Ep 107 - No More "I'm Sorry"

0:07 Welcome back to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast. I'm Chris. And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. Man, I love this industry. Brandon's really excited. He's really excited to be in the production studio this morning. We, uh, so we were on location in Los Angeles, we'll just say Los Angeles area. And, um, you know, with Christmas in front of us and we're like, you know, we, we really need to lay down some material. I mean, we're always thinking about things. We've always got conversations and situations and stuff we're processing. So we've got a rabbit trails episode here for you.

0:50 And, um. And I got a little, I got a heavy piece I want to dig into today. And also there's some... Yeah, there's some sales stuff. All right. And I don't know, maybe we'll end up talking about Tesla a little bit. Brandon's got a bit of a passion brewing here. Yeah. What are we looking at? That's pretty sweet. What? No problem. And look, that's for... Full blown. Whoa. Okay. Anyway, so here we are. So back. Yeah, come on, let's focus. Um, so we're going to cover some ground, uh, today.

1:32 Um, we've got our lapel mics here. We're chilling in a shop. Um, one of our clients locations. Uh, before we get into that, let's thank our sponsors. Um, liftify.com forward slash floodlight. Uh, great partners. And they, to me, they meet the definition of like the perfect vendor partner, right? This is a function that you have to fill in your business, either you and your technicians, your job file coordinators, everybody on the team is oriented around asking for Google reviews and getting Google reviews on every single job. Or you need a partner like Liftify. And there's other brands. Brandon and I have actually had experience with some of the other platforms that do the same thing.

2:15 We were pretty unimpressed with the results that we got relative to the spend that we were putting out. And so we ultimately reverted back to just focusing on it with our technicians and we got pretty decent results. But ultimately, just with the nature of our business, it's it's very difficult to capture as many Google reviews as we ideally want to to get the recency, you know, with our Google My Business profile that lifts us up in the search result rankings that all of us are trying to get into. Right. And Liftify. they preach a 20% to 25% conversion rate. So if you're doing 1,000 jobs a year, you ought to be adding 250 Google reviews to your profile every single year.

3:00 And if you're not performing at that level, you owe it to yourself to do a Liftify demo. So go to liftify.com forward slash floodlight. Get a demo set up with Zach or Nick or the Liftify team. Their team's growing. And get that on your agenda. Yeah, agreed. And I, you know, kind of in the same light, same fashion is, is AnswerForce. And obviously all of us are looking for ways as it gets more difficult to, to bring in great staff, quality staff and build our teams. We're looking for ways to, to outsource, to partner and make sure that our clients and our business can continue to perform at a high level. just maximizing the opportunities, the resources that are available to us.

3:41 And with AnswerForce, they're your bolt-on partner for incoming calls, for capturing that initial relationship with the client, making sure that we're gathering the appropriate information and pulling them into our ecosystem or our process in a professional manner. Everything from inventory spikes, weather spikes, you know, personnel going on some kind of paternal, maternal leave. You know, our teams even taking breaks or just us giving some bandwidth or some breathing room to our staff. This is an awesome way for us to expand. maybe even what you already have in place in terms of a really rock solid intake system. One of the unique things about them as well is it's a, you flex, right?

4:21 As you need them, you pull in more of the resource. And as you don't, you can downshift so that what we're spending for is efficient and is getting us the highest value we can. So, you know, talk to them, take a look. It's just like with Listify, get in touch with them, have their staff show you and walk you through their program, through their process, how they're technology backed. and what they can do to customize a resource and bolt on to what you're doing to not only meet the demand, but enhance the performance of you and your team and what your clients experience when they first ring your number. Dude, you're like a bullet train this morning, bro. I'm in it, yeah. And it's only $375. In fact, I learned they even have a lower program. They have like an entry level program.

