[00:00:00.170] - Brandon
What's up, amigo?
[00:00:01.210] - Chris
You beat me to know I'm feeling a lot of things today. You and I had a pretty manly conversation earlier, boy.
[00:00:09.960] - Brandon
Howdy.
[00:00:13.090] - Chris
I'm feeling all the things, man. It's a lot of gratitude for our situation.
[00:00:19.010] - Brandon
And then there's some reality frustration.
[00:00:21.870] - Chris
There's angst, irritation for other things. Lately, that whole Buddhist thing, the yin and the yang, it just so connects with me. It's just like there's really good stuff, and then there's other stuff. It seems like that's just the way the universe works. It's just the way life is, right?
[00:00:42.320] - Brandon
I think it is.
[00:00:43.200] - Chris
So there you go. Hopefully, we didn't lose anybody. Hey, y'all, we're going to get into a podcast here. Don't worry, we got a good one. So this is a special edition. We were on the blue collar boys. Blue collar nation. Their podcast. We love those dudes. Fun. We always do a little arm wrestling with them through our book club shows that we do. And this one was another fun one. In fact, I think, honestly, the book is called Who Not How. It's a great business book. I think this was one of our better book club episodes.
[00:01:15.600] - Brandon
I think so, too. It was an interesting balance of agreement in many fronts and then some areas, too, where we didn't exactly have the same perspectives, which was always kind of cool. I always like that.
[00:01:27.370] - Chris
Well, the book for me was such a it was so motivational, and yet, like virtually all business books, there's actually no silver bullets contained in it. I think some of the best books, they provoke you. Like, they call you back to sort of truths that you kind of know internally, but you've neglected or you're just moving so fast, you're not paying attention. You get in a tunnel sometimes with what your objectives are, the things in front of you, and you just lose track, right?
[00:01:57.750] - Brandon
And inevitably, nothing's as easy as we want it to be. So kind of going back to the silver bullets, it's not. It's a reminder of some basic core principles that when we wrap our head around them in the right way, when we kind of stay in that vein, they tend to produce results we can all get pretty excited about. And of course, you'll hear it as group, we kind of wrestle through some of these concepts. But the end of the day, this whole who not how is how are we thinking about the people in our sphere and what it means to the overall quality, capability, achievability of the mission in front of us? Right? Are we allowing our ego to give us some kind of message that we have to be the best, be the owner of all things, be the only one that's creating the value?
[00:02:42.930] - Chris
Have we gotten a cost first posture.
[00:02:46.410] - Brandon
Where we're really analyzing the return too much from that? What is it going to cost me? Versus, what does this investment mean to me and the team.
[00:02:55.860] - Chris
Yeah. It's like we're trying to hog too much of the margin is the headspace we can get into. And one of the things we kind of hit on, I just find it's so motivational inspirational. For me, this thought track. Like, I so many times in my career have pursued hiring younger, inexperienced people because I can get them cheaper if I'm honest. I'm just being honest, right? I've made that calculation as a business owner. Now, of course, I'm not going to compromise on attitude and character and stuff like that, but I think we can get in this mind space of, oh, so and so that I know could totally do this. And they probably aren't going to be terribly expensive, and we can kind of try it out. And if it works, great, it's a screamer deal. I can get that person for 50 instead of 75. You know what I mean? Just get in this bargain headspace. And the book does such a great job of really spotlighting the force multiplier. Like, instead, let's just say that role in the open markets a $75,000 year person. I think what the book provokes in me is like, yes.
[00:04:06.510] - Chris
And what if I found the person and they're 100,000? Could that make sense? And I think the book is a resounding, hell yes, it can make sense. You get the right person in there that wants to build alongside you, wants to be a part of something bigger than themselves, and they've got the right mix of talent and desire and all the things, right? Yeah, of course it makes sense to pay up for those people. It almost always makes sense. It's all about how could this person make one plus one equals three. I'm so inspired by it. Even now with some of the decisions that you and I are looking to make in our own business and what we see some of our owner clients, some of the moves they're making along those same lines, like, well, dude, we just had a one on one meeting with a COO executive that one of our clients made. It was probably one of their biggest hires they've ever made in their 15 year business. And you and I are seeing the fruit of it, bro.
[00:05:04.660] - Brandon
Crusher.
[00:05:05.630] - Chris
An absolute game changer they brought in from outside the industry. Game changer. If you're listening right now, you probably know who you are. You know who you are. Came from outside the industry. Very high level corporate experience, but super tuned in, super high EQ. Understands people, understands how to scale companies, and they are absolutely going to change this person. They already are.
[00:05:30.460] - Brandon
Oh, yeah.
[00:05:31.470] - Chris
60 days in, already in. Oh my gosh, it's so exciting to see. And you and I, I feel so much motivation out of it. As we grow, floodlight. It's just like, oh, man. I think what this book and the conversation really stirred up in me is generally speaking, I think too small.
[00:05:48.990] - Brandon
Yeah, I think that's a great reminder. Yeah, I think that is true. I think the book reminds you to get out of your own way. It's that whole, like, hey, good reminder. 100% of zero is still zero and or the delayed gratification. Right. So much of the opportunity, I think, for us to experience in our day to day lives is that delayed gratification, and some of us, admittedly, are really good at it. I do not fall in that category, not even by a stretch. I'm in that category that really struggles with the delayed gratification. And there's been many times in my life that it has cost me more. The opportunity cost was hard to measure until I looked backwards.
[00:06:30.830] - Chris
Listen to my employees when I ran a state farm agency, when I owned a state farm business. I'm sorry. If you're listening to this, I was thinking so small.
[00:06:41.660] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:06:42.480] - Chris
I remember a particular hire in my agency where I had somebody that really I should have been willing to spend at the time. This was a long time ago, but 70, $75,000 I could have. But here I remember I remember the brain space, the calculus. But if I could get somebody in there for 55, then that's another 15K or 20K that I can take home in my personal income. And at the time, like, the first couple of years in agency and again, this was like, 1215 years ago or whatever it was, it makes a difference. It makes a difference that extra, whatever, one $200 a month or whatever it was, it's like, I need this. I want this. I didn't have the foresight or the vision then to recognize how much more I could have grown. Just not my income, but the whole scale of my team.
[00:07:34.080] - Brandon
Yes.
[00:07:34.760] - Chris
By having somebody who is more motivated, more skilled, and adapted to help me build.
[00:07:43.250] - Brandon
Absolutely.
[00:07:43.760] - Chris
And so instead, I kept that 15K for myself. I took the responsibility on myself to grow and develop and scale the business. And ultimately, I never took it where I wanted it to go. Yeah, I mean, ultimately, I got frustrated in the business, and I ended up choosing a different path. And I'm grateful for that, obviously. But I look back, and I'm like, you know what? I was using the wrong calculus. I was looking at the business the wrong way. And not coincidentally, one of my best friends who's a state farm agent, he didn't take that path. He made some key hires, invested in growing his capacity within the business, I think, along with this. Right. I forget what CEO or book I read where it's just like, hey, your role as a CEO or an owner, you could say the same thing about a GM. Your whole role is building the capacity of your like, that's your function.
[00:08:39.590] - Brandon
That's the engine.
[00:08:40.920] - Chris
That's the engine. You got to build the capacity, the horsepower and torque and mileage of that engine.
[00:08:48.330] - Brandon
And that comes from skill set and competency.
[00:08:50.660] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:08:53.050] - Brandon
Hiring the right talent, pick up dimes.
[00:08:55.200] - Chris
Oh, bro.
[00:08:55.900] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:08:56.970] - Chris
I'm just so motivated by that, and I'm seeing the fruit of it. I'm seeing the fruit of it in our business. I'm seeing the clients that are oriented around that and locked in on that perspective right now. We're seeing it and the results and the fruit come faster than you think it's going to.
[00:09:12.100] - Brandon
That's right.
[00:09:13.020] - Chris
We're seeing it on our team, bro. And you think that you're going to.
[00:09:17.120] - Brandon
Feel leveraged for too long, and the reality of it is you often don't. Now, all of this being not being wild and chaotic, no decision making. We're not saying that.
[00:09:26.290] - Chris
No, not at all.
[00:09:27.030] - Brandon
But again, let's get into this. If you haven't yet, obviously you're going to hear us talk about it for the next hour with these guys, which is super fun. But the who, not how. Check it out. Most of our listeners probably spend more time in the cab of their vehicle than most citizens. Guys, this is a great place. Eat this book up. It will change your mindset regardless of where you're at in the business. Owner decision, key decision maker, department head. Oh, my gosh. This theory, it'll at least get you.
[00:09:54.290] - Chris
Right back in the right pocket, back in the right focus. Again, you've heard it all before. But I think sometimes through other people's stories, it makes it real to us, and we can start acting out of that versus just the head knowledge. Right.
