[00:00:07.370] - Chris
Welcome back to the Head Heart and Boots Podcast. I'm Chris.
[00:00:10.870] - Brandon
And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead.
[00:00:17.590] - Chris
Man, I love this industry.
[00:00:21.010] - Brandon
Hey, before we jump into this very unique episode, we've get sponsors to think, yeah, we do.
[00:00:26.860] - Chris
I think we should start with Answerforce. Let's do it. Answerforce.com call reception. Call intake. I think oftentimes we overlook that as a real strategic driver in our business, but you think about how much money you spend with sales reps out in the field, potentially google, PPC, how much do we spend on just building out our website, all those things. And then I think a lot of times we just like, reception is an afterthought. It's like, well, let's hire a $15 an hour person, college age kid that can maybe start out part time, and we just kind of willy nilly our call response. It's like, man. How valuable? Like, dollars and cents valuable is every single call point of the spear, really? In a lot of cases, huge.
[00:01:12.790] - Brandon
It's the first time, and in most cases, our clients are having in or action.
[00:01:16.080] - Chris
It's massive. It's a huge deal. Right? And I think we've probably been guilty of not taking that seriously enough ourselves in the past. So Answer Force is a really great turnkey solution for that. Regardless of how big your company is, whether you're just starting out, you're running your company out of your kitchen or a storage unit, or you've got 40 employees and you're gunning for 25 million, I think. What do you do when your reception is out at lunch? Do you just willy nilly forward the phones to whoever picks up? No, I think you should have a professional solution like Answer Force. And it's very cost effective, too, and flexible in terms of use a ton of it or use very little of it. It's a really interesting bolt on product. It's kind of like a SaaS, like a software solution, but with real people that understand your intake process and can imitate it perfectly. So if your full time reception is out on maternity leave, forward the phones to Answer Force right. Just right inside their app. Click a few buttons, and now you have a professional person answering your phone even when your receptionist is out.
[00:02:15.290] - Chris
So it's a no brainer, guys, you should absolutely at least do a demo, regardless of what your situation.
[00:02:23.370] - Brandon
Floodlight thing liftify.com. You guys know the team over there? Of course. We're huge supporters, Zach and their team, and what they're doing in terms of tech and advancing their system, adding AI features, doing all these things to really customize and fine tune and automate how our teams are getting the reviews and reviews as we've talked about we've talked about in previous episodes we've talked about as part of our chat with Zach and their team the natural organic SEO activity that comes from consistent, relevant and current five star reviews is unbelievable. I mean, at the end of the day, Google is going to prioritize their platforms, their systems, over anybody else. And at the end of the day, that Google five star review is fuel.
[00:03:08.500] - Chris
For them, big deal.
[00:03:09.440] - Brandon
Prioritize it. So there's all these natural gains. You guys have heard us talk about it super cost effective. The reality of it is, most of us in our companies, we cycle our aggressiveness and our attentiveness to our Google reviews. When we're slower, all of a sudden people get amped up about it and they get focused on it. We start pitching out benefits and spiffs for people to get it, and we get a bunch, and then we all get busy. And then that tapers off, that behavior starts to slip. And now we've had this moment of time where 30, 45, 60 days, we get just a fraction of the reviews, if any, that we could have. And with a team like Liftify, it's just consistent. You're always going out. You're consistently getting 2020 5% of your losses of your opportunities to turn into five star Google reviews, which is a massive number compared to competitors and other types of services that are available. So guys, Liftify.com, Floodlight, visit our friends over there, take advantage of the benefits that a partnership or being a listener of ours is, and bolt that partner into the system. Let's get the benefits, let's get the SEO gains from those five star reviews.
[00:04:16.600] - Chris
And then last but not least, CNR magazine, right? Our industry trade journal. Essentially. We talk about them so much, and I think one of the things I appreciate is just how know Michelle and her team are in terms of how they approach a media company. All the partnerships that Michelle does, I mean, she has all different kinds of regular media that she's putting out, interviews, recurring programs and shows that she's helped create alongside other Restorers and other industry consultants. I mean, she's always looking for creative ways to deliver information, knowledge, industry intel out to the masses. And I don't know, I just respect it. She's very strategic, she and the rest of her team. I just saw recently the Know How industry survey is going out. So the updated survey, which is a huge value to our industry. So thank you to know how, but obviously Michelle and CNR for facilitating that and bringing that to the industry. Plus, every week they've got new articles that are being posted. They have ce opportunities for your employees for free, right? Yeah.
[00:05:27.100] - Brandon
Yeah, I think so.
[00:05:27.960] - Chris
Plus they have industry playbooks that they've been putting out, one of which we participated in, the commercial sales playbook, I think that's what they call them, or Master playbooks or I don't know what they're calling them. But there's so many opportunities to learn and bone up on different subjects in our industry and for your people to do the same. It's great stuff as a leader to be able to share out with your team when you find a gem.
[00:05:48.210] - Brandon
100%.
[00:05:49.090] - Chris
So anyway, CNR magazine, if you're not already subscribing, what's wrong with you? Why are you ignoring such an important industry asset and resource? Right.
[00:05:56.820] - Brandon
Get with the paces.
[00:05:57.850] - Chris
That's right.
[00:05:58.500] - Brandon
This is an interesting episode for those of you that came to the Collective when listen to us projecting out in the future. So this will come out after the Collective at the end of August. This is a more conversational version, maybe, of what you and I spent a bit of time on the main stage sharing with our attendees at the core collective. It's one of those things where you and I have prioritized with the show of getting below the surface, talking to the whole restore. We continued that and we stepped out onto the main stage and immediately dove in deep.
[00:06:31.400] - Chris
It's so funny to hear you remarking on this sort of with a historic in a historic context, because right now I have butterflies. I'm sick to my stomach. I'm terrified. Like, this is the first time you and I are going to hit the stage in front of 800 or more people.
[00:06:50.900] - Brandon
Chunk of people. Yeah.
[00:06:52.310] - Chris
Not only that, but we're also joining the roster, the conference roster with the one and only Joey Coleman. So I'm nervous as hell, to be honest.
[00:07:01.860] - Brandon
I think that's fair. I think if we said anything other than that would be straight up.
[00:07:06.550] - Chris
I got feeling imposter syndrome. I got the squiggles in my tummy. It's all the things it would be.
[00:07:11.950] - Brandon
Funny to reevaluate what this opener is going to sound like post the Collective.
[00:07:15.970] - Chris
Trying to think about what I'm going to wear. Do I need a new pair of shoes for this thing? Yeah. Do I need to buy a new swimsuit for this? We're going to be poolside. Everybody will have seen us on stage. I need to look good. I'm feeling all of this pressure.
[00:07:31.270] - Brandon
I haven't even taken the time to worry about those other elements yet. But yeah. So this is a weird intro. We are both in the future and in the past, simultaneously is a gift to you as a listener of a podcast, pre recorded podcast.
[00:07:43.340] - Chris
In many ways, this is a trial run that you all may get to hear if this sees the light of day.
[00:07:48.100] - Brandon
That's right.
[00:07:48.760] - Chris
So this is real gritty. Pull back the kimono. OOH. What's?
