[00:00:00.000] - Chris Nordyke
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.
[00:00:07.500] - Chris Nordyke
Welcome back to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast. I'm Chris.
[00:00:11.200] - Brandon Reece
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.
[00:00:20.930] - Chris Nordyke
I'm noticing that and I really appreciate it.
[00:00:23.100] - Brandon Reece
I thought you did that on purpose. No, I don't. I didn't, and I am not happy with it. Dude, you social media. Are you scrolling right now? What are you doing?
[00:00:32.200] - Chris Nordyke
I'm looking through my notes. Oh, okay. Well, that's...
[00:00:35.220] - Brandon Reece
Now I feel bad for seeing it the way.
[00:00:37.940] - Chris Nordyke
All right, dude.
[00:00:41.980] - Brandon Reece
Here's where we're going. Let's get supercharged here. Ra, ra.
[00:00:45.720] - Chris Nordyke
I have a...
[00:00:46.900] - Brandon Reece
What?
[00:00:47.480] - Chris Nordyke
I do have another...
[00:00:48.740] - Brandon Reece
You can't mid-shift. We're recording.
[00:00:51.580] - Chris Nordyke
Dude, I have another topic that we could rift through that I think is fun and funny.
[00:00:58.120] - Brandon Reece
Is it attached to what we're talking about Am I hitting stop right now on the recording?
[00:01:02.920] - Chris Nordyke
Oh, dude, we already... Oh, we're live.
[00:01:04.960] - Brandon Reece
We're live, homie.
[00:01:06.120] - Chris Nordyke
Well, maybe I'll just inject it if there's a...
[00:01:08.050] - Brandon Reece
Okay. Yeah. Could you not ignore me, though, for 30 minutes and then?
[00:01:13.000] - Chris Nordyke
I'm going to engage with what you're saying. And I may. I may bring in... Okay, let's get the mic here. Yes, I may... Okay. I may inject a little sideline. That's right. Revit. Okay.
[00:01:24.740] - Brandon Reece
All right. Trail. All right. We're digging in on this topic then. I'm going to get my punches in before it's too late You remember Eric? Oh, shoot. What's Eric's last name? Founder of Rock Solid? Yes. Do you remember meeting him the first time? Now we've had several interactions with him. But he was on the show, actually. He had a great show. I think we called it Golden Nuggets or something because the guy was the king of one-liners, very effective and productive one-liner. Anyways, he and I, I can't remember now. I think maybe it was at core. We just had a quick stand up, just chit-chat a little bit about business. He was talking about this equation that he buys into, which I really liked. It was this idea of... What was it again? Oh, yeah, the three Fs. It's focus, faith, and then E, F-F-E. Focus, faith, and effort. All right, so here's the idea. If any one of those is a lower score than your ultimate outcome, your chance of success is substantially lower, right? Because it's this times this times this equals. This idea of faith, I could come into an opportunity, a strategic plan, whatever the case may be, an opportunity, and I can be really dang confident.
[00:02:35.090] - Brandon Reece
I have faith. I think we can pull this off. I can be really focused. I can be like, Hey, I'm super confident we have a plan. I'm focused. I know exactly what I need to do. But then if I show up lacking an effort, F times F times E equals bummer. Because the effort didn't match the level of the other two, and they're not siloed from each other. They depend on each other. I was thinking about this. This is duck. Oh, sorry. Yes, for me, it's duck football season. It is football season. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Oregonians, their claim to Fame is college football because we don't have any professional teams up here. I'm personally a duck fan. Our office is in Corvallis, which makes... Chris grew up here, so he's a beaver fan. We're technically civil war.
[00:03:23.680] - Chris Nordyke
I would argue Oregon's claim to Fame is not duck football.
[00:03:27.260] - Brandon Reece
No, it's just the only thing I care about, right? Super fun. All right. We're in the playoffs. I'm not ra-ran or anything. Phase two of the playoffs, round two. But anyways. On the first, we played Texas Tech. I was just thinking about all the different sports channels as they do their pre walking into this second playoff game. What does it mean? Who's going to be able to do what? Blah, blah, blah. And there's a lot of this conversation around this idea of effort, confidence. Do they have a plan? Have they watched enough film? Do they know what Texas Tech is going to bring to the game? Do they have their system dialed in to compete against that? Some of the newest conversation is, are they distracted by X, Y, and Z? And will that make it difficult for them to show up? Anyways, I was thinking about that in relationship to this. There's this thing in my mind, like when I'm thinking about the playoffs right now, is I'm super confident that the Ducks have the talent inside their team and their coaching staff to do it. My faith is high, right? Their faith is probably hell high.
