Modern Church Leader
Hear pastors share what's working in their churches. Welcome to Modern Church Leader, a show for church leaders to learn business strategies, leadership skills, church tech tips, and generosity. Tune in for powerful interviews to help you grow your church to be more effective, efficient, and powerful for the kingdom of God. For more information, visit https://www.mclconference.com/
Modern Church Leader
Building Exceptional Faith-Based Leadership Teams w/ William Vanderbloemen
What does building a strong leadership team for a values-based organization take? Join us for a thought-provoking conversation with William Vanderbloemen, the visionary founder of Vanderbloemen Search. William shares insights from his entrepreneurial journey, from his childhood experiences to founding a firm that helps churches recruit pastors efficiently and with heart.
For more information on Modern Church Leader, visit https://www.mclconference.com
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Hey guys, frank here with another episode of Modern Church Leader. I am here with William Vanderbloemen, the founder of Vanderbloemen Search. William, it's great to have you on today. Thanks, frank, it's good to be with you. So you put William. Do you go by William, or do people call you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have a. So first of all, little advice. If there are any listeners out there that are thinking of having children never, ever, make your child go by their middle name. It's terrible. I'm a junior. I'm actually Bruce William Vanderbilt Jr. And dad was Bruce and mom didn't want two Bruce's in the house, so it's William, but then she was Persistent would be a nice way to say it about it only being William. So I don't even say Bill or it doesn't. It's not like it's, I don't care, but it just doesn't even get from my brain.
Speaker 1:You know it's like yeah, I get, I'm a Franklin named after my grandpa, but I go by Frank. It's always been Frank, it's always been Frank, it's never been Franklin. You know, but I get the middle name. The middle name thing would throw me off if I started calling my kids my middle names.
Speaker 2:The only upside, frank? The only upside is if I get a phone call and somebody says hey Bruce, they're either running for office or asking for money and I can hang up real fast.
Speaker 1:So it's like got it wrong. You don't actually know me, Right, oh my gosh. Um well, thanks for doing this.
Speaker 2:I know you're, you're traveling and speaking at some cool conferences and everything. Um, but man, you like my home decor. I mean, this is pretty awesome.
Speaker 1:I was going to say with the suitcase on the bed. That's amazing, that's right. Well, I get the two beds.
Speaker 2:I don't do the king, and that way I've got a place for my things and a place for me. So a hundred percent.
Speaker 1:I'm the same way. It's like I don't use the closet in a hotel room. That's work.
Speaker 2:No, that's just a recipe for leaving something at the hotel.
Speaker 1:So I've totally done that and I'm like yep left it in the closet.
Speaker 2:No, it's a pretty cool thing. I'm speaking tomorrow to the CEOs of the larger homeless missions in the United States, so it's a really interesting crowd with a very unique puzzle to solve, so hopefully I can learn from them and maybe even offer something that will help them.
Speaker 1:How many of them are there? That seems like a fairly niche crowd of CEOs, but how many of those are there?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, first of all, if you say CEO, then it's a pretty good size. You call it gospel rescue mission, right? Okay, I think there are a couple hundred here. It's a very small gathering. No sponsors, no, like we were going to bring somebody and set up a table like no, no, no, no, no, no. This is a quiet thing. So it'll be fun to go and learn from these guys. I would bet they are a little closer to Jesus than I am Right, yeah, I mean they're doing that's tough work. Yeah.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent. A hundred percent, Well, that's cool. That's not necessarily you're speaking to this group, but you were obviously invited there to speak because you've built a pretty awesome company over the last 15, 16 years.
