[00:00:02.060] - Chris
Welcome back to another episode of the MRM podcast. I'm Chris
[00:00:06.330] - Brandon
and I'm Brandon. Join us as we discuss business, life and legacy.
[00:00:11.370] - Chris
It's business time.
[00:00:13.140] - Brandon
Hello, my friend.
[00:00:14.590] - Nick
Good morning.
[00:00:15.660] - Brandon
How's everybody doing today?
[00:00:18.050] - Brandon
Chris. I've made you a fortunate man. Brought a guest with us today that I think is going to align really well with some of the areas that we've been diving as a team. And certainly in terms of perspective on what we prioritize working with people and trying to get in under the surface. This man is very gifted at working with folks on the inside. getting into the depth of things and uncovering and unpacking things to make some significant change. So, Nick, he's got 20 plus years working with youth in the correction system, lots of development. https://nicksotelo.com
[00:00:50.300] - Brandon
He's led teams. He's created curriculum, he's created programs, just tons of extensive work, helping youth come through those programs and actually be able to reintegrate into their communities. Master's degree in marriage and family counseling. PHD in counseling, education supervision. Assistant professor at Corbin University. And somehow he still finds time to be a podcast host and a life coach. And the podcast is the Upgraded Life. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-upgraded-life-dr-nick-sotelo/id1480256535
[00:01:19.680] - Brandon
Nick, thanks a lot for joining us, my friend. I'm not even sure how you had a time block to offer us, but we're gonna take it.
[00:01:27.370] - Nick
No, absolutely. I always have time blocks. And when people reach out, I just give them the link. If it works, it works. And I'm willing to give my time. However it's asked for, for the most part, within reason.
[00:01:38.620] - Brandon
Yeah, it's got to be within reason because there's no way you're getting all of this done and giving it out to anybody that asks for it. So thanks again, man. We really appreciate your time. So dude, I think the best place to start is, of course, I've got some inside trader information on this concept, but share with us this idea behind the upgraded life. Where did this concept come from? What is it? And why has it been so important to you and the work that you're doing?
[00:02:05.360] - Nick
You know, it's always a struggle, right? I'm sure you went through it when you were trying to figure out what you're going to call your project or your podcast, right. So I took a little bit. It took a little bit of mulling around, but it really comes out of this observation that I made of myself, observations of me working out of what we call central office and just kind of listening to the default water cooler type talk. You know, the talk that happens across the copy machine.
[00:02:33.160] - Nick
I caught your episode on Elon Musk, right? It's the idol banter that happens that meetings that you should cut down to seven minutes. Here's what you don't hear in an agency in a Corporation when you have managers and leaders and you have workers, what's critically important is the actual lives of your employees and the actual lives of your workers. That's critical. I think that we focus too much on product and we focus too much on output. But you're not going to get your best product, not going to get your best output if the lives of your employees are a mess.
[00:03:09.840] - Nick
Here's what you don't hear in that kind of idle chatter, neutral banter is, things aren't really working out the way I thought they were going to be." I'm eight years into this, and I just wake up and I dread coming to work. I think I need to upgrade something in my life." You don't hear that. You don't hear that type of conversation. Now, you might, and you two are talking about it in terms of how leaders are investing in their subordinates and mentoring and coaching. Hopefully that kind of conversation is happening there.
[00:03:37.370] - Nick
But it's not the default conversation. This is what you do here. "Man my TV is like 18 months old, I got to get a new one." And then somebody says, "yeah, I just got a new one. My brother-in-law Jus got an awesome new one. You come over, we're gonna show a fight party, you can come see the new TV." People will talk about that kind of stuff all day long, every day, somebody will go buy that new TV, come back and be like, "It's the greatest thing ever."
[00:03:57.620] - Nick
But when it comes to personal development, self development, we just don't have those conversations. So the upgraded life is one way to kind of voice that out there, and so that people who wanna choose to invest an hour in themselves by listening to the podcast on the other end of it, they are gonna get some practical things that they can do to upgrade their life. And that's kind of where the Genesis of it came from is just how do I change the conversation? Right. Somebody famous said, if you want to change the culture, you need to change the conversation.
[00:04:25.810] - Nick
And that's my way of kind of tapping into that idea.
[00:04:28.360] - Brandon
I love that. My understanding of it is there's kind of three core. Let's call it pillars, right? Or focuses. So talk to us about what those are and explain their importance.
[00:04:38.240] - Nick
I appreciate this. So it's mindset, mission and movement. That's what I focus on. And again, this isn't anything new. You're going to see that kind of three phase, three stage process everywhere. But it's what I call it. I'm a firm believer that it's all about mindset. You can have the best plan, the best resources, the best equipment, the best team. But if there's something inside your head that says, "you're not gonna do this, you're gonna fail, this isn't gonna work." Then that's ultimately what's gonna happen. Craig Groeschel says your life moves in the direction of your strongest thoughts.
[00:05:08.210] - Nick
I think you spot on in that. It's all about mindset for me and everything that I've known about myself. And the work that I've done is you have to address the mindset. First and foremost. It's like going to the gym and you can get your mind in great shape. But if you neglect it, you're gonna go right back to that former state that needs work. So it's something that you always need to check up on. So doing mindset updates and checkups are important as well. So that's what that is is getting your mindset solid.
[00:05:35.890] - Nick
And there's three phases within that. But I'll quickly go to the second pillar, as Brandon called it. Mission is: what are you doing? What's your purpose? How do you define success personally as an individual? And then what are you doing literally every single day to chip away at that? Once you put in the work, you put in 90 days, 120 days a year, three, four or five years into it. If you're doing this thing according to your mission, you can't help but have some success.
[00:06:05.460] - Nick
It may not be the success that you initially set out to be, but you'll have something. That's what mission is and making sure that you are just like we talked about a second ago, my mission is to get my story out and to get my message out and to be able to help whenever possible. So that's why I have time like this for other people to kind of dig into it. That's part of my mission. So I say yes to things that are part of my mission. And then movement is: the execution of the mission.
[00:06:32.420] - Nick
It is the what do you have to do more of? What do you have to do less of? You know this average sum of the five people you spend the most time with, it's about actually making the commitment now to do the things that we've established in the first two pillars. That's mind set, mission and movement. That's my process. That's how I envision working with people. It's what I do for myself. And in a nutshell, that's what it's all about.
