358 - The Puzzle of Business: Finding Harmony in Leadership and Team Dynamics with Joe Zentmyer

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 our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Joe Zentmeyer, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You have a really interesting career. You were 18 years in corporate working for Kraft, doing all kinds of stuff for Kraft, kind of learning, learning what it means to be an operator in a big company. And then something happened, which we're going to learn about, and you went out and started becoming a serial entrepreneur. And you're in your at second company, uh, Snaggletooth Gobi.

That's my third company, actually.

Third company in Chicago. Well, welcome to the show.

Thank you, great to be here.

Yeah, why don't you just give us a kind of a summary of all your experience, starting with your work, you know, education, and then craft, and then what happened and got you into being an entrepreneur?

Yeah, so, uh, I went to University of Iowa and I, I got a degree in English creative writing and then a degree in accounting. Uh, and then I got a master's as well. And then I went on to work at Kraft Foods, and I was there for more than a decade. While I was there, I was changing jobs like every 18 months, taking on more and more responsibility, and I just saw so many different acts of aspects of business. So I saw finance, of course, and then business expansion opportunities, quality improvement projects, marketing, I was every 18 months, it was something new. But then after being on that merry-go-round in the corporate world for all those years, I started to get the itch to do something bigger. And part of that itch was actually because my father was a business executive himself and was very successful. So I was always just very inspired by business and by the ideas of like kind of putting the puzzle together. So I had kind of extra motivation in seeing my father and how his career advanced. So even though things were going great at Kraft, I was looking for something bigger. So I started looking at trying to start a business, and I looked at a lot of different concepts and ideas, and nothing really quite fit. But around that same time, I fell in love with rock climbing.

Ah, so there's not much rock climbing in the Chicago area.

There's not much rock climbing in Chicago area, and therein was the business opportunity.

Ah.

Building a rock wall.

That's right. And so I spent 3 years while I was working at Kraft working on developing my first business, which was, uh, First Ascent, a rock climbing gym business. So 3 years of doing 2 jobs. And actually, during that time, I got one promotion at Kraft even though I had a second job trying to start a business. And then started operations of First Ascent in 2015. And then over the next— from 2015 to all the way to 2021, we opened 7 locations.

Wow.

And we did really well. Had several hundred employees. We were growing fast. And then there I was part of everything because I was a founder and I, along with my business partner, we had our hands in everything, but all the staff reported to me and then I worked on real estate development as well. So I was the one that was trying to find the new locations and develop the relationships with the landlords or with land sellers in some cases. So, did that until 2020, 2021, sold out of it. And now, I'm doing my next business, which is also involved in different retail opportunities, which is Snaggletoots Kobe.

Wow. So, why did you bail from first business?

I wasn't getting along well with my business partners.

That'll do it.

And COVID was, you know, was rough. And it was just time to move on.

Okay. Ready to do something else.

I was definitely, I wasn't looking to get out and do nothing. I was looking to get out and do the next thing.

Right. So where do you come up with your business ideas?

You know, for me, I like to find a business that has some form of recurring revenue. So I try to stay off of businesses that you're just entirely like, see something seasonal or you're just trying to sell a product. I like to find something that has some kind of monthly contract, some annual contract, something that defines your revenue and gives you some consistency. In your receipts.

So what is Snaggletooth Goby doing now?

Uh, so actually I purchased an aquarium business that's in the south suburbs of Chicago, and I'm slowly growing out that business to get it bigger. Yeah.

So just—

you just have one retail location right now?

So I have one retail location, but— and I've had it for a couple years now, but now we're doing in-home service, which has monthly contracts And then I've also expanded online and I have— I'm selling online as well.

So, so you have people that go into people's homes to clean the aquariums and that's filters and change the water and feed the fish.

That's right.

All that kind of stuff.

All right.

So I'm curious, you've been doing this for a long time now and all kinds of different stuff. What is it that gets you up in the morning and gets you really excited to go to work?

