[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.
[00:00:20.930] - Brandon
Oh, my dude, I think that I'm not sure what what's happening. I want to be highly like my brain just ready to rock and roll, but I think I might be getting hungry or something, but I just kind of fizzled out there for a moment.
[00:00:35.100] - Chris
We didn't participate in Sober October, but you and I are doing a Sober May. Yeah, no intoxicants, to be honest. It hasn't been hard. No, it hasn't been hard at all.
[00:00:43.810] - Brandon
But you and I do pretty controlled on well, totally.
[00:00:47.000] - Chris
Yeah. We're pretty temperate. But the other thing I think is good that you talked about yesterday and I'm doing the same thing is I'm really trying to up some of my other disciplines that I think sometimes it's like booze or whatever your thing is can be that thing that kind of takes the edge off at the end of the day. And certainly I've used it that way. Right. Just calm down a little bit, calm the nerves, whatever. But there's other things that are actually helpful. So you and I've been cranking up our workouts, and I see your biceps popping and the veins popping, and it really pisses me off because I feel.
[00:01:18.200] - Brandon
That'S mainly the steroids.
[00:01:22.250] - Chris
And I've been trying to get more consistent with my sauna and my evening routine to sleep and stuff like that.
[00:01:28.780] - Brandon
Do you ever get the feeling that when we talk about this stuff, some people just go, oh, gag.
[00:01:33.350] - Chris
Yeah, probably. Whatever.
[00:01:35.550] - Brandon
Certainly.
[00:01:36.140] - Chris
Hey, if that's how you want to live your life, yeah.
[00:01:37.950] - Brandon
No guilt or shame, but hilarious, if you want to underperform that way, that's.
[00:01:41.560] - Chris
Still your so today I was going through my notes. I just use the Apple Notes app, and when I get a little inspiration or I'm coming off a consulting call, or I'm sitting on my back deck and I'm thinking of stuff, I got little notes here, and I have one I want to dive into a little bit with you and just see where it goes. But before we do that, we've got some sponsors that really help make this thing happen and keep the dream alive. That's right here at Headhart and Boots. And the first sponsor partner is Liftify. Liftify. Man, you've just made us look good so many times. Zach and your team gosh, and all of us have our favorite vendors and stuff that we've come across over the years, and we just love to tell our friends about it because we always get a good report back. Hey, did you sign up with those folks? Hey, you working with those guys, and you get those enthusiastic responses, and you're like, Hell yeah, I like sharing good news. This is the gospel of Google reviews that we are spreading but let's face it, everybody that's listening to this understands the power of five star and 4.8 to five star Google reviews on your Google My Business Profile.
[00:02:48.600] - Chris
Is that what it is now?
[00:02:49.590] - Brandon
I don't know if that's changed.
[00:02:50.610] - Chris
Google business profile.
[00:02:51.820] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:02:52.070] - Chris
Not google my business now. It's called Google business profile.
[00:02:54.480] - Brandon
I want people to Google my business. I don't know if that has any.
[00:02:57.450] - Chris
And I want them to find 4.8 to five stars. Right? So we all understand the power of that. All of us who shop, we make decisions on service, vendors and products based on the reviews we read, right?
[00:03:07.050] - Brandon
That's right.
[00:03:07.660] - Chris
But the other thing that we learned from Zach and his team and we've had verified by Ben Richardi and and other industry professionals in the space, is the power of regular routine Google reviews. Just not getting a big batch because you throw some contest in your company. But week in, week out, all year, every year, Google reviews, having a strategy for that is mission critical. And it's becoming apparently it's part of the way that Google really gauges the actual value and sentiment around your business. Because anybody can go throw some money on the table with their employees and get them to ask a bunch of times for a month, but are you doing that week in, week out? And Zach and his team have really solved for that in the sense that they've created a platform that automates that for you, and their conversion is way better. We've talked about this. Some of you out there, you have companies that are doing 1000 plus jobs a year. Zach and his team have built a platform that gets 20% to 25% conversion rate when they ask for Google reviews, 20% to 25% of the time they are getting them for their customers.
