Driving Growth Through Leadership Resiliency With Mike Lepper

I have a relentless work ethic. You know, I want to be the best. And I don't think it's exactly, you know, explicitly in there, but you had kind of alluded to it. Started my journey in 2010 as an entry-level salesperson. And the success piece, the hunger, the grit, you know, just excited to do what we do and, and really love to be surrounded by the people because the people are what it's all about. And that's what drives me every single day is coming in here and making a difference in an organization and watching people grow. There's nothing better than it.

Yeah. It's sort of a common thread when I speak to people that are at your leadership level. I hear something similar. In a conversation I had just the other day, this wonderful woman, she was describing the difference between being a driver because she's sort of a self-made person, very, very self-composed and self-motivated and a go-getter and gritty and all that stuff you're just kind of alluding to there. But she said, but when I got in the role of CEO, what I realized is that Instead of being a driver, which is how I've been successful in my life, I needed to be a multiplier. And I'm just curious what you think about that phrase, or, I mean, you kind of were just sort of saying something similar to that.

Yeah. I've had individuals say that to me over the past, and they've said it in somewhat of a different way, but I think it connects, is plant your seed in many different areas and allow multiple different divisions of the company to grow, multiply in different areas. And just because you were maybe on the sales side or the service side or the admin side or wherever you sat doesn't mean you should just stay there, right, in that area. Go plant that seed across the organization and multiply and, and make, you know, great people all over the place.

Yeah. 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. And maybe, I mean, in my role I get to see this, so perhaps I have a different perspective than you, but do you think salespeople in particular that continue their journey up into senior-level leadership roles, do they have a harder time moving from that driver mentality to that multiplier mindset?

I would say absolutely. I mean, I You know, over the course of— I'm coming up on 15 years next month, first job out of college for me. And I met with a ton of CEOs, and a majority of your CEOs out there were sales professionals early on in their career. That's not an uncommon thing. And the hard thing about being a leader just in general is allowing your people to fail and fail forward, right? Because you want to just jump in and do that for them. So I think when you say that, absolutely, you want to drive things because you've been driving things for Probably majority of your career. And what I've realized, especially over the years as I've climbed into different sales, higher-level sales positions, you can't do everything. And it's not sustainable, and it doesn't allow your company to grow if you're gonna try and be that jack of all trades, because you master none, right, in a lot of ways. But you need to allow your people, like I said, to fail forward and grow and coach and develop and train. And that's what true leadership is.

Yeah. I'm going to ask you that. I've never asked anybody this question, but I'm just inspired to ask you this. Is there a particular kind of failure that is the worst type of failure for you? Meaning, as you're looking at people, as you're taking care of them, because I mean, I'm a CEO. I've been in that role for many years. In many ways, I see people as the team is— they're the people I— I don't want to say this in a condescending way because I don't mean this at all. I mean this in a loving way. They're like my family, like my kids, like, you know, or when I was a lifeguard, they were the people in the water. And, you know, you're on the lifeguard set, they're in your water to be taken care of, you know, if they need it, right? If they're struggling in any way, you want to care for them, right? So I'm just curious if in that vein of things, if there's a particular type of failure that when you observe it or the habit of it, that's less, less of a thing that you invite or creates a learning opportunity in those moments. Is there something you have that— Is there anything that gets triggered for you when I ask that?

Yeah, absolutely. The first thing that comes to my mind is just, you know, as companies grow, and we've had 10x growth since I joined the organization roughly 15 years ago, which means a lot of opportunity for individuals. And the challenging part is when you give an individual, you know, that was maybe an individual contributor role, put them into a leadership role, and maybe that leadership role just isn't for them, but you don't know until you try. To me, that's a really hard thing when it doesn't work out, right? Because you want what's the best for them, but sometimes people just aren't cut out to do that. So then it's trying to figure out, hey, they're a great asset for the organization, let's get them in the right seat on the bus. But anytime, you know, potentially it's a step back, it's looked at as a demotion, and, and I don't really see it that way, but I can understand why the employee would. So that's a challenging piece for me, right? It's just working through those changes because it's that human interaction. You built up a great rapport, you built up great relationship, but you also, as a leader, have to do what's best for the organization.

