The Forge Experience: Alumni Insights and Successes

So starting with Lawrence, Lawrence, you were one of the first people to reach out from the Netherlands and say, this should be a thing. At very least it should be a community. Lawrence is from the Netherlands and he was in cohort one. Welcome, Lawrence. And then I'll move to, uh, Ken, you were part of cohort, I want to say three.

And is there anything that we could do that would make it more modern, more current, or somehow better, but I want the world to meet you guys. And I want you to meet the rest of the audience because you've all been formative in building the forge into what it is today. So first of all, welcome everybody. And then I'm going to go around the room and let you introduce yourself. Let us know what you do.

And, uh, then we'll start, I'll start, I have some directed questions to ask you about your Forge experience.

So Lawrence, please, let's begin with you.

Ask me, I want to do more with like that, that essential podcast that you pointed me towards because I really, really think this dude is on to something. Um, and so she sent an email and that got the ball rolling.

Let's go then sequentially up to Ken from cohort three.

Tell us about yourself, Ken.

And I choose to do it because It's a, it's a medium for me to help improve the lives of people that love the work that they do so that they never have to, you know, feel stressed or pressured and carry that burden home. Like, you know, I used to back in the old waterfall days and I, I love it quite a bit. And I apply my, you know, agile, you know, Mindset and approach to experimentation to tournament fishing. Uh, something that I do, uh, personally.

So that's how I came to learn about it and the reason why I ended up joining was on his, uh, prompting to do so. And I'm super glad that I did.

And then last but not least, Andras from Cohort 5. Tell us about yourself.

It was, uh, Being mentioned in a training that I was attending at the time that, hey, by the way, does anyone listen to that? I said, China. I didn't like the name. So I checked it out. And. I fell in love with the content immediately. And then, um, at 1 point, you started advertising or mentioning it. By the way, there is this 1 year long immersive leadership development experience. And at that time, I felt it is really something that I would love to do. Like to do, um, went for it.

I was a line manager of, uh, HI coaches back then. And, uh, I started, um, utilizing it basically right from the beginning.

So let's dig into some of the things that I'm hoping will be useful for each other. One of the things I love about what we built here is that we remain a community over time, not only when the program is over, and it's a year long immersion, by the way, so there's a lot of time spent getting to know one another. So not only do we maintain our. Partner relationships with, you know, our swim buddy relationships, the team relationships, but also intra teams.

So some of you have met each other before and continue to

help and support each other. When we started it, the idea was to create something so good that no one could catch us. And I didn't know what that meant, except for the fact that as a learning experience I wanted it to be something that would stick. A lot of learning experiences, you go, you take the course, you read the book, maybe, you do the exercises, maybe, But within six months, you'll probably have retained about 10 percent by statistics of what you learned. So we wanted to fix that.

We wanted to make it more immediately applicable. Hence the year. Hence the homework was meant to be situational. Like the homework is not, go think about this. It's about, It's about going back to the workplace and bringing the new skills to the job and seeing what happens and reporting back.

But of course, we also noticed about the forge is that the most important things, the things that we're sticking with people again, going by the analytics, the stuff that people were really digging into commenting on listening to. tended to be the stuff that was counter, uh, counterculture, if you will. So it's not the stuff that they're saying in the Agile books, in the Agile memes, in the Agile certified courseware. It's in fact the opposite sometimes.

So I wanted to take all of my personal learning experiences and gel them together into one cohesive bunch and then make it simple. Simple to learn, simple to use, simple to remember. So the reason why we come back together for this podcast episode is to ask the question, did it work? So then my, my first question for you really is what's happened to you since you went through the forge?

So if you can think about something that you got out of the forge that you remember and attribute to your forge experience, I'd love to hear about that. I'd love to hear about things that broke open for you because you went through the forge, like a skill. That you didn't have before and you thought maybe you'd never get or you didn't know you needed. And most importantly, can you say definitively, who or what will I never go back to?

