[00:00:07.370] - Chris
Welcome back to the Head Heart and Boots Podcast. I'm Chris.
[00:00:10.890] - Brandon
And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead.
[00:00:17.650] - Chris
Man, I love this industry.
[00:00:20.930] - Brandon
What's up, my bro?
[00:00:22.150] - Chris
I rode my bike to work today.
[00:00:23.680] - Brandon
Oh, man. You know what I just realized? Then we'll get back to your bike. You and I went through a stent there where everything was bruh. B-R-U-H BR. What drove that?
[00:00:31.760] - Chris
I think it was my boys. Oh, is that a my boys are like, in fact, my 15 year old. It's bruh.
[00:00:37.920] - Brandon
You know what? That totally makes sense. Because when we went to the beach, our families a couple of weeks ago or a week ago or whatever, even.
[00:00:44.660] - Chris
Cara was saying, yeah, because she called.
[00:00:47.620] - Brandon
You out on something. She's like, Yo, bruh.
[00:00:49.450] - Chris
Instead of correcting the kids, we just like, Whatever. Roll with it. Yeah. The very first time my boy was like, Bruh, he kind of did it. Like, he's irritated by something I did. He's like, Bruh, don't give me that, or something. Like, he was just being kind of snappy. And internally, I'm like, dude, I'm not your bra. That's what I felt.
[00:01:07.260] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:01:07.700] - Chris
And then I was just like, okay, whatever.
[00:01:09.540] - Brandon
That's just my ego.
[00:01:10.810] - Chris
Sure he wants to be bra. Okay, I got a bra. So it's like, all the time at our house right now. That's just the stage of things.
[00:01:17.920] - Brandon
I love it. It's freaking crap. All right, let's get into this, man. Guys, before we get rolling into today's topic, we're going to be talking about this concept of keeping short accounts. I'm going to let Chris open it up. Before we jump into that, though, I want to just kind of talk through a couple of our premier sponsors, the folks that help us feed the machine so that we can continue to do this. Answer Force guys have probably last couple of episodes. You're like, who is this Answer Force team that is now popping up on the radar? And we're really excited about that partnership. They are actually kind of their regional offices here in the Pacific Northwest, so that's always kind of fun. But essentially it's a call taking partner. I'm sure they have a better way to say that, but in my mind, this is how it works, right, is what happens. Storm season, cat events, lunches, after hours calls, right? There's just this rhythm of we have an opportunity to wow our customer when they first make contact with us. A lot of times we try to control all of that in house, and sometimes we do that really well, and at times we get stressed.
[00:02:21.140] - Brandon
The system gets strained because of real world events, and then we struggle to keep that experience consistent with Answer Force, they literally are going to customize it. They're designed specifically to be working within our industry. They understand how to partner with restoration companies, they customize the call, taking the questions. They can even go as far as integrating in our CRMs. There's some details behind that that answer force is more equipped to talk about. The point is, these guys are a bolt on partner, and it's pay as needed, pay as you use it. There's not a more flexible option to create that consistency. And one of the ways that I thought about this is if there are things that burn our team's commitment out, like after hours calls or whatever, we just get inundated with flow, call flow. And our teams then begin losing some administratively productivity or administrative production guys. Partner with these guys, use them as needed, flex to your needs, and these guys can be a really powerful partner to help you take those calls in and really get that client started on the right foot.
[00:03:27.030] - Chris
Yeah, that wasn't shorter, but it was really good.
[00:03:30.200] - Brandon
I know, but it was really good.
[00:03:31.190] - Chris
No, you get excited to talk.
[00:03:33.300] - Brandon
That's okay.
[00:03:33.890] - Chris
They're new. We're going to kind of unpack it for a little while. Liftify.com, you know how much we love these guys. You need Google reviews for your business, like, period.
[00:03:43.180] - Brandon
It's not even a discussion.
[00:03:44.320] - Chris
And Brandon and I have yet to see a team actually, there's one team that was doing pretty radic Google reviews. But here's a way to think about it, of how good you're doing and whether you need liftify or not. Let's say you do 1000 jobs a year. Some of you are like, we do 3000. Okay, whatever. You do 1000 jobs a year, if you are doing it well, you should be adding 200 plus reviews, google reviews every year to your Google business profile.
[00:04:12.100] - Brandon
100%.
[00:04:12.980] - Chris
If that's not what you're doing, then you should hire Liftify, because they will help get you to that standard really fast. And we've seen it over and over and over and over again. They're targeting 20% to 25% conversion. And you'll hear, if you listen to Zach in previous podcasts, that he's serious about that. If they're not seeing that in a particular account, they bring it up at a weekly meeting. Kind of like our production meetings.
[00:04:35.340] - Brandon
That's right.
[00:04:35.690] - Chris
And they're like, hey, what's the deal? Conversion is not what we want to see it be. And they troubleshoot it's really cool. So Google reviews. Liftify. Liftfy combloodlife. There's some kind of deal there that sweetens the pot.
[00:04:46.860] - Brandon
That's right.
[00:04:47.290] - Chris
And then finally CNR. CNR magazine. Michelle and her team, I mean, they have all the industry content, right? They get all the scoops of all the most interesting latest stories. I've mentioned this before. I was somebody who just sort of glanced on. I wasn't paying attention to the CNR platform. And then once we met Michelle, I just got kind of turned on to who she was and what she was trying to do with the company. And I started opening the CNR emails, and I'm like, there's a lot of value. That's free, right? So subscribe to the site, get the emails, actually open the emails. Right. They are worthwhile. Michelle doesn't waste your time. They're content pros anyway.