Yeah.

And you know that it's not the right thing, you need to make the adjustment, but you feel like you failed that individual. So, being able to work through those things can be definitely a challenge.

So, I'm going to come back to the question I asked you in a second, but I want to follow that thread for a moment. So, when someone doesn't make it in that management role, and we all, I think, probably are aware of the statistics, they're pretty stark that when somebody leaves an organization, I mean, our company Workwell is all about how to create healthier places to work. Well, we have to to really get under the hood and look at what's going on in order to be able to make or suggest changes there. And one of the things that we routinely hear, and again, all the statistics bear this out, is that people leave more often when they have a manager that doesn't work for them, that they can't get along with their manager, they don't feel supported by their manager, or even some people feel oppressed by their manager. So it's such an incredibly important level of leadership And it's kind of in the middle in an org chart typically. And often that middle level doesn't get a lot of resources. There's not a lot of training devoted to them. Usually, it's sort of somebody who is a great performer in their individual area, whether it was sales or some other place. And they go, oh, great. You perform really well in that area. Right. Now, go ahead and meet and lead other people, manage other people. Right. But they've never been trained for that. So, are there things that you see when somebody doesn't succeed in that role that are sort of the typical telltales that it's not a right fit, as you say, that they're in the wrong seat on the bus?

Yeah, absolutely. So, leadership to me is not always about— some think it's like you have to be the smartest person. To me, you have to be able to motivate people to want to get behind you and go make a difference. And I think that's a common thing that's missed. It's like, oh, they were a high performer in their job, which are all great things to have because then you want high performers to work for you and you carry on that mentality. But if you can't motivate people to go out and do a great job and get them excited about what they're doing every day, because you look at all the statistics out there or any of the reports, they say that people don't leave their jobs, they leave their manager, right, in a lot of cases. So to me, it is how can you get the most out of these individuals? How can you keep them highly motivated to go out and make a difference and do a great job? We have very ambitious goals, you know, here at Impact and .Security. And we want great people, we want great talent. We talk about all the time, we want high performers. And what I've learned, I've been fortunate to take some professional education classes to further what I've been doing, you know, in my leadership roles. And what I've learned a lot at Kellogg specifically from many different, you know, CEOs that have led organizations and now they're teaching in the classroom too, which is just an amazing experience. But they talk about not getting too so siloed Right? With, hey, it's this specific service. It's about cascading people. Like, if you could do a great job in this area, put them in other areas to help grow and develop them so they don't just have to stay, hey, in this one division of the organization. If they're great motivators, they're great leaders, they could pick things up. Like, these skills just get built. I didn't read a book on how to become a CEO, right? I mean, you listen to a lot of things, you read a lot of— don't get me wrong, but you learn a lot of this stuff as you get into it or from your other experiences.

Yeah. There's a question that we sometimes will use as a prompt, and I want to see if this question resonates with you, or maybe you even use it with your folks, which is to ask those people when you see that they've got potential, are there areas that you're great at, things that you're great at, things that you love even, that we're not making use of? Because I think there's a lot of instances where if those employees are siloed to the point that you made earlier, And not getting a well-rounded experience, or, and they are not actually utilizing skills that they know themselves they've got, but their manager, their, you know, who they report to, or, or inside of that particular framework, those talents aren't being tapped. Do you guys ever ask that question of them? Like, what's our blind spot as to your talents is really what, what I'm asking.

