Be The Master Of Balance With Bryan Bentley

yeah, and there's 2 things that come up for me when I hear that. First, just that I resonate with it personally, because I've been really blessed to be a daddy for a while now. Yeah. And we have 4 kids. And I still to this day, there's nothing that lights me up more and makes me more ready to get out there and rock and roll, work hard. Yeah. And everything than those kids. So I get that really personally. And the other piece is that so often people talk about work-life balance, right? Yeah. This concept. And I like to sort of play poke at that, call BS on that thing too. Yeah. Because Balance is something like, when you think about balance, I always think about somebody like on a tightrope. Right.

Right. Yeah.

That's like a great example of balance. And even if you could learn how to do that, and I think most people could just be— learn how to do that, but how long could you do it for? That's the question, Brian. Like, how long could you possibly keep yourself in balance? And yet that's the thing that people think that they're seeking.

Yeah.

Right. So, you know what? I have a thought on it, but I wanna get your thoughts. That's why you're on the show and I'm interviewing you. So what's, what's your thought on this whole work-life balance concept?

Yeah, I think it really is a false— it's a, I like to say off balance on purpose, right? Because the reality is, is if you try to stay on balance all the time, to me, I think about it as a scale and it kind of does the same thing of the tightrope is for me to have work-life balance would say that I have an equal parts of my day is spent with my kids and my wife. And or equal parts with my kids, equal parts with my wife, and equal parts of my job. And the reality is there's not enough hours in a day to make that possible. And the way we work today in the society today, I've got bills to pay too, right? I mean, none of us are independently wealthy that we can just do whatever we want. So to have a perfect balance of saying I spend that time just doesn't work. And I think it sets people up to fail. It sets people up to be unhappy because they feel like they're having to give up something for something else because they never fully attribute And you get stressed at work. It's like, oh, I feel bad about being home because I've got something at work I need to do, or I feel bad about being at work because I got something at home to be and do. And it ultimately sets you up for a negative stress and a negative peace. So my philosophy of it has always been give it all 100%, 110% in the moment that you're in. And you don't have that negative feeling, as you know, you can go to work that day and say, last night with my kids, I was all in. Yes. And because I was all in, then today I'm at work and I'm all in. And as soon as I get home, I'm back all in. But it's being all in in the present moments that you can Because the balance piece— listen, I've been working for this company for almost 30 years. I've never found perfect balance, and I never will. And so you can either die being unhappy trying to find balance, or you can find a better way to do it.

I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof Podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience For the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. Yeah. I think that's truly quotable. Will you repeat what you just said? I want people to hear that one again.

The last part is really, you can die being unhappy trying to find balance.

Yeah.

Or you can find happiness with the unbalance that you have. Probably not the exact way I said it. I never say anything the same way twice, but that's, that's the meaning behind it.

We're gonna go back and we're gonna get that out of the transcript. I'm gonna send it to you. Because I feel like that ought to be on a card that should be on your desk, and you should be leading with those words, my friend. Because—

Yeah. When we print this out, I will put it up on my wall. I'll send you a picture of it as soon as I get it there.

No, that's really good. Hey, listen, if you've ever hung around— not everybody listening to this has kids, or not everybody that's listening to this even likes kids, I don't know, but I think most of us do, or whether it's our nieces, nephews, or whoever it might be, right? If you've ever hung around with a 2-year-old, 3-year-old, 4-year-old, They command your presence. Absolutely. That's what they do. They will not tolerate, frankly, you not being fully present with them. And you know it when you're with them if you're not, because you can feel it. You can feel like, hey, they won't let you split the way we are constantly splitting ourselves into pieces and multitasking to the nth degree, to the point where probably millions of people walking around with ADHD that aren't technically

Yeah.

Wired that way originally, but they are now that way, right? Kids just won't let you do that. So I think that's one of those good things that whether it's your kids or it's somebody else's kids, not a stranger's kids, by the way, like caveat to that, right, everybody, please. Yeah. I want to be getting like emails that say, I got arrested because I followed, you told me go sit down with a 3-year-old and then all of a sudden the police show up. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah.

We don't need that.

My 4-year-old is the best salesman in the world. I mean, my 4-year-old. Can command what he needs me to do, and he never takes no for an answer. If all the salespeople I work with could just sit in front of a client, when they say, no, I'm not interested, they'd be like, no, that's not a good enough answer. Let's figure this out. How can I make this work?

Oh, dude, seriously, you might— again, this is perfect stuff here. You might bring your 4-year-old in to train your sales team. Like, have a little workshop that gets led by your 4-year-old son that says, listen, here's how you get what you're looking for. But, of course, everybody's gotta win in this. Right? So, Dad, I want you to do this, but I want you to do it with me. Right?

Yeah.

Like, we're gonna have fun together. So, yeah. Yeah. That's so cool.

Yeah.

God, the lessons, the lessons that can be learned from kids. Hey, I didn't ask you this beforehand. So, not everybody has the time or even has the interest in reading a book, but is there something that you've either read recently or something that you're currently reading that you really love?

