[00:00:07.370] - Chris
Welcome back to the Head Heart and Boots Podcast. I'm Chris.
[00:00:10.810] - Brandon
And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lean.
[00:00:17.590] - Chris
Man, I love this industry.
[00:00:21.010] - Chris
Oh, my goodness
[00:00:22.440] - Brandon
Dude, Sometimes...
[00:00:23.490] - Chris
Nobody has any idea what we're talking about before we hit start.
[00:00:28.250] - Brandon
sometimes our conversation that we get into just before we hit go is...
[00:00:33.930] - Chris
Highly inappropriate.
[00:00:35.110] - Brandon
It's amazing.
[00:00:35.950] - Chris
So we won't talk about that, but instead, we're going to get into a show topic today, actually. This was your lead, and I'm excited about it. But before we get into today's show yes, sir. Let's talk about our sponsors, our friends, our partners.
[00:00:49.930] - Brandon
I'm talking about Lyftify. So you just slow your role. Okay. Do it, guys. If you're a consistent listener of the show, I know you've heard some of this before, but the reality of it is that Chris and I were going to work with a sponsor. There's a couple of things that are very important to us. One is there's got to be value for the listener. There's got to be value for the company. Right. Legitimately, it's not just what's in it for us here at Floodlight or the show, but what's in it for you guys as what we feel as our client and Zach's team at Lyftify, they just kind of exemplify all of it. They create real results. They measure it, they monitor it. They report on it to ensure there's no gap between their clients perception of what they're receiving and what they're giving. And it's a resource or service that just has way more value than the cost associated with it. It sounds very utilitarian, but that's a couple of the real key factors and why we believe in Lyftifier and why we continue to promote it. The other thing is just the backing behind the company who the founder is.
[00:01:55.460] - Brandon
Zach is an outstanding entrepreneur. He's a great businessman, and he's brilliant when it comes to this whole SEO marketing fiasco that we all have to engage in to a certain extent. He's created a service that honestly, for cost versus return, there's just no comparison. Pound for pound, it's a great service. They're kicking ass. They're approaching 2020 5% return or participation rate in their reviews. They have a great system where you can respond to all your reviews via a dashboard. So it's simple. Their system automatically posts these five star reviews to your social media platforms. Like, the return is so obvious in our book. It's just, dude, just do it. The cost is just.
[00:02:40.930] - Chris
We're clients, too. We've mentioned that before. But we use Lyftify at Floodlight, and we're getting way more reviews than we were, more reviews in the last three or four months since we implemented than we'd got in the previous two years. And almost every one of our clients have said the same thing on a person.
[00:03:00.860] - Brandon
And the opportunity for you guys is stores where you're doing hundreds, if not thousands of jobs a year. Chris and I are not talking to 1000 people this year. Well, maybe, but I don't know. Anyway, so do yourself a favor, go to lyftify comfloudlife floodlight.
[00:03:17.850] - Chris
So we advertise in C&R. Some of you, I like how you referred to our listeners as clients.
[00:03:22.750] - Brandon
Well, they are.
[00:03:23.730] - Chris
Yeah, they are. You're already clients. Call us when you need something. C&R. So we advertise in C&R, and it's been a great source of lift. One our engaged listeners, all of you, has grown a lot in the last several months since we started advertising in C&R, which obviously to me means a lot of the industry is reading C&R. And from Brandon Ice perspective, everybody we talk to and see Michelle is at Michelle Blevins, the CEO at Chief Editor. I don't know what exactly your title is, but she owns the show. C&R is like the intersection point within our industry. Like all the important stories, all the greatest news. She and her team are scooping all the biggest stories.
[00:04:06.760] - Brandon
They're at everything.
[00:04:07.970] - Chris
They're at everything. She's involved in everything. We ran into her at Core Summit this last week. It was awesome. So she's just got a presence that she's developed and relationships all over the place that's super valuable. And of course, awesome articles. We write some of them and we read a lot of them, too.
[00:04:24.530] - Brandon
It's really exciting by everything.
[00:04:27.750] - Chris
But anyway, if you're not a subscriber yet on C&R, you need to be. I mean, there's no cost. And if you're a company that sells into the restoration space, like we sell services, obviously, we found it to be a really great advertising platform, and we've recommended it to other colleagues and friends who own other companies. They're serving the industry. So if you're selling to this industry, C&R is probably a platform you should be advertising on. So keep that in mind.
[00:04:52.940] - Brandon
Okay, my man. I've had this kind of thing that I've been wrestling with. So obviously some of you know we're in a little bit of a book club with the boys, the Blue Collar nation, our dear friends Eric and Larry. I can't wait to find an excuse to spend more lifetime with those guys. But my point is we're reading a book together, some of us faster than others. Hint, hint. Chris haven't started procrastination called the dichotomy of leadership. And it's a jocko Willink book, it's a sequel, if you will, to his extreme ownership that he put out. And he felt like there were some additional layers of leadership that they needed to unpack and they do a great job. Point of the book, essentially, is this Dichotomy of Leadership is this idea of these balancing requirements and priorities. When we lead people, we can't live in extremes of one end of the pendulum swing or the other. And I think that that's where they kind of came back and dialed in the rest of the color under extreme ownership. So as leaders, we still have to have extreme ownership in the sense of, like Henry Cloud would say, we we get a combination of what we allow or what we create.
[00:05:59.670] - Brandon
And extreme Ownership talks about that literally is, listen, in our personal lives, our relationships, our professional environments, you're going to get a combination of what you allow and what you intentionally put into place, period. Anyways, in the midst of that, Chris and I feel strongly about the fact that when you take on the mantle of leadership by saying yes to a formal leadership title, this is different from influencers. And yeah, we're all leaders. We're all leaders, we're all leading ourselves, some of us have some downlines of some sort anyways, titled leadership, you take on a mantle and a responsibility. And in the military, the term that they use is the burden of command. So it's this idea that as soon as I say yes to a formal leadership position, I take on the responsibility for the decisions that I make and how they impact my team, my people and myself and those around me. The interesting thing, of course, is when we look at stories by like Jacob Willink, for those of you who don't know his ex Navy Seal, he was a platoon commander, I think he ended up actually taking over a larger unit, force, and being the commander of that team.
