David CM Carter is the “CEO Mentor” and founder of Entelechy Academy. He has crafted a unique character development strategy that supports millions of people in becoming the best version of their professional selves.
With over 40 years of experience as a successful serial entrepreneur and the global success of his self-help book “Breakthrough” selling over 100,000 copies, David is well-equipped to provide future generations with the knowledge and skills to thrive in the business world.
What you will learn
- David shares his journey as an entrepreneur and why he skipped higher education
- The 5-year process David undertook to develop his business model and strategy
- How Entelechy uses technology in character development
- Discover the power of continuous improvement
- Learn more about the significance of character development in raising human consciousness
- Plus loads more!
Transcript
Jeff Bullas
00:00:03 – 00:00:57
Hi, everyone and welcome to The Jeff Bullas Show. Today, I have with me, David CM Carter. Now David is the “CEO Mentor” and founder of Entelechy Academy. He has crafted a unique character development strategy that supports millions of people in becoming the best version of their professional selves. With over 40 years of experience as a successful serial entrepreneur and the global success of his self-help book “Breakthrough” selling over 100,000 copies. David is well-equipped to provide future generations with the knowledge and skills to thrive in the business world. So David, thank you for coming on the show. It’s an absolute pleasure and you’re zooming in from Lower Slaughter. And I did like your description or what the meaning of slaughter is in the English language and in the English countryside. Tell us what a slaughter is.
David CM Carter
00:00:58 – 00:01:27
A slaughter is a boggy marsh which means that in the winter, the flood plains are full of water. So all the fields are muddy everywhere. So if you look up Lower Slaughter on the internet, it could easily win the most beautiful village in Britain award every year. It is a stunning little tiny hamlet with 40 houses, but it does get boggy in the winter.
Jeff Bullas
00:01:28 – 00:01:30
So it’s a quintessential English village.
David CM Carter
00:01:31 – 00:01:32
Yes.
Jeff Bullas
00:01:33 – 00:01:36
So that means it should have a pub. Is that correct?
David CM Carter
00:01:37 – 00:01:59
It doesn’t have a pub actually, there is a hotel in the village that has got a bar that they’ve decorated to look like a pub but they’re not particularly welcoming to villagers. So my local is in the village next door, which is also where I walk my dog in the winter because it’s not muddy there.
Jeff Bullas
00:02:00 – 00:02:24
Okay. So David, tell us a little bit about your journey as an entrepreneur because you’ve done quite a few things. And then we’re also gonna get to where you’re up to with your new company. But you never, you just finished high school and you didn’t go and do college or university. So, why was that?
David CM Carter
00:02:27 – 00:12:25
Well, actually I started my entrepreneurial career a long time before I left school. And I joke about it, but it’s kind of true in a way. I’d already had two exits by the time I left school, you know, one, I was a sole trader and discovered that the golfers at my local golf course weren’t very good. And if I could walk around the golf course with a rucksack, I could pick up all these brand new golf balls and I could sell them to them back in the car park and the caddy master decided I was taking too much of his profit. So he bought my business out and maybe he turned me into a caddy. And then when I was 13, I started a babysitting business and I provided a super VIP service because I’d offer to the mums that I’d go over and cook supper for their children and do their homework so they could spend more time getting ready to go out and that became very popular and I hired some more people. And then when I moved, I sold the business to Fiona on a handshake that I’d get 10% of the revenues for the next 12 months, which she honored.
So by the time I left school I’d already done two exits. Why didn’t I go to university? The short version of that is that throughout my secondary school education, I had worked extremely hard and prepared myself to go into the army and become a James Bond. And unfortunately, I had a major hip operation a couple of years before I left school, which meant that I couldn’t have passed the medical to do something I’d worked very hard and trained for seven years and I didn’t have a plan B. And so and I also got married very young and so I wanted to earn some money and it was also in the famous winter of discontent and the economic carnage that, you know, the strikes and everything so that I’d have three jobs. And I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, so I, but I got a job because, you know, I’d left school, got married and it was a horrible economic situation, but I had three jobs. And, I worked for a bank and then a year or so later, a couple of years later, I saw an advert which said come and join the racy pacey world of high finance and important deadlines, become an international officer trainee executive of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation that I thought that’s got my name written all over it and that sounds a bit James Bond-ish. And I applied and got the job. And so for the first 10 years of my career, I worked in investment banking and venture capital for a couple of banks and I worked all around the world. I worked in the Middle East, the far east and west coast America, Germany, Switzerland. And so I had a fantastic, like real life MBA program and being paid well whilst I was doing it. And I would say that even though I didn’t really enjoy the job, I love the travel and I love, I, sorry, I didn’t like the culture in the company, but I was fascinated by these businesses that we invested in and bought and I went native. I was always like, oh, how can we make this more profitable? And how can we? Whereas my colleagues were like, David, businesses aren’t for running, they’re for buying and selling.
