Ep 17 - Is Your Work Worth Your Time With Dr. Nick Sotelo

0:02 Welcome back to another episode of the MRM Podcast. I'm Chris. And I'm Brandon. Join us as we discuss business, life, and legacy. It's business time. Hello, my friend. Good morning. What's everybody doing today? Real good. Chris, I've made you a fortunate man. I brought a guest with us today that I think is going to align really well with some of the areas that we've been diving as a team and certainly in terms of perspective on what we prioritize working with people and trying to get in under the surface. This man is very gifted at working with folks on the inside, right? Getting to the depth of things and uncovering and unpacking things.

0:43 to make some significant change. So Nick, he's got 20 plus years working with youth in the correction system. Lots of development. He's led teams. He's created curriculum. He's created programs. Just tons of extensive work helping youth come through those programs and actually be able to reintegrate into their communities. Master's degree in marriage and family counseling, PhD in counseling education supervision. Vision, assistant professor at Corbin University, and somehow he still finds time to be a podcast host and a life coach. And the podcast is The Upgraded Life. Nick, thanks a lot for joining us, my friend. I'm not even sure how you had a time block to offer us, but we're going to take it No, absolutely.

1:28 I always have time blocks. And when people reach out, I just give them the link. If it works, it works. And I'm willing to give my time however it's asked for for the most part within reason. Yeah, of course. Yeah, it's got to be within reason because there's no way you're getting all this done and giving it out to anybody that asked for it. So thanks again, man. We really appreciate your time. So dude, I think the best place to start is... Of course, I've got some inside trader information on this concept. But share with us this idea behind the upgraded life. Where did this concept come from? What is it? And why has it been so important to you in the work that you're doing? It's always a struggle. I'm sure you went through it when you were trying to figure out what you were going to call your project or your podcast.

2:12 So it took a little bit. It took a little bit of mulling around. But it really comes out of this observation that I made of myself. Observations of me working out of what we call central office and just kind of listening to the default water cooler type talk, you know, the talk that happens across the copy machine. I caught your episode on Elon Musk, right? It's the idle banter that happens at meetings that you should cut down to seven minutes. So here's what you don't hear. In an agency, in a corporation, when you have... managers and leaders and you have workers, what's critically important is the actual lives of your employees and the actual lives of your workers.

2:57 That's critical. I think that we focus too much on product and we focus too much on output, but you're not going to get your best product, not going to get your best output if the lives of your employees are a mess. Here's what you don't hear in that kind of idle chatter, neutral banter is things aren't really working out the way I thought they were going to be. I'm eight years into this and I just wake up and I dread coming to work. I think I need to upgrade something in my life. You don't hear that. You don't hear that type of conversation. Now, you might and you two are talking about it. in terms of how leaders are investing in their subordinates and mentoring and coaching. Hopefully, that kind of conversation is happening there. But it's not the default conversation.

3:39 This is what you do here. And my TV is like 18 months old. I got to get a new one. And then somebody says, yeah, I just got a new one. You know, my brother-in-law just got an awesome one. You can come over. We're going to show a fight party. You can come see the new TV. People will talk about that kind of stuff all day long, every day. Somebody will go buy that new TV, come back and be like, it's the greatest thing ever. Right. But when it comes to personal development, self-development, we just don't have those conversations. Right. So the upgraded life is one way to kind of voice that out there and so that people who want to choose. to invest an hour in themselves by listening to the podcast, on the other end of it, they are going to get some practical things that they can do to upgrade their life. And that's kind of where the genesis of it came from.

4:19 It's just, how do I change the conversation, right? Somebody famous said, if you want to change the culture, you need to change the conversation. And that's my way of kind of tapping into that idea. I love that. My understanding of it is there's kind of three core, let's call it pillars, right? Or focuses. So talk to us about what those are and explain their importance. I appreciate this. So it's mindset, mission, and movement. That's what I focus on. And again, this isn't anything new. You're going to see that kind of three-phase, three-stage process everywhere, but it's what I call it. I'm a firm believer that it's all about mindset. You can have the best plan, the best resources, the best equipment, the best team. But if there's something inside your head that says, you're not going to do this, you're going to fail, this isn't going to work.

5:00 then that's ultimately what's going to happen. Craig Groeschel says, your life moves in the direction of your strongest thoughts. I think he's spot on in that. It's all about mindset for me. And everything that I've known about myself and the work that I've done is you have to address the mindset first and foremost. It's like going to the gym. You can get your mind in great shape, but if you neglect it, you're going to go right back to that former state that needs work. Right. So it's something that you always need to check up on. So doing mindset updates and checkups are important as well. So that's what that is, is getting your mindset solid. And there's three phases within that. But I'll quickly go to the second pillar, as Brandon called it.

5:41 Mission is, what are you doing? What's your purpose? How do you define success personally as an individual? And then what are you doing literally every single day to chip away at that? Once you put in the work, you put in 90 days, 120 days, a year, 3, 4, 5 years into it. If you're doing this thing according to your mission, you can't help but have some success. It may not be the success that you initially set out to be, but you'll have something. That's what mission is. And making sure that you are just like we talked about a second ago. My mission is to get my story out and to get my message out and to be able to help whenever possible. So that's why I have time like this for other people to kind of dig into it.

