Amanda Northcutt (00:01)
Hello, you're listening to the Level Up Creators podcast. Amanda Northcutt here, founder and CEO. We have a very special series of the podcast for you these couple of weeks where we're featuring participants from the MRR Accelerator Cohort 2. And today I am thrilled to welcome someone who's truly reshaping how we think about leadership and growth. Our guest today is Eduardo Brasinho, a cultural transformation partner who helps Fortune 1000 companies develop learning driven cultures that boost innovation and performance.

His Ted talk on growth mindset and the learning zone have been viewed over nine million times and he's the author of the performance paradox, turning the power of mindset into action. also co-founded mindset works alongside Stanford professor Carol Dweck and led it as CEO for over a decade. Eduardo, so happy to have you, welcome to the show.

Eduardo Briceño (00:48)
Great to be here. Thanks, Amanda.

Amanda Northcutt (00:50)
So for those

of you who may not be familiar, could you share a little bit more about your backstory and how we got to do the work that you do today? And I really would love to get into the weeds a little bit here. You have such a fascinating story and you have been in the shoes of the people that you help. So let's unpack it.

Eduardo Briceño (01:07)
Sure. I'm originally from Caracas, Venezuela. I grew up there and moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma when I was in high school and went to college here in the U.S. and studied chemical engineering and finance. So the beginning of my career, I was doing something very different from what I do now. I spent two years doing investment banking in New York City, working 100 hour weeks. ⁓ And then I joined a large venture capital firm in Silicon Valley and I spent five years

investing in entrepreneurs in technology, entrepreneurs. And it was, both of those were really great experiences. ⁓ but I got those jobs because they were kind of sought after jobs who were well paying jobs. didn't have a particular like emotional interest in what I was doing. And I realized that I was going about my career in ways that were unhealthy, both for the body and

for the soul for me. And my body broke down at some point. I got a repetitive strain injury called a myofascial pain syndrome. I was losing function in my hands. I met people who couldn't use their hands for more than 10 minutes a day. And it was hard to brush my teeth, to open doors. And the hardest part was that it was really hard to diagnose. ⁓ doctors didn't know what I had or how to treat me. So I went to lots of practitioners and

Western medicine, Eastern practices and all kinds of things, you know, travel a little over the place, spent weeks getting treatment and prioritize my health. But in that journey, I realized that I couldn't take my hands for granted. And so I was in my late twenties. I couldn't take my ability to do things for granted, to do things that ⁓ had an impact on other people. And I realized that for me, what I had been doing wasn't meaningful.

in the sense that I didn't think that what I was doing was making an impact in other people's lives because there was so much capital in the venture capital industry that whether I was doing that job or not, somebody else was going to do it and the great companies were going to get funded anyway. And my colleagues were like decades older than me. I was the youngest person in the fund and they were adding value to their entrepreneurs through their board membership and through their advice. I

⁓ I didn't have any prior operating experience. didn't know what I was talking about. So what I would do is just, I was an observer in several boards for several years before becoming a board member. And I would just listen to other people, whether we were looking at, you know, observing entrepreneur pitches or advising CEOs, I would just listen to others and just repeat what they said, not understanding why that was good advice. And so I felt.

inauthentic and that was stressful for me. The way I was holding my body was not healthy. There were a lot of things that I wasn't treating well in my life, including the sense of purpose. And so I decided to exit the venture capital industry and go to grad school to

in search of a different path that felt meaningful to me. That was like when I understood what I had and what I had to do to heal, which involved like three years of stretching, one and half hours every day and lots of other things. ⁓ And ⁓ my wife had become a teacher and I saw a huge change in her and how into her job she was when she did that. She found her sense of purpose and I wanted that for myself. So I went to grad school to get an MBA, a master's in education.

interested in social entrepreneurship, interested in education. And I was introduced to Stanford professor Carol Dweck, who had done amazing work on mindset, but she wasn't known yet. That was in 2007. And her book had just come out, which wasn't an instant bestseller. I learned about her work, got super excited, got so many insights from how a fixed mindset in my life had gotten in the way of my goals. How I was, you

just trying to prove myself rather than improve on a daily basis and how that was not only adding stress to my body, but also leading to stagnation and lack of continuous improvement and innovation. So I realized how powerful this was and I partnered with her to start a company that would bring Growth Massage out into the world. And that was 18 years ago and it's been what I've been focused on ever since.

