.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Wow.
Bill Vick (B):
And the average recipient in the class got less than $1,500. The tragic part though, Jonathan, was that sometimes the people, the class that brought the suit against their company, the Paga settlement bankrupted the company. So not only did they not receive much money, their friends and people they used to work with lost their jobs.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah, that's.
Bill Vick (B):
So we talk about how to deal with that, the things to do to protect yourself against that kind of thing. So that's one issue I'd say is regulations, taxes. Another big issue, tariffs, how to outsource, how to protect yourself. And Vista Joe also has a. Annually we send a group of our CEOs to Washington D.C. to the Congress and talk about issues for small and mid sized businesses. And we have also a Vistage survey, monthly survey that's published in the Wall Street Journal and talks about the outlook from small mid sized businesses in America. And it's quite compelling. It's very, very good.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
I'm going to have to keep an eye out for that. I don't know if I.
Bill Vick (B):
Well, you're going to get one very soon. Your father will get one very soon. It's coming his way. You can.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah.
Bill Vick (B):
You know he needs some help.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yes. I was more talking about seeing it in the Wall Street Journal.
Bill Vick (B):
There you go.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah, the. So. So what do you feel like the average business owner tends to get right? And what do you think they Tend.
Bill Vick (B):
To get wrong caring for their employees. They really do care for the employees. I think on average they. Based on a conversation we've had since I've been a chair, is that they really care about the people work with them, the people that work for them and the community. They're passionate about what they do. They really believe in their products. It's like there's basically two things that you want to be either a low cost provider or you provide a service or a product. That price is an object willing to pay. I'm willing to pay because that's what I want to deal with. And then I'd say also just the community, their business and. And they're passionate about their work itself. They. They like what they do. And that's the real, I think, advantage of being your own employer. Employer. When you can pick your work and make it work for you.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Absolutely.
Bill Vick (B):
I don't know if I answered your question or not.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
That was, that was what you feel like they get. They get right.
Bill Vick (B):
Yeah.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
What about you? What do you see? What are the things that you feel like people commonly get wrong or maybe not could also not be blatantly wrong, but where, you know, maybe they tend to miss the mark more or.
Bill Vick (B):
That's a good question. I don't know that I could give you. It varies company by company.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Okay.
Bill Vick (B):
Some of it can be things outside of their control.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Sure.
Bill Vick (B):
Competition. Some it could be just the product itself becomes obsolete sometimes. You know, it's just mismanagement. We don't do a good job with it. We're not, we're too careless or maybe we are too dependent on one or two of our customers and we think we have great revenue. But if either one of those or one of them left and all of a sudden we've got a real problem.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah.
Bill Vick (B):
So the ability to know that's part of that trend transaction center we have every year. Because you'll take a look at what your company's worth, where your products or your profitability is coming from or your KPIs, what's working and what you as the CEO should know about your company and your product or service and how it fits in with competition.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah. I think, I think that once again, coming back to that regular review of your business.
Bill Vick (B):
Yes.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
The value and has a lot of value. I think it's valuable in your personal life too, just in terms of taking stock of where you're at and where you are.
Bill Vick (B):
Well, think about it this way. It's part of your responsibility as a CEO. You're Supposed to de risk and not, you know, be whistling, walking in the dark. You know, let's not do that. Yeah, things might be good, but you know, might be a big change right around the corner and you don't know it. Well, you should be aware of those things, not like change derail you.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah, it's, it's amazing how the. I think it's a very coming back to like having one or two big clients. That's a story as hold as time.
Bill Vick (B):
Oh, it is.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
And I think that's if someone has a business where if they lost those one or two clients, they represented 80% of my revenue and my business would disappear tomorrow. In some ways you're like, well, do you really. I'm not gonna say you don't have a business, but it is like you're almost like a subsidiary of whatever those clients or customers are.
Bill Vick (B):
Classic examples of business owners. They'll say, oh, my business is worth $25 million. Okay. And I'm going to sell it at three times that, four times. I'm going to sell it for $100 million. And then you get people like in the transaction center and potential buyers and people that have expertise in this, they'll look at your revenue, look at your business, say, yeah, you've got $25 million in revenue and you know, 15 million comes from two customers. You don't really, you have a seven million dollar business.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Right.
Bill Vick (B):
You don't have a $25 million business. And that's what we're looking at. Okay. And then they look deeper into those issues and how well is that being run and so forth. And I think business owners are oftentimes maybe aware of that, but not dealing with it. So your Visage group want to make sure you, you deal with that. The transaction center will say, what is your business really worth? You should know that.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
And I think that's in. You talked about CEOs being in charge of de risking the business to me. If that is the situation I'm in my business, I should be doing everything I can to find alternative sources of revenue that would support. Allow me to continue running my business.
Bill Vick (B):
Don't be beholden to one or two clients or one or two services or products.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Right.
Bill Vick (B):
Because as we know, Jonathan, competition comes in, oh, I can do that.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Right.