6:24 That's part of my mission. So I say yes to things that are part of my mission. And then movement is the execution of the mission, right? It is the what do you have to do more of? What do you have to do less of? You're this average sum of the five people you spend the most time with. It's about actually making the commitment now to do the things that we've established in the first two pillars. That's mindset, mission, and movement. That's my process. That's how I envision working with people. It's what I do for myself. And in a nutshell, that's what it's all about. I love the movement piece. I think when we're even doing our show, I think sometimes I'm a little self-conscious about like, okay, are we going to be able to do something by the end of the episode where folks can actually walk away with it?

7:10 And I've listened to a lot of your shows. And I know that I'd say in some ways, a little bit of my summary, my wrap up that we joke about came from my experience of listening to your show of you're very diligent that by the time the show's over, you're trying to recap on the items, the things that someone could walk away with right now and go put into practice. It's super practical. Tell me more about that. Obviously, I know that you've got really strong education background. So obviously, systems and processes is certainly something you're experiencing. But in terms of and maybe a good place to go is all those years in youth corrections, right? Where do you see, I guess, where that application piece, the rubber hits the road?

7:52 Why is that so important? And how do you make it happen? Another thing that I've been focused on in the last sort of eight years of my career, we'll say, is I want to do better than what was done to me. And this is state government, meaning I know what it's like to get forced into trainings. And as soon as you use that word training, you just shut people's brains off. Like, oh my gosh. And so I know what it's like to be in trainings for three hours, four hours, a day, three full days, and come out the other end of it and actually feel like you're dumber than when you first started, right? And so it really kind of stems out of that. And again, unfair, right? Because here's the other thing that I'm sure the two of you know, oftentimes people are put into that training role and they're not trainers.

8:34 They're not subject matter experts. They're not being supported. So I want to be gracious in that, right? But oftentimes people that are speaking at you from a training perspective, they're just doing the best that they can as well. And so that's a big part of it is when you leave whatever that time investment is, you need to be able to have something, right? Even if it's only one thing that can say, oh, I'm going to start looking for this or I'm going to try this out or I'm going to think more about this and do some more research on it. That's where a big part of it comes from is just feeling like I just gave away hours and days of my life to trainings that really didn't help me in the work that I was being asked to do. Nick, I want to go back to the upgraded life thing. I love that example you gave where, God, I've been doing this eight years.

9:18 Is this as good as it gets? Who has that famous quote, men essentially spend their whole lives in quiet desperation. It reminds me of that. Just this angst that I think all of us have experienced at one time or another. Can you describe a moment where you kind of contended with that? Yeah, a moment. Yeah. Or perhaps the most recent one. I'll describe it. For a long time, I've been a reluctant leader. And I'm a Bible believer. So I'm a Moses, right? Where God says, you're going to lead my people out of captivity and into the promised land. And I say, why don't you talk to my brother Aaron, right? He's better. at this than I am. So that's been me for a long time. And that was part of my, gosh, what am I doing?

9:58 I was in cubicle land in our central office. And I was just go along to get along. As long as my office chair had my butt print in it well enough to say I was there for enough hours, then everybody was kind of good to go. There was really nobody around me that was really pushing for excellence. And I started eroding in every sense of the word, mentally, physically, spiritually, I was just getting funky. It was kind of on the other end. Well, somewhere along the line, there was this pressure for me to return to the other side of the fence where I had started my career and put about a decade on the inside of the fence. There were some signs being put in front of me that maybe I had to go back.

10:40 And so I did. I went back. It was really kind of confusing at first. I was personally confused. I knew something had to change, but I didn't really know what or why. It was a little bit confusing to my wife and my kids. You know, we joke in the industry like, I paroled, why would I ever go back to working inside the fence and corrections? And people would say like, you came back? I'm like, yeah, I'm back. And then there's just kind of this, maybe this assumption that something didn't work out. Like they were waiting for the backstory to happen. Like I had gotten in trouble and I didn't have any choice and whatnot. So two things happened that were kind of the ahas for me when I was kind of maybe a year or two into this. One thing was that my wife and I, in some other ventures that we're involved in for Income Streams, we went to a personal development seminar.

11:26 It was in that seminar, we learned... It's a basic color personality profile. It's pretty standard. You're familiar with it. This one is the gems. And what I learned is that I'm a Ruby. And Rubies need a challenge. And Rubies need a coach. And if we don't have a challenge in front of us, and we don't have somebody telling us that we can do more and be more, then we get funky. And I was like, oh, that's exactly what was happening to me. The other thing that happened, I was reading a book by General Mattis, Call Sign Chaos. So Brandon, he might have been a colonel when you were over there. Mad Dog Mattis. Yeah, I think he was in theater during that time. So I read his book. His story is he's retired. You know, he's a three or four star general and he's living up in Washington, just north of us here.

12:09 And he gets a call from Trump, says, I need a secretary of defense. And he hadn't been out long enough to actually do the duty. And so Congress had to do whatever Congress does in order to make it work. And in his book, this is what he said. This was my destiny. This is my lot in life. I'm a battlefield general. And I was a good one. And when that call came, I couldn't say no to it. This is what the people of the United States had invested in me. And there was just no way that I could turn down that call when it came to me. And I was like, ping, that's what it was. There were some things that were going on inside the fence that, that were problematic and they were putting the agency and the state at risk, quite honestly.

