Ep 57 - Part 2 "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. I don't know. What'd you think? I don't know. I was kind of serious. Should we laugh? Christopher. Why aren't you looking at me when you say that? I'm in denial. Yeah. I'm intimidated. Okay. Your black shirt is throwing me off. Suns out, guns out. Yeah. Isn't that what they say? Yeah, that is what they say. That is certainly something they say. Come on, dude. I get thinking of a few other things that are said commonly too, but we won't go there.

0:49 Listen, you control yourself. Yeah, let's get back on track. So part D. D. D. D. D. Whatever. It's French. Yeah. It's French. This is part two of the four agreements. Yeah. Yeah. We launched into it thinking it was just going to be a single podcast, but we got into it. We're like, okay, we started talking a lot like we normally do. Just breaking up a little bit. Yeah. Could have been an hour and a half, but we thought, yeah, let's bring it up. So here we are. We're back. For those of you that didn't catch the first one, I even managed to talk about sex in it. Yeah. Well, that's pretty consistent. Somehow you find a way to... Yeah, I don't know. Connect with us. But it happened. And it was actually a great show. So go back to the four agreements, part one, if you haven't already listened to that. This will still be good, you know, so hang in here.

1:29 But you'll want to check out that first part. Yeah. So the first part, we talked about the first two agreements. Be impeccable with your word. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. We also talked about gossip, being a part of that. Yeah. Right. Being reckless, careless. Yeah. We say things, I think even in our Western culture, right? America, let's just call it America. In America, we prioritize kind of shooting from the hip, just saying what we think. And I think being impeccable with our words means considering our words before we say them. Right. And then also don't take anything personally. Oh man, we spent a lot of time on that too. Yeah. So today we want to dive into the last two agreements. And actually he wrote a follow-up book called The Fifth Agreement.

2:10 And we might have to do that on a future one. I was just looking over and I'm like, oh man, this is good. It's actually really good. It's different. So don't make assumptions. Ooh. Okay. Okay. Don Miguel Ruiz, the author says right here, find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. communicate with others as clearly as you can. You can see there's a little bit of crossover with how we were interpreting impeccable with your word, but communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstanding, sadness, and drama with just this one agreement. of don't make assumptions, you can completely transform your life. I believe that. And the fourth one, we'll come back to these, but always do your best.

2:52 Your best is going to change from moment to moment. It will be different when you're healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret. We actually, we talked about that self-abuse that we do. We're conditioned to do this. He calls it as we're domesticated. It's funny. He kind of talks about us as kind of the human animal and how our culture domesticates us. Our culture as we grow up, whether it's whatever it is, church, school, family, friends, hobbies, sports, all that, it domesticates us to obey a certain way and to adopt certain social norms and behaviors. And one of those sort of domestications is how we punish and shame ourselves.

3:36 He asked the question, I think in that chapter, he says, how often do we punish ourselves? How many times do we punish ourselves for a wrong or a failure? I almost said a fail using that millennial language. How often do we punish ourselves for a fail that we made? Yeah. And he said, most of us humans, we punish ourselves thousands of times for a single wrong. Yeah. Believe it. Yeah. Yeah. I've been punishing myself for multiple decades. No joke, right? Certain things, but... Okay. So, okay. Don't make assumptions. Let's camp out on that a little bit. Find the courage to ask questions. I think the reason why we make assumptions sometimes is because we're afraid to actually know what...

4:17 The full truth. Sure. Yeah, we do that about our quality of service, right? Our team's engagement levels, their happiness at work, right? Yeah. Bad reviews from clients. Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Or even just normal exchanges, right? Like we employee performance, right? We see something, we note something, we experience something and... We don't do a good job of getting in there, having a direct conversation. I mean, professionally, politely, asking questions, getting the information, rounding out our understanding or our perspective of the situation. I see it. Oh, man. I failed to do this probably more times than I'd like to admit, for sure. Right. We get a tough customer that freaks out, has a tantrum, complains to us about our teams.

5:03 we can tend to make assumptions about why and what their problem is. Right or wrong. And, you know, this customer is just a hard customer. Yeah. We just put them right into that file folder without really being curious. You know, one of the questions we teach our salespeople, but I think it's really good as owners. And we've talked about this a little bit is, is, When somebody is really angry with us, we can just dismiss them or we can react to the anger. And I think oftentimes we do dismiss people. It's like, oh, they're just crazy. Yeah. Hard customer, whatever. Sure. Instead of asking that golden follow-up question, hey, it sounds like you had a really terrible experience. It was really frustrating. I want to learn so I can take this back to our team, Mrs. Jones. What was it about our people or our process that made it the hardest for you and your husband or you and your kids or whatever?

5:50 What was it about our people or our process that made it the hardest? Sometimes we don't really want to know. Sure. It's so much easier and our ego is gratified by saying, Oh, Karen, she's just a hard customer. Yeah. It's not us. Yeah. It's her. Yeah. So don't make assumptions. We oftentimes, when we ask and investigate our assumptions, we find out that they're based on a thin layer of information. Yeah. Lots of missing data. The interesting thing about all four agreements is... they really are building blocks for creating a really hostile-free environment. Like an environment where everybody kind of knows where they stand.

6:32 They're consistently looking for feedback. They're able to take feedback in a way that they can do something positive with it. They can use it. They can grow from it. It certainly affects our ability to communicate with one another and where we direct our attention and energy. It's really interesting, right? These agreements are... our pillar, would you call it behaviors? Behaviors or I guess just perspectives, right? Yeah. It's kind of like a old school operating system. It is. It's like, yeah, we're, yeah, commitment. Well, I mean, they're agreements. So we, it's interesting if teams could almost look at these pillars or these agreements and, and use them as the defining foundation for how they're going to problem solve and or, I would say, manage conflict within their organization, it would probably be super profound.

