Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Sam.
[00:00:31] There is a difference from being trained and being ready. Hello and welcome to tonight's episode. I'm your host, Ryan Kahn. And this is Pivotal Change. This is a show that's all about leadership, influence, business executives and entrepreneurs trying to build and grow and expand and how they can take one or two pieces of information, tips, tricks, and use that to have their pivotal change down their path of success. Tonight's theme is going to be about what they don't teach you about leadership and business growth in your traditional schools and institutions.
[00:01:03] And like I said, there is a difference between being trained, that is checking boxes, that is maybe acquiring some credentials, a nice pedigree, certain skill sets that you can actually pick up. But most people are actually, when they get into the business, they get into the career, and especially when they get into leadership, they are educated far beyond their level of capable execution. And so that's a different, that's a difference maker for most leaders.
[00:01:30] Institutions often provide lots of structure. They give you p plans and paths, and I'm not going to discredit any institutions. But what they do is they give you a very generic foundation and they give you some statistics and things rely on things that seem to be very predictable, things that are often based on theory. But what the real leadership ultimately gives you that is different from the institutions is they give you pressure, pressure forged through experience in real world scenarios. They give you uncertainty that you must rely upon yourself, your team, or what you've accumulated in your background to resolve that uncertainty. And they also, they don't teach you about the consequences. Very often. You may have some ethics and some legal classes and things like that to tell you about lawsuits and losing accreditations and insurance policies. But the consequences of human capital, loyalty, integrity, partnerships, fracturing clients, dropping off, or the opposite, the consequences of incredible growth, incredible reputation and incredible success from doing things right.
[00:02:35] So one of the things you want to do is you don't want to become, or excuse me, you don't become who you say you are, you become who you prove you are. Especially under pressure, people will see how you respond, they will see how you react.
[00:02:50] This happened a lot, of course, in my career. During law enforcement, there are often times of pressure where you're dealing in volatile situations that could escalate rapidly into even violence, physical harm, and, heaven forbid, death. But in the police work, you have to become who you are under pressure.
[00:03:08] Sometimes you might get a call of a burglary in progress. And here is a home or a office building that's all darkened, windows been kicked in door's been kicked in, you got there quickly and you and your partner might have to go in there and find a bad guy with a baseball bat, crowbar armed. We don't know what they do, but they certainly don't want to go to jail. So whether they get found or they run or they fight, you have to figure out who you are under those high pressure situations.
[00:03:37] Also in those high pressure situations you see, do you rely on a teammate, do you stick to the plan, or do you just run off and do your own thing? I also found out about some of this in some of my early business struggles. In my early business struggles, I came on board to be a leader that had to transform systems in the way that leadership was conducted and write clear policies and get people prepared to handle the real world job they were asked to do, which was client interfacing. In the world of accounting, a lot of people imagine you're wearing the green visor, having the big long paper tape running from your calculator, and you're sitting in a room or a closet by yourself just crunching numbers, okay? But there's tons of client interaction, ton of quick questions, ton of expertise need, a ton of relationship necessities and skills that have to happen. So those early business struggles were a little bit of a slap in the face to me and I had to adapt and use policing skills in the accounting world and then try to impart those skills, those relationship techniques, what most people refer to as soft skills, and get those out there.
[00:04:42] Those are some of the times where I realized that I'm not prepared for this. Was I purposely sent off a training in a learning capacity of taking master level courses in accounting and also learning the very basics of administration and what form goes where and what box do I put this due diligence answer on in order to get tax returns prepped and filed and be able to take care of our clients in a real manner. I was learning from the top down, highest level of advice, from the bottom up of like where do I scan this and what's the proper way to stor document this client information safely for ready recollection and use in the future. And I realized that I'm not prepared for some of this when I sat down in a client meeting and they asked me a highly technical question and instead of just looking like I had a giant question mark on my face saying I don't know, I adapted and said I don't want to give you a wrong answer. Let me confirm through my research and I'll get immediately right back to you. And I realized that I had to put in the extra hours. I ended up putting in 12, 80 extra hours in my first year of additional training, additional studying, research and client relationships where I would go the extra mile for that. I also realized that I am prepared for this in other categories. See, I Adapted back in 2002, a fun movie came out. Mel Gibson, one of my famous actors and producers, he did the movie We Were Soldiers about Hal Moore. And one thing that very much impressed me in the leadership realm of that movie so much impressed me about that, that true story is that Hal Moore made sure that he was the first person to step foot on the battlefield and the last person to step foot battlefield. And they highlighted that in the movie. And I knew that if I was going to break through in leadership and break through and molding change in the company, that I would have to be the first one in and I would have to be the last one out. I would. I didn't do this 100% of the time, but I'll tell you what I did at 90% plus. Sometimes there was a big project somebody else was working on and they stayed late. Sometimes somebody was getting ready to go on vacation and they came in an hour or two early and of course beat me to the punch.
