Chris Lesner
John, thank you for joining us today.

John Venhuizen
Hey Chris, great to be with you. Thanks for the invite.

Chris Lesner
I'm sure a lot of people are wondering, how did you become the CEO of Ace Hardware? What did that journey look like? Could you share that with our audience?

John Venhuizen
Yeah, I think a lot of people do ask how did you become CEO of Hardware? That's probably a fair one. Largely, it's result of a great number of irresponsible bosses who gave me way more chances than I ever deserve. I joined Ace in the marketing department. It's been over 30 years, 32 years, I think. And I kind of just fell in love, not really, not so much with what we sell, but the people.
And it's a lot like life. It's not so much what you do, it's who you do it with. And this place is just loaded with some of the most salt of the earth, humble, hardworking, hungry, smart people that has made it a joy to be here. So it's a total privilege. A lot of the times when you get a title like I have, it's a great deal of luck and timing. But it's really the people that have kept me here, number one. And then number two, I think a lot of us love it at ACE because we love showing up for work every day with a chip on our shoulder.
You know, we compete with the biggest, baddest, most well -capitalized companies in human history. know, Amazon will lose more money in the seat cushions than we'll ever make in our lives. And we love showing up to compete as an underdog. And the world loves an underdog. So the combination of those two things have really been a great opportunity and a joy for me to work.

Chris Lesner
So obviously you've been in leadership roles for a while. You've been helping lead many franchisees and many people throughout ACE. What does leadership actually mean to you?

John Venhuizen
Yeah, I mean, a phrase we use around here all the time, and I believe it deeply, is more and better leaders equals more and better everything. And we have hundreds of initiatives we're working on, like any company, like any business, like any not -for -profit, like any church. There's a number of imperatives we're trying to move forward. They're all important. The skill with which we do that matters a great deal. But if you said, you know, just you could only pick one thing. You know, what one thing would you want? Is it more advertising? Is it more stores? Like, I want all that stuff.
But the answer is crystal clear for me, it's give me more and better leaders. Because all those initiatives we're working on, all those imperatives we have, we're trying to push uphill. With more and better leaders, all of that gets better. The culture gets better, the performance gets better, the amount of money we're able to give to our people gets better, the amount of money we're able to reward our shareholders with gets better. And then we do all that while we get to do what really makes our heart race, which is to give to those charities.
that are the least, the little, and the lonely who need our support. So all of that comes together in important ways, and it's driven largely by the fact that everything rises and falls with leadership.

Chris Lesner
I know ACE is structured differently than many of your competitors from just a pure corporate structure. Can you explain that a little bit to our audience and then how you even go about finding some of those key leaders?

John Venhuizen
Yeah, Ace is, I mean, we operate, we report out a lot like a publicly traded company. We disclose our financials like a publicly traded company every quarter. And we think the discipline and transparency there is good. So we follow that, but we are not actually, we are solely owned by our local, small, mostly family run businesses who own and operate most of the Ace stores. We have 6 ,000 Ace stores around the world. We're in all 50 states, we're in about 62 countries.
And every one of those stores is locally owned and operated with the exception of about 250 that they own and we operate. And those local family businesses make up essentially the only shareholder base of ACE Hardware. So in a very real way, this corporation exists to serve our stores. The stores exist to serve their neighbors. So they're our customers, but they're also our shareholders.
So our shareholders are our customers. And it's bizarre, it's not perfect, but I'll tell you the alignment there is beautiful. We know who we serve and it keeps us marching down a path and it keeps our feet to the fire in a way that most franchises, Chris, we don't even use that word, we call it the F word. These are owners, these are our brand partners. They own the place. So that franchisor, franchisee tension that exists in a lot of companies
We don't have much of that. The alignment is very strong. We're the fifth largest franchise in the world and I think we're the only one where the local franchisees, store owners, own the whole corporation. So we are in a very real way stewards of their resources and their money. you you talk a lot about servant leadership, you know, it's a bit of an oxymoron. There's leadership and there's not and leadership is servant, right?
But here, trying to find folks who have the intellectual elasticity to understand that your customer is also your shareholder is difficult. But when we find those special people, it really makes for an incredible culture that we're quite frankly very proud of.

Chris Lesner
Yeah, really, really is an interesting culture you have then. And it's just structured to be a leadership organization based on servant leadership.