[00:05:28.220] - Brandon
That's committed.
[00:05:28.880] - Chris
That's all I have to say. If you're not following CNR, you should be.
[00:05:31.680] - Brandon
All right, dude. So this keeping short accounts, I feel like that could go in 50 different directions.
[00:05:36.960] - Chris
I think it's a biblical concept. Now, whether it started there or it's mirrored in other religious texts or whatever, who knows? But I think I learned this in Sunday school. This kind of follows one of those principles of everything you need to know in life, you learn in kindergarten or whatever.
[00:05:50.670] - Brandon
Wow, I wished I would have paid more attention.
[00:05:52.710] - Chris
I know. Where am I going with that? Well, this is something you and I have talked a lot about lately. I think there's a lot of directions we can go with this. Most recently, I've been thinking about this relative to my marriage. This came up on that podcast with I almost couldn't remember how to pronounce podcast. That podcast we had with Zach from Liftify, right. Where he was talking about this weekly EOS Pulse meeting that he does with his wife, kind of similar to an L Ten meeting you do with your team at work or whatever. And it reminded me of my friend Mark Boyd. I think I talked about it somewhere. Maybe it was the Friday live. There you go. My friend Mark Boyd shout out, who told me about a CEO meeting that he did with his wife on Sundays. I had that conversation with him like, five or six months ago. Maybe we had lunch and told me about that. Did I implement it? No. And yet so when Zach brought that up, I'm like, I really need to implement that. And then over the last several days, because Kara and I were going in different directions this weekend, so we couldn't implement on Sunday, I've just been mulling over, I think, the value of that relative to my marriage, of there's something my wife and I have, I think, a pretty good relationship.
[00:07:00.950] - Chris
When I hear about what other people's marriages are like, my ego really loves to think, okay, I got a little bit more of a handle than that. We're very communicative. Like, this morning, we get up most mornings together, and we have coffee and we talk about real things, and yet there are some minefields that over the course of 21 years of marriage, we brought some landmines into the marriage and we've developed our own set of landmines. And I think everybody can relate to that. There's just some areas of conversation in life that can be a little explosive. And what it looks like after 21 years of marriage is one of us will start to ask a question, and the other knows where that question is going and immediately has a reaction to it. Even if we don't want to. We've developed a level of communication around all of these subjects where we both want to be better. We don't want to have the natural reactions we do, but we still do. We're kind of in that stage, and hopefully somebody can relate to that, where it's like, man, we got these minefields. We're learning how to navigate them.
[00:08:02.590] - Chris
But where I see the value when it comes back to short accounts, I think there's something valuable about agreeing to a cadence of conversation about those things rather than either person having to bring it up on kind of a complaint basis. Does that make sense?
[00:08:19.140] - Brandon
What I'm hearing you say is establishing a framework so maybe some of these harder conversations take place yeah.
[00:08:25.410] - Chris
So that they can be planned. We can plan to have a cadence of and I'll just spell it out. I mean, sex, money, how we're parenting our kids, what's going on with the kids, because I don't think it has to all be like heart level stuff, but I think it creates a placeholder for these different categories.
[00:08:44.090] - Brandon
Well, I'd say, too, these principles apply to our businesses 100%, to our teams.
[00:08:49.170] - Chris
Well, we probably aren't going to talk about sex. Typically.
[00:08:51.590] - Brandon
That is fair. We'll probably stay away from that particular item. I was thinking more the just that cadence. Right. Principle. The cadence. Yeah, don't talk about sex.
[00:09:02.150] - Chris
That's always bad.
[00:09:03.120] - Brandon
HR.
[00:09:04.030] - Chris
Yeah, not HR appropriate. But know that there is something actually really important there. There's a really important distinction and value in just scheduling the plan to talk about that. And of course, we have analogues in our business, right. Leadership meetings. That's one of the things that that's for, is that we're hitting on these different areas of the business on a regular basis. But I think this is a good reminder for us as leaders to think about that, if any. I think everybody has minds landmines in their business. What are those landmines in our company right now? You think about your leadership team. You're having that reflection time on Fridays or whatever your cadence is. What are those landmines in my business? Are there landmines between my business partners? Is there landmines on our leadership team? Is there landmines I'm aware of within our downline leadership team, our crew chiefs? Is there drama? Are there things that routinely come up? And it's like, is there a way for us to get those out on the table more routinely and just create kind of a safe container where it's like, guys, we're going to talk about this every leadership meeting, so let me.
[00:10:08.790] - Brandon
Just make sure I'm following you. Connect the dots is okay. So we've got this underlining issue that shows up in our relationships at work, at home, where we've got a sticking point, something some kind of conflict or friction. And then because we're not addressing it in a timely proactive manner, it stacks up, it grows. So that the keeping short account references. If we can get in and deal with those quickly. That's a short account.
[00:10:36.700] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:10:36.970] - Brandon
Like, okay, go back just hangs. Right. And keeps okay.
[00:10:39.690] - Chris
Going back to my marriage. So the way it happens is somebody, my wife, either there's a behavior that she didn't do or a behavior she did do that somehow. It was frustrating disappointing to me.