[00:10:10.480] - Brandon
And if you're one of those people that's listening, one of our folks that are listening to the show and you're not the owner or the department lead or the GM or whatever, ask yourself the question, how do I become The Who? Because I think that's part of the magic, too, is part of this conversation. And the theory is when we get better at looking for those who's in our business and in our sphere, the caveat to that is asking yourself the question, how do I be that person for my business partner, my partner in my home, my kids, my world? How do I more effectively become that true force, multiplier and become the who? That changes the opportunity that that decision maker had because of my performance and the way that I contribute and carry myself. It affects all of us. And this applies all the way across the board.
[00:10:59.880] - Chris
You know what, man? I read that email last night that Will sent out to a prospective client of ours.
[00:11:04.680] - Brandon
Oh, yeah.
[00:11:05.490] - Chris
And I'm not exaggerating. And Will, I really appreciate you. And for what I'm about to say, I'm not blowing smoke up your ass to make you feel like I had a moment where I read through it a second time and I asked myself the question, would I have generated that good of an email if I had been replying?
[00:11:25.190] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:11:25.450] - Chris
What was the answer, and the answer was no.
[00:11:27.100] - Brandon
Yeah, I know. Honestly, I read it and I went, I can't even connect the dots. Like, my mind would have not even gone there.
[00:11:35.390] - Chris
It was just so excellent. It was so excellent. And it was just another one of those moments. We've had a number of them as we've been growing the company, but it was one of those moments, particularly because Will's in the sales area. He's in my territory.
[00:11:48.650] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:11:49.120] - Chris
Right. And so I have ego and pride in a standard that I've come to kind of I want to put out. I want people to experience with myself. But it was another one of those moments where I was like, oh, man, this is what it feels like to build a team around yourself with people that are smarter and more talented than you. 100%, dude, that was a moment for me where I'm like, oh, my God, that was so good. Yeah, it was so true. It was so cool.
[00:12:19.040] - Brandon
We won't even go into our I mean, Scott, you guys have heard us talk about.
[00:12:26.190] - Chris
There'S examples of that all across the team. And I just think that you and I dude, it's taken a whole career right. To get clarity in some of these areas. And so anyway, it's just, wow, it's really exciting. Okay, let's talk about our sponsors, and then we'll let you guys dive into this conversation.
[00:12:41.070] - Brandon
Just so it's clear. This will be kind of a weird transition, guys, because this is obviously us. This was a podcast done with the blue collar.
[00:12:49.090] - Chris
Yeah. Collarboys invited. Yeah, we're in the blue collar kingdom.
[00:12:54.640] - Brandon
And all of these book club episodes are which you guys will hear more of them, but it's done with their show, and so you'll hear their intros and all those things. Just hang tight through that, and then we'll get into the heart of it. But you're right. Let's talk about our sponsors.
[00:13:06.880] - Chris
Yeah, baby. We love our sponsors. Answerforce.com floodlight answerforce. Comfoodlight I really, truly believe this. You and I have kind of a privileged position. We get to see the inside guts of restoration companies all over the country. Big ones, small ones, really big ones, growing fast ones, stuck ones, stuck ones, all the different types of companies. And I think it's reasonable to say everybody needs a reliable call intake backbone. Like, you need a platform for that. And for some companies, that means you need potentially two dedicated receptionists. You need people cross trained so you have a consistent call intake experience. We spend so much money to get the phone to ring. Yeah. We spend so much money to get the phone to ring. We put our necks out building our reputation, all the things. And that call intake is where we can blow it all by letting the phone ring six times or giving an inconsistent call intake where we're not empathizing with the customer, we're not asking the right questions and then ultimately, we're not delivering the right intel and data and information to our responding tech teams. There's so many things that can go wrong with our call intake, and yet in our experience, we the industry, we do not put enough focus on it.
[00:14:30.140] - Chris
In some ways, it kind of goes back to our conversation leading into this of I think a lot of us just think that receptionist role, it's like a $15 an hour job. You just throw somebody in there, hand them a call script, and that's it. It's like, oh my gosh, how many thousands or millions of dollars do we have coming through that phone?
[00:14:48.570] - Brandon
Yeah, right. And oftentimes one of our primary first impressions right there.
[00:14:53.340] - Chris
And I can tell you as a consumer as well, I had a water loss. I had to call a local company. Now, of course, I had connections which.
[00:15:01.310] - Brandon
Helped you're calling bosses.
[00:15:03.130] - Chris
So even as I as a customer called somebody, a company that I really love and trust, have a lot of experience with that call and take experience, it's a variable with everybody. And I think Answerforce.com is a solution that helps us build a more reliable call intake platform. Meaning when your receptionist is out to lunch, you can go into your app, forward your phones to an answer force call agent that is going to replicate the exact same intake experience. They're going to follow the same script as your normal, dedicated, full time receptionist would take. And how important is that? And the fact, too, that when we were checking with them, there's actually a cheaper plan than this. But it's like their standard plans, $370 a month, super low. And I want to say it's for 300 minutes and think about that, folks. Now, some of you are huge businesses. Fine. 300 minutes. You take in way more call volume than that. Well, fine. Yeah. So you can use this when your receptionist is out sick. Maybe receptionist is on family leave for a while instead of having your phones hunt and just whoever, random person, estimator COO controller, dispatcher, pick up the phone.
[00:16:19.070] - Chris
Hello, this is XYZ Restoration. And then just wing it to have an organized, consistent call and take process that maximizes every inbound call. Why would you not? $370? I mean, come on, let's not triple for dollars to pick up dimes. It is one of those scenarios. So you owe it to yourself to at least do a demo. If you already have an extremely reliable call intake service partner that you use, great. If you don't, though, you really ought to explore this as a way to create some redundancy stability in your call intake process in your business, whether it's an influx of storm calls that are coming, whatever. Okay. Anyway, they're answerforce.com. I've sold enough.
[00:16:57.780] - Brandon
You got a little preachy on that.
[00:16:59.030] - Chris
Well, it is one of those things. It is. I do believe in it.
[00:17:03.370] - Brandon
You got a trench on that one. All right, guys, well, I don't know if I'm going to breathe that much fire, but we're going to talk about Know. Actually, we just had our annual check in with Liftify and the team with their owner Zach and Nick, one of their head sales guys. They're both just studs. We did our annual check in where they literally walked through all our current clients that are partnering with them and they gave us a full breakdown on performance plan and strategies for some of the teams that aren't leveraging it to the best of their ability, just deeply connected with the results. They are relentless and that was just another example of how important it is to them that what they provide to their clients is being leveraged for high value and that was just part of their check in. So anyways, Liftify.com, this is your go to primary backbone for five star Google reviews and building that reputation, building that digital real estate recognition online for everything from SEO growth, search growth, I mean, you name it. And obviously the most important thing is so that the world that gets exposed to you and your brand for the first time can go somewhere and see a bunch of people with the same opinion.
[00:18:11.220] - Brandon
And that is that your team rocks. And so go check them out. Liftify.com floodlight. And again, there's opportunities for you to partner with them and leverage them on behalf of your business.
[00:18:21.620] - Chris
I just saw another update email from one of our clients in Houston. They implemented Liftify like 60 days ago. Yeah, and just reviews continuing to roll in. And they're a multi site business, so they've got several Google profiles and Liftify is optimized to where you can kind of direct the review requests to the particular to build up maybe build up your market. Yeah, like lesser know Google profiles and stuff and they're just finding so much success with it. So yeah, that's exciting. All right. CNR magazine, our other faithful sponsor. I think the thing I want to highlight right now that I just really like and appreciate is how they've partnered with know how to do the state of the industry.
[00:19:09.300] - Brandon
It's awesome thing.
[00:19:10.480] - Chris
And I think them and Phil Rosebrook yesterday, I think they had their big live little thing where they were breaking down the and it's just great. I mean, it's so great for our industry to have more data on what's happening in our industry. Pay rates, turn, just all the stats on how is our industry functioning, what are the trends, what are the things that we're seeing and noticing. I think it's useful for all of us. It's the same reason why many of you listen to this podcast and why we listen to other leaders around the it helps to have our ear to the ground, not only to feel more connected and realize we're not alone. Like we're all encountering a lot of the same struggles 100% and challenges, but then I think best practice sharing everything else. CNR is such a rich destination for the latest kind of the bleeding edge of where the industry is at, what it's struggling with, where it's growing, where it's innovating. So if you don't subscribe to CNR, I mean, jeez, what planet are you? How many times do we have to say it? That's right.
[00:20:08.680] - Brandon
Guilt and shame. Guilt and shame, guys.
[00:20:10.820] - Chris
That's right. All right, here we go. Let's dive in, guys. Blue collar nation. Thank you, Larry and Eric, for having us on. This was fun. Layton. Welcome back to the Head Heart and Boots Podcast. I'm Chris.
[00:20:29.330] - Brandon
And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead.
[00:20:36.090] - Chris
Man, love this industry.
[00:20:39.370] - Larry
Okay, we're back to the show, and we are having an amazing book club episode again with Chris Nordike and Brandon Reese. We're very excited to have the floodlight guys with us. Hosts of the Head Heart and Boot Podcast. How are you guys today?
