Why Working Harder Is Making Your Business Worse with Brad Poulos

Most business owners think they need better answers. What they actually need is to stop answering every single one. And that's what we're talking about today on Experience Leadership.

Welcome to Experience Leadership, a podcast that challenges small business owners and entrepreneurs just like you to dare be the exception. Join our host, customer experience expert Marc Haine, as he uncovers relevant and timely content to help you script and direct your business and teams to create jaw-dropping experiences your customers and staff deserve. Here is the host of Experience Leadership, author of Lights! Camera! Action!, customer experience expert Marc Haine.

Welcome to this episode of Experience Leadership. I am your host, Customer and Employee Experience Strategist Marc Haine. And today, my guest is Brad Poulos. And today, we are talking about why most business problems don't really need fixing. They need patience, clarity, and a better operating discipline. So, stick around with us. If this is the first time that you're with us, I'd like to say welcome. If you find this episode valuable, please check out our past episodes. There are tons of other episodes here. dealing with all sorts of different leadership and business principles that I'm sure you're going to find really enlightening. And if you haven't done so yet, please make sure you're subscribed to this podcast. That way you get notifications when we publish each one each and every week. So first and foremost, thank you for investing your time with us. So here's a hard truth most business owners never get told.

Being busy feels productive.

Being effective feels uncomfortable. We've been taught to jump in, rescue, decide, approve, and to fix time after time after time. But over that time, that habit quietly turns leaders into bottlenecks and businesses into stress machines. And that brings us to our Question of the Day. So, I want you to be honest. Where in your business are you stepping in to help that might actually be slowing things down or costing you time and money? I'd love to know what your experience is. Go ahead and share this episode on your favorite social media platform. Hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership. Put your comments down and be part of this conversation. I'd love to hear your thoughts about this. As I mentioned, my guest today is Brad Poulos, known as Canada's Small Business Professor.

Thank you.

Brad has started businesses, sold some, shut some down, raised capital on Wall Street and Bay Street, and spent the last 16 years teaching entrepreneurship at Toronto Metropolitan University. In other words, he's lived the wins, the messes, and the lessons most business books skip. He is the author of Most Problems Solve Themselves and The Small Business Operator's Manual. And his work is grounded in real operating experience, not just startup theater or buzzwords. Brad, welcome to the show. It's so great to have you.

To be here, Marc. Thank you for that very nice introduction.

So Brad, maybe we could start, tell us a little bit about who your clients are and how you serve them.

Yeah. So my clients are generally small or medium-sized business owners and operators. Most of the time we're working on some level of strategy. So helping them clarify exactly who their market is. Exactly what products they're taking to market and why they should be winning as opposed to their competition.

And so when we think about the way small business operates right now, what are the most common kind of well-intentioned mistakes you're seeing business operators make?

So the one that you alluded to at the open, which is jumping in and thinking that you have to solve every problem that pops up in your business. I realized this about 30 years ago when I was actually working in a large company, and I was given the job of launching a new product as well as continuing to do my job, which was running sales and marketing for a portion of the company. And I was super busy. So I realized that I had to somehow filter out the amount of communications I was receiving. And so I basically started waiting until somebody asked me at least 2 or 3 times to do something before I would do it. And then I realized that a lot of the time you never even get the second request. So that was when I sort of coined this term that, you know, most problems solve themselves in the sense that they just kind of go away. And a lot of small business operators, they feel that they have to, you know, add value by jumping in and chiming in on every problem, whether maybe they're not solving it necessarily, but giving their opinion. And I found over the years of running my own businesses that Leave people to their own devices. And most of the time, the problem will get solved by them. And yeah, they may not do it exactly the same way you would have. They might not even do it as, quote, as well as you would've done it. But in business, a lot of the time, good enough is good enough. And so, that's sort of where the title of the latest book came from, is that little anecdote.

You know, it's interesting. As you were saying that, I was wondering how much of the whole jumping in that leaders do How much of that is distrust of the team versus the ego of, hey, I'm the master of my universe so I'm going to come in and control everything? Or how much of it is that the leader themselves just lack the capacity and capability of being a really good leader?

Yeah, I think all 3 of those happen. So, depending on the individual. And in fact, some individuals may be guilty of different ones at different times. You know, we were told a long time ago in this book called The E-Myth, which I strongly recommend. Very good book.

Michael Gerber.

He talked about working on the business versus in the business. And a lot of small business owners never make that transition to, you know, stop making pies, to use the example in the book, and start running a business that makes pies.

It's interesting because I meet a lot of like entrepreneurs who are kind of in the first 5 years of their business. And so, like, a pizza guy who knows how to make amazing pizzas opens up a pizza restaurant. So his default is not going to be, hey, let me sit down and do a business strategy and start hiring people to do— he goes in there and he says, I'm going to do the best thing because this is what's going to launch my business. It's going to be my pizzas. That's what's going to make my name. But then we end up using that as an excuse not to run the business because I can't pull away from the genius I bring. to let somebody else do it because then my business will fail.

