Scott Kelley is the president at Encore Search Partners, a specialized recruitment and executive search firm. He is also the firm's EOS Integrator and has helped turn ESP into one of the fastest-growing recruitment firms in the Houston area. He also mentors a lot of professionals from various fields in Houston and is a member of several groups devoted to business development, entrepreneurship and business strategy.
Scott Kelley is not only the President of Encore Search Partners, he is the Integrator (and obviously runs the business on EOS), and he has seen firsthand how the system has turned their organization from "barely a company" to one of the fastest-growing recruitment firms in Houston. Today, we go through ESP's journey - from the difficult decisions they had to make for the sake of the company's growth to the major changes they had to make to finally get their organization going.
2:51 - ESP's humble beginnings with EOS
14:21 - Don't be afraid to cut your best performers if they are not a culture fit
23:14 - Delegation is a critical leadership skill that has to be in place for you to break through the ceiling
35:48 - With trust, employees become more open to giving constructive and honest feedback
44:27 - Visionaries and Integrators need to get comfortable with healthy conflict
54:51 - To become successful, you need someone who willing to have tough conversations.
1:11:46 - Scott's passionate plea to entrepreneurs
"Discover what your business stands for and what you want, and really be aggressive and intentional about achieving that - not accepting mediocrity in any step of the process."
GET IN TOUCH:
Mark Leary:
www.linkedin.com/in/markhleary
www.leary.cc
Scott Kelley:
www.linkedin.com/in/scotttkelley/
https://encoresearch.com/
Production credit:
Engineering / Post-Production: Jim McCarthy
Art / Design: Immanuel Ahiable
You're Doing It Wrong - Scott Kelley
Wednesday, November 4, 2020
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
integrator, people, visionary, business, jeremy, organization, read, core values, hire, book, quarterly, eos, team, employees, roll, role, great, talk, implement, survey
SPEAKERS
VO, Scott, Mark
Mark 00:00
So we're rolling, cool. We are live. This is you're doing it wrong with Mark Henderson lyric. And my name is Mark, and I have a passion that you should feel in control of your life. So what I do is I help you get control of your business. And one of the ways I do that is by letting you listen in on a conversation between two people who have a passion for excellence in the entrepreneurial world in some way. And they're talking about a subject that you already know something about. But this time, we're going deeper or really giving you the nuts and bolts, so you can start to figure out where you're a little off. And so you can start to make sense of this discipline. So you can break the ceiling and really get what you want from your business and ultimately, your life. And so my guest today, I'm excited. I'm excited about all my guests. But this particular topic is one that that's come up a lot. And and so Scott Kelly is a friend of mine, but more importantly, in this case, he's the president of encore search partners, specialized recruiting and executive search firm. And he is the not just the president, he is the integrator. And he has helped turn ESP to be one of the fastest growing recruitment firms in Houston. And he also mentors, a lot of professionals from various fields in Houston. And he is a member of several groups to around businesses that are focused on business development, entrepreneurial entrepreneurship and business strategy. So I'm excited to bring Scott into the conversation because we can really contrast your role as integrator and the role of the visionary you work with Jeremy Jensen, who's been on the podcast in the past, so we get to see the yin and the yang. So welcome, Scott. Thank you, Mark. So what is going on in the world of the integrator at encore search partners today?
Scott 01:53
Oh, man, there's a lot going on. Honestly, we're actually prepping for our quarterly off site coming up this Friday. And so I've got a lot of different things going. I'm running in 1000 different directions right now from accounting and finance to Sales Reporting to employee satisfaction and engagement. Doing all kinds of stuff right now.
Mark 02:15
So for context, your quarterly off site, you you're running on EOS, so the EOS system is what you run on that informs the agenda and the focus of what you're gonna do when you're quarterly off site, you self implement you have you read the book, you implemented the tools. And you guys have managed to make magic with it. Tell us a little bit about that. So kind of in, you know, working backwards, well, you guys are really truly one of the fastest growing companies in Houston, enjoying a lot a lot of success. And I hear you guys attribute a lot of that to Eos. So what does that been? What does that journey been like for you?
Scott 02:47
Absolutely. So really the journey for me it's been it's been an interesting one because we kind of went from a not so quote unquote, right not so real company to a very real company. And, and so iOS helped us define what that looks like. It helped us really say, who we are, what we stand for, what we want to be known for, and then what type of talent we want to attract to the organization in order for us to achieve those goals. And so when we put pen to paper, back in 2017, when we first started rolling out us, that was a big kind of aha moment for us, we realized, okay, this is how we want to be different, this is what we're going to do. And then we started putting those goals or rocks in place in order for us to achieve those. And so it's been a wild journey. There's been many times where the boats seem to go off course. And you know, life happens and the economy happens and industries change and policies change and things like that. And so we had to be nimble and adapt very quickly. But us allowed us to do that. And, you know, I've, I've talked to several people that have implemented, whether it's self employment implementation, or with an actual implementer, Eos. And those are the businesses that are still not just surviving, but actually thriving right now in 2020.
Mark 04:10
So I can point to stories all day long about how iOS has really helped companies get a sense of direction, feeling a lot of uncertainty. It's really powerful for that. And Germany, Germany, Germany, Jeremy and I had a conversation to some extent around that. But I really want to go through the back to that process through the lens of the integrator, where the visionary is excited about the opportunity and wants to take a bigger and bigger bite of the future and can often be terrified of the equally about potential bad outcomes, very emotional creature. Your job is to kind of somewhat be skeptical overall, and and be conservative if you're going to make a plan change. And make sure that the plan you have is when you can execute and follow through on it just for context. So what does that really look like when you're working with your integrator? How are you processing that vision and turning this into action.
Scott 05:02
Sure. So when I came into the business, right, this was four years ago when I first joined encore search partners, and I joined as the vice president. Just really kind of learning the recruiting industry, I came from manage it services in a litany of retail background before that. And when I came into the business, I really didn't know a whole lot about recruiting. I couldn't even spell it right. In our exactly, see, so So for me, you know, I spent the first basically six months just learning the business. And then the next six months, I started, you know, putting the sauce together around, okay, now I know what we do, how we do it, I know why we're great. You know, let's go from accidentally making money to being incredibly intentional about making money. And that's where I pulled in EOS and the tools that I had learned about from from reading this book. And I was like, Okay, let's do our first executive off site session. And let's talk about our business. Right? It was myself, Jeremy and our executive vice president over our ESP Financial Group, we sat down at Jeremy's dining room table. And the three of us put our heads together and said, Okay, what are we going to do? What do we stand for? Right? And there is a major fear when we were putting these things down, because we'd never had core values before. And so, you know, I started dredging that out of Jeremy and saying, okay, you're the entrepreneur, you are the founder, creator of this business. What do you stand for? What's a no go for you? If someone does this? It's a terminable. offense, what does that mean? Right. And so we started writing those things down. And then right, when we got to the last core value, we all kind of looked to each other and said, This is great. This is this is who we are, this is what we stand for. But then we started looking around at our art team, and the people on our team, we're like, that person doesn't stand for this, this person does the same. It's like, man, we've had three or four people here that literally violate our core values that didn't exist until right now.
