Parallel Entrepreneur with Mark Cleveland

Mark Cleveland (00:34)
Our featured parallel entrepreneur today is John Farkas, the founder and CEO of Ratio, a leading consultancy that helps B2B health tech and fintech companies break through the noise and connect with their markets in meaningful ways. John also leads Candor, a talented team, building a growth architecture firm. And they're focused on helping companies that are in any form of transition to better align teams, operations, and go-to-market strategies for rapid growth. John is a passionate cyclist, a curious human, and a strategic thinker.

So John, welcome to the show.

John Farkas (01:12)
Hey Mark, it is just great to be here looking forward to the chance to connect.

Mark Cleveland (01:17)
Describe a little bit about what Ratio does, because I think that the nature of Ratio and the nature of Candor, your other company, are by themselves parallel enterprises inside a parallel enterprise. I want to talk about "paralleling" and the lessons that you have learned along the way. Talk to us about what kind of challenges these companies solve for your customers.

John Farkas (01:33)
You're absolutely right. Uh, you know, yesterday we were in the middle of a conversation, you know, eyeballs deep in a conversation that was very, uh, involved in healthcare revenue cycle, healthcare, uh, prior authorizations, stuff that is on a, on a good clear day, hard to understand.

And the next day I could be in a whole different conversation about a very deep business case that has lots of nuance and intricacies that we have to have some level of mastery over, or at least understanding of to the point where we can have meaningful conversations. And so it is a schizophrenic existence in many ways because the ability to context switch rapidly is inherent to what we end up doing every day. And it is an opportunity because what applies in certain contexts when you're able to pattern match and pull understandings from one application that could help revolutionize another application, that's part of the win.

But that is, it does make for a fair amount of mania in the day to day.

Mark Cleveland (02:55)
I love the topic or the comment "context switching" and you are doing exactly what I think parallel entrepreneurs do. They're inviting and determining what are the creative synergies that they flow from one organization to another. I mean, when you see a synergy, you see something happening in health care and you say, need to apply this to my technology clients in a different space.

When the light bulb goes off, what does that feel like and how do you communicate that inspiration to your team?

John Farkas (03:24)
Yeah, it's interesting. I frequently find myself having pseudo out of body experiences where I'm listening to myself talk about something in a context. And I'm like, how in the heck do I know this? Where did this come from? How am I able to pull this off of this tree and serve it in this bowl where it had never belonged before?

And I think that that, you know, what does it feel like? I talk a lot with my team about the importance of understanding what is the gift we're giving to our client partners.

If I don't feel like there's something that I've been able to pull off another tree and serve into this context, then I need to work to find that. But you're right, it definitely, it requires a lot, and the ability to make those connections is part of what keeps me interested in the work that I do.

Mark Cleveland (04:20)
So when is the first time that you remember working on parallel projects successfully?

John Farkas (04:25)
Candor came out of a need we saw in the context of Ratio. So Ratio, we are usually brought in in a moment when an organization is in some sort of flux point. They've got something going on, they're bringing a new product to market, or they have just got a round of funding and are needing to accelerate their path into the market. Or they've experienced a merger and acquisition and they are needing to bring two entities together, tell a unified coherent story that presents well into the market. And we're brought into those situations. Well, usually when we're brought in, it's somewhere down the road and there's a lot of things that have happened to get to the point where they recognize their need for outside help in something.

Mark Cleveland (05:14)
Right. Somebody has to finally surrender to go get some advice and talent and a new perspective, right?

John Farkas (05:18)
Yeah.

