The Six Pitfalls of Business and How to Avoid Them (ft. Zach Hoskins)

Zach Hoskins 0:00
The biggest thing that I see with business owners here is we have people stepping on each other’s toes. There’s people doing two people doing the same thing, and then nothing actually gets done. Wow. There’s no clarity in who’s actually doing it. Because, you know, as the book traction says, when two people are accountable, no one’s accountable. And so this one is huge, as far as having a visual structure of your business built out in a structure first people, second approach that gives you the opportunity to build out what are your major roles and functions of the business, what are the key responsibilities for each of those and then putting the people in place to ensure we have one person in each seat, not two people in each seat, so that there’s clarity in this is my role. This is what it looks like to win, and this is who I report to. Welcome

Brandon Welch 0:54
to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I’m your host, Brandon Welch, and I am joined for the first time ever by a master in productivity, people and peace with your business. I’m so excited to introduce you today my friend. Zach Hoskins, hello, Zach.

Zach Hoskins 1:15
Super, super excited to be here. Couldn’t be more excited? Welcome.

Brandon Welch 1:18
This is the place where we help you eliminate waste in advertising, grow your business, and achieve the big dream. And we’re gonna do all three of those things today. Let’s just get into the you know, formalities here. Yeah, let’s do it. I’ve got to read to you about you, please, and we’ll see how I know how painful that is for you. So I’m gonna make it take a long time. Absolutely, Zach helps businesses and people facing chaos pivot to clarity and sustainable growth. After mastering the art of strategic planning with hundreds of organizations, he founded the firm the efficiency conductor to help CEOs maximize their time, influence and impact, serving as the integrator CEO of multiple companies over the past decade. Zach is no stranger to growing through adversity in the midst of a chaotic business time, he created a multi million dollar revenue stream from scratch in under two years from scratch. That’s awesome. With a decade of service to the Missouri Air National Guard, thank you so much for your service. Appreciate them. Decorated with honors, Zach’s blend of military discipline and business acumen sets him apart from your average coach, that unique blend allows him to offer a set of essential principles and creative business thinking to guide entrepreneurs towards lasting success. Outside of work, you’ll find Zach volunteering with his wife Lauren, training in Jiu Jitsu or slamming it in your face on the pickleball court. Perfect. Yeah, yeah. You like that. Love it. So today he’s going to bring his keynote from the stage into the studio. Here we go. And I happen to have heard really good things about this, and I was like, we’ve got to get that in here. Can’t wait. Called the six pitfalls of business chaos, and how to avoid them.

Zach Hoskins 2:53
That’s right,we’re going to dive in.

Brandon Welch 2:54
Do I have your attention? I know I have the attention of the of our friends listening, because Haven’t we all been there? Yeah. But what are those six pitfalls? We’re gonna go right into them.

Zach Hoskins 3:04
Yeah, let’s dive in.

Brandon Welch 3:05
Do you want to list them out?

Speaker 1 3:06
Let’s list them out. So, yeah. So whenever you look at the six pitfalls of business, what I’m looking at is a lack of clear direction. You know, maybe not having that clear vision. So lack of clear direction is the first one. We have poor execution and implementation. You know, actually executing on that vision. We have a constant threat of running out of cash. We have lack of clarity and accountability in roles. We have team dysfunction, maybe some wrong people, and then costly and frustrating meetings. So those are the six key pitfalls of business chaos that I’ve seen.

Brandon Welch 3:43
I can think of situations in each one of those for sure. So you’re gonna tell us how to avoid those, yeah, for sure, and maybe help us diagnose if that’s what’s might be going on our business. So 100% I know so many of our friends and clients over the years. I mean, just super capable, high performing people, like the top, top, you know, 1% of professional humanity, I would say. And it really, what I found is even at the highest levels, and I can think of and some of my friends that are running 50 plus million dollar companies. And I mean, these guys are unicorns in their industries. But this love, this idea of business chaos doesn’t even escape them. Of that at that high level. And so I know this applies down at the lower end. We’ve all been there wearing all the hats. I think it even applies to some of our very established friends. And tell me about lack of clear direction, we hear that a lot with your visionary idea and the rocket fuel and EOS world is kind of commonplace, but why? How does that manifest into the chaos that we experience as business owners?

Speaker 1 4:55
For sure? No, I think one of the biggest pieces here is if you don’t have. That clear direction. So, and maybe it’s not that you don’t have the clear direction, but maybe it’s you’re a high performer, and you have that clear direction in your head, and you’ve never actually gotten it out on paper. You’ve never communicated it to someone else. And so whenever you don’t communicate that, or you don’t actually write that down on paper and share the vision with everyone. And even worse, if you have, like many of us, might be high level visionaries. You pop into the shower, you’ve got 20 ideas you come out with, maybe that vision is a little convoluted and you don’t really have kind of what that clarity of the vision is. So you might start there, if we take a step back of like I truly I know I want to go do big things. And I know these are some of the things I want to do, but I’m not exactly sure. Like, what’s the clear direction there? Yeah. But then have I even written it down or shared it with someone to actually make it happen? What

Brandon Welch 5:51
if I did it once?