[00:06:43] But in those early years, you have to model the behavior. And I was ready to model behavior by being in law enforcement, being on other teams, coaching individuals and being able to do that. So I want to tell you that you have the ability to do the how more we were soldiers thing. Showing up on time really doesn't take any talent or skill at all other than setting an alarm clock appropriately.
[00:07:07] The other thing that you can do is you can understand that credentials don't always matter. They matter and they are required in lots of places and lots of industries. And I am not dismissing credentials. I'm just saying they don't always matter. Let me tell you about a moment when credentials didn't matter. You see, in order to represent somebody before the irs, you have to be a cpa, an EA, or a couple of other specialized credentials of which early in my career, I had nothing like this. I was just what I thought was a pretty sharp guy trying to learn the industry.
[00:07:37] And in doing that, one of our clients who owned a large farming operation got audited by the IRS. The IRS was saying they were going to owe 41, $42,000 in extra taxes based on the type of numbers and the information the IRS looks at, which is very, very surface level Most of the time. And then they make the worst case scenario assumptions scare the clients. The farmer comes to us biting his fingernails, thinking that his operations might take a big hit.
[00:08:02] By the time we got done with that, we looked in there and our IRS agent was not from a farming community. So reasonable and ordinary exp for a farm can be articulated across a whole host of ranges. So me having owned a farm in partnership with, with another person knew about farm operations. I knew, I, I came from a farming community, community in Michigan where I was raised. And now I owned a small little 176 acre farm at the time.
[00:08:29] So we were able to articulate and work through the entire audit and highlight and show with reasonableness that our client was exempt from so much more than the IRS thought. And in doing that, I had no real CPA knowledge at the time. Accounting knowledge was very limited. This is like the first year and a half of my transition. But I had farming knowledge, I had articulation from law enforcement. I had a level of confidence and charisma where I can say things with authority like no sir, this is appropriate to put this item on here because this is how a farm works. This is how access to the feed pens happens. And that really kind of saved the day. Our client ended up getting a seventeen thousand dollar refund. And just for your math, that's about a fifty nine thousand dollar swing in the case of an audit. Credentials don't always matter. What you want to do is you want to find somebody that's not just qualified on paper, but ultimately effective in reality. And that's where you can start teaching these skills about critical thinking and making people go into the pressure, making people go into the uncertainty and face real world consequences. But when the big boy money hits, of course you want to be there to help and save. Jocko Willink, one of my favorite authors, my favorite people to watch and listen to, has discipline equals freedom. And what you do is you tie your structure and your routine together and it doesn't take a whole lot of talent to have discipline. It just takes consistency. It takes making up your mind that you're going to follow up and do this and then you move forward. A lot of people can be far more effective just through consistency and discipline than they ever can with a whole bunch of initials and a really nice certificate hanging on the wall. Kingdom Another thing about leadership that's very important to understand is that Simon Sinek says it very well and I'll probably butcher his quote, but he says in a leader, it's not how well, can your people take care of you? It's how well can you take care of your people?
[00:10:20] And that is such a flip on the mindset of so many decades worth. And Jocko Willing always talks about putting his people first, putting the soldiers first, making sure that they all have the resources necessary. It does not take a whole lot of talent at all to go to bat for your people and say, hey, we're dealing with old, old, broken, improperly working equipment. We are spending time and money and headaches on things like repairs. And I'll tell you what, here's a funny one. Office Space, the movie Office Space, back From the early 2000, they have this running theme with this broken copy machine in the office.
[00:10:54] Of course you have some of the stereotypes of just absolutely terrible micromanaging or distant bosses. But how cool and powerful could the boss have been in that movie if he would have just taken care of his people by fixing the copy machine or getting a new one and a whole host of toxic culture and stress would have gone down. So listen to Simon Sinek. Listen to Jocko Willink. Listen to the things that don't cause skill to be the most important thing. Okay, so one of the things that you can do is Simon Sinek also says another thing. He says everything sounds good until it cost you something. Well, that's leadership. It costs you something to be a leader, to have sacrifice. So remember, most people are trained to be in comfort and they're expected to perform in chaos and put them in the situation. With the fly on the wall method that I've used in the past, people do not rise to the level of the training. They fall to the level of their habits or they fall to the level of the standards that you've held them to. So if real leadership isn't built in classrooms, where is it actually built? Then we'll be answering that question right after the break. Stay tuned for more Pivotal Change right after this.
[00:12:03] Sam, welcome back from the break. And before we answer that question about where these types of skills and experiences are actually built, because it's not necessarily in the classroom, let me tell you about how you can find this episode if you can't watch it all or any of the other episodes of Pivotal Change and everything that's on the NOW Media Network.
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[00:13:03] It's on the move. You can catch it in the podcast version if you can't watch and just completely keep your cup full with all this great content, culture, leadership, business and news.