[00:20:54.130] - Brandon
Oh, I'm psyched, actually.
[00:20:55.700] - Chris
Totally good.
[00:20:56.880] - Larry
I'm ready to get into your energy shows.
[00:21:00.450] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:21:01.810] - Eric
You're feeling it, Larry? I have this distinct feeling just by looking at these two that we're on the hot seat today.
[00:21:12.790] - Larry
All right, we can handle it. So the book we're going over is who, not how. It's one of Dan Sullivan's and how do you pronounce I was trying to pronounce the other name.
[00:21:23.850] - Eric
It's Benjamin Hardy.
[00:21:25.760] - Larry
Benjamin Hardy.
[00:21:27.220] - Brandon
There you go.
[00:21:27.710] - Larry
That shouldn't be that hard.
[00:21:29.770] - Brandon
That was the quintessential. Buy yourself another 10 seconds so you can look his name up.
[00:21:35.200] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:21:35.470] - Brandon
I was like, we know what you did there, Larry. We do it all the time. You can't pull one over ours.
[00:21:39.800] - Chris
Yeah. It is one of those stereotypically hard names to pronounce.
[00:21:44.210] - Larry
Ben Hardy.
[00:21:45.660] - Brandon
Yes.
[00:21:46.420] - Larry
I was looking at unabridged. I thought that might have been what.
[00:21:51.490] - Eric
You know, guys, where I grew up in, like, Maynard's curse, like nobody else. Right. Really? And the spacer for when you're thinking is everybody says, yeah, and then I was fucking and then they larry, if he was in Maine, he would have been what's that guy's fucking Benjamin Hart, dude. Men, women, everybody does. So I've never seen anywhere else in the country.
[00:22:20.960] - Brandon
Yeah, that's military is the same way. Yeah. If you hang in the military, they use the F bomb like it's a filler. It's a descriptor. It's the core element of the conversation. It could be all of the above.
[00:22:36.130] - Eric
I hear you.
[00:22:36.980] - Larry
Well, we're looking forward to the book. My filler got abused and thrown up and down, so I appreciate you guys for calling me out, but we're going to default to you, Brandon, for the thesis of the book, the intro, and give us an idea of what this was, your book and your idea. So why don't you tell us what the listeners, what it's all about today?
[00:22:54.570] - Brandon
Yeah, you bet. Okay, so book is the who not how. And the key area basically is shifting or key concept is shifting our mindset with the way that we look at developing a team, deploying our resources, investing in people to ensure that we ultimately kind of experience the big picture goals that we have and getting out from this mindset where it all is on us. We have to be the best, we have to be the smartest, we have to be the ones in control and it really flips a lot of those concepts on their head. So here's a little chat GPT summary example for you. So instead of asking how can I do this, ask who can do this? For me, the shift in mindset can lead to more effective delegation, collaboration, faster achievement of objectives and it's interesting as we go, I think it'll show in our conversation is the most interesting thing about this for me was the idea of just shifting literally the way that we consider how we're spending our money into our businesses. And so much of us approach the cost, if you will, of our team as a cost and we're looking at it purely from this direct Roy, right, this is going to cost me, I got to spend this instead of looking at I'm investing in this to create a specific outcome anyway.
[00:24:16.930] - Brandon
So I don't want to go too off but I think that's the part that I hung on to and I'm most excited. I think both of our businesses, obviously this was very relevant probably to both of our teams in a lot of ways.
[00:24:32.230] - Chris
Yeah, and for me just more on kind of the perspective or that main thesis. It really made me think about Desperation Brain, which is something we talk a lot about with the business owners and leaders is that I have to find somebody to do X that mindset. We do this with technicians and unfortunately it causes us to keep people that can't do X because at least they can show up and carry equipment. Right? It's like Desperation Brain is really predicated on people doing a specific thing for the business which leads to a ton of bad outcomes. We keep people on that we shouldn't, we hire people that really aren't going to be awesome, but they can kind of do the work and so therefore we slot them in so that they can do the thing. And I think what this book was showing is what if we focused on hiring the kind of people that we really want to have in the business that can be through a force multiplier, that they can not only just do the tasking, but they can bring their creativity, their passion, kind of who they are to the role and the company benefits from all of that versus just their capacity to do the thing or the current tasking.
[00:25:48.450] - Chris
And the idea being that the current tasking we have identified for the team, the individual, the priorities and all this stuff. Somebody, the right person, may come in and say, god, there's a way, better way for us to do this more efficiently, get better results. Right. That's what we really want to be hunting for, is the person that could come in and transform the role or transform the business that we currently have rather than trying to maintain or find people to plug into the existing business.
[00:26:14.790] - Brandon
Yeah. Like low cost. Right. What's the maximum I can get back for the least amount of spend versus fuel?
[00:26:21.380] - Chris
The machine I have today, I feel like that was one of the main messages of the book, is don't think about bolting on the factory parts for the engine that you have today. It's like, what parts or what computer modules or turbos can we add into the machine that make it a whole new, different machine, that make it a much you know what I mean? Turns that Honda Accord into a race car. Like, who can I hire to make that?
[00:26:48.050] - Brandon
Yeah, yeah. Spot on.
[00:26:49.700] - Eric
It made me think chris, like, I've read several books on Steve Jobs, and I find him a fascinating yeah. One of the constant mantras that he had in his business life was, I have to have the best people. Like, I don't want any duds. I don't want any marginal people in this company. A players hate working with BC and D players. I need to fill a building with A players. I think of anyone in the public sphere that I could think of, he spoke about that more than anybody else. And to me, I was thinking about him a lot while I was reading this book because he obviously thought use can I use a quick example of what Chris just said about Force Multiplier? So I have a coaching client who has a very large plumbing company, and he's starting restoration. I'm kind of helping him get that off the ground. We were talking yesterday, and he just hired from another company, a sales rep who the guy's? Take home pay apparently was like 800 grand last year at his last company. Right. We're talking rainmaker.
[00:27:58.910] - Chris
What? Yeah.
[00:27:59.880] - Eric
So my guy brings him in and he's super nervous about it because he's like, look, man, anybody like that is going to have a huge ego. This is potentially a management nightmare for me. Right. So he's got these fears around this. And this is a person who's not a fearful individual whatsoever. I mean, to scale on his level. And the first week there, he sold a quarter million.
[00:28:23.010] - Brandon
You serious?
[00:28:25.410] - Eric
What he did was so my guy went back, he's a data geek. He goes into service. Titan pulls that guy out, starts tracking everybody. All the other 80 plumbers out.
[00:28:36.120] - Brandon
Right.
[00:28:36.390] - Eric
Because they're having a daily sales meeting. And his average ticket last week, because these guys are seeing this guy coming in, like, just sold. $75,000 job, just sold $50,000 job, $200 increase across the board for everybody else other than him. Because now, like, Chris used the term force multiplier. He's this guy's who on the side, right? All of a sudden, these guys are getting nervous, or these guys are going, I need to be better. So he overcame his fear of hiring a person like, that what it's already doing in one week?
[00:29:12.200] - Brandon
That's awesome. Unbelievable.
[00:29:14.220] - Eric
And then he said to me, he goes, I think I work for him now, and to be honest, a little bit, right? Because he's like, what do you think? And I'm like, I think your job is to keep him happy.
[00:29:26.520] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:29:27.190] - Eric
That's your new role with yeah, that's.
[00:29:30.490] - Larry
Any leadership role as well. Keep your whole team moving along.
[00:29:35.110] - Eric
That's really far off topic, but that goes exactly what Chris just said to me, that example.
[00:29:41.080] - Brandon
Yeah, it's super relevant. It's interesting. I think in general, and we can kind of get back into a bit of a rhythm here, but I think in general, that was my biggest takeaway, is just becoming more confident in identifying what it is that I feel I do the best. Like, what is it specifically in terms of competency, skill set, perspective that I can offer the most to my personal and professional strategy? Right. Those big picture goals. Where are we going? How are we going to get there? If I can just keep getting more and more clarity around what's my area of genius, if you will, what is that thing? And just be like a monster at identifying, then how do I get these other things accomplished? Who's better suited to do these things? And it totally reshapes the business. Like, for us, I think Chris and I have lived in that this year a lot, and the book just kind of helped affirm for us those moves like, this is the right stuff. Because sometimes you just question yourself, right? Because you don't know. It takes time sometimes to see the.
[00:30:45.500] - Chris
Outcome, and it takes money. I would imagine that $800,000 guy, I don't know, but I would expect he's probably got a $200,000 base, a guy like that, you know what I mean? He's not showing up to work for 60 grand, obviously, context, but I think it does require an upfront investment, I think, to grow your business this way. And that can be scary. But I think, too, the fear of letting go is a big deal for a lot of business owners. Like this past week, we've been talk trying to process through with one of our business owners who's just been stuck because their who problems are they've got a lot of toxic people on their team right now, and it makes it very difficult. Interesting. I didn't plan on going here, but I think it's really interesting, in order to hire the right who's, you got to get rid of the wrong who's first.