Mark 07:07
And okay, so this, I want to slow this down, because you're on so much gold, this is the kind of thing that I don't want people to step over and gloss over. Because I'm experienced this in a big way. The first thing you're describing is that when you get the core values, right, they are deal breakers. Yep, they are the absolute deal breakers. And if you don't feel like deal breakers, you might not be talking about core values, you might be talking about some other form of value and aspirational value have permission to play value, or an accidental value or something that's not really core. And so once you've mined that out, then this is where I think I'm gonna kind of call out the integrator side of this, because what I see is the visionary in your seats, as these are the core values. And you look at that audience and see people in the go, audience, the employees, the staff, you know, like, not everybody really displays that. But they will, right? Just keep trying, and the visionaries typically, classically are, are not that great. It's saying today is the last day of tolerating lack of core values. And the integrators are typically the ones that say, like, are we serious? Are we not serious? Because if we're serious, there's a path. And the path means that people aren't who are not displaying the core values are out. Yeah. Is that Is that how you I don't want to script this and put this in your mouth? Is that how it played out for you? 100%,
Scott 08:20
you know, and that was really one of the things that's like, Okay, this guy makes us a lot of money, right? And we're a recruiting firm. So we're in a sales organization, right? Everyone is a revenue generator for our business, we are very minimal, at the time had very minimal minimal overhead from an operation standpoint. And so when I'm looking at the team, and it's like, Okay, this person isn't, okay, if I take away that person, let's say we're gonna lose, you know, 400 $500,000 in revenue for our business, by removing that person from the team. And we had these tough conversations like, Okay, well, but it's him, but it's him, you know, he's been here for a long time. Like, he'll he'll figure it out, you know, he, he's been good. He can be great again, you know, all those things. And so we kept having these conversations and conversations and finally added, be the bad guy and just say, look, this is what we're saying, Okay, if we want to recruit in better people, we can't have them walk through our hallways and see that we accept mediocrity. And so if we say we stand for this, we have to stand for this. And then within six months of implementing EOS, we turn over three of our top four billers from the previous year. And so all this revenue from these people disappeared and what happened, our overall revenue for the business skyrocketed by getting rid of getting those cancers off the team.
Mark 09:43
Okay, so that's so the I love the getting passionate about like when you've got those over producers, who are non core value fits, you got to get them out there. They're their cancers. But the problem was when i when i get passionate about that is that every form of non fit looks different in every organ. So making that believable in the mind of the listener is difficult. So did you have trouble believing that when? How did you make the case that like, Look, I know they're producing, but the rest of the organization is totally under the weight of their cancer. And if I can get these three people out, everybody else will rise up by 20%, which will be like 10,000% more productive, because the entire organization, what are you able to articulate? or How did you so
Scott 10:26
I was it Actually, it was very much, Jeremy, trust me. Right? It was like, let's jump off the deep end together, I'm going in first. And let's do this together. And it was funny the next meeting that we had, because we do our level 10 meeting the next next Monday, and I stood up in front of the whole company, and we talked about it right. And then I said, let me let's do an exercise real quick. So I took those big poster note, sticky poster notes, put them on three different ones on the wall, broke the company up into three different teams, all different layers of people that have different 10 years, new employees, very entry level callers to with the ebp. And one of the groups, put everyone in these groups, separated them out across the room, and said, Okay, I want you guys to write down the pros of having this turnover. And the cons of having this turnover, and had everyone list all their excitements about it and their fears. And then we got back together, a team leader from each group read their pros and cons. And we talked about each and every one of them. And so just addressed all of that with the entire group, and said, Okay, well, here's why we made the change we made. Right, we told you guys that we're going to adhere to these core values. This is our mission and vision. This is what we're trying to accomplish as an organization. This is how everybody fits in on the organizational chart or accountability chart. This is your seats. And here's how we're going to get there. Right? And everyone was like, Yeah, that's great. And then we just started seeing an uptick in revenue, uptick in revenue, and we started going up marketing getting bigger and better deals. And the people that were getting the house lead, so to speak, were even more and more grateful for the that opportunity that they were going down swinging on deals that maybe they ended up in the past. And it's like you, you showed us that you care about us enough to make sure that we have all the tools, resources and the right people in the team. I'm gonna have your back now. And so that's that's really what happened. And we were able to start recruiting and some really, really good talent because we started getting more and more fees and changed our recruiting practices for us internally. And it really made a huge difference. Just not accepting mediocrity.
Mark 12:34
Do you have a sense because like, Houston Texans just fired their coach. After four games, and I went for a start, and we've been playing for two games, the best we've played, yeah. all season. And so that's not a common it's the there's something that happens to a culture when something major happens like that. Do you have a sense of and I guess it doesn't really matter. In the end? Maybe I maybe that's the point is that? So let's first of all, the question is, how much of that do you think was right? People on the boat on the bus? And how much of that was shocked to the system? And how much of that? Do you even care? It is just that when you trim? Well, does it it just makes good positive impact? You know,
Scott 13:11
I think that it was kind of the shock to the system. Honestly, you know, I think that people believe that when you generate X X amount of revenue for our firm, that you kind of get to be the peacock have the big ego and walk around and very puffy chest and do whatever you want. And that was kind of the culture before, right. But EOS doesn't allow that. Right? The thing that I love about EOS is that it trains us to keep our foot on the gas.
Mark 13:36
And, well, I'll stop you there. Because if EOS doesn't do anything, you got to do it the to the to the tool makes it obvious, yeah, whether you are accepting that or not. But the leadership has to look at the data and say, I'm going to accept this. I'm not going to accept this. So you guys got to own you particulars got need to own the fact that you the data came back to you, and you own it. Sure. So that's on you in a good, good way to step up.
Scott 14:02
Sure. And so I would say that the shock to the system really was a big thing there, but and then the accountability that came with it, right and, and the expectations of Okay, we as an organization have to replace this revenue, where's it going to come from? And we saw people that were historically mid tier billers become top tier revenue generators for us.
Mark 14:24
So I'm kind of hearing that is, the shock to the system was it coincidentally that you got the non core value fits out of there, that creates a shock to the system. And now you've got the opposite. You're going to react to that. And you're going to react to that in into the vision that you created. So you almost just want to create this vision. That is like where do we want to go? And then you want to shock the system some way to get everybody to kind of mobilize and feel like you got to make a change and what's the change is going to be might as well be this vision we just wrote. And so and then when you if you're doing that in a pruning capacity, you You might as well prune the people who are part of the past not a part of the future. I'm paying it's interesting thing to kind of think this through about it is it does it matter exactly that they were the wrong core core value fits in is it matters less than? Well, I don't know what I'm saying at this point, hopefully the Gestalt of this is coming through for people to see that, like, you should get the people out. The shock is not a bad thing. It's a good thing. The fear of cutting what your best performers is actually one of the reasons you might want to do it, because it's going to mobilize people. And it's a great time to do that, if you've got a good clear vision that excites you, as a visionary. If you've got the core values, and you've got a path that's cool for you, people are going to mobilize somewhere because of the shock to the system and, and they're probably going to go to that vision that you're going to make it really easy for them to see,
Scott 15:48
you know, I agree and I think you hit the nail on the head earlier, when you mentioned the NFL, right. People always just know in sports in general, but in the NFL in particular. Next man up next man up next man up, right, it can't get comfortable in your seat because it could be gone tomorrow, doesn't matter if you're JJ Watt, you know, 10 years in the league, you know, 100 sacks or 99 sacks in his career thus far, he could be replaced tomorrow, if he doesn't get off the line as fast as the guy behind him, right. And so the unfortunate thing about business, just like when people say the NFL is the business side of the NFL, it's the business side of our business is the people that got us to where we are today may not be the people that are gonna get us where we want to be tomorrow. And it sounds harsh, and it sounds cruel. And it makes people feel like they're replaceable. And it makes people feel like they're not valued. But it's not true. Like we're grateful for the people that are on the team. And we're grateful for everything that they've done. Right, I have a team of people that have worked here, in the last four years that I've been here that I'm grateful for every single dollar they brought into this business, because it got us to where we are today, to where we're able to not only once again, like I said, survive this pandemic, but actually thrive. And we're going to do more revenue this year than we did last year, because of those past successes. But, you know, they weren't what we needed in 2016. But they weren't what we needed in 2017. And they certainly weren't what we needed in 2020. And so I'm grateful that we got them off the team. But I'm also extremely grateful that they were on why they were on.