[00:04:33.540] - Brandon Reece
They're clearly focused. They know exactly what is going to be required. If the experience this year is any direction of what their coaching staff will do next week, or here in a few days, they're going to be focused. But that could cause them, hang with me, all my non-sports fans, that could cause them then to come into that game-And not put the effort in. And not put the effort in. Then that would be their demise. Then they all go home disappointed, even though they could do it and they knew it and they had a plan of attack. But then they show up laxing as if Texas Tech won't demand everything from them in that game. If they do that, they will lose. This is the stuff that I think shows up in our personal lives, our professional lives is we don't accurately account for all the variables in the equation. By ignoring one of them, we basically basically neuter our ability to be successful.
[00:05:32.340] - Chris Nordyke
Okay, so F&E, focus, faith, and effort. Yeah. Focus, faith, and effort. Yeah. Okay, so can we unpack the faith thing a little bit? It's a bit of a buzzy word to me.
[00:05:42.160] - Brandon Reece
Depending on when Hunter actually puts these shows out.
[00:05:46.260] - Chris Nordyke
I know Eric's a Christian, so I know probably for him, the context for that word probably has a- It's not religious faith, though. Oh, it's not?
[00:05:53.580] - Brandon Reece
Okay. Well, let me be careful. I'm not speaking for Eric right now. Sure. The idea of this equation is not a religious or faith-based. It's, do you have faith in the plan, the direction, the commitment, the solution? You could say confidence, maybe. Is my understanding? Confidence, for sure. For those, again, I'm not entirely sure how Hunter will release these episodes, but we did record an episode within the last week or so where we talked about this idea of one of the most profound ways that we can create a really high level of confidence to then remove some of the emotional dynamics in our business- Is to plan. Is to plan, be prepared well. I think this is an example. If we're looking at this in a business environment, the better planning and preparation you do, it should then jack up your faith in the outcome. In the process.
[00:06:45.980] - Chris Nordyke
Based on the planning that you've already put in place. Then the focus thing, I would think, is our ability to hold to the plan in spite of many constant distractions. A 100%, right?
[00:07:00.720] - Brandon Reece
The emotional ups and downs. Can you stay the course? I think for all intents and purposes, there's this element of discipline in this, right? How do you not allow yourself to get distracted? How do you maintain a specific level of discipline that marries up or matches the result that you're ultimately seeking? Then this effort, and you and I have talked about this before in different settings, but it's this idea, I think, where depending on what the outcome is that we're seeking, we have to ensure that the level of effort marries up or matches what is required to yield said result. Here's an example. Coming into the work this morning, I come in early, just early day. We have an East Coast team, so it's literally I have to start early. As part of that, I'm wrestling right now a little bit with just what level of commitment is required to win in this thing, and then actually asking myself honest question of, do you have that in you? Are you going to do that? Are you going to do the thing that is required? I think we can fail to do that well often. I think we get really...
[00:08:07.840] - Brandon Reece
I have a tendency to get overly romantic about people and ideas and concepts. I get all fired up. I might have a ton of faith. I might have a ton of focus in terms of, Yeah, I want to do that. I'm in. But then I didn't properly value or assess the level of work and commitment that that will demand of me. When I look at my equation, I had faith, I had focus, I underestimated what it would require for me.
[00:08:37.180] - Chris Nordyke
You didn't count the cost.
[00:08:38.260] - Brandon Reece
I didn't count the cost.
[00:08:39.680] - Chris Nordyke
You didn't count the cost. The other side of that, too, I think is I think a lot of times us as owners, leaders, in everybody, we feel really powerful shoulds.
[00:08:51.800] - Brandon Reece
Oh, yeah.
[00:08:52.660] - Chris Nordyke
I should be willing to do all of that. I should be able to tackle it. And we make the decision based on this compulsion.
[00:09:02.860] - Brandon Reece
Yeah.
[00:09:03.780] - Chris Nordyke
Because, well, other people do, or I should do that because it's going to get me all these good things. But internally, we don't actually want to.
[00:09:14.160] - Brandon Reece
A hundred %.
[00:09:15.120] - Chris Nordyke
That's the trap for me sometimes.
[00:09:17.060] - Brandon Reece
I mean, dude, think about every person, to include ourselves, where we've had an opportunity. I mean, dude, this is making me uncomfortable saying it out loud, to be honest. I'm going to point at other people.
[00:09:30.900] - Chris Nordyke
Let me talk about others.