[00:31:40.860] - Eric
Yeah. Because what good who is going to want to come into a rotten whoville?
[00:31:45.450] - Chris
That's exactly right. And I think a lot of people that are having trouble recruiting right now, they underestimate the impact of having the wrong who's on the team, and they think, well, that guy or that gal. They're not going to see or hear about that stuff while we're interviewing. No. When you got the wrong who's on your team, your interviewer, your department heads, every person feels it. And it takes away from that Esprito core, that confidence, that excitement about the brand, about the team. And no one is as eager to bring people onto the team when they know it's a shit show, and that person's just going to be disappointed. They're going to feel out of their element when they start meeting those bad players that they've allowed to stay on the team. Everybody, it's like we know it. We don't talk about it. It's not something we're consciously thinking. But the impact to the culture of keeping those people on because we're afraid prevents us from bringing the right who's in because they don't want to be around that shit. You know what I mean?
[00:32:41.300] - Eric
They won't take the job. Yeah.
[00:32:42.900] - Chris
No, they won't. Or if they get in, they'll turn over. They'll be like, oh, my God, what did I just get myself into?
[00:32:48.070] - Larry
It's the exact opposite of the example. You were just saying to rise everybody up. You can do the opposite just as easily if you're not as aware and conscious to manage the people that you've got there.
[00:32:58.350] - Brandon
Yeah, 100%, actually. It's easier to go that direction. It's easier for the ship to start.
[00:33:03.440] - Eric
So is the owner afraid to retract for the greater good?
[00:33:07.720] - Chris
The owner really needs to relinquish CEO control to somebody else. He's got a big heart. He's got a big heart and I think just struggles to doesn't want to be the bad guy. Oh, gosh, they've been with me for seven years. We went through some hard stuff four years ago, and they hung in there and they continued cashing my paychecks. I owe it to them. Exaggerating just that a big heart, but doesn't want to be the bad guy.
[00:33:42.470] - Eric
It's hard to scale.
[00:33:43.660] - Chris
That really hard.
[00:33:45.510] - Brandon
Big time.
[00:33:46.550] - Eric
All right, well, should we get in our own package?
[00:33:50.130] - Brandon
Yeah, I think so. I think so. And because you opened the door, Eric, I think you got to lead us out.
[00:33:55.690] - Chris
Yeah. What are you thinking?
[00:33:57.210] - Eric
I will.
[00:33:57.820] - Chris
Sure.
[00:33:58.350] - Eric
Well, I was thinking a lot about you guys, actually, when I was reading the book, because you have added a few people this year, and I think those were from at least the outside looking in really good moves and potentially really going to help you, you know? Meanwhile, I looked at Larry and I, and we haven't done that, but we're in the process of doing that in different, like, I think, for us. Look, the reason I've been sick. Like, massively sick two times this year. The previous, like, five years, I was hardly sick at all. Right? I have literally worked myself to the bone. And you guys know as a coach, you are taking in everybody's stress and problems all day long, and there's no getting around that. That has a massive effect on you personally and your health. And, I mean, we've laughed about it. You guys laugh at me and think I'm insane. I just go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Like, nine to 1010 to 1111 to 1212 to one, one to two, two to three. I mean, I do that every day. And I'm not saying I have no breaks, but it's like the way I have structured this whole thing, I don't have a who.
[00:35:09.880] - Eric
I'm the who, right? And when I go down, it's not scalable. And we didn't actually start doing this on purpose anyway, right? And look, I gained great value. I love my coaching. Like, I really want them to be successful, but not at the expense of my own business and my own.
[00:35:30.890] - Brandon
So that's huge right there.
[00:35:32.910] - Eric
One of the things that Larry and I are doing business planning for the next month is we have to figure that out. So that was really on top of mind, because, dude, I'm reading this flat on my back in bed. I had scheduled a vacation because I was so burned out. It was the first time I had taken off since Christmas. And one day in, I'm sick. As soon as the adrenaline went down, boom, I'm flat on my back. I knew why. Did you notice that at the start of almost every chapter in this book, it started with an owner being, like, super ill? Did you notice that?
[00:36:10.330] - Brandon
Yeah, that's true, actually.
[00:36:12.100] - Eric
Probably hit me harder than you guys, but, yeah, every chapter started with a story of an owner who had either fallen off a roof and tragically hurt themselves or they were. And look, that's a real thing. That's what hit me the most. And I think for larry and I guys, I'll let larry chime in after this. It's like, for us, at least, I think, in the next year, because you can find who's either internally or externally. I think for us, and the thing that we really are pushing more, which is the video training and all that, that's in our mind, our core business, it's having a lot more external. Who's. Like you said, Chris, paying for that, right? Coming off the road, not being on so many trade shows, not spending so much on flights and hotels and food and trade show booths and, you know, let's pick a couple trade shows a year, do those, and then reallocate that money to find our who's in digital marketing, in video editing and all these even it could be in sales. Having people work the phones. That's how I see it. I don't know. Larry. Larry and I haven't fully had this conversation.
[00:37:27.780] - Eric
We're kind of having it on air.
[00:37:29.700] - Larry
No, we're walking the walk as coaches, being the who, we want to be the who, but we have to reciprocate by not doing the how ourselves. We have to keep reaching out, finding people, do the who, just like you were saying. I mean, who can we do externally or hire internally just to get things accomplished? And I'm the biggest person doing the how on a regular basis. So this was just hitting me right in the face. And then when we talked to people, know, you got to reach out to talk to the experts and specialize and put them on the right seat in the bus. And what you were saying, Chris, was the right seat on the bus. Put the people in the right seat on the bus so everybody's effective, so everybody can make the most amount of productivity, money, progress, whatever. You're measuring those KPIs, if you specialize and focus on it in the long run, you're going to have the most ROI on that. And that's what I took out of it. I'm probably the most guilty, I'm sure out of the four of us, we're doing more how than who. But I enjoy the who more than.
[00:38:31.330] - Chris
Anything because my high eye, I want.
[00:38:34.230] - Larry
To interact with everybody, make things happen and collaborate. That's all I want to do. When you sent this book out, I was like, oh, people, you saw that text. I'm like yes. I was all excited, and I was like, listening to it because I listened to the whole thing, and I was like, oh, I was getting kicked all over the place.
[00:38:51.520] - Brandon
Yeah, same. I think one of the parts that stuck out to me when he's going through essentially what you get in return, right, by being focused on the who, these things that you get back. And he talks about, like, freedom of time, freedom of finance, freedom of all these different elements. And I think the part that I was kind of connecting with and again, everybody's businesses, just like anybody listening are on some part of their journey, right? Small, large, medium, midterm, whatever. Our business is obviously in its earlier phases, and as it's changing shape, I keep finding myself almost getting loose with my strategy. Like, it's easy for me to get pulled off the strategy, but as I'm reading this book, as I'm listening to these core concepts, I'm like, no, wait a minute. Holding that strategy, holding on to that path that you originally kind of outlined for yourself when you were dreaming in quotes, like, what you wanted, what you wanted the business to feel like all those things. It's easier to stay in that place when you're looking at how am I going to invest in the people to help me bring that dream to fruition?
[00:40:00.040] - Brandon
Instead of it just being this pounding pressure that you keep placing on your own shoulders. To be all those specialists. And I think sometimes when we say this stuff out loud, everybody's like, yeah, duh. But we're all living in it, though. It's like, we know, but we don't experience it. Yeah, exactly.
[00:40:17.190] - Chris
Yeah. I think one of the mindsets that's tough for a lot of business owners to get out of, certainly for me and we've both talked about this, is you have this instinct to be really Spartan. A lot of times when you're first getting the business, you have to be Spartan.
[00:40:30.650] - Larry
A lot of us that's great.
[00:40:33.290] - Chris
We didn't start our businesses with a war chest of capital where we can just spend spend until the money starts rolling in. So you learn how to be Spartan. You learn how to work out of a shitty office space or a storage shop for a while. Right. It's like everybody who's listening to this has some version of that story, or most people do or still in it. Or still in it. But there comes a point where is it Spartan to still have all your drinks and stuff in a little crummy dorm fridge and you got shitty secondhand desks? Sure. But where you have to start to flip that is in the people you're hiring. And this makes me think of a video, a random and I'm not a huge follower of Grant Cardone and his stuff, but I recall this video that he put out, and he was talking about hiring people, and he said, pay people as much as you possibly can. And of course, it's a little bit of hyperbole there, right, because he's a showman. But I thought about that a lot, and it's like, no, there is wisdom in that. If you've clearly identified sort of what that who is and what their impact and their role is in the business, pay them as much as you can to get the most quality and the most engagement out of that person.
