The ROI Of Workplace Happiness With Frank Smith

Summary

The Lindsey Anderson Show: Episode Summary
Title: The ROI Of Workplace Happiness With Frank Smith
Release Date: December 17, 2024

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Introduction to Frank Smith and Business Culture

In this compelling episode of The Lindsey Anderson Show, host Lindsey Anderson welcomes Frank Smith, a seasoned expert in business culture with over three decades of experience. Frank, often referred to as the "business culture guy," has a diverse background, having acquired or started five businesses across manufacturing, retail, distribution, and professional services. With a coaching certification from UC Berkeley and over ten years of coaching and training experience, Frank brings a wealth of knowledge on creating thriving workplace environments.

Notable Quote:
Frank Smith shares his pioneering efforts in business culture, stating, “I was doing culture before culture was cool” (02:03).

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The Essence of Business Culture

Frank delves into the heart of business culture, emphasizing its role in fostering an environment where employees genuinely enjoy coming to work. Drawing from his personal experiences, he recounts how treating employees like family and understanding their personal lives initially seemed unconventional but ultimately led to significant improvements in workplace morale and productivity.

Key Points:

• Foundational Needs: Frank outlines the basic human needs in a workplace: food, shelter, safety, followed by the need to be seen and heard.
• Personal Goals Alignment: Inspired by Matthew Kelly’s The Dream Manager, Frank advocates for aligning business goals with employees' personal aspirations to boost engagement and satisfaction.
• Building Trust: Establishing trust is crucial. Leaders must consistently show they value employees’ voices and genuinely care about their well-being.

Notable Quote:
Frank emphasizes the importance of mutual growth: “Working here helps you get where you're going in your life… it’s a win” (03:39).

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Implementing a Positive Culture: Before and After

Frank shares a transformative story from his tenure at a manufacturing company. Initially, the procurement process was cumbersome, requiring multiple approvals for minor expenses like super glue. By simplifying these processes and granting employees autonomy, Frank empowered his team, leading to faster problem-solving and increased efficiency.

Key Points:

• Empowerment through Autonomy: Allowing employees to make small decisions independently fosters trust and accountability.
• Personal Connections: Taking time to understand employees’ personal challenges, such as Maria’s situation with her child, reinforces a supportive workplace.

Notable Quote:
Frank illustrates the impact of empowerment: “If you need superglue, just go buy the stinking super glue” (05:11).

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The Tangible ROI of Workplace Happiness

Frank discusses the direct correlation between employee happiness and company profitability. Citing Gallup data, he notes that companies in the top quartile of employee engagement are, on average, 23% more profitable than those in the bottom quartile.

Key Points:

• Profitability Link: Engaged and happy employees contribute to higher profitability through better performance and problem-solving.
• Snowball Effect: Positive workplace culture leads to further growth opportunities, allowing companies to hire more employees and expand their impact.

Notable Quote:
Frank succinctly connects happiness to profitability: “Happy employees make more money for the company, which makes the owners happy” (07:39).

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Overcoming Obstacles in Cultivating Culture

Frank identifies common challenges business owners face when trying to implement a positive culture. Often, leaders believe their culture is strong because they experience a supportive environment at the top levels. However, this perception may not reflect the reality experienced by employees further down the hierarchy.

Key Points:

• Misaligned Perceptions: Leaders must seek honest feedback from employees at various levels to accurately assess and improve workplace culture.
• Cultural Fit: Ensuring alignment between company culture and employees' personal values is essential for long-term satisfaction and retention.

Notable Quote:
Frank compares assessing company culture to racing: “The stopwatch is the real guy” (09:24).

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Adapting Culture for Remote Work

Addressing the shift towards remote work post-pandemic, Frank emphasizes the increased effort required to maintain a cohesive culture when teams are dispersed. Regular and intentional check-ins are vital to ensure employees feel seen and heard despite physical distances.

Key Points:

• Intentional Effort: Remote work demands more structured and frequent communication to maintain engagement.
• Relational Connection: Building personal connections remains crucial to prevent feelings of isolation and loneliness among remote employees.

