February 12, 2025 • 46 mins
This episode features Ryan Chute, who shares transformative insights on effective leadership communication, the importance of removing friction in the workplace, and the significance of differentiation in a crowded marketplace. As leaders, embracing a mindset shift from survival to thriving is essential to foster a culture of collaboration and enhance the employee experience.
• Friction in communication as a barrier to growth
• Identifying and addressing blind spots in leadership
• The role of storytelling in differentiation
• Shifting from survival mode to a thriving mindset
• Core values and motivations for effective leadership
• Building trust and gratitude among teams
• Leadership as a collaborative rather than authoritarian endeavor
Hey leader! Thanks for listening. For more leadership communication tips, check out https://www.thecommunicativeleader.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dr. Leah OH (00:00):
Welcome back to the Communicative Leader.
Today, we have a fantasticguest with us.
Please welcome Ryan Chute fromWizard of Ads.
Ryan is a powerhouse ofinsights.
He combines his rich backgroundin retail with his expertise as
a strategic marketer.
Get ready to dive deep, as heshares some invaluable
strategies on leveragingcommunication to minimize
(00:22):
friction and maximize impact.
It's what we're all looking for, right, my friends.
So whether you're anentrepreneur looking to sharpen
your skills or just curiousabout more effective leadership
communication, ryan's experiencecan leave you inspired and
equipped with somethought-provoking takeaways.
So let's have some fun.
(00:44):
Hello and welcome to theCommunicative Leader Dr.
Leah Omilion-Hodges by me, .
My friends call me Dr OH.
I'm a professor ofcommunication and a leadership
communication expert.
On the Communicative Leader,we're working to make your work
life what you want it to be.
Ryan, thank you for joining uson the communicative leader, and
(01:06):
I was hoping you could start bysharing a bit about your
journey.
So you had early experiences inretail and now you're a
strategic marketer with wizardof ads, so kind of what also led
to this focus on helping smallbusinesses well, you know, I'm
super grateful to to be able tolead an eight-figure creative
(01:27):
consultancy agency right nowwithin the Wizard of Ads, but it
wasn't always that way.
Ryan Chute (01:33):
I started off in a retail gulag.
It was the bad bosses and thequestionable practices, the
toxic work environments and theweaponized fear, shame and guilt
that I I mirrored.
You know it was is what youknow and and what you what you
learn from, and I thought I wasdoing the right thing, um,
because I didn't know what Ididn't know you know, and I
(01:58):
became a really, really strongmanager, um, and an equally bad
boss strong manager and anequally bad boss.
After getting summarily firedfor generally bad behavior.
I had an existential crisis.
It was this situation of if thisis bad, over-performing but
(02:19):
making people angry and creatingall this friction.
What was good and I didn't wantto be average, I didn't want to
be good, I wanted to be greatand it really hit me hard.
So I started kind of exploringwhat it was that was causing my
problems and I come to find outthat this is really all about
(02:41):
friction, and friction andcommunication and the things
that I'm doing, intentionallyand unintentionally, from the
things that I thought were rightto cause myself to be a weak
leader as strong as a manager asI was.
So today I get to create thesedivergent sales and marketing
(03:03):
strategies for clients, but I doit by looking at two big things
One is removing that unwantedfriction and the other is
looking for that divergentcommunication, that thing that's
going to stand out amongst thecrowd so that we can actually do
something that gets noticed,not just blends in with the
(03:25):
fabric of the business or thecommunity or the marketplace
that you're in.
And it was that early frictionthat has me so hyper-focused in
on your brand is a culture youknow and culture is your brand.
And when we really elevate theemployee, experience is your
(03:46):
brand and when we really elevatethe employee experience,
including the experience that wegive ourselves.
We have this opportunity todeliver a better buying
experience and ultimately, thebuying experience and the
employee experience are themarketing and the advertising
that we do to accelerate ourprofitable growth as a big brand
, to accelerate our profitablegrowth as a big brand yeah,
excellent.
Dr. Leah OH (04:05):
Thank you for sharing that, and I really love,
in your experience and whatyou're sharing.
You show the impact of socialmodeling right Of when we're
showing this, even if it's notintentional, you know, it's that
idea of you never want to betheir leader who says do as I
say, not as I do, Because thoseactions speak so loudly, and so
(04:30):
I really appreciate you sharingthat and then changing it and
turning it around for all ofthose who you work with and who
work for you.
Ryan Chute (04:37):
Yeah, yeah, I didn't realize it was such a big deal
until I knew better.
Dr. Leah OH (04:43):
Mm-hmm, yep, yep.
And then you can look back andcringe and say that's okay, I've
done the work, I'm doing itdifferently now.
Ryan Chute (04:50):
Well, that's what makes us who we are today.
Dr. Leah OH (04:52):
Exactly.
Ryan Chute (04:53):
And affords us the opportunity to stand above the
crowd.
Dr. Leah OH (04:58):
Yeah, yes, so you were mentioning friction, and
that was my next question,because I know you talk about
this idea a lot, so I was hopingyou could define it for us.
So what is friction in thiscontext?
Ryan Chute (05:16):
And then the second part is how is this, or how can
it be, a barrier to profitablegrowth for small businesses?
Well, the friction really liesin the laws of nature.
You know, when you, when youthink about friction, you think
about that.
The rough bits on a flywheel,the things that are, are slowing
things down because therethere's bumps along the way,
there's roadblocks, there'sbarriers, there's pitfalls, and
(05:37):
that that all is the frictionthat we deal with, and sometimes
it's self-inflicted, sometimesit's intentional, sometimes it's
unintentional, Sometimes it'sback to those old habits that we
learned from our daddy, and alot of the time it's not done
with ill intent, but it is donebecause we think that's what
(05:57):
produces a result.
One of the biggest parts offriction is compliance.
Now, I'm not talking about thecompliance that keeps people
safe.
I'm talking about thecompliance that we demand from
people when we don't have themdoing the way we want them to do
it.
What we're doing is we're beingreally lazy about what it is
that caused that friction in thefirst place.
(06:19):
What did we not communicate?
What did we not say to helppeople do the things that they
need to do to be successful inthe job that we're asking them
to do?
So, when we think about it thatfriction causes resistance, and
resistance is what's slowingthings down and that slows down
(06:40):
profitability, productivity,effectiveness, efficiency, that
that compliance that we'redemanding only produces one
result, and that's defiance.
And defiance effectively leadsto the quiet quitting and the
other kinds of things that wesee every day that Gallup polls
(07:02):
has been reporting on for over40 years, saying, hey, guess
what Productivity hasn't changed?
Well, it's because we'refollowing rules of a factory
from 200 years ago.
Dr. Leah OH (07:15):
Yeah, yeah.
It is really incredible thatwe've largely not taken many
steps to change that.
Ryan Chute (07:22):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, it's because compliancefeels so darn good you know, it
gives, it gives the person, theleader, the authority, not the
leader, but the authority, theum.
The dopamine hit you go.
Oh yes, yes, see, I got what Iwanted there, right.
And what they don't realize isthe silent killer of the
customer, the employee or thecustomer who is, who is
disengaged.
Dr. Leah OH (07:44):
Exactly, and I think this will probably tie
into my next question, becauseyou talk about blind spots and
you say that sometimes these arekind of what leads to that
friction.
So what are?
I imagine there's, you know, acouple that you continue to see.
So what are some of thesecommon blind spots?
Continue to see, so what aresome of these common blind spots
(08:05):
?
And once you're kind of awareof them, what is it that we can
do to sidestep them?
Ryan Chute (08:16):
or you know, better insulate ourselves from these
bad practices?
Well, you know, that's a goodquestion.
Blind spots, bottlenecks andbreakpoints those are the three
big B's that are always gettingback at us, and it's you know.
There's a couple of ways thatyou can figure those out.
One you can hire somebody tolook at it from an outside
perspective in, and that has afair amount of worth, because we
(08:36):
can't often see the writing onthe bottle when we're inside the
bottle, right?
So we have this notion that wereally want to help people and
that we're of good intention.
Well, the road to hell is pavedwith good intentions, and
that's the blind spots I'mtalking about.
Compensation is a perfectexample of a blind spot.
(08:59):
When you're putting a personinto a survival position through
a commission-only structure,for example, and then not
providing them with theappropriate lead volumes or
measuring them with theappropriate sample size, of not
(09:20):
performing.
When you're measuring me off ofcompletely bad data and not
giving me what you're requiredto give me, which is the lead
flow that I need to besuccessful.
So when we start to look at thecumulative effect, a lot of
businesses say, well, I can'tafford to pay my guys this much.
Well, change your businessmodel and stop treating your
(09:43):
employees like a bank.
Change your business model andstop treating your employees
like a bank.
If you want an environment ofsurvival-minded employees, then
you have to accept what you'repaying for in that model, which
is deviant behavior and doingthings for their benefit because
(10:03):
their job is to survive.
Dr. Leah OH (10:06):
Yeah, yeah, that's a good example.
Are there other blind spotsthat you see outside of
compensation or others that kindof pop up that you realize
having this conversation again?
Ryan Chute (10:18):
Yeah, well, that often is the case is because we
as adults very rarely understandhow people learn, so we don't
teach people properly or at all,and then expect them to somehow
know that stuff from some othersituation that we chose not to
(10:40):
hire them from in the firstplace we chose not to hire them
from in the first place.
