Alex Swire-Clark: 0:00
We’ve got to get to a point where people are not spending emotional energy in areas where they’re so low to start with in that bank right, they don’t have that much money in that bank account to be able to take out. They end up having to withdraw more than is there and we end up in a deficit. And that’s when we have potential problems with folks in energy laws.

Brandon Welch: 0:22
Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I’m your host, Brandon Welch, and I’m joined today by a guy who’s going to help you get more out of life and business in 2025, Alex Swire-Clark. Welcome to the podcast, alex. Thanks, sir, appreciate the invite. Alex, is it true? You’re an emotional intelligence expert, an author and an award-winning speaker.

Alex Swire-Clark: 0:43
Those are all true facts. Brandon intelligence expert and author and an award-winning speaker.

Brandon Welch: 0:45
Those are all true facts, Brandon. So it says here since 1997, you’ve been doing this a while. Alex has been providing dynamic tools for improving communication to audiences around the country. He works with organizations that want to increase their emotional intelligence so they can reduce conflict and increase collaboration. Reduce conflict and increase collaboration that’s a novel concept. He facilitated over 6,000 personality assessments since 2018. He’s collaboration. Reduce conflict and increase collaboration that’s a novel concept. He facilitated over 6,000 personality assessments since 2018. He’s a member of the National Speakers Association and has worked with organizations such as Make-A-Wish, the Society for Human Resource Management and the South Carolina Manufacturing Extension Partnership. Of course, we want to hear three fun facts about Alex of course we do we should play two truths and a lie, except we don’t have time for that.

Brandon Welch: 1:29
You should know, though, alex is an accomplished French horn player in the Foothills Philharmonic got a concert coming up in two weeks. Really heck yeah we’re going to give away tickets for this for anybody in the Greenville, south Carolina, the Foothill area.

Alex Swire-Clark: 1:43
Right, we’re going to give away tickets that this for anybody in the Greenville, south Carolina the Foothill area.

Brandon Welch: 1:46
right, we’ll give away tickets that are free, by the way. Okay, we’re going to give away free tickets for the free thing.

Alex Swire-Clark: 1:49
So we’re really not giving away anything.

Brandon Welch: 1:52
Is it true? You’re the Captain Emeritus for the Southeast number one scenario paintball team.

Alex Swire-Clark: 1:59
Capital offense. That’s right, that’s right. Yep, captain Emeritus, captain Emeritus, that means when I show up, they provide me with food and serve me grapes and all that kind of good stuff. But, yes, I have no leadership responsibilities anymore.

Brandon Welch: 2:10
Love it so paintball, french horns and 80s music pop.

Alex Swire-Clark: 2:15
Let’s go Heck. Yeah man. The more Journey, the more Bon Jovi. Give me some MJ.

Brandon Welch: 2:20
Enlighten us Number one song from the 80s. Oh man, you can’t do that, I’ve got to do it. Lightness number one song from the 80s.

Alex Swire-Clark: 2:24
Oh man, you can’t do that, I’ve got to do it. That’s a three-hour podcast. I mean because I’ve got to say are we going slow songs? Are we going hair bands?

Brandon Welch: 2:30
Are we going R&B? One popped into your mind. One popped into your mind Best overall song from the 80s.

Alex Swire-Clark: 2:39
It’s like a 16,000-way tie. Let’s go with the classic thousand way tie. Let’s let’s go with the classic. Billy jean is amazing. Um, I love, um, I love anything from journey, so don’t stop. Believing is an underrated song from then, but now it’s an basically an 80s anthem, so I’ll go with those two right off the break okay, we’ll take it.

Brandon Welch: 2:59
We’ll take it. Maybe we’ll put him as bumper music oh shoot you. Going from 80s pop music to modern day business 2025. We chose the title for this episode the Helicopter Boss how to Finally Take your Hands Off the Wheel and just looking around at the companies that we serve. Frankly, my own world and the reflection from my team and what we do here in our four walls, and, I think, just the tired sense I feel in entrepreneurship in America, we’ve been working as leaders a little harder than we have to, would you agree?

Alex Swire-Clark: 3:40
I totally agree, Totally agree. We are set with our own self-awareness and our own personas and our own ways of doing things from either our formal training and education world or from just, you know, the training of hard life and the knocks that we’ve taken to get to where we are. So I think we can have some paradigm breaking through this podcast in terms of seeing the world a little bit differently and maybe having some tools in your tool belt to be able to navigate that a little bit easier. I think you’ll be in good shape for 2025.

Brandon Welch: 4:06
Well, you were instrumental recently in me, maybe solidifying this concept for myself. I belong to a CEO group. We get together with 18 other CEOs every month and we just bounce ideas off each other. We bring in guest speakers, world-class speakers such as Alex through Vistage International, and I highly highly recommend, outside of anything on this podcast, if you are not in a group of CEOs, ideally from other industries that would pull you up and give you a different lens to solve your problems. Man, join something like that, vistagecom. You can check out any of those local chapters or even if you just pull together a group in your community. And that’s where I encountered Alex and he presented one of the most dynamic workshops on the idea that, as leaders, we have a duty and a responsibility but, more importantly, an easier path for our lives if we choose to adapt better to the people we are called to serve versus expecting them to adapt to us. And isn’t that a novel concept? Is that a fair summary of what I think I learned a few months ago when we got together?

Alex Swire-Clark: 5:22
You nailed it, brandon. So the three principles I teach right off the break of our sessions is understand yourself. Self-awareness is key if we’re going to communicate effectively and be effective leaders. Secondly is to be able to increase our social awareness of understanding others, right? So understanding myself, yay, but if my circle stays small, then my sphere of influence stays small as well. So, understanding myself, understanding others.

Alex Swire-Clark: 5:44
And then the magic happens when we learn how to adapt our behavior and our communication style to meet others where they are. So don’t just sit in your ivory tower expecting everyone to respond to every email you send, with every box checked and whatever, but that yet you don’t necessarily have expectations for yourself to do the same for them. We have to set up boundaries, of course, but being able to understand the pace at which people speak, the understanding that some people like an email that has 25 paragraphs and lots of detail and some people are going to respond to that with TLDR too long, didn’t read. And then some people want three bullet points in a cloud of dust man, just give me the top half of the window so I don’t have to scroll. So understanding those subtleties in terms of how we communicate makes us much more effective.

Brandon Welch: 6:24
So understand yourself, social awareness, understanding those around you and adapting your behavior. A lot of owner-operators I know just went. Wow, I didn’t know I was about to get in a counseling session with some psychology guru and I’ve been in that camp before. So let me, let me say, um, what I observe now is a lot of practically um, owners, you know, maybe maybe even 50 to a hundred people, uh, employee companies going.