Speaker 2:Well, maybe we do a lot of whether it's awesome or not, we'll let God decide later but we have to work for members of this group and I wrote a book last year about kind of standing out in the crowd, and right now the pastors, your listeners, can relate to this. It's harder to stand out in front of donors. Yeah, like overall benevolent giving. United States is going down, not up. The church is doing better than non-church, but, um, you know, those guys raised 42 cents of every dollar in their budget in the month of December, yeah, which, by the way, is when it gets cold and homelessness becomes a problem, right, so you know they got that. And then there's volunteer, and then then there's the whole. Like the number one headache is is what we're doing? Working because people don't want to give their money to something that's just thrown away, or so it's a fascinating studying for them and trying to to figure out how to help them, how to help.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean. Good luck when you go. Thanks, Tell us about the search firm that you started, though. Like give us?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Maybe you can go, you can step before that and like what got you connected to church and what you want to start serving. I know you do searches for more than just pastors, but you obviously serve a lot of churches and pastors.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Kind of got you into this.
Speaker 2:Well. So what got the search firm started was a question, one question Can we help churches find their pastor faster and better? And it's since grown into some other things. But let me drop a little bit behind that. And it's since grown into some other things. But let me drop a little bit behind that. I was, you know, the chronic entrepreneur as a kid and we could spend a long time talking about that. But, like you know, I would buy up extra paper routes and sell off the parts I didn't want and like that's dysfunctional. That's weird thinking for a nine year old. But that was me. And and then I went to college thinking I would finish my MBA in three years and then by 30, have most of the Western hemisphere under control. And you know I was going to this, was it? And then in college just did this prodigal journey. And man, was I good at that? I did all the wrong things and I'm everything my daughters better not bring home.
Speaker 2:That's what I was yeah, okay, all right, and had a a pretty significant um conversion experience or warming the heart. Grew up going to church but you know where. They say that the farthest six inches in the world is from the head to the heart. You know it never got from head to heart so, but it got to heart and it got real and I wanted to go tell other people about this. And so I was going to do a PhD. Went to Princeton for seminary, go somewhere, I could be a college professor. Then thought, well, they sit in libraries, who, who talks to people about Jesus all day. Well, that's a narrow career search. So I went into church ministry, was a pastor, was a senior pastor of about 15, 16 years, left the church world, went through a divorce which I would not recommend. It wasn't anything interesting enough for tabloids to pick up, but it was still just tragic and found myself as a dad with four kids and, not knowing so, went into the corporate world and was at a Fortune 200 company oil and gas very large company. They were putting me in like a management rotation sort of thing, and the first year I was in HR and the CEO of the time been there nine and a half years. He said that's long enough time to find a successor. Nine and a half years is forever for a CEO for a company that size. Yeah, I didn't know that they hired this thing called a search firm and I was in the HR department so I was kind of like I guess, if our ambitions, I'd say I was on the succession team. The reality is I was like the third string water boy for the team. So you know it doesn't matter and I've watched him use this search firm and I'd never seen such in the in the church we didn't have anything like that Right, and the church that I had been serving most recently, first person tree in Houston, fantastic church, wonderful people, world beaters of people.
Speaker 2:I mean just amazing. They took three years to find me. I was there, six. They thought that was all normal and, and you know, you leave with a divorce. There's a little bit of choppy water, but the church is way bigger than me, it's the oldest church in the city of Houston 5,000 adults, 3,000 kids, a school, a whole everything. And they took three years to find my successor. So 12 years, six years with a senior pastor, six years without.
Speaker 2:And this oil and gas company company which, if you don't live in texas. I live in houston. If you don't live in texas, oil and gas companies are are the death star of the galaxy, like they're the worst thing in the whole world, right? So evil, death star oil and gas, yeah, 90 days, 90 days, frank, 90 days. They had had a new CEO, seamless, right. And I look at that.
Speaker 2:And then I look at the church, six years with six years without, and I was like and I can say it cleanly now, but but there was a discontent in me that was like, yeah, why does the business world have a better solution than the bride? Does the business world have a better solution than the bride? And I had gotten married, adrian and I had just blended our families. We had six kids now a house we just bought that we could barely afford. And I came home and said hey, babe, I think I'm supposed to quit my job and start something new for churches. So she looked at me and she said oh, oh, that's because churches love new ideas, right? Yeah, yeah, said no one ever Just ask Jesus. So, anyway, she should have said I love you, I love your vision, go back to work. We got miles to feed, yeah. Instead she said let's give it a try. And oh, frank, she listened.
