[00:00:07.390] - Chris
Welcome back to the Head, heart and Boots podcast. I'm Chris.
[00:00:10.890] - Brandon
And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead.
[00:00:19.190] - Chris
what did you think?
[00:00:19.190] - Brandon
It was kind of serious.
[00:00:21.230] - Chris
Should we laugh?
[00:00:26.010] - Brandon
Christopher.......
[00:00:27.240] - Chris
Why aren't you looking at me when you say that?
[00:00:29.650] - Brandon
I'm in denial.
[00:00:30.580] - Chris
Yah
[00:00:31.190] - Brandon
I'm intimidated.
[00:00:33.150] - Chris
ok
[00:00:33.150] - Brandon
Your black shirt is throwing me off
[00:00:35.680] - Chris
suns out, guns out.
[00:00:36.840] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:00:37.280] - Chris
isn't that What they say?
[00:00:38.440] - Brandon
That is what they say. That is certainly something they say. I can think of a few other things that are said commonly, too, but we won't go there.
[00:00:49.750] - Chris
listen, You control yourself.
[00:00:50.740] - Brandon
Yeah. Let's get back on track. So part deux. Whatever.
[00:00:55.840] - Chris
French.
[00:00:56.330] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:00:57.570] - Chris
This is part two of The Four Agreements.
[00:01:00.610] - Brandon
Yes.
[00:01:01.250] - Chris
We launched into a thing. It was just going to be a single podcast, but we got into it like, okay. We started talking a lot like we normally do.
[00:01:07.390] - Brandon
Spring it up a little bit.
[00:01:08.600] - Chris
It could have been an hour and a half, but we thought, spring it up. So here we are back for those who didn't catch the first one. I even managed to talk about sex in it.
[00:01:16.510] - Brandon
Yeah, well, that's pretty consistent.
[00:01:18.490] - Chris
Why?
[00:01:18.740] - Brandon
You find a way to, I don't.
[00:01:20.320] - Chris
Know, connect with us, but it happened anyway. It's actually a great show. So go back to the Four Agreements part one. If you haven't already listened to that, this will still be good. So hang in here. But you'll want to check out that first part. So the first part, we talked about the first two agreements. Be impeccable with your word. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. We also talked about gossip being a part of that, being reckless, careless. We say things, I think, even in our Western culture. Right. America, let's just call it America. In America, we prioritize kind of shooting from the hip, just saying what we think. And I think being impeccable with our words means considering our words before we say them.
[00:01:59.260] - Brandon
Right.
[00:01:59.680] - Chris
And then also, don't take anything personally. Oh, man. We spent a lot of time on this, too. So today we want to dive into the last two agreements. And actually, he wrote a follow up book called The Fifth Agreement, and we might have to do that on a future one. I was just looking over, and I'm like, oh, man, this is good. It's actually really good. Different. So don't make assumptions, okay? Don. Miguel Ruiz, the author, says right here, find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can. You can see there's a little bit of crossover with how we are interpreting impeccable with your word, but communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstanding, sadness, and drama with just this one agreement. But don't make assumptions. You can completely transform your life.
[00:02:46.900] - Brandon
I believe that.
[00:02:47.860] - Chris
And the fourth one will come back to these. But always do your best. Your best is going to change from moment to moment. It will be different when you're healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best and you will avoid self judgment, self abuse, and regret. We talked about that self abuse that we do, we're conditioned to do this. He calls it as we're domesticated. It's funny, he kind of talks about us as kind of the human animal and how our culture domesticate us. Our culture as we grow up, whether it's whatever it is, church, school, family, friends, hobbies, sports, all that. It domesticate us to obey a certain way and to adopt certain social norms and behaviors. And one of those sort of domestications is how we punish and shame ourselves. He asked the question, I think in that chapter he says, how often do we punish ourselves? How many times do we punish ourselves for a wrong or a failure that will set a fail using that millennial language? How often do we punish ourselves for a fail that we made? And he said, most of us humans, we punish ourselves thousands of times for a single wrong.
[00:03:57.830] - Brandon
Yeah. Believe it. I've been punishing myself for multiple decades.
[00:04:02.750] - Chris
No joke, right. Certain things, but okay, don't make assumptions. Let's camp out on that a little bit. Find the courage to ask questions. I think the reason why we make assumptions sometimes is because we're afraid to actually know the full truth.
[00:04:18.270] - Brandon
Sure. Yeah. We do that about our quality of service. Right. Our team's engagement levels, their happiness at work. Right. Yeah.
[00:04:26.930] - Chris
Bad reviews from clients.
[00:04:28.230] - Brandon
Oh, sure. Yeah. Or even just normal exchanges. Right. Like, we employ performance. Right. We see something, we notice something, we experience something. And we don't do a good job of getting in there, having a direct conversation. I mean, professionally, politely asking questions, getting the information, rounding out our understanding or our perspective of the situation. I see it. I fail to do this probably more times than I'd like to admit. For sure. Right.
[00:04:56.600] - Chris
We get a tough customer that freaks out, has a tantrum complains to us about our teams. We can tend to make assumptions about why and what their problem is, right or wrong. And this customer is just a hard customer. We just put them right into that file folder without really being curious. One of the questions we teach our sales people but I think it's really good as owners and we've talked about this a little bit is when somebody is really angry with us, we can just dismiss them or we can react to the anger. I think oftentimes we do dismiss people. It's crazy. Hard customer or whatever. Sure. Instead of asking that golden follow up question, hey, it sounds like you had a really terrible experience. It was really frustrating. I want to learn so I can take this back to our team. Mrs. Jones, what was it about our people or our process? That made it the hardest for you and your husband, for you and your kids or whatever? What was it about our people or our process that made it the hardest? Sometimes we don't really want to know.
[00:05:56.330] - Brandon
Sure.
[00:05:57.070] - Chris
It's so much easier and our ego is gratified by saying, karen, she's just a hard customer.
[00:06:03.900] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:06:04.400] - Chris
It's not us, it's her. Right. So don't make assumptions. We oftentimes when we ask and investigate our assumptions, we find out that they're based on a just thin layer of information.