Brandon Welch: 6:58
You know, people just don’t want to work hard anymore. Why aren’t they doing it the way I want to do it? Um, your thanks is your paycheck, you come to work for me, yada, yada, and I think the younger end of leadership spectrum now knows at least somewhat that that’s not going to lead us to success. But, man, there’s a lot of burnout I’m seeing in CEOs. There’s a lot of last few years. There’s a lot of people that are just like saying keep the cheese, let me out of the trap, I’m going to sell my company and go live on my boat, or something like that. Why do you think that is happening? This super stressful, this angst, what’s going on?

Alex Swire-Clark: 7:37
Yeah, so that’s a four-hour podcast, right? So I think that, coming in from the 40s to the 70s, we had this generation of you have built in from your parents and other social factors. We go to work, we show up, we do our job, we make a paycheck and we kind of do our thing right. And then as we got into the 70s, then those social constructs started to break down. Then we get into the 80s and 90s and those folks, folks become parents and it just has changed the way we approach things and I think that the invention of social media has really increased the awareness as a general population of what’s possible, right?

Alex Swire-Clark: 8:14
So people have, you know, like the four-hour work week was a great book that came out in the early 2000s that said, hey, go do a little bit of stuff and then pursue your passions outside of work. So people have gone from this tying passion and purpose in the workplace to work as a source of income, which is a means to an end, so that I can use that to fund my passions elsewhere. So, as business owners, if we can help people tie passion and purpose within the workplace, then they’re not necessarily looking for the only resource for fueling their passions is outside the workplace. There can be some of that done within the workplace, but that goes, brandon, back to understanding what motivates people and treating them in a specific way. We can kind of start breaking that down as we go through.

Brandon Welch: 8:59
Yeah. So I heard a couple of things there. I heard we’re basically past an era, our generation, which isn’t even young people anymore, it’s like I mean, millennials are in their 40s now sort of calling BS on work your whole life and then have fun or work a job without much meaning other than maybe status, without much meaning other than maybe status and our values have shifted professionally, personally, and maybe we’re getting some things in line and I’m seeing you nod right now, saying like that’s kind of what’s happened. But I think the conclusion that a lot of my leader friends and I make is that, wow, that means that we’re going to have to move slow, we’re going to have to accept a wimpy way of going about business, and what I’ve learned from you is that it’s actually quite the opposite. When we get this right, we unlock a whole different level of productivity and growth, and I know you’ve been a part of hundreds of companies coaching them through that growth. Help us understand how we do that from where we are today.

Alex Swire-Clark: 10:20
So two things there. Number one is that what it takes as a business owner from zero startup right to, let’s say, a million, five, it’s duct tape, it’s shoestrings, you’re in everything, you’re touching everything, every invoice, you’re signing the checks, I mean you’re doing everything right. And so we have that mentality. If it’s our baby in the startup mode, when we get two or three years into this thing and we start to grow it, we get to, let’s say, 5, 10 million and we start building in layers of management to be able to A effectively navigate the processes we have to develop, or else we’re going to have the whole thing collapse on us, and then, b we have to be able to remove ourselves from that and let our people do their thing. Because if we have our hands in everything, then people are going to be either timid, if they’re more of a reserved personality style, or they’re going to be angry if they’re more of an outgoing style. Stay out of my stuff, dude. You hired me to do a job, let me do my thing right. So, from that perspective, we have to have greater social awareness in terms of where do I fit into this scheme and what have I hired my people to do? And thank you, jim Collins. Good to great. Have I put people in the right seats on the bus, right?

Alex Swire-Clark: 11:49
So I think that’s a huge piece of becoming a more effective leader is learning how to hire, recruit that top talent, keep that top talent, but make sure they’re in the right spaces in your company. So we’re tying that passion and purpose. If we combine those two things, then people assuming that comp is legitimate right, I mean we can’t just pay somebody $2 an hour and expect them to have passion and purpose and stay forever. That’s not going to work. But assuming that comp is not the factor. If we’re getting people to say I get to go to work today as opposed to I have to go to work today, that all boils down to they’re getting something out of it, right, they’re. They’re charging their creativity, or they’re getting to build processes, or they’re going out there and they’re, you know, tagging sales every day, whatever floats their boat. That’s the key.

Alex Swire-Clark: 12:34
And so, as leaders, that’s what we have to do above anything and everything is, once we’re out of that startup phase is making sure we’re using tactical, practical ways and a methodology to hire and retain that top talent. Because otherwise, if we just shotgun approach, or you and I are sitting down on a committee together saying what do you think about Bob and Brandon’s like, oh he’s great, so do I, but why? What’s the why in there? Why do we think they’re great? Well, because they laughed at Brandon’s jokes. I did too, but that doesn’t mean that they’re going to be an experienced salesperson or they’re going to be a tremendous accountant. It’s a really good start. Well, yeah, I mean because dad jokes are for the win. So we need to have objective tools in that system.

Alex Swire-Clark: 13:18
I think that, brandon, that’s where a lot of those new hiring managers, ceos they don’t have a methodology right. They just kind of ask. They go to chat, gbt, give me 10 great interview questions for a salesperson, or give me 10 questions for an accounting person, and they ask those questions, but they really haven’t tied personality and energy into that scenario. So it becomes almost this generic one-size-fits-all and we end up with these square pegs and round holes and they’re looking to the exit For the position, not the purpose.

Alex Swire-Clark: 13:51
That’s right, that’s right. And we end up having people you know leaving every three to six months and turnovers high and whatever, because again we just we don’t have a methodology. And then we can start talking about you know personalities within you know what is conflict, and we can go down that road if we need to and how we coach our teams through conflict.

Brandon Welch: 14:07
So I want to get to conflict because that’s a constant. But you just mentioned tools to objectively understand who we’re hiring and I think what I heard in there is how to manage and lead with some objective tools. I asked that full well knowing you are a big fan of the DISC personality test, but is that the tools you were referring to?

Alex Swire-Clark: 14:33
That is one tool. There are many tools out there. Your team has some great ones with Enneagram StrengthsFinders. There’s lots of great tools, myers-briggs, you’re never going to hear me bash a tool, because they’re all great.

