Episode 52: Date Mornings: The Talent Shift You Can’t Ignore

[00:00:09] Good morning, everybody. This week, at least what we wanted to talk about, at least what I put down in my notes was, what's your lens? When I say that, I mean, you know, are we putting attention into the wrong things? Oh, it's me. And, you know, are we putting attention into the wrong things because we're in denial about the right things? Or even do we even know what that looks like with what's in front of us? So getting really kind of introspective here, but I think it's a great topic. We started talking about it on our walk, which is more around business.

[00:00:35] I would say yes and no, at the same time. It's more around business, but I think this is going to be some hard truths for a lot of people to probably hear. And it's a good wake up call for us, right, to reset. One reason this came up is we're doing our quarterly planning for the businesses, quarterly planning for couples retreat, but it's also what we're hearing around us, what we're hearing around us.

[00:00:56] And, you know, everything from like, Libby, I like bread. I can't do that. People saying, but Libby, you know, I can't, I can't do what you're doing. I like bread. And I'm like, you don't think I like bread too? Like, or hey, I need to hire. I'm desperate, but I don't have any trainers right now, so I can't onboard for two weeks. Or I need to hire, but, you know, I don't have time to do interviews. Or like, it's just like reassessing of like, what's really important versus what we think is important. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:01:26] Yeah. And so there's two different things, two different ways about it that I think of. And one is whether we're avoiding it or two, whether we even know it exists in just being aware of it. But, you know, there's, there's the low road, there's the high road in terms of habit or instincts and what you know and what you can see. But then there's other things, which is more, I guess, behind the scenes or subconscious that you don't even know that you should be paying attention to.

[00:01:51] And I think that's where we get ourselves into trouble because a lot of the solutions we're trying to put in place in life, you know, with health or whatever is only based on what we know or only based on what we remember. I want to put that out there is only based on what we remember because we haven't made it a habit to make it important enough to stick. Yeah. Or it's only based on what we're like, what's in front of us or what we're looking at. Yeah.

[00:02:16] And it's not what we're like, not looking at instead of like, because people are like, well, you know, I'm not eating carbs or sugar, but I'm having oatmeal. Right. Or I'm having, you know, oh, but I like, but it's also like, what are you not looking at? Like if we keep looking at the same thing, it's like, it's that saying like you're in a vacuum and you cannot see like what's going on. Like you don't have a clear perspective or it's bias. Right. Just back to what it was. I think with like, for us, it was internal.

[00:02:45] It was, it was like focusing on like for us, for the companies, you know, are certain people focusing on the right things? Yeah. On what's in front of them, you know, and not looking at the bigger picture. Yeah. And I think this goes back to like fear of making mistakes, the fear of, you know, it being messy or the fear of it failing, like the fear of you failing. So I think that we avoid certain things. Like we avoid, we, at the end of the day, you know, I always go back to hiring because we have recruits and people are like, oh, but you know, I'm desperate.

[00:03:14] I need to hire. And I'm like, you know, if it's your number one issue, it needs to be the number one focus. But we don't want to focus on it because we don't like it. It's just like with eating right. We don't like it because it's not fun. We, we, we don't want to have to pay attention to it. We don't want to have to hold ourselves accountable. And we know what we need to do, but we, because it's also there subconsciously. But then we don't do it out of fear. We don't do it out of, I think it all stems back to fear.

[00:03:40] Or fear, or there's a little element of convenience where subconsciously, you know, it exists, but your brain is so wired to avoid it. So I think avoidance, which is an element of fear because there's something around it that you don't like. Yep. Back to the, you know, in terms of health and, you know, cutting out carbs, I know I need to do it, cut carbs and sugar. And then, and then the topic was about like, let's say oatmeal, you know, two different ways to go about that. One is either what you see is all there is, meaning that you don't know what you don't know.

[00:04:08] If you don't see oatmeal as carbs, you don't see oatmeal as whatever. It's hard to get around that because the solution lies in something that you don't yet know or don't really have on top of mind. Either because you're trying to dismiss it or excuse it. And this is just one, one, one general topic, which was, I think the avoidance piece or the fear piece of having to do it. Yeah. And I mean, you know, are you putting attention to the wrong things? I mean, I don't know how many people I know do this, whether it's in business or in life, putting attention to the wrong things like, oh, I work out.

[00:04:38] For two hours a day, but I eat whatever I want. Right. Or, you know, my business isn't growing, but I'm going to go over here and, you know, focus on the wrong thing because I think I'm, I love this one. I am buying my solution. Right. How many of us think that money is going to fix, you know, buying the solution is going to fix your problem. And I put a quote out yesterday that there is, you know, people or money can fix anything. Right. People or money. That's true. But, you know, when you're buying that solution, you still have to do it. Yeah.

[00:05:08] You still have to implement it. You still have to execute. You still have to hold yourself accountable. And at the end of the day, that's why we were looking for the solution because we weren't doing those things. Like I love coaching and I love teaching, like buying coaching and teaching. But at the same time, I have not heard anything that I've never not read in a book or heard from another coach. It's just, are you ready for that element of, you know, accountability instead of, you know, always focusing on the wrong thing. Always focusing on the fun thing.

[00:05:36] This is a big issue with entrepreneurs because we can do whatever the hell we want. And we tend to do the fun stuff. Yeah. The wrong one. The like, oh, I like marketing. I'm going to go over here and play with marketing, even though like I'm in a deficit with employees. Or, oh, I love hiring, but I don't have any jobs. But I don't know how to market. So I'm going to ignore it. But I'm going to stay over here with hiring. So it's like back and forth. And the same thing happens with health and exercise.