[00:06:55.140] - Brandon
I love the movement piece. I think when we're even doing our show, I think sometimes I am a little self conscious about, like, okay, are we going to be able to do something by the end of the episode where folks can actually walk away with it? And I've listened to a lot of your shows, and I know that I'd say in some ways a little bit of my summary. My wrap up that we joke about came from my experience of listening to your show of you're very diligent that by the time the show's over, you're trying to recap on the items, the things that someone could walk away with right now and go put into practice.
[00:07:30.690] - Brandon
It's super practical. Tell me more about that. Obviously, I know that you've got really strong education background, so obviously systems and processes is certainly something your experienced in, but in terms of and maybe a good place to go is all those years and youth corrections right. Where do you see, I guess where that application piece, the rubber hits the road... Why is that so important? And how do you make it happen?
[00:07:54.940] - Nick
Another thing that I've been focused on in the last sort of eight years of my career will say is I want to do better than what was done to me. And this is state government, meaning I know what it's like to get forced into trainings. And as soon as you use that word training, you just shut people's brains off like, oh, my gosh. And so I know what it's like to be in trainings for 3 hours, 4 hours a day, three full days and come out the other end of it and actually feel like you're dumber than when you first started.
[00:08:23.300] - Nick
And so it really kind of stems out of that. And again, unfair. Right.
[00:08:27.740] - Nick
Because here's the other thing that I'm sure the two of, you know, oftentimes people are put into that training role, and they're not trainers. They're not subject matter experts. They're not being supported. So I want to be gracious in that. But oftentimes people that are speaking at you from a training perspective, they're just doing the best that they can as well. And so that's a big part of it is when you leave, whatever that time investment is, you need to be able to have something, even if it's only one thing that can say, oh, I'm gonna start looking for this, or I'm gonna try this out, or I'm gonna think more about this and do some more research on it.
[00:09:01.260] - Nick
That's where a big part of it comes from feeling like I just gave away hours and days of my life to trainings that really did help me in the work that I was being asked to do.
[00:09:11.760] - Chris
[ comment: Henry David Thoreau, WALDEN "The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation." ] Nick, I want to go back to the upgraded life thing. I love that example you gave where..." I been doing this eight years. Is this as good as it gets?" Who has that famous quote? Men essentially spend their whole lives in quiet desperation.
[00:09:24.520] - Chris
It reminds me of that. Just this angst. Then I think all of us have experienced at one time or another. Can you describe a moment where you kind of contended with that?
[00:09:33.760] - Nick
A moment? Yeah.
[00:09:35.360] - Chris
Or perhaps the most recent one.
[00:09:37.990] - Nick
I'll describe it... For a long time I've been a reluctant leader, and I'm a Bible believer. So I'm a Moses, right where God says you're gonna lead my people out of captivity and into the promised land. And I say, Why don't you talk to my brother Aaron, right? He's better at this than I am. So that's been me for a long time. And that was part of my "gosh, what am I doing?" I was in cubicle land in our central office, and, you know, I was just go-along to get-along as long as my office chair had my butt print in it well enough to say, I was there for enough hours.
[00:10:10.930] - Nick
Then everybody was kind of good to go. There was really nobody around me that was really pushing for excellence. And I started eroding in every sense of the word, mentally, physically, spiritually. I was just getting funky. It was kind of on the other end... Well somewhere along the line, there was this pressure for me to return to the other side of the fence where I had started my career and put about a decade on the inside of the fence. There were some signs being put in front of me that maybe I ought to go back.
[00:10:40.620] - Nick
And so I did. I went back, and it was really kind of confusing at first. I was personally confused. I knew something had to change, but I didn't really know what or why. It was a little bit confusing to my wife and my kids. We joke in the industry like, "I paroled, why would I ever go back to working inside the fencing, corrections?" And people would say, "you came back?" I'm like, "yeah, I'm back." And I just kind of this maybe this assumption that something didn't work out, like they were waiting for the backstory to happen, like I had gotten in trouble, and I didn't have any choice.
[00:11:11.200] - Nick
And whatnot? So two things happened that were kind of the aha for me when I was kind of maybe a year or two into this. One thing was that my wife and I in some other ventures that were involved in for income streams. We went to a personal development seminar. It was in that seminar, we learned it's a basic color personality profile. It's pretty standard, right. You're familiar with it. This one is the gems, and what I learned is that I'm a Ruby, and Rubies need a challenge, and Rubies need a coach.
[00:11:40.020] - Nick
And if we don't have a challenge in front of us and we don't have somebody telling us that we can do more and be more, then we get funky. And I was like, oh, that's exactly what was happening to me. The other thing that happened, I was reading a book by General Mattis "CALL SIGN CHAOS." So, Brandon, he might have been a Colonel when you were over there, mad Dog Mattis.
[00:11:58.740] - Brandon
Yeah. I think he was in theater during that time.
[00:12:01.170] - Nick
So I read his book. His story is he's retired. He's a three or four star general, and he's living up in Washington, just north of us here. And he gets a call from Trump. Says, "I need a Secretary of defense," and he hadn't been out long enough to actually do the duty. And so Congress had to do whatever Congress does in order to make it work. And in his book, this is what he said. "This was my destiny, this is my lot in life. I'm a battlefield general, and I was a good one. And when that call came, I couldn't say no to it. This is what the people of the United States had invested in me, and there was just no way that I could turn down that call when it came to me."
[00:12:40.800] - Nick
And I was like, ping... That's what it was. There were some things that were going on inside the fence that were problematic, and they were putting the agency in the state at risk, quite honestly. That's not over statement. If you were to kind of look at some of the things that I've gotten my stripes for when going back in, you would see kind of what those things are.
[00:12:58.270] - Nick
So those two things happen. Number one, I figured out who I was kind of at a personality level... "I got to have a challenge. I've got to have somebody tell me I can do more and be more." And then recognizing that all those years that I spent working in the fence, I wasn't executing on that knowledge, skills and ability while I was in cubicle land. Hopefully I answered the question there?
