AI Is a Mirror. Execution Is the Multiplier with Peter De L Torre

AI can write your emails, summarize your meetings, and spin up a strategy deck in minutes, but it cannot do the one thing that actually determines outcomes: execute. Grant McGaugh sits down with Peter De la Torre, a longtime executive and the creator behind the Magic of 13 Weeks, to confront a brutal truth leaders need to hear. Most teams don’t have a knowledge problem. They have an execution problem, and the gap between knowing and doing is where goals go to die.

We dig into the hidden “blind spots” that sabotage implementation, including AI abdication, when companies invest in artificial intelligence but ignore the human habits required to make it work. We also break down the 12-month mirage that turns yearly planning into annualized lethargy, plus the convenience of busy, where meetings and inbox churn replace results. Peter shares a clear rule of thumb for productivity and business growth: protect the time that drives revenue-producing activities or results-producing activities, and automate the rest.

The conversation moves from tactics to identity: red ocean competition versus blue ocean creation, personal vision that creates an emotional stake, and ruthless honesty as the foundation for real change. Peter challenges the usual language around accountability, arguing that ownership is the only lever that consistently works, then adds a practical tool to keep execution real: predictive scorekeeping built on lead indicators, like a scoreboard that tells you whether you’re winning before the quarter ends.

If you want a repeatable execution framework that makes strategy real, press play now. Subscribe, share this with a leader who’s stuck in “busy,” and leave a review with the one execution habit you’re committing to next.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Follow The Brand! We hope you enjoyed learning about the latest trends and strategies in Personal Branding, Business and Career Development, Financial Empowerment, Technology Innovation, and Executive Presence. To keep up with the latest insights and updates, visit 5starbdm.com
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And don’t miss Grant McGaugh’s new book, First Light — a powerful guide to igniting your purpose and building a BRAVE brand that stands out in a changing world. - https://5starbdm.com/brave-masterclass/

See you next time on Follow The Brand!

Transcript

Welcome And The Brutal Truth

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome everybody to Power Brand Podcast. This is Grant McGall, and I want to bring to you to the stage someone I know, but I had no idea that he had 40 years of executive experience and over 2,500 interviews as a podcaster. And one brutal truth, he had to learn. This is what he told me. He had to learn this the hardware is that your team doesn't have a knowledge problem, it has an execution problem. So today on the Follow Brand, we're going to sit down with Pete. You know, if people have seen him on my show before, Pete is the magic behind the magic of 13 weeks. We're going to talk about why busy isn't the same as productive, why busy isn't the same as productive, and why AI in the wrong hands just accelerates failure faster. Let that sink in. And why he had to nearly lose everything before he became the authority he is today. So let's get right into it. Pete, welcome back to the Fallo Brand Show.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Thank you for uh bringing me back to your fantastic podcast uh uh platform. It's been we've had a lot of fun in the past. I know we're gonna have some great times today. And uh congratulations on the continual growth of this uh platform and uh the fact that you're now uh dead center in the United States.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

I am I'm dead literally dead center in the United States. I mean it was operating on Omaha, Nebraska. I still operate on Miami and also Saint Crivers and Islands, depends on the time of year and what's happening. But right now we're standing up. Matter of fact, our Omaha AI business accelerator. So as we do that, I'm spending more time here, and then we're gonna get that rolling really, really. Good for you, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Good for you, buddy. You deserve it.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Yeah, yeah. But you're making some big impacts right now. And so we want to get into that because I always like to start at the brand level because every framework comes from a moment, and you weren't always what I would call the execution architect. There was a version of you that was a generalist, capable, very experienced, but trying to be everything to everyone. So something forced a shift.