[00:07:09.820] - Brandon
Rich experience in the special operations environment and spent a lot of time in.
[00:07:14.640] - Chris
Iraq, to my credit, even though I haven't started reading the book, I've probably listened to like 150 episodes of Jocko's.
[00:07:22.210] - Brandon
Show which cover the gambit, right? So anyways, his leadership experience that he brings to the table is vetted in real life war environments, specifically in force, on force environments where there's violence of action, there's real life consequences that reach far beyond the PnL. And yet there's these lessons that we learn in those extreme types of environments that really apply well to business in general. And of course, you and I specifically feel like it applies very well to our industry and the business inside these service sectors. Anyway. So this idea, the burden of command, balancing your decision making, and in conjunction with that, it's the idea of how do we as a leader come to terms with those decisions that we inevitably have to be forced to make? And so, like an example, I think, just to kind of kick this off is think about our employee relationships, right? Like, we talk about it a lot on the show. We recently had an interview with Marcy Richardson from Guarantee. Just brilliant, smart woman. Point is that we are going to be forced to make decisions as leaders. And we have kind of two contexts for these decisions.
[00:08:35.920] - Brandon
We have decisions that are best for the greater team as a whole, the company, the PnL, our sustaining business, and then there's other decisions that the value of the outcome, or the outcome, I guess, has a very specific impact on the individual, right? And sometimes in order for us to continue to make progress towards the goal, towards the mission, or as Jocko would be referring to, to complete the mission, we're going to have to send people to do hard things and hard environments. And that's difficult. And there's going to be some negative circumstances, some negative outcomes that come sometimes from that to include things like sometimes I got to fire a single person for the greater good of the rest of my team. And those aren't easy decisions. There's a dichotomy that we get stuck in there and there's a weight or a burden of command that we have to shoulder. And so I want to talk a little bit about that, because I think one of the big things that we miss out on is you and I are consultants and we work with teams. And one of the things that we find is that nine out of ten teams know what they need to be doing, even if it's not in black and white terms.
[00:09:49.470] - Brandon
They've got at least tribal knowledge on, this is our process, this is what we do, this is how we do it. Yet they do not have consistency and execution. There's a giant gap between what we say and what we actually do. And so accountability comes from this idea of holding people to performance standards, making people do hard things, often in hard environments. Like, that's just part of the job. But if we don't create that accountability, if we don't make the tough decisions, our business suffers for it, right? A mission doesn't get completed if we're afraid to make a difficult decision and then bear the weight of that decision and the outcomes of that decision, sometimes we're going to make right decisions, sometimes we're not. Sometimes we have to sacrifice one to save many. It's not easy, no matter how you slice it.
[00:10:40.970] - Chris
Can I go back? And I want to poke at something you said as you were kind of introducing this topic. You brought up extreme ownership. And I think and you said that it's about making difficult decisions, right? And it's dichotomy of leadership, making difficult decisions and bearing the weight of those choices and dealing with the consequences. But I feel like also, too, from having listened to Jacob for all these years and and read Extreme Ownership, I feel like he would also say and there's some nuance to this but he would also say that as a leader, you're not only responsible for your own decisions, but ultimately you're responsible for the decisions your people make.
[00:11:19.320] - Brandon
100%.
[00:11:20.040] - Chris
Now, of course, there's an aspect of and we were just talking about this with Marcy there comes a point where we've given somebody all the tools, we've equipped them with all the necessary resources they need to be successful. They understand the standards. They're very clear on what's being expected of them, all this kind of stuff. And then ultimately, the employee will make a bad choice. Right. And essentially they're self terminating. Right. If we've provided them all the resources, clarity and objective and mission and all that kind of stuff, and they still choose to make different choices. Well, ultimately, I guess, we're not responsible for that. They're responsible for their own removal from the team. But what I mean is that oftentimes our team makes bad choices in the field. And I think as leaders, certainly I can only speak for myself, I'm not always quick to accept responsibility for my role in that bad decision as a leader. And I feel like having listened to Jocko many, many times, like when there's a mistake made in the mission, it's at least partly, and I don't know if he were sitting here right now, if he would say, no, it's all my responsibility.
[00:12:21.090] - Chris
That error was made in the mission because clearly I wasn't clear enough, I wasn't smart enough in terms of who I may be put in that role. They weren't ready. You know what I mean?
[00:12:31.300] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:12:31.810] - Chris
I think his inclination would be to accept full responsibility for not only his choices, but the decisions and actions and behavior of his downline team. And when you take that level of responsibility, it forces you to take a more global view of your business and how you're leading 100%. Right.
[00:12:52.920] - Brandon
No, I think you tapped into something there. And I think that this is part of what we lean into so often is this idea that you and I just feel very strongly that once you take on a formal leadership role, you've got now this extended possibility to adapt, to learn, to grow, to gain new skills, like areas that were very soft and completely a weakness for you. You're going to have to shore up to a certain extent at minimum, and then likely take that to the next level by putting somebody on your team that can help completely make up for that weakness. But you can't ignore it. You can't just be, this is who I am. I'm an entrepreneur, I'm this, I'm wired this way naturally. You just have to deal with it or learn me or learn to deal with me. And you and I don't agree with that. There's some realities there, but as the leader, you have the burden of adapting.
[00:13:43.090] - Chris
Changing, getting all like if the buck stops with you, everybody, everything stops with you. Right. You're responsible for all of it. If you're going to take hold of the authority and the influence, you're also taking all the responsibility. And it's so easy. I think, and I've fallen into this in different words, in different ways, where you have an employee that makes a bonehead decision, does something in the interest of themselves, or they forget the interest of the team. Right. They're not minding the four PS, like we talked about, whatever, and it can be really easy as a leader sometimes to commiserate with our fellow leaders and be like, Bonehead. This guy's always making these bonehead mistakes. And instead of saying, wait, what does that say about me as their senior leader that they keep making these boneheaded choices? Either one, I've left somebody on the team that's not committed to the team. I've allowed them to stay in place, or where have I failed to equip them and coach them and mentor them? Right? Where am I in this problem versus, oh, yeah, we got this problem employee that somehow we need to get them to get their shit together?
