186 - Exploring the Impact of Active Listening on Leadership Success with Ivybrook Academy's Drew McWilliams

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show, and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started. Drew McWilliams, welcome to Listening with Leaders. So you're a pretty interesting guy. You're the president and co-founder of a company called Ivybrook Academy. Which is a franchising operation for preschool, and we'll talk about that a little bit. And you're also the partner in a private real estate investment firm called Starting Point Capital, and you basically provide passive investment opportunities for people who are interested in income streams and tax, uh, the tax benefits of passive real estate investing. So you've got your hands full. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. Glad to be here. Little, little busy. Also have two middle school-aged children. I chase—

oh my goodness—

chase around on the weekend with different sporting activities.

There you go. So you live in Charlotte, North Carolina. Tell us a little bit about your backstory.

Sure. Yeah. My wife and I are actually college sweethearts. We met and met in school, and my wife was a teacher by trade. My background was business and real estate by trade, and moved to Charlotte, North Carolina after we graduated from college and, uh, been here for about 24, 25 years now. So I can kind of date myself there. And my, my background, my story is being in residential real estate sales and having an extremely lucrative career at a very young age, at the— hitting real estate at the right time in the, uh, in the mid-2000s. And then my wife was a first grade teacher and decided that, uh, one day she wanted to work with younger children and I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. Little did I know it was going to be her dream and her vision of the company that I would— what I would start. And that was in 2007. So we have been very blessed over the last 17 years to be in business and now have been franchising our business for the last 7 of those 17.

So tell us a little bit about Ivy Brook Academy.

And Ivy Brook Academy is a children's preschool. Specifically, our niche is we cater to children between the ages of 2 6, and we are a half-day preschool with a very large Montessori education, uh, component into our curriculum. So we cater to really parents that elect to stay at home to raise their children but still know that there is an educational component that their children have to have before they go off to kindergarten or first grade. Not only the educational component, because everyone wants their children have a better head start in life, right? I know I want my children to be more successful in life than, than I was and so forth. But at the same time, the social aspect, if you, you know, haven't gone to preschool before and you just send children straight to kindergarten or first grade and you say, go stand in line, you know, Doug, you and I know, I know exactly what that means. But, but to somebody else that has never had to have a queuing system or a line before, that's irrelevant. So, you know, those, those things are extremely valuable. And important. And we provided a— we saw a niche and provide a great opportunity that wasn't being fulfilled across our country.

Sounds like you've been pretty successful with— I think you've got what, something like over 80 franchisees across the country?

Yeah. So currently we sit at 92 locations have been awarded across the country, over 18 different states. We currently operate— we're open by the end of this year. We're recording in Q1 of 2024. By the end of this year, we'll have, you know, just under 50 locations that are going to be open of those 92. And then the rest are under development, which means they're looking for real estate under construction or people have signed a multi-unit agreement to open up stores in future years.

Wow. Keeping busy with this one, aren't you?

It provides a little bit of work, but it's truly— it is a pleasure to be able to do something that I like. It's not a job if you enjoy doing it. So very regularly, I will have to remind myself to go to bed before midnight, but it is— I just lose— I just lose track of time and I enjoy doing it. I enjoy growing and scaling what is now my wife and my first child, we feel like, but also at the same time being able to help back, benefit communities because we are a very large impact on the community in a positive way., but also be able to help franchisees— we call them franchise owners— be able to benefit their own life and their own communities equally.

Who are your typical franchise owners?

Um, it is truly a, a husband and wife combo, uh, of all of our locations. We have— we currently sit at 60 different ownership groups, uh, that, that collect Ivybrook Academy franchise. Um, 2 of them are— 2 of them are brother and sister combos, which is really nice, uh, and then the other 58 are, are husband wife combos. That's, that's, that's the typical— I'll call it avatar— where, uh, a one spouse has the, uh, great ability to start a new business while maybe another spouse is working for corporate America. They want this, the, the head start of the school and the operation, the business to get up and running, and then the corporate America spouse looks to exit within, you know, 12 to 24 months to come jump on board and want to work with their wife. And that's kind of a, a great thing. We— all of our owners, they all come from different walks of life and different business pedigrees, but the amazing commonality is they all love children, they all want to make a positive impact on their community, and they all really want to work with their, their spouse, and they want to build something together.

