Leadership - “if you’re the smartest person in the room... you’re probably in the wrong room!”. Tune into this episode of Standing out with Brooke O’Grady, Chief Operating Officer of TAFS, Inc. Learn about Brooke’s transition from Education to Transportation, and her take on the extended side of leadership.
Sponsored by SPI Logistics. If you're looking for back-office support such as admin, finance, IT, and sales as a freight broker - reach out to SPI Logistics today! Learn more about becoming an agent here: https://success.spi3pl.com/
Standing Out is a sales, marketing & leadership podcast powered by BETA Consulting Group, created to highlight best practices from industry leaders with incredible experience and insights! The goal is to entertain, educate & inspire individuals & companies to improve their sales, marketing & leadership development outcomes.
Leadership - “if you’re the smartest person in the room... you’re probably in the wrong room!”. Tune into this episode of Standing out with Brooke O’Grady, Chief Operating Officer of TAFS, Inc. Learn about Brooke’s transition from Education to Transportation, and her take on the extended side of leadership.
Sponsored by SPI Logistics. If you're looking for back-office support such as admin, finance, IT, and sales as a freight broker - reach out to SPI Logistics today! Learn more about becoming an agent here: https://success.spi3pl.com/
Standing Out is a sales, marketing & leadership podcast powered by BETA Consulting Group, created to highlight best practices from industry leaders with incredible experience and insights! The goal is to entertain, educate & inspire individuals & companies to improve their sales, marketing & leadership development outcomes.
Oh, yes, look at that. Come on, oh love that. Oh love that. Oh love that, oh love that. Oh, you gotta love that. I love seeing my stepdad walk into us when we were live. Always gets me so fun to see that. And you gotta love great swag. Look at this. I'm so excited to get our new poll over in there with the beta consultant group on. Oh, it's on that shoulder over there. Absolutely love that. Listen, folks, swag matters out there. If you're gonna get swag, get good swag. Get the kind of swag that looks good, performs well, well designed, something that people want to take with them on vacation. Bad swag is no good. It's better to have no swag than to have bad swag. So always keep that in mind whenever you're thinking about your swag for your company.
Speaker 1:I'm Trey Griggs, host of Standing Out. Thanks for joining us today. We're so excited to have you with us on the show today. Gonna have a great one. It's a banger. It's gonna be a good one.
Speaker 1:And we want to give a shout out to our friends over at SPI Logistics for making the show possible. Make sure you visit them at successspi3plcom, especially if you're a freight broker. That's just done with the admin, the back office type of stuff. You just want to get rid of your authority and just focus on sales and customers. Make sure you reach out to them. Or if you're an agent not happy with where you're at, or you're thinking about becoming a freight agent, they're the ones to call Again, visit them at successspi3plcom.
Speaker 1:And while you're out there surfing the internet, make sure you follow us on social media my personal, trey Griggs 24, and Beta Consulting Group, everywhere that's out there. Love to engage with you, have a little fun online, give us some banter, give us your best insult. Out there, we'll have a good time. Be sure to follow us for all of our content. We appreciate that. Also, we're building up a new YouTube channel. We've got the Beta Podcast Network YouTube channel. Very excited about that. We're gonna be launching that officially here really soon with all of our content so you can never miss an episode again if you want to watch the show, and so we appreciate you following our journey as well. Hopefully it provides a lot of great content for you.
Speaker 1:All right, we got a great guest today. So excited to have this incredible woman on the show. I've known her for a couple of years now. Watch her grow. Just got promoted doing some great things. So please welcome to the show our friend from TAS, the Chief operating officer, brooke O'Grady, in the house today. It's a great song. This is a great song, my friend. Love it, love it, come on.
Speaker 2:I'm a big fan of the actual CD. You know Eminem show.
Speaker 1:I look back.
Speaker 2:I can't believe my parents. Let me have this. I think I was in sixth grade but gosh, I did.
Speaker 1:Did you ever see Eminem in person? Like you ever go to a concert?