[00:07:52.950] - Brandon
Right? All right, so here's the deal. Chris and I feel like it's really important that as part of our journey, we share out some of the experiences that we're having. The reality of it is we're in all sorts of different phases of that journey. There's times where we feel like probably personally, we're rocking. And I think that if we're honest, there's plenty of times where we're kind of in that pit of despair and some kind of weird transitional period where we're not necessarily rocking. Right. We're a lot of susceptible and caught up in the many things that life throws us just like you guys as leaders and business owners. And this journey, I think, that Chris and I have been chasing now for numerous years is this idea of getting a better understanding of what it is that's happening inside us, in between our ears. Whatever you want to say in your heart, in your soul that's affecting the way we lead, the way that we affect relationships, the way that we have conversations, the way that we negotiate, the way that we teach and train and equip. And we just have seen through that journey, just this reminder over and over and over again how universal the challenge is, even though the color of what creates the challenge might vary, and how universal this missing element is to us getting better, faster, and experiencing the kinds of jobs, the kinds of careers, businesses and relationships that we want to.
[00:09:16.150] - Brandon
The tactics are good, they're relevant, they're important. The processes are critical. But we can't lay those things on to a broken foundation. Right?
[00:09:27.240] - Chris
Yeah. It's interesting. There's so many interesting analogies and you and I like to use analogies because I think analogies are easy to remember when we're talking about change or an opportunity to grow. Analogies are really helpful for getting clear on what am I trying to do, what is this about, why is this important? Right? And we're going to have a lot of analogies in this conversation. I think another imagery that I find really useful about what we're talking about today in getting below the surface, getting another way of saying it, is getting kind of into our heart, connecting on with what's happening inside me. There's the brain where I rationalize things and then there's the heart where I feel things and I react. I have these responses that almost happen within my body like they're hardwired into me. Right. And all of us have it. This is universal. So much of it is subconscious to us for much of our life. And sometimes I don't know if it was Eckhart Tolle or somebody else that he refers to it as most of us are. Sleepwalking, I think is a really great I like that kind of word picture, is that most of us, we have a certain set of behaviors and default responses to things.
[00:10:38.670] - Chris
A way of seeing the world that has worked for us in some fashion. And it's almost as though we're on autopilot and we don't necessarily understand what lies beneath it because we haven't ever taken time to see it. But Eckhart Tolle also refers to us all being in a dream. In a dream. I think that's an interesting way of thinking of it is all of us individually have a way that we see and interact with the world that we are the only ones who know and understand what that dream is. It's internal to our thoughts, the stories in our head, the way that we interpret why somebody did something, the assumptions we make in our interactions with people, all that stuff. It's kind of like we have our own particular way of seeing our life in the world and most of the time it's just subconscious to us. We're just making decisions out of that. These thoughts come in and out of our heads. No one else sees it the way we do, right? But we have this way of dealing with people and doing relationship and all the things and most of us don't ever pause to step back and kind of look at that.
[00:11:38.560] - Chris
And I think that's what we're going to ask people to do today is to just pause, kind of open your minds and say, what about this? Can I relate to? And is there something here for me to explore? Is there something foundational here that I can tap into that will bring value to my life and potentially impact my leadership? Because it certainly has for you and me. When we were talking yesterday about this and kind of doing some of our planning and ideation, we were talking about the fact that in some ways this thing that we're going to try to talk about and bring some clarity to might be the biggest thing.
[00:12:14.300] - Brandon
Yeah, it could be the elephant, right?
[00:12:16.880] - Chris
Like it could be the operating system for leadership. Like this is the essence, the scaffolding, the arteries. This is the thing that I think we have to get in touch with in order to reach our potential as a leader. Can you lead without considering these things? Well, sure, but like we're going to get into there's usually a negative consequence or a byproduct when we're trying to lead outside of our heart space and without acknowledging and managing some of those things that are inside, that are driving our behaviors and stuff like that. So I think the other thing we talked about, the universality of this, this is for everybody. I think sometimes we tend not to look inward until we have a problem. And so I want to kind of open up the conversation by asking the listeners to think about do I have a problem? Because generally we don't really equate our situation with a problem unless we're losing money, not making money. We're in survival mode. And some of you listening to this are like some of the audiences. They just started a restoration company. They're struggling through their first handful of payrolls. Like, shit, I'm the last person to get paid.
[00:13:31.240] - Chris
This is terrible. I don't know if I'm going to make my mortgage. We've worked with you before. We know what it's about. You do have a problem, right? And your problems are various. So we're speaking to the struggling restorer. But then for those of you out there that are making plenty of money, that have a full intact team, you have a fleet, maybe even own your own building. You got all the nuts. Maybe you have a boat, maybe you have a fancy car. You got a lot of the things that you always thought you wanted and yet underneath it all, there's this thing that's chafing kind of against you. There's this reality of I got all this and it didn't do for me what I thought it was going to. I got the multimillion dollar business, I got the fleet, I got the assets, the balance sheet. We're making the EBITDA. And yet I'm unhappy. And that unhappiness might be centered within your own marriage. That unhappiness could be in a particular part of your marriage. It could be your relationship to your children. It could be a lack of creative output because you've neglected your own passions.
[00:14:33.900] - Chris
You've traded some aspect of your life for the business success and now you're left with some unfulfillment. You may even be asking yourself, why the hell insert some other word if you choose. Why am I doing this? What is this for? Because I think oftentimes we're just thinking of I have a successful business or I have a struggling business. And I think one of the things we're going to talk through today is you can have either one and be happy within yourself and you can have either one and be very discontented and full of anxiety and full of stress and have broken relationships around you. That's what we're going to lean into is that thing.
[00:15:10.560] - Brandon
Yeah, I think the kind of that analogy, right, that we kind of poked at first was this idea of contaminated soil, right? It's this idea of we take these actions, these tactics, techniques, best practices, those are seeds. We look at them, say, hey, this is what you need to grow is you need this seed, right? It all starts with this. We throw that out into bad soil and those seeds just sit there. They die on the vine, they don't take root. There's nothing for them of substance to get engaged in and to grow from. And then we're frustrated with the result. Right? And I think that that's what we attempt to do with compartmentalization. I think it's what we try to do when we say, hey, our business is banging. But yeah, I'm challenged with the relationship with my kids, I'm challenged with some of these direct personal relationships with my employees, but the money is good. But again, to me that's just more and more affirmation of this idea. One of the things that we've talked about in the past is bolt on parts, right? We talk about taking a broken engine, going out and buying high performance parts, bolting them onto this broken block and at the end of the day, you didn't gain anything in terms of horsepower, efficiency, right, performance.
[00:16:20.810] - Brandon
And it's the same idea. It's this idea that we are trying to solve problems and create solutions for things that at the end of the day are still sitting at the surface and where the problem is is underneath the surface. So it's this idea of we've got to dig in and begin to unpack for ourselves. What are the things that are contaminating the soil? What's below the surface that at the end of the day is leaving this sticky residue on the things that we're trying to implement in our lives or in our businesses that create this disconnect, right?
[00:16:56.180] - Chris
Yeah. So for us, it's kind of the genesis of some of this thinking. There's been a lot love, I think, journey, like the journey of leadership, the journey that we all have as individuals, this dream that we're in. Right. Like says we learn these things in know. They tend to come to us when we're ready for know. And I think for you and I, when we started working together in the industry each other, we were provoking and kind of poking at some of these things as we worked together. Right. One of the other kind of moments of truth for you and I was when we went to Global Leadership Summit and there was actually a lot of learning that happened there. I mean highly recommend it. We haven't been for a couple of years, but the lineups are powerful. And I remember like Patrick Lencioni very formative like in terms of the way we looked at recruiting was one example of hungry, humble, smart. How do we identify the right fit and how do we hire appropriately and all that kind of stuff. And then one of these other concepts was Bill Heibles. Bill Heibles, he had a simple little flip chart there and when he drew that circle that big it was more like an Easter egg.
