Challenges of the C-Suite with Rhett Power

And welcome to our first show. We are on LinkedIn Live. I'm so excited. And, uh, it is— of course, it's called CB Live, right? So I am super excited about having our first guest. Uh, this is just incredible. You know, I work so hard to get on this show. So, and I want to— I want to introduce The man behind the woman, which is Rhett Power. Rhett is an amazing person. He's a friend, he's a mentor, he's a colleague, he's a business colleague. I, I couldn't ask for anybody better to be on this show. So Rhett, welcome.

Hey, it is an honor and a privilege to be on your first Show, CB. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Well, in all transparency to those that are listening, Rhett was the force behind my getting on this show and having this opportunity, so I can't thank him enough. Rhett has an amazing background, and I'm going to ask him to share a little bit. By the way, again, transparency, this is what, my second interview with Rhett, but it's the first one On LinkedIn Live. For the other one, you can follow me on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. So, Rhett, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Wow, where do I begin on the journey that is who I am this minute? Uh, you know, you know, that, that's a— it's always a tough question, right? Because you don't know what parts of your life that you want to talk about. If I talk about it in the context of right now, You know, I'm a partner in a company called Courageous Leadership, which is actually a relatively new venture. And we help companies believe again. We help companies get back to that day-one mentality. And to me, that's really, really, really invigorating and exciting work. I just love helping companies get back to those, that creative and that time when they could solve and conquer the the challenges ahead of them and do it with courage. But, you know, I've got a long history. I started as an overnight radio DJ out of college, worked a bunch of jobs like that to no end, and, you know, ended up working in communications for a big corporate entity. And when I was 30, said, you know what, I'm going to go join the Peace Corps. And that really took my life in a whole different direction. I ended up working international development for almost a decade and then learned that I, after that, wanted to start a business. So I jumped into a toy company, a startup toy company, which ended up— we ended up taking that globally to 35 countries and doing an exit. And that was just really such a learning time for me. And then I invested and we've done some other startups and other companies. And that's led me, and that led me ultimately back to coaching. And as I was reflecting on that a few months ago, you know, I really discovered while I was in the Peace Corps that I love to teach and I love to help and I love to see those light bulb moments in people. I attribute the coaching that I do now and the consulting and the work that I do with leaders as to really going back to those moments of, I really liked watching my students be inspired and to learn and to want to get better. Like I said, those light bulb moments. That's why I'm a coach. That's where that comes from. That's where I think I learned that about myself. And I've kind of, I think, in a lot of ways, kind of come back to my roots. I think the business experience was really valuable to being able to be a good coach, to be able to help people through the challenges that they're facing in their businesses. So I think I've always probably been a coach. It just took me— it was a long path to that. But that's okay, because I think that's what makes me a good coach. So That's who I am. That's what I do. That's what I enjoy. I think that answered your question. That was a really long answer to probably what you were looking for in terms of a short answer.

No, it was exactly what I was looking for because I was going to build upon your experience in the Peace Corps. Rhett, you have such a giving spirit about you that just resonates in everything you do and everything you touch. Maybe too much so because trying to, you know, grab you down is like, oh my God, it's like trying to catch the air, right?

Like trying to catch a greased pig at the county fair, right?

Well, I was putting it a little bit more politely. But I tell you, I have benefited so much from your mentoring. And I love when you said to me the other day, we were chatting and And I was talking about how I grew very proudly chatting about how I've grown my LinkedIn connections to 7,000. And you looked at me and he's— and you said, now, CB, I want you to grow by 100 per day. And I'm like, what?

It was only a week, only 100 a week.

Oh, 100 a week. Okay.

I'll let you off.

Thank you. Thank you. So I wouldn't share with the audience, if you're reaching out to Rhett for mentoring, he is tough. Let me just tell you, in a very sweet way, but he is tough as nails. And you just learn so much. Now, so Rhett, there's so much I want to ask you about. First of all, your courageous leadership. When you talk about that, you say, oh, we want people to get back to where they started. What does that mean? I mean, I know what it means because I've seen what happened with Apple and Microsoft and Uber and the likes when they became more mature clients.