12:50 That's not overstatement. If you were to kind of look at some of the things that I've gotten my stripes for when going back in, you would see kind of what those things are. So those two things happen. Number one, I figured out who I was kind of at a personality level. I got to have a challenge. I've got to have somebody tell me I can do more and be more. And then recognizing that all those years that I spent working in the fence, I wasn't executing on that knowledge, skills, and ability while I was in cubicle land. Hopefully I answered the question there. Yeah. No, I totally get it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. I'm curious, this whole inside the fence thing, it's so foreign to most of us that are listening. So we're coming from an industry. A lot of our audience that's listening to this is in some aspect of the disaster restoration industry, right?

13:33 And it's a 24-7 game, highly stressful. Just like with all of the trades, so construction service trades, there's a lot of anxiety and stress just inherent within the industry. And now you've got this experience within the corrections, which I think is also known to be dangerous. And there's just also a stressful, anxious, 24, it's always on kind of feel. And I guess I'm curious if you could speak to, you work with youth primarily, so you're not necessarily working directly with the prison guards. My current responsibilities are, I'm a manager of managers. So I lead three other leaders that are leading three different teams of staff.

14:13 And so I honestly see part of the reason why I went back Wasn't to work with the kids, but again, it was to do better for them than what was done to me. Right. And so I went back to make things better for the staff, kind of going back to my earlier comment here that what I learned, and it was told to me in my younger years, but I didn't have the ears to hear it. But if you take care of the staff, they'll take care of the kids. And that's very, very true. So I really see what I have been doing for the last four years when I went back in the fence as being a resource to staff, holding the ladder for staff, showing the staff what they're capable of, mentoring, guiding them. So it's really been more focused on staff development more so than anything else, because that's where our agency lacks extremely is that investment level in the most critical part of the whole deal, I love that.

15:06 I'm holding the ladder for the staff. That's so good. There's a lot visually, I think, that's happening with that statement. And I don't know if I'm just reading way too into it. But I just like that idea and that concept of... My job now is to help provide the support and the infrastructure to step in and give them the moment, the opportunity to climb up that ladder to hit the next run. There's a lot that just was said there. Yeah. Yeah. Can you drive in? Okay. So what I just heard you say is you are really developing the capacity of the teams that you work with and supporting them. You're trying to create support structures that enable them to better mentor and support the youth and the individuals that they're working with.

15:49 So yeah, I want to go back to this comparison because our industry can feel very chaotic and very difficult to maintain. It can feel very unsustainable as a worker within the disaster restoration industry at really all levels. As a general manager, I mean, I walked with Brandon through that role in leadership roles. There's just a constant buzz. of anxiety and stress that comes with the industry. Could you describe the kinds of dysfunction and challenge that are unique to the corrections field or industry? And how have you gone about trying to create greater health in that environment? You talk about holding the ladder. Can you dig into that? What are some of the challenges and problems that you've seen, struggles of people that work in that space?

16:32 And how have you sought to address that and bring better health to that environment? Yeah, absolutely. And I'll start at a high level and then drill in. So high level is the average worker career person is going to spend 80,000 hours doing that. There's a website called 80,000 hours and they have all the stats on what career looks like. And I see that as a gift, right? We're put on this planet. We have a finite number of years. And if you're going to give someone or something 80,000 hours of your life, you better know why you're doing it. And you better agree with what the exchange is for these 80,000 hours. And you have to constantly be reevaluating that because that's how drift occurs.

17:16 That's how five years goes by, 10 years goes by, 15 years goes by, and you wonder what it's all for. 80,000 hours. So I tell my folks about that. And when they're young in their careers, I tell them about that. Our industry in corrections, we have the very upbeat and sunshine and rainbows statistic of not living much past five years after retirement. So you grind away and we get early retirement. We're police and fire. So we can retire with 25 years in, right? I've got 22 years in and I'm only 43. I can't hit the age marks or being eligible to officially retire. But if I was five years old or six years older, in three years, I could retire.

17:58 And then on average, I'd be dead in five years. Wow. That's not a highly motivated statistic. But it's true. One of my dear mentors that was a guy that either you loved them or you hated them. And I was one that went from hating him to loving him. He just passed. I was just at his funeral probably about a month ago. I think he was three years into retirement. I was like kind of right in my face. Here it is. So it's a soul grind. It'll grind at your soul. I think most of this gray hair that I have came from my years there, my continued years there. You said that it's on 24-7. It is like I'm basically on call 24-7, meaning I do have my work cell phone.

18:39 But my boss, who's the superintendent of the facility there, largest facility in Oregon, has my personal number and he's free to call it. I give him permission. Like if something goes down and you need me, you can get ahold of me on my personal cell. And nine times out of 10, I'll respond. And this last 18 months, both of you know, because you're here in Oregon, this sucker has gone off. Yeah, I bet. ice storm. We had to be ready to evacuate during the wildfires last year. We had a legit through the fence outside health escape. First time that's happened in my career. If you keep track of top 10 things in my top 10 staff assaults, three of them have probably happened in the past 18 months. So out of the whole 22 years, this last 18 months has produced probably the top three staff assaults.

