Notes on Resilience
Conversations about trauma, resilience, and compassion.
How do we genuinely support individuals who have experienced trauma and build inclusive and safe environments? Trauma significantly affects the mental and physical health of those who experience it, and personal resiliency is only part of the solution. The rest lies in addressing organizational, systemic, and social determinants of health and wellness, and making the effort to genuinely understand the impact of trauma.
Here, we ask and answer the tough questions about how wellness is framed in an organizational context, what supports are available and why, what the barriers are to supporting trauma survivors, and what best practices contribute to mental wellness. These conversations provide a framework to identify areas for change and actionable steps to reshape organizations to be truly trauma sensitive.
Notes on Resilience
131: A Great Business Needs Genuine Human Connection, with Rob Gallaher
Ever noticed how the most successful leaders somehow manage to build thriving businesses while maintaining genuine human connections?
Rob Gallaher discovered this secret the hard way. After years of working excessive hours, micromanaging his team, and watching his personal life deteriorate, he knew something had to change.
Rob joins us to share how compassion transformed his approach to leadership. As a CEO leading multiple companies and author of Profit Sharing: The Power of Shared Success, he explains why business relationships don't have to remain purely transactional. "When you are compassionate, when there's a relationship with your team members... business is easier and smoother," Rob explains, challenging the notion that professional success requires personal sacrifice.
The conversation reveals how Rob revolutionized his companies through profit-sharing as a way to create genuine alignment between business owners and employees. What's particularly refreshing is Rob's emphasis on simple, practical approaches to building workplace relationships. Rather than elaborate team-building events, he suggests brief walks with colleagues, shared lunches, or handwritten thank-you notes. These small investments yield massive returns through increased trust, better delegation, and stronger overall performance.
Whether you're a business owner feeling isolated at the top or a team member seeking more meaning at work, this episode offers a roadmap to more fulfilling professional relationships. As Rob powerfully states, "Whatever your measurement of success is, it really comes down to the number of lives that you affect every day and the quality of that influence that you have."
Rob Gallaher is CEO of Gallaher Co. and is passionate about profit sharing. He is the author of Profit Sharing: The Power of Shared Success and is launching an online course to teach others about profit sharing. You can learn more about Rob on his website, LinkedIn, or Facebook.
Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.
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Producer / Editor: Neel Panji
Invite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity.
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#trauma #resilience #compassion #MentalHealth #CompassionateLeadership #leadership #survivor
Whatever your measurement of success is, it really comes down to the number of lives that you affect every day and the quality of that influence that you have.
Manya Chylinski:Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, manya Chylinski. My guest today is Rob Gallaher. He's a CEO and leads multiple companies across multiple industries, and he's the author of Profit Sharing: the Power of Shared Success. We talked about compassion and leadership, fostering collaboration, boosting motivation and how all of that works together to build success for a company. I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation, rob. Thank you for being here. I'm so excited to talk with you today.
Rob Gallaher:Thank you, amanya, I'm excited to get into this and thank you.
Manya Chylinski:Well, our first question before we dig into the topic what's one thing you have done in any area of your life that you never thought you would do?
Rob Gallaher:I never thought I'd write a book. It was one thing that my father was blue collar and we grew up working on cars and tractors and stuff, and so, being a book writer, I read a lot, but just never thought that that would come down my way or have a need for that.
Manya Chylinski:So that's that's an easy one. That's really cool, and congratulations on writing a book. I know it is a lot of work, even when you have a lot of help.
Rob Gallaher:It is a lot of work. So yeah it. It was much bigger apple to chew up when I first started than I ever thought it would be.
Manya Chylinski:Well, thank you for doing that, and we are going to talk about your book at some point. I know you and I are talking about compassion in leadership and organizations, and you come at it from a slightly different angle than a lot of my guests, so I want to just get started with what. How do you think about compassion and leadership?
Rob Gallaher:Let's talk about what I think compassion is. Okay, my definition that you think about compassion and leadership. Let's talk about what I think compassion is.
Manya Chylinski:Okay.
