Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: SA hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Pivotal Change. I'm your host Ryan Kahn with CS Business Consulting and I am here to walk you down your continuing journey, your continuing path to success by the show designed for entrepreneurs, leaders and those who have or want to grow their influence and leadership. Pay attention when we're here to get you those things that are going to make your pivotal change to success.
Now, per usual, I'm asking and inviting you to get a pen and paper out and watch this show with a pen and paper. Tonight I'm going to go over a couple of topics with you and we're also going to have a wonderful guest on board that's going to share some really critical things about how to identify ways to change and make changes. So I want to talk to you first, just in general about are you ready? And I mean, are you really ready?
And I want to cover four categories of what it means to be ready. Now this could be ready for sports competition. Ready to lead, continue or grow your business, to take on that new deal, to take on that new promotion and position, to lead as team captain, whatever it is. Are you ready? Have you done the self examination?
So let's peel into the first one. Did you make the preparations or is this something you're just trying to whimsically chase after?
Readiness isn't reactive, it is proactive.
There's a principle that I teach on multiple levels in every facet of my life and is the principle of action versus reaction. And in that principle you can demonstrate very scientifically that action beats reaction. So we take that action, we turn it into the term proactivity in your business, in your personal growth, in your self discipline, in your, in whatever environment you're going to exist and grow in and hopefully you're going to do it in all of them. There's a fun game that you can play to test this out. You can turn to the person next to you and you've played the slap hands game where one person puts their hands out, the other person puts their hands on bottom and you have to wait for them to move. Then you turn and you flip and you slap the hands of your buddy. Well, you're going to win most times until they really get into a rhythm. It might take five, six, seven times for them to finally make you whiff and then you turn your hands over and switch spots. That's a great, great game to test and show that the person who is almost always going to win most of the time you can get a tie in reaction. So in life, do you want to just be tying people? Do you want to be missing the mark most the time until you get an expert level feel for a situation? No.
You want to have your preparation set and be the proactive person that's making others in the world react to you.
Success also doesn't just start at the moment of some opportunity popping up. That that's not how it really works. It starts in all of those quiet hours when no one is watching. It starts with all those character building moments when you're doing the extra going farther, educating, just a little more so that when the opportunity comes, aha.
You've made the preparations to use that opportunity for your advantage. Have you done things like studied the market that you're in or getting into? Do you know who your customer is or who your idea ideal customer is? Have you taken the time to profile out what exactly it is you're looking for in a customer?
That's an important thing so that you can wean that out and save a boatload of headaches in your future.
Are you actively building your network and deepening those relationships? Are you building systems before the pressure hits and you have to fall back on those systems? There's a very common phrase in the tactical world of which you've heard me say before, you do not rise to the occasion, but you fall to the level of your training. The business world is a similar model. It says you do not rise to the occasion, but you fall to the level of your systems. I hope you did the preparation and got those systems built.
The pressure will hit and it's going to come when you rely on those systems and the moments of preparation. Have you acquired all of the resources necessary? Do you have the proper inventory? Are you just going to run out of something in the middle of the job? Did you buy enough bricks to finish the fourth wall of the building you're constructing? Did you buy enough chemicals to finish the entire process of the job? Or you have to run back to the vendor and get more and explain to the customer why the job is delayed. Make sure you have what you need, the resources, the computers, the software, and of course the money in the bank. You should be having a minimum of six months of operational funds, payroll included, to run your business without making a single dime for six months after you launch and get on your feet. Now, the leaders who prepare before these pressures, before these waves hit them, well, they're the ones that don't drown when it comes. They're able to keep their head above water, think clearly and react in the moment and rely on their people, their systems, their network, their relationships. Some of the most overlooked areas of preparation are preparing your personal life. Have you talked to your spouse and significant others about the endeavor you're engaging on? Are they recruited into that plan and a supporting member of that plan? Do your kids know that you're changing lifestyles from being a worker at a factory to an entrepreneur? That's going to demand a whole lot more from your core.
And are they being coached and are you being transparent with the efforts it's going to take and the joys and the blessings and opportunities that it's going to bring?
That was a big conversation I had on multiple levels when I switched from being a police officer. I went from cop to accountant and I told them that life is going to look different. It's going to be different. When I'm starting out on this venture, I'm going to be putting in a whole lot of extra time. You're not going to see daddy as much as you thought you were going to see. Obviously they were a little younger when I started. But in doing that you need to develop the necessary skills. So the skill set I'm going to break off as a second category. Of course it's part of the preparation, but it's a little more casting towards that vision. A lot of people have great ideas. They've got these visions out there. But listen, vision without the capability behind it, it's nothing more than a dream.
