Blue Collar Culture

Business Results the Old Fashioned Way

Ryan Englin

Date Your Clients With Mark Young

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BCC 83 | Date Your Clients

 

We all have relationships that we get into that require communication, setting expectations, and commitment and the employee-employer relationship is no different. Today’s guest has identified parallels and creatively conceptualized a metaphor between dating and building client relationships. Mark Young is the CEO of Ryze Agency and author of Date Your Clients: Building Professional Equity from Life’s Worst Personal Strikeouts. In this episode, he chats with host Ryan Englin about the essence of every human relationship and how understanding this can help your business. Mark shares that relationships, regardless of their context, follow predictable patterns. Using the concept of dating, he outlines practical strategies for engaging and communicating with clients to foster healthy and positive relationships. Listen in on their chat to learn all about it!

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Date Your Clients With Mark Young

If you’ve ever heard me speak, you’ve heard me talk about how recruiting and hiring new employees is much like the dating process. We all have relationships that we get into. They’re relationships that require communication, expectation setting, and commitment. The employee-employer relationship is no different.

Our guest is an expert at translating this idea of dating to the business world. He is a brand new author. He wrote a book called Date Your Clients. I love the premise that goes into the idea that we have to make a commitment to our clients and to our people, set expectations, and communicate with them properly as we do when we’re dating someone new. I’d love to introduce the guest to the show, Mark Young.

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Mark, welcome to the show.

How are you?

Mark’s got a new book out. I love the metaphor here that we’re going to dive into. Even though we’re going to talk a lot about clients and how to take care of your clients and your customers, there are so many parallels when it comes to recruiting and your employees. I’m excited about that. This is the same question I ask everybody right at the beginning. We love changing mindset. We love breaking down norms. What is the biggest myth about your industry?

Professionally, I own and operate an advertising and marketing agency. With that being the industry we’re talking about, the greatest myth is that anybody who does marketing is an expert at all different forms of marketing. I talk about this. Someone’s like, “I have a nephew who does that,” or, “I have someone I know. They’re good with computers. They should be able to build you an eCommerce site.” I tell people, “If my foot hurts, I wouldn’t go to an oncologist, except both of them are doctors.” At the same time, the same is true in the marketing advertising industry. That is because when someone works in the industry, it doesn’t mean that they’re an expert. There so many different verticals and so many different ways to skin that cat, so to say.

I had somebody. He was a young man that I was mentoring. He was like, “I want to get into this marketing world professionally. I need to know what to do.” I said, “Okay.” He goes, “I’m really good at it. I know my stuff, but no one will give me a chance.” I’m like, “It depends. What do you want to get into? Are you trying to get into SEO and organic-type marketing? Are you trying to get into paid advertising and social media?” He’s like, “SEO and paid ads are the same thing.” I went, “They’re the exact opposite of each other.” He laughed. He’s like, “I don’t have as much experience as I thought.”

Isn’t that the case, though, with so many people? In my past life before I was helping companies with recruiting, I had a marketing agency as well. I always loved it when we would deliver a new website design and would send it to the client. They’d be like, “I talked to my brother-in-law and he thinks it’s awful. He thinks you need to change this and that.” I remember thinking, “If my doctor told me I had a brain tumor, I don’t know that I’d bring those films home and be like, “What do you think? Should we operate or not?”

I’ll caveat one thing to that. That’s what I always tell my clients. I mention this in Date Your Clients. That is, “Quit asking the people closest to you about their opinions. All of them are going to tell you something positive because why would they want to set themselves up as being the bad guy? These are people who want to remain in your life. Why would they call your baby ugly? They’re not going to do it. Hire a professional who tells the truth. That’s what you need to do.”

From the standpoint of, “My brother-in-law thinks this needs changed and that needs changed,” the one thing I always highlight for my clients is, “Let’s take that under advisement because your brother is a potential consumer.” From the eyes of a consumer, let’s figure out if your brother is the demographic that we’re trying to sell to. If your brother is in demo, that may be valid input. If your brother is 60 years old, and we’re trying to sell a product to an eighteen-year-old female, I probably don’t care about his opinion.

There is so much to that. You wrote this book called Date Your Clients. I love the metaphor there of dating. Give us the premise of the book and maybe why you wrote it.

BCC 83 | Date Your Clients
Date Your Clients: Building Professional Equity from Life’s Worst Personal Strikeouts

The story behind this is embarrassing as it sounds. It’s not embarrassing for me. I was talking to a client who wasn’t getting it. As I was trying to explain to her some of the disconnects that were happening because she was, metaphorically, throwing out the baby with the bath water, I’m like, “You’re missing the point. You’re driving traffic to a website that’s terrible. You’re blaming the traffic, and it’s not the traffic’s fault. The traffic got there.”

The issue is that the site itself is terrible. I’m like, “It’s no different than if I were to get you 100 first dates and you showed up looking ugly. It doesn’t matter how many dates I get. You showed up looking ugly. It doesn’t matter what kind of personality you have. You already turned people off. It’s like you’re dating profile. You would never put ugly pictures of yourself on a dating profile. You always put the best ones. It’s the same with your website. It’s another point of intrigue.” The goal is to simply continue the relationship.

I said, “The goal of a first date is a second date. The goal of the first date is not marriage. The goal of the first date is a second date. The goal of the second date is a third date until you’ve accumulated enough data to decide if this is going somewhere.” The reality is, as a marketer, I can get you as many first dates as you want, but you’ve got to deliver once that happens. I start metaphorically outlining this to her and she was not receptive to it. I said, “How about if I put this in an email for you? In that way, you get a chance to let it marinate.” I started writing this email to her and it turned into a book, truthfully. That’s exactly how that happened. I started an email and wrote a book.

I love it. That’s one of the best ways because it’s authentic. It’s real. You were looking to solve a problem. It’s fantastic. When we talk to clients, they’re like, “We can’t find any good people. There’s no one out there that wants to work.” We pull up their online profile and they look to the equivalent of being an ax murderer. I’m like, “this is why people don’t want to come work for you.” When your Yelp reviews are a two-star, guess what employees are thinking? The customers don’t like them. There’s no way the employees like being there.

True statement.

Often, as employers, we see this as business owners. We dismiss some of the bad stuff. We’re like, “That was a crazy psycho client. Who cares?” It’s out there in the world. It’s part of your ax murderer-looking profile.

It’s that Glassdoor issue. The truth of the matter is to a certain extent, there is a certain element of people reading Glassdoor reviews. People post the negative, not positive. That’s one of those things. To employers, one of the things that I always mention is, “Have your current staff go write reviews for you.” It’s not that complicated. We can dismiss the bad ones, but are there any good ones? When we’re dealing in eCommerce, the same thing goes for your product. It’s okay to have an average of four stars because some people aren’t going to like it no matter what you do. The reality is we need to make sure that we’re trumpeting the ones that do.

If you have 5,005 star reviews, people are going to start to call BS after a while. They’re like, “There’s no way you’re making that many people happy.” It’s okay to have a couple bad ones.

We have that conversation all the time, too. There is no such thing as a perfect company that delivers perfect customer experience. Customers don’t want to know you’re perfect. They want to know that when a problem arises, they want to know how you’ll solve it. That’s what they want. When stuff happens, because it will happen, what are you doing to fix it?

There is no such thing as a perfect company that delivers a perfect customer experience. Customers don't wanna know you're perfect. They wanna know that when a problem arises, you'll solve it. Click To Tweet

There is more value in you responding to a negative review in a positive light than there is in ignoring it and hoping it goes go away. Talk to me. Give us a couple of the principles that started in this email that turned into a book. They may be 1 or 2 things that our audience could start thinking about for their business and ways they could transform things. Let’s dig into a couple of them.

I tend to be somewhat of a sarcastic, snarky personality. It became evident in my writing that everything had a bit of a tongue-in-cheek nuance to it. Part of that is when you’re talking about dating your clients, even the title itself has a somewhat provocative nature to it. They read dating your clients and everybody immediately tilts their heads slightly and goes, “I thought we weren’t supposed to date our clients?” In that metaphor, one of the things I tell people is, “I’ve dated a lot. I’ve also had a lot of clients. The one thing that all of them had in common was they’ve all been human.”

The reality is that human interactions are human interactions. No matter how unemotional you want to consider yourself at work, you’re an emotional human being. You’re a person who’s created that way. We all get frustrated. We all get disappointed. We all have celebrations. We all want to be cheered on even when we say, “That stuff doesn’t matter to me.” An ‘atta boy’ goes a long way no matter how good you are. A certain amount of that pump and celebration is necessary.

Chapter by chapter, it walks through probably the unscrupulous details of how dating takes place. It makes every single comparison through the life cycle of a client relationship. There are chapters such as The First Fight, The First Date, and Meeting the Family. They all play into the same thing in recruiting and in all of this. It’s how do you manage relationships? I go back to a word all the time near every interaction I have, and that is expectations.

For most people, it boils down to a matter of making sure your expectations align. Talking about recruiting, an employee has an expectation of what an employer should do for them and what the employer should be for them. The employer is, for all intents and purposes, guessing. Those expectations are typically based on a past employer. You have no idea how that past employer treated the employee. That’s what that employee expects from you. Good or bad, that’s their expectation.

It’s like the ex-girlfriend. All of a sudden, you’re dating her. Her setup for what your relationship should look like is based off of her family or previous relationships. It’s based off of these types of things. You’re guessing. The reality is that most arguments in relationships or most employee dissatisfaction all comes up because someone expected something that didn’t happen. It has typically nothing to do with what happened. It’s usually what didn’t happen.

BCC 83 | Date Your Clients
Date Your Clients: Most arguments and relationships, most employee dissatisfaction, it all comes up because someone expected something that didn’t happen. It’s typically nothing to do with what happened.

 

Many people talk. They go, “The only way to get people to work is to pay them more.” Everybody thinks they’re worth so much. You know what it is. I love how you put this together. They’re expecting you to treat them like their last employer. The only way they’re going to tolerate that in a new environment is if the bribe aka their paycheck is big enough for them to look the other way.

The other thing I would say is unless you treat the person so much better than they’re willing to. What I call it is this social engagement. There’s this marketplace, socially speaking. For instance, you get the pretty girl with the guy who’s got money. That stuff happens, too. He’s able to offer his finances in exchange for her beauty. Those things happen in that social exchange.

The same things happens in employers. I’m willing to work for less money if it’s a super fun environment and I’ve got a lot of friends that work there. For instance, I get to work in field where I’m passionate. If I’m an artist and you offer me a job where I have to create art every day, I’ll work for less money because I love what I do.

In your world, you’re dealing with a lot of blue collar work. That doesn’t necessarily provide the existential benefit that a lot of people are looking for. It’s a wage-type situation, but they still want additional perks. They still want to feel that value. They still want to have that personalized touch. You’re competing with the bar that was set for them.

We’re an advertising agency. How often my client thinks we should meet is 100% based on when their last agency met. We tell them, “We’re going to set you up on a meeting every two weeks.” They’re like, “In my last agency, we met weekly.” We’re like, “That’s fine. We’ll meet weekly if that’s what it takes, but I’m guessing the outcome until that happens.” They’re like, “I don’t like the way we do this.”

We use Microsoft Teams. We use it internally. We use it with clients. We use it with all of them. This one particular client uses Slack. His solution was, “Everyone we deal with uses Slack, so you guys need to use Slack when you’re communicating with me.” We’re like, “If that’s what it takes.” It’s the expectation of what they believe good service looks like.

How do you manage that? You already said it, and it was so great. It’s not what happened. It’s what was expected to happen that didn’t happen. That’s what causes the problems. As the company, how do you manage that?

The way to manage expectations is through clear communication, and that is 100% of it. If you come in as an employee and I tell you exactly what’s going to happen, what the expectations are, what the negatives are about working here, and what the exciting things are, all of that is set up in the beginning. There is no reason for an expectation to go south. All of that happens early enough in the courtship process, which in the employment world is the interview. We’re going to talk about the good and the bad.

The truth of the matter is with me, I tend to focus more on the negative during an interview than positive. A lot of intrinsic positives come with working in our industry because we get a lot of passionate people who love what we do and they want to be part of that. In addition to that, we’ve got to focus on the negative. We tell people like, “We’re disorganized. We have a very entrepreneurial client base. That means last minute things show up all the time because our clients don’t have their shit together, so to say. Things happen. Communication can get crazy.”

We say, “Does that sound okay to you? Does that frustrate you? Is that something you think you can work within? We change hats all the time. Is that a place that you can do?” A lot of times, I notice employers want to talk about all these positive things. They want to do all this stuff. That’s when they want to say, “This is the best place to work ever. We are the biggest whatever in America.” No one cares that you’re the biggest company in America. They want to know how it affects themselves.

At the end of the day, I’m my own favorite topic. We talk about this in marketing all the time. Quit talking about yourself. Talk about the customer. From an employment standpoint, it’s the same thing. Employers want to sit and have this conversation about themselves, what they offer, and what they do as a company. The reality is the employee is sitting here going, “How does this affect me? What do I get out of this?” I don’t mean financially.

Quit talking about yourself. Talk about the customer. Click To Tweet

We do an annual golf outing for us, as an example. One of the things we talk about is we believe in work-life balance. We understand that people have lives outside of the office, which means we’re flexible about people being able to work from home if necessary. We close the office for two weeks around Christmas and New Year’s because we understand that being here in South Florida, nobody’s from South Florida. We all travel for the holidays.

No one who lives in South Florida has family in South Florida. Everybody is from somewhere else. Our entire office is planning on being out of town anyways. We shut the office down. Here’s the expectation. We are outlining what projects must be completed before we go on break. Everyone has to take their laptop home with them when they’re traveling over the holidays because it doesn’t mean that we are closed that our clients are as well. We’re outlining those types of expectations. What’s in it for you? You get to spend two weeks at home over Christmas and New Year. You can go spend it with your family up north. You can do whatever you want, but be available if I need a call.

Those types of people start thinking, “I get vacation time and I get time over the holidays? That’s cool.” They’re like, “You don’t count sick days? If you’re sick, you’re sick and can work from home?” We’re like, “Sure. That’s not a problem.” They’re then like, “I get these things?” It’s usually not a conversation about dollars. It’s usually a conversation about the people wanting to be part of a fun team. It’s common for us to have 3 or 4 people all come in and introduce themselves during interviews. I’m not the one who does most hiring, but our VP of ops will leave the room and let them chat with other employees. Talk to other people.

There are lots in there about expectation setting and communicating it. I don’t know why, but communication seems to be one of the hardest things for a lot of companies to figure out how to do effectively. The analogy into the metaphor is that’s what the whole dating process is about. That’s what you communicate during the dating process. When it comes to dating your clients, what does that look like? How do you set expectations with clients so that it works?

I want to say two things in there. The first thing is with the expectation side. Setting those expectations and communicating clearly is enormous on the front end. You’ll never get around it. This holds true even in the blue collar recruiting world. Most of our clients have come to us scorned. They’ve dealt with somebody in the past who has treated them badly. They may be someone who told them they were going to go take them from zero to hero in three months and all they had to do was pay this giant retainer. They’ve come to them with these expectations broken. They’re coming to that date that got out of a bad relationship.

