Scaling With People
Tired of spinning your startup wheels but never gaining traction? Buckle up, founders and CEOs, because this podcast is your rocket fuel to profitability! Every week, we ignite explosive conversations with bold-faced founders, brainy experts, and even a few out-of-this-world vendors. Get ready to crack the code on growth, master employee engagement, and blast through your scaling goals. We’re talking real-world strategies, actionable tips, and perspectives that’ll make your business do a cosmic dance. So, strap in and prepare for lift-off!
Scaling With People
Balancing Growth and Trust: Chad Brown on Integrating Personal and Professional Life, Building Mature Trust, and Overcoming Founder Challenges
Unlock the secrets to a fulfilling professional and personal life with Chad Brown on this episode of Scaling with People. We promise you’ll rethink the elusive work-life balance myth as Chad introduces his dynamic concept of integration. Picture balancing a broomstick—constant, small adjustments are key! We discuss how blending business demands with personal life can alleviate stress and lead to more harmonious living.
Curious about building genuine trust within your team? Chad delves into the importance of mature trust, differentiating it from blind or immature trust. Through effective onboarding, regular check-ins, and tough conversations, we explore how proactive measures can foster a thriving, empowered workforce. Learn how leaders can enhance employee engagement and leverage their instincts to address issues early for long-term success.
Finally, we tackle the common pitfalls founders face, from the myth of time scarcity to the challenges of "solo syndrome." Chad offers actionable advice on focus, delegation, and viewing employees as more than transactional assets. We wrap up with an inspiring discussion on overcoming personal limitations, urging founders to stay true to their future goals and avoid stagnation. Don’t miss these game-changing insights that could transform your leadership approach!
Welcome everyone to today's Scaling with People podcast. I'm Guinevere Curry, your founder and CEO of Guide to HR. So, founders, are you being the leader that your business needs to scale and grow? This is a great question we're going to dive into. I'm so excited to have Chad Brown on the call. Let's get to it, brad. Welcome and tell us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me, guinevere. I'm excited. I love the title of the podcast. I just have to say that's what caught my eye. That's why I reached out to you and said, hey, can we have a conversation? Because scaling with people, that's my business and I love the people side of business. Not many people say that, but I do. That's the most fascinating part of business to me is how do people interact with business? So that's part of my introduction is just I love people. I always have.
Speaker 2:I've grown and sold a couple of businesses of my own, learned really hard lessons through a lot of failure.
Speaker 2:Everything that I teach and work with my clients now honestly comes from my own failure completely, lessons through a lot of failure. Everything that I teach and work with my clients now honestly comes from my own failure completely.
Speaker 2:And so I'm a dad of three kids that I love and we adventure a lot together and celebrating 20 years of marriage with my wife this year we're going to go to Italy and eat some food and drink some wine and go all over the countryside, but they are the center of my universe. And then everything else is added onto that the work that I do and I get to work with founders and leadership teams in points of transition is what I call them Points of inflection Points, when they're saying hmm, we'd really like to grow and scale this thing. I don't know how to do that and I don't know, like your introduction said, I don't know what it's going to require of me or who do I need to be in order to grow this thing, but I'm determined and committed to do it. And then we get to work together to put those kind of ways of thinking into place that allow a business to scale and grow.
Speaker 1:I love that and, a fun fact for the audience, we're both Utah residents, so we get to see each other in person. Well, I can't wait to dive into this. So there are kind of three things I'd love to dive into. The first one is this famous myth of oh, I want to have a good work-life balance, and you and I have talked a little bit about this and I've had a couple of CEOs that I've worked with that we really talk about it from an integration perspective. But what's your take on this? And what have you seen has been kind of maybe a stumbling block for founders building their business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean we were talking before we hit record, but it's worth saying here, the majority of the clients that I work with that are founders that are working to both grow a business successfully and scale it and be present for a family or a community, something that's outside of their business, that also really matters to them. I always describe it to them and they usually nod really big when I describe it this way. So I know it's touching some nerve, which is it feels like the devil and the angel on the shoulder at times of like, not necessarily that one's good or bad, but just hey, the business needs your attention, needs everything from you, and you've got this family, you've got these people that depend on you, or this community that really needs you, and they're both beckoning towards you. And and then there's this experience of where do I spend my time, my focus and my energy, and that can be a really, it can be a frustrating at the least, but it can be a despairing position at the most. And so I work with founders. You mentioned integration that's a word that I use a lot is how do I? I'm not, I'm not me, I'm not one person at work and then one person outside of work. That's one that's one of the starting principles that we start with, because that's been a myth that's been out there for a long time is like I'm a professional over here and then I'm a person over there, and that creates a dissidence, that creates an inconsistency where we feel like we need to put on a mask and then, ultimately, the mask. It creates a lot of other problems down the road. So that's one of the things.