Actually, I just had a meeting with my team yesterday. I charged my team last, at the beginning of the year, that we're going to go through 4 or 5 books this year. I've not been the guy who reads a bunch, but that's one of my habits that I'm developing more over time as I get a little older and more mature, that, that, that really is a skill that I didn't develop before. And so the book that we're going through right now is called Atomic Habits. I'm sure you've heard of it by James Clear.

Sure.

And that's what's been really charging my team. We spent 3 hours just walking through the first 5 or 6 chapters of the book, and there's so much to take from that on a personal and a business level to really, really change your habits and get away from— it's almost like the balance thing. One of the things they talk about is winners and losers all have the same goal. You know, if you go run a marathon, the guy who won the race and the guy who lost the race all were trying to win the race, right? They both had a goal. that they were going to win the race. And I joked with my team, I said, maybe the last place guy only had a goal to finish, but at least the first, the top 10, they had a goal to win that race. And the guy who came in first and the guy who came in 10th both had the same goal. The difference in what happened was really the process that they did to make it to achieving the goal. And if you build the process the right way, then you don't walk out as a failure. And it's not short-lived because the process never stops. And that's really, that's the book I've been going into now. It dives into a little bit of that. I won't get, I'll digress. But, yeah, it's been a good read both personally and business-wise.

I read that book during the pandemic. I remember, and I read it when I was going to the YMCA and I was sitting in the hot tub. That's my favorite place to read a book. In fact, I'm gonna hold up a book for— this will be a little annoying to people maybe that are just listening to this and aren't looking at it on YouTube, but I'll describe it as I'm saying it. So, in fact, Brian, Tell me what this looks like to you.

It looks like a well-read book. It— maybe it fell in the hot tub. I don't know. But, but it looks like it's been gone through a few times.

So this is not James Clear's book, by the way, for folks. I'm holding up a book called The Snowball. It's Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder. This is an epic book. What this is is a business course, a great business course right here. And it took me forever because I'm a bit of a slow reader, but But it looks this way because, again, that's one of my favorite things to do is either sit in the sauna or sit in the hot tub and—

Yeah.

Quietly and read. I read James Clear's book there, and part of what I, I took away from his book from that, that I still think about today is habit stacking, which you may have— Yeah. Got to already. Yeah. So the habit stack that I created for myself based on that situation was I realized I hadn't been talking to my mom on a regular basis. I was feeling guilty. Like you were saying, people, we're splitting ourselves. We often kinda Have these other conflicting emotions that are going on at the same time. And I was thinking, when is it? It seems like I'm always busy. I'm always moving to and from something. And so I said, well, I'm gonna stack a new habit. The habit I wanted to create was calling my mom on a more regular basis, not just when I felt guilty or whatever. Yeah. So I said, well, I'm going to the YMCA to swim 3 times a week, and at least, but then it was 3 times a week. I go, so here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna stack that habit I know I'm already doing with this new one. So every time I get in the car to leave the YMCA to go home, it's got 10, 12-minute drive home. I'm gonna call my mom the second I get in the car. And that's what I did. And so that, that new habit became embedded in me. And to this day, I just call my mom pretty regularly now because that became a habit.

Right.

So love that. Selfless, shameful promotion, self-promotion. This is your next book, my friend, with your team. It's called Change Proof.

Change Proof. That's right.

Yeah. And we—

you think about the Atomic Habits and Change Proof. Those 2 processes really go perfectly hand in hand, right?

Yeah.

Because stuff is gonna change, and it's gonna be in our control or out of our control. And so if you have just a goal, if you just set a goal of this is what you're gonna do, and then all of a sudden something changes in your world, you're gonna be like, off script. You throw your hands in the air, and you don't know where you're gonna go. But if you learn the resilience and the process that you talk about in your book, the resilience piece and the process piece, and put those 2 together with those habits, you're gonna win every time.

Dude, I couldn't have said it better if I'd given you the words of myself. And I— what a pivot you made. What a pivot you did there, Brian. Oh my goodness. Oh my God. I haven't seen the Pivot

book. I'm gonna get that one next.