Notable Quote:
Frank highlights the necessity of consistent engagement: “If you care about them, I should be checking in with them on a regular basis” (18:25).

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Future of Happiness at Work

Frank predicts that the younger generations will continue to prioritize happiness at work, demanding environments where they feel valued and respected. He challenges some emerging trends, like the 32-hour workweek, as impractical for most small businesses, advocating instead for genuine engagement and alignment of company culture with employee needs.

Key Points:

• Generational Shift: Younger employees are less tolerant of poor leadership and are proactive in seeking better workplace environments.
• Sustainable Practices: Practical approaches to fostering happiness, rather than trendy but unfeasible solutions, will drive future workplace success.

Notable Quote:
Frank asserts the growing demand for positive culture: “You’re going to lay me off anyway, so I’m going to at least demand that you treat me well in the workplace” (20:53).

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Lessons Learned and Final Advice

Reflecting on his journey, Frank emphasizes the fundamental lesson of treating people well. He acknowledges the initial resistance he faced when advocating for a people-centric approach but reaffirms that prioritizing employee well-being leads to sustainable success.

Key Points:

• Consistency is Key: Leaders must consistently uphold their values to build trust and ensure a reliable and fair workplace.
• Ignore Naysayers: Following one’s gut and prioritizing employee treatment over conventional wisdom yields long-term benefits.

Notable Quote:
Frank shares his key takeaway: “You should treat people well…and that’s going to work out” (22:18).

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Connecting with Frank Smith

Before concluding the episode, Frank provides listeners with ways to engage with his work. He can be found on LinkedIn under Frank Smith and through his website, Driving Happiness at Work. Frank specializes in coaching and training leaders to enhance workplace environments, focusing on the complexities of the people side of business.

Notable Quote:
Frank invites engagement: “I love to help…the bigger the problem you've got, the more I actually enjoy diving into it” (23:19).

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Conclusion

This episode of The Lindsey Anderson Show offers invaluable insights into the profound impact of workplace happiness on business success. Frank Smith’s extensive experience and practical strategies provide entrepreneurs, coaches, and consultants with actionable steps to cultivate a thriving company culture. From empowering employees with autonomy to maintaining consistent and meaningful engagement, Frank’s approach underscores that investing in employee well-being is not just beneficial but essential for scaling businesses with ease and precision.

Takeaway:
Creating a positive workplace culture where employees feel valued and engaged leads to increased profitability and sustainable business growth. Leaders must be intentional, consistent, and genuinely invested in their team's well-being to achieve lasting success.

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Connect with Frank Smith:

• LinkedIn: Frank Smith
• Website: Driving Happiness at Work

Subscribe and Learn More:
Stay updated with The Lindsey Anderson Show by subscribing, leaving a review, and connecting with Lindsey at lindsaya.com.

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Timestamps Overview:

• 00:03 – Introduction
• 00:32 – Lindsey introduces Frank Smith
• 01:14 – Frank discusses his background
• 02:03 – Frank on early culture initiatives
• 03:29 – Strategies for treating people well
• 05:00 – Before and after implementing culture
• 06:48 – ROI of workplace happiness
• 07:36 – Team effectiveness and profitability
• 08:25 – Common obstacles in culture building
• 09:24 – Assessing true company culture
• 10:49 – Balancing leadership and employee desires
• 13:03 – Key cultural components
• 14:31 – Importance of intentional culture
• 15:15 – Frank’s branding and car racing analogy
• 16:22 – Happiness leads to better performance
• 16:33 – Maintaining culture in remote work
• 18:25 – Importance of regular check-ins
• 20:11 – Daily leadership practices for happiness
• 20:53 – Future of workplace happiness
• 22:18 – Lessons learned
• 23:19 – How to connect with Frank
• 24:04 – Closing remarks

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This summary captures the essence of Frank Smith’s insights on workplace happiness and its return on investment, providing listeners with a comprehensive understanding of how to foster a positive and profitable business culture.

