Bonus - "Hurting or Helping"

0:07 Welcome back to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast. I'm Chris. And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. I don't know, what'd you think? I don't know, it was kind of serious. Should we laugh? Happy Friday, everybody. Welcome to the Floodlight Friday livestream. I actually have to be very intentional about saying that. You don't want to F that up. See, that was such a... Take it easy with the F-bombs. That was such a... We just got a message from Jana, our artistic director, our creative savant. She said, Hey, I just reviewed the podcast you guys recorded last week.

0:47 Do you want me to edit out some of the F-bombs? And you know what? Honestly, if she's asking that, that means there's quite a few F-bombs in there. Yeah. We may have tiptoed a little too far over the line. Your kids that are out of the house, you guys have... We're not... Listen, we're in the construction industry. That's it. That's exactly right. So anyway, we're not editing out the F-bombs. So if you like that or don't, be mindful of that podcast. It's probably coming out next week. So I'm trying to figure out how to do this post thing. We talk about prison. Yeah, we did. I guess that's why it was... We'll just leave the context for the podcast. If you talk about prison, you have to cuss.

1:28 Look at us getting all clever. Okay, I'm going to start kind of keep it light at first here. I have a podcast recommendation. Because you guys know where we go, right? I mean, the whole purpose... So I'll go back... Let me open this up appropriately. So part of the impetus behind this, not to take anything away from Brandon's role, was just I love on Fridays, I've been trying to do this for a while. You've probably done a version of this too. No. On a day of the week. No. Fridays, I've always tried to find at least a little bit of time, whether it's in the afternoon or first thing in the morning, to just have some pause, have a reflection time. Think about, okay, what's taking place so far this week? Good, bad, and ugly, right?

2:08 Where have I come from this week? Okay, what's ahead? And also just some ideation, right? I don't really have an agenda for my time on Fridays. And in a way, this Floodlight Friday live stream is kind of that for me. So I have some ideas that we'll go through here. And that's part of my reflection this morning. So anyway, that's the genesis of this whole thing. And it's a variety show. It's going to be different every week. A couple weeks ago, we had one that was pretty technical heavy. We talked about, I think, training techs or onboarding technicians or something like that. And we got some good feedback from it. Other times, as you guys know, it's head, heart and boots for us. So it's all the things. And we've got a pretty eclectic mix today.

2:50 Business breakdowns. I've talked about this podcast. Brandon still hasn't listened to an episode. I'm not holding it against him. Yeah. What I love about it is it's kind of like a street MBA. For those of you that want to learn and want to learn more about other businesses outside of our industry and just how business models work and how people are making money and all that kind of stuff. They basically have the host is one of those Wall Street guru, MBA, Harvard guys. Yeah. analyst, essentially an investor business analyst. And then the guest is always an executive or shareholder or founder or something of the featured business.

3:31 Or sometimes it's an industry analyst that's been following that company for a long time. And they basically spend 45 minutes to an hour breaking down how does this business make money? What's the historical trend? What challenges have they faced? And what's their position in the market? All this kind of stuff. MBA, Harvard business, all the highfalutin stuff, but they break it down into concepts that are really easy to understand and follow the 30,000 foot view. But this episode I want to recommend is on Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett. They go deep. This guy has been covering Berkshire Hathaway for 25 years. This analyst that's And so it's just really fascinating. He talks about some of the failures.

4:12 I mean, Warren Buffett has not had all Ws, right? He's had some Ls in the last column. And so it's just really interesting to hear about some of the history of Berkshire Hathaway, but overall the trend of leadership and the discipline that they exercise in their business, all the things, how they've set themselves up for success. I mean, fanatical success, right? So I want to recommend that. Business breakdowns, I listen to it on Spotify, but all the platforms. and look for the Berkshire Hathaway episode. I want to have a little sales post because we had a Restoration Sales 2.0 webinar yesterday. By the way, those of you who are watching this, if you wanted to go to that Restoration 2.0 sales thing and you couldn't make it for some reason or you wanted a team member to go, make a comment here on the post and we'll make sure that we invite you to the next one because inevitably we're going to have another commercial sales webinar coming up at some point.

5:03 So we can tag you or shoot you a DM when we go to do that. But just, yeah, drop a comment. It'll probably be slightly different too. So I think we're going to clean up that recording, maybe just kind of bookend it. We could get that out too. So we can follow up. Yeah, we'll be posting like a greatest hits from it or whatever. Jana, our fearless artistic director, she's going to slice and dice and kind of put together a more abbreviated version of it. It's a four CD box set. Yeah. So it's coming. I just had a thought as I was in the shower this morning, just kind of thinking about sales and about just where our industry is at with sales. I thought you were going to say toilets. I put it in my Apple notes.

