Transforming Bosses into Great Leaders; The Jim Salvucci Way

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This show is sponsored by dn ten Insurance Services, helping
businesses get the right insurance for all their insurance needs.
Visit dn ten dot io to get a quote dn
tn dot io and remember, when you buy an insurance
policy from Denten, you're giving back on a global scale.

(00:21):
Hello all, my entrepreneurs and business leaders, and welcome to
the Michael Esposito Show, where I interview titans of industry
in order to inform, educate, and inspire you to be great.
My guest today has a career spanning over thirty years,
much of which was as a college administrator. His goal

(00:42):
was always to help set higher education and its institutions
on a more successful path. He helped leaders at every
level to become their best selves and to cultivate the
best in others by refocusing on the organization's mission being
the increased need for this kind of specialized thinking and

(01:03):
support in the corporate world. He moved into the corporate
arena where he offers his experience and commitment to leaders
and emerging leaders in every field that values its mission.
Please welcome founder and President of Guidance for Greatness, Doctor

(01:23):
Jim sal Vucci. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, thanks, for having Michael, this is great.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
I added the doctor in front of your name because
I saw on your website that your PhD. And I
was like, well, that's pretty cool. I want to put
that in there.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
I've been leaning into that a little more lately, so.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yeah, I think it's I mean, it's it's pretty cool, right,
I mean you you had to work pretty hard to
get there.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Actually, we were just talking off Mike about your college
experience and you know, between Bard College and Queen's College,
and then you did one in Toronto. I think, oh,
that's where you did your PhD. So that's interesting. And
we were just talking about how Queen's College. I'm from
Queen's My parents are both Queen's graduate Queen's College graduates.

(02:06):
And actually I just remembered my brother is also a
Queen's College graduate. Okay, And if I want to try
to associate myself even closer to Queen's College, my sister
and I. You might remember there was at Queen's College.
Right across the street, there's a place called Pomanac.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Do you remember?

Speaker 1 (02:23):
Remember you don't remember Pomenak, So right across the street,
Pomanac is a whole development there and my sister and I.
My brother's nine years younger, so he wasn't a part
of this one. My sister and I used to attend
classes there. They offered free classes ballet it was ballet classes,
karate classes, gymnastic classes, and then kind of like an
after school program where you would like there was like

(02:45):
a low pool hall and older people would watch us.
I say that because at the time we thought that
there were like adults, but really they were probably like
eighteen year old right right watching us. But so I
was right across the street from Queen's College and I
would go there with my five would take my sister
and I there when we had our candy sales and
we would go there and sell all of our candy
up at Queen's College.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah, you would clean up there.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
But since we're on that topic, yeah, the PhD and
college and education, and we're going to get into your
background and education and the schools you founded and all
the different things that are really cool in that space
and how it translates into your coaching and your public speaking,
your keynoteer, all these different things. We're gonna get into
all of that. But like I said, while we're on
the topic, of PhDs. I'd love to learn more about

(03:31):
about that journey.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah, well, it wasn't my first career, as these things
often go. So I went to Bard College, which is
we're in Poughkeepsie now, it's actually right up the river
a little bit.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Yeah. Is Bart and Poughkeepsie a red Hook? I thought
it is.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
It is next to red Hook. It's the town of
Anadel and Hudson, which I believe Bard is the town
about Okay, and yeah, and that was quite an experienced.
Bart is a very very unique place right even to
this day, in a lot of different ways. And then
I left there. I did a number of things, and
at some point I actually started building sets professionally outside

(04:10):
of Philadelphia. Philadelphia originally and uh so I was. I
worked in a theater in Philly, and then outside of Philly.
I did that for a little while, and then my
wife got a job. She went to law school, Temple
law school. In one summer, she graduated law school, took

(04:30):
the bar, got married, and moved all within you know,
just a few months. And uh so we moved up
to Queens because she was going to be working as
a legal aid attorney at Public Defender in Manhattan and
Queens was affordable. Moved to Bridgewood, Queens, and I was
kicking around for a little while trying to figure out

(04:52):
I was going to do. Got a job as a
writing tutor at LaGuardia Community College, which is in Queen's
Great Community College, and from there I decided, well, you know,
I love I was an English major. It's like, you know,
I really want to go on academia. So I went
to Queen's College, got my master's and while I was
doing that, they let me teach courses at LaGuardia. So
my first teaching experience was at LaGuardia. So, just to

(05:15):
sum it up, I lived in Queens, I worked in
Queens at laguardi and I went to school at Queens College,
which meant I took a lot of buses. Yes, I
took buses to the bus you know.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
Right, Yeah, I mean I grew up in Queens and
similar to you, I was. So I moved up here
to the Hudson Valley when I went to college, when
I went to Maris College. But up until that point
I used to take the train and the bus to school.
And as we know about the MTA, the buses are
never on time, and so you're either you either just

(05:47):
missed the bus that you were planning to get, or
you're waiting there for an hour and probably walking to
the next bus stop in order to try to just
get there a little faster, or maybe to your transfer
or something like that. But I I somewhat miss like
I justber. I'll say this when you're in when you're
taking public transportation, which some of our listeners do, take

(06:08):
public transportation, you really start appreciating owning a car and
being able to just get in and go where you
want to go when you want to get there. Because
I remember being a teenager or a pre teenager, I
guess like before I had my license, and I would
stare at any car that drove by, any car that
I mean the hooptiest of the hoopdies like hubcaps falling off,

(06:30):
grilled held together by duct tape, and I would look
at that car and I'd go, I would take that car.
I would take that car if I don't have to
take another bus, if I don't have to chase another bus,
because I literally I'm not known for my timeliness. So
I remember one morning I was in summer school and
I had just missed the bus. I saw it going

(06:52):
by me. It was on Hillside Avenue and Queens You
might know Hillside Avenue. That's a big one on Hillside Avenue.
I see it. I'm on on the other side of
the avenue. I see it at the stop and it's
going and I'm running towards it because I'm like, I
could probably just get his attention and he will just
wait for me. Yeah, they're not waiting for you. So
I get like right to the back of it, right
And this is like remember when Superman is chasing the

(07:13):
train and Superman won Do you remember that Clark Kent
is chasing the train. He was like in high school.
That was what I was. I felt like I got
my backpack on and him and I'm just chugging along.
I chased that bus, I gotta say, because I knew
I was like at the light, I'll catch up. I
would catch up. I would get so close to it
at the light, and then it would stop at a
bus up and get so close to it. I chased
that bus for probably a good four or five blocks,

(07:35):
and I finally caught that bus. I got on that bus.
I swear people were cheering for me because they stay
would see me like catch up to it, and I'd.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
Be like, oh, stop the bus, stop the bus.

Speaker 1 (07:45):
So yeah, track coach, No, I was. I was in
really good shape at the time. I was actually a swimmer.
I was a swimmer, so I was in good I
had good cardio and shape at the time. Well, yeah,
swim up to it. I don't know if I would
have been able to swim that much, but no, because
the like I said, the traffic lights and the bus

(08:05):
stops are what helped me stay kind of like catch
up and teetering back and finally catch that bus van.
I never forget that, that moment of catching catching that
bus and public transportation. But so then you you got
your master's there at Queen's College, which is a great
college in Queen's I mean in what is it the

(08:26):
cunity system, right, the counity system. And then what brought
you to Toronto?

Speaker 2 (08:31):
Then I got into the University of Toronto. They threw
a lot of money at me. It's an unbelievable school,
an incredible English program, on the top literature programs you
can get into, and they had a great library. So yeah,
it was it was a no brainer.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
When you say they threw a lot of money at
you're talking about scholarship, I'm assimming, right, yeah, So talk
to us a little bit about that, so you because
I think so often we hear about scholarships coming out
of high school and to college. Yeah, I don't know
how often we hear about people getting scholarships for master's
programs or for PhDs and how to maybe get into

(09:09):
that because of course, you know, if you're listening right
now and you're looking to elevate and go through some
sort of educational program, whether it's a master's program or
a PhD program, this will definitely be helpful to you.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah. I mean, you know, far outside my area of expertise,
but usually it's PhD programs, not much master's programs, And
it really depends on the school. The type of program.
You know, I was going to English is very academic, okay, right,
So when there's academic programs like that, they try to
attract the best people and so they give them money

(09:44):
to keep them there, and the job market's usually abysmal,
So a lot of people even do like post docs
and they continue to get paid either by that school
or another school after they get their doctorate. And before
they get like a real job. It's pre complicated, but
it really can vary from school to school, program to program,
but it's worth looking into most master's programs, not really.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
Not really, Okay, Oh I'm glad you said that. I
would say for the master's programs. The one that I
am aware of is a lot of jobs. A lot
of companies will offer some sort of compensation if you
take a master's program or something like that, so then
you get your PhD. So you know, I want to
kind of just take a step back, actually because I'm

(10:29):
a little I want some clarity in your bio here.
I understood that you were building sets at eighteen. Oh yeah,
yeah right, but then you also talked about being married.
So did you get married young?

Speaker 2 (10:40):
Is that a little both? So I I not that deal,
So I yeah, bring us back. I'm going to give
you a story. I should never tell anybody this story,
all right. So when I was what maybe I was
a sophomore in high school. Now, I was like a year.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
Behind, like and this is in Philadelphia, now.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
Yeah, just outside of Philadelphia, Delaware County. I was young
for my class, so everybody's older than me, and I
was hanging on some friends and we found some what's
that called alcohol? And we drank that and naturally and
I and I wrote, I remember we were I used
to travel a lot. I used to ride my bike

(11:17):
and walk. My high school was about two miles away.
I walked every day and I rode my bike home
and I remember its fall. And the reason I remember
this is because I kept like my falling off my
bike and I and the only thing I could do
is I try to land in the leaves. Got home,
walked into Wow, you were drunk, oh, I was, and

(11:38):
walked in the house. And normally, if I were in
a situation where I did not want to encounter my parents,
I would turn right and head to my bedroom. But
I made a mistake and I got confused and turned
left and sat down on the couch next to my mother,
and then promptly fell off the couch. And my mother
said to me, all upset. Were you taking pills? And

(12:00):
I said yes, And I said, wait, no, I wasn't.
I wasn't, And so so I got in a lot
of trouble, grounded for a while, and all this other stuff.
Then my parents said to me, you were not involved
in anything in high school. You need to get involved
in something, you know. I wasn't an athlete, you know,
so you don't worry about but you need to get

(12:21):
some club something. And I said, well, I've always been
kind of interested in the stage crew. So I got
involved in the stage crew. And then soon thereafter I
was made like the co director with another kid that
tool us ran the stage crew. Leadership has always been
I always get thrown even as a little kid, always
got thrust in a leadership right. So I was, you know,

(12:42):
being the head of stage crew means and this is
no exaggeration, you are the king of the nerves. It's amazing.
But I went to a Catholic boys high school and
the girls high school is right next door. And I
had a girlfriend and I like to see her more often.

(13:03):
So I integrated the stage their stage crew into r
so they were we actually girls and building sets. It
was I was way ahead of my time. And then
I started volunteering at a program in the summer that
was like a summer stock theater, like a community theater
that mostly had younger people in it, called Summer Stage.

(13:24):
And I did that in the summer, and then finally
they hired me to be their master carpenter when I
was in college and I was building sets in college too,
has my work study job. And then I became the
technical director there at eighteen, so I was the boss.
So when you're a technical director who run everything technically,
So at eighteen, I was thrust into that position, yet

(13:46):
another leadership position. And actually that's where I met my
wife when I was I was nineteen years old when
I met my wife and she came in to volunteer.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
So you had broken up with the girlfriend.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
Oh yeah, yeah, and and yeah and so yeah, I
met my wife and we weren't married yet, of course,
and we and you know, we hung out there for
a while and we decided to stay together. So you know,
so I did get married fairly young. I was like
twenty four, okay, yeah, and then I went away from
theater for a while and then decided to get back

(14:20):
into it professionally.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Ah, okay, that this is this is making a little
more sense. So so we both share it in common.
Not liking public transportation actually, oh you do like it, yes, okay, I.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
Don't like cars. I'm the opposite.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
Yeah, interesting, I think. Okay, So here's what I'll say
in terms of what I just what I what I
just stated there is I like public transportation for what
it offers, right. It's it's very valuable, gets traffic off
the road, gets people to and front places, very inexpensively wonderful, wonderful, Right,
But I don't like it because a lot of the
times you have to go out of your way to

(14:55):
get to it, which then you do need cars too,
like you need to take a cab to get to
the right or it doesn't run on time and it
delays you, or it takes longer. And so that's the
part that I have that problem with it. But otherwise, yes,
I probably understand what you're saying to me to liking it.
And the other thing is I also went to an
all boys Catholic high school. My story is reversed from

(15:18):
yours in that when I was drinking in high school,
I ended up getting kicked out. So I did something
similar to you in that I wasn't drinking in high school.
It was more of like I did something similar in
that I brought the alcohol to high school to hang
out with my to have a little celebration at lunchtime
with my friends. It was now I have to kind
of clarify the story here right for all of our listeners,

(15:40):
because now this just sounds like I'm a problem here.
What it was was that my parents never hid alcohol
from us in the house, so I had access to it.
It was never an issue. I never had an issue
with alcohol. It wasn't something I cared to try to
have or not have. If I wanted to have a
drink at a family party in my teenage years, like
I could have one. It wasn't a problem for me,

(16:02):
whereas I think many kids that I knew it was like,
you know, going to the keg was the only time
they could ever have an alcoholic beverage. And I remember
I was sitting at the cafeteria all boys Catholic High
School in Queen's Archbishop Maloy, and some of those guys
were talking and are just like, it'd be so cool
if we could have a drink at lunch, and I

(16:23):
was like, I'll bring it. And what I said, I'll
bring it. Now Again, I am a very defiant person,
and I'm like anything to try to figure out how
I could bend the rules or break the rules and
get away with it was something that I enjoyed doing.
It was just more of like I got the thrill
out of knowing that I can do something like that.
It was more that than it was to bring the

(16:44):
alcohol to school, right, So anyway, so I did. I
brought rum and coke to school the next day, and
my friends feasted, right Like. I poured out the running
coke to all the guys and everything that everybodys having
a rub and coke. And unfortunately, because of my hoarding,
I had put it all in this like this really

(17:05):
cool Arizona sports bottle. And I'm calling it hoarding because
I seriously should have just thrown this thing out. It
was like I bought it for two dollars with the
Arizona iced tea in it and drank it, washed it
and then put a rub and coke in it, and
then I didn't throw it out. So anyway, so it's
a Catholic school and as you know, it's very strict rules.
So I'm going to my locker and I have this

(17:26):
Arizona bottle with a little bit of rum and coke
left in it because I didn't care to drink. It's
like that wasn't you know the point to me was
just to bring it. So I have it and one
of the guys comes up. He's like, hey, you still
have any of that? I said, yeah, I finish it.
I said I don't want it. So he starts drinking it.
He drinks it, and then he gives it. He hands
it back to me, and one of the tas is
walking through the hallway. He says, no drinking in the hallway.

(17:49):
And somebody else who I'll never forget him. I don't
want to even say his name, Well, it doesn't matter,
right because all he did was wrap me out, Mike Farina.
I'll never forget his name, Mike Farina, and get out
of here, Mike Farina. But you know, but he had
no idea. All he had was a locker near me.
He had no idea. We weren't like friends where we

(18:09):
hung out in the cafeteria at all. He just we
just had lockers near each other. So he had no
idea what was going on. And he just says, yeah,
I don't drink any alcohol in the hallway something like that,
and he as a joke, as a total joke. No, no, no,
not at all. It's just bad humorist. And he said that,
and the TA had to ask me to smell my bottle,

(18:32):
and I was like, I said, come on, like, there's
nothing in here, and he goes. He goes, let me
smell it, and you know, long story short, which we're
already passed the long story part. So I don't know
why I said that part right, Yep, they smelled and
they're like, and I remember telling this is what I
told the dean. You're gonna love this because you're an academic, right,
you were a dean, Right, you're gonna love this. So
the dean pulls me in and looking back at this,

(18:56):
I don't see how I thought this was going to
get me out of trouble, said, I.