[00:06:04] A lot of people reach out to me about like, how did I get started? How do I do it? How do I hold myself accountable? And how like, you know, my mom was here visiting and I was making Christmas cookies. And I was like, for the love of God, they smell amazing. And I'm sitting here watching her and helping her decorate. And my mom just like eat one. And I'm like, no, I don't need to eat one. And I can still make them with her and engage. And she can eat one, but I don't need to eat one.

[00:06:33] It's going back to with it's just like with business and with health. It's focusing on the right thing. Like, what am I focused on? What is the easy thing? It would have been to eat the goddamn cookie. But, you know, what am I focused on? And it's the end result, right? It's the thing that's hard. It's the thing I don't want to do. I was just following something. You guys all know I'm a big Dan Martell fan. And he put a post out yesterday, I think it was like a year ago today. He was stuffing his face with peanut butter.

[00:07:01] Yeah, I remember that because his favorite food is peanut butter. And his favorite second food is chocolate. Because I just know that from being around him and chocolate peanut butter together. And it's like he's debilitated. And it's funny because we saw that transformation in him. And it's what made us do it. It's what made me do it for myself. But it's doing those hard things. And it's not it's, you know, fear that you're going to fail. How many of us women have tried to diet after having kids, you gain the weight and you keep saying, oh, this is I'm going to laugh at this. I just posted this.

[00:07:30] I'm laughing because it's me. It's me totally in my higher profits tribe, which is about like life. It's a Facebook group. I posted a video about like how many of us women just eat salad. We're just eating salad because we think it's healthy. And that's what we were told to do. And that's all we know. And we're eating salad for like breakfast, lunch and dinner. And you're so tired of salad that you just want to like. Yeah. And that was me years ago. Like and that's all I knew. That's that was my lens was it was it.

[00:08:01] And until I decided to educate myself and do the hard thing, because with salad, guys, I could still have ranch dressing and cheese and chicken on it and croutons and bacon bits and sunflower seeds and craisins. I could put anything on a salad. But it was all I knew. And that was the lens. And I was kind of fearful one of failing again at diet, you know, convenience. I didn't want to not eat certain things.

[00:08:27] And when I decided to do the hard thing, just like in business, it changed everything for me, like literally everything. And so, you know, this this topic goes to life, to kids. Like, are you not are you focusing on the wrong thing with your kids? Right. The right attention to the wrong thing, which is the avoidance. But yeah, with your kids. Yeah. The right attention to the wrong thing. You know, are you doing this with your kids or are you doing this with your marriage out of denial or, you know, like wanting to avoid certain things? You can do it with your business as well.

[00:08:55] This this topic spreads around like life in general, because, you know, I was pissed or not, but could you just help me? That's the hard thing. It's the hard conversation. It's the hard thing. It's not avoiding it. Is that all he knew? Because he wasn't paying attention. He was in the vacuum of himself and not even noticing that I needed help. Yeah.

[00:09:24] You know, again, doing it with your kids, doing it with your health and doing it with your business. I think the new year is a great not the new year right now is a great time to self reflect on. Am I looking at things or am I only seeing what I want to see? And that's a hard question because you're probably doing something. But again, right attention, wrong thing. You know it. But subconsciously, you just shift to that other direction of, you know, the health.

[00:09:50] I'm going to I'm going to go ahead and eat salad, but I'm still going to have something else later in the day because that's just what I do. Yeah, this is hard. And we call them the intangibles and the intangibles are things because why do we call them the intangibles? Chris, explain. Because they're not they're not apparent. They're not right in front of you. They're not something that draws your attention immediately. And again, I think this comes in with creating habit, creating instinct, creating repetition to make it aware to to be aware of it.

[00:10:19] Because to me, like the intangibles are almost like making those hard decisions, right? Having a hard you can't measure it. It's almost a feeling or subconscious thoughts. So I'll I'll also point to something here. I think that when you can make something real or something tangible from intangible when and you probably heard this before is when you acknowledge or say something out loud. Yeah. So, you know, in relationship, I screwed up saying that statement. I screwed up with X, Y, Z saying that statement immediately makes something intangible

[00:10:49] into a tangible. It makes it it makes it something that you can actually focus on. Whereas if you didn't say it, the low road, your subconscious would have you just kind of riding along and you couldn't really, you know, grab ahold of it and do something about it. Yeah. But I think having these with ourselves is the first first step. It's all with ourself. And, you know, having those difficult conversations with yourself, like, are you and this is like my phrase of the year of, you know, are you just tired of being tired?

[00:11:16] Are you tired of like mediocre, like health, mediocre life, sex life, business? I mean, you have to. It's that feeling of you're tired of being tired. Like you're tired of just constantly churning, constantly stuck, constantly in the same place. Like the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting it to change or a different result. And that's what it feels like in business or in life when you're trying to like lose

[00:11:44] weight or grow a business, you know, and you feel like you're going insane. It's because you are. I want to go one layer. I want to go even deeper there. And this is going to kind of flip it is you've heard the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. But the flip side to that even deeper is you're avoiding the same things over and over again. You could be doing different things, but avoiding the same things over and over again and expecting different results. Yeah. I'm guilty of that right now.

[00:12:14] I just did a self-check with myself. I'm avoiding stuff. Even I, everyone does it. I'm avoiding stuff. And I, you know, we had some yesterday was some really, actually this week, some really big things we made me personally and as a couple and as a business and as owners. And we made, I made some big decisions I'm avoiding and I keep avoiding it. And I have a ton of people that ask me for like coaching or help. And I'm like, dude, I don't want to be another coach. There's so many coaches.

[00:12:42] How many people that we know that are like 20 years old and they're like, I'm a coach. And I'm like, dude, what have you done? And I've kept avoiding it and avoiding it. And so I just, I made the decision to, um, you know, invest in launching a course in 2025, but I kept avoiding it. Why? Cause it's hard and I want to do it, but I don't want to do the work. Yeah. And so it's like, you have to make that decision. So there's that. And then, you know, we made the decision to buy a software.