Speaker 1:She heard you and didn't walk away.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it was the fall of 2008. So it was the fall of 2008. Now, if you're old enough to remember the economy, then that's arguably the dumbest time in the history of America, except October of 1929, to quit your job and start something new for churches. So I don't know what we were thinking. We were idiots. But we decided we'd start on a little card table no debt, no investors, just try and build it from scratch and see what happens. And we're still learning as we go. But it's been a fun. Fun 16 years, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, 16 years is a testament to it Doing very well. And also man, yeah, 2008, not the greatest time on paper, but also you start something in a time like that and you get it to work. That's kind of like trial by fire and starting it during a hard season not necessarily like the easiest of times. So there's something to be said about you know making it work in those times.
Speaker 2:I wish I could say I was that smart. I'm not looking back. I do think the need was there and we did market research. It wasn't some, you know I heard from the Lord when it was actually a bad burrito the night before. It wasn't anything like that Like we really did the research and I think the need was much bigger than I realized. And I really think the economic slowdown of 2008 was a gift from God for us. It allowed us time to practice the craft before it really took off, because it grew pretty quickly and then it grew really fast for a long, long time. So I think it was kind of like we got to do a year of wax on, wax off before we had to go to the dojo, yeah.
Speaker 1:And so for those that don't know I assume most listening probably know, but for those that don't know, what actually does the business do?
Speaker 2:What actually could repeat the question.
Speaker 1:What does the business do? What do you guys? Yeah?
Speaker 2:So we don't do karate and if and if for those who are listening who are not ancient, that was a reference to Karate Kid as an old movie. There was sound then, but just barely color. So what does our company do? We started with this idea, this question could we help churches find their pastor better and faster? And then it spread out to any full time employee of a church. And then, oh, we have a school. And so we started working with schools, and then gospel rescue missions and then nonprofits, and now, in addition to all that kind of the easiest way to say it is the chick fillets of the world, kind of the values-based businesses that need top talent.
Speaker 2:We do some other things along the way that just kind of are a natural outgrowth of our work. We'll do compensation studies, because we have all the salary information on all those things I just listed, which is very hard to aggregate. We do culture studies, say how's your workplace? Do people like being there or not? We do a lot of succession planning, but at the end of the day, it's like I don't know anything that slows a church down quicker and more thoroughly than people. Problems Right, and I mean staff problems. They're not just like members can't get along. So internally it's not a very sexy vision statement, but internally what we say you won't read our website is we help team Jesus go farther and faster by solving people problems. And most of that is getting the right team on board Right.
Speaker 1:Right, where do you spend your most time? Or, like the business? What types of roles do you find yourselves working on most, or is there anything?
Speaker 2:like that, like we do, this place, it comes and goes like like you know, if you ask me that in April, I'd say student pastors, cause in April is when they all quit, and then you need somebody by camp. I mean, I'll stay through graduation, but then so there's that.
Speaker 2:you know, there's the cyclical stuff, head of school stuff contracts go out in March, so the searches are kicking up right now. But but the better answer to your question is the people that are most satisfied with our work are people that asked us to hire high on the org chart, so the higher up the org chart it's almost like we're called to do that, more than the sound engineer for our sixth campus or you know stuff like that.
Speaker 2:And I probably ought to pay attention to that. I, I, you know probably ought to, but it just doesn't feel like we're something we're very good at or maybe even called to Right Right.
Speaker 1:Right, and maybe the impact that you're having by hiring those positions is like bigger for the organization. That's where they maybe look for this kind of help is with those higher level positions. I want to get on to the other topic here, but this is fascinating to me. So one last question what's the hardest part about hiring the new senior pastor?
Speaker 2:I think the thing that I'm learning to focus on, frank, is asking myself and I don't mean this in any disrespectful way is the search committee in touch with reality? Okay now, what do I mean by that? A?