Yeah, absolutely. I think a miss is that most managers manage teams, and then there's definitely a component to this, but let me explain. I have always led by, I have to understand the individual on a professional and a personal level. What makes you tick, Adam, is different than what potentially makes Mike Lepper tick, right? And we need to know how to get the best performance out of you on a day-to-day basis. Your personal life may impact your professional. Like, I'm gonna treat people fair, not equal, is what I talk about a lot. So you need to understand each individual on your team and then how that comes together as one team. We have a one-team mentality here at Impact, but every individual has different skill sets. They come from different walks of life. They have different potential, you know, that's out there. They have different knowledge and expertise, and some are really motivated by higher level of education. Some people, you know, that's not for them. So you need to really understand what gets them excited and what gets the fire in their belly and how do they get up every single day and how do they show up? Are they the best version of themselves? So you need to really get to know people. And we're big on culture here at Impact. Like, culture is our staple. I think a lot of companies talk about it, but I don't think they're really about it. You know, it's, oh, we have a great culture and we promote this. We really, from a leadership level, we want to get to know our people. We want to know what drives them and we want to get the most out of them because it's all about them and their families and their growth and taking care of our customers at the end of the day. I mean, that is what it's all about.

I got to see that firsthand. I had the great honor of being a keynote presenter at your annual conference that was in Mexico a couple of months ago. And I got to see both that fun, like literal fun, is an aspect of the culture at Impact. And I mean, you guys have fun with the best of them, I would say.

Yeah. And that was a big part of our strategic plan is just going through the core values of the organization and living that out and making sure that that's aligned with what you're Carrying out day in and day out. Have a great time, have fun at work, right? Be honest, egoless, innovation. We're disruptors in the industry from a tech perspective. I mean, it's all about that. And then bringing the one-team mentality together and all going out and winning together.

Yeah. I absolutely love this. The first time I've ever done this, and I've delivered hundreds of those kinds of presentations, but to read the values out loud with your team, I don't know if you remember that part of it. That was not canned. I wasn't planning even on doing that. But it just— there was so much just energy in the room and alignment and felt just like, you know, not like we're on a football field. It wasn't, you know, a pump-up or whatever, but it just felt so right to read those things and say them aloud in that moment. Just for me personally. I don't know how it landed with your people, but I loved it. I'll just say.

And thank you for calling that out. I mean, we really believe that energy is contagious. And we really feel that it's not just a show that was put on. I mean, definitely, we have struggles like any other organization does, but— You know, we really band together and live out that one-team mentality. Let's work with each other. Let's help each other, right? Let's not put each other down. How can we really get the most out of our people to give them the best opportunity for their success and growth?

So, I want to say this too. You guys have been through— it's not like you're skating on thin air, you know, like on, you know, like you've somehow, whatever the phrase would be, but, you know, You're living in the real world, and the real world is filled with challenges and uncertainty, as everybody knows right now in the marketplace, et cetera. And you're no different. So you've been reconfiguring some things at Impact, right? And I think before we started, before we hit record, I said, so how's it going? Have you stuck the landing? And all that kind of thing. I thought it would be neat to explore that, especially for the leaders that are listening to this that are in the process right now themselves in that exercise at the moment. What's it been like for you and what can you tell us about that?

