The ART of BUILDING and RETAINING A Talented Team with Sean Barnes

Discover the keys to effective team leadership and communication with expert coach Philip Sessions. In this episode, Philip dives into building a positive company culture, retaining top talent, and fostering leadership development through transparency and open communication. Learn how Philip's ACT framework—Action, Consistency, and Time—guides leaders in nurturing growth and creating a cohesive, goal-aligned team.  
  
We explore how to balance sensitive company information with transparency, the importance of cross-departmental communication, and the strategic choice of promoting from within versus external hiring. Philip shares real-life insights on cultivating patience, consistency, and a strong company culture to empower emerging leaders and drive long-term success. 
 
NOTABLE QUOTES 
"If you're looking to build up your leadership culture and backfill your leadership team if you're not talking about these things with them, how are they going to be able to take over from day one?" – Philip 
"Not everybody wants to be a leader, and that's OK!" – Sean 
"Your job as a leader is to take down any walls, any barriers that get in the way of the people doing the work." – Philip 
"Isn't it crazy how, as humans, we spend our entire lives communicating yet we can suck so bad at it?" – Sean 
"Get out there and start talking with your team." – Philip 
"Spending time learning the skills, adding those skills to your toolbox and then spending more time applying those skills with some sort of feedback loop, That's really what it comes down to. " – Sean 
"Sometimes the people that don't want it end up being the best leaders." – Sean 
"Good people want to work with good people." – Sean 
"If you do not have a defined culture, that should be your top priority." – Sean 
"If you find a good person who's got decent talent, they're 10 times better than somebody that's got great talent and they're a terrible person." – Philip 
"Whenever I think about diversity, I completely support equality of opportunity." – Sean 
"Race or gender should not play a factor in who is best suited for a position." – Sean 
"It's not about what you know, it's about the people that you know and who know you more importantly." – Philip 
"It's not what you know, it's who you know, but also it's who knows what you know." – Sean 
 
RESOURCES 
Sean 
Website: https://www.wsssolutions.com  
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_seanbarnes  
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanbarnes  
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sean.barnes.792  
 
Philip 
Digital Course: https://www.speakingsessions.com/digital-course 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamphilipsessions/?hl=en 
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@philipsessions 
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-sessions-b2986563/ 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therealphilipsessions

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 1:12 Tackling leadership challenges
• 9:46 How time and communication shape success
• 16:55 ACT: Action, Consistency, Time
• 21:45 Why delayed gratification pays off
• 29:01 Building strong team members
• 34:06 Aligning team subcultures
• 42:23 Profits, ESG, DEI impacts
• 54:42 Networking, Intentionality, and Consistency in Business
• 1:08:57 Networking’s impact on growth
• 1:12:40 Philip’s biggest lesson of 2023

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

What's going on, guys? I want to let you know that today's episode is going to be a unique episode. It's one that I did man this was probably about six months or more ago with a great friend, sean Barnes, on his podcast, and I'm basically just repurposing that for the podcast here. Full transparency. You may tell a little bit of my voice. I've been sick. I got behind on bit of my voice. I've been sick. I got behind on some of the episodes.

Speaker 1: 0:26

I had to cancel actually two episodes and so I was not able to get a guest episode for today, but you will still enjoy this episode if you have not listened to the podcast when it came out on Sean's podcast which, by the way, the Way of the Wolf podcast, an amazing podcast that you should check out. All things leadership, fitness. He talks about a bunch of different things, but this podcast, or this episode rather, is gonna be primarily around leadership and our thoughts on leadership the corporate world, small business, you name it men in general, lots of leadership. So I really hope that you enjoy it and, as always, make sure that you leave a comment, let us know your thoughts on the episode and share it with a friend if you found value.

Speaker 2: 1:12

How is it going, ladies and gentlemen? This is Sean Barnes. I want to welcome you back to the way of the wolf. We have Philip Sessions in the studio again today. It's been a couple of years since he's been here with me. We're going to be chopping it up, talking about leadership, communication, building, businesses, all those sorts of fun things. Phillip, welcome to the show.

Speaker 1: 1:30

Hey, sean, thanks for having me, man. I'm excited to be back in person once again. This is an exciting time.

Speaker 2: 1:36

I know We've done a few virtual ones over the years and I always enjoy these conversations, so tell me where would you like to start?

Speaker 1: 1:45

Let's just dive right into leadership, man. I think that's going to be a great overarching topic for us to talk about. We'll end up talking about communication, team building, things like that throughout all of this, and really business. At the end of the day, that's what it is. As leaders, we're developing a business, no matter if we're on the outside building it, on the inside building it. If we're building somebody else's, a leader is there developing the business.

Speaker 2: 2:09

Yeah, Okay, all right. So where my mind immediately goes to is I've been on this entrepreneurship journey for a couple of months now full time officially and what I want to talk through is some of the things that I have come to realize in a very short period of time when, having conversations with CIOs, chros, just CEOs, all sorts of C-suite executives Whenever I go in and talk through the areas that myself and our team focus on which is people, processes and technology they all seem to latch on to the people piece of it. I'm struggling with culture, I'm struggling with talent management and turnover. I can't get my people to stick around. That is not surprising for me to hear, but at the same token, it seems that that is a theme that almost all businesses are struggling with these days, and I know in your business you coach and mentor a lot of people more on the public speaking side, but you do focus on leadership with the people that you work with. Have you been seeing a similar trend? Oh for sure Always.

Speaker 1: 3:14

Culture, employee retention, things like that is really the struggle right now. And how do I effectively communicate with my team is what I end up focusing on a lot, because that's where public speaking, communication, those all kind of go hand in hand. But that's where they really struggle at, because I can talk one way to the rest of the C-suite team, the leadership team, but how do I get down to the people, especially when they're a couple of rungs below me and they're the ones doing the work? How do I let them know things? And a lot of times I find as well is that they feel like they can't share all the insides, like what's up and coming, because they want to almost guard that or protect the people from that the employees. But what I find is that in my mind, that really hinders the growth of the company because not everybody wants to know the ins and outs of the business, what's going on, what's in the future, what are some things that we're worried about. But at the same time, you have people that want to know that, that are hungry to know that.

Speaker 1: 4:13

And if you're looking to build up your leadership culture and really backfill your leadership team because there's companies out there and I've worked with some of them where they've got leaders that have been there for 30 years. They're getting ready to retire, and if you're not talking about these things with them, how are they going to be able to take over from day one? And so you really need to have those conversations, and through those conversations I feel you will see some of the people that you can. Just their ears are popping up, they're interested, they like that stuff. And their ears are popping up, they're interested, they like that stuff.

Speaker 1: 4:44

And I think about an engineer, for example, because I'm an engineer and so for me, talk about engineering. Yeah, I can do it all day and talk technical and talk programming, but when you start talking about leadership stuff, I get a little excited. I'm like, oh, this is cool, I like talking about the future of the company, but then you'll see other engineers that don't want to talk about it, that just leave me behind the computer, that's it. And so if you talk about these things, you can kind of see who those people are going to be in the company.

Speaker 2: 5:05

Well, and I think that tells you who you can spend your time working with, because, to your point, not everybody wants to be a leader. Yeah, and that's OK. I did struggle with that early, probably about a decade ago, trying to wrap my head around. So you're just OK, coming in nine to five and going home and playing video games, like that's all you want from life, and I couldn't wrap my head around it. But the reality is we need people that operate in that way. Not everybody's cut out to be a leader. You've experienced it firsthand.

