CXChronicles Podcast 177 with Larry Yatch, CEO at SEAL Team Leaders

Hey CX Nation,

In this week's episode of The CXChronicles Podcast #177 we welcomed Larry Yatch, CEO at SEAL Team Leaders based in Boca Raton, FL.

Larry and his SEAL Team Leaders help you create, expect and empower leaders at every level, just like a SEAL team.

Every member of the SEAL team is a leader. When you have an organization full of SEAL leaders, this gives you the freedom to grow your business instead of just surviving business.

All of these benefits allow you to create what you want - as an entrepreneur, as a team member, and as a customer & employee focused business leader.

In this episode, Larry and Adrian chat through how he has tackled The Four CX Pillars: Team,  Tools, Process & Feedback throughout his career + shares some of the tips & tricks that have worked for him across his customer focused business leader journey.

**Episode #177 Highlight Reel:**

1. How you can bake the key traits of Navy Seals into your leadership & management team
2. Learning how your team can hold, pass or accept responsibility as you scale
3. Why proper planning prevents poor performance in any business or team
4. Taking consistent actions on a regular basis to push progress and innovation ahead
5. The power of slowing down to figure out how you can go even faster!

Huge thanks to Larry for coming on The CXChronicles Podcast and featuring his work and efforts in pushing the employee experience and customer success space into the future.

Click here to learn more about Larry Yatch

Click here to learn more about SEAL Team Leaders

If you enjoy The CXChronicles Podcast, please stop by your favorite podcast player and leave us a review today. This is the easiest way that we can find new listeners, guests and future business leaders to join our customer focused community!

And be sure to grab a copy of our book "The Four CX Pillars To Grow Your Business Now" available on Amazon +  check out the CXChronicles Youtube channel to see all of our customer focused business leader video content + our past podcast episodes!

Reach out to CXC at INFO@cxchronicles.com for more information about how we can help your business make customer happiness a habit!

