Jordan Goldrich – Serving Abrasive Customers

Introducing Jordan Goldrich – Founder, CEO, & Podcast Host at Workplace Warrior Inc. In this episode, Jordan reflects on his background in Social Work and Executive Coaching and walks us through tactics for navigating abrasive or difficult customers. Tune in as we discuss: 

• How to stay respectful even if your brain is telling you not to 
• How to give negative feedback without damaging relationships 
• How to manage personal triggers 
• The difference between compassion and sympathy 
• And much more! 

MORE ABOUT JORDAN 

Jordan Goldrich coaches successful executives who are labeled as abrasive to be completely authentic and drive results without damaging relationships. Jordan is co-author of Workplace Warrior: People Skills For The No-Bullshit Executive. He is a Chief Operations Officer, Master Corporate Executive Coach (MCEC), Professional Certified Coach (PCC), Licensed Clinical Social Worker, and Certified Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Coach. He is producer and host of the podcast, Workplace Warrior®: Drive Results Without Damaging Relationships®. 

CONNECT WITH JORDAN 

workplacewarriorinc.com | Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter 

OTHER RESOURCES MENTIONED 

• Tip Sheet (How to Select an Executive Coach) 

CONNECT WITH US 

Website | LinkedIn | YouTube | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter 

Transcript

Mike Cole  0:05  
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Peoplecast. I'm your host, Mike Cole and with me today, as always, is our co host and producer extraordinaire, Jerrin Padre. 

Jerrin Padre  0:15  
Hello. 

Mike Cole  0:17  
Today we have with us, Jordan Goldrich. Jordan is the founder and CEO of Workplace Warrior Incorporated. He is a master corporate executive coach, licensed clinical social worker. And he is an author of the Amazon bestseller Workplace Warrior: People Skills For The No Bulls-t Executive. And as if that wasn't enough, Jordan also hosts the podcast, Workplace Warrior: Drive Results Without Damaging Relationships. Welcome to the show, Jordan. 

Jordan Goldrich  0:44  
Well, thank you. It is a pleasure to be here. 

Mike Cole  0:47  
So here's your first question, Jordan. First question is when you're shopping in a department store, and you're ready to check out, do you go to self checkout? Or do you go to live cashier. 

Jordan Goldrich  0:57  
I go to live cashier. I don't like self checkout. I've heard you talk about this on other shows. And I know the two of you both go to self checkout, but I go through the cashier.

Mike Cole  1:10  
Yeah, yeah. I mean—for me, I'm from a retail background, and I worked retail many years in my younger days. And I definitely appreciate and need sometimes a human interaction. So I guess I'm gonna, you know, really step back just a bit from my stance on self checkout for this episode. Because I want to make sure that people know that I do appreciate human interaction. I mean, that's really part of what podcasting is all about is connecting with the audience. And it's part of that human social interaction. So I do go to live cashiers on occasion, because I myself was a live cashier. Back in the day.

Jerrin Padre  1:49  
it is harder, though. I find that after the last two years of not having that regular social interaction, it's really hard for me to have those minute interactions throughout the day with people that aren't, you know, in my pod or in my circle.

Jordan Goldrich  2:03  
Yeah, absolutely. I, about three months ago, went to my first in-person meeting after the COVID. And it was—I live in San Diego, and it was up in the LA area. And I remember driving for three hours and thinking to myself, "Virtual's okay, I don't need to see these people!"

Jerrin Padre  2:21  
Right, well, and then—so I also just recently went to one of my first in-person meetings, and I was surprised that I had the opposite reaction where, like, some of the conversation just flowed a lot more naturally than it does on Zoom. And I just remember thinking, "Wow, you lose so much of regular human interaction." But then, you know, driving there, I definitely had that same reaction. I was like, "I think we're fine. We can just continue to be remote."

Mike Cole  2:52  
Yeah, yeah, I'm delivering a session next week. And it'll be my first in-person meeting in quite some time. So I'm curious to see how, you know, not only do they react, but do I react to because this will be one of the first times they've come together as well. So, you know, it's interesting how this pandemic has just kind of changed social interaction and our opinions. So it's pretty fascinating. Yeah.

