In this episode, Simon welcomes Darius Mirshahzadeh, the best-selling author, host of the greatness machine and serial entrepreneur. His book The Core Value Equation shows how core values create the ultimate decision-making engine for your organization that consistently produces spectacular results. Core values also create an “invisible manager” that sits next to every employee and holds them accountable to a common set of beliefs, actions, and outcomes, all without hiring a single person. Core values are the best tool out there to recruit and support an army of diehard team members who speak the same language, create consistent results, and make your organization a magnet for like-minded individuals. Listen to Darius’s sharing on the Core Value Equation.

3 Valuable Insights:

• Core value is the most foundational beliefs of a person or an organization
• Actively promote your core values to your customers
• Misalignment in your team slows your business down

(00:00) -Simon: Three, two, one, roll the footage.

(00:15) -Simon: Welcome back to the Strategy Sprints podcast. I'm your host, Simon Severino. And my guest today is a serial entrepreneur, Mad scientists' CEO, best-selling author of the core value equation there. His passion is to make the world a better place using his talents and engagement. He's all about the four Ps, passion pizza puzzles and pink unicorns. Welcome everybody Darius Mirshahzadeh.

(00:45) -Darius: Simon. Right? l get it right. Simon. Nice to be here, man. I'm pumped.

(00:50) -Simon: So pumped to have you here. And you also run a podcast. Tell us about your podcast.

(00:56) -Darius: Yeah, so I, I, you know, I launched my book. Uh, gosh, it was, uh, September 15th and I hired a book launch team and it NG NG enterprises. I don't know if you, if you heard of those guys, but they do a ton of best-selling book, launch book launches, my friend, Justin, Donald. He did his book launch with them as a number one. It was a wall street journal, number one bestseller. Um, he just doing Steve, I can't even say some of the names she's doing, but she's she does. She's doing John Lee Dumas book launch actually too. You know, like I, she, I don't want to say her price, but because we, we worked out a deal. What I did for her was we did some trade and, and, and, and so she's, she's the type of person where, uh, she's not cheap, but, um, but what she, you, you, but you get what you pay for man.

(01:47) -Darius: She is a freaking animal. I mean, she did, I met her through a friend of mine, you know, Mike Michalowicz, he did profit first, so he's a buddy of mine. Right. And, and, and I said, Hey, Mike, who did your book launch? He's like, dude, you got to talk to Amber at N G N G. And so I, and so he hooked me up with her and she did, she did the, his new book. Um, what's his new book? fix this now. Um, and he did, she does all his book launches. So, um, so I hit her up and we're talking and we hit it off. And, and so I was like, Hey, listen, I got a proposal for you. I'll do your core values. Cause she's all about core values. And I said, I don't even offer this for people because I'm way too expensive.

(02:29) -Darius: I said, I said, but I'll do your core values for your business and I'll give you some money. Cause I don't want it to be just trade. And so we worked out a deal where I built the core values for her business. They actually just went live with them publicly last week, but it took, it takes, you know, to build a good set of company core values, six months. It takes, if you, if you use my system, if you use the one systems that don't work, then it can take you one day. But, um, so I, yeah, yeah. So we did a trade. I built her comedy core values for her and uh, and I gave her some cash and she did my book launch man. And part of that, the question you had asked me earlier was about the show. Part of the book launch strategy for me was doing a show.

(03:09) -Darius: So I had the show, the greatness machine, which is born out of a, I did a TEDx event in 2011 and 12 in San Francisco called TEDx golden gate park. And w and the theme was the pursuit of passion. And I said, man, I'd love to do a show on that. People that have lived their passions to create greatness in the world. And, and I, and the show was awesome, man. And when I did the show at the de young museum, it was an amazing event. We brought, I mean, one of our talks has had 13 million views now. I mean, it's a really cool event. And I was like, yeah, that's all I said, I'm going to take that event and turn it into a show. So all I've interviewed 115, 16 people since July, and it's all around people living their passions to great greatness of the world could be entrepreneurs authors.