That's pretty cool. It's got to give you a lot of pleasure to help people realize their dreams like that and get off the corporate hamster wheel.

It's, it's, uh, it is a treat. It is a, it is a true blessing that we were able to find something that my wife and I both like to do and, uh, still run it 17 years later.

So, but if that doesn't keep you busy enough, you've got your, you've got your real estate investment firm. Tell us about that.

Yeah, Starting Point Capital is a really, it's a liaison between helping folks that want to invest in real estate but don't know how. And there's so many folks out there that I talked to just over the last two decades. I've had my real estate license for over 20 years, and I started in real estate when I actually was 19. I knew I wanted to be in real estate at a young age and started leasing apartments at 19. I went into real residential real estate, commercial real estate. Through the years, I've been developing a great rental portfolio. Uh, that is something that I, I invest in pretty heavily. I have multiple residential and commercial rental properties. But after so much time, uh, and the older that I get, Doug, I realize I am tired of dealing with tenants, termites, and trash.

I love that, the 3 T's.

The 3 T's. I am tired of it. I am too old for that. When I was in my 20s, I will totally go fix your toilet, you know. I'm in my mid-40s, I am not gonna go fix your toilet right now. It's just not gonna happen in my walk of life. But it's fine. I I got my, I got my, you know, hands dirty is probably a bad analogy right now with that. But that being said, I knew I've always wanted to invest more in real estate, but I just don't want to deal with tenants anymore. I don't know, I just— as transparent as I can be, but I love real estate because I know it has created more millionaires in our country than any other industry. That is a fact, right? So how can I invest in real estate but not necessarily have to do the dirty work? And I found this amazing opportunity called real estate syndications, which is really the better way to think of like crowdfunding. When you crowdfund for a new product to launch, this is crowdfunding for a down payment for someone to buy an apartment complex. But I did that so many times just as on the investor side that my partner now at Starting Point Capital, who I was investing through, he said, Drew, you know too much to be dangerous. You need to come join me and you need to be a partner. And I said, Jeremy, I've got a full-time job. I don't, I don't, I don't need another job. I don't need any more, you know, gray hair than I already am starting to get. And he said, listen, you know, this is just really— it's not a, it's not a sales thing. It's just all the due diligence that you're doing and investing in these properties yourself. Just provide that same education to the rest of your network and you're just providing them an opportunity. But, and the more I thought about it, it— I love education, not only the preschool education that I put out there for a living, but I feel very passionate about now with 25 years of real estate experience, how can I now turn that into education, free education? I don't do any promos or webinars or infomercials. I don't believe in that. I think when someone charges you for education, you better get a college degree. You know, a piece of paperwork that comes with that. But so I provide educational opportunities for people to learn how to invest in real estate and be able to receive passive income. It's all good.

I appreciate it. So, um, interesting that you're educating people in real estate and you're educating small children.

What, uh, yeah, I got, I got on both.

I got about a 40-year age gap between the two different education modules I got going on out there in life, but So with all of that that's going on in your life, Drew, what is it that gets you up in the morning and gets you really excited? Oof.

Okay. So there's two different answers to that simple question. What gets me up in the morning is probably my 12-year-old son running down the stairs because my bedroom's underneath the stairs. That's probably what gets me up in the morning. What, what fuels me to get me going? I just, I, I came from very humble beginnings and I have a very innate drive to not go back to where I came from. So I always want to strive to achieve more, uh, because I knew when I was born, I first came home to a mobile home in the middle of nowhere, rural Pennsylvania, and I ain't gonna go back there. And there's nothing wrong where I grew up. I love where I grew up. I bleed black and gold for my sports teams. But I know that the more that I the harder that I work, I know the more education that I can bring to myself. Now, this is flipping the education cycle. You know, I don't watch TV. I bet most of your successful listeners, they're not watching shows. I don't have a show.

