Ep 194 - "Keep Your Cool: Leading Under Pressure"

0:00 Wow. How many of you have listened to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast? I can't tell you that reaction, how much that means to us. Welcome back to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast. I'm Chris. And I'm Brennan. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. This new camera angle makes my arms look smaller than yours. I'm noticing that and I really appreciate it. I thought you did that on purpose. No, I don't. I didn't. And I am not happy with it. You know what I'm realizing, dude? What? Part of it's probably my mustache. But as I get older, I'm starting to see more and more of my dad's face in my son. Do you recognize that? Yeah, as you get older. It's so funny.

0:40 It's Christmas time. So you're seeing a bunch of family and friends. And more and more of my older family members are starting to look like the older members of the family that are no longer with us. It's just so funny. It's like almost everybody ends up looking the same by the end of it, dude. It's really weird. It is so funny because I do see it in myself and I see it in my sister. I see it in my kids. Oh, totally. I start to see more and more of like my features and my wife's features and mannerisms. Yeah. And I catch myself, in particular with my dad, I catch myself saying things and even making sounds. Oh, yeah. You know how we all have these guttural kind of sounds, like reactions to things? Like, huh. You know, like I catch myself. I'm like, oh my God, my dad made that noise.

1:22 I grew up 42 years with my dad making that noise. My son, like right now it's hilarious because he's just really turning a corner just in his maturity and development. And. He's like, now all the time. He'll be like, dad, you'll never guess what happened. So he'll tell me the circumstances. And he's like, dude, that comment that you used to make with me when I was a kid, and I used to hate it, it was the first thing that came out of my mouth. So it's funny. It's kind of like just desserts. But all right, my dude, I got a topic I've been wrestling with. And I'm planning to stay focused on and committed to going into the new year. And I wanted to share that with you just kind of as a friend and business partner accountability. And then I just want to share it with the audience a little bit and see if anybody can relate to it.

2:02 So to say this year has created some frustrations and emotions would be like the all-time understatement of the world, right? For those of you that may not know, we have several companies that we're a part of. Well, several, bro, is like four to seven. Yeah, well, maybe several is too many. Anyways, we have our hands full, just like everybody else that's listening. because it's entrepreneurship. All of them require a lot of solving problems, trying to be strategic enough and intentional enough and focused enough that your business is growing and maturing over a period of time. We're laying the foundation, preparing for scale, things like that. Anyways. One of the things I've recognized in myself is I'm so emotionally charged that I literally, like in a single day, I might go through four, five, six different, very significant emotional patterns in terms of how I'm viewing the world, viewing one of the businesses, viewing my role, viewing the team, on and on and on.

3:04 And it's exhausting. I remember I used to measure my emotional shifts in a week. And then it was a day. And then as we really started getting knees deep in entrepreneurship and owning a couple of companies and all those things, it's by the minute. You and I have joked about this. I've joked about this, Wayne, and many people in my sphere of. Sometimes I feel straight up schizophrenic. Because in a single hour, I can go from the highest of highs, the lowest of lows, somewhere back in the middle, hit the bottom, and then somehow come out at the end of the day on a high. It's unbelievable. Anyways, the challenge that I've seen where this shows up the most often, and I've caught myself now several times this year being frustrated when I take note of it.

3:46 It's this idea of in our businesses, in our teams, whether you're an owner, a leader, a team lead, even owning your own career development. When we slow down to think about, to be strategic in nature, to really wrap our head around what the thing is I need to solve. Again, this could apply to your personal development even. When you've slowed down long enough to identify, okay, I'm experiencing this problem, this gap in my business, this thing that I don't want to experience any longer. And you determine a good course forward that's strategic in nature, that's going to go to the root cause and actually create a solution, a long-term solution.

4:26 There's this really healthy thing. And then you feel extremely motivated by the fact that you withdrew, you took the time to do this, and now you've got a good plan. It's kind of like every conference you go to, every annual planning that you have inside your business. And then the very next day, within hours, sometimes within days, maybe if you're fortunate, the first fires come and hit you in the face. And then you watch yourself degrade into reactionary status again. Here, you've taken the time to determine the root cause that will actually create a legacy solution for the thing that you're having a problem with. You then define a plan, create action steps, and set out the first step on that plan.

