0223: The Hot Sauce Principle: How To Live And Lead In A World Where Everything Is Urgent All Of The Time with Author, TEDx Speaker, & CEO Brandon Smith

Brandon Smith, the workplacetherapist.com and you're listening.

To EA Interviews, EA Interviews episode 223, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week, join Mario Ficcini for today's expert Authority effect interview. Do you feel like you want to slow down at times? Do you feel the world is too fast paced? I know I have and I love talking about spending time with family and friends and what's important and that is why I'm beyond excited to have Brandon Smith, author of the hot sauce principle, TedX speaker, podcast host, communication and leadership expert. And we're going to be diving into this because the world is great, all this is fantastic. But wouldn't you like to just connect like for real and not just be all, you know, Mimi and Instagram Taggy and all this other stuff. So I'm going to thank our sponsor and I'm going to bring up Brandon Smith. Every business needs a book, including yours. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's free businessbook publishingcourse.com Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Brandon Smith. Brandon, how are you feeling today?

I'm doing great today.

Why today over any other day?

Well, first I'm on your show. I mean what more reason to be feeling great? I get to be on your show and talk about something I'm really passionate about. Also feeling good because it is end of Tuesday and so we are starting to move towards hump day. So that is always, that is always a good sign. We are starting to head towards the end of the week and I have just had a really good fulfilling week this week. Had some really good calls with coaching clients today on a lot of the stuff we are going to talk about today. So today has been a really good day. Thank you for asking.

I love hearing that because I don't think there are enough people that realize every day can be great if you choose to make it that way because of exactly just being busy. You know like your book talks about. Why do you feel so many people are encapsulated with I gotta just eh. If that made sense.

Oh man, so many reasons. So I would say naturally, you know, we're in a world right now with pandemic and quarantine that's added a whole other flavor. But if we back up a little bit in time, you know, before even we experienced all this, my experience was all the organizations all the leaders I was working with had two big factors going against them. First, time was our most precious resource. It wasn't money, it was time. And second, everything was urgent all the time. And so with those two forces, it kind of pushed them into firefighter mode. So they were waking up every day constantly anxious, constantly just worrying with what was going to come at them. And so they were playing a lot more defense than offense and they weren't particularly playing it well. So it really inspired me to write the book to help people kind of manage that level of urgency and start to get in front of things a little bit.

What percentage of the population do you think is just in overwhelm mode? The state of just being all pent up and everything versus actually enjoying it? Because I know one of the things with CEOs and the entrepreneurs I talk to is it's like how many days a year can you take off? How effective can you be where it's like you don't have to do all of it. And the flip side is it's I see other people and it seems like they think they're going to win a gold star like if they sleep one hour a night instead of an actual night's sleep. And it's like the more work they do.

Yeah. What's interesting, if I was to go that percentage, I'm going to take a ballpark guess. I would probably say you're looking at a good of the working population, we can even take kids at another conversation around this. With the level of anxiety that's increasing with kiddos, but the working population, you're probably looking at a ballpark figure. About 90% are dealing with this level of anxiety that's heightened the percentage once you start to get to a C level role or owner, founder role, if you are able to, you actually have some freedom to pull back a little bit. So you actually see stress. When they've done studies around stress and anxiety, it starts to drop off at the senior levels because you have a little more sense of control. But there aren't too many of those seats so it becomes a little more tricky.

Now. Do you think that's just because of the delegation or you know, devil's advocate here because it's like you might not have the day to day problems, but you definitely have a lot bigger and different problems.

Mostly it's because you have a little more choice and it's clear choice. So for most people in the working world, no matter what kind of what environment they work in, they've got if they're just some, a manager or leader in an organization. They got folks below them that need help and they're pushing and need guidance. They also have folks to their left and right and they got folks above them. So they're kind of in the middle of all that pressure. It's a big pressure cooker. When you get to the top, you might have some folks to your left and right, but there's nobody really above you. So the pressure is really coming from below. And so it's only one direction. Not to say that's not a big deal. Trust me, I work with a lot of leaders that, that they've got plenty of pressure on their plate, but a lot of it is more self imposed rather than from external forces.