[00:41:49.720] - Chris
That's what he went on to say. It's like, let's not mince words like money is a chief money and financial security is a chief motivator for people. And you got to be willing to pay up for the best product you can find in order to take your business where you want it to go to create the best business you can build. And there's such a direct connection there. I think we forget that I've made this mistake so many times as I've been growing little small businesses that I've owned. And my mindset is, how can I get a deal? Like, how can I find that diamond in the rough that I can pay them 50 grand but get 100,000 worth of production out of them? I think that's a lot of times as we're young in our business or even as we continue to grow, we still see this in some clients that are 20 years in and being very successful. They still have that mindset. It's like, oh, my god. What would happen if instead you started hunting for the best person and you found a way to pay them?
[00:42:46.340] - Brandon
Yeah, I think that piece of context is really important.
[00:42:49.690] - Chris
Right.
[00:42:50.310] - Brandon
You're not saying to overspend, to over, or to provide people big incomes because it flexes the ego. Instead of trying to get something for cheap, which causes you to search the wrong way, flip that on its head and go find the person and then create a strategy to be able to afford them.
[00:43:10.020] - Chris
Yeah. Don't discount the role. Don't trim away at the job description and scope of work. Find that person and then figure out a way to pay them what you need to bring.
[00:43:22.800] - Eric
I have a coaching client that he has a restoration business. It's kind of in its infancy. He had been a carpet cleaner for a long time, and we're starting to work together. He has some big goals. And I start asking, okay, who works there? And then I get to the point, so what are you paying that person? And all of a sudden, he's like, ripping off 35 an hour, 40 an hour. And I'm just like, Dude, you realize that's like, double the going rate, right? Like, I don't know how you're doing? You know, he had a really interesting take on it. He was like, Eric, I know right now this isn't good for like, I know this hurts me financially. He goes, but these guys will help me scale, and then I can put lower price helpers underneath them. But I need four or five people right now to just supercharge me up and then I'll figure it out. And the bean counterpart of me is, like, twitching in my seat going but I've noticed in the time that I've been working with them, I mean, dude, the guys that he has as like, a technician are what project managers are at most companies.
[00:44:32.070] - Eric
And when we are working together, he has none of the encumbrances that the average person has because all of his guys are out there killing, like so time will tell how that plays out. But you know what, man? I think that's his own.
[00:44:50.990] - Brandon
Yep.
[00:44:51.750] - Eric
Because he doesn't have any friction from them because they are making so much everything is, like kind of chris said earlier, they're all A players and they're all working towards a goal of blowing this thing up.
[00:45:04.040] - Brandon
Yeah, I think, dude, that's a really great example. Literally. We've had some similar conversations with some folks because, again, that's one of the beauties of being a consultant is that you meet all these different entrepreneurs trying to make a go at it in all these different ways. And we certainly, as a group, can identify some of those core elements that are universal, that just work, and they're foundational, and we can implement them, we can do them, but there's always going to be a lot of different ways to deploy some of those systems. And processes. And I think that's a perfect example. And we're talking to another couple of groups where they're experimenting with how high they can go in what they pay their technicians. And I think you hit something really specific there and that is don't keep paying higher and higher wages for part time. Give a shit people. That's not what we're saying because you just lose.
[00:45:55.800] - Chris
Right.
[00:45:56.200] - Brandon
But if I grab somebody that at $24 an hour, there was no prayer in hell that they would come join my team or do the hard ass nasty work that we do. But I could pay them 35 and they will come do it with a smile on their face and help me implement process to make it better and more efficient. And they're going to move with a sense of purpose. My gut says that job will be done at a higher margin. Maybe we spent more in our margin on labor, but did now instead of placing 70% of the equipment the job could have handled, what if we're placing 105? Right. Instead of being on the job an extra day because we bullshitted and took too long, we cut 6 hours off the production, demo, production of that project. My gut says if we're deploying high caliber people even at a rate that kind of makes us nervous. I mean, I haven't seen it yet. Brandon tells me it shakes out on the PNL.
[00:46:52.850] - Eric
Here we go. His PNL looks as good, if not better than most companies.
[00:46:57.720] - Brandon
There you go.
[00:46:58.520] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:46:58.920] - Brandon
There you go.
[00:46:59.640] - Chris
Which I think the principle right, is if you're going to overextend yourself, overextend yourself on the people and stay spartan with your better to have trucks that don't look quite as nice and the best people in town, right?
[00:47:15.120] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:47:15.710] - Larry
You have to walk the walk. And that's what the whole thing is. If you want to make a bundle, you got to pay pills to get you if you want to make a lot of money, you can't just skirt on all these different things and it's going to be a problem. And what he was saying, on what you guys are saying right now, all the money you're going to save from less problems and more productivity are going to make a difference in your cost of goods sold on each job. Just like you were talking about, it's going to be huge. And what Dan was saying, I can specialize.
[00:47:44.730] - Brandon
Yeah, exactly. That's it, Larry. And it's like what then happens to the business because the owner, instead of spending 85% of their week cycling through the same lost energy bullshit. If every week there was legitimate progression downfield because that's all they were thinking about, the majority of their time was spent on what's next, what's the next strategy, what's the next tier, what's the next relationship, what's the next role I need to invest in to continue this pace? Like when owners can stay in that lane that's where you watch a company go from 3 million to like, 25 in just a few years.
[00:48:23.170] - Chris
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, Headhart and Boots is. But it's also a way more and more that our consulting clients find us and in effect, they interview us, right? Those of you been listening to Show for a while, you get to know who we are, right, what we're about. So if Headhart and 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.
[00:49:22.420] - Chris
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.
[00:49:36.520] - 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 Floodlightgrp.com Premier Partners 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.
[00:50:27.770] - Chris
Guys, I can't begin to convey to you just how transformational the three hires we've made this year have been to Floodlight.
[00:50:37.130] - Brandon
And it's picking up pace.
[00:50:39.850] - Chris
It's growing in pace. Like, I'm sitting with our VP of Sales that we hired and the level of expertise and ingenuity and creativity that he's bringing with things like Chat GPT and creating back end funnels and ways of us organizing and automating and developing our process and our outreach and the systems. It's nothing I would have ever been able to put together myself. And much of it we're not even asking for directly. Like, they're bringing that ingenuity to us without us even prompting it. Then, you know, it's like, oh my God, we made the right.
[00:51:18.710] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:51:19.360] - Chris
We've had these moments of affirmation over and over again. We're like, oh my gosh, we hired the right people. Oh, my goodness, this is incredible. And that's what happens.
[00:51:28.810] - Brandon
Well, and it's mutual, right? Because at the end of the day, our team members, if we hire the best, and again, we find the people, and then we find a way to compensate them, right? In a way, that's a win win. Like, we figure it out. We've done that and our people ultimately now, as Chris and I get closer and closer to sitting in the right seat ourselves, then we all benefit, right? Because they're doing the things that they're just engineered better to do naturally. Chris and I aren't fumble fucking around with these half ass attempts to get some of this stuff put into place because we're not designed well for it. And now we get to really dial in on what are we doing next, what event are we going to, what group do we need to sit down with and spend time and energy with to figure out a win win? Like, where are we going as a business? And all of a sudden, it's that whole concept around the Flywheel, right? It's like the idea is we're going to reinvest in the people. It's going to take a little while for them to get their legs under them and start to be able to benefit and take control of that position.
[00:52:30.540] - Brandon
But then as they do that, that Flywheel comes up over the top band and boom. Then all of a sudden, that momentum starts to get behind it. And then it's like, watch out. And we're literally sitting on the precipice of that as an organization because we've gone through that hard foundational part where we get the first pillar people on the team so that we can begin to recognize and live out that momentum. But it's real. Like, it's scary as shit the whole time that you're doing it, but it is real. If you can commit to the concept, it does.
[00:53:03.290] - Larry
That's what the whole book is talking about, because you guys aren't doing all the tasks. You're not doing the how at all. You got the who people doing the how. But like you said, it's scary taking that step and throwing all know, you're just throwing it out there, hoping that it'll work, doing all the things. It sounds like you guys found key players, the who's, that are going to help you get to the next level, and the listeners are thinking the same thing, okay, I can probably do the same thing, and Eric and I are thinking the same thing. As well, and we're all going to be thinking it. I mean, the guys there in the book, he has all these people working for him, Dan, and he's constantly thinking. It's like a lifelong shift in thinking, like you were saying initially, shift in your mindset. Bring up examples.
[00:53:48.350] - Eric
It's moving from thinking to doing, where most people fail, all of us included.
[00:53:55.380] - Brandon
Yeah, totally fair. Right. How many times have we had conversations, you know, who I just need I wish I could find man, if I only had right. But it doesn't translate into a focused effort. Right.
[00:54:06.910] - Eric
Where you always like when I hear somebody say I'm like, oh, what are you working on? I'm trying to get in shape. Oh, well, then you're not fucking getting in shape because you already told me you're just trying.
[00:54:19.060] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:54:19.990] - Eric
Opposed to, hey, I'm training this many hours a week and I've dedicated this much resource. Then you're like, that person's going to make it.
[00:54:27.740] - Brandon
Yeah, they're going to do it. That's right.