[00:06:18.710] - Brandon
Yeah, right. Lots of missing data. The interesting thing about all four agreements is they really are building blocks for creating a really hostile, free environment. Like an environment where everybody kind of knows where they stand. They're consistently looking for feedback. They're able to take feedback in a way that they can do something positive with it. They can use it, they can grow from it. It certainly affects our ability to communicate with one another and where we direct our attention and energy. It's really interesting. Right? Like these agreements are pillar. Would you call it behaviors or I guess just perspective principles.
[00:06:56.620] - Chris
Yeah, it's kind of like an old school operating system.
[00:06:59.810] - Brandon
It is commitment. Well, I mean, they're agreement. It's interesting. If teams could almost look at these pillars of these agreements and use them as kind of the defining foundation for how they're going to problem solve and or I would say manage conflict within their organization, it would probably be super profound. Right.
[00:07:20.890] - Chris
This reminds me of remember we had Jenny Bandhey on from First Sunsite. She's the senior VP of Culture and Experience. First on site. She touches a lot of areas of the business. What was she saying about that? Lately they've been focused more on core behaviors than core values. What does it look like? Sounds like within first on site for us to live out these core values. These core values?
[00:07:45.030] - Brandon
Yes. I thought man, which I really like.
[00:07:46.990] - Chris
Oh, I do too.
[00:07:47.600] - Brandon
Yeah. Where are we making assumptions? Right? Yeah. I'm just thinking in my mind, like how applicable this is to everyday business, regardless you're in our industry or any kind of survey, anything really. And it's funny because it's often we approach these conversation topics from the direction of if you're the owner, key leader, GM, whatever. And it's interesting how profound these are for us as individuals, even if we're on the team, as an employee or a downline team member, just in terms of having a positive influence or helping us build momentum in our own personal development. And this not making assumptions is very interesting because it's very easy with a minor amount of input or conversation to make all sorts of assumptions about our current employer, our team manager, I mean, you name it. Right. Obviously this applies to personal and professional lives alike. But I'm just thinking to myself, back in the day, we promoted this idea of individuals coming to our team with some sense of vision, personal vision, right. Where what we were asking them to do is develop this ability to look at their current position or space on the team and look at it from the perspective, where could it go?
[00:09:03.790] - Brandon
What can I influence here? What is my opportunity? What could we build together? And it's interesting because I feel like in some ways we were skirting this kind of idea of trying to ask people to increase the level or enhance the way that they own the trajectory of their own personal and professional development in our organization. And we called it like, have vision. Right. It was kind of our perspective. But this reminds me, I know it's long round corner here, but I'm getting there.
[00:09:35.770] - Chris
We got time.
[00:09:36.530] - Brandon
We got time.
[00:09:37.040] - Chris
It's our show.
[00:09:37.810] - Brandon
I think the idea with this not making assumptions is it's a behaviorally way to describe that. It's like, don't approach any situation from the perspective, you've got it all figured out.
[00:09:51.060] - Chris
You know what your employees looking for and wants.
[00:09:53.520] - Brandon
Yes. Or I am the employee. And I've made all these judgments and assumptions about what my employer or my.
[00:10:00.910] - Chris
Boss or supervisor, because it goes both ways.
[00:10:03.970] - Brandon
Wants or doesn't want. Right. We have really no idea. I mean, how many of us are on teams as a GM? Maybe we're in a leadership position, maybe we're not. We're part of the sales staff. We're part of the project management staff, whatever the case may be. And we really have a lot of assumptions that we've made about the organization, about the owner, about our boss, about the direction the company's going or not going, what they're doing well or not doing well. And really, if we unpacked it, we'd identify that we have very little proof of data that we're using to make those assumptions. Right. And I think one that we see a lot, of course, we've been talking about, like, this quiet quitting. And some of this is a lot of what I see create tension. It seems often a lot of the tension that gets created in our companies is from assumptions. It's because we're all working half cocked. Right, I think is the term where it's the whole ready shooting, oh, man, we don't really even know the truth, but we're already acting on and acting out based on these limited data points.
[00:11:14.660] - Brandon
Right? I mean, of course, there's so much overlap. But in my mind, like, this idea of operating with assumptions, I think that's the biggest contributor, even, let's say, failing to meet a customer's expectations. Well, how do we know what their expectations are? Because most of the time we go in again with more assumptions than questions. So really, almost all our actions are being carried out from this perspective of we're just assuming it's going to work here. We're assuming this is what our client wants or doesn't want. And I wouldn't even chalk it up as being lazy because I don't think it's lazy. I just think it's a matter of it's just simply a matter of just acting on default behavior. We get so accustomed to moving without thinking in so many areas of our business, our life, our roles on the team. Right now I'm just kind of going off. But one of the things that we do when we work with clients, one of the first steps we do is we do an audit of key specific stuff in terms of process systems, right? Yeah.
[00:12:28.400] - Chris
All the areas of the business.
[00:12:29.400] - Brandon
Yes. It's like a general audit of what's formally in place and what's not. And one of the things that we can fall prey to is when like an example would be from our interaction with the business owner. We make assumptions about the things that are in place or not place. And then maybe we skip that step or maybe based on the launch, for whatever reason, a specific focus that we adapt to at the client's request and we don't do that audit. And then how we end up getting into the business later and uncovering all these systems and processes that may or may not be in place. It's funny, the whole intentionality of that was to prevent making assumptions of people's businesses. Because what we've learned over the years is that regardless of size, scope and capacity, it's amazing the lack of infrastructure that a company can have in place and still have done a great job getting to where they are now. Right. Just overcoming challenges. Real grit.
[00:13:25.420] - Chris
Adapt and overcome.
[00:13:26.490] - Brandon
Yeah, it's amazing. But we still will do it from time to time. We just will get out of a sequence and we'll make assumptions. And inevitably there's ramifications from that. In most cases weren't positive. Like it either slowed down work that we could have been focused on and or it caused us right to have to hit reboot on a certain phase because we realized later that thing was not in place or there wasn't a strong foundation or whatever. Anyway, it's amazing to me how quickly we can even fall prey to this. Even at that level. Right. At a real execution level.
