Coaching Vs. Managing - Carson Heady, Microsoft's Top Sales Leader

Foreign.

Bullock. I'm the CEO and founder of Spinify. We make gamification fun and easy. Carson, just before I get him in the room, I'll just give you a little bit of an overview of this guy and how great he is. So Carson's had over 20 years experience in sales leadership all over the world and he currently works for Microsoft, is he's a well known speaker, he's got two podcasts, he's the best selling author of Birth of a Salesman series. He's done so much stuff on YouTube, which is amazing. I really recommend you watch it. And he's consistently ranked in the top 20 salespeople in the world. And so today we're going to be talking to him. Understanding coaching versus managing.

Good to see you. Good. How are you? Great.

So we've got people from all around the world, which is awesome. So it's like good evening, good morning and good afternoon.

That's right, wherever you're joining us from. Thank you.

Yeah. So great to have you here. Awesome. To talk about coaching versus managing and get your experience on this. I've got a whole bunch of questions that we'll go through. First, obvious question is what do you see is the main difference between, between coaching and managing?

Yeah, love the question. You know, managers manage managing. You know, these are all, you know, indicative of directing the flow. Right. Where I see coaching and coaches really developing people, developing strategy and you know, really spending a lot of time in the trenches. You know, when I think of manager, we've all seen the, the visual graphics of manage, manager versus leader and you know, where leaders are, you know, at the front kind of pulling things or helping their, helping their team push. While a manager is kind of, you know, articulating, here's the, here's the plan, here's what you need to go do. Right. So I think the primary difference is found there. You know, I, I think of great, I love making sports analogies too, whether it's in sales and leadership. So when I hear the word coach, you know, I think of the great sports coaches. I think of great sports coach speeches from films and you know, that motivational aspect. So ergo, a coach can absolutely be a manager. But I think where managers can struggle is by becoming great coaches. Right.

And as for sales teams, because that's what you're an expert in with sales teams, how important do you see that sales coaching role?

Well, it's critical. Yeah. You know, it's a lot of times, I think one of the biggest and most common beefs that someone will have in the sales realm or really in any career realm from a manager perspective is that, you know, that often they're, they're not getting the coaching and development that they want. I think it's important that leaders look at their responsibilities from a couple of different lenses, right? You know, somebody who's in a role, they earn the right to be in that role because of their unique differentiators, because of their experience, because their superpowers, whatever it is. And while a manager may go tell them, hey, go out and sell more widgets or they may, you know, more from an accountability standpoint, manage off of a data spreadsheet, a real coach will dive in a lot of times, pull their sleeves up, go in the trenches with their teams, understand the role, stay at the pulse of what matters to with their team and their customers, understand the ecosystem effectively and that's what enables them to be a good coach. And so I think those are some of the key delineations, Matt, is that, you know, the, the coach connotation is really all about understanding the playing field and really working with your people to develop strategy.

And on that culture is obviously a big part of that. How do you, what techniques do you use to build that culture? Because obviously if the culture isn't there when you're trying to coach, things are just busted. So what's your tips and tricks for building that culture to be able to coach?

Very astute observation. Culture is all about people, it's all about the relationships. And so in order for a coach to build and nurture a culture, it starts with the people, it starts with the team and the collective and what matters, what are their motivators. So, you know, as a leader, I need to understand the motivating factors of my team. I've got to work at it from, you know, not only how do I help them master their day to day craft, but also how do I ensure that they are on the career trajectory that they want to be on. And these things change. The only constant is so as things ebb and flow, we've got to stay at the pulse of what matters to our team. And you know, when there are concerns that are raised, you know, we sit in that, we sit in the pain with them. We understand, you know, what, what are these concerns that they're having? We work through problems together. We're not reactive, you know, we're not reactionary. These are some of the key elements of not only defining your culture, but also nurturing it. Because the most important thing is consistency, you know, keeping that steady Hand on the wheel when it comes to investing in your team, making sure you stay true to that mission. And if culture matters, you got to put your money where your mouth is. It's very action oriented, being proactive, spending time with your team. Over half your time should in reality be spending time with your team hand in hand, arm in arm, strategizing and doing the things that, that they need you to do. Removing legitimate barriers to their success. You know, those are the types of things that a coach does.

