The Secret to Finding Your Perfect Business Partner | Cameron & Amy Bruske(Podcast 305)

The real CEO COO relationship should be a yin and yang relationship. You compliment each other. You are each other's balance. The COO is the brakes to the CEO's gas. The CEO shines the spotlight on the CEO, and the CEO shines the spotlight on the COO. It's just a real strong partnership and balance. Very, very similar to how a marriage might be between, you know, a couple that are married and how they're going to raise a family and build the life is. Is there's a counterpart to each other.

Today, we have a special treat for you. I'm joined by Amy Brusque, the brilliant host of the Powered by Instinct podcast. In our conversation, we dive deep into the Colby strengths assessment, and I'll share how this tool completely shifted my perspective on approaching the diversity of strengths in the work environment. Amy and I also explore the nuances of company culture, the dynamics of leadership, and I'll recount a breakthrough moment that was a real eye opener for me. It was when I realized just how significantly not understanding the instinctive strengths of others was affecting my ability to collaborate effectively with them. In this episode, you'll learn the transformative power of comparing yourself to others and how this comparison can be a force for good. The critical information that CEOs absolutely need to know about their people to lead effectively. The stark differences between an entrepreneurial company and an established, more corporate entity. And some invaluable advice on nurturing and growing your leadership skills. Based on both mine and Amy's experiences. Let's dive in.

You are such a natural person who drives change. You know, you'll get in a situation and say, how can we do it differently? You know, how can we take some risks and do things in a way that are really innovative and you really naturally work to deadlines very well? So I would maybe guess when you were in school, you would have been a crammer. You would have possibly waited till the last minute to get things done, which is a good thing. What we know now as adults is that's actually when you do your best work, right? And you ha. You are very naturally adaptable. So if things are the same every day, you're actually. That's going to deplete your energy. You actually get energy from switching things up. And when things aren't going according to plan, you're the person that I want to be, you know, jumping in because you really very naturally adapt to change and envision solutions. So that's it kind of in a nutshell. Did I nail it for you?

Yeah. Yeah, you totally do. I love change. I absolutely work under deadlines. And I, I started laughing as you said it because seven minutes before you and I were to go live, I was sitting four floors below where I am now at the hotel I'm at in Arizona, sitting in the lobby, trying to get two more quick emails out the door, knowing that I could be up here and sitting down completely ready to go. So, yeah, I love to work under pressure. It's great. And I don't know why I do that, but I, I do. I tend to also have a very good ability to see the whole picture in enough detail to know how much time I actually need. So even though I might cram or leave things to an end, I've already reverse engineered it in my mind and I know all the steps and roughly how much time. And I leave buffers, but not two hour or two day buffers. I leave, you know, enough time to make sure that it's good. And then I also believe in minimum viable everything, you know, instead of just minimum viable production for me, getting it done and out the door, because momentum creates momentum. So, yeah, I mean, it's big for me.

Yeah. And you touched on a little bit about the detail. You're someone who's mildly accommodating with that foreign fact finder. You're accommodating the detail and the, you know, the information as needed, but you'll get just enough that.

That I don't want to know all the details. I want to know that they have them and they trust them. But my brain, it's almost like my brain is a hard drive and it's very full. I don't have room for all the details. I just have to know that their servers have the details. So if I call on those details, they can give them to me in, in summary format and then if I want more details, I'll ask. And they're good with that, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. It probably drives you crazy when somebody, you know, gives you long emails with all the details that you know you don't need. Right. Start with the summary in the bottom line and then they can put it there. But you may or may not skim.

It well, and I've had to learn over the years. It's funny you mentioned my Colby at 4393. I did my Colby profile first back in 2002. I think it was with Strategic Coach. And then I did it again around 10 years ago, and both times the number was the same, 4393. So I feel pretty confident that that's my grounding. But one thing I had to learn from doing some work with Colby was how to work with the high fact finders and the high follow throughs to understand their styles so that I can accommodate them and not be too fast for them. Like, one of my team is a very high. They're like an eight fact finder. Their first number is very, very high. And for me, I think the biggest gift I can give them is to say, do you have any more questions? What other questions might you have? So they go, wow, he's actually giving me the time to ask some questions. Right. Or sometimes to just say, here's my bucket. Keep telling me all the cool you want to. I might not to let it sit in my brain, but I'm quite happy every once in a while to let you tell me more, because it's. It's what they need to do, right?

