This episode is packed full of interesting and insightful information regarding communication strategy, pitfalls and concrete advice on conversational intelligence, the future of communication and how you can sidestep getting caught in the “Addiction to Being Right” trap.
0:00:02.1 S1: Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. You’re the first one in, last one out. And you do whatever it takes to succeed. Nonetheless, 25 million Americans have chosen the entrepreneurial life because it’s equal parts demanding and fulfilling. Welcome to the People First, Then Profit Podcast, joined hospitality veteran photographer and entrepreneur, Don Mamone each week as he host a candid now holds care conversation with successful business owners and entrepreneurs eager to share their professional secrets with you. Like as crazy Italian family does on Sunday nights, he’s serving up a healthy portion of inspiration, motivation and education. So I hope you’re hungry. Now, here’s your host, Don Mamone. Alright, excellent, everybody, welcome to the People First, Then Profit Podcast. I’m so excited to be here today with Ms. Jennifer Thornton. Jennifer is with 304 Coaching, and we’re gonna talk today about everything about communication, being right all the time, or feeling like you have to be right all the time, developing your team, all things organizational. So thank you for being here, Jennifer.
0:01:03.8 S2: Thank you for having me.
0:01:05.1 S1: It’s an absolute pleasure you reached out to me, which was one of the single most humbling things I’ve ever experienced when it comes to my podcast, somebody is professional and as upwardly mobile as you in the space of coaching and teaching to reach out to me and offer to be on my podcast was a real compliment. So thanks for that.
0:01:22.4 S2: Yeah, I enjoy your work, and when I find people with great energy, I wanna have more conversations with those types of people, and at the time, I didn’t know it, but found out your somewhat a neighbor. We live in the same city.
0:01:33.5 S1: Which isn’t always the case when you’re talking about podcast, my podcast a week or two ago, the interview was in Ireland, and so he reached out and we connected and he said, Yeah, I’d love to be on your show. And I said, Love to have you on my show. Where is the accent from? He’s like, Oh, I’m calling from… I can’t remember exactly where Limerick, I think it was in Ireland, a Howell. Let’s talk about the global village.
0:01:52.3 S2: I know I am prior to going out on my own, having my own company, I ran an international team, and one of the things I try to do is reach out to podcasters around the world, ’cause it’s just fascinating how different countries sometimes think about how they view leadership and communication and different things like that, so it’s fun to know that the world can be very small.
0:02:12.6 S1: And in the world where we’re celebrating whatever wins we can take in a space where we’re brand new, it’s pretty awesome that I could say that my podcast is now, international, because I interview somebody from Ireland, before we get too far, I’d like to read your bio, and I’d love for everybody to know a little bit more about your history, what brings you here today, and what puts you in a place where you’re coaching after running in international team, and then I’m gonna ask you some questions as it sound perfect. Excellent. Jennifer has developed her experience in talent strategy and leadership professional development over her exciting 20-plus year career as an HR professional, she’s led international teams across Greater China, Mexico, the UK, and the US to expand in new markets, managing franchise retailers and developing key strategic partnerships. All while exceeding business objectives and financial results, the rapid growth of her consulting firm, 304 coaching has been largely due to Jennifer’s unconventional approach to building innovative workforce development solutions for companies who are facing breakthrough growth and accelerated hiring patterns. She is a sought after a business strategist, specializing in startups and large value-based organization, she assists her clients in building talent strategies that complement their business strategies to ensure exponential growth.
0:03:27.4 S1: She lives in Texas with her family and rescues in her free time, she enjoys reading Historic Preservation, remodeling her Lake home and spending time with friends. Thank you for spending time with me, Jennifer. Well, thank you, that is an unbelievable resume bio, talking about many countries, many cultures and companies that are on a trajectory to grow exponentially. What’s that been like?