5:44 If you're not a sales organization, if you don't have a sales operation in your business, you're ultimately beholden to somebody for your work. That's the thought that came to me. And I think a lot of restoration companies are in that position where they maybe are being very successful doing TPAs and Google PPC and national accounts and all these other sources that we begin to depend on for our revenue. But... But I just had this thought of just how precarious that is. And I think all of us feel it. And those of you that don't have an active sales operation, I think you know what I'm talking about. And I wrote here, it's as though you're employed...

6:25 and depending on others for your paycheck. So if you don't have a sales operation in place right now, you don't have somebody that's developing referral partner relationships and or a direct commercial B2B sales leader, who's your employer? Who are you working for? Who's in control of your livelihood today? your people's livelihood? Who's putting bread on the table? Because you are, in some way or in multiple ways, you're beholden to them, right? And of course, all of us are familiar with the burden that TPAs place. They give us gifts, right? But they demand a lot in return. And what is that overhead? What is that costing your business? What's the obligation? Anyway, so I just leave with that. We do have, I guess I should, a perfect bookend to that would be...

7:10 We have a flash sale going on our commercial sales master course. I kind of teed that up perfectly. Oh, wow. Yeah, that was... 40% off the normal price. Anyway, we'll link to that in the show comments. All right, let's get into another topic. I know you had something that you wanted to talk about from yesterday. We had a learning experience. We had a learning experience. Yeah. Learning experience. Bit of an ego check. Oh, hardcore. I would probably throw it in that category. Yeah, so here's kind of the stage. I'll set the stage. So we had a project we've been working on that we put together, and we had a couple partners helping us with the project. And one of these individuals, extremely experienced, has done this kind of thing a million times. And it was part of the reason we really wanted their help.

7:51 was that this individual had the background, the experience, and the know-how to do it. And inevitably, as the project went on, Chris and I are basically being naive and not having the skill set or the background in this before. We were providing all of this, let's call it help, right? So we're communicating. We don't realize that both of us are actually communicating at this individual and providing help and insight and direction from our... perspective ended up becoming this thing where this individual was being bombarded with direction. Where again, from our perspective, it was help. We were just... providing information.

8:32 And this individual was being bombarded. And of course, that creates this scenario where there's problems for us. And so part of it is you and I, we do this all the time in our work. You and I are texting each other back and forth and it's part of the mojo or even just habit with our consulting is oftentimes we're giving each other cues, follow-up questions that come to one or both of our minds. In our conversations with clients and stuff, we're constantly texting each other cues on iMessage just to focus and redirect conversations and emphasize certain things, follow-up questions, all that kind of stuff.

9:14 We do it in our show. Oh, we do it all the time during podcasts and everything else. And so we were essentially in a project meeting doing this with a person. There was some other people present for that meeting and... I think ultimately we were just stressing them to freak out. Yeah. Not only were we stressing them out, and this is the part I think that sucked, was we were, from their perspective, we were aggressively offending them. I think. I mean, that's true. That's what I'm afraid happened. Like the sentiment is we were giving all this direction. Direction to an expert. To an expert, right? And I was thinking about it last night a little bit. I was having a conversation with my wife about it. And it would be like, You know, my son's really smart.

9:55 He's in school right now. He's studying psychology. He's very confident about his academics, and he does a great job. It's very impressive. Well, when it comes to some of these realms of study, because he's recently in it, meaning he's in the coursework, they're talking about it, he will often communicate stuff to me as if no one else on the planet has ever heard these things, right? And he's not being offensive. He's excited, he's in the moment, he's giving input, and he doesn't realize at times how much he's offending me from the perspective of storing my head as I'm making all these assumptions. Like, he's talking at me. because he knows so much about this topic. And for me as a 45-year-old male, we've had a lot of life under our belt and these are things that we've experienced firsthand, right?

10:41 Silly, right? But I think we were doing something similar. We're bombarding this individual with direction, with communication, with insight, with all of these things. And we don't realize the whole time, it's like, again, it was me telling the expert what to do. After we invited the expert to do their expert thing. Yeah, to do their thing. So I think the long and short of it in terms of this particular experience is it was completely accidental. It was us not knowing better. We are fully responsible for the outcome. It is Chris and I's fault that that was not handled better. And we created this scenario completely out of accident, though.