(03:59) -Darius: I mean, we've had chefs, authors, bloggers, I mean some amazing New York times bestselling authors athletes. We had a Superbowl champ. I mean, anyone that's live their passion to create greatness in the world. And so it's been fun, man. I did John Lee Dumas two weeks ago. That was a fun show. He's promoting his new book. As I know you said he was just on your show. Um, I did my friend. She has the number one TV show on cable. Did her last week spent, it's fun, man. It's all about just having fun and meeting cool people and hanging out. So yeah, the shows the podcast actually is going live on iTunes next week. That's our, it's our debut. So I'm pumped about that.

(04:35) -Simon: Absolutely. And so tell us about your book. Um, the core value equation is it was itself published with a publisher?

(04:44) -Darius: No, I did hybrid publishing through scribe media. And so it was a PA you know, funny enough, uh, it was a passion project. And so I started writing the book. Let me tell you a little bit about background on myself. So I, I have jokingly call myself a mad scientist CEO. And the reason I say it is I'm kind of a, just I'm a hardcore creative, but I was in the banking world, right? So being a hardcore creative and a CEO and being in the banking world is kind of a weird combination. And, and that was actually what got me into this whole idea of passion because I spent my career really chasing money. I was like, man, I want to make a lot of money. And I got to this point in 2011 where I wasn't making a lot of money and I was chasing money, which is a really bad place to be, right.

(05:32) -Darius: Like at least if you're going to chase money, you should make a lot of it. Um, but the worst place you could be is to be chasing it and not making it, which is where I ended up. So I got into this passion work. Um, my next, I ended up kind of turning the corner of in 2012 and I had this business that took off. I ended up getting bought out of it. And then I started my next business to 2013, which was called the money source. And I know you're in Europe, but in the United States, that's where we grew it to become the 40th largest lender in the United States. And what does that mean? There's 4,000 lenders that we compete against. So we were number 40. Um, so this is a business. Now that's a $100 billion mortgage lending company. Um, and I grew up with my partners from a very small company, about 30 employees to a thousand employees in three years.

(06:20) -Darius: Prior to that, I'd got introduced through, I don't, are you familiar with Verne? Harnish of scaling up? So is a mentor of mine. I did a program of his at MIT called birthing of giants, and it brings together 60 top entrepreneurs under the age of 40 from around the world for a three-year program. And so I started that in O six ended in O eight at the time my company I had built was that they got me into that program was the 40th largest, fastest growing company in the United States. Number 40, it was number 40 in the Inc 5,000. Um, but it, it, the company sucked. It was, it was a really a place you didn't want. And the culture there ended up not being good. And I, and I took full accountability for it, but I got introduced from Bern to this concept of using core values in your business in O six, well, fast forward to O eight, the company wasn't doing well because of the recession hit.

(07:13) -Darius: We were a lender. We were subprime lender, which meant we were the reason that the economy wasn't doing well. And, um, and I really like FA figured out that I had built a company I didn't like, and the book kind of opens up with two case studies. The first case study is that company. And it shows this moment where I figured out that most companies don't have core values that are actually being used in their company. And that what happened was, was at year three of birthing of giants, right out the night we graduated, two of the members of the class, did a peer to peer workshop. And they asked us if we all could stand up, if our company had core values, now mind you, we're like, Vern's teaching this program. It's just us in Bern. And, and the first thing that you learned, you've got to have core values.

(08:02) -Darius: So we all stand up. Cause we all have core values. We're all scaling up businesses. The guys running the workshop are as a company called nurse next door, where if you've read, scaling up there, one of the case studies in the book and in my class of 60 entrepreneurs, four of the people were case studies for the book. I mean, this is like a top like total super user group of scaling up. And so we're all standing up. We all have core values. They say, please stay standing. If you know your core values, you can say them off the top of your head. Half the room sits down, including me. I sat down and I was like, can I curse on your show? Or is this family friendly?

(08:42) -Simon: You can.

(08:43) -Darius: Oh, I was like. Fuck. And I sat down, man. I was pissed. I couldn't believe it. I built these in my company. You had six core values, 76 words, but something interesting. I wasn't the only that sat down, like I said, half the room sat down and I was like, what the hell? Why don't all these people have core values in their companies that are working. Then they asked a second question, John and John and, um, and Ken who were the CEOs of nurse next door. And they were running a core value driven organization said, please stay standing. If your employees know your core values, half of the remaining half sat down and I'm like, three quarters of the room are sitting down. And then they asked the final question. They said, please stay standing. If your customers know your core values, everyone sat down. And it was, this moment changed my life, right?