I haven't owned a television set in 40 years. I hear.

Exactly. I mean, my, my children probably— I know they watch shows. I know they do. I don't watch TV. So The more I can learn and not just work, you know, how when I'm in the car, I'm listening to podcasts, I'm learning, and then that is going to be able to help me not only help myself and my family, but it's also going to be able to help others as well. So I'm a— if you can't tell, like, I'm, I'm all in on education, both internally receiving it and then externally trying to provide it.

Hmm. So what is it, you know, when you think, look back on from your humble beginnings to your great success today, what is it that you think is unique about you that you bring to the table?

Hmm.

Allowed you to achieve this shift. There are so many people who are born in, as you say, in humble beginnings who can never lift themselves out. And yet you, you obviously have overexceeded. I don't know, I'm still working on it.

I, I'm, uh, I try to be extremely humble, and I, I never want to say that I'm even close to the mountaintop. Um, so as far as me personally, I think I have a way higher than normal work ethic than the average person. Of your listeners, they probably can relate, right? Uh, I've always had the mindset, if I'm gonna get myself out of wherever I came from, or if I just even want to advance myself where I'm at in my career now, I need to work 10 hours more per week than the rest of my peers. I just do. If I work 10 hours more every single week, and I've done that now for 30-some years, you— do you know how much faster you get to mastery level of your craft?

Right?

A ton. A ton faster.

Yeah. That reminds me of my, my days as a trial lawyer, which I did for 22 years. And the reason I won 90% of my cases, maybe 95%. I can't— can barely remember that. A long time ago, I outprepared everybody else. I outworked everybody else. I think that's the secret.

I think the secret— and you got to be born with that. Like, I don't— I don't think someone can teach you drive. I don't think I can pick up a book and just be motivated to have more drive the rest of my life. Might motivate you for a week, a month. But I think drive is a big component. Going back to your question, you know, of success, I consistently brag to my team, my staff, we call them our team, right? I don't like having staff. My best trait is that I'm really good at hiring people smarter than me. So I'm really good at it. Because I do not want to be the smartest person in the room. I want to be the most interested, not interesting person in the room. And that's how I get to the next level.

So I was going to say, I have interviewed over 165 CEOs and founders and entrepreneurs, and every single successful one of them has just said exactly what you said.

Interesting.

The secret is to hire people who are smarter than you are and then listen to them.

But you have to be humble and have enough self-awareness about that.

And that's the problem.

I think so many people fail because they, they can't get out of their own way.

That's right. Or they're so ego, so ego invested that they have to be the smartest guy in the room.

Right.

And, and the most successful people have the humility that you're talking about. To hire people who are much, much smarter than they are and take care of them. Right. And that's the— that's long term. Yeah, it seems to be— that seems to be the key to scaling any business. And so it's interesting that you should say that. That is a very common refrain that I hear here. There you go.

Love it. Glad, glad for that feedback.

Let's, let's pivot to listening. This show is called Listening with Leaders. I don't know, I don't know if you got a chance to see some of the videos I send out to my guests, but I'm, I'm, I've had the interesting experience of moving from a, from a trial lawyer in combat, right, to becoming a peacemaker, getting my master's degree in peacemaking and conflict studies, leaving the practice law after almost 25 years to become a peacemaker, to today helping people not get into conflict in the first place by listening. How important have you found listening to be in your trajectory, your career?