[00:04:14.130] - Chris
Think about that. Some of you, for multiple years, have been doing thousands of jobs a year, and you're sitting on 120 Google reviews. And you may have 4.8 stars or whatever, but what Zach and his team have created, basically the expectation now is you should be getting 200 plus reviews every year. Some of his clients have 4500, 800,000 Google reviews. That should be you. Many of you listening to this, that should be you. So sign up with Zach go to liftify. Comfloodlight because he will like he's done for every client we've sent to him, virtually. He's made a significant jump in their Google reviews in just the first six, eight weeks of working with them. Liftfly Combudlight, you will thank us. And please do send us a text message when you're like, holy crap. We added 30 reviews in the first six weeks. It's amazing.
[00:05:03.440] - Brandon
Yeah, you were right. Okay. CNR magazine. I can't imagine there's any of you that listen to the show that doesn't know Michelle And or CNR magazine or what they're doing.
[00:05:15.400] - Chris
You should still advertise with us, though, Michelle, because there's new people coming every day.
[00:05:18.470] - Brandon
That's right, guys. If you're not a subscriber, just become one. It's easy. It's great content. It comes to you on a consistent basis. You can leverage it with your team. You can leverage it for yourself as business owners. She's the networker, she's the shaker, she's the connector. I had a great time with her not that long ago at RIA and just saw her in action, doing exactly what it is that they do best, and that is bringing great content, great information surrounding the industry, and connecting people to what matters, providing a voice for us, providing guidance for us as restorers in the industry. So we often refer to as a friend of the industry, and we just feel strongly about that. I think that's a simple way to put Michelle's relationship and CNR magazine's relationship to our industry. They're a friend to us. Be a subscriber. It's worth them.
[00:06:04.610] - Chris
Michelle is like you know what she reminds me of? She's like the old school newspaper publisher back in the day, right, where it's like the publisher, the local newspaper was everywhere all the time. They knew all the people. They were plugged into government and they were plugged into all the key businesses in town, and they just knew what the hell was going on. They had a lot of power because they could get the right interviews. Michelle's kind of like that old school publisher in a lot of ways, yet applying all the new school tactics. Anyway, it's fun.
[00:06:36.460] - Brandon
Okay, dude, where are we going here?
[00:06:38.320] - Chris
The note that I had here is all about patterns. Let me unpack that a little bit. And I actually can't remember the genesis of where this note came up for me. It could have been on my back porch, could have been right after a consulting call. But it's just this idea we talk about this a lot as leaders. We ultimately are always going to end up with what we create or what we allow. And to that point, this issue of patterns, the other thing we talk a lot about too, is just this principle that you have to create a safe environment where your leaders and your people can fail. If we're not failing as a company, we're probably not pushing very hard. If we're not failing as a company, we probably don't have very high expectations for ourselves. If we're not failing, we're probably not trying very big things. You know what I mean?
[00:07:23.340] - Brandon
Yeah. And I can feel the tension in what you're saying in terms of the topic already, because some people are like, I don't want to fail. I don't want to do a bad job, but hang with us.
[00:07:31.840] - Chris
Yeah, hang with us. Failure is a key component in achievement. I think everybody knows that, right? It's real. But the question is, how do you manage failure and how much is too much? And the way I was thinking about it when I wrote this note was it has to be okay to fail, but we have to guard against having a pattern of failure. That patterns of failure, they sneak up on us, right? Because it's like we get so busy about our business that one failure and one corrective and coaching conversation, it's very easy for us. It's just a fall off of our radar. And for another failure to happen in the same kind of category, the same topic, or the same area of the business, and then another failure happens three weeks later, and then two weeks later, and now all of a sudden, we have a failure that has now become normative. We've allowed that standard. We become our patterns. Some of us have had seasons in our life where we've been 20 pounds overweight. How'd that happen? It didn't happen because you ate that piece of chocolate cake and you had a second one on your birthday.