Alex Swire-Clark: 14:51
The problem is, brandon, is that we don’t use them to their fullest extent. So we’ll take a tool and we’ll be like hey, brandon, we just hired you, you’re an INTJ and you’re going to be a rock star. I’m going to go get some coffee and then there I go off to my desk and you’ve got this 90-page document that’s full of all this great stuff about you and you know yourself really well, but you’ve got zero idea how to work with Sally down the hall, who’s an ESFP, right. And then the second phase of that is we use it to hire and then we never touch it again. So in terms of coaching opportunities, interpersonal conflict going on, we never pull these tools back out and say, hey, here’s a great resource to be able to end this conflict now.

Alex Swire-Clark: 15:26
But just by having people look at their assessment results and swapping them right and saying, oh, this is why Brandon always does that. No wonder he gets up at five o’clock in the morning, just driven and ready to go, and Sally comes in and she’s just chill without having to succeed and rule the world one day. That’s not what drives her. So those tools and the DISC model I love it because it’s super easy for anyone in the organization to understand. C-suite, middle management, frontline people doesn’t matter. The tool is simple enough, if you use the right ones, that everybody can understand it. It’s not too much data and we can use it practically every single day in the workplace to prevent conflict from ever happening.

Brandon Welch: 16:07
So I think that I’ve got to know more about that. I think we need to dive into that. But just as a quick overview, I think most people on this in our audience would have either used or at least know what the disk personality profile tool is. I would like to get a quick rundown of that, because I think you explained it better than I’ve heard anybody explain it. And then, by the way, we’re going to throw a link up on the screen where you can go get a free disk or maybe not free, but a very affordable disk profiler tool for yourself, and then maybe your key team members and by the end of this episode, alex is going to give you some insight as to how to best use that. But what is it? Real quick. And then maybe could you give us some of the basic measurements and how we might start to use that.

Alex Swire-Clark: 17:01
Sure, sure. So disk, in a nutshell, developed way way long ago. Marston and I can talk about Hippocrates and all that kind of stuff, but the the the foundation is is there are four quadrants of of human behavior that are pretty predictable, and so we call that D, I, s and C. The D styles are outgoing and task-oriented. So you know, never met a challenge they couldn’t face. Love to be in charge, sleep when they’re dead, right, going all the time, going all the time.

Alex Swire-Clark: 17:26
Then we have our I’s, who are inspiring types. Those are outgoing and people-oriented. Never met a stranger. Talk to a squirrel. They are fired up about paint, drying grass, growing, woo. We’re excited about everything in life, right, and we’ll tell you about that. And then I’ve got my S’s, which are my reserved and people-oriented. So these folks are fierce friends, deeply loyal, salt-of-the-earth kind of creatures, super supportive, caring, very steady, harmonious people. They’re the glue of any organization. And then we’ve got our C’s. C’s are our reserved and task-oriented folks. Those are, you know, think, analytical people, logic, organized, super consistent, love to have data, like to know the entire scope of the project before they take one step into it. And so we’re all a unique blend of these four characteristics. No one’s just a C or just an I. We all have some of this in us. It depends on the intensity level of those traits and how much we have of each. That determines how we behave in various situations in the workplace and in our personal lives.

Brandon Welch: 18:25
Love it. Just, I think everybody who’s listening could. Just. As soon as they heard their type, they’re like yep, that’s me, and hopefully they were starting to go. Oh, that’s Sally down the hall, right, or that’s-.

Alex Swire-Clark: 18:39
Or this is my CFO, or this is my sales team lead, you know. So that that’s. That’s. The hope from this conversation is that you can say, oh, I’m this, but this colleague is not right. So how do I get from where I sit to where they’re sitting? From a communication, from a behavior standpoint, so that we can we can, as we say in the South air, that we can Jihad right and we can get along and be productive collaborators.

Brandon Welch: 19:02
So I think an easy one to think of is your wife or your spouse, and just you know who are they. It’s an easy like mirror, because you know that person really well. Hopefully you know them well. And where do we get into trouble? And just kind of wrapping this around. I see now, so clearly we’re not letting go as leaders. So clearly we’re not letting go as leaders. We’re being the helicopter boss because we are assuming maybe the wrong things of the people we’re leading, which leads to either conflict or fear, or assumed maybe lack of aptitude or ability to pull something off. And when it comes to these personality types, where is that getting us in trouble? I think you mentioned most leaders are the D type. It’s a stereotypical entrepreneur trait is a D right.

Brandon Welch: 19:58
Correct, Correct. Help us look through those four D, I, S and C types, through those four D.

Alex Swire-Clark: 20:05
I, s and C types. Yeah, so there’s a lot to unpack there. I think the first thing is we have to understand that. You know, when Frank Sinatra sang, I did it my way. Not everybody’s going to do it your way, right? So if you’re a D Ds, typically do things the fast way. How quickly can I cross the finish line? You know processes be darned. You know I’m going to follow steps one, two, three, four and five. Three might not get done today because I’m going to get to five, so I can finish first. Because, as we know from Ricky Bobby Talladega Knights, if you ain’t first, you’re last, that’s right.

Alex Swire-Clark: 20:38
So for the Ds, they want to finish first and do things quickly, so they’re not so heck bent on following the process versus. Let’s go down the quadrant on that same task side and look at the C’s for a minute. We must follow the rules, brandon. That’s why they’re there.

Brandon Welch: 20:57
Everybody’s thinking of their C right now.

Alex Swire-Clark: 20:59
That’s right. So like we must follow the rules. The speed limit is 55, not 56. It’s not 57. It’s not 60. It’s not nine under, just so you don’t get caught by the cops right? It’s 55. So the C’s live and breathe rules, procedures and policies. And so it’s a fascinating article and a graphic I throw up on my screen. Sometimes is expectations, brandon, right, what each person expects of themselves and others. So it’s a really cool slide, because our C’s if 10 is super rigid and zero is basically nothing a C’s expectation of themselves is a 10. Their expectations of others is also a 10, right?

Brandon Welch: 21:40
So they expect high Thinking of Angela from the Office.

Alex Swire-Clark: 21:43
Exactly exactly. It’s a high degree of of you know a, capabilities, abilities, doing things the right way every time, all the time. For myself and everybody else Okay For an S. Their expectations of others is like a four. Their expectations of themselves it’s about a seven, right. So they expect good things from themselves, but everybody else, it’s okay. If you didn’t do it right this time, it’s okay, it’s fine, don’t worry about it, we’ll fix it right.

Alex Swire-Clark: 22:07
A high I. Their expectations of themselves three. Their expectations of others three. If we show up we show up, man, we’re going to have a good time, we’re going to make it happen, don’t worry about it. Tomorrow’s another day, we got it right. And the D’s expectation of themselves is about a, let’s say, about a five. But their expectations of the other, those around them, is a seven.