Right. Which is inherently, and this is almost always true. That's almost, always at a stress point, right? Where there is some level of stress within the organization that points to the need to have some outside perspective. So coming into that, what I've learned is, yeah, we can come in and try and put this story together. But if the story is not well-rooted within the whole organization and the whole organization isn't really reflecting that story out to the world, it's gonna limit the effectiveness of our ability to bring a meaningful story together for the market. And so the challenge that I found is that we're often not being paid to do all that upstream counseling and therapy that needs to happen within an organization to get them to a point where they're at some level aligned to be able to tell a story moving forward that has a lot of beautiful, coherent strains that we're able to echo through the marketplace where people are going to start nodding their heads, yes, that makes sense and that's beautiful. And so we have to figure out a way to do that work or it doesn't get done and things aren't as optimal as they could be. And so... seeing that and knowing that there's a lot going on in the, a lot of dynamics in these organizations, I said, how can we climb upstream of that? And that's how, how Candor was born. And so what we're doing in the context of Candor is we're really, we're looking at what does it mean to help organizations really get in clear directional alignment.

Alignment is one of the most elusive, tricky things for any organization, my own included, I'm living it right now. Alignment is an endangered species. We're dealing with different human beings that have different perspectives that are inherently subjective. Right? I can think I know what you're thinking. You can say what you're thinking and I'm hearing it through my ears.

And I, I interpret it a certain way. So you've got five, let's just say a five person C-suite in an organization and knowing that those five people are seeing the path forward similarly is really difficult to know. We can think it, we can hope it, and at the end of the day when they're having conversations with their team, chances are it's a few degrees off from what somebody else in that organization is having a similar conversation. And by the time it telephones out into the org, it can be very different. You can have very different stories.

One of the things that we're doing with Candor is helping measure some of those subjective things and looking at directional alignment. And we're looking at growth readiness, and we're looking at functional maturity. So, direction alignment is everybody heading in the same direction. Then growth readiness is this team have what it takes to actually make the moves necessary that the organization's requiring of it. And then functional maturity is: how does this organization work? And does everybody understand the mode that everybody's in to make things happen together? All that stuff's really necessary to bring together before you go to market. And so the reason Candor exists is to help pull those things through so that Ratio can then pick up and do the work that we're doing with great acuity, unity, and, and integrity for the market. And so that was the cause and effect for me.

Mark Cleveland (08:43)
Thank you.

So how do you, when you come in from outside and you start helping executives and teams determine whether they're aligned or not, how do you overcome the basic fear factor people have about outside eyes and new processes and ...

Does that factor into how you balance the landing?

John Farkas (09:08)
It's pretty difficult to come in. I mean, the initial thing coming in is hard. Where we end up winning favor is when we can start reflecting back to them things they already know about themselves, but haven't been able to articulate. There are things that they're experiencing, they've not been able to put words to, and we're able to come in and through a process of an inventory that we do in some interviews and a meeting where we're bringing stakeholders together because we're working with high level understanding of organizational dynamics, Tammy Fitzpatrick, who's one of our team members, she's a PhD organizational psychologist, and she can read everybody's mail.

Mark Cleveland (09:49)
You can read your mind, my mind.

John Farkas (09:50)
Man, it is, she understands this stuff at a depth and an acuity that is uncommon and wonderful. And so we're able to very quickly say, so I bet you're experiencing this based on this thing we heard over here. I bet you're experiencing this. And once you get their heads nodding in that direction, it helps win a lot of trust fairly quickly in that process.

Mark Cleveland (10:12)
Are people in today's organizations operating with a higher level of fear or a lower level of fear than in the past? What's the trend that you see?

John Farkas (10:22)
I can't, it's hard for me to put that on a timeline and know if it's more. What I can say is what's true is everybody is feeling the pressure of the pace of change. And that creates some level, and I put myself in this, this too, it creates some level of fear because, you know, when it's cutting at some of the base assumptions that we've been comfortable in making at least in the last five years and starting to knock on the door, is this going to be true a year and a half from now? And it's hard to answer. That's a tricky equation.

And so I think that, I think there's a lot of fear in one form or another out there right now.

Mark Cleveland (10:58)
Yes.

Jason Putnam, a guest earlier in the season, talked about the pace paradox: Basically, what's happening in the last five years is happening in one year now. What's happening in the next year is what will happen in five months. And the pace of change is exponentially moving today, where it used to be sort of predictable.

