← Confessions of an Implementer
Confessions of an Implementer
S2E57 | Kind vs. Nice: What Most Leaders Get Wrong About Caring for Their Team with Mike Yoder
00:46:53
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A
No, they're not born with it because it's not like the doctor. You were born. The doctor looked at the baby. One leader. Right.
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Welcome to Confessions of an Implementer. I'm your host, Ryan Hogan. We share unique stories of EOS implementers and the companies they've transformed to give you a rare glimpse into the successes and challenges of the system in action. Let's jump in. You know, there's a funny thing about the countdown, because one of the things is, like, I don't do big introductions. Like, we try and just, like, naturally flow into it and. And it's to try and, like, ease. Ease, like, the tension and. And sometimes there's nerves and things like that. But then the countdown timer, like, then you get this thing, and it's like. It's like this. I don't know. I. I hear you on that, though.
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A
That's good. Feeling a little like Ron Burgundy getting ready to start the cast.
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B
That's. That's exactly right. And then you, like, you get this thing where. Where, like, voices start to your radio voice, and it's. It just. It starts to get all wonky. Well, Mike, thanks for taking the time today to jump on and kind of share your experiences and talk about some. Some of the things, trials, tribulations that you went to. There's some really interesting kind of parallels both in our journeys and. And also during the pre call. One of the things I asked for is. Is the golden thread. And when you told me yours, it was, like, so near and dear to me, because I think we actually share golden threads, or we share, like, why we believe we're here. But we'll get to all that in just a second. What I wanted to start with was you have a really kind of interesting career. And it's like, you started and it was like, corporate, and then you went into, like, an entrepreneurial realm, and then you became, like, a full blown entrepreneur, and now you're an EOS implementer.
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Yeah.
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Like, where. Where did this start for you? Were you. Were you, like, one day I'm going to launch a business. When you were a little kid, or is it.
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I grew up in a small town in northern Indiana, near. Near South Bend. So for Notre Dame fans, I was near there. I went to Purdue, so I'm not a Notre Dame fan. Not to be whatever. Grew up on a farm.
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Not.
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Not many people in my family, my mom's side or my dad's side, I don't know that anybody went to college at that point. My. My brother went to diesel mechanic school. And my sister did go to college. So I didn't grow up thinking anything big. I was just in the moment, having fun, decided to go to college after working a few summer jobs that weren't so fun and thought well, maybe I should go to this college thing or something. And I liked electronics. I had no clue what to major in. I didn't even know what half the majors meant. Right. You know, and so I was an electrical engineering student at Purdue University and ended up at a really good engineering school. Very, very affordable education back in those days. And, and that's what kind of got me down the path of corporate America because I'm in college at Purdue. And so when interviewing started it's like, hey, you know, Parker Hannifan's coming to town. Johnson Control, Siemens. And so I started out at Purdue, Johnson Controls and, and, and kind of looked around after a year of it, went through their training and was a sales engineer for them and looked at my fellow sales people and my boss and kind of went, I don't know that I want to be doing this in 20 years and don't know that I want to do what he's doing. And looking at my boss and so I'm like, yeah, this isn't right. Right. So I went to another company, actually a bigger one, Siemens Energy and Automation. Stuck it out a little longer there, but there element of, I mean I got to learn so much. I mean I was so blessed because their training programs and just being a part of that big of an organization and seeing how everything fits together at the time I had no clue I was learning, but I was learning a ton and meeting some incredible people. One of my clients at Siemens was Miller Brewing, headquartered in Milwaukee at the time. And I called on the corporate engineering manager for Miller Brewing and like to this day I'm like, I can't believe the guy gave me the time of day. But I literally had meetings with him, you know, every other month and just talking about what, when they would need our product, you know. And so that's pretty cool. But there was an element of, you know, boredom, just, you know, not meaning something or mattering. Feeling like I can get in my car and do my job every day and whether I get a sale or don't, doesn't seem to matter to anybody. And so I, I went through my pre midlife crisis. I was about 25, quit my job, didn't have something lined up, got my ear pierced. I was into rap music at the time.
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B
Let's go.
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So it was, I was just Like I don't know what I'm gonna do. I, I sold my car, bought a jeep and was living in a house with five other guys. Cost me 200 bucks. I lived in the basement. This is in suburbs of Chicago. And I started painting houses. I got on a paint crew and for six months I just painted houses and was like, I don't know what I'm going to do when I grow up.
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And you left Siemens to paint houses?