11:23 Like our mindset wasn't directed at that. And here's what I ended up kind of wrestling with this morning about it. You were going to... I was just going to say, I mean, the great irony... I mean, this wasn't the first time where I've done a version of this or felt the way I feel now and did after the fact. But the great irony is just this total disconnect of in the moment... I thought all of my intention was, it was helping. Like, that's just the great irony is it wasn't until after the fact of getting this person's feedback that I realized, oh man, it was not, it did not come across that way. And it really probably wasn't helpful at all.

12:04 No. You know, just, yeah. realizing in hindsight just how stressful that must have been while you're trying to do your thing in a project environment and you've got two people that are chatting you up. Wow. In the midst of it. It's like, oh man. Oh yeah, it was total chaos. How embarrassed, you know, it was just one of those moments of, oh, embarrassment. I was embarrassed. I think you and I both made that comment immediately. We were just ashamed. Like, oh man, what a real foul. And we felt misunderstood, of course, too, because we're like, oh no, that wasn't our intent. So guys, gals, leaders, here's what I was thinking post-event.

12:46 is I was thinking like, and I've done this as a parent. I've had conversations, even as a spouse, a partner, I've had these kinds of conversations with my wife where I feel like in the moment, my intent is to provide information, direction, quotes, help. And I think what I don't realize at times is I could very well be bombarding someone with useless direction in my effort to help. And in conjunction with that, I'm probably offending them because I haven't done a good enough job to really understand their knowledge base, their perspective, their goal, their plan. Or I'm just flat out being impatient. Or that.

13:28 I think those are the harder ones to draw connection to because at the end of the day, our intent is let's help the team get to this end goal that we're really excited about achieving. But we're making a mess in line. So I was just thinking about this as leaders. How many times would our teammates... with our downline employees, thought about this a lot with our leadership teams, is how many times did I walk into a situation and I'm providing direction and input and I'm inserting my perspective into the situation Again, all from the position of, I feel like I'm helping.

14:09 I feel like I'm providing assistance to the success of the team. And or I know what this situation requires. I at least have a perspective on what we want, what we want to see the outcome be. And I think what normally I would wrestle with, and I think maybe what this topic would have looked like even a few weeks ago, is more around, I want to do less of that because I want to draw in someone's participation. So it's like I would almost be falsely holding back Because my gut as a leader, as a growing leader is, I'm not going to talk at people because I want their input. I want their engagement.

14:50 And I think what I realized yesterday is, even in that perspective, I'm still coming at it like I know it all. I've got such a grip on what it is that I want my team to succeed at. But because I'm coaching them and I want their participation, I'm going to hold back some of that direction giving intentionally. Yeah. And what I realized yesterday in this experience is I just straight up didn't know I was stepping on myself and that I was offending this individual. And so it was an eye opener for me of how many times I've approached an opportunity like this with this conscious awareness of I'm going to hold back a little bit because I'm so smart and I want this individual to learn.

15:31 And I realized, man, the same thing can happen in complete accident when you're not trying to be that way. There was no intention. It was just a blooper on my part. And so I just think as leaders, it's a great opportunity for us to just stop for a second and remind ourselves how valuable the people on our team's input and perspective is. Like really, not just because I want engagement from them, but because I honestly need to see and hear things from another set of eyes, another mind. I really want to continue to build teams that I'm actually hearing. Not just coaching because I'm so smart, but that I'm actually hearing their input and having them lead me at times.

16:15 Like this was a perfect scenario. We were meant to be led and we didn't allow that to happen. Yeah. And it created some poor outcomes. So I think that's just where I went this morning thinking about this. So as you guys just process through some of the interactions that you have with leadership teams or department heads or even our technicians in the field, it's so easy for us to write off their perspective or their input or to provide too much direction because we're helping develop them or we're helping achieve the outcome that we need. And that can be hard. I think that crosses over into people being challenged by delegating, right? And equipping downline team members to really participate or own their portion of the house.

16:57 So anyways, I don't know. What else do you want to add to that? This is kind of where I was coming or I ended up going. Yeah, another... Another angle I wanted to talk about is just the aftermath of those kind of situations. Yeah. For some leaders, by the way, hello, Stephen, Christine. Thank you. Thank you for commenting, watching. So you and I use the core values index with our clients. And for us, it's a combination of things. One, it gives us some insight into the clients we're working with and their leadership team. And so it helps us kind of rapidly get a deeper view of each of the people we're working with. And essentially what it does is it scores people in a four-quadrant matrix. Everybody has some mix of scores in builder, merchant, innovator, and banker.