Oh my God. So funny. The book I just finished. So again, back to something else that I absolutely love, and I'll recommend it to you too after your team. By the way, I will send you— I'll say this right here publicly. There's a great book discussion guide that goes along with Change Proof. I'm gonna send that to you. I'm gonna make sure that somebody from our team sends that over because it is really cool when you're guided through a book with certain questions that the author or somebody else thinks is, like, really the, the good ones that will lead that conversation. Because sometimes you get together with people to talk about a book, and then somebody's like, well, who's in charge and who's asking questions? Like, to use your word, what's our process here? And you don't wanna, you don't wanna waste time. So in any event, we'll send it to you. The book I just finished is called Shoe Dog, and it's the Philip Knight kind of business memoir. And, dude, I'll say this. That is an epic story. So those that don't know who Philip Knight is, Phil Knight is the founder of Nike. But for, I guess, the first 10 years, and I found this out through the book, I'm not revealing, you know, giving it away here. It was called Blue Ribbon. The company was Blue Ribbon, which, which, like a classic entrepreneur, he was in Japan with this idea, this crazy— this is what he calls it— the crazy idea that he had to sell his dad on just to borrow $50 and ended up on this trip to Japan in 1962. And he's in a shoe manufacturing facility speaking with this group of Japanese businessmen. And this is not far after World War II ended. I mean, this is a funky time for American businessmen and Japanese businessmen working together. And then Japanese society as a whole was rebuilding after devastation. But they ultimately said to him, you know, they were very, very impressed and respectful and they wanted to do business. They said, so tell us the name of your company. And in the moment, the guy goes, because he said, you do have a company? He goes, yeah, I do. And he was a runner in college and whatnot. He goes, it's called Blue Ribbon. He made that up outta thin air. And lo and behold, through a lot of great drama, the natural drama of businesses stuff, which is in the book, he gets 10 years under his belt. And then one of his early employees comes up with the name Nike and there's a whole backstory for it. So it's a great read. Really cool.

Yeah. Even the story of the marketing person who came up with the swoosh and it was just like, yeah, the logo, right? I mean, the way they came up with the logo and they paid her, it, I mean, it was like, You got next to nothing for that back in the day when they—

Oh yeah. They paid no money for it.

I mean, yeah. I was like, it's like today you would have ChatGPT build it for you. Just build me this logo. It was effectively what they had back then.

Yeah. I'm actually gonna, it's funny enough, I'm gonna have our team read that book too, because the element of, again, business school wisdom, but better than business school, frankly. I'm not putting down business school, but like wisdom that comes from being an operator. Until you operate a business, till you've worried, I'm not saying you have to have had this worry, but, but when you've worried about making payroll, when you've been up at 3 o'clock in the morning worrying about whether you're gonna make payroll for people that you want to take care of and they take care of other people, right? Like, then you don't, you don't really, you just don't get the gist of business. Business is this razor's edge thing, right? One day you could be literally thinking you can't make a mistake and the next day you're Lehman Brothers, right? I mean, it's shocking. Absolutely.

Right.

So it, you know, I wanna get a sense of where has that happened in your business experience? And if you could be detailed about it, great. If you don't wanna be, that's okay too. But I wanna, where's that razor's edge where you got to look over the precipice and into the abyss and how that all kinda play out? People love to hear those stories, those pivot stories, if you will. So I'm gonna ask you for one right now if you could, Brian.

Yeah. So Probably my best pivot story, it was not, I mean, there's probably several that we pivoted some of the organizations or some of the areas within the organization that I was running, where I pivoted how they managed things, how they did things, a sales team. But I'll probably tell you more of a personal one that it's business related, but it's about me personally. It was probably about 12, 15 years ago. I was asked to take over a big market and move out of my comfort zone. I grew up in Colorado. I moved to Utah with some family. Ran the business there and I was given an opportunity to move to Texas and take some things over. But that for me was a personal pivot piece that I had to leave home. Right. So there was part of that of leaving.

Brian, will you, we just fill in a little backstory for people. Just tell us the company and the industry you're in just so people get a sense. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So I work for the company Service Corporation International. We're the largest funeral and cemetery company in the world. We own funeral homes, own cemeteries, but the role that I play in, and I've done everything from washing toilets When you had to, when things were slow, to doing the funeral arrangements, helping families with funerals, going out in the middle of night and bringing someone's loved one back into our care. Primarily what we do today, though, is we help families plan for the future, which is great, which is really just meeting with people who are in their 60s and they're thinking about looking at retiring. But I got to make sure my investments are in place. And one of the investments they do is investing in their funeral plan. But that investment is also an investment in their family because That means their family doesn't have all the hardship of what they need to do when that happens. So there's an emotional investment and a financial investment that we help people do. But I've been doing that for, like I said, almost 30 years now. So, so yeah, so I was asked— if I go back to that, I was asked to move from a very stable operations role where I was running a bunch of markets out of, and my home base was out of Salt Lake City, and move to Dallas and take over a very large Dallas Metroplex. and run a sales organization there. And I had to— when I came in, the sales organization was doing good. It was one of our better sales organizations, but I had the challenge and the request to really pivot that market from being a high discount, high price sensitive market to a high value market where we switched from being, how do we be the lowest cost competitor to how do we have the most value in that? And so for a salesperson to be able to go in and say, listen, I can give you 40% off if you buy it today. But now going in and being able to say, listen, our discounts are very minimal. We only do 5 or 10% off on a discount ratio. But here's why and here's what that value is. So it takes a salesperson a long time to make that shift. So I went through that process to make that pivot in the market. But in order to do that, sales really plummeted for about 4 months. I went through 4 or 5 months where I went through a big downhill and the scrutiny was, Brian, we gave you this market who's been— that's been doing phenomenal for years. And the one question, one thing we told you when we gave it to you is don't screw it up. And so, and now all of a sudden the market's not hitting the quotas, not hitting the numbers in what it needed to be. And I said, trust me, we'll get through it and we'll be better on the other side. The win story is, is we were better on the other side. But by the time we got to the other side, the company said, Brian, I think we want to move you into another role. Which was a big pivot for me and a big, big hard piece for me because I was in the trenches making this real thing happen. And the hardest piece about it was the company, when they came to me, said, we're not really sure what that role is yet, which kind of is a code to say, we don't have a job for you right now, but this job isn't the one that we want you to do.

