91. Leadership Training Plan

Hey, my friend, welcome back to leadership in a nutshell, where we're cracking the code of that driven mind you and I have been blessed with. It can be a curse at times. It feels, but trust me, it is 100% a gift. And one of the reasons that I jump on here and come to you once a week with a quick shot in the arm, a quick snapshot, a quick mind shift, something that helps you continue to elevate your game, manage your emotional regulation, and heighten your own levels of consciousness. Today we're here to talk about episode 91, Leadership Training Plan. So I want you to think about your own training plan, and I want to talk to you as a leader as well as kind of, you know, how you're gonna shift and create a plan for you and those in your business. So when I talk about a training plan, I'm not talking about just for you specifically. I'm talking about for your entire organization. But you as the leader, are the one that gets the opportunity to go ahead and craft and create what this will look like. And so, leadership Training Plan, episode 91. Do Me a favor and make sure you share this episode with somebody. Share. Share our entire podcast. Here we are. We're closing in on 100 episodes together. I just feel so grateful to have you as a listener and as you continue to grow our community and help, I would encourage you to share this information with those around you and anybody that might get value from this. Yes, we talk a lot about blue collar. It's who I am. It's what I'm all about. When I say blue collar, I don't just mean the blue collar success group that I'm the founder and CEO of. I mean the blue collar industries in general. And I'm a tradie, as they would say, our friends and clients down in Australia. I'm a tradie at heart, and this is what it's all about. Now, we can't elevate our games as leaders without training ourselves and our team. And I want you to think about that today. And I just really want to want you to kind of frame. I'm not going to have a lot of, you know, here's a structured activity for you today. This is more just having a conversation where you kind of get in your own head and think about a little bit, you know, what has been my training plan, or has there been one at all? You know, do I handle training based on a little bit of reactivity? No reason to kick your own butt or be frustrated with yourself, but A lot of times I might react a little bit is where training comes from. I know in my own service business, I had a service business for 20. I always get it confused. 24 years, I think. And during that period of time, it was like, oh, man, average ticket sucks. Okay, John, build training for next week. We're going to uplevel average ticket. Oh, my gosh. Conversion rates down. Okay, let's do some training. You know, a lot of that was early on. It was based on reactivity of result. And guess what? We built a phenomenal business by doing that. You can build an even more phenomenal business with greater emotional regulation if you don't wait for the dips and the valleys to take action. And that's kind of what a training plan does for you, is it helps, you know, look out ahead and go, hey, here's what we're going to need. It's kind of like, you know, last year when the lovely Christy and I took six, what was it, seven weeks, eight weeks, motorhome trip around, you know, second time we've done a long motorhome trip. We did six months in 2007 and then we did a couple months last year where it's kind of like laying out the plan of what I might run into if I'm in the Smoky Mountains versus what I might run into if I'm at the coast of Maine or down in Florida during hurricane season, whatever that is. Hey, there's some things coming up I might want to be mindful of. I might want to revisit an evacuation plan if I'm going to be down in Florida in my coach or whatever the case may be. Translate that to business, man. I know we've got shoulder season coming in between seasons, so what would be some training? What does that look like? Right? So I want you to just remember though, that training creates predictable behavior, period. Like that is one of the main things is when we're training ourselves, we're creating predictable behavior. People are showing up with behavior every day, every week, every month, right? So what we want to do is create predictable behavior through training. And then the cool thing is predictable behavior creates our results. And that is, that's the massive thing that we want to focus on. If I want to up level results, if I want to increase my fill in the blank of a KPI, and sometimes the KPI might not be super measurable. It's just, you know, my own emotional regulation as the leader of the business, as the leader of my department, I don't want the ups and downs the peaks and the valleys near as much. I just want to get better, consistent results. Well, then I've got to create predictable behavior in both myself and my frontline, frontline team in order to get those things to happen right. So make sure that we're focused on predictable behavior which creates the results that we desire. I wanted to remind you too. You know, as a blue collar leader, we have these blockers sometimes that were instilled in us around education. And I've got, you know, I had years and years of being blocked when it came to education. Why? Because I was told I was a dumb kid. Because, you know, the kids that couldn't focus or couldn't study went to shop class or went to VO Tech or whatever that was. And for me, I wasn't even that good with my hands. When I got into this business. I became a really good drain cleaner and I could clean drains with the best of them because I'm a problem solver, but I'm not a phenomenal plumber. You definitely don't want me working on your H Vac or your electrical panel. So I wasn't blessed with great technical skill, but I was blessed with great problem solving skills and I had to elevate that. And that's why I quickly got out of the truck two years in by myself, running every call for two solid years. And then I started getting out of the truck and working my way out earlier than industry experts said that I should or anything like that. But I knew I had to get out and build a business because I wasn't the best technician. And that actually served me. So if you're a phenomenal technician turned leader, you've got some things you need to let go of and want to set down from your craft and shift to your mindset craft. And that means embracing education as an industry. We want to embrace education. There's going to be a restructure. I'll call it. I'll hesitate to call it a collapse, although I believe there's going to be a massive restructure of higher education in the United States, specifically the unbelievable