Adopting a Growth Mindset

Episode 897: Adopting a Growth Mindset, with Prentice Howe

Adopting a growth mindset and embracing a challenger-ability is the key to Prentice Howe’s success. Start adopting a growth mindset today!

Prentice Howe has always believed in underdogs, especially when they start adopting a growth mindset. As Owner and Chief Creative Officer of Door Number 3, a full-service advertising agency based in Austin, Texas, his passion is helping brands embrace their challenger-ability and topple their giants. Prentice has been featured in The New York Times, AdWeek, Inc., and Communication Arts and authored the Amazon best-selling book “The Empowered Challenger Playbook,” which describes his strategies in detail and backs them up with case studies.

What you will learn in this episode about adopting a growth mindset:

• Why Prentice thinks that betting on yourself is the best thing you can do for your professional career
• Why you need to start adopting a growth mindset, what it means for your future, and how to instill that mindset in your employees
• Prentice’s advice for creating a roadmap and acquiring the tools needed to advance your business and achieve your professional goals
• Strategies for “challengers” to shift their focus, make sacrifices, and pursue their goals of competing against market leaders
• The five pertinent personal traits needed to be an empowered challenger
• Finding your niches to diversify your client base and avoid putting all of your eggs in one basket
• What Prentice thinks are the most critical skills for “business masters” and how they could start influencing in adopting a growth mindset
• Why your business should serve YOU and not just your clients
• The life-changing effects of having a mentor and why success leaves clues

Resources:

• Website: https://www.dn3austin.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/dn3austin
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doornumber3/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prentice-howe-54163b4/
• Prentice’s new book: https://www.amazon.com/Empowered-Challenger-Playbook-Brands-Change-ebook/dp/B06WLLLVT8
• Learn more about adopting a growth mindset by listening to this podcast with Jason Bronstad

Additional Resources:

• Sell With Authority by Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner: https://amzn.to/39y7x13
• Predictive ROI Free Resource Library: https://predictiveroi.com/resources/
• Stephen Woessner’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwoessner/
• You can start your journey in adopting a growth mindset by signing-up for our 3 step action plan for FREE

 

 

Adopting a Growth Mindset: Full Episode Transcript

 

Get ready to find your recipe for success from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

 

Good morning. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host for Onward Nation, where I interview today’s top business owners so we can learn their recipe for success, how they built and how they scaled their business. And I know I have been talking about this now for the last, probably a couple of months, and because we continue to build out our resources section.

 

So if you’ve not yet gone to our resources library on PredictiveROI.com, I strongly encourage you to do so because we’re continuing to add new ebooks. And soon we’ve got plans to add in many courses. So new ebooks on the Trojan Horse, sales on culture, living out your core values. All of this pulled from brilliant insights. Share by our very generous guests.

 

So just go to PredictiveROI.com/Resources and whatever your request, we will send it right to your inbox. 

 

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Adopting a Growth Mindset: Prentice Howe’s Introduction

 

Before we welcome today’s guest. This is just going to be an amazing conversation Onward Nation. So Prentice Howe is here. And let me just tell you, give you a couple of nuggets about why, when Prentice said, heck yeah, I’ll join you on Onward Nation.

 

Why? I was, like, over the moon excited because this is such a unique opportunity. We talk about oftentimes in our conversations that, like the holy grail of being able to be a business owner is to build it, scale it, and then at some point, be able to sell it right, be able to sell it right off into the sunset and enjoy whatever that second stage of life is.

 

Well, what this interesting conversation is going to reveal is that Prentice has done the opposite of that. And I don’t mean that at some point, maybe he has a vision for selling his business. We can ask him about that. But in the year the early 2000, he was a part of the company at door number three, and he was the executive creator, director, then went off to do something else and then in 2015 came back to the agency.

 

Now, as the owner, he purchased the agency that he had worked at previously. So we’re going to talk about that story, why he decided to do it, why he felt like that was going to be the push to help him grow. You know, by the way, now that he’s an agency owner, one of the next challenges that he accomplished was that he’s a bestselling author and sharing the story about how smaller companies or brands can challenge those larger competitors in their space and win.

 

So we’re going to talk about some of those highlights from his bestselling book, which is just going to be very revealing and great lessons. Onward Nation for all of us. So with that said, and without further ado, welcome to Onward Nation, Prentice. 