Smartest thing that person could do then would be probably to hire some sort of a chief operating officer to do all of those things. If they want to stay, you know, spreading sauce and doling out pepperoni on a pizza, then that's fine. Hire somebody else.

I love that you said that because I recently had— I mentioned this once before, but about a year ago, I had my mechanic was in the shop and he was, you know, he took in my car and all that. And then he called me, the car was ready. I walked into the office, he's behind the counter and he is doing all the transactions. He's got the contracts, he's got the printer, he's got the debit machine, he's going through all the billing. And I said, you know, why don't you have somebody to do this for you? And he looked at me and he says, well, I used to. He says, I used to have more mechanics and then I would run the business and then I had somebody in the front of office. But then I didn't get to work on cars. And because I didn't get to work, and it's like, you know what? I didn't want that. And one of the first things that ended up happening, I said, you know, why don't you hire your boss? And he goes, well, what do you mean? I'm the boss. I said, I'm not saying hire a new owner. I'm saying hire somebody who's going to delegate responsibility, is gonna divvy out the work to all the mechanics, including to you. And then, you know, once or twice a week, you sit down with that person, talk about the business side, Then you go back to being on cars and let this person run your business. It's probably going to be the best investment you ever made. And and so ultimately, he didn't listen. So so now he's still scrambling every day, being the busiest person on the floor. C'est la vie, right?

It's no surprise that he didn't do it, but it would probably be the most brilliant thing that the person could do because they'd be they'd be happy getting to work on cars.

Yeah.

And yet the business would be getting to the next level because they've got the right person making. Those sorts of decisions.

Right. And yeah, yeah. And taking that pressure off. Aside from that, are there any other myths about owners and managers kind of being productive that we need to bust today?

I don't know about myths, but there's sort of a common thread that I see that's really related to what we're talking about right now. And I call it the $8 million problem. And now, the $8 million is an old number. So, that number might be up to $10 or $12 million. But But where it comes from is when my brother and I were running our own business together, we sort of noticed that among our suppliers were a lot of companies that were around the $8 million range in sales where the owner made every single decision. And so we decided that, yeah, up to $8 million, you can make all the decisions. But the problem is that if you want to be the person that's making all the decisions, you're getting stuck at $8 million.

Yeah.

So, you know, that's, that's, it's another, it's just another form of being able to let go.

Yeah.

Start to build some structure in your organization.

Absolutely.

So that you, one of the things I tell my students is that if you can't go to Barbados and sit on the beach for 2 weeks, you actually don't have a business. You just have a job that you own. You, you need to get to the next level, which is, which where the business can actually run for some time without you. You know, I think I tend to think of any business, large or small, as a pyramid. You know, there's only one CEO and then there's a whole bunch of people at the bottom. And that CEO could probably go away for a couple of months and no one will notice. But take away the bottom layer and see what happens.

Yeah.

You know, take away the people that are making the fries and the burgers at McDonald's and see what happens. You won't be in business for very long. So, I've always believed that managers work for the people underneath them in the hierarchy. That's what you're there to do.

So, we have a comment that that approach works in your day-to-day as well. This whole idea of being able to— I think this was in response to hiring your own boss and having people helping you delegate to you to help you organize yourself. But this whole idea, yeah, I mean, I made a dishwasher cry once. Because he was having a really tough day. He was yelling and screaming at the serving staff, and I pulled him aside and I talked to him, and he was like, I don't know, I think I'm going to have to quit and stuff. And I said, that would be a real shame because here's the thing, without you, we can't serve food. And he's like, what? I said, without you, we can't serve food if we don't have you here. I said, you are more important to this business than I am, and I'm the general manager. And he goes, no. I said, absolutely, because you do the work that makes sure that we can keep Fresh hot food going out on clean plates consistently. And he was virtually almost in tears. Like I could see him welling up because he had never thought about his position in that frame before. And I challenged that a lot of leaders think that they're the grand poobah of their village. But really at the end of the day, I fell back on my training with one of my first bosses who said, if you're not serving a customer, you damn well better be serving somebody who is. Right.

And too many leaders just don't make that transition to realizing that they're not the most important cog in the wheel. In fact, you shouldn't even be a cog in the wheel. You shouldn't. That's for others to do the job.

You should be in the center. You have spokes going out so everybody can do the work.

Right. Yeah, exactly. Or maybe turning the crank, or I'm not sure. Maybe putting some oil in. Maybe that's your job. But it's certainly not to be a cog. Yeah.

One of the things I'm seeing in small businesses is always they launch the first 6 months, the first year, if they're doing really well, they start thinking, oh, now I better expand now. I better hit when the iron's hot. Why does this idea of kind of this fast growth often make owners actually poorer more than more successful?