5:06 And then the very first fire, it literally pulls you out of your plan. Your brain almost immediately goes back to this. You don't have a way to solve it. Hurry up, jump in, react, create chaos, add more fuel to the fire right now. And what's insane is how I've looked over the last several years and different aspects of my performance, and I've seen where I've allowed almost entire years to go by where I started with a plan, and then almost immediately I get swept up into the chaos, and my commitment to the solution goes away, and I just spend nine more months in a constant state of reaction. The end of the year comes, I go, holy shit, I breathe a sigh of relief, and then I try to do it again the next year.

5:48 Yeah. Then you take a retreat, go to a business planning retreat, and then you do it all over again. Yeah, Sylvester Stallone or Mike Tyson that said everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth. That's right. Until they get punched in the mouth. Or everyone has a plan until the first bullet's fired. And so anyways, I've recognized in the last six months where because of some of the decisions we've made and some of the partnerships and things, that that stress, that dependability, all of those things are ramping up exponentially. Yeah. And I'm finding myself really aware right now. And I'm thankful for that. I think sometimes what happens is maturity shows up in the form of more awareness, not necessarily that you just behave differently by default.

6:29 And so I'm thankful because instead of me going an entire year in 2026, off course, I know I won't because I don't anymore. But anyways, over the last several months, I've watched our teams have these moments where we slow down, we create a plan, we identify the solution, we all need to unify behind, and then chaos hits and we start throwing darts and shit falls apart. And one of the things I've just committed to is trying to be a much stable element in the machine. So as a CEO, as a leader, as an owner, I'm really trying to identify when my team or myself... have begun to come off course with the strategy that we said that we were committed to.

7:11 And we begin to react and emotionally give ourselves to the chaos and pull off the strategic plan that we said that we were committed to. And one of the reasons this happens is because there's delayed gratification from the effort, especially when you go down to solve the root cause. So we all get jacked when a problem comes in and we do the two or three things that we need to do in this moment to satisfy that, calm it down, get it off the plate. Feels good to overcome problems. Yeah, dopamine hit, we're fired up. But it sucks when you know a plan and your discipline is required to not deviate from the plan, but it might take 30, 60, 180 days for you to see the fruit of your efforts.

7:52 And I think one of the hardest things about business development and entrepreneurship is that fight. It's the fight that when you want to do something remarkable, you're going to have to commit to consistently providing the level of effort that's required. But understanding you may not see the fruit of that labor for an extended period of time. It doesn't mean you're failing. You have to stay the course. And some people talk about that as a form of stoicism. One of the things I'm just keyed in on is our industry, dude, it's nuts. Maybe we've been in it now for so long that we forget how crazy other industries are. I don't know. But I just... It's nuts, dude. And it's so easy to get lost and caught up in the emotion.

8:35 Anyway, so I'll kind of land the plane so we can actually have a conversation here. But what I'm intentionally trying to do as a leader is to get better at finding and seeing when us as a team, we are beginning to come off track with the plan and strategy that and we start to give too much to fighting the fire. When you're building and growing a business that's already underway, you can't ignore the fire. I'm not saying that, and obviously if it was that easy, nobody'd be crying about it. But there is a level of attention that's required to put out a fire to get back on course with the strategy that will fix that long term. And often we make the mistake of just hanging in that pattern where we're just constantly trying to put the short term fix on the thing.

9:20 And then we ultimately fail. This year, going into 2026, I'm really committed to being far more stoic in how I'm emotionally reacting to the fires that get presented to me or that I encounter as we're growing and building these businesses. Because I think it's one of the most important skill sets that I can develop as a leader and as an individual. I don't know where that's come up with you or if it has, but I know for me, it's almost been crippling before in the past. Oh, yeah. Without question. And then you drag your people in with you. It's unbelievably negative, I think. You know, this reminds me of, we mentioned Alex Hormosey a lot.

10:00 I like most of what he says. I think it's really great. He said something to the effect of, not a superpower, but an attribute of really successful people is that they find reasons to have a positive attitude in the midst of really negative circumstances. Yeah. And I think this kind of correlates to what you're saying. And I've actually felt this because for the last few months, I've been working with a sales team to kind of reorient them. And it's difficult making change. It doesn't matter what environment. Yeah. Right. It's like, If you're trying to make change at home with your kids, really difficult because it requires a lot of honesty about what's broken. It requires being really transparent with people about, hey, you're really great at this.