[00:13:12] So let's talk about some of these most valuable skills. If the most valuable skills in business are really learned in moments that you would rather avoid, how do you force yourself to get in those moments? Well, you attach yourself to a mentor. That's a really good way to do it. You also simply recognize that, that if this is a thing that I am avoiding, I am trying not in this situation, this circumstance or this project.
[00:13:35] That's probably the exact thing you need to be doing to truly have growth and ultimately success down your path. And what that's going to do is that's going to help you develop a lot more of those unspoken core skills. And with those unspoken core skills, well, we should probably speak about them a little bit. So what are some of them? Well, one of them, and one of the highest ones, especially in modern society, is emotional control.
[00:14:01] When things go wrong, or at a minimum when things don't go the way that you want. Another one would be making decisions without having all the information.
[00:14:11] You want to be able to make the best decision of all the relevant information at the time and move forward. And you should have success and also grace if that's all the information that you had at the time. Another skill that is fantastic is to be able to read people quickly and accurately. Whether that's just a general demeanor of who's sitting in the meeting and who's ready to go versus not responding to what you're saying or anger or happiness or joy or success or failure, but being able to read people and ultimately get hey, is this person safe to confide in? Is this person safe to put into the leadership role, to put ahead of these next series of tasks, having hard or crucial conversations early on, not letting things fester and get to late. So having the courage to have the courageous conversations and then selling doesn't matter what position you're in, doesn't matter what part of the company you're in. If you're not directly in sales, you could be in the backdoor accounting. Like I said, you be in a highly technical engineering and calculation scientific part. But at some point you're going to have to sell something.
[00:15:13] Now why don't you think about that? Sell something where you might have to sell your role on a project, may have to sell literal funding for what your next thing is. You may have to sell the fact that you need one more team member to truly execute this, the way that the boss or the executive team wants, that is a huge portion, is that you have to understand that you are always selling your value, your product's value, your team's value, so that you can have the next entry level towards success.
[00:15:41] So if you can get some of these unspoken core skills that they don't teach in schools and institutions, and maybe if you have a good mentor, they'll run you through some of them.
[00:15:50] Now, here's a part of the philosophy that needs to really be inserted here. Avoidance is one of the most expensive habits in business. Let me repeat that. Avoidance is one of the most expensive habits and business.
[00:16:04] Sometimes we get into our own heads and we say, oh, I got to make a big presentation or I got to reach out to this one client. This is the biggest fish client that we've ever had. And you keep trying to make things perfect. Make things perfect. You're trying to engineer the exact sales pitch, slide deck, whatever it is, maybe it's even a cold email, but you know, they're a prime warm target and you're avoiding it because of failure, because of nervousness, because of self doubt.
[00:16:28] That's a huge one. Avoidance is the most expensive habit. Your growth is hidden inside conversations that you are also avoiding. There's so much value in conversations that maybe you're saying, I don't have a right to go to the boss and ask these questions and explore and try to gain things. I don't want to waste somebody's time by hatching out a certain situation or perspective in the area that we're trying to go. But these conversations that you're also avoiding have so much value, content and relationship capital as well, especially if you can learn to do it in a, in a nice way, in a professional, exploratory way. Not demanding, not forceful, not accusatory, but do it there.
[00:17:12] So there are some tough employee situations that I've had to go through.
[00:17:17] I was in charge of developing a couple of several training programs in my time in law enforcement. I was also in charge of developing training programs internally in the businesses that I've owned or been a part of. I was in charge of developing training and coaching and mentorship programs for our client base and things like that. So there's some tough situations where I didn't want to have to break down and ask for advice. Okay. But there was one guy at the, at the police department, and at the time, I was a three or so, four years into my SWAT career. And so I was being leaned on to help develop tactical resolutions to certain situations that we could globally train the entire force on.
[00:17:58] And I knew that I was missing something. And there's this one sergeant who's pretty known for being blunt and just kind of tell me like it is. And I just didn't want to go to him, but I knew he had experienced it before. I knew he had been to a unique external training that nobody else had. And I had to pick his brain. Well, I got a ton of value out of that conversation by just sitting down with him in the sergeant's office one shift, like on a slow Saturday or slow Sunday, and having a 30, 45 minute conversation about his training, his mindset, and the perspective in which he analyzes these next set of changes. Well, that literally just boom, boom, unlocked a door for me. A bunch of neurons started firing and made connections I didn't have before. And that was literally this little bridge that could just lay across the river in my brain and connect all the data, tactics and information I had.
[00:18:43] And that was a tough situation. I was able to develop a curriculum that ultimately led to an active shooter program. It was adopted by our police department, then it was taken to the department of criminal justice training and they took huge portions out of it and put it into the police academy. And then the state police further took on the active shooter training and they took about 80% of that. And now about 80% of what I developed in conjunction with about three other people on my team is used all over the place in law enforcement. Keeps a lot of people safe, keeps response levels high, and it's been used to resolve a lot of incidents.