Yeah, you know, look, I, I, I, I saw this happen in my own company and, and the first company that I ran. Uh, you know, the day one, I, I, I will always— I will take to the grave the day that I walked in the— we bought a one-product company. That's how we started the toy company. And it was a one product. He had a 1,500-square-foot warehouse. But I remember the day I got the keys to it and we walked in and the realization that this is yours kind of washes over you, right? And I will never forget that feeling because this is— I mean, it's just a visceral feeling. I just, I remember it and I always will. And, you know, on that first day, you don't have a culture, you don't have a stack of rules and a stack of this is how we do things. You know, you don't say— in your vocabulary is not something you say. You don't say something like, Well, this is how we do things here. You're looking at the world in a way different view. You're looking at it in a really fresh way. Now, 6 or 7 or 8 years later, you're looking at it a whole different way. You've got a stack of processes and you've got a stack of— you've got a book, actually an employee handbook of rules and what you can and can't do. You know, you've got a culture. And I just remember, you know, we were always at our best when we looked at it from a day one perspective. We were always more innovative. We were always solving the problems faster. When we got back to throw everything out the window and let's think about it in a new way, when we did that, we did really well. When we got bogged down in, well, this is in the mindset, this is how we do things, then we failed and we stalled out something, you know, it didn't go as well. So the whole point for me for Courageous Leadership is to help companies think like it's day 1 every day. And think about what you can accomplish if you're coming into work every day and you're thinking, there's nothing that I can't do and there's no problem that's too big and there's no rule book. There's got to be a rule book, but there's no rule book on how I can solve that problem. If I have to tear things apart to solve that problem, then I can tear things apart to solve that problem. And that's the culture that your company's built on. That's what this is about. This is about taking— it's about having courageous, being able to make courageous decisions and not be ruled by fear and ruled by the culture that a lot of companies get stuck in. That's what courageous leadership is going to help companies do, and to be more courageous and to get back to the point where they believe in themselves again, they believe in who they are and what they're trying to accomplish.

You know, I want to share with the audience something because, you know, what Red is saying doesn't apply only to the big companies. No, it applies to people who are just starting their business. Now, I have a very successful business called the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches, which is for master-level coaches, but I decided as a result of Floyd, I was going to open an additional business called Workplace Racial Equality. And for me, being accountable to somebody, even as the CEO, was important because then, you know, you don't find excuses, you find solutions. And at one point— so what I did is I asked a few people that I knew to sit on my board. And that included Rhett, it includes the CEO of Fast Company Inc., it includes Beth who started iVillage in New York, and it just goes on and on. It includes a marketing person that worked with Steve Jobs at Apple. And after one meeting where everybody was saying, okay, you have to develop more process, you have to develop more procedure. You have to do this. You have to beta test, you know. So my philosophy in my success has always been jump first and figure out where you're going to land. And this was completely contrary. And I did want to start this business in a different way than I started ACEC. But this felt so restrictive to me. I was choking. I was doubting myself. And I called I called Rhett and I said, okay, Rhett, I don't know what to do. I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. Everybody is volunteering their time. These are brilliant people. And his advice to me was, go with your gut. Go with your original vision and we will follow. And that was the best advice I've ever gotten. That took courage.

Yeah.

Would you say to startup businesses— well, let me just ask it this way. What are the 3 things that you feel get in the way for startup businesses?

That's a great question. I think leadership often gets in its own way in a lot of ways.

What does that mean though?

Well, I was trying to articulate it. I think we don't delegate, we don't empower, we don't give people— when I say we don't empower, it's very easy as a founder in a startup environment where I've got the— as the founder or the co-founder or whatever it is, you know, I've got the vision. I know exactly where I want to go. And I can't let go of that. Maybe it's control, maybe it's personality, whatever, but you can't let go of it, right? And you run people away and you don't give them a— the people that you bring into the organization, you don't give them a chance to shine. You don't give them a chance to do what you've brought them on to do. And you don't give up some control, right? You want to keep that control. And that gets in the way. That gets in the way of growth. It gets in the way of— I mean, I know it. I've seen it in my organizations. When I didn't get out of the way, when I was involved way too much in things I shouldn't and had no business being involved in, I got in the way. I was a bottleneck, right? I was a roadblock to making progress. So learning to get out of the way and letting people do what they're— what you've brought them on to do is a huge thing for founders and a huge control thing for founders, and can be a hindrance. I think also discipline is something that gets in the way too. You know, I'm— I try to be a very disciplined person, but when the first thing happens when you start making a little bit of money You know, I'm coaching a guy right now. This is a prime example. And I, I, you know, it's, uh, I don't know how long I can really coach him anymore because, you know, he's, he's doing okay. He's actually come out of COVID really well. Um, but he's gone on and he's bought himself a few toys now.