Speaker 1:couple of different things.
Speaker 2:I work for one church, a super wealthy church outside of New York City full of CEOs and executives. This was 15 years ago and we couldn't bring them anybody. That worked and it was awful. It was like I wish I'd have filmed it all and said how not to do a search, because you know it's like listening to your early sermons why did anybody ever come back to church? But these folks were really pretty funny. I won't out the church. But one of them you know we were like, okay, that didn't work, that didn't work. What are you looking for in preaching? That would be better. And one guy said you know, I've been listening the last couple of weeks to this guy, andy Stanley, and why don't you just go get?
Speaker 2:him and I'm like well, you know, andy's lived in Georgia his whole life. I don't know that he wants to. I was trying to be nice about it and the guy looked at me and said just tell me what the number is, I'll write the check. Just tell me what the number is. And I'm like you are not in touch with reality. Okay, so that's one form.
Speaker 2:Now it takes a much more common form. Where you've got a search committee of people who have real jobs right. Where you've got a search committee of people who have real jobs right, they work 40, 50 hours a week and then they coach their kid's soccer team or whatever the thing is, or take care of their mom that's in assisted living or whatever it is, and then oh, by the way, serve for three hours at night on a search team. I mean, these people love their church, right, which is such a positive. The shadow side of it is they think everyone's going to love their church just as much as they do, and it's actually a pretty competitive job market. So I think I'm trying to learn how to study. Are they in touch with me? Are they a little too proud? Are they a little too bashful? Are they a little too bashful?
Speaker 2:And then another area that we're still figuring out but we're better than we used to be is does the search committee's appetite for change match the congregation's? So sometimes you get the people who are very optimistic, very entrepreneurial, want to get new families, want to bring new people in, make some changes around here, but that's not a true reflection of the congregation. So we've found ways to kind of stress test the church a little bit. You can get a great, talented person who changes things too fast and they're done. So it's really the easiest way to say it is. Socrates said, the key to wisdom know yourself. If a search committee really knows their church, like what the church can tolerate, what it can't, if they really know that they love their church but it's not the only church in the country, then expectations start to align with reality and it's a lot easier.
Speaker 1:So not bad people, not, it's just, uh, it's just the nature of the way things go yeah, but navigating all of that, um like, as you're saying it and I'm going, yeah, I can totally understand how those different parts and pieces all make it either more complicated or more easy, depending on kind of where it's all.
Speaker 2:How long is a sermon, Frank? Yeah, no really. That's a real question. Believe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you probably spent six. You have the perfect or as perfect as it can get and you're probably getting better every year. Like way to ask all the right questions of you know.
Speaker 2:Search the church is endlessly nuanced and I'll tell you, I tell our new people and if you're listening today and you're like, well, our church is different, our church is unique. Here's what I tell our new people After working with 5,000 churches, finishing 3,500 searches, doing succession planning, let me just say something If you've seen one church, you have seen about one church. That's it. They're all very, very different. They're all very unique and you're right If you think your church is unique and anyone who comes to you with any solution at all that says this is the cookie cutter and it'll apply to you because you're the same, as they're run away from. People who people who are successful at church work know that every church is unique.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's good. I mean, that's good feedback right there for everyone listening. Right, it's like you, you are unique and you have to look at. It's like even it's not your business or even what we do really, but like as everyone, COVID and everyone's going online and social media and streaming and all of a sudden, everyone feels like they have to be like elevation or something like that you, but it's like we're not all that. They're that and you can be you in your context and at your size and where you sit and you know, frank, I'm pulling this off topic.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, but my pastor I won't out him. He's just one of the nice. He's going to have such a nice place in heaven I hope I get to visit. It's probably a gated part of heaven that I won't get to go to, but he was so worried after the pandemic that people weren't going to come back to church. I'm like, why are you worried? He said I don't preach as well as Stephen Furtick.