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Yeah, I quit. I didn't have a job, I just quit. And I was 25. I mean, who cares? I didn't have a family, I didn't have much risk. It was just like, I was just like I'm fed up and I thought I was gonna write music or something. I was, I was really involved in some hip hop dance stuff at a church. I was a part of it's kind of crazy story and was really into to rap and writing songs and stuff and I, I just wasn't skilled. I mean I was, I was okay, but you know, that wasn't it. And like I said, I just, I hooked up with a guy that was, had a paint crew and he, he kept me busy for a few months and so I made enough money to put gas in my car and, and just was kind of a six month sabbatical. I actually went on a mission trip for seven days and, and helped build a house or whatever, help build a boys boys home and just, you know, just sitting back and going, wait a minute. Because I've worked for two excellent organizations, given great opportunities and I just didn't feel like it fit. And so through that time period, I got connected to Jeff Chandler and one of my friends knew him. We, we actually went to college together. Just didn't know him in college. My friend knew him from college and said, hey Mike, go talk to Jeff. He's starting a business and maybe, you know, something there. And so he and his other fraternity brother were starting a software development company and, and I talked to him and he was like, sure, you know, uh, you pretty much gotta sell something to make money. I'll give you a little bit of money each month to pay your bills, but for the most part you're really not gonna make money unless you sell something. So go sell vaporware, you know, warehouse management software. So I spent three months knocking on doors in the Chicago suburbs trying to sell that stuff. And we both learned really quick. We sold a couple of systems and tried to build them and we learned that we weren't gonna make money doing that. It was Just, it was too inefficient of a process. And he said, hey, we got a friend who can print barcode labels really cheap, so go sell barcode labels to libraries. And I'm like, okay. I started calling libraries and, you know, I'll never forget the day I called this lady and wonderful woman, she. She's like, yeah, we're actually looking at barcoding our whole collection right now. And I'm like, ooh, big order. You know these are two cent labels, right? I said, yeah, great. She's like, well, do you do smart labels? I said, I don't know. Just one second. Hey, okay, this is landline, right? This is back in the day, right? Hey, Jeff, do we do smart labels? And he's like, yeah, yes, ma', am, we do. She's like, oh, great. Well, can you come out next week and we'll talk about pricing and how the process works? I'm like, sure. Get off the phone. Hey, Jeff, what's a smart label? I don't know. You better figure it out.
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I knew that was Covid. Yeah.
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And so it was a bit entrepreneurial. So fast forward. In two years, we sold a million dollars worth of 2 cent barcode labels. We took over the market share in that state for college libraries. And then we were. I had built up some marketing materials and a system, a core process. Didn't know what it was back then, but I had two people working phones and we were, we were going state by state, going after public libraries in all the neighboring states and college, college libraries, and so built that up. And that was the beginning of a 23 your journey of me being the number two guy in multiple entrepreneurial adventures. There were a couple startups in there that was a startup, and I did a nonprofit startup in that journey, and then another small company startup. None of them grew to millions of dollars businesses, you know, billions of dollars businesses, but all three of them are still going today, you know, 20 plus years later. And then I also worked in a couple more mature entrepreneurial companies, the biggest being Ambassador Steel. They at the time, they were about 500 million in sales, and the smallest one being a manufacturer in Nebraska. That was at about 80 million. So I was on leadership teams with those companies and I ran a branch actually for ambassadors. So I was in charge of a $23 million operation when I did that. And so I learned so much through those journeys. But that was 23 years of being a number two guy and oftentimes thinking, something's wrong with me, like, why am I not starting These businesses. And then that's when I. Somebody handed me this book, you know, actually get a grip. It wasn't even traction. It was the, the novel version of that fable version. And I read it and was like, oh, I'm an integrator. So I am not, I'm not broken. Right. I, I'm the number two guy. I like to execute the vision and so it made sense. And I do have a little bit of visionary in me. I love to think of these things, but. But that's kind of what I'm about, is building teams and helping people become their very best. I mean, that's just my theme in my life. I just love to. To coach and get teams to be effective, get coach people to be who they were made to be and be the best version of that. So, yeah, that's how I got introduced to the EOS system. And yeah, the rest is history. That was, man, I got introduced to it and I was still in the market, but I went to a new position and I brought EOS there and tried to self implement it. And that's why I am an implementer now, because I saw how it doesn't work when you self implement. I mean, it helps. So those folks out there doing it, keep going, keep doing it. I'm not throwing shade. It's just, it's a per. It's hard to do. You need a perfect situation. You need the right people in the room at a leadership team level. And it's hard to do. And so we tried to do that. Didn't work. Hired an implementer. And I saw the power of that. I saw what it looked like to have someone from the outside holding us accountable. And he could tell us, you know, he could tell the owner to be quiet and look at it differently because he didn't work for him. And when I saw the effectiveness of that, I was like, wow, that's really cool. That's kind of what planted the seed for me about a year later to say, I'm going to do it. And that was almost nine years ago.