[00:19:16] So there are some other things that, that can cost you as well.
[00:19:20] I had another training program where I was told I had to develop a curriculum. That was not my favorite thing to develop curriculum. I really liked talking, audio explanations, visual kinetic explanations, making films and things like that, and especially pre AI and dictation software. I'm having to type this stuff out in a super strict law enforcement format. Right, that's, that's boring stuff for me. And so I had to do a lot of that stuff and I delayed, I delayed making the decision of how I was going to format it. And the captain that was allowing me to do this said, we're going to give you so much time to work on this. Well, I delayed so much literal procrastination and avoidance because I was afraid that I was just going to screw up or not do a good job with the format and I was going to get a bunch of red marks all over my. My lesson plans. Well, I lost out on about 20 hours of payback time that I should have been due because I delayed making my decision. That cost me real world time with my family.
[00:20:16] So there's some other people that talk about, you know, the delays and taking action, things like that. I would recommend anybody look up Alex Hermosi. He's. He's fantastic. He's a very motivational guy. He's pretty popular. You can find about two seconds in any type of search engine.
[00:20:32] What he does is he ties consistency and messaging to so much of what he does. And he tells about just getting off your butt, basically, and going, but also endurance, setting a pace, setting an energy frequency that you can keep up with and you can keep moving forward. He does so much in. In helping people, especially business leaders or business owners. And there's another guy who I've always liked and now I love this guy. His name is Andy Elliott. He is incredible. He is like Mr. Energy, Mr. Intensity. And he used to be pretty cr. Ass, pretty bold. And he's huge into fitness, and he thinks that your mindset and your fitness and your business life, they're all interconnected, right? And he has recently taken on a huge spiritual lens. He just recently gave his life to Jesus and was baptized, and then his family fell in behind that. And now he's having huge influence, not just helping people build and launch their businesses, but help sustain the relationships and their families and how to interact with their children and how to interact with their faith. And he's doing all of this and he says, how do you connect how you connect with people leads in the rooms that you're in, the teams that you're, the athletes that you're training or whoever it is. And Andy Elliott is doing a lot of this. And again, if you like the intense stuff, he's the guy to watch right now. Another guy that has recently become an acquaintance of mine is Grant Cardone. He has built the 10X brand. He has built things that are incredibly crazy. And he is constantly telling you to take massive action, right? He wants you to plan. He wants you to do research. If you've ever been on a call or a conversation with him, his brain is literally firing a million miles a minute. This guy has done the research. He's sees things like Neo sees in the Matrix, right? He sees the ones and zeros and the breakdowns of everybody. But he's done it and he's taken the massive action and he's Taken the lessons away. He jumped into something before he was fully prepared on paper.
[00:22:20] But he uses real life experience, his ability to impart charisma, to, to talk quickly and swiftly and be witty and execute these deals. And he uses a little bit of brute force. I'm just going to impose my will because I want this thing to happen and I want my life to go this direction. I want these things for my family, family, for my business, for my friends. And so these three men are all about action, endurance, perseverance, making big things happen, and dreaming. Have a big dream. And then 10 exit is basically a very paraphrased summary of Grant Cardone. So actions create clarity when you start moving forward. That is when you truly get the perspective of what you need to be looking at, what you need to be watching and focusing on. Sitting back in the the prep phase forever, you don't get the clarity of exactly what you need. And you can prepare forever because the world and the climate around you is going to change and change pretty rapidly. So you better get your booty moving forward so you can pick up the clarity of what it is you actually need. And most people just keep waiting. I want to feel ready. I'm not ready yet. I want to feel ready yet. But leaders ultimately move and get it figured out. So if you're wearing a lot of hats, if you've worn a lot of hats before, all of that connects. You can use experiences from across costs all over the place. You get learning by doing. Just go try, don't be afraid to fail, study. But don't just study all the time. Skills not built, or excuse me, skill is built through exposure and not just explanation.
[00:23:43] So here's the trap. People start consuming all this information and they never actually build it their own way. So get out there, explore, get building, and we'll talk about how to do some building right after this break.
[00:23:55] Sa.
[00:24:29] At some point, you have to stop quoting people and start becoming the person that's worth quoting. We took a break and we talked about the trap of starting to consume all this knowledge, starting to prepare yourself with information and then never actually building things your own way. You want to be authentic, you want to build. You can use other people's systems, you can use other people's mindsets and quotes and things like that. But ultimately you have to be an authentic version of you. So be somebody worth quoting.
[00:24:59] Another thing is that when you're doing that, you can get information overload. You can get yourself into. I want to learn more. We've already talked about Some really big heavy hitters in the influence, leadership and entrepreneurship industry.