Speaker 2: 5:36

Leadership is very challenging because, going from being an engineer where my background's in the IT side of things, you configure a router and it's set. You don't have to worry about. Did that router have some sort of issue with its kids? Did it have a spouse that cheated on it? Did it have all of these things that will impact a person's ability to do their job? And so whenever you step into that leadership role, you have to start to understand what drives and motivates Philip. Well, what drives and motivates Philip might be different today than it will be 10 years from now. So that means, if you're constantly working through putting together pieces of this puzzle, for your business to operate at its optimum capacity. Great, cool. The challenge is those puzzle pieces or the people are constantly evolving and moving, yeah, so you have to keep a pulse on everybody on your team, and that's work, it's not easy, it's very challenging, but that's how you build trust in relationships.

Speaker 2: 6:40

And then, whenever you have those relationships, you know what drives Philip, what drives Jason, what drives Sally, and then you create those opportunities and then you share. Where's the business going? This is oh, we've got a downturn ahead of us. It's going to get brutal, but you would much rather know that so that mentally you're prepared, as opposed to just having to deal with silence and thinking the worst like, oh my God, am I going to lose my job? Well, at least if the leader tells you, hey, we're going to cut half the company, yeah, okay, well, I know that's a possibility, start saving, yeah, right, so you can actually be mentally prepared. And just having clarity, while difficult, having those conversations can be extremely beneficial in building trust, and a lot of leaders just aren't comfortable with that.

Speaker 1: 7:24

Yeah, and the other thing that I found with leaders is they forget that they are not the ones doing the work anymore. They feel like they have to solve the problem, they have to be the one to lead the pack. So to say no. Your job as a leader is to take down any walls, any barriers that get in the way of the people actually doing the work. And those are the leaders that I've worked for in the past that I love the most. I love working for them. I would do everything I could because I knew they had my back. The leaders that, oh, hey, we need to work on this. Okay, I'll take it to management, I'll see what we can do, oh. And then they come back oh, management couldn't do that. It's the worst.

Speaker 1: 8:02

And, being with a manufacturing background, the people that solve the problems are usually the people that are like loading parts, say, in an automotive manufacturing industry. The people loading the parts know what's wrong with that. It's not the engineer, it's not the manager, it's always the person loading the part. But if you don't ever go out there and ask them that question, they're not going to tell you, they're not just going to volunteer it, because what happens? I tell you the information. Oh, no, no, no, no, it can't be that. And then you try and figure something else out and you spend thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to come up with some stupid process that makes their job even harder. And now they're just pissed off. So they want to tell you even less. So, the more you go to them and ask them their opinion, what they think, and then come back and say, hey, here's why we did what you did, or why we didn't, and let them know and that's the part that we fail.

Speaker 1: 8:50

Sometimes we go out there hey, what's your thought, sean, what do you think here? And you give an opinion and then we never come back to you and tell you anything. And it's like well, why am I going to keep telling you? Because every time you ask me something, I never tell you anything in return, I never give you any feedback. Even if your opinion or your idea was turned down, I should still tell you why, as a leader, I shouldn't just leave it as well. It was turned down. Well, no, hey, here's why. Because of these other things that you don't see, because you're here in the process. I'm here at the 30,000 foot view. I can see where we're trying to go. That doesn't align with our targets. Oh, okay, that makes more sense and now I'm bought in more as an employee, as somebody on the team, and that's oftentimes what leaders don't want to do. But your team can solve the problems for you and they're supposed to solve the problems. You just remove the barriers, you get the money, whatever that looks like in your situation.

Speaker 2: 9:46

Isn't it crazy how, as humans, we spend our entire lives communicating yet we can suck so bad at it? It is crazy that learning how to develop skills around communication is such a hard concept for people to grasp, and I think it comes down to making sure that it's the right type of communication, that there's trust that exists and that the manager is comfortable giving you the keys to the kingdom and saying hey, philip, I know you're my top director and I'm the VP and I want you to be able to do everything that I do today, so I'm going to just share everything with you. I'm going to be an open book Now. There may be times when, especially if you're at a publicly traded corporation, you just can't share everything, but I have found that if you are more transparent than not, it will rarely bite you in the ass.

Speaker 2: 10:43

For the most part, it's going to be a good thing because we're going to have trust. You're going to better understand what's going on and when I do make a decision, you're going to understand the why. And whenever I start delegating more and more to you and letting you make more of those decisions, I'm going to feel more comfortable with it, because I know. You know where my head is at and there's alignment. And if there's not alignment, we need to talk through it. Hey, philip, I want you to start doing this new process and then you come back.

Speaker 2: 11:11

Well, that's dumb, because of this Now probably not the best way to deliver that message, but we probably need to talk through it because, sean, you might not be seeing this, this and this oh, I wasn't aware of that. Because I'm up here and you're closer to the project or working with the equipment, you're going to have visibility into it, kind of like what you were just talking about?

Speaker 1: 11:34

Yeah, exactly, and the other way too. If you're trying to explain why this process won't work, how can you tie that into the targets of the company? Because, yeah, these upper C-suite executives and stuff like that, they're thinking about the targets. They're looking five, 10 years out. They're not thinking about today. And while five or 10 years out that might be great, right now it's terrible. So how can you go back and explain that and really explain hey, we need to do this because, and how it supports this five or 10 year goal is going to be a great way for you to build that, buy in core values, things like that.

Speaker 1: 12:06

And the more you can tie this into the company and what the company is looking to do and where they're trying to go, the easier it's going to be for you to sell, if you will, what it is that you're wanting to do. And kind of going with what you're talking about with processes and technology. Those are things that are easy. It's ones and zeros. You can kind of put with what you were talking about with processes and technology. Those are things that are easy. It's ones and zeros. You can kind of put those in place and, oh, this is great, but the people are constantly changing, even like for us, if we're hungry or if we're irritable, whatever may be going on.

Speaker 1: 12:36

We're going to have to approach each other a little differently when we talk. There's not this. Oh well, okay, sean's hungry. Hmm, okay, I need to approach him this way. Oh, sean's, he's been here for 12 hours. I need to approach him this way. He's a little tired. There's not a guideline for that, where, when we look at businesses that are established, they have a process for a certain thing, they have technology to help that, and the people? There is nothing of that, and so it's really a skill you have to learn with time. You of that, and so it's really a skill you have to learn with time. You can go to trainings and work with coaches, like us, but it still takes time and repetition to really truly master that skill, and that's the hard thing for a lot of leaders. They want to try and bypass that if they can, but you can't. It's about getting the reps in, so get out there and start talking with your team.

Speaker 2: 13:21

Yeah, you're dead on right Whenever it comes to getting the reps in. Now I do have to say when Sean's hungry, bring him a cookie, and that usually does the trick. Oatmeal raisin, to be clear.

Speaker 1: 13:32

That usually does the trick. That gotta be gluten-free and sugar-free, though, because he's gonna die. No, I just power through.

Speaker 2: 13:36

I just power through. It's gonna be rough, but I power through. It's worth it. But yeah, so I was. I'm thinking back through a few years.

Speaker 2: 13:50

Probably about four years or so ago I was in a leadership development kind of an executive cohort and one of the other vice presidents turned to me and asked how did you get your IT team to perform at the level that they do? It is beyond impressive. I've never encountered anything like it in my entire life. How did you get them there? Because I need to get my team there as fast as possible. And I paused and said time.

Speaker 2: 14:15

It just takes time and intentionality in terms of focused development around building the leader of that team, empowering him or her, coaching them, making sure they know what they need to do and not only know how to lead their team, but also know how to build leaders within their team. So it's almost like this ripple effect If I can build and develop the director or VP of IT, then he can build and develop his managers, grow them into directors eventually. Eventually, they can then grow the people on their team. That becomes this ripple effect, and that's how you affect change at scale. It doesn't happen overnight, though. It takes time and intentionality, and you have to know what you're doing.