Amanda Northcutt (05:44)
Wow, that's so, I mean, serendipitous that you ended up working with Carol Dweck and that was, her research was the missing puzzle piece that illuminated so much of, and put context and color and meat on the bone, if you will, of everything that you were feeling and experiencing. And I mean, did you feel a high degree of imposter syndrome when you were in investment banking, when you were just kind of parroting what you were hearing the older guys saying?

Eduardo Briceño (06:07)
For sure, was, you know, felt imposter syndrome, lack of authenticity. Just as an example, you know, the people around me were really into luxurious things like expensive wines, expensive cars. Like I didn't care about those things where I pretended to, right? So that I would belong in those communities. That's just a small example. Or they had a passion for entrepreneurship and...

business and, technology that I didn't have. And so I, I just was pretending to be into things that I really wasn't into as an example.

Amanda Northcutt (06:46)
How did you select this program at Stanford and then eventually kind of nesting under Carol Dweck's purview?

Eduardo Briceño (06:54)
Stanford was perfect because it was known for social entrepreneurship. And it also had a very flexible program where I had studied business undergrad at Wharton in the University of Pennsylvania. And I didn't want to take again introductory finance, introductory marketing, and all those things. it was a super flexible schedule that allowed me to look at interpersonal dynamics and psychology and all kinds of things that I was interested in.

So it was, you know, and it was also down the street. was like literally, you know, 10 minutes from where we live. So I actually didn't get in. I applied, I didn't get in. And I waited two years to reapply and I finally got in and went there. It's a great, great choice.

Amanda Northcutt (07:41)
I did not know that. That is shocking to me actually.

Eduardo Briceño (07:43)
Yeah. And then what happened with

Carol was that, ⁓ I was vocal with my classmates about what I wanted to do, what I was there for. wanted to find something in social entrepreneurship and perhaps education that, that I was passionate about. So my classmates knew what I was interested in and Carol was interested in taking her research and putting it out into the world. So she,

Asked, know, a friend of hers. Hey, this is what I'm interested in finding somebody like that. You know, this person went to a business school professor and asked, and then the business school professor asked a classmate of mine, Hey, do know anybody who would be good for this? And he, he sent an email to five classmates. was one of them. And that's how I was introduced to Carol. And then we started, ⁓ speaking every two weeks to get to know each other, to learn about, you know, the, the joint vision that we could put together together.

And, ⁓ and eventually we partner up and she was on, you know, I was the CEO of that organization for over 10 years. She was on my board and she's still a treasured mentor and friend.

Amanda Northcutt (08:51)
Incredible. Tell us the story of the TED Talk. Kind of shift the tides in your direction.

Eduardo Briceño (08:59)
Yeah, you know, I never planned to do public speaking. I wouldn't have thought that I would enjoy it or be good at it because I grew up very, very introverted. And my idea of what I was going to do is, you know, sit in a desk in an office where I'm very comfortable and just, you know, be an entrepreneur like for, ⁓ you know, software as a service company. And one of my board members.

who is also a friend of Carol's and now a friend of mine too. She came to me, she's like, look, like nobody knows what growth mindset is. We are evangelizing growth mindset. You're the CEO. You need to get out there and people need to know who you are and they need to like learn about growth mindset from you. And so you need to start going to networking events in Silicon Valley. You need to start going out there. And I was like, well, Ellen, I agree because I did agree, but

there's so much work to do. Like, I just can't do this right now. Like, let me try to figure out. And because we were bootstrapping the organization too. And, but like two months later, Carol was asked to do a TEDx talk and she couldn't do it. And I thought that was a great opportunity to actually try to reach a lot of people. Because going to networking events, I was a little resistant to it because it's like, okay, like 20 people at a time. And it's just take so much time. with a TEDx talk, if I worked really hard, it was six weeks.

Amanda Northcutt (10:00)
you

Eduardo Briceño (10:27)
six weeks away, I could put something together that could potentially like reach a lot of people. And so I worked really hard on that. I got lots of feedback from Carol and lots of other people, know, videotape myself many times. Cause I thought I'm very uncomfortable in a stage. I've never been on stage before. I'm very introverted, but it's only 10 minutes. And I think I can memorize this, like, great craft, a great script, memorize it. And what I did on stage was.

I actually looked at the lights on the back wall. I didn't look at people because I thought if I looked at people, I would just blank out. And so I did things like that ⁓ and went to Carol's office and I practiced and she gave me feedback. eventually I gave the TEDx talk and it went viral. It now has over 5 million views. And that, it was fun, but it then also led to organizations reaching out to me.

