March 6, 2026 – The Moralists Glen Dunzweiler and Be More Strategic Charlie Curson

0:04 Jim Beach : Broadcasting from am and FM stations around the country. We don’t have time for the introduction today. This show is cram packed with two great interviews. First up, we have Glenn dunswell, our probably the number one homeless advocate out there. He’s got a new product out called the moralist, a book. It is fantastic. It’s a great interview. After that, Charlie Curson is with us, talking about be more strategic. Let’s get started. I’m very excited to welcome back to the show. Glen dunswiler, he is a producer, filmmaker, speaker, but number one, he is a homelessness advocate. Everything he has done has been trying to help the homelessness problem. He has a document out called Why homeless, and it’s on Amazon Prime. He has several books out. One is called a degree in homelessness, entrepreneurial skills for students. And he has a new book out now called the moralists. It is a novel thought experiment. Glenn, welcome back to the show. How are you

1:03 Glen Dunzweiler : doing? I’m doing well. Thank you so much for having me.

1:07 Jim Beach : All right, the new book, it’s a thriller, suspense, socio political situation book. Wow. This means, what is the tell us about it.

1:19 Glen Dunzweiler : Yeah, so I see us not solving homelessness, and in fact, the past 10 years, we have tried to embrace housing first and harm reduction, which means we’ve taken a lot of public money and not really done anything to get people off of the street, which is making people angry and with our observance of rule of law, we are liable and afraid of liability, so you can’t just take people off of the street. That’s called kidnapping. So I was doing a thought experiment. I thought, all right, well, what if there was a group that just said, No, we’re just going to make things happen. We are going to do things regardless of whether it’s legal or not. What would that look like in the United States? Because I know a lot of people are sick and tired of it. In fact, I’m afraid we’re going to go back into insane asylums and internment camps, because people are so tired of people living on the street and not agreeing to play by the Get a job to pay rent, game that we all have agreed on. So what does that actually look like? And I spent a few years going through all the details of if a group, a grassroots group, kind of an online grassroots group, decided to take on these tenets of how to live a successful life, and then started deciding whose life is worth living and how that would work out. And it kind of goes through that. One of the things that we do in that that happens in the book, is we have rich benefactors, because it costs a lot of money to support people, and we have a sad camp so people that are depressed on the street get basically kidnapped and gone, taken to an island, and those people are said, Okay, this is a rehabilitation program. We are here to support you. And after a year, if you can’t get it together, well then we will deal with that when we get to it. And we’re really talking about making hard decisions. Yeah, I mean, it really like when I was trying to think about it, it’s like, well, what happens when a person can’t be rehabilitated? Think about it in the in the world, if a person can’t or won’t take care of themselves, then we just have to take care of them. And can we accept that? And in the moralist world, they decided that that just gets too expensive. And so now it gets, you get to you have kind of like these socialist ideals about caring for each other. But in order to get to those socialist ideals, we end up running into fascist path. You know, like, well, what? Wow. Okay, this is what would happen, because we have kind of come to a head in this country of we’re just so tired of people not being able to or not playing the game. Well, what would it look like if people started deciding you need to live your life better.

4:24 Jim Beach : All right, this is, excuse me, absolutely fascinating. The idea that people refuse help isn’t that 99.9% of the time either mental illness or drug related.

4:42 Glen Dunzweiler : It can be people come to it from different points. And in the book, I have a sad camp, I have a mad camp and I have a bad camp. So sad camp is for people that are depressed, mad camp for people that are mentally ill and bad camp is for people that

4:56 Jim Beach : are violent. Is there a camp? Yeah. Karen, yeah.

5:00 Glen Dunzweiler : And of course, all of this, all of this in your dream world sounds great, but where does the money come from? You know, and I have rich benefactors, because that’s the thing that that internment camps and saying asylums the reason they got ended. Well, they got bad reputations, but they were so expensive, especially insane asylums, you know, just to upkeep those people that can’t take care of themselves. We run into this problem of well, we want to take care of people, but we don’t want to spend the money, and then we want to take care of people well, but there are some people that are really difficult, and those people to be taken taken care of. Who takes care of them, and are those people hurt by the people that are difficult to take care of? And are we just perpetuating madness? I had a co worker that once would say, stop the bleeding, and and I just kind of took that guideline and put it into the book. And by the way, there are no answers in this book, because that that breeds major conflict. You start doing illegal stuff on the street, people start disappearing. Media is going to ask, people are going to say, Whoa, what? What’s happening? And we always want someone to be the bad guy. And so the moralist there’s, there’s always a good faction of the moralist, that do good things, and then there are these people that say, Well, we have to make hard decisions. And so in the moral list, there’s a divide and the separation of, should we even have these people that are making these hard decisions, because they’re bringing the rest of us down? You know, some of the people in the moralist, the whole idea is, you have these tenants, human life is equal, regardless of circumstance, human life is to be respected and cared for. Humans will work to support and improve the lives of themselves and others. Human life is important until it’s not. Nature will win. Nature takes care of itself. Humans must take care of human life while respecting nature. And direct positive action is the best action, and direct action is better than no action. So you have these people living these ideals, and then you have people that are taking that a little too far. And then you have copycat crimes, people that say, Well, you know, people riding scooters on the sidewalk. That’s not a very moralist thing. So then they get in street fights about taking scooters away from people, or, you know, other people doing illegal activities, tagging graffiti. There are people that have taken in the book, have taken violent action to stop people from graffitiing walls. So it kind of builds on, builds more problems than we’re trying to solve, or just as many problems as we’re trying to solve. And so that’s really what the thought experiment was. Is, you know, I’ve been on so many interviews, and people will say, Well, why don’t we just and I thought, Okay, why don’t we just take the homeless? Well, what does that look like?

