Biz Bites for Thought Leaders

Kevin Hutchman on improv training and building high performing teams. Welcome to another episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders. What if the key to Better business performances wasn’t another productivity hack, but learning to laugh together? My guest today, Kevin Hutchman, has discovered that training in improv comedy develops the exact soft skills that every business desperately needs.

This is a very fun episode, but it’s a very different way of looking at building culture, building teams, and really creating unbelievably successful way of breaking down boundaries and improving performance. You don’t want to miss this one. So let’s get into this episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

Welcome everyone to another episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders, and this is going to be a different kind of episode ’cause we legitimately are gonna have a bit of fun with this one. Kevin, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here. So let’s kick things off as we do by allowing you to introduce yourself to everyone.

I am a entrepreneur, comedian keynote speaker. Team bond bonding, fun guy. And yeah, corporate facilitator that likes to work with companies to help them have comedy skills in their professional world. Yeah, there is a lot to cover in that alone. And I wanna point out to everyone listening in that what we’re gonna cover a fair amount today is, of course a about the role that some of this stuff can play in building teams and really building a sense of community and a sense of fun in your organization.

I wanna start things off, Kevin, that’s interesting about how you introduce yourself. So what do you see yourself as first? What is the first thing? Is it entrepreneur? Is it comedian? Is it, where do you sit? I’d say it’s probably entrepreneur. I think that entrepreneur allows me to. I, there’s a various amount of businesses that I do outside of the one we’re talking about.

I’ve always been interested in a unique path, but more just about solving unique problems. And so I’m really just drawn to different areas of industry whatever that might may be, and using my expertise that I’ve had over the years to, apply some solutions to those problems. I’m a problem solver, and if I haven’t said it enough, and I love I love being an entrepreneur, and so I try to apply that in whatever I do.

I love that it’s being an entrepreneur is such a a wonderful asset and a way of thinking to have, but I think you apply it in a different way, particularly with a comedy background. So I know you call yourself a comedy nerd, but where did the comedy stuff begin for you?

Yeah, so it really began at the dinner table. I am youngest of six kids. Always loved comedy. But I was introduced to comedy from all my brothers and sisters. We used to watch Saturday Night Live. Ever weekly when I was a kid, like real young all the way up until, currently watch it.

So I’ve been exposed to all different types of genres of comedy my old life. And I didn’t really take a big leap until I moved to New York City after college and started at a company called Splash where I was one of the first 10 employees. But simultaneously, while I was there, I started training in improv comedy.

And me and my two brothers and my best friend, we started a group called The Brothers in Flaws, and we would do three hours of comedy training of improv comedy a week, and it was just the most fun ever. We just would laugh our butts off constantly and we thought, I thought it ended there, but it wasn’t until I would go into work the next day.

Fresh outta college. Not a lot of professional skills, but what I did have were these new skills I was learning in the comedy world. So I was able to apply those to work. And, you know what I call them comedy skills. I’m not talking about being able to make a joke, but I’m talking about active listening and empathetic communication and collaboration and creating psychological safety taking risks, going off script.

There was just these crazy lists. Of skills that I were protruding from me and I was able to communicate better with my team, collaborate better, which you absolutely need when you’re on a small, scrappy squad. I was able to reel in clients better. I was able to talk to customers and prospects, learn about their problems, prescribe custom solutions, go off script.

And I truly believe that it wa, if it wasn’t for immersing myself in the low stakes environment of improv, I wouldn’t have been so successful early on in my career because I was able to use those skills while I got, it got the chops of the business world under my belt. So I really attribute learning those skills in comedy as a way to really jumpstart my career.

I think it’s a fascinating way of bringing those things in because yes, immediately you think, okay, you can’t, there’s only so far that you can have jokes in the workplace because things have to get serious at some point in time. But you’re right there that, that safety that is created, but also I find fascinating with improv is that everything always has to be a yes, right?

You can’t say no to things, and that is a skill within itself, particularly in the business world. How do you actually say yes to things? How do you actually make it work? Yeah. And I think that understanding what the yes is not, I’m gonna be now doing the thing that you’ve told me to do. And it’s more about accepting the current circumstance that you’re in.

And adapting. So the phrase is yes, and rather than just Yes. So the yes is more of a validation. The yes is a validation of, Hey, I’m accepting your idea that you’re throwing my way. And yes, that is great. And you’re validating the person that’s giving it to you, whether it’s on the stage or in the boardroom, and you’re validating that individual.

Then you’re adding and to it, right? You’re saying, and here’s how I feel, whether it can be positive or combat, not combative, but contrary. And, the whole idea is that it’s the validation that you’re giving people with the Yes. And it’s the acceptance of what they’re saying with the Yes.

And it’s then bridging what the words that you’re going to do the, and is really for the individual. So is the yes as well, but it allows you to say, Hey, how can I just be very collaborative in this effort and eliminate words like, no, but or because those are words that can really stop the train. And that’s all about what applied improv is about.

And improv performing in general, but it’s about saying yes to the experience and the situation that you’re in and playing the next play off the top of your intelligence. Not coming up with a canned response or a, or something that you were gonna say. And, you wish you said it earlier, so now you’re saying it now.

It’s really about living in the moment of being present, and that is the best thing that you can do. To create a laughing moment is allowing people to create rapport and build rapport. Because that is, it’s not even if you go and back to someone and you try to explain why you laugh today, they’re probably not going to understand it.

’cause it’s not like some joke, but it was a situation that you were in and that’s what happens on the improv stage. If you go and tell someone why you laugh so hard at an improv event, people are gonna be like, that’s not funny. And you’re like it was ’cause I was there. And we’re in the moment and in the zone.

But that’s because we’ve created the psychological safety where it’s like, Hey we’re in a silly fun area, now we can laugh. Or we’ve created vulnerability now we can trust each other to laugh with one another. So it’s really about listening, communicating, building that trust and vulnerability so that people can effectively communicate.

I’m a big fan of watching shows like, whose Line is it Anyway, where? All about improv and for anyone who hasn’t seen it, I recommend you do watch it. It’s interesting what you’re saying there because they definitely create that sense of safety because clearly they’re given things that they don’t know what it’s going to be, but there’s so much trust in each other that they know.

That it’ll go somewhere that will work for both of the people that might be appearing on there at any given time, or it could be three or four, whatever it is that appears on the stage. And I think there’s a lot of valuable lessons to learn in business there. I think we, you’re not necessarily suggesting everyone in business goes and learns how to do improv, but it’s a good way of demonstrating it.

I’d say that is exactly what I’m hoping people will do because improv is something that is an incredibly accessible art form. You don’t need to go into it with any sort of knowledge. That’s what our business primarily helps people train in, improv and train. We call it laughing and development.

And it’s this workshop, series of workshops in person or virtual. The virtual ones are actually. Amazing because everyone has to be so focused and dialed on their squares. You’re al already dialed into like your environment and looking at other people and they, the whole goal of this is that we should be training in improv, and it’s called Applied Improv.

I’m not saying people need to go and perform improv. That’s a completely, totally different beast. And if you’re gonna perform and invite your friends, you better be good. ’cause you’ll give improv a bad name if you stink. The, but the, but training in improv and training in comedy is totally different than going out there and performing in front of a huge group of people.

While that also can have its benefits, I’m not saying everyone needs to do that, but I do think everyone can benefit from. Getting into the EQ gym, so to speak, working on their soft skills like listening and communication and adaptability, and what are those different ways that we can do that. And improv offers a wonderful environment for people to feel safe enough to make mistakes and really be silly and show up as your most authentic self.

Then when it’s time for a business situation or professional setting or any sort of like even serious high stakes situation, you can tap into that muscle that you’ve been training and your performance might not be in a comedy setting. Your performance is going to be in the real world where these skills are going to benefit you and you’re not gonna receive a laugh.

You might receive. A sale, you might receive trust, you might receive a new friend, whatever that might be. And so that’s why I truly believe that, training in these comedy skills is not to make you the next Jerry Seinfeld, but it’s to make you the best version of yourself so that you can always bring yourself into a place to connect with others.

Yeah. I wanna pick you up on a couple of things that you’ve said there that I think so important. Yes, you’ve said the listening, and I think that’s incredibly important, but it’s really about, to me, that ability to adapt. Is incredibly important. That I think is often overlooked, but we do it in business every single day.

No matter what business you’re in, you don’t know what is going to walk through the door or come through in an email or in a call, in a, in the next, five minutes and it can throw you for a loop. Sometimes it’s not always exactly the same as whatever happened previously. So we have to adapt and we have to learn how to utilize those skills.

And I think then the second point about that is, is then developing trust as a result of that. I think that is where the important skills lie, particularly for business. Absolutely. Those are, that’s the foundation of any sort of business relationship, whether it’s internal or external. And and people find their own ways to do it.

And I think that, again, communication, trust. All of those different components I’ve talked about are a really great way to build that foundation with your organization. So tell me a little bit before we get into what it actually looks like for people now. How did it happen? How did the progress happen to get to where you are now in terms of offering, offering comedy and improv and these ideas to the business world?

So we started out I’ll take you all the way back, but we did I started this business in 2019, just as a way for me to get more stage time. And, I, after I did my improv journey I kept training in improv after our group broke up. And we went and I just went and did more improv training and then eventually I got into the standup comedy scene, started hitting more open mics, doing some clubs in New York.

And then, we had the opportunity to throw an event at my office that I worked at, and we had this awesome stage and lighting and the just sound system was perfect and. I also had one of my best friends at work played the drums and could work the lights and the sound and, suddenly we were our own Jimmy Fallon and the Roots situation.

And we went and started throwing what I would consider at that time, the best comedy show in New York City on a Wednesday at 7:00 PM and it was electric. The comedians that we had on this show were some of the best, not just in the, in New York City, but in the whole. Country. And I’d say since we first did those first 10 shows, there have to be at least 10 people that have done Netflix specials.

It was that kind of talent that were on our shows and I was incredibly grateful for those experiences because one, I got to perform alongside mega huge stars and that was so cool. But I also got to. See how they prepared, what they were like before they got on stage, what they were like after. Then I would be, some of them I’d be able to pick their brains like, Hey, what is, what was it like to prepare?

How do you learn from certain situations? So I’d bug a lot of them and be like, just, I wanna get into your psyche about what it’s like to perform at such a high level. So this was like one of the first times I was able to really. Work with comedians at this level, both producing and hosting and performing in these shows, but, performing alongside of them.

And that was a really cool experience. And then, about 10 shows in, I was like, let’s, no, let me do this full time. So I was, I’ll leaving my company doing this full time and then the pandemic hit and I was like, what have I done? This is a horrible mistake and. We got really, it was a blessing in disguise and we went into corporate comedy and we said, how can we put these comedians that I’ve been working with over these last 10 shows in New York, and how do we put them to work?

Because all those comedians were actually out of work because of the pandemic, and they weren’t legally allowed to even perform in comedy clubs. Doing virtual comedy was a good outlet for folks. And I had the opportunity to give some comedians corporate gigs. And so I started to get into that corporate scene and see what it was like for people to how they were at work.

And, COVID was a Hal. Its own thing, but people were so not pumped to be at work or be at this event, or like their day was like just absolutely killing them. It was the first time I was actually able to see. How our comedy shows were impacting people during the workday. And it wasn’t just like great show in our post-event surveys.

It was, thank you so much, I really needed that. I’ve had a horrible week or a month or something’s going on in my life and this was the best outlet. It was these like incredibly impassioned things. And since it was COVID, people were like, I haven’t bonded with my teammates like that since we were back in person.

I also, I started to see. This was making people less depressed. It was bringing people more social bonding. It was, people suddenly leaving their jobs. Men mentally for a second and showing that they could have fun in the same environment, AKA, the zoom link that they were having some of their most boring and mundane and probably brutal experiences.