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Wow.
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It's the longest I've done anything ever. Like my, my journey through entrepreneurial stuff, my average stay at a place was two to three years. I'd get there, get something built, get it going. I wasn't bored. I, I was excited. It was fun. Just something else came along and I'm like, I felt called to go do that. I'd go do that. And so it hit me about a year and a half ago, I was like, wow, I've Done this for eight years. I must be doing the right thing. So I found it every stop.
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What are some things that, that you had learned from those big companies that like helped you especially in the startup environment. So like it's, you were on the founding team of, of barcodes or going to, you know, improve the way in which libraries organize and manage all of their books. Like what are some things you learned that you carried with you to those other organizations?
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It's a really good question. So I think some business principles, right? So like in those big companies, I would like Siemens is a great example. I, I had like, I think seven product lines that I was responsible to sell and each of them had their own factory, right. That was building so, so small motors, you know, was in Little Rock, Arkansas and Nema frames or sorry, small motors. There's, there's two classifications, large and small motors. It's really technical in electrical world. And then the large motors were like 2,000 horsepower electric motors, like massive motors. Those were built in Norwood, Ohio. So we would spend time in each of those facilities and learn their kind of business model for them and then we were charged with going out and selling that product. I learned to negotiate. So one example is when I got through that training. My territory was in Wisconsin and northern Illinois, Southern Wisconsin, northern Illinois. And I had a distributor for motors and they hadn't had a rep calling on them for multiple years. So they weren't selling many of our motors and they didn't have a good multiplier. I mean their pricing was horrible. And so I came in and listened to their story and they told me all the blah, blah, blah. I was like, got on the phone talking to my rep at the factory and saying, you know, here's the deal, da, da. And finally I just said, look, you don't change the multiplier. I'm not even gonna spend my time calling on them because they can't sell motors. They can't sell them if you don't give them too good a price to compete with the competitor. We got the multiplier changed in a year later. They, you know, they did almost more sales in, in our motors than they had in the previous 10 years. And so I learned how to negotiate like because hey, if I wouldn't have went and pushed back, you know, which, hey, the factory just here's your multiplier, go do it. And so, so that, and just the business model of how those two entities were working. Learned a lot in that job about going to market. I'm a small town guy it seems real simple. Hey, we got a distributor. We just sell through our distributor. Well, they're like, yeah, but Miller Brewing expects you to sell some stuff to them direct. Oh, and I have to protect this distributor. And so I made my decision. I'm always going to protect my distributor. I'm never going to sell a price direct lower than what they can do with the step up on, you know, mark up on their side. I just made that decision. Talk to other sales reps in other markets. And some did it differently than that. They had different situations. So I learned that, you know, it's not here's the cookie cutter way to do it and do it. This is the model to work from, but then go find out what's going on. So I learned that. And I mean, I. I mean, on the other side of it, I learned that I don't fit in that environment where I like the environment where what I do today, all day matters. Right. You know, I saw sales reps, you know, other fellow sales professionals, not reps, professionals that I was. My colleagues that were very seasoned, were good at what they did, and they were working about 30% of what they could have done. No big deal. They're hitting their numbers, but, you know, they make two calls a day. They could easily made six calls a day, which would have generated more opportunities to bid, to sell product. I mean, and to step back and watch. That was really interesting as well as, you know, one of my bosses would say, hey, go call on these 50 companies because they're big companies. It was some list he got on a paper. Make sure you're calling them. And I'll never forget, he got really grouchy with me one time because I wasn't calling on it much because they didn't buy our product. Like they were headquartered in my territory. But the people buying the product weren't there. So I wasn't calling on him very much. And he got call on him. I remember I was like, this is the dumbest thing in the world. I'm just doing this because he wants me to. I can't sell any product here. And so I learned about, you know, when things get big, it's really hard. So. So what I'm talking about right now is strictly is 100 leadership and accountability. So I learned a lot about that just by. I didn't know I was learning at the time, but looking back and going, well, that's what I, I miss. I want accountability. Performers want accountability, right?
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Yeah.
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You know, non performers, not so much. But. But folks. And I Don't mean like, I'm great. I mean just there's two types of people. There's people that really want to do good, want to go get it done and do it. They welcome accountability. They'll push back on it, of course, but they want it because they want to know if they won or lost each day. Right?