John Venhuizen
And Chris, it's, you know, I talk to people all the time here. It's, a lot of it is leading without leverage. These aren't mostly corporate stores where we can just come up with something and shove it down their throat. They're not franchisees where we just tell them what to do and bark out orders. Here's your menu, do this and nothing else. That's not how it works around here. There's leadership and then there's no leverage leadership.
And we largely have no leverage leadership. In fact, I encourage folks all the time here to study leadership, obviously, of great business leaders. And there's a large pool of leaders to learn from. But I think what business fails to do very often is learn from leaders in the not -for -profit world. I often think sometimes I'll juxtapose the leadership tools that I have versus, the leader of a not -for -profit, say, the leader of a local church.
compensation program. I've got, you know, company cell phone, company car, benefits package, year -end bonuses. We got all these tools to sort of inflict my will on people. I'm not saying it's a good way to lead, but every business leader has that. Now juxtapose that against, the leader of a church where pretty much all the work is done by volunteers. So that local leader has to have such strong leadership and be able to, you know, communicate with such
conviction and clarity, a vision for the future that you actually make people willingly give up their own time and their talent and their treasure for the cause. And I think that's a beautiful form of leadership. Whether you support what they're teaching from a leadership lens, you can see that's gonna require a real effective, sincere, genuine leader who has a vision that can be communicated with crystal clarity to the degree that people go after it with him or her.
for free. That's a little different than what we have in business and I think we can learn a lot from them.

Chris Lesner
I love how you guys just view things differently. I've heard many people talk about ACE and internally, think you guys talk about neighbors serving neighbors. It's such a different model at least of how you hear maybe some of your competitors talked about because they really focus on how great the company is and ACE is focused on how great neighbors can serve neighbors and talk about each other as people. How much of a difference do you think it makes to talk about
people as people versus as just large corporate entities.

John Venhuizen
Listen, most of the world thinks businesses run by the rich for the rich and usually at the expense of the most vulnerable in society who they believe to be them. That's the starting point. So nobody wants to hear about the woes of the CEO. Nobody wants to hear about the profits of a big corporation, though that's critical. I mean, in business, we keep score with money. I'll never apologize for that. I'll never let some politician make me feel guilty about it.
We believe we need to stand for something bigger than money because business isn't about money. It's about people. And people long for something way bigger than just money. And what's beautiful about ACE to me, you know, our brand promises that we're the helpful place. We need to provide better customer service than the other guys in order to have a proposition that's relevant to the consumer. But what's beautiful about that is
We say our purpose, we have our mission, vision, values, we have our strategy, but our purpose is that we exist to serve others. And that is a way of saying we want to fulfill our brand promise so that we don't become promise breakers. If I tell you our service is going to be better than the other guys and you come into an A store and it's not, we're promise breakers and promise breakers kill brands. So there's a business commercial lens to it, but there's also this benevolent lens because what's gorgeous about this strategy of being more helpful is it requires better service.
which requires what we call an irrational pursuit of amazing service. And yes, that's for customers, we call them neighbors. And yes, that's to create profit for those businesses. But it turns out that the irrational pursuit of amazing service is actually incredibly rewarding and fulfilling. The path to a fulfilling life is paved with selfless service.
There's a lot of businesses with great strategies, but I think we're one of the few where our strategy is actually intertwined with the commercial benefit is as strong as the benevolent benefit. And it creates a really unique environment where people get very strong levels of fulfillment by serving others. Incredibly counterintuitive to most in the world, but it's true.

Chris Lesner
It is so interesting because it's just so different. Yeah, it's so counterintuitive. When you look at all these different owner operators who really, I think a lot of people can relate to furthering themselves, how do you actually build the culture that you have the owners care for each other and care for the brand as a whole versus are just looking out for their best interest as people who are watching this might be thinking, I wish I could start something and it's all about them.