Speaker 2:And now everyone knows they can find him online and Stephen is unbelievable. I mean, he's Rain man of preachers, right, right, right. And I just looked at him and said, tom, you're the only pastor for this zip code, for this six blocks, and I bet people want to hear what you have to say about that. So if you're out there struggling today as a leader and a preacher, or your business, or I'm looking at the giving and what are we going to do and all that, I think if you'll focus on your local six blocks, if you're super hyper local ministry there's no one else called it up at you Right, your expression for your community will never be usurped by some national chain. Yeah, yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1:I love that. Ok, you also. I mean, you've written a few books, but your most recent book is called Be the Unicorn, and I love the title. I live in startup land, so I have one version of a unicorn in my head. That's not what you're talking about. So it's a leadership book and you're coming to our conference in October. You're going to talk about it. But, yeah, what was the inspiration? Why did you write a book about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, I'd love to say something noble, but it wasn't. It was selfish motivation and not selfish like I'll write a book and make a lot of money. You don't make money writing books unless you invent Harry Potter. So you know, you just don't. So we were doing a very selfish research project, and it was during the shutdown of the pandemic, because none of our clients were even meeting, much less hiring, right. So it wasn't. I mean, we had nothing to do. That's a whole other podcast about how God saw us through that. It's amazing.
Speaker 2:But we did realize we had some time to work on the business rather than just in it, because we can grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. You know. And we started to say, like what are the very best candidates we've ever interviewed have in common? Do they have anything in common? Right, and it's like the I don't know. Have you met somebody before? Maybe it's in an elevator, maybe it's a job interview, maybe it's a social function or a church, and you meet this person and within five minutes you're like this person's remarkable. I want to sign up for their newsletter, I want to listen to their podcast, I want to go out with them, I want to hire them, like there's a magnet, thing that very few people have that stands out of the crowd, right.
Speaker 2:So we were kind of asking how many of those have we interviewed and could we figure out if there are any common denominators? Well, long story short, in any search we're looking at literally over 1,000 people for any one search. But when you get down to the very end, the most qualified people get a long-format face-to-face interview with us and then they're the most qualified after that. Well, the most qualified after that. We have now done 30,000 long-format interviews with these folks and tracked every note and tracked where they went in their career and track whether they got promoted and track. So, like we've been able to say, all right, these really are the ones that you would meet within five minutes and you'd say this one's a winner. And then we started to say do they have anything in common? And it was so interesting. I mean, the answer is yes, they do have things in common, yeah that's fascinating.
Speaker 1:And the answer is and then you're able to kind of scour it, you know yeah yeah?
Speaker 2:Well, the answer is yes, they have things in common. And then the second answer is and it's not what you would guess. So, like I had some preconceived notions in my head yeah, you know what they say about assuming right, don't do it. You know, I thought, like I thought it would be the head cheerleader, the quarterback right Went to the Ivy League school, or for your younger listeners out there, like in finance, 6'5" trust fund, blue eyes, the whole thing. Right, I thought, for sure, that's what it is right? Not at all.
Speaker 2:It was habits, not traits, not things. They're born with, not silver spoons. Habits that all of these people shared in common, that are incredibly uncommon for the rest of us, incredibly uncommon for the rest of us. And we saw common threads, these habits, and then we realized these are teachable habits. These are really simple lessons, and the hope was, rather than just William's 12 opinions on what he thinks makes a great person, no, no, data-driven habits. Right, that if you develop them, you will stand out in the crowd. Or if you're a church leader, if you can develop a volunteer team that practices these habits, your church will be one that people won't just visit once. Right, they will come back. And so it's soft skills, it's habits, and you know we kicked around lots of titles. Standout was one, but there are like a million books called Standout. Yeah, boring.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I was sitting around cleaning out the kids' room We've got seven kids now and so there's lots of toys and things that we've aged out of you go through all the stuffed animals for cleaning stuff out I noticed the only thing that stood out was the unicorn Not all the menagerie of stuffed animals that we have, and so I thought well, that's it, and I know it's a tech term, you know Silicon Valley and all that, but, like most people get it, the unicorn is the rare.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They're very hard to find. They the unicorn is the rare they're very hard to find. They're unmistakable once you see them and you really want to be around them. And that's kind of the guy you meet in the elevator, the lady you meet at a social function, whatever the thing is. So we called it Be the Unicorn 12 data-driven habits that separate the best leaders from the rest. And the cool thing is these 30,000, there is, we look to see. Do they have race in common? No. Do they have gender in common? No. Do they have an age? Do they have an educational background? Is it socioeconomic? None of that matters.