From Generalist To Execution Authority

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Take us through that little story.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Well, it's it's it's an interesting part of my uh journey. Um uh and we had a conversation a few months ago about a big shift that I had made to finally follow my my dream, my my uh passion for speaking and teaching. And I did that about a year ago. Came out with a brand new look and feel, new website, the whole nine yards. I started getting out there talking. But late last year, maybe November or so, as I uh continue to do my research on the market and the things that I I was doing and planning to do, uh, and and you know, being part of some some some of the webinars that are out there, I discovered something that hit me between the eyes. And today, uh there's too much going on, there's too many distractions. Um, and so it is imperative that if we have a passion for something and that we know something very well, then we need to take that something and brand ourselves and move forward as an authority on that something. And so uh for me, it was something I was doing for a long time, but it was kind of spread out, a little bit too scattered. And I brought it all together and decided to focus on something that I've had a passion for for probably over 20 something years, which is execution, implementation. Um it's like you just said at the very beginning, right now, we are we we know a lot of things and and and we have a lot of great strategies, but a lot of those things never go beyond the idea and are not implemented. And through the years, I I've been discovering that there is a common denominator that not just corporate America, but all businesses, small, medium, large, have the common denominator is execution. It's not about the strategy, it's about executing that strategy. The challenge has been there are blind spots, things that hold back individuals from actually actually executing what they already know. So I decided to take all of that and and and and and brand a program that I've been doing for years called A Magic of 13 Weeks, which is focusing on four 13-week sprints per calendar year. Imagine accomplishing four years worth of work and production in one calendar year. Think about what that can mean for that business and for that individual, okay? And discarding 80% of the stuff that is not that important and focusing on the hand uh just that short list of things that are really important to move forward and make things happen.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

I'll tell you, this you just hit the say the nail on the head as far as execution. You know, I've been doing the Brave framework, that is my methodology that I've come up because I I often think you've got to be courageous, you've got to be brave in order to achieve the goal that you've set out to do. But if you don't have everything in place, like you take the E out of Brave, it does not spell anything, right? Um, so you get to a point of I got an idea, I'm trying to make it visible, but then the execution to your point, you fumble and stumble because I don't think everybody has all the different um parameters that that are that are necessary, the resources that are necessary to truly execute the know-how. You're saying that this is a wake-up call for a lot of people. And I love how you also said about going into your bag and understanding your domain expertise. I think in the AI age, this is a key differentiator because lived experience cannot be simulated. You've got to have uh authority in that world, you've got to understand, you've got to have the wisdom and the experience, be able to bring somebody through a particular experience. So you're architecting, you you understand the problem, which is they people are not executing. You've got a framework around that. You've broken

The Execution Gap And Blind Spots

SPEAKER_01 6:50

this into 13 tenets, and I think the first are around diagnosing what's broken. Talk, take us through what you call the these execution gaps.

SPEAKER_00 7:01

Well, first of all, that execution gap is that you know, you've heard the saying, um, I know what I know, I know what I don't know. But the third one is I don't know what I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

That's it.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

And that's what we're talking about here. There is something there that that is holding people back from executing, being the best they can at what it is, whatever it is they're doing. And it's a mystery, and and it's a gap between knowing and actually executing. It's that middle right there that we're talking about there. And the idea is to bring that together. So, what causes that that gap? You know, what I call the great blind spot. In no particular order, okay. We'll start with what I call the AI abdication, where companies are investing hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars to incorporate AI into their businesses, right? And they're doing it everywhere. Doesn't matter what size of the business it is here, but they're doing that. The problem is that they're bringing in all this technology, and it still needs that human-centric implementation to make it happen. So if you give all this great technologies to individuals that have poor habits that are not implementers, as you say, you're just gonna accelerate, uh, as you mentioned a little while ago, their bad habits. It's only going to get worse. So that's one of the things that that is causing this gap here. The other thing is the the what I call the 12-month mirage, where people, especially at the beginning of the year, they have 12 months. It's a new year, they're gonna accomplish everything that year. They're they they've listed all their goals on January 1st, and by the 20th or the third week of January, they're going right back to where they were before because they believe they have all the time in the world. They don't see the deadline after 12 months. So this illusion that we have, I call annualized lethargy. Okay, because it you're you're you're you're going for 10 months and you're not doing a whole lot, and then finally the last two months out of the year, you start to scramble. You're in desperate mode, you're DEF CON five, you know, and and and you just you know, you're you're going crazy. So, you know, a lot of things don't happen until that time of the year, and they're happening in a different type of state of mind. So that's a that's a problem. The other one is the convenience of busy that we believe we're really busy, you know, we're we're we're being productive, and all we're doing is wasting a lot of our time to things that are not going to move the the that needle forward. Okay, and we'll talk a little bit more about what that means here. So, you know, again, at the end of the day, companies do not have a strategy problem, they have an execution problem. And there is this gap and these things that are holding individuals back and companies back from actually executing and moving forward. So we've we've talked to mine.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Yep, we got that's a lot to take in for people, yep, and understanding what you just said there, because this is how I look, especially at AI, especially this type of technology. Now, I've been in technology 35 years, so I think I know a little bit of what I'm talking about. What it is in the in the hands of the end users that AI becomes a mirror, and it's a mirror of your business to your point. So, and you might see your your business one way, you perceive it a certain way, but in reality, you you know what's in the mirror is in the mirror. You might not have realized what's all in there, right? So when you go to execute and you're executing on uh a bad perception, it's not the real identity, it's not exactly what you think it is, but it's really something else. A lot of people go out and start blaming the tech, and that really it's not the tech, it's the individual that you're talking about. So help us because that's brand identity. I call that the identity crisis that I think a lot of people have, and AI will expose it. It really, really will. So you can't really hide that. So you call it the great blind spot, right? That's a huge blind spot, especially when you start making this type of thing visible, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:21

