6 Tips for Increased Customer Satisfaction

Bernadette is the founder and CEO of two aspiring Atlanta, Georgia-based companies, The Boas Group, a business management consulting practice, and Ball of Fire Inc., media, communications, and publishing firm. Both companies are focused on the health, wealth, and prosperity of individuals and organizations. An Atlanta, Georgia resident for 16 years, Bernadette is an avid cyclist, runner, and dog park visitor, where you will often see her with her four-legged best friend, Charlie. Bernadette Boas.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. And for those of you that— it's nice to see some familiar faces because how long was it? About a year?

Last year or something.

Okay, so it was nice to see some familiar faces. Nothing like walking into a room to complete strangers, so that was very nice. And since those of you who do know me and those of you who worked— we've worked together, you'll know I always put you to work. So enjoy your food, but at the same time we will be working. So let me ask for some assistance in getting those handed out. I wanted to take a different spin on a typical topic. How many of you have gone to training or some sort of program around how do you improve customer satisfaction? Okay? We typically all do. And if you're in the business, which you all are, that is a typical focus that you should definitely be paying attention to. However, we tend to talk about it in the way of revenue, how do we improve revenues, how do we improve, you know, smiling at the customer. And what I want to do is I want to kind of present it in such a way that it's a different spin on it. Because as I— do you have enough? I think we should. Do you need some more? No, I think we should have enough. I need one over here. So— I can steal hers. It's okay. So what I've learned over the past few years— I have a very extensive background in coaching and consulting for 25 years in corporate and the last 3 years on my own. What has been interesting to me and looking at my clients, but more so even looking at myself. As I started to write this book, Sheding the Corporate Bitch, it is a book about me. It's a book about how I kind of went about climbing the corporate ladder for 25 years. And it was only until I left that environment that I actually literally go through a transformation to where right there in the middle of the parking lot of the company after they handed me a pink slip after 12 years. And I was a global vice president. And I was very good at what I did. And I made them a lot of money. And here I was being let go. Not unlike anybody else, a lot of people that have, you know, been experiencing that over the last few years. But what was interesting for me is that morning when they told me I was losing my job, I literally said to the gentleman that was my boss that was telling me, I said, "Dave, don't worry about it." And I packed up my bags, went to my office, packed up my belongings, and I left. And I'm sitting there in the parking lot going, "Why am I so happy that I just lost a really good job with a really nice paycheck and international travel and all these wonderful And I tell you this because not all firings are bad things. Not— and you all know that change may be hard, but there always seems to be a better other side, you know, other side of the street, greener. It is always brighter somewhere else. So I found myself standing in the middle of this parking lot saying, "I am never doing that again," to myself. Giggling to myself, and the next thing you know, this weight of 25 years of a lot of angst and attitude and ego and greed and power and position just shed it away. The only way I've ever been able to explain it to people is— how many of you, we've all watched Wizard of Oz, right? And the witch at the end getting water thrown on her, "I'm melting! I'm melting!" Well, that was me in the middle of this parking lot, driving away, actually laughing. Now, I spent the next couple years building a business of my own. I have a consultancy business as well as a media publishing business, but I was first building that, and yet I really still never focused on what caused me to be so happy about losing this great job. So