Oh.

And I think that in, in those kind of cases, it's, it's a real danger to, you know, not to have the financial discipline and the discipline that you need in every way to make sure your company gets, you know, goes where it wants to go. So discipline to me is in all kinds of ways, whether that's in your life, whether that's in your habits, whether that's financially, is often a place where entrepreneurs and startups get gets, um, you know, and I'll go back to the story. So when we started making— in the toy company, when we started making some money, and we, we, we— I think we were doing about $10 million a year at that point.

Uh, that's definitely making some money.

And, and, and this is only a few years in, and we were doing really well. Um, the, the, the, the, the The real desire was to go out and say, hey, let's, let's move to a nicer office and let's, let's go out. And I mean, I was still— we were still in the same— we were sharing an office. I think we had 3 people in that little tiny office at that time. I think we had our receptionist in there too. And the, the, the mindset was, oh, let's— we should go get some new office furniture. Boy, I'd love a new chair. I'm sitting on that old chair that I've been sitting on for 6 years and it's about And it was used to begin with. And we resisted the temptation to go out and do things that we didn't need to do because what we really needed to do was stay focused. We were operating just fine with what we had and we didn't need to go out and we didn't. Thankfully, we maintained our discipline. And I think that that's where people get in trouble a lot too.

I want to go back to something about giving up power. Rick, how do you know when you should be giving up power and how do you know when you should maintain power?

Wow, that's a great question. I think you learn. I think you have to learn some of those skills. I think you have to learn Number one, it's a lot easier when you have the right people. What I learned about that was when I wasn't confident in who I had brought on, I was a whole lot less reluctant, or was a lot more reluctant to give away control, right? When I brought on really great people and I began to trust them and have confidence in their work, Giving up that control was a lot easier. So, uh, I, I think we put sometimes— and I, we were guilty of it too— sometimes we just needed bodies and, and, and to do certain things. That was an awful approach, and I wouldn't do it again if I was hiring that many people again and building that kind of team again, because you didn't always have a sense of confidence. You know, by a few years in and by process of elimination, mostly not in any skill in hiring, we had a great team and I could leave and go on a sales trip. I could go to Hong Kong or I could go to New York. I could go to a show and feel like the place wasn't gonna burn down when I left. And that productivity and things would still keep going. And that was a function of having really a lot of confidence in the team. So, you know, my advice to entrepreneurs is put a lot of effort, front-end effort, right? Front-end effort into the hiring and the people that you're bringing on, because I think that's gonna help you have the confidence to let go a little bit. And I think that's really important.

Let's go back to the example that I gave of my board saying that we needed to be more measurement-focused, more process-focused, more procedure-focused, and it just chokes me up. Your advice to go with your gut. Now, was that giving up power or was that— what was that? Would you say that I should have done that? No.

Look, I think this is your vision. Workplace racial equality is— you have a very clear idea where you want this to be and what you want that to look like and where you want it to be 6 months from now, 5 years from now. And I think sometimes there are different styles of way— the ways people do things, right? Uh, the way you do something may be different from the way I do it. Uh, and that's what you get when you have a board, and that's what you have when you have advisors. It's what you have when you have mentors. Uh, when you talk to a lot of people like you and I both do You're going to get a cross-section of the way other people might do it. That's not right or wrong. There's not a right or wrong because the vision that you have, we all know it's not going to be a straight path. It's going to be a zigzaggy path to get where you want to go. There's no straight line. There are going to be pivots and changes and things that you don't anticipate. Some that you do, some that you don't. So what I think I was saying to you in follow your gut is a lot of times we don't, we listen to others because we trust what they have to say. I mean, you put a board together of people that you trust and admire and value what they have to say, right? All of that is valid, but at the end of the day, the only way to get things done is to listen to all the advice and then make a call.

Right.

