Ep 56 - Part 1 "The Four Agreements"

0:07 Welcome back to the Head, Heart, and 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. What'd you think? I don't know. It was kind of serious. Should we laugh? What's happening, my friend? Well... You know, apparently we're a little bit off kilter because we don't have quite the right video frame here. We started this out with you convinced that my shoulder was taking up more of the frame space on the left side. So audience, right? You're kind of off. Like, and I'm not going to mess with the camera angle to attempt to fix this. So I think it probably doesn't matter. But let's leave it to the audience.

0:47 Do you guys care? Do we have a problem with our frame? Is something you OCD folks, are you having difficulty doing? listening to us because we're a little bit off center. I don't know. Anyway, got that out of the way. I know it's bothering me. Direct message us, LinkedIn. Let us know if that's a problem for you. We'll try to accommodate. we'll cut that frame up. My friend, you've been kind of pumped to do the show that we're doing today, this topic. This is something that comes up with you. Like, I've heard you reference it before. It's certainly, like, the individual components of it, you know, have come up quite a bit with you. Clearly, it's stuck. Well, you know, I don't want to trump this up too much, man. You're kind of giving me this rad setup for me to give sort of a seven point sermon on this thing, but hope you're out, like, perhaps.

1:33 Hope you're ready for this one. Yeah, no, I have. So what we're talking about is the four agreements. And The Four Agreements was written by Don Miguel Ruiz. Many of you that are listening to this, you've heard of this book. Maybe you have or haven't read it or you read it a long time ago. That was kind of my story. I first dug into this. You know, somebody recommended it or I saw it on a blog post or whatever and checked it out. And then like many great books in my life, I've started rereading some of them here in my 40s. Yeah. Because I think I'm finally starting to connect the dots about why this stuff matters, you know. Yep. It's like the first time we read some of these personal development or business books, I think a lot of times we just don't have enough experience or context to really apply it. Yeah. And we're like, oh, that's really good.

2:13 But we just don't have the framework yet to realize we need it. Right. Or even it's just your situation changes. And so it makes it sometimes at times more applicable or maybe just more in front of mind, maybe recent experience, whatever the case may be. Yeah, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's just you kind of spend your 30s sort of getting your teeth kicked in and all the lessons and learning, and you go into your 40s, you're like, okay, I think I want to try to do this thing a little bit better, you know? Yeah, that's fair. Okay, so here's the four agreements. Ready? One, be impeccable with your word. Now, when I first read that, I'm like, okay, well, duh. So be honest, all right? There's a life principle. Yeah. And of course, it's such a good principle that how much do we struggle to actually do it, right?

2:57 Mm-hmm. We'll come back to this. We'll unpack these as we go. Give us the overview. But let me give you kind of the overview because this is what it says. So I'm inside the cover here. Dom and GoRuiz breaks it down for us or his editorial assistant, whoever it was. All right. Be impeccable with your words. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love. You get a little bit of flavor there. I mean, this is one of those, you know. Definitely on the woo-woo side. There's a little woo-woo. Yeah, a little bit of woo-woo. So the first time I read it, I think that's one of the reasons why I dismissed it, to be honest. I had a hard time filtering some of the woo-woo, new agey kind of language.

3:39 Yeah. It doesn't bother me as much anymore, but anyway. Number two, agreement. Don't take anything personally. Mm-hmm. That's hard for me. That's the ego check right there. Oh, boy. Oh, yeah. All of these really just slam my ego in the nose. Okay. So don't take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you. Ah. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality. Well, we might say the own story in their head. Yep. Right. It's their own dream that they're living in. It's the terminology he uses, which I actually I've grown to like, you know, when you hear him, when you read the book and I recommend it, you start to translate what these words like in your own kind of experience. Yeah. And it does connect. Yeah. You know what I mean?

4:19 Sure. And it goes on. When you're immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering. Right. He talks about in this chapter, that particular chapter, just how much suffering we create for ourselves because we take the actions, the body language, the words of others personally. It's a personal affront. They're attacking me. They're reacting to me with this bad behavior. This is all about me. They're mistreating me, taking advantage of me, whatever it is. But don't take anything personally. Number three, don't make assumptions. We've all heard the phrase, don't make it. It makes an ass out of you and me, right? Yeah. If only we really practice that. Again, like as I'm reading this stuff, I'm like, okay, yeah, this is old wisdom.