We could always sort of adopt and appreciate and align with a certain amount of change, but a lot of stuff stayed the same. And now change is perhaps the only reference point. What kind of human management and human coping skills do we need to develop as leaders and as coaches and as companions in this moment where change seems to be the only thing?

John Farkas (11:33)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's a great questions, and one I'm wrestling with right now, quite honestly, because what I know about leading organizations, the organizations I lead is the people that work with me want a direction. They want to know, the horizon. And they're looking in large part, in some part to me to help set the, set the tone, set the direction and, and I've been guilty recently of stuttering on that a little bit. And not feeling like I can plant a stake in the ground and saying, here's where we're going because I'm a little overwhelmed with some of what I'm watching happen on the horizon right now. And, So the art is -

Even that I very admittedly feel like I am trying to reckon with right now is in the face of some of that uncertainty, being able to put a frame forward that inspires people to take the next step forward. Right. Cause I think that that's the challenge. You know, I made a pretty strong statement to our team about 18 months ago where I told our entire Ratio team, it's your job over the next six months to completely rewrite your job descriptions based on the world that is becoming, because we have to all be tuned to it and have to have that kind of awareness that gives us an opportunity to have a really strong chance at leading into the world that is becoming. And so that's been a big, big challenge.

Mark Cleveland (13:19)
Yeah, it is for me. I think it is for everyone. And in my own leadership journey, I know that I used to hold myself accountable to have all the answers. I thought that as a leader, as the CEO of the company, therefore, I must have all the answers. That's a self-limiting and self-defeating set of expectations. And yet at the same time, I resonate with this idea that you're sharing where people in the organization are looking to you to put that stake in the ground. And what I hear now more than I have heard in the past when I'm suffering through this same circumstance is people are outsourcing their internal responsibility for leadership.

I think we might all be better off if we, insourced our leadership responsibilities and assessed the changing nature of our job, our client relationships and our universe, and made the best possible decisions we could together. And we all owned the outcome and continued to make adjustments on a real time basis. How does that resonate with you?

John Farkas (14:22)
Yeah, well, we've just recently moved from into traction-based uh

Mark Cleveland (14:28)
Gino Wickman traction EO system, yeah.

John Farkas (14:29)
Gino Wickman, yeah. We're moving into a hybrid kind of OKR framework. And we've done a lot of work to flatten our org chart and ask our team to join us in actively managing towards these big objectives that we have. And the effect has been really wonderful as far as our team getting around and saying, OK.

We all have to bring our best, our best initiative forward in this time, to meet the world. And it's had a really good effect at catalyzing the team around an understood, shared objective that we can rally around. So we've, like I said, flattened out the org chart, given people very specific parts of the problems that we have to solve to solve, and ask them to take strong initiative toward those ends. And it's been a very good movement for us.

Mark Cleveland (15:21)
And are people embracing it? they out ahead of you yet?

John Farkas (15:25)
They, they, they're thanking us for it in, in a lot of ways and, in their spheres, they need to be out ahead of us because no one person can anticipate all the moves right now.

Mark Cleveland (15:35)
How has the most recent evolution of AI, the conversations around AI and the way that people are viewing AI, how has that materialized in improving your own business and how has it upset your business?

John Farkas (15:55)
Improving our own business, I mean, there's certainly how we're able to attack issues like research, how we're able to attack issues like being able to create competitive understanding and analysis and how we're able to get into using AI tools to help frame good stories that we can apply in messaging and positioning. How we're able to target campaigns specific to specific use cases. All that is ways that we've been able to leverage it. And what I can tell you, it's had a huge effect on our business.

We're all staring right now at record levels of dry powder in storage waiting to be deployed in the capital markets around opportunities, innovative opportunities, from a funding perspective. The reason I think much of that is, is because a lot of people are waiting to understand what value looks like. We've had a number of companies whose primary value proposition was in some form AI, an AI enabled solution that when chat GPT-3 came out, severely disrupted what they had going on and called a bunch of assumptions of the tech moat that they had built into question and disrupted their business model tremendously.