Speaker 1 5:52
I did it once? Yeah. Well, you all know, like, so I’m actually expecting. My wife and I are expecting our first kiddo in the next six weeks or so.

Brandon Welch 6:01
Lovely. Congratulations,

Speaker 1 6:03
yes. Thank you so much. But I’ve heard that, you know, when you’re parenting, and you might be able to speak to this, but you have to repeat things up to seven times. And I think there’s research behind that that says repeating things

Brandon Welch 6:15
about me, repeat it to to me, yeah? So it’s right, you know, there’s, there’s truth to that. Definitely in parenting, I can 100% test to that, but I would, I would say that more in line with this podcast that’s marketing like, right? The minimum frequency we look for in a campaign is four a week, yeah, four per week. And that’s on the low end of advertising. Some of our guys are doing, you know, two to three a day for a message. And we do that for 52 weeks. And so the average audience has been exposed to that message, you know, 150 times or more, you know. So Repetition is key. I heard Zig Ziglar say it once. Motivation is like bathing. We recommend it daily. Yes, for sure. And I think that’s a pitfall of a lot of business leaders. I see it’s like the last time we heard anything about vision was the first week of January when we had a rah rah event. And, you know, it’s exceptionally talented, skilled or otherwise convicted people about their thing, just, just sort of walk around assuming everybody else gets it, yeah, and then when they don’t like, the immediate assumption is, well, you don’t belong here, or do you not get it? Like, didn’t you hear me speak once, right? And truth is, if those people got it to the level of that visionary got it, they wouldn’t need the visionary. They would be running their own ship, or they would be doing their own thing. And that’s that’s not a better than or worse than. That’s just if you got hit with that spell of your thing, it’s so much involved in your DNA, and you operating every single day, you’re gonna live it and breathe it. But that doesn’t mean that it’s as contagious as you think it is, and that’s good news. It actually that means you were called to do it, and probably others weren’t to that level. That’s right, that’s where, that’s where you come in, right? Yeah,

Speaker 1 8:07
and navigate that. And that’s where that kind of, we’ll talk about this here in a little bit, but the lack of clarity in roles, and how do you do, how do you know you have the right roles? And something that I’ve and we can talk about this a little bit later, but something that I’ve been recently struggling with, with some of my with some of my clients, is the visionaries out there don’t feel like that’s a true role, and they don’t feel like they have the permission to truly be that visionary. They should, should, quote, unquote, should, right, be working in the business. They should still be doing this type of work, and when they don’t build out their role and communicate that the team doesn’t get on board to say, yeah, actually get out of the office and go do the visionary thing so we can grow this thing.

Brandon Welch 8:51
Yeah, it’s the whole E Myth. It’s the whole, you know, I think there are business owners who don’t have that visionary, curse. Sure, we’ll call it a curse that that spell put over them, and they and they got into the business for a logical reason, because they were a skilled worker, or they were good at something. And I think there’s two ways you can go on that you can just get over it and learn the skill, and not be afraid to speak up and say, like, No, you actually get to do this. And believe it or not, for as or as big picture as my dialog tends to be, that was actually thing I had to do. I had to get over the fact that, oh, I should probably collaborate here a little more, and I shouldn’t just call it like it is. Sure it’s like, No, damn it. You should call it like it is, right? Yeah, if you got it in you and you woke up, if that pulled you out of bed, guess what? You’re the guy that gets to do that. That’s right. You have been called to do that, if you’re not the guy that got pulled out of bed. Now I think you can, I think you can be an integrator and an owner. Mm. Again, I think you can be the COO operations person and owner, as long as you understand you need somebody with that strength 100% and what happens the lower levels of business is nobody can afford to pay a CEO, yep, if they’re not one, so you have to fake it for a while. I think I disagree with

Speaker 1 10:19
that, yeah, well, and something in my specific experiences is I lean more towards that integrator side. And something that I’ve found is, is who are my board of advisors that I can surround myself with to help me drive that vision, to help me have some more of that quick start in me, because I have a lot of follow through, and a lot of, you know, research and kind of that stuff. And I can make things happen. I can do it. And I’m an owner. And so surrounding myself with those people who do push me to have a higher level of vision, who do push me to start things quicker, is super important.

