Accountability in Leadership: Robert Hunt

This is the Chris Project, where we discuss mental wellness, self-awareness, and mindset with entrepreneurs and experts. Set your perceived ideas and biases aside and let's go on our journey for yourself, for your family, for the world.

Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me today, Robert Hunt, author of Nobody Cares. Welcome to the show, Robert.

Thank you so much.

Do you want to fill in the last, last part of that? Because nobody cares sounds, you know, mean.

Yeah, it's really— the book's called Nobody Cares Until You Do. And It does sound a little negative if we, if we stop short.

Yes. Yes. So you and I were talking in the green room about the origin of the show. And, you know, you had this response that I thought was spot on. You talked about these peer groups that you run. So tell us a little bit more about those peer groups. Why did you, why did you start them in the first place?

It's my purpose in life. I get a job that allows me to live out my purpose in life, which is to help people remove the obstacles that keep them from being their best. And I never had a job that I could do that. I was a director of marketing and sales most of my career, but the companies I worked for never really wanted to be great. They just wanted to say they were great. And marketing can only do so much. Lipstick on a pig a lot of times. And when I ran into the person who owned the franchise here in Texas, I was enamored by the idea. So people pay you money to come sit in a room and to be transparent and vulnerable to get the help they need to reach their goals?

Yes.

Oh, I got to do that. That's the perfect job. And so, I jumped on it having no clue how to run that business, no experience being a facilitator. No, I've never been in a peer group. Frankly, I wasn't even that accountable in my own life. And that's part of what we talk about in our book is the way that we lived our life that was modeling the lack of accountability. But I love the idea. Of people coming together to help each other to create a world of accountability so they can get the things done that they want to do. And the burden that a business owner carries is pretty enormous, and I don't think many people understand what that's really like other than other business owners. And that's why we meet together to work through that.

So what, what, what franchise network is this?

This is part of what used to be called Renaissance Executive Forums, and now they just go by REF. Which is like Kentucky Fried Chicken, go buy KFC.

Yeah, it's easier. You, you talk about accountability, and I, I, I— that, that really resonated with me as you were talking about it because I think a lot of entrepreneurs are like me in that— I think my daughter calls it obstinate defiant disorder, uh, something like that. You know, a lot of entrepreneurs are, are start the journey of entrepreneurship because they don't want to be told what to do. Right? They want to make the decisions. They want to control the outcomes. Right? And that's not a bad thing to have. I mean, it should be— you shouldn't be obstinate just to be contrary. Right?

You shouldn't.

You shouldn't not do something just because somebody told you to do it. But there is this characteristic of a lot of entrepreneurs of self-reliance and persistence, and accountability doesn't necessarily play well with those things on the surface.

Yeah, well, in the definition that most people think of when they think of accountability, you're correct. However, we look at accountability as being punitive, like, I'm going to hold you account— like, it's a threat. But really, accountability, at the heart of what it is, is the power to get things done. It's the freedom to live and pursue what you really want. The opposite of accountability is being a victim to everything that comes your way. So, whatever happens in your life, in your business, it happened to you. I mean, my boss was a jerk and the customers are horrible and the market and darn tariffs. Pick your topic. People love to blame or make excuses. But the reality is, if you're not doing it, that's on you. It's your business. It's your life. And that applies to everything. It applies to your marriage, applies to your health. If I'm eating donuts for breakfast and I get fat, hmm, whose fault is that? The guy who sold me the donut or the guy who bought the donut and ate it?

It's the donut industry. It's a conspiracy.

Clearly, clearly it's the donut guy. We've just created a society that in the last years, I don't even know how long it's been going on really. Everyone loves to blame everything. Everyone's mad at everybody. That's why we wrote this book after 2020 when COVID shut down the world and people drew lines and started just pointing fingers like crazy. Like we couldn't get anything done. Everybody was mad. You wear a mask, I hate you. You don't wear a mask, I hate you. You know, you come to work, why you come to work? You make us all sick. Stay home. Why are you staying home? You're not working. It was, it was a nightmare. And we just stepped back and watched this. Something's got to change in the way we look at life and how we need to own it. Your actions have consequences. Believe it or not, they do.. And you have— we have to go back to the days where people believe that their actions have consequences.