Speaker 3 (19:01):
Said, but I didn't drink any I said, you could
do a breathalyzer on me. He goes, but Michael, you
brought rum and coke to school and you gave it
to other underage guys.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
I go, yeah, but I didn't drink it.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
Thinking this is going to get me out of.

Speaker 1 (19:20):
Trouble, and it did not. I got immediately expelled. Here's
my favorite part, which is I'm gonna throw a question
at you at this one, and then we're going to
get back to the learning people. I promise, I promise
we can get back to the learning. But Jim and
I are having a little fun here going back in
the day with our booze stories.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
I suppose very different outcomes, but very moral of my
story is I have a thirty four year happy marriage.

Speaker 1 (19:44):
Right out of mind, right moral of my stories. I
learned how to get kicked out of a school. But I,
you know, I believe everything happens for reason. So so
here's my question for you about from a dean's perspective.
So I get kicked out of school, right, I get expelled.
My life is in the gutter. I'm junior year in
high school. I'm like, you know, no college is going
to take me. Now. My life is at the end.
My parents are devastated. My mother, by the way, is

(20:05):
also she's, by the way, thirty years retired from New
York City Board of Ed. So she's embarrassed.

Speaker 2 (20:10):
Right.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
My father's you know, professional, Also, everybody's embarrassed in my family.
It's like, don't tell anybody about this, Michael. It was like,
this is the secret, Like nobody's going to know about this.
A week later, we get a call. My father goes,
mister Lembo's on the phone, Michael, that's my old dean
and I said, okay, what do you want for me?

Speaker 3 (20:28):
Like?

Speaker 1 (20:28):
Kicked me out? Am I getting back in?

Speaker 2 (20:30):
Right?

Speaker 4 (20:30):
Like?

Speaker 1 (20:31):
Actually, that's exactly what I thought. So, hey, Michael, you know,
how's it going. I'm like it's not going well, mister Lembo.
I'm like, I'm like, can I get back in? And
he goes, no, nigga, He goes, what I want to
know is you said that you brought the alcohol to school.
Who were the other people that you're kidding? Swear to god?
Who are the other people that drank from it?

Speaker 2 (20:47):
And you said that guy Farina right?

Speaker 1 (20:50):
And I said, I said, why would I tell you this?
I said, if I tell you, well, we all be
Will I be allowed back into school? And are you
going to expel them? And he was like, well, no,
you're not gonna be allowed back in school, and yeah,
they're probably going to be expelled because they were drinking
in school. And then he starts trying to throw some
names out to me of like oh I heard this
and this person said this about you, and he was

(21:11):
playing this game with me, and I just remember thinking
why would I, Like, i'ma be honest here, one hundred
percent was ready to throw people under the bus one
hundred percent. I'm gonna be totally honest here. My life was.
I was devastated. My life was at the end. My
parents were embarrassed. Everything was was, you know, and I'm
a junior year in high school. I'm ready to throw

(21:33):
people under a bus. Sure, But I asked a dean,
and this is where I'm interested in your thoughts on this.
I said, if I tell you, would I get back
in And he just said no, And I was like,
we're done here, Like you could have.

Speaker 2 (21:48):
Smite at your enemies at that point, though you realize.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
It could have smited a lot of people, right, I mean, right?

Speaker 3 (21:55):
What?

Speaker 2 (21:55):
Look? I mean, you know, I was. I was not.
I didn't get grown out, but I almost did because
I got in a big fight by senior year, but
it was off campus. And then somebody else trashed the
same kid's locker, I mean like squirted some sort of
ink into it or something, and they called me in,

(22:17):
accusing me of doing this. Naturally enough, I actually knew
a couple of people who did it, but I wasn't
sure and I saw and I wasn't gonna wrap them out,
but they were asking me to wrap them out, and
and and they said. And the dean a students said
to me, look me in the eye and said to me, well,
I can tell you're not You're a straight shooter. You're
not gonna you know, you'll get a fight, but you're

(22:38):
not going to do this kind of thing. But I
think you know who it is. So I'm gonna I'm
gonna hold you responsible until we find out who it was.
And I thought to myself, you have not met my father.
He's a union guy. He's gonna come in here and
knock your head off, Like, seriously, you're gonna make me

(23:00):
pay the price for something. You know you just admitted
to me. You know I didn't know. Yeah, But fortunately
I went out. I went to one of the kids.
I said, here's the deal. I'm not going to rat
you out, but here's the deal, right, I said, you
do whatever you want. And to his credit, you wouldn't
turn himself in.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
Yeah, And I got off the hook. But it was
but I came very close to being a lot of draw.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
Yeah. Catholic School is a different game, man, But so
so I want to go now to because to change
gears here. You know, we we we we have a
nice little uh some commonalities here, this is this is
so so nice. It's when when these kind of things
kind of get uncovered, of like of like, look at
all the commonalities we have, public transportation, Catholic school, alcohol.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
I haven't told these stories in years, and you know
I'm telling them on a podcast.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
I know I know well and same here. But you know,
I think that the good and we're going to get
to leadership in this because I have a question for
you in terms of that. But I think what's important
for for all of you listening right now and for
our conversation is what to take from this, right, is
that we can make mistakes in our past, and we're
going to continue to make mistakes. We're going to go

(24:07):
out and make mistakes today, tomorrow, and the next ten, twenty, thirty,
fifty years from now.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
Right, it's an imperative, right, But.

Speaker 1 (24:15):
What did you learn from the mistake? How did you
move on from the mistake? Is what's important. And we're
two professionals sitting across from each other right now, who
started our own business, who left careers, started our own businesses,
And you're in Master Networks. You're part of an association
where you're well respected, asked to be a presenter. I
was brought in to be a presenter where we're well

(24:37):
respected professionals today, And I think that that goes to
show that we can make mistakes. But how did we
learn from it and how did we move beyond it?
How did we take our mistakes? Be true to our
mistakes as well, because we're both sharing, we're both being
vulnerable now, we're both being truthful. This is a mistake
that we made, that I made and being and owning

(24:57):
it right, owning this mistake, realizing, hey, like I said,
I was ready to throw them under the bus, realizing
that these aren't the right actions in my life. How
do I change them? And it doesn't happen right away
Because for my journey, which you know, i'd love to
hear yours too, it didn't happen right away. It took
me many years. It took me a marriage to teach

(25:18):
me that I needed to change. And that's I didn't
get married to my wife un till I was thirty one.
And it wasn't until I got married. And she is
just a brilliant woman. She's a teacher, special ed teacher,
and I think that's you know, That's what's changed everything
because she knows how to psychologically work with me of
like plant the seed of change and like six months
later she's noticing, Ah, it's working, and she gives it

(25:41):
that time to change, and so so much has happened
from there. You were nineteen years old and you were
leading major groups in the theater.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
I wouldn't say major, but it was, yeah, I was
in charge.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
Well, the reason why I put the word major in
there is I'm just thinking I'm digging back of those days,
and it's got to be anywhere from ten to thirty
kids right in your group in your theater group.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
In the theater. No, I mean it was. It was
a lot more not and it was just kids. It
was adults too.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
Right, And so that's my point. So you have a
lot of people that you're leading right at nineteen years old.
I'm also thinking about personalities in all of this. You
have egos that you're managing, You have you have is
this is kind of like teen years So not just egos,
but this is where gossip and clicks and groups are.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
Don't forget the drama.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
That's the point. The drama that comes. Well, yeah, that too,
the right, but the drama that comes from all of
that that you're managing. And so what I'm interested in
as you look back with what you have right now
in terms of your leadership capabilities and knowledge and all
the years experience, When you look back at nineteen year
old gym as a leader, what do you see as

(26:54):
some of the qualities that you had or that you
had to learn in those moments.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
Yeah, I actually I've been thinking about this a lot.
I will I will tell you my biggest mistake is
I didn't go back the following summer when I was
twenty to do the same job because I realized that
summer the greatest claim the fame of Summer Stage in
Upper Darby, Pennsylvania was in Summer Stage that year and
I was Tina Fay. Oh wow, so I missed her

(27:21):
by a year. Wow. I looked this up because she
was like a kid then she's a little younger mayor.
We had a bunch of kids who volunteered, and I
thought when she was one of those kids, but she wasn't. Now,
but it so recently I wrote. So, I have a
newsletter and podcast, and basically I write this newsletter every
week and I read it because some people like to
hear my voice, especially Met and the uh it. So

(27:48):
I've been thinking a lot about that journey. I was
a leader from like in boy Scouts. I was pushed
into a top Boy Scout troop leadership position when I
was like a tenderfoot and like twelve years old or something,
you know, just bizarre. And so I've always had this

(28:08):
kind of thrust upon me and I was pretty good
at it. I was a faculty leader when I was
a faculty member. I was running our faculty governance system.
I was asked to lead our reaccreditation every ten years.
You have to get reaccredited. I was put in charge
of that, which was all good, and I could do that.
I did well, you know, and but I was My

(28:29):
leadership was all intuitive, right. My dad was a leader.
He was a union leader. He had his union local,
you know. So I had that example sort of you know,
he didn't talk about leadership, but I just had that example.
But he you know, but I just had this sort
of gut leadership I call it, right, like you just

(28:49):
know how to lead, you know how. They say some
people are born leaders. I don't think that's true, but
I think some people are more intuitive leaders than others.
Right wherever that comes from, you learn leadership. It's not
all got, but it's you know, a lot of it
was gut. And when I became a dean, that's when
I realized that I really had to step it up right.

(29:11):
The stakes went a lot higher. You know. Now I
have a bunch of people work for me. They're all professors,
and it's wow, this is a big deal. So I
was in. What happened was I was I was a
faculty leader and there's a school outside of Baltimore you
never heard of, and there was a we were we'd
been a college and we became a university. In fact,
I was in charge of creating I was put in

(29:32):
charge of creating all the schools, which I did that.
The president said to me, just take a few of
your your fellow faculty members and just dive divide up
the university into these schools. And I thought, that is
the stupidest idea I ever heard of my life. It's like, yes,
I could do that in five minutes, but you know,

(29:53):
they'll be hell to pay forever after, you know. And
so what I did was I was in charge of
our faculty governance system. Because university's faculty have a lot
of power, and so I was the happened to be
the chair that year. And so what I did was
I empowered the faculty Council to be a committee of
the whole to deal with this issue. And then we
held for like like a whole semester. We held weekly

(30:16):
meetings in the evening, so you had the faculty Council there,
which is a representative group, and we invited the entire campus.
Anybody could come, and we publicized this. So faculty were there,
administrators were there at all levels, and one time there
were even students there and they were you know, totally
and we were just asking people's opinions and we just

(30:37):
worked it out slowly. So by the time we did it,
you know, by the time we divid everything up, everybody
was on board. We had buy in, right because I
know if we just if I just did it, yeah,
it would have gotten done, you know. And I always
resent that that that's that statement that leaders get things done. Well,
everyone gets things done, you know, there's nothingular about that.

(31:01):
But it isn't the getting done that makes you a leader.
It's how you do it, it's why you do it right,
it's what you do. It's not just getting stuff done.
So then they said to me, okay, well we want
you to be the school, the dean of the school.
You manage and social sciences, which you've surmised did not exist, right,
So I was the founding dean and okay, great, that

(31:23):
was easy, right. I had fifteen disciplines. I think six
or seven departments, I can't remember. You know, it's a lot.
But it's just a matter of putting this with that's
just nuts and bolts, like this goes with that, and
that goes with this. That's easy. But what's hard was
getting it up and running and keeping it running right.
That requires leadership, right, And so this is what I'm realizing,

(31:44):
mm all, my leadership to date, to date is not
not cutting it here. This is not going to work.
I've got good instincts, but I need to learn a
lot more. I can get a sculling, but how am
I going to sustain this? And I look to the
president of the school, the provos to every worded to
as a dean, and they were bosses. And I make

(32:04):
a very strict distinction between bosses and leaders.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
Yeah, I can go on and on it.

Speaker 1 (32:11):
We'll talk about that please.

Speaker 2 (32:14):
And so they were bosses. They were not good model
role models. I wasn't getting any mentoring to speak of,
no guidance, no models. I really hadn't had very many
really good bosses in my life in any level. You know,
a couple of small exceptions. And I looked at my peers,
my fellow deans, and they were kind of flailing around wildly,

(32:34):
and I sort of imitated them for a while. You
know how you know what you're doing, so you kind
of go, well, they look like they didn't know what
they're doing, and you follow them. And no, no, no,
they were you know, I found myself micromanaging and becoming
a perfectionist and a workaholic and all these things I
abhorred and I thought, this is this is not me.
And I had a break one day. And what happened

(32:56):
was there was a It was my second semester as
a dean, and we had this department called Human Services,
and Human Service had outside advisory committee. This is all
sounds like a lot inside baseball. Basically, these are people
who were worked in the human services field and we
would invite them in and they would advise us in
the curriculum, and it was mostly to keep up relationships

(33:16):
so they can get internships. And so we'd bring the
campus like once a semester, and so we have in
this room, we have a little continental breakfast, a little
chit chat. And my role there is purely ceremonial. There's
a department chair, you know, and I'm just there in
my suit. I used to wear suits with French cuffs
and oil. Yeah, that's a pretty mady dresser. And we'd

(33:39):
sit down beginning of the meeting. The department chair says, oh,
our dean wants to say something, and I welcome everybody,
blah blah blah blah blah. And my role is to
get out of there. So because it's a department chairs thing,
it's not my thing, you know. And I said, so,
you know, and I'm sorry I have to leave you.
I'd love to stay, but I have to go put
out a fire.

Speaker 4 (33:58):
And everybody in the room, oh yeah, yeah put that fire, like,
oh yeah, I know you're talking about. Yeah, we have
it hard too, Yeah, we're all busy, yeah yeah yeah.
And I walk out like I'm putting out a fire
and I'm walking across campus go to my office, and
I'm thinking, Okay, I gotta go put out this fire.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
What's that fire? I had to make a phone call.
This is the fire I'm going to put out.

Speaker 1 (34:19):
That's what it was. Call about anything.

Speaker 2 (34:21):
No, it was nothing. It wasn't even important phone call.

Speaker 1 (34:23):
That you had to make as though, right, And.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
I realized that everyone around me talk like that everything
was a crisis all the time. Everything was up and
I and I and it just hit me, like when
everything's a crisis, nothing's a crisis. Right. Your priorities are
all flat. It doesn't matter whether they're high or low.
Everything's the same level. Right. If you're everything's like you know,
I mean, anybody you asked like, how you doing, Oh,
oh you know, I'm real busy today. Oh, you know,
sucking wind? Whatever they say. You know, they always had

(34:48):
these things. One on one Dean always said, oh, I'm ducky.
She would say, you know, very sarcasticly, because she's so busy.
And I realized, this is nonsense. This is nonsense. There's
very few crises in higher ed, especially on the academic
side and student affair, sure, because you get your juvenile
delinquent's like you drinking, you know, like I only brought

(35:08):
it for everybody else. You brought for everyone else. You're dealing.
So but on the on the academic side, rarely anything
comes up with you really like it's so urgent it's
a crisis. And I thought, oh my god, I've been
lying to myself and everyone else. And then I realized
all my people were talking the same way, all my
department chairs and whatnot, and so I banned the word crisis.