[00:14:02.290] - Chris
It's so true. And there's so many other areas. Like we talk about customer experience. We've been talking a lot more about that lately. This reminds me of Theofan, my executive coach. He and I had lunch a few weeks ago or something and he was telling me we were talking about this very thing making assumptions and the importance of interviewing our customers in a very specific way. And he sent me, he found a process. There's a company called Pumpkin Consulting or something like that. I'd never heard of it, but I think they're kind of a thing anyways, they're kind of one of those platforms for coaches have all the cool whatever. But anyway, there's this thing that they do called the Wishlist Client Interview.
[00:14:44.860] - Brandon
Oh yeah.
[00:14:46.020] - Chris
Can I read some of the things. So he forwarded it to me and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is so good. And it's a proactive way to not make assumptions, right?
[00:14:55.370] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:14:55.680] - Chris
So the idea is that you schedule call your top five clients and ask for a meeting to discuss how you can serve them better. That's the pretense. And for you as the owner or general manager, definitely use your title, but it means something to the customer that the general manager who's busy and important or whatever, or the owner of the business would take this time. But I think you'll see it's like incredibly valuable. These are some of the boilerplate questions and I don't know if I could conceive better ones, to be honest. Number one, when working with so and so like me, other businesses or vendors like me, there's an intentional way they ask these. It's very interesting. So when working with construction companies or disaster restoration companies like me or like us, what impresses you the most? So it kind of asks it from this third party perspective where you're not necessarily talking about us directly, you're talking about our industry. That's another way you could saying never.
[00:15:48.540] - Brandon
Back somebody into a corner. That kind of reminds me of you're.
[00:15:51.400] - Chris
Giving them a little bit of an out because they can still say they can still be honest. Number two, can you tell me about an interaction that you have had with any business that made a big positive impression on you? I'm not just asking for them to stroke me right.
[00:16:04.380] - Brandon
Yes.
[00:16:05.370] - Chris
My ego. That was implied. We're running a podcast here. Can you tell me about an interaction that you've had with any business that made a big positive impression on you? Number three, what has been the most impactful and positive part of your experience dealing with us or my company?
[00:16:19.550] - Brandon
Yeah, these are great.
[00:16:20.900] - Chris
I'm not going to read all of them, but they're so good. What are your biggest complaints about vendors in my industry? Gives them a lot of latitude to be open and honest. They do apprentices here. No, when using words, my industry versus US makes it more likely you'll get an honest answer. Most people are too nice to complain about you directly to your face, but if you make it general instead of personal, you get more information.
[00:16:42.410] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:16:43.310] - Chris
So good.
[00:16:43.870] - Brandon
That sounds yes.
[00:16:44.870] - Chris
What do you wish vendors in my industry would do differently? I'm going to teach this to our sales circle folks. I think we're going to focus on this. If you could ask for anything and get it, what do you wish our industry or other businesses like us would do for people like you or companies like yours?
[00:17:03.220] - Brandon
Right.
[00:17:04.020] - Chris
Example, if you could ask for anything and get it, what do you wish business coaches like us would do for a small business owner like you? Blah, blah, blah. So anyway, I go on and on, but I think we rarely in this industry take the time to have those kinds of conversations with our clients. And words matter. Right? The words. It's one thing as a business owner, because I know many of you that are listening to this have started making client calls. Maybe you're doing QC calls. Maybe you as the owner, you make X number amount of calls every month. That's a rhythm you have. That's great. But think about your words, right? Are we just saying, hey, I want to follow up on your experience with us. Thanks for the five star review. Any feedback, anything good or bad, you can tell me. Well, that's not going to be as effective as what we just described here.
[00:17:47.120] - Brandon
Really specific.
[00:17:47.840] - Chris
Yeah. We got to create, again, it's that impeccability of our word. We have to prefink and kind of plan, how do I want this to land? What am I trying to get out of this interaction? I'm not just doing this just to do it and then maybe I'll get some good information. I'm being very strategic in how I wear this stuff.
[00:18:03.370] - Brandon
Anyway, I think that's the interesting thing about this commitment or agreement, right? Agreement number three, this idea of not making assumptions. I think the interesting thing about it is operationally. Right. I think for a lot of people, they can look at this and say, okay, I can apply this to personal relationship or professional relationship. I shouldn't assume I know what they mean. I shouldn't assume I know what they're referring to. But it's interesting how this really applies well to just operational tempo and behaviors. Like, if we just think about our systems and processes, how much of our day to day systems and processes are making more assumptions than not. Here's what I mean. One of the things that we've talked about a lot with folks is creating an actual outline for the key topics that we need to be discussing with our client when we first introduced our team to them. And we're getting ready to start a project. Right. The idea is that at minimum, what we want to do is outline enough information that one of our personnel can use that to appropriately convey and have a dialogue centered around some of these things that can create anxiety, friction in the job lifecycle process, all the things.
[00:19:17.700] - Brandon
And what's interesting about that is how often we don't choose to build or develop outlines for our teams to reference for these kinds of conversations. And here's the reality of what we're doing. We're assuming that our personnel understand exactly what it is that we meant and think about this. And most of our businesses, we, as the owner or founder or a GM or somebody that's highly experienced in the team, has been doing this thing for a long period of time. And a lot of it is a mixture of our own experiences. Whatever training we've had in the past, corporate influence, whatever. But then we're making all these assumptions that every single personnel that we now add to the team from that moment forward is going to approach the client and the conversation with the client from the same perspective that I am and we know we see it and failed execution. That's not going to happen most of the time. Yet we still leave room for that because we allow these assumptions to navigate what we're doing versus us stopping and saying. Okay. But if we're going to create consistency and clarity. We can't assume we need to put these things in place to help our team do the right thing.
[00:20:30.080] - Chris
I read an article on the same lines recently on I don't know what outlet it was, but it was a restoration article and it was talking about the importance of educating our customers, setting good expectations on the front end, smart.
[00:20:42.150] - Brandon
Preparing for the end of the month.
[00:20:43.610] - Chris
But I thought about it further and I'm like, yes. And it's really important that we approach them with curiosity before we educate them because I think a lot of times we go in with a client thing, whether it's commercial or residential and depending on the technician, we have assumptions in our head. Either we are assuming often that they've been through this before and they already know they know enough, whatever, or we assume they haven't been through this before and we treat them just like any other client. But we tend to respond to losses the same way every time and just setting good expectations and explaining the process, we've learned, is not enough.