Speaker 2: 14:59

Whenever it comes to the leadership development side of things and this is an important part I've started having many conversations with business executives and entrepreneurs and there's a little bit of uncertainty in their minds. Whenever it comes to leadership development, some of them have this mindset that's just some touchy-feely HR crap, I don't need to worry about it. I pay people. They need to do their job, right, okay, all right, fair enough. But the other side of it is this is a real challenge that these executives don't know how to navigate because likely they are undeveloped as leaders themselves and so they haven't seen the value firsthand. Also, the barrier to entry to becoming a coach is nothing. You just fire up an Instagram page and I'm a life coach, but you're 20 years old. That's okay, I'm going to be great, well, but you haven't lived.

Speaker 2: 15:55

So there is something to be said for somebody who has spent time and years in the seat getting the reps and developing themselves and also building and leading teams, and I've come across people that have MBAs. You know, they went through, they got their college degree, they went and got an MBA and then all of a sudden, they do leadership development Well, you never led a team. You never led a team period. At the end, I understand you know the materials, you've read the books, but that doesn't mean you understand how to apply that knowledge, and so I think spending time learning the skills, adding those skills to your toolbox and then spending more time applying those skills with some sort of feedback loop to know this works, this doesn't. Maybe I shouldn't do that. Maybe don't get Sean this. Maybe Phillip likes this. It just takes time and getting the reps in and most people don't understand that.

Speaker 1: 16:55

That's really what it comes down to.

Speaker 1: 16:57

Yeah, and I like to use the acronym ACT. So action, consistency and time you need all three of those in order to be able to build that team. So I want to ask a question to you real quick, and then we'll tie this back in on how to actually build the teams. How do you know when a leader is ready to be a leader? You're trying to develop somebody to start leading, in whatever function. How do you know when they're truly ready to start leading, or how do you see that? Okay, they're a good leader now.

Speaker 2: 17:28

I look at how they interact with the rest of the people on the team, even if they're not in a leadership role. Say, I had five direct reports in a function. I will look at who the others naturally look to and seek guidance from, and then how that person responds to them. If everybody's going to Jason asking for technical answers and Jason's like, figure it out, you have Google, right. Okay, that's probably not the right person. However, if somebody keeps going to Crystal and she takes the time to show well, this is how I do it, this is what is going on, this is how this works, and you know, go try it and then let me know how it goes that's a stark contrast in terms of how these peers are interacting with the rest of the people on their team.

Speaker 2: 18:20

Now there's another element that I've discovered over the years, because some of the strongest leaders that have worked for me didn't want to be in a leadership role, but I saw something in them, and I think part of what I saw was what I just described. They were naturally stepping into that leadership role without really seeing it or recognizing it, and this speaks to the importance of, as a senior leader, having a pulse on your team, getting feedback from everybody and trust and having those conversations on a regular basis, because when you do, you will see the leaders that will naturally emerge and sometimes they don't want it and one of the strongest leaders that I've worked with. It took me years to get him into a leadership role. He was kicking and screaming I've never done it, I don't want to do it, I'm not, I'm not a leader, I'm the tech guy. I don't want one of the strongest leaders now that that I've ever worked with and it's it's interesting to see that sometimes the people that don't want it end up being the best leaders.

Speaker 1: 19:23

Yeah, I would say there's some humbleness there as well, which is probably why that happens. But going back to your example of Crystal, so we saw there was an action.

Speaker 1: 19:31

She took action by helping people and consistency, because she was consistently helping other people. But this wasn't just over a two-year time period, I'm sure this or two-week time period. Rather, it was probably over a two-year time period or extended time period. And so that's where that ACT acronym comes in. And so the same thing for you as a leader.

Speaker 1: 19:50

If you want a better team culture, if you want a better company culture, it comes down to you acting consistently for a period of time. If you want to change the culture, it's not by going to a workshop and now you've had, you've drank the Kool-Aid, it's a new flavor of the month. You're excited. Now, all of a sudden, everybody else should be excited. No, and it sucks, because you want to do something and you almost want to say hey, look at my CEO title right here. You're supposed to listen because of that, but we all know that's the worst. Way to lead is by title. There are times for that, but when it comes to culture building, no. So you have to start acting in the way that you want others to act and be consistent with the way you act, and then finally, over time, people will start recognizing that that's who you are now.

Speaker 1: 20:40

I was actually talking with my mom about this yesterday, with my brother, because he was overweight years ago and it's probably I would probably say a solid five years at least that he stayed like in pretty good shape for him and everything and she's all like. She mentioned something about the fact that like, oh yeah, you know he's not overweight anymore. It kind of made seem like his identity was still he's this overweight kid and he's not because he has been in good shape and yeah, of course we all fluctuate in our shape and everything a little bit, but he's never went back to where he was and I was like that's not who he is anymore. He's somebody that's in shape now. It's the same thing for us. Over time we become this new type of leader because the way we act but it takes that action, consistency and time for us to be that new leader, that leader that we want people to see in order to change that company culture, to have the company be shaped a different way. But once you start being that part, you become that part.

Speaker 2: 21:39

Man, you beautifully tied all that together, man.

Speaker 1: 21:43

Oh, it's called public speaking coach right.

Speaker 2: 21:45

Yeah, exactly, all right, okay. So where my head goes is a lot of the times these leaders, they want instant gratification, and that's the way the world is designed.

Speaker 1: 21:57

This day Amazon, it's here in two days. Are you kidding me? Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 22:01

Right, anything you want at the. You know, just scroll through on your phone and it shows up a day later, right? Or sometimes the same day, quite frankly. So instant gratification has permeated through the entirety of the world, and whenever you tell somebody you've got to be patient, it's going to take time and they don't like hearing that, but that's ultimately what it comes down to, and I think that the period of time that people are focused on growing into a leadership role Because there's obviously a lot of people out there that aspire to be good leaders and they want to get there overnight and it just doesn't happen.

Speaker 2: 22:37

It takes years and years, and I can confidently say it's probably taken me five to 10 years of intentional focus to get to the point that I'm at now, and I still have a lot to learn. I can openly acknowledge that. But it has taken me a very long time and as I have gotten older 42 now I've come to realize that delayed gratification is worth it. It is perfectly okay to spend time putting the reps in. I mean hell. This podcast is a perfect example. It's been three years that the show's been going on, so 150 something episodes that we're at now I don't have near the reach that I would like to, but it's been gradually, steadily slowly, building over time. I don't care, because I'm making an impact on the people that are watching, the people that are listening, and when they send me a message, hey, your show today really resonated with me. Thank you, that's that, I mean. That's everything, quite frankly.

Speaker 2: 23:42

Yes, I would love to get millions of downloads, but that you know. That's not why I'm doing it. Um, it would be nice and it wouldn't mean that I could potentially have a greater impact on the world. But also, I'm in this for the long haul, right, I figure, if I can do this for a decade, that something will come of it, and if not, well, it's probably not meant for me. I don't think that's going to happen, but that's really where my head is at. I didn't start this podcast just to monetize it and make a ton of money, right, I mean, I'm never going to monetize the show, but a lot of people get into it and they think, well, I'm going to get into a leadership role, I want to be a CEO, and it's just.

Speaker 1: 24:19

It doesn't work that way, yeah, yeah, and you have to be patient. And so what I found for myself is I'm the world's worst at having patience, and I know we've talked about a lot of things or I don't have the patience, I have the drive. And being these big corporations, it's a lot of times it's a slow grind, and I talk about if you're trying to change the trajectory of where that company's going. It's like you having a two by four on the side of a cargo ship and you're trying to row. How effective is that really going to happen? I mean, maybe eventually I'm sure there's somebody could do the math that eventually you could turn that a little bit but I mean, how much is that really turning with the two by four? But that's what it is when you're one individual person, when you're that cog in the wheel, so to speak.