Yeah. You're a. You're touching on something that's so important, which is how do you get the freedom to be yourself? Kathy, Colby describes success as the freedom to be yourself. How do you figure out how to do that, but at the same time not impose your results on somebody else. Right. Your needs on someone else. So in a relationship, a working relationship. Well, frankly, in personal relationships, too. Right.

My wife's an eight fact finder.

Oh, okay. That's so important to know. Oh, good. We could talk about that.

Yeah.

Like, how do you allow her to be her 8 and fact finder and you still be a 4 and it works out. And you just described it. When you really need the bullet points and the summaries, you'll. You'll make that clear. But then there's other times when you say, what else? What else do you need to share with me? And so it's allowing people to do that. And frankly, in. In business, you know this. Sometimes there's just way much to collaboration and way too many meetings. And there are times when you have to work independently and then come together so that you can get your own needs met.

I think a lot of it's just around communication, right. And just talking to the others and making sure that they're aware of my style. I'm aware of their styles. Whenever we do our zoom meetings for our team or for our co alliance, our names in our zoom. So My name is Cameron4393. We put our Colby profile in our zoom name.

So.

So that everyone else on the call understands even how we're approaching the situation in a zoom meeting. As well. I just think it's really powerful to understand the way the person's coming. My wife, as an example, you know, we live globally. We sold our home in Arizona, sold our home in Vancouver, got rid of our cars, sold everything, and we travel. So we've been in, I think, 10 or 11 countries in the last four months. She has everything planned out for the next 18 months. We know all the countries we're going to be in by week for the next 18 months. Airbnb is booked, Travel calendars booked. I think it's a little overkill, but if I ever said that to her frustrator, because the reality is that overkill allows me to just kind of meander through it nicely.

Sure.

So when she'll. She'll come to me and ask me an opinion on, hey, which of these seven Airbnbs do you want to look at? Sometimes I'm just like, just pick one. But I'll kind of, in a way, humor her, but in a way also go, yeah, I can slow down enough to look at these seven. Because she's asking. Right. So I think it's just being accommodating and caring and understanding the other person and not letting their style upset me, but realizing that we need my style could upset her if we don't understand how we compliment each other.

Absolutely. Oh, my gosh, what a great example. Because probably when you guys decided to make such a radical change in your lives and just sell everything and start traveling, you immediately, you had the vision, you decided, we're doing this. And then it took her a while to catch up, and that's okay. Right?

Her vision was to create a master plan in this master spreadsheet, and mine was, let's pick a city and let's go. Let's do Barcelona for a month, and then we'll figure out the next one. She's like, no, I need to figure out the next 62 cities in a row. Now there's some comfort in me knowing that she has our plan, too. So.

Yes. Well, so tell me a little bit more about. So what? You have just gotten to the point where you have mastered this, understanding how to be you, and then working with the people around you when you first got your Colby result, or maybe even way before you got your Colby result. Can you think about times in your life where maybe you weren't free to be who you are? And. And how did that challenge you? Whether it was at school or at work, frankly, you have a profile where you're not as much of. You don't look like the teachers in school, right? They're all, they look more like your wife. So how did that play out for you in your life?