Rob Gallaher:My definition that I think about compassion is is just having a personal, kind relationship with others. And in business, business is transactional by nature. Right, we go into the donut shop, we're there to buy donuts, we want to leave with those donuts, we want to pay for them and that's it. And so that's how it starts. And this is why the compassion can be a challenge in business because we have to, we have to make money, we have to make payroll, like there's true costs, there's true realities of operating a business. And but I learned early on that when you are compassionate, when there's a relationship with your team members, with your customers or with your vendors, business is easier and it's smoother or deal with some kind of transactional lifestyle and work. That if you're not personal, if you're not using compassion in your relationships, you're just making your whole life harder. Facing out on this key component of, if it's of a win-win in all of our lives, searching for win-wins in everything that we do, benefits both parties. And why are we not doing that intentionally every day?
Manya Chylinski:Right, I'm with you on that question. Why aren't we doing that intentionally every day? What do you think that organizational leaders misunderstand most about this? And or? I guess the underlying question is why are some people not getting it right?
Rob Gallaher:I think we get caught up in the day-to-day, depending on your organization. The focus is the P&L right. Depending on your organization, the focus is the P&L right, the profit and loss statement. It is the focus on hitting those metrics, the numbers. Where are your numbers at? And it's easy to get sucked into that, because that's what drives results right, that's how we earn our paycheck and that's what we get graded on.
Rob Gallaher:I do in my company and I didn't always do this. This is something I've learned is now we don't call them reviews, we call them reflections and that's a whole nother topic. But we ask each team member you know how their relationship is with this person or how their relationship is with this department, and we do that because we just want to create awareness of their relationship with this person. Do you know what his wife's name is right? Have you guys played soccer together? Or have you guys, when you guys eat lunch, do you eat it together? What do you talk about? And I don't think I've ever told anyone. You need to be compassionate towards your team members, but I ask questions that get them to think about their relationship with others and then I'll say something like well, do you think that if you guys ate lunch together and talked about your kids, how do you think the rest of that day is going to go?
Rob Gallaher:When there's maybe a conflict or just a difference of opinion on how to complete this job or this task at hand, I get a lot of blank stares. And it's not because they don't, they just never thought about it. They're not bad people. And so now they think about it and they're like man, I'm gonna try that. And so I think we missed the mark, because it's not what we get graded on. I don't know how you would get graded on compassion, I think, making it part of the conversation all the time. Human beings, we want compassion, we want relationships, we want to feel connected to others and we just sometimes they just need to push an awareness to that point and it happens naturally.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, and in the work environment still these days, I think there is that divide. We don't necessarily think about that. This is something we need or want in the work environment. So the kinds of questions you're asking are getting at that from the side door.
Rob Gallaher:Right, correct, and this is not something that I was always good at and I thought about this when I was reading, you know, the questions we talked about was this is something that I was really good at in the early days. It felt natural to me. You know, everyone's different, but for me, I'm a social person, right. It was easy for me to talk to my team members about their families and their hobbies and what they like doing, joking around, telling jokes and kind of building that persona because I was the owner of. I'm a real person, right. That's kind of how it has to start is like you're a human being, like I and I say this I put my pants on, just like you do one leg at a time every day, right, and and so I was.
Rob Gallaher:I've been good at this, or I was naturally apt to do it in the early days and I will admit, reading your questions kind of brought this awareness to me is that there was a point in my business where I got away from it and then I saw the mistake and I saw the cost of not having that personal relationship with my team members as much as I did in the beginning, and in the last couple of years I've shifted back to focusing on that compassion and personal relationship with personal trust, and because that's what it really comes down to is having that trust with each other in more recent years and have seen the cost of doing it, not having it.
Rob Gallaher:So you're the numbers guy, but you've seen both sides and I'm betting that the numbers are better this way 100%, and that is one of the challenges, not even talking about profit sharing, but business owners, I think, need to realize that their success, their level of success, for example, some people think that's how many team members you have, or your top line revenue, or the size of the boat that you have at the lake. Whatever your measurement of success is, it really comes down to the number of lives that you affect every day and the quality of that influence that you have. And so, with your team, you know, if you have 10 team members, I bet you and I don't know if there's metrics on this, but I'm going to guess that if I had only 10 team members, I bet you and I don't know if there's metrics on this, but I'm going to guess that if I had only 10 team members, that I knew and we had a great relationship, you know professionally, but also there was a personal element to it, right? I'm constantly inspired by some of the fathers that work for me and I'll ask them fathering questions. And or I have teenagers now, and this is like blowing my mind dealing with teenagers, and so I'm like talking to other people that have teenagers, like what'd you do about this and what'd you do about that and just creating that personal relationship and has.