7:56 Jim Beach : Yeah, great idea. Glenn, this is, I’m definitely going to read this. It sounds very dystopian, but then I read an article in the paper yesterday about the Canada’s aid program. Do you know about their maid program?

8:11 Glen Dunzweiler : No, I’m not familiar

8:12 Jim Beach : with it. It’s m, a little I capital D, and it is mental illness, and if you are deemed mentally ill, they will euthanize you in a hospital setting and make it as pain less as possible. But get ready for this. You can get diagnosed and euthanized within 24 hours, right?

8:40 Glen Dunzweiler : So then we get to the eugenics stuff that we hit the early 19th, right, right? You because You have and then, and then one of the things that I started covering, I thought, Okay, well, this just for homeless. If you have enough money, can you be a non moral person? Is this just for poor people? And I thought, well, it can’t be just for poor people. So then I started looking at, well, what if rich people were acting badly? Would the moralists do something about that? And because, especially in the US, you can do more with the more money that you have. Right people are a little more lacks on your your decisions in life. The less money you have the less bad decisions you can make. And I just thought, well, I don’t that doesn’t sound very moral. So what if I start throwing rich people into the mix? And of course, rich people are connected, so they start disappearing. They know who to call, and they’re trying to figure out, you know, the moves to make, and they know the legal structure. And they don’t have to navigate in ignorance. They navigate connected with with authority. And so now you have a bigger problem, where you know, if you get rid of a rich kid, which happens in the novel, well, then the father is going to do his best to figure out what happened. And so the moral Olis are trying to keep that out from from happening. And. And trying to keep things secretive, and kind of trying to keep things moving, while there are other people in the book that are just trying to do good things like clean streets and give out food and try to house people and help veterans you know, or make women feel safer with empowering themselves, with different types of, you know, self defense, or whatever that may be. So you have this, this, this huge mess that you create just by trying to answer these very difficult questions.

10:31 Jim Beach : Last week, Keanu favian, 26 year old, diabetes and seasonal depression, was killed using Canada’s medical assistance in dying program. Yeah, seasonal depression. Glen, hell, I can qualify with seasonal depression.

10:53 Glen Dunzweiler : And we, we do not like, well, the 110, one tenant life is important until it’s not. People in the book have a real problem with that, because you hear because you hear that, you think, what does that mean? Well, look at the people in Cuba right now that we are starving because we’ve just cut off all their oil. You know, their life is important, until we decide, no, we don’t like what you’re doing, so we are just going to make you live in trash. And that stuff happens all the time worldwide, and we do not like putting together life is important and well, your life isn’t important because of this reason and this reason and this reason. We hate trying to make those two worlds fit, but we do it all the time. And the moralists admit that some decisions have to be made for reasons. So life is important until it’s not. And suicide is another thing. Like, we don’t like people that take their own lives, but we also say, my body, my choice. You know, we just have these things in our that are in conflict all the time, and the moralists try to pull that out. Hopefully, the end of someone asked me what the goal is, and I said, the goal is to work through your own difficult questions you’re willing to tackle. Because the problem, especially with homelessness, is we just want someone else to take take care of it, and that there never works. It’s the answer is, what can I do? And you don’t have to do everything, but what can I do to make the people around me better? Because I’ve noticed homelessness comes from two things, the degradation of family and community and us looking at property as a real estate investment instead of shelter, and those two things are working together to kill it, just create problem after problem. So it’s as an audience, if you can read the moral list and see, well, you I don’t want to go down that path. What path do I want to go down to try and be helpful? Because there are helpful paths. There are points that people can go to and then not go to, certain points that they may feel uncomfortable with so.

13:02 Jim Beach : Glenn, what is your personal opinion? Money, no object. Money, no object. What should happen to someone who is addicted or someone who has clear mental problem? What, in your opinion, as an expert on homelessness, what should happen? Money, no object, sure.

13:19 Glen Dunzweiler : Well, our Utopia would be being able to spend as much money as possible to make that person as comfortable as possible for as long as they live. But if you can’t take care of yourself, that’s more than full three full time jobs to take care of one person. So now we’re looking at four or five people earning a full time living to take care of one person, and that is that’s just not sustainable. There’s no way people get neglected. So then hospitals have to say, Okay, well, we have this three staff. They can’t take care of just one person. They have to take care of 25 and so the 25 patients obviously get neglected, and we because we don’t like even medical assisted suicide. We don’t even like it when, when the person says, Please, can you let me die? Like no, you have to stay alive, because life is important. But, yeah, I think if we had enough money, we’ll take care of everybody, but that’s a utopian dream. We all that we know that is never, ever going to happen, and people are difficult. You know, you have someone that has hallucinations, that is violent. Do you keep them in a straight jacket all the time? Is life, for life’s sake, more important than quality of life? I personally am a quality of life guy. I like people to enjoy being alive, and if they don’t enjoy it, then maybe you don’t be alive. But. Some people are life for life’s sake. And I don’t know if we have answers to that, we just have opinions.