(35:29):
I said, unless unless you come, then be with an
actual crisis. I don't want to hear the word crisis.
And so we you know, we worked on that. But
that's when I realized that I need to become a
real leader, and so I started studying leadership. I started
reading books, I started going to trainings, talked to people
about leadership, meeting some people. I didn't really have models,

(35:52):
like I said, So it wasn't like I gain anything
from campus. Our president, you had a leadership program that
he put me in on campus that was, well, this
shows you how stupid it was. We use Jim Collins
Good the Great, which is fine, it's a good book, right,
And every month we'd meet together and we'd read a
chapter and talk about it. And the person who led

(36:12):
each one of those those sessions changed from month to month,
and they were all his vice presidents because he had
so many. He had won for every chapter, and there's
a lot of chapters, right, which is certain itself. And
he and some of these people like because because they
have their vice president, they're a leader. I can assure you.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
This was not the case, right, I mean, and you're
just talking about how you're in it. You're wanting to
change because the people around you are part of the issue,
and you're being taught or led by the people around you.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
Right. So I needed help, and there was no cause
to get help, and I had to go find it.
So I started treating I didn't think of it in
terms in these terms of the time, but I started
treating leadership like a discipline. Right. My first disci one
was English. I started thinking of leadership as something to
be studied and mastered. And I made a lot of mistakes.

(37:02):
You asked about mistakes before. I made a lot of mistakes,
and I learned from my mistakes. But I also discovered
it's very important to learn from other people's mistakes as well. Right.
I looked at my bosses. I looked at my fellow deans,
and frankly, they weren't very good. With a couple exceptions, right,
they weren't very good, and so I learned from them

(37:23):
what not to do. I call that learning from the
negative paradigm, right, the idea that it isn't just your
own mistakes. Learn. You know, if you see something that's
not going well, think about why not, and it's usually
not do the opposite. That's a trap people fall into.
Oh they're going left, I need to go right. No, no, no,
you might need to go straight, or just sit still,
or go backwards, or maybe wait a little while then

(37:45):
go left. Whatever. But don't do it their way. Don't
just replicate what you say. And that's what people do
all the time. I think that's why there's so many
bad bosses in the world, because people just replicate their
bad bosses behavior. Simon Sinek says, the boss you wish
you had, right, I would go further. Don't be the
boss you wish you didn't have, right. I mean, it's

(38:07):
it's both sides of that thing. You've got to think
about what you don't do. A lot of leadership advice
is about what to do. I give a lot of
advice on what not to do. A lot of my
podcast is about what you don't do right. In fact,
most of it is it's it's it's you know, don't

(38:27):
do these things because these are bad behaviors. And so
it's not just about making the right choices in terms
of what you're going to do, deciding not to do
the bad stuff, because some people they do all this
stuff over here and it looks really good. But you know,
so on the left hand they're doing great. On the
right hand, they're still doing bad, you know, because it's
just a gimmick.

Speaker 1 (38:47):
Yeah, So I like, I like this approach of what
not to do, and it's it's interesting. There's there's two
things that come to mind with what you're talking about here, uh.
One one of which I'm gonna I'm going to go
back to something that you said originally, which I thought
was a really great thing to do. So to not complicate,
not to confuse the two is what I'm going to

(39:09):
say here is on one of the things that you
said as a leader is when forming this new school,
you brought everyone in and by doing that, it became
part of something that they built and they were more
bought in. And I follow someone Brennan Burchard. I don't
know if you're familiar with him and his work. He

(39:29):
says people fight for what they create, and it's so true.
When you let someone create something, they're more apt to
fight for it. It just makes sense, right, It's like,
I created this, Why wouldn't I fight for it? It's got
my input in it. So I think that that's a
really great example of good leadership is as a leader,

(39:50):
rather than telling your students, your mentees, your vice principles,
your whoever you're managing, whoever you're leading, telling them what
to do, asking them questions, asking them questions as to
what do you think we should do? What should we do?
What are your thoughts on this topic? How do you

(40:12):
think is a better way to open a sale? You know,
asking them an open ended question to get them to
respond is going to have so much more buy in.
I see it with so I coach basketball my daughter's
basketball team, third graders, third and fourth graders, and I
see it with them when because this is you know,
this is always an ongoing progress work for us. Right

(40:35):
when I tell them to do something, I get a
lot of pushback. And a pushback could be oh do
we have to do that, or oh can we do
it this way? Or whatever it is. But I get
pushback when I ask them, hey, girls, which drill do
you want to do? And I say, you know, here's one,
here's two, here's three, And I give them the option

(40:57):
of which drill because there has to be some sort
of structure. They're all in when they pick that drill.
It's like they're all in.

Speaker 2 (41:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:04):
So it's it's incredible, you see it right away with
little kids. So I think that that's a really great
example of what to do as a leader. I think
that that's a really really great example that you bring
up there.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
And that's a teacher's trick too. By the way, go
ahead to offer people options. Right if you say to somebody,
I want you to you know, as an Englis presser,
you have to sign the you know, you have to
write on this topic. If I say you have to
write on this topic, nothing but pushback. But if I say,
choose one of these three, right, no problem.

Speaker 1 (41:30):
No problem.

Speaker 2 (41:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:31):
And I also think it speaks to when you say
three or two or more two to three is probably
good because otherwise people get hung hung up on so
many choices. I think it speaks to their different pleasures, right, Like,
what is it like maybe in those writing you have
one that's a fiction, ones that's a nonfiction, one that's
a fantasy. It's like, okay, you know one of those
three I'm going to relate with. One of those three

(41:54):
is going to speak to me and say, oh, I
want to talk fantasy, or I want to talk nonfiction,
or I want to talk fiction, which I know non
fit and fantasy are a little bit of the same.
But we're speaking off the cuff here. I want to
go now to what you were just talking about, which
is what not to do. And again I'm reminded of
Brennan's teaching here of there is so much wisdom out
in the world and to learn from it. Right, So

(42:16):
we just talked about learning from the wisdom of letting
people fight for what they create, but now also the
wisdom of the mistakes that they make. And I'm very
interested because you really go deep into this in your
boss versus leader, and I know that there's a lot
of what not to do when we talk about bosses,
and I think you spoke a little bit about this

(42:37):
just now in terms of your example and your story there.
But I'd love to kind of go back to this
bosses versus leader idea that you have.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
Yeah, so the way I always put it, because it's
so clear, and tell me if you disagree. There are
very few bosses in the world who were actual leaders
in any real sense from their title, right, And they
are even fewer who are great leaders. And yet at

(43:06):
the same time, there are very many leaders who are
not bosses, including great ones and will never be a boss.
What do those two words have to do with one another? Nothing?
So I make a strict dot com between boss's leader.
You can't be a boss and be a leader. You
can be a manager or an executive or a director

(43:26):
and have that title and be a leader you must be.
And you can be a leader without any of those titles.
Bosses that's a title, you know. So these two words
have nothing to do with each other, and yet we've
tangled them up together and you constantly hear about, oh,
she's the leader of the organization. You know, she's the CEO. Well,

(43:46):
she's the CEO, But is she the leader of the organization?
That remains to be seen. That's a whole different question.
Bossing is a title, right, as his manager, director, any
of those, right, executive, those are titles. Leadership is an
attitude and a set of behaviors, right, And it's not
just the attitude. Some people think it's an attitude. No,

(44:09):
it's attitude and the set of behaviors you have to
behave like a leader. And it's really hard. You said
something earlier, you said, we have to keep doing this. Yeah,
it's a constant, constant self improvements, self questioning, self evaluation
in education, or something called the feedback loop of assessment. Right.
You look at something, you analyze it, you decide whether

(44:33):
it's good, and then you close the loop. You start
all over again. It's just like that, Just like that constant.
You constantly have to be checking does this work? Something
can work today and not work tomorrow. Something can work.
And that's this situation, not that one, this organization, not
that one, These set of people, not that one. You
need to be thinking about this. But if you're coming
from a good place, that's good. It's not good enough.

(44:55):
If you're coming from a good place and you apply
that good place like you use that and you make
that who you are and how you behave, then you're
on the tractor of leadership.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
Going to the boss's piece, because I think I don't
disagree with you, right, but I do think that there
could be some misunderstanding and what you're describing here, and
so I'd like to just kind of elaborate on this
a little bit more, or have you elaborate on this
a little bit more in that I think when we're
talking about professional development personal development, we kind of have

(45:31):
to make these distinctions, and it's intentional. It's not to disparage,
it's not to take away from someone's capabilities or what
they do, but we have to make these very clear
distinctions in order for us to figure out what it
is that we need to work on and improve. And
I think that what you just said is you're making
a very clear distinction as to someone who is perhaps

(45:53):
promoted or hired to come in and evaluate people below them,
when we're going to say that intention only people below them,
because that's another term that a boss would rather than
a leader would look at everybody on the same level
and same playing field. But they're hired, they're promoted to
evaluate people beneath them and to maybe have some sort

(46:14):
of evaluation metric where number of phone calls. I'm going
to sales because that's where my background is. Number of
phone calls, number of deals closed, number of people in
a pipeline. And they have this metric and they come
in with the mindset of I'm going to get you
to make the X amount of phone calls, to meet
with X amount of people, and to close X amount

(46:35):
of deals. And by way of doing that is going
to be We're going to have weekly meetings and you're
going to tell me who you spoke with, and you're
going to tell me how many calls you made, and
you're going to tell me what deal is closing. And
at the end of that meeting, I'm going to tell
you if you did a good job or a bad job,
and then I close my door. And if I hope
that I made a very clear picture, and if I didn't, yeah, right,

(46:57):
the clear picture is simply we're going base off of
a we're not offering, and I don't want to. I
don't want to again disparage anybody because there might be
some sort of support, or at least you think you're
providing support. You think that you're empathizing, you think that
you're supporting, but at the end of the day, all
you care about is the metric, and if this employee
doesn't meet the metric, they're probably going to be terminated

(47:19):
or put on some sort of plan and then get terminated.
And you do care. I don't want to remove the
idea that you don't care as a person, because if
you're listening to this, you care. You're listening to this
podcast because you care and you want to learn. But
the person that we're talking about, they are essentially just
doing their job. They're plugging in the numbers into a
system and that's it. And I think that the distinction

(47:39):
that you're making is that that's the boss that we're
talking about, right, that's the boss that we're talking about.
We're talking about people that follow this metric, that just
follow and are essentially droning on. Right, And then we
have leaders. And I kind of just helped clarify what
you're talking about in terms of boss. Could you give
us exactly the exact opposite. And I know, I know

(48:02):
you don't want to do binary. I know you don't
want to do binary, but I do want to. I
want this binary intentionally for everybody listening here of we
have this why don't we play it out this way,
because because this is you're a coach and I love this,
So we're actually gonna coach this. We're gonna have a
little fun here. So we have this manager I just described.
I'm coming to you as a client of yours, right,

(48:22):
and maybe I'm I'm telling you, hey, Jim, I actually
have this manager. He's a great manager. He runs the
numbers with us. He sits in a room with us
and we go through all the numbers. And you know
some people that just don't do their job and they
get terminated. And I'm on track here and I'm probably
gonna be able to take his role because he's up
for a management position. I'm gonna take his role, and
I'm looking to do exactly what he's doing. But I'm

(48:43):
coming to you because I want to make sure that
I am the best leader in this organization, just like
he is. And I'm interested as to how you would
help paint the picture for me of what maybe I
should or shouldn't do.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
We would have a very long and yes, we were
conversation about what is it you mean by leader? There again,
this idea that leaders get things done right, that's not
the metric. Leaders do get things done, but they get
things done a certain way. And what's your end game.
If your end game is to hit the numbers, Okay,
that's great, but you're not really being a leader. You're

(49:17):
just hitting the numbers. It doesn't matter whether you're doing
it yourself or you're driving other people to do it.
That's not leadership. That's hitting numbers. And I can go
on and on about numbers. By sure, there's something about
good hearts long if you ask me about that, that's
we'll just keep talking for the next hour. But but
you know, but if you're just driven hit the numbers, Okay,
you're going to hit the numbers, but that isn't leading people.

(49:39):
Do you want do you want that next person to
be able to foster relationships? Is that important to the organization?

Speaker 4 (49:45):
Now?

Speaker 2 (49:46):
Perhaps it isn't. If it's not, we probably wouldn't be
talking because I primarily deal with people who are in
organizations that on some level are values driven. Yeah, mission driven.

Speaker 1 (49:57):
Let's assume that just for the for the idea, for
the sake of this exercise here, let's assume that you
probably had like a pre call with this with this
person because as a coach, we want to ask a
lot of questions, and you already just did it. You said,
what's the end goal, what's the what's driving You're already
asking some questions. So we want to have a good
dialogue based off of questions and from there you find that, yes,

(50:17):
it is good hearted, good value driven organization. Maybe they're
tied to some sort of investment group that puts these
numbers over their heads and they don't know any other way.
They want to know another way, and that's why they're
reaching out to you. And so I'm interested in how
how do we support these goals? How would you help
them support these goals of these numbers and keep their

(50:40):
values intact of you know, like you said, relationships and values.

Speaker 2 (50:45):
You've introduced a wrinkle here that may be insurmountable, right
because there's now there's this dichotomy between what the company
says it stands for and these investors who are really
driving the company. Right, So if the company says, oh,
we're about you know, we want to have employees who

(51:06):
work here because they want to work here or do
their job because they want to do it, and they're
not just hear about the money or the job or
the benefits or something like that, or the titles. They
really want to be invested here because we value our
customers and we want to show that through the way
we value our employees. But then these investors come in
and say, we want you to hit these metrics. Come
hell or high water. Right, there's there's a problem here

(51:28):
at this organization. There's a split.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
But isn't that the reality of any organization, Like, I mean,
even us as solopreneurs or entrepreneurs. Right when you think
about it, whether it's an investment group that comes in
tells us to hit these numbers, or it's our mortgage
payment or our electric bill or our spouse that says, hey,
you know groceries, you know, are you going to pay
for them? At some point we have a metric that

(51:53):
we have to hit. Sure, So how do we how
do we foster what you're talking about of helping people
create eight and support them in reaching these goals as leaders?

Speaker 2 (52:03):
Yeah, I mean it's hard, it's hard to talk about
this as a hypothetical.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
Right, Yeah, Well i'll give you, I'll give you, I'll
give you a non hypothetical. Okay, so and maybe you
could evaluate it then. Yeah, So the way that I
approach it with my team. So I have my insurance
company and I have a team, and we just had
we we literally just had a sales call at Thursday morning,
a sales training call that I did with them. And
one of the one of the things that we're working
on right now is building out our list of new prospects,

(52:29):
new prospects to call on. And I asked them, how
many new prospects do you need? Do you think you
need to call on in order to close the sale?

Speaker 2 (52:38):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (52:39):
Right? So yes, you're with me here, right. So I
asked them a question, how many do you think?

Speaker 2 (52:43):
Right?

Speaker 1 (52:44):
And they're kind of like looking at me, not not
unsure on shore, And I said, is it fair to
say ten out of one hundred? And they said, yeah,
that sounds that sounds about fair. Ten cold prospects. I mean,
excuse me, one hundred cold prospects. Ten out of those
could probably turn into a deal. Of course, there's there's
we're gonna we're just kind of cutting through the twenty
five that made appointments with us and that we met
with them to the ten that closed the sale, right,

(53:05):
I said, Okay, cool? So ten, I said, so if
we set a goal for ourselves, what would be a
fair goal in terms of commissions, What would be a
fair goal for the end of the year for you,
For like, we're just talking a twelve month span here
or not, it is end of January, so it is
fair to say the end of the year. So it
was a good commission goal. So they came up with

(53:26):
a commission goal, right, And I helped guide them in
that as well, because again, you know, so what we did,
here's here's the reality of exactly what we did. I
know what they want to earn, but I also know
the reality of the habits that they're currently in, and
we're going to talk about your tiny habits. I also
know the reality of the habits that they're currently in
that they're not going to earn that, right, So I said, great,

(53:48):
so let's just call it a six figure goal, right,
And I said one hundred thousand dollars six figure goal.
And they're like, yeah, of course, right, it's okay, great,
but we're not living in the habits to create to
get to that goal.