Oh, I want to take that deeper. I want to take that deeper before the next question. But why would you say it's self imposed?

Because what drives us to become successful is a lot of those that self talk and that story that we tell ourselves. So for example, I had a client earlier today, he's the CEO of a private equity backed company and, and we had this mini therapy session. So I'm a therapist by training and now I apply it into the working world. And he said to me, just on his own, he said, you know, I've always had this underdog kind of idea in my mind, this self talk, underdog stuff. So I love turning around businesses because you're not, they're, they're broken and not supposed to be fixable. I loved going in there and fixing it. But that underdog mentality is what kind of gets me every day up and fighting. And it's this idea that I don't, I shouldn't belong here. And it's creates hunger and ambition for me. So he works crazy hours, not necessarily because he has to, but because he's got this story by choice, underdog and doesn't belong. And so he needs to, he needs to keep up the pace.

Okay, so it's a good thing, but left unchecked could go out of proportion.

Yeah. So I'll give you a great example. This was something a mentor of mine taught me years ago. A great question to ask. If this is you listening to this right now or watching this, there's nothing wrong with that kind of self talk. The real question is, what's it costing you? That's the big question. What's it costing you? Kind of a deep question, huh? I left that with my client today. I said, Jared, just kick this question around a little bit for the next couple weeks. What's it costing you?

Wow. That's a great expert authority insight. What is it costing you?

It could be everything. Or it could just be a couple hours. Huh?

He could just say a couple hours, sure. Absolutely.

Or you might say, guys, it's really costing me time with my family, or it's costing me other relationships, or it's costing me vacation or other things. There's no right or wrong answer other than wrestle with the question.

Wow. So take us through the hot sauce principle, because this is intriguing to me, and I'll just let you take us through it.

Yes. So the title of my book is the Hot Sauce how to Live and Lead in a World Where Everything Is Urgent all the Time. And the analogy is pretty simple. It's urgency is like hot sauce. And why I love that analogy is because hot sauce is a great thing. You put a little bit of hot sauce on things, adds a little bit of focus, a little flavor, a little bit spice, right? Oh, wow. It's good. Maybe it needs a little bit of relief and a little drink of water. But if we cover every single thing we have in hot sauce and just douse it, and everything that comes out of our kitchen is doused in hot sauce or comes out of the leadership kitchen to us. So the appetizer is covered in hot sauce, the salad, the entree, the brownie at the end, the iced tea. You know, we're curled up in a ball, overwhelmed. And so I love the analogy because a little bit of hot sauce adds priority and focus. But if we make everything urgent all the time or we live in a world where everything is urgent all the time, the exact opposite happens. It creates paralysis and urgency. And hot sauce. Another word for that would be anxiety. So we want to be careful that we're not putting so much on our plate and in our lives that we're suffering from extreme anxiety, because that's definitely been an issue and a growing issue, particularly as we're in a world where we're a little more isolated and quarantined. For the moment.

Let'S talk about what this does to the business over time. So I love the analogy too. When you said putting it over a brownie, I was like. But I know some people who love it. They're like, oh, I put hot sauce on everything. It also reminded me of the one episode of the Office where Michael was. They were like, you can't keep doing this. He's like, what? You can still tell the differentiation. He's like, I mark it urgent. A, urgent, B, urgent, urgent, C, Urgent, you know, everything's urgent. To your point.

Yeah.

What does this do to a business over time if everything is literally covered in hot sauce?

So if we extend this a little bit further, it creates a tremendous amount of chaos is what it really does. It creates chaos. So nothing is ever really done well and it creates a lot of fits and starts. So from a business execution standpoint, it's just this choppy. Nothing ever really gets fully accomplished. Lots of starting things, not finishing things, a lot of collision of resources. You don't manage resources well. You can't allocate resources to certain initiatives because what initiatives will you allocate them to? All initiatives are important. So you can't really. There's no way to make trade offs. And what you also end up doing is it will ultimately result for a fact in a loss of talent because you'll have people burned out and so they're going to leave. So then now we're replacing people. Our experience with people, with new people, that can be bad for customer retention. Client retention could be bad just for general execution. So in simple terms, the companies that I see that really do this the best, the managers the best, particularly even the last six months, they execute off of three to five priorities. That's it. They've got three to five priorities.