[00:14:49.770] - Chris
Is there maybe some shit I need to get together in order to make sure that person is better equipped?
[00:14:54.920] - Brandon
And it's interesting too, because even Jacob will talk about the fact that there's this demand or need for decentralized leadership. Otherwise, you just no matter what, no matter how great a single person is, they will become a choke point, right. Under this idea of decentralized command. It's this idea that we have people amongst our ranks that can take that message, that mission, that vision, that commander's intent, and they can own a piece of it. Right? Just like in our own businesses, we have this responsibility to equip our downline leaders in such a way that they can be fully integrated and own the outcomes because they've been completely empowered to be successful and to lead those objectives or that element within our business. But I think the thing that we struggle with as leaders is folks will hear a message like this and it just turns into more guilt or weight or coulda shoulda. I need to I need to work on this. I need to adapt to that. And it creates this pressure that we put on ourselves that it almost freezes us in our tracks. Right? And some of us are more susceptible than others.
[00:16:01.860] - Brandon
I mean, we have people in our sphere that god, I can't even imagine the pace they run at. It's unbelievable. And then there are others where life doesn't take a ton of life to rock you a little bit and put you off guard or whatever. But anyway, so this burden of command, what do we do with it? So, first, I feel like there's this principle of recognizing right, wrong or indifferent. It's almost like you can agree to not agree. But the reality of it is that our people show and the performance of our businesses show that as a key leader who's taken on the mantle of a specific form of leadership role, our decision making has a lot of weight. So that being said, what do we do after we recognize I've got this burden of command, I've got this responsibility to often keep in check the health and safety of a single person, their best interest versus the best interest of the team as a whole. So once we recognize that, what do we do with it? How do we manage that burden in a way that doesn't take us out of the game?
[00:17:06.060] - Brandon
It doesn't become a burden that's become so unsurmountable that we ignore it or decide to not be effective in our management of it, our engagement of it. From your experience, you've had the burden of command in many different types of relationships and systems. What did you do? I often watched you have to make some tough decisions. We talk about it. We talk about times when we did it right, plenty of times where it was not done well. But what do you do to manage the emotional weight of the burden of command?
[00:17:41.340] - Chris
Oh, man. Well, let's go back to the context of hiring and firing because that's the cleanest example I think all of us can think about is we've got somebody in our team that is not performing up to the standard or there's an attitude issue where they're creating some kind of toxic environment drama. We talk about how do we know when it's time to fire? We ask ourselves the questions, have I provided this person with clarity about their role, clarity about our expectations and standards? Have I really established clarity? And most of the time, for many of us, the answer is no. We get to that firing conversation. We got the employee file on our desk. We have to have that chat with somebody today. And a lot of times when we go to answer that question, our ego likes to tell a story of, well, they've had every opportunity and blah, blah, blah. But when we really get down to it, did I really take the time, effort and energy to give this person clarity about what I expect from them? Or was it all inferred? Was it all implied, hey, they should know because this is how we run our company.
[00:18:44.500] - Chris
A lot of assumption. I think we're all guilty of that. The other thing is, have I equipped them? Do they have the resources to actually perform at the standard, right? Do they have access to the training, really, or have I just thrown them in a truck? Have I just thrown them in the truck? And are they just had kind of the mercy of whatever the veterans on the team tell them and communicate to them? Do you have a game of telephone really going here that's created the clarity or have we been intentional about it? It's like we can ask those questions if we've given them clarity. We've provided them the resources to be able to live that out. And then have we had some kind of ongoing communication and dialogue when standards aren't met? Like, has there really been a coaching relationship in place where they have truly had the opportunity and the direction to make a course correction or not? And if the answer to those questions is all yes, hey, I've done my part. The times where I've had that awareness, and that intentionality. I can always go home after that conversation and feel just fine about the decision because it's like Marcy said in our podcast we just had with her, some employees just choose to quit.
[00:19:54.810] - Chris
They choose to fire themselves because they're unwilling to meet the standard or they're unwilling to be a part of the team. So I've actually found when all those things are in place, it's much easier to fire deer. Yeah. My ego still gets flared up sometimes. I'll either feel like a failure or I'm caught up in why we had to fire them. And I'm still upset and frustrated with the employee's performance, but it also helps to over 25 years of having employees, I've just found that you can't want it more than they do.
[00:20:24.840] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:20:25.430] - Chris
And I think that's a lot of my heartburn when I'm having to remove somebody from the team is I want them to stay on the team. I want them to figure it out. Most of the time, sometimes personalities are just the wrong fit for the team. So for me, that's been really helpful. And I don't remember where you and I kind of picked up those principles along the way, but when I deploy that and I can really be honest with myself, that helps. That changes it.
[00:20:49.790] - Brandon
That almost feels more to me like a preventative measure right, than a way to deal with which I like. I think you and I try to both kind of just continue to develop our prowess around understanding and creating and establishing leading behaviors versus those lagging indicators. And I think that's an example right there of a one way that we can mitigate the impact and or prevent the impact of that burden is to put things in place that give clarity for both parties around those expectations and our decision making. It's funny because my career in leadership has kind of spanned everything from the military side to this kind of corporate environment. There's something that I always found after spending eight years in the military, it's a little bit like an old pair of shoes. And so when you have other experiences that are similar to that and they draw on some similar experiences, it feels like home. And I've always kind of tried to create that in our work environment, but certainly over the years, especially in this industry, it's probably one of the reasons why I love it so much is that it's dear to me.