Rob Gallaher:What I was saying was someone that has 10 team members with that kind of relationship with them is probably going to be more successful than the person that has 20 employees. That are numbers to them, because when business gets hard or there's challenges, those people step up to the plate that you have that relationship with. They want you to win. They have your back because you have their back and personally seeing this in my own life is like if I can be in a meeting and be like, talk about their kids and their names, and this is why we got to win. This is why this deal needs to happen. Or this is why we need to cut these costs is because this person's kids are depending on us my kids and their kids. I'm a family guy and I use that a lot and I know not everyone has kids but a lot of us do and it works really well. It's just tying in that win-win for the family and for the business to succeed together works really well.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, and you talk a lot about shared success and that's how we got even connected, because you look at profit sharing and sharing that success with your team, with your team, and I think that must create an interesting dynamic, but it feels like compassion has to be at the core of that?
Rob Gallaher:Yeah, absolutely, because if you didn't care about your team, why would you share anything with them? For one, and it started with being a frustrated business owner that was working way too many hours in micromanaging and feeling alone. I felt like I was the only one that really cared about the business, and so I started talking to other business owners about what they were doing with this problem, and they didn't have much help. You know they were. For example, this is what I saw for business owners they're in their 50s. Yes, they may have money and toys and property, but a lot of them were on their third marriage. A lot of them did not have a great relationship with their kids. A lot of them were alcoholics. A lot of them were numbing the pain and escaping the reality of some of the sacrifices that they have made in their life, and I thought to myself I do not want to be that Like this. I'm working really hard. My wife was extremely, and still is extremely supportive, but we were making sacrifices, and my first couple of kids did not get a lot of daddy time at two years old, right, so I wanted to change that and I was determined to figure out how to do that.
Rob Gallaher:And profit sharing is what I found has changed that for me and other business owners that I've helped create this system in their business. And it takes compassion, it takes that relationship. It's not just about an extra check every month, there is more. Why are you working for that check? You have a family, you want to pay for their college, you want to go on this trip whatever the reasons are financial or you just want to save it. And that has, I tell business owners, this is a win-win win because your customers are happier because they can't tell if they own the business or not. Everybody wants to deal with the owner. Your team member, your employees, turn into team owners that think, act and care like a business owner does. And for me, the biggest benefit is I don't feel alone. I don't feel like I'm just pushing and fighting and cracking the whip all the time, and I have my agenda and they have their agenda. We are united and it's a powerful thing in business being united.
Manya Chylinski:Well, you get at something really important that you started that with, which is you were feeling alone and I don't know the weight of leadership and I love that. One of the ways you wanted to work against that and not feel alone was leaning into those relationships with your employees rather than trying to find something some other way to stop that, but recognizing that it was the work environment and the structure, the way you were working together. That was the challenge. I'm not sure everybody sees that.
Rob Gallaher:Yeah, probably not, Because this story is very common. Right, we see the guys, the business owners that don't have relationship with their kids. I mean, I know these guys. I know these people because we're in construction, we deal with a lot of subcontractors, a lot of small business owners, and they have money and they're successful. But I look at their life and when you get to know them more, the story's all too common and I think there are simple fixes that, oh, maybe not simple is the right word. There are solutions out there that take some work and time and awareness and education and training and practice, but there are ways out of that. There are ways. There's a much brighter future and a much easier path to go. That is more fulfilling, I think for sure.
Manya Chylinski:What do you think is the barrier? People aren't recognizing that there might be a way out of this.