Brandon Welch 10:53
So I’m usually the guy around the campfire saying, You know what we should do, and then whatever. And then you’re the guy going, waking up the next morning going, yeah, when are we gonna do that? That’s right. I’m like, why would we actually why would we execute on that idea? Because we’re going to have a better one here in a minute. Yeah, that’s exactly right. That’s that typical visionary integrator thing, and in my world, and I wish Caleb were here, this is not timely, that he’s here, not here on today’s episode, because yesterday was his 10 year anniversary. Yeah, it’s huge. And I owe, we all owe so much to Caleb, because that is what he does. He goes cool well, and he knows now, at first it was like, we had to, like, really work through this. But now he knows, okay, I’m gonna let you know, you know, Brandon, Mr. Visionary, over here, have his fun. And then, you know, we’ll, we’ll pick up what? There’ll be some, there’ll be a sliver of gold that might fall out of that, and then, then I’ll bring that up, and he’ll follow through with it, or make sure that I do that’s exactly and God bless Caleb for doing that, because he is. He’s the best at it. He’s like, he’s a carbon copy of you in that way. And so you need both, but that lack of clear direction. So I think there’s two problems. I heard you say, yeah, you either have it and aren’t properly communicating it, yep, or you are so caught up in the ops of your business that you don’t really have it and you need to solidify it 100% Yeah,

Speaker 1 12:13
but I think we just talked about a couple different ways to actually avoid that. It’s surrounding yourself with that right person who can kind of help you clarify that and say no to the 19 ideas, but one, but yes to the one, yeah, and then go execute it. And I think that’s that’s a big game changer, and taking a step back,

Brandon Welch 12:33
it was game changer for us, yeah, left to our own devices. Visionaries are very dangerous people, sure. So do you have any specific ways you help people do that?

Speaker 1 12:44
Yeah. So I mean, one of the biggest things that you can do is take a step back and look at the amount of time that you’re working in your business versus on your business. And so if you audit the amount of time that you are actually taking a step back, taking a higher level view and working on, what does that vision look like? Where do you actually truly want to go, figuring out, why do you exist? What do you stand for? So going back to those you know, kind of those core tenants of like, your core values and your core focus, of like, what are you actually doing? Why are you existing? Why do you walk in the doors every day, turn the lights on and serve who you serve, yeah, and then cast out this 510, year vision that’s actually written down and kind of clarified, of like, what do you want to be in 10 years? What do you want to do? What do you want to have, what do you want to be experiencing? Kind of writing all those things down.

Brandon Welch 13:36
We do, what they should do. They should get a copy of the Maven marketer, because that’s our process. We call it vision, values and vows, boom, and it’s all those things. There you go. And there’s a lot of frameworks for that. We like ours, but it’s, what do you what’s the world you’re trying to create? What will you do no matter what? What would you never do no matter what? And then what are your specific product promises? And just having those in place, we actually will not do a campaign unless we understand those about a business, yeah, like and you should fire an ad writer who doesn’t demand to pull those about marketing, not about eliminating chaos. Well,

Speaker 1 14:09
that’s true, but if you truly don’t have like across the board, even with vendors, with clients, with anybody you’re trying to serve team members, if you truly don’t have a vision in place that’s clear, then no wonder, you know, you don’t have those boundaries in place. You might be attracting the wrong team members. You might be working with the wrong vendors. If they don’t align with where you’re

Brandon Welch 14:28
trying to go. You’re programming the universe to give you random things 100%

Speaker 1 14:31
there’s a lot of intentionality to be gained here, which creates

Brandon Welch 14:35
clarity. So we spent a lot of time on that one, but that probably drives the rest of these. If I’m hungry, I’m guessing there’s a reason you put that as number one, absolutely. So number two would be, let’s say you have the vision that you get all that all figured out right for execution and implementation.

Speaker 1 14:49
Yes. So this one goes into very similar to what we talked about, is if you are that visionary and you aren’t surrounding yourself with the right team to actually execute and follow through. On that there’s a ton of clarity. Because what I like to say is some visionaries go out and make a lot of messes, and we need those team members to come back through, and because we need the visionaries to go make the mess 100% but we also need those team members to come back and clean that up in a way that creates a sustainable business, so that the visionary can come through, keep making those messes, and then perpetually create that sustainable growth. What would happen if

Brandon Welch 15:25
the visionary wasn’t there to begin with? Let’s just, let’s just no message clean up. Let’s just give some let’s give some visionaries some potential validation here, 100% that we needed, not that we needed. Yeah, you know anybody to tell us that we’re great? We already think that typically true. It’s a joke, yes, but, but you know who you are. It’s, yeah.

Speaker 1 15:43
But seriously, if you don’t have those 20 ideas, you have nothing to execute. So who you know that’s, that’s where it’s this yin and yang. Of you almost have to have that, because you’ll look across multiple different businesses in the most successful ones, have that Yin and the Yang. Yeah, you have someone creating messes, and you have someone cleaning them up.