Mike Cole  2:52  
I think I'm gonna change my "This or That" question. My "This or That" question is text or call?

Jordan Goldrich  3:24  
You know, it depends. I—for a long time, I resisted texting. I'm an old guy, I'm 68 years old, and took me a while to get into it. But there are times when it's just something real short. And text is very nice. And if I actually want to have a conversation with somebody I prefer to call.

Jerrin Padre  3:42  
Right. 

Mike Cole  3:43  
Yes. Yeah, it's funny how these devices that we keep in our pockets, we can actually talk on them too. And I tell my kids that a lot. It's like, "Hey, you know what, you can talk through these devices, too, instead of just, you know, using your thumbs." So I would agree sometimes just a quick, "Hey, headed home" text. That's fine. I don't need to call you and tell you that. But, if I have a lengthy something to share with you, I'm probably going to call you so. 

Jordan Goldrich  4:05  
"Home safe" is a good text. 

Mike Cole  4:07  
Yes. Yes. What about you? Jerrin? Are you text or call?

Jerrin Padre  4:10  
I like texting. I like planning what I'm going to say. Having time to articulate it in the way that I want it to come out versus having to do it on the spot.

Mike Cole  4:20  
Do you find yourself worrying, though, about how that message is going to be interpreted? Because it's really hard to interpret tone from text, right?

Jerrin Padre  4:27  
Um, I feel like I'm—I consider myself a better writer than I am a speaker. 100% So I like the way that my texts come across for the most part. 

Mike Cole  4:39  
Gotcha. Okay. 

Jerrin Padre  4:40  
I'll send you a nice text. Mike.

Mike Cole  4:42  
Send me a nice text and I'll see how I intepret it. I'll see what tone I feel like it was, see if I guess right. Well, now that we've learned a little bit more about Jordan and his preferences for self checkout and texting or calling, I do—

Jordan Goldrich  4:57  
*chuckling*

Mike Cole  4:57  
Hey, that's important stuff. That's important stuff right? 

Jordan Goldrich  5:00  
That is important. That is important.

Mike Cole  4:57  
The things we have—I mean, we can end the episode right now and I think people know more about Jordan. But we're not going to do that because we have a ton more that we want to find out, especially somebody of your background and your caliber and the things that you've done. So the first question I probably have for you is where did you grpw up?

Jordan Goldrich  5:19  
So I grew up in a city housing project in New York City that was built for returning World War Two veterans. 

Jerrin Padre  5:27  
Wow. 

Jordan Goldrich  5:27  
And the big deal is that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar lived in the same building that I did, or I lived in the same building he did.

Jerrin Padre  5:35  
Wow, that's crazy. And you didn't meet him? You never—I feel like he'd be hard to miss.

Jordan Goldrich  5:40  
No, I did meet him. He's the big kid. So he's about three or four years older than I am and he wouldn't know me at all if he met me, but I did once play on his stickball team. 

Mike Cole  5:54  
Oh, wow.Who can say they played stickball with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? That is one for the bank right there. Yep.

Jerrin Padre  6:02  
When you have to do, you know the annoying, icebreaker bits, do you ever use that in your two truths and a lie?

Jordan Goldrich  6:10  
Oh, uh, no. I actually don't really do icebreakers.

Jerrin Padre  6:15  
That's a good choice.

Jordan Goldrich  6:16  
*laughing* I'm from a loud New York family. Very direct. Yeah. 

Mike Cole  6:21  
Okay. So let's get direct into the next question then. So you grew up in New York, was your first job in New York?

Jordan Goldrich  6:27  
You know, I was thinking about that, because I had a—as I said, I've touched base with some of your other podcasts. And I know you asked that question. I think that my first job was delivering drugs for a pharmacy. And I think I think I was like 14/15, maybe and drove around on a bicycle and went up to people's houses and delivered.

Mike Cole  6:54  
I'm sorry, I'm putting this storyline together for Jordan right now of let's see, "I grew up in New York, played stickball with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, I was a drug deliverer." That's, that's what I—

Jerrin Padre  7:07  
A drug "pedaler." Prescription medications.