It was a very good, immersion therapy, I’m sure as well, to be like, oh, this is a really good experience. So that was the first moment where I was like. Comedy at work works, and I really want to keep going down this. How else can we serve these organizations, especially as we go back in person, but more importantly as people stop to think about how do we meaningfully spend our budgets on team building or professional development?

Because there was a shift and said, Hey, we gotta tighten the coffers and we can’t really just be doing. Cocktail making classes and, comedy shows were thrown into that mix too. So we started, that’s when we first developed laughing and development. And I brought, I went back to my time starting comedy and starting my professional career.

And I realized that was the key. That was the key to really unlocking folks, is taking them pretty much through my journey that I did myself, because I saw firsthand the impact that. Training in improv could have if I applied it to the workplace. So that is really when our business took off. And we were able to, have real meaningful impact.

That was another thing. Although the comedy shows are awesome, we still do they’re a huge part of our business. We still do a lot. There’s a time and a place for a comedy show. There’s a time and a play and that’s a celebration. It’s having a lot of fun. And, but when it comes to every quarter, every month or offsites or moments where we need to really dial in and figure out people’s why that we’re able to come in and have real meaningful impact, that helps companies, through us tell their message to their employees about.

This is an environment where we value collaboration and we want to communicate more effectively and we wanna listen to one another and we wanna go to war with each other at work, and we wanna support one another. So that really was, added a whole extra meaning to what we were doing. First it was in the world of let’s just get people to laugh more, have fun and brighten up their day.

And then it turned into, okay, how do we help people really start effectively? Communicating and using these skills at work to make each other smile at the very least, hopefully it leads to a laugh. So are you going in with businesses and talking to them in advance so you understand what the messages are that they maybe want to give over so that is worked into whatever it is you are delivering for them?

Oh yeah, absolutely. It’s a very prescriptive solution that we’re offering, whether it is a. Entertainment comedy show on the virtual. We do virtual comedy shows that are so specific and tailored that we have attendees completing pre-event surveys to tell us office buzzwords to incorporate or memes to incorporate.

But then on the other side of things with professional development, we will ask the event organizer to tell us. What do you want out of this event? And there are so many different exercises and games that we can incorporate into our sessions. So we wanna know exactly like I have them rank a list of 12 outcomes from one to 12, which they think is the best, outcome for their group.

And a lot of the times people are like, they’re like, they’ll write in a note. I couldn’t, I wish I could. Put all of these at number one. That’s how like pe, how much people resonate with the material. But we then try to take like the average of the six and say, let’s create a theme connected with what their purpose of it.

We asked them, why are you doing this event? Or what challenges. Is your company seeing, we have a recent one that we’re working with now. It’s hey, we are a new sales team. We’re coming people that have, one style of selling with, a transactional style of selling and we need to bring them together as a group.

And, and then we also need to have people be more comfortable creating relationships with clients. So we wanna help build that rapport. And it’s stuff like that where we then say, okay, we have a series of games and exercises that we think are going to lead you in this right direction, so that in the OutCo outcomes of all of this, people are going to feel like they can take these skills and apply them to their, to the next day at work.

And that’s where you are using things more like the improv and those kinds of ideas, rather than it necessarily being a comedian. ’cause I imagine the comedian’s gonna be a little bit harder to adapt to some of those things, but I gather that’s still part of it as well, potentially. Yeah, but not really.

We’re all business when, it’s silly and it’s fun, don’t get me wrong. Like laughing and development is, it’s in the name there. It’s a lot of laughing. People are going to have a lot of fun, but it’s not gonna be from a comedian telling jokes, like if you had hired us from an entertainment perspective, this is all.

Parentheses funny business and we are trying to, help your team accomplish your goals. And so these facilitators, I don’t call them necessarily comedians, even though they are all comedians, but they’re facilitating a session with the group. And that’s different than the entertainment side of our business that we offer.

It’s a completely separate thing where, we are one side. We’re trying to create a great comedy show that’s for this moment. Then the other side of our business is we’re trying to create a really great team building and professional development experience that will have people really learning or even bringing out some of their skills that they may have had dormant.

What a great business to have both sides of the things that you can, do the straight out entertainment side and you can do this stuff that, that really gets into the that’s the best. Yeah. The man of business. I’m interested though, ’cause you talked about. This coming out of the COVID period and o obviously operating in a virtual environment, which I know you do.

And for those that are in Australia and watching or listening to the podcast at the moment, there is opportunities to do some of this stuff in a virtual environment. And I think we talked about before, could be coming soon in a real world environment as well. But talk to me about the virtual environment because.

It’s a lot harder to get responses, right? Comedy doesn’t play as well when you’ve got one person delivering something and you’ve got these other people that may or may not have microphones open, but you’re not feeding off one another in the same way as you are in a sitting down in a live audience.

So how does that play out in not just comedy, but in the improv and other things you’re doing? So just in the higher arching of everything, you’d be surprised in that virtual, in a non-corporate setting. You’re right. It doesn’t, I don’t think it works very well. It’s like a bunch of strangers.

I remember being at that in the beginning of the pandemic and we started to this idea of doing like that was got what got very popular public. Virtual comedy shows and see had 200, 300 people in, you had to mute some people were listening on their phones, like it was just like a complete disaster.

And so I remember going, we’re doing this, but not that. And what I mean by that is. The public nature of it. Now, when it becomes corporate, your company is sponsoring your event and your company is asking you to attend this event, and your company is asking you not just to attend the event, but you’re attending as a member of the organization.

So there is this built in sense of I have to be, I’m at work, I’m getting paid to be here. So there is this sense of I need to focus and dial in and I was very surprised at it. But the, just the nature of a corporate virtual event has a like, like bouncer feel to it.

Like that, like you’re, the company is the bouncer being like, you gotta, you better pay attention. And so much so that we don’t even have to we, I’ve never kicked anybody out, ever. And we’ve done so many things of of events that people are being like rowdy or not good. Or not paying attention whenever it might be.

I’ve had other people that, like the companies have kicked out because like they’re so dialed into it. So that’s just one kind of misconception that comedy can’t be done virtually. I think the setting is so incredibly important. And we also, on the virtual comedy side of things, and I’ll get into the improv side of things, but on the virtual comedy side of things, we started to say, okay.

First we started with just standup, and then we realized what’s another way that we could bring people to always be focused on what’s going on. So we went from standup to what I said before was, let’s have the content be about the people in the room. So let’s do pre-event surveys with the attendees and get information.

We said, all right, maybe let’s layer in images on top of screens when comedians are doing shows, like it’s a late night format. So creating another virtual element of it or visual element of it. We also started to get into musical improv where, or we have comedians that will create songs about your company live on the spot from ideas that they have in front of you.

It is actually amazing when the audience is dialed in and everyone’s on their mics and everyone’s on their cameras or as many people that can be, it is as fun as it can get on virtual. Obviously nothing beats in person, but it is as fun as it gets, and you’d be very surprised at how fun it can be.

Now when it comes to improv, it’s the same thing. People, we recently did an event where there was actually one of the women, that was, had to catch a flight. And so she was actually like going through, she was in a cab and then she was going through security and then I think she had to, when she got on the plane, she had to turn her phone off, but like this was a moment where you see.

We put people into breakout rooms, like we do warmup events where we get people assimilated, create that psychological safety. Then we’ll do two person activities. So we’ll put them into a breakout room and then we’ll do five person activities, put them into a breakout room. The beauty of the virtual side of things is that we can.

When we’re trying to do team building and professional development, we can leverage the technology that virtual softwares have, like breakout rooms to make sure that people are getting that, high level engagement from one another. And then on the entertainment side, we don’t use any breakout rooms and we’re just like, bring the laughter in.

Let’s just have a good time. So it really is dependent on it, but we found ways to be. The leader in our category as it relates to doing any sort of comedy experience online improv. The improv let’s, to make it work. It’s, and it’s amazing how you’ve adapted the business and found ways to make it work and made it probably larger than it would’ve been ’cause you would’ve otherwise been looking at very localized offices and operating perhaps just in New York.

And now you can operate globally. It’s the coolest thing. There is the first, I’d say 2021 was the first year where it was like, whoa. Maybe even early 2020 or like at the end of 2020, but it was 2021 where we had like at one point 13 events in one day and it was. So also not only like the volume was crazy because the demand was so high because of the pandemic.

We were doing so many events that it was starting at 9:00 AM my time and ending at 9:00 PM. My time. And so it was this full, like using Eastern time zone to, or, sorry, not eastern time zone, but like we do a show on that in the European time zones. Then us time zones, then APAC time zones.

And it was this very we had companies that were hiring us for like, all three of their holiday parties and they would just have different time zone areas. So it’s just very cool. We’ve performed on nearly every continent. Which I never thought I’d be able to say. VIR obviously virtually.

And, we get to reach so many different audience members and that’s what’s cool about performing for remote audiences and remote workforces. And do you get much opportunity to perform or you it’s just stuck in the entrepreneur space. I’m a host of a lot of these events, so I get to get the crowd going, that’s my natural position is the host.

And so anytime I have a chance to put myself into the event, I usually do. And but it’s very fun to be in that host space, get the crowd engaged, make sure people are, on the virtual side of things, have their cameras on, mics on, do some crowd work, practice what I preach a lot of the, of what I’m doing.

And so the performing is always very fun, we always like to. The people that we’re bringing in are just the best at what they do. And so we really respect that and these companies are paying good money for great talent. And, we wanna make sure that we’re delivering the best show possible.

So there are moments where I gotta step out of the limelight and let the real craftsman take over. Tell me, you’ve done a lot of shows for the business. Have you collected the data? Do you know where the main problem areas are that businesses are highlighting and where you are seeing a result after what you’ve been doing?

I think the best way to answer that question, and I think ’cause we went through a bit of a, we’ve been through a bit of a wave in terms of what our offering was and it was virtual entertainment to in-person. Laughing and development. So there’s been like a very large wave. And so in the beginning, people had bad cultures, frankly, they weren’t transitioning well in the COVID space and they didn’t know how to connect with people.

And they were really open to trying new things. They just wanted people to have more fun. Now I would say I’m able to dial in so much more. I love being on the. Professional development and team building side of things because I’m really able to now ask questions about what is wrong with your organization that you think you need to do a laughing and development experience.

And what I mean by what is wrong, it’s more what do you think that you can improve? Not like I can’t believe that you’ve come to us but it’s like, what do you think? You can very be very honest and I would say the biggest thing is. AI has lowered our EQs a bit across the board, and that can either be veterans in the professional world or it can be people that never started a job or you had to go in person five days a week or go out to meet with a client over lunch or whatever, or pitch in person.

I think that’s really the biggest trend that I’m noticing is that a lot of people are still, assimilating into this new normal because we all went through an experience where virtual was normalized. And I think that people got some of their muscles atrophied on the EQ side of things.

And so people are, organizations are really looking to get that mojo back and what we’re able to provide is, I like to it’s like a gym, we’re able to help with those muscles and, the people that work with us best are the, are not the ones that do this one time. It’s the people that do intermittent sessions with us that can allow for people to, really work.

Better with each other and work better with their clients. And it’s because they’re working on these skills. I think that’s an important point for people to hear from you as well, is that this is not about a one-off kind of gig. It can be, but I assume, but ultimately you want people coming back and continuing to work and obviously seeing a level of improvement that happens in that.

So are you seeing a lot of that and do you, are you able to track it? It’s the organization. It’s, it all depends on what the organization allows us to track, obviously. But the ones that continue to do more events with us. We do not have to reset and start at zero. If we are doing an event with an organization, we can pick up into 1 0 2, 1 0 3, eventually get them up to 2 0 1, 2 0 2 0 2.