I decided that I needed to kind of go inward. Now, how many of you have ever been in corporate? Okay, a good amount of people. All right. How often while you were in corporate did you ever really have time or were you kind of advocated to go inward and really kind of think about who you were as opposed to simply really mastering your skills and the talents that you bring to that company? You don't get that much. Organization development in corporate is, What skill are you really good at? What talent do you have? And go take classes and go sit in seminars and programs. They don't really advocate really focusing on who you are. So I decided, well, here I have this opportunity to really focus on who I am. Because I figured if I knew me really well, then I'm going to be able to master my clients really well. So I started going inward. Never imagining that fact, that I'd actually have this realization one day that I was this really nasty person for a really long time. And I was so devastated, I thought, "Oh my God!" I was literally like breathless. I was like, "Oh my God!" 'Cause I'm a good Christian woman and was raised with 12 children and middle class, church every Sunday. And here I was just like, "Oh my God!" But it was true. It was absolutely true. So the only— what do you do? How do you apologize for 25 years of roadkill, as I call it, that you leave behind you? Well, you write a book. And you actually put out to the world that you were this nasty witch of a woman. And yet what happened through that process, through that writing process, was I learned so much about the fact that as successful as I was, as skilled and talented as I was, I was still insecure, intimidated, had that junk in your head. You know, those voices that talk to you going, "You're not good enough, you're not skinny enough, you're not pretty enough, you'll never break the glass ceiling," right? And I realized over the past few years that until I really kind of mastered how to keep those voices silenced. Not that it happens, trust me, I still have my days. But then I was really able to kind of go out to the world and help clients, help my friends, help peers, help young people kind of master whatever it is that they wanted to accomplish in life. So our discussion today about how can you improve your customers' satisfaction with you and their experience with you is going to take a different angle than what you traditionally hear about. Oh, well, just make sure that every person in your company smiles, and when they answer the phone, they do this, and when you go out to meet with them, you do that. We're going to talk a little bit about that, but a lot of it we're also going to talk about is until you show up in the best person that you could be, will you really master customer satisfaction? Because what I have found over— especially, I've been coaching and consulting with CEOs at Walmart, Target, Office Depot, you name the retailer, for 25 years. I was in with their senior leadership team. And had I been so aware of this mindset being so powerful, I could write a lot of books about the little voices and the little, what I call the little bitches in people's heads. Because that's what that word really means to me. It's not a person, it's not a kind of projecting onto somebody else, it's really what goes on in our own head and heart that stops us from being able to accomplish our dreams. So let me give you a for instance and then we'll dive into the 6 tips I provide you with. I bumped it from 5. Is every one of us are business owners, correct? Yes. So how many salespeople do we have in the room? Okay, what— right, everybody should have their hand up. How many of you really like to sell? Oh, good number. Very impressed. I normally get like 25-30% of the room. And at the same time, what I will find out when I start talking to them is it's not that they're not skilled enough and they don't have the training or they haven't— there's tons of courses out there of how to sell, but something in their head is stopping them from being able to sell. It has nothing to do with whether or not they can go up to somebody and go, "Hi, how are you? What's the business problem you're having? 