(09:31) -Darius: I was like, what? Like how can all these people with these great businesses not have core values in their business? Now the answer is they probably did it to a certain degree, but it just wasn't institutionalized. It wasn't true. It wasn't the language of the organization. So I sat down the next morning, I rewrote my values. I brought them, I made them simple. I made them really strong. I made them in the tone of the organization. There were nine words and my 76 words, six values turn into do work lives, then break the box. Wow. Everyone, four values that we stood for working hard, high integrity, innovation and excellence. And I brought it back to the organization and right away, I noticed a difference. Well, fast forward to 2013, five years after that moment. And it was really a June, July of 13 was when I started this, my most recent business that I exited.

(10:23) -Darius: And the business grew from 30 to 300 employees in 18 months. And, and C1 had zero growing pains, zero like zero, none. It was 83, NPE, NPS, 80 NPS were rushing it. Then we grew from 300 employees to a thousand employees the next 18 months. And I'd be lying if I said, I didn't have any growing pains, but I was able to fix the problems very quickly. And I came to the conclusion that core values have the opportunity to become the language of accountability in your organization. And so then fast forward to five years later, I spent now, now at this point, this is a nine figure company. I'm running it and experimenting mad scientists, doing all these crazy things, testing I'm my own case study. And I got asked to speak at this conference for orthodontist in the United States for, from a friend of mine on core values.

(11:18) -Darius: And I had this really amazing talk. And it was, it was a great experience. I never had talked on the subject before. And at the end of the talk, I had a line of people. There's probably like a hundred people waiting to ask me questions. And they came up to me and they said, you know, um, where can we take a class on this? Or is there a book we can read though, teach us this? And I said, Nope, sorry. I created all this stuff. Next person, same question, next person saying words. But by the sixth person I say, Oh yeah, I'm writing a book. It's coming out in June. So I made the decision to write the book. I was still the CEO of my company then, and I was writing at this point, this is a thousand person organization. At that point, we were managing $30 billion with the mortgages.

(12:03) -Darius: You know, we're one of the largest lenders in the United States. So that I, I was, I mean, I wasn't, I didn't set out to go become an author and a speaker. I was just like, you know, I've been helping people with this work for so long. I should probably just get it out. And you know, and I wanted to write a book. So they asked your question. It's a long-winded way of me saying I reached out to Tucker max, who is a friend of a friend. I went through a thing called guided author workshop that they do through scribe. And I wrote my book and they published it for me. And it's been an amazing experience, man. I, I, you know, I ended up exiting my company. Uh, the same year I launched the book and now I'm just kind of out there exploring I'm working. I'm advising CEOs, I'm doing the book. I have, the book has a, uh, mini mastermind to teach entrepreneurs how to build a core value driven organization. That's launching this week as well of the podcast. So do a lot of exploring and having fun and being creative and just living my best life, man.

(13:02) -Simon: I was just thinking how many people listening right now know their core values? How many of their employees know their core values and how many of their clients? And I was also thinking of my own. So too, I know the core values. Yes. Focus, freedom flow, humble, hungry, happy. Do my team members know them? Yes. All of them. Do my clients know them. I would say 20%.

(13:31) -Darius: That's a, that's not bad. I mean like, like you're, you're all that puts you in the rare minority. What I changed, the last question I ask people. Now I say, do you actively promote the core values to your customers? Is it in your scripts? Is it in your marketing? Is it in your website? Is it being done through your emails on a consistent basis? And you measure your, your productivity and customer experience against them. And if you're doing that, then you're doing everything you can. But the data out there is pretty staggering. Once I, I was always doing this intuitively and I have a friend who he told me, you know, dairy shirt and intuitive somatic, you, you kind of like get, you know, data comes to you and you figure things out intuitively without realizing you're figuring it out based off this data. And, um, it's amazing when you look at the data, nine out of 10 companies, the employees don't know their core values.

