[00:00:00.000] - Chris
Wow. How many of you have listened to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast? I can't tell you that reaction, how much that means to us. Welcome back to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast. I'm Chris.
[00:00:11.430] - Brandon
And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. This new camera angle makes my arms look smaller than yours.
[00:00:20.890] - Chris
I'm noticing that and I really appreciate it. I thought you did that on purpose.
[00:00:24.250] - Brandon
No, I don't. I didn't, and I am not happy with it. Hey, all, thanks so much for listening to the show. Hey, if you're not already following, please do so and ultimately share, right? Like the coolest currency that we have in terms of supporting this is share it with a friend, share it with somebody, a colleague, a peer, one of your downline team members. Let them be able to take advantage of the information you're already leveraging in your favor. And finally, guys, if you hear a show that really moves you, that really moves the needle, will you please leave us a review? Those five-star reviews help us a ton.
[00:00:58.120] - Chris
Right on. And listen, if you're trying to grow your business, you might consider checking out Floodlight's business opportunity audit. It's free. We provided it no charge. It's actually what we use to assess new clients as they come in. It's a 110 point assessment for your business. We've now decided to give access to the general public for it. So go and take our business opportunity audit at floodlightgrp. Com. It's going to help you identify the biggest gaps and opportunities in your business right now. And at the end, it'll assign you a health score to let you know exactly where your business stands right now. Go check it out, floodlightgrp. Com/audit, and take the Boa. It's a great way to get a pulse on your business.
[00:01:38.430] - Brandon
Amigo, how are you? I'm good. I'm digging. I know people have already seen this now by a handful of episodes, but the vibe in the studio is. Yeah, it's very-it's cool. I like it. I like where we're going with this. We got some updates to make, but I like where we're headed. You are all off on the screen. You do tend to hang to the outside. I don't know. I don't think I have a B. O. Problem or anything. You'd let me know, right? If I just had a walking stink issue.
[00:02:00.230] - Chris
You know how I love conflict.
[00:02:02.670] - Brandon
That's so true. Okay, dude, I've actually been excited about today's topic. It's been something I think that mentally has been top of mind. And ultimately, to be brutally honest, is I feel like I'm having a bit of an episode of, I don't want to say rethinking, because I think a lot of the guidance that we've leaned into around coaching our people's performance is accurate, is effective. But I also, it's like on the back of a last several client interactions, I I also know this is just one of the most hard things to do is understanding when coaching someone up is feasible and when our responsibilities are around that. And more importantly, and actually where I want to go today is the honor and the fun that actually exists in the space when you begin mentoring and coaching your people up. Now, I think the wrestling match is always going to be, when is it just time to pull the rip cord? Because obviously, we're not having a positive impact. So I definitely want to touch on that a little bit. Anyways, bad way to open. Here's the I want to dig into some of the opportunities and some of the rewards of coaching our people up.
[00:03:08.020] - Brandon
I also want to tackle this idea that there's actually far more mental influence that we have than we think with an interesting story. But how does that land with you? Where do you want to go with that?
[00:03:18.410] - Chris
Yeah, dude, it's such an important topic. I was actually just getting off the phone with one of the sales managers we work with that leads a sales team for one of our clients. This topic is fresh for me. It's good.
[00:03:29.260] - Brandon
I'm to open with a story. This is real stuff. This has happened with me, specifically with a very talented person, certainly somebody that we respect and care for deeply, even today. Anyways, let's get into it. Years ago, we had an opportunity to work with an executive coach. Dude, I think we have brought her up many times before. We just love the heck out of her. She was so influential on both of us, a lot of our leadership team. Just very forward thinking in terms of how we're interacting with our staff and our people. One of the things that came up is I was just... I can't even remember if this individual's name came up specifically, but the point was I was relating to her, like many of our clients do to us, some frustrations around certain behaviors because I felt like ultimately was taking this A player and this one or two things was like knocking them down to a C plus plus. It's like, this is a person that can crush at an elite level, right? Yeah. I was voicing that with her, and she really tripped me out. She said, Hey, have you ever or thought about how much influence you have subconsciously on your people.
[00:04:35.040] - Brandon
I'm going back to like, well, yes, I understand I have a responsibility as a leader. I likened it to, as a parent, the thing I say to my kids is going to stick around, can have this lasting residue. But then what she ended up doing was she walked me through this process of she said, if you start speaking into this person, the thing that you see them doing well, even if it's in contrast with what what they actually are executing on on a day-to-day basis. Let's say for this example, it was follow up and follow through. She basically said, if you start planting the seed that you recognize this person's capabilities or consistency in this thing, watch what happens with their actual behavior. So I'm so manipulative. I'm just tripped out about this whole thing. And as I start nerding out on this, I'm like, okay, so I highlight my person.
[00:05:28.550] - Chris
You're like, what if? What if this actually works?
[00:05:29.900] - Brandon
What if this works? Because this is trippy. So I identify my person mentally. I'm like, okay, that's my target. So literally that day, later that day, individual walks into my office to talk about a project and a relationship. And this particular individual, a capable player, but their follow-up and follow-through was sagging significantly to the point that it was definitely a performance hindrance. And I remember that this individual, I remember them often saying little statements about themselves that are affirming this failure. Yeah. This person, for all intents and purposes, had identified with the fact this is their weakness, but they weren't getting better. I end up later that day, individual walks into my room or walks into my office. I'm not trying to blow smoke up their ass because that's a no-go. But anyways, I plant the seed. I can't remember what the specific sense was.
[00:06:19.940] - Chris
It's really you speaking to... You know this person's capable of better.
[00:06:24.950] - Brandon
Yes. That's part of our frustration as leaders is that we see that folks have potential, and then we see them just stepping on themselves for a reason. Anyways, I planted the seed. I was just trying it, and I said something to the fact like, Hey, nice work on XYZ's job. The follow-up and the follow-through that you did on that was excellent, man. I basically followed it with this. What was it? You're so great at that.
