Episode Transcript
[00:00:31] Hello everyone and welcome to tonight's episode of Pivotal Change. I'm your host Ryan Kahn from CS Business Consulting. And just a reminder that this is a show that I ask that you watch with a pen and paper so that you can take notes and hopefully find that one or two things that's going to make that pivotal change on your journey to success. In tonight's episode, I've taken this time to give a special treat of this is going to be all me this episode and I really want to walk through some Chang points in life, some really critical things that have kind of come up and just deliver those today. And we'll have more contributors back with us next week. But what I want to talk about on this opening segment, something that has shown its face in my life several times and one of the big times it showed up was in law enforcement and I didn't realize necessarily what was happening until it was pointed out to me and then I was able to apply it in other areas in life. And the little saying is this power deceived is power achieved. Now this has a kind of two sided dichotomy to it. So the power deceived can be two ways and it's not necessarily a malicious thing that I'm talking about here. You're not just trying to go around tricking people. The power deceived can be used in two ways. One, you're convincing something, someone that you're very strong and capable and therefore you are going to be able to handle the situation, overcome any objections, issues or law enforcement potential fight or flight scenario. So they're convinced that you can take care of business and they're not going to challenge you. Now you can understand that again, in the entrepreneurial world, to have somebody not challenge you because they believe you're capable is a very important tool. So I want to share this and clarify it more with a couple of stories. And then the other side of the coin is power to see because you're actually convincing somebody that, hey, I may not be as good as I am, I may not have the skills necessary to resolve the situation when in actuality I do. So you're getting them to then buy in and then you can show to overtake them or overwhelm them, usually with some type of rival or challenge. And again, I'll demonstrate this through some stories. So real quickly, the easiest way for me to really convey to you power deceived, and this is a little bit more on the negative side is if you've ever played cards, think of the game of poker. You got this big pot. The last two people are remaining in the hand, they're staring down at their cards. There's some pretty classic Hollywood scenes about this. And one guy's got nothing, he's got nothing in his hand, he is going to lose. And the other guy's got something pretty strong. And the guy with nothing continues to raise money, keeps his poker face and eventually he bluffs and he bluffs out the guy to where he folds the more powerful hand, thinking that the other guy had the best hand. That's a great, real quick example of power to see. He convinced his opponent that I've got you beat, I've got something better. And the opponent lays down and submits and says, you can have the money, you can have the pot. This would be good in the business world and under, you know, non gambling or malicious circumstances, which I'll apply later. But that's just a quick one for you. Another one that I want to tell you is a pretty fun policing story I had. It was actually one of my first exposures to working a major crimes case myself. I was a patrolman. I was fairly veteran patrolman, probably six years at the time. That's, that's enough. We've definitely figured out the job and I was starting to get up for promotions into the detectives division and things like that. So we had a midnight shift home invasion happen. Two guys came in. One of them was, one of them was not wearing a mask, the other was wearing mask. The second one kind of burst in under false pretenses, held everyone in the home at gunpoint and stole all of their phones and stole their money. And it was a drug deal going bad. The drug dealer set up people to buy a substantial amount of drugs knowing they had the cash ready and then just went and robbed them for that cash. So again, not, not a true victim crime. But needless to say, there were two suspects immediately on the scene, plus a getaway driver, three people, there are four or five people in the home. There was a witness neighbo and there was some camera footage from a neighboring business. So there was plenty to detect and there was plenty to investigate and go after. And of course this crime just happened. It was, we got to the scene shortly after they left because it was in the middle of the city. And I end up getting assigned this case instead of it going up to detectives branch for a decision that my supervision made to give me a chance at working a case to prove that I could be a good detective. Now as far as crime stories go that's not a good thing to leave in the, the hands of a patrolman. But I was going to do my best and I worked the case as best I could over the next several hours. What eventually happened is I tracked down a name of a suspect, I found a location for the suspect, and we went and contacted him at the apartment in which he was staying, located him visually, it was clearly him. There were clothing matching his clothes in the corner. And we ended up going ahead and arresting him based on probable cause on everything that we had lined up and the description and the matching phone that he had. But I was still missing the cash, still, still missing the gun. And of course, a confession seals the deal because I have all of the cooperating evidence. Get him back to the police department for an in custody interview, some random rights and everything. And this is one of my first big interviews of this nature. So I go print off as much as I can about this guy. I want to learn his background, his criminal history, get all the facts from the computer system about when the call came out, all the players, and what we do is we print. And it has pictures of this guy's page, picture on his page of his description of his criminal history. And this is probably somewhere between a dozen and 15 page document. So it's a little stack of paper. And I said, man, this doesn't look very impressive for me to walk in with this file folder right here on this desk. So thin, so little. I want to look like I've done investigations for the last several hours and I know everything. So I literally took a half inch stack of paper off the printer, shuffle it up just a little bit, and put it underneath those 12 or 15 pages of actual real materials. That way I could walk into the interview and go and set down this huge file folder. So I was deceiving him and believing that I had all the power of knowledge, the power of information about every witness interview was already written down and captured in every system and every printout report. And when I start flipping through that folder, I opened it wide open and I flipped through the first page and I'm holding it up so he can see it upside down. I hold it up and he can see his picture, he can see his address, he can see several things that are taken, including one or two witness notes. I said, look man, I've got everything I need right here. I know exactly what happened. And the only way you're going to get any mercy is to give me a complete confession so that I can go to the court and Say, hey, this guy actually took accountability for his actions, and he needs a little break. You won't escape punishment, but I can be your advocate saying, this guy screwed up. He feels sorry for it and gave a confession. That guy literally says, man, I can see you've done your work. You've got everything right there in front of you. There's no way I can fool you on this. Here's what happened. And he continued to pour out his confession to the T over the next hour to where it was an airtight case with a ribbon wrapped around it. Could hear my buddies in the room kind of snickering through the door when. When that happened. And I was very proud of myself and learned that, hey, this can actually be a tool to be used for good.