19:24 And then COVID, we had to bring online almost overnight a medical isolation unit And again, a year ago, we didn't know what COVID was going to be or wasn't going to be, and we were preparing for the worst. Well, there was only a handful of us still around because we had kind of mothballed this area of the facility. And it's literally got storage stuff in there and whatnot. But it had functional rooms and a way to kind of... quarantine people and whatnot. So over the weekend, I had to go in and move all the stuff out of there and get it all staged and ready because we didn't know what we were going in. Oh, and by the way, I volunteered to work in that medical isolation. You know, I went through the PPE training and the N95 training. And I said, yeah, I'll do that. Because who the hell else was going to do it at that point in time?

20:05 So yeah, it's always on. It's a grind. What's the solution? I think that's the question that you wanted me to answer. I already talked about it in terms of what I do with my coaching and podcast. You have to figure out who you are. You have to have a vestment in the work that this is. You have to be able to step away from every shift, every week, every month, every year, and say, this work is worthy of my time. So you've got to define personal success within the role that you have. If you don't know who you are in terms of your values and your mission in life, and if you don't have a way to determine personal success based on the work that you're putting in, then corrections job will eat you alive.

20:46 And a lot of people are being eaten alive and they still come to work and they say they're fine. Oh man, I think that is a very profound perspective. And I think it's very fitting for what we've experienced in our industry. And you know what probably the reality of it is, this is fairly universal. That whole 80,000 hours thing. This concept of us as leaders, business owners looking down line and saying, Okay, my people, my ask is heavy. It's a big ask. And so I think being really crystal clear on understanding that, we are asking someone to give us 80,000 hours. Now, of course, you're talking in environments where there's fixed retirements and there's these things on the horizon.

21:30 But in general, we're asking people to give a vast majority of their daylight hours... to serving our companies, serving our clients, serving one another? And how seriously are we proactively engaging that responsibility? And I think that that's part of the question. I think that's where the challenge comes. Are we investing in that? Are we just saying, yeah, it's 80,000 hours and all moving on with our lives? Well, you know, we've talked about this and I imagine there's probably some crossover here as well. We're in an industry and it's not exclusive to construction and disaster restoration. I mean, the military, you've talked about this. There's a bit of a stigma. You talked about the water cooler talk and just the run of the mill neutral banter that makes up like 90% of what we talk about at work and in life, frankly.

22:15 But not only do we not talk about things below the waterline in terms of, we have this pat answer of, how you doing, man? Fine. It's all good. It is what it is. We have these phrases where it's like, you know what? I'm soldering up. I'm good. How about you? We all just talk in code. And in the blue collar trades, especially, I think it tends to be more masculine energy. Historically, there's a lot of ego, but there's also just a stigma. Yeah. A lot of times when we talk about our emotions and our emotional state, it's translated to others as complaining. And complaining in the trades is not allowed. Even though we all do it at certain levels. Even though we all do it. We all do it, but we find ways to do it while speaking code.

22:56 So we can't be labeled as a complainer. We call it something else. But the point is, is that talking about how I'm feeling and talking about these deeper thoughts... that I think all of us have of, wow, is this as good as it gets? Every day, I just wake up, I work my ass off, I go home, I possibly get a call to come clean out, poop out of a crawl space, or go clean the scene where somebody has just committed suicide. And then I go home, I go to bed, I wake up, I do it all over again. And nobody's asking me how I'm doing. No one's really asking, what is it like for me? And do I want to do this? And the why behind it, those conversations are not happening on a personal level.

23:39 There are a lot of companies that want to be more progressive. And at all company meetings, they will talk about these things as a bullet point, as a team, looking out for one another, this kind of stuff. But those one-on-one conversations just still carry some stigma. It's an overshare. We've been conditioned to separate work and personal. Personal life and work life, you keep them separate. That's what it is. And that's the way I was brought up too. Which almost feels more like separating the humanity from the role that you have, right? Because personal life, what, means the internal workings of how you are as a human being? Let me tell you how crazy this gets in my world. This will be a societal commentary too. Real quick though. I was told, this was about two years ago, by two female HR analysts...

24:22 that there is no functional difference between a pregnant female staff and a male staff when it comes to executing their duties. And I'll use the term as a corrections guard. So I know that I have a female staff that's pregnant and I'm supposed to say, yeah, you need to respond to assaults and incidents just like a male staff. There's no functional difference between the two. BS. I don't care. I'm going to tell her, you don't need to jump in there and take a kick or a punch to the belly. You just get in the control room, get on the radio and you direct traffic. And if anybody gives you flack about it, tell them to come talk to me about it. I don't care what two female HR analysts, because they're only telling the party line, they've bought into it too, that you keep your work life and your personal life separate.

25:04 And you can tell I get a little animated about this, but I think it's ridiculous that we've separated the humanity from the worker Dive into that a little bit for us. So obviously, there is a lot of crossover in terms of some of these underlining anxieties, these drivers for I'm giving a lot to this organization. There's dangers, there's risk, there's fear factors. How do you teach your staff? how to be better at responding to their internal workings, I guess, A. And then B, how that translates into the way that they're treating... Call it their client, right? Yeah. What do you do? And this is where... I guess I'm a prolific reader. I'm an audiobook guy too. Brandon, I don't call it cheating.

