Chris DeJong is a former US national swimmer and the Founder & President of Big Blue Swim School, one of America’s fastest-growing swim school franchises. We talk about how successful entrepreneurs franchise their businesses, what diversity can do for your business, and effective time management tips for entrepreneurs.
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Build a Flexible Vision with Chris DeJong
Our guest is Chris DeJong, a former US national swimmer and the founder and president of Big Blue Swim School, a fast-growing swim school franchise that combines world-class swim instruction in an unbeatably easy experience for the entire family. So welcome to the show, Chris.
Thanks, Steve. It’s great to be here.
It’s exciting to have you. And listen, I’m always very impressed by athletes when they turn into successful business people. So how does that even happen? How does from being a US national swimmer, someone becomes an entrepreneur. It seems like an unlikely transition.
That’s fair. Yeah, I was a swimmer my whole life. You know, I grew up swimming. I grew up in Michigan. My dad sold boats at the local marina. My mom taught swim lessons. And I was just kind of always in the water and around the water. And it’s just a part of who I am. So I slowly got into competitive swimming as a kid after a couple of false starts not really liking it at first but then starting to like it as I got older, and that just started to develop more and more into more serious commitment as a competitive swimmer.
I went on to swim through high school and through college and then even for a while, professionally, post college. Now, as you mentioned, I was on the US National Swim Team for about nine years, and just missed the US Olympic Swim Team in 2004, and then again in 2008. And after that, I kind of knew my competitive swimming career was done, and I really was not sure what I was going to do with my life after that. So I just started teaching swim lessons as a way to make ends meet at first.
And at the time, I wasn’t exactly in love with the sport of swimming anymore. I was about 24, 25. But by starting to teach kids how to swim and sharing, you know, my passion for just being in the water and swimming, it kind of breathed life back into me. And I quickly realized that this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And so one way or the other, I know I’m always going to be involved with swimming or near the water of some sort. And this was just the perfect way for me to build a career out of what was my passion. And it’s really a pretty cool, magical experience to watch a kid learn to swim. And I’m proud to say now we get to do that every day. And we’ve done it with well over a million swim lessons at this point.
Wow! Okay, you’re really making a difference then with that. And I agree with you it’s, it’s a huge experience for a kid when I was a kid when I first started being able to stay on top of the water and. And it kind of gives you the freedom of, of, of floating in this in this substance it’s really cool and, you know, it’s really cool that you made this pivot and found something else where you can strive for an Olympic gold type of experience, building a big business is kind of winning the Olympics.
And then you stay there, right? It’s not just for four years, but you can stay on top for a long time. So this is really, really cool. So switching gears a little bit here, you know that the theme of this podcast is the management blueprint and business frameworks. So I wonder what you, you seem to have had a very intentional approach to building your business. What kind of frameworks have you come across that you found useful and implemented partially or fully in your business?
Yeah, that’s a great question. I’ve had a multitude of different influences on me over the years. If I had to narrow it down, I’d say a couple of different business books, as well as some mentors and some different even consultants I’ve spoken with but one book that sticks out is called Essentialism by Greg McKeown and that talks a lot about how you you really need to be ruthless with your time and shave away the things that don’t really matter. It’s thinking about your day in day out routine as a business leader, you really have only a few core responsibilities. And you need to focus your time on those.
Those are really the essential functions of being a leader. And as a leader of a business, it really comes down to hiring the team and then making sure you don’t run out of money, really, at the end of the day. So obviously, a lot more responsibilities come up after that. But when hiring the team, that also means keeping the team, making sure that they feel motivated and engaged and happy and that they have the right structure around them to go succeed.
You know, if you’re not focusing your time and energy into those really core essential responsibilities as a business leader, I think you’re gonna fail pretty quickly. It’s pretty easy to go down rabbit holes and to get stuck in some of the minutiae of day in and day out responsibilities. But you’ve got to pull yourself up and gain a perspective because if you don’t, no one really else will in the business. And so you need to have that peripheral perspective at times to see what all is happening so that you can most effectively use your very limited time and to help the business.
You need to have a peripheral perspective at times to see what all is happening so that you can most effectively use your very limited time. Share on XSo in that regard, the essential functions of a business leader in my mind really do boil down to those two things of just managing your cash and hiring the team. But when it comes to hiring the team, like I said, you also have to make sure that they’re engaged and motivated. Another book that’s been influential for me is a book called It’s Your Ship by Michael Ebershoff. And that is a book about, well, he’s a captain in the Navy, and it’s about how he took one of the lowest performing ships in the Pacific fleet and turned it into the highest performing ship.