5:02 This is something that our parents or grandparents or a teacher, these are the truisms, right, that have been echoed to us throughout our life. And yet I don't think we were taught to actually take them really seriously. And I think that's what he's doing is he's taking these principles as like religion, right? in a way. Like the same way that some of us go to church every Sunday because we're, you know, it's the thing to do. Well, it's like, how seriously do we actually take these things? So don't make assumptions. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. Mm-hmm. Man, okay, we'll come back to all these. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

5:44 Okay, number four, always do your best. The always do your best one is interesting too, because it's this idea, it's this context, right? All right, you were probably going to read this, but it's that context of that's the one thing you can do. Because granted, there's times where you're more capable than others, more energy than others, more capacity, more skill, right? All the things. But if we're always doing the very best we can with whatever context we're currently in, like you can do that. Like you can commit to that. Yeah. That's an interesting one. It is. I mean, they're all good. What they say here kind of echoes what you said. Your best, did you memorize this? Your best is going to change from moment to moment. It will be different when you're healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstances, though, simply do your best.

6:27 You said it just as good. I didn't need to read Dawn's. Yeah, Dawn. What does she know? She's only the author. Yeah, whatever. Okay. Yeah. You know what, this book also kind of tugs at some of the same places kind of in my mind or my heart or whatever as leadership and self-deception. Yeah. Which we've talked about a lot, being in the box versus out. When we're in the box, right, we're in our own little dream. Yeah. We're locked in our dream. We're not aware of other people's dreams. We're not aware of other people being just like ourselves. Yeah. And a lot of times we do this as leaders. We do this as coworkers. We do this professionally and personally where we have something we want, something that's important to us. Could be a challenge or a struggle we're dealing with. Sure. And in that moment, we can find ourselves in a box where no one else's dreams and problems and fears and aspirations are as important as ours.

7:13 Right. And we start to objectify people and then we start to trample over people and use people and manipulate and miscommunicate and make assumptions and do all that stuff. But there's something about the four agreements that connects to that for me, too. They parallel. You know what I mean? For sure. Yeah. Okay. Should we start the top? Yeah, man. So be impeccable with your word. You know, I mentioned in the book, he unpacks it a lot, right? It's like, it's a short book too, by the way, on Audible. I think it's two hours and 15 minutes, something like that. So it's a pretty quick thing, right? So it's a good, great little Saturday, Sunday deal to work through this weekend. Well, I guess you're going to, yes, you're going to get this Tuesday and you can carry this into the weekend. There you go. But he talks about how it's not just about not lying.

7:54 You know, there's a line there about gossip and the way that we talk to ourselves. Yeah. That I think is really interesting. Yeah. Yeah, that's actually the part that stuck out to me was the reference to our internal dialogue and how this plays in that. I mean, to me, that was the part I kind of honed in on because there's a reality, man, that if I'm honest with myself, I am like my own worst enemy. Like I think, you know, not all the time there's phases, right, where I think we do a better job than others. But there are times like I treat myself like garbage, like the kinds of things I say to myself or, you know, don't say to myself, I guess. can be pretty interesting. It's things that I probably would never do to somebody else, right?

8:35 And so it stops you in your tracks. You got to ask yourself the question, if I don't treat anybody else this way, why is it that I allow myself to treat myself that way? That was the part that stood out to me in that book. And obviously, you've referenced a much broader work there, but that was the piece that it just like, oh man, there are many times I would not even consider saying the things I say to myself to another human being. It's terrible, right? And of course, one of the things he talks about in the book, and now I'm actually potentially confusing this with Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth or The Power of Now And so all this stuff starts to flow together, right, as you're taking these things in. But I believe there's a section in this book where he talks about, and I think it is in this chapter, and be impeccable with your word and how we talk to ourselves.

9:21 He says this thing, he said, what is just punishment for wrongdoing? Hmm. how many times do we punish ourself for our wrongdoing? And he says that the typical person punishes themselves a thousand times over for a single wrongdoing, right? We failed our marriage. We, you know, whatever. We mistreated our children. We performed poorly at our last job. We didn't take something serious. We flaked out on a project, whatever. And how long does that judgment and shame and disappointment in ourself or self-loathing, how long do we repeat that message about failing on that thing?

10:05 How many of us carry that forward? I was just talking to a family member about an extended family member who, after 30, 40 years, is still lamenting a divorce that they went through. And the way what happened went down, it still plagues them. Yeah. And I was thinking about that in my own life, you know, how often I reference back to past failings as though they're still a part of me. Yeah. Yeah. A label that you've slept on. And I think that's, it's me, it's like sabotaging myself. And that's what he kind of talks about is we sabotage ourselves with our words. Yeah. You know? I think, so being impeccable with your words, I think impeccable, I think he referenced the fact that that's, it's Latin. Yeah.