Alex Swire-Clark: 22:28
So if they show up on time, you know, if they don’t show up on time, it’s okay. I’ll get there if it’s important to me, but by gosh, you better be there, right? I mean, you better show up and be ready to go. So that paradigm right there, just in itself, is crazy. Right there, just in itself, is crazy right. And so for me, as a high eye, if I’m thinking to myself which of those four do I not understand? For me it’s clearly a c. Right, it doesn’t have to be about the book every time I can order off the menu and say take off the onions. I had a issue with my wife and early on our marriage we went to a restaurant and it was off the minions. I said, well, can you hold this? And I don’t really like mushrooms. Is there any way to take the mushrooms out of the sauce? And my wife is going. Who’s a heist? He’s going. Oh, my god, you know just yeah it’s all rock.

Brandon Welch: 23:12
Yeah, so it’s supposed to be that way that’s right.

Alex Swire-Clark: 23:15
So this in the workplace really really causes issues. Right, because as project managers, as we have to decide is it the outcome or is it the process that should drive behavior in our organization? Is it the end game? Is it crossing the finish line or is it crossing the finish line the right way, even though it may take longer, or may involve fewer or more people, or may involve us creating processes that we didn’t already have to start with. So we have to be mindful of that when we’re talking about our processes. And then on the people side of that, the high I’s. They are going to be involved, give you their information, talk about their stuff, get really excited about it, but they’re not into the details. So a high I leader will delegate as much of that process, as much of that detail stuff as humanly possible because they don’t want to have to deal with it. I can tell you from my career as a CEO for 18 years that, as a high I, low C CEO, I know that person, by the way.

Alex Swire-Clark: 24:20
End of the month was just terrible. Terrible because I had to go talk to my CFO and I’m just praying that I got by the way.

Alex Swire-Clark: 24:23
End of the month was just terrible. Terrible because I had to go talk to my CFO and I’m just praying that I got a thumbs up. If I had a thumbs up, I’m running away from his office as fast as I could, right. And if it was a thumbs down, I said, oh no, I got 30 minutes where I’m going to have to look at spreadsheets and performance and projections and P&Ls and I mean, just shoot me in the face and get me a root canal, right? Yeah, I couldn’t stand that because it requires me to exert a lot of energy in a quadrant or area that I just don’t have a high score in. So my I is 100 on a 100 scale. My C is a 12. So, oh, it’s just painful for me to have to channel that inner C to get above a 50% and get competent in that area. Can I do it? Of course I can, but do I want to? No, and that’s going back to the point we were trying to make earlier. Brandon is matching people’s passion and purpose Because there’s a high.

Alex Swire-Clark: 25:11
I low C. If I had to look at spreadsheets all day, dude, I’m miserable, I’m out. You’re not going to have me as an employee for more than like two weeks. So to a point where people are not spending emotional energy in areas where they’re so low to start with in that bank right, they don’t have that much money in that bank account to be able to take out. They end up having to withdraw more than is there and we end up in a deficit. And that’s when we have potential problems with folks in energy laws.

Brandon Welch: 25:36
So back to your CFO and you at that time. Were you using these tools and did you understand that about each other? Were you using these tools and did you?

Alex Swire-Clark: 25:43
understand that about each other. 100%, 100%, yes. So my CFO knew that I was a no-detail person. I’m the manage-by-walking-around high-five guy. Let’s pump everybody up and it’s all about culture. It was not about numbers. I just wanted if we were profitable. I really didn’t care what the margins were, and that’s terrible.

Alex Swire-Clark: 26:01
And there’s high-se seed CFOs and CEOs out there going oh my God. Well, how does this guy have a company that lasts for 20 years? Well, it’s because I surrounded myself with people who did care. I didn’t need to care, brandon, as long as I surrounded my people in my leadership roles who were predisposed to caring, naturally would make sure they’re always. Every little detail matters. That’s great.

Alex Swire-Clark: 26:25
You do your thing, and so what I did was I empowered them to make decisions, to track those data points, create analytics that I didn’t even think about and ways to track things in our organization. So that’s what kind of got them out of bed and getting fired up about going to work. Maybe I get a chance to create a process today. That’d be amazing. Or I know I’m going to share something with Alex that he’s never thought about. That’s going to help us grow, sustain and build this thing to be an epic company. So again, it’s just about matching that passion and purpose. So we took those assessments, definitely shared those scores to say, oh, so this is why Alex doesn’t want to come talk to me anymore. Well, it’s not you, it’s me.

Brandon Welch: 27:05
You know a lot of these personality tests. I think they present the idea that, oh, you have to be this, it’s this rigid. You got prescribed this personality type and so you’re also this. And what I’ve learned is that they’re just measurements for your most natural preference. And it’s like I could write with my left hand if I really wanted to, but doing that all day long, I’d be exhausted by 15 minutes from now. Right, I could use my preferred hand for writing and doing all the tasks forever, right.

Brandon Welch: 27:34
And so the jumping into adapting to a personality style that’s very distant from yours is stressful, it requires energy, and that’s why you don’t naturally want to be around those people is stressful, it requires energy and that’s why you don’t naturally want to be around those people. And so I think what I’m reading between the lines on is A going back to what you originally said understand yourself, so you know where you are in that spectrum. B understand other people. And then how do we start to adapt? Because what does the high D do with the high C? Or the high I with the high C?

Alex Swire-Clark: 28:06
Yeah, great question, right, especially when crossing those diagonals, like you said, ic and DS. Those are always the keys. And so for me, brandon, it always starts with education, because, let’s say, somebody wants to bring me in and do one of these training sessions or do some coaching. My first question then was well, at what point are we going to share this information with the entire organization? And they’re like well, I was going to start with middle management. Okay, awesome, great.

Alex Swire-Clark: 28:31
So you’re going to make your middle managers adapt to everybody around them the C-suite and their direct reports but you’re not going to make anybody else responsible to adapt to them. They’re going to be out of gas in the first two weeks, right, because they’re going to have this methodology, that’s going to have this information. And, yeah, it’s great. And selling down below me, she’s deceased. I’m going to adapt to her and make sure I’m super, you know, thorough, and I’m going to adapt up to my, my, my, uh, my boss, and they’re a high d, so I’m gonna they’re just gonna be exhausted, right so yeah okay, my, my, my statement is we have to educate the entire organization at some point.