And that phrase stuck in my head is like, no, these have got people in them and customers and I want to delight the customers and delight the employees. And so culturally, I was a misfit in venture capital, you know, I remember one year in December, the chairman, who I loved, he was a great mentor. He came round to my desk and said, right, David, we need you to sell this company by Christmas because you bought it for 10 million. We can flog it for 40 million and we can make a big bonus this year. I was like, no, we’re in the middle of this and we’re doing this big turnaround and all the rest of it and we’ll be worth 80 million next year. He was like, no, sell it before Christmas. And I just thought, you know, they really are assets that you buy at one price, sell at another price three years later and make a profit and they don’t care about anything that happens in the middle. And I, and anyway, because we got a record bonus that year in the April or March or whatever it was, I got called into his office. Well, young man, record bonus, record this, record share options, record year, I think it’s time you moved on. And, given that there were eight partners in the business and I was contributing at least 40% of all new business. It was an interesting, but I smiled and I looked at him and he said, David, you’re just on the wrong side of the table, stop consulting and financing entrepreneurs and go and be one. And because I had a whopping great big bonus, you know, I could have lived for a couple of years, probably without a salary. And I thought, you know, financially, I’m never gonna be in a better place. Like all great stories, my first venture failed. I didn’t end up buying it. I ended up doing loads of work to buy a company called Lifax which was the original FiloFax business and it had offices in Paris and London and New York, so a bit of international. And it was a super luxury brand and I raised the money to buy it and everything and literally at the 11th hour, a quarter, a big publishing company came in and trumped our bid, you know, buy a lot of money. So we couldn’t. And then I did, what did I do? Then I did golf courses for 10 years, I built up two businesses. The first one I built up and sold to a trade buyer. The second one I built up and floated on the stock exchange. And that’s when I had a major tectonic plate shift in my life. And I ended up being a single parent to a seven year old daughter and a three year old son and I wanted to find something to do that was very family friendly, could work from home, maybe. And being the CEO of a public company and a single parent weren’t mutually compatible. So I resigned and whilst I was busy thinking about what I wanted to do next, loads of people turned up on my doorstep and said, oh, could you help me decide whether to float my business, raise some money, expand overseas, bring in a chairman, whatever the hell it was. Sell the business. And so I ended up with half a dozen really interesting businesses and CEOs and I seem to be getting more and more inquiries anyway, after about a year, the kids and I went over to my mom and dad’s for Sunday lunch and my mum said, oh, it’s going so well for you, isn’t it? And I said, well, it is going well mum, but I’ve got no time to think about what I want to do next. And she said, oh, I thought this was what you were doing next and in the drive home, I remember thinking, no, I’m actually really good at doing this. I really love doing it. It’s paying the bills and it’s making a difference. So unless I wake up in the morning and think of a reason not to do this, maybe this is what I’m doing next. And 15 years later, I had built up and eventually became the world’s leading CEO mentoring company with officers and clients around the world. And that was a fantastic learning experience for me. I learned so much and achieved a lot as well. But after 15 years, I was bored, there wasn’t a fourth region to open and I wanted to democratize what we were doing and making and cascading it into the whole organization to help everybody in the company become their entelechy, the ultimate version of them with all of their potential, fully actualized, not just the CEO. And if there’s been a red thread throughout my career, I think it’s always been about helping other people become their best version. And I feel I’m my best version of myself if I’m helping other people become their best version, there’s been a sort of red thread. And I think, you know, six, seven, eight years ago, whenever it was, I sold that mentoring company, I decided that the rest of my life, I was going to dedicate to my legacy project, which would be helping anybody anywhere, become their entelechy, through developing their character.
Jeff Bullas
00:12:26 – 00:12:32
Yeah. So really the Japanese would call it, you did find your ikigai.
David CM Carter
00:12:32 – 00:12:34
Yes, very much so.
Jeff Bullas
00:12:34 – 00:12:49
So tell us Entelechy, what is the meaning? And who was the inventor of the word and give some examples that you gave to me before we hit the record button about what it means.