So does Ref work with the exclusively the owners or also their key executives?

Well, Ref as an organization is targeting the business owner.

Okay.

Or other C-suite leaders. And not that we're opposed to working with anybody, but our desire is to have the most impact as possible. If I work with the CFO or a marketing manager and I have I help them pursue excellence in their business and their personal life, they still got to go up to their boss and go, "Can we do this?" And if the boss says no, then, "Well, where are we going?" So, if we go to the top person, whatever title that is in the organization, president, owner, whatever, key executive, and we work with them, they can trickle down to the team all the things that we're learning together through our meetings. And we hope to have a greater influence that way.

So, talk a little bit more about the mechanics of the cohorts. Like, is it a monthly rhythm? Are there one-on-one sessions? Like, what does it look like?

We meet once a month in a private meeting. We take turns hosting at each other's company. Gives us a chance to be a part of their business and learn what's going on and meet their people. Every month we come together, we do our check-ins. We do, hey, what's been going on the last 30 days? What's new? What's on your plate? A lot of times that's when our issues come up we want to work on that day. Someone will say, I've got a new employee, but I'm having all these problems and how do I integrate him into this? That becomes a thing that we work on as a group that day. We usually have a speaker come in and talk about something. Last month was about contracts. Uh, before that we had understanding tax laws and how it could affect you personally. Just stuff that we need to know as leaders to always keep learning and sharpening ourselves. We'll have lunch together. Uh, we'll, we'll go through fixing and working on issues, one of the things we don't do is tell you what to do. And in my particular groups, the way that I run it is I'm looking to build an environment where people feel safe enough to be radically transparent and vulnerable about their issues. And so you're in a very sensitive place when you're really being honest about stuff. And for us to go, well, you need to do that, it's going to shut you down because, A, we don't want anyone to tell us what to do, but also I'm being really vulnerable and now you're going to make me feel stupid that you're telling me what to do at this moment of vulnerability. So, what we strive to do is have them self-discover their own answer because whatever you self-discover, you're more likely to do. And if we chime in and say, oh, you absolutely have to fire that guy, you're going to be like, well, he's my brother and what do I do about that? And so, if we can ask enough questions where you self-discover, then it's much better.

I'm looking at my phone here real quick because I don't remember the author's name. Michael Brody Waite. Great Leaders Do What Drug Addicts Do, or I think the title of the book is Great Leaders Live Like Drug Addicts or something like that. This is the YouTube title. Have you heard of this guy?

I will check it out.

That's fascinating. Yeah. So, uh, what you're describing sounds a lot like EO Forums. Um, I don't know if you're familiar with the Entrepreneurial Organization.

There's lots of peer groups out there. YPO, EO, Vistage. C12 Convene. There's lots of groups out there, right?

So, so this guy, uh, is actually coming doing a workshop here in Oklahoma City, uh, uh, in, in February. And so the chapter sent, uh, everybody a copy of his book. And so I got it, and I'm like, this is— I— you got to read it based upon the title, right? You talk about good marketing.

Yeah.

And, um, he, he talks about his life as a drug addict and then his getting clean and then his, his success as an entrepreneur and comparing and contrasting life as a drug addict and how he lives as a, as a recovering addict. But the first thing that he talks about is radical authenticity and how as an addict And I think really, and he talks about this like everybody lives this way, whether they're an addict or not, is they live life with a mask. And it really resonated with me because as an entrepreneur, we're— we really have to fight to not wear a mask, right? Or I have because there's this, uh, image I thought I had to put to not just my peers, uh, but my team, right? Like, I, I had to have all the answers. I had to know what to do in any given moment. I, I, I had to have this clear vision of the way— the path forward, right? But the reality is I didn't feel that, that most of the time. Right.

