[00:00:07.370] - 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.
[00:00:17.650] - Chris
Man, I love this industry.
[00:00:20.096] - Chris
Hey brother
[00:00:21.800] - Brandon
Christopher
[00:00:22.930] - Chris
Oh man, alright...
[00:00:23.460] - Brandon
you kind of try to jump in there and beat me a little bit, but...
[00:00:26.330] - Chris
You know what I'm really enjoying?
[00:00:28.050] - Brandon
I feel like there's a lot of options for me to choose there.
[00:00:31.210] - Chris
It's true. I'm in a very enjoyable state at the moment, but I am staring out our window through the curtains there, and I'm seeing sunshine in Oregon.
[00:00:39.830] - Brandon
There is a ball of fire in the sky.
[00:00:41.830] - Chris
We've had a sunshine deficiency that is just sort of part of our lived experience here in the Northwest. But the high was supposed to be 59 today and no rain.
[00:00:50.420] - Brandon
Well, I'll tell you what, I am really looking forward to getting my different shade of red on that. I get to part your summer look.
[00:00:58.210] - Chris
Your cherry tomato summer look?
[00:01:00.050] - Brandon
Yeah. My wife gets, like, olive, and I just get more different shades of red.
[00:01:05.460] - Chris
How did that work out? Dude, that's exactly the scenario. My wife has this olive skin. It gets nice and brown in the summer.
[00:01:10.990] - Brandon
I just get more red.
[00:01:12.300] - Chris
I'm the white boy.
[00:01:13.110] - Brandon
I get red.
[00:01:14.470] - Chris
Pink.
[00:01:15.150] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:01:15.430] - Chris
Okay. There we go.
[00:01:16.390] - Brandon
Jaw jack and let's get to the show.
[00:01:17.670] - Chris
I've gotten hairier as I've gotten older, too. I'm just kind of disappointed in all those things.
[00:01:21.200] - Brandon
Yeah, it's a bummer.
[00:01:22.160] - Chris
It's all right.
[00:01:23.310] - Brandon
Skip more tattoos.
[00:01:24.430] - Chris
We get what we get. Before we keep bullshitting, let's thank our sponsors. Get the work out of the way. Right? We've lost work. We really love our sponsors. Let's talk about liftify. I'm taking lift.
[00:01:35.400] - Brandon
Go for it. You almost call them liktify. No, because that wouldn't be the same.
[00:01:39.390] - Chris
But it's interesting, so don't look that up. Lift don't type in liktify.
[00:01:43.730] - Brandon
Type that.
[00:01:44.430] - Chris
Don't hold us responsible for it.
[00:01:45.760] - Brandon
Anyway, there is no forward flash of anything on that, just so we know.
[00:01:49.910] - Chris
Oh, good Lord. Do we need to start having, like, a child disclaimer? If people listen to this and they're comfortable? I was thinking about that the other day, maybe because I had, like, a relationship sex example or something. I'm like, wow, that's not part of our sponsorship. Read. Okay.
[00:02:04.040] - Brandon
That has nothing to do with Zack's company.
[00:02:05.820] - Chris
Okay, on another note, liftify, Google reviews. Yes, it's interesting. Lyftify is not just for a small, little service company. We were talking with a mega million dollar restorer in our area, and we ended up talking about Liftify recently with them, and they're like, oh, my gosh, we suck at converting that out. Yeah, I think sometimes we can tend to think, oh, it's a small business. We don't have time for this or that. But even companies that have entire marketing departments that theoretically would be totally hammering down on Google reviews, they aren't necessarily getting a better result from that either. And so Liftify has created a solution where we don't have to be dependent on our frontline technicians to generate Google reviews. Obviously, it should still be part of our process and expectation. We're asking for reviews, all that kind of stuff. But it takes the pressure off. You relying on their compliance to convert these Google reviews. And let's face it, you can't chance it this day and age with Google's algorithm. You can go back. You can listen to our podcast with Zach Garrett. You can listen to our podcast with Ben at Ironclad Restoration Marketing.
[00:03:10.340] - Chris
He said the same thing, right? Google reviews are incredibly important to organic search results. All of us are trying to get found by people hunting for water mitigation leads and all that kind of stuff, right? So if you don't have Liftify and you're not getting, right now, 20% to 25% of your jobs giving you five star Google reviews, go to Liftify. Comfloodlight. Right? The solution is right there. It's very affordable. Brandon and I've talked about this before we've hired those big fancy Silicon Valley Google review platforms, and we got, like, 5% conversion. We were spending hundreds of dollars a month on those platform services. Well, if price come in here and at a lower price point, is generating 20% to 25% conversion, and we've seen it in our clients, we've seen it in our business. It's helped us completely overhaul our review presence on Google. And we've watched organic leads for people looking for consulting from floodlight coming off of that as our Google reviews have built up.
[00:04:03.690] - Brandon
So that's right.
[00:04:04.480] - Chris
If you don't have Liftify, you owe it to yourself to have a demo with them and explore them as an option.
[00:04:11.090] - Brandon
Dude, you know what? I'm going to critique you a little bit there in a good way, I think passionate on that one. I like the fire in your gut.
[00:04:17.640] - Chris
Did you hear the juice? I did. Well, you know, when I looked and I saw we have, like, 31 4.9 or five star reviews on our profile.
[00:04:24.650] - Brandon
It gets you.
[00:04:25.640] - Chris
Hell, yeah.
[00:04:26.150] - Brandon
It gets you, Jess.