Transcript

#177 -- Larry Yatch, CEO at SEAL Team Leaders

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:00:08.56) - All right, guys. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the CX Chronicles podcast. Super excited for today's show guys. We are welcoming Larry yachts, the CEO of seal team leaders. Larry, why don't you say hello to the CX nation? My friend, 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:00:21.82) - Hey nation out there. I'm excited. Just from the time that we spent talking to ahead of time, I'm looking forward to this. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:00:28.24) - So Larry's got there. Got an awesome story. He's got an awesome background and he's got a super cool business that he's going to share with us today. Um, spends a ton of time thinking about leadership spends a ton of time thinking about how to work with other awesome customer focused business leaders. Plus has a really, really cool background and upbringing. So Larry, why don't you take the first couple of minutes, man, set the stage for the CX nation. Give them a sense for number one, who you are, where you came from and some of the stepping stones and some of the early experiences that you kind of went through in your career, um, and definitely get into how you formed seal team leaders and your, your business that you're you're building and growing today. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:01:03.88) - Yes. Sounds good. Uh, my background, it all started for me in third grade when I saw top gun. Uh, and it's kind of, it's interesting. I, my dad visited for the first time a couple of years and I got to take my dad and my two sons to see the new top gun. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:01:20.68) - We just saw it last night. Larry, my wife and I just saw last night. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:01:25.57) - I agree. And so literally I saw I was in third grade, I saw top gun and by the time I left the theater, I decided I was going to be a fighter pilot. And then I found out about the Naval academy and all the best fighter pilots were in the Navy from the Naval academy. So that was my goal from the time I was in third grade, about seventh grade, a friend of mine got me a sweatshirt that said Navy seals on it, just because it said Navy and had a cool logo. Cause late eighties, early nineties, no one knew what a Navy seal was. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:01:57.01) - So I went to the library and literally like Dewey decimal system looked up Navy seals and found a book called the men with green faces. And by the end of the book, it was a Vietnam era seal book. I was convinced that fighter pilots are pansies and I needed to be a Navy seal. So that was, that was it for me. And, uh, so I did go to the Naval academy. He got an engineering degree from there and then went straight into the seal program as an officer, uh, graduated, uh, buds at the top of my class and got to choose whatever team I wanted to go to and chose seal team three, uh, based on the fact that it was responsible for the middle east, uh, this was in 1999. So, you know, pre nine 11, there was nothing really going on. And I figured if there was, it'd be in the middle east and as we know from history, very accurate, like it was a very busy time. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:02:48.31) - So I was a combat leader in the seals for 10 years until I got injured and medically retired in 2008. And it was in 2007 when I was going through a bunch of surgeries. And I knew, uh, sir, uh, back surgery went really bad and a surgeon said my career was over and it was laying in that hospital bed. You know, my whole life, all I've ever wanted to do is be a seal. That was my full, my full full-on purpose was protecting the country as a special operator and, uh, faced with having no purpose was, was a rough spot. And so being able to identify that I had more to offer the country than just being a weapon, uh, was, I'd say the turning point for me, that my ability to lead and teach, uh, others into effective leadership was really what made me successful as a officer in the seals. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:03:40.82) - And so from that point, decided to get into training, so built and ran a series like literally in the hospital, Bethesda Naval hospital, and do the thousand seven decided I was going the entrepreneurial route, which is somewhat unique because I'm not a born entrepreneur. Like I'm not, I didn't have businesses when I was in school. I was out playing, you know, Navy seal in the woods. Uh, I chose entrepreneurship as a mechanism to produce the life that I wanted a life of freedom. And in that, you know, I think that's one of the, at least the misconceptions is that as an entrepreneur, you're free. Like I found that that was a big lie, right? Being, being an entrepreneur has kind of the least free I've ever been. And that's really the, what inspired. Ultimately our third company was seal team leaders was creating an environment to, to allow entrepreneurs to be free, uh, and gain freedom from their business. And so that's, that's how we started seal team leaders was to be able to leverage all of our skills and behavior change training, uh, and team up team optimization to bring that freedom to entrepreneurs that they, most of them started their businesses to have. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:04:54.47) - I love it. I mean, so number one there, thank you for sharing that. I think so many different follow-up questions right out of the gates here. I think I always say this all the time guys in the show, but like talk about the different walks of life for how people find what they're doing building or leading today. Right? Like, so when you bring up, um, just the military piece in the Navy seal piece and the special ops piece, like.