Speaker 2:Second is, if we're going to talk about balance, most people think about balance as like a scale or a justice scale. Right, you think about this justice scale where if you put some on one side, the other side goes up and then you've got to put some on that side to equal them out, to find some sort of equality or balance. And the thing about that is it's completely unrealistic. You are never going to balance any area of your life, let alone your personal and your business. And if you did here's the crazy thing If you did, by chance, you achieved it in a moment. That's as long as it would last.
Speaker 1:Yes, that moment.
Speaker 2:The moment because pretty soon, without fail, something in the business is going to go awry and need your attention, or something in the family or the community is going to go awry and it needs your attention. So what are? You're back out of balance and now you can play this shame game or this like beat yourself up about being out of balance. I think about a different type of balance, which is I don't know if you ever did this Guinevere. When I was a kid. I would avoid chores however I possibly could.
Speaker 1:That's called procrastination there, chad, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:I'm still a pro at it, by the way, but when my chore was to sweep the kitchen floor, I found myself with the broomstick sitting on my hand with the broom head up in the air and trying to balance that broom head as long as I possibly can to keep it up in the air, and I would time myself and I would keep record, and I was really really good at it. And this is the type of balance that I invite founders into or anybody who is finding this struggle between business and personal or anything else. Is that? This is what it is is that when you balance a broom on your hand like that, where do you have to put your gaze? You have to put it at the bristles, at the top, because if you look at your hand, you're not. It's going to fall there's, you can't keep it up, right.
Speaker 2:So the top of the broom, those bristles, is the aim. That's getting clear about our goals, our milestones, our rocks. What are we working towards and keeping our focus on those things? And if we keep our focus on that thing our hand in the scenario of the broom if we look at the broom head, our hand almost automatically moves in the direction it needs to move to keep the balance almost automatically moves in the direction it needs to move to keep the balance. Same thing with life when you're clear on your aim in your business and with your family or your community, whatever it is outside of your business, your movement will almost automatically happen. That would work towards or contribute to that aim.
Speaker 2:But the challenge is that most founders have not gotten clear on what those aims are and specific about what they are and how they would look when they get them. That they're just moving their hand all over. They're looking at their hand, they're looking at the things that are needed in that moment today the emergency, the to-do list, all of that sort of stuff and it's completely out of balance and the broom falls. The aim and the vision doesn't work because we've lost sight of it. So it's a different type of balance, but it's a balance that invites us to stay focused on what we want most and let that make our decisions to founders and CEOs and it's about are you working on the right thing at the right time to move the needle?
Speaker 1:And, like one, the needle is the top of the room, right. But then knowing that and then constantly asking yourself is this what I, how I should be spending my time? I find founders so much like just doing so much tactical stuff, whether it's HR or marketing or sales. Now, of course, a founder is probably going to always be in the sales aspect. You know trying to build up their clients or customers. You know with the relationships of investors and so forth. But how you spend that time is as critical as understanding, like, okay, where you're going, because if you know where you're going, then you know you're on the right road of how your time is being spent. So I love that concept. Yeah there's, you know you're on the right road of how your time is being spent, so I love that concept.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's. You know. You started the conversation by asking the question who do I need to be, or what leader do I need to be? One of those beings is focus, focused. I must be focused in order to grow this thing there's always going to be another thing to get done?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's never ending. You, every anybody listening to this that has grown a business or owns a business knows the list is endless. So you could work till you were dead. So what that requires of you now is how willing am I, how willing am I to focus on where we're going and say no? Or, you know, see the forest through the trees. You know that. All of those sayings that we say over and over again, how are we going to stay focused on what's going to be most impactful in this moment with these people?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is so true. I love that. All right. So let's flip the script a little bit here. Let's talk about you know you've got the balance. Well, we don't say balance, we've got the integration right and you're working on your business, and part of your business is about trust. It's trust. You have trust in the people you're bringing on leaders, employees, people who are going to execute on your business, and then you're building the trust with your investors, your customers, that they're going to get with what you're promising them. So we were talking a little bit about there's two types of trust, and I'd love to dive in a little bit more and share with our audience what that is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this is this is interesting, I would actually say rather than trust being a part of your business, I would say your business is built on trust, or the lack of trust, and it's a foundational piece that determines the stability of it. And if the trust doesn't exist, sure you can grow, but it's going to be a pretty unstable growth. So why not sure up that foundation as much as you possibly can? Now that takes us to a deeper level, which is it's not just enough to talk about trust or to go for or to create trust. There are a couple of types of trust. One of them is devastating to a team and the other one is exactly what a team needs to scale. So the first one is I call them immature trust and mature trust. So immature trust is actually the most common, I would say.