BCC 83 | Date Your Clients
Date Your Clients: Setting expectations and communicating clearly is enormous on the front end and you’ll never get around it.

 

They’re not willing to give us everything. They’re not willing to buy into the culture. They’re not willing to talk about all the things. They come to us and say, “What would you do with our brand? Tell us. What is it that you would do if you were king of the forest?” We spell out this giant scope of work and tell them, “These are all the things that are wrong,” which to them, inherently sounds like the other people they’ve talked to because they were negative, too.

They say, “Our budget is $3,000 a month.” I have to resist laughing. I’m like, “You’ve barely covered our phone call. Can we please talk a little bit deeper than $3,000 a month? In the marketing world, that’s nothing. We’re doing more than that in sales a day and that’s what you want to put to your marketing. That’s ridiculous.” What we end up having to do is get some very early wins.

The same holds true in dating and recruiting. You have to set up those expectations early and then prove that you are a person or a company that follows through on your promises. Most expectations have been defeated because somebody has made a promise that they haven’t kept. I’m like, “I promise that we’re going to do this,” and then I don’t. It’s the boyfriend who makes all of the, “You’re the love of my life,” but then is texting all the time to other people. He may be doing nothing wrong, but her expectation is different than that.

The same is true with employers. They’re like, “You’re going to be the greatest. You’re going to be amazing. You’re going to be the best hire we’ve made all year.” Suddenly, they’re just another cog in the machine, and that person feels deflated by it. On early wins with our clients in particular, what did we do? We tactically figure out, “For $3,000 a month, what is the one way we can make a super early win and prove to you we know what we’re doing?” We meet them where they are and then pull them forward.

We have a client that we started working with a few months ago, which is where the $3,000 a month comes from. That was their cap. I’m like, “That’s fantastic. Here’s my scope of work. Your whole place needs remodeled, and yet, you want to paint the living room. I’m trying to tell you there’s no point in painting this because we need to tear the walls down.” Eventually, it’s like, “That’s great.” I’m like, “Rather than painting the living room, even though the walls need to be torn down, let’s metaphorically do something completely different and show you what we’re capable of.”

We did some tactical work for them and blew up a $30,000 weekend in sales. All of a sudden, the client was like, “We’re listening. What is it you got?” A few months later, I’m on a telephone call with the client talking about a complete revamp of their entire program. We’re rebranding, repackaging, and rebuilding their website. There are full PR, SEO campaigns, and everything else. The client is like, “What else?” I’m like, “There we go.” It’s a trust issue.

You showed them you were different.

That trust is built on expectations. The expectation is that when I promise you something I deliver and I deliver once, you expect it the 2nd time and the 3rd time. The trust happens because when you say you will, you do.

Trust is built on expectations. The expectation is that when you promise them something and you deliver once, they expect it the second time and the third time, then the trust happens because when you say you will, you do. Click To Tweet

I love that. You keep your promises and don’t make promises you can’t keep. That’s the rule right there. That’s fantastic. You said that the dating your client metaphor goes through all of these different stages. What’s another area? We talked about expectations and communication. What’s another area that our audience could go, “I can start doing that,” whether it’s their clients or employees.

I get asked regularly, “What’s your favorite chapter?” I will say that my favorite chapter is a chapter called The First Fight. The first fight becomes a bigger problem than most people realize because nobody wants to talk about that. The truth of the matter is every employee is going to get frustrated. Every dating relationship is going to have a fight. Every client is going to disagree with a strategy. There’s always going to be differences.

My dad always used the phrase, “If we agreed on everything, one of us wouldn’t be necessary.” The reality is we need to learn how to embrace those differences and figure out how we communicate through them. Part of that I’ll say is an example. It’s that time of year that we’re doing employee evaluations around here. One of the things that interests me is so many employee evaluations are a list of all of the things that you should do better. Seldom do employee evaluations stop, congratulate, celebrate the wins, and talk about the good stuff.

BCC 83 | Date Your Clients
Date Your Clients: Every dating relationship is going to have a fight. Every client is gonna disagree with a strategy. There’s always going to be differences. The reality is we need to learn how to embrace those differences and figure out how we communicate through them.

 

When the stuff goes right, we expect it. When the stuff goes wrong, we feel like we need to throw a parade to make sure that everybody knows what they did wrong. We talked about online reviews. The happy customers expected a good experience. What happened? They got expectations. That’s it. The people who had a negative experience tell the world. They share their experiences. In the first fight, we talk through when things go wrong, what do we do?

There’s an incredible metaphor that I’d seen in a meme of all things. The meme was of a World War II plane that came back to base all shot up. The engineers at the base said, “Look at all these areas that got shot up. We need to start reinforcing our entire fleet in those areas because those are the areas that get shot up most often.” There was one man who stood up and said, “I’m going to say it’s the exact opposite. The planes got shot up in those areas but still made it home. I would postulate that the planes that didn’t make it back were shot up in the other areas, and because of that, we should reinforce the areas of these planes that didn’t get shot. That’s where the damage gets done.” I was like, “We need to double down on our positives and not focus so much on the negatives.”

When it comes to dealing with staff or dating, imagine the case that all we do is focus on the things that go wrong and don’t take the time to talk about the things that go well. Related to clients, let’s say that we send a website to a client. The client, what do they do? They immediately go through it and find everything about it that they wish they had differently. We get this giant bullet list of everything they want changed before we even get a chance to get on a phone call because we have to send them the art files in advance.

They want to take three days to go through it. We’re like, “Let us walk you through it please.” The immediate thing that happens. We get on the call and the client sent this list of fifteen things they want changed. The artist is disappointed. They’re like, “I did such a great job and you called my baby ugly.” We’re going through this battle.

We get on the telephone with them. Usually, it’ll be a web meeting because I hate phone calls when we go through this stuff. Usually, I will tell them, “We’re not starting with your email. We’re starting at the top of the page. At the top of the page, tell me. What do you like about this?” They’re like, “We loved that. That image is exactly what we were going for. The font’s a little small.” We’re like, “No problem. We’ll fix the font. What do you think of the overall branding?” Usually, when we talk through it, we find out we’re 95% in agreement. You didn’t send me a list of all the things you loved. You sent me a list of all the things you wanted different. The same holds true in fights.

My background was in clinical psychology. I’d be sitting with clients on a regular basis in a therapy session, as an example. I would always try to take them back to, “What is it that you love about each other? What brought you together to begin with? I get the problem you’re having right now, but is there enough equity that we can work through this? What’s going well?” When you start figuring out the things that are positives, that first fight and all subsequent fights start to seem less of a deal.

When my clients don’t like something, we’re like, “Let’s talk about all the wins you’ve had with us on your team.” All of a sudden, the one thing they didn’t like doesn’t seem like that big of a deal anymore. That’s a big deal when you’re talking with trying to discipline an employee. You’ve always heard the start with a good, end with a good type of situation. We’re like, “I want to thank you for your commitment. I know you meant well when you were doing this because I can see how you thought it through. I don’t like the action you took here. I want to hear about what led you there. I’m excited because I know that you are a person who’s going to fix it.” That type of communication goes a long way.

It’s interesting as you’re talking about the first fight. For those that are reading, one of the things that stood out to me was the first fight can’t be the first thing that happened because then, it’s a problem. You started with getting the little wins so that there’s a little bit of built up equity. When you do have the first fight, there’s enough positive that’s happened in the relationship that you’re both willing to work through it. Is that right?

Absolutely. When I talk about the first fight, I’m assuming that first fight is an existing relationship, not one that began.

There is a lot of great stuff in there. The thing that stood out for me was when you were talking about the critics. Everybody’s a critic. One of the things that I learned a long time ago is the difference between an amateur critic and a professional critic. The amateur critic can tell you what’s wrong with it and what they don’t like whereas the professional will tell you what they do. Much in human nature is it’s easy for us to tell what we don’t like because there’s usually an emotional, visceral reaction to it.

Better communications is understanding that it’s not going be perfect. There are going to be fights. Whether it’s a client or an employee, there are going to be fights. You’re making sure that there’s enough equity getting those little wins first that when you do go to the fight and you’re in that relationship, you’re both willing to work through it. Even when there is that fight, you’re being able to communicate.

One of the things that stood out to me that you said was when they sent that email. The designer wasn’t happy and account manager probably wasn’t happy, but nobody went and blasted the client back and said, “You’re wrong. You suck. You’re an idiot.” It was like, “Let’s sit down and have a conversation like two civilized human beings.” You started with, “What’s good about it?” You heard them, but then you were also able to point out probably a lot of the other things that they didn’t. For me, it sounds like so much of dating your clients is so similar to relationships. They’re all grounded in communication.

The other thing I’ll throw in there is for your audience that’s looking for a little bit of a deeper dive in something, I’m sure you’re familiar with the psychological term of pattern interrupt. With pattern interrupt, I tend to live my life by them. Most people have a script already written. The idea is that, I know what a fight should have. I immediately go into my comfort zone.

People behave in patterned ways. The brain doesn’t like change all that much. It likes novelty. It doesn’t love change. The reality is that people approach situations and those patterns. Patterns are not typically rational. When we interrupt the pattern, what happens is it forces you to think in the now and not think from the past. There’s a difference there.

When we interrupt the pattern, it forces you to think in the now and not think from the past. Click To Tweet

When I get on the phone with the client who is accustomed, their expectation is, “You send me your best and then I tell you all the things I want changed.” That’s their expectation. When I can pattern interrupt, get on a telephone call, and say, “I’m so glad that you’re out on the call today. I wanted to sit and talk about all the things you love about our work.” That’s such a pattern interrupt for the client because that’s not what they expect to hear. It makes them go off script. Their script is they printed out the email they sent and we were going to talk about all the things they told us needed change. They’re forced into stopping and going, “Did you say talk about all of the things you loved about my work?”

I can picture this. I see it in marital situations and whatnot, too. You and your wife get into a fight and your wife’s like, “You fill in the blank.” You’re like, “That’s great.” I love to reply, “First, I need you to tell me two things you love about me.” You can imagine her response. She’s like, “What the heck are you talking about things I love about you? I told you how angry I am.” I’m like, “I know, but there are two reasons you love me. I need you to tell me them.” I will reply with what we’re talking about here. Those types of pattern interrupts are complete game changers in conversations. The more novel you can make a conversation, the more present the other person becomes. That’s true in so many ways.

When I go in for a job interview, what do I expect? I bring a copy of a resume. I wear my best outfit. You show up in the meeting room ten minutes late. You tell me how busy you are. We expect all of these things. The more novel you can make it, the more intriguing it is for the other person. To your audience, as you’re recruiting new people, quit doing it the way everyone else does it. Find a pattern that breaks their expectations. I guarantee you they’ll remember you. I guarantee you that novelty, they will assume, is not a one-time event. It’s a novelty that continues. Break those patterns. Sit down in an interview.

I’ve started interviews and deliberately do it different all the time. I’ll start an interview going, “Before I start asking you questions, I want you to start.” The person looks at you like, “I don’t know much about the job.” I’m like, “You’re searching for an employer. I’m interviewing you. You’re interviewing me. You start.” Sometimes, it’s enough to break that ice to change that pattern a little bit.

There are many things here, and then there are probably so much more in the book. We’ve only had a short little time together and you wrote a whole book about this concept of being able to date your clients. There are probably so much more that our audience can get. For those of you that have heard something in here, go check out the book. It’s available on Amazon. There’s also a website.

You had also mentioned too, if anybody’s interested in having a conversation with you or your team about ways you can help them with their marketing, being able to even date their clients a little bit more, or have better relationship with their clients, you said you had an offer form. I’d love for you to tee that up.

Thank you. I love building relationships with people. The entire premise of our book is to value the relational over the transactional. That’s the same way I want to be. I’m not trying to offer a transaction to anybody, but I want to offer a relationship to anybody. Reach out. My website for the book is DateYourClients.com. You can reach me at [email protected].

The book is available on Amazon. I tell anybody to go pick up a copy of it. You’ll enjoy it. It’s a fun read. It’s a business book. It’s not boring. At the same time, reach out to me. Let me know what I can do to support your business in whatever way possible. Ryze Agency is my marketing agency, but go to DateYourClients.com and reach out to me. We’ll talk. I answer that inbox myself. If anybody wants to talk, they’re getting directly through to me.

That’s great. Thank you so much. Take him up on that offer. What an incredible offer. He is a published author that knows what they’re talking about and knows how to create better client relationships. The truth is we all need that all the time. We were able to do it quite well in this episode here. It’s all going to translate to all your other relationships as well, even your employee relationships, and talking about dating, maybe even some personal ones as well. Thank you so much for being here. I enjoyed it.

Thanks so much. I appreciate the time.

 

Important Links

 

About Mark Young

BCC 83 | Date Your ClientsWell, it is fairly hard to draw a straight line through the trajectory of my career, but I am happy to have ended up in a place where all of it makes sense. Having been an entrepreneur for many years, both past and current, I understand the unique challenges which face small business owners and enjoy every minute of watching a plan come together and launch the next great success story.

Whether it is sales coaching, marketing, branding, leadership, product development, or just business consulting, my unique combination of experience and education lend themselves to a well-rounded menagerie of input. At the core, of course, is the overarching theme of quality and ROI.

 

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://bluecollarculture.com/podcast/

 

Inspiring Your Team To Connect With Your Mission With Tony Martignetti

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BCC 82 | Inspiring Your Team

 

If you want to inspire your team to work harder and better, you need to give them a mission that they align with. Make them know that they are creating meaningful work. No one wants to do something without any greater purpose behind that. As a leader, it’s your job to want to make sure that you understand your people. Start having honest conversations with them because that is key to inspiration. Join Ryan Englin as he talks to Tony Martignetti, founder of Inspired Purpose Coaching. Listen in as they talk about how you can inspire your people as a business owner or leader. Know how you can have a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset. Discover how you can give your employees a meaningful mission today!

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Inspiring Your Team To Connect With Your Mission With Tony Martignetti

When it comes to building a great team, it’s not only important you find great people. You got to find people that are inspired by what you’re doing, aligned to what you’re doing and want to move in the same direction that you’re moving. This might sound or feel a little touchy-feely. Our guest and I are going to talk about that and why it’s so important you’re able to connect and inspire the people you have on your team.

It will not only make you a better leader or help you to raise new leaders but it will also help you to achieve all of your goals in business. Whether it is to grow the company, increase profits or impact the world. Our guest is an inspired purpose coach. The name of his company is Inspired Purpose Coach. He is working directly with leaders who not only need inspiration but aspire to be more. My guest is Tony Martignetti. His goal in helping to change the way these companies’ cultures work and these leaders operate is so inspiring to me. I’m excited about this episode. Thank you so much for being here. Let’s jump right into the show.

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Tony, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. I’m thrilled to be here.