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:05:15.35) - What an incredible foundation for cause let's call it what it is. Everybody on this show, that's listening knows whether you're, whether you're leading and managing a business or whether you're building and owning and scaling your business. Men, building companies, building teams, building customer portfolios. It is one of the most difficult battles that anybody can enter into. And it's funny, let's call it. Here's the other part. And there, nobody talks about this, but let's just call it out. Like this is why business owners and entrepreneurs and founders are in a minority. It is one of the most difficult challenges. It's one of those, try it breaks families apart brings marriages a party. It makes parents not be able to see that like, come on, let's call it. This is, this is some of the sacrifice that goes into actually building dynamite, sustainable company that can actually give you everything that you want. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:06:01.76) - Right. And I, and I love that you called this part out too, because I think it's funny, man, depending on who you, who you ask and you say, well, why did you start your business? I like the you're super direct and clear about the fact that you knew that it would be a vehicle to get you the things that you wanted and the places that you wanted to go in life. I know for me with six Chronicles, 100% the same thing, it was literally just joking with Larry because, uh, before today's show about, you know, for me, I loved building other companies, CX and CS teams. And I loved working with all these different executive leadership teams. But you do get to a point in your life where eventually you start to understand kind of what drives you, what you want, which want more of what you want less of. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:06:37.25) - And this is one of why, why building companies and being a founder or being aspiring business owners, just one of the most incredible ways of really kind of fulfilling a lot of your dreams and doing the things that you want to do. So awesome. Awesome stuff out of the gates there. Why don't we start with the first pillar team. I'd love to learn more about your team at seal team leaders. Can you talk a little bit about sort of how you've built out the different roles or built out some of the different focus areas and I'd love for you to kind of just spend a minute kind of talking about some of the people that you've pulled around, all of this incredible, um, ideas and mission that you work on with your customers today. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:07:09.56) - I'd say first off the, we, we have a belief, uh, we have a belief that, uh, your success in life is a hundred percent dependent on your ability to team. And I think this is a fundamental principle for everyone. If you look at anywhere in your life that you're experiencing struggle or pain or suffering, you are not coordinating action. Well, with those around you, it's, it's always tied together anywhere. You're experiencing success in your life, fulfillment, joy, uh, accomplishment, you are coordinating action at a high level. And so at the most fundamental level, your ability to coordinate action determines not only the accomplishments you produce in life, but the experience of success in your life. And that to me, is unbelievably important based on the fact that as an entrepreneur, we have a million things vying for our attention and our attention and focus is our most limited and valuable resource. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:08:13.64) - And understanding that at the core of every problem you have in your business is a coordination of action issue is, is discord with some team and that team could be there, your team to your clients or inside of one of your departments or between departments or between leadership and the department, the actual team, those four areas. How's every problem you've got. And part of why I think what you do is so important, right? Being able to create those relationships with the clients and having that be smooth is one of the most critical aspects of producing success in a business 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:08:53.22) - A hundred percent. It's funny, man. I, and I, and I appreciate you calling that out, but you're right. It's like this notion of teamwork, collaboration, communication. I talk about this all the time, Larry. So, so our listeners are gonna roll their eyes when I say it, but this is, this is super important establishing areas of accountability, authority, and, uh, and the ability to really make sure that you're identify who's responsible for what right is huge, man. And I would argue one of the biggest jobs of every business owner and every executive leadership team member in the world, man, right? Like, yeah, you're there to make some of these big, difficult, airy, stressful decisions, no doubt about it. And then let's call it what it is, the bigger these companies get these bigger. Some of these organizations get, you were literally, you have fiduciary responsibility for just a tremendous amount of value, right? 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:09:38.82) - If you're talking about a guy or gal, that's running a business as north of a thousand employees, like this stuff gets really, really serious, but still at the end of the day, laying off those lights in the sand, they get it super clear who owns what, who needs to communicate with you. It's one of the easiest places to start when you're thinking about like effective team, um, the team collaboration team experience. I love that you bring that up to you, man, because it's, it's super important, right? If you don't have, um, a plethora of positive experiences occurring regularly on a team, you're not gonna have people that want to stick around that team very long. I'm going to look for another team where they can get that, that good stuff. So I love it. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:10:13.50) - Let's just, uh, I'll jump on the bandwagon and have your audience roll their eyes more. I don't know if that's all of this, but.