Alex Swire-Clark: 29:08
It might not necessarily be in that first workshop or whatever, but we have to, because if you just use one segment of your population, not everybody else has the information and then not everyone is adapting to others. Because the key, the magic happens, brandon, is if I’m a high D and you’re a high S down here in the bottom square, if I’m a D and I’m having to move to you, I’m exhausted. But guess what, if we’re both moving together, neither one of us has to spend that much energy right In those emails, in those meetings or whatever. We’re adapting to one another. So we’re using a collective less energy, because the sum of the parts is certainly not nearly as great as when we put those together. So that’s where the magic happens. But too many times I have my CEOs will say yeah, we’re just going to do it for CEOs and middle management and I’m like, well, have fun with that because it’s like Uncle Ben said, with that whole power and strength, with great power comes great responsibility.

Alex Swire-Clark: 30:05
But now you’ve got that information and you’ve got the responsibility to use it. You haven’t put the responsibility on anybody that’s reporting to those folks, and so that can create more stress than it actually helps in the long run.

Brandon Welch: 30:14
And everybody. Well, the CEO goes to some seminar like yours or some big thought leadership summit or whatever, and comes back and says now and starts treating the people. They’re all fired up treating everybody different and they don’t know, like, are you tripping, man, did you just get a brain transplant? And it comes across as either really weird or not genuine, or like what’s going on here and that doesn’t work either. It’s got, it’s gotta be a totally understood operating system operating system upgrade.

Alex Swire-Clark: 30:50
People have to understand the why behind these super. You know wide open behavioral changes and or else, like you said, there’s there’s disingenuine thoughts that come in like oh, what’s this guy doing?

Brandon Welch: 31:00
Or you know he went to some kind of spa retreat thing and gotten into his inner whatever, and so yeah, yeah, you drink some hallucinogenic tea or something like that, so OK, so the big idea going back to how do we A stay in our lane, live more harmoniously with our business, allow our people to maybe step into their purpose? Quick observation I get a lot of I work with a lot of like kind of what you were just describing owner-operators. But then we work really closely with the second level of leadership and so I know these people really well and as an objective third party, and the boss or the client, the person who signs our paychecks, essentially, will call us or even in a meeting, be venting about so-and-so. Dang it, why can’t they just do their job? Or they messed up this, or they’re totally jacking up this, or it’s a common theme.

Brandon Welch: 32:02
And then I’m also seeing, like you know what I actually see, the other side of this person, because I don’t have a stake in this particular conflict. How do we resolve those conflicts so we can let go and trust? The basics are understand the personality, understand what everybody else is. But how do I start to let go with that understanding?

Alex Swire-Clark: 32:28
So I’m going to back it up a little bit and say we shouldn’t even be talking about the people that are in current seats in our organization until we’ve talked about the methodology that got them in those spots to start with, because for me, we have to have a process in terms of getting them into our company that makes sense, because otherwise, what’s the metric we’re using to label success to that hire right?

Alex Swire-Clark: 32:53
If we don’t have a process to entertain that. So first thing I would do is say ask a question. Okay, let’s just call him Joe. Joe, do you have quality?

Brandon Welch: 33:06
Joe, do you have quality?

Alex Swire-Clark: 33:08
well-written job descriptions for every role in your company. Do you, and 95% of the time it’s no.

Brandon Welch: 33:12
The Joes that I know do not.

Alex Swire-Clark: 33:14
Okay Often. So that would be as we would say in the Vistage world. That would be a personal action summary takeaway that we would write down and say that. Because, brandon, if we don’t have that, how do we know what the benchmark is to measure success? And so let’s say that you start writing these down from your ivory tower or wherever you happen to be, and then you go sit down with your highest performing person and say, okay, I’m writing this job description, I just want you to check me out.

Alex Swire-Clark: 33:42
Okay, number one says I’m supposed to come in at this time and do this particular thing, and then Sally will say Joe, we haven’t done that in six months. That’s Latricia over there. She’s doing that now, right, oh, okay, well, scratch that one. Okay, let’s go to number two and they’ll go down all the list of their 10 things and half of them won’t even be what that person’s doing anymore. So not only do you provide clarity for what the role is, but you actually provide clarity in terms of who’s doing what and where in your organization, because that adapts and changes. So you have to kind of have a pulse on that, once every six months just to do a job description checkup, because you’re going to hire people and it should grow and expand. Roles might tighten Roles, someone might be moved over there. So that’s step one right.

Brandon Welch: 34:28
And yeah, I would just say right now, like if you’re listening to this, schedule your next job description review, like we have those things, we have what personality types are likely to succeed, core responsibilities. We have kind of like a maturity scale of like here’s what top of your game looks like, here’s what beginner level looks like, and we have paths of advancement and uh. But as you’re saying this, um, we’re really proud that we have those and we actually use them, but they could be, they could be dusted off.

Alex Swire-Clark: 34:51
So that’s an action item for all of us um, schedule your job description or have I’ll have frank and maven come in and do a third party. Right, because you guys can look at it agnostically versus you know somebody who’s in the role you should be doing this, but no, no, we shouldn’t. It is what it is. Well, we are where we are Right and so if we need to say you should be or shouldn’t be doing that, well, that’s. That’s step two in that process of that. But so, and a third, a third party source, like you guys would be fantastic to have that no-transcript company if you have a third party. So, frank, maybe a little plug for you guys. So secondly would be once we have that, then we need to start getting as many objective tools in the pre-hiring process as possible. And that’s super critical because, as we said from our conversation a while ago, you and I could be on an interview and we love Bob and he’s great and we want to hire Bob, but in that 45-minute interview or hour and a half or two interviews or whatever, we still really don’t know what Bob can do in that role, unless you’re a salesperson. You give me the classic, sell me this pencil or whatever. So my second thing would be to build a quality pre-hiring process so that people will self-select out along the way and you’re matching not only core values and not only skill sets but temperament to that role. So as many filters that are objective as you can into that world.

Alex Swire-Clark: 36:24
So when people would always ask me well, alex, you talked about in your presentation, y’all had 92% retention rates after the first 90 days. I’m like, yeah, that’s right. So how do you get to that? Well, it’s all about being objective. Right, take the subjectivity out of it. So first thing we would do, brandon, was when people applied for one of our roles, I would immediately follow up and say so, thank you for applying. State your personal core values and how do you live those out in the workplace? Just send me an email. State your personal core values, how do you live those out in the workplace. And so what does that do? That tells me, a, is there core value alignment? And B, can they communicate? Are they crossing T’s, dotting I’s? Did they do this at a traffic light? Were they just like I like blah, blah, blah? So how? But that’ll tell me the sincerity of their application and do we have core value alignment, which is huge?

Brandon Welch: 37:13
Yeah, and then the second thing would be Core value alignment would solve a lot of it. Just by just trust and like. Are we reading from the same sheet of music, right? Do we see the world the same way? That fixes a lot of things.

