Milestone 50 And Life’s Messiness

Dave 0:01

Welcome to the Business Crypto Podcast. We're here to share real life insights, practical strategies, and the added lessons that we have learned from our own state and we have made in your future. So whether you need help with operations, accountability, financial balance, details, or maybe just getting your mindset right. We are here and it's the right spot for no fluff conversations. So grab your favorite cup of Joe. Let's jump into the show. Let's jump into the show, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to another episode of the Business Unscripted Podcast. It is another Friday morning and it's episode 50. I cannot believe episode 50. We talked about it last week, halfway to a century. Two more episodes. We'll be doing this for about a year, Darren. So it's been it's been fun and exciting. But you're in the right spot. As I my my recorded voice said, you know, if you're a business owner, maybe you're an aspiring business owner and you're going through some struggles and you're you're just interested in in learning what you could be doing a little bit differently, or maybe you just want a different perspective. We're here. This is a spot for you. You know, welcome to our community, welcome to our our little tribe here. So we love you. Thank you for joining us today. Uh, we got a good conversation, I'm sure, because as the uh name of our podcast says, we don't follow a script. Typically, we we talk maybe one or two things we might want to talk about. But it won, if you've listened to any of our episodes, right, we go off the rails. So Dwarne, thanks for joining us.

Duarne 1:23

Good morning, Dave. How are you doing?

Dave 1:25

Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. Beautiful day in it's a beautiful day in the paradise, you know what I mean? I cannot complain.

Duarne 1:32

Well, it's a lovely night here. Um I wasn't sure I was gonna be able to make it tonight, though. If you'd asked me in the beginning of the week, I wouldn't have been sure. For those who are not aware, I've been in moving mode. So moving house and also office for the home office at least, for the last two weeks. So something I thought would take for my office move a couple of days, ended up taking four days.

Dave 1:57

Right.

Duarne 1:58

Uh we had a lot of people.

Dave 1:58

Well, the last time you moved, I mean, did you have kids at that moment? Like you probably were, you know, just uh a single man with it with a girl, and and that was it.

Duarne 2:07

Yeah, pretty much. And look, like eight years we lived in the previous place. It's amazing how much crap you accumulate in eight years. And just blew my mind. So, you know, we like it's one of those scenarios where it makes it a lot harder too when it's raining constantly during that entire week. We've had this is our second day of sunshine today since we started moving two weeks ago. And we were lucky to have an enclosed truck for most of it. But this last couple of days we've just been using my silverado and you know, bringing over a few loads at a time, a few loads a day rather. But yeah, it's been good, stressful, but it's nice to be in the new place. It's a little bit messy. I don't have my normal background up. I've got a blur on because it's I haven't got a curtain up yet. I got an old desk in the background that's got tables on it from setting up. Yeah, so forgive me, but I'm live and I'm here.

Dave 3:04

We all got the it's just a reminder, you know what I mean, that you know you don't have to be perfect. We I think we said it last week, you know what I mean? Like you don't have to literally try and be perfect every time. You just got to get started, you know what I mean? I think that's me and you why we're here, like episode 50, you know what I mean? Because we literally just got started and now we've been doing it every single week. Um you know, there's weeks where you're not able to make it or or or anything like that, but that's all right. You know, we just got started, and I think that's important. You know, a lot of individuals, myself in the past, probably would have been able to use that as an excuse of, you know what, Dave, I'm not gonna make it today. I'm not, you know, things aren't ready. I don't want to I don't want to look like you know, maybe like unprofessional or what you want to call it, and they would have used being you know, moving as an excuse to not be here this morning and missing the conversation. So I'm gonna give you props, right, for just showing up, you know, even when things aren't perfect in your office right now.

Duarne 3:59

So thanks for joining us. I appreciate it, man. I think that's life, right? Life is bloody messy, and business can be messy, right? I mean, it's just how things are, and you know, you mentioned kids, right? We've got two kids under the age of two, an eight, an eight-month-old and a 19-month-old. So, I mean, you can imagine like they're into everything, they're constantly moving. You can't leave them unattended, and it is just one of those scenarios.

Dave 4:27

It doesn't matter how much Miss Rachel you can put in front of them, they just yeah, you know, we've we've got they want mommy and daddy time, you know what I mean? Even when you're trying to get done. They do, they do, right?

Duarne 4:40

And it's like you just get one down and then the other one's up. Uh, it's just it is reality, it is life, and I think that's the that's the thing, right? When you've got work-life balance going on, if if you work in an office, if you work from home, I mean you've got a newborn in your house at the moment, you know what this is like. It is the reality of getting that balance right, and it is not gonna be as smooth as everyone sees in front of a camera sometimes. Sometimes it is messy in the background, but we make it work for sure.

Dave 5:15

And and I think that's the biggest thing, you just make it work. Nobody really knows what's going on in the background, you don't see the background of anybody else's life, right? You just assume that things are perfect because they're successful, you know, and and and you're in in reality, you don't know how much stuff you're going through. So, what I would say, you know, today we talked about this last week. We we chatted about accountability, and a lot of times, clients of mine in the in the world of business, they want to jump to accountability and take blame for things that might go wrong with their clients, and they want to immediately say, you know what, I'm sorry, you know, it's all on us, like we'll fix it because they're afraid of losing that person as a client. Um, and we talked about last week about how you want to maybe pull back a little bit, you know, give it a little bit of a minute to rest and actually analyze the situation, and then have the conversation with your client to or your partner, however it ends up being. I gave an example last week of a of a business partner. But Dwarne, it's funny because we were talking pre-show, this was actually you know impactful to you. So why don't you walk through kind of the situation that happened like right before the podcast and then how you are now because of that kind of pulling back for a minute and where you are with that that client now?

The Power Of Just Showing Up

Duarne 6:32

Yeah, yeah, sure. So, like just literally minutes after joining the pre-show last week, I got a message through on an instant messaging platform that I use for work from one of my clients, and it was something as simple as an emoji, and it was an unhappy face emoji. So, first thing I think is uh someone's got fat fingers, that's me all the time. I hit the wrong emoji all the time. No big deal, screenshot, send it back, question mark. Then I get this message back where it was actually no, I meant to do that, I'm not happy. I this is how I interpreted what you said previously. Oh, okay. Forcing me to actually take a moment and read through everything that I was doing. Now, I was in a situation at that point where I was about to go live, so I was talking with you, Dave, and pre-show, and I'm like, mentioned it, and I'm like, and you're like, hey, you know what? Let's just do the show, we'll come back and we'll talk about it afterwards if you need to, and we can go back. So my response was, Hey, look, I'm about to go live on a podcast, I'll come back to you after this. And that became part of our topic for the conversation last week without going into too many details during that show. But after the show, I was able to read through it and I went through it with yourself. I pulled my wife in and I was having a chat with her and showed her, and we we all agreed that nothing was said that was of concern at that point, right? And it might have just been something was taken out of context or something or rather. So I took that moment, like we talked about, had a thing, and I recorded on the app a four or five-minute message, just basically, hey, look, you know, this is I don't know what's happened here, but this is what my intention was. And I'm sorry if you felt that you know that way about what I'd said, that certainly wasn't the intention. This is what I was actually referring to. You know, I did this in a recording because you know what, it's easy to tell what my tone is in a recording, and uh sent that through. And surprisingly, the next day I get a message back and it was like, hey, you know what? I've had a really tough time lately. I've got a newborn at home, and just like we're talking about before, and now you guys get delayed on something, right?

Dave 9:01

So now you guys are actually instead of just being at each other, like, oh my god, like I can't believe you said this, I can't believe you took it this way. You know, you actually were able to settle back, and now you're at a place of you know connection.