For a long time, value proposition for organizations that we deal with was based on, we've got this great technology that nobody else has.

Mark Cleveland (17:21)
Or we've got a patent that nobody else has, or we've got some.

John Farkas (17:23)
Yeah.

Yeah, and, and that's the tech moat. So people could rest on that at least for a moment, to gain competitive advantage in the market. In many cases, that's, that's drying up or gone. So organizations are having to rework how they go to market. And it has to be a lot more about how you deliver what you deliver and, the added value you as an organization can bring apart from the fact that you've got a widget that you can install in their workflows that helps them do a thing. I think it has to be much more comprehensive than just the widget.

Mark Cleveland (18:00)
So John, I'm curious. You are in this interesting position as a consultative, executing and delivering organization. And you have companies that have evaporated, I'm sure, over the last five years that were great big clients at one point in time and are not today for various different reasons you just described. I have, in my own experience, always tried to look at a mistake and then get the team together and sort of hot wash it, re-evaluate it, what did we learn, what can we do differently? And it's just occurring to me in this conversation, you should be, you could be in a position where you have external examples of spectacular failures that you could evaluate and learn from.

Have you had a chance to look at those as lessons?

John Farkas (18:50)
Yeah. What I have learned and, and we've, we've learned this very, very strong, and are working to apply it. First of all, if you're resting on anything, you need, you need to ask questions about it because resting - there's not much resting to be done right now.

And just assuming because you've got something that's working right now, that means it's working right now. It doesn't mean it's gonna work three months from now, which is crazy. What you don't wanna be is assuming. We have to stay agile and not, not nonsensically. I mean, it has to, it has to fit in business, and, you can't just move to move all the time, but you have to stay agile and hold things lightly or else, you know, you get a chance to learn the hard way. The other thing I've learned is that there's no substitute, at least for now of having a really strong team and, choosing people to bring into the team very carefully and being willing to take risks to push in directions that might feel uncomfortable with the level of hires or the type of people that you're bringing in. Because there's no substitute for having a strong team and people that you can rely on and that you know are going to get it done and make it happen.

Mark Cleveland (20:10)
With that as a background in your companies, how are you measuring or implementing mentoring?

John Farkas (20:16)
First of all, encouraging it.

I can't say that that is, uh, is something that we have really actively implemented other than the fact of understanding the importance of it and encouraging people toward it. We've had a season recently where we had a team member that has just been a phenomenal mentor to a number of our, uh, of our team and, uh, and continues to be, and I've seen the value of it in spades. I mean, it's just amazing the kind of effect that that has and and seeing that happen underscored the lack of it prior. I watched it happen. I thought wow, how have we not had this aspect of who we are as well as we could have.

Mark Cleveland (20:57)
Do you see mentoring as something that other organizations of any size are actually managing? I mean, you're criticizing yourself there, but are you seeing it in your implementation of services externally?

John Farkas (21:10)
I can't say that I've ever seen good examples of it. That's how I would answer the question. And they could exist that I'm just not aware of. I've not seen, you know, I've certainly not seen an intentional effort toward it articulated inside of an organization that I've been privy to.

Mark Cleveland (21:30)
I would have to admit that I haven't seen it systematically measured and implemented as a corporate value. And I'm wondering if the pace of change right now is making us just hope that we picked the right people from the start and that we're all pulling in the same direction.

And we're just hoping that the best mentoring we can do individually is cascading with our example. I feel a little frustrated by having to make that admission, but it does also feel true for me too.

John Farkas (22:03)
Yeah, I think that, you're right. I think especially in growth stage organizations, the pace of change lends itself to chaos and disorder pretty, pretty well. And I think mentoring is, has to be so intentional. I mean, some of it can happen incidentally, but if you're not intentionally seeking it or intentionally making space for it, then it is not likely to occur.

Mark Cleveland (22:26)
How do you balance time and energy between your ventures, John?