[00:10:54.160] - Brandon
Sure.
[00:10:54.770] - Chris
And what it looks like feels like stacking up is I start to form a story in my head or I start to reference back to this always happens, that language starts to develop of, oh, here we are again. Right. Or the story starts to grow. I had this interaction with my wife, and I know, listen, she has all these interactions with me too, right? So we all stack our shit up. So it starts there. There was a behavior that I wanted I had a desire for her to do or not do, and it frustrated me, did something negative to me. That story starts to grow in the back of my mind. No matter how mature I want to be, I start building on that. And then ultimately, it starts to affect my body language, my attitude, my everything else in my interactions with her. The more it grows, no matter how adult I want to be about it, I start to have this internal dialogue of, okay, is it worth it to bring it up? Because I know it's been a minefield in the past. Am I prepared to deal with the emotion that maybe comes from both of us to deal with this thing right now and oftentimes, especially after you've been doing this for a while, it feels more prudent in our best judgment, to just let it lie.
[00:12:10.980] - Chris
The problem with letting it lie is that then the next time something happens, we stack that. We let it lie on top of the last one that we let lie. And we start to form a pile. This is actually this analogy is getting better. We start to form a pile of bullshit because most of it, what we find is it's bullshit. Where there's smoke, there's fire. Of course there was an offense of some kind, a disappointment or an offense. But it grew into a narrative about my wife or it grew into a narrative for my wife, about me, or it grew into a narrative about my daughter or my son or my other son or my parents or my employee or our clients or whatever. Right. It's like there's some sort of thing that hooked me in a mental, emotional way, in a negative, stressful way, and I made the judgment of, eh, it's not a big deal. Now, here's the thing I've been mulling over, though. I do think that there are some things that aren't worth bringing up.
[00:13:09.980] - Brandon
Yes.
[00:13:10.890] - Chris
I don't know that that ever becomes like 100% clear. I think we get that wrong. Right. I think sometimes we're going to bring up things with our spouse, with our leadership team, with our business partners, with whatever, where it's like I'm getting off something off my chest that maybe what's the real didn't hold any value for the relationship.
[00:13:30.630] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:13:31.010] - Chris
So I think that's one kind of filter you can use. Is there purely value in me getting this thing off my chest? Or is there relational value in us dealing with this? Is this affecting how I'm seeing this other person? Because if it is, if I'm creating a story about this other person, their value to me, how much they care about me, how important my business is, how important our team is, whatever, if I'm starting to form some negative stories about this person, well, that's going to affect them, not just me. And I think the mistake I've made for so many years bro bruh bruh is like, I make the mistake that no one else can tell.
[00:14:09.380] - Brandon
Oh, yeah.
[00:14:10.080] - Chris
If I keep it to myself, that somehow that's the professional thing, hey, I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. I shouldn't be letting this bother me. That's the genesis of a lot of my error in my leadership over the years and my relationship with my wife is, well, either one, I already know how they're going to respond, and so therefore, I choose not to bring it up. Two, oh God, this is sinister. I make the judgment they can't handle it, which the more I unpack that man, the more devilish it is and the more arrogant, the more arrogance I see in my past. You know what I mean? Yeah. When I really think about why I don't say certain things, I don't share certain stories in my head is more about me than it is the other. Like I'm more concerned about how it's going to negatively affect me if I bring it up to that person. They can't handle it. They're immature. They aren't going to be able to see it. They're going to argue with me, they're going to defend themselves, or they're going to make me feel like shit, like it's my fault.
[00:15:08.300] - Chris
And so I don't even give them the opportunity to hear this from me. Instead, I stuff it, but I allow it. But ultimately what I've also learned is I allow it to negatively affect the way that I engage with that person, including my wife.
[00:15:21.730] - Brandon
Yeah. And sometimes I don't even know if allow is the right term because I think the reality, it just does. It's just going to happen. There's just so much suppressing that we can do before it's going to expose itself. I think it's similar to things that we are talking about in terms of this theory of our actions, our decision making. A lot of that is stemming from these previous past experiences. You've made reference to that before. We're going to talk about a little bit main stage at the collective. There's just this reality right where it rears its head, it's going to influence how we act and behave. Want may not necessarily actually be that much of a variable in those kinds of scenarios. All right, so let's think about this. I'm just kind of reiterating some of the things that you're saying as I'm kind of processing it live here.
[00:16:09.830] - Chris
Okay.
[00:16:10.300] - Brandon
So there's this mentality that inevitably we're going to have experiences with people downline, employees, peers, clients, relationships, where there's conflict of some sort, a difference of opinion, a difference in communication style, different perspective, performance gap. Yeah. So there's going to be this friction point, and what most of us are going to do is stuff, tuck away, compartmentalize, and ultimately then by not doing that, not airing the laundry, if you will, that pile of bullshit just continues to mount. So instead of keeping a short account, we get these lengthy it's like aging AR. There begins to be this bind, this conflict in the system between us and our counterparts that build up and up over time.
[00:16:54.410] - Chris
And it inevitably gets uglier. Yeah, it takes on an uglier tone every infraction.
[00:16:59.550] - Brandon
It's like feeding that more of this.
[00:17:02.710] - Chris
This is what this person is all about. We don't say it out loud, but that's how we start feeling towards that person.