Do you see any commonalities with those three to five priorities or just the fact that it's only three to five priorities?

So. Well, I see that they tend to have three to five big priorities that they focus on and they just keep repeating those. At least the senior leader does. This is the stuff that matters the most. And then the challenge is all the leaders within the organization have to kind of line up to those because there can be the tendency for those individual leaders to create sub priorities that are their version of hot sauce. So then you have, you know, big bottles and small bottles floating around all over the place. But the bottom line, do you see.

Any as far as the topics of like for example, sales. Is sales commonly always one of those top three or is it weekly meetings and team building?

Well, it should, at least in my opinion, should depend upon the need of the business. Okay, so right now as we sit here today, yeah, revenue protection and profitability is a big topic, particularly client relationships. So that tends to be one of the big priorities is how do we really reconnect with our clients, partner with our clients, understand where our clients are at and make sure that we're meeting them where they're at right now, because everybody's in their own place right now, so that's definitely one. Cost control tends to be one too. To be honest with you, I'm not a very big fan of that one because that one, to me, I think is a pretty easy one. And it tends to get overweighted, which then cuts into things like clients and marketing and sales and a lot of those other lifeblood pieces of the priority. So I would say this, a good mix of priorities should look like the inside of a car. There should be a combination of gas pedal priorities and brake pedal priorities. Because too many gas pedals, it's gonna be a fun ride, but you're gonna go off the cliff. Too many brake pedal priorities like cost control, we're never going to leave the parking spot. We're just going to stay parked because it's much safer that way. So the priority mix should probably be something that represents gas pedals and brake.

Pedals, depending on the business. Okay. I didn't know if there was some magic bullet inside of the magic bullet of, you know, you got the three priorities, three to five. But, you know, sales is. You see it in 80% of cases. But it makes sense because, you know, maybe someone's great with lead gen sales and closing and their team's a mess. Company B might have great team and synergy. They all hate selling. That's also problematic. You know, maybe both of those are good, like you're saying, but you're doing cost overruns and small margins and, you know, maybe you got great margins but not enough volume.

Yeah. Most of what I see now is, at least today, revenue preservation, revenue stream preservation. So it's how do we maintain this and what can be ways we can secure it going forward and what do we need to do to make that happen?

Okay, well, I want to kick it back for a second because I want to know how you got into this.

It's obvious you're helping people and you're doing a fantastic job, so congrats on that. But what inspired you to even get started with it?

Yeah, so I'm going to go way back in time.

I'll tell you kind of the mini story around this. So I was the youngest of three boys. I had two older brothers, both were adopted. And so being the youngest of three boys, I always tell people I know what the inside of a dryer looks like because that was what it's like to be a little brother. Well, my oldest brother, Chris, he was in and out of jail, rehab centers for most of my life growing up. So there was a lot of kind of dysfunction in My house. And then when I was 10, he took his own life. And that was a particularly traumatic experience for me. So much so that about after six months, after that period of time when he did that, I came out with an uncontrollable stutter. So I couldn't, I couldn't speak in public at all. So every day before, and this was going into middle school, so every day before school I would go and see my speech therapist and work on my B's and my T's and my P's, all the letters that I couldn't, couldn't get out. And then I go into the school day. Well, between my brother's kind of issues and the dysfunction of my house and then my speech impediment, I just decided people were way too dysfunctional, way too messy. I didn't want to have anything to do with them. So I became kind of a world class wallflower. And that continued all the way through high school, into college. I didn't really know what I wanted to major in in college. I ended up settling on communications, ironically enough. And like most good communication majors, I was unemployed at graduation, wondering what am I going to do with this thing? And I got a job with a small chain of retail stores. I was, it was a family owned business and I was going to be the assistant manager at one of the stores. They had about 15 stores. So my boss was a son in law of the owner. So the woman who started the business, her daughter marries this guy. He's my boss, okay? So he greets me at the door of the store where I'm going to work on my first day of work. And I'd worked other jobs, but this was my first full time job. And he said, all right, I'm so glad you're here, but before you get started, I have a task for you. Waiting for you in the back room is the current assistant manager. But he doesn't know you're coming. So your job is to go back there and fire him and you get his job. And that was what I did on my first day of work. First task, I had to go let the guy go that I was taking his job. And that was how my boss rolled. He loved to do everything you're not supposed to do as a leader. So he was a great example of what not to do. He loved surprise visits to try and catch you doing something wrong. So he burst into the store and he'd go to the back room. He said, hey, I don't like what Janet's wearing up Front, go fire her. I had to do more layoffs in that first six months of that job than any other time in my career since then. And that experience had me really have three realizations in my life. First, it made me realize work should not have to suck. It should be a source of fulfillment and meaning and purpose for all of us, not a source of anxiety and stress and pain. I mean, it is work, but, you know, it should be all those positive things, not necessarily those negative things. Second, if my boss was any indication on the state of leadership in the world today, I want to fix that. And third, that was where my purpose was born, that I wanted to fix and eliminate all workplace dysfunction everywhere, forever, having no idea what I'd signed up for. So that was what really got me on the journey. I went off and pursued a clinical therapy degree to develop my coaching skills. This was before coaching certificates existed. And then I worked in the clinical world, transitioned into the corporate world for a number of years, went back and got my mba. Then the rest is history. So it was all started with having a really bad boss in the beginning that kind of let that fire underneath me.