Yeah.

And so it was a big pivoting point for me to understand, what am I going to do next? I've always had this cushion. that I've been able to rely on and what I'm going to be able to do next. Sorry, the Air Force is flying over top of me right now. So I've always had that comfortability of what I was going to do. And what ended up happening was all of a sudden I was in a place where I wasn't exactly sure where my career was going to go. And it took a lot of deep reflection. And the person who kind of was driving, making that decision said, I'm just not sure this is the right role for you. Although we had got through the other side, hindsight's 20/20. It was, it was actually perfect for me and for the market. But at that time, it was a devastating blow. It was a blow that said, I don't, you know, maybe this career isn't what I thought it would be. And maybe this industry isn't what I thought it would be. You know, you start to question absolutely everything.

Sure.

And what you were going to do. And I remember I got put on a couple of special assignments, which caused me to travel all across the country. And so I was on the road 6 days a week. for 3 months straight. I remember one time looking at the book that I was reading at the time, and every ticket was a Delta ticket, row 5. That was the nature of habit. Row 5, every ticket. I pulled them all out and going through that process. And the change point for me was really when I called that leader in my organization and said, listen, I'm not mad at you. I'm not upset with you. I said, it was a change for me that I wasn't ready for. But I said, I only have one question. And the one question is, whenever I'm in an opportunity in the future, how can I do things a little bit better, a little bit differently that would help me be more prepared for things in the future? And I'll never forget, he said, listen, he goes, you did a great job. He said, but you seem to procrastinate a little bit. So it seemed to take you too long to make decisions. Well, my perspective was I wasn't taking a long time to make decisions. But I wasn't communicating what I was doing in the decisions I was making. So from afar, it looked like I wasn't doing anything because nobody saw the different steps I was doing. From afar, it looked like we've given you a task to do this, and it wasn't done. And when we met with you, you're like, yeah, I would admit, yeah, it's not done yet. But all along the process, I never explained all the different things I had done to slowly make my way towards that decision, which looked like for them that I was procrastinating or not getting things done. So I took that to heart and really understood how that was. You fast forward a few years. When I fast forward a few years, there was an opportunity to move out of the field into the corporate office and take up a role that really had a lot of impact and a lot of influence on our, all of our markets. So I was just driving one market. Now I had an opportunity to interview for a role with the same company. that impacted every market we served. And during the interview process, I realized that the person who was interviewing me was about to retire. And the person who was that leader before that said, I don't think you're the right role for that, was gonna take— was the incumbent to take the job, which meant I was gonna be working for that person. But I had taken to heart enough of what I did that that person rehired me or re-put me in that position, had enough strength in saying, I'll put you back in that position. And today we are side-by-side partners that go through thick and thin together with every little piece of it. But if I had not humbled myself to really understand what that change was gonna be like, Yeah.

You

know, I, I wouldn't be standing here today. I wouldn't be in this industry today. I would've let the negativity of the goal that I was trying to pursue and that the change that happened in front of me that I wasn't ready for, I would've let that just overwhelm me as I tried to push it forward without slowing down. And I would've crashed and burned. And it was just a huge piece. It was a pivotal change in my life. It was a pivotal change in my career, both personally and, and professionally, that brought me forward to where I am.

Wow. The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilient leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you Already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. Yeah, Brian, I'm so grateful that you shared that story. I don't know how else to say— I mean, I would say more, but I'm grateful because I'm imagining how many people are listening to this right this second that are going, wow, that wasn't That's not a 2-cent piece of advice, right? I heard here. That's like super, super good. Such high-quality advice or wisdom that comes born out of, of pain. I mean, there's pain, pain in what you just explained. And we got to feel a little bit of that too. So when we choose that path, like, am I choosing a path to kinda dig my heels in on something, or am I choosing the path of humility to— Yeah. Just like you say, to humble myself, to ask the questions like, What am I missing here? What am I not seeing here?

Yeah.

That person didn't put you in a role to set you up for failure. I mean,

right.

In hindsight, you know that, right? That's not what the person did. But the fact that you got put in that role, but then weren't, as you said, prepared, and then asked that question for the future, how could I be better prepared? I mean, I think you got a gem for yourself, and now you just passed it on to all of us, which is that Communication is gonna lead into my next question more than into a statement of my own. I see some things going on in the world, in the business world regarding the word communication.

Yeah.

And you just said that, that part of what was missing there was that because your communication was lacking, people assessed you as procrastinating when that's not actually what you were doing.

Right.

So in your world now and in the place where you sit, What do you see in terms of this word communication among people? Do you have a sense of, of whether communication is lacking or is like, and I don't mean specifically in your company, but even in other areas as well. What do you think about that?