Oh, that's a fairly simple finance concept. Basically, as you grow, it depends on the business, of course, but most of the businesses that I deal with are, um, they're not necessarily like retail-type businesses. They're more B2B. So we're dealing with, uh, credit on both sides. You know, you get credit from your suppliers and, you know, accrual accounting, as we call it.

Mm-hmm.

So when you grow, if you're a company that has inventory and has receivables and all that sort of stuff, those things have to be funded and those things get funded generally out of profits. So the faster you grow, the more difficult it actually is to take cash out of your business. And I tell people all the time, if you want to take cash out of your business, no problem at all. Just stop growing. Watch your bank account climb. It'll be amazing how that happens, right? So it's just a natural outpouring of growth. And obviously as you get much larger, then you can start to look for external financing. And maybe get a little bit of both worlds in the sense that you can both grow and take a reasonable amount of money out of your company. But in the early days, it's not happening. Small growth companies are going to be cash-strapped, and that's just the way of the world unless you came in rich.

Yeah. And that saddens me a lot because I find that a lot of the newer businesses, under 5-year businesses, are struggling more than well-established businesses are because They started probably on a shoestring. They probably started underleveraged, and they didn't have the resources that they needed in order to make sure that they can succeed for over 2 years and all that kind of stuff. And so, you know, people come in, they go, oh, I got $100,000, I'll get this storefront and I'll set up my thing and I'll get a loan to bring stuff in. But because they don't have anything to fall back on, they become challenged later on. Is that a fair assessment?

In fact, it's the number one reason why companies go out of business, in my opinion, is lack of— not a lack of customers, it's a lack of capitalization.

Right.

Just not raising enough money to get you over the hump. You know, I mean, every company starts out on day one spending money, not making it.

Right.

And you're— we have this thing that we actually call the J curve in entrepreneurial finance, right? So it looks like a J, cash goes down for a while, and then you hit this wonderful day of cash flow positivity. where you're now at the bottom of the J and then you start to climb your way out. And then the wonderful, wonderful day is when you're cumulatively cash flow positive. In other words, you've made back everything you've put in and you're now well into the green.

Right.

But if you don't get the size of the bottom of the J right, in other words, if you don't, if you're not judicious enough in calculating how, you know, how much cash am I going to need to get to the day where I'm cash flow positive? Then you run out of gas and you either end up closing or you have to maybe bring on a partner at less than ideal terms, mortgage the house.

Yeah. Well, you know, and again, you know, it's that desperation factor kicks in, right? And so if our mindset is so focused on this idea of scarcity and desperation, the decisions we make after that are all seeded in that. And That can never be good. Even to the point where leaders start to say, you know what, maybe I'm going to cut back on my serving staff or my front of house staff or my clerks, and I'll just dedicate 2 hours of my day to do that job so that at least I can save money.

Small businesses do that a lot. Yeah, no question about it. And it can be a death spiral. I mean, in the short term, it's something that you might have to do. Just suck it up and yeah, you do the cleaning for a while, but it's not a good long-term strategy for sure. It's not a super high value-added activity. And the owner, the leader of the company, they should be working on the highest value-added activity all the time if possible.

Yeah. One of the things I did for one entrepreneur was that we actually broke down the hourly cost of all the different jobs that he was doing, that if he was to hire somebody. So he didn't bring a bookkeeper on because bookkeepers are expensive. So we sat down, we figured out how many hours a week or within a month he spent doing his bookkeeping to stay, to keep his head above water as far as the paperwork was concerned. And we realized that if a bookkeeper costs you $35 an hour, his time as the entrepreneur, as the business owner was like $150 an hour, right? And so looking at the two, it's like, well, why aren't you hiring a bookkeeper? Because your time is worth so much more.

Pennywise and pound foolish, as my mom used to say.

Oh, there you go. The old wisdoms. Yeah. So, I mean, this idea that leaders kind of jump in and they want to control things and so on. How does a leader know if they are actually the bottleneck to their business?

Probably if they're, if they feel really, really busy because the leader, like the president or the CEO of a company, of a small business, It shouldn't feel busy. It should feel like you're working on long-term things that don't have the same— it doesn't have the same feel as, let's say, that guy that's in the back of the place making pizzas. So, if you feel like you've got a million things to do, then you've got probably 990,000 too many things to do. You've got to get some things off your plate. That's probably the best way that you'd know. That, or if your growth starts to sputter, then obviously something's wrong. And there's a good chance that it would be that.

It's interesting. This morning, I was at a breakfast meeting for our local business community. And it was interesting to hear kind of the stories that people are saying about their success of their business. And I have a sneaking suspicion that the people who are at the table are actually more successful than they think they are because they're actually showing up inside the business community to have the conversations. Whereas other people are nose to the grindstone. They're not looking up. They're locked into their little bubble of their business. And they're not actually responding in a positive way. And so, I can't help but wonder how that affects their culture. And I can't help but wonder how cultural misalignment shows up not only for their businesses but for their customers and their employees as well.