David CM Carter
00:12:50 – 00:17:43
So, Entelechy, the word, the concept was coined by Aristotle two and a half thousand years ago. The entelechy of an acorn is an oak tree. The entelechy of a caterpillar is a butterfly. So the entelechy of Jeff Bullas is the ultimate version of Jeff with all of his potential, fully actualized. And Aristotle also coined another phrase which I love, which is character determines destiny. And what he meant by that is that we all end up in life wherever we end up as a direct function of our character, which everyone knows ultimately makes sense and a lot of people might when you talk about character, they say, oh well, you’re bored with your character. There’s nothing you can do about it. But very quickly you can say to them, well, no, that’s a myth. And there are 54 character qualities which underpin all skills and they, every baby born on the planet is born with the innate ability to be good at all 54 of those skills, but they might get parented out of them or schooled out of them or churched out of them or workplace out of them, but they still got the innate skills. Let me tell you a very, it’s one of my new favorite stories. So, about five or six months ago, five months ago, we hired a senior sales guy and everybody in our company is working on a professional and a personal character quality every, all the time with a new one every month or whenever you feel like it. And he chose to work, his professional character quality was disciplined. And he asked around in the company, what other people did to be more disciplined. And one of his colleagues gave him a great tip which he loved, you know, a salesman’s got to hit the phone, send emails and be disciplined and he realized that he was really badly distracted all the time by his mobile phone and it was pinging a Slack message or an email or WhatsApp message or whatever. And his colleague said, put the phone in the kitchen, dedicate 90 minutes to your calls and your emails, have a break for 15 minutes, check your messages, then go back and hit the phone. And he said at the end of the first week, he’d save four hours or created four hours of more productive work and made more calls and got more pipeline and blah, blah, blah. So a really simple shift in behavior and being more disciplined had a big impact. But my favorite part of the story, he decided to work on being more kind in his home life and he had a number of ideas that he picked up from colleagues, you know, to thank one person every day for, you know, being a nice person or doing something nice for him or whatever. Anyway, on the Friday evening, at the end of his first week of work, his wife sat him down and said, look, are you having an affair or something? And he says, no, why do you ask? Well, you’ve taken the trash out, you’ve taken the dog out to the toilet before bedtime. You’ve done this, you’ve taken the washing in from the line, you know, this new company, are they giving you drugs or something? And he’s like, no, I’m just trying to be more kind. And she said, well, it’s working, keep taking the drugs or whatever it is. But, you know, he realized in a week that he could work on two character qualities and dial them up consciously and have a dramatically different outcome at the end of the week. So, these 54 character qualities are easy to learn, easy to dial up and, you know, I can sum up the entelechy business story in two very short sentences when we go and describe it and show it and demo it to companies. They say, why has no one ever thought of this before? It’s so obvious and simple and clever and we pulled it together in a very high tech way but when we show it to the young people in the workforce, their number one question is why weren’t we taught this at college or university or at school? It’s like, it’s so obvious you need these skills but no one’s ever taught us them. So anyway that’s what entelechy is.
Jeff Bullas
00:17:43 – 00:18:26
Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, I try to be kind as possible and I sent some flowers to my partner in her office in the city of Sydney. And she said, why did you send them? You’d done something wrong? And I said, no, I’m just getting in early. So the question I do have though, is those 54 character traits, are they, qualities, sorry, character qualities. Are they your curation from your experience in life or Aristotle mentions them? Where did it come from?
David CM Carter
00:18:27 – 00:19:05
There are hundreds of character qualities and there’s a research institute in character called Via in America. And they got a very, I mean, there’s hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of character qualities and some of them are sufficiently close to each other that they’re really synonyms. And, you know, you might use the word courageous and I might use the word bold
Jeff Bullas
00:19:05 – 00:19:07
Or bravery.
David CM Carter
00:19:07 – 00:21:09
Or, you know, or brave, a character quality is something you are or can be, you can’t be bravery, you can be brave. Anyway, but, and someone else might use that word. And the point is we’re all really talking about the same thing. So we took all of the synonyms and we put them through a computer called Bob and said, what’s the most highly used frequency word? And then the second and the third in common language. So we ended up taking the most used word out of those synonyms. All the synonyms are available for you to see as well in case you want to choose another one. But also, you know, there are 54 character qualities that we’ve selected out of these thousands that apply in the workplace. You know, if you want to be a parent or you want to be a partner, there’s probably other character qualities that you might need as well, but you don’t need those as much in the workplace. So, we spent, we also did, we talked with over 200 companies and HR departments and asked them to choose the character qualities that they felt were missing in their workforce that if they could develop them would. And so it was a two year process of, you know, on the ground research to end up with a matrix and a framework that was robust that the learners said they wanted to engage with it, the buyers said it made sense to them and we felt there was enough research and underpinning behind it that it worked as a framework.
Jeff Bullas
00:21:10 – 00:21:14
So when, so obviously.