Yeah, work-wise, actually work and personal. Let's talk about them both. Extremely important. Jokingly, I think I'm a better listener at work than I am at home with my wife. She can probably laugh whenever she listens to this recording. So I can always focus and do a better job on that. But, you know, at work, it's extremely important. And And to me, the, you know, the listening comes in, you're sometimes looking for the things that aren't being said, right? You're looking for maybe the nonverbal cues, or you're, you're, you're listening for what might have been implied, but not exactly said. And then as a leader, it's your job. You know, at the end of the day, every day, I sit down and I really try to unpack conversations in my head and replay them of what I've had with different people the day just to see, did I miss anything? Is there something that I was so hyperfocused and running 100 miles an hour trying to run a company today that I might have missed in conversation that I need to think about? And maybe I need to follow back up with that person tomorrow. I think those are extremely pivotal and important moments if someone really wants to be considered a leader.

What do you think gets in the way of, of good listening as a leader?

Hm, um, busyness, just getting caught up in the rat race. I, I'll just say personally for myself, by me having, you know, you know, I've got, you know, I, I've got a, I, I'm old school, I've got a notebook with all my to-do things that I've got to accomplish every day. And, and I have an action plan of what do I need to accomplish. And, and if I don't accomplish everything, you know, I got to stay up later or or something's getting bumped the next day. So me having an agenda gets in the way because I have an agenda every day that I want to accomplish. And if I have an unexpected phone call, which is extremely important, whether it's a team member, franchise owner, something like that out of the blue that takes a half an hour, I have to figure out how to allocate new time extremely quickly to be able to make everybody happy.

How do you manage your impatience and anxiety when that happens?

Oh, good question, Doug. Um, I, I, yeah, it's a good question. So impatience-wise, I hopefully only my, my, my wife can see my impatience. Hopefully that's not being able to read. I think, I think I'm a pretty good, uh, I think I'm pretty good poker face, I think, on the impatience aspect of it. So, but I, I, I do, you know, I am, you know, a Type A personality. I want to just check things off the box. I want to get it done. And the impatience definitely comes, you know, I've got about a 30-minute ticking clock in my head. And if I can't wrap up a conversation in 30 minutes, then I don't know if it's my Type A or undiagnosed ADD at a young age, but something, something makes me want to move on to the next task. So self-awareness, I think, is, is extremely important. I am far, far from mastering that, but that is definitely a goal that I, that I have before the end of my days on this earth.

Interesting. One of the things that I'm teaching these days, it's a new phrase I picked up, is abandon reason. So when I'm listening to people, I'm going to abandon the concept of reason because reasoning does not help you listen. Reasoning is a skill that we develop that allows us to absorb evidence, use logic and critical thinking skills and you make decisions, learn, and plan. None of that has anything to do with listening, uh, especially if I want to listen to make sure that somebody feels really heard. There's sometimes when I'm listening, like when I was a trial lawyer, I'm listening to gather information to work with it. But there are most of the time these days I listen to make sure that the other person feels heard. Because when the person feels validated and heard, they calm down. That's the title of my fourth book, De-Escalate: How to Calm an Angry Person in 90 Seconds or Less. They calm down, but more importantly, in leadership, you're building trust, loyalty, and connection with people because they feel like you really understand them. And the way that I overcame my impatience and anxiety, because I'm just like you, Type A. Yeah. Come on, get to the point, right? Don't waste my time. Um, the way that I got overcame that was to focus on what the other person was feeling, what their emotions were. And it's interesting when you do that, when I do that, and when I teach it to people, because it's what I teach, all of a sudden all of that pressure that we're feeling from all the other millions of things we got to get done, it all goes away. So for that period of time that I'm really listening, I'm one with this person and just totally engaged in what their experience is. It's a really amazing process.

That's good. I love that.

Yeah. Um, and that's how I managed to overcome it. And the other, the other advantage to that is that sometimes we'll be engaged in difficult conversations. I'm sure you've had your share of difficult conversations. Uh, imagine being able to go into a difficult conversation not having any anxiety. And being perfectly calm and composed and compassionate, and the person can say whatever they need to say and it doesn't bother you in the slightest. That's a pretty cool place to be too.