[00:18:02.950] - Chris
It was like a big oblong circle. And he put a line through the center of it and he had these images up above the line and he had these little X's down at the kind of the bottom. I think he kind of called it the ocean. It's like if you're the ocean down below the surface, there's all these items on the ocean floor and then up above the surface of the water we have kind of the way we behave today, the way we talk to people, the way others experience us, the knee jerk reactions that we have to certain situations and types of people, all that stuff. And he drew a line between those items up above the water and those little X's at the bottom of the ocean. And he went on to kind of describe how psychologically, most of us like the sleepwalking example. We don't even realize where these attitudes, reactions, mannerisms, default behaviors are coming from. And it's even more deceptive when they tend to work. When we're having some measure of success with the way that we're being, we're even less likely to look below the surface and investigate where our behaviors, our attitudes, our perspectives are coming from and yet they are 100% of the time tethered to these things.
[00:19:20.180] - Chris
Another helpful word picture I've heard from Byron Katie. I think it's Byron Katie in her book Loving What Is, she talks about how we pull file folders. We have these events happen in our life, good and bad. It's like our brain logs that memory in vivid detail of how it felt in our guts, how we responded to that thing and how we coped with that moment. And it just keeps a file folder like a file drawer back there. And then certain people will say or do things in our orbit that cause our body and our brain to be like, oh, I recognize this. I know what's going on here. It fills in all the gaps to protect us. Oh, I know exactly what's happening. It pulls that file folder and then we behave out of that moment in that situation. And for some of us, we have a whole bunch of these things on the ocean floor. It's like family culture, a father wound, a mother wound, maybe an early employer that berated us in front of our employees. We're going to get into some you and I have some examples of what those things are lying on the ocean floor.
[00:20:24.140] - Brandon
That's right.
[00:20:24.820] - Chris
You and I were so caught up in that. And I think we looked at each other and I remember us at the break being like, holy shit, that was.
[00:20:31.080] - Brandon
Yeah, this is relevant.
[00:20:32.080] - Chris
There's something here. And if it's here for us, it means everybody. It's here for everybody, including our people. So how is this impacting everything?
[00:20:42.640] - Brandon
Right? It's funny because we were just talking to an operational leader today and they were talking just kind of around this concept of real powerful team member already being super successful, already having gains. So on the surface, kick butt, perfect hire, we're excited. And though he's like Anne, we need to be aware of there's some personal stuff going on in that individual's life as well that I just noticed a couple of red flags I'm paying attention to and I thought that was super insightful and it's interesting, right? And I think where most of us can go fairly easily is at least that far in the journey. Like I think all of us can say, okay, I'll buy the idea that past experiences, past events, traumas, relationships, whatever are shaping, like you said, are shaping some of my decision making. But I think part of what we want to get into, especially when we say the heart of the matter, right, which is the title of our stage talk that we gave, is it's not just recognizing the fact that we are affected by these past experiences. But I think what I'm hoping to get more buy in from people in general is this idea of how important then is it for us to invest time and energy understanding ourselves better at that level.
[00:21:57.960] - Brandon
So not just an awareness of, yeah, my past experience does influence what I do today. It's bigger than that. If we can really understand the value of me beginning to truly understand and evaluate myself and who I want to be and what I want to be and how I want to carry myself and how I want to influence relationships. Now, all of a sudden, it's not just a recognition of these things influencing, but it's now, let's get integrated, let's uncover and see what these things are so that I can understand why I do what I do better and I.
[00:22:32.630] - Chris
Can exert some control, I can exert some intentionality. Because so often we're living at the effect of these things and we don't realize it. And again, it's really deceptive because sometimes we can really find a lot of success 100%. I mean, you and I see this, we've seen this over and over and over, not only in ourselves, but in other business owners where it's like you get in and you see a tremendous amount of certain kinds of success, monetary success. They got a big team in place and you get under the hood and you're like, whoa, how in the world have they gotten here with all of these other fundamental problems? And I think there's just a reality that there are certain things that you can execute well on and you can have a whole bunch of other things broken and you're still going to get positive results, dude.
[00:23:16.360] - Brandon
So I have an example and I want to be really careful because you and I have the opportunity when we work with people we're trusted at a very intimate level in a lot of ways.
[00:23:24.980] - Chris
Are you about ready to tell a story?
[00:23:26.500] - Brandon
A little bit of a story here. So this is interesting actually. I didn't really think about this earlier, but we have a client that we're working with actively right now and one of their leaders is responsible for the administrative teams JFCS in this particular world. And it's interesting as we were working with the team and talking about new strategies, talking about some of the shifts that the leadership needed to make in order for them to begin building systems they can scale on, right? Like normally we just really get stuck in the mental battle more so than the process procedure stuff. And we're there. We're in that battle. And her and I were in her office and we were talking about this kind of transition that she's going to be responsible for and for safety. Long story short, we realized in our conversation and sometimes this door opens, sometimes it doesn't. We were able to in a two way dialogue, really unpack the fact that relationships that not just employee certainly had employee examples, but personal relationships. Relationships where she felt like she had been left hanging. You invest the time and energy and the ultimate result will be somebody leaving, not caring for not maximizing that investment of time and energy, but actually using it ultimately against you.
[00:24:41.770] - Brandon
This is a perfect example of that very real emotional connection to previous experiences, both in personal relationships and let's admit it, we've all had employees that we've invested in, and they leave us, and it feels real shitty.
[00:24:56.520] - Chris
Yeah. Betrayal.
[00:24:57.290] - Brandon
It feels like betrayal. And so she was able to for herself. Articulate wow. That's the block. That's why I'm failing to be able to get back into the trench and train and equip my people so that I can delegate and scale. It wasn't because she didn't believe the principle was valuable. It wasn't because she didn't know what to teach her people. She was stuck in the head game related to previous experiences and relationships that told her that when you invest time and energy, not only will it not reap a benefit from you, but it'll probably expose you to pain.
[00:25:32.840] - Chris
And of course, we see this a lot because these kind of letdowns disappointments happen all the time in teens. But this was even an example where it was somebody outside of the existing team. This was a prior experience. Unrelated.
[00:25:43.670] - Brandon
That's right. And this is a sharp, capable, longtime industry person. Guys, we're not talking about a weak link, an immature person that's really struggling to have control of who they are and how they function. This is a capable person that had an epiphany in a conversation that, holy shit. My current leadership struggle is all about a previous experience, and it is subconsciously controlling what I'm able to do or not do.
[00:26:11.640] - Chris
See, that is such a perfect example. Perfect example.
[00:26:14.200] - Brandon
And I think that's what we're talking about here is there's a difference between someone listening to this and saying, yeah, I totally buy the fact that my previous experience shaped what I do today. No, guys, listen to what we're talking about at a subconscious level. You may very well be experiencing roadblocks and friction because of something you just have not wrestled with an emotion, a relational reality that's shaping how you treat your employees right today. And I think one of the things that we talked about earlier, sometimes we get a little off track in our discussions, but it's the ramifications of this, and I think we kind of glossed over this a little bit. And I just want to back up just for a moment, guys. All of us, I think, if we're honest, can look at the success or at least the incremental improvements that we're making in our businesses, in our professional spheres, and there's something that still makes that thing pale in comparison to the other things that are challenging the living shit out of us. It's like, I'm kind of going into story mode now, but I was just thinking about in my personal life, we were in a very interesting and successful, aggressive, driven growth time in one of the previous companies that you and I.