So maybe before the forge, you felt uninspired, unenlightened, unmotivated. Uh, you felt like you had a lack of discipline or a lack of accountability or you had a hard time asking for help. I'd love to know what things you'll never go back to. So you can answer any or all of those three questions. What did it give you that you couldn't get anywhere else? What, what's cracked open for you and so what doors open for you and then what doors closed for you? What things will you never go back to?

So I'll start again with Lawrence. Well, the, the force gave

Um, I was always, and still am, um, like a walking bookcase, right? People actually, actually call me an encyclopedia. Um, and I was proud of that. I know, I know a lot and that, that's my job. That's it's like a Tyrion Lannister of Agile. I, I drink and I know things. Uh, but the, the, the weird thing was. Having the knowledge. Knowledge isn't actually power. Um, and that's a thing that, like, weirdly was highlighted for me in The Forge.

So all these embers of knowledge got, like, um, whipped together. Almost literally whipped, by the way, because Chris wasn't having any of my bullshit. And the fun thing there was that, like, I already knew all these things, but I wasn't taking action on even a single one of them. Um, and what it brought me was the notion you can know all you want, but if you don't start actually doing something, it's actually useless. Literally useless. And I was helping others with stuff, but not me.

I was always only helping other people. And that's the thing that was cracked open is Why am I not taking my own advice? This, this is just weird. So I started doing that just a little bit. I mean, I haven't morphed into this weirdly different person all of a sudden, but it got started that got the ball rolling every day, just a little bit and stop listening to my own bullshit. Right? And recognizing it for what it is, usually an excuse, because I'm afraid to get started.

And now I'm not afraid to talk about that. And that's the key thing. Um, actually the key thing is I now ask for help, um, getting over that hump. And, uh, my help is called Tracy. It's really, it's an extremely simple concept, but it works. She just, every time, every week I tell her, I haven't done the thing. And she just,

Um, and that, that's what, that's really what the forge gave me.

And I think, you know, your testament or testimony is proof that it helps or that it works. Just to put just a few

And it, and it flexes and it changes, right? Over time, but having somebody to literally, um, keep you accountable has been amazing, I feel. And. One of the other things that I took away from the forge was the whole concept of having a personal vision statement. I work in a corporate organization, so I'm not unfamiliar with what a vision statement is, but I've only ever thought in terms of a corporation before.

It never became, was never a thought that you could apply that to, you know, Somebody's personal life. And so for myself, since the forge, I constantly, when I'm trying to make some life decisions, bigger life decisions, I keep going back to, okay, what is that vision statement for myself? And, and having that help to anchor me in some of the, Personal decisions that I am faced with making in my life, so that's been tremendous for myself.

The other thing that changed for me, I think, before the forge, like, like Lauren said, I have a lot of knowledge. Already that I brought to the table a lot of practice in my field. I was, I guess what some people would refer to as an agile scrum master, uh, in my world in my corporation, we call them agile team leads. And I felt like I was bringing a lot to the table, although in the forge, there was so much more to learn.

And I think I gained a whole lot more confidence in myself and my ability. And when. You know, even near the end of my time in the forge, my manager came to me, you'd have to know the person, but he can be a little bit blunt sometimes. And he basically said to me, so do you want to be a manager or what? And, you know, I think he really saw growth within myself since I had, Participated in the forge and been a member of the, uh, cohort too. And I am now managing a team where I work.

Um, but that has been the single most useful thing that I've taken away, uh, from the forge and the place I'll wallows in whatever state of mind I'm in, if I don't want to be there. Like if I don't want to be aggravated or upset or sad or whatever, whatever it is, I don't be. I use the techniques and the teachings in the Forge. To put myself in a position to be more successful in the immediate term, as well as moving forward out of, you know, the position that I find myself.

Out of the blue, without you sitting there saying, Hey, I'm a coach, uh, and I'll listen to your problems and maybe I can help you. They just through conversation got a sense that you possessed or had something that they wanted for themselves. And they wanted your advice on how to be more, you know, more present to not keep making the same bad decisions, et cetera, et cetera. And it was a natural byproduct of you becoming that person.