And that just creates an incredible burden for you to somehow amp up to be all those things. And now you're living under duress constantly.

Exactly. And it's wasted energy, right? Like you're putting all this energy in putting forth a persona. And this is where people talk about, you know, imposter syndrome. Well, of course you're living— you have imposter syndrome. You're hiding behind a mask. If you were authentic, and saying, you know what, I don't know. I don't have the answer.

Which is the true answer because you can't know everything no matter how smart you are. You know, earlier you said a lot of people start their own business because they want to be able to make their own decisions, be their own boss. In my experience, which is just my experience, most of the people have started a business because they were really good at something and it just grew. They didn't necessarily want to be their own boss, but they loved doing what they did.. But now all of a sudden I got 30, 50, 100 employees and I don't like half of them and I don't know how to run this thing. And we know when it was just me and 3 other dudes in my garage, we were doing great, but now it's like this and I'm way outside my league. So to pretend that you know everything when all you were, were a great painter and now you've got this whole company to take care of, it's naive. And so really smart leaders are willing to be transparent and humble enough to say, I hired all y'all. Because you're good and I'm going to let you do your job, which takes the burden off of me as an owner to say, I need to know everything. I don't know enough about cybersecurity to do the right job. I don't know enough about tax laws to do our accounting or even financial guidelines or HR or inventory. You have to know everything and be an expert. Come on, it ain't going to happen.

No, but it's, you know, at least my experience is, is that the expectation— well, I'll back up. Most, most business owners don't realize all the shit that they have to know, right? And they, they, they go through baptism by fire and like, oh shit, there's a lot of stuff I don't know that I need to know, right? Right. And so, uh, I, I— for me it was like I felt like it was my responsibility, right? Like, I have to be— I have to know everything. And I've shifted that as a leader to I don't know, have to— I don't have to know everything, but I have to know enough. And that's one of the things where I think you can go the other direction where and say like, well, I'm washing my hands of it. You know, I'm hiring you to do marketing. You got to do marketing.

But you can't be ignorant about it. Exactly. It says, oh, we're spending $2 million to build brand. I don't want to build brand. I want to get orders. And along the way, we'll build our brand because we're getting orders. Don't give me this, I'm going to build brand stuff. And so, this is where you have to know enough to be aware of what the expectations are. But a good leader is constantly creating a conversation between the people that work for him of where we're going, why we're doing it, how's it going to work, how do we measure it? And then you have to go back and ask other people who are doing it. That's why peer groups exist because you could be in a room and say, hey, this guy wants to spend $1 million to build brand. And we'll all go, no, no, no, get leads, sell orders, you know, do close deals and then you'll build your brand. But it, but you can have other people to bounce these ideas off of who are going through the same thing you're going through. And then you can go back to your team and go, well, I'd like to have some more measurables. What's the, how are we going to get a return on this investment? Let's set some, steps along the way we can measure and have real deliverables.

Yeah. I mean, as an aside, brand is, like you said, it's what happens along the way. You don't build a brand and then automatically you start sell shit. That's not the way that works.

Now, coming from a marketing background though, I met a lot of people who would say, yeah, we're doing all this to build our brand. I'd be like, you're getting paid? They're paying you to do that? Yeah.

Good for you. Yeah, well, for businesses that don't have any marketing acumen and they have the money, that's an easy thing to sell them because it's pretty, it's shiny.

It is shiny.

That's exactly right. Exactly. So in your groups, do you purport any specific systems like Scaling Up, EOS? Like, is there anything that you recommend in these groups for accountability and how to run the business?