10:43 You're not so great at this yet. Those are tough conversations for people to receive. In addition to change, which everybody bristles at, and I've felt the burden of it. Like there's this combination, I think every owner can relate to this, this combination of frustration because it never goes as fast as you want it to. Yeah. In some cases, disappointment. Yeah. Where somebody's not on board with the change and there's just no way forward and you have to cut a cord. It's like, oh God, that sucks. Or you're also battling your own incompetency where maybe, I feel like all of us at some level are always pushing up against our level of knowledge or experience. For sure. Especially if you're always trying to grow. Yeah. Like if you're in a high growth environment, there's that component with change too, is that you're leading the change, but you kind of know what the fuck you're doing.

11:29 Yeah. And you only so much. It's like, well, I talked to ChatGPT about this and I called a couple of buddies. I listened to a podcast and so I kind of sort of know what I'm doing here, but then you're second guessing yourself. So all of that can feel really negative. Certainly doesn't bolden confidence. Right. Right. And so I think you can start as you get bogged down and like, how do we do this? And how do I lead it? How do I get everybody else on board? You can slip very easily into a real negative headspace. And I caught myself, actually, even just the last few months, I'd come home and my wife's like, hey, how was your day? Like, well, that's a complicated question. Let me think about that. Which version do you want? Right? You can just kind of catch yourself in this. I was actually literally writing notes on journaling about this last night. You can catch yourself having a super complicated answer to how you're doing because you're in kind of a negative headspace.

12:16 You're trying not to be. There's plenty of things to be positive about. But you're kind of caught up in the negative things that are happening. So I liked that comment from him. I'm not sure that I fully mastered how to do that. Yeah. But I think it's real. And I think the leaders that I've long admired are ones that somehow manage to grab hold of, maybe it's gratitude. Maybe it's just periodically zooming out. Mm-hmm. I know for me, sometimes if I can get myself in the moment when I'm feeling really negative, to just recognize the negativity and be like, okay, hold on. Not everything's broke here. What's moving in the right direction? And can I sort of rally around that positivity as I work to get this stuff also caught up?

13:01 I think one of the ways I've been thinking about this, because I'm like, I don't want to just have a sesh where we just kind of bitch and moan. Oh, is that what you thought I was doing? No, I was doing it. I want to definitely just kind of think structurally, maybe, what I'm trying to do to really become much better at this. And then I think just kind of share some examples of how this makes sense in the entire org chart. Like it's not just if you're in C-suite or if you own it or whatever the case may be. These are skill sets. Like I was even thinking about this from the perspective of a BD. And thinking about how often they're put in a situation where they're trying to earn the trust of this prospect, this new relationship. It's very intimate and unnerving and you're really putting yourself out there.

13:45 Like you've talked about that a lot. And how inevitably there are going to be times where we step on ourselves when it comes time to deliver service. Or, which is probably more common than not, there's just some kind of misperception or communication that's happened We're starting to create a story that something's failing, the client is, and in reality, we probably just need to have an open dialogue and we can all get squared away. We can communicate through it. We can communicate through it. And so I just want to be very honest about the fact that this is a skill set that is required for successful living period, not just if you're at the upper echelon in an old chart, right? Oh, no question, right? Yeah.

14:25 So in that case with a BD, as an example, one of the most powerful things we can do is instead of getting swept up in the emotion of it, falling on swords, starting to sell each other out, get on the same side as this person or individual. Man, saying that out loud is very eye-opening for myself right now. Anyways, instead of doing that, we slow down and we're that voice of reason that just says, okay, okay. I recognize what you're saying. Can I just ask you some questions to help me get some clarification so I know how to participate in this in a meaningful way? Get you the help you need. Get my team what they need. And so instead of getting all swept up in it because you're uncomfortable, You're the voice that says, well, let's slow down.