And how he did that is, it’s really a pretty miraculous journey, and a lot of it comes back to giving people ownership. He talks about an interview he had with one of the members of the crew that was set to leave the Navy, and he asked him, “Why are you leaving.” And his response was, well, no one’s ever asked me to stay. And so that’s when he realized that it’s really not a, it’s not very complicated. It’s just about doing the simple things, exceptionally well.
He then turned that ship around by engaging with people and through a couple of core responsibilities. He talks about providing purpose for your employees, listening aggressively, making sure that they really feel heard, and then communicating back to them. He calls it communicate, communicate, communicate. They need to know what’s happening, and you need to see the ship, or in this case, your business, through the eyes of your crew. And to me what that means and one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received is that as a business leader you need to have a flexible vision.
So obviously you need to create the vision, you need to share the vision, but if you’re going to give people ownership and really good people are going to want some ownership over the direction of the ship or the business. They need to feel like they can hang their hat and direct the business in a way that they feel it should go. And so as the founder of Big Blue Swim School, what I’ve found is that if I really want to go far, I need an amazing team around me, and that means the vision that I maybe had at the very beginning needs to be, it needs to remain very flexible. And if it’s unbending, then great people are just not gonna wanna work here. And you really do wanna be able to say that great people are lining up to wanna work with you. And they’re lining up to wanna work at your business.
As a business leader, you need to have a flexible vision. You need to create and share the vision but remain flexible, allowing great people to have ownership and contribute to the direction of the business. Share on XI love this idea. And it’s not an easy thing to do. I don’t think entrepreneurs like to have their way. And, you know, and also entrepreneurs also like to kind of pivot in real time and going after this shiny object whatever excites them in the moment. It’s kind of part of the perk of the perceived perks of being an entrepreneur. Sure. If you do that, then you are going to demotivate your team, not just because of the people, but also if they can’t be in on the vision, if they can’t contribute to it, then they’re not gonna feel ownership, as you say, and they’re gonna go and fulfill their potential elsewhere, and that’s the biggest loss that you can have, because this is exactly the kind of people you want to keep that have the potential and the vision.
They’ve got this entrepreneurial energy, and they can keep them in the organization by allowing them to contribute, that is a huge bloom. The other thing I’d like to reflect is the essentialism that you talked about, which is so true and you know, few people realize that decisions, making decisions all about saying no to things is cutting off decisions, cutting things off and it’s a very painful process because all the time you have to hold yourself back from doing this and that, the other, and just limiting your involvement. I recently read a book from Jeff Bezos and he talks about even the number of decisions you have to limit that because as a CEO of a company, you don’t have to make 25 decisions, you just have to make three or four really good decisions every day and your work is done. And how do you make those decisions and how you keep yourself in the best possible mental frame so you can do those? It’s really, really critical.
Yeah, you look at a guy like Jeff Bezos and just how incredibly productive they are and how ruthless he has to be with the efficiency of his time. it’s really pretty incredible to think about managing an organization of that size. You have to get really good at asking the right questions and providing the right framework to be able to ask those questions. Another piece that’s been really influential on me was an article I read in the Harvard Business Review called, When Should a Process Be an Art, Not a Science? It’s written by two guys, Joseph Hall and Eric Johnson.
And they talk about different processes and systems in the book. You have mass processes where everything needs to turn out exactly the same, like production of a car. Another process they talk about is called mass customization. And a third process is called craft systems. Mass customization being, you know, where you do the same process every time, but things come out a little bit different every time. And that’s a good thing. Imagine like making a sandwich at a sub shop and it’s a little different every time. And the customer accepts that and actually embraces it.
But then there’s also a process called craft systems where, you know, you can’t necessarily make a formula for how people to people interactions are gonna work. And in our business, in Big Blue Swim School, there’s a lot of person-to-person interactions. So in a craft system, we do a lot of training on how you’re going to engage with a customer in a organic, fluid manner, but still produces very consistent, positive results. And so knowing as a leader when to use a mass process, mass customization, or craft system is really the real challenge. They also talk about a fourth system, which is a broken system.