[00:08:46.210] - Chris
It happened because you had two pieces of chocolate cake on your birthday, and then three days later, you finished the chocolate cake that your mother in law made for you, and then you went to the grocery store and you bought another. There's this one grocery store in our town that you can go in for, like, $4. It's this freaking four inch square of three inch tall cake with the buttercream ice cream and ridiculousness, right? And so then you started buying that after lunch every week. And then it was twice a week, and then you had a shitty day. And so you went and you had a second piece of it in the afternoon because you felt like shit and you bought it on the way home to eat it and stuff your faces. I've never done that before.
[00:09:28.390] - Brandon
I've never parked in a parking lot and eaten a piece of cake before I go home.
[00:09:34.150] - Chris
Oh, I promise you some personal experience there. But that is a pattern, and that's how we get fat, right? And our business suffers from the same thing. And I think it just starts to happen. We allow one failure to turn into two to three to four to five, and we become that's where those behaviors get normalized in our business. And I feel like I can identify many examples of that in my own life and the businesses I've run, in the leadership roles I've had, where it just creeps up on you. So I think we should talk about that.
[00:10:11.360] - Brandon
So it's interesting, as you're saying that part of me immediately goes to it's almost like the dichotomy of failure. It's the other side of this failure component, where you have people who are afraid to fail for the right reasons, right? Like, meaning we don't want to create a pattern, or we don't want our brand to take a hit. We don't want customer service to slip all those things to where it becomes very difficult for us to delegate, hand off trust our team members develop. Our team members and so there is this interesting relationship where you've got this we can allow because we don't pay attention, we don't conduct an after action review, we don't coach on when we didn't hit the mark and then the opposite side, it's like I'm so afraid to get engaged in that process anyways. It's easier for me to maintain control and hold up tight against the chest, the playbook. And neither one of them work. And I think that's a real important place for us to start from is don't hear we're saying fail all the time. And the opposite of that is not the winning strategy either. It's this balancing act of we're going to put some things about our business in the hands of our team members.
[00:11:27.290] - Brandon
We're going to be comfortable with the fact that that will not get executed 100% and that we're going to have this follow up routine of ensuring that we inspect it, we talk about it and then we coach or improve on it.
[00:11:40.990] - Chris
I think you're touching on is we talk a lot about battle rhythms and battle rhythms are they literally are the antidote to negative patterns forming. If we're conducting those battle rhythms appropriately, we talk about the importance of production meetings. We talk about the importance of having accurate data in our Whip and reviewing it in a specific way with specific people every single week. Here's just one other practical example. We were talking with one of our clients earlier and just talking how their vehicles look like shit because they don't have a battle rhythm around their morning stand to their vehicle inspections, their safety inspection. Presumably they didn't bring it up. But if their vehicles look terrible, chances are we're not doing vehicle safety checks either. And you and I've had some very negative experiences with fleet where those safety checks aren't happening and you get significant maintenance issues. It's like shit, this did not need to happen. But again, negative patterns forming. I mean example is and I think one of the things that drives it in our business is we have these massive influxes in business and we're forced to adapt and overcome. We allow a temporary failure in some areas of our process in order to meet customer needs, right.
[00:12:54.460] - Chris
And keep the business moving in the time and space of a dramatic weather event or wildfire, whatever it is, right. That causes this massive spike of business to come in. And we make these exceptions, but we allow those exceptions to persist over a couple of weeks, three weeks. Then we start billing for all that work. We took it in and then we're busy collecting and we just keep making exception after exception. And now all of a sudden we have a fleet that looks like shit. We have GP numbers that are in the toilet because we're not managing our pro. We're not pre budgeting our construction. Now all of a sudden we've normalized these negative behaviors and we're having to crawl out of a hole in terms of our customer experience, our profitability, our sales efforts.
[00:13:41.990] - Brandon
Well, and I think the reality of it is this mirrors up with it's not just failure. I guess you still throw it in the failure category, just not following standard, just not following process. So I think it's important for us to also remember we're not talking about like some catastrophic falling off somewhere. It's simply like I didn't inspect what I expected. I allowed that behavior pattern to go once, twice, three times unchecked. And now they've adopted a whole new policy that I'm not even aware of. Right. Henry Cloud. You get what you build or what you allow. So I think that that is a critical element of it. And I want to be careful. We maybe don't go too deep into that side because I do feel like that's an area that we do work through pretty commonly. But I think it's maybe some of the fear around failure, around what is healthy failing. Can we hang in that pocket a little bit in terms of I think you agree with me. I see failure different than a miss on standard or a miss on process. I'm thinking more the fail piece of we go out and we try a new service line.