Yeah, I think there's a ton of that in every realm of life. You see it out in social media, you see it in just normal media, you see it within the business. But when you look at within the businesses, I've always come with a process and my leadership style is I have to give people direction on what to do. But when I give directions, a little bit different than some business leaders is I always try to emphasize the why behind it. Because I think if people can buy into the why behind it, then they'll buy into what they're doing and how it impacts and where it really grows from and how they can move that stuff forward. Where I see a lot of communication missing is where people say, this is the direction we're going and toe the line. Right? Or push it forward, or this is what we're doing. But if you don't take time to really understand the why behind it, or don't take time to, with the communication process, I think, and part of it comes with relationships too, with the relationships that I have with my leaders that I have the ability to work with every day, both up and down in the food chain, those relationships, I can anticipate what the heartburn is going to be for these decisions,

right? Yep.

And what the win's going to be. And if you can anticipate what the heartburn is going to be, When you communicate, you can emphasize on the bigger why pieces and to make sure that the why overwhelms the heartburn, because that's where we win. And I think we have a viewpoint where a lot of people only see the one side of it. They see this is the side that I need to make sure I push. And whether it's a corporation that says the one side of it is we're driving revenue,

right?

There's a side to it that has the human impact, the process change impact. Our company, SCI, we used to go by the slogan. It was SCI, and internally we talked about it being Sudden Change Imminent. Uh, it wasn't Service Corporation International. We used to joke that it was Sudden Change Imminent.

Sudden Change Imminent.

Always changing.

That's hysterical, dude. They got to be— I don't even know how many people right now are laughing to themselves that that's what they should call their business, right? The business they're in is Sudden Change Imminent. Yeah,

yeah, that was the definition of our abbreviation, was Sudden Change Imminent. But that's where people The change is gonna happen to all of us. And I think that's where communication breaks down is people communicate either only the positive and not what the negative's gonna be about it, or they, they communicate what the result needs to be and don't take time to look at the positive or the negative with it so that you can anticipate how you're gonna have to navigate the waters in anything that you communicate.

Yeah. Yeah. I think there's an element of communication today that's just been, that's continues to be covert. that people are not getting the full story.

Yeah.

And then there's also some leaders that manage in the way that parents did and do, I suppose, still. Because I said so. Because I said so. You knew what I was gonna say. Yeah.

I knew exactly what you were gonna say.

Exactly. Why? Because I said it. Like, because I'm your boss. That's why.

Yeah.

Yeah. And though we know those things don't really work, I mean, they might work in the moment. It's an expedient way to handle a situation, but long term, it devalues The relationship, it does not foster trust. In fact, it creates a lack of mistrust, honestly.

Absolutely.

Which when they don't have a story to, and I like to say this to folks too. I mean, our company Workwell, we often get embedded in organizations to talk about these things at a deep level and look

at

manifesting change, creating change. And sometimes we have to really break down that communication to what's underneath it. And so I'll say to sometimes a leader, I say, so did you share the story? Did you provide the backstory? I don't, listen, I got, you know how many things I got to do in a day?

Right.

You think I got time to, like, create a story for everything I gotta help people to understand they gotta implement or whatever? I go, if you do not provide a narrative, what happens is that, and this is the case in the universe, there's no vacuums. The vacuum is always filled by something. Yeah. So if you don't create a narrative, then the narrative will be created somewhere in some other way by gossip, by people making up their own story about what this means, etcetera. So you get a choice.

And I think it stifles leadership growth too. I think that's the big thing that people don't realize is that if people can understand the why behind it and they can start to pull behind it, then they start to understand all the philosophies behind that why. And then your leaders can start making decisions. The people that you entrust to manage your organization for you, they can start making decisions that has the why in mind, right? It goes up and says, listen, every time we've met with Adam, he's talked about this is why we're doing this, is why we're doing this, is why we're doing this. So now when I make this decision down here that made a change as a leader, I'm not just taking direction. I'm making my own changes, but I'm backing it up with this why. And I think when we don't do that, we stifle growth within our organization. And you either have turnover, people just leave, right? Because they don't feel the value, they don't feel the trust. And if you don't have the turnover and people don't just leave, then you end up being more of a heroic manager than you really should be. And not being able to trust your people to make their own decisions. And they don't grow into taking more responsibility and your company, if they don't grow, you don't grow.

So, and in our world, in our language, we'd say they don't develop their resiliency. They don't increase their resilience. Yeah. Because change is something that's gonna, like you said, sudden change imminent. That could be the title of the book of life. And certainly the, certainly the book of life as we know it today. Right? Sudden change imminent. That's pretty cool, actually. I got a couple of questions here before we wrap things up, Brian. So first of all, I wanna know, you brought it up about the way that leaders impact whether people stay. I mean, that's usually the number one reason why somebody goes— Definitely. Finds another job is that their manager sucks. I mean, that's just top of the list. Right? And has been for a while. So how is the health, sort of the mental health and the wellbeing of the folks that you see at SEI? And I'm asking you for an honest appraisal here of Because you know what your attrition looks like. And if there is anything that you've learned about keeping people healthy and happy at your place, I mean, I know there's a lot of people, leaders right now listening to this who would love to learn from you.