[00:13:16.660] - Brandon
Yeah. No, I totally get it.
[00:13:18.190] - Chris
Yeah, that's good.
[00:13:19.930] - Chris
I'm curious. This whole inside the fence thing, it's so foreign to the most of us that are listening. So we're coming from an industry, a lot of our audience that's listening to this is in some aspect of the disaster restoration industry, right. And it's a 24/7 game, highly stressful, just like with all of the trades, so construction service trades; there's a lot of anxiety and stress just inherent within the industry. And now you've got this experience within the corrections, which I think is also known to be dangerous, and there's just also a stressful anxious 24...It's always on kind of feel. And I guess I'm curious if you could speak to you, work with youth primarily. So you're not necessarily working directly with the prison guards?
[00:14:05.600] - Nick
My current responsibilities are I'm a manager of managers. So I lead three other leaders that are leading three different teams of staff. And so I honestly see... Part of the reason why I went back asn't to work with the kids, but again, it was to do better for them than what was done to me. And so I went back to make things better for the staff. Kind of going back to my earlier comment here... That what I learned, and it was told to me in my younger years, but I didn't have the ears to hear it, but if you take care of the staff, they'll take care of the kids.
[00:14:34.560] - Nick
And that's very, very true. So, I really see what I have been doing for the last four years when I went back in the fence as being a resource to staff, holding the ladder for staff, showing the staff what they're capable of, mentoring guiding them. So it's really been more focused on staff development more so than anything else, because that's where our agency lacks extremely is that investment level in the most critical part of the whole deal...which is the workers.
[00:15:04.800] - Brandon
I love that... "I'm holding the ladder for the staff."
[00:15:08.100] - Chris
That's so good.
[00:15:08.910] - Brandon
There's a lot visually, I think that's happening with that statement, and I don't know if I'm just reading way too into it, but I just like that idea and that concept of...Like, my job now is to help provide the support and the infrastructure to step in and give them the moment the opportunity to climb up that ladder to hit the next rung. There's a lot that just was said there.
[00:15:31.360] - Chris
Yeah. Can you drive in...Okay. So what I just heard you say is you are really developing the capacity of the teams that you work with and supporting them, like you're trying to create support structures that enable them to better mentor and support the youth and the individuals that they're working with. So, yeah, I want to go back to this comparison because our industry can feel very chaotic and very difficult to maintain. It can feel very unsustainable as a worker within the disaster restoration industry at really all levels. As a general manager, I mean, I walked with Brandon through that role in leadership roles.
[00:16:06.260] - Chris
There's just a constant buzz of anxiety and stress that kind of comes to the industry. Could you describe the kinds of dysfunction and challenge that are sort of unique to the corrections field or industry? And how have you gone about trying to create greater health in that environment? You talk about holding the ladder. Can you dig into that? What are some of the challenges and problems that you've seen, struggles of people that work in that space? And how have you sought to sort of address that and bring better health to environment?
[00:16:36.340] - Nick
Yeah, absolutely. And I'll kind of start high level and then drill in. High level is the average worker career person is going to spend 80,000 hours doing that. There's a website called 80,000 Hours, and they have all the stats on what career looks like. And I see that as a gift. Right. We're put on this planet. We have a finite number of years, and if you're gonna give someone or something 80,000 hours of your life, you better know why you're doing it. And you better agree with what the exchange is for these 80,000 hours, and you have to constantly be reevaluating that because that's how drift occurs.
[00:17:16.270] - Nick
That's how five years goes by, ten years goes by, 15 years goes by...and you wonder what it's all for. 80,000 hours. So I tell my folks about that. And when they're young in their careers, I tell them about that. Our industry in corrections, we have the very upbeat and Sunshine and rainbow statistic of not living much past five years after retirement. So you grind away and we get early retirement. We're police and fire so we can retire with 25 years in. Right. I've got 22 years in and I'm only 43.
[00:17:48.950] - Nick
I can't hit the age marks or being eligible to officially retire. But if I was five years old or six years older in three years, I could retire. And then, on average, I be dead in five years.
[00:18:00.850] - Brandon
Wow! That's not a highly motivating...
[00:18:03.610] - Chris
That's a depressing statistic man.
[00:18:05.920] - Nick
but it's true.
[00:18:06.690] - Nick
One of my dear mentors, that was a guy that either you loved him or you hated him, and I was one that went from hating him to loving him. He just passed. I was just at his funeral, probably about a month ago. I think he was three years into retirement. It was kind of right in my face...here it is. So it's a soul grind. It'll grind at your soul. I think most of this Gray hair that I have came from my years there my continued years there.
[00:18:30.510] - Nick
You said that it's on 24/7, it is. Like I'm basically on call 24/7, meaning I do have my work cell phone. But my boss, who's the Superintendent of the facility there, the largest facility in Oregon, has my personal number, and he's free to call it. I give him permission. Like, if something goes down and you need me, you can get a hold of me on my personal cell. And nine times out of ten, I'll respond. And this last 18 months, both of you know, because you're here in Oregon, this stuff here has gone off.
[00:19:00.100] - Brandon
yeah, i bet.
[00:19:01.750] - Nick
Ice storm...We had to be ready to evacuate during the wildfires last year. We had a legit through-the-fence outside help escape, first time that's happened in my career. If you keep track of top ten things in my top ten staff assaults, three of them have probably happened in the past 18 months. So out of the whole 22 years, this last 18 months has produced probably the top three staff assaults. And then COVID, we had to bring online almost overnight a medical isolation unit. And again, a year ago, we didn't know what COVID was going to be, or wasn't going to be, and we were preparing for the worst.
[00:19:35.730] - Nick
Well, there was only a handful of us still around because we had kind of mothballed this area of the facility, and it's literally got storage stuff in there and whatnot. But it had functional rooms in a way to kind of quarantine people and whatnot. So over the weekend, I had to go in and move all this stuff out of there and get it all staged and ready because we didn't know what we were going in. Oh, and by the way, I have volunteered to work in that medical isolation.