Here's what I can tell you. If you try and sticking the landing means a lot of different things, it's kind of what we were talking about. But our biggest thing is how do we get this into an MVP, minimal viable product mode, and get it out in the hands of our people? We've spent a ton of time. And here's one perfect example that we really launched January 1st of this year was a sales reorganization. Our business has changed quite a bit from a very transactional hardware commodity-based organization to a true managed services consulting type of business, which is a massive transformation for any type of organization. So what we really tried to hone in on was what we call the bowtie. It's the bowtie model, right? You have the left end, which is the customer acquisition and the experience that they take, getting the contract signed right in the middle, and then the right end of the bowtie is how you take care of your customer through that journey. It's not just about plugging in a switch or a firewall or an access point or something from a tech perspective and a set and forget it. It's how do you take care of the customer day in and day out? So for us, it was really important with that reorganization to get our people in, define what we call swim lanes. So focus is a big challenge that I see for a lot of organizations, and we really wanted to dial in our focus for our people. And overall, it has gone well. We have learned things, and from things that we have launched January 1st, I've adjusted and tweaked a few areas. Because when you actually get into it and the customers are experiencing it— and I think this all goes to customer communication— how are you speaking to your customers? Are you educating them? People generally react and respond in a much better fashion when they're aware of something that's going on. So, hey, we're going to be making this change in the way that we deliver your service. We just want you to understand. You lay it out for them. If there's any service disruption, You know where to come, and we'll explain all that. If you do that on the front end, it's a much better situation when challenges do arise because they know what's going on. If you hide from that, then to them, they're caught off guard, and most people don't like surprises in this world. But going back to your question, have we stuck the landing? I would say overall, very well. We've learned things and we're continuously fine-tuning, but the reorg is in place. We're seeing the results that are already coming in, and we're excited for the many other projects that we have ahead of us in the coming 12 to 18 months.

In your experience, what's the hardest thing about change management? Because, again, that's agnostic to what the change is. Change is the thing that's constant.

For sure.

What's difficult about managing change from your perspective?

When I look at just most organizations' biggest challenge, it's around communication.

I want to raise my hand to say yes, and more than people are willing to acknowledge. But now I really want to get your beat on that. So,

yeah, so I am all about clarity and as much transparency as possible regarding, hey, what's coming, what you can be prepared for. I alluded to the external customer and prepping them. It's no different than prepping your internal people even more. And making sure that they understand what is going on because the human brain and the human body is set up for what we can call survival mode, right? Just how do we survive, you know, on a day-to-day basis? Making change like this for the better of an order, it's just not the way that the brain normally works. So when you could have the people really understand and get buy-in, you know, from the top down and everybody's singing the same song, And we're all aligned. I mean, I think alignment is just the key piece, and there's so many things that you could talk about within that. But the CEO all the way on down has to believe in the mission, has to convey that to the people, right? Has to lead from the front and make sure that all of the people within the organization are understanding of why we're doing it. I'm not saying that they're gonna be happy about it, but they understand why we're doing it, and they're overcommunicated on why we're gonna do it. And Why it's going to be better for them individually, you know, and internally for our internal customers, our external customers, and then how that helps impact Endot Security overall for us to grow into the future, to continue to provide opportunity for our employees.

You know, to me, the way the brain works, it's like you said, it's sort of prehistoric and it's wiring. And so when we don't know something, we tend to figure out or try to figure out what it is we don't know. So that means we're making up a story or we're creating Sort of a structure to replace the unknowns or to fill in the blanks, if you will, so it's not as scary. And often that story is just wrong. It's just flat out not accurate. It's not accurate as to motive or intention or some other, even just something that's even more sort of tangible around what's happening. But certainly as to the why, it can be really misunderstood. So to provide the narrative, to take the opportunity as a leader to lead in that, from that place, um, and own that, I think is a really big deal. What I observe is, is sort of avoidance. Sometimes in cultures, in organizations that we speak with, they'll say, we got a, like, a politeness problem. Um, you mean like, oh really, people are, people are too polite, huh?

Yeah, right.

Wow. Oh my God, that's amazing. You know, they literally emptied out the church and everybody's right there and everybody's—

Good problem to have.

So polite. It's amazing. And I took that— I really early on just sort of said, oh, okay, I'm super curious and I want to meet some of these polite people. But they weren't any more polite than anybody else that I've known. Not really. It wasn't politeness at all. It was avoidance. The culture there was one that avoided conflict.

Right.

And it avoided difficult conversations and avoided talking about things where you didn't have all the answers even. Which is tough, which is a tough thing for a CEO, right? Because you're sort of hired on the, the, you know, at least the premise that you have all the answers. And, and I know from being in that role, that's one of the toughest parts of the crown to wear because you don't have all the answers all the time.