Amanda Northcutt (11:14)
you

Eduardo Briceño (11:23)
to do keynotes for their employees to learn about growth mindset. So I started doing that and it's surprising to me, I enjoyed it. People really kind of connected and they appreciated it. And so that eventually became ⁓ my full-time job and I started doing more kind of workshops. And I just loved actually doing the work in front of people and having the conversations and the creativity of learning about people's contexts and goals and designing something that was going to take them on a journey rather than kind of.

leading people who did the work. I realized that I liked the psychology and the work itself. so a few years later, I had done a lot of talks and lot of workshops and I had realized that I had come up with a framework that really lit people's eyes up. It just led to very strong insights in the room. And I realized this is another message that needs to get out there. And so I went back to the curator of the venue where I did my first TEDx talk.

and talk to her about it. So I did a second TEDx talk on the second concept and that also went viral. was featured at TED for like in the homepage for a year and it's part of TED at work. that is also, you know, is a framework that people find super practical and helpful and was the basis of my book as well, The Performance Paradox.

Amanda Northcutt (12:39)
For those of us who don't know, let's back up a couple steps. Would you define growth mindset?

Eduardo Briceño (12:45)
Yeah, growth mindset. So first, when people, if people have heard of growth mindset, would ask listeners to come up with a sentence of what growth mindset means, you know, what they understand growth mindset to mean.

Because often when we ask that question, we get lots of different answers. get, you know, we hear things like working hard, persevering, having high expectations, not giving up. And those things are related to growth mindset, but they're not growth mindset. And what it is, is really important. So growth mindset is a perspective about the nature of human beings. Specifically is the belief that people can change, that our abilities are malleable, that we can develop ourselves over time. And

improving and developing ourselves involves changing ourselves. If we don't change ourselves, then we are not better. ⁓ And so it's the understanding that our abilities and qualities are, and there are things that we can continue to evolve and shape. And when we understand that about ourselves and about other people, then it has psychological implications. Like we are more likely to take risks. We're likely to, like pay more attention to our mistakes or what.

the surprises of things when things don't go the way we expect. We listen to feedback much better rather than react defensively. And all of those things lead us to improve more, to innovate better, to have better relationship with people around us, and to more collaborate relationships, and to experience less anxiety and depression as we go about our work and life.

Amanda Northcutt (14:22)
It's a good sales pitch. So those are good reasons to employ a growth mindset. ⁓ Tell me what that means for organizations when you have embedded a culture, a learning culture, a growth mindset culture, how does that shift for the organization down to team performance? You've talked a lot about what does for individual. What does it mean for teams? What does it mean for KPIs? And then we can trickle all the way down to the profit and loss statement.

Eduardo Briceño (14:48)
Absolutely. know, organizations are looking for more adaptability, right? More resilience and a better ability not only to adapt to the fast change that we have and the complexity of the world, but to drive change, right? Eventually, what organizations are trying to do is whether it is innovate.

or enter new markets or grow and improve in some way is about kind of driving change. And a growth mindset helps us do this. So in a growth mindset, people are on a journey, right? We're all in a journey, but when we're not in a growth mindset, we might see that journey as it's a journey about improving our products. It's a journey about ⁓ finding the right customers. It's a journey about improving our organization.

when it's a growth mindset journey, is also a journey to evolve ourselves, to evolve our abilities and our qualities. And when that is part of the journey that we are engaging together, then we are experimenting more with each other, right? And we're giving and receiving feedback from each other more. We're soliciting more feedback from our customers and being more customer centric. We are experimenting and...

talking about the mistakes or what we can learn from our processes, having more mid-action reviews and after-action reviews, and all of those things enable organizations, A, to adapt to change faster and to drive change and growth. And all of that, of course, that's what leads to revenue growth. That's what leads to net income growth and what organizations are looking for. But it also, in addition to those performance metrics, it also creates a more positive

workplace where people feel less anxiety, where people get to know each other better because they're more curious, they're asking more questions, they're giving and receiving feedback more about the ways that they're working and the effect they're having on their colleagues. And so not only are the metrics higher, but also the process is more fulfilling and enjoyable along the way.

Amanda Northcutt (16:54)
Yeah, so thinking about the whole suite of HR metrics with regard to ⁓ reducing attrition, increasing engagement, innovation, cross-functional collaboration. ⁓ I mean, what you're saying about reducing anxiety around making a mistake or failing, running an experiment and failing is so important because we do not innovate successfully without rapid experimentation and learning from quote unquote failings and being able to move forward in a better way.

bring to the table is incredible. know you've influenced millions and millions of people at this point. You've written this incredible book, The Performance Paradox. So let's talk about what is the performance paradox?