From Emoji Conflict To Client Breakthrough

Duarne 9:13

Absolutely. We're there was a there was a common ground there, and I leaned into that a little bit, and I asked him, like, how's things going? Are you getting much sleep? How's your wife doing? You guys taking it in turns, and it turns out it was a second kid, so they got a four-year-old as well. So it's not, you know, four years is I've got an I've got an 18, a 19-month-old and an eight-year-old. I totally get it. The eight-year-old's kind of independent, does his own thing, whereas the 19-month-old and the four-year-old a little bit similar in the way they uh need attention and definitely need watching. But yeah, it was it was interesting. And as we started chatting, and it was just he was he was chatting with me on the messenger app, and because he couldn't, he had the baby sleeping there and he couldn't take the call at risk of waking the baby, it was in his arm. So we're having a chat, and it turns out there was actually a few concerns going on in the on his business front. And when I spoke to him about it, it was more just changes that he he had a lot of downtime because he couldn't actually work while you doing baby duties, right? You know what it's like when you've got a baby, you can't really just go and sit on the computer and start typing and doing things at full speed. It's kind of a little bit of a half speed. Stop, pause, baby moved, make sure it doesn't move the wrong way, can't make too much noise, can't get on a call. So it's like he felt very hamstrung at that point. But what ended up happening was we had a really good breakthrough moment where I was able to talk to him about some suggestions on how he could do some things in his business. He was really appreciative of it. We ended up pushing forward with the original plan of services that we were gonna do in the first place. He actually reduced what his requirements were, and actually we're able to deliver the we're able to deliver what he wants basically sooner, which is great, and we'll build up to what he wants long term. So it's it was really interesting. And then, like I was saying to Dave just before this call, a few hours ago, I was on a convers on a video call with him with another client. We're having a three-way conversation and we're having a great time talking about everything. We're on a really good space now. And then earlier today, we're both on baby duties looking after babies, and we're messaging each other and sharing pictures and go, well, this is what my view looks like at the moment. I'm trying to make sure my toddler doesn't jump off the bed and hit her head, which seems to be a constant battle. And he's like, Yeah, I've got a four-year-old pulling on my leg constantly wanting to play, or my newborn wants to constantly fight to wake up. So it was interesting. We found that common ground. But I think if I had done what we and you know, could have been my instinct initially, which was to jump in and start defending myself and you know being defensive about it rather than step back and do what we talked about in that last episode and just think about my actions before I took action, I think it could have been a very different outcome. Right. We're all in a really good place right now again. And it just goes to show, right, you don't know what's going on in someone else's world. You don't know what sort of day someone's had up until now. And if you don't know that, then it you can make one misstep can cause someone to take react react differently to what you normally react to. And sometimes just taking that moment to take a step back and just be, you know what? Let me just see what's going on here. This is not normal, this is this feels a bit off. Let me see if I can re-evaluate this and come at it from a different angle.

Dave 12:54

And it's nice, it's interesting you say that, right? Because I've said this a lot to people, and I is you could be walking down you know the street and you don't know what's going on. I think I actually shared it my brother's birthday, you know, who passed Jesus uh 26 years ago. It's crazy. But but I just shared it because you don't you never know ultimately what that person's going through on that day, you don't know what they're struggling with internally. And if your immediate response, like in that situation, uh no knowing myself in the past, like probably would have been like, well, what do you mean? Like, you know, I said this exactly what we talked about, you know what I mean? And and maybe they would have then even felt more attacked, you know. And so I also I like what you kind of did with the video message, which is important because I think the tonality is so important in in conversations and in connection. And when you're when you're able to have a calm conversation with somebody, you know, sometimes they're gonna be irrational and they're not gonna listen anyways. But at least you know that you controlled, you know, kind of your side, and that's all you can really control ultimately. And so in your situation here, it was it's great because you were able to you were kind of forced, but you were able to take that like our break and then come back to the conversation with a clearer mind. And then in that moment, you're like, wait, let me just do a video so you can understand exactly what I'm trying to say. And then you went ahead and you kind of move forward with it, right? And now you're in a good spot where you said he signed up for services, that you know, you there's no more disappointment, he's completely on board, and now you are in a good position to make him a raving fan of your services and your support, which who knows what that's gonna bring you in the future. So just wanted I wanted to literally, you know, as you as you kind of mentioned that pre-show, just recap that from last week. I know we didn't kind of dive into a lot of the details with it because it was something that was going on like with our clients and and and but you specifically, and then now it it had a happy ending, which is which is good to hear.

Duarne 15:10

So yeah, and look, I'm sure it's not always gonna be the case, but I'll tell you what, whether you're forced to or you choose to, just taking that moment. Thank you, Jackson, Jordan.

Dave 15:22

Thanks, Jackson. You have a good one, dude.

Duarne 15:24

That that moment you managed to take and just reflect on the scenario and the situation can be huge. How many times have you opened up an email, read it, got really upset and irate, and then go back and reread it an hour later and go, Oh shit, I really overreacted the first time.

Dave 15:41

Right. Well, and here's here's the thing that you did too that I that I want to point out as well. And you know, I mentioned Jeremy Minor and his NEPQ model all the time because I've gone through the training. But what you did is kind of the same way that you would do in person, and and somebody's saying, like, hey man, I really am upset with you. You just kind of like upset, you know, and you're you're you were curious. And what did that prompt him to do? It prompted him then to respond in what he was actually feeling, yeah. Right. And it's the same thing in person if you're having a conversation. If somebody says, you know, I'm stressed, well, stressed, you know, what is that like by just simply repeating that emotional word back, it in their mind, so oh, they want to know more information. Let me tell them a little bit more about it, and now they can open up a little bit. So it's really interesting what you did in terms of you took an emoji and turned it into kind of that same context by just copying it and question mark, which would be the text version of you know, that without the tone, because you obviously can't do tone, but then you opened up and kind of told you a little bit more about what the issue was. And and so if you're listening to this, don't don't feel bad if if you find yourself being in that situation where you're you're quick to react or maybe you're quick to take accountability, because we've both been there, Dorne and I. But now use this as your your kind of reminder of hey, wait, let me let me just set anytime I want to re-remind myself or if I want to respond to anybody, I'm gonna give myself five minutes, right? I'm gonna give myself 10 minutes and then come back to it, reread it. Do you still have the same feelings towards it? Because more often than not, you're not gonna, you're gonna see it in a more clear mindset because you didn't let yourself get into that emotion right away. And I don't remember where I saw this, but it's really important. And again, I'm not like any sort of like psychologist, but that first five to ten seconds of when you first feel an emotion, if you let yourself go down that emotion even further, you're stuck in it, right? Yeah, but if you can break the pattern of initially feeling it, recognizing, get away from it, you're never you're you're not gonna the likelihood of you going back into that emotion when you go back to that situation is gonna be slim.

Duarne 17:58

So you should say that. Like I saw a video the other day, which is quite interesting. It was a a guy sitting there and got splashed. And I think I shared this video with you, and he gets splashed, and then the guy sitting on a lawn chair next to him gets splashed as well. And the guy in the lawn chair is like totally cool. And the guy who's walking on the sidewalk's like, Hey, are you kidding? That guy just totally splashed me on purpose. You got splashed as well. You must be so mad right now. And he goes, Nah, I'm good. No, no, you have to be mad. He just did that on purpose, he didn't have to do that. That you should be really mad about that. And he goes, Nah, I'm good. And then he says to him, He goes, So here's $1,400. Bang. Well, oh, that's cool. So I'm gonna ask you a question. You've lost one dollar, you've now got thirteen hundred and ninety-nine dollars. Are you gonna burn that whole thirteen hundred and ninety-nine dollars? Hell no. And he's like, that's what you're doing with your time, man. You're you've got one minute of bad time in your entire day, one out of 1400 minutes in a day, and you're choosing to ruin the rest of your day because of that. You wouldn't give up $1,399. So why would you give up $1,399 minutes of your day getting upset about that situation? Try and let it go. And I was like, whoa, that's that's that's a clever way of looking at it, right? And it's a lot of people.

Dave 19:31

The other one, too, that you know, for somebody that and and and it's kind of like on the same premises that I that I really it it hits, you know, and the dollar amount really, I guess doesn't really matter, but you know, Dwarne, if I give you five million dollars, will you take it?

Duarne 20:19

What's the catch? We got straight to that.

Dave 20:25

Okay, but okay, so yes, I'm gonna give you five million dollars, but you don't wake up tomorrow.

Duarne 20:33

Yeah, I'd rather wake up tomorrow.