[00:09:33.380] - Chris Nordyke
Are you a business that's under 5 million in sales, and you're just now getting ready to try and scale your company up and hit some of those targets you've always wanted to hit, but now you've got to build a sales team, or maybe you just hired your first sales rep, but you don't really know how to manage them. How do you manage, lead, train, develop a sales rep? Floodlight has a solution for you now. So we can actually assign your sales rep a turnkey VP of sales that will help them create a sales blueprint, their own personal sales plan for your market. They'll have weekly one-on-ones with that sales rep to coach, mentor them, hold them accountable to the plan. And they'll also have a monthly owners meeting where they'll meet with you or your general manager and review the progress of that sales rep. Their plan their plan to actual results, what performance improvement they're working on with them. Also let them know, Hey, you might, they're doing really well. Maybe we should think of hiring a second sales rep. They're going to have that one-to-one advice for you as an owner or senior leader on the team as well.
[00:10:27.950] - Chris Nordyke
How great would that be to have a bolt-on sales manager for your one sales rep, and it's only 2,500 bucks a month. If you're interested in talking more about that, reach out. Let's grab some time and let's talk shop.
[00:10:40.000] - Chris Nordyke
Our floodlight clients this last year in 2024 generated over 250 million in revenue. Supported by, advised by an industry expert who's owned and operated a business just like you. So take action. Don't kick the can down the road. Start with our business health and value assessment, and let's unlock the next chapter of your success story.
[00:11:01.540] - Brandon Reece
How many times do we have a downline team member or a team member that in principle feels owed, expecting, or wants to fill a certain role in the organization? Sometimes they lean into time and grade, loyalty, I've been around, I know the company, whatever. I know stuff. I know stuff, right. Been in the industry a long time. I think what you would say in a situation like that is you've got a scenario sometimes, for example, where someone's got faith. It could be a bit assumptive, but for whatever reason they have it, they feel that they're totally capable of doing that job. They're focused, they want it real bad. They're clear on what the tasking is, at least for all intents and purposes. But what they underestimate is the level of effort required to be in alignment with that plan to remain focused, disciplined, blah, blah, blah. When you put them in that situation, their success rate, obviously, is not good because faith and focus was high, but they couldn't marry up to the level of effort that was required or demanded by the position. I have interviewed a lot of project managers, for example, that want to become a GM or an OM, whatever you call them.
[00:12:17.740] - Brandon Reece
They've even used language in the interview of, Oh, at the last company, I did everything. I mean, from start to finish, I was a part of it. I helped sell it. I knew exactly how to produce the work. I mean, they're lucky. They're lucky because if it wasn't for me, they wouldn't have done. Only to come to find out the person's never done anything beyond had a handful of projects that they were responsible for. But the only thing they were responsible for was managing the calendar. They didn't really understand the budget. They weren't responsible for the budget. They didn't negotiate rates with subs. There was no interaction with invoicing. They didn't participate in the scope negotiation. They actually haven't participated in any of the things that are required, let Not alone to do the job of an OM or a GM. But in their mind, their faith is high. They believe they're ready for this position and their focus. They want that job doing that thing.
[00:13:10.870] - Chris Nordyke
For that money.
[00:13:11.940] - Brandon Reece
For that money. But they underestimate the actual cost to do the thing, and then because of that, they fail. Then there's a many different ways to split this up. Sometimes it's like, we were talking about this, I think a couple of weeks ago or something, where sometimes can get the very best of me. I actually had a great plan, and I was focused, and I actually was willing to put in the effort, but I fucked myself because I lose the faith. I let the imposter syndrome voice get so loud And blow out your confidence. That it blows out my confidence. And now I'm missing that variable in the equation and my effectiveness drops exponentially. I think one of the things I'm just trying to lean more into are these frameworks to help me synthesize the things that I experience in my real life. I like that, dude. To make it easier to communicate and share with our friends and our people. I think that's this journey that I'm on right now is like, okay, it's cool that I get to run a podcast and think curious thoughts and be inquisitive and do all the things.
[00:14:15.200] - Brandon Reece
But what does that mean and how does that translate as a leader for me to deploy that down into my ranks? This is an example. This idea of, gosh, can I teach my team to understand these three variables in an equation and help them understand how important it is that they understand all three and that they're aggressively chasing a high score in all three?
[00:14:33.500] - Chris Nordyke
Yeah, pardon me while I'm tightening a bolt.
[00:14:36.060] - Brandon Reece
You're doing a little mechanical there.