[00:07:41] Did I have the information? Yes. But it was not all compiled in a pretty package. I faked the package, even though the knowledge was right here and on various audio recordings and things like that. So that's one really interest. Interesting way that you can use power to see is like, hey, you got the information? You got to let somebody know that you have the information, even though it's not right here for everyone to be a believer of. And the next one is a foot pursuit story. Believe it or not, this power actually occurred during the event. So we had a fight outside of the police department. Pair of parents came up and they wanted to turn their son in, who had a juvenile warrant, those are fairly rare. And they were going to turn him in. They got an argument with the son who wouldn't get out of the van. So a couple of the officers leaving shift that day, I was coming on shift, sitting in the middle of the police department, in the middle of roll call, went to go, hey, there's people arguing out front. They went to deal with it. As they approached, the kid hops out the other side of the car, just beelines it straight down the road. Foot pursuit. So we bail out from the police department, run out the front door. There's this kid running down the street, and I end up tracking him down. I happen to be, at that time, the fastest, healthiest police officer on the shift. So I'm ending up beating this guy up. And I know I have the ability to track this guy down. But let's say there's a weird fence. Let's say he disappears into a building. Let's say he turn left, and I think he goes right. He can definitely escape, regardless of me being in better conditioning than him. So as I'm getting closer to him, I start yelling hey man, you better quit. I can do this all day. Hey, man, you better quit. I run 5Ks all the time. I'm faster than you. You can't escape me. And I start harassing this guy to let him know I have power. And I need him to believe that I have the power to track him down. He eventually gives up. His legs start burning. Mine were burning as well. And I didn't want to have to catch this guy all fully exhausted. Fighting while exhausting, while exhausted is a dangerous thing. So he ends up giving up. Of course, my legs are burning too. And he turns to give up. And as he gets closer, he decides last second to put his fists up and fight me. And I'm able to run him down, wrestle on the ground, get him handcuffed. He had a bunch of money, a bunch of drugs in his pocket, and we were ultimately able to serve the warrant. But his compliance came and I watched his shoulders drop. When I said, the second time I run 5Ks and I can do this all day, he went and he stopped. So my power deceived was this guy believed in his mind he could not outrun me or I'm dying inside. My lungs are burning and blood's filling my legs. And you know, there's a chance this young kid, I'm 30 something at the time, this kid is 17. There's a good chance this spring chicken could outrun me. But I wasn't going to let him believe that was eventually able to capture the bad guy. So let's move away from law enforcement for just a minute and let's talk about how this happens in the business world. One of the things that we see all the time as we've been to conferences, we've seen people give presentations, and many in the audience have probably given presentations. And you see these bio pages, right? Hey, this is where this guy comes from. He graduated here and got his MBA and maybe his doctorate, and here's all of his work experience. And they give you what we call in law enforcement the I love me pages. Because you have to establish your credibility in front of the crowd. If they don't know who you are and you're coming in as some guest speaker, some keynote speaker, you've got to establish some power, some credibility and authority in order for your information to truly land. Unless you're just the most articulate, charismatic speaker, you're probably going to need a little bit of a bio at these conferences where people are there to learn. So that's the power deceived portion, is that they truly have no idea what you're capable of. Obviously you're telling the truth, but the deception is that they have never experienced your intelligence, your power, your capability in real life. And you have to convince them that that is true so they'll receive your message, they'll get the most out of the conference and hopefully go use something in real life. So those I love me pages can be important. I hate doing them because it sounds like you're just bragging on yourself on stage. Everybody's got cool stuff going on in their life, but I just hate feeling like I'm braggin. So if you ever have the opportunity, have somebody else do your I love me page. Have somebody else introduce you. Another way that you have to convince people that you have capability or power is in your sales. You got to make sure people understand that their service, the product you're selling is pretty awesome. And you have to make them a believer without experience that they should buy into you anytime you handle a complaint. Some of those complaints may even go to I'm going to report you to hr, I'm going to file a lawsuit. And you have to convince them, let's take a breath. I know exactly what I'm doing. Here's the process we established and I did all of these things correctly. Your complaints kind of die if you file it because systems were set in place, precautions were taken. So those are another areas where you could really go out there and promote your power to even then training issues. Training is another one. You have a new person walking in off the street, somebody getting transferred to your division. They don't know anything about you. You have to establish yourself as an authority real quick. Again, with no experience. So you must convince them that you have the power, the knowledge, the skill, the ability to train them and make them a better person. Of course, lead the team, lead the mission, lead the division, lead the company when they hire on with you. So you actually use this a lot of times you need to make sure that you are understanding that hey, I can go ahead and take control of the situation. And then a fun one on the last one is the power to see each other side is where you might say, hey, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know what I'm talking about. The poker hand of the opposite. You pretend to ho hum and bite your fingernails when really you've got four