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:10:21.33) - But my 2 cents in here that the biggest limitation to every company that we work with is their ability to hold pass or accept responsibility. But that is the biggest limitation to every organization. Like what, my, when I look at the team that I was operating in, in the seals versus the teams that I built initially in my initial companies, and now with all the companies that we see, the biggest difference is the, the level of responsibility to tell as a seal, every, every time I, one of my seals committed to holding a responsibility, they did like I there's for 10 years of operating in what would have been countless commitments made? I can think of five times that a seal didn't do what they said they were going to do. Like he was like breathing. Like I didn't have to think about it. If someone, if I gave someone clear direction, clear standard of performance, they committed to doing it. They did it a hundred percent of the time I get into the civilian world. If someone does 80% of what they're supposed to do, 50% of the time, they're a high performer, 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:11:31.71) - Like 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:11:33.75) - Blows my mind. And so that ability, because why do we have teams? The only reason we have teams is to share responsibilities because we are insufficient to do it alone. So the teams are what produced success, your ability to hold pass and accept responsibilities is the only reason you team. If you don't do that well, then you can't have success. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:11:55.83) - I love that. I think that's an incredible, an incredible learning lesson, for sure. I think the other thing that immediately makes me think about it in the organizational side of things, Larry is like, this is why, uh, having clarity, visibility, and socializing the hell out of your OKR or your strategic objectives or your primary goals and mission as a business, whether they're broken into monthly, quarterly, annual, this is why, if you're not, if you're not already doing things like that, you almost don't even allow for the team to understand and kind of take a look at like, uh, the greater map or the greater direction of where the ship is is, is, is, is heading and decide whether or not that's a ship that they want to be on, or those are the type of waters they want to be in. Is it the type of direction and speed and pace that they want to be a part of or isn't it. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:12:38.91) - Right. And I think that this is why it's just such an awesome, um, you know, idea for our listeners to stay pack, which is that that's part of our job guys. It's literally part of that is arguably our biggest job as, um, as business owners and executives is to make sure that we're actually constantly reminding people where we're going, by the way. I think it's both ways. I think it's customers so externally, I think it's, and then it's employees all damn day internally. It's making sure that you're triangulating on those two different views. Um, Larry, I'd love to dive into the second seat pillar of tools, man. So you've been able to work with all of these awesome businesses. You've worked with several different types of executives, different types of industry sets and Andrew and the team at sealer building out your own, your own, your own business. Spend a couple of minutes talking about some of the tools that you've kind of leveraged or some of the, um, the different ways that you've seen. Some of your clients really kind of leveraged tools to grow a business scale, a business, and really kind of help build out an incredible customer experience. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:13:32.47) - So where, um, where I am, which then means that the culture of the organization follows from the leadership. I am a systems-based person. If I have to do something more than twice, I'm going to I'm in a bill, that tool. So I never have to do it again. So when you say tools like I get all excited, cause that's our core function is behavior change, influencing behavior change. We have 35 structured tools, three pieces of software. We built all designed to systematically change behavior, but the ones I want to share, I think I'll share the ones that I think will have the greatest impact is when I looked at, when I looked at the teams that are occupied the civilian sector versus in the special operations community, there were three gaps that exist in a huge way. We already covered the first one, which is the ability to hold responsibility. That was, I just took that for granted. So one of the most functional tools we use is, is a, a scripted format for passing responsibilities. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:14:40.09) - Because if you don't have a real structured format for PA passing and accepting responsibilities, then you're just guessing if it's going to be able to be held or not. You're hoping. Yup. So that'd be the first tool that one we leverage internally. And it's usually the first tool we work with organizations to implement is, is a structured format for passing, holding, accepting responsibility. The next piece that I took for granted in the seals is I could give someone direct feedback and that they would implement it. It blew me away. When I sat in my one of my first meetings with one of my employees, they had made a commitment to hold a responsibility. They didn't, I brought him in and I was simply asking why. And they cried over crying in front of me. And I, I, I was blown away. Like I should be crying that you said you were going to do something. You didn't do it. I don't understand how I'm not yelling at you. And you're not 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:15:33.37) - Wondering 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:15:33.79) - Why 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:15:34.51) - I'm assuming there's no crying in the Navy seals either. Right? Larry? 