I’m excited about our topic. It’s no secret, I’m into the people part of business and you’re into the people part of the business. I’m looking forward to our conversation. Tell me, what is the biggest myth about your industry?

I usually wrap this up in one particular quote. “Amateurs compete and professionals create.” When we get into this industry, it feels as though we are so unique and we have to make sure that we stand out in this crowd. We have to be very close in how we show up in the world. The reality is we can make a much bigger pie if we talk with each other. We talk to other people in our field, collaborate and make a bigger pie. That applies to pretty much any industry when you’re out there. If you try to be the person who’s constantly competing, then you’re missing out on the chance to create something bigger.

Amateurs compete. Professionals create. Click To Tweet

There are so many truths and metaphors in life that we could apply to what you said there. I do see that. My focus is on helping these small business owners get talent and attract the best people. They always feel like they’re competing against everybody else. The one thing they all compete on is the dollar. I don’t know how you feel about it because we were getting to know each other but I don’t believe it’s ever about the money. You work with business owners and leaders all the time that have this mindset of competition versus creation. What do you see are the differences between those two groups? What bridge did that create group crossover to stop thinking about competing and start thinking about creating?

It comes down to this fixed versus growth mindset. It’s adapting this idea, “I don’t have all the answers. I can get out there and start to learn from others,” including my clients. There are some things that I learn by getting out and doing stuff. I think about some of the businesses that I’ve been involved with and helped coach along the way.

There are pivots that we create by putting out something and asking people very vulnerably like, “What do you think of this? Should I do X or Y? Did you like this or that? How can that inform the next step?” It’s a powerful way to look at the world. If you feel like you have to have everything perfect, from the moment you exit your stage of launching, it can be challenging.

It does take an element of humility to be able to ask those questions and look to support from others. It’s so unfortunate but as a society and a culture here, especially in the United States, humility has been looked at as a bad thing. We forget that there are people that have climbed the mountain in front of us and that have a wealth of knowledge that if we would ask could support us.

I love what you bring up there because I’m going to build from that to say courage and humility are the two most important traits that anyone can adopt to be successful. It takes courage to get started and humility to keep going. I call that the humility advantage and see it as, “I don’t have to be a leader.” You don’t have to have all the answers. You have to be okay with asking for help.

BCC 82 | Inspiring Your Team
Inspiring Your Team: Courage and humility are the two most important traits that you can adapt to be successful. It takes courage to get started and humility to keep going.

 

I find that a lot of times, they say it’s very lonely at the top. Talk to a lot of people that are in these high-level leadership positions, whether they own the company or they’re helping run the company. It feels very lonely for them. They don’t know who else to go to. They think that gritting through it, figuring it out and throwing stuff up against the wall until something sticks are the way to do it but there are so many ways to move into that creative mindset by surrounding yourself with great people.

It’s funny you mention that because I have my podcast too, which I’ll briefly mention. It’s called the Virtual Campfire. Almost every person who’s come on the show are people who have created amazing things in the world but almost every person who’s come on has mentioned the fact, “I wouldn’t be able to be here without them or there have been champions. People who believed in me first before I could believe in myself,” which I am a strong component of this idea that people have to believe in you along the journey for you to have that confidence and continue along the way.

You’re all about helping leaders inspire their teams and others. You inspire them. If we’re thinking about this, my passion is helping companies create amazing teams by creating positive work environments, which for so many small and medium-sized businesses, they’ve forgotten that there are human beings that come in and do the work every single day. They’re not just employees. They’re moms, dads, sisters, brothers, parents and kids.

They’re real-life people with real-life stuff going on. We forget about what I call the human condition. We forget that they’re real-life human beings. They have hopes, goals, dreams and aspirations but they need inspiration. They need something from their leaders. Often, these employees are turning to the leaders in their workplace to get what they’re not getting at school, at home and all that stuff. Feel free to throw them out there and then we’ll dig into them. What are a couple of things that people can do to inspire their team and others around them?

Before I get into the exact things they can do, I’ll start by saying, it’s also a part of being inspired by the people around you. It goes two ways. You don’t have to be this font of inspiration. It’s also about making sure that you bring people into your organization who inspire you to do the work that you do too. It’s like the self-generating process of continuing the wheel of progress in an organization where inspiration flows both ways. I’ll get back to answering your question.

The point is to enroll them in a meaningful mission. You want to make sure that there’s something behind all of the stuff that you’re doing that lights their fire and creates a spark in them that says, “Why are we doing this? What is the reason behind creating this business, showing up to work every day that continues to light them up and lights me up as the leader of the organization?” You have to remind them of that on an ongoing basis. It’s not a one-and-done. That is a never mission that is completed. Continue to find ways to light that spark and keep it lit throughout the day, weeks and months. That’s one thing. The other thing is to make sure that you understand your people.

BCC 82 | Inspiring Your Team
Inspiring Your Team: If you want to inspire your team, you have to enroll them in a mission that is meaningful. You want to make sure that there’s something behind what they are doing that really lights their fire.

 

Check-in with them and ask them, “What is it that you want more of in what we’re doing here? What is it that you would like to see more of an organization? It’s not just about what I want. It’s about what you want. I want to create an environment that fosters a mission that we all get excited about.” Make sure that you’re checking in. It’s not about the kumbaya type of stuff but asking them, “What are the challenges that get you almost a little bit fearful that we can’t make that happen outside of the comfort zone of where we are?”

As a leader, it’s giving and enrolling them in the mission. It’s your job to figure out what the mission is. However, it’s important that you understand what your people want and that they’re bought into the mission. If the mission doesn’t align with their goals, you might have a problem long-term or even short-term.

This is where some leaders come into an organization and feel like, “I’ve started the company. My work is done. All I have to do is continue to check the box and move forward.” That work is never done. You have to constantly be thinking, “What’s next? What’s on the horizon? How am I going to continue to challenge myself and the people around me to continue to feel excited?” I said fearful because there should be a little bit of scariness in what’s ahead that keeps the fire lit and doesn’t get people complacent. If you feel you’ve already arrived, then you no longer have that fire in you that says, “What’s the point and the next thing?”

If there’s not that next step of discomfort that says, “We’re going to grow and connect at a deeper level,” why fight for anything?

You should always be feeling like there’s something that’s on the horizon that’s keeping you on the edge of your seat and you have a growth edge that you’re continuing to strive for.

It’s a healthy fear. Not the fear where it’s like, “Am I going to have a job tomorrow?” That’s not what we’re talking about so we’re clear. Almost discomfort because people don’t like change. We know this. I talk about this book all the time. One of my favorite coffee table books is Change is Good. You go first. That’s one of my favorites. It’s that fear or anticipation of, “It will be a little different tomorrow,” but in a good way is what you’re talking about.

It comes back to this whole concept where you might have heard of healthy conflict. You don’t want a culture that constantly makes everyone feel like, “This is a nice place. Everyone’s so nice. We make each other happy.” That’s all great but it’s not going to move the needle in terms of creating a path forward or progressing forward. You want healthy conflict that allows people to feel like they can disagree and because they disagree, that allows them to build on ideas, the yes and ideas that move them in the direction of progress.

You want to create a culture of healthy conflict that allows people to feel like they can disagree. Click To Tweet

The truth is if you and I agree on everything, one of us is unnecessary.

I love that but I’m going to stay on the call for a little longer.

I’m learning. This is great. Talk about this idea of mission. There are so many different ways we can go but take it wherever you think it makes sense. How do we do this? I get the communication side of it. That’s not what I’m talking about. How do we come up with a mission that is going to inspire our people to get up and do what they’ve got to do every single day? I’m sure there’s probably the big long version of it but what are some things people can do to make that happen?

First and foremost, if it’s something that you can do on your own and you don’t need people to do it, then you’ve got no mission and you just have a personal goal that can be achieved. You have to have something big enough that requires you to enlist a lot of people in it. If your mission is big enough that it requires you to build a team around it and that team needs to do a lot of heavy lifting to get it done, then you’ve got a meaningful mission. You want one that is going to serve to create something meaningful in terms of the impact that you would be proud to have as part of your legacy, both personally and as a company.

Do you have 1 example or 2 that you could share with some of the companies you’ve worked with? That way, we get the creative juices flowing as we’re thinking about what is that mission that’s bigger than me.

I’ll start by saying that I came from the biotech industry. I worked in an industry that was all about saving lives. We always had the patient at the center of everything we did. Every decision was based on, “There’s a person who’s waiting for us to do something that will help save their lives.” There’s a lot on the line for what we were doing but that’s not what I’ll share.

There’s one particular company that comes to mind that is working on de-extinction, which means bringing back to life certain species that have been extinct. The reason why is because it’s about saving the planet. There are climate change implications for some of these extinction events that are so important to bring us back into balance with our planet. It sounds like science fiction but this is the reality. The reason why these particular goals and missions are important is that it gets everyone thinking, “What is possible? Can we do this from scientific reasoning?” Also from a, “Should we do this? Are we the right people to do this?”

It’s spurring that creativity and that yes and type of culture by having this mission. It’s one of those things. I’m listening to you talk about this mission and I’m like, “I don’t know that one company is going to be able to pull that off.” It’s a lot bigger than that.

Yes. When you think about that mission, it’s massive but also game-changing. It requires you to get people thinking, “We need to do this as a collective whole.” It’s going to have an impact on society at large. We can start one person at a time bringing the right people into this environment to make that impact.

I feel like that’s a little bit of what Simon Sinek talks about in The Infinite Game with his just cause. We don’t know who the players are, how we are going to keep score and how we’re going to win but we know where we’re going. We’ll never know when we get there because it’s infinite. It keeps going but we’re moving our industry, society and culture in that direction for everybody to win. That’s fantastic.

If you’re not in biotech and you’re not going to be saving the world, that’s okay. Your mission doesn’t have to be that big. I think about the mission of my church. They’re only focused on the Phoenix area. I’m out in Phoenix, Arizona and they’re like, “We want to introduce Jesus to the people in Phoenix.” That’s it. Your mission doesn’t have to be changed the world.

It could just impact a community but it’s such a big thing that there are so many opportunities that people can rally behind it. I love it because when you’re clear about your mission, not only do you know how to but you communicate it regularly. This is where I get passionate about it. It’s going to be so much easier for you to attract great people and keep them on your team.

It is a ripple effect too. The key word around this is the people. One thing about the mission so far that I haven’t connected to is, “What are you doing for the people who come join your organization? Are you leaving them better off than you found them?” I love to think of this whole idea of bringing people into an organization, not just engaging them in the mission but maybe even enriching them, leaving them better off than you found them. When you think of that mission, there’s something about that which is saying to people, “Come join this cause because you will also be left not just an impact beyond society but also on yourself, leaving you with a positive impact on yourself.”

BCC 82 | Inspiring Your Team
Inspiring Your Team: When you think about your mission, think about what you are doing for the people who come to join your organization. Are you leaving them better off than you found them?

 

To do that, you got to do the second takeaway you gave us. You’ve got to understand your people and understand what they want. I’ve got little kids at home. When my kids don’t want to do something, trust me, there is nothing I can do or say to get them to do it. How do you do that? I’m sure it is probably going to be one of those duh things. How do you understand your people and figure out what they want?

It starts with committing to get to know them. Not just doing this on the surface but getting to know them on an intimate level. I’ve thought about this concept of not having people check themselves at the door when they come into the workplace. We need to understand what lights or fires them. What are their hobbies? What are the things they do outside of work that make them who they are? If we look at them as to, “This is a person who does numbers, inventory and what have you,” we’re missing a huge portion of what makes them who they are.

They’re a holistic person. Understanding, what are their hobbies? Are they a person who enjoys volunteering at a homeless shelter? Are they someone who enjoys playing an instrument? Celebrating them for who they are as a whole allows them to bring their whole self into that work and allows you to understand what are the causes that get them excited. If they’re not willing to bring them their whole self in, it’s not necessarily just on them. It’s also on you because you’re not giving them a space where they feel like they want to bring themselves.

It’s funny you’re talking about this. I got a couple of clients in mind that I’m picturing them reading this and going, “It’s all this warm and fuzzy touchy feeling stuff. Stop it. I’m not interested in that.” This is where I love it. You have to understand that human beings are the soft side of the business. We’re the warm, fuzzy, squishy part of the business. People are not cogs in a machine but so often, we treat them that way. They come in, do numbers and if they don’t do numbers well, we replace them. Maybe they don’t do numbers well because they’re dealing with some issues at home. That’s the part that so many people miss.

I hear people tell me all the time, “I wish my employees would care as much as I do.” I’m like, “Your employees could probably even care more than you do.” If you don’t care about the fact that they’re leaving their friends, their family and the things they do for fun at home while they come to work for you, if you don’t care about the fact that they might be going through some personal struggles and challenges, if you don’t care about those things, how you ever going to get them to care about your business?

Care is at the center of that. When you show people how much you care about them, they will reciprocate. They will show you how much they care about the cause and you. They will do things that you wouldn’t have normally expected them to do because you’re connecting with them on a human basis, not just a worker basis. They’re not workers. They’re humans.

When you show people how much you care about them, they will reciprocate and show how much they care about the cause. Click To Tweet

They are human beings with hope, goals and dreams. It’s funny. I was expecting to say, “If you want to know what your people want, ask them.”

Thanks for bringing it back to basics. That’s exactly it. Ask them.

I don’t know if you’ve read The Dream Manager.

No, I haven’t.

It’s by Matthew Kelly. It’s a fantastic book with short hundred pages. He knows who his audience is. It’s a little business fable but he talks about the idea of finding out what your employees want. All these leaders are sitting around at the conversation table like, “How do we do this?” The new guy raises his hand and says, “Why don’t we ask him?” They’re like, “What? Ask him? That’s absurd. You mean ask them?” The sad part is we have lots of clients to do this. They ask their employees, “What do you want? How do you line to the vision?” They always get, “I don’t know.”

It’s funny because most employers have never asked. They don’t know how to answer because no one’s ever asked them. They never had to think about it. I’m going to throw this out there. If you do decide to do this and you want to understand your people and enroll them in a mission, you got to be patient with them because they’re not used to it.

I want to add one little thing because what you’re speaking about is so powerful. My tagline for my business is, “Inspiration through honest conversation.” The crux of all that is to say, “Where does inspiration come from?” It comes from this idea of getting deeper in the conversation and having an honest conversation with the people around you. I often say that honest conversation starts with yourself.

Inspiration comes from having honest conversations. And, honest conversations always start with yourself. Click To Tweet

That goes back to, “Who’s the toughest person on the planet to lead?” It’s yourself. People want to follow a leader. They naturally do but to get ourselves to follow ourselves, that’s hard. I’m going to resist that all the time. It’s not easy but it’s simple. Enroll them in a mission, find out what they want and align to the mission. You will inspire and motivate people. You will create better teams and have better workplace dynamics. You’ll probably have a better business, ultimately more profitable because when your people are happy, they’re more productive. Productive employees usually are more profitable employees. It all rolls down to the bottom line.