Who no longer sat there and wallowed and just, you know, if you're in self pity mode, you'd stay there. And if you were in unhappy mode, you would just stay there and fold your arms and harumph, and, you know, pick up your bat and ball and go home. And when that changed in you, it immediately drew a certain kind of person to you. And that kind of work, that, that sort of impromptu coaching, I know at one point anyway, made you really happy. Which was awesome to see. Let's go.

Thanks for sharing that. Let's go to Andrus.

Andrus, tell us your story.

Um, stop doing it. And I think the single most important thing or take away, uh, from the forge was actually the ability to push through to not rely on motivation, but to, um, to build up this great, um. And to keep pushing towards a dream, keep pushing towards something that I want to achieve, um, even was the motivation, the, the, the feeling of motivation is not there, but just the mental pull towards that thing. And, um, so that's 1 thing.

And the other thing, I think Tracy mentioned the vision thing. I never have thought how powerful a aircrafted vision can be because all of a sudden it starts filtering everything else out in the world. Everything goes quiet. And then only what is connected to the vision starts coming out in the daylight. And even at the beginning, you have no idea how to bring your vision to life.

Um, it's just, you know, a sentence initially, but then soon, you know, You start forging everything around that sentence, and then it starts filling up with content. And I think that's a very impactful, um, practice that we had along with the, um, personal ethos. and then the practice of, well, crafting yours first, but then going back to it day after day and then revisiting it and seeing where, where you are still not there where you want to be.

Um, and the place where I never will go back is the guy that I mentioned at the very beginning. I enjoy finishing things and I've learned that I can actually finish things and first gave me the confidence that. This is something that I can maintain as long as I want to.

So you mentioned something important there that all the other agile training that you may go through focuses on the, the what and the how of doing the framework. So how do you pick who's going to go get donuts for the daily standup meeting, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm being a bit silly, but at the end of the day, it really is about how to split a ticket in JIRA, uh, or how to prioritize. And those things are useful and you need to know them, but you don't need the forge to learn them.

What you need the forge to do is the other stuff. So let's talk about a couple of achievements here for everybody, because Tracy mentioned, well, she got a promotion. So she went from being, uh, at one level and got promoted to managers doing the manager job. So she's growing, which is awesome. And you also packed up and moved. You went from one place that was no longer suiting you. And instead of sitting there and accepting it, you went, moved to a different place.

With Lawrence, you've written four books or more. Uh, with Andrus, you left your corporate full time job to start a company where you're actually building software that helps people do what we teach in the forge, which is how to manage your top priorities, how to get laser focused on what matters most today to move the needle towards writing that book or getting that promotion or whatever happens to be important to you. And Ken, you've done a ton of stuff. You've gotten a totally different job.

You opened up a fishing channel on YouTube. Which all of this stuff we'll put links to. So be prepared at the end to gimme some links on where to find you in your work if you'd like the the public to know.

The next question was gonna be about what was the most important takeaway, but I think many of us have already discussed that. The vision one I really like because most people don't know that you don't get into a car and just turn the GPS on and expect it to take you somewhere. You gotta punch in some coordinates, but having that concrete picture of the future allows you to operate. We're no longer in the comfortable past mode, which is who was I, what did I used to do?

What were my default reactions to circumstances? How did I handle pressure? How did I handle conflict or negotiation? All of those things that we avoided or didn't do in the past, we did it not really knowing why we didn't do it. And that's what keeps us comfortable and keeps us safe. But the minute you have a different version or vision of the future, it forces you to move off of that spot.

You can no longer be the person that you used to be, afraid of what you were afraid of, accepting what you used to accept. You now have to change, you have to act differently, but the mind Is this supercomputer that just like a GPS automatically knows what to do to reroute you to your new destination. There is literally almost nothing to do except set that vision. So I'm going to ask you a question that you may not be prepared for.