Speaker 1:How did you get to, how did you identify, uh, the actual, the fact that it was habits, and then the actual habits, like how do you get to that level of knowing these people?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, we get paid to know people better than what they present online, right, right, yeah, so, um, we, we have a pretty formulaic way. It's not cookie cutter, but it's. It's got a rhythm, it's got a flow of interviewing people to test them for certain things and over many conversations leading up to our study, we asked our consultants over the years who stood out, why they stand out. I mean, it's been a running conversation because, selfishly, if I can find those people faster, you're going to hire me more. And, by the way, the church can go farther and faster because we're solving people problems.
Speaker 2:It's a really selfish exercise. But when we realized this is a roadmap, we've got to write a book, we've got to get it in people's hands because if it can help the church and people be better and a lot of individuals buy it like job seekers. I just signed 200 copies for a graduating senior class.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so like I mean, I already see the next book, like volume two. Is you and James clear partnering up on some kind of book about habits? And I mean atomic habit has got to be like one of the best selling books of all times.
Speaker 2:Oh it's amazing. Right, it's amazing, and I often say, if I could recommend you know, amazon says, since you liked this, you might like that. Yeah, read my book to learn what the habits are and then go read James's book about how to actually build the habits in your life.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's to this day like my favorite book ever, so I'm definitely going to read yours.
Speaker 2:But I'm going to send you. I'm going to send you a Bible. Frank, you need to expand your reading. Ok, done.
Speaker 1:I'll start in Genesis and I'll read all the way through.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah OK let's.
Speaker 1:I mean, I could like have I geek, but um what? Let's pick maybe two or three, you've got 12. You're also going to speak at the conference, but what are two or three of the habits that you're like? These are, these are some key things that anybody could go take and develop, and I don't know if they're like an ordering of them, where you think about them, like if you do this one, then that one, then that one, or if it's just right, right one, or if it's just right right, right, right.
Speaker 2:Well, so, interestingly, um, everybody needs a different order, so we wrote the book to be non-sequential. Okay, got it, so so, like now, what do I mean when I say that everyone has a different area they need to work on?
Speaker 1:right right, I just, and some people like sorry, uh, william, I just literally just took six different like leadership assessment profile thingies over the last like month, so I'm all, I'm all in the like. We all have things to work on camp right now well, there's.
Speaker 2:Let me give you a seventh. Uh, we built the vander index which is around these 12 habits, okay, and you can see where you place. We interviewed the 30 000 okay, and surveyed them extensively. Then we also surveyed 250,000, just general population to see.
Speaker 2:How do you stack? Where are you good? Where's an action plan? What are you good at? You can start there. Some people like to start with their weaknesses. Whatever, that's fine. I don't know what's most important. I do know that when I'm trying to make a change in my life, seeing momentum makes all the difference. I finally ran a mile. Now I can run a mile and a quarter. Right, I lost that first three pounds, or whatever Progress. Momentum is the friend of change, and so we started our very first chapter. I believe is the easiest habit to adopt and we'll give you the quickest win, so you can feel some momentum, start to get noticed and move to the next ones. They're not written simplest to hardest, but the first one is definitely this is low hanging fruit.