Speaker 2:No, I wish I could see Marshall Mathers. He I feel like he doesn't. I mean, he just doesn't perform a whole lot. And I feel like now that I'm in the space of like, oh, I could go travel and see him. It's like not really happening.
Speaker 1:Life change. He's going to be the guy. He's going to be the 50 year old rapper that you know when your kids are all grown, you go watch him live. You know he's probably still going to be good. You know he's one of the best of all time, which is great.
Speaker 1:And then I'm like, if you don't know the song, I'm probably you're probably too young, Right Like totally yeah, we're getting to that place, brooke, where you know we're working with people who have no idea the movies we watched, the music we saw none of that, it's just kind of the way it is. And speaking of CDs, my kids just the other day were like I'm never going to own a CD and I thought to myself that's crazy. They're never going to own a CD. I mean, they don't have any place to play it.
Speaker 2:I don't think I have any place to play it at my house. I mean, I used to have like a book, right, and it had all your CDs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know we all did. I know, yeah, I know, see, it's interesting. So so you know a turntable, you know those have come into play and people buy vinyls now and have that. Nobody's buying eight tracks, Nobody's buying cassette players. I don't think people are going to buy CD players. Just doesn't have the same feel as the old turntable. It's just going to be gone. They're never going to own a CD. That's crazy to me. It's kind of weird. But anyway.
Speaker 2:I used to burn my own CDs.
Speaker 1:I know that was. That was big. When that came around, we were totally dating ourselves. But that was huge back in the day when you could burn your own CD, just felt like so much power and and Napster was was helping us make it possible. Love that, all good stuff, all right. So, brooke, real quick. Thanks for being on the show. We appreciate it. Are you a coffee drinker? Water bottle drinker? Which one do you want? We're going to send you one today. We'll be on the show. Coffee, all right, cool, we're going to send you your own mug. And again, we appreciate you being on the show today. So tell everybody a little bit about yourself and about what you're doing over a test now.
Speaker 2:Sure, a little bit about myself. I hate.
Speaker 1:I mean, I've got some fun facts I could bring up. I got some dirt, but you know, what do you want to say?
Speaker 2:Well, we have to bring up, like the appropriate dirt, like don't dig up.
Speaker 2:But so I'm in Kansas City, I have a husband, two kids, a five and a two year old kind of like my background. I went to high school in Kansas City and then for my undergrad I went to University of Kansas so the J Hawks and then I actually moved out to Arizona to be a teacher. So I used to be a middle school teacher and then I studied abroad and then I ended up coming back and getting my master's in organizational leadership at Baker, which is like a private, smaller college in Kansas.
Speaker 1:And then the same circles. We have such a similar life. Keep going.
Speaker 2:No, you're fine. And then I've been at tasks for almost eight years and I started out as the training and onboarding manager, and so that really I look back and I'm like, oh my gosh, but so I would do the orientation for new hires coming into the company internally, and then I would also call all of our clients when it was their first time submitting an invoice and I'd have to walk them through how to do it over their phone, and they could possibly be doing it on the computer or the app. But it's crazy, looking back, because I remember calling and the technology we were so, I believe, so far advanced at that time. And so you're calling these Companies to show them how to submit invoices, and some of them don't even. They have a flip phone, right, they don't know how to submit the app or a portal, and so it's totally come a long way. But I would spend like sometimes two to three hours on the phone with our client trying to say, hey, here's how you submit the invoice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and kudos to you for doing that, because a lot of times people, especially tech companies, they just don't take the time to help people learn how to use the tech. So I think that's awesome. You did that. You know it's so important. But we have we have some similar, you know, lifestyles. I grew up in Kansas City as well. I was a middle school teacher for a while as well. Left that got into business. So we have a lot of similarities. But you grew up on the Kansas side, I grew up on the Missouri side. We didn't like you guys, we didn't like the Kansas people you didn't like that's.
Speaker 2:State line maybe stronger than people by far to teach, I think.