aces and you get them to put in more money, but you've got four aces and then boom, you show your big cards, you rake in the pot because you deceived them that you did not have power. That works in law enforcement as well. I've had to play the dumb cop at times in order to just somebody say, oh, let me gain, let me, let me gain compliance. Let me let this cop in here, let him do his thing. He doesn't really care. He seems like a knucklehead, a Barney fife type. And then all of a sudden like, oh, yeah, but here, here, here and here, boom, I've got you. You thought I was lazy or sloppy or unintelligent, and I fooled you. Another time to do that, other than poker or law enforcement would be, hey, if you've ever done a sports competition like martial arts or wrestling, you kind of don't look strong and maybe you're very weak. And this guy just doesn't put his best efforts and boom, you snatch him, take him to his back, you pin him and you get the win. This can happen in business with your rivals. You can position yourself a certain way in business with your rivals. You can do it again to imprint learning. And then all of a sudden, boom, you pull out the right answer, you pull out the better product, or you pull out the, the path that is needed to be taken. And then you can really impress upon people that you believed I wasn't capable and I allowed you to believe that so that I could now make this impression on you and take you to the next level. So there's a really good opportunity to do this. I want to summarize the power deceived as power achieved, to just remind you that you can gain cooperation for people by convincing them you're powerful. So therefore they comply. You can inspire people, they can believe like, man, you've made it, you've done it. You have no struggles in life. We all know that as a crock. But they can look at you and inspire you to follow you down a good path that does have a lot of good fruit and good potential to gain compliance from people, to calm chaos. If you show up and you look like a big powerful officer, really big powerful boss, businesswoman, businessman, and you are calm and capable. Even though you may be stressing and struggling on the inside, you are projecting calm and capability. Everyone else will calm. They will mirror your behavior and you can further your influence, people will look at you and say, hey, I'm going to listen to what this guy or gal has to say because look at his resume, look at his cv. Look at that I love me page. They know what they're talking about. They've got the life experience, and I'm going to lean into them and I'm going to accept their influence. So go ahead and take a couple of notes, look at what you got there, and find ways that you can use power to see to have power achieved in your life. Sit tight. We'll be back with more Pivotal Change right after this.
[00:15:47] Foreign welcome back from the break. We're going to keep moving along with this episode and all of the topics are not necessarily going to be directly connected, but this episode of pivotal change is again, talking about different things that I have been experiencing lately that I feel I really need to get this message out. So I'm Ryan Kahn from CS Business Consulting, and I want to talk to you about navigating new phases in life and in business. It seems recently that I coach a high school wrestling team and wrestling season has come to an end and the school year is coming to an end and all of the seniors are now in that phase of uncertainty in the unknown. And it just so happens that I've had a lot of business owners that are either starting a new adventure or changing their industry and something new has come on front. So we've been navigating through this with a lot of people helping coach and mentor in various ways in life. So I felt I want to go ahead and talk about it. This is something that's needed right now. I want to let everyone know that change is inevitable, but growth is also inevitable if you are intentional about it. It's really important that you lead yourself and you lead others through change and new phases in life. You don't want to just experience a transition. You want to be the one that focuses and orchestrates the transition. This is an opportunity for you to look at those positions of leadership and lead yourself and lead others from out front, from stepping out and navigating this new change, moving into this new phase, whether it's in life or it's in business, it can be very intimidating. Nobody likes change, but I believe we all know at this point that change is the only thing that is inevitable. So it's an opportunity to take what you've learned from the past, all of these lessons, and use that to build something stronger in the future. So I want to share what you can take away from what you've learned. I can use it to again lead yourself and lead others and go into this next stage, this next phase of life with confidence and clarity on what you're going to do. So first thing I want to do is talk about learning your lessons in every phase of Life, whether you've had struggles or whether you had successes or both, probably each of those taught you something very valuable and you have to draw the value out. Imagine I look at myself and say, if I had gone through my high school career and just sat down at the end of my high school career, maybe the summer before college, and just asked myself a series of questions, reflected on life, how much more powerful of a collegiate student and athlete would I have been? And then adult after college, and then an adult business owner after a career change. So take this opportunity to ask yourself three pivotal questions. What went well? What worked for me in this phase of life? Then I can identify those things and look to replicate them, reproduce them in this new phase. Also ask yourself the second question. What did not go great? What was a failure? What didn't go well? And if you can identify those, you can then avoid them. You can try to avoid the replication of the things that didn't go well and imprint those lessons learned. Write that down with a pen and paper when you do this process. And then lastly is the wisdom step. What patterns did I see that contributed in my decision making, my actions, my habits that contributed to both the good and the bad, and how do I apply that to the future? That's the wisdom step. How to take the good and the bad and apply it to something new or different in the future? You have to go through this phase