15:08 How about I be the voice of stability so that you become less anxiety filled? Because instead of me ramping up to meet you, I'm just going to get you to slow down for a moment and have a conversation with me. And by the end, we might be able to solve this together. And so you start asking questions like, okay, well, what gave you that impression? Well, I didn't know X, Y, Z. Okay, excellent. Let me ask a couple of questions. Did you get the 24-hour report? Well, I don't know. Okay, well, normally we send those out at XYZ time in the day. Were you able to take a look at your email yet? Well, no, I haven't. Okay, well, while we're here talking, why don't you just pull that up? Let's just see if it's there. Maybe we missed it, but it could be there. And this might actually answer a lot of your questions. You see what I'm saying? Like, I think everybody listening, if they're in this kind of home service space, Or when the client calls a CSR or a coordinator and wants to just start barfing about how everything's haywire and it's on fire and it's all shit.

16:01 If we can just slow down, take some of the fire out of the air and ask really good questions. Never defer, never belittle, never act as if it's not as important as they're making it out to be, but just slowing down. and asking questions and taking some of the angst out of the environment. It's unbelievably powerful. And what I see people do more often than not is they're so uncomfortable in the situation that it's easier to become friends with that person than... And we do dumb things to make that happen. We say things we shouldn't say. We agree to things we shouldn't agree to. We make assumptions. We start firing things back at our team, accusations, all the stuff, often to find out we were just fucking wrong.

16:47 And we just needed to ask some good questions. So anyways... When I think about leadership teams, it's the same idea. Like inevitably in our business, we have leaders that have different responsibilities, different lanes they're responsible for. And inevitably they see crossover, they see warning signs. They might have working history. Like they have these things that are going to, cause them to fire up emotionally. And often what I can make the mistake of doing is just getting swept up in it myself. And I'm wanting to side with the individual one. Well, let me at them, and I'm going to put a boot in this person's ass, and we're going to fix it. And the reality of it is what I needed to be was the leader that said, okay, I hear you. Sounds legitimate. Let's slow down for a minute, though, and ask some questions.

17:29 Haven't we already implemented a plan where this thing gets inspected at this particular moment in time? Yeah, we have. Okay, great. The work that started since that was implemented, can we guarantee that that exercise is being done then at that right particular point in time in the project lifecycle? Yes, we can. So then didn't we already solve the problem? Yeah, technically we probably did. Yes, we did. We just need to hold this pattern together. to see the net result of that commitment and that activity. And it's so hard to do. Like, I think what I'm identifying, man, is at least in my world, this is one of the biggest mistakes I've made as a leader is that I don't stand that emotional stable ground.

18:14 And so because I get swept up in the emotion, I allow the entire team to come off track. And so again, it's like, With maturity, with consistency, you get better at slowing down and catching it before it's too late. But like as a leader, when you have a downline team member, a department head come to you fearful, full of anxiety, they saw this thing. It's a warning sign. They've been there before. They've seen this thing a million times before. They know what it means and what it's going to turn into. Can you just slow down and ask a couple questions? and identify, is this just still a version of immaturity in a solution we've already implemented? Did we miss something?

18:54 Did we not get deep enough to cut into the root cause? Right? And we can identify that by just slowing down and asking questions to help ourselves and that team member identify what then is really required from us before we act or react. Because the other thing that happens And I think that this is what I've done over and over and over again, is I wear my leaders out, dude. And I am just thinking to all these tumultuous moments. I mean, I'm going all the way back to the first companies we were a part of. where I would just start that day in such confidence and two or three meetings end.

19:34 I've lost all confidence and now I'm just in full reaction mode and I'm breathing fire on everyone around me. And the reality of it is, is I just pulled my entire leadership team through this fucking emotional cycle right along with me. And when I get out on the other side, there's a strong chance that the only net result that I effectively deployed was I said something about a topic that bothered me. That does not mean I created any kind of behavioral change. It does not mean I got an actual product or byproduct of something that actually was measurably beneficial. Doesn't mean you refocused your team. If anything, I might have done the actual opposite.

20:15 If anything, I've blown them fucking out. And if I'm lucky, they're going to come back tomorrow with some form of reset so that I don't lose a week. Right. It's amazing to me how many times I will return to that even knowing, even in the current level of awareness I have. So anyways, it came up this week. So in the last two weeks, besides the holidays, besides running a few companies, we're in the middle of an insurance loss because I had a limb come down and spike my roof. Somebody rear-ended my truck. I'm working with my daughter to help her replace a motor. And I just found out this morning on my way into work that our HVAC system took a crap on us and it was like 28 degrees last night.