15:09 Jim Beach : You ever had a kidney stone? Glenn,

15:13 Glen Dunzweiler : I have been hit by multiple distracted drivers, so recovering from being hit by a Dodge Durango. I personally don’t want to do it anymore. I wish that people, if I get hit by another distracted driver, I hope they end me. I hope they just they keep naming me, and it’s so brutal because it takes me out, and I have to rebuild my life. And I’ve been I’ve had to rebuild my life three times because a distracted driver decided to run into me. So, yeah, I know, never a kidney stone, but I know the pain. You know?

15:51 Jim Beach : Yes, yes, I have chronic kidney stones because my bladder is about the size of a peanut, and so I’m just, I get kidney stones, and every time it happens, I’m like, please just kill me right now. It’s, you know, the pain is, you know, it goes on for weeks, and then it’s three operations to take care of it, and the last operation, Glen, is usually done under a local when they take a McDonald’s coffee, stir out of your penis with you watching them do that. Oh, yeah, yeah. Never want to have sex again, you know. Just take it off. Cut it off, you know, yeah, yeah.

16:35 Glen Dunzweiler : I’ve had to deal with chronic pain for a little bit, but that stuff is maddening. If you are in constant pain and it never gets better, that will drive you over the edge. And I I feel for those people, I feel if you’re in chronic pain and you want your life to end, I don’t understand why we have a problem with that, but I do understand that that medical professionals get to make decisions on what they do, like you just can’t tell someone, hey, you need to end me now. You need to kill me now that they get their their choice of of whether they perform that act. And that’s another kind of really hard thing to swallow is, oh yeah, my, my, my profession is I, I kill people. Wow, that’s, that’s brutal, you know, on yourself and the people around you.

17:35 Jim Beach : My daddy was a pathologist, which is two things they do, autopsies that’s very rare, but mostly they just look at slides and tell you whether that’s cancerous or not. But because he was the pathologist, he had access to the morgue. And on weekends, my brother and I would go and play hide and go seek in the morgue. Wow, that’s a fun thing to do. There were never any bodies there. My father wouldn’t have let us do it if they were going to find bodies. But any way, I’m addicted right now to Oxy. Totally addicted. I also had gillion barre. I woke up partially paralyzed, like 25 years ago, and I got better, of course, but the pain stayed, and so I’m on oxy four times a day, and I’ve asked the doctors, what is our plan to stop this? Yeah, there’s no plan. You’re just gonna do it until you die. You know? Yeah, no plan, yeah, at all.

18:29 Glen Dunzweiler : When I when my mother died of cancer, the whole idea, I learned what palliative care is, and it’s just drugging people so they don’t even know they’re conscious anymore, until they drown in their own fluid. And I just thought, is this humane? This is wild,

18:48 Jim Beach : yeah, because you can’t interact with your family or anything. There’s your family just sits there and watches you die. That’s a horrible situation. I’ve been there too, so yeah,

18:57 Glen Dunzweiler : and so in the book, you know, people die on the street all the time. So now we take them, we kidnap them, and we bring them to the sad camp to hopefully rehabilitate but it’s not like a medical professional camp. So people die at the sad camp, and then there’s this whole idea of, okay, well now someone is dead, and that’s a PR liability. So how do we not make this something that blows up in our face. And so then, then the moralists have to get rid of the bodies, you know? That’s not a good that’s not a good look, you know. So, yeah.

19:32 Jim Beach : So, Glenn, let me interrupt. Sorry to change topics here. We’re kind of running out of time. You’re la based right, correct, isn’t that the epicenter of all of this? Isn’t that the worst? Yeah, in the United States, yeah, to me, isn’t you know, someone who looks at California is where La La Land is that it’s just getting worse. You haven’t started rebuilding after the fires. Um. Um, correct. My God, it seems like a tractor wreck dumpster, you know? Yeah, after,

20:07 Glen Dunzweiler : after the fires, I thought, oh, maybe something will change, because now rich, connected people lost their houses, and it’s amazing, they’re just as stuck as the drug addict on the street, they can’t they have more money for hotels and Airbnbs, and maybe they can buy a new place, but the Pacific Palisades is still not being built, and the bureaucracy is just maddening to all these people that you would think could skirt past the bureaucracy. So I don’t know if that’s good or bad.

20:43 Jim Beach : I think it’s horrible. Karen Bass, I think is just a horrible mayor. I can’t imagine. I’m just not impressed.

20:51 Glen Dunzweiler : Yeah, well, we’ve got, we’ve had, now, I think three nonprofits in a row that are homeless nonprofits where the leadership has gotten in trouble for embezzling funds. So we do not have the answer. People are going for short term goals, and they’re selling people a false, good story, and they’re not doing it. And so I thought that this was also a time for me to just say, what, what are we doing? Would the moralists approve of this, you know, just kind of a reminder that kind of moral police that other countries have that are usually religious. I tried to answer that in a secular way in this book, because we kind of need it. We don’t have guidance. We’re just, we’re just exploiting each other. And It’s wild.