I gotta ask you, you gotta tell us about that. I mean, it's impressive overall, but what did. How did that go down the day. So he told you you have to fire him, you went back there. Was that just like a casual conversation? Did it escalate? Tell me about that.

You know, I should. There should have been warning lights that went off for me right out of the gate. Because when I went back there and had the conversation, it was no surprise to the guy. He was like, yeah, yeah. I figured something like this. Like, he wasn't surprised. You would think that would be pretty surprising.

He just took it.

He was like, yeah. I was like, I'm really sorry. You know, it's not. Nothing personal. I just this. Apparently I. I now got your job. He was like, yeah. And he just walked out.

It was like, zero protest. Not even, this is unfair. This sucks.

Or three minutes, wow. Picked up his stuff, walked out. That was it. Which should have told me, like, this guy was not surprised by this action. I mean, later. That was why.

Even if you weren't surprised, why would you just be like, yeah, I anticipate. I mean, even a little protest for five or ten minutes. Like, it's. Wow. I had no idea. But I was just like, that's. I had everything running through my mind from this could go smooth. I didn't think it would be that easy. Truthfully, that wasn't even on the radar. But I was also like, this could also be like what you see in movies where it just turns into this giant, massive. You know, I'm glad no one got hurt, but.

Well, believe me, I had a lot of those other conversations where it was a surprise. You know, he would say, I don't like what Janet's wearing up front. Go, let her go. And then those were big surprises because. Yeah, but the guy who was working more closely with my boss, I think knew him a little bit better and wasn't too surprised that this was.

So let's expand on this, because clearly, you run the gamut on. I'm sure you could go all day on the stories, but if someone's facing this in their business right now, how do you handle. If Janet's wearing the wrong thing and you have to go fire her? And that does explode versus this guy who I. Is still a shock to me. Why? He'd just be like, yeah, no problem. I'm out of here. How do you. How do you handle these situations and have good workplace dynamic without it turning into something where you're legit, joking aside, fearing for your life or the employees, the staff, this, that, the other thing, or just having a huge impact on business? Because the reality is, you know, I've let people go and I've hired people, and sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn't. But it plays a role, whether it's mentally, emotionally, or it could be physically.

Yeah. So let's. Let's. We'll back up a little bit. Let's talk about healthy. Let's talk about how you have healthy conversations and healthy dynamics at work. So I'm a big believer that the first job of any leader for her or him is to drive clarity. Clarity on roles, clarity on goals, clarity on expectations, clarity. And when you do that really well, you're. You know, you're. You're setting up what you're expecting from people, and it makes it a lot easier when you have to have feedback conversations. Okay, so if I haven't told Janet what I expect in terms of attire, it's going to be a real shocker if I show up and say, by the way, you guessed wrong today. You're fired.