[00:04:26.940] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:04:27.510] - Brandon
All right. Cnr magazine. Gosh, I'll tell you what, talk about in the front of the line. Holy cow, man. Obviously, we're in the midst of what we call this is like, convention season, right? Like, all the big companies and entities are putting on their conventions, and Cnr, obviously, is front of all of it. And we were just doing a text exchange with her about her booth at PLRB, man. It was awesome. Point is, Cnr magazine guys, in terms of true content, there's stuff there that we can use that has an impact on us. So I was just reading literally this morning, I was reading the article from Ed Cross, and there's a pretty in depth article about a suit that was won against allstate, not banging on allstate. But in this particular case, it's a very clear example of frustrations we all have around our billing and statements being made about what will be allowed and what won't be allowed. And of course, Ed just gets into the rock and roll of it. In Cnr magazine, they're publishing that content and it's content that actually helps us. You guys know how we feel about Cnr and you especially know how we feel about Michelle and her team.
[00:05:27.220] - Brandon
But guys, the validations there, the content is not BS. It's not just to get some eyeballs for marketing dollars. They're providing content that's actually applicable and useful to us.
[00:05:36.480] - Chris
It's really good.
[00:05:37.200] - Brandon
It's a voice in the industry for us and so pay attention to that. And of course, we'd love to continue to support from her and her team and we'll do whatever we can to be in their corner because of what they do for our industry. Okay, dude, let's get into this topic. You want to get the lay of the land for us?
[00:05:52.770] - Chris
Yeah. The topic I kind of want us to revolve around today is clarity. And I think as a leader, we were just talking about this kind of a category of thinking as leaders is that whole Henry Cloud principle that we talk about a lot, which is leaders will always end up like you're always going to get some combination of what you create as a leader speaks to intentionality, focus, all that stuff. What we create as a leader and what we allow as a leader 100%. What a powerful mental model for us to think about leadership in those terms. Right?
[00:06:29.440] - Brandon
Yeah. And it's crazy too. I remember I'm going way back. I remember some training that we were starting to adapt to at one of the original companies that you and I did some work with. Some work. We were almost there for a decade. Anyways, part of that development of our teams, we really hyper focused on developing some internal training and leadership development. And I remember early on when we were kind of putting that curriculum together, one of the things that I remember us having an experience with another professional where we got some training, we were probably at like some kind of summit or something. And we got training around communication, communication styles and things like that and how it impacts our teams and our leadership. And that was one of the very first things that I wanted to introduce into our curriculum, was teaching our team members this more developed skill, soft skill around communication. And one of the biggest factors of that was establishing the reality that good communication is actually a scenario where you close the gap between what your audience is receiving and what you intended, what you put out. Right. I just remember how awakening that was for me because I think we're all communicating all the time and we're assuming what the audience is hearing and we don't really know specifically and what we've learned over the years and for some people, they're like, duh how big that gap can be, and we really can't comprehend why.
[00:07:53.370] - Brandon
Right.
[00:07:53.930] - Chris
We've got some good examples today, and so I think we will title this in some fashion as Creating Clarity. That's our theme.
[00:08:01.270] - Brandon
Yeah, I think so.
[00:08:02.190] - Chris
How do we create clarity in all the different spheres of our life? Because, again, if you follow floodlight, you follow our head, heart, and boots. We're just huge believers that the me that I bring to work ought to be the same me that I bring home to my kids and my family. Right. So creating clarity, it's not just for being a more effective professional or leader.
[00:08:20.360] - Brandon
Right.
[00:08:20.590] - Chris
It touches everything. We got some stories that's the ground we're going to cover today is how do we create clarity? And if you're okay with it, I'll start with kind of our sales example.
[00:08:28.870] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:08:29.360] - Chris
Because I think clarity is a really important aspect of the sales work we do.
[00:08:35.520] - Brandon
I was just thinking, I'm going to throw something at you before you go into that specific example. Can we just give I think for some folks, like, they get it, they connect the dots, but can we just think about, like, let's call it three, four, five different ways that this creating clarity benefits us, benefits us as leaders, as individuals. Right. Like, just kind of the why? Why should we care about this? And then I think it'll be fun, like you were going to, is just kind of looking at some of these examples in these different areas of our life.
[00:09:07.760] - Chris
Yeah. The first thing that comes to my mind of why is clarity so important and how do we prioritize it, how do we think about it? Right. I have a story in my head at all times. Yeah, you have a story in your head at all times.
[00:09:20.740] - Brandon
I mean, mine might be better than your story, but there's definitely a story.
[00:09:23.940] - Chris
Scott, our other senior consultant, he has a story. He has a story in his head, and so does our creative director, Jana, and so does Avon, and my wife does, and my daughter does, and my sons do. One of the main reasons for clarity is we can move through the world. We've talked about this idea of sleepwalking from the outside looking in. We're a successful professional, maybe an owner, a general manager, a professional mom. We're a teacher, we're a whatever whatever our role is. But on the inside, we have these things we do that we're just not even conscious of clarity. Oftentimes we are acting on the stories in our head rather than moving based on clarity. That I think is the default behavior that all of us have is we're moving within our businesses, within our relationships, based in some part on the story in our head. Our mind is skillfully filled in the gaps. We're 100% confidence in what we know, our instincts. What my gut tells me only to find out, most of us, that it's a very imperfect picture. And I think oftentimes it's in our work that we first discover that, but certainly in our relationships.
[00:10:33.300] - Chris
And I'll share maybe a little bit later how my wife and I married 21 years today.
[00:10:38.810] - Brandon
Congratulations.
[00:10:39.600] - Chris
March 22, 2002 that in marriage, it's equally as important because, again, it's just another aspect of our life, right? Yeah.