What we recommend for accountability is just being vulnerable and honest about what's going on. The systems and the processes that can be used as a tool to achieve your goals come up based on the need. We talk about all these things. I've had EOS implementers come in and present what that's about. I love Working Genius. We've had all kinds of different things. We did a session on scaling your business. It's just, it's a tool. There's ideas out there and we're always talking about a new idea, but you have to have what fits for you. Um, I think EOS is a great foundational system, but it doesn't go far enough in my opinion. I think they stay in their lane too much and they fall short of what needs to be done for a lot of leaders, which is to hold their hand and do more coaching all the way through. Are you doing what you said you're going to do? Meeting quarterly is, is just not what some leaders need. So you have to do what's, what's needed for the type of leader you are and the business you're serving. There's a lot of great tools out there. What we don't need is another tool. What we need is the determination to do what we said we're going to do. And that really is created when you become accountable. And I know maybe just because I wrote a book on accountability, I'm not— everything's, you know, accountable is the only thing I know, but I've watched this for 13 years now.. And I've seen people make really bad decisions because they refuse to be accountable. And I would be talking with them one-on-one. I do coaching as part of the offering I do. And I'd say, look, you gotta bring that to the group because that just doesn't make sense to me. And they go, I don't know, I'll think about it. And then they come in the next meeting and they wouldn't say anything. And I'd go, hey, how come you didn't bring it up? I'm not ready for that yet. Well, then time goes on and they made some really heinous decision and now they gotta eat it. If they had just brought it to the group, the group would've said, no, you're outta your Fine, don't do that. And they would have challenged them and hopefully spared them all that pain. But because they held on to it and kept it private, they ate it. And I mean, it's like your story with Chris, you know, the same thing. You know, you can only speak into someone's life. They got to own it.

Yeah. And, and, and I find that a strange dynamic as an entrepreneur because, you know, as visionaries, we see things— entrepreneurs see things differently, right? And so we see the possible where other people just see reality. And when you have a conversation with others, it's very easy for them to say, well, that's not the way things are, right? Like, I see reality. You're talking about La La Land, right? Right. And you have to let that in. As an entrepreneur, as a leader, you have to let that criticism in because the vision may be a delusion, right? Like, you can't always assume that what you're seeing is possible. But the flip side of it is, is that you have to have enough belief and passion in your vision that even if no one else says they don't see it, or everyone says they don't see it, that you still have the passion to move forward, right?

Yeah. Then, all you got to do at that point is we're not questioning your vision. We're going to tactically— tell me how you're going to get there then. You have a vision to do something that we're like, "That is ridiculous, but that's so cool. Let's go for it." How will you get there? Now, the steps required to do something, we could all agree upon because that's measurable. It's a process. Process. But if your vision is, I'm going to do something, it's just going to happen, you know, you don't have a plan for it. We can all tear that apart. We're not tearing apart your vision. We're tearing apart the steps that you're going to commit to that you said you want to do to achieve the vision. And we're not telling you how to chase the vision. This is your plan. And if you lay it out and go, well, who's going to pay for that? How long is that going to take? How will you do this and spend more time with your kids? I mean, cause that was what you said last time, you're not spending time with your kids. And, and so now you've got something that's going against what you shared last time. So we just ask questions and ask questions and then you go, okay, well, I'll do this and I'll set a measurable. And that's a good point. Maybe. But you're making the decisions as you chase your vision. We're just asking good questions. I think a good peer group is asking more questions than we ever tell people what to do.

Yes. And I love what you said about not telling them what to do. I say the EO mantra is We don't give advice, we give experience share, right?

Yeah.

And it's the same concept because if someone tells you what to do in the guise of advice, you don't own the problem, right? You're just saying, well, Robert knows what he's doing. He's been there and done that before. So I'm going to do what Robert says. And if it fails, I'm gonna— who do I blame? That's right, I blame Robert, right? I didn't own the decision, right? And as leaders, that's exactly the, the thing that we have to cultivate in the, the people that we're bringing up as leaders in our organization, is like, you know, I'm not making this decision for you. I, I can, I can give you my experience share. I can even give you advice in the— to the extent of I'll ask you questions about your plan. Like, I can poke holes in it, right? But at the end of the day, it's your decision and you have to live with the consequences.