Brandon Welch 16:03
I’m studying this, right? Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, right? Yeah, 100% Warren left his own devices. Was like, he was just a really enthusiastic investor, and he would believe, see the little shining, you know, Ember, inside the company, and invest in it, right? And Munger was like, Okay, you can have your fun. You want to, but you’re not going to be. It’s not going to get you very far, right? So his skepticism allowed Buffett to become what they both did, right 100%

Speaker 1 16:32
so yeah, so if you have that clear let’s say number one squared away. You’ve got that clear vision, clear direction, all of that’s written down, communicated, but you don’t have someone on your team or team members around you that can actually execute it and follow through on it, you are going to cause a lot of chaos in your business. So I don’t know if any of any of you are feeling that right now, saying like, you know, and we can get to this, these all kind of intertwine as you as we kind of talk through them, but it goes into having the right team members as well. So, yeah,

Brandon Welch 17:01
absolutely. So is there anything, if somebody’s sitting here going, what’s my first step to taking this vision? I know I have it. I know I’ve had what we call the pissed off moment that I know I’ve got to go change this. I know I’m mad at the industry, and I’m going to change something and make a better world for my end customers. Yes, I’m stuck on how to get that out to the execution phase. Yep. What do we tell our guys right now the

Speaker 1 17:27
it’s going back to how much time are you working on the business versus in the business? So to the degree that you can have a clear direction and a clear vision, with your core values, with your long term vision kind of written out, what do you want to be do have great experience out in five or 10 years, then we start to reverse engineer that down. So we need to start the next question. Tactical question is, what needs to be true in the next three years? For us to do it, write out those big dominoes. Once you have the three year written out, you write out your one year. What needs to be true by the end of this year? So we’re sitting here, it’s just, it’s in between Christmas and New Year’s what are the things that have to be true for us to be on track for our three year, on track for that longer term. And then you just continuously. Now we create these 90 day big priorities, big dominoes. What are the 90 day priorities that we need to knock down and make sure we’re on track for the one year, the three year, the five year, or whatever that looks like. And then you map out what do I need to do next week, and so creating a consistent cadence of reverse engineering those huge visions down into something that’s actually, you know, attainable and tangible. Yeah, that’s what you do here.

Brandon Welch 18:33
Yes, sounds so simple. Sounds so that’s right. And I think in your experience, it probably is it. For me, when you do this for other companies, you don’t have the emotional correct, you know, buying,

Speaker 1 18:48
yeah, and it’s, it’s, you know, being that close to the business day in and day out, being in the trenches, whatever that looks like for you, kind of executing and doing what you need to do, Managing all those things. It’s very difficult to not be emotionally tied to that. But a majority of the time when you bring a third party person into that, I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced that in your life, and other things other than business, but they can kind of point things out that you might not see. They might be able to like you said, lack that emotional attachment to your baby, and you can kind of point directions out, and it might let

Brandon Welch 19:21
people walk away from your engagements, just feeling like, oh, like clarified and on fire to go do the thing. Because they’re like, Finally, somebody who cut through all the chaos. So speaking of that, let’s get to the third thing, of chaos. The third thing, the pitfall, yes, constant threat of running out of cash,

Speaker 1 19:39
right? Have has, uh, raise your hand if you’ve ever felt anything like this. I mean, I think everybody has had uh, something like this happen to them, especially if you have started a business, or if you’re running a business, growing a business, scaling it, all of those things. And so this one is just like higher level. I don’t really get too deep into this. I typically. I refer to, you know, a higher level CPA or something like that, to as far as someone a board of advisors. But one of the key things that I’ve noticed whenever I work with businesses that don’t have these couple of things in place, is they’re feeling a lot of chaos with their cash so they aren’t paying attention to a budget, a year long budget. That’s kind of what’s what’s true and what’s projected, what was actual versus projected, and kind of keeping track of that month over month. Yeah, the next one is a cash flow projection. Where did we start the month? Where will we end the year? Where did we start the year with our cash balance, and where will we end the year based on that budget? Yeah. So then you can start to, you know, contingency plan, and put things out to kind of see where your cash, yeah, will end at the end, yeah, and yeah,

Brandon Welch 20:48
taxes, and taxes, all those hires and Yeah. I think where I see it, the most of my industry is, is just the emotional commitment of emotional meaning, like there’s risk when you’re hiring people, 100% for them, and you, if you have a holistic view, one of our core values is, if we’re not growing you, we’re using you. Yeah. And if you’re not growing us, you’re using us. And so how do you make sure that you can weather that? Because there’s a there’s a ramp up period, you probably shouldn’t wait to the last minute to hire that extra person, right? To really share bandwidth,

Speaker 1 21:21
true. And so if you don’t have those things in place, and the third one, I would say, so the first one’s budget, second one’s a cash flow projection, the third one is cash reserves, yeah. And so that comes in, yeah. If you don’t have those three in place, you can see how the chaos can ensue. But if you have those three things in place, for example, your capacity process. So let’s say you’re you’re crushing it with sales and marketing, and you need to bring on another person. Well, if you don’t have a budget in place, obviously you don’t know where that how that’s going to affect your expenses, and how that’s going to affect what you truly want as a business owner, right? Um, whether, whether that’s more impact, more revenue or more profit, whatever that looks like. But you don’t know what that does. And then if you hire that person, you don’t know how that’s going to affect your cash flow, knowing, like, how do I weather these storms? What does the contingency plans look like? And then if you don’t have the reserves, well, then you’re going to be in a constant state of chaos, because you’re not sure if all of your clients make a run on the bank and they come to you and say, Hey, we can’t pay you this this month? Well, yeah, then you’re sunk. And so having those three things gives you confidence, clarity, courage, all kinds of things to make those decisions. And