Mark 17:18
I love what you're saying. And I think it paints the picture of we have to recognize change. Yeah. And it because because it's not nice to ignore change and let people suffer that. And I really hit people hard with that point. Like, if you see somebody on your team, or in your company who doesn't match the job that they're assigned to do, like they can't do it, they don't get it, they don't want us to have that. They don't want it or they don't have the capacity to do it. And you let them try anyway. Yeah, that is on you for knowingly let someone fail, and feel bad about it. And that's not good leadership. That's terrible leadership. A good leader says I recognize that either I made a mistake, by by giving you a job, that's not the right one for you, which happens in hiring all the time. It's on me, I apologize for having to let you go and mislead you. But the truth is, is my fault, I put you in a job you can't be successful in or to what you're saying. Things have changed. And I have to honor that. And you are not going to be successful if I don't recognize this change in the form of getting you out of a seat that you're not comfortable in and maybe moving you into a seat in the organization, if I've got it. And if not, we'll get you to some place. It's a better fit,
Scott 18:31
right. And that's what happened right at the beginning of this pandemic, when we started working remote from home, and I had a pivot people that we had hired for other industries that all of a sudden those job orders or roles that we were working on disappeared overnight, because there's so much uncertainty. And so when you look at, okay, 35 to 40% of our business just went away. We say okay, what are we going to do? And so when we got together, we said, okay, we've got some folks that are in a division that is still thriving, that maybe don't adhere to the core values that that we set forth. But if there wasn't a pandemic, we would keep them for sure. But because there isn't these people adhere to the core values. We know we could pivot them. Let's top grade those positions in that division that's thriving, remove the folks that were sort of underperforming and let's let's hit the ground running. And so that's what we did. And it's like I said, it's unfortunate because if there wasn't Coronavirus going on, you know, I would have had the luxury of being able to spend more time and energy developing and coaching those folks to get to get them on track because it wasn't a capacity issue. It wasn't a one issue. It was a good issue. Which you know, for me that's let's do more training. Let's do more development. Let's be intentional about what the things that they're missing are in it that's on us to get it right. But I had people that could get it one and have the capacity to do it sitting on the sideline twiddling their thumbs that are, you know, high potential folks. And we just pivoted quick and made some things happen.
Mark 20:07
So let's talk about that. So what was the role? What was the integrator role for you? Particularly contrast in Jeremy as visionary with, okay, we're hitting the early days of the pandemic or whatever, just talk walk us through the story of how you that unfolded for you.
Scott 20:22
Sure. So, you know, when when this all kind of came about really how I even started working at encore search partners was, Jeremy knew what he was great at. Right. Jimmy was. He's a Rainmaker he is high energy, he has high motivation. He has a marketing background, he has a great eye for getting meetings and getting leads in the door. And when he's on the phone, it's magic, the thing that he wasn't good at is holding people accountable. And so in doing so in a way that was actually actually effective at the time, right with the folks that we had on the team. And so one of the things that we talked about when I first came into the business was okay, we're kind of in like this money grab right now. And our hands are out here catching all this money. And what we need to do is kind of bring them together and like actually cup the money as it's falling through. So stuff doesn't fall at the bottom of the funnel, right? And so
Mark 21:16
keep that revolving door spin and super fast. Yes,
Scott 21:18
coming in. But where are they going? And so when I first started, it was very much like learning the business. Okay, now let's talk about the operations where, where are we having deficiencies, what, what processes could we create? What systems do we need to put in place? What checks and balances Do we need to have for our producers in order to make sure they're being effective? So that kind of just started and then naturally evolved over time? To where Jeremy started feeling comfortable letting go of certain things that he was doing, Jeremy did everything. Right. And now, you know, we have clear boundaries of what people do. What is Jeremy's role in the process? Okay, what is Blair's role in the process? What is recruiter X's role in the process? What is Scott's role in the process, right? And then we kind of explain that out over and over and over again to the team and say, This is what it is.
Mark 22:07
Yeah. So are you in charge of the repetition piece of that
Scott 22:11
I am today, I am actively working to hand off a lot of what I do back right, once again, right before the pandemic happened, we hired an operations and training manager. She was actually an internal candidate was doing another role was seeking more responsibility and more opportunity. And we interviewed a couple of folks for the role to internal and a couple of external candidates and, and made her the hiring decision for her and brought her in. And so unfortunately, the pandemic happened, and we went to work from home two weeks after she started in the position. And so she kind of reverted back to her old role about hybrid, you know, doing about 5050 of that. And now, I'm ready to say, Okay, I need to hand stuff off, and not do everything myself, I need to focus on my core competencies and give us some of the the lower level operations stuff for sounds bad, but it's stuff that has to be done in stuff that means that that really makes an impact in the business, to someone that I could actually trust to do it.
Mark 23:14
So that probably deserves a little unpacking as well. delegation is a critical leadership skill that has to be in place for you to break through the ceiling. And that's something we talked about on day one and us implementation
Scott 23:24
terrible delegates go.
Mark 23:27
Well, that's interesting, because what, what I think this, when you're talking about visionary and integrator, it's this very binary, like, um, a lot of visionaries. When they run out, when they hit their own personal ceiling, they move from feeling smart to feeling like the worst person in the world, like they very go very quickly go to like feeling like total failures. And then when you say, like, well, actually visionary, you're not really supposed to be this. There's somebody who can be the interior Yang, and you find that puzzle piece individual. And so it's this very binary sense of, it's not like delegation, it's sort of it's a very much division in the middle of black and white and light, dark. And then now you're the integrator, and your job is sort of the chief delegator, Chief accountability officer, in terms of making sure that teams obstacles are monitored. And when there is an obstacle, you sense it and you get involved. But it applies just as well to you everybody in the organization will at some point, if the company keeps growing, run out of time. And when you run out of time, you have to figure out like, well, I've got 120% things need to get done with my 100% time, whatever that amount is. And so you have to figure out and you figure out very quickly at 100% that there are things you're doing that you're you don't want to do and you're not good at. And so then you have to kind of Humble yourself to like, well, what am I like go up? So how are you addressing that? How are you addressing this idea of what to get off of your plate?
Scott 24:55
Sure. So I'm actually I put time on the calendar to look at My desk and do the delegate and elevate exercise through us. And that us gave me I should say, and actually look at everything that's there. The problem is is, is when you're in a small business, right, it were relatively flat organization. And so there's not historically there has been zero mid level management. And we're starting to put that in a little bit. And I like that. For Jeremy, there's one throat to choke, and that's mine. If something goes sideways, it's my fault. Now, what's hard for me is because we have been a small business or because we are a small business, I have done, you know, 17 different hats. You know, when I look at some of my competitors, they have seven people on payroll that do what I do in our business. And I, I don't mind it, right. And I, I love what I do. And I love our business. And I love what we've accomplished. And I love my team. And so I give, give give, right, but part of me growing is saying, okay, I do need to take that step back and be able to give some of my responsibilities to someone else. But there's almost there's there's two parts of the that are hard, right is that as an integrator, there's still a certain level of arrogance that comes with us, especially in small businesses, where we have to do a lot, it's just us got me that's possible. But
Mark 26:26
give me a hard time because you're competent guy, because you're so you're smart. And you work hard. And I worked with you in the past, and I know you, and when you get something done, it is not accidental. Your your track record was not a surprise to me. I know, I know, to expect great things from you. So I guess what you got some confidence and you have some some history, and you guys are fast growing company. And it's be very difficult for you to say like, well, what we're doing does seem to be working. Yeah.