So I think that’s the best thing is you what, when I was training in improv, I didn’t see the value the first day after. At work the first day after I left or went into work after doing improv, it was until like probably a month or so in where I had done it so many times that it was now a part of me and it was a, it was now a muscle and a skillset that I had grown and developed.

And I think it was when I started to combine both of the two, I was more conscious of it and said, oh, this is like improv and listening and communicating and going off script, adapting, all that stuff that I’m now conscious of. But it took my subconscious a while in reps to do I think that, that is what people can really benefit from is seeing that and my goal is that there’s gonna be.

A sales team that comes through and wants to do a case study with us. That’s very clear. I’ve seen case studies done with organizations like Salesforce, where I saw that they had a I think a 20% increase in, in sales conversions when they trained their sales reps in, in improv. And that’s a case study that I’ve pulled from the internet and.

Those are the things that are so fascinating, but you also have to have people that are in in it with you to want to grow and have the same people and the same studies and go from there. But the good news is I don’t need to prove this to anybody. These, this is in medical journals, it’s in case studies.

I’m just picking up where a lot of people have already done the hard work. And how much resistance do you get from people, because obviously there are people that are going to be embrace it straight away for whatever reason. And you would have, I imagine, people who are more outgoing and then you have the people that are more insular in their approach and maybe a little bit reticent if you, when you start doing some of these exercises.

So how do you bridge that gap? Yeah, I would say. The first five minutes are a lot different than the last five minutes. And that’s basically everybody comes in with preconceived notions, whether it’s improv or not improv. That’s also, we don’t call it improv ’cause that’s a scary word for a lot of people.

We call it laughing and development. And so I think that is, no matter what, you gotta shake those cobwebs off. And so I think that the. The important thing is like how do you create psychological safety in the beginning of the event to be like, Hey, we’re gonna have some fun. And so whether that’s an entertainment event that we’re doing or an IMP or a laughing and development improv event that we’re doing, you need to spend those first five minutes of.

Doing really easy warmups with folks and icebreakers with folks so they get familiar and create that psychological safety so that you’re able to take them into the deep end and and everyone ha can have a lot of fun. How much baggage does the term laugh carry? Because I imagine and maybe you can tell us what it was like the first time you jumped on stage as a standup, because most people can’t really imagine what that’d be like.

But you stand on stage and the audience is sitting there going your job is to make me laugh, so go on, make me laugh. That’s hard. Yeah. I think that, that’s definitely the worst audience member that could be if that, that they’re coming with that attitude. But you’re right. No, that is the, that is what people pay for a show.

And I think that what I learned is that there are comedians that take that part very seriously. They go and they’re not just doing a throwaway show and throwaway event. They know people that have come out. They’ve paid money. They’ve gotten babysitters in some cases. Not for me, obviously I’m not in this category, but I think what I’ve noticed is that you try to take it with that same approach and mentality.

You try to prepare. And I think that’s a really. Good lesson that I learned from folks is really giving a crap, giving, really making this very important to you. And so that you not only prepare what you’re gonna say, but you’re very dialed in and focused and very present in what’s going on in the room.

And then the next thing is like reps, like it’s scary, but it’s only scary if it’s your first time or second time, third time, it’s, the scare the scare turns to nervousness and this, and the nervousness is different than the scare. Because the nervousness is because now you want it to go really well.

You know that nervousness is just meaning that you care about it. And so you can ask other comedians like, do you still feel nervous? Where you get on stage, people that are huge, and they’ll say yes. And that is coming from a place of I want it to go very well versus in the beginning. It’s scary because you’re not used to it.

You haven’t gone through the ups and downs or the bombs or the failures, and so you don’t know the worst that could happen. But most comics, they have to go through the worst before they can have really good sets, myself included. I have so many moments where I’ve bombed for five, 10 minutes straight.

It’s the worst feeling in the world. But that’s those are scars and calluses that I can leverage. Not just for future performances, but sort of anything that I’m getting into of being like, I know it can go bad, but also I’ve survived a lot of crappy awkward moments where my body is telling me they hate it.

At the end of the day you survive. And and it’s just another story that you can tell yourself that you’re resilient. Is it, tell me when you talk about laugh and development, is it that. It just puts a smile on people’s faces and brings the barriers down. Or does it carry some level of expectation in a similar way for people?

Do you find? I think that the laughing component is to let people know that this is going to be fun, and that is the mo most important aspect. We’re not calling it jokes, and development. And I think that’s a very clear distinction between jokes and laughter. People can laugh in a whole different number of ways, and the whole, the goal is that we are going to do these games and exercises, and I almost guarantee you are going to laugh out of the experience and you’re going to laugh probably within the first five minutes because we’re going to do something silly.

Enough that you are going to break down your barrier and you’re gonna make a mistake and you’re gonna laugh at the mistake and you’re going to laugh at others making mistakes, and suddenly nobody really cares. And you’ve broken down these barriers. So the laughing component of it is, it’s a result of what’s gonna happen and when and then the development part of it is also another result of what’s gonna happen.

And when you can combine laughing and development together. When you laugh, you and you associate a new skill with a moment of laughter, your brain remembers it better. So our goal is to always be combining the laughing with the development. And that’s why we named it that because applied Improv and applied standup has have so many opportunities for people to laugh and connect with one another, and then simultaneously learn something that they can take away and use in the future.

And we didn’t. Talk too much about it but the musical comedy side of things as well. So I’m open to having a musical comedy version of the, of this show. So whenever you’re ready, just just pluck out the guitar and get going. But no, I, in all seriousness, I wanted to ask you as well, you talked earlier on about learning from a lot of the comedians and things.

So tell me what are some of the biggest learnings that you’ve had? And if you wanna name drop a few people, go for it. But are there some particular things that you’ve learned that have then transferred across to this stuff that you’re doing in, in, in laugh and development, I can name a lot of comics that I’ve worked with and I could talk forever about this.

I’ll just focus on one. And someone I’ve worked very close with over the years, a comedian named Jessica Kirson. She’s, your favorite comics, favorite comic. She is amazing. She’s such a killer. And I had the pleasure of opening for her once. And, I was opening for her and I remember doing my set and it was whatever, my, my experience my I did the job I hosted, it was a fun time.

But when I saw Jessica go up there, you open that door and it was the loudest laughs you’ve ever heard she’s killing for. And I only did 10 minutes, she’s doing 60 and she’s. Lighting the room on fire. She’s absolutely crushing. And I went up to her after and I was like, how do you kill every single time?

And I was like, that is what I heard in my room versus what it was like when you were up there. Those are two different sounds. How do I get to where you are? And she said, Kevin, I’ve been doing this for over 30 years. And that was it. It was, that was the answer. It was like, I have been in it, I’ve been in the trenches.

You’ve been doing this, for seven years or whatever the number was at the time. You, we don’t compare and experience, and it was one of these like aha moments where it’s especially in comedy, but throughout all of our, professional experience. We wanna cut the line and we wanna, get to that goal faster.

And the older that we get, the more we realize how important those years of struggling are to our final story and how hard we could kill it in the professional world. And so I think that was one of my let me zoom out for a second and realize where I am. And I’m on a, I’m on a journey, whether that’s in comedy or as an entrepreneur.

And, I’ve had a lot of lows during that time. But that is ultimately for, I’m investing in my ability to have really big successes in the near future and beyond. So that’s how I look at it. And that was probably my biggest skill I took away from a comedian. What I really enjoy about Jessica and I followed her for a while on in my feeds on social is that a lot of her stuff is bouncing off the audience.

She’s, it’s not it’s amazing. See, great comedians like a, like a Jerry Seinfeld and the like, and they have a pre-prepared routine. They do know how to respond to an audience jumping in as well, but a lot of her stuff is built around what is in front of her. That’s she’s a killer.

She’s, she is, she knows how to work a room. She’s very adaptable. She really embodies a lot of the stuff that we’re learning or teaching and laughing and development. She’s really good at improvising and she’s really good at working with what she’s got. She’s really good at her act and her material that she’s honed over the years.

She. She can, I’ve heard her do sets back to back to back. So I’ve heard like them do run consecutively and the breaths that she takes are conscious, like she is such a master at her craft. And not only does she work with what she’s got to. Bring the audience back in. She’s doing that to bring them in so that she can really knock them out with a tried and true joke that she knows is kills in any environment.

So she’s constantly rope a doping, the, her audience members and no one kills harder than her. And she’s and it’s because she’s got, it’s she’s like out of a helicopter, like shooting like two giant guns. You know what I mean? So she’s just but it’s she’s awesome.

And she’s amazing at what she does, and she’s a good friend. Two quick things to wrap things up. One is, are there some top tips that you can give businesses from the things that you’re doing and that you’ve picked up to open their minds as to what you can do with this sort of stuff that you are doing?

My lesson to businesses always, whether they work with us or not, is find a way to improve your team’s active listening skills, which will then help them more empathetically communicate, which then will allow them to be more vulnerable and that will allow people to trust one another. And those steps are very important and that’s what we aim for in all the workshops that we do.

Is with that ultimate goal of kind of building people up in that mentality and that can pay the dividends for internal team collaboration. It can be external with clients and prospects, and it’s really investing in your team’s emotional quotient. And that’s, it has to, I’m not saying don’t do other types of trainings and professional development.

It’s allowing people to be very well-rounded. But don’t forget that these emotional skills are invaluable and could arguably be the X factor in helping your team reach its full potential. So one final question. I love those tips by the way, and thank you for that. The final question that I have, and I always like to ask all my guests this question, what’s the aha moment that businesses have when they come to work with you that you wish more people knew they were gonna have in advance?

The aha moment is that is a lot more fun than I thought it would ever be. That’s the, we do a survey before the event and after the event, and almost always the, before we ask people to say one word or a phrase, and the phrase always before is tired. Don’t wanna do this apathetic, just neutral or negative.

And the words that they end with are. Enlightened ex inspired, energetic, open to new experiences. It’s just completely opposite of what they had going into it, the experience they had. So that’s I show that to people to say it doesn’t matter. This is a work event.

People in general are just gonna feel negative about a work event. But here’s what people feel afterwards, and it’s always gonna be opposite and exciting. And so we try to really help people understand that everyone just gets into it and we build our programs to make sure that the first five minutes is, are way different than the last five.

Thank you so much for all of those insights and we’re going to remind everyone that we’ll put lots of details in the show notes of how to get in touch with you, but it’s Laugh Events is the website address where you can find lots and lots of information about how to work with you. Kevin, thank you so much for being a part of the program.

Thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. Yeah, thanks for having me. All right, everyone pay attention to the show notes so you can get in touch with Kevin and we look forward to your company next time. Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. We’ll see you next time on Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

Hey, thanks for listening to Biz Bytes. We hope you enjoyed the program. Don’t forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Biz Bytes is proudly brought to you by podcast done for you, the service where we will deliver a podcast for you and expose your brilliance. To the world. Contact us today for more information, details in the show notes.

We look forward to your company next time on Biz Bytes.

Self-leadership and transforming executive performance with Ross One as our guest today. So what if I told you that poor leadership doesn’t just affect workplace performance? It ripples through people’s entire lives affecting their families, their confidence and their wellbeing. So my guest, Ross Swan, has spent 25 years coaching executives across Australia and Asia, and he’s been seen firsthand, I should say, how transforming one leader can transform hundreds of lives.

After decades in financial services, Ross made the courageous decision to pursue his passion for coaching. Eventually relocating to Singapore, where he became a pioneer executive coach. His approach a little bit different, instead of focusing on management techniques. Ross helps executives lead from within emphasizing self-leadership and inspired leadership.

In this episode, he shares a very powerful story about an executive who publicly berates a team member, and then the one simple question that changed everything. He also explores why executives who need coaching most are often the blindest to it, and how to create those breakthrough moments. That transform leadership behavior.