[00:25:13] On this episode, we're going to talk about a few more guys, maybe bring a couple of them up again. But information overload is not the problem. You have access to more information literally at your fingertips than all of world history combined. People would have to travel hundreds of miles to find a library and they would spend weeks there researching or sharing manuscripts where they only had one or two copies. And now you can get a comprehensive analysis on every manuscript, every written on the topic in like 0.3 seconds from an AI engine. So information overload is not your problem.
[00:25:46] It's your lack of application that's the problem.
[00:25:50] So you have to lace up your shoes, walk out the door and take your first step. That requires risk, that requires swallowing the lump in your throat that is fear and moving forward.
[00:26:02] There's a really nice guy that I watch, I, I have a whole lot in common with the way this guy thinks and talks. But Brad Leah is a really powerful influencer for business minded folks, for entrepreneurs. And he has a really simple saying, saying if you go to his website, you follow his podcast, you do anything like that, you're probably going to get a recurring thing with that Information without application is useless. Why are you sitting here just consuming, consuming, consuming. And this is a guy that is selling courses, this is a guy that is selling information and mentorships and stuff like that. And if you go to his information, he's ultimately going to tell you to get up out of your chair and do something with this. Don't buy another one of my courses before you take action on the first one. Nothing. That's a really bold thing for you to hear from somebody.
[00:26:45] So if you want to follow any of his information, if you want to like get real with what he does, that is a great guy to follow. But again, I'm going to tell you, look at the guy, research it, find his methods. Listen to something that I said, that's great. But go do make a change in your business. Start the business, go call the client, go hire the person you're afraid to spend a little bit of a cash to upgrade your systems, to upgrade your work product, to increase your inventory so you can have a flash sale and sell more, more, more and build your brand and build your, your, your items and get yourself out there. Another person is Jocko Willink. Again, I mentioned him earlier. He's one of my favorite people. I would say he probably has written my favorite book called Extreme Ownership. This is my favorite book other than The Bible. So I, I like these two. And in summary, he is going to tell you it all boils down to you. If you're in any leadership position, he says, man, other than pretty much, you know, getting swallowed up by an earthquake, your life is all about your ownership. You put yourself in the situation, you did or didn't do something.
[00:27:46] You have to take full ownership for the people under your command for not influencing your superior the way that you should, for not taking the action that you needed to. And it could all start with how you rolled out of bed in the morning and deviated from your routine because you skipped brushing your teeth and run out the door because you hit the snooze button and a chain of dominoes went into effect and you're playing catch up from that point forward. So extreme ownership means you have got to get out of the chair, get away from the scrolling machine and go take action. Make the phone call, make the introduction, have the conversation, learn the lesson and then apply it.
[00:28:21] Okay? And then something that you really need to understand is when you go apply it, you need to start applying with value propositions. Simon Sinek, I mentioned him as earlier as well too. He has a wonderful book that I have always told people that people need to understand your why. Right? His book start with why is one of the things that exploded his fame and exploded his influence and he is just the most insightful business leader because he has such a, a great balance between let's go ahead and draw a line in the sand and make it happen and hold on, let's pause for a second and respond with some empathy and care and develop and win people. So he tells you to start with why how to find your wine. He's got all kinds of books and series on the why, but what happens is why matters. But execution of that why, why you're doing it, why you're selling it, why it has value for your client. That is what sustains you. And he'll tell you that in yourself. So execution sustains.
[00:29:16] Sell your, find your value, articulate your value, sell your value. All with the why and why the person needs us to be a solution to their problem. Why the per person needs this to benefit, increase or enhance their own life and therefore it's mutually beneficial. You make a sale, you make a relationship, you get into a bigger network and your life increases as well.
[00:29:35] So you don't need more information. Almost certainly if you're watching this show show you are in a position where you are in real world action. You don't need More information. I mean literally, unless you're running a metrics report for tomorrow's meeting, you don't need more information. You need better implementation. Okay. General Patton says all great plans fail at implementation, which means the leader, the people in charge of executing it, didn't do their steps right. They didn't follow the process, they got off script, they violated their training path. They came up with their own plan that was not based in training or world experience and they just did something, something through ignorance, arrogance or laziness. Okay? So get down and implement. I can't tell you enough. This show is hopefully motivating you ultimately. I mentioned this earlier, your clarity on, let's say my vision isn't perfectly clear. I have a vision, but it's not articulated. Ryan, and you've told us in the past to, you know, get, get a plan with your, your three, three, three plan, you know, your, your three action steps per three phases. And it's over three days, 30 days and three months just to get the ball rolling. I'm telling you to do that. And if that action plan needs to be tweaked or, or manipulated around the implementation of it, that's fine. But you got to get going. You're going to get more clarity if you can't find that third action step on that third and final phase. You got eight out of nine. Once you get the ball rolling, you're going to get a whole lot of clarity. You're going to pick up data like crazy and it's going to be really fun. You know, I'm just like anybody else. I, I get stuck in an airport and I play these little games on my phone and there's this one where you're going around, you're trying to of capture these, these like little treasure, reward things and you're supposed to move and explore and expose a sit still and in order to stay safe. But what happens is the experience that levels you up is attracted to you when you move and as you move near it, it sucks into your character and you grow and you get more experience that little game even though it just wastes time. In an airport when I answered all my emails or I don't have any more phone calls or it's not the appropriate time to do it.