 

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Adopting a Growth Mindset: Prentice’s Path and Journey

 

Stephen, hi. Thank you so much for having me. And, hello to Onward Nation, all your listeners.

 

Oh, my gosh, it is just an honor to have you here, sir. And, so I’m really looking forward to the conversation and diving in. But before we do that, I mean agency owner, bestselling author, you’ve done a lot in this space. And so the bio is deep and rich, but even as deep and rich as it is, it is only a portion of your story.

 

So take us behind the curtain here before we dive in with the questions. Take us behind the curtain and tell us more about you. Tell us more about your story, your path, your journey. And then we’ll dive in. Sure. As you know, I grew up as a copywriter in the advertising world. So, you know, I bounced from agency to agency and became creative director and got more important titles as you go along.

 

And working in Dallas, Los Angeles, Austin, Detroit, Austin again. So my path was always on creative storytelling. Being a writer, it’s very strategic. But that was my passion. And then, you know, I had a great opportunity at one point in my career to work as executive creative director at door number three, which is the agency I’m at now.

 

And did that for seven years, under the founder and owner. And, she came to a point where she was ready to have some new challenges. And so, I actually went away for a while and came back and had the opportunity to come back to an agency that I loved. I loved the clients. I loved the culture, I loved the mission, I loved the work that was being done and just continued to shape it and move it forward.

 

And that’s just kind of unique. I know people are always interested in hearing more about that, because it’s not often that you get that opportunity and it’s that seamless. And we just had a great relationship. We’re able to make it happen. And I’m just so excited to be back now as owner. And it’s been, I guess, just over five years now.

 

And we’ve really pushed ourselves to evolve as an agency and just, just keep going. Well, I think it’s an interesting choice of words. There, as you mentioned, you push yourselves to evolve as an agency because as you and I were talking in the green room before, you know, hitting record, you know, we were talking about how, you know, your philosophy, if you’re not growing, you’re dying.

 

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Adopting a Growth Mindset: Professional Growth

 

And so now that’s kind of like sinking up for me that there really is this emphasis on always getting better. Right? I’m tracking with you there. Right. Well, I think that’s it. Now, when I say growing, I mean, for me, I mean personal growth. I meant professional growth. It didn’t necessarily mean, headcount or billings or things.

 

Sure. It’s to me, it’s if you’re not continuing, you know, I just hit a point, you know, when you work in the same doing the same thing in the same industry for two decades. And I was joking with you about this. I was like, I’m either going to take all the learnings and all the great things and the bad things that I’ve experienced along my journey at different agencies of all sizes and apply that to a culture in a company that can be, mine or, or I’m probably going to go become a boat builder or something, but no skills to become a boat build.

 

It was like, okay, this forces my hand, my liquor, my resume. It all goes back to marketing. So let’s do this. But it was, in so that was gosh, it was definitely, man, you know, as prepared as you think you are and as much research as you do and as much due diligence as you do, at some point you jump out of the plane, you figure out how to build a parachute on the way down.

 

And so there’s always a little bit of that, but there’s definitely no looking back. That’s the most professional decision I ever made. And I think part of that is it’s a growth mindset and it’s betting on yourself. That’s the big one. I was betting on yourself okay. So why do you think it was the or why do you consider that the best professional decision that you ever made?

 

I mean, obviously it’s a big decision. For me, it goes back to what I just said, which is betting on yourself, which is probably the best thing you can do. And why was the scariest thing you did? But there’s no there’s no excuses. There’s no fallback. You do well, you reap the benefits. You don’t do well.

 

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Adopting a Growth Mindset: Making Important Decisions

 

It’s all on your shoulders. And it, you know, it’s, someone told me before doing this, you know, I have two girls. And he said, well, you’re about to get a third child, you know, and I had no idea what you’re talking about. I said, yeah, that’s cute. But, you know, I can tell you five years later, I have three children.

 

Definitely. And this is one that I think about, just as much as my other two. So it’s a constant, you know, people that own a business. It’s in your head all the time. The wheels are always turning. But it’s yours. Ultimately, it’s yours to shape and hire great people and work with great people and make it special.