And this is where I try to really be efficient with my time is how to diagnose the broken system. And it really comes down to three core questions in my mind is you either have a systems problem, a management problem, or a training problem. Pretty much everything comes back to those three things. And if you ask yourself, is there a process in place that can be followed? And the answer is no. Well, then you clearly have a systems problem, but oftentimes that’s not the case.
So if you ask yourself, is there a system in place that can be followed, but is not being followed? And the answer to that is yes, then you probably have a management problem and you need to dive into fixing that issue. And the third question would be, is there a system but employees don’t know how to use it? In that case, if the answer is yes, then you probably have a training problem. And so if you put all the issues that come to you through that lens, that filter, you can be much more efficient with your time because oftentimes, I can’t tell you how many times, people come to me with something they’ve noticed that they think is a big systems issue and we need to create a whole new process.
And I say, wait a second, let’s really kind of dive in here and understand things. And oftentimes it is a management or a training problem. But had we tried to go fix a whole new system, it would have been a really inefficient use of everyone’s time, including my own. So when you can more properly diagnose problems by asking the right questions, which is something I continue to try to get better at every day, then you can get more and more efficient and get back to the whole idea of just being able to execute the essential tasks as a business leader.
Diagnosing problems by asking the right questions makes you more efficient and helps execute essential tasks as a business leader. Share on XI mean, I agree with you. This is basically Socratic method of asking questions and letting the people who are the closest to the problem to figure it out. Sometimes they are too close to it. That’s true. Then you can help them or brainstorm with other people who see it from different perspective. But definitely having them figure it out and own it, own the solution, they get much more motivated to fix it. And they’re gonna learn in the process to fix their own problems. So they’re not gonna bring next time to you. That’s really cool.
I like your framework of looking at systems, the problem whether it’s a system for a management problem or training program, you know, Gino Wickman in, in the entrepreneurial operating system he talks about the follow by all checklist, which is basically who touches it is trained that you measure the execution. Often you put it in a scorecard or a scoreboard and then you manage the execution. And if it doesn’t work, if it’s broken, then fix the problem and then update the system and make sure that new people are trained. So there’s kind of this cyclical process of maintaining the system and not just putting it in the drawer and then reviewing it.
Yeah, it’s a rinse, wash, repeat system of diagnosing and fixing. And that’s really what the day comes down to a lot of times.
That’s really cool. So let’s talk a little bit about Big Blue Swim School and what makes it special. And one of the things that you mentioned to me in the pre-interview was that what you really pay attention is the voice of the customer and advocating for the voice of the customer. So what do you mean exactly by the voice of the customer and advocating for it? What does it look like in the real world?
I mean, we definitely listen very closely to the customer. We look at reviews from customers, written reviews that come in to us every single morning and we talk about it as a team. That’s a really big part of what has steered the direction of the company. But I’d also say from the very beginning, just to throw one more book out there, actually is another book called The Innovation Stack by Jim McKelvey, who started Square along with Jack Dorsey. It’s a great idea and it talks about perfect problems.
And that at the time they were uniquely positioned to solve what he called a perfect problem because they were the ones to go solve it at the time with their square card readers. And he talks about how from the very beginning what they were trying to do was solve a problem as opposed to offer a service or make a product. And I think from the very beginning of Big Blue Swim School, it’s been a differentiator for us.
You know, we didn’t like any of the off-the-shelf software platforms out there, so we built our own platform, software platform, which was basically like starting two companies at the same time. But we knew we needed to do that in order to better meet the needs of our customers. And so in my mind, we have not just been offering a swim lesson. We have been solving a problem for parents and making it easier and easier by creating more and more frictionless experiences, not only in the pool, but also around the entire experience for mom and dad.
So you think about just the process of scheduling a swim lesson. When I was a kid that meant driving somewhere and getting in line and, you know, getting your, your kids signed up to sign, you’d start swim lessons at the local park district. Today, we try to make that really simple by solving that problem for parents and making it easy to sign up online or sign up on your phone and schedule all three of your kids at the same time.
So through technology innovation and other efficiencies, we have been solving a problem similar to what Jim talks about in the innovation stack. And it’s a big reason why he believes Amazon eventually backed off trying to copy the Square space, or sorry, the Square card reader, because they had such an innovation stack behind them of years and years of developing and solving problems that even Amazon backed off trying to duplicate that.