You don’t wanna miss this episode with Ross Swan. This is Biz Bites for Thought Leaders. Let’s get into it.

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders. I have one such thought leader with me today. We’ve got to know each other a little bit over a period of time ’cause he’s been a regular attendee at a forum that I run on a monthly basis. So if anyone wants in on that, you better just reach out and I’ll tell you more.

But right now I’d like to introduce Ross Swan. Welcome to the program. Thanks. No, we like chat. We like to start off by letting you introduce yourself. So why don’t you fill everyone in on the little bit of the backstory. Oh, the do the short version. To on my gray hair, if you’re looking at that, I’ve, it could be a long version, but I’ll stick to the short one.

Look based, I’ve had probably 30 years in financial services, then another 25 years in coaching executives. Most of that time was in Singapore and it was an interesting journey leaving. Australia and all my contacts within the industry of financial services and then going to I don’t know be a pioneer in coaching because there wasn’t that much around to turn the century.

So coaching with the coaching executives over that time and instead it evolved with people the way they lead people. It’s given me a lot of I guess a lot of thought process to move to where I am now, so I’m probably being slower than not quicker. In essence, my original coaching led me per more sole inspired leadership.

In other words, self-leadership, and that’s what I’m about now, helping people to be better self leaders. And that’s, that comes from within you, your own belief, your own purpose. And that’s what I now do is help people become better versions of themselves. To use that cliche, there’s a lot that I wanna explore around that because I think it is an important area and I’m gonna ask the listeners to bear with us a bit here because I, I think that what’s important in order to get to that point where we can start talking.

About how important that is and ways to address that. I think it is important to understand your backstory a little bit because you’ve downplayed it, moved to Singapore, then you’ve moved back, right? So tell me about that time and then your, first of all, financial services and then deciding to make a leave.

With financial services, where you wanted to go originally, and then how do you make that leap to then jump to Singapore? Yeah, that’s a good question, Anthony. I’m writing a book and I actually cover some of those aspects. It’s interesting when you grow up in your high school, you, there’s pressure on you to decide what you wanna be, what you wanna do.

I had absolutely no idea, but, so I floated through school. I just passed things. Primary school, I’d be way up on top of the class. But whenever I got study in high school, I fell right back because I had no vision of what I wanted to do. And in hindsight, coaching and helping people, if I’d said that when I was 15, people think I was strange.

Yeah. So anyway, it evolved. I fell into financial services, joined the local national banking town. I said, I can’t nimble. That’s how I went to financial first and upstate manager of the insurance company, both in South Australia and back home in Queensland. So I got to level and then I thought, I dunno where this for me, I actually, we did some training on whole grain thinking, right?

And we the facilitator looking at. What part of the brain he is. We did this and I’m a senior executive of there and all the other senior people, it ended up, they were sitting on one side of the room and I was the other side by myself maybe. Maybe on the certain to be working with actuaries or whatever.

I dunno, man. Look. Anyway, I can start. It got me to start thinking. But in essence my, my manager who always me and be true to yourself. And I started seeing because I helped him, I fell into catching, ’cause I helped him different, he had different hotspots around Australia he’d send me to sort out the issue.

’cause I just naturally do it. I can help people and motivate people, find out what’s wrong. So in Congress do that. But one thing I learned, just how much core leadership, how much, much it just affects people’s lives. Like you you’re work all day or a poor leader, everyone has a toxic environment, then they go home.

It’s like I go home and kick the cat and do it. Yeah, it just flows out. That’s when I started. I’d like to do coach. I’d love to help some of these people because the more I help them, the better lives. Everyone under there, out their sort of control. Control has better lives. And that’s how I started.

That’s a big leap to make, to be working, in somewhat of security of a financial services company in a decent position to then say, I’m going to be a coach in a completely different way. ’cause it’s not like you were doing the same thing that you were doing in the financial services company.

So that’s a significant decision, is that, how hard was that decision at the time? It would, we bit to make and then. The, my, my boss was retiring and I just saw this as a catalyst. The go rather than be the only one in the room now. So I thought, no, now’s the time will go. So it it happened that way and I think that’s what the universe does that to you gives you beat up the backside at times and, oh, now I’m out by myself.

And I did that for a couple years. I was not starving, but I wasn’t far from it because a lot of people saw me as financial services executive. And they, so that’s why I went to Ville. I was gonna say, people have a great way. Pigeonholing you. I do. And it’s it’s always a strange thing to me because particularly in this day and age now you hope that it happens less because there’s so much fluidity in the way that people move around.

But I know personally that I worked for a number of years as the communications manager for the largest funeral company in Australia, and I went to a recruitment company at the time and said. I’ve done this for a while. I wanna do something different. And they said, ah, okay, we’ll look for a job for you in the funeral industry.

Nice. See? And I went there’s literally one at the time, there is literally one job for a communications manager in the funeral industry in Australia, and I’ve had it for seven years. So do you think we could take me outta that box and put me somewhere else? I didn’t and didn’t end up getting the next job through the recruitment company.

Yeah. And soon enough led to me setting up my own business, but yeah. Yeah. Talk to me though about why Singapore, how did that happen for you? I thought I, I needed to probably get some education or some sort of, ’cause given Asia, I could see that’s where the growth is, but I just need a bit of education that sort of hint towards coaching.

So I went and did a masters in performance management at a UK university. Which is something my boss working and with him for time, he encouraged that and helped me with that. So I started that, started coaching, but when I went and so part of my dissertation for that, with some research I did in Hong Kong in Singapore, and when I was there, I thought, geez, this is probably where I could probably land.

No one knows mes, so I’m not gonna be pigeonhole. And that’s where the growth is for the region. Australia is on the edge of the region of the Asia Pacific region thing. Pause in the middle of it. So that’s when I went and I had my wish. I had wish no one knew me, but unfortunately no one knew me. I’m knocking on doors.

Naomi, who are you and what are you doing? Reason we. Yeah what sporting team de cope.

It was umbrella and that forms a lot of the, what I talk about that I’m writing about now, that quite a few people, Naomi, keep encourag me to do because it’s that belief yourself and what you want to do. Only thing that keeps you going. If you listen to your head, I would’ve Pat come back here go working for insurance company or bank again.

What? But I just have to go. It is just, and I, for 20 years, feast and F, you’d get a good project. Ironically, most of the good ones I had were back in Australia. US driven client, contractor, right? But in essence, it’s that belief. You just gotta, it’s that belief that I wanted to help people be better leaders, that all the people under their influence have better lives.

That was what kept driving me. That was my essential purpose. I think it’s so important to, to get this story because. To me there are a number of coaches that are out there. Not, there’s a small percentage, let’s just say that I think have been career coaches, and whilst there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s, I think it, it, to me it lands a lot more when.

Someone is coaching their particular area and you can see that they’ve had the experience in that area. And so what they’re bringing out is the experiences that they’ve had and offering it to other people and how to navigate that is a lot stronger one. So talk to me then, what has. Provoke the move back after 20 years.

And you’ve obviously established yourself, you’ve established, you’ve gone from not being known to obviously being known and having a network over there. So what makes you pack up your bags and move back to Australia? It’s a couple of reasons. The first one, see, I do, I was doing a lot of subcontracting work at this firm in the US and I do get a lot of work in age specific.

And I was certainly not in financial services. I probably coached 50% of the lease would be engineers working for construction companies, oil and gas, the goes on. But COVID hit, so a lot of that work disappeared. I was working on a project in Bangkok at the time. Come home for the weekend, never left.

So we, we completed that online, that job, but it, now they data wound it all down because r and gas and they were bleeding at the time before that. But then it was hard to enroll out of that. It’s interesting. So one of the reasons was that I was struggling to get momentum again, this is the feast in the family, right?

And like anything, when you challenged Challenge void, you learn a lot of life yourself. So I thought I had challenges leading up to that. But post COVID, it just seemed to happen more and more to calm up and down, and I was at the same time. Grandchildren in Australia which I’ve been divorced for quite a few years now, and I have another partner think of the right.

But my grandchildren are getting, are now getting older, asking once you come and watch me play cricket, granddad, or football or something. So I’m missing that. So I thought, no, I can go. So I was thinking about coming back and then. I was about to Stu 2024 with a full book of engagements looking to be all year thinking this could be the breakout here.

This can be, I’ve never had a hole yet and within a month every went to zero. Just about off. And my, a good friend crying who was. Me probably about 18 months of work CEO of the company. And I, and these are jobs I’d have three days a month or four days. A month. A month, whatever I sent out.

He even had to tell me, and I won’t go into the reasons, but they weren’t reasons you could make up. Yep. They’re all legit. And I told him the other one, he said, you can, he said. You cannot make that stuff up. And instead even what I’m telling you now, it’s a up, it’s things. It’s that happened, but very rarely.

So that all went within a month from the hero to zero. And I thought that’s the universe saying, Ross, go Australia because, so that’s where I come back. And I’ve just taken a bit of time to, yeah, spend a bit time with family and now I cranking up and I want to talk about that story because people like coach, the ones who keep coming and want to keep coming back, are the ones who connect with that desire and belief.

They have their sense of purpose as a leader, and so they keep coming back to more. More chat, more conversation convers. So that’s why they’re one saying one song and that’s happening in the background and we know that. And we look forward to talking about it when it’s when it’s done as well.

But, so let’s turn a little bit to the shift that you are making in terms of the style of coaching that you are doing. Moving away a little bit from the executive style coaching, which in itself, this is a question that I wanted to ask you, and particularly whether this is, you’re gonna see this in the shift that you’ve made.

There is a lot of this executive coaching idea. There’s and I find it fascinating that business owners and CEOs. And maybe some upper executive management. In larger companies, coaching is the norm. People get coaches. It is accepted thing that you should do. It is now. Yes. Yep. Personally I’ve had a co, I’ve had coaches for an, for a number of years that what’s interesting to me is.

Is there a lack of coaching that is happening at lower levels? Are people, is this being reserved just because you’re going to be, you’re a CEO or a business owner, you’re aiming to get that way. Is there a lack of coaching that happens at lower levels and particularly as you are seeing, moving from these executive coaching to more the more around self-belief and those kinds of ideas which have, everyone can benefit from.

Is there a gap there? Is there, there is a gap? I think the gap is probably getting a bit shorter. But certainly there’s still a gap. Like I’m not brought in to coach somewhat middle to lower management, but I’ve coached a lot. But that’s because I’m there coaching their boss. And he or she asked me, can you have a little chapter?

And I coach him because I sit in many leadership meetings with Tom coaching, a lot of walk arounds planned up, seeing behavioral challenges from everyone. So I’d end up doing, but it is more likely added hours to the bosses. Then having a separate account from John Smith or something. Mary Smith. Because they wouldn’t get through which budget. So they just, they’d worked out that way, which is rather unfortunate, by the way. I think that I think a lot of larger businesses miss the mark that if they can offer coaching. Opportunities to people who aren’t even in management positions or they might be in lower management positions, but that’s where the opportunity lies.

’cause if you can get so much more out of people when you pay attention to those people and steer them in the right direction, I definitely, looking back on it now, we spoke earlier about when I was communication manager in the funeral industry. I, I would massively have benefited from a.

Coach at the time, I was making a lot of stuff up as I went along the way and I think they would think, and I think I, think that I did a pretty good job at the time. It was a great learning curve, but I think there would’ve also other directions I could have gone and benefited if I’d have had that, coach alongside of me now not blaming the company. It was a, it was quite a few years ago, by the way. That’s it. It wasn’t as prevalent as it is today. Yeah, it is. Yeah. So talk to me about this shift that you’ve made from the sort of executive style coaching into more personal development.

What’s brought the passion out in that? ’cause it’s a little bit come out in your story, but what’s the passion for that? And where is this going? Where are the opportunities here? Actually come to be successful coaching executive is to start with their themselves and to lead themselves.