 

There’s just excuses, sure, but not really. I mean, it’s all on you. So that’s the exciting part. And I guess that’s why I say it was the best decision ever. Yeah, I love that. I love where your mind is at with that. That’s an awesome point of view. Okay. So what I’m curious about and I think that this would be really, really helpful for Onward Nation business owners because it sounds like you’re locked in to getting better, being the best that you can be.

 

And how can you continually improve yourself and go all in on decisions and, you know, like a big decision, like purchasing your own agency? I totally get that. How do you also instill that mindset into your team? How do you help nurture that as part of culture, whatever word you want to use, so that your teammates are also the oars or rowing in the same direction?

 

As far as everybody getting better as a team, yeah, it’s got to be curiosity. It’s got to grow. It’s got to be the willingness to keep learning and getting better and not feel like, you know, everything. I also feel like I have a, I mean, a pretty empowered culture. I try to do my best not to micromanage people, not to sit over their shoulder and make decisions for them.

 

I think I’ve got hired, you know, you’re really smart people and let them do what they do. And I would rather see them take action, make a decision and do something and maybe even fail then to then to just kind of look around and be like, who’s going to do this? I’m not going to do this. Can someone else do this?

 

You know, I just feel like that’s the culture you have to have where people are empowered to just make a decision to move forward and even failure, if you want to call it that, you learn something. Whereas in inaction, doing nothing, not kind of owning it. You don’t learn a thing. So I think that that’s really important here.

 

And we don’t fail that often. Luckily, we got really good people. But it’s okay to do that sometimes. But that’s how you fail less going forward by maybe even having some miserable failures in the beginning. But how else? How else can our team learn if we don’t actually instill the confidence that you support their decisions, even if it’s a wrong one?

 

Right? Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. No, I generally do. I mean, I try to and I think that’s really important and I hopefully, hopefully that’s felt but that, that’s I think that’s the way you need to do it. I mean you need to I mean, I remember reading this article, but someone was a CEO and she said, you know, I steer from the back of the boat.

 

And I thought that was interesting. You know, I guess I probably do that more than being out front, being loud and just beating. And, you know, I really love having good people that can do what they do and be empowered to do that. Yeah.

 

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Adopting a Growth Mindset: The Empowered Challenger Playbook

 

And I get it Onward Nation. That sometimes is easier said than done.

 

There’s a whole lot of fear around it, I understand that, but as Pam wisely said back in episode 637, you really have to hire smart people like Prentice just said, you have to delegate. Yes, you have to get out of the way and let them do their thing. Otherwise you will never, ever grow. You’ll never build and scale to where it is that you want to.

 

If you keep, you know, looking over their shoulder using your words, Prentice. Right, right. No. That’s right. Yeah. Well said. Yeah. So let’s dive into your book first. Very intriguing title. Right. So the title of Prentice’s book Onward Nation is the Empowered Challenger Playbook. So before we dig into some of the nuggets, like the big awesome lessons for unfinished business owners.

 

First, why did you decide to title it that? I titled it that, you know, when I thought about writing a book, I thought, why? Why? I’ll write a book. You know, a lot of people do it for publicity, I get it. I mean, of course, for me that’s great. I thought, like, that’s going to have a nice added benefit.

 

But the two things I wanted to for sure do by writing a book was to fortify and strengthen, articulate our own agency positioning from the inside out to make sure people hear we’re all on the same page in terms of what we do, what we offer, what our promises for clients. And put that out into the world.

 

So it does help kind of clients either see themselves in us or not. Self qualify, you know, however you want to say it before we have conversations. So that was one thing that the other thing was just and I see this with your podcast, I listen to your podcast and it’s just being useful, trying to put something out there that people can have a good take away.

 

No, we generally don’t work, for example, with startups. But, you know, I think whether you’re a startup or whether you’re a 20 million plus revenue established brand, that just does not happen to be an industry leader, I wanted to have a book that had content in there that I felt people could actually take away and apply to their business.

 

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Adopting a Growth Mindset: Positioning The Challenger

 

So if you’re involved with marketing in any capacity, you may be a founder, maybe a CFO, you may have a marketing role, but if you touch it, you’re exposed to it. You’re making decisions around it. It was a way for them to kind of get into the challenger mindset more and hopefully apply some things. Love it. Okay.