'Cause I got a great solution." I have a solution for you. Now who would believe I don't like to sell? I don't like to sell. I don't think I'm good at selling. And yet I can't tell you since I was like 10 people are like, "You should be a saleswoman," and I never have been until I used to have my own business, until I had to go out. But then I spent a lot of time over the last few years mastering myself inside. It's not my skills, my talents. I know how to sell. I know the process. I know the steps that you need to take. I know the questions you need to ask. All that's great. But having to pick up the phone and call you for an appointment and you say no to me, that wasn't happening. That wasn't happening. How many of you experience it? Come on. Who likes rejection? No. So, You get over that part, and that's a head game. It's not a skill game, it's not a talent game. It's not even a heart game. It's a head game. Get over that and you'd be amazed at how you can impact your businesses. And I've worked with a lot of businesses. I left corporate, started my own first business as a coach consultant, worked with small businesses pretty much up to like the $15 million. Arena, and I've seen the gamut. I've seen the gamut, and I've seen the ones that are willing to face the fact that it's not just skill, talent, that it is in the head, and then some that just want to face it from a skill and talent perspective. And I can show you who's most experienced or who's most successful, and I deem success differently than I did a few years ago. A few years ago, it was the house, in Buckhead, it was the car, it was the bank account, and now I have a lot— a different definition for success. Their definition of success, which I try to understand immediately, they would be able to mirror that success if they just get out of their head. So customer satisfaction, what you're able to deliver to your customer, is not a great product. I've known you guys for a while. We met actually multiple times. You know, it's not the fact that she doesn't do great work and she doesn't do great— she and her sister do great delivery. Randy, too. I mean, it's not that you guys don't have good products and services. It could be sometimes the fact that whether or not we are showing up to our customers and our employees and then our vendors and our partners and everyone else, as effectively as we can. Does that make sense so far? Okay. So let's touch on what are those, the most effective 6 things that I have found in all of my working that could impact you today. Now, part of this, I remember the last time when I was here, and I was actually standing over there, and I asked these questions, a few of these questions. I'm going to see if like the numbers have gone up at all. Okay, so how many of you— this wasn't one of those questions— how many of you actually do spend time each and every day focused on you? Not your family, not your children, not your community, but you. How many? Okay, so that's probably only like maybe not quite a half. All right, now are the other ones just being stubborn, you don't want to answer? Well, what do you mean by that? Yeah. Well, you know what, I'm glad you asked that because I've been asked that before. What I mean by that is individually, outside your business, outside your wife, husband, partner, outside your kids, you have goals and dreams of your own. Things that you want to do, the bucket list that is just you. Now it might include other people. You, don't get me wrong, it might include other people, but should no one else show up, it's you. There are things that you want to do for you. And it doesn't matter if you can't. It doesn't matter if you don't have enough money. It doesn't matter if you don't have this and you don't have that. Because trust me, I've also found, especially over the last few years, evolving my consultancy business to really focusing on this brand that I've created around shedding the weight. I've also learned that people can accomplish just about anything, or anything actually, if they get in their heart what it is that they really want. So does that answer your question? So if I were to ask it again, who spends time on them each and every day? How many of you would say you do?