It's.
It's the classic unicorn hunt,you know, going around and
trying to find the unicorns thatare going to, they're going to
run your business and solve yourproblems, when the only unicorn
you can trust is yourself andthe others are manufactured
unicorns.
You know, you, you have tocreate those unicorns based on
(11:01):
what you stand for and what youstand against, what your true
commander's intent is, becausenot everyone's, you know,
singing off the same song sheet.
So all of that matters from myperspective as a marketer,
because all of this has to dowith are you going to be able to
(11:22):
have a business thataccelerates in growth?
Because I promise you, themarketing we do is going to
accelerate your lead flow, andthe reason it is is because
we're going to tell a true storyin an entertaining way, about
what you do.
That's different.
Dr. Leah OH (11:38):
Yes, yep.
Ryan Chute (11:39):
And you have to do something different to talk
about something being different.
Dr. Leah OH (11:43):
Yeah, yeah, excellent.
And when you're talking aboutthat really kind of antiquated
but still pervasive paystructure, you attract a certain
type of person and, like yousaid, it is typically someone
who really likes to compete andis good at it, but they don't
(12:04):
tend to like to stay aroundbecause they're competing for
what's best for them, like yousaid, preservation.
So even if we think, ah, thisperson gets it, they're not
likely to stay, they're notlikely to be part of that more
collaborative, long-term nature.
Ryan Chute (12:20):
Well, you've just hit the nail on the head.
It really comes down to the twofundamental dualities of life
of survival mode and thrivingmode.
When you're in surviving mode,you're competing.
You're competing for resources,you're competing for rank,
(12:41):
you're competing for keeping upwith the Joneses.
And even when you start tothrive, you're still in that
survival mindset, even thoughyou may be thriving.
So it's not about wealth orprofit, it's or income.
It's about how you think aboutlife.
And look, I'll be the first tosay that I have lived my entire
(13:02):
life as a survivalist.
And I have because that was theworld I grew up in 100%
commission, sales,performance-based.
Everything has to kind of leanon you.
This is why I'm terrified ofproviding for my family every
single day and doing a good joband keeping up with those
proverbial Joneses.
(13:22):
Thriving mode is acollaborative mindset.
It is one of those things where, unless we have the strong
desire to break ourselves awayfrom, for all intents and
purposes, our ego, we're notactually going to see thriving
(13:45):
in our world, because the ego isconstantly whispering in your
ear hey, he's trying to stealyour sale, or your wife, or his
TV's bigger than yours, yep.
Right.
Dr. Leah OH (14:00):
Yep, exactly, exactly.
So one word you've mentioned afew times is differentiation,
and I would love to dive intothat and thinking.
You know, from your perspectiveand what you've been doing one,
how important is it for smallbusinesses to really
differentiate themselves,differentiate themselves, and
(14:21):
then maybe after that you cantalk to us about.
You've mentioned storytelling,we've talked about communication
it's my happy place but how dowe then kind of use our
communication, our storytelling,to help?
Ryan Chute (14:39):
to show others how we're different, how we're
unique, right?
Well, listen, everything we'vebeen talking about is about
communication and is abouttelling a compelling story,
because if we're not different,if we're not doing something
distinctive, then we're justsaying the same story that
everyone else is already saying.
No one's going to pay attentionto the same thing.
(15:00):
There's this bouncer in ourbrain.
This bouncer's name is Broca,and Broca is the part of the
brain on the left side of thehemisphere saying hey, if you're
not new, interesting anddifferent, you're not allowed
into club imagination where allthe cool kids are hanging out.
Now club.
Imagination has no facility forwords and neither does our
(15:23):
decision-making facility.
All of that orients in theemotional side of the brain, the
right side of the brain, andthen is backfilled and justified
with logic on the left side ofthe brain.
So why am I saying all of this?
This all matters because whenwe start to tell the stories, we
start to set up our businessowners ahead of time.
(15:45):
I'm giving the preamble for thebusiness owner to go.
Well, what is actuallydifferent about me?
And it has to be more distinctthan the differences, that
everyone is right.
All the goth kids wanted to bedifferent.
Yeah, like all the other gothkids right.
So bless their souls.
(16:06):
It's this trying to find youridentity thing and you try this
costume on and that costume onand see what fits.
Well, the real difference iswhat makes me stand 600 feet
above the competition?
Well, there's a few things.
There's generosity andgratitude.
There is honesty, integrity,trustfulness.
(16:29):
There is that willingness tohelp people.
You know, the people who standout above the crowd are very
often the helpers, the peoplewho who faced danger and put
themselves in a vulnerableposition with courage.
Right.
We honor and and admire courageevery single day but, you can't
(16:52):
have courage withoutvulnerability.
Right, they're two sides of thesame coin.
And why does this matter?
Because if you're going tostand out in your marketing, in
your advertising, with youremployees, as a business, as a
leader, all of it makes adifference when you decide what
(17:12):
to stand for and what you decideto stand against.
And that's the real first step.
Here is the biggest shift fromgoing from manager to leader is
recognizing what you believe inand standing for it.
Now there's a big differencehere.
This is a crucial moment thatwe're talking about here.
The moment we're talking abouthere is the difference between a
(17:36):
belief and a value.
Now, nobel Prize winningphysicist, niels Bohr.
He once said that the oppositeof a profound truth is very
often another profound truth.
What most people don't realizeis that for every proverb that
exists on the planet today,there's an equal and opposite
(17:57):
proverb.
So we live a world of dualitysurviving and thriving Most
people.
Maslow himself says that 65% ofpeople live in this survival
type of thinking and that only35 ever see some level of of
thriving, even if they'recurrently in an abundant
(18:19):
situation, because they'restruggling to hang on to it.
Well, that matters for yourcustomers, that matters for your
employees and, frankly, itmatters for yourself, right?
Because we very often ignoreourselves in this communication
cycle and when we're talkingabout values and beliefs, a
(18:40):
belief, then we can agree, is anequally interchangeable thing.
I believe that justice andmercy are equally valid virtues.
But if I'm the accused murderer, I want mercy and if I'm the
victim's family, I want justice.
But what happens when thevictim's family murders the
(19:00):
murderer?
Right, those are beliefs andthey're valid beliefs.
We're not dismissing beliefs,but they are worthless because
they're interchangeable.
They're interchangeable becausethey come with no consequence,
(19:30):
willing to sacrifice the thingsyou're willing to struggle for,
the things you're willing togive up and the consequences
that you're willing to put onyourself when you don't hold
true to your consequence, toyour value right, and when you
don't hold true to that value,what does that mean?
It means that if I don't standfor it in other people, I don't
(19:51):
stand for it myself Now in yourbusiness context.
Operationally, you can build abusiness that represents all of
that right.
You can say here's the things Ibelieve in, here's the things I
don't believe in, here's what Ibelieve the customer wants and
here's the thing that I'mwilling to punish myself with if
(20:13):
I don't deliver for thatcustomer and operationally you
can deliver that consistentlywithout having to show everyone
the magic trick.
Right, magicians don't tell youhow they did the magic.
Right, this is no different thanbusiness.
We're not telling them how wedid the magic trick, we just do
(20:34):
the magic trick.
Dr. Leah OH (20:38):
Yeah, thank you.
Such an eloquent response, ryan.
Thank you.
That was really helpful inunderstanding that and giving me
a new way to think aboutdifferentiation.
Ryan Chute (20:52):
Yeah, yeah, it's super important because
otherwise you're just puttingtable stakes on the table.
You're saying that you havegood hours and good people who
care about your needs and all ofthe normal stuff, that is, you
don't need to say the minimumstandard anymore, right?
Yeah, you don't say, to say theminimum standard anymore, right
, yeah, you need to saysomething more than that.
Dr. Leah OH (21:11):
Exactly Like you said, that's a story that's been
told over and over and it'stime to think about a new story
that will be memorable.
Ryan Chute (21:20):
Yeah, yeah and lying in that, a memorable story
isn't a factual story thateducates a person about the
thing you do isn't a factualstory that educates a person
about the thing you do?
We have a client where there'stwo people sitting in a truck at
night.
It's a home service companythat stays open late.
Well, the way we tell thatstory is the one person says
(21:43):
something, the second personsays something, and then it's
just free reign from there.
We're going to go crazy for 30seconds and say something goofy
and then circle back to anatural resolution.
It always opens the same way,it always has the second
response same way and then goesoff the rails and then, always
finishes.
So this is consistency incommunication, but it's also
(22:07):
repeating that same thing overand over again to embed into the
customer's brain which, by theway, you can do in training to
embed what your values are andwhat you want the employees to
remember.
Tv ad at 1143 at night,immediately clicking to 1144 as
(22:31):
the ad starts so that the eye isdrawn to the time block that's
in the bottom in a dark vaninside on the parking lot.
And that's storytelling, thekey to powerful, powerful
communication and storytellingthe mechanics of it, which are
excruciatingly hard to get right.
(22:52):
You have to be the story, nottell the story right.
We don't need to tell a storyabout the guy who did the thing.
We need to be the guy who didthe thing in the moment.
So people immediately thetheater of their mind pulls into
it and goes, oh yeah.