[00:17:09.660] - Brandon
It's ultimately what jim deathmer.
[00:17:13.690] - Chris
We talk about Jim a lot, and we've referenced his work. We did a book club with him. And I think sometimes Jim is hard for people, for a lot of leaders to absorb because he's so connected to feeling, and he talks a lot about feeling that happens in our body when we're encountering stress or negative situations. The somatic the body connection that we have with our emotions and our thinking and stuff like that. And so for some people, it's just so weird because they haven't learned that it's not something that's very commonplace in our industry. But man, I've noticed it. It's like the more I read people like Deathmer and whatnot, is that you can feel these things in your body when you pay attention. When I'm feeling somebody did a certain thing, I'm feeling disappointed. Like there's this kind of sinking feeling in my gut that I feel that I'm reacting from. There's a physical feeling to it. Jim has talked about it, and other thought leaders have talked about it. Is that's like an evolutionary thing, this kind of statement, this behavior from somebody else is negative in some way, and I'm feeling threatened by it.
[00:18:22.050] - Chris
And there's this almost body reaction that happens that clues you in. There's danger here. There's a risky thing happening, like kind of gird your loins, protect yourself sort of reaction that our body does. And that just grows too, like your anxiety around that person. Because instead of dealing with the situation at hand and moving through it, you end up building all of this shit up. And of course, listen, none of us are consciously walking around the hallways and sitting down our desks thinking about this stuff in the moment. Right. But I think that is part of the task is learning to notice this stuff. For me, it has been anyway. It's just a discipline of starting to think like this whenever it comes to mind and reminding myself, right, this stuff's important because, again, the biggest lie that I feel like I believe for most of my career is that no one else sees it. And I think everybody sees it. All this stuff actually can't be hidden.
[00:19:21.290] - Brandon
We think it is, but it's not.
[00:19:22.900] - Chris
But it's not other people's awareness.
[00:19:25.130] - Brandon
Right.
[00:19:25.690] - Chris
They've evolved to tune into, hey, Brandon's acting. Something is different. Something is off now again, then they're going to make a story about, oh, Brandon's pissed off. Well, you may not be pissed at me, but I start, I notice something's off and I fill in the gap even from the very first moment.
[00:19:43.710] - Brandon
Yeah. No, it's true. It's like when we talk about the fact that our people, our team members, teammates see the holes in our system. They see it. They don't need to be educated from us, the only smart ones on the team about where the leaks are, right. In the business, they see it and they actually become more disgruntled as we ignore it. This is kind of an interesting concept. And I know sometimes some of the things that we talk about, they almost become so interwoven with one another that it's hard to differentiate. So for me, I'm just continuing to kind of chew on what you're talking about here. I think with the short account piece, there's a couple of things at play here. One is I have to get better at asking myself the question is, is this something to address or is it something to let go? And so Gianna and I, as an example, kind of keeping with the home theme, we've had to do this with our kids and this is not a knock on either one of them. I love them. Right. And they almost probably have to do this with their partners in relationship to us as mom and dad is.
[00:20:42.090] - Brandon
We have to ask ourselves the question like, hey, Janet, is this something that we feel is important enough that you and I need to affect? Like, do we need to confront this? Is there something for you and I to do here? And if if her and I's answer to that is ultimately no, then it's our job to hold each other accountable to actually letting it go. And I don't know that I have a prescriptive plan for how that unfolds, but it takes some conscious effort and thinking of, okay, I'm kind of fired up about this, but I told myself this is not important enough for me to address.
[00:21:15.670] - Chris
All right. Headhart and Boots listeners wanted to stop here just a moment and thank our underwriting sponsor, bloodlight Consulting Group. As as all of you know, right. You know, Brandon and I, this is our passion project, head Heart and Boots is. But it's also a way more and more that our consulting clients find us and in effect they interview us, right? Those of you who've been listening to Show for a while, you get to know who we are, right, what we're about. So if Head Heart and Boots is valuable to you, one of the best things you can do is share it with your friends. And it's been incredible to watch just the audience grow and we still get text messages from many of you about shows that you really like and impacted you. So that's number one. And please keep doing that. Many of you have been huge advocates of the show. We also just want to remind you too, if you're a restoration company owner and you're interested in a partner in your growth, you want some help building out systems, developing your leadership teams, helping set up the infrastructure for you to scale and grow into the company that you're trying to build.
[00:22:14.960] - Chris
That's what we do. That's what we do is we come alongside restoration company leaders, we help equip them and we help support them in that growth trajectory. So if you're looking for that go to Floodlightgrp.com, potentially we could be a great match for each other.
[00:22:29.120] - Brandon
Another way that we really do serve our client base and our sphere of influence is through our Premier partners. We work really hard to vet those folks that we believe bring a level of value to the industry, that it can really be leveraged in a way to have a sincere positive impact on your business. We take that very seriously. The folks that we create, those kind of ongoing partnerships, that's not a check the box kind of scenario. We really see strategic alignment in the value that they bring. We see value in the way that their leadership teams and their partners are developed. And we've done very sincere work of ensuring that these folks that we introduce our clients and our sphere to can actually create vetted value. So go check out Floodlightgrp.com Premierpartners and see if there's some folks on there that you can connect with and begin developing some other resources to support your growth and your business.