[00:21:22.130] - Brandon
It's not enough.
[00:21:22.740] - Chris
And yet that often is the first sort of pass when companies are trying to systematize and dial in their response and their mitigation process outline is, well, let's make sure that we're kind of holding people's hands at the front end, explaining how this is going to work, all that stuff. And that's good, but if you stop there, you potentially still run into all kinds of problems. For example, I actually came up with a couple of questions as I was preparing for this. When we're greeting our customers, do we ask them, hey, have you ever been through something like this before? Another good question I think we can ask is, is there anything in the home right now that is a primary concern? One of the assumptions that I think we make as technicians or PMS or estimators or whatever when it comes to like, let's say we have a major water damage loss or we have a fire situation where a lot of personal contents are affected, we think the customer cares about their contents.
[00:22:10.430] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:22:11.090] - Chris
Now what's funny is some do, some it's like most of what they care about is their stuff.
[00:22:17.480] - Brandon
Right.
[00:22:18.570] - Chris
Or they're very oriented around keepsakes, you know, and artwork. They have stuff that is of high personal importance to them. My wife and I, my MacBook.
[00:22:29.970] - Brandon
Right?
[00:22:30.470] - Chris
Because that's an enormous amount of hassle fact. It's like up in the cloud, but it's like as long as my laptop is okay, I can pretty much set up in a tractor trailer and I can rebuild my life from that laptop. And so for me, for somebody to make that assumption that we're really worried about our stuff that was damaged or whatever would be a wrong assumption and folks are on the wrong things. Because for me, my primary concern is we've got a daily rhythm of we cook a lot in our house. This is going to displace us. I don't care about my stuff. I just want back in our functional kitchen as fast as possible. And as a team, I think sometimes we can assume people care a lot about their stuff. They may or may not.
[00:23:07.690] - Brandon
Right?
[00:23:08.090] - Chris
You know what I mean?
[00:23:08.750] - Brandon
That's a good example. I think that's a good example too, because I think the default would almost be that we would approach that subject was not an accurate enough perspective on how much they value versus the fact that there's going to be a reality at times. They don't give a flying yeah, they don't. And how's that applied into everything else. Just like you said in even the rooms, like specific rooms, right? It could be. Well, this is a baby's room and so XYZ is associated with that. Fear, concern, anxiety, health concerns. I mean, it's interesting. One of the things that we, I think, struggle with sometimes is how we're managing air quality during our projects. Now, I know some of my hardcore IICRC standard followers out there are like, there's no way you could do that. But there is a reality that at times, because we make assumptions about what the carrier is going to approve or not approve, that we don't place negative air on a water project or we don't place scrubbers in particular situations. And if we ask good questions and we don't make assumptions and we find out if there are any fears or concerns or health issues or anxiety issues around certain elements of the project, we can very easily identify that we need to add some air scrubbing equipment and why it needs to be covered and why we placed it on the project.
[00:24:26.080] - Brandon
And I know that's kind of getting down into a little bit of a technical aspect, but across the board it literally affects every aspect of our business. It affects way we lead our people. If we make assumptions about what one of my team members wants or does not want from their career or from their employer or from me as a boss, then we begin categorizing and shoving people into boxes that they may or may not fit. And it has nothing to do with efficiency. It's not removing our ability to make a profit. It may require a little more intestinal fortitude when it comes to developing relationship with your personnel, but it doesn't stop us from being an efficient and productive company when we stop assuming and we start asking more questions and identifying the truth. You say this all the time when it comes to sales you talk about like we really don't even care about anything other than finding the truth. We need to know the truth. We need to know the truth about their perception of our industry. We need to know the truth about their needs, their wants, their pains, the things that have gone wrong, preferences, boss relationships, organizational chart relations.
[00:25:34.320] - Brandon
The more of those things that we know, more of the truth that we know, it just makes us so much more effective. Yeah.
[00:25:40.100] - Chris
That preferences piece I think is where we trip up a lot in any service business.
[00:25:45.370] - Brandon
Sure.
[00:25:45.910] - Chris
Here's another example. So oftentimes the sales leaders or owners or whoever, we're out talking to a prospect and we find out. We ask them, hey, what's your experience been with our industry? I'd love to know and get your perspective. And they say they roll the eyes. They do restoration because it's hard. Right. It's like our industry is really difficult one compared to really almost any other service sector. I'm sure there's other dirty jobs that are really tough but it's like the fact of the matter is nearly 100% of our clients come to us in some state of frustration, confusion or despair, all the things, right. So it's a uniquely difficult industry but how often when we ask people that question what a nightmare, we never know what the hell is going on. Communication obviously is a huge thing and frequency of communication but this is where the assumptions come in. We may have a system in the back of our mind where hey on all recon projects, as an example, our PMS are required to have a face to face check in with all their projects every week. So once a week cadence of meetings and for some companies that's their only case is hey, you're required to have a check in with all of your live projects every week.
[00:26:57.160] - Chris
Well so when we hear crappy communication in our mind we're like, well that's great. You're going to like working with us because we have a weekly meeting we do with people, whereas if we ask a follow up so we can assume that, oh okay, well they're going to love that. We meet with them every week.
[00:27:10.880] - Brandon
More than enough.
[00:27:11.540] - Chris
Yeah, it's more than enough.
[00:27:12.370] - Brandon
It's great.
[00:27:13.380] - Chris
But if we follow up that comment, which usually it's a generalized comment about how crappy the communication is and we say instead, oh man, I wish I could say I hadn't heard that. But it's a tough thing in our industry. What in particular about their people or process made it tough. Like what part of the communication? How often would you prefer your restoration company to check in on a project or methodology? Yeah did they primarily communicate via phone or email? What was your preference? Just asking some of those curious questions of what was it about the communication? Was it not often enough? Were they emailing you and it was just getting buried and you were seeing it?
[00:27:50.180] - Brandon
Or the opposite, you're calling them, you're communicating via phone, which is great, but now they've got to do the work to summarize that interaction with that communication and provide that information up their organizational chart of searching and command. Whereas had we identified the beginning and we write a really nice robust email that clearly dictates what's happening and outlines what's happening next, they can simply hit forward. Yeah, right. And now we get to control, have some more control over that level of communication. But I think you're spot on.