And you're talking on the hiring process. So you let them know right out of the gate, here's the dress code, here's the time code, here's the eating code. Here's. Here's the setting the expectations.

I'll be even more broad. The first job of any leader is to drive clarity. You cannot Give accountability, help people accountable, or give feedback. If you haven't made it clear what you expect first, okay, then they're going to get really angry. And because you essentially are evaluating them on their guessing skills.

So it's not even the timing of when you do it. It's did you do it or not?

Yes, exactly. If you haven't driven clarity, you're evaluating them on their guessing skills. My daughter, she would make me play guessing games with her. Now she's 18, but she would always say, oh, dad, I'm sorry, you failed. You got a Z minus in guessing. Well, we don't want to be scoring people on their guessing skills. That's not healthy dynamic. So it's really important that we drive clarity first. So in this case, when there was issues, when people got upset, it was because it wasn't made clear what was expected. If you make it clear to what you expect, 80% of your folks will step up to that. And then your coaching conversations are only 20%. But if you don't make it clear, you're just playing Las Vegas management. You're just letting people guess and gamble. And the ones who guess right and gamble right, they win. And the ones who guess wrong lose a long time figure out. So the best gifts any manager can do is provide that level of clarity.

You got incredible insights and some of the best analogies.

The car, the hot sauce, the Vegas. This is awesome. So let's talk about the people you've been able to help with this. Who's been your biggest transformational success story?

So I'm going to give you kind of two as examples. So one would be a luxury retailer. That.

One was a luxury retailer I worked with a couple years ago. And when I get to do my very best work, so let me wave my magic wand and I get to do my best work. It tends to involve a couple of different things. I'm doing individual coaching with leaders across the business, so I'm working with lots of folks one on one. I'm doing teamwork, so I'm doing work with teams. And then I'm also getting to jump in there and doing a little bit of executive education. I get to do a little bit of teaching and, you know, communicate principles and concepts. So everybody's getting the same language. When I get to do all three of those, I could change the culture. And so this was a luxury retailer. This was when E commerce was really disrupting their business. And they said, you know, we need to go from a clerking culture to a clientelling culture, which I love that image. Clerking to clientelling. When we're clerking, we're standing back on our heels saying, how can I help you? But when we're clientelling, we're saying, oh, my gosh, Mario, you look great in this. I mean, we're really being proactive, so they need to change that. And they were so successful in the year that I worked with them. It wasn't just my doing. I supported it, but then they ended up getting acquired. So that was a really good, happy story for them. So that was a. That was a great one. And then one that I've really enjoyed recently is I've been able to take a lot of the work that I would normally do in person and figure out ways to do it virtually. So I've been having a great opportunity to do more of that kind of work, virtual work, same kind of thing, but I'm doing it all virtually. So we've all had to pivot. And I had the opportunity to work with a department, so an R and D department inside a medical device company. And they were the lowest on employee engagement score. And after the work we did over four months, they bumped to the top of the list on employee engagement score and saw tremendous improvement in how they collaborated across the business. So that's a mini example, but a more relevant one. So it's. Both of those have been kind of fun, happy stories for me.

So tell me about the book. With all the success you've had with the speaking and the coaching, why did you decide you wanted to do a book?

There was a couple of reasons. One, I always wanted to find a way to take a lot of the content that I was producing and creating and putting it into something a little more just tangible that people could hold on to. And you have it at their disposal. So there was that reason for it. But the other reason was from a business perspective, there's a lot of things I've gotten to accomplish, but I've never written a book. And that was, I think, establishing yourself as an expert. It's still one of those important pieces, those feathers and the cap that you have to have. And I found that to be very true for me. I didn't have to have it to continue to run my business, but to really position me for some of the other work that I wanted to do, it was important to have one. And so I'm really glad I wrote it. It was a great experience, and I'm already planning on my next one.

Oh, the next one. What's. What's that? Gonna be about.

Oh, I can't, I can't tell you that. It's like, it's like going into Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. There's some secrets.

I know I had to try those underneath. I, I have done it and I actually got some people to reveal some stuff that their own staff didn't know. I got an email and they were like, how did you get her to tell us? We didn't even know. So I had to go for it. But I'm sure it'll be great also. But I can respect that.