[00:14:48.940] - Brandon
We try a different model because our team is expanding so quickly. And now what we did before doesn't scale. So now we're trying a different change in our chart. We're changing some positions within the organization that we don't have it all plotted out yet. We think it's going to work. We have a reasoning that we're saying, hey, this new structure makes sense, but then we're going to have to play. We have to try and we have to be confident about two things. It won't go exactly as we planned and that you can recover from that and continue to iterate it until you get what you want. Right.
[00:15:23.960] - Chris
I totally agree. And I think that's important to differentiate. All right, Headhart and Boots listeners wanted to stop here just a moment and thank our underwriting sponsor, Bloodlight Consulting Group. As all of you know, right, Brandon and I, this is our passion project, Head Heart and Boots is. But it's also a way more and more that our consulting clients find us and in effect, they interview us.
[00:15:48.580] - Brandon
Right.
[00:15:48.830] - Chris
Those of you been listening to Show for a while, you get to know who we are, right, what we're about. So if Head Heart, Boots is valuable to you, one of the best things you can do is share it with your friends. And it's been incredible to watch just the audience grow. And we still get text messages from many of you about shows that you really like and impacted you. So that's number one. And please keep doing that. Many of you have been huge advocates of the show. We also just want to remind you too, if you're a restoration company owner and you're interested in a partner in your growth. You want some help building out systems, developing your leadership teams, helping set up the infrastructure for you to scale and grow into the company that you're trying to build. That's what we do. That's what we do is we come alongside restoration company leaders. We help equip them and we help support them in that growth trajectory. So if you're looking for that go to floodlightgrp.com potentially we could be a great match for each other.
[00:16:42.160] - Brandon
Another way that we really do serve our client base and our sphere of influence is through our Premier partners. We work really hard to vet those folks that we believe bring a level of value to the industry that it can really be leveraged in a way to have a sincere positive impact on your business. We take that very seriously. The folks that we create, those kind of ongoing partnerships, that's not a check the box kind of scenario. We really see strategic alignment in the value that they bring. We see value in the way that their leadership teams and their partners are developed. And we've done very sincere work of ensuring that these folks that we introduce our clients and our sphere to can actually create vetted value. So go check out Bloodlightgrp.com Premierpartners and see if there's some folks on there that you can connect with and begin developing some other resources to support your growth and your business.
[00:17:35.330] - Chris
There are so many opportunities in this industry and this type of business for us to cut a corner, to skip a step in our process. And you're right, I don't think that's fair. And a lot of times it's conscious, right? Because it's like we're forced to adapt at times. But I think the error that a lot of us make and this isn't just true in restoration I think it's across all businesses you get a big huge client, a new client and it's like all hands on deck. I don't think it necessarily even matters what business we're talking about per se, but it's when we make exceptions to our standard or our process or procedure or whatever when we allow those exceptions to become the rule it happens faster than we think. Like you and I have observed that a bunch of times. It's like is it after the third time? Is it after the 11th time? I think that's different with whatever the topic is, right? But there's something I think as leaders that we have to stay on top of because really quickly the standard gets eroded to where then there's a whole bunch of other negative things that that affects in the business that I think it's one of the things we have to be mindful of as leaders.
[00:18:49.390] - Chris
Battle rhythms are the thing I think that solves for a lot of that. Right? If we're having a routine leadership meeting, if we're having one on ones with our people. If we're having, like we talked about the production meeting, I think even with larger gatherings that are really more promotional and culture fueling like all company meetings, I think it's even important there that affects our cadence and standards.