Speaker 2:My experience I wouldn't say this is a fact or whatever, but my experience is, when most people talk about trust, they're talking about immature trust, which is I trust you, guinevere, so I don't have to pay attention to you, meaning I trust you so much. Look, look how honorable I am in my trust and look how much I think of you, so I don't even have to pay attention to what you're up to, because I trust you're going to do what you're going to do says we all have snakes in us, meaning we all are capable of compromising our relationships or compromising our trust at any moment. And we do eat on accident, on purpose, on just at a function of time and focus and all of that sort of stuff. We have breakdowns. We're humans and so I love that visual. First of like, all of us have snakes in us. We have the ability to betray each other, and so immature trust is me believing that that would never happen with you. That's when we get surprised. Have you ever sat down with a founder? I'm sure you have. Have you ever sat down with a founder? And they're just dumbfounded. They just can't believe that this person had betrayed their company in some way or their team. And it's like okay. And they always touted off like well, I really trusted them. Well, okay, you did, but in an immature way. And I don't mean that derogatory, I don't mean to put anybody down by that word of immature, it just means beginning, it just means early right. That's how we learn to trust.
Speaker 2:Mature trust is trusting somebody knowing that they can betray you at any moment, whether it's conscious or unconscious, and paying attention to what they're producing. That would give you the signs of whether or not they're going to be successful or not, and then be willing to interrupt any conversations or any action that doesn't seem to be going towards the aim. That's mature trust. So it's a lot of people in the business world talk about this in the context of trust and verify. Trust and verify, which is a great principle. However, I think it's a simultaneous. I think it happens together. I think it is the same thing. If I truly trust you, I'm interested in your success, my success and our success together. So I'm going to keep checking in. I'm going to pay close attention to make sure we're moving in the direction we said we're committed to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I call the immature trust on my side is blind trust. I trust you and then I'm going to just go blind because I don't have the capacity or the desire or whatever the reason might be, to do what you're saying which is more of the mature trust and really be partnering with individuals in your space, in your world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you mentioned capacity. That's an interesting one, because think about anybody listening to this. Think about the times when you haven't paid attention to somebody and they betrayed you in your business or otherwise. How much time, energy and focus did that cost you that betrayal? So it's short-term gain, this blind trust that you're talking about, or I call it immature trust. It's short-term gain, long-term pain.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, the other the opposite. The mature trust is short-term pain because it's paying attention, it costs you time, energy and focus, but long-term gain because when it really matters, when they're out there with your clients when they're a steward over a very vital piece of your business, then that doesn't get messed up because you were paying attention.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's such good words of wisdom and can be used in so many different areas. I mean just in human resources. When you're talking about looking at your onboarding and your new hires and making sure that they're being set up correctly, that is building that maturity, trust, right. It's not just like, oh, I hired you, you interviewed well, I hired you. You must be able to do the job now. Go do it like you actually spend the time to get them on boarded and make sure that the relationships are being built with the right people, they have access to the right things so they can be successful. Why? Because you don't want to have to go through it all over again in six months Because, like you said, it's costly, it's time, like so much time is being spent on it. So when you said that, that just kind of triggered like, yeah, that's exactly how many times we see those kinds of scenarios in our decision-making process every day.
