Episode 395: The Integrity Game with Jeffrey Klubeck

All right, here's the intro. Welcome to another episode of the Above the Business podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have Jeffrey Klubeck. He is a soft skills expert. Have you ever heard soft skills, hard skills? Well, today is a deep dive all about soft skills in business and in leadership. We talk about accountability, we talk about motivation, we talk about helping you to become a A Better Leader. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Jeffrey Klubeck. Jeffrey, welcome to the Above the Business podcast.

Oh, thanks for having me.

Excited to have you. Well, we always start with a background and origin stories. I want you to kind of take us back, um, on your journey and a little bit however far back you want to go and bring us to present day.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot back there, so I don't want to get lost, but I mean Pretty simple. It starts, you know, family. My wife, Marianne, I met in college at San Diego State University. And so I guess I'm going to start there. I got my master's in communication there. I attended and survived 18 consecutive semesters at San Diego State, I like to say. But I fell in love with Marianne when I was 19. She was 18, and we're married now to this day. So we were together for a while, had to spend a little bit of time apart, came back together with our commitment to raise great kids. So we got 3 great kids. Our oldest, as of this recording, AJ's 19, in his second year of college playing baseball. He had gotten a scholarship to San Diego State, our alma mater, which was a really proud moment. He decided to go into the transfer portal to go get more playing time elsewhere, but it was still a really neat year last year. And I happened to be teaching classes on campus at San Diego State as well. So I'm an unretired adjunct professor, but I started teaching when I was getting my master's and I fell in love with it, being in the classroom, helping people find their voice, teaching public speaking. It was general education, helping people find their confidence, their voice, get over their fear. So that's a big piece of what's helped me in my career. I was better as a coach, consultant, trainer because of my classroom experience and vice versa. And, um, I got a brief mention to Brody, our youngest. He's getting into middle school. So, and then our middle daughter Abigail, she's a rising senior. So we've got, uh, a lot of pride here underneath the roof of, you know, like people say, Jeff, what do you do for a living? And I say, I wake up every day, figure out how I'm gonna deserve my wife and kids. That's really what, what drives me. I think I'm a lucky, lucky guy. And, uh, that's the, the, the background. But, you know, communication, I was doing some headhunting and some recruiting, some org dev. And then when I found Personal and Professional Growth and said, hmm, what's this coaching thing all about? And I committed to learning how to coach and attaching everything I knew to it. And, and I have some, some competitive advantages as a coach. And so it's led to more services, soft skill delivery, training, consulting, speaking. I've written 5 books. I've been around the world on international assignments. And, that, that's all background stuff. You can ask me anything more detailed, but now I'm playing the Integrity Game. That's the brand that I'm building. It's the baby that I'm raising. And it's the 10-point framework through which I deliver soft skills. So I believe soft skills make strong leaders. Soft skills make strong teams. Soft skills make strong organizations and culture. So, without being asked anything more specific, it starts with family. Everything I do is motivated by my gratitude and how lucky I feel to have such a great family, and I want them to be proud of me. I want more integrity in my life, so I'm inviting the world to play with me.

What is your definition of soft skills and hard skills?

Soft skills? Well, not, you know, the definition, but like soft skills, it's all communication stuff, right? All communication. Human interaction, the human element, you know, the combination of, you know, our logical brain choosing words from an organized system of symbols, but the emotional stuff, how it's, how we say what we're saying, right? So if you went into a corporate, my corporate training library for soft skills, you get titles like Be a Likeable Boss or Personal Branding or Corporate Behavior or Emotional Intelligence, Social Intelligence, Change Management, conducting performance reviews and So a lot of that, you know, if, if you think about an HR, if, if we go above the business and look down on it, right? And we find the HR department somewhere in the org chart, right? There's an arm of, you know, training and development that HR might be responsible for, but, you know, the departmental managers may be responsible for personal professional growth, professional growth skills development, et cetera. So versus hard skills would be like, how do you design an application-specific integrated circuit if you're an electrical engineer wanting to, you know, make chips that you can sell to aerospace industry or something like that? Or what's a programming language? Or how do you format a spreadsheet, you know, with pivot tables? And so there's, you know, there's hard skills that are less bound by emotion, if you will, and soft skills, there's an emotional component, there's a human element, there's ego defense, there's things of that nature that are hardwired and built in or baked into the, the process. It's a lot, lot more of a moving target. In that regard, right? Hard skills, it's kind of black and white, right? But soft skills, there's a lot of gray area.