Bill Vick (B):
You know, I can do that cheaper than you're doing and whatnot.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah, I mean, in, you know, my background in farming, there's always a person, so another farmer that's dumb enough to do it, to do it more cheaply. You Know, it doesn't, it doesn't matter if, you know, they're, because they're like, oh, farmers will just try and buy the business because they figure, oh, I'll make it back over time, eventually I'll make it back. Exactly, you know, or the big guys come in and they'll throw, you know, they'll do, give something away and then two years later raise prices or all kinds of, all kinds of things.
Bill Vick (B):
There's so many, you know, unknowables.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah.
Bill Vick (B):
In farming, not only the weather, the products here, the workers, everything. And the government, all those things working for you or against you.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yes.
Bill Vick (B):
It is a real juggling act. So my hats off to you and your family for all the hard work you guys do and the many things you do.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah.
Bill Vick (B):
Thank you. Thank you.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
So what is, what is the current. We talked a little bit about it. Obviously things like the economy and provisors are, are on people's or not pro. Visors. I'm sorry. Yeah, I was trying to say economy and tariffs. That's what I was trying to get to. We're on people's minds, things like that.
Bill Vick (B):
And government regulations.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Government regulations. I mean, so what is the general sentiment right now? You talked about that survey they're doing. What's, what's, how are people feeling generally? Is there a lot of just, is it. To me the word is uncertainty. Okay.
Bill Vick (B):
That's the word. And you're right because there's, things seem to change so fast and one thing that's added to all this is artificial intelligence. And there's a huge amount of knowledge, I think a certain huge amount of knowing. But there's also a lot of misinformation, misdirection and so forth. So it's very important that you curate this source, that you protect yourself from it and your group will help you in that. And the approaches that we take to that and know about large language models and agents and all the things that are part of the AI network. And so we try to tell our group we want to make sure that they are aware, they know the things that work, the things that do not work and how to use it to make their, you know, their company and more successful and integrate that in a way that, you know, keeps employees satisfied and engaged as well. Very important.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
So what is the general sentiment for small medium sized businesses about AI and how are they doing?
Bill Vick (B):
Adopting a great deal of anxiety because a lot of entry level people are concerned that they're working to improve the AI capability in their job and basically have AI take their job.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Right.
Bill Vick (B):
Is what there's a fear. And then certainly a lot of graduates from colleges these days are finding that entry level positions are more challenged because of that. So that is one area of concern. And the other one is the actual security of your work. I mean, you can put information into AI that basically goes everywhere.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Right.
Bill Vick (B):
And so that is. I don't think a lot of people are that careful with that or understand that risk. So that's a responsibility of the CEO and the C suite to do that. At the same time, it also is a great opportunity to use AI to help you out. Like, for example, one of our speakers, AI Academy founder Sam Keller and Steve Giogiovanni. I'm saying his name wrong. I have a hard time saying his name. Great, great guy. But they show you how to go from the very fundamental bottom layer of AOI all the way up to the top and have a C suite board member from AI, if it's done correctly and it adds to your thinking into the processes that can be done. So it is a great tool, but it's only a tool. And like any tool, it can be misused and it can be used in a way that's harmful. So I think it's up to the chairs and to the group to curate. In fact, our next meeting, we'll talk a lot about which parts of, you know, AI are you using, how are you using it, what do you recommend so the group gets more comfortable with it. Because we'd like to be the director of that for them. You know, as a chair, let's not, you know, you do one thing and somebody else does another thing, then it's like, I think it's all over the place and it shouldn't be that way. I think there's probably a best path and a least risky path and a path that makes a lot of sense for people that they can employ in their business and their employees and their C suite and leadership of that company will feel like that they're current and they're doing the smart thing and the right thing.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah. I think one of the best practices now is to. Is you want to avoid employees just running amok with AI. Right. And so coming up with some. An AI policy for people.
Bill Vick (B):
Absolutely.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Saying, hey, this is the tool you're allowed to use for work.
Bill Vick (B):
Yeah.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
And these are the ways in which it's okay to use it, I think is a really important for people. Especially, you know, there if you have employees dealing with sensitive information, because you can drop anything into AI and Ask questions about it. You don't know what company secrets.
Bill Vick (B):
Oh, my.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
That someone's dropping in there, you know, so that's really. I think that's really important for business owners to do is make sure that they've, like, their employees know what the expectations are.
Bill Vick (B):
Yeah. You have a policy for how you pay people. You have a policy for sick leave. You have a policy for vacations. You have a policy at work. And, you know, for safety policies. And. Well, the Internet and AI and access to technology is at warp speed these days, so we better have a policy around that. Two reasons why. One is it protects your company. Secondly, it gives your employees a sense of security as well.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah.
Bill Vick (B):
They know what they can do and their limitations. That gives them a sense. Well, I'm following the rules here.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah, no, I think it's really. I think it's very helpful to provide people with a guardrail.
Bill Vick (B):
Absolutely.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
So they know what to do. So, Bill, we are getting close to the end of our meeting. There's a couple things that I always like to ask people. The one question is, if you could put one thing on the side of a billboard, like, over a freeway that you wanted to communicate to people, what. What would it be? You know, typically, like a saying or phrase or some. Some. Some wisdom, or it could be, you know, anything or nothing.