Dr. Leah OH (23:15):
Yep, I can see that and I appreciate too.
You talked about the fact thatwe can train people this way,
because I think so often as anorganizational scholar,
onboarding is completely fumbled.
It's a miss, it's overlooked,it's assumed that, like you said
, people are going to come inand they're going to know these
things, and then we shame themfor not knowing them.
(23:37):
So I appreciate you kind ofacknowledging that as well, that
the same way that we work withclients and other stakeholders,
we can treat our people withthat same care and concern.
Ryan Chute (23:57):
Absolutely.
And look, I came into thewizard of ads as an operational
consultant.
I understood sales, Iunderstood how to make a
business really efficient, todrive forward and get out of the
way of marketing, and I adoredthe marketing component because
everything I'd done before washyper transactional and and only
had so much shelf life.
Well, when you start to do thisacross all of your channels,
(24:18):
the exact same things.
What I learned in advertisingthat customers need to hear the
thing three times a week, everysingle week, for for four weeks,
before it gets tired and youhave to do something else.
That's the same thing that youremployees need.
Guess what your employees areon a four week cycle that needs
to hear your thing three times aweek for it to go back.
And, by the way, if yourmessage is boring just as much
(24:40):
as your advertising is boring,guess what you're going to get
Zero salience, low retentionrates, low recall rates because
you didn't do anything or sayanything that stood above the
crowd.
Dr. Leah OH (24:51):
Exactly yes, and so I think this is a nice
connection to this idea ofmindset.
So I think it takes anorganization that has embraced a
different mindset to treatemployees like a valuable
stakeholder, and certainly wecan do this with external
stakeholders.
But I know that you spent a lotof time thinking about the
(25:11):
importance of the right mindset,so I was hoping you could talk
to us about mindset shifts andwhat you encourage others who
are looking to grow theirbusinesses.
What do you mean by that andhow do we get there?
Ryan Chute (25:24):
Yeah, oh my gosh, there's just so much to unpack
there.
One is understanding themotivations of human beings.
I've distilled it down to the10 big motivators.
The second is what I like tocall the leadership trifecta,
and that was pulled from threedifferent sources of information
and then studied acrossmultiple disciplines, because
(25:49):
oftentimes they live in silos.
Dr. Leah OH (25:51):
Right, right, the oh we love silos in academia so
much, so much so unfortunatehappy place it's it.
Ryan Chute (25:59):
It is.
It is because we, we fail tosee the bigger picture.
When we, when we focus in on onthe one thing, what one is, the
psychology of the self,obviously, and and what we're,
what we're internalizing in ourmindset, is that's the first
thing we have to get right.
And if you look at it like thehierarchy of needs and you spin
the perspective to how that fitsagainst the tribe, right, what?
(26:25):
I think I can't remember Dave'slast name, but he wrote the
book Tribal Leadership and hetalks about the five levels of
the tribe.
Then we have Jim Collins whotalks about the five levels of
leadership, and then we haveMaslow talking about the five
levels of the individualhierarchy of needs.
Well, when you distill downthat information, bucket it into
(26:47):
the survival and thrivingmindset, what you see is that
all of them are the same thingin a group, in an individual and
in a tribe and in the self.
Now, james Shuler talks aboutthis in his Three Levels of
Leadership, which is anexcruciatingly hard book to read
but is a useful device for meto have figured out.
(27:08):
These three things are allliving together.
Right, we're failing to see thebig picture here.
And when we put them together.
First we have to get our mindsetright and we start off with
subsistence living.
We have this, you know, as atribe, that's, you know, no
leader at all in the tribe.
It's basically rough, hardliving In Maslow's hierarchy of
(27:29):
needs.
It's the basics, basics, basics, right.
It's almost rough, hard livingIn Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
It's the basics, basics, basics, right.
It's almost pre-survival In aninner city, it would be.
You're not a member of the gangyet, right, because level two
would be the member of the gang.
You're dealing with a warlord,a crime lord, a gang boss.
You're being controlled.
(27:50):
You usually have some sort oftyrant operation in your
business.
It's bad bosses, it's justreally bad, just bad bosses, who
one either don't know anybetter or do and are just
assholes.
And we have to figure out whichone's which here and decide
whether you stay or go.
And then we have this belongingsection in Maslow's hierarchy
(28:11):
which is no different than theaspirational leader, the
aspirational manager who wantsto do right for their employees,
who is trying, may not besucceeding all the time, but is
doing the job.
And then we elevate up withinthe tribe, within ourselves and
within the individuals who weimmediately affect, to something
of esteem, something where Ithought esteem was ego for the
(28:33):
longest time, when esteem isactually.
You're doing something ofesteem.
What I learned when I correlatedthat information with some of
the research that Steve Forandid in his book Surviving the
Thriving the Ten Laws ofGrateful Leadership, was that we
have to shift at some point intime to truly thrive from a me
(28:53):
mentality to a we mentality.
And until we shift to the wementality, which means
abandoning the ego, right, yeah,then we're actually not going
to be thriving at the level thatwe even thought was possible,
level that we even thought waspossible.
Now we, we imagine these thingsas as like oh, wow, there's
(29:16):
wonderful companies, like, likeZappos, who've done these
amazing things, but that's notfor me, like that'll never be my
company, that'll never be me.
Well, it actually could be, butit takes a lot of, a lot of
self work.
You know, and and andunderstanding one big, big, big,
big big thing, and that's thatyou have to meet people where
they're at.
You're not going to aspire aperson into your thriving
(29:38):
mentality.
You need to get down in thetrenches with them at survival
mode and relate to them andfight with them to bring them up
with you as a leader.
And that's what true leadershipis is showing them the way
right.
Leaders are only leadersbecause they have someone who
follows them.
Dr. Leah OH (29:58):
Exactly.
Ryan Chute (29:59):
So do something worthy of being followed.
Dr. Leah OH (30:01):
Yeah, yeah, and good on you, ryan, for reading
all of those literatures thoseare.
You get a lot of literaturethere that you've put together
in really meaningful andinsightful ways, and I can see I
mean it's very, very easy tosee why you're enjoying these
successes and making this impact, because, again, you've done
(30:24):
that very hard work.
Ryan Chute (30:27):
Yeah, yeah, it is.
Dr. Leah OH (30:50):
Yeah, yeah, it is, and it's like, like I said, the
trick is, what are those tipsfor them in terms of tailoring
their communication, their styleor the messaging?
Ryan Chute (31:00):
Yeah, look, the very first place that I always go
with these things is gettingclear on what you stand for and
what you stand against.
I did a study across goshhundreds, thousands, easily
thousands.
I'd have to go back and look athow many there were.
There were so many.
Basically, I just scooped upall of the core values and
(31:21):
principles and guidingprinciples and mission
statements and silly stuff thatyou see posted on websites all
over the place that really trulymean pretty much nothing but
sound pretty and collect dust ona wall somewhere.
Ultimately, what those taught mewas that there actually comes
(31:42):
down to only three simplebuckets helping people win,
being trustworthy and livinggratefully.
Gratitude, frankly, surprisedme a bit, and when I started to
really study all of these thingsthat were able to fit in one or
two of these buckets at anygiven time, what I came to
(32:03):
realize was that we're makingthings so complicated on
ourselves when what we reallyneed to understand is what our
true intention as a commander iscommander's intent.
Now, I was in the military andI understand the notion of
commander's intent, and that'sabout alleviating yourself of
(32:23):
the burden of autocratic controland authority and replacing it
with flexibility.
To control an authority andreplacing it with flexibility.
But I'll tell you, any boss whoI know would say I can't trust
these idiots, right?
These people are hardly likeman, there's no way.
Well, that's because youhaven't been given the recipe to
trust them yet, and the recipeis helping people win in a
(32:46):
trustworthy and grateful manner.
Simple, full stop.
What does that mean to you as aboss?
So, step number one if we canagree that those three things
encompass every possible virtuetrait attribute that you could
list and post on a wallsomewhere, choose which ones
that you stand for and whichones you just believe are
(33:08):
convenient for the time, giventhe circumstance and situation,
and then devise punishments,consequences and outcomes that
are self-imposed when you don'tlive up to them.
You have the backbone of onebeing different and two
self-imposed creating anenvironment for your employees
(33:31):
to be able to stand behind yourbelief structure, and when they
do, they're going to deliver abetter buying experience.
And when they deliver a betterbuying experience and you
deliver a better employeeexperience, guess what?
We have the recipe for a killerbrand.
Dr. Leah OH (33:45):
Yeah, exactly Magic right.
Ryan Chute (33:48):
Simple as that.
It doesn't get any morecomplicated.
Dr. Leah OH (33:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that, and so let's
complicate it for a minute.
With some of the noise andfriction and that you mentioned
you had you experienced a lot ofin your early career.
So I'm thinking about deceptionand some of these other
persuasion or influencestrategies that sometimes don't
(34:13):
quite feel above the bar and I'mwondering, you know, what are
some insights you can shareabout that time and, more
importantly, kind of encouragingothers to lean into a more
transparent and, you know,person-centered approach.
Ryan Chute (34:30):
Yeah, super easy, super, super, duper easy.
Centered approach yeah, supereasy, super, super duper easy
Survival and thriving, surviving, thriving.