by using one of those pillars of being humble, genuine self, reflection. Don't pat yourself on the back, but examine the true reality of what you went through in the last year, four years, 10 years, depending on what it is. So in order for you to be the best leader, you don't just want to move forward without any type of awareness. You want to have your head on a swivel, look backwards for the moment of a lesson, but do not stay fixated on the past. Right. We have a rearview mirror in our car just to check what's behind us. But we're always supposed to be looking forward to that windshield. So here's an example. In the business world, let's say you started a new business. Maybe it was a seasonal business. Cash flow was really good, Everything was really good. You started operating at a certain level, living at a certain lifestyle. Then winter came and the seasonal business started dropping, and you had to learn some really hard lessons on cash flow and savings and how to get yourself through the winter, how to pivot, how to take on another service. A great example of where these three questions would come in mind. Now, the next one is A little bit more about mindset. Most of us fear the unknown. That's very natural, but it's also where the biggest growth happens. So I want to have a mindset shift a little bit. Instead of seeing uncertainty as this risk, this fingernail biting moment, see it as potential. Say, oh, here's an opportunity. I don't know what's going to happen. I'm going to take advantage of it. My mindset says positive, let's find something to take out of this. The best and most successful business owners and leaders, the people that thrive, they have this mindset. They're the ones that adapt. They look to the future not as risk and scary, but as potential and ways that they can adapt to get the most out of it. So again, think of the past times when uncertainty, you didn't know what was going to happen, but the expectation was nervousness and fear. And it turned out, whoa, this was better than I thought it was going to be. Hey, this worked out great. This allowed me to pivot, this allowed me to grow. So those unexpected things in life can often be some of the most impactful for us. The next thing that you're going to need to do in this new phase of life is you're going to need new goals. You've got to be setting goals for yourself. So you got to set goals in two ways. One, the actual action steps. If you are a passionate visionary, remember in that principle, that pillar of leadership, passion invokes action. So you have to take action and action requires plans to be successful. So you're going to write down goals, you're going to write down action steps. You're going to put calendar dates on your calendar that I will have A, done by this time, B, done by this time, and hold yourself accountable. You also need to set new boundaries and new expectations for both yourself and others. If you have a team or a business or something moving forward, new phase, new expectation, new phase, new boundaries. And make sure that is clear. The communication is going to have to be very clear so you can go out and say, hey, in six months we're going to transition to this software platform. Hey, in two weeks, months, we're going to have these new people hired and working in our business and we are going to do X, Y and Z. We're going to scale, we're going to be nationwide, we're going to expand out of our region. That clear expectation is where you're going to get people. So make sure you set those boundaries, expectations and be a passionate visionary that leads with action through it here's another one. Surround yourself in this new phase with the right people. If you watch any of my content and materials on Ryan Forges Leaders, then you understand that there are five advisors that everybody should have. Five types of advisors everybody should have in their life. You go to a new phase of life, not all of those advisors might be coming with you. For example, one of them being the healthy rival may be left in the past. You need to find a new healthy rival. You may need to step into a new realm of an industry. And that expert that was an expert in the format industry is no longer the expert in the current industry. So again, your advisors can change. You need to expand your network, get the new phase of life, to have a strong, powerful network. Get new advisors that can lead you in those various areas in life, and they're going to be able to complement your weaknesses, enhance and further your strengths. And of course, that involves hiring the right people, surrounding yourself with the good, ambitious people that are positive. So surround yourself with the right people in this new phase of life. Again, another great example this changing careers or changing from high school to college, or college to graduate school or into the business world. You're going to need new friends. And then be confident, lead others through change with confidence.
[00:23:27] This is really tough because people are going to be looking to you for direction and your confidence. So this does go back to the last segment just a little bit, but your confidence is going to be very important. Or if you lack confidence, they're going to see that as well. That will set the tone and people will mirror your behavior, acknowledge the challenges. But always go back to the vision, that alignment of the vision, the vision that you have cast. You got to fall back on that. Stick to the daily mission, communicate clearly. People need to understand why the change is happening more so now in this generation than ever. They need to understand the why. So if you can do this, you're going to take a step out from front and you're going to start leading alongside your people. You're going to start leaving behind them, encouraging them forward with your confidence. And you're changing in and out of those five different positions of leadership all the time when coming into a new adventure of your life. So again, that leading by example is paramount, right? You have to be the one showing up. You have to be the one that is courageous. You have to be the one that's taking the fingernails out of their mouth and moving forward with confidence. Shoulders back, head up, smile on your face, and you can go and get that behavior replicated from your people. So this is just a couple of tidbits for people moving in that new phase of life. We've seen a lot of it. Every transition is a chance to refine.