(14:23) -Darius: It's very low percentage, about 11%, 89% of companies, uh, cup at least 80% or less of their employees don't know their values. When interviewed there was a Gallup poll out there only, I think it's 23% of companies. Do employees say that the, that the team actively lives by the core values. It's a very, very small percentage. So it's the norm. It's not, it's not the exception. It's the norm that this is not being done well in business. And so I think that's where my book really bridges the gap. Is it, it, it really makes it simple. How do you do it? And, and, and, and then how do you use it as a tool to scale your business? Because I believe that when it's done well, it becomes the most valuable tool you have in your business to create scale and accountability in a way that happens organically through the business.

(15:15) -Simon: This is the amazing part that you did scale to 100 and from 100, 2000 with as few growing pains as possible. And we want to know everything about that after one word from our sponsors.

(15:30) -Speaker 3: Hey, if you love what you are hearing, you will love our free masterclasses. Go grab them at strategysprints.com.

(15:40) -Simon: The first shift is amazing to 100, but then to 1000 with a limited number of pain moments, how is that possible?

(15:50) -Darius: Yeah, so we, so the, the first 18 months it went actually from, from a 30 to 300 employees. Um, and then, it goes like this. Look, when you grow from that size, in that, in that quick of a period of time, you're really a new company every few weeks, right? You don't have time to build training. That's going to be scalable. You don't have time to, you know, have a robust learning system. You don't have time to have a robust policy and procedures. There is no, your SOP is or billing being built on the fly because you're, you're very small. You know, even going from 30 to 60, you gotta imagine going from 30 to 300 is 10 times your size in 18 months, 30 to 60 is double. Most people start to. And what I, what I described when I talked to you about this, soon as I say, people break all the way up.

(16:43) -Darius: They keep breaking a, breaking, a breaking, a breaking. Now, usually it's not a straight line. They break up, they fall down, they break up, they fall down. Hopefully it's an upward trend, but it's a breakup once, fall down twice, break up once, break down twice, break up once, break or break up twice, break down once. Right? And it's just really painful. That's all growing pains. And what, when we say growing pains, what I hear is, is friction, misalignment. And that's it. Growing pains is just friction. A misalignment it's that you don't have people being agreeable to each other in the business. You don't have people supporting each other in the business. You have people miscommunicating, you have someone dropping the ball, you have gaps in the process. You have execution things don't get done. When they're supposed to get done, you have off clients then that it becomes this vicious cycle.

(17:35) -Darius: And in my first business, I lived that I broke all the way up from myself. One, my first business was myself to 150 employees in three years. And it was painful the whole way up. Now, the only thing I had going for me was we were making a lot of money. So I just threw bodies at the problem, which is what a lot of people do. They just throw bodies at the problem and that's waste, right? All it does is you might be able to get one unit of work done for three people's time. And yes, if your financial models favorable enough, that that might work in the short term, but which is what it did for me. But there's a lot of waste creation and slows down the growth. It makes it where you get higher turnover. It makes it where people are creating more waste in the organization.

(18:23) -Darius: And what my belief is, is the simple and easy way to get around that. And here, Matt, when I say this, I think a lot of business leaders are left brain. So they try to create structure. That's very like scientific around it. Like, Oh, we're going to have this huddle. And then this meeting, and you should do those things too. Don't get me wrong. And in that meeting, we'll have this agenda where we do, you know, give me your business high, and then we're going to give me your challenge. And then we're going to address the challenge. So it's all this like if then statements, right? Well, let me ask you a question. If you have a, if it was just that easy, why would every company not have growing pains? And the answer is, is because that's not like human beings are not as methodical as that human beings have emotions and feelings.

(19:08) -Darius: And Oh, that person said that, but they meant that, you know, they said this, they meant that, and I'm not going to help them now. Right? So all those things I'm saying are human behavior and humans are what break process, right? This is user error. Your company is having growing pains because you have a bunch of people misaligned causing friction, not reconciling that friction, maybe it doubles the friction, creating more, waste, more waste, more friction. And it becomes this vicious cycle. And eventually if you're unlucky enough, you start losing money. And then you're like, I'm not going to do that. And then you go and start fixing it. And I call that being a firefighter. So the opposite of that is what I call invisible scale. It's really simple. If I have 10 people in a room and seven of them have the same values and three of them, don't, I'm going to have friction in the organization.