[00:13:11] So we signed the deal on a software. Um, I was already a part owner in it and I just became the full owner. You're going to see some stuff coming out with that, but I didn't, I do want to do it, but like, I'm don't. And then I'm like, it's more work, but I'm like, oh my God. You know, and I thought to myself before I decided to sign that paper to buy the software and, um, you know, I'm like, man, there's that saying like, oh, you know, you can't do multiple things and you can't do this. You can't do that.

[00:13:35] I was just on a boardroom call with a SAS Academy and it's a software group and we do quarterly boardroom. We call them mid sessions all day teaching on zoom. And they were like, yeah, we wrote a book and launched a new course. We have this and that. I'm like, damn. Like I'm like, well, maybe I can do multiple things and I am doing multiple things, but I keep trying to figure out where's my cap of multiple things. And you see one person, here's where I get confused in business. And this is like a totally different topic.

[00:14:01] And I want to hear if you guys all agree with this or have the same feeling we get, like some people tell us, oh, you can only do one thing. Like you can only focus on one thing. And I do believe that you can only focus on one thing at a time, but then you see these people have like six businesses, softwares, consulting this and that and products and write books. And you're like, but you just said I can only do one thing. Yeah. I'm not sure if any of you guys feel that way.

[00:14:29] You're kind of like, wow, I'm getting really mixed signals right now. And it's interesting to sit back and kind of like assess your year and say, okay, what do I want from 2025? And can I do multiple things or wait, I was just at a conference and they said, no, I can only do one thing really well. And then I'm in another thing and they're like, oh, we did 500 things and we're killing it. I'm like, well, crap. I'm like, well, what should you do? And you know what you should do? You should do whatever the heck you want to do. So, you know, I just don't know if you guys feel that same way, but you know, it's just

[00:14:59] one of those things where in business and in life, this lesson can be applied everywhere. But if you stop, but if you don't stop to look at it, if you don't stop to self-check yourself. And I talked about this last week. Do you have a coach? Do you have a mentor? Do you have a person in your life that scares the bejesus out of you? Or is willing to call you out? Yeah. Call you out. That you allow to call you out on shit. When I say scare the bejesus out of you, it's because they're holding you accountable.

[00:15:26] And like when I signed up for this, I signed up for a course, a coaching course, and he scares the bejesus out of me because he's going to hold you accountable and they make you move. They make you go fast. And you're like, oh God. And it was the thing I was missing that I used to have. And then I was, I just currently noticed I was missing it, missing it from my life. As an entrepreneur, we need somebody to push us because we can achieve great things.

[00:15:52] If we don't have, and typically peer groups, a group as a whole can't do that. They can lift us up and cheer us on, but they don't really scare you or push you outside your comfort zone. And that's what's scary. It's also scary that peer groups sometimes can get you in the rut of shifting focus away from what needs to be like that. Again, that intangibles, you keep dancing around the intangibles because there's other things out there that this might work or, oh, this might work. Oh yeah. I'm guilty of that.

[00:16:20] And the peer groups I'm in that it's also a distraction by shiny objects. They're like, what did I just did? No, no, no, but it's the root issue. Again, back to the idea of insanity and avoiding the same thing over and over again, because people keep delivering or sharing or showing other solutions where everybody's avoiding the topic of the root issue. Yeah. But they're presenting these other things, these other tools, these other softwares. When the real issue is, I'm going to, sorry, I'm going to say this. It's you. Right. The issue is always you.

[00:16:49] It's always you. It's a great topic because even in one of my businesses, I was having a conversation with one of our leadership team members and they got very defensive about their team, which I understand and I love and I respect it. But if you're so defensive about the team, is your mind open enough to realize that it could be you? Like it could be the team. Like it could be us.

[00:17:19] It could be like, it's not always like the customer. It's not, it has, it's always like, it's always coming back to us. But if you're so defensive and you care about your team so much, but it's a great trait too. Is your mind open enough to see the intangibles? I'll go back to kind of the concept that I said before. And it's that anger derives from, or comes from frustration and frustration comes from a lack of understanding. So say that again.

[00:17:47] So anger comes from frustration and frustration comes from a lack of understanding. So when you, when you're sitting in a room with somebody and again, the idea of somebody calling you out. This is great for customers as well. For all of my business owners, if you have a customer that's angry, this is anger comes from frustration, which comes from a lack of understanding, lack of knowledge. Again, what you see is all there is, or they don't know what they don't know. But this is something that really plays in.

[00:18:13] And this is, this is the magic thing that you can instantly look at to know exactly what you need to fix in yourself. If you're willing to admit to it. And right now, if you're getting frustrated is again, anger, frustration, lack of understanding. This is going to be the thing that can fix you instantly if you catch onto it and get used to it. And it is that if somebody calls you out or you allow somebody permission to call you out and you start to get defensive, you start to get upset, catch that trigger, go back into it. What's making me frustrated? Okay. What don't I understand? Okay.

[00:18:41] What do I need to fix about myself? That's it. This, this, that step right there, guys works is true for when your children are upset. You're mad at your husband. A customer's mad at your company. A technician is mad at you or the company that right there is the root cause of all anger, right? Or frustration inside a business. Yeah. And life, I'm sorry, life, business, family, marriage. And I'm sorry, but if you can master identifying when this trigger happens, as soon as again,

[00:19:11] because you're talking about your, your, the ego, the super ego, it's things that are conscious, things that are subconscious. But as soon as you catch the consciousness of the anger, the frustration, you can start to flip it around real time to start having this mental math going on where you have a customer that's angry. You start to trace it back immediately. You can start to figure out real time in that conversation, how to steer the direction of that conversation. Same thing with your, again, as long as you allow yourself to soak it in. I'm saying thing with employees, same thing with your kids.