Otherwise, you're taking the monkey back on your back. You've probably heard that phrase before. But we've even got to the place where when we say, okay, we've got an issue, our employees are coming to us asking questions and we're saying, okay, don't come to me anymore with these questions. Come to me with a solution. Tell me what you're going to do. And the only time— and we used to say, hey, great idea, good luck. And we thought that we were, you know, really smart. But I took the monkey back because I said great idea. And so when it doesn't work out, they go, well, you said it was a great idea. Well, it was your idea, you know. So instead, now we've told them ahead of time. So when they come to you with this great idea, the only thing I'm going to say to you is, hey, that's wrong. If it's not wrong, I'm not going to say anything. I'm going to say have a great day. And so I'm not accepting the monkey back. Because people don't want to make decisions. They don't like risk. They don't want to get blamed for anything. But if you create a culture where it's okay to take a risk, where you're not punished for screwing up, you're punished for not doing something. That's where you need to get someone off their butt. But if you take, if you made it on a decision on your own and you failed, then, then we'll roll with that. One of the things we created is this waterline concept. You probably, I don't know if you've heard of it before, but you know, when a boat sits on the water, there's a waterline on the boat. Anything that hits the boat above the waterline, no big deal. Anything hits below the waterline, we got a problem. And so, what we've decided is we're going to create a waterline for each company and it's based on the core values, the vision, the mission, all that stuff is articulated on one page. And then, we have our annual goals and the top policies that we want to reinforce like safety or take a risk or something that we're trying to build into the culture that year. Then everyone has a one-page document that anytime if you're not around, I'm not waiting on someone to tell me what to do. I know what you've asked me to do. And so, if I have to make a decision, I look at my core values. Does that align? No, that doesn't align. Don't do it. If I look at this and I say, this is our mission and our vision, or this year's goal is to save money, and I have a chance that I think if I lock into a contract, I can save 30%, but I gotta pay all this upfront money upfront. No, we're saving money this year. You can make more decisions because you created a waterline that everybody knows where we're going and how we make decisions. And we're empowering everybody to make their own decisions because we've created this tool. It's a very simple document, but it's very powerful because we want people to own it and be empowered.

I love that because I've used a similar concept with my team using EOS. You know, I tell the team periodically, I remind them, like, these are our values, this is our mission. If you make a decision using that as your filter, you're, you're not going to make a mistake. Like, you're empowered to make any decision that you need to make with, with that paradigm, right? But I like you're extending it to, like, because, you know, they could make a decision that could have a short-term impact that was not expected, right? Maybe financial. And so I like that idea of the waterline. I also think that it's very nefarious, at least it has been for me, it's insidious almost, that you can pretend to delegate responsibility. So, one of the— I can see his face, I can't remember his name. The speaker at an event I went to several years ago, he talked about deputizing people, not delegating. You deputize. And the analogy there is that the deputy, when they're on site, has the full authority of the sheriff. Right? They are the sheriff when they're on site. Right. And so this idea that you're not just delegating responsibilities, get this stuff done, you're also delegating the authority to get it done. And it— that's a hard thing to do. I mean, it really— for me, it has been because I, I still find myself wanting to put my hands back on the wheel. Right? Yes. And the reality is, is that you can be very subtle in how you do this and not really delegating or deputizing. You— I, I— one of my peers who was, was very successful, he had a 9-figure exit, uh, but he had— he admitted that he was the bottleneck in his organization because there was one process that still came to him. And it was just a laying of the blessing, like, yes, it's okay. Yeah, right. So it's, it's very, it's very insidious, uh, where, where you can get sucked back into that approval, um, of, of your leader's decisions.

Then you're really not delegating at that point.