There are a lot of people that aren’t doing this because it’s not easy. You got to look in the mirror and say, “What is it we want to do? What do we want to accomplish? How do we want to get there? Whom do we want to take with us?” What’s one thing that our readers can do? Maybe even by the end of the day, if they’re reading this, they could go back to their office, sit down and do this thing to move them in the right direction, almost that first domino that they get to knock over. What is something they could do?

I love this particular model of thinking because this one is where we get most stuck. I use this analogy, “Expand your vision. Narrow your focus.” The reason why I say that is because no matter what challenge you’re facing, it’s probably because you’re not looking at it as widely as you could. When I say expand your vision, it’s like, “If I’m stuck on a problem or not seeing things away that I want to see them, maybe I need to step away from my current viewpoint and expand it.”

“Look differently and wider. Look at the problem from a different angle. When I do that, I see new possibilities arise. With those new possibilities, I have to then decide the next step that I want to investigate and explore.” When you do that, narrow the focus and think, “What is that next thing that’s going to take my focus?” Do that. Move forward in that direction. That’s taking an experimental view of your path forward. If it doesn’t work out, that’s okay, at least you had taken action in that direction.

As you were talking about that, it got me thinking because it is. It’s tough. When you’re inside that jar, it’s hard to read the label. Sometimes being able to expand your vision can be difficult when you’re stuck in a jar. I got to think of this. It probably aligns back to everything you do. Why don’t you bring in some of your other leaders and ask for their opinion? Ask them to help you find their vision.

I was thinking about my daughter. She comes home every day like, “Daddy, I want to work with you.” We’re working on some things. I’m working on her mindset and the way she thinks about some things and teaching her about people. That’s what we do. I forget what it was but she’s like, “Daddy, how can I help you?” I go, “I’m struggling with this.” She’s like, “Daddy, why don’t you do that?” I’m like, “It’s because I didn’t think about that.”

It was the most basic day. It reminds me. I forget there was a movie I watched. She’s like, “Why don’t you say I’m sorry?” I’m like, “I don’t know why.” It was so simple, basic and easy to do because I could see that. I’m going to sit down and expand my vision but I’m still in that box. Bring in others, get an outside perspective and ask your kids. The way they sell things is crazy but that’s fantastic. There is so much here that we could unpack.

People are reading going, “I want to inspire my people and create better leaders. I want to be a better leader.” How do they learn more about what it is that you do? How do they get ahold of you if they want to consume more information? You got a short book that probably goes into some of this stuff but you’ve got some other things too. Talk about that. I believe you got a giveaway for our readers.

First and foremost, thank you so much for doing this. This conversation has been powerful. I enjoyed it. The starting point is to go to the website, InspiredPurposeCoach.com. There, I share a lot of insights and different blog posts around some of the things that are on my mind that help to expand the way people think about the world. I love to have those insights out there.

BCC 82 | Inspiring Your Team
Climbing The Right Mountain: Navigating the Journey to an Inspired Life

The book is called Climbing The Right Mountain. It’s a book that packs a punch and is a very short read. I did that very intentionally. I wanted to make sure people could find a way to get unstuck and think, “Am I on the right path for me in my business? How do I get unstuck?” That’s what the book is all about. There are a couple of stories about climbing mountains but that’s not the intention. If you want to get started, that’s a place to go find me. I’m also very available on LinkedIn. You can find me there.

You’ve got an assessment too.

I sure do. That’s one of my free giveaways here. Go ahead and take the Leadership Journey Assessment, which is a great tool for someone to check in like, “Where am I? Where would I like to be?” You can find that assessment straight on the website homepage. You can go there and find it. If you take the assessment, what’ll happen is you’ll get some feedback almost immediately by getting a PDF read out of your report and also understanding what paths you can take from there. That’s the free giveaway and you can start from there.

If you want to be more inspired by surrounding yourself with people that inspire you, learn from Tony. There’s a wealth of knowledge there and tons of free information. It sounds like a great book. I love books about metaphors. Thank you so much, Tony. I enjoyed our conversation. There’s going to be some people out there going, “I got to sit down and figure out how to expand my vision so I can enroll people in a mission and align them to that mission by finding out what they want.” Fantastic takeaways. Thank you, Tony.

You’re so welcome. Thank you so much.

 

Important Links

 

About Tony Martignetti

BCC 82 | Inspiring Your Team

I am Tony Martignetti, a leadership coach, entrepreneur, idea generator, people connector, and a curious adventurer. I bring together practical experience, formal training, and extreme curiosity, to elevate leaders and equip them with the tools to navigate through change.

I love helping people find clarity in their lives, so they are energized, fully present, and unstoppable. When leaders unlock their potential and lead from a place of inspired purpose, they impact and inspire everyone around them. I have dedicated myself to helping people live a life of inspired purpose.

Before I became a coach, I was a finance and strategy professional with experience working with some of the world’s leading life sciences companies. Along my journey, I also managed small businesses and ran a financial consulting company.

As I share my story, I want to leave you with three key lessons I learned along the way to help you on your journey from where you are now to where you would like to be.

 

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://bluecollarculture.com/podcast/

 

Only 100 Pennies To Transform Your Culture With Alex Freytag

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BCC 81 | Transform Culture

 

As a business owner, you want to create the best possible work culture for your employees. One way to do that is by being transparent on the financial side of things. Start educating your employees about the business and what makes and doesn’t make a profit. Because when employees have the right information, culture just gets better on all fronts. Join Ryan Englin and Jeremy Macliver as they talk to Alex Freytag about sharing financial information to transform your culture and cultivate your workforce. Alex is the expert EOS implementer at EOS Worldwide. He is also the author of Profit Works, a book that teaches you how to maximize your company’s potential. Learn how to simplify incentive plans, improve profit, and develop culture. Start becoming a business leader of tomorrow!

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Only 100 Pennies To Transform Your Culture With Alex Freytag

In this episode, we are going to talk about something that I feel might drive some fear in the heart of our audience, especially if you own a business and you’ve got thin margins, which is not always a bad thing. Sometimes, that’s just the way the industry is. With hiring being so difficult and understanding what job seekers are looking for, we’re all looking for ways to differentiate and find new ways to attract and retain great people.

We are going to talk about ways you can simplify incentive plans where you create transparency with your team so they know exactly what they need to do to perform and generate results for your bottom line. Our guest is Alex Freytag. He wrote Profit Works. He is an EOS Implementer and has a wealth of knowledge. He has been doing this for decades and has worked with business owners all over the place in different industries. He knows what works and what doesn’t. Get ready to take some notes. Buckle up because we are going to talk about how you can create amazing incentive plans to motivate your workforce.

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Alex, I’m excited about this episode and to have you here. Welcome.

Thank you, Ryan and Jeremy, for inviting me.

It’s good to have you.

We’re going to talk a lot about how to get your employees to get excited about helping you drive your organization into positive territory, but before we get into that, what’s the biggest myth that owners tell themselves about what you do?

This is the biggest myth that I’ve been exposed to, and this is 26 years of overnight success. I’ve seen a lot of head trash or stories we tell ourselves, specifically in the frontline workforce. Probably the biggest myth is, “My people will never understand this stuff.” It’s just not my experience. When I do a presentation for groups of business owners, I say at the very end, “Whether you believe your employees will understand this stuff or you believe they won’t, you’re right.”

It becomes a mindset. When we’re talking about incentive plans and understanding how to drive profitability and that stuff, it sounds like it could get complex pretty quick, which is true but we’re not going down that path. We’re going to try and keep it at a pretty high level with enough information for your employees to be dangerous in driving improved profitability. They are smart and good people. They respect receiving the information.

BCC 81 | Transform Culture
Transform Your Culture: In the absence of information, people make things up. You have a choice as a business owner not to share anything. But then, whatever story you’re telling yourself will become your reality.

 

If I’m understanding this right, you’re saying that what causes us to make profits and not make profits, you can translate that to the entire organization and get them to understand it. I have to ask. That sounds scary. Why would I want to share that with my team?

There are a couple of reasons, Jeremy. The first one that comes to mind is in the absence of information, people make stuff up. You have a choice as a business owner to not share anything, but then whatever story they’re telling themselves, it’s going to become your reality. In my experience, I started surveying employees in ’96 when my brother and I started Profit Works. We would say, “What percent of sales would you guess for profits?”

These are frontline, under-educated, good people but they’ve never been exposed to this stuff. Their average guess is about 50% are what they think profit is up sales if they even know what profit is. For some, profit sales are the same thing. It’s not because they’re dumb. It’s because we haven’t told them. If you have employees walking around thinking the company is making 50% profit or this “us versus them” thing creeps in, there are consequences to a lack of transparency.

I’m not saying you open all the books, but you got to find your comfort point. When employees have the right information, they make better decisions at the moment. That has been my experience. There’s a bit of dignity there and an honorable thing to do to share the information that can help them do their jobs better, contribute, and be more actively participating in the financial side of the business.

We had a steel company and we asked that question. We were struggling to make profits. We were growing but we’re getting a lot of kickbacks. We’re an open and honest team. We had a big old group huddle on the shop floor. “If we make $100 in revenue and sell that, how much do we get to keep?” We had everybody write it down. We did end up with 50%. I think it was $37 out of every $100. We had some $50s.

When we told them, “We would be happy if it was $8,” they fell over. We could just hit $8. It’s the transformation there. I think also about a plumbing company. They are trying to get their guys to sell? They’re like, “You can buy this part for $10 at Home Depot. Go there.” It doesn’t quite translate. I love that you’re educating them. What is the number one thing that’s holding a business owner back from scarcity, not sharing to abundance, and everybody is engaged in driving towards it?

Whether you believe your employees will understand what you're talking about or you believe they won't, you're right. Click To Tweet

There are a couple of things that come to mind. One is finances can be a mess. You can run a lot of personal stuff through there. It’s a big mess. You don’t want to go there, which I get. Number two is the business owner thinks, “If I share this information with my employees, they’re going to want more money.” My experience was they were so surprised by how small actual profits are if it’s 5, 10 or 8 cents on the dollar. That’s before taxes usually. There’s a conversation in there as well.

They’re not thinking, “I want more money.” They’re thinking, “How do we drive it higher?” Ryan, you probably see this too in your experience with business owners. It’s lonely running the business. If we can enroll more of the folks to share the insomnia of what keeps you awake at night and have them thinking about the business like you do, thinking about opportunities, process improvement or moving something to technology that’s manual or whatever it might be, they will see things.

The ideas are sitting out there in your workforce. Our ability to tap into that untapped potential is huge. It’s a cool opportunity. It’s unique for business owners to do it. I would argue that it’s a bit leading edge to engage your folks, try to understand it and feel a part of it. They can find money that has fallen through the cracks in the business, which is such a relief for the business owners to feel like they’re on a team.

It reminds me of a client I worked with a few years back in construction. They were talking about selling the business to the kids. I was like, “Do your kids even want it?” They’re like, “I don’t know.” We went and talked to the kids. The kids were like, “Yes because I know mom and dad have a private yacht and an airplane somewhere.” They are rolling in the dough.

This is a company that if they hit double-digit profits, they were stoked. It’s a $12 million to $15 million a year company. Of course, there are millions of dollars in the bank that they’re hiding from the kids. The kids were so excited to be able to get their hands on it. After the kids found out that it wasn’t that profitable, they’re like, “Maybe I’ll be okay working here for a little bit until I figure out what’s next.”

You draw a good point toward the risk. The whole risk-return equation is not broadcast or taught in schools. People get in and don’t think about all the risks and the sleepless nights that you’ve had as an entrepreneur, the bank, the mortgage, and all these kinds of things. In reality, we expect a return on our investment, but it’s not without all that risk that’s taken. That’s a great place to start with folks because employees are investors too in certain ways. They might own a house. They might even have a car or things that they’ve invested in. They expect a return on that investment.

BCC 81 | Transform Culture
Transform Your Culture: There’s a bit of an art form to what you share with whom, how often, and how much detail. You have to know what to share with your employees without getting them too uncomfortable.

 

That whole risk-return basic element of our capitalist system is true. All returns come from profit. There’s an element of teaching folks around profit as a driver for that return on investment. It’s one element of what we do with profit. Even if it’s 20% of the bottom line, we’ve got to pay taxes, provide a return on investment for taking all the risk, reinvest in the business, pay down debt and take care. When those kids in the construction company are thinking about all that stuff, it is a real eye-opener. It’s like, “There’s a lot of stuff going on in this game here that we didn’t know about.”

The irony of that is the kids are close to mom and dad. They’re connected. You would think that they would be getting it. Maybe you could share a story of an owner that went from one to the other so we can visualize that. Kids are struggling and they’re right there. You can only expect how much less the employee is seeing.

The way I picture it is that if you can picture a line, a spectrum or a continuum. On one end of the continuum is a closed book, not sharing anything with anybody like kids or employees. On the other end is radical transparency. What those parents in that construction company were doing was they were shielding their kids probably from some of the harsh realities of risk and the things that make them sweat. There’s somewhere in the middle there just with the kids.

I had a big a-ha. There’s a bell curve sitting on top of that transparency where performance is the up and down access. If you don’t share any information, people are in danger in their comfort zone. If you share too much information, people freak out and run around scared because they’re like, “I didn’t know if all of this was true.” Somewhere in the middle, there are higher levels of performance when people have the right information.

There’s a bit of an art form to what you share, with whom, how often, and how much detail. We try to coach clients through what to share without getting them too uncomfortable but the whole transparency piece is interesting. I had one client in Florida. She has a company that does pump systems for pools. There’s a group of employees who are out in the field and trucks with lots of equipment doing jobs, all these informs, and going through it. She maybe has 30 employees and had never shared any information. We met during a Vistage talk I was doing several years ago.

We started working together. Went through the whole education process, designing an incentive plan for her organization. She decided to pay the incentive plan out equally to all employees. If it’s $30,000 and there are 30 people, everybody gets $1,000. It was easy to administer. She eventually changed it to the percentage of wages. It was very interesting to watch her culture transform over a period of years. She eventually sold it to the employees. It was cool that the culture, she had done right. The profits were there and the employees understood what it means to be an owner. It was a fun case study across.

When employees have the right information, they make better decisions at the moment. Click To Tweet

What are two actions that the audience could take to enter into this and begin the journey?

If they’re running on EOS, which is a more frequent occurrence these days, they’re probably in some sort of meeting discipline where they’re meeting with the employees, hopefully with a recorder doing a state of a company meeting or something like that. In those meetings, it’s all hands. You’re doing where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going kind of stuff. They could begin to share the scoreboard.

If you think of business as a game. If you’re playing football and you can’t see the scoreboard, it’s not nearly as fun. You don’t know if you’re winning. You’re just like a pawn in there. When you start to help everybody become aware of what winning looks like at the company and you’re sharing that, you start to enroll them in the game a bit more. It becomes more fun for everybody.

You’re providing them with tools, resources, training, and things to help them become more actively engaged in the game. Scorecards, measurables, departmental meetings, and those kinds of disciplines are great tools that employees can use to affect their scores. There’s a weak link often between the choices or the activities that employee does every day, especially the frontline folks. They come, do the job and go home.