Alex Swire-Clark: 37:27
In my job description. You’re spot on In my job description. The first thing out of the break is not comp, it’s not whatever, it’s okay. Our company’s core values are integrity, teamwork, clients first, take the next step. If you don’t believe in those four things, stop reading now. I don’t even just stop right, just self-select out the door. Is that way right? So as much as that stuff I can funnel off off the front, it’s awesome. So anyway, so we do the core value statement. Then I’ll have them prove to me they can do what they do.

Alex Swire-Clark: 37:58
I always recommend to folks Brad Remillard. He’s a consultant from out of California. His topic in terms of our Vistage group was you’re not the person I hired, you’re not the person I hired, the person I hired, you’re not the person I hired. And so what he always told us to do and this is beautiful and brilliant and that’s why I always give him credit for it is you’ve got to put people in the role, brandon, before they get the role. Put people in the role before they get the role. So in my world as a medical billing company, we would always have them take a medical billing assessment, because I don’t care if their resume says they’ve been doing this for five years, 10 years, whatever. You’ve got to show me the money, prove to me you can do that. So we gave them like a 45-question test. We gave them 60 minutes. We said have at it. There’s coding in there, there’s looking at explanation of benefits, all the things we have to do, and so if they didn’t make it 80% or above, they’re done right.

Brandon Welch: 38:45
We’ve started doing that. Yes, so now you don’t have to wait. Exactly People we loved and people that even passed the profile we thought they ought to have, but we call that person-purpose proof and we really leaned in heavy to the proof. Part of what do they? That’s?

Alex Swire-Clark: 39:03
right.

Brandon Welch: 39:04
What can they do? Can they swing a hammer?

Alex Swire-Clark: 39:05
That’s right. Can you break the rock? It’s that simple. That’s not to say that I can’t teach someone skills, right? So if this is an entry-level position versus a, you know, a, a senior coder, that those are two completely different things, right? If I’ve got somebody fresh out of medical billing school, I don’t expect them to be able to to pass it at 80. That might be a 65, because you still need to know something and have learned something in your coding classes. Yes, so at that point we’re there.

Alex Swire-Clark: 39:31
And then the next step is an interview with an outsourced hiring manager that’s recorded, and then I’ll go back and take a look at that. And then we give them a personality assessment and do they fit the benchmark that we’ve already created? The benchmark is key, but the benchmark, brandon, is dependent on the quality, well-written job description, because if you don’t have that, you have nothing to benchmark the assessment to. And so, once you combine those things, and then I do I always did a core values interview myself as the CEO. Everybody in our company, every single person that’s ever hired, was always interviewed by me on core values, because that’s super, super important. You nailed it right If you don’t have core values, it’s nails on a chalkboard. It’s not going to work. That’s just a matter of fact.

Brandon Welch: 40:17
I have some guys and gals right now that are going wow, you interview every employee. How big was your organization then?

Alex Swire-Clark: 40:23
Yeah, so we were up to 40 or so employees at some point, but our wheelhouse is around 35. Okay, but all remote-based. Wow, nobody was in the office, and so we knew that our benchmark for specific places were specific things. So we hired a lot of CS blends. That was one of our top two benchmarks we had for most of our roles, most of our roles. So the C is for the attention to level detail in the building world. Plus, that C is super great for not needing to be micromanaged because C’s have to do things the right way, and so that was a beautiful thing and they can work independently without having to be managed very much, going to do things the right way every time, all the time. So that was something we knew we needed and it kind of came to fruition when we did the assessment to support the benchmark. So our idea of what we thought was supported by the benchmark that we ended up with. So that was great.

Brandon Welch: 41:15
Love it. So I’m hearing. Let me just read back Fix our recruiting process so we don’t have the mismatches, to begin with in culture and skills and then just understanding of just the basic personality types. Understand yourself and them so you know where they plug in, how you’re going to approach them, how you’re going to communicate with them, how you’re going to follow up using the DISC profile and or, by the way, our team and we have the best team. If there’s one thing I would die proud of, it’s that we have built wonderful teams and even as people move in and out of our organization, the teams are wonderful and we don’t just use one or two. We use like five personality tests, enneagram, strengthsfinder, we’re now using DISC, patrick Lincioni’s what is it called? Help me out Working Genius, sorry.

Brandon Welch: 42:10
I’m like yeah, exactly it was me out Working genius Sorry.

Alex Swire-Clark: 42:11
I’m like, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, it’s right there.

Brandon Welch: 42:13
Working genius, yeah, so there’s five of them that we go through. Myers-briggs is one of them. And then you’re saying, okay, it’s not that this person can’t do this, it’s that I could approach them this way and I can set my expectations this way, and it’s not compromising, it’s really for us Ds and Is it’s just not freaking them out and it’s letting them live in their genius and then maybe, well, always trying to compliment their genius by showing up on time to a dang meeting or something like that for our Cs, right?

Alex Swire-Clark: 42:49
Heaven forbid right.

Brandon Welch: 42:50
Yes. So in between we’re hiring this person, we know who they are, we’re adapting our styles and our leadership communications and our follow-ups that way, we’re reviewing those job descriptions regularly. I think that’s a huge, huge thing. That’s not an annual thing with a person. That’s probably quarterly, and you’ve just challenged us to level up in that area here. We do that to somewhat, but we don’t talk about it enough. If we do that, if we do those things that are outlined there, does that lead us to the freedom where we can start to go? I don’t have to run in and jump that. I don’t have to micromanage that, I don’t have to show up and be the hero in this situation. Is that going to get us there?

Alex Swire-Clark: 43:34
Not quite. We’re getting closer but we’re not quite there. Okay, so what we have to do is we have to, once that person has taken their assessment, we bring them on board. Is we share that result with their teammates? With their teammates, we clearly share that with their supervisor. But if we share that result with their teammates and then in turn, once we’ve educated that person as a part of the onboarding process to the DISC model itself, then we can adequately share their teammates with them and teach them how to work better with others, because what we’re trying to do, brandon, is we’re trying to keep you, the CEO, from jumping into every fire and let people eliminate the conflict that happens before it happens.

Alex Swire-Clark: 44:15
So if we’re using the tool to educate everybody throughout the organization and, of course, they’re going to get mine, so you can imagine me as the high IS CEO working with a bunch of CSs, and that’s just crazy, because when I come, to a meeting… those poor people.