Yeah, it would likely translate to a very kind of frenetic culture and this notion of everything has to be done right now. And it's actually, I think it's very telling if somebody has the time to go to something like a tech group or a breakfast group, like you're describing, that's proof that they're working on the business and not in the business.

Mm-hmm.

So I think that's a great sign, the fact that they're doing that. I can remember, the other thing is that it's not related to exactly what you're asking me about, but I was a member of one of these CEO groups for several years and it was invaluable. And the reason is because when you're the owner of a company, you don't really have a boss. Yeah, maybe kind of the bank, but not really. And so having a peer group that would tell you what you really need to hear and what your employees will not tell you was very, very invaluable to me. It felt like I actually now finally had a boss and I sort of wanted it. At least to some degree, because I don't really like being told a lot what to do and something I know about myself. I learned that when we sold our company to a publicly traded company and I became the CEO of a publicly traded company. So, I went from having 2 partners to having 4,000 shareholders and I liked it a lot less. Yeah.

It's interesting.

Yeah.

It really, I, you know, that whole idea with bringing peer groups in and that sort of thing, you know, when I talk to business leaders, They recognize that maybe they need help. They're at a point where I've tried everything I possibly can. In fact, my whole business in hospitality was built on that premise. I was a fixer for casinos, hotels, and restaurants. And so, I would get the call when their backs were up against the wall. And it's like, Marc, you know, we've been doing everything for the last 20 years and now things are changing. We got more comp— we've tried everything, Marc. And then I realized stepping into it, some of the things they could be doing was common sense to me. But it was only common sense to me because I had an outside perspective of the world around us, whereas they were in their bubble and they didn't realize the knowledge gaps that they had.

That's one of the reasons why I think once you get to a certain size, you should have probably not a board of directors if you're a private company, but at least a board of advisors, you know, a group of, and maybe, maybe you don't meet every month. Maybe it's like once a quarter or whatever, but a group to which you're accountable for the strategy of the company. And it should be diverse in the sense that you've got different, both industry and functional capabilities in this group. They should be senior enough that you'll listen to them and that they'll have credibility with you. And then you should be mature enough to listen to them. So—

And have your ego parked far enough away from your butthole to realize that you don't have all the answers. And that you have to have some level of humility.

Most successful business people have their egos at least reasonably well in check.

Yeah. And I think that's what makes a difference, right? Is because they've learned somewhere along the way, wait a second, maybe I don't have all the answers, right?

Yeah, that's it.

So I'd like to talk about why you think most problems solve themselves, because I bet you there's a bunch of entrepreneurs out there that go, what is he talking about? But we'll get to that right after this. When the spotlight shines on your business, are customers applauding or yawning? In other words, how is your business performing? Make your business a star with the new book Lights! Camera! Action!, Business Operational Excellence Through the Lens of Live Theater by Marc Haine. Marc uses his business and acting experience to help you see your business like a live show so you can create a performance your customers will never forget. Buy Lights! Camera!

Action!

Get yours today at your favorite online retailer or directly at marchaine.com. Welcome back! I am speaking with Canada's small business professor, Brad Poulos. Brad, I just shamelessly promoted my book. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your book?

Okay. So, my most recent book is called Most Problems Solve Themselves. And it's a collection of 52 stories mixed in with some business theory and Where the title comes from is just one of the stories where I just talk about the fact that in a small business, there's usually lots going on depending on the culture that you've created. A lot of problems kind of find their way into your office. And if you allow the people that work for you to solve most of them, then I used to have a saying actually, which is that the first time staff would hear it, they'd be quite taken aback. But I would say, you know, it's not that I don't care, but I don't care. And what I mean by that is, you know, I care about you, but I don't care how you solve this problem. And I want to empower you to try to solve it yourself rather than me tell you how to solve it, or me, worse, me jump in and take it over. Now, I'm not advocating that you abdicate your responsibility as the chief executive of your firm. There are times when a problem comes into your office and yes, That's one that you should grab, but most of them, you likely don't have to. And they'll either go away in the sense that it'll— and you may never know how it got solved. Somebody else will solve it, or it might actually literally just go away. Like, it might just prove to have not really been a problem as it, you know, it just really wasn't a problem that you needed to spend any time on.

I was amazed to see during COVID kind of the cultural dynamics of businesses. Because when COVID hit and people all of a sudden had to work from home, managers and leaders were scrambling to find all sorts of computer surveillance apps that they could put on people's laptops to make sure that they were working the hours. And they were doing like, like they were so worried about that. And ultimately, I think what we learned is we should stop actually micromanaging the processes and start just making the outcomes I mean, people stepped up and they just shined.

Sure.

Yeah.