David CM Carter
00:21:14 – 00:23:58
By the way, can I just add on when we were doing this as well. A big part of our research was asking the employers, what the soft skills were that they wanted that were lacking in their workforce. And without going through the whole story, there are 77 essential soft skills that all of that research threw up. But we then mapped the 54 character qualities against the 77 soft skills. And to this day, we’ve never found that there’s a character quality missing from any soft skill or any hard skill that anyone brings us. So the model does work. It’s had two or three years of severe panel beating to try and break it up, but it hasn’t been broken up yet. And so, if I mean, over the last few years, the number of companies we’ve spoken to who have said, oh, time management is such a problem in our company. People turn up to work late, you know, hang out around the coffee machine too long, spend too long at lunch, too much time on those social. And actually that isn’t time management that it’s been called time management, but actually it’s honesty and respect, you know, you, if the office hours are Monday to Friday 9-5 and you get an hour’s break for lunch. You know, you gotta be at your desk at nine o’clock. You can’t go home before five o’clock and get an hour for lunch and you can’t spend half an hour of every hour, you know, checking your TikTok account or your social media account or WhatsApping your friends. So, companies call it time management to be politically correct. But actually what they’re really talking about is engagement. And so if you send someone on a time management course and tell them what time management is and the benefits of time management, but you don’t teach them how to implement it. Guess what, a month later, there’s no benefit to the company or the employer at all of that course. So we look at the underpinning character qualities of being accountable, responsible, disciplined, organized, efficient and reliable. And that’s what we teach the learner to become those six character qualities. You don’t ever need to send someone on a time management course, who’s accountable, responsible, disciplined and organized. So, that’s what we do. We’re teaching the subdomain of character qualities rather than the soft skill, higher level domain, which we don’t believe you can ever teach in a way that works and sticks unless you teach the underpinning character qualities.
Jeff Bullas
00:23:59 – 00:24:29
Yeah. So what was the inspiration to cross the threshold and strike out on this adventure with Entelechy? Was there a like saying, well, this is what I love doing this, I’m good at doing this. Was there a moment and are you doing it, and the other question I’m curious about is are you doing this on your own or are you doing it with some other friends or colleagues?
David CM Carter
00:24:30 – 00:30:25
There are 30 employees in Entelechy the UK, there are 15 colleagues in India in our technology center. So there’s 45 of us in total today, we’ll probably be 55 by the end of the year. I’ve got 44 shareholders who are all angel investors. Wehopefully in the next month or so, we’re going to finish a £5 million fundraising. We’ll probably end up with 48-49 shareholders. So I’ve got shareholders and I’ve got colleagues in the company. So it’s actually not a one man band at all. And you know, I’ve got two direct reports into me in the company. Amy, who’s our chief operating officer, she looks after the consultancy team, customer service team and everything to do with operations. And Kaylin has product sales, marketing, learning, and data insights reporting into him. And then I’ve separately got a part time finance director reporting into me. And, but I’ve also got two people who head up our international scaling team. So we’ve got a strategic partnerships team with two people because we’re going out to India in November to pitch to eight companies who between them have over a million employees and they’re very interested in working with us. We’re talking to a university group in America who’ve got 250,000 students. So my, the boiler room of the UK business is really run by Kaylin and Amy and I’m now spreading my wings to scale the business internationally. And, I think that to answer the other half of your question towards the end of my 15 years at Merrick, I was bored, you know, I’d opened three regional offices around the world. They were all running perfectly fine. There wasn’t a fourth region to open and I think I’m better as a rocket launcher than a rocket in orbit manager. And so I think I’m really good at spotting an opportunity, putting a team together, exciting a team to come together to make that work. And so the UK operation the border room as we call it.
I think it is run a lot better by Amy and Kaylin than I could ever run it. And actually what I’m doing, developing both of them is so that Amy is starting to think about how does she develop boiler rooms in India and America and Australia and other places that we open up and the same with Kaylin and so who I’m, you know, building up to be the CEO in the next few years. So I love finding great people, developing them, nurturing them, mentoring them to become their entelechy. And, you know, my joy in life is developing other people to become their entelechy. And I think I become my entelechy if I do that with other people. And so, you know, I think the boiler room in the UK is fantastic now and, you know, sometimes, well, not, sometimes every time I go to every other month offsite with the whole team, I sit there and think, wow, it’s really cool what we put together, you know, we’ve got amazing people and they’re all enjoying their work and we’re doing great business and it’s really cool to put this together and, but then I think, right, what am I gonna go and do? Let’s take this overseas and let’s scale it. And so, it’s all to me about finding really, really high quality people and then nurturing and mentoring them to become their entelechy. Steve Jobs had a great phrase that I learned watching a film about him a few years ago that we don’t hire great people and tell them what to do, we hire great people so they can tell us what to do. And I think I’ve always done that throughout my career, but it was kind of nice to know that I wasn’t the only lunatic in the asylum doing that. But, and, you know, sometimes like Amy who’s worked for me for six years now, I’ve spotted someone and I thought, I don’t know what I’m gonna do with you, but I’m gonna get you on the bus and we’ll figure out what your seat is later. But in the meantime, until I figure out the right seat, if you go and do this because there’s a problem over there and you can go and sort that out and so I think Amy’s worked for me for six years now. Yeah, about six years. And she’s probably had, this is her fourth job in those six years and she’s still growing and developing. And so, and the same with Kaylin, you know, I think he’s been with us a year now and he’ll grow and continue.
