Episode 252: How to Uplevel Your Workplace with Darren Virassammy

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I'M great. How are you doing?

Good. You seem particularly cheery. I don't know, you just seem super cheery today.

Maybe it's because I'm meditating.

Oh. How long have you been meditating?

Two days. No, that's not true. I've switched to more traditional meditation as opposed to historically, I do pretty much every day a ten minute visualization.

Oh, yeah, but you're going to this. When you travel for your sabbatical, you're going to do these two sessions for two hours per day, every day. And is this in preparation for that, this meditation? Okay. All right. But before we chit chat much more, why don't you tell people where they can listen to our show and all that stuff?

You can find us on itunes, Stitcher, Tunein Radio, Spotify, iHeartRadio or any podcast or anywhere.

Pretty much, yeah. We're on Google Play and I think we're. Do we have entrepreneurshipelevated.com?

Yeah, entrepreneurshipelevated podcast.com.

Oh, God.

Longest URL.

Could we not get Entrepreneurship Elevated? Is that taken? I wonder.

I don't remember now, why would we.

Do such a long name? I guess for the SEO or something.

Yeah. And so we could say we have a really long name.

Yeah. The problem I'm running into with posts is I'm getting limited because the summary descriptions and then I have to include Entrepreneurship Elevated. So I got to cut a. Oh.

My God, this is a disaster. We should rename the show again. By the way, if you don't recognize that voice, that's J. Bonet.

Jay Bonet.

J Bone. That's the English pronunciation.

I feel like we should have people guess your name and what you look like.

Well, he. Mike said my name before, not my full name. Thank God.

Yeah.

Oh, no, I would never say your.

Full name, especially with the comments you make.

I know. Well, I wasn't the one who said when we started off the show, we have it on tape. What Kelsey said was the same thing you said.

I didn't say anything about Jeremy.

Yeah, I said it, but mine got cut. Kelsey's is going to actually be played.

No. Yeah.

Why don't we do a song together?

Okay. What do you want?

I don't know. You have such a good song. So, J. Bonnet. I don't know if you know this. Kelsey and I originally met on the circuit as singers. I mean, you know, I was a professional singer. I went by my stage name, Justin Love. Justin Love. And what was. What was your stage name?

Just Kelsey.

Yeah.

So he formed a duet called Just in love and just Kelsey. And here's one of our songs. You want to start? You want me to lead us or you want it? You lead us. You take the lead. That's a good one.

In your eyes the light that he your eyes I am complete your eyes in your eyes.

So that was one of the songs. We also did an original. I don't know if you heard this one before. You ready? You go in 3, 2, 3, 2, 5. 1, 2, 1. It's a jazz song. 3, 4, 8, go. Boop bop bop boop bop bop boop bop. When I go on the street I don't want to.

This is cringe worthy. Like, this is the most cringe I've experienced in my life ever.

I think that's one of our most popular songs. I love it because people think, you know, most songs have a countdown of 4, 3, 2, 1, or 1, 2, 3, 4. Ours starts off with this menagerie of numbers.

I mean, it's really contemporary, abstract, you know.

Yeah, yeah, totally.

It's popular. It's popular with no one. So do we have any listener shout outs or anything?

Yay. Okay, this comes from mparrot84.

Why do people listen to crazy names?

Why are you getting so mad about it?

Why are you laughing like that? You guys stay in the microphone.

I got a super strong reaction.

I want to know who we're talking to. And it's mparrot.

Yeah.

I love when Kelsey just loses it in laughter.

Okay, this comes from mparrot84. Just started reading the profit first book after listening to several podcasts by Mike Michalowicz. And I'm so excited to start implementing a new system. It's really easy for me to ignore profit and owner pay, but no more. Mike does an excellent job in the book in his podcast to relating to his audience as well as making his point engaging and easy to follow. I highly recommend that entrepreneurs study his system and see if it's right for your business.

Thank you, mparrot84.

Yeah, we love your name.

You know what threw me off though, was I was flipping ahead to the anonymous listener mail.

Oh, yeah.

Are you gonna read the whole thing?

I think you should read it.

The whole thing is it.

You're better at reading out loud.

Really? You're such a jerk. You're such a jerk. All right. I do want to thank our corporate partners to make this show a reality. Oops, I didn't push the button quickly enough. I want to thank nextiva and receipt bank. Nextiva is a voiceover IP phone System. And receipt bank is a receipt scanning system. We'll tell you more about those folks in a little bit. These crazy features you probably don't even know they have. But first, we gotta get to the meat of the show. Kels. Yeah, we're gonna. Now, I pronounce Darren's name. Is Darren Vera Swami. I pronounce it Vera Swami. It sounds more. It sounds more wrong. That's the word. Now, to me, like, it sounds more like a intellectual Veraswamy. Sounds like whatever. If you're a swami. Sounds like you're digging yourself in a.

