Six EASY Strategies: Increase Your VALUE Professionally | S1E14

[00:00:10] Speaker A: All right, we are rolling. [00:00:13] Speaker B: We are rolling. So I was thinking about. I'm always thinking about some fun things. [00:00:22] Speaker A: From the time we end until the time we sit back down, you are. [00:00:26] Speaker B: Always thinking about, which I love just thinking about this. Yeah. But even just for weeks out. So I've been in the habit of using evernote or sometimes just my phone. Anytime a topic comes to mind, I'll write it down. Like things we could talk about. And if it's something that I continually go back to, that's when I know I have so many notes of topics we could talk about. But I only want to talk about the ones I keep going back to continually. [00:00:53] Speaker A: Right. [00:00:54] Speaker B: So one of the ones that's been on my mind has been things that anyone can do inside a business, at any position, from CEO all the way down the line, that can help you become that, just make you more effective and valuable and productive as a person in the workplace. And here's the thing about Americans. Americans love quick fixes overnight, like, not the long, tedious, arduous process. These are simple, very easy things that you can implement and execute on overnight and increase your productivity as an employee almost instantaneously, or engagement. [00:01:41] Speaker A: I mean, there's any number of, I. [00:01:42] Speaker B: Don'T know, take away. I'm struggling on the word. If you become, by implementing these, it's more productive, more effective, more valuable, and I think it's all an aggregate of all of them. But what I love about this is it's very simple, easy things you can immediately implement for a big, what's the right word? Yields a big performance increase on the back end. And a lot of this is, if I'm being quite honest, is things you and I talk a lot about. We're like, it drives us nuts. Just do this. This is so simple. Just implement this. And so we talk about these little things that people can be doing, and we don't understand why they're not doing it. And sure, this is our own bias, but I do believe after years of doing this and being in the business, these are things that could make a difference. [00:02:40] Speaker A: Yeah. And you might get the story about the dog whisper today. I just thought of it, and I figured out how it's appropriate here. [00:02:47] Speaker B: Oh, I know. Exactly. I've thought about it the whole time and what it ties to. [00:02:50] Speaker A: When do we talk about the dog whisper? [00:02:51] Speaker B: Oh, yes. [00:02:52] Speaker A: It could be today. [00:02:53] Speaker B: Yes. May not be preference. Communication preference. Yeah, I'm on that same page. Yes. Got it. [00:03:02] Speaker A: When we get there. [00:03:02] Speaker B: When we get there. So let's just for this episode. Bat it back and forth. [00:03:09] Speaker A: Okay. [00:03:10] Speaker B: I'll hit you with one. We'll go into it. You hit me with one. [00:03:13] Speaker A: Okay. [00:03:13] Speaker B: And I think we could probably bust out eight to ten of these bad boys. [00:03:18] Speaker A: I think so. [00:03:18] Speaker B: Okay. [00:03:19] Speaker A: And some of the thoughts behind them, too, because for sure, when we get into these, I often think, how did we get here? Because some of these seem very simple to me. And I know when I was younger in business, or just had a sales role, for example, I was deploying any number of these and still do. But I've watched. We've watched society. Society. That was very formal. That's because I said, thompson Whitman the third, and I think I still might be stuck. Right, Tommy? Tommy T Bone Thompson Whitman II. Sorry. Sorry, ladies. I gave out all his details and I can figure out who production is, but, yeah, how we got, why we. [00:03:56] Speaker B: Got here, because you and I constantly, this is so easy, and it drives us. [00:04:00] Speaker A: Not us, but, like, some of these have just gone away and we're feeling the need to bring them back up. And my thought is, how and why did they go away? Because they were not just prevalent as a younger salesperson or whatever my role was, they were expected, even mandatory. So I have some thoughts on that, too. [00:04:18] Speaker B: Okay. [00:04:18] Speaker A: When we get there. [00:04:20] Speaker B: All right, so I will start with number one very easy, actionable item. When someone sends you an email, acknowledge it. I say immediately. Promptly. Not with. Doesn't have to be with an answer. It just has to be with. Got it. I'll get back to you ASaP or on it. Mine's on it. I know yours is on it. [00:04:45] Speaker A: Mine is, too. [00:04:45] Speaker B: Even if it's a couple words I see all the time. And my teammates do this still constantly. And we have the conversation because I have this conversation with them face to face. Every. Don't even I. Who I'm cc'd on the email. Okay, so an email comes from, say, our customer. [00:05:03] Speaker A: Yes. Joe Large. General contractor. [00:05:05] Speaker B: General contractor. Our customer. To someone on my team. I'm CC'd. I don't even know that my teammate has received it yet. They're already working on that request. Say it's Mr. General contractor. Ask for pricing. My teammates. Already on it. However, my teammate has not responded to general contractor on it. So I'm sitting there like, did they receive the email? General contractor sitting there like, I received the email. They received it. They're working on it, but neither of us know. [00:05:32] Speaker A: Question. Because you and I are very guilty of putting our made up stories on the rest of the world. So do you truly believe that the general contractors are on the other side wondering if it was received and it is in motion? [00:05:46] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [00:05:47] Speaker A: Okay. [00:05:47] Speaker B: I mean, if you send an email and no one responds, aren't you wondering it's just floating in the wind? [00:05:53] Speaker A: I am. Yes, I am. [00:05:54] Speaker B: I think any human being would be. [00:05:56] Speaker A: But I think it's always important that we check in and say, all right, is this Amy Britism or is this generally acceptable practice and should be going forward? I completely agree with you on this one, but we have to be sensitive to being in an echo chamber where we both agree so we think the entire world feels the same way. Open to feedback from the viewing audience. [00:06:16] Speaker B: I don't need feedback on this. I know. Okay. I spend half my day following up with people saying, making sure you receive this question mark. It would be so simple. On it. Got it. I'm not looking for an answer. I just want to know you got the email. So that is a very simple. Immediately when you get an email, acknowledge it that you're going to get back to them. [00:06:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I think there's a cool thing. There's a few things about that that are appropriate. A, it signifies that the ball has moved to the other person's court. Right. Because tons of sports analogies, right? Who has the ball? That's a really important thing. And I just need to know if you have the ball. And that's great. Right? A, you didn't fumble it. B, somehow it didn't get to you for whatever reason. Rare in today's world of technology. But I agree. And I just think from a confirmation perspective, as far as demonstrating to the person on the other side, whatever that relationship happens to be, you are demonstrating urgency or not even engagement. Right? Engagement, yeah, engagement. I'm doing my job over here and I always take it one step further. And that's why you shop here, right? Because you sent me an email. You took your very valuable time to send me an email. You entrusted me with something. And you need to know that I'm on this. And I'm big, too. Right on it. One in is another one, and they're very short. Right? I mean, mine can be. Got it. On it. And now over time, I've actually reconditioned some of my customers, and by the way, big customers, blue chippers. But our relationship is such that they get four words back from me, got it on it. And then they put it to bed. Like Arnold's doing his thing. When he's got something of importance to communicate back. He's going to be here and I'm not going to have to follow back up. [00:07:59] Speaker B: And anytime if we have a customer or a vendor on the other side that's following up, just making sure you got this, that is to me, the worst. I never want to see that because that means we did not do our job in simply acknowledging that. So it's very simple and I think makes a world of difference. [00:08:22] Speaker A: Yeah, totally agree, period. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Nothing to say about that. Over to me, I think you said, so this is an interesting one. And we talk about our emerging thought leaders on a fair occasion. I'm always interested to hear their perspective. Right. So as a reminder for the audience, 24 to 34, something like that. And I'm not a big generational person, but we're starting to see the emergence of Generation Z into the workforce. Now you've got some z and some y, you've got some x like me, and certainly some boomers. And there's a lot of boomers still in the quarter office calling a lot of the shots. So regardless of size of demographic in the workforce or so on and so forth, if you look at decision making power, still a tremendous amount of that in boomers. And certainly x. If you think about some generational people in X, Elon Musk X. Michael Dell X. Right. If you just think about some of the people that are in there, my generation is now coming through into those positions. But Bob Iger, Disney Boomer, right. He's pushing 80 years old, for goodness sake. So this is one that's interesting as it relates to. We hammered out in our last episode this idea of work life balance and them unfortunately being polarized and or mutually exclusive. [00:09:38] Speaker B: Let me ask you, work and life. Yeah. [00:09:40] Speaker A: Yes, work and life. Let me ask you this one. Both of us huge on preparation. I think preparing on Sunday before you go into the week is critical to setting it up. Right. I think everything starts on Monday, but for me it starts on Sunday because I prepare to go in to meet my teammates and then we collectively prepare and attack the week together. What about preparation on Sunday? [00:10:09] Speaker B: Yeah, and we say Sunday. I mean, assuming your workday starts on Monday and of course the night before you start, or could be Saturday, just there's some kind of prep work prior to your beginning of your week. You will never be top level ever in your lifetime if you don't do that, because you are immediately starting behind on your workday in the beginning of the week and you're losing two to 3 hours by shuffling through emails, organizing. I've had an employee where I had this, it's relevant because I had this conversation with them and they constantly. Then we had this conversation and it changed. But I was never getting emails back. So our workday starts at seven sharp. I was never receiving emails back on Monday. This is continuously from them until ten or eleven. And when I finally asked after several weeks of this, it was a new employee. It was like, oh, I'm organizing my emails from last week that was two to 3 hours into the day where they hadn't answered a single email that was just coming in. Therefore you're 3 hours back and someone could say, okay, 3 hours. In the grand scheme, it's a lot of time. And if you have any desire to be the best of the best, compound that, 3 hours, week over week, month after month, year after year, you're losing a shit ton of hours that someone else is being way more efficient, productive, getting shit done. So you absolutely should go into Monday, if not with a clean slate because sometimes that's unrealistic with a very clear plan of attack and hopefully you have most of your items cleaned up, but at least in a clear plan of attack, right? [00:11:54] Speaker A: Well, how about the idea, we talk about sports too, right? The idea that NFL football teams would script the first 20 plays. So you show up to the game called work on Monday morning and you haven't scripted any of your plays. Right. I mean, that's a very interesting idea to me, that you would show up flat footed. It would drive me crazy because I couldn't do it. You know I feel about surprises, right? [00:12:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:12:13] Speaker A: I can't stand them. So to come in and then open my emails and find a surprise on Monday that I'm completely unprepared for now. Meanwhile, the rest of the world's open and now that work is starting to pile up, which would make me crazy. Let me ask you this. You just said something that you said if you're ever going to get to the top, and by the way, I think this is going to be a bare minimum of acceptable performance in your experience with working with the newer entries into the workforce. 234-5673 what do you think their expectations are when they look at the top, right, Elon, or whomever you would put there was big business, little business. [00:12:58] Speaker B: And by the way, we're referring to Elon, it could be someone local. There are just so. [00:13:06] Speaker A: But at the top, whatever your definition is, what do you think the perception is of what that looks like? I wonder what the story is in a newer person to the workforce's head about what type of drive and effort it takes to get to the top, whatever their definition is. [00:13:26] Speaker B: I will answer that, but I'm sidestepping because I think a lot of also like you and I would say that. I would say you and I, for instance, and a lot of ceos and maybe even top management are not preparing on Sundays for Monday because we're working throughout the week. So there's no start and finish. [00:13:46] Speaker A: Sure. [00:13:46] Speaker B: But for people that there is a start and finish, this is applicable because there's going to be, a lot of people say there's never a restart. Like it's prep continuously. [00:13:55] Speaker A: Right. [00:13:55] Speaker B: Okay, so back to your question. What would hard work look? Sorry. [00:13:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, if you were someone who's relatively new to the workforce, who intends to make it to the top, wherever that is for them, I wonder, what do you think, how would they define the steps, what they look like from a commitment, persistence, some of the words we talked about in our last. [00:14:15] Speaker B: Podcast, I don't know. I'm having a hard time with the question. I'm not sure I understand it. [00:14:20] Speaker A: Well, if you're 25, do you think you work 40 hours a week and you're making it to the top? [00:14:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. We probably have to ask that question. No, I don't think so. I think it's still understood that the more deliberate it intentional practice hours you put in, the better you're going to be. I also think, as we've talked about, there's a lot of, and I don't want to get into this too much because we just had a work life balance, hard work conversation, but there's definitely more talk about mental health than work life balance and all that. So I don't have an answer for you, but I think at the end of the day, no matter who you are, what generation, female, male, where you come from, most people understand hard work is hard work and it becomes deliberate practice, intentional. And the amount of hours you put in, I think that's understood. And I think part of that is prep. It is going to always be one of the most important