And so that’s, I think, a big part of what we’ve done is building a moat by thinking about the customer first and constantly listening to the customer. And if you’re not doing that, you’re not really understanding what their pain points are and you’re not in a position to remove them. So from the very beginning and even to present day, we are constantly thinking about what are the problems facing our customer and our employees and how do we innovate and solve for problems? And that’s just a continuous cycle of improvement.
I love this concept of not trying to build a service or company or a product, but focus on the problem. How do we solve a problem and keep, stay focused on that and the problem evolves and then your attention evolves with it. It’s definitely a very powerful way of building a great product, which the customer wants. So how about how about improving and evolving with the customer? How do you make sure that you continue to solve the problems? And obviously you solve this problem and then there’s going to be a higher level problem and then another one, another one. and kind of prioritizing and solving these ongoing new problems or high-level problems that keep popping up?
Yeah, you know, we have a lot of people now weighing in on that, and we like to say none of us is smarter than all of us, so it’s in some ways a very democratic process at this point. It’s another reason why we’ve gone into franchise, is to broaden our pool of people who are engaged and wanting to see the business improve. So leveraging the expertise of our franchise partners, as well as listening to our customers, you know, an ever growing corporate team, everyone has a say, and good ideas can come from anywhere. You know, the Big Mac was a franchisees idea, right? Like some of the best ideas come from places that you may not expect.
So we’re always listening as broadly as we can, I would say. And then when it comes to how do you stack rank the list of ideas that come in, sometimes in art, sometimes in science. You know, if it’s a really easy project to do and it’s low hanging fruit, then we go do that. And then we also stack rank the other, maybe longer tail projects, but we know that’s gonna have a great ROI. It’s a balance between those two, the short, easy projects, and then let’s stack right the longer, more intensive projects.
And usually our quarterly goals are set with a combination of those two different types of projects. But we try to keep the goalposts pretty broad and just focus in on a couple projects at a time. Because if we try to be everywhere, we know we will land nowhere. And just a couple of core projects that we know is going to have a huge impact on the customer experience has been our North Star from the beginning and continues to be today.
So are you intentional about harvesting the ideas of your community and now you have a franchise, you have franchisees and they are entrepreneurial people, they’re going to come up with ideas. So what is their process for capturing these ideas and prioritizing them? Or is it more of an organic thing that if someone is really passionate about it, we’re going to push it and eventually it’s going to reach you and then you’re going to consider what is the process?
So for example, like with our, with our business, we teach from us, right. So a core part of our product is the curriculum. The curriculum has been involving since day one, getting better and better. And great ideas on that come from everywhere, mainly from the instructors who are in the water teaching still every day today. Those are where some really great ideas are coming from all the time. So we do have one spot, one place in our custom software where anyone can submit those ideas and they come into a central place.
Then we have committees set up for different areas. So, for example, the curriculum committee determines what are the ideas we’re going to work on now and what ideas we’re going to put in the icebox for later, and then communicating that back to everyone in the system, both franchise partners and internal partners, and even communicating to customers. So, you know, we’re listening, we want to hear your best ideas, how can we be better?
A lot of our current roadmap has come from customer suggestions on how to improve how we give feedback to customers, for example, of how their kids are progressing through lessons. That was very intentionally driven by going out and talking to customers about their experience, which I love doing. Our current quarters work is influenced by a conversation I had two years ago with a customer in one of our lobbies about specifically progress and what that meant to her as a mom. So yeah, we’re always trying to make that intentional effort to go listen to customers as much as we can, as well as use our own intuition of what we think they’re going to want.
Okay, yeah, that’s cool. So what about franchising? How did that idea come about that you would turn yourself into a franchise organization? And what do you feel are the success factors to become a successful franchise?
We were almost 10 years old as a brand before we decided to go into franchising. And I think that really benefited us a lot because we spent 10 years refining the unit model and refining a lot of the processes that we were just talking about, before we felt ready to scale this more broadly across an entire nationwide system of franchises. Being a franchisor has its own pretty long list of responsibilities that you don’t really want to be adding to by still trying to develop a unit model.
Being a franchisor has its own pretty long list of responsibilities that you don't really want to be adding to by still trying to develop a unit model. Share on XSo if you’re going to go into franchising, I would recommend spending some time prior to franchising of perfecting the in-store experience, perfecting your core processes before you really feel ready to do that. And for us, it was a process, but it wasn’t until about 10 years then that we really felt like we knew exactly what we were doing, how we wanted to do it, and what the plan was to go execute. And even today, we’re still evolving and getting better.