If you could do a forge version 2, a second round, would you come up with a bigger vision than you did the first time around? And what might it be?

So if that is at all possible, that's one thing I copied. And actually last week or night was not last week. I think it may have even been yesterday. I was on a call and just opened up the the. Get up software to enter in a meeting with two people who wanted to go on as speakers. We were talking about that and I just asked them, so you want to speak? Yeah, I'm scheduling you right now. What's, what's, what's going to be the title? I typed it in after that talk, it was done.

That's the forge, right? So not just knowing what to do and saying, yeah, I'll, I'll get the link and then maybe next week we type it in. No, Urgency. Uh, if you can do it now, do it now, because otherwise it'll just be something on a list that stresses you out. And that for me was a big lesson because I still have lists that stress me out. And the forge just.

But really rework that for me, the thing I would do to answer your actual question, the thing I would do in a forge to is indeed make the vision bigger. So my vision would now be start my own company. Um, really go solo as opposed to being afraid of that. Because 1 of the 1st time I joined the forge, that was the thing that scared me and it still does. But now I would probably work on that.

So one of the things that I've noticed about people is that it's much, much, much harder for some people to stay an employee when they realize they're limitless. Because the question arises, what am I doing? Who am I doing it for? And when you ask that question, of course, the answer could be, I could be, I could be impacting so many more people. And I'm going to ask you in a minute, who do you think the Forge is for? But I'm going to pre answer the question.

I think it's for people who really desire impact, right? Because Agile is changing. Let's face it. It's no longer, you know, we've talked a few times, Lawrence, about the state of the education industry. We know the Agile conferences are begging for people. Like, revenues are down 30%. We know the jobs are hard to find. And some of the best of the best in our industry are posting on LinkedIn. Like, not only am I out of work, but it's getting serious. Like, I'm in trouble.

So the industry is changing. We can't just sit there and plug our ears and pretend it's not happening. We have to take action and figure out what's next. You can't do that without bigger vision. Yeah. And if we, what we learned in the forge was limited to agile skill, how to split tickets in Jira, we'd all be in big, big trouble because we'd have nowhere to go. If someone pulls the job title out from under us. So thanks for that.

Share being an entrepreneur, running your own company, very common by product. of starting in the forge, even though people like, I don't want to run my own business. They do find that they want to do something that transcends the role of title in the corporate brand. So thank you for that. Anyone else want to contribute? If there was a, if there was a version two, what would you do differently? What would you do bigger? Go ahead.

Previously, I was very, very happy with just working with one on one clients, um, in the coachings or maybe doing some trainings, but now I feel more like, hey, this is actually something that millions of people would need to know about and the vision itself still can contain this whole thing. So no change is needed on that front and alternative phrasing could be maybe I make. Of wisdom grow exponentially, but then that's way too long compared to the other one, but could be an alternative thing.

Um, on the other hand, it's it close it by itself without even a fortune to the toe. But with a forged 2. 0, what I would be doing differently, um, is that I would take the vision even more serious in the everyday decisions. Once I have said that, um, maybe that maybe that's that's the difference.

So my next question I have for you is for those people who are out there watching who haven't been through the experience. Who is the forge for? And what do you think it solves for that person? So who the forge is for really asking is what kind of person would and should be in the forge? And what do you think that kind of person struggles with the forge could help them solve once and for all? Whoever wants to go.

What is the line about the forge? You harden steel with fire? Well, if you want to be hardened, if you want to test yourself, you should sit down and have a talk about joining a cohort, because I think any 1 of us here can make a promise that you will be tested. and push some boundaries that you didn't know that you could exceed.

And you'll probably end up being surprised at how much you'll improve, the things that you'll learn and the capabilities you will become vividly aware that you have that you didn't know you had.

And certain people, I think the people who belong in the forge are the people who are called to go bigger. That tends to be my opinion. Does anyone else have an opinion?