Speaker 2:And we can talk about it a little bit. I will be talking about it quite extensively at the conference, so let me just give you a little piece and see if it's helpful. And that's this the unicorns are fast. Yeah, first chapter, the fast. And the book, by the way, is 12. It might be 13 or 14 chapters, but the 12 chapters, one for each habit. Here's where we saw it in people. Here's the responses from our unicorns when we question about it. Here's a case study. Here's how you apply it. Really, no one will read this book and say William is definitely going to cure cancer. That's not going to happen. When you read this book, it's simple cookies on the bottom shelf, kind of stuff. And when I say fast, it's only because I want a one-word title. You say I'm not fast, I'm not fast. I'm not fast either, frank, I'm Dutch. You know we are not built for speed, we're built for wind resistance. We look like this so you know it's….
Speaker 1:But fast is important and hard.
Speaker 2:Well, if I could title it accurately and not the way you have to title things for people to read books, the title would be the intentionally responsive. I mean, here's the thing Humans are horrible at getting back to one another. Yeah, terrible, just awful at it. I mean, we we looked at, and the unicorns are not. They're almost maniacal about getting back to people, enough that they end up getting close to burnout somewhere in life and they have to put guardrails up and how do I know when to respond and when not to? But they are driven to get back to people and I thought well, that's easy, but just do it. But most people don't, and some of this is born out of when we started the company in the fall of 2008. What was I thinking, frank? What was I thinking um?
Speaker 1:you, you, you know this, you were gonna, you're gonna write a book about these 12 things and you're gonna know, what actually? I was just 12 things, and you're going to know what Actually?
Speaker 2:I was just envisioning getting one contract so I could go buy groceries.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I was.
Speaker 2:I get it Shoot. So you know, if you called me back in those days where we were on it literally on a card table, guess how fast I got back to you. If you called and said could you talk to me about me coming to help me find?
Speaker 1:a fill in the blank If you didn't pick up the phone right when they called. I'm sure you could talk in minutes.
Speaker 2:And email. We were right on the front end of blogging. We're right when Twitter came out the same month. We started. So like there's all this sort of inbound marketing starting and I didn't realize it. But we got back to people really fast. And the longer we did that, the more we realized and we just did it out of necessity, like I didn't have anything else to do. People kept saying you just got back to us so fast and intentionally. It wasn't like an auto response. You mentioned our weather or something about the Air Force Base in San Diego or whatever. And the longer we do that I thought they were just paying lip service. But I started realizing no, actually that's kind of weird to get back to people quickly and that was one of the things we noticed in the unicorns is that they're the same way. They're driven to get back to people really quickly.
Speaker 2:Most people are not Sales and marketing. We talk to people that work in sales and when marketing gives them a lead whether that's a form filled out online or whatever how quickly do they respond? Because speed makes all the difference in a sales conversation. We need the lead. Speed makes all the difference in a sales conversation and I won't bore you with the details here, but it was staggering how slowly salespeople got back to leads. It was staggering how slowly people on dating websites get back to. Here's someone you might be interested in. Like, we're terrible at getting back to people. If you will find a way to just intentionally respond quickly without blowing up your life right, you will stand out of the crowd, I promise you.
Speaker 1:I mean, it makes sense. It sounds so simple, but it definitely makes sense that like oh, the public.
Speaker 2:And so, behind BTS, behind the scenes, right, the publisher hated the title. Like we went round and round. Like I paid for an online A-B test of titles to prove to them that Uniform would work. Like we're not doing it, we're not doing it. Great publisher. I'm using them again for the next book Comes out next year. Nothing but good things to say about him, but we did fight over this.
Speaker 1:Okay, you know the alternate title we kicked around at the office was well, I guess mom was right that one could have worked too, though I like it.
Speaker 2:Well, it's kind of yeah. Mom always said write the thank you note as soon as you get the gift. Mom always said you know, yep, so it's not rocket science, but nobody does it. Yeah, very, very few people do it, and it's like we figured out just by accident how to build the magic treadmill that will cause you to lose weight. Look great, run faster than ever. This is the one, and you still have to get on it and use it Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I get it. Okay, give us another one. Give us another one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll give you, I'm not going to bore you. I've already gone past the time. You told me Maybe one more, and it's kind of ironic Self-aware.