Nice.

That's very nice, because a lot of times it's a lot lower. So the only thing I would suggest to those of you who didn't raise your hand, unless you're shy or just not willing to participate, is, is to do that. To just spend 5 minutes a day. I actually spend a great amount of time now per day focused on what is it that I truly want. I want? What is it that I need to, to do in order to get that? And then who can help me along the way? And right now, I have to tell you, like 95% of it is professional, and I'd love it to be like 50% professional, 50% personal, but I don't have— but that's not the priority right now. Um, so a lot of it is business-wise, but it's what I personally want, not what you want for me, not what my family wants me, not what anybody else wants for me, but what I want. So one of the most freeing and liberating things you could do for yourself is to take 5 minutes and just like shut everything out, shut everything— everybody away from you, and just really ask yourself that question, because you owe it to yourself. I tend to now talk a lot about the fact that You know, I was— I thought I was the ultimate corporate person. I thought I'd spend my whole life in corporate. I thought I'd be this very uptight, rigid woman that I was for so many years. And I did. I found a whole new kind of outlet when I left and when I found— like, started shedding all these layers away. And I have now tons of goals and tons of dreams that I didn't have 3 years ago, even last year. But yet, I— for 25 years, maybe even my first 40 years. I just never paid attention to it because I thought it was too important to— I thought it was too selfish, and I thought it was too important to care about everybody else, serve other people. Well, you can't serve other people really well until you serve yourself, and that goes with your— to your clients and your customers. You're not working on yourself and showing up as that best person, your customers, prospects are going to smell it. They smell it. And therefore, if you can get to yourself to the point where you are really comfortable in your own skin and focused on yourself, you will be able to focus on your customer. And if you don't believe me, or you're sitting there going, oh, this woman is full of woo-woo, because if you had asked me 3 years ago would I be in the woo-woo business ever— I call it woo-woo business— I would have told you no way in hell. No way in hell. And yet, just from experience and from change and watching other people grow and really master whatever it is that they want for themselves by just paying attention to themselves, it's been unbelievable. It's been really unbelievable. So even if you spend 5 minutes to yourself, you're not being selfish. And you're actually— your family, your kids, your friends, your business is going to benefit by you really kind of saying, you know what, I need to figure out what it is that I want to do. And I always tend to say, look, we get one shot at this lifetime. And I can't believe I'm 49. Yes, I'm a woman who's willing to admit that. And I can't believe, like yesterday I was 15, and yet now I'm 49. I don't want it to be— I don't want to be 50, 55, 60, and still hoping and wishing on things that I can make happen if I wanted to. So can you. Okay, so spend time for yourself. This was the question I asked the last time, and I tend to ask this question and get very surprising results. How many of you define, like, really have written down— or let's not say written down— how many of you have goals and objectives for your business? Okay. And how about your life, relationships, your spirituality? Your family. Okay, but let's— but we'll throw this on family just to get out of the woo-woo stuff so I don't totally lose you. But for your business, how many of you said have those goals? Are they for a year? No.