 

So thank you for the context in the background there. So is we’re thinking about where as is you’re thinking about maybe 1 or 2 of the big nuggets that you think are super, super relevant to business owners, you know, out of your book what might be the first one that you could share with our audience at the core, I mean, the book is at the core, it’s about positioning, really how to position the challenger brand so that I think anyone can challenge.

 

But what makes you an empowered challenger? And I think the difference is having a roadmap and having the tools to really get there. So I’d say at the core positioning, and I know that a lot of people think they have that figured out surprisingly. A lot of people really don’t. And so I kind of go through the lens of a challenger in the book.

 

And it’s more important than ever, especially when you cannot be spending time with the category leader. Can you? Spending, you’ve got to have that. Just so locked in. Differentiation is a word that you hear all the time. You have to differentiate. But what do you offer that others don’t that your customers want and need? And if you can’t answer that and probably, I don’t know, 12 words or less, it probably won’t pass. Just stop. 

 

Because the danger then is spending money. It’s fun to make things. It’s fun to put things out there. But the danger is doing that without that foundational work in place. And so I think that that’s a huge emphasis of the book and a huge thing I think, that people need to focus on and they just overlook or they move too fast or they think they’ve got it.

 

And the other thing is, it’s something you have to reevaluate and not be too proud to reevaluate on a continual basis. 

 

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Adopting a Growth Mindset: Committing To Invest Mostly in Marketing

 

Okay. So here again, let me make sure I’m tracking with you. So even if, you know, going back to an earlier point, somebody is running a $20 million company and they’re in an industry where the leaders are many times bigger than that.

 

So there’s no way they’re going to outspend the competition in trying to gain market share. So I think if I’m tracking with you, correct, don’t try to outspend and really think about what it is that you do and truly what it is that is unique and different, whether you want to call that unique selling proposition distinction, differentiation, whatever.

 

But truly like how you are being helpful to your audience? How are you adding value to the audience, to clients and so forth? And then that probably gets distilled down into a couple of key nuggets. But am I tracking with you so far? Yeah. No, you’re definitely tracking. And I think one thing to talk about when you say spend is I think successful challengers cannot and should not spend the same as a category leader.

 

It’s just not going to happen. And it’s understandable that it wouldn’t. But I think there has to be an investment readiness. Well, you can’t exceed the level of market leaders. I think in order to facilitate transformation, you need to be committed to investing probably a greater percentage of gross revenue in the marketing. Then I would say a comparably sized company with less ambition.

 

So that’s one thing. So I think that they’re not going to spend with the leaders, but they do need to invest, but they have to differentiate first. And that’s the biggest thing. And then they have to have restraint. That’s a big thing too, because the temptation is to look at the world now and the media channels and all the opportunities that the temptation is to chase a lot of things.

 

And I think the challengers that are winning right now, they focus. And they don’t get bored. They commit and they will commit through media channels that commit through messaging. They’ll commit through consistency of tone and voice. And these are really hard things. I think it’s making some sacrifices. That’s a difficult thing, I think, for people to wrap their head around when they have to go to market this way, but it’s important.

 

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Adopting a Growth Mindset: Focusing On a Niche

 

Yeah. Okay. So I think you just touched on a really important lesson, but here again, let me give that back to you. Make sure I’m understanding. So in order for a challenger to be successful competing against, you know, the larger whatever in their space or larger competitor, not only do they have to be differentiated, they have to really understand what makes them different.

 

But then they also, it sounds like you’re encouraging them to go narrow to maybe whether that’s to focus on a niche, you know, as opposed to trying to be everything to everybody. Here again, am I tracking with you? You’re tracking with me. Yes, that is absolutely correct so I think it’s being niche differentiation and then being entirely fascinating with every touchpoint.

 

And if you think about the touch points that I know now have to be paid media but, you know, you have a lot of owned media. So I don’t know if you’re an apparel company, just, you know, online apparel sales, for example, you know, that package shows up. What’s the package like what’s the experience of unboxing look like?

 

What’s the little message inside? Challenger’s like they don’t waste any real estate. And so they have to be fascinating at every single touchpoint. And that’s really important. So differentiation is fascinating. And then I mentioned a minute ago consistency. I think a lot of marketers get bored with themselves and realize, you know, they’re looking at the same thing all the time, but their customer base is not looking at as much as they have.