And there's another one where if you turning or trying to turn your vision into a reality but you don't have goals and benchmarks, well then you've created an impossibility. Don't just have some fantasy vision in your but the ability to execute and carry out a vision. In order to do that, you have to take this great idea and then you have to invest in mastering the skills or mastering the leadership that's going to allow you to drive through. Learn how to delegate properly. Not just throwing stuff everywhere, but mentorship, development and growth so then you can delegate and trust when you hand it off. Become financially literate. Most people just run their businesses by looking at the bank account. Do I have enough money to spend on this and do I need to work really hard and put in some extra sales so that I can afford the next piece of equipment.
Learn financial literacy, learn how to read a P and L statement, learn how to understand a balance sheet. Those things are going to be really important. Get a budget in place and have people be accountable with you on learning those and Executing the explanations and the budgets involved with them. Also, I want you to ask yourself, have you trained yourself for the job that you say you want? If you're putting yourself in the leadership position, then you're going to need a whole lot more skills than just the technical side of things. Can you confidently lead people like, are you able to handle conflicts and be a mediator and resolve things? Can you make strategic decisions that maybe doesn't provide a benefit today and everyone has to be sad and grind a little harder. But the payout in the long run is where the real satisfaction comes. A lot of leaders struggle with that play short term mindset and keep making people happy along the road and they never get to the big payouts of time, freedom, work, life, harmony and bigger raises, paydays and benefits for all.
Make those tough decisions and learn how to analyze it. Get mentors and advisors that can teach you those things. And also great leaders, they're going to be growing their skills before they're ever needed of them. So you're going to be getting the skill and say, hey, you might as well need it and not have it, then to.
Then I'm sorry to have it, not need it, then to need it and not have it. And so if you go ahead and develop those skills one day when you have gotten down the path of accomplishing your vision, that skills necessity will pop up and you will have it right there in your back pocket to use and survive the day.
So the difference between the potential and the performance is usually a pretty big thing. And the main thing is that preparation eventually will meet and need the skill that you develop. Especially if you've done your research like I talked about before, about what it actually takes to run your industry, run your style of business, be an entrepreneur and a leader.
Leader. A lot of people, if you're doing these things in just the first two stages, look at you and say, man, this guy or this gal was really lucky. But that's not what luck is. What luck really is is when preparation meets opportunity. And that's what you're going for. The third category is did you actually put in the work? See talent, that is a great thing and it is a multiplier of great effort. But without effort, without putting it out there, putting your shoes on the street, zero. The result is zero. Any elite coach will tell you that the hard workers will always reach and then surpass those who are naturally gifted or naturally talented. If they're not also putting in the work. It is the grind in which it separates the talkers from the people who are the builders. If you put the reps in when it is not glamorous, when it's behind the scenes, you're doing these things consistently and executing on the mission and the vision building, even when it's tedious, even when times are slow and you could kick your feet up, that work ethic is going to ultimately be your great equalizer in entrepreneurship and in fact largely across all categories of life as well.
Don't confuse also just motion and activity with progress. It's very easy to be busy and have things going on, but not be effective or efficient. So make sure that you're actually accomplishing things with your movement and your motion and then make sure that you're not avoiding the hard things. Are you actually doing the hard things? The things that you don't want to do but you know is part of the job and it will ultimately move that needle, or are you just staying in your comfort zone? Avoid those things. Number four and last one for the segment of the show is your mindset, right?
Because everything rises and falls on your mindset. It is the first M in the 5M's program on purpose.
Are you leading from a position of fear or clarity of the vision and the knowing of the resources and skills that you have? Are you doing it from comparison and keeping up with the challenges? Or are you doing it from passion and conviction? The strongest business plans won't survive a leader who is just mentally checked out, who is too fearful to make decisions or they're riddled with self doubt. A readiness mindset is what is necessary and is rooted in resiliency, adaptability and once again, that long term perspective.
It was a core value of the SWAT team when I was on to be readiness to always be ready. And we had a huge significant impact in how we conducted not just our training and our mission, but our personal lives as well. We had to be fit, have our back together, our gear together, be ready to respond anytime and flip that switch and get those baddest of the bad bad guys. So what can I control? Is a good way to examine this. What do I need to let go of? Maybe I can't control that and who do I need to become in order to lead at the next level? So examine those first three steps and you can answer that question which develops your mindset. Your mindset must be one of perseverance, service, end of growth and that growth mindset on multiple levels. Make yourself the best whole person you can and be ready to lead. Sit tight with me. We're going to put a pin in the conversation right here. We're going to bring on our next guest and we're going to have a continuing conversation about how to implement a lot of these things. We're to going catch you right back here on More Pivotal Change after this break.
Foreign welcome back from the break for More Pivotal Change. We just had a wonderful segment on being ready and making sure that you were ready for the endeavor that you're going on. And now we're going to transition into that wonderful guest I was telling you about, Brittany Casares. She's a very good friend of mine and she is a consultant that works with a lot of industries, largely accounting firms, to really help them develop their operations, their processes and their people. She's an expert in her field. Field has does it multiple times, even through mergers. So, Brittany, welcome back to Pivotal Change.