[00:10:48.270] - Brandon
I think for me, one of the areas that kind of popped into my mind very first thing as we were thinking about this was in our businesses, right. What do you and I do? We're consultants, right? So our primary goal when we partner with somebody is to help them create systems and processes and adapt leadership capacities and competencies so that they can create a kind of business that's like, hey, this is a solid, elite performing business that I love and I enjoy being a part of. Well, man, sometimes one of the biggest things that we see when companies get stuck or lose traction is there's just a lack of clarity on where we're going, what we're doing, and why we're doing it. And so I think those of us really in general that are looking at our own businesses and frustrated maybe to a certain extent, well, this is one of those places. There's a strong chance that somewhere in those ranks there's a lack of clarity. And it could be about something specific like chart or structure or training or whatever the case may be. But the point is that somehow in our interaction with our teams, there's a mixed message somewhere there's a lack of clarity.
[00:11:49.610] - Chris
You know what I was thinking of, as you were unpacking, that we have to keep in mind how relationship. There's really two different dynamics that I think tend to sabotage clarity. One is power dynamics.
[00:12:01.530] - Brandon
Oh, yeah.
[00:12:02.310] - Chris
We probably haven't talked enough about this, actually, because I think in leadership, this is one of the things that we just totally forget is that if I'm a general manager or I'm a VP of sales or I'm a Mitigation when I walk into the room, most of us don't even consider it this way. But the reality is that in that leadership seat, I have the power of life and death over my direct reports. And of course, I'm being dramatic, but right. Like, I could fire them today.
[00:12:31.410] - Brandon
Sure.
[00:12:31.840] - Chris
Yeah. I could get angry about something and just it's, of course, poor leadership. But I have that authority as part of that leadership seat to take away somebody's livelihood. And there's a ton of downstream effects of that right. For the person. Like when they consider that my boss could fire me, I would potentially be embarrassed to go home to my wife that day. There's all these downstream effects of the authority that I hold as a leader.
[00:12:57.330] - Brandon
Sure.
[00:12:57.980] - Chris
And so when we ask somebody who's a downline employee or team member whether they're clear on something or what they think about something and they give us a response. If we haven't gone above and beyond to establish a safe container where they feel like they can actually share what they are really thinking or experiencing, we're often only going to get a version of clarity and they just won't offer all of their response, right? Or I think more often than not where we see this clarity breakdown is people will tell us yes to something, hey, we often as leaders or speakers, when we're going through an agenda or we're sharing something in front of our team or a group, we'll ask for clarity. We'll say, hey, everybody cool? Everybody with me so far? Everybody get it? Does this make sense? All that stuff. And I think culturally there's a knee jerk response that all of us are programmed to give, which is, yeah, the socially acceptable answer in front of your peers is, yeah, I totally get it. That's one of the things we're fighting is the power dynamics, right? So anytime somebody's up in front of the room, there is a power dynamic, even if they're in front of peers, because the person in the front of the room, there is authority granted in that moment.
[00:14:11.630] - Chris
And so there's a lot of social pressure to just say, yeah, I get it, rather than saying, no, I have no clue what you're talking about. Very connect the dots for me, right? I mean, think about your last team meeting or all company meeting. When you did that, were you like, hey, is everybody cool? Everybody understand what we're trying to do here? How many times did somebody raise their hand and I say, I have no clue what's going on? I don't understand what you just said. No one says that.
[00:14:34.540] - Brandon
Right?
[00:14:34.920] - Chris
That's part of our problem. So there's power dynamics and then there's relationship dynamics, which is going to come into play when I share a story about my wife and I last night before our 21st anniversary. And I could go into this morning, but I'm not because we had it's so funny how ironic life is. But relationship dynamics play into this too. In our personal lives and in our work lives, amongst colleagues and peers, there are minefields that we develop in all of our personal relationships. And of course it all comes from the stories in our head and our ego and our wounding and it's all the stuff we bring to our relationships. But I think we lose track of it sometimes. And so it's the same thing in personal and professional relationships. Forget the power dynamic. As peers, we oftentimes we make a lot of assumptions. We make a lot of assumptions. Or when we ask for clarity again, the same types of things that motivate us when we're in front of our boss or something else to just say, yeah, rather than getting into it about why we're confused or we don't like what we're hearing.
[00:15:32.820] - Chris
Unfortunately, all those things kind of conspire to sabotage clarity in every area of life.
[00:15:39.020] - Brandon
100%. All right, so what about sales, man? I mean, obviously, you've kind of been talking about the power dynamics. You've been talking about kind of this employee employer relationship.
[00:15:48.140] - Chris
Yes.
[00:15:48.830] - Brandon
I feel like the most obvious place is when the lack of clarity shows up in our sales relationships. Like, where have you seen that?
[00:15:57.220] - Chris
What's that look like? There's a lot of ways lack of clarity shows up. I mean, holy cow, those stories are endless where we leave the table with somebody with a lack of clarity. We think we have clarity. And of course, that's the biggest problem is we think one thing and the truth is something else, or some percentage of it is truth. Right. Here's one very simple scenario. Like, when you and I meet with a potential consulting client, we have our own sales process, and we potentially fall victim to the whole clarity issue as well. And one of the things that you and I do that we like to do with our potential clients is take the temperature. So we have a whole process. When somebody comes to us, usually they have a reason, a presenting problem that they want help with. And we have this discovery conversation. We ask a lot of questions. And one of the ways that you and I try to establish clarity is we say at the end of the first call, we ask them. We say, hey, based on what you were hoping to find in a potential partner, based on the questions that you were hoping to get answered today, scale of one to 1010 being, wow, you guys have answered every question I was hoping to get answered.
[00:17:00.910] - Chris
It seems like you guys offer everything I want and zero being, yeah, this doesn't feel like a good fit. This isn't the right direction. Where do you feel like you land? Yeah.
[00:17:08.810] - Brandon
Where are you at?
