Episode 8 - Unleashing Growth with Kelly Ross

[00:00:00] Hi everybody, this is Libby Dulucian with Fearlessness.

[00:00:04] What is Fearlessness? It is the underlying grit that empowers you to forge ahead,

[00:00:08] even when hope seems distant, and the courage to walk through the fires of hell knowing you'll

[00:00:14] come out stronger on the other side. Stay tuned and learn how to get Fearlessness.

[00:00:20] I'm your host Libby Dulucian and our guest today is the amazing Kelly Ross. Kelly, welcome to the show.

[00:01:22] I am married to Tim Ross. We've been married for 36 years, together for 40.

[00:01:25] And we are high school sweethearts, so we are that story.

[00:01:28] I have two amazing grown adult children, Madison,

[00:01:32] who is a sweet mama of two of our grandchildren.

[00:01:35] And then Hunter is in the Navy,

[00:01:39] and currently a senior in dental school in Houston,

[00:01:41] and I'm going on to be an oral surgeon.

[00:01:44] So I am that mom that was fortunate enough and recruiting as far as that interview process and how to train people. And if you wanna hear Kelly talk about who should be doing interviewing in your company, you should check out our YouTube channel because we're gonna talk about that next over on our YouTube channel. But Kelly, I wanna talk about, so this is fearlessness. This is struggles as far as business owners or family.

[00:03:03] And you're going in every day,

[00:03:05] helping people fix their culture. and the love that an owner carries. And we as owners are giving, giving, giving, giving. But who's refueling your tank? And so that's one of the first things that I do, is I go in and I recognize you as an owner and say, yep, I know how that feels and I've been there, done that.

[00:04:20] And I think sometimes they just need somebody

[00:04:23] to bounce off of.

[00:04:24] So I've become that a lot, but it's my job

[00:04:27] and how do I do it to begin with? And I think you get into the everyday mundane grind of the company and what you're doing and trying to make it successful. But sometimes do you ever stop and think about why did I do this even to begin with? And I have a niche, I feel, I kind of slow you down and I'll say let's talk about your

[00:05:41] 1%.

[00:05:42] There's something innately wonderful and beautiful about you as an individual that you carry be great at it. So I have a hundred ways to go from here. And so you know and I don't want to forget what they are because the first one is you'd mentioned who's giving that love back to the business owner? Who's refilling your tank? I think that is super powerful to hear because

[00:07:01] entrepreneurism is very lonely. Oh yeah. It's very, you've had it so well at the beginning because of all the struggles, right?

[00:08:21] And it is important of who you have around you.

[00:08:24] Who's your who's?

[00:08:26] And who's your top five? Being lonely but also making sure who do you surround yourself with. I am a huge believer in that the average of five. When I heard that the first time years ago, I was like, I looked around and I said, Oh my God, like I need to reassess who I'm spending my time with. It's so important.

[00:09:43] But I think to operate at our 1%, what are some tips? Like I recommended that book to you the other day.

[00:09:45] We just had lunch.

[00:09:47] Yes.

[00:09:47] And it was the entrepreneur personality type.

[00:10:43] So you've got to do a little bit of self-reflection and get yourself around great people.

[00:10:46] And if you're right now identifying

[00:10:50] that the people that you're surrounding yourself

[00:10:52] with are energy takers instead of energy givers,

[00:10:55] then you're not with your five.

[00:10:57] And so, and that can be hard to do

[00:10:59] to let go of certain relationships

[00:11:01] that you, maybe you did think were very good

[00:11:04] and very positive, but then the assessment process

[00:11:07] is the hardest. Again, I think it's your dwelling of where you're putting yourself, the people you're surrounding yourself with. So every day you got to find what brings you joy. And music for me is one of those things. So if music speaks to you and put in music this morning, I'll be honest 2x because 2x is linear to grow at a 10x You have to change so much that you will get change But the one thing that resonated with me in that book and how you talk about your why is he talks about your unique ability?

[00:13:41] And so I think a lot of us especially women in business

[00:13:45] And I don't want to jump on the woman bandwagon, but I'm gonna jump on this woman bandwagon

[00:14:44] like you said, what is my top 1%, what am I so good at? What do people, why are people drawn to me?

[00:14:47] That is kind of that unique ability.

[00:14:48] And as a woman, I will say I get the imposter syndrome sets

[00:14:54] in sometimes and I love what you said at lunch yesterday.

[00:14:58] We just had lunch yesterday and you had said your daughter

[00:15:04] is writing a children's book.

[00:15:06] And I was kind at this. Like, I am the best at these things. Is something I think that we are not good at. Oh, I wholeheartedly agree. I think you're nately as women. We are so great at being a cheerleading for you. And therefore, I believe that again, it goes back to those words have power. If you have constant greatness being spoken into you, how can you fail? And

[00:17:41] and but be careful that you're also being a giver and that you're giving that same energy and that same amount of

[00:18:44] And if you can find that, then I believe all things will align for the better.

[00:18:47] And I bet you guys, it's so important.

[00:18:50] It's so important to pitch yourself

[00:18:51] around the right people.

[00:18:53] It is.

[00:18:54] So a lot of things I've learned in business

[00:18:56] as I've grown companies, it's not necessarily,

[00:19:00] because so I get this question a lot,

[00:19:02] like how do you do this?

[00:19:03] Like how did you grow software?

[00:19:04] Now I have a service business.