100%. And you— I love that you said avoidance because I see that the most when organizations try and bite off too much, right, or have too many things going on. And then most employees just, ah, This is going to blow over in a week.

Right. It's the idea.

What you're going to do, really detail it out, communicate the plan, execute on the plan, and move it forward and fine-tune where you need to fine-tune. There's a lot of ideas, and I, and I love ideas, and I don't want to suppress anything that's coming from our employees because some of the best ideas for our organization over the last 25, 26 years— come on, we're coming up on— have come from the employees, which is a great thing. But don't bite off more than you can chew type of mentality. Right? Because then that avoidance comes in of where, I'm just going to avoid this for a little bit of time, let it blow over, and wait till the next thing comes.

Do you think your folks have difficulty with feedback? Is that— I mean, if you're sort of assessing, or like, an organization-wide, you know, is that an area for improvement for the folks at Impact, do you think?

You know what, I love that you brought that up. We have been doing a ton in the last 4 to 6 months. We started this transition, you know, it went New executive suite, current executive suite moving into board-level positions, really September of last year. It was official in January, and obviously you were out in Mexico and saw the whole show, and it was an amazing experience. But we started to implement that really in the 4th quarter of last year, feedback loops, and we call it a one up and one forward. We've started it with really our executive team, so myself, Jeff Miller, Anthony Cuco, We are CEO, COO, and CFO, and we're considered the executive leadership team. And then we have a senior leadership team underneath us that are all C-suite members that are really helping us run the business. I say all that because this team has become very, very close. We have a ton of tenure. I think you probably heard that at the Mexico Oil Company. The average tenure is 14, 6 people first job out of college. So it's really exciting that we've had a lot of growth and opportunity, but one thing you don't do a lot is give feedback. So, what we implemented that we learned from one of our executive coaches that we use is give a positive and an area for improvement, like that one forward. You're doing an excellent job on this, this, and this. One area that I could see or like to see you improve would be this. And we do that with a group of 10 of us, and it's amazing how close it's brought us together. And I'm starting to see that again. I'll use that cascade word. down throughout the business. And, um, yeah, it's creating much stronger relationships in the trust piece. Yes. And if I go back to one of those core values of honesty, right, I understand honesty, you know, there's sometimes you gotta have kick gloves around that. I get that. But that feedback is so important because most want it. It's just a tough thing to ask for, or it's a really hard thing to give. But if you get to that relationship, we were talking earlier, just Knowing your people and having great relationships and even giving your boss feedback, right? That is like taboo, right? We don't do that. We've tried to open that up from a communication perspective because just because you're in this position doesn't mean you know every single thing. And we're not those type of people. We don't carry that ego that maybe potentially most do. And one of our core values is egoless. So let's live this out. If we're going to build out a strategic plan, really embody all of those things and carry it, live them out.

And that trust piece is so important. You know, I don't imagine any team or any group of people that are committed to an aligned goal, whether it's a military group, it's a group of people that are supporting each other in business, or on a playing field in sports or something, where you don't look to the right, look to the left, and look in front and look back, and trust that those people have your back. That was one of the through lines that I was trying to bring to life during my talk for your folks, was that whole idea of just how— how do we have each other's backs? Mm-hmm. look like to have each other's backs. And I absolutely think that working on being comfortable in giving feedback and receiving feedback, which is something that so many people are— and it's not because we inherently have a problem with hearing the feedback or giving it even. It's that sort of some ridiculous percentage of folks, I would say well into the 90th percentile, Just learned early on in childhood, and so the groove in the record, the programming, and the habit has been to see that feedback feedback as threatening, as an actual threat. As you say, to the survival mind, that is a threat to survival. When someone says, "I want to give you would be all right if I give you some feedback," it's like I'd rather drink a glass of you know something that's going to make me sick than right exactly. So to break that, to reconstruct that. To develop greater trust so that people really know that they can take risk. Because to me, to go back to that question of if I were asked, what's the one form of failure that I have the hardest time with in my own organization, in ones I see, I would say too, is just unforced errors. And the reason behind unforced errors, which I've given some thought to, so I've looked into it a bit, and to me, it's when people are not Being fully committed in the present, they make unforced errors. And the reason that they're not fully committed in the present often has to do with the fact that they're exhausted, they're depleted, they're running in deficit. From a resilience standpoint, their bank account, their resilience bank account is in deficit, not in surplus. They're multitasking, thinking somehow or another they're going to be great, like you said, doing 6 things simultaneously. They're going to be fully present and really at their best in all 6 of those things. And then they make a mistake. And it doesn't matter to me the size of the mistake, but if it's an unforced error that's caused by that, that's an area that we need to work on.