Yeah. So I would say the health of the organization is better than it's ever been. You know, I remember being in the organization in the early '90s, and we were the big bad wolf in the industry. And we were the people that were just going out and being aggressive. And that aggressiveness that we had to buy and become bigger and to grow our business That aggressiveness of how we grew our business and buying also became that aggressiveness in how we managed our people. And people didn't adapt very well to it. And we had unhappy people. We had turnover. I think I was speaking to a university the other day on this topic. And I said, and I truly believe it, is that our associates that work together, the people, my teams, whether it's the team that's in the field or the team that's here, here at the corporate office that I work with every day. We don't call each other associates or colleagues. Typically we're like family, right? When I met you the first time in Nashville and we brought all these people together, some of these people I only see once or twice a year face to face, like physically face to face. Now we've got this great video conference, we see them more often, but physically face to face. And when I see them, we hug each other. I mean, that's just the nature and what it is. And what I've been— I just came from a conference in Vegas where I brought in a bunch of people And I talked to him about the process, the Atomic Habits, and how the process is really going to drive your success and that stacking habits is going to drive results. And that process really, and I showed him a period where results are on top and below the results is the process. But then I kind of blew him away to say, really, but below that process is culture. The culture will drive the process, but if you've got the wrong culture, it'll also break down the process. And I think that's really the foundation is what culture are we bringing into the organization? Are we bringing in a culture of inclusivity? And in today's day and age, when I talk about inclusivity, people burr up a little bit. I think people are like, wait, are you going down this path that whether people call it woke or non-woke or anything? And when I met with my team the other day, I said, let me tell you what inclusivity means to me. And what that means to me is I've got 45 people on my team that were all in this meeting. I said, all 45 people of you had different sets of parents, grew up in different houses, had different educations or no educations, had different works, had different managers. You all have different experiences in life that the information you got from those experiences brought to this team will help this team be better. But if some of you are just on the sidelines and not sharing those experiences or saying, well, that makes me think of this, or that doesn't help me with this, or you're holding back with some of that information. Then I don't have an inclusive team that's really pulling everything together and driving it forward. So my inclusivity is not about gender, race, or religious orientation. It's really about every person on the team has strength to help pull this thing forward. And it doesn't matter if you're the person who's only in charge of making sure that the break room is taken care of and the coffee's made and the phones are answered, because that person has just as much importance As the person who's signing the payroll checks, because that's the culture that you really have to instill. And I think that culture is what drives organizations to be better. You know, I'm happy and proud to say that I've not seen a culture better than what we have right now.

That's just beautiful to hear, actually. And the growth that the company is still engaged in. So I can tell that you're a lifelong learner. So I want to, I want to get a sense of where do you feel like you're on your own growth edge at this point? Because 30 years into an industry, into anything really, you put 30 years focus into something, you're gonna be good at it. So you don't have to say that. I know that. And just every other thing that you've said today, just, I can feel that. I can feel the confidence. It's not a cockiness. It's

a

confidence born out of, of all those experiences. So where are you still on your growth edge? Do you see?

Well, I've got something over here on my wall that says adapt and thrive or fall behind, right? And that's really what it's about is adapting and thriving or falling behind. As an organization, as, as a world, I mean, we're changing all the time and I don't see myself in a place where I'm just comfortable in riding this role. I see myself in a place where it wouldn't be hard for somebody to come up behind me with less than 30 years of experience and blow right past me because they've got new ideas and new processes. That's the negative thing about doing something for the last 30 years. Is I've done something the same way for the last 30 years, and there's different ways to do it. And that's why I talk about the inclusivity is there's other ideas and ways to do things that I haven't even thought of because I've only looked at it from this one lens. And so the edge that I tip on right now is what's next? What are the things that I haven't learned? I put myself through a mini MBA course at the university here about 3 weeks ago, and they said, Brian, what track do you want to do this on? I said, I want to do it on finance. I'm not a finance guy. And my leadership says, why do you want to do this? I said, I said, because when the CEO talks and we have those conversations, I want to be able to be right in line, lockstep with how that CEO works. I want to think about that process and what they do. Those are things that there's always growth opportunity in that. Technology's gone crazy. The funeral business 5, 7 years ago was 100% paper, 100% paper. We wrote everything on paper. And over the last 7 years, we've evolved completely to be electronic. And had we not done that in COVID, we would have been in bad shape because you couldn't sit face to face with somebody and engage in that paper conversation. It was a virtual conversation like this that we had to do. So that world of whether it's AI, whether it's the social world, whether it's the new finance world, those worlds are always bleed into every organization. There's no organization that's going to stay the exact same way. And that's why you have to always adapt. I can't be stagnant in my thought process. Yeah, I can't be stagnant in even how I coach my people. This book that I was telling you about, Atomic Habits, this is the first time I've pulled my whole team together. And it doesn't matter what level you are on my team, every single level on my team, we're reading the same book, we're going through it together, and we're all building this culture together because everybody's gotta pull the same way. So my edge is always there.