Absolutely, absolutely. So, you know, it all starts with blind spots, and there's different things that are that are holding us back.

AI Abdication And The 12-Month Mirage

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Um now, what's important to realize here is is is uh is is the fact that most people, most companies are in the competing business. What do I mean by that? Um whether it's creating strategies to try to outcompete your competitors, or introducing new technology, or changing up your product offering, uh lowering your prices, God forbid. Imagine being in an ocean that's red and it's full of sharks. Okay. And you're swimming in there and you're trying to survive, and it and it just doesn't get any better. And and you you're trying to recreate everything and and you're going nuts, and it's you're not really growing as a company. One of the things that I ask everyone to consider is to get out of that ocean, that red ocean, and shift over and get into a blue ocean. A blue ocean where you are now uh creating as opposed to competing. Right? Yeah, that is another blind spot is allowing your company and your people to continue to be in that world of trying to compete and outcompete your competitors. One of the courageous things that we all need to consider is adopting this blue ocean strategy of really digging in and saying, how can we create something new with what we know, right? How can we find the non-customers of what is typically there? So there's a process that you've got to follow, you've got to eliminate, you got to reduce. There's a few things you got to do there, but that that allows you to start looking at things in a whole different way. So this entire methodology of the magic of 13 weeks starts with identifying the problem that is holding back execution. And then once you've identified it saying, okay, what am I gonna have to shift? And it's typically the mindset. What am I gonna have to start doing different here, looking at in a different way to start moving forward? Um and along with that mind shift, that change, right, looking at new things, new possibilities is identifying the one thing that will truly drive someone to do something, and that is personal vision. You have your company's vision, you may have a family's vision, but every individual needs to have an emotional stake in what they are doing and identify what that is, because once you identify that, then you have that passion. Let me give you an example. Yeah, when we were small kids and whatever that age, eight, nine, ten years old, and we wanted a bicycle. We wanted a bicycle really, really bad, but your parents didn't couldn't really afford to get that bicycle. We got creative. We started doing things. I know back in the day when I was a lot smaller, I would look for empty bottles of Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola, yeah, and take them back to the grocery stores and get 10 cents, five cents, and accumulate enough money at that point to be able to buy my bank. I did what I had to do. When you have that personal vision, something you really want bad in your life, you're going to do whatever is necessary to get to where you want to get to. And you're going to put aside all the things that are just not going to help you get there are going to hold you back. So that's why that personal vision is so important.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

Can I can I hold it up for one second there? Yep. Because I'm on my bike, right? I like that. You know, I got the bike. So how did I achieve getting that bike? And I go back that that personal accountability is so important uh to understand your role in getting to this new space, that mindset shift. You know, I want to take an audience through this mindset shift. AI is just a part of this, it's a vehicle to get you to a different space. You talked about the Red Ocean. For whatever reason, I got this whole vision of being in Jaws, right? Jaws, you got a lot of red ocean because something is churning and burning, and that is where a lot of that competition is taking place. And there's a lot of churn and burn there. But it takes some some some some gumptions. You know what? We're gonna go out to the blue water. No one knows that it's an unknown. That blue water is unknown to a certain degree, but you do know yourself, you do know your capabilities. Is that what you're talking about? When you're talking about, like, hey, you've got to understand where you are at, what you do well, and that it's different from your competition. It's in that red ocean, and you now have created a whole new blue ocean, but you gotta bring your audience to that so they see you differently. You're saying we gotta all take personal stake in that. And now I know you did something around you had a wake-up call, you had a cancer wake up call, right? You call it the wellness trifecta, things of that nature that got you into a new world. And that's kind of what you know I talk about a lot because that human behind the framework is very important. Walk us through how you went from that red ocean to the blue ocean, how you're gonna how you feel you can take other people through that, you know, through your rules of execution and whatnot.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Well, it goes back to exactly 12 months ago. Okay, I I jumped