I agree. Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, it's interesting. And so I'm curious, when it comes to your folks, where would you say they are the strongest in their resiliency? Where are they the weakest in their resiliency, and how does that reflect their leader, you?

I appreciate that question. I think our group is diverse, I think diverse in the best ways. I would say that we have a lot of great people that are excellent executors, and we have a lot of great ideas individuals. And I don't think that you necessarily, you can be the best at both. I exactly haven't seen it. Maybe there are individuals out there, but if you just— you're asking me about my group specifically, I think what we do a really good job of is, is that we have great collaboration. It's just making sure that you can get the right people teamed up together to say, hey, let's get this idea. Let's not spend 2 years trying to get this fully baked and make it perfect because it'll change probably within 3 months, and then a team saying, hey, it's time to get this in that MVP mode, like I was talking to you about, and get that execution done. And then let's fine-tune when it's in place. So I would say that it's a healthy mix of those 2 things. And if I've learned anything, and one of the things that came up in that Kellogg class that came from a professor that ran a $10 billion organization, he had said that it's 10% strategy and 90% execution. And I'm sure that could be argued in many different ways, but when I've really seen what we've pulled off, it's hard for me to argue that. You could have the best strategy in the world and you could spend an ample amount of time trying to build out this strategy and thinking about it, but if you don't execute on it, it's for no good. It's just a strategy that's sitting there. So it's getting everybody aligned in their positions. And I think that was one thing that Maybe we struggled with years or months ago, you know, trying to bake

things to perfection, or—

Yeah, it's 100%. How can we perfect this as much as possible to then get it out there? Where we're in a day and age where things are changing every second, and you've got to be willing to adapt and evolve and really be change agents, what we consider ourselves.

So in your journey from starting in sales at an entry level right out of college to where you are right now, you've had to be resilient. Where have you been the strongest from a resilience standpoint, mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually? Where have you been the most resilient, would you say?

I would say just definitely in difficult times. You know, there's been a ton of change in the business. There has been economic changes in our world, right? I mean, all the events that have hit since— I came out of college, like I had mentioned, in May of 2010. So, we were just coming out of the 2008-2009 recession and all those things. And I didn't really feel it until I got about 6 months on the job. understood what the organization I'm coming out of, then COVID had hit 10 years later. And then there's just been a lot of those things. But it's just, for me, it's just a never-give-up mentality. You're going to have tough days. I try and do my best to not take anything personal. I allow things to roll off my back and just say, you know what? At the end of the day, it's business. And I want to go out there and do my best every single day. But don't take it so personal. You know, it doesn't have to, it doesn't have to completely drag you down.