Rob Gallaher:I think one thing is you don't know what you don't know. You know, if we think about our parents coming out of World War II our grandparents the country was in a prosperous state and money was pumped through and it was about, you know, there was a lot of patriotism and there was a lot of just go, go, go, go, and I think people were focused on that, on the success, right, and the rebuilding their lives. And then there's large companies were not a big thing like they are today, back then, right. So now this leadership problem is a new problem, I think, in our society, because back then the mechanic shop it was a guy and his wife was doing the books and marketing, and maybe a son or one kid in the neighborhood that was helping fix the cars.
Rob Gallaher:There was not a need to be a leader of a team of 10 people, right, different backgrounds, different ages, different religions, different thought processes, different levels of education coming together as a team, and now somebody has to lead this party, right. And so I think it's something that we just don't know, and reading a leadership book, right, is kind of an interesting idea if you're not aware of it, or searching for that right, and so it takes effort to become a leader. Leadership is one of my favorite topics. It is hard. Leader leading is extremely hard and if you've done it for a decent amount of time with a large amount of people and different groups of people, it can kick your butt sometimes.
Manya Chylinski:Yes.
Rob Gallaher:I love it Most days. Some days I'm like this really sucks, like being a leader here, making these decisions really, really sucks and it's really weighs on me. But so people don't know what they don't know, and then I think people are selfish. I think those are probably two big barriers where they're just like I'm going to do my thing, I'm not going to speak up, I'm not going to rock the boat. I see this all the time and I fight it and I encourage people to speak up because their profit sharing is affected by this too.
Rob Gallaher:And if you see things going on, you need to help the team, and people don't want anyone else to get fired or they don't want anyone else to get disciplined, and so they hesitate. They don't want to be the rat right. They don't want to be the snitch when when reality they're doing is they're hurting the team, which hurts themselves, and we never want to let one member of the team be the weak link. So we either coach them up or they got to move along, and so people are, people are afraid of that. So there's fear. You don't know what you don't know. People are, people are afraid of that. So there's fear. You don't know what you don't know, and there's selfishness.
Manya Chylinski:I think are all barriers to communication, to leadership and having this compassion in the workplace yeah, you mentioned how, as a leader, you're dealing with a team of people with different backgrounds, different beliefs beliefs political, religious, about family, about different levels of things. They want to read or not read, or TV. They watch the entertainment, and I've said this before on the podcast but the more I learn about leadership and people and behavior, the less I'm surprised when we have misunderstandings, the more I'm surprised that we ever actually effectively communicate with each other, because we are all coming from such different places and how do we ever say things that happen to make sense to each other?
Rob Gallaher:Yeah, that's a dark thought, but you are absolutely correct. And so it's almost like when the communication happens to be really celebrated because how difficult it is, yeah, and then what about all the ways you can communicate with technology? I mean, you didn't even mention that. You know, we have word of mouth. We've had forever but text messages, emails, you know, the CRM software is people communicate through. There's so many apps on my phone that I don't even WhatsApp. I don't use that. And there's another way to communicate and all these things calendar invites and so it's no wonder why it's a struggle. I struggle with it internally. We work really, really hard on always communicating as much as possible. Yeah, communicating as much as possible, yeah, it's a daily battle.
Manya Chylinski:It is. It's one that you have to want to, or be willing to deal with Because, as you're saying, it's work. It's work to be a team member, it's work to be a leader 100%. You think a lot about shared success and the idea of profit sharing, and I'd love for you to share with our listeners how it is that we're talking about compassion from your position as someone who thinks about profit sharing. How are those things actually related?