Mike Cole  7:11  
That's what I've got so far. So please continue. Jordan. Sorry.

Jordan Goldrich  7:14  
Okay. So are you looking for my history?

Mike Cole  7:17  
So with that job, I mean, was that long term? Or where did that job take you?

Jordan Goldrich  7:22  
You know, it didn't really take me anywhere. It lasted about five or six months. And I can't even remember why I stopped. You know, it was something to do earn a little bit of extra money while I was in high school. And I went to college. I left when I was 17, to go to college. So that's probably when it stopped

Mike Cole  7:41  
In your your college days, was there any experience that caused you to realize that you wanted to do what you're doing now? Or did you want to do something completely different?

Jordan Goldrich  7:50  
Yeah, I actually wanted to do something—it's not completely different, but it was different enough. So my uncle was a psychiatrist. And my father was a podiatrist who is very interested in psychology. And like I said, I came from a loud family. And there was always a lot of talking about taking responsibility for yourself, and what are you really saying and all of that. And I knew from a very early age that I wanted to be a therapist. So I took my undergraduate degree in psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, which is highly, highly behavioral. 

Jerrin Padre  8:30  
Yeah. 

Jordan Goldrich  8:31  
And it was harder to get into psych grad school that year than it was to get into medical school. And I got on two waiting lists and didn't get in. So I started working for a couple of years in drop in center for runaway and abused adolescents. And then after two years, I realized they didn't know what I didn't know, and that I really needed to get some education. And so I did get into graduate school, but I didn't get any money, at least from a psych program. But I did end up getting my Master's in social work and a Master's in counseling.

Mike Cole  9:07  
And so that led you into the current role that you're in now?

Jordan Goldrich  9:11  
Well, actually, no. So you know, it's kind of funny, I decided to go into analysis, which is three times a week on the couch and went for about five years and realize that I didn't really want to be a therapist and decided I'd be a good manager. And so there's a program called Employee Assistance programs, and what those are are counseling programs for normal problems in living that are offered to the employees of mostly large companies, large and medium sized companies. And part of that is that the employee assistance counselor, also coaches managers and supervisors on how to handle performance issues and behavioral issues that are caused by personal problems. So that's really where I started working with managers and supervisors and executives. It was really around how do you have a conversation with somebody and tell them that if they don't change their behavior, they're in danger of losing their job and get them to go to the employee assistance program to resolve their personal problems. So, I did that for a number of years, I was living in St. Louis at the time. And then I became the Chief Operations Officer of a small EAP here in San Diego. And over about an eight year period, we grew the company to about 65 employees and something in the neighborhood have an 800% revenue increase, and sold it to Blue Cross of California. 

Jerrin Padre  10:42  
Wow.

Jordan Goldrich  10:43  
So we're now getting close to how I got into this business. About three years into it, I get a call from my boss to come down to her office. And when I walked in, sitting there was the Vice President of Human Resources whose office was three and a half hours away. And being a fast study, I realized this is probably not good. And they proceeded to fire me for mismanaging my budget. So the week after that happened, I bumped into the woman from the finance function who had been my consultant. And I bumped into her at a coffee shop, and she came over and she said, "Jordan, I owe you an apology." And I said, "How come?" And she said, "Well, you know how for the last three or four months, you've been telling me there's something wrong with the overhead in your budget? And I've been looking at you like I don't have a clue what you're talking about?" And I said yes. And she said, "And do you remember that you asked me twice to give you a breakdown of your overhead and I never gave it to you?" And I said yes. And she said, "Well, I knew exactly what was wrong with it. But I was told by our boss that I would lose my job if I gave you the breakdown." And so you know, at that moment, sort of punch in the gut, I realized that had been set up. And I still remember it was 90 degrees that day, and I was sitting in my car outside the coffee shop thinking about what a great opportunity I had to feel victimized. 

Jerrin Padre  12:11  
Yeah. 

Jordan Goldrich  12:12  
And boy, do I hate feeling victimized. So I decided to do what, at the time, I would teach my counseling clients to do, but now coaching clients when something like that happens—just focus on what you controlled. 