10:45 Right. To be without sin. And what was interesting to me is this thinking about that, like the kind of the overarching context of that, of communicating in such a way that it's without sin. Now, obviously, we've got a mixed group in terms of religion and not religion for those that that listen. But I think what's interesting here that caught my attention was this idea of and you can say good or bad. Positive or negative, right? If you don't want to take any kind of spiritual or religious references there. But it's this idea of everything that we're doing, our body language, our posture, the language that we're using, how we're talking, the distance between us and our audience, whatever the case may be, is always coming from this perspective of doing good with it Is what you're communicating going to, A, equip someone, enhance their performance, make them better, give them support, encourage them, give them clarity on winning or not winning when it comes to performance or beating expectations.

11:45 And so it's interesting, I think, how little weight we give to the idea. It's the same boat as just influence in raw form. Big time. What are you using your influence for? And I think one of the things that I will slide into as a leader is I forget how often or I guess it's just subconscious that I slip out of this role where what I'm communicating, how I'm communicating, what tools and resources I'm using to communicate is being done for the benefit of the other person. Like, am I really thinking about this conversation from the perspective of what can I do to make this a better experience for the other individual?

12:26 And most of the time, I don't know if it's most of the time, but often, right, it's really self-centered. It's really internalizing something. So I'm trying to communicate something in a way to get what I want, get my way, get out of a situation or repel this individual or this experience that, And it's interesting, you know, we've talked about this before. My wife is always a big proponent of being for something rather than against something. And I feel like in some ways, that's what he's saying here is using our communication to be for something and not against something. And maybe a practical way that we see this play out is drawing attention to people or team members, for example, that are exceeding the expectation.

13:09 They're in pure alignment with our mission and our vision for our company, right? and really taking the time to just basically communicate like, oh wow, that was a job well done. And because we do that, it orients everyone towards, oh, if I do more of that, right? Even if it's subconscious and it's not done at a conscious level, that's always so more powerful, so much more powerful than, than when we come into a room and just wreck, right? Drop the hand grenade, get pissed off, go off the handle, which, you know, it's kind of like, what's up, Kettle, right? For me, because that's a challenge place for me. But we see that. We see that in our clients. We see that in a lot of business environments where the teams have kind of migrated towards leadership's attention and everything is on the stuff we need to fix, which makes sense to a certain extent.

13:56 But then we're communicating that all the time. So again, instead of getting what we need to out of the team by pointing towards what's happening well, we're just hyper focused on the stuff that's not working and we come at it with a negative like we don't want to be this. We don't want to do that. We need to get away from these things. And I don't know, I don't know if the correlation is direct there, but that's what I walked away with was just this idea of, and what I'm saying, doing and communicating, is it having a positive impact? And if not, can I switch something or change something here to make it impeccable? Yeah, another word that's coming up for me, as you say that, is intentional. I think in Western culture, and I know I'm overgeneralizing here, but I think being reckless with our words has become very socially acceptable.

14:45 To spout off, to sound off, to make judgments about things. And even in some contexts, I think more so, and again, like I, I'm not down in any way on the, like the blue collar trades and the service sector, because I think it's one of the most exciting sort of areas of business that there is. But I think in general, it's historically been more rough and tumble because it requires a lot of grit. Like to be in this industry for any period of time, it requires a lot of grit. But I think part of us kind of, figuring out our industry and whatnot, I think it's just become really acceptable for us to have as leaders oftentimes in this industry segment. You know, we, to a degree, it's acceptable to just explode with our words, right?

15:28 If something's going wrong, just to deal with it. You know, you show up to a job site and stuff is not the way it should be. Our industries, and I just mean construction and home services and just these blue collar sectors, I think it's, there's still Yeah, apologize later. Apologize later. Maybe. Rough and ready. You know, it's just like, and so I think being impeccable with your word is also about being intentional of really thinking, how is this going to land? Where's my ego in this before I say this out loud? Sure. Like my anger, the spark of anger I'm feeling from what I'm seeing or what I just heard, right? Okay. Okay. how much of this is my ego? How many gaps am I filling in in the story here?

16:09 It's just, it's thinking, it's saying, my words are so powerful. And I think it's true of everybody. We've talked about this before, but when you're the GM or the owner or a key leader, and you got the power of God in your job title to that employee, right? You have the power to fire them, take away their, you know, it's like we just, it's about considering. Like creating a discipline around the pause before we react to that. And I think the opposite is true. Like we often don't say anything to our personnel. We don't often, you know, we pause. We withhold. We withhold. That's a great way to reference it. Like we fail to give very clear and honest feedback about a performance or.