You think— what do you think the balance of acquiring skills for a small business owner entrepreneur, how much of it do you think success, which even that could be a discussion of like, what do we even define that to be, but You know, businesses, small businesses that are succeeding, they're growing, they're profitable. They busted the million-dollar revenue threshold. 91% of small businesses never do that. So they've done that, but they're growing, they're profitable. The business owner themselves is not burned out. They're taking adequate time off. I mean, I'm trying to give some level of definition of success to then ask the question, well, how much of that is hard skills? How much of it's soft skills?

I think it depends on the organization. It's, I don't know if any organization would benefit from understanding the exact ratio other than to make sure that there's some commitment to soft skills. You follow? Like, you know, if you can build the stadium, but if there's people not sitting in the seats, what good is the stadium? Right? So there's, there's a yin and yang of it. What good is a man without a woman and vice versa? Right? You know, like there's, you know, heads and tails. They need each other. You know what I'm saying? Sunup and sundown, right? So, you know, the safe answer would be, oh, 50, 50, 50, but I've never measured it. I don't know if there's a benefit to any business owner to make that ratio a KPI, you know, key performance indicator, for example. But there's other ways to get at, you know, you create KPIs around employee engagement or psychological safety or, How, you know, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10, how excited are you to work for your employer? Or what's the culture? You know, so you could do surveys and take measurements. But if it's, it's just a safe answer to say to ignore one or the other could, you know, could really hamper a business. And, and most successful businesses have some attention being paid to soft skills, whether it's, maybe it's not even a formal program. Maybe it's just in the interviewing process where you're looking for a certain type of person, but you hear about culture and fit. Sometimes people don't necessarily know how to define culture and fit, but I'll know it when I see it type of deal, but they're still paying attention to soft skills. You know, an energy of a candidate, their, their level of engagement, level of self-responsibility, things of that nature. Why do people do, you know, if it was just the resume, you know, that hard piece of paper that got us the job, it's not, it's, it's, we have to interview, we get reference checked, we get, we do behavioral assessments in these processes, right? To learn as much as we can. To anticipate what kinds of needs there are on a soft skill. So whether it's a formal commitment to soft skill development or the way that it's baked into processes in the culture of an organization, I just, I don't know if there's a ratio. I don't know if I'm trying to think if anybody's ever measured how much of our success is based on soft skills versus, I don't know if anybody's ever measured that ratio.

Hmm.

No, I think it's a great question. I think it's a great question, but I don't know if it, if there's a numerical answer to it.