20:56 My point is, all that was going on. And Wayne just made a comment to me like, dude, I don't know what you're on, but talk about being stoic, brother. He was just complimenting me like, I haven't been running around like a fucking chicken with my head cut off, losing my shit about everything. I'm not sure how, to be honest. And it was just such a great solidifier for me of that's a valuable compliment to receive. I guess what I'm trying to convey here, I'm just babbling, is it was so meaningful for me to hear that, that I was like, yes, that's why it's important. But because it creates trust, confidence, and faith that we're going to be okay. It creates more safety and comfort for the people around you.

21:39 And I think ultimately what I can wrestle with is that I want to give myself the excuse that I can ultimately kind of just act however the hell I want. Because I know at the end of the day, once I'm done doing my thing, I'm going to get on track and we're going to get back to work and we're going to do the thing, blah, blah, blah. But our people don't know that. That's built over time. But the reality of it is, is a lot of times in those moments, like I've done whatever damage I'm going to do. I've depleted some energy reserves from a person. I've made it harder for them to commit to the change or the consistency or whatever because I'm drawing this energy out of them in a way that doesn't help me solve the problem long term. And by leaning into this idea of not ignoring, not being blind, not shoving your head in the sand, but just stoicism, Calm down, level out, ask questions.

22:28 Let's identify what we need to do and create the sense of calm and stability with our reflection and our interaction. I just think it has a ton of potential to really change the inside of our companies and quite honestly, just make our lives more stable. Are you a business that's under 5 million in sales and you're just now getting ready to try and scale your company up and hit some of those targets you've always wanted to hit, but now you've got to build a sales team? Or maybe you just hired your first sales rep, but you don't really know how to manage them. Like how do you manage, lead, train, develop a sales rep? Floodlight has a solution for you now. So we can actually assign your sales rep a turnkey VP of sales that will help them create a sales blueprint, their own personal sales plan for your market.

23:11 They'll have weekly one-on-ones with that sales rep to coach, mentor them, hold them accountable to the plan. And they'll also have a monthly owner's meeting where they'll meet with you or your general manager and review the progress of that sales rep. Their plan to actual results, what kind of performance improvement they're working on with them. Also let them know, hey, you might, they're doing really well. Maybe we should think of hiring a second sales rep. They're going to have that one-to-one advice for you as an owner or senior leader on the team as well. How great would that be to have a bolt-on sales manager for your one sales rep and it's only $2,500 a month? If you're interested in talking more about that, reach out. Let's grab some time and let's talk shop. Our floodlight clients this last year in 2024 generated over $250 million in revenue.

23:54 Supported by, advised by, an industry expert who's owned and operated a business just like you. So take action. Don't kick the can down the road. Start with our business health and value assessment. And let's unlock the next chapter of your success story. Okay, you didn't exactly articulate how you're doing that. Okay. What I mean by that is, this reminds me a little bit of what my coach, Seth, taught me a few years ago, right? He like stopped me because I was complaining about a circumstance, a thing that was happening in my life. And I was like, oh God, I'm so frustrated with this. He said, whoa, part of you is frustrated. Oh, yes. Can you look inside yourself and find a part of you that's perfectly okay, at ease, unbothered?

24:38 I was like, oh. think I can. And then it's like, I was able to zoom out and look at that bothered part. Yep. Like, okay, is there a good... Separate it. Yeah. It's like, is there a good reason for me to be bothered? Yeah. And I can kind of look at it with a little bit of distance from my emotions. Yeah. And then a lot of times the thing that was bothering me just starts to kind of dissipate. It's not controlling my emotion anymore. It's just like, okay, boy, wow, I'm really bothered by this. Why? Is it appropriate for me to be bothered by this? And you can kind of process the emotion that initially hit you and then act differently than you might have otherwise. Is that part of it or what's happening for you as you've been Mr. Stoic? I think this is part of where you and I differ a little bit in terms of like techniques that we deploy.

25:23 I mean, obviously, there's a ton of overlap, right? You pulled the whiskey out of the drawer. I just freaking slammed a couple shots and smoked a pack of cigarettes. No, what I find myself doing is really becoming aggressive about tracking what we said we're going to do, why we're going to do that thing, being really concrete on who's supposed to be doing what, who's responsible for it, when is it due. Because, and this is going to sound like many of you listening are going, well, that sounds like annual business planning. Okay, well, I'm going to push right back and say, yeah, but how many of you do it? And when you do fucking do it, how many of you actually use it as your playbook? Smart asses? We're back to saying fucking a lot. I know, I'm sorry. We need to clean it up for this next year, bro.