[00:27:31.330] - Brandon
Worked in and we were winning. Like, for all intents and purposes, we were winning. Revenue is growing, profits growing, systems are growing. Reach is growing. Market penetration is brand recognition. We were winning. And I was at probably one of the most depressed and kind of overwhelmed places I had been. And it's because my home life was in a position where my wife and I were really struggling with the age of our son. It was a challenging time period. He had things just like we all do. He's no different that he was transitioning through, that he was working through as a young adolescent person. We were as a family, just like many of yours, wrestling with this new relationship. As our kids mature, like as we start to loosen the grip a little bit and they want there's just this dance that we bro.
[00:28:22.160] - Chris
I'm in it. I'm in it right now.
[00:28:24.260] - Brandon
And I have shared the woes. And it was just overwhelming to me that in the moment that all the success at work could not overthrow or overcompensate for the fact that this very bedrock driven relationship was not healthy. It just wasn't. And it gassed me. It took everything out. It made everything else I was doing so unrewarding because that felt like, well, yeah, I'm rad here, but I can't even manage my household. I can't even be a great partner to my spouse or my kids, but I can do this thing good and it's not good enough. I think that's what we're trying to talk about here is, guys, we are whole people. We can't compartmentalize our successes and the bedrock relationships that we're responsible to and for have to be winning if we're going to see success or have organizations that are healthy and flourishing as well. Right. We've got to address this stuff. It's not good enough to be aware. We have to dig in. We have to understand what profound impact it's having on ourselves, our businesses, and our relationships.
[00:29:30.830] - Chris
Yeah, boy, that is such a good example and I think something that people can really relate to. I certainly can. I mean, I'm just having all these examples from that same period. I was in the fire too, and I am in many ways right now. And there is that profound feeling of, god, what is wrong with me? And what does this actually mean about me? Is the areas where I am succeeding, is that all just a charade? There was this real impostor syndrome that I feel and I feel sometimes right now relative to my teenage children. What is this actually saying about me that I'm in so much conflict with my kid? It's humbling, I think when you start to pull back and look at some of these things, where do we want to go from here, man?
[00:30:09.920] - Brandon
I think it's an interesting piece to kind of tie in, like, two concepts, I think, that you and I have been chasing recently. And that's helped us kind of flesh out our relationship to some of this topic is so it's this idea of what Bill Heibls presented, right, that our current actions, mindset, perspectives, they are tethered to these previous relationships, experiences. And at a very subconscious level, they have this controlling impact on the way that we make decisions wear through some of these issues. Blah, blah, blah. But I think almost simultaneously, you and I were introduced to this idea of leaders then, right? So leaders at home, leaders in relationship, leaders in our professional environments. It's this idea of us acting out these subconscious and so what do some of those things look like? And so there's these two really great pictures to follow suit with this Bill Heibles concept of leaders, us either being in a box or being outside of the so. And I know this has been something that you've been keyed in for a really long time, but this idea of what's ultimately happening when we're not aware of these previous experiences and relationships and how they're shaping how we affect relationship and make decisions.
[00:31:29.160] - Brandon
Now, most of us are in this box, this constricted, restrictive, just crushing box that limits the kind of influence and opportunities that we can experience. Right?
[00:31:41.860] - Chris
Let's come back to the box thing, because I think I wonder if it might I have an example. So when we talk about these underlying things, these things at the bottom of the ocean that our current behaviors, attitudes, perspectives, reactions are tethered to. As sort of nervous as I am to share it, I want to give a little bit of my backstory. And then I think it'd be useful for you to share some of your origin story as well, because you and I have very different kind of origin stories, and yet both of us have these artifacts at the bottom of the ocean that have driven our leadership in very specific fact. I was literally I was just talking with Will, who is our newest team member at Floodlight. We were talking about the same thing as we were going through our company values. And this is one area where it all shows up, is, how am I living out my values? Because there's some of these things in my history that affect my ability to live out certain values. It was just interesting, timely, before we had this podcast. For me, I think we touched on at the beginning of the podcast, those artifacts are the result of those things at the bottom of the ocean that we're tethered to, are a result of a bunch of different things.
[00:32:53.130] - Chris
It's going to be different for everybody. There's horrible, traumas people that have PTSD, so sometimes those artifacts have this packaging of PTSD, right? Some people have had really horrendous things that have happened to them and that they've experienced in their life. So whatever that is, you fill in the blank. If you're one of those people that has had just this very disruptive, horrifying kind of experience. And there's others of us that just grew up in a certain kind of family culture where certain kinds of things where we just learned through osmosis. This is the expectation on you. This is where your value comes from. This is how you get recognized. This is how you receive care inside our family unit. All those things. We just accumulate those experiences as we get older and ultimately those become those things at the bottom of the ocean. It's like, this is just the way I do my life. This is the way I do relationship because it's all I know. It's what I grew up with. And then I think too, like I mentioned, sometimes this past work experiences, all those things become the file folders for me.
[00:33:59.630] - Chris
There's a family of origin thing on my dad's side of the family. There's a real, in some ways a really beautiful story of kind of coming out of very difficult roots. My great grandfather was an Itinerant worker. He was a farmhand and raised a family doing that splitting time between Arizona and Oregon when Oregon was in their rainy season down in Arizona, doing just he was a rough neck trying to raise a family in the context of that, whatever it was 70, 80 years ago, it was rough and tumble. He was a piece of work, angry, violent, what we would call abusive now. But at the time, it was just harsh father stuff. I think it wasn't necessarily seen the same way it is now. We just didn't have that awareness. Right. But there was a lot of abuse, very harsh treatment of my grandfather. And I think like most of us have seen of our families, my grandfather inherited some of that experience that became the norm in his family culture. And so when he had my dad and my uncles, that aversion of that continued forward, a very harsh discipline. What I think most all of us would equate with physical abuse.
[00:35:16.050] - Chris
A lot of anger, a lot of kind of fear mongering to get my dad and his brothers to do things. There was a religiosity kind of packaged up in this. And my dad learned at a very, very early age that if he could somehow make himself special, if he could somehow project some talent, that my grandfather would leave him alone. So if my dad was the good son, right, did good in school, my dad was very musical. That turned out to be kind of his way out to escaping some of that anger dynamic with my grandfather. If he could just be the piano player at church. My grandfather liked the way I think. And of course my grandfather's dead now. I haven't had this conversation with him. But what I've observed is that if my dad made my grandfather look good, it gave him a pass on a lot of that harsh discipline and abuse and all that kind of stuff. So my dad just he picked this up. None of this was explicitly talked about. And my grandfather never said, hey, look, guys, you screw up, I'm going to beat you and I'm going to do this, but if you do a really good job and you make me look good, none of that was ever conveyed actually verbally, right?
[00:36:24.650] - Chris
But my dad just we learned these things through observation and experience. And so my dad learned if he can somehow find a way to be extraordinary, talented, special, and get other people validating that and develop a reputation for that, then my grandfather would be more kind and less harsh. And so my dad grew up as the good son. First kid to graduate from college was the church pianist and organist from like the age of twelve up in front of the church every Sunday. That was his persona. And my grandfather liked it, other people in the church, and it just fed my dad's ego in a particular way. And my dad's a really good person. So again, this isn't a judgment of good or bad. No, it's just this is it's like this has happened in our family and this became kind of the family culture. And so I think my dad carried a version of that forward. And I'm really grateful that the physical abuse was never part of my experience, ever. So my dad managed, somehow found it within himself to leave that part behind. But very early on, I also fell into music partly.