(20:02) -Darius: Those three people or Eva, one person doesn't show, let's say I have nine that shared the same values, but one doesn't that one person is going to be cancel with the other nine. And so I, as the leader, if I let that stay in the organization, I then send the message to those nine that, Hey, our values are really, aren't true. This, we accept this bad behavior. And then those nine say, well, who am I really working for then? Well, it gets, it doesn't matter. What if I try harder or not? It guess it doesn't matter if I am a good coworker with my employees, because Derrius is going to let some stay here anyway. Right? So the opposite of that, and normally, by the way, it's not nine good one bad. It's usually seven good three bad, five, good, five bad, six, good for bad.

(20:49) -Darius: So you can own it. So, and I'll tell you this too bad is not double one bad, two bad, like four bad, because you get an exponential increase, a synergy of crap that happens in the organization. And that's all stuff that does not make you money. That's all stuff that costs you time and energy and money. And, and so, and it creates misalignment. And this alignment slows you down. I always say, it's kind of like a car. If my tires are not misaligned or not lined perfectly, or my suspension is off, I'm going to get less miles per gallon on the car. I'm going to go slower. I'm going to more, brake. I'm going up. My brakes are going to go bad. The engine is going to have problems. The tires are going to get bad, faster because there's misalignment.

(21:33) -Darius: The opposite is true If I have 10 people in the organization, one of them's bad. I say that person's out of there quick. I manage them up or manage them out to a standard set of values that everyone knows. If everyone knows the values and everyone's measured to them. And this is a design process, my book says, look, you've got to design them to become the language of the organization. So if those 10 people all know, this is the standard, this is it. And there's a way we do this in my book. We say, discover design, rollout, implement, measure, and optimize, right? And it's a cycle. You discover it. What's authentic to the organization. You design it so that it's memorable, sticky, and viral. You roll it out. You immerse them in the language and then you nurture it. You constantly make sure it's there. Then you measure for ROI.

(22:20) -Darius: And if it's broken, you fix it. And what ends up happening when you do that is there's heavy accountability. The team knows that. So we use my previous company. Rock salt service was our number one value stands for service orientation. I did all the things I just said. So at my company, everyone knows you have two choices, give rock solid services. Don't give rock solid services. It's binary. If you don't, I will manage you up or out. That's it. And everyone who does is like, Oh, they're not going to be here for long. And they keep doing it. They keep doing it. They're aligned misalignment out, aligned, align, align misalignment out. And when that happens, you get a velocity in the organization. Things start speeding up because people have trust that those core values are real. And they know every decision they make is a binary decision.

(23:15) -Darius: In my book, I say four things happen. Number one, you create an immersive language for the organization. Number two, when core values are alive and well in the organization, it creates a ultimate decision-making engine. You live, you live rock solid service. You don't live rock solid service. No questions asked, okay. Number three, when that happens, it creates a magnet for talent. Good people start showing up. Oh, we heard that place is awesome. We want to go there. That people say, I don't want to be there. And they self select out of the organization. And, and when you get that, you get that language to the organization. You get the ultimate decision making. And last but not least, when all those things are present, you can grow from 30 to 313 employees. Because the biggest thing happens. You get what's called invisible scale. People naturally organically gravitate to the middle, to the core.

(24:06) -Darius: They naturally do it. Not because I teach them because they do it no matter they're there, they're naturally doing it anyway. And that creates an invisible scale. You have an invisible manager looking over everyone's shoulder. It's not Derrius saying, Hey, you're not living the core values. The core values are concrete. The core values are in the air. Everyone knows what they are. And it's a binary decision. Simone, you either do it. Or you don't, you don't. We know what the outcome is. You do. We know what the outcome is. And that creates a lot of synergy

(24:33) -Simon: Remembers me of Tony Shea at Zappos who had this role. He said, we have such a strong culture. So we understand if you want to leave. If you want to leave, I will pay you to leave. I will help you take this decision of integrity. And, uh, because we want only the people who want this one to leave this strong culture. And there were many, many positive points in there. Beautiful. Who do you nominate for the strategy award?

(25:06) -Darius: For the strategy? For, for, for what's, for which strategy award?

(25:09) -Simon: The strategy award. When everybody's zigging, this person is zagging. But from your perspective, there are the right think. Who is this?