[00:23:21.390] - Chris
Byron Katie, I've talked about her a little bit. She wrote a book called Loving what is and it's earth shattering at the right time, so got to be ready, be ready for it. But it's incredible. But one of the she talks about using inquiry to deal with our negative and stressful thoughts. Oh yeah. And again, fully aware of just how woo woo some of this stuff feels. Some people listen because it was for us and is in some cases right. But one of the questions that she suggests to interrogate those negative or stressful thoughts is can I think of a non stressful reason to let this thought go? I e. Can I think of a good reason to just let this thing go? And just considering that for a moment, oftentimes I've found I can think of a whole list of reasons. Yeah, it's either not totally true or I have no way of verifying if this negative stressful thought is true or it's just going to harm me. It's just going to make me more stressed out to keep thinking about it. Or I have no way of connecting with this person to validate that thought.
[00:24:21.380] - Chris
Or you just start thinking, yeah, you know what? I got spun out. And you can kind of discharge you can that thought just by looking at it.
[00:24:31.270] - Brandon
This is kind of a heavy example. So here's an example I've been chewing on.
[00:24:35.030] - Chris
Is it real?
[00:24:35.660] - Brandon
Yeah, it's real.
[00:24:36.460] - Chris
Okay.
[00:24:36.710] - Brandon
It's just like a real one where all right, I don't feel like I really not feel there was not really a way for me to correct this thing or address this thing with the person. So those that have listened for an extended period of time, there's some episodes where you and I have referred to kind of some of our old school pain points, right, growing up or whatever. And one for me is my relationship with my father. It was total dog shit, basically, in a nutshell. And I have at times been an extreme victim to those circumstances, and at times I've been more proactively leading my effort and my intentionality around that relationship. But one of the things that just struck me was for an extended period of time, so until I was in my 30s no, almost 40, 40 years old or something, I had some kind of broken version of a relationship with a father figure, somebody that held the title and donated their sperm to the cause. And one of the things that happened towards the end of that is he was battling cancer. And I'm a believer. I feel like that in some spiritual terms, I have a responsibility out of grace that I've received, and we don't have to unpack all of that, but I felt some level of familial blood responsibility to look outside of what previous experiences had created in terms of my commitment to him or what I owed him, in quotes.
[00:25:57.800] - Brandon
And my wife and I kind of reengineered her working career and my lifestyle so that we could partner with him during the last part of his battle with cancer. And due to his own relational making, he didn't have anybody else there. And so we did that. And the reality of that scenario hopefully I'm not getting too crazy here, but the reality of that scenario for me is I was making a sacrifice to do that. And I knew I was potentially exposing myself to a new layer of pain because the reality of it is, over the years, I had created scar tissue that protected me from kind of the emotional impact of. This very broken relationship. Or at least I had told myself that that's probably part of the truth, right? So anyways, long story short, I talked to my wife. We have this very kind of proactive heavy conversation about, hey, I think we should do this. She agrees. Totally helps lead the situation honestly. Okay, so we commit to this. We reshape things. I start taking my dad to his appointments every week. Sometimes it was two a week. And I was fortunate that our employer at the time that partnership, allowed me to do that as well.
[00:27:04.060] - Brandon
So I did that. And after gosh, I don't know how long it had been a few months of this, I just got a wild ass text from him at, like, 1030 11:00 at night. And it basically was him chewing my ass for not doing enough, telling me that literally kind of the quintessential message is he wrapped it up with, if I needed an Uber driver, I would have fucking paid for one. So I don't know if I need to reboot the story to connect the dots, but I think anybody listening here could say, well, that didn't go exactly as we planned. So then there was a very heated confrontation. I probably didn't respond as well as I could have, and I basically just I defaulted to, you know what, I fucking spent my entire life without you. I did this for you, so fuck off. And so I unplugged that connection and he ended up dying in the will. So you get a copy of the will if you're part of it. I don't know what all the terminology is. Long story short, I get this will, and there's basically a very detailed section in there that not only am I not getting anything, but he's also stated multiple times in clarity that I am to have zero impact on any decision making as it relates to his estate.
[00:28:12.580] - Brandon
So my final goodbye from my particular father's situation was a will that went out of its way to describe specifically how his son, me, named Brandon Reese, is worthless to him and should not have not should, but specifically says, do not allow this individual to have any impact on my estate or decision making on my behalf. So where am I going with that? That is a legitimate pain point in my life.
[00:28:38.120] - Chris
Well, he dead, so we're not going.
[00:28:40.660] - Brandon
To have a conversation about, hey, this thing really bothered me. Right? And so I have to do some very intentional work to let it go. Now, that's kind of a heavy example because I don't want to let it go in terms of it would be great if I could address that at a core level and do something to create relational restoration, but I can't. And so I have to make a conscious effort to let it go. That's not easy to do, and it takes partnership and accountability. And I think what we're talking about here is that on this short account piece is this is not just you making a decision. There's going to be smaller examples, right? Lots of them that we face day in and day out. But then there's going to be these bigger things. And I guess my point is not to get kind of hyper focused on this kind of emotional context. But my point is this. When you evaluate this, either I'm going to sit down and address this in a very proactive way with this person, that person, or I'm going to let it go. Then I think we need to be wise enough to understand that chemically letting it go is not as simple as a decision and that you may have to do more to actually execute on this idea that I'm going to let that thing go.