I love that. The culture piece, it's funny because in our work we hear from organizations that it was their culture that got them through COVID, that they had a strong culture and that's what got them through what was a sudden change. Yeah. Yeah. That's what happened, right? But now we're also hearing that what's emerged post-COVID has been something different, meaning that the culture that came out of COVID is not the same culture for some of these organizations that they went into it with.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I'm just curious, has Have you noticed any shift? Because I think a lot of companies, and I don't think this is necessarily the case with SEI, but maybe it is too, that they're reinventing their culture. They're recreating their culture post-pandemic. And maybe that's even what you're suggesting or saying that's going on by you.

Yeah. I think you have to completely adapt. I mean, even the culture of you're not working unless you're in the office, right? That's the culture that everybody had pre-pandemic.

Right.

And then we forced everybody to be home for 2 years. And then there was a piece of that, that there's people in the organization who said, well, we got to bring everybody back 100% because they're not working at home. I'm like, well, the last 2 years the company has ran and we've gone really well and nobody came in the office. But adapting to how that works and how you engage in people differently, how you manage somebody who lives 1,000 miles away when you used to manage somebody whose office was right next door.

Yes.

That's a different process. That 8 to 5 job, I tell people this all the time. The days that I worked at home when our office was shut down, now granted, our office never fully shut down and I was at the office most every day through COVID except for when my wife said, I need you to work from home a few days to help teach these kids elementary school in between. But I learned that the days that I worked at home, I worked just as much if not more, but my schedule was very different, right? As I would get up, And I would maybe get on my computer and work from 6 to 7:30, and then I would shut it off. And then I would get the kids up, get the kids breakfast, get them going, get them either off to school or onto their schedule. And then I'd jump right back into it and I would maybe work from 9 to noon. And then I might have to walk the dog or I might have to run to the grocery store. I might have to do this. And so I had iterative sprints basically throughout my day versus that marathon of an 8 to 5. And that's hard for some people to do when your schedule is, I'm, I have to buckle down 8 to 5, but somebody you're partnered with to do something with was going to be on at 2-hour, 3-hour chunks of the time. You may have to wait longer to get things done. I like that actually kind of about, you talk about that in Change Proof is you've got to be able to recover, right? You've got to be able to hit that recovery. And I learned during COVID that Those 2-hour blips when I worked for 2 hours and then I'd have to take an hour to get the kids ready, that was me stopping working, but I was recovering.

Exactly.

From that process before. And I came back just as strong, if not stronger. And so doing iterative sprints, I think is a better way. I think a lot of us learned that there's a better way to do it. And unfortunately, there's a lot of companies maybe who don't have the luxury to do that, but they haven't adapted to that because it's just not what they know.

Exactly. And so it sounds like your return to office, your RTO process has been pretty smooth. It seems like that there's— Yeah.

Yeah. I think my team more especially, and I'll tell you why my team said it was more than enough, is because of communication. Because all the way through, I said, here's what we're planning. Here's what we're doing. There was other teams within our organization that when the rule was made, you're coming back to work 3 days a week. They heard about it right before that rule was made and said, in 2 weeks, you got to change and pivot. Where my team knew about this, they knew what their two-day a week, three-day a week in the office schedule was going to be six months before we even instituted the plan.

Yeah,

communication was key to get through all that.

Well, listen, we're going to call it here. Okay, because and I'm only saying for a couple

more hours.

No, no, no. I'm just saying because you and I could keep go. I could just we can keep going and going and going, and I'm certain people are going no, no, no, no, no, no. You guys should. Keep talking. Keep talking. Yeah. I just think it's a good place to land the plane. You know what? You can't say enough. I mean, culture is one of those almost ineffable things. It's hard to define it. You just know it when you feel it. You know what the culture of, of an organization is by its feel. And if the feel of it is kind of like, you gotta watch your back. Yeah. This is how we frame it. That's a very different kind of a culture than a culture where people know that you've got their back. Yeah. And a got your back culture versus a watch your back culture is something that we often are thinking about. That's what we want to assess. And nobody really wants to think that that's their organization. But we know that when there's fear, when there's sort of a, you know, not knowing, not communicating, silos of information and lack of transparency and, and all that kind of thing, well, it just, that's what defines the culture because it's how people feel.

Yeah.

In their work. So I'm so happy to hear that SCI, they're doing it the way they're doing it. And the point there is that sometimes you don't do it well and you, you learn from that. I mean, you learn what does work by first knowing what doesn't work. I wanna repeat that. You learn what does work by first learning what doesn't work.

Right.