things you can do. And I think as we just talked about, that prep on, call it Sunday night, going into Monday is required. [00:15:24] Speaker A: Right. [00:15:25] Speaker B: If you have any desire at all to be at the top. [00:15:29] Speaker A: Sure. And practice being one thing, and then this pregame prep like you're talking about, they're different, right? I mean, they're very different things that pregame prep. [00:15:36] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. [00:15:36] Speaker A: Is coming up right on the edge of the game. It's the last things you're doing so that you're not figuring it out the first 15 minutes of the first quarter. By then, you're already down three. [00:15:45] Speaker B: That's right. [00:15:46] Speaker A: That's a problem. [00:15:46] Speaker B: That's exactly right. [00:15:47] Speaker A: Love the sports analogies. They resonate with me. [00:15:50] Speaker B: Let's slam dunk that. [00:15:51] Speaker A: Okay, go ahead, slam dunk it. [00:15:53] Speaker B: Slam dunk onto the next. Okay, next thing. By the way, I'm looking at the email I sent you with some things I had in my head. Thank you for printing this out because I'm using it as my notepad that I should have printed out. [00:16:06] Speaker A: My job is generally to support your excellence. That's what I do. I run paper printing. I brought a pen. [00:16:13] Speaker B: Oh, you're good. You are a salesperson. Okay, so this is one that I think it's not rocket science, but I do think it's a little unique to me. And what I've been doing, what I figured out, really works. So I create a folder. It's in my outlook. That's the email platform we use. And one of my folders is, it's called just pending. Pending folder. And anytime I have an exchange via email and there's something that is an open item and it could even be an exchange, I'm simply cc'd on. I am not the main character and we owe an answer, or whomever on the other side of it owes an answer, maybe not even me. It could be my teammate. Any email that is not completely put to bed with a bow tied goes in this pending folder and I check it. I try to check it, at least at the end of every day, but that's unreasonable. Definitely 100%. At the end of every single week, I am going through that pending folder and I am following up on every single one of those emails that was unresolved. Sometimes it's a follow up related to the first topic we talked about. Hey, just making sure you received this. Sometimes I would say 30% of the time it's a follow up to one of my teammates, is this resolved? Where are we? Maybe I got left off an email somewhere. Maybe I'm like, hey, teammate, you didn't get an answer. Ball is still in our court. What's going on? It probably drives my team nuts because I feel like I'm continually following up on them, getting back, and quite frankly, it's a lot for me to keep up with everybody else, but it's really effective. I'm a safety net underneath them, but it's just a way, literally, I can tell you, almost nothing falls through the gaps when I am religious about checking that pending folder from start to finish at least once to twice a week. [00:18:21] Speaker A: Well it would suggest then your team is not listening to your counsel as it relates to using that as a tool or there would be no follow up. They would be working their most of the time they are penning folder. [00:18:31] Speaker B: Yeah, most of the time they are sometimes a lot of times it's yeah, I got it. That's a lot of time. The answer for my team. But it's just as much following up with my vendor, my customer, making sure they got it or just making sure we're ball still in their court. But I will go through everyone. So here's what I'll do. I'll start from the bottom, the oldest in my pending and then I go from oldest to newest. A lot of them I'll skip over like yeah, I know they're still working on it. I don't need a follow up. I just saw it all with them two days ago. But I'll be like, oh yeah, shit, we talked about this on Monday. This was a critical item but nothing falls through the gaps and it is super effective just to keep that running folder. As soon as whatever that item is, it's done. Whatever we figured it out, quote was sent, Po was sent, done. I move it out of pending to the appropriate folder. In my outlook it's usually a project folder. So I'm just constantly moving. And it feels so good to move a pending email out because when I move it out I know it's taken care of and it sounds so ridiculously trivial really. But the effectiveness of it is amazing. [00:19:40] Speaker A: Yeah. It's interesting that despite think of how many different modes of communication we have today. We have text, email, phone, which obviously phone, but now it's a supercomputer that's in your pocket. It's not like the phone on the wall. When I was growing up, we have all these methods of communication yet somehow we still miss. Right? I mean that can only be one thing, effort or structure or organization. Right? What would it be that would ever have you under communicating, at least from a business perspective, right. Which is a lot of the business stuff is very nutsy boltsy, right? You need something and my job is to go get it and I give it to you and it's either complete or not complete. You might give it back to me. So on and so forth. Right? The back and forth between. Let's just say you identify a prospect and you engage each other to work together in business, it's a pretty straightforward process, right? I mean, we exchange information through a period of time until we get through whatever the components are. Risk. I'm a supplier. Am I a risk to you? Am I going to upset your manufacturing lines because I say I can perform but then I don't? We're checking those boxes along the way, but it just seems, having expanded and continually expanded as human beings, our methods of communication, we still come up light sometimes, which is amazing, right? [00:20:55] Speaker B: This is just an organizational tactic. And I will say, among all the things I need to improve on, I think the way I can visualize and then organize is one of my real strong suits and I can figure out that on a larger scale, the structural and organizational piece that keeps, I rarely miss anything with the way I've said it, and I feel comfortable saying that. I think most people would agree and it's the way I've been able to visualize and structurally set it. But the pending folder has been part of that process. [00:21:30] Speaker A: It's a good one. [00:21:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:32] Speaker A: Seems simple, right? [00:21:33] Speaker B: It is simple, but I mean, it's a lot of work to keep up with it continuously. You got to go through it one by one. I mean, at any given time, I have 100 emails in there, I'm sure. So it's just like continually staying on it and following up. And my team knows all of a sudden they'll have 50 emails and like, oh, it's going through the pending. They know it's all of a sudden what's going on? What are we doing here? What's the answer? And they know it's one of my daily going through the pending. [00:22:01] Speaker A: And if they're smart, because you're doing that on Sundays, a lot like I am a lot of prep, right, where I'm just trying to get the ball in your court because I don't tell. [00:22:08] Speaker B: Them that anymore what I'm doing. [00:22:11] Speaker A: Especially when you have new people coming in. Like, I had to go through that. Listen, I have to do it when I can do it because I don't know what my time is going to be taken up by going forward. So you could get this on Sunday at 03:00 that's cool. I'm not looking for an action. If you want to reply, great. If you don't, that's great, too. But they're going to want to be smart and do that Sunday prep or they're going to wake up to a surprise on Monday morning. [00:22:33] Speaker