[00:13:29] Speaker B: Thanks for having me, Ryan. I'm excited to be here.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: Well, it's always the pleasure is mine, I can assure you that. So I really want to encourage you as you make your points, if you have a really point of emphasis, really draw that out for us because I tell the audience to watch with a pen and paper and a lot of them actually listen with taking notes for what they can do to make those pivotal changes. But for the sake of time, I'm just going to jump right into the first question because I want to get as much as your brain out in this episode as we can.
So you do a lot with teams and their operations. So when you step in to first evaluate a team or the operations that are in place, can you tell us about like the first areas or the first indicators that you're looking for? What do you examine first to help identify the inefficiencies and the bottlenecks?
[00:14:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I think the first thing that any leader within a firm needs to check on is do you have the right people in the right seat. So and that would mean understanding people's skill sets and seeing if they are they are able to adapt to whether you even if you have a workflow in place or if you're willing to build a new workflow, making sure that you have individuals working on where their strong suits are or if you even have the right personalities within the right roles. Because if you don't, your workflows, your success rate on anything, finding any inefficiencies in the workflows are not going to be consistent because you're not going to have the drive or the knowledge from the individuals if they're not in the right seat.
[00:14:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I like that a lot. You said right in the beginning they're having the right people in the right seats. I wrote it down. I took my own advice and I think that's really important because a lot of people have the right people. But to hire them for a job that maybe they're not best at their skill set or maybe their personality isn't really quite caveated. For us, we have that example. We hired a highly skilled person and we thought we were going to push them into a more out front, client facing role and they really just wanted to sit in the back room and just crank out work and they excelled at that. So we had to pivot. And the personalities. That's another really good point that you made is that, you know, if you have a person that can be put on team A or team B, but they just happen to jive and get along with this person a lot better, then they're going to be effective doing that. That personality matchup could be pretty important. It could be a game changer potentially.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: Yeah, extremely. Because if you, you want to make sure that you have people who have very similar learning styles and very similar delivery sty same team. So for example, if I am helping multiple partners or multiple owners in a firm, I need to be able to kind of speak their language rather than kind of shy away if they ask something of me. I need to be able to have that ability to speak in the leadership role of speaking back to them, asking clarifying questions and then being able to deliver to my team. Down below, if you're asking an individual who really doesn't have that confidence to speak up to individuals who may be on that leadership level, probably not the best fit for that individual because you're not going to get exactly what you want out of them because they have that little bit more of a shy personality. So I think personalities is only going, putting people in kind of little pods of where their personalities are going to be most successful are going to be providing the firm the most successful ways of finding inefficiencies and producing positive workflows.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: Ooh, I like that a lot. And I really like your example there about, you know, if you're not going to ask clarifying questions back and you just like a robot, go report the information and the team's going to say, well, what if? And what about what if? And you didn't, you didn't help your team progress there. So that's, that's a pretty good point too. You also said kind of in that, that first question that I asked you. You know, it's pretty interesting about making sure you have a good clear workflow, if you have one. And I've been to some places that don't have workflow. They just have a kind of the way we do things here. And it's nothing formalized. So tell me about in your experience, how does a well designed operational workflow impact the overall team performance? Does it help morale? What are the long term success rates look like when you do that?
[00:17:24] Speaker B: I think you're extremely successful if you have a productive workflow in the sense of if you have the buy in from the individuals who are finding the inefficiencies and making the workflow stronger, you're going to be more successful with that going forward.
So with that being said, one way to do that is to make sure that you're supporting your employees. So I always go into my operations team and find out what their strong suits are and asking each one of them to champion something within the workflow. Because if you're just constantly delegating and these individuals don't find interest in what they're being delegated to, it's not going to be at the highest rate that you could possibly get it to be working at. So you need to go in and find what does this individual succeed at and what do they want to do? How can I leverage their strengths to be able to produce a more positive and more efficient workflow?
You know, as leaders we always just constantly want to delegate and delegate, delegate, delegate. But we're forgetting when there's some tasks that are delegated to us, we kind of sit there and go, I really don't want to do this or I don't know if I'm the best suited for this. Maybe so and so is best suited. So you can take a step back and be proactive and understand where your employees are at with what they're interested in and what their strengths are. And that is only going to project the workflow to having less inefficiencies going forward.
I think the biggest key is finding individuals who are heads down like you said, who are individuals who want to stay behind the work and then who are the ones who want to vocalize and be able to explore more options to produce that workflow to outsourcing clients or out out to your firm in general. So I think that's one way to be proactive. Start there, find the strengths of your team and you're going to limit inefficiencies in the workflow later on.