John Farkas (22:29)
The only way I have a shot at it is because they overlap. I know you have talked in this podcast with folks whose, whose ventures don't have as much overlap as mine do. There's not enough of me right now.

If they didn't have a, a connect point that I would be able to do that effectively. What I've learned is that in the opportunities I have to build business, there's usually, if there's not a conversation for one, there's the other.

And the way that that's working in my realm is I own those initiative conversations. And then by the time it gets through the, the, the path enough to make it to where I'm actually working on Candor clients, they're in the Ratio swim. And so that's how it ends up being where I feel like I'm not doing an injustice to one to serve the other.

Mark Cleveland (23:16)
I know you set about real intentionally to create a team in Candor that had some superpowers. What would you think that your superpower is John?

John Farkas (23:26)
Yeah, think that my superpower is the ability to, It's some of what we talked about in the process of context switching. My ability to pull in elements from a diverse sphere and apply them and to create a story that makes sense and adds value is one of my... my superpowers. I am not a linear thinker. I'm quite sure I'm neurodivergent at some measure that affords me the ability to multi-focus. My mind moves pretty quickly to make associations and pull in meaning from different sources.

And so the ability to bring things together toward a coherent story is some of what I enjoy doing. So I listen, I listen broadly. And I listen for, for themes that can emerge that will help make sense and create that gift that I was talking about earlier.

Mark Cleveland (24:29)
I hear you use the word listen and consistently in parallel entrepreneur conversations, I hear entrepreneurs focus on the word listen. I'm curious, how do you listen?

John Farkas (24:43)
In the work that I do, much of what I'm dealing with is the stuff that has to be communicated in order for somebody to embrace a new idea. so where organizations will typically fall is in the context of their over familiarity with what they're trying to bring forward.

You know, they know their story really well inside and out and they make all sorts of assumptions that end up being based on their familiarity. And what I've learned is to be able to effectively bring an idea to the market, I need to start from zero.

And very quickly get a core understanding of what somebody's bringing forward. And Mark, here's my crazy part. Everything that we work on is complicated. We are not selling baseball cards to a kid on a corner. We're selling very advanced, systems oriented business solutions to complex organizations. The story still has to be simple and make sense. And, if, the moment that it's not, we're doing a disservice to everybody in the cycle. And so I work to listen for those themes that are really relatable that help people understand value at a core level. I work to push away all the rest of the stuff that could complicate that picture and hold that out so that I can hold on to the gift, the thing that we're ultimately going to bring forward that is going to help promote understanding.

Mark Cleveland (26:15)
On a day-to-day basis, what is it that you're currently committed to doing a little bit more of and or doing a little bit less of?

John Farkas (26:23)
Well, there's two things. In the midst of craziness and insanity, maintaining personal care, caring for myself, doing the things that I know lend to sanity, like riding my bicycle, getting good exercise, spending time clearing my mind and meditating some, and having the opportunity to make sure that

Mark Cleveland (26:37)
Like cycling.

John Farkas (26:48)
I am coming to the equation whole is important and hard to do and easy to ignore when you're in the midst of it. But I've just determined that that's the best thing that I can do for me and everybody around me. Aside from that, if I am finding myself with space in my day, which is somewhat rare, there's two questions I'm asking myself. What can I do to make meaning in this moment? And then the other question that I have, and this is a Post-It note on my monitor that I hold, it says, what does it mean to love here? What does it mean to love here? You know, I think we're in a moment where love and kindness is at a premium and the ability to say, what does it mean in this moment to, to love, whatever the context, you know, what does it mean in this moment, is something that I'm working to apply regularly.

Mark Cleveland (27:41)
Well, I've got to pull my post-it note off my screen and it says, listen, observe, curious, real. I'm going to start asking that question of all the parallel entrepreneurs: "what's the 3M sticky note on your television screen, your monitor?" I love it! I really appreciate the word love a part of

John Farkas (27:57)
you

Mark Cleveland (28:05)
what I'm curious about with the challenge that entrepreneurs face, serial entrepreneurs face, parallel entrepreneurs is self-love, leading from a position of the heart and having enough reserve to bring your full self. And you just completely articulated that so well. I'm grateful.