Dave 20:35

Okay, so what you so and and I think in the video it was like 10 million or whatever, but it could be a million, it could be you know 150,000, whatever it is. Basically, whatever that value is, right, is you are now telling yourself, hey, that's my that's my life. You know, I'm I'm literally worth that much. You know, even if even if it's a if I've said a billion dollars, I don't think anybody would take a billion dollars to not wake up tomorrow.

Emotional Control And Pattern Breaking

Duarne 20:59

I don't think there's a well the only scenario that makes sense, right, is if you're sitting on death row and you're meant to be executed in a couple of days, and you could leave that money to your family to give them a better life, or to the victims that you caused grief to, that makes sense. Or if you're got a terminal illness potentially, and you want to leave something to help someone, that makes sense. But the average person outside of those scenarios is gonna do exactly what we just did, they're gonna go literally there is literally no monetary value that you could say to me, okay, let me make I guess like if somebody said a trillion dollars, sure, I'll give it to my family, you know, and let's do with it.

Dave 21:43

Like they can do better without me, probably with a trillion dollars. But more often than not, like there is a vast sum of money that it a lot of you are gonna say no to. And it put that in perspective. It means your your your life, your ability to wake up, to breathe, to go on with another day is worth more than that sum of money. So if you don't have that sum of money, why are you feeling bad about yourself? Right? Why are you not happy that you're you know kind of in the you know journey of life to build something? You have that choice. And I say this to so many people all the time you have the choice to decide how you're gonna react to a particular situation, whether it's anger, whether it's you know, being stressed, whether it's you know being overwhelmed. You have that choice. And yes, everybody is I'm stressed, I'm overwhelmed, but it how do you choose to live your life? You know, if I if I I could I could live my life and be angry all the time or you know be quick to react uh to any situation because I have so many things going on because I'm a business owner, which a lot of people don't understand. As a business owner, you you have to think of everything. You know, you're not an employee anymore. But you have that choice to say, you know what, I'm gonna live every single moment of my day happy because you know what? My life is worth more than 10 million. My life is worth more than 100 million because you wouldn't give up your life just to have that money today and not wake up tomorrow. So when you put that shit in perspective, hopefully, you know, it actually will, you know, can change your change your emotions, change your your ability to to see the world a little bit differently when you think of it that way.

Duarne 23:23

I totally agree. And I think if we go back one step as well to the you don't know what's going on in other people's world, how many times have you gotten home from work, you've had a pretty emotionally draining day, and you get home and your significant other is there, and you just want to tell them about your day, and you fail to acknowledge the fact that they're home looking after the kids, maybe they've had a really shitty day as well, and first thing that happens as soon as you walk in day, I need you to take the trash out, I need you to go and do this, I need you to get this done. And you're like, shit, are you kidding me? I just got home, I'm just getting settled, I've had a really shitty day, and we don't stop and think, hold on, what sort of day did they have? Because we're quick to react. Since that meeting, that meeting conversation we had last week.

Dave 24:18

But that's not both sides. I'm gonna I'm gonna be the devil's advocate.

Duarne 24:21

Oh, no, no, absolutely, absolutely. And I think since I had that meeting, since we had that conversation last week, right? I've been sitting there watching my wife struggle with two babies some days in the middle of this move. And there's things that I'll get you know, I'll walk in and go, Hey, can I do this? And she'll be like, I just need to get this done. Can you help me out? Yeah, all right, I'll do it. Then other days, I'll be in like yesterday, today. I'm like, hun, I need to be at the desk for the whole day. I got so much work to catch up on. It's all good, I'll handle everything over here. You know, sometimes if you both got that understanding and partnership, whether it's business relationship, it can make things go so much smoother.

Dave 25:02

But see, that's so rare key to find is the partnership, right? Because if you are, and it doesn't matter the sex, right? But if you are the business owner that's coming home and immediately your partner is just expecting everything from you, like that's not a good partnership, right? You have to sit down with it and have a good uh heart-to-heart and kind of figure out like they don't they in that moment they do not understand what's going on. Now, granted, if you're also coming home and you just think that you're gonna sit on the couch and not do anything, you also are not a good partner. But there is a very vast difference of you coming home, whether you're a man or or or woman, and your your spouse coming up to you, and and the first thing that they do is not, hey, I need you now to go do this, I need you to take over this, I need you to go do that, right? If they come up to you and their first reaction to you is affection, right? Is love, is appreciation that you're home, you know, and eagerness to tackle the rest of the day with you, there is a huge difference in that versus somebody that's gonna come home, and immediately you come home by be like, oh, the trash is there, can you take that out? I need you to go to this, I need you to go to that, can you go check this? Can you go check that? Like, are you serious? That's not a partner, that's somebody that's just waiting to unload on you. And yeah, you don't, you literally don't have the capacity for that. And many people are going to say, Well, you know, they're home and they're taking care of the kids, they got a lot going on. You're right, they do. I'm not saying that they don't. But when you're in a partnership, that's the key that me and Dwarne are talking about here is a good partnership. Is that when that partner comes together, you're not first figuring out what can I get them to do for me. You're figuring out how can we come together for this moment and appreciate each other and then move forward and then figure out what it needs to be done after that. There's a big difference of the first 10, 15 minutes letting them go. Like it's huge. Just to be able to come home, right? And not be bombarded and just to you know, give a hug, give a kiss. How was your day? Right? What what what happened today? Did you were you able to sign any new clients? How was that meeting that you told me that you were gonna have, you know, and then on our side, how are the kids today? Did anything happen? You know, was anything exciting today that they did, you know, or how was the doctor's appointment I wasn't able to go to? Right, and now you're having a conversation. And then, hey, by the way, you know, would would you mind like you know, taking the trash out? Or don't say it at all. They know their job. Like, I know, like, you know, let it get let them let them do it. And the problem is with so many sides, and and is when they you decide to get up and just be like, oh my god, he's just not gonna do the trash now. It's because it's just not your timeline. That's the problem, right? Is like it nobody said that it wasn't gonna get done, it just they didn't do it for you. And so if that's if you're like, oh my god, he's just they're never gonna do that, right? They're never gonna wash the dishes, or they're never gonna, you know, change the laundry or whatever it ends up being that you, you know, you have an expectation of, you know, and then you just go ahead and do it, it's just because it's not being done on your timeline. And so now, you know, you don't know what they're doing, you don't know what's going on in their mind. And so it kind of goes on this whole conversation, right? Of give the expectation of, hey, would you mind getting this done by tonight? And then let it go.

Home Partnerships And Shared Expectations

Duarne 28:32

Let them set expectations, and that's in business too, right? When we have staff, set an expectation. Do you know? I was having a conversation with a client during the week, and one of the things that came up was about KPIs. And he's like, I think I need to set KPIs for my staff. And I said, It's a great idea. It's basically giving them a compass, tells them what your expectations are, lets them understand what your expectations are, lets them know how they can succeed in what they're doing, and they're not just going through the motions. And he's like, Yeah, but I don't want to multi, you know, I don't want to uh micromanage them. And I well, I don't see how that's micromanaging if you're setting KPIs and standards. It's actually giving people direction and helping them know what your expectations are, and you'd be surprised how much more relaxed and calm people are when they know what they're expected to do when they turn up. There's a reason why some of these more menial jobs that people have, they enjoy them because it's very routine. Many years ago, I used to run a 2IC second-in-charge manager for a retail outlet, and we sold appliances and home audio TVs, computers, all that sort of wonderful stuff. And every morning, every store manager or assistant store manager, our job was to pull the team together, and it could be you know anywhere between 12 and 30 of them on the floor that each day. And we'd pull the team together and we'd have a little huddle, and we'd go through and we'd hand out a job sheet to each team leader uh for each department. And that was basically their list of priority tasks to get done for the day. And then we'd sit there and we'd just remind everyone, everyone, we'd all be reminded about what our you know expectations were for them with a store. You know, if a client, you know, if clients come within so far, make sure we just greet them. And, you know, just be pleasant, be helpful, and all always willing to help and clean up messes when you see them, and just simple stuff, right? Look out for other people on the floor or in other departments who might need assistance. You know, it's all about the customer experience. That meant everybody on the floor, we knew what we were gonna do that day. Whether I was getting that delivered by the manager or I was doing the delivery, we all knew what we were gonna achieve. And it was great, it was motivational. The amount of times that I see people turn up to work and they don't have a list of tasks to do, they just assume they know what the business owner just assumes they know what to do. Or they the business owner has no systems and SOPs and then just assumes that everybody's gonna understand what they want to do. It's just it's a lack of communication, it's a lack of clear understanding. And when you have that in any form of a way, if you've been an employee, right?