Red Ocean Competition To Blue Ocean Creation

SPEAKER_00 17:20

in and and I want to be a speaker, and I, you know, I've been speaking and in all different forms and shapes and sizes, and and I've been teaching for for a long, long time. So that wasn't totally foreign to me, but it's how to package that, like you said, about branding and bring it together, because a lot of people knew me in different ways, but they didn't know me as a speaker and as someone that does corporate training. That that's step one. So I made that jump. But then, like I told you a little while ago, I found out very quickly that that, and looking at my stuff and looking at my website and talking to people, it's like I I didn't have a definitive area or or path. Um, because then everybody everybody was doing everything there. So I realized along the way that I had to, if I'm if I'm gonna be successful, really successful, then I've got to hone in on what I do best and love to do. And not only that, but how do I how am I gonna do it and how am I gonna bring it to the market and actually implement it, right?

SPEAKER_01 18:23

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

So I learned very quickly um in that process. And and and there's two words that I truly uncovered five years ago when I went through my my cancer battle, and it was the basis of my book, Connect with Ruthless Honesty. I guess the the the the the inspiration to all of this that I'm doing and what you and I are talking about today is ruthless honesty, being honest with myself, and then transmitting that honesty in my work and everything. And I and I got to the point where I need to focus on something that is going to be a clear-cut difference, and where people will know me for that. I am the authority on that, on that particular thing. And everyone that is watching right now and listening, I am convinced that you have something that you have a passion for and that you have a knowledge of, and that you've been doing whether you've realized it or not, okay, is to bring that out to the open, okay, and look at that and say, you know something? This is where I can make a difference here. Not because it's a great idea that someone brought to you, but because you took that deep dive in yourself and said, This is what I know, this is what I love doing, this is where it can be of greatest value and focus. And so that my wake-up call goes, my real one goes back five years, but it's been a process, you know, and last year was another example of that, and that's why we're talking about this topic today.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

Well, I tell you that first of all, thank you for sharing because you gotta have ruthless honesty, is very, very important. You got to be authentic in what it is, but you can't know that until you really see it. And you got a chance to see it. You went to a uh uh big undertaking, and then you saw you you kind of looked at this like, yeah, I can go into the speaking world, yeah, I can probably make some difference, I can actually get on stage and I can actually, but you said, Am I bringing forth my expertise in this area? And then instead of competing with uh, you know, and that red ocean, as you call it, the red waters, you said, here's some blue water out here that I'm actually uh a very good captain on. And you know this is a major problem. We all know, Rodney. If you don't know, 50% of most small businesses fail. 50% of most small businesses fail within the first five years. What gets them over the hump? What are they executing on? And understanding this, the marketplace is compact constantly changing. It's it's it's always there, but now it's even faster. In my world, we used to say technology changes every 18 months. Now it's changing almost every 18 days because of the uh pull restoration of uh AI tools and platforms. You're like, wow, I know it's confusing a lot of people right now. Like, what should I be doing? Because of how do I how do I you know put all my eggs in this one basket when it's changing so rapidly? But you're going back to some core principles of first of all, know who you are, know yourself and know what you're good at, and then execute on those two things. Am I in the right world world here?

SPEAKER_00 21:55

No, no, absolutely. And and because you are cheating the market. By not pursuing what I believe God gave you the gift to do and that purpose that's unique to each and every one of us. Um so yeah, you're cheating yourself and your family, but you're cheating the marketplace because you know you you you we all have a mission, we all have a purpose, and we have to fulfill that uh uh with what we've learned uh and and the gifts that we've been given at birth. And and and and that's important there. So um when we opened this up, we started to talk about um, you know, everything is a magic of 13. So there are 13 aspects to all of this here. And we put up on, of course, the execution gap uh and and and what causes that. If there's a blind spot as to what's happening, uh we talked about annual authority, which affects that's the disease that's out there affecting everybody. We've talked about AI, obviously, the technology uh that everybody's jumping