17:42 And all of these different values have specific default behaviors and instincts that that they're characterized by. I'm a merchant innovator. You're a merchant builder. So both of us are high merchant. I'm really high merchant. And in my experience, about 25% or so of leaders are merchants. Maybe 25-30% are merchants. And what merchants are characterized by is their whole life cycle. outlook and their strategies are wrapped up in relationship, creating new relationships and maintaining relationships. And so you can see how that's really beneficial, this sort of profile for an owner or a key leader or something, right?

18:26 To be very relationally oriented. But you can also imagine some of the drawbacks. Oh, yeah. And one of the drawbacks I found of being a high merchant. So for those of you familiar with the CVI, I'm a 30 merchant, which is way up there on the scale. Branding, you're 26, I think. Yeah. When you're on the high scale of merchant, the dark side of that archetype is that when there's a broken relationship, the merchant tends to spin out. Yeah. And I experienced this when we were operating in the field in restoration. Boy, you have a job that goes sideways with a new client, an old client. It doesn't matter. Client's unhappy with you. Yeah. When a merchant receives that call from the client or hears even from a team member, oh yeah, so-and-so is really upset with how things went, it's debilitating for a merchant.

19:09 Now, one of the things about the merchant is they tend to be very buoyant, which is why they're so adept at building and maintaining relationships is they still get mad, angry, disappointed, melancholy, depressed, all those things when a bad thing happens, but they tend to recover pretty quickly. Yeah. But boy, I'll tell you what, like yesterday when this happened, I was just like, the fear I felt of a broken relationship potentially, you know? Even though we had a good conversation with this person after the fact, there was just still this burden of, oh, man, I think they're just being nice to us. Yeah. I don't know if they really forgive us because we really did. It was not great. And so I was just laboring over that over the evening and just trying to get centered back down to, okay, screwed up, apologized.

19:57 Yeah. owned it, they said were good, and just rest in that. But I'm just... I think for a lot of owners and key leaders in this industry that are like you and I with this really high relational anchoring, it's something to be aware of. For me, I'm really trying to get more in touch with that and not let it torpedo me quite as much. Yeah, exactly. Because I'm just spinning out. And we see this with high merchant sales reps in our industry. Yeah. Because there's so much that can go wrong. Yeah. in our business, right? It's complicated. It's a complicated business, a lot of moving parts, a lot of characters involved in the process. Anyway, and so it's something for those of you that know, and if you don't know how your salesperson's wired, get in touch with us, we'll do a CBI with them, whatever.

20:41 But if you've got high merchant players on your team, just understand that's a real thing. When there's some kind of break in a relationship, what happens with the merchant is they almost can't focus on anything else but trying to repair that relationship and trying to make it right. And not everything can be made right, so to speak. It's not always like, hey, I kicked a soccer ball through your living room window and I can pay for it and then we move on. Some of the things that happen in business and relationships, there is no way to just cure that thing we did. And so I don't know that there's actually a directive there. I think it's more just like, okay, it's just something I was feeling. And I think it's actually helping me.

21:23 It's a little therapeutic, me just saying it out loud. To get it out. Yeah, just to get it out there, right? Well, and I think there's a counter to that, right? So as leaders in our businesses, I mean, if we overly generalize, you end up falling in one of these two categories. And one is you're the overly emotionally connected, or let's call it the more emotionally connected to the relationship between you and your downline clients. Or you fall into this category where you're a little bit more utilitarian in nature and it's like, you know, fire and forget. Like we address the thing. I've moved on. There's no emotional context or baggage for me. Everybody should be fine. So I'd say, you know, like if you're what you just described is more that individual that tends to be weighted heavier in the relationship side. And then those that don't, I think the reminder for us is.

22:05 it's almost harder for us to place ourselves in a position where we want to be hearing and engaged by our downlines because we are so utilitarian in nature. So it's like, we're looking for the wind. I don't care how we get there. It's black and white. It's yes or no. Boom, get the wind, move on. And so we, in those cases, I'm saying we, like I'm in that. I'm really more on the relational side too. But that can be very difficult to manage. It's funny because this actually tied into a conversation I was having with my kids. my son yesterday. So my daughter's birthday, we're having a barbecue, my son was over. And my son and I are in this unique place in our relationship where we... I think a lot of you experience this where you do a little of when they're young, we're really close. And then there's this interesting gap that gets created when they go through their late teens.