0:03:50.0 S2: Gosh, it’s been exciting. Scary, fun. Whatever other adjective I can think of. When I left my job in corporate America, it was fantastic. I was running an international team, it looked really cool on Instagram and Facebook, ’cause amazing pictures from all over the world, but there was just something in me that I just knew I had run my course at an incredible career with an organization for over 20 years. Amazing, it was just so amazing, but I just knew something else was waiting for me and kind of saw a little bit of a window and I jumped and took it and I started my own business and it’s been fantastic. I can’t complain a bit, my bad days are still pretty good days, I think that any time as a solo entrepreneur, you can wake up and pay your bills by doing what you love… It’s a pretty good day. I’ll
0:04:43.0 S1: Tell you so, I’ve recently read a book, and in that book, the author talks about how important it is to choose your problems, because if you think you’re gonna leave corporate America and that you aren’t gonna have tough days, that’s not true, they’re all gonna have tough days, you’re always gonna struggle. It’s picking the problems that you want, and so… I love that you’re saying that, yeah. I mean, it’s up and down, but that largely… All the lines are putting in the right direction.
0:05:03.6 S2: They are… They’re all pointing in the right direction. And even when I fail or mess up or you don’t… You don’t get the client. Maybe I wanted… It’s just… And I did a lot of coaching myself when I started my business, but it… To me, it’s just opening the space for what is right, and I have to choose how I wanna look at it, and we all do, if I looked at it, it’s like, Oh my gosh, I didn’t get that client. They must not have liked me if I created a story like that, where I’d be on the couch upset every day and said, I’m like, You know what, they would be really cool to work with, but then now there’s a space open for the client that really does need me, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stayed in contact and then that client came back around six months, a year later, and they actually were my client, but having that viewpoint that it’s okay at that point, I think helps leave that space open for them in the future.
0:05:55.6 S1: It’s so interesting to me because I find that through the course of these interviews and the more professionals that I meet that have either chosen or and sometimes in some way has been chosen for them to become an entrepreneur, to strike that bold new path, they really typically fall into a couple of categories, and you fall into the category that I love so much that you had a corporate career that was immensely successful, you had major mark, you could have continued on, it’s just you were looking for that level of fulfillment that you knew you could no longer get, and so you took the jump off the cliff and you built the plane on the way down, and here you are flying and soaring, and so that’s really encouraging to so many people that might be listening in right now is that if I’m either ready to make that leap or that leap, I was sort of pushed a little bit because of some sort of life change, that it’s okay, you can build that plan all the way down and still sore…
0:06:44.3 S2: Absolutely, and you do that every day. And I talk to entrepreneurs all the time, and they’re like, How… Did you get your business off the ground? How did you do that? And it’s because I got up every single day and I still do, and I go to my office even if my calendars empty, especially in the beginning, most days, my calendar was completely UMD… I went to work at the same time every day, and I learned something new, or I made a connection on LinkedIn or research something, which gave me an idea, and that’s why I think I made it is because my calendar was empty, I didn’t go hang out at the pool and son all day, I went to my office and I worked, and so my mind knew I was working, and so work came my way, it’s
0:07:24.9 S1: Remarkable because so often it’s not about whether or not you succeed at what point… It’s that you’re willing to put in the hard work, fight the good fight, Scratch and call your way to the point at which you do become that success that you know you can be, it’s just you have to manage expectations and you have to be willing to put the work in… ’cause they say it’s not which failure, it’s making sure that that failure doesn’t stop you and then you out survive it. So I’m so glad that you did. I wanna ask you some questions. If that’s all right. Absolutely, yes. So as a loud and proud relationship marketer, obviously my rally cry is people first in profit, and I believe fundamentally in the power of relationships, you often talk about a concept of somebody feeling addicted to being right, and that that has very specific implications when it comes to communication relationships, talk to me about your addicted to being right to concept and what the impact of that is.