We'Re gonna do. I kind of asked you one, but we're gonna do the Wheel of Whatever before we thank our sponsor. And this is a question that is always fun. So I'm gonna spin this and see what it lands on for you.

Oh, that's doing good. Last time I almost dropped the thing.

Wheel of Whatever.

My question for you is.

What business would you love to be able to work with that you haven't yet? Like a well known one that you maybe not even think you could get access to that you know you could help and they definitely need it.

Oh, wow, that's a really great question. Oh, I love that question.

You know, I will answer it.

All right. It is hard for me to pick, but I am going to go ahead and pick one. I love, love, love, love and gotten a chance to work with them a little bit. But I love, love, love hospitality. So I would love to work with either Marriott or Hilton or a large hospitality.

Right now they're definitely struggling, but my heart really goes out to companies that have strong service models where service is a really big part of their revenue and how they end building those customer relationships over time and the importance of culture in that. So I would love to spend more time with them. Now if I had a real wish list company, even within that space, even in Marriott and Hilton, there'll be one that stick to the top of the list. If you looked behind me, you'd probably see hints of it. Disney World. I would love to work with Disney, particularly the park side of the business for that. So for all those same reasons because I think they, when they do it well, they create a lot of loyalty and that makes their business run really, really well and it can weather most storms. But pandemics are a little more challenging.

I'm thinking of if I know anyone that has ties to Disney because that would be a fun. I'd be happy to make that introduction if anyone ever comes on the show. I think that would be great. Too. Because I know you could help them.

I would owe you big time. I would owe you so big. So big.

How long have you liked Disney for?

Oh, gosh, probably since I was 4 or 5. I always just loved what it stood for and what it felt like to be in there and how everybody just kind of operated a little bit differently, even the customers. I find that really fascinating. And now as I've gotten older, I look at how the cast members work and how they just generally create environments where people just tend to be nicer to each other. So in that way, at least when I'm there, it feels like the happiest place on earth. So I think that's pretty cool.

You know, one of the most fascinating things I remember about it is I've always liked Disney also just from a personal standpoint. Like again, they're nice, upbeat, positive this and that, but also from the business standpoint. And I've watch some movies on Walt and I do, I love documentaries and just learning business in general. But one of the things that long before the show and probably even my companies was just. I've always been fascinating with like how people think in the behind the scenes and stuff. And I will never forget.

Well, I did. I did forget whether it was a documentary on TV or a book or whatever. Probably tv because I'm drawn to video. Shocking. But they were talking about how they engineered the park. And.

A lot of people don't know this, but there's actually tunnels under it because when they're taking the trash out or moving people around this and that, like some of the simplest things we take for granted. When you're doing stuff at scale, it's just a whole different ball game. And I was just fascinated because it's like all these little things that aren't a big deal for us. It's like when you're moving a hundred thousand or million, probably millions of people daily. I go, come to think of it, I never did see any of the staff interfering with our experience. You know, when did you ever see the people getting dressed, walking out into the area? You didn't. How did they get from one side of the park to the other? And you have to have your. A brain that just. You have to be tuned into excellence in what you're speaking about. That top level. It's like, was that even on anyone's radar? You know, they didn't just build the whole thing and then realize we have a problem, tear it down and do it again.

Did you, did you happen to know, know about that?

Or not yet. Yeah. The story, though, as the story goes, what drove Walt Disney crazy because in Disneyland, he was so bothered by seeing a cowboy walking through Tomorrowland. So when they bought all that property in Florida, it was designed so it was on the second floor. So a cowboy would just kind of pop out of the bushes in Frontierland, and there was no walking through other parts of the park. So everybody kind of stayed in character and all the cast members stayed where they were supposed to stay. So it's really, really interesting. And they. From talking to people who have worked there, they said it's one of the safest places on earth. They monitor every. Everything. So we could spend a whole show on just Disney, my friend.