Yeah, I think it's also that part of that is getting everyone to believe in why you're doing it.

Right.

That's it. I watched the Lego. Have you seen the Lego movie?

Absolutely, yes.

With I believe and I put like 50 around the office going, you got to believe. Trying to get everyone to follow as well. So do you have. That's fantastic answer. And on that, what techniques do you have that you've got for actually coaching people? So building the culture and then what's some things that you can do to actually make sure that you're effectively doing this coaching?

Yeah, I mean, look, it's. As I said, it comes down to understanding your people. So, you know, one of the first things I do when I start working with somebody, somebody is send them a survey of kind of how they want this relationship to work. Work ideally, how often do you want to meet? What do you want to discuss as a part of that? Are there things you want me to be aware of? You know, what are the career aspirations that you have? Because here's the thing, every time we connect, we should be going back to the, you know, that blueprint. You know, I've got to make sure I'm staying true to what we pledged to do. Anytime that somebody works together. I mean, there's a, there's kind of an unspoken contract. You know, you've agreed to give me your best, but on the flip side of that, I've agreed to make sure you've got the tools and the resources and the coaching and the strategy that you need in order to be successful. That I'm removing barriers to your success and empowering and enabling you to be successful. That's the role of the coach. So, you know, I kind of start with that survey, Matt. That's kind of the base point of the relationship. Then we start meeting. I take a lot of notes, I make sure that I capture some of these things that are top of mind for us in our discussions. And as things pop up, I can utilize these to really hark back. You know, look, a Coach is the evangelist and the advocate of their employees. So I have to understand what matters most to them, but I also have to be able to take that and articulate that to leadership. You know, if I'm trying to get them promoted or, you know, I want to get more recognition for this person, get them an award, you know, whatever it is, I've got to understand my team inside and out, just like they need to understand their customers or anyone else that they interact with. You know, I think that's the key in that ecosystem is, you know, understanding your people so that you can really, truly coach them effectively, but also advocate for them.

Sweet. And then in your mind, like for someone who's brand new and someone who's been there for many years, what do you do differently from that perspective? Or is it. Is it much the same? Because you know something that you've been coaching forever and then suddenly you're saying, now we're going to change this. And I guess there's a couple of parts of this question of, first of all, from new to old, how do you do it? And then also when you have completely new ideas and you pivot and how do you then handle the new to the old person?

That's a very important question. Yeah, I mean, look, when somebody's starting, there's all kinds of statistics out there about, you know, how, how quickly a lot of us adapt into new roles and pick up and, and master these new components. I'm a big believer in relationships and resources, people and process. And so, you know, when you first start in a role, it's so important that you understand, like, who are the key relationships that I'm going to need? What are these key processes look like? What are the resources at my disposal that I need to learn and grow, to become more valuable, to have more impact, and that ultimately I deliver to my audience. In sales, that's often a customer or it's a partner or a colleague. So you've got to understand these things. And so a new employee, it's making sure that they're aware of these things and they're also comfortable prioritizing because you get pulled in a lot of different directions. It's very easy to lose focus in those early days so that coaching looks very different. It's making sure that there's a comfort level. It's making sure that I, as a coach, I'm not over inundating them with, hey, you know, you need to know this. You need to know that it's no, let's get really good at some of the core fundamentals, and then we can start branching out. And so to your point, Matt, that's where it continues to evolve over time. Somebody who's been with the company 5, 10, 15 years, you know, I'm going to coach them differently because they're going to come in with some preconceived notions as far as what this relationship should look like. That's why it's so important that I meet them where they are as opposed to coming in and trying to encroach or impose my will. That's not what it's about. It's more, hey, let me understand. What do you have in flight? You know, is there something that you're pursuing in your career that I should know about? You know, let's. Let's start there. What's important to you? What additional muscle do you want to continue to develop and learn and grow? And how can I empower that to happen? Are there relationships that I can help create for you? Mentorship relationships? You know, whatever it is, those types of things look a little bit different when you're talking with somebody that might have or ideally has created more mastery of their role. So. But all the time, it's very important. And I think I encourage all coaches to not think about. We're never making a drastic overhaul of anyone's process, whether it's somebody who's brand new or very tenured. A lot of times it's very small tweaks to process that can make all the difference in the world. So I encourage you to look at what do you think are the biggest gaps or the biggest priorities that your employees should have at that moment in time? Focus there.