B: I don't want to belabor the point, but here's another thing. About that. There is a piece, and you might not even know what's going on. But if you come into Mondays unprepared, there is, for most human beings, some little level of anxiety. [00:22:49] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:22:50] Speaker B: Just like procrastination, you will continually have a small layer of anxiety. Or it's like sitting on your shoulders. The more you procrastinate or don't take care of things real time. I don't want to sit with that. I don't want to have that. And if you just prepare and take care of things real time, that goes away. And that's a really nice feeling. So just like, don't walk around with that. And, hey, I know how to do it. This is one way. [00:23:17] Speaker A: Yeah. There's a very cathartic feel to that, right? To knowing. To always knowing. [00:23:20] Speaker B: I completely agree. Yeah. [00:23:21] Speaker A: It's not worth the stress, that's for sure. [00:23:23] Speaker B: It's not. [00:23:23] Speaker A: All right, boom. [00:23:24] Speaker B: Boom. Do you see that? That's a tennis. The tennis games that are going on, right? [00:23:33] Speaker A: That's not a tennis thing. Sorry. Any of you tennis players out there, I know you don't recognize that I. [00:23:37] Speaker B: Was serving the tennis ball to you. [00:23:39] Speaker A: Got it. Okay. Wait, I started the last one, though. [00:23:43] Speaker B: No, I just did pending. [00:23:45] Speaker A: Oh, you did pending folders. Yeah, got it. Okay. So I think this is time. So I think one of the most challenging things, because I like this communication undertone. We started on that. Right? Got it. On it. So on and so forth. The pending thing really has a communication undertone to it as well. I think one of the most challenging things, and there's industry specifics to this, and I watch your industry in general, is so we've talked about the different generations that are in the workforce, right? There are four, give or take between Zyx and boomers, and then all of these different communication methodologies that we've now hatched. And I didn't even say mailing letters. Oh, my gosh, can you imagine? But if you just think of the ones that are more technical, like text and email and picking up the phone and calling your industry, for example, is still very phone call heavy. You could count on one hand the number of times my phone rings in a day. And when it does, it's generally someone soliciting me for something, and I don't recognize the number. And sometimes I'm able to pick up, sometimes I'm not. But I think that's part of the challenge or something, or the recognition is to understand the right method of communication for your particular audience in dealing with engineers in a big portion of my day phone is the wrong way. They're never picking the phone up. They're generally immersed in something. And the number of times over the years as I was evolving into new communications, because it's exactly the opposite of the way it used to be. Used to align all of your phone calling activity when you were getting in the car because you were going to be productive with the windshield. And that's completely gone. I mean, being productive with the windshield, at least in our industry. And I think construction might be a little different in that regard. Still, by virtue of what's going on, that's lost time now. It's now shifted where driving is the least productive thing I do because I shouldn't be texting or I shouldn't be doing that while I'm driving. But there's some people you can call, but by and large you can. And I think one of the challenges to then figure out the right method of communication for a particular audience, that's going to be the most effective. And I think I might be saying this to some of our younger listeners, right, who maybe hasn't figured this out yet. If I need to get in contact with or move information with someone that is an engineer, I can promise you that's going to move via email and only email. And if I know them well enough, then I might take it to the next urgent level, which would be text, but in no point I ever calling them. And the closest thing that I would do to that would be a teams style meeting on follow up because we're generally going to be sharing data in the form of drawings. So there's going to have to be some type of screen share methodology because we're going to show a model or a 3d or something that we're going to get on the same page with. And we're using this as a check in tool. So I think that's one of the parts. What have you recognized in your particular industry as it relates to being effective? Because I know there are people that you work very closely with who just aren't efficient with email. Like you're just going to wait indefinitely. And you know as well as I do, if you don't pick up the phone and call them, you are not getting a reply anytime soon, maybe if ever. And we have some folks on our team who admittedly struggle with email. They're ops people. They're very hands on. They do a great job. Our culture is awesome. They're on the floor, they're making sausage with their teams. They're up to their elbows in it. And what suffers for that is the communication medium called email. So what goes on in the construction world or how do you balance all that? Who's someone who likes to monitor the pending folder, which is going to be an email communication? What are you doing to make sure that that information flow is moving to ultimately get to whatever outcome you're looking for? [00:27:38] Speaker B: Well, there's two different parts of this. There's one, just what your preferred source of communication is, and then there's two, what your work allows. So, for instance, if you have superintendents for me, you're talking about people on the op side. It's the same thing that are hands on for us. If you have superintendents or foreman's that we're communicating with direct, which we do. Sometimes they're in the field, they're calling you, they need answers immediately. [00:28:03] Speaker A: Right. [00:28:04] Speaker B: So it's being able to identify a what the preferred communication is or what the required is or both. And typically what the required is is going to be the person's preferred. And I'm laughing at this a little bit because we had this internally, this discussion, because somebody on my team loves phone and is always phone. Another person on my team loves text. They're preferred. I'm definitely email. So we've got all of these different preferences and it leads us to other discussions. And I always say to my teammates, you have to get to know our vendors and our suppliers and our customers very early and learn what they like. If you email somebody ten times and you don't get an answer, light bulb should go off that they're not an emailer, start calling them. I don't care if my preferred method is email. I need to get an answer from that person and I need to play to their preference for me. I find phone calls a little invasive, if I'm being honest, because it's like I have to answer, drop everything I'm doing and answer that call at that time. And it's really hard if you're in some deep work or to get back in that mode, and I don't want to break that sometimes, versus if you send me an email, I can at least get to it on my own time, which is going to be quickly, of course. So I like that flexibility in being able to get you an answer on my own time as opposed to, that's why I like email. I also like email. You can refer back to it. Very important you get confirmations written via emails. There's a lot of reasons I like it. You can also multitask, add more people, whatever. But it's figuring out very early what the preferred method is and then playing to that. And that will get you very far. I'm going to pass to you because I know in the many