Transcript

[A]

Are you ready for next level growth in your business? Welcome to the Lindsay Anderson show where we pull back the curtain on the exact strategies, tools and mindsets that build million dollar empires. If you're hungry for more time, more freedom, and a whole lot more impact, you've come to the right place. Buckle up, because we're about to ignite your business journey. Now here's Lindsey.

[B]

Hey, everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Lindsey Anderson Show. Today, I am so excited for our guest. His name is Mr. Frank Smith. And for over 30 years, Frank has influenced and shaped the culture of businesses by fulfilling his personal purpose of elevating life through work. During that time, he has acquired or started five different businesses in manufacturing, retail, distribution, and professional services. He has been coaching and training for over 10 years while running his other businesses and received his coaching certification from UC Berkeley. I'm so excited to have him on today. He is known as the business culture guy and we're going to be diving into that topic today. Welcome, Frank. So glad to have you on today.

[C]

Hey, it's great to be here. Excited to have the conversation.

[B]

So, Frank, what are you most known for?

[C]

Yeah, business culture really has been my thing for 30 plus years. I had the chance to buy a manufacturing company back in 1994 and started doing stuff with culture. We didn't use that word back then, but everybody thought I was weird for the stuff that I was trying to do and treating your employees like they were family and getting to know people and diving into their personal lives and trying to help out with their life situations and all that. And then all of a sudden it started all coming together and people are like, oh, wow, what did you do? And I'm like, yeah, all that stuff you said I was goofy for doing for the last four or five years is actually all starting to work now. It took some trial and error. So was doing culture before culture was cool is what I tell people.

[B]

That's what you tell people now. Was there a certain event or sometime in your life where this became evident, that this is really what your passion was?

[C]

It took a while before. Hindsight's always great to be able to look back and go, oh, yeah, that makes sense. But I grew up in a house where my dad hated going to work every day. And as a kid, I thought that seemed really weird. Why would you grow up and go to a job that you don't like? What made that even more odd was my dad owned the company that he went to work for every day and he still didn't like going to work every day. And so I grew up in that situation. And then I got out of school with my degree in accounting, started out in the workforce and I didn't like going to work every day either. And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm repeating my dad here. And what I realized was it wasn't so much the work as it was the work environment. And so I kept trying to find a good work environment and it was hard to find. And I finally landed at this manufacturing company, worked there for a couple of years. I had the opportunity to get the management team buy the company from his estate and then I ran it for the next 20 years. And my goal from the get go was I'm going to create a place where people like to come to work, where Maria that has to show up at 7:00 on Monday morning to run a sewing machine for us, actually wants to come to work at Monday morning at 7:00. And so we started trying to figure out how do you make that happen? And funny, if you just treat people really well, they tend to not mind showing up to work.

[B]

Interesting. I love this. So can you be just a little bit more specific about if you treat people really well? Can you give us some hardcore points on that?

[C]

Yeah, absolutely. The basics of life is you need food, you need shelter, you need safety, and then after that we want to be seen and heard. Matthew Kelly in his book the Dream Manager says if you want people to engage in business goals, you need to engage in their personal goals first. And he's exactly right. I need to get to know you, find out what you are trying to do in your life. If I can connect the dots for you that show you working here helps you get where you're going to go in your life. I've got you and we're going to work really well together because working you working for me helps me accomplish my goals, but you working for me also is helping you accomplish your goals. It's a win. And we create a great culture. Once that's the case, it just takes a lot of time to get to know people well enough to where they'll share with you what their goals are. And so you have to build a trust with people at the very beginning. You have to let them know that they have a voice in the organization and that you care about what they say. It doesn't mean they always get their way, but at least they get heard and seen. And you try to build a culture around certain guidelines that the ownership group wants to do and Certain guidelines that the employees want to do. You work together and create that culture and you work well together. Once you've done that, I love that.