Jerrin Padre  12:25  
Right. 

Jordan Goldrich  12:25  
And I realized she didn't like the way I spoke to her. And I wasn't profane. I wasn't, you know, unprofessional. But I'd seen her do stuff like this before. And I just didn't respect her. And it came through, both in meetings and behind the scenes. And so the first thing I decided—if I was going to take responsibility—was that I knew that and I let it go. And then I had to admit that I had had mentors and supervisors and a therapist there too, along the way, telling me I need to be more diplomatic. And I'd always dismissed it for a couple of reasons. One reason was I didn't see any reason why, you know, people shouldn't be able to handle me. Another reason was, you know, that we didn't have the term politically correct in those days. But if we had had it, I would think, you know, you're pressuring me to be politically correct. And another reason was, I was working my tail off. And, you know, I didn't have the energy to stop and edit everything I was going to say before it came out of my mouth. And I made the decision at that point that I was going to change my style, and be respectful regardless of whether my brain was telling me they deserved respect or not. And also, when I get stressed, I tend to be very direct. And so my outplacement counselor put me through some assessments. And he circled in the assessments, my tendency to just say whatever comes to my mind, and to not care that much what people think about me and a couple of other things, and he circled them and he said, "There's your derailment." I'd never heard that term. But it's a term that they use in business. And I said, "What do you do?" And he said, "I'm an executive coach." And that's when I knew I was going to be an executive coach. So that's how I got into it.

Jordan Goldrich  14:28  
Started working for the Center for Creative Leadership. It's a master contractor for executive coaching and they are absolutely wonderful. And they figured out that I was very good with abrasive executives. So a lot of my work has been done with the center, I do some private work, but I'm not a great marketer and I'm really good as a subcontractor. That's been my that's been my story, but I have really, really specialized in working with executives who could get called names like bully and jerk, etc, etc.

Mike Cole  15:04  
So I do have a question. I was going to ask you about that. I saw on the website that you did mention you once lost a job because somebody experienced you as disrespectful. And then you at that point made the commitment to be respectful even when your brain was telling you that they don't deserve it, right? And so, to me, that ties in with kind of what our focus of this season is. It's about inclusive service. And I think when you interviewed LaTonya, our VP, you've heard about Fill The Glass. And it's a training program that we've launched. And part of that is to make the decision to be "on." You know, we all have bad days, we all get up, our car doesn't start or we just are in a bad mood and we choose to stay in a bad mood. Or something's going on with our family or relationships, or—many things impact us when we step into the workplace. And what you just said, making that intentional commitment to be respectful, even when your brain's telling you they don't deserve it. We've all been there, I think. 

Jordan Goldrich  16:05  
Absolutely. 

Mike Cole  16:06  
And so the next question leads into that. And we've asked all our guests this season this question, and we've gotten kind of varied responses. So I'm curious to hear what you have to say about it. When you hear the words "inclusive service," what comes to mind for you?

Jordan Goldrich  16:23  
So I had not heard that term before. And I did some thinking about it. And certainly "inclusive," on the one hand brings up—you know, we're at a time where equity and equality and diversity are big issues. So it certainly brings that up. And it also feels like it just means giving it your all.

Mike Cole  16:45  
Yeah, certainly. And that's, you know, the whole premise of this training is taking ordinary to extraordinary and in your words right there, "giving it your all," doing what you can to go above and beyond. That's kind of really what it's about, yeah.

Jerrin Padre  17:00  
I guess when you're working with your clients, and obviously having been in their shoes, what do you do when you experience resistance from them in the work that you're trying to accomplish together?

Jordan Goldrich  17:13  
So there are different kinds of clients, some of them reach out and want to be coached. Other clients are assigned to because they're part of a ongoing leadership development program. And they're either excited about it or they're not. And then there's a third group that I get, which are people who—they're very, very valuable to their company. Could be their knowledge, it could be their years of service, but on an interpersonal level, they're either abrasive or they're conflict avoidant. So when I get that kind of person, typically what I do is I acknowledge that I was one of those people, and I'm not judging. One of the other things I do is ask them whether there's a conversation in their head, that sounds like you know, "This is a bunch of politically correct bull. I shouldn't have to do it, people should be able to listen to me." And almost 100% of the time they have that conversation going. And so, you know, it's a way to connect. I think, regardless of what you're doing with customers, I think you need to be able to connect with them. And that's a nice way to connect with them is to find out what's going on with them, what they're thinking, what their issues are, what their needs are.