Speaker 1: 25:03

But in order to have patience, what I found for myself is really just finding targets along the way, and so if you have that young person on your team as a leader, that's something you need to help set up for them. Like, hey, what are some targets we can focus on, especially as a millennial and with Gen Z generations, we've got like five generations of people in the workforce right now, the oldest one, the baby boomers you just say do this, okay, no questions asked. And then you get down to the Gen Y, I can't think, but the one before millennials. When you get to them they've kind of been overlooked, unfortunately, but they're kind of still in between. They want to develop, they want to know what to do. But you can also just tell them what to do and they're just going to do it Millennial and Gen Z you can't just tell them. You've got to tell them the why behind it and then give them things to do. And unfortunately, we've kind of skipped the generation that's before millennials and we're focused on millennial and Gen Z. So if we're going to be focused on them, how do we help develop them?

Speaker 1: 26:01

Give them targets and reasons why they need to hit these targets and that's how I've found to be able to keep patients for myself but how you can help other people, especially young people, be more patient and say, hey, we need to work on these, we need to have you doing this and this, and okay, cool, and let them find a way to get there. They just need to know what are those steps. And a lot of times those aren't apparent.

Speaker 1: 26:24

And as a leader, there's a lot of leaders and I would call them more managers out there that one, they don't really understand the steps. But two, they don't share those steps either, because they're afraid that, well, I'm going to start working for you one day and is that really that bad? Because it it happens all the time where you'll get a young person that leaps up over you. So why not at least train them up? Worst case, in the way that you want them to be, is then they're going to like you a lot more, but still train them up, because they got to take over that company one day.

Speaker 2: 26:54

Yeah, yeah, that's such an interesting point and I can think through. One of my consultants today was a coach and mentor and I actually worked for him 15 years ago Great guy. And now that I've launched my company and we get different projects that come in the door and I can call on him and he's working for me. But we have a great relationship. He's phenomenal phenomenal at what he does and I like to think I'm pretty good at what I do, so we complement each other very well.

Speaker 2: 27:22

But ultimately there's trust. After he and I working together for almost 15 years on and off, there's a lot of trust there and I think really what it comes down to is good people want to work with good people and so as you navigate through life and your career, latch on to those people that you resonate with. They resonate at a similar level as you and there's trust and camaraderie and you can work together on things. And I think that's one of the biggest things that I have also learned is surround yourself with excellence. I mean, that's the easy answer and when you have people that are toxic to your team, get them out. You've got to get them out as fast as possible.

Speaker 2: 28:07

I don't care if they're your top salesman or your CFO, possible. I don't care if they're your top salesman or your CFO. You've got to get that cancer out of your organization or else they're going to be a drag on the rest of the team, and I've seen it more times than I could count. Where they'll hang on to the top salesperson, oh well, we can't get rid of him or her because they bring in X amount of revenue. Well, the rest of the team is suffering while you're hanging on to this person. That's capturing revenue and they're actually. We're getting all sorts of complaints against this person. Just it's insanity. And when they finally let that person go, the productivity for the rest of the team skyrockets, because they're now focused on executing the mission as opposed to bitching and complaining about that toxic person that nobody was doing anything about.

Speaker 1: 28:56

Yeah, yeah, and I wrote down this question because I wanted us to cover this. But the thing that comes up from a lot of leaders that I've talked to is how do we get good people? So I want to ask you that question how do we get good people? Because there's just not good people out there. We can't you that question how do we get good people? Because they're just not good people out there. We can't find them, we can't recruit them.

Speaker 2: 29:15

Okay.

Speaker 2: 29:15

So there's two ways in my you can build the talent or you can buy the talent, and now I imagine you're probably thinking, yeah, duh, okay, right, but that's really what it comes down to, and if you want good people, you can't always just buy that talent.

Speaker 2: 29:33

Unless you are a developed leader, can hold them accountable and set them up for success, you can buy all the talent you want, but, as a senior leader, if you are not intentional about building a culture of performance and holding people accountable, you're going to have high performers that are toxic, like we were just talking about, that are a drain on the rest of the team, and so I think what you have to do is balance the priorities and timelines of the organization itself with can we build this talent or do we have to go buy this talent?

Speaker 2: 30:08

If an organization is doubling or tripling in size in one year, quite frankly, you probably don't have enough time to build the talent that you need in-house, or you might not have enough bodies to build. If you're going to 2 or 3x in a year, which is usually kind of in the startup phases, you're going to have to hire people, which means you're going to hire some really talented people, but you have to be very intentional about how you assimilate them into your culture and if you do not have a defined culture, that should be your top priority.

Speaker 1: 30:42

Yeah, that's really what it comes down to. Yeah, and I think it almost sounds a little contradictory with the story you just mentioned before about the toxic person. So we have a good talent when we have good people, and so you can have great talent, but they're not always great people and so we have to find that. But we really, in my mind, if you find a good person who's got decent talent, they're 10 times better than somebody that's got great talent and they're they're a terrible person or they're even just like a halfway decent person because, like you said, you get rid of that toxic person, everybody in the team starts performing better. So same thing with you as a leader. If you are a great leader, you focus on the people and you're more of a people person than a technical leader and telling them here's the direction we're going. They're going to want to work with you so much more than somebody else. And the same thing with the people around them. If they've got good people, they enjoy them with. It doesn't mean they have to go out and get beer or go out to the top golf with or anything like that. It just means they enjoy being there with those people and working with those people and really kind of being in the trenches, they're going to want wanna be there more and you're gonna be able to have people perform higher because of that. And I think about and I don't know the exact statistic but like one horse can pull so many pounds, you put two horses together and they can pull like three times or four times their weight. And it's the same thing. When you get one great person, they can do so much. You get two great people, they do so much more. So it's not necessarily about buying the talent I mean, there are times for that but it's also about developing that which really goes back to our core values, about the vision of the company.

Speaker 1: 32:22

And you kind of hinted at this, I feel like as well, when you buy that talent, you have to keep them some way. It's through your culture, your company culture, because just like you bought that person to come in, another company can buy them as well. So the reason why people stay, and really the reason why people go, is because of a company culture. They always say people don't quit a job, they quit a leader. They stay at a job because of the leader as well. They stay at a job because of the company. Well, they stay at a job because of the company, because of these things that don't actually work for them in the company. Because money is the easy thing to do. You can always throw money at people, but it's not until you start adding culture in there. Health insurance, I mean, that's another basic one. But money, basic benefits, those are all things that the company. It's just an expectation now, because every company is doing that.

Speaker 1: 33:15

But what really differentiates you is the values that you bring at that company. And especially with small business, this is a lot easier than a large business like an OEM or something. But with a small business, when people can see themselves inside of your business, inside of the vision of your business, they want to stay there. When they feel like they are beyond your business, they've grown outside of your business, that's when they start looking elsewhere, because they're looking for the leader that can share a vision that is there inside of. Think of an umbrella If they're going to get wet because they're bigger than your umbrella is, they're going to go somewhere else where they've got a bigger umbrella. But if your umbrella is so massive that it can cover everybody's vision, everybody's dream within the company, people are going to stay there. So that's what it really comes down to dreaming bigger at the end of the day and having a good culture.

Speaker 2: 34:06

All right, I want to talk a little bit about subcultures. So I'm curious in your experience, you work for a very large corporation, but then you also coach people that work in, I would imagine, a lot of different size companies and you inevitably end up with a whole bunch of little subcultures from all these companies that have been acquired and we'll say quasi-integrated because integrations isn't always as successful and clear-cut as people would like. But you end up with all of these little subcultures and I found it fascinating to see how strong some of these subcultures were and how they would almost butt heads and compete against one another. Like, oh well, these guys, or oh well, they're not doing this right. Well, whenever you start getting those guys to actually communicate with one another and start spending time together, they can start to recognize there is more alignment there than you initially anticipated. So it's like you've got to use your umbrella analogy You've got this red umbrella and then green umbrella and they come together and they're just like butting heads. But whenever they start to cross, pollinate, they're like, ok, well, there's a lot of the same stuff that you guys do, that that we do. Well, that's interesting. Oh, actually I really like what you guys are doing over here.