Exactly.

Can I take a minute to explain how we teach delegation in our— Delegation requires 4 things to be done effectively. The first one is rarely done. It's clear and compelling communication. We say, "I want the report by Friday," and I leave. And then I come around at 4:00, 4:58 on Friday, you stroll in with a stack of papers and go, "Here's your report." "Dude, where you been? I've been calling you all day." "I had my phone off. I was golfing with a customer." I needed that by 1 o'clock. You didn't say you need it by 1 o'clock. You said you need it by Friday. And then why are you giving it to me printed? I need it digital. And I have to send it to the customer and there's no photos in here. This guy feels like you're tearing them up, but you didn't say any of that stuff and you weren't clear and there wasn't a reason behind it. Therefore, I didn't wear a hard hat. I didn't put on a safety seatbelt. I didn't do the things that we're supposed to do because I didn't think it was a big deal. It's not compelling. And we as leaders have not created the expectation that I will communicate with clear and compelling communication. If you were successful in doing that, then you got to give them the tools to do it as well as you do it. And the reason that we don't delegate is because you're slow, you don't do it as good as I do it. Well, I don't have the tools you have. I don't have all the knowledge. I don't have this. I don't have the computer you have. Mine doesn't work half the time. I don't have all these documents that you've collected and known for for so many years, that's a tool. And once you give someone the tools, which is hard to get documented and give to 'em, like an SOP or something that we use to guide ourselves, you gotta train 'em. Because even if you gave 'em all the paperwork and all the things and it was clear and compelling, there's still subtleties that we didn't mention. Well, when you send it to this guy, he doesn't like it in color. And when you do these guys, he likes doubles 'cause he's got a brother that works there. There's things in there that are unique that we've gotta train and make sure that they do it well, but they do it efficiently. If you can accomplish the first 3, then you can do the 4th one, which is have accountability where they can truly own it. And I can walk away and not helicopter in, not babysit it, not let it consume any part of my brain to continually think, I wonder if he's going to do that. I wonder how's that project coming along? How's the Johnson project? You need any help? I want to walk away and never think about it again. That is delegation. And so we've got to be really good as leaders to do the first 3 so we can enjoy the the fourth one.

Yes. And, and I, I'll, I'll experience here where I have failed in doing exactly what you said, um, with full knowledge of what you said was necessary. Like, so I, I knew everything you just said, and I still failed, uh, just this year. So, uh, I realized that I was not, after 28 years, the right person in the right seat to head our marketing and sales efforts. I had been there by default, but it became clear to me that I did not know how to solve the problem of taking it to the next level. And that was a whole story on its own. But once I made that decision, I had a conversation with my marketing director and I said, here's what I think. I'm not the right person. Do you want the job? Do you want to step into it and come up to the leadership team and assume this role? And I knew that there were shortcomings, right? She'd never hired anybody. She'd never managed anybody. In other words, she didn't have any leadership skills, right? She didn't have any leadership experience, but she was really good at marketing, right? Not really any experience at sales, but yet she was responsible for managing salespeople. So I knew all of these things. And we had a lot of conversations around, like, I don't want to set you up for failure.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, intentionally, right? And, and, and, you know, I was very clear on the expectations of this is what needs to happen if you accept this role. These are the outcomes that need to happen. And almost immediately all of those deficiencies that I knew were there started showing up, right? She tried to replace herself, uh, hire another marketing director, and it, it failed. Um, she ended up having to fire her 8 weeks later, right? And, and so like, my reaction over the last 7, 8 months has been panic, right? Like, this isn't working. And, and trying to help and manage her, I've really caused more anxiety and confusion, right? And all of it is because of things that I knew were going to happen. I knew they were issues, but I still proceeded. And I, I still think we made the right decision. It's not the decision or the fact that she was going to have to learn these things, and they were going to be difficult lessons. It was my reaction to it. Like, my reaction was emotional panic, like fear, like, this isn't working.