5:02 $375. I mean, look, I get it if you're only doing $200,000 a year in revenue. Maybe that's an expense that you can't figure in your business. But for everybody else, right? What an incredible tool to be able to pivot to when your receptionist is out on PTO or your receptionist is out on lunch, for goodness sake, to have a reliable call intake platform that captures the opportunity coming through that phone. Jeez. Get on it. That's right. And lastly, CNR. CNR Magazine. If you have not subscribed to CNR Magazine, go to the website right now and do it. The emails they send out are quality. They got their pulse on what's happening in the industry, what you need to know, what technology is emerging within the industry.

5:44 And that's to say nothing of the content that they're constantly pushing out on LinkedIn. LinkedIn Lives, webinars, all kinds of stuff. Michelle and her team are incredibly close to the industry, and it's a great source of value-added content learning. and engagement. So, uh, check them out. See in our magazine. Um, here we are. Okay. Where are you? You said deep stuff. Are you, are you starting with the deep stuff? I want to talk about, I want to talk about I'm sorry's and I want to talk about forgiveness and don't stay with us folks.

6:24 Um, You're like, shit. Everybody's like, uh. You're like, oh, man, I'm not sure I've got this in me today. But hang with me because I think this is something that all of us... It's a part of our lives, right? We mess up. People around us mess up. Saying I'm sorry in some form or fashion, like this is a part of life. And I want to talk about it because I have a unique, well, not unique, but I have a very specific perspective on it that's kind of been... I don't know, percolating in my head for the last several years. And so, and Jana and I had a, so Jana's our creative director at Floodlight and we were sitting in the office and we had this chat and I just thought, God, this is, I think maybe important.

7:15 My wife and I, we were involved in a kind of a counseling program, uh, in our marriage. We've married 21 years, be 22 years in March. And, um, you know, we've had all the typical struggles in a marriage, you know, and, um, some of these I've talked about on the podcast, just a little, but if you're going to be married for more than a minute, it's fricking hard. And so, so we got plugged into some, a counseling program. And one of the things that stood out to me was, um, You know, there were some patterns of behaviors and attitudes that I had earlier in our marriage that just like it was a long term pattern of behavior. Right. And when I got into counseling, I was really quick to see, oh, gosh, you know, this is this creates a lot of anxiety in our relationship or pressure on my wife and all those things.

8:02 And so I apologized. We're kind of, you know, gosh, I wasn't aware of this. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I had that attitude, that recurring behavior, all that kind of stuff. And in the midst of that counseling, one of the things that that counselor said was, you know, apologies maybe have some value. Like in a moment in time, just recognizing and acknowledging something's, I've done something wrong here and I feel badly about it. Um, but, but I'm sorry, don't fix anything on their own.

8:44 And that really stuck with me. And, you know, they went on to talk about just like with, um, With most situations where we've offended somebody or we've wronged somebody in some way or we've mistreated somebody in some way or we haven't met the standard in some other way, like a lot of times it's important to circle back maybe multiple times. And I think that kind of offends us because most of us just want to, I'm sorry, and then move on and that everybody's just supposed to move on. And I hear this a lot, frankly, in our business conversations with clients and stuff like that, where there was some sort of trespass, somebody broke trust, or there was something that happened in the business.

9:24 Oh, I'm sorry. And then they just expect the other person to get over it. And I think the reality that I've seen in my marriage is it's really important for me to understand that. what it was like for my wife. It's really important. I think it's important for both people, and this is what we learned in the counseling, is it's important for me as the person. I feel really self-conscious in this moment because it's like, what kind of shitty husband was I? But, you know, it was both of us had ways that we were offending each other and not meeting each other.

10:05 Right. And I think both of us felt this, that when the other person just says, I'm sorry, and then expects the other person to move on. It's like, well, no, I need you to understand. I need to understand the problem. I need to understand how you offended me and what was going on inside me and what that feels like in order for us to move on. And sometimes that takes a while. Sometimes that takes us circling back. Hey, you know, checking in on that way that we used to interact with one another and that pattern that I used to have. How am I doing on that? Like, how have you experienced me lately? Yeah, there's kind of a couple things that come to mind when you say that. And there's two, and I think maybe both of them are some opportunities for us to kind of dig in a little bit.