Jeff Bullas
00:30:25 – 00:30:44
That’s fantastic. I do love the phrase you said that you wanted you to democratize, helping people realize their full potential. And because obviously you with the CEO mentoring, you are only doing it for the C-suite essentially.
David CM Carter
00:30:45 – 00:30:49
So not even the C-suite, the CEO.
Jeff Bullas
00:30:49 – 00:31:47
So, you’ve been doing that, you’re a bit bored and you’re going, I really, I wanna democratize this. I want to take this to the world to help every employee be the best version of themselves to realize their potential. So was there a, was it a creeping realization out of being bored and the jelling of your experience, passion and you know what you’re good at? Was it a creeping realization went I’m bored, I need and then there was this light bulb moment? How did that? And that obviously the word from Aristotle and entelechy is key to it. So when was that? And then, because you obviously would have said, okay, this is the idea. I’m really ready to run with this ball now, when did that happen? Was it five years ago? And why?
David CM Carter
00:31:48 – 00:35:29
The answer to your question, it was a combination of an itch over a long period of time and asking myself, you know, maybe we could scale this beyond the CEO to the C Suite and the senior leadership team and maybe even down into the bawlers of the organization. And so what I did, you know, with that sort of how could we do this? Would it work? I started doing some experiments outside of the companies I was mentoring. And for many, many, many years, for every expensive, super expensive fee paying client, I always had a pro bono client who ran a charity, an NGO, a not for profit, a social enterprise or whatever. And what I started to do was experiment in those pro bono clients and it worked and I can tell you so I’d had the, no, I want to do something slightly differently here, but I was being paid a lot of money to do a particular thing in a particular way with my fee paying clients. But I felt I could experiment and do a pilot or two with some of my pro bono clients and it worked. And I, but I can tell you there was a day, I was actually in South Africa in a coal mining business where I mentored the CEO and I was listening to some story in the boardroom about something that wasn’t working, why it wasn’t working? I thought, yeah, that just doesn’t add up to me. And so I asked Chris, the CEO, if I could be given a driver and go out into the community and interview some people and talk and he was like, are you sure you want to do that? And I said, yeah, I do, I don’t believe what I was told in that room just now. And I went out into the community, I ended up spending two days interviewing and filming people and found out what the real problem was and then reported that back to Chris and the senior leadership team. And that’s when I had the epiphany is like, if I could get those people in that village to work on these three or four things, this is going to change the outcome for this entire company. And I was given permission to do that by the CEO and it had the most dramatic impact on a company with 98,000 employees and I thought this is gonna work. And so I tried it in a few small ways with a few pro bono clients. I then had one opportunity to scale with a massive employer and it absolutely worked. And I thought, no, this is what I want to do now. I’ve spent 15 years building up this amazing little company. But my journey, I want to go off and change the world. And my colleagues were very happy in a nice, comfortable, you know, environment, which is fine, but I wanted to do something a bit more adventurous. And, by the way, having then resigned, it probably took me the thick end of five years to figure out the business model, the strategy, the product, you know, I knew I wanted to do it, but I wasn’t quite sure how to do it using technology at scale.
Jeff Bullas
00:35:30 – 00:35:32
And that’s.
David CM Carter
00:35:32 – 00:35:35
That’s been five years of experimentation.
Jeff Bullas
00:35:36 – 00:36:01
And that’s the next question I was going to ask is because mentoring a CEO is obviously a one-on-one. It doesn’t scale well, in fact, it doesn’t scale. So how do you scale in Entelechy? I’d be intrigued by that is a combination of technology systems and processes. Tell us how you scale in Entelechy.
David CM Carter
00:36:02 – 00:37:56
Well, remember that Entelechy at the moment is a B2B business and so in the UK, we will grow the business. We’ve got a marketing team, a sales team. Yesterday, Kaylin and I did 11 pitches to, you know, senior executives, senior HR executives at 11 top companies in the UK. And so you build the business in the UK by more marketing, better marketing and a sales team and converting sales marketing leads into sales leads. And, but, so it’s sort of classic B2B growth. And then I like doing pilots, like I’ve just described to you a few minutes ago. And so we hired Alan Greenberg, who was the former head of education at Apple in Asia and the Middle East. And he’s now head of our strategic partnerships. And so he’s the one who’s created this gigantic opportunity for India. We’ve hired another senior international ambassador who’s gonna be based after January in Dubai, who’s gonna be looking after Dubai in the Middle East. Whereas Alan’s gonna be looking at India and to the east of there. And we’ll start off with servicing three or four clients in India from the UK. We’ll really understand that the market and then once we’ve figured out, no, this is a very scalable business in India, we’ll then hire, put some boots on the ground in India, marketing and sales and delivery team to grow the business there.