[00:19:14.460] - Brandon
Here's something that immediately comes to mind. We've been talking about this a lot with some folks, both Downline clients. Actually, it came up not long ago in a recording with Rachel Stewart from Accelerate. This idea of when we think about our structure and we think about our leadership roles or just the roles in our team in general. One of the things that I see people kind of struggle with and I've done it I mean, I've struggled with this for years, is we get really keyed in on the productivity portion of our tasking and responsibility. So we're really keyed in on project managers have to do XYZ business and we sell this much work and we want a Mitigation department manager to make sure that we're producing the job and that they're producing it at margin. All great, that's great. But there's also this very important part that basically helps address what you're talking about. That if we are such a skeleton crew when it comes to leadership within the ranks, and we see this with a lot of companies that are trying to break out of that three, five, 6 million mark, they just struggle to put in those downline leaders like department management.
[00:20:22.550] - Brandon
And the cost to you is the consistency and failure. That's where these patterns develop because it's just very difficult for one person to have their eyes on enough targets to keep us out of trouble and then we get kind of sucked into this idea. But if I hire right, I don't have to oversee those kinds of things and that's just not accurate. There's a difference between hiring right and removing the path of least resistance and hiring wrong. A wrong is a wrong. I get it, and you can't manage wrong. But you do still need to manage and lead the right hires. They still need guidance, they still need some accountability, they still need a battle buddy to ensure that they stay on the right path. And so one of the things that can be difficult when we're looking at our PNL is understanding. It's very easy for me to say, oh, I'm adding a so and so K salary to payroll. Do I really need that? And when you look at it and say, well, yeah, we're able to get out to every job, it seems like we're not having any issues getting the work done in a fairly efficient time frame.
[00:21:27.220] - Brandon
All that's great. And it is certainly one of the things that you use to measure that need. But don't forget the opportunity cost associated with not having management that person where their key responsibilities is inspecting the body of work from that team or that department or that location. That's how you keep things from spinning out from under you. One of the things that we talk a lot about is bite sized chunks, right? We've been doing a ton of time blocking with people lately. It's funny the patterns that you get into. But one of the pieces of that is it's so easy for all of us. I think we talked about it in the project management episode where you get this mentality of, man, I'm grinding gears, but Thursday, thursday, boy, I'm coming in, I'm going to get into all our files. I'm going to really look at things and make sure that we're doing okay. Thursday morning rolls around. You know, you have to look at a million files to have any context of what your business is actively doing. So you're slow to do it. And then as soon as the phone rings or a fire is put in front of you, you're excited to go jump on that thing and not do the hard work of inspecting what you expect.
[00:22:36.770] - Brandon
And then you do that week after week after week. And now we have project managers that are no longer following the process. You have technicians that are under equipping jobs you've got right. And the list goes on and on. And so I think that's a big piece of this is if we're going to ensure that we don't allow failure to become a pattern, we have to have bandwidth in our leaders ability or leader space to make sure that we can be getting into those things and we can be looking at them, right?
[00:23:05.840] - Chris
Yeah. And for those of you that are owner operators and you're probably hearing this and you're like, I'm kind of pushing up against that ceiling right now where I'm at the limit of what I can inspect. And that's kind of when, you know you need to invest in more leadership, is when you no longer can keep a pulse and you start to see those negative patterns emerge because you just can't be everywhere at once. Where we see this a lot is in sales organizations, right, where a lot of restoration companies fail to hire sales management until they're beyond that point, right? Where it's like they hire for independence, they hire for experience and stuff like that. And they just think, oh, just throw my salespeople out in the field. Like it's a great investment. This is how you grow. It's like, yes, that is how you grow. But at the same time, salespeople have to be managed. They have to be managed. And so if you're not at a point yet where you can afford the spend for a sales manager, someone has to oversee that department. We see this all the time. Is that an owner?
[00:24:10.490] - Chris
They're ambitious. They understand the value of hiring salespeople, but they don't understand the importance of managing them. And in a consistent manner, having certain KPIs activity expectations and inspecting it. And the other side of it too, is that we can certainly have our sales meetings. We can ask all the right questions. But there's a reality that if someone is not getting out in the field with them, there are negative patterns that are taking hold. And one of the things I talk about with our sales leaders and our owners is whenever we're not seeing the sales that we want, it is always a function of one or both things. It's always a function of quantity. We're not putting in the right amount of effort with the right people or quality excuse me, quantity in that we're not doing enough of the right effort. Quality. We're not doing the right effort with the right people. So it's always going to be a function of that. And the only way you really know what the hell is going on with your sales team is getting out there and seeing who are they cold calling, who are they talking to, what kinds of questions are they asking, what's sort of the substance of their sales meetings?