[00:24:43] Okay? Think about that forging process of heating something up, getting the impurities out, smashing that hammer against the metal and molding it into something new. It's still iron, but now it's going to take on something new. And then you can redefine. You can sharpen your blade and say, hey, I'm no longer a dagger, I'm a sword. And you can redefine what you are. You can rise to the next level by taking the lessons of the past and the action plans for the future and combining them with wisdom and setting your training and setting your tone and your expectations and your leadership. And you are going to rise to the next level and people will follow and you will have the impact you desire. So the best business owners and the best leaders, they're not the ones who avoid change. They're the ones who are embracing change and also using it to their advantage with tactics and planning and logistics. So take those lessons you've learned. Face the unknown with certainty, with some strategy and with a vision of making yourself better in the next phase of your life. It will be waiting for you, and you can step into it with confidence. Sit tight. We'll be right back after this commercial break with more Pivotal Change.
[00:26:14] We are back from the break and past the halfway point on Pivotal Change. We've been talking about a lot of things in this life that I think have just really come up as themes that I really felt like I needed to speak about. Take this episode. So we're going to continue down that path once again. They're not all perfectly related, but I am Ryan Kahn, the host of Pivotal Change from CS Business Consulting, and I want to talk about there being a tip, a trick or a technique to everything. If you can really understand this mindset, you can really enhance your life in several ways. So what I first want to do is I want to take your mind back in the day when you were a kid or maybe you just eat a cracker barrel and they have those little puzzles. You walk into a toy store and those are little brain buster puzzles where, I don't know, maybe there's the two horseshoes with the chain and there's a ring on that chain. And you got to try to figure out how to get this ring off of this solid item here where it's welded together at the, at the base. And of Course, if you do things just the right way, you know, the tip, the trick, the technique to it, you can be the smart person that impresses your friends and gets the ring off the chain, or can slide the hook off the nail or do whatever. There's all kinds of little brain busters. And in that moment, it kind of gives you an advantage over your friends. You're the smart one. You get to step up intelligence. I don't want it to be too much of an ego issue, like, hey, I kind of know something you don't know. That's not the point here. But it is a moment where you now have the ability to teach somebody else and impress upon them this little technique or trick. So you know that from my experience, I talk a lot about wrestling and jiu jitsu and law enforcement, my business endeavors, and other sports as well. I'm going to continue along those lines to help illustrate this point. One of the most impactful little techniques or tips that I got was in wrestling and in jiu jitsu, when a concept called infinite base that not everybody even talks about, talks about, exists. So if you think about life, you have all of these bases all around. You have my desk, my chair, these walls. All of these things technically are pretty movable. Even the wall, if you apply enough force to it, I could probably put my. My fist through the wall or kick through the wall. If I had to shove somebody in a wrestling match or fight, they would go into the wall six inches deep and break the plaster. And if you got something out, you could probably knock over the technically. So that is not an infinite base, but in the context of a sport, a jiu jitsu or something like that, the ground, the earth, the mat is infinite base. It is not going anywhere no matter how hard I punch, kick, or push on it. So utilizing infinite base to its advantage really helped me in one way. Let's say there is a cradle. In wrestling or jiu jitsu, there's similar techniques where you take somebody's head and arm and their leg and you bring them together and you hold them together. And that way you get control over that person to either pin them or subdue them and escape the fight.
[00:28:52] You can use all of your biceps and shoulder muscles trying to crunch somebody's entire body together. That's very difficult. Of course it can be done. But if you can plant your hand on the mat and utilize all of the friction that that infinite base provides, I can now turn and use my entire body to scoop up and run to that one immovable, infinite Base their entire body, lock it up with greater ease effectiveness and start pinning and beating people in some of these cradles or other techniques like tilts, glacier series, things like that. So the infinite base was a revolutionary technique for me and created a lot of success in my life. So I've now gone and I've looked into my business world, my relationship world and said, what is the version of an infinite base here? What's that thing that I can rely on to always be there and then build success off of it? So keep that in mind while we go along the ways. And I'm not talking about all combat sports and football and wrestling and things like that, because there is definite a psychology for this, for sales pitches. Let's just say. Let's say somebody has never taught you how to set a hook in a sales pitch and your customers just kind of keep losing interest and walking away. Well, if you can learn to set a hook in a sales pitch and somebody teaches you that little tip, say this first or hey, here's a trick. If you bring this up or make a connection with the client, or there's a technique to actually structure your sentences in a different way, then you can tell somebody's sales pitch has gotten a lot better. They're going to be extremely effective in making sales. We do something in our advisory service as well. So in the accounting firm that specializes in advisory and business consulting, we have a profile of a client that we like. We do not want just tax returns walking off the street and somebody saying, hey, can you do my taxes? That's not what we're here for. We want the relationship, the longevity of providing value and pouring value in that relationship. And of course, the client has to have a situation in which they can receive our value and get the gains from the changes that we're trying to implement in their life. So we need to profile that person. And the psychology of what we do is in the very first introductory meeting, there's no bill, there's no charge. We're just meeting each other. We tell them fairly early on in the conversation. This is just as much us interviewing you to see if you're a good fit for our firm as we know it is for you. Going around and shopping for accountants to see if we can do the job that you want us to do. Immediately the situation changes and they go, whoa, I might not get picked. I thought this was a one way street and I'm shopping for account mountains. But it's no longer that way. We might not pick you even if you like Us, they take a deep breath. They usually sit up in their chair and start paying attention differently because their mindset goes, I may be excluded. Nobody wants to be excluded. The kid on the playground that didn't get picked, so they're going, pick me, pick me. And they're immediately more compliant into our systems, our methodologies and our procedures. Also, they understand that, like, hey, if things break down with us, you stop responding to our communications. You don't give us the documents, documents we need to help you in a timely manner, we may cut you from the program. Holy cow, I'm going to stay compliant. And it has completely restructured the psychology compliance and forced positive relationships between our clients over the years. So there is a technique that we can use in the advisory world. Things like that can be expanded to all industries as well. But having a tip, a trick or technique, and then allowing your people to do sales pitches that way has been incredible for us.