Speaker 2: 35:29

And so if you find yourself in a leadership role and you have little subcultures, I would encourage you to figure out how to break those walls down. And my firsthand experience was as I grew as a technology leader and then started also leading HR and then safety and the transportation and PMO and ESG all these different functional teams. Whenever I started, there was a VP over all of these teams, like there was one VP over transportation, one over safety, one over IT, and there were walls between these support functions and we were able to work through and support the organization. But that was one of the first things that I always focused on was tearing those walls down and getting people to communicate and when they see that they're people just like them, they have challenges and then also helping the IT team understand the challenges that the HR team was going through.

Speaker 2: 36:25

It's like you kind of pull the blinders back and the IT people oh well, I didn't realize that that's what they were having to deal with. That kind of sucks. Maybe I can help them with this. And so if you find yourself with multiple subcultures and you want to lead through it which can feel like a daunting task, but it's not insurmountable. Start tearing down those walls. Start establishing connections, getting people aligned and seeing how they can help one another. Have you experienced something like this in your world?

Speaker 1: 36:56

Yeah, I've got two examples of that and so one. That will neither really happen, but how I would fix them. It would be this way. So when I worked for Schneider Electric, one of the things that all the engineers would complain about was the fact that the sales team, they'd go and sell this system and they'd just be like, oh yeah, it's going to work. And it was so much work on the engineer's side. Yes, we got it to work, but was it even a profitable project? I don't really know, because I wasn't on that side. I was the engineer and everything, and so you would see where the engineers complained about this sales guys. They were making way more money, and so these are definitely complaints that you're just going to see, no matter what. But how I would have mitigated some of that to make the engineer's life easier.

Speaker 1: 37:40

Now they're not going to get paid as much because it's a tough thing on a sales side and really and truthfully, if you said, hey, we'll let you come over here to make more money like the sales guy, most of those engineers will not go over there because they don't want to deal with customers and all of this. And then maybe they have a flat baseline like $2,000 a month, and they get all this commission afterwards Like, oh, I can't do that, I don't want the instability and so they wouldn't really want to go over. But how could you get them to work together and so really figure out, like, hey, let's bring you into like pre-engineering. So we're going to have you come as a sales engineer and come with the sales team and talk through that, like, ok, here's what you're really looking for, based on what we kind of already have and what we can do and some of the engineering we can customize a little bit. Here's what we could do. And so now you probably could sell a system for more. But now you've got the engineers being able to talk through and figure out, oh okay, this is what the sales team is dealing with. But then the other side, the sales guys, get to learn more about engineering and understanding what hoops they're having to jump through just to make something happen based on the system they sold. That really wasn't even a thing that existed. You just kind of threw stuff together and said, hey, here it works. And I know you've seen this in programming where, oh, we're going to sell this system, it's going to do all this stuff, and you're like are you kidding me? These systems? They don't even talk to each other. Now we've got to find a third party, a piece of equipment to make them communicate with each other. And so really just getting the teams to come together and really work on a project, and so the same thing from from an HR perspective, with training, development, and then what actually needs to happen on the manufacturing floor.

Speaker 1: 39:13

Being in HR, there's a lot of red tape and there's still a lot of red tape on the manufacturing floor. But you got this little easy button and it's not always easy, but it's a little bit of an easier button where you say manufacturing need, we need it now. And it goes right through. No big deal, hr, it's not a manufacturing need, it's not a production need. I should say it's probably more production need. And so they can't hit that easy button saying, hey, production need, we have to have this now. We've got to escalate it through all the chains of command and get all the approvals.

Speaker 1: 39:43

And so they're slowly churning this training development, while you've got the business side, the production side, that is like, hey, we needed this two years ago, where is this at? And so really trying to get them to come together to talk about this what things are actually needed, what aren't, and be able to find the priorities within that. Because you've got HR that's doing all this development, which they should be. That's their realm. And then you've got production that has their needs over here. Well, a lot of times HR is trying to develop this, but then you've got production over here that just ends up going and outsourcing stuff Because, like, well, we can't wait, we just got to do this. So you need to come together.

Speaker 1: 40:18

And so I don't really have a great example of that, but just being able to talk back and forth, and really it comes down to communication, how you kind of fix some of this. Hey, we're working on this, here's where we're developing, and I see this all the time within companies where you've got the HR doing something. They're developing something. Leadership knows about it because they're kind of the go-between, and then the employees that are waiting for this, they want that training, they're hungry. Where is it? Where is it at? And well, the leaders don't really know what's going on too much and HR doesn't really want to explain all of what's going on because it's really just they're part of the system and they're in the way through the process and everything.

Speaker 1: 40:54

So really, if I could sum it up and the way to fix it would be that systems and processes are a great thing for a small business and they still make sense for a large business. But as the business gets large, they have a process for each department, but there's no process for when departments have to work together. So you really need to create a process. And again, it's difficult and it's where the people come in and people are smarter than a process or a system. They can understand how to navigate through that. But still it would help the company culture as well and fix some of these issues If you had a process for when Department A and Department B work together.

Speaker 1: 41:33

Here's the process, because what happens and why it takes so long in these large businesses is that Team A has a process and they've got to go through and get their checks and approvals, and Team B has that same thing. So then Team B is waiting on Team A and then Team A gets their approval, goes back to Team B, they're waiting on Team B and it's just this whole waiting game. Where's that process in the middle that says, hey, we're doing this together, we need to have just everybody come together, and I get that senior management is busy, but this would help speed things along and really develop the team a lot more. So those are kind of like two examples of things that I see. I don't necessarily have a great idea of how to fix that, but those are some of the things that I've seen in companies.

Speaker 2: 42:23

Well, I think that it kind of comes down to what are the drivers that are actually driving that behavior, and a lot of times, especially in publicly traded organizations, it's shareholder value. Well, we've got to drive the stock in the right direction. So that means we've got to sell more product and, even if you don't have the right people involved or the right parts available, we've got to rush this, to get this out the door so that we hit our quarter targets and the stock moves in the right direction. And I think you and I have even talked about this.

Speaker 2: 42:49

One of the things that I appreciate about Gary Vee is the fact that he could IPO his company and make ridiculous amounts of money, but he doesn't want to be beholden to shareholders because he has a long-term strategic vision for where he wants to take his company a few quarters of performance to achieve some long-term goal and objective. He doesn't want to have shareholders breathing down his neck trying to force him to make a short-term decision for a long-term problem. And I think that is the challenge that many organizations struggle with. Is they get to a point where they're so massive and there's all these other shareholders whether you're public or private, there's always going to be stakeholders involved that are trying to drive growth in the business and sometimes the stuff. Well, we just keep hammering on this. It takes time right, yeah.

Speaker 2: 43:41

And whenever a business is hyper-focused on grow, grow, grow, grow, you start sacrificing some of these things that you and I are talking about that are actually far more important to the long-term sustainability of the corporation. And when we look at how ESG is at the forefront of all everybody's minds these days, now people will say environmental, social and governance, or environmental sustainability and governance, or environmental sustainability and governance. So there's a few things that S could kind of fall into, but sustainability is a big factor for a lot of companies and they just throw that out the window for profits.

Speaker 1: 44:21

Yeah, don't get me started on the ESG route. I'm definitely an advocate against it. I don't think it's a great thing overall. I mean there's definitely parts to it that are good. I think overall it's a government-forced thing, especially in the European domain. I mean by law it's there, or it's not by law here yet at least and so there's definitely pieces that are great, but as an overall long-term thing to me it's not a great thing overall long-term thing.