[00:19:16] Speaker A: I really like how you said, go find the differences in the teams and you're talking about the positive skill and personality traits and who's more fit and able to do this. And I like that you point out that even you as a leader, like, hey, I don't like this part of my job. Maybe it's just a part I gotta swallow and understand that nobody likes every single component of their job. But at the same token, if you have a part that you're not as good at or not as comfortable with, if you can mentor, then delegate. That's one thing I tell people, is that delegation rarely works without mentorship first. And, but you're talking about literally discovering the people, spending time with your staff members gotta learn your people and then you're able to position them and grow them. And then I really want to point out one more thing that you said, give each person on the team they need to champion something. And so if someone on the team is championing something in their team, their responsibilities, the workflow, then they're probably going to get more buy in. Is that what you're, is that what you're doing? Partly telling us?
[00:20:10] Speaker B: Yeah. So one thing that I've learned over my career is no one likes micromanaging. However, as leaders we have to feel we have to micromanage in some way. But what you can do is to, is reverse the micromanaging. So find that individual who is, you know, somebody who really loves to dive deep in the data, allow that individual to find those inefficiencies in the data and then report back to you. And then instead of you constantly checking in and saying, hey, where are we at? What did you find, you know, what needs to be fixed, etc. Just report back to them. And you, you have them saying, hey, I need you to produce just something to me at the end of the week. You tell me what we need to do, you tell me how we should fix it, and then let's get together as a team and let's see how we can take your ideas and make it work better, make it work the best. Instead of you leading and delegating, allow that individual to take their strengths, which is why you put them in that position in the first place, and fully support them. And switch the micromanaging around and you're going to have 100% buy in a lot more than you are constantly asking and checking in. Allow them to provide the check ins to you.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: I really like that switching or flipping, the micromanaging, you micromanage back up to me and tell Me what needs to change. And I was kind of gonna bring that up earlier and you guys got caught away listening to you there for a minute. But we're talking about buy ins. I want to lead into talking about some buy in with people, but if you have the permission for these people to say, hey, we've got this process that's set in stone, but maybe we're on this team, we're moving and grooving and we see some tweaks that can come along the way. Giving them the permission to speak up and in your case, giving them the directive to speak up and say, micromanage me in the process upward so I can help, you know, initiate these changes. That's a whole different component and version of buy in. Is that, is that part of it?
[00:21:55] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, 100%. It's all about support.
So every person in their role, no matter where you're at in a firm, if you have support from your leader within your team, you are going to have that 100% buy in. So if, no matter what you can do, even if it's support of as a leader, if I say, hey, look, I just don't think these are going to be the most beneficial changes that we need to do right now, but let's put it on the back burner and at least acknowledging it, you acknowledge that you support everything that they're doing. I mean, there is a reason that you have these individuals in your firm. You know, you cannot run your firm firm by yourself. So if you're going to have these individuals in your firm, you have to learn to support them, to be proactive to produce that positive culture and for individuals to continue to see your vision and when you want to make those drastic changes in a workflow or process, or you have to turn back to them and say, sorry, we're not going that route, we're going to go my route. At least they understand that you listened to them, you reviewed and supported them through what they were a champion of, but you want to provide them a little bit more clarity on what you feel the direction is going.
[00:23:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I like that a lot. That's that very clarifying. I appreciate you sharing that. So about a minute for this last answer, this last question here, but let's say you're trying to find new people or develop the right people to fit within this new high functioning team that has all these new changes.
Especially when you're trying to shift or you're trying to strengthen your culture and doing this, how do you approach the finding and the Shifting.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: I think one of the biggest things that I'm a firm believer on and something that I've experienced personally is do not hire off of a resume, hire off of the human aspect. So how can you have a conversation with somebody, look at what their drivers are in life. One of the biggest things that I have always been successful with, and I love to death, are hiring teachers. They have the drive, they have the work ethic. You can always teach the trick of the trade, but you cannot teach work ethic or personality of somebody. So in order to find those individuals, you have to be creative and set those resumes aside and go into the human aspect of a person and see if they're on the same path and the same vision as you.
[00:24:08] Speaker A: I like that so much. You and I are twins in this category. We hire for character and personality much more than we ever hire for credentials, if at all.
And I'm a firm believer that you can always teach and train skills, but it's extremely difficult to teach and train personality and character. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and put a pin in this conversation. We're going to jump to a commercial break real quick. Everyone sit tight. You're halfway through the episode. We're going to be back with more Brittany Casares right after this break.
You've made it past the halfway point, so we're going to keep on moving forward. On this episode of Pivotal Change. We're going to jump right back into this wonderful conversation with my good friend Brittany Casares. She is an expert consultant helping transition firms all over the country into a much better version of themselves. If you missed the last segment, go back and watch it because there's a lot to remember in for your lifetime of success. We talked about operational assessments and how to identify things and start transitioning and molding people into the right fit into the right roles. And now we're going to talk a little bit more about the accountability and the success culture that goes along with these things. So, Brittany, let me ask you this question.