[00:32:10] Some of the things don't have to be so large is like how to select a proper client profile and use psychology to get them to be compliant. That seems a little heavier, but some of them could be pretty small little tips or techniques, and they can be game changers. One of examples, like how to properly hold a hammer. You got some new person onto your construction company, maybe it's a young kid you hired your buddy's son or something like that. And they don't know how to hammer a nail. So you teach them how to take the proper grip, hold their wrist at the right angle, swing their arm the right way. Now they can swing a hammer properly and they're much better employee. And they're grateful for you for showing that. Maybe it's not just holding a hammer, but maybe it's learning something like using your pinky to hit the tab key on a keyboard and tab your way through fillable documents. I know it sounds silly, but if I have a document like a tax software program where I keep taking my hand off to the mouse to move from category to category, or I can just tab my way through, well, shoot, I may save something like three, five seconds per opportunity. I mean, what's that worth? Well, if I've got like 55 or 60 categories to enter on this tax return or more, well, then I'm saving minutes per tax return. When it all adds up. If I'm doing 40, 60, 80 tax returns a week, I'm starting to get in the category of saving hours of work every month. If I'm saving hours of work every month, I'm saving dozens of hours a year, you're telling me by just using my pinky to tab through a screen. So that was something that I learned back in the day in high school and college that made me more effective. But it's carried us through in little things. Like little tiny things that seem insignificant can really have a large ripple effect. Maybe there's some other things, like just shifting your weight. You put somebody in a stance or in a resting position, just shift your weight to the front on the balls of your heels so you're ready to take off when the ball is snapped, right? Or hey, if you're filling out this form for hr, start on page three. And when you fill that data in, it propagates it to the rest of the form. Whoa. I just saved a bunch of time by teaching people how to fill out these forms because there's an auto feature to it that people didn't know about.
[00:34:06] Maybe you think back to your high school days, your middle school days, when you got Excel the first time, and somebody taught you how to enter formulas into Excel, maybe make a pivot table and summarize your data. Holy cow, that can be a game changer. But somebody had to teach you that technique first. They had to show you the little trick. I'm like, hey, if you do this, do that, and hit the little sign in the corner, boom. It posted for. Wow. Those little secrets, those little functions are not just going to help you, but you should be now learning to seek them out so that you can help others. There is the mindset of going beyond the basics of what you are taught. If you just want to receive your training and then move forward with your job and effectively go into factory function mode, you can do better. You want to learn beyond basic functions as a leader, as a person with influence, part of a team member looking for promotions, or running a full company, you want to be able to find these secrets. You can make yourself and others more efficient and almost certainly more effective in accomplishing the daily mission, the goals of the team, and getting that vision accomplished as well. If you know these secrets, you're the person that possesses the secrets, the tips, the tricks and the techniques. Now you have an opportunity as well. Go back to the beginning of this conversation when we're talking about the little brain busters. You can shine as a mentor and shine as a trainer. You can bring people answers that are relief to their problems. They're going to have some type of struggle, they're going to have some type of inefficiency, and you can bring some serious value to them. Now, that is huge and gives you an opportunity to accelerate your team yourself and succeed. But remember, it's not an ego trip. The other thing you can do is you can monetize this. There are entire industries built around, hey, we're going to teach you the seven most effective ways to do X, Y and Z. And they monetize that. And you can find tips, tricks and techniques in your industry or in your training programs, and then develop a training program and sell it for outside of your industry, maybe even inside your industry at times. This is a huge thing that you can lock into. And we need to be people in life that are always looking for that tip. The trick, the technique. And we're not talking about cutting corners and taking shortcuts. That's different. But something that makes us more efficient and more effective. After monetizing it, there is a trap, right? So other than monetizing, other than sharing and being a training and a mentor, be that shining star. There is a toxic side of this as well. And I really want you to be the person that does not grab all of the secrets and trips and hoard them and keep them close to their chest. And I refuse to share my expertise with anybody.
[00:36:34] People think that makes them more valuable, but it doesn't. Because what's going to happen is if you leave because you're the only person that knew how to unlock this software, you're the only person that knew how to order the exact right custom part from the vendor and explain exactly what they need. Well, we're going to figure that out. We're going to resolve that issue at some point based on necessity, and you will be replaced. But your value comes if you can now teach 10 other people to do what you do. If you can teach 10 other people to know what you know, you're now valuable. You might have opportunities at promotion, opportunities at expanding bandwidth and increasing your company delegating to where you have a superior role. That's incredible. And that promotes a good culture. It promotes sharing and expertise and team building and mentorship. And that is a huge thing. So do not be the toxic person that hoards all of the tips, the tricks and techniques. Be the person that shares and teaches and trains. And if you have the mindset of looking for these in life and seeking them out, you're going to watch some serious growth occur and some serious expansion happen in your life. So try that out. Everybody sit tight. We're going to take one more commercial break before we finish tonight. Right here on Pivotal Change.