Speaker 2:Every day, every team that I work with is is working to undo the damage that some sort of betrayal or or blind trust had created, that some sort of betrayal or blind trust had created.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's not a problem. It's recoverable, but that's resources spent right. So, and ultimately, what I want to say is this is the greatest way to care for somebody. If you really want to care for people which I kind of dig caring for people If you really want to care for people, this is the way to do it, because they're going to be more successful, you're going to be more successful, and and then you can enjoy the success together.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and that then equates to your leaders, your employees, being engaged, empowered and actually being able to, like, be your spokesperson, make decisions that are going to be impactful to your business, without you having to get involved with every little decision. Right, I don't need to know if it's a blue plan or a black man. Just sign it already, like simple, obviously, example, but you know, just like another way of thinking about it. So we open it up, as are you. Being the founder you need to scale your business. So, in this regards, what are some ways that a founder can start thinking about and changing their behavior to be more of a mature, trust, trusting partner?
Speaker 2:Well, you already named some of them. So easily I could tell it came to you. No, it's like you talked about the non, an onboarding period. Anytime you bring a new team member on, in order to get clear, in order to pay attention to them, they need some sort of period where they're being onboarded. You have regular check-ins and listen.
Speaker 2:Check-ins aren't enough. You have to be willing to ask the challenging questions and be willing to engage the challenging conversations. So if something's missing, if something doesn't look quite right, or to be willing to say it in that moment hey, this doesn't seem to be aligned, or we didn't meet this onboarding goal, or whatever it is that comes up you have to be willing to have those conversations. Right. Then you have to interrupt it, because it doesn't make sure you could pay attention to it and then see it and then just keep going, and that's not gonna get it done. You have to be willing to take the next step, which is actually interrupt the thing that's not working and investigate it, Not like, not punitively, not like anybody's in trouble, but just like Hmm, this is interesting. I wonder what we might be missing here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and I think there's a little bit of like listen to your instinct too, yeah.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's like Hmm, something doesn't feel right here. I need to check in and not be like I don't have time. I got to deal with this other fire and then you know you go deal with that other fire that might be like a kitchen fire and all of a sudden you turn around and that instinct is now a forest fire that's taking 10 months to, or 10 weeks to like, clean out, Right? So yeah, Trusting in your gut. So, um, continuing on the theme of being the founder that you need to be in order to scale your business, what are some of the critical beliefs that you have found through your interactions with your clients and other individuals that founders have that are actually killing their capability of scaling and growing their business?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I actually I did some work to compile some of these beliefs, so I have five founder beliefs that kill scalability, and I appreciate you teeing it up so beautifully that way. We've actually been talking about a couple of them, so it's very, very pertinent and I'd be happy to share that PDF with you and any other listeners.
Speaker 1:It'll be in the link listeners.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the cool thing about this PDF is that it names the belief, but then it also walks you through how to identify if you are engaged in the belief and then what you can do to start to change the belief, what you can do to start to mold the belief to something that's much more useful or will contribute to success, right? So, like the one that we've been talking about already, is a belief of time scarcity. I don't have enough time to pay attention to the important things because I've got that fire burning over there. And I've got that fire burning over there. And this idea of time scarcity is a product of lack of focus.
Speaker 2:I believe that and some people may hear that and say I don't know about that Of course we have a finite amount of time, but if you are laser focused, it will become very clear the things that need to be addressed and the fires that can burn. And I see it over and over and over again with my clients and they're always amazed when they can finally start to let things burn that don't need the focus. Now they like they're so excited to tell me about it. So that's one of them.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to go into that and let me add let me add a little bit more to that, because I think there's also a scenario where you let the fire burn as a founder, because that's not where you, founder, need to spend your time. However, you have a team that either you already have in place, or maybe it's time to get in place, that will go and firefight for you, and they're the ones that that's the fire that they need to focus on, but you don't need to focus on.
Speaker 2:This is so crazy because you haven't read my list.
Speaker 1:I haven't read it. No, is this going to go to number two?
Speaker 2:The number two. Number two I call the solo syndrome.
Speaker 1:I swear I did not cue him up audience. I swear.
Speaker 2:Number two is called the solo syndrome. This is the attitude that usually shows up. No one can do it as well as I can. Nobody can do it as well as I can. Nobody can do it as well as I can. If that is true in your organization, you really need to revamp your hiring. I always tell founders hire people that scare the hell out of you to work with.
Speaker 1:I say smarter that are smarter than you.
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, but if you're interviewing somebody and you get that little butterfly in your stomach like I don't know if I can keep up with this person, that's the person you need in their realm of expertise. So solo syndrome is the second one. The third one is avoiding feedback. That one's plain and simple. I don't need to talk much about it. Plain and simple, I don't need to talk much about it. But a lot of founders don't want to see the results that are there because they make a lot of meaning about it. And I say, let go of the meaning you're making about it and see the feedback. And that one's a pretty common one. The tool shows up as I pay people, so why don't they just do their?