Monthly?

5 years.

For what?

5 years, then broken down to a year. And then you take that year to what?

Monthly.

And monthly to— It comes down to daily. Okay. And do all of you or those of you who raised your hand? Okay. How many of you actually write them down? Not just have them in your head, but actually write them down? Okay. And then how many of you act on those goals that are written down? Yeah, it tends to go like this. And it's like, it's one of those things where I tell, you know, clients and friends and anybody that asks, it's like, you know, hope is not a strategy. We've all heard that, right? At the same time, that saying comes true when all we do is keep it in our head, because you can't act on what's in your head because you got a lot of other junk in your head, good stuff and kind of stressful stuff, especially nowadays, right? So not only that, but nothing is more freeing than putting it on a piece of paper and saying, oh yeah, that's what I'm trying to do this year. Now, some people don't do that. Why? Anybody have an answer why? They don't want to be held accountable by themselves. Exactly. They don't want to be held accountable. What if I don't make it? What if I, you know, what if I fail getting it? What if I don't know how?

Huh? Set a new goal.

Well, not only that, but what if you did? Yes. Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo! And yet a lot of people suffer from fear of success as much as they do fear of failure. Or in my case for years, I'm still single, never been married, fear of rejection. I'm working on it. Woo-hoo! Yeah. People wonder where I come up with that term woo-hoo. And that's how I came up with it a long time ago. Anyway, so let me give you an example. Now, other people will tell me, and I love it when clients actually tell me, that, oh, it's too much time. It takes too much time. I don't even know how to do it. Now, if you don't know how to do it, that's a beautiful thing. It's actually a beautiful thing, because at least that means that all you need to do is learn it, and maybe you're willing to do it. So if you don't understand what I mean when it says, you know, defining your goals and writing them down and blah blah blah, feel free to email me or give me your business card before the end of this thing, and I will send you documents and templates. Raymond's used them, and I will send you anything that you want. No obligation, no nothing. Just send me an email or give me your business card, and I will send you templates and worksheets that you can use to set your goal. Because I'll tell you what, I can come back here— I'll come back here a year from now, maybe. We'll see at the end of this. And, uh, you know, and you'll tell me, you will tell me, like someone did in this room earlier, that that one thing changed their world. Just by putting— getting out of your head what it is you want and admitting to it, and like she said, you know, be willing to take accountable— accountability to it. And it's not hard to do. It's not— I do this every— I mean, it's just a natural thing for me, but I've been doing it since I was 10. You know, so, you know, this is not— this is really what mine kind of looks like. I have the year, and then I break it down to the month, and then I have this weekly goal. I lay out my weekly goals. So I have, you know, I need to create a couple products, I have certain revenue I want to hit, I have a certain number of media placements I want to accomplish by the weekend. And then I just start making my priority list as to what it's going to take to get me there. So on Monday, I had a great Monday. Man, I was kicking butt yesterday. And then I just— nothing's better than scratching stuff out. How good is that? Just to know that you've gotten something done. And yet there's days, maybe today might be one of them, there's days that I'm not going to get a lot done. And that's kind of depressing because then I have, you know, the list just continues growing. However, you know, it feels great to see your checked-off list. I typically, you'll notice, I only have, even though I have a bunch of stuff written, I advise you to only give yourself like 2 or 3 things to do each day. Don't give yourself anything more than that because you can always add to it. But nothing's more depressing than having a long laundry list to that you're staring at like I do right now and not accomplishing them. So actually what I'll do is I'll number them and that's all I focus on during the day. So I already have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then I stopped at Wednesday because things will change by tomorrow, let alone today. So this takes 5, 10 minutes. It's that 5 minutes of of time that you take thinking about you is what is it that you want to accomplish in the week. And I include my fitness stuff. How depressing is that? But I do. I say, okay, I want to go to kickboxing at least 3 times this week. I want to get to the gym 1 time this week. You know, the dog is just kind of natural. But I do because if not— and it's on my calendar. Because then what I do is I literally take this list and it becomes my calendar. So if you go on my Outlook calendar right now, you can actually check me on this, go to Tungle and you can probably look into my calendar. It will have my— when I go to kickboxing, when I do my planning, which includes goal setting, when I go see— I don't really have a lot of clients right now because I'm building a business, so I'm not really prospecting for clients. But, you know, when I'm going to do product development, all— The only things or whatever it is that I define my goals is what reflects in my Outlook calendar. And it's the easiest way to hold yourself accountable without holding yourself accountable. Because if you