To this degree, they start to create a stronger link between their activities and the score at the end of the game. It’s a lot more interesting and there are a lot higher levels of employee retention. The employees are curious and appreciate being asked their opinion on things. You can start to evolve that culture slowly.

In that state of the company, to answer your question more directly, you can start to share a very simplified version. I use sales minus expenses equals profit. It’s three lines. You could break it down into maybe five where sales minus direct costs equal gross profit and then maybe stay there. You don’t have to go to the bottom line. Help the employees to understand how we affect the cost of sales, labor and materials typically. If they see that it’s 30% or 40%, they could start to help you with that. That’s one idea.

BCC 81 | Transform Culture
Transform Your Culture: Attract higher-quality candidates who want to work at places where they’re respected, and their information is shared. Have high expectations of performance. Earning attracts earning.

 

What would be something else?

The one activity that has been a home run for companies is called the 100 Pennies Exercise. I talk about it in the book. You lay out 100 pennies and ask somebody to come up and remove the pennies that they think are labor and materials out of the 100 pennies. You get to your gross margin there. You have somebody else come up that removes all the pennies that are SG&A or operating expenses or the indirect costs. There are 5 pennies left or sometimes 8 pennies as in your example, Jeremy. That’s a cool exercise. It doesn’t cost you a lot. It’s a huge a-ha for most people.

The first time you do it, you’re like, “There’s no way. It’s baloney.” It’s like, “No. This is true. This is before taxes.” You have to do it. People have to hear that seven times for them to hear it for the first time. Once you got the seven times there, they start to realize, “This is the way it works.” You can share industry averages as well if you have that data and show them, “It’s not just us. Our industry is 5% to 10%. We are the best in class. We should be 10% or 12%. We don’t want to be mediocre or average.” Those are a couple of exercises. They’re in the book Profit Works. We have a class online where they could easily watch videos.

Some of what you’re saying and I hear you talking about it for the whole company, that 30 or 150 employees. How many times have you used the leadership team? How many times have you seen that working with clients like, “This sales guy or sales leader knows how we make profits.”

It’s a great way to think about the project. If your ultimate goal is to cascade it throughout the organization, you’ve got to think about those milestones like, “Let’s get the leadership team exposed to this.” To a degree, everybody who is on the leadership team can teach the folks who are also leaders. Maybe they’re not on the leadership team but they have to lead, manage and hold people accountable below them. If we can teach them, there will be the conduit for that front line often.

We want business literacy or financial profit education to become a part of the expectation of being a good boss. You should understand the basics of a profit and loss income statement. What’s the difference between profit and cash? To your point, Jeremy, if we can teach the leadership team first and enroll them, it’s a great way. You can do this over a period of months and quarters. In year two, you start going deeper into the organization and so forth. It is a worthwhile endeavor because it starts to build a culture of appreciation, trust, enrollment and engagement by everybody in the organization. It is a long-term cultural shift.

If you're playing a game and can't see the scoreboard, it's not nearly as fun. You don't know if you're winning. So when you help everybody be aware of what winning looks like, it becomes more fun. Click To Tweet

You’re building pay plans from all of this. I love to shift it over. You have a whole scorecard. I would love to talk a little bit about the mindsets that are going on, and then maybe move it into what we’re working around helping them hire. How does this change the whole underneath of the business essentially? If you want to share a little bit about the scorecard and high level, I would love to know that.

This isn’t for everybody. The mindset scorecard is a strategic coach tool. I did some thinking and research on the eight mindsets that I see in our best case studies. A lot of them are in alignment with our core values, which is interesting, but being disciplined around data, running on an operating system, having a sense of teamwork, comradery, and wanting that. The scorecard asks you, “Where are you now on these eight mindsets and where do you want to be?”

One of the key ones that people tend to have an a-ha is around transparency and what they historically have shared, if it’s a family business, what their folks shared, which was usually nothing, and then what they want to share. They typically want to share more and maybe aren’t quite sure how to do it. That’s an interesting conversation to have.

We’re not pushing people to open all the books and everything, but there are consequences either way. It depends on what you want from your business and culture. A scorecard is a thinking tool for the entrepreneur. It’s in the back of the book. It’s also online. It’s one of the free resources. You can take that and do some things. It can probably take seven minutes to take it and it spits back like, “This is where we are, this is where you want to be, and here are some ideas.”

One thing I liked about it is as an entrepreneur, you’re wondering, “Do I have what’s in it?” It makes it simple to look at it and say, “Everything here, I have the foundation and the core principles,” or as said, the core values of that. “I have those but I’m not getting what I want.” Seeing where we’re at made it so much so that someone is like, “I could do this and go for it.”

One of the most critical words to this whole psychology is the word simple. Whether it’s incentive plan design or teaching business and finance to people, we’ve got to keep it simple. You could easily make it super complex but as we say in the US, the art is in the simplicity of it, even an iPhone or something. It looks simple but there’s a lot of work that goes into making it look simple.

BCC 81 | Transform Culture
Profit Works: Unravel the Complexity Of Incentive Plans To Increase Employee Productivity, Cultivate An Engaged Workforce, And Maximize Your Company’s Potential

We tried to make the book simple because a lot of visionaries and entrepreneurs don’t have the attention span like me. They don’t have time for it. It’s a 2.5-hour listen unless you’re on 1.25 or faster. You can get through it a lot, but keeping it simple is very core to our philosophy of incentive plan design. If it’s simple, it’s easy to communicate with people and easy for them to understand. There’s more trust in simplicity. The same thing goes with business literacy and educational pieces to keep it simple.

One of the things you said in one of the masterclasses I watched you do is this is about shaping behavior and making sure that your team is behaving in a way that’s going to either increase revenue or lower expenses. I love your example about how they can participate in the expense reduction. Everybody can. It’s not just the sales team. Usually, some people are like, “I don’t know how to drive revenue. I’m just a frontline employee.” You can at least be honest about your hours. You can clock in and clock out on time. You can stop grabbing a couple of sodas for the drive home. There are a whole bunch of ways as a frontline employee where you can reduce those expenses.

One of the things I remember thinking going through this as an owner myself is, “This sounds awesome.” When we get there at the end, it’s going to be great but there’s this journey that has to happen. It’s like the example you gave about the gal that had 30 employees. It was years of transformation inside her culture and her company before she was ready to exit to her employees. This isn’t something that you wake up one day and say, “I’m going to be a transparent and open book and give everybody this. Everybody is going to be happy and it’s going to work perfectly.” This is something that takes time to get right.

It’s a shift and glacial. There will be little data points along the way where one of your employees asked you a question that a year ago they never would ask. That’s a great indicator that something is sinking in there. I was on a call with a company and the HR guy said, “What can my frontline guy do in the field? They’re not going to be able to drive different costs down.” He was addressing me. The owner said, “They can upsell and offer a filter and these other products,” and some of the things. He gives examples.

There are so many opportunities. These are little decisions that folks can make in the field to drive. Those pennies add up. It becomes a behavioral shift. We define the ideal purpose of the incentive plan, which is the financial carrot that’s out there. It’s not the only thing that’s causing behavioral change, but the ideal incentive plan should shape employee behavior toward improving the financial performance of the company.

It’s not in isolation. It’s not the only thing that’s doing that. It’s got to be buffered with education, reinforcement, meetings, communication and data. If I pull this lever, does the cost go up or down? It’s that kind of thing. It gives them a response and that’s our duty. That takes time. On the accountability chart, those bullets in each of those seats are an element or representation of time. We got to spend time teaching it, reinforcing it, and not getting tired of it. Lencioni calls a Chief Reminding Officer, “They’re going to think I’m being repetitive but I’m telling you, they don’t remember what you said 90 days ago.”

When teaching business or finance, just keep it simple. There's more trust in simplicity. Click To Tweet

That’s a key piece too. What I heard you say was there are going to be things, setbacks, and times you have to repeat stuff, remind people, and all the other stuff. As the owner, this is already probably scary for them thinking about this process, but don’t let that fear or those setbacks get in the way of you moving forward to the final thing. Something we see happens a lot is that we know hiring is hard and retaining people is difficult.

Someone told me, “Business would be amazing if it weren’t for the people.” There’s a lot of truth in that, except that what creates the business is the people. For the people that get through that fear and they see the value in being able to get their team to embrace it, transform their culture, get their teams to work on both the revenue and the expense side of the equation to help drive more profits, what is your experience is that we are in one of the most difficult hiring spaces we’ve been in a long time? How does something like this help you differentiate your business? Have you seen 1 or 2 examples of how people were able to use this and being able to bring in more quality hires as well?

It starts on the front end of the hiring process to discuss concepts like cash, profit and understanding that we are running a business. It’s not a not-for-profit. We have to have something down the bottom line to move toward the future. Look at the best places to work surveys. I’m in Columbus, Ohio. A lot of the folks that are winning that type of recognition, typically are serving the entire workforce when they get the data back and compile it.

It’s employee engagement and participation. Hopefully, it’s not just coaching them. They take the survey because we want to show up here and try to attract more candidates. There might be some of those but the bulk of the folks who are getting that type of recognition is attracting higher-quality candidates who want to work at places where they’re respected and their information is shared. We know the winning or losing. They’re working with companies, employees or coworkers that are aligned with their core values. They’re not going into a toxic environment.

A lot of the process, not only in the US but also in Profit Works, pulls out is this, I don’t want to use the word safe environment but it’s not fear-based. There are high expectations of performance. If you come in here, we’re going, traveling and challenging. It’s not like you come in here and you can quit and stay. We’re going to be measuring things. We are shining a light in every corner of the business. We are striving to grow the business. We are ambitious.

There’s an element of an earning mentality that you can interview for. Earning attracts earning. There are no entitlements in a mentality. If you have an adult agreement with your workforce where you live your core values, treat each other with respect, you don’t shoot the messenger, and those kinds of things, you can keep that high level of performance where people are shooting for the big one and not afraid of getting shot.

BCC 81 | Transform Culture
Transform Your Culture: Part of that entrepreneurial art is balancing the intrinsic with the extrinsic or the money with the softer stuff.

 

As you’re talking about that, it’s got me thinking about this topic that has been trending on social media around quiet quitting. I don’t know if you’ve heard that term. During the pandemic, what happened was a lot of organizations laid people off for whatever reason. Instead of rehiring and bringing back all the people, what they did was say, “Alex, you’re a great performer. Do you think you could take on a couple of extra things that aren’t normally within your job description?”

The employees that don’t want to get laid off were like, “I’ll help.” Employers got numb to it and said, “Things are going good again. It’s difficult to hire those so I’m going to let Alex keep doing all the extra things.” The employees are getting wise now and they call it quiet quitting where they said, “You hired me to do X, not X plus Y. I’m going to stop doing Y until you decide you want to compensate me or take care of me for that.”

That’s a great conversation to have. If I want to get paid more, I got to earn it but we’ve got to have that conversation upfront.

It makes conversations like this so much easier. I can go to them and say, “Remember that incentive we talked about? If I go hire somebody else, that takes more of our ability to make profits away.” What I love about it is as scary as it is and as beneficial it is for the owner, it can be very incentivizing and beneficial to the employee as well. That transparency you create through doing this is going to make those conversations so much easier.

When we talk about employee retention, there are intrinsic motivators like what drives you and there are extrinsic ones like money. There’s a balance here in terms of our philosophy at Profit Works where we’re balancing those two. It’s intrinsically valuable to be part of a winning team. A winning team is a profitable team with good cashflow and a great healthy workforce that’s growing and attracting great candidates to our company and so forth.

There’s also that financial piece. Ryan, to your point, it’s got to be interesting. It can’t be too much of a stretch and unattainable wish that set up on a mountain. It’s got to be in there. Our responsibility as entrepreneurs is to provide our team with all the tools, training, and resources to help them achieve that financial performance and take home some extra pay.

Our experience is 5% to 15% wages, you’re in the right ballpark, especially if you’re exceeding your minimum threshold of profit and starting to reach for stretch goals. You’re up to 15%. It’s all very on-the-table conversation. There’s a balance. Part of that entrepreneurial art is balancing the intrinsic with the extrinsic or the money with the softer stuff.

There’s so much in here that we could dig into and so many things that you said that I have thoughts and questions on it. Our readers are like, “I want to know more about that.” How do people learn about you, find out more, and get ahold of you?

The website is probably the best place. It’s ProfitWorksLLC.com. That will get the conversation started. They can certainly send me an email. It’s [email protected]. If you want a conversation, talk about incentive plans or how this work, those are probably the best place to start. I’m also on LinkedIn.

You got a masterclass and a book. There’s a lot of information out there. You got a special offer for our audience. Do you want to talk about that?

Part of the Blue Collar exclusive offer here is if you’d like a hard copy of Profit Works, send an email to us and we’ll get that out to you. Include your mailing address and we’ll get you a copy of Profit Works. It’s a part of trying to help you get better and stronger and think about this more deeply. Take the mindset scorecard at the back of the book. You can also find on ProfitWorksLLC.com the scorecard and other free downloads. I’m happy to offer that free book to your audience.

Alex, thank you so much for being a guest. I’ve enjoyed the conversation so much here that can affect not only employees’ performance and retention but also our ability to attract people.

Thank you, Ryan and Jeremy. I appreciate it.

 

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Building a Team of Service Technicians Who Can Sell With Chris Fresh

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BCC 80 | Building a Team

 

If you’re struggling to get more sales and want to increase your business’s revenue and profitability, you’ve come to the right place. Joining us on today’s episode to share tips on how to build a team who can sell and scale your business is Chris Fresh, Founder and CEO of The Plumbing Sales Coach. We will talk about things that transcend the service industry and will impact any business you have. From how to differentiate services, communicate with customers, create culture, and market your business, it all starts with having the right people. Listen to this episode and get ready to take some notes on different strategies you can use to grow your business.

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Building a Team of Service Technicians Who Can Sell With Chris Fresh

We have a lot of subject matter experts and different guests on this show but very rarely do we have someone on this show that is doing something that’s so closely aligned with what we do over here at Core Matters. Our guest works with service plumbers, those that are moving into the service world or who’ve been in the service world for a while. They’ve hit a wall and they’re stuck and they need to figure out, “How do I scale my business and take it to the next level?”

I know I said plumbing but I can promise you, in this episode, we are going to talk about things that transcend your industry that is going to impact any business that you have. If you’re struggling to get out of the business and get more sales, you want to increase revenue or profitability, engage and motivate your team, we cover a lot in this episode.

As business owners, we can do so many things to make a change in our business, but when it comes down to it, there are only a couple of key things that if we get these things right, everything else is going to become much easier. I want to welcome to the show my guest, Chris Fresh. He’s the Founder of The Plumbing Sales Coach. Get ready to take some notes. There is going to be a lot of great information and he’s got a great offer for you at the end of the show. Let’s get started.

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Chris, welcome to the show.

How are you doing?

I’m looking forward to this conversation. We’ve known each other for a little while. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to invite you to the show and share your expertise with our readers but we finally are making it happen. I’m super excited about that.