[00:19:39] If you start to practice this, you can catch it real time. You can start to figure out what to fix in yourself immediately without having to wait for somebody else to get so pissed that you, that you fracture a relationship. Yeah. Start to practice this every single day, catching that anger, understanding the frustration, figuring out what's behind it and fixing it. Yeah. And communicating. So if you can learn this, then this is something you should teach. And that's why I said, Willie, something you should teach to your staff to help them understand like, why is an account mad at me? Why is a customer mad at me?

[00:20:08] Why is an employee angry? If you can learn to do that in yourself, then you can therefore learn to feed it down to your leadership team, your management, and down to your technicians in the field. If they can understand why a customer's angry, if they're like in a home or at a building, servicing the building. And so this is great. This is a great tool on how to diffuse situations and turn them around.

[00:20:35] You can even diffuse them before they happen because you can start to see it happen. Hiring sucks, right? Sorting through bad applications, ghosted interviews, and wasted time. It's all exhausting. That's why we built Woot Recruit. The hiring system designed to attract and convert the right people for your business fast. What are some of the benefits? Well, you get more qualified applicants without lifting a single finger. Increase your show rate.

[00:21:05] Eliminate the worry of ghosting. Track every single step of our process with real-time data. If you're tired of hiring headache, go to WootRecruit.com and let us start filling your open roles today. ...yourself and communicate. So, you know, we started with, you know, what lens are you seeing the world through right now? How are you seeing yourself?

[00:21:29] Are you feeding yourself a laundry list of excuses of like, hey, I can't do what you're doing because I like pasta. I'm like, you don't think I like pasta too? Or like, hey, you know, I don't know how you do that. How do you, do you not sleep at night? You're doing all these things. I'm like, I sleep at night. I actually sleep pretty well. Yeah. Um, but you know, I'm like, if Elon Musk can do these things, five, 500 companies, not that I'm him, but that's what I keep telling myself. If he can do it, I can do it.

[00:21:57] And that's what we look, we tell our son, uh, he's 16 and he's like, well, I can't have a job and play basketball. I'm like, if Elon Musk can build Tesla and SpaceX and X, you can do... Catch a rocket with chopsticks. Catch a rocket with chopsticks. You can play basketball and have a job as well. So we, we, we keep telling ourselves that. But the reason for today was like, we need to stop feeding ourselves a laundry list of excuses.

[00:22:22] And those are those intangible thoughts and feelings that we have when we're faced with something difficult or something we don't even want to do. And if you don't, here's the thing. But if you don't want to, like, if you're happy, then who cares? Be happy. Not everyone needs to be a million dollar business owner. Not everyone needs to, you know, be thin. I think everybody needs to be healthy for themselves and their families, but not everyone needs to be a size four. And no, I'm not a size four, but not everyone needs that.

[00:22:52] So it's whatever you need, right? But stop. Here's where I get upset. Stop feeding yourself excuses because when you do that, you're chipping away at your own self-confidence, your own self-worth, and it starts to degrade over time. Yeah. It's that bubble that builds up. Yeah. Me and Chris, uh, we didn't work in the business yesterday. We took the time to work. We didn't work in the business yesterday. We worked on it. Yeah. Planning 2025.

[00:23:18] And some of these things, as I was like looking at what do we need to do and what do we want and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, some of these are just like lame excuses on my part. Right. Of like, why we're not, are we reaching our goals? Are we just making excuses? What do I really want from a business? And you know, it's calling it out. It's holding yourself accountable and it's doing the hard things, having those hard conversations with yourself, with your team. Like it's just having them.

[00:23:44] I'm going to go back to insanity is avoiding the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. And this is, this is a great statement that Chris just said. Are we avoiding the same thing over and over and over? Are we avoiding the difficult conversation? Are we avoid holding somebody accountable? Are we avoiding asking for certain things? Are we avoiding the data, the scorecard and expecting a different result from our team? Are we avoiding those difficult conversations and we're just expecting them to figure it out? Yeah.

[00:24:13] So it's one of those things where I can guarantee you we all are at some degree. Oh yeah. We're all avoiding it somewhere. And I found where I was avoiding it and they're not, leadership team is not going to like the leadership meeting because I noticed like, Hey, we're not meeting certain things. And I've been avoiding bringing this up because I'm like, and you know, I can guarantee we all are with somebody individual on our team or the whole team as a whole or somewhere we're avoiding something. Even in relationships.

[00:24:43] Or even in relationships and marriage. That's what I mean. We're avoiding it somewhere. And at any time you have to avoid it at certain times at different places, because you don't either have the time or capacity to address it all at once. The right way. The right way. So yeah, we're avoiding it because we're like, I'm going to put this off because I'm dealing with this right now when I'm done with this, then I'm gonna go back and do that, right? That difficult conversation or hold somebody accountable. So yes, we're avoiding it because you can't do it all the right way at the same time.

[00:25:12] If we're in a deficit. Now, if you do it and you keep it up, you can keep it going. Yeah. Because I've been there and I'm in a little bit of a deficit right now, to be honest, because I've been distracted. I'm not going to lie. Yeah. I've been distracted, like going off and doing stuff Libby wants to do. Like I wanted to write a book. It was on my vivid vision and I got distracted and the book's over now. So I'm like, okay, now I got to come back and do some hard things. Fearful of the outcome. Yeah.

[00:25:41] And that goes back to fear, right? It's fear, whether it's the diet that we're going to fail or fear, stop going to the gym or fear that if I have that difficult conversation, they're going to quit Teresa. And then, oh my God, then I have to do their job along with my job. Change is scary. And it is fearful. And I feel, I get it too. And it doesn't matter. Teresa, I'm going to tell you this right now. I got like three companies. It doesn't matter what size your companies are. It doesn't matter how many companies you have.