make it an appointment in your calendar that you have to work on X, you have to go see clients, you have, you know, like a lot of yours right now, mine is books. I have a number of books I want to sell and a number of media placements. So translate that to yours, which will be maybe number of prospect meetings you want to have this week. You want to hit a certain number of networking events so you can gain those prospects that you're looking for. It could be that you want to close an order or two this week. Specifically, what is it that you want to accomplish? And then each day, very simply, what do you need to do in order to do that? Well, I need to go to 4 networking events. Okay, which ones are they? Block them on your calendar. Well, I need to get, you know, 5 leads. Okay, fill out 5 places on your calendar that you can go and have a prospect meeting. Does this make sense? For those of you who didn't raise your hand, did that sound complicated or hard to do? Honestly, truly. Because at first it will be, just like anything, right? Well, I don't do it now. Now you're gonna tell me I could build 15 minutes into my day. My day so I can like sit down and have to scribble on a piece of paper, but I can guarantee you I can call you next week if you were to, let's give it a week and a half, so today is Monday, right? Tuesday? Tuesday? Oh, okay. Days run into each other these days. But you literally can go home today or back to your office and do this for this week. Even finish it for this week. Say, okay, what did I want to accomplish this week? And I have 4 more days to do it. And I can guarantee you, come Monday, if I were to call you, you will be like, oh my God, I saved time. I, you know, took away all my junk. Like, I only do emails in the morning and at lunch and at night. No email during the day. And we'll talk about that in a minute. So even— it's literally blocked out on my calendar. Now, some services business are geared on email, but if that's true, then we'll talk about that in a second, okay. So, not hard to do, but I can guarantee you will gain about 200% of productivity. Not 5%, not 10%, not 100%, but I probably have done this at least 400 or 500 times over the last 3 years with clients or friends or whoever comes up to me. Asks, and a majority of them, if not all of them, do see productivity improvements. Okay, so one big tip, the first big tip. All right, um, know and understand your value. This is one of the most— one of my favorite topics. But know and understand your value and worth to your customers is going to help your customers be very satisfied and keep coming back to Now this doesn't mean— value doesn't mean that you're the cheapest. As a matter of fact, the majority of the people that I work with, I will have them increase their pricing because they're already undervaluing themselves. I walked out of corporate and I literally would be billed out to my clients at like $650, $700 an hour. So I I came out going, well, I get billed out at $600, $700 an hour. And my friends thought I was absolutely nuts. What did I know, right? So they actually— this, you know, head, head, remember, it all plays up here. They actually convinced me— this is 2008, worst financial economic situation we've I've ever been in. And they convinced me, no way are you ever going to get that amount of money. You need to bring it down. And what did I do? I brought it down. I know, I brought it down. I brought it down to something that I thought, OK, I have to compete with all these other business coaches and consultants. It was 2008. People thought I was nuts as it was to start a business in 2008. And yet I was like, I don't care about those other coaches and consultants. I bring something very different to the table. They bring something different to the table. And there's enough people, enough businesses in Atlanta, let alone the country, that we all can do business. So I don't have a competitive issue when it comes to— there could be 10 coaches in here, and I can guarantee you they'll get clients out of the group, I'll get clients out of the group, so forth and so on. So because I do know my value and my worth, Okay, and I don't mean to sound conceited or egotistical. I just know my value and my worth when it comes to coaching and consulting. But I let my head get in the way and peer pressure and all the other things that were going on, and I allowed myself to devalue my worth. So what do you think happened? I got a lot of clients. I did. I got a lot of— even considering the economic situation and when coaches weren't really picking up a lot of business because all the small business owners said, "Oh, I did. I got a nice portfolio of good clients." At the same time, I had to work my tail off for that money. And what I mean by that is they weren't necessarily— you know, you get what you pay for, right? Yeah. So you get what you pay for. So they'll either work you hard harder and drive down your margins, or you'll drive them down yourself. And until I kind of said, you know what, I am getting really great results for, you know, all these potential— these clients. And just like when I was in corporate, I made Walmart and Target and Office Depot millions, millions upon millions, actually tens and hundreds of millions. I was in data warehousing, it's a long story, but I wasn't necessarily I wasn't selling them stuff, but I was improving their processes and procedures and automating them in such a way that they got productivity and profit. So that's what I was doing for my clients. And here I'm, you know, this corporate experience taking it to the small business and I'm devaluing myself. So this is the way I told myself what I wanted to do and then I would recommend for you too. So that yearly— Don has a 5-year plan.