conversations we've had that you have a very good story that demonstrates this. [00:30:11] Speaker A: I do. [00:30:11] Speaker B: Very well. [00:30:12] Speaker A: I do. So this is going back. I've wanted to tell this story for a while, and I do tell it a lot in my travels because it's interesting. And one of the things I've clung onto as I've continued to get older and see a lot of different situations. So our dog Hudson is. Oh, gosh, I think he's 13 years old now. He's getting up there. But I remember when I found him on pets.com, I literally found him on pets.com. So you need a car, cars.com, boats.com, and pets.com is a thing, too. So I remember we got Hudson and. [00:30:42] Speaker B: He was $35, right? I think he was $35, yes. [00:30:47] Speaker A: So he shows up and he's got a lab look to him. We can tell he's a mutt. Of course, we got him out of a high kill shelter where all of our pets have come from. So he's got a lab look to him and he shows up and out of the box. He's this amazing dog. I mean, he's potty trained. And this was right around 2009, right after the first financial cris, and we will never know, but it was almost as if somebody just opened the back door and let him go because they couldn't afford him or whatever it was. That's how trained this dog was. So he would get on the front seat, he'd ride to school with the girls who were very little at the time, and he'd look around and he was the model citizen, absolute model citizen. So we noticed as time wore on that he started to growl a little bit at stoplights and people, and then he started barking at stoplights. And then at home, his behavior was completely different. Like someone ring the doorbell, he would jump so high, he could almost see out of the skylights on the top of the door. That's how high this dog was getting. So it got to the point where we were worried about, is he going to be able to survive as a family member? Are we going to have to find an alternative? Because his behavior is just out of control. So found this woman, brought her in. So she comes in and starts circling Hudson and provoking him, kneeing him every once in a while, watching his reactions. And she says, oh, he's a lab springer mix. I'm like, oh, okay. Of course, we hadn't gotten there. He had these floppy ears and this white chest and this white tip tail and said, yeah, that makes sense. Hadn't hit on that. But yes, of course, I see it now. So she continues to walk around this dog and provoke him. And I'm watching him and I've never seen this dog act like this before. I think she said ten words the entire time. That's why I call her the dog whisperer. So she says, I know what's going on. She said, he is a work dog and he exhibits the highest qualities of both lab and Springer. He's picking jobs that you don't like. And until you start giving him jobs, he's going to keep picking jobs that you don't like. And she said, when you understand the breed, you can train the dog. And I just parked that. I parked it for years. I never even gave it another thought. And then as I realized, as I started being exposed to lots of different types of people, it resonated with me that my job was to start to understand the breed, if you will, the type of person that I was working with. And part of that is generational, not to broad brush it or broadstroke it, but to have an idea where they came from or what they might have been exposed to. My father, who was a super boomer, right? I mean, he'd be 102, right? So I knew what that looked like. I knew what his friends looked like, so on and so forth. But just that idea. I started to get much more in tune with understanding the person that I was working with so I could communicate with, not train the dog. I was never training anybody I was working with, but I understood or was very interested in learning how to have more effective conversations with them faster by attempting to understand where they were coming from so that we could meet on common ground early and get where we were going as fast as possible. And I don't mean hasty fast or sloppy fast. I mean, there was an outcome that we were working on together. And the faster that we spoke the same language and could get into a position of alignment, use that word here today, the better off we were going to be. And I think that's one of the things that I didn't learn until much later, that if our young listeners are listening or whomever, someone hasn't even figured it out yet, that might be inner focused or selfish. I mean, that just thinking of self that you might consider that. Right. And the idea, too, that Hudson's a mammal just like the rest of us. And there are things that are hard coded into us that, whether it's long times of exposure because you've been on the earth for a long time, depending on when you were born or the conditions that you were raised in, whether that be age specific or not age specific, just that idea of understanding who your audience is and working on connecting with them. Like, happens everywhere. Right. Whether it's performers are always trying to connect with their audience and so on and so forth. Our roles aren't particularly different. Right. I mean, we all have an audience of some kind, and what are we doing to understand what that audience needs or what they understand or how they communicate so that we can get into position to communicate better and more effectively and immediately. And immediately. Yeah. And the sooner the better. And again, I don't mean hasty. I mean, the faster we can find that common ground, then we can really get off the surface level stuff and we can get deeper and really understand who each other are. [00:35:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I know from the flip side, it's not a game to me, but if someone is continually calling me and I'm a little frustrated by it because I can't stand it, I'm like, email me, dude. First of all, you have to say it. Listen, I'm in a lot of meetings. I'm hopping around a lot. You will get a quick answer. For me. It's so much easier via email. It just is. [00:35:43] Speaker A: Yet there are some that don't get it. Right. There's a tone. There's a tone deafness around that. [00:35:47] Speaker B: That's where I was going. [00:35:48] Speaker A: Sorry. [00:35:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Part of it for me is, yeah, if you're not listening and I'm picking up that you're tone. I was going to say picking up that you're a little tone deaf. I'm picking up on that. Hopefully you get it. But there are people that will call me ten more times, even after I've said, please email me, and I'm paying attention. I notice so on the other end of the spectrum, I can imagine our suppliers or customers are like, is she ever going to call me? Or they're thinking the same thing. So I keep that in mind on the other end, I'm like, I'm hoping that you're understanding or you recognize after I don't pick up five calls, but I reply to your email ten minutes later with all the information you're looking for that you'll pick up. And if you don't, you look like a slow learner or that you just can't adapt and our chances of doing. [00:36:45] Speaker A: Business together or whatever together are going to be significantly diminished. Right? [00:36:49] Speaker B: Yeah. I never want people to do that or think of that of us. So, yeah, it's figure it out early and then execute that way. [00:37:01] Speaker A: Yeah. And you and I are in a position where. So we do get to experience a lot of that. Because, look, when your name's on the building, Tegler or Arnold, you get prospected a lot. And salespeople today are generally taught to start in the corner office. Right. Even if they ultimately want to sell to my director of it or they want to freight. I mean, for example, the number of people that are pinging me for freight, I don't do freight. I really don't do. I