7:20 Right. You know, this reminds me of... Remember when we had Jenny Bandehey on? Oh, yeah. From First On Sight. She's the Senior VP of Culture and Experience. Yeah. First On Sight. And so she touches a lot of areas of the business. What was she saying about that? That lately they've been focused more on core behaviors than core values. Yeah. What does it look like, sound like, within First On Sight for us to live out these core values? These core values. Yeah. I thought, man, that's a really... Which I really like. Oh, I do too. Yeah. So where are we making assumptions, right? Yeah. I'm just thinking in my mind how applicable this is to everyday business, regardless if you're in our industry or any kind of survey. Well, anything, really.

8:01 And it was funny because it's often we approach these conversation topics from the direction of if you're the owner, key leader, GM, whatever... And it's interesting how profound these are for us as individuals, even if we're on the team as an employee or a downline team member, just in terms of having a positive influence or helping us build momentum in our own personal development. And this not making assumptions is very interesting. Because it's very easy with a minor amount of input or conversation to make all sorts of assumptions about our current employer, our team manager, our... I mean, you name it, right? Like, obviously, this applies to personal and professional lives alike.

8:44 But I'm just thinking to myself, you know, back in the day, we promoted this idea of individuals coming to our team with some sense of vision, personal vision, right? Where what we were asking them to do is develop this ability to look at their current position or space on the team and look at it from the perspective, where could it go? What can I influence here? What is my opportunity? What could we build together? And it's interesting because I feel like in some ways, we were skirting this kind of idea of trying to ask people to increase the level or enhance the way that they own the trajectory of their own personal and professional development in our organization.

9:27 Yeah. And we called it like have vision, right? It was kind of our perspective. But this reminds... I know it's long round corner here, but I'm getting there. We got time. We got time. It's our show. I think the idea with this not making assumptions is it's a behaviorally way to describe that. It's like, don't approach any situation from the perspective you've got it all figured out. You know what your employee is looking for and wants. Yeah. And or I'm the employee and I've made all these judgments and assumptions about what my employer or my boss or supervisor or here wants or doesn't want. Right. Like we have really no idea.

10:07 I mean, how many of us are on teams as a GM? Maybe we're in a leadership position. Maybe we're not. We're part of the sales staff. We're part of the project management staff, whatever the case may be. And we really have a lot of assumptions that we've made about the organization, about the owner, about our boss, about the direction the company's going or not going, what they're doing well or not doing well. And really, if we unpacked it, we'd identify that we have very little proof or data that we're using to make those assumptions, right? And I think one that we see a lot, and of course, we've been talking about this quiet quitting and some of this is... A lot of what I see create tension, it seems often a lot of the tension that gets created in our companies is from assumptions.

10:58 It's because we're all working half-cocked, right? I think is the term where it's the whole ready shooting. Oh, man. We don't really even know the truth, but we're already acting on and acting out based on these limited data points, right? I mean, of course, there's so much overlap. But in my mind, this idea of operating with assumptions, I think that's the biggest contributor. Even, let's say, failing to meet a customer's expectations. Well, how do we know what their expectations are? Because most of the time we go in again with more assumptions than questions. So really, almost all our actions are being carried out from this perspective of, we're just assuming it's going to work here.

11:45 We're assuming this is what our client wants or doesn't want. Yeah. Gosh, and I wouldn't even chalk it up as being lazy because I don't think it's lazy. Yeah. I just think it's a matter of... It's just simply a matter of just acting on default behavior. We get so accustomed to moving without thinking. Yeah. In so many areas of our business, our life, our roles on the team, right? Yeah. It's so interesting. I think... And now I'm just going off. But one of the things that we do when we work with clients, one of the first steps we do is we do an audit of key specific... stuff in terms of process systems, right?

12:28 Yeah, kind of all the areas of the business. Yeah, just like a general audit of what's formally in place and what's not. And one of the things that we can fall prey to is when, like an example would be, from our interaction with the business owner, we make assumptions about the things that are in place or not place. And then maybe we skip that step. Or maybe based on the launch, for whatever reason, a specific focus that we adapt to at the client's request, and we don't do that audit. And then how we end up getting into the business later and uncovering all these systems and processes that may or may not be in place. It's funny. The whole intentionality of that was to prevent making assumptions of people's businesses because what we've learned over the years is that regardless of size, scope, and capacity, it's amazing the lack of infrastructure that a company can have in place and still have done a great job getting to where they are now.

13:22 Yeah. Right. Just overcoming challenges, real grit. Adept and overcome. Yeah. It's amazing. But we still will do it from time to time. We just will get out of a sequence and... And we'll make assumptions. And inevitably, there's ramifications from that that in most cases weren't positive. Like it either slowed down work that we could have been focused on and or it caused us to have to hit reboot on a certain phase because we realized later that thing was not in place or there wasn't a strong foundation or whatever. Anyways, yeah. It's amazing to me how quickly we can even fall prey to this, even at that level, right? At a real execution level. It's so true.

14:03 And there's so many other areas, like we talked about customer experience. We've been talking a lot more about that lately. This reminds me of Theo Fon, my executive coach. Yeah. He sent me, he and I had lunch a few weeks ago or something, and he was telling me, we were talking about this very thing, making assumptions, and the importance of interviewing our customers in a very specific way. And he sent me, he found a process, there's a company called Pumpkin Consulting or something like that. I'd never heard of it, but I think they're kind of a thing. Anyways, they're kind of one of those platforms for coaches have all the cool whatever stuff. But anyway, there's this thing that they do called the wishlist client interview.