25:45 I just call it being effective and efficient. Yeah. I like it. I'm going with your version. You know, and I got a bro crush and all things Navy SEALs, you know, probably one of my biggest regrets if I have a regret is not serving. And so I've read, I would say at least 80% of anything that's been put out by a Navy SEAL, meaning that the other 20%, I don't know it exists, right? I haven't found the title yet. But what stood out to me in those books that are written from a leadership perspective is they tell you it's all about rapport. The leadership effectiveness hinges on how well you know your people and how much your people trust you, trust in who you are, trust in what you're capable of doing, trust in your ability. Are you going to own the mistakes as a leader?

26:27 Are you going to let the shit roll downhill, so to speak? And that's where it starts. And the same is in corrections, too. You have to have a level of investment and genuine investment in the people that are reporting to you. Otherwise, again, you're just going to get the daily grind out of them. We have a process in work now where managers are expected to have their one-on-ones with their employees at least once a month. And we know that that's not happening the way it's supposed to happen. I kind of shudder when I think about this one manager having one-on-ones because their personal life is a wreck. You can't give what you don't got, right? You can't pour from an empty cup. And that's a huge part of it.

27:07 Is it the whole part of it? No. But that's huge is that you have to show a genuine interest, not just in their work life, but in their personal life. And if you don't have that, the rest of what I might say about how do you do that really doesn't matter. in my opinion. 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.

28:03 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 gotta be a mobile app experience. And in our experience, the solutions that were previously out there were just too cumbersome and tricky to use.

28:47 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're 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 Matterport, how does that scale? You're the bottleneck.

29:28 I know I'm preaching to the choir, but this is where Actual 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.

30:10 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 F-C-G. Can I ask you a personal question, Nick? No. Uh-oh. Here we go. As you look back at your leadership across your old career, it sounds like now you're in even more of a position of senior leadership.

30:54 You're leading leaders. When you look back, where do you feel like you've inadvertently created distrust with your downline team? And at what point did you realize this? When did you become aware of it? And then how did you move through that awareness? Like, how did you step through that and go about making a change in that area? Yeah, great question. And again, I was heavily convicted by the book Multipliers by Liz Wiseman. Highly recommend that book if you're a leader. If you're doing agency type work, I also recommend the book The Oz Principle, O-Z, like Wizard of Oz. When I read that book, light bulbs went off. But in that book, Liz Wiseman talks about being the diminisher or the accidental diminisher.

31:36 And I was so convicted by that, by just filtering my approach, the things that I do, what comes natural through that. And so one thing that I do, if you actually know me, if you actually know what goes on in my mind in terms of mindset, you would know that this isn't intentional. But I can be the know-it-all in the room. I can be the smartest person in the room. I can be the person that's in a team meeting that nobody wants to say anything because they know that when I say something, it's going to be the thing that needs to be said and we can finally get this show on the road. But that's not helpful when you're leading a team, right? Because I can't be there every single time to make every decision and come up with every good idea, right? And that's part of my conviction of being the accidental diminisher.

32:19 Right. So I've done that. I've steamrolled over people. I've steamrolled over ideas and concepts. I've been dismissive of those things. And that's not holding the ladder either. Right. Because of course, they're going to think and say those things because they're only on rung two or three or four, right? What else would they have to offer at this point in time? And here I am, you know, on rung 500 thinking, how could you say something like, well, yeah, because they're at the bottom, they're climbing up, not in a pejorative way. Does that make sense? So I've done that. I've made people feel small. not necessarily intentionally. So this comes back to knowing your people, right? Because when you make somebody feel small, especially, and I'm sure it's the same in your world, but in my world, people show up and be like, no, I'm fine.

33:03 Are you sure? Because you're acting a lot different. Nope, everything's good. Are you really? But without that kind of established trust and rapport and knowing your people. So the bottom answer is you got to know your people You have to expect that you're going to make mistakes as leaders. I think that's one thing that keeps people from, again, in my world, being a manager to being a leader. They get used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. Managers want and need to be right all the time. So they play small, right? Being leaders, you've got to make decisions knowing that you're going to make the wrong call and you're going to make bad calls. And how do you make up for it? You own it, right? I'm going to go back to Jocko Willink in extreme ownership. I'm totally bought into that concept in all aspects and areas of my life.

33:46 In fact, I have a leader that just got promoted to now she's my peer. What I do, my process is I give them a copy of Discipline Equals Freedom. Yeah. Draco's book, if you don't have that book, it's an awesome, actual, real book. Yeah. So I'll write a little thing in there and give it to them. But you just have to own your mistakes. Your trust quotient will just go a hockey stick when you do that. You come back to them and like, look, I shouldn't have said that. Look, your idea was valid. You were right. Giving your people credit when credit's due and not taking them back. Taking the credit for their ideas and their work and their concepts is also huge. You talk about deflating somebody and making them feel like they're being used and worthless.