[00:06:50.300] - Chris
Let's get this straight, though. You dug into his project files. Yes. You found some jobs in Dash that had great notes, clear Communication, consistency in terms of the frequency of communication.
[00:07:03.490] - Brandon
It was current. It was relative. It was real.
[00:07:06.010] - Chris
You found a good example.
[00:07:07.510] - Brandon
I did. I highlighted. I just said, Hey, great job with this. Excellent communication, follow up. You're really good at this. Great at that. I didn't miss a beat. I didn't make that a ceremony. I just threw it in there and then went right to the topic that he wanted to talk about. We have our discussion, we go about. A couple of days later, I remember I tried to compress this. This was in a short period of time because it was like my own internal experiment. Okay, so a few days later, same thing. I see him passing in the hallway. I refer back to a specific... So this isn't blowing smoke. There's a specific example. And then basically what I'm doing is I'm leveraging that into a global statement is what I'm doing. So again, there was some piece of information with a subcontractor, something I heard about, something about a good negotiation, whatever. Same thing, Cora, hey, nice work with XYZ. Man, that follow-up clearly made the difference on that. Love how good you at that. Moved on. Like, literally, these are hallway comments. Like, 15 seconds, make the statement, no visual change in my face.
[00:08:06.990] - Brandon
I just don't even skip a heartbeat, keep trucking down the hallway, moving on to the next thing. I'm going to save everybody every episode. I literally did this for the next several weeks, a few times a week, I caught said person in the hallway in passing over the phone on a call for a checkup, whatever. And I kept planting these seeds of great communication and follow-up. Love how good you are at that. And I shit you not. At the end of several weeks, this person was actually living out that consistency and follow-up and follow-through like never before. They had literally bought at a subconscious level the fact that they were good at it. And lo and behold, their performance began to follow Bucking suit, dude. And I remember how he came-And he came far and away. Far and away. Best PM we had.
[00:08:55.960] - Chris
Yes. Pm we had.
[00:08:56.950] - Brandon
Had huge following, lots of adjust or direct relationship.
[00:09:00.760] - Chris
To this day, still loyal relationships with those people.
[00:09:03.170] - Brandon
Still does. He has leveraged that stuff into lots of ongoing success and opportunity. And it was literally... I remember going back to Amy and talking to her about this experiment, and I was literally ripped out by how effective it was. And it's funny. It's like I look back in time, I know you make these statements. It works so well, we stopped doing it. I remember looking back and going, Gosh, I really... It was this short term experiment with a resounding, awesome result. But I do reflect and realize I didn't make that a battle standard. It didn't become a normal cadence where I was leveraging that as much as possible to create these changes, life changing changes in my people. Okay, so here's some of the context, right? You guys hung in the story. As I'm talking with business owners and they are making these really profound changes in their business to create scale, to consistency, accountability, balance, all these things that we we want so that our businesses are healthy and so that our people experience everything they're capable of experiencing. We also get really frustrated because we run into situations where it's like people just aren't making the change with us.
[00:10:13.040] - Brandon
I get into this position after a while of really boring in on people and being like, look, did we train correctly? Have we set clear expectations and standards? Blah, blah, blah. Okay, you need to make a decision. I realized over time, I start to sit in this space where I'm doing more telling people to quicker to fire. I'm not going back on that, but I think we can then... That's not motivating. When you're constantly talking to leaders about the fact that, hey, firing sucks, but you got to do it and you got to do it quickly. Again, there's truth there. But I think what I even get out of the pocket on is, yes, and are we really doing everything we can to coach up that individual's performance if we see that the want and the desire is there? It's like, okay, if the want and the desire, meaning they are coachable, when we do give them insights and perspectives, there's a shift in behavior, then let's double down on that. That's where I wanted to go, is I want to talk about some of those things that we can do with our people to include planting seeds like that in a real proactive way that actually has a profound impact on their performance and their experience.
[00:11:24.560] - Brandon
Here's why. I underestimate or I get pulled out of perspective often of the fact that our people are often just acting out of a lack of self-confidence. That shows up in so many different places. We talk a lot about how we made mistakes, and because We've not had a lack of clarity in our businesses around certain roles, responsibilities, and outcomes, that it created friction for accountability. It makes it difficult. We try to teach elements to overcome that now. But I think what we don't do a lot of is talking about the human experience and the human experiment and what opportunities we have to really change people's lives because we change their own personal perspective of themselves. So anyways, that's what I want to dig into a little bit today.
[00:12:13.280] - Chris
Well, you know the funny association that I make to that story is, if you're on Facebook and Instagram and you're into personal development and stuff, you end up starting to see in your threads a fair amount of what maybe I historically would have just dismissed as woo-woo bullshit. Things like manifesting. I'm not sure I know what to make of some of that stuff all the time, but I think one of the things that I have really latched on to in recent years is the power of our thoughts. To me, that's no longer woo-woo. It's I recognize it within myself that I can get caught in thought loops that are counterproductive to me. And that when I focus on the right thoughts and I nurture the right thoughts in myself, that it has a profound impact on my behavior, like what I'd subsequently do. Yes. I think both of us have experienced that.
[00:13:03.590] - Brandon
And the opposite is true. We can change action first, and then some of that.
[00:13:08.160] - Chris
Our feelings and thoughts and emotions will follow. For sure. Yeah, absolutely. Just the power of our thoughts as humans. And then also the other thing, too, is I've noticed as I've applied more attention to that, that just the nonsense nature of our thoughts sometimes, and how just the randomness of the things we can get caught up in, that I didn't necessarily generate the situation didn't necessarily generate, but our Our minds are just chaotic. There's this process, I think, of learning how to manage our thoughts more successfully, more consistently to when I have a negative thought about myself or other people, you can actually... The Bible talks about this, taking our thoughts captive. I think That might very well have been what they were referring to. I don't remember who said that, taking whatever. Somebody out there who's a theologian, to send us a message. That's what comes to mind for me is that we as leaders have an opportunity to help or proactively manage our people's thoughts about themselves. What I heard in your story, and it's really fun because obviously, both of us know that person. I think that the choice that you made and what our executive coach pointed you towards is hunt for the positive things that they're doing in this area.