22:50 maybe early teens for some of you. And then that kind of verges back again as they get into their young 20s. And my son and I are in this convergent stage again, where he and I are just really beginning to bond again relationally. And it's pretty exciting. I like it. And my son has gotten far more aggressive about asking me questions as he's sharing his life and talking about professional endeavors and education and things like that. And we were having this discussion about drive, internal drive. And he was talking about... And he does it. The kid gets more than a four-point. He's just really driven with school. He's been working really hard, lots of hours. And he talked about this space where he has a tough time taking a day off.

23:31 Because he feels in that lack of productivity, he's not living up to some standard for himself or whatever. And you and I have talked about this as a wrestling match that I even have with myself. And the beautiful thing about being in a relationship with somebody that's maybe a few steps behind you, whether it be development in your career or age or experience in relationships, is... as you begin to talk to them and give them some direction and some insight, it's such a great learning lessons for yourself again. Like it makes you think about it in a different way because this person's asking almost for insight or teaching on it. And so anyways, we were talking about this... topic.

24:11 And one of the things I pointed out to him, and it's funny how it just comes back to this, and maybe this was on my mind and why it led there. The challenge that we have is that we can all tend to fall into a category where we get very good at creating time and dedication to learning a new skill set. Whether it be professionally, getting good grades, working hard, we're excited to have 60-hour work weeks, not because we actually like it, but because we're going to tell somebody at the next event that we're doing these 60-hour work weeks or whatever the case may be. But we're not good about giving ourselves the time to develop the internal skill sets, balance in our soul where we're not so emotionally driven by our environment.

24:55 We talk about this stuff all the time. All right, let's take a minute to recognize and thank our Mitresto Mastery sponsor, Accelerate Restoration Software. And I'm fully aware, by the way, that when I say those last two words, restoration software, that that instantly creates heartburn for some of you out there, right? Because we probably all fall into one of two camps when it comes to software. We've either cobbled together kind of a version of free website tools and spreadsheets just to make our business work. Or we're in the camp where we've adopted one of these existing restoration platforms, you know, one that has all the bells and whistles and supposedly does it all.

25:37 But we can't get our team to consistently adopt it and input information to it. Yeah, and that's really where Accelerate has honed their focus. They've created a system that's simple, right? It's intuitive, and it focuses on the most mission-critical information, i.e., guys, your team will actually use it. Let's talk about sales, right? After years of leading sales and marketing teams, the biggest trick is getting them to consistently update notes about their interactions with referral partners and clients. And the essential piece there is there's got to be a mobile app experience. And in our experience... the solutions that were previously out there were just too cumbersome and tricky to use.

26:22 Yeah. Imagine guys, how your business would change if your entire team was actually consistently using the system. Do yourself a favor, go check these guys out at xlrestorationsoftware.com forward slash MRM and check out the special offers they're providing to MRM listeners. All right, let's talk about actionable insights. Owners, GMs, you can't be your business's expert on all things estimating. You might've been three years ago when you were writing sheets in the field, but the industry's always changing, and so are the tools. If you're the smartest person in the room when it comes to Xactimate and Matterport, how does that scale? You're the bottleneck.

27:03 I know I'm preaching to the choir, but this is where actionable insights comes in. They're a technical partner that can equip your team with the latest bleeding edge information and best practices and then update them with webinars and training resources when the game inevitably changes again. For this reason, we recommend actual insights to all of our clients. Yeah, three of the kind of big things that stuck out to me when being introduced to AI and their team. First off is this consistently updated training. I mean, at the end of the day, these guys are the experts. They're out front all the time. They're constantly learning new trade secrets and ensuring that your team's got access to those things. A 3,700 plus page database of Xactimate templates.

27:45 I don't know what else to say here other than don't reinvent the wheel. It's already available. Download it, copy it, use it, bam. database of commonly missed items. I think this is huge. So many of us can change the numbers by just moving the needle a couple points and those commonly missed items can make all the difference in the world. So go check them out at value.getinsights.org backslash FCG. So here's where I was going with this with my son. My son and I both share a trait that is we can tend to get very heated up in a moment like a flash fire.