Rob Gallaher:Well, profit sharing is a huge buzzword and people hear that. Let's say if you're an employee, you hear the word profit sharing and you think I'm gonna get more money, right, that's the first thought that happens. So then the employee wants to talk about what is. What is profit sharing? And I stumbled across it, not as an employee, but as a business owner. And back when I was talking earlier about you know, I was a new business owner. I was three years in. I had 30 employees, I was micromanaging, I was working too much, my marriage was stagnant, my kids didn't spend a lot of time with me, I was putting on weight, I was not healthy and I thought there had to be a better way. And I started reading books and talking to other people. Long story short, I stumbled across this idea of profit sharing and, like most people, it fascinated me and it was a buzzword that caught my attention. So I was like, okay, let's try it right, let's research profit sharing, find out what it is and how to do it. I couldn't find anything on how to do it. I found a lot of people talking about it. Everybody loves talking about it. So I brought two of my leaders in. They were phenomenal leaders, phenomenal people. They worked hard. I felt like they cared about the business and they're just making their salary Like they got paid, whether the company did well that month or not. A typical job. And I was like, hey, I got this idea for profit sharing, I want to figure it out. And so we sat down and grew up what we thought was a pretty good profit sharing program, a starting point. It was one of the biggest disasters in my business career and it took three years of trial and error, going back and forth to figure out how to do it, to get the ROI as the business owner that I wanted from sharing profits and then it actually motivating and creating unity correctly for the team, because I had some pretty detailed goals and objectives that I wanted to accomplish with it. Three years goes by and we stumble across something that worked really well and the compassion part of it is you know, you're sharing the rewards of a.
Rob Gallaher:One analogy I use is we're all in this kitchen and we're baking a cookie, right. You're grinding flour. You're mixing up the chocolate chips. You're cracking the eggs right. We all have our part and we're all going to mix it together and we're all going to put it in the oven, we're all going to pull it out and then that cookie is going to be a certain size and the business needs a certain size to maintain its cashflow and growth and budgets and all this and that. But whatever's left we're going to share and that's the image I want people to think about, because we all worked on that cookie together. Right, yes, I'm the business owner, it's my name on the paperwork and I may have started it and I may have had to put money in and yes, but I could not.
Rob Gallaher:That cookie would not be here without the person grinding the flour, would not be here without the person cracking the eggs, person mixing the bowl. So it just makes sense to share, I think, in that cookie. What I found was that cookie gets bigger and bigger and bigger, because now everybody wants a big cookie and when you have a team of smart people trying to make the biggest cookie, you can. You can get a lot of cookie out of that oven at one time and you're sharing it and they're winning and I'm winning. The customers are winning. I don't know exactly how compassion all fits into that, but everyone's happy and everyone's winning. Together Feels pretty good and it feels like we're caring about each other, we look out after each other and we need each other, we want each other and when someone slips, we pull them up and we coach and we we want everybody to win and it just creates a lot of genuine human success on all levels.
Manya Chylinski:Wow, I love that cookie analogy Also. Now I want a cookie.
Rob Gallaher:I love cookies. I am the cookie monster. Yes, I had cookies yesterday.
Manya Chylinski:I can see, having worked in a few different kinds of environments. I never had that kind of motivation from working for a paycheck, no matter how much I loved the company. It was a very different kind of motivation. So I think where compassion fits in is what's key to that kind of relationship. Is the relationship, part of it, that you are supporting each other and helping each other versus well, I don't know how to extend the analogy to beyond that, but the relationship is really important and that's where that compassion and that humanness comes in.
Manya Chylinski:One of the things that I get frustrated about when I'm reading business news or talking with companies or learning about how companies work is how often, or in certain cases, people leaders expect their people to somehow not be human, and if that's the case, then really do create an AI or a robot that does the thing that you want. But if you're actually dealing with humans, the kind of environment that you're talking about seems to me the way we should be going, whether you're actually doing profit sharing or not, but where you're treating people, valued team members and I can't do this without your input and how about.
Rob Gallaher:You mean it, and these people, even before I had profit sharing figured out. They got out of bed that day, they got dressed, they had their personal family, kids, whatever they had going on handled so that they could get in that car, drive to your office or your job site, show up with the right tools and the mindset to put in eight hours to help you win. Why don't we say thank you? It's not just about the eight hours that they're there. They had to do things before and after that night. They have to do it again, their routine, to prepare themselves in a good way to show up for you tomorrow.
Rob Gallaher:And we don't say thank you enough and shake their hand and say, hey, you did a good job today. If it wasn't for you, we wouldn't have won today. Things like that and I'm not perfect, this is something I have to be aware of, to do and you got to think about it and writing thank you notes have been some of the easiest, most impactful 10 minute activities I've ever done in my life, personal and professionally. And having that, like we say, we keep saying the same word relationship with them and actually caring about them, their kids, their problems, their parents or whatever's going on that person's life.