Dave 31:24

And now you now you now you own your business, just put yourself back into your employee shoes when you're reporting up to a manager. If they had expectations of you or they had standards of you and they never communicated those to you, how did you feel? Were you able to get your job done, or were you always kind of walking on eggshells because you didn't know if what you were doing today was correct, or if you're gonna get yelled at because there was some unknown expectation? So KPIs are a standard. Okay. They're not a well, maybe I should implement KPIs. They are a standard, especially when you start getting into new departments and and multiple departments when you start to run a business, not run a job. I think so many people, if they're against KPIs, it's because they're still running a job. They're putting themselves in the day-to-day way too much. And you can't do that. So if you want to run a business, you have to develop KPIs for each one of your different departments, for each one of your different employees and your managers, so that all they have to do is report those to you. Okay, and then you now have as a CEO of the president, right, of the business, a snapshot of what's actually happening. And then when something's off, dive into it with the with the employee, dive into it with the manager, whoever it may be for that situation. But KPIs, if you want to own a business, even if you're a solopreneur and your goal is to do it, now's the time to develop the KPIs. Develop KPIs for yourself. And I said this before, you are your own manager. So you have to take time away to be a manager to yourself, right? Give yourself an evaluation and sit down and say, you know what, how was the last month of work that I did? If I was my own employee, would I be writing myself up? Would I be, you know, maybe even putting myself on a final written warning because I let myself slack too much, I didn't meet any of my objectives, I'm falling behind on all my work. If you if you had an employee like that, would you keep them? And if that's how you're acting in your own business, why would you expect to be great when you when any other manager would fire you?

Duarne 34:23

And the other thing is, you're a reflection of that to your staff. So if your staff see you as that sort of person, what do you think that's gonna mean for them? You know, they're gonna see that as a reflection of what your expectations are. It's no different to when you're you know, clients, if they see you as that sort of person, they're gonna see that as a reflection of the output you put out that the of the services you provide. So I think if anyone out there struggling with the idea of putting KPIs in their business, start really, really simple. What's important for you to know about what people are doing in your business, that's what you want to start with your KPI reporting around. Because you just want to capture important information that you don't have to go out and look for yourself. You want it to be captured and presented to you on a regular interval, whether that's daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, that's your choice. And then just have that reported to you. The biggest thing that I hear from business owners all the time and managers is what do I need to get reported on? Or what's important to you? What are you looking for as a oh, they're not doing their job, or oh, they could be doing better here. Oh, how did that get missed? Those those things are gonna generally give you the idea where you should be basing those KPI stats around. And if you find yourself wanting results on those things measured and you can't do it because there's a problem with presenting the KPIs, then that gives you the instance to go and figure out what that problem is and find a solution or improve your systems around that to get that KPI delivered because those KPIs are how you're gonna be able to measure and scale in the future, like you said. Whether you're a single, if you've got a VA, if you've got multiple staff, it doesn't matter. Exactly. Like I used to be one of these people, yeah, KPIs, whatever, that's for big businesses. And then I had my sales team and I'm like, no, I'm setting KPIs for my sales team. And then I had my development team and I'm like, well, I'm gonna set some KPIs for the development team. And then I started insisting that my clients who bring on outsource staffing introduce KPIs because how else are we going to evaluate their performance? I'm we're not gonna wait until six months, 12 months, and they go, hey, how did they perform? Oh, based on what I can remember, this is no, because a person sitting across from you who's being evaluated, they want to have a clear expectation. Well, I was able to get 16 quotes this month, and I close eight of those deals, and I was able to do 60 email outbound appointment set settings, whatever that might be, whatever those KPIs need to be, they know what those are and they can aim towards them. If they have nothing to aim towards, well, you basically tell them that, yeah, just go and do whatever you want.

KPIs As Leadership’s Compass

Dave 37:16

And I think many business owners fall into the trap, and I did this very early on, too. They fall in the trap of thinking, well, I hired them for my business, they're gonna be so involved in my business just like I am. They're just gonna be they're gonna be 100% bought in, ready to go, and they're there for a job, they're there for a paycheck. So the human nature is to try and do the least amount of effort for the max amount of gain. So if you're gonna pay them an hourly rate, no matter what, you're they're essentially gonna give you the minimum amount of effort to get that full paycheck. But if you give them KPIs and then you're holding them accountable to those KPIs, now they know what the standard is, they know what the minimum is now. They're gonna give you that, right? And they're probably gonna maybe sometimes you're gonna find the people that might give you a little bit more, right? That, or maybe even a lot more, but those are the ones you want to like really identify. And then we'll we'll talk about here like by two types of employees that you want to look for. But you have to understand that. And if you don't set that minimum, people are going to literally give you the minimum, they're gonna give you the least amount that they think, and it may not even be anywhere near what you need from them, right? And so to go to that point of the people that when you set a KPI, the ones that are going to exceed it, you have two types of employees. And I've said this and I say this to everybody all the time, especially if they're they're growing and they're hiring employees, or I'm I'm talking to a group of you know corporate managers. You need to have two types of employees in your business, and it is a rock and a rock star. The rocks are the employees who are okay where they're at. They love doing the repetition, they love going through their day-to-day, their responsibility. They're not looking to level up, they're not looking to become a manager. They are literally there because they love what they do, they love who they're around, and they know their process, they know their place. They're rocks. You need them because those are the people that are going to make your business hum. And when you have somebody in your business like that that gets the job done and does that, you know, kind of admin work, that, you know, the back end office work that needs to be done and they're doing it great. Reward them for that. Like don't expect them to, you know, their reward is not becoming a manager and leveling up. Their reward is either monetary acknowledgement, something like that. You have to understand who your rocks are. Then you have your rock stars, you know, and your rock stars are the ones that they want to be challenged. They want to, they're looking to climb the corporate ladder. They want to become your managers, they want to become your C-sweep, you know, individuals, or you know, eventually maybe actually go and do their own thing, right? There, you have to cultivate those as well. Like you can't try and keep your rock stars down in your business by giving them rock responsibilities. You're gonna lose them a lot earlier than if you were to actually cultivate them and let them level up within your organization. So early on, and this is why it's so important to have like one-on-one conversations, regular meetings, is really beginning to understand what is important to them. How do they you know gain acknowledgement? You know, what's do they do they prefer monetary motivation? Do they prefer you know extra extroverted, you know, external motivation, right? Where you know, maybe it's an acknowledgement in a meeting or you know, a you know, a parking spot for some people, you know, whatever it may be. But understand who they are, and then don't try and give rock responsibilities to rock stars, or don't give rock star responsibilities to rocks. You're not that's not you're never gonna build a successful business, successful culture that way. And when I came into two teams, I noticed that first things I ever did was to understand who my people were, understand what are your responsibilities, what makes you tick. And each one of those situations had the roles were wrong, the responsibilities were wrong for the individuals they were given to. And as soon as I was able to kind of make that shift, as soon as I was able to give rock star rock responsibilities, give rock stars their rock star responsibilities, the team motivation, the team you know morale went up significantly because of that.

Duarne 41:25

So because you you're recognizing people for what their skill sets are and their attitude is and what they want to achieve. And you're right about the rock stars. People get worried about rock stars and their business and either shy away from hiring them or they keep them down thinking they're gonna try and keep them in the job for longer. The reality is, I learned this a long time ago. Stop hiring people with an expectation they'll never leave. Start hiring for the skill set you need in your business. You're hiring a skill set, not all not just a person, you're hiring a skill set. Yes, they are people, but they have a skill set that is unique for your business that you need. So hire for the skill set and basically treat it like you're hiring a skill set. So if they were to leave, you need to replace that skill set. Now, when you're actually got rock stars in your team, that's a great opportunity to mentor, to help grow, to have people to take things off your plate and nurture that, go with that. You can't have a whole team of rock stars, it's just not gonna work.