Alex Swire-Clark: 44:30
Exactly when I come to a meeting. I was like, okay, virtual scavenger hunt, baby, let’s do this. And they’re like, oh my God, not again, alex. But they know right, they anticipate that we’re going to have a gift card giveaway for some crazy Christmas dress-ups, ugly sweater contest. We’re going to have fun in the meeting because I’m not just going to sit here and just talk about the changes to meaningful use and all this other stuff. We had to do so.

Alex Swire-Clark: 44:52
So again, they can anticipate my behavior and adapt to me more easily because they know. So and if you remember the commercials I’m not commercial, but the GI Joe from the 1980s you know. And now you know, and knowing is half the battle, gi Joe. So. So to use it in the hiring is great. But then again the education happens, where we all know, and you can put this easily on on the internet. You know your company web page, whatever, a nice little disc graph that has everybody’s dot on a big wheel so you can see everybody. It’s super easy to use that before I go into a conversation.

Alex Swire-Clark: 45:26
So if I got brandon up here, who’s a di, versus sally, who’s an SC, I have to approach them very differently when I’ve got a new idea, object whatever that I’m going to discuss, because if it’s Brandon DI, I can say hey, man, you got a minute, bring it what you got. Okay, I got these three bullet points. Tell me which ones we’re going to do. Brandon’s like awesome garbage. Never say that one again. Super, we’re out the door. That was 30 seconds and we’re done. If I’m going to go talk to Sally, who’s an SC, I got to send her an email a day before and say hey, here’s the PDF I’d like to discuss with you tomorrow at 12. Just this nagging flywheel assumption that something’s going to go wrong or something’s messed up.

Brandon Welch: 46:02
I don’t know where it is but I’m about to see it and I think that’s where a lot of CEOs live is things are too quiet right now. Something’s got to be off and we go create that chaos. But what you just said not just about how the CEO understands the people I think that’s an easy enough concept because that’s training us to like, maybe on the unhealthy end, manipulate, but on the healthy end, empathetically communicate. But on the reverse end, yeah, On the healthy end, you know, empathetically communicate.

Alex Swire-Clark: 46:49
And influence yeah, but on the reverse end, yeah.

Brandon Welch: 46:51
On the reverse end. You know, sally doesn’t have to assume that her boss, the D, doesn’t care, because he just, you know, always probably feels to her like he’s always overlooking her details or he’s not, you know, appreciating her hard work and organization. And if she understands, ah, he’s not that way, then then she trusts him more and everybody is like, happy, healthy, in their, in their spot, right.

Alex Swire-Clark: 47:17
And they know what you need, right? So if, if I’m, if I’m sending you an email I’m not going to send you the 20 page thing, but I’ll just I’ll put that in a link I’ll say hey, brandon, here are the three things we talked about last week. Boom, boom, boom. For more information, click this link and if you want to, you can. If not, then it’s not necessary for that time. So we can anticipate what everyone needs in the organization. And it doesn’t take overthinking. It’s not a complex methodology, it’s easy to look on that wheel.

Alex Swire-Clark: 47:44
Okay, dc, doubly task-oriented. So land my plane. Nothing but facts. Don’t talk about my dog or his cat or the Lakers game. It’s all business, right? And if he wants to shoot the breeze socially, we’ll have a drink afterwards or we’ll go get a cup of coffee or whatever. So just anticipating that. It’s the anticipation, brandon. That’s key, right? I know what to expect when I walk in that room and I know what they need before I ever get there. And then it’s vice versa. They know with me as well, right? They know that if they’re going to come into my office for a goddamn minute, we’re going to have a little conversation about the game or the voice or whatever before we start, because that’s going to fill my batteries up for them Me to look at those spreadsheets for 10 minutes and watch. Can you physically watch my? My batteries drain? Yeah, for sure.

Brandon Welch: 48:29
Yeah, and isn’t that all the key to the healthiest and best marriages and friendships and client relationships? People listening, you’re already doing this for your clients. You’re already doing this in your sales team. You’re already modeling who you’re supposed to be interacting with, and it just don’t stop when it gets to your team. Right, that’s right. That’s right If it’s good enough.

Alex Swire-Clark: 48:51
Externally it’s like you know the persona that your kids have in public right In the South here. You know we’ve always taught our kids, yes, ma’am, no, sir, please, thank you all that kind of good stuff. And so when they’re out there and they’re talking to Ms Jones as the teacher, your kids are so polite, that’s just so wonderful. And then they come back home and they’re like ah, I want Cheerios, right, and whatever they behave, how they behave in the house, completely differently than their public persona. So, like you’re saying, it’s not just let’s be on our best behavior in front of our clients.

Brandon Welch: 49:26
Let’s be on our best behavior in front of the people we work with.

Alex Swire-Clark: 49:35
Yeah, exactly, and that would be man, that, that, that new golden rule we talked about it last night, but lay that down for us the new golden rule, tim McCoy. Yeah, so the golden rule is treat others as you want. You want to be treated right, which is absolutely, completely false. Right, because if I’m a D, I don’t want to be treated like an Est, right? Right, I don’t need handwritten notes to tell me what a good job I’m doing or whatever. I just want space and just set me a goal and a super high target and I will go go after it. Right? So understanding that if you’re going to try to influence people, if you’re going to try to reward people or motivate people, we have to do it in a way that’s meaningful to them.

Alex Swire-Clark: 50:07
So a high I is all about recognition. So bringing them to the front of the room, recognize them in front of the entire team, everybody clapping for them. Woo, it’s amazing for a high I, but guess what? Only 30% of the population are high I’s.

Alex Swire-Clark: 50:21
So if you’re doing that, if all you’re doing is recognition, brandon, for your team, in terms of trying to motivate them, you’re missing it 70% of the time, because a high C a high C in no way, shape or form wants to be at the front of that room. They want to be back at their desk doing more stuff they don’t need to at the time. Thank you, whatever. Get me off the stage back to my desk. So if we’re not creating dynamics where we’re customizing motivations, communication, all that kind of stuff to the person, we’re missing it. So the golden rule modified, or the platinum rule now, is treat others as they want to be treated. Because if we’re doing that, then they’re going to feel like, oh my gosh, they’re customizing this job for me. It’s amazing and people treat me in a way that like they’ve known me forever. So we’re shortening that learning curve for how teams can collaborate more effectively. As opposed to two years of trial and error, with this methodology we go to two months.

Brandon Welch: 51:14
Isn’t that so much different than the arrogance that sometimes we walk in the room with and saying I’m just going to beat them into shape, I’m going to show them how they’ve missed the mark and it’s like man, you’re missing their entire wiring. You may as well be speaking a different language. Are we close to landing the plane? Are we on final approach for a year of letting go and letting our team live in a harmonious victory?