[00:25:20.950] - Chris
That is the only way you can do it. And so many of us that we have not put the attention on that that's required. Right?
[00:25:29.370] - Brandon
Yeah. So kind of maybe working towards landing the plane here a little bit. Let's consider this. So where do we start in this conversation? There's this element of patterns versus events. Patterns, right. We know we're going to have failures. It's going to happen. So we have to do everything in our power to prevent that from becoming the pattern, as you said, or the new norm. But then balancing that with we have to consistently create a relationship with our team where they are trying, where we're delegating to them, where we're putting the opportunity in their hands and giving them the chance to execute and try. But then there's this piece like do we have enough availability, do we have enough bandwidth in our leadership, in our structure that we have the ability to second check, to inspect what we're asking to ensure that that failure doesn't become a pattern. It's kind of funny actually, thinking through that. Dichotomy. I think it's the right word, right? Dichotomy, I guess, between those two. Is that is the answer. The way that you can balance that, where we don't allow it to become pattern, where we don't swing to the opposite end, where we just micromanage everything.
[00:26:36.770] - Brandon
Is it's that space in the middle? Do you have enough bandwidth to monitor the team's progress or process?
[00:26:43.830] - Chris
I think it's that and I think it's committing to the right conversation with our people. Frankly, this episode, I believe, is a great conversation for an all company meeting or a leadership team meeting is to talk about patterns versus events. And it really can dictate how we lead our people, our downline people, how we lead ourselves. Right? And so I'm a big Friday Friday guy. Like Friday is my reflection day. I've just. Kind of built that in. And there's some version of afternoon, morning, sitting with my coffee and just thinking, just thinking about and part of my thing is what are some patterns that are forming here that I need to get on top of and I need to stamp out in my own personal behaviors. But then also just throughout the week as we're working with clients, just really trying to get quick at seeing these patterns as they're forming versus after we've found them, you know what I mean? After they've been festering, right, and eroding our culture and our profitability and all the things. So I think it comes down to committing to a certain conversation when failures, when an event happens, when your sales rep has a bad week in terms of their leading behaviors and their excuse is, I just had a lot of events this week, it's talking through that and saying, hey, I totally get it.
[00:28:02.190] - Chris
It was an abnormal week. We can acknowledge that. It certainly would have been more difficult to maintain the other disciplines we had. But the question is we're going to have a lot more events in our future. What needs to happen for us in either our work up to the event week preparation, maybe it also has to do with our follow up from events. What kind of system do we need to put in place? Are we reaching the point as a sales team where we need to get a sales assistant, an admin for the team to assist with some of these things, to allow you to stay in the field and to still get your field time in during you know what I mean? It's looking at the event and saying, okay, what can we learn from this? How should we be processing this thing? That was it was a negative. It's like, shoot, we had three events and we only got one sales meeting and four cold calls in. We don't want to repeat that. So what do we need to fix in our system? I think it's committing to that kind of conversation, both at a one on one level, department level, and there's a leadership team.
[00:29:03.700] - Chris
It's like if we have a week where we have 14 jobs close out at 50% less GP than our target, whoa, whoa, that's a bad week. What went into that? And how do we solve for it? Not, hey, you guys are a bunch of ding dongs. It's like, we don't have to slap our hand on the table and be like, just be on fire, pissed off and angry energy that comes week two, that's when it happens a second time. No, but it's like, hey, guys, all right, stuff's going to happen. Why did this happen? Was there some sort of existential outside thing that affected our whole team? Probably, but probably that thing is going to happen again. So how do we build this into our conversation, this differentiating and really identifying it together as, okay, we had this event happen, could we maybe have avoided it? Yeah, but who cares? It happened and that thing's going to happen again. What do we do? So as a team, we handle it better and it doesn't become a pattern.