Speaker 2: 44:52

To me it's not a great thing. Yeah, you know it's challenging the whole DEI topic. It's such a sensitive topic and I had Evan Nierman on recently and he has a PR firm called Red Banyan and we were talking about just cancel culture and anything in this DEI space. You have to be very careful about the things that you say, and a lot of the HR summits and forums that I've been attending and speaking at recently they'll talk about DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion and there was actually one that I was sitting at, oh God, a couple of months ago and they asked me you know my opinions on diversity and I asked the moderator.

Speaker 2: 45:34

I was like well, what does diversity mean to you? And he quit back well, I believe it's an old wooden ship. I said no, no, that's not quite right. But in any event, whenever I think about diversity, I completely support equality of opportunity. Everybody should have the same opportunity to go into a pool where an organization can select the best suited talent for a given position. The problem that I see with a lot of ESG frameworks that exist out there today is they are forcing equality of outcome and they say you have to have 50% females in leadership positions.

Speaker 1: 46:16

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 46:17

Okay, well, what if females don't want to be in leadership positions? All right, well, you have to have 50% female engineers on the team. Well, you and I both know that females are more interested in people and males are more interested in things, which lends itself to men going into STEM fields engineering being one, women going into fields focused on people like healthcare, teaching and things like that. There's pros and cons to each and, yes, you can find some phenomenal female engineers. But you can't say, okay, well, the majority of women, period, they're not going to be interested in engineering tools. There will be some that you can pull into the team. So, from a mathematical perspective, if you start running the numbers and you force a team to have 50% women, when the talent pool, the bell curve of talent within a smaller population, you're just not going to have the same level of output. Now, that is a very tricky conversation to have. Whenever you talk about statistics and math and differences between male and female, that's very challenging. And math and differences between male and female, that's very challenging. Where it also comes into play is whenever you start throwing race into the mix, of saying, well, we've got John over here. He's a white Christian male, has 20 years of experience and proven he can execute in this role. We've got Sally over here, who's an African-American black lady right out of college, and we need to have a black lady in this position, so we're just going to put her in this role. Well, which one's going to successfully execute in that role? I mean, you could probably get Sally there right, but John is going to be able to hit the ground running. Now where I think it is important is to focus on diversity of thought, because Sally and John are both going to have different life experiences. Thought, because Sally and John are both going to have different life experiences. Can you team them up so that they can both work on solving the solution? Because she is definitely going to view things through a different lens than the lens that John is going to view them through.

Speaker 2: 48:23

It's just a very challenging topic to navigate In these DEI frameworks. They focus on what percentage of male, female do you have in leadership roles? What percentage of minorities do you have in these roles? They're not focusing on are you creating opportunities for everybody? They're focusing on the outcomes only. And there was a panel that I wasn't sitting on, but I was observing, and there was a chief diversity officer and a CHRO and a couple of others, and they were talking through and I posed that question because there was like an online thing that you could post it and post up there. And my question was something to the effect of you know what? Let me, let me see if I can find it, because I don't want to misquote what I said here.

Speaker 1: 49:09

But I definitely agree with you what you're talking about there, and too often we're focusing on the equity, you know, the equal outcome versus the equal opportunity. And I think as long as we focus on the equal opportunity, that is OK. But when we try to make everybody have the same outcome, that's not OK. That's not really America at the end of the day, that is not the American culture that we had. That started in 1776. Yeah, yeah. So we're flipping this culture and that's where I don't like this, because we're trying to get rid of what the American culture is, the American dream. And that's why everybody flocks to the United States of America, because they could see if I work hard, if I do the right things, I can make a better life for myself.

Speaker 1: 50:00

But now what you're saying is it really doesn't matter what you started with and who you are. It really doesn't matter because we have to have a certain amount of people and so and I know this is kind of tongue in cheek here because we are that majority still, so it's really kind of against us. But who's next? Yeah, and with this women movement thing, white women are next, and that's oftentimes what's not talked about, because it's still. There's still a lot of women, so women in general can do that, but right now white men are on the chopping block, and then it'll be white women, and then guess what? It's going to be black people. We see this with. I can go down.

Speaker 2: 50:37

Yeah, that's a rabbit hole With the border crossing and everything.

Speaker 1: 50:40

But that's what's happening, and it's going to be one step at a time until we're happy with nothing, and that's the scary thing.

Speaker 2: 50:49

So the question I posed to this panel was how do you ensure your DEI efforts stay focused on equality of opportunity instead of equality of outcome, when many ESG frameworks score only on outcomes? And there was a very long, awkward, silent pause. Nobody on stage had an answer for that, and that's unfortunate, and I think that is really. The problem is, we've got these frameworks that are being pushed out there and forced upon us by the Black Rocks and all these big yeah, so that that is an issue. But one thing that I will say is in one of the discussions at an event that I was at recently, this topic came up and it was actually discussed, which I was shocked, but it was discussed that these getting access to capital has been increasingly difficult if you don't have a solid ESG program in place.

Speaker 2: 51:50

Well, I think they're starting to see the incredible amount of strain that it puts on a corporation to do all of this ESG related stuff and how it's actually hindering its ability to grow and make profits, and so it's almost like they're starting to recognize maybe we're pushing a little bit too hard and need to back off some, which is it's nice to see that people are actually starting to acknowledge that I think a balance can be struck and since DEI ESG is kind of in its infancy, people are just kind of figuring it out along the way, and that's what's important for everybody to remember is that this is going to take time for us to figure out.

Speaker 2: 52:35

Yes, equality of opportunity 100%, that's what we need to have. Just because you and I both go in for the same position, if I have 20 years of experience in a leadership role and you've got three or five or however many like I, would expect the organization to probably lean into me. Now there's going to be things that you bring to the table that I don't Right, and whatever is best suited for the organization, they make that decision. Yeah, but race or gender should not play a factor in who is best suited for a position.

Speaker 1: 53:07

Yeah, I agree, I agree, and maybe I'll give a little caveat just to not be, you know, just to play devil's advocate here. Now, if it comes down to like, what are you trying to do? And this is really where it comes back to the diversity yes, because of what color we are, what sex we are, that does mean we have a diverse thinking. But it really should come down to do you have the qualifications? Are y'all equally qualified, at least on paper, on experience and stuff like that? Then let's look at your diversity of background. So I think there still is a little bit of a place for that. But with ESG and DEI it's more like hey, are you different? And then, oh, let's look at your experience, which any small business owner, anybody that owns their own business, realizes.

Speaker 1: 53:56

You're not going to do that. We don't do that on professional sports. You don't say you know what? We don't have that many of you. Let's go ahead and bring you on in. We see there still is a male and female sport, for now at least, and we see that we don't just bring a female over just because they're the best over in the female world, because they're not the best in the male sport world, and so we get the best of the best males in the sports, but then we're pushing this on the business side Corporations.

Speaker 2: 54:25

Yeah, you don't see NBA teams saying, well, we don't have enough white folks, so we need to get more white guys in here, right, it's just it's not a thing, right? Yeah, so in any event. So I'm going to change the topic so we don't get canceled. Okay, let's see here. So how are things going in the public speaking realm for you? I know you've been doing this kind of on the side for a pretty good while and you've got various cohorts and masterminds and things that you're doing. Talk me through that.