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:15:37.81) - Uh, no. I mean, like they say, there's no chronic baseball. There is not, there is no emotion in the Navy seal, much less dry. So the second piece is a systematic tool to be able to give feedback in a way that it can be received. That creates connection. Most ways people give feedback at best that person can receive it, but they always feel distanced creative, not connection. Definitely. So that's, that's a very, very important tool. The third one is we just took for granted that you plan, we plan for everything. We finish a training mission and we were going to go to get burritos. We put a plan together as to how to go get burritos as a group, but you've got some of the highest performing people in the world. And they're taking the time out to actually go plan to go get burritos. You get into a business other than strategic planning. They rely on the individual expertise of the manager to come up with how to get it done. And there is no systematic process for planning. So that'd be my third tool that we usually bring into organizations. I think critical is the ability to systematically plan, not for big things, but a small thing. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:16:54.11) - I love it. I had, um, I had a college professor that I remembered vividly Larry to this day. His main lesson that he, he definitely put into me for the rest of my life was he would say proper planning, prevents poor performance. And he would tell us regularly, like once a week, if you don't learn anything from me all semester, I don't care. But what you need to remember me for is proper planning, prevents poor performance. This was in a business class. So he was thinking about it, not from a, from a military type of way, but from more of like a business preparation way. And the idea of like, look, the more time you take to sharpen the ax, the faster it is to cut down the tree or another way of thinking about it, going back to our team, some of our team discussion parts. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:17:34.61) - Like if you guys think that you're going to be able to run a team, manage a team, grow a team, build a team or better yet get a bunch of human adults to just cooperate, to play nicely and to not hurt each other's feelings or make each other cry, whether it's right or wrong. He talks about this, this notion of the preparation. So I love that. I think it's, I think it's brilliant and something that every one of us needs to be thinking about and really trying to instill into our team every day. The other big thing that 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:18:00.62) - Think about how this get back to, you know, what we're talking about, what's the sole purpose of a plan. The sole purpose of a plan is to coordinate action. The only reason that we have a team is to share responsibilities and coordinate action through coordination of action. We get to experience success through producing accomplishments. So there's a direct line through everything we're talking about. You can't hold responsibilities without planning, and we can't have success without being able to hold responsibility 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:18:28.64) - A hundred percent. And you know, I was just conceived. The other thing that I, uh, that the feedback part that you mentioned, the direct candid, whether it's 360 feedback reports, whether it's your quarterly, your quarterly, you know, team-based reflections, whatever the hell you guys are calling them. Most people actually need direct candid feedback to understand whether or not number one, they're doing a phenomenal job or number two, when they're, where they're falling short. I think every one of us has to think about what delivery mechanism and obviously people are all different. So you need to know which people are potentially your criers versus which people are going to ask for more, or they might ask for it to be even more candid, or they might ask for you to, to, to, to drop all the fluff and be direct, you know, direct as possible so that they can actually get better. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:19:10.67) - Right. So I think that's the other piece, but it's funny there. And I, I don't know what your experience has been with this, but a lot of companies don't do a good job with that. I think I might know where, and I think a lot of times too, if you think about it, it does start with the C-suite right? If like, if your C-suite does that really well, has open candid, uh, highly communicative and super direct types of exchanges, your extended leadership team probably has that. And if your extended leadership team has that, then guess what most of your troops, most of your, your, your, your boots on the ground, they're going to probably get that from their middle management, right? So it really is a top-down, but guys, these are all things that I think is customer focused business leaders, that people that are constantly thinking about leveraging and triangulating CX, and IEX, this is how you can absolutely separate yourself from the pack. This is how you can become a completely different type of modern leader. And the bottom line is everybody in anybody's.