Jerrin Padre  18:28  
Are there—you know, you work with executives, so they're smart. So they understand, like the tactics that you use, is there ever a point where you encounter resistance because, you know, you'll try to de escalate something in your work together and they're just not buying it?

Jordan Goldrich  18:44  
Oh, definitely. I get, "I'm not buying what you're telling me." But, you know, I'm very direct. And typically executives like direct. A lot of times when people think about coaching, they think about asking questions, and the questions tend to be indirect. "What's important to you about that? And why are you doing that?" You know, "what worked, what didn't work?" And I do that when we're problem solving, when we're trying to figure out how to get better at something. But I find, especially with abrasive people, that they prefer direct. And so one of the things that I do is I have developed a system for giving negative feedback without damaging the relationship. And so one of the ways to do that is you can say almost anything to anyone if you frame it properly, and you can talk to people from an, "I'm in service to you" position. And the "I'm in service to you" position is very, very powerful. So one of the things I might say is, you know, "I wouldn't be doing my job as your coach if I didn't challenge you on that. Is that okay?" Or I might say, "I wouldn't be doing my job helping you be successful if I didn't give you another perspective. Are you open to hearing it?" And by the way, if they're really negative and don't want to hear it, I'll ask them if they were opposed to hearing it. Which means that they have to say no if they want to say yes. And that usually breaks the hypnosis for a minute, and there's connection.

Mike Cole  20:16  
And really what you just said ties into one of our questions that we had later on in the episode. And we wanted to pick your brain about giving feedback or saying no to customers, or our direct reports, or peers or supervisors without damaging your relationship. And I like asking, "Are you ready to hear this?" Or, "Do you want to hear this?" That puts the ball back in their court to say yes or no. 

Jordan Goldrich  20:37  
Absolutely. 

Mike Cole  20:39  
I like that.

Jerrin Padre  20:39  
Yeah. It's almost asking for consent, basically. 

Mike Cole  20:42  
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And really thought of it that way.

Jordan Goldrich  20:45  
I have a couple of the versions of that, if you'd like to hear them. 

Jerrin Padre  20:48  
Yes, please. 

Jordan Goldrich  20:49  
So let's say your customers are internal. And let's say you are a project manager, or even a director or vice president in a company, and you're serving them. They are your customers. And one of them asks you for something that the other one has said they don't want you to do. So one possibility is just to say, "I can't do that because so and so said." Another way to do it—and again, it depends on your relationship—but one of the things you could say is, "Listen, I'm in a little bit of a bind, and I need your help." And typically, they'll say, you know, "What about?" You say, "Well, you know, obviously, I'm here to serve you. And the request you've made is totally reasonable. And the bind that I'm in is my boss just told me that we're not doing that anymore. And I'm thinking the way I could be most helpful would be to set up a meetings with the three of us so we can hammer through how we can take care of that. Do you want to do that?" And typically, they then have to decide whether or not they want to actually have a conversation with the boss or with somebody else. And I'd say about 80 to 90% of the time, they back out and say, "Oh, nevermind, it's okay." But you know, you maintained your "I'm in service to you" position. You asked for help, because it is a bind for you. And, by the way, the voice is not, "Oh, please help me!" The voice is direct and equal. But the words are, "I need your help with this. I'm a little bit in a bind, etc, etc." And I've also done that with customers. So I'm thinking back years ago, when I was in the EAP business—by the way, I want to give credit to Rick Helen, his name was. He was one of the owners of the EAP firm I work for and we were working with a large national electronics company. And I got asked to do something that was, number one, outside our contract. And number two, just I didn't think it would work. And I went in to talk to Rick and I said, "Listen, what do you do with this?" And Rick said, "Well, you say to him, 'I wouldn't be doing my job serving you,' or 'I wouldn't be doing my job as your consultant if I didn't give you another opinion about this, do you want to hear it?'" And that's really where I got it from. And I've kept it over the years. So it can be a very strong and positive tool. By the way, the piece I'm missing is you also have to deal with the conversation in your head that saying, "Who is this person? What are they, crazy?" So a lot of it is managing yourself and your own internal conversation.