Jeff Bullas
00:37:57 – 00:38:03
Right. So it’s a combination of boots on the ground and some technology.
David CM Carter
00:38:04 – 00:41:11
Yeah, well, the product is the technology but the product I think will be always owned and kept in the head office if you like. But the product when a company wants to become a company of character, the first phase is a two month project called Discover where we do a 180 and a 360 of every individual in the company in terms of those 54 character qualities, we map the individual against where the whole company is today and would like to be in the future. So there’s 15 million data points in that report that the company gets on itself and they can look at it through lots of lenses of age, gender, geography, department team and every individual gets their own character report, which is amazingly beautiful and comprehensive, like nothing they’ve ever seen before. But at the end of Discover, the company can say, right, well, here’s where we are today, here’s where we want to get to in a year’s time. And if we achieve that, it will make us a lot more profitable and we’ll achieve a 10 times return on investment on, you know, this Entelechy program. But, they don’t have to upgrade to Transform, you know, Discover is the diagnosis and Transform is the remedy. Transform is a year program where we take them from where they are to where they want to get to and transform them into a company of character and achieve that growth in performance and productivity through the development of character. But it’s only in Transform that the individual learner gets our app, which is preloaded with all their 180-360 information and their learning, their personalized AI created learning journey for them to go from where they are to where they and the company want them to get to in a years time. So the technology is part in Discover, part in Transform. And I would also say that it’s sort of technology, but the data insights which is a form of technology is the most amazing set of data that any company or any individual will ever see on themselves and their workforce ever. So there’s different but all of the ownership, the creation, the development of that will be kept in head office. And the whole idea is if we put boots on the ground in India, we’ll need a sales team and a marketing team and a customer experience team and customer service team, but they won’t need product and they won’t need data insights because that will all be done for them in head office.
Jeff Bullas
00:41:12 – 00:41:59
Yeah. So that’s basically the boiler room doing that heavy lifting or the IP, I suppose, isn’t it? So it sort of reminds you a little bit in some way is what Gallup has bought and does with strengths test, StrengthsFinder, which I did about 10-12 years ago. And it was quite profound in a sense that then I went, wow, that is me. And that and reflecting on it, I realized that some of my decisions I’d made were the right decisions in terms of where I started from in teaching and moved into technology. So, and 2 million people in that. So you’re collecting a lot of data, aren’t you?
David CM Carter
00:42:00 – 00:42:12
So first of all, I think StrengthsFinder is a good product. I’ve done it on myself many years ago. But, you know, it was 10 years ago that you got that report. Have you ever picked it up ever since?
Jeff Bullas
00:42:12 – 00:42:15
I picked it up and had a look at it again, yes. Or you saying.
David CM Carter
00:42:16 – 00:42:18
Most people don’t.
Jeff Bullas
00:42:19 – 00:42:24
You know what, I pull it up later and found it and actually looked at it again.
David CM Carter
00:42:25 – 00:43:43
I think you’re unusual. But anyway, the point of the story is, first of all that, it is only 180 information, it’s not 360. Other people could have seen other strengths in you, you didn’t see in yourself. And so if there was a StrengthsFinder 360 model, which is what ours is, it would be so much richer data because there are lots of things about yourself that you don’t know. I mean, one of the things that comes out of our 360 reports all the time is, you know, you might put down, I think I could be more kind. And so you put it as a growth opportunity, but nine out of your 10 respondents see it as a super strength in you, right? And it’s like, oh, well, maybe I am more kind than I think I am, you know, or I think I’m collaborative but all my colleagues think it’s something I need to work on. So the difference between a 180 and a 360 report is gigantic. But also at the end of our report, it says, well, now you’ve got these strengths and these growth opportunities. Here’s something you can do with it and work on to develop it even further.
Jeff Bullas
00:43:43 – 00:44:42
Yeah, I look, it’s, I’ve just used it as a bit of a, I suppose a north star for me, not as a prescription. But it’s, yeah, I have revisited several times and but what you’re doing is another level which I think is really quite amazing. And I think if you add humanity, which is, you know, you’ve gone through and looked at all the different, you know, character qualities and then you’ve applied technology and like you said, you go into an organization, you’ve got 15 million data points. Humans aren’t good at trying to make sense of 15 million data points. We as humans are quite good at what we call pattern recognition and some have got superpowers on that. So in terms of the data, you’re collecting data that is only going to continue to become more valuable over time, isn’t it?