[00:26:09] You're still fearful of that sometimes because you don't want to have to cover their job. It doesn't matter at the level because then you still got to cover that higher level job or the next level job. Or you're like, so that fear, to be honest, probably never leaves. It's just that you're now comfortable with the fear. Yeah. Yeah. Because if it didn't scare you just a little bit, you wouldn't be human, right? Not scare you, but if it didn't, if it didn't like make you like, if it didn't do something to you, whether you want to call that fear, you know, procrastination.

[00:26:39] You'd lack emotion. You'd lack emotion, which wouldn't make you human. Or you could be human. I know people who don't have emotion, but they're not very good at being a leader because they lack that emotion and that empathy side. So that's what makes you a good leader because you care is that, you know, you don't want, you don't want to hurt their feelings. And two, you don't want to have to do their job. You don't really want them to quit, but you need them to my favorite saying, step up or step out. Or as my grandma would say this, you guys, I want you to hear all this, this saying.

[00:27:06] And I say this in my company, by the way, and the L10 and the leadership, but I've said it and organized it very often is that it's time to piss or get off the pot. That is my Nana. My Nana used to say that. And that's a business term. Like it's time to step up or step out. And I said that the other day and organize it and they cracked up and they were like, has she lost her mind. And I'm like, I have because it's time. And my grandma used to say that to me. It's like one of my most epic say, like memorable sayings.

[00:27:32] And it's true in life and business and health and like raising your kids. Like when I told Austin, you got to get a job, honey, or you can't live here anymore. Well, not yet. He's only 16, but it's coming when he's 18. I get ready for it. But it's, it's definitely, it's scary to say these things and hold people accountable because you don't know the outcome. Yeah. And that's okay. Makes you human. I'm sorry. I hope I didn't offend anybody, but I think they resonate with different people in different ways. They all say the same thing.

[00:28:01] So, you know, we can move on from this, but it's a great time to sit here and reflect on the year. Did I not get what I wanted? And if not that conversation with yourself, are you mad at yourself? Are you angry with yourself? And if you are, you need to figure out what are the things I'm not doing, right? Where's that lack of communication with myself? Or with others. Yep. So I grew up in the country and that was my Nana's phrase. But anyways, we can move on. Chris, do you have any other last words?

[00:28:29] No, we talked about it last week about, I think it was the attention. Really what we talked about was the, the five people that you're associated with. Basically your influence, your invisible counsel, the people that influence certain aspects of your business or your life. So chunking it out into individual slices of health, focusing on the focus there. So health, relationships, business, lifestyle, things like that. So the same thing goes here is chunking that out too. I think with, um, where you're at and just catching it. Yeah.

[00:28:57] And if you don't know what the invisible counsel is, guys, I recommended Think and Grow Rich. That book will change your life. You should read it every year because every year we're a different owner and we're at a different spot and we need to have been different. And that book will resonate you if you read it every single year. But they talk about your invisible counsel. Who's on your invisible counsel? And sometimes that counsel is not invisible. Sometimes it's a group of friends. And let me tell you what, man, friends can get you in trouble sometimes. Friends are great, but you know, they can bring you down to their level or they can bring you up.

[00:29:26] They can also inject negativity into you. They can cheer you on or they can hold you down. Or they can expect you, you know, to bring you along on that, that journey. Right. Are you dragging them along on your journey or, or is it a mutual journey? So I can get a little bit, um, a little bit polarized. I won't go deep into it, but you know, my, my concept here is that friends are based on dependencies. Acquaintances are based on that individuality. You're, you're, you're going at a pace that is right for you. If they come along for the ride, fantastic.

[00:29:56] If they have to step off at whatever point, fantastic. But just be careful that you're not creating too many dependencies outside of yourself. Yeah. Cause, um, you know, that's just, it's just something to think about, but that's in think and grow rich, your invisible council. But also, you know, a group of minds is more powerful than a single mind. So they, you know, they also encourage masterminding, but who are you masterminding with? It's just something to watch out. And, but your invisible council is important. And, you know, we, it's, you probably think we're crazy because we're talking about your

[00:30:24] invisible council and like who's on it. Yeah. Like Michael Jackson. My Nana's on it. No. So, you know, who's on that? Are they, is it, are, you know, what would they say? It's kind of like if, if you were in this situation, what would they say to you? Right. And your invisible council aren't people that are like not with you anymore. There are people that you inspire to be like, because if I say, okay, Dan Martell's, cause Teresa said, I'm bringing buyback your time. If Dan Martell's on my invisible council and I approach him with a situation, I know exactly

[00:30:53] what he's going to tell me. And I just, and so therefore it helps hold yourself accountable because he's going to tell you, you know, to, um, he's going to call you out. Yeah. So you might look a little loopy thinking to yourself like, Dan, what do you think? Dan, what do you think? And in the book, it even suggests that you have a meeting with your invisible council on things. Um, you know, if Elon Musk was on your invisible council, what would he say? Well, you know what he would say because he talks enough publicly that you would know how you. He would kindly shut you down. And Dan would shut you down, but not kindly.

[00:31:21] No, he would just be, he'd be, he'd be direct and straight. And that's what I love about, you know, these type of people that we follow a gate and we engage with, but great book to have your invisible council, you know, do those hard things. What are the intangibles, the feelings, the thought processes going through your head when something hard happens, right? When you're sitting there looking at that cookie and everybody, everybody tells me it's okay to do it every once in a while. Just cheat. You can't call it cheating. You can't call it.