 

So just, you know, being consistent and being willing to double down and say, we’re going to run with this because we believe it to be good. That’s all that leads to brand advocacy. But it’s a challenge. It’s a challenge because it requires restraint. Well, I love that it does require restraint. It also requires discipline, doesn’t it?

 

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Adopting a Growth Mindset: The Brilliance in Staying the Course

 

Yeah, it does, it does. Yeah. And that’s sometimes difficult, especially when you’re herding cats or there’s a lot of decision makers, within a company, you know, is. Yeah, staying true, keeping the true north. I mean, I have conversations like this all the time with business owners. 

 

And my guess is you do too, based on what you just shared, where a business owner or maybe somebody who’s running marketing, you know, for the business owner is, well, we just had this campaign or we had this lead gen thing, or we just did this or whatever, and we did that for three months, and then we did this and did this as opposed to, you know, sometimes not sometimes, you know, like part of my point of view is go an inch wide and a mile deep. I know, you know. Right. 

 

It’s like, that’s kind of turned into this axiom that lots of people use. But there’s some real brilliance in that of staying the course, and not switching all the time.

 

Right. No, I think that’s true. And I could go back, you know, decades. But I think about, like, I mean, I think about, like, Jack in the Box going up against McDonald’s and Burger King and, you know, that kind of brand in the early days, if you think about how long Jack has been around right now, I mean, to this day, you turn on TV and there’s Jack.

 

Now, I’m not advocating everybody have the same character and play that out for their brand for two plus decades. But I think there are some learnings from brands like that, as opposed to others. It’s just just constantly changing messages and looks and they’re just confusing people, but yet, they’re throwing money at it. 

 

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Adopting a Growth Mindset: The Five Personalities of an Empowered Challenger

 

Yeah, that’s right. Okay. Well, this is awesome. Is there another big nugget that you’d like to share out of your book? Another big lesson? I think, yeah. The other big thing, I think that, you know, if you pick up the book and it’s an easy read, you can get it on a plane and maybe finish it by the time you get off.

 

But one thing I get into in the book, Stephen, is five personalities of an empowered challenger. So if you think about David having five stones to defeat Goliath, I think brands have five personality traits that are accessible to them at any time. So these personalities can really inspire the voice and tone of all the I mean, when we look at clients and we work with our clients, they inspire the brand archetypes of what we’re doing and work we’re doing for them because they win and they, you know, I track it back in the book to case studies and examples, but those five personalities, I get into in the book.

 

I think that hopefully you can read that and kind of challenge yourself to say, how can we apply this to our own brand? Does it make sense for us? Okay, so then if I’m a business owner, I get a copy of your book. I’m looking through it. I review the five personality traits. Then probably one within the five is going to resonate with that.

 

And then just because I don’t have your book in front of me, right now, but then through that, there’s some discussion about the personality, how that might play out as a challenger brand. And then might give me some clues into the type of strategy that I want to build as part of how I’m going to challenge the competitor.

 

Right? Yeah. Oh yeah. Definitely. And it can be through marketing. It can just be through how you operate as a company. It can be through your culture, your culture and your own people being your best brand advocates. But, and I don’t need to go through all of them, but I mean, there can be an overlap, too.

 

I mean, even you might look at it and say, well, we’re kind of a lightning rod. We can kind of adopt a lightning rod, you know, kind of polarizing in a way that advances our story. We can also foster rejection. So foster rejection is a personality that I call out. It’s really the challenger that commits to pleasing a select few.

 

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Adopting a Growth Mindset: Focusing On Specific Clients

 

So pushing away the masses in order to attract your most ardent fans. So, you know, there’s brands that do that really well, maybe they’re not for everyone and that’s good. That’s the way we like it. So you may say we’re a little bit of that and we’re a little bit of a lightning rod and we can use some of these personalities, to kind of overlay.

 

So I don’t think it’s as simple as going in and picking one and saying, we need to just focus on this, but get it. There’s probably some takeaways from each one. Yeah, it’s really smart. And also, quite frankly, it makes it fun. Yeah, it should be. It’s, you know, it should be fun.