Am I doing this to preserve formyself?
Am I manipulating in a way topreserve something for myself,
protect myself, protect myresources, protect my reputation
?
Or am I doing it for thegreater good?
(34:52):
Am I doing it from an abundantperspective, from a gracious
perspective?
It from an abundant perspective, from a gracious perspective,
from a gratuitous and a gratefulperspective, surviving and
thriving.
Where am I coming from when I'msaying this, doing this and and
making this decision?
And then number two is why arethey doing it?
right are they in surviving mode?
As a customer, as an employee,your customer's job is not to uh
(35:16):
lay down and and buy what yousell them yep your customer's
job is to survive.
if two-thirds of your customersand employees are all in
survival mode at varying levels,what are we doing as bosses, as
leaders, as true um beacons ofhope to actually serve the
(35:37):
person at the highest level?
Put it through the simplelitmus test how am I helping the
person win in a trustworthy andgrateful manner?
That's how you empower peopletoo.
Question about the customerthey're dealing with the
employee, they're dealing withthe co-worker, or the choices
they're making about your moneyand how they discount or give
(35:58):
away or whatever right.
How they respond to that personin a compassionate and
empathetic way, right or in aself-serving and aggressive or
contrary kind of way.
All of these fall into theduality of life.
It's not 58 things, it's one oftwo things.
(36:22):
If it's negative, it's almostcertainly going to be survival
thinking.
Dr. Leah OH (36:28):
So address the survival thinking, not not only
within yourself, but within yourpeople and all stakeholders
that are involved, and you shiftinto solving problems in an
empathetic and compassionate wayYep, which then, in turn,
creates such a betterenvironment for those who are
(36:49):
looking to make purchases inthese areas and, I would imagine
, would lead to a lot morerepeat purchases than the oof.
I didn't feel good about this.
I felt pressured into this, youknow, crossed off the list for
anything going forward.
Ryan Chute (37:05):
Absolutely and equally as much for your
employees, for retention, ifyou're asking your employees to
betray themselves and theirvalue system and their belief
structures.
This is an age-old problem whenit comes to technicians in the
home service space.
You're saying, go out there andbe a salesperson and they're
like, yeah, no, I just want tofix the problem.
Dr. Leah OH (37:27):
Fix it, yep.
Ryan Chute (37:29):
And you're asking me to charge too much money, and
you're asking me to do this andasking me to do this and I don't
feel right about it.
So I'm going to go install newair conditioners in new home
builds and for commercial unionsinstead, and that's because
we've asked them to betraythemselves with devious practice
(37:50):
, not practice that serves thecustomer at the highest level.
Well, when we can reconcile thatserving a customer at the
highest level is selling, it'sselling because we've won, gone
through the process of properlyunderstanding their needs, the
environment's needs and thesystem's needs that we've only
(38:10):
presented the thing thatactually is the problem, not
trying to sell them a bunch ofnonsense they don't need.
Is there other things that theyneed eventually and will spend
money with us on?
Absolutely.
Do we need to escalate thatunnecessarily for the benefit of
us in sacrifice for thelong-term sale?
Absolutely not.
And when we reframe, helpingpeople win means closing the
(38:36):
sale, not just having aconversation about what needs to
be repaired and then show thema path where you're actually
serving the customer at a veryhigh level for the money that
we're asking for.
You know that value doesn'tmatter at all until what you
have to sell them is worth morethan the money that they're
going to give you, or not.
Dr. Leah OH (38:57):
Exactly.
Yeah, I really appreciate thatshift.
So, ryan, let's think aboutleadership.
I mean, we've certainly beenlooking at leadership through
our whole conversation, but inthis way, I'm just kind of
thinking about contemporaryexpectations from stakeholders
for small businesses inparticular, and thinking you
(39:20):
know, what have you seen or whatdo you recommend when
stakeholders are saying I wantyou to give back to the
community or I want you to leaninto eco-friendly approaches?
So you know what do you coachbusinesses in this regard now,
in terms of their kind ofresponsibility to lead in
different ways?
Ryan Chute (39:40):
Well, you know, I think it really boils down into
the old Adam Smith Keynesianmentality of economics, and
perpetual growth was anonsensical notion developed in
the late 1800s to serve nationsat the highest level and not to
(40:02):
serve the actual populace.
And while there is merit in someof that economic belief,
there's also a whole bunch ofabsolute nonsense, and I have a
fairly solid foundation ineconomics so I can say this with
a fair amount of confidence.
Ultimately, what it boils downto is let me give you a story
(40:24):
instead.
I have a client down in Floridaand she and I were talking about
one particular market inFlorida and she goes.
A year earlier we had beentalking about what's the most
you feel like you could pull outof this market each year, and
it was like 24, 25 million andwe could probably push it to 30
if we had to.
And a year later her and I aretalking at our strategy meeting
(40:47):
and she's like we've actuallydone an analysis of this
marketplace and we found thatthe diminishing returns for our
operational build, ourinfrastructure, was at $20
million, that we're actuallystarting to go backwards in our
profitability trying to chasethis extra $4 to $10 million.
So we're going to stick to $20.
(41:09):
And I go, I love what you justsaid and I go, that's that's.
I love what you just said and Ilove what she said because what
she recognizes if we got $24million one year because there
was some hurricane or somethinggreat.
We made a bunch of money butwe're not going to operationally
stretch ourselves beyond the$20 million mark.
And we'll just, we'll just, youknow, pull the pull the levers
(41:30):
to to do things that go extrahere and there, but we're also
not going to collapse under theweight of our business when we
end up only doing 18 in a softeryear.
So, ultimately, this is whattrue economics of a business
look like.
There is a threshold ofdiminishing returns.
Everyone talks aboutbreak-evens and profits and
(41:53):
top-line revenues, and that'sall great, but it can't be
excluding the conversation ofdiminishing returns.
And this holds true in themarketing budget you place and
the staff that you have, thetrucks that you order, the
inventory that you stock.
All of these things affectwhether or not you're going to
be successful.
Or not all of these thingsaffect whether or not you're
(42:14):
going to be successful or not,and successful at the true
definition of success.
Because once you have thatmodel down to a rinse and repeat
, guess what?
You can move into another townand get another piece of
property that does the same kindof profit level.
So it's not about not gettingmore money, it's about doing it
in the most profitable andefficient of ways for everyone's
(42:36):
benefit.
Because it's not just moneywe're talking about here, it's
the energy and the time.
If we don't have energy and timeinside the equation, we really
miss a huge part of what peopleactually care about.
Dr. Leah OH (42:52):
Exactly yeah, from every end right, because your
client will feel it, all of theemployees feel it, their
families feel it.
That ripple effect goes on andon, it's not sustainable.
Yes, exactly.
Ryan Chute (43:05):
And again, a perfect example of a blind spot, when
we're only factoring money intoan equation which is an
externally driven force, whichis a dopamine driven force.
What that means is that you'reexcluding the employee's energy
and their ability to rechargetheir battery, their time that
they have to spend with theirkids or their wife or not, and
(43:30):
all of that is a part of theequation, not just money.
Dr. Leah OH (43:33):
Exactly so, ryan, I have two final questions for
you, and these go hand in hand,and this is the way that we end
all episodes of theCommunicative Leader.
So I'd like you to think about,you know, whether it's a
challenge, a pragmatic tip.
You know advice in terms ofleadership, communication.
So first, for our titledleaders out there are folks who
(43:54):
are managers, directors,supervisors and then the second
part is you know employees ofall ranks across industries.
Ryan Chute (44:02):
Yeah, well, the very first thing that this question
makes me think about is thenotion of leadership.
Leadership is not about titleor authority.
Everybody is a leader, and whenwe start to take that
perspective of everyone is aleader, we can create a pipeline
of unicorns ordinary peoplethat do extraordinary things.
(44:25):
And the big challenge here isfiguring out what can we do to
keep it simple, and the first isto understand what are the true
core motivators of people andthen to play to those
motivations.
A great book to read is DanielPink's book Drive.
That really orients to that.
(44:46):
I believe that there's 10 majormotivators, both positive and
negative, and there is an equaland opposite demotivator that it
associates with those.
And until you have those 10right, then there's really no
point in trying to focus in onall of the other fluff that this
world throws at us at any giventime.
And then two regardless of whoyou are, regardless of what rank
(45:10):
or status you have or titlethat you have, filter everything
through how you're helpingpeople win in a trustworthy and
grateful manner, and you'realways going to have a litmus
test that's going to determinewhether or not you're walking
the virtuous path or not, andthat will allow for natural
empowerment, not just you, butyour wife, your kids, your
(45:33):
family, your friends, all of it.
Dr. Leah OH (45:36):
Exactly, and I really appreciate that advice
because I, time and time again,find that the best advice is the
simplest advice.
We're not weeding through atreaty of 33 things we need to
do in order to start it's.
Here are these three things.
Ryan Chute (45:57):
The brain is.
The brain is literally designedto cope not not to thrive, but
to cope.
And the way to thrive is tofind ways of keeping it so
simple that you can cope with it.
Dr. Leah OH (46:09):
Yes, yeah, yep, I appreciate that.
Well, ryan, it has been a truepleasure chatting with you today
.
I've learned a lot.