Scott 26:51
Yeah. And so there's that that level of arrogance, right of that. And then the other side is that the fear of letting go. And in and I don't know, letting go of control, I guess, is really what it is, is I like to control things, you know, and I like, I like to know that I've checked, I thought about all the possible outcomes, and I chose the right direction to go. But I know that if I don't feel comfortable doing that, eventually we will not be able to grow as much. And so I know I gotta let go some stuff I'm working on that, you know, I have put a lot of thought into it. I've drawn out detailed job description, and I've really looked at my desk and what I can offload of me. And I've got some really cool exciting things that I think that will help not only keep this employee engaged, because she's a phenomenal employee. We're definitely a rising star in our organization. And so I want to make sure that I keep her engaged and excited to come into work every single day. And and I think that doing some of the stuff that I do on a daily basis will help with that.
Mark 27:56
Have you have you ever taken the visionary integrator assessment? I have? Yeah. Do you recall what you got back? I
Scott 28:02
don't know. I think I want to do it again, though, because I did it back in like 2017 when the senate? Because what
Mark 28:08
I have a hypothesis, and that is that you don't go, you don't score terribly on the visionary side. Yeah. So so you have the integrator skills, which is super valuable. And a lot of people that's it, like I don't want to do the vision work. But there are a lot of people who score kind of high on both. And that's important to note, because the dynamic isn't that people in the integrator seat can't necessarily be the visionary, what the dynamic and same thing for the visionary that it's not that they couldn't be an integrator, it's really, really, really hard to do both at the same time. Because as somebody who's inwardly focused, you want the vision handed to you and fed to you to fuel you that you can implement, as opposed to going out and looking into the future and getting outside the organization and discovering what's going on out there. Because if you discover what's going on out there, everything in here is a distraction to you if you try it, and then vice versa. So what I heard and you in that control, I don't want to let go. And I guess I know you as well. I would not be surprised if you have the potential to be a visionary. But what's great is you have a great visionary who can feed you the vision that makes you feel comfortable that you don't need to do that and you can you can relax some extent. I mean, integrators rarely relax, right? Because they're really, really concerned about the plan going well, that's the whole point. And sometimes the integrators are this, the highly stressed out, less, less glamorous job, I mean, you know, the visionaries are seeing a lot more than than the integrators and so you're kind of like you know, you're below deck working on the engines, man.
29:49
The captain's not like, say on the dance floor, you know, a champagne toast, like we're going to go across the ocean. We'll see some integrators
Scott 29:55
Jeremy last night then
Mark 29:59
for sure So you're down below the deck sweat and trying to keep the motors running engines going and everything's I can like, you know, we got to get this boat moving. Yeah. Do you ever get any resentment for that any, any not getting the limelight?
Scott 30:10
I don't at all. You know, Jeremy gets a ton of the limelight in in things like that outside of the organization, obviously, he is definitely the face of the organization. Whenever I tell someone where I work, they're like, Oh, you work with Jeremy. Right? He doesn't, it doesn't matter where I go. It's like when you're, like Scott's mom, like in Iraq? Yeah. Like, oh, here's how you're Scott. Yeah, exactly. Like instead of a name, you don't have a name. So it gets a ton of that outside of the organization. You know, and what I really love doing is I love developing people. And so inside the organization, I get a ton of FaceTime with all the employees, you know, I lead our quarterly townhall meetings. I do a lot of the one on ones I do a lot of the trainings, I do a lot of that kind of stuff internally. I champion, our community outreach program, you know, a lot of the things that I love to do I get to do inside the business with the people that I want to make the most impact on anyways. So I don't ever feel that resentment at all. Like I really I hate praise. I hate recognition. I hate all those things. I'd much rather get constructive feedback. Yeah, I hate those meaningless words. I don't.
Mark 31:22
Sorry. I said some nice things. I'll stop. Maybe sweat.
Scott 31:25
I don't like it.
Mark 31:27
Yeah, you and I had that experience before. So that's interesting. I appreciate you sharing that. Because I bet a lot of people out there have had that challenge as well. Yeah. How do you deal with that? Actually, because you guys are a high performing company? Do you just rather deflect and say, yeah, I'm just back here. And this Jeremy's all him? Or what do you do? Um,
Scott 31:42
I like to deflect to the people a lot. You know, I do definitely want to give Jeremy a ton of praise. I think that he does a great job of getting the praise. And and, you know, I want to make sure that the people that we have, know how much you know, I appreciate what they've done to get us there. Right. You know, the things like we were nominated for Best Places to Work there announcing the plate the the ranking for that this Thursday. And I'm super excited about that. I think what's funny is when you look at Jeremy and I, Jeremy is super, super excited about the fast 100 list and the Inc 5000 those things in which I'm excited about too. Because obviously, I want to grow the revenue. But the best places to work tells a different story, right? It tells us that not only are we a high performing sales organization, but we're a sales organization with a solid culture that that people want to come to every day. And, and so that one is is super exciting. That's the one where I feel like I make the major major impact. I know I impact revenue, I know I do that, I get that. But the the biggest impact I believe I have is on our people into the Best Places to Work is something that I really pride myself on. And, and, and I will give all my praise to my team for being honest in our quarterly engagement surveys and giving me constructive criticism throughout, you know, so you
Mark 33:00
have a sense of Okay, so that's, that's a good point to go into that for you to get there. I've been through this process. And in fact, you and I have been in the trenches with that together. And there are a couple ways you can get into something like the best places to work. And one of the ways is to make sure the answers that go into the survey are the answers, you want them to be sure. And then the other way is to make sure you really build that culture what it needs to be, which is through kind of this opposite it counterintuitive approach. And that is to solicit the worst possible feedback as easily as possible. So you'll get this blunt honesty, how have you guys gotten that? And it sounds like that's what you're implying. So how do you get that blunt honesty?
Scott 33:39
Yes. So I, about two years ago, maybe three years ago, rolled out employee engagement survey that I did at the beginning, or at the end of every quarter. And then we've reviewed the results in our executive off sites. And I asked the same nine questions for the first two, two and a half years of the survey. I recently, this quarter, actually, recently, last week, changed the survey and added more questions, added more open ended questions less yes or no answers in and send an email to the team explaining why I did it. The purpose behind it, you know, I had this phenomenal Vistage speaker that spoke on employee engagement and developing high performing teams. And he gave me a lot of really good content. And I was like, This is amazing. Like I want to understand more and more and more from our team of what we're doing well, what we're not doing well, what they love to see from us, you know, any questions they have about their compensation or benefits or you name it, it? I've got a question in there for every category of the business. And I want that God's honest feedback from all of them. And I made that crystal clear. And so I took I got that and normally when I get my survey results, you know it's between 25 and 35 pages long. I printed off the survey results to take them to read last night 65 pages.
35:02
Okay, so when you don't do this, if you're not ready, it's like how many employees
Scott 35:07
for employees? And I got 65 pages of feedback on the world. So
Mark 35:12
that's the three pages in person,
Scott 35:15
three pages person. Yeah.
Mark 35:16
Wow. So So there's two pieces to pull apart of that. And I and I don't want to get to down the path of exactly what that survey says. Because I think that's important, but it's more more important. How did you create a culture that was willing to tell you? Because I don't you don't do that overnight? I want to say, I would say that over and over again, I have as a leader of my organizations, and working with other companies, it's so common to say, I want comments. I want direct, honest feedback from my team, and I can't get them to talk. That's the most common scenario. So they're talking to you, how did you get that done?