Yeah, yeah, you're, you're right. Probably is a blend in at different times. There's a, there's a requirement of just some business skills and tools and some principles at play of, you know, return on ad spend and return on investment. And just like, you know, are we charging enough and what are we investing in marketing? Like, there's just some, just some business principles at play there. But then at the same time, of course, You're still, you know, unless, unless we get to a point to where, you know, people are spinning out multi-million dollar businesses with them and AI, which, you know, could certainly be the case down the road. I mean, yeah, you know, um, at the end of the day, that's not here. That's not here now. That's not here now. So I, I got a question. Um, how do you— I guess I'm, I'm getting around this idea of being liked or respected with our team members. Okay. And so what I want to— I'm, I'm curious about is I know myself, and I believe that many of the people that I've worked with as well have struggled with finding that balance. They've struggled with, you know, how close to get to their team members, right? Um, are, are they friends with their team members? Are they not friends with their team members? Because they want to, they want to be able to enjoy the team that they're with, yet they want a performance culture, yet they— whenever they're having one-to-ones, they want to be honest, they want to be able to share with them. And there's this always this delicate balance. And specifically, I'm talking about in small businesses where there's, say, less than 25 team members, right? And so therefore, there's not multi-levels of— sounds like obviously you've done some corporate work. This is, you know, like I was in the corporate world, so you can, you can have many, many, many levels between upper leader management leadership all the way down before you get to the, to the reps that are actually on the ground. Well, in a small business, it's just not the case. I mean, you probably, you have the owner, founder, and, you know, one level of management, team leaders as an example, but there's still some level of connection between the business owner and, and the team, right, doing it. And so I think that there's a lot of people that want to be able to hold the team accountable, they want to be able to have the tough conversations, yet at the same time they want respect and they want— but then they also want to be liked. And Finding that, like, that balance, you know, is oftentimes challenging. What are your thoughts?

Yeah, I agree with you 100% when you say it's challenging finding the balance in anything. You know, balance is power. That's why achieving it is challenging, right? Because if something powerful was easy to get, we'd all have it, right? So balance is power, and achieving balance is always going to be difficult. So on one hand, we should just accept that it's always going to be challenging. If we convince ourselves or are delusional about some sort of ease waiting for us in this pro— we're behind the 8-ball because now we're gonna be frustrated, right? So if we just accept that there's a challenge and we know that heading into our endeavors, then that's gonna help, right? So you said an important word though, and this is where I come from playing the integrity game. What I wanna do with the integrity game at a super high level, if like you rose above my business and look back down on it and say, all right, looking down at this from 30,000 feet elevation, what's this business trying to do? It's a soft skills business. What coaching— so what is it? And the brand promise is to make accountability non-threatening. That's what I really would like to do. And so what, what, what happens is accountability is always gonna feel like an attack when we're not ready to be 100% responsible for our behavior. So if we just start there, like, hey, raise your hand if you're ready to be 100% responsible for your behavior. Okay. If everybody raises their hand, now what we need to do is, is establish jurisdiction, right? The concept of jurisdiction is a really cool one. I remember growing up watching Dukes of Hazzard, right? And Bo and Luke Duke, they would, they're in trouble getting chased by, you know, Roscoe P. Coltrane or Enos, right? And as soon as they got to the county line, as soon as they went over, right, then the cops had to turn around and go the other way because they didn't have jurisdiction. You follow? So the business has needs, right? Individuals inside the business have their needs. They're human-based, they're soft skill needs, right? They are emotional, etc. But the business has needs. And so if we can all raise our hand and agree to be 100% self-responsible, 100% responsible for ourselves, we can try to take the threatening nature of accountability out of it, and then we can start to declare what we're accountable for. So then the question changes from how do I get close to my employees for respect and likability without diluting accountability and authority? Well, the question now can become, or the answer can be, get so close that you're able to have an honest conversation about the needs of the business and the jurisdiction and the accountabilities, right? Does that make sense? So like they would tell me in a, in, in a, like a, an organization that sets standards for the coaching profession to keep arm's length and not make friends with your clients, et cetera. But how can we do the work that we're doing and not develop likability and trust and rapport and relationships? So, the balance that you seek, the balance that you talk about, it's always gonna be challenging, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't, it can't exist. But the thing is, is like for me, I don't wanna see, look at getting close to my direct reports or my clients, right? Or if I'm a manager inside of an organization, getting close to my employees, I don't wanna perceive that as fundamentally and categorically opposed. To accountability. I want to actually use my efforts to get close to build enough rapport to create enough trust to have the conversation about accountability. Hey, we like each other, right? Like, we might go bowling later, but right now we're wearing this hat, right? If we take our hats off and go bowling later, that's cool. And can we keep it straight in different contexts and so forth, right? Um, you know, you could just play it safe and just have a policy only, you know, not to socialize with coworkers, but that's Nearly impossible and, and super unrealistic in so many cases, right? But I would just lean in, right? I, I, I wouldn't wanna see them as opposed. The heads and tails, yin and yang, left and right, up and down. Relationships and accountability, but accountability doesn't have to be threatening, right? So we gotta get close enough to have the conversations that take the threatening nature of accountability out of it so that we can— accountability is a hotter knife through warmer butter.