I've never, I've personally never been a clock watcher when it comes to the people that report to me. Yeah. Right. I've never felt that I'm buying hours. If I'm only buying hours from you, you probably don't have much skill. I'm buying, I'm buying output. I'm buying results. Yeah. I don't really care how you achieve it. Right. If I'm not happy at the end of the month, the day, the year, whatever, with the amount of output, we'll talk about that. But it doesn't have to do with how many hours you put behind the computer.

Yeah, it's really interesting. You know, one of the things I think that's really changed in the last 30 years, you know, 30 years ago when I was in the business operations, it's like, you know, we held all the financials close to our heart. I remember the CEO of the company I was working for, it's like, oh no, we can't tell people we're making money because then they're gonna want a raise. Right. And it's like, but why don't we recognize, I mean, we've got recognition programs in place anyway, that's costing us money. Why aren't we just out there letting people know when we're having a good month versus when we're having a bad month and let people feel like they have a stake in the game? Is that something that you're seeing more and more of now? Or are we still kind of in that vein of, oh no, we can't let them know. Kill it.

I don't think it's changed. There are folks that fall into both camps. So, when I was growing the company that I just mentioned that we eventually went public, We put in place a profit sharing plan. And I told, I told my 2 partners, we can't have a profit sharing plan if we don't tell them what the profit is.

Mm-hmm.

Otherwise, it's gotta be transparent. So we started to share our, for the first time, we started to share our financial results. And yeah, it's a little bit scary to do that, but what it, creating that culture allowed us to do something that I think a lot of companies wouldn't have gotten away with. And, uh, back in 2000 and 2005 or so. So it was a little while ago now. The company was, we were coming off the worst part of the tech bust. So the tech bust didn't hit our company until a little bit later. It was 2002 before our revenues really tanked.

Yeah.

So 2005, we're still sort of coming out of it and we had already done some layoffs and the results were not what we needed them to be. And we did not want to lay off any more staff. At the time we had about I think the number was 52 people. And so we went to them and we asked, will the non-managers take a 10% pay cut? The managers take a 15% pay cut, and the owners took a 25% pay cut. There were 3 of us working in the firm at the time.

Mm-hmm.

And this was in May. And we said to them, if 100% of you don't agree to this, we can't do it. We're not going to do it. Now we will probably have to lay some people off. We didn't position it as a threat. It was just a, this is where we are.

Yep.

And they all agreed, 100% of them agreed. Now, so that, I think one of the reasons that they agreed to that was that we had created this culture of openness and transparency, and they knew that we were in some trouble, but not, not, not in danger of going out of business yet, but, but in some trouble. And Interestingly, by Christmas of that year, we had come out of the rut. We returned them every dollar that they had deferred. So, whatever amount of pay that they had not gotten across that period of time and topped it with 10%. And our employees just loved us for that because, you know, for obvious reasons.

We talk a lot about trust on this show. And creating cultures of trust. And what you've just mentioned is you were required to be trustworthy when you went and were open and transparent with what the situation was. You came together as a team to be able to decide how you would handle that. But then you just made deposits into this trust bank account when things started to rebound, as opposed to going, oh, well, guys, you know how hard we've had it. Give us 6 more months and then we'll see.

Right.

Which unfortunately tends to be the script for a lot of businesses.

And you know, we've had very, very low turnover, which wouldn't surprise you because—

That's what happens when you have a positive culture. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. You know, when it comes down, first of all, I think, you know, if this is resonating for anybody, everybody, how could people get in touch with you if they'd like to reach out to you, get your counsel, talk to you about their problems?

Yeah. Well, my name's Brad Poulos. You can see it there on the screen and my website is bradpoulos.com and you can find me on LinkedIn as well. So yeah, those are the best ways.

So we talk about this idea of like, I mean, transparency is a, is a buzzword now with politics and all that sort of stuff. But, but this idea of, of kind of having this radical candor, how can people create this without kind of giving away the show or hurting themselves in some vein? How can they have radical candor with a mindset of abundance rather than the mindset of scarcity?

So you're talking about Radical Candor, the book, the concept created by Kim Scott. Is that what you mean?

Yeah.

I think it is. Yeah. So, well, Radical Candor is the confluence of caring a lot and being willing to be direct. So because it involves the caring a lot, like, a lot of people are willing to be direct, but they're not They don't care that much. Kim calls that obnoxious aggression, but radical candor is both. So obnoxious aggression is actually the second best thing to be. It's better, I think, to be direct and not care than to care but not be direct.

Yeah.

And the reason is because if you have a boss that doesn't care, but they're direct, you will grow. If you have a boss that is not direct but cares, you're not going to grow. I've had them before. I worked for somebody for 2 years and I never did anything wrong. It's like, how's that possible? And so I didn't grow as a human being, as a leader, as a manager. I was lucky enough to have a boss for several years that did live in that quadrant of both caring, but also willing to be direct. And he made me a great salesperson, gave me an edge as a manager. And I love him to this day for it, although I haven't worked for him for over 20 years. So I think if it comes from a position of compassion, empathy, then that goes a long way.