14:45 Oh, yeah. Yeah. Can I read some of the things here? Oh, yeah. So he forwarded it to me. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is so good. And it's a proactive way to not make assumptions, right? Yeah. So the idea is that you schedule, call your top five clients and ask for a meeting to discuss how you can serve them better. That's the pretense. And for you as the owner or general manager, definitely use your title. It means something to that customer that the general manager who's busy and important or whatever, or the owner of the business would take this time. But I think you'll see it's incredibly valuable. These are some of the boilerplate questions. And I don't know if I could have conceived better ones, to be honest. Number one, when working with so-and-so like me, other businesses or vendors like me.

15:27 So there's an intentional way they ask these. Very interesting. Yeah. So when working with construction companies or disaster restoration companies like me or like us, what impresses you the most? So it kind of asks it from this third party perspective where you're not necessarily talking about us directly. Yeah. You're talking about our industry. Yeah. So that's another way you could say. The saying never back somebody into a corner. Yeah. That kind of reminds me of that. You're giving them a little bit of an out. Yeah. Because they can still say, they can still be honest. Yeah. Number two, can you tell me about an interaction that you have had with any business that made a big positive impression on you? I'm not just asking for them to stroke me, right? Your ego. My ego. That was implied.

16:07 That was implied. We're running a podcast here. Can you tell me about an interaction that you've had with any business that made a big positive impression on you? Number three, what has been the most impactful and positive part of your experience dealing with us or my company? Yeah, these are great. I'm not going to read all of them, but there's a few. They're so good. What are your biggest complaints about vendors in my industry? Yeah. Gives them a lot of latitude to be open and honest. Mm-hmm. They do a parenthesis here. Note, when using words, my industry versus us, it makes it more likely you'll get an honest answer. Yeah. Most people are too nice to complain about you directly to your face, but if you make it general instead of personal, you get more information. Yeah. So good. It's sound. Yeah. What do you wish vendors in my industry would do differently?

16:48 Oh, this is good. Yeah. I'm going to teach this to our sales circle folks. So I think we're going to focus on this. Yeah. If you could ask for anything and get it, what do you wish... our industry or other businesses like us would do for people like you or companies like yours. Example, if you could ask for anything and get it, what do you wish business coaches like us would do for a small business owner like you? Blah, blah, blah. So anyway, I go on and on. But I think... We rarely in this industry take the time to have those kind of conversations with our clients. Yeah. And words matter, right? It's the impact of our words. Yeah. It's one thing as a business owner, because I know many of you that are listening to this have started making client calls. And maybe you're doing QC calls. And maybe you as the owner, you make X number amount of calls every month.

17:30 That's a rhythm you have. That's great. But think about your words, right? Yeah. Are we just saying, hey, I want to follow up on your experience with us. Thanks for the five-star review. Any feedback, anything good or bad you can tell me? Well, that's not going to be as effective as what we just described here. Yeah, getting really specific. Yeah, we got to create, again, it's that impeccability of our words. We have to pre-think and kind of plan. How do I want this to land? What am I trying to get out of this interaction? I'm not just doing this just to do it and then maybe I'll get some good information. I'm being very strategic in how I word this stuff. I think that's the interesting thing about this commitment or agreement. Agreement number three, this idea of not making assumptions.

18:11 I think the interesting thing about it is like operationally, I think for a lot of people, they can look at this and say, okay, I can apply this to personal relationship or professional relationship. I shouldn't assume I know what they mean. I shouldn't assume... I know what they're referring to. But it's interesting how this really applies well to just operational tempo and behaviors. If we just think about our systems and processes, how much of our day-to-day systems and processes are making more assumptions than not? Here's what I mean. One of the things that we've talked about a lot with folks is creating an actual outline for the key topics that we need to be discussing with our client when we first introduce our team to them.

18:54 And we're getting ready to start a project, right? The idea is that at minimum, what we want to do is outline enough information... that one of our personnel can use that to appropriately convey and have a dialogue centered around some of these things that can create anxiety, friction in the job lifecycle process, all the things. Mm-hmm. And what's interesting about that is how often we don't choose to build or develop outlines for our teams to reference for these kinds of conversations. And here's the reality of what we're doing. Okay, we're assuming. We're assuming that our personnel understand exactly what it is that we meant.

19:36 And think about this. In most of our businesses, we as the owner or founder or a GM or somebody that's highly experienced in the team has been doing this thing for a long period of time. And a lot of it is a mixture of our own experiences, whatever training we've had in the past, corporate influence, whatever. But then we're making all these assumptions that every single personnel that we now add to the team from that moment forward is going to approach the client and the conversation with the client from the same perspective that I am. And we know, we know we see it in failed execution that that's not going to happen most of the time. Yet, we still leave room for that because we allow these assumptions to navigate what we're doing versus us stopping and saying, okay, but if we're going to create consistency and clarity, we can't assume we need to put these things in place to help our team do the right thing.

20:30 I read an article along these same lines recently on... I don't know what outlet it was, but it was a restoration article. And it was talking about the importance of educating our customers, setting good expectations on the front end. Yeah. Smart. You need to. Preparing for the end in mind. But I thought about it further and I'm like... Yes. And it's really important that we approach them with curiosity before we educate them. Oh, yeah. Because I think a lot of times we go in with a client thing, whether it's commercial or residential, and depending on the technician, we have assumptions in our head. Either we are assuming often that they've been through this before and they already know, they know enough, whatever. Or we assume they haven't been through this before and we treat them just like any other client.