[00:37:32.680] - Chris
I think I carried some of my dad's talent, my mom's musical as well. And so I, from a very young age, realized this is a way to get positive attention. And it became a source of affirmation and accolades from my know, when I would play or I would sing at church, people would come up and I still remember it. I still have a visual in my head when people come, oh my goodness, Chris was so wonderful up there on stage and I could see my dad beaming. He was very proud. And so it wasn't that my dad never hugged me and never loved me in other ways, but it's just we had this culture and over time I just really started to embody this thing of I need to be talented. My talent, what I'm externally people think of me is everything. My reputation, what people say about me when people praise me after I do things like that, is my value as a person. And I think ultimately this is not all bad. Again, this isn't good bad, because I mean, holy cow. I look back at my career, I think that part of me pushed me in the direction of business and sales and wanting to persuade and do well and be an achiever.
[00:38:39.150] - Chris
And so it fueled a number of things that are positive me. But it also had this dark side. There was a toxic residue that it left behind both on my dad and I's relationship, because I always think there was a part of me that wanted to just be loved and to just have his affection just cuz, rather than it being sort of a byproduct of me doing impressive things. And again, I don't think my dad ever intended it for the he and I've talked about this, so, dad, if you're listening, I love you, and you know that and all the things, but I carry it forward, and it's come out in some interesting ways in my leadership. And I'm realizing, as I say this, that I'm spending way too much time on this. This can be difficult to distill all this into an hour when we're on stage.
[00:39:17.240] - Brandon
Right.
[00:39:18.130] - Chris
But where it's shown up for me is I've had, over the course of my career, such an intense commitment to managing how my reputation yeah, I think.
[00:39:27.770] - Brandon
You'Ve referred to it before as it built a performance culture yes.
[00:39:31.500] - Chris
Where I first started to clue in on this or one of the big moments of truth you gave me. I remember presenting in front of our all company meeting. It was like an update on what we were doing with our commercial sales division or it was some kind of whatever. And I had the floor for a good ten or 15 minutes at one of our meetings. And I came out of the meeting and I said, hey, how'd I do? Which I had always asked you that question. You kind of paused what wasn't good? And anyway, I followed you back to your office, and I remember you saying, I don't know exactly what I mean here, but you've got tons of confidence. You have great self confidence. Like, you're great in front of people. So it was fine. It was good. It was good like normal. You're good in front of the team, he said, but it just felt like you don't really like yourself. There was just this little thing that I picked up on of you really needed the team to like what you were saying or to find it important. And I just wonder it just seems like you have low self esteem.
[00:40:28.570] - Chris
And when you said that, I was like, at first I felt defensive. I'm like, what the fuck does this mean?
[00:40:33.790] - Brandon
Yeah, right.
[00:40:34.270] - Chris
And what does this mean about me? I spun out on that, and I think I don't remember where that interaction with us landed, necessarily. I may have gotten emotional on it because I realized there was this grain of truth that you were tapping into inside me. I just remember that as one of those moments of truth where I thought a lot about that. That was probably five, six years ago. Yeah, maybe seven. Yeah, maybe seven or eight years ago.
[00:40:56.710] - Brandon
Certainly a catalyst of sorts, but it.
[00:40:58.530] - Chris
Clued me in to this subconscious demand. And another terminology that I think I got from this family culture, even though my dad doesn't even use this word, my parents don't curse is I'm afraid of being seen as an asshole. If people experience me or think I'm an asshole or whatever, that inherently is bad. I can't have people not like me. Somehow I got that in my family culture and I could spend another hour on this. Just things I've observed in my father and how he's managed his reputation, all those things. But that is like a real mortal sin or a fear that I carried for a lot of my leadership and it's still there. I'm just aware of it now where I can be conscious and be like, man, what's going on inside me? God, there's a part of me that is afraid of being seen as an asshole. If I say this out loud, to this client, to a team member, to you, whatever, but I really started to become more conscious of that when you brought up that whole self esteem thing.
[00:41:52.130] - Brandon
Well, and it's interesting because I think what you're talking about here is that's that whole in the box element. So again, just kind of ripping through some of these analogies, right? It's this idea, okay? Something in your past is shaping how you act, respond, the stories you tell yourself, the way that you prioritize certain types of relationships and certain actions. Yet until that moment, most of that is just happening outside of your conscious thought. And so then how did that represent itself? How were you a leader then, in the box, meaning you were influenced by these things because there was a lack of recognition and awareness to the fact that they are influencing you. And so I think it became I don't know if passive is the correct word, but it made it very difficult for you as a leader to establish accountability.
[00:42:39.790] - Chris
Oh, that's your wrestling percent. 100%. All right, Headhart and Boots listeners wanted to stop here just a moment and thank our underwriting sponsor, Bloodlight Consulting Group. As all of you you know, Brandon and I, this is our passion project, Headhart 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 been listening to show for a while, you get to know who we are, right, what we're about. So if Headhart 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.
[00:43:43.900] - Brandon
That's what we do.
[00:43:44.920] - Chris
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.
[00:43:58.060] - 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 Premier Partners 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.
[00:44:49.050] - Chris
So one of our company values at Floodlight is openness and that involves transparency. It involves us keeping short accounts with one another. And my struggle in that and I was telling Will this, I'm like, this is a growing edge for me. This is a real struggle. This is aspirational in many ways because it is difficult for me when I am disappointed in somebody. Frustrated, angry, whatever. It's almost like a foreign language sometimes. There's a part of me that gets so caught up in I don't want them to think I'm an asshole. I don't want them to not like me.
[00:45:19.560] - Brandon
Right?
[00:45:20.090] - Chris
And it's been compounded over the years having a role of sales and small business owner because you are so indexed on wooing people and winning people over.
[00:45:31.020] - Brandon
Right.
[00:45:31.610] - Chris
That that conflicts I think with building this awareness and overcoming that fear because you just train yourselves. You're just constantly in the mode of trying to woo and win others over and persuade people into your perspective and all those kinds of things. I was telling him, I said, yeah, it is very difficult for me to have critical conversations because I'm so afraid of what that person is going to think of me. So that's an example of how for me, that family culture kind of took root in my heart. It's a feeling thing. I can rationalize the shit out of it in my head, well this is counterproductive. This isn't serving me as a leader. This is putting a cap on my like I think anywhere along the way, even maybe before that conversation with you if somebody had dug into that, if somebody had said to me, hey, Chris, I feel like you have a difficult time being critical and sharing critical feedback and stuff like that. I'd been like, well, hell, yeah. And I could see how it's limiting me and my capacity of leading others and influencing. And yet I wouldn't have necessarily been able to tell you why until later on.
[00:46:39.390] - Chris
Even knowing it doesn't solve it. It's developing this. I think it's part of where I've had to come is that that's not all of so, because I think our tendency in America and in business culture is you find a problem and you just solve it and eliminate it, and you move on. And I think the reality about people is that while you can do that with a system or a part of your business, a functional area of your business, that's really not how humans work. And so I think part of the wisdom of this stuff we're talking about is it isn't necessarily about just, like, seeing it, cleaning it up, fixing it, eliminating it and moving on. And that's never a thing again. I think it's more recognizing this is a part of who I am. Because I go back to that other piece. That desire to build reputation and protect my reputation has been a critical component of me having success in sales, building floodlight, building other businesses. So there's an aspect of it that's been productive, right? Yeah. It's like you can't throw the baby out with the bathroom. This is a fundamental thing that has shaped me.