 

Absolutely. Yeah. Well, this is a great way to start off the conversation. I mean, you are bringing the thunder and you’re being super, super helpful, being useful, being, you know, sharing your knowledge in a very positive way. Inspiring way. So this next question is going to feel a little bit weird. Just keep. Okay.

 

Because now I want to go 180 degrees in the complete opposite direction. So tell us the time when it was challenging for you, challenging for the business. And in that situation it could have devastated, maybe even ruined the company. But it didn’t. It didn’t because, Prentice, you made the tough decisions and now you can look back on that and say, okay, not so awesome, really valuable tuition.

 

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Adopting a Growth Mindset: Learning From Experience

 

I learned a lot. And that was although not a great experience, it really helped propel us forward. So tell us that story, Prentice. Oh, gosh. Okay. So I think I’m going to give you one kind of thematically. I don’t know if I can point to the date and time, but okay. But thematically, I think that we all sometimes get in situations where we have a little bit of a client concentration problem or an industry concentration problem.

 

And I guess what I mean by that is having too many eggs in one basket, whether it be a specific client or just like a category or an industry. So I think we have experienced that in the past and that can be frightening. And it’s nothing you want. And I don’t want to go so far as to say it almost devastated us, but I think you can get in those situations and, and for whether it’s a, you know, economic winds or whatever’s going on in the economy, things can change very quickly.

 

And so coming out of that and learning the importance of diversity, diversifying the client base was really important to me. And I think, you know, I know there’s a lot of great expertise when you get a niche and you only focus on one category. I think you just have to really be careful of what that category is. You know, we at one point had a lot of clients around experiential, like, I don’t that’s the right word to explain it, but, you know, like professional sports, travel tours and things that were experiences, you know, in a bad economy, some of those marketing spends are the first to go. 

 

So, you know, that’s a learning that I’ll always remember. And I think that I’ve tried to, you know, from, from our standpoint now we work with challenger brands, but we’re working in health care technology, consumer product goods, financial real estate, a real mix. And I think that served us well.

 

Yeah, really, really smart lesson. I mean, you still have a depth of expertise in each of those niches, right? And you’re building your expertise so that when somebody comes to you, they can see your thought leadership, they can see your smarts in each of those areas or niches. And so then you are distinctive against the other agencies that might be vying for that business.

 

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Adopting a Growth Mindset: Important Skill for a Business Owner to be Successful

 

But back in episode 515 Onward Nation, Drew drew McLellan, who’s the CEO of the Agency Management Institute, was talking about something similar. And I thought it was really, really smart how the two of you are on track with this. It is. Let’s find four niches. 3 or 4 niches go really deep in those niches, and let’s make sure that those niches have some level of connective tissue.

 

But if one of them fails, you’re still diversified, right? Yeah. That’s right. I have to go back and listen to that. That sounds like it was probably a really good one. But yeah, I can identify with that. And I think it’s good learning. Yeah. So like going all in on real estate. Not awesome in 2008.

 

No, no. And you know, not awesome at all. You know we had the contracts with Hyatt and W and we had some professional sports clients, and you know, travel tourism stuff. So. Yeah. So yeah, that’s right. But, you learn from those things and move on. But I think it’s, I don’t want to go so far as to say complete diversification where there’s no throughline or no, like, narrative or, you know, you still want to have that.

 

And we do. We do. So what do you think is, I mean, you’ve been a business owner now for a while. You work with many business owners as clients. And so you’re obviously every single day you’re in, like, that business owner realm. So, given that broad base of experience, with respect to mindset and skills, I mean, what do you think is the most important skill for a business owner to be successful today?

 

That’s it. Oh, you come well, you come with the questions. This is a good one. I mean, I think social intelligence and empathy are really high up there. You know, I don’t think it’s, I’m not the smartest guy in the room. I have really smart people here that know what they know, and I’m so thankful for that.

 

But hopefully empathy and of being a listener and having some social intelligence and all of that is really important. It’s critical. 

 

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Adopting a Growth Mindset: Being Committed to Self-Improvement

 

The other thing I would say, I guess would be, it’s thundering in the background here in Austin, Texas, hopefully get rid of some of that heat. Yeah. And that’ll just get muggy and swampy.

 

No, the other one I would say is being selfish is just a little weird. But I’ll explain it. Be selfish so you can be selfless. I think that it took me a while to figure out but, you know, that expression is kind of like putting on your own oxygen masks, you can help others. And that seems very selfish.