Eduardo Briceño (17:35)
performance paradox is kind of the counterintuitive reality that if we're constantly performing our performance suffers. So we might think that if we want to maximize performance, we have to perform as much as possible, right? To spend all our time performing, but the paradox is that that lowers our performance. And so what do I mean by that? One way to kind of understand this really clearly is to examine

people who are fantastic at what they do, super skilled, like world-class, and think about how do they develop those skills. So we can think about, you know, Olympic athletes or, ⁓ performance artists like Cirque du Soleil acrobats, right? They're, they do these incredible things and beautifully and artistically. And we might think that the reason they're so good at those things is that they've spent a ton of time doing what we see. They spend 10,000 hours, you know, playing tennis and that's why they're a great tennis player. But.

That's not the case. The reason they're so good is that they've spent a lot of time doing something very different from what we see them do. So for example, if a tennis player is playing in a tournament, you know, a difficult game and they're having trouble with their kind of backspin, you know, backhand, and they're going to avoid that move in the game. They're going to try to not do that so that they can win as many points as possible. But then after the game, they're going to go to their coach and say, coach,

I was struggling with this. need to practice this. We need to figure out what I can change. We need to experiment with different moves. ⁓ And those activities are different than what we do in the match. And what happens in work and life often for a lot of us is we get stuck in chronic performance, right? In just trying to get everything done as best as we know how, trying to minimize mistakes. And that leads to stagnation. That leads us to not discover better ways of working.

Amanda Northcutt (19:32)
Thank you for explaining that. Would you talk about kind of the healthy tension between in a growth mindset culture, how the learning zone and the performance zone should ideally kind of play together?

Eduardo Briceño (19:45)
Yeah. So the performance zone is super important, right? That's how we get things done. That's how we contribute. And the learning zone is when we go beyond the known, when we experiment with things that might or might not work, when we ask questions rather than kind of provide answers. And these two things need to be in harmony. You know, is we can over index on one of them or the other. Most people over index on the performance zone, but there are other people who over index on the learning zone.

And I see it kind of as a yin yang, right? That we need these two zones to be balanced in our life in harmony and integrated also so that we are engaging in both of them in the flow of work and it's in our systems. It's the default ways of working rather than involving kind of willpower or remembering to do these things. And the way we can think about

how is the balance between the learning zone, the performance zone in my work and life or in our organization? We can think about our highest level goals, like our most strategic goals. You know, we can ask why is this important five times and get to like, what is most important here? And also think about the long-term rather than the short-term. And so think about what is the big vision that we're trying to achieve in the long run? And is the way that I'm working or is the way that we're working the best way to get there? Or does it feel like we're

just trying to focus on today and tomorrow. And is that missing out on the opportunity to grow and to increase our performance over time?

Amanda Northcutt (21:21)
Based on publicly available information, can you think of an organization that manages the learning and performance zones really, really well, just from a cultural standpoint?

Eduardo Briceño (21:31)
Sure. Yeah. And I have lots of examples in my book. The most famous one and the most public is ⁓ Microsoft. They were really a pioneer in really championing a growth mindset culture in their organization. They started this in 2014 when Satya Nadella was promoted to CEO and he got

the management team, the executive team to first like spend a lot of time with each other to develop relationships and then think about, you know, what do we want our culture to be? How do we want to come to transform our culture? And they came up with five cultural attributes and growth mindset was one of them. And they've invested a ton in that and they have done a great job at modeling a growth mindset, at teaching a growth mindset, at embedding it in their systems. And as a result of that, I mean, it was at the time

a 40 year old company that was pretty stagnant, not growing very much, like super large, right? Super large company. And since then, they have more than tripled their revenues, more than quadrupled their net income. The stock price has gone up by more than eight times, which was incredible for a 40 year old super giant mature company that was not growing very much.

Amanda Northcutt (22:52)
That's a great example, thank you. Eduardo, you frequently have a seat at the table in the room where big decisions are made by the world's most revered and looked up to companies. What typically precedes them bringing you in to have a seat at the table? What pains are these, I mean, amazing on all account organizations feeling? ⁓ What symptoms do they have that lead them to say, my gosh, we really need to... ⁓

embody and operationalize a growth mindset culture? What's happening?