Yeah, my, my teachers told me that I was winging it, shooting from the hip, making stuff up on the go, that I wasn't focused, that I was leaving things to last minute, that I wasn't organized and I, I was like different to that. I was like, well, I'm also running a business on the side and I'm managing the ski team and I'm on student government. And you know, I have 12 employees in second year university, so I'm not sure that you really have the rest of the picture. I just knew that I was very different. I'll tell you something that I got from Colby early on was I'd already built three companies prior to doing my first Colby profile, so I'd already done some pretty big, substantial businesses. When I did the Colby, all of a sudden I realized why people thought I was crazy and why they thought I was making it up on the fly or shooting from the hip or why my thinking out loud bothered them because they didn't understand where it was coming from and how it made me me. It gave me a glimpse into me. And then the second piece of the puzzle that I think worked really well for me was understanding the four other, I don't think we call them profiles, but the four other colors or the four other modes. So the first, like for me understanding fact finder was really easy. The higher the number, the more questions they ask to initiate a project. Got it. The second number, when it was called follow through was confusing for me and I think it's actually to me mislabeled. I would call it a systems person or a systemizer because they, they're the, in my mind, they need a playbook or an SOP or a checklist or plan startup. Right. It doesn't mean they're going to follow through on the project at all. And most entrepreneurs, most high quick starts, think they understand what follow through means and they don't understand what follow through means. So me understanding that was powerful. And then the same with implementer. I call it like the they need the tools or the model. It doesn't necessarily mean they're going to implement something. They need the implements. So some of it was just understanding. Slowing down enough to understand it enough was really powerful. And then I did something, Gosh, this is going back 16 years with Colby. I call it an A to a match. It was me. And one of my is that what, what do you call it when you.

Have called an A to a. Yeah. Comparison report.

Yeah. So I did this A to a comparison report and had someone from Colby walk me and my second command, my VP of operations who reported to me. Walk us through it together. Holy. It was powerful. She was a very high fact finder and a very high follow through. So for her to start a project, she needed to ask a lot of questions and put a system in place. And I was such a high quick start. I used to think she was arguing with me. She arguing. She just needed to ask a bunch of questions to catch up with me. And then I realized, oh my gosh, I've been answering the questions in my head for three months. It's no wonder she needs the questions. She hasn't been inside my head for three months. It was really understanding the other modal, other modalities or modes that made me understand mine even more as well.

Oh my gosh. Thanks for sharing that because yeah, it, it is so much more powerful when you can compare yourself to someone else and then you, you, you get it. Because we just have been doing this for so long. This is our need to act in a certain way that seeing someone else has the same need. That's just as much of a need for your second in command. Right. To get that, to act in that way. So if they're not doing something to you, they're not trying to frustrate you. It really is what you can count on from them. It's not going to change. Right? We're not going to change. These people we're working with, with our.

COO alliance, we got every member of the COO alliance to do their Colby a profile and we trying to get all of their CEOs to do it as well. Now the CEOs are not members. One of the things I've been teaching them is Most of the CEOs are kind of high quick starts.

Yes.

At least most of most of the entrepreneurial CEOs. Once you're the CEO of a Fortune 500, it's very different.

Yes.

But entrepreneurial CEOs are very high quick starts. Most of the entrepreneurial COOs are very high fact finders and follow throughs.

Right.

So what I told them was when your entrepreneur comes to you with a new idea, instead of asking all the questions right away, which was going to have them getting frustrated that you're arguing, just say this, I love your idea. Can I ask a few questions so I understand it more? They'll say yes. Wow. You Love my idea. Let me tell you more about my idea. You ask a few questions and then you go, I still love it. We're going to do it, but not now. But I'm going to keep it in a safe place. So I'm kind of teaching them how to work with the quick starts. And holy, it's powerful because all. All the entrepreneur wants to do is get their idea out of their head. But they don't necessarily want it to start constantly because that might disrupt everything else.

Right. So I'm an 8 and quick start too, not unlike your 9. And I tell people all the time, I mean, I will sell an idea to you. That doesn't mean I really think we're going to do it. I'm brainstorming half the time. And so they need to go. They have to check back with me later sometimes, like, should we really do this? But I love what you said because I say it's. I call that start with yes. Right. So someone initiating quick start, your CEO comes to you and says, I want to do this, this, and this. You start with yes, we can do that. Now let's think through, like, how will this affect these other things we want to have happen? Or I love the fact that you say, I love your idea. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. So let's talk about that because you're touching on the power of what you do at COO Alliance. So first of all, I want to know, why do they call you the CEO Whisperer? Because I think that's the coolest name ever. I think it's fun to have a nickname like that. But tell us about the work that you do.