21:11 Yeah. We tend to respond to losses the same way every time. Yeah. And just setting good expectations and explaining the process, we've learned, is not enough. It's not enough. And yet, that often is the first sort of pass when companies are trying to systematize and dial in their response. Yeah. And their mitigation process outline is, well, let's make sure that we're kind of holding people's hand at the front end, explaining how this is going to work, all this stuff. And that's good. Yeah. But if you stop there... you potentially still run into all kinds of problems. For example, so I actually came up with a couple of questions as I was preparing for this. When we're greeting our customer, do we ask them, hey, have you ever been through something like this before? Another good question I think we can ask is, is there anything in the home right now that is a primary concern?

21:56 Yeah. One of the assumptions that I think we make as technicians or PMs or estimators or whatever when it comes to... Let's say we have a major water damage loss or we have a fire situation where a lot of personal contents are affected. We think the customer cares about their contents. Yeah. Now, what's funny is some do. Sure. Some, it's like most of what they care about is their stuff. Right. Or they're very oriented around keepsakes and artwork. They have stuff that is of high personal importance to them. My wife and I, my MacBook... Right? Because that's an enormous amount of hassle factor. It's up in the cloud, but it's like, as long as my laptop is okay, I can pretty much set up in a tractor trailer and I can rebuild my life from that laptop.

22:43 And so for me, for somebody to make that assumption that we're really worried about our stuff that was damaged or whatever would be a wrong assumption and focusing on the wrong things. Because for me, my primary concern is we've got a daily rhythm of we cook a lot in our house. This is going to displace us. I don't I don't care about my stuff. I just want back in our functional kitchen as fast as possible. And as a team, I think sometimes we can assume people care a lot about their stuff. They may or may not, right? You know what I mean? Yeah, that's a good example. I think that's a good example too because I think the default would almost be... that we would approach that subject with not an accurate enough perspective on how much they value. Yes. Versus the fact that there's going to be a reality at times. They don't give a flying.

23:23 Yeah, they don't. Right? And how does that apply then to everything else? Just like you said, like in even the rooms, like specific rooms. Yeah. Right? It could be, well, this is a baby's room. And so XYZ is associated with that fear, concern, anxiety. Yeah. You know, what health concerns. I mean, it's interesting. One of the things that we, I think, struggle with sometimes is how we're managing air quality during our projects. Now, I know some of my hardcore IICRC standard followers out there are like, there's no way you could do that. But there is a reality that at times, because we make assumptions about what the carrier is going to approve or not approve. that we don't place negative air on a water project or we don't place scrubbers in particular situations.

24:07 And if we ask good questions and we don't make assumptions and we find out if there's any fears or concerns or health issues or anxiety issues around certain elements of the project, we can very easily identify that we need to add some air scrubbing equipment and why it needs to be covered and why we placed it on the project. And I know that's getting down into a little bit But across the board, it literally affects every aspect of our business. It affects the way we lead our people. If we make assumptions about what one of my team members wants or does not want from their career or from their employer or from me as a boss, then we begin categorizing and shoving people into boxes that they may or may not fit.

24:51 And it has nothing to do with efficiency. It's not removing our ability to make a profit. It may require a little more intestinal fortitude when it comes to developing relationship with your personnel. But it doesn't stop us from being an efficient and productive company when we stop assuming and we start asking more questions and identifying the truth. You say this all the time when it comes to sales. You talk about like, we really don't even care about anything other than finding the truth. We just... We need to know the truth. We need to know the truth about their perception of our industry. We need to know the truth about their needs, their wants, their pains, the things that have gone wrong or right. Preferences, yeah. Preferences, boss relationships, organizational chart relations.

25:34 The more of those things that we know, more of the truth that we know, it just makes us so much more effective. Yeah, and that preferences piece, I think, is where we trip up a lot in any service business. Sure. Here's another example. So oftentimes, the sales leaders or owners or whoever, we're out talking to a prospect. And we find out... We ask them, Hey, what's your experience been with our industry? I'd love to know and get your perspective. And they say, Oh... They roll the eyes. They do, oh, restoration. Because it's hard, right? It's like our industry is a really difficult one compared to really almost any other service sector. I mean, I'm sure there's other dirty jobs that are really tough. But it's like the fact of the matter is nearly 100% of our clients come to us in some state of frustration, confusion, or despair, all the things, right?

26:22 So it's a uniquely difficult industry. Yeah. But how often when we ask people that question, like, oh, what a nightmare. We never know what the hell's going on. Communication, obviously, a huge thing, frequency of communication. But this is where the assumptions come in. We may have a system in the back of our mind where, hey, on all recon projects, as an example, our PMs are required to have a face-to-face check-in with all their projects every week. It's a once-a-week cadence of meetings. And for some companies, that's their only cadence is, hey, you're required to have a check-in with all of your live projects every week. Well, so when we hear crappy communication, in our mind, we're like, well, that's great.

27:02 You're going to like working with us because we have a weekly meeting we do with people. Whereas if we ask a follow-up, so we can assume that, oh, okay, well, they're going to love that we meet with them every week. It's more than enough. Yeah, it's more than enough. It's great. But if we follow up that comment, which usually it's a generalized comment about how crappy the communication is, and we say instead, oh, man, I wish I could say I hadn't heard that. But it's a tough thing in our industry. What in particular about their people or process made it tough? What part of the communication? Can you... How often would you prefer your restoration company to check in on a project? Or methodology. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Did they primarily communicate via phone or email? What was your preference? Yeah. Right? Just asking some of those curious questions of what was it about the communication?