[00:31:50] Like that's where we get ourselves into trouble. Like you can't, it's not that I can't ever have it. You're reasoning through avoidance. It's the way I reason through it. It's like, Oh, like I can have a cookie, not like, Oh, it's okay if I cheat every once in a while. But if it's okay, if I cheat every once in a while, it's okay if I cheat all the time. And I flipped that around. It was avoidance through reasoning. You know, the other day I said to something to Chris, what did I say to you? And I said it to my mother.

[00:32:16] My mom runs one of the organizer locations and she flew in for the quarterly meeting. She just left yesterday. And I asked her, I asked Chris and her a question and I don't remember what it was. And they're like, why? I said, cause I know I'm not easy to deal with. Like I am not easy to handle and it's true. I'm not. But the first thing I know is that I know that I'm not easy to deal with. And so I addressed that like straightforward. You have an SOP on. I have an SOP on how to work with me because I'm dangerous.

[00:32:46] And I bet I've learned how to approach that. I've learned how to almost control myself depending on who I'm in the room with and who I can be myself with and who I have to like dumb it down a little bit for. And I had a, I have an SOP and I'll share it. I'll drop it in here. And it's like how to work with Libby. That's the name of the document. It's how to work with Libby. And the reason I had to make this document guys is because I lost employees because they thought I was a, I don't know what word to use so that I won't get banned on social media.

[00:33:16] They thought I was not a nice person and it was the way I operate. I'm actually probably one of the most caring, like empathetic, give you the shirt off my back. But because of the way I carry myself, the way I communicate and the way I engage, I can come off really like brass, like very heavy or difficult. And it was because we had an employee and I did not say happy birthday to them. I didn't even realize it was their birthday. Yeah.

[00:33:43] And this is now in our onboarding or in our recruiting, if you're going to work, if you're working directly with me, um, is that I'm not going to acknowledge your birthday. Probably I'm, if I see it, I will most definitely save a birthday, but I may not acknowledge it or be aware because of how fast like my brain is moving, how many decisions we're making a day, how many companies I'm involved with, how many people I'm leading for the love of God, just how many chats I have, I'm seeing or monitoring or I'm in the amount of technology.

[00:34:12] We're in our communication platform. It's mental overload. And in that document, it says like, this is how I communicate. This is how you need to communicate with me to get me to respond. Cause if you're just putting something in a chat, I'm never going to answer it. You have to tag me and maybe tag me 10 times to get my attention. And so that document really helped because when I noticed that, like, so it wasn't just one employee, Chris, we had somebody lose their marbles on me, like at a meeting. Yeah.

[00:34:41] And then, um, I had somebody quit and got mad because I like didn't acknowledge their birthday. And so I had to do a self check and they were angry at me. This goes back to, they were angry at me and I had to kind of assess why were they angry at me? What did I do? What was the lack of understanding? And then how can I then communicate better going forward so that this doesn't happen again? So yes, we did that. And I even acknowledge it when I'm new hires, when we're doing stuff in leadership, when

[00:35:10] I, and when, when they need something or if I offer something, I'm like, are you sure you want me to get involved? Cause you know how I am? Like, it's not going to be fun. Most of the time they're all like, yes, yes, please don't help. We don't need your help. I think also you've, you've baked it in now to a lot of your everyday conversations. So it's not this momentous occasion where, um, all of a sudden Libby is being mean. You, you kind of simplify a little bit so that they always know, or at least it becomes habit that you've mentioned it enough times that they, they get it.

[00:35:37] So that if you, if you do say something very direct, they knew it was coming. Yeah. And so I encourage this for anyone who owns a business or anyone that's communicating with a lot of people. It's just a communication. It's how to work with me document. It's how to work with Libby and it's really, really helped. And it helps filter out new hires because if you're a true, like entrepreneur, what did you call me yesterday? An extreme entrepreneur, right? Cause I just bought another company, like signed on the line. Chris, like this lady is nuts.

[00:36:07] But if you're an extreme entrepreneur or you communicate, right? If you operate probably on the spectrum somewhere, you need, you need to explain how you operate. You need to explain to your employees, how do you communicate? How do you operate? Why does it take me 15 pings in Slack or WhatsApp or Google me chat to get my attention or to get an answer, get a reply from an email. So you need to do that.

[00:36:34] It's really important to one, your management and leadership team, because they're going to be working directly with you, but also the rest of the company. I mean, we shared that with everybody. Like, you know, why is she nuts? This is why, this is why, but that's off topic. I love Erica Turner is just what I thought I was done with it. Erica, you're never done. It's really helped. And I think it helped people not take me, not take things so personal, right? And again, it goes back to, it took a couple employees to get angry with me.

[00:37:03] And I mean, one of them was angry, like screaming at me over Zoom. And the other one had their, they were generally hurt. And so it took that for me to figure out, Hey, there is a lack of communication, misunderstanding somewhere. So before we wrap up, cause we've been on for a minute, I just want to talk about, so there's two types of bonuses in business. There's a this, then that, and then a now that, right? And when it's expected, you know, it just depends.

[00:37:31] They have, if when it's expected, it's also shown that performance starts to drop. If it's a, if you do this, then I give you that. Or a now that they didn't know it was coming, but now that you did a great job, Hey, I want to show you a little extra love. Same thing with allowance for kids. They start to get complacent and then they expect it and they start to drop on quality on their chores. So unless, you know, I'm not a big fan of bonuses unless they're like a true, I eat what I hunt, right? Like a true, true sales.