Speaker 4 (53:59):
Right.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
What we're going to put make that goal is we're
going to call it a be hag. And I explained
to them, what bags are big, hairy, audacious goals. So
we're going to call it a behag and maybe it's
our two year, three year goal, because we're going to
start today on creating the habits to get us there.
But what's a more realistic goal? Thirty forty fifty grand
right somewhere around there is more of a realistic goal. Okay,
what are the habits that we need to create? So

(54:20):
we start talking about that, and I'm having a dialogue
with them, what are some of the habits? And it's
asked for referrals. It's ask friends and family, it's call people,
it's build out this list. And of course, as we
get to building out the list or looking at me going,
but in order to get that at one hundred thousand,
I'm going to need like three four hundred people to
call on how do I get there?

Speaker 2 (54:40):
Said?

Speaker 1 (54:41):
Great, do you know ten people? And they said, yeah,
of course I know ten people. Said do you know
ten people that you can call today or text today
that will respond to you today? Said yeah, great, So
I made time for them put this list together of
ten people? So they did. We made some time. They
put this list together of ten people. I said, so
if you call, well, these ten people, they will pick

(55:02):
up the phone, respond to your text, and they'll meet
with you. Yes they will. Okay, great. I said, So
if you do this, now, you meet with these ten people,
would you be open to sharing with them what you do?

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Right?

Speaker 1 (55:16):
And they said yeah, I would be okay great. So
this is the assignment that I gave them. I said, Now,
this is where my values come in. So my values
are integrity and relationship. It's actually which you just brought up.
I said. The first thing you're going to do is
reach out to these people, and you're going to tell
them in transparency is also one of our core values.
You're going to tell them why you're reaching out. Hey,
I'm reaching out because I set this really great, big

(55:37):
goal for myself this year to sell this amount of policies,
and I'm hoping that you might be able to help
me do that. That's one. The next step is learn
about them, build a relationship. What it's been a while
since we talked, talk last or whatever, what's new in
your life, what's going on with you. Empathize with them,

(55:59):
listen to them, be a part of the conversation, and
be authentic with them in that conversation, be present with them.
If they tell you they're having a great day, awesome,
how can I make it better? Who can I refer
to you to make it better? They tell you to
have an awful day? What's going on that's so awful?
How can I be a sounding board for you and
hear what you're saying and listen and internalize what you're saying.

(56:19):
You do all of that, and at the end of that,
then you can say whatever it is. However the conversation goes,
the person's going to ask back, So you said that
you had this big goal for the year, how can
I help you with it? And then you tell them,
could you refer three people to me? If we take

(56:40):
those ten people and they refer three people, that's thirty people.
And if we do that over and over and over again,
we're going to build our list of one hundred to
three hundred people and they're not going to be cold,
They're actually going to be warm. So going back to
the whole leadership piece of this whole thing, one, I
just gave you a little bit of a sales training everybody, yes,
But on the leadership side, a lot of what we
did as a team was I asked questions and they

(57:04):
gave me answers, and based off of those answers, I
built upon those those answers using sales strategy, using the
sale strategy of Okay, what about doing this. Here's a
question that came up from them. Okay, Michael, you want
us to call these people, you want us to build
an authentic relationship, But then you also want us to
ask them for three referrals. And I said yes, And

(57:25):
I said, but what if it doesn't feel natural? And
I said, then don't ask And they kind of looked
at me and they went, but then, how do we
get the three referrals out of them? I said, build
a relationship? So what's a relationship look like for you?
Is it to call them weekly? Is it to call
them monthly? Is it to stop by and have coffee
with them? What does the relationship look like for you?

(57:46):
Build that relationship. And it might not happen on the
first call. It might take three calls, it might take
three months. But if you start planning the seeds now
of building the relationship with these people, eventually you'll get
one referral, you'll get two referrals, you get three referrals,
You'll have now ten twenty thirty people that have turned
into relationships that are feeding you the leads that you need.

(58:10):
And it's not because you're asking. It's not because you're demanding.
It's not because I'm demanding or asking. It's because you're
building relationships and you're being transparent with your goal. With
these relationships, you're letting them know, hey, I care about
you as a human right, and I'm going to reciprocate, right,
because part of what I just said was if you
tell me, hey, business is going good because I work
with these kinds of clients, and I say, hey, I

(58:32):
have three people I could refer to you, I'm going
to refer them to you. I'm going to give them
to you, and I tell my team do that. Give
give as much as you can because that person, on
the other hand, is going to receive it, and they're
going to think about you every time that they receive it,
and every time they receive it, they're gonna go, man,
how can I help Jim out?

Speaker 2 (58:48):
Man?

Speaker 1 (58:48):
How could I help Jim out? And eventually they're going
to help you out as long as you continue that relationship,
because once you stop that relationship, then they're not going
to remember you anymore. You've got to continue the relationship.
So anyway, so back to you're coaching in all of that,
what do you see as good? What do you see
could use improvement based on what you just said?

Speaker 2 (59:09):
Yeah, first off, that's a terrible hypothetical. Yeah, it's it's
so okay, that's great. I mean that that's that's exactly right. Right,
But that's very different what we were talking about before,
where it was, you know, somebody in an office kind
of saying I want these numbers.

Speaker 1 (59:29):
And I was in the opposite. Yeah, what's the opposite
of that? That is the opposite exactly in that structure.

Speaker 2 (59:34):
The only thing I would say that you might want
to think about improving is at the very end there
you said how can I help Jim? And and the
best referrals or when the person says how can I
help Bob.

Speaker 1 (59:49):
You should meet Jim.

Speaker 2 (59:50):
Right, that's even. But be that as I mean, that
structure that's perfect.

Speaker 1 (59:55):
Yeah, when you're connecting people to each other.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
I mean you're giving them you know, you're giving them,
You're you're giving them a ownership. Right, we talked about
that before, Right, So that's all great, But now imagine
I'll give you a hypetical Yeah, now, imagine that there
is some overboard. It could be investors, it could be
a company. It could be a boss you have, right,
who comes in and says, hey, Michael, you're doing great.
You're hitting all your metrics. The metrics have changed. I

(01:00:19):
need you to hit these numbers by next month, hell
or high water, or you're fired. Right. That's an untenable situation, right,
I mean, what would you do in that situation.

Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
It's interesting because what you're saying brings up some memories
for me. It's funny. I feel like I'm being interviewed now,
which I love, which is kind of cool because I
never really got that to do that on my show.
What's interesting is one of the things I want to
make a note of with what you said earlier, was
to learn from other people's mistakes and learn from what
they did and do it differently. Maybe not do the opposite,
but do it differently. And you're right, I'm not doing

(01:00:53):
it the opposite. I am doing it differently because I
did work in an insurance organization where the manager was
exactly what I described earlier.

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
I suspect it was.

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
It was we had our red, yellow, and green spreadsheet,
and it was like, you listed your red, yellow, and green,
and red was like they're closing next week, Yellow was
they're really warm and ready to close, and green was
like we're still grooming them, right. And we would go
through this the metric and everything. We would have the
roundtable discussions where, like I said, they feel like they're

(01:01:24):
supporting us, but truly all they want to get down
to is how many deals are you closing this week? Right?
They they're like, oh, tell me about tell me about
that meeting with Jim.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
How was it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
Oh, oh, you got to know him all right? Is
he going to be closing? It's like they make that
fake empathy. And that's what I want to make sure
my team doesn't do, is I don't want fake empathy.
I want if it doesn't feel right to ask for
the for the referral, don't ask.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
Which, by the way, is brilliant, right, that's brilliant, That's perfect.

Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
You know, I appreciate that, But it's because it's what's
true in the moment, right, what's true in the moment.
So back to this example that I had given earlier,
is the organization that we're speaking about is an insurance company,
one of the biggest brokers in the country. And for
purposes of this podcast, people know we're my history, but
for purposes of this podcast, I'm not going to name

(01:02:09):
them because of what I'm saying right now, everyone's right now, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that'd be cool if people actually googled me maybe one day. Anyway,
this organization was once a grassroot type of insurance organization
that was just like a bunch of guys I've heard
this so many times, right, that kind of came together
and they were like, hey, let's put off our insurance

(01:02:30):
books together. U's make this really big one. We'll get
some really great profit sharing. We'll be able to offer
more resources to our clients. And really had this wonderful
idea and it was so good that eventually, as they
aged out and were ready to get out of the business,
they sold. But they didn't sell the whole company. They
actually kept half of the company or somewhat right, like
some sort of half of the company. But they sold

(01:02:51):
to an investor company, A what's it called a what
those investor firms?

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:02:56):
I know, I can't even think of the word right now,
But anyway, VC the venture right and this venture capitalist
was taught to us as being a very kind venture
capitalist of we put the customer first and we stick
to the values of that organization and don't worry about us,
you know, like as you go into training, it's like,
don't worry about us, We're just the money behind it all.
But you know, just go do the right thing by

(01:03:18):
the customers.

Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
Like being a kind mergers and acquisitions.

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And you soon find out after training
that no, you got to hit the metric because this
is a turning. This is just like I mean, I
was there three months, I think, and I had already
seen two different salespeople that I had come in with gone, right,
so I experience what you're talking about, and I saw

(01:03:41):
my leader, or I saw my manager in the same
respect that you're talking about. I was like, he's not
a leader, right, he's not really leading us. He goes
on he went on meetings with me, and he just
takes takes a meeting on his own, like he just
pushes me to the side, as though I don't know
what I'm doing here, right when meanwhile, I'm the one
who the meeting and I'm the one who did all

(01:04:01):
the prep work to get into here, and instead of
making me look good, you are making me look good
because you don't want to lose the sale. You're you're like,
oh yeah, Michael's got your back, but you're not making
me look good by Michael is knowledgeable. Right, So you're
not leading, You're again managing, You're taking charge. You're doing
like you said earlier. And so I witnessed a lot
of this. So back to your question now of the hypothetical,

(01:04:24):
which wasn't hypothetical for me, which was.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
Very which is why I said it wasn't a good hypothe.

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
Which was very clear to me. Of I'm in a
position where, yeah, I'm making my dream income my six
figures that I used to write down in my notepad
every single day. So I'm going to earn six figures.
I'm gonna earn six figures. You know my Brian Tracy
that I used to follow, Brian Tracy. You know Brian
Tracy right now is leadership and sales guru and mentor.

(01:04:49):
He's in his eighties now, It's been around for a
long time. But write it down, write down, I earn
one hundred thousand. I finally made it right. I'm earning
one hundred plus thousand dollars at this company, and yet
I was so unhappy. I was so unhappy about that.
I was so unhappy not because of the work that
I was doing. The work I was doing I thought

(01:05:11):
was amazing, Like I learned so much about the insurance
business while at this company. I learned things about the
insurance business that I never thought I would learn about
the way to ensure buildings and the way that you
coverage works, and policies work, and how you can actually
create policies for companies that need them. Because what we're
talking about at this company was I'm selling policies that

(01:05:31):
are worth over five hundred thousand dollars. Policy like this
is just your building policy. This is you know, these
are multimillion dollar organizations that we're working with, so we're
building things for them to cover them properly. It was
just amazing work. But on the other side of it,
the way that we were managed, the way that we
were supported, or lack thereof, I was miserable. I was miserable,

(01:05:55):
and so I had a decision to your point where
it did come to that where you know, I'm meeting
with management on a regular basis where your numbers were
your numbers, and here's what I'm working on. Here's what
I'm doing. And I'm not pushing that person because I'm
not going to push them, and I'm being very clear
with them. They're not ready, I'm not doing it. Give
me time to work with them, and I'll do it.
And I was fortunate in that I still had a

(01:06:17):
very good relationship. I had closed some good deals and
I had a good relationship with them, but I was unhappy.
I knew I wanted to start my insurance company den ten.
I knew I wanted to, but it drove me there
faster to where your question of leaving. What I leave
was what I looked at as like, I'm going to

(01:06:39):
make a five year plan out of this and put
five hundred thousand dollars in a bank account. Turn into
a one year plan. Yeah, turn into a one year
plan very quickly. And I'm going to tell you that
even before it was a one year plan, it was
like a seven month plan. At seven months, I was like,
I am ready to leave and start my organization. Quit
and start my organization. And my wife was like, can

(01:07:00):
you at least make twelve months please? So I stayed
for twelve months. I literally to the day of being hired,
I quit. But to your question there, I don't know
if quitting is the right answer, because for me it
was quitting because I knew I wanted to start something.
So quitting might not be the right answer. If I
look back at this question here of what do you do,

(01:07:22):
I think it's I think you try as hard as
you can to lead the way and stay true to
your values, and if at the end of the day
they fire you, then they fire you. But I think
the most important part is that you stay true to
who you are and keep your integrity intact.

Speaker 2 (01:07:36):
I've literally been there my last job, I got fired.

Speaker 1 (01:07:39):
Yeah, tell us about it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
I should I. I rarely bring this out in public.
So this is this is my debut, this is your debut.
This is why I left High Ed. I was the
number two to the president. I was the vice president
for academic affairs, which is also called a provost. Right.
It was my second gig at this I had been,
I'd been, I'd left another one where president came in
and everybody left, and so I started this job and

(01:08:05):
I kind of took it in desperation. I could just
smell there's something wrong with this school. It was a
little school in Kentucky, very rural area, very impoverished area
in Appalachia, which is fine. You know that, that's cool, right,
You're providing app matching kids these kids and need need
help give me them an education. I love it. But
you know, like I just smelled something wrong. Like, for instance,

(01:08:27):
when I interviewed on campus, the president wasn't there. I'd
done I'd interviewed a lot of times for these kinds
of jobs for years, you know, and and I don't
think I ever had a situation where the president wasn't
there to meet her potential number two just unheard of, right,
she just wasn't there. You know. She interviewed me by

(01:08:49):
like zoom or well you know whatever video and it
was and she was asking these absurd questions. Then she
low balled me on the salary, but I held firm,
still took a bit pay coup, but tried to low
ball me in the salary. She was playing all kinds
of games, and she was a bully. She was a
gas lighter. I can I can fight bullies. I don

(01:09:11):
know how to fight bullies. You can't fight a bully, boss.
You can't. It's like a it's like a it's like
a cop on the street. It's like they have all
the power or teacher, right, you can't fight the teacher
if you're a student, if the teacher is a bully,
because they have all the power. And it's the same
thing with the boss, you know, and so she it

(01:09:33):
was just it was a very ugly situation, and yet
I was trying to be true to my values. My
charge was the faculty and academics. I was in charge
of everything academic, except that there was another vice president
who she had split that person off from a previous
person in my position, and so some of the academic
stuff was under her, which was very very strange structure,

(01:09:56):
and that was President's favorite. Of course, that was her
her favorite person. And so I stayed true to myself
and I worked with the faculty. One of the hardest
things to do in the university is get faculty to
accept change, right, they are allergic to change. And I
can go on and on wine and it's not all
it's not really their fault. Lot of is they're their training,

(01:10:19):
their their rewards system. Everything you do is very narrow focused,
very narrow board, and anything outside of that seems superfluous, right.
You know, you write a dissertation and it's about this
tiny little subject, and you get a job teaching this subject,
and all your research is on the subject, and you
get promoted and you get tenure because of this subject,
and you don't really care about anything else. You know.
I get all that, but I'm able. I was always

(01:10:42):
able to work with the faculty because I got them
to buy in, right, And how do I get them
buy in? I would focus them on the mission. I
used to start faculty meetings off. I'd say, Okay, I'm
putting the mission statement up on screen, let's talk about
these words here right literally, like I'm running a and
by the way, if you can find a distinction between

(01:11:03):
leaders and teachers, I want to hear it. And you know,
and I'd say, we're gonna what about what do these
words mean to you? And we'd focus on like we
do little deep dives two three minutes into the mission, right,
just to get people focused on the bigger picture, because
when you're in an arraber area, you can't see the
big picture. And that's what one of the reasons faculty
was this change. And so once they could see the

(01:11:26):
big picture and where they fit in and how what
they did had an effect on the big picture and
vice versa. All of a sudden, now they have totally
different perspective. These are really good hearted, willing, dedicated professionals,
smart people, many of whom could make a lot more
money doing something else, especially to school like that. They
could make a lot more money, right, right, I mean
these were dedicated, they were They work their tails off, right,

(01:11:50):
Treat them like that. One day, almost exactly three years
ago to the day, by the way, it was January thirty,
first walks to my office, allgly. This is after she
had gone a long stint of gas lighting that was
so bad that people came to me and that was
going on. It was so obvious what she was doing.