amount of student loan debt that we've saddled people with that we continue to push. You know, I feel like it's pill pushing almost and guidance now. Please don't take it personal. I'm not calling anybody out, I'm calling a system out. But the fact that, you know, everybody's doing the best they can, and I think a guidance counselor sitting down and recommending somebody to go to college, they're doing the best they can and they're doing what they were taught to do. But now you have somebody that's in an authority role telling a 17, 18 year old kid what they should do with their lives. How on earth are we supposed to know at that age? And now we just go, sign here and you get this free money at 18. I didn't know what that was. I, oh my gosh, I don't know, you know, so I, whatever, I won't sidebar on that. Let's just say there will be an education reform within the next decade in the United States. And because of that, it's going to mean a massive opportunity for the blue collar industries and we're going to continue to grow our capabilities and our education opportunities. So you've got to remove the blocker when you think, oh, training plan, training me into education. I'm not good at education. Get that out of your head. The lovely Christy and I recently had dinner with friends of ours in our neighborhood. And he was one of the top executives at Wells Fargo and he's in his early 70s now. He retired several years back and you know, obviously was a roller coaster ride with a large bank organization. He was based in St. Louis at headquarters and different things. And, you know, it's fascinating when we talk and the more he learns about our industry, he's like, yeah, man, it's amazing how as a banker I saw, you know, how these companies did and different financial performance. And I think back to when I was in school and the same deal, dumb kids go to shop class, dumb kids. You know, it's like, well, hang on, really smart kids went to shop class. Let's stop that. And we need to embrace that for our own frontline, for our leaders as well. Many of our leaders, myself and possibly you included, came from a truck. I came from a drain cleaning truck. You know, I was a truck driver in the army. It doesn't get much more blue collar than going from truck driver to drain cleaner. And now I run a high level education business because I believe in education and I believe in training people. And so you've got to think about how does that sit for you? And I've got a question for you here today. Are you a training organization? Now, I'm not talking about a training organization like the Blue Collar Success Group where you go out and train other people, but are you a training organization, meaning you train internally? What does that mean to you? And here's the reality. If you are not embracing becoming a training organization, if you are not embracing the reality of what training means in your own organization. When we think about a training plan for this year, you are missing the boat. Yes, there will be massive changes as more technology comes on, more AI comes into our space. We have the push and the challenge with labor. There's more private equity money than we've ever seen around right now. What does that mean? It means you've got to continue and you get to continue training, training, training. So when I ask you to think about, are you a training organization, quite honestly, my friend, I don't really care what the answer is today. If you are great, if you're not great, just get aware of it and realize that it's time to start shifting in that direction. Because when I think about being a training organization, I think, well, yeah, we are, Kenny. We're a training organization. We train every Tuesday and then one of the blue collar coaches does an on site at your company and go, hey, you know, everybody in the room. How many of when was the last time we had a Tuesday meeting? Oh, man, it's been, I don't know. What was that? Was that last month or. No, Jamie, I think that was two months ago. Well, Jerry, was that. No, I think. And all of a sudden you're going, huh? Leadership told me before I got on site that they train every Tuesday. But the reality is that's the plan. Put that in air quotes, but then stuff happens. Put that in air quotes too. There's a plan and then stuff happens and the plan gets changed. And that's a reality of business, reality of life. However, if you don't make training as important or more important than anything that happens in the organization, it's always going to get pushed. Why? It's an annuity. It's an investment in future performance and an investment in predictable behavior. But you might not run a call and go, oh my gosh, yes, you should get immediate results. If you hold a training on a specific topic, you should definitely see a return on that investment that day or certainly that week. But as a leader, we have a hard time seeing that. We go, oh my gosh, I got two installs today. Yeah, cancel the training and we'll make it up next week. All of us know this happens. I'm not saying that it's easy to not, you know, to get through, although it is simple. You just stop doing it. No different than stopping smoking is simple. I've got a really good friend of mine who's also a client who recently quit smoking after 40 some years, probably actually 50 years of smoking and bam. He Just finally decided he chews the hell out of some nicorette or whatever the lozenges are, right? But he just decided he's going to stop smoking, period. And that was it. When you decide you're a training organization, boom, that's it. It becomes that important and you start putting value on it. So just be mindful of that. Be mindful of what gets in the way. Build your plan. If you're a blue collar member, obviously you've got access to training. Different training plans based on your membership level. Reach out to your coaches. If you're not a blue collar member, that that's cool. Why? I guess I would ask, but no, I'm not here to sell you anything. I'm here to have a conversation. And so there's plenty of training plans out there, I'm sure. But just even if you sat down and said, okay, what are the 52 weeks that we want to focus on, do that, maybe do a quarter at a time. Just make sure you ping yourself to do it ahead of time. When you do it ahead of time, when you focus on yourself first, what do you want to make sure you learn? What do you want to make sure your team learns and execute that plan that will change your game. My friends, it's 2022 and it's time for your training plan. Your leadership training plan, first and foremost. Until we talk, my friends, make it a better than fantastic week. Give us a, like a rating review. Share this with somebody. Talk to you soon. Cheers, Sam.