[00:38:00] I eat what I hunt kind of person. The book, the book is great because what you find is that that's not really what drives people. What drives people is a greater purpose, a greater cause. Now I'm a big fan of performance pay, right? And we do performance pay and what recruit, we do it and organize it. So I'm a big fan of that, but that's different than a bonus. So I'd go into it real quick. That money only matters to a certain degree once you're, and this is more of the psychological

[00:38:27] aspect of the hiring, but it's money only matters to a certain degree until your base needs are met. Your standard of living or things like that. Once you get to a certain threshold, it doesn't really do anything extra for majority of people, except for those hunters. Like you said. Yeah. If you're true, eat what I eat, what I hunt, right? Typically there's, there's not, there are very few. Those are as rare as entrepreneurs. And those are your true, really, really like good salespeople. They're like, they like to work on commission. And I will say right now, if you're a cleaning company owner, you don't have any of those people in your business.

[00:38:58] Yeah. Because these people make multi, like- They go fast. They make more than six figures and they want to work commission because they truly know how to hunt and they have confidence in their ability and they're making 250,000 in, you know, a year in commissions. We don't have any of those in, in our, you know, in, in cleaning, probably not in lawn care, maybe like in larger ticket items, like HVAC, maybe in roofing.

[00:39:24] Um, but not necessarily in smaller price points or, uh, in a lot of home service. But Teresa's like, I'm glad I asked that question. Teresa, I used to stress over this every year. And my brother works for Tesla, right? My brother works for Tesla and he had a Christmas party and here's Libby. I'm like, can you take a video of the inside? When he onboarded with Tesla, I'm like, can you take pictures? He's like, no, they won't allow. They won't allow cameras inside and you can't take your phone and cause they flew him to California. And so during his Christmas party, I'm like, tell me all about it. What'd they give you? How much did they spend on the party?

[00:39:54] What'd they have? How long did it last? And because these are like giant companies with thousands of employees and I'm like, what are they doing? And what's scalable for them? Cause what I did when I was a small business was not scalable. And let me tell you what, guys, I got myself into trouble as in they expected that bonus that I gave to the technicians. And then all of a sudden I went from five technicians to 20 and you're like, oh crap, I can't, it's not scalable. Yeah. So don't think like, yes, I would love to give all the money in the world to everybody.

[00:40:24] But it has to scale. It has to be right for your business. But my brother, I think they got like a Tesla jacket and a barbecue lunch. They, they had the party during work hours. They, they didn't give anything honestly. And I think they all got a piece of swag. Like a nice jacket was about what they got. And so I think that when we're small, we think we have to compete with the big boys. But when we actually find out what the big boys are doing, you're kind of like, oh, well, that's lame. Like, and so just make sure you don't get yourself into trouble with scalability.

[00:40:53] I did that my first few years at organize it. And then I dreaded growing. I dreaded the end of the year with the company party. Cause you're like, oh my gosh, like this is not scalable. It's going to cost me $10,000. So, you know, like Chris said with the book, unless they're truly money motivated that eat what I hunt, you know, people appreciate anything that we give outside of whatever, if they're, what would you call it? If they're outside of their core needs are met. Yeah. Their base needs are met. Their base needs are met.

[00:41:22] One thing I love to, to do in is to get PTO. Why? They appreciate it. When they're on that vacation, they're going to think of us, right? They, they're, they're, they're having an experience on us. And then it's not going to cost me a ton of money upfront because not everyone is taking PTO at the same time. Like we have a policy that no more than two field techs at one time can be off. So you kind of have a control or a throttle on it. The PTO has to be approved. And we typically approve all PTO.

[00:41:51] So it's, it's a little bit safer for the company versus say, I'm going to give everyone $200 bonus. And then, you know, then you have 20 employees later and you're like, wow, that's a lot of money now. Versus when I had five employees that that easier to do. Yeah. So it's got to scale. It's got to be simple. It's got to be fair. It's got to be easy, right? Because we have to do this every year. It can't be overcomplicated. It can't like make it easy and make it fun for you.

[00:42:17] Because if we, if we overcomplicate it or we extend ourselves too much, it's no longer fun for us. It's exhausting. It's exhausting. Yes. So how do you pull it back? There's five people, by the way, they're like, talk more about the PTO. How do you pull it back? You just pull it back. Like your leadership team, your management should understand like, Hey, what I did last year didn't scale. So I'll, I'll be. Go ahead. Maybe I can talk a little bit to this and then you can clarify it for me. But when you do pull it back or when you change something, there is going to be a natural friction that builds up.

[00:42:46] Or again, people that focus too much on that end up leaving. So it's kind of a natural cycle. I haven't lost anybody over it, over pulling back. Unless they weren't the right fit to begin with. No, but I mean, we didn't lose anybody over that. Right. So how do you pull it back? So first you need to make sure that your management or your office or your leadership understand that I made a mistake and this is not scalable. Right. So first you, you acknowledge that and you communicate it to your leadership team so that they support you.

[00:43:16] If anybody comes with questions, right? They understand it. And then from there, what you do is you can choose to give the current people that were there from the prior year, the same as you did or roll them into the new one. Right. So do I give them the bonus because they're expecting it and that's what they got last year? Or do I have a one-to-one with them and say, Hey, like, I just want to let you know, unfortunately I can't do that. It doesn't scale anymore, but I'll do this for you. Right. Because they're still there.

[00:43:42] So you choose if you want to have that one-to-one with them and explain, I would have that one-to-one with them and explain it any, no matter what, explain it. Yeah. I think to Teresa's answer from what you're saying is no matter what, there's a layer of transparency that has to come into play. Yes. If you're not being transparent, it's not going to work. Nope. And the new people don't have to know that. They've never experienced it. They don't know. So you don't need to tell them, right? You need to tell your current office staff. So if anybody asks and the people that experienced it prior, like last year, so communicate it.