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Yeah.
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When folks that don't really care about that so much, they don't want any accountability. They just want to get a paycheck and be happy.
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I was talking to somebody yesterday and, and they were talking about like they kept going kind of like down market. So they started off very big and then they went to another one. Another one. I was like, well, why would you do that? And, and he was talking about, like he just wanted to be closer to the customer. He wanted to feel like he was making a larger impact. Do you think large, larger organizations can still make that happen? If there's, if there's some sort of like, value around that or is like it doesn't matter which large organization you would have been at. Like, you never would have fit into that, that type of mold.
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Yeah, I know. I think it's more about the person. Right. I think there's amazing performing people, great workers, you know, great leaders, great managers, and living by accountability inside of every great organization, the big ones. There has to be. I mean, you just can't. There has to be. So it's not, it's not big organizations bad. Small entrepreneurial or medium sized entrepreneurial is not. That's not what I'm saying. I appreciate you asking that question because. No, I think it's personality for me. I just didn't fit in that. It wasn't that that was wrong or bad. There was a lot of great things happening, a lot of good happening, and a lot of great people in all those organizations. So no, I do believe that. Now, getting to your question specifically, I'm not like a student of all this stuff, but generally speaking, you look at Amazon and Bezos or Bezos Bezos, his leadership style today, I would come, you know, I would say, man, if you gave him 100 people to lead in a $10 million business, he might struggle a little bit because he'd have to be really in there leading and managing. And he's, he's like the genius behind the ideas of pushing the customer support and serving the customer. But far as leading and managing, it's like just hire a person to do that. Just hire a person to do that. And I know it's not, I know it's not that. I mean, the guy's obviously very sharp, but to your point, yes. I mean, Amazon's really close to its customers, and that's a massive organization. And I think they hear their customers and I think they're very shrewd in their business stuff and everything they do. And down to pricing, changing prices, ongoing, whatever their algorithm is to get a penny more here and a penny 2 cents more here and at the same time have a lower price here. And. But I think they're really, I mean, that whole thing was built on customer service. That's why they, that's why they crushed everybody. So if, if you and I have a company and we build it to, whether it's 1 million or we build it to 100 million, it's privately held. You and I own it. We built this team. We're customer focused and employee focused primarily, right? So we want our employees to be treated well, to be awesome, to love what they do. And through that, we're serving our customers in a great way. Well, with those bigger organizations that are publicly traded, right, they have the third entity, and that's the shareholder, and that's where that gets funky, right? The challenge for, I can't even imagine. I've never sat in that seat. But the challenge for those CEOs is to care for their people and care for their customers and still serve that shareholder. And, you know, you know, you, you see companies that go, hey, we're projecting low earnings in the next quarter, so lay off, you know, 5,000 people because we got to serve the shareholder. It's not about the employee. And, and again, I'm oversimplifying it, but I think that's a really, that's a whole nother level of leadership that I've never been in that seat, so I can't, I just respect it. That's a really challenging place to be when you're balancing that shareholder with the employees and the company customers. At the end of the day, every business is the same. We got to make money or we don't have a business. Right? I mean, that's it. You know, it's not very complicated, but you have that, that balance of, of keeping those shareholders happy, so you have the capital to invest in people and serve your customer. So I think that's really complicated. I think that's what you were asking.
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Have you had to evolve kind of your leadership style based upon, like, the organizations that you were going to, like the way that you showed up and the way that you led and managed at large organizations? As you went down, like, did you have to show up differently or was it more just like a natural evolution of lessons learned?
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So as far as the two big companies, I was a pawn, I was a salesperson, wasn't a leader, so I couldn't speak to that. Led myself, but wasn't a formal leader. A couple of the bigger entrepreneurial companies, I was a leader. And I would say, no, not at all. Like, I, I think that there are principles of leadership that have to be applied, and I think they're pretty simple. And then if I'm applying, if I'm working off those, those foundational things, then if my style is more subtle and soft, it's still effective. If my subtle style is more direct, it's effective. My style is a little bit brash sometimes. It still can be effective because the underlying number one principle foundation of leadership is you have to genuinely care for the person you're leading the day. You have to genuinely care about the person that you're leading or care for them, have, have, have a heart for them. So that doesn't mean they, I have to like them. We might have different personality, but I have to be able to respect them and care for them as a human being. And then secondly, I have to be competent in what we're doing and what I'm leading them in. And then thirdly, I got to know where we're going. And just so you know, they sound really smart and I came up with them or not. I heard those from Lou Holtz talking about what every team, football team looks to their coach for. Do you know where you're going? You have a vision, right? Can you get us there? Are you competent? And then the last one is, do you love me? He's like, if you can't say yes to all three, they won't follow you. And I love that. I think that's a foundational piece of leadership. So if you got those, then your style doesn't matter. Now competency is in there. So I could be lacking some skills as a way of communication, as a way of being a skill of empathy, being able to put oneself in other shoes, emotional intelligence, just being able to navigate difficult conversations for a win, win outcome for people to get to the best outcome for both folks involved or for the greater good. Those are skills that a lot of people suck at. And if you're competent in those, then your style of approach doesn't matter.