21:39 Jim Beach : It’s absolutely wild. It is. It is so scary that government is stopping so many good programs. I heard the other day that the government, American government, has spent $48 billion that’s not right. Maybe it was 4.8 trillion and the world to fix environmental issues, and they can’t point out a single thing that they’ve done to make the environment better, you know, because worse, they say, than 10 years ago or whatever seems very What about putting AI in charge Glen and letting AI decide it?

22:25 Glen Dunzweiler : That would be wild. I had an instance with my publisher too. Yeah, I had an instance. So I’m, I’m published through books.by that’s where you can give my, my, my stuff, and that, that company is through Australia, and they have AI as a respondent for you. That’s 24 hours. But I was asking a detail on publishing my book, and the AI agents hallucinated an answer that was untrue. This is my own publishing platform, right? So I had to wait to get to a real person, and they said, Oh, no, that’s not true. I said, Wait, your own AI agent is lying to me about publishing my own book, which I’m paying you for. This is wild. So, yeah, I don’t know that AI is the answer, because it’ll just, it’ll tell you the good story too, which is a flat out lie.23:17 Jim Beach : Yes, unbelievable. And you know what you you pointed out at the beginning that a lot of people ask you, what about what about this? What about this? And I’m sitting here playing with, what about in my brain, and I’m coming up with nothing. You know? You know, there’s just not a solution to the problem. You know, Atlanta’s solution. We have the World Cup coming this summer, and I guess I don’t think LA does is not one of the cities, I don’t think, but what we’re giving the homeless, one way, bus tickets, right? Kind of more value is that

23:51 Glen Dunzweiler : yeah, I tell people, it’s, it’s about thinking about your community, and about thinking what direct action, direct positive action you can do. I’ve had, excuse me, I’ve had two real success stories in helping homeless people. One, I happened before I lost my house out of the housing crisis, I got an old church lady back off the street. She was living behind a grocery store. She was not a drug addict. She her parent, her mother. She stopped working to help her mother. As her mother got older, her mother died, and then she lost housing and didn’t have a job. So within six months of giving her housing and phone minutes and a bus pass, we got her back on her feet, and that was a success story, and that’s one person, but it’s me and me and my resources getting someone back. And the other one was a little one, but I used to do this Youtube series called Skid Row speakers, where I would go pay homeless people for words of inspiration that I could videotape and then put on YouTube. And what that did is it brought them back into this. Society of, oh, I’m you think I’m worth something, and then they’re like, Oh, I am worth I have something to share, and you’re going to pay me for that, and I’m going to give you my business card, and so I can tell you where this is going to be published. And I did that to this woman that was a drug addict in Las Vegas, the flower lady. And two weeks later she called me and she said, you know, because of your interview, I realized that my life was worth living, and I went back into rehab. Now, I don’t know if she stayed in rehab, but that’s what we can do, the stuff that’s right in front of us, and we get to celebrate those wins. Hey, I got a lady to go back into rehab. Hey, I got an old church lady off of the street and back into jobs and back into society, and I get to be proud of that. And if you can do little things like that, the little things help. And the more people that do little things, the more help that happens. That’s where we are. Instead of trying these big rubber stamp sweeps of, can’t we just give a nonprofit $5 billion and they can just handle it. No, they’re not. They’re gonna steal the money.

26:05 Jim Beach : You remember the movie Groundhog Day? Yeah, yeah, there’s the old man in that movie. And what’s the guy’s name, the actor, Bill Murray. Bill Murray tries to save the old man every time he dies. And yeah, Murray has to give up, because that man is, it’s his time. And, yeah, that was sometimes you just have to

26:28 Glen Dunzweiler : give up. You sometimes you just can’t do anything. And we also have, we don’t like to admit that we, we are born especially in the US. You know, we’re the amazing us. We can do anything. Well, no, really, we can do a lot, but sometimes you just can’t wrap

26:46 Jim Beach : it up 20 seconds. Where do we get books.by?

26:51 Glen Dunzweiler : The moralists and or you can go to my you can go to moralist.com or Glenn dunswater Calm. If you can spell my last name, you can find me Glen.

27:00 Jim Beach : Thank you so much for being with us. He’s really challenged. Me, and I’m going to read this one. Thanks a lot, beautiful. Bye, and we will be right back.

27:21 Jim Beach : Welcome back and again. Thank you so very much for being with us today. Very excited to introduce a great guest. Please welcome Charlie Curzon to the show. He is a strategist, leadership coach, author and investor. He has a new book out called be more strategic, 12 essential practices to build the life and career you want. It is five star rated on that Amazon place. He is also the founder and CEO of Mandarin associates. They are a strategy development firm, and he’s worked with companies like Visa, McDonald’s, Unilever Experian, Volkswagen, L’Oreal Barclays, to name just a few. Charlie, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?28:07 Charlie Curson : I’m very well. Jim, really kind of used to have me on the show. Very generous. A very generous introduction. Thank you,

28:13 Jim Beach : Olis, pleasure to have you so be more strategic you get. You’re sort of implying with this title that I get to choose, that I have a voice in what my future turns out to be is that, are you being so bold? I thought it was all predetermined.