[00:30:06.630] - Brandon
Yeah, no, I think that's super insightful. I mean, that's great leadership. It doesn't have to be a full blown AAR, right. It's this scenario of it's just the way we poke and prod and peel back the layers of the onion in a normal production meeting or in a sales meeting like you're talking about, investigate the response. Oh, well, XYZ so I couldn't do anything about it. Right? Well, it was all flooring on that.
[00:30:29.610] - Chris
Job and it was hard to get.
[00:30:30.510] - Brandon
Margin or whatever the case may be, is not allowing that to be an excuse, but use it as an opportunity to problem solve and decide if the strategy needs to be updated or modified. That's great.
[00:30:40.840] - Chris
I think a piece of this too, and we can wrap up on this. It's just that part of this topic is managing emotions in our business.
[00:30:48.220] - Brandon
Sure.
[00:30:48.960] - Chris
It's like when we crack down on somebody from a single event, and single event means different things because there's such high frequency in our business of just that we do a lot of repetitive behaviors and processes throughout the year.
[00:31:01.400] - Brandon
Right.
[00:31:02.100] - Chris
And so it's going to be different in every situation. What is a pattern? There are some things, if it happens once a quarter, it's a negative pattern, it's a threat to the business. And then there's other things where if a negative outcome is happening once every couple of weeks, that's a negative threatening pattern. And so you just have to assess that is the magnitude of this exception to our process or corner cut or a failure of some kind in terms of standard happening that often, is that a threat to the business or not? If that continued every two weeks, you have to judge that every situation is a little bit different. When we body slam somebody from a failure or a process, whatever the shame, right. The shame that people like we don't want to make people feel like an asshole for a mistake or a judgment error that is just going to happen.
[00:31:57.850] - Brandon
It's very different.
[00:31:58.970] - Chris
Right. But there's a lot of businesses right now where there's a real negative morale in the company because we're cracking down on every mistake or poor judgment that somebody makes. Whereas really what we're trying to avoid is patterns of that singular events are not going to change our business. They're not going to sabotage our success patterns, sabotage our success patterns, sabotage the culture events. We can sabotage our culture from a single event by reacting to it poorly. Right, yeah. Anyway, hopefully there's something a takeaway for our audience there. I know. Even just now, processing through it, I'm like, oh, this is really good for me. To think about. I wrote this note, like, two weeks ago, and I'm like, yeah, I could reflect on this some more.
[00:32:44.720] - Brandon
Well, it's very applicable to our business as well.
[00:32:47.240] - Chris
100%.
[00:32:48.070] - Brandon
We have the same exposure to failure becoming a pattern as anybody else, and.
[00:32:53.780] - Chris
We didn't part of my notes where obviously the flip of this is true, creating positive patterns is more than just an event. And a lot of times we'll invest in a new behavior, and we'll get all excited about it, and we'll do this thing, and it works so well. We stop doing it because we never put in the effort. It's not a habit to make it a pattern and then normalize it in the business. We talk about building ruts. Concept of, like, on the freeway, right. Ruts form. And of course, it's a negative example. You hate it when you're on a freeway that has these big ruts, especially when it's raining. But the concept is, when you're driving on an old freeway, it almost pulls your vehicle into those ruts. And that's kind of what we want to do in our business, is we want to have these deep ruts where new people can come in on the on ramp and just slide right into that rut, and it tells them where to go.
[00:33:44.860] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:33:45.180] - Chris
Right.
[00:33:45.500] - Brandon
Yeah. It's hard not to think about that word in a negative candidate.
[00:33:48.640] - Chris
I know. It's weird. We need a better analogy. It's the best I got so far.
[00:33:51.290] - Brandon
Right.
[00:33:51.720] - Chris
Everybody knows what it means when you get pulled into that rut in the.
[00:33:54.520] - Brandon
Fast lane, like that natural alignment, if you will, of where the traffic's been going.
[00:33:59.340] - Chris
Yeah, right. Exactly.
[00:34:01.130] - Brandon
All right, guys, thanks for hanging out with us. Geez, next time. All right, everybody.
[00:34:06.860] - Chris
He.
[00:34:07.130] - Brandon
Thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart and Booth.
[00:34:10.420] - Chris
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