That is, that is.

Yeah. So what do you do, what do you do when you're confronting bad listeners, people who are not very good listeners?

When, when, um, every day, right? Um, I would say it's kind of our, kind of ingrained, kind of in our company that after phone calls with, we'll call it franchise owners, franchisees, we will always do a recap email, right? Because I'm sure you know this, you know, even in a, in a speech or a lecture style, setting, what is the audience going to really retain? 20, 30% of what you said?

10% if you're lucky.

10%. Okay. So really low percent. So we always do a recap email following up and in bullet points. Hey, here's what we discussed. Here's our action plans for next steps. I love that. And we lay everything out. I think that is extremely important. I am— I cannot be the one that took credit for developing that within our company culture and our company systems.. But it's something that I find is extremely valuable just to make sure that everybody is on the same page and all pulling the rope in the same direction.

Yeah, I really like that. And that the, as an analog to that, I teach people how to run good meetings, which is surprisingly enough, people don't know how to run good meetings. Many people don't. But that's one of the key points is that at the end of the meeting that you bullet point the time and action plan that was decided upon. Who's res— what's going to get done? When's it going to get done by? And who's responsible for it? And who's Who's accountable for it? Just taking the time to do that kind of detailed follow-up, as you know, makes it, makes a huge difference because it provides accountability. And when you have accountability, things get done. If there's no accountability, nothing gets done.

Yeah, agreed.

Yeah.

Well stated.

That's probably what you found too, which is why you've incorporated that practice. Yeah.

Nothing gets missed, right? Exactly. You don't— I mean, even if one step got missed, I mean, that could be a vital, important thing to be able to take somebody to the next level in whatever their professional development is.

Right, right. Exactly. Yeah. So one more question, and I'll let you go.

What is the—

what is it— what's one thing about yourself that we'd never know about unless you revealed it to us? I love to watch people try to answer this question.

I— only my very close circle of friends know this, Doug.

Okay, so reveal.

Close circle of friends. I and my family are passionate RVers. We are an RV family. Which I say that cautiously because typically that comes with immediate judgment. All right. So I feel like people that live in a tin can for pleasure definitely get judged. And I'm not going to lie about that.

I used to think that, but I've gotten— my wife and I have talked about that and we've gotten old. As I've gotten older, it gets more and more appealing.

Yeah.

To go to some really beautiful places.

It has been beautiful. It is something that, that certainly, uh, came out of the pandemic. It forced a lot of people into kind of that mode, right, you know, mode of vacationing. And it stuck with our family, and we've been doing it for 3 years now. We have, you know, changed and changed vehicles, and, and, uh, it has been extremely rewarding to be a business owner and being able to work remote in the summer from all over the country with my family and have a new beautiful view almost every single day when we wake up. That has been—

pile everything into the RV and then just go across the country and just work every day remotely with Starlink.

I haven't crossed the Mississippi yet.

Okay, so you got to get out here.

I got to get it. I got to get to your way. We're on complete opposite ends of the country. It is definitely on the bucket list. I definitely if you want to talk about, uh, comfort zone, it would be way outside of my comfort zone to be that far away from home or that far away from my business. At any given time, I can always fly, I guess, back in the same day somewhere. But we've been up and down the East Coast, and, uh, this, this summer we're excited to be, uh, a pretty extended long trip down through, uh, Gulf Shores, Alabama, Florida, uh, Savannah, Charleston. It's, it's going to be It's going to be an amazing adventure.

Good for you. And the kids probably love it too.

Love it. They totally love it. I think, I don't know if the kids love it or the dog loves it more. I'm not quite sure. Whole family, whole family piles in.

Everybody, dog and family. Good for you. Well, Drew, thank you so much for your time today. It's been a really wonderful talking with you.

Well, it was a true pleasure and a joy, and I hope your listening audience got a lot of opportunities to, and nuggets to take away from it.

I'm sure they did. Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.