[00:14:18.040] - Chris
Find, even if it's one out of 10 right now, if it's one out of 10 of his jobs in his file, find it and focus on that. Focus on the behavior that you do want. This is in some parenting books, too. Rather than harping on all the negative behaviors and the negative ways your kid is showing up, focus relentlessly on times that they're doing things right. That's just in some ways, it's basic psychology. But boy, it's just so easy to forget about that and get hyper-focused on the non-compliance.
[00:14:49.090] - Brandon
Totally agree.
[00:14:49.900] - Chris
I'm even thinking about some of the clients and some of the staff that we're working with right now where there's points of frustration. God, we've been talking about this thing over and over and over again, and it's making me take an inventory of that. I'm like, where could I apply this today and shift my dialog with that person to hyper focus instead on where I see them succeeding and complying with these principles or with these behaviors that we're working on with them and potentially shift the momentum. Yeah.
[00:15:20.080] - Brandon
I think there's a great deal of opportunity. I was just thinking about in my own personal journey, these shifts that I have because I started telling myself a story. I remember for years, man, that I had this message in my mind that I would repeat audibly or tell people. I don't know why we do this, but I literally would say to myself that I'm not strategic by nature. I'm not very good at being a strategic thinker and developing and or organizing strategy and those kinds of things. That went on for years. I remember somebody in my sphere just in passive was like, they actually said the I remember how it sounded so weird. It was so obviously different when I heard that message because it was in such contrast to this thing that I've been telling myself for so long. It stopped me in my tracks. I could imagine this individual whose story I told. I wonder if the first time I said that to them, even though I didn't give it any space or air to be weird, I know they heard me really well because if it was anything like my personal experience When this person said to me something in stark contrast of what I had been telling myself, it was like, stop me in my tracks.
[00:16:36.780] - Brandon
I remember it, remember recognize. Anyways, long story short, that was a doorway that began opening up the thought process for me is, well, maybe I am actually fairly decent at that. Then that turned into a, I'm very confident in my ability to create strategy. That's been a very significant shift. I think there's players that are far more prolific at it than I am, but I don't live out that story that I had in my head before because someone in my sphere told me something that stopped me in my tracks to rethink that. You know what I mean?
[00:17:05.270] - Chris
I think leadership is so much more of an art. It's a practice.
[00:17:10.470] - Brandon
It's a real tradecraft.
[00:17:11.560] - Chris
It's a real tradecraft. I think of one of my early mentors who's, ironically, my daughter's employer now. My daughter recently got into insurance and in the process of getting licensed as an insurance person. She's still young. She's 18. She's still green. She's still green. But she's really he's really lossoming under this guy's leadership. His name is Jim Coolman. He's a very, very successful State Farm agent in Oregon.
[00:17:36.010] - Brandon
And a good dude.
[00:17:36.820] - Chris
Yeah, and a really good dude. And I benefited from him in so many ways because he is one of these relentless obviously affirming leaders. And I think he would probably articulate that the growing edge for him is learning how to have being committed to having corrective conversations as needed, because definitely his talent and his gifting in this affirmation space. But now, as I look at his legacy and the businesses he's built, he has just leaned into that affirming leadership style, where he is constantly calling out the genius and the talent and the skill that he sees in people. And he overwhelms them with that affirmation, and they want to live up to it. They want to live up to it, and I see the genius in it. And I have also been around other leaders like that. It's just they have nurtured that part of themselves, and they're just very consistent in handing out those affirmations. Now, the thing is, they're never false.
[00:18:39.680] - Brandon
Yes.
[00:18:40.450] - Chris
Great. I think that's the important part of the story. There it is. You never bullshitted. That's right. That PM. That's right. So it has to be real, but I think it's a discipline of... I know that at times, Jim, we get frustrated because over time, I became a confidante of his. And then eventually, we were colleagues. We were both state farm agents, and I had a lot of conversations with him about this. I continue as a good friend today. I know that he gets frustrated with people's performance. But I also know that he's just so committed to this strategy of developing people, where he finds the thing that he likes and appreciates and values in them, and he hammers on it. I had a story, but I can't tell the story. But there's so many examples I could rattle off. Being a close friend to Jim, I've watched his business grow. I know about the various people he's hired. This is a recurring theme throughout his 25-year career, and he's one of the top agents in the country, not just in Oregon. And I really, externally, I would credit his success potentially just to that, because you can imagine when you have a leader that is that focused on leading that way with his people, he's also a really successful sales guy.
[00:19:49.130] - Chris
Again, he's one of the biggest life insurance and financial services agents in the company. And I think that rubs off on how he engages in interaction, sells with his clients. He's so relentlessly focused on what is working and what they are bringing to the table and what they have versus the have nots, the frustration points. It's like people want... They want to live up to it. I felt that.
[00:20:13.640] - Brandon
It's funny because I don't know if this is funny, but it's the counter. Because inevitably, people are listening to this. The goal is never to say something or portray something in a way that people swing a pendulum all the way out to that side or the opposite side. I was of a balancing story is, I've also been in scenarios, and I think this is what's so key about what you said is that it has to be real. We have to be saying things that are real. Even if it's a micro, meaning we're... Yeah, micro, we look at this moment and we say, in that moment, was this thing true? Yes. So say it. But you can't make statements that aren't true, right? Example, we had a situation with a team member long, long, long time ago, many years ago, where we were having significant performance issues. And this was somebody that was made very high commissions. And long and short of it, we ended up letting this individual go. But I remember, and this was a core mistake that I made, and I remember in the moment, dude, I actually... My face probably just went flush when I...