10:49 One is that apologies don't make up for what happened, basically. Like, meaning it's not an – apologies don't – they don't give you the ability to repeat the offense, right? Like at some point there has to be actual physical, emotional change to the behavior, to the reactions, to the way that you're carrying yourself. We can't just keep coming to the table after repeated behavior and be like, well, you know how I am. I'm sorry. So I think that's kind of partially what you're talking about is that the sorries themselves don't fix the situation. I think the other thing too that we see, and I've been, I've done this.

11:31 is the apology without recognizing your liability or your ownership. The full impact. Yeah, it's like here's an example. It's a, I'm sorry that the circumstances made you feel that way. Well, you didn't take any ownership of what happened. You basically placed the ownership back on the person that's come to you and said that they were wounded, hurt, offended, whatever, right? It's a, well, I'm sorry you interpreted things that way. Yeah. Right. I'm sorry that that was the perspective that you had. Now, I mean, I'm sorry that you felt that way, that you felt that way. Right. It is this thing of you misinterpreted.

12:11 And I'm sorry that I'm, you know, that you've landed on me as the cause of the course of, of that situation. So those are those two things I think I wrestle with and that I fail in, like that I fail. can be the person that's using sorry's as an excuse for a repeated offense. And then I'm also the person at time is if I don't really agree with what you're saying, I can say sorry, but clearly place the blame or the onus of your reaction back on you and never really take ownership of my personal behavior. Man, I'll tell you what. I mean, I just, in a marriage, I mean, I hope I'm not tiring people out with the marriage references. Like, what does this have to do with restoration?

12:51 But for me, there's so many parallels, right? The condition of my marriage affects how I show up to work, right? All those things. But one of the most transformational moments that my wife and I had was my wife wrote in her journal like a whole book. She wrote like two or three pages in her journal about something she was just really frustrated with and overwhelmed by in our relationship. And one Saturday morning, which is normally our time to get together and have coffee and sit and whatever in the morning. Instead, we were just sitting in bed and I was like, okay, something's up. You know what I mean? It's like normally we hop out of bed, we get up and there's this whole thing, kind of a routine, right?

13:35 And I was just like, oh no, something's up. And then finally she says, hey, can I read you something? And I was like, oh no. Here we go. Oh no, this is either a poem or it's a problem. And she proceeded to read this really deep personal journal entry about how she'd been experiencing me and how she was feeling and how it was affecting her and she had some anxiety around it and... And it was very, very hard for me to listen to. You know, I've told you about this before. It's very hard for me to hear. And yet, like I could hear her emotion.

14:18 I could see myself in what she was saying. Like I knew it was true. But it offended me. Like I felt misunderstood. And all of these things started to come up in me. Fortunately, in that moment, this is why it was a transformational moment, is I was able to hang in the pocket while I was hearing these things and just kind of hold my ego at bay, you know. And I heard her. It was like the first time I'd really heard her and I understood how I had been affecting her in a number of different ways. I was aware of some of it. You know what I mean? It's like I was aware. Like she and I have these certain areas in our relationship where there's tension. It's like minefields.

14:58 Like every marriage has that where there's like certain topics. You just know... breed kind of some tension and and i think over time hopefully as you're married longer you start to remove the minds right but so i was aware of some of the things she was saying but then i was i was hearing for the first time like the real hurt and the anxiety and the heartache of just around how she'd experiencing and just the downstream effects of that yeah you know what i mean yeah And I heard it. And it was a transformational moment because I finally connected the dots. I realized just how big of a role I did have in all of it. Just these mannerisms, behaviors, knee-jerk reactions to things, attitudes, tone of voice.

15:44 But I was just – I was like, oh, shit. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's interesting too because I think one of the things that you're highlighting there, it makes me think of kind of a similar thought or maybe like a parallel thought is – We often are approaching partnerships, relationships, downline, upline employees, all the things from this perspective where we feel like we're actually taking into account their situation for the sake of them. But most of the time, if we're really honest, the majority of the time we're just actually thinking about their perspective or their seat. About us. Yeah. In our favor, about us. How is it reflecting on us? How does it affect me?