I've really enjoyed thisconversation, and I know that
our listeners will as well.
Ryan Chute (46:23):
Thank you so much.
This has been a real treat,thank you.
Dr. Leah OH (46:27):
All right, my friends.
That wraps up our conversationtoday.
Until next time, communicatewith intention and lead with
purpose.
I'm looking forward to chattingwith you again soon on the
Communicative Leader.
Welcome back to the Communicative Leader.
Today, we have a fantasticguest with us.
Please welcome Ryan Chute fromWizard of Ads.
Ryan is a powerhouse ofinsights.
He combines his rich backgroundin retail with his expertise as
a strategic marketer.
Get ready to dive deep, as heshares some invaluable
strategies on leveragingcommunication to minimize
(00:22):
friction and maximize impact.
It's what we're all looking for, right, my friends.
So whether you're anentrepreneur looking to sharpen
your skills or just curiousabout more effective leadership
communication, ryan's experiencecan leave you inspired and
equipped with somethought-provoking takeaways.
So let's have some fun.
(00:44):
Hello and welcome to theCommunicative Leader Dr.
Leah Omilion-Hodges by me, .
My friends call me Dr OH.
I'm a professor ofcommunication and a leadership
communication expert.
On the Communicative Leader,we're working to make your work
life what you want it to be.
Ryan, thank you for joining uson the communicative leader, and
(01:06):
I was hoping you could start bysharing a bit about your
journey.
So you had early experiences inretail and now you're a
strategic marketer with wizardof ads, so kind of what also led
to this focus on helping smallbusinesses well, you know, I'm
super grateful to to be able tolead an eight-figure creative
(01:27):
consultancy agency right nowwithin the Wizard of Ads, but it
wasn't always that way.
Ryan Chute (01:33):
I started off in a retail gulag.
It was the bad bosses and thequestionable practices, the
toxic work environments and theweaponized fear, shame and guilt
that I I mirrored.
You know it was is what youknow and and what you what you
learn from, and I thought I wasdoing the right thing, um,
because I didn't know what Ididn't know you know, and I
(01:58):
became a really, really strongmanager, um, and an equally bad
boss strong manager and anequally bad boss.
After getting summarily firedfor generally bad behavior.
I had an existential crisis.
It was this situation of if thisis bad, over-performing but
(02:19):
making people angry and creatingall this friction.
What was good and I didn't wantto be average, I didn't want to
be good, I wanted to be greatand it really hit me hard.
So I started kind of exploringwhat it was that was causing my
problems and I come to find outthat this is really all about
(02:41):
friction, and friction andcommunication and the things
that I'm doing, intentionallyand unintentionally, from the
things that I thought were rightto cause myself to be a weak
leader as strong as a manager asI was.
So today I get to create thesedivergent sales and marketing
(03:03):
strategies for clients, but I doit by looking at two big things
One is removing that unwantedfriction and the other is
looking for that divergentcommunication, that thing that's
going to stand out amongst thecrowd so that we can actually do
something that gets noticed,not just blends in with the
(03:25):
fabric of the business or thecommunity or the marketplace
that you're in.
And it was that early frictionthat has me so hyper-focused in
on your brand is a culture youknow and culture is your brand.
And when we really elevate theemployee, experience is your
(03:46):
brand and when we really elevatethe employee experience,
including the experience that wegive ourselves.
We have this opportunity todeliver a better buying
experience and ultimately, thebuying experience and the
employee experience are themarketing and the advertising
that we do to accelerate ourprofitable growth as a big brand
, to accelerate our profitablegrowth as a big brand yeah,
excellent.
Dr. Leah OH (04:05):
Thank you for sharing that, and I really love,
in your experience and whatyou're sharing.
You show the impact of socialmodeling right Of when we're
showing this, even if it's notintentional, you know, it's that
idea of you never want to betheir leader who says do as I
say, not as I do, Because thoseactions speak so loudly, and so
(04:30):
I really appreciate you sharingthat and then changing it and
turning it around for all ofthose who you work with and who
work for you.
Ryan Chute (04:37):
Yeah, yeah, I didn't realize it was such a big deal
until I knew better.
Dr. Leah OH (04:43):
Mm-hmm, yep, yep.
And then you can look back andcringe and say that's okay, I've
done the work, I'm doing itdifferently now.
Ryan Chute (04:50):
Well, that's what makes us who we are today.
Dr. Leah OH (04:52):
Exactly.
Ryan Chute (04:53):
And affords us the opportunity to stand above the
crowd.
Dr. Leah OH (04:58):
Yeah, yes, so you were mentioning friction, and
that was my next question,because I know you talk about
this idea a lot, so I was hopingyou could define it for us.
So what is friction in thiscontext?
Ryan Chute (05:16):
And then the second part is how is this, or how can
it be, a barrier to profitablegrowth for small businesses?
Well, the friction really liesin the laws of nature.
You know, when you, when youthink about friction, you think
about that.
The rough bits on a flywheel,the things that are, are slowing
things down because therethere's bumps along the way,
there's roadblocks, there'sbarriers, there's pitfalls, and
(05:37):
that that all is the frictionthat we deal with, and sometimes
it's self-inflicted, sometimesit's intentional, sometimes it's
unintentional, Sometimes it'sback to those old habits that we
learned from our daddy, and alot of the time it's not done
with ill intent, but it is donebecause we think that's what
(05:57):
produces a result.
One of the biggest parts offriction is compliance.
Now, I'm not talking about thecompliance that keeps people
safe.
I'm talking about thecompliance that we demand from
people when we don't have themdoing the way we want them to do
it.
What we're doing is we're beingreally lazy about what it is
that caused that friction in thefirst place.
(06:19):
What did we not communicate?
What did we not say to helppeople do the things that they
need to do to be successful inthe job that we're asking them
to do?
So, when we think about it thatfriction causes resistance, and
resistance is what's slowingthings down and that slows down
(06:40):
profitability, productivity,effectiveness, efficiency, that
that compliance that we'redemanding only produces one
result, and that's defiance.
And defiance effectively leadsto the quiet quitting and the
other kinds of things that wesee every day that Gallup polls
(07:02):
has been reporting on for over40 years, saying, hey, guess
what Productivity hasn't changed?
Well, it's because we'refollowing rules of a factory
from 200 years ago.
Dr. Leah OH (07:15):
Yeah, yeah.
It is really incredible thatwe've largely not taken many
steps to change that.
Ryan Chute (07:22):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, it's because compliancefeels so darn good you know, it
gives, it gives the person, theleader, the authority, not the
leader, but the authority, theum.
The dopamine hit you go.
Oh yes, yes, see, I got what Iwanted there, right.
And what they don't realize isthe silent killer of the
customer, the employee or thecustomer who is, who is
disengaged.
Dr. Leah OH (07:44):
Exactly, and I think this will probably tie
into my next question, becauseyou talk about blind spots and
you say that sometimes these arekind of what leads to that
friction.
So what are?
I imagine there's, you know, acouple that you continue to see.
So what are some of thesecommon blind spots?
Continue to see, so what aresome of these common blind spots
(08:05):
?
And once you're kind of awareof them, what is it that we can
do to sidestep them?
Ryan Chute (08:16):
or you know, better insulate ourselves from these
bad practices?
Well, you know, that's a goodquestion.
Blind spots, bottlenecks andbreakpoints those are the three
big B's that are always gettingback at us, and it's you know.
There's a couple of ways thatyou can figure those out.
One you can hire somebody tolook at it from an outside
perspective in, and that has afair amount of worth, because we
(08:36):
can't often see the writing onthe bottle when we're inside the
bottle, right?
So we have this notion that wereally want to help people and
that we're of good intention.
Well, the road to hell is pavedwith good intentions, and
that's the blind spots I'mtalking about.
Compensation is a perfectexample of a blind spot.
(08:59):
When you're putting a personinto a survival position through
a commission-only structure,for example, and then not
providing them with theappropriate lead volumes or
measuring them with theappropriate sample size, of not
(09:20):
performing.
When you're measuring me off ofcompletely bad data and not
giving me what you're requiredto give me, which is the lead
flow that I need to besuccessful.
So when we start to look at thecumulative effect, a lot of
businesses say, well, I can'tafford to pay my guys this much.
Well, change your businessmodel and stop treating your
(09:43):
employees like a bank.
Change your business model andstop treating your employees
like a bank.
If you want an environment ofsurvival-minded employees, then
you have to accept what you'repaying for in that model, which
is deviant behavior and doingthings for their benefit because
(10:03):
their job is to survive.
Dr. Leah OH (10:06):
Yeah, yeah, that's a good example.
Are there other blind spotsthat you see outside of
compensation or others that kindof pop up that you realize
having this conversation again?
Ryan Chute (10:18):
Yeah, well, that often is the case is because we
as adults very rarely understandhow people learn, so we don't
teach people properly or at all,and then expect them to somehow
know that stuff from some othersituation that we chose not to
(10:40):
hire them from in the firstplace we chose not to hire them
from in the first place.
It's.
It's the classic unicorn hunt,you know, going around and
trying to find the unicorns thatare going to, they're going to
run your business and solve yourproblems, when the only unicorn
you can trust is yourself andthe others are manufactured
unicorns.