[00:54:30.550] - Eric
Have you guys ever noticed that a lot of the best entrepreneurs, a lot of them are not balanced people, they just go all in sometimes to their detriment. But the ones who seem to really do well, they just burn the boat, man. They just burn the boat and they go and they're going to make a decision. And they actually implement mean, even when it's not perfect.
[00:54:58.740] - Chris
Yeah. They just do. They just like to get into it. Let's figure it. Yeah.
[00:55:03.080] - Eric
I mean, Howard Partridge, who was our mentor, wrote a book called Failure to Implement. Great book, because his thesis of this book was, most entrepreneurs don't ever get where they want to go strictly because they don't implement what they already know they need to do.
[00:55:18.870] - Brandon
Yeah, it's very true.
[00:55:20.150] - Chris
So true. Yeah.
[00:55:21.160] - Brandon
Well, and I think one thing is people are listening to this this broad stroke idea of hire the right people and let them do what they're good at. Everybody can hear that from a kind of surface level and go, well, yeah. Duh. I think also when you read a book like this, you're getting all the examples of where it worked out. Right. Well, they were stressed. They were XYZ, they hired this person. They were so brilliant. They did this, and all of a sudden, their business was brand new and everything was hunky dory. And that does happen. But I think the reminder here is, and it's going back to your effort comment, Eric, is don't be afraid to be comfortable with the fact your first couple tries might absolutely blow up in your face. Right. Like, we had examples of that.
[00:56:07.910] - Larry
It just doesn't work. Sometimes. It's perfect.
[00:56:10.870] - Brandon
It's not always going to be we make mistakes. We read the person wrong, even though we've done everything we can to build some kind of mutual relationship and learn about them before we make that decision and that commitment. I think that we're. Still going to make mistakes. And we just need to realize that that investment was still worth it. It was still worth the time and effort. Keep going, right? We have a client right now that is in the midst of doing some restructuring of their organization. And they're looking for some additional key leaders to bring into a really strong group. They've got foundational capacity at the top tier in the organization. They need some higher level competency in their department level leadership. And so they're frustrated because they've been trying to fill one of those seats for a long time. And it's like they think they have the right person. We were even duped recently on one of them where we're like, okay, this person's going to crush. And they've been wrong, man. They were mishires three times in a row. And that team is so disgruntled and frustrated. But it's like, you guys have to keep going because not having this role field is not the option.
[00:57:15.520] - Brandon
That's a non negotiable. So keep going and putting in the paces on that fight. So I think a reminder for me is our next hire might be a total fucking bomb. We're going to do the best we can to prevent that, but it could happen. And we can't all of a sudden then lose the momentum or the prioritization of finding that, right? So anyways, that's something on my shoulders. I think from this I have a.
[00:57:42.790] - Eric
Little insight, I think, to add to that. So for Howard Partridge's group, I have led a kind of a mastermind called Get Off the Truck for home service guys who are owner operators and who want to scale. So just recently we stopped doing it. It did it for about a year and a half. And the interesting thing, Brandon, it goes exactly what you said. The point where the guy would have to go and hire a helper was the sticky. I don't after having done that class once a week for over a year, the sticking point was their fear of hiring the wrong one, right? They're like, well, what if I hire the wrong one? And I'm like, well, then you fire the motherfucker and you get a new one. To me, that's just like normal behavior, right? We're going to try to train them, but if they're not the right person, they're not the right person. But to them, that was failure. And look, a couple of them had said they had tried to do that and then went years back on the truck by themselves because they're like, well, this isn't for me. And I was like, dude, if you know how many bad helpers we hired and fired.
[00:58:52.310] - Eric
And it's like we had guys we'd hire that we thought were going to be really good, just like you said, Brandon, and we'd get them out in the field and it would be like nightmare immediately. And Larry and I did we were trying to get a manager, like a general manager. We interviewed a guy four times. I mean, long form interviews. We thought that this guy he interviewed really well. I went on vacation his first day. Larry called me at noon the first day and went, this guy's not going to make it. I was like, what? And then he just started going into some of this guy's behaviors, and it's like, well, who's that person? Because we didn't see that person in any of those four interviews. He was just a master at interviewing. It's not like we shut the company down and said, oh, well, there'll never be a general manager. I guess this is not going to work out with this person. We need to keep going.
[00:59:53.870] - Brandon
That's kind of an interesting zone. Right? I feel like over the years, I've become more confident in making decisions like that where you just like, we were wrong. This is the wrong move. Let's go. Let's get it over with. Let's move on and get the seat emptied and open it up. But even in our business, like, us personally, we don't get faced with that lot. I'm not hiring techs. I don't have 30 people on the ground that I have to worry about. And so the context is certainly not as robust as somebody that's hiring and firing technicians on a regular basis.
[01:00:32.210] - Eric
But you used to do that.
[01:00:33.850] - Brandon
Oh, yeah, I think where I was going with this is there's something that we've slipped into? Oh, actually, I think you and I were talking about this yesterday, where we're in a hurry, right? There's this pressure. It's hard to hire, so most of our teams have holes. And then on top of that, there's this pressure coming from recruiting companies and stuff. Like, once that process starts, move. Get them on the team as quickly as possible because they might go somewhere else. And I agree with that. If it's a matter of us not following up with communication or taking too long to respond or scheduling a follow up, I see all of that as being the wrong move, and it's going to cost you. But I think we do have to not then allow that to slip into the cadence at which we're asking these people to come spend time with us. Because if we're finding the right person chris talked about this yesterday was they're interviewing us as much as we should be interviewing them. And if we're honest about it at the very beginning, like, look, hiring decisions for our organization are really important to us.
[01:01:40.110] - Brandon
We take it seriously, and we do not want to be in a hurry. If you feel like you need a decision from us in a very short period of time because of your personal circumstances, let us know, and we might be identifying it's not the right fit already. And that sounds scary as fuck anybody trying to hire right now, but think about the quality of person that says, I respect what you just said to me and I want to go those steps with you. Like you're already identifying. Well, on a caliber level, we might be talking to the right damn person here. Now, I don't think we need to do four interviews for our frontline tech positions, but man, project managers, estimators some of these salespeople coordinators, salespeople like, dude, a, if they're the right people, they already have a job that's probably paying them pretty damn well. And the only reason they're going to think about another team is that culturally something is dynamically different with your organization than where they currently are. Well, one of the first places to start figuring that out is are they battle patient enough to ride or die with you a few times so that you can get a fucking chance to learn about each other.
[01:02:47.110] - Brandon
Like, if we can't do that, we probably are off on the wrong launch already. I don't know. It's opinion, right? Yeah.
[01:02:52.690] - Larry
If it's one of those people that are the strong people that you're going to pay good money to or they're going to be on the right side.
[01:02:57.530] - Chris
On the bus if they're going to.
[01:02:59.000] - Larry
Want to jump in real quick and want to rush. Rush. That's a big red flag that they're not the right people to be coming along. And you're going to want somebody that's going to want to I mean, it's all pacing. Everybody has a different pace. But if you explain it and you're direct upfront about it and you're accountability what you've got going on, that's just like he was talking about in the book. If you're straightforward upfront, it goes a long way.
[01:03:21.780] - Chris
What you're saying is right, well, and.
[01:03:23.430] - Brandon
I think too, we've talked to some teams that prioritize introductions to the spouse or partner and there's an interesting dynamic that happens when you share a meal and hear and ask questions and directly reference that person as a person. Right. I think some of the employers, if they're listening to this, they're going, dude, I don't have time to be meeting with people four times.
[01:03:46.840] - Eric
You don't have time not to do that?
[01:03:48.680] - Brandon
Dude, say that again. Right?
[01:03:50.890] - Eric
Brandon, right now I have a client hired a general manager. Guy had a shit ton of experience. I interviewed him for them. Amazing. They didn't do the dinner with the wife and she expects him home at 05:00 every day. And now all of a sudden this guy who's amazing in the restoration industry and is getting his phone blown up and they had replaced another guy with similar issues that ruined their culture for the technicians and now they're going like, what do I do now?
[01:04:25.850] - Brandon
Yes, such a perfect example.
[01:04:28.260] - Chris
Perfect example. But here's one other thing I wanted that jumped out at me in the book that I think maybe I've struggled with a little bit more than you just because of our just wiring.
[01:04:38.370] - Brandon
If it's a struggle, probably.
[01:04:41.850] - Chris
By the way, I wrote down your term earlier. I'm in the process of doing a book on Brandonisms.
[01:04:50.730] - Larry
Too. Go ahead.
[01:04:51.900] - Chris
I had to write that down. That's going in the chapter of Colorful Language. All right.
[01:04:56.900] - Brandon
I think Eric and I could probably have a duel. Pretty fun. Okay. Good toilet reader.