Hole that gets worse and worse.

Okay, whatever. This is important. You guys know Darren. I are friends.

I know Darren.

Not anymore.

Darren, how do you pronounce McAllen?

You don't sound intellectual.

Oh, Darren Michelob shits or something?

Yes.

I don't know. Yeah.

All right, Let me introduce you. Now. Go back in your hole. Darren Verasami is the co founder and chief operating officer of 34 strong. We as an organization have gone through this experience. We analyzed our team, found out the compliments to each other was actually really eye opening. It's a new breed of consultancy that believes everyone deserves a great place to work and that any workplace can be great, except for this place. A leading expert in the global employee engagement community, the 34 strong team leverages the Gallup strengths finder assessment, which I think their book was ranked like the top, what, one or two in. In any kind of personal assessments recently. And Q12 is. Is to create massive shifts within organizations, both culturally and the bottom line. He did test his black belt, which he got kind of beat up on. And his company is the 15. Is the top 15 fastest growing companies in the Sacramento region for 2018, specifically in the Elk Grove Drive Road area. That didn't work out either.

Wait, and did you just say upgrow?

I don't know.

Elk Grove.

What I meant to say, here's the funny thing I was gonna say is that they were the 15th fastest growing company on Elk Grove Drive.

Hilarious.

Yeah, not so funny. All right. Welcome to our show, brother.

Great to be here. Great to be here. Yeah. Thank you so much.

So, Darren, right way. Can any place be great to work for that can't be.

You know, we were actually really intentional in the language of not saying every place can be a great place to work. Any workplace, if you want to actually put in the work to become a great place to work, it can happen, but it doesn't happen overnight. It's not going to happen in a single team building session. High fives or any of that stuff. It takes some work, but any workplace does have the capacity to do it. That's kind of the. That's kind of our thought process.

So what about these, like, these places you go by and they have the obligatory foosball table or I guess table tennis now ping pong is like, super popular. What really dictates a great place to work is it those things?

You know, it's not. It's not going to be those things. Those can be little accoutrements that we can add in that can make the process a little bit more fun. But at the end of the day, what is it that people want, Mike? What is it that people want, Kels? They want to be valued for being valuable. So when we're really thinking about great places to work, it's how are we actually creating a culture where people can be engaged in their work, show up as their best self and know that they're contributing? Hey, they might enjoy playing a little table tennis or sitting on whoopee cushions, since that seems to be a key part of our title for today's show. Whatever might float your boat in that space can be huge. But that's not going to be the end all, be all. That's not what's going to really get people showing up to be their best self at work. And that's not necessarily what we want. So.

All right, so people want to be valued for or be valued for being valuable, but is it simply just a mentality that needs to come about or how do we start instituting this process?

You know, big part of the process is we've got to identify where our natural talents actually are, our natural way of thinking, feeling, and behaving. You know, what are the things that we're naturally going to do and contribute? There's some people, guys that are really going to show up. They're going to be really excellent at making sure that the relationships are intact on the team and making sure that we stay in line and keep those relationships together. So as we're marching through tackling different tasks, we can stay together and stay on point. There's going to be other people. You just tell them what the tasks are they have to do. They can go out and they can knock it down and get it done, and they're really going to contribute that way. There's going to be other people that really think about the long view, the future vision of what things can be, and that's where they're going to contribute. But it's understanding the fact that we're all created very uniquely and very differently, and the way that you naturally think versus the way I naturally think are going to be totally different. But there's a lot of value in the fact that we're completely different because that can get us to the right outcomes that we want to have.

So how do we start unifying our culture? We have different people, different values. They all want to be valued. How do we start unifying this culture to have a really extraordinary workplace, you.

Know, a great place to start and particularly with a lot of your listeners not necessarily being massive organizations, we've worked with large companies all the way to micro businesses. Great place to start, first and foremost is with that leader taking that inventory of self awareness, really understanding who they are and who they're not. They can take the CliftonStrengthsFinder assessment and really identify their strengthsfinder profile. And what it measures is again, your talents, your natural patterns of thought, feeling and behavior that can be productively applied, but they can also get that for their team. They can really understand how that's gonna show up. You know, I know you and Kelsey, you have very, very different talents, but those areas actually balance each other out really well. Mike, you're more of a. Your thinking process is more outward talking, discussing, getting things done. Kelsey operates in a place where she needs a little bit more time in thinking and having that free space to really think before she acts. But that brilliance coming together can create great results as we're going along. So starting by identifying our talent, particularly for our smaller organizations, is a great way to go.