Personal Vision And Ruthless Honesty

SPEAKER_00 23:00

in right now uh and spending a lot of money in. We've talked about the Red Ocean, we've talked about personal vision, we've talked about the convenience of busy, all these things that are going on. Some not so good, some new ideas, right? Really good. Yeah. Um the convenience of busy.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

Let's talk about it. I'll talk about that one a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Yeah. Um everyone has their duties, whether you're an employee or you run a business. There are things that you've got to do daily, weekly, monthly, whatever, um, to make sure that uh the business continues to move forward and that you are contributing as an employee to that company's growth. You have a job description, these are the things you have to do there. A lot of that includes things that are important, but they're not critical. Emails, company meetings, um, you know, uh marketing. That's all important there. What this whole methodology is about, to make sure that what you execute means something, is to focus, rule of thumb, the numbers can vary, but is to focus 75% of your time to revenue producing activities, the activities that are going to actually um promote productivity and increase the top line and hopefully continue to grow the bottom line in any business. So there's busy work, that's important, but what's really critical are those revenue producing activities. In other words, to be ruthlessly honest, not to do things just to say I'm busy and I'm working hard here. Uh, that's just comfort zone type thing. We need to do the things that are hard that maybe that are that that that pull us out of that place that we're that we like to be in. Yeah, that's what we're talking about here.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

Let me put I want the audience, you really got to get into this. This is this is gonna separate you from your competition. What he just said, and then been in the sales game, and I've been in sales a long time, selling technology for you know the same 30 years, revenue producing activity. I mean, you cannot waste time wasting time. You gotta be in front of what's important to get things done, and you have to be able to solve someone else's business problem. That's how they're gonna really get traction that way. Not that you're solving your own problem. I used to walk around, I had a number I had to get to. There, people don't care about that. What they did care about is like, did I have something in my little bag of tricks that can actually help them to produce the result that they were looking for? And a lot of times that was revenue production activity. This is very, very important to understand uh because if you're spending a lot of time on things that don't matter, meaning, understand this the language of business is finance. You have to look at what you're doing and how it affects the finances running through your business, your business system, up or down. Where is that? That's going to be a nice gauge for you. Is that bringing money in or is it taking money out? Understanding that is very important. And now you can critically start to understand the amount of time that you're spending on these things. What can you outsource possibly to an AI to make that automation? Because it's not revenue producing activity. Let's get that out, let's automate that in the back end, but let's bring in these revenue producing activities that are really human-driven, and that is a very aggressive standard. Now, you bring up which I think to me is the big page in the book, or I would call it even the big elephant in the room: accountability versus ownership. Or I'm gonna own that. But are you accountable? Talk to us about being held accountable.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

We you and I have spoken about this in the past, um, but along the lines of this whole methodology, um when we were growing up as young kids, uh, and we were going to school, our parents would tell us, listen, you better get good grades, or else there'll be consequences, right? Or your boss says, Hey, these are these are the orders, this is what we gotta get done, and this is what I want you to do, and I expect you to do. Um, but if you don't do this at the level that we expect, there may be some consequences. Okay. Okay. Let me start by saying that neither our parents nor our bosses have the power to hold us accountable. You can they can try all they want, but that doesn't exist. It's really about ownership. It's about us taking ownership of our lives, taking ownership of the tasks that's in front of us, okay, understanding that they're important, and the old saying, if it's going to be, it's up to me. Right? And not waiting for someone else to hold you accountable, right? And being responsible, taking ownership. When things go great, man, you can pat yourself on the back and say, I did a great job. When it didn't go so good, what where where did I fall short? Okay. It's it's getting away from this blaming. You know, we we heard back in the day of COVID, right? Seems like it was forever ago, but you know, there was a coronavirus. Then out of that, you had offspring, you had the economic virus, you had the political virus. Well, the one virus that came out of it that I think is the worst of all is what I call the blaming virus. Blaming someone else, your boss, your co-workers, for you not doing what you had to do. So that's victimhood. We're talking about being a victor, about taking ownership. And that's a big part of execution. It's taking