You know, you, you have tocreate those unicorns based on
(11:01):
what you stand for and what youstand against, what your true
commander's intent is, becausenot everyone's, you know,
singing off the same song sheet.
So all of that matters from myperspective as a marketer,
because all of this has to dowith are you going to be able to
(11:22):
have a business thataccelerates in growth?
Because I promise you, themarketing we do is going to
accelerate your lead flow, andthe reason it is is because
we're going to tell a true storyin an entertaining way, about
what you do.
That's different.
Dr. Leah OH (11:38):
Yes, yep.
Ryan Chute (11:39):
And you have to do something different to talk
about something being different.
Dr. Leah OH (11:43):
Yeah, yeah, excellent.
And when you're talking aboutthat really kind of antiquated
but still pervasive paystructure, you attract a certain
type of person and, like yousaid, it is typically someone
who really likes to compete andis good at it, but they don't
(12:04):
tend to like to stay aroundbecause they're competing for
what's best for them, like yousaid, preservation.
So even if we think, ah, thisperson gets it, they're not
likely to stay, they're notlikely to be part of that more
collaborative, long-term nature.
Ryan Chute (12:20):
Well, you've just hit the nail on the head.
It really comes down to the twofundamental dualities of life
of survival mode and thrivingmode.
When you're in surviving mode,you're competing.
You're competing for resources,you're competing for rank,
(12:41):
you're competing for keeping upwith the Joneses.
And even when you start tothrive, you're still in that
survival mindset, even thoughyou may be thriving.
So it's not about wealth orprofit, it's or income.
It's about how you think aboutlife.
And look, I'll be the first tosay that I have lived my entire
(13:02):
life as a survivalist.
And I have because that was theworld I grew up in 100%
commission, sales,performance-based.
Everything has to kind of leanon you.
This is why I'm terrified ofproviding for my family every
single day and doing a good joband keeping up with those
proverbial Joneses.
(13:22):
Thriving mode is acollaborative mindset.
It is one of those things where, unless we have the strong
desire to break ourselves awayfrom, for all intents and
purposes, our ego, we're notactually going to see thriving
(13:45):
in our world, because the ego isconstantly whispering in your
ear hey, he's trying to stealyour sale, or your wife, or his
TV's bigger than yours, yep.
Right.
Dr. Leah OH (14:00):
Yep, exactly, exactly.
So one word you've mentioned afew times is differentiation,
and I would love to dive intothat and thinking.
You know, from your perspectiveand what you've been doing one,
how important is it for smallbusinesses to really
differentiate themselves,differentiate themselves, and
(14:21):
then maybe after that you cantalk to us about.
You've mentioned storytelling,we've talked about communication
it's my happy place but how dowe then kind of use our
communication, our storytelling,to help?
Ryan Chute (14:39):
to show others how we're different, how we're
unique, right?
Well, listen, everything we'vebeen talking about is about
communication and is abouttelling a compelling story,
because if we're not different,if we're not doing something
distinctive, then we're justsaying the same story that
everyone else is already saying.
No one's going to pay attentionto the same thing.
(15:00):
There's this bouncer in ourbrain.
This bouncer's name is Broca,and Broca is the part of the
brain on the left side of thehemisphere saying hey, if you're
not new, interesting anddifferent, you're not allowed
into club imagination where allthe cool kids are hanging out.
Now club.
Imagination has no facility forwords and neither does our
(15:23):
decision-making facility.
All of that orients in theemotional side of the brain, the
right side of the brain, andthen is backfilled and justified
with logic on the left side ofthe brain.
So why am I saying all of this?
This all matters because whenwe start to tell the stories, we
start to set up our businessowners ahead of time.
(15:45):
I'm giving the preamble for thebusiness owner to go.
Well, what is actuallydifferent about me?
And it has to be more distinctthan the differences, that
everyone is right.
All the goth kids wanted to bedifferent.
Yeah, like all the other gothkids right.
So bless their souls.
(16:06):
It's this trying to find youridentity thing and you try this
costume on and that costume onand see what fits.
Well, the real difference iswhat makes me stand 600 feet
above the competition?
Well, there's a few things.
There's generosity andgratitude.
There is honesty, integrity,trustfulness.
(16:29):
There is that willingness tohelp people.
You know, the people who standout above the crowd are very
often the helpers, the peoplewho who faced danger and put
themselves in a vulnerableposition with courage.
Right.
We honor and and admire courageevery single day but, you can't
(16:52):
have courage withoutvulnerability.
Right, they're two sides of thesame coin.
And why does this matter?
Because if you're going tostand out in your marketing, in
your advertising, with youremployees, as a business, as a
leader, all of it makes adifference when you decide what
(17:12):
to stand for and what you decideto stand against.
And that's the real first step.
Here is the biggest shift fromgoing from manager to leader is
recognizing what you believe inand standing for it.
Now there's a big differencehere.
This is a crucial moment thatwe're talking about here.
The moment we're talking abouthere is the difference between a
(17:36):
belief and a value.
Now, nobel Prize winningphysicist, niels Bohr.
He once said that the oppositeof a profound truth is very
often another profound truth.
What most people don't realizeis that for every proverb that
exists on the planet today,there's an equal and opposite
(17:57):
proverb.
So we live a world of dualitysurviving and thriving Most
people.
Maslow himself says that 65% ofpeople live in this survival
type of thinking and that only35 ever see some level of of
thriving, even if they'recurrently in an abundant
(18:19):
situation, because they'restruggling to hang on to it.
Well, that matters for yourcustomers, that matters for your
employees and, frankly, itmatters for yourself, right?
Because we very often ignoreourselves in this communication
cycle and when we're talkingabout values and beliefs, a
(18:40):
belief, then we can agree, is anequally interchangeable thing.
I believe that justice andmercy are equally valid virtues.
But if I'm the accused murderer, I want mercy and if I'm the
victim's family, I want justice.
But what happens when thevictim's family murders the
(19:00):
murderer?
Right, those are beliefs andthey're valid beliefs.
We're not dismissing beliefs,but they are worthless because
they're interchangeable.
They're interchangeable becausethey come with no consequence,
(19:30):
willing to sacrifice the thingsyou're willing to struggle for,
the things you're willing togive up and the consequences
that you're willing to put onyourself when you don't hold
true to your consequence, toyour value right, and when you
don't hold true to that value,what does that mean?
It means that if I don't standfor it in other people, I don't
(19:51):
stand for it myself Now in yourbusiness context.
Operationally, you can build abusiness that represents all of
that right.
You can say here's the things Ibelieve in, here's the things I
don't believe in, here's what Ibelieve the customer wants and
here's the thing that I'mwilling to punish myself with if
(20:13):
I don't deliver for thatcustomer and operationally you
can deliver that consistentlywithout having to show everyone
the magic trick.
Right, magicians don't tell youhow they did the magic.
Right, this is no different thanbusiness.
We're not telling them how wedid the magic trick, we just do
(20:34):
the magic trick.
Dr. Leah OH (20:38):
Yeah, thank you.
Such an eloquent response, ryan.
Thank you.
That was really helpful inunderstanding that and giving me
a new way to think aboutdifferentiation.
Ryan Chute (20:52):
Yeah, yeah, it's super important because
otherwise you're just puttingtable stakes on the table.
You're saying that you havegood hours and good people who
care about your needs and all ofthe normal stuff, that is, you
don't need to say the minimumstandard anymore, right?
Yeah, you don't say, to say theminimum standard anymore, right
, yeah, you need to saysomething more than that.
Dr. Leah OH (21:11):
Exactly Like you said, that's a story that's been
told over and over and it'stime to think about a new story
that will be memorable.
Ryan Chute (21:20):
Yeah, yeah and lying in that, a memorable story
isn't a factual story thateducates a person about the
thing you do isn't a factualstory that educates a person
about the thing you do?
We have a client where there'stwo people sitting in a truck at
night.
It's a home service companythat stays open late.
Well, the way we tell thatstory is the one person says
(21:43):
something, the second personsays something, and then it's
just free reign from there.
We're going to go crazy for 30seconds and say something goofy
and then circle back to anatural resolution.
It always opens the same way,it always has the second
response same way and then goesoff the rails and then, always
finishes.
So this is consistency incommunication, but it's also
(22:07):
repeating that same thing overand over again to embed into the
customer's brain which, by theway, you can do in training to
embed what your values are andwhat you want the employees to
remember.
Tv ad at 1143 at night,immediately clicking to 1144 as
(22:31):
the ad starts so that the eye isdrawn to the time block that's
in the bottom in a dark vaninside on the parking lot.
And that's storytelling, thekey to powerful, powerful
communication and storytellingthe mechanics of it, which are
excruciatingly hard to get right.
(22:52):
You have to be the story, nottell the story right.
We don't need to tell a storyabout the guy who did the thing.
We need to be the guy who didthe thing in the moment.
So people immediately thetheater of their mind pulls into
it and goes, oh yeah.
Dr. Leah OH (23:15):
Yep, I can see that and I appreciate too.
You talked about the fact thatwe can train people this way,
because I think so often as anorganizational scholar,
onboarding is completely fumbled.
It's a miss, it's overlooked,it's assumed that, like you said
, people are going to come inand they're going to know these
things, and then we shame themfor not knowing them.