Speaker 1 (01:12:10):
Could you explain gaslighting? And at least in that kind Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:12:13):
So gaslighting is when someone basically causes you to doubt reality.
They like they kind of twist reality. It's usually somebody
has some sort of influence over you and they kind
of you say the sky is blue, and they say you, sure,
it looks a little green to me. But they do
it in a very subtle way, or maybe not so subtle.

(01:12:37):
In this case, it wasn't always so subtle and to where.

Speaker 1 (01:12:39):
You're saying okay, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:12:42):
Or you're thinking, well maybe I'm a little confused, or
well they mean well, you know, it's it's it's very
it's it's a tool of bullying. Okay, like several other things,
but it's a tool bullies use, and so it's a
way of just sort of twisting things that you're just like,
you're not really sure what's going on and you're confused,
you know. And she was pretending like she was being

(01:13:02):
very professional about things when she was actually being incredibly
unprofessional and dishonest. And so she walks into my office
I was having a meeting with with one of my
direct reports, just knocks on the door hidden. I don't
think she'd never been in my office before. I've been
there about a year and a half, and she was
just down the hall, walks in my office, sits down,

(01:13:25):
throws the other person out, sits down, hands me a
letter that is unsigned. It's just a paragraph, and it
says I want you out of here in two weeks.
Two weeks notice, which is kind of unheard of for
that position. And it's and it said but because she
said you're very good with faculty, but you're a bad colleague. Well,

(01:13:47):
first off, if you're a provost and you're eighty you're
a good faculty. You're like eighty five percent of the
way there. That's very rare, right that a provos be
very good faculty. Right, So that's like you're you're worth
your weight in gold. But okay, out of side, you know.
But she was saying as a bad colleague, which was
blied by the fact that when it was announced I

(01:14:08):
was leaving my fellow vice presidence except for her favorite,
like had an outpouring of concern. And you know when
I said, could you write a letter recommendation? Absolutely later on,
I asked a couple of them for testimonials, absolutely years later,
like you know, like, yeah, I was a bad colleague.

Speaker 1 (01:14:25):
Right, And also like you said she had a mining
office in over a year.

Speaker 2 (01:14:29):
Yeah whatever, Yeah, but you know, but show she you know,
she made this claim and said I want you out
of here on Valentine's Day and and she said, but
she said, you can. You can go be a faculty
member because you're good with faculty. MM in the fall,
so you take off this semester, she can pay pay
me out for the rest of the semester, and that

(01:14:52):
that's how they buy you off, by the way, that's
what they do. And and and then she said, and
it was a heap pay cut, and it was a
non tenure track position. And I'm thinking, you're doing this
to me as vice president? How am I going to
be treated as a non tenure track faculty? Yeah, I
don't think so, lady. You know that I made that
decision rad on the spot. But this is totally out

(01:15:15):
of the blue. I mean, she had been I had
no idea this was coming. I mean, she'd been doing
horrible things to me, like I said, to the point
where other people had noticed. And I was horribly depressed,
in really bad shape. But I wasn't expecting to have
her walk in my mouth. And I said to her,
what what's the precipitating cause here?

Speaker 4 (01:15:31):
Like?

Speaker 2 (01:15:31):
What why today? Because literally the week before I had
announced that through merely tweaking the teaching schedule, having my
dean just played with the teaching schedule, we had saved
over one hundred and thirty thousand dollars at a school
where that's a massive chunk of the budget right where
we were throwing away money because of bad scheduling for

(01:15:54):
for forever, right, and I just announced we're saved one
hundred and thirty thousand dollars just by playing with things.
And finally I said, I mean just last week I
said this thing. She just she's like, wow, I knew.
I knew you had to go because you said you
didn't say things that I know you said. And this

(01:16:14):
this went back to believing. I'm sorry, this getson, said,
this is why I don't talk about this. I had
my first evaluation with her, which was on like July
first or something. She she said it started with someone
told her that they heard that one of my direct
reports said that I said this thing. And I'm like, okay,

(01:16:38):
but I didn't. So there's that, you know, like, so
you heard a rumor, okay, yeah, right, And I actually
literally said the opposite. In fact, I said the opposite
to these two people, and you can go ask them.
I said the little opposite of that, And that's what
that That was why you know, that was basically so

(01:16:58):
this is looking for something, right, It was nonsense. So
I I you know, I departed there. My wife got
a job up here, which is why we ended up upstate,
New York and I was applying for jobs and I thought,
and this, and then COVID hit right right after that.
So thank you to that president for helping me dodge

(01:17:19):
out bullet and not having to be in Higher Ed
during that fist, right, And I can go on and
on why hire it hand to that so badly? But
so we moved up here, and I at first was
applying for jobs and getting interviews, but these schools were
just haywire because of COVID. You know, the interview you
and then you never hear anything. You can get an
answer to the phone. You know, overre too busy, like

(01:17:41):
you too busy to answer the phone and tell me
what's going on? You know that kind of thing. And
I realized these people were crazy. I don't I don't
want anything to do with Higher Head. And one day
I just hadn't actually had a local interview that was
coming up, and I said, I called him up. I said,
I'm not coming. I don't want to be interviewed. I'm done.
And that was it. And I said, I thought, I
what do I like doing? What am I good at?

(01:18:03):
What I really like? Because I actually really loved being an administrator.
I really loved it, I said, what do I really
love about it? I said, one of the things I
love most was working with young managers, right, and not
necessarily people reported to me, but working with them and
helping them become really great leaders and passing that on.
I said, that's what I.

Speaker 1 (01:18:24):
Want to do, working with people who strive for more
and want to grow and.

Speaker 2 (01:18:29):
Helping them and helping them strive for more. And so
that's that's why I switched up. But like I said,
I don't tell that and there's a lot more to
that story.

Speaker 1 (01:18:38):
Well, yeah, I mean the point is one, it's always
great to tell a good story to keep everybody's interest
of I think there are ways to improve the story,
considering it's your first time telling it. You know, when
we tell you know, this is your public speaking lesson everyone.
When when the more we tell a story, the better

(01:18:59):
we get at telling that is true, right, So the
better we get at telling it because then we learn
what parts that we don't need, that aren't necessary. We
also learn how to frame it so that you know,
people can paint the picture of Okay, where is it,
what do they look like? Descriptions of things of course,
but at the end of it, why It still is
a good story, even though it's your first time telling it,

(01:19:19):
and I think I encourage you to tell it more
as you teach about leadership. Is what do we get
from this story? And you said this earlier, it's you
teach on not so much how to become a great leader,
but you teach on what not to do. And I
think what this story really tells us is one it
gives us a little insight into you and your moral compass,

(01:19:41):
which is wonderful in that as somebody that we're going
to follow as our coach or as our keynote, is
that we were following somebody who has great integrity and
stands by his values. That's wonderful that we get from
that story. The other thing we get from that story
is this leader, or excuse me, this manager who was
touted or thought of as a leader but not and

(01:20:03):
why not? And I think you give several examples of
how they were not a leader, and I think one
of them is presence.

Speaker 2 (01:20:11):
Oh nice insight there.

Speaker 1 (01:20:13):
Yeah, presence is huge. Right, Like as a leader, we
always hear the term is I never asked my people
to do things I won't do. Okay, that's fair, But
are you also there with them? And how are you
there with them?

Speaker 2 (01:20:28):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:20:28):
So there are plenty of things that leaders ask people
to do that they don't do or that they're never
going to do, but will you be there with them?
And to your point, she wasn't there to hire you.
She was virtually there with you. She had never stepped
foot in your office. So there's so many different areas
and those are just some of the examples that you

(01:20:49):
said in a story that shows that she was never present.

Speaker 2 (01:20:52):
That's a great insight there, actually, because that was a
big problem with her as the president. She wasn't on campus.
I don't know where she was. She was on all
these boards. I mean, she's supposed to be a great fundraiser.
I don't know if she had raised a dollar while
I was there, but she was in all these boards
and was constantly givauting about But she was not on campus.

(01:21:13):
And there were major events where I was like the
highest ranking person, but I wasn't assigned to be in charge,
and so I kind of had to go and play
this weird role of you know, these are things like
you know, the faculty and staff Christmas party, where's the president?
We had a major televised announcement about a change in

(01:21:35):
our tuition, and the head of admissions at that time,
who was actually a consultantly hired was announcing this. He
announced it. Where's the president. The president was in her
office having a meeting. It was literally she all she
had to do was walk five minutes, say a couple
of words, and go back to office, no matter how
important meeting.

Speaker 1 (01:21:55):
Is and wasn't right, And we know what that meeting was,
and it was it was that crisis phone call that
you mentioned. No, no, I mean but in sense of.

Speaker 2 (01:22:03):
Like the and I know exactly what the meeting was.
It was not.

Speaker 1 (01:22:05):
It wasn't important at all. It was the false But.

Speaker 2 (01:22:08):
What I did was I knew that he was going
to be alone up there, so I told my deans,
I want you to make time, and we're going to
be there standing off to the side as a show
of solidarity. That's presence. Yes, right, So my deans were there,
you know, and we stood there and we cheered and
we you know, did the whole thing so that people

(01:22:30):
could see this. Wasn't this poor guy up here, who
wasn't even a permanentployee of the of the college making
this announcement to the press.

Speaker 1 (01:22:40):
Right, which is the other thing about leadership. So you
have that presence, you have the other thing of essentially
throwing people to the wolves, of stepping over people with intention.
And that's the other thing I pick up from your
story here that you shared is that she was very
willing to, of course not take blame for anything, but

(01:23:04):
blame others. And when we think about a manager versus
a leader, not that managers necessarily do that, because leader
people that are viewed as leaders do that too, But
a leader would never do that. A leader takes ownership
for their entire organization and will be the shield to
that organization and take those bullets. So I think that
in your story there it also shows another lack of

(01:23:26):
leadership in that she was willing to put people down
in order to protect herself. She was willing to put
somebody at a podium when she should have really been
at the podium. Maybe they could have set it up,
but she would be there to support the comments or
the key. Oh.

Speaker 2 (01:23:41):
This was this was something where any institution, the press
president would would he would say something.

Speaker 1 (01:23:46):
So that was another piece that I that I pick
up from from the story that you say here. The
other one that also I'm hearing a lot and kind
of sticks with what I just said. There is the
inner politics, and at all is that organizations. A manager
lets the inner politics run loose. A manager just allows
people to have what they'll call friendly competition where there's

(01:24:10):
no such thing, right, they'll call it friendly competition. Oh,
that's good, But really all it is is that people
are just eating away at each other. People are having
conflict with each other, and you're, you, as the manager,
are not addressing it. You're not addressing it for multiple reasons.
Maybe you don't want to be there, you don't want
to do the job, it's too hard, it's challenging. It's
all these different reasons. But that's what makes you a manager,

(01:24:33):
is that you are not addressing the inner politics. And
what happens with the inner politics is that they just
eat away at the core values of the organization and
the organization, which is what you witness with her special
pet vice president and why people probably bought into you,
which caused inner politic problems for her.

Speaker 2 (01:24:53):
It was very she found it, she resented.

Speaker 1 (01:24:56):
So what we learn from this story is how important
it is to be in tune with everyone and understand
why do you like that person? Why do you dislike
that person. I'm being very blunt in that because that's
not necessarily the question to ask, But it's really just
understanding what's driving this person, what's driving that person. How
do we get the two to collaborate, How do we
help the two to understand or the three or the

(01:25:17):
different organizations or the different schools in your situation, and
that I didn't hear come through in your story. In
your story, especially when you speak about gaslighting, it sounds
as though she intentionally put people at odds with each other,
which causes the inner politics conflict.

Speaker 2 (01:25:34):
Yeah, I mean there was a lot more to it
than that. I mean I glossed over a lot of that.

Speaker 1 (01:25:39):
But this is the learnings that we get from stories
like this, Yes, right, this is the findings I learned
a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:25:43):
Yeah, and it wasn't my first time dealing with gaslighting
and bullying bosses either. And it's funny after that, when
I did get on the job market, I would get
interviews and I blew a couple of the interviews almost
on purpose, because what I did was I'd ask, I say,
tell me about the president, and they would tell me that.
I'd say, yeah, but it's the pre micromanaged as a president.
Oh no, no, no, And then they would tell me something
like that's micromanage. I said that, that's micromanaging. What do

(01:26:05):
you mean the president doesn't micromanage? And you're right down
and there I've met the job not getting job. I'm
also thinking I don't want the job.

Speaker 1 (01:26:10):
I don't want the job.

Speaker 5 (01:26:11):
I don't want to work.

Speaker 2 (01:26:12):
With this organization, right right, you know, so fine, don't
hire me.

Speaker 1 (01:26:16):
Where they're where there is it conflating for this term.
Let me see if I'm using this right. I've been
wanting to use conflating because I've heard it so much.
Right where they're conflating micromanaging to presence, right where they're saying,
I'm here, I'm here, and so that's what that's why
I'm watching your every step because I'm being present.

Speaker 2 (01:26:36):
Yeah, I mean they might be. I think a lot
of times with micromanagement, it's the most micromanagers are perfectionists
in my experience, right, perfection just for the audience. So
everyone knows that's impossible, right, Okay, it doesn't mean you
don't try to improve. Improvement's good improvements possible. Perfect not possible,

(01:26:58):
and when you aim for it, you always will fail. Right,
And most perfectionists first beat themselves up and then point fingers, right,
that's their operation. The other thing is they're control freaks, right,
and and so control freaks don't let anything go. When
I was at the squat side of Balmer as a dean,
they had another dean who was a control freak like

(01:27:19):
you have never seen. And my comment about her was was,
if you stick a thumb in every pie, all you
do is ruin a lot of pies, right, I mean
that's what she did. She just like gotta be in everything,
and you know, and it was like unbelievable. This is
not a healthy thing. And so and then you get
your micromagerment. You get your people who just they can't

(01:27:41):
they can't delegate. If they do delegate, they watch over
your shoulder, and.

Speaker 1 (01:27:47):
On and on and on, and so little gets done
when that happens, right, because when you if delegating. What's
wonderful about delegating is that you get so much more
done when you trust. When you just trust someone, you say, hey,
look you have the skill set to do this. This
is what we need to accomplish together. Go off and
do it. Come back to me in a month from now.

(01:28:08):
Let me know how it goes. That manager, that leader
can now work with somebody else.

Speaker 2 (01:28:12):
I'll let you in a little secret. I'm not a genius, right, okay.
And so I got these people I work with who
are like really good professionals and all they have ideas, yes,
and they're really smart, right, and they see things I
don't see, and you know, yeah, delegation is key. One
of my favorite times is I see you can tell

(01:28:34):
I'm a lousy employee. I mean, I am a horrible
Most entrepreneurs are, well, I was never an entrepreneur.

Speaker 1 (01:28:41):
You are in our DNA.

Speaker 2 (01:28:43):
This is my message to the world. Never hire me.
So when I was when I was a dean, my
boss one time he liked to yell. And one of
my sayings is there's a special place in hell for
bosses who yell. And he yelled at me. That actually
was the last time he yelled at me, because that's
the time I yelled back, and I.

Speaker 1 (01:29:04):
Can yell really and then it was over and that
was it.