Did you have the habit of taking things personally earlier on in life? Is that—

Yeah, for sure. I definitely think that, you know, taking things, you know, too critical and not that it's hard because then people are like, well, you don't think it's important. It's just a balance of, I think what sales taught me and especially when I started, we were a transactional hardware-based organization where I would knock on 60 doors a day. And I would hear 55 to 58 nos or get the door slammed in my face. You want to talk about building resiliency and understanding that, hey, you know what? If you take that no and compound it with another no, you have to be wired a little bit different upstairs in a lot of ways to be able to take those shots every single time. But you have to allow for those 3 to 5 yeses that you would get on a day. To just take over all of those nos. And that's— that was kind of my mindset. It was a game, right? It was a competition, uh, against my peers of, hey, how many appointments did you set? And, you know, how many yeses did you get? And how many contracts did you sign? And you just make it really competitive. And that's what we've carried out within the organization. It's how do we push each other to be better? You know, the way I look at it, 3 or 5 yeses is better than 0 yeses. That's 3 or 5 more than I had the day after. And you just allow those things to compound and you build a pipeline over time. And when that person slams your door in the face a month later, you just kind of laugh. And it becomes almost a competition then with the prospective client of, hey, I'm going to be back and I'm going to be back with a smile on my face because I know that I could help you. I wouldn't be here and wasting my time or your time if I didn't think that our technology can put your business in a better position to be successful. But you have to think about it from their seat, right? I always try to put myself in the other individual's seat. They're getting that 10 or 15 times a day from all different types of salespeople. So, it has to be exhausting. On top of it, they're trying to run a business. So, taking all those things into account and understanding that it's just a timing thing.

Yes.

And most salespeople, the stats out there are staggering. After a no, it's over 80% that they're not going to be back to hear a second no because they just can't handle it. So, I just have to work against those numbers. And we have a path for success here. We have all the activity numbers and metrics built out, and you just have to continue to work those things and put in quality work, and the success will balance itself out, which has been the most exciting. So going back to your question, you know, what's created your resiliency is I've just tried to take a positive attitude, you know, every single day that I come in. And one thing that I've really lived out, or I think that I've lived out is I'm trying to be the best version of myself every day that I show up. I want to take one thing and get better.

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. Is there an area that you would say you've been the weakest? I know that's not— I think you may have even spoken to some of it, but is there an area you'd say, in my own resiliency, this would be the area that I have worked on the most or have needed?

Yeah, absolutely. So you definitely lose more than you win. And if I think anything, of all of the losses And it's been tens of thousands probably, right, over the last 15 years, or maybe thousands, hundreds, whatever the number. It's a big number. I wish I would have done a better job. And it's one thing that we're really trying to work on as an organization is doing debriefs and understanding, hey, where did we misstep so we don't make the same mistake moving forward? I think it becomes, you know, as I was talking about, like, hey, just allow the brain to move on. Yes, you absolutely want to do that. But what did I learn? And am I making sure that I'm not doing the exact same thing? And I think if you could cascade that down throughout your organization and really have salespeople do, you know, a debrief and where did we miss and how are we going to be better in the future, that 15 or 20 minutes is worth all of the effort that you put into the prospecting, you know, on the front end.

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, and then that really aligns quite well with, with a number of the things that we've found through research that The grit, grit is important. You mentioned it earlier, and yet it needs an asterisk on it because it's grit plus. Grit by itself isn't going to win the day any more than Rocky Balboa standing in front of Apollo Creed in the movie Rocky and getting punched over and over again and hitting the floor again and again and getting back up. You go, okay, what a gritty guy. What a resilient guy. But if you haven't learned anything, if you're not able to get back up and move forward, And do something differently and do it better, hopefully, as well, or more effectively, then you're just a punching dummy. And the goal isn't to sort of imply that we all— that, you know, the way to success is just being a punching dummy. So, I—

I have one comment for you. I've never told you this, but— and you may have saw him in the crowd because I was fortunate that my son was there as we transitioned everything, but my son's name is Rocky. And there's many reasons behind that. And a lot of that is what you just said is, you know, building out resilience And yeah, that's what I try and embody with my family too. But I love that you called that.