[00:38:10] We are back from the break and on to the final segment of the night. So more pivotal change. We're going to wrap up the show with this. I, Ryan Khan, want you to know your role. This is what I mean by that. When you are inside of a team, an agency, whether you're the top dog or you're the bottom of the barrel and you're working your way up, it is important that you know your role. And again, there's a dichotomy to this. Two sides to knowing your role. One of the greatest lessons in leadership and in mentorship is understanding your role. Leadership is not about doing everything. It's about knowing what is yours to do and doing it with excellence.
[00:38:47] Today I want to talk about, in this final episode, how to know your role. The best one is to master your role, to literally know your role, to be an expert at it, to dive into it, to get all of the best experience, all of the best resources, all of the best skill and knowledge inside of your role. So you can literally perform it with the highest level of expectation that anyone can ever want out of you. If you can do that, you're going to help grow the organization larger, make the team a lot better. And then the other side of knowing your role is knowing your boundaries and respecting those boundaries, staying in your lane, staying in your wheelhouse, as they say. It also is when to speak and when to stay silent. If you know your role, then you won't step out and put yourself in maybe a tight spot. So strong teams, successful organization, and very well respected leaders are built on knowing their roles. These principles here. So when you want to master your responsibilities, every team has a lot of moving parts and every team member has different roles or responsibilities inside of that part. And they have to mesh together like the cogs or gears of a bigger machine. You are not responsible for everything, but you are responsible for your part. So excellence is where you take your role in the organizational success and you pour yourself into it, focus your expertise and make sure that your part of the system is efficient and effective in the overall mission. Let's give an example here. In sports, the quarterback doesn't get out there and just go play defense, right? If he does, the whole team is going to suffer. There are better people geared out than the quarterback for playing defense. He needs to be handing off the ball, throwing the ball, maybe making the occasional run and orchestrating the maneuvers of everyone else. Huge, important role. But if he sacrifices that to spend his time playing defense, the entire team suffers. So that leadership principle of mastering your role comes from focusing on what exactly they're supposed to do. You got to study your job to know what that is. You have to improve your craft, get skills, get repetition, do the mundane, boring things and master the basics in order to build off those basics and just, just be the best at your role that you could ever think about. So that when somebody else steps into that role, they have a model to then look at. And it helps you step into the next role as well. Become reliable. You gotta be a reliable, trustworthy person. People know they can trust you. People know they can get the job done, they can give you something and it will be well done on time, in the right way. Inspire others, like I said, by being the role model. Set the ethics standards of this is what hard work looks like and this is what a good product look like. This is how the service should be delivered. And then create momentum with that, use that to create momentum and encourage other people in a nice, positive, peer pressure way to do the same, to dive into their role and help the whole organization move forward and grow. Now there is a little side I want to do a little offshoot on that football model as well. Occasionally the quarterback witnesses a fumble or throws an intersect interception. What that, what must that quarterback now possibly do? Well, now he might have to go make a tackle and throw himself in there, there. But the quarterback knows the game so well. He's been playing it since he was a child. He knows when that time comes and he steps into that role as a leader and makes the tackle to save the defense getting a touchdown. So you have to know your role so well, you can identify the moment I need to step outside of my role, do something different and guess what happens on the next play. The quarterback's the quarterback again, that's a little point that if you don't truly master the knowledge of what your job entails and doesn't entail, you don't know when to step out and make a tax. So respecting boundaries is led into that from this conversation.
[00:42:16] You are not always just looked at for your actions as a leader, but sometimes your restraint, sometimes you're looked at on your leaders. When you stayed silent or chose not to react or do something, you have to know when something is not your responsibility and delegation must ensue or you must not try to take it off of your neighbor's lap and just get it done real quick. And that's a big caveat. If you're training, you can't just fix the issue with somebody. You have to identify it, send it back and let them fix it so they can imprint their learning. So knowing what not to do when staying inside your role or your lane is very important. Sometimes voicing your opinion is not your responsibility. You're part of the role that you're in. You don't need to share at this time. Not every conversation requires your voice to be heard. And that is tough for modern Westerners. Let me tell you. You want to avoid stepping on others toes and keeping the process is going by getting in there, just doing something for them or doing a little extra or doing a little less than what your role does. Now they have to pick up the slack for you. Micromanagement is bad. So knowing your role is to trust but verify. Train well. If you train them well, you shouldn't have to micromanage them at all. The other thing is like think about in the military, right? You don't sit here and voice your opinion and do things for other people outside their role, like the military. If you've got like a squad leader or a sergeant or something like that, he's not going up the chain and telling the general, hey, this is what we did and this is what we're going to do, right? That doesn't work well. That undermines the general and undermines the trust in your team, saying, hey, this guy thinks he's a big shot. He's trying to do things he's not supposed to be doing and it's going to crumble the integrity of that team. Don't overstep your role. So instead of inserting yourself, you can think of various times of when to more strategically bring up your opinion, more strategically step outside your role. Like when the quarterback has to make a tackle. You can also confer with your teammates or even your subordinates. Hey guys, do you think this scenario right here invokes action in me? Or do you think it would be better for me just to leave it? Right? It's okay to go out to your advisors and understand, is this inside the umbrella, the realm of my responsibilities? I want you guys to ask yourself a handful of questions, okay? Those handful of questions can be this and this is those pause and breathe, these tactical pause moments. If you've watched some of my other videos, here's a really good question. Does this issue that is being worked on, discussed, contemplated, does it fall under my authority? So you look at the umbrella of your authority and maybe the structure of the organization and you can literally track it down on a flowchart and say, yeah, this is in my wheelhouse. Or nope, this does not fall under my authority. Therefore, I will not insert myself into this conversation.