16:49 We round off the edges because we're afraid of hurting feelings. Yeah, we don't want to lose this employee. We don't want to back them into a corner, whatever the case may be. That in itself, though, is out of alignment with being impeccable with our word, because ultimately what we're doing then is failing to give our team member guidance and feedback on how they're doing. So we're leaving it up to them to draw some kind of perception or to draw some kind of connection between what we've talked about in the past versus how they're performing now. And that in and of itself is not doing that individual anything beneficial either, right? The pendulum can swing between these two places where we're either doing something negative by the way that we're approaching it.

17:31 Either we're lying, not, you know, false truths. We're not speaking with integrity. Or we can also withhold, like you said, information, feedback, communication. And it's just is negative, right? Yeah. So it's a bit far-reaching when we think about this, but I like the simplicity of it, of being impeccable with our word, i.e., just attempting to communicate in such a way that the goal is to enhance or support the individual, you, the team. And the you part is important, like remembering that ourselves have to be considered in this equation, right? Just as much as a downline employee, a spouse, a partner, whatever the case may be. I think one other thing, and then we'll move on to the next one, is gossip.

18:14 Yeah. Oof. I really, you know, when I read that, and I've read this now several times, right, like, I think to myself, I'm not a gosper. But then when I actually reflect on it and I consider, I realize, oh, I'm not a gosper. I'm a gosper. Yeah. You know, that means different things to different people. But I realize if I'm honest with myself and I consider all the times that I'm needlessly talking about any number of people, I can catch myself. And I'm not consciously trying to build myself up by making other people sound terrible or whatever. But subconsciously, I realize I do that a lot. A lot of times it's just in passing. And sometimes it's me even engaging with somebody else who brings up another person or makes a comment about another person and I jump in.

18:57 There's all these different scenarios. I guess also too as a key leader, right? Here's the question for us and anybody who's listening is, how often am I talking about my employees? Hmm. And my intent is not directed at building them up and supporting them and caring for them. Even when I'm talking amongst colleagues, as a leadership team or as department heads, undoubtedly there's going to be times where we have to talk about an employee or talk about a colleague. There's a problem, there's disunity, there's performance issues, whatever. But I think it becomes a really slippery slope. Yeah. And we've seen this, you know, both, I'm done it. We've done it. And we see it all the time. I think it's a common form of drama that takes hold in a company is when the leaders start to cross that line between, hey, we're troubleshooting, we're coaching, we're holding accountable, we're having to deal with behavioral issues or whatever with a team to where we're kind of regularly disparaging a person's personality or default behaviors or whatever.

19:59 And it becomes more of a I think you can become more of that gossip thing pretty easily. I totally agree. You know, that was one of the things that we have always tried to do. Well, certainly we are human and we've had teams that were better at it than others in terms of time and just how we were carrying ourselves. But there's this, you know, when we talk about safe work environments or environments where employees are engaged and committed, one of the biggest things that has to happen in an environment like that is it needs to be safe. And when I say safe, I mean the team has got to develop good conflict management skills, right?

20:46 that created an outcome that they weren't... It wasn't positive, right? And whether that was encouraging our employees to be more direct with us. Like, hey, circle back with me. If we have an exchange in the hallway or in passing or during a meeting or whatever, and you walk away with an overwhelming negative feeling, like, come talk to me about it. We reference... you have already this show, like the story in our head. And that principle of just going to this individual, the person that can actually make a difference, right, in this scenario, and just being honest with them and saying, look, this probably wasn't your intention, but this is what happened. This is what I walked away from in our conversation. And I think what's really special about that, when you develop just kind of a default behavior that always directs somebody back right to the individual that they have an issue with, or had that exchange with, and then setting the stage for, I'm not judging the hell out of you, this was the impression I had.

21:39 I'm not even saying that that impression's accurate. That's actually the whole point while I'm here. Yeah. Is I want to be able to know, right? Yeah. If it was intentional, was it an accident? What did I miss? What did I fill in the blank with? Whatever the case may be. Hey friends, hey listeners. We're doing something a little bit different with our ads. So you've been accustomed to hearing some ads with our favorite partners and companies in the industry. Now we actually have a product page, our partners page on our website. So floodlightgrp.com forward slash partners. We want to give you a quick rundown though of the people that we're partnering with and we believe in as really go-to resources in the industry. The first one is restorationerp.com, right? ERPs are an important part of our sales process, our customer development process.

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25:19 And they added this phrase, listen, here's the story in my head. I'm not saying it's true. And I care enough about my relationship to you as your leader and your partner. to check it. I don't want to assume that that's what you meant. Sure. I care enough about you as a leader. I want to check in and make sure whether I'm right or wrong with the story in my head. Yeah. It's because I do, I care in any way. Yeah. Different ways we can show people we care. Slapping the care. Oh, dude. Okay. So we need to do two parts because we could spend like an hour and a half on this. One of the stories he gave about this, about gossip, was really good. And so in the book, he gives this example of college student. Okay? So college student registers for their classes.