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:20:00.09) - Can you have an individual who is going to be direct, they're going to be candid and they're going to give you, uh, the, the, the bottom line. Cause that's frankly, everything else is so hard cutting through fat, cutting through noise, cutting through incomplete, or sometimes even false, um, messaging and feedback. That's hard, man, that just complicates this stuff, Larry. So 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:20:18.15) - The key piece of want, I don't want to get lost is, you know, your, how do you, the question I'll ask is how do you know if you're giving effective feedback and the, the obvious, easy responses that behavior changes, right? So if I'm giving you feedback and your behavior changes while I'm being effective, but that's only half of the equation, performance is half of the equation. Connection is the other half. If your behavior changes, but at the end of it, you feel further than me, like more disconnected to me than you were before then I didn't do a good job giving feedback. So when people are out there looking like, am I doing a good job of feedback? One is the behavior change too. Do they feel closer to you after the feedback you give them or do they feel more distant? 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:21:06.33) - Yep. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:21:07.14) - That's, that's the critical aspect. That's where it gets really hard. And that ends up being the way we solve that as linguistics like linguistic patterns are necessary to produce effective change and the connection. But if you can do both of those, then you're crushing feedback. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:21:22.53) - Love it. I love it there. The dive into the third six pillar process, man. So like, and we've kind of already started to hit on this, but like, even as far back as the seals and Navy and some of these awesome companies that you've been a part of helping to build, um, I'd love to just hear kind of some of the things that you sort of learned over your journey around process. So think the way that you capture some of this, these expectations, the way that you document, the way that you, um, can give other smart people, views windows or content or usable, digestible content into understanding what the story is or understanding what the standard operating procedures are. Spend a few minutes talking about sort of how you've kind of tackled process as you've gotten deeper into your career. And some, some ideas or some tips and tricks that you kind of have found along the way that could be really valuable for our listeners. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:22:08.64) - The, uh, to me, processes everything. Um, and I'd say, I'm gonna, if you don't mind, I'm going to go on a higher, uh, I want to answer this on a, uh, a fundamental level. Cause I think this will have a bigger impact than, than some tips or 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:22:23.91) - Tricks. Absolutely. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:22:25.89) - Is, um, is your goal in your business to be relevant or irrelevant? The, the absolute goal is to be irrelevant like as a CEO, if I'm absolutely irrelevant to my business, then I've created a sound strong business as a manager. If I'm the relevant to my team, then I've created a sound strong team. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:22:54.79) - Yeah. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:22:55.45) - Most of us, because of our need to be valued or need be wanted or needed to be important, create an environment where our relevance is critical to success. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:23:07.21) - We, our goal should be irrelevant. And so finding anywhere in your world where you have, there is a need for you is opportunity to identify process, structure automation, to get yourself out of it. And, and you can think of this from the same perspective of being a parent. My job as a parent is not to be relevant in my children's lives. My job is to be completely irrelevant in their life. And from that position where they have no need for me, we can have pure connection and love, but if they need me, then there's always a barricade between that connection. So my job in life is to become irrelevant to everyone around me, from business to personal. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:23:55.81) - I love that. I love that. I mean, it makes a tremendous amount of sense. You hear so often, um, you know, especially for folks that are building companies or building teams managing and leading teams, you know, you have to find time to work on your business, not in your business. And when I hear you say, uh, being relevant or irrelevant, I don't think about it as a negative way at all. I, I, Larry, I was just joking with you before we started diving into today, man, I would love to be able to, um, continue to work with all these incredible companies, but have my team do it and our solutions do it and have some of our, and the reality is obviously like so many of our listeners, you know, we're building this stuff, so I've gotta be a part of access where the learning and the finding and the PR progress, right. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:24:32.86) - Coming back to this stuff every damn day of the week and just inching forward. Right. That's that ultimately, you know, we, don't probably talk about it enough in the show, but like the action is what drives everything. So like for people that are on the fence on, maybe I want to start a business, maybe we want to be an executive, get ready to provide, provide, and take a tremendous amount of action every single day. It's the only way that you will actually be in that world. I don't disagree with Larry where it is still common where sometimes, you know, showing up as unfortunately 80% of the battle. So depending on where you're at in your own corporate ladder or your own career trajectory, uh, I think it's an old Woody Allen quote, but like, it really truly is if you're going to be the type of guy or gal that shows up 80% of the time, you're statistically improving your chances of being able to accelerate me bad. But I love this idea of, um, really focusing on almost.