Yeah. And I love that you're speaking on the communications and excellence and the leadership, because even recently, I mean, I'll bring up a recent. I'm not going to name the chain or where I was doing or anything, but I was looking for a building. The GPS wasn't working, and I literally kicked it back old school. For anyone that thinks that your phone is only for Internet, it does still make calls. So I did what we used to do back in the day and made a phone call to the place I was looking to get to. And I was just shocked because they said, the person who answered, she goes. I said, are you north of 19, you know, the mile road? And she goes, I don't know, northeast, south and west. She goes, we're over by the Walgreens and the pet store. And I'm like, how did you function to get to this point in your life where you didn't learn a basic. You know what I mean? Customer service now is just, in so many instances, just.

Not fantastic. And to hear stories, you know, like, we're talking about Disneyland. It's like the vision and the mind you had to have 70 years ago, 80 years ago. And now it's like, you would think we'd advanced through it, but clearly not, because you've got a ton of clients and.

Clearly people still can get it right.

Well, I think you make a really important trend point that is for all businesses today, there's such a push to make business transactional, and there's a dismissal of relational businesses and that importance of that connection with people. But I have a feeling, since we are actually people and we like to deal with people, that that's going to kick back the other way at some point, but probably not until the pendulum has already kind of swung so far. So there's, you know, just such a desire to make things like Amazon where it just shows up your door. But we still like people interaction and that's why I have such a heart for things like hospitality.

And I think it's great from an opportunity standpoint because.

You know, it gives us the opportunity to help more people because some people just literally aren't thinking about it and that's fine. But if you've heard of it and read a book or just had some common sense and it's like, hey, I want to be treated how I should treat people, how I want to be treated, incorporate it in your business, you're not going to be, it's your business, you can do whatever you want.

But so many people, it seems like they just don't care.

And I'll put it in another language that I think a lot of your listeners and viewers will relate to. When we treat our clients transactionally and we have that relationship, they call us a vendor. When we treat them relationally and we build that relationship, they call us a partner.

Yes.

I don't know about you, but I would rather be a partner. Because partner, that means we're going to walk with them for five or 10 years. Vendor, it just means they'll put us out the bid the next time they have cost issues. So I think strategically there's real value in being a partner and building those relationships.

I agree 100% and I can say over the last five, six, seven years, I never treated my staff and team as like, you work for me, you're an employee or you're just like, you're just kind of there. But I did start saying, because I've always had that mentality. But I have literally posted when I'm looking for people like as the show grew, you know, I'm always looking for great people to join the EA Interviews team. I'll put in the post. I go, this is not a one time deal or a project basis. I'm looking to partner with someone. Majority of my clients team and people have been with me, you know and I even put, I'm looking, for example, I was looking for a lead programmer for css, PHP and stuff for one of the softwares I developed and I put in the post. My lead programmer has been with me for over eight years. I really don't want to have to look again next year. And I, you know, I'm looking to partner. I'm not looking for someone on a project basis. And the people who responded, I had a little thing that said, you know, what drew you to this? I mean coding is Nothing new. And they go, I'm so tired of just dealing with companies that just toss us. I, you know, we're, we're looking to have a long term relationship also.

Yeah. And I bet that's your ideal client that you work with is longer term relationships like that too. So your, your internal culture, you know, matches your business model. Which is why this stuff also matters too.

Yeah, I mean, I'm so glad you're sharing it because.

When you embody it, it just comes out in everything. There's times where people ask stuff and it's like I, it's just so ingrained in me. It's not like.

Let'S talk about the vision and mission real quick because this is a thing. I was gonna make a joke and say it's not just a bullet point on the vision, vision list or whatever, but what's your take on those? Do you think most people get these right?

The core values, the mission statement and all that stuff where people.

No, they don't get them right.

Do you think they just do it to look good?