First, as you're starting, do you ever see the point where someone, you know, you look at the process and then you go, yeah, that bit's busted. And then it's time for, like, a huge pivot.

Go.

That thing there. We used to do that thing. We're never doing that thing ever again. We're now going to do this thing. All that stuff you learn, all that coaching we've done, chuck it out. And we now have to do this thing. Like, how do you handle that big, massive shift of going and, you know, new and old, whatever about. But how do you go from that big thing? Because I'm sure you've done stuff where you've looked at the process and gone, that bit's broken.

I think that happens a lot, Matt. Well, not a lot, but that. That can happen. And there can also be just drastic changes to the playing Field, you know, to all the variables that are surrounding you. So sometimes what I, you know, sudden big changes are what would happen. And I think it's most important to first off, kind of sit in that with them and understand where they're coming from, because they're going to be very likely resistant to change. If you're going to, if you're the one presenting the change that's proposed, it's.

Easy when you say the change, it's when someone else is telling you that it's the change, it's easy to go, go do this.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I think, you know, you've got to consider the circumstances, but ultimately you both have to understand and embrace and accept. Not, not always embrace, but accept, you know, what the reason for the change is. You know, I often go to my employees and if there's a process that I've identified that is broken, you know, obviously there's going to be a result or an output that points back to that. Right. So even if I see it, maybe they won't or they don't. There's two big components of this. One, it's that realization of the need for change. You know, I often ask people, hey, are you, are you 100% satisfied with the results that you have today? Because if you're not. Yeah. Why are you so afraid to gamble and risk? I think we might have times it's important to ask those provocative type questions.

We lost you a lot.

I think we bled for a second. I'm not sure where I lost you. But, you know, I think it's important to ask provocative type questions sometimes to your team to make sure, understand, like, look, if you're not 100% satisfied with the results that you have, why are you so afraid to gamble them if you're not happy with your results? So this can help them in adopting and embracing a new process. And I think that's super important. The other piece that I think is key to point out here, Matt, is that it's not just about them understanding the need for change. It's also about committing to the change because it's new muscle, ergo, it's uncomfortable. So as I go out and I try something, even if I think it's a great practice, if I go out and I strike out five times in a row, chances are I'm going to go back to comfortable ways of mediocrity or comfortable failing. And that's why we've got to stay with them for the long haul. And through that, I think a lot of Times as a coach, you know, it's roll up your sleeves, be in it with them. You know, maybe if there's the opportunity to go out in the field, or if it's virtual calls they're on or whatever, so you can be there to support them. You can witness the change, and you can continue to coach through the change. Those are the things that make them stick and make them more effective.

And how do you. How do you deal with. Because I've seen it myself over many years that you coach, you fix the process, you identify it, you've got a whole bunch of reps going on in that new process, and then that's like water running down a wall that suddenly you walk away and then you come back and it's doing that old process, and that's because it just somehow got back in. And then before, you know, it's just then gone. Everyone and everyone's just forgotten about what you were doing and. But back to where we were.

That happens. It does happen, and it's because. And I'm sure there's a lot of statistics out there about, you know, the. After you do a training, you know, you could do a revolutionary training, and six months later, you know, did it. Did it stick and who did it stick with and why did it stick? You know, it's. It's fascinating to me because, you know.

Yeah, that's the question really, is what. What techniques do you do to make sure it does stick?