[00:31:38] That's life. The more you move and navigate through life, the more you're going to soak up that experience. The more you're going to level up your character, the more you're going to finish and see because the bigger and bolder you get with that character. The more of the map you see, the more you can look out at the future and say, there's a bigger treasure over here, there's an enemy or a threat over there and you can navigate. Get moving, start leveling up, soak up the experience and move yourself up to higher standards. So let's talk about some standards.
[00:32:05] You have to draw a line in the sand early for yourself of what is acceptable. This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to take these actions, you know, policies, SOPs, manuals, things like that.
[00:32:16] And then what is unacceptable. It's equally important to say I will not do these things. I will not have shiny object syndrome and I will not chase this endeavor or this person or this relationship because it deviates from my mission. I may make a quick buck, but it's ultimately deviating from my mission. Mission accountability what happens when standards are missed? So you're going to set metrics, you're going to set KPIs, you're going to be chasing after a lot of things.
[00:32:40] What happens when somebody misses a metric? Now again, brand new phase. It could just be information and you adapt your metric because something truly isn't geared up to be possible.
[00:32:49] But when you have your metric set, what happens when somebody misses? Do they miss out on a bonus check or a commission increase? Do they get disciplinary action? Do they get remedial training? Do they get get paired up with a mentor that can give them more experience on how to close or sell or assemble faster or whatever it may be. But know your accountability.
[00:33:10] Communication, you have to literally write down how frequently are we going to communicate.
[00:33:16] So one of the greatest successes in my family and one of the greatest heartaches in my family is our communication. We communicate on certain things extremely well. Like for example, my kids know that like on a Sunday night night we got to look at the calendar ahead, know who has practices and games and of course church. There are special event here and stuff like that. And then we communicate that and we know all of those kind of big ticket items, but we're terrible about where are we eating dinner. And somebody walks into the kitchen at 5 o' clock and eats some leftovers and now they're not hungry and the whole family was going to sit down and eat at 6 o'. Clock. So our communication on like meal prep and food like that, that's poor in our family. So now we all get in arguments about what we're going to eat for dinner or where we're going to go out and things like that, that, but at least we get some of our scheduling done. Pretty good. But put that into your business. How are you going to have a tone? What is the expected tone? I have traditionally been a little bit more that southern. Howdy folks, how's it going? Let's get this done a little bit more casual but professional tone. And some other people are just like, hey, just the facts man, let's lay it out there. And I need everything put to me in bullet point format. And that's okay as long as the expectations are known. So of course they can be communicated and met. And then decision making, making. Are you going to prioritize speed and decision making over precision and perfection, which perfection is pretty much non existent. But you have to understand that we're in a rapidly folding business. So I want you to go ahead and make the decision and move forward with initiative even if it ends up being wrong. You gathered all the relevant information and made the best choice. With that information you're going to get a thumbs up and we'll adapt in the future. Or do you need to be like an engineering firm? You don't need to say, hey, I need three more days on this report because if I don't get precision here, well, the building might be crooked and ultimately be unsafe and fall down. So that's the difference. In your company, you need to articulate, write down and hold people those standards. So culture is ultimately, it's not what you say, it's what you allow repeatedly over time. Okay.
[00:35:07] It's what you tolerate in your business and it's who your people actually believe you are about your standards and are you keeping them and exampling them yourselves. So that's part of your get going, get motivated, get those things in place. Example them, tolerate the good, don't tolerate the bad. Grow people and move them up. Leaders are just system builders and culture builders. They're not just problem solvers alone because a lot of people can be a version of a problem solver. So now that you get to building that system, the real challenge begins. It's keeping it intact as you scale and as you grow. We're going to talk about some of those things here in just a moment as we close out the episode on our next and final segment. Sit tight.
[00:36:19] Welcome back to pivotal change and the final push of the night we talked about. Now that you're building the system and now that you're on your way and you finally decided to take action, then you've set certain things in place. The real challenge begins with keeping it intact. As you grow. So if we're going to talk about that in just a moment. But first you got to know how to find this episode later for reference. Because if you're not writing it down, maybe you're listening on the go. You won't be able to find us unless you go to Pivotal Change on the NOW Media TV website and you can find this show, all of your favorite shows of Pivotal Change or the many, many other shows that we have that are all fantastic. You can get this live and on demand. It's anytime that you want. You can be doom scrolling at 2 in the morning and pull up Pivotal Change. You can listen on the go with the podcast version of it on NOW Media tv and you can get it on Roku. You get an iOS and guys, it's bilingual, English or Spanish. It's a multinational show. You can get it any format you want. Just go ahead and listen and learn. Grow and expand your life. Be successful.