It was actually Rich Karlgaard, who is the publisher of Forbes magazine. So the actual physical. He's the publisher of the magazine, has knows the top CEOs on the planet, and he's seen me speak so many times and understood what I was doing in my career in coaching CEOs behind the scenes. And when he met me, I was actually doing a little bit of work with Marcelo Claret. Marcelo was the CEO of Sprint, had already built his first company, sold it for a billion dollars, ended up being on the board of Softbank, the board of WeWork to turn it around. And I was whispering in his ear. I was telling him things about how to make Sprint entrepreneurial and coaching his COO for 18 months on how to get ready for a transition with T Mobile. And when I'm whispering in the ear of these CEOs, the shortcuts and the tips and the tools, Rich Just kind of gave me that nickname and it stuck. So that's where the CEO Westport came from.

That's so great. And what do you think are some of the things that CEOs need to know the most about people?

What I'm really working with them on right now to understand about people is that none of what we do in the day to day office environment actually matters. Like, we're all going to die. You know, this is just what we're doing and they're doing to make money. And we need to be really empathetic to the fact that as humans, every single one of them, you and I both are struggling with something today in our personal lives that weighs on us. And if the CEO can build a culture where we're truly empathetic of people and we care about people, we care about their insecurities, their vulnerabilities, their relationships, their personal finances, like if we actually gave a shit about them as humans, they would care about the business more than they do today. And I'm really trying to get the CEOs to slow down on that because most of them, when they're aware of it, realize, wow, you're right. Because I'm sure you have something that you're struggling with, right? And we all do. My dad's in hospital having gone through a heart attack and a major cardiac arrest six days ago. So I. That's one thing I'm really working with them on is just to slow down.

To truly care as an organization. They spend so much time in the business and not maybe with their families or the things they really do care about. So it is like a second family. So we would hope that we care enough about our employees to make that happen. But there actually is a business case for it too, right? So there, there are two different reasons to do it. And I think things have changed so much in the last 20, 30 years as far as the mindset where leaders, I used to go in 28 years ago or something, and they would say, fix my people. Tell me what's wrong with them. That's why they want to do Colby, like, just tell me what's wrong with them and what I need to fix. And now people really do have this mindset that I should actually care about your strengths and tap into that. And I need to know you as a person. And there's, you know, something. A lot of the research, our teams talk a lot about being able to be free to be yourself on a team and really speak up, push back, but also be who you are and let people into your life a little bit. And that kind of trust that builds with that is really powerful.

And I actually try to work with companies to have them think of their business more as a team and less of a family. For, for a couple reasons. You can't fire people in your family and we actually can fire people in our company. We can get rid of people in your family, that toxic aunt or grumpy uncle, unfortunately, they're with us forever and we, we kind of have. But in, in the business world, you can get rid of some of those cultural cancers. And then secondly, a lot of people had really dysfunctional family lives and the whole thought of coming to work and having to spend more time with another family is different for them. They understand the idea of a team and a high performing team and the coaches on a team and having each other's backs and, you know, maybe not all of us being best friends, but respecting each other. And so that's where I try to definitely go, is on the team approach.

Right? Oh, that's great. Yeah. Well, I love in meetings Tuck, by the way, one of the best titles for a book ever. I love the title of that book. You know, you talk about the need for some of the off site retreats and just time together in some way in order to get to know each other a little more personally. So I really did love that. Tell me about the CEO COO relationship. What makes that so special and what are you guys focusing on at COO alliance around that.

