Interview with Greg Offner

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season. We're calling interviews 2.0. We are wrapping up in this episode an interview with Greg Offner, also known as Junior, an incredibly interesting individual. I hope that you have enjoyed the first three parts as much as I did in the conversation with him. And we sort of leave, I guess, on a high note. We really continue into some great points that Greg likes to make. A lot of what is the focus of his presentations of what his why is at this point. This episode, we're going to dive right into listening to Greg talk about the concept of once you start running from something, he's sort of into tend to keep running from it, as opposed to running towards something. We're talking a little bit about goal setting. And we're going to talk about some of the benefits of having a job that you may not have considered until you hear what he has to share with you today. Hopefully I set the table properly for him. And now here we go back into our discussion with Greg Offner, our fourth and final part. Yeah. And we started by talking about approach avoidance. And I would simply say that an organization who isn't developing its people because they're scared of losing them is running away from what they don't want. And they're consistently going to miss what they do want. In fact, the entire life cycle of that organization is going to be nothing but churn. That's what happens when you're running away from what you want. You keep running. There's no end destination because you just don't want to get caught by that thing that you believe is chasing you or that thing you're trying to avoid. When you're running towards what you want, there's a goal. There's something we can go and get. And once we're there, we celebrate and then we set a next goal. So that Gary's whole company, his whole not to make this all about Gary Vaynerchuk, but he operates out of a mentality of abundance. There's people born every day. There's folks looking for jobs every day. Let's get some of them. You want to go do your thing. God bless. Good luck. See you later. I hope you do great. There's somebody else. It's OK. We've got to. I think he takes it far enough. I think what if you had partners? Forget rivals. Partner with everyone. Imagine if let's take the pharma industry, for example, imagine if the drug industry partnered together, what they could achieve if it were really about impact. I am worried by people who are most interested in the income that they get from a job. If that's the most exciting thing about the work that you do, I think you're in trouble. I think you really run the risk of losing who you are and not becoming all that you're capable of being. I think the most valuable thing that we should get from a job is continuing development because organizations can spend money and get development opportunities for us that would be way out of our reach as individuals. That's the real value to working for an organization is how they can develop you. You can be. I mean, it's many organizations, some of the senior people we're talking million and multimillionaire, in some cases, billionaire status. You can get mentored by people like that and get paid for it. You know what it would cost to have somebody like that coach you thousands of dollars a week. You can get paid for it at large organizations. So if they get their development program right, man, the impact that a business can have on the world is really tremendous. So we're. Yeah, this has been incredibly good, which is what I sort of expected. But I would not be I would be remiss if I didn't come back to one of the things you had that you have mentioned in the past. And it makes me a little bit curious, although now with your your piano bar background, it does. I'm starting to guess maybe where you're going. But you mentioned the idea of a tip jar culture and building that. And it's actually it's actually it's probably more fascinating to me now if I'm seeing where that came from. So if you could explain, spend a little time explaining that. Yeah. Well, we talked earlier about that idea of a classical piano performance and a piano bar performance. And I mentioned that classical pianists are very technically gifted. Yeah. At the piano bar, we're very tactically gifted. That's not to say we're not also good at the piano, but there's that added element of understanding your audience, that tactical skill development. And that's that's truly what organizations need right now to. I know I just talked about partnerships and not rivals. And I was going to say to get ahead, but to become all that they're capable of being, to reach their fullest potential. Organizations would do well to develop the tactical competencies of their people, not just the technical. Part of that is this idea of a tip jar culture where everybody in the organization is actively and eagerly participating, where appreciation is being freely given and well received. I ask the question, what's in your tip jar? Where collaboration is the name of the game, where it's not about protecting my own little fiefdom and making sure that I'm getting credit for everything. But the recognition that we're all here together, we've assembled, I think about Prince, you know, we've gathered here today. Prince is one song we've all assembled to achieve a common goal. I mean, in an ideal sense, that's why a company exists. The company is nothing more than a legal designation on a piece of paper. That's it. So when a company when an HR officer or someone goes to talk to me about their company culture, I sort of laugh inside because your company has no culture. The people inside your company are the culture. Think of each one of them as having an eyedropper. And inside that eyedropper is a bit of what makes them them. It's their culture. And each person that comes to work for your organization puts a drop of that dropper inside of inside a glass. The bigger the title, the bigger their dropper. So the outsized impact their culture has on the organizational culture. That's what culture is. It's the amalgamation of all of those little drops all into one glass. That's your company culture right there. So in a tip jar culture, you've got people who are participating, appreciating one another, collaborating with one another. That's how we achieve this transformation of becoming a tip jar culture organization where we're focused on the goal, which is the experience. At a piano bar, we've got the audience. I've got the bartenders, the bouncers, the hostesses, the servers, my managers, my other fellow piano bar performers. We're all there together. If we're not each doing our job, the night's not going to be exceptional. And in an organization that embodies a tip jar culture, the performance is exceptional. It's the experience that makes an individual or a customer shout the business equivalent of one more song, one more song. They want to come back day and again. They want to work with your organization day and again because that culture is engaging. They want to come and experience that again and again. And because of that, it's an engaging culture. We retain our people more and we get more innovation because folks actively want to make the experience better for each other. They're not just sitting there trying to hide out in a cubicle and hope they don't get caught for doing less than they're supposed to do. Yeah, that's a, I live in the natural area, spend a lot of time in those kinds of environments of bands and piano players and all these different, very skilled people. And it is an interesting thing how often the ones that are good, that are the ones that keep people coming back and have followings and things like that, how often they reach out and talk about the servers and the management. And even you look at all these, especially entertainers, that they will show a huge appreciation for the crowd itself because it's very much like