[00:17:09.690] - Chris
When you and I remember to integrate that in, we don't get lost in the conversation, which all of us do from time to time. That is an incredibly effective question. It lets us know exactly where we stand with that person. And then, of course, we ask follow up questions. They'll say what they're going to say. They say, well, seven. So what would need to happen for you to get from a seven to a ten? And is that even possible? Right? If we ask those kind of questions that teases out, well, maybe their objection is they keep thinking about the money because we haven't talked about the money yet. Okay, well, so if the money was in line, how does the rest of everything we talked about line out? We've learned to ask really good follow up questions, which I think is really important in sales, but it's also kind of a key factor in all of this clarity piece, is you generally can't get clarity without asking follow up questions to get it. It's pretty rare that any of us hear something the first time. We're like, oh, I totally understand.
[00:18:01.150] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:18:01.520] - Chris
In fact, that's the mistake we mostly make, right?
[00:18:04.110] - Brandon
Literally, we just got off the line not that long ago with somebody that's talking to us about setting up 401 KS and things like that for our employees and all that, and I had to ask a million questions, man. There's a lot of details in there, and it's confusing. I wanted to make sure I had clarity around what we were committing to and not committing.
[00:18:20.970] - Chris
And that's an interesting example, right? Because most of the time we're in a group, there's some kind of group thing, even if it's like in this situation where we're meeting with a financial advisor and I have a little bit of a background in that stuff, enough to be dangerous enough to sound cool, enough that my ego gets activated. Like, I kind of know what we're doing here. The reality is, it's been years since I've tried to sell a Roth IRA or something like that for one of my clients. And so, in a way, we've got a little bit of a power differential or knowledge gap. You've never really been in that space. I mean, you've had to learn as a GM, it's part of the whatever business, but I have a little bit more knowledge. But the reality is that knowledge is very old. I'm not quick on the draw with it. And so there's even more potential for lack of clarity because I can say things that make it seem like I know what the hell I'm talking about to the financial advisor. If he makes too many assumptions, we could be totally sideways, and he's like, oh, yeah, these guys are in, and they know exactly what's going on.
[00:19:19.480] - Chris
No, we probably don't.
[00:19:20.920] - Brandon
We don't. Yeah.
[00:19:21.720] - Chris
You know what I mean?
[00:19:22.450] - Brandon
I was thinking about this a few months ago now. We did one of our Project Manager episodes. Man, that one got a lot of plays. But again, what was one of the things that we focused on is just that clear proactive communication in regards to managing that relationship. Of course, this comes up all the time. I mean, this lack of clarity thing, it's very interesting where it rolls in and takes advantage of us. Like, we're working with multiple teams. We have over the years. There's multiple teams where conversion, closing rate between we had an EMS opportunity. We went out and produced a Mitigation job, and then, for whatever reason, there's an air gap that gets created, and we're really not closing and turning those EMS leads into recon jobs or rebuild jobs. And when we get in and start working with companies and identifying what's going on, it's never a malicious intent. It's never we don't care. It literally ends up being more than not, there's some kind of lack of clarity in the handoff and the communication that then prevents us from taking advantage of these opportunities we've already spent money on, and we talk about it with teams all the time, is you've already spent money to get that phone to ring.
[00:20:25.870] - Brandon
Now we just simply have to take advantage of and make sure we provide a full suite of services for that particular customer and communicating that and establish clarity around that from the beginning. I think the other place that we see this show up all the time is just our relationship to training and developing personnel. We hammer a lot on Ojt and the fact that, yeah, we got to do that, but what do we do with it to make sure that it's clear and that we're setting standards and follow up and establishing protocols and all those things? Again, it's a clarity issue, right. It's what we want someone to be learning may not be what they're learning. And so we have to establish clarity around those expectations and whether tools and resources that are available to make sure that we provide it.
[00:21:10.280] - Chris
You bring up that whole conversion from mid to resto. It's a huge thing in our industry. There's a lot of businesses right now, you're listening to this, and you're converting it maybe 30 or 40% of your jobs. You may be leaving millions of dollars on the table for your business.
[00:21:26.270] - Brandon
Now, sometimes people are making proactive decisions, of course, right.
[00:21:30.400] - Chris
And we've done that over the years. Absolutely. There are great reasons to not take a recon job sometimes, right? That's a whole nother episode, and nine times out of ten, it's because of what we learn about the customer through the myth, is this really a client or it's a carrier or whatever, and we just decide this is not a good opportunity for us. But the point being is that that's a huge source of clarity gap, and we talk about this relative to sales, that whole conversion thing. In our belief, much of that conversion from Mitsoresto starts at the very initial response to the MIT loss. It's in that initial conversation with the homeowner, the business owner, whatever. And one of the pieces of clarity that most of us just walk right past our technicians, our crew chiefs, whomever is in that conversation with the client is we forget to ask. This is going to sound like a broken record. Some of our clients and people in the podcast have heard this many times. I hammer on this. The way that we handle that initial response of the customer has the potential to give us enormous clarity about the project in front of us.
[00:22:33.060] - Chris
Or if we fail to ask certain questions and gather certain information, it creates an enormous opening for confusion and sabotaging the project. And here's the number one question that we teach that they should be asking in the very initial approach. Mrs. Jones, have you ever been through something like this before? Just an incredible source of clarity right there in that one single question. Because if somebody's been through a significant homeowner's loss before, chances are they're more familiar with the insurance language and restoration language that we potentially use. They also have some potentially negative or stressful experiences that we want to understand before we trip over ourselves and create the exact same negative experiences. And it also helps us understand how to explain the process to them most effectively so that we get the recon along with it. We talk a lot about that. It's like, look, we're a full service company. We're going to hold your hand through this entire process until the final post construction cleaning. We're here for you. We're going to help you navigate the process. But again, most of us or many of us are losing that conversion because we don't have clarity.