I appreciate you having me on here and I’m excited to share. I love what you’re doing in your industry.

The prospect is that you are helping these service contractors. You are mostly focused on plumbing.

We strive to help the service plumbing industry or the owners that have that. Maybe they have a construction or a commercial side of that but they want to get into service or they’re already in service and they know there’s got to be a better way. That’s typically whom we focus on helping.

Even if you’re not a plumber though, a lot of what we’re going to talk about is going to be relevant if you want to grow or scale your business. When you think about the people that want to either transition in or scale their business, what’s the biggest myth that they’re hanging on to that’s holding them back that you want to break down?

It’s not only applicable to service plumbers but to anybody in the service industry that’s providing something on top of a product. A lot of people believe that the consumer is focused on price or the cheapest price. The reality is that people don’t have a problem spending money. They only want to get something in return for their money. Our job is to show them what they’re getting.

A lot of people believe that the consumer is focused on price. The reality is that people don't have a problem spending money. They just want to get something in return for their money. Click To Tweet

In the recruiting or the hiring that we do, everybody’s focused on money. They want to make more money. That’s not the case at all. That myth transcends both your employees and your customers. Tell me about it. Why do people hold on to that belief? What can they do to work on overcoming that?

The biggest problem as an owner or even as an employee is we often view what we do as a commodity. The reason why that happens is the consumer views us as a commodity. We have to separate ourselves from that. I simply mean this and we can talk about plumbing. If you’re clearing a drain, unclogging someone’s drain that’s clogged and that’s all that you offer, you’re going to be compared to everybody else that unclogs drains. You have to separate yourself from that. That’s where we get into the details of how to do that in the service industry, take it to that next level and make sure the customer is getting an experience more than a product.

When you said that, I had that vision of that thing I see at Home Depot. That long piece of plastic with the little teeth on it that you put down your drain and pull up. That’s your competition if all you’re doing is unclogging a drain.

The homeowner says, “I could have done that.”

For $3.99.

The reality is that they couldn’t have done that because we’ve come in several times behind them when they tried to do it and it’s worse.

It’s cheaper to get the problem fixed the first time than it is to make it worse and then have to fix it. They hold on to this belief and I hear this a lot. We help a lot of these home service contractors with hiring CSRs. The number one challenge these CSRs have is, “They don’t want to pay the dispatch fee or they say we’re too expensive or this.” That’s what you’re saying. The market is breeding that belief system a little bit. How do they overcome it?

BCC 80 | Building a Team
Building a Team: Make sure the customer is getting an experience more than a product.

 

It’s the question we get a lot and words matter. A lot of times, how do we view that fee? What’s that fee doing? What are we educating our team on what that feed does? That’s what’s going to get communicated to the customer. If we’re covering costs, taking care of ourselves or making sure that we don’t waste our time, what happens is the customer feels disenfranchised in the fact that, “You’re only looking out for you.” They then carry that over to what they expect the experience to be.

Change that to what you’re going to do for them for that money. Show them the value and what they’re going to get. Since we’re talking about that dispatch fee, first of all, I like to call it a diagnosing fee. The mechanic world has already valued diagnosis at a price point. It means that people understand paying for a diagnosis when they take their car in somewhere. They’re already educated on that.

That’s what we do on the phone. “We’re going to come out and diagnose. We’re going to spend some time finding out what the bigger issue is. Once we know what that is, we can come up with some solutions. We do charge a $79 fee to come out and do that. However, if we do work, we waive that fee. It sounds like you’re going to need some work done. I’m not even sure if this is going to apply to you.” We then move on with booking the call. Most customers are like, “You’re right. I do need work done. I do have a problem. You probably do need to figure out what’s going on. That is going to take time. This fee is covering me. It makes more sense and I’m willing to pay for it.”

It’s WIIFM. What’s In It For Me? Everybody wants to know that. I’ve never called a contractor and said I don’t want to pay for their service before I dialed the phone. I never was like, “I hope I get this for free.” I’ve never thought that. I’ve always been prepared to pay something and most consumers are that way as well. They got to like you.

I love that little shift you made because you emphasized “our.” It’s to cover our costs and time. Don’t even make it about that. We want to diagnose the problem for you. I love the comment that you made about the auto industry has already conditioned us to understand that diagnostic fees are a normal part of life. It starts with the same letter even.

Dispatch is covering me and diagnosing is covering you. Words matter. The next question I get is, “Chris, what about people that call about price? They only want to know what the price is going to be.” They don’t necessarily want to know what the price is going to be. That’s only their way of sifting through the people that are going to rip them off in their minds or take advantage of them. That’s their tactic and what they’re good at. They’ve caught a lot of other people. What I tell people is, “Those people are listening for yes and not no.” “Will you give me the price of the phone?” That’s what they’re listening for. You have to find a way to explain what you’re going to explain to them without turning off their ear.

It goes like this. If they say, “How much is a water heater?” I say, “I can do something even better for you.” That gets their ear turned on to go, “What’s better than a price over the phone?” From that point on, I typically teach the plumbing company to say what they’ve already been saying at that point but the customer’s listening instead of you going, “No, I can’t give you a price over the phone.”

It's about will not skill. You can teach people how to push buttons or connect something to something or to communicate a certain message, but to get them to want to do that is a whole different game. Click To Tweet

Their ears are turned off and whatever you say doesn’t matter. It can be that simple in any industry, the sales world. It’s changing the words, the delivery and putting yourself in the customer’s shoes going, “What are they asking me? What are they saying when they said that?” They trying to get to something else. “Can we get there a different way because I want to get there too?” There’s a process. “How can I communicate that?” To me, that’s the key.

I love that concept of, “Are they open to hearing you? Are they turned on and listening? Are they turned off and they are listening?” If they told me no there, they are probably going to tell me other things I don’t want to hear. There’s everybody out there that will promise a cheap price over the phone. They know that when they’re standing there. They’re looking at your water heater and took them four hours to get there. What are you going to do? Are you going to say, “Don’t charge me the extra money?” No. The guy’s already there and they know that. Where a lot of that industry reputation comes from is we’ve got a few bad actors out there doing that stuff.

You hit it. It all comes back to motive and that’s what the customer is questioning. They don’t know your motives in the beginning so they fill in the blank. You admitted yourself as a consumer. People are offering the cheapest price. I have eight kids. Black Friday has been a place of business for us in the past where we wanted to save money for Christmas but the product that we got matched the price. We know that. However, if I were the salesperson, I tell you, “Be careful with the other price. It might not be what you think.”

Even though you know that’s true, you reject the message because you don’t know my motive and you think, “You’re only trying to sell me.” We have to understand that’s where the customer’s coming from. If you’re the salesperson, it’s not about us. It’s about what they want. That’s what I love about what you do. If the same is true for the consumer, then the same is true for the future employee who is the first customer of the company. It all goes hand in hand. All this stuff is the relationship.

There are probably people reading that are like, “It’s great and I love how Chris says that but my CSRs would never do that. They would never behave and act that way.” What’s interesting and you already said this is the employees are the first customer. If you’re hiring right and you’re coaching and investing in training your employees, they’re going to do right by the customer.

They’re going to be able to take these things and say, “What is in the customer’s best interest? I’m being taken care of by my employer so I’m going to take care of the customer,” versus what a lot of it is, “You got to get that spiff and close that deal. If you don’t put those tickets on the board, you don’t have a job next week.” What have we done? We’ve redirected it all back to the employee. It’s all about me now. I’m not worried about the customer.

It’s exactly what we talked about. People should understand that it’s about will not skill. You can teach things to people. You can teach people how to push buttons, connect something to something or communicate a certain message but to get them to want to do that is a whole different game. It’s a lot easier to teach the skill to somebody who wants it than to make somebody want it that has the skill. That is the biggest message here. When you get the best version of someone, that’s when the magic happens and it doesn’t matter how experienced they are.

BCC 80 | Building a Team
Building a Team: It really can be that simple—just changing the words and the delivery and putting yourself in the customer’s shoes.

 

You work with your clients on not only helping them find these people. You talk a little bit about recruiting in your program but you’re also coaching these people on how to improve the sales process and helping them build that process out. Tell me a little bit about what you’re doing there in a big picture or high level. I’ve got a couple of questions for you on how our readers can start applying a couple of these things.

I do think that businesses are complex but at the same time, it is simple. There are some simplicities to it that we can follow. As we get into those, we can get as complex as we want, depending on our skillsets and our team. What I mean by that is this. You need exposure. We teach that. People have got to know that you’re a business and that you exist. The second thing that we hone in on is what are they seeing when they see you like reviews, your brand, messaging, personal Facebook posts and all the things that we forget about that people have access to.

The last thing is, what are you going to do with that customer? What’s the process that you have in place? I say process as a general term but then inside of that is a sales process or a dispatch process, maybe for service plumbing. If you’re a restaurant, you have to have a process from the time that the person grabs that front door handle, walks in and stands in the lobby to them sitting down and eating their meal, even when they leave and make it available for the next person to come in and eat at that same table.

That’s the business of the restaurant industry. We all have to have those processes. That’s what we teach. Inside of that, we dig deep into their business, specifically your market and where are you. What makes sense there? For fun, we rebranded a company in Indiana. It’s a plumbing company. It hasn’t even been released yet. People might be reading this and go find it later but we’re in the middle of the van wrap.

It’s a big, huge piece of corn. He’s carrying a bucket of water and people might go, “What’s that?” The company name is Cornwell and they’re in Indiana. It’s having fun and helping people see the fun in the business. Also, get back to that dream that they were building, not the nightmare that they’re living in and help them do what they originally wanted to do. We know there are some common processes and things that have to be dealt with to get to that dreamland and dream world, wherever they want their business to go. That’s what we do. That’s what we take pride in and what we love doing.

I’m thinking of the business owner in the context of what you shared but as you mentioned with those CSRs, if they have the will, we can teach the rest of it. They’ve got to have the will to want to change, have a little fun with it and say, “Let’s make it about the customer and not about me.” All the rest of the stuff is easy.

We did this coaching call talking about what we were going to talk about. Before we started, I felt in my heart that we need to deal with accountability so we talked about that and it’s what you’re talking about. It does because there are companies that get into our program and they explode. One guy was sharing his story. He has $3,000 a week by himself in a truck and gets in the program. Within a month, he’s doing $10,000 a week. A couple of years into it, he’s doing millions a year. He’s rolling, rocking and loving it.

With culture, make it about your end-user always. Click To Tweet

I got other people who get into the program in the first six months with them questioning everything that we say. I got other people in the program that is like, “Are you in the program? Hello? I haven’t seen you.” I tell my clients this, “I’m just a book. If you buy me and put me on the bookshelf, I’m no good. You got to read and apply it. Otherwise, what’s the point? It all comes back to that accountability.”

Let’s talk about that. The easy part is taking it off the bookshelf and reading it. You got to apply it. What’s something that the readers could apply in their business to help them? Something that you see is pretty much universal. Everything you’ve said here already is a universal truth. You got to have processes, people with the will and make it about the customer. What are 1 or 2 things you can share with our readers that will help them see that this is possible?

I’ll say two things. Culture is the environment. If you think about an aquarium, a fish can only get so big. You could feed it but it has to have the right aquarium. That’s the culture. With culture, make it about your end-user always. When you’re talking to your team internally, how can we make it better for the consumer, the person spending the money? None of this exists without them. How can we always make it better for them?

If you can change that focus, the way you talk inside of your company with your team and outside of your company, you can always make it about the customer. Everybody reading could go to the internet and look up a company called Mr. Drippy Plumbing in Birmingham, Alabama. It’s a fun company. Mr. Drippy is a cool little logo. They do a great job always making it about the consumer. The culture, the team and even the new guy getting hired in. The other team members are saying, “Make it about the consumer.” That’s number one.

Number two, permeate your community with your brand. When I say permeate, I mean to get in it. Don’t be like a big billboard but be a part of it. Live in it. Help it. Serve it. Make an impact on it. If you want the best pay-per-click return on investment ad in the world, don’t run them. Instead, make everybody fall in love with you because you’re making an impact where they live. You need pay-per-click and SEO in the beginning because you don’t have anything else.

All those things matter. I’m not saying they don’t. I’m saying that if you want to be in your market for a long time and be somebody that people look to as a solution, permeate your community. Get in the farmer’s market or into the schools if that makes sense for you. Everything in your city is a billboard, even the placemat you’re looking at when you eat and the 18th hole at the miniature golf course.

Can your logo sit there on the 18th hole? That’s the most popular thing in town. Mr. Drippy has a water park in their town. We’re talking about getting Mr. Drippy and a costume in the water park plumbing. How can you do this? He’s got a Mach-E Mustang wrapped because that costs $800 to drive around every month in the city rather than a billboard and it’s even cooler than a billboard. How can you get creative with your brand and permeate your community so people go, “I’m glad they’re here?” Those would be my two biggest pieces of advice.

BCC 80 | Building a Team
Building a Team: If you want to be in your market for a long time and be somebody that people look to as a solution, permeate your community.

 

The first one near and dear to my heart is culture. I believe that as an owner, the first and foremost thing you need to do is focus on your people and build a strong culture. When you’ve got great employees and what I call the core, they’ll take care of everything else for you. If you want your employees to treat your customers better, treat your employees better. If you want your employees to get you more customers, help your employees get more out of their life. There are so many things you can do around culture but that second part, I want to dig into it. Permeate into the community. If I’m starting or I’ve got maybe 1 or 2 trucks on the road and maybe I’m still in a truck on occasion, how do I find the time for that?

Most humans are like water. We follow the path of least resistance. I was talking to somebody about the idea of being an attractive character in their market. I said, “We all do that differently.” Here’s what I mean. If you’re trying to permeate your community, what is your gift? Are you good at Facebook posts? Are you somebody who’s a talker? What do you naturally do? How do you normally interact with your community? All I would say to you in the very beginning is to do more of that and include the fact and make sure they know you’re a plumber. It could be that simple. Make sure that all of your friends and family know that you’re a plumber.

Many of us miss that first step. We go right for Google or some ad or somebody wants to put us in a magazine with a bunch of strangers. What about the people who know us? We’re talking about the brand new person. If you have somebody in a truck and your phone is already ringing, that means you have a little bit of money. This is going to sound a little counter-intuitive but my guess is you’re probably not producing what you could be producing with those same calls and that same opportunity.

Find some training for your team. Make your team better. Make them so that they can go out and make an impact in the community but also maximize those tickets so you have a marketing budget. What I would tell you to do at that point in the market is you’re going to need some money. You’re going to not spend it with me but you’re going to need some money to get into your community. People want money to advertise or showcase you. You’re going to need that.

You’re going to need some resources to trade or exchange. You’re going to need something. If you’ve got the phone ringing because you started telling everyone you’re a plumber and you treat your employees great, what are they probably telling everyone? They work for this cool plumbing company. That word is getting out. Start there. Put some generic face. Don’t create a Facebook page just yet. Go on your personal page and say, “We started a plumbing company. If you need anything, don’t hesitate.” Assume that no one saw that post and don’t be annoying. Don’t make every post about that but every couple of days, remind everybody, “We do plumbing.”

