[00:00:07.370] - Chris
Welcome back to the Head Heart and Boots podcast. I'm Chris
[00:00:10.830] - Brandon
and I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead.
[00:00:17.850] - Chris
I don't know what you think?
[00:00:19.220] - Brandon
It was kind of serious.
[00:00:21.150] - Chris
Should we laugh?
[00:00:25.750] - Brandon
What's up Chris?
[00:00:26.860] - Chris
Well, dude, I'm really excited about this. I'm a change guy. I like, change.
[00:00:33.640] - Brandon
You are a change guy. You're a starter.
[00:00:35.110] - Chris
I'm a change guy. Yeah. So we are changing the name of the podcast. We are listening to this. You've already seen the new artwork. Thank you, Jana. And you're like, what's going on? Why?
[00:00:47.540] - Brandon
It's kind of a big deal, too. We're a little nervous about it.
[00:00:50.460] - Chris
Formerly known as the MIT Resto Podcast, which, I mean, for anybody outside the industry, they're like some of our friends. Oh, you have a podcast? What's it called? I want to check it out.
[00:01:00.060] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:01:00.740] - Chris
Okay. It's called the Mit Resto Mastery Podcast. It's just a little cumbersome. I mean, it's part of it.
[00:01:06.880] - Brandon
Yeah. I kind of feel like sometimes when you go to explain that name, you almost are setting yourself up for a marathon. Like, maybe we need people on either side of the highway ready with cups of water.
[00:01:16.350] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:01:16.720] - Brandon
Because it's going to take so long to say it.
[00:01:22.010] - Chris
It's like when somebody has a bad website URL and they have to spell it out and make sure that that's one O-N-E. And you got to do that every time you bring it up. And so that certainly was no small part of our decision.
[00:01:35.790] - Brandon
Yeah. It was definitely an element, if you will.
[00:01:38.550] - Chris
But also, two, we have some really visionary figures. That one we've already had on our podcast from outside the industry. But that's been a major, I guess, vision we have for the podcast is to bring outside thought leaders and entrepreneurs from outside of the restoration industry to talk to us in restoration. That was another reason for the name change. I think it makes just a little bit more approachable. Yeah. For those folks. And then also to a lot of those people want to share that stuff onto their own audiences and networks and understandably kind of give them some pause where it's like, hey, check out my recent interview on the MIT Restaurant Mastery podcast.
[00:02:22.790] - Chris
True. Just kind of a funny disconnect there.
[00:02:25.340] - Brandon
Well, and I think, too, man, what a year. Right. So in 2021, the podcast basically was the platform to give Chris and I the opportunity to meet so many great people in our industry, like Pros, that have been at this a long time. And they themselves have podcasts or training systems or things that they're doing to better equip our industry. And we just respect them. We really respect their work and what they're doing. And then some of it we kind of looked at. We say, you know, some of these folks are really delivering real tactical content that by name right.
[00:03:00.600] - Brandon
It's like you think MIT restomastery it's so niche. It's so specific. You're really anticipating getting this very technical tactical expertise. And we do bring that from time to time. But there are people who that's what they focus on in this industry, and they do such a great job. And we just respect that. And we honor that. And I think for us, we have a little bit different direction that we're going with the show and that we've been going with the show and we just want to honor that, I think a little bit cleaner in the name as well.
[00:03:28.820] - Chris
Well, it's just like anything, right. We started out really intentionally going for this balance between leadership culture, sometimes some fun storytelling and reflecting on experiences we've had and how it relates to our work and consulting whatever. And also having these technical components, like, how do we get our AR and our control even show on that, right. Or how do we deal with sort of the labor crunch that everybody's experiencing some of these tactical bits over time? Like, all of us doing business, we just realized we really one.
[00:04:00.510] - Chris
It's more fun for us to hang in that leadership culture. I guess you could say self mastery. There's been a lot of self work that you and I've talked about, and those ones are the ones that people text us later.
[00:04:12.420] - Brandon
It's true.
[00:04:13.410] - Chris
Like the technical ones, they get a lot of plays because I think all of us are looking to improve our technical game as well. But those are the ones that seem to really grab people. And so we wanted to double down on that. So you can even look at our show catalog from this last year, our 1st 25 shows. And you can see that trend. We really kind of walked away from doing those technical ones and more into this leadership culture, self leadership, that kind of stuff.
[00:04:40.290] - Brandon
And it's going to be a similar mix. We're not rebooting per se. I think we're just getting clearer and more consistent with what we want to focus on and where our attention is going.
[00:04:49.600] - Chris
Yeah. So this Head, Heart and Boots? Yeah.