[00:19:57.830] - Nick
I went through the PPE training, and the M95 training, and I said, "yeah, I'll do that," because who the hell else was gonna do it at that point in time? So, yeah, it's always on. It's a grind. What's the solution? I think that's the question that you want me to answer. I already talked about it in terms of what I do with my coaching and podcast. You have to figure out who you are. You have to have investment in the work that this is. You have to be able to step away from every shift, every week, every month, every year, and say, this work is worthy of my time.
[00:20:30.400] - Nick
So you've got to define personal success within the role that you have. If you don't know who you are in terms of your values and your mission in life, and if you don't have a way to determine personal success based on the work that you're putting in, then a corrections job will eat you alive. And a lot of people are being eaten alive, and they still come to work and they say they're fine.
[00:20:51.080] - Brandon
Oh, man, I think that is a very profound perspective. And I think it's very fitting for what we've experienced in our industry. Right. And you know what probably the reality of it is this is fairly universal. That whole 80,000 hour thing, this concept of us as leaders, business owners, looking downline and saying, "okay, my people, my ask is heavy. It's a big ask."
[00:21:18.210] - Brandon
And so I think being really Crystal clear on understanding that. We are asking someone to give us 80,000 hours.
[00:21:24.870] - Nick
right
[00:21:24.870] - Brandon
Now, of course, you're talking to environments where there's, like, fixed retirements, and there's kind of these things on the horizon. But in general, we're asking people to give a vast majority of their daylight hours to serving our companies, serving our clients, serving one another. And how seriously are we proactively engaging that responsibility? And I think that that's part of the question. I think that's where the challenge comes.
[00:21:48.960] - Brandon
Are we investing in that? Are we just saying, yeah, it's 80,000 hour and all moving on with our lives.
[00:21:54.070] - Chris
Well, you know, we've talked about this, and I imagine there's probably some cross over here as well. We're in an industry, and it's not exclusive to construction and disaster restoration...I mean, the military, you've talked about this. There's a bit of a stigma. You talked about the water cooler talk and just the run of the mill neutral banter that makes up like 90% of what we talk about at work and in life, frankly, but not only do we not talk about things below the water line in terms of... We have this pat answer of, "how are you doing, man?" "Fine.
[00:22:23.080] - Chris
It's all good. It is what it is." We have these phrases where it's like, "you know what? I'm soldiering up. I'm good. How about you?" We all just talk in code. And in the blue collar trades, especially, I think it tends to be more masculine energy, historically. There's a lot of ego, but there's also just a stigma. A lot of times when we talk about our emotions in our emotional state, it's translated to others as complaining, and complaining in the trades is not allowed.
[00:22:50.790] - Brandon
Even though we all do it at certain levels.
[00:22:52.320] - Chris
Even though we all do it. We all do it, but we find ways to do it while speaking code. So we can't be labeled as a complainer, we call it something else. But the point is that talking about how I'm feeling and talking about these deeper thoughts that I think all of us have of, "wow is as good as it gets? Every day I just wake up, I work my ass off. I go home. I possibly get a call to come clean out poop out of a crawl space, or go clean the scene where somebody has just committed suicide, and then I go home. I go to bed, I wake up, I do it all over again...
[00:23:25.910] - Brandon
"And nobody's asking me how I'm doing?"
[00:23:28.090] - Chris
yeah, no one's really asking, "what is it like for me?" Right? "And do I want to do this?" And the why behind it, those conversations are not happening on a personal level. There are a lot of companies that want to be more progressive and at all company meetings, they will talk about these things as a bullet point, as a team looking out for one another, this kind of stuff.
[00:23:48.370] - Chris
But those one-on-one conversations just still carry some stigma. It's an overshare.
[00:23:53.740] - Nick
We've been conditioned to separate work and personal. Personal life and work life, you keep them separate. That's what it is. And that's the way I was brought up too.
[00:24:01.840] - Brandon
Which almost feels more like separating the humanity from the role that you have. Because personal life, what, means the internal workings of how you are as a human being.
[00:24:10.920] - Nick
Let me tell you how crazy this gets in my world. This will be a societal commentary too, real quick though. I was told, and this is about two years ago, by two female HR analysts that "there is no functional difference between a pregnant female staff and a male staff when it comes to executing their duties," and I'll use the term as a corrections guard. So I know that I have a female staff that's pregnant, and I'm supposed to say, "yeah, you need to respond to assaults and incidents just like a male staff." There's no functional difference between the two. B.S.
[00:24:43.240] - Nick
I don't care. I'm gonna tell her, "you don't need to jump in there and take a kick or a punch to the belly. You just get in the control room, get on the radio and you direct traffic, and if anybody gives you flack about it, tell them to come talk to me about it." I don't care what two female HR analysts, because they're only telling the party line. They've bought into it, too, that you keep your work life and your personal life separate. And you can tell you a little animated about this, but I think it's ridiculous that we've separated the humanity from the worker in those scenarios.
[00:25:12.180] - Brandon
Dive into that a little bit for us. So obviously there is a lot of crossover in terms of some of these underlining anxieties, these drivers, for I'm giving a lot to this organization. There's dangers, there's risk there's fear factors. How do you teach your staff how to be better at responding to their internal workings? I guess A and then B how that translates into the way that they're treating...call it their client, right? What do you do?
[00:25:39.040] - Nick
And this is where I guess I'm a prolific reader. I'm an audiobook guy, too. Brandon, I don't call it cheating I just call it being effective and efficient so...
[00:25:47.270] - Brandon
I like it, I'm going with your version.
[00:25:49.420] - Nick
And I got a bro crush in all things Navy Seals. Probably one of my biggest regrets if I have a regret is not serving. And so I've read, I would say, at least 80% of anything that's been put out by a Navy Seal, meaning that the other 20% I don't know it exists, right? I haven't found the title yet. But what stood out to me in those books that are written from a leadership perspective, is they tell you it's all about rapport. The leadership effectiveness hinges on how well you know your people and how much your people trust. Trust in who you are. Trust in what you're capable of doing. Trust in your ability. Are you going to own the mistakes as a leader or are you gonna let the shit roll downhill, so to speak? And that's where it starts, and the same as in corrections too. You have to have a level of investment, and genuine investment in the people that are reporting to you.