[00:47:43.250] - Chris
And so I think it becomes more of an awareness as a leader to where it's, hey, this is a part of me. What do I do with it? What influence do I allow it to have?
[00:47:52.630] - Brandon
Yeah, I think that's the key right there. It's not a matter of it's not good, bad, right, wrong.
[00:47:59.470] - Chris
It's recognizing the different parts that are active inside of me.
[00:48:02.510] - Brandon
These are influencing.
[00:48:03.950] - Chris
And it's saying, okay, this commitment to reputation, this part of me that's like, oh, shit, if I say this, they might get mad, they may leave, they may fire us, they may be offended, and then they'll go away. Or they'll say stuff like, Chris is an asshole. Like, they'll say that on social media. It's saying, God, part of me is really afraid of that. And then choosing to go with this other part of me that understands the responsibility I have and has this commitment to the relationship, to share this in spite of this other part of me that's afraid.
[00:48:33.710] - Brandon
Yeah. It's like in awareness, we can make different choices when it's all subconscious, when we're just reacting to whatever that under the surface driver is.
[00:48:43.400] - Chris
We're sleepwalking.
[00:48:44.140] - Brandon
It's so limited, it's so limiting. It really creates a ton of dysfunction. And I think, too, it's just that it's this idea of how do a lot of those kinds of behaviors manifest themselves. And in your particular case, it's this idea that you become more passive in your leadership style. You're overly indexed on what people think of me versus what is the value, the responsibility, the critical thing that I have to equip the team or be able to deliver. In this moment, many of us are going to fall on an opposite end of that spectrum.
[00:49:13.930] - Chris
Before we go into the box, man, I want you to share your story, because I think some people hear my story and they're like, man, that's really nice. Chris, it's really hard just how traumatic your childhood was. They just can't relate to it. And I do. I feel so lucky and fortunate that my wounds, by comparison, I think, are less severe right. Than a lot of people's experience. A lot of people there's just some fundamentally different experiences people have. And you and I, you've shared extensively about your experience. Could you just kind of touch on that and give people some insight into yeah.
[00:49:48.830] - Brandon
Unfortunately, I think my youth story is like lots of Americans, right. That's both kind of a sad but true scenario where broken family, divorce when I was super young, single mom trying to figure it out. How do you work, especially? I mean, guys, neither one of my parents were walking away with doctorates. These were blue collar families. And a single parent making it is very difficult and call a spade a spade. A single mother in the 80s, late 80s, even more so, very difficult to make it right. And so it was just this mom's not at home because she's surviving. She's trying to do the basics, provide the basics. It wasn't malicious intent, per se, dad, that left our home environment when we were young, and it was like he was gone and gone. It wasn't, wow, we just really couldn't make it work out. So we're going to do a good job co parenting.
[00:50:44.410] - Chris
He wasn't taking you off for Sundays? Yeah.
[00:50:46.930] - Brandon
No. Visiting was weird and not great, and normally because there was some kind of mandatory requirement and those few and limited experiences that we had, sharing time with my father was excruciating at the best. No signs of love. No signs of being proud or excited about what my life looked like or what I was going to become or where I was headed or having any kind of influence on the direction of that trajectory. There was no commitment to relationship. And I think what's hard for a lot of people to understand, unless you've been in those, is that my wife is really smart. She'll stella saying is like the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. It's indifference you feeling, for whatever reason, that you are so meaningless that you don't have an emotional impact on that person whatsoever.
[00:51:35.470] - Chris
That sucks.
[00:51:36.530] - Brandon
Right? And I don't think anybody says that stuff out loud. It's like, what you're talking about? It's this assimilation through osmosis. It's just felt you grow accustomed to someone's unspoken language saying to you, you literally are so meaningless to me that not only did I not have a problem walking out and having little to nothing to do with you, but I don't really care all that much. Like, there's nothing on the surface that even says that there's a resemblance of pain or discomfort or dissatisfaction with the fact that it played out the way that it played out. And so as hard as a mom can do to try to say, hey, you're loved all these things, a guy needs a dad to speak into him and let him know that he has value. And again, guys, I'm very fortunate. I had an amazing set of grandparents that were in the mix. Spotty, right? Not an everyday influence, but they were an anchor influence to me. And at the end of the day, they saved my life. If it wasn't for those relationships, I'm not sure what would have happened. But long story short, I grew up in a very broken home with a father that, through action, said I was meaningless to him.
[00:52:46.000] - Brandon
And what's interesting is a lot of people don't know this, but later on in his life, not very many years ago, he was struggling and dying from stage four cancer, lung cancer. He's a lifetime smoker and alcoholic. And my wife and I made a commitment to each other to go participate in that end of life experience with him and reintegrate and take him to his appointments and all the things. And this was after probably about a two or three year stint where me, as a mature adult with kids, full blown families, careers and all the things, he was kind of trying to integrate, to reconnect in some fashion some weird broken way. I mean, we had no relationship whatsoever. So anyways, my wife and I go through this process of kind of eating our ego and treating him respectfully and trying to support him, prioritizing our time, sacrificing things to be available to him. And the last part of that experience turned into a text message. I got, I think, about 11:00 at night, and I can't remember all the details, but the text message essentially was summarized with, if I needed an Uber driver, I would have fucking hired one.
[00:53:49.960] - Brandon
So recap piece of shit dad. As an adult, my wife and I choose to put bad blood aside, help him through the latter months of his existence on Earth, and in the midst of that still chose to shit on us intentionally. Wild. So then he dies, and some period of time goes by, and the attorneys that were responsible for the estate and all that send out these obligatory letters in regards to people's will and testament, all those things. And my dad's will literally goes to the extent of explaining in detail how me, by name, can't have anything and has zero input, influence, authority. Over his will, over his estate. So at times I tell that story and I kind of laugh because it is so ridiculous. And there's times I tell it and you're crying inside because it is so ridiculous. But what that created was a chip that was based on constantly trying to prove to the external world that I was valuable. Knowing the entire time on the internals that I didn't feel like I was. So here I am, an adult, I've been leading platoons and teams in the military, real world deployments, learning how to be very authoritative in my leadership structure, very vibrato, very aggressive.
[00:55:16.030] - Brandon
I learned that the more aggressive and frictional and divisive I was that people got into line if I was strong enough presence they would just hear me fall into alignment with what I wanted and that's how we controlled what was happening. So anyways, it's one of those interesting things where for you it created a bit of a passive leadership style as an example. And for me it created this more aggressive, anger driven, put up or shut up. Either get in alignment with where we're heading or get the fuck off my body ass.
[00:55:49.790] - Chris
Right?
[00:55:50.160] - Brandon
And what's interesting about that is that over the years now, looking back, that was not me. I was at ODS with myself that whole time. Part of the reason that I was dysfunctional, part of the reason that I had aggressive anger issues at home and with my relationships with my family is I was at ODS with who my soul wanted me to be. I was acting out and being somebody, making decisions, leading people from this thing that was influencing me on a subconscious level. And at the end of the day, I didn't want to be that. As I've become more mature, I've had more experiences to look at those things more closely, I'm becoming more of the kind of leader that I respect, that I know is healthy and creates commitment, engagement, all the things. And so anyways, for me that story is what put me in my box and you and I looked different. But the issue is still the same. It's this idea of I wasn't experiencing and or being the kind of person I was proud of. Like internally, deep inside when no one was looking was myself proud of myself. And in those times I wasn't.