And also, I think we often don't take enough time to listen to ourselves and listen to our gut and what's right for us. And we tend to go with what somebody that's important to us has to say, or somebody's opinion that we value greatly. And, and think, well, maybe they're right. Maybe I should, maybe I should do it this way, right? And that's not going to be necessarily the way we should do it because we, we have a different style. And I think as an entrepreneur, you have to follow the way that works for you. Take all the advice you want to take, but at the end of the day, you gotta, you gotta follow your own heart and follow Follow your own gut because that's the way you work and that's the way you— I mean, you know what's best for you. So I think sometimes we have to listen, but to tune into what we're saying to ourselves first, um, and then take the advice of others and, and take it for what it's worth, right?

I think you said it perfectly. And, and to be fair to the audience, there was another part of this, and, and Rhett just articulated it quite well because the people that I asked to sit on the board, I trust implicitly. And so I knew that their advice was quite sound. It just wasn't something that I could totally get behind because contrary to my personality, it was consistent with my values, but contrary to my personality.

Right.

And so what I was able to do was to take what they advised and extrapolate from that and figure out how to use it based upon my personality. It's throwing away everything.

If they were CEO, that's probably the way they would have done it. It doesn't mean that they wouldn't get to the same result. In their own way, they would get to the same place that if they were running the organization, they'd get to where the vision was. They would just do it in their way, and that's fine.

Yes, exactly. And yet, you know, here's where I'm gonna go. I didn't warn you about this, but you know, you're used to me already. Um, I think it's, as, as we've pointed out, it's really, really important to be around people that you trust. As my board, just, you know, I would give anything to help them, and I feel they would do the same for me. But recently, I was in a meeting with a group of people, and the goal of the meeting was to support each other. When I talked about my project, the result was I heard a lot of implicit bias. I think that people of color, women, any minority, we need to be really careful to listen for that implicit bias. Because if I had listened to it and acted on it, I would have been in terrible shape. Knowing that the strength in what I was doing and where I was going, and because I'm a coach, it allowed me to quickly identify The naysayers, and those could be incredibly disruptive to a dream. What's your experience with that? What do you feel? Any advice?

Well, I'll start off by saying this: I can't imagine. Um, I mean, you can see I'm You can see that. You can see my skin tone and my—

My camera makes you look a little brown there.

And my gender, I think you can tell.

That we could tell. The beard helps, you know.

So I don't live that every day, right? I don't. I can't say that I That I have felt like I, I— there's bias. You know, I haven't been in a room where I felt like I didn't have a voice or I couldn't speak up, or it's been a long time since that's been the case. Um, I think it's something though that we have got to think about. It's something that we've got to try to have and feel what people of color and minorities and women feel. I think we have to, as leaders, put ourselves in your shoes, at least try. I think that starts with having uncomfortable conversations about it in your own organization. Giving people permission to ask the tough questions and to put you on the spot as a leader. You as a leader, not responding defensively to that, but in a way that is empathetic. You almost have to turn on the listening switch and and zip it right here and listen. I think you've got to create an environment where that's okay. You've got to let other people and other management in your organization know that that's okay and that this is what and how we're going to operate.

I think that's great advice for companies. But I think where we get stuck is when These people are categorized as friends or colleagues.

Yeah.

And then it becomes a real challenging position to say or not say, you're full of it. You have some unconscious bias going on here.

Yeah.

It's, it's And so especially women, fortunately I don't suffer from this, who suffer from the imposter syndrome. Because that kind of dialogue, that kind of feedback can stop women cold. I mean, men suffer from it too, but not to the same degree. And I think that people of my race can also suffer from it.

Right.

And what I'm saying is, please try to listen for that Identify it and move away from it.

I think it's also— we have to, you know, I don't know how you call it out amongst friends without ruffling feathers or hurting people's feelings. But I think, how else are people going to change? If we're not calling it out, and I mean yes, we should notice it. Yes, we should be more self-conscious of it or self-aware of it's probably a better way to say that. But the fact is, if I'm not think if it's not on the top of my mind every day like it maybe is yours, then I need somebody. I mean, I look at it like this. We need help recognizing it. What I've got to do is I've got to set an environment where I can do that, but I need help recognizing it because if nobody ever calls me out on it, most certainly friends. Friends, that's where that starts, I think.

Yeah, I agree.

I can't expect my employees to do it, but damn, I want my friends to do it.