Alex Swire-Clark: 51:42
I think we have. We’ve given people lots of great nuggets and even if you only do a couple of these things, your organization is going to take three, four, five levels way farther than where you are right now. So yeah, we’ve given them lots of good stuff.

Brandon Welch: 51:54
With Alex’s encouragement and his wisdom and some technology that makes it all work together. I would highly, highly, highly recommend, before you set off onto this goal-seeking journey and try to do another brute force, make it happen type mentality there’s nothing wrong with that. But I would, on the back end, fix your adaptation styles. It starts with you as the leader empathy. If there’s one thing I would give leaders across America, it would be an extra dose of empathy and curiosity. But just to kind of read back some of the practical, tactical things fix your hiring process. Make sure you’re having an objective tool and DISC is a great one to understand these personality communication styles. Understand yourself, understand them, teach the entire team, not just leadership, how we’re going to interact with each other. Review those descriptions, those job descriptions, those role clarity things. Often, maybe even quarterly. How often should people be reinvigorating this thing? So it’s not just a fancy hoorah thing we did at the beginning of the year? Do you have a recommendation for a pace at that?

Alex Swire-Clark: 53:18
If we educate the entire team. Once we’ve educated the entire team, that’s ground zero. That’s day one. If we’re using that methodology throughout everything we do, you put up that team wheel graphic, let’s say, in the break room. If you’re on site, it’s just super easy for folks to live it and breathe it and we can use it as a part of our lexicon. So, for example, if we’re in a team meeting and Brandon’s going really fast and I’ve got these three new objectives, hang on, bro, you’re going high D on me, right, just give me a second.

Brandon Welch: 53:45
So adopt it in your vernacular. Yeah, you put it on the wall. I love that.

Alex Swire-Clark: 53:48
That’s correct. You put it as a part of your vernacular. That’s organic. It’s not just something like some companies where you walk in and there’s mission, vision, values on the wall and once you leave that front lobby it’s lost. If you’re using this kind of in your daily vernacular, it becomes a way of life and it’s not artificial, right, it’s just super easy to do. This is a high C thing. I’ve got Jane as a high C. She’s going to want it this way. Okay, boom, I know I just need to give her a little bit more detail than I would to Brandon, who’s a high D. It’s just a natural flow.

Brandon Welch: 54:19
Yeah, and you preempt frustration, which is just the biggest energy drain for anybody who’s trying to go to the moon.

Alex Swire-Clark: 54:27
Right, right, and that’s how you stop helicoptering right. It’s when you empower your people to solve their own problems and get that interpersonal conflict kind of out of the situation and they can focus on just being the best version of themselves in that role.

Brandon Welch: 54:41
Wonderful Amen on that. Any final things as we look at across 2025? Any final things as we look at across 2025, any tools or advices, or just like one thing, you would impart to the leaders of small business America?

Alex Swire-Clark: 54:57
Yeah, well, ai is a huge factor right now. Ai into everything. I mean from training videos to you know, chat GBT to you name it right. It’s out there building PowerPoints and whatever. There’s a great AI tool out there called Crystal C-R-Y-S-T-A-L Semic plug. I’m an affiliate of that, but it used to be called Crystal Nose and it’s still branded as that in some spots. But what that does, brandon, is, if you’re in sales, if you’re in recruiting, it will go to LinkedIn. It takes their algorithm and within about 70, 75% accuracy from what they post, who they follow, all that kind of good stuff it can give you their DISC personality profile.

Brandon Welch: 55:36
Oh, wow.

Alex Swire-Clark: 55:37
So it’s an amazing tool that gives you a head start on how we should contact, how we should communicate with people. So if it does read, let’s say, a DC, then you know that those first encounters should not be playful or whatever. They should be tactical, business-driven versus if it’s an IS like me. Like oh hey, I saw you support the upstate symphonic winds. Tell me more about that. Oh yeah, I’m a French horn player and we create a conversation right. So that’s a great tool out there. That’s AI-driven. If you’re into that kind of thing, fantastic and driven. If you’re into that kind of thing, fantastic. And again, you can let me know if you’re interested in signing up for that. Again, shameless plug, I am an affiliate. But if you choose to get a free version of that, free version is great too. Just go to crystalcom and fire away.

Brandon Welch: 56:18
We’ll put your code and your link in the links and on the screen. Awesome, we got to make sure that happens.

Brandon Welch: 56:23
So, guys, we’re going to be doing at least monthly, bringing in experts like Alex. Our heart, like the whole reason we’re doing this podcast, as you know, is to help entrepreneurs eliminate waste, grow the business and achieve that big dream. And when we get alignment, this type of stuff that Alex has brought us today, we live in peace. We live in, I think, appreciation and this blessing that we have in front of us, just to not fight and worry through the thing that should be our mission. All these other things are getting in the way and it’s my heart, it’s the heart of Frank and Maven, to continue encouraging you and building you up in this way and bring you the best tools that we know of. And I would recommend that you consider Alex as one of those.

Brandon Welch: 57:13
Again, we’ll put his links on, but you can do a one-on-one consult with him If you’re having any sort of friction inside your organization, if your hiring process is broke, if you got some wrong people on the bus, one-on-one coaching. He can come and do a workshop, which I would highly recommend. I got to be part of one of those and just a wonderful, feel-good, fun, mind-opening thing. Every CEO in the room said it was one of the best presentations we’ve ever had, and you can get in contact with him.

Brandon Welch: 57:40
He’s such a generous man with his time and his knowledge and his wisdom and he’s been around the block a lot of times, so you’re going to want to reach out to him and do that. Alex, thank you so much for being on today. Thank you for sharing your stuff with our people. I know it’s made them better and this is the part. We’re going to give away one of your books Anybody who submits a screenshot. I have three of Alex’s books called the Report Advantage yes. The Rapport Advantage yes. Rapport Advantage yes. The Rapport Advantage yes. Rapport Advantage With a T, but that T is silent.

Brandon Welch: 58:13
The Rapport Advantage we’re going to give away three copies of that and, if you will like and comment, just send us a screenshot of doing that to mavenmondayatfrankenmavencom. We will get you in the drawing for that and it’s a great book. I’ve started reading it as of last night. Also, check out Alex’s podcast and links to his other materials here. You’re going to want to use these. You’re going to want to start your year off right in alignment so you can get more out of everything you’re doing this year and into the future answering your real life, marketing, business, growth, personality, conflict, all things entrepreneur, big dream, related questions. Because marketers who can’t teach you why? It’s just a fancy lie. You got it the first time, boom. Thank you, alex, have a great week.