Brandon Welch 22:28
then you can do the important work, yes, and you can devote mental bandwidth, like your energy. It’s not just time. Time is a big thing, like you, but you can, with a little bit of discipline, you can get a hold on your time, right? That’s usually as simple as yes and no and prioritizing Yep, but energy yes, if you wake up with cash flow crunches, you know, two weeks out of the month, and you’re wondering how closer out of the finish line that is, that is emotionally burdensome Yes. And I’m not trying to make it a softy like cry, pity party kind of emotion, but that literally takes out like your being, like your identity as a well. It’s a man of your word, if nothing else, because it’s like, and I know businesses that have gotten into that, am I going to be able to pull this off? It’s not a fun place to be, so no, but once we have that, we can go into these other three so focusing on lack of clarity and accountability, which this takes time, 100% takes time and like, good quality time, like, yes, like emotional height of like, quality of bandwidth to be able to put in here to pull this stuff off, absolutely speaking, a little bit from experience, but tell us about lack of clarity and accountability. Yeah.

Speaker 1 23:43
So, you know, the biggest thing that I see with business owners here is we have people stepping on each other’s toes. There’s people doing two people doing the same thing, and then nothing actually gets done. Wow. There’s no clarity in who’s actually doing it. Because, you know, as the book traction says, when two people are accountable, no one’s accountable. And so this one is huge, as far as having a visual structure of your business built out in a structure first people second approach that gives you the opportunity to build out what are your major roles and functions of the business, what are the key responsibilities for each of those and then putting the people in place to ensure we have one person in each seat, not two people in each seat. Of course, there’s exceptions to some of these things, like, for example, a dentist office who has multiple hygienists or multiple assistants, dental assistants. You know, obviously you’re gonna have multiple seats there, but you just want one. Just want one person in each seat so that there’s clarity in this is my role. This is what it looks like to win, and this is who I report to, because it creates this hierarchical structure. You think,

Brandon Welch 24:54
if you’re more traditional professional trades like legal and medical, yes, and there’s some of them are literally. Be granted by certification and like legal ability to perform that duty, you bring it down into office environment where you don’t have to be certified or have a linear set of training to do something. And that’s that’s the downfall of those positions, is that you might have somebody like Nate the camera guy who was a rock star of execution, just taking stuff off people’s plate, that’s a wonderful, beautiful thing. And the business owner’s perspective, it’s like, that’s really cool, but it might be robbing somebody else of their ability, and that did not happen here. Just made that up, by the way. But you might be robbing some of their also their ability or accountability, or correct job role, right? Job description, and the part about Nate being a rock star was true, as far as I know, isn’t true, but that’s right.

Speaker 1 25:47
Well, the tough part about this too, is if you’ve never built out a visual structure of your business, and to see it on paper and to share that again with your whole team, yes, that can be one of the biggest levers of growth. Clarity everything in your business to see, oh, shoot. Do I have too many seats? Do I have too many people? Do I have not enough seats? Am I missing something? It’s you’re basically having you’re inventorying your business in a visual sense, with people and roles. I

Brandon Welch 26:20
recommended this to somebody the other day. I’m like, you have to in your mind, fire, everybody, put them over here and an imaginary like purgatory, right? Of like in or out of the business? Yes, and you have to go, if I were trying to do, x, y, z, what are the what are the roles, the functions, the financial ability to pay people, what? What would, what would I be able to do 100% then divide it out on a chart. And then you go back to your Purgatory and go, Oh, well, she’s a perfect fit. Oh, he’s a perfect fit. Oh, that. This is all wonderful. And you find the one person you’re like, oh, man, where do I put them? Yes, and, or they’re not there yet, and I’m going to give them an opportunity. Of course, I’m going to clarify, man, that’s the most compassionate thing you can do as a leader. Absolutely say it’s not continually walking around and being like passive aggressive to that person. It’s like saying, No, have the hard conversation, which I know is coming up, but it’s like, here is what the role needs. Yep, here and like, nine times out of 10, unless they’re a sociopath, they pretty well know it. Yeah, just say, how do you think you’re doing in these areas? Yep, one out of five. And I think the best role, tell me if you agree, the best role, descriptions and clarities are just literally continued throughout the entire history of that person’s tenure and their reviews? Yeah, that was their position. We it’s not new, surprising or different. If, if the last time your employees saw their job description was on the day they got hired, you’ve got a problem.