Jerrin Padre  23:26  
Absolutely. And I think, you know, in the context of customer service, so many of those customer facing roles where you do have to deal with those mindsets, or certain behaviors, you're not really in a position at that point—because they're entry level positions—you're not really in a position to do that work on your own. At least, you know, when I was 18, and I started working at American Eagle Outfitters, my gut reaction wasn't, "To deal with these difficult customers, I should probably go to therapy to understand how they're feeling." Yeah.

Jordan Goldrich  23:58  
Going back to this whole business about being respectful of people when your brain is telling you not to be, where I got that from is I took a class called Compassion Cultivation. And the definition of compassion that was used—a lot of people misunderstand compassion for sympathy. It is not, "Aww, poor baby," that sort of thing. What it means is, number one, it's partly empathy. It's just recognizing that somebody that you're talking to or interacting with is in some kind of pain or some kind of suffering. And the second part of it that makes it compassion is having the intention to help alleviate that suffering or pain, if it is possible and appropriate. And it doesn't mean letting them off the hook. It's really about, "What does that trigger in you?" And once they figure that out, they also have to figure out, "What is that person suffering from?" Well it could be that they're conflict avoidant, that somehow they got raised that if you say something directly, that's not a good thing. Could be they're overly political. And they may not even know that they're in pain and suffering. But if I can identify what the issue is, certainly, it helps me be more balanced in my response. But then I can also redirect what I'm saying to those things. 

Jerrin Padre  25:21  
Yeah.

Mike Cole  25:22  
So let's talk really quick about the worst customer service experience that you've ever had. And what made that the worst?

Jordan Goldrich  25:30  
You know, the one that's coming up was one that happened recently. So I get this knock on the door. And there's a technical looking person sitting outside and I decided to open up the door. And it turns out that he was selling pest control. And long story short, my understanding was that for $49, they would spray my house, and it was that part of the season where we were getting some ants and stuff. So it was nice. And I was impressed with the thoroughness of what they said they were going to do. And then what I understood was, we recommend every six months, so I thought I was getting a full service for the next six months for $49. So the next thing I know about six weeks later, I get called up and "It's time for your service." I said, "Well, I don't understand." They said, "Well, we recommend that you do this every six weeks." And I was like, "That that was not what I understood. I understood, you know, twice a year or three times a year at most." And by the way, the next—you know, after the first $49 one, it was now $150. So that rises to a bad customer service experience.

Mike Cole  26:43  
Yeah, I'll say,

Jerrin Padre  26:45  
What about your best customer service experience?

Jordan Goldrich  26:49  
Recently, we had a blockage in our sewer system. And we had a group come out and look through the pipelines and this and that, and then they fixed it. And, for some reason or other, the toilet kept running. So I called them out. And it turns out that it was it's an old toilet. We bought the house about eight or nine years ago and hadn't remodeled the bathroom. And so in order to replace this toilet, it would be something like a minimum $300 toilet, and then there was time and energy. And the other thing was, I'm in California, so—I forget what the number is, I think it's .75 gallons now. And the toilet that I have is like one and a half gallons when it flushes. So there was all of this stuff. And he actually came out, spent a couple hours, and figured out a way to jerry rig the toilet so that I didn't have to get a new one. And I really appreciated that.

Jerrin Padre  27:46  
Yeah. I mean, I think that reflects something that you just talked about earlier, the going above and beyond, giving it your all.

Jordan Goldrich  27:53  
Yep, the real field that they're trying to serve. And you know, it's not every cent is being counted, but they're trying to form relationship.