[00:26:40.150] - Nick
Otherwise, again, you're just going to get the daily grind out of them. We have a process in work now where managers are expected to have their one-on-ones with their employees at least once a month. And we know that that's not happening the way it's supposed to happen. I kind of shudder when I think about this one manager having one-on-one's, because their personal life is a wreck. You can't give what you don't got, right. You can't pour from an empty cup. And that's a huge part of it.
[00:27:07.620] - Nick
Is it the whole part of it? No. But that's huge is that you have to show a genuine interest, not just in their work life, but then their personal life. And if you don't have that, the rest of what I might say about how do you do that really doesn't matter, in my opinion.
[00:27:23.260] - Chris
All right, let's take a minute to recognize and thank our MIT/RESTO MASTERY sponsor, Accelerate Restoration Software. And I'm fully aware, by the way, that when I say those last two words, restoration software, that that instantly creates heartburn for some of you out there, right? Because we probably all fall into one of two camps. When it comes to software, we've either cobbled together kind of a version of free website tools and spreadsheets just to make our business work. Or we're in the camp where we've adopted one of these existing restoration platforms, one that has has all the bells and whistles and supposedly does it all, but we can't get our team to consistently adopt it and input information to it.
[00:28:08.520] - Brandon
Yeah. And that's really where Accelerate has honed their focus. They've created a system that's simple, right? It's intuitive, and it focuses on the most mission critical information. I guys, your team will actually use it.
[00:28:23.720] - Chris
Let's talk about sales. Right. After years of leading sales and marketing teams, the biggest tree trick is getting them to consistently update notes about their interactions with referral partners and clients. And the essential piece there is. There's got to be a mobile app experience. And in our experience, the solutions that were previously out there were just too cumbersome and tricky to use.
[00:28:47.100] - Brandon
Yeah. Imagine, guys, how your business would change if your entire team was actually consistently using the system. Do yourself a favor. Go check these guys out at ExcelRestorationssoftware.Com/MRM and check out the special offers they're providing to MRM listeners.
[00:29:07.040] - Chris
All right, let'S talk about actionable Insights owners, GMs you can't be your businesses expert on all things estimated. You might have been three years ago when you're writing sheets in the field, but the industries always change and so are the tools. If you're the smartest person in the room when it comes to exact at Matterport, how does that scale you're the bottleneck. I know I'm preaching to the quality, but this is where actual Insights comes in. They're a technical partner that can equips your team with the latest bleeding edge information and best practices and then update them with Webinars and training resources when the game inevitably changes.
[00:29:43.110] - Chris
Again. For this reason, we recommend actual insights to all of the clients.
[00:29:47.040] - Brandon
Yeah, three of the kind of big thing that stuck out to me when being introduced to AI and their team. First off is this consistently updated training. At the end of the day, these guys are the experts. They're out front all the time. They're constantly learning new trade secrets and ensuring that your team's got access to those things. A 1700 plus page database of exactimate templates. I don't know what else to say here other than don't reinvent the wheel. It's already available. Download it, copy it, use it.
[00:30:16.820] - Brandon
Bam database of commonly missed items. I think this is huge. So many of us can change the numbers by just moving the needle a couple points and those commonly missed items can make all the difference in the world. So go check them out at value.Getinsights.Org/FCG.
[00:30:41.300] - Chris
Can I ask you a personal question, Nick?
[00:30:43.240] - Nick
No, haha
[00:30:44.480] - Brandon
Uh-oh here we go.
[00:30:45.800] - Chris
As you look back at your leadership, like across your whole career. I mean, it sounds like now you're even more of a position of sort of senior leadership.
[00:30:54.470] - Nick
Absolutely
[00:30:54.470] - Chris
Your leading leaders. When you look back, where do you feel like you've inadvertently created distrust with your downline team? And at what point did you realize this? When did you become aware of it? And then how did you move through that awareness? Like, how did you step through that and go about making a change in that area?
[00:31:14.200] - Nick
Yeah, great question. And again, I was heavily convicted by the book MULTIPLIERS by Liz Wiseman. Highly recommend that book if you're a leader. If you're doing agency type work, I also recommend the book THE OZ PRINCIPAL OZ, like the wizard of OZ. When I read that book, light bulbs went off. But in that book, Liz Wiseman talks about being "the Diminisher" or the "accidental Diminisher," and I was so convicted by that by just kind of filtering my approach, the things that I do, what comes natural through that. And so one thing that I do, if you actually know me, if you actually know kind of what goes on in my mind in terms of mindset, you would know that this isn't intentional, but I can be the know-it-all in the room.
[00:31:55.400] - Nick
I can be the smartest person in the room. I can be the person that's in a team meeting that nobody wants to say anything because they know that when I say something, it's going to be the thing that needs to be said, and we can finally get this show on the road. But that's not helpful when you're leading a team, because I can't be there every single time to make every decision and come up with every good idea. And that's part of my conviction of being the "accidental diminister."
[00:32:19.390] - Nick
Right. So I've done that. I've steamrolled over people. I've steamrolled over ideas and concepts. I've been dismissive of those things, and that's not holding the ladder either. Right? Because of course, they're gonna think and say those things because they're only on rung two or three or four. Right? What else would they have to offer at this point in time? And here I am on rung 500 thinking, how could you say something... Like, well, yeah, because they're at the bottom. They're climbing up, not in a pejorative way.
[00:32:48.510] - Nick
Does that make sense? So I've done that. I've made people feel small, not necessarily intentionally. So this comes back to knowing your people, though, right? Because when you make somebody feel small, especially, and I'm sure it's the same in your world, but in my world people show up and say..."No, I'm fine." Are you sure? Because you're acting a lot different. "Nope, everything's good." Are you really? But without that kind of established trust and rapport and knowing your people... So the bottom answer is, you got to know your people.
[00:33:14.120] - Nick
You have to expect that you're gonna make mistakes as leaders. I think that's one thing that keeps people from, again in my world, being a manager to being a leader, they get used interchangeably. But they are not the same thing. Managers want and need to be right all the time. So they play small, right? Being leaders that you've got to make decisions, knowing that you're going to make the wrong call and you're going to make bad calls, and how do you make up for it? You own it.