0:08:16.1 S2: So we actually can get physically addicted to being right, just like we can get addicted to sugar or alcohol or shopping, whatever our addiction of choice is, because we get a dopamine hit when we’re… Right, so every time you’re right, let’s face it, it feels good, I’ll be the first submit, I like being right. It feels good, and we know about all addictions, when you get that dopamine hit the next time you seek it out, you need more and more of it to get that same level of feel goods. And so when you’re right early in your career and you have some early wins and you’re rewarded because you’re right, maybe not rewarded because you collaborated or leveraged experts, you got rewarded because you were right, then it starts this spiral of, I got rewarded, I gotta do me when I don’t mean it, when I was right. So I need to be right some more in asking everyone to continue to approve your thoughts and allow you to be right, and over time you get addicted to it.
0:09:16.3 S1: It’s remarkable to think then that you must have to do something proactively to either be aware of it, or you have to have somebody intercede like an intervention, like any other addiction. What’s your advice to somebody if they notice this pattern in themselves or in someone else.
0:09:31.5 S2: So most people don’t notice it in themselves until you are so far down the path that the pain of not changing is greater than the pain of change, and that’s how most addiction works, we don’t necessarily wanna change until we don’t have a choice anymore, and being right the same way. And so if you’re someone running your business, even if you’re a solo entrepreneur and you are telling people what you want them to know, or if you are… If someone comes to you and they tell you something and you’re like, No, that can’t be true. No, that’s not it. This is it, and not listening to them, or at the end of the day, if you’re not saying, Oh my gosh, I learn 10 things today, or I ask this question and where I met someone today? And learn from them, if you’re not doing any of that, then you’re probably addicted to your own thoughts and being… Right.
0:10:22.3 S1: So would you say that the addiction to being right and maybe confirmation bias or echo chambers or those sort of things that we experience in, especially in social media, when you have this ether of content, do you think that those are kissing cousins to say… Are they closely related?
0:10:39.2 S2: Yeah, I think they absolutely are. When we get a like and when we get a comment on our post or someone agrees with our opinions… Yeah, we can do men hit, they’re verifying we are right, and let’s face it, we don’t like it on social media when someone tells us we’re wrong, because then we’re not getting that dopamine heat, we actually get cortisol, which is a stress hormone because now we’re stressed out because someone may not like us or someone may have seen different than us, and all of that starts to spiral, but you have… We love being right, whether that’s social media in the office with our clients, and we just love it.
0:11:13.4 S1: I wanna distill that for the audience because really what we’re talking about now is how rapidly either the intensity or the breadth of how often we feel right or wrong, we’ll have a huge impact on the way that we communicate, the way that we relate to people, and I would imagine that again, the aggregate can make things even worse, so let’s say you surround yourself in person or on social media with people that you consistently feel like you’re right all the time, and then some one person tells you you’re wrong, I’ll bet you you have a pretty big reaction like, How could all these people be telling me I’m right and now I’m suddenly wrong… It’s that shock. So we’re talking about not, Oh, this is just something to keep an eye out for. This could be debilitating or it could really be crippling to our relationships in our communication, it’s
0:11:54.4 S2: Crippling to our relationships, and I’ve worked with some executives who were so far down the addiction road that they could not hear the truth about their business and their business was spiraling out of control. And if you are someone who says, Man, my team, they never make decisions on their own, my team never comes to me with new ideas, my tee, and you’re blaming your team for all your company problems, then you’ve trained them, you’ve taught them not to tell you the truth, you’ve taught them through your actions and your words that being truthful gets them in trouble, and so if you’re addicted to your belief of your company and another leader or another just… Any employee says, Hey, look at this, I have a new way of doing this, or I was… We’re doing some research and I see that our customers are trending this way, and you don’t stop and listen, even if you don’t want… Even if you don’t feel like it’s true, if you don’t stop and listen, then you’re teaching people not to tell you the truth.