[00:04:51.840] - Brandon
I don't think you haven't even said it yet.
[00:04:53.540] - Chris
No, that's it.
[00:04:54.200] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:04:54.400] - Chris
So it's the Head Heart and Boots podcast from a design standpoint. You've got two, five letter words and one four letter word. It creates a nice visual stack. So we'll see what I'm excited to see what Janet comes up with for our artwork, but it really hits on the things that are important to us, right? It's like figuring out, boy, where do we go from here? It's like there's so many ways that I relate. I remember when we first came up with this, I just had these three words pop into my head and I looked over at you.
[00:05:22.560] - Chris
I'm like, Dude, head, Heart and boots. The boots is the work. There's work strategy. It's the nuts and bolts. It's part of it. I think the part we leave out, though, is really having good conversations about what's going on in our head. In our heart, though, and how does it affect the work we do? Yeah.
[00:05:45.800] - Brandon
Absolutely. I think when I first kind of heard you mulling this idea around it, it really was just kind of this these words that represent the spaces that we hang in. Right. So we talk about business, we talk about legacy, we talk about life, and that's not going to change. That is the mission behind the show. But I just think that this head heart boots kind of summarizes those or puts this appropriate label on those different categories. Right. That we hang in that we talk to our guests about that we exchange ideas and thought patterns on.
[00:06:16.940] - Brandon
So I think this headpiece for me, is it's changing the way that we think about our companies, the way that we think about our roles as leaders, the way that we think about our roles as members of our family and our spheres of influence? What is the head game? Right. And we get all sorts of things that come into that category. We're talking about things like personal disciplines and different strategies that we deploy to make sure that we're kind of bringing our whole self to the situation or to the job.
[00:06:43.860] - Brandon
Right. It's the head game. How much, really, when we boil it down, how much of our time and energy is spent processing, working through these thought patterns, the ways that we identify ourselves, the way that we think about ourselves as leaders and as business owners like that whole space, not naval gazing, as you brought that up a lot. But it's not self being self consumed. That's not what we're talking about. It's the game. How do we ensure that the thing that, for the most part, ends up steering the direction that we go, the thoughts that we have, the choices that we make.
[00:07:20.920] - Brandon
We want to make sure that we're bringing in guests and that we're spending enough time talking about this element. That really is the engine, if you will, on what drives us, right? Yeah.
[00:07:31.360] - Chris
I heard this one phrase, and I just thought that is so good. The value of thinking about our mindsets and our perspectives. The phrase was, I want to be the steerer of my thoughts rather than my thoughts steering me, right?
[00:07:49.250] - Brandon
Oh, yeah.
[00:07:49.870] - Chris
And I just thought that is so good because our thoughts can so easily get the best of us and create a lot of suffering, our thoughts about our business, our spouses, our relationship to our kids. I mean, we all have these dark thoughts, and if we react to them, they create suffering inside of us. Right. They create unhealthy in our businesses. That's probably been one of the most productive areas for you and I to lean into these last several years. It's just kind of revisiting some of these mindsets perspective anyway, it's a good source of change.
[00:08:24.450] - Chris
So what about the heart?
[00:08:25.850] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:08:26.250] - Chris
The heart.
[00:08:27.240] - Brandon
Well, it's funny because I remember when we first launched the podcast. I can't remember what episode it was, but you tiptoed around this love word a couple of times, right. And so for me, it's really attaching the emotional context to what we do. It's this how do we build the relationship? How do we emotionally respond to our environment, to the task, to the responsibilities? And I think that's what we're talking about there. And I think sometimes you can kind of get those two. I think the lanes cross a bit.
[00:08:58.270] - Brandon
We're talking head and heart. But I think for me it's the soul work. It's the legacy work it's that what are we leaving behind for me is how I categorize the heart. It's this deep emotional response to what we do, how we do it and why we do it, right. I think that's where I've been hanging with that.
[00:09:18.220] - Chris
That's good man. Would you say that one of the books that comes to my mind that I relate to on this is Leadership and Self Deception by the Arbinger Institute. They talk about being in the box versus being out of the box. And when we're in the box, we see others as objects, right things to get around in order to accomplish our purposes and our objectives. People to move over or cajole into doing what we need them to do. We objectify people when we're in the box and it talks about being out of the box as we see others as people just like ourselves that have hopes, fears and dreams huge.
[00:09:56.270] - Chris
And so that's the heart, right. It's staying anchored to this place where our employees, our business partners, our vendors. I've seen them as people. I think there's been a lot of times in my career where I felt frustration and irritation with certain employees. And nine times out of ten, when I'm feeling that the strongest, I'm seeing them as a production unit. I hired them. I pay them to do this thing, and they're not doing it quite the way I want them or need them to. And I feel irritated.