(23:37):
So I appreciate you kind ofacknowledging that as well, that
the same way that we work withclients and other stakeholders,
we can treat our people withthat same care and concern.
Ryan Chute (23:57):
Absolutely.
And look, I came into thewizard of ads as an operational
consultant.
I understood sales, Iunderstood how to make a
business really efficient, todrive forward and get out of the
way of marketing, and I adoredthe marketing component because
everything I'd done before washyper transactional and and only
had so much shelf life.
Well, when you start to do thisacross all of your channels,
(24:18):
the exact same things.
What I learned in advertisingthat customers need to hear the
thing three times a week, everysingle week, for for four weeks,
before it gets tired and youhave to do something else.
That's the same thing that youremployees need.
Guess what your employees areon a four week cycle that needs
to hear your thing three times aweek for it to go back.
And, by the way, if yourmessage is boring just as much
(24:40):
as your advertising is boring,guess what you're going to get
Zero salience, low retentionrates, low recall rates because
you didn't do anything or sayanything that stood above the
crowd.
Dr. Leah OH (24:51):
Exactly yes, and so I think this is a nice
connection to this idea ofmindset.
So I think it takes anorganization that has embraced a
different mindset to treatemployees like a valuable
stakeholder, and certainly wecan do this with external
stakeholders.
But I know that you spent a lotof time thinking about the
(25:11):
importance of the right mindset,so I was hoping you could talk
to us about mindset shifts andwhat you encourage others who
are looking to grow theirbusinesses.
What do you mean by that andhow do we get there?
Ryan Chute (25:24):
Yeah, oh my gosh, there's just so much to unpack
there.
One is understanding themotivations of human beings.
I've distilled it down to the10 big motivators.
The second is what I like tocall the leadership trifecta,
and that was pulled from threedifferent sources of information
and then studied acrossmultiple disciplines, because
(25:49):
oftentimes they live in silos.
Dr. Leah OH (25:51):
Right, right, the oh we love silos in academia so
much, so much so unfortunatehappy place it's it.
Ryan Chute (25:59):
It is.
It is because we, we fail tosee the bigger picture.
When we, when we focus in on onthe one thing, what one is, the
psychology of the self,obviously, and and what we're,
what we're internalizing in ourmindset, is that's the first
thing we have to get right.
And if you look at it like thehierarchy of needs and you spin
the perspective to how that fitsagainst the tribe, right, what?
(26:25):
I think I can't remember Dave'slast name, but he wrote the
book Tribal Leadership and hetalks about the five levels of
the tribe.
Then we have Jim Collins whotalks about the five levels of
leadership, and then we haveMaslow talking about the five
levels of the individualhierarchy of needs.
Well, when you distill downthat information, bucket it into
(26:47):
the survival and thrivingmindset, what you see is that
all of them are the same thingin a group, in an individual and
in a tribe and in the self.
Now, james Shuler talks aboutthis in his Three Levels of
Leadership, which is anexcruciatingly hard book to read
but is a useful device for meto have figured out.
(27:08):
These three things are allliving together.
Right, we're failing to see thebig picture here.
And when we put them together.
First we have to get our mindsetright and we start off with
subsistence living.
We have this, you know, as atribe, that's, you know, no
leader at all in the tribe.
It's basically rough, hardliving In Maslow's hierarchy of
(27:29):
needs.
It's the basics, basics, basics, right.
It's almost rough, hard livingIn Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
It's the basics, basics, basics, right.
It's almost pre-survival In aninner city, it would be.
You're not a member of the gangyet, right, because level two
would be the member of the gang.
You're dealing with a warlord,a crime lord, a gang boss.
You're being controlled.
(27:50):
You usually have some sort oftyrant operation in your
business.
It's bad bosses, it's justreally bad, just bad bosses, who
one either don't know anybetter or do and are just
assholes.
And we have to figure out whichone's which here and decide
whether you stay or go.
And then we have this belongingsection in Maslow's hierarchy
(28:11):
which is no different than theaspirational leader, the
aspirational manager who wantsto do right for their employees,
who is trying, may not besucceeding all the time, but is
doing the job.
And then we elevate up withinthe tribe, within ourselves and
within the individuals who weimmediately affect, to something
of esteem, something where Ithought esteem was ego for the
(28:33):
longest time, when esteem isactually.
You're doing something ofesteem.
What I learned when I correlatedthat information with some of
the research that Steve Forandid in his book Surviving the
Thriving the Ten Laws ofGrateful Leadership, was that we
have to shift at some point intime to truly thrive from a me
(28:53):
mentality to a we mentality.
And until we shift to the wementality, which means
abandoning the ego, right, yeah,then we're actually not going
to be thriving at the level thatwe even thought was possible,
level that we even thought waspossible.
Now we, we imagine these thingsas as like oh, wow, there's
(29:16):
wonderful companies, like, likeZappos, who've done these
amazing things, but that's notfor me, like that'll never be my
company, that'll never be me.
Well, it actually could be, butit takes a lot of, a lot of
self work.
You know, and and andunderstanding one big, big, big,
big big thing, and that's thatyou have to meet people where
they're at.
You're not going to aspire aperson into your thriving
(29:38):
mentality.
You need to get down in thetrenches with them at survival
mode and relate to them andfight with them to bring them up
with you as a leader.
And that's what true leadershipis is showing them the way
right.
Leaders are only leadersbecause they have someone who
follows them.
Dr. Leah OH (29:58):
Exactly.
Ryan Chute (29:59):
So do something worthy of being followed.
Dr. Leah OH (30:01):
Yeah, yeah, and good on you, ryan, for reading
all of those literatures thoseare.
You get a lot of literaturethere that you've put together
in really meaningful andinsightful ways, and I can see I
mean it's very, very easy tosee why you're enjoying these
successes and making this impact, because, again, you've done
(30:24):
that very hard work.
Ryan Chute (30:27):
Yeah, yeah, it is.
Dr. Leah OH (30:50):
Yeah, yeah, it is, and it's like, like I said, the
trick is, what are those tipsfor them in terms of tailoring
their communication, their styleor the messaging?
Ryan Chute (31:00):
Yeah, look, the very first place that I always go
with these things is gettingclear on what you stand for and
what you stand against.
I did a study across goshhundreds, thousands, easily
thousands.
I'd have to go back and look athow many there were.
There were so many.
Basically, I just scooped upall of the core values and
(31:21):
principles and guidingprinciples and mission
statements and silly stuff thatyou see posted on websites all
over the place that really trulymean pretty much nothing but
sound pretty and collect dust ona wall somewhere.
Ultimately, what those taught mewas that there actually comes
(31:42):
down to only three simplebuckets helping people win,
being trustworthy and livinggratefully.
Gratitude, frankly, surprisedme a bit, and when I started to
really study all of these thingsthat were able to fit in one or
two of these buckets at anygiven time, what I came to
(32:03):
realize was that we're makingthings so complicated on
ourselves when what we reallyneed to understand is what our
true intention as a commander iscommander's intent.
Now, I was in the military andI understand the notion of
commander's intent, and that'sabout alleviating yourself of
(32:23):
the burden of autocratic controland authority and replacing it
with flexibility.
To control an authority andreplacing it with flexibility.
But I'll tell you, any boss whoI know would say I can't trust
these idiots, right?
These people are hardly likeman, there's no way.
Well, that's because youhaven't been given the recipe to
trust them yet, and the recipeis helping people win in a
(32:46):
trustworthy and grateful manner.
Simple, full stop.
What does that mean to you as aboss?
So, step number one if we canagree that those three things
encompass every possible virtuetrait attribute that you could
list and post on a wallsomewhere, choose which ones
that you stand for and whichones you just believe are
(33:08):
convenient for the time, giventhe circumstance and situation,
and then devise punishments,consequences and outcomes that
are self-imposed when you don'tlive up to them.
You have the backbone of onebeing different and two
self-imposed creating anenvironment for your employees
(33:31):
to be able to stand behind yourbelief structure, and when they
do, they're going to deliver abetter buying experience.
And when they deliver a betterbuying experience and you
deliver a better employeeexperience, guess what?
We have the recipe for a killerbrand.
Dr. Leah OH (33:45):
Yeah, exactly Magic right.
Ryan Chute (33:48):
Simple as that.
It doesn't get any morecomplicated.
Dr. Leah OH (33:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that, and so let's
complicate it for a minute.
With some of the noise andfriction and that you mentioned
you had you experienced a lot ofin your early career.
So I'm thinking about deceptionand some of these other
persuasion or influencestrategies that sometimes don't
(34:13):
quite feel above the bar and I'mwondering, you know, what are
some insights you can shareabout that time and, more
importantly, kind of encouragingothers to lean into a more
transparent and, you know,person-centered approach.
Ryan Chute (34:30):
Yeah, super easy, super, super, duper easy.
Centered approach yeah, supereasy, super, super duper easy
Survival and thriving, surviving, thriving.
Am I doing this to preserve formyself?
Am I manipulating in a way topreserve something for myself,
protect myself, protect myresources, protect my reputation
?
Or am I doing it for thegreater good?
(34:52):
Am I doing it from an abundantperspective, from a gracious
perspective?
It from an abundant perspective, from a gracious perspective,
from a gratuitous and a gratefulperspective, surviving and
thriving.