But the fact that we gave ourselves time to develop the concept and develop the customer experience and to keep investing in our software, our custom software that helps power Big Blue Swim School, I think that’s been a big part of why we’ve had pretty rapid growth on the franchise front over the last two years since we started selling franchises. You know, definitely the fastest growing provider in our space. And when we bring in franchise candidates to learn about the business, they see that right away, I think.
And they tell us that, but they can tell that this is a mature, more evolved unit model, and that there’s still a ton of white space out there and a lot of great markets available because we’re still relatively new in the franchising space, but the concept itself is not new. It has a lotof maturity behind it.
So, what’s attractive in your franchise for a potential franchisee? Why do you they choose? And I’m not just comparing you to other film schools that may or may not be franchising, but if someone comes out of corporate America and they look for a franchise, why would they choose your model as opposed to other models?
That’s a great question. So, you know, the Swim School concept has been around for a long time. Yeah, I like to say the best business ideas always hide in plain sight, right? So swim lessons have been here for a long time and likely they always will be. And what the unit model has going for it is that swim lessons actually stand to benefit from the more macro trends happening in the economy, such as what Amazon is doing to traditional retail. A swim lesson would be very difficult to automate. You can’t outsource it. You have to come and you have to do it.
And you need to get your kids trained in water safety. You know, I have a three and a five year old, and for my wife and I, it’s non-negotiable. Now, if the kids want to get into tennis or soccer, we’ll let them go do that and support them, but it’s non-negotiable that they have to learn how to swim. And a lot of parents feel the same way. So, there’s a staying power to the concept that a lot of other franchise concepts can’t really advertise, that people just intuitively understand right away as they learn about the business. What’s that?
It’s not a fad.
It’s not a fad. And because for so long people have been unaware or even afraid to build a pool and a business around it, there’s still, like I said, a lot of white space in the market. So people see that and they see the staying power and they see, oh wow, this is just at the beginning phases of what’s happening in experience retail and fits perfectly in with those macro trends as commercial estate landlords realize that hard goods retailers are quickly being replaced by online providers and that they can’t fill their malls and their centers with just restaurants.
So what replaces that? Experience retail, something like a like a nail salon or a gym or a swim school, is the perfect replacement for where you used to go buy shoes. And it’s also very conveniently located, so if you think about families, you know, kids come with SUVs and minivans, and so we like to be very conveniently located with lots of ample parking for families. And the typical well-located strip mall gives us the perfect positioning to go do that. So, we see a great run over the next 10 years of, at least, and into the future, of being one of the first swim schools to provide an experience in line with the expectations of a millennial parent.
I love this idea of filling the mall with experiences, and I was a little bit, I’ve been a little bit concerned about how malls become deserted. As retailers, they go out of business, especially during COVID, it’s accelerated. But there’s this online trend, which is a much longer term trend that is vacating malls from retail shops. But there you have the experiences can fill the void. And then the mall, it becomes actually more fun rather than less fun. I really like that vision. This is really cool. So we are getting close to the time. But before we wrap up, I’d really like to ask you about something that you mentioned in our pre interview, which really hit a chord with me. You said that you really feel that diversity is a lever in your business. So what did you mean by that? And please speak to that concept a little bit.
Oh, it means a couple of different things to us. Embracing our differences is a core value to our company. You know, we’re very much a mission and values driven company. And like I said, that core value of embracing our differences, I believe has been a strength of ours from the very beginning. I think I, you know, I touched a little bit on the diversity of experience and expertise that franchising offers us by leveraging the expertise and different backgrounds of all of our different franchise partners, but also too, just embracing a culture that accepts everyone for who they are, regardless of race, gender, identity, orientation, none of that matters at Big Blue Swim School.
And the fact that we see beyond that and actually very much welcome it, I believe strengthens who we are as an organization, makes us smarter, makes us more nimble, makes us more aware of the trends happening in society. And at the end of the day, is very much the right thing to do. So it’s been a core part of who I am as a person, but also who I hope Big Blue Swim School would become. And I’m proud to say today that I believe that it absolutely does embrace that core value. It’s something we try to live up to more and more and get better at every day. You know, nothing’s ever perfect, but it’s a huge part of who we are, and I credit a huge part of our success to being open to and embracing the things that make us different because it’s a really important part of life.