Jerrin Padre  28:02  
Yeah. And I think that's something that gets lost in so many transactions. I think that's why, personally, I go to self checkout, because, you know, I've just been conditioned to feel like those minute interactions, while they can be really life giving and great, and when they are and they surprise me like it totally makes my day. But you know, the majority of those experiences are pretty mundane or unpleasant. And then it just conditioned me to feel anxious about them.

Jordan Goldrich  28:32  
Yeah. So can I ask you a personal question? 

Jerrin Padre  28:35  
Of course. 

Jordan Goldrich  28:36  
Did you get raised in a family that was very polite and nice with each other?

Jerrin Padre  28:40  
Well, so it was both, right? I think the culture—so I'm Filipino-American. And managing perceptions is a huge cultural tenant. So it's that classic—and I think a lot of people can relate to this too. It's that classic, like your mother is screaming at you in the car. And then one of her cousins calls and her voice shifts to, "Oh, hi, how's everything going?" So there's that huge shift, right? And then even for the smallest interactions, like I said, we had so much pressure on us to be an extension of the family and to treat everybody with a certain level of kindness to basically build the brand of the Padre family.

Jordan Goldrich  29:23  
Yeah.

Jerrin Padre  29:24  
So it was like this weird cognitive dissonance around my family being very loud as well. But on the flip side, you had to be completely different if we left the house.

Jordan Goldrich  29:36  
Yeah, that's nice. The difference between your family and my family is that they didn't have the "you have to be nice when you leave the house." Yeah, you know, I really got a different kind of—you know, I call it a paradoxical message. I got a different kind of message from my family. And one of which is I come from a family with Jewish background, then we lost people—you know, a couple of generations before lost people in the Holocaust. And both of my—well actually all my family was very, very much about treating everybody fairly. Didn't matter the color of your skin, you know, didn't matter whether you're gay or straight, you know, none of that stuff mattered. At the same time, if you said something that they thought was stupid, they didn't see any reason why they should treat you respectfully. 

Jerrin Padre  30:33  
Right. 

Jordan Goldrich  30:33  
You know, so it was two messages.

Mike Cole  30:36  
If you could go back, go back a few years. What advice would you give your younger self, a young Jordan Goldrich entering the industry? What would you tell yourself?

Jordan Goldrich  30:46  
There are a couple of things. One of which that's popping up at the moment is that one of my first mentors—when he noticed my very direct style, and my insistence that things made sense—said to me that if I wanted to be successful in business, I needed to be able to recognize conflicting demands in the environment, solve them all and remain sane. And I talk about those as polarities now, but that is a big one. The other one was, you know, just treating people respectfully, even when your brain doesn't think that you should. So those would be two things that are really big deals.

Mike Cole  31:29  
All right. I think that was last question right, Jerrin?

Jerrin Padre  31:31  
I think so. Unless you want to psychoanalyze us a little bit more, Jordan. 

Mike Cole  31:35  
Oh no!

Jerrin Padre  31:38  
That could be a whole other episode.

Jordan Goldrich  31:39  
That's a whole other conversation. Yes.

Mike Cole  31:42  
It is. Yeah, it is. Well, Jordan, we have had a wonderful conversation, just around so many things. And, definitely, I think our listeners have a lot to take to heart and a lot of practices to use. And it's just been wonderful to have you on the show. And we truly appreciate it.

Jordan Goldrich  32:00  
Well, thank you, I have really enjoyed this conversation. It's been very just friendly and conversational. And we've gotten into some really good stuff. So thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Mike Cole  32:12  
You're welcome. So thanks also to our listeners, for sitting with us for this conversation with Jordan. Jordan, one more thing really quick. If people want to find you, how can they find you?

Jordan Goldrich  32:25  
Well, my website is https://www.workplacewarriorinc.com, and they could also get a hold of me at https://www.jordangoldrich.com. And if you are interested in a tip sheet on how to select an executive coach, you can go to www.selectcoach.workplace warrior.com

Mike Cole  32:49  
Very nice. Listeners, we'll have all of that information in our show notes so you can find Jordan and connect with him should you so desire. And as always, we thank you for listening. And until next time, we'll see you then on Peoplecast 

Jerrin Padre  33:03  
Bye bye!