The Convenience Of Busy And Revenue Focus

SPEAKER_00 29:10

ownership of your execution and not waiting for them to say, okay, we got to do this now, we got to execute here. You know what you have to do, you have a personal vision of something you want to accomplish, you're gonna do it. Yeah, and you're gonna focus on it. And there's another, there's a cousin to this. It's called interest versus commitment. Okay. Interest is, hey, I'm interested in that, or someone you're talking to, I'm interested in what you have to tell me there. Yeah, I'll I'll get back to you. And and you know where that goes most of the time, right? Right. When someone makes a commitment, that's a whole different, that's a whole different environment. Man, I'm gonna do that. I'm committed to do that. Last time you and I spoke a few months ago, early 2025, I sat down and looked at my year, and I said, I'm gonna, there are two to three things that I want to accomplish. So I actually wrote out, I have decided to. I have decided to do this. So it's that personal commitment you make to yourself. And if you're ruthlessly honest with yourself, you can't be as yourself. And if you make that commitment, starting with yourself, you're going to do it. That is also a big part of motivating you to execute to get to where you want to get to. Right. So it's accountability, ownership, interest, commitment. They go hand in hand. They're in the same family, and it and it separates. Left side, you got accountability, interest, on the right side, you have ownership and commitment. That's what it's all about at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

I I like that because how bad do you really want to achieve this goal? Is it an interior motivation or is it an exterior motivation? I just came off, I just watched a couple championships. One was the NBA basketball championship, I just watched the uh hockey championship. Most of the time, and I would tell people, no matter what sport it is, most of the time when you pair them up, you look that at them, the teams, and they take the field, there's not a lot of variable difference in talent and size and the plays they can run. The thing that is the intangible is the will. Can you will yourself in the fourth quarter down by 10 or whatever it may be? Can you summon that extra part of yourself? And that has to be the desire, the the commitment. Like I said, I'm willing to go through this pain and anguish to get to that desired state. And most champions will tell you that the journey to getting to that championship pony, that's why they always usually break down. There's a lot of emotion there, and it just kind of comes out on stage, and you're like, oh my God, you just you just don't understand what I would happen in the back end to get me to the front end. It looks so easy, you know, when I'm hitting those those three pointers, or I'm putting the pocket button, or I'm you know hitting these home runs, but you didn't see all that hard work that went into it. Executing takes hard work, am I right?

SPEAKER_00 32:09

Yeah, it takes and commitment. It takes that commitment. I I saw the beginning of the series between San Antonio and New York. Yeah, San Antonio had all the talent in the world, and they're young, and they're gonna be around for a long, long time. And then you saw what New York had accomplished up to that point to get to the finals, right? After seeing game one and New York won it, I said to myself, San Antonio is happy to be here in the finals. Yeah, and they're just euphoric that they got that far. And my God, and we beat the defending champions to get here. New York was on a mission, they had less talent, but they had grit. I knew when I watched game five the other night, yeah, and I saw San Antonio ahead, and you know, by 10 or 12 points of the fourth quarter, go, New York's gonna win. New York's gonna have done it before, they're gonna do it again immediately. And the doubt was in the minds of San Antonio. So if that's that's a perfect example you brought up right there. It's it's it isn't all about talent, it's it's it's determination, grid and teamwork.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

You gotta persevere through your as you go through your challenge, and part of my book that I wrote, yeah, I call it Five Mountains, but the only way you're gonna get to the top of that mountain, you're gonna get through the resilience, you're gonna go through the ups and downs, you're gonna slip, you're gonna fall, you're gonna scrape. But if you don't have a pure desire, a commitment to that you stated, like, no, in the New York's case, it's been 53 years. The entire city is wanting us to win. I want to win. I was disappointed last year. I know we can do this, and you just start, it doesn't care. I don't care what the score is. You saw that one by I think it was OG, he just hit that bucket at the very end. That was will. And but you have to have that type of will. So going back to your earlier point about the people on your team, your employees, what is their true grit about? Are they really trying to get to this next level? Or is this just a job for them? Or they just try to get to go home? Man, maybe for some people that's what it is, but what is their true passion? Because that frontline people, your you know, CEO on down, they've got to have it. You know, they they've got to get there and be willing to take the challenges, the risks that go along with this. Executing is difficult because, to your point, you gotta also take a litmus test on that and step back and say, am I doing this correctly? What am I learning from what I'm I'm doing in this activity now? And am I achieving these goals? I've set these goals out, but I'm not getting there. Do I do I need to make adjustments? Can I get to the next level? You've got these 13 points that you help people that are in this fight, right? You've got these keys, you've got the desire, the clarity, the counting the cost. And we know there's a lot of costs. You're acting on the commitments and you're walking us through all these things. You call it predictive scorekeeping. What's that all about?