What systems or practices do you recommend and work with people on to build both the short term accountability, you know, those, those daily and weekly recurring things, and of course, the long term accountability, that quarterly and annual thing that is essential in team operations.
[00:25:58] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think the biggest thing with operations is it's always, there's always moving parts. Everybody is playing a role in multiple, whether it's departments or multiple tasks. So really making sure that you have your team all on the same page or Actually bringing up, allowing them to bring up things that might be critical components or really big pain points for that week. So something that I always recommend is a midweek meeting with your entire operations team. A lot of the times as leaders, we say we can't afford to sit in another meeting. You guys have this meeting and then report back to us. That is not the way to handle those types of things. You need to be able to sit in on those meetings, listen to the pain points that they may have or inefficiencies that they have seen. So you can hear it firsthand. So you're not hearing that secondhand messaging, because that's one going to show the support to the team, to show them to be a little bit more accountable, that you are there, ready to listen and see how you can move forward. And number two, it's great to get everybody together because operationally, like I said, your hands are in every cookie jar every day. And being able to come together as a team, whether it's two people, whether it's, you know, 15 people, and you have one hour a week, and that is enough for accountability to allow them to speak up, but not too much micromanaging to be like, hey, where's this at? Where's that at? Because they're going to continue that open conversation if you allow them to have that open forum once a week.
[00:27:28] Speaker A: I like that a lot. We follow a similar model, and during our crunch season, actual tax season, we actually meet twice a week, but on the, on the routine, yearly, we meet once a week. So I love how much is matching up here because it sounds like things that I've gleaned off you over the years are inadvertently or not so inadvertently, but working really well. I also really like the point that getting people together, you said, helps with the efficiencies, making sure that their voice is constantly heard. But a leader needs to make time. Time, that's. That's probably a sentence people could write down. And leader needs to make time for their people, but not too much time, because then the people are going to get too comfortable or drive or do whatever. And of course, it's a disruption from actual operations when you meet, even though it has productivity. So I think there's a good dichotomy there that you really pointed out for us. So that's really, really interesting stuff. The, the nature of it. Do you ever have a bigger biannual or annual meeting? Even if it's like not employee outing, like we're going to have some big, you know, go to the off site, we're going to meet for a day or two on a bigger scale. And are those valuable if people are doing them?
[00:28:29] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm a firm believer in if you're already meeting weekly and you should be constantly having that human interaction with your team, you don't have to have that water cooler talk day in and day out, but just those daily check ins. How are you doing? How are you feeling today? Because a big thing to increase the individuals to continue one, having your vision, two, giving 100% every day is making sure that you aw you are aware of, you know, maybe, maybe their mood has changed just a little bit today. Maybe something's going on. Just kind of having those human interactions is going to be able to limit having more meetings biannually or annually. So yes, I believe in still having those, but having those daily interactions is going to decrease the amount of items that you may have to review annually and with those annually. I'm a firm believer in allowing those conversations to be at a lunch to be, you know, whether it's, it's a happy hour or going to take them to do something that they enjoy. Because getting outside of an office setting is only going to allow that individual to open up just a little bit more and be able to feel a little bit more comfortable and not like they're in this closed space to where they can't have that open dialogue conversation. So every time I try to have a more important meeting, whether it's we need you to, we see some inefficiencies in your work, we need to be better at this or even giving great performance evaluation and the goals and expectations going forward, lightening up that setting and something that they, you both are comfortable in or is only going to increase the dialogue and the communication that you have between you and your employee and make you a better leader to where they can actually trust you and respect you. I think those are the two biggest things that us leaders forget. We need the trust and the respect from our employees in order to eliminate harder accountability check ins later on.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: I like that. And those harder accountability check ins I always call uncomfortable conversations. And so there's a whole drum of those. But that, that is a great point. I really like emphasizing change the setting, change the setting. Always eating with each other is always good. I'm obviously, as most people could tell, a fan of food. So if you're going to tell me to show up to lunch or dinner, I'm probably going to be there. Right? So I think, I think you said it sets the Environment looser so you get more truth and more respect comes out.
So in order to get people to that truth and respect phase, we need to continue to focus rooting out toxic behavior, good hiring practices like you mentioned in the first segment and things like that. So let me ask you about some maybe key behaviors or statements, phrases, orange flags, red flags. If you're looking for toxic attitudes or patterns within a team, how do you go about addressing them effectively for those larger accountability check ins like you said, and maybe a double answer. An already existing employee toxic is approaching or in the hiring process, what do you look and listen for to make sure you don't hire a toxic in person?
[00:31:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I think the biggest thing is really understanding your staff. So in a sense of understanding their personalities, you do have to go dig a little bit deeper and seeing how their moods are. So if you being able to kind of see if something may be off that day, are they having a bad day, are they, you know, do they have something that's going on outside or can you tell they're stressed about something? So really kind of putting an eye on who is that employee that I know and that I hired and what is kind of changing and some green or some yellow and red flags. The biggest thing that I can, that I preached to many, many owners and leadership teams is if something is brought to you, address it immediately. And that means address it with that either the individual who brought it to you or bring in both individuals together.