26:04 Well, I'm getting all mine in before the new year. Before stage time. Before stage time, yeah. So anyways, I think what I'm trying to say here is, I am leaning in to living out and doing and remaining committed to doing the hard preparatory work so that I can be confident and slow the team down and ask hard questions because I know I have something concrete I can point to that says, team, we're going to do X, Y, Z. We agreed to this. We understand why. It's working. Stay the course. This is good, dude. It's actually making me think What I hear you saying is there's something very useful about anchoring yourself to the plan.

26:50 The plan is not emotional. The plan doesn't care how you feel. The plan is just the thing that we all agree to. And so it's like... And there's a reason for it. There's a reason. There's a why behind it. There was like intentionality behind it. And so that's really interesting, like to use the plan as kind of the anchor that you hold to. It's like, okay, this thing happened. Well, what's our plan? This thing happened. Well, what's the plan? You know, it takes all of the reactivity out of it. And instead, it's like, okay, what am I going to choose to do? That's right. In the interest of the plan. Yep. It's kind of, I hear you saying that. And I think that's the challenge, right? Is that we talk about being busy.

27:31 We talk about, I wish I had more time to work on my business. I've lived all of it. I'm living all of it. I get it. And it kind of is all bullshit because until you commit to developing a plan and then leveraging that as your backbone for confidence, it's very difficult then to remain stoic and not light yourself on fire. Because what are you using as the basis for your confidence? Here's an example. We said that we would be fairly transparent about what's going on with FP as an example. Well, Wayne this morning in our executive meeting, we highlight our wins and fires for the week. And then we have kind of essentially not much different than an L10 type agenda that we follow, okay?

28:14 So anyways, we're going through it. And Wayne's comment, I want to use this specifically. I've got a reason. So hang in the pocket. So he basically says, look, I can't point to the one thing that tells me this is true, guys. So he's like table setting. But and I am very confident that the changes that we've been moving through on the operational side are providing results. Here's why. What I'm seeing as an example is that this month's billing was very close to target. And we're 1000% confident we are not overbilled on a single project. What that means is we are producing work in an efficient enough way that our invoicing, 100% accurate, is enough to meet our goal.

29:04 For some of you that heard me say that, they run the scale. Some of you are going like, yeah, bro, that's low-level stuff. And then some of you are going, well, I'm not even fully sure I understand what that means. My point is, he couldn't show me yet the thing that was the 100% undeniable fact that we know our changes are working. But there's a combination of two things. One, a concrete plan that was put into place, very diligently thought through in terms of why and how it will help us win. We then started to execute that plan. And now not just gut, we're seeing fruit from that endeavor. And so the two things in combination, even though it's not this thing very specifically that we can point to, it's that we can have a whole lot of confidence.

29:49 So that when a fire starts next week, because it will, the team can slow down and say, guys, wait a minute, wait a minute. We have a plan. We're executing the plan. We know that plan will solve this problem long term. Do we need to get wrapped up in the chaos of that moment? And we can say, no, we don't actually. Keep plugging along. It's changing. We will see the fruit. It's starting to come together. And so my encouragement to myself is to lean in to being that guy. The guy that helps ensure that your team creates and is constantly operating from a bonafide plan. And then be the guy that helps your team remember. I know this is hard. I know this is emotionally taxing.

30:29 And yes, that is a problem that you're experiencing. But we've already started down the road of creating a solution to that. Hold the course. It's powerful. Well, dude, it's honestly, it's inspiring me because, you know, between you and I, everybody that's been a longtime listener knows, right? Like you're on the spectrum, more discipline and process oriented. I know in some way you've communicated to me at times. It's all degrees. It's all degrees, but it's also like, I made the same comment to Wayne and Wayne's like, no, dude, it's purely out of necessity that I prioritize these things. That's great. But as you say that, I'm going through kind of finalizing our annual planning for floodlight this next year and kind of our growth plan and all that kind of stuff.