28:32 Charlie Curson : That’s a great that’s a great opening question. I guess it is a choice, I guess in many ways, being strategic, rather than probably being more of a planner or being operational is very much a choice in many ways. I think strategy versus planning, they are quite different things, and you see that certainly in the corporate corporate world, but you also see it in life. What’s the difference? I think, simply put, planning is more sequencing actions. It feels safe. It’s the easy option, it’s especially appealing to those who like to be in control. And certainty strategy is about choices. It is dealing in the uncertain. It is increasing exposure. It is therefore uncomfortable, and therefore it is something that people can certainly learn to do and do better and apply it, I think, in their everyday lives. Who’s Billy?

29:25 Jim Beach : Who’s Billy? Billy?

29:27 Charlie Curson : Actually, if I’m allowed to say names originally, someone referred to Charlie, doesn’t mean I could be a little bit more Yoda, with the nod to our friends in the galaxy. And so Billy was an attempt to create a fictional character who epitomizes all the 12 practices that I believe being more strategic constitutes. So a few people have already commented to me that they recognize Billy in their CEO or a former partner. They used to work with that sort of thing. But they are, they are a somewhat fictional character, really.

29:59 Jim Beach : All right. You. Let’s dive in and talk a little bit more about it. How does the brain work, and how is that relevant to our conversation about being more strategic? Chapter Two, yeah, well, without

30:12 Charlie Curson : getting into too much depth, my late father was a psychiatrist, so I grew up, I was telling you about the brain, I think, in very simple terms, without, you know, going too much detail. If you imagine the brain shape, we have a sort of upstairs and downstairs brain, the upstairs brain, longer term, thought, judgment, creativity, reasoning, a lot of it gets turned off the moment emotions start to gather. So as the limbic system starts to pay attention. We feel under threat that doesn’t have to be a target jumping out at you, that could be sitting in a board meeting, and you feeling judged or defensive, we tend to go downstairs. And unfortunately, with being downstairs, we’re not really tuning into our full potential, full capacity. And I think therefore, to my previous point about, you know, dealing with uncertainty and risk and threat and needing to be bold and make choices. If people are permanently maybe as a result of their roles under pressure, targets, etc, people tend to operate downstairs most of the time. They are more reactive than they are creative.

31:18 Jim Beach : Okay, I think that’s very true. All right, let’s dive into some of the practices that we should be using, being curious and being a learner. Talk to me about that.

31:31 Charlie Curson : Well, it might sound obvious, maybe, but I certainly noticed working with 1000s of managers and leaders around the world, running a lot of workshops and events that not everyone is naturally curious. I think it’s something we can learn to do. I think that you know the great work of the growth mindset. You know, growth mindset versus fixed mindset. Carol Dweck talks a lot about being a learner, being open minded, and I think it’s something we can probably all learn to do, even if you know, for someone listening to this, even in your next conversation, maybe walk into that conversation aware of what you might be assuming and adopt a mindset of in this conversation, I’m going to learn something, and it’s amazing how that changes your mindset.

32:14 Jim Beach : Yes, I’m not you know, maybe this is a cultural difference, but here in America, I’m pretty sure that learning after college has been outlawed. I’m pretty sure

32:26 Charlie Curson : it’s probably true here too. Actually,

32:30 Jim Beach : you have no free speech anymore, from what I understand.

32:34 Charlie Curson : I’ll avoid drifting onto politics, but I hear you completely. I think you’re right, though. I think actually, there’s a slight irony in this, which is often when you work with people who have a lot of academic qualifications. Unfortunately, if anything, they become in many ways, less curious, less of a learner. If that makes sense, you get that slight trait of, you know, I know the answer, or I told you so and so. I think there is something about tapping into that childlike curiosity that a little bit too much education can rather dim in. A lot of people

33:09 Jim Beach : tell me about your business, the Mandarin associates. How do you make money? What do you do? I do a few things.

33:18 Charlie Curson : I came from a strategy consulting world originally, but I was rather overwhelmed by my business, and I personally find that strategy and developing strategy for companies the world over requires a lot more people. It requires large groups of people. It requires insight and provocations. It does obviously require a bit of a process, but you don’t need endless amounts of analysis and slides, necessarily. So at Mandarin, we do three things. We help companies to develop their strategies and help to execute them. I’m also a qualified coach, and I work with a group of other coaches, and we work on an executive level, executive coaching. And I guess, the middle ground and what the book really where it spawns from, and what I do mostly is capability building, so working with leaders existing and emerging around developing this strategic capability. And in many ways, Jim, that is the reason for the name of the book. Being more strategic is probably the most common question or conversation that would arrive at my door. People being told that in a job interview or they’re going for promotion, and they keep being told, I need to be more strategic, apparently, but I don’t know what it means. So that’s, that’s what we that’s what we do, that’s what we help and enable other businesses and teams to do.