What, um, what element does motivation play specifically in when you have a team member that's underperforming?

Well, motivation, um, um, you know, if somebody's underperforming, there's— it's so multi-determined, right? Um, There's so many things that can create lack of performance. Is it not understanding expectations, not having enough modeling, not having enough training, not, you know, the way things are delegated? Is it competition? Is there backstabbing? Is there misinformation, miscommunication? Is there an overwhelm, an overload of what's been assigned and where the person doesn't know? How often is the supervisor meeting with and guiding and supporting? What's the difference between management and leadership? Right? So sometimes, you know, if we look, you know, one of the places to look at an underperformer is who's their leader, right? And what are the— what are the— talk to me, who does this person, this underperformer, report to? Okay, can I have an interview? You mean you? You—

what if it's me? Yeah, what if it's— I'm just giving a hypothetical for a lot of our audience. They may have direct reports that are underperforming, like their direct team members are underperforming.

Yeah. So we want to go back to what's the position description? What was the interview process, right? What are the KPIs, right? How clearly is that communicated? How often do we meet one-on-one with our direct reports? How often do we meet as a team? So they're all hearing the similar messaging. When we delegate, are we delegating? Is this a chore or an opportunity? Is this an opportunity or a test? Are we making ourselves available? Are we giving the support? Are we providing the training? Are we checking in? Do we just decide that they're underperforming or do we check in on them along the way to perform? We gotta hold ourselves accountable first as the manager, as the leader, their performance ultimately, the buck stops with you. Yeah. So I would, does it hurt here? Does it hurt here? Does it hurt here? Did I do a bad hire? Dude, I do a bad onboarding. You do a, is the operations manual up to date? Has their training been updated and is it working? Am I meeting with them regularly? Like, you know, I would look within first at all of the things that I need to do. As somebody with direct reports to ensure, you know, am I, am I doing a performance review? Am I communicating clearly about where they're doing well, where they're underperforming? Why have we identified why? Is it a skill gap? Are they distracted at home? Is there a mental health issue? Is there drama and competition and sabotage inside the department? Are we, have we built enough rapport to get honest answers? Do we need to get HR involved? I mean, there's a lot of questions to ask here, right? But all of the questions I'm asking is if I've got a direct report that's underperforming, I want to look within first at everything that I've done as the leader for that, the status that that person is sitting in right now. They didn't get there by themselves. I hired them, right? I asked them the interview questions, correct? I drafted the position description, on and on. I'm the one that delegated. I'm the one that decides the meeting schedule. I'm the one that showed up late to the meeting as scheduled or canceled it last minute on them or whatever. You follow? Like, we want to hold ourselves accountable because, you know, a real leader, right? There's many arguments that would say a real leader never believes their direct reports are underperforming. It, it's, it's me who's underperforming as I'm, right? There's no difference between my direct report and me. I'm responsible for the team. I lead this team. So if I looked within and I check, I'm like, no, done a good job there. Done a good job there. Now we gotta put a performance improvement plan in place, right? Like, hey, I've done everything I need to do as a leader to ensure that you're successful and supported for success in this role. You've got the skillset, you've got the background. We know you can do it and we that we've paved the road, what's going on? We are going to need to see in the next 30, 60, 90 days different numbers in these metrics that we're going to pay attention to measuring. And so if you're not performing, no hard feelings. Let's get you into a situation where you could perform. Let's move you to a different job that's better for your skill set, or let's, you know, turn over the position because the person that's underperforming, imagine what's going on in their head. They probably know they're underperforming. It's probably stressing them out every day of their career. Right. And, you know, are we giving them the resources to communicate about that and to get the help that they need? And these are the questions that I would be asking leadership, management, supervision about an underperformer.