Speaker 1: 54:57

I'm building this up on the side. It's been a struggle to take to that next step, which I really feel is where I can catapult and help a ton more people which would be really coming into teams. I think I could probably do that on a here and there basis, but I couldn't do that on a consistent basis where I come into corporations or help out teams on a regular cadence or anything like that. So I've been really focused on individuals as well as the group cohorts, like you said, and the digital course that I've came out with, really just focused in on presentation skills. Helping you prepare for your next presentation is what I've really honed in on, just because that's something I could immediately do and help you out with and really help on that one-on-one basis or in a group basis. But then that communication, meeting cadences, things like that is what the next step will be for me, as well as the culture building piece within that, because that's a huge part of what leaders have to deal with, because, yeah, they're going and presenting all the time, so there is that, but then usually that's what will come up in our conversations is hey, okay, I'm presenting, but how do I present this in a way that helps build up the team. How do I present it? In a way that it still goes with the alignment of the company, where we're trying to go, our vision and everything like that.

Speaker 1: 56:14

So overall it's coming along good. It's just slowly working through what works best, what's going to help people the most. And that's where that digital product came out, because I found that people are like whoa, I can't afford that, at least not right now, or it's oh, give me a little bit, I don't have enough time. Well, here's this digital course. It's at a reasonable price compared to the other stuff and it can be on your own pace and everything. So just trying to find ways to be able to meet people where they're at essentially is what I've been doing with the business and everything.

Speaker 2: 56:42

I really like what you've done there in terms of really lowering the barrier to entry and giving people access to the information they need so that they can grow.

Speaker 2: 56:52

When you do that, it builds an incredible amount of goodwill and trust with those customers as they grow in their careers, as they start making more and more money.

Speaker 2: 57:04

They're going to remember that and they're going to lean in.

Speaker 2: 57:06

Not everybody, but many of them are going to remember that and think man Philip did this for me back whenever I couldn't afford to really do it and he came out with this course and made the barrier to entry next to nothing for me. What could I get if I started paying him for one-on-one coaching? Right, and I think that's one of the things I know you've been doing with your YouTube channel and your podcast and things like that, and that's kind of another driver for me with having the Way of the Wolf is I want all this information to be out there for free. And if somebody wants to learn more about effective communication, yeah, we've got episodes where we talk about that and you can sift through three years of episodes, or you can pay me and I'll come in and do something very targeted and we can get you there as fast as possible, right, but building that library of content, it's just creating goodwill and showing people that you're in it for the long haul, and that's also what's important.

Speaker 1: 58:04

Yeah, exactly, it goes back to the acronym we talked about. You and I are both doing that. We're acting, we're being consistent and giving it time to develop the business. And so how about for you? I mean, I know you just took that step out. Well, I say just, but it's been a couple of months now that you took that step out on your own. I know you were doing pretty good at being able to develop it, and now you're out in it full time. So are you like in it doing the trainings, or are you kind of more as the CEO? You're kind of overlooking everything more.

Speaker 2: 58:32

Yeah. So what's funny about this? Just over the past few days, I've been reflecting oh man, yeah, yeah. So I knew that the business development and lead generation and sales side of thing was going to be something that I was going to struggle with. Never in my life have I had to do any of that stuff or build skills around it. I'm very comfortable in all these other areas that I've led in, but I've never had to sell anything. And so right now, the lion's share of my time is spent on business development and, yes, I've been doing it full time.

Speaker 2: 59:08

And, philip, I'll say I was compensated very, very well for my time whenever I worked in oil and gas. Now I am not compensated at all for my time, and I say that kind of tongue in cheek, but I'm not paying myself anything out of my company for the first year. Everything that I earn in terms of billable time is going back into the company so that we can pay for marketing, we can pay for branding, we can pay for talent when we bring it in the door. I've saved a lot of money and I'm betting on myself in this process. On myself in this process Very scary, but it's also where my heart is, and it's deep down. I know this is my purpose in life, so I'm going all in, I'm betting on myself, I'm not going to take a salary for a year and we'll see what happens, but the lion's share of my time right now is spent on business development and then leadership development. So I have consultants there's, we'll say, four or five at any given time that are working on various projects in various capacities, and so I'll support them in the things that they are doing.

Speaker 2: 1:00:19

But my main focus is business development and then leadership development, and what I'm seeing is there's almost two verticals of the coaching and leadership side and then the consulting project management side of things, and what I'm starting to realize is these end up funneling work to one another. If we get in the door and start focusing on an ERP implementation, as we're working with the people in operations and the people in IT, we start to identify the strengths and weaknesses of everybody on those teams and I can come in and start coaching them on working through those weaknesses so that they can become more proficient and more successful down the road. The inverse if I sit down and start doing executive coaching with a C-suite executive or a vice president of IT and start recognizing they have some execution challenges with people on their team. I can augment with some of our consultants, so these two verticals actually support each other very well.

Speaker 2: 1:01:21

In all of my market research it doesn't seem that there's a lot of companies that can do both very well. You have a leadership development firm or you have a consulting firm and a lot of companies or customers will go get this leadership firm and this consulting firm and sometimes they work together, sometimes they don't, but there's very few that can actually do both and successfully blend those together. And therein lies the value proposition that seems to resonate with the customers that we have so far, and whenever I have conversations with potential customers they seem to latch onto that and see a tremendous amount of value in that approach. So I'm not getting paid anything right now but I'm optimistic and thinking that it's going to work out really well for us.

Speaker 1: 1:02:07

Yeah, I think it's the better spot for you to be in, and I would even challenge you more to try and get somebody in that leadership, executive coach role for you as well, because the less you are the face or you're the one that's actually doing the work, the better, because I've seen guys like that where they want to start a business and they become the coach. They are the person that has to be there, they're the trainer and they can never go work and develop that business and so you being able to kind of be on the outside and, yeah, you are doing some executive coaching still, but doing that business development is going to be the better spot for you to be able to continue to grow that company. Because if you become the coach, everybody's going to want you and while it's great in the short term, in the long term it's not, and so the less you can do, the better. So you're really in a great spot right now doing that. It's cool that you're not taking a salary for the moment.

Speaker 2: 1:02:56

Yeah, I appreciate it. Well, we'll see. That's what I said for the moment.

Speaker 1: 1:03:00

Yeah, for the moment.

Speaker 2: 1:03:02

But it's yeah, I mean, you touch on something that's also very important. I'm aware of how to operate a business at scale and, obviously, the importance of being in a leadership role. Right now, the name of the game is capturing customers, capturing revenue and building our team. As I'm networking with people, I'm kind of identifying and almost bucketizing people that I'm networking with. Could this be a potential client? Could this be a potential partner that we could pass stuff over to the fence? Or maybe they could pass stuff over to us? Could this be a potential employee? So every time I go have lunch with somebody, or coffee or breakfast or something like that, I'm viewing it through that lens to figure out where they can fit, and maybe they can fit in multiple areas. I've also seen that. But whenever I start having these conversations, I'm always thinking in the back of my mind as we grow, is there an opportunity for someone to come in and start doing more of this? You one day are going to work for me.

Speaker 2: 1:04:07

At least that's where my head is at, because I need somebody with your skill set or will need somebody with your skill set around public speaking, being able to come in and coach and mentor and help people get comfortable with getting on stage. So I'm always keeping a pulse on people in my network and who would be a good fit. There was a lady I had a conversation with a couple of months ago. She works for a big publicly traded corporation but she's leading their learning and development program and their leadership development program Very heavily, heavily emphasized disc training and stuff like that. At some point I would love to be able to bring her in to be able to do that stuff and facilitate. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:04:44

So as an entrepreneur, I've come to realize it is important. Yes, you got to get in and do the work, but also don't create a situation where you are just creating a job for yourself to not work for the man. If you want to be a solopreneur cool, that's great, but also it's really cool to be able to build a team and build a bunch of people. And I also see the flip side of this, where some entrepreneurs they teach you how to build a business and then exit the business, which there is some value. There's a lot of value in being able to build up an organization that can operate autonomously without you and then you just kind of jump in whenever it's needed because it allows you the opportunity to go do something else.