John Venhuizen
Well, know, so let's answer that question through the lens of leadership. And I think it starts by actually defining with very strong clear parlance what leadership actually is. It's widely talked about, there's books written every day about it, there's seminars and conferences about leadership and lots is said, lot is said around it, but
very rarely will you hear somebody define what it is specifically. at the risk of sounding a bit cynical, a lot of times people who want to sell a lot of books or get a lot of people to their conferences will defy leadership, they'll define it in such a wide swath that it really becomes about nothing. it's like, everybody's a leader. And if you broadly define leadership as having influence, that's true. But I think there's a special gift of leadership and we've got to define what it is.
That's the starting point. And the way we define that internally is basically three definitions. We say leadership is taking people where they could not go on their own. And if you just marinate in that definition for a minute, you'll see how high the stakes are and how humbling it is. That's a very difficult thing to do, to take people. So that's the first part of the definition, right? It's not about you.
That was a long -winded answer to your question. It's not about you. By definition, leadership is about others. So that's the starting point. That's very difficult. We all come out of the womb very interested in ourselves. Nobody comes out of the womb and looks back and go, Mom, are you OK? That's not how we're wired. So right out of the box, this is counter -cultural. It's counter to how we're wired. It's about others. And it's taking people where they would not go on their own, where they could not go on their own.
not where they would not go on their own, right, we're not trying to impose ourselves on people, but we're trying to take people where they could not go on their own. And that says, but for you, being part of the equation, things wouldn't have worked out as well, or the business wouldn't have gone as far as fast, or the people wouldn't have been developed as much. And you gotta ask yourself, if I wasn't part of the equation, everything still be the same? And if the answer is yes, you may be an effective teammate, but you're not a leader.

John Venhuizen
The second way we define it is, and I've stolen a lot of these definitions over 30, 40 years from others, so I don't even know who to give credit to. So I don't have any real pride of authorship here, but maybe some of the words became our own at age. But the second is we rally people to a better future. We rally people to go somewhere that's better than where we are today. For any business, for any...
not -for -profit, for any charity, for any church to go from where they are today to where they want to be tomorrow. Somebody's got to have the guts to stand up there and say, hey, gang, thanks, appreciate how much you've done to get us here. High five. Good job. But I got to tell you, there's a better place. And, you know, I think if like we join hands and go there together, we can do this. you rally people to someplace better than you are today. And then the third definition of leadership is to
galvanize people to want to do what must be done. And this gets into that real fire in the belly, that white -hot intensity of leadership. I've heard others describe this as a Popeye moment, which dates me, I'm sure. But, you know, a Popeye moment, if you remember, is Popeye when he would get mad, would pop the spinach, and he would say, that's all I can stand, I can't stand it no more. I was sharing that definition, by the way, Chris, with my family at dinner because I'm a dork.
And I mentioned it and years ago, my oldest son's girlfriend looks at me and goes, who's Popeye? Who's Popeye? I couldn't figure out if she was that dumb or I was that old. I'm not quite sure. But anyways, we put those three definitions together, you know, take people where they could not go on their own, rally people to a better future, galvanize people to want to do what must be done. And I think all leaders, if you buy those definitions, got to sit back and say,
Okay, am I doing that really? Because the bar is really high when you define leadership that way versus just say influence. Because we all have influence for sure and there's leadership component to that. But when you say that no, no, no, the bar of leadership is taking people where they could not go but for you being part of the equation. Rallying people someplace better than it is today and measuring if you're doing that. Or galvanize people so that they fire in the belly.

John Venhuizen
You don't even need to pay me I want to do this so badly. So I think it starts by defining clearly what it is and then challenging ourselves and our leaders to actually do it.

Chris Lesner
I love that. That's such a great definition and great three points on it. How often do you have to remind people of that? Is it one of those things that once you tell people they're on board, do you have to keep reminding them of it? And do you talk about leadership more or do you talk about customer service more or how do you keep this front of mind for people?