Yeah, I think, I think it's what I hear is extreme ownership, which is really Jocko's concept. And to be able to say, Look, I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, people listening to this, there are times that, no, that a team member is underperforming. They continue to make mistakes. If they're in sales, there's such an easy relation between what is expected of them, their quota, if you want to call it that, and what they're selling. Like that, that is, it's just easier in sales typically to do that. And I'll just use that one as an example. So I think to your point. To be able to say, no, they are underperforming, but it's my fault. And so I can tell you, I can accept the ownership and the responsibility that I have to get them up to speed of where they need, where they need to be, which is why I was really kind of going a little bit with around, you know, I've heard people talk about inspiration and motivation and motivation As I've heard some people say, that motivation is the thing that kind of gets you, gets you going, maybe, uh, get some lift. But then it's inspiration. So motivation comes from external and inspiration is internal. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, um, semantics, right? Tomato, tomato, you follow? And there's denotative meanings of words which we could find when we look up in the dictionary, and then there's connotative meanings of words which is cultural usage. Like, right, if I ask somebody what is What does dog mean to you? Somebody might say companion or fluffy or furry or cuddly or loyal, right? But in the dictionary it says flesh-eating domestic mammal. Okay. So one of my thoughts on this is like, I don't wanna spend too much time splitting hairs in my frame, in my ecosystem, in my approach to leadership, internal and external is within the category of motivation, right? So as a coach or as an agent of behavioral change, whether that's through coaching, consulting, training, speaking, keynotes, books that I write, whatever. If I'm motivating somebody to either stop doing something that they're doing or start doing something like DISS, decrease a behavior, increase a behavior, start a behavior, or stop a behavior, right? Now there's, that's, now I need to motivate them, right? And, and there's, to me, motivation has internal and external. So external motivation is the strategies, the tactics, and the resources. That's, that's outside of us, right? So if my, like, you're ready to laugh a little bit. My wife wants me to cook dinner for the 3 kids. She can provide external motivation by saying, hey, Jeff, you know, the ingredients are out there, the pots, the pans, the utensils, and the instructions. Oh God. Now I'm motivated. I don't wanna cook for the kids. I wanna, you know, go, go, go out to eat, right? But if she's gonna make it that, give me the ingredients, the tools, the strategy, the instructions. Now I'm more motivated because I see a how-to. You follow? Okay. But if, when it comes to internal, if I believe because of some burn trauma at 3 years old that I'm a klutz in the kitchen and I'm gonna hurt myself, cut myself, or burn my finger or whatever, it doesn't matter how many strategies, tactics, and resources she lays out. Like, you know, if you, if you were the best trained sailor, got the best crew, had the best boat ever built, was given a blank check from the Queen and the best map stargazers could create to date, you got all of everything you need to go discover new land. But if you believe the world is flat, despite all of those strategies, tactics, and resources, you're not going. So for me, when we talk motivation, it's both external proven strategies matched to a behavioral style. Because I'm not gonna assign the same strategy to an analytical that I am to an emotive, right? A persuader promoter is gonna, we want a people-oriented strategy where a coordinating analyzer, we want a systems and details-oriented, but there's strategy for everything. Anything that's been done, there's strategy for it, right? Equifinality is multiple paths to the same destination. So usually, Bradley, the strategy, the tactics, and the resources is the easy part. Usually the hard part is the checkup from the neck up, is getting inside people's minds to understand what they believe to be true, right? What is, what are their beliefs? What's a feeling of certainty about what's true? And then the best motivators can reframe, create, create alternatives, maybe even replace limiting beliefs with empowering alternatives. Really take the time to peel enough layers of the onion to get to the core belief that's preventing the behavior. Back to underachievers, right? I don't get it. They're capable, they're qualified. We interviewed and da da da. I don't get why aren't they performing? And it's a checkup from the neck up that needs to be done. And I don't know how many managers inside of organizations are trained in behavioral intervention techniques. So I always believe that leaders, anybody with direct reports, would be better off knowing what a world-class coach knows, right? And so people go to a shrink to like heal wounds in the past, but they come to coaches to change behavior despite the wounds. Does that make sense? So we know a thing or two about changing behavior, getting people into action, you know, creating habits, eliminating bad habits, sometimes even intervening in emotional addiction and things of that nature, right? So to me, motivation is the big umbrella and internal and external falls beneath it. Inspiration, to me, it's less tangible. It's more like an idea. I'm excited, I'm inspired, right? But that's all to me. That's all in the head, right? Until now, what about the action? When we focus on behavior, that's where I'm gonna bring the word motivation in, right? I can be inspired but not motivated. You know, I've been inspired sitting on my couch watching the Olympics, for example. It's timely that the Olympics just ended, right? Like, oh, I'm inspired to be an American, or I'm inspired to enjoy athletic competition at the highest level, or I'm inspired to cheer, or I'm inspired to see, you know, athletes differently, or whatever it is. But I'm motivated to go work out. I'm motivated to change my diet. I'm motivated to, you know, get up early and walk for an hour, whatever it is, right? So for me, my thoughts on motivation is the jurisdiction of behavior, right? Whereas inspiration's jurisdiction could just be excitement, emotion, right? Internal, if that makes sense.