16:25 They're upset with me. They have a problem with me. I need to fix that and then we can move on. Yeah, yeah. About me though. It's still for the purpose of me, not that individual. I know. Somebody's mad at me because I did or said something that offended them. So I need to fix the offense when really... there's a fracture in the relationship because of a way that I'm sowing into that relationship. Right. Right. Right. Well, and it even, I think it expands outside of that. I mean, I, you know, this is something I think is pretty easy to see in our young adult kids as they are maturing and kind of transitioning, um, And then it's less as easy to see in ourselves.

17:08 But like, you know, from this perspective of, you know, we look at it like social awareness or emotional awareness. You walk into a room and the idea in that is that you have the ability to empathize with those around you. Meaning you are looking at the environment and you're asking yourself the question, When I act this certain way, when I approach things from this certain posture, how is it impacting the folks around me? And here's where I think the nuance is. It's not asking yourself the question, how is this impacting those around me? And then immediately pulling it into from the perspective of how do they feel about me? How do they see me? How do they react to me?

17:49 How does this get me what I want? Right? Which is what we are doing more often than we're willing to admit. But it's more asking yourself the question, how is my behavior or what I'm doing affecting them for their sake? Yeah. Like how does it affect them in their role? How does it affect them in their success? Right? What impact... Do my subconscious behaviors, my attitudes, my mannerisms, like how am I impacting others? For their sake. Yes. Like stop the loop there. Yeah. But instead I feel like we push through that. And I do this all the time. Yeah. I push through that and then the next turn is back on me.

18:31 Our ego really quickly activates – Because we feel misunderstood and we start to defend ourselves. Right. And in our defense, we do things like, but they're doing something that's making me or contributing to my behavior. Yeah. It's a way that I can not take full responsibility whatsoever. Or I can divide up the responsibility in the matter. Hey, I'll take responsibility for this. But the reason why I acted that way was because you've been doing this or not doing that.

19:14 That's right. Yeah, so think about it like this. If relationships existed in a test tube, right? And you could control every element. I think we all can, I think we can agree to the idea that if I'm, let's say back in a marriage relationship or really any kind of relationship, if I spend the majority of my energy meeting your needs, You will then likely spend the majority of your time and energy meeting my needs, which gives me what I need and what you get what you need. Reciprocity, baby. Right? It's how the world works. But what we find ourselves doing, and I think that theory translates into behavior. Like at the end of the day, if we have a conflict, we've got to work through something tough.

19:54 I can't own your behavior. I can't own how you react to things. I can't own any of that. Yeah. But I have 100% control over what I'm doing and what I'm bringing to the situation. So I think kind of what you're highlighting is, is that if I'm only taking partial blame, meaning I'm looking at it and trying to find all the ways it's not true, it's not me, then ultimately what you've done is gutted your ability to do anything to change the outcome. Yeah. But if you're wholly focused on, okay, I need to accept all the ways of responsibility I can here and then begin thinking through and changing behaviors or activities to get the result we both want. And I think it's like kind of going back to that relationship test tube thing.

20:38 If both parties are spending their energy, again, thinking about how they're impacting the other person for their sake and they're owning that behavior, they're – trying to raise levels of competency and understanding to make that a better and more effective result. They're going to draw that in others. And then we both end up getting exactly what we need out of the partnership, the friendship, the relationship. And it's like the contract between us and others is I'm going to like, like I'm going to be that. And also in it, I have the right, I have, the permission to ask for what I need as well. So when the other person is affecting me in a negative way, I have permission to bring that up and address that too.

21:24 And the expectation, I think that's the social contracts, the expectation is they'll reflect on how I'm experiencing, how others are experiencing them. And there's this great loop. This is what relationship is. It's this reciprocity, this back and forth dialogue of both people accepting full responsibility For the way they are impacting others. Right. And so like my wife and I, it's been interesting because sometimes I'll catch myself when I'm getting ready to say I'm sorry because I'm really eager to move on. Like I noticed that more in myself where I'm saying sorry and I mean it. But it's kind of investigating things. What is my goal when I'm saying sorry?