[00:21:13.410] - Brandon
Whatever. My The space just went stark white, I'm sure, when I noticed what I had done. So this is like what you wouldn't do with this is I'm trying to encourage this individual. I'm pulling into the tool bag. I'm trying to figure out what I can do. By the way, this was long before Amy. I'm trying to figure what to do with this individual to promote some change in the outcomes. I remember in a write-up I did on this individual performance evaluation, I remember I ended my evaluation with this overly optimistic review of his performance as a whole and just making these blanket statements of X, Y, Z. I did it because my hope is that by being nice and encouraging, it was going to shift his behavior. I'm telling this because I want to create some contrast here in terms of how we do it versus what I did. And so ultimately, guess what happens when we're in a HR situation in front of attorneys, and we're talking about poor performance as the reason that we had to make the decision that we made.
[00:22:13.430] - Chris
And here's this documentation of this glowing, abusive- Dude, he pulls this thing up in front of me, and he's asking me these pointed questions to draw my attention to phrases that I put in writing in this employee's review that basically say that why we're there doesn't match with what I was saying about his performance in writing.
[00:22:34.290] - Brandon
Oh, man. Humbling, scary, and really just messy all around. I say that because what I don't want you to hear us say is, just say what you want. Tell this person what you want to see because you see it in them in quotes, and hope that they turn the corner. That's not what we're saying.
[00:22:53.610] - Chris
It has to be true.
[00:22:56.110] - Brandon
It has to be true. It has to be true. Even my mental experiment of planting those seeds, that's not necessarily something we turn into a process. I want to shift here and just move into, okay, all right. If we have an opportunity to potentially reframe the expectations our people have on themselves, how do we do that in a systematic way or in a way that's proactive, that's professional, that's responsible, so that we can partner with our people and give them the highest opportunity to be coached up before we have to coach them out, but not make the mistakes that put us in a situation where we're lying to that person and/or compromising ourselves from a liability perspective. Well, I think one of the first places we start, we've talked about this before, and again, this is stuff I've done better in practice later than I necessarily always did as an operator is one-on-one. This is our opportunity to be talking to our people in a real intentional, specific way. Here are your hopes and dreams. Here's the opportunities you're trying to seek in our organization. How can I tie your performance, expectations, deliverables, tools to help you get back to that?
[00:24:01.990] - Brandon
That's that opportunity in that one-on-one. It's not disciplinary necessarily. It's not even, here's what you have to do to fix everything. It's just like, hey-What do you want? Yeah. What do you want to see? What do you want to experience? And then once that's established as a baseline, pointing back to that and just saying, hey, you said this. You said this was an outcome. Here are these three or four things that you do really well that are helping you get there. And here's two things you're really struggling with. And these are friction points that are absolutely slowing you from experiencing what you want to experience. What do you want to do with that? And really putting that ownership back in their hands. But the point is, I guess, of all this is that in situations like that, we're doing two things that I believe are really important. One is we are showing them and telling them where they're crushing it because it's important for them to have confidence and motivation by these wins that are being recognized by us as leaders. And then I think the second thing that we're doing is we're saying, Hey, you're saying this.
[00:24:59.180] - Brandon
This is your speech. To your talk about what you want, but the behaviors aren't there. And then I think that opens up the conversation of, What do you think standing in your way of that? And then I think we have this really cool opportunity to ask a follow-up question of, Are Are there any mental barriers? What conversations are you having with yourself around this item? Here's another example. We have somebody, a client in our roster right now who has a phenomenal key leader on their team. Very experienced, very like the bowl, likes the challenge. Nine out of 10 pieces of conversation or topic, they're super coachable in. But they have an Achilles heel of they cannot show up on time. They struggle to get into the shop prior to their team. That's a problem. That's a major issue. That is mirroring behavior that erodes trust and accountability down through the ranks, period. I don't care how you wrap it. That guy has so much capacity, capability, and opportunity in front of him. I'm not saying this is the case with him. If it was in my organization, I'm only going to go along for so long before I'm like, dude, the fact that you can't show up before your team mirrors some very critically negative behavior that I can't allow culturally.
[00:26:11.510] - Brandon
You're going to force me into a corner where I have to make a different decision about your position or your place in this company. But if they can't change it, right? Anyways, my point is, our people can do many, many great things and still have the one thing. It's too critical for us to ignore. There has to be engagement and advancement here. But if I can Call that out in a one on one and point towards, look, this is a thing that is absolutely standing in your way of experiencing the success that you want here. What would you like to do about that? I don't own it. It's not my job to make you change. It's my job to hold you accountable if you don't change. So I'm asking the question, what do you want to do about that? And then I think we can, again, it's like I know we started out the story with this mind game. These are those proactive ways, though, that we engage our people, get them to own that experience. And ultimately, at the end of the day, they're either going to do something to change or modify that behavior or they don't, which you can't be responsible for.
[00:27:06.180] - Brandon
But the whole point is for us to show up, create a space that's safe for us to hear from them what they want and then tied directly into where they're having strengths or weaknesses and how that's impacting what they want, right? Instead of trying to approach it all from a performance. Anyways, I think that's a great starting place for most of us to have a really profound impact on our team in terms of having the opportunity to coach up before we have to make that decision to coach them out.
[00:27:32.130] - Chris
Liftify.
[00:27:33.230] - Brandon
Com/bloodlight.
[00:27:34.610] - Chris
You've heard Brandon and I talk a bunch of times about the importance of Google reviews. Maybe you even heard our episode with Zack Garrett, the CEO and founder. Recency, Consistency, two of the most important things when it comes to maximizing the benefit from your Google reviews. Why not use an outside partner? Liftify is targeting 20 to 25 % conversion, right? So if you do a thousand jobs a year, you ought to be adding right now 200 to 250 reviews a year, every single year. If you're not doing that, you owe it to yourself to get a free demo from liftify. Com. See their system, see how it works, see how affordable it is. I promise you, you'll thank us. Liftify. Com/ floodlight.