Um, how does somebody— what are the typical pains that a business owner or someone is experiencing that they come to you because they want to be able to solve it?

Wow. In no particular order, scale, right? They have a hard— they built the business from scratch and they have a hard time letting go of all of the responsibilities that they took. You know, a lot of business owners started off with their initials in every box on their org chart. And as they've, as the business has grown, maybe they're not letting go of certain things. So back to a jurisdiction piece, you know, a successful business owner, you, you will rise to a situation where their initials are only in the ownership box or whatever technician box they want to be in or whatever management box. But if you keep your initials in every box and micromanage, so that's one thing, being able to have confidence to hire and to delegate and to offload and be okay with things being done around 80 to 86%. As well as I would have done it if I did it myself. So, you know, like sometimes steps backward to take steps forward. You were talking about it before, underachievement, right? Performance issues, right? Management, holding people accountable, holding self and others accountable. You know, I think that most of the problems in organizations come down to communication, right? Lack of communication, miscommunication, etc. But business owners, they, they're out of balance sometimes. Right? They're not spending enough time with family, or maybe they're hiding at work and convincing themselves that they have to be at work because of this and that and the other when they're running from, you know, or avoiding the things at home that they really need to be addressing. You know, a lot of times, I don't know if you're married and kids or whatever, but my wife and I talk about that, you know, we agree, you know, sometimes work's easier than raising kids. You follow? You know, working on our job sometimes is easier than working on our marriage. Right? So I think business owners need to pay attention to who, what, you know, what they're really married to, finding balance. Sometimes business owners, they, they, they want more prestige, right? They're like, all right, I've raised this business, it's cool, but I'm at a plateau. So they want to write books or they want to develop speaking or they want to go beyond the business and be not just having a job inside their business, but they want to be a subject matter expert or they want to be, an icon in the industry. Like, you follow, they want to move into speaking and writing books and consulting and expanding their reach. You know, most business owners have staffing issues. Most business owners have HR issues. You know, and I'm not a compliance HR guy. I'm not a, you know, payroll and, you know, HR guy. I'm the training and development. But I learned a lot about issues. A lot of times, you know, business owners, not, not you, of course, right? But, you know, a friend, right? It's accountability. Who holds the business owner accountable? They don't have a board yet, or they, you follow, you know, the CEO there. So they're hiring people. They're hiring yes people. It's, it's so people want their job and they want their paycheck. So they won't say what needs to be said. They won't challenge up and manage up, if you will. So those are just, you know, insulating themselves with yes people, or groupthink, you follow. And, you know, a lot of times, I mean, those are just a couple off the top of my head.