Oh, that's beautiful. So, I'll ask the same question. It's kind of like the last question as we wrap up here. But in your organization, where would you say the organization itself is working on its resiliency? Do you see anything there that you're being really intentional about?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I talked about our sales reorg. We're doing a service reorg. We're putting in a new ER. We have 2 organizations, right? I mentioned Impact Networking and DOT Security, and DOT Security is our cybersecurity standalone organization. That's a much more simplified business as far as when putting in systems and change and process because they only do cyber. At Impact, it's the managed IT business, it's the AI business, it's the managed marketing business, and it's also the managed print services business. So there's a lot of complexity to Impact, a little bit more than DOT. So DOT was the first one that we had stood up, and that was January of this year. We put in a new professional services PSA tool in Halo, which is a service delivery tool to allow for better reporting and customer service delivery. Then we also put in the new ERP system to go hand in hand. We're on that journey to do that with impact for both of those systems. When you talk about building in resiliency, that's what we're really working on. We're making a ton of changes, a sales reorg, service delivery reorg. And major core systems change, not upgrades, literally change, you know, and the systems that we're using and we've been using for the last 25 years, the resiliency comes right there to make sure that we have the right people in the right seat executing on what we need to do to deliver a world-class experience, which is the mission that we're on.

And really embracing change, leveraging change.

Absolutely.

As a catalyst for growth.

Right. And that's the biggest thing. You know, we talk about all the products and services that we sell to our customers. We use them in one way, shape, or form at Impact. So it's a good way to get out in front of it and say that we're our own best case study to a certain extent. You know, where else are you doing this? Obviously plenty of other customers, but we're utilizing it internally.

Yeah.

And these are the ways that we're doing it. Yeah. And it's building in, and we say embrace that climb, you know, because we're on a journey and we're on a mission to grow this company leaps and bounds from where it's at right now.

I have zero doubt that that is in the near future for you all. For a variety of reasons, including the fact that you're at the helm, my friend. So I've so enjoyed the conversation. I know our folks have. More information about, about Mike and about Impact will be a part of the show notes. So if you've got curiosities, that's where you go for that. But if you've got questions also that you want to put to Mike or to myself, you can go to adammarkel.com/podcast and leave a question there. For now anyway, I just want to thank you, brother, for being a part of the show. Yeah. And to our community, thank you for being there as well. If you know somebody, another leader, a friend, a colleague, family member even, that would benefit from hearing some of the insights that Mike shared with us today, please share this episode with those folks as well. Well, as promised, I think that conversation with Mike was just filled with insights, filled with really tangible looks into the inner workings of an organization that is been rising. It's more than 20 years in existence, and it is really coming into fruition even more so now. Mike is new in this role as CEO, but he's not new to the company, having started as a sales representative back in 2010. So this guy really has made his way up the ranks, and he— I loved his discussion of what it was like for him to do that, what it took, where he succeeded, where he's been resilient, where he's Failed and how he feels about failure and where he can and is still working on developing greater resiliency, both for himself as well as inside the organization. It was just a very transparent conversation, which I know is something that he values as well. We talked about so many things that are just so foundational to great leadership, great team building, and great success overall. So if this is an episode that you enjoyed as well, please Please leave a review. 5 stars is terrific. That always helps the algorithm, helps the algorithm help us to have more people consume this content. So we appreciate if you take a moment or two to do that. I can't thank you enough for doing that. Also share the episode with a friend, a colleague, a family member, anybody that might benefit from the insights that were shared as well. And let us know your feedback because we want to know from you how this is serving your interests in business and as a leader yourself. And for now, I just want to say once again, thank you so much for being a part of this ever-expanding community, expanding in size and numbers and all that, but also just expanding in consciousness, which I think is even more important. So for now anyway, I would just say ciao and thank you again.

Thanks for listening. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights To build resilience and become change-proof. Remember to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, and you may be featured in an upcoming episode. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof teams, visit adammarkel.com. To get your own free resilience assessment, go to rankmyresilience.com.