Intro

Scott Raven: Welcome to The Corvus Effect, where we take you behind the scenes to explore integrated self leadership and help ambitious family men build lasting legacies for themselves, their tribe, and their community. I'm Scott Raven, and together we'll discover how successful leaders master a delicate balance of career advancement, personal health, financial growth, and meaningful relationships. Get ready to soar.

Guest Introduction: Joe Forgét

Scott Raven: Hey everybody. It is Scott. Welcome to this TL;DL episode from my conversation with Joe Forgét, founder of Igniting Momentum and someone who's walked the complete journey from corporate executive to business owner to strategic coach. With 30 years of experience as a president, COO and business owner, he now lives at the intersection of purpose, people and process every single day. And by identifying his true purpose, he is the model that everything else will fall into place.

For those who don't know, TL;DL stands for too long, didn't listen. This is a quick five-ish minute summary of the episode. If you like it, I encourage you to go back to the full episode because Joe was a fantastic guest to have on. But let's dive into some of the key takeaways.

The ROI of Why

Scott Raven: First, he has the approach to business growth that he calls the ROI of Why, connecting people to purpose rather than just pushing the numbers. And as he explained, when people understand the purpose of an organization, what the purpose is delivering, the impact it has on others, they can connect to that, and that's much more of a motivating and rallying point versus here's a target, hit it.

And particularly with the newest generation of workers coming into the workplace, the Gen Zs who are asking these questions: Why would I come work with you? What is the impact that you're having on this world? It aligns purposely with our Corvus principle that sustainable success comes from integrating business excellence with meaningful impact, not choosing between them. Obviously this is harder in practice than just saying it, but if that's a true north, that leads to a business that produces both output and impact in the long run.

Breaking Free from the Founder's Trap

Scott Raven: Second, his insights of breaking free from the founder's trap through his ignition framework centers around the System and Soul human-centered approach and shared a brutal reality, which is have you ever stopped to ask yourself as a founder, as a business owner, et cetera, do you own your business or does your business own you? And if it's the latter, you've gotta get that key breakthrough in order to reduce your dependency, be more operationally efficient, be able to work on your business, and be able to get things done without you having to be the saboteur of your own business because everything's got to be done your way.

You need to be able to step back to allow that operational independence to occur, and it sounds so simple. But many founders and entrepreneurs fall into that trap: my way or the highway. You gotta be able to break free of that in order to get the freedom that you are looking for.

Culture in Mergers and Acquisitions

Scott Raven: Finally, his powerful approach to mergers and acquisitions prioritizes culture over everything. We hear the expression culture eats strategy for breakfast. He played it: culture eats strategy in mergers. So when company A and company B form a merger, typically one of the companies becomes dominant culture and the other gets absorbed. Joe advocates for creating the company C, the new entity that's gonna take the best of both cultures along with the top people, and be able to say when company C is successful on our three-year bet, five-year bet, et cetera.

Who are the players and what is the culture that we need in order for that to occur? And it's about creating something greater than either company could have achieved alone. This again, sounds very simple, but in practice it's usually that one culture dominates another culture and that you have the unwillingness of people to move off of what they are familiar with. Joe's methodology and approach is to encourage these new entities to start from scratch, to be able to design the culture that they want, not the culture that they had, and that is certainly something that he has found not only through his practice, but also the way that he commits himself to his life and being able to find that true operational freedom.

Final Thoughts

Scott Raven: So I encourage you guys to listen to this full episode. He gives specific strategies for implementing his framework. Wonderful person to chat with, subscribe, share with those people in your circle who could use this wisdom in their life. Please leave us comments. They help us understand how we could be improving in terms of the impact that we're producing with this podcast.

As always, I'm Scott, and as Joe's journey provides, and he reminds us it's never too early or too late to follow your passion, but remember that requires identifying your true purpose first, and then building the right systems and teams to support it. Now go out and do it, guys. Take care.

Outro

Scott Raven: Thank you for joining me on The Corvus Effect. To access today's show notes, resources, and links mentioned in this episode, visit www.thecorvuseffect.com. While you're there, you'll find links to our free tools and resources to evaluate where you currently stand versus your aspirations with personalized recommendations for action. If you found value in today's episode, please take a moment to subscribe wherever you get your podcast and share with those who may benefit from it. You won't want to miss future conversations that could transform your approach to leadership and life. Join me next episode as we continue our journey towards building lasting legacies that matter. Remember, it's time to soar towards your legacy.