Speaker 2 (01:29:07):
But he actually said to me, I delegated something to
a young faculty member and he wanted it done a
certain way, but I want you to do it. You're
the way it's best for your school. But he wanted
done a certain way, but he didn't tell me what
the certain way was. And when he came back and
it wasn't his way, I pushed back and I was like,
this is ludicrous, right, this is your child, Like what
is your problem? But he was he he said to me.

(01:29:30):
He started yelling at me and he said, you know,
I asked you to do it your way, but you
turned it over to this faculty member. And I said,
what are you saying? Well, you didn't keep an eye
on him, you didn't watch him real closely and I
and I said, you're angry because I delegated and he

(01:29:50):
was taken back that and I just ripped into him.
But that was, I mean, what an unbelievable thing that
the crazy thing was this young faculty member had done
this fellar job right. It just wasn't what the boss.

Speaker 1 (01:30:02):
Had wanted, right, And that's where you go with the bosses.
And then the other piece that I want to bring
up about this story that you mentioned about this Kentucky school,
is you use the word she low balled me on
a salary. Yeah, And I thought that was very important
because what I wanted to bring up in that is
what lowballing is. Yeah, right, what is lowballing?

Speaker 2 (01:30:21):
Well, in this case, she basically, you know, she tried
to quote me a salary that was absurdly low and
then said, well, the cost of living here so low,
we're a poor school and blah blah blah blah blah,
when I knew very well she was making way more
than that.

Speaker 1 (01:30:37):
And now, so lowballing is it's knowing that you have
this power over someone and going below it.

Speaker 2 (01:30:44):
But then she was able to meet she was able
to read it. It still was ridiculously loved, but she was
able to of.

Speaker 1 (01:30:48):
Course she was right, because that's what lowballing is. That's
what the holding of the power is. The holding of
the power is saying this this job. We have eighty
thousand dollars or one hundred thousand dollars to hire somebody
at this level, but we're going to only offer them forty.

Speaker 2 (01:31:03):
Oh yeah, the school is out outside of Baltimore. When
as a dean, we had a we had a horrible
hr VP, another bully, and she used to say, you
cannot offer the full salary, you have to low ball them.
And I argued with her and got it down to like,

(01:31:25):
so I always had a low ball one thousand dollars
just so I because I wasn't gonna lie, right. But
what I would do is, you know, because she said
to me, drew off her lower salary and always say
I could say yes, honestly, but I would. I would,
But then I would like sort of drop here and say, well,
this is the hour we're offering, but I want you
to think about it, you know, think about that's enough

(01:31:45):
for you or if you need, you know, just think
about that, because you might you know, we don't want
to not offer you you know, what you need. You know,
usually they would come back and say could you do
you know a little better and say, well absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:32:02):
And well why I bring up this situation is because
it's it's the holding of power, right, And so when
we when you go back to your your teaching of
what not to do, a manager is going to try
to hold power because that's all they have, right. It's
like it's like the parents saying you're not gonna get
You're not gonna get dinner if you don't eat, you know,
you're not gonna get desert if you don't eat the broccoli.

(01:32:22):
And it's just like you're just holding power. You just
so eventually, so what do you do when the kid
finally is like a teenager and they can go and
have dessert whenever they want, right, how do you hold.

Speaker 2 (01:32:31):
The power over them?

Speaker 1 (01:32:33):
It's gone, right, So power is false. It's just based
in that, as is control. Right, It's all false. But
a real leader, which is what you teach on, right,
They're not going to low ball. It's exactly what you
just said. It's it's what what what? Where can we
meet here? You know? We you know, imagine if you
go to the table with this person and you say, hey, look,

(01:32:54):
you know when we hire for this position, we usually
hire anywhere between eighty and one hundred thousand dollars. You know,
I'd love to offer you the higher of the spectrum.
What qualifies you to get the higher's reasonable?

Speaker 4 (01:33:06):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:33:06):
Because I'm honest.

Speaker 1 (01:33:07):
The person might say, hey, you know what, I don't
want the pressure of one hundred thousand. Maybe why don't
we go to ninety? Why don't go to eighty five?
Because I feel more comfortable and I could work my
way to that fair enough Actually, what's very funny about
me bringing up that example is this is just accidental
because it just popped in my mind the situation I
was telling you about about that insurance company that I
worked for and I got my six figure salary that

(01:33:28):
I always wanted when I was speaking with the recruiter.
It's so funny that just just popped in my mind
as I was giving you that example. I mean, it
probably makes sense because this is exactly what happened. The recruiter.
She was really good, she was savvy, she was really good.
And I had said to her, I wanted, I'll say
the salary exactly. I was like, I know what other
people are earning there because I had been referred in,

(01:33:51):
and I want one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I
want one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, I said to
the recruiter. She said, that's great, Michael. She goes, I
love your ambition. She goes, I want you to realize
what one hundred and fifty thousand dollars comes with as
a base salary there. And I said, okay, what does
it come with? And she goes, it comes with all
these different things of requirements right. She said, do you

(01:34:12):
feel confident that you could meet these requirements? And I
was like, no, I go, but I really want the
one fifty. She goes. I understand that she goes, and
they could pay it obviously, because you know that, right
because I told her the person's name and they what
they earned, right, because that's the person that referred me.
And she said, she said, so do you feel and
I said no, she goes, So you would be doing

(01:34:32):
yourself a disservice. You're gonna have a target on your
back and eventually you're gonna get found out, right, and
you're gonna get fired, and you're never gonna even earn
that one fifty. And I really appreciated her saying that
to me because from there I said, Okay, I'm much
more you know, I still want to hit my six
figure goal. One ten is what I'm comfortable with based
off of what you guys hire at and what I

(01:34:54):
can do and where I won't have a target on
my back. And she said cool. And you know what
she actually did for me, I said, one ten. I
agreed to that. They hired me at one twenty five.

Speaker 2 (01:35:01):
Nice. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:35:02):
So, now, while the organization ran its way this woman.
She didn't have power. I mean she had power, right,
she had power in terms of salary ranges, but she
used it in a way of a leader. She helped
me understand, like you said, a teacher. She helped me
understand what it came with, what responsibility that salary I
wanted came with, and what salary I probably felt more

(01:35:25):
comfortable came with. And yet she still was able to
raise it like you did right right, which I thought
was pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (01:35:32):
Yeah, No, that's very cool. That yeah, and that that's great.
But it seems like it's so rare.

Speaker 1 (01:35:37):
It's very rare.

Speaker 2 (01:35:38):
You know. It's like when I did have the power,
when I was a vice president and I could dictate
these things, and you know, nobody in HR could tell
me otherwise, then I just I would always just offer
the straight salary and then But I also delegated hiring
to the deans. And the reason I did that was
because I thought it was important because apparently my predecessors

(01:35:58):
did the hiring right. I was delegated to the deans
because I wanted them to have ownership over the faculty
a B super right. Not ownership, you.

Speaker 1 (01:36:07):
Don't know, yeah, but ownership in the goods sense.

Speaker 2 (01:36:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:36:10):
I think when you say yeah, when you say ownership
in that sense, you're talking about being a part of
ownership in that of what you create, fighting for what
you create, right.

Speaker 2 (01:36:20):
And I also wanted them to have that experience of hiring.
And I used to say them one of the one
of the deans had been there a long time, this
is a different school. It had been in a long time,
and he had never actually made the offer to hire someone,
and he was very nervous about it. And I said, look,
and I'm going to tell you something. Here's how you

(01:36:43):
do it. I said, you can do this, you can
do I gave him different strategies. Whatever you're comfortable with.
You to it your way. There's no wrong way. I
mean there's wrong ways, but I mean out of these.
I said, but you know, when you do this, you
were going to feel so good. And he called me
up a little while later and I was like, so,

(01:37:07):
so you hired a person. Yeah, yeah, how to feel
you feel great? That's why I wanted you to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:37:15):
It's so true too with when you talk about ownership,
because I've been in so many situations and jobs where
and I've had a roller coaster of jobs of excuse me,
a career, a roller coaster career, and I always and
the reason why is because you're not living in your why.
I love that you brought brought up Simon Senek, right, uh,
And I'll kind of just keep this short, but only

(01:37:35):
just for context for everyone.

Speaker 2 (01:37:37):
Is that?

Speaker 1 (01:37:37):
And I speak about it and you heard me talk
about it in my talk of my roller coaster and career.
Is you know I went high and low in sales,
high and low, and it was all because I wasn't
living in my purpose. I wasn't living in my passion.
Now that I do, I mean, it's like the world's
my oyster, right, It's like amazing. It's like I meet
people like you and you introduce me to other people
and we're we're getting on stages and we're coaching, we're
training and we're keynoting and now we're living in our purpose.

(01:38:00):
But I go back to this hiring firing life that
I was living, and I want to just talk about
the ownership of hiring somebody in that. I remember several
leaders that I had and I'm bosses. Back to you,
what exactly you said? I had some bosses, some managers,
and I had some leaders, and a key differentiator between
the two outside of everything else that we've talked about,

(01:38:22):
but right now in the hiring portion of what we're
talking about, is the managers would outright just fire me, right,
they would just It wasn't much to it. It was just, hey,
you didn't meet the numbers, you didn't meet the metric,
and it was like boom here. You know, it's like
almost like the shock that you just had in your
face of like you're fired, and it's like, yeah, I
kind of saw this coming, but I didn't see this
coming from you, right, Whereas my leaders would always kind

(01:38:46):
of bring me under their wing and give me some
foreshadowing of hey, Michael, you know, I remember one taking
me out to an Applebee's. Actually, we had we had
lunch at Applebe's that day, and she said what are
you trying to do here? And I was like, I
don't know. It was one of my first sales show actually,
and she goes, well, what do you want out of
this job? And I said, I just want to make
the most money I can. She goes, okay, well how
can I help you do that? And I was like, oh,

(01:39:08):
that's an interesting question. And as I look back, I'm like, okay'.

Speaker 2 (01:39:11):
That is what a manager's supposed to do, right.

Speaker 1 (01:39:13):
And she did. She helped me do that. What she
told me later on after I hit my goal for
that quarter was she was like, Michael, you were about
to get fired, but I hired you and that meant
the world to her. Wow, was I wasn't going to
let that happen to you. You know what I mean.
I just got emotional. It just got some emotions run
through me from that moment. Because that team that I had,

(01:39:34):
that was a yellow book, that team of managers that
I had, there were leaders. There was Danielle, who was
my direct and then it was Antonella, who was her
manager but also was part of the hiring process. These
two women hired me and groomed me and mentored me,
and not just me, but everybody in that office. They
took responsibility for the people they hired and they would

(01:39:57):
take us out to lunch one to ones and have
those conversations when they had to have them. But nobody
in that office was ever fired. Which I didn't get
fired from that office, but nobody was in that office
was ever fired without having some sort of lunch meeting,
some sort of conversation, some sort of how can we
get you over the hump to the point where I
was at sales organizations where the best players got the leads,

(01:40:20):
and then this one it was like the ones that
were struggling got the call in the office and they'd
walk out with the lead.

Speaker 2 (01:40:26):
Yeah, and let me let me guess it was no
less productive and perhaps more productive and more profitable than
other organizations you were in.

Speaker 1 (01:40:34):
We hit So this was yellow book. So we were
selling yellow page advertising. We were one of the we
were one of the offices that hit our book goals consecutively.

Speaker 2 (01:40:45):
Yeah, this is executively. This is what this is what
gets me.

Speaker 1 (01:40:48):
And then it was turnover.

Speaker 2 (01:40:49):
What you described there you can call leadership, you can
call leadership. It's leadership, absolutely, But the first principal leadership
is highlighted by that approach, right, taking people out, by
the way, lunches are great eyes, taking lunch all the time,
but you know, just just get to know them. But
you know, taking people out and treating them this is it. Everybody,

(01:41:11):
write this down, get out your pen. We need this.
Treating them with human decency, that's it. That is the
core principle of leadership. If you come in with that
value and apply that, then you will succeed as a leader. Now,
you might not hit the metrics, that's some boss over

(01:41:32):
you likes, that's a whole nother question. But as a
leader for yourself, when you go to bed at night,
you may be worrying about your job, but you won't
be worrying about your soul. Right, And that's what it
comes down to.

Speaker 1 (01:41:44):
And to that point, we fought for them, right like
when when you asked me about hitting our goals, we
hit our goals because not because they drove us to
hit our goals. In that in that group, it was
it was a very small period of time because then
we did we did an acquisition and then we got
into a bigger office and things kind of did change.
Management change and things changed. But while we were in that,

(01:42:06):
it was in Newburgh, by the way, our office was
a new Berg. It was a small group. It was
about twenty of us.

Speaker 2 (01:42:10):
I adopted the town.

Speaker 1 (01:42:11):
Yeah, yeah, it was about twenty of us. And we
hit our goal not because they drove us to it,
but because we all had the inner desire to do it.
And it was because of what I'm talking about with
our Monday morning meetings where if it was your birthday
that week, we almost had a birthday cake at almost
every Monday Morning meeting at least once a month, at
least once a month because Antonella always celebrated everybody's birthday

(01:42:35):
with a birthday cake. Everybody's birthday got celebrated, and it
wouldn't be just because it was your birthday that day.
It would be like maybe the months the January people
would get their birthday cake. But it was that kind
of camaraderie that she created and instilled in all of
us to where when we were just teetering on getting
the book goal, we were all out prospecting. We were
all out like we got to hit this book goal.

(01:42:56):
She also gave us some great incentives on the other side,
incentives that she didn't have to do that other offices
didn't do. Taking us to Mohegan Sun and giving us
money to go play the slot machine and we all
got one hundred bucks. I mean taking us to dinner
is like doing things that were above and beyond what
other managers did. This was leadership.

Speaker 2 (01:43:15):
Yeah. But here here's the thing. It's funny you bring
up the birthday thing. Because so when I was a dean,
there were I think six of us, right, and we
had the provost who we reported to, and we would
have a meeting every week, come hell or high water,
pretty much two hours. I mean, these were horrible. They
were so miserable, and everybody was miserable and cranky, and

(01:43:35):
it was just and I used to I always did
this thing where I would sit in a different seat
every time, which was very disruptive good negotiating too. I
can tell your story about that, but you know, just move,
move your seat, and you know, and people didn't know
where it's doing. I was still on the side too,
what do I say, sit on the other side of
the table, dummy, same seat you. And I even did

(01:43:56):
that when I was the boss. I would I would
I never sat the head, I would just move around.
And so so we would have it was somebody's birthday.
There was always some cake. You'd make his assistant bring
a cake or somebody would make cake. And it was
just always the most miserable experience. It was so demoralizing

(01:44:19):
because everybody'd have their cake and they wouldn't it just
wouldn't even be there was everybody was tense and.

Speaker 1 (01:44:25):
Sick that there wasn't a celebration.

Speaker 2 (01:44:26):
It wasn't a celebration. It was just it was just
so fake, you know. So so this is the lesson.
The cake is fake, right. The cake isn't the means
to the end. Right. The cake is what you do
when you really mean it. It's sincere like, I'm not
like a cake guy, right, I would never have a

(01:44:48):
celebration for my people because I'm not a birthday guy.
Could birthday right. Nobody knows what my birthday is. It
just happens, right, So I never you know, I wouldn't
ever do that because that's not my thing.

Speaker 1 (01:44:59):
It wouldn't be since he is so important what you're saying.

Speaker 2 (01:45:01):
Yeah, but you know, but I show them many Oh,
there are ways I showed how much like I used
to when I was a dean. I used to have
these we have. The only time we could have a
meeting in my department chairs was it lunchtime. So I
provided lunch out of my budget, you know, And and
we did that every time. And if there wasn't a
reason to meet, wait for it, we didn't meet, you know,

(01:45:25):
or if the meeting ended, we got our business done.
We just hang out, right, this is your time, relax,
eat your lunch, enjoy you know, it was like this
was it was. It wasn't about we have to have
a two hour meeting every week, right and we today
today is birthday day. Everyone commenced eating the cake. That's
what it felt.