0:12:55.4 S1: They don’t wanna speak truth to power as they say, and I wonder if there’s a point at which is solo printers, entrepreneurs, people that serve clients largely, right? So they may not be working with a team, this would of course be the same in any communication pattern, in any relationship. I wonder if there’s a time when they struggle with, I’m supposed to be the subject matter expert, and I need to have a conversation with this person and make sure that they understand… I bet you this will serve them well to know the difference between I’m addicted to being right, and the need to educate this person on my experience as to why this is the direction they should go, or why this is the right choice to make. Would you agree with that?
0:13:31.2 S2: I would, as a consultant entrap oftentimes, you’re getting paid to be right, you’re getting paid to know that as an expert, but when I think about working with an organization, I do talent strategies, so there is a million different ways to create a talent strategy because it has to match the business strategy, and everyone’s business is unique, and so I have to really get curious and understand someone’s business before I can bring in options to them, because if I say no, it doesn’t matter all companies your size, this way, that way, this is like a wash in prints and repeat. Use this and you’ll be fine. That’s not how it works. And so I think as an entrepreneur, you have to get incredibly curious about your clients, and then you also have to be okay with options, and it takes more work, it takes more work to get curious, it takes more work to bring options, but when you do that, you build a better product for your client and you have a much better relationship with your client.
0:14:29.2 S1: There’s two answers that I always hated when I was in an organization, or even my wife and I saw… My wife and I are obviously business partners, and we engage in lots of conversations about how we do things, or when I was on an association board, I always tell people that the answer that I hated was because it’s a way… It’s always been done right, and that’s just not a viable answer, you can follow it up with, because that’s the way it’s always been done, and here are all the reasons that we should continue to do it that way, otherwise it’s really not… So again, it takes work to dig deep to answer those kinds of questions, so that’s obviously why you’re probably a wildly successful entrepreneur and coach is because you have to care and you have to care about more than just the business, you have to dig deep and learn about those folks. So let’s move on to one of the other things that we talked about a little bit, and that’s once again, my rally and cry people first and profit comes back to relationships and communications. I have a communications degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and it was always interesting to me how it was applicable to every walk of life, every walk of life, interpersonal, professional, organizational, what are we gonna do with the future and how we choose to communicate because from my nerdy communication history, I know about Sender Receiver models and non-verbal communication and transmission issues and all that stuff, and it seems like almost every day we are going through a litany of changes in the digital age with virtual events and tons of zooming…
0:15:50.3 S1: What does the future of workplace communication look like?
0:15:53.0 S2: Oh my gosh, let me get my crystal ball out, but… A tough question. It is a tough question, but I’m so glad you liked it. Because these are the kind of conversations we need to have. Because I always feel like the future can organically happen, and it is what it is, whether you like it or not, or you have conversations and you create what you want and you create where you go, so I think really hard questions like predicting the future are important to have… And I think we’re going to see a little bit of a divide, and I think there is going to be kind of this fork in the road where people have the choice to go one way, and that way is maybe how we’ve communicated in the past, which is very more about command and control and do as I say, because we’re in so much fear because the world is moving so fast, and when we’re in fear, that’s how we naturally lead, because our brain actually closes down our prefrontal cortex because our ermine brains and control and so you can’t be innovative as a leader when you are in fear, and so I think there’s that path, and then I think there’s gonna be a sharp other path, and that sharp other path is gonna really start to understand to be a leader in the future.
0:16:59.1 S2: You have to not be the expert, you have to be an expert at bringing great ideas in, you have to be an expert of deploying people, you have to be an expert at learning enough, and that’s very different than how we may be led in the past. I was the expert, so I got promoted in Job B because I was the best person at it. Well, that’s not how it works anymore, because if you were the best person at it two years ago, you’re probably horrible today because it moves so fast, so you have to be able to lead and communicate in a way that lets the people in the moment come out and lets everyone show their expertise, but that’s gonna be hard for people, and there’s gonna be people that won’t be able to do that, and so that’s why I think you’ll start to see a really hard split on types of environments.