(25:18) -Darius: Oh, like in the world today? Uh, I think the Elon Musk without question. Yeah, like he's, he's a constant zagger, you know, because he spoke, he knows what his values are. He knows what his purpose is. He doesn't care. He's he's, you know, Maverick he's out there. Yeah. And that guy's, that guy's a game-changer right now. I think for him, by the way, it's funny, you said Tony Shay. He actually endorsed my book before he passed away. So I, I met him. I connected with him through a friend, but yeah, that guy, that guy was that like that too. Right? If you look at Zappos 10 years ago, they built a holacratic organization. No managers, they were the, he, you know, his book, delivering happiness was all around building a core value driven organization. Um, yeah. He's uh, he was, he was, he was a zag. He was a strategic award-winner I would say at one point, but I'd say right now, Elon Musk takes the cake. No question.

(26:14) -Simon: Absolutely. You, you, you own Tesla shares right now.

(26:18) -Darius: No, no, no, no, no. I, I can't buy it. Uh, I can't, I should have probably bought it when I, uh, seven years ago when I first got introduced to the stock. But no, I I've met him though in person spent time with him about three years ago. He's an, he's a very interesting guy. He's really tall. He's like six foot five. I didn't know that

(26:38) -Simon: He doesn't look like that in behind the camera,

(26:40) -Darius: I don't think he has good posture. I think that's why really tall. I mean, I'm six foot one he's way taller than I was.

(26:48) -Simon: So the three books that shaped you most.

(26:51) -Darius: Oh, you know, uh, it depends on what subject, you know, I like, um, you know, for business scaling up and traction are two must reads. I really think that those are books that if we want to really get our head around some best practices for scale, those really changed my life. I love delivering happiness back when I read it many years ago. Most recently though, you know, I like, I just read the book, uh, never split the difference by Chris Voss. I think that's a really important book for leaders to, to read. So they understand the, the emotional intelligence side of, of negotiation. So that, that was an interesting book. So yeah, I think, and that's been one of my favorite books I've read in a long time, but yeah, those three, I think are great. Three great business books. I know a lot of other people like, you know, Ben Horowitz's book, you know what got you here? Won't get you there. Sorry. No, I'm sorry. That's um, Marshall Goldsmith's book. Um, I, that's a great Part of the hardest thing.

(27:45) -Simon: The hardest thing?

(27:47) -Darius: Yeah. I read that book last year. Um, I thought that was a cool book too. I, you know, another book, I really like, I know you said three, I'm giving you five lean startup, Eric Reese. I don't think that that's just for startups. I think that's just for thinking about product. Like I used it. I mean, look, I am, when I read that book, I had seven companies and was running a nine-figure organization with a thousand employees. Um, and literally we had seven different companies, totally diverse portfolio of companies. And I thought about it from the standpoint of mergers and acquisitions. I started thinking about it from the standpoint of start of building a startup and also building new product within an existing legacy business. So I love those books, those books. I think everyone should read every book I just said, and those should be a foundation and my book, but, um, exactly what the exception on my book. I think those are really good books, foundationally for business. And, and I will tell you if you're a young entrepreneur, uh, rich dad, poor dad and cashflow quadrant is a good book for kind of framing how to think about going into business for yourself. So those are a lot of the, my favorite books.

(28:55) -Simon: If now somebody couldn't, um, say their core values and wants to work on it, what should they do?

(29:05) -Darius: Well, I think they should read my book. That's because in the book we, we get, we kind of would take you through, through the process. There's some really, you could Google how to build my core values. I think getting clear on what are the top four or five things you're willing to fall on your sword for what are the four or five things that you would be willing to lose money for to make sure they stay true? So like an example of that would be, would you, would you go against your own integrity if it meant you were going to lose money? And the answer is probably hopefully yes, if you have high integrity. Um, but there's a book called built to last by Jim Collins and, um, porous. And, and in there they say that visionary organizations and, and, and if you look at the, the actual textbook definition of core values, it kind of says a lot, by the way, Simone, have you ever seen what the textbook definition of core values is?