Yeah, because training is one moment in time. And that's why I think it's so important that you have these. These touch points after the fact and these barometers of success. Nothing that you want to achieve, anything that you want to achieve. You got to make sure that there are tangible, trackable mechanisms by which you can track your progress. So if you've identified a data point that we've got to improve through process, and we've identified what we want our new process to be and why, and then we ensure that our team is accepting or embracing or executing upon that. There's got to be some way to measure it. So is it a certain, you know, number of calls, or is it a certain number of leads that we're trying to make, or is it a certain type of, you know, activity that we're trying to do to show this new process? You know, I think one of the things that my sales teams focus on all the time is developing new muscle around prospecting. You know, I work for a big organization where, you know, a lot of our members work directly with IT and procurement and frankly, to drive all up transformation, it often requires influencers in different lines of business because, you know, we have to make sure that we are, you know, working with and collaborating with and keeping in mind all of our key stakeholders. And so it's. But it's not a common muscle for a lot of our sellers to go out and develop those types of relationships. They don't know the talk track, they don't know the intel. So I think, Matt, to your point, there's ways that we can make very tangible the mechanisms by which I can say, well, hey, I reached out to, you know, 10, 15, 20 new executives in this line of business today. I got this response. Is that a good response? If it's not, maybe I tweak my messaging. You know, it's all about controlling the controllables. Yeah. And so I think anytime you change, you have a new process. You've got to make sure you're controlling all the controllables and that you're learning from the data as opposed to being reactionary to it.

And with the world that we live in and so many people changing jobs, we're currently hiring and you know, I get 700 people. We're not Microsoft at applying a bit over a week. In your mind talking about this whole process and coaching and difference of managing what's the right characteristics of salespeople that are coachable? Like how do you identify?

Right.

I've got 700 people and these people are the people I can actually coach and take through this process.

I always ask people, what have you learned from your greatest losses? Yeah, okay, that's a cool question because I want to know how you have handled or grappled with the experience of a loss or something that didn't go as you anticipated. Because it shows me, Matt, how they relied on maybe their instincts, what they changed as a result of the loss, maybe who they realized they should have relied upon more. You know, I'm looking for very collaborative people that want to learn and grow. But it's easy, you know, especially in an interview process, you know, it's easy to get a lot of buzzwords thrown at you. But if you are able to articulate how you bounced back from and got better as a result of a loss or something that didn't go as you anticipated, that shows me how you are going to, you know, come into potentially a new role. I look back on my career and I realized, you know, some of my greatest successes were beget because of losses and setbacks, things that didn't go My way, deals that I lost, promotions I didn't get, jobs I lost. You know, being able to look back over the course of that and to say, okay, you know, I adjusted or course corrected as a result of that. And that's what I love hearing from a candidate is that key learning, that key growth area where they were kind of forced to go inside and say, all right, I've got a choice. I can. I can stay on the mat or I can get up and I can come back better. And I love hearing about those types.

We normally just talk about the wins when interviewing people.

That's the. No, isn't that. But that's. That's what. It's human nature.

Just tell me what you want. I don't know that you lost. Just tell me about what you won.

That could be. And that could be another philosophical manager versus coach type of call. Right? Because I think the. The coach understands and knows that, look, the play is.

You're gonna.

You're gonna lose. It's gonna be up. Yeah, yeah, you gotta lose. You're gonna lose. And how are you gonna handle the loss? Can you handle the loss? I've had so many sales reps that they started out, they had 1, 2, 3, 6 months of hitting quota, and they thought, oh, I'm ready for a promotion. Well, it doesn't work that way. In fact, I don't think any of us are ready for a promotion until we've been kicked in the teeth and sometimes multiple times, because that shows the resilience that you have. Life isn't all about winning. It's hardly ever about winning. Winning is rare. Winning is something we got to fight for and earn. And if you're looking for hiring a winner, you need to find somebody who knows how to lose and bounce back.

So on that. When. When do you think? Because, you know, a lot of people don't manage, but always want to manage, whether that's even coaching. But in for lots of people that you've worked with, when. When do you see as the right moment for. Because there's. I've seen it plenty of times in my life where someone wants to manage, but has just wants to manage because I'm a manager but isn't quite there and ready to do it. How do you know when someone is.