31:14 And I'm like, hearing you say that is very interesting because I probably tend, and I think probably most sales oriented owners and leaders are similar. We tend to be a little bit more driven by our emotions. It's part of the thing that helps us connect with people. Sure. It's part of what helps us attract people and build rapport and all these kinds of things. And the dark side of it is that we can tend to have wild emotional swings when things aren't going to plan. Sure. I love this idea, dude. It feels like a discipline that I could grow in this next year of a week doesn't go well, a sales meeting doesn't happen the way I think it's going to, whatever, we have some challenge with our consulting team or our recruiting or some other facet of the business to just come back to the plan.

32:00 Yeah. And be like, okay, based on the plan. Yeah. What's the next right move? Yep. Whereas I might typically default to my brain gets scrambled for the rest of the day. Yeah. Right? When this fire happens or this thing doesn't work the way I want it to. I love that. Well, here's another way it plays out. And I'm just thinking for sales teams, right? Because it's just a hard gig. I think one of the ways this plays out like in that role is this idea of if we're clear on what our average closing or conversion rate is, as an example. We know we don't hit them all. Like we just know that. If we're diligent about identifying what our standard is, our goal that's achievable in our current state or whatever the case may be, and we're really clear on what are the activities that matter, you can be more emboldened to get all your no's out of the way.

32:51 Like just be aggressive. Go get the no's, man. Because you know, 60% of your exchanges, whatever the number is, right? Yeah. Are going to be a freaking no. Yep. Just rack them up. And instead of getting depleted or disillusioned, I mean, this is a lot easier said than done. If you go back to the plan, you say, you know what, though? We knew that like at Floodlight, we have a certain closing percent, right? And it's like, hey, we know that. Like we can prove it. We've seen it. Our no's are not no's to the business. It's part of the percentage. We identified it's right there in the pro forma. It's just the math. It's the math. Yeah. And I know that's hard for those of us that kind of live more openly in this emotional state by default.

33:31 But there's power in recognizing when the math ain't mathin', you know, and just kind of going back to the basics for that and taking some of the emotion out of it. But that's where I'm leaning this year, man. I feel like that's kind of the mission critical thing for me to develop professionally this year. And I'm going to be very aggressive, just like I'm trying to be super aggressive with our teams. We don't have a lot in front of us at a time. There's a couple things. Handful of the most critical, the highest leveraged, the highest ROI. And I'm just going to be really sincere and dedicated to that. And this is one of them. I want to pull more and more of the emotional response that I bring to the table. That's good, dude. All right. Well, maybe a few of you, that sounded like something that you can connect with.

34:14 And if so, good luck. Hit me up if you want to battle, buddy. We haven't said this for a while, dude. I've gotten a little bit lazy on our podcast outtakes. Yeah, you have. A lot of you... You're going into this new year and maybe you have, maybe you haven't done really robust business planning for the coming year, but there's a gut drive in you that you're like, we need to grow, we should grow. And for some of you, you're coming out of a really difficult year and you've got some ground to make up. And maybe there's some question marks in the midst of things of how we best go about that. I would venture to say all of the most successful companies operating at scale in our industry, meaning let's just say $10 million and up. that are profitable and successful, you know what a common denominator amongst them is?

34:58 Nearly all of them work with a coach, consultant, or advisor. Period. I would challenge anybody to show me somebody who doesn't or wasn't recently engaged or isn't routinely engaged with a consultant throughout the whole life of their business. And if you're looking for an ops partner or a sales partner to come in and really help you either, one... fix some things that you've allowed to become a mess or you've just failed to address in your business yet and help you put those things in place or help you optimize a business that's already growing to help you prepare for scale and develop your downline team. Reach out to Floodlight. We've got solutions for you and they're cost effective.

35:40 That's our wheelhouse is helping come alongside companies and accelerate the their results. And so whether it's a profitability and systems and process issue and you need an ops partner to come walk alongside you, or you need a sales partner that can help supercharge, help you build out a sales team, help you provide the right mentorship and management accountability to your sales team that you're not able to provide, which most owners can't or don't, reach out to us and let's talk shop. Go to floodlightgrp.com. Different results require different actions. That's right. What got you here probably will not get you to where you're trying to go. So anyway, happy new year all. I guess you're probably hearing this in the new year. So here's to a great 2026. That's right.

36:20 Cheers. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and 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. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.