26:00 College student A is talking to their roommate. College student B, it says, oh, yeah, I signed up for, you know, a survey of American literature, blah, blah, blah. And the other roommate says, oh, I took that last semester. Did you remember this from the book? Oh, did you take it from, you have so-and-so professor? Yeah, that's his name. Oh, that guy's the worst. And he's kind of a perv. So watch out. You know, like pervert professor, you know, whatever that is. Right. And he talks about how often that kind of exchange takes place. And how does that, when we accept or we hear that kind of gossip about somebody, whether it's true or not, we often don't even try to validate. Yeah.

26:40 Well, why would they say that? Yeah. Like the seed is planted. The seed is planted. We've heard it. And now we are, it is going to affect our body language, our posture toward that person. So that student is going to show up to the first thing in class and think, man, this guy's a jerk and he's a perv and they're going to be on guard. They're not going to be engaged with the material, all that stuff. And yet we don't know, was it because this person got a terrible grade? They did poor work and the professor called it out and wouldn't give them, you know what I mean? Like, who knows? Well, inevitably, like once the seed has been planted, like once we start down a certain trajectory, right, we have a hypothesis about a situation, really what ends up happening most of the time then is all the incoming data just continues to affirm that, you know, we don't really come at it from a neutral investigative perspective where it's like, I'm going to take in information and then make a judgment.

27:30 It's like, I've already made a judgment. Now I'm just listening for things to affirm what I'm thinking. Yeah. Right. Which is, it is interesting. And I think we can set the stage like that for our employees, right? I know there's been scenarios where I've probably talked to one of my department heads and said, hey, here's my perspective on so-and-so. And the reality of it is, is I had a limited look of that individual's performance because of just the inherent title that I had or the place in the organization. Maybe there was just too much distance between their work, you know, effort and what I got exposed to. or whatever the case may be. But inevitably, what I may have done now is planted a seed in that department head who is going to have a much closer relationship, is going to be able to see their day-to-day work, may be able to influence that performance in a much more positive way than I am based on my current situation.

28:18 And ultimately, there's this strong chance now, though, that department leader is not really trying to develop that leader to the same extent. They're waiting for them to fail. That's right. It's like now the data coming in just affirms what I planted or maybe what I may have said, and now the effort stops. And I think often what happens in most of these cases, these are subconscious things. It's a little erosion that we allow to happen that ultimately have a profoundly negative impact on what we're building or trying to do. So we should keep moving. But this one is really interesting to me. I know. And it's one of those things too, where I think if anybody's spent any time in or around church, which as an American, a lot of us have, right?

28:58 I think one of the things that you learned in that was it was this idea of how you treat your neighbor. Yeah. Sure. Concept. And really, at the end of the day, it's amazing to me how much power our words have. It's, you know, we've made references before that it's like the ship, the rudder on a ship, right? It's this tiny little piece in the whole context of this giant boat, ship, whatever you want to call it. And it literally governs the direction of the entire situation. Well, it's like another biblical reference, I think, right? Doesn't the Bible refer to the tongue as a two-edged sword? Yeah, right. Right? Yep. Cuts through flesh and bone and marrow. It's like it can create great encouragement and pleasure and love, and it can also create destruction, right?

29:42 And here's the thing, dude. I want to come back to this like gossip piece because I think this is really important. I think there's a reality that we lose touch with, and that is, if you're the kind of individual that people hear talking shit about people, they know you're not safe. Yeah. They just know it. Even if it's fairly subconscious, and... their guard is up. They know if most of the time when they're around you, there's somebody in your sights, there's somebody that's not getting spoke about very well, there's some negativity in the way that you communicate and what you're talking about. You just need to understand that you're creating a sphere of influence where people don't trust you. Yeah, and they won't tell you it.

30:23 And they won't tell you. In fact, they may not even be able to articulate it because it may not be a front of mind thing, but I can almost guarantee you. I mean, just think about yourself. Think about ourselves and situations that we've been in. Do you have friends, employees, peers, coworkers that they just kind of are always talking crap? Yeah. Are you super excited when you're around them? Do you really feel motivated? Are you trusting? Is your guard down? Are you being your best? Mm-hmm. Right. Or are you filtering? Just think about the impact that those people have on you as an individual and just remind yourself, like, I have an opportunity to choose to be which of those two. And so, again, I think it really it even goes as far as saying it's just a matter of just make people's names safe.