So I think of our own organization. I feel that our little team here, the Obsidian team, is like, I would put us up against anybody. Like I would literally take on any other company for our devotion and effort and so forth. But I also agree that we're diverse in the way we process. But Jaron doesn't like, like people seek, like people don't. Don't. I feel most comfortable in hiring people who are like me. How do I facilitate that diversity? How do I make that reality without getting uncomfortable as a leader? I don't know why I say leader that way. But you know.

So, you know, great analogy. I like to give guys is simply this. When you look at the Golden Gate Bridge, for instance, as an example in San Francisco, it stands and its strength comes from the fact. Not that the tension, right? The cables that hold the bridge up, there's two towers and there's cables and those cables are actually pulling in slightly different directions, but there's A healthy amount of tension on those cables that creates the strength of the bridge. Much the same is the strength of our organizations. We do want people that are like minded in our beliefs. For instance, you want people that believe in eradicating entrepreneurial poverty. That's the outcome. That's the ultimate mission. But we're going to have our own blind spots. And if we can bring in people that comfortably fill our blind spots, guess what? We get to a much, much broader perspective of what the outcome can be. There's an old African proverb that I want to share with you that I think really illuminates this in the lens of team. If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go alone, go with others. Others can often cover those spaces that we don't see. Those things that we don't see as leaders that can really fill in those blank areas and allow us to play to our strengths, really be the best version of ourselves, but also allow us as a team to become the best that we can be.

So if I want our team to be strongest and for people to enjoy this work environment here as the, as the boss. Kelsey's the boss actually here for our company. Is it her responsibility to find people's strengths, move them toward their interests and what they love to do and then find how that all works cohesively? Like I'm just trying to figure out the structure is like the people come first and you build the business almost around it or is it reversed on a mission? So confused.

So yeah, we're going to have certain outcomes that we have as a business. Right. So you might have a certain project that you're working on, you might have multiple projects that we're working on. But a big part of what we're looking to get into is in identifying people's strengths, in identifying where their talents are, is in getting into the place of trying to figure out what are the right talents that we have on these different projects. So we get into. I give you a great example of this. This is an exercise that we have and if people take the strengths finder or not and I think we've a download available that'll be in the show notes as well or you'll be able to. I can provide this for you. It's a real simple exercise called grind, Greatness, genius. And it's a great place for each team member to actually start on and go through the leader of the company all the way into all levels of staff. But you identify what are the things that are in your grind zone. What are things? When we think of our grind guys, these are things you. You might actually rather consider going outside and breaking your ankle than having to do these tasks in your job. Right? These are things that just. Oh, they just really wear on you and they take a lot of energy, your greatness. These are the areas where you feel really strong doing these things. In fact, maybe you'd like to spend a little more time doing these. And then you're going to have the things that are in your genius zone, where you're just. Nobody can really stand up to you in that place. You're truly in your element in that space. Now, here's the thing. You're always going to have some things in the grind zone. You're never going to fully eliminate those. But what happens when we start thinking about the team and being aware that, oh, wow, I had no idea, Mike, that you really enjoy getting out and talking to people. I had no idea that you enjoy making those connections. I thought you just wanted to sit behind your computer and work through these projects. That's how I work. So, of course, everybody wants to work like that. It opens up the conversation as to what different people's grinds are, their greatness and their genius, and it gives us a framework and how we can make maybe little micro shifts. And if somebody's spending, Maybe they're spending 50% of their time right now in their grind zone, but maybe we're able to make some subtle shifts on the team and reallocate some responsibilities on the team to different parties, moving more towards their greatness and their genius zone. What happens to the engagement of that team? Even if it goes from 50% to down to 40% or even if it only goes to 45%, you're moving in the right direction. You're moving away from your grind zone into more of your greatness. And it's not all going to happen overnight, guys. But starting that conversation for your listeners, that's a great place to start to think about it and open up that conversation. So I strongly recommend that I think Jenna.

Kelsey, didn't Jenna come to you or to me? And she said, I'm ready to write. Who did she come to you or how'd that come about?

Yeah, well, she told me early on that she started a few different books. And so that's what I said. Mike's a great resource, you know, to talk to her about it. And then I guess she had had a conversation with Ron, and he was like, well, why don't you write for Them.

Yeah. So, Jenna. So, Darren, Jenna, one of our colleagues here is starting to write for us, doing some blog stuff and whatever. And, you know, it came out because she just actually came into my office and said, hey, if you ever want me to write, I'll write, but don't feel, like, obligated. So she was very uncomfortable even saying it. Yeah, right. Yeah. So I'll tell you, that came out because Ron here pushed her into doing it. I wonder if she'd ever voiced it. So my question is, how do. How do we, as an owner of the business, whatever, don't intimidate our colleagues from sharing what their dreams are and what they want to do? Because she was scared. Ish. And.