[00:14:37.380] - Chris Nordyke
Repairs. I think that's actually a really interesting idea, a really interesting coaching framework, one-on-one with team members. Because it's not just... That doesn't just apply to with Eric being the CEO of a giant nonprofit or in your position. It's true of all of us. I got this thing, I have this objective in front of me. Are these things synced up at any given moment. If something's not working, let's peel this back and let's look at this. If there's a lack of confidence, there might be a lack of clarity, which is a great signal for you as a leader to understand. Yeah, why? For whatever reason, maybe it could be the fault of somebody not paying attention, not reading their emails. Sure as shit, been guilty of that. There could be some ignorance involved or a lack of planning. They never really thought through, what is the intended outcome here and how am I going to get there? Therefore, there's a lack of confidence, there's confusion, there's a lack of faith because they really haven't done the work to really plot out, okay, for the salesperson maybe you're working with, how many sales calls is going to take me to schedule a sales meeting.
[00:15:46.060] - Chris Nordyke
My goal is to get five sales meetings a week. I must not be making enough call, but they never thought through that. It's just willy-nilly. I'm going to go gangbusters on sales. That's a great, really cool coaching framework for, look, there's There's the confidence and the faith that comes from planning and consideration. Then as we start to execute, there's the focus, focusing our attention on the plan and the effort. Where might we be? Where is something out of alignment? I would think that's really helpful for regaining confidence and clarity, shoring those things up. I'm like, Shit.
[00:16:24.700] - Brandon Reece
Yeah, it's almost like a good framework to start with questions in terms of, let's say yourself or somebody in the team or an entire team is really struggling to get the result that we need. It's like pausing for a moment and go, okay, let's break this down. Okay, faith, focus, effort. Let's go through each part of this equation and identify where are we at. Can we properly assess the current state of affairs in that particular category? If we say on the face side, why doesn't the team have confidence? Let's hang in that pocket. What is going on? Do we not have a clear enough plan? Did we ask them to do too much adlib, figure it out on the go?
[00:17:03.460] - Chris Nordyke
Have we not repeated the plan or gone through it enough for people to really understand?
[00:17:06.660] - Brandon Reece
Have we not communicated it? Did we do a drive by like we do as leaders more times than not? Did we do an effective walkthrough? Meaning when we presented the plan, did the plan? Did we do any role-playing? Did we allow them to give pushback, to press in, to... What can we do to create a clearer path of faith and confidence? Then you just work your way through the variable I'm just thinking, man, it's really a great framework for solving problems inside your company, too. Because it's like instead of getting all swept up in the what's not working, you're almost reaching deeper that and you're asking, well, the why first. Then it gives you this area. Anyways, I found it super fruitful and I've been leveraging it a lot more ever since. I think he shared that with us. That must have been August because it was core. This year. That's right. So like August, September. Yeah. So it's only been a quarter or so, a little more than a quarter. He spoke.
[00:18:06.060] - Chris Nordyke
He was a keynote at a quarter. Yeah, he's a dude.
[00:18:08.200] - Brandon Reece
I'm telling you, that guy.
[00:18:10.100] - Chris Nordyke
Really phenomenal.
[00:18:10.780] - Brandon Reece
He is a crazy good speaker. He literally has, I don't know what happened, but that guy's brain is so good at synthesizing big subjects and concepts into these one sentence bangers. I mean, he's unbelievable at it. Anyways. It's fun. Super powerful framework. It's not overly It's really complicated, but it's like one of those little pocket tools I feel like you can have with you all the time. You can really leverage this inside your company as a tool for just equipping your people to solve problems.
[00:18:43.680] - Chris Nordyke
Anyway, I'm actually writing this down.
[00:18:46.880] - Brandon Reece
You are, yeah.
[00:18:47.780] - Chris Nordyke
Yeah, it's just a really great mantra.
[00:18:49.620] - Brandon Reece
Yeah. Faith times focus times effort equals our level of success. Slowing down, identifying each reach our current status and then determining with certainty, can I do this? Will I do this? I think you and I have talked about this before in terms of when us as business leaders or owners, we don't execute the level of action that's required to truly solve the problem. An example might be, we understand that somebody's not performing well, but because of our relationship with them, it makes it difficult for us to take the action, which is get them out of the seat, period. We that. Then the amount of... It doesn't matter how bad we want something because we're not willing to put forth the level of effort in that action that's required, we don't yet yield the result. It's so universal. It's silly. It's super universal. All right, there you go. A little 20-minute banger. There we go. All right, gang. See you. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots.
[00:19:58.720] - Chris Nordyke
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.