And where the most success was to when they can, when the light bulb will go on. Oh. So it’s me, so it’s me not everyone else. Yeah. It is you now let’s look at you and get that right and then let’s work on, on, on everyone and how you connect with everyone and so forth. So that’s where all went to.

So it was interesting, like when I started coaching, if I’d mention to someone that you should lead from within, so being so inspired, listen to you in yourself, guy. No mate, not me. What, how do I do with this evil? But that, over time, that changed and and that’s in about 2015. I started a business call, so as my lose, but I wouldn’t have, I wouldn’t have started that name earlier on.

It’s quite an interesting area when you start getting into this because. I guess the first question is how difficult to sell. Is it from the point of view that, do people have to recognize that they need this, personal development or. Because it’s a very, I was gonna say, because there’s a big difference between you coming on as a, as an executive coach, where people understand that need, okay, I wanna navigate, and do better in business.

And so they’re thinking more in terms of the business. Yeah. And then you turn it around and you go, okay, you need some help in this area. And that’s okay to make that transition when you’ve got a relationship with someone and you say, Hey, we’ve been working on this, but actually you need a bit of this.

To come out and start saying from the beginning saying, Hey, I’m here doing personal development. How many people are putting up their hands and saying, yeah, that’s me. I need this. I guess I’m not probably saying that so much. I’ll give an example of a personal coach, an engineer and a team of about a hundred in a quite a large company, and they asked me to case him.

There’s some challenges with the way he is, he dealt with people and et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, it’s, there’s a graveyard of coaches before me. Fuck. You don’t go there and say you need to leave from within. They’ve gotta take them there. You’ve gotta take them to within. We had an episode where he berated one of his staff, a lovely guy, about 28 years of age, and they have all desks in Pigpen type thing so everyone can see, and here everyone does.

So he comes out of his office, berates, this guy, I won’t go into it, but it’s and wandered off back in his office. That, that, that word came to me and my next chat I had with him asked him about it and he said he is gotta be, he’s gotta learn, he’s gotta be clear. So I thought I’d just do it out there.

That just makes him feel as though, be more motivated to, to do it. I’m telling him to do all, you, so I still go,

He’s a good fellow and everything. He’s very popular. He’s just had a baby. He’s got a 2-year-old son. So you yelled at him the other day. How do you think when he went home, and I can’t, I won’t mention the kid’s name, but I knew he knew the kid’s name. I said, so little Johnny comes up to his dads on his leg and say, how was your work day Daddy?

All small, little excited. How do you think he’s feeling? Why do you think he’s thinking himself at that moment? He, that it looked, it felt like about five hours, maybe about 10 seconds, and he said, yeah, I probably shouldn’t have done that, shouldn’t I? I probably shouldn’t yelled him like that. That’s taken him from his head when he thought it was clever to his heart when he thought, that’s not safe.

Clever. So you don’t say you’ve gotta go there, you just take people there. So whenever I want take people there, you start talking about things that’s close to their hearting and that then you try and kick them there and, so he went he apologized. Apologized, and he told everyone in a meeting how he shouldn’t have done that.

And he doesn’t wanna see anyone else do it. That’s huge. He’s still struggling. He still struggle, buddy. And I think this is the important thing to realize as well, that this is, it’s very much a journey. It’s not like going to the doctor. It is where, oh, I’ve got a, I’ve got a little bit of a cold grate here.

Take these Ill in two weeks and you’ll be better. It’s not quite the same as that. And, and it’s very easy to fall back into old habits. It’s it does, making these kinds of shifts is huge and it’s ongoing, but it’s being conscious of it. And it’s having someone such as yourself that you can confide in and say this is what happened this week.

And being called out for the things that maybe didn’t realize or being accountable for that in a different way, because that’s one of the hardest parts about. Leadership is having accountability. Plenty of people out there that’ll be listening to us now have got their own business. So there isn’t really any accountability as a business owner.

You’ve got team more than likely and you are trying to keep them in line, but who’s keeping you in line? That’s right. If it a thought coming in my head then you’re saying that Anthony a lot will say it, it’s my business. Or this is my team, right? So therefore I’m so on that guy as well.

If I sat down, worked out, I thought let’s look at it from the head perspective. And I looked and we worked out roughly what that costs him on the bottom line by that outbursts to that guy. Going about how to effect it, everyone else. They’re not working because all they’re doing feeling sorry for someone off, they lost half a day work for about 30 people because they were not working.

And if they were they making mistakes because they weren’t concentrating and the list goes on. So this is what business owners struggle. It, they, it’s their business, but they forget if you don’t stop and do these things well, you are paying people. To be only working at half the capacity or the key working 10% of capacity and your goes through the real frost because you are used to dealing with people working 56, 6% of, but they don’t get it.

They’ll put on two extra to cheat everything. Everything that you can. If they’re all you probably.

That’s, and you get a, the light bulb comes on. Others not so much. And it’s a difficult thing. So tell me, tell me a little bit about that. ‘Cause how do you get the light bulb to turn on for people? Does it have to be very personal? Do you have to listen to their stories and call them out on things and do it that way?

Or is there a way you can make people more aware from the outset? I think it’s everyone’s individual. Some you can read, I can read that they’re a bit open. So you can talk about those things more quickly. Others you work on and wait for cues where you can actually, ah, now’s the time. I think they’re, apron can listen to this, otherwise they’d have shut you down.

Yeah. It like, I had one lady. Singapore, it runs a very successful business, but she’s in the sixties and wanting to sell it. But see, because she’s got the business, she knows what everyone should be doing, and she’s got a hundred staff and she tells them he empowers them, but they know in reality, they go one step out of a small little box that.

I’ve been given to work in, they’ll get hammered. And I, when I told her at the beginning, I said, I’m happy to case you, but I said, the biggest challenge here is not your staff, it is you. Unless you are willing to open up and look at yourself. I don’t want the job. It’s a hiding to nothing. You’re paying me for a couple of months, you gonna say you work clear, see your off on your bike.

So I just didn’t take it. Years later, they’re still in the s still to trying to, no one wants to buy it. You now, once she leaves the skill’s not there. All the brains are gone. So they’re happy to pay, but a lot less than what she knows the business is worth when shit, she’s there working long hours, seven days a week.

Just, they don’t get it. It’s it’s a very difficult thing for people to let go. It is. That’s right. And how so let’s assume that she said yes and it’s a pity that she didn’t, how, you know and people in a similar situation. How do you coach that to get people to let go?

You just, every case, it’ll all depend on who they’re letting go. Work is work for the ones they. Probably respect the most. They’re more easily to let go and then work with them and discuss it with them. Get them to talk it out. What paranoia are they now feeling that they need to go in and poke their nose into what’s happening?

It’s just letting it stack bite lip ring and bear her. She’s getting over that and. Just helping them do that, helping with you. I think one of the, that’s the biggest experiences. I was gonna say, one of the biggest challenges I would imagine is that and I think every business owner has probably experienced this, is that you let go of something and it goes okay for a while, and then something happens and you’re forced to either pick up the tools and do it again.

Or, something goes wrong and it’s, that’s the point where it’s really hard to maintain that letting go and not going back into those old habits. Yes, I agree. And it depends on, on, on the situation and the person and discussing if something goes wrong here, sorry something goes wrong, what will it cost you?

What’s the worst case scenario? And sometimes it’s very little or sometimes it’s a lot. Then we have to put some parameters in. But it’s just how you talk to that person. You like, you might say, oh, look I’ll let look I feel confident in you answer to be doing this just because I know it’s a, it’s you’re eager and you’re keen to get this going.

I want you to learn. I wanna help you with my expertise, so I’ll check in on you. I’ll give you a call once every, whatever it’s gonna be, right? Yeah. And you get there, you get their permission. Look, you gotta do things to to ease that along. So he is not, you’re not going a let ’em have it and I’ll just be in the dark.

You are helping them tell you, and I might say, so Anthony, now that I’ve got this, I’ve got this task. You said you how you intend to t and you. And you ask questions. And you ask questions and then they give answers. You answers. That’s a good idea. Good idea. This just a thought, you’ve gotta work. You’ve get a garbage.

How serious.

So Ross, this whole idea of, recognizing when you need help, recognizing that it’s gonna be about you. These are really difficult areas. What can we suggest to people who are out there? Listen at the moment, who maybe they haven’t had a coach. Maybe they have had a coach in the past, but they haven’t really considered that the problem is them.

What do you say to those people? Let’s do some serious reflection. Reflection and listen to me cues and messages that sort of surround you. But the challenge, Anthony, when there is a listen in needed, the people are most blind to it. And it’s interesting that some people do need it, but suddenly something happens and they start to.

Change a little bit, make something happens in their life, they start to reflect more or whatever. Soon as that comes there, that’s the time to act, because something’s telling you that you need to be doing this, that, and that’s coming from, that’s your intuition saying, I, you need to be doing this. And, but a lot of people for bit until it gets louder and later.

But the key is if you get a little feeling, I should then reach out to someone, reach out to me, anyone, and just test, test the water. Test the water.

Then you start to realize what it is. It’s not me telling them what to do. It’s me helping all.

I think it’s a really challenging area. That you’re in, because I can see that there’s so much that you can give people. But getting them in the first place and getting people to put up their hand is always going to be the challenge. But once people are working with you.

What are the sort of the processes that you need to work through and is it a, is this a many year journey? Is it, once you start in, you’re saying really this is something we’re gonna have to continue to work with and work on four years to come or is this something where you can go we’ll be able to shift this in the next whatever period of time?

I guess depends what the challenge is. That could be a specific challenge to someone, or if it’s just an overall, I wanna be better at being me, type, sort of scenario. So it just depends on the person then? Depends. One person. It could take one month, three months, one, three months. Could be couple years.

I’ve coached pretty senior executives for a good few years before we, there’s nothing more you can do. You’re right. And some of them have come back occasionally, just a can. You have a chap. Chap, but generally there’s no set. Set. Depends on the person and situation. The context are. There’s some core areas that you would encourage people to start doing some self assessment with to see whether they’re in need of some extra support.

I, I, there’s some things that people can reflect on and do quite specifically to say, if I spend a bit of time on this, it’ll reveal whether I need something

probably right. You could the people who need something don’t usually go and fill anything in, and if they do, they only look for the, what’s the positive side of it. I’m not saying that’s everyone, but a lot of per, a lot of the personality tests I never really like doing because it puts people in a box, for example, right?

So I won’t go into a male one, one put in, put ’em in a box of being are task leader. This person, it was like a badge of honor. I’m a task leader. Beautiful. It’s, but I am stuck. Hey, you’d need to be task focused, but you also to, it’s not just one or the other. So I do it like, it’s like a mor a strength traits and we, strength and challenges traits, and just picks up your traits, ups when you have a really strong strength every trait has a yin and a yang, there’s an opposite trait. It’s it’s like I’m blunt or I’m diplomatic. Opposites in the way they communicate, the way they communicate, the keys can be a bit more balanced than you do it. And so that’s the to I get people to look at and I tell ’em, is any red mark, mark, you probably need to have a chat.

Most times they go, yeah, that’s me. So I’m more to get a chat to start the Little Bowl. I know we’ve gotta wrap things up in a moment or two, but there is just one other area that you’ve touched on a few times in here. So it’s one thing when you’re being, you’re working on yourself as a leader and it’s the impact that it has on the culture of the business.

And I know this is an area that you are passionate about as well. So talk to me about. Where we are going wrong in cultures? What people, what were the signs that people are missing? ’cause it comes from the top, doesn’t it? It does it, it has to be driven that way. It has to be driven that way.

It’s culture is just the way people behave at work. It’s what they’re do and say, work and cultures are driven by the leader, but by the consequences. The consequences of people’s actions. That’s what drives them. So if you do something well and you get encouraged, encouraged and pat it on the back in, in a way, you’ll do it again because you’re proactively doing it again.