(29:57) -Darius: No, it's the fundamental beliefs of a person or an organization, fundamental beliefs. Then you look up the word fundamental, the most important, the most foundational beliefs of a personal organization, the most important beliefs that you yourself hold true. So that's why I find it interesting when I ask people what their values are. They can usually tell me the first one or two, and then they have to think about it, which tells me that they haven't defined them yet. Um, I know that they ha everyone has them, but they're, but they ha there's a difference between intuitively like kind of knowing it, because it's something that you, you know, when push comes to shove, you'll make a decision and it's another thing to proactively define them and then put them out there and look at them consistently and say, and then talk about them and say them.

(30:47) -Darius: One is reactive and one's proactive. So I would say my book is a really good place to kind of frame that and cause a process for how to do it for either a person or organization, but you could go online and Google, how do I figure out my core values? And there's a thing called mission to Mars. That's a good strategy you could pick. What are the top five values of my book or my website? You can sign up on my website, we'll send you a list of 105 values. Pick the top five. We have a worksheet that we send people, pick your top five. What? My, I have six for my own personal and I have in my, my new business. We're building them right? But for my last business, we had four, the four words were caring, service, orientation, integrity, and inspiration. Uh, my personal ones are love happiness, passion, creativity, curiosity, and balance.

(31:38) -Darius: The next thing though, I think that is the most important part that people get wrong. Those words by themselves, they mean many different things to many different people. And one of the most powerful things about values is if I tell you my value, I should know more about you. I like. So for instance, if one of your values I think is called freedom, I understand the concept of freedom, but freedom to you may be different than freedom to me. And so I think that the, what I say is those more generic words. I call those brochure language and, and, and it's, it's, it's important and it's foundational. But I say that that's a core value theme. I think the most important part where people don't do is they don't translate that into the language in which they speak. Right? And, and so for me, my number one, my number three core value is passion, my personal value, but I don't call it a passion.

(32:33) -Darius: I call it eye of the tiger. That says a lot, right? I don't call my number two core value. Love. I call it vessels, which is kisses in Spanish. I don't call my number one core value, happiness. I call it heart cause it's from the heart. And it means a lot to me. And I use a Fibonacci heart. As the symbol for my last business, caring was translated to people matter. Inspiration was translating to inspire and leadership character. Excuse me, integrity was translated into the strength of character and service. Orientation was translated into rock solid service. You could see the difference. People matter, caring people matter says something tells you more about what this means. And then I write four to eight sentences to describe it in detail. So the design is the most important part to help people learn their values. And that's the hard part is you got to design them in the tone of who you are as a person.

(33:26) -Darius: And then that's the real, that's where you get a lot of value. Because if I tell you my core, my six core values, personal heart vessels, eye of the tiger, boom, that's creativity, Cinco for curiosity. What, where, who, when and why? And then movie night, cause my family has a movie night every Saturday night, you know, a lot more about me. It says a lot more than those themes. So I think that the design, the translating them into language and the tone of your life, that's where there's really a big value. So I'd say there's, there's a big design process that most people miss. And, and I, I teach that in my book, powerful,

(34:02) -Simon: Get the book people and where can people stick around and get more of you?

(34:09) -Darius: Uh, you know, there's, there's really the best places on my website, the real derrius.com. So my name though, real derrius.com. All my social media is there. Uh, you can sign up opt-in for the email. I don't, we don't spam. We only send valuable email. Um, you can go, if you want to see my show, you can go to YouTube or Facebook and just look up the greatness machine. Um, so yeah, those are the places in the it's all on my website, the real derrius.com. That's the best place

(34:37) -Simon: Who should be my next guest.

(34:39) -Darius: Oh man. Well, I have a friend who I was just speaking to this morning, his name's Jimmy Ferris and he, he was a super bowl champion. He won a super bowl with Tom Brady in 2001, he was played six years in the NFL and he has a new, a new program called Be a Pro. And, uh, it's all around, you know, leveling up and being your best self. And he's a really interesting guy. I would say, Jimmy Ferris, that's who you should bring on your show.

(35:10) -Simon: Beautiful. Thank you so much. Thanks for being here, sharing your passion, your core values and the process, how everybody can create their core values and why it's important for you to scaling up without friction. Thank you so much. Come back soon, my friend,

(35:25) -Darius: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I appreciate it very much.