Can you tell me a couple of practical ways where it actually improves business? So I understand the philosophy and I think it’s very loathable that you want to embrace this concept and you want to show an example. I think that’s very cool. Is there a way for it actually to help business to get you more customers, to maybe attract better teachers? I don’t know what that could mean, but how do you see it manifest in Big Blue?
Absolutely. I think a lot of businesses right now are talking about culture because, as you know, hiring has been a challenge across all sectors in a lot of different businesses. So I think specifically in the area of hiring for us, the fact that we’ve built a culture that embraces the differences, as I said, has been a huge net positive for us from a hiring standpoint, because it ultimately creates a culture that is in line with who our employees want to identify with and how they identify as themselves and where they work to them is an extension of their own identity.
And they want the places that they work to reflect their own personal values. And I can confidently with a straight face, tell them that this is a place that embraces those values. And if you are a person who perhaps sees things differently, then it’s very upfront from the very beginning. And I’ll tell people, you simply will not meet with success here at Big Blue Swim School if this is not something you’re comfortable with. So, you know, defending those values and aggressively going after, making sure that we live by them every day has been a big part of, I believe, building a culture that people wanna be a part of.
And at a time when people have more options, it’s very important to do that. I think culture organically arises out of how well a company follows those systems and processes we were just talking about, as well as how well they live their mission and their values every day. And out of that organically arises a culture. And if we can say that we’re living by our values every day and we’re following the processes that we put in place, it develops a very healthy culture that people want to become a part of, and most importantly, remain a part of long term.
No, I couldn’t agree more with this. And the reason I’m so interested in this topic is because I come from a part of the world where diversity is kind of not a big topic and in Central Eastern Europe, or it wasn’t up to when I left nine years ago. And my awareness of it was very low. And, you know, many years ago, I formed a peer group of business leaders in my city that I live in Richmond. And one of the CEOs who was running a big insurance company, he pulled me aside and said, hey Steve, this is a really great group, but have you thought about making it a little bit more diverse?
And I didn’t quite get what that meant, but he helped me understand it. And then over time, managed to attract first women and then people of color. And the whole experience became so much richer because we had different people from different backgrounds and races. We had a much wider perspective on issues. We could go get deeper. We had more vulnerability in that group. We could actually help each other much more. And it became more attractive as well to people outside the group.
So ever since I had this experience, I’m looking for, okay, let’s just, so there is the moral part of it. I get it. But let’s sell also the benefits of business, actually having that and being better at understanding the customer, attracting great people and generally providing a better end culture is an aspect that you highlighted particularly here. So thank you for that. So, Chris, we’re coming to the end of our time. I really enjoyed our conversation. So if our listeners would like to find out about the Big Blue Swim School, and there are now locations all over the country, where can they find that out? If they want to connect with you, where can they reach out and ask the questions from you directly perhaps? Where are you?
Yeah, you can check us out at bigblueswimschool.com. On there, you can read about some of the franchising opportunities we have. We have a big goal of trying to open up 400 locations nationwide and trying to teach a third of the kids in the U.S. how to swim and really change and revolutionize the swim lesson experience in this country. So there’s a lot of available territories out there. You can read more about, you know, the areas that we’ve targeted and that we plan to come and move into. , check us out at bigblueswimschool.com or shoot me an email at chris@bigblueswimschool.com.
That’s awesome. So thank you. Thank you for for that. Thank you for coming on the show. And Chris and to our listeners, if you enjoyed the show, please don’t forget to rate and review us on Apple podcast. Go and subscribe on YouTube. Really helps us get the show out to more people and have other people listen to these great interviews such as this one with Chris De Jong. So thank you for listening and thanks Chris for coming to the show. Please stay tuned because next week we’ll have another exciting entrepreneur come Please stay tuned because next week we’ll have another exciting entrepreneur come and share their ideas about and experiences with management blueprints. Thank you.
Great. Thanks, Steve. This was a lot of fun.
Important Links:
- Pinnacle: Five Principles that Take Your Business to the Top of the Mountain
- Stevepreda.com
- Chris’ LinkedIn
- Big Blue Swim School Website
- Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
- The Innovation Stack by Jim McKelvey
- It’s Your Ship by Captain D. Michael Abrashoff
- When Should a Process Be Art, Not Science?
- Steve Preda’s Book: Buyable
- Complete the Buyability Assessment for Your Business