[00:44:56] Is it helpful or am I just speaking out loud to be heard? Is what I have to say truly helpful and provide some type of solution, some type of opportunity, access to a resource or something like that? Or is it, again, have a tip, a trick or technique that, well, hey, I'm. This isn't necessarily my authority, but however, if people do this, I think it will help this situation as well. A little wisdom, but your input must be helpful.
[00:45:21] Would silence be more beneficial than your opinion? Is your opinion going to ruffle feathers? Is your opinion just something where I want to know? I want people to know how I feel?
[00:45:32] Or is it better just to be silent? Thomas Jefferson has a really good quote where it says, it is better for you to be silent and thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. So think about that for a second. People may think you're dumb and that may hurt your ego and your feelings, but they don't truly know if you're dumb or a fool. But then you open your mouth in the wrong circumstances, in the wrong setting, especially when you don't have authority and somebody says, hey, this doesn't involve you, Ryan, now you're a fool for sure. Okay, another one I want you to ask yourself. This question is, do I have the expertise or the experience to offer a genuine opinion, or is it just something I'm supposing would happen? I'm theorizing that this would be the outcome, or hey, guys, I have been there, done this, and in my experience, this has happened in my expertise. I've done this 1200 times, and in this 1201 times, this should be the outcome. Let's go ahead and move forward. If you have the expertise and the experience and it is outside of your realm of authority, you may have the opportunity to say that. You can also put caveat statements. Anytime you need to step outside of your role. You can say, hey, guys, I know this isn't my department or division. I'm just trying to be helpful. But in my division we do this. If that applies here, you guys make the decision. I just thought I was trying to be helpful. If you caveat yourself and say, well, we do this, you guys should just do that. You're going to have a problem. So delivery and understanding that your role is to also communicate properly at the right time. If you've heard me discuss my leadership philosophy. Everyone has permission to raise their hands when I have incomplete or inaccurate information and I'm trying to make a decision. So that has just placed you under the umbrella of it is your role, even if you're outside of this division or operational team, to speak up and say, hey, you don't have all the information. We're on back order right now. We can't finish our widgets to provide to you. So when you move forward into phase two, Ryan, we're not going to be able to provide you the widgets from our division to your division. I just wanted you to have that information. Let's hit the brakes and reconsider so you can understand how knowing your role, being an expert and mastering is going to elevate you, elevate the team, elevate the mission and ultimately accomplish the vision of the company. It will work out hopefully well for you and everyone involved if you truly master your role. And you can also see how knowing your role and knowing not when to steal work from somebody else or not do enough to prop up and set your buddy for success, or to speak out of turn or speak when it's not your proper place can really harm your career. If you can know your role and write down the differences and ask yourself the four questions we went through earlier, you're gonna have a lot more success. So I want to talk about true leadership being again about discipline. Discipline is what grants you all kinds of opportunities in life and truly take stress and burdens off of you. Discipline must come in both in your action to continue doing the excellent things you're doing and make it habits and repeatable. And it must also come in restraint when not to speak, when not to steal, when not to micromanage. Knowing your role and then owning it is what truly creates stability and trust and success both personally and globally. Inside of your sphere of influence. Respecting the roles of others is the last little token of this it's healthy and functional team when you're not trying to dip into somebody else's role. I mentioned this briefly just a moment ago, but if you're in, let's say a supervisory position or some type of managerial position and you have a new person that you've showed them once or twice, so they should have figured it out by now. And they keep sending you the improper product material or report and you just, I'll just fix it. It'll just take me 10 minutes to fix it instead of sending it back to them and having them learn and putting the red ink on the form and positively directing them to the better behavior. So that is also your role is when to let them fail, when to let them learn when to let them correct their error so they stop making in the future. And the ROI on time management truly pays dividends. So I'm going to end right here. Master your job, respect your team, and watch how everything around you then flourishes. So I want you to take the lessons from tonight. A lot of stuff that I just really want to get off my heart from what's been going on in the last couple of months of life. And I hope you can go out there and see the change and be the change. And we'll catch you right here. Next time on Pivotal Change.