David CM Carter
00:44:43 – 00:44:57
Yes. And you know, over time, I think the data in our company is probably gonna be our most valuable asset.
Jeff Bullas
00:44:57 – 00:44:58
It will be, it’ll be your oil.
David CM Carter
00:44:59 – 00:45:47
It will be because we’ll be able to see patterns in countries and in industries and in roles. And no, but I think it all goes back to this, you know, red thread throughout my life, which is if I can show you something that can help you become your entelechy by a five degree course correction and it works. You’re gonna go, wow, that was just so cool. I just, you know, changed course five degrees, but I’ve ended up in such a better place and I wouldn’t have achieved that if I hadn’t had that little insight about myself that I didn’t already know.
Jeff Bullas
00:45:47 – 00:46:51
Yeah, I, the thing I think about when you mentioned that that five degrees change or improvement is that just if you think about it, if you’re playing a long game of life and you want to realize your full potential, then just a 1% improvement every day is a huge improvement over 12 months. So, I think what you’re doing is really, I’m personally find it fascinating and I think it’s really, really cool. Are you thinking of taking this to the masses or we just gonna leave it, I’m sure B2B is the most lucrative in terms of revenue and profitability. And so is there any other concept of maybe taking it, you talked about democratization is to take it to the world to professionals that don’t, because there’s a lot of individuals that work on their own. They’ve got like a virtual team. So is there any idea of taking it beyond B2B more almost B2C?
David CM Carter
00:46:52 – 00:48:44
Very definitely in our longer term, medium to longer term strategy. If I say that my vision for this business in 10 years time, there isn’t an adult anywhere in the world that has not been introduced to and accepted the fundamental point that character is important and determines your destiny. And they might have half a dozen emojis on their phone that represent important character, qualities to them. And so I want character to become a thing that people talk about. And, you know, why is that person suddenly outperforming everybody else in this team? Well, because they’ve dialed up this and that and the other. Why is that person unable? Because they need to dial up this and this. It’s like people will see the cause and effect between character and success and it will become common language. And so in order for it to be a success in B2C, it’s got to have already been a success in business. And people say, oh, well, I got a promotion, I got a pay raise because I developed my character. I got a new job because they were looking for someone with my character. And people go, oh, how do you get a hold of this character thing? But, you know, it’s, we’ve got to have evidence of efficacy that it works and get you a pay raise, get you a promotion, you know, gets you the new job, gets you the investment or whatever it is you’re looking for. And then it, everyone will want one then.
Jeff Bullas
00:48:44 – 00:49:10
Well, I think it’s and it also makes me think of what you’re doing if we apply, amplify the humanity and insights that you’ve discovered and realized work. If you can amplify that with AI or technology that allows you to do more with less. That becomes very exciting.
David CM Carter
00:49:10 – 00:51:13
Yes. And, sorry, just to finish up on the last one, I was just thinking of something as we were talking, you know, over the last two or three years, we’ve looked at apprentices, university students, CPD professionals, we looked at lots and lots of different channels and markets and even though employers are telling us young people turn up from university without all these skills that we need them to have. And it’s a shame they’re not taught them at university when we go and talk to students and say to them, here’s all the research, you know, from employers of what they’re looking for. So, if you could turn up with your degree certificate and say, look, I’ve got these 10 characters, you’re gonna go straight to the top of the interview pile and they’re like, I just can’t be asked. I’m at a university, I’ve got too much with my studies and everything else as well. And so, and well, if I did buy your product, how much would it cost me? And it’s like, oh, you know, £100 a year or whatever? Oh God, you’re joking on my student allowance in no way, a pound a month maybe. So they don’t see the value. However, in two or three years’ time when they turn up for an interview and someone says, do you have your Entelechy signature we could have a look at, please? And they go, oh, blimey, do I need one of those for this interview? You know? Oh, yes. We only ever hire people now based on their character and everyone in our company uses Entelechy and so then university students are gonna think I don’t get a job at Barclays Bank unless I turn up with a Entelechy signature which shows I’ve got these 10 character qualities which I’ve learned in the flow of my studies. And so it will take time for the evidence of efficacy to get into the marketplace, for students to go. This is an essential purchase, not, you know, a frivolous one cause’ I won’t get a job at Barclays if I don’t.
Jeff Bullas
00:51:14 – 00:51:44
So the other question I have is how long does it take to, I suppose, put the information in and how do you get, put the information in? And I suppose one part of that is one side of it is 180 in other words, what you put in and then the other 360 is what your colleagues put in or closest friends, colleagues. How long does it take? And how do you do that? What’s the process for that? Just briefly.