[00:33:38.310] - Nick
[ comment: Jocko Willink EXTREME OWNERSHIP ] I'm gonna go back to Jocko Willink, in EXTREME OWNERSHIP. I'm totally bought into that concept in all aspects and areas of my life. In fact, I have a leader that just got promoted to now she's my peer. What I do, my process is I give them a copy of DISCIPLINE EQUALS FREEDOM, Jocko's book. If you don't have that book, it's an awesome actual real book. So I'll write a little thing in there and give it to them, but you just have to own your mistakes. Your trust quotient will just go up hockey stick when you do that.
[00:34:08.690] - Nick
You come back to them and say like, "look, I shouldn't have said that. Look, your idea was valid. You were right." Giving your people credit when credits do and not taking the credit for their ideas and their work and their concepts is also huge. You talk about deflating somebody and making them feel like they're being used and worthless. Take credit for their work. People do that all the time. People did that to me. Coming up through the years. That's what I would offer again, you gotta know your people.
[00:34:34.100] - Nick
You've got to make decisions, knowing that you're gonna make the wrong ones. And when that happens and you've hurt a relationship or you wronged somebody in your ranks or outside of your ranks, you have to own it. You have to apologize for it. You have to make it right. The worst thing that you can do is pretend that didn't happen. The worst thing you can do is say, Well, suck it up. No complainers. There's no crying in corrections, right? That's the worst thing that you can do. In my opinion.
[00:34:59.940] - Brandon
It's funny that you would say that too. The whole water under the bridge kind of thing. Just let it go. Like, there's no reason to bring any more attention to it. It was a mistake. It's over. Let's move on. And I think you're right. There is this deposit that's been made or it's leading above the line. yeah.
[00:35:14.430] - Chris
Yeah, Jim Dethmer talks about these bad leadership behaviors, of not accounting for wrongs and what-not "leaves a toxic residue," over the realtionship.
[00:35:20.950] - Brandon
Absolutely
[00:35:21.990] - Nick
Absolutely
[00:35:24.010] - Brandon
Yeah, that's big. You know what the funny thing is? The example that you use... We're kind of joking about being the smartest person in the room, but I think all of us, to a certain degree adopt that, right. So even us that don't have extensive academic backgrounds, our experience can often serve in its place, and then we become, oh, just like you said, you almost get that dismissive personality or that dismissive tone about it is like, oh, my gosh, that's ridiculous. Why would you even... This is how you need to do that.
[00:35:51.510] - Brandon
So I really like this idea, though, of what you said is stopping and looking back and saying, Well, of course, they don't have the time and grade the experience. And so instead of it being this well, my job then, is to fill in the air gap. It's the how do I equip them so that they can make the decision better next time? I just think that's powerful. I think it's hard work. I think leading this way is tiring. I think people often get frustrated because they spend the time, the energy to do it, and the result isn't always what we want.
[00:36:24.910] - Brandon
People don't always accept that and do something positive with it. And so I think that that can often be discouraging. So here's where I'm going with this. You are in an environment that... We hear probably people all over the nation make jokes about state employment, right? Oh, they're a state worker, like, I think it's kind of a universal joke.
[00:36:44.720] - Nick
I made the joke
[00:36:46.520] - Brandon
You put people on the inside. So obviously you have some things that can be challenging to overcome when it comes to people's willingness to invest in getting better and developing.
[00:36:57.200] - Brandon
How much is that is kind of just like an overused general statement and the element of parts that are true, what do you do to combat that and overcome that with staff?
[00:37:07.840] - Nick
The state worker mentality. Is that what you're getting at?
[00:37:11.060] - Brandon
Exactly? It's like if you're asking people to change...
[00:37:12.920] - Nick
The "good enough" mentality?
[00:37:14.380] - Brandon
Exactly.
[00:37:15.840] - Nick
Yeah, it's the idea that state work doesn't get held for quality product, it get's held accountable for showing that they did something. Right? It doesn't matter if that something actually made it better or made sense. I mean look at Oracle getting Affordable Care Act out. We did a lot of things, it cost us millions of dollars, but it didn't work. Right. And again, that goes back to personal integrity, personal values. Why are you here? What's your mission? I tell my people all the time. "We do our work with excellence, not depending on whether somebody else is going to pick up on that work or use it or not," because that's also what happens.
[00:37:51.670] - Nick
Why should I do this exactly as described when I know so and so isn't going to take the baton? So to speak. That also happens quite a bit. And it's like, Well, no, you do the work to the highest degree, regardless of what somebody else is going to do or not do with it. Now, that's a tough thing to get into somebody's mind, and I battle that sometimes as well. When I was young, again, when I was young and kind of looking at this is the next phase for me.
[00:38:17.640] - Nick
I would look around. I would go to these trainings, I would look around and I would see what I would call the average state manager, and I just right then and there and said, that's not going to be me. I don't want to be that. And Brandon's known me over the years, and so he's recognized the way I actually physically look. That's also part of it, too. I don't want to be that stereotypical, 30lbs overweight pot belly, shirts are screaming to get off you.
[00:38:45.970] - Nick
You know what I mean?
[00:38:47.590] - Nick
And again, I'm not trying to put anybody else down, because I also know that to do something different means that you're gonna have to swim up stream in a major way in a constant way. So again, if I just described somebody in state government again, I get it because I was there. I can show you my badge that I have right now. The card is actually flipped over so you can't actually see my face because it looks like, you know. Yeah. Right. So again, I was there.
[00:39:11.100] - Nick
So I'm not trying to make anybody feel bad or like, I'm better than. But I keep repeating myself, but I had to figure out why I was there and what my purpose and mission is. I had to pull myself accountable. Jason Redman, again, another Navy Seal says "leaders always have to lead, and they have to lead themselves first." That's his first principle of leadership. Always have to lead, and you got to lead yourself first. And so when I feel myself slipping, I'm like, am I leading myself?
[00:39:37.920] - Nick
I have to be honest. Another Navy seal, and I'll keep doing this right, David Goggins... "the toughest conversation that you're ever going to have is the conversation that you have to have with yourself."
[00:39:46.600] - Chris
Dig into that? When you say for you, what are some of the kind of organic elements? What are some of the ingredients of you leading yourself well? How do you know when you're leading yourself well?