[00:29:53.280] - Brandon
And maybe that looks like a business partner, your spouse or partner at home, a really close friend, certainly not a downline personnel at your company. But I think it's going to be wise for you to find someone that you can bounce these things off of because at times you may need someone on the outside to tell you, yeah, keep a short account on that. I e. Just let it fucking go. That is not important enough to create or to give any more energy. And if that's the case, then how.
[00:30:21.050] - Chris
Do I do that?
[00:30:22.330] - Brandon
What kind of decision making do I do? What kind of check ins do I allow? What kind of accountability relationship do I build so that that person at times can say, like, dude, you made a commitment to let that go and it's come up four times in the last two months. Right?
[00:30:36.000] - Chris
Yeah, I totally agree. I think where I'm at is it's probably better for me to bring that thing up and be wrong than to default to I should let that go. It's probably generally better for me to risk sharing the story in my head, even if after the fact. I think that was such a little thing. I wish I hadn't shared that, which that does happen for me.
[00:30:59.460] - Brandon
It does.
[00:31:00.210] - Chris
But it rarely has the negative outcome that I think it might.
[00:31:04.320] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:31:04.630] - Chris
You know what I mean? And I think the more I do it say, for example, with my wife, Kara, she routinely surprises me with how reasonable she is when I bring those things up and how much it actually does matter to her. Some of the little things I bring up where I'm like. I don't know if I needed to give that air time, but because I think we're just so inclined, I think as we start to give more consideration to keeping shorter accounts, we have to also consider that we've been taught in a whole variety of ways to stuff.
[00:31:36.430] - Brandon
Yeah, for sure.
[00:31:37.470] - Chris
Like, we were just talking with Michelle in her podcast, Michelle Blevins, and we were talking about kind of what she called modern leadership. And I think part of what we're having to figure out with leadership now is based on just what we accepted about leadership or all we knew about it previously, which is more of a command and control. Like, the owner has all the power, the general manager, the CEO. That's a position of authority. And therefore, you do what they say to do, because there's just a way that we've functioned as society. And I think part of that is like, my grandfather didn't matter how he felt about something, you just fucking go to work. You do what you're told. You have a negative experience. You just stuff it and get back to work. So I think a lot of us have grown up directly or indirectly, just absorbing that ethic of don't make a mountain of a molehill. Somebody 150 or 200 years ago made up that analogy, and now all of us take it to heart, and I think many of us, and it's only the drama people that do that. And the reality is that we just have become a culture that we stuff a lot.
[00:32:46.180] - Chris
We act out of those offenses. We just don't talk about it. You don't admit it. And so in my experience, that's what actually creates the drama. It's not the conversation about the thing. It's all the body language bullshit. It's all of the rolling eyes. I'm not making eye contact as much in the hallway. I talk to that person as little as possible. There's avoidance because then people inter, why is Brandon acting differently to me? I think he's pissed at me. And then I'm talking to a buddy. He's like, have you noticed Brandon? And then there's drama, and they're like, oh, yeah, Brandon did that to me. You know what I mean? The drama is born out of we aren't talking about this shit. And I think the opportunity and this happens with my wife oh, my God, 21 years. The first ten years of my marriage, man, were that it was unmet expectations that both of us had that somehow we just couldn't figure out a way to talk about shouldn't be a big deal. I shouldn't be making such an issue out of this. And so neither one of us is really talking about it.
[00:33:49.070] - Chris
And then finally, about ten years, we're like, Holy shit. I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. I don't want to feel this way for the rest of something has to give. And that's where we started to delve into these conversations. But I have found that when I have the courage, because I think that's actually what it is. I think, especially in our industry, there's just so much bravado. It's so much of a get shit done, hero kind of environment that we don't like to think about it this way. But it takes courage to have to keep short accounts.
[00:34:18.370] - Brandon
Well, I think one of the things that you're almost saying there, at least where my head goes, is when we think about the relationship to that saying, don't make a mountain out of a molehill. I think what we've done with that is I don't disagree with the concept. I think what we've done is landed the plane on the Ron Tarmac in terms of how do you prevent a mountain from being created out of a molehill? And I think what the past has told us is ignoring stuff. And I think the reality of it is the way that you prevent that issue from becoming massive is you address.
[00:34:51.960] - Chris
It, you move through it, you move.
[00:34:53.680] - Brandon
Go to it, talk about it, unpack it, put that shit on the table and dissect what just happened. And if it's nothing, great, now everybody knows we're all privy to it, and we can keep that account short. But if we just do the stuffing ignoring method, there's a real chance that you and I have made a decision that the other person doesn't agree with. Right. Like, from your and I perspective, we look at it and we say, yeah.
[00:35:15.490] - Chris
It'S not value enough.
[00:35:16.360] - Brandon
I don't need to address that. And then I act as if then I'll be able to compartmentalize it and not do anything with it. But what if that issue actually was pretty darn important to the other person? This is Rando, and I don't want to spin us out at all, but I have a creative as a wife, and you're more of a creative too, and I see this come to play with you is and interesting enough, it's the same for me. Some of the biggest fears for creative is to be misunderstood, which is really interesting. Right. And they're just better at articulating it. Because I think the reality of it is I think we all kind of feel that way to a certain extent. Right. But so the interesting thing in relationships with folks that really don't want to be misunderstood component is something actually, from their perspective, may still be very important and be a big deal that needs to be addressed. And I've looked at it and said, that's not that big of a deal. But if it's a reflection of someone else being misunderstood, an exchange conversation or whatever, like if I'm walking away with the wrong impression or the wrong understanding, that's a big deal for that person.