[00:19:05] Now we have another software. What is your mission and i told them i said you know i don't really care about revenue so i don't understand why i'm on this revenue chase. I care about profit and i care about helping people because i need money. We created Windows over rival time for every job so that they provided more flexibility. And then we started to attract the people that supported our why. And it was a great feeling and it sometimes I can see them be rejuvenated. But your why then is great and it's set the foundation and you just need to be reminded of that. But then obviously you've organically grown. You've turned into more and your desires wants and needs are even better than what they

[00:23:00] were even then because you're now educated on more. And I think I think in today's world, especially as a woman, we've got everything, you know, just hollering at us, right? It's like white noise, this constant. And Do we ever slow down enough to go? Wait a minute. What about me? What do I want? And and You know, am I doing good feeding into the people around me?

[00:24:22] Am I loving and speaking greatness into my five?

[00:25:24] place, we get uncomfortable so we avoid it. We're like, oh, I'm just going to go see what core values are on online or what my competitor using. But I don't think we spend enough time on personal core values.

[00:25:33] So I love that you touched on personal core values because I have a set of my own personal core values.

[00:25:41] It might came to me at a very dark moment, I had no car, and at the moment I had no kids because my kids were taken. And in that moment, like I sat there and I figured out, like, I can't let this happen again.

[00:27:00] Here is my hardcore value.

[00:27:02] And Chris, my husband knows, like, I have certain things.

[00:27:06] And I'll just tell the woman you are today. You know, I love that you're identifying some of these, Libby, because a lot of people don't do it. And we all have hard.

[00:28:20] We've all got some hearts, major hearts, and that was a major hard, my friend.

[00:28:24] Bit on that curb had learned from. And there were a lot of lessons that I had learned from in there. I love that. I love it. So let me tell you this and really hear what I'm saying and everybody listening to this. Like you said, you weren't starting over. You're starting from then.

[00:29:40] But when I was in one of my places, my my hearts, I had a really very valuable friend.

[00:29:46] I'm still very you do with it. And so that's where it's very important to slow down,

[00:31:03] to slow down, to establish your ignored that, that you knew the value in relationships. And you knew and you recognized that you had ignored that. So going forward, it became important. It was probably one of the single most, it was like a brick wall that hit me, was to say that I had neglected every relationship I had.

[00:32:24] My family, I hadn't been home for a Christmas,

[00:32:27] I hadn't taken his name. His name is, oh, Dan Sullivan, the book is up there. That's why I'm looking up. You know, he talks about, you know, you need rest days and focus days and prep days, right?

[00:33:41] Those certain days are designed for things

[00:33:43] and rest days are full rest days.

[00:33:45] And I didn't really get we don't stop. Right. You're a serial entrepreneur and I think entrepreneurship causes you to think constantly because you're ready to pivot at any hardball that's being thrown at you. And oh, it's so important to just stop and breathe and be still,

[00:35:02] be still in the moment you for, you know,

[00:36:22] pushing me through it. But I'm a big believer that a lot of people want to go around things,

[00:36:26] you know, they're like, it's're just busy doing the day to day, all we're ever going to be good at is the day to day. And that's not why we want to be an entrepreneur. That's where we lose that sparkly brain, that imagination, those innovative ideas start to dwindle, like drift away because we're burnt out, we're just doing the day to day.

[00:37:40] So I have this thing I do every day.

[00:37:44] And I'll share it with you guys.

[00:37:45] It's funny because the desires are like, what is my statement?

[00:39:04] That's what I call that grit, you know, and you've got the grit to do it. And to be an entrepreneur and to be a business owner, you have to have grit. And to what level you're going to need that that day depends on what's happening in your

[00:40:22] world that day, right? We sat down in January and we wrote out our personal goals and our professional goals. And then our goals is a couple. And I'm proud to say that in 2023 out of all of those goals, we only did not achieve two. And we went back and we achieved and kept reading what we were achieving.

[00:41:40] Because once you move them off of your completed board, over to the completed board,

[00:41:44] you kind of have a tendency not someone's invited, I will show up and I will work on this thing. Right. But if it's just me, I'm like, oh, I'll do it later. Right. There is some accountability practices that can make you be more successful.

[00:43:03] And so I have a dear friend, her name is it, and be great at it. And if you need me, I'm going to love you through it. And even if you don't need me, I'm going to probably find you and love you through it anyway. and the things that you've set over people I want to live with no regret and that's really important to for certain goals or companies. But our COO, our fractional COO had set us down and said,

[00:47:00] hey, I want you to go through this.

[00:47:02] I want you to watch this video.

[00:47:04] And I want you to write a vivid vision.

[00:48:08] of knew in that moment that it probably wasn't going to work. And it was a great exercise and we are still friends. But if we wouldn't have taken the time to stop and do that, like

[00:48:14] probably that's when relationships go south or not work out so well where you can still

[00:48:22] end as a friend. But Cameron, he talks did was we gave it, I did a presentation and I gave

[00:49:41] for WeWorkruit, we gave everyone a digital copy.

[00:49:44] And for Organize It, we printed them all. And I love that. That makes me smile Libby. So yay for you. So Kelly, I want to thank you for being a guest on the Fearlessness Podcast. So, what's up next for you? So our viewers can kind of know what's Kelly doing. We'll put some stuff in the show notes so that they could get a hold of Kelly

[00:51:02] if they're interested in connecting.

[00:51:03] But what's next?

[00:51:05] What's next for me? is more, M-O-R-E, so more in 24. So our goals were built around the 20th, you know, more in 24. So we're getting ready to launch some mastermind groups at Couples mastermind groups. So if you work together and we're gonna be doing some groups like that, we're gonna be doing a mastermind

[00:52:22] on a higher level of business and where you'll be working