22:06 And most of the time when I catch myself wanting to go apologize to my wife or whatever, or my kids. I mean, I'm hyper-focused on my wife here, but you. It's a good example. You or somebody else on our team or whatever, a client. We had a poor interaction of some sort, whatever. I'm catching myself when I'm saying, Okay, am I just trying to kind of assuage my own soul here? Yeah. So I can feel better about myself because I know this person's upset with me or offended by me. And I just want to fix how they feel about me. Yes, exactly. Or do I genuinely want to understand so I can avoid hurting, offending, frustrating, disappointing that person in the future?

22:49 That's good. So it comes back, and I think we talked about this before, that Hebrew term, yadah. We all want to be known and we want to know others. There's something important about us understanding versus just understanding. trying to fix and move on. Right. You know, and... Yeah, like silence the moment. Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah, it's my fault. I'm sorry. And so now, like, so the big question is, because I would not have had a frame for this until we went through that counseling experience. Now the question is, okay, well, how do you reconcile? Like, how do you move on? And what it started to sound like with Kara and I is, hey, babe, you know, I...

23:29 Um, I didn't feel good about what, like that interaction you and I had, I didn't feel good about that interaction you and I had last night. I, I, I don't feel great about how I acted like my tone of voice. Like I was, I felt pretty pissed off and I feel like I, I just wasn't in control. You know what I mean? What was that like for you? It's good. And then listening. Yeah. And then being like, you know, I, I appreciate that. I hear you. I don't want to be that way. Yeah. Like anything else, babe, like that was kind of going on inside you during that whole interaction. Yeah. Right. Investigate. It's like in some ways it's almost informed the way I sell now too, because it's this principle of I want to dig in and understand.

24:16 You know what I mean? Yeah. You know, I think here's another element to add to this. And by the way, we're... Because when I'm upset with you, dude, like you and I, we have a personal relationship. I think everyone needs to know that you never get angry with me. You just cut me off. I'm starting to feel something right now. But I really... The thing that's inside me when we're upset with somebody, when we feel offended is, I want you to understand where I'm coming from. All of us have that. I want you to understand why I'm offended. It isn't even so much that I don't ever want to be offended again. Oh, that's good. That's not fucking real. Right, right. I want to be understood. I want you to understand where I'm coming from so we can...

24:58 we can be aligned. Right. We can be together. And I also... I also want to understand you in the same way. Well, and I think what you're hitting on, see, this is that piece again, like going back to what can we own. If we just hang in that stance of I need you to understand why I feel this way or why I acted this way or why I reacted this way, it's important. We do need to communicate that because that paints the rest of the picture so that we're on the same page. And, however, you can't force the other person to want that. And so I think, again, it's like just what can we control? What can we be accountable? You can be the one that is genuinely curious about the understanding the other person.

25:41 And the hope is if it's a mature relationship and we are aligned and we want a similar outcome, whether it's right in the moment or not, we should begin to see this behavior grow of two people. seeking to understand the other person. And when we do that, we're going to get what we want, but I can't force you to be curious about my circumstance and vice versa. A hundred percent. And that's the awkwardness of relationship. And I think, you know, we've been talking this whole time about marriage, but I mean, think about the application in your own business. Oh man. with your business partners, with your leadership team, with your technicians. It's like, what if, you know, and I think this is what you and I are so driven by because we saw it, we applied some of this stuff. We tried to bring this into the business and this awareness with our team.

26:24 And we're bringing it in ours now. And just how beautiful of a picture is it, right, when we can start to teach these things to our technicians. And if it can start over time, For them to process the relationships around them and the offenses, because we're always going to be offending each other. For sure. I mean, in some ways, especially in this business. Yeah. Know what I mean? Yeah. This was supposed to be a Rabbit Trails episode, but we just spent the whole time on this. Way home in one pocket. So anyway, I hope this has... You know, it is what it is. So that's what we talked about today. Until next time, we'll be back with another episode. Give us your feedback, right? When you hear episodes that resonate with you, send Brandon and I a text.

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27:46 Thanks for listening.