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All right, quick break, friends. Do you find it impossible to hire and retain top sales talent? Or worse, are you paying insane recruiter fees who are all using outdated hiring processes. Yeah, I was too at Hunt a Killer. We were spending hundreds of thousands on recruiter agency fees. And after I sold that company in 2025, I started Talent Harbor. And the whole vision here was to make sales recruiting accessible to small and medium sized businesses. Because the organizations that can hire and retain world class people are the ones that ultimately win. Most organizations rely on things like ZipRecruiter or LinkedIn and they get hundreds if not thousands of resumes. But we find that the best salespeople are already perfectly placed somewhere else. And that's why our approach is to go after them. And we do that through a business model called recruiting. As a service, we do not charge commissions, we, we do not have success fees, we don't have contracts, we don't have long term engagements and we become an extension of your team as expert sales recruiters. If you're tired of the same old recruiters and want to actually grow your sales team, check us out@talent harbor.com that's Talent Harbor. T A L E N T H A R B O R dot com. Let's get your next sales superstar hired. When you think about the care aspect, like we, we hear this, we hear this all the time of, of like, you know, care and empathy. And, and I, like, I'll preface this with I 100% agree agree with you. How do you bring care into the workplace? Like what does care look like?
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I'll start with this. Any folks that work with me as an EOS implementer have heard this speech a few times. If I care for you generally, I'm going to be kind to you. I'm using the word kind of defined as I'm going to get, I'm going to treat you with respect. I'm going to, I'm going to love you through that. Like be a human to you. And I'm going to be honest with you. The flip side of that, what most people fail in is they choose instead of being kind to be nice. And I heard a gentleman recently say this. He goes, I'm scared when people are nice to me because when someone's nice to you, they want something. I'm like, oh, that's really interesting. But nice is Ryan. Yeah, your numbers are a bit off but you know, just work harder at it. Okay. Or this isn't going so well. You need to do better. Right. But overall you're doing great. Overall you're doing great. Right? That's nice. Kind is Ryan. Let's look at these Three things. You missed this mark last week, the week before, and the week before. This is the standard for what you need to hit. This is your scorecard to hit. I need you to understand, I know you can do this. I believe you can all the way until you tell me or show me you can't. And if you can't, then you can't be in the seat you're in. Are we on the same page? I want you to win. How can I help you do this? That's kind. I'm telling you the truth. What a lot of people do is don't even say anything about what you're goofing up and then complain about you to their other colleagues. Yeah, like, that's not nice. That is not caring for someone. That's despicable. It's. It's disrespectful. And so with love and respect, I'm going to be kind and communicate to you. It's easier for me to say all this because I'm on the outside. I'm not leading this company. And I don't have to deal with the challenge of hiring people and finding right people for a right seat, right. Someone who fits us, right person, and someone who gets it and really wants to do and is very capable of doing. The seed I'm hiring for. That takes a lot of hard work. And we're scared. We listen to all the noise out there and it's like, oh, there's nobody to hire. Right. So therefore, we take a mediocre employee, someone who's never going to love their job because they're not shining in it. I'm going to be building resentment towards them as their leader because they're constantly underperforming. So now I'm damaging any form of human relationship outside of work with that person. And I'm doing it because I'm scared that I can't find someone else. I mean, and the other one is. The other part of it is just human. I don't want to fire someone because it's their livelihood, it's their family. A great leader in one of those big companies. Actually, not one of those. One of the larger entrepreneur companies. One of my person, that leader that I've had in my lifetime that I've respected the most. And he said, yoder, if you ever don't feel like crap over firing somebody, then you should stop being and leading people. Right. It always has to hurt, but it doesn't mean it's not the right thing.