Ready, ready to leave the team going.

From being that person in the team, being coachable, when is that step to go from there to there that has got. The performance is smashing out of the park? Because I think everyone's also seen that rep that is Amazing. That is just awesome. And you try and make everyone like that rep and they just. And you try and get that rep to whatever they're doing. They just can't.

They just.

It's like that person's just there. Everyone has that group of people that are just there that no one's like.

You know, you know what it is? It's that moment then when you are 100% sure that you're finished being the hero and you're ready to be the hero.

Yeah. Okay. Okay.

That's a tough call for a lot of people because especially in sales, you know, we, we, we, you know, we drive hard, we like to win, we crave that recognition. But when you're a leader, when you're a coach, it's not about that anymore. It's about getting your team into a position to win. It's not about telling your team how to do it. It's about inspecting how they do it and helping them continue to improve their process. And, you know, if you got a team of 10, 15, 20, 50, hundreds of people, it's not about making them do it all a certain way. It's about understanding their process and how to make it better, understanding their motivators and their why and how you can be a person who can help them achieve more. That's, that's what it's all about. But you've got to it. No, it ceases to be about your individual achievement and your ego and your accomplishments, and it becomes 100% about your team. It doesn't matter if you crush your goal as a manager. How did all your team perform? Did you get everybody on your team across the threshold? Because if you didn't, there's always more work to do.

Yeah, right. Sweet. Another thing on that with leadership and how important is it for you to have that transparency in leadership and how important do you think it is regarding coaching and leadership and where does that kind of connect in your mind?

I think back, Matt, very distinctly and this tells you how important I think it is. I think back very distinctly to times when my leaders was extremely transparent and communicative with me. And it left a phenomenal impression. So I think the way that I look at it is I've always tried to be very transparent and communicative with my team so that they understand the why behind whatever it is, you know, whatever I feel that I'm able to share with them. I do. And I'll give you some examples, like the quota setting process, things that are near and dear to their heart or Their compensation process, how they can maximize their compensation. You know, we live in a world today, my team does, where there is a revenue based component and then there's also a contribution based component. And so I spend a lot of time helping my team figure out a plan to achieve their goals on a quota perspective. But also I spend a lot of time with them, helping them to maximize their impact in our organization because those are the types of things that are going to maximize their compensation. That's what I view as my job is how can I be as transparent and communicative as possible? And I probably over communicate. If you ask my team, I probably over communicate, but it's always the things that I think they will benefit from. And it's never, hey, tell me about this, give me this update xyz. Because frankly, I need to be as entrenched in the business as I possibly can be where I already know a lot of the answers and they're already arming me with what I need to know to best evangelize them and best support them. So I think the key component there, Matt, is being transparent and communicative. Left a really big impression on me when it happened. And it happened rarely. It's happened rarely in my career. So much so that it left that much of an impression with me. But I always try to live by that with my team to be as transparent communicative as possible with them and to help them understand how they maximize their. Their impact in their career.

And then on that, how do you rec. Obviously there's a TV player in the background. What we do, recognizing people and giving visibility. How do you. How do you do that constant. Because it's that recognition thing that we're. We're doing in Spinify that every time something happens it plays a song. But how do you do that and handle that that someone does that deal and doesn't feel recognized and they did 20 other deals and you go, yeah, well done. But I missed that one.

And.

And as the team grows and more people from that coaching perspective and also trying to recognize everyone, but obviously you can't do everything. Where's that balance and that making people feel recognized in your mind? How do you handle that as a coach, Matt?

You know, you got to look for ways to recognize in the moment. And look, I'm very cognizant that we all get pulled in a lot of different directions. So I think the key is look for. It's kind of like parenting. Yeah. I'm always looking for reasons to compliment them or to point out and reinforce positivity. I mean, look, even earlier today, I saw somebody sent a great email. I just wrote great email, gave a little bit of feedback in the moment, coaching. It was like, I love this email. Well done. Nice job tying everything together. Here's something you might want to think about.

Done.