I always get fearful that when the word compassion and empathy hits the airwaves, people hear woo woo woo woo woo woo woo woo woo woo. But it's not. This is the challenge, right? Like I mean, my tagline is I dare people to lead with love and kindness first, right? And so switching this idea of culture, you know, I've been harping on a philosophy. In fact, I've spoken a number of times at a couple of conferences about this idea of creating caring communities. And the number one thing in a caring community is that we're no longer managers. We are coaches to the team. When you hear that, what difference as far as cultural definition, as far as cultural buy-in, what difference does that incite for you when you hear that?

I think you have to have created a culture That allows for a lot of two-way communication. So, I don't think people are gonna be super coachable if they don't believe that you as their manager are also— maybe coachable is not the right word, but approachable. That you'll take information, you'll take criticism. The Radical Candor thing, if you read the book, it's a two-way thing. It's not just top-down. It's both ways.

Yep.

In fact, the first time The first time I ever experienced it was years and years before anybody wrote a book called Radical Candor. And I was giving my very first performance reviews, my very first time as a manager. I won't tell you the year, but a while ago. And I finished, I had a star employee, I finished his review and I very dramatically pushed it to the side. And then I said to him, okay, his name was Greg, come on, Greg, review me. And he's like, are you sure, Brad? And I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, for sure. And he asked me again, are you sure? I said, great, just let me have it. And he goes, okay, you're a fucking tyrant.

Ooh, yeah.

I'm like, oh wow. But rather than a lot of people would decide that he was wrong, and I took it in and I checked with him a year later and I was no longer a tyrant. So I actually had somehow become a better manager. And there's a really interesting kind of side story to that, which is that I started giving a talk on Radical Candor a couple of years ago.

Okay.

And I wanted to use Greg's name. So rather than have him just be some nameless, faceless person, I wanted to put his picture up and have his name because I wanted to pay tribute to him. So I found him. He lives on Vancouver Island in a sleepy little town and he's retired. And I asked him, 2 things. I said, first of all, we had a great conversation for a while, but then I relayed this conversation and I said, do you remember this conversation? And he said, no.

Hmm.

Now, this was life-changing for me. This was a life-changing moment. I'll never forget it. And yet he doesn't even remember it. So that taught me— now, I only learned it a couple of years ago, but that taught me how you really do have to watch your words in the sense that they can, if you're not careful, Man, you can do a lot of damage. But the other thing I asked him is, when you look back on me as a boss, like, what do you think? And he goes, oh, you were a great boss. So, I obviously turned it around.

Yeah. It's interesting you say about that intentionality about the words we use because typically, as owner-operators, as managers, we tend to be in a lot of crisis. And sometimes, the things we say, we have to kick ourselves in the head. I remember I was in Cabela's or Bass Pro, one of the two. And I remember I was with my wife and we're walking and we saw obviously somebody who's a supervisor talking to a clerk. And he said, if you don't like it, clerks like you are a dime a dozen.

Ooh.

Right? And I thought, and I, and it's like, you know, I so badly wanted to go up to him and say, hey, do you know you really suck as a leader? Would you like some help? But, but we know that that's not going to resonate. But, but again, you know, so he's going to walk off. Crisis averted or whatever. Later on, months and months and months and years and years later, won't have thought about it at all. But that poor clerk is never ever going to remember— forget that they were pegged as one in a million, like they could be replaced because they were a dime a dozen. Anybody could take my— you're so insignificant that we could replace you like that. Right? How's that person gonna feel?

Well, that makes me think of a couple things. One is that I'm not sure about the clerk, but that manager's probably in the wrong job. The second thing is—

Or not trained.

Well, so that's the other thing is that, yeah, okay, training's important for sure, but I'm a firm believer that— so, culture eats strategy for breakfast. And the way you create culture is by hiring for values.

Absolutely.

Right? I can teach the technical, whatever the technical elements of the job are, as long as you've got the right, somewhat the right background, you know, we can teach you how to do that. But it's really hard to teach values. You probably can to really young employees because if it's the first company they've ever been in, they don't really know what values a company should portray or should have inside it. But certainly once you start to get a little longer in the tooth, then it's pretty hard to hire, to train new values. So you hire for that. And when I was like a 3rd or 4th level manager, I still insisted that everybody that gets hired have at least one interview with me, even if it was just a quick one. And it was never— I would actually sit them down and I would ask them, do you know why you're talking to me right now? And, you know, I'd get some answer like, well, you want to see if I can do the job or whatever. I'm like, no. First of all, I might not even know how to do your job. So, how am I qualified to decide if you can? My job is to decide if you fit.

Mm-hmm.