Beautiful.

Sweet. Minimum I would even ever suggest is 3, but 5 is perfect. That's what most of the investors and financial planners and whatever would say, 5. I'm happy with 3 because I just can't get overwhelmed. It's like a diet. It's like I do 30-day diets, not 6 months or a year, because I'll give up before the end of the second month. So what I'll tell my I say to my clients is, okay, so what do you want to do for this year? So they say, oh, I want a revenue of $100,000. And hopefully that's based on history, it's not a pipe dream. So they want to do $100,000. I say, okay, so $100,000, your average price of your— either your product or your service is X. So what does that mean in regards to how much you're hourly worth? I have them break it down to an hour. So what that means, again, if you think about it, if when you, those of you in corporate, you had a salary, an hourly salary. So you basically take that $100,000, there's roughly 2,000 and— 2,048 hours that you would work in a year. Now I take out vacations and stuff, I know you guys all work them, we all do, but I take them out. And that will give you your hourly worth. So roughly $200 an hour if you want to make $100,000 a year. Okay, so what that means is that's either high or low, right? So I kind of said, okay, do I really want to go out at $200 an hour, or do I want to go out higher than that? Personally, for me, for my clients, I'll say, okay, are you comfortable with that? And they'll be like, yep, because that's the app, that's the target I want to hit. Now this is where they get uncomfortable. Then I say, okay, then the first thing you need to do is stop doing anything that isn't worth $200 an hour. I heard somebody chuckle over here. And that's what most— I know, it's like, yeah, right. I scrumplin'. Yeah, right. But think about it. But think about it. And I'm not suggesting that you have to go out and all of a sudden you have to hire this huge team, which you could talk to me about that because I have very creative ways for getting team members on board and not even paying them a dime for a year and a half. But what you could do is you sit there and you look at everything that you need to do, that list, and you say, okay, so what do I— your revenue-generating hours, predominantly 9 to 5 in here? Anybody off-kilter from 9 to 5? You're 24 hours? You're— okay. So, but when are your client— when are you— can you actually like meet with your prospective clients? Okay, so 9 to 5. Okay, 9 to 5. Even though you support your customers 24 hours a day, you're really only going to meet them— you show up at my house at midnight. I'm the killer. So what I tell people to do is 9 to 5 is your revenue-generating hours, period, end of story. So you take this list of all the things that you need to do, and you have to say to yourself, what is going to make me money and what is not? That's the first way you prioritize. If you ever— if you have an issue with prioritizing or knowing what to do, not what not to do during a workday, it's the number one easiest way to do it is which one of the 9 zillion things I probably have on my list, which hopefully you only have 3 and a half for today, 3, is revenue, is money-making. Now that's gonna be events like this, 'cause you can actually meet a client, 'cause you know, a new client. It's gonna be, for me, 'cause I'm building a brand, doing Facebook is actually money-making for me. I'm not going to retire, okay, because it's building my brand. But email is not. Some people on Facebook is not. Doing medial tasks, even one client, loved him to death. However, I would say 65% of his 9-to-5 day was doing personal errands. And I would say, is the dry cleaner not open until 12? I'm considered a tough love coach, so I'm not here to like stroke you, I'm here for you to make money and for you to be productive and have a life, right? So I'd say to him, you know, you can't go to the grocery store and pick up milk at 5:05 when you leave the office or on the way back from a customer perspective meeting? And so we sat there, probably took a good 2 or 3 sessions just and totally ripping apart his head and his plan and reorganizing his schedule because anything that you're doing between 9 and 5 that's not generating you money in any way, shape, or form is never going to allow you to make your goal. Yes. And yes, please ask questions. Okay. First of all, I want to make $100,000 a year, but I get stuck. Doing things that don't even— that are not $200 an hour. And sometimes I think that I can't let that business go even though I know back when I was doing much better, 10 years ago, I was making a lot more. But what do I do to get rid of that stuff that really doesn't make me? Well, you need— what you need to do is, and what I would advise you to do, is write it all out, okay, and get a good look at it, okay? And then you just need to ask yourselves the question. It's almost like the friends I had 2 years ago, 3 years ago, when I was, you know, before I started my businesses, is very different than now. I have fired a good many friends out of my life because they were just draining on me. That was not easy, right? And I went through the same process. And I do it to my— I do that process every day and every week when I look at what I need to be doing. And so you write out everything that you're doing, and that's what I had Bruce do. I had Bruce just write out everything that he does in a given week, and he brought me this legal pad that was just pages of stuff. I said, "This is not going to be fun for either one of us," and I made sure he knew that. "This is not going to be fun, and you're not going to be happy with me, but we're going to do it." And what we did was we looked at all of it and kind of said, "Okay, what is absolute? What is going to go towards What are my goals? Okay? And then I hear this, not that I'm saying you're doing it, you do this, but then I'll hear this, "Well, but my wife," or "but this," or "but that." I mean, so you have to think about, remember the head that we're going to work on? Get rid of the buts. It doesn't have to be a, it can't be a but. If you really, the accountability piece, the piece that people have the most discomfortable is the fact that they let it— they like to let themselves off the hook. Well, how important is your dreams to you and your goals to you and your family and everyone else? If you're going to keep letting yourself off the hook, they're not that important. I call those butt goals. Butt goals. I want to have this goal, but— I want to have this plan, but—

Right. They're butt goals.