Scott 35:48
So To be fair, it's not done yet, right. And so there's still it's a work in progress, it's something that will continue to, to change, you know, the last quarterly Town Hall, we had, I displayed all the results from the survey, just put it all out there and gave every everything out there, that was the the good, the bad, the ugly. And then, and I think that there's a different element of trust that my employees have now, with me, as we continue to grow and do these do one on ones we've made, I made a very intentional play and making the one on ones more impactful, and, and go a little bit deeper, not just, you know, professionally, but all the things that are impacting their life. And, and so that's been a big part of it, you know, there's just that different level of trust. And I think that, you know, every, every level 10 meeting that I step into, when the survey is active and live, is I'm making that plea, Hey, be honest, tell me what's going on. We've and I can list changes that we've made in our organization based off that feedback. And like, Look, we didn't have employee benefits, you guys said it was important. You know, one of the questions I ask is, why if hypothetically, you're gonna quit tomorrow, what would it be? And 66 of the 15 surveys at the time, we only had that many employees said, for a job with benefits. It's like, Okay, let me look at this, like it was something that we never thought of before. And so you know, six months later, we rolled out a PEO for all of our employees. And so it were able to show tangible actions from the the feedback that they gave us. And so that's part of it. But you know, it's still a work in progress. I'm not gonna lie and say that all my employees are 100% honest, and tell me everything that's going on everything. They think that because they don't, and I'm not I'm not a full of the things that they do. But But I am working to make it better.
Mark 37:38
So I love humility, to counter your, your claim of arrogance. I do think that what I'm hearing is a combination of persistence and proof. Yeah, so it's a it's a work in progress, you got to keep after it. The proof thing I always I always caution people on and I say like, if you're going to ask people what you want, or what they want, rather, and you don't deliver on it, you are better off not asking, sure. Did you have any fear around your ability to execute on what they asked for? Or did you think about that you just went for it?
Scott 38:12
You know, I didn't think about it. Honestly, I think about that a lot in this survey, there's things that people are asking for for sure that I'm not going to be able to do, I can't make a business case for it. And I'll explain why. And it's one of those things that's Hey, this is going to be on the back burner, something we'll get to talk about, please keep putting it on the survey, right, that type of deal. But there are things that some people ask for that could never happen, and that's fine, you know, we still have to make decisions that are best for the business. And, and I will explain that in the tunnels. And that's one of those things where it will be explained in detail in front of the entire company, it's not going to be something I try and hide behind or just pretend it wasn't in the survey. It's something that I will head up, you know, directly address in that meeting and say, This is what we want to do, or this is what we're not going to do. And here's why. Okay, that
Mark 39:01
makes perfect sense. So what you're saying is you get the data back, and the first and foremost thing you do is reflected back to We heard you Yeah, it was not in vain. And then you say, of the things we heard, here's where we can take action. And here are the things that we cannot take action on. We're gonna backburner them. And here's, you know, whatever else to talk about. So you really just are giving them clarity on you heard them. And here's the plan. It's not exactly what everybody wanted. But it's the plan. Absolutely.
Scott 39:26
And no, and I'm very intentional about putting their ideas and thoughts in our quarterly rocks and saying, okay, here's what we're going to address in this quarter. Based off the survey feedback, here's things we're going to add to the agenda for the next executive off site. So we can see if it makes sense to add them to the quarterly rocks for the next quarter. Right and and we'll keep kicking the can down the road if we have to, if there's more pressing issues within the business, but if it's something that we feel like we can address in q3 based off of revenue forecasts or projections for next year, maybe it's something we tell them that right and I have no problem saying that At this time, it's this isn't a no, but it's a no right now.
Mark 40:04
Yeah, I want to shift gears a little bit, I want to talk about the day in the life of the integrator. And as much as we can contrast the visionary, so much the better but don't Don't think too much about that. So what's actually, you know, what, let's do this in a deeper way, or a more complex way? What was the day in the life of the integrator, when you first were in that integrator function, chaos,
Scott 40:31
herding cats. There is a lot of, I've got a lot to do drinking from a fire hose, where do I start? I constantly, you know, switch back and forth from my firefighter hat to my it hat to my, whatever hat needed to be worn in that second. And now I it's changed a little bit, right, there's still some of that chaos, which I love. Right. And maybe that's a little bit of my fear of letting go some of my desk is that I love kind of that getting to do all kinds of different things. And so a day in the life could be, I'm doing collections I'm doing you know, I'm searching out a PEO. I am doing tech demos, I am having conversations with candidates or clients or I'm doing prospecting calls with with our recruiters, you know, on role playing, I'm doing training, developing training, I'm citing one of the 17 books that I keep behind me, because I regularly use them and one on ones, you know, it's all over the place.
Mark 41:36
What percentage of your of your week or day is on the business versus in the business?
Scott 41:41
Um, probably about 15% of my week is on the business. And the rest is really in the business as a very tactical role.
Mark 41:52
Okay, so when you say on the business, what types of things are on the business type things for sure.
Scott 41:57
And so talking about creative strategy with Jeremy, you know, I think that there's a lot of that is whiteboarding ideas and discussing what we want to do. areas we want to break into things that we we see going on in the in the world or in our industry, things like that, you know, we we have a we do a lot of same page meetings from that regard. And really, just best practices for business right in taking all the data that I consume on a daily weekly basis in saying, okay, here's what I've read over the last week, I'm going to implement this in our business, and here's why I think it actually helped our business grow, etc. And I'll put a plan for that. And so that's the stuff that I'll do a lot. And then
Mark 42:46
it won't be through the same page, meaning I don't want to step out because that's a huge nugget for a lot of
Scott 42:50
be sure. So I mean, it happens in random times, random places. I mean, Saturday, this past Saturday, after Jeremy went through, he had his three boys play soccer. So you went through the soccer fields, and Saturday came over my house right after, just stopped in just to say hi. And we talked on the couch for probably an hour, hour and a half about the business and what we're what we're working towards and what individual people are doing and ideas that we had that we want to talk about in our off site. And, and really just making sure that him and I are in agreeance on those topics. And, and he you know, it's funny is is Jeremy's got a really great idea that he wants to bring up, he's like, I'm gonna bring this up, if it's okay with you, right? And that just that humility, from the visionary to say, okay, Jeremy, your job is to bring these ideas to the meeting. Like that's fine like that. Don't ever ask if it's okay, of course, it's okay. of me. It's your damn meeting. Right?
Mark 43:41
A lot of respect there. Right. So that's, that's not worth that is worth highlighting. Sure. He is showing you that respect. And, you know, he could say I'm bringing it Yeah. And he really wants to make sure that you, you get your support. So that's powerful.
Scott 43:54
Yeah. And so that those can happen there. You know, just a random Saturday afternoon, we get together and it can be an intentional lunch, where it's like, Hey, we got to talk about these things. And and we do that often. You know, it's not something that that Jeremy and I have to shy away from, you know, we like having those conversations. And we like picking apart ideas, or I really like it. I love playing devil's advocate, it's something that I'm fortunately or unfortunately good at depends on who you ask. But it is, it is one of my my strong suits. And so we have a really good time doing that stuff.
Mark 44:27
So the devil's advocacy kind of fits into the question I was going to go to in a minute, which is about the puzzle piece, which means that the visionary is a unique shaped creature. And, and an integrator is something we describe in very common terms like they're all the same, but the reality is the integrator has to match the visionary. So when you say Devil's advocacy, that's part of the Oh, you got to have the push and pull got to have the friction but for a lot of people that's a that's a street fight and it's not fun and it's not good. And for other people. It's it's very healthy conversation. Did that evolve for you? Do you do you? Is it just a certain match? Do you guys had a certain chemistry? how did how do you get that? That healthy conflict? How did you cultivate them?