I think in today's world, given Floyd, you can expect your employees to do it. I think, and you certainly can do it with friends. I think where it comes— where we haven't crossed over that permission line is with colleagues.

Yeah.

And, and better yet, implicit bias, or another word is unconscious bias that they're displaying. And then you have to figure out what's real and what's not real, you know. Is there a nugget of truth in there, or is this all bullshit, right? And it's bullshit. Is it conscious bullshit or unconscious bullshit? It's a lot of work.

It's pretty draining.

Okay, so now that we've talked about that, I, I want to go back to talking about startups.

Okay.

You and I and 2 of our colleagues do volunteer work, uh, every 2 weeks to help coaches that are beginning their business or practice.

Mm-hmm.

And we see 2 things. One, we see failure, and failure can be defined by many things. It could be just not making enough money. And we also see that people just don't know how to get behind starting a business, which I see as 2 different things because you can be successful at starting and then fail. So as— and as coaches, I see a lot of coaches that don't make enough money. They could have the right number of clients, but they're not making enough money. And, and they don't have mentors like I have that said to me recently when I said, I'm gonna— I don't know what to charge for a speech for this particular entity. And boy, did you— you were all over that. I was like, okay, Rhett, okay, I got it, Rhett. Okay, you know, and, and I love you for that. But here we have a whole group, a whole generation, the new generation of coaches that just need help because they don't think of their practice as a startup business. What advice can you give?

Wow!

Wow!

I think we're getting a little bit. You hear that?

Yeah, I do. The problem of technology. I'm not sure what's causing it.

Can you hear me now?

Yes, that's much better.

Okay, I'm sorry.

And I am closing other documents that I have open. Okay, let's go for it.

Let me see if— anyway, can you hear me?

I can hear you perfectly.

All right, I'm getting feedback. I'll try to ignore it. I think it's gonna make our recording not great. How about now?

Mm-hmm. I can still hear you. Okay, now I can hear the feedback.

How about now?

I'm good now. Now I can hear the feedback.

Yeah, we're not gonna live with it. I think, I think to answer your—

Uh-oh, you're breaking up now.

Oh no.

The challenges of technology.

It's always challenging. Still?

Yeah, I should, I should mention to the audience that Rhett is on the road on a business trip. And was kind enough to call in from a hotel. So that's probably what's happening. So just bear with us a minute while we try to figure this out. Nope, not good now.

Not good.

It sort of goes in and out.

We'll try one more thing and then we can— I can go out and come back in.

Okay.

Try one more, push the headphones in, see if that helps.

All right.

I don't know why all of us have this problem.

Oh, that happens in a hotel.

You there?

We're here, so let's give it a try. I think you were just stalling, thinking about an answer, Red.

Oh, I know.

Okay, it looks like Red went out and will come back in. So in the meantime, I want to take a moment to talk to you about the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches, which I am so incredibly proud of. It's a group of master-level coaches who are on the road to or already have achieved being enterprise-wide business partners. And you say, CB, what the heck does that mean? We're not business people. We are coaches. And as I like to say, the enterprise-wide business partner is somebody who takes in a global picture with relationship to their client. It's somebody who looks at how does the client exist in the world, in the business world that they're in? What is the competition that their company faces? What happens with the employees? How is the person's leadership model? And so on and so forth. For a great long explanation, please go to our website on the homepage, and that is acec-association.org. I see we're lucky enough to get Rhett back, so let's go turn it over to Rhett.

What was that question again?

The question simply is, how can coaches treat their practice like a startup business? How can they make money? How can they, uh, be conscious of all of the things that a startup business looks like versus our nature, which is to just help people and hope that it'll work out?

Yeah, like I said, that's a loaded question. And we've got that feedback again. But I'll answer it a couple of ways. I think number one, you have to know what you're differentiating, what, you know, who you are, what you have to offer. What problem do you help solve? What problem do you help a client in your kind of coaching, whatever kind of coaching it is? What kind of problem do you help them solve? And so if you can sing— if you can narrow in on that, if you can understand that really well, then you can market that, right? Because you'll know what kind of clients you can help. And when you know what kind of clients you can help, then you can go after them.