But if you get bere embarrassed, like that example I was telling you, that doesn’t mean to say they run, do it again. They may not do that particular thing that particular. They’re so paranoid. They make a thousand other, HES, they don’t, they’re not, they don’t have any confidence. And so the consequences drive the culture and the more toxic it is, because those consequences, the harder and tougher, and it’s always around verbal or human.

Human sort of challenge. It’s yeah. Yeah. If you put your finger in a fan and it gets cho off, you’re smart enough to not to do it again, right? But you want people, if they do a good job, keep doing it. And the more they keep doing it, the less you have to, and you can get onto doing what you do, but they just don’t get.

So the more you spend time encouraging people to keep going, and if they make a mistake making mistake. It’s a debrief. It’s debrief. They don’t get Belgian for it. The military do it politically politic. They have a problem with their, whether they win or lose, they have a debrief. No one gets blamed.

Blame. They just debrief. Debrief. Did that go wrong long? Yeah, that’s. It’s very simple. And it’s, and it is a lesson that many don’t learn. I’m very grateful for the fact that I had a boss many years ago that said to me, pretty much, look, we are human. We are gonna make mistakes. How you respond to the mistakes is everything, including if you make a mistake, come in, own up to it, and by the time you leave the office, I’ll have forgotten about.

There won’t be a blame game for that. It’ll just be, we’ll deal with it in there and then you’ll walk away and we’ll get on with the next things. And he was very true to his word on that. In fact, we are still very much in contact. I think it partly as a result of that, and it’s been a long time.

Been longer than both of us care to remember. And it’s, it’s a wonderful thing to learn that very early on and to give people that security as well as saying, Hey, if you make a mistake and you make it once it’s fine, but own up to it. Don’t try and cover up, but also work out how we’re gonna deal with it.

Because how you deal with it is everything. And I’ve certainly been. Privy to some stories where things have not been dealt with in a particular way. They’ve ended up in newspapers and courts as a result of it. Not something that I was involved with, but other companies and things that I was very aware of were going on.

And it’s you go, why would you do that? And people trying to cover up. And at the end of the day, all it was people trying to cover up the mistakes because they didn’t have the confidence to go and say, I made a mistake. And no matter how big that mistake is, it’s like owning up to it, learning from it, and moving forward.

But you’ve gotta create the atmosphere for that to happen. That’s right. And that’s the environment that const, that’s driven by the consequences. Consequences or how everyone behaves that if you’re saying, we got, we Little couple of, only a couple of seconds to wrap up. There’s one thing I ask people, and yet you gave the perfect example there.

See your bob if you remember the most was a good one. Yep. You forget all the up. Yeah, we had a few. I’ve had a few. That’s what I’m saying. One good one stands there like bloody. Yes. Yep. So I asked executives, I said, look, what do I want you to do for me? Write down how you want your staff to describe you as a leader.

And Right, and I’ve never had anyone ever ride down. I wanna be known as an absolute bastard.

A, it’s always nice you say down and say, what are you gotta do? 365 days, 24 hours a day in order for people to destroy me that way. And then it gets to people once they work, an hour one do it. And I, one had a checklist, looked every hour, every time she’s at work. All time. She turned her, the leadership around for being not very popular to being one of the most popular because she did exactly to what she had to do.

So they’d describe it that way. Being motivated to be better. Others talk about it, don’t do it. But if you can do that breathing, it’s no different to starting. Write down how you want your. Partner described you, your wife, asked wife, what are you gonna do them to describe me that way? Belong. Now you gotta do it.

Put you on notice to do the, that you need to do to be that your utopian over can be true. Like that good lady pad. He did the right things. He did the right things. Hence you’re still in contact with him and you always have bring a smiley face. Yeah. Hear his name right? Absolutely.

Absolutely. Which reminds me, I’m supposed to catch up with him, so I better send that note out to him. Before too long. Just to wrap things up, I have a question that I like to ask all of my guests who come onto the program. What’s the aha moment that people have when they come to work with you that you wish more people knew they were going to have?

It’s when. Oh yeah. I guess the light bulb comes on. It’s like that example I gave you ago when he said to me, yeah, I probably shouldn’t have said that. Probably shouldn’t have said so that point, yes, that’s a breakthrough. I’ve had a lot of those type of moments. That’s when you think, yeah, that’s workers.

I hadn’t worked with him, he’d still be yelling, abusing people, and everyone’s life is hell right there. I think that is a wonderful way to end it. Really fascinating discussion, A great journey that you’ve been on, and some really insightful comments I think about how people can recognize that they’re the problem.

I need to start working on it. Thank you so much for being part of the program, Ross. Thanks for the conversation, Nancy Conversation. Alright, and to everyone listening in, of course, we will give you all the details on how to get in touch with Ross in the show notes. We look forward to your company next time on Biz Bites for thought leaders.

Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Hey, thanks for listening to Biz Bytes. We hope you enjoyed the program. Don’t forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Biz Bytes is proudly brought to you by podcast done for you, the service where we will deliver a podcast for you and expose your brilliance.

To the world. Contact us today for more information, details in the show notes. We look forward to your company next time on Biz Bytes.

From hospital to 34% profit will waitress on EOS success. Welcome to another episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Anthony Pearl, and today we’re sitting down with Will an EOS implementer who learned about the entrepreneurial operating system the hard way. He had a stress induced health crisis that landed him in hospital that led him to learning about how EOS.

Can make a major impact on a business. He took his marketing company from chaotic and overwhelming to a high performing team that increased its profit from six to 34% and now functions without him. So he just focuses on EOS implementing. In a business there are 136 simultaneous issues that are happening, and six components that actually solve them all.

That is some of the gold that you’re gonna learn from Will in today’s episode. It’s one that if you are running a business that has a couple of million dollar profit to a hundred plus profit, then this is perfect for you because you no doubt have teams and you no doubt have issues and blind spots that you don’t even know about yet.

So stay tuned for this episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Biz Bites. And once again, we are traveling to the other side of the world and I’m delighted to say we have Wheel Tres joining us today where it’s well as we are recording this, it’s evening your time. It’s middle of the day my time. Welcome to the program.

Thanks Anthony. Great to be here with you today. So we’ve got a lot of topics we’re going to cover today, I just know, but why don’t we start by asking you just to introduce yourself to everyone. Sure. So currently I am an EOS implementer. That’s the Entrepreneurial Operating System. There’s a book out there called Traction, which is pretty well known in the business community, but how I got here is an.

A whole nother story. It’s very interesting. I own a company. I started it about 15 years ago and it grew rapidly to the extent that I had some health issues come up. The stress of that chaos and so many moving parts just really took a toll on me and the leadership team, in fact, and I found myself in the hospital and they thought it was pretty scary actually.

They thought I was having a stroke, and so they did all these tests. Ultimately, they determined that it was all stress induced. And after that incident, I set out on a mission to create a healthier business and a healthier life, and I came across that book Traction. Reddit made a lot of sense to me, so I hired an EOS implementer and worked with him for a couple of years, and it was transformational.

The business continued to grow, but morale improved. We used to feel like we were herding cats every day. We turned into this high performance, healthy functioning team, and net profit went from 6% to 34%. And needless to say, I fell in love with this whole EOS thing. And along the way it also created a lot of freedom for me as the owner of the company.

So about three and a half years ago, I stepped away. I still own the company passively now. I meet with the CEO once a month. Run through financials and support him as I can. But all I do now is help other business leadership teams implement EOS in their companies, help them gain traction in their companies, create companies that are aligned and healthy and moving toward their clearly defined vision.

Super thankful to be where I’m at today doing what I’m doing. And and you’re part of that story now too, just spreading the good word, that there is hope, that there is a way to wrangle this crazy thing we call business. Yeah. There is so much that goes on in a business and you are absolutely right that it’s hard with so many different things coming at you from multiple different angles.

And it’s sad in a sense that you know the story of. A health crisis is often what we see as what. Is the determiner of making a significant change in a business. And I was actually just leading a forum just before we spoke, and one of the big things that we were talking about in that forum was around the ability to break habits and the fear that’s attached to making change that really comes to the fore.

And I think that’s the one thing when you have a health crisis like you did, it makes you, it forces you to stop. But I’m just interested as well as how often when you encounter businesses, are they really ready to make that significant change? That’s a great point, Anthony, because the reality is that we’re all on our own journey and business leaders, entrepreneurs we’re all on our own individual path toward.

Success or fulfillment or whatever it is. And what I, my experience has been that some people are very goal oriented. They’re very driven. They have a clear picture of where they’re trying to go, and that drives them forward to making whatever changes are necessary. And I would also say this, that I think we all function at times in that manner.

However, there’s also. Times where there is so much pain, there is so much pressure and stress that we know that we come to this place of, let’s call it disgust. We just realize that something is going to change. I’ve had it and I am going to make a decision. And so that pain inst insti, instigates, if you will, or inspires or initiates a change or a willingness to make change.

And so in, in my instance, it was the pain that drove me to make significant changes in the business and the way I was running the business. But you’re right that so often I think that’s the reality for a lot of people. It’s just they get to a place where they’ve said, I’ve had it and I’ve gotta do something different.

And I’ll say this too, that until people reach that point, it’s really hard to help ’em. They say when the student is ready, the teacher appears. And if someone’s just determined to just keep trying, to figuring it out on their own and just keep hitting their head against the wall or trying different things, I get it.

There’s power and persistence and perseverance. That’s real. That’s important. But when something is not working and you’ve tried everything, to do. At some point, you have to be willing and open to look at things in a different way. And until you’re ready to do that, I don’t, I’m not sure that there’s much hope.

Yeah. And, but it is, as I said it’s sad that sometimes it’s something outside that crashes, outside of your control, at least that crashes that causes that. And so how many of the people that you are dealing with that, that have become clients or that you’ve helped along the way?

Have had some kind of external forced, we need to take a look at this. Yeah. So I’d. I would say all of them in one way or another. Not all of them, certainly not a health crisis, but there is enough pain in the organization that they’ve realized we need intervention. And that’s really, in a way, what I do.

I am intervention. I, this is someone stepping in and helping them to figure this out. Help equip them, teach them, show them a better way. All of them have come to their, to that point, or honestly, they’re not a good fit. I, I. Would not want to work with someone who feels they’ve got it figured out and they don’t want or need help.

That’s just not a win-win situation. And so I would say all of my clients in one way or another, what, whatever has happened. So I’ll give you a few examples. So one, one client he has a family. He’s got family in the business, family on the leadership team. He’s getting older and he’s in his.

Mid sixties and he’s thinking, you know what? I wanna step away and spend more time with the grandkids. But he and his wife are a little concerned about what’s gonna happen to the business. He’s the source of knowledge. He’s the one who started it, let’s say 25 years ago. He’s a little worried about what’s gonna happen to the company when he steps away, becomes less involved and hands it all over to his kids.

And so he’s wanting to institute some framework, some foundation, some structure to the organization that ensures his legacy. And so that might not be a pain in the sense that the sky is falling, but he’s recognizing that his. Priorities are shifting and he has concerns about what’s gonna happen, how do they navigate that?

So that’s one example. Another client had cash flow issues. A great company been around for a long time, but they’re working their tails off and just don’t have enough profit at the end of the day to show for all of the work that they’ve done. And so that’s a very real pain point.

And and I’ll give you one more client example. One, also another gentleman in his. Late sixties it was working just 70 hours a week. And at that stage of life, the 70 hour work weeks get old. And so he’s just wanting to create some. Space, some margin, some freedom of time and what he had been trying to do or trying to handle whatever he was trying to do to handle that wasn’t working.