Speaker 1:job. Oh, if I had every penny of when I heard that one right, that's right.
Speaker 2:That's right. I call that the tool belief, because that's when you want to use human beings as tools. You want to simplify them to a single transaction of money for labor or money for intelligence or whatever it is that the role is, and you just can't do that. Human beings can't be boiled down to a single transaction.
Speaker 1:I feel like COVID really helped kind of like manage through some of those thought processes too. Like during COVID it was like very obvious that we're all human beings. And then, coming back to work, there was still this we're all human beings and we're not gonna leave our baggage at the door to get to work and do the still this. We're all human beings and we're not going to leave our baggage at the door to get to work and do your, do the job.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. And the last one is I call it the nice gal or guy syndrome. If I'm nice enough to people, if I'm, if I am that nice person, they will do for me what I need them to do. They will grow my business. And that's just not the case. And I make a distinction between nice and kind, which I don't think we have the time to go into here, but that's a little teaser. People can check that out. I encourage my founders to be kind founders, not nice founders, and that's been an important and powerful distinction for them.
Speaker 1:I love that and I also think, too, some of my experience has been a lot of founders like this is their baby. You know, this is their blood, sweat, tears. This is their idea. Of course, they're going to work a lot harder and a lot longer than anyone else that's coming on board. And then there's this like thought process. I see where it's like, well, I need them to be loyal and stay with me, and I'm like, okay, but what are you doing that they feel like you're loyal to them? There's so many things that employers do that like basically make people feel like, well, they don't care about me. I'm just a number, I'm just a cog in the wheel. Why do you think you're going to get my loyalty when you're not treating me the same way? And I find that very fascinating too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the way that I work with founders on that. It is so interesting and it's like this age old dynamic between founder and team, right. And what's interesting is I have so many clients that I've worked with where I think some of their people, especially on the executive team, care just as much about the company as the founder does. They're just as much on the vision and the aim as the founder is. And here's what makes the difference. Here's what I've observed. That makes the difference and here's what I teach my clients to do is identify each individual's vision for their life.
Speaker 2:Why are they doing this? What's the purpose of the career? Why do they love it? Where's it going? How can they progress? And then, how can the company contribute to their personal vision? And if you will draw that direct line with each person on your team, the likelihood of them being sticky and fighting for your vision is so much higher because they explicitly see how the company achieving its goals and vision contributes directly to them achieving their goals and vision for their life. But that requires you to slow down just a little and get interested in what people want and what they dream up.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And when you do that and you connect it to what you guys are up to in the company, loyalty goes through the roof.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I love that thread. Well, as we do wrap up, unfortunately, I feel like you and I could talk for hours here. What is a last tidbit, trick, tip, thought process you'd like to share with the audience as we wrap up today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I've mentioned vision and aim a couple of times. I work a lot in vision in a couple of time segments, which is a year to 18 months I think is the most powerful vision aim sort of you can have five-year plans, but those are so far out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, especially in today's out. Yeah, and then you're going to break that down.
Speaker 2:So 12 months, 18 months, feels really tangible. So I work in that realm and then I'm working quarterly. What are the things that we need to accomplish? What are the two to three things that are going to move the needle towards that 12 to 18 month vision? And the question that I'm asking myself every single day is and this is the tip or trick the question I'm asking myself every single day is would next year, chad do be doing this? Every time I'm doing a task, every time I'm considering signing a contract with a, with a potential client, I ask myself would next year, chad do this? And then that makes my decision. So I'm putting myself it comes back to that being that you started the conversation with. Am I being the guy that I'm committed to becoming next year right now and making those decisions? And if I do, then I'm well on my way. If I don't, if I betray myself or betray next year, chad, then I'm staying stuck. Don't, if I betray myself or betray next year Chad, then I'm staying stuck.
Speaker 1:That's what people call a stuck or hitting a ceiling. Yeah, that is great thought process there and I hope everyone listening adds that into their daily thought process. And with that we'll wrap up. Thank you so much, chad, for joining me today and having this wonderful conversation for the listeners out there. I hope you have a wonderful day, evening, morning, wherever you are in the world, when you're listening. Don't forget to hit the follow sign and check us out next week when we have our next podcast, and we'll see you then. Thanks so much.
Speaker 2:Thank you Bye.