Speaker 1 (01:45:43):
But you're one hundred percent right. And I love that
you bring that up and use that as an example
because it has to do it authenticity and that word
is so used. And I like that you use the
word sincerity because that is that is the true sign
of a leader, right, is that you're authentic, you're sincere.
Is that for Antonella? She's a birthday girl? Right? It
was important to her and that sincerity comes through. How

(01:46:05):
does it come through? It comes through? With what I
was saying before about cold calling, how does it come through?
It comes through? And we're not just doing a cake
to do a cake. We're celebrating, we're singing happy birthday.
There's an upbeat to it. There's cake, there's plates, there's
a conversation around it, there's a camaraderie that happens, there's
conversations after and with what you're talking about, we could
see it, right, it's happy birthday everyone, here's your slice

(01:46:27):
of cake, and now let's get to the numbers. And
that shows right there that there's a lack of sincerity.
The other thing that you brought up that I thought
was also very important for people to hear is that
when we talk about managers or leaders going the extra
mile and having these incentives of like I said, she
took us to Mohegan Sun or to dinner, and you

(01:46:47):
said it I took it out of my budget and
got lunch for them. I think what's important for everyone
to hear is that when a leader buys lunch or
takes you somewhere, they have a budget that they could
use in so many different places. And the question between
a manager and a leader is how am I using
this budget. Am I using it because you know, I

(01:47:09):
want to see improvements in the office, of like I
want better lighting for myself because I just think it'll
be better, nicer, Or am I using it to do
better lighting because it's going to help my employees. It's
not the best example, because what I want to say
about the budget is that they can use it in
ways that don't benefit the employees. They can use it
to buy more supplies on something more copier paper or
whatever it is. Or they could use it to invest

(01:47:31):
in the employees. And with what you said is that
you used it to invest in them, invest in them
in a lunch, in a lunch and making them feel appreciated,
maybe an educational seminar.

Speaker 2 (01:47:42):
I would take faculty and administrators the conferences and it'd
be like, you know, the faculty had like a certain
amount they they were able to spend. They got like
a little you know. It was at one school it
was literally a budget. They actually got a little budget amount.
Other schools was like an award or something, and they
could go to a conference. And this is very important
when you're an academic. You need to go out and

(01:48:03):
interact with your colleagues. And I would take them the
conferences with me, right, or have a dean or something,
and they'd be like, well, my budget, I don't have
any more money in my budget. I don't worry about it.
I got it. Come on, we're going to go. And
you know, and I'd had my assistant, my poor put
upon assistance set it up for them, you know, so
they weren't like sitting there playing games with the you know,
trying to book flights and all this. What a waste

(01:48:24):
of time, right, you know this, She's great at this
to you know, but you know, so it was like,
I would use my budget all the time to help people.

Speaker 5 (01:48:36):
What else is the money for to invest in them?
What else is the money for your your entire being.
It's not about the money. Your entire being when you're
a manager of any kind is to invest in your people.
Your job, your sole job, is to make them better
at doing theirs.

Speaker 2 (01:48:51):
Yes, right, And.

Speaker 1 (01:48:52):
That's back to your thing of the differentiation of manager
versus leader. Managers looking at their budget saying where can
we cut the budget it, where can we use it
so that it's used in whatever the facilities or the
operations or whatever. A leader is looking at it going
how can we reinvest in our people? And if the
better lighting is reinvestment in our people, then cre But

(01:49:13):
how do we invest in our people? And I think
that that's another thing that we get out of, you know,
when we go back to the whole low balling of
salaries and all the rest, is it's a lack of
investment in people. And that is really really important to
understand as a leader. Is that, like you said, we're
there to invest in our people.

Speaker 2 (01:49:32):
I'll tell you. I'll tell you a story about the
college I was in Kentucky and that that other vice
president who had an academic piece, but she for some reason,
she had it under her And I never understood that
because she knew nothing about that. We had a big
nursing program at that school. And nursing is very it's
you know, it's licensed, it's this and that. They have
to jump through all these hoops. There's a lot to it.
It's a lot to it. And they had this exam

(01:49:55):
they have to take a very high stake exam called
an end clup and this could make or break your
like if your your your pass rate drops too low,
they can pull your accreditation. You're done done right, So
this is a very very very big deal. Well, the
end clip was done online, right, so it was a
you know, you had to have a computer. Well, this

(01:50:17):
building that the nursing schools and had atrocious Wi Fi.
So the students would try to take the exam and
it would be shutting down. It was problem to problem.
And so I said, I said, well, why don't I
have an idea. I know I'm going out here on
a limb, why don't we get better Wi Fi in
that building? Right? Well, that's going to cost money, Okay,

(01:50:38):
losing the nursing program would be a bigger loss of money.
Don't you think? You know this is how much could
it cost? It's going to cost eight thousand dollars. I
was told, you know, it's not going to cost eight
thousand dollars. There was already WiFi. It was not going
to cost eight thousand. So I don't remember how I
did this, but I pulled in the head of it

(01:50:59):
and had to meeting with him, with the nursing dean,
and I said, and at first he was kind of, well,
you know, or we're gonna have to do this, We're
gonna do that. And finally he was a good guy.
He was a really good guy. He just finally said,
you know, it's going to cost three thousand dollars. And
I said, I got that on my budget, and the

(01:51:21):
nursing says, I got that on my budget, and then
he says, I got in mind. The whole time they're
making they're telling me. I'm sitting there in a meeting
with the other vice presidents and somebody's like, why don't
we have the nursing students go from here from this
building to this building where there's better Wi Fi during
the middle of the day so you can take the

(01:51:42):
exam doing this. I was like, what, like, what are
you talking about? Well, this is like we're gonna move
the students, right, You're not investing in the students. Oh
my god, what are your values here? What are your values?

Speaker 1 (01:51:57):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:51:57):
And lying about how much it was going to cost.
It was all the other thing. I mean, I forget
what the amounts were, but you know, but it was
a well I'll never just say I've got that my budget.
I said, wait, you budget? Did you have a budget
for improving Wi Fi on campus? He goes, yeah, that's
a budget line. His boss had lied, of course, in
front of everybody else. Lot Oh my goodness, blatantly lied,

(01:52:20):
you know, or it was grossly mistaken and should not
have talked either what right?

Speaker 1 (01:52:25):
Both were probably true, It doesn't matter. Both were probably true.

Speaker 2 (01:52:28):
What she said was untrue?

Speaker 1 (01:52:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean this has been This is
this is why I love doing this show with people
like you, where you know, we meet at a networking
event and there's something about chemistry there. We didn't we
didn't talk much. But you know, I sat through your
presentation and I remember when you were done, I was

(01:52:50):
just like, I got to talk to that guy. It
was just something about you, and you and I talked
for a little bit afterwards.

Speaker 2 (01:52:57):
We remember I accidentally hijacked your computer.

Speaker 1 (01:53:00):
Yes, yes, yes, But I think we also ended up
missing like the closing remarks because you and I were
stayed back with one person. But there was a good
chemistry between us. And you know, I'm very fortunate now
with this show, and I really really am appreciative, and
I hope everybody who's listening is appreciative of this in
that I no longer have to go out looking for guests.

(01:53:21):
It's really really wonderful. When I started the show, I
had to work really hard. I was, I hate to say,
it's spamming as many people I knew on LinkedIn to
come on my show. And I'm at a point now
where I get offered a lot of people. I have
a couple of pr agencies where you know, I'm very
grateful for you pr agencies who are out there listening
right now for sending me your people. I'm very grateful

(01:53:43):
for that. So what's really nice about this is It
removes the pressure from me to have to find people
and search for people. So what I'm getting at is
what's nice is when I meet someone where I'm like,
you know, I feel like you'd be a great guest
for my show and they follow through. Because some people
don't follow through that I say that too, and that's okay.
You know, they still would be a great guest if

(01:54:04):
they did follow through, and they follow through. This is
the kind of conversations that I love to have where
it's not just about your product, it's not just about
your services. It's these stories that we got to hear today.
It's this relationship that you and I have have built
in these two hours together and will continue to build
and in our previous conversations. This is what I just

(01:54:25):
love about the show. And I'm just so appreciative that
two things happened. One, you took me up on my offer,
and you went to my website and you filled out
the intake form and.

Speaker 2 (01:54:35):
You were like, like ten hours.

Speaker 1 (01:54:38):
Because you were very thoughtful in it, and you know,
and I see that, and that's why we've been able
to have such great stories and conversation certificate. But I
did find that but so you took me up on
that offer, and then two you followed up with it
because unfortunately, because of some sort of glitch in my
website in the intake form, I didn't know that you
filled it out, and so you followed up with it.

(01:55:00):
And you know, I want to give a shout out
to the people at Master Networks. You know, it's not
a plug for them, but it's a plug for them because, uh,
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:55:08):
Rick, you know Rick Gabrielle.

Speaker 1 (01:55:10):
Yeah, Rick gab Gabrielli and I had a meeting and
he's just great at following up with people. He's just
really great. And he followed up with me. He said, hey, hey, Michael,
let's get together. What's new with you? And so we
got together. We got on a zoom and I was
telling him what's new with me? And he said, oh,
you should. Have you ever have you ever gotten gotten
back to the guys that Jim I forget his last name,
Jim Sandler. Have you ever gotten back in touch with him?

(01:55:32):
I said, no, he goes get back in touch with him,
And so I sent that email that ended up was
in my draft since since we had done the conference,
and you responded and said, hey, you know, I don't
know if you know, but you know, i'd filled out
that intake for him and I went no. And I'm
so happy that you followed up with that, because I mean,
you know, it's it's really, really wonderful. And I hope
everybody listening can can get the vibe here when I

(01:55:55):
have somebody in studio with me that we are just
riffing like this was. This was just fun, and I mean,
I know that you and I can stay here for
another two hours and three hours and just talk.

Speaker 2 (01:56:05):
We didn't even talk about tiny habits.

Speaker 1 (01:56:06):
Oh my goodness. So so as as we start wrapping
wrapping this this up, as we start wrapping this y
tuned well, as we start wrapping it up, why don't
we talk a little bit about tiny habits because this
is another piece that is super important about what you
do and and I think everybody can get so much
information from this. So let's let's stay here for one

(01:56:27):
more one more couple of minutes, a couple more minutes
here on tiny habits, because you and I both agree
that habits are what build leaders, and not just the
big habits that I talked about before, but the tiny habits.
So that's your segue right there.

Speaker 2 (01:56:43):
Okay. So Tiny Habits for those of you who don't know,
is a program that was started by doctor B. J. Fogg,
who is a Stanford researcher. He runs the Stanford Behavior
Change Lab. I believe it's called and he wrote a
book called Tiny Habits. I suggest you buy it. Don't
confuse it with Atomic Habits, which draws a lot from

(01:57:06):
his research. But this is his research.

Speaker 1 (01:57:09):
I read Atomic Habits one.

Speaker 2 (01:57:12):
So Tiny Habits is basically the premise is that you
have we have a they called the fog behavior model.
One of BJ's insights is that through his research is
that all behavior breaks down to three elements motivation, ability,
and some prompts something gets you to do it m

(01:57:33):
APay right. Motivation is whether you want to do it
or not. Ability is whether you have you can do
it or not. And prompt is something gets you to
do it. We often put all our money on the
motivation right and I always use the example. This past
month in January the gyms were full. This coming month
in February the gyms will be empty. Why because something

(01:57:55):
happened People's motivation wing Motivation is a roller coaster. It's
up and down, it's in and out. You can't rely
on it. And yet where it's like you should just
power through, right, that's nonsense. It doesn't work that way.
So what one of Bjay's great insights was, if you
increase people's ability to do something, then the motivation ceases

(01:58:17):
to matter, right, and you want to start with things
that people want to do. That's important. Help people do
what they want to do, not something they don't want
to do. If you don't want to lift weights, it
doesn't matter what you do, they're not going to do it. Right.
But if somebody wants to get more exercise, so for instance,
you want to have a regime where you do more
push ups, right, So what you need to do is

(01:58:38):
instead of doing twenty push ups at first, do one
or two, right, and then build the habit. How do
you build the habit? First off, you need something to
attach it to. We call that an anchor, something you
already do a motivation, right, I'm sorry, I'm not motion
plip that strike that word. It is you know, some
sort of activity you already do routine, another habit, like

(01:59:01):
say brushing your teeth. Right, every time I brush my teeth,
I'm going to do two push ups. Okay, great, How
do you make that a habit? A lot of times
you hear it's about repetition, doing it over and over,
twenty days, a new habit, twenty two days, ninety days,
six months, ten years, whatever. The reason are so many
different days because none of that's true. There's no research in

(01:59:22):
the back of any of that. Off You can form
a habit in an instant if you want, I'll give
you an example of one that you formed in an instant.
But you can form a habit in an instant. What
locks in a habit, then it's not time. Here's another
part of his research. It is emotion emotion. Every habit
you have has some emotion that is locked it in good,

(01:59:45):
better and different. Well, we try to be positive with
tiny habits. So the emotion we use is celebration. And
there's an emotion, the emotion that where you feel success
and BJ calls that shine and you try to build shine.
So everybody has different ways they celebrate or they I
don't celebrate and they need to learn to. We we can
help with that. But you celebrate the moment, so you

(02:00:05):
brush your teeth, you do your two push ups, and
then you celebrate it, and you do that and it
becomes a habit. Like suddenly you want to do the
push ups because the celebration feels so good. Right, the
next time you brush your teeth, you're like, oh, I
gotta do this right, and it just becomes what you do. Okay,
so you're doing two push ups, big deal. The best

(02:00:25):
thing is the habits are like little seeds. You do
poo push ups in the one day you're like, let
me try five. Next thing, you know, you're doing five.

Speaker 1 (02:00:32):
I do.

Speaker 2 (02:00:33):
I have a similar habit I started. I do over
one hundred and twenty push ups every day, easy, right,
every day. I don't do them all once. I do
them in blocks, but I do get them based on
a tiny habit.

Speaker 1 (02:00:47):
I'm with you, and just to say the same thing
with what you just said. I have a skiing injury
my right shoulder. I have no right shoulder. It's just
a bone here, no muscle here. And for many years
I always said I can do push ups. For many years,
if I did ten push ups, I'd get like a
neck cramp and my shoulder would just like her and
I'd get like bad cramps. I would go to the

(02:01:07):
gym and work out and do different exercises, but I
would do exercises that wouldn't put pressure on my right
shoulder that I'm touching right now because I said, I
can't do push ups because I would get these eggs.
And I don't know if it was atomic habits that
led me to do exactly what you're talking about, but
that's exactly how I started. Was I was doing something
like five or ten push ups for the day, and

(02:01:30):
then eventually it got to thirty, and then eventually got
to fifty and now I do one hundred push ups
a day. Also, the same thing happened with the pull
up bar for me, where I couldn't do pull ups
because of my shoulder, and I would always say that,
and I was like, let me just do three. I
remember starting with three, and so I just wanted to
just emphasize how it actually works. I've gone through it.