[B]

I found it really interesting that you worked at this manufacturing plant before and then you now you own it. What paints some differences for me, like a before and an after. You've implemented your strategies. Tell me.

[C]

Yeah. One of the things that was simple to do was if you needed $10 worth of super glue to do something in the warehouse, you had to fill out a form, you had to take it to the owner's desk, it had to sit there until he got around to it, then he would sign it, or then he would say, no, I'm not going to do this, and then give it back to you. And if you've got a sign off, then you could go to the store and buy $10 worth of super glue to take care of whatever it was you needed to take care of in the warehouse. The guy that ran the warehouse had been there for 20 years. If he needs superglue, just go buy the stinking super glue. So literally, it was, some of it was that simple of a deal of, hey, Bobby, you've been doing this job for a long time. I trust you to do your job. It's a thousand bucks. Come talk to me. If you need something up to this amount, I trust you to go do it. And letting people have some autonomy in that kind of stuff is a big piece of it. But a big part of it is they just want to actually get to know. They want to feel seen. They want to know that you know what their kids names are, that you know, that they like to play soccer on the weekends or anything like that. I always tell people it's simple, but it's not easy because it takes a lot of time to do that. It takes intentional effort to make sure you get to know them. But it's really as simple as understanding that the reason Maria's been late for the last three days getting to work is because she has a kid that's in the hospital and she was afraid to tell anybody. And she's having to get her other kids to a friend's house so they can get to school on time. And she's still trying to make it to work by 7:00 in the morning. Instead of getting mad at Maria for being late, we figure out, how can we help you while your kid's in the hospital?

[B]

Can you, can you boil this down to in terms of company success, is the company more profitable this way? Did you See any improvements in terms of that?

[C]

100%. Yeah, we saw things change drastically because the people that are on the front lines have a lot of great information, a lot of great answers that the people in the office don't have. And so they could help avoid problems much quicker. They could fix problems much quicker because you put the tools in their hands and let them run. I experienced that for myself in my organization. The latest Gallup data at the same time will tell you that if you're in the top quartile of employee engagement versus the bottom quartile of employee engagement in the same industry, you're on average 23% more profitable.

[B]

It's all about the team, how effectively that team is running.

[C]

Yeah. I always tell people business culture is all about creating engaged employees or happy employees. Happy employees make more money for the company, which makes the owners happy. So all of this trickles down to more profitable business that can actually now hire more employees that make more people happy. And we snowball on top of the success that we have, all because we took the time to get to know people and find out how we could help them in their personal lives by letting them work here and connect those dots for them.

[B]

I love that. Now, you've mentioned one obstacle for business owners is that takes a really long time to get to know Maria and everybody else, and over a long period of time. What are some other common obstacles that you come up against when you're telling business owners this great information?

[C]

Yeah, the biggest obstacle that I run into with this information is business owners almost always think they have a good culture. I bet they do, because they have what everybody wants. They're seen and heard. When they walk in the room, everybody stops to see what he or she needs or is saying or whatever. So they're. They are seen and heard at the most fundamental level. They have flexibility, they have autonomy. They have that sense of belonging that all employees are wanting. And so their perception is, hey, we have all these things. We must have a great culture, and it is great for that top leadership. But almost every time, if I go down two, maybe three levels in the organization, the employees will tell me something completely different. But the employees don't get to pick the culture. The owners up at the top are going, we're good. We've got this all figured out. And the employees are going, please come help us.

[B]

I think that is really interesting. So how, as a business owner, do we see past our misconceptions there?