[00:23:38.800] - Chris
It comes back to clarity. Okay, so on the sales side, we could make it more fancy and we could get all nerdy on it. But I think it's all about that check in. It's all about whether it's a stand up conversation with a hotel GM in the middle of their lobby or it's a formal sit down in somebody's office. It's checking in with them at the end of that meeting and say, hey, essentially, did you get what you were hoping to get out of this interaction?
[00:24:01.590] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:24:02.110] - Chris
Did I answer the questions that were knocking around in your head? Is there anything else tugging at your sleeve that we haven't talked about? And part of two of having clarity in the sales arena is creating that container at the front end of, hey, after we get done here, my goal is I want to make sure all your questions are answered. I want to make sure that things are important to you guys actually get talked about, because I have things that are important to me to get out to you guys. And then that check in at the end is just, hey, where are we at? One of the questions we've even asked our clients, hey, is there something here? Is there something here for us to have another meeting on? It's a really honest way of asking that question, whereas I think a lot of salespeople feel so much pressure to just, like, get the next thing before they say no. It's like create interest any way we can so we can get the next meeting instead. I think part of getting Clarity is this the willingness to kind of sit back in your chair and say, hey, is this working for you?
[00:24:51.570] - Chris
Are you into this conversation? Am I addressing some concerns or needs that you have, or are we missing?
[00:24:58.020] - Brandon
Yeah, I think kind of what some of these examples or whatever, the ways that they impact our business or different portions of our life. I think what they totally summarize to is these handful of impacts, negative impacts. And of course, there's. The opposite to all of those negative impacts when we do actually create clarity. But, I mean, think about it. We lose traction in progress if we're making some kind of system change, process adoption, whatever the case may be, often it's going to be some lack of clarity somewhere in that process that really grinds gears and slows progress and in a lot of cases, ultimately just ends up being another initiative. We've talked about. But we can't do anything with it. I think we see real financial costs that are measurable when we have lack of clarity. Things like closing rates, conversion rates. How often are we really maximizing by upselling almost all our recon opportunities? Like how many people want to put their house together exactly the way it was before you showed up? Okay, granted if it's a brand new house, but most of our projects, buildings, houses, they've been around for a while and some kind of ti or improvements is necessary.
[00:26:02.440] - Brandon
So again, there's real monetary costs to a lack of clarity within our system. Things like employee turnover, lack of engagement. Again, it comes most times you can boil all those things down to the fact that there's some kind of understanding gap about where we're headed and how we get there, right?
[00:26:19.080] - Chris
And we work with a lot of fairly large teams and clarity is probably the number one issue affecting their organization. And these are very successful teams. But when we get in there and we look at it and we're like, okay, here's the opportunity, it's almost always clarity. And we end up one of the very first initiatives typically we'll do is looking at chart. How is this organization set up? Is there clarity in terms of job descriptions, roles and responsibilities? And often there's not, right? Because as we grow really fast, everybody puts on multiple hats. You just adapt and overcome, adapt and overcome. But then we have clients we've worked with where there's a real lack of clarity of who reports to who. And as owners, sometimes you think it feels obvious, but then when you talk to the downline people, it's not. They have multiple people they're reporting to, which is really messy. It creates more drama, but it also just makes people feel insecure because they don't know who to please or they.
[00:27:12.110] - Brandon
Just choose the wrong person, right? They inevitably partnering or seeking advice or direction from a peer or potentially somebody from another department or undirectly related or whatever the case may be. And it's like you can't really get connection between their direct line supervisor, the person actually responsible for their and again.
[00:27:29.710] - Chris
We talk about power dynamics. Sometimes it's really difficult for an employee to create that clarity themselves because of the fear. So and so is a little bit testy or gets easily aggravated. I don't want to bring this up to them. It's fine the way it is. It's like leave well enough alone. Don't poke the bear right there's all these things that whether it's warranted or not, I think sometimes as owners, we discover these things after the fact. Why the hell didn't you just come talk to me? We have one particular owner that they never even brought it up to me because they were intimidated. And it's like we forget the power we have. It's really important, I think, in establishing clarity that there's an element of posture and body language that's really important as leaders, especially when there's a power differential. It's like, I think part of the practice of creating a safe container for the person in front of us at times it's shrinking our profile a little bit. It's lowering our voice, it's creating a little more safety when we may be a real intense, hard driver person. Part of creating safety to achieve clarity is making ourselves more approachable.
[00:28:31.390] - Chris
I think it's part of it. 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.com Partners 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 and 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 have 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. They're really advocating for the contractor and trying to create a software solution that works for them. Actionable Insights.
[00:29:35.930] - Chris
We recommend Actionable 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're an awesome resource and they're always coming out with new great stuff. Yeah.
[00:29:56.820] - Brandon
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 life cycle 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 as least friction as possible so we can go out, do a great job, and then our businesses don't suffer while we're waiting to get paid. The money is coming, and it's coming quickly. And then the last one, guys, is Liftify is 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.
[00:31:00.450] - Chris
Google review 25% conversion rate, which is industry wide. People tend to average 5% of the people you ask for review actually convert Liftify bumps that to 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.
[00:31:19.770] - 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 businesses long term.
[00:31:33.330] - 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.com partners.
[00:31:42.090] - Brandon
Thanks, guys. I think you've kind of turned the corner a little bit here in the conversation. I think we should just keep rolling with it is what are some of these tangible things that we can do to continue to focus on and create clarity in these kinds of scenarios? Right? And you've talked about it with sales. That whole taking a temperature, I think that's a perfect example of a tool or a resource that we could deploy. That's not rocket science. It's simply being honest. Right. And I think one of the powerful things that you're displaying when you give that example of just taking the temperature, asking the client is, I think you also diffuse some of that ego stance in that where you're like, okay, well, they're the ones presenting, and they're the ones pausing for a second and saying, hey, what's your understanding of this? Is this landing? Are we headed somewhere here? I think it empowers the listener then to be more engaged and say, like, well, okay, well, you're since you're asking, versus them going off into the nethers silently and us never hearing from them again, or whatever the case may be.