John Venhuizen
And when I say it once it just happens. No, that's a total lie. That's a total lie. You know like a lot of things in any complex or large organization I think it's a little different when it's just you and me are two friends in a pizza I think it's a little different because we're all sold out to the to the mission and we're starting it The passion of the founder can keep the fire incredibly hot in the early days, but once the organization starts to mature
get a little larger, complex. At ACE, we're 100 years old. All of our founders are dead. There is no passion of the founders anymore. They're all gone. And so it's incumbent upon those of us who are trying to steward this mission to act with the passion and the fragility of a founder, even though we're not. And I think that absolutely requires endless amounts of communications on the things that matter. In fact, unless we're so sick of hearing ourselves say something,
Probably half the people haven't even heard it yet. So the repetitiveness, I had an old boss who said, if you want to get your point across, you gotta be redundant. And then of course he'd say, if you want to get your point across, you gotta be redundant. And I got it, I mean there's truth in it. the frequency with which you communicate things that matter is incredibly important. But dot dot dot, the creativity to do that in unique
refreshing, knock me off center kind of ways is hard work, but I think it's incumbent upon a leader. People have said, and I agree, leaders need to paint pictures that create passion in people. And that painting is a good illustration to say it can't be the same boring, rote, incrementalism crap you said last time. It's got to be sincere, and it's got to be fresh, and it's got to do something in people to make them want to move forward.
Again, when you define leadership in those terms, think most people, myself included, step back and go, wow, that's quite a task. I'm going to have to really be a student of that to ever get any good at

Chris Lesner
So keep painting that picture a little bit, because a lot of people might be in roles where they know that they might be in leadership roles or they want to be in leadership roles. As you think through ACE and what you're trying to achieve, what would somebody exhibiting this level five or servant leadership type actions be able to do that would be transferable to somebody outside of ACE?

John Venhuizen
Yeah, so that's a great question, right? So let's get this out of the theoretical and into the practical. We have several things once we define it to say, okay, what do leaders do? It may look very different, your style of leadership is different, there's certainly no one way. Jack Welch was certainly a lot different than Mother Teresa, but both are pretty effective leaders, right? So we're not gonna argue style points here, but what leaders do, the work of leadership is important and nuanced.
And then it needs to be filtered through the specific mission of the organization. The church, the school, the not -for -profit, the business. Maybe giving you a use case at ACE will be helpful to try to apply to other businesses. So from a strategic standpoint, when I think about ACE, the helpful place, and the enemies we compete with, who are very good and very large, some of the best companies in the world, you'll never catch me saying anything.
bad about a Home Depot or a Lowe's. They're incredibly good companies and very well -lead. But we need to offer something to consumers that's uniquely better than what they offer. And the way we internally define that, Chris, is we say the three battles that we must wage to win the retail war are service, convenience, and quality. We need, as I told you earlier, an irrational pursuit of amazing service. When you walk into an A store,
The service needs to be so amazing that your jaw drops. Like, I can't believe, I can't believe this place did that. That's what we aspire to do. I'm not arguing efficacy, but that is what we're intending to do. The second is quality. We say internally, we want to have a fanatical devotion to high quality, locally relevant, differentiated, exclusive merchandise. Stuff that consumers want so bad, like their tongues wag.
but you can only get it at Ace. It's why we love things like our outdoor powers, know, Steel, Craftsman, Milwaukee, Ego, DeWalt, Toro, those six brands. Ace Harbor is the only retailer in the world that has access to all six of those brands, right? So there's a fanatical devotion to high quality stuff. We sell Benjamin Moore paint. We're the only national retailer that carries it because it's the highest quality.

John Venhuizen
We sell Yeti and Big Green Egg and Blackstone and Weber and Traeger, like a lineup that you can't get elsewhere because we have a fanatical devotion to high quality locally relevant merchandise. And then lastly is our convenience factor. We want to exploit our geographic proximity advantage. 75 % of the United States has been 15 minutes of an A -storm. And we need to exploit the benefit of that both for customers coming in
and being wildly convenient, but in the world where a lot of the business is done right here, we also need to have our store associates, we call them 100 ,000 red -vested heroes, going to the consumer's home with online buy online and deliver from store. Okay, that's a quick little thumbnail of our strategic imperative, service convenience quality. Well, a great deal of our leadership focus needs to be measured against those initiatives.
And you can probably even hear in my parlance in describing service convenience and quality, some aspirational language so that people get a bit amped up about doing those very things. And then we can measure their leadership efficacy against the mission of the company. So it's not just esoteric and it gets measured by whether or not your employees like you. That's important. Don't get me wrong. We want our highest value here is love.
A hundred -year -old company of highest values love, we want to have people who love what they do and love who they do it with. But there's a mission here that needs to be measured, so there also has to be respect and efficacy.

Chris Lesner
So you've brought up now a couple times that you're a 100 -year -old company, and then you also just held in your hand a phone. And you've had to make so many advances over the year. As a leader, how do you think people should be thinking about innovation and thinking about growth and moving into whatever the next thing is? And how do you do that at ACE?