[C]

Yeah, I did a little bit of stent doing some car racing. When I was younger in my careers and was pursuing, trying to become a professional car racer. I always talk about the stopwatch. I could go out and do a lap that I felt was really fast, but the real deal is the stopwatch. Sometimes the stopwatch would be like, no, you were half a second slower on that lap. They just might have felt fast to you. So the stopwatch is the real guy. And so to figure out if you have a good culture, you have to survey the people two and three levels down from the leadership and the bigger company. Obviously, the farther down you have to go. But it's the employees that really get to decide whether or not the culture is good or not. The owners get to decide what the culture should be. But they have to find this balance between what everybody wants and not every business is for everybody. There's companies that want to grow at a really fast pace and other people don't want to work at that fast of a pace. It just means this company that's a startup that needs me to work 70 hour weeks is not a culture fit for me right now. I need to work at a place because maybe I'm a single mom, I need to work in a place that has lots of flexibility and 40 hour maximum kind of week. Great. Then you need to find a company that offers that. And so that's part of what makes culture so challenging is because what I want and what you want may be two different things. It doesn't. Company culture is bad. It just means it doesn't align with me at this time in my life.

[B]

So what is the answer to that? As a leader you develop the culture that you want and hopefully it trickles down or. Because if you're listening to people at the bottom, but maybe they're not the right people. How do you mesh that?

[C]

Yeah, so ultimately the leader gets to make that decision, but there's some things that you can have some flexibility on. So there's 16 different, depending on how you count them, components that make up your culture. And you need to have specific things identified or answers to each one of those 16 pieces. And what makes this again, tricky is what may be important to me may not be important to you. And so you have to, as the leader say, here's what we want. If it's a leadership team or if it's a single leader, here's what I want the culture to be. I've got some flexibility on these things. And what would you employees like? So, like in my company that I have right now, that's recruiting business, we recently changed the dress code. I am more of a business casual, where you should have slacks and a nice shirt on every day. People on my team would rather wear jeans than something comfortable. So we have to have this talk. My landing with that was if we're in front of the client, we're going to be dressed business casual. So if you have a client meeting, you need to be dressed in business casual because that's what our client expects from us. If you're working from home or you're working in the office and you're going to have no client interaction that day, you can wear jeans and a nice shirt. We still have to be camera ready because we do interviews on zoom and all of that. So I want a collared shirt or something appropriate. I don't want a T shirt or anything like that. And so I get it's some give and take and we can be flexible on that. I'm not going to be flexible about what we look like in front of the client, but on days when we're not in front of the client, I'll give some flex to that. This takes more time, though, because if I just want to do it quick, I'm going to say this is the dress code. Forget you all if you don't want to do that. Go find a different team. Or I can say this is what I want in front of the client the rest of the time. There's still some guidelines, but what. What do you guys want? And so we can mix and match some of those things. The purpose or the vision of the company may not be up for debate. And then employees just have to decide if they want to join into that or not.

[B]

Makes sense. Culture. Can you give me, like, what you would consider a couple of the most impactful ones?

[C]

Yeah. The 16 kind of break down into four different areas. The first area is the purpose, vision, and the mission of the organization. It's the base of the pyramid, if you will. It's where are we going? Who are we going to be along the way based on our core values. So that's the base of our pyramid. The next step up is going to be the pace of the organization, which is basically how quickly are we going to get there? And this is going to dictate some of the things like work life balance. How many hours do we expect you to work every week? It's going to dictate the communication style that I have with you. Am I going to be very direct and hey, we're moving quick. I need to just tell you stuff and you go do it. Or do we have more time to debate and figure out things? Then we get to the relational level. How are we going to interact with each other on the team? You know, if we're remote, how often do we connect on video calls? If we're in person, how much do we spend time talking about personal stuff versus work stuff? I always start meetings with some personal banter before we dive into the work process. That's my style, that's my culture. And then the last piece is kind of the top of the pyramid, but it's the style, it's how do we communicate with the people around us through our marketing efforts. It's our dress code, it's the language that we use in the organization. All of those things make up the culture. And you have to be definitive and intentional on each one of those areas.

[B]

It feels if you're not intentional, then it'll create itself and you're going to end up somewhere you don't even expect.

[C]

Or want to be 100%. All of these things will answer themselves. You'll just end up somewhere that you never planned on landing if you're not focused and intentional about it. If you've read the book Delivering Happiness by Tony, say that wasn't the founder of Zappos, but brought Zappos to what it is known for today. He left a previous company that he let the culture get out of control on and that's why Zappos is the model for culture these days, because he was very intentional with the new company because he actually created a situation in his own company that he hated going to work because he was growing so fast that he wasn't intentional about answering all of these components.