34:26 Take credit for their work. People do that all the time. People did that to me coming up through the year. So that's what I would offer. Again, you got to know your people. You've got to make decisions knowing that you're going to make the wrong ones. And when that happens and you've hurt a relationship or you've wronged somebody in your ranks or outside your ranks, You have to own it. You have to apologize for it. You have to make it right. The worst thing that you can do is pretend it didn't happen. The worst thing you can do is say, well, suck it up. No complainers. There's no crying in corrections, right? Right. That's the worst thing that you can do, in my opinion. It's funny you would say that too, the whole water under the bridge kind of thing. Just let it go. There's no reason to bring any more attention to it. It was a mistake.

35:07 It's over. Let's move on. And I think you're right. There is this deposit that's been made or it's leading above the line. Yeah. Tim Dethmer talks about these bad leadership behaviors of not accounting for wrongs and whatnot. Leaves a toxic residue over the relationship. Yeah, that's big. You know what? The funny thing is, the example that you use is, we're kind of joking about being the smartest person in the room. But I think all of us, to a certain degree, adopt that. So even us that don't have extensive academic backgrounds, our experience can often serve in its place. And then we become... Just like you said, you almost get that dismissive personality or that dismissive tone about it is like, Oh my gosh, that's ridiculous.

35:49 Why would you even... This is how you need to do that. So I really like this idea, though, of what you said is stopping and looking back and saying, well, of course, they don't have the time and grade, the experience. And so instead of it being this, well, my job then is to fill in the air gap. It's the how do I equip them? so that they can make the decision better next time. I just think that's powerful. I think it's hard work. I think leading this way is tiring. I think people often get frustrated because they spend the time, the energy to do it, and the result isn't always what we want. People don't always accept that and do something positive with it. And so I think that that can often be discouraging.

36:31 So here's where I'm going with this. You are in an environment where, We hear probably people all over the nation make jokes about state employment. Oh, they're a state worker. I think it's kind of a universal joke. I make a joke. Right? You have people on the inside. So obviously, you have some things that can be challenging to overcome when it comes to people's willingness to invest in getting better and developing jobs. How much of that is just an overused general statement? And the element of parts that are true, what do you do to combat that and overcome that with staff? The state worker mentality? Is that what you're getting after? Exactly. It's like if you're asking people to change...

37:13 The good enough mentality. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's the idea that state work doesn't get held for quality product. It gets accountable for showing that they did something. It doesn't matter if something actually made it better or made sense. I mean, look at Oracle getting Affordable Care Act out. We did a lot of things. It cost us millions of dollars, but it didn't work. And again, that goes back to personal integrity, personal values. Why are you here? What's your mission? I tell my people all the time, we do our work with excellence, not depending on whether somebody else is going to pick up on that work or use it or not. Right. Because that's also what happens. Why should I do this exactly as described when I know so and so isn't going to take the baton, so to speak?

37:59 That also happens quite a bit. And it's like, well, no, you do the work to the highest degree, regardless of what somebody else is going to do or not do it. Now, that's a tough thing to get into somebody's mind. Right. And I battle that sometimes as well. When I was young, again, when I was young and kind of looking at this is the next phase for me, I would look around, I would go to these trainings, I would look around, and I would see what I would call as the average, you know, state manager. And I just right then and there and said, that's not going to be me. I don't want to be that. And Brandon's known me over the years. And so he's recognized the way I actually physically look. That's also part of it, too. I don't want to be that stereotypical 30 pounds, overweight, pot belly, shirts are screaming to get off you.

38:46 And again, I'm not trying to put anybody else down because I also know... that to do something different means that you're going to have to swim upstream in a major way, in a constant way, right? So again, if I just described somebody in state government, again, I get it because I was there. I can show you my badge that I have right now. The card is actually flipped over so you can't actually see my face because it looks like, you know, yeah, right? So again, I was there, right? So I'm not trying to make anybody feel bad or like I'm better than that. But I keep repeating myself. But I had to figure out why I was there and what my purpose I have to hold myself accountable. Jason Redman, again, another Navy SEAL, says leaders always have to lead and they have to lead themselves first.

39:30 That's his first principle of leadership. Always have to lead and you got to lead yourself first. And so when I feel myself slipping, I'm like, am I leading myself? I have to be honest. Another Navy SEAL, I'll keep doing this, right? David Duggins, the toughest conversation that you're ever going to have is the conversation that you have to have with yourself. Dig into that. When you say for you, what are some of the kind of organic elements? What are some of the ingredients of you leading yourself well? How do you know when you're leading yourself well? You look at the fruit, right? For example, we had a diversity, equity and inclusion forum. So we did it with the youth. We did it with the staff. And then we did it with the varying levels of leaders and managers.

40:13 And it was really about how is race and inequity at play here in your experience as youth, as workers and what not. So again, there's a group of managers. This was random mix, but the mix of managers, when I was there going through it as a participant, talking to the panel, all three of my managers that I'm leading were in this group. So it was probably 13, 14, 15 of us there. When it came time for us as participants to voice what we think or our thoughts or our opinions, only my three spoke up and said anything. Wow. I mean, I haven't talked to many people about this other than my three. But to me, that said something. Yeah. I don't think that was coincidence.