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I. I love that so much, by
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the way, and the other side of caring in the professional workplace is I care about you as a human being. So that, that this illusion that you have your personal life and then you have your work life, and they're two separate worlds, that's an illusion, right? So the way one of my old time mentors said it to me, he's like, mike, how many hours of the day are you Mike Yoder? He's like, it's not a trick question. I'm like 24. He goes, exactly. So Mike Yoder is Mike Yoder with his wife, his kids, and doing his stuff personally. And he's the same person that's coming to work. And so this goes back to leading ourself. Well, right? If I'm leading and I have order in my household, right. If I'm leading well, they're leading myself well to manage those things, then I bring up happier, I bring a more content, I bring a more focused person to those eight hours a day or 10 hours a day that I'm focused on work stuff. And likewise, when I'm working well and competent in what I do and love what I do and respect others and I'm respected at work, I don't generally go home and kick the dog, right? And so, so caring for people is like, hey, your numbers are off. Let's talk about what's going on. And that so many times ties to a, you know, for someone who's normally doing great and also their numbers fall off for a while. Call me a magician or, or whatever, or a prophet. But lots of time it goes back to a personal thing going on. My mom just passed away, right. Or we're going through this. So part of that caring is caring enough about that stuff. I don't have to be their counselor. I don't have to do that. But I got to care about a person and say, wow, okay, how can we help going through this? How do we, you know, I get it. Look, we got to still perform, but at the same time, what, what do you need? So there's, there's a whole bunch of aspects to what you said. What caring is there.
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So. Yeah, and I love that because I, because we hear, we hear this so much of like, good leadership is, is care and it's empathy and, and I think it gets lost in like, what care actually means. I loved your, your kind versus nice and the aspects. And then immediately when you were like, people are being nice, you're trying to get something. I just thought a recent, a recent example of that in my life. So the other Part and this is more just commentary. I don't know why it took me so long. But like, I thought we were supposed to be somebody at work and we were supposed to be somebody at home. And like I've been in the Navy now for 23 years. I start off enlisted, now I'm an officer. And so all I saw was a line of demarcation. There were enlisted and there were officers. And officers get, get special treatment. They get their own parking spots. You know, they have all these, these benefits. They, on ships, officers even have their own place that they eat so there's no overlap. And, and like that was my, that was my interpretation. So when my first company took off and we started hiring people, like it was a creative company, it was a zombie infested 5K obstacle course race event that we used to put on around the country. And for some reason I would show up to work every day in a suit. Everybody else is in T shirts and this and that. But my perception was I'm supposed to be somebody different when I showed up to work.
- [32:31]
A
Well, that's an interesting thing too because, ah, so take a manufacturing company, right? They have that same demarcation, right? The shop and the office, right. In those bigger companies, it's like it's the mothership and then it's us people out here doing the work, right? Humans do that, right? We, we tend to, I think it's a communal aspect of how we're made. We, we're with our peeps and so we form this community. And the problem is instead of saying, hey, we're both part of the same bigger organization. How do we work best together? We kind of build these lines up and throw bombs and blame and again, that goes back to accepting responsibility, right? And accountability. But that's interesting you said that because I see that so much and I'm like, you know, your language should change. Folks like those people or the shop people and the office people, right? It's like just lose all that language. I mean, it's not like it's taboo. It's just, hey, we're one team, right? We're one organization. And we have different, you know, got legs, arms, eyes, ears. We got to make this thing work well together. That's interesting. You said that one of the things
- [33:39]
B
that, that you had talked about like your golden thread was, was like your purpose on this earth. And I repeat it real quick, I, I've got it, but I don't want to, I don't want to misquote you. And then I'd like to talk about that just a little bit.