SPEAKER_00 35:14

Well, I'm glad you because I was gonna go there. Um, imagine going to watch the Knicks and the Stan San Antonio Spurs in the arena, and you sit there and it's got 19, 20,000 people sitting watching the game. Uh, you've seen all these great athletes, and my God, they're making all these shots and everything like that. This is fantastic. But there's one little issue going on. The scoreboard is not working. Right? Unless I'm really, really anal where I'm shotting down, he just said a two-pointer, three-pointer, and I'm I'm I'm you're not gonna do that. You're there obviously to watch a great game and have fun and see these great athletes, but you're there pulling

Ownership Over Accountability And Real Commitment

SPEAKER_00 35:55

for one of the two teams typically, and you want your team to win. How do you attract that? You gotta keep score. So I talk a lot about, and and we've heard this in uh uh when you hear about the economy and and the results and how things are coming along. There's lead indicators, there's lag indicators. Your lag indicators is basically what happened, the result. Taking a look back, this is a result after one quarter, one year, one month, one week, whatever it is. The most important indicator is your lead indicator, and your lead caters are tied into your execution of the revenue producing activities. And when you are ruthlessly honest and you are tracking that with yourself, okay, and and I keep I keep a scoreboard of what I do weekly. I have certain uh objectives during the week and I and I score myself. Okay, and if I fall short, I can't look around, it's it's me. I didn't fulfill what I promised myself to do here, and it's keeping me honest, ruthlessly honest. And if you can get into that practice, that habit of tracking your lead indicators, the things that you know you have to do, then the results will take care of themselves. Yeah, but you don't have to worry about keeping you know, looking back and oh boy, that was a good time we had back then. I wish we could have that time again. Well, why don't you get to work, execute, and produce a better result? Something even better than what you did before, you know. Um, so you know, when you go through this process of of this methodology, uh it starts with ruthless honesty and it looks at, you know, okay, what's going on here? There's an issue, there's a problem. It's not a brand new sparkling strategy that we have to put in here. And by the way, this is very important, and and and and this is something that drives me because I'll talk to people say, Well, we're working with someone already that does what you do. I go, okay. Um and I and I start to ask them some questions. Yeah. Uh, and then I see sometimes that they get uncomfortable when I ask them these questions because it makes them think. Most of the training programs that I have come across, and I've been in New World for a long time, and I've been trained at corporate Fortune 500 love in so many different ways. First of all, I tell people I don't have a training program. This is an operating system that I install in your organization here. Most training programs are typically focusing on the symptoms, and they're not tackling the root cause of the issue here. What I tell everybody is don't change your strategy, but do yourself a better favor, light the match and ignite it. And that's what all of this is all about here is igniting that strategy by being humble, honest, open-minded, action-oriented, and keeping track of what you're doing. That's what gonna lead to your success.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

I like it. See, so I was getting at it because you also you have these five pillars, right? You're talking about you gotta add a vision, you have a plan, the process control, the scorekeeping, the time use, pulling it all together. Because when you're in the game, you you know, you just you're just doing it, right?

SPEAKER_00 39:36

And you're gonna have you're gonna have to make some game time adjustments, like we've seen when we watch it, right? So you gotta have you need to go back to your process. The things that got you there in the first place.

SPEAKER_01 39:48

Yeah, and especially when you're throwing it. Or not. That's the thing I was noticing, especially. I'm using the NBA championship as a as an analogy, but I kept saying, like, well, who is playing at a championship level? They're not making the mistakes, they're hitting their free throws, they're not following out, they're not, you know, who's doing that the best? Ultimately, especially, and I'm talking about four quarters of work because no one wins a game in three quarters. The body of work speaks for the body of work. I saw a better team over and over again out-execute the other team at the moment of truth, at the end of the game. No one comes back from 30 points down, but I watched this other team kind of relax, start making the mistakes, stop doing the things that got them there, to your point. They they they they put out the fire, and the other team just caught fire and just really started to show what they were capable of, and they were not gonna take a loss, they just willed themselves into victory over and over again. I think good companies and good people do that, they find a way to win. Most people they they say, you know, oh, he's he was gonna win. Like, no, he willed himself, they willed themselves to this level. It wasn't just a guinea.