[00:28:19.810] - Chris
And more and more now people are using these asynchronous methods. An email is a great one, right. People can read it when they can vote, a phone call where it's like they have to answer and we have to be on. At the same time, a lot of people are using text message now. A lot of clients prefer that because they just lose emails. It's buried. And then a lot of people are starting to use these Apple voice notes where you can say something, send it, and people can listen when they can.
[00:28:41.960] - Brandon
Right?
[00:28:42.350] - Chris
All of these are great methodologies, but again, if we just assume, oh, we have a communication policy for projects, we assume that that's going to match with what that customer wants and what they may need is daily updates and your weekly updates going to disappoint them. Hey friends. Hey listeners. We're doing something a little bit different with our ads. So you've been accustomed to hearing some ads with our favorite partners and companies in the industry. Now we actually have a product page, our partners page, on our website. So floodlightgrp. Compartners want to give you a quick rundown though, of the people that we're partnered with and we believe in as really go to resources in the industry. The first one is restorationerp.com, right? ERPs are an important part of our sales process, our customer development process. And why reinvent the wheel? The restoration ERP platform is awesome. It can be customized to your business, branding and all that kind of stuff. It has all the components to really create a value add for your commercial client. Accelerate Job management software. Everybody needs job management software and we just found Accelerate. Not only is their team just really great to work with, when they get ideas from customers, they throw it into the product roadmap and they implement it.
[00:29:51.950] - Chris
They're really advocating for the contractor and trying to create a software solution that works for them. Actionable insights. We recommend actually insights all the time, right? All of us as restoration operators are looking for turnkey resources and training solutions that we can take our team to the next level. And AI, when it comes to estimating and matterport and a lot of the other essential tools we're using. They are an awesome resource and they're always coming out with new great stuff.
[00:30:19.030] - Brandon
Yeah, super influential in the industry. Super Tech University soft skills development training for your technicians, for your Frontline personnel. Let's face it, frontline personnel are the heartbeat of our company. They are the ones that connect with our clients and create the customer experience. There's no better investment than investing in the ability for those individuals to represent themselves, our clients and our brands well. So Super Tech University, surety, they essentially are cutting down this lifecycle between delivering service and then getting paid, stepping in, removing the middleman in terms of mortgage companies, refining that pipeline, making sure that there's at least friction as possible so we can go out and do a great job and then our businesses don't suffer while we're waiting to get paid. The money's coming and it's coming quickly. And then the last one guy is lifted. Kind of a newer entry to the industry. They're driving Google reviews. So they're a turnkey partner that we can literally go out, provide a great customer experience, hand that name off to our trusted partner in Liftify and have them go chase that.
[00:31:23.050] - Chris
Google review 25% conversion rate, which is industry wide. People tend to average 5% of people you ask for review actually convert list of five bumps at the 25. We were such a big believer. We're a customer and they've been generating all of our floodlight reviews and in a matter of a week and a half, we're up to, I don't know, close to 15 reviews in just a short period of time.
[00:31:42.400] - Brandon
And I think people just underestimate what happens organically with your SEO search activity when you're getting these new and active five star reviews from our clients. And we just can't let the pedal up on that because of the effect on our business as long.
[00:31:55.840] - Chris
Big deal. So check it out. Check out our partners page, do business with them, you won't regret it. We're confident in that floodlightgrp compartners.
[00:32:04.670] - Brandon
Thanks guys. I don't want to leave that subject. We had a little bit of a back and forth with someone earlier today actually about an experience they were having and it actually just totally aligns with this particular topic. And again, often we're talking from the perspective owner, key leader, department head, whatever. Let's think about this from an employee's perspective. How often are we making assumptions about the relationship between us and our managers, our managers perspective on our performance, on their wants, their likes and dislikes, about how they're going to treat us, how they feel about us, what do we actually provide in terms of value? All these things. And I was thinking about something today. So example is an individual on a team wants to pursue some higher level education when I want to go back to school. And the communication leading up to this decision was basically didn't exist. So there was no back and forth. There was no, hey, I wanted to give you a heads up. I wanted to chat about this. I wanted to partner with you guys, blah, blah, blah. It was just FYI, I'm going to be doing this starting tomorrow night.
[00:33:12.040] - Brandon
Hopefully that's okay.
[00:33:13.890] - Chris
And I will no longer be available for on call rotation.
[00:33:17.210] - Brandon
Yeah, that's important. There's some real issues right.
[00:33:20.050] - Chris
With this beginning tomorrow.
[00:33:21.720] - Brandon
And I think in my mind I'm looking at that and I'm going, I bet you the assumptions like here, I'm assuming. So let's think through some of the assumptions this individual has. This is going to make my employer angry. I'm uncomfortable to have this conversation. I'm going to go through for it with it, and we ask for forgiveness later. Right. Or I don't know. But it's like you can clearly see how this individual could have some anxiety around this idea of talking to their employer and saying, hey, my availability may change. I want to pursue some additional education. I might make assumptions, oh, this is going to make my employer think I want to quit, or this is going to make my employer think I'm not happy. Like all these things. Right?
[00:34:02.180] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:34:02.810] - Brandon
And in doing so, in living out those assumptions and then behaving in such a way that's led by those assumptions, they may have actually put themselves in a worse position. And I'm not saying any of this is true with this. I'm just saying it's a good example. Yeah.
[00:34:20.460] - Chris
Right.
[00:34:21.100] - Brandon
Now, I've waited till the last minute to communicate my needs as an employee that then in turn forces the hand of my employer. It starts removing their options to problemsolve with me. And now I've inadvertently placed them in a compromised state where one of their key people who are part of their own call roster, which is part of the life balance that we create with our teams, is now not available. And how does that coincide with the goal of that individual? What if that individual was trying to get a lead tech position? What if they're trying to move their way up the.ORG chart? And now, because I made assumptions about how my employer is going to feel about this decision, I've now totally placed them in a poor position where, how do I approach this differently? And said, you know what? I don't know how my employer is going to feel about this. They may be down, they may really be supportive, they may not. But I don't want them to make any assumptions about my perspective or my role here at the team and what I mean to do with this education. And had they stopped, set a meeting with their employer, with their boss and said, hey, I just want to talk to you about some things I'd like to pursue.