[00:39:57.400] - Nick
You look at the fruit, right. For example, we had a diversity, equity and inclusion forum. So we did it with the youth, we did it with the staff, and then we did it with the varying levels of leaders and managers. And it was really about how is race inequity at play here in your experience, as you the workers and the whatnot? So, again, there's a group of managers, there's a random mix. But the mix of managers, when I was there going through it as a participant, talking to the panel, all three of my managers that I'm leading, we're in this group.
[00:40:32.970] - Nick
So I probably 13, 14, 15 of us there. When it came time for us as participants to voice what we think or our thoughts or our opinions...only my three spoke up and said anything. I mean, I haven't talked to many people about this other than my three, but to me, that said something.
[00:40:52.560] - Brandon
yeah
[00:40:52.560] - Chris
yeah
[00:40:52.560] - Nick
I don't think that was coincidence. And I was there too, right? I don't know. Maybe that could be both ways like, "oh crap, nick's here. We gotta say something." But regardless, out of all the other managers, it was my three that were the only ones that spoke up and had anything to offer.
[00:41:05.460] - Chris
So that's the soup. That's the stew that you made as a leader. For you leading yourself well, what are the ingredients that you're putting in to try to achieve those kind of outcomes?
[00:41:15.740] - Nick
I think it's a positive outlook. You have to find the positives. I'm a big believer in gratitude. And so starting in ending your day with gratitude, my watch, my phone will go off three times a day. So this little prompt, and wherever I'm at, whatever I'm doing, it's a prompt. Again, I use it to remind myself of my core values and what my mission is... But it's also a prompt to be grateful for whatever the situation is. That's a "movement type" concept that I would teach and train into people.
[00:41:44.000] - Nick
When we open our meetings, we open with gratitude and people kind of think it's hokey. But again, in our work, the grind, we deal with dark, dark, dark stories and people and circumstances. And if you can't find the light and the good every day, then again, that's part of how it eats your soul. It will eat you up. So that's part of it is teaching the discipline of showing gratitude. It's showing people that other people matter. Even if you don't really appreciate that co-worker, you got to put that aside.
[00:42:15.120] - Nick
And if they're struggling, you need to help. It's really easy to be like, oh, that person struggling, let's just wash the fire burn, so to speak. We can't accept that. It's truly being willing to go the extra mile. We just had a circumstance again where we're short staff. I'm looking at the CIT calls that rolled in this morning and I'm like oh man. But again, we were doing a brainstorming troubleshooting. How do we fill this leadership role in this other part of the campus? Again, it was only my area that I'm responsible for that was providing solutions, like I could give up so and so, I could swing so and so over there to help.
[00:42:46.800] - Nick
I don't know if this is getting to what your question is, the daily thing. There's times where the person that really kind of was prodding me to go back in the first several months, I would text him almost every day. "I hate you. Why did you let me do this to myself?" Right, but I had to change that, too. I had to own... This is my decision. I came here. What did I expect? I knew that this was the work and what it was gonna be.
[00:43:11.560] - Nick
I've got no one else but myself to blame and to own. Again, I had try instill extreme ownership into my people at work too, because we've got enough blamers. We have enough complainers. We don't have enough owners in terms of that.
[00:43:25.360] - Brandon
It kind of reminds me a lot of the discipline and integrity conversation that we just had. Actually, I think that one just posted. And it is...Chris refers to this idea that really integrity is lived out through all these tiny little day to day decisions. And that's kind of what I'm hearing you say. Hopefully, I'm not putting words in your mouth. But it's this idea that what's going to produce the fruit, as you said, is this idea of all these little decisions of integrity. Like I said, so I'm going to. I committed so I will.
[00:43:58.410] - Brandon
It's this over and over again that ultimately creates some kind of end result that's productive. Here's one of the things that's in the back of my mind, though, as I'm hearing you say this. I'm thinking about this from a leader's perspective on the ground. Okay. I'm a resto company leader owner, whatever the case may be. And I'm thinking, okay, I hear a lot of personal accountability, a lot of personal accountability. I can't make someone take personal accountability. So what do we do as leaders? Or what you're trying to communicate is what you're trying to communicate this thought that we as individuals, the leadership, have to get a grip on our own personal mission.
[00:44:34.230] - Brandon
Where we're headed. Why we're gonna do it. And then out of that, we have to start making some decisions or walking the walk, even if we get lots of examples back reflected back at us of our individual team members not doing the same thing. But that doesn't necessarily give us an excuse to change or modify what we're doing. Is that kind of what you're saying? Is that fair?
[00:44:55.920] - Nick
Absolutely. So at the foundational level. And again, company, I'm sure your company has mission mission, vission and values, right? And so you at least have to get some kind of buy into that. If your person says "I don't believe in any of this." Well, then my conversation is gonna be, well, then you're gonna have a tough time being here. And so a person to person, let's figure out if this is really the best spot for you, right. So that really has to be the bottom line, at least from my perspective.
[00:45:22.200] - Nick
When you get the agreement, okay yeah boss, I agree to this. But then you use that again, you use that in your one-on-ones. You use that in your examples of why did you choose A instead of B in this situation? How does that fit with mission, vision and values? Well, it doesn't. Okay. So what are we going to do next time? That type of a thing. So that's how you kind of start to shift the people, but then you have to have integrity as a leader, holding yourself to that same standpoint.
[00:45:44.320] - Nick
I don't know what it's like exactly in your world in terms of teams, but there's a trap that gets set in my world. And again, I'll kind of break it down. So on a living unit, which is kind of how we're structured. Mclaren has eleven different living units within the Correctional facility that makes up about 200 beds that we are responsible for. So each living unit has about twelve staff attached to it. You've got a manager, you've got an assistant manager, and you have a qualified mental health professional.
[00:46:12.060] - Nick
So those are the three kind of... We call it the unit leadership team. That's our structure. And then you have somebody like me who is the leader of the actual manager of the living unit. So doeas that make sense? Follow me on that?
[00:46:23.280] - Brandon
Yep
[00:46:23.490] - Chris
sure.
[00:46:23.820] - Nick
So here's the trap. The trap is the living unit manager can fall into the trap of if I don't have 100% of my staff team on board than I'm sunk. And staff team on board can mean a lot of different things. Again, we're in a staffing crisis right now. So we have staff teams that only have three or four of those twelve that are actually permanent hired-in applied for this job vetted type employees. The rest are all people that were bringing in that are brand new or their temps.