[00:32:39.250] - Brandon
I think other things that I've been taught over the years, especially it's like, for instance, in delegation or training or interaction with personnel, is really doing feedback, establishing a feedback loop and saying, hey, what did you hear? Right. We've just been discussing, let's say, an update to our methodology about estimated whatever. What did you hear from what we've been talking about? And then doing that whole peeling back the layers of the onion based on that first response. And there was a point in that that I asked an open ended question because you and I do this a lot. Like when we're presenting and training. You feel me? Are you following where I'm coming from? And that literally is a yes no answer, but something like, hey, what did you hear in our exchange so far? And having them almost do a summarization of what they've picked up on, oh, man, that has given me so many opportunities over the years to go, oh, okay, hold on, that's not what I meant. Or, no, that's close, but let's provide a little more color there so that we walk away with a similar understanding. I was just kind of feverishly writing some notes as you were talking.
[00:33:39.820] - Brandon
Here's one, and this is that more proactive stance is leveraging setting expectations as part of how we're creating clarity. And again, this is effective in all types of relationships that we have professional, personal, family, employee, employer, sales prospects, all the things if we can do a good job of. And you teach this a lot in regards to setting up the sales meeting, like, you literally open very specifically with setting the stage of the expectations as we know them right now for what the meeting should unfold, like, and then you again leave room like, hey, is this agenda aligned with what you were hoping to do? Is there anything here you want to add that's massive to establish the clarity? You've proactively prevented a lot of space that people will get spun out on to create that lack of clarity. I think we can do the same thing when it comes to client relationship. We show up on the first day of the job helping set expectations. You and I talk about a lot the silent phase, right, where things are going to feel a little lame for a while on that project lifecycle. But again, if we can proactively set that stage and create clarity around, hey, this is going to happen.
[00:34:50.700] - Brandon
This is what we do about it. It's so powerful. It's so powerful in preventing that from becoming an actual issue, right, that we lose confidence from the client.
[00:35:00.770] - Chris
I think a lot of times as leaders, we're in some state of fear of how our audience is going to react. A lot of times as leaders, we're regularly faced with situations where there's no awesome option. It's like the lesser of two evils. We get in a tight spot or there's just something dangerous or urgent or whatever, and it's like both options are going to suck a little bit, this one sucks a little bit less. But we're in front of the audience and we're just a little afraid of what the reaction is going to be and how it's going to impact morale and all the things and our sales focus and everything else. So we're almost afraid to hear what people think of it, which leads to confusion and misconceptions and misunderstandings, which perpetuates, which amplifies amplifies the problem of how that message landed. But we're timid because it's like we don't want to poke the bear either, whatever that means. We don't want the conflict and drama either. And yet sometimes avoiding the drama creates.
[00:35:56.300] - Brandon
More of it, I think. Vagueness in job descriptions, vagueness in Accountability.org charts. I think if you have any gray in scenarios like performance, like, what does performance expectations look like? What is me delivering a win look like? Again, these are huge areas in our business that we create clarity gaps that really hinder and cost us again.
[00:36:18.570] - Chris
Yeah, you bring up a good point, because so many of the people listening to this are likely in some kind of growth curve. Fred. There's obviously m and a there's all this everybody is chasing growth right now. And I think with that, you end up with people on your team that become kind of these jack of all trade resources and maybe you opened a second location, or you're in a massive hiring blitz, or you got all these things are changing your business, and inevitably, you get people that emerge on your team that are capable of a lot. And so you just start assigning them all these projects and they just kind of become this project person on the team. I think we've had employees like that, sure. And it's not a negative in the moment, but it becomes a negative when you start to stabilize after that growth. And they've worn all these hats. People see them in some cases as this executive figure, but they aren't necessarily tasked with that authority. But they've been moving in all these different areas of the business, and people continue to kind of use them, like, Well, I'll call so and so for that.
[00:37:17.180] - Chris
And then all of a sudden, behind the scenes, this person is experiencing burnout overwhelm. They feel like they report to seven different people, and it's like anybody asks them for help, they need to help. And there's a certain amount of ego in there, so they don't say, no, this is common. But it's a lack of clarity. Again, it's like, hey, my job is all of this stuff. If you have somebody on your team like that, they may be the rock star, they may be your right hand person, but have you taken time to give them clarity on who they're responsible to, what they're responsible for? These are some of the reasons why people burn out and they leave our industry and they leave our businesses just because at some point, they are incredibly valuable, and they're like, oh, man, I just need a little bit of a break. I just need to go get myself a nine to five. And there's someone out there that's willing to pay them to give them a 95 yeah. To be the position player that doesn't have all that stress and confusion with it. I mentioned that I wanted to talk about this in the context of personal relationships.
[00:38:14.420] - Brandon
Yeah, because you just say context. That seems a little bit like a Freudian probably, like context instead of content.
[00:38:22.450] - Chris
Yeah, we haven't quite crossed that threshold in this podcast yet, but I'm sure it's coming.
[00:38:27.920] - Brandon
That's next.
[00:38:29.090] - Chris
My wife and I yesterday, I mentioned on the podcast, a couple of months ago, I bought a sauna. Yeah, I installed a sauna at my house, barrel sauna. And I did it for a variety of reasons, but mostly just health. Saunas are good for all this, and that supposedly, right? Four times a week, 25 minutes at such and such temperatures, like all these studies, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so I'm one of these excitable. I'm a passionate person. I find my things, and I just get all into it. My wife, bless her heart, thank goodness my wife isn't a carbon copy of me. I don't even know what kind of mess my life would be if my wife and I were both visionaries and idea adventure people. So I find these things out. I'm like, Honey, we got to get a sauna. And I just go get a sauna. But then it isn't just that I want her to be as excited about it as for health and longevity and all these benefits. Heat, shock proteins. Come on, honey. Just come sauna with psyched. Yeah, I'm psyched, and I'm trying to get her psyched, and inevitably, she's never quite as psyched as I want her to be.