[00:28:16.420] - Brandon
We spend a lot of money and a lot of attention trying to get that first call. And one of the things that we do once it happens is, sometimes we leave it to chance, right? Who picks up the phone? How do they respond? How do they walk that client into a relationship with us? Well, one of the benefits of partnering with a team like answerforce. Com is we can systemize that, we can make it more consistent. We can also have backup for when our teams need that help. Somebody goes on vacation, somebody's out sick. We get a storm search, we get cat event. All sorts of things can have an impact on how we receive that client. But the most important thing is they need to know that they've chosen the right team. And so answerforce. Com can support you, be a bolt on partner to help you consistently produce an awesome onboarding experience with that first call with your client. So answerforce. Com/bloodlight. That's great.
[00:29:08.940] - Chris
Cnr magazine, we're friends with all the folks at CNR. Michelle and her team, they do a great job of keeping their ear to the ground and reporting all the important information from our industry. You want to stay up on all the M&A activity and what the latest best practices are for selling your company successfully. She's got that. Great articles about all the four quadrants of our business. Cnr CNR is constantly pushing out great material and leveraging great writers and subject matter experts in our industry. It is the water-cooler of our industry. So if you're not subscribed, go to cnrmagazine. Com. Follow them on LinkedIn. Follow Michelle on LinkedIn. Trust us, if you're trying to stay on top of everything happening in the industry, your best destination is cnrmagazine. Com.
[00:29:52.360] - Brandon
You guys, many of you have already heard about Actionable Insights and the training and the technical expertise that they bring to the industry. But how many of you are already leveraging the Actionable Insights profile for Xactimate? That's the game changer. It's essentially an AI tool that's walking alongside of you as you write your estimate, bringing things to your attention that should be added, that could be considered. All of them items that increase our profitability, increase the effectiveness and the consistency of that scope. And it can do anything from helping a new team member assimilate some estimating best practices. And it also helps the grizzled vets add back that few % that we've just forgot over time. So actionableinsights, getinsights. Org/ floodlight, and take a look at what the actionableinsights Xactimate profile could be doing for you and your team.
[00:30:47.920] - Chris
You know what? I think going back to this mindset and the mental jiu-jitsu that you did with the PM that we were talking about. I think the other side of it, too, is retraining ourselves as leaders to how we are thinking about our people. It's developing that discipline. Here's a pattern that I've noticed in my career is I have such a high relational anchor that I get really excited about people. And I think in a lot of ways, I have a very high expectation of them in my mind And I just get super stoked about what they're going to do and who they're going to be and the positive impact they're going to have on our team. And then when there's any deviation from that, I get really disappointed. And because of my deep relational anchor, I don't lie very well. Not to suggest lying as a core leadership skill, but you know what I mean? It's very obvious to everybody that I'm disappointed. Yeah. And really, that's just a mental game. It's my thoughts take over. These disappointed thoughts about, Oh, they just let me down or they let the team down on this critical thing, or they fail to follow up, or they miss that sale because they weren't diligent in their follow up, or whatever it was, I can allow that disappointment to take over.
[00:31:59.970] - Chris
And then we've talked about this before. This is a fairly common pattern amongst leaders is you start to distance yourself from that person because you're not sure exactly how to deal with that disappointment. Do I give them more time to prove themselves? Yeah. Maybe I'm just being too critical. And we just sit on it. But in my mind space, the thought pattern is still it keeps going. And then that disappointment, then if they have another, they let me down or let the team down in another way, then I stack another disappointment on top of that. And then finally it gets to point where I associate it with a performance failure, a performance issue, so to speak. And then I bring it up to them, but they can already sense that my energy is against them, that I've judged them as you might not be a good fit for the team. And it's just this negative cycle that takes hold.
[00:32:46.830] - Brandon
It builds momentum.
[00:32:47.700] - Chris
It's really hard to rescue myself from that thought pattern as a leader and to get out of it because it just allow that momentum to build. And I think part of what you're talking about is reorienting myself and saying, okay, is part of me disappointed with some of their early results or some of the decisions they've been making? Yes. But can I find some examples of them adding value to the team and executing well in some of these areas that I can focus on that and draw more and more and more out of that, out of them?
[00:33:16.290] - Brandon
A hundred %.
[00:33:17.100] - Chris
And I just think to me as you're talking, it reminds me that is a critical leadership skill or habit is to first anchor ourselves in, okay, can I see behaviors? Can I see aptitude and potential? And can I drill on that and draw more and more of that out? And this goes back to my example with Jim Coolman, the State Farm agent guy. I have seen over and over and over again when leaders do that, when they begin there and they hang in that pocket, it doesn't mean that you don't deal with non-compliance, right? But I think it does mean you more heavily invest in drawing out the positive performance, the aptitude, the skill base. Focus on that. It's like when I do that in my marriage, it pays dividends. When I do that with my kids, I've seen that a dividends. I've seen it create a positive outcome, and I've seen it drive positive relational connection, all of that stuff. And yet for some reason, it's this disconnect I think a lot of us have as leaders that we need to hold the line, and that's all true. But the question is, how do you hold the line?
[00:34:17.550] - Chris
It's like there's two different pathways. I can hold the line by being a hard ass and using my anger energy and just be really direct and all the stuff that we associate with being a really disciplined leader. But there's this other methodology that accomplishes the same exact thing with less toxic residue. Yeah. And I feel like that's what you're conveying in that story. The other thing that comes to mind for me, one of our core values at floodlight is keeping short accounts and defining that as routinely clearing the table, right? Not allowing... Like the biblical principle, the second time I'm talking about the Bible today. Interesting. This idea of keeping short accounts is not allowing offenses to stack up, right? Not going to sleep on your anger, right? I think it's the biblical proverb. Yeah. And And I was talking with a sales manager this morning that we work with, and she just mentioned out loud, she's like, I'm just... I struggle with conflict, struggle with having these corrective conversations. And one of my... Part of my advice to her, because she's actually newer, and so she's building a team, and she's just getting started with her team.