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:25:19.16) - Finding the ears where you can be completely irrelevant and letting the business, the process, the team, the solutions, and all of the things that you've engineered over time, run themselves. That's ultimately what, what the goal is. So I love it. Um, has there been maybe one or two examples, Larry, where you've seen certain clients, or even with some of the work that you guys do with seal? Has there been like, uh, certain exercises or certain tools or certain different types of ways that you can kind of get a team to unite around how you can rapidly kind of improve or optimize the way that the processes are functioning? A lot of our company, or a lot of our listeners are startups, man. They, they will openly admit you. They don't have any playbooks. They don't have any knowledge base. They don't have any FAQ's written because they're figuring stuff out every day. So I'd love to kind of, has there been like an example of something that you've seen that can at least kickstart this stuff or give up? 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:26:07.61) - So again, I'm going to answer this on a fun, not fundamental, but I'm going to answer this on a, a level that's if this doesn't exist, you can't do what you're talking about. Um, most people, most managers or leaders of an organization or heads of a startup, uh, believe that we would be perfect if I was managing my team to a hundred percent of their capacity, right? Like I'm optimizing every minute of their day. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:26:34.31) - Yup. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:26:35.15) - The reality is that that's ineffective. Right? Most people, most organizations are over capacity, right? So someone ends their day and they still have 20% of their tasks done done. Right? That's really poor management, tight management would say, well, at the end of the day, I'm done, right. I've done all my tasks. In reality. We need to manage our people that 80% capacity, meaning they have to have excess capacity in their day to one help others on their team. Right. If I'm at a hundred percent capacity and you come to me with a problem, I have to say no, because if I say yes to helping you, then I break a commitment on my side. The other thing is I don't have time to learn. Like I can't learn if I'm on our percent capacity. And if I can't learn, I can't get more effective, more efficient. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:27:27.53) - I can't innovate the third part that you miss. If I'm a hundred percent capacity is I can't spend time on my role. Like you're saying in my business versus on my business, in my role versus on my role, if I don't have part of my time to spend on my role, then I can't possibly put together processes, structures as ops. So the thing to remember for the startup is slow down to go fast. If you have to slow down, you have to decrease your overall commitments in order to start building a sustainable organization that can then speed up. So I'd say that'd be, my answer is like, don't worry about SLPs until you manage your people to have capacity to start working on their SOP. Because if you put it on top of their already over capacity cells, they're going to lead. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:28:16.07) - Yup. Awesome ideas. You know, just, just one quick note in this, it's funny as we've gotten more and more at bats with these incredible growth focus companies that we work with at CXC, um, what we've definitely learned over the last two plus years, Larry's establishing, identifying and validating specific CX and CS focused calls to action. We'll call them  right. Calls to action. Like you might have the team, you might have the leader who, or, or has anyone identified all these different calls to action. They're low-hanging fruit right in front of you. But then the next part, I love that you talk about this capacity, uh, best practice, which is oftentimes more often than not is we can start identifying and teeing up, prioritizing, breaking out compartmentalizing, all the different facets of how you need to accomplish the CTS. But it's super common to have these, these companies where, because everybody's already at a hundred percent capacity, all these brilliant, smart, awesome guys and gals that should literally be helping to expedite your revenue growth, building better products for tomorrow, figuring all the cool shit out that your customers are asking for. They can't even tackle the next five CTS that are literally going to propel you into the future. So this is like, this is gold right here, there that I want everyone to kind of stop, stop this part of the show, relisten to it. Think about how you can bring that back into your team tomorrow. Cause that's like a brilliant, brilliant piece of advice. Larry 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:29:41.04) - Go fast, 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:29:41.51) - Slow down to go fast. I love it. I love it. And every one of us has to do that. I'd love to dive into the fourth and the final seeks pillar feedback, man, I'm excited about this cause you kind of hit on some of this with how you guys manage this in the knee and the Navy and in the, in the seals. But I'd love just to hear you talk for a couple of minutes about the way that you've kind of sort of learned and built your own little playbook around customer feedback. And I'd love to kind of have you spend a minute or two talking about the same type of thing that you've seen with how you can solicit employee feedback. So in a few minutes, kind of talking about what you've learned about this 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:30:13.68) - On the customer side, I like it as opposed to getting traditional feedback where you ask someone, how did we do or a survey, or like, I like to think of customer feedback from a perspective of metrics. Like what numbers can I look at from our side to validate that we're hitting our goals or objectives. That to me is more, more useful than someone telling us something because a lot of times people are just not.