[00:36:17.550] - Brandon
Right. I wonder how many things actually get put into the bucket of this isn't important enough to just quickly address every day. Right.
[00:36:26.840] - Chris
Every hour.
[00:36:27.640] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:36:28.120] - Chris
The piles of that stuff that's stacked up all across our industry and in our homes.
[00:36:32.770] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:36:33.140] - Chris
It's worth considering. It really is. Here's another way it's shown up in my career as a leader, and we have talked about this, we've referenced this, but it comes back to keeping short accounts is how many times have we fired an employee when we're in it just finally boils over. And we've been developing a narrative that we may or may not have communicated in our head about their lack of care, lack of attention, lack of follow through. Whatever the negative stressful story is, they aren't following the process. They aren't doing enough. There's not enough volume of activity. Whatever the infraction was, rather than routinely bringing that to account, talking, having a conversation, communicating our expectation, talking through a strategy of, hey, I'm just curious. Why is this going on? What's happened for you? What's your take on this? Right? And engaging with them, trying to get through the stories is that at the end, when we finally just get so pissed off, we're like, we're done. This person no longer is bringing a value commensurate with what we're paying them, and they have to go, we're fed up. We're fed up. And then we come to that table and there's some amount of shock or betrayal that that person feels because they didn't understand the magnitude of those infractions, because we just sucked.
[00:37:51.330] - Chris
I don't have time for this. I don't have time to do I'll give them some more time. There's all the things that we tell ourselves, but God, I can feel it in my bones right now. I can see those people in my head. I can see their faces when I let them go. This look of disgust and shock and betrayal, of like, really? I think they were like, what the fuck is wrong with you? I've been doing my best. They're put on their heels because I've been making long accounts, and I thought it was lost on everybody. But in the end, right, it was just unfair. It's just unfair. And again, that goes to I was talking earlier, just that realization there's some arrogance in there. They can't handle the truth. That, if I'm honest, is part of my thinking. And now I'm aware of it, I'm starting to tune in and be like, why am I so hesitant to have a conversation with this person about this thing? A lot of times it comes back to I'm afraid of their response. And if I go even deeper, beyond the arrogance, it's this boy inside that I don't want them to not like me.
[00:38:55.120] - Chris
You know what I mean?
[00:38:55.920] - Brandon
Yeah, I think it's interesting. I think that's a coat a lot of people can put on, right. To include myself. I think the other place that this comes into play, this whole short account thing, you know what? I think in a lot of ways you've mirrored this for me. There's at times, I'm not going to lie about it. It kind of irritates the living fuck out of me. But then there's a lot of times where it's really helped me grow, where you want to keep some short accounts. So when we have an exchange or something happens, you circle the wagon, sometimes a little slower than others, and you ask us about it and we work through it and vice versa. But it's interesting because we work with a lot of clients across the states where there's a couple that owns at minimum a partnership. But often we see husband wife combos, some kind of partnership with two people lots. And it's interesting. I think one of the benefits of keeping short accounts is associated with getting and experiencing more of what you can. Okay. Different from what you want. You're dealing more in reality, experiencing more of what you can versus what you want.
[00:39:57.730] - Brandon
Right. And here's kind of where I'm going with that. So we've seen scenarios where we have partners, husband and wife. Let's say the one partner has a pretty clear vision of where they'd like to take the business, but the other partner hasn't quite got on the same horse. There's a little bit of a disconnect of all it's going to take is X and the business will be fine. And one of the other partners maybe has a firmer grasp on what really is needed in order to make the business fine in quotes or I mean, here's a reasonable example. You and I's perspective on our company, on our business. My vision of what it can be at times looks differently than you. Not to the point where we're playing two different games, but just by default without the conversation. Mine might look one way and yours looks another. Well, if you and I keep short accounts, that means not ignoring and stuffing. It means us jumping in and having this dialogue and problem solving and talking.
[00:40:56.370] - Chris
About this is a great actually, that's a really great point. And I think what it does is I have and you do too, I have an almost visceral, unexplainable reaction to certain topics, things that mean something to me. So when I hear you say those things, I react and I have a very vivid sight picture in my mind of what you mean. And how many times does this happen with you and I, where I'm like I get hooked on maybe a certain way you say it or a word you use to describe what you're thinking. And then once we do wrestle with it, most of the time you and I are in total alignment. And it might be a different color of window trim, but it's the same fucking building.
[00:41:39.440] - Brandon
Yeah, that's right.
[00:41:40.270] - Chris
But it's that I can get hooked initially, like, whoa, dude, I don't want that because of a way you said it or a term you use that I've got some negative association with. And then when we dig in, we.
[00:41:52.150] - Brandon
Clear the table closer than we thought, right?
[00:41:54.480] - Chris
Often way closer.