Would you say that one, one of the problems is as a new coach, you try to go after everybody? Instead of staying focused.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, everybody's guilty of it. I was in a room the other day and I asked that question of about 50 coaches, and every single one of them raised their hand that they had chased money, right? And that's a natural inclination when you need the money. Yes, but it often leads you to lose focus. And do work that is not helping you grow the kind of business that you want to grow. And it doesn't help you gain a reputation as a problem solver in that particular type of consulting or coaching or whatever it is you're trying to do. So, so as much as you can avoid that, that happening to you, and you can really focus in on those problems that you solve, Then you can go out and sell to those that are gonna benefit the most from your service. Now, the other thing about it is setting up and being disciplined about selling, because the lifeblood of any business is the ability to convince somebody that they need your product. Or offer a product that somebody really needs. And so I think the toy business and all of the businesses I've been in required me to sell. And when I came to coaching, I think those prior practices helped me put the focus where the focus needed to be, which is to Build a product, right? Build a product that somebody wants. Test it. See if there is if it's a viable product. And when you find the viable product, you start selling it, and you start narrowing in on who it is will buy that product. And that business mentality is helping me be a profitable coach because I spend a lot of time. Working on business development. I look at it as a sales call. I remember the first sales training I ever sat in on the radio station, right? We talked about the sales pitch. You've gotta talk to so many people a day to sell this many ads to make this much money. And I think looking at it that way has really helped me make the selling process In the business side of coaching, my coaching practice, uh, do well because I, I'm relentless enough with that.

So, so many coaches are afraid to sell or to feel that that's not their strength. Do you go out and hire somebody to do this for you, or do you take a class on how to sell?

I think you have to, you have to Nobody's gonna sell it like you can sell it. Nobody's gonna have as vested interest in it as you do. And I think when you're starting out, and you know, there, there are a bunch of coaching organizations and, and franchises and things that you can become a part of that have systems and, and all that. But I think, I think starting out, yeah, it's really good for you to sell. And, you know, and, and you have to make a name for yourself. You have to build your network. You have to, so that ultimately, you know, right now I do mostly a referral business, but that's because I spent years and years and years out there building my network, uh, introducing the world to rats. Uh, and And, and, and, and really hustling. And, you know, absent a New York Times bestselling book, absent, um, the main stage and giving keynotes around the world, and absent a huge platform where you get people to come to you, most coaches—

Most coaches—

Have to Go out and grow their business in an old-fashioned way. That is knocking on doors and offering your service.

Sorry to interrupt you, Brett. It's so true on several levels. One is staying close to your equity, really understanding that and developing— I hate this word because I'm not a soft skills person. But developing your passion helps you really in terms of selling and marketing yourself. So I, I can't tell you how many coaches I've spoken to and I've said, what are you a thought leader in? Oh, I'm not a thought leader. Wrong. You have to be a thought leader. So if your product is not making you a service, not making you a thought leader, then of course you can't sell it. So staying focused on being a thought leader and servicing as a thought leader helps you market much better. I remember when I was in— and so I took sales classes, hated selling. I'm an introvert. I could not, uh, deal with knocking on doors. So I was a failure in selling insurance. It just wasn't my gig. When I opened ACEC, I started talking to people about it, and it started growing and growing and growing. And people would say to me, how did you get so good at sales? And I would say to them, I'm horrible at sales. I hate sales. They said, CB, let's just look at this. You've grown this organization and you've grown it by volunteers. And nobody says no to CB. That is sales. And I'm, no, it's not. No, I refuse to accept that that's sales. But when you have a passion for something, sales comes naturally to you. Yeah. Yeah. So my advice, make sure that you stay close to your passion and talk about it all the time. That's sales. That sells in the new way that we do business. Now, Rhett, I want to— we have about 15 minutes left, and there's a couple of other things I want to talk to you about.

Yep.

That you probably are not even aware that you're good at. But the other day, well, actually for a couple of days, you have been helping me in identifying an assistant. And I said to you, I have just not been successful in finding an assistant to work for me. I have somebody who is amazing at IT. And I said, so I don't, you know, how am I going to do this? And I was whining to you as an adult. I was whining. I will admit this. And you said to me yesterday something so incredibly powerful. You said to me, I want to be successful. This is in your new business, Courageous Leadership. And I want my assistant to be successful to the degree that they want to be successful. That was an aha moment for me. How did you even get to that space, that understanding of what you needed to do?