[00:35:15.820] - Chris
And I said, you know what? I totally get it. That's definitely more my default behavior and my bias is to be conflict-avoidant. And I said, one of the things that I found that works better for me is making it a point, creating a discipline to clear the table every day with my people. And of course, I don't always hold this discipline, but it's something that I've been trying to redirect myself to over and over again throughout my career and make it more of a routine discipline is, is to deal with the small things rather than having to deal with the stack of things. And I spent the first, at at least half or two-thirds of my career allowing small things to build into a pile of small things. And again, in the process, my disappointment stacks up. And all of a sudden, the energy, the interactions that they're having with me are very negative. They're second-guessing themselves. They can tell that I don't, quote, like them. They can feel it. And it's because I have this pattern of thoughts inside me of they did this, they didn't do this, they did this, they didn't do this.
[00:36:13.980] - Chris
And yet no one Everything feels like it's important enough to have a corrective conversation, but then ultimately a pile of things, I have to do something or I'm going to fire them. Yeah, for sure. And so I think somewhere in this conversation, too, when we talk about coaching up versus coaching out or this whole idea of fire fast. I think a lot of times, we end up in a position where we have to let somebody go because we've sat on a pile of micro-disappointments in people. Yeah, for sure. To the point where it's completely changed Our orientation as a leader toward that person. It's made it impossible for them to come back from.
[00:36:50.760] - Brandon
It's interesting because I think all of this rolls into a couple of core thoughts. One is, I think this is where the opportunity costs show up in regard to leadership bandwidth and how we've structured our org structure and our teams and what we're asking them to do. Here's what I mean by that. It's very common for us to have department heads, team leads, those kinds of things. We want them to participate in the the auction cycle because it's difficult for us to just have spend that's not generating any revenue. Totally understand that. It's good stewardship, standard business management. And though, I think what we do is we push that too far and we end up with leaders that hold leadership job titles, but they're really just an extension of our production staff. They really are mired still in producing work. And the challenge with that then is that we don't have a leader that's proactively thinking about their people and respecting and/or leveraging the honor that they have to change the perspective or worldview that that individual on their team has about themselves and their place within our organization. I think what we can't measure very effectively or at minimum, we just don't spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to measure, is those opportunity costs that come from a leader instead of being a leader, being a production member.
[00:38:09.890] - Brandon
And so instead of doing those things, how much are we losing from our top line? How much gross profit margin leak do we have? What is the impact, measurable financial impact of churn turnover with our staff or extending onboarding time frame so long that what could have been trained out in three months, now we're We're six months in, we're nine months in, and their performance is 70% of what it could be. What are those costs to our organization? And would we have made up for it in spades by just ensuring that that key leader or department head is spending 75 5% of their time focused on proactive leadership and management versus production? And I bring that up because I think that we often want these kinds of things in our business, meaning we want to have the leaders in our organizations to include ourselves ourselves where we understand the opportunity that we have for that level of influence in our people's lives, because for many of them, they don't have it outside of our organization. If a lot of our younger team members, specifically, many of them aren't coming from home where there's a lot of consistency and healthy patterns and where they've been built up or encouraged or spoken into.
[00:39:21.740] - Brandon
I'm not saying none of them do. I'm just saying, I bet you it's very common that you have team members that have not gotten much of that in their personal sphere. And so they come an organization like ours, and they're ultimately living up to what their sphere has told them they were capable of. And we have this immense honor to reshape that and allow them to experience something totally different. But we can't be afraid of conflict. We can't be afraid of addressing or speaking to those things. We certainly can't be afraid to have conversations where we're asking them to take a different look or a perspective on their own individual performance and contribution. Anyways, I'm not even sure where to go in terms of a nuts and bolts piece with that. But I just think it's a mind frame that it's really important, and it's a difficult one to stay in. But if we want that, if we want to experience that with our organizations, there's got to be a line that we draw where we commit to that and we give room to our leaders to have that space. I mean, we were talking to a team.
[00:40:17.810] - Brandon
They have 40 direct reports.
[00:40:20.190] - Chris
I was so crazy. I remember when I was sitting in on that meeting, and I just thought, how in the world can you possibly even function as even a manager, let alone a leader?
[00:40:31.460] - Brandon
You might be able to check some boxes. You certainly could review some dashboards and some data points. But I think it would be very difficult, nearly impossible.
[00:40:42.310] - Chris
Well, difficult to do anything consistently. Exactly.in that environment. Yeah.
[00:40:45.780] - Brandon
And that's what it requires. We can't do this stuff once a year. We can't do it every once while when we think about it. These are behaviors or commitments that have to be consistent in order for them to produce a result. I don't know. I think this is an interesting topic, guys. I think it's something that we all can continue to investigate and think about and chew on as an industry. Because I think at the end of the day, if we're going to start doing a better job of attracting fresh blood into this industry, which the industry warrants it, is that we have to continue to understand our role as human steward, as people influencers in our organizations. I think, too, we've talked to so many teams that wrestle with burnout and where the owners are just tired. So much of it is they just spend the vast majority of their time sucked into these things that are so unrewarding. They just grind gears on you all the time. They're borderline depressing. Gosh, if you could spend more of your time coaching and speaking into people and watching fruit of that engagement, management and that energy commitment, well, then our businesses get a lot more rewarding.
[00:41:49.840] - Brandon
Yeah. Anyways.