40:53 And I was there too, right? I don't know. Maybe that could be both ways. Like, oh, crap, Nick's here. We got to say something. But regardless, out of all the other managers, it was my three that were the only ones that spoke up and had anything to offer. So that's the soup. That's the stew that you made as a leader. For you leading yourself well, what are the ingredients that you're putting in to try to achieve those kind of outcomes? I think it's a positive outlook. You have to find the positives. I'm a big believer in gratitude. And so starting and ending your day with gratitude, my watch, my phone will go, off three times a day. Just a little prompt. And wherever I'm at, whatever I'm doing, it's a prompt. Again, I use it to remind myself of my core values and what my mission is.

41:36 But it's also a prompt to be grateful for whatever the situation is. That's a movement type concept that I would teach and train into people. When we open our meetings, we open with gratitude. And people kind of think it's hokey. But again, in our work, the grind, We deal with dark, dark, dark stories and people and circumstances. And if you can't find the light and the good every day, then again, that's part of how it eats your soul. It'll eat you up. So that's part of it is teaching the discipline of showing gratitude. It's showing people that other people matter. really appreciate that coworker. You got to put that aside. And if they're struggling, you need to help.

42:17 It's really easy to be like, oh, that person's struggling. Let's just watch the fire burn, so to speak. We can't accept that. It's truly being willing to go the extra mile. We just had a circumstance again where we're short staffed. I'm looking at the sick calls that rolled in this morning and I'm like, oh man. But again, we were doing a brainstorming, troubleshooting. How do we fill this leadership role in this other part of the campus? Again, it was only my area that I'm responsible for that was providing solutions. Like I could give up so-and-so. I could swing so-and-so over there to help. And I don't know if this is getting to what your question is, the daily thing. You know, there's times where the person that... really kind of was prodding me to go back. You know, in the first several months, I would text him almost every day.

42:58 I hate you. Why did you let me do this to myself, right? But I had to change that too. I had to own. This was my decision. I came here. What did I expect? I knew that this was the work and what it was going to be. I've got no one else but myself to blame and to own. Again, I try and instill extreme ownership into my people that work too because we've got enough blamers, we have enough complainers, we don't have enough owners in terms of that. Yeah. It kind of reminds me a lot of the discipline and integrity conversation that we just had. Actually, I think that one just posted. And it is Chris refers to this idea that really integrity is lived out through all these tiny little day to day decisions.

43:40 And that's kind of what I'm hearing you say, or hopefully I'm not putting words in your mouth, but it's this idea that what's going to produce the fruit, as you said, is this idea of all these little decisions of integrity. Like I said, so I'm going to. I committed, so I will. It's this over and over again that ultimately creates integrity. some kind of end result that's productive. Here's one of the things that's back in my mind, though, as I'm hearing you say this, is I'm thinking about this from a leader's perspective on the ground. Okay, I'm a resto company leader, owner, whatever the case may be. And I'm thinking, okay, I hear a lot of personal accountability, a lot of personal accountability. I can't make someone take personal accountability.

44:22 So what do we do as leaders or what you're trying to communicate is what you're trying to communicate this thought that we as individuals, the leadership, have to get a grip on our own personal mission, where we're headed, why we're going to do it. And then out of that, we have to start making some decisions or walking the walk, even if we get lots of examples back, reflected back at us of our individual team members not doing the same thing. But that doesn't necessarily give us an excuse to change or modify what we're doing. Is that kind of what you're saying? Is that fair? Absolutely. So at the foundational level, and again, company, I'm sure your company has mission, vision, and values, right?

45:03 And so you at least have to get some kind of buy into that. If your person says, I don't believe in any of this, well, then my conversation is going to be, well, then you're going to have a tough time being here. And so person to person, let's figure out if this is really the best spot for you. So that really has to be the bottom line, at least from my perspective. When you get the agreement, okay, yeah, boss, I agree to this. But then you use that. Again, you use that in your one-on-ones. You use that in your examples of why did you choose A instead of B in this situation? How does that fit with mission, vision, and values? Well, it doesn't. Okay, so what are we going to do next time? That type of a thing. So that's how you start to shift the people. But then you have to have integrity as a leader holding yourself to that same standpoint.

45:44 I don't know what it's like exactly in your world in terms of teams, but there's a trap that gets set in my world. And again, I'll kind of break it down. So on a living unit, which is kind of how we're structured, McLaren has 11 different living units within the correctional facility that makes up about 200 beds that we are responsible for. So each living unit has about 12 staff attached to it. You've got a manager, you've got a assistant manager, and you have a qualified mental health professional. So those are the three kind of, we call it the unit leadership team. That's our structure. And then you have somebody like me who is the leader of the actual manager of the living unit. Does that make sense? Follow me on that. Sure. So here's the trap.

46:25 The trap is the living unit manager can fall into the trap of If I don't have 100% of my staff team on board, well, then I'm sunk. And staff team on board can mean a lot of different things. Again, we're in a staffing crisis right now. So we have staff teams that only have 3 or 4 of those 12 that are actually permanent, hired in, applied for this job, vetted type employees. The rest are all people that we're bringing in that are brand new or they're temps, right? That's a wicked problem. I'm not going to say that there's an easy answer to that. Outside of that dynamic, what we have to tell our folks, or at least what I tell my folks, you're never going to have 100% buy-in. So if you're waiting to make progress or to make moves or to push forward, you're going to be waiting your whole career.