Eduardo Briceño (23:25)
What's happening is that they're realizing the world is changing really, really quickly and they feel like they need to get better at operating in that fast changing world. Whether it is AI or just policy changes or whether it's all kinds of social dynamics or political dynamics or market dynamics or technology dynamics that lead organizations to feel like the world is moving faster and faster.

They want to make sure that they are going to either continue to be market leaders or expand their market leadership or become market leaders. And they realize that they need to get better at experimentation, at innovation, at a culture of growth. so what precedes companies reaching out to me is them doing a process

similar to what Satya Nadella did of like thinking about what's important to us, what are most strategic objectives now? And whether it is a cultural transformation or more specifically saying we need to better equip ourselves, our people, our systems, our organization to drive change in this world. That's ⁓ a high priority strategic objective for us. And so then they figure out, how do we do this?

And then, you know, I am one of the kind of the pieces of that, you know, I partner with organizations. It's important for organizations to have agency and drive this. Right. So it's important for the CEO to to be driving this is important for the executives to own this and to model it and to live and lead in very different ways than they might have in the past. having an external partner to

help bring this to their people and educate, inspire, and help them build the systems and structures to support the new behaviors, both individual behaviors and collaborative behaviors is where I come in.

Amanda Northcutt (25:36)
Is there even another way to achieve that level of seismic shift that these companies are hoping for without a growth mindset? Who else gets called in? Who are your competitors, Eduardo? Who else gets considered for these big decisions?

Eduardo Briceño (25:52)
Well, I think this can be done by organizations internally too, right? There are people who understand kind of learning and learning while doing, and this can be led internally by an organization that has done this in other organizations. There have been strong learning organizations always. There've been a great minority, but...

they're definitely a great examples always of wonderful learning organizations. And, you know, I'm certainly not the only person who can do this.

Amanda Northcutt (26:28)
But I think it must be true that you cannot achieve that level of cultural change and truly embed and operationalize what is desired by these companies if ⁓ they lack a growth mindset culture. You can't have the agility and the innovation without that as a foundational baseline.

Eduardo Briceño (26:44)
Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely. And, and, know, the opposite of a growth mindset is a fixed mindset, which is the belief that we, our abilities are fixed, that we, um, often it manifests as like a know it all culture, right? Where people want to prove that they already know they want to prove that they're really smart. They want to prove they have the answers. And, you know, I used to do this, like when I was in venture capital, I would just pretend that I had all the answers and I was sure of myself.

So what, what did that do? I didn't ask for, I didn't ask people for their advice. I didn't ask people for feedback. I didn't really listen to feedback or experiment and observe mistakes because I wanted to prove that I was right. know, I would disregard, and this is like brain imaging store studies show that when people believe that their abilities are fixed and that they're geniuses, for example,

they don't pay attention to their mistakes. They want to look away because it makes them feel badly. And so when people and organizations are focused on proving rather than improving, then they stagnate and everybody leaves them far behind.

Amanda Northcutt (28:00)
Proving versus improving, it's a powerful statement. Tell me what conditions must exist both on the individual and organizational level in order to embed and adopt a growth mindset culture.

Eduardo Briceño (28:15)
Well, for the organization to adopt and strengthen growth, the top leadership really needs to prioritize this and model this because people are looking to their leaders for what's valued and what to emulate. And so sometimes people and culture issues are almost like, this is the CHRO's job, the chief people's officer's job.

And the CEO is focused on other things or other executives are focused on other things, but who are people looking to? They're looking up the chain to the business leaders. They're also the CHRO, but the person is only one of a team. And so it's important to actually value these behaviors. We reward them, model them visibly and explicitly. So that's one component. And along with that,

Leaders in the organization needs to do a few things. One is to frame what we do together. So explain to people and help people understand that part of what we do at work every day with each other is work to continue to evolve ourselves, to discover new things about ourselves, become more self-aware, gain new skills, gain new insights, gain new understandings of our customers and the things that we can do to serve them better. And that's part of what we do.

on a daily basis together and how we do it. We do it by integrating the learning zone and the performance zone, not just by trying to do everything as best as we know how, trying to minimize mistakes. So that understanding, that shaping of mental models, which happens over time, is part of it. And it's about language. ⁓ It's about helping people think differently. Second, you need to ⁓ help people build habits and systems so that

This becomes the normalized way of working and it doesn't take willpower. It doesn't take remembering things. So if you look at things like meeting agendas, they often only have performance zone topics, which are important, but they don't have enough usually learning zone topics. Like what questions do we have for each other? What we've learned recently? What next mistakes we're going to be making? Or we can think about our projects and mid-action reviews.

post-action reviews or how we're also listening feedback from customers or all kinds of things that need to be integrated into the way we work and into our daily habits. And then finally, we've talked about this already, is just modeling learning visibly and explicitly.