You know, for me, the puzzle of a business is really inspiring, and that's what gets me up. Like, it gets me obsessed. And when I say like the puzzle of business, figuring out like the right combination of staff, uh, incentives, business process, structure, getting all those pieces together, working in harmony is what gets me going. And I just find it like so fascinating to figure out how to conceptualize it and make it work. And that's the thing that I find most interesting about being an entrepreneur. And the thing about it is it changes every day. Like, if you think you got it to the perfect balance and it's smooth, it's not going to stay that way, right?

It's a very dynamic thing. I don't know what else to call it. Yeah, and by dynamic, it means there's a lot of moving parts. You can have them balanced in one moment, the next moment something comes out of the blue and throws you off.

And what's fascinating about it is you oftentimes think you have understood the balance, and then there'll be some kind of event and you'll realize like some aspect of what was keeping you in balance you just never understood. And so like a great example of that obviously is like the COVID shutdowns, right? And then all of a sudden you reveal like, oh wow, it's like I had a staff member over there that was taking care of these incoming emails from customers. We didn't even know that they were doing that, but now that it's not happening, wow, it's, it's a disaster. What do we do? And it's just so fascinating how all the pieces come together.

Yeah.

What do you think the most challenging part of your work is today as an investor and a CEO and an entrepreneur?

I think what's most challenging is different depending on the person and often is a reflection of that entrepreneur skill set. For me, where I struggle the most is just having patience for people.

Really?

Yeah. I come from like an analytical mindset. And so for me, it's like, just do it. What are we talking about? Just do it. And obviously that's not very motivational.

No.

And, uh, and obviously like sometimes it fails to understand that, hey, maybe the people just don't understand what to do. And so that's probably my, my thing that I have to constantly go back and remind myself about.

Listen to them.

Right, right.

Listening, listening can be hard because you got an analytical mind and everything's going on 90 million miles a minute and you gotta stop all that for the time it takes to really listen and understand what somebody's saying and feeling.

And you know, you have your task list that's 1,000 long or whatever it is, right? You're like, I'm kicking off the task list. What did that person just say? I'm on the next item. And that can actually get very toxic very fast if you let it.

So how do you manage that with yourself?

I mean, the first part for me is I have had to learn over time to be disciplined about my time. And I have a set list of things that I judge myself on.

Oh, really?

Yeah. Kind of like some of the things that I judge myself maybe are not like intuitive, but it's like, hey, what is the mile time that I can run? What level of rock climbing route can I climb?

Those are important though.

It's basically a way to objectively assess how much I'm keeping up with my personal life, essentially. Because if I let it, I'll let myself do all business and no personal life.

Right. Yeah, it helps you keep some balance.

It helps me keep some balance. And then what I have learned over time is if I get to that point where I'm not keeping up with my personal fitness, I'm not keeping up with my social life outside of business, my relationships within business start to go bad because I get increasingly ornery and curmudgeonly and just do the work. Why are you bothering me?

Exactly.

Uh, it's an interesting thing because the thing— one of the things that makes me successful is that I can be so focused and single-minded about, uh, the task at hand, but that also can lead to failure over time.

Yeah, right, because you get so blinded, you get such tunnel vision that you can't see stuff around you that you should be looking at.

Right, right.

What do you think it is that's made you successful over all these years?

You know, I think the thing, uh, that has made me successful is is actually a evolution I went through with my rock climbing gym business. Because when I first started, I was very focused on the things of the business, like what computer system were we going to use, how was the building going to be designed, what color was the logo going to be. I was super focused on the things of the business and then on the process of the business. And in the beginning, people were a part of the process to me. And as time went by and I matured as a leader and I started to understand things more, I evolved into caring more about the people in the business and figuring out how to make the people happy and successful. And the things were still there for me, but just not as important. And that was kind of an evolution that I had to go through as I was leading the business. I didn't start out there, and I think it made me more successful that I had the analytical background and I could understand cold hard numbers and things think in an analytical, objective way, but then also I had taken the time to work on my relationship skills and work on working with people.