[00:41:51.360] - Chris
Let's say so I have this is a little bit tangential or maybe adjacent to what we've been talking about, but we had a conversation at the TKI conference. Oh, yeah. Got into a chat with a guy in a real small market, 25 years, five-ish million dollar business, 2022, 25 employees, something like that. But the classic, there's probably a lot of people listening to this. That's your business. That's your business. Yeah, that's your business. And we were just talking shop, and And I said, How's recruiting? How do you guys do for labor? I mean, you have a smaller team, but inevitably, you guys have turnover and stuff. He said, really, our turnover has really gone away in the last few years. I said, Okay. He's like, Yeah, we have a really stable team. It's been really great. So we've tapped in our little market. I feel like we've tapped out on our growth. We've probably got to open up another market if we're going to really grow. I was like, Okay. And I said, how have you stabilized your team like that? Especially because oftentimes in those smaller markets, it's really hard to maintain a team because inevitably, you're going to lose people periodically.
[00:42:44.990] - Chris
And it's really hard sometimes to replace those folks, especially the last several years. He said, You know what? I did something wild here recently. We were struggling with drama within the team. We had a number of people turnover a few years ago, and it just got me thinking, this He said, This is such a crappy business in the sense of most of the work we do is really hard. Even the stuff like build back and construction, which is everybody loves to build things. People that are in the trades, that's one of the things they enjoy is building something and creating something new. And he said, But in our business, even when we're doing construction, the timelines are so compressed. It's like needs to be done yesterday. He's like, It is a hard business. There's a lot of pressure. And then there's all the ugly stuff that we deal with, too. He said, The work is hard. You have to like the people you work with. What else do you have in this business but your team?
[00:43:33.820] - Brandon
Yeah, interesting.
[00:43:34.760] - Chris
He said, So I made a critical choice. He said, I made a decision that from now on, whenever I hire somebody, I'm going to give them a 30-day probationary period. At the end of that probationary period, did I ever tell you this? No. He said, At the end of that 30 days, I survey every single one of my employees, and they either give a thumbs up or thumbs down to that employee. If I don't have a consensus across the team, we don't hire that person.
[00:43:58.850] - Brandon
Interesting.
[00:43:59.680] - Chris
I said, Wow, how did that work? He said, Well, it's been hard at times because when we are hiring somebody, most of the time, we need them.
[00:44:06.340] - Brandon
You need them now. Yeah.
[00:44:07.530] - Chris
I think everybody who's listening to this is like, Oh, my gosh. But he stuck to his guns. And three years later, he said, Whenever we have somebody retire, they take a better opportunity, they leave the industry or something like that. He's like, We are known in the community as the place to go because everybody at my business right now likes each other. Wow. Everybody. We have no drama. People When people like coming to work, they feel supported. When people talk about it's like family, it is because everybody has had a role in who's on our team for the last three years. Super interesting. They understand the commitment we've made as a business and how important that is for us to like and care about each other and respect each other. That's something else. And nobody wants to violate that. And they have a say so in who makes it on the team. He's like, It's been profound, man. And I just thought, okay, and I I made a comment to him. I'm like, Well, obviously, that wouldn't work with if you had a team of 100 people. But then I've been mulling over that ever since.
[00:45:06.670] - Chris
I'm like, Well, can you do this as a team grows? Can you stick to that as a team grows in our industry? I think it certainly has trade offs. It can certainly create hardships. There's cost to having a policy like that. But what are the benefits? Now, of course, you get to a big company, you get multiple locations. Not everybody can vote on every employee because they don't have interaction with all of them.
[00:45:26.960] - Brandon
But I think you can within your team. But what about their department? Yeah, for sure. Department locations, right? Because you could have a large entity, but each one of their operational locations may not be that big.
[00:45:37.300] - Chris
Now, part of the imperative, too, and he talked about this, is it requires that people go out of their way to welcome that person, to instigate interactions with that person, right? Yeah. And I just thought, man, whether or not that is a scalable strategy, I just thought, gosh, that takes a lot of leadership, discipline, and courage. It really does. Courage. To enact a policy like that, especially in today's environment where talent is so scarce. Labor is so scarce. But boy, if you've got the courage and discipline to hang in that pocket, what a beautiful thing.
[00:46:08.540] - Brandon
What's interesting about that is that I feel like these are legacy plays. These are the plays that are very difficult to do in the moment for certain. But if you look at the long term ramifications, the impact on the organization, and the fact that many of these things that are hard to stick to your guns on, once you do it for a long enough period of time, the environment begins to protect itself from even any deviation from it. So what you're referring to essentially is a peer accountability. And we've seen this. We've seen it in our own organizations. We've seen it in some of our clients' organizations is when you reach a certain level with some of your core foundational elements of your business, where the peers begin to regulate the success of that within the organization, owners begin to experience something very different in terms of their workload, their vision their business, where they're spending their time. But I think a lot of it has to start with this idea of what do you want to do with your employees? What relationship are you anticipating they have with you and that they have with your business?
[00:47:14.340] - Brandon
Because I think that guy can't make that decision. He can't lead that way, and he can't commit to that if he doesn't reshape what he wants to experience from his business. If we go back to the beginning of our conversation, and we talk about how much so much of this is a matter of resetting our frame by the way that we talk about it. I think as owners and leaders, we often, and I'm no different, I've been in this. Full transparency, I've had multiple weeks this quarter that I've felt like this. And that is that I am burnt out. Things aren't as sexy as I want it to be in all aspects of our business. It's just totally normal. But there's got to be this moment where you reshape your expectation and you start talking about it differently. So instead of settling in as a business owner of employees, the hardest thing about being a business owner is my people. I've said that, we tongue in cheek it, we make jokes about it. I think it's a general consensus that the most business owners and leaders would say. It's like, I love it. People make it the hard thing, right?
[00:48:16.060] - Chris
It's the number one reason why people sell their businesses. It is.
[00:48:18.380] - Brandon
Get out of a business. They just get burnt, right?
[00:48:20.450] - Chris
Get tired of the people part.