[00:21:54.740] - Brandon
Like, the challenge of it, the environments that we're operating in, the conditions, the pace, a lot of it, for certain, you know, to a certain extent reminds me of my time in the infantry. One of the things that I always struggled with is when we would have a cat kind of scenario or storm scenario or not. That long ago in Oregon, we suffered extreme forest fire scenarios that burnt up two of our passes, like tons of damage and lots of work. And my point is that there's been plenty of times where I knew I was running my team literally into the ground. Like there was just a reality that we're going to do some hard things in some shitty environments. And I'm not sure how to communicate to you when the end will come. And there's difficulty in having to lead and command, if you will, in a way that continues to force them to do the hard thing. Because when we're left on our own, it's very easy for us to take the path of least resistance. We use that terminology all the time. And as humans, especially when shit gets difficult, we're going to lean into that path.
[00:23:05.210] - Brandon
When you're tired and you've been grinding freaking eight days a week for umpteen, days, if an opening comes, you're just going to slip into it, most likely. And so as a leader, we just have this burden of, okay, how do I continue to drive the horses? Not give them that out, because knowing that they just can't help but take it. And our clients need us right now. This event is not forever. There's so many big gains to this opportunity that change the health of the company, change the direction we can go. It outfits us with resources that we may not have had access to now. Things opportunities for me to develop and invest into my people. And there's this reality of I'm asking people to stay away from their kids, their families, not be at home, they're not getting as much rest as they should be. And so there are safety concerns I start to worry about. There's just this idea of what is going to be the cost of me driving the team this hard for this period of time. And so that dichotomy there of balancing those two things can be very difficult.
[00:24:07.490] - Brandon
And I often would just have this very uneasy weight that I was carrying as a leader, knowing I was forcing my team to do these things and understanding, dude, they're only people. Like, they're only humans. And I'm going home right now and having really tough conversations with my family because I'm working fucking 70 hours this week. Well, all my people are having that same conversation. And you know how different that conversation looks when you're not the boss? When I go home and tell my wife we have a fairly traditional household, kind of when I go home and say, hey, babe, we're going to have to grind gears for a while, right? We've had many conversations like this in our company now, hey, we're traveling every other week. Is that the goal? No. Do we have to do it right now? Yes. It's tough, but going home and telling my family that as the GM COO founder, whatever the hell your title is, I'm going to have to grind some absurd hours, I'm not going to be very available. Okay, but they get it. There's some context there that says you're the head of the shed.
[00:25:11.650] - Brandon
If things are going to be tough, I understand you need to carry that weight. And be an example. When you're an hourly employee and you go home and tell your partner, dude, I'm going to get really real here. Most of the people on our team are not getting rich because they work for you. Let's fucking think about that for a minute. There's tension in payroll, right? And I don't think we have a role in the industry that outright is about to retire because of their compensation package from your company. All right? If you're a tech on our team, there's no doubt in my mind what you bring home is not setting your partner's hair on fire, okay? There's tension. You're grinding your balls off to get the level of income that you are. And I don't think anybody in your household goes, you're the luckiest person to work at that job and make that hourly rate, if we're honest. So then that same person goes home, talks to their spouse and says, I'm going to be grinding like 70 hours this week. I have no days off for the unforeseen time, and I really don't know how available I'm going to be picking.
[00:26:11.930] - Chris
Up the kids all participating in anything.
[00:26:15.210] - Brandon
Grocery shopping, food, prep, house cleaning, house animals, family endeavors. What happens? What is that individual then pressing down on the rest of their family to meet that demand? That is the real burden of command, if we give a shit. And we should, because when we, as a key leader, are making decisions for the good of the team, good for the strategy, and we're deploying humans to execute on that strategy, the burden of command is the fact that you are making decisions that force them to be in compromised positions. Period. It just is part of the game. And so if we're really conscientious about that, we're going to have to develop some skill sets around it. I'm trying to keep this in some kind of like categorical direction, I guess. But first, recognize, guys, we have the burden as levers of the burden of command. As long as our head is in the right space, you better have the burden of command because the weight of your decisions is big, it's heavy, and it means a whole lot more than just the nuts and bolts of your PnL. So then when we recognize that there's a couple of things that we have to do, one is I think you can be more preventative in the way that you set the table for your team and your employees that will hopefully help prevent you from having to be in these kind of situations more than you need to.
[00:27:38.530] - Brandon
But inevitably something's going to happen, an environment, an event, something where we force our teams to be uncomfortable and do hard things. And when that begins to happen, what do. We do? How do we begin communicating and leading our team? That doesn't remove the responsibility of creating the win and forcing the team to do hard things, yet remembering the humanity and doing it in a way that we still respect each other when that shit is over. Because nothing is forever, right? You want to go make hay while you can? I get it. Big event cat event hurricane. Well, I don't fucking care. Whatever the thing is, that's a short term piece in the entire history of your company.
[00:28:21.020] - Chris
Yeah, we come back home.
[00:28:21.890] - Brandon
Eventually, we come back home. That thing is over and you are either left with a burning rubble or you're left with a team that's more loyal and more dedicated to you than they ever were because you led the right way when shit was hard.
[00:28:35.650] - Chris
Hey, friends.
[00:28:36.420] - Brandon
Hey listeners.
[00:28:37.210] - Chris
We're doing something a little bit different with our ads. So you've been accustomed to hearing some ads with our favorite partners and companies in the industry. Now we actually have a product page, a partners page on our website. So floodlightgrp. Compartners. I want to give you a quick rundown, though, of the people that we're partnering with and we believe in as really go to resources in the industry. The first one is restoration erp.com, right? Erps are an important part of our sales process, our customer development process. And why reinvent the wheel? The restoration ERP platform is awesome. It can be customized to your business, branding and all that kind of stuff and has all the components to really create a value add for your commercial client. Accelerate job management software. Everybody needs job management software and we have just found Accelerate. Not only is their team just really great to work with, when they get ideas from customers, they throw it into the product roadmap and they implement it. They're really advocating for the contractor and trying to create a software solution that works for them. Actionable insights. We recommend actionable insights all the time, right?