0:17:45.4 S1: I like your crystal ball so much, well.
0:17:48.2 S2: Meet in five years and see how it looks.
0:17:50.3 S1: We’ll meet in five years and see how it looks, because I feel like you’ve opened the door to many possible answers, but at the same time, you really pinpointed a couple of things that I’d like to distill. Number one, I hope you’re right. I personally do not like a control model, and I’ve always said that I believe that there’s a fundamental difference between a boss and a leader, and they’re mutually exclusive in some cases… Which is so frustrating, right? Do you have somebody that’s a boss that is in control of your day-to-day operation and maybe the operation of the entire organization, and you recognize that they’re a box and not a leader, and fundamentally, the difference is, I think that a boss believes that they’re right and they know the direction and they push to people to go where they need to put… A leader is a person that brings to gather the best group and they seek counsel, seek advice, they may have to make the final decision, but that they’re open to those things, and so I fundamentally hope that that is some of the future. And then my follow-up question to you is, do you think that will generationally be the case? Do you think that things will shift because it seems like between co-working space and fun, neat, interactive ways in which people are working and brainstorming and collaborating, do you think that that generation is gonna move in a version…
0:18:57.3 S1: Automatically.
0:18:57.8 S2: You know, I think one thing that actually that I think covid brought us because it’s been horrible and we all know that, but then you think, Okay, well, what came out of this… I think what came out of it is there’s a lot of people that from a generational standpoint, multiple generations, everyone’s having to learn this new way of work together, and so for the first time, I don’t feel like it’s well. You’ve been in the workplace for 20 years, so you can’t do zoom or you can’t communicate on a camera, and the person fresh out of school and their first job is like the wiz at this technology. I think that’s disappeared a little bit because we all had to figure this out over night, and I think it’s a nice by-product of helping us stay away from this thought of only certain generations can lead a certain way, because we all had to figure it out no matter how old or young we were.
0:19:47.7 S1: I did a talk for many years called typewriters to tweets, and it was about the generation gap in business, and I felt like it was never wider than it was at that moment, because you had people that were… Mainly the boomer generation, there weren’t too many people from the greatest generation that we’re still in an office environment, but you had people that didn’t have electricity and TVs and things like that in their home that are now expected to kind of just jump on board with a ridiculous amount of technology, and I think that your point is so well made that it forced the younger generation to support the older generation or whatever, however you wanna look at that, to make sure that everybody was included, it wasn’t okay to just say, Well, they’re just Okay, Boomer, as they say, No, it’s kind of the running joke. Right, you can’t… Just cast them aside. So what a great thing. So let’s talk then, since we’re talking about tea real quick, teams can be one of the most rewarding, one of the best ways to operate as a solo Renu, I love collaboration and I love to work with preferred partners because that allows me to feed that…
0:20:41.5 S1: Well, it’s also one of the more difficult, scary places to be, you rely on those other people, so how do you create trust in safety in collaborative workspaces?
0:20:51.6 S2: Oh gosh, there’s a lot of pieces to that though, I think about… So entrepreneurs or I think about someone like myself, I have a team, but they are all experts, and I hired him for a really clear reason, so I think the first thing is… Even if you’re working with contractors. So they’re not your typical 40-hour employee. If they are involved in your business, they are a team member and should be treated as a team member, they should be treated, they should be onboarded properly, they should have regular communication, access to you, they should know the other contractors that are working within your organization, and be able to work around them. So I think when you start to build safety with them, the first thing I say to someone, when I bring them in as I hired you, because you’re an expert in this, I know a very little bit about it, so I expect that as we go through this relationship, you do fantastic work and you teach me along the way, and when they come to me and they’re like, Here’s what I think we should do. I always say, Tell me why.