And I actually had this little exercise I'd go through where I'd draw a circle, right? And I'd say like, this is our culture. And then, I would draw a circle inside the circle and I'd say, I don't want this. Like, I don't want somebody who perfectly fits in the culture. And then I draw another circle outside of the circle and I say, and I don't want this. I don't want somebody who's a total misfit. But what we do want is people that overlap. Because what happens is if you add a bunch of those over time, you're expanding the culture, it grows, and yet nobody is so much of a misfit that you create problems, conflict, that sort of thing inside the firm. And that's what I saw my job as, is making sure that if anybody that we bring into the firm will be a nice fit with culture.

And it just makes so much sense, right? I mean, I personally think we need to change our school systems, that we need to be training virtues and values at the elementary school level, and we need to be reinforcing them through every year of them being in school. Because I think that's where we are now as a relational age. We're not thinking only reading, writing, arithmetic. So it's not only about capacity building, but it's figuring out how do we define these skills, right? And how do we take these skills into the future to make our generation better? Oh yeah.

And interpersonal skills are so much more important than they were a few generations ago where many of us went into jobs where we're basically like a human machine. You know, it's not like that as much nowadays. So, you're certainly not going to get ahead without very strong interpersonal skills and you're not even going to be a strong individual contributor without them.

Yeah, it's so amazing. Hey, Brad, you and I have been talking about so many different topics today. As people tune in, I want to be able to kind of highlight for them if they see themselves in some of the stories we've been telling today, that they know that they need to fix something. But I also want to outline for them some cautionaries and pitfalls of trying to make change. And so, we'll get to that right after this.

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Welcome back! I hope you're getting tons of value from today's episode. As you can tell, Brad and I are passionate about today's topic. If you belong to an organization that could use our help, or you might be planning a leadership retreat, or a conference, or an offsite, whatever it might look like, maybe drop us a line. We'd love to explore how we could be of service to you and your people to make your event absolutely stellar. So, feel free to reach out. Our contact information is in the show notes. So, Brad, as we kind of are wrapping up our conversation today, I'd love to talk about some cautionaries and pitfalls. As people see that they have something to learn, they've tripped across this episode, they're going, yeah, I got to become a little bit better of a leader. So, for the next 30 days, our new policy is let's talk some cautionaries and pitfalls.

Fear is a big one.

Yep.

So, fear that you'll make the wrong decision, that it won't work out. The good thing is that a lot of decisions are undoable. And the ones that you want to think about long and hard and get lots and lots of input are the ones that are less undoable, right? The ones that are less reversible. But most decisions are reversible. And like in my latest book, shameless plug, one of the examples I mentioned is Coke. Coke made the decision to change their formula back a couple decades ago and it didn't really work out. So what did they do? They went back. Like, this is Coca-Cola and they had the—

Coke Classic.

You know, the courage to— yeah, exactly. To go back to Coke. They went from the New Coke to— they went from Old Coke to New Coke and then New Coke didn't— wasn't a blockbuster success the way they had hoped. So they went back to Coke Classic. And I think that it certainly wasn't a negative in the long run. It's probably a positive in the long run. Now, at the time, it was probably not that comfortable to be the CEO of that company, but they had the courage to both make both changes. So now, how do you overcome fear? That's a tough one, of course. But that's one of the pitfalls for sure. And like another thing I see, I have a shtick that I go through with new clients and it's It's not always as applicable as— it's not always super applicable with every client, but I do it in any case in the first meeting. And I go, tell me right now, why can't we raise your prices today? And all I'm really trying to do is get them thinking about prices because so many business people sell on price. And I think it's a lazy way to sell and you're shortchanging yourself most of the time. And we go through an exercise of trying to figure out, well, what would happen if we do raise prices? Well, I'm afraid I'm going to lose customers. And the truth is, if you have a lot of customers and you raise prices, there's no doubt you're going to lose customers. But so what? What you have, you got to do the math. How many are we going to lose? How much are we going to raise prices? And how does the, how does the math work out? Because what we're really doing is probably firing some customers we don't really want anyways, the ones that are super price conscious. The ones that are at the kind of the bottom of the pyramid.

So, or the ones that may be at the top of the pyramid but cost you so much time, energy, and money in order to support them that you have to turn around and go, I don't care that he's generating, you know, 6 figures into our revenue stream. It's costing more to support him than not.

Yeah. That's one of the reasons I believe in, if you can pull it off in your company, practicing what we call activity-based costing or accounting. You know, so we know how much that customer is bringing in, but do we know how much they're costing us? So, trying to track your expenses in that way can be very, very helpful.

Yeah, it's interesting when you're talking about this idea of fear because, you know, in hospitality, you know, I can't tell you how many times I've come across menus in restaurants that are 6, 7, 8 pages. It's like, why? Well, we didn't start off that way, but, you know, we just kept adding things because people were asking for them or we thought they'd like it. But we don't wanna take the other stuff off because we don't wanna lose customers.

There's actually some research around that, that they did an experiment. I can't remember who ran it, but it was around salad dressing. Are you familiar with it?