John Venhuizen
Yeah, again, you know, almost every business, almost every charity, almost every not for profit, almost every religious organization started because someone or a small group of someones
fell in love with a problem and then obsessed over fixing it. And out of that came all sorts of innovation that's made, you know, a capitalistic, entrepreneurial capitalistic country like America, has produced incredible things. I mean, with the exception of spiritual influence, small business in general and entrepreneurial capitalism in particular is the greatest force for good the world's ever seen. It's helped.
You know, it's paid more taxes, created more jobs, delivered more self -esteem, lifted more poor people out of poverty than virtually any force on the planet. And largely it's because they were freed to think about problems, obsess over fixing them, and come up with innovative solutions to fix them. That's how most organizations started. Unfortunately, over time, as they become successful or not, people that work in these companies, like me,
tend to complacent and comfortable. And that's horrible. And it suffocates exactly what you just said. We get comfortable, we get very used to it. The neural pathways in our brains get formed to do the same thing over and over and over again. And as operators, that's how we get good. And it can suffocate falling in love with the problems you have within your organization and solving them so you innovate within yourself. It's the old hogs don't butcher themselves point, Chris.
And I think that's a huge, huge weakness for companies. And it's going to be up to the leaders to create a culture where that doesn't happen. And again, I'm not arguing efficacy at ace, but your point about the phone and a hundred year old company. Listen, in our world and pretty much everybody that's in business at all, Amazon changed everything. The free and fast delivery is really, really good.

John Venhuizen
I mean, name me a customer who doesn't benefit from it. And it makes you rethink everything. So for example, for us, convenience pre -Amazon used to mean that my local store is smaller than the big box and it's closer to your home than the big box. So you could get from your couch to my store, back to your couch faster.
than a trip to the big box, which would take you longer to get there, the parking lot's bigger, it's a warehouse store, so why wander around a warehouse store when you could go to your local place, right? That was our convenience message, and to a large degree, that's still true. But it's still not as convenient as one -click ordering and free and fast delivery. Okay, so we could cry about that for the rest of our lives, or we could do something about it, and in our case,
We declared long ago, much to the chagrin of all of our operators, that we were going to be faster than Amazon on stuff we stock. We have $3 .4 billion of inventory sitting within 15 minutes of every home in America. We have a fleet of trucks in almost every single store, and we have 100 ,000 red -vested heroes who work there, all of whom will go home at night. So we launched BuyOnLine Pick Up From Store for free.
shoot 20 years ago and 15 years ago, 12 years ago, we launched buy online, deliver from store. So you can go to aceharvard .com, you can use our app, you can order anything you want that we stock in our stores and we'll deliver it faster than Amazon because we live right in the neighborhood too. Okay, enough of the ace pitch. I'm just trying to give you an example of how our leadership team was not settled and uncomfortable.
with one of the most important battles we got to win, which is convenience, and it changed on us. And I think a lot of retailers who didn't move are either struggling or not here anymore. But I'm delighted to see the continued double -digit growth in our digital business, 90 % of which, 90, 90 % of which is either picked up for free by the customer in store or delivered by our Red Vested Heroes to the customer store.

John Venhuizen
We have a lot of things I could tell you that, we have a list as long as you're armed with problems and issues we need to fix, but I think that's a good example of a practical application of leaders forcing a lot of change in an organization when nobody that works in an A store wants to do delivery. But in the world we live in, if you want to compete and win and be relevant, it required not only the leadership chops to identify the problem, to fix it.
and then to manage the change through the operation to get it done. And I couldn't be more proud of our team and our local owners. The degree to which they have integrated their physical assets with our digital assets is so hard, but that local leadership has made it happen.

Chris Lesner
I mean, that is such a great story and a great example because I think a lot of times people face adversity, like seeing Amazon start free delivery, quick shipping, all of that. And they either give up, cave in, or just make excuses and don't lean into what opportunities are there. And I love that example. As you think through ACE in the next five or 10 years and really, really where you're heading, what are other things that you're focused on now?
And how else are you thinking about continuing to move forward?