[00:57:00.080] - Brandon
I'm getting closer to that. It's a work in process but my ability to be aware of how that influences my decision making, my relationship management and all those things is giving me the ability to intentionally make decisions shift change so that I become more of what I want to experience. Right? And I think that's again, heart of the matter, that's what we're talking about. It's an idea of the awareness equipping us then to shift the decisions and priorities that we have to experience more of what we want versus these part compartmentalized successes driven by subconscious thought or decision making. Right. I feel like that's what I'm learning in this journey is not right or wrong. Awareness gives me the ability to affect change, make different decisions, change things if I want, add subtract if I want, because I'm engaging it from a thoughtful, responsive posture instead of a reactive or subconscious posture. I don't think we need to unpack and detail the whole boxing, but that's ultimately what was happening is you and I were leading from our boxes because of these previous experiences. And the interesting thing is the box looked different for both of us, but I think the outcomes are the same.
[00:58:19.390] - Brandon
The outcome is my people don't get the kind of leadership they deserve. It's not the kind of leadership that creates the best performance. You're just not able to provide that when you're in this box, when you're constrained from the subconscious behavior. So I guess time, sake of time, we need to shift out of this.
[00:58:38.060] - Chris
What are we doing?
[00:58:38.860] - Brandon
So if as an audience, as a group, we say, okay, I may not be all in with you, Brandon, and Chris, but I can definitely see how my life is a product of some of these subconscious factors affecting my decision making.
[00:58:52.480] - Chris
So what do we do about it?
[00:58:53.370] - Brandon
So what do we do?
[00:58:55.230] - Chris
Well, I think it's the art of noticing is I think the thing we have to invest ourselves in is in noticing our reactions and responses. And I think usually so from if you talk to Byron, Katie, Eckhart Tolle, and some of these other thinkers on this subject, they would say that it's really important to start to just create awareness and notice these things. Here's a simple example with my son. So everybody who's listening to this that has kids, I think, hopefully will relate to it. So my son and this happened probably two years ago he's 13 years old. He's full of piss and vinegar. He has my anger, and he has my wife's stubbornness. So he's like, he's got that. And he's a sweet kid, and he's a deep feeler, and that's always been kind of part of my stories. I'm very squishy inside, but when I feel hurt, when I feel small, when I feel his anger is the thing that comes out in a variety of different ways, and so he's got that in spades. So my mom, she took the boys, she picked them up for school. Their grandma took them on some errands, took them to a haircut of know, just kind of took the kids along and all her errands running around, and then brought them home.
[01:00:04.850] - Chris
And as they came home, I'm actually walking out the door to go run to Trader Joe's to get food for dinner. So I stopped the kids at the threshold of the door on the patio, and I said, hey, actually, don't even come in, because we got to go run and get food for dinner. And my son flipped out. He's like, what? We've just been riding around with grandma for the last 3 hours straight. I don't want to get back in the car. I'm so Dana, first of all, school just got out an hour and a half ago, so they haven't been riding around for 3 hours. So this is just where he's coming from. Right? And I had just recently had a coaching call with an executive coach I was working with. And he used to do this with me. And I think this is a really useful discipline for us to cultivate a mental model when I was doing my work. I'll come back to my Jack story here in a minute. When I was working with this executive coach, every day he would say, hey, so what's going on? Anything that you need to clear the table we need to talk about?
[01:00:59.910] - Chris
And inevitably, at the time, I was really struggling my relationship with my wife. And so usually it was marriage stuff that would come up and I would say something to the effect of, gosh, I'm really just frustrated with know, this thing keeps coming up and he's whoa, whoa, hold on, Chris. Part of you is feeling that way. Part of you is and he would always say part of you. And I was like, oh, this is so freaking annoying. This is just stupid. Woo woo. Mumbo jumbo stuff was my initial reaction. And over time, I started to understand what he was talking about because he would always circle back and he would say, hey, part of you, yes, there is a part of you that's feeling this way. Is there another part? Step back. Look at this situation. The frustration you're telling me about. Is there another part that is just okay and fine? Well, that's a weird question, but I started to recognize there was this other part of me when I would step back and I would just pause for a moment before I reacted. And I could just think about, yes, part of me is really pissed off, but there's this other part of me.
[01:01:57.450] - Chris
It was just fine before we started talking about this thing. And I started to see that both things are in. Yeah, there's always good things and there's frustrating bad things inside me. And so I started to take hold of that. So back into my Jack story. So we're standing on the front doorstep, he is flipping the fuck out. And I had the presence of mind to notice. Part of me is feeling like I want to flick him on the end of his nose. Part of me wants to just push him out towards the car. And I'm feeling a little pissed off. Part of me is feeling a little pissed off. And I'm like coaching myself. Mentally, I was in my head, but I had the presence of mind to just pause there in the moment. And so after I said part of me is really feeling pissed off about this. I think I'm going to flip out on Jack. All of a sudden, it started to subside inside me. The anxiety, the anger just started to kind of dissipate. And the words that came out of my mouth next were, okay, hey, dude, I get it, okay?
[01:02:53.100] - Chris
I totally get it, man, but we got to eat, right? And so I just started to appeal to the rational side of him. I'm like, but we got to eat, right? How long is it going to take as a Trader Joe's, what do you think? And he's like, I don't know. I'm like, It's probably 30 minutes, right? And then we're going to come home, and then it's going to be cool, right? So it's not going to take long. So I'm just trying to appeal to him. Anyway, he finally gives in. We sit in the car, and when we got into the car, I said, hey, dude, you just seem like you're really upset. What, man? Did something happen today at school? And I did it in that tone of voice, because, again, I wasn't angry anymore. Part of me was angry earlier. I saw it like, okay, because the.
[01:03:29.590] - Brandon
Normal would be this competing ramp.
[01:03:31.610] - Chris
The normal would have been, we're just ramping each other up.
[01:03:34.450] - Brandon
Principal, treat me this way.
[01:03:36.550] - Chris
Yeah, because, dude, do you know how much bigger I am than you? You're going to get the fuck in the car. I mean, I don't say those things to my children, but this is what I'm feeling inside, right? And so it would have been, Dude, quit complaining. We're going to go. There would have been some sort of escalation that happened, and then ultimately, he just would have been pissed off, and we would have taken that whole energy into our evening, and the whole evening would have been punctuated by some amount of his irritation, frustration, yelling, stomping around the house. You know what I mean? Maybe hopefully, some people can relate to this. I'm not the only one, right? But so we get in the car, and I have this sympathetic tone to my voice because I'm able to see him as just another human that's clearly upset about something. And he said, yeah, I failed this test, and the teacher wouldn't let me retake it, and I failed it because of just some he had some excuse, and he was embarrassed, and he was really upset because he cares about his grades. And I'm like, oh, dude, I totally get it.
[01:04:30.360] - Chris
I've had those days. All right, man. Well, listen, I understand. I understand. Are you cool? Can we go to Trader Joe's and let's just and then we'll move on with the day? Is that cool? He's like, yeah, man. I'm sorry. Yeah, bro. Is this, like, thing now that's bro everything? Yeah, bro. All right. And so we were able to move through that situation without it becoming this bigger, more angry, darker, frustrating thing. Like, I still I think about that a lot. And of course, there's been a ton of subsequent times, but this exercise as a leader, but it's just as a person, as a dad. And I could give you a multitude of stories with my wife because our spouses, it is the most personal and intimate relationship that most of us have anywhere in the world. Right. And for some of us, our whole lives, and I think it also often is the most sensitive and painful spot too. Right. So I could give you a multitude of examples there, but I think that for me, was the first step of just recognizing, look, this thing is happening in me. And just noticing, it just the art of noticing starts to dissipate.