31:09 Right. Like how you speak about them. And dude, that is so hard. It's so hard. You know what's hardest about it is, I think this also plays into the desperation brain that we can feel as business owners. We feel like we're backed in a corner. This person is not good for our business, not a culture fit, but we need them right now. I think a lot of times that creates that gossip mode that we get in because then we're just lamenting, oh, this person, oh, that person. And it's this cycle where we're actually probably making them worse. in their attitudes and behavior because I feel like I've observed this and I've probably lived it in some ways at different points in my career where when it starts to flip over from problem solving and strategizing on HR stuff and helping do course correction stuff with employees and it switches over into this complaining and gossiping about who they are and how they act and all this kind of stuff and what their problems are and all that, I've found it fundamentally changes my behavior and body language towards them moving forward.

32:06 And they know it. They feel it. Yep. And I think it's possible that some of that creates those termination behaviors we learned from Amy, where it's like employees start to, they start to show these termination behaviors because they feel uncomfortable. They don't feel wanted. They don't feel trusted anymore. We tend to become more micromanaging of those people too and call them out and be more obsessive about details. And then every single wrong they do, it just turns into this ugly thing. And it's all driven by just this subconscious thing. I just think we don't think about it. We don't really step back and say, what's going on here with this person? How am I treating them? And how is this affecting it? You know, anyway, okay. All right. All right. I think we, that was good. This is going to have to be a two-parter.

32:47 Okay, number two, don't take anything personally. Oh, geez. So much easier said than done, right? You know, as a business owner, oh man, I think as a business owner, especially in the early days, because oftentimes as business owners, we're the last to get paid, right? It's like when I had my state farm office, I had four employees, actually my first year. I was like, that was a little bit of miscalculation, to be honest, but a little more payroll than I probably needed or should have had. But I was the last to get paid, you know? I had a couple of, you have these pay periods where it's like, well... I guess I'm not drawing on this round. We'll wait to next month. Hopefully things will be better, right? Your employees, they're the first to get paid. And they... At least they should be.

33:29 Yeah. It's hard. I think it's hard not to take poor performance or attitudes by your employees sometimes, personally. Like, who do you think you are? Yeah. And it doesn't even feel good saying that out loud, right? Because it's like, yeah, well, listen, they're just people like me. They want what they want. They need what they feel like they need. They're fallible. They're going to screw up. It's not like just because we pay somebody that we're entitled to perfect performance. We're paying a human. Right. But I think that's an area where we can really get indignant and take things personally as an owner where it's like, hey, I'm providing this livelihood to you. Sure. Sure. I took risk. I continue to take risk, right?

34:11 In order to provide you a career opportunity. Anyway, I know I've felt that, you know, in previous ownership roles where you just can get really indignant and be like, man, how dare you? Like, who are you to say this? Or how dare you treat my business with such, to be so reckless, you know? It's funny that you say it. My wife often says this around me. of course, in the context of our kids, but she'll make the comment, your self-centeredness is impeding on my self-centeredness. And it reminds me a lot of this, like, I think the challenge in this don't take it personally perspective is, right, is that most of the time what's happening is that we're approaching a conversation, an exchange, a friendship, relationship, and we're coming at it from a very self-centered perspective.

34:57 Oh, yeah. Right? So it's like, of course, we're assuming that it's a personal attack. Of course, we're assuming that it's out of their understanding for what I do for them, that they're making these comments or not making these comments. And then the reality of it is, though, is that that individual is so self-consumed and so wrapped up in their own life, their own issues, their own perspective. They're not even thinking about the impact on you. Dude, last night. Yeah. Last night, I did what... is this marriage and family therapist. I'm going to have a marriage moment here. Oh man, what is their name? Gottman, John Gottman. Okay. John, I think, and Julie Gottman, husband, wife, marriage and family therapist, run the Gottman Institute up in Seattle, a very, very sort of like, they do a ton, it's a psychology school.

35:40 Anyways, yeah. So they create counselors and whatnot. The Gottmans are kind of the preeminent marriage and family therapists, you know, and they talk about bids for affection that we're constantly in relationships, particularly marriage relationships. We're making bids for affection. You know, we want to be touched. We want to snuggle. We want to have sex or whatever it is. But it's bids for affection. and bids for affirmation. And so there's this whole dynamic between couples, right? One person makes a bid, the other person either responds and sort of meets them and sort of provides that affection or whatever, or they don't. And that often is where a lot of the strife and stuff happens in a relationship. Well, anyways, so last night I make a bid for affection. Now, mind you, we're in the middle of a huge remodel. The kids are back to school this week and my wife was just not feeling the affection, so to speak, right?