Speaker 1 27:53
Big miss, yeah. Big miss, yeah. There should, in all reality, to the degree that you can have quarterly conversations with your team to review how they’re doing in their roles, how they’re doing with the core values, and how they’re doing with just kind of their day to day, kind of their priorities. That’s going to be super key. So that’s huge. What I’m hearing you say a game changer, yeah, what I’m hearing you say is, there’s some businesses out there, don’t you don’t have to raise your hand, but that the last time your team members might have saw the job description was the day they were hired or the day that they interviewed. And that’s that’s a big opportunity to maximize on to truly grow and continue to sustain awesome team members.

Brandon Welch 28:34
It takes the awkwardness out of those conversations, those tough conversations, that makes them objective. You may love the person you may, they may be somebody you go to church with, or you’re friends with, yes and just the person you don’t you don’t want to hurt, you don’t want to hurt them, then actually be clear with them. Yes. Clarity is compassion, yeah,

Zach Hoskins 28:52
yeah, for sure, it’s kindness, absolutely.

Brandon Welch 28:54
Who said that was that? Brene Brown? Brene Brown. Yeah. Love her. So good read, Brene Brown. Yes, while you’re at it. So stop this podcast and really just go listen to any of her books. So four, so get your clarity and accountability in check. Yes, and then wrong people on the bus. You’re gonna find wrong people and dysfunction on the team. Yeah, tell us about that.

Speaker 1 29:15
So the classic one here, this is the so fifth Pitfall, wrong people and team dysfunction. The classic one of this is the Rainmaker, who’s an asshole, the person who can sell all of the all of the things generate a ton of revenue, but the team doesn’t like them. Yeah,

Brandon Welch 29:32
and the business owner stuck with Yes, it’s on a constant apology tour, a constant

Speaker 1 29:39
apology tour, but they’re also seeing that revenue. And if you aren’t checking yourself and checking the pulse of your team, you can be like, Oh my gosh, this is great. Look at our numbers. Yeah. But then if you aren’t checking the pulse of your team, that’s where the dysfunction comes in, and some team members may or may not leave over that well. Biggest

Brandon Welch 30:00
what would be worse than them leaving leaving? You would at least have an indicator your business. It would be worse if they stayed and they were miserable Absolutely because they’re going to suffocate themselves and you, and eventually your customers, and eventually the people around them, if you’ve got a sales guy making that person’s life miserable. Because, yeah, some I’ve experienced, sometimes they’re not just, you know, jerks, right? Sometimes they are just incompetent. They might be really good at the relational side of things, but they’re incompetent and they’re constantly relying on other people to, you know, do their stuff for them. And if that’s understood as a role, and there’s it’s provided for in the org structure, fine, absolutely. But sometimes it’s like, no, you are a coming. You’re trying to fix the system for delivery of a product by being a salesperson, and that’s just the that’s the wrong way to do it, right?

Speaker 1 30:47
Because, you know, we’ve all been there, we’ve all had to wear that sales hat. Sometimes we say things that are just like, hey, yeah, we can do that. And then you go back to the delivery team, it’s like, no, we can’t. What are you talking about? And so, and I’m not saying that’s that’s that’s not an extreme example, but that’s one where, like, the clarity and roles comes in, and the what does the actual role look like? How is the salesperson trained? All of those different things. But I, and I use it as an example, as kind of an extreme example of what a toxic kind of potential, wrong team, Team dysfunction, you know, opportunity could look like, yeah.

Brandon Welch 31:20
Well, no doubt the sales that paradigm exists, yeah. So I look for it in bad culture fit, lack of disrespect. I think your core values do a ton 100% to align that conversation immediately. Here, our core values are literally set out loud every week. That’s how we start our week. And, you know, I think that takes care of a lot of the expectation and, like, the how we roll, because we’ve been doing that for like, nine and a half years. But the other thing we do is in those quarterly conversations, that’s your Well, first of all, Caleb actually has monthly conversations. He would sniff out any of those problems 100% we had, if they hadn’t already seen them. But then the quarterly conversations are like, we go back to the core values, and it’s like, do you think you’re upholding X, Y and Z, yeah. And sometimes it’s just a subtle shift, yeah.