34:37 Jim Beach : All right, so you worked for McDonald’s, I think was one on the list art It was, yeah, I’m sorry, go ahead. What? No, you’re right, yes, a little

34:47 Charlie Curson : while ago, works in over 30 sectors, actually, over the years. So I’m not a sector specialist. It’s much more of a competency that, in many ways, working across lots of industries is, is very helpful. You know. Taking someone who’s worked in the airline industry to meet someone who works in FMCG, for example, or retail or hospitality can be surprisingly informative and insightful for them.

35:12 Jim Beach : All right. So what kind of deliverable would you have for McDonald’s or visa or Unilever walk us through an engagement sort of understanding, maybe, maybe you can make it generic, so you don’t, you know, give away any particular client information, but walk us through an engagement and the deliverable.

35:29 Charlie Curson : Yeah, okay, I’ll give you, yeah, I think in the strategy development side, a classic one would be, I’ll base this on a real story without naming names. Major global corporate had a couple of years working with a quite famous consultancy, and in their words, we spent a lot of money and achieved nothing. And so what they asked was, could I assemble a SWAT team to basically repeat the process far faster, far more creatively and to create a far more ambitious outcome, something that they could pursue over the next three to five years. That was 10x revenue generation. Dot, dot, dot, that sort of thing. So the process was one of over a few months, a lot of insight, quite a lot of workshopping, a lot of divergent and convergent sort of thinking. And it resulted, ultimately, to your question in a proposition for a new business and a business case and business plan that was taken to the executive and signed off. The powerful thing in that process, I think, is involving that many people and a huge amount of insight and provocation, so that when you get into execution, you have at least 100 plus people who are already on board. In fact, in that particular story, the amazing thing with that story was they ended up acquiring a business part way through the process, because it became so evident to them that a transaction they’ve been sitting on for a good couple of years was clearly the right the right path to take hope that hope that answers your question.

37:04 Jim Beach : All right. Back to the book. Another one of the practices here is be present, be a listener. And people ask me all the time about this as a frequent conversation. I’m a huge introvert, and because I’m an introvert, I naturally listen more than talk. I don’t want to talk. I want you to talk. And so how is this part of a way to build your life?

37:31 Charlie Curson : I think listening is an absolute superpower. I think many people, until it gets mentioned to them, they would answer, yeah, I’m an okay listener. I might be with a CEO when they might say to me, yeah, yeah, I don’t need any help with listening, Charlie, I’m a I’m a very good listener. And you can run a couple of very quick tests and practices, and they quickly realize that they’re not they’re often inside their own heads. They might be rehearsing their answer. They might be second guessing what the person is going to say. They’re probably judging and filtering. There are a whole variety of what you might call barriers to listening. I think when someone starts to recognize their barriers, I think people start to become much more present. I think if your natural default gym as an introvert is to listen, that’s a that’s a great place to start. I think it’s a shame there aren’t more people in the world who do that. I think when you start getting into the detail of it, certainly when I qualified to coach about 10 years ago, the coaching process took about a year, and in many ways, Jim, looking back, I was learning how to listen. I think that is in itself a real skill. It’s why you can only coach two people in a day, because it is so energy consuming. So I think that’s what really listening is about. And the reason it sits earlier on in the book, I think it’s something that we can all learn to do and do better. And I think it’s a real life skill. I think you can only ever get better and better and better at the depth of your listening, and you get into all sorts of science around levels of listening, generative listening, for example. So no, I think it is. I think it’s something generative listening is about

39:11 Jim Beach : meaning making,

39:13 Charlie Curson : if you like. So if I asked you, Jim, you know, where have you been in a holiday recently? And you told me, Oh, Charlie, I’ve been to Italy. I might, at a very high level, say I’ve been to Italy, and quickly make it about my holiday. And if I work, when I go into too much detail, if you then go through the kind of levels, and it moves into much more of a state of empathy and understanding, much more about how you felt, you know, more than the practicalities. If I then am chatting to you after that experience, meaning making and sense making is about exploring with you. What do you make of the world since that experience? If that makes sense, and that’s what we mean by generative listening.

39:54 Jim Beach : All right, very interesting. I hadn’t heard that term before, so we’re. To one creativity you’re getting now into some of the entrepreneurial practices. Let’s talk about creativity and uncertainty. Creativity. First, you say, to be more imaginative, be a creative. What is creativity?

40:17 Charlie Curson : Charlie, what is creativity? There’s a big question. I think, certainly in a strategic sense, there’s a distinct lack of it to my earlier point about planning versus strategy. I do believe, I know there’s been much written about this by some wonderfully talented people, that everyone has the ability to be creative. It links back to neuroscience. I think a lot of people live in a world where they don’t they either have beliefs that they’re not creative. We probably all heard that, and we people say, Oh, I’m not I’m not creative. I can’t draw, I can’t paint. I think everyone does. I think you need to create the environment to allow yourself to do it. In the book, I think I talk about some simple practices where you might invite someone to go for a walk and not put earphones in and not listen to music and observe, observe nature, and then pick up a factual book for 10 minutes and then listen to the news and then go back to the problem. And most people can discover a degree of creativity in themselves. I think in the workplace, it just links to a real limitation. I think in the space, people are given to think you mentioned startups and entrepreneurial people. I work with a lot of founders. A lot of them have it in them quite naturally. I think as businesses start to scale, it often gets lost. A lot of the work is also around some of the techniques you may see in things like improvisation. So if you see improvisation on television, for example, TV shows where they you might be running a meeting. And next time you’re in a meeting, rather than allowing someone to kill everything off by saying yes, but just invite them to say yes and and it’s amazing how just by doing something like that with 10 people in a room, you will quickly get into new territory. So I’m a real I’m a real believer in it as even at a simple level, I think everyone can be more creative, and certainly in teams, we should allow it to we should allow it to foster and try not to kill ideas too early.