[00:41:56.470] - Brandon
Just kind of going back to that want thing. I think one of the things that we walked away from with our conversation with Zach a few episodes ago is he was really talking about transparency with the way he's leading at home. And for all of those that want to jump down a nontraditional throat here. He's not in charge. We're not saying anything about equality or whose job is to do what. Part of his partnership commitment is to be a good leader at home in partnership with his spouse. And one of the things that he highlighted in that was some more intentionality around their planning, like their own vision for where they're going as a couple financial plans, certain wants like, hey, we'd like to have X kind of car, we want to have this many children. And they just were very intentional about talking about the substance of this planning. Now, is his wife as excited to lead the planning process? No, but I think that they've really partnered well on establishing what they want and getting more of that experience together because they're proactively leaning into these conversations and keeping short accounts. And I think about that in our business.
[00:43:05.790] - Brandon
Right. Is your business what you want or is it just something you're existing in? Well, shocker here. If you want a business that looks more like what you want, there's a chance that you need to think about this area in your life where you're keeping longer accounts than you should. Because we're afraid, because we're not intentionally discussing, we're not addressing these things. Same in my own home. Like, my wife and I just had this conversation a couple of days ago and I think we're actually going to be fairly intentional this next week to get some more time around. It is. I just basically said you and I win all the time together, but is it everything it could be, right? Where it's easy for my wife as a creative and this is not a knock on her, it's just the way she is and we just need to be cognizant of it. Is that when you poke at something, the first thought is, is it not good enough? Are we failing? Is this broken? Is this a sign of a problem? And that's not at all what I'm saying. I'm just saying, hey, we're good.
[00:44:03.220] - Brandon
Can we go to good? Er yeah, right. Can we go to good? To great in some areas.
[00:44:09.310] - Chris
I think the way that humans are wired is we are wired to grow and it doesn't feel good. There's a sickness that sets in with humans when we're staying the same.
[00:44:18.480] - Brandon
Yeah. Stagnant.
[00:44:19.500] - Chris
I just think that's like a reality.
[00:44:21.020] - Brandon
Of life and maybe more so for certain personality types.
[00:44:24.140] - Chris
Yeah, maybe so. Maybe so. But I think it it is it's just like there's some kind of inherent value in looking for the better. It like drives us in some kind of positive way.
[00:44:35.350] - Brandon
Yeah, I agree. Any final thoughts?
[00:44:38.980] - Chris
Should I try a little summary? Yeah, we haven't done the summary. No, wait a while.
[00:44:42.180] - Brandon
It's like old school.
[00:44:43.560] - Chris
So this concept of keeping short accounts biblical principle pretty sound, right? Instead of stacking up the offenses, probably better to err on the side of sharing those things. Is there a way to do that in a healthy way that doesn't create more conflict? Most of the time, but there may be conflict. But I think part of what we talked about here is having the courage to just air it out. What's the worst that could happen? Somebody gets mad. Well, you're already mad. Are you going to allow that anger to grow in isolation, or are you going to allow it to flare up and flame out? And, like, we can move through it. And we talked about relative to our families, our spousal relationships, I think there's just such an awesome opportunity there. Right. We talked about, too, implementing that weekly having a weekly time that is set where you can bring up to keep short accounts is, hey, we're going to talk about in marriage. We're going to talk about sex. We're going to talk about how we're spending money. We're going to touch base on how we're parenting the kids. We're going to talk about what we want for the future.
[00:45:43.740] - Chris
We're going to expect to talk about that. You're going to talk about how you've been experiencing things sex wise. I'm going to talk about that. How we're spending our money this past week. We are going to talk about that rather than waiting for things to come up on a complaint basis.
[00:45:58.570] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:45:59.040] - Chris
And I think there's so much direct application into how we're engaging with our fellow leadership, team members, our business partners, our Downline employees, all of these same things apply. So let's all prioritize keeping shorter accounts. I love that.
[00:46:13.670] - Brandon
Can I add one piece?
[00:46:14.820] - Chris
Okay. I hate to even I don't know.
[00:46:16.580] - Brandon
If it's a miss. I think one thing I'd caution myself in these scenarios is I think I have to think really well on what would I want that person to react like. Right. So just thinking about that, I want to touch a base on this thing. What would I hope they would respond like? And I think the opportunity here is you can't control the people, but boy, what a great opportunity for you to.
[00:46:39.730] - Chris
Decide how you oh, man. How am I? Oh, my God. That's a great reflection. How do I contribute to this? Yeah. How am I going to choose to receive that's right. When my wife or my Downline employee or my colleague brings something to my attention?
[00:46:55.950] - Brandon
That's right.
[00:46:56.530] - Chris
Do I want to make them feel like they're making a mountain out of a mole hill? Or do I want to investigate and really show some curiosity, some humility? Yeah. Like, Jim Deathmer talks about this how when he talks about feedback rich environment. I freaking love this. This is so transformational where he said what you're saying, which is rather than coming at feedback from somebody as, is this true? Is this feedback correct? Is this valuable? Instead, starting from the place of how is this true? Investigating, assuming the best of the other that there's truth in here for you to gain.
[00:47:37.310] - Brandon
100% again, thanks for hanging out with us.
[00:47:39.970] - Chris
Love you all.
[00:47:40.470] - Brandon
We'll see you next to you next time.
[00:47:41.590] - Chris
Bye.
[00:47:42.610] - Brandon
All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart and Boots.
[00:47:47.160] - Chris
And if you're enjoying the show or you love this episode, please hit follow. Formerly 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.