27:45 Was it not often enough? Were they emailing you and it was just getting buried and you were seeing it? Or the opposite. You're calling them. You're communicating via phone, which is great. But now they've got to do the work. to summarize that interaction or that communication and provide that information up their organizational chart, up their chain and command. Whereas had we identified at the beginning and we write a really nice, robust email that clearly dictates what's happening and outlines what's happening next, they can simply hit forward. Yeah. Right? And now we get to control, have some more control over that level of communication. But I think you're spot on. And more and more now people are using these asynchronous methods. And email is a great one, right? It's people can read it when they can.

28:25 Yeah. Versus a phone call where it's like they have to answer and we have to be on at the same time. A lot of people are using text message now. A lot of clients prefer that. Yeah. Because they just lose emails. Yeah. It's buried. And then a lot of people are starting to use these Apple voice notes. Yeah. where you can say something, send it, and people can listen when they can. All of these are great methodologies. But again, if we just assume, oh, we have a communication policy for projects, we assume that that's going to match with what that customer wants. And what they may need is daily updates. And your weekly update is going to disappoint them. 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.

29:07 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. And why reinvent the wheel? The Restoration ERP platform is awesome. It can be customized to your business branding and all that kind of stuff and has all the components to really create a value add for your commercial client. Accelerate job management software. Everybody needs job management software. And we have just found Accelerate not only is their team just really great to work with. When they get ideas from customers, they throw it into the product roadmap and they implement it.

29:52 They're really advocating for the contractor and trying to create a software solution that works for them. Actional insights, we recommend actual insights all the time. All of us as restoration operators are looking for turnkey resources and training solutions that we can take our team to the next level. And AI, when it comes to estimating and Matterport and a lot of the other essential tools we're an awesome resource. And they're always coming out with new great stuff. Yeah, super influential in the industry. Super Tech University, soft skills development training for your technicians, for your frontline personnel. Let's face it, frontline personnel are the heartbeat of our company. They are the ones that connect with our clients and create the customer experience.

30:35 There's no better investment than investing in the ability for those individuals to represent themselves, our clients, and our brands well. So Supertech University, Surety, they essentially are cutting down this life cycle between delivering service and then getting paid, stepping in, removing the middleman in terms of mortgage companies, refining that pipeline, making sure that there's as least friction as possible. So we can go out and do a great job. And then our businesses don't suffer while we're waiting to get paid. The money's coming and it's coming quickly. And then the last one, guys, is Liftify. It's kind of a newer entry to the industry. They're driving Google reviews. So they're a turnkey partner that we can literally go out, provide a great customer experience, hand that name off to our trusted partner in Liftify, and have them go chase that Google review.

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32:04 Thanks, guys. I don't want to leave that subject. So we had a little bit of a back and forth with someone earlier today, actually, about an experience they were having. And it actually just totally aligns with this particular topic. And again, often we're talking from the perspective of owner, key leader, department head, whatever. Let's think about this from an employee's perspective. Yeah. How often are we making assumptions about the relationship between us and our managers? Our managers' perspective on our performance, on their wants, their likes and dislikes, about how they're going to treat us, how they feel about us. What do we actually provide in terms of value? Right.

32:44 All these things. And I was thinking about something today. So example is an individual on a team wants to pursue some higher level education when I want to go back to school. Mm-hmm. And the communication leading up to this decision basically didn't exist. So there was no back and forth. There was no, hey, I wanted to give you a heads up. I wanted to chat about this. I wanted to partner with you guys, blah, blah, blah. It was just a, oh, FYI, I'm going to be doing this starting tomorrow night. Hopefully that's okay. I will no longer be available for on-call rotation. Yeah. That's important to say. There's some real issues with this. Beginning tomorrow. And I think in my mind, I'm looking at that and I'm going, I bet you the assumptions.

33:28 Here, I'm assuming. So let's think through some of the assumptions this individual has. This is going to make my employer angry. I'm uncomfortable to have this conversation. I'm just going to go through for it with it. And I'm going to ask for forgiveness later. Right? Or I don't know. But it's like, you can clearly see how this individual could have some anxiety around this idea of talking to their employer and saying, hey, my availability may change. I want to pursue some additional education. I might make assumptions. Oh, this is going to make my employer think I want to quit. Or this is going to make my employer think I'm not happy. Like all these things. Right? Yeah. And in doing so, in living out those assumptions and then behaving in such a way that's led by those assumptions, they may have actually put themselves in a worse position.

34:15 Because now, and I'm not saying any of this is true with this. I'm just saying it's a good example. Yeah, right. Now I've waited till the last minute to communicate my needs as an employee. that then in turn forces the hand of my employer. It starts removing their options to problem solve with me. And now I've inadvertently placed them in a compromised state where one of their key people who's part of their on-call roster, which is part of the life balance that we create with our teams... is now not available. And how does that coincide with the goal of that individual? What if that individual was trying to get a lead tech position? What if they're trying to move their way up the org chart?

34:56 And now, because I made assumptions about how my employer is going to feel about this decision, I've now totally placed them... in a poor position where how do I approach this differently and said, you know what? I don't know how my employer is going to feel about this. They may be down. They may really be supportive. They may not. But I don't want them to make any assumptions about my perspective or my role here at the team and what I mean to do with this education. Yeah. Yeah. And had they stopped, set a meeting with their employer, with their boss and said, Hey, I just want to talk to you about some things I'd like to pursue. I want to see if we can work something out to where I've got the ability to do that and it doesn't compromise our team.