[00:35:31.690] - Brandon
I want to see if we can work something out to where I've got the ability to do that and it doesn't compromise our team. That would have changed or could change the entire interaction and opportunity. And as an employer, it's really frustrating to be in a corner like where an employee's behavior has done such a thing. The actions they've taken have started taking options from the table. It totally puts me in a compromised state. And then it's like I'm frustrated because I can't deploy as many resources to help them or support them and look what it's done. Potentially. Again, I'm not saying any of this is true in this particular example, but generally, what does that do to that individuals, opportunities now with that team? It totally changes. The possible outcome in all of those circumstances really are centered around making assumptions versus stopping what we're doing, having a dialogue that's two way, right. And where we're really asking questions to get to the truth. It's a thing, right?
[00:36:33.140] - Chris
So true, man.
[00:36:34.190] - Brandon
What's our fourth one?
[00:36:35.500] - Chris
The fourth agreement? Always do your best. Always do your best.
[00:36:42.210] - Brandon
The best that you can or do. You do the best. Yeah.
[00:36:45.260] - Chris
So it says your best is going to change from moment to moment. Of course, it'll be different when you're healthy as opposed to being sick.
[00:36:51.930] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:36:52.600] - Chris
Under any circumstance, simply do your best and you will avoid self judgment, self abuse, and regret. This does for me. It also kind of points back to this leadership and selfdeception. One of the principles they talk about there is self betrayal as the worst sin, essentially, that we get. And it's funny how much we talk about religion, but I think some people call this your conscience or some people might call it the Holy Spirit, right?
[00:37:17.740] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:37:18.250] - Chris
We have these instincts. We have that thought as we're for me, those of you who have been following our podcast for a while, you have that thought as you walk through the kitchen, oh, there's a pile of dishes in the sink. I know my wife would appreciate it if I would put those out and I keep walking. He would call that self betrayal. And it's funny because it's a little thing, right. But when we do that 100 times a day in our business, when we do that with our friends and family, we do it with our personal health, we do it with all the things. We ignore those wise impulses that we have because it's either too much effort or whatever. It doesn't serve us in that moment or whatever. We aren't even thinking about this stuff, is the problem. Right. Because we pause to think about it. Like when I walk by the kitchen sink, if I took just a second and I realized this will take me about nine minutes to do this and it will make a positive impact on my wife's day. Is it worth the nine minutes? Hell yes, it's worth the nine minutes.
[00:38:17.390] - Chris
For all kinds of reasons. She's more likely to accept my bids for affection. Terrible.
[00:38:24.420] - Brandon
Check out episode one.
[00:38:25.540] - Chris
Check out part one. Anyway, always do your best. To me, that goes back to this idea of self betrayal that we usually know what our best is, or rather, we know when we're punching out early, we know when we're hitting Eject before the task is complete or that conversation is really gone where it needed to go. We quit on the 28th cold call when we know we had more juice in us and more data burn. We do this all the time, and I think we deceive ourselves a lot. We deceive ourselves because our ego just wants to think the best of itself. And I think we oftentimes there's this gap that forms between how other people perceive us and how much we're contributing to relationships or to our job role or everybody else. We have this inflated view of ourselves because we're not giving enough. Intentionality and reflection of this question. Yes, I think that's fair.
[00:39:29.510] - Brandon
And the reality of it is I probably have some pretty significant points in my career, certainly in my personal life where I was a victim of my own scenario. Here where it was I was telling myself I was giving my best. I reflected that outwardly when I was in communication with peers or employees or friends or my family when they asked me about work. And there's a reality that wasn't the truth all the time. There were certainly moments, and hopefully more moments than not, where I was giving everything I really could at that moment in time, right. Based on life experience, knowledge, skill set, all the things. But there is a reality that we talk about doing the best that we can, sometimes more than we're actually executing on. And I know that, dude. That creates challenges for me right now in our current business. And what we're building and pursuing together as a team is there are times where it's easier for me to say that I'm giving it my best than it really is happening in execution. Sure. It's not giving everything. We've talked about this before. There are some people in the industry that we keep our eyes on or that we're friends with, that we just admire their work ethic.
[00:40:45.760] - Brandon
Larry and Eric over at Tech you is tear those two guys, man. When you think about the road time and how much time they're traveling and meeting with clients and doing everything they do, they are just workers, man. And so I often have to look at outside influences like that, not from a FOMO comparison perspective, but just to remind myself, get some context outside of my own place of am I is there a little more gas in the tank in a healthy way, not grinding yourself to the bone, but just this? If I gave it a little more effort, would I be closer to the goal? And can I do I have that?
[00:41:25.260] - Chris
I think what it requires to give your best is taking 100% responsibility for yourself and your situation. Circumstances.
[00:41:34.090] - Brandon
That's huge.
[00:41:34.910] - Chris
I think so often all of us in different ways, and sometimes it's elusive. For the more successful you are, I think the easier it is to sort of look past these areas where you aren't giving your best because there's so much external validation of how good you are.
[00:41:51.480] - Brandon
Sure.
[00:41:52.160] - Chris
Whether it's your bank account or the size of your company or whatever, the kind of car you drive, there's so much sort of external. There's this really shiny shell that you've built around yourself that it's really hard to see past the reflection of those areas that are maybe not you're not giving your best.
[00:42:10.730] - Brandon
So it's interesting, I was thinking about this kind of example. I'm kind of on a from the employee's kick.
[00:42:16.890] - Chris
You are? Yes.
[00:42:17.480] - Brandon
It's a little bit today, which I'm not entirely sure what's motivating that, but an experience that we had not that long ago was a scenario where an employee was frustrated with bringing up the fact that they would bring up a concern. And it felt as if there was quite a bit of lag or a lack of caring of this problem that they brought up. And from the employees perspective, they were doing their part because they were communicating the truth. There's a thing that needs to be resolved and ding it. They've brought it up. And I think what's interesting about that, if we tie it back to this doing the very best you can, you're not doing the best because the best you can would be. I've identified an issue and then I did some legwork to determine some possible solutions that would be in the best interest of my team, the brand, and my client. And then coming to the said department head, company owner, whatever, and saying, hey, I know you're busy. This is something I've ran into. This is what I was thinking. There here's a couple of solutions I came up with, and here's why I think they're valid.