Bill Vick (B):
I would say this. Just, you know, put a sign says, talk to your peers.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Okay. On brand.
Bill Vick (B):
Talk to your peers.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah, I. I think that's.
Bill Vick (B):
Well, we all have peers. We have friends that are peers. Yeah. We have our family as our peer groups. Certainly our workers are a peer group, our community's peer group. But you want that peer group that you can completely trust to say anything to. And like we like to say in our meetings, what's said in our meetings stays in our meeting. And a sense of confidentiality and a willingness to share is really quite critical. And most people don't quite have that. You know, your family, you have a role you play as a family member. Have a role you play at work or role you play in your community, wherever. But this is one group that's pretty special to you, that you can share all those things.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah, I think that's a great point, is that it's interesting that humans seem like we're wired to need to be in community with each other and be able to share with each other. But in. And in some ways, we're more connected than ever, but at the same time, more disconnected from ever.
Bill Vick (B):
And so, yeah, you make a great point. Is that technology, our phones our computers, our TVs, everything keeps us in our minds all the time and takes our attention away and our connectivity to other people is diminished. And so there's more isolation than ever. And so the ability to step away from that and put that phone in a box. When you go into a meeting and have a 8, 10, 12 hour meeting and there's no phones, no interruptions and you might be shocked what you might learn about yourself.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah, that's powerful. Yeah, that's powerful. Yeah, that's so I think even if you're not a business owner, I think it's important that people go out and find peers, whatever that context is, maybe that you can share with too because if you hold, you know, you never get it out.
Bill Vick (B):
You know, it's really interesting because there's a book, a fairly old book called Bowling Alone. And the book was written about the fact that. And this was in, I think, I think mid-90s, I can't think of who the author was and talked about what we used to have so much of community. It was either maybe a faith based community or it was our bowling league or we played bridge together or we had community events and people were always involved. And you guys do a great job of that within petaluma with your rig form and all the stuff you got going on in downtown. But today there's nothing like that. And so the concept was a guy goes bowling and there's nobody there. Yeah, so it is, you know, we need community. So this in a way is a community for you? Yeah, it establishes that.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
I think that's. I mean it's even worse. They're talking about it now. They're talking about the people are looking back on the 90s like it was pretty good in terms of community. There's a lot of conversations about how lonely people are.
Bill Vick (B):
Well, the, there's a lot to be said for. I think it's the vagus nerve. It goes from the head all the way to the gut and it's driven by the limbic brain and dopamine and you know, all those things that come into our bodies chemically and that little magic phone just turns those things on and off all the time, firing all the time. And I think that's a real risk to a lot of people, especially younger people. Yeah, but I want to go down that road.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
That's a whole other conversation.
Bill Vick (B):
It take us another bit.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
So you already mentioned one book, but the other question I always try to ask everyone is what are the one or two books that you either recommend or Gift to people the most.
Bill Vick (B):
Well, one's the Power Peers by Elio Batari. Okay. Talks about that. Exactly. What we've been talking about. A book I recently got was Clear Thinking by Sean Parrish. I really like that. About how you think and what you do are critically linked. Okay. And thinking and doing are two different things. It's very much like knowing and doing as we talk about in our visage groups. And I think one I heard about just quite recently was, if I can think the name of it. Again, it was not knowing. It was. Oh, I cannot remember the name of it right now. I just got the book, too. Awareness. Awareness is the name of it, and it is really quite compelling. And it's quite just the opposite of what we're talking about with being constantly involved and entertained with our media and knowing what's going on in the world. So Awareness. And I can't think of the author right now, but check it out. Yeah, Jump right up. Awareness and then Clear Thinking by Sean Parrish. I recommend both those books.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Those are. Yeah, those sound like. I've never. I haven't heard of either one of those. So that'll be good for me to add to the list to check out. In some ways, it's just selfish. I need.
Bill Vick (B):
Well, it's one of the recommendations now you'll need is 37,998 more. Go and you'll be ready, Jonathan.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Exactly. Exactly. Well, it's, you know, sometimes, too, you just keep reading all these business and personal productivity books.
Bill Vick (B):
Yeah. You like to find a theme that runs through it, though. If you find a line.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah.
Bill Vick (B):
That it. It said a different way, but it's saying the same thing. And that's the key to it.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Trying to uncover the kind of, like, universal truth that's in between the lines.
Bill Vick (B):
I think awareness is part of that. And I think that Sean Paris's concept on, you know, he was, you know, the part of Berkshire Hathaway.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Okay.
Bill Vick (B):
And that kind of thinking that those people did. And quite. Quite compelling how you think and how you feel and how to control those.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yeah. Well, those are great recommendations. Thank you so much.
Bill Vick (B):
My pleasure.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
And that we have come to the end of our episode.
Bill Vick (B):
Well, this just flew by.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
It flies by.
Bill Vick (B):
Fly wheel does spin pretty fast. I like it, man.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much for being on. It was a great conversation. I really enjoyed it.
Bill Vick (B):
Okay.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
And hopefully we'll have you on again sometime in the future.
Bill Vick (B):
You got it, my man. Thanks so much, sir. Okay, take care.
Jonathan Mahrt (A):
Thank you.