[00:44:11] And then, you know, some people asked how much PTO do you give? Well, that's up to you and how generous you want to be. And also we give it based off tenure. What is 10? That length of time with the company. So I'll give you an example. So if we're going to give for Christmas, we're going to have an extra three days of PTO. Well, anyone that's been here a year or longer gets the three days. So then you take the three days and you divide it by how many hours that is. And then you divide it by, I'm sorry, however many hours that is. It's 40 hours.

[00:44:41] I'm not, it's not 40 hours. I'm sorry. It's 80. It's 120 hours, right? 40. Oh no, wait. Three weeks? No, it's three. It's three days. Sorry. It's eight, eight and eight is 24 hours. And then you just take the 24 hours and you divide it by the months. And you say, okay, well, if you were here six months, you get this many hours of PTO. And if you were here three months, you get this. And some people only get like, you know, a little, like if you want to go the least amount of half a day. So you don't want to, if you don't want to like, if you, if you feel like they might

[00:45:09] find 30 minutes of PTO insulting, you could do a half a day because again, it accumulates. They have more that accumulates with what they're working. So we do it based off tenure and what is the total time we're willing to give. And then we just work those numbers backwards. So I'll be honest with everybody. I have no idea how much PTO we gave. I'd organize it because I didn't need to know. And my office did it. I trusted them to make the decision. They know that we do it off tenure because we did it last year.

[00:45:39] And I didn't need to know. It takes up my brain capacity. And I have more and more important decisions to make than deciding on the PTO. If someone in my office already knows how to do it. And again, you're not fronting all the money at once. And it's more, they love it. Who's going to turn down pay time off? When, when I'm going to say this, when majority of companies don't allow you to take off for your, your daughter's graduation. Yeah. And you know, this is a great topic. My sister, she got a, she, she helped us out. She used to work for organize it.

[00:46:09] She went back to school. She came back this year to help us launch the location. She was a launch manager. And so once the location was up, it was a project based. She went and got another job. And during Thanksgiving, she said, we were talking about jobs and there was some negativity going on in the room about owners. And because I'm an owner, I got a little defensive. And I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute. I said, no, I don't think that it's true that there, you know, nobody wants to work. I think that what people want in life has changed because of COVID.

[00:46:38] And I think that business owners and businesses have not caught up to what's important to people because we're still operating. And that traditional, you don't get anything until a year. You can't take time off. You just need to work. And I think businesses caught up with what's important to people. COVID did that to all of us, right? We want to work how we want, where we want, when we want. Those are the most three important things in life right now when it comes to work. We want it. And so do our employees.

[00:47:03] And so my sister said, I just want a job that if my daughter has a volleyball game, I don't get fired if I go. And so who is not going to appreciate paid time off when that's the mentality of a lot of companies, right? And that's why there's a whole nother topic that I, we started with, we have unlimited approved time off in our company and all of our companies, because I might not be able to give them, I work where I want to my cleaning technicians, but I can provide, I can work

[00:47:31] where I want, but I can work when I want, you know, within reason. And that's a whole nother topic, but it's creating that sexier job that appeals to the new version of the employee, right? I think that we had a pre-COVID set of employees, right? A mindset. We had a COVID employee mindset. And now we have a post-COVID mindset. That post-COVID mindset is all about time freedom, time freedom. Everybody wants it.

[00:47:58] My 26 year old, he'd rather be live paycheck to paycheck and have time freedom than dedicate his, you know, then be so dedicated to a company. And that's that mindset that a lot of people have. I have it. I want time freedom. Their time value is so high that it's hard to get around that for them. Yeah. And so it's a great topic. And so if you're thinking about what's a great gift for Christmas, what's a great gift for

[00:48:23] anything, do I need to give a bonus or is, you know, money's great, but if I give a bonus or money, they're just going to take that money and go pay their phone bill. They're going to take that money and go pay their rent. Two days later, they're back. They're back. It's gone. It's gone. So that, that feeling, or I don't even want them to be appreciative. It's just the feeling associated to our business that paying off their phone bill didn't feel good. Like we didn't help them feel or rest or relax or enjoy the time.

[00:48:51] But when it's contributed to PTO, then that feeling of relaxing or that feeling of going to my daughter's volleyball game, that feeling of going to my kindergartner's graduation or a middle schooler's graduation, that feeling they have is tied back to us. We don't let our PTO roll over. And some of our employees have pushed back on that. And the reason we don't let it roll over is because they need to take time off. Yeah. They need to take time off. They need to rest.

[00:49:20] Don't roll it over because we have this mindset, at least here in the United States, that take time off is like, oh my God, somebody might steal my job or do a better job than me, or I'm going to lose my job if I take time off. And so we make them use it. You use it, use it or lose it because we want them to take time off. Here's the other thing. I know that my office didn't let me give it because I'm over generous. I'm like, give them five days, 10 days. And my office will be like, no, like, are you crazy? And you get a car. And you get a car because they already have their five days if, you know, that ticks over

[00:49:49] every year. And for the ones that have been with us for a long time, they have two weeks. And so it keeps ticking up and up and up. And so if you give them more, like they're going to have a ton. So my office probably took me away from it because I always over give. But okay, well, we'll wrap up. We've been on for over an hour. This was a great topic. Remember, we're just here to share our thoughts. We always kick off with a topic, whether they're health, life, kids, marriage, business, you name it. We just want to share what we've learned, what we've went through.

[00:50:19] I wanted to talk this morning about the crap I used to eat when I traveled on the road. We went to 7-Eleven this morning for coffee because our coffee machine broke and there was chocolate frosted donuts. And I want to talk about that today. And Chris is like, no, we should talk about something more important. I'm like, no, I want to talk about all the crap I used to eat. And I used to eat chocolate frosted donuts every day. I miss the Reese's and coffee. I used to eat Reese's and coffee every day as well. So, and I'm like, I want to talk about the habits we used to have. And he's like, no, we should talk about something more important. I'm like, fine.

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