The real CEO COO relationship should be a yin and yang relationship. You complement each other. You are each other's balance. The COO is the brakes to the CEO's gas. The COO shines the spotlight on the CEO and the CEO shines the spotlight on the COO. It's just a real strong partnership and balance. Very, very similar to how a marriage might be between, you know, a couple that are married and how they're going to raise a family and build a life is, is there's a counterpart to each other. So a lot of trust, a lot of complimenting each other. It's about working. You know, if the CEO is strong in four areas, you want a COO that doesn't want to work in those areas at all and is really strong in the areas they're weak. It's a very misunderstood role. Harvard actually wrote an article years ago called the misunderstood role of the coo. And it's different for every company. As great of a COO as I was for one, 800 got junk. Right. I took them from 14 employees to 3100 employees in 6 years. I was an amazing COO for them. I would have been the wrong COO for 95% of my COO alliance members. I would be terrible in their companies because I don't balance with their CEO properly. I'm too entrepreneurial as a match for their CEO. You know, they might want somebody that's more inward facing on finance and engineering and it. And I suck at all of those.

Right.

So it's a really strange role. Whereas a c. A chief marketing officer, you can almost plug and play a chief marketing officer into every company or a chief technology officer. It's very interchangeable. It's a very, very different role to get figured out.

Right? Oh my gosh. Such interesting examples. Because, you know, depending on the life cycle of the business, I mean, you were a second entrepreneur in that business. You really, as a CEO, everything you were doing was innovating. Because to go from however many employees you said to 3100, I mean, that's a massive jump. And it, it does. It reminds me a little bit about David Colby and me. So we're both owners in the business. He's the CEO, I'm the president. But we both are very entrepreneurial. And I was saying the other day, I go at a certain size, I would not be the person anymore. This just wouldn't be fun for me anymore.

The new COO at 1-800-got junks, a guy named Eric Church. He and I started a fraternity together 34 years ago at Carleton in Ottawa. He's been their COO now for nine years. He would have been horrible in the first six when I was COO. And I took them from 2 million to 106 million in revenue in six years. He's now taken them from about around the 100 million to about 450 million. But he's very process driven, very inward facing, very matrix decision making, you know, leadership strategy, planning, tax, all the stuff that I wasn't real good at. I was definitely more like Brian's partner and mentor. I'd already built a couple of other franchise companies, so for the first four or five years, I was just like, you do your stuff. Let me get this done. Cause I knew what to do. There was a partner role. Whereas Eric, the COO now at Wendy's under got junk. Very different. No one will ever know his name. He stays very inward facing, doesn't want press, doesn't want accolades. But he's crushing it as a coo. Yeah. At different stages. That person in that role completely changes as well.

I think that's. That's this little nuance I don't think we talk to people about with their career trajectory. Right. Is that you people look so much at a job title. I want to do this or this is my goal. But it's. But in what type of a business? Talk a little bit about the difference between an entrepreneurial company and something that's a little more established or becoming a larger corporation or that is a large corporation. So there are different times in your career where you are the person for that. But be careful what you wish for, because people just aspire to a position without really understanding how are you going to apply your strengths.

Yeah. It can also go in the opposite direction where entrepreneurial organizations get very enamored with the seasoned senior talent and they try to bring someone from a big company in to work for them. So I made that mistake years ago. I brought in the former vice president of marketing for McDonald's Canada and dairy Queen Canada, brought them in as our head of marketing for 1-800-got junk. And a week later, I knew it was a disaster. His first question he asked me was, who fills out the FedEx forms? I was like, kidding. Like, dude, we have 30 people here. What are you talking about? Like, fill out the damn forms, man. It turned out he was a great culture fit. He just was in the wrong seat. He's now been a spectacular franchise partner for 1-800-got junk for 18 years. So great culture, person, wrong seat, Very corporate in anyway. Yeah.

People make that mistake all the time as entrepreneurs because you think there's. There's all these people who are so much smarter than I am. I just need to bring them all in and have this experience. But it's. It has to be a cultural fit first.

Number one, it must be both the culture fit and the proven skill set. So the other thing I think a lot of entrepreneurial companies do wrong is they hire people that know how to do something but have never done it. You know, as an example, I know how to do front crawl and back crawl or backstroke and butterfly. I know how I would drown doing butterfly in a race. And. But would you rather hire someone that has won an Olympic medal and hire someone that broke a world record and hire someone that has competed in all four events or hire someone who knows how to do it?

Right.