What did you do, take it back?

No, no, I have not. What actually happened was the rest of the leaders— it's been a growth for all of the leadership team too, because what had happened was when I sat in her seat, it was very easy for them to just say, well, that's Christian's. I don't know anything about marketing and sales. If he says that they're going to do it, they're, they're going to do it. And what it led to is a leadership team, there was no accountability around it.

It.

But now that she was in there and it wasn't me, it was like, oh shit, we need to hold this accountable, right? Like, if we're not performing, we need to figure out as a team how to make it work, right? And so it's been this growth process where the whole leadership team has risen. Um, I'm not saying that we're there yet and successful yet, but we, we've, we've turned the corner as a leadership team and understanding that if marketing is lagging, yes, that's that person's job, but it's our job to hold them accountable and give them what they need to succeed, right?

Let me challenge a little bit of that journey there. Accountability, one thing we need to start saying to ourselves, nobody can hold anyone else accountable. So when you say I'm going to hold her accountable, That means that you're having an expectation that I'm going to correct her when she's out of line. What we want to do is to have real accountability, is to be proactive in nature that says, okay, if I'm going to be accountable, I'm going to tell her upfront what this job requires, and I'm going to notice that she doesn't have the leadership training that she needs to do her job. So before, or at least while she's developing this, she's going to go through a leadership development course. To build herself up as a leader, focusing on radical candor, difficult conversations, whatever the things you see. That is you being accountable to what you need to do proactively to help her succeed. She, on the other hand, needs to be accountable to say, I am not ready to take this job. I know you want me to have it, but I'm not ready. And so to take the job and then to struggle with it, she could be responsible and try and fix everything when it goes wrong and apologize. And work really hard, that's responsible. But accountable would say, look, there's no way I'm prepared to do this. Even if I want to, I don't have the skills you do. So let's put in this, let's work together on this, let me get this training. Proactive nature of what we do is the only way we're going to have accountability. And by you modeling it, you create a world where everybody else will want to be accountable. Thereby we have accountability in our company. But I can't hold anyone accountable. Because if they don't do it, I don't fire them. I can't babysit them. I can't see everything they do. And so, it just becomes down to we're going to proactively do something in the effort that we hope to get out of it.

I love that statement because I've often thought about that in terms of accountability of like, well, what are you going to do, fire them? Like, I mean, because that's really the only alternative, right?

Which is just you being accountable because you fired them. Exactly. You're still taking their lack of accountability to the next company.

Exactly. Exactly. And it goes back to Lencioni, as you mentioned, Working Genius. I love Lencioni. What we, what we noticed through this process and was not with, with her, but her reports, one of her failures of leadership was that she tried to hold somebody accountable. Her salesperson, she basically said, well, look, we're doubling your quota. Like, you got to do more. And the game's changed, right? Well, and I sat there with my HR person who's really not HR. It's really more about people and culture. And it's like after this, it was like, well, shit, you can't hold somebody accountable to something that they haven't agreed to.

Right, right. And how are you going to make it? What do you do to help them? If you say you got to double your quota, then the conversation goes, here's what we're going to do together to help you get there. You need to go get trained, you need to generate more leads, you need to do this. Somehow you got to equip people. You just can't say you got to do something, right? That's not accountable. That, that's really throwing something, and there's no clear and compelling communication with the tools and training to do it. You're gonna— they're gonna fail. And so if you're gonna really do expect someone to, to do whatever you have the accountability that you model by there, you're proactively helping them succeed and setting them up with whatever they need so that they can be accountable.