[B]

I love that. So I see behind you and you've mentioned the race car driving, driving, happiness at work. Why that tagline?

[C]

Yeah. So really I love everything about business culture. I've been on this journey for 30 plus years. So business has always been a big passion in my life. My other big passion outside of my faith and my family, car racing. When I was working up the branding for my coaching and training business, I thought I'm going to merge these two pieces together and have a little fun with it and try to go with a racing theme. So if you look at my website, it's racing theme pictures. A lot of the videos that I do on LinkedIn are all done from my car. So just trying to keep that car theme going. I love everything about car racing, I love everything about business. And so I thought, let's have a Little fun with it and just put the two together. But happiness at work is what we're really trying to create. Happy employees lead to happy owners. And so the driving piece was just my nod to my car racing background.

[B]

I love that and the word happiness. Like if we can get happiness, they want to come to work, they feel seen, they're excited to be there, they're going to perform better as a team.

[C]

Absolutely, yes. That's what it's all about.

[B]

We're in a really interesting time right now with the pandemic and half of us are working from home and half of us aren't. How does one keep company culture the way you want it to be if everybody's remote?

[C]

There's the million dollar question, right? What a crazy ride we've been on from few people worked remotely, knew a person or two that worked pre pandemic and then we all worked remote for a time period. And then the big battle started after we all started coming back to work of I'm not coming back to work, I am coming back to work. And now we're still seeing this. With the recent Amazon bringing all their people back to work, et cetera, it's confusing for everybody. And again, what part of it has changed is we used to all have one set rule, then we realized, oh, the rules could be different and people are trying to figure out what they need and what they want. So can you work remote? I get a little bit of a rap from people because they say, oh, you just don't like remote work. I like remote work. I'm working remote right now, so I get it. Part of the reason I work in remote is because I wanted to experience it and figure out what's it really. What do you have to do in order to keep your culture? What I've found is it takes a lot more intentional effort to do it remotely than it does in person. And it gets to that point of to see and hear your employees as a leader is much more difficult because in the office I could walk out into that open area, talk to some their cubicle and in 30 seconds I can assess whether or not they're in a good. If they're remote, I've got to schedule a time to get on a zoom call. They can put on a great facade for a 30 minute call that they knew they were going to have at 3 o'clock, whereas they might have had their guard down if I walk out randomly at 10:35 of my office. And so it just takes a lot more intentional effort to schedule Those zoom calls to make sure you have those zoom calls, because we all get. I don't really need to check in on them. No, you do. You need to check in on them. They need to seen and heard. I've got clients, they're like, yeah. Since we've gone fully remote, I try to talk to everybody every two weeks.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And I always tell people, if you were to go work away from your family for a while, if you go on a business trip, how often do you check in with your family? Oh, I check in with them every day. Oh, maybe we should win our work family. And I know people get divided on whether you should call people work family or not, but the people, if I care about them, I should be checking in with them on a regular basis. And if I want them to feel connected, I need to be making that time and effort. So what I found was when I work remote and I'm trying to stay engaged with my team at the level I can in the office, it takes me about an hour a day more to do that.

[B]

So interesting.

[C]

From my standpoint, I'm like, I'd gladly have a commute, be in person, and not have to spend an hour extra a day on zoom calls and trying to get a hold of people. When I'm working remote, I just find it much more difficult. But it is doable. There's companies out there that are thriving successes that are completely remote. Some of that is, though, their culture tends to be a little less relational. I'm just going to get in my room. I'm going to do my thing, the information along, and I'm not going to interact with people. And if that's what you want in a culture that worked great for you. That's not what I want in a culture. I want more relational connection with the people that I work with, because I find that tends to actually work for most people better than the isolation piece. And the data shows depression is up. Isolation, loneliness is up with people that are working remote. And so it's. It's mapping itself out that it's not actually great for most people to be in a room by themselves, trying to work remote all the time, 24 hours a day.