I heard it with mustard. Mustard.

Oh, okay. I heard that. So the version I heard was salad dressing, but who knows?

So go ahead and tell it.

It might even be an urban myth.

Go ahead and tell it.

Yeah, but what happens is that if you have too many choices, People just give up and they just, they, they just bail out. They don't even bother buying any salad dressing that day. I'll tell you what I personally do. I can't stand those huge, large menus. It's just too much work for me. And so my friend and I, we sort of have a saying, right? When in doubt, have the club sandwich. That's what I'll do.

Yeah.

It's interesting. I've started playing games now with my— in restaurants, I'll just go to the serving staff and just say, you know what? I don't care what it is. No, I have no criteria. I have not— no allergies, no nothing.

Make—

ask the chef to make me whatever they're the most proud of. And if she comes back and says, you know, he said no, then I said, then I'll have a cup of tea.

I love that idea. I'm gonna steal. I have, by the way, I have a philosophy which I stole from Steve Jobs, who stole from Picasso, and it is great artists copy and— sorry, good artists copy and great artists steal. So now I'm stealing that.

There you go.

Do it.

It's— and you'll be amazed when you actually get into conversations It's— and you challenge them like that, the good ones get super excited. Like, I can't tell you how excited people get when they do that. And, and it's worked out. And you know what? I've never been ripped off. You would think that, oh, they're gonna sell me an $85 steak. They don't. It's, it's amazing. Any other cautionaries we should be aware of? You know, you mentioned this idea of fear. The other thing I was thinking about when you were saying that was this idea of failing forward.

What do you mean when failing forward?

But it's okay that when you're— because I don't know why as entrepreneurs we think that when we try something brand new that we think we're going to be perfect at it, or our staff is going to be perfect at it. And so when we fail, we're like, oh my God, it's costing me a fortune. Oh my God. And you turn into this kind of ogre because people failed. And yet I look at failure, that failure is going, oh my God, look what we learned. Look at all the different things we became aware of, a variable we didn't even consider when we developed this.

Yeah. I think the best thing to do in that case is not frame it as failure, but frame it as learning the way, the way you're saying. So Take the classic example of Thomas Edison, right?

Yep.

Did he fail 9,999 times or was he just in the process of succeeding? And I tell students all the time, because I teach entrepreneurship, right? I'm teaching startups. So it's actually all about small experiments, not all of which are going to work out. We don't use the word failure. We try not to. If you're going to, then you want to fail quick, Cheap, often fast, right?

And learn.

What I tell students is you can only be a failure when you stop. Yes. Until you stop, you're not a failure. You're in the process of succeeding.

Yeah. Love that. What a good way to reframe that as well. As we wrap up, Brad, do you have any last thoughts about what we've been talking about today?

Well, don't be afraid to try things, you know. So I've had way more, quote, failures than I have had successes in my business career, but It doesn't stop me from continuing on. So, you know, don't be afraid to just go out and try things and chase your dream. I'm certainly glad I did it.

Wasn't it Michael Jordan that says he missed more shots than he ever made? The best basketball player in the world, right?

And he says— Yeah, look at a baseball player, right? Yeah, the best hitter in baseball, quote, fails 60% of the time. Yeah, yeah.

Interesting. Brad, this has been really fantastic. Could you just remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you?

Sure. My website, bradpoulos.com. So just my name, B-R-A-D-P-O-U-L-O-S. You can find me on LinkedIn as well. That's— those are the 2 easiest ways. I do use Facebook for my business, but, you know, fewer and fewer people are on there. So the website or LinkedIn are probably the best way.

Brad, thank you so much for spending time with us. I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge and your passion and your I really appreciate you having me on.

Take care. Thank you.

Hey, if you have any questions about today's episode or you'd like a complimentary 30-minute brainstorming session with you and your team, feel free to book yourself on my online calendar. The link is down below. It's the one that's marked meetwith.marchaine.com. And of course, reach out to Brad if you think that he could be of service to you. That's why we do what we do, to be of service. Reach out to him. His link is also in the show notes. As always, I am at your service. And if you haven't done so yet, please, why don't you go ahead and subscribe to this feed? Follow me on social media. Write comments. If you see something, write a comment like our gentleman did earlier today. Feel free to write comments and stuff. I would love to get in a discussion with you. I'd love to hear your philosophy on stuff. Follow me on social media as well. It's been an absolute pleasure hanging out with you. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe.

Bye-bye.

Stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope, I hope, I hope you dare to be the exception. See you next week.

Thank you for joining us this week on Experience Leadership. Make sure you visit marchaine.com for a full directory of available episodes. While you're at it, if you found today's If you found this content valuable, please share it and tell your friends about the show. As Marc says, knowledge is power, but only if you share it. Be sure to tune in each week for the newest episode. Please stay safe, stay healthy, and dare to be the exception.