[00:29:40.280] - Chris
All of us as restoration operators are looking for turnkey resources and training solutions that we can take our team to the next level and AI, when it comes to estimating and matterport and a lot of the other essential tools we're using, they're an awesome resource and they're always coming out with new, great stuff.
[00:29:58.540] - Brandon
Super influential in the industry. Super Tech University. Soft skills development training for your technicians, for your frontline personnel. Let's face it, frontline personnel are the heartbeat of our company. They are the ones that connect with our clients and create the customer experience. There's no better investment than investing in the ability for those individuals to represent themselves, our clients and our brands well. So super. Tech University. Surety. They essentially are cutting down this life cycle between delivering service and then getting paid, stepping in, removing the middleman in terms of mortgage companies, refining that pipeline, making sure that there's at least friction as possible so we can go out and do a great job, and then our businesses don't suffer while we're waiting to get paid. The money's coming, and it's coming quickly. And then the last one, guys, is Liftify is kind of a newer entry to the industry. They're driving Google reviews. So they're a turnkey partner that we can literally go out, provide a great customer experience, hand that name off to our trusted partner in Liftify and have them go chase that Google Review 25%.
[00:31:03.880] - Chris
Conversion rate, which is industry wide. People tend to average 5% of the people you ask for review actually convert lift. If I bump that to 25. We were such a big believer. We are a customer, and they've been generating all of our floodlight reviews, and in a matter of a week and a half or up to, I don't know, close to 15 reviews in just a short period of time.
[00:31:21.600] - Brandon
And I think people just underestimate what happens organically with your SEO search activity when you're getting these new and active five star reviews from our clients. And we just can't let the pedal up on that because of the effect on our businesses long term.
[00:31:35.080] - Chris
Big deal. So check it out. Check out our partners page. Do business with them. You won't regret it. We're confident in that floodlightgrp compartners.
[00:31:43.870] - Brandon
Thanks, guys. So I think the opportunity here maybe is to unpack some of those behaviors that we've seen, and others at times, maybe you and I have used the right methodology, but what are some of those standards that we watch people deploy so that they manage the burden of command well, right? Yeah.
[00:32:06.630] - Chris
Well, one of the first things that comes to mind is something I keep coming back to Marcy Richardson, because we just had a really cool show with her and met her last couple of weeks ago. She was saying that because they do a lot of cat work down in the Gulf, and it's something that Shaun folks and her have provided their team is when they have a cat team that goes out on site, they're gone for sometimes months. They do two things, but they have a rotation that the employees can count on. And I don't remember if she said what it was like three weeks on, one week off, but they have a it's fixed. It is a fixed rotation similar to what somebody might experience in the military.
[00:32:45.320] - Brandon
Correct.
[00:32:45.510] - Chris
Right. They rotate out, get home, get re acclimated, and then come back to work. So that's one thing they do. And then when somebody is out on cat, one of the things she mentioned was that they have a landscaping service.
[00:32:59.550] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:33:00.110] - Chris
And that landscaping service trims that person's lawn yep. While they're on deployment, so to speak, on in a cat zone.
[00:33:07.110] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:33:07.630] - Chris
And I thought, man, that is that's cool. And and and you say, well, that's that's really novel. You know, you're spending that $40 a week or something to have somebody's lawn mode. But but it's more about that headspace. It's more about occupying that headspace as a leader and saying, hey, it's acknowledging there's a real cost here. Now, me as a general manager making the general manager money or as an owner making profits, it's easy for me to not even think about because I already pay somebody maybe to take care of my lawn because I can afford to. Right?
[00:33:39.560] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:33:40.340] - Chris
But it's really considering our team and their situation and their world and it's like, okay, when dad's gone or mom's gone on this thing, what are all the things that are impacted in their home? Because we're not paying their family. Their family isn't on our payroll. It's that one person. No one else is getting paid for this additional hardship. Right.
[00:34:03.570] - Brandon
So how do we remove some interesting context to remember? Yeah.
[00:34:07.580] - Chris
Because when you think about it, if you're the owner of the company, your spouse or your kids may not be working in the business, but they're getting paid. Right. That's hard. You get everything that's left over and that's big or small or whatever it is. But at the end of the day, your family is supporting you and owning your company or whatever, being a senior executive, they're winning along with you. But for our front line people, they don't necessarily enjoy that same upside. The family doesn't get to enjoy a lot of the perks of owning a company that come along eventually. And so what is real life like for them when they're gone for three, four weeks at a time or more? Because there's a lot of companies that aren't as intentional about that whole cat deployment.
[00:34:46.950] - Brandon
Right.
[00:34:47.210] - Chris
And people just leave and they're gone. Maybe they get a two day long weekend to fly back home and blah, blah, blah, and then they're back in the trench.
[00:34:55.230] - Brandon
And I think what I really like about those examples, again, you can find other ways to mimic the outcome of these examples. Right. That's really what's important here is it's not necessarily that it was the lawn getting mode. What is that? It's a it's showing that you recognize that there are difficulties beyond just working hard because you're a person, the whole person has a lot more to them than just their hours, their logging. I think you also show the family right. Because this is where engagement, support and longevity come from. You're not going to keep employees if they're at odds with their spouse about their employment period. You're just not going to fucking win that fight over an extended period of time. So one of the things that you're saying right, in this particular situation is, hey, we value you family and we understand you're making sacrifices because we're asking your partner, your spouse, to do this to help us. Right. I think the other thing that you do is you take a tangible, measurable, concrete step towards showing I will help you in this. I'm meeting you here because we still have to make hard decisions.
[00:36:04.560] - Brandon
We still have to have these high level of expectations. We still have to have somebody do something that's inconvenient and difficult, but we're marrying that with a concrete step of saying we recognize it and here's what we're trying to do to help. And I think that's massive, and I think there's all sorts of ways for us to build that into our business when we're asking people to do hard things. Right? Yeah.