And, um, the, the, the thing that helped me is I'm perennially insecure about every single thing that I do. The only thing that I'm not insecure about is the shit I know. Uh, so I know, I know a lot of things, but. Um, I feel really insecure in taking action and that insecurity has, I wouldn't say evaporated because it's still there. It's, it's still in me. So it's not that I've become this wildly different person, but I don't let it stop me anymore. And that is big.

Uh, and before you know it, you'll start to dream bigger. Um, and that becomes normal and people start to ask. How on earth are you getting that amount of stuff done? Um, people literally ask, ask questions about that. So how are you able to do this? I mean, you have a full time job. You coach a ton of people. You write books. You, you apparently also find the time to write proposals for presentations and then actually go there and, and you have a family. Um, that also takes some of your time.

So how on earth are you doing this? And for me, the answer is, I was always doing a little bit of that, not feeling insecure about what you're doing, just speeds up things and allows you to do more.

So when you really hone and focus your efforts, it changes the quality of what you create, which is wonderful. So again, I'm really glad that you had that experience Lawrence. Thanks for adding that. Does anyone else want to throw down? We have just a few minutes left and I have like maybe one other question and then we'll wrap up with some, where can people find you and some closing thoughts. Does anyone else want to throw down?

And You know, what I really came to realize that it was more about, uh, learning about yourself and seeing yourself as who you really truly are and being able to come to the table as who you truly are. And it was about leadership to really a lot of focus on, on leadership. And what does that really truly mean? Be a leader and and all the ins and outs of of that realm.

If you had to say, because all of you have stayed connected, like you were the first group of people I wanted to talk to, because you naturally chime in, join in, pop up, you know, you show up around the forge and what we call the alumni is called the sanctuary and you guys are popping in every once in a while or you're coaching new cohorts or you're, you know, you're helping me with my marketing efforts.

What I've always found is that the people who belong here already know the more I try to drag somebody into the forge, the less it works. The looser the fit, but people who are like, I think I want this. This is speaking to me. I've this, the things I'm hearing today are the things that I'm curious about, want to know more about. And if that's you, you probably have a seat here already. That's what I've learned.

But I'd love to know from you, if we could just be succinct, can you think of one thing that the forge has gotten you raise promotion, better family life, personal life, more confidence? I don't care what it is. What was the biggest thing that the forge got you? And then. For me, going forward, what was something you, what is something you would love to see added or improved in the forge to make it even better for future cohorts? And again, anyone can answer.

Soft skills, especially on self improvement and challenging oneself, uh, in any way possible, because those are the areas that I have benefited from the most. And I think they provide a solid foundation to set somebody up for greater success in doing anything else is once you have a greater control over your mind, heart, and soul.

And what might you, what do you think might improve it in the future?

think that the forge could do to improve even further, not copy again, because I thought that was an excellent suggestion, um, is maybe find a way to strengthen the, the swim buddy connection. Uh, so that it's no longer a question or a happenstance thing at the end that could happen that you stay in touch like forever, like Tracy and I do. Um, but. That, that becomes really part of the experience.

And I know that that was the intent and it's, it's always the intent, but somehow it doesn't magically happen. So maybe some experiments to, to run, to try and get there.

I think there is a pattern amongst what all of us are saying, and this could be even taken further down. Uh, and the area which goes in the direction of, uh, creates, uh, day in day out progress, um, deep focus, deep work, uh, flow, all these kind of topics could be even extended a little bit further down. Um, because this both as a leader, but also as an individual contributor as a business owner, as anyone, these are the essential skills that can, uh, move the can and will move the needle.

And I think you are mentioning it many, many times throughout the forge that. Yeah, reading the books is great, but not applying the knowledge. We are. Entirely worthless in the end. And just reinforcing this, uh, in people and showing, uh, more and more practices, uh, would go even further, I think.

I really appreciate that and I hope this has been helpful for people who've been thinking about the forge or thinking about what they need as a next step in their, in their career or personal development.

But where can they find you? Some of the things that you have done or have built since the forge or because of the forge, where can people find you? Give us your online, your links, your URLs, and I'll put them in the show notes as well. Um,