- [33:55]
A
Yeah, so. So I touched on it earlier of simply helping people become who they were created to be. Just, you know, we. We are. Humans are awesome, right? And there's stuff in us, like, that keeps us from being who we're supposed to be. There's. There's distractions, there's habits, there's addictions. There's just all kinds of situations that formed us and trauma and all that. So when I say that, I'm not trying to say I'm awesome and I'm going to help you be like me. I'm saying, no. Step into who you were made to be, right? And. And learn to build on who you were made to be and then ideally get good at stuff that you were made to do. Generally loving that follows that. I always want to become better, right? I want to become a better version. And so the trick is, I want to become a better version of who I was created to be. I don't want to become better by being like Ryan right now. I might see a trait in you and go, yeah, that's important to me. So I need to. I need to raise the bar, because that's also in me when I see a trait in someone else I admire. So one other thing that, that, that I kind of push against is, you know, there's this mentality of like, well, what's the path of growth through this organization? Like, okay, so let's, let's use. I'll use a welder as an example in a manufacturing. So I'm a welder. I'm really good. I get in, I'm working. I'm a super worker, right? And so my boss assumes that I should be a supervisor at some point without truly understanding. Is that who I'm made to be? And so super worker gets promoted. A supervisor and minimal training. Regardless of training, though, I'm not wired to lead other people. I'm just good at crafting and creating and work with my hands. I'm good at that because of the societal thing of going up the ladder. If you ask me, hey, do you want to be a supervisor? Huh? Because it means more money, it means prestige, and I'm supposed to say yes to that. And a lot of people aren't emotionally strong enough or know themselves well enough to go, no, I don't want to do that. Some are and they get it, right? But it's just, I'm always like, don't ever, don't ever put that on the people that you're leading. Because If. If I'm made to play the tuba and play it really well and not to be a conductor. Just because I'm an amazing tuba player doesn't mean I should be a conductor. And the other side of that, that's really sad is that same super worker that I put in as a supervisor. You know, in about four months, they're curled up in the fetal position in my office because I keep beating them up every day because they're not leading their team well. It's not who they were made to be. And again, doesn't mean it. Seasons of life change. Maybe they do want to be a supervisor 10 years from now, but right now, they just want to make good money, do their craft really well, and love the people they're working with. And so that's. That goes all the way back to that whole thing of saying, hey, just helping people become the best version of themselves and become who they were made to be.
- [37:14]
B
Can you always train somebody into that role? Or is it like, either got it or you don't? As far as, like, formal leadership. Yeah. Like, what we see all day long is the best salespeople, because we do. We do recruiting for salespeople. And what we see all day long is that organizations take their very best salesperson, and they're like, you're now the sales manager. And then it's, like, really dangerous.
- [37:39]
A
That's really dangerous for that field, specifically because rainmakers usually suck at leading people.
- [37:46]
B
Correct.
- [37:47]
A
You want. You want the salesperson that demonstrates just being able to guide the whole team and go, hey, there's a new product we're selling. And they're the one that kind of rallies everybody around selling it. They do a good job in sales. They're probably not a rainmaker, but they definitely don't stink. They do their job really well. That's the person I'm looking at going, hey, can they lead people? Right. It's rarely. Your rainmakers, especially in sales operations, is a little different. Right. The people that move up in there, they tend to step into more responsibility. And, yeah, they probably are going to be a leader of people. But sales is a crazy one where it's like, you end up. You actually lose sales because you're taking that person and going, hey, do this. What I say to people. And I love this one of the EOS principles, it's really. It's one of our basic five principles of being a good leader. Part of that first one is being able to create the opening. And when I first read that and studied that, I'm like, Gino, that's so confusing. What? But it's genius. When you see someone that you think has, I'd say, formal leadership qualities, the qualities you think could lead and manage other people, create opportunities for them to step into responsibility. Because leadership abhors a vacuum. So without talking to him about, I'm training you to be a leader, you're going to be in training for a year, and then we're going to move you in the seat. I'm like, that's so silly. Like what? Like, if they're capable, put them in it. But they're not on experience, how are they going to get it? Right, Sorry. Passionate about that. Anyway, if you see that in someone, start creating. Hey, this Saturday, I'm coming in the morning. I got to do some work around the shop. And a person that's a leader is like, I'm on that now. It might be because they want the overtime. You gotta judge that. But it's like, they're like, no, I'm on it. I want to come help, man. If I get somebody to take care of this and go do this over the next two weeks, you know, clean this area, we're going to be a better team. I'll do it like creating, and I'm just trying to make silly examples, but the concept is if you see that in someone, then I want to kind of create opportunities for that person to step into that leadership and then just watch how they handle it, right? We're so busy looking for a resume and history of experience of being this great leader, and we hire someone based on their resume, and reality is, you know, maybe some of the great things on their resume, my blind grandma could have done, it was situational, and they didn't do jack. I don't know. So, yeah, it's a framework. But I really want to get to know the person because if you give me someone with the