[00:36:29.770] - Chris
The other piece, too, and jock has talked about this a whole bunch of times when he was deployed. We talk about structure of leadership. Right. As everybody has ten people at maximum, we can really only affect an influence and be responsible for ten people. Right. So one of the things he talks about is with his ten, when they're on deployment, he's making it a point he takes it upon himself to maintain a connection with the spouses, to talk with them and how are you doing? And of course, within the military, there's other resources for spouses and families that have soldiers on deployment. And he saw that as part of his responsibility to make sure that they were getting and accessing the resources they needed and just to see, how are you doing that's, right. And to reassure them, hey, I'm doing everything I can to take care of your loved one and just whatever. Let me know if you need anything. And him taking responsibility for those family relationships. And it sounds like, too, like Marcy was kind of indicating a similar level of care. Why can't we? If you're a company that does storm travel or a lot of cat large lost work, is there any reason why you can't have a champion on the team that's reaching out to families and checking in on folks?
[00:37:44.360] - Brandon
100%?
[00:37:45.110] - Chris
Nine times out of ten, they're probably going to be okay. But that one week where you have this mom with three young kids, dad's been gone for nine days straight, or comes home and sleeps and showers and heads back into their rig. Maybe they just need somebody to grab them a bag of groceries. Because they're absolutely at their wits end trying to get the kids everywhere, and they don't have any spousal support for the last week and a half.
[00:38:08.440] - Brandon
Right.
[00:38:08.920] - Chris
And a $200 batch of groceries.
[00:38:11.950] - Brandon
Everything changes.
[00:38:12.990] - Chris
Everything. And the emotional value of that to that mom.
[00:38:17.170] - Brandon
And I think the value for something like this, guys, is this idea. It's not just cat environments. It's not just being deployed. It's also how many of us are businesses growing in such a way that today the amount of volume and work that we're managing looks significantly different than it did call it 120 days ago. Well, there's that burden, right? It takes us time to recruit. It takes us time to ramp up and train. Like, sometimes, especially if you're just fortunate and you're really experiencing a boom in your business. We're going to be on the outer limits of our current capacity from a labor force perspective. And that means we can't push the stop button because then we'll lose our momentum. It means we're going to kind of be asking our people to perform just like they would in a cat environment. So that's when these decisions and these opportunities can come into play as well right here at home base. And I really love that idea. It's almost like a courtesy check, like just making sure that family is doing all right. And I know some of you going, but yeah, we have a massive team, and it's so hard to keep contact with each one of our team members.
[00:39:25.320] - Brandon
It's like, that's a bullshit excuse because the reality of it is, don't you have departments? Don't you have locations? Don't you have branches? Don't you have individual teams? Of course you do. Break that shit down and assign somebody to that group that can be responsible for that way. Don't use my team as big as an excuse to not take care of your people. Another thing I think about is how do we communicate through it? So I think these are some great tangible ideas. I think it's enough to get somebody started, just to think outside of the box. What are tangible ways that I can show my team? I recognize the hardship we're asking them to bear, yet we can't compromise. Like, this is something that we have to do as a team right now. So showing tangible ways of how you can win with them and honor them and respect them and help them take care of these things that distract them from the mission. But they're realities. They're realities. We all have some way to problem solve. I think the other thing is just this ongoing communication. Here's something that I saw in leaders before me, and it's something that I adopted and that was I got very good maybe good is not the right word.
[00:40:30.400] - Brandon
I got very intentional about recognizing out loud the shitty part of what I'm asking people to do. And I think what I see a lot of leaders do is explain it. They downplay it, they trivialize it. They do the whole persona of, well, I work 90 hours a week. I've got my grip on all the details, on all things at all times. Well, yeah, I hear you, but you're kind of being a pussy. I don't know if I might have to bleep that one up, right? Like, it's this it's this very threatening, dismissive, dismissive, downplaying, discrediting way to communicate. Or it's the straight up ignoring the elephant in the room. They just don't want to verbalize the fact that this shit is hard right now. Those are the two absolute worst versions of leadership that I've seen executed when the need and the demand is high because they're not sustainable. What you end up doing. One is everybody thinks that you're disconnected if you ignore it because everyone else in the work environment understands shit ain't the same right now. Or if you're that person that's just in quotes so much bigger, better and faster than everyone else on your team.
[00:41:47.330] - Brandon
And every time they come to you with a real life challenge, it's affecting their performance or their inability to meet the expectation. If we shove that down and threat and tell them basically that they're failing because they're just not making it enough of a priority, you're going to lose amazing people from their team. They're only going to accept that for so long. And in today's hiring market, there's plenty of companies that got their shit together. There's plenty. And they will scoop that person up in a heartbeat. And the first time that they're shown value and that they see proof that they understand that sometimes things are difficult and yet we still need them to continue to march forward. They're going to thrive in that environment and that team will continue to kick your fucking ass because they got all the A players that you grinded right off your roster. Kind of got into a thing there. But I think that's important. So part of what I learned to do over time was just call the elephant out in the room. I did this a lot in the military, man. And I will tell you it really changed the shape of the kind of relationship that I have with my team.
[00:42:53.500] - Brandon
So even as a team leader, we would get command, we would get assigned missions, strategies, training, events, right? All these things. And I took it upon myself to consistently say, hey guys, I recognize this is a shitty deal. This is a tough scenario. This is a burden on an already busy schedule. This is whatever. It's going to be tough. However, I think it's going to take us about three weeks. We're going to do what we can to share the load and I believe we can make it. We can get through this. It's not going to be easy. Fucking sucks, but we're going to make it happen. Right? Hurrah. Good. All right. And everybody's in that looked so different in the way that they received it and responded to it than the guy that was just totally stuck on command and control. Fucking do it. Suck it up. Hurrah. There is a difference in the loyalty. There's a difference in the engagement. There's a difference in the sustainability of it. Like when we just put our head down and lie to ourselves and ignore the elephant in the room. We can only do that for so long because technically our soul knows there's no end in sight.
[00:44:02.680] - Brandon
Nobody's communicated to me. One more step. Nobody communicated to me. We just got to do it for this long. Nobody communicated to me. There was an end in sight. So that I could adjust and keep my mind frame correct.