How do you do that? What you're talking about is what I teach, and I find that people who are highly analytical tend to shy away from relationship stuff because it's messy and it's unpredictable and it's chaotic and it's right, comfortable, and it's— you can't put it into a spreadsheet, you know, it just doesn't work that way.

You know, so the first part of it, I'm a big reader, so I just did a lot of reading consistently.

Oh, good.

And I, I, I wouldn't say that there was ever any one book that I was like, it all made sense now, but it helped me just to like come up with some vocabulary.

Mm-hmm.

I don't know if I had a vocabulary in the beginning. The second thing that was really beneficial to me is I am a self-reflective person.

That helps.

So I was able to like think about like, well, That didn't go how I wanted it to go. And I, I mean, I coach a lot of people that are an— from the analytical background, and ultimately, like, what's helpful is to say, you know what, the end result of these group of interactions you had with those people didn't get you where you wanted it to be, did it? So how do you step back and change your behaviors so that you don't keep ending up alienating people, or people just doing things as robots as opposed to doing them as— how do you make the sum of the parts bigger?

I mean, one of the things that I reflect on is the fact that human behavioral change is the hardest job of a CEO. And so how do we engage in— engage with people to get them, to make them better, make them stronger, make them more successful, and raise them up, which then should improve process and profit. If it all goes well, right?

And especially with like smaller businesses and growing businesses, you're just not going to have very strong process. Like, that's just the reality of it, right? Because you're figuring out the processes as you go, right? So you are reliant on people to be creative. You're reliant on people to put in an extra hour to like figure out how to do this thing that no one has done or hasn't been done in a long time. It was being done differently. Uh, if you think as a leader you're going to be able to get everybody to do it by coming back back to you all the time, it's just not going to work. I'll say, like, the thing that I have struggled with, with my new business, is not investing too much time into people who are just not in a place where their attitude can change.

They have a fixed mindset, not a growth mindset.

I've gotten to the point now where I feel like, oh, I can get people to grow, I can change their attitude, and sometimes it's not worth it. Sometimes you got to move on, say, hey, you're just not the right person for this situation.

Yeah.

And the negative of that is you can spend so much time trying to develop someone that's not the right fit, and people that maybe you could have gotten there are being ignored. And that's a big struggle.

How do you even evaluate whether somebody is worth investing in or not?

The first part for me, like, even in an initial interview, is just, can I connect with this person? Like, can I have a conversation with them and where we have some rapport? And that could be tricky, obviously, because everyone wants the job and they're or when they first start in a job, they want to be well-liked. So they're going to seemingly have great rapport with you, which I think is something a lot of new leaders tend to forget. But that's something I really— I try to figure out. And oftentimes I try to kind of lay a few eggs in there that I know probably aren't— won't be well received and just see how the person reacts. And if someone just tells me like something that I said is wrong is awesome, I usually won't spend too much time. I want the people that tell me I'm wrong. And especially, I want people that can communicate a difficult thing or challenge me in a good way, in a positive way. But that again is, you know, as I grew as a leader, I understand it. It took me a long time to understand. It's really hard for people to confront their boss.

In all businesses that are hierarchical, the people at the top sign the paychecks, right? Because there's a certain amount of power there that you really don't want if you're lower down. You really don't want to upset that power structure.

That's right. And so that's, that's certainly a challenge for sure.

How do you remain open and accessible and coach people and at the same time understand that as the owner of the business, you're the ultimate authority and have ultimate power over people's livelihoods?

So like, an interesting thing happened in the rock climbing gym industry where, you know, COVID occurred, and then basically all of the rock climbing gym operators in the United States closed their gyms all at the same time. And so the average age of rock climbing gym employees in the United States is probably something like 25, 26.

Pretty young.