35:37 That would have changed or could change the entire interaction and opportunity. And as an employer, it's really frustrating. To be in a corner. Yeah. Like where an employee's behavior has done such a thing, the actions they've taken have started taking options from the table. It totally puts me in a compromised state. And then it's like, I'm frustrated because I can't deploy as many resources to help them or support them. And look what it's done potentially. Again, I'm not saying any of this is true in this particular example. Yeah. But generally, what does that do to that individual's opportunities now with that team? Yeah. It totally changes the possible outcome.

36:18 And all of those circumstances really are centered around making assumptions versus stopping what we're doing, having a dialogue that's two-way, right? And where we're really asking questions to get to the truth. Yeah. It's a thing, right? So true, man. It's a thing. What's our fourth one, my friend? The fourth agreement, always do your best. Always do your best. The best that you can or just do the best? Yeah. So it says your best is going to change from moment to moment, of course. It'll be different when you're healthy as opposed to being sick. Yeah. Under any circumstance, simply do your best and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

36:58 Yeah. This does for me, it also kind of points back to this leadership and self-deception. One of the principles he talked about there is self-betrayal as the worst sin, essentially, that we get. And it's funny how much we talk about religion. But I think some people call this your conscience or some people might call it the Holy Spirit, right? Yeah. We have these instincts. Yeah. We have that thought as we're... For me, those of you who've been following our podcast for a while, you have that thought as you walk through the kitchen, oh, there's a pile of dishes in the sink. I know my wife would appreciate it if I would clear those out, throw them in the dishwasher, and I keep walking. He would call that self-betrayal. And it's funny because it's a little thing, right? Yeah. But when we do that 100 times a day in our business...

37:41 When we do that with our friends and family, we do that with our personal health. We do it with all the things. Yeah. We ignore those wise impulses that we have. Yeah. Because it's either too much effort or we're whatever. Whatever. It doesn't serve us in that moment or whatever the... We aren't even thinking about this stuff. Yeah. Is the problem, right? Because if we pause to think about it... When I walked by the kitchen sink, if I took just a second and I realized, okay, this will take me about nine minutes... to do this and it will make a positive impact on my wife's day. Is it worth the nine minutes? Well, hell yes, it's worth the nine minutes for all kinds of reasons. Right. You know, right. She's more likely to accept my bitch for affection.

38:24 Terrible. Check out episode one. Check out part one. Anyway. So, so yeah, always do your best. To me, that goes back to this idea of self betrayal that we usually know what our best is. Yeah. Or rather we know when we're, punching out early. Yeah. We know when we're hitting eject before the task is complete or that conversation is really gone where it needed to go. We quit on the 28th cold call when we know we had more juice in us and more data burn. Yeah. Like we do this all the time. And I think we deceive ourselves. Yeah. A lot. Yeah. We deceive ourselves because we just, we want to, our ego just wants to think the best of itself.

39:09 And I think we oftentimes have, there's this gap that forms between how other people perceive us and how much we're contributing to relationships or to our job role or everybody else. We have this inflated view of ourselves because we're not giving enough intentionality and reflection to this question. Yeah, I think that's fair. And the reality of it is, I probably have some pretty significant points in my career, certainly in my personal life, where I was a victim of my own scenario here, where it was, I was telling myself I was giving my best. I reflected that outwardly when I was in communication with peers or employees or friends or my family when they asked me about work.

39:56 And there's a reality that that wasn't the truth all the time. There were certainly moments and hopefully more moments than not where I was giving everything I really could at that moment in time, right? Based on life experience, knowledge, skill set, all the things. But there is a reality that we talk about doing the best that we can, sometimes more than we're actually executing on. Yeah. And I know that, dude, that creates challenges for me right now in our current business and what we're building and pursuing together as a team is there are times where it's easier for me to say that I'm giving it my best than it really is happening in execution. Oh, for sure. Just not giving everything it out.

40:38 We've talked about this before. There's some people in the industry that we keep our eyes on or that we're friends with that we just admire their work ethic. Larry and Eric over it... at TechU is, dude, those two guys, man, when you think about their road time and how much time they're traveling and meeting with clients and doing everything they do, they are just workers, man. And so I often have to look at outside influences like that, not from a FOMO comparison perspective, but just to remind myself, get some context outside of my own place of, am I Is there a little more gas in the tank? In a healthy way, not grinding yourself to the bone, but just this, if I gave it a little more effort, would I be closer to the goal?

41:23 And can I? Do I have that? I think what it requires to give your best is taking 100% responsibility for yourself. Yeah. And your situation, circumstances. Yeah, that's huge. I think so often, all of us, in different ways, and I think, and sometimes it's elusive, for the more successful you are, I think the easier it is to sort of look past these areas where you aren't giving your best because there's so much external validation of how good you are. Sure. that it's really hard to see past the reflection of those areas that you're not giving your best.

42:10 So it's interesting. I was thinking about this kind of example. I'm kind of on a from the employee's kick. You are? Yeah. A little bit today, which I'm not entirely sure what's motivating that. But So an experience that we had not that long ago was a scenario where an employee was frustrated with bringing up the fact that they would bring up a concern and it felt as if there was quite a bit of lag or a lack of caring of this problem that they brought up. And from the employee's perspective, they were doing their part because they were communicating the truth. There's a thing that needs to be resolved and ding it, they've brought it up. Yeah. And I think what's interesting about that, if we tie it back to this doing the very best you can, you're not doing the best.

42:59 Because the best you can would be, I've identified an issue, and then I did some legwork to determine some possible solutions that would be in the best interest of my team, the brand, and my client. And then coming to then said department head, company owner, whatever, and saying, Hey, I know you're busy. This is something I've ran into. This is what I was thinking there. Here's a couple of solutions I came up with. And here's why I think they're valid. They protect our brand. They protect the four Ps, whatever. It's aligned with our culture from this X, Y, Z. Which one should I pull the trigger on? Okay. And I think for a lot of people, that example, it's like, dude, that's a very regular, everyday example that we all are struggling with.