They do it. They do two things wrong. So this is for everyone who does these. This is how, where you screw this up. First, you go off with the senior leadership team and you create these over a full day. And then you say, look at what we did. And you stick them up on behind plexiglass. You never talk about them again. So that's the first way people screw them up is you do them. You treat them like a one time event and not something you're going to talk about every day. Because they really are supposed to be things you talk about every day. The second way people screw them up is the more subtle way they create too many. There's too many. The statements are too long. They've got too many so no one can remember them. Because to really have these effective, it has to be sticky. So let's go back to Magic Kingdom and Disney World for a minute. If you and I worked at Magic Kingdom as cast members, we'd be trained on four values. There'd be only four values that they would train us on. Safety, courtesy, show and efficiency. That's it. And we would be trained that that's the right priority. We keep our guests safe. We give the magical moments, which is courtesy. We create great show experiences which are like memorable lifetime experiences and super efficient because no one wants to stand in the hot Florida sun in the middle of July. And we train on those four. Now, how many companies have you gone into that have 8 or 12 value statements? Or purpose statements, people can't remember them. And that's not me saying that. Those are psychology studies that have been done over decades that show that most people, after you get past about five things, they forget. So even a cognitive psychology proves this point. So if you really want to do this right, you know, think about things you want to talk about every day and keep it simple. The fewer the items, the better. That's how you really make culture work.

Excellent. Those are great expert authority insights. And I was thinking there's, there's times I've done the exercise and it's like, well, I want to do six or seven and it's like, no. Well maybe there is eight, nine or ten. It's like bundle them, rename them, but keep it simple because you don't want to be, you don't need to impress people by doing, you know, more than the other person. Just be uncommonly good at the simple stuff. Most people take, don't do, do those, you know those three things exceptionally well. You don't need 15 of them.

Yeah, and here's makes us even simpler. Remember we went back to priorities earlier today and we talked about priorities in three to five. The companies with culture values. Three to five. It's the same rule. Just keep three to five. Three to five main values for your culture. Three to five main priorities you're going to execute on because people can remember those and it keeps people focused and aligned. And as leaders, that's really what we're trying to do. That's our job. We gotta herd all the cats.

I have told my author clients the same thing when I'm helping them publish their books. You know, the title, subtitle and then the bullet points for like what, what are you going to discuss in the chapter? Put three of them in there so you have a few points, they get some benefits. It's all well and good, but there's not. You don't have one chapter that's 27 pages long and one that's two.

Yeah, nice.

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I'm ready.

These are rapid fire questions and answers. The first one I have for you is what is the fastest path to the profits?

Sitting down with your customers and talking about what are their goals and needs and being flexible enough to meet those needs today, that's really, really important. Trying to put them into a box that existed six months ago isn't going to work anymore. But customers are really open to still meeting their needs today. So if people are willing to be flexible and creative, that's the path.

Excellent. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

The biggest problem I see them making, particularly at the leadership level, the leaders that I work with, is that because they make everything urgent all the time and they're defaulting to doing other people's jobs for them, they find themselves more as firefighters than anything else. And so the easiest way to fix this if you're a leader is think about your hourly rate and make sure that you're using your hourly rate to determine what's the best use of your time and what are the things you either need to be saying no to, delegating or outsourcing.

Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Oh, I think we've talked about this before. I think you want to match your culture, the culture of your business and how you provide service to the culture of your clients. So what do they value in that experience? And make sure that you're operating that way to align. Because when your culture is lined up with their culture, that's a marriage made in heaven and that's going to last a long time. And that creates ongoing revenue streams, which is what we all like.

Absolutely. Well, thank you for those. What are some books you could recommend to Expert Authority World that have made a big impact on your life?

Well, in addition to my own, which I highly recommend people buy and read, I have a couple I do like Darian greatly from Brene Brown. I like particularly her work around vulnerability. I think there's a lot of power in that. And anything by Paula Coelho is very, very good. So I recommend his work as well. And then when I'm thinking about other books, I like to read anything. Malcolm Gladwell is just more stimulating for me. So that's more just entertaining but also insightful. But I would kind of start with some of those as big ones.

Excellent. Great recommendations there. I've thoroughly enjoyed this and I appreciate you for sharing.

Yeah, I too. Thank you for having me on the show.

The pleasure is mine. And Expert Authority World, we have another great episode here today. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day and God bless.

You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate and qualify leads while increasing profit for you 247 and if so, how well are you promoting it? With the Expert Authority Effect publishing method, it's easier and faster than ever. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com to get started. Now once again, that's free business book Publishing Course. Com. Hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show and also be sure to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.