47:10 You're never going to have 100% buy-in. So I actually preach and teach 60% buy-in, 6-0. As long as you have 60% on board, you can move it forward. It may not be at the pace that you want. It may not have the results that you are expecting or wanting, but you can move it forward. And in that process of moving it forward, you will get more people at least minimally buying in. At least they won't be undermining. Because again, if your average person is a go-along to get along, or they're going to go along to get along with the thing that has momentum and direction. So that's the trap that gets set. And again, I don't know how that plays out. I'm different, right? I'm state government. I'm union backed and all those types of things. I can't just give somebody a pink slip if they are on board with what we're doing.

47:54 Right. And again, I don't know that that's always the solution, but I think you follow what I'm trying to say. Yeah, I like that a lot. Yeah. None of our listeners can relate, by the way, to. staffing crisis. And I mean, this is so relevant. That might have been the first time I've heard that concept of 60%. It makes a lot of sense to me. Because the trap that I think all of us as leaders can fall into is if I don't have everybody on board, I've failed. It can feel like that. If you've got some stragglers that you just can't win over, it can feel like a failure. Whereas I feel like there's sort of a pragmatic quality to that 60% that feels really true to me. If that's my first target, we at least need to get 60 on board. If we can get everybody moving in the same direction, well, hey, all the better.

48:37 But if we just need 60 as a starting place, that feels hopeful. In a way. Well, and I think if you look across the board in terms of just kind of your general makeup of teams, like it's technology, you got early adopters, first adopters, and then the people that just jump in once it's proven, right? Well, there's probably a reality of that at play with our team. This is the next new idea. Here's the new initiative, the new push. And they're kind of like, come back and let me know once we've done it long enough to say we're actually going to do it. Yeah. So I want to be conscious of our time. And I know we're probably getting down to the end here, Nick. But before we let you go, I have to ask you, you've had a lot of time and grade.

49:18 You're actually in many ways approaching at least the end of part of your journey. Where do you assess yourself mentally? Be honest with us. All this work that you're trying to do to not be put in that position as a leader where it's like, once the game's over, the game's over. Yeah. How do you assess yourself? Where do you feel like you're at right now in the way that you're managing your own mindset? And what do you think the biggest work that's in the near future that you need to be working on? That's a great question. And I look at N.T. Wright as a theologian and his take on where he is in life, meaning the guy's a prolific writer. The guy cranks out three or four books every year. And what he says is that he came to this realization that he had all this knowledge, right?

50:00 He had all this, this is what I've done with my whole life, and I've got to figure out how to get it out there. And that's where I'm at, is that I need to figure out how how to get it out there so that it can be consumed. So that way it has a life beyond me, that it has greater reach and expanse. And so, I mean, I've got three or four books started that I need to just buckle down and get finished. I've got models of treatment and therapy that make sense to me, but they don't make sense to other people because they can't, look at it. They need to be able to look at it and flip through it and think about it. Unless they have access to me, then they can't. That's where I'm at. And this is where... I mean, your podcast talks about the legacy that your business is going to lead. And the way I talk about that is that you have to have personal success in order to get to that legacy point.

50:47 I've amassed the personal success. And I say that in humility, right? It took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. And if people want to put in the work, they can have their own personal success as well. But the legacy is... How are you going to use that success to inspire the next generations? And that's where I'm at. At this point, I need to shift gears and figure out how am I going to get this that's in here out there so that other people can be inspired by it and carry on the torch, so to speak. I don't know if that answered your question or not, but... No, it's great. No, I think it's right in line. So obviously, you are doing work very specifically with developing and continuing your outreach through the Upgraded Life, both the podcast and your one-on-one work, your life coaching work.

51:30 Where do we send people? What's the one spot that they can land to learn more about you and be able to interact with you in some way? Probably the best spot is going to be my website, www.nicksotelo.com. S-O-T-E-L-O. That's the spot to find me. It's still a work in progress, but you'd be able to send me an email. You'd be able to find my podcast and you'll be able to book a strategy session with me if that's what you want. My commitment there is you give me 30 minutes of your time, the investment will be worth it because I'll give you something that will at least point you in the direction that you want to go in terms of your own personal success. That's where I would send folks. right on and we'll do it. And for those of you guys that have been listening to this, and obviously you may not have a lot of background on Nick, I will say this from years and years of observing him, both closely and indirectly, I know that you are a man of integrity.

52:21 And if you're telling people that you will provide them value for the time that they spend, that is something that they can take to the bank. And so we would encourage folks to reach out and work with you because it would do nothing but be a positive impact for certain. Dr. Sotelo, sir, thanks again for joining us and hanging out with us. Man, we appreciate you. And I know personally, I'm thankful for the work that you do. So thanks a lot, my friend. Thanks, you too. It's likewise. Thanks for the opportunity. All right, brother. We'll see you next time. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of the MRM podcast. And if you got something out of it, share it with a friend. Hit subscribe, hit follow. Leave us a five-star review.

53:01 Thanks a lot.