0:21:52.2 S2: Tell me the research, tell me why you’re passionate about this, if this wasn’t a possibility, what else could we do? And I ask questions to make them think really hard about what they’re bringing to me because I don’t know enough, I’m not an expert in it, but I can ask questions so that they’re basically selling me, they’re teaching me and that pushes them, but it also allows them to know I trust them because I expect them to bring me their expertise.
0:22:19.4 S1: It’s interesting because that can be true of a team that you’ve formulated, it could be true of a client you work with, it really could be true in interpersonal relationships as well, what you’re doing it seems like as you’re threading the needle, Jennifer between, I hired you, you’re the expert, go do your job. The other end of the spectrum might be something like, Yeah, I hired you and you’re the expert, you work for me in a very controlling environment, and so the needle thread is, I hired you, you’re the expert, I need you to instruct me, just all the things that you said, they’re just so wonderful.
0:22:48.2 S2: Yeah, and you have to build safety people have to know there’s people around them, and so there’s what, eight, nine of us that work together at 304 and everyone else has their own business, I hire them as an expert, and every time I bring someone in, we have a group conversation, we invite them in, we talk about how we can support each other, we talk about what each person does, and it creates trust and safety for them because they feel like they’re part of a greater cause and not just a contractor getting direction and an invoice that goes out because that doesn’t feel good, so they’re gonna work really hard because they have purpose, but the other thing it does is it allows them to have other people to talk with, and it allows them to… Have someone to go to and say, This is what I’m thinking. What are you thinking? And it makes my job easier ’cause when my marketing… The person who does my marketing talks to my tech VA, who does all of the technology behind our leadership academies, I don’t have to get in that conversation because I’ve created trust within the team that they can talk to each other, they can make a decision and then they just person it back to me, so not only am I creating a place where they get to be their best…
0:24:03.2 S2: I’m creating a place where I’m not overwhelmed, therefore, I can be my best…
0:24:08.1 S1: The word that I use, and I think you used it as well, that I have been trying to move the people I coach away from the people that are in my master ride, away from the people… Anybody I talk to is transactional, we have to get away from a transactional existence where to your point, I’ve hired you, you’ve given me a resume, I’m giving you a paycheck, that’s of course the basic… That’s the skeletal structure of hiring somebody, but you do the work to bring them on board. I can speak from experience. You and I, I’ve had the pleasure working with your team over the last three weeks or so, we did a lovely Discovery called to make sure this was a great fit, and here you are in about a week before I got an email from your team saying, We’re confirming, Here’s the information we talked about, let us know if there’s been any changes, so I felt like a very, very valued extension of your team. And that doesn’t happen by accident. You have to be intentional about that.
0:24:56.6 S2: Yeah, and we have processes and processes create safety because people know what to expect and they know what to do, and so as a podcast guest, there’s a lot of moving parts to that, and just like there’s a lot of moving parts. If you have your own podcast or anything that you do, there’s moving parts, and so we have very clear process maps, and so I can go to bed knowing that every single Monday for the week after that, any podcast I may be on… They’ll receive the email that you received, and I want people I work with to feel good, like you knew I would show up today, right, because we communicated with you and we created safety and our partnership with you because you knew I would show up and I’d be ready? But if we hadn’t communicated, you hadn’t heard from us, you’d probably like, Well, I hope she shows up, you know, you might be having fear before this, and we wouldn’t want that, and
0:25:48.0 S1: What’s ironic is you beat me to it, so a little bit later in that week, you would have normally gotten an email from me that said, Here’s our shared drive, please upload any materials you want, Here’s a guide that I’ve created for all the ways that you can be the best guest, and I got your email from Jennifer or the other… Jennifer? Yeah, and I said She doesn’t need my email, she’s already sent me everything I need, I can load them to the drive, she obviously knows how to be the best podcast guest because of all the information she shared, so I love that. That is so intentional on your part, let me ask you, and be honest, be candid, because if you did it in advance, then you’re, of course the front runner and you’re the forward thinker, if you didn’t, then we can learn from you. Did you start those processes as you developed a team, did you start those processes the minute you started doing those things, because so often I think people don’t understand the value of creating a process if they’re the only one in their business…
0:26:40.8 S2: I am a process person, and that came from my early upbringing upper… I grew up in the retail industry, my first jobs were running stores in the mall, and we had processes, everything had a standard operating procedure of… And everyone knew what to do. And so when I make a decision, I always think about… ’cause I’m an operator at heart. How will this play out? What’s my end goal? And how do I get there? What do I wanna deliver? And we’re very process-driven here, but it creates efficiencies, it creates safety, it creates trust. We sleep better at night. But yeah, I have a spreadsheet for most things, but… And I love a process map, because here’s other thing, if as my business grows, Jen, who you’ve been communicating with, we have a succession plan for her, even though she is, I guess on paper a contractor, I have a succession plan for her, I know what her next step is in my business, he knows what that next step is, but when we bring in her replacement and new admin, we have process maps, and so we can pass that off with really just an easy hands-off versus like, Oh man, I just do it this way, I don’t really know why.