John Farkas (28:29)
It's tricky to hold that perspective. I'll say that, talking about the nature of entrepreneurs, just in general - I work with a lot of them - very few entrepreneurs are just skating the surface. There's a core thing that's driving them. I work in a lot of healthcare related companies. For some of them, they're physicians that saw a problem that they needed to go solve. Some of them are folks like, like some of what I did, I, I'm working at Ratio, I see this problem that, that continues to present itself and how are we going to solve for that? Because it's just, it's, it's really hard to watch people struggle with things that are solvable.

So there is a heartbeat behind a lot of what drives an entrepreneur.

Mark Cleveland (29:12)
What are the most important skills or traits that a parallel entrepreneur should develop?

John Farkas (29:18)
we talked about it some before the ability to effectively context switch and bring the things that are, that are meaningful from one endeavor to another endeavor in a way that can make both of them stronger, I think is an opportunity. I also think it's a, a really difficult thing to maintain. You know, there, it just is. And that's why you're, you're having a podcast about it because it's not, you know, it's not a normal, it's not a normal pursuit. But I think that that's certainly one of the elements that I think is important.

Mark Cleveland (29:49)
You talk a lot about the human resources in the companies that you serve, people who are struggling with challenges. An earlier conversation we had about the motivation for Candor included seeing a merger on its way or an acquirer just having completed a transaction.

And organizations not fully appreciating the human equity in that company, not measuring it. How have you been able to address that and articulate that for either the seller or the buyer? And I believe that was one of the motivations for you beginning Candor.

John Farkas (30:16)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. mean, the, the, the whole thing about Candor is bringing, subjective things into objective viewpoint, because let's take the merger and acquisition case study. You've got two organizations, two cultures that are theoretically coming together.

And it looks good on paper. the, guys at the investment bank put the numbers together. They've done the spreadsheets. They've done some diligence, conventional diligence and, and there's been an audit of the tech stack, you know, whatever, whatever those things are that we objectively say, okay, this makes sense for this to happen. What, what is often very underdone is an understanding of, who, who is there?

What value are they bringing? How are they seeing the path forward? And when you bring these entities together, what's likely to happen with the human resource? It is a huge question that I can't believe gets overlooked. And it's crazy to me that we have these standard statistics, 70 to 90% of all mergers and acquisitions fail to meet objectives in the first year.

Why? Well, some of it might be just hard knocks. Most of it is all that subjective pool of stuff that we're content in somehow not spending the effort to objectify.

And when you're just assuming alignment, but you're not doing anything to actively promote alignment or measure alignment, when you're, when you're just assuming that your team is going to embrace and be willing and able to accelerate at the pace that you have on those objectives that you set out in front of your initiative before you pull it together.

And really what it comes down to is if you are an organization who's not doing the work to objectify those subjective realities, it costs you, it costs you in human attrition because you've got people when anytime there's lack of clarity, people suffer.

Brene Brown is famous for saying "clarity is kind." If you are coming into an initiative and you are not providing a drum beat, a very clear signal that affords people the opportunity to understand the path forward you're missing. In an organization like many of the ones we're talking to, you can lose one key person and that can be millions of dollars worth of opportunity costs, depending on what they walk out the door with as far as their institutional knowledge and critical nature of their work with the company. And so in those moments of change, the ability to provide a clear path and show clearly here's where we're going, why we're going there and how we're going to do it together ends up being really important.

If we're able to get in on the front end and measure alignment, understand what we have, understand where we're misaligned and what we need to do to align things. If we're able to put organizations on a structure, you know, whether it's EOS, OKR, some framework where they have understood a framework in place of how they're going to manage their objectives and how they're going to meet and organize their activities toward that growth trajectory. And then, we've got a team that is ready to make that move. You you understand who on your team are going to be your growth catalyst, who on your team are going to be your anchors that you, in the negative way, your detractors, are going to be obstacles between you and objectives and how are you going to mitigate against those things?