And so that’s, he’s bringing in EOS to help him manage that. So those are just some examples of the, you’re talking about the pain what maybe triggers someone or inspires someone to want to use something like EOS? Those are a few examples. Suppose the important thing for people listening in now is to recognize.

When they might be in pain or that they’re heading towards it. I think that’s the thing is you don’t actually want to have to wait for that pain to come. You want to recognize that it’s coming and and try and get in front of it because it, I imagine for you it was a lot harder to react when you go, okay, I have a health issue now.

And so now I need to respond, but now you are managing the health issue and managing a significant change in a business. So two significant changes in your day-to-day living that’s hard to manage. Yeah, it compounds and the body’s keeping score, whether you realize it or not, in the background. It’s paying attention to all the stress and.

And all of the chaos, sometimes it goes into the business. So yeah, that it’s much better to see it coming and hit it off at the pass. It’s so much better. And I’ll say this I love entrepreneurs. I love the entrepreneurial spirit because they see an opportunity and they just figure it out.

They just jump in headlong and try to add value to the world. And I love that entrepreneurial spirit and. Part of the reason they’re successful is that they do just figure it out. They just grab a piece of this and a piece of that, and they’re just bringing it all together, creating this business, and that is a wonderful thing.

It’s a beautiful thing. Honestly, the issue is that as we say, what got you here won’t get you there. And so you cannot continue to grow a company in that manner. At some point, you need to have a business operating system, and I’m not talking about software. I’m talking about how do you function as a business and if you’re not intentional with that, you’ll wind up with this Frankenstein.

You’ve got multiple operating systems all trying to work together and communicate different languages. Different approaches, different words that mean different things. And so having a single business operating system is what really allows you to create simplicity, because prior to that, you’re just at piling on complexity.

As the business grows, as you add people, as you add services, whatever the business becomes more and more complex. So simplicity is. Is very valuable. It’s a very important thing. And so having a single business operating system that’s simplified allows you to grow and create the freedoms that you’re seeking in the business.

I wanna delve into that in a moment, but I do wanna ask you just first, how important do you think it is for you to have gone on your own journey and discovered not only EOS, but. Discovered how to implement it in your own business and the impact that it makes, how different is that approach to someone going, oh, here’s a great tool I’ve never actually implemented on my own business, but I’m gonna.

Implemented on lots of others, which without denigrating a lot of coaches, a lot of coaches have, the only business they’ve ever known is a coaching business. So they’ve not actually had an opportunity to build something for themselves and show how it’s being delivered. And you’ve done that, so how important do you think that has been in the success of what you’ve had?

Yeah, so for me it was the price of admission. Meaning that that was my path. And I’ll say this, I would never want to knock someone who did it, the whole that’s a wonderful story to tell is that I saw other people’s mistakes. I learned from other people’s mistakes, and I decided to do it the right way from the beginning.

And that’s a wonderful story. And an example, although I’ll say there is also a lot of value and just. Empathy. I think people feel when they see that, okay, someone has learned the hard way and they’ve paid some prices of admission and learned some lessons that I can now benefit from and learn from.

And so to answer your question, I’d say it’s very important. It’s been very important to me. I think it’s relatable. Most business owners and leaders have made mistakes, have, done some things that have been. Really painful, and they can relate to that and they understand that. And it’s been a big important part of my story.

With that in mind, let’s give everyone a little bit of a background to the business that you had, that you were involved in on. Say you, you’re still involved with it to, to a lesser extent today. Give us a paint, a little bit of a picture about that business at and at the time, what it was looking like.

Yeah, so it’s a marketing company that specializes in emerging franchise brands, so multi-location businesses throughout the US and Canada. And at the time I have had a wonderful, I’d call him a right hand man a real executive, like a operations executive. His name is Bruce. And he is just been a wonderful aid and a help in managing the company.

The problem though was that he and I were often not on the same page. And in retrospect, I see now that I’m more of a visionary type leader. I have great I come up with the ideas and I chase shiny objects and one month I love this, and the next month I love that I’m making all the promises.

He’s finding himself having to fulfill all the promises that I’m making. And so there was a lot of just stress around not being on the same page with basic things like the organizational. We call the accountability chart. In other words, who ex who is doing what in the organization? What’s the right structure for our company?

What’s the simplest and best way to arrange all of these people? Who is responsible for which area? You would think that would be obvious? But at the time it was not clear. And so balls were getting dropped. And deadlines were getting missed, and I would continue to try to sell, and he’s trying to do, create efficiency and processes and account profitability.

And so it was not great. And the staff could feel that tension as well, because they weren’t really, I would say one thing and he would might say another thing because the, I would have a great vision of something, but he would have the more realistic version of that. And so there was not a lot of alignment across the organization.

So that’s what it, that’s what I was dealing with at the time prior to us embarking on our EOS journey. So you discover EOS, how do you go about implementing? What did that journey look like? So as any entrepreneurial spirit would probably do. I read the book and tried to do it all myself. I just, nobody’s ever done that before.

Surely not. Yeah. Yeah. It’s I like tos, a couple of YouTube videos. And then it’s all fine. Exactly. Exactly. I, it’s like learning how to play golf by watching YouTube videos and then picking up a golf club and expecting to go out there and hit the ball just perfectly straight after you’ve watched a dozen videos.

Doesn’t quite work like that, sadly. And so I realized, sadly, I wish it worked. So I, I realized that. There was a lot of value in having someone walk us through the process, and so we, we worked with an US implementer at the time and he walked us through the exercises and coached us and trained us and.

Watched what we were doing, gave us feedback and really helped us hone and lean into the EOS process, adopt the tools. And the further that we went, the more clarity that there was, the more alignment there was. We’re all on the same page at a clear picture of success. Looks like. We knew who exactly was accountable for what we were using.

The scorecard at a leadership team level, paying attention to the handful of key numbers that the leadership team needed to be looking at every single week to know what was going on in the business. Just as a few small examples. So that was a, it was a great process for us, a great learning. And I realized, this is funny.

I was actually talking with someone earlier today about this. As a marketing company, some of our clients were in the medical industry and so talking with doctors, very smart, very intelligent people, and at the same time, while they were brilliant in their field, they were. Maybe sometimes very ignorant as it came to marketing.

We would be just surprised, wow you’re really good at what you do, but you’d really have no clue how this marketing thing works. And so the point is that we had blind spots. Everyone has blind spots. Business owners as well. So what I’ve found is that even great entrepreneurial leaders and leadership teams have blind spots.

They’re in the weeds, they’re in the forest. There’s so much going on in the day to day, and they don’t have enough perspective. They don’t have just a simple tool set, some very simple things that can help them and they don’t realize that they’re missing these very simple things. And yeah, that, that’s been very funny to watch.

It’s I’ll sometimes I’ll work with a leadership team. And this is what’s interesting. I actually don’t need to know a ton about their specific business because what I’m working on them is how they run their business as a business operating system. So they might be talking for 10 or 15 minutes and all this jargon.

That’s internal language of these, but I’m not paying attention to that. I’m paying attention to how they’re talking together, how they’re working together as a team. I’m paying attention to some simple mechanics that are really. Foundational, they sit below their area of expertise. So anyways, it’s just interesting how all of us have blind spots.

It’s interesting how a simple set of tools that help you run your business better can be so obvious but many teams are just unaware that take an external person to recognize the blind spots. Yes. Yes. That was my point. Thank you. I had kinda lost track of what, where I was going with that, but yes.

An external perspective that can look on, look in and say, Hey guys, what about this? And what about that? And go, oh yeah, that’s a great idea. Why didn’t we think of that? Yeah. It’s a big thing for business to actually realize the, where the, that they have a blind spot and where that actually is and.

That they may not also be the best people qualified to fix it either. I think that’s the important bit. It’s all very well to, I’m sure you experienced as a marketing company to point out that hey, you don’t have a clue around marketing, but you can’t just give it to them and expect that they will then be able to implement it themselves.

You actually, you actually have to get in and get your hands dirty. Yes. And with EOS there’s a lot of what we say put in the reps. In other words, it’s using the tools. You’ve got to get your hands dirty. You’ve got to use the tools, get the practice using those tools for you to really understand.

And even once you start using the tools, you need some feedback. Ev. Every great athlete has a coach, sometimes multiple coaches, and I would say high, all of the high performers of the world have some coach in their life that’s giving, offering them an objective perspective, helping them see things that they can’t see when they’re in the game.

And and so that’s a big part of EOS is getting some feedback are we doing this right? The, and it feels messy. It feels awkward to them. It’s a new tool set. It’s a new language they’re adopting. Within their organization and it feels awkward. And so to have someone say, yep, that’s right here, watch this, watch out for that is, is really valuable to them.

Tell me at a high level, someone’s going, okay, what is the CEOS thing at a very high level? What am I going to get out of it? Yeah, so EOS is a simple. Tool set. It’s a complete system and it helps people get what they want from their business, which could be different things. But the three main things that I like to say are vision, traction, and healthy.

So number one, it helps them get on the same page with where is this company going and how do we plan to get there? So a clear vision. Traction means instilling discipline and accountability first in the leadership team level so that they’re executing really well on every part of your vision. And then healthy means helping the team to become a more healthy, functional, cohesive leadership team.

Because leaders often don’t function well as a team. And what we found is as goes the leadership team, so goes the rest of the organization. So we get to the point where everyone in the company is crystal clear, all aligned with where we’re trying to go. They’re gaining consistent traction. Everywhere you look in the company, people are making progress toward that vision and they’re doing it as a group of people who enjoy the work they do and the people that they’re around.

And so vision, traction, healthy is really what EOS delivers. The way it delivers it is just with a complete set of really simple, practical tools. So let’s talk about then going into a business in the first instance. What are you looking for to start things off, to know where you’ve gotta go?

Do you mean in, in terms of a perspective eeo, so is someone ready for EOS or Yeah. Someone you as an EOS consultant going into a business, how do you, what are you observing? What are you looking for that is knowing what are the directions you want to go? Because I understand that someone, can look at their business and go, we have some pain points here.

We potentially have some blind spots. We have things that are not working as well as they would like. I understand that an, this system can deliver for us, but they probably don’t know where to go. So how do you know where to go? Gotcha. So I’ll come at this from a couple of different angles.

First of all, at the very beginning, I’m looking for a leadership team that’s growth oriented, that is more afraid of the status quo than they are of change. They do want to grow and change, and they’re willing to be open and honest and vulner vulnerable with themselves and the people that are around them because it takes a leadership team being open and honest with one another to really grow and go where get where they want, where they’re trying to grow to go.

So with that said, EOS, the process is very prescriptive, it’s very defined. There is a set of meetings and agendas and the, it’s, there’s, I don’t know how many, there’s, I think 34,000 companies working with an EOS implementer now around the world. So it’s, there’s actually I think a couple hundred thousand companies using the tools.

So it’s. It’s proven. My point is that it’s a very proven process. The results have been seen over and over again. And over time they’ve, EOS worldwide has been very intentional and careful to curate and find the best way to implement EOS inside of a company. So with that, we have a really clear process.

There’s a journey mapped out. Here’s what we do. The first step is a 90 minute meeting. I have a very clear agenda what happens on the 90 minute meeting, and then there’s focus day, and then there’s vision building day one, and then vision building day two, and then there’s quarterlys. All of these meetings have very clear agendas, very, we introduce a tool at, in a certain meeting in a certain way and assign certain homework after and so all that to say.

What we found is there’s a foundation that has to be built regardless of what the pain points are right now today. There’s a path to get there that requires a foundation to be laid and so that you can solve that problem. So us. What Gino Wickman, when he started creating Geo Us, he saw that these entrepreneurial leadership teams tend to struggle with 136 issues simultaneously, but to the degree you can strengthen the six key components of your business.