So I think hiring someone that is the right culture fit and has done what you need them to do before. Right. Has the skills to do what's on their plate, then you'll win. On the CEO coo, when it's hiring somebody, you have very implicit trust. Brian and I had an unfair advantage. Brian was the CEO at 1-800-Gaut-JUNK. He was my best man at my wedding three months before I joined him to start working with him. So we were best friends. We were also in an entrepreneur's organization forum group together for four years. He'd seen me build two other companies. So he had or your interview with me.

Right? And that's two things. Right? You knew each other personally, so he understood your values. But the other thing was he saw you work. Because sometimes people think I'm just going to hire family because I know I can trust them and I know them personally and that's not always a great decision. So speaking of COOs, I got, I've been asked this question, so I'm wondering what your answer is because I'm a little bit stumped. People have said I know a lot of entrepreneurs out there who need to find that second in command. Where do I find them? I know what they should look like. But where are all these people living? You know? So I don't know if you have a response to that.

Great. Well, and before you hire a coo, make sure that you at least have an executive assistant already. If you don't have an executive assistant, you are one. First thing you need to do is go hire yourself a really good solid executive assistant to get all the administrative work off your plate, all the lower impact tasks off, all the lower price tasks off your plate. That might free you up for another year before you truly need the second in command. So that's the first starting point. Secondly, a coo, if you remove the title, right? I think Shakespeare said a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet. So a person doing operational stuff is working in operations somewhere now. They should have good understanding of all the business areas. So they're probably working in mid sized companies in the 40 employees to 200 employee range companies. They have access to the leadership team. They've seen all the other and worked with all the other business areas and they're probably working on the operational side of the business, close to the CEO. So that's, that's where they are, is they're working in ops at other companies today. I also believe that great employees are never out looking for a job. They have a great job, they work for a great company. In fact, I'm having dinner tonight with the CEO of a search firm based in Phoenix, Arizona that I've referred clients to for 11 years. The company's called Y Scouts. They recruit very seasoned C level and VP level executives. And they only look at culture Fit first and then Skillset second. They're amazing. I've sent Max and the Wisecouts team, gosh, 50 clients probably over the last 11 years. So that's what you use. Use a good search firm to help you poach the people who are already working in operational with a lot of the visibility to the team.

That's great. Yes. And we love Wise Scouts. Thank you for that, for reminding us of that. Because of what they do and what they focus on. First, do you feel like there's some people that are running businesses right now that would be good COOs, good entrepreneurs.

That would be good COOs.

They're not necessarily good entrepreneurs. I think sometimes they're struggling because maybe they shouldn't have been an entrepreneur. Sometimes they come in and they become an excellent COO because they can think like an owner, but they were in the wrong position as an entrepreneur. They really weren't the person to do it.

Being an entrepreneur, being a visionary, you know, putting it on the line, not expecting a paycheck, being okay with the risk. You know, one of, one of the strengths of my bipolar is that I, my manic edge that I'm often on allows me to recruit people and sell people on ideas and raise money and, you know, sell to the public and the press. If you're very operational, you often don't have that manic edge, which is tough to then to then lead on that, that entrepreneurial side. And the other one is just the DNA makeup of are you okay with mortgaging your house and putting everything on the line and not drawing a paycheck for six months, that's tough. To be entrepreneurial too, I would say they're harder. If someone has really gone out and started their own company already, it's probably tougher. Yeah.

Harder to find that way. Okay, thank you for that. So tell us just really quickly about a couple of your books and what you're excited about right now. And, and my question about your striving instincts is, do you enjoy writing books? How do you do it? Because I, I want to know, knowing your Colby result now, how does it work for you to, to be an author?