[B]

Tell me, is there one thing that a leader or an owner can do daily that can really promote happiness at work?

[C]

Ooh, one thing. The first thing that popped in my head, I'll just go with it, is being consistent, actually living out what you said you were going to do. If you have a core value that says, we respect people, be consistent in Making sure that if somebody on the team treated someone disrespectfully, they get talked to. We're going to be consistent with this. What we tend to do is we give people a pass or they're a top producer so we'll give them a little bit of cushion. That comes across as inconsistent, which when you reduce consistency, you reduce trust as well. And if I can't trust my boss, it hard for me to be happy at work.

[B]

I love that. What do you see, Frank, as the future of happiness at work?

[C]

Oh, I think actually the younger generations in the workplace are demanding more happiness at work. I think some of the ideas may be a little bit misguided. The 32 hour work week I don't think is going to be something that for most small businesses, they're struggling. The average business in America makes a 6% profit to say, oh, we can get all our work done in four days instead of five. Most people are having a hard time getting their work done in five days. And so that part doesn't make any sense to me. But the younger generation is actually demanding to be seen and heard in the workplace. I think they watched their parents be mistreated in the workplace and put up with bad leadership and then they still got laid off or whatever the case may be. And so I think the younger generation is just like, why would we put up with that? Because you're just going to lay me off anyway, so I'm going to at least demand that you treat me well in the workplace. And so I actually think they're bringing a little bit more awareness and I think they're bringing more culture to the forefront and requiring it or they will bounce. They'll go find a better leader. If you're not leading them well, they're not going to hang around like they watched their parents hang around for bad leaders.

[B]

That makes sense. That makes sense, Frank. Here you are, you're so far into your career, you've owned several companies now you're really accomplished. What is one thing now that you wish you would have known before you got started?

[C]

Oh, wow, that's a tough one. One thing that I wish I knew now, just that you should treat people well. And one of the very first leaders I had told me don't get to know the people that report to you because it makes them harder to fire was the mindset back when I started into the workplace. And I wish I had realized quicker that that's ridiculous information. Not that I'd. Easy, yeah, but I just, I would have been quicker to do what my gut told me, which was treat people well and this is going to work out. I spent time listening to other people's voices that were like, you can't do that in the workplace. And that's why it took me 10 years to create the culture that I did when I bought the manufacturing company instead of the three or four that I could have been able to do it if I hadn't listened to people that were the naysayers.

[B]

That's a good one. Frank, it's been a real pleasure interviewing you on the podcast. Before I let you go, I'm going to turn the time over to you to let people know where to find you and anything else you want the audience to know.

[C]

Great. Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn under Frank Smith. You can look at my website, Driving Happiness at Work. I do coaching and training that helps people learn how to be a great workplace. I teach leaders how to engage with their employees. That's what I love to do. I actually like getting into what I call the messiness of the people side of the business. The people side of it gets challenging and I find it curious as to why do they react that way or whatever. And I love to help leaders figure those same things out to make their workplace a better place so that people like to come to work. Love to have people reach out to me. I'd love to help. The bigger the problem you've got, the more I actually enjoy diving into it.

[B]

I love it. Thank you, Frank, for being a great guest today.

[C]

Thanks.

[B]

There you have it, folks. Another amazing interview here on the Lindsey Anderson Show. As a quick reminder, if you're looking to generate more high quality sales through social media, do social media the right way. Don't just content drop and run, but to actually get high ticket sales from social media. Make sure you sign up for my upcoming workshop by going to lindsay a.comworkshop. thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the Lindsay Anderson Show. Cheers to you and your success.

[A]

That's a wrap for today's episode of the Lindsay Anderson Show. If you loved this episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and share how you're leveling up your business. Want more? Connect with Lindsay Anderson and get the tools you need to crush your [e-mail] until next time, keep pushing, keep growing and turn those business dreams into reality.