It's, it's never fun, but I have always called it carefrontation instead of confrontation. Because you're bringing something up because you care about the situation and everybody is there to meet the same goal, you will lose a lot of respect from your employees, which will create a more toxic culture in the end, if you don't provide that support outright initially and make sure that they understand that you heard something. It's going to be extremely hard, anyone in the firm to call out something that they don't feel is beneficial. But maybe kind of sitting down and getting a little background information. And I am a firm believer to always kind of hearing two sides to the story. In operations we see so much that goes on. We dabble in anything and everything.
So if something is coming back to a leadership team that may just seem a little bit uncertain, I want to go to all of the individuals involved and kind of figure out is this a miscommunication or is this something that we can just kind of get together, clear the air and move forward.
We live in a world anymore where we have to be able to have some tough conversations because in the end, everybody is there for the same purpose and everybody wants to do good. So let's make sure that we can actually bring everybody there to get through that. That rather than creating some bad juju and some air in the room, that just creates people. People's uncomfortableness. You got it. You got to nip it in the bud.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: Yep. I like that. We call that around here keeping short accounts. So if something good happens, we want to keep a short account. Right. We want to call that dude. We're going to praise that person in close proximity to when the good thing happens. Same with the negative thing. We don't want to let it fester. So we're going to keep short accounts. But. Hey, Johnny, can you step in my office for a minute? Hey, what happened last Monday, blah, blah, blah. And we're going to keep short accounts is the way we do now. Something that I'm going to steal from you probably is a carefrontation. That's just terribly cute. I can't help myself. Probably use it in the future. I think immediately that's going to de. Escalate some, some, like you said, bad juju. When you say, hey, we got to have a carefrontation here because I care about. And you're replacing literally the prefix con, which means negative or bad. So I like that a lot.
So I appreciate you bringing that in. And then those, those toxic behaviors again, go about knowing and going to your people. The detective side of me, anytime somebody brings something to me, there's one side of the story, then there's the other side of the story, then the truth is probably in the middle. So I really appreciate you emphasizing go to the other party as well. Don't just jump to assumptions. And I always find it. Brittany, you tell me this is true for you too. I always find it amazing how much assumptions are involved with toxicity.
[00:34:48] Speaker B: Yes, it's, it's extreme. Especially reading an email, reading a text, reading something in a tone that somebody had no intention of making, but you read it in a, in a different tone and that immediately creates toxicity because we are assuming something in a negative nature.
So I'm a firm believer of really just kind of calling that out and just saying, hey, did you mean it like this or what? You know, let's, let's talk about this a little bit more. You know what's even better? Let's have a face to face conversation so I can eliminate all of those assumptions of those types of things that are around. So yes, it is so common. But the biggest thing to do it is just have those face to face conversations. It's going to nip everything in the bud from, from the start to finish and people are going to be a lot happier.
[00:35:35] Speaker A: I like that a lot. So that just to rephrase that one backward, I think the face to face and the tone I always tell people I said when you send a text or an email, something in print, who gets to assume the tone of the message? The reader. The reader gets to assume and place the tone. So if you're not like jamming in exclamation marks and smiley face emojis and comma lol then and you're not trying to play a tone which generally isn't professional, we do it anyway. But you, you, they get to infer their tone. So I love the face to face get on the teams a zoom, a phone call, walk into their office and nip it in the bud like you said. So Brittany, I want to reserve this last little bit right here just to say, hey, you are obviously filled with wisdom and experience.
Somebody in this audience probably wants to use. You pick your brain. How would somebody go about getting a hold of you?
[00:36:22] Speaker B: Yeah, so I've kind of ventured out on my own. So I am kind of doing some consulting side gigs. So everything is through my personal email right now which is brittanyl casares gmail.com and I'm giving out my personal cell phone number to be able to have these conversations. So I'm at 970-218-2442 and again I have traveled the country doing this, talking to many firms, massive, you know, massive groups, up to a couple hundred people and then also siloing into small firms, even sole practitioners. So this is something that we can have a conversation of just how we can remove some items from partners or sole proprietors shoulders and to see how we can make a successful operation for you.
[00:37:08] Speaker A: It Britney, you're truly a gem. I know you've been hugely beneficial to Wayne and I over the years. So I appreciate you coming on the show once again. You're for sure going to be seen in the future. Everyone else, sit tight for the last segment of Pivotal Change on tonight's episode. We'll be right back after this.