John Venhuizen
Well, there's no standing still, that's for sure. And while we can cry about our competitors, they definitely keep you on your toes and make you better. So we will absolutely forever stick to our roots and stick to our knitting. Our tactics and strategies may change, but our foundation will not. The way we talk about it here internally is that this company is built on bedrock.
The bedrock is not our brand though. I take bullets for our brand. mean like if you cut me I'll just bleed ace red all over the table It's not our supply chain though. Our supply chain is foundational to what we do You know sourcing and procuring product from around the world putting into distribution centers and distributing it to local family businesses is core of what we do But that's not our bedrock all that stuff could change the bedrock is the values of this place
We believe that values are what you believe, culture is how you behave. And coincidentally, the values of ACE, when we determined them, I don't know, about a decade and a half ago, just coincidentally, the first letter of all the words that we settled on as our values here, spelled, light. We light. It's winning, excellence, integrity, gratitude, humility, teamwork, and again, I told you our highest values, love. I think the whole foundation of any answer to your question has got to start there.
Listen, I'm a little indifferent as to what we may sell going forward and that constantly changes and morphs, but the bedrock of this place will be our values and again our purposes that we exist to serve others. And it turns out that that never gets void of opportunity. So we're going to try to continue to learn about ways that we can better support our neighbors on something that's pretty important to them, which is their home. Think Chris about the whole totality of human history.
You you and I take this for granted. We didn't choose to be born at this time, at this place, in this country, but what a blessing. But you think about the totality of all of human history, a huge amount of that time has been spent doing two things, to eat and live indoors. And we largely try to help people with the second thing, although we do sell some food. And our barbecue sauce is awesome. It's called Boomshakalaka. So our whole mission is to serve our neighbors well.

John Venhuizen
in their ability to repair, replace, preserve, protect, and to fortify and beautify the largest asset most of the world has, which is their home. And we think there's great meaning and purpose in that. So we're never going to stop trying to do that better and in increasingly relevant ways as consumer behavior and taste change.

Chris Lesner
That's so good. I want to hit you with 10 rapid fire questions. And I want you to just say the first thing that comes to your mind.

John Venhuizen
And I will probably give you ten rapid terrible answers.

Chris Lesner
That's okay. Who's the first person you think of when I say servant leadership?

John Venhuizen
don't think of a person I think of what we talked about earlier. I think of the leader of my local church or of the local church. That could be a synagogue and not for profit, but that leader is sacrificing in almost every case a great deal to have to lead.
something they believe so deeply in that they have to rally a bunch of people who generally aren't getting paid who just do it for free. And if you're not a good servant leader there, the whole thing's going to fall apart. And I think we can learn a lot from them because they lack a lot of the financial tools that many other storied leaders have that they don't. So that's the first thing that comes to mind.

Chris Lesner
All right, five words that most describe yourself.

John Venhuizen
I'm pass.

Chris Lesner
All right, favorite author or book?

John Venhuizen
Okay, here again, you're gonna hate my answers on all this. I would never give you just one book because I think that leads people to think there's a silver bullet. know, like Yoda's out there and you could just go to this one place and you get all the answers you ever want on leadership. I think you need to be a student leadership broadly. you know, leaders are readers. Read a lot of books. Yes, I love the Leadership Challenge by Kausas and Barry Posner. Great book, but I would never recommend to just read that book. So get your...
Inductive reasoning skills is really valuable and if you think about that, it's a lot about connecting dots, so get more dots.

Chris Lesner
Do you have a favorite movie?

John Venhuizen
It's a wonderful life and Hoosiers.

Chris Lesner
Both great movies. What do you like to do in your free time?

John Venhuizen
just work, Chris, there's no free time. Listen, I give a lot to ACE, but I tell all the people here, if ACE is the most important thing in your life, you're not only a horrible dork, you can't work here because your priorities are screwed up. Well, we need your best when you're here. We really do need your best. Our competitors are significant, we need your best. It should not be first in line. So my faith...

Chris Lesner
Do you have any

John Venhuizen
my family, my friends, these things are far more important to me than ACE. And so I think that order and prioritization is really important for people to figure out.

Chris Lesner
I love that. Is there any surprising fact about you?

John Venhuizen
Pass. Do people actually answer this for you? I mean, do you actually get people to answer these questions, Chris?

Chris Lesner
Okay, Farah.

Chris Lesner
The craziest answers and it's always fascinating.