Speaker 1:I and it's kind of ironic Self-aware I'm not, you're getting you're getting like real stuff and you're out, you're like I want to grow Well, even just starting it. So even getting people to want to do that kind of stuff is probably hard, and then when you do it now, you've got to try to take action on it. So it's just hard, it's hard.
Speaker 2:It is and that's why we built the. If you go to vanderindexcom you can see the little software tool. We built it for teams where your whole staff can take it together and see where you're good, and all that. But it is a bit like me going to my physicals once I turned 50. It's a different game and you don't want to know all the information Painful to find out and then painful to hear.
Speaker 2:So you know it is hard. But the unicorns here's what's interesting. We had the unicorns forced rank what am I best at of these 12, and what am I worst at right? And it was all over the board who was best at this? And this? The one consistent answer was the unicorns ranked self-awareness as their worst habit of the 12. They're the most self-aware. When we polled the 250,000 general population lovely people to see how they do, one of the questions was rate yourself in each of these 12 areas, and self-awareness is one and it's one to five. You know, like not good at all. Sort of good, good, really good, excellent, right. 91% of every normal person surveyed, 91% said that they were better than average. Now there are people-.
Speaker 1:That doesn't surprise me, and it's also shocking all at the same time.
Speaker 2:Well, there are some bean counters listening right now, I hope people that manage the money or the finances of the church and you're like, I mean I'm no math major but I'm pretty sure 91% of a group is not above average at anything. Yeah, like 50% is above average.
Speaker 2:Right, but that's the punchline. The people who are most self-aware think they have so much more work to do, right. And the people who lack self-awareness think I got that, it's like this, and okay, you're going to hear this again at the conference. So like sorry, but I'll give you this one little illustration. I went to Princeton for seminary and so we study, and you know all the academics and all that, and I took a class in Galatians. Galatians takes about four and a half minutes to read. I took a whole semester in it. So that's how geeky I am. But one thing and I know that everybody listening has Galatians memorized. But just for memory's sake, let's think back to the beginning of the letter which, by the way, I believe and most scholars do it was probably the first letter Paul wrote that ended up in the New Testament.
Speaker 1:Earliest one.
Speaker 2:So what's our first picture of Paul? Here's how he starts his letter Paul, an apostle called by God, not by men. Now, that's a guy with very little self-esteem issues, right.
Speaker 1:Called by God not by men.
Speaker 2:Right Fast forward to arguably the last letter Paul wrote that ended up in the New Testament. How does he describe himself? I am the chief of all sinners.
Speaker 2:The longer you walk with the Savior, the more amazed you become with his grace, and it's that self-awareness that unicorns whether they're Christians or not. The unicorns are really sort of hell bent on figuring out what makes them better and doing it even when it's news they don't want to hear. So that's two, and I can geek out on all kinds of data, but we'll have more time together in Dallas and maybe some of the folks listening today will get to hear it.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it. William, thanks for coming on the show. The book sounds amazing, I mean, and for like lots of reasons, like not just for Christians, not just for this audience, it's like really for anybody. So people should go check it out. Should they go to your website, or should they?
Speaker 2:go to Amazon. I never saw this coming growing up because I hated my name, but the reality is my last name is so messed up you can misspell it into Google or Amazon and it'll show up.
Speaker 1:It'll come. That's amazing.
Speaker 2:It'll come and you know it's interesting. I didn't see this. We wrote this for people that want to stand out in the crowd, but so many people buy it for their kids for graduation gifts. Yeah, heck, yeah, it's become like one of the two, three, four top job hunting books on Amazon and kind of staying there. So that's cool. If you're trying to get ahead, it might help you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, love it, love it. Well, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks, guys, for listening. Definitely go check out the book and come to the conference to hear William speak live. You can get the book and then he'll autograph it in a session at the conference, maybe. Maybe you got to get in line, so there you go.
Speaker 2:I'll stay as long as Frank lets me.
Speaker 1:All right, thanks guys. We'll catch you later.