And so a lot of really great companies, I, I mentioned that book about Nike and Phil Knight and whatnot. You know what? They have a very unique culture, or it's the way Nike was always framed as having this really unique culture, et cetera. But that culture was, went through a period where they didn't do it right and they made a lot of mistakes. Yeah. And in his book, he admits and regrets, frankly, a lot of the mistakes they made along the way, including having to do a lot of layoffs when they weren't doing well. When he said he wasn't a good enough manager himself, the end result of that was that people lost their jobs. Right. And to this day, if you believe him, and I do, I believe he was sincere when he wrote this, he still feels regret about that because you, you know it. And so I think these things are when you can learn from people like you, Brian, when you can learn from seasoned business folks, when you're willing to be open to learning, humble enough to bring in organizations like ours or other organizations that come in and will give you not the emperor's new clothes bit, but will tell you what they really think.

Right.

And if you can hear it, it's hard to hear sometimes, but if you can hear it, you can stand it. Well, then you can learn a little more easier or faster what works without having to go through that pain of first seeing people unhappy or unhealthy.

Yeah.

Et cetera. So SEI has come a long way. I feel grateful for your all success because as I said to you when we were together in Nashville, when I got to speak to your group, The ripple effect of your work in the world is profound. I mean, there's nothing that anybody— I mean, we all share this. This is a shared experience here. Nobody wants to deal with anything less than their own death or the death of their loved ones. Like, that's every day gonna be the last thing on the list of things that anybody wants to think about or deal with. So for you all to, to be there in a compassionate and empathetic way and to provide them with solutions, to make plans ahead of time, to be prepared, So people don't get caught completely unawares and unprepared. I just think that's such valuable work, my friend, and I thank you for it.

Yeah, I've often said it's a calling, not a job. And so I appreciate the comments. There's nothing more rewarding to me than the emotional paycheck that I get each and every day, whether it's from a colleague like you, whether it's from one of my employee colleagues, or whether it's that family that I helped plan in advance 15, 20 years ago that says, We couldn't have been here and this wouldn't have gone as smooth without what we did today. So it truly is a calling on my heart that I'm here to take care of people and help people in all different aspects.

Yeah. Brian, thank you so much for the conversation today. And I know it was super valuable for me. I know it was valuable for everybody else that's listening. So thank you again, sir.

You're very welcome. Had a great time. Thanks.

Well, I hope you felt the same way as I did about that discussion. Brian is just a heck of a guy. I mean, He's humble for somebody that has achieved as much as he has and has had as many experiences and has been in so many leadership roles. And, and the common denominator, I think, is that in every instance where he was asked to take on something new, even without the experience to give him confidence that he could succeed, he nonetheless moved forward and said yes to those opportunities. And I mean, we've heard this with other of the leaders that we've had on the show just in recent months. And I think I'm thinking of Andy Clement in particular, 3 decades with another major Fortune 50 company. And so this is a theme I think that we are seeing again and again and again in leadership roles, that people that are willing to go into that unknown, that space of uncertainty. And whereas other people sometimes they crave the certainty, they crave the clarity, they crave the known versus the unknown. Because it, as we would imagine, it provides a level of security and confidence. And yet so often it is the case that people that are succeeding in growing their careers and, and elevating themselves within organizations as well as in other areas, entrepreneurial areas, and in pretty much almost any area, I think, in life, our growth is often just outside of our comfort zone, and our growth is often in the unknown, in the space of what is uncertain. And the goal here in our work in the resilience space and working with leaders and working, coaching often senior-level leaders and working inside organizations, the goal is to help people to leverage the power of uncertainty, the kind of uncertainty that leads to this growth, this opportunity for growth. It doesn't always translate into that. There's no guarantee. If there was a guarantee, it wouldn't be uncertain. That's the riddle of it. And yet in looking backwards and being able to sort of reverse engineer the process, if you will, that's one of the common threads. And that's why in the book Change Proof, the subtitle is Leveraging the Power of Uncertainty as a Catalyst for Long-Term Resilience. And you might say long-term growth as well. So Brian is just another one of those examples, and I love the conversation. I wanna invite you as well to let us know what you thought of the conversation. You go to adamarkel.com/podcast and leave a comment there, or even a question for Brian or myself. We would love it if you would share this podcast with friends or colleagues, people that you think would really benefit from listening to it. And if you take the few seconds, I know it doesn't take very long, but it is a commitment to provide a rating, provide your thoughts directly to the platform where you've consumed this podcast, whether it's Apple or, or wherever it might be, Stitcher or something, Spotify. And you could give us a 5-star rating. That only helps us. And I, I so appreciate it. I don't wanna make any assumptions there. About your time or about what else you have committed to, and I don't wanna create any overwhelm for you. But thank you in advance if you choose to do that. We so appreciate it. And we'd also love for you to take 3 minutes, and I do mean just 3 minutes out of your day to take care of yourself by finding out how resilient you are in this moment. And you can do that simply by going to rankmyresilience. That's for your resilience. rankmyresilience.com. And in 3 minutes, 16 questions later, you're gonna get a great snapshot view of your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resiliency and health, well-being, etcetera. So for now, anyone, I just wanna again thank you for being a part of our community. Thank you for listening in. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us as well as the wonderful compliments that we get. I don't know else to say except ciao for now, and thank you so much again.

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