Speaker 1 32:14
Well, in a game changer there too, as far as like, yeah, like, the core values are key. So in those quarterly conversations, something that can be powerful too, is to have your team member come with their belief on how they feel they’re doing in each of the core values. So you come with your belief, they come with their belief, and you kind of just have a conversation of like, are we aligned or not? Yeah. Because also, like, going back to the core values, to the degree that you can get those clear, you’re going to start to create this magnetic effect. You’re going to start to attract in the right people, just like you said, like, every week you repeat them out loud. Well, if you have a team member that’s on your team that hears those every week and is in alignment with those, they’re gonna be like, oh gosh, I don’t, I don’t like this. I’m probably gonna, I’m probably gonna bounce out, yeah, but to the degree that you have happen, that’s exactly right, but to the degree that you have those correctly, you’re gonna attract in the right people, and they’re gonna get bought in so much deeper. You’re going

Brandon Welch 33:07
to train the universe to send you the right people. Exactly right. Took me so long to learn that I was afraid. I don’t know why I was afraid for that to happen so much maybe, maybe because we didn’t have the execution and implementation oiled as well, sure. So it was like, it was, like, a short term mentality of, like, oh my gosh, what would I do for the next three months without that person? Yes, but now I’m like, as fast as possible. Like, if yes, you’re pretty sure that this isn’t working, then we aren’t going to be anywhere close to as sure as you are about that it is going to correct. And so artist friends, and that’s happened, and it’s happened. I’ve had that happen with the best of friends. I’ve people say, don’t hire friends. Well, if you have this in place, yeah, and there’s somebody you trust and you want to give it a shot, and there’s this clear communication. We’ve gone on to be wonderful friends. 100% it didn’t, it didn’t do anything, because this was a the conversation, and the cadence was pre eminent to any of the problems that might arise. Yeah. So talk to me about the courage to off board people. Yeah. So

Speaker 1 34:11
one thing I love about this is there’s two options. When you off board people, you can coach. Well, there’s two options before, before you start to offboard someone. There’s two options. You can coach them in, or you can coach them out. And so when you have the visual structure of your business, the roles built out, and you have your core values, you can coach them in. You can say, hey, what resources? What coaching can we give you to you know, help you out here. How can we get you deeper into it? How can we try attract you in? How can we get that buy in? And then, if not, you know, a very generous thing you can do as a business owner is coach them out. And what does that look like? Well, it can look like helping them find another role that’s better fit for them. Yeah, it could. It could it could, you know, be so many different things. We can talk way deeper this prize in the conversation, but about that. But it’s, it’s, it’s, if you approach it as a coach in or coach out mentality, the courage to off board people kind of,

Brandon Welch 35:14
kind of, it gets crazy, good thing. Yeah, well, it’s, it is. It’s the compassionate thing to do. Man, that’s the golden rule, yeah. And I would say it’s not like the second best thing. It’s actually the best thing to coach people where they need to be absolutely if that happens to be in your organization, great. If that happens to be an organization, all the same, great. Yes, it’s if you truly care about people at all. And let’s hope that everybody listening does. If not, I don’t know what to tell you, but if you truly care about people, you will wake up going, I want you to be the best version of you, 100% and sometimes it’s like, I know you were called to be here. And sometimes it’s like, here’s what you’re awesome at. You haven’t heard this in a while because you’ve been hearing all the things you’re not awesome at, because you’re required to do a lot of things you’re not awesome at. But let me remind you of your greatness. That’s that is my favorite thing to do, huge no matter the status of a of a team member. I think we should all do that more, if I can, just absolutely for a moment. But I agree, find Yeah, remind it not and not just when there’s a problem, man, that’s exactly remind them of what they are rock stars at on any given day. And then when you say you know what you’re a rock star. A rock star at at this you know what else? I think these other things that are in the way, which might be the job that you’re currently in here? Yeah, I’ve had that happen, and I don’t know how I learned that, yeah, but I think over time that that just that belief and that conviction about people has served this organization well. 100% as we all kind of share that, yeah, it’s big. Sometimes they need to do that for the leader too. Absolutely. I, you know, yeah, hard to coach an owner out of that business, yeah? But I’ve seen it done. I’ve actually seen it done, yeah, um, I’ve seen, I’ve seen companies where the employees were like, you should sell or let me buy you out. Or, sure? Yeah, it takes a really self aware owner. Yeah, absolutely, like ego, but 100% so wrong people and team dysfunction, I would say it’s the whole higher slow fire fast that time. But let’s change that to

Speaker 1 37:20
recruit slow, yes. Coach Fast, yes. Well and always, have always be hiring is another key thing too. You don’t always have to say, like we have positions available, but you can always have a bench of awesome people that you can consistently be keeping up with as the visionary you know, you’re kind of responsible for these large relationships, large relationships equal team members in the future. So create your bench of all stars that you would love to bring on and then just keep them in the whole

Brandon Welch 37:51
higher slow or recruit slow doesn’t have to mean you take forever for the sake of taking forever. It just means you think longer term, about 100% that on ramp to finding the person, when you find them and the time’s right, you better move fast. That is a fast move, right? Absolutely. But then coach them fast when you get them in and, man, I’ve, I can think of two companies right now who had the most mediocre, lousy team members for dude, I’m talking three or four years, and every other meeting, it was like, You’re not going to believe what so and so did next. And like, by the second one, I’m like, have we coached this person? And they just part, part of, part of the nature of our engagements is some of, sometimes it’s blowing off steam, so we let them do that. But then you’re like, do you need to coach this person? And then they get, they get afraid to do it, because they don’t have these tools, and they didn’t have this process. And then there’s and then sometimes it can get, you know, litigious, and they’re afraid of who’s gonna sue them or whatever. Yeah, as a bad place to be. So Coach fast. If you don’t know how to coach, call my friend Zach. Yeah, you would teach him how to do that, right? I’d love to, okay, be awesome. My friend Randy is also really good, so costly and frustrating meetings, center of chaos. Yes,