 

But once I realized that I needed to be fully committed to my own self improvement, whether that be, you know, physical, mental, spiritual, and to avoid burnout, then I’m a better person at work. I’m a better person for my wife, better person for my kids. And I just spend a lot of time with business owners and see really smart people, really driven people that are just so unhealthy and they’re falling apart and they look bloated and you just kind of go, man, that’s I’m sure they’re killing it right now, but I don’t know how long it’s going to last.

 

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Adopting a Growth Mindset: The Most Influential Lesson from a Mentor

 

So that’s just one thing I try to keep an eye on. Yeah, I love this. Okay, so as driven as you are about hanging out with smart people, being a smart person yourself, being, like, continually pushing yourself to learn, my guess is, and I’m just making an assumption because you and I did not talk about this in the green room.

 

But my guess is you’ve had some pretty amazing mentors in your past. And, so tell us about the most influential lesson that you ever learned from one of your mentors and how that lesson is still paying dividends today, how that lesson and his has helped you become the business owner that you are today? I have had some really good mentors.

 

Yeah. I mean, all the way back from school, I went to SMU and had, you know, David Slayton, a great professor there that got me going. I’ve had another guy that owned the agency, some of the best agencies around the country, smaller firms too, that punched above their weight. Bart Cleveland, you know, at one point, I decided I wanted to meet him, like, I just was in Austin, and I didn’t.

 

I knew him a little bit, but I just picked up the phone. I said, Bart, I know we’ve only talked a few times, but I want to fly out too. He’s in New Mexico at the time. I want to fly out there and spend an entire day shadowing you and just get to know you and love you.

 

And I was never ashamed of doing that. And to this day, he’s a friend. And a mentor. So I think it’s good to always have mentors. And even as you get older, maybe a reverse mentor, maybe it’s good to have someone that’s 20 years younger than you that can mentor you in a whole different perspective.

 

But I’ll tell you the one thing that a good friend of mine, a successful business owner here in Austin, told me, Prentice, the business exists to serve you. And I remember when he told me what I thought, and that sounds a little selfish. I mean, I think about our clients, and I think about my team, and I think about, you know, the people that have worked here.

 

And I feel like it’s here to serve them. And I think it goes back to what I was saying a minute ago is just, you know, putting on your own oxygen mask first. There’s so much truth in that that I now understand is the business exists to serve you. Because if it doesn’t serve you, if I don’t love coming in and if I don’t love my business, and if it doesn’t work for me and I’m not just talking financially or, you know, perks of being able to work remote or whatever I’m just talking about at the core.

 

If it doesn’t serve me, then it’s not going to serve my clients and it’s not going to serve the team. So I finally got my head around that and I just think about it all the time, and I loved it. I thought it was great advice. It is great advice because if it doesn’t serve you, then all you’ve done is taken on a very risky job.

 

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Adopting a Growth Mindset: Success Leaves Clues

 

That’s exactly right. Yeah. No and I’m going to be totally honest with you, I didn’t know I don’t think I had figured that out early on. I, because I was, you know, honestly, I was an employee at different agencies around the country. I had not owned my own business until this. So it took a little bit of time.

 

And to get that. But the way you just summed it up is the exact concept. Yeah. So take this inside the call here. I think you said his name was Bart, when he was in New Mexico and you picked up the phone, called him and said, hey, I want to come do a shout out. I just want to get to know you better.

 

I want to shadow you for a day. Yeah. And here’s why I’m asking this as a follow up here. Because I think that most business owners, I’m sort of generalizing here, but most business owners kind of fantasize, dream about having that mentor, that person that they can learn from or that they can learn from, yet they’re not willing to do what you did.

 

That takes courage and guts, and you got a reward for it. So take us inside that just a little bit deeper there. There’s a good lesson there. Yeah. I, you know, remain a friend to this day, so I got a lot out of it. But I think you just being willing to do it, you know, it was kind of a crazy, feel crazy thing to call someone up out of the blue and say, I want to fly out and spend time with you and just follow you around, but the thing that I have learned is, success leaves clues, and there’s there’s pattern recognition, and I’ve.