I have no idea.

That's my rat truth.

No, I know.

Okay, let's, let's approach it this way. Share with me, which— with our audience about the things that you advise me to do in starting to work with a new assistant or anyone else for that matter.

Yeah, you know, I think it goes back to what we were talking about earlier where, you know, you invest a lot up front, and I think, I think I learned those lessons the hard way. And I think this may be— so there was a point where you had to scale up a company from 4 people to like 100 people in a matter of 2 months. And so it was rapid fire every day, taking in resumes, doing interviews. Making decisions right there on the spot. We didn't have an onboarding process. We didn't have policies and procedures. We didn't have job descriptions. But I needed people ASAP. And what I realized is that You've got— and we didn't have time to train people, and we had a lot of attrition that first round. We finally got it under control because we put things in place. We slowed it down. We were more conscious. We did team hiring. We put more effort up front, and we got a better, better person and a better product and a better work effort, uh, as a result. And so I, I think where I was talking to you about yesterday, where that comes from, is that I, I would rather put that effort up front with the people that work with me, get them to where they need to be so that ultimately—

Ultimately.

The reason I hired them is so that they save me time, right? They save me energy. They let me focus on my things that I have to do to be— to make my business profitable. The reason I hired them in the first place is to take some of that off my plate. And so I understand The first few weeks of that, maybe months, I'm not going to be saving any time. I'm not going to be— in fact, I'm going to be spending more time.

That's important for people to know.

Right. I just, I guess I realize that it's not an automatic thing. I have to train people with what I want and how I want it done. And The other thing about spending that time up front is, you know, we talked earlier about trust, and we talked earlier about, uh, understanding and getting to where you trust somebody to let go. Uh, I feel like that's essential to building that trust, and so that you realize whether that person is going to work out or not, right? You have a clear understanding of that. They also have a clear understanding of who you are. You get them a competency level that allows you to breathe and allows you to step back a little bit and then give them some control gradually. And I guess that's the way I have taught myself to think about it. And it's how I I, it's how I do it. It's my process.

So tell our audience some of the tricks that you taught me. Let's go down to the granular level of onboarding. What does it mean? What do you do, uh, when you're a solopreneur? It's very different than— well, maybe it's not when you, when you're like a, um, I don't know, General Foods, Philip Morris, Ford. Bringing somebody on board, what is it that you do to ensure the success other than spending time? What are the very specifics that you do?

Well, I, you know, particularly with talking about the kind of hire that we were talking about yesterday, I tend to break things down because it's how I run my life. And so, and I have to run my life this way. Otherwise, I could go down the rabbit hole of YouTube or Facebook, or I could look out the window and be lost for an hour.

I wasn't going to reveal that to people.

But I have daily tasks that have to be done daily. I have weekly tasks that have to be done weekly. I have monthly tasks that have to be done monthly, and I have projects that can get done anytime. They don't have a time frame, but that are important. And so I have those 4 categories, and I, and I try to look at anybody that works with me as an employee or a team member, that the more we can break down— and, and what that also does is to help set priorities. You know, when you know what's on your daily list You know what's on your weekly list. It makes the priorities really clear. Right. And, and so to me, that's an easy way to set priorities. It's an easy way to give people focus. And it's a good way to just clarify everything.

And so you actually put together— this is what you taught me— you actually put together a spreadsheet. With daily tasks, weekly tasks, monthly tasks, and projects.

Yes.

And then from that, you started— there's something else very important you said to me: allocate an hour a day for training.

Right now? Yeah, from right now.

I never thought about doing that. To me, it was, here, take care of this. And not in a demeaning way, but having assumptions that people knew how to do it. Now, they might know how to do it, but they might not know how to do it your way. And if you're a control freak like I am, then it's important to share that information.

Yeah, if you want it to be successful, right? If you want it to work. None of us wants to spend the money, the time, and all that effort for it not to work out because then you have to start over and you have to— I want to make it work the first time. If I put effort into making sure I have the right person, I want to make sure that right person can succeed.

Perfect. These were important lessons to me because first of all, The person that we're talking about, we're working with them virtually, and we have a certain number of billable hours that they are working. So we need to be very concise and accurate in the training model.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, I'm gonna go back to something that we were talking about earlier, which is your own company. Let's talk a little bit about vision. How does one create a vision and bring it forth?