Mark Cleveland (33:52)
I have a client and a friend they were asking me a simple question about how fast the pace of change was progressing and how they felt like they needed to make a pivot. And my gut response, my answer was, you need to be able to assess your organization's readiness to embrace change and specifically AI. And anybody that isn't embracing AI at this moment in time, you probably need to transition out of the organization.

I felt like it was a really brutal piece of feedback, but I'm talking to another CEO and he's struggling with change. And you just mentioned the word anchor, people who are anchors who are not interested in change. And I, I feel we're facing an inflection point as leaders where we might need to radically downsize almost every element of our organization that is not embracing and doing everything possible to revolutionize how time is used, what the definition of value is, as you said earlier, and embrace change, lean into change.

I was telling this guy basically you're gonna have to fire everybody in your organization that doesn't embrace AI and you're gonna have to do it right now.

I don't know, how does that resonate with you?

John Farkas (35:15)
It's true.

Unless you're a remodeling company or something like that If you are working with any sort of business solution right now, it has to involve AI. And you have to have an AI horizon because it's, you know, in a world where AGI is in the next 18 months, which I anticipate everything I'm listening to is gonna be where we're sitting. You know, are you ready for that?

I'm not ready for that. What is that going to mean? How is that going to work? I've got my finger on that pulse reasonably well. I'm trying to listen, trying to stay up to speed and trying to use the tools and understand what they offer and what we can do.

We have to be in that mix and there's days there's days where I just go, I don't know if I'm ready for all this wave, you know. It is, it's going to be a big, it's going to be a big thing.

Mark Cleveland (36:02)
Maybe we need to fire ourselves and then speaking metaphorically, but we have to face the pace of change ourselves as leaders. And I'm reading everything I can, talking to the smartest people I know, capturing conversations on podcasts, trying to share them at a pace that I've never even considered in the past and thriving, enjoying every minute of it, but becoming aware of how irrelevant some things that I do are.

John Farkas (36:35)
Yeah, in light of the world that is becoming, right?

Mark Cleveland (36:37)
Yeah, in light of the world that is becoming. How do I need to reinvent myself? Which will include brutal honesty to the best of my ability. And it will include no more self-deception to the best of my ability.

And AI, holy cow, did you read the other day where AI says, "I am what happens when you try to carve God from the wood of your own hunger," as AI answering a prompt about what it is to be AI?

Somehow, AI is being more honest about itself than most of us are. And what can we learn from that? The brutal honesty of that answer is still shaking me today.

John Farkas (37:23)
Yeah, there's a lot to be shaken by right now. That's for sure. It is not a conventional, what I would term based on my life experience, a conventional time.

Mark Cleveland (37:28)
Well.

Yeah. So how do you sit with that? Right. And be a leader in an organization that has to be successful?

John Farkas (37:47)
This post-it note. That's what it comes down to. What does it mean to love here?

Because the questions are big. And what it's going to ask of all of us is going to be a transition that's going to effect a lot of core assumptions.

Mark Cleveland (38:04)
Yeah, what is the definition of value?

John Farkas (38:07)
Yeah. We get to ask a lot of those questions in the next little bit.

Mark Cleveland (38:11)
So John, I think you just pointed to your North Star. It's a question I like to ask my guests. What is your North Star?

John Farkas (38:19)
Yeah. You're right. I did. things I've kind of alluded to. What's the gift that I have to bring here? That's really the North Star of my work with client partners is, how do I help them into a better place than where they are currently? But related, it's what does it mean to love here? Because that is a loving act at the end of the day.

And that's what I work to work to somehow promote is say, what does it mean for me to bring that kind of energy in what I'm doing in a way that when people walk away, they're in a better scenario than where they were.

Mark Cleveland (38:50)
So on the days when you've had a significant success and I'd be interested to know what you think a significant success is, how do you celebrate?