Pretty young. So you had all of these employees that love their jobs, they love being in a rock climbing gym, and they all lost their jobs immediately. And probably for the first time had that ever happened to them. Or they lost their job. And of course, all of us rock climbing gym operators, myself included, we were working on growing. We're a growing industry. We had never really worried about staff in the sense of like a layoff. Like, layoffs never happened. So there was no communication tools there. There was no HR person there to help smooth things over. And like, for my part, I can recall the day I laid people off, I did like 30 individual Zoom calls was everyone in my full-time staff here. Sorry, I'm laying off. Sorry, I'm laying off. Terrible day. And coming out of that, I'm like, okay, I just did it. I laid everyone off. This is terrible. But obviously I had no choice. Like, we are closed.

There's no revenue.

Customers. Yeah, there's no revenue. Obviously I had no choice. We're closed. And this happened everywhere in the country, you know, and the result of that was large groups of these younger employees writing online petitions. They don't care about us. And then bringing up like bad things that had happened in the past that they were angry about. And ultimately what— and every situation was different, you know, but like in one gym, the employees demanded that there was a teacher that had been fired that the other staff really liked. So they demanded that they bring him back. Even though that teacher had been fired like 4 years earlier. So there's all kinds of things happening. And of course, some of it happened to us as well. And ultimately, what people were angry about, and at the most basic and simple level, was they didn't feel like anyone was listening to them.

Yep.

They just didn't feel like anyone was listening.

Yep.

And then they all got laid off. And there's like, that's proof.

Right.

That's proof they don't care.

They don't care is equivalent to they're not listening.

Exactly. Yeah.

Because if you can learn how to listen to people, then that complaint goes away.

Right. So all this is happening. And like, so for me personally, like the COVID layoff occurred, I worked for 4 months straight without a day off, including weekends. I was working 7 days a week. I didn't take a paycheck during that. I'm just working my butt off and like, kind of like stuff is like percolating out there on social media. People are starting I'm starting to get back to me and I'm just so focused on figuring out the finance, figuring out. And at first I had no— I literally went, how can anyone be angry? Like, why would they be angry? Like, we're trying to do everything we can to help people. We paid people for like a month even though we were closed. Like, how could they be angry? And it was so hard for me to see past my own filter, right, of like focus and It took that long for me to— it probably took me 4 months to realize, oh, they're angry because nobody heard them. And they're angry because we laid them off. Most people are angry about losing their job. And they don't care that, you know, bad things happen to the business.

Right?

They just care that they lost their job.

Yeah.

So to take it back to like, what would I have done differently? I think I would have scheduled more listening sessions with staff, that were lower in the business. So I did a pretty good job of listening to the people that were my direct reports, but people that were more hourly staff, I didn't spend enough time with them.

Right.

Yeah.

How are you applying that lesson today in your new business?

You know, so I meet with everyone in my business at least once a week. Wow.

Well, you got one location, so that's not— probably not.

It's easier.

It's easier.

Yeah. So it's easier when you only have less than 20 employees.

I was going to say. Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I haven't gotten to that challenge just yet on the new one. Yeah.

Right.

Well, good. One more question and I'll let you go. What's, what's one thing about yourself, Joe, that we would never know about unless you revealed it to us?

Well, there's one, one thing about me that you wouldn't know from a podcast. You might know if you met me in person, but you wouldn't know about it from podcast is that I actually have a moderate hearing loss. Ah, and I wear hearing aids. Wow.

Yeah.

Which is—

you have the headsets on.

That is one of my challenges for communication sometimes as well.

Listening. Yeah. Just being able to hear people.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, there's another thing that we share in common. I was born with a bunch of severe disabilities and slowly overcame them all, but you know how that is, right? Really difficult.

Well, not to be like, uh, COVID, but man, face masks were rough for people with hearing loss.

That's right. Because you can't read their lips.

That's right.

Wow. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Joe.

Thank you.

Really appreciate it.

Great. Thank you.

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.

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