David CM Carter
00:51:44 – 00:53:11
It’s all done online and I mean, the learner can do it on a website or in their mobile app. So the Discover one is all done through a web app. For the learner to input and get their 180 results. If they did it properly and spent time really thinking it through and would take a minimum of 15 minutes and a maximum of 25 minutes and we’ve built in lots of AI safeguards that if someone just goes through and click, click, click, click, click and they don’t, there’s all sorts of safeguarding to make sure that they don’t end up.They can’t, they won’t end up with a high score. And if you asked me to do a 360 on you, if we were colleagues, it would probably I’ve got to choose six strengths and six growth opportunities for you and to write a little paragraph or, not a paragraph, or a sentence about each one that probably takes about half an hour, 20 minutes to half an hour.
Jeff Bullas
00:53:12 – 00:53:19
So what’s the price points for people for organizations to commence the journey?
David CM Carter
00:53:20 – 00:53:57
For Discover, it’s £50 per person. And so if you’ve got a thousand employees, it’s 50,000, you know, pounds and which is, you know, half the price of StrengthsFinder and color insights and Myers-Briggs and all those other ones, but a hundred times more information. And then Transform is 100 and £50 for the year and that includes the app, the insights, the consultancy, everything.
Jeff Bullas
00:53:57 – 00:54:50
Cool. That’s so it I think, look, I’d love to do it because what I think you’re offering is insight that you just don’t get. And I think also, and making everyone realize their full potential as much as possible is an incredible goal. And I’m, I look forward to seeing how you guys go over the next few years. It’s fabulous. I really like it. And before I did some, doing some research, I went, wow, this is gonna be a fascinating conversation and it has been and I look forward to how you apply and scale it and look forward to hearing more about the journey. Maybe in a year we’ll touch base again and maybe run another quick Zoom catch-up and I’d be, I’m curious.
David CM Carter
00:54:50 – 00:55:29
Thank you very much for inviting me on to your podcast. I’ve enjoyed our conversation a lot and yes, the best way to keep following what we’re doing, which because I think we’ve done a very good job at constantly updating with news and white papers also is to follow Entelechy Academy on LinkedIn. We got a good team working on that. If people want to connect with me, David CM Carter also on LinkedIn to LinkedIn and obviously go to our website entelechy.academy. So follow us on LinkedIn.
Jeff Bullas
00:55:30 – 00:55:45
We’ll do that and we’ll put it in the show notes as well. So just one quick question, which I flagged at the beginning and I think you’ve already touched on it. What brings David Carter joy?
David CM Carter
00:55:46 – 00:57:37
What brings David Carter joy is helping as many people as possible become their entelechy. Optimizing their potential, helping them grow and helping nurturing them to become a better version of themselves. And I feel that I and my best version of myself, if I am my life creator is make yourself useful. So, if I end up making myself useful to anybody, somebody every day I feel I’m growing myself. And that’s what brings me the greatest joy and bizarrely, even though it was one of the greatest joys I ever had was being a single parent. I loved bringing my children up. I think I probably did it slightly unconventionally. And now a few weeks ago, I’ve become a grandfather for the first time. My daughter’s had a boy and my team did the most amazing thing. They created a video for my grandson all about me and my character and the character qualities that they thought he was gonna need in life that he could copy from his grandpa and the rest of it. And I realized, you know, that my legacy is not just for my grandson, but it’s for that generation because the world is a pretty screwed up place these days. And the way we solve the problems of the world is by raising all of humanity’s consciousness. And we do that by reconnecting people to their innate humanity through the development of their character.
Jeff Bullas
00:57:38 – 00:58:34
I think that’s an awesome mission. I really think you are on purpose. And as Joseph Campbell said, you are following your bliss. And I think if we as humans can help other people discover and this is what you’re doing is to discover what their bliss is. What the icky guy is as the Japanese say. Then I think, you’re making a difference and being fully actualized as the best person you can be is something you’re doing. So hats off to you, David, it’s awesome. Thank you very much for sharing your journey and your insights. I’ve learned so much and that’s what I love here is interviewing and having a chat, a fireside chat to some of the smartest people in the world here on Zoom. So, thank you very much. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
David CM Carter
00:58:34 – 00:58:36
And look, we’ve got a real fireside here.
Jeff Bullas
00:58:37 – 00:58:39
Yes, we should have lit it up.
David CM Carter
00:58:40 – 00:58:42
Thank you very much, indeed.
Jeff Bullas
00:58:42 – 00:58:50
Thanks David and have a great day because it’s just starting there and we’re just finishing up here. So, thank you.