42:18 Jim Beach : All right, that makes a lot of sense. And then uncertainty, risk,

42:25 Charlie Curson : risk and uncertainty, uncertainty, I mentioned earlier about the you know, you asked about neuroscience. I think uncertainty has a strong link to neuroscience and how we are physically and physiologically wired. The best way to talk about this, I think, is a little parable for me, just a quick parable, I think I talk about this in the book. It’s a great story. My father was military, and I remember him telling me this story about a group of soldiers who were lost in the Alps. They had nothing. They were completely lost. The weather was horrendous, and they found a small wooden shed, and in the shed, they broke the windows, and they found inside the shed a map, and they used the map to find their way home. And it was only when they got home they discovered that the map wasn’t off the Alps at all. It was actually of the Pyrenees. And the point there is that the map allowed them, even if it was a false belief. It gave them the belief to make choices, make decisions, make progress. And ultimately, by starting to make progress, rather than sitting quietly and arguing and doing nothing, they they survived. And I think that that parable that sort of linked to when things are uncertain, what can we do? How can we make a step forward? What experiments can we take, I think again, linking to the difference between strategy and planning, where planning is maybe a false sense of certainty, a false sense of control. I think we can all learn to manage uncertainty better, and it certainly takes time and practice and experiments and a lot of reflections.

43:59 Jim Beach : And can we change our ability to accept risk and uncertainty? Can we come better at being risky?

44:07 Charlie Curson : I believe we can. I think in fact, it links to our beliefs again. Goes back to self awareness, understanding ourselves, understanding our limiting beliefs. What holds us back? You might be coaching someone in their mid 40s, they are running a very successful team, and then they start to recognize, through some quite simple coaching interventions, that they may have a belief around achievement, for example, that may actually be a belief that comes from their parents. They may believe that everything needs to be right or perfect, and ultimately, of course, that can be a huge limitation. So by doing a little bit of work with those people, letting them let go of their beliefs and create space to invite new beliefs in, I think you can, I think a lot of people can learn to be more comfortable with risk, to make decisions with minimal information, and I think ultimately, be more strategic in the way they live in.

45:00 Jim Beach : Act be more future focused. Be a visionary now that one you can’t learn. You have to be born a visionary, right?

45:09 Charlie Curson : Yeah, well, it’s a good point. I think the first part of that be more future focused. I think we could all learn to be more future focused. There are lots of practical techniques and things like that around being your future focused. I often find working with a lot of managers and leaders, private and public sector that unfortunately, we live in a rather 12 month loop at best, maybe three months. You know, people operate businesses, especially quarter to quarter. It’s amazing how profound this sort of a profound effect it can have on people when you spend a little bit more time operating into three to five to 10 year range, depending on circumstance and scope. In fact, I’ve had people ring me in the past. I had a managing partner of a big property company phone me after an event. We were running a big strategy event for their business. He’d been running it for 30 odd years, and yet new people came in and complained to him that they didn’t really have a strategy. They had no dual word vision, right? They had no real sense of Ultimate Direction, of where they were heading, and putting that to one side. The reason for mentioning that story Jim is that he phoned me that night and he apologized for being so quiet in the session, and I said, That’s okay. I appreciate you were probably listening and observing as the boss. And he said, No, what I realized was, I find this really difficult. I have spent 30 odd years working, but also I realized living in a 12 month loop, I get to December and I kind of reset and I start again. And I’m only realizing, a result of this sort of more strategic work, that actually I will benefit a lot from seeing things in longer time frames. I will be able to make better judgments. I’ll be able to make better decisions. And actually I’ll get to next December, and rather than feeling I have to start all over again, I’ll be on a journey. I’ll be on that road. So I think there is a lot you can learn. I do agree there are probably some people who are born visionaries, but I think they’re probably very few and far between.

47:07 Jim Beach : Yeah, you remember the first George Bush lost re election basically because he admitted that he didn’t have that vision thing. That’s right, that’s right. Quite embarrassing for him. Be a doer. Be more decisive. Be more decisive.