Speaker 1:See, I was the opposite. I love teaching high school. I don't love those conversations better. Even though I'm a silly person, I just got more out of the high school teaching. I felt like I was preparing them for for life a little bit more. I don't know, I got a little Fulfillment out of that and the middle school was difficult. I feel like a middle school. I opened more lockers than I taught math. Yeah, kids get the combination open more than teaching math. It was still fun. I just enjoyed the high school just a little bit better. Middle school teachers are unique and very valuable I'm thankful for teachers.
Speaker 2:I just like the quirkiness. They're awkward, they're like, and they're excited to see you. Like they're still like when they walk in in the morning. They're excited to see their teachers, usually in middle school. So that's fun too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you love on kids, man, you're the hero. I mean they just think you're great and I guess I got a little little ego boost out of that. But I enjoyed like helping kids and I enjoyed just, you know, being available to them and give them good advice for life. So a lot of good lessons there. But you can I mean the. I think that people don't understand the, the Transferable skills from teaching into business. There's a lot there. I've taken a lot of things from my teaching career I'm sure you have as well into business that have really helped you out. What got you into? You know wanted to go into business as opposed to teaching. What was it that kind of triggered that for you?
Speaker 2:Well, I knew I would if I stayed in teaching. I knew I wanted to go into admin at some point. I actually got approached by the job here at TAFs and what they had originally wanted was somebody with an educational background. They were going to implement a really big CRM system. We use Salesforce, and so they were gonna launch Salesforce and they said, hey, we need someone to come in and Show adults how to use it and so that kind of pertain to you know, teaching. It was just different.
Speaker 2:I think actually adults are more difficult to teach 100% yeah yeah, people don't really like change as much as they think that they do. You know people say that, but I'm like I don't know, because I've had to implement, you know, major changes sometimes and you know sometimes you get a lot of pushback. But that's really why they said you know, with your background in education, even come in and teach adults.
Speaker 1:So that's how adults think they don't like change. They also don't like failing or being bad at things. That's something that is really great about kids is that they don't have that fear of failure. Usually, especially at a younger age, they're willing to try. They're willing to learn new things. Everything is new in many ways. Older people, adults they tend to be set in their ways and it's hard to change and there's just a discomfort about it and about failing and not knowing. So, yeah, they're not the best students. It's a much more difficult job teaching adults than just teaching kids, in my opinion.
Speaker 2:For sure. And then here I am. I was 25 at the time. I'm teaching people who have been working here for seven, eight years. Hey, do this and do that, and so they're probably looking at me like who are you? So that was. I learned a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's talk about that. What did you learn from a leadership standpoint, because obviously leading kids, there's some crossover in terms of just being a good leader in general. What are some things that you've learned over the years at TAPS and your development? Because you started in the management level, but probably a mid-level area somewhere in the range.
Speaker 1:Now you're managing yourself. You had on the office I think it's Kelly. She manages herself that kind of thing. You're managing yourself at that time, but now you manage other people. You're chief from the operating officer. Now what are some leadership lessons you learned all in the way in the last eight years that really helped you out?
Speaker 2:Wow. So I'm a big believer that leadership, you get better at it over time. You hear people say a lot of times like, oh, they're just a natural born leader, or oh, they have really some leadership skills, or oh, I can someday see them leading. And that usually is true, right? I think some people possess characteristics that are important when it comes to leadership, but I also believe that leadership can be completely taught, and a lot of that is just over time.
Speaker 2:I would say the number one thing that I've learned is to set clear expectations, and that's I mean, as you know too. That plays into your role as a dad, right? And here's what I expect out of you, and because I want them to be successful, and I'm setting people up for failure if I'm not giving them clear expectations, because they won't be able to meet my expectations if I'm not clear, and that's really unfair. So that's probably the number one thing I've learned. I've also learned there's times where I thought I was being clear and I wasn't, and I've also learned most people they want to do well. So if somebody is, you know, not meeting expectations or you think they need more training or this or that, just having a conversation about it because usually they don't know and most people want to do well, and I think sometimes we're quick to jump that or jump to the conclusion that maybe somebody isn't performing well because of this and whatever reason. But usually when you sit down and have a conversation with somebody you can kind of figure out what's going on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and going back to what you said about expectations, I think that's so powerful. One of my dear friends, JD Gravina he's the head of women's basketball coach at Western Illinois and he preaches this all the time. He says that success is the product of proper expectations, that when you have the right expectations and you communicate them clearly, that that sets you up to be successful. And without that it's a shot in the dark and there's a lot of guessing and it's just not clear. I think the strongest ability of a leader is the ability to communicate, and that's a taught skill.