[00:37:18] So talking back to growth, that's what we want you to do. Growth exposes everything, especially weak leadership.
[00:37:26] I've been a culprit of this. I've grown and not put certain systems in place. And then I have to go back and either somebody left, they voted with their feet and they left me. I've had people leave me because they're like, hey, I don't like working here. I don't like the way things are run. I don't like the disorganization or whatever it is because I had a gap in my systems and my leadership kept pushing it off. I did not take my own medicine in certain circumstances. And so I was younger then. I learned, I grew and I continued to push forward.
[00:37:51] So my weak leadership was exposed. I had a vulnerability that I had to repair.
[00:37:56] So I was doing a lot of things through my early stages of like that hustle, that proper controls and getting visibility and things like that and recruiting clients too fast is ultimately what happened. We overworked our people because we were those hungry young entrepreneurs starting a new advisory program and things like that. What we failed to do is proper delegation. We did a good job, not a great job. And then our systems were not there, so. So it fractured some trust. Our staff at the time was really worried. Pretty much everybody stuck with us except for, you know, one, one in particular. But they, they survived that bridge, that gap. And, and so that's something that you have to watch out for is you have to put systems in place. And there's a great. A couple of friends of mine, Natalie Dawson and Brandon Dawson, And I didn't think I was going to bring them up today, but they're really good at having these breakpoints in your industries and learning to grow through your industries. And at certain breakpoints, you got to change your systems or change your people or change your operations and adapt. Not rework the whole foundation, but add changes and structures in place. And that was something that, if I knew that 10 years ago, I could avoid a lot of pain. But in those failures and in that pain, I learned a lot as well. So there's, there's value both ways.
[00:39:04] So here's where it, it really, really starts. Standards get diluted. That's probably one of the first areas you see. Some of the breaking down is you have a standard. We're saying, we're not going to do this, we're only going to do that. And then you're saying, well, here's an exception. And guys, I'm happy with exceptions if you have an exception because maybe it's a random big ticket item or you have somebody that's in a tough situation. We've had situations where one of our clients, you know, the husband died and now we have a widow who's sitting here holding this bag of meat, mess of this business that their husband is running and they know nothing about. We're gonna, we're gonna make the exception to help them out. The problem is when your exception then becomes the rule, you start making exceptions for everyone. Now we're gonna lower a price. We're gonna go ahead and get this person. We're gonna spend more time than we promised without getting a scope creep and going and amending the contract and doing addendum to add services or add time and, and that's where it really comes in, guys, once or twice as life. But you get in any frequency at all, all you have dilution and you need to fix it. Communication gets really inconsistent. When we say we're going to put all the information into this platform or communicate in this frequency in this style, in this way. Then you end up getting people that are in a panic and a tizzy because maybe it's crunch time that happens a lot in tax season. And you're just yelling down the hall, hey, can you do this and put that there and take care of this. It doesn't get documented properly. And that comes up six months later when somebody needs to reference your actions and it wasn't put in the right place or in the proper communication channel. You're like, yeah, I think Johnny says, I think I told Sally to go ahead and do that, guys. If it's not written down, it didn't happen. If it's not cataloged in your systems or CRM, your, your various portals and stuff, you're shooting yourself in the foot. And then leaders also get distance. Leaders start saying, hey, everything's running like a well oiled machine. I can finally take my hands off of things. Then they take their hands off too much. They might even leave their position from behind the steering wheel completely and they don't come back. Or if they're at that 50,000 foot level, they're not swooping down in any frequency and they get distant and they don't have connection with their people and they don't have their full understanding of the pain points and the things that are successful because they can grow those and squash the others.
[00:41:07] And getting distant is a tough one. I've seen again myself in early stages of success, I did that a little bit and I pivot to a new project and I just kind of abandoned that project, needed to come back, apologize, repair relationships and workflow. So don't let the distance be be something. It's okay to take an extra vacation if you've reached a pinnacle area of your success, but don' don't get distanced. Don't just pass things off and say I've officially delegated and washed my hands of it.
[00:41:34] You still got to check in at a bare minimum with frequent stylized communication.
[00:41:39] Another thing that ruins businesses isn't success on its own. It's the complacency that comes along with success.
[00:41:47] A lot of people say, hey, we've booked, we've got this recurring revenue, we've got income, sales are good, especially if you have like subscription services or recurring customers. Because maybe your product just has a shelf life or a consumption rate and you can keep these customers coming back. But if you lose one big contract, or maybe there's some type of legislation that regulates something and now you can't produce your product with the same ingredients. You have to make this huge pivot and find a really expensive ingredient that's in short supply from someplace else. And everything gets flipped on your head. And complacency keeps you from keeping your head, head on a swivel. That's where the law enforcement turns and being able to take a tactical pause in those moments and pivot and move forward. So it's not necessarily success that runs the business. It's the distance, it's the complacency, it's the slipping of standards. Once things get going good, you don't think that you have to stay on top of it like you used to.