Well, and what's interesting, most COOs don't want to be CEOs. Most of our CEO alliance members have no desire to ever be an entrepreneur or a CEO of a company. You know, you look at Sheryl Sandberg who's the queen bee of all COOs. Right. She was Mark Zuckerberg, COO for 15 years at Facebook, has never had a desire to go be an entrepreneur or CEO. Zero. So that's really interesting. And I think it's similarly that if you're truly entrepreneurial, you probably don't want to be a second in command. Do I like writing books? I like having books written. I can't say that process of writing them, it's hard to write them. I found a really good partner to help me. So I use my Colby profile to my advantage in writing my book. So I'll give you the process that I use. My newest book, which is called the Second in Command. I did. I kind of walked around and transcribed using my phone, all of the things that I wanted to have included in the book. You know, how to hire one, how to fire one, how to build a relationship with them, how to build trust with them, how to integrate them with the team. All the things. All of those things became the table of contents for the book. And then for each chapter of the book, I made a bunch of rough notes that I wanted to talk about, and I walked around and used a headset and just recorded a bunch of stuff. And then I. I worked with a company called Scribe, and Scribe interviewed me about each of the chapters and each of the points and asked me questions so I could think out loud. And I talked all of this content, and then they took all of the content and started writing it all into the manuscript. I then went through it and read it and edited it. Right. So I used that, my unique ability, and I used my Colby profile to my advantage. That's how I got the book to where it is.

I love that. Yeah. So. And you figured. Did you always do that?

No. My very first book, Double Double, I did it that way using something called Dragon Dictation. This was back because it was 12 years ago, before Siri and anything existed. I Dragon. And I had said that it was Bluetooth for my phone or my laptop. Bluetooth, my laptop. Yeah. So I did my very first one that way. I learned that because my. I'm very good at thinking out loud. I'm very good at speaking from a stage. When I sit down and have to type something, I freeze. And so I used to write my memos that way. As I would send my assistant an audio recording, she used to have to type it. Now we just use Otter and she gets a transcription, and then she polishes it, and then I send it to a copywriter. Who really polishes it, it's out the door. So for me it's like five minutes, her five minutes, and the copywriter a half hour for what used to take me a week.

Sure. Oh, I love that. Yeah. And for those of you that initiate and quick start out there, the spoken word is everything. When someone says, can you put that in an email to me? I'm like, no, Keith, call me on the phone and I'll tell you in 30 seconds. Like, why would I have to put that in an email? So I really avoid having to do that as well when I communicate.

I'm even using now when I'm on social media, My assistant helps me find a bunch of questions that people will post on social media for me to reply to. The way I reply is I send a loom video. So if I'm on Facebook and I see somebody asks about how do I hire a COO? I do a 90 second loom video and I drop that in and everybody's like, wow, it's amazing you took all that time. I'm like, no, it was 90 seconds and it was super easy and I didn't have to type all the shit out for you. It was a shortcut for me.

I love that. Well, and what good advice for everyone out there to really start figuring out what are, what are your shortcuts? What is, what can you be doing to make sure you're your most productive self? And you have to make sure that you have people in your life that you're not just aspiring to. Look at someone who does things in a totally different way than you do. So sometimes you can use information about someone, how they're running their business or, you know, some good advice on things with finance or whatever it might be. But you really have to step back and say, would I solve a problem the same way this person would? So if you don't share the same strengths, sometimes I find that people are trying to emulate someone that would be taking action in a way that's totally different for me.

One of the biggest shortcuts that I'm obsessed about right now is not just growing my skills as a leader, but how do I grow the skills of all of the managers in my company so that I give them the leadership skills. I'll give you an example. Most managers, right, if you manage people, whether it's two people or 20 people inside of a company, you have to interview people. Most managers have never been trained on interviewing. You're probably running meetings in person or over zoom. Most of them have Never been trained. You're probably doing one on one coaching, coaching, delegation, time management, email management, conflict management, problem solving, project management. So what I did is I created a course called invest in your leaders to actually give managers those solid skills so that I believe if we grow their skillset, they'll grow the company. So many companies out there are trying to train people on what we do, like trying to train them on Colby or train them on, you know, making widgets. But we don't ever train them on the culture of the company and the history of the company and the core values of the company, nor do we ever get into really growing them as leaders. And if the company scales right, when the company goes from 2 million to 4 and from 4 to 8, from 8 to 16, if you haven't grown the skills of your managers, they're out of a job or your company's going to stall because they don't have the skill sets to get to the next level.