[00:39:30.040] - Chris
So anyway, last night, we've had the sauna now for maybe six or eight weeks. I go to heat up the sauna for our evening, soak and I talked to her. I'm like, hey, honey, you know, sauna will be ready in about 30 minutes. And she's like, yeah, I don't think I feel like doing the sauna tonight. And I'm like, okay. Why? And she's like, Well, I need something to preoccupy me in the heat. She gets really overwhelmed by the heat, and it's uncomfortable. Like, you don't go in a sauna to relax. Buy a hot tub. You want to relax. There's some intentionality to it. I find it relaxing afterwards. It's kind of like going for a run. Running is miserable for me, but I do generally get that feel good thing after a good workout, right? Yeah, same kind of principle. This is not a leisure activity. And so she always wants to have Gilmore Girls on or something, like, on her phone just to preoccupy her brain, and I'm like, cool with that. It's uncomfortable for me too. Long story short, the last few times we've gotten in the sauna, I would just start up, like, a YouTube video or something, something to distract her.
[00:40:30.170] - Chris
So last night as we're talking, I'm like, Why don't you want to go in? She's like, well, you just kind of have your thing. You like, to do. Sometimes you just like to sit quiet, or you just listen to music. Like, I need distraction, and you kind of have your own thing you want to do, and so let's just do it separate. I'm like, well, wait. Whoa. Hold on a second. I'm a total romantic. I'm a total squishy guy, and I'm like, wait, honey, I like this. This is valuable to me as having our sauna time. So, what is it? You want to watch gilmore Girls. I don't have a problem with that. This is cool. You want to watch Gilmore Girls the first season for like the 9th time in a row, baby. Whatever. Let's just go do our sauna thing. She's like, I was like, God, what is going on here? So then it turns out there's more to it. She said, Honey, can I just have my own sauna time? I'm like, well, yeah, but please tell me why does this sound familiar to any other married couples out there? It's like, I want an explanation, honey, why all of a sudden are you not wanting to go in the sauna with me?
[00:41:23.770] - Chris
So, long story short, the conversation goes from our kitchen to our bedroom. I'm, like, getting ready to go in the sauna. I'm like, Honey, just level with me. What the hell is going on? And she's like, well, several times now, you've been standing on the back deck in your underwear, waiting for me, and I feel pressure, like I'm not moving fast enough for you. Like, you're ready to do sauna now, and it's just become this whole stressful thing. I feel like you don't want to listen to Gilmore Girls. Plus, if I'm not ready to go in the sauna at the same time as you, you don't want more hot air to escape. So you don't want to hold the door open while you're waiting for me. So we got to both go into the sauna at the same time. It's a whole thing, and it's stressing me out. I'm like, Honey, why didn't you just talk to me about this a week ago or two weeks ago when you started to feel this whole stressful thing around going in the sauna?
[00:42:07.450] - Brandon
I would love to hear her version of this story and compare it to you.
[00:42:11.910] - Chris
I think I'm actually being pretty honest. I mean, it's like, okay, I've been a bit of a dick. Like, I realized that I do that. We have a sliding glass door off our master bedroom and a deck, and then we have the sauna out there. And so I'm, like, standing out there. She's seeing me in the glass. I'm standing out there in my underwear, and I kind of am tapping my foot. I'm like, Honey, what is taking you so long to take clothes off? Let's go. Like, okay, you want to throw your swimsuit top on? Okay, fine. Let's go in at the end of it. Right? First of all, I was starting to get a little irritated. Like, why didn't you just talk to me about this? Which, of course, is part of the issue, is my irritation and my general impatience. And so I finally I get what's going on. I'm like, Honey, okay, bear with me for just a minute, okay? First of all, I don't care what we listen to Gilmore Girls. Second of all, I need the distraction, too. I may seem like I'm so into this whole sauna thing that I love it.
[00:42:59.130] - Chris
I don't love it. It's like I'm doing it for the health benefit. It is hard for me to get through the 25 minutes, too. So you and I are on the same page there. If we will listen to Gilmore Girls for the next two years in the sauna, I'm okay with that. Are we clear on that? She's like, okay, I just figured you wanted to watch your YouTube video. No, it's just because you couldn't figure out what you wanted to watch. But then inevitably, by the time I find some on YouTube, then you're already pulling up an episode of Gilmore Girls that we've listened. But I don't care. That's the good news. I don't care. Let's just start with Gilmore Girls from now on. Don't care. And I said, as far as the foot tapping thing, I'm such a dick. I'm sorry. Yes, I'm so impatient. I get it. You're exactly right. I'm impatient, and I'm like, look, honey, here's the deal. Let's do the next few sauna sessions separately, but then let's try again. Can we try again together? Gilmore Girls. I won't tap my foot this next time.
[00:43:45.910] - Brandon
You me, the G girls.