Welcome back to the final stretch of this episode of Pivotal Change. And we just got done receiving a boatload of good advice and very practical ways to carry out and execute on that advice. So I hope you wrote that down with a pencil and I hope or a pen and paper and I hope you have some goals and some ideas and some ways that you can start diving into those things and making the changes necessary. So I want to move on talking from everything that we've talked about today. And it seemed like a lot of the heavy conversation revolved around people that were already established, people that were already growing and moving and grooving. But what if you're right at the very beginning phase of trying to be successful, of trying to be leader and run a business and entrepreneurial path?
What do we do there? How do we apply these principles for somebody that's starting from scratch? So if you're starting from scratch, don't worry. There's a path, there's a way to do it, because hundreds and thousands of people have done it before you, even in the last year or so. It's definitely possible. So stay focused on this one. One thing that you want to do is you want to establish yourself simple at first. You want to make sure that you're scalable with your workflow. Early on, you just want to build the bones, right? So think about just the bare bones of something that that's definitely what you want to start. And that's why the phrase exists that way. Don't wait until you get overwhelmed to start thinking that I need to get organized. That's. That's a big thing. There's a way to have initiative and jump in and get after it. But you have to have some type of planning. You have to have some type of organization and thought process and goals and method to your madness, right? You can't just jump off and start doing things and taking pay for it. All kinds of hoops and legal ramifications and liabilities and stuff like that. No matter what, you have to do the pre planning, you have to do the prep work that we talked about, talked about. You got to get yourself ready, okay? And once you got your mindset fixed, then you can jump in there with at least some prep. You can't just go to battle without ever having fired a weapon, trained with your gears and tools, not having the right equipment, transportation necessary. You got to make the preparation happen. But you only need the bare bones to get yourself started.
So most businesses truly do not fail because there's some type of lack of hustle or initiative. They fail from a lack of strength, structure. So you've got to get that bare bone structure in place in the early stages. You want to focus on clarity. What exactly is it that we are offering? What is our business here to do here to provide?
What do we need to do daily to make those things happen. If you have not checked out the 15 steps to freedom, it's going to in detail map out this entire process.
But I want to cover a lot of it today.
Then after you examine, what's the daily thing I need to show up and do to be successful and accomplish the job or sell the product? How do I do that weekly on return inconsistency, then how do I do that monthly? Then what does my projection look like? Annual, yearly, over time, Map out these workflows. Guys, I don't care who you are. You're gonna sit down at a computer, get out an Excel spreadsheet, a Microsoft Word document, if you like writing things. Personally, I highly recommend that you literally write these things down. Map out. I need to go from A to B to C to D until I'm finally arrive at Z, which is the whole finished product, right? That's gonna allow you to examine where bottlenecks are, where you're not so simple as you thought, where you need extra resources, tools, materials and supplies. But you can build it simple enough so that you know what to repeat and you know where to scale in the future. Hey, I've only got one of these right now, but in the future I'm gonna need two, and then three. Use checklists. If you're gonna have multiple people at the very beginning of your endeavor, make sure there's clear roles for what people are doing, some job responsibilities for the different staff positions. Make basic project tracking tools rules. Get your 3, 4, 5 critical phases of that process and make sure they're checked off so that you and the team know that you're this far along the process.
That's how you're going to use those things to scale. Start with checklists, start with clear roles, and start with tracking tools of some type. Doesn't have to be software, but that's a really good way to go. You can even use AI to help you and also document these things. You got to document not just for your financial perspectives, so that you can report your taxes and your payrolls and at the end of the year, but so that you can document how you messed something up and need to avoid it, or how you did something really well and need to repeat it. That is going to set your future and your future team into a big positive path and you and them are going to thank you for it. The other thing that you want to do and very important is when starting off is culture.
Set your culture from day one. Set the tone, set the expectations, and the language. You've heard me talk a lot about these things, plus boundaries and expectations and the clear roles and the language that you're going to use are going to be highly professional, precise, legal jargon, or you're going to be more lackadaisical and casual and slang with how you deal with customers. Everything from that or you're going to have type of communication channels and ways to communicate with each other internally and externally. Every email, every single meeting, every day, every single decision you make shapes your future and it shapes your culture. It's not just something that happens when you hire people and they all bring a little something different to the table that is a component of it, but it's really embedded and then emboldened with how you work directly with your people, how you treat them from the beginning. I have a little ebook called the first four Hours. This is a great way to set your culture. And in that first four hours four Hours book, ultimately you have to walk the walk and not just talk the talk as well. Speak with respect to people and lead with integrity. If you're requiring somebody else to do it, you better also be doing it or have done it in the past. Don't ask them to do things that you never dare do yourself. Nothing is beneath you. If it is, then you shouldn't be asking other people to do it. And then you want to start really training and clarifying on what success and winning looks like. What does a successful sales pitch in a delivery of a product, service or item look like? If people know what winning and success look like, they generally have a true clear idea of what they're working for. They can look at the picture of success in that mission, in that daily grind and accomplish that for you. So even if it's just like a contractor that you're having to come on site and help you with one thing that you can't really handle yourself. Start using that language around accountability and growth and a shared vision and that contractor is going to buy in and they're going to know what success looks like to you and accomplish that for you.