And that's. That's a. That's. That's the whole point behind the culture piece. And that's where the grind, greatness, genius exercise can be a good, good starting point. But a big part of this process is getting ourselves comfortable as owners, talking about the things that we're not only good at, but also what are the things that we don't excel at. So when we're playing to our talents and playing into our strengths, we are confident in where we shine and confident in where we're blind. So we're taking ownership of some of those. And in so doing and playing in a space where we're what we like to call confidently vulnerable, again, confident where we shine and confident in where we're blind, we're almost giving our employees, our team members, the permission to start taking ownership of some of these things, to start having those conversations. Because you bring up a great point, Mike. A lot of times, people won't even bring these elements up, but it forces us to pause long enough as owners, as leaders in organizations, to ask, what are the other elements that you would like to get into? It's so interesting you mentioned that example. That's a conversation I've had with one of my team members that's had some desire to really get into more of managing our blog and getting into that. We're actually stepping into that conversation more next week. But it's actually pausing long enough when you're in a leadership role to ask your team members, what are the things that are your grind in your job? What are the things that are in your greatness, in your job, what are things in your genius in your job, and what are the things that are in your greatness and your genius that we don't even get to see in you right now at work? Because they sometimes will have those elements, like it sounds like Jenna might have had that brilliance in other aspects of her life, but you're giving her permission to show up as your whole self in that and share that. Does that. Does that kind of make sense there?

Yeah, perfect.

I mean, we want her to show up. The thing is, I. My fear is, Darren, I'm intimidating or preventing that from happening.

Totally.

We're. We're doing a retreat. J. Bonet is going. Kelsey's going. We're bringing Paul down, Amy. And here's my fear. I'm going to be freaking bulldogging the agenda. Not intentionally, but intentionally. Like, I'm going to say, here's what we want to cover. And I'm afraid you guys, Kels and J. Bonet are gonna be like, yes, Manning me. Like, not because you. You know, saying like. Like. Like, if you confront sort of a.

Well, I feel like it's less about your personality, more about the general conception of a hierarchy.

Yeah.

Power of having.

Yeah.

How do we.

And I know that's damaging the company because. Listen, dude. Listen to dude. When I say, dude, I'm talking to you, Darren. Like, I looked. I stared right at the microphone. I'm like, listen, dude. Yes, yes, there's the microphone. I got a little. I'm working on a new book, and it's this model. I'm calling it the Ascension model, and the name may change, but that's what I'm working on. And was going through this process, and I was laboring over. It just did not feel right. And Paul, one of our colleagues here, said, mike, we got changes. It's not right. But he was really comfortable saying it, and he's trying to support me. And it was all this awkwardness, so this. It's not right. Got stretched over about a month. And then finally I said, oh, my gosh, it's not right. And he's been. He's been saying that for a month, but I couldn't hear it. Dude, I feel like such a D bag. Like, what's wrong with me, Darren? What's wrong with me?

Oh, well, you know, Mike, it's a common place that we get to. You know, there's this really good book. I think it was released in August. It was called Clockwork. You might want to read. Talks about moving away from having to grant your people permission and different things like that and how to create ownership. But no, to your point here, Mike, it's a space. You've written books on this very thing. But our human nature is really, really difficult. And I think part of it is what we're practicing every day as leaders, as owners in our companies. Here's a great question, and this was a question that was asked by the conductor. I think it's of the Boston Orchestra or Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, but a gentleman named Ben Zander. He says, you know, I'm the conductor of the orchestra, and my face and my picture gets put on the COVID of the album, but yet I don't play an instrument. And he said, when I'm leading an orchestra, I have to ask myself, who am I being that I'm not putting the shine in my people's eyes? So what he was saying is, when their eyes are shining, when they're looking up at him and he's conducting, he's got them engaged. And that was a really powerful lesson for me to hear from Mr. Zander. Because if we can pause long enough as leaders not to ask, have we hit this target? Have we gotten this completed? Is this project done? But where are my people at? How are my people feeling? In the process, some of our talents will pull us more towards seeing the vision, aiming at them, wanting to get it done and crushing it. That's great, but there's going to be other needs. Where some people along the journey might say, hey, I need some time to think about that, or, hey, what's the best way that I bring this up? Or, how do I keep the relationship together? And. And Mike, just what you just did, the fact that you just own that with the scenario with Paul, I think that's a huge starting point, like being able to go back and say, listen, team, I sometimes need. I need to hear this, and I need you to keep coming up with this, you know, these red flags or whatever for me. And I might not hear it right away, but I need you to stay on that. And that's going to help me manage my own blind spots. And I do trust your opinions and do value it, but sometimes I need to talk it out and think that that can be part of my thinking process to open this up a little bit more. One of the things that we actually got into, very, very interestingly enough, you talk about this. We had a team retreat last week, and my business partner, Brandon, his thinking cycle, guys, is very much. He needs to verbally process things. He puts them outward, and that's kind of how he thinks by talking it out. But in the process of talking it out, others can interpret that as like, oh, my gosh, we have to move on this right now. And that's never his intention, but because he speaks so well and he's able to influence the team unintentionally. A lot of times. That's just his talking style. Makes you feel like, boy, we should have started this back in 1982. Right. And that's. That's not the intention. So he's actually what we came up with as a team. And the team came up with this, actually. And taking the ownership, they said, can we come up with a safe word? So that word is basically like a reset button. If they're not safe, does the safe word keep going? The safe word was belief. Because belief.