Another cool thing you can do is when you do plumbing, let everyone know you did some plumbing for someone. That’s another way of advertising yourself without advertising yourself. You can make it about the person you did the work for. You don’t need to make it about you or your employee like, “Steve did a great job over here for Mrs. So-and-So,” or whatever you’re allowed to share. It’s because you’re communicating to so many more people than you realize. We’ll leave it at that but I would scream from the mountaintops as comfortable as I was in my way of communicating. “Everyone, I do plumbing. Give us a chance.”

I remember in one of my first sales jobs, I’d have a friend or a family member call me. They’re like, “You’re not going to believe it. I refinanced my house.” I’m like, “I’m in the mortgage business. What are you talking about? Why didn’t you call me?” “I didn’t even think to call you. I forgot. That’s right. You told me.” It’s so common sense and basic but we forget. Just because we’re consumed with our profession or our business doesn’t mean that the people that care about us are consumed with it. They got their lives, distraction and things going on. I’ll promise you, the people reading are going, “I do that. I forget to tell people so much.”

When you do plumbing, let everyone know you just did some plumbing for someone. That's another way of advertising yourself without advertising yourself. Click To Tweet

It’s so funny. I had to leave the mic for a second because I was dying when you said that. It’s so true. We’ve all been there. When I was younger, I worked at CarMax. I’ve had people come into CarMax and I see them working with someone. I got my hands in the air like, “What?” It’s too late. They’re already working with someone. Make sure everybody knows that you do it. Don’t be annoying. Don’t be that one guy but at the same time, let everybody know.

If you opened up a new line, I’m sure you have a wide range of people that tune in. It doesn’t matter what it is that you do, painting or plumbing. Let people know what you do so they can then come to you for that service when they’re ready. Stay top of mind. I was thinking of this. There are so many people I know in life that will tell me, “I’m going on a trip. I’m doing something.” When they tell me, I remember but then when they walk away, I forget. Later on, I see a post somewhere or something of their trip and I’m like, “That’s right. So-and-so was going.”

It’s not only with your business. This is normal because it’s not affecting me. When you tell me you’re a painter and I don’t need painting, great but I already forgot. Tell me one more time a little bit later. American Express did a survey and they figured out that it takes 4 to 7 touches with somebody before they can consciously make a decision that they want to do business with your product or service. We’re already not telling people once.

We’re not going to have a lot of time to dig into this but you have this philosophy about recruiting. I share the same philosophy about how often and how frequently you should do it. It’s funny to me how many times we work with companies and they’re like, “I can’t find anybody.” I go, “Have you asked your team?” “My team knows we’re hiring.” I’m like, “Let’s ask them.” “I had no idea we had 7 open positions and we had 4 empty trucks. I didn’t know that.” There was a study done and this was a while back. How many times has the CEO had to say something before everybody in the organization heard it at once? I don’t know if you’ve heard this or not, Chris.

No, but I can only imagine.

It’s 37 times. Trust me when I tell you that your people do not know that you’re recruiting. They don’t even know that you want more customers. I promise you. They think you’ve got it all figured out if that’s not their world. You got to be doing this stuff that you’re talking about.

You nailed it and the idea too that they don’t know you’re hiring. They might be filling in a different thing or a negative thought. They’re like, “Why do we have four trucks sitting empty? Are we getting slow? Is your work drying up? Do I need to start looking?” I promise they could be doing that because you don’t find out until they’re not there or they come in and say, “Can we talk?”

BCC 80 | Building a Team
Building a Team: Make your team better, make them so that they can go out and make an impact in the community, but also maximize those tickets so you have a marketing budget.

 

You have that talk and then you’re scrambling around, “This guy’s going to offer him $1.25 more an hour. I’m about to lose someone that I’ve invested thousands of dollars of training into.” You’re like, “Should I pay him the other $1.25?” When you tell people you’re hiring, they hear that message and what they know is you’re growing, that’s comfortable and a good thing. Always communicate that.

If you’re running your team ragged with OT and they’re running lots of overtime because you are short-staffed but you’ve got the volume of work coming in, letting them know you’re hiring says, “You’re working too many hours and not spending time with your family. I’m working to solve the problem.” Asking for help, you’d be amazed at how many people are going to want to help you.

Sympathy is, “I’m sorry you’re going through all that but it’ll slow up soon.” Empathy is, “We’re hiring.”

I love the way you summarize that at the end. Chris, we could keep going. We needed to do another episode here soon. How do people get ahold of you? You only work with the service plumbers or people that want to get into service plumbing. If you’re a plumber reading and you’re like, “I got to have some of that stuff,” how do people get ahold of you? You’ve got an offer for them as well.

We’re going to do this specifically for the people that are only reading this show. You’ll need to mention that. Go to ThePlumbingSalesCoach.com. There are several spots there where you can request more information or get information about our program but simply put in the message there that you’ve known me on the show. We’ll give you a 30-minute consultation at no charge. We’ll work out what are your biggest problems right there on that call.

Take Chris and his team up on that one. It’s an amazing opportunity. He is an amazing guy. Chris, I love what you’re doing, your philosophy and your approach. It is so much in alignment with what I do. That’s probably why we get along so well. This is amazing stuff. I love the way you ended it with sympathy versus empathy. That transcends everything, not just business. Thanks for being on the show, Chris.

Thanks for having me, Ryan. I do appreciate it. I do love what you’re doing as well.

 

Important Links

 

About Chris Fresh

BCC 80 | Building a TeamWhen it comes to business, Chris has done it all. He started his plumbing career by taking a local shop to 7 figures in less than a year. This of course is after he had owned his own successful business in the home services world and was a top 10% sales rep at multiple Fortune 500 companies. Chris is definitely no stranger to success in business, sales, and coaching. He has helped 1,000’s of techs and 100’s of owners make big money and get their life back.

 

 

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Get Your Employees To Care As Much As You Do With Dane Sanders

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BCC 79 | Employees

 

We all know that not every job will be our dream job. But that doesn’t mean we can’t find ways to love our current jobs. But how can leaders help employees love theirs? That is what Dane Sanders, Co-Founder and CEO of Tell Me Your Dreams, speaks about today. Dane helps business owners build cultures their teams love. At Tell Me Your Dreams, Dane interrupts the burnout cycle by helping employees achieve their dreams and promoting self-discovery, personal responsibility, and meaning at work. In this episode, Dane talks about how leaders can become strong and awake and get employees to care as much as they do.

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Get Your Employees To Care As Much As You Do With Dane Sanders

I am super excited about our guest. In fact, I already know we are in for a real treat. He’s the CEO of Tell Me Your Dreams, and he focuses on working with companies and leaders to make sure that the employees are engaged and that they love their job. He has what he calls a culture design firm. Seth Godin called his writing a precious gift, and he even serves on Donald Miller’s StoryBrand facilitator team.

If you’ve heard us talk about StoryBrand before, it’s come up a few times. A great process for helping you communicate your message to the right people. Dane and I have something in common. We both love pouring into people and helping people become engaged. Dane has taught leadership and character development at Westmont College. He’s led development efforts for Academic Centers at Biola University. He goes on and on. The resume for this guy is incredible but do you know what? I want to jump right into the episode and hear from Dane how he got to where he’s at. I want everyone to welcome to the show, Dane Sanders, CEO of Tell Me Your Dreams.

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Dane, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Ryan. Great to be here.

I am so excited about this. We’ve met a couple of times. We’ve chatted a couple of times. Our conversations need to get in front of our readers because I feel like I learned so much in spending a few minutes with you. I know this is going to be an amazing episode.

The feeling is mutual. My sense is that if we could somehow wonder twin powers activate and form something powerful, we would do some damage, so let’s get into it.

I asked the same question to everybody on the show because, for many business owners, there are a lot of things that we start to believe that aren’t true. Rules that we create for ourselves. Rules that others have created for us. In the work that you do, what do you think is the biggest myth?

It's normal for people to wake up and see themselves as heroes of their own stories. Click To Tweet

When I think about the human condition and out of the box of how people are wired, it’s normal for people to wake up and see themselves as the hero of their own stories. We all wake up and go, “What’s going on for me?” It’s natural. When those people who wake up and like that, and they go and they lead their organizations, they are tempted to think that because they are passionate about their work, their people should be as passionate as they are.

It’s not a conscious belief. Sometimes people expect it because they are paying them a lot of money but there’s the sense of like, “I am so excited about what I’m doing. Why are these people not as excited?” the reason is that those people woke up that morning and thought they were the hero of the story. Now we have two heroes in the story. That’s a problem. It’s not a very interesting story narrative, and we are competing.

When people can figure out some alternative roles in the story, the story gets way more interesting. What’s unique about the business owner, the leader, is the leader has a role available to them that their employees don’t have. When they can tap into that, when they can decide to be the guide in the relationship, everything changes.

There’s some Donald Miller stuff in there. I heard that. It’s interesting. I hear a lot of people tell me, “I can’t get my people to care.” I’m sure you’ve got some ways to help solve that and get them excited. The easiest thing to forget is that we hire people. They’ve got hopes, goals, dreams, frustrations, problems, and drama. They’ve got all of it they’re dealing with. If you forget that they’ve got a personal life to go home to that may not be perfect, and you don’t care about that stuff, how can you ever expect them to care about your business?

I’m glad you mentioned Don. He is a good friend, and we’ve done a lot of work together over the years. His contribution to my own take on life is amazing. Let me back up. I will give you a quick snapshot of what got me to now. When I was an undergrad in college, I studied Marketing. At the end of my Marketing degree, I felt like I had learned how to manipulate people to buy things they didn’t want or need.

BCC 79 | Employees
Employees: The leader has a role that their employees don’t have. When they can tap into that and decide to be the guide in the relationship, everything changes.

 

I thought, “That’s gross. I don’t like that now. What am I going to do?” I went to grad school and studied philosophy. I study philosophy and virtue ethics. How do you be a good person? Can you have a good life? Is that even possible? I was running away from marketing. That’s what I was doing. If you know anybody who’s graduated from grad school of philosophy, you know they are unemployed or their teachers.

I decided to become a teacher. I was lucky enough to do that. I’m teaching leadership and character development at this Liberal Arts college up in Santa Barbara, California. I read this book by Donald Miller called Blue Like Jazz. This is a million years ago. This is a New York Times Bestselling memoir. It was incredible. I made a movie about it. Don wrote a little chapter about this guy named Greg Spencer. Greg was a colleague of mine at Westmont. I basically worked my magic to try to get Don to come to campus to talk to my students. That’s how I met Don years ago.

Since then, Don has introduced me to the profound nature of the story. His story is so deeply built into our guts, into our DNA. It’s the human language. It’s how we make sense of the world. That can be for good, and it can be for not. Those ideas, I’m thinking, “What story are you living into? What story are your people living into?” They are in a story. If you can help them upgrade their stories, everything transforms.

Even me with my marketing thing. The other guy that I met around that time was a guy named Seth Godin, who you and I both know. Seth, first professionally and more personally, enrolled me in the idea that you could do marketing different. I’m a fan of marketing. I love marketing now. It’s amazing but it wouldn’t have happened if someone didn’t choose volitionally to be a guide in my life to invite me into a bigger story than I was living.

I was looking for hacks and shortcuts to everything. Seth came along and said, “Slow this train down. You can get where you want to go way faster, doing things 1 day at a time, 1 foot in front of the other but do the right things and the right way at the right timing for the right reason. You will see something change in your people.” Like Seth did in me. What we are talking about is how we upgrade people’s lives because of the position we hold as leaders but we do it in a way that is going to serve you and your company. That’s not the first benefactor. The first benefactor of the humans was called to steward and lead well in these seasons.

Leading is not having a transactional relationship with your people but a human relationship with them. Click To Tweet

There’s so much to unpack and your story of how you got to where you are at. I love how you started with the marketing route, which at the end of the day, this is what I believe. Everything we do is marketing. One of the big shifts in the way we recruit is we help people understand that recruiting is a marketing activity. They forget that. They think, “I write a job ad. I give it to HR, and they take care of it.” It’s very sterile and cold. It’s okay if we hurt people we don’t know.

That’s the way it is. It’s not that that’s the right way to do it or there’s a law that says, “That’s how it has to be done.” It’s the way it has been done because most people don’t like to recruit. They don’t like to grow their companies on the people’s side. They do it because they have other goals in mind. You had so much in there but what do you think is holding people back? It sounds like you had a lot to learn. You went on your own journey. I’m sure a lot of our readers are like, “I don’t have many years to figure it all out.” What’s holding them back and keeping them from getting their people engaged and having these conversations with their people?

First is what you said. It’s not having a transactional relationship with your people but a human relationship with your people. If you look at them as human beings like you described with real life, real challenges, the universal is everybody struggles and suffers. If you think about like, “Why do people quit their job?” Nobody quits their job because they didn’t like the company. They quit their job because they didn’t like their supervisor. They didn’t like the person they were working with. If you can be where you treat them like human beings, it’s amazing how much they will respond.

Leading with, “I wonder what these people are up against?” Getting curious about their real lives. Having a coffee. Let’s say you have 50 employees. Have one coffee a week for a year, and everyone will feel like a million bucks because the boss cared enough to say, “What are you doing?” The company we run is called Tell Me Your Dreams. The reason we call it that, it’s a horrible name for a company probably, is because what we do is we say, “If you are going to do one thing, even if you don’t hire us, sit with your people and say, ‘Tell me your dreams. What do you want in life? What do you want?’”

The reason we talk about dreams and not about, “What do you want” directly is because they will say, “I want a raise.” Let’s get the big picture here. If you had the raise, things going your way, if you could wave a magic wand in your life, what would happen? What is your dream?” People can internalize the woman or man who’s leading this place cares enough about little of me, my dreams, and that they think about me more than how I can serve them; everything transforms. A motivation arrives. The way we say it is if you invite dreams, you discover drive, and a whole new world opens up in terms of people’s outlook at work.

BCC 79 | Employees
Employees: You can get exactly where you want to go faster by doing things one day at a time and one foot in front of the other. But do the right things in the right way, at the right timing, and for the right reason.

 

I can see a bumper sticker that says, “Invite dreams. Discovered drives.” A little plaque when you walk into the office or something.

It’s true. Again, it’s human. Everyone wants to get after it with their lives. If someone is working in a job that they didn’t have when they were kids. They want to be a fireman, a cop, an astronaut or be whatever, then they grow up. Let’s say they are in a role, a job, or even an industry that they never would’ve thought about. It happens all the time. That’s most of the world.

If you don’t invite meaning into those roles, this is how you do it. You talk about their aspirations. You talk about what they care about, at least as much as you want them to be thinking about your company’s mission statement. Care about their dream statement, what they want, and things open up. It’s natural. It’s human. It doesn’t require heavy lifting. There’s no brain damage required except you got to care. You got to care about these people. Care like give a rip. If that’s all that shifted for most people like you said, “I’m going to choose to care for one employee a day differently than they are expecting,” a whole new world will open up.