Scott 45:07
Yeah, I, we definitely had a chemistry from the beginning. Right. That's the reason why we started working together in the first place, you know, we met through Vistage and, and discovered that we had a lot in common in a mutual respect for one another. And, you know, I think that the devil's advocacy on both sides, comes from that mutual respect, right? And if you don't have that mutual respect, then that's when it becomes street fight, in my opinion. You know, I think that there's times where, you know, where Jeremy and I do kind of maybe have an argument that gets off the rails a bit. And it's because one of us has a stronger belief that we know better or more about that topic than the other. And then if we take that step back and say, No, like, we we respect each other, let's get back together, let's have this logical conversation. Right. And so, you know, I think that that it is it is a fight, but there is a definite chemistry at the beginning. And then that has grown over time, right. And Jeremy and I have, obviously, were great friends. We've always been best friends since the day I stepped foot in this building. And so there's that as well. You know, we're very close with each other's families and things like that. And so I don't know, it's almost like a brotherly relationship, then visionary integrator relationship.
Mark 46:29
But depending on the people listening, that might be a good image, that might be a terrible idea. It's possible.
Scott 46:35
It works for us. Yeah.
Mark 46:39
Got each other's back. Yeah. So how does? How does? How is the power and authority of the position evolved? So what do you have right now in terms of power, authority, ability to fire make decisions, stop and start projects? What do you have today? A lot? All I don't know how to answer that. Really? You know, I think that's good. And that's actually a lot you've you've said a big, big message to a lot of listeners, I know who really struggling with how to how to see this. And you know, the empowerment piece of the integrator functions very scary for, for visionary who's entering that. So take us back to day one. How much power Did you have on day one? Very little
Scott 47:17
right. I didn't have any direct reports. When I first started, I kind of had this VP of something titled, right. It's a pretty good, it's a fun title for this is a is very much like a What do I do with my hands situation? Right? Like, I don't know what I'm doing here. And then it really, you know, evolved drastically over time. And it became clear and clear, then it kind of got broad again, and then it got clear. But you know, as far as firing, you know, I have definitely extreme autonomy there. from hiring, we have a very rigorous process that we go through with our leadership team, for the interview process. And so, you know, there's not like any one of us necessarily hires, we try and have equal votes on that. And we talk about why or why not. Just to make sure that we're all on the same page there. But, you know, I have a lot when it comes to processes and procedures, I have a lot of autonomy, you know, but but here's, here's the deal. At the end of the day, I run just about everything by Jeremy not for a stamp of approval, but just to make sure that I'm not missing anything. Right. And, and so there's things that I'll do, I'll run all the meetings on my own, and I'll come back and say, Okay, here's what I think. And here's why I think it and poke holes, right. And that's that, once again, just that level of respect that we have with each other that I know I can miss something. I don't think that I'm perfect, or I don't think that I know it all. And he's the same way. Right? He'll, he'll say, here's, here's this great tool I just saw, and I want to try it. And here's why I want to try it. And here's how much it cost. And what do you think? And like, yeah, that sounds like it's a good idea. And if it works, it's great. We'll make a ton of money on this. And if it doesn't, we're not losing a lot. So it sounds like a win win for me. Right? And
Mark 49:04
so that that trusting that chemistry, I think if you guys are pretty top tier top percentile in terms of that electricity, because I know you guys separately and it was seemed to be like an instant kind of connection for you. But even still, how long did it take you to earn that trust on his part and for you to get comfortable equals both sides of the same coin to go from kind of like day one chaos? no power, no people to like, I think I'm an integrator now. Yeah. You know, it was a two month process a year process like six
Scott 49:37
months. I think that I think I worked for six months before I got my first promotion to senior vice president. And that's when I really started taking on the operations responsibilities. And but you know, when I walked in the door, right, it's not like I had any recruiting experience. We had recruiters that had worked for giant recruiting firms that have worked for corporate in house recruiting teams. We had all these things People with a ton of experience in the industry. And so for me walking in and saying, Hey, I'm your boss, and I know nothing about what you do, but I can do this, I promise. Right? It was kind of that situation. So I had a proven and earn, earn that trust and respect from not only Jeremy, but it's also I wanted to make sure that the employees also knew that, you know, what I brought to the table without any recruiting experience?
Mark 50:25
Yeah. Did they have skepticism at first?
Scott 50:28
Definitely.
Mark 50:29
Yeah. How did you discover that,
Scott 50:30
uh, you know, when when I started putting processes and procedures in and people started pushing back or not wanting to do it, it's the classic legacy salesperson that doesn't want to put stuff in the CRM, right? It's like, that's the thing that happened, right? That was the first kind of pushback, and then a little pushback, and then then a rolled up scorecard. And it's like, what you're looking at my calls, what you're looking at my submittals what you're looking at this, like, Why are you looking at this? It doesn't make sense. Like, no one's ever told me this before. And and once I started putting those things in, then it was just evident that these people weren't rowing the boat in the right direction. Right. And but we didn't know really what direction that was kind of going at the time. And and then once we put in us, and those are the those are the three of the four people that were literally within the first six months of of implementing us, we're gone. Where those people, so
Mark 51:17
did you find yourself in that integrator seat before you started rolling out to us? Yeah,
Scott 51:20
yeah, we didn't know what it was really. I mean, obviously, I knew the term because I've read the, the the I'd read rocket fuel, and I had read, what the heck is EOS and I had read, you know, tractor action, right? The minute the main one. So I had known what the titles were, but I didn't really know at the time, what I was, what that role meant for me.
Mark 51:44
And so on. Yeah. So you get some things bouncing around, and you're getting more and more responsibility, and then you decide to roll the system out. And then and then it kind of lays out like we talked about earlier. There's some data. Yeah, it's like, then you got a way to describe it. So I've worked with some companies where we implement Eos. And it's like, Okay, I think we're sick. Okay, well, like how sick Oh, I don't know, well, I think if we put an EOS, we can diagnose and find the disease and cure. Oh, that sounds great. And so we've put together a microscope, you know, metaphorically, we put the slide under, we've done a little biopsy under situation. And it looks like you've got cancer. And a lot of companies sort of go like, give him a microscope. I don't like that. You know, it's like, well, no, that micro is not the problem. It's you actually have business cancer. And in you got to solve that if you want to get healthy. And do you see leadership teams who just want to pretend that the throng question and so but you guys clearly were like, Oh, well, we might have cultural cancer. Let's do surgery. And let's make sure we get this behind us. And that's a bold to bold reaction and takes real leadership to do that.
Scott 52:54
What's funny is EOS when you first roll it us it's for two reasons, right? One, you know, you have a big problem. or two, you believe your own bullshit, right? And you think you're great. And for whatever reason, it just hasn't happened in rolling out to us helps you identify why it hasn't happened in rolling out of us helped us figure out what where we were sitting, right. And it's like, we weren't losing money. We were making money. We were having experiencing year over year growth. It was at a lower rate, but we're still growing. Right. So it but when we put in us it was literally like the like the book says rocket fuel for our business. And so it's interesting to see, you know, once people roll it out what happens?
Mark 53:38
Well, not to say something nice about you again, I'm going to try to stop it at least in the book rocket fuel marks, marks whole phrase comes from the his observation of seeing that become a combination of the visionary and the integrator is the rocket fuel. Because I EOS does a great job of highlighting opportunities and obstacles and creating clarity. One of the places that I see companies get stuck more than any other places. Okay, we've built our structure. And we need the integrator obviously. And I don't want that isn't it scares me, and never was kicked that down the road. And so you leave either someone who's the wrong person for the integrator seat in place, or you have the visionary trying to do that job less than perfectly. And that is by far in my personal experience, the number one most constraining, suffocating failure to act on. And so your rocket fuel comes from having the right rocket fuel combination of visionary and integrator that then can embrace the data and the right people in the right seats and all the processes and all those things because you've got the right leadership and the ability to execute, frankly, to be able to listen well see what's going on and take action.