I thought it was keep going. Okay.

No, no, no. The safe word was belief. So if the team ever throws out to him or me or any other team member belief, what it does is it anchors us back to our core values, resets the conversation around strong spirit, grateful attitude, and courageous heart, and asked ourself, basically, guys, to. Let's take a pause. We're moving really fast at this target, but maybe there's some other stuff that we're missing. And I'm basically asking for a pause to be able to have that conversation. And it's there to reset the conversation, not along the lines of, I'm right, you're wrong, this is the direction we're going, but to create that holistic approach so we can really think about it again through that Golden Gate Bridge analogy. Sometimes the cables are pulling in slightly different directions, but. But that's what gives rise to the best ideas, to the strength of the idea or the project or the book idea that we're working on, getting into and being able to have a meaningful conversation about it. Sometimes it's just being able to pause, you know?

Yeah. Darren, we're running tight on time, but I got to ask you one more question. You're a bassist. You performed at our ProfitCon last year, blew people out of the water. What have you learned from that extracurricular activity? Because we all have these hobbies or things to do inside. What's translated from being a bassist into the work you do now?

You know, being a bassist has been one of the greatest gifts that I've had, because I think we can find in whether for me, it's playing bass, whatever it might be. But in these extracurricular activities, we find glimpses of our own talents, our own excellence, our own zone of genius. And it can be a warmup activity a lot of times for the other areas that we want to excel in our work. So if we don't make time for the things that make us feel strong outside of the work that we do, we're going to have a heck of a time showing up really strong in the work that we do. Playing bass has always been a reset button for me. And sometimes, truth be told, guys, when I'm preparing for a really big keynote or a series of keynotes, I actually make sure I schedule in bass playing time into that because it warms up my creative mind. If something happens in the talk that you don't expect, your microphone goes. Whatever it is, it's warming up the improvising talents of what you have to be able to do to adapt as a speaker, as a facilitator, and that's part of how I've played it out in my life. So I encourage everybody. If you have one of those things in your life, make sure you're getting to play to and invest in your strengths outside because it always spills over in your work that you're doing.

I love it. And it was. I don't know if we have a video online of that. Do we have. We do a video of Darren playing. We should just put it on our Vimeo site if. Yeah, I'd love it.

Yeah, there's a rough cut of it floating around there. I don't know if there's the full, full.

Yeah, the full thing. I mean, it was just such a cool thing you did. The entrepreneur's journey on base. Darren, before we let you go, where can people learn more about you and perhaps take a little strength finder test?

Yeah, they can. They can Visit us@34strong.com They can take a look there. We're actually going to be in the next two weeks. I think by mid March, we're going to have the capacity for people to be able to take the StrengthsFinder assessment directly through us. So we've got a lot of resources there and you can find us on Facebook, LinkedIn, connect with me personally there. I'd love to, love to stay connected. We got a lot of great stuff that's. That's coming up right now.

Awesome. And we're at the 34 strong link in our show notes. Darren, thanks so much for joining us today.

Thank you, Darren.

Thank you so much for having me. Always a pleasure to spend time with both of you.

All right, well, hang on tight because I got one little thing for you at the end here. We're gonna have a little game we're gonna play and see how good you're at this. Darren, it's actually, we're trying to see if you're qualified to employ. Be employed here. With our company.

It's our test.

It's our strengths finders test.

Do I have to use a whoopee cushion? As long as maybe.

Maybe it is related to that genre. So we'll just leave it at that. All right, Kels, I want to recap what we've learned from. I want to do our little game today. And I do have a tip for us. Plus, we have listener mail. But first I started reading that listener mail.

Yeah.

So now I know why you want me to read it. It's a doozy. I don't know if I'm up for it. It's. It's a tough read. Kelsey. Yeah. Next to you, J, you got to get this phone. So the nextiva phone system is flexible, it's high end, and it's extremely affordable. You're on all the time.