[01:05:03.320] - Chris
Yeah. That's a separate episode. One of the themes was ego and control that they talk about in this and what gets in the way of us developing more of a who focus. And I have struggled with this this idea when you're starting the business and you're the brand and you're the main talking head, and you're the one establishing the standards of what we're always going to do, what we're never going to do, and this is what we're about. I think the thing I've struggled with is I tend to over index on the value of my personality in those sales conversations, in those customer service recovery situations, my personal ability to match up with the customer and kind of the way I do things. That's been one of the biggest adjustments for me. And I can look back over my career when I owned a state farm agency, when I had a small retail business that was kind of always a theme is no one else. And I know this is so stereotypical, it's like classic emyth story. No one's going to be able to do it as well as I can. Right. Or I think the thing that you and I've wrestle with again, probably me more.
[01:06:14.230] - Chris
So you've been more quick to be like, Nah, dude, we're not that important. Or that is the same with this business, with the podcast and everything else. It's like, will the people we hire be able to kind of emulate or will there be enough of a reflection of kind of who we are and the brand and how we conduct ourselves in our consulting, that we maintain kind of the essence of what floodlight's about and what people have come to expect from headhart and boots and floodlight and everything else. And that really worried me for a while. But it's interesting. I think the thing that surprised me a little bit is just how easily our team has reflected who we like, how natural that is when you hire the right people, you know what I'm saying? For me to let go.
[01:07:03.020] - Eric
But the thing is, too, Chris Floodlight could actually be better if it still has a lot of essences of a lot of other people. It doesn't have to be just 110%. There's still not a through line with a lot of Chris, a lot of Brandon, but it doesn't mean that the whole vibe can't be slightly different, but maybe even better.
[01:07:24.260] - Chris
Yeah, but it just goes to show how much my own ego has limited has put a ceiling on past businesses that I've had, because nobody's going to quite say it the right way or they're not going to connect with people the same way I do. DA DA DA DA DA. I just think back over the other businesses I've run or I've owned, and it's like, man, if I could have gotten a hold of this sooner. I even think about I look back at employees and team members that I've had and hired in the past where they had so much more capacity and I was the lid on them because I refused to hand over certain roles that they could have done better than me. If I'm honest, I thought you probably.
[01:08:08.400] - Eric
Also chris, even if you didn't lose those employees, they just shut down.
[01:08:12.990] - Chris
Exactly. Yeah.
[01:08:14.590] - Eric
It's like, okay, I'll take my paycheck.
[01:08:16.470] - Chris
Look, I saw that.
[01:08:17.250] - Eric
I mean, Larry I know this resonates with know, people would kind of do that. I watched them do that with Larry. He would interject and whatever, a lot of the same stuff you're talking about. And they would just basically do the invisible throwing up with their hands and be like, yeah, great, dude, wherever fucking you want, I'll do it. Stupid, but great, I'll do it. Meanwhile, we're completely thwarting their talents.
[01:08:39.250] - Chris
Yeah, 100%.
[01:08:41.270] - Eric
They do it not just Larry, Brandon, me, Chris.
[01:08:43.740] - Brandon
Oh, yeah. I'm probably notorious for it, and it's challenging because you want to provide pushback, you want to provide critical thinking, all the things, but it's just this really delicate balance between, okay, but have I stopped allowing that person to give it a try? Do I need to control some of these elements? I found myself doing this yesterday. We had a call with our consultants and we were looking at some of the processes and stuff that the team's developing. And I was in my own head, a lot of the conversation where I'm fighting, it's like, I really feel like this input is important. And though the whole time I'm like, okay, but do you need to have input here? Do you need to say anything? It's fucking hard.
[01:09:28.740] - Larry
It's like a ping pong in your head.
[01:09:30.600] - Chris
Totally.
[01:09:31.210] - Brandon
Yeah. And I don't even honestly, I'm reflecting on yesterday's conversation now, and I'm like, yeah, there was probably plenty of shit in there. I just didn't need to say anything. Oh, that's like, the team's going to figure it out.
[01:09:43.130] - Larry
Chris is like, yeah, thank goodness.
[01:09:45.540] - Chris
Well, no, because I'm dealing with the same I think that is where we're at as a business is we're in that process of figuring out what does letting go look like with rad people? Like, with rad people. Because I've had this conscious thought too, with our team of like, okay, I may have a marginal disagreement with the way or the tone or the methodology or something, but then if I hang long enough in that pocket, I realized it was a non issue. It was just a moot point. It was not even worth bringing up. And I'm thankful I didn't. So I'm getting better at just being like, I can leave that unsaid.
[01:10:22.240] - Larry
Yeah, you got to stay out of the box now.
[01:10:24.380] - Chris
Yeah. Because they're so damn smart. But I think a lot of times I jump in before the other person has a chance to process and come up with a solution. Right.
[01:10:34.970] - Eric
I think, too, guys, we've kind of touched on startup mode a little bit today because we both kind of really at the point where you're growing out of that. I think you guys are ahead of us on that. But startup mode is supposed to be a very short period of time, and the same skills that make entrepreneurs good at startup mode are usually the same exact things that hold them back from reaching any type of scale.
[01:11:00.360] - Brandon
Yeah.
[01:11:01.270] - Eric
Most owners have to either change or step aside and let a big boy come in who's a manager and go do that. And I think we're both like in the midst of that to a degree, in different ways. Different degrees.
[01:11:15.100] - Chris
Yeah.
[01:11:15.560] - Larry
But to that same thing. We did this already with the other businesses that we grew. So now we're learning the same problems again, relearning them. We're at a different level that the learning curve is shorter. But we're still I don't know about me at least, and Eric, too. We're still having to go over similar hurdles. Oh, yeah, that's right. I'm supposed to listen to these I had service managers for a while. I was supposed to listen to them. Oh, yeah, that's right. Now I got listen to these people too. Oh, yeah.
[01:11:44.130] - Brandon
We're forever a work in process. Right.
[01:11:46.790] - Eric
Well, for us, because so much of what you guys are taking on internal who's, we're in the process right now of taking on external who's. Vendor partners who are integral are going to be integral to our success. I was thinking about this the other day after a meeting. We can no longer the problem with vendor partners a lot of times is like, well, it's my money, so I'm going to dictate what happens. Right. You can't go into it with that mindset. You have to go into it where I'm paying just like I'm paying somebody to work for me and I need to listen to them. Just because we're spending money with you doesn't mean that why the fuck are we hiring somebody who's supposed to be better at us than something and then telling them what to do? Because we somehow think we know better in something that we don't know shit about.
[01:12:41.940] - Brandon
Yeah, that's huge.
[01:12:43.040] - Eric
But we do it. Larry and I are guilty, very guilty of this. It's like, well, that's our money and we want you to do this. And they do the same thing as the employee. They go, all right, dude, it's your money. It's stupid. I'll spend it for you. Sure. Where it's like I think Larry and I and this is one of the things in our business planning is like, we have to take an entirely new approach to our vendor partners.
[01:13:06.500] - Brandon
Yeah.
[01:13:07.200] - Eric
Do them as team members.
[01:13:09.710] - Brandon
Yes. That's good. It reminds me of that whole 100% of zero is still zero when you're thinking about external partners. And more recently, I think, for Chris and I, and this shows up in a lot of different, I think, thought patterns. Know, we're still developing the long term strategy.
[01:13:30.070] - Eric
Right.
[01:13:30.820] - Brandon
There's all sorts of things about Chris and I's, partnership and professional endeavors that there's sky's the limit. We have all sorts of things we're still exploring together and what we could and potentially go after or do. And one of the things I'm trying to be more open to is this idea that I don't need to have majority control. I don't need to necessarily have majority ownership. I'm trying in my own mind, trying it's not a standard yet of looking at opportunities and saying, what if I wasn't in complete control? Is there still something powerful about this potential partnership or this cooperation between these two peoples, three peoples, whatever the thing is, and I'm trying to get more open minded to what do I want from this experience? Well, I want some financial freedom opportunities. I want some displacement of liability and risk. I want all the things, okay, well, can you get the same thing from that and not own the whole thing or not control the whole thing and maybe not even be the driving influence over all the decisions that are made? And the answer a lot of the time is, Fuck, yeah.
[01:14:37.660] - Brandon
So then it's like, I need to reengineer my expectation and be more open to opportunities that don't put me in that same position that I'm in with some of my existing opportunities now, where I feel like everything falls on Chris and I, or everything falls on me in this certain lane or whatever the case may be. And it's like, holy shit. The opportunities that we could take part in all of a sudden get really expansive. Not to the point where it's chasing shiny shit, but it's like, I could do more of what I want if I partnered in this way. You know what I mean?
[01:15:07.160] - Chris
Yeah. There was a sentence, I underlined it in the book, and I think it was in chapter one or two where he said, learn to judge your progress by the number of collaborations you have in motion. Wow, that's interesting. And I was like, Shit, that's really good when you think about it in those terms. What new relationships, what new collaborations are we identifying in any given moment? What are the relationships of opportunity that we're stirring up and instigating? That's an interesting way of looking at things.
[01:15:38.000] - Brandon
Yeah, very much so.