[00:43:47.450] - Chris
So I wish there was, like, some fantastic outcome where she's like, okay, honey, all right. And we have this meeting in my no, we didn't go in the sauna together last night. I've saunaed by myself. My point is, if it's not already self evident, right? My wife had a story in her head about what the whole sauna experience was to me, what I cared about, what I was committed to. I wasn't committed to anything except going in the sauna. And yet she had this whole story. I always had this whole story when I was getting her resistance about, like, I'm feeling misunderstood and all these things. And over the period of about 40 minutes, we finally were able to get clarity. But I think part of it was I was starting to get all ramped up, and we were starting to do this whole acceleration of things, and thankfully, I noticed it, and I was able to sort of bring my voice down, slow my speech, like, all this stuff. I was able to be sympathetic. I was able to hear her, and we were able to finally connect the dots. But that's kind of a picture of what conflict looks like for my wife and I is that both of us just get these stories in our head stirred up, and we think that there's a minefield that we're sort of avoiding when a lot of times the minefield was created in our own heads, one or both of us felt like the other person was hyper committed to a certain perspective or a certain thing.
[00:45:03.650] - Chris
And then when we actually finally come to an understanding, we realize, okay, it was 70% reality. It's totally true. I was tapping my foot like a total dick. Come on, honey, what's taking you so long? We strip down to our underwear, and we go in the thing. I was totally being impatient because I'm an impatient person. A lot of the other stuff was just in her mind, and of course, it's probably predicated on previous conversations we had and all that stuff.
[00:45:28.950] - Brandon
It just goes to show, though, how quickly these things spin out of control. And I think if you look at that isolated experience, and it's got real clean edges, and it's like, okay, XYZ, right? Or ABC. But I think what happens in our businesses and our working relationships and our client to prospect relationships is they're more subtle. It's just these little lacks of clarity, these little misunderstandings that we allow to be produced. And then it really does. It creates all those negativities. It creates the friction. It creates a loss of revenue. It lost profit margin. We turn people over. We lack engagement. Like, it really does come back down to these key elements of just creating clarity in our understanding. It's not lost people on the same page, you know what I mean?
[00:46:14.140] - Chris
Absolutely. It's not lost on me, by the way, that at no point as I'm telling this somewhat revealing and embarrassing story about myself and my natural tendencies, at no point did you say, oh, yeah, Jana and I deal with that all the time. Yeah.
[00:46:27.210] - Brandon
Because I've never had that problem.
[00:46:28.520] - Chris
Son of a bitch.
[00:46:29.220] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:46:29.450] - Chris
Okay. All right.
[00:46:30.190] - Brandon
Let me know.
[00:46:30.720] - Chris
Hang myself out there.
[00:46:31.710] - Brandon
It's time to do counseling. We'll square you away.
[00:46:33.860] - Chris
Really appreciate that.
[00:46:34.750] - Brandon
Yeah, no, we'll be really crystal clear.
[00:46:37.790] - Chris
Yeah. I hope you and Janet can impart some winning strategies to my wife and I. I really look forward to that.
[00:46:43.510] - Brandon
Now I understand why you started with the context statement instead of context statement.
[00:46:50.350] - Chris
That's what I'm not going to be having tonight. No.
[00:46:52.690] - Brandon
Okay. Crew, hopefully.
[00:46:54.010] - Chris
Did I mention it was my anniversary today? Yes.
[00:46:56.630] - Brandon
We've lost the control.
[00:46:58.070] - Chris
I really think one of these days we should get our spouses on the episode, and they just run it, and they kind of set the record straight.
[00:47:04.190] - Brandon
Well, what a lot of people don't know is my wife actually, unfortunately, probably for her, she has to listen to every episode. She does a lot of post production interactions, so she's probably heard, goodness, we.
[00:47:14.510] - Chris
Should land this plane. Listen, for those of you who have been following floodlight the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast for a while, if any of this holds value, the best thing you can do is share it with your friends. Subscribe. So you go into Apple podcast app, right? You can click is it Follow?
[00:47:30.590] - Brandon
Yeah, apple still calls it Follow.
[00:47:32.240] - Chris
I think it's Follows instead of subscribe on Spotify. We also have a bunch of listeners on Spotify as well. So whatever platform but Subscribing or following, whatever the deal is, sharing with your friends, when we post our recaps or our little snippets on LinkedIn, sharing those out on your newsfeed, it makes us feel good.
[00:47:50.680] - Brandon
In full honesty, think about this, and this is just full transparency. We need your help growing the show. One is it's growing, and it's growing rapidly, and we're very humbled and excited about that. It's fun for us. It gives us the wherewithal to continue to invest energy and time into that. But more importantly, guys, is that us talking to guests and just saying, hey, the show is great and people love it, doesn't necessarily move the needle, doesn't.
[00:48:15.640] - Chris
Help people find us.
[00:48:16.510] - Brandon
Yeah, right. But as more and more people are actually subscribing and formalizing that relationship with us, it gives us more authority for us to bring in more and more guests. And this year, Chris and I intentionally started the year a little bit more solo and not bringing in a lot of industry specific guests. We've had a few, and we have a few more coming up, but we really are trying. Our goal we're just being really transparent with you guys. Our goal is we want to continue to attract and bring more voices that are more well known and or have more traction in some of these other industries because they have a lot to share with us, a lot to teach us. And those numbers mean something to those folks. Right. When they see that there's engaged listenership and that there's followers, it really gives us much more of an opportunity to leverage that relationship and bring some new people into our industry and expose our listeners and our partners to some of these folks. It really does help move the needle.
[00:49:10.580] - Chris
Yeah, it really does. These authors and speakers and business executives, they're in high demand, and so they start to differentiate, where do I want to give my time to? Right? So that's awesome. If you and your company are on a growth trajectory and you're looking for a partner to consult, coach, advise Equip, we'd certainly love to talk to you at Floodlight as well. You can go to Floodlightgrp.com, check out services, see testimonials of other clients, learn about some of the other services and things we do other than that. Till next time, we'll see you.
[00:49:43.130] - Brandon
All right, everybody. He. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart and Booth.
[00:49:47.680] - Chris
And if you're enjoying the show, but you love this episode, please hit Follow, formerly known as 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.