Another thing that's really good is culture gets built in the small moments. It's not just always these big grand gestures and these big winning moments where we covered some type of crisis, but the little day to day interactions, taking people out for lunch, saying please and thank you, encouraging people along the way. Have noticed, working really hard this week. Thanks. Keep it up, up. I appreciate it. A lot of those little things let you know that you truly care. You can't fake caring for somebody, not for very long anyway before they can smell the fake side of it. But you can also make grand gestures like a big giant, you know, employee bash for July 4th party or Christmas party or something like that. Those grand gestures do impact people, but it's the day to day routine that really sets apart who you are, what your culture is. And you got to do that from day one one.
Now accountability is another thing that's super important when you're starting from scratch. But of course, throughout your longevity, your life, personal life and professional, your accountability is something that you can do without overwhelming people. So you can do things without micromanaging called like these micro checkpoints or micro check ins where you just peek your head in the door, say hey, I just want to see how you're doing on the, on the Johnson case file. How's that going? Okay, thanks. Appreciate it. And did you make sure to check those two things? Perfect. Have a go to man. Keep, keep tracking at it. Right? Then you go on. Or you have these micro checkpoints where hey, in every project you got to at least check in with the supervisor these three or four times.
That way there's the accountability and everybody can have the freedom to do their job. And then they can also be checked in on or make sure that they're being checked on. The other thing is making sure that you set some milestones. It's really important to say, hey guys, by the three month mark, we need to be this far. We got to have this much of the construction complete or this X number of projects done, or this X number of projects sold by this date. If you're setting clear milestones, people have something that they're looking for. If I told you just jump on the highway and drive, you wouldn't know how much gas to put in. You wouldn't know how quickly you need to get there. Are you allowed to take bathroom and snack breaks off on the highway or do you just need to run straight through and get to the stop? So almost at you some milestones along the way. Hey, don't forget to gas up here, grab dinner at this location and try to arrive by 9pm at the hotel. That's a lot better. You don't have to have some full HR system in place. That's not, not necessarily in the beginning. HR is an important component so that everybody has an access in a way to be taken care of on their side of things. Because as employers we sometimes just look at the mission all the time and we don't think all the Time about every single component of the various diverse employee needs. So in the early stages, momentum matters a lot more than perfection does. And you can tweak it along the way.
But you do need a rhythm, definitely. And you do need discipline. So short term, visible goals highly communicated to your people. What do we need? We need it done by Friday. Okay. What tools do we have? We have these three tools available. Thanks. And you can share your dashboard, share your work, reflect on all those things and share your success is and correct in the areas that need to be corrected as well. So it's very huge. But accountability is going to be a hallmark of your early culture and your early success.
Accountability truly is a habit and not a system. So that's where you deviate from a lot of things that I normally say. You fall in love with your systems. You fall in love with your systems. But accountability is often automatically a personal thing that can be built into some systems, but it on its own is not a system. It's a mindset and a method of operation saying, I will have integrity and I will have my people display their integrity throughout. And the last thing that you want to do is you want to do something that's called like guard your garden, right? So you're growing this, this business, you're growing this thing that is supposed to produce fruit in the future and be plentiful, hopefully so that everyone can be well fed and well nourished. Well, if you cannot recognize and prevent and, or prevent toxicity, you're going to get some fungus, some rot, some mold in the garden. And we don't want that. The best time to root out toxicity is before it ever grows. Think about that. So when you're small, one bad habit that you let slip by, or one wrong hire where you kind of had a weird feeling, but you just needed the extra body that can do some serious, some massive damage. Pay attention, attention to those red flags or even those orange flags that can grow out of control, poor communication. People start blaming and blame shifting or just any type of inconsistent follow through and not doing what they said they were going to do. Those are some things you need to work out and address right away so that your culture is, we do what we say we're going to do, we show up time we have the right attitude, we speak professionally and respectfully to each other and that toxicity will never be allowed in grow. You also have to be honest with yourself. If you're going to model that behavior, you better be on it, right? That's what the other people need to bring as well. So the nice part is toxicity is much easier to prevent than it is to fix, right? Go back to the HR from just a minute ago. If you built a system in a company over time you made a wrongful hire, then you might, if you're not in at will state, have to do an actual technical formal process which keeps that person on board for 36, 60, 90 days longer than you wanted because you can't root out the toxicity like you should have never hired. So create a culture of clarity and of feedback. Give them the comfort to speak, open their mind. Often suggestions, but ultimately, ultimately, when you help your team grow, you gotta cut off and trim and prune that toxicity if it shows up and hopefully root it out before it ever starts. Tonight's episode of Pivotal Change hopefully gave you lots of ideas on what you can go out into the world and see the change and be the change. And we'll catch you right here next time on Pivotal Change.
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