[01:15:39.630] - Eric
One of the things that really struck me is The Truth about Procrastination how to Kill at that chapter. But I was reading the chapter takeaways in the end and I noticed that I actually wrote in the book, which I rarely do, but there's, like this cascading effect. Right. So it says leadership involves being clear and explicit about the vision.
[01:16:00.950] - Brandon
Right.
[01:16:01.190] - Eric
So for the four of us, that's our job, or at least in part as the founders, principals, owners, it might not be forever our job, but for now, that's our job. We have to get very clear this is exactly what we want. This is how we want to do it. And then it says it kind of cascades down to the impact filter is the one page tool for defining the vision or goal and why it is so important. So having any whether you use this or another planning tool to get to, like, okay, well, let's hash this out, and then it cascades to asking, who can help me achieve this? I think usually our default is like, let's get a goal. Maybe not getting clear enough on that goal, and then just saying, what do I have to do to make this goal? That I don't know about you guys, but I think for Larry and I, that's our default. Like, hey, we have this idea, we want to do it.
[01:16:58.150] - Chris
Yeah.
[01:16:58.620] - Eric
We're going to set some maybe unclear goals around this, and then let's just divide tasks.
[01:17:04.130] - Brandon
Yep. More importantly, what sets that goal is most of the time a limitation of what I think I can and can't do.
[01:17:12.120] - Chris
Right. Yeah.
[01:17:13.200] - Brandon
Right. So you're going to launch right out of the gate, going for a target that may be only a mere fraction of a reflection of what it could be. If you started by identifying just clearly, what is it that I want to experience? Succeed in goal, whatever.
[01:17:28.820] - Chris
Not what are my capabilities? What do I want? And then find people that have the capabilities.
[01:17:34.930] - Larry
That was all crux of the book. Yeah.
[01:17:37.570] - Eric
And I think a lot of times we will scale the goal mentally only to what we feel our capabilities are.
[01:17:45.820] - Brandon
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
[01:17:48.150] - Eric
Because we just can't imagine somebody else doing it with us or for us.
[01:17:53.110] - Chris
Right.
[01:17:55.430] - Brandon
I can't remember where we started hearing this the first time, but there was somebody in our sphere that would say, you have not because you ask not. They said it all the time. And I think Chris definitely it landed with him at some point, he's become more aggressive about asking. It's just random people for random things. This outreach to this person to see if they'll be on the show. You know what I mean? He's just gotten really diligent about, like, screw it, you have not because you asked not. You might as well ask. And I think what's interesting is, in context of this book right. This whole idea of the who not how is I think there's this pattern of increasing the quality and the level of expectation you have with your ask as you do this more. So what I mean by that is that. Let's say I think of this thing that I want to do, and then I look at it normally from this perspective of, can Chris and I handle that? What is it going to require from Chris and I in order for us to do this thing? And I think a lot of that is based on the fact that I'm afraid to ask someone else, right?
[01:18:55.520] - Brandon
Because I make assumptions on whether or not there's a win in it for them or that I bring enough value to the relationship or the partnership or we do or whatever the case may be. And it's crazy because it's like, dude, when you just ask, I'm always surprised by how often somebody is willing to engage in the conversation because there's a little bit of a thought that they had as well, right? But both parties are over here just making a ton of assumptions about what the other person's thinking, instead of just coming up and saying, look, hey, I'm just going to toss this out here. I'm not pushing. I'm not even saying it's a thing, but, hey, what if have you ever thought about I mean, shit, you guys and us, we've had conversations like that, and I'm always blown away by how often people are like, yeah, screw it, let's have a chat. Nobody's committing to anything. Let's just ask some questions and see where we can go with this. And holy hell, man, there's more partnerships, more cooperation waiting, because the audience is thinking the same shit I am. They're not asking, they're not bringing it up out of fear, and we both want the same thing.
[01:19:59.310] - Eric
It's interesting you say that, Brandon, because I read this several years ago. I was reading, like, Forbes magazine one day. I was just sitting and reading in the backyard.
[01:20:08.060] - Brandon
Are you in the hair salon, Eric?
[01:20:09.910] - Eric
Yeah. I still only one with hair left.
[01:20:16.390] - Brandon
Last man standing.
[01:20:17.660] - Eric
Let's get a perm. I've already got the Irish Afro. I don't need a perm. Anyway, I'm sitting there reading, and it said, like, something like, you know how they have these top ten traits of billionaires or whatever, right? So I'm reading this list, and number one on the list, Brandon, was that people who tend to have reached billionaire status, their number one trait for their success is they leverage the value and experience of others in collaboration. Oh, man, they partner way more than the rest of us. They're always looking to partner. And that stuck with me. Look, as I'm aging, I'm opening to that, but it's not my default.
[01:21:04.810] - Brandon
My default is to do yeah, well, and I think it all comes back to that limited perspective of there's only so many pieces of the pie. Just constantly looking at it from that perspective, kind of beating an example to death. But if the right group was out there, the right product, the right concept, and we felt like we could offer something special, I think I need to be open to the fact, well, maybe 51% is not necessary. What if it was 25? And it's one of ten things that we're doing in collaboration with really solid foundational people. The return long term is going to be everything everybody wants. Right. It's just this really interesting, limited perspective that I tend to start with by default.
[01:21:50.770] - Larry
Is that the ego or is it just control that you want to have? Your ego is part of it.
[01:21:56.010] - Brandon
Yeah, I think it's both.
[01:21:58.390] - Chris
Yeah. And I think another trait, too, is just that's required is open mindedness. We have this buddy, a real estate budy of mine that we met with who's young, very ambitious, and it's one of the things I've noticed when I talked to him about making money and investments. In fact, I had another conversation with him recently. He referred to making money as a game, and he just went through a huge life change, divorce and all this kind of stuff. So all of that's been kind of reorganized to some degree. And I asked how he was doing. He's like, honestly, I'm kind of excited. He's like, I've had this massive change in movement in my balance sheet. And he said, I'm sort of excited to see how quickly I can rebuild it and get beyond where I was. Because he sees it as a game. And when you talk to him about opportunities, he's looking at he's so dispassionate about any of the details. It's just he's looking at it through this open minded lens of, how could this work? How could this benefit me? How could I benefit them? He's less passionate about his role in it, what percentage, all the things, and just looking at the opportunity as a whole and saying, what's the best way to do this thing?
[01:23:11.340] - Chris
And I think there's some wisdom in that. I think somehow it relates back to this rather than seeing how we interact in that thing and what's my role in it, it's looking at it more globally and with more of an open mind.
[01:23:24.870] - Eric
I've referenced my friend that I cycle with that's so successful, and this probably hits all four of us, but we were talking about partnership one day, and he was like, I will do 49% to 1%, I will do 51% to 100%. I will not do 50 50, because now I have to sit and capitulate and go through the whole process of decision making, and it's too slow. He's like, so in business, I either have to own very little and I just let it go. I make my investment and it will make me money, or I control everything. Right. His whole thing was, I have all these businesses where I own 10%. Like, I don't care.
[01:24:10.830] - Chris
Passive investments.
[01:24:12.130] - Eric
Yeah. His whole thing was like, if I'm going to own the company, I'm going to own the company. I'm going to get my share. Right. So it's not so. Much about the 50 50 partnership. For me, it's more about he has all these companies that he owns a fraction of, and he's totally good with not on the board. He's like, I just own small bits of lots of other businesses, and then he has, obviously, a couple of businesses that he owns outright. And to what Chris was saying, very just analytical about the whole thing, no emotion.
[01:24:48.330] - Brandon
There's power in it, for certain.
[01:24:50.240] - Chris
Yeah.
[01:24:51.470] - Eric
All right, well, gents, we got to land the plane because I got a coaching call in six minutes.
[01:24:56.350] - Brandon
Let's do it. Let's do it.
[01:24:58.750] - Eric
I'm going to go do a how.
[01:25:00.500] - Brandon
You're going to go execute on the how? Yeah. Okay. Well, do we want to wrap this one up? Do we want some summarization here, or do we need it?
[01:25:08.310] - Larry
It was a great book. I enjoyed it.
[01:25:10.130] - Chris
Totally.
[01:25:11.970] - Eric
Surround yourself or hire people that are better and smarter at you with the things that they need to be, and go do what you're best at, nothing more.
[01:25:21.340] - Larry
There you go.
[01:25:22.020] - Brandon
Yeah. No, I think that's right on the dot, dude. So yeah. The who, not how. Read it. Do yourself a favor. If you lead a team or building a business, read it. It's a powerful book. It's literally changing the way I look at just about everything in relationship to my journey. That's for sure.
[01:25:39.960] - Chris
Yeah.
[01:25:40.640] - Brandon
Okay, boys.
[01:25:41.620] - Larry
All right, gentlemen, it's been a pleasure. We'll see you. We're out.
[01:25:44.270] - Chris
Good deal.
[01:25:44.880] - Brandon
Light up. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head Art and Boots.
[01:25:50.920] - Chris
And if you're enjoying the show or 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.