Dave 42:33

It's never got a business. You need both. You need both, you need so many people, not even business owners. I think this is more to like the managers, right? The leaders. When they see a rock star in their team, there's one of two ways that they look at it. If you're a great leader, you see it as a benefit. Because you know that you're a rock star and you're trying to level up and you want to get to that next level. So, what is the best way for you to get to the next level? Is for you to train and cultivate the person to take your job who's then still going to report to you. So, why wouldn't you recognize that rock star in your business? Because you shouldn't be afraid of training somebody to take your job. Because if you are looking to level up, you should be also looking to leave that position. You know what I mean? And so you need to train somebody to take your position. But uh so often, most people are like, oh my God, I don't want to lose my job. I'm not gonna train that person to take my job. And they again they try to keep them down and they end up losing them. And then now they have a team filled with rocks, and now when they do want to level up and they want to grow and they want to move up, they force a rock to become a you know leader, and that's not what motivates them. Yeah, I've seen it all too many times. I've heard it from you know, people telling me about their positions and their jobs and their teams, and I'm just like, and then they they tell me how horrible the new boss is because, or the new leader manager who was just somebody that was a coworker that's now moved up and into a manager because that's that natural progression, even though they really didn't want to be. And they realize that they don't have good leadership skills, they they don't know how to how to handle right situations, they don't know how to motivate other people because it's not what motivates them, it's not what makes them tick. So, why do we force that natural progression that they have to be a manager in order to make the most of their self, the most of their career, you know?

Duarne 44:24

And so we've done that situation before in the past, and I've done it with my team, and I've learned, you know, that some people are just not natural-born leaders, and it doesn't matter how much training you give them, they don't if they don't want to be a leader, then don't force them. So you should always ask the question how they feel about that. A lot of people will take the leadership role because it comes with the promotion and money, but you're right, sometimes you're rocks, just give them the money and don't need to give them the promotion or give them the accolades that they deserve, you know, for the work well work well done. I had a situation 18, 19 years ago. I sat down in front of a recruiter put me in front of a met sales manager for a company. And it was a waste management company. And it was for and he sat there and he was interviewing me. He goes, Oh, look, yeah. Look, you're great. I think you'd be great in the role. Yeah. You know, like you'll definitely fill this, you know. You're if you had that region, I think you'd do really well with it. My only concern is one thing. There's only one job up from this. And that's my job. And I have a 10-year plan. I don't plan on moving for the next 10 years. So let me get back to you. I followed up with the recruiter, and the recruiter said, He's very worried about you taking his job. Like, I don't want his job, I just want the job I'm applying for. And he's like, he's very worried you're gonna take his job. And I'm like, why? That's not what I want to do.

Dave 46:01

And that tells you a lot about the manager, too. Definitely insecure, definitely not, you know, set in their in their own.

Duarne 46:50

And it was it, and it was, and I was just thinking about that when you were explaining the story. I'm like, yeah, I remember that. And it's weird because like I've been in other companies where they want you to take that initiative, they want you to grow, they want you to develop, they want you to create new things, they want you to lead a team, they want to want to nurture you. And if I look at my current leadership team in my business and the new leadership we're bringing in, like we're hiring really top-notch leadership. We're not promoting from within if they're not ready. We're taking the people within and we're really bringing them up and getting them where they need to be. And we're doing that, and it's working really, really well. We've in the past, we've tried hiring in what look like good people from the outside that just didn't work and didn't have the skill set. So we've done it enough times now that we know what we're looking for. And I'm sure you're sitting out there listening to us going, look, I've tried hiring a manager and it didn't work. Sometimes it just seems easier to hire the person inside the company who knows the most, but it's not. It just means you've hired the wrong person.

Dave 47:58

Right. So do you give up? Do you do you do you say, oh, you know what? I'm not, I'm I'm just done hiring, I'm just not gonna fill the position. No, like just because you fail, like how many times like I don't know. Like, it's a lot of times I'm just like, man, try again. Like, stop failing, like you only fail when you stop getting back up.

Duarne 48:16

Some roles, exactly, and some roles are really bloody tough to fill, especially the higher up the chain you try and hire.

Rocks vs Rockstars: Building Teams That Fit

Dave 48:24

And you just look at think about too, like when you're talking to a manager position, you know what I mean? Like, ultimately, what's your pro like? Why did that person fail? You know, and I just did a presentation on this yesterday, and and it it's about your culture, was a piece of it. And exit interviews are what people kind of hang their hats on. Somebody's leaving the organization. Hey, I'm ready. Like, let's do an exit interview, let's figure out why you're leaving, right? That's the autopsy. You're literally at that moment, like you're saying, oh, the the the our our relationship, it's dead with that employee. Let's just go ahead and do an autopsy of what happened and figure out why they left. Well, why would why do you want to have autopsies in your business? Focus on it. What we, you know, and I mentioned this yesterday, it was a stay interview. Why are we not having why is it not more common for HR teams or managers to have these conversations with these employees about, hey, how do you feel about how things are going? How you know, is there anything that we might be able to do better for you? Is there anything that you feel like would help you be better in your job? These are questions that I asked on a regular basis to my team when I was doing the one-on-ones. Can I do can I do anything better for you? Is there anything that you need from me that's going to help you, you know, obtain and and you know achieve the responsibilities that you're supposed to do? And by just doing that, you know, it developed the culture of the team, which is why, like for me, the best thing that a you know an employee can do in terms of like your loyalty, et cetera, is when you leave a job and then and the employee says, Can I come join you? You know, because they want to follow you. Like that tells you how great you built that relationship. And so, and you do that because you do these stay interviews, you don't wait until the relationship is dead. You know, you wouldn't wait until, well, I guess some people some people might, right? Because it's it's this common culture, but you wouldn't wait until like the relationship's over to try and figure out, hey, how do we like get better? You know, and if your partner is just like, I don't know, like that's not again, is it a good partnership at that point? You know, because they're not willing, you know, you're trying to level up, you're trying to help them get better and level up, and their only response to you is, I don't know, like I just want to be where I'm at.

Duarne 50:39

Like, you know, you know, it's interesting actually. This raises an interesting concern. One reason that I've seen and heard personally that a lot of business owners will not ask that question of their staff or have their team uh, you know, their team members in HR, etc., ask those questions or managers is because they're worried that the staff are gonna ask for too much. They're worried about what are they gonna ask for. Ironically, the big companies that I've seen and the small companies that I've seen across the board who do ask this question, it's generally never like I want to earn more money, which is what the common skin fear is for a lot of these businesses. It's it'd be great to have you know team building a little bit more often. It'd be great to, you know, be able to come in dressed, you know, casually on, you know, once a week or something.

Dave 51:34

Or it'd be great to have the coffee machine back that that the team cut out, right? Because they they wanted to cut back money, so they cut back given free coffee. Like it's it's those perks that are important that you're gonna hear. And in reality, being as part of the executive teams that's had these conversations, you know, you as a human are going to always think the worst things. You're gonna think the worst case scenario of the results of these surveys, and it's never gonna be that bad. I can't, I the one thing I remember I when I first came into like one of my leadership positions at a bigger organization leading that led up to you know executive position, was I wanted a 360 survey, I wanted a 360 evaluation put in place. And there was absolute like rejection of that idea from the levels above me. And I'm like, why? They're like, Oh, we don't do that. We we don't, we don't want, we don't want to give the employees like that much, you know, uh power. And I'm like, what do you mean? Like power, like why would I want not want to know what my employees are thinking of my performance, not as much as like my managers think of my performance? And ultimately they still never did it. And it's one of those things where it just always rubbed me, I guess, the wrong way. Like, why are you so worried? Like, those are your people that you're supposed to be leading. And if you don't care about what they see of you and what they think of you, why should they why should they even care what you think of them? You know, and so if you're not wanting to level yourself up to lead better, you're not a good leader. So you and in order to do that, you need to have the view of everything that you have leadership of. Not just, hey, am I am I meeting the responsibilities of the people above me? You know, no, I want to get the feedback from you know the levels below me. So, you know, I just did it myself, right? I just told them, hey, you know, this is an anonymous survey, like, you know, you're not none of it, it's not gonna be your names aren't associated with it, but I'd love to just kind of get your guys', you know, kind of feedback and let me know what you think, you know. And so I just did it myself. I just went around, I screw it. I needed to know that. I needed to know how to become a better leader, and my team had to tell me what they thought. And so it improved. Like, not everything was you know, roses and and unicorn kisses, you know what I mean?