[00:44:15.470] - Chris
And the other issues, when we make it an elephant in the room and we don't talk about just how hard it is. And the reality of the situation is people stop trusting us 100%. They stop trusting us. They stop respecting us because they just know in their guts that they're getting shined on. And it also creates a lot of division and drama within the team completely because people feel like, well, I can't even talk about the challenges I'm facing because I'm going to get met with just get your shit together and suck it up. There isn't an environment where people can be honest with each other. You and I have talked about this in a lot of different contexts of the business. It's same in customer experience, customer service, service, delivery in our industry, very challenging, especially for those companies that do recon, right? And we've talked about this before. Like when we're conscientious about letting the customer know what parts are going to be difficult. We talk a lot about the silent phase when we're working out scope and stuff with the carrier and whatnot. It's really frustrating for the customer not to know what's going on.
[00:45:27.990] - Chris
But if we tell them up front, hey, listen, there's going to be this weird pause break where it's going to feel like nothing's happening on your job. I promise you. We're just experiencing it's going to be really frustrating. When the hell are they going to get in here and start doing some shit, right? When we articulate the frustrating points we know are going to happen to the customer when it happens, this is what you're talking about, right? There is so much less emotional reaction from the customer. And that is true for all of us. I just went through my own water damage loss. I talked about it a shit ton on the podcast. And part of my frustration and angst is just that there was very poor expectation setting. But when we're just really clear about what's true, we're just talking about telling the truth to our people and ourselves. It's a big part of it. Most of us can adapt to what's true. I think. So we'll get through it. Yeah.
[00:46:20.970] - Brandon
Here's another tool, I think, to layer on here. I really think this is probably the superpower and I'm still figuring this out. It's probably a journey I'm going to take for the rest of my life. I'm honest with myself and that is just getting better at leading through questions. One of the things that we've talked about this before, but wisdom, man, those people who I just admire, sometimes it's hard to put your finger on it. Like, what is it exactly that makes you just respect and admire that person? And one of the things that I've seen in those people that I almost just put on a whole new level is great at asking questions and like their knee jerk response is to ask a question. Their immediate response is to ask a question. And I think about that in terms of this relationship with the burden of command is part of ultimately what we have to do. Again, the principle is we're asking people to do hard things. We're asking them to perform at a level that's not congruent with the masses, right? Where it's hard to circumstances all the things well then when they can't or when they look as if they are potentially failing to meet the standard, we have to ask questions.
[00:47:30.590] - Brandon
Like when someone comes to me and I've identified they haven't executed on something that I've asked them to execute on and they give that knee jerk response about time as an example because this is what we hear all the time. I didn't have time. I didn't have time to work on that this week and we lose our mind and we start making assumptions. But what if we asked questions first? What if in conjunction with gathering our data so that we're prepared for the conversation? What if we also just came in prepped to learn something? Learn something about the circumstances, learn something about our person's character, learn something about their life and the complexity that makes them a whole person. What if we showed up ready to ask questions so that we can dig into the details? Because here's what I see happened more times than not. That person's excuse and quotes that they gave you for them was real. It had real implications to their performance. Whether it was partly in their head or not is irrelevant. Their perception was that thing prevented X from being able to get completed. Isn't the real thing that we're trying to do there then, is teach them ways to overcome a similar experience in the future.
[00:48:50.410] - Brandon
Grinding them down, belittling their experiences, or proving to them in your story how much harder it's been for you and you overcame it is not the fucking answer. Ask them questions and find out what is going on in their head or their personal circumstances that created that failure. Because that's what we're going to teach on. That's where we're going to make the connection with our person and equip them potentially. Or coach and consult them through adapting so that they're better and better equipped for the next opportunity. You're not going to get that if you immediately knee jerk off of assumption or again you come in guns ablaze them because you're so much bigger, better and faster than they are. It's amazing when you learn what is hindering your people's performance. Because what you often find out is it's not that they're a C plus player, they're an A plus player. They just don't got the equipment yet. They're still in their developmental journey just like all of us are. And when we can ask those questions in hard times, it gives us the ability to coach and mentor them through skill sets that they can adapt and use next time.
[00:49:55.010] - Brandon
Right.
[00:49:55.890] - Chris
I'm thinking of some of those questions, right? Like, what if when somebody fails to meet expectation, we started from a genuinely curious position of what got in the way? What got in the way? And really listening for Jim Deathmer talks about this, and I just love it because it feels like the only way to get good at this. He said, when somebody gives you feedback, an employee gives you feedback, a partner gives you feedback. Instead of starting from the place of, is this feedback true or relevant? Like starting with that, filter it's instead disciplining ourselves to ask, how is what they're saying true? How is this true, what they're telling me? And hunting for the truth and the nuggets in it, rather than hunting for a reason to discredit or blow off their feedback. And so it's like somebody fails to meet performance standard or fails to complete a project or some other timely thing, and we say, well, what got in the way? And really being curious and listening for those things that maybe you can influence and have an effect on so that that thing isn't in the way next time. Or like I think of another question that comes to my mind is what would need to change this next week in order for you to be able to huge complete that and really be curious, what are they going to say?
[00:51:18.220] - Chris
Because they may have the answer to six other people on your team that missed the expectation as well, and then we can fix that and they're equipped with what they need in order to accomplish that. Right. But it's so easy, especially when we did it. What the hell is your problem? Yeah, I did that thing. Now, for context, though, how often are we talking about an achievement we had ten years ago when the company was twelve people and we had three jobs a day coming in?
[00:51:51.000] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:51:51.380] - Chris
Versus now we have 25 jobs a day. You know what I'm saying? Like, the context is different, but we just stripped that out. We're like, I did it. Why can't you do it?
[00:51:58.570] - Brandon
Or even the responsibility to the carriers and our relationship.
[00:52:01.940] - Chris
Oh my gosh, everything's changed.