Great question. I think, for example, you have a vision of WRE.

Absolutely.

You've seen where it could go. You've seen the possibility. You've dreamed about it. You've thought about it. You've written about it. You've tried to think about it in every iteration and every form. And the challenge, right, is then sharing that vision With other people. And number one, having them understand it, right? Number two, having them be able to get behind it. And, and then maybe number three, them being champions of it, right? And, and, and sharing your passion for the mission. And I mean, I think that's any leader's challenge. I remember sitting in a boardroom— wasn't actually a boardroom, it was a hotel conference room that we rented— and we had all 4 of our employees there. And this is before we blew up. This is before we— this is when we were actually really struggling. Interesting.

Before you had Shark Tank as partner.

It was before we had anything, and, um, we barely had 2 cents to our name anymore. Um, I'm not even sure how we afforded the hotel room. I'll have to ask that question. Um, so I think maybe we had to give somebody a toy or something at the front desk, so I had to bribe somebody to get a hotel room.

Yeah.

Because we didn't have space in our office to sit down and have a meeting like that. And so anyway, we, we were sitting there and, you know, I had come from the— at the— before that from management consulting, and, and my business partner who, you know, Pete, had, um, come from management consulting. And so we were trying to take this management consulting approach to where we were going and how we were gonna get there and what our challenges. And, you know, we had this— I remember sitting out there doing a SWOT analysis of this and that and, you know, sort of trying to take this approach to it. And God bless every one of them, but everybody in the room either put stuff in boxes all day long or was driving a delivery truck. And so they had never been asked to participate in an exercise like this and asked for their opinion. They had never been asked to help set the strategic vision for the company. And I remember their eyes just glazed over half the day.

Right.

And I'm thinking, as I'm standing up at the whiteboard thinking, this is just not going well. This is, in fact, this is going horribly. And we're not understanding where we want to go. We're like, they're, they're not understanding that passion that we have for this and the, the vision that, you know, we're trying to articulate where we could really, where this company could go. And I remember just out of kind of a moment of frustration And our product was a little toy frog thing. So this will— this will— so that this will make sense, but I just wrote up on the board 1 million frogs. And all of a sudden, they laughed at me. But it was a breakthrough moment because it was something that people understood, like And I— because I said I want to sell 1 million frogs. Now, they thought that that was stupid and impossible, but it was something that they could understand, and it was something that we could say, okay, we'll set that as a, as a, as a, you know, as our goal. And so I think— and we did, by the way, sold millions, multiple millions of those. Um, and it wasn't funny anymore. I got the last laugh.

Of course you did, Rhett.

But, um, the point was, is that it— sometimes you just have to, you know, keep pushing and trying to find that vision that's going to resonate with people, right? And, and, and you got to keep sharing and keep trying to find that way To get your team and get your people to really see what the possibilities are. Because sometimes that's really hard for people that aren't living in your brain, that aren't living. It's hard to articulate that vision and that dream and that where you can go.

You say to yourself, why aren't they getting it? I've said this Right.

So sometimes I think you just have to keep pushing and finding what's going to break through, what's going to make that, that aha moment, you know. And, um, I think some of it is like trial and error, right? You're trying to find what that— what button you're going to push that's going to, to really turn on the light bulb.

Yeah, especially when you're creating something that sort of breaks the sound barrier. And people are just— they want to stay behind the sound barrier. You're like, oh yeah, do this, we can do this, let's do it. So it's, it's really that expression, don't give up on your vision.

Yeah, no, it's like when you walk into a room— I'm in a conference room right now at the, at the, this project that I'm working on, and the light switch thing over there has like 7 switches on it, right? You just got to keep flipping those switches until you find the right one that resonates, that turns on the lights that you want to turn on. And so that's how I kind of look at it as a— I was going to put it into an analogy. You just got to keep switching, flipping those switches.

I love it, Red. Hey, we're out of time, but you have to come back. We have to talk more about how coaching can better succeed, about how do you identify your vision. Uh, let's talk some more about roadblocks. Let's just wrap.

Twist my arm here. Twist it. I'll put it behind my back.

You're an awesome dude. Hey everybody, thank you so much for joining us. This is CB Live. I will see you next week, same time, same place. Go with success. Bye now.