[00:43:29.910] - Brandon
They protect our brand. They protect the four PS, whatever. Right. It's aligned with our culture from this wide XYZ. Which one should I pull the trigger on? Okay. I think for a lot of people, that example, it's like, dude, that's a very regular, everyday example that we all are struggling with. And the reality of it is even myself, how many times was I in a position where I identified a struggle, a challenge, an issue, something that wasn't awesome within my organization, and that's where it stopped. And I still was telling myself I was doing the best I could. Yeah. Now I was being a victim. I wasn't being the best I could. Right. Okay. Now, it's like we can go into assumptions. We can go back, feed that entire example, back through these other commitments, but just hanging right there in the best I could, there was more I could give to the situation. And the reality of it is that the outcome was more productive, not just for me, but for the rest of the team as well. Yeah, right.
[00:44:28.240] - Chris
I think another angle on that, too, is with that employee story you were talking about. It's a really good example. You helped loot me back into what I was thinking. That's a perfect example. And I feel like the best question that I can ask myself in those situations where I'm frustrated with something that my boss or a colleague or partner is doing, that's somehow I think this is all how we feel I feel is preventing me from doing a good job.
[00:44:54.550] - Brandon
There you go.
[00:44:55.240] - Chris
But I think we can quickly get in this headspace of I can't give my best because of all these external things. I've got a terrible boss or my department manager doesn't understand or my business partner doesn't get it. We all have these narratives that come up for us of why they're excuses. They're excuses. When I can't get my best, my ego comes to the aid by saying, well, of course you can't give your best because you were blocked by this other person doing X, Y, or Z or saying this during the meeting, or this person never replies to your emails, or they never call you back on a timely basis. And therefore I can't be my best because they're holding me back. And the hard part is there's truth. There's some truth in that, but it isn't necessarily helpful information.
[00:45:41.090] - Brandon
Right.
[00:45:41.570] - Chris
And one of the questions I like to ask myself, I probably should do it more often, and I ask our clients at times is if that situation or that person never changes, is it possible for you to give your best? What does it look like for you to give your best in spite of that? Right. So what is your best? What is within your control if these circumstances and these people never change at all?
[00:46:09.720] - Brandon
Right.
[00:46:10.480] - Chris
You share the story in your head. They either don't get it or they don't care. Now what?
[00:46:15.840] - Brandon
Right?
[00:46:16.200] - Chris
And I feel like that's where I get down to brass tacks. It's like, okay, I go to my kid, I share the story in my head. They either don't care or don't get it, which is going to happen maybe the majority of the time when we're in a relationship is that we share that and it's effective to a point, but maybe it doesn't change their behavior right away. Right. People don't change overnight. If nothing changes, what's my move? Am I still going to give my best or am I going to wait until all the circumstances around me changed that enabled me to be my best? I think it takes full it's like that jocko willing thing, right?
[00:46:49.730] - Brandon
Yeah, it is. Extreme ownership.
[00:46:51.360] - Chris
Extreme ownership. It's just absolutely owning. I get to control my response to everything in my world.
[00:46:59.240] - Brandon
Do you remember Qbq?
[00:47:01.210] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:47:01.960] - Brandon
I pulled it up because I was having trouble remembering the author's name. So John Miller john Miller is the author. The book is called the Qbq. The question behind the question. This is like jocko willing in his extreme ownership is certainly the I would call it the more aggressive, gritty approach to extreme ownership, to personal accountability. Sorry. Of course it's extreme ownership. That's what he called it. The Qbq is almost more of a more civilized right. It's a little less bravado, it's a little less hardcore, but the concept is the same. It's giving some framework for people to really take accountability for their actions, the outcomes, their place in the team, blah, blah, blah. And one of the things that he talks about against John Miller look it up. Cubicube. One of the things he talks about is reframing questions that we're asking ourselves and staying away from the kinds of questions that prevent our ability to have an effect on the situation. So as soon as we ask a question that starts with why we're screwed because we've automatically removed our ability to contribute versus a what? And so an example of why does my boss do XYZ versus what can I do in this situation to move forward?
[00:48:21.440] - Chris
What's going on in the situation that I can have an effect on and.
[00:48:25.640] - Brandon
I can influence the action I can still take, right? And so I think coming back to this, doing the best we can, I think a lot of it starts with the kinds of questions we're asking ourselves about the situation that we're currently in. And this happens whether you're an owner. I mean, think about this happens all the time for employers. How many times do we sit in a room, a meeting, freaking with an IPA in our hand on Saturday? I almost said that's true.
[00:48:53.860] - Chris
With our bacon and eggs in our.
[00:48:55.400] - Brandon
IPA, at least go Bloody Mary, make it not look like you're an alcoholic. But how many times do we sit in this space, right? And it's like, why do my employees do XYZ? Why do they always how come I can't? Right? And we ask all these questions as business owners, we do this a lot right now regarding this generation and this new workforce. And we have all these victim perspectives that we have, whether or not they're a good workforce, a lazy workforce, or otherwise. Instead of asking these questions that give us the ability to do the very best we can in the moment with what we have available in terms of resources. When you take ownership and accountability, it changes the questions that you ask and it reframes what options you have available to you. It does allow you to do your very best. Right? I think so much of this comes back to this. It really is how it contributes to your ability to have real personal accountability.
[00:49:53.430] - Chris
Maybe I'll finish. How we doing? Yeah, finished.
[00:49:56.670] - Brandon
Good.
[00:49:57.230] - Chris
I'll share an example I may have shared before, but it has been really useful to me. It just kind of keeps me tuned in to this stuff and I feel like I'm growing. It's always slower than I wish. So my instincts and my instinct to pause and reflect into notice am I really giving my best here or am I just kind of moving through the world? I'm just kind of swagging my way through my days, my interactions, not really paying attention to my best. For me in the gym is one of the best sort of practice dojos is for how am I treating my training, both my physical training and I think I gave an example in a previous episode about it was like two or three years. I just joined CrossFit. And it's hard. You go from like lifting weights in the weight room and doing the machines and bench press and curls and stuff. You go into a CrossFit environment where it's just a different kind of workout. It was very intense. I remember I was in my first few months and I had this one particular workout in the last exercise. They call it the finisher sometimes, which used to be like a character in WWE wrestling is the finisher.