Speaker 2: 1:05:28

I'm never going to exit WSS because it's so near and dear to my heart. There may be other companies that I start in the future that I build up and exit, but right now, because of the potential impact it can have on teams, companies and people, it's going to stick with me forever and it's just something that's near and dear to my heart and that makes it very easy for me to hire the best talent, because a lot of the best talent has been through mergers and acquisitions and it's destroyed their lives and I want to make sure everybody on my team always knows that that will never happen. I will never sell this company. We will never go public. I don't even know if we'll ever get that big, but I have no aspirations because that's not about money for me. It's about positively impacting the lives of everybody we work with.

Speaker 1: 1:06:14

Yeah, yeah, and you can definitely tell that through the things. I know we talk offline a little bit more in detail, for sure, but still you can definitely tell from your content the podcast that you're doing everything, that you really care about the people that work for you and the people that you work with and everything. And I'll give this challenge to the listeners right now. If maybe you're in that spot where either you are, you've just started developing your business or maybe you're thinking about it and you're still in that nine to five, you can learn the principles to developing a business by being in a company, especially as the company is larger. Networking within a company is the same thing when you're outside of the company, because it's not about what you know, it's about the people that you know and who know you more importantly, because when they need a leadership coach or they need a speaking coach, they go to Sean for leadership, they go to me for public speaking, but it's because I've networked with enough people, it's because you've networked with enough people. So you being in that nine to five, if people know that you have this aspiration, this here's where you're going, here's how you can help them out, or even that you just happen to know everybody. That's something that's going to be so much better for you and help you be able to grow in your company. So when you decide, hey, it's time for me to take my business elsewhere, to do this on my own, you can take those same practices and apply that for your business. But the same thing with building up that team, building up teams, building up camaraderie with people around you, building up a culture, being known for something that transfers from a nine to five out into the real world. So practice while it's safe, if you will, within that company with that stable salary.

Speaker 1: 1:07:56

And I wouldn't challenge you to really just get outside that comfort zone, just do something. And you're like, oh, this would be stupid, I don't know if this really makes sense. Go, network up, go. You know you need Go network up. You need to figure out how it's going to work for you.

Speaker 1: 1:08:09

But if you can go talk with the VP and maybe you're just a manager or even just an engineer or somebody that's just an employee non-leadership level try and get a coffee with that VP, even if it's through LinkedIn, and this is a great way to connect. I've actually had some conversations with VPs and department managers who would be two and three levels above me right now, because I connected with them on LinkedIn and said hey, good seeing you, and I'm sure they've seen my name Maybe they have, maybe they haven't and I would love to get coffee with you sometime. Yeah, let's set something up, talk to my secretary or whatever, and I've been able to get coffee in because of that, but because I networked. It's the same thing even internally. It coffee in because of that, but because I networked, and so same thing even internally. It's a little bit more difficult when you're internal, because you're going through the secretary but still find ways to get in front of these people and it's going to translate right there for the outside world, for you.

Speaker 2: 1:08:57

You touched on something that is really important and I think everybody has heard. It's not what you know, it's who you know. I think it's important to take it a step further to it's not what you know, it's who you know, but also it's who knows what you know, because you and I could know each other. We could work out at the gym together and just train like animals and I could never know that you did public speaking.

Speaker 2: 1:09:25

Yeah, Right, so it's important for Philip to make people aware of the things that Philip is good at. Yeah, it's great to network with people and have conversations, but also layer in a little bit of intentionality so that people know the depth of Philip and all the different things that you care about, all the different things that you're passionate about. So always take it one step further than just networking with people. Do it with intentionality and let them know hey, here's my strengths, here's what I'm good at, here's what I enjoy doing type of thing, and not in like a salesy type way, but just being comfortable opening up and letting people know what you know.

Speaker 1: 1:10:04

Yeah, yeah, and I'll take this with an example. For us is that when we think about dating, most of the time when you meet a person, most people, they are introduced to somebody, so a third party introduces them together and that's who they end up marrying, more so than you happen to meet somebody on Tinder or at the gym or wherever you met them, and y'all just happen to meet. Now, can that work out? Yes, but because of that what I call third party validation, it makes somebody automatically trust you so much more. And so, taking this from relationships to business, when you can get a third party person or somebody that's a mutual connection to say, hey, you need to talk to Sean because he is a great leadership coach, they now trust that Sean's a great leadership coach so much more than if they randomly happen to see you on social media, listen to your post. You reach out to him a cold DM, whatever, you're still the same guy, you're still the same person, but because of that third party, that mutual connection, you're automatically that much better, and sometimes it's not even about that.

Speaker 1: 1:11:09

I actually got one of my one-on-one clients because when I reach out through a cold DM, this guy was following me. I reached out to him and we had a mutual connection and I talked a little about that mutual connection. Hey, how do you know this person? And they were in the same industry as this person and because of that, all of a sudden, like the trust level went up and I ended up closing the guy over DMs, which was really awesome.

Speaker 1: 1:11:35

First time that I've ever done that oh, at least at the high ticket level. I've done some other stuff lower ticket level, but that's a one-on-one coaching but anyways. But I use that mutual connection to help us. But most of the people I've worked with has not been because I've known them, or if I have known them and I didn't have a third party, it took time, but the way to cut that time down and how I've gotten people to work with me so much quicker was through a third party connection. So get people to know what you do, like Sean's saying, and your business is going to transform so much more. Whatever you want to do is going to be so much better and grow so much faster through other people knowing what you do, versus you just knowing everybody.

Speaker 2: 1:12:14

Philip, I have to say, every time we get together, you impress me more and more. Just seeing your consistency over time, man, it's so damn impressive. Okay, we do have to wrap up. We're going to be jumping on Cammie Lehman's pod hour, which I'll post a link to that in the show notes for any of you that want to listen to Cammie Lehman show. Um, I've been on her show before. Tons of energy, she's just fantastic. She's just absolutely amazing. So, before we wrap up, what is one of the biggest lessons that you have learned in 2023?

Speaker 1: 1:12:47

Really just being going back to the ACT acronym, but just being consistent and setting actionable steps that I can take little milestones, instead of just looking at the big picture of here's where I want to go and getting frustrated. I've really and it's funny because I'm an engineer I usually can reverse engineer things. That's what engineers do. But when it came to my business, my goals, it was really hard to figure out how to reverse engineer things. That's what engineers do. But when it came to my business, my goals, it was really hard to figure out how to reverse engineer that. But finally this year I really figured out ways.

Speaker 1: 1:13:13

Ok, here's my end target, what are some steps that I can take along the way to get there and what are some milestones I can get. And when I started doing that, I started being comfortable with the process and started enjoying the process and I started being patient as well, which is a huge struggle for me. So, really reverse engineering goals and just continuing to be consistent and realizing that it's going to take that time for people to recognize me and want to do business with me, and just letting things fall where they may along the way is what I've done. So I just control what I can control. If I want to sum that up in a better way Control what you can control, focus on what you can control and leave it at that.

Speaker 2: 1:13:54

I love it All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that is all we have for the show today. A little bit of a different format. We just came in and started chopping it up and having a good conversation, but I actually really enjoyed it. Instead of actually interviewing him, we just had a great conversation.

Speaker 1: 1:14:11

We did that like three years ago. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 1:14:14

I'll link the previous shows in the show notes, so there's a bunch of interactions between Philip and I over the years. But yeah, like subscribe, share the show with somebody. If you could leave a review, it would mean the absolute world to me. Don't monetize the show. I'm not selling anything, never going to. So the best way we can affect change at scale is by leaving those reviews, leaving a comment and hopefully sharing that with people to possibly change their lives and help them grow as leaders. That is all we have. Ladies and gentlemen, y'all have a good one.