Speaker 2:You're not a mind reader. And so it's unfair for me to expect that.
Speaker 1:You're absolutely right. But communication, again, it's a learned skill. I really I agree with you. I think leadership is completely learned. The idea of somebody being a natural born leader usually just means that they're able to talk and jump like a little you know, take charge of a situation. That's a part of leadership, but that's not all of leadership. There's a lot more to it than that but that we tend to look at people that just are able to jump in and communicate or take charge as, oh, they're a natural born leader. So what I've learned is that leadership is all about serving. Like there's an element that you're now serving everybody. You're not the one that's telling people what to do. You're helping people accomplish their goals with a little bit of guidance and things like that.
Speaker 1:It's just a different way of thinking about it. It's a lot, but I love what you said about that. It's definitely a learned skill and you've obviously progressed.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited for you. You just got promoted here in the last couple of months and that always feels good to be acknowledged and recognized for the work you're doing. Do you feel like? What was your? What was your sense of when you got promoted? Was it a sense of like excitement and relief, or was it a sense of like more pressure or more responsibility, or a little combination of both?
Speaker 2:How did you view that when you had the opportunity to move into this role, I think I just felt probably anxious, excited, but also really nervous, because more people are going to look to me for support and I want to be able to provide that for them and make sure I'm doing a good job and making sure that my plate's not too full, that I'm able to give people the time that they need, and so it's mainly just you know, can I do this?
Speaker 2:How do I do it? Well, because I want to, and just super grateful because I don't. I'm never the smartest person in the room, I'm just not. And so you know I'm just a big believer that I should be really thankful for what I'm given and I work, I try to work really hard, but there's definitely people that can do it better than me, that are smarter than me. So I just felt really like humbled and grateful that they believed in me. Right, because that's ultimately when you get into the room and you cannot be an тут rise and get their expert to come on that and figure it out for you and get that up in those things that they do over in the household and taking advantage of that outgoing and much moreOn how it Okay.
Speaker 2:And if you feel that way or like like right, you are over that this testing thing and you're not be walking around like if I umiente, look at a bunch of reports and just like, I've never been super book smart. I've always had to work really, really hard at it and that's okay. We each have strengths and weaknesses, but it's nice to feel like, okay, I'm doing something right, if they believe in me, which is really humbling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I love that. If I'm ever like on the basketball court and I'm the best player, that's not, that should not be. I should not be the best player on the basketball court.
Speaker 1:I'm five, eight if I'm gonna say or if I'm playing golf and I'm the best golfer in the group, it's like I need to be in a better group. That with players that can challenge me, like that's where you wanna be in life and sports, and all those kinds of things. So it's really, really important. All right, so we got a little game to play Every day on the show. I like to have a little fun and play games, so today we got a game, and that game is called Wavelength.
Speaker 2:I'm nervous.
Speaker 1:I know, me too. I have no idea what to expect here. But here's the basic rules of the game. But I think we're gonna get some clues and we have to think of a word, but we can't say it. And then when we hear this noise, the gong let's see if we hear it. Does it get played? Let's see, maybe I can play it. There we go when we hear that, then we have to say what we think our word was and hopefully our goal is to say the same thing. So that's the goal of the game. All right, so let's go ahead and just do the first one here. So we're gonna get a clue. Let's see if we can think of the same word at the same time. Here's what we got, but okay, so this is a movie that starts with a letter Z. It has to do with food. I don't know that many movies that start with a letter Z.
Speaker 2:Mine just says food.
Speaker 1:Oh, you don't see food dash Z.