[00:48:22.060] - Brandon
Yeah. I think this is just our opportunity. Again, this is as much a reminder for us, me, as it is for anybody listening, right?
[00:48:29.020] - Chris
I think, though, Everything that we're talking about, it's critical path for business owners today that they still have another 20, 25 year run in front of them is the generation that's coming up is unwilling to trade today for tomorrow. We watched our parents and grandparents. We've talked about this before. Generations before, they're happy to nose to the grindstone for their 25 years, collect their pension, retire on their 401k match that's been happening all along with their company they're with for 25 years. That is not the generation right now that's coming up. They are unwilling to trade their enjoyment of now or a possible enjoyment in retirement. So the really smart leaders that we see, like I was having another tabletop conversation at the event up in Canada with another owner. He's in his 30s. He and his brother took over dad's business. Oh, yeah. They just opened a second operations center. What did they do? Well, first of all, all three of these guys are like, triathlets. They work out every day. And they're modeling this holistic lifestyle for their people. This particular guy I was talking to, he's like, I don't want to potentially sacrifice the close relationships I have with my kids and my wife to only try to recover them later on in life.
[00:49:43.590] - Chris
In retirement, he said, I've just He's like, I missed out on some of that connection and fathering from my dad because he was so eager to build the business and create a better life for us. But in the process, we missed out on the relationship with him in those early years. He's like, So I'm not going to do that. And so he and his brothers have literally set up a schedule where he works until four every day. From 4:00 to seven, he does sports, dinner together with the family. And then he picks up and he puts in another hour, hour and a half, most nights to check his email, check his dashboard, do his thing. From seven to 8:30 or so after the kids are off in bed or doing their own thing, intentionally to enjoy the now while he's building tomorrow. When they built this new operations center, he and his brothers, they're big into fitness. As you might imagine, a culture of that has started to form around them. Other employees see that, right? And some are motivated. And so they built this 20 by 30 workout area, built a whole gym space in a section of this shop for their employees to be able to utilize.
[00:50:45.090] - Chris
And it allows them to work out at their business, which again perpetuates this modeling of, hey, we're not asking you to sacrifice your life for us. We all just have one life. And this is part of what we value in our and we want to offer it and make this available to all of you. And I just thought, man, it's a great example, and not everybody has to put a gym or a yoga studio in their shop. But I think it points to the fact that the generation that's coming up that are going to be our leaders are not going to trade their life now for some benefit or wealth or riches down the road. And so how do we accommodate that in our business? How do we create an environment and an opportunity where we can honor them as people that have families just like us that want to have fun, want to enjoy their life, want to stay healthy. I think this is all stuff that we have to be thinking about as leaders as we make this transition.
[00:51:38.350] - Brandon
Well, and I think quite honestly, for us, if you're the owner or leader of this organization that's listening, there's this opportunity for us to catch a glimpse of what that means. Why is that generation choosing to not sacrifice? And what's in that for me as a key leader? Because I think what all of this is summarized by, it's this boils down to the stories that we tell ourselves, the things that we say to ourselves and continue to affirm. And I think what we have is an opportunity to stop for a moment and say, okay, this is my current experience. Do I like that? Do I like this outcome? Is it everything that I thought it would be? And if the answer is no, begin visionering, we've talked about that before, what a better experience looks like, and begin talking about then what it's going to take to get there. And using that as the new to frame the new story. I think the example that you're talking about that you shared both with that previous employer that made that decision for that peer accountability element, and then the fact that our current generations don't want to give that up.
[00:52:41.790] - Brandon
I think the other thing they're telling us is that you don't have to. We are seeing young entrepreneurs be highly, highly successful, and they're not working 100 hours a week. They're not blowing up their families and their personal relationships to do so. What they're doing is leaning hard into Developing systems, processes, building people, hiring correctly, setting clear expectations, having a clear vision for what they want to experience in their business, and hiring the type of people that want to align with that story. When you do that, you end up with a balanced business that has a lot of enterprise value that is far easier to run and a whole lot better to experience. And guess what? If you decide to show up tomorrow and exit, you're the most valuable company on the board, right?
[00:53:29.050] - Chris
I think part of what we're What we're talking about, man, is I think we all know in our guts, happy people produce better results. For a period of time, you can drive people into the ground and milk every ounce of energy and production out of them, and you can generate some results. You can. But happy people can go forever. You can take happy employees and ride off into the sunset with happy people. So the question is, how can we create a happier work environment where people are not dreading going to work on Mondays? I think happiness and hard work can go hand in hand. I think that's what we're starting to see, right? A thousand %.
[00:54:03.740] - Brandon
A thousand %.
[00:54:05.800] - Chris
Listen, if these podcasts are valuable to you, and we know that there's a lot of you out there that you're faithful listeners, you share these podcasts with your employees and stuff like that. And You have thought about getting some coaching or consulting relationship for your business to help you level up, to expand the capacity your leadership team to execute more quickly, to support you, to offer guidance as necessary, to help model new behaviors, new processes for your team. One of the best places as you can start, if you're curious about Floodlight, is to go to floodlightgrp. Com/audit, A-U-D-I-T, and take our business opportunity audit. It's a comprehensive health assessment that's going to give you a health score at the end. What we'll do is we'll offer you a free consultation session to review the results of that, identify some of the low hanging fruit that you could potentially take action on immediately to affect your business and to move it in a positive direction, begin leveling up your business in the direction that you want it to go. And if partnering with us helps accelerate that, great. It'll be really obvious after that call whether or not that's a partnership you want to pursue.
[00:55:05.800] - Chris
But that's free. Go to floodlightgrp/audit. And then also share the podcast with your friends, other business owner colleagues. Let's continue spreading the word. And that's it. We'll see you on the next show.
[00:55:16.660] - Brandon
See you guys. Thanks for hanging. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots.
[00:55:24.320] - Chris
And if you're enjoying the show, if 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.