[00:51:05.340] - Chris
And it is like that because you just don't feel like doing it and it's just torture to finish out the workout. But we were doing V ups, which I couldn't even do one, so I had to do modified tuck ups, this AB exercise, and it was like three sets of 15 after just a crazy sweat out workout. And I was the last person on the gym floor. Everybody else was yakking and talking it up and heading out, and I still had two sets to do. You know how your ABS start to cramp up if you ever done a ton of sit ups and you're just like, It's really hard, same deal. And I had this moment where I mentally was like, okay, I've already done like a set and a half or two. I just had a hard workout, I just leave. But I had made a commitment to myself when I started CrossFit is that I would show up and I would always do what they tell me they would always finish. If it was three sets of 15, I would always do at least 45 reps. And I remember this moment because we have these moments of truth in our life.
[00:52:03.620] - Chris
If we'll pay attention right where it comes to us, it's like, I have a choice. I could totally just pitch out of here. No one will know. And I think this is important why? It's an important training ground because nobody knew what was going on in my head. And I ended up doing all three by all 45 reps. And after I did the very last rep. I collapsed back and I was just laying on the floor. Staring at the ceiling for a moment and I had this enormous wave of self satisfaction that came over me that felt so real and felt so real in the sense that sometimes when other people compliment us. We know that they've only seen what we've let them see.
[00:52:39.540] - Brandon
That's huge.
[00:52:40.160] - Chris
You know what I mean?
[00:52:40.910] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:52:41.320] - Chris
They don't really know what we put in if we gave our best to something, but we always know.
[00:52:45.720] - Brandon
Yes.
[00:52:46.450] - Chris
And so I got done with that 45th rep, and I collapsed. I ended up it was just emotional for me.
[00:52:51.180] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:52:51.670] - Chris
And I know I talk a lot of people like, man, is this guy, like, always crying and hugging on people? That's not me. But yes, I'm an emotional guy.
[00:52:59.210] - Brandon
Right.
[00:53:01.590] - Chris
I get mad too. I feel things deeply, anyway. But I knew and there was something felt really good about that. And I've observed that in myself, I don't know, eight or ten weeks ago, I was here, we were finishing developing our Master course, and I had a video I had to record. And I was stuck here on a Friday night until, like, 09:00 p.m.. Because I'd done, like, 91 takes on this stinking, like, 13 minutes video or something to just wrap up our course, and I stuck with it. And I felt so good. When I finally hit the save button after renaming that file and pitching it up in the cloud, I felt so good. Not because I just moved mountains or whatever. I wasn't getting a trophy for this. Nobody even really knew. Nobody knew what I put in. I didn't even hit our slack chat, whatever and be like, hey, guys, I just did 91 takes on this. But I finished it and it's great. I didn't know it was just inside me. When I finally locked the door to the office and went down to my car, I was like, I felt that deep satisfaction with myself.
[00:54:11.510] - Brandon
You actually had done the best you could that day.
[00:54:14.040] - Chris
And I recall I even talked to my wife and she said something affirmative. She wasn't like, oh, great job, honey. But she was like, that's great. I'm glad you stayed. That didn't bring me, like, my wife saying that or affirming that I had done my best. It didn't matter as much.
[00:54:27.960] - Brandon
Right.
[00:54:29.370] - Chris
It's like, how can we cultivate those internal moments where no one else will know?
[00:54:34.480] - Brandon
Right?
[00:54:34.810] - Chris
And I think for a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs, fitness is a really great platform for that.
[00:54:40.630] - Brandon
Absolutely.
[00:54:43.050] - Chris
So, anyways, just in quick review, I hope you guys enjoyed this segment. We talked about don't make assumptions.
[00:54:48.530] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:54:48.900] - Chris
And there's so many things that that touches in our business. We talked about how, with our customer experience, the way that we respond to a loss, the questions we ask on the front end. I gave a couple of examples of one, and we've talked about this before, but so few of us do this and teach this to our technicians. The why do we ask these questions? We plow right through. But Mrs. Jones, have you ever dealt with something like this before?
[00:55:08.650] - Brandon
Yes.
[00:55:09.100] - Chris
Mr. Plant Manager, have you ever gone through a damage event like this in your manufacturing floor before? Yes or no? Hey, Mrs. Jones, is there anything in your home right now that's a primary concern for you? I think it's your contents. But I could be wrong, right? It's not making assumptions, and there are so many different ways to do that. And then always do your best, and you are the only one that can judge that.
[00:55:30.500] - Brandon
It's true.
[00:55:31.500] - Chris
That is true. All right, so listen, if you're enjoying these shows, head Part and Boots, sharon is Karen.
[00:55:37.540] - Brandon
Yes. Sharon.
[00:55:38.460] - Chris
Oh.
[00:55:38.710] - Brandon
Give us a review, guys, please.
[00:55:40.910] - Chris
Reviews, please. Reviews are king, right? You guys are all trying to get Google reviews. Bloodline Consulting group. We would love your Google reviews. We'd love your itunes reviews. I think there's even a way to review and Spotify, I think who knows? But yeah. Sherry, Karen, share with your friends about hit hard. Boots posted on LinkedIn. Share it via text to somebody. There's other ways you can work with us as we always talk about. We're one on one consulting company. We have a client that's going to be rotating off here this next quarter. And so we've got room for potentially another one on one client. You can reach out to us via website like grp.com if you're training up a commercial sales leader or you've got sales agent on your team that really have never had formal training or much robust training on commercial sales. Get our digital commercial sales Master course ten or 11 hours of just a deep dive, something you can give to a seasoned B to B sales professional, and they will pick up and find reminders and get back on certain disciplines. Maybe they've let go over their career and for a newbie gives them kind of a full foundation for how to go effectively chase commercial sales.
[00:56:43.400] - Chris
So that's another way. And then we do on sites, we'll do two day live trainings on operations and divisional leadership and all that kind of stuff. So reach out to us, share us, just come back. We're really passionate about this and we'd love to have you listen to the next one. So until next time, see you later. Bye.
[00:57:03.210] - Brandon
All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart and Boot.
[00:57:07.750] - Chris
And if you enjoyed the show, you love this episode. 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.