0:27:53.8 S2: All of that messiness. We have a succession plan.
0:27:57.4 S1: I am a fellow process nerd, you won’t say that it started in hospitality, I ran a department that had a corporate level sops that we got that were great, but they did not apply to the specific building and the specific operation. So we created sops for our offices, and I remember people sort of feeling like, this seems like extra work, this doesn’t make any sense, right up until they got promoted, and when they got promoted because of the wonderful work they did and they got to hand that to their successor and say, Hey, here’s the deal, this is how you do these things, and if you have any questions to hand over and the turnover and the onboarding and the person’s promotion was so seamless, and it takes a great deal of forethought because you think… Well, I’m just the one that does it. It’s no big deal. The other thing that I wanna touch on real quick before we move on, because I think it is so important, people don’t understand this, when you do a process map, whether it be a pen and paper or a process flow app, whatever the case is, you find holes in your system, and I’ll tell you that being a podcast host, re-launching the podcast in a way that was much more methodical than when I originally launched podcast, I created a five-page process workflow and still…
0:29:11.3 S1: When I go back, I think, Okay, now that I’m 10 episodes and or 15 episodes in, I should be doing this, I need to send this note earlier, it is remarkable how you can immediately improve a product process just by having that map and looking at it and seeing where the holes are.
0:29:26.0 S2: You can… And it’s also, obviously, it creates efficiencies and there’s only so many hours a day one can work, and so you have to think about it as a distribution of energy, and so if I’m putting a ton of energy into chasing what I didn’t do right, then that is energy that I cannot use to create a new product or follow up with a client or write an article because I’m so overwhelmed, and so when you think about you only have so much energy to distribute, do you wanna waste it because you’re not organized and you don’t have processes and you’re not on top of efficiencies, and for the first year and a half, it was just me, if I did it all top to bottom, and if I was sloppy with it, I would never be where I am because I wouldn’t have had the energy left to create my academies and to create marketing and all that other stuff that it takes to have a viable business.
0:30:25.6 S1: I think that that’s the takeaway there that is so profound, Jennifer, it’s that you put the capital time in up front when time was less of a constrained commodity, so that you could save time and energy and delegate every single day from then on it, it feels like such a heavy burden to stop whatever you’re doing, look through a process map, figure out what your process is and then write it down right up until you have 20 of those that maps out your entire existence, and then the minute somebody comes on, you’re like, Okay, here’s how you do this, now I can go do this and I can spend my time somewhere else, and as your time becomes more and more and more constrained, you just hand them off, we create the process for the next person and move on to more valuable things that is unbelievable, tactical advice that every listener… I don’t care if your business owner, I don’t care for an entrepreneur, I don’t even care if you work for a company, if you’re a professional hospitality professional, especially, you could create those saps for yourself, just so you know how very efficient you could be…
0:31:23.0 S2: Yeah, and all that energy left over, you get to decide where you put it, and that’s always fun.