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:30:42.25) - We build. One of, we built one of our companies in Minnesota, in Minneapolis, and it is like, they are so nice there that you could have done a horrible job. And they were like, oh, everything was great. Like we love it. And then they leave and never come back. And so I learned to trust more on metrics that I can see on performance than someone's direct feedback. So I'd say that would be an innovation that we've had around customer feedback is number numbers, not words, uh, when it comes to employee feedback, I'm going to measure that based off of the connection of the team. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:31:19.56) - So the how strong of a connection does my employee feel to their coworkers and to the organization, and then to us as management within the organization, if that connection is strong, then they're, they're like voting their feedback with that, that perceived connection. And that connection comes down to authenticity, vulnerability, and trust. So how do I assess if one of my team members feels strongly connected is going to be based on the degree to which they are authentic the degree to which they are vulnerable and to the degree to which they lead with trust as opposed to distrust. So again, I'm, I'm odd in that as opposed to being, uh, receiving it, being reactive to feedback, I'm being proactive in it, looking at underlying things that wouldn't normally directly be tied to feedback. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:32:19.50) - I love that you just gave me a bunch of different ideas for how every single solitary, um, you know, business leader out there can be thinking about how they could build their own unique or custom employee experience, scorecards or team scorecards or whatever you guys are doing for your current, um, your current team validation or assessment strategies right now. They're, those are brilliant ideas, man. I love the authentic piece because let's call it what it is. We spend literally more time with the people that we work with than we do with our wives and our kids and our brothers and her sisters, which is ridiculous, but it's the truth. And every one of us goes through it. The other thing too is there's something about comfortability, man. I, I'm not I'm, I'm thinking about this because I literally just saw, I just saw top gun last night, too. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:32:59.04) - So this is I head, but for, and I've, and I'm saying this because let's call it what it is. It's smashing box box office records. A lot of our listeners probably have already seen it, but like, think about the, the, the, the point in the flick where Maverick breaks the group, did the beach, drink beer and play football and hang out and be human together. Like just being a normal together, get away from the FAA, teens, get away from the stress, the pressure, the bullshit, the minutia, and like, figure out how to like bond with someone on a human level. Like as a friend, as a colleague, as a coach, like, and then you think about right after that is when they started getting, getting it together, pulling it together, figuring out the actual specifics and granularities in the mission, but, but trusting each other and building a team and really supporting each other. So like awesome ideas there, men, um, there has been an absolute pleasure, man. I've been, uh, thrilled to have you on the show. Awesome ideas before we let you go. Um, where can people find out more about you, sir? Where can people find out about, um, uh, CLT leaders and then spend a minute or two to talk about your book to men. I want to make sure that people know where they can find your book. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:33:59.50) - Yeah, so that that's actually what was going to direct people. We've, uh, we're so, uh, so proud and so excited that our services have really been exclusive to large companies. You know, that's what we've for years have just been working with companies that have a lot of money to spend on, on optimizing their teams, creating clear coordinated action. And that was that wasn't fulfilling our mission. Our mission is permanent positive change in people's lives. And we were having that permanent positive change. There's just not a lot of people by, by the nature of how we, we, uh, met with our clients. And so having the opportunity to bring these very expensive lessons to, to, into the reach of everyone through first the book, uh, which is how leadership actually works. And so, uh, the book we launched just over a month ago, uh, it's been doing great. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:34:54.19) - You can find it on Amazon. Uh, the other way, best way to get to us is how leadership actually works.com. The book website has information about the book, some of the software assessment tools that we, we leveraged with businesses. Uh, and then the other cool thing that we're really excited about is, uh, we started a group coaching offer. So the ability to have individuals at a very low price point, get the same type of service that we're charging hundreds of thousands of dollars for companies to do it in groups, and that they get direct access to me once a month to, to my two partners plus some of our teams. So that's been one of the things that we're most excited about, you know, low cost opportunity for individuals to gain deeper understanding of these things and bring it back to their teams to create that permanent positive change. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:35:45.61) - I love it. Well, look, Larry, it's, it's awesome work that you guys are doing. Uh, love the story. Huge. Thank you for coming on the show and sharing it with all of us. And, uh, I'm gonna look forward to continuing our relationship on our discussion in the future. My brother. 

Speaker 1 (tc: 01:35:56.56) - I agree. Thank you. 

Speaker 2 (tc: 01:35:59.26) - Uh,