[00:46:52.570] - Nick
Right? That's a wicked problem. I'm not going to say that there's an easy answer to that. Outside of that dynamic, what we have to tell our folks, or at least what I tell my folks. You're never gonna have 100% buy in. So if you're waiting to make progress or to make moves or to push forward, you're gonna be waiting your whole career. You're never gonna have 100% buy in. So I actually preach and teach 60% buy in. 6 0. As long as you have 60% on board, you can move it forward.
[00:47:20.090] - Nick
It may not be at the pace that you want. It may not have the results that you are expecting or wanting, but you can move it forward. And in that process of moving it forward, you will get more people, at least minimally buying in. At least they won't be undermining. Because, again, if your average person is a go along to get along where they're gonna go along, to get along with the thing that has momentum and direction. So that's the trap that gets set. And again, I don't know how that plays out.
[00:47:45.510] - Nick
I'm different... I'm State government, I'm Union backed and all those types of things. I can't just give somebody a pink slip if they aren't on board with what we're doing. And again, I don't know that that's always the solution, but I think you follow what I'm trying to say.
[00:47:58.080] - Chris
And I like that a lot. yeah and none of our listeners can relate, by the way, to staffing crisis. I mean, this is so relevant. That might have been the first time I've heard that concept of 60%. It makes a lot of sense to me, because the trap that I think all of us, as leaders can fall into is if I don't have everybody on board, I've failed. That can feel like that. If you've got some stragglers that you just can't win over, it can feel like a failure. Whereas I feel like there's sort of a pragmatic quality to that that 60% that feels really true to me.
[00:48:29.760] - Chris
If that's my first target, we at least need to get 60 on board. If we can get everybody moving in the same direction. We'll hey, all the better. But if we just need 60 as a starting place, that feels hopeful in a way.
[00:48:42.890] - Brandon
Well, and I think if you look across the board in terms of just kind of your general makeup of teams, like, it's technology. You got early adopters, first adopters and then the people that just jump in once it's proven right. Well, there's probably a reality of that at play with our team. This is the next new idea here's the new initiative, the new push. And they're kind of like, come back and let me know once we've done it long enough to say we're actually going to do it.
[00:49:07.900] - Nick
Yeah.
[00:49:08.440] - Brandon
So I want to be conscious of our time, and I know we're probably getting down to the end here, Nick, but before we let you go, I have to ask you, you've had a lot of time and grade. You're actually in many ways, approaching at least the end of part of your journey. Where do you assess yourself mentally? Like, be honest with us all this work that you're trying to do to not be put in that position as a leader, where it's like, once the game is over, the game is over.
[00:49:34.380] - Brandon
How do you assess yourself? Where do you feel like you're at right now in the way that you're managing your own mindset? And what do you think, like, the biggest work that's in the near future that you need to be working on?
[00:49:45.060] - Nick
That's a great question. And I look at N.T. Wright, as a theologian, and his take on where he is in life, meaning the guy's a prolific writer. The guy cranks out three or four books every year. And what he says is that he came to this realization that he had all this knowledge, right? He had all this. This is what I've done with my whole life, and I've got to figure out how to get it out there. And that's where I'm at is that I need to figure out how to get it out there so that it can be consumed.
[00:50:12.600] - Nick
So that way, it has a life beyond me. That it has greater reach and expanse. And so I've got three or four books started, and I need to just buckle down and get finished. I've got models of treatment and therapy that makes sense to me, but they don't make sense to other people because they can't look at it. They need to be able to look at it and flip through it and think about it. Unless they have access to me, then they can't. That's where I'm at.
[00:50:35.380] - Nick
And this is where me and your podcast talks about the legacy that your business is gonna leave. And the way I talk about that is that you have to have personal success in order to get to that legacy point. I have massed that personal success, and I say that in Humility, it took a lot of blood, sweat and tears, and if people want to put in the work, they can have their own personal success as well. But the legacy is how are you gonna use that success to inspire the next generations?
[00:51:00.800] - Nick
And that's where I'm at. At this point, I need to shift gears and figure out how am I going to get this that's in here out there so that other people can be inspired by it and carry on the torch, so to speak. I don't know that answer that question or not
[00:51:16.300] - Chris
it's great.
[00:51:16.950] - Brandon
I love that
[00:51:16.950] - Brandon
I think it's right in line. So obviously you are doing work very specifically with developing and continuing your outreach through the Upgraded Life, both the podcast and your one-on-one work your life coaching work. Where do we send people? What's the one spot that they can land to learn more about you and be able to interact with you in some way?
[00:51:36.880] - Nick
Probably the best spot is going to be my website, www.Nicksotelo.Com. Sotelo, that's the best spot to find me. It's still a work in progress, but you'd be able to send me an email. You'll be able to find my podcast and you'll be able to book a strategy session with me if that's what you want. My commitment there is... You give me 30 minutes of your time, the investment will be worth it because I'll give you something that will at least point you in the direction that you want to go in terms of your own personal success.
[00:52:04.610] - Nick
That's where I would send folks
[00:52:06.160] - Brandon
right on and we'll do it. And for those of you guys that have been listening to this, and obviously you may not have a lot of background on Nick, I will say this from years and years of observing him both closely and indirectly. I know that you are a man of integrity, and if you're telling people that you will provide them value for the time that they spend, that is something that they can take to the bank. And so we would encourage folks to reach out and work with you because it would do nothing but be a positive impact for certain.
[00:52:34.520] - Brandon
Dr. Sotelo, sir, thanks again for joining us and hanging out with us. Man. We appreciate you and I know personally I'm thankful for the work that you do. So thanks a lot, my friend.
[00:52:44.460] - Nick
Thanks you too, it's likewise. Thanks for the opportunity.
[00:52:47.100] - Brandon
All right, brother. We'll see you next time.
[00:52:50.260] - Brandon
All right, everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the MRM podcast.
[00:52:55.470] - Chris
And if you got something out of it, share it with a friend. Hit subscribe. Hit follow. Leave us a five star review. Thanks a lot.