Yes. And I would say all of this sounds really good when I'm sitting here talking, right? It's very easy to speak of these things in third person and more clinically. Yeah. It's hard in the moment when the emotions— and to me, I think that's where the peer groups, yes, really help is it gives you a place to clear those emotions out. Yeah. And really be clear, clear-headed in thinking because it's hard when, when you're looking at, you know, the bank balance going down every month and it's like, ah, you know, the fear. And, and it's real easy when you've made a decision and you're, you're questioning the decision, um, to, to want to pull it back, to want to blow it up, right? And, and so I, I think you've got to get out of just yourself. You, you— I, I don't— I mean, I'm not strong enough of a person to do it. I haven't really met anybody that— maybe one or two that are very exceptional people that have the internal self-awareness and fortitude to be able to do that without peers. But they're few and far between.

Well, what are they leaving? I mean, maybe they're not falling apart, but what could they be if they had other people? We always talk about that. We're going to give you more questions to your answers before you even get going, because you already come in, hey, I'm going to do this. I got a person, she's going to take over for me for marketing. And then we go, how long she been doing that before? What's her training? How does And we're asking all these questions. You're like, "Oh, I hadn't thought of that. I hadn't thought of that." And we're not shooting it down. We're just asking you questions and things you hadn't thought about before. Well, what would be the first thing she'd deliver on the first 90 days? How do you measure that? What's going to be the things that she'd do? And so, I think having the ability to share with someone who knows you and you trust them enough to be really truly honest about it is that I'm not so sure she's going to succeed, but I don't want to do it anymore. Then we can ask enough questions to help you see the things you hadn't thought of. I think that's another benefit of being in a peer group.

Yes. And to your point, you referenced the man or woman, I don't know, the person that you said you had the one-on-one coaching call with, and then they come to the peer group and they don't bring that. Yeah, you have to be vulnerable and you have to understand that being vulnerable is uncomfortable. There's no getting around that desire to put up that mask. I mean, that's always there of like, well, I can figure it out. Like, I got this, right?

And you could. You really could. You're very smart and you're very successful. You probably could figure it out on your own. But why? Why would you take all the energy and time and potential mistakes just so that you can have the ego that you didn't need anyone's help? I mean, you don't do your own lawyering. You don't do your own books. You don't do your own taxes. You don't do your own doctoring. What makes you so egotistical that you can't invest and let other people give you wisdom and guidance in the normal stuff you do just so it'd be faster, easier, better, smarter, stronger, cheaper, all that stuff? Why would you not want that? That's just total ego. And that's why a lot of the times the things I bring to our meetings are just things to help people get used to being more real. We painted one time. I brought in a bunch of empty canvases and we just squirted paint on it and took a squeegee and made some cool designs. And then we voted on which ones spoke more to our soul. And they're like, every time I bring something, they're like, why do you make us do this stuff? Well, because I want you to take a minute to be real. I want you to let your guard down a little bit. I want you to practice vulnerability and transparency and having emotions again and being free to begin. You get screwed so many times by people in business that you become hardened and distrusting and you guard yourself and you put up a wall because you've been screwed over so many times. We need to rebuild that because you're not bringing all of who you are when you live that way.

I love that. I really do. I think, although we could probably go on this discussion forever, I'm going to wrap with that. Painting story. How do, um, people find out more about Ref and specifically Nobody Cares, AKA Robert Hunter?

Yeah, well, we're everywhere. Where you have our website, nobodycaresbook.com, where you can learn more about the book. You can actually take the satisfaction assessment online and not have to buy the book because we want people to recognize where are you satisfied in life or not, and what are you going to do about it, and what are the excuses or blame that you make that holds you back as a victim. It's available on Amazon. We actually have an audiobook now. It came out this year on Audible.

Did you read it?

Yeah, Selim and I took turns reading it. That was a horrible experience. I didn't like that.

It's work.

It is work. And I think I sound so nasally and awful in the book. It's just terrible. But not to dissuade anyone, but that's how I felt about it. And then of course I'm on my own company website where I run peer groups and executive coaching and leadership development workshops. And that's refdallas, refdallas.com.

Perfect. Listeners will have all of those links in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. Until next time, remember, you are not alone.