47:23 Charlie Curson : Yeah. Again, something nine, chapter nine, yeah. So you get now into, you get now into the, you know, the cry I’ve sent you, you get into the detail. I actually, I work very closely with a couple of military leadership coaches who are wonderful to talk to about this subject, understanding both the science and the arts, if you like, of the practice. I think everyone, everyone in varying ways, Jim, you and I included, would have quite a natural decision making approach, if you like. And I think it’s also something that is certainly learnable. We’re certainly not born decisive. I think you know, you can learn to be decisive. I think in leadership spheres, you will certainly work with people to learn, to become more comfortable, to make decisions with limited information. But I think in any kind of profiling, for example, if you profile people, there’s a great military profiling tool I’ve played around with over the years of different people, and you kind of end up with these sort of eight types, if you like. It’s based on your natural disposition, based on a certain point in time, and the vast majority are different versions of procrastinating, whether that is you’re a perfectionist, whether you are maybe more of an analyzer. You know, you’re just begging for an extra two or three weeks for a little bit more information. But of course, what happens there? Jim, we wait two or three weeks. The opportunity passes, it becomes more expensive. You know, the stakes rise. You may have people like who naturally are more catastrophizers. You may have socializers or Democrats. They’re all decision making styles and types, but all of them really are based on forms of procrastination and procrastination, ultimately, back to the neuroscience. Really is about fear. It’s really about a preventative mindset. You know, we are choosing not to decide, even if we’re doing that subconsciously, because it keeps us safe.

49:15 Jim Beach : How, as an entrepreneur, should I use this book and all this information as an entrepreneur, I think it would

49:24 Charlie Curson : be helpful. I had it said to me just recently from someone who is a founder. His business is about 25 people. He’s at sort of early fundraising stage that he found the practical element of it incredibly useful. There were certain things in there that he was very naturally good at and there were other elements. He realized he had complete blind spots. I spoke to a founder in Australia. Actually, he beta read the book for me last July, and he said to me, he’s an MBA. And he said, I must admit, Charlie, I read it as a favor. You know, I was happy to read it for you. And he said, I thought the latter stages would be really. Interesting, the more like juicy, chunky strategy, stuff that I recognize the names of, like uncertainty and future focused. But he said the earliest stages around self awareness, mastery of emotions, listening, he said, had quite a profound effect on me, and I found myself sitting with my with my partner and with my children, discussing these traits. So I think there is something for everyone. To the earlier point about Billy. Think Billy is a rather fictional idea, but I would like to think, and certainly feedback suggests there is something in here for everyone. And I certainly don’t think no matter what stage you’re at, there’s probably always going to be something that you could improve and hopefully be a little bit more strategic in your choices in work and life.

50:42 Jim Beach : Very interesting. Charlie, I love this. Thanks, Jim. Tell me about your entrepreneurial journey in setting up a an agency by yourself and getting clients like McDonald’s. What have been some of your entrepreneurial secrets?

50:56 Charlie Curson : Oh, I’m not sure about secrets, Jim, given your background, I I, what do I? What do I? What do I learn? What am I learning? I think my learnings have been give things a go, fail fast. I’m a real believer in failing fast. Well, I’ve learned that the hard way. Probably, Jim, you mentioned in your intro, I’m also an investor, so as well as building my own business, I invest and advise in others. Some have succeeded, some have failed. So I think failing fast. I think surround yourself with great people. I think there’s a real, I know there’s quite a lot said about that. You know, having a high bar, spend time with good people, trusting good people. So relationships, I think, are also, are also very key. And actually, you alluded to it earlier, Jim in your own story, I am a real believer in having that sense of vision. I think it does help. It doesn’t need to be huge and grand. It just needs to be that clarity of you. Imagine a straight line and a piece of paper, A to B. I understand my past. I understand where I am today. That’s my A getting really clear and spending good time and understanding what your B is at any point in time, I think makes a huge difference to not just your decisions, but also, I think, your motivation and your self belief.

52:09 Jim Beach : We have run out of time. I am afraid, and we need to wrap it up. I’m afraid we could go on all day. How do we find out more? Follow you online, get a copy of the book.

52:19 Charlie Curson : Yeah, thank you, Jim. So best way so the book is be more strategic. Hopefully, if you type that in, you’ll find it. My business URL is www, dot team mandarin.com, and you’ll find copies of the book there as well. And then quite soon, actually, Jim, having coached and trained 1000s of people over the years on the back of the book and the PR from the book, later this spring, in May this year, we are launching a be more strategic leadership program. So if anyone out there is even interested in learning a little bit more than that, visit the website, join the waitlist, and you’ll be the first to know Fantastic.

52:59 Jim Beach : Thank you so much, Charlie, and we’d love to have you back. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much, Jim. Really appreciate the thing most important question, Team Harry, or team William?

53:12 Charlie Curson : Oh, that’s good. I’d say team William Jim, because I sometimes get told I look and sound like him. So I think I probably have to say,

53:20 Jim Beach : William, you have a lot more hair than he

53:22 Charlie Curson : does. Yeah, that’s true.

53:26 Jim Beach : All right, yeah, this, I’m just this could start a war between our two countries. You have got to do those two people back. We hate please take care in that woman back.

53:39 Charlie Curson : Well, I think I think they’re currently out of your country, so maybe now’s the time, Jim, that you could act

53:46 Jim Beach : get their passports canceled.

53:48 Charlie Curson : Yeah, exactly.

53:49 Jim Beach : Charlie, cruise on. Thank you so much for being with us and are out of time. Have a great day. Everyone. Take care. Bye Now!