28:27 And as I've gotten older, this has been something that both out of just experience and age is getting less and I've been intentionally working on it. So my point is, right, is that my son is younger and so he's still kind of in the throes of these flashpoints. And we've had multiple scenarios where a flashpoint happens. Right. The experience is not fun. The conversation doesn't go well. And from my perspective, sorry, son, with a little bit more time under my belt, is I'm looking at the situation and I'm just thinking to myself, my son is totally going to be embarrassed later when he thinks about this. Because the behavior doesn't match the situation. There's scope and scale is not in alignment. It's just a mistake.

29:09 And he's burning bridges. He's hurting relationships and he doesn't realize it. Okay? Inevitably, though, he's a smart kid. He thinks about it. He processes. He comes back. He apologizes. We talk about it. But the damage has already been done. And this is the thing that I have wrestled with for years, and we've talked about it, you've been an influence on me, helping me get better at it, is for like, I'm an eight on the Enneagram. And what that means is, is that I can get into a heated situation. When the situation's over, I'm done. Like we had our thing. It's not forever. It's not meant to affect our relationship forever. I'm done. I've moved on. But what I've done is left that sticky residue. Mm. I've hurt something.

29:51 I've affected that relationship trust, whatever the case may be, in a way that over time, maybe the majority of it will be overcome. But no matter what, I degraded that account in some way. So anyways, I'm talking to my son about this and I'm like, look, the win... is when you begin to give time to tools and skill sets that help you prevent the flashpoint from happening in the first place. Because even if you're smart enough and aware enough to apologize later, the damage was done, period. You can't undo the negative impact. And I think what I'm wrestling with, with what happened yesterday, is no matter what happens, I trust that this individual is a professional, we're professionals, we're going to move on, it's going to be okay.

30:34 But our naiveness, our mistake left some damage there that changed that relationship. No matter how mature we all are, it doesn't look exactly the same than it did when we made that mistake. And so my encouragement to us as leaders is the win is not being aware enough to apologize later. That is definitely a step in the right direction. And it's definitely a level of maturity we're searching for. But the win is, can we do a better job of not getting caught up in the moment and having the flashpoint in the first place? So I think these two, they are slightly different, but they parallel each other. And it's this idea of...

31:16 is there a way for us to approach experiences and circumstances with more questions and asking for more insight and leadership and communication before we start inserting aggressively or reacting or responding or doing? Slow down and don't do immediately, but gather more information. I think we get wins in both of those categories if we do more of that. And again, this is for me, right? This is my own lesson this morning. You know what else it reminds me of is that conversation with Dan Pink about regret. Oh, big time. So for us, it's sitting in the regret. I really appreciate what you just said. I think it's very true. It's like there is damage that's done.

31:57 And it's like, okay, if you've been damaged in interaction, it's okay to acknowledge that and that there's going to need to be some kind of repair. And I think the same thing is true with our children and our marriage relationships and everything else. Yeah, we can apologize and we can be sincere and genuine, but there is a rebuilding that has to be tended to. And I think that's part of that whole concept of regret that Dan Pink was talking about, which is it's kind of important to sit in the embarrassment of... That regret, the shame of, oh, man, I behaved badly. And this was how the other person felt. So just really, it's almost like we're creating an important file in our brain.

32:38 So when we get back, like the next time you and I get back into that project environment that we're in, there's this monument in our brain. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay, Chris. It's also about that article I wrote in CNR. Part of you is not going to like this. It's like, oh, whoa. Okay. Part of me is feeling really... I mean, I think in this, I think there was an aspect in this whole project example of, it was definitely... I was in that tunnel vision, what I wanted for this whole experience. For everybody, it was a... It was a universal want and that I just wanted this project to be as awesome as possible. But in that tunnel vision, I was totally disconnected from the roles and relationships and the things involved.

33:21 And I was just inserting. Oh, yeah. I was just like, I was, so there was, it was a control thing. I think ultimately it was my ego that, hey, I want to create this outcome. I'm taking responsibility for the whole thing, even though I have partners in this thing. And I'm inserting myself because I want it to come off a specific way that I want it to come off. And so I think part of me was feeling really controlling... Part of me was feeling anxious that it wasn't going to go exactly how I wanted, which is so funny because typically I'm not a perfectionist guy. Yeah. You know, but there was something about that moment where I was just really trying to pull the levers and flip the switches and all these text messages, go here next, let's do this next and that kind of...