understand it, sure. But everyone now starts at the top. And I recognize it's interesting to watch the way I get a front row seat at how prospecting is taught and attempted to be delivered today. And it still comes back to that. The number of people where just like, have you noticed yet that when you call me, you don't get me, but if you email me, I respond in 1 minute with everything you ever wanted to know. At what point will you just do? You're not being disrespectful to me. You don't need to call to open the door to earn the right to push the keys on your keyboard. I still earn the right of not replying. But you don't have to call first to send me an email. If it matters, and it's inspiring, I promise you I will reply. [00:38:08] Speaker B: Right. [00:38:09] Speaker A: Promise you? [00:38:09] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. All right, my turn. [00:38:15] Speaker A: Batting it back over to you. [00:38:16] Speaker B: Okay. One of the things is when I have an employee or a teammate that has, they have a task, or I've given them some kind of responsibility of some sort, a true pet peeve is when I get five questions back that could have been figured out within minutes. So I am always looking for somebody as we talk about the figure it out factor. Now, if it's a solid question, like, listen, I cannot move on and get you answers here because I truly don't know this and I don't know where to find it. Fine. But most of the time, it's just that the extra five to ten minutes weren't taken to figure it out. And yeah, you could say, well, if they could just ask you, they'd save themselves five minutes. I don't care. Okay, take the extra five to ten minutes and figure all the questions out and come back with an answer rather than asking. Because I'm telling you, this happens all the time. I get five questions instead of just take the extra ten minutes, figure out those answers, and then give me the answer back. Easy. But, I mean, that goes such a long way when you have plays are like, yep, got it. Here's your answer, or here's your solution without the five extra questions in between that we both know. Like, you could have googled or you could have. Just like, it happens all the time. [00:39:41] Speaker A: All right, yeah, I was going to say, biggest dick move ever. But what I will do is I will actually google it and I will screenshot the answer back on Google. [00:39:47] Speaker B: I do it all the time, and I do this with my sister. I've done it with my sister predominantly. And today she responded. I think I responded back with a rhetorical question. It was not an answer of some sort. She goes, yeah, I think I just talked myself through that one and I didn't say anything. [00:40:05] Speaker A: Well, I'll do it with who I do it to most is our sales reps. If they're being lazy, some of them are just lazy shit. And it's easier to ask than think. And I'm like, all right, that's fine. If you want to ask, there's going to be a little bit of a price to pay, and it's going to be me making a little bit of fun at mean. Last week, I replied to a sales rep and said, there's a new thing called Google. I'm not sure if you're aware of it. And I screenshotted the answer back. The other one that I love is when people ask me what an address is, is there ever a reason to ask anyone for an address on earth, ever? [00:40:35] Speaker B: I mean, to make sure it's the right location. [00:40:36] Speaker A: If you have 63 buildings, I get it. I have done that. But, man, oh, man, it's just like, stop being lazy. [00:40:41] Speaker B: Or in LinkedIn, when people ask me what we do for a living, when I have the description of all descriptions that we've curated exactly what we do. [00:40:52] Speaker A: Or if they just took five minutes and jumped down the rabbit hole that is Britt Tegler. [00:40:55] Speaker B: I definitely don't. [00:40:57] Speaker A: Of LinkedIn. Holy. [00:40:58] Speaker B: Not diligent on anything. Here's the thing. From an employee standpoint, if you're thinking about it and it's your boss or the CEO, whoever you direct, to think about yourself, times 10, 20, 30, however many people there are, if everybody's writing back five questions, five. That amount of time, it's a lot of time. It's just unreasonable, rather. You can be such a valuable asset if you're like, yep, got it. And, you know, I know John. I send him a question like, I'm going to get an answer back and it's going to be a good one. I don't have to do anything else on my end. It's given back to me in one bit because there are some people, you know, we're still not going to be there. The ball is not going to cross the end. Get, we might get in the red zone, but I am never getting over the end line with John. [00:41:49] Speaker A: You're not getting it back in an actionable fashion. [00:41:52] Speaker B: But like, susie, we're scoring a touchdown every time. Right? So it's like those little things. [00:41:56] Speaker A: Yeah. I think the question would be, if I'm working with you would be, is Britt truly the only keeper of this piece of information on earth? And if she is, I will ask her, and if she's not, I'm going to kill myself to find out before now, at some point it becomes, if it becomes completely. [00:42:10] Speaker B: And we're like, those are outliers. Yeah. I mean, we're talking about little things. That's just like, I just want an answer back because I would have done it myself if I knew you were going to come back with five questions. [00:42:19] Speaker A: Well, in today's world of google, Khan Academy and Chat GPT, what the hell is actually tribal? Yeah. Is there really any tribal knowledge left? I mean, short of my blood type, which isn't out there, but there's not much tribal knowledge left in the world if you're actually that interested in finding it. [00:42:35] Speaker B: Yeah. And this slides into another very similar. I mean, the one thing, and I think you initially just worded it this way. To me, it was like, you want people in your organization or that you're working with that make things frictionless, which is like what Amazon has done. [00:42:52] Speaker A: And that's so beautifully. That's where I borrowed it. I completely plagiarized that from Jeff Bezos. [00:42:56] Speaker B: Well, it's perfect. I mean, it is like anybody that can eliminate friction. You know, the people that are just time sucks. And you're like, they make this so complicated when it could be a one sentence conversation, but it's like that time suck. On the other end of the spectrum, you have people that make things so simple and it's so frictionless and it's from a to b so quickly. Those are the people I want inside of my organization and then I want to work with. [00:43:25] Speaker A: Right. [00:43:26] Speaker B: How can you make this so let me put this on a platter for you. [00:43:29] Speaker A: That's right. Yeah. And it's like I'm going to hand off a pile of crap and you bring it back in a basket with a bow on it and hand it back to me, and then I'm ready. [00:43:35] Speaker B: To go to the party. Although we're talking about this doesn't play as well into the other bucket of things we've been talking about where it's really easy to implement that comes with a little bit more work on your end and a little bit more due diligence and maybe a little bit more research, whatever. But you just become exponentially more valuable. [00:43:56] Speaker A: Sure. Yeah. But that is the topic. Right? I mean, there's some easy ones, like got it on it. Right. That's an easy one. And I would say because it's that easy a value, but certainly less value than getting a turd bowl and then handing it back to your direct report in a beautiful basket. Right. That makes sense. And that would be of higher value and time investment and everything associated with that makes sense. [00:44:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Frictionless. Make