I agree with everything you said but I know there are people reading this now going, “Dane, I’ve sat down and talked to my people about what they want out of life, and they give me a, ‘Oh,’ answer or they give me something that doesn’t feel like a thought through. My people don’t care.” I can see people reading this and thinking, “They don’t care that I would care about their dreams.” Help me overcome that objection.

First of all, if that happens, you are in good luck because what that means is it’s not that your people don’t care. Your people have never been asked the question. This is their first rep in answering what they should do. In fact, most people, if you ask them what their dreams are, they are like, “Lose weight.” They don’t know. They are dream deprived. They have been in survival mode their whole lives. It’s going to take a couple of reps for them to figure out what they want. If you can be the one that helped them figure it out. Now, you are like Yoda. You are the person that opened up a vision for their future. What if they don’t have an answer? Assume that they do. They just don’t know it yet.

If you invite dreams, you discover drive. Click To Tweet

They are going to credit you as a person who helped them figure it out. You get curious about them. This is what I do with my kids all the time. I will say, “What’s the answer to some question?” The answer that every teenager says is, “I don’t know.” I say, “If you did know, what would you know?” They always have an answer. That’s the first line of defense. Do you care when you ask this question? If you can get through that line of defense, now you are entering into the space of real connection with your people. Don’t get thrown off by that easy distraction. It’s an invitation to go deeper and take your time. There’s no rush in these conversations.

That’s something I’ve learned as I’ve grown up professionally. As a child, I had lots of big dreams. I wanted to be an astronaut, wanted to do this, wanted to do that, and somewhere along the line, that was probably a school guidance counselor that said, “Stop it. You need to get a job. You got bills to pay. Be realistic.” I look back now and don’t know who it was that would have done that but I promise you. There were people that said, “No, dreaming big doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t put food on the table. It doesn’t do these things.” I think part of it too might be that people were told to stop dreaming.

There’s no doubt. It’s a tragedy. Bless the guidance counselors’ hearts. They were trying to help. They are not evil people but they were answering a different question. The question about dreaming isn’t real. Like if I’m dreaming about being an astronaut, I’m not thinking about how I’m going to eat dinner tonight. Those are two different conversations. One is a 20 or 30-year conversation, and one is a 20 or 30-minute conversation. I got to get the right wavelength for the conversation I’m in.

It wouldn’t have been great if your guidance counselor had said, “Here’s the deal. There are two things you need to care about in life. One is today, and one is tomorrow. Tomorrow is the dream question. Today is, ‘How are you going to get that girl to go out with you on Friday night or what job do you want in life? How are you going to take your next step?’” If all we do is serve the short-term and we never get to the long-term to our future self, we are robbing ourselves.

We wake up 20 or 30 years later and go, “How did I get here? I dreamt of something bigger, and I forgot.” Some people, when they are reading this, are remembering. That’s amazing because there’s still so much time. It’s not too late. Even if you are the leader and you park your dreams back in twelfth grade. Get back to it because there’s gold in those hills. What’s tragic is people blow it off. They have time left but they don’t take advantage of that time. It’s amazing how quickly things can turn once you get clear and committed.

BCC 79 | Employees
Employees: There are two things you need to care about in life. One is today, and one is tomorrow. And tomorrow is the dream question.

 

That was incredibly impactful for me personally. I’m sure there are people reading having the same thing going, “If I don’t dream, it’s probably tough for me to help others figure out their dreams.” That’s what I heard you say. I know you didn’t say that but like, “Wow.” At some point, maybe I’m not dreaming big enough, so it’s hard for me to lead others toward their dreams.

This happens all the time. We will come and work with organizations, and the organizational leader is excited to bring us in to help work with their employees. They want to help their employees love their job. If they love their job, they are going to stick around longer. They are going to engage more. You are going to become famous, become a talent magnet for other people to come work there. All those things are great but somewhere along the line, the leader, if they are tuning in and usually what happens is they will be there for the intro.

Let’s say I’m giving a series of talks or something. They will come for the first one to introduce me. They are getting credit for bringing this in. It’s awesome. Good for him or her. Ten minutes in, they are still in the room. “They got a meeting but will get to it in a second,” and that’s good news. That means they are not there now because they are serving their people. They are there for themselves, which is good news. It’s an invitation for people to treat themselves like humans too while they are taking responsibility for the leadership roles they hold.

I feel like there’s so much information you shared. I feel like we have already been on the show for an hour. It’s all many thoughts, so many directions. I love this because what I heard you say was if we want to get our people dreaming, get them engaged, and care about the business, we have to do the same thing ourselves as leaders. Whether that means that we need to have a mentor that’s saying, “What are your dreams?” we need to learn how to hold ourselves accountable to make that happen, which I’m sure you know. I’ve heard many times that the hardest person to hold accountable is yourself. There’s so much opportunity.

This is an unpopular belief. I don’t think we can even hold each other accountable. What we need is more of a sense of space to account. Let me explain what I mean. Accounting for me, and this happens all the time. You and I, off the air, are talking about this fun project I run called Men and Women Of Discomfort. We get together and do wacky things for 90 days. People work out six days a week, and they intermittent fast.

What's tragic is people have time left but don't take advantage of that time. Click To Tweet

They basically do everything we tell them. They make one choice to opt out of their choices, and we choose everything for them for 90 days, when to eat, when to sleep, what to eat, what to drink, when to get in cold water, cold showers, to hold their breath, when to do anonymous good deeds for others and to meditate. We do all these fun things. It’s super fun.

Our tagline is, “It’s probably not for you.” It’s for a reason because it’s the thing where people say they are so happy they’ve done these things but it’s very difficult to volitionally say, “I’m going to put myself on the hook like this.” Those who do have this radical transformation. It’s super cool. Inevitably, people come in, especially at the beginning and they say, “I’m so excited. You guys are going to keep me accountable.”

I’m like, “We got to stop this cancer right out of the gate. No one is going to hold you accountable because, do you know what? If we are the ones holding you accountable, who’s responsible? If you fail in this program, who’s responsible? Are you going to make me responsible? We are not responsible. You are responsible. Do you know what else? If you succeed in this program, it’s not because we did anything. It’s because you did something. You showed up for you and your life.” This is where it is the hardest thing to take into account for ourselves.

It’s the only thing that makes the difference. If I don’t have someone in my life that I’m willing to say out loud, “I said I was going to do this and broke my commitment or I said I was going to do this and made it. I’m accounting.” That’s the way where people start living more authentically. They are more real and showing up differently in their lives. As a result, they get the benefits. They look like superheroes, their capacity to do things because they can do hard things. When everyone else around them, they crumble when it gets difficult. We don’t need that in leaders now. We need leaders who can stand up when we need them to.

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned in the last decade or so, being an entrepreneur. Number one is that we are capable of much more than we give ourselves credit for. I’m not talking about, “I can go make more money or get a better job.” It’s amazing what the human being, the human body, can do when the rules are gone. We talked a little bit about that in the beginning. We talked a little bit unfair too. All these rules we apply for ourselves, “We can’t say that. We can’t do that.” We have all these rules that society has “created for us” that we believe to be true. Those rules are the number one thing that holds many of us back.

BCC 79 | Employees
Employees: As you begin to identify for the people you’re leading and for yourself what your dreams might be, get back to today and say, is there one next step that I can make that’s not just true for them, it’s true for me too?

 

Even what you spoke about earlier with the guidance counselor could be a rule. It almost may be an agreement. The metaphorical guidance counselor, whoever he or she is, said that to you. You could make an agreement with like, “That’s the limit.” I remember when I was a kid. I was working on something, and my legal name was Dana. My mom would say, “Dana, you are not very mechanical.”

I made an agreement with my mom that I didn’t know how to put things together until I turned 25 or 30 and went, “What if that wasn’t true? What if there was more available?” I started making crap, and it started working. All of a sudden, I could tell myself a new story. This is what I mean when I say tell yourself bigger stories. It’s interrupting those agreements, those rules, and limiting beliefs in our lives so that we can get after things that we thought were impossible but they weren’t tried yet with any effort. You might fail but if you don’t run that risk, if everything is a sure thing, talk about a boring existence. We are not going anywhere new. We are stuck in a rut.

We started with the stories that others were telling. The stories that we are creating, but now, we are talking about the stories we tell ourselves. A lot of story going on here, and I agree with you. If we go back to before there was writing, how did human beings communicate? Through story. It’s the oldest way of communicating with people, and it still is relevant now. That’s why marketing is so popular now. Everybody’s got a story to tell, and we got to figure out how to tell the right story to the right people at the right time.

It’s so empowering when you hear a story that calls us up to life. There are conversations. I’m in a lot of times where people are getting called out. I don’t think we need quite as many call-outs. What we need are call-ups. There are invitations to occupy the space in our lives in a fuller way. I know there are readers who are reading these words. There’s something tingling in their guts about, “What if me? What if I took a bigger risk on me? What if I was willing to put myself on the hook to get after that?” It could be an old practice you had or you’ve got a little out of shape. You haven’t gone on a date with your wife in a while.

If you decided, “This is as good as it gets, so let’s ride this one home.” What if there was more? In particular categories, the ones that you are scared to go to. Even as I’m saying this word, some of you who are reading are sweating a little. If that’s you, that’s what I’m talking to you because if you are not sweating just a little and a little bit uncomfortable, you are probably missing out on a lot of gold.

I don't think we can even hold each other accountable. What we need is more of a sense of space to account. Click To Tweet

The brave ones, the courageous ones who are noticing that and go, “I want to barf but I’m going to go forward anyways. I’m going to take a risk. I’m going to make that call. I’m going to set that appointment. I’m going to call Ryan. Let’s finally pull the trigger.” If that’s you, you have a little window of time to take action. If you don’t do it soon, the window will close, and you know it. If you have any vision about what I’m saying, your opportunity is to do it now.

We go back to those analogies. We talk about these analogies and metaphors to help people understand where we are going. I think about the concept of growing pains. I’ve got little kids at home. My legs hurt because they are growing. Growth doesn’t always have to be bending over painful but it does hurt a little bit at times.

When you have a strong workout or you go on a big long hike, and your muscles are sore. It’s because they are growing. Not that it has to be that painful but a lot of times, we know that there is pain associated with growth, and because of that, that fear kicks in of, “What if?” We start telling ourselves all these stories that aren’t true. As we wrap up the show, Dane, I want to think about those people that are on the fence that are thinking, “I know what I need to do but I’m scared to do it because it might hurt a little bit.” What do we tell them?

Let me offer three things. Not just for the individual but also for the people that they are leading. The first thing to go full circle to our conversation, it might hurt a little bit to ask a junior entry-level employee for coffee and them say no. It might be a little awkward. It might feel like you are not quite as relevant as they think they are or whatever it is.

If you sit beside systematically to have leadership coffees where you know your role is to be the guide, virtual or otherwise, with every team member in this next season and ask them, “What are your dreams?” that’s going to be uncomfortable but I promise you that you will gain fruit. That’s the first thing I would say for the others that you are serving. Second, I understand that it might feel vulnerable but you want to get to a place where you are being honest with your own dreams too.

BCC 79 | Employees
Employees: None of us are guaranteed another day, another breath. If we’re not taking advantage of the things in front of us right now, we’re fools.

 

Where even though you have a lot on your shoulders, you are carrying a lot of weight with the organization or families you are leading to find space for you to stop to retreat. Maybe it’s one day a week, a Sunday. In the old days, it was called a Sabbath. Take a break, stop, think, and breathe. Have an app first, maybe. Go for a walk.

Talk to a buddy about your own dream conversation but not with those you are leading but with somebody that’s your peer or someone who’s a guide to you, and get real in those conversations. If you do that, both in directions, both in who you are leading, calling up, and calling yourself up where you are going to do is, you are going to find some freedom, some new vision for where you want to go. Some people need that.

The third thing I say is as you begin to identify for the people that you are leading and for yourself what your dreams might be. Can you get back to now and say, “Is there one single next step that I can make?” Don’t make a conceptual. Don’t make it in their head. Like when your employee says their dream is to get out of student debt or their dream is to buy their first house or whatever. Get them to make a single first step but that’s not true for them. It’s true for you, too.

What’s the single next step that you need to make? If it’s not the thing that you came up with, what is it? If it’s not like you, who’s going to do it, who will? If it’s not now, when? The time is now. Life is too short. One of my best friends, earlier this year, January 1st, 2022, he’s the guy that I started this Men and Women Of Discomfort with. His name is Tim Krueger, a 42 years old, Ironman, stud, and athlete. The best blue-collar curmudgeon you could ever imagine. The guy you want to hang out with.

He finished a year of suffering with stomach cancer, and he died. Two young boys, his wife, Jess, his birthday is coming up on August 14th. I miss the guy so much but I will tell you this about Timmy Krueger. That boy lived. He understood what was at stake. He was more alive in his last year of life than he was in the previous 41. You want to be like Tim Krueger. None of us are guaranteed another day, another breath, and if we are not taking advantage of the things that are in front of us now, we are fools. Wouldn’t it be nice if the stakes were too high? That’s my encouragement. Care about your people. Care about yourself. Do one right next thing and do it quickly because we are all on the clock.

It might feel vulnerable, but you need to get to a place where you are honest with your dreams. Click To Tweet

I don’t know where to go from there, Dane. That was amazing. I have to say, it’s probably one of my favorite interviews. It’s incredible. It got me thinking about a lot of things, too. I know there are people going, “Dane sounds like he knows his stuff. He’s probably got other nuggets out there, other tips, other ways I can learn or even connect with you.” How do people do that?

First of all, thank you for saying that and encouraging me, and thanks for leading, Ryan. What you were doing in this space is so profound. It’s one of the reasons I was so excited to be in this conversation with you. You are the real deal. The way you are leading, I know there are people at home nodding their heads now as they are reading like, “Ryan delivers over and over again.” Thank you for leading.

To answer your question. I created a website. Forgive the name. It’s a silly name but it’s called AskDane.com. It’s pretty simple. It’s basically a video walkie-talkie. You go there, press a button and say, “I’m Sally. I’m Fred. Whatever.” If you want to process or talk, it’s all private. It’s a one-to-one conversation. It’s asynchronous, so no meetings are required for you or me. It allows me to have a lot of conversations with a lot of people. If any of your readers would love to debrief, chat or ask a question about Tell Me Your Dreams or Men and Women of Discomfort or any of the things we chatted about. That’s probably the easiest place to go do it.

My last question is usually, do you have any offer or giveaway for our readers but you answered them both at the same time? That’s an amazing offer to be able to get some time to share with you, what they are going through, and what’s going on with them because of a quick little video chat. You can get them unstuck and help them take that next right step. Maybe even they can learn a little bit more about the work you do at Tell Me Your Dreams or even the Men and Women of Discomfort, both of those sounds like amazing things. Not only for our readers but probably for a lot of their employees as well, to help them with their dreams.

Thanks, Ryan. Thanks again for having me on.

Thanks for being here. I enjoyed it.

 

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