Amanda Northcutt (30:56)
Let's talk about habits. So I know that you spend a lot of time giving keynotes, you lead workshops with executive teams and senior leadership teams, you get everyone excited, and you've got a hell of a sales pitch for a growth mindset and the benefits that come with near-term, mid-term, and cascading for what embedding a learning culture can do for an organization. But we have to habitualize, as you were just saying, these things, right? We can get excited about them, but...

most often after a keynote is given or we go to a conference and we get very excited about an idea and then we get back to our desk on Monday morning and it's back to the performance zone to use your term. So how do you help your clients actually build a muscle around this and make sure it sticks for the long term?

Eduardo Briceño (31:44)
Yeah. So that is often what happens for you just described, right? Where we might go to a conference or a keynote or a workshop and get super excited and be super motivated when we're there, when we're getting out of there and really want to implement things. But like you said, it's Monday morning, it's filled with our calendar and we have so much to do and we revert to, you know, to what we, we will always do. And so we, it's important to follow those

Ignition events, right? Where we are helping people discover a different way of working and living with structures and support to build habits and change systems. And there are different ways of doing that. but one way is for people to, ⁓ identify, you know, in the event, like in the workshop where I'm there, part of what I do toward the end is helping help them. Identify one habit that can be, make a big difference.

And kind of set it up in a system that I have for them to practice that habit for the next three to four weeks with, you know, an accountability buddy and kind of with a social accountability in the room and kind of like getting people excited about why that's important, sharing what they're working with each other and what effect is going to have and doing that in collaboration. And so, you know, through that process, people are getting, you know, reminders, whether it's like SMS or WhatsApp or email. They're getting also like.

they're checking in on how they're doing and they're sharing reflections with their buddies and with me or my colleagues, right? The coaches and they're receiving digital coaching from us as well, which is like super helpful to them. And then what my favorite part is like at the end of those three to four weeks, they receive like a really insightful report on that journey of like based on their reflections.

where they have struggle, where they had breakthroughs, what reflection questions to think about. And that all that data is also aggregated and is super insightful for the organization to think about what kinds of habits are people interested in working on? What do they tend to struggle with? Where are they finding success? And with all that data, then that can start a cycle of continuous improvement, right? Where organizations can use

this as a cycle to just continuously improve going forward. And then, know, if we do this, when we do this with executive teams, then there are ways to then have them cascade down the organization with their teams so that they're modeling the way and it's just actually permeating the whole organization.

Amanda Northcutt (34:11)
Mmm.

Yeah, it's like taking our brains to the gym. ⁓

Eduardo Briceño (34:28)
Taking our brains to the gym.

Yes. And, know, in micro ways, because, you know, habits take a while to build and we're really busy with other things. So we need to pick kind of one habit at a time and, ⁓ and have structures to support, you know, the, the, repetition, right. ⁓ neurons that fire together, wire together. So we want things that are frequent, but easy. And through those.

our brain actually physically changes and then we start thinking differently and behaving differently.

Amanda Northcutt (35:01)
Was it James Clear who first said, we don't rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems, our habits? Is that right? Okay. I want to use apropos for this conversation. ⁓ So for organizations who want to begin embedding a learning culture, what are kind of their first three steps?

Eduardo Briceño (35:09)
I think that's right.

It depends on where they are. it's not the next step depends on who is interested. Where are they? know, where are they in their journey? What are their strengths? What are the challenges? But in an ideal situation, and I was guessing in all situations, wherever in the organization this is emanating from, people need to speak with their colleagues about, is this something that we're interested in? Is this something that is really important to us?

And so sometimes the way that happens is somebody becomes really interested in bringing this to their organization. They might bring like a resource, like my Ted talk or an article to their colleagues to read or watch. And then they'll come to a meeting together and say, Hey, like I want us to talk about this idea of, for example, the learning zone or growth mindset. I think this is something that we could really benefit from if we consciously and deliberately work to build this together.

What do people think? And actually like give people the space to voice what they think and if they have any concerns, right? And actually have people make a choice rather than something that is top down and forced on people because this is something that people love growth mindset and learnings on something people want. They might have some concerns, right? About like how they're going to be treated if they make mistakes or if they're unsure, right? Or if they take a risk and it doesn't pan out.