Scott 54:51
Yeah, you know, I think that where where people fail in the US or fail at anything in businesses, is not having someone that is willing to have the tough conversations or even excited about the tough conversations. And, and when you have a team, especially a leadership team that, you know, doesn't have trust, you know, that's something that when when you look at lencioni is Five Dysfunctions of a team, right? We go through that pyramid on a regular basis to make sure that we're adhering to the and we're not, we're not dysfunctional. And, you know, accountability is a big part of us. And accountability is a big part of the integrator role. And without that, we would definitely fail, of course, but you know, oftentimes the visionaries just aren't excited about accountability, you know, they have a ton of really, really great ideas. And they're really, really excited about them. They're really, really happy to roll them out. But not very excited about what comes next. And so making sure that there's a clear path to accountability, whether it's the integrator, or someone else on the team, being accountable for each action that we roll out.
Mark 56:00
Well, two things come to mind. One, is it when I see, because we've talked an awful lot about EOS here. And obviously, that's my world, but it's not we don't on the podcast, we don't obsess about it. Like some podcast, many podcasts. We don't talk about it at all. But we've talked about it a lot here in that flag when in my brain. And when I work with new integrators, they say I'm new to this. I'm not sure what I need to do to really be great. As an integrator. I feel like I'm growing and I'm up for the challenge. But I've gotten a lot. And I have learned that well. Here's your manual. It's called traction. Yeah. If this is your language, this is your toolset. And I and I think the podcast this interview has really reinforced that like your go to language of how do you get what you want out of your out of your life, and your job is right there in the book, you know, this is what I need to do. This is the tool, everything I needed to be as integrators write in this book. Yeah.
Scott 56:50
And that's the thing is, it's not just writing the book for the first time, right? And so what happened for me is, I already us before, a long time ago, or read traction, I'm sorry, a long time ago. And then I started in the business. And then I read it again, right before we started rolling out of us before our first quarterly off site, all that strategic planning session, read the book again. And then I've heard it now five other times or six other times since then, and I still take little nuggets away, because it means something different now. It's like, when there's little pieces of like, the level 10 meeting that you think, Okay, let me roll this level two meeting out, you roll up pieces at a time, oftentimes, because you can't cram stuff down people's throat. And so there's kind of a slow rollout process to make sure everyone understands and buys in and appreciates it. And then there's pieces that are like, Oh, well, I could have included this in there. And let me now add this and then let me know, this isn't that stuff that I didn't fully understand the first time I read the book. And so when I've gone back and read it, and I've probably listened to it 14 or 15 times on blinkist and gotten gotten the book again in 13 minutes, right. I've really taken I've taken a so much out of this book and reapplied it on the fourth or fifth time of reading it and, and and for me, you know, I talk about us a lot whether it's here in my Vistage group in even in my men's Life Church group, I talk about a US and and you as an integrator, it's like you eat breathe and sleep EOS, because it's what we have to do to keep the wheels on the bus. And it's become such a big part of my life. And, and I read every single Friday, when that article comes out the US newsletter, whatever it is on Fridays, I saw you're in there recently on talking about scorecards. And in when I read that every single Friday, I go back and look at my toolkit inside my my SharePoint folder and say, Okay, what am I not implementing that I could pull from this toolbox? Right, and I just look at it all the time in and that's just the only way that I think you could be successful is you're constantly sharpening the saw.
Mark 58:48
Yeah, so I Cameron Harrell pointed out I one of the early podcasts that, you know, people will come up to him and say, Oh, I love good grade, or I love this book in school. Are you using it? And it's like, well, no, I read it. Well, then why? Why do you say you love it? Because there's no point. It's like, you know, what's the point of that? And I, I think that is a huge factor of us. Because the way the process is laid out is we're it's not about reading a concept in a tip or trick and sort of like suddenly you're fixed. It's about a cycle of repetition and increasing your competency with a, you know, a handful of simple tools that when you get good at them start to make a difference. Like if you learn to fight and in martial arts, you know, you learn a punch on day one, you're gonna kick on like day three. Yeah. And there's an after that, you know, it's still punching and kicking and maybe throwing right and so that's not fighting. Yeah, you gotta you got to practice over and over again and EOS is just like that. Even I read, I reread the books myself and I go back to these simple tools. And I guess the contrast to that is how I used to be personally in a lot of people still are. It's the flavor of the month. They Like, you know, I'm trying to I got to learn one more new thing. Yeah. And what I'm finding, is it? No, almost all the entrepreneurs I work with are already plenty trained, got plenty of information, if you just took a system, a handful of tools that we're going to cover what you needed, and you just used them until they worked, you would get everything you wanted out of your business.
Scott 1:00:24
So what's funny is, you hit the nail with the flavor of the month type deal, I hate these tips and tricks, events, right, these webinars, these, these meetings that people have networking groups that bring in speakers and like, I'm going to give you five tips to make your business better today. And the thing, everyone loves those little catchy things, right? Like, I've got something, I'm going to take this and then you get the handout that you get, leave the event with, and you throw it in a filing cabinet or you throw to the trashcan or leave it in your car, and you never actually look at that stuff again. Right. The thing that I love about traction is that it's the foundations. It's not just the tips or tricks, it's not if you don't understand the foundations, the tips and tricks don't mean shit, right? Like we've been through exactly like you and I obviously have been through Sandler sales training together. Right? We start in foundations for a reason, right? You have to understand the foundations of sales, just like in martial arts, like you said, you start with throwing a correct punch, not just throwing a punch, it's the correct function. And if you didn't know martial arts, you wouldn't know that there is a correct and incorrect punch. Right? Yeah. And this is how businesses and that's what traction is for me in the businesses. This is the foundations. And then now I could sprinkle in the tips and tricks from emotional intelligence or, or the Five Dysfunctions of a team and I could all these little tips and tricks along the way I can now sprinkle into the business because I have a foundation for it.
Mark 1:01:44
Yeah, that's amazing. Well, look, man, I, we've covered a lot of ground. And I know I never tried to like break records on duration. So I think we've really covered a lot, I'm happy to kind of wind this down. Sometimes you're about to say something or I'm about to submit it'll go another 30 or 45 minutes. In this case, it's fine. But I don't want to dilute the content. What What do you anything you want to share with either visionaries who are looking to hire the integrator and kind of on the ledge, or new integrators who are trying to figure out their role. Anything you want to share specifically in either those bucks.
Scott 1:02:20
Sure. So I'm going to start with the integrators, right. So one of the things that I learned early was the importance of reading and learning, right? It's obviously it's important to continue to grow your skill set. The thing that I hear so many people talk about it, and it's beyond frustrating. For me, it's like, I read a book a week. On what right? Why are you reading a book a week. And one of the things that I really love is targeted reading. And it's something that has really made an impact on me and it on my business in particular, because if I'm struggling with a certain thing, I will go like deep dive into that topic. And I'll read one, two or three books on that topic. And I'll be able to take stuff and build an action plan and actually implement the things that are read, right, but people that just read a book on strategy one day and read a book on communication, when they had read a book on accountability one day and read a book on emotional intelligence one day, and they keep reading the reading, reading 75 different business topics, they don't actually apply any of it because they don't really understand it. Right. And so one of the things that that I love is when people do that targeted reading, and I want to perfect the teamwork of my team. Okay, now I'm going to read a bunch of books on teamwork, and we're going to start coming up with strategies and how we can improve this team together, right, and I'm going to enroll other people in the business on this as well. And so that's something that I that I think that's too many integrators get bogged down with, I'm gonna listen to every single podcast, I'm gonna listen to every single book, I'm going to read every book, whatever it may be, I'm going to go to all these different seminars and to get all the tips and tricks in the world and do nothing with it.