43:49 And the reality of it is, I mean, even myself, how many times was I in a position where I identified a struggle, a challenge, an issue, something that wasn't awesome within my organization? And that's where it stopped. And I still was telling myself I was doing the best I could. No, I was being a victim. I wasn't being the best I could. And okay, now it's like, we can go into assumptions, we can go back, feed that entire example back through these other commitments, but just hanging right there in the best I could. There was more I could give to the situation. And the reality of it is, is that the outcome was more productive, not just for me, but for the rest of the team as well. Yeah. Right. I think another angle on that too is with that employee story you were talking about.

44:32 It's a really good example. You helped loop me back into what I was thinking. That's a perfect example. And I also feel like the best question that I can ask myself in those situations where I'm frustrated with something that my boss or a colleague or partner is doing that's somehow... I think... This is all how we feel. But I think we can quickly get in this headspace of, I can't give my best because of all these external things. I've got a terrible boss, or my department manager doesn't understand, or my business partner doesn't get it. We all have these narratives that come up for us of why... They're excuses. Yeah.

45:13 They're excuses. When I can't give my best, my ego comes to the aid by saying, well, of course you can't give your best because you were blocked by this other person doing X, Y, or Z or saying this during the meeting. Or this person never replies to your emails or they never call you back on a timely basis. And therefore, I can't be my best because they're holding me back. And the hard part is there's truth. There's some truth in that. Yeah. But it isn't necessarily helpful information. Right. And one of the questions I like to ask myself, I probably should do it more often, right? And I ask our clients at times is, if that situation or that person never changes, is it possible for you to give your best advice?

45:57 What does it look like for you to give your best in spite of that? Right. So what is your best? What is within your control? If these circumstances and these people never change at all, right, you share the story in your head. They either don't get it or they don't care. Yeah. Now what? Right. And I feel like that's where I get down to brass tacks. It's like, okay, I go to my kid. I share the story in my head. They either don't care or don't get it, which is going to happen soon. maybe the majority of the time, when we're in a relationship, is that we share that and it's effective to a point, but maybe it doesn't change their behavior right away. Yeah. Right? People don't change overnight. If nothing changes, what's my move?

46:39 Am I still going to give my best? Or am I going to wait until all the circumstances around me change that enabled me to be my best? Yeah. So I think it takes full... It's like that Jocko Willing thing, right? Yeah. It is extreme ownership. Extreme ownership. It's just absolutely owning. I get to control my response to everything in my world. Dude, do you remember QBQ? QBQ? I pulled it up because I was having trouble remembering the author's name. So John Miller. John Miller is the author. The book's called The QBQ. The question behind the question. This is like a Jocko Willink and his extreme ownership is... Certainly, I would call it the more aggressive, gritty approach to extreme ownership, to personal accountability.

47:25 Sorry, of course it's extreme ownership. That's what he called it. The QBQ is almost more civilized. It's a little less bravado. It's a little less hardcore. But the concept is the same. It's giving some framework for people to really take accountability for their actions, the outcomes, their place in the team, blah, blah, blah. And one of the things that he talks about against John Miller, look it up, QBQ. One of the things he talks about is reframing questions that we're asking ourselves. Yeah. And staying away from the kinds of questions that prevent our ability to have an effect on the situation. So as soon as we ask a question that starts with why, we're screwed.

48:06 Yeah. Because we've automatically removed our ability to contribute versus a what. Yeah. And so an example of why does my boss do X, Y, Z versus what can I do in this situation to move forward? What's going on in a situation that I can have an effect on and I can influence? What is the action I can still take? Yeah. Right. And so I think coming back to this, doing the best we can, I think a lot of it starts with the kinds of questions we're asking ourselves about the situation that we're currently in. And this happens whether you're an owner. I mean, think about this happens all the time for employers. How many times do we sit in a room, a meeting in our freaking with an IPA in our hand on Saturday?

48:50 I almost said morning. That's true. With our bacon and eggs and our IPA. At least go Bloody Mary and make it not look like you're an alcoholic. But how many times do we sit in this space, right? And it's like, why do my employees do XYZ? Why do they always... How come I can't? Yeah. Right? And we ask all these questions as business owners. We do this a lot right now regarding this generation and this new workforce. And we have all these victim perspectives that we have, whether or not they're a good workforce, a lazy workforce, or otherwise... Instead of asking these questions that give us the ability to do the very best we can in the moment with what we have available in terms of resources, when you take ownership and accountability, it changes the questions that you ask and it reframes what options you have available to you.

49:39 It does allow you to do your very best. Yeah. Right? I think so much of this comes back to this. It really is how it contributes to your ability to have real personal accountability. Yeah. I'll give... Maybe I'll finish. How are we doing? Yeah. Yeah. Finished. Good. I'll share an example I may have shared before, but it has been really useful to me. It just keeps me tuned in to this stuff. And I feel like I'm growing. It's always slower than I wish. So my instincts and my instinct to pause and reflect and to notice, am I really giving my best year? Or am I just moving through the world? I'm just kind of... I'm just kind of swagging my way through my days, my interactions, not really paying attention to my best.

50:23 For me, in the gym, it's one of the best sort of practice dojos, you know, is for how am I treating my training, my physical training. And I think I gave an example in a previous episode about, this was like two or three years, I had just joined CrossFit. Yeah. Yeah. And it's hard. It's hard. You go from lifting weights in the weight room and doing the machines and bench press and curls and stuff. And you go into a CrossFit environment where it's just a different kind of workout. It was very intense. And I remember I was in my first few months and I had this one particular workout in the last exercise. They call it the finisher sometimes, which used to be like a character in WWE wrestling is the finisher.