Where am I coming from when I'msaying this, doing this and and
making this decision?
And then number two is why arethey doing it?
right are they in surviving mode?
As a customer, as an employee,your customer's job is not to uh
(35:16):
lay down and and buy what yousell them yep your customer's
job is to survive.
if two-thirds of your customersand employees are all in
survival mode at varying levels,what are we doing as bosses, as
leaders, as true um beacons ofhope to actually serve the
(35:37):
person at the highest level?
Put it through the simplelitmus test how am I helping the
person win in a trustworthy andgrateful manner?
That's how you empower peopletoo.
Question about the customerthey're dealing with the
employee, they're dealing withthe co-worker, or the choices
they're making about your moneyand how they discount or give
(35:58):
away or whatever right.
How they respond to that personin a compassionate and
empathetic way, right or in aself-serving and aggressive or
contrary kind of way.
All of these fall into theduality of life.
It's not 58 things, it's one oftwo things.
(36:22):
If it's negative, it's almostcertainly going to be survival
thinking.
Dr. Leah OH (36:28):
So address the survival thinking, not not only
within yourself, but within yourpeople and all stakeholders
that are involved, and you shiftinto solving problems in an
empathetic and compassionate wayYep, which then, in turn,
creates such a betterenvironment for those who are
(36:49):
looking to make purchases inthese areas and, I would imagine
, would lead to a lot morerepeat purchases than the oof.
I didn't feel good about this.
I felt pressured into this, youknow, crossed off the list for
anything going forward.
Ryan Chute (37:05):
Absolutely and equally as much for your
employees, for retention, ifyou're asking your employees to
betray themselves and theirvalue system and their belief
structures.
This is an age-old problem whenit comes to technicians in the
home service space.
You're saying, go out there andbe a salesperson and they're
like, yeah, no, I just want tofix the problem.
Dr. Leah OH (37:27):
Fix it, yep.
Ryan Chute (37:29):
And you're asking me to charge too much money, and
you're asking me to do this andasking me to do this and I don't
feel right about it.
So I'm going to go install newair conditioners in new home
builds and for commercial unionsinstead, and that's because
we've asked them to betraythemselves with devious practice
(37:50):
, not practice that serves thecustomer at the highest level.
Well, when we can reconcile thatserving a customer at the
highest level is selling, it'sselling because we've won, gone
through the process of properlyunderstanding their needs, the
environment's needs and thesystem's needs that we've only
(38:10):
presented the thing thatactually is the problem, not
trying to sell them a bunch ofnonsense they don't need.
Is there other things that theyneed eventually and will spend
money with us on?
Absolutely.
Do we need to escalate thatunnecessarily for the benefit of
us in sacrifice for thelong-term sale?
Absolutely not.
And when we reframe, helpingpeople win means closing the
(38:36):
sale, not just having aconversation about what needs to
be repaired and then show thema path where you're actually
serving the customer at a veryhigh level for the money that
we're asking for.
You know that value doesn'tmatter at all until what you
have to sell them is worth morethan the money that they're
going to give you, or not.
Dr. Leah OH (38:57):
Exactly.
Yeah, I really appreciate thatshift.
So, ryan, let's think aboutleadership.
I mean, we've certainly beenlooking at leadership through
our whole conversation, but inthis way, I'm just kind of
thinking about contemporaryexpectations from stakeholders
for small businesses inparticular, and thinking you
(39:20):
know, what have you seen or whatdo you recommend when
stakeholders are saying I wantyou to give back to the
community or I want you to leaninto eco-friendly approaches?
So you know what do you coachbusinesses in this regard now,
in terms of their kind ofresponsibility to lead in
different ways?
Ryan Chute (39:40):
Well, you know, I think it really boils down into
the old Adam Smith Keynesianmentality of economics, and
perpetual growth was anonsensical notion developed in
the late 1800s to serve nationsat the highest level and not to
(40:02):
serve the actual populace.
And while there is merit in someof that economic belief,
there's also a whole bunch ofabsolute nonsense, and I have a
fairly solid foundation ineconomics so I can say this with
a fair amount of confidence.
Ultimately, what it boils downto is let me give you a story
(40:24):
instead.
I have a client down in Floridaand she and I were talking about
one particular market inFlorida and she goes.
A year earlier we had beentalking about what's the most
you feel like you could pull outof this market each year, and
it was like 24, 25 million andwe could probably push it to 30
if we had to.
And a year later her and I aretalking at our strategy meeting
(40:47):
and she's like we've actuallydone an analysis of this
marketplace and we found thatthe diminishing returns for our
operational build, ourinfrastructure, was at $20
million, that we're actuallystarting to go backwards in our
profitability trying to chasethis extra $4 to $10 million.
So we're going to stick to $20.
(41:09):
And I go, I love what you justsaid and I go, that's that's.
I love what you just said and Ilove what she said because what
she recognizes if we got $24million one year because there
was some hurricane or somethinggreat.
We made a bunch of money butwe're not going to operationally
stretch ourselves beyond the$20 million mark.
And we'll just, we'll just, youknow, pull the pull the levers
(41:30):
to to do things that go extrahere and there, but we're also
not going to collapse under theweight of our business when we
end up only doing 18 in a softeryear.
So, ultimately, this is whattrue economics of a business
look like.
There is a threshold ofdiminishing returns.
Everyone talks aboutbreak-evens and profits and
(41:53):
top-line revenues, and that'sall great, but it can't be
excluding the conversation ofdiminishing returns.
And this holds true in themarketing budget you place and
the staff that you have, thetrucks that you order, the
inventory that you stock.
All of these things affectwhether or not you're going to
be successful.
Or not all of these thingsaffect whether or not you're
(42:14):
going to be successful or not,and successful at the true
definition of success.
Because once you have thatmodel down to a rinse and repeat
, guess what?
You can move into another townand get another piece of
property that does the same kindof profit level.
So it's not about not gettingmore money, it's about doing it
in the most profitable andefficient of ways for everyone's
(42:36):
benefit.
Because it's not just moneywe're talking about here, it's
the energy and the time.
If we don't have energy and timeinside the equation, we really
miss a huge part of what peopleactually care about.
Dr. Leah OH (42:52):
Exactly yeah, from every end right, because your
client will feel it, all of theemployees feel it, their
families feel it.
That ripple effect goes on andon, it's not sustainable.
Yes, exactly.
Ryan Chute (43:05):
And again, a perfect example of a blind spot, when
we're only factoring money intoan equation which is an
externally driven force, whichis a dopamine driven force.
What that means is that you'reexcluding the employee's energy
and their ability to rechargetheir battery, their time that
they have to spend with theirkids or their wife or not, and
(43:30):
all of that is a part of theequation, not just money.
Dr. Leah OH (43:33):
Exactly so, ryan, I have two final questions for
you, and these go hand in hand,and this is the way that we end
all episodes of theCommunicative Leader.
So I'd like you to think about,you know, whether it's a
challenge, a pragmatic tip.
You know advice in terms ofleadership, communication.
So first, for our titledleaders out there are folks who
(43:54):
are managers, directors,supervisors and then the second
part is you know employees ofall ranks across industries.
Ryan Chute (44:02):
Yeah, well, the very first thing that this question
makes me think about is thenotion of leadership.
Leadership is not about titleor authority.
Everybody is a leader, and whenwe start to take that
perspective of everyone is aleader, we can create a pipeline
of unicorns ordinary peoplethat do extraordinary things.
(44:25):
And the big challenge here isfiguring out what can we do to
keep it simple, and the first isto understand what are the true
core motivators of people andthen to play to those
motivations.
A great book to read is DanielPink's book Drive.
That really orients to that.
(44:46):
I believe that there's 10 majormotivators, both positive and
negative, and there is an equaland opposite demotivator that it
associates with those.
And until you have those 10right, then there's really no
point in trying to focus in onall of the other fluff that this
world throws at us at any giventime.
And then two regardless of whoyou are, regardless of what rank
(45:10):
or status you have or titlethat you have, filter everything
through how you're helpingpeople win in a trustworthy and
grateful manner, and you'realways going to have a litmus
test that's going to determinewhether or not you're walking
the virtuous path or not, andthat will allow for natural
empowerment, not just you, butyour wife, your kids, your
(45:33):
family, your friends, all of it.
Dr. Leah OH (45:36):
Exactly, and I really appreciate that advice
because I, time and time again,find that the best advice is the
simplest advice.
We're not weeding through atreaty of 33 things we need to
do in order to start it's.
Here are these three things.
Ryan Chute (45:57):
The brain is.
The brain is literally designedto cope not not to thrive, but
to cope.
And the way to thrive is tofind ways of keeping it so
simple that you can cope with it.
Dr. Leah OH (46:09):
Yes, yeah, yep, I appreciate that.
Well, ryan, it has been a truepleasure chatting with you today
.
I've learned a lot.
I've really enjoyed thisconversation, and I know that
our listeners will as well.
Ryan Chute (46:23):
Thank you so much.
This has been a real treat,thank you.
Dr. Leah OH (46:27):
All right, my friends.
That wraps up our conversationtoday.
Until next time, communicatewith intention and lead with
purpose.
I'm looking forward to chattingwith you again soon on the
Communicative Leader.
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