36:23 Yeah. And leaving that vague enough. Well, yeah, whatever. Everybody knows what I'm talking about. We've all made those bids. Sidearm hugs. Yeah. Yeah. I get it. Yeah. And I had a real, I had a reaction to it in my own head. I was like, I really was taking it personally for a moment, for a little more than a moment. But I finally, I finally, as we were getting ready for bed and stuff, I was connecting with that. I was like, wow, part of me is really, really frustrated. My bid went on reciprocated. So it's every area of life. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right, it's every area. I'm sure I'll have a kid story example by tonight. But it is, it's just a knee-jerk reaction that I think we all have because it is, we want what we want as humans.

37:04 And I think sometimes we're not willing to say that out loud. Like I'm a selfish person. Like we are wired to take care of ourself. Yeah. And I think that's where it comes from is whenever we are trying to take care of ourselves and our little lizard brain and somebody blocks that, we're like, hey, well, what's wrong with me? Yeah. You know? Well, and I think this is huge from a coachability perspective, right? It's like the easier it is or the more it's... consistently that you're in a situation where you're taking what is happening personally, it's going to be very difficult to learn in that environment because we just spend so much time and energy rebutting, arguing against, refuting, tearing down, right? Whatever we can to belittle that opinion or perspective in an effort to protect ourselves, protect our ego, protect, right?

37:48 That we ultimately just lose out. I mean, there's just this massive loss of opportunity to learn when we take things personally. And I, Again, I'm bad at this. I mean, I've gotten better, I think, as I've gotten older, just trying to at least in the moment, like, okay, take 30 seconds. Let's breathe through this. My initial reaction is being defensive right now. I can feel it. I am probably taking this personal. Okay, what can I do right now to get my head out of this place? I would say that some of the situations that were the most challenging, that taught me the most, I had to do something in the moment to get out of that headspace so that I could take advantage of what I was experiencing. And we see this a lot with downline personnel.

38:28 I know as a leader, I get frustrated over the years as I've tried to develop somebody. We talk about like often we're in a position where we can see a couple corners down the road. the road. And we're looking around that next turn and realizing how close this individual is to pay raise, increase an opportunity, and they stop short. And so then we're really frustrated with that individual. And it's like, oh, if they were just more coachable, right? So it's really easy for us to look to outside individuals and see what- And judge others. Yeah. Well, it's not even the judgment. It's the see how this lack of coachability because of ego and because we're taking it personally stops them. And we're like, man, it's 10 more feet.

39:10 You're almost there. But then we don't do a good job of turning that inward and saying, okay, where do I see this in my own behavior? Are there relationships? Are there people speaking to me or interacting with me? I'm taking it personally. I'm getting defensive. My guard is up. And so I'm not able to take advantage or learn in the situation. And honestly, this happens a lot between employees and employers. Because you think, you know, because we have a title or maybe we've been with the organization or in an industry for a longer period of time than this person, our guard is up. We're not good at hearing their perspective, their influence, and being able to take advantage of that. I mean, we see this a lot when new people come to a team.

39:51 there's a reality that their perspective is a little cleaner. It may not be more accurate necessarily than somebody else's, but it's also not as tainted or filtered by previous experience from that team. They haven't become accustomed. Yeah, exactly. To the behaviors and culture. They're not ignoring the same things everyone else is. They're not stepping over that, you know, whatever. There's an opportunity for them to be catching and seeing things fresh. And man, I would tell you, that's one of the hardest groups for me to learn from is when I have a new team member. Very difficult for me to remain in a place like my knee jerk response and reaction to most things is they don't understand they haven't been here long enough.

40:32 Right. Or you come up. It's easy to create excuses of why what their input is saying to me isn't valuable. And really, there's an opportunity during our onboarding for a totally different subject, really, but to set the stage to make sure we can hear and get some insight from this fresh set of eyes on our team. It doesn't mean you throw anything out. You don't start from scratch because it's very possible that their time on the team has been too short for whatever perspective they offer to have a ton of value. But I'd say more times than not, there's value there. There's an opportunity, right? Yeah. Fresh eyes, right? The power of fresh eyes. Yeah. You know, he, and maybe we can end on this. He talks about this concept of we're all in a dream.

41:13 We all have our own dream. Yeah. Yeah. I do remember that. It's very, it's interesting. And the more I think about that and all over that, it's very helpful for me to consider that I have my own experience. Yeah. Like there's things happening behind my eyes. I have all this self-talk that you are totally unaware of. Yeah. And you have all of this processing of me, of what we're doing, of what the rest of your day is going to look like, positive and negative, all the things. Like you have your own inner world that I will never be in. fully aware of, no matter what. Just the way that you think and react and interpret things. Yeah. And all of us are that way. All of us have this dream, this reality that's happening up here.