Hmm. Well, people want to find out more about you and your book and your work. Jeff, where would you point people to?

Well, yeah, we're— we TheIntegrityGame.com is, is what we're building. That's where people can find out, um, some of what we're doing. Some of the links to, I mean, full disclosure, we've transferred websites and platforms, so some of the links may be broken, et cetera. But still IntegrityGame.com is a great place to learn what we're up to. My personal LinkedIn profile is a great place to go, Jeff Klubeck. And, you know, my LinkedIn profile is great. And, um, you know, do a search, Jeff Klubeck and Integrity Game, and a lot of stuff's gonna come up. I've done a lot of podcasts and, I, I'm growing, but I still respond to my own social media. So Facebook, LinkedIn, those channels are still very, very, um, uh, viable in terms of people that want to get ahold of me or reach out. Um, but theintegritygame.com is where we're sending traffic and we have, you know, our membership site and our 90-day challenge group coaching program. And, um, there's a little video where I explain what is the Integrity Game and, and, and we're, we're, we're building it. So my, my brand used to be Get a Clue, so closely linked to my name, but I realized, no, no, no, no, like, that's not going to work. I have to separate myself. And so The Integrity Game is what we're building now. So we're in construction, we're building at 30,000 feet. So there's some, some links may be broken, but people can learn a lot about us by going to theintegritygame.com.

Awesome. Jeff, appreciate you coming on, man.

Thanks, Bradley. It was great.

You know, it's interesting that we've talked about a lot of different things, and I think soft skills has come up at different times with guests that we've had on, but we haven't done as much of a deep dive into the soft skills of business. And I agree with him that I think that it's very difficult to get an idea of like, you know, how much of success in business is hard skills and soft skills. The reality is it's— there's no way to know, but it does require, you know, both of them. I, I tend to over-index too much for hard skills in business. Um, but over time, to really work on what are those soft skills that I need to be able to develop. And I do agree that they are skills. They are skills that you can ultimately acquire. You know, one of the things that I circled from the conversation, I like that— I, I circled two things really: making or make accountability non-threatening I thought that stood out to me. And then also the DISS, which— DISS, I don't know. So decrease, increase. Can you— do we need to decrease something? Do we need to increase something? Do we need to stop? Do we need to start? I actually like that framework. That was actually pretty good. Enjoyed having Jeffrey on. Check him out at theintegritygame.com. Integritygame.com. Connect with him on social, Facebook, LinkedIn, all of the socials. Appreciate him coming on. Shout out to our podcast sponsors: Coach P Consulting, Club Capital, Today App Pro. If you want to be able to put a great tool to go along with the skills that you're developing with your team, go to todayapppro.com. They are an all-in-one tool that syncs with your corporate-approved CRM to pull your bonus, your compensation plans, and your WordTracks all in one place. Spreadsheets have their place, but when you want to have something that everybody's working off of and is a great experience, todayapppro.com. When I think about skills, I think about the skills of even being able to understand your financials, but you also may want to have somebody that can help walk you through that. And that's exactly what Club Capital can help you to be able to do. They can help you to not Necessarily you have to become the CFO of your business, but they can help you to acquire the right skills and have the right mindset and some of the tools that you need to be able to make better decisions in your business so you can grow top-line revenue, increase your bottom-line profit, and personally be able to take more home for you as well. Go to club.capital, book a demo, speak with someone on the team. If you're an insurance agency owner and you want to see what does it actually take to scale your business, go to coachpconsulting.com. Coachpconsulting.com. He has not only just been able to grow, but he's been able to scale, and he's also helping other insurance agency owners do just that. So if you're in the space, go to coachpconsulting.com. All right everyone, that was a great episode. Till next time, lead well.