Speaker 2:I see food dash Z, so in my head it's a food that starts with a letter Z.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's a food with a letter Z. Okay, go, go, go, go. Okay, very good. Not a movie. Okay, got it. I was off on that. Okay, all right, I think I have mine, I don't know Same. Okay, all right, let's go Hit the gong, let's go. All right, what do you got Ready? One, two, three zucchini, Zucchini, yes, Zucchini.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we got the first one right. We got the first one right, so that's good. All right, so we're on the right track in that regard. All right, let's see what the next one is. Here we go. Okay, famous people that start with a T, this one's gonna be harder.
Speaker 2:Can we give each other hints right?
Speaker 1:I don't know. I don't know if that's a part of the rule or not. I don't think we can. I think we just have to think of a T and see if we come up with the right one. Now, it's so funny when you have to think of a famous person with the letter T. It's not okay. I got one, I'm ready. Okay, I got one. Okay, are you ready?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Three. Okay, all right, there's the gong Three, two, one.
Speaker 2:Travis Kilt, taylor Swift.
Speaker 1:Oh, we were almost on the same wave, wow. I mean there's definitely a connection there.
Speaker 2:That is for sure a point, that's a point.
Speaker 1:It has to count, that has to count as a point that was so good. Or I'm giving it to us, we're taking it, we're getting that point. That one's good, all right. Next one sports. Okay, so is it a sport that starts with the letter I? Sport that starts with the letter I? I think that's correct, the sport that starts with the letter I. Okay, I got one, you're ready. Oh no, okay, I like hearing the gong, you ready?
Speaker 2:I got one.
Speaker 1:Okay, you ready Three, two, one. I skate, I skate, let's go. Seriously, let's go. That counts, I love it. That's good, okay, all right. Household item J. Household item J Uh, household item that starts with the letter J. Oh man, I'm blanking here. Household, oh, we gotta do it. Household okay, I guess we gotta do it. Hmm. Uh, dude, this is really really tough. Can you think of a household item with a letter J?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You have one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wish I could give you hints, but I think that's against.
Speaker 1:I know, I know, I know that's not good. I'm so blanking right now. Okay, I got it. Okay, you ready? Okay, here we go. Yeah, All right. Three, two, one Jacuzzi. What did you say? I said a jar, A jar. Okay. Well, we didn't get that one? I can only think of a Jacuzzi, which is a household item, but Kind of, kind of, I couldn't think of anything else. Okay, last, one.
Speaker 2:This could be our last one.
Speaker 1:Movie that starts with H. Hmm, Okay, I've got one. I'm going to funnel this to you right now, Brooke. I'm funneling it to you through the ether the airways, giving you what it is right now. I'm going to funnel this to you right now, Brooke. I'm funneling it to you through the ether the airways, giving you what it is right now, Okay.
Speaker 2:Okay, are you ready?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Okay, here we go. Three, two one Home alone Harry Potter. Oh, all right.
Speaker 2:Well, we got two, we're taking two on that.
Speaker 1:That wasn't bad. We're going to go to. We could take like back in time, though, at least yeah we did.
Speaker 2:We did go back in time a little bit. You went a little further back in time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you went to the 80s I know, I know. That was a ways back, for sure, but that's good. Well, brooke, listen. It's still great having you on this show. I'm so excited for you. Thank you for being a part of standing out today. Yeah, and best wishes to you in the new role as Chief Operating Officer over at TAPS. Thank you Appreciate you having us on the show. We'll get that mug out to you. Make sure you take a picture of it, throw it on social and tell everybody where you got it.
Speaker 2:All right, Thanks guys.
Speaker 1:All right, thanks, brooke. We'll talk to you soon. All right, everybody. We come back every Tuesday for a new episode of Standing Out. Visit our YouTube page, subscribe to that and or listen to it. Anywhere you find audio podcasts, you can find episodes of Standing Out and until next time, thanks to our friends over at SKLogistics for making this possible. Remember to visit them at successspi3plcom to learn more about joining the organization as an agent or as a free broker. That's just done with the back office. We'll talk to you guys real soon. Take care.