So people have legitimate concerns that they need to talk through. And when they talk through that and everybody makes the choice of, cool, this is really exciting and I'm all in and let's work together on this, then that is, I would say, the first step.

Amanda Northcutt (37:14)
Cool, thank you. You have an incredible long-term vision for what you would like to achieve through your work. And I think it's certainly worth stating, I'd love for you to share whatever you'd like to, but why do you do this work? What gets you out of bed every morning to keep doing this?

Eduardo Briceño (37:32)
You know, I think I became disconnected with learning through school, right? So when I, when I think about when I was a little kid before school, I was super curious. I would explore so much and tinker and experiment and love learning. And in school, I associated the word learning with things that were really

Irrelevant and boring and useless because I was just sitting on a desk the whole year, the same desk. And like teachers would come into the room and rotate and just talk at us about things that I didn't care about, you know, whether like just memorizing facts and, you know, stuff that I didn't think I was ever going to use. so I, school became just about proving, just about doing as best as I could on the exams. Right. And so.

That's what university became. That's what my job became. And I think that happens systematically to society. And we have so much to gain in our lives from reconnecting with that passion of discovery and tinkering and exploration and the agency to shape ourselves in the way we want to shape ourselves, right? And to become the people we want to become, not just because we're attached to that end goal of

I need to do this or become this, but also because the process is really like a rich life and a fulfilling life, you know, where we are having better conversations with each other, learning more about each other, connecting better and reaching our goals better and growing more in whatever goals we care about. And so that the workplace is, a really important place to spread that because we spend so much time working. We do it socially in collaboration with others.

And when we do these things socially, right, and we do it together and we become, we make this a social norm, then we create incredible cultures that are really fun to be part of. And then that spreads to our families, it spreads to society, you know, as more organizations work on building learning cultures.

Amanda Northcutt (39:46)
That is a vision worth fulfilling. Thank you. And it is an absolute honor and privilege to get to work with you. And you and I met in person at an event, a very non-salesy event earlier this year. And we ended up spending quite a lot of time together just sharing about our health journeys. And there's a lot of parallels to our lives that are very interesting. And we could spend the whole day unpacking those.

⁓ I was very interested in everything that you do and ⁓ Carol Dweck's research and your work, I told you, has influenced how my husband and I parent our son and how I view life and my organization. And one of our core values is leading with a growth mindset and 1 % daily improvement. And so this felt like a very full circle moment for me. But in the course of those conversations, your interest was piqued about the MRR accelerator.

by all intents and purposes and measures, you are already successful. You are successful. ⁓ So what prompted you to want to pursue going to the next level?

Eduardo Briceño (40:52)
Well, know, first it was amazing like how serendipity, right? We were both in this event, but also we went pre-event. We both decided to go on a hike and it was six people and we ended up doing the hike, the tour hike in Paris and you and I ended up just working, walking for two hours as a pair and it was delightful. And it's just amazing how the serendipity of life works out. But for me, that event is a community that

I've learned a ton of, and more than anything, I have learned so many things. I've just opened a window into so many things that I know very little about. And as I said before, I'm not really passionate about entrepreneurship and the business of entrepreneurship. I'm really passionate about psychology and creating great workplaces.

And, and, and helping people improve their lives. And so I don't gravitate when I listened to podcasts, right? I listened to podcasts about things that I'm interested in and that is not about like entrepreneurship and marketing and branding and those things. And so I realized not only there's so much that I don't know, but also in the MRR, in a MRR accelerator program and a level of creators, there's a structure.

and a system and expertise and like a fractional team that is a perfect fit for me because you are all passionate about the things that I think are really important, but that I, I don't gravitate toward, right? And so I haven't learned a ton of, they're, they can make a huge difference to my business and therefore to the impact that I can make to organizations and to people. and so the fact that I learned

about a resource that is available to me that I could go through a process in the program and support and with support to grow in areas that I could see I could grow so much in was something that was very appealing to me.

Amanda Northcutt (43:06)
Great. And how do you find the cohort model? I think I have a hypothesis at least that if we were just working with you as an individual and Amber as an individual and we didn't connect ⁓ all of our clients really, this would not be nearly as rich of an experience. And so what do you think the cohort kind of brings to the table?