Yeah.

Actually. What's your. What's your favorite call over over at nextiva phone? Do you ever do. Can you think of your best call ever over next to your phone? Your favorite. Where do you call? Your question. Your favorite nextiva moment?

What's the most fond memory on a phone?

What was yours, Jayvon?

Well, something interesting. I wanted to ask you guys about this. So Brian called me at home.

Yeah.

And it was your extension.

Yeah, because I transferred him.

Oh, okay. Because I was like, yeah. And then he's like, oh, Jeremy.

And I'm like, that's a new feature. They rolled out the next diva transfer component.

Yeah.

How was his voice?

Oh, crystal clear.

Crystal clear. Now here's the interesting thing. So he didn't. He doesn't own an X T. Have a phone. He called Anthony through a cell phone. But when you connect through the nextiva phone system, it clears up your voice too. So that TrueVoice technology plays even now with phones calling using a different bass system.

Amazing.

What's your favorite nextiva moment?

You know, it's probably that one time when you called me, and we're like, hello, hello, hello. That's like every single phone call, just like 10 minutes of us saying hello back and forth.

I used to do this thing when you would hang up and you go, dup. It was like dupe. And like, just a weird noise right before you get off the phone.

Yeah, because.

What was that?

I go, dude. Because Paul still does. I do it to Paul all the time. I do, all the time.

But he does it to everybody. He talks.

Does he really?

He was, like, on the phone the other day, and he did it, and he was like, I got that from Mike.

Yeah, it's like skidoop.

Yeah, this is whatever. I used to see it. And soup. And soup. And then deep. So now it's just whatever loud, obnoxious noise at the end. But I think it's important because you ever hang up a phone call with someone, you're on your next diva and you're like, okay, I'll see you later. And I'll see you later. It's like, okay, bye. Okay, bye. Bye. And you don't know, like, who says the final Bye. A deep. It's clearly over. You can't degradate any further.

It's like the.

I didn't say bye bye. And then hang up.

You go, bye bye. You actually end up on an up note. It's very nice. I like your bye bye.

The skadoop is like the verbal equivalent to the callback on walkie talkies.

Yeah, yeah.

Roger is a throwback. It's a throwback. The nextiva system is so clear and so effective. I have to add that sound just to bring it back to human understanding. It's. It's out of this world. Receipt bank. That's our other sponsor. Okay, so let's get in.

Let's go on to our favorite receipt bank receipt.

Kelsey, you, favorite receipt.

No, I don't use receipt bank.

My favorite receipts from cvs. Those are so effing long.

Yeah.

I don't know if they're still doing it, but there was a meme going around these things. You order like one chocolate.

No, it's like 10ft long.

Receipt back. Yeah. And it's just like Prince Alec, here's your coupon here. You know.

Do you know what?

I get chocolates at receipt bank all the time.

They do distribute it there.

This is legit, though. Like, the one thing that I think that receipt bank's good for is because now they're all. It's thermal paper. So if you hold on to the receipt, like the physical receipt too long.

Yeah.

It degrades. And then you go to the store.

And they're like, well, is that by design?

Yeah, I think it's by design. Home depot's the worst.

It's their shoes. It's cheaper.

It's cheaper.

They don't have to keep buying ink. So it's like thermal print.

It sucks. Yeah.

Really stinks.

All right, let's go on, cows, to your big takeaway. So join me in the song. What did you learn?

So what did you learn today? So I love the analogy to the tension bridge because I feel like that was awesome. I feel like you need that give and take, you need that little push on each other to bring out the best. Right. And I think, like, particularly while we were at storybrand, that sort of process of weeding out what our best outcome was. It's. It's a little bit of, you know, give and take. Like, it's. You have to put yourself out there. You have to put your ideas out there, and you have to be willing to, you know, shove them back away.

Yep.

To get the best possible outcome.

Yeah. No, I love that analogy. That's great. The bridge.

Yeah.

What was yours, Jay? Boner. Bonet.

So I worked at a lot of places where the. The. The head people have such an ego that they're not willing to talk to the little guys on the floor. But I think that that's.

Are you talking about here?

No, no, no, no. Actually, my last job, it was super frustrating because we all thought that they were making some wrong moves, and we were the ones who were dealing with it on a daily basis. So we saw the problems, but. But they didn't want to adjust because they were too. So I think pausing as a leader, pausing to ask questions is super important.

Yeah, yeah. And just creating that safe space, space to welcome feedback and. And the culture. Yeah.

And so it's interesting. I. I don't know if this was Toyota who implemented this. No. What?

Toyota.

Toyota.

Toyota.

The second time.

What?

Toyota?

