Jay welcomes John Grimsmo of Grimsmo Knives for a wide-ranging conversation on leadership, manufacturing culture, lean systems, and the Six Types of Working Genius assessment. Fresh off implementing the framework with his family and team, John shares how understanding “working genius” helped relieve pressure, clarify leadership frustrations, and reshape the way he thinks about people, meetings, and workflow inside his company.

The conversation includes: why some people thrive in tenacity while others burn out, the surprising emotional impact of understanding your frustrations, how working genius creates a shared language across teams, the danger of over-optimization, and more.

Is a good leader a dictator? In this episode, Jay and Andrew wrestle with the tension between decisive leadership and collaborative growth. What starts as a customer support question turns into a deep conversation about lean manufacturing, parenting, company culture, value stream mapping, and the hidden danger of “at some point” processes.

They unpack why servant leadership is often misunderstood, how leaders can avoid micromanagement without abandoning standards, why some mistakes are worth letting happen for the sake of growth, binary decision-making, lean waste, product simplification, and more.

Andrew also shares why he finally committed to a once-in-a-lifetime lean trip to Japan with Paul Akers, and the mindset shift that convinced him to go.

Andrew and Jay explore the tension between confidence and delusion in entrepreneurship, the challenge of scaling a company without losing yourself, and the reality that what got you here might not get you there. They also dig into Vistage vs. hands-on consulting, the value of networking in real life, productive failure, family business dynamics, and why some people seem to operate in an entirely different league.