It took me all of 15 seconds. But what that employee sees is their leader reaching out to them unsolicited, giving feedback, but giving them praise, giving them recognition. Another thing, you know, looking at opportunities in, like your team meetings. A lot of people run team meetings and they're. Here's, here's the agenda. We're going to. Come on, we're going to talk about this. We're going to talk about this. I kick off every meeting with a couple of ideas that actually I borrowed from others. One, we do this DJ of the week program. And so I always recognize a top contributor from the wack from the week prior. They come on and they pick a song that's going to kick us off for the week's team meeting. They tell us why they picked it. We celebrate their win or whatever it was. And it might not even, maybe it wasn't even a deal. Maybe it was they shared a best practice or they, you know, did something just that. So find daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly recognition. And maybe it's even you put it on your calendar as a leader to say, hey, send out the daily recognition. In prior lives, you know, when I had, you know, updated daily sales rhythm and things of that nature, I'd send a daily sales report and I'd recognize every single person who was, you know, kind of a leader. I'll do, you know, awards. Sometimes they're serious, like, hey, you did the top of this metric. Sometimes they're silly. You know, whatever it is, just find ways to make it fun. You know, we were talking about culture earlier. You want to have a culture of recognition?

Okay, I'm just going through the questions here. Question. Generally speaking, what's the most efficient size of a sales team member? Coach ratio.

Wow, that's a good one.

That was from Chris.

Yeah. So, Chris, you know, my thought is this. That's a tough one.

Because it is a tough one, isn't it?

Well, it depends on a lot of different variables. You know, I've had teams that were anywhere from six people to 37 that directly reported to me at some point in my career. And the 37, I was actually getting ready to take on more than that. And then I got promoted. And so it all comes down to the two thresholds that make sense. And that are justifiable. That's challenging. I've seen really good ratios of anywhere from 10 to 20. But as an example, today I'm in an enterprise sales space with a lot of very senior client directors and account executives and technology leads. And having 20 people on my team would probably be quite overwhelming. So I think 10 to 20 is probably a sweet spot. But I think there are some outlying factors. You know, I ran a call center years ago and like I said, I had almost 40 people on my team at one point while I was just, you know, while I was a sales manager in that role. And that was not. It was not too much for me. I think it really depends on the roles and responsibilities of the person. It depends on the makeup and the needs of the team and that it also depends on everyone's skill level because I certainly wouldn't recommend over inundating a relatively new sales manager or a new manager with a very large team that has a lot of needs or that might be less intent.

That makes perfect sense. So question here about how do you measure coaching as being effective? Obviously there's how many deals you do. Is there other ways? Yeah.

Yes. Oh, I love that question so much. So one of the tales of the tape obviously is going to be the result for the number. However, that's not always an immediate tale of the tape. Right. Because you know, you can make quite a course corrections and changes in process and not see a change in the result for months or even a year, depending on what your sales cycle is. So I think as you meet with your team, you want to develop what are the things. And this is something that, this is what I love about coaching. You're developing this with the person that you're coaching. What are the things that put into place to determine how successful this is? You know, what are we going to do differently and how can we track that? Are we making, you know, more calls to a specific type of organization? Are we making more outreaches to a specific title or line of business? Are we going to focus on making less calls and doing more research before we do those calls? I mean, there's. There's so many different things. Once you identify sales leaders are like doctors. You know, you go in, you've got a process, you've got a report, right? You've got to go in and you've got to diagnose based on what the data is telling you and talking with the patient. And so what you're basically trying to do is you've got to develop a Plan together from there. And so that's how you measure if the coaching is being effective. I always take very robust notes. And so I've documented what our process looks like. And then the next time we meet, you go back to those last meeting notes and you say, hey, this is what we talked about last time. How is this progressing? How is it feeling? What are you seeing differently? What's happening differently? Sometimes they'll admit that they're not even necessarily doing it or, you know, now we can observe a lot of calls. If you're, you know, if you're in a situation where you can observe calls, you can probably see metrics that may say whether they're doing what they're supposed to be doing or not. So you just want to continue to reinforce that positive behavior and track what you can track.