you don't get the same show every night. Even if it's almost the same people, there's always going to be a couple different. And it's that culture that you talk about is that there's all those little droppers in there. And as a business, at least you do get the same crowd every day or the same crowd every night. And it's finding a way to mix those droppers or make the adjustments so that it does create a culture that is positive for you. Yeah, I want to thank you so much for your time. This is this has been I could I could probably go all day, but then it would, you know, I could probably wear out your voice again. I could just go and throw it because there's there have been so many great things that have been touched on. But I do want to say I very much appreciate your time and spend some time talking through this and your passion. It is it's definitely it comes across as this is one of the things that you've you know, you have now said this is part of your why is that you want to share this with other people. And it's always it's always enjoyable to be in those kinds of conversations. So as we're sort of wrapping up, is there. I sort of either parting thoughts or and or like ways if somebody says, I want to spend more time or I've got to get a company that really needs Greg's help, you know, some of the best ways to get a hold of you. Sure. And thanks for asking that. My website is Gregory offner.com. So that's a great place to go. I'm on all of the major socials at Gregory Offner Jr. So you can just find me wherever you like to hang out online. The parting thought would be a focus on impact. I talked earlier about how when I go on a stage, it's not about me, it's about the value that I can provide for the audience and for folks out there who have listened to all of this. First of all, thank you. I know that your time is valuable, so thanks for spending it with us. But maybe you've listened to this and you've thought, you know, Greg, I like where your head's at, but I also don't think you live in the real world because we got bills to pay and money is important. And for you not to recognize that, boy, you must be a little privileged son of a gun. You aren't you? I recognize that money is important. Money makes things easier. But a focus on money alone is going to keep us churning and churning and churning. A more sustainable approach, I would argue, is a focus on impact because I've looked around at people who are successful in life and not just financially wealthy, but who've delivered meaning and value to the communities that they're in, real value, who have really made change, who have made humanity better. They prioritized impact. They believed that the income would follow because they know that money follows improvement. If you want to get rich, three things for you to do, identify waste, exclusion or confusion. When you can eliminate confusion, make something more simple. When you can eliminate exclusion, make something available to more people. When you can eliminate waste, take something that's not being used to its maximum and use it to its maximum, you can create tremendous wealth. But if you just focus on creating tremendous wealth, I mean, just go around and look at I mean, just go rob a bank. They've got the money. That's really what you should do. If you focus on just creating tremendous wealth, you may never get there. But if you focus on identifying and solving challenges for people that matter, creating impact is what I like to say. If you focus on impact, the income will follow. That's what I'd want people to really take away and start to act on. I think you just came up with the perfect get rich quick scheme is go rob a bank. There you go. I mean, you got to get away with it and all that. But hey, you know, that's like you want to get there. Yeah, there you go. It is I can I can definitely see the the historical piano bar kind of thing because you just hit the ground running like most of them do. You know, they just sit down, they start into their first song. And the next thing you know, you got the got the place rocking and rolling. So all right. Well, I will let you get going. And thanks again. Have yourself a great week. And I look forward to listening to this again, actually, as I'm going through all the editing. Thanks, man. Yeah, this has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate you having me on the show. And that wraps up our interview with Greg Offner. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I have. I do think that some of these points that he brought out in this last this final part of our how we split up the conversation are critical. I think the idea of having a job and that you are getting paid while you are being mentored by people in your industry, in your career is something that is missed by a lot of people. I once had a guy I worked with that said, you know, with the group that we were at, we were building products, we were building software. And he looked at it as we were getting paid to build software and we were actually getting financed to build software. We were given everything we needed, all the tools, all the equipment to go out and do what we wanted to do. We wanted to solve problems. We wanted to build software solutions. And our job gave us that plus paid us to do it. Now, you may not have had that perspective. This whole idea of you're getting paid and you're learning, you're being grown, you are being advanced and you're getting paid to do it. I think that's a shift in perspective that Greg provided that more of us could use. It really, I think, will, there's one of those things that can change how you look at your job, how you look at your day to day. And then the idea of the tip jar culture, the idea of us actually getting a giving and getting affirmations through the day, getting this idea of, you know, we do our jobs, but when we do it a little bit better that we get thanked for it. And even when we do our jobs correctly, that there's somebody that is effectively thanking us for doing it. So we do get that positive feedback and are not forced to just generate it on our own. And while you may say, Hey, that's just not the environment we live in or that I work in. You can start that. You can be that first person that just shows that appreciation. As we talked about all of those people that are involved in a show for him to appreciate them and recognize them makes a difference. It makes them feel because they are appreciated and recognized and heard. And if that happens, you're much more likely to stick around and say, Hey, this is not a bad place to be. And so I don't wear out my welcome. We will wrap this one up. We're not done. We're going to come back next episode. We're going to have yet another interview. There are a lot of incredibly cool people, interesting people that I'm talking to this season. I can't wait for you to, to hear some of these conversations, hear from them and some of the golden nuggets that they lay out through each of these, each of these interviews and even in each episode that we go through. With that being said, go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Amazon anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. Well, give it up for Rob. He's my new best friend. I think I love you and we haven't even met. So I thought I'd write a little song for you because I think that you're so damn cool. California born Memphis raised, but Nashville's aware he likes to spend his days. That hockey rink is where he likes to be, but he's dying to head to Italy with Tim, Ian, Ben, Beckham Tom, where he can stare at the stars all day long. Oh, yeah, he can eat that pasta till he passes out. Oh, well, I love you Rob. I think there ain't a shadow of doubt. Come on. So I said, give it up for Rob. He's my new best friend. I think I love you and we haven't even met. I want to say thank you for having me on your show. Cause this friendship of ours is one that can only grow.