Duarne 53:51

But it helped me. And sometimes it's simple shit, right? I mean, it'd be great if you could communicate better when you're asking for us to do tasks. And you're like, shit, well, where did I or am I failing at that? It gives you a reevaluate. You know, there was that there's a guy, there was a surge.

Dave 54:07

That was the number one reason. You know how I say, you know, how I say the question thing, you know, where I say, you know, just ask questions. That's where I got it from. Because in I was in my meetings, I would say things because in my head I see it clearly, like you see it in your head clearly, but sometimes I don't talk through it enough, or I say enough. Yeah. And so that's where I got the feedback. Hey, sometimes like we would appreciate it if you kind of like maybe slow down or you know, gave a little bit more detail. And that's where my feedback to them was okay, I get it. I see things in my head. Let's make sure we ask a bunch of questions as well. Like, I'm gonna leave it open. I and there's no bad question. You know, like let's get on the same page before we go and do a project. And from there, like everything was it. That's where we kind of came up with that solution. And now, boom, now I use it with everybody. I tell everybody that's new working with me that one of my things for me is I can see it up here quickly. But if you're not on the same page with me, ask a question until you are clear that you know what I'm looking for. And if you're not, and then you tell me you are, it's gonna be like nails on a chalkboard to me. It's gonna be, you know, one of my pet peeves.

Duarne 55:16

So absolutely. And you know what? I think this is the thing. You've got it really comes down to you've got to open up the communication channels in both directions, and it's not a unilateral communication, which is what a lot of companies try and do with their leadership and management styles, I find. And I've been in companies like that before, and it's just staff feel unhurt, they feel uncomfortable, and sometimes that'll work, I guess, for a little while, but a lot of the times it doesn't work. And if you're gonna run teams and if you see high turnover, it's typically related to that. It's related to they don't have clear expectations, they don't have KPIs, they don't know what their job is, they don't appreciate the the fact that they can communicate up as well as down the channels. And it's got to be an open channel of communication within reasoners for these things. We're not talking about, hey, I'd like to get, you know, I'd like to get you know a Starbucks coffee every day and I turn up to work. No, it's that's not what they're gonna do. A lot of people are very reasonable in their requests. We had a situation there, and it it's amazing. We used to, when we ran the office with about 25-30 people in it, we used to do every second Friday, I love Friday. And it was just a little initiative we put in where the company would buy lunch for everyone, and we'd all come together for the lunch break and we'd have lunch together, chit-chat, hang out, all levels, and it'd just be fun. Everyone looked forward to it. We'd announce in the morning what that was gonna be so they could be prepared for it, and yeah, they knew they were gonna get a half decent meal that day, which was fun. Well, it's really hard when you got a remote team to do the same thing. It's like you can jump on Food Panda Uber or whatever and send everyone a meal to their house. It's a little awkward. So we had a situation where it was a terrible, dirt, terrible rainy day. And I was working in the office. It was just one of those days I was feeling like this is shit. I hate this sort of weather. We're trying, I had people, other members of the household trying to move, furniture and stuff in the rain. It was just it was horrible. And I've looked on the camera at the office and I've seen everyone down there, and they're all rugged up, cold, wearing jackets and stuff. Like, you know what? I know what they need. Everybody needs a coffee. So we had 11 staff working out of the office that day. I I contact one of my team members and said, Hey, just a quick head count. Can you confirm how many people are in the office today? And can you also just confirm everybody drinks coffee? Got a heads up. Yeah. All right, cool. Let me place an order. Jumped on the food delivery platform called Food Panda here. No coffee shop was delivering because there was localized flooding all around the place. It was that rain was that heavy. And I was like, oh shit, this is really bad. So I had a I contacted my person back in the office and said, hey, look, the 7-Eleven across the road, do they sell coffee? Let me check. So they went across the road, took a photo. Sure enough, they sell a variety of coffee, hot coffees. I said, All right, ask everyone in the office what they want. I'll I'll just send you some, you know, Gcash, which is like the virtual currency. Yeah, yeah. Go and buy everyone a coffee. Love it. Cost me like 20 bucks US, right? To buy coffee for everyone. I didn't expect anything. And then suddenly I'm getting a flood of messages from everybody individually saying, Thank you so much. You know, we needed that, it just woke us up, warmed us up. And suddenly the whole office, when I check the camera about an hour later, very different atmosphere. Everyone's chatty, lively talking. And I'm not saying you have to do that sort of stuff all the time, but just when you do these things, they get the staff will appreciate it. And it's those little things. It's not always about putting more money in their paycheck pocket in their paycheck or their pocket.

Stay Interviews, Feedback Loops, And Culture

Dave 59:31

I think the the biggest thing, you know, kind of on that on that thing, every Friday for me was donuts. You know, so I brought donuts in every Friday morning. They loved it. The other thing we implemented, kind of along what you were saying, right? Is every month we did a team lunch. And it was they picked where we wanted, like each it rotated between you know the employees of picking where we were going to lunch that that that month. And when we were there, we didn't talk business, right? It was what's going on. And we all it was a team building exercise, and people loved that. Because again, as a manager, like the status quo is that you are this, you know, your whip and your your collection, your whip, and you're you're you're leading from behind. But if you want to actually be successful, and only just talking about this from experience, you got to lead from in front, right? Show them what you want, be part of them, understand they're human. Understand that you're not gonna get robots. You know, they're stressed out at home. You know, things are going on in their lives. Be empathetic of that, be understanding of that, be sympathetic, you know, and let them know. Like, you don't have to stop your personal feelings at the door. Yeah, I think it was that was an old cliche. They're just like, oh, when you get through the door, you're in business mode, and they just expect you to drop all your personal feelings, you know, outside and and everything you're going through in your life outside, and that's not life.

Duarne 1:01:02

Like that's that was never like that.

Dave 1:01:05

Yeah, I would that was the biggest. I said, look, I understand you're human, so if you're having a bad day, come tell me. Like, let's talk about it. You know what I mean? Like, just you'll get through it. Like, let's figure it out. And just treating them as human beings, as a leader, as a manager, as a business owner, that's what's gonna keep people loyal to you. That's what's gonna keep people you know interested in what you're doing and want to grow with you and not look for the next opportunity that comes along.

Duarne 1:01:32

So, yeah, you know, you know, it's interesting actually. I've had staff just this last week, some of my lead leadership team, I didn't openly tell them that I was gonna be moving because you know there was I was still operational and working to a point up until the extended couple of days that I didn't expect to be offline. But you know, it was at that point I'm like, hey guys, look, just give me a heads up. I'm gonna be a little slow to respawn because I haven't got a computer set up right now. I don't have a desk to work from, and it's chaotic because I'm in the middle of a move. And they're like, Oh no, sir, we know how much crap you've got. Yeah, that's gonna be fun. Do we've been there, we know what it's like. Don't worry, we've got you covered. And they just took care of stuff. It was amazing, right? They you'd be surprised if you get if you've got a good team and you treat them right, they will look after you and they will help you through those times when you get, you know, it's hard and it's tough. But you've got to remember that they go through tough times.

Dave 1:02:33

You know how many times you bridge loyalty.

Duarne 1:02:36

It does, right? I mean, you know how many times we get, you know, I have my HR team come and go, hey, look, you know, somebody's asked for a day off and they haven't put in the 14 days notice that we normally require for it. I'm like, who is it? Uh-huh. Okay, what's it for? Oh, like this. Yeah, give it to them. Oh, so it's unpaid? No, it's paid. They got credit. Yeah, let them use it. Go for it. But they're not doing it all the time. Let's do it. It's all good. You know, it's a rule, it doesn't have to be enforced. It's just a guideline.