it frictionless. Frictionless. [00:44:22] Speaker A: I guess the question is, when it's not the individuals that you're dealing with, what is it? Right? Is it a knowledge? Is it lack of knowledge or ignorance to the execution around making it frictionless? Is it a lack of interest in returning it in a frictionless fashion? Right. I'm trying to balance out the difference between ignorant to what frictionless looks like or not willing to put in the hard ass work to return it in a frictionless way. [00:44:53] Speaker B: And I'll add a third category, which exists. And don't do this, people, if you're listening, because it's so easy to read, there's a third category of people that tries to make it harder than it is to make themselves look more knowledgeable. Right. This is so complicated, but I got you. And I've been doing this for so long, and I'm the only one that can do this because it's so hard. But I got you. Absolutely. I have a couple of people that come to mind on this, and I literally will do everything I can not to work with them. [00:45:25] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:45:26] Speaker B: Because it's like everything is so complicated, yet perfect example. So there's someone I'm thinking of off the top of my head that makes the simplest things hard. And it's because that person wants to act like they know the most and that they're really needed. I will talk to their counterpart and get the answer in 30 seconds. 30 seconds. First, 30 minutes to an hour. And I'm not shitting you. [00:45:51] Speaker A: It's one of the biggest turn offs in the world, right, is creating a problem so you can solve it. [00:45:55] Speaker B: That's another category of people. Why it's not made super simple. You need me because this is hard, right? [00:46:03] Speaker A: Yeah. And meanwhile, what you really value is the people that can, I'll say, dumb it down, right? Because I appreciate that. Jesus. If I'm coming to you, it's because there is nowhere else to look. Because, like we're talking about. I have done the hard work on all those different learning platforms before. I'm coming to you. Which means I am truly stumped. Kevin, our vp of automation, brilliant human, who also has mastered the ability to come down back to the dog whisperer conversation and understanding his audience and not talking up here. And that's actually something, and me guilty of that. Our current VP of packaging, Steve Sutton, he has been very insistent that I am engaged with our ops teams, more than anyone else, has been insistent that I am engaged. And he's also done a very good job of coaching me. Right? So this is someone who is on the chart and below me on the chart, but does a great job of coaching me in that moment, because he's been the planet ten years longer than I have, and he has seen things that I have not seen in those ten additional years yet. And he does a good job in coaching me to say, I think you're missing your audience. Some of these words you pick in your day in and day out. I mean, I was very fortunate to have some very brutal english teachers who demanded that my mastery of the english language was significant. That doesn't play everywhere, right. He would look appropriate to say, hey, Hudson, think about who your audience is here, and let's pick words that are appropriate so that you can have a conversation with them that gets them further than they would have been otherwise. That's the beauty of it, right? That's where the magic is taking. There's a sign that hangs in our automation room. Hangs like there's a hanging sign. There's something on the wall that says, any idiot can make things complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple. And that's the delivery. Right? If you're. If you're engaging our group back there, that's the mantra, right? What we want to do is make it seem very easy, not because it is, but because that's what we're expert in. And in the process, we're derisking it for you. That's the benefit of the ease, is we're derisking something that we could make wildly complicated to feel great about ourselves. Hell, if I'm the other side, I'd be thinking, that seems so complicated. I don't know that I want any parts of it. So that's the opposite effect of what you could be trying to accomplish. [00:48:29] Speaker B: Yeah, ultimately, I mean, the end goal. I have a perfect example of this, and I've actually spoke about him once in one of the episodes we did. One of my warm room members, my CPA. I love him so much because he dumbs it down. I go into these meetings talking about our finances and accounting. Always high stress. Or I'm looking at like, something's freaking me out. By the end of it, I am so calm because he's just like, no, we're good. Literally dumbs it down for me, which I'm okay with. Speaks to a language we understand. And I always come out of there feeling better and comfortable simply because he's an expert and he knows it so well that he literally does know how to dumb it down and get it done. But we're just talking about. What did you just say prior? Because it had to tie into that. But either way, he's so wonderful at doing that, and that's why I want him by my side always. He's a perfect example of that. And then ideally, we have these meetings, right? We have these consistent meetings. We're going on a year now on one of them that I have with him. And he wants to dumb it down enough and make us learn it enough so he's eventually not needed. So it's not like he's never trying to make himself more valuable where we need him more. The goal for him is eventually I'll roll off these meetings because I will be able to teach you guys how to do it internally. Those are the best kind of people. You don't need me. I'm going to teach it to you and make it so simple that eventually you won't need me for this. You'll need me for something else. And I know that, and it always pay off on the back end, but it won't be for that because I'll have already taught you for it. So that's the difference. [00:50:03] Speaker A: Yeah. And by then the trust. By then the trust, 100% risk here, trust here. Two completely different ideas, right? The risk component is absolutely gone. We had a similar situation recently with one of our war room people in that we were interviewing for a higher level position, one that could have reduced the amount of engagement from our accounting firm. This particular role had a finance slant to it, and at no point was I ever worried about that individual being conflicted. Right. It was never looked at and said, oh, I'm against this, because this could cut 10 hours, 100 hours, whatever, out of our billing time, because you're effectively bringing that skill set inside, and those are the best relationships. Right. I think we got onto this because we were just talking about understanding your audience. But these are the types of things that if you're selling to us, I think what we're saying here, if you're selling to people that are similar to us. Right. If you're trying to figure out our breed, these are the things that resonate with us. So if you encounter other people in your travels that also profile like us, then these are some of the things you might want to consider or might want to pay attention to. [00:51:13] Speaker B: I believe we're punching to you now. [00:51:17] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I don't have a ton more. These are all part and parcel to what I'm doing, actually. I'll even deploy some of these. You and I have talked about your pending folder on a lot of occasions. What other ones do you have? Do you have any other ones in mind that you were thinking about? [00:51:31] Speaker B: I think we can. I would love to end. This is just such a great one to end off on. And it's down to ride, which you actually have written down. You actually have up to ride. [00:51:40] Speaker A: I did, yeah. [00:51:40] Speaker B: Well, I believe you meant to. [00:51:43] Speaker A: These short weeks are pretty tough, so. Yeah. [00:51:45] Speaker B: Don't blame it on the short. [00:51:47] Speaker A: I was. I was moving faster. Than what? [00:51:48] Speaker B: Just not down with your lingo. [00:51:50] Speaker A: You know, the thing, speed kills. [00:51:52] Speaker B: This is one of those I'm up to ride, but, yeah, simple. It's just like, be a teammate that's down to ride. That's who I want to be. Yeah. Hey, Justin. Thinking about this? Yeah, I got you. There are certain people that will come back always with some kind of answer. It's like, well, I can't do this because. Or just something. Just some kind of friction. [00:52:18] Speaker A: Right. [00:52:18] Speaker B: It's like you want the people on your team. I'm not saying a yes, man or woman. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying someone that's down, like, you always know, they got your back, you got theirs, and it's like, yeah, I got this simple done on it. It's not like there are just certain people. Everything's hard. Everything's friction. It could be the smallest request in the entire world, and, you know, it's just not going to be like, yeah, sure, got you. [00:52:42] Speaker A: Right. [00:52:42] Speaker B: Those are the kind of people you want and that I strive to be. Just make it easy, especially when you can know what's small and what doesn't matter and what it's like. Very easy to say, yes, sure, got it done. Of course, there are bigger, more complicated issues we got to break down. We got to talk about. That's not what I'm talking about. [00:53:03] Speaker A: Right. [00:53:04] Speaker B: She's like, be that person. I was like, yeah, I'll get shit done. Especially if it's easy. It doesn't take a long time. [00:53:08] Speaker A: Yeah. It would be down to ride over here and pump the brakes. Over here. There would be two totally different approaches and mindsets, and still it comes back to alignment. I'm sure there are certain people that love the pump the brakes mentality. Right. And they're comfortable with that. That's not us. We don't profile with. If you had to pick one between down to ride and pump the brakes, we profile as down to ride. [00:53:29] Speaker B: We always say, yeah, what's the question? [00:53:31] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. [00:53:31] Speaker B: But I mean, my whole team, like, truly my whole team, I know the answer is going to be like, got it? Yeah, cool. And I know it's going to get done like that. It's done. We don't have to talk about it, but it's really hard when you have people in the organization where it's always something. It's exhausting. It's like, dude, I just asked you if you could move that chair over there, like, today, and it's on wheels. Yeah. [00:53:58] Speaker A: Pick the thing up. You just had to move it. [00:53:59] Speaker B: And that's just so much about being a teammate and somebody people want to be around and can rely on. I'm not going to come to you anymore if I need help with something. And you want to have the people you can go to. [00:54:10] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. And all of them. Right. It's never going to work that way. It won't be 100%. But, man, as you're building teams, we talk about this a lot. Right. And you're building teams. We have this amazing tool with our values now that we stand up and there's not one there that says down to ride, but if you put two of them together or three of them together, it screams, if you check these three boxes, you are down to ride, whether it's adaptability or whatever those things are. [00:54:33] Speaker B: And, you know, immediately with people, it's pretty noticeable, and you identify immediately, and that's the people. I mean, we're generally always looking for an organization, but you can get it wrong. [00:54:45] Speaker A: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Well, listen, there's some great. And we fight this in the sales world a lot. I have a saying that says there's a fine line between an actor and a salesperson, and you don't know what you have sometimes until it's very late. Especially back to the conversation about the breed. There are certain people that are exposed to a lot of people and they become very good at melding or being a chameleon of sorts and being able to tell you they read your breed so well. They're actually able to tell you exactly what you want to hear. And that feels comfortable and familiar and therefore even breeds a little trust. And that's the stuff that's dangerous. [00:55:23] Speaker B: Yeah, this is a whole different topic, but sometimes I like to do that as we go on because it's like a cliffhanger that reminds me very much different, but reminds me of what I was listening today on a podcast about performative vulnerability. So there is a difference between actually being vulnerable and if you're actually being vulnerable, you know it because it's super uncomfortable and scary. I'm sure we've done it at times where we talk about being vulnerable and we want to be vulnerable, but there's still like a performative piece of it. So I'm not saying we do or we don't, but I think everybody, there is definitely a thing about performative vulnerability. [00:56:04] Speaker A: Performative could also be construed with faking. [00:56:07] Speaker B: Yeah, but I think there's a ton of that. Yeah, and that's sort of along the lines of what we were just talking about. Right, but different. [00:56:16] Speaker A: Yeah, well, listen, I'm sure there's all of these different. I hate the word things. That's such a big dumb word. But there's all. [00:56:23] Speaker B: Sometimes things just work. [00:56:24] Speaker A: Yeah, but these movements through society. Right? Let's just call it that. Movements through society. And because Brene Brown said so, who's one of my favorites? That's not me poking fun. I truly enjoy listening to what she has to say. Primarily because it's data know, it's the data suggested or when we studied these people, these thousand people, there is definitely this movement towards vulnerability, authenticity, which authenticity is the exact opposite of that. There would be nothing that was fake or genuine or whatever those are. [00:56:58] Speaker B: I need to be vulnerable. I want to connect. So I'm going to talk about these things and say these things. I think the great gauge, if it doesn't feel super uncomfortable or a little scary, it's probably not totally authentic. [00:57:13] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I'm assure your audience. It's hard for your audience to pick up, though, especially for the people that are really good at it. [00:57:19] Speaker B: And thus we end back on where we started. [00:57:21] Speaker A: Performative equals acting. [00:57:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:57:23] Speaker A: So this is great. So we wrapped this thing with on it and down to ride. That's what we wrapped this thing with. We started with on it and ended with down to ride. [00:57:31] Speaker B: And I'll say, if you're someone listening to this, try a couple of these out. You could probably try all of them out and see what happens. Yeah. I guarantee you will get something beneficial out of it. Guarantee it. [00:57:45] Speaker A: Totally agree. All right. Now we're high fiving out. We got to figure out something to do. We got the football season starting. It's pretty cool. [00:57:53] Speaker B: We'll work on it. [00:57:54] Speaker A: We'll work on it. I think we have a lot of sports in here anyway, right? We talked about the goal line today. You're welcome, folks. [00:58:00] Speaker B: Our endings are. [00:58:04] Speaker A: All right. [00:58:06] Speaker B: We got to figure out just more impactful endings. All right, done. [00:58:12] Speaker A: Here we go.