34:03 Anyway. So I think there's something about that regret of it's okay to just wallow in that briefly long enough to be like, okay. Yeah. Yeah, that was crummy. I don't want to repeat that. Yeah. You know? And again, it's like, we got to keep balancing this. It's funny, one of the viewers is saying, I needed to hear this. Like, I'm into the leadership piece. And I think the balance of this always is like, again, I think for the highly relational side, We're more quick to be worried about how that experience went and what that exchange felt like. And I think, again, for our more utilitarian-driven drivers, it's going to look different, but it's just as important. I think that those folks, and I fall into this category, definitely more than you, but I fall into this category from time to time, different seasons, is...

34:51 It's like I don't even ever circle around to know there was a problem in the first place. And that can be really dangerous. So here's my last thing on this, and we'll put it to bed, is... A lot of you right now are talking about how to develop your teams and engagement and recruitment and all these things because we're a woman-man-power business, right? We're a service industry. And I think we get caught up in these benefit packages, or I have to give these kinds of pay scales, and I have to provide XYZ ping-pong tables and whatever. I think there's some truth to those things, yes. Yes. But I can tell you from rich experience, you're going to earn more loyalty, engagement, recruitment power if you're better at not making the same mistake that we made yesterday.

35:41 As key leaders, whether you're the business owner, a general manager, a sales team lead, or whatever... Our win in terms of culture is getting better at engaging our people, not out of coaching, consulting, because we're so smart, having these flashpoints and telling your people, you just got to get used to me. This is who I am, but I am apologetic. I'm sorry. We got to get better at remembering that people actually have true inherent value that they're bringing to our team. It's why we have a team. They have thoughts, perspectives. They're closer to my client than I am. They're closer to the ground than I've been in a number of years. Whatever the case may be, the better job we do is realizing they actually have input that's valuable.

36:24 And I want to slow down enough to hear their insight and ask questions and identify with certainty where they stand and where they're at in this particular endeavor. the more loyalty and engagement you're going to get from your people because they're going to love you. They're going to respect you because they feel that first and in return by the way that you're interacting with them. And it's like we see this all the time with teams. They're very large and they're doing the same stuff we're all doing and they're having no recruitment problems whatsoever. And some of that is coming out of the market that they're in. But a big chunk of it is coming from they've created an environment like this.

37:06 And people want other people to come work there because they know how rad it is. Right? So, okay. Let's put that one to bed. Hopefully some of you can relate to that. We can keep moving. Keep trucking forward. I know. I was trying to think of, well, first of all, I'm still struggling. Do we look at the camera? Do we look at the audience? Or do we look at each other? I feel really awkward. And sometimes when I glance down here and see my face, I'm like giving myself a side eye. It's weird. Okay. Yeah, I had some other notes. I just feel like people are going to get so sort of heavy. Like we're talking about the internal stuff. I did have just one last thought. And maybe this is actually a way to close out just this whole thing of processing a failure and whatever.

37:47 I have this friend, a childhood friend that I reconnected with recently. He lives in Colorado. And I grew up going to church with this guy. He's four or five years older than me. And I always, he's one of those older kids that I really admired. Yeah. He's a piano player and a singer, which is part of my background. And we reconnected randomly about a year ago. And so we have these calls every three or four months. And his name is Ryan. And he told me, he said, he is a therapist he went to in the past. And he just said this really interesting thing that just stopped me dead in my tracks. Yeah. His therapist told him one time, he said, Ryan, you are so much smaller than you think you are.

38:29 Oh, wow. I was like, what kind of thing is that to say for a therapist? But then he went on to explain it and what the value was for him in hearing that. I'm like, oh, that's so good. That's so important. And I was thinking, it came to my mind last night. I went home and I was doing jump rope because I'm like, I need to blow off some steam. I need to get re-centered. My head's spinning now. And so I'm doing jump rope, but I'm still thinking. I'm still spinning now. And then the voice of my friend Ryan came to my head and said, you're so much smaller than you think you are or than your thoughts tell you you are. And I was like, what does that mean? What does that mean for me right now?

39:10 I think what he means is that our ego, we get so dialed in on presenting ourself and having others see us as competent, successful, notable, interesting, special, above average, an industry leader, whatever. Whatever our ego, like we have this image that we're trying to cultivate. All of us do. I mean, I just think it's a function of the ego. And then when something happens that, that hits that image somehow or potentially it's like, oh my God, what does this person think of me now?

39:50 Yeah. I think it's healthy. And probably why the therapist suggests it's healthy to say, okay, hold on. Like you have this whole picture of you that you're trying to create for other people. This big, it's like there's this big banner over your head of I'm this big thing. And so the moment that one of the grommets comes out of that banner and it flops over and half the message is missing, it's like you're crushed. You're like, what am I going to do to salvage my reputation with this person? And it kind of goes in line with that old adage of people probably aren't thinking about you half as much as you think they are. You know what I mean?