You going to do that? Toyota. T. Over the. What did you say?

Bur both of you, your checks are being withheld. The next one.

This is paper.

You should take it.

You guys are so lucky. I love you, too. Emphatically. You are like my brothers and sisters, because you're such asses. But Toyota. Toyota. So their methodology is the people that are at the front of the line are the most aware of the challenges and therefore are the best decision makers. So the management's job is not to make decisions. It's to get the feedback from the front line and then serve the front line. If a Toyota manufacturing line has problems, the line will stop. The person that is in the front line assembling or doing whatever will bark out commands to the management team, and the management team runs and serves the person fixing it. So the job of management is to make the front line's job more efficient.

Smart.

Yeah. Super smart.

Yeah. And that's why they rename themselves to Toyota from Toyota. That makes sense because the front line said so.

Yes.

Don't roll your freaking eyes at me. All right, cows. That was it. Right? That's what. Oh. What I learned today. I Learned that the. The leader and I don't like that word. Needs to make a sell or take a self assessment and really understand her or his blind spots. Kelsey, we do the reader mail. Listener mail.

Yes. Do you want to read it?

Not really. I do want you to read it because it's. It's. Listen, I skim through this as we were preparing and it's anonymous. Because the position this person's in, this is very serious. I am very fortunate. This is an email that came to me. I'm just kind of setting the stage here. I'm very fortunate. This is a rarity, but this is not the first time I've gotten something like this. I did respond to this person immediately. It is scary. So just want to put that stage out and stage this. And that's why we're not going to say this person's name. All right.

Okay. So they write. Years ago, I started a brokerage business with the aim of helping my father with his construction business. It seemed a perfect fit and it did. For a while. We sold a couple of construction contracts that came from my clients who bought lots from me. However, this dream became a nightmare. My father is clearly in a Craftsman cycle where he does a lot of work for any client, any kind of client. Because there are too many projects for my father to handle, I'm forced to be managing some of these problems that even my father has not yet even encountered. And it doesn't help that my father is not the sharing kind of person. He does not teach at all. He wants me to spend time in the construction site where I don't want to be and I'm not supposed to be right. But still, we had no one and some key people even left recently because of this, we have made a lot of mistakes while trying to correct them took us months. While incurring overhead costs, I'm noticing that I could not sell properties anymore because these problems are more urgent. I do know that I still have to get back to my core strength of selling. But it seemed like our success was the cause of our failure. And solving these problems took more and more of my time and focus. Now I am recovering and making ends meet, but I am just so tired and stressed mentally. I feel like I had no control. Even though I worked 12 hours every day, I cried in front of my parents after thinking of taking my own life one day. I just don't want to be in that dark place again where thinking of suicide made me feel so comfortable and relaxed thinking of suffering would end. Recently, I took some of my savings piled up from my Prava first account and invested in a franchise business that has its own system of operations and usp. I have no knowledge of this industry and yet I felt in research that it had huge potential as I would be the only one carrying this brand in my city. It is currently just two weeks old, but it's doing well. I saw light and hope because I still know that I'm not a bad businessman, that I'm not a failure. Those earnings from the profit first principle saved my sanity and belief in myself. And now I want to get back to studying and learning construction in order to make a system of it. It is the only missing piece of the puzzle in our company's usp. Therefore, I am now focusing on the system. I'm committing to the clockwork method because I want to take back my life.

All right, brother, just thank you for sharing that. It's the challenge with that this person's facing is so common. And there was a time that I too thought the better solution was not to be alive. I actually ran numbers on my own value if I was not on this planet and the math was abhorrently appear that I shouldn't be here. Apparently poorly apparent. I shouldn't be here. And so I can very much relate to this. I email back this person individually and if anyone ever listening is contemplating or even thinking about suicide, please immediately seek assistance, professional assistance. No life is worth losing. And I know the entrepreneurial strains we experience that sometimes that feels like the right out. It's never justified, it's never appropriate. There is help out there and seek it. It's okay if you're going through this, you're not a weirdo, but just get help. So I thank you for. For that person emailing me.

Can I share something?

Yeah. Yeah.

So I don't know if this is a common phrase, but I went through a really dark time a long time ago. And my mom, she doesn't have much to say, but when she does, it's pretty smart. And she said it's a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Oh, wow. Thank you, Jay Bone. Yeah. So it's kind of an awkward transition to go into our little game here. But we have to. I mean, it's the law.

Super awkward.

It's the law. So, yeah. Just everyone to know you are not alone. Now let's have some fun again. Okay. So do we still have you, Darren?

You still have me? Yeah.