51:05 And it is like that because you just don't feel like doing it. And it's just torture to finish out the workout. But we were doing V-ups, which I couldn't even do one. So I had to do modified tuck-ups, this ab exercise. And it was like three sets of 15 after just a crazy sweat-out workout. And I was the last person on the gym floor. Everybody else was yakking and talking it up and heading out. And I still had two sets to do. You know how your abs start to cramp up if you've ever done a ton of sit-ups and you're just like, it's really... Same deal. And I had this moment where I mentally was like, okay, I've already done a set and a half or two. I just had a hard workout.

51:47 I just leave. But I had made a commitment to myself when I started CrossFit is that I would show up and I would always do what they tell me to do. You'd always finish. If it was three sets of 15, I would always do at least 45 reps. And I remember this moment because we have these moments of truth in our life if we'll pay attention, right? Oh, yeah. Where it comes to us. It's like, I have a choice. I could totally just pitch out of here. No one will know. And I think this is important. Yeah. Why it's an important training ground. Yeah. It's because nobody knew what was going on in my head. And I ended up doing all 45 reps. And after I did the very last rep, I collapsed back and I was just laying on the floor, staring at the ceiling for a moment. And I had this enormous wave of self-satisfaction that came over me that felt so real.

52:33 And felt so real in the sense of sometimes when other people compliment us, we know that they've only seen what we've let them see. That's huge. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. They don't really know what we put in if we gave our best to something, but we always know. Yeah. And so I got done with that 45th rep and I collapsed. I ended up, it was just emotional for me. Yeah. And I know I talk to this a lot. People are like, man, is this guy always crying and like... Hugging on people. And that's not me. But yes, I'm an emotional guy, right? I get mad too. I feel things deeply. Anyway. But I knew. And there was something that felt really good about that. And I've observed that in myself. There was, I don't know, eight or 10 weeks ago, I was here. We were finishing developing our master course.

53:15 And I had a video I had to record. And I was stuck here on a Friday night until 9pm. on this stinking 13-minute video or something to just wrap up our course. And I stuck with it. And I felt so good when I finally hit the save button after renaming that file and pitching it up in the cloud. I felt so good. Not because I just moved mountains or I just... Whatever. I wasn't getting a trophy for this. Nobody even really knew. Nobody knew what I put in. I didn't even come. I didn't even hit our Slack chat, whatever, and be like, Hey guys, I just did 91 takes on this, but I finished it and it's great.

54:00 I didn't know. It was just inside me. When I finally locked the door to the office and went down to my car, I was like, I felt that deep satisfaction with myself. You actually had done the best you could that day. And I recall I even talked to my wife and she said something affirmative. She wasn't like, oh, great job, honey. No, but she was like, that's great. I'm glad you stayed. That didn't bring me... Like my wife saying that or affirming that I had done my best. It didn't matter as much. Right. Right. So it's like, how can we cultivate those internal moments where no one else will know? Right. And I think for a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs, fitness is a really great platform for that.

54:40 Absolutely. You know? Yeah. No, I agree with that. So anyways, just in quick review, I hope you guys enjoyed this segment. We talked about don't make assumptions. Yeah. And there's so many things that that touches in our business. We talked about how with our customer experience, the way that we respond to a loss, the questions we ask on the front end, I gave a couple examples of one. And we've talked about this before, but so few of us do this and teach this to our technicians. The why, you know, why do we ask these questions? We plow right through. But Mrs. Jones, have you ever dealt with something like this before? Yeah. Yeah. Mr. Plant Manager, have you ever gone through a damage event like this in your manufacturing floor before? Yes or no? Hey, Mrs. Jones, is there anything in your home right now that's a primary concern for you? I think it's your contents, but I could be wrong.

55:22 Right? Right. It's not making assumptions. And there's so many different ways we do that. And then always do your best. And you are the only one that can judge that. That's true. You know, that is true. Alright, so listen, if you're enjoying these shows, the head of heart and boots, sharing is caring. Yeah, sharing. Oh, give us a review, guys. Oh, please. That'd be rad. Reviews, yeah, reviews are king, right? You guys are all trying to get Google reviews. Floodlight Consulting Group, we would love your Google reviews. We'd love your iTunes reviews. I think there's even a way to review in... Spotify. I think who knows. Yeah, I'm sure. But yeah, sharing is caring. Share with your friends about Head Heart Boots. Post it on LinkedIn. Share it via text to somebody. There's other ways you can work with us, as we always talk about. We're a one-on-one consulting company.

56:02 We have a client that's going to be rotating off here this next quarter. And so we've got room for potentially another one-on-one client. You can reach out to us via our website, floodlightgrp.com. If you're training up a commercial sales leader, or you've got sales leaders on your team that really have never had formal training or much robust training on commercial sales, get our Digital Commercial Sales Master Course. 10 or 11 hours of just a deep dive Something you can give to a seasoned B2B sales professional and they will pick up and find reminders and get back on certain disciplines. Maybe they've let go over their career. And for a newbie, it gives them a full foundation for how to go effectively chase commercial sales.

56:43 So that's another way. And then we do onsites. We'll do two-day live trainings on operations and divisional leadership and all that kind of stuff. So reach out to us. Share us. Just come back. We're really passionate about this. We'd love to have you listen to the next one. So until next time, see you later. Bye. All right, everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart & Boots. And if you're enjoying the show, but you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.