Mark 1:03:57
Right breath strategy instead of a depth. Right,
Scott 1:03:59
right. And so but it's,
Mark 1:04:00
I'm glad you said that, because I experienced that, I feel a lot of pressure, as somebody who's supposed to be an advisor on like a very broad set of leadership topics, that if anybody mentions a book that I've not read, I feel bad. I just feel like I just feel stupid, and I'm not up to date. Like, I gotta add that to my list. And there's like, 150 books on my on my not read yet, book list. But I have found the opposite to be true. Like if I'm really passionate about a specific subject, sleep was actually the last one I got really obsessed with. And I read four books, not short books, and you know what, I know a lot about sleep. And it made a huge difference. It made a huge difference as opposed to trying things I really was able to pull together some sense of foundation. So I love that you said that that's a big, that's a big deal.
Scott 1:04:45
Yeah. And then and then on the topic of visionaries, wanting to hire integrators are getting ready to hire an integrator, you know, I really encourage them to look at the things that they don't do well, and that they want to hand off and make sure that they find them. Someone that is a good complimentary skill set in and really look themselves in the mirror and make sure that they're ready to have pushback. You know, there's so many people that, that have such a short temperament. And I've seen several business owners in our market that have been either in my Vistage groups or in other networking groups that I'm a part of, or sit on other boards with me, and we're just talking casual conversations about their team. And they're like, Yeah, I just hired this guy. He's gonna be my Scott. I'm like, that's awesome. Let me What does he do? What is it? He's just, he's like, well, he's gonna roll out. This is a Roth, this is a roll this and he jumps in and starts doing he gets fired 30 days in, and I'm like, wait, that's not your Scott. Then what happens? How does he get fired in 30 days? What happened here? And he's like, well,
Mark 1:05:47
Scott does not get fired in 30 days. He tells
Scott 1:05:49
me he's like, well, he made all these changes, and he pissed off all my salespeople, and they're all ready to walk out and I was like, okay, so he's doing this job. Right. That's what I heard. Right. And, and they're like, no, that's not his job. And I'm like, Well, I mean, obviously, there's a tactful way to go about doing things, but but he was making positive change, right? Yes. He was doing what you said he was gonna do, right? Yes. Okay. So why didn't you let him do it? Well, you know, I'm one of the top sales guy that he is pissing off. It's like, Okay, well, now we're getting somewhere. Right. And so that's, that's something that it's hard. It's like, when you're an integrator, he, the visionary really has to realize that they have the boss now, you know, it's like, they fit in on this accountability chart. And they have to be held accountable to that role in the accountability chart. And in a small business, in particular, which these companies I'm referencing were smaller businesses. The the visionaries are oftentimes the top producer in their business. They have historically been the Rainmaker that feeds their team. And so you know, if they're not ready to to be accountable to the integrator, who is responsible for making sure the sales processes in sales growth strategy are being implemented, they're not willing to report to that person. They're not ready to have an integrator.
Mark 1:07:07
So I want to unpack that a bit less some people misunderstand, because how you the it's not that the integrator suddenly has emotional authority over the organization's you don't follow their whims, what the integrators job is, is enforcing and fulfilling the plan on the BTO that the leadership team co built, including the visionary. So the visionary said, this is the plan. And it's your job integrator to get that done. And so that's, that's the authority we're talking about the greater good, we've agreed on a plan and the integrators job is to get the obstacles out of the way to making the plan real. And if the visionary is resistant to that there's problems. It's not that the integrator suddenly starts to, you know, make random will at a whim because absolutely, that's an integrator, usually not interested in doing that. And integrators usually not interested in providing they usually they will, they want the plan, they want it to not change, they want to have the goals and they want to go to work, and then want to get all those obstacles out of the way to make the plan as discussed, as agreed, come to life and feel like we won because the game plan that we described came true. Yeah. That's winning for most people. And I've been calling the shot making
Scott 1:08:16
it happen. I've been beating into my people said, whether it's my newest hire entry level employee to seasoned vets on the team, you know, I've been talking to him about Focus, focus, focus, focus, and, and what focus means is follow one course until successful. And if they do that, then they will find success, we've proven it. And so that's what I want to do as integrators make sure that the team has focused and including the visionary and, and Jeremy will be the first to tell anyone that Scott's everyone's boss, including mine, right? And he says that all the time, we are literally getting on a call with a eo member, sometime this week, where we're talking about them wanting to look at potentially hiring an integrator. And he's like, hey, Jeremy, he reached out to Jeremy directly and said, Hey, I want to have this call and talk about it with you. And he said, I'm going to get Scott on the call as well. He's my president, as well as my integrator hear in the business. And he's everyone's boss in the team, including mine, literally in the email to another entrepreneur CEO here in Houston. So, you know, that level of respect is important for the team to see. But, you know, obviously, it's important to me as well to know that when there's Jeremy's in those roles, that he does have to answer for the test that he's doing. And, and obviously, for me, I'm ultimately accountable to him to making sure that we're hitting our profitability targets. We're hitting our revenue growth targets, and we have the right people in the right seat on the bus.
Mark 1:09:43
Well, there's a lot in there. I mean, and I don't I don't even have time to unpack all of that because it's because we know that well, you guys, you're an owner. So you have a certain board a directory, I see what don't even matter. It doesn't even organization wide if you're if you as an integrator owner or not doesn't matter, that the objective is the plan. We've agreed on. And if the visionary is the only owner and the visionary says like, he's my boss, you know, we know that he can say, like, EFF this, that's that the big red button is always there. But it's but why would you do that, and that is that, we know that the biggest threat to any visionaries idea is the visionaries. next idea. So we're trying to put a process in place that produces good consistent results. And we want to, we have a visionary ask for the visionary wants it, the visionary wants to be coached, the visionary wants to be their best. And they know that not every habit they have is really serving them well. And by bringing a yin to the Yang, in the form of an integrator, you're purposely taking off some of the the patterns and behaviors that don't serve the organization. And everybody's happier for it, you see a guy like Jeremy, who's got plenty of passion, willingly giving up some power, because he knows he gets a better life as a result
Scott 1:10:53
of it. Absolutely. And, you know, speaking of the shiny objects that the next idea for a visionary, what's great about our business, and what's great about Jeremy is that Jamie's hands on, he'll jump in and do stuff, he's not afraid to do the work. And he jumps in oftentimes with a new idea. And he'll pilot it himself. Right. And so it doesn't change the direction of the whole boat, it changes a little bit of his focus and attention. But everyone else is sort of rowing in the right direction. And then once it's once it's something that we can actually roll out to the masses, or hire somebody or transfer someone into this role, then we'll we'll have a true plan for that. But you know, if a visionary is going to have a lot of ideas, or chase shiny objects, it's important that they don't distract the rest of the organization from what they're trying to accomplish, which is that core focus.
Mark 1:11:46
Yeah, that's awesome stuff. Look, man, I want to I want to end the point, or in the end, this topic is super solid, we shared so much took to bring it home, what is your passionate plea for entrepreneurs right now,
Scott 1:12:00
my passion for entrepreneurs is really discover what your business stands for and what you want, and really be aggressive and intentional about achieving that. not accepting mediocrity in any step of the process.
Mark 1:12:15
setting the bar high. Yep. That's awesome. So yeah, I appreciate everything you shared Scott, such great wisdom, we'll make sure we get this in the hands of everybody, all of the integrators, visionaries who are trying to reach mastery with this topic, because it's so powerful. And I think your success is such a great model for people. And so that's it for today. So as a reminder to everybody, please subscribe, share with your friends, give us the feedback, good and bad, happy to happy to see it, get the bad or at least constructive feedback so we can make this better. But please make sure we get this in the hands of the people who need this because it's valuable content for those people who are looking for. And we will see you next time on you're doing it wrong with me. Mark Henderson.
VO 1:12:57
This is you're doing it wrong with Mark Henderson Leary for more episodes and to subscribe, go to lyric.cc