SPEAKER_00 41:11

You you don't win because of your strategy, you win because you execute your strategy.

SPEAKER_01 41:15

There you go. Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 41:19

Um, something something we talked about earlier that I wanted to bring when we talk about revenue producing activities, because I'm also part of my market is the uh working with municipalities. So they're not in a quote unquote, they're not trying to sell something per se. But at the end of the day, whether you're in a for-profit environment, non-profit, uh public sector, we are all here to serve. Yeah, we're serving the marketplace, we're serving our clients, we're you know, and we're also serving our employers.

Predictive Scorekeeping And How To Work With Pete

SPEAKER_00 41:55

And in the case of municipality, they are serving what's best for their constituents. So again, it goes back for them, it's the results-producing activities, and in the business worlds is revenue producing, but we're all serving, it's all about serving and doing it in a way that we can deliver consistently and do it over and over.

SPEAKER_01 42:17

You're teaching us a masterclass right now, you're giving us you know that that precursor, a little viewpoint, you know, open up the the hood, look at the engine from that execution gap all the way through the 13th week rap that you've got. So tell us what's coming up, what you're gonna be doing. So if the audience wants to go deeper into your work, the magic of 13 weeks, where what's it should they be following you? How do they get in touch? What happens?

SPEAKER_00 42:45

Well, uh, in many, many ways. Uh, you can start by visiting my website to get uh uh a more in-depth uh information on what we you and I have been talking about today, which is peterdelatory.com. Uh not Pete, but Peter uh with the R. So you can go there. I am on LinkedIn. I'm primarily a LinkedIn guy. I I I you know, I like I said, I got very, very focused. And I try to be on all different platforms. LinkedIn's the one that I think is best for the business world, and and that's what I'm trying to do here. Is is so I'm on LinkedIn. Um uh look for Peter Delatore. Uh you can you can get me there. Um now one of the things that I'm um doing right now to bring down the mystery of this whole methodology and and allowing people to get a taste. I have uh I am offering when I when I talk to different people, uh organizations, a way to get their feet wet without making a total commitment. And it's called this complimentary 60-minute diagnostic to uncover that company's blind spot. Okay, and I and it's kind of a shortened version of all of this, just highlighting the key points, but it gives you an overview, gives you a taste of what this program is about. And and and the the entire program is in three stages. The first one is the installation. I spend a half day with your team, with your group, ideally 15 to 20 people at a time. We go through the entire program. There's a workbook, there, there, there's an assignment that everyone has after that. Then for the next 12 weeks, um, I am constantly doing an outreach to everybody that participated with an email that will highlight one of the areas that we discussed during that half day installation. So that's one time, and I become available for any sort of coaching calls during the week in case anybody's stuck. So that goes from the half day, then the following 12 weeks, and then the 13th week is what I call the rap session, where I come back for about an hour or so and we celebrate the wins that everybody had, the progress that they made. We review again some of the challenges that they they went through. But most importantly, is to get them recalibrated for the next 13-week sprint. Nice. And to reward themselves. But typically, what do we do after the old 12-month year, blah, blah, blah? We take vacations, we reward ourselves. One of the musts here is that every 13 weeks you reward yourself with something a short trip, a beautiful nice dinner, a night on the town, whatever that is. So you can avoid that burnout because what this does, there's a lot of velocity in all of this. And by the way, at the end of the day, this program is not for everybody.

SPEAKER_01 45:49

No, you got to know what's good for you, what's not good for you. I want to appreciate again for being on the show, why these things are fully important. You've got to be able to execute in the environment that we are in and take a real good look at your windshield and what's in the mirror, your rear view mirror. All these things are very, very important so we understand the magic of these 13 weeks can be like so we can exit. Right now we're in the middle of the year. We've only got another, you know, six, five, six months left. Why not take Peter up on his offer and take this to another level? So I want to thank you again for being on the show. I want to encourage the entire audience out there in your world as well to check out all the episodes of Follow Brand at Five Star BDM. That is the number five. That is Star S T A R B for Brand, D for Development Informasters.com. Thanks again for being on the show.

SPEAKER_00 46:46

Thank you, buddy.

SPEAKER_01 46:47

You got it, man. Take care. All right.