41:58 And when you step back and you consider that, I think it helps with not taking things personally. Sure. Because it helps us, it reminds us like, okay, we're all a mixed bag. At any given time, we've got suffering inside. We've got something that, whether minor or major, that we're dealing with in terms of relationships or health or professional, whatever. There's an element of suffering inside all of us, I think, at all times. There's things that are going well. There's things we're proud of. There's things we're ashamed of. There's all these things. And when you start to zoom out from an employee interaction where you've got a difficult employee or you've got a difficult colleague, and at least just taking a moment. to say, okay, I'm in a dream, I've got my own dream, what potentially is happening within them that would be showing up with this kind of behavior?

42:43 Why? Because I think the older I get, the more I start to believe that people aren't evil. I think maybe there's exceptions to this. It's that most people are not evil. Most people are behaving out of a place of suffering or having been harmed. Self-centered. Like there's a dream that they've been placed in, right? None of us picked our parents, right? And so there's a dream that they have built in their head of how they interpret the world and parts of it may be broken because of broken experiences that they've had, right? Traumas and so forth. So anyways, yeah, this, dude, you got to do a part two. Well, and here's the reality with this too, is that the opposite can be true. I mean, how many times are we around people that actually their perspective is much more enlightened from the perspective of, you know, maybe they haven't had the same experiences, negative experiences that we've had.

43:33 And so instead of kind of being tainted and negative, they could be approaching a situation from a much more enlightened and positive direction. Right. And we have an opportunity to get a fresh perspective and a fresh set of lenses and be like, okay, I need to take in more of that reasoning, right? Because I clearly have some issues with the way that I see things. I don't know. You kind of swirl a little bit and it can get a little confusing, but I think that's super powerful. That's good. Okay, quick summary. We'll come in with part two and we'll hit assumptions and always do your best on the next episode. But yeah, so what are the two we covered? Be impeccable with your word. It's more than just not lying, right? We might benefit from considering our words. It's that pause.

44:13 And I think I almost would say it feels like as a leader, like that's a responsibility we have to put on. We don't have to be perfect at it, but it seems like that should be part of our path, is pursuing that. Yeah, I agree. Pursuing that pause before we react, right? Leaders respond, leaders don't react anyways. The second one, don't take anything personally. We just unpacked all of that. I mean, it relates to gossip. It relates to the way we react and overreact. Right. inappropriately react, all that kind of stuff to others and even to ourselves. That's good. All right. Well, listen, if this has been helpful for you, right, if we're provoking sort of new thoughts or connecting dots or this stuff resonates with you in some way, please share it.

44:54 I mean, that's one of the easiest ways that you can help out the Head Heart Boots podcast. We really love this passion project for Brandon and I. Absolutely. So sharing is caring. I just thought I'm a fly. That's clever. Sharing is caring. And other ways you can connect with us. So we do at Floodlight, we do one-on-one consulting with restoration company owners. It runs the gamut. We work with companies that are newer to restoration, helping them get set up in a way that they can avoid some of the mishaps and accelerate their growth and scale. And then we also work with medium and large size restoration companies. We usually always have a mix kind of in our portfolio of clients. helping them fine-tune their process, make more EBITDA, more profits, develop their downline leaders, really help them build a business that they can operate as a business and not be an owner-operator, helping people scale and get ready to sell their business.

45:41 Some people, some of you want to do that. Of course, the PE craze is going on, but how do we build a healthy business so that we could sell or we could get to that point and choose to keep it because we like our business and we have the right role in it? Yeah. That's what we help people with. Also, if you're onboarding a commercial sales leader and you're looking for a turnkey onboarding and training solution to equip them so they can go effectively chase commercial, you'll want to check out our commercial sales master course. It's a real affordable option that you and your team can use over and over again as you onboard salespeople, sales manager to your team, etc. Lay the foundation. Yeah, you can have us bring Brandon and I in for a live workshop. We got one or two we're doing this fall, later this year. And we have some schedule availability for Q1 of next year.

46:23 So if you're interested in that, you can reach out to us. But otherwise, we appreciate you listening. Absolutely. Yeah, we enjoy doing this and we'll keep doing it as long as you guys are listening. So yeah, look us up, Floodlight, find us on LinkedIn. Also check out our Follow, our Floodlight Friday live streams, Friday mornings. That's another way you can connect with us on LinkedIn. Yeah. And I guess that's it. Okay, again. Until next time. See you later. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart & Boots. And if you're enjoying the show, but you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.