All of those 136 issues tend to fall into place because they’re actually symptoms of a true root cause rooted in one of those six key areas. And so the EOS journey is a journey to strengthen those six key components of your business. That’s what gets you everything that you want from the business. You want to focus on all of the noise and putting out all the fires, and that’s fine.

You’ve gotta do some of that. But what has to happen is we must go to the root. We must lay a real foundation so that you stop having the fires to begin with. So going to, from fire, fighting to fire prevention take some time and due diligence. And so the journey you asked. How do I know where to start?

We started the same spot with every single client and get them a firm foundation built upon which they can then build the rest of their business and solve all of those pain points that they’ve been working through. Imagine for many businesses. The dilemma here is that we’re working on some foundations, but yet.

We want to be running at the other end of things. We want more business. We want it to be growing at a faster rate, and this potentially slows it down because you’re reexamining the base, which can lead to other things. I’m sure as a, from a marketing perspective, branding can be a an outcome of all of this.

Because if fundamentally the vision and many of the. Those base components have changed. It may change how you market the business. And branding could be an impact of that, which is inevitably gonna slow down what they want to be doing and running at the other end. So how do you balance those two?

Because it’s not a, this is not a, you’re not talking about something that is a, couple of weeks process here. It is not a quick fix. It, I, most of my clients work with me for about two years. So it’s about a two year journey. To get those six key components strong. So it is not a quick fix, and that’s hard for some entrepreneurs that are fast paced and to live in this microwave world that we live in.

We want it right now. We want everything right now. But I’ll tell you that while it takes a couple of years and while it is a bunch of work, the payoffs are worth it. It is amazing to have a company that’s healthy, clear vision, strong team, energized team, healthy culture. It’s worth the weight.

All, some recipes you throw it in the microwave and it comes out. Two minutes later, other recipes, you cook all weekend. And I guarantee the meal that’s been cooked all weekend is much higher quality, much more enjoyable than the one that came out from the Wake av. Great analogy, isn’t it?

And it’s funny too because you often look for, you watch any of the cooking shows always fascinates me. The amount of preparation and thing that goes into this meal and people consume it in. A minute or two when you go, it just took three, four hours, sometimes longer to prepare this thing.

And that’s by someone who is an expert. So if you’re not an expert, it probably took you a day or two you say to get there. But the feeling that you have at the end of it is significantly more joyous. And the and in part that’s because of the quality of what you’ve turned out as well. Yes. And they say big shirt, big ships turn slowly.

Sometimes companies have a lot of bad habits, and when you’re changing culture, when you’re changing who the company is at the fabric, the core of who they really are, that’s not something that happens overnight. That’s, that takes a process. Yeah. And so what’s it like for the businesses that are dealing with you over that period of time?

Do they, do they fall into that routine and respect the fact that it is a two year process? Or is there that tension of can we go faster? There’s so two years is the average. Some do it faster, some do it slower. And that’s fine there. Each one is at their own pace. It’s funny, I’ll say within a leadership team, typically the founder of the visionary is saying, oh, can we just speed this up?

Can we just move faster? Why are we still talking about this? They wanna move on. And there’s other key leaders on the team who are going, whoa, wait, we just made a decision. Hold on. We need to talk and do all this due diligence and research. And so there’s tension even within the team. Some feel we’re moving too fast, some moving feel, we’re moving too slowly, and my encouragement to them is trust the process.

Tens of thousands of companies have gone through this exact same process, stick with me, and it doesn’t take long for them to see, by the. By the second session they’re realizing, oh, okay. There’s a lot more going on here than I might have realized. And so it takes time to practice. It takes time to put in the reps to make fundamental shifts in the organization.

And I think they respect that. And I do have to encourage them to trust the process along the way, but it’s not a, usually a big battle. I think more of the tension happens maybe within the team. Some as I said, feeling we’re going too slow, some too fast. Let’s maybe look at some of these six different areas that you go through.

What are some tips across each of those that people might be more or less to look out for? Because we say we are not telling people that they can do this themselves, but what are some things that they might be looking out for to recognize if they’ve got problems in those six key areas?

Yeah, so there’s actually a fantastic tool. It’s called the organizational checkup, and if you were to just Google it and just do a search for EOS organizational checkup, it’s 20 questions and you just, and those, there’s those are designed and that’ll reveal to you how well you’re doing in each one of those six key areas.

That would be a great. Just exercise or tool for really any leader to go through. The six key areas are the vision component. Is everyone crystal clear on where we’re going and how we’re trying to get there? The second one is the people component. Do we have the right people in the right seats?

Right People or people who fit the culture like a glove. You love having them around. Having them in the right seats means they excel at their work. They have the. Excuse me. The God-given talent, the drive, the desire, the capacity to do the job well. That’s the second one, the people component. The third component is the data component that’s running the business on facts and figures, making so sure that we’re using objective information to make our decisions versus in most entrepreneurial companies make decisions based on hunches and egos and subjective feelings.

The fourth key component is the issues component, and that’s just making sure that your people are really good at solving problems as they arise. You can’t really grow a great company if your people aren’t great at identifying issues and then knocking ’em down, making ’em go away for good. The fifth key component is the process component, which is.

Making sure that all the important stuff in the business is getting done the right and best way every single time. That’s what creates scalability, profitability, makes the business a lot more fun to run and manage when everything’s being done the right and best way. And then the last, the sixth. Key area is what we call traction, and that’s bringing the vision down to the ground and executing on it day in and day out.

And within each one of those six key areas, we’ve got a couple of tools or disciplines that we use that helps strengthen those areas in the business. But the starting point that the assessment I would say or the. Best way to understand how you’re doing is to start with that organizational checkup and it’s free, it’s online.

It would take probably less than five minutes for any leader to, to fill that out. Typically, what kind of businesses are you working with? They are privately held, typically two to $50 million US dollars in annual revenue. Typically 10 to 250 employees. And as I said their leaders are growth oriented.

They are willing to be open and honest and vulnerable with themselves and the people around them. And they want to grow. They are seeking change. They know that there’s a better way to run their business. We start to wrap things up a little bit. I wanted to get some insights on a couple of different levels from you.

You’ve talked about some of those six different areas. Is there a a note for people that are listening in now saying. I think I should, you know that says that they should look at EOS as something they should be doing. Is there a trigger point aside from the ones that we talked about at the beginning, which are the crisis points?

Is there something where you can say, you need to get in advance of this. It’s better to move now rather than wait a year or two when something might happen. Yeah, so a lot of the issues we see are people issues. So whether that’s turnover, a lot of turnover sometimes it’s drama, just a lot of tension on the leadership team.

Sometimes it’s accountability when it comes to people. You feel like you come together, you make a decision, but then it just never gets executed on fully. You don’t see things being finished out completely. And so people. Is one area profit. I mentioned earlier, sometimes you’re working really hard, but there’s just not enough profit at the end of the day to show for all of your hard work.

Other times there’s a lot of stress or chaos because things are not being done the right way consistently. So I mentioned that process component. It’s funny when. When I was running my marketing company, I read a book, I forget the name of it, but I got really excited about processes.

I thought, man, if we just created a process for every single area of the business, everything would be done the right way, and all these problems would go away. And I had the right idea, but my way of executing on that was very poor. I. I wound up creating hundreds of pages along with a team, hundreds of pages of processes, and by the time we were finished, the first ones were outdated and nobody was using them to begin with, and they were in a Google Drive folder.

So within EEO s we’ve got a really effective way, an entrepreneurial approach to systemizing a company. And so anyway if you feel like there’s not consistency in the organization, the customers are not getting the same consistent experience or product or you just know internally, there’s a lot of inefficiency in the way things are getting done that’s another symptom or pain point or a tip that someone might realize, okay, we might need to adopt something like EOS to help us become more consistent.

I wanted to ask you, and this is a probably a significant topic that we can only scratch the surface on, but I’m intrigued about the role of technology. There’s a lot of chatter about ai of course, but that’s not the sole piece of technology. How much of a role is technology playing both in the, building up to a crisis point of needing to change and also EEO S’S intersection with that in terms of how is it using technology to help improve the business?

Yeah so what’s so interesting about US is that it’s industry agnostic, first of all. So it doesn’t really matter what the business does, it sits below your area of expertise. We all mentioned, we mentioned earlier we have these blind spots in these areas where unaware of. But secondly, I would say that technology is.

Neither good nor bad. It is how you use it. It is what’s done with it that matters. And so AI is great. I use AI every day. The marketing company, every role within that marketing company uses AI as a tool every day. But within EOS, it’s what I would say EOS is a people management system. And so AI can help, technology can help with that, but at the end of the day, it’s a bunch of people working together to accomplish a goal.

Technology will change, but how people work together, having a clear aligned vision, having clear accountabilities, having discussions to solve issues together as a team, those things aren’t so dependent on technology, and so I encourage my clients to use ai. We in the session room when I’m meeting with them, we don’t use technology at all.

In fact, we’re using paper and pen because of the distraction that it tends to be. We put the cell phones away, they’ll close the laptops, and we’re just fully present, fully engaged with one another. And that’s important. It’s been interesting to watch AI unfold. AI can help you create processes in your company, for example.

That’s a great tool, but AI is not going to call John out when he shifts in his chair a little bit. When Sarah says something, that’s my job as an EOS implement. John, I saw the look what’s with the look. Sarah said such and such and now we’re getting some, now we’re getting to the root of some real things.

That’s a team health issue perhaps, and that’s what us really helps teams do is get clear aligned, open and honest and measuring progress, those types of things that technology’s a merely a tool that can enhance that. So much stuff in everything that you’ve talked about there. I wanna ask you the question that I ask all of my guests on the program, what is the aha moment that clients have when they come to work with you that you wish more people would know They’re going to have?

I wish leaders realize, realized that. Regardless of what their business does, they’re ultimately in the people business, and especially as leaders, your job is to get work done vicariously through your team. You’re less a technician now and more a people person. Your job is the people business and. When you realize that you’re in the people business, you see your job differently, you realize how important it is that we clearly communicate that we have an aligned vision, that we’re aligned with the vision, that we hold one another accountable, and that we have open, honest conversations.

How we work and function together as a team is so important because most companies. Focus on strategy. They focus on how we can deliver the product better. They don’t often work on the health of the company. They focus on the performance, but not on the health. And so if leaders realized how important and how simple that can be, it’s.

It doesn’t have to be complex, doesn’t have to be complicated, but it has to be a priority. They have to be very intentional as to designing a culture and a team that is healthy. And Patrick Lencioni, in his book, the Five Dysfunctions of Teams, and he’s written several other books that are wonderful, is a great read.

I would recommend that to anyone. But that at the end of the day, what I think most of these teams realize is the power of being open and honest with one another and being a healthy team and how that gives them a tremendous advantage in the marketplace. Thank you so much. Will there is so many great insights that people will gain from listening to this conversation.

I know I certainly have. It’s a process I think is the most important thing that people need to understand and that EOS is something that you should jump on. Sooner rather than later for your business. ’cause if you see any of those warning signs at all, it’s never too early to get on board and do those things.

So thank you for enlightening everyone about EOS and about sharing your story as well. And I really appreciate you being part of the program. I know it’s been a privilege to talk with you and just have a great conversation. I learned as I talk sometimes just, fleshing things out. So I really appreciate your questions and the way that you phrase to those.

And it was a great to have great to have a good conversation with you today. Fantastic. Thank you so much for being part of the program. And of course, we will include in the show notes all the information on how to get in contact with Will, and we remind everyone, of course to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

And we look forward to your company next time on Biz Bites for thought leaders. Hey, thanks for listening to Biz Bytes. We hope you enjoyed the program. Don’t forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Biz Bytes is proudly brought to you by podcast done for you, the service where we will deliver a podcast for you and expose your brilliance.

To the world. Contact us today for more information, details in the show notes. We look forward to your company next time on Biz Bytes.