attitude, right, that that. That is. Is faithful, available, teachable, they want to step into something. They want to grab the, you know, learn. They want to. They're not as afraid of it. They want to care for people. They don't want to just make money, right? There's a person that, you know that. That, you know, they're an organizer, they're a rally, or they're a galvanizer. They're pulling people together that's a potential leader, regardless of their background. They don't even have to have any industry experience. In your industry, it's like, you can get there quicker with that person than you can with some Other experienced people, because you hire them and a year later you're like, nope, they aren't it. Then you hire them, you're like, nope, they aren't it. That's just wasting 400 grand. Put somebody that's in there that has the right attitude, that fits your culture. Everything I just said is not easy. It's not easy to see that in people. But at the end of the day, that's how you really build some strong leaders and so forth. So I was taught. You asked about, are they born with it or not? So, so technically the. To me, the technical answer is, no, they're not born with it because it's not like the doctor. You were born, the doctor looked at the baby, went leader, right? Yeah, yeah. So we can develop the skills and the abilities to lead other people, right? But I will say this, just like a lot of other things, there are certain, you know, genetic things. There's certain things in someone that are intrinsic, that are just natural, that equip them way more to be a leader. Right. There are introverted leaders out there that are really, really good. Naturally, they wouldn't have been a leader of other people because they're really introverted. They don't get energy being around people and all that stuff. But they learned how to do things in their style and to keep giving themselves energy. Having enough cave time, if you will, to recharge my batteries. And they found some joy in leading and managing people. Great. You know, that's someone to me, I would look at them very respectfully and go, wow, you're not necessarily wired to lead other people. And yet you found that it fits you, you know, and, you know, so there are definitely, you know, I mean, it really comes back to attitudes. Like if I have an attitude of greed and I want to be a leader because of greed, I'm probably going to suck as a leader most of the time. Maybe not in the short term, but for sustainable results, I'm going to just drive people off. People are going to not like me. It's going to suck. So that's an attitude. So if you, you humans are amazing. We have the ability to change those. So if you can coach that person to change their attitude, they could become a great leader.
- [43:16]
B
I love it. Mike. I like this one. This episode was like, really packed with some amazing wisdom and advice. If, if someone listening either right now or when we publish this, and they're like, I need to talk to Mike. I need an EOS implementer, specifically, one that, that shares the philosophy of, of leadership. How would they get a hold of you?
- [43:38]
A
I don't know. I'm just kidding.
- [43:40]
B
It's like that. That was the trick question. Go ahead.
- [43:45]
A
Well, there'll be contact information when you publish this with my email and so forth. I have a practice manager and her email will be on there. The best way to get me is to reach out to her or reach me, and she'll read my email and schedule a phone call. Schedule a cup of coffee. Like, there's two steps to this. First, let's have a cup of coffee or have a phone call and just give me your story. I just love to hear entrepreneurial stories, whether it's a big company or it's a small one. I just love to hear the story. What are your frustrations? Right. Here's the question to ask yourself. You know, do you want help? There's entrepreneurs out there that think they want help, but they don't. And that's okay. They love to go figure it out themselves. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just you won't, like, EOS won't last very long because you're asking me to help you, right? So if you, if you feel stuck or you want to grow and you know that stuck can be a lot of different things, right? Developing my people, the growth, it can be a market challenge, whatever, and you want help. I would love to just again, hear your story, have a cup of coffee. The second step in it is what we call an EOS, the 90 Minute Meeting. It's really creatively named. It lasts about 90 minutes. It's really an, it's, it's our sales pitch. It's a, it's an EOS introduction. And so in 90 minutes with you, the owner, ideally, they're couple key leaders. They're key leaders of their company. We're in a room, I'm on a whiteboard and I'm just going, hey, here's that book traction in about 90 minutes. I mean, there's some questions I ask, but then I go through that and just share the model and what it looks like to, to implement this, that is really valuable for folks. It's free, right? We do that for free. And even if you don't think that using me or you want to do eos, that's not with me. Cool. There's other implementers that fit you better and it's totally about fit. And secondly, you might be like, yeah, we're just going to dabble with it ourselves for right now. Wonderful. That meeting will kind of spur some thoughts and give you access to some tools that you can start using the next day for free. So those are the two steps. Reach out. I'd just love to have a cup of coffee or if you're in my market here, then let's get a cup of coffee. I like to be face to face.
- [46:09]
B
Awesome, Mike. Thank you. Actually, I'm going to call you Yoder now. People call me Hogan. You said, hey, Yoder, so it sounds like you're Yoder and I'm Hogan pretty much.
- [46:17]
A
He calls me.
- [46:19]
B
I just want to thank you so much for taking the time this morning to come on and chat, share your wisdom. And by the way, no one, no one at the end has ever done that before. And that was such a clear, clear articulation of, like, what. What the actual next steps look like. So I love that. But just wanted to thank you for coming on. I appreciate you.
- [46:37]
A
I really appreciate this time and hope it helps somebody, somewhere, somehow. That's it. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it, Hogan.
- [46:45]
B
Awesome. Yeah, there's.