[00:10:34.490] - Chris
And, of course, when I'm seeing them in that way, I'm no longer in a mentor's mindset or a leader's mindset. I'm in an old school man at best. I'm in an old school manager's mindset where I need to change their behavior. And so I think the heart is just about recognizing, Geez, the people that work for us and with us are there people that have their own mind games going on?
[00:11:00.360] - Brandon
Yeah, they have real life happening.
[00:11:01.650] - Chris
They have real life happening just like us. I agree.
[00:11:05.600] - Brandon
Boots, where are we going with the boots?
[00:11:09.390] - Chris
Yeah, the boots. It's the work, right. Sometimes I don't think we've totally laid down the technical or the strategic or the tactical bits. I think we're going to come back to that but I think it's part of the conversation I think even about there's a lot of head in heart in this upcoming release of Clint Poverty podcast. But there's also a lot of tactical stuff. It's like, all right, as we consider this stuff as we start to change our mindsets, we start to get tuned into our people and ourselves, and we see ourselves more clearly.
[00:11:46.870] - Chris
That's going to change how we go about our business. Yeah.
[00:11:50.240] - Brandon
And I think it's why we do the summaries, right. Like, it's fun. But the purpose behind it is that we want to make sure that every time we record a show and we share that with the audience, we want you to be able to walk away with something you can put into practice. And so I think as we unpack these concepts as we work through and interview folks and have them share their level of expertise or their kind of deep experience in these certain categories, we want to be able to accumulate that into something that you guys can Bolt on and put to work, like you can take with you and put into action.
[00:12:22.920] - Brandon
So I think there's a lot of that in that boots component. I think like you said, there's going to be tactical technical stuff that we're doing. Good business is good business. And there's just a lot of hard work that has to be done. Actually, it was funny. I was Eric Spraig from The Blue Collar Boys. He did a post this morning, and he was just talking about like Ed Milet says, oh, I saw that doing the work when no one else is trying to separate you from the pack.
[00:12:47.030] - Brandon
And it's kind of that rising grind, like there's an element that you can't just wish this stuff into place. You got to put the boots on and go to work.
[00:12:54.730] - Chris
Yes. No, I agree. And then sometimes too, the next action, the to do list item is just to think and mull over. I think sometimes there's going to be practical bits. And I think we even ended a few of our podcasts last year. It wasn't necessarily a next action to take. It was more reflective. I think about our filling the whole podcast, and at times the work is just the art of noticing hearing a conversation between other people can tune us into maybe something we just hadn't really given much thought to.
[00:13:32.370] - Chris
The next order of business is I need to give that some more thought in my own life. Anyway, we've got a really cool lineup of guests this next year, and we do. And I almost think, too. I don't know. I mean, you and I show up every Thursday, and we're just like, somehow I'm always a little bit worried when I come to production day. I think, what are we going to talk about this week? And then we go on our coffee walk. And inevitably one of us has either been wrestling with something, had something on her mind.
[00:14:03.440] - Chris
Got an idea in the shower that morning or the guest is bring, oh, my gosh.
[00:14:09.150] - Brandon
And this year is going to be fun. We keep hinting at this. But our first show beyond this name change, that's coming out in 2022 is just going to be the bitch. And then as far as how this will influence, kind of where we go with our guests, and really, we're going to use this head, heart and boots is kind of our outline. We want to be consistent. We want to continue to raise the bar and our professionalism and how we exchange ideas and thoughts with our guests.
[00:14:33.910] - Brandon
And this is our framework that we get to use to make sure that we stay on point and we stay in that zone that we promise to bring with our show and how we differentiate ourselves from other well respected shows. And we're just going to take them through the process. Man, we're going to dive into the head games and talk about how they manage themselves and their perspectives on what they do. We're going to dive into the heart matters. We're going to get behind the scenes and talk about the real emotional context of things that drive us and both the wins and the losses that happen and then dive into how do we go to work?
[00:15:04.240] - Brandon
Like, how do we do this? How do we put it into play? And I think this is a much better title for where we're going to go on this journey. And we're really excited that you guys are going to continue to take that journey with us.
[00:15:14.870] - Chris
So here we go. Okay. Share away, friends.
[00:15:21.710] - Brandon
All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart and Boots.
[00:15:26.250] - Chris
And if you're enjoying the show, you love this episode code, please hit follow formerly known to subscribe, write us a review or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn. Share it via text whatever it all helps. Thanks for listening.