Eduardo Briceño (43:28)
It's wonderful. know, it's first is an amazing group of people, ⁓ both in kind of what they do and their achievement, but also in just being human. And that's also true of the everybody at level of creators is just very life-giving people that are like a pleasure to be with and to collaborate with. Right. So that's kudos to you for, you know, for, for bringing people into your team and your circles that

are trying to make the world a better place. You know, they show up, you know, giving and supporting others and also, you know, want to become excellent at what they do. And so they're very insightful. They're very wise and, ⁓ and we support each other. And so, you know, I asked my cohort mates questions about things that I'm struggling with or grappling with, and we, help each other out and just going through the process at the same time too, ⁓ means that we're learning together about.

the same thing about some of the same things at the same time. And that's nice too, because then we are asking questions and learning from each other's questions and giving our perspectives and learning along the way kind of in the same topics along the process.

Amanda Northcutt (44:40)
Thank you for saying that, I agree. And we've got a pretty special thing going here with, I mean, I can't, I have so much gratitude for both my team and the people that we get to work with every day. I just can't believe I get to get up and do this. This, this is so fun. ⁓

Eduardo Briceño (44:54)
And you get to do it because

you created it, you like you envisioned this and you have made it a reality. ⁓ so kudos to you for that.

Amanda Northcutt (45:03)
Thank you. And I have so many questions. like triaging in my head and I only have a few minutes. We may have to have a part two here. But what do you, last question. What do you hope that we accomplish together through our work together in the accelerator? Money aside, everybody knows there's a guarantee associated with this, but what's the bigger picture?

Eduardo Briceño (45:26)
Really growth. mean, actually I've been struggling for several years, kind of grappling with how do I serve my customers more deeply and more longitudinally, because I do a ton of keynotes and executive workshops and people love it and they're super energized and they say like, we want more. And, you know, I had a couple of like things that

So I have tried things over time and I hadn't had the unlocks that I've had this year for and there's several that have really like finally like realized what How can I actually do this and support people not only at that initial education and inspiration? But also through those habits support and those kind of longitudinal partnership supports that

have required me to build, continue to build like my skills and my capabilities. And so the process takes a ton of learning, a ton of work, but I'm like super excited about not only the growth of my business, but also my own growth in terms of my own skills and my own capabilities. And I think, you one of things that the Level Up Creators Program has allowed me to do is first to like way increase my expectations about

what I can achieve and what I can make possible for my clients and then help me kind of get there. And it's something that I've been trying to do for years and this year has been the unlock for me.

Amanda Northcutt (47:06)
Awesome. Okay, I lied about that being my last question because I have another one. What has been most surprising to you? What were you not expecting that you found through the accelerator?

Eduardo Briceño (47:09)
Thank

I didn't, you know what, I really came without a lot of expectations because there's a process and I, you mentioned the process at a high level, ⁓ but it was like, don't know what's going to happen next week or the following week. And I'm just going to do like what Amanda and her colleagues do like with Natalie and everybody else. And so.

I really was kind of doing what I do and waiting for what unfolds and knowing that I didn't know what was going to unfold. So there's nothing that comes to mind in terms of something that has surprised me. And I think it's because I didn't have like hard expectations about what to expect.

Amanda Northcutt (48:11)
Touche, fair enough. All right, Eduardo, where can our listeners find you online?

Eduardo Briceño (48:18)
My website is [brisenio.com](http://brisenio.com/). It's my last name, B-R-I-C-E-N-O. I'm active on LinkedIn. And on my website, people can download a PDF on five strategies to foster a growth mindset. If they want, they can also subscribe to my monthly newsletter if they want to continue learning about growth mindset and the learning zone. And my book again is called The Performance Paradox.

Amanda Northcutt (48:38)
Nothing.

Yes, it's right there. You can see it. It's fuzzy in the background, but it's right there. And do you have a quick parting shot before we wrap up? Anything you'd like to leave our listeners with? And we'll have all of those links, of course, in the show notes.

Eduardo Briceño (48:53)
I will leave people with not forgetting to enjoy the process. We ⁓ go through parts that are very difficult and challenging, and you and I have had lots of those in our lives. And we also go into parts where we might be really attached to growing specific goals. And I think it's just really important to enjoy the process and focus on progress rather than perfection.

Amanda Northcutt (49:20)
Well said. Thank you so much. And thank you to our listeners. We know that your time is precious. We appreciate you sharing some of yours with us today. If you're a subject matter expert looking to build a customized business with recurring revenue model, head over to MRR Accelerator to learn more and make sure you follow me, Amanda Northcutt on LinkedIn for daily insights into consulting, business growth and leadership. That's it for today. We'll see you next time on the Level Up Creators podcast.