And if you really look at the buts, they're for really nothing. Okay, but to finish answering your question, so you really, you make this whole list out and against the goals that you've defined for yourself, yourself, your business, your everything, right? I have been procrastinating on losing the weight forever. It's like I used to go to the gym 6 days a week for 40-some-odd years and about 2 years ago when I started the second business, Yeah, it just fell off the cliff. My butts came everywhere. And it came here. But it was everywhere. And so what I had to do instead, what I had to do is I made a list of, are these things really important to me? Are these goals truly, truly important to me, or am I just kind of, you know, playing around? And I determined that losing this is playing around. So I've had to do some head game on that, but to your question, you have, that's what you have to do. You have to look at it and go, are these things good for me? Are they healthy for me? Are they gonna help me with my business? Are they gonna get me where I wanna go? And then, and I don't know what the details are, and we can talk offline if you'd like, but then you need to find a way to get out of it. You gotta fire 'em. The way I look at things is you either You fire it, you delegate it, you hire it, or you do it yourself. But I can tell you, you're the CEOs of your company, okay? Anyone not the CEO of your company? Okay, what are you? What's your role?

Manager.

Pardon me?

Manager.

Okay, well, but still, I mean, it's huge contribution to the business, correct? So you need You need to kind of recognize that and kind of get like, hey, you know, without being like me, old me, but you do, you just have to take kind of the empowerment. You got to stand, you know, firm and find a way to get rid of those things that are holding you back. And I'd be more than happy to spend some time with you and just give me a call or afterwards or whatever. And if any of you have a question in regards to— seriously, I will send you whatever you want. And if you choose to— I didn't even plan this— but if you choose to and you want 20 minutes, 15 minutes with me on the phone, feel free to do so. And if— and please, I'll apologize right now if I say, okay, it needs to be in a week or so. But please feel free to do that. No obligations. Like I said, I don't like to sell, but no obligations. Yes. So what if those things that are taking you, you know, it's those the 20% of your people that you're spending 80% of your time, what if it's those people that are making your, paying your bills and you can't just fire them? Well, you can fire anybody. Well, you know what I mean, but like, I mean, it's either you're the CEO or the, you're you're their manager in any way, shape, or form. And yes, I've never had a problem firing someone. It's not— I don't like it, but— No, but the client, though, they're paying the bill, and they're making— Yeah. What do you do then? If you're not in a position where you can afford to lose them, even though they're paying your— Then what you do— What? That's a great question. OK, so what you do, because now you're talking clients versus employees. Because the employee part— No, the employee, I don't have an issue with. OK, good. Clients, what I advise people to do is if you know that you have— like, I also have them rank their clients, you know, and look at the profitability of those clients. And then what I have them do is if there are some that they need to get rid of to not only bring up their margin but their sanity, then we put it— you know, I would suggest to you find tactics and strategies for finding new clients that fit your of things so you then can get rid of them.

Yeah.

And then get rid of them. Because I have one client that I've been working with for 2 and a half years now. And they're a $4 million— well, they were when I started, a $4 million manufacturer who considered themselves a mom-and-pop shop. Well, I don't know about you, but I would like to be making $4 million a year. And I wouldn't be calling myself a mom-and-pop shop if I was. So that was the first thing I had to get them to get out of their head, is you're not a mom-and-pop shop, you're a $4 million business. Today they're 6, 6.5. But their problem was they had all these— and they still have some issues— they have all these clients that are just dragging them down. And they were doing it to themselves. They were pricing in this competitive mode, the value, which we'll talk about a different angle of that in a minute. But, and they were dragging their margins down, and it was killing them. So the tough love woman that I am, I just kind of said, okay, these are the parameters for the type of clients we take on, and we don't take on anybody that falls outside these parameters. Now it doesn't mean, it doesn't mean that the clients that you have, you don't have those that are going to be low margin and those that are going to be high margin, but if you deemed your margin to be X, You can have low margin clients as long as the high margin clients bring you to the margin that you want. So again, that touches on as CEOs, as business owners, as managers, planning, planning, planning is not a one time a year thing, it's not a one time a month thing, it's a daily thing.

You know, one thing though, Bernadette, is I hear you talk about that is that, you know, if you're a man—