40:31 Oh, for sure. And so I just, I love that. And for those of you that are dealing with, you got egg on your face, you've eaten crow, you've been a bad actor, you've done something wrong, you've been impatient, all these things like we've been talking about. It also is important to be like, okay, who am I anyway? Yeah, keep it in context. We all screw up. Yeah. We're going to screw up tomorrow. The person that I hurt and offended, they're going to hurt and offend somebody. Like none of us... are pure actors. We're all figuring this out as we go. And so that just felt really healthy to me. And actually, it feels even good as I say it out loud. I'm reminding myself.

41:12 It's like, okay, Nordyke, you are just a dude and you screwed up. And so, okay, let's keep moving. I don't know. I kind of hate to end on that, but it's like... Oh, man. Solid. Those are kind of the high points. Yeah. I also, one of the other things too that I really enjoy, it's probably my favorite part of Facebook, is the memories. And if you guys into the memories, like where it's not Facebook. Oh dude, I'm so Facebook. So I love the Facebook memories. Like sometimes I'll post a photo of my family or kids and it's like they do these five year, 10 year increments. And then it just shows up when you log into Facebook in the morning or whatever. And this is the one that came up for me from 2015, seven years ago.

41:53 It also makes me feel freaking old too when I see these things. Marcus Aurelius. So there's this quote, and it meant something to me at this time. And I'm like, oh, this is good. Marcus Aurelius, 2,000 years ago, 2,500 years ago, he was a Roman emperor, often regarded as sort of the Stoic, one of the godfathers of Stoicism, which if you've read the book by Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic, The Obstacle is the Way, Silence is the Key, right? Yes. Yeah, I think silence is the key or something like that. Anyways, they're all great. Really great leadership and just books for all of us. He recommends Marcus Aurelius' book, Meditations, which is actually his journal that he wrote only for himself, but it was found.

42:34 It's been translated. So this is from Marcus Aurelius. So imagine he's writing this to himself. It's like he's meditating on this. He's doing his Friday morning meditation and reflection time. He says, two kinds of readiness are constantly needed. And you kind of got to just sift through this old language a little bit. One, to do only what the Logos and authority and law directs. And the Logos, they think of that as like, some people would call it Holy Spirit. In the ancient days, it was like this essence of the universe. It's kind of a universal God, like the spiritual energy that's kind of driving everything. And so to mind that, to submit to that universal energy. And two, to reconsider your position when someone can set you straight or convert you to his, right?

43:18 Always being open to being corrected. Always being open to have your mind changed. But your conversion should always rest on a conviction that's right or benefits others. Nothing else. Not because it's more appealing or more popular. I just thought, oh, God, that's great. That's a huge reminder, right? Yeah, it's interesting because if you, you know, I'm reading this as you're going through it is both sections. So the first one says specifically with the good of human beings and mind. And then, of course, the next section is, you know, with conviction or the benefit of others, nothing else. And that totally aligns with where the other topics that we've covered on today. That's solid, man. Okay.

43:59 Well, guys, thank you. Thank you for being a part of this. I mean, really, it's an honor. It feels special that people tune into this stuff and I hope it added value for you guys. There's a lot of ways to connect with us. If you want more or you want to engage with us more frequently or have us work in your business or whatever, you can go to floodlightgrp.com. Turn up the podcast. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Check out Head, Heart, and Boots. It's a passion project of ours. Yeah. I mean, sometimes you'll probably feel like crap when you listen to it, but it's intentional. We do use some salty language sometimes or often, or I don't know. You be the judge. And then lastly, a little bit of, I guess, shameless self-promotion. We... We have our digital commercial sales master course. It's at floodlightgrp.com forward slash master course, I believe.

44:39 I remember right, but you can certainly Google it. In fact, we'll link to it in the show notes. We have a flash sale. We're experimenting with this flash sale, all these fancy social media things. 40% off through midnight tonight. So we've been running that since the 4th of July. Just kind of a fun deal there. Save some money. If you're trying to grow your commercial sales, this could be a really great resource for you to coach up, to train up. You want to throw that in the show notes too? The code? Just get crazy. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we'll throw the code in the comments. All right. Okay. Okay, gang. We'll see you. See you next week. Bye. All right, everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart & Boots. And if you're enjoying the show, but you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend.

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