[00:52:03.280] - Brandon
Yeah. When I was a right and run, you know, estimator project manager, like, I was a grinder, man. I put my time in, I could manage a lot of revenue. But if I'm honest with myself, the level of competency, the level of communication, the level of need that the carrier relationship and the client relationship, they're adapting, they're increasing. You mix in TPAS all the things. So now the burden of these roles, if I'm honest, is more complicated in many ways than it was when I held the same role ten years ago, or whatever it may be. But I think more importantly, the reason I think this concept is so important for us to wrestle with is that at the end of the day, how good are you at learning and adapting by somebody telling you do better versus actually giving you a concrete solution to learn?
[00:52:49.530] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:52:50.360] - Brandon
Like, ask ourselves that question. If a person is put into two circumstances and we're banking on which one will produce the outcome we're looking for, how many of you would bet on the do better versus actually providing tools, resources, and opportunities to get better? Yeah. And get the outcome you want, which one which one would you put your money on? Well, I'm putting my money on the one that comes with some concrete solutions, not the fucking do better. So ultimately, what we choose to do in terms of managing the burden of command when we are directing people to do hard things, if our responses do better, instead of asking questions and then providing some solutions, some input, some coaching on what kind of tools or opportunities we have to deploy do the math. Right? Do the math. Okay, dude. A little preachy on this one, dude. But I think it's relevant. It's really relevant. Relevant. And guys, like, with anything we talk about, do not hear us accusing.
[00:53:52.730] - Chris
In a lot of ways, it's funny. This is a form of self reflection for you and I. Man I'm recounting. As we cycle through most of these episodes, we're reflecting on our own behaviors, some of which were even recent.
[00:54:07.390] - Brandon
A lot of this is totally current. Guys, we have a team. We have a team that's all over the place. One of our personnel is not even in the US. And I have expectations. We are a growing company. We have to move quickly on our feet. We have to be nimble right now. We all have to do more things than we've got time to do. That's just the name of the game. And I have to be good at balancing that burden of command and asking my team questions so that I can give them tools to increase their efficiency. Dude, we have creatives right on our team, guys. If you've led creatives, it's one of the most challenging things I've ever had the honor and opportunity to do. It is growing me. It's stretching me. Because creatives don't operate the same way that US. Utilitarian operational drivers do. It's a different playbook. It's a different set of circumstances.
[00:55:01.750] - Chris
I can't tell if you're talking about me or our actual creative team.
[00:55:06.230] - Brandon
Yes. The answer is yes. Chris so there's reality, right, where if I just throw down the gauntlet and I'm like, do better, I'm not going to get, okay, we beat that one up. Okay, guys, thanks for hanging out with us on this one. Really quick recap. So there's a reality when we take on the mantle of a formal leadership position, start a business, become a GM, you name it, you will begin to balance this weight, or what they call the burden of. Command. And in that you're going to have the responsibility to drive and coach and lead your team to do hard things and hard environments and often not supported to the extent that we would like to be supported. That's just the reality of the hard parts about business. So when we do that, there's a couple of things that we have to do. One is we have to have a grasp on the fact that we are asking humans to do hard things. And it's not just them that's impacted by that decision, it's our company as a whole. And just as importantly, it's their sphere of influence, it's their families, their friends, their commitments outside of your brand that are affected by it.
[00:56:12.360] - Brandon
And so we have to deploy tools that will equip us to lead folks through that successfully. One of those things being don't be afraid to communicate the reality of how hard shit is going to be. Don't be afraid to proactively. Prepare and manage the team to deal with those hard circumstances. Create rotations, create ways for us to create an end in sight so that we can coach and tell our team that we're almost there. We're almost there, right? And then this last piece is don't lord over your team to push the performance. Don't put them down. Don't try to compare their experience to your experience. Don't bring the I'm bigger, better, faster, so do better. I'm going to come ask questions. I'm going to find out what it is specifically that's preventing my team member from being successful in this environment. And then I'm going to offer some real concrete solutions and coaching on how to help them adapt so that they can be better next time. Thanks for hanging out with us.
[00:57:15.630] - Chris
That's good, man. Listen, if you like what we're putting out, if this stuff connects with you, it's valuable. We get text messages from folks, we love that, it's fun. But the best way you can thank us is by sharing the Head, Heart and Boots podcast. Tell your friends about it. Check out our website. Obviously, if we can support you with some one on one consulting or project based consulting coaching work or you want us to come out and do an onsite leadership training or commercial sales master course for your teams that's certainly a way that we'd love to work with you, but we appreciate your listenership and would covet any sharing of the Headhart Booth podcast that you're motivated to do.
[00:57:57.710] - Brandon
Oh, by the way, so we have new shirts, hot off the press, ready to go, new stickers on the way.
[00:58:06.730] - Chris
Awesome.
[00:58:07.450] - Brandon
We have some new stickers. What are we looking at here? So today is the first 2nd. Today is the 2 march. So throughout the month of March, what I'm intending to do is if you guys leave us a review, obviously a five star by the way, just hand in. If you leave us a five star review, on any of the platforms or on Google, we will put your name in a drawing, and we'll be issuing out a few shirts this month. At the end of the month, I think, April, you're going to get a shirt. You get a shirt.
[00:58:37.410] - Chris
Oh, my God.
[00:58:38.130] - Brandon
I'm no.
[00:58:39.970] - Chris
What they're going to do to our PnL this month.
[00:58:41.740] - Brandon
Yeah, that's right. We'll have to identify, like, how many we're going to give out once we get some folks starting to throw the reviews in there, but that's what we're going to do. And we'll probably run that off and on throughout the rest of the year. And I love this industry shirt. So if you guys haven't seen that, they're super rad.
[00:58:59.020] - Chris
They're fun. Credit to Jana for the awesome design, and the stickers are nothing to they're super fun.
[00:59:05.280] - Brandon
They're super swaggy. Okay, good. Thanks. We'll see you next time. Bye. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart and Booth.
[00:59:14.990] - Chris
And if you're enjoying the show or you love this episode, please hit follow. Formally known as subscribe. Write us a review or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.