Dave 1:03:10

Yeah, and it's and it actually goes to you know the idea now that so many some some companies are moving towards unlimited PTO, right? You have your responsibilities at work, but and then and then you treat those people that abuse it as the exception, you know what I mean? And so many times we want to make the rules for the exceptions. We try to solve every one of the exceptions in your rule, and that's not how rules are meant to be made, right? Rules are meant to be for the mass, and then at if there is an exception, that's when you you know treat it as such. So I like the idea. You know, um it's it intrigues me. I I've never worked for an organization that has the unlimited PTO rule, but it intrigues me because I'm interested, and maybe if you work for an organization like this or you have it in your business, like share like down below, comment down below what are the expectations of the employees. Like, I'm I'm pretty sure, kind of going back to the first part of our conversation, that there has to be very clear KPIs, very clear outcomes that they should be, you know, kind of delivering on in order for it actually to work. Because it's like, hey, I'm hiring you. And this is where, you know, before I decided to go full-time in in Triumph Business Solutions, I was in that sort of fork in the road stage of do I do I want to stay in corporate? Do I want to take what I was doing part-time and go full-time? And I was at that, you know, it kind of had a couple interviews. And for me, you know, it was one of those things where it's just like, you know what, you're hiring me for an outcome, right? You don't want to pay me an hour there. You you're cut you're you want to hire me as a full-time, you know, CFO, director of finance, whatever. You're hiring me to provide impact to your business. You're not hiring me just for 40 hours a week, right? And so it's on me to be able to, if I can provide that to your business in 30 hours, to be able to do it in 30 hours versus me just having to fill up 40 hours of my week, right? And to lead the team effectively. And so if I can make that happen in less time, does that make me less more valuable? Or do I still get the full salary? Because ultimately, your salary is what you feel like that outcome is worth your business.

Duarne 1:05:38

Yeah.

Dave 1:05:39

And if the person you bring in can be more effective and do that for you, how are you hiring it?

Duarne 1:05:46

You know, and so look, and this is an interesting point, right? That way, right? Some roles, yes, you're gonna need somebody there from a point A to point B because you need they need to man a table, they need to man a phone, they need to be able to respond to people, they need to be able to get customer service. You're in a retail environment, you need to be able to cook food, whatever that may be, because you're in hospitality. Right. We're not talking about that, we're talking about your salesperson. There was a my wife would tell me stories of back when she worked in BPO industry back in Manila, and they would have their sales boards, and if they hit their targets, they're allowed to shut the computer off and just take a break. And she would go hard to hit the target as soon as she could. She hit that target and then she'd take a break. She earned it. That was all the expectation was.

Dave 1:06:49

And then it tells you a little bit more about that person, right? If they then come back and still want to do more, because they are not looking to just be the minimum. Now you're able to really begin to see, okay, who's my rocks, who's my rock stars? Because the rocks would hit their targets and then be like, oh, okay, I'm done for the week. I don't need to do anymore. Like, it's my minimum. That's it. You know what I mean? Rockstar, and then those people that take a break, reset, come back, and try to do even more, those are your rock stars. You can easily identify that.

Duarne 1:07:13

That's it. And this is and this is the key, right? Every business has these people. And what I encourage anyone who's listening is work out who your rock stars are in your business, and you're probably gonna find your rock stars are pretty minimal, because most of the time they are. Or think about who were the rock stars in your business and you didn't nurture them properly. And what you could have done different to have kept them in your business longer, or you know, not be afraid that they were gonna leave because you being afraid for them leaving probably caused them to leave earlier or prematurely because you didn't nurture what they wanted. And you'd be surprised when you talk to people and you ask them what made you choose the taking this job. Rock stars will rarely tell you it's the salary.

Dave 1:08:00

No, it's the opportunity.

Small Gestures, Big Morale Shifts

Duarne 1:08:01

It's the opportunity. That's it. And it's a different. So one thing we've started doing is with all our new staffing coming on board, is we've started putting them through some basic assessments. And I know this is like a one of those scenarios where people go, well, you know, why do you need to? Well, because what I want to do, and what I've started doing is taking those assessments and putting them through an AI chat, an AI system that I've built, which tells me how to communicate better with each one of them. Where they excel, where they could be upskilled, and how do they respond better in different instruction modes or training modes? And ironically, the first few that I tried this with and shared that information with the clients, they instantly started seeing better results within a week or two because they changed their approach to communicating. Because sometimes it's not the employee who has to change the way they communicate, it's the manager or the leadership that needs to change the way they communicate to get more out of that employee. Right. It's got to be a little bit of a give and take scenario in play. And I was really impressed with that. So I've actually I'm going across the board on all levels and doing the same testing, running those scenarios and building out these tools. And one of the things that we are doing for our outsourced staffing clients is we're providing them the chat tool to allow them to run scenarios through it. And they can actually have conversations and see how that re how their conversation, the way they want to present it, may play out based on the assessment results. And it's a little rudimentary, I guess, but you know what? We'll probably try running a scenario where we do the retesting in six months, and then we'll see how that differs to the original testing, and then update those profiles. And then because people evolve, people up, you know, upskill, they get you know better skills, they learn new skills. And what works today may not need may not work in six months, but it's something we're trialing and something we're testing. We're getting great results from it right now. And it's all about just trying to, like you said before, understand our employees better because we're not always, when you've got multiple employees, you're not always going to know what's going on in their life, you're not gonna know what's happening, and HR teams are generally too stretched thin to be proactively reaching out to people and say, Hey, how's things going? You know, do you need a mental health day? Are you good?

Dave 1:10:44

You know, but you as the officer, you as the owner, when you when you start running a business, you make it the priority to be checking in on people. You know what I mean? Because it doesn't take you a lot, especially if as you're growing, like you're not gonna have 10,000 employees. Like you're not you're not kind of Amazon right now, right? At most, the majority of you watching the show, the majority of you will end up with 10 or 10 employees or less. There is no reason why you can't, as an owner of your business, be checking in on your employees, how are things going, seeing what you could do better, seeing what the or your company can do better, and then figuring out how you can do it if it makes sense, right? They're not asking for too much.

Duarne 1:11:25

So and if it's not you, and you do get to the point where you're bigger, assign individuals within your business, but that's part of their role.

Dave 1:11:34

Even then, like this the one the one C out CEO, you know, when went when I was in the executive team, we we didn't always see eye to eye. But I will say that one thing that she did great was she tried to actually like send handwritten notes to the employees every once in a while, like everybody, not just like her direct, like the further the front level, you know. And it it was actually like an improvement because come to find out, when she initially became the CEO, she didn't do any of that. She would like come up the back stairs and then go directly into her office so she didn't have to see anybody. You know, it wasn't like her comfort zone, but she got out of that. And then when I was there, you know, she was doing these things. And and so it did a little bit to build up right, and then people can see you. Even you, the CEO of a company that had 200 employees still took the time to maybe handwrite a note. And it's not like you know, you just pick five to seven employees every week, and you write something or send them a text message or send them a personalized email that just says, Hey, I just want to, you know, I saw your name come across on the employee list, you know, thought of you, you know, just wanted to say, hope everything's fine. If there's anything we could do better for you, you know, let it let me know, open door, you know, or reach out to your manager and they can let me know. Great. Yeah, that's huge. You know, but I think all too often leaders, especially business owners and you know, you just get overwhelmed and you don't even think about that. You just think, oh, well, they're just they're just employees, they'll just keep going. Like, no, you have to you have to treat them. You know, you wouldn't let your you know significant other go you know months and months and months without you, you know, in terms of like checking on them and seeing how they're doing, would you? No.