0:31:29.6 S1: That’s why is literally about to say, and that’s always the good stuff when you realize you have just a little bit of extra energy left over, you get to decide what to do with that energy? Yeah, absolutely. Alright, I have a lot of energy left, but we need to wrap up, and I wrap up every podcast in a super fun way, and I don’t tell my guests about it, and it’s just a fun lightening around… Are you ready? I am ready. I love how definitive you are. Okay, so my daughter’s favorite movie right now is trolls to World Tour, so… Is it rock pop or country for you? Oh, rock, I would say, yeah, she… She does the cute little rock on symbols and he’s a… Daddy, are you ready to rock on? So thank you for loving rock. She absolutely adores rock, Antara and Tarakan. That’s the thing is she literally says, Daddy, I wanna listen to crazy train, and that’s an Asia-born song. So
0:32:12.3 S2: I was a big Asian Black Sabbath.
0:32:14.8 S1: I got to tell you, if there’s one thing I like about pop-cultural for children is when they do it right, they introduce them to things that they would not have stumbled upon on their own. Okay, so since you’re my neighbor here, favorite Dallas-based restaurant…
0:32:26.4 S2: Oh gosh. Then that would probably be… Okay, so our favorite place to hang out is in Bishop Arts here in not Cliff, and we hang out as a fantastic pub, 10 bells, and it is a true dive Pub, has great food and everyone knows your name when you walk in.
0:32:42.1 S1: I love dive clubs, it’s where my wife and I went on our first aid because we met at a really sort of high-end watering hole, and both of us were like, That’s not really where we hang… Can we go to this pub over here? So we went to Sherlock bubble. It was one of our favorite spots. Okay, so since I know you go to the pub, favorite beverage… Oh.
0:33:00.1 S2: Let’s see, I guess, sparkling water, if
0:33:03.0 S1: It’s past 5 o’clock, I love me some red wine, and right now it’s my favorite time of year, it’s getting little Crispin the air, a nice glass of red wine at the end of the day to relax and warm up is my favorite thing too. Okay, thank you for playing my lightning around. It’s just a fun way. We’ve talked about so much sort of heavy strategic and tactical, it’s good to get to know you and have a little fun with the audience. So the next question is, if people want to find you, I believe that I’m supposed to send them to 304 coaching dot com, correct?
0:33:29.2 S2: Yes, they can head over to 304 Coaching, we have a resource section, case studies, the directions on how to have some innovative meetings with your team and access to some of the podcasts I’ve been on. Exceptional, so that is the core hub of your universe. 304 coaching dot com. You did tell me right before we got started that you have a brand new resource there that people can download about how to create innovation in your team with some creative team meetings and such… Yes, yes, it’s called a crazy idea meeting, and it is a way to jump start innovation, if your team has been in a place a little bit of fear and they’re not coming to you with new ideas, it’s a very specific way to get them to start thinking about innovation by rewarding them for ridiculous ideas.
0:34:12.5 S1: I love everything about that. No idea. Is too crazy. Wonderful. Well, listen, Jennifer, you’ve been a pleasure to chat with… I know I’ve learned so much, I’m confident the audience learn so much. Thank you so much for spending your time and sharing your knowledge with us.
0:34:25.5 S2: So I thank you. And it’s been great getting to know you.
0:34:27.8 S1: Thank you so much. Alright, with that, we’ll have Adam more tickets out of here, everybody, have a great week. Thanks for listening to the people first and profit podcast. If you like this episode, and I’m pretty sure you did subscribe, review and share it with your friends, fans and followers wherever you get your podcast, check out the show notes for additional information about this week’s guest, as well as a list of all the links and resources we discussed be sure to visit people first in Profit dot com for a ton of great content, free resources and leads to the people first in-profit community. Alright, I’m out of Willmar and on behalf of your host, Don Memon, we’ll see you next week, anoo.