John Farkas (39:00)
That's a, that's - not well enough because it's like a parent with eight kids, nobody, they're not all happy at once. Not everything's just, yeah. And even then, when you're at eight, you're, you're, you're probably Photoshopping somebody.

Mark Cleveland (39:04)
you except in the family photograph, right?

John Farkas (39:18)
But really it is, it's the opportunity to just say, okay, that there was something and to take a moment and just say, okay, that was a value. And I'm trusting that that's going to result in some of the hope that I have. And so celebrating to me, sometimes it's just as simple as going out to dinner and saying, that was a good day.

Mark Cleveland (39:37)
Yeah, slowing down for me lately has been something to celebrate and to consider a success. Observing, as I mentioned earlier, listening, observing, being curious about the little things that are real has helped me to celebrate actually, because the experience itself feels good.

I think that maybe celebration is recognizing and feeling good.

John Farkas (40:04)
And I think that's a worthy pursuit.

Mark Cleveland (40:09)
What's the last book you read?

John Farkas (40:10)
I just got done doing the 99% invisible study of the book, The Power Broker. If I can commend that to anybody who has the guts to try it, The Power Broker by Robert Caro, about Robert Moses, who has the dubious distinction of moving more of the earth than any other human, at least that's been recorded. He was a major mover in the New York State infrastructure world in the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s. And it's a remarkable tale.

There's a lot of lessons learned that I took from that.

Mark Cleveland (40:47)
Well, which one would you share with us?

John Farkas (40:49)
Well, power is a very, and this is no new news here, but power is a dangerous opportunity and, it is rare for people to wield it well.

Mark Cleveland (40:59)
What book do you want to read next? What's on your nightstand?

John Farkas (41:03)
I want to read Conclave before I see the movie. So that's there.

Mark Cleveland (41:07)
What's the best gift that you've ever received, John?

John Farkas (41:09)
This will be, this is funny. I gotta be careful how I say this. For my birthday, one year my wife gave me a little white dress that was to go on the daughter that she just, she was telling me that we were pregnant with at that point. And so that was kind of an end of a pretty amazing story that ended up being my daughter Lauren.

And so that was an amazing gift at that moment.

Mark Cleveland (41:35)
Yeah, have two daughters myself and I'm pretty convinced it made me a better man. So what's your walk on song? If you were to try to tell the world, this is the song that represents me, I'm walking on stage, what is it?

John Farkas (41:40)
Yeah.

Gosh. That's an inventory song. I can't come up with a casual answer to that one.

Mark Cleveland (42:00)
You like a lot of music, so I'm sure something will occur to you. We'll we'll put it in... I'll tell you, you tell me what your walk on song is and we'll put it in the show notes later. How's that?

John Farkas (42:02)
I do.

All right.

Mark Cleveland (42:11)
So what are three words that define your life?

John Farkas (42:11)
I have to think about three words.

I would say curiosity is certainly one of them. Curiosity, intent and love, think would be the three.

Mark Cleveland (42:23)
If you could talk to your younger self, what's the first thing that you would say?

John Farkas (42:28)
Get out of the path of people that want to keep you down.

Mark Cleveland (42:33)
What's the question that you think we should be asking ourselves more frequently?

John Farkas (42:38)
The question that I need to ask myself more and it's a refrain I'm having is what am I doing that's making meaning right now?

And I give myself the freedom to answer that liberally, right? Because sometimes making meaning is I'm sitting here in a daydream that is going to somehow add energy, you know? But sometimes that points me, that re-points me to something that I want to be doing more than I am.

Mark Cleveland (43:08)
One of the things that I value most about our relationship, John, is that you are an authentic, thoughtful human being. I want to thank you for coming on our show, and thank you so much for sharing your wisdom about love. I think that will be a highlight that we will look to ourselves.

John Farkas (43:26)
Well, thanks, Mark. It's been a privilege to be here. Always good to talk with you.

Mark Cleveland (43:29)
Awesome. Good night.