And what's your process? I've got a dog that wants to go to the door. What's your process when it's, when it's not going like, so trying to get through there. But sometimes, sometimes everyone can be coached on everything, right? So I guess that the question on uncoachable, how do you handle that when there's just sometimes square peg, round hole where you just can't seem to get that person to be coachable? What. What do you, what do you do?

Well, ultimately, you want to figure out if it's a skill versus a will. Okay, that's skillless as well. If there's no malice intended, you know, I'll let someone continue to develop it before. I just basically say, well, you know, after one or two sessions, well, hey, this just isn't working. You know, we're just going to jump to discipline. That's what a, you know, a manager might do. But I think a true coach, you're going to stick with them and you're going to understand, you know, where the pain is. And maybe you continue to tweak the process a little bit based on the result. Because I think that's the key element Matt, is really understanding. You know, what's. Is this. Is this not happening because the person is just blatantly not doing what they're supposed to do or what we agreed on. And that's why we hark back to the notes. We say like, you know, hey, since we talked last, you're either doing this great job or you're not. And if you're not, you know, hey, we agreed in the last session that, that this was an issue, that we were going to address it in this way. What changed? Help me understand that, and if it's a discomfort, great. Let's, let's work on this together. Let's sit in that together and figure out how we can continue to do this better. Is this still a priority? Those are the types of questions that you want to ask. You want to be very curious as a coach to understand why they're not doing what you collectively agreed upon. That's why it's so important. It's a contract. You know, you're, you're, you formed this plan together, which makes it stickier, but it doesn't guarantee success. So you go back, you hark back to the notes that you had prior, you make sure it's still a priority, you understand why they're not executing, and then you figure out the plan going forward yet again and you just keep doing that. Now if you've met five, six times, they are not doing it, they're refusing to do it, whatever it is. Now it's time for a different conversation.

Brilliant answer. And I think a lot of people could do something with that. So that's, that's super awesome. Someone wanted to hear, to know.

The.

Back in time type question. What do you, what do you wish you knew when you first were in the position of coaching and managing people that you know now?

I think it's that there is a fine line between the people that work for you. They're not your friends and you don't owe them a friendship. They're going to very much like your kids will. They may give you a lot of lip service to certain things and there's a very cut and dry responsibility that you have. Your organization is paying you to be the ambassador of their brand and the evangelist of your team. But that doesn't require you to go above and beyond for someone's personal need or to let them slide. You don't owe them that. You're paid to play a role. And while it's important to invest in your team, if you cease to exist tomorrow, that relationship is also going to cease to exist. They're not your friends, no matter what they say. And I wish I had known that years ago. Now, don't get me wrong, I love my team. I invest in my team. I've spent a lot of time with my team, but I also understand and respect their role. And, you know, they get paid to do a job, they support a family, you know, just like I do. So, you know, the key element is that we find ways to work together and collaborate and invest in each other's mutual success. But that doesn't mean that we have to be best of friends, nor does it mean that we're going to be best of friends in five, 10 years. And I think I wish I had known that because I likely let a lot of people, friends or whatever the case may be. And I was glad that I learned the lesson the hard way that that was.

I think it's a fantastic lesson. It's been amazing. I've learned lots. I'm sure lots of other people have learned lots. Really appreciate you giving us your time. Here's your podcast where people can go and learn more of this great stuff that you're talking about. I just want to say thank you personally and it's been an honor to meet you. It's, it's been really great. And we'll be sharing this on the Internet so some more people can learn all the wonderful things you've been talking about.

Thank you. Matt, this was amazing. I like your dog. Probably need to have a restroom break as well soon. But in all seriousness, this was amazing. I, I love the topic, very passionate about it and I'd love to connect, you know, with anybody if you have any follow up questions or anything of that.

Yeah, we'll just get them to put this will be on YouTube and we'll get them to put them in the comments here. So anything in the comments.

Sounds wonderful.

Get back to you and they should absolutely check out your podcast.

Thank you.

Cool. Thank you very much. You're an absolute legend. It's been amazing.