And what a shame, right? They're out of a job because they are people that are fabulous for your culture and have been there the whole time, but we didn't do what we needed to do to get them there. Is that a course then? That, that's a course for anyone, any kind of manager, not just CEO.

Yeah, it's for all managers. Like one of our members of our CEO alliance, she has 34 of her employees going through the invest in your leaders course because she wants to grow their capacity. And then, and I priced it like $747 per person. So as she said, if I'm not willing to spend $747 on them, I should probably fire them. Like for seven or 47 bucks. You grow their skills, it gets so much easier.

Is that remote or virtual or is it in person?

No, no, it's all virtual. It's all self guided. It's me teaching all of the 12 modules. It's the core 12 modules that I trained everyone at 1-800-got- junk and Gerber Auto Body and you know, every business that I've built and then all the clients I've coached globally, I coach them on all this stuff.

I love that. And you know, this is the kind of stuff entrepreneurial companies don't have set to go. When you work at a larger company, there are, there are management trainings for junior managers and bringing people up and, and we just don't have that. So I love that solution. Okay, so lastly, are there any, you know, trends in leadership or things going on that you're thinking about? Most right now or that interests one.

Big one right now. Cause you know, the trendy things that have been talked about in the last probably six months. One was the great Resignation. The other one is quiet quitting.

Yes.

Well, I'll tell you, quiet quitting is not something new. Years ago we used to call it coasting. Right. People were in jobs, coasting. It's the same, different label. I'm not so worried about quiet quitting. But the great Resignation is actually a really good thing. It means that good employees can finally quit working for companies and driving 30 minutes each way for the privilege. And it means they can probably work remote for a better company somewhere else. It's raising the game where you have to be a really good company now or you're not going to get. You're not even going to get B or C level people anymore. It can just work somewhere else. So I think what's going to be good is it's going to force companies. It's kind of like a coffee shop. You know, years ago you'd walk into Starbucks. They played jazz, they had good food. Now every coffee shop plays jazz. Every coffee shop has good food. And Starbucks is kind of in the middle. Starbucks is no longer a real cool place anymore.

Right.

Well, average companies are going to be below average very, very quickly. So what I'm trying to get leaders to understand is it's kind of like if the rate of change outside your business is greater than the rate of change inside your business, you're out of business. They need to adapt or die. And everything we used to know about company culture is different now that we have hybrid and remote teams, right?

Absolutely. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Thank you for saying that. That's huge. Because I do think there's so much focus right now on quiet quitting. And Gallup has almost been frustrated. They're like, we've been telling you about this forever, that there's a lot of people who aren't engaged and they're, you know, there's actively disengaged. They're the loud ones, you know who they are. But these other whole other group of people that have been coasting for years.

And entrepreneurial companies often don't have those people because we can spot them. But when you get into kind of the hundred to five hundred person or one hundred to a thousand person, that's where the death zone is.

Yes.

The death zone is all these companies or people just coasting along, sucking up time, sucking up resources. You could fire 10 of them and give all their salary to Some of your A players, like, I think companies have to take care of the A players. A players are racehorses. B players are the workhorses. C players, you go to the glue factory. But we often spend so much time with the C players and we waste so much money on the C players. You could get rid of them and put all of your time and resources and money into your A's and B's and you win.

That mindset is so important. And I find when they. When there's tremendous change, sometimes your A players won't complain when they're kind of drowning. So you can't totally ignore them. They're really good at putting their head down and powering through and being a part of it. And so we have to focus on them and, you know, worry about them and make sure they have all the support and the resources they need and they. And know that they're a player. So.

Well. And if you don't worry about them and if you don't focus on them, somebody from Wisecoats is going to come and poach them because they're going to be.

That's right. Yep. That's a good. That's exactly what happens.

People always ask us this. They're like, how did you get to the size you are? And I've never seen an ad from you guys. And. And that comes down to two things. Realistically, if it was my brother's way, we would have had ads live years ago. You know, at Grow Rev, the biggest issue ever since the beginning that we've always ran into is we don't have a lead problem. We have a.