 

I’ve really tried to tap into that with everything I want to learn or get better at is to, you know, you don’t have to go figure it out yourself. There’s someone out there that’s done it in part at the time, had owned as a partner, a few different agencies around the country that was doing some of the most noteworthy work.

 

I would say probably working with challenger brands, and just doing great. And I figured I’m going to go there and I’m going to follow him around and see his temperament, see how he talks to his teams, how he gives feedback on creative, how he runs the agency, what the artwork looks like. And I came back from that and it was like a week later, we had artwork hanging around the office in the I got the exact I remember I got the exact same frames that he had in his office.

 

I just thought I, you know, I could go on Ikea and Crate and Barrel and figure out, you know, where to find these frames. They look great. And I’m going to go ahead and take this whole steal like an artist thing. Right. But it’s not going to hurt anybody. I mean he doesn’t care. But you know, whether it was the frames of how we feature our work on the hallways, the office, how to talk to teams, how to give positive feedback.

 

I mean, I just, you know, go to the source, go to the people that you admire that are doing it. And it’s whether you want to learn drums or be a better leader. If you know, it’s funny I say that because I decided at age 45 that I’m going to learn how to play the drums. 

 

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Adopting a Growth Mindset: The Impact of Having a Mentor

 

So it’s like the same thing, you know, it’s just, you know, you got to go all in and find somebody great and learn from them.

 

So it’s like I said, success leaves clues and it’s good to just, kind of go for it and find that mentor, that person that can give you the shortcut. So, would you agree that it was a shortcut, like, did it compress your learning curve? Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, at the time, I was executive creative director, that was my title.

 

So I know and that’s what Bart always did and was so good at it. It was a title that I was given because I had hung around long enough, liked and worked at different agencies. Now. I mean, I’m saying that kind of was a joke, but there’s some truth in it, too. You kind of get these titles and you go, what does this mean?

 

And then no one’s explained it to you other than, you know, you’ve been around long enough and you got the experience to get the title. So and then you got to go soak it in. And so it did shorten things for me. It was really helpful. And you know, he’s a guy to this day, I would want to meet up for lunch and you can continue to learn from, it’s a powerful mentorship lesson, that great conversation.

 

I mean, you just really were super, super helpful to our organization business owners, just like I knew that you would be. That was fantastic. But before we go, before we close out and say goodbye, it lets me just check. Anything you think we might have missed, anything that you would still like to cover? And then please do tell us the best way to connect with you?

 

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Adopting a Growth Mindset: Final Advice from Prentice

 

The thing I would say is. And we say it here and it’s not a real word. So I’ll forewarn you. But we say embrace your challenge, your ability. So embrace your challenge or ability like I mean there’s so much beauty in being boxed in and knowing what you can push up against.

 

And, you know, in writing the book, in writing any book, you learn so much, you don’t know everything going on. And so I got the chance to talk to a lot of challenger brands, founders and CMOs and things like that. And they, you know, what seemed like constraints or restraints or, disadvantage is they have figured out how to make those their own advantage.

 

And it’s in they just, you know, and they’ve been on both sides of it of being a smaller brand that has to be scrappy and being and, you know, the giant brand that has all the resources in the world and all of them, all of them say they’d rather be at the smaller, you know, the smaller setting to be able to just really, we between the toes of giants.

 

So, Yeah. Embrace your challenge, your ability. Find the beauty there. It’s a pretty amazing spot to be. Love it. 

 

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Adopting a Growth Mindset: How to Connect with Prentice

 

Best way for Onward Nation business owners to connect with you, Prentice. Yeah. Dn3Austin.com is our website. I’m on LinkedIn. Just my first name, last name – Prentice Howe. Same on Instagram. So I’m on a few places on the internet.

 

Okay. Onward Nation, no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back and relisten to prentice’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do. The key is to take all of this knowledge, all of the lessons, all of the steps, all of the advice that he shared with you so generously. Take it and apply it into your business right away and accelerate your results and Prentice, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day, my friend. 

 

And I am so very grateful that you said yes. You came on to the show that you are our mentor and our guide to help us move our businesses onward to that next level. Thank you so much, my friend. Thank you so much, Stephen. I appreciate you having me on. 

 

This episode is complete. So head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.

 

Listen to this podcast to learn more about adopting a growth mindset