Speaker 1 39:03
number six, the final one, costly and frustrating meetings. And you’ve kind of seen how we’ve gone from this higher level kind of down to more tactical. And so when we look at meetings, I’m curious if you’ve ever felt this. We have to prep for this meeting. We have to build out the agenda. We spend time doing that, okay? We’re not sure who’s supposed to be in this meeting, and so we just bring a lot of people in there and hope that it’s the right person then, or the right people in the meeting. Then we have this meeting. It’s supposed to be an hour, but it ultimately goes two hours and 15 minutes, and we just kind of talked around in circles. We never solved anything, but we did say we were gonna do things. And so afterwards, we then send out an email or whatever, follow up actions, and then nothing gets done. I don’t know if you’ve ever felt that, but there’s a lot of people, a lot of business owners out there that I’ve talked with that that is their thing. And there’s and there’s like, Okay, well, we had time before the meeting, we had the time in the meeting, and then we had the time after the meeting, and then still nothing. Got done. And so when you look at costly and frustrating meetings, look at the Hours of everybody who is in those meetings. How much did that cost you? And then how frustrating is it for you to spend all that time and nothing get done?

Brandon Welch 40:11
In our business, we are professional meeting runners in a way early on, when we had like, 15 clients. It was great because it just we automatically had the bandwidth to go spend a bunch of time here, and then we just would be like, we’d have enough time in the day. We’re like, Oh, now it’s time to do that work. Yeah, as we doubled, it got to where we were running meetings, and then having so many meetings, client meetings, that we didn’t have a plan for what needs to get done. By the time two or three weeks rolls around, it’s time to follow up. It’s like, oh gosh, what we’re supposed to do? So, quite literally, by fire, we had to produce our own internal way to run our client meetings, and then we started doing that for us. Like, what needs to get done after this such a game changer, because the emotional need we’ll make, we’ll make the meeting call. Something bad would happen. We didn’t have a meeting about this. And then you go off and it’s blowing steam, yes? And then, which might be helpful for your temporary emotional state, but it’s not good for a long term, 100% execution state. So that’s

something you help people facilitate, yeah, absolutely. Kind of creating a What does that meeting structure look like. And you kind of can see how we went back to reverse engineering. If you have a kind of a longer term, kind of annual strategic planning, working on the business session, a quarterly session, and then these weekly sessions, you can kind of see how your longer term vision gets reverse engineered down. And you’re always consistently tapping in this cadence. And if you can get that cadence right, you’re going to be executing. You’re going to have a clear direction. You’re going to execute and implement. You’re not going to have a, you know, constant threat of running out of cash. You’re going to have the right people and the right roles, and you’re going to haveproductive meetings where stuff actually, your stuff actually gets done.

We talked about the podcast being the place where you eliminate waste and advertising. Waste and advertising, yes, grow your business and achieve the big dream. Yes. And while none of this seems like it had much to do with advertising, sure, um, eliminating waste sometimes means you get the stuff behind the business out of the way so that you can have the time and bandwidth to grow. Yes. And those other two grow the business, achieve the big dream, 100% 100% limited by these six chaos factors, absolutely. And now you know how to solve them. Yep, now you know how to get these out of your way. We didn’t talk about this. But is, is there a way you could literally help this audience if they wanted a guide in this process? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 42:40
absolutely. So if you go to the efficiencyconductor.com and there is, you know, there’s going to be a little bit of information there. And if that resonates with you, awesome. If it doesn’t, that’s awesome too. But I’m here to help you and provide value in any way I can. I’m always in your corner. Connect with me there, fill out the form, and then you can get in touch with me that way, and I would love to help wonderful.

Brandon Welch 43:04
I know you got so much value out of this episode. One of the things that would be so helpful to our mission is that, if you would share this with other business owners, or other employees of yours, or other people who you know this would speak to. It is very much our heart to help entrepreneurs do exactly what we said, eliminate waste and advertise and grow the business and ultimately achieve the big dream. And we are just on fire about that. So like, subscribe. If you haven’t got a copy of the book, there’s a lot of our vision, values and vows, formulas will help you get through some of this that’s in the comment section of the where we posted this episode. And I hope you have a wonderful week and start it with this wisdom. Maybe pick one thing that you’re going to do about this this week and let us know about it at Maven Monday, at frankandmaven.com Yes, we’ll be back here every week answering your real life marketing questions, because marketers who can’t teach you why are

Zach Hoskins 43:57
just a fancy lie. Have a great week.