John Venhuizen
Yeah, there's nothing that can come from this that would be good for me. Or I lie to you.

Chris Lesner
All right, favorite place you've been.

John Venhuizen
Oh my goodness. I don't know. Travel is one of the hardest parts of this job and travel is one of the best things about this job. Getting from A to B is horrible, but experiencing the world is incredibly humbling and it always makes me so appreciative of where I am right now.

Chris Lesner
Is there anywhere you want to visit that you have not visited before?

John Venhuizen
You know when you travel as much as I do I probably long just to be home more than anything else.

Chris Lesner
Okay, and finally, the best advice you've ever gotten.

John Venhuizen
Not to answer stupid questions from guys doing podcasts

Chris Lesner
You did well on that.

John Venhuizen
Listen, real quick, I'll just tell you, a lot of the focus here is on leadership. if I can, just for a moment, I want to just double click on something that I think is really important for anybody listening. it's a great reminder for me and you two. We talked about what leadership is. We talked a little bit about what leaders do. But very often, we fail to answer the question, why is leadership so important? And I want to take a stab at that, because I think it's critical.
And we think about it here in terms of five quick answers. Why does leadership matter? Well, first is because time matters. And this is a humbling statistic. I read it from somebody else. I did the math to see if it's true because it's so stunning. 50 % of our team's waking hours are spent in a culture we create.
Half of a person's life, I mean 50 % of your waking hours when you're not sleeping, half of your life is spent in a culture that the leader creates in a business or a charity and that is incredibly, incredibly humbling. And we've all been to organizations or stores where you walk in there and you feel like the employees are fossilized and the owner's comatose and it just feels like death. But for leadership, that's never going to change.
It reminds me of the book The Dash, right? You're born, you die, and then the dash. It's a great book, and it's a lot about not wasting your only life. And I think it's important. But as leaders, we also got to remember we shouldn't be squandering our team's one and only life. So I think that's why leadership matters. Second is perception matters. If business was a brand, it would be a horrible one. We talked a bit about this earlier. Most of the world thinks business is run by the rich, for the rich.
and usually at the expense of the most vulnerable in society who they believe to be them. But for leadership, that's never going to change. And if you look at the Gallup research over decades, it mostly hasn't. I think that's a weakness in leadership. Third reason why leadership matters is because engagement matters. And again, if you think about the statistics of this, most of the US workforce is aimless, purposeless, bored, and entirely disengaged.

John Venhuizen
According to Gallup, 77 % of employees in the US are disengaged and 23 % of them are so terribly disengaged, they're actively working against the company that employs them. And it's why most people, you know, they hate their boss, they hate their job, they hate their pay. They get up, they eat breakfast, they go to work, they come home, they eat, they binge watch Netflix, and they get up and do the same boring, rote thing over and over and over again. It's like Groundhog Day.
And again, statistically speaking, I'm not trying to be judgmental, just statistically speaking, those of us that are leaders gotta look at this and say, what are we doing? Because a huge chunk of our workforce is medicating themselves through life with sugar, caffeine, alcohol, and digital stimulus. What a life. But for leadership, I don't think that's ever gonna change. And I think it's incumbent upon leadership. Fourth reason why leadership matters is because outcomes matter.
Results matter the scoreboard matters and as I talked to you about before I'll just bump it again more and better leaders equals more and better everything and Then lastly why does you know why does leadership matter? It's because people matter There's only one thing in this whole world that God cherishes and it's people and so when you put that together, I think that anybody with either a leadership title or
is trying to lead without a title, leadership without influence, I think we gotta take this stuff very seriously, be incredibly humbled by it, and then pick ourselves up off the floor and have a white hot Bunsen burner in our gut to get really good at this because more and better leaders really does equal more and better everything for others. So anyway, I forgive the little ramp there but.
When we talk about leadership, think we need to look in the mirror and realize how high the stakes are.

Chris Lesner
That is so good. Is there anything else that you feel like, hey, it would be great if users heard this?

John Venhuizen
I've probably worn out my welcome already. So I'll just merely thank you for the time, Chris, and thank you for the good work you're doing in the world.

Chris Lesner
Thank you so much, John. I'm so excited for people to be able to listen to this, learn more about you, more about ACE, and more about servant leadership.

John Venhuizen
Thank you, sir.