All right. This is the game I'm gonna name rattle off three businesses, three concepts. This Is all in the same type of industry. Two of these are legitimate entrepreneurial endeavors. Products that are out there. One of these is a fake. I wrote the description for each one so as to have my tonality so it makes a little more difficult. Your job, Kelsey, Jay, Bonet and Darren is to guess which company is the fake. Okay, we got the rules. All right.

Okay.

First company. It's called the product. It's called Glow in the dark toilet paper. I don't know why it's funny. Late night runs to the toilet can lead to late night runs. Oh, my God. This is a good copy. I just did a Kelsey laugh on that one. Let's try it again. Let's try it again.

Maybe you hang out with me enough, it'll just wear off on you.

Oh, my God. Glow in the dark toilet paper. Late night runs in the toilet can lead to late night runs in the pants. Until now. The new Glow in the dark toilet paper is a beacon for your behind. Oh, I write good coffee during daylight or from the lights in your your bathroom. This special TP will glow all night. Create from. Created from all natural materials, the glow in the dark TP is safe from even the most for the even the most delicate skin. Now available in 2 ply for double the comfort and double the glow. Okay, okay.

Now you need to do a remake of the toilet paper entrepreneur. That's Glow in the dark jacket cover.

Yeah, exactly. Late night runs in the toilet can lead to late night runs in the pants. That's ridiculous. Okay, the next product. Safe entry sign. It's called called the safe entry sign. No one. And these are all bathroom based. Obviously no one wants to enter a bathroom after it's been used. And it's, let's say, particularly odor rich. SES Safe entry sign uses its specialized odor detecting system to notify guests that the room is not ready for comfortable breathing and illuminates a red notice on the outside of the door that sounds stupid. When the odor dissipates, the entry sign illuminates green batteries not included. Audio alarm to notify users that is safe to enter. Only available on the SES 1790 model. Okay, next one. Next one's called the squatty Potty.

That's real.

That's real.

Jeez, that's real. All right. Do I even need to read it then?

No, no, we all know that one.

Next time you need to cop a squat jump on board our new squatty Potty. The specialized pooping stool is made out of high end polyurethane and can Sustain weights up to 350 pounds. If you are a new squatter, the 7 inch is the best place to start. But if you consider yourself an advanced squatter, go with the 9 inch Squatty Potty, which will work best for you. Special note for first time squatty potty poopers. The squatty potty may feel different at first, but the body quickly adjusts and the new healthy way of eliminating quickly becomes second nature. Okay, so it sounds like squatty pie is already off the table. And that is a real product. So let's go. There's two. It's either the glow in the dark toilet paper or the safe entry sign.

I say safe entry sign is fake.

Jay Bonet.

Yeah, you definitely wrote that.

Okay. And Darren, 17, I'm gonna agree with.

The safe entry sign is the. Is the false one.

Okay, you guys nailed it. So the glow in the dark toilet paper is legit. They. I don't know who'd ever use that. The square body is legit. And the safe entry sign. What was the tip off on the safe entry? The.

Like the ultra 1790.

Oh, I should have ditched that part. Okay. I went too deep. Too particular. The audio edition. Okay. I'll improve in the future. Good. Oh, that was fun for me.

You know what I did get for a Christmas gift?

What?

This is a true story. It's a light. The LED light. And you hook it over your toilet bowl and it lights up. And it actually is really awesome because in the middle of night, you want to turn a light on. Yeah, it lights up the bowl.

The bowl all the time. Or just when you open the.

It has a sensor. So when. When the lights go off, it turns on.

Oh, when the lights go off. Oh, that's cool. So. So but you have the lights off all night. So if you have the pot open, it's always on then.

Yeah, it's always on.

So it's like a nightlight in the toilet. Yep. Interesting.

It's cool.

Interesting. Personally, I would just go with a nightlight. Okay.

It's more fun that way.

Oh, we got one more thing right?

Yeah, you got a tip.

All right. Jeremy. Jeremy. What'd you want to call it?

No, I didn't.

Why do you want to call it? So the correct term is called the elevation point. This is the section called elevation point. Jeremy wanted to name it something else. All right, here's the thing. So many people are focused on revenue, and there's a saying that revenue is vanity. Profit, sanity. I want to call bunk on that. Revenue is not vanity. I mean, it is vanity, but revenue really is stress. And I want you to understand this, my friends. The more revenue your business generates, the more stress it puts on your organization, because revenue is an obligation. The more money your business generates, the more you're obligated to deliver to clients. So the more you sell, the more you got to do. That's a stress factor. The balance to this or the relief from stress is profit. So if you want to grow your business revenue, realize you're growing the stress factor in your business, and the only relief is profit. So you need to take your profit first. So don't focus on the vanity sanity thing. That's close. It's really stress and relief. Whoo. That was good. All right, Kels, take us out.

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