[00:42:39] So we're going to talk about three of our buddies. You've heard us talk about Alex Hero. He is really huge in system systems that sustain growth. That's what a lot of these guys are about. And he's talking about how to scale your business, how to get to the point where you're getting like a million, ten million, hundred million dollars offers and then like how do you even find those people? How do you position yourself to find the right people that can even entertain one of those $100 million offers? Grant Cardone specializes in expansion mindset. How you always need to be looking. And of course there's like a, I don't have any clue where the original age BC you know, always be closing comes from, but that's definitely a Grant Cardone 10x mindset. Grow, grow bigger, do more, grow bigger, do more. One of the things I love about Grant, I've had an opportunity to sit down with him. We've played cards together, we, we've, we've done some interesting conversations. Got to have dinner at his house with him one time.
[00:43:30] And in those conversations he makes a lot of money so that he can do more. With that money. He's not just cash, passion out and living a luxurious lifestyle. Obviously that plays well on a website to capture an audience, but man, this guy gives back to the communities, he gives back to young people, he gives back to business owners. And that also helps his expansion mindset in probably an unsuspected but now planned ways because those people are now grateful for him and they're going to support him and, and do whatever it takes to elevate that brand because he was there for them. And I dark hour just by being nice and just by having expanded and having the revenue to go out and help people. And then Andy Elliott, Mr. Energy is kind of how I refer to him. It's, it's that you must scale. He has a must, he has a imperative behind it.
[00:44:19] It's kind of like that whole there's no such thing as staying the same. You're either improving or, or you're decreasing. And he says one of the things that happens, it's very deadly to people's that they fade, right? So he says your energy must help you scale, must help you grow, otherwise you are fading. And I think that is a, a really awesome mindset to, to keep on and if you can set reminders of yourself and you can say, hey, what am I doing to use my Energy to scale, to grow today. And if you're not doing that, maybe today is a day that you're in danger of fading just a little bit. So think about what those guys say. Think about some of those huge lessons, okay? And then in growing your firm or in growing your team or whatever it may be, there's a fun story, is that you have to take risks on people, right? If you can find somebody that even has a spark of these mindsets, a spark of these talents, and they have a willingness to learn, okay, then you should probably take a risk on those people. I mean, do your vetting, do your, your hiring system, do your recruiting. If you have certifications that are required, make sure those boxes are check. But look at that culture, look at that personality and how approachable is this person. If I came to you and told you that you're doing something wrong, would that hurt your feelings? Or is there a special way that I need to approach you in order to keep that from hurting your feelings? And if that person can articulate that, yeah, I'm an open book. Please coach me. Please, please approach me, then I think you've got something really special and you need to invest in those people and that's going to help you grow your, your team. If you have opportunities and it's like, hey, I can go to this nice, cool leadership conference, but it cost a ton of money, or I can send four people to this, you know, mid level conference for middle management or skill development or their own level of networking. We'll go ahead and make the sacrifice, send four people and elevate them and say, hey guys, I'm not sending myself to that same conference again every year. Instead, I'm using those budgeted dollars to send you four who have met the metrics, who have somehow now reach the level where, you know, you can invest in them. And that develops a lot with people.
[00:46:21] And that's where we had a big cultural shift in one of our things when we started sending people to conferences.
[00:46:28] And we were going to send four people to a conference every year. And one of them, you could go every year if you wanted if you were the high performer, right? So if you're the high achiever, boom, you earned your spot in the conference every year. It was a pretty fun, pretty big conference is always an extremely nice location. It comes, cost us a few dollars to send people to it, and then the other three people were on rotation. And so people would kind of scramble and work a little harder as one of their motivators to say, hey, I'M the person that earned this lot and and that helped our culture grow. Instead of slip coaching, wrestling is another good one as well.
[00:47:00] There is good pain and so introduce people to the good pain, the good suffering. Those good growth diamonds is made from the pressure that goal has cold pole provides under all that pressure. So introduce them to that Inspect what you expect out of people. Stay visible as you grow. Reinforce your standards daily, if not at least weekly. But it can't just be this occasional thing. And develop others by leading intentionally and telling them that you're developing them as a leader. So leadership's not a position, it's a responsibility that you carry every day. You don't have to go take another course course. You don't need to. You just need to execute what you already know. The people who win aren't the most trained. They're the most disciplined in action. So if you want to grow your business, grow your standards, increase your discipline and your willingness to act, go out into the world and see the change and be the change. We'll catch you right here. Next time on Pivotal Change.