Manya Chylinski:I really appreciate you saying that it can be done simply. It might take some time, but we're talking a few minutes a day to say thank you or to write the thank you note, and when you make it part of your day, it's something you can easily do. I think there's a lot of fear that this requires a lot of extra something policies, procedures, time and I know how busy business owners and leaders are and you don't want to have to say here's some more things to add on to your already full plate.
Rob Gallaher:Right. I have a rebuttal to that. If a business owner has good relationships with their team members because they built those, that takes time the amount of time that they're going to get back in the future. They're going to have less fires to put out, they're going to have more people capable of delegating that they trust to do tasks, and so the benefits of having this relationship, using compassion, saying thank you, all these little things the rewards are undeniably. You cannot, you cannot ignore them.
Rob Gallaher:And if you're struggling in this area because I've seen these guys, what do I do? Man, I've been doing this eight years and I feel like I'm in the same spot. Or my favorite one is I worked all day and I don't feel like I did anything. You need to start, right, you need to start. Who's your favorite team member? Now? You got to go. You're eating lunch anyway. Or, if you're packing your lunch, like I do, find out when they're eating lunch and go, sit in the break room with them or go out to your picnic table outside.
Rob Gallaher:Another thing I like to do is I like to walk, not for physical health, but like mental clarity, and I need fresh air sometimes, and I bring a pair of shoes that I can change into and I like to walk sometimes and I bring a pair of shoes that I can change into and I like to walk fast and then I'll just walk to the office. Hey, do you want to go for a walk with me? Randomly, and it throws people off what Walk, and they're high heels maybe, and they're you know, so they sometimes they need to know, or they'll have shoes too, and it's 15 minute walk around the block but we don't talk about work. And then endorphins start rolling and people start opening up and then at the end of the walk, in 15 minutes, you feel like you're almost best friends sometimes.
Rob Gallaher:Those are the little things. You don't need to spend tons of money on a conference or this team outing event, spend some dinners and there's a lot of that's fake and they know it. That's what everybody does, right, these team building events, those things work so much better when you can go on a walk with somebody or share a meal or ask them how their family's doing at the cubicle in 90 seconds yeah, doing those things. Then the money you spend on the team building events and the trips and the dinners so then those start to really matter.
Manya Chylinski:Right, absolutely, rob. We are at the end of our time, I'm sad to say.
Rob Gallaher:Before we end, please tell our listeners a little bit more about your work and your book and how they can get in touch with you. Yeah, thank you. So I developed this profit sharing program. Took me years. I started it about 11 years ago. We've been actively doing it for about eight of the last years. My business has grown five to six times since 2018, since it hit so it works.
Rob Gallaher:I'm in multiple different industries construction, plumbing. I have a car wash. The amount of time and work that I have spent in it to figure it out and make it work is the time that I would like to save other business owners in doing it, the benefits it's brought to my life. I'd like to share those and have other business owners lead successful lives, healthy lives, where they have time to have relationship with their kids and their families, and business ownership doesn't have to be this lifelong curse of long hours in the office, unhealthy, just this lifestyle that we think of. They may have toys, but are they really happy? There is a light at the end of that tunnel.
Rob Gallaher:So I wrote a book about it because I was spending a lot of time coaching other business owners one-on-one and I thought if I wrote it down, it would save me some time and you buy it on Amazon for like 10 bucks, and then we're also creating a course that's going to be out at the end of the month that would dive really, really deep into it. And basically is everything that I know about profit sharing, because the benefits are undeniable. The rewards to this at any business, in any industry, on almost any size, is immense. So my team members' lives have gotten better. My life has gotten better. My customers are happier. I don't see it negative to exploring this option for your business and if you work for somebody, maybe give them the book. It's $9.99. And business owners love more things to read because they don't have anything else to do. So good luck with that, and we'll post the link to the website and my socials on the show notes. And thank you for listening and I really, really appreciate it.
Manya Chylinski:Rob, thank you so much for sharing and for this conversation. It was amazing and I could absolutely talk to you for about another two more hours. And thank you to our listeners for checking us out for this episode of Notes on Resilience and we will catch you next time.
Rob Gallaher:Thank you, manya, have a great day.