Duarne 1:13:15

Well, it's funny that my wife is really good at this. She's she heads up the HR. Pre-COVID, we were running about 30 staff roughly. And what she would do is every month she would have a random selection of three staff, and she would invite them out for dinner. And there would be four of them go out to her and three staff would go out to dinner, and it'd just be like hanging out, getting to have a conversation. Each person was from a different department, so they probably didn't get to spend a lot of time face to face spending, you know, doing things and chatting very often. They knew of each other, of course, because it was still a small team. But over a period of 12 months, everybody went out for dinner. And I was really impressed with how excited they all were about it. And what she would do is she'd include each one of them in that month, and she'd be saying she'd include them in a little group chat and talk to them about so where do you guys want to go? Do you want to go out for Mexican? Do you want to go out for some Chinese? Do you want to go out for some grill? You know, what do you burgers? What do you feel like? And they would feel like it was a very they were included in the contrast, you know, in the conversation, and it was great. They'd all turn up, they'd all rave about it, they'd post pictures online about it, like Filipinos tend to do, but it was great and it was really good. And it's something that you know we want to start doing again this year, even though we've got a remote team, most of the team lives within the region that we're in, so it's something that we want to be able to do because we've got a hybrid team, some in the office, some from home. And it's I think it's a great way. You just reminded me that it's something we should definitely look at introducing again. I know my wife's mentioned it, and then we started moving, and life got busy, but it's something I think happened. Yeah, you don't you know. So, I mean, look, I think we need to, as business owners, we need to take accountability that it's our job to try and make everyone feel comfortable, happy, and welcome in our business. And sometimes it's just giving them a little bit of our time. It's not always about anything more than just giving them a little bit of our time. And you may be surprised, you may hear some great ideas that you just by giving them a bit of your time. I know that some of my Again, you treat them like humans, right?

Dave 1:15:36

You treat them like you're they're they're they're part of your your they're part of your circle, they're part of your realm, you know? Yeah, and they're gonna feel welcome, they're gonna feel appreciated. I love that idea. Like I again, I highly encourage you guys to to pick that back up and then maybe report back on it, you know, maybe get some feedback. You know, what I what actually what might be interesting is the people that you decide to do it with is have a survey with uh you know about the business beforehand and then get get you know, maybe a couple days later, ask a follow-up survey of those same people and see how they kind of feel and if it actually made a change in terms of like their feeling towards the organization, feeling towards their job, feeling towards you know how kind of how you guys care about them. Because you'd be surprised how just probably something as small as that is gonna have a big shift.

Duarne 1:16:25

Absolutely.

Dave 1:16:27

A lot of these like API things, a lot of these surveys are not just do it once and forget about it. You know, these are things that have to be a regular process in your business. Just like with your prospects, your employees are in the same ways. You know, you have to do regular outreaches, regular follow-ups in order for things to you know take effect in order for them to actually be changed. You know, it's not just hey, let's do it once. Oh, okay, we check that off. Like it's not a checkbox thing that you have to do as a responsibility. Like it's not just, oh, the box is checked, let me be done with it. Like, no, it's something that recurs all the time. You have to do it.

Duarne 1:16:58

Well, it's like learning good habits, you know, developing good habits. You have to do them regularly. You have to build it into a routine as it becomes normal, it becomes part of the regular conversation. And you know, I think that's something that's really interesting. Like, I know that when I do stand-up meetings, I typically have three questions that I lead my I go with. What did you achieve yesterday? What have you achieved today or plan to achieve today? And what's stopping you from achieving what you need to achieve or you want to achieve? Those three questions in some variation is typically where I take the conversation whenever I'm doing my stand-up meetings. And it doesn't have to be work-related, but sometimes you can take that and do the same thing on a personal level with people as well. So if you don't know where to start, I'm gonna give you really some critique.

Dave 1:17:54

I'm gonna give you some critique, right? Because every single one of those questions is about them, right? About about their outcome for you, right? To your benefit, your expectation to them. Ask the question, instead of saying, like, what is it that's stopping you, right, from from completing, ask it in the way of is there anything that I can do for you that's gonna help you? I like it. Because that changes that last question from blame or not blame, like in their mind, they see it as blame, like, oh my god, like I'm failing, versus, hey, Darren is concerned and wants to know how and what he can do for me to help me my goals. Right. Yeah, I like it. And so instead of saying, like, what did you get done, right? Just be like, how do you feel how yesterday went? You know what I mean? How did how did you feel how your day was yesterday? I like it. You know, do you feel like anything is standing in your way from being as productive as you can be? And then finally, you know, what can we provide for you to help you be and and reach what you feel that you need to do at your job? And then now these take all of that off of them and comes from a perspective of you being interested in them.

Duarne 1:19:05

I like it, Dave. You should be a business consultant, Dave. You've got some good ideas on that.

Dave 1:19:11

Oh man, I love it. Holy cow, it's it's been an hour and 20 minutes. I like it's like every week we go a little bit longer, and it's like pretty soon we're gonna be able to do it.

Duarne 1:19:21

It's been a great chat, though. It's been a good conversation and we've covered a lot of things.

Dave 1:19:24

We didn't even cover the other, like the other topic we wanted to actually talk about, possibly.

Duarne 1:19:28

No, but that'll say that until next week.

Better Stand‑Ups And Leader Language

Dave 1:19:33

So if you're watching this, I appreciate it. If you made it all the way to the end, we love you. Again, we're on a mission at Triumph Business Solutions to impact a thousand business owners just like you by the end of 2028, whether it's through this podcast, whether it's through you know, working with them, making some sort of impact. So hopefully, there's maybe one or two things that you heard today that you're gonna be able to take away, implement in your business. And if you have, drop a comment down below. Make sure you like, subscribe, do all that fun algorithm stuff. But Duar, what's that one thing that you hope that they take away from today's episode?

Duarne 1:20:03

Well, I think from personal experience, now take a minute, take an hour, reflect on what people are saying to you, and before you decide to react. And don't you don't need to take personal accountability for everything that goes wrong within your own business, whether it's from something your staff have done or you've done from someone else's point of view, take a minute and try and reflect on it before reacting. And in a lot of cases, you're gonna find that it's not as drama, dramatic, or you know, drama-filled as you originally thought it might be. And you'll come at it from a clear space, a clear thought process, and a little bit more logical. And next time you plan on getting on the keyboard and typing a message out to somebody to try and explain your situation, ask yourself is this something that would be better done in person, on a call, in a video call, or even just a quick video recording or an audio recording? You know, try there's there's so many different ways to send messages these days, and text messaging or a text-based content is not always the best way to do it, especially with tools like Chat GPT, Gemini, and that can generate all this stuff, even if it says it really, really well. Sometimes just a personal voice on a message can mean so much more. 100%.

Dave 1:21:30

Love it. I think for me, you know, the takeaway is to understand how important your role is as a business owner, and it's not just to gather the profit checks and the big paydays at the end of the day. Like your role is to truly cultivate people in your business to you have a responsibility to their life as well. And you know, I say it all the time is you know, when you make a change, when you make an improvement in your life as a business owner, it has ripple effects. You know, it's like a rock being thrown in in a still body of water. You know, that initial ripple, that's you. And then every other ripple outside of that is every single person that is in your sphere, right? Right away, it's probably gonna be your family, then it's gonna be your employees, then it's gonna be the business in general. And then it's community, you know, because when you start growing, your business starts being stronger, you get to start making an impact in those people around you. And it is those ripples of effects. So take responsibility for that. You know, and if if you're maybe struggling or you don't know how to be a leader, and maybe there's things that you got going on, again, drop the question down below and listen back to today's episode. I think there's a lot of good points that we chatted about today about being an effective leader, about understanding you know, employees and you know, leadership. And you know, even if you have one employee, it's fine. Like there's you still can do these different type of tactics with one employee.

Duarne 1:22:53

Some more critical when you've only got one employee than it is when you've got 10 or 20. Because you've only got one person that you're communicating with and getting it wrong.

Dave 1:23:04

That person leaves thinks you know, like it's it's you know, a big impact because now you got to take care of all the responsibility. Whereas when you have 20 and you lose an employee, okay, maybe you know it hurts, but maybe you you you know the other people can can pick up the slack for a little bit. Yeah. And so, you know, it's just like having one big client versus having 20 smaller clients. You know, we can lose one and it's fine. When you have one big client and you lose it, it's catastrophic. So you cultivate even from your first employee or not. So uh so yeah, if you listen and and you got something out of this, uh, or maybe you know somebody in your network, please share this video. You're more than happy to share any one of our clips. Make sure you'd like, subscribe to any one of our channels. We share clips on a regular basis from these podcasts. And we look forward to it. We look forward to seeing you every Friday morning at 8 15 in the morning. So until then, Warren, thanks for joining me. And we'll see you. We'll see y'all in the next one. Bye. See everyone.