[01:05:39.460] - Chris
Those negative and stressful reactions and emotions are happening because, again, that file folder just gets pulled.
[01:05:44.820] - Brandon
Right. Well, and I think most importantly is it gave you the opportunity to choose different.
[01:05:49.570] - Chris
Yes.
[01:05:50.910] - Brandon
And the ramifications of choosing different, because in that same situation could have had that blowout. It sucked all night. The attitudes flare up, and then you almost stay in that state for a year, but you could have rolled in the next day to the shop. You could have been well in your way of signing a new opportunity, like all the winning and the success, knowing the whole time in the back of your mind, I've got this relationship that's broken at home.
[01:06:13.930] - Chris
And, you know, I think this is a reality for many of us. I hope so. Anyway, it's not just me. Daughter got the short end of the stick because she's 18, three years older than Jack. I didn't have this awareness. And I just think about just the downstream effects of this. Right. Because yeah, that example with Jack, what would have happened is he and I would have been totally disconnected for the remainder of the yeah, just pissed off. I'm irritated with him. He's no with me. Dad's an asshole, whatever, whatever he's thinking.
[01:06:39.380] - Brandon
Right.
[01:06:40.670] - Chris
But then it would have spilled over to my wife. This is a story for many years of our marriage and with my daughter. And just like my daughter's, very strong willed. She's just like me without years of I'm sorrys. So all of that strife and all of the dynamic there, it would always spill over into our marriage, too, because I'm just so caught up in my son. My daughter thinks I'm an asshole again. My family of origin, that's the translation. It's not logical. My kids weren't really telling me I'm an asshole, but they weren't respecting me or they weren't going along. And my file folder is telling me in those moments, they think you're an asshole. You're not worth it. You're not special. You're nothing to them. You're just freaking annoying. I'm internalizing that. I feel angry. I feel sad. There's all these things that are happening inside me, and ultimately, then in my interactions with my wife. She's experiencing the version of me that's feeling and caught up in all those stories, and it's ugly and it's not pretty. And our first probably 15 years of our marriage were punctuated and sort of highlighted by that.
[01:07:45.970] - Chris
We had a lot of good times, but where we had strife, it was because of these things happening inside me that I just wasn't paying attention to, and therefore, I felt like I didn't have any control over it. But that moment with Jack was one of those starting points where I was like, gosh, part of me has seen that that there's always these opposing parts of me, and when I take a moment to notice it, I can turn away from the negative and stressful version, and I have an opportunity to choose. There's this other part of me that's functioning just fine. And what if I move in that way? And of course, the outcome is always better.
[01:08:17.120] - Brandon
Yeah, it's always better.
[01:08:18.290] - Chris
You know what I mean?
[01:08:19.070] - Brandon
Yeah. No, I do. I think that's probably a good place to start to kind of close up the conversations. So here's some thoughts.
[01:08:25.000] - Chris
We're realizing we have a lot of trimming, and we've got a few things to work on.
[01:08:28.210] - Brandon
So this is interesting to me. I think this is what I want to encourage people to consider. So first off, what we're talking about is this idea of we need to be more introspective on what do we want, who do we want to be? What kind of life are we wanting to experience and not getting caught up looking at an isolated portion of our existence, our life? So like, for instance, this compartmentalization between our professional environments and our home environments, whatever the case may be. It's this idea of asking yourself some hard questions of am I who I want to be? Am I experiencing the kind of business, the kind of relationships that I want to to be experiencing? And if the honest answer is kind of sometimes sort of, which is probably true for almost all of us, as long as we're honest, then what is the opportunity then? If we do that assessment and we're honest with ourselves and we say, yeah, kind of. I mean, I think we're headed in some similar directions or good directions, but I got a lot of work to do. Well, then ask yourself if what we're talking about is feasible.
[01:09:28.810] - Brandon
Do you have an open enough mind to look at this and say, a lot of the kinds of relationships that I'm experiencing in my business, in my company, at home with my spouse, my partner, my kids, is potentially being driven by and or controlled by these previous experiences, these past events, these past relationships. If you can be open minded enough to accept that, then what do you want to do about it? Right? What do you want to start considering as an individual and potentially changing in the way that you're responding, maybe shifting the kind of energy you're deploying with your family, shifting the way that you're thinking about these relationships, and would that then produce the kind of outcome that you actually want to experience? Right. And then this third piece I think you touched on this is if you're saying, okay, I can do better, there is a better experience, a more holistic experience to have. I think I do buy into this idea that my previous experiences may overwhelmingly be driving some of my current decision and behaviors that I'm not totally aware of, and I want to make shifts in that. Then I think you need a battle buddy.
[01:10:40.690] - Brandon
You've got to have somebody in your sphere that's safe, that does have your best interest in mind, that will help you be more aware and conscientious of these positions, these things that are affecting the way that you interact with people and your employees, blah, blah, blah. And begin leaning into them to help you make adjustments. Kind of like the story that you shared, right, of, hey, is this what you intended? Is this position or the posture that you want to be leading out of? And then I would just add this. Team Floodlight has a mission that stretches far beyond consulting. Consulting coaching is the platform. It's what we do professionally to create an entry relationship with our partners. It's only the beginning of the journey. And anybody that's worked in any kind of relationship where you are partnering with, supporting, helping, equip, coach, and mentor, you understand that at the end of the day, tactics, principles, industry standards, very valuable, absolutely critical to our business. That's not where the most of the work goes. Most of the work is what we do, working with people.
[01:11:53.270] - Chris
Yeah.
[01:11:53.700] - Brandon
What's going on between your ears? And this is no different. The reason that we want to talk about this kind of stuff more often, the reason that we shaped the show the way that we did, is this is the stuff that changes families, communities for the better. If we work with a leader and, like us, help them do some journeying that makes them healthier in their relationships with their partners, their spouse, their children, their churches, their community, their companies, their businesses, wow. What kind of impact is that from a legacy perspective? So we really believe this stuff. We believe this is bedrock critical for us to get a grip on. And we believe that missionly, for us, it's a top priority. Top priority.
[01:12:36.670] - Chris
I think we landed the plane. Yeah. I don't know what else to say. Go to floodlightgrp.com. If this stuff's resonating with you and you want to have a deeper conversation, you want to get into what's going on with your business and what's the opportunity, what are the challenges that you're facing? And could we potentially partner together? Could we be that sort of battle buddy that you and your team need just go to floodlightgrp.com and send us a message, and we'll do a complimentary zoom session and just talk more about your business and where you guys are at. Also, check out our sponsors. Go to our partner page while you're what's that? Please do that. And then certainly share the Headhart and Boots podcast. It's one of the best ways that you can thank us. If this stuff is valuable to you, just share it on LinkedIn.
[01:13:20.340] - Brandon
That's right.
[01:13:20.820] - Chris
Text a friend. Share it with your downline staff. Use it. Use it as a resource. We have a lot of friends that will let us know. Hey, I shared that Project Manager episode. It was so good. I shared it with all my awesome. You know, it's really exciting for Brandon and I.
[01:13:34.530] - Brandon
That's right.
[01:13:35.080] - Chris
Otherwise, till next time.
[01:13:36.450] - Brandon
We'll see you. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots.
[01:13:42.760] - Chris
And if you're enjoying the show but 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.