Speaker 2 (02:01:49):
And you can do with anything. You can do it with.
You want to go for a walk, It doesn't that
be working. I could be I want to drink more water.
I want to be I want to say I love
you to my wife right right. That's one of my
habits now. When I wake up in the morning, my
first habit is what's called this is the classic we
call the Maui habit. When you first wake up, whatever
it is you know, wakes she's gotten you with. When
you wake up, you don't like, oh, I'm well, wake right,

(02:02:11):
But what's the first thing you do that tells you
you're awake? And you know, it might be putting your
foot on the floor for some people to make it
all way to the bathroom and looking in the mirror,
whatever it is, right when you go, oh, I'm awake,
At that moment, you say, today is going to be
a great day, and then you celebrate it. What a
what I used to Here's how I used to get
on the bed, I get a bet. Oh, now I

(02:02:32):
get out bet, I go, Today's going to be a
great day. What a difference? Yeah, boys, that make a difference.
And then the second thing I do is when I
see my wife up and about I say to her
good morning, I love you, and she always every day
she acts aprised when I say this. It's so cute, goes,
I love you, But it's but it's great. She's going

(02:02:53):
to hear this and be embarrassed. But but it's you know,
it's just such a nice thing to do. You can do.
You can build habits around anything. Sometimes you're just being
reminders just don't you know. I used to be very forgetful,
and I build all these reminders, Like I do the laundry,
and I would forget to grab certain things sort of laundry. Well,
now I have a habit I built. It just reminds
me to do it. Yeah, you know, you can build
has around it. But the key is it's not time,

(02:03:16):
it's emotion. You have to celebrate. It has to be
in the moment. It can't be I'm going to have
a candy bar at the end of the week to celebrate,
you know, going to the gym or something like that. Right,
It's going to be in the moment. And the tinier
the habit, the more likely you are to be successful.
And the idea is to feel successful. That's another one
of one of our one of the maxims of tiny
Habits is help people feel successful, not be successful, feel successful.

Speaker 1 (02:03:40):
And I think back to the emotion part. So go
back to the story I was telling earlier of my
sales team and we were going into referrals. So one
of the things that we talk about is asking for referrals,
and in sales, the salesy way of asking for referrals
is is to say to someone sitting across from you,
it is to say, are you a student with sales

(02:04:00):
at all? Or no, no, no, you're not. Okay, So
the typical thing that we don't even buy things, Now
there you go. The way that we're trained as salespeople,
or that I was trained as a salesperson is after
I close the deal with you, is to say, okay, Jim,
here's a piece of paper and a pen. Could you
go ahead and write down three people that you think
could benefit from my service or that you know you'd
like to introduce me to. And now I put the

(02:04:21):
pressure on you by handing you the paper and a
pen to write down those three names and phone numbers.
It's a very salesy tactic. Does it work? It sure
does it works. People fall for it. But it's a
icky feeling. Yeah, it's an icky feeling and all that stuff.
So nobody really wants to do this, and so I
don't want to encourage my sales team to do that,
and they don't want to do that. But back to

(02:04:43):
your tiny habits and why I want to just bring
up this emotional piece is what I said to my
team is what would you be comfortable doing? And one
of them said to me, his name is Jim too.
By the way, there's a lot of us. Yeah yeah,
Jim said to me. You know, he's like, I've been
doing this for thirty years and I never asked for it.
I said, you know, we wanted to. We did a

(02:05:04):
whole training on what's holding people us back. We do
trainings on Mondays on all the different coaching stuff that
we enjoy. You and I and anyway, we did that
whole thing. I'm just going to expedite it to where
I'm going with this. And he said, you know, I
don't mind telling people to just tell their friends and
family about what I do. And I said, great, I'm
going to the emotion part with this. Why I'm bringing

(02:05:25):
this up. I said, Jim, what if we did this?
What if after every single call you said to someone, Hey,
you know, if if you're happy with everything I did,
could you just tell your friends and family. Would you
feel comfortable doing that? He said, yeah, I would. I go,
do you do that every call? He goes, no, I don't.
I said, start doing that every call, right, and he says, yeah,
I said, just sprinkle the seed, just as if you

(02:05:46):
take a sunflower seed and just throwing it out. I'm
not asking you to put the dirt on it. I'm
not asking you to water it. I'm not asking you
to go to the extra step, the extra mile. Just
do that. But here's what I want you to do.
When you do it. I want you to tell yourself
that you just asked for a referral. And I want
you to put it in our team group chat that
you just ask for a referral. And I promise you
that if you put that in a group chat, we're

(02:06:07):
all going to give you the smiley face and the emojis.
That's what we do. We'll put the fun emojis. And
he said cool, and he did it. Wow, And he
said I'm one for one today and I said awesome.
And I put a thing in there. And it's been going.
The point that I'm making here and what you just
said is it's the emotion. It's no, he did not
ask for a referral in all truth, right, if we
were to just really break this down by him saying, hey,

(02:06:30):
if you liked what I did for you, please tell
your friends and family, you didn't ask for a referral.
But emotionally, if he believes in his mind, which we
talk about neuropathways and coaching and all this other stuff,
if he implants in his mind the emotion of asking
for a referral in his mind, he's setting the tiny
habit of after every call, he's asking for a referral.
And eventually he'll feel more comfortable to say, hey, Jim,

(02:06:53):
if you like what I did for you, do you
have someone that you could maybe share my contact card with?
And then he'll go to, hey, Jim, if you liked
what I did for you, could you please share what
I could you please share a fan or family's name
with me? And he'll do it in an authentic way,
not in a salesy way.

Speaker 2 (02:07:10):
And you know that. And what you're doing there is
you're helping him feel successful, feel that emotion of success.
That's that shine is key, right, Feeling that emotion. It's
it's a wonderful feeling, right, And it doesn't have to
be a big thing, right a group chat, but that's

(02:07:31):
actually feel good. You know, it doesn't have and this
idea of like, oh, at the end of the week,
I'll reward myself at the end of the quarter, you'll
get a reward. Doesn't actually work. It doesn't actually work.
People aren't motivated by that in any real way, in
any real way. Right, But when you want something fundamental,
I mean, I think that's cool. I have a theory.

(02:07:51):
I don't think it's been studied that when leaders praise
people with sincerity, that can help people feel shine and
that actually helps build habits. And I've and yeah, and
it's interesting. But you can do this around. You can
do it around. You're limiting thoughts. Right, when I have
a limiting belief come up, I tell myself, oh, I'm
not worthy. I can build a tiny habit right where

(02:08:15):
I say no, I am absolutely worthy, and then celebrate it,
and it helps build the habit of knocking that limiting
belief away. I mean, you can do these sorts of things.
You can also unravel habits. I used to bite my
fingernails horribly. I haven't bit my fingernails in years ever
since I found tiny habits. I figured out a way
of unraveling that. Yeah, I don't bite my fingernails.

Speaker 1 (02:08:35):
Tell us about that, the unraveling, because that is you know.

Speaker 2 (02:08:38):
I wish you wouldn't ask that.

Speaker 1 (02:08:40):
Well, you know that that's one of the things that
I speak about in my training. So in my trainings,
I talk about creating productive habits, Right, I talk about
you have we all have habits, and we have habits
that serve us, and we have habits that don't serve us.
And when when I talk about learning new things and
being a leader and a nonentre preneur and a better communicator,

(02:09:02):
I talk about adding productive habits. And the only way
to add a productive habit is to eliminate a habit.
And I'm saying that without any backed research, But I'm
saying that because I want to respect the fact that
we're all busy. Right, I know that I'm using it
in a different context than what you talk about.

Speaker 2 (02:09:20):
Yeah, it's a little bitfferent.

Speaker 1 (02:09:21):
I respect the fact that we're all busy, that we
have families that were taken care of, that we have
jobs that we're doing, that we have entertainment that we
want to have. So I respect that. And what I
ask the people that I work with is, out of
all of the things that you're doing throughout your day,
what's something that's not serving your higher purpose? What's something

(02:09:42):
that's not pushing you closer to your goals. One thing,
and if instead of doing that one thing, you can
do this productive habit to what you're talking about, if
you could just insert that there, then it's not about
asking you to create more time. It's asking you to
just remove something. But that removal is difficult, and that's
why I ask you that question.

Speaker 2 (02:10:03):
Yeah, so yeah, it's it's very difficult. I mean, first off,
I mean tiny habits there's there. They start out so
small and sometimes they stay that small, like now we
have it right, it's right, but they're so small that
it's like having an offset it with something doesn't really matter,
right because it doesn't take up any time. But in

(02:10:26):
terms of now, bj Foul calls it unraveling habits. We
talk about breaking habits, and he says, we don't break habits,
we unravel them. They're actually very complex. There's no one way.
In fact, I think it's in his book Tiny Habits.
I think there's a tired I think it's chapter eight.
It's all about unraveling habits, right, Like, there's a whole
chapter and it is very complex and I'm not going
to get into here because there's a lot to it.

(02:10:46):
But sometimes the simplest thing to do. If someone has
a habit they want to get rid of, they want
to unravel somehow, sometimes it works if you get lucky.
And this actually happened with my fingernails, is you replace
it with another habit. So my fingernails, I replaced it
with habit of every time I put my fingers near
my mouth, I pulled them away and I celebrated and
that actually worked. Now if why that worked, I guess

(02:11:10):
I'm you know whatever.

Speaker 1 (02:11:12):
How simple right, right?

Speaker 2 (02:11:13):
Super?

Speaker 1 (02:11:14):
But that's not always silly simple right.

Speaker 2 (02:11:16):
Right, But it's not always common that it works that easily.
Sometimes you have to go more into what's behind it,
and there's a whole Yeah, there's there's a lot.

Speaker 1 (02:11:25):
Well it's like you said, yeah, what's behind it? That
goes back to motivation ability and the prompt, Right, the
prompt is you're putting your fingers in your mouth. What's
the motivation to you not wanting to chew your fingers?

Speaker 2 (02:11:36):
Well, I was motivated not to want to, but I've
done it for so long. It was a habit and
it gave me some sort of satisfaction. But when I
just replaced it with this other habit.

Speaker 1 (02:11:45):
But why didn't you want to bite them anymore?

Speaker 2 (02:11:47):
Because I was learning to play ukulele and you need fingernails,
so motivation and also that was ugly and sick.

Speaker 1 (02:11:53):
I tried to quit many mines. So you had a motivation,
So you got to have that. You just said that, right,
you have a motivation. You had the ability, right because
you have the ability to move your hand away from
your mouth.

Speaker 2 (02:12:02):
Right. But your but your motivation isn't trustworthy. Right, So
you're with fingernail biting. You're doing it unconsciously, right, You're
not always thinking, well, oh I'm doing my.

Speaker 1 (02:12:12):
Fing are you? Are you doing it unconsciously because it's
a habit, though, because a lot of habits are unconscious lutely.

Speaker 2 (02:12:19):
No, absolutely, yeah, And you know, but when I replace
it with a conscious habit, right right, putting the fingernails
near my mouth, not biting the finger putting near my mouth?

Speaker 1 (02:12:28):
Oh, you were intentionally putting on their No no, no, no, no, okay.

Speaker 2 (02:12:31):
What I'm saying is when I instead of saying when
I bite my fingernails, I'm going to put my hand away,
I'm already biting them. Right, It's too late. I'm already enjoying.
That's reinforcing the habit. Whatever satisfaction he gave me. It's
pretty sick when you think about whatever satisfaction gave me
was was you know? It was there? Right, they're already
in my mouth. I'm true in away, I'm alling away.

(02:12:51):
But now what a weird thing to talk about, now,
you know I I it was just putting my fingers
near my mouth. I pulled away, right, so I don't
even get to the habit of biting them. And so
it was eliminate the satisfaction, right, So it have really
nothing to do with the motivation. Interesting, the motivation is
what got me to create the tiny.

Speaker 1 (02:13:08):
Habit so for me, So let's have you dissect me
for a second here. Then, one of the habits that
I've been working on eliminating and I've been successful at,
but there's like a little one that I still make
an excuse for. So I'm successful in a sense that
I don't go on social media at all. I don't
go on social media. A lot of people did you

(02:13:29):
see this post? And no, I didn't see the posts
unless you email it to me or text it to me.
I typically don't.

Speaker 2 (02:13:33):
See as a former English professor, I have to point
out the irony that we are on social media even
as we speak.

Speaker 1 (02:13:39):
But go ahead, even as we speak, we got the
YouTube going right now, I'm posting about this on social media.
I have a LinkedIn live on social media.

Speaker 2 (02:13:46):
So stay away from social media.

Speaker 1 (02:13:48):
But one hundred percent, and here's here's the thing, and
we're going to get into the habit. But real quick
in terms of this is is use it, use social media,
but don't consume it. Which is which is the habit
I'm talking about breaking down it's use it, but don't
consume it right, and use it in a way that's productive.
So I only put out on social media productive things, right.

(02:14:08):
It's how to improve your public speaking, how to improve
your leadership, how to improve these different things. Shine a
light on my guests and what they're doing in my
Shining Light show. It's putting out the podcast and educational
on this so you can use it right. And so
I don't go on, you know, I in all honestly,
I go on to see where my post is, how
it posted, what it was a couple of people that

(02:14:31):
I maybe yourself might be on there that I might see,
and I'll like your post or whatever. But I'm off.
I'm off in like less than lightning speed. One of
the places that I do tend to go, which is
social media, but it's a different type of social media,
is YouTube. I enjoy watching videos on cars. I enjoy
watching basketball videos. I'm a big basketball fan. I don't
get to watch basketball games anymore because I'm not going.

(02:14:54):
I choose not to make the time to spend an
hour and a half to two hours to three hours
watching a game that does nothing, that doesn't serve me
in any productive way outside of having a good conversation
about basketball with somebody about who's the best and who's
not the best. Right, But watching a couple of basketball
clips on YouTube is awesome, Right. I could see a
couple of dunks, I could see a couple of three
point shots. I know who's the guy to talk about

(02:15:16):
right now, because that's interesting to me. I see what
he's doing kind of moves. I'm a basketball coach. I
watch a lot of basketball coaching videos. So it serves
me in these different ways. However, it does keep me
up longer than I want. Right, So I'll watch it
where right when I'm putting my door to bed and
I go between that window of eight and nine o'clock
at night, I'll watch it and then it'll be like

(02:15:38):
nine to fifteen and I'm like still scrolling through the
different basketball clips, which are different YouTube I in bed,
in bed on the phone on the phone, and I'm like, no,
last one, Michael, And then it's like no, because the
YouTube algorithm knows how to hook me for the next one.
And I convince myself that it's a good habit because
it's basketball, it's cars, and then the other one is

(02:15:58):
self development. A lot of it is Brian Tracy and
zig Ziggler and the old clips of all that stuff.
So I convinced myself this is good for me, right,
But I'm watching it and I'm not really getting I'm
getting some out of it. I'm getting some things out
of it, but I'm not getting what I want out
of it, right, So you.

Speaker 2 (02:16:14):
Don't want to do it, right, okay? I mean, because
that's that's key, because there's nothing wrong with watching basketball.
I'm a big baseball fan. I'll sit there and watch
a baseball game, you know, I enjoy it. It's why not.
You know, I'm an old guy. I can watch baseball.
But the in terms of like, if you don't want
to do it right right, there's a number of things here,
but in this particular case, the reason I ask you

(02:16:35):
where you're doing it is because one thing you can
use to either build or help unravel a habit is
to change the context. In other words, in this case,
specifically the environment. Right, don't bring your phone to bed. Okay,
you can build a habit around leaving your phone in
another room. And I've actually worked with clients on this,

(02:16:57):
where you know, say, okay, when I go to what
do you do before you go to I brush my teeth.
When I brush my teeth, brushing teeth comes up a
lot on them. When when I brush my good habit,
it's a good habit.

Speaker 1 (02:17:08):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:17:08):
When I brush my teeth, I put my phone. I
don't know the arrangement your house. I put my phone
over here, and then I go to bed, and you
celebrate that, and that becomes the habit you don't even have.
Where's the temptation? Right? I've had clients who like, they
wake up in the middle of the night and they're
checking their phone or the first thing in the morning,
they're scrolling, and they're lying in bed for half an

(02:17:29):
hour and then they don't go work out because now
they don't have time. Right, these kinds of things. Okay,
don't put your phone near your bed. That's it right now,
you got to get up and now get out. And
if you're going to get your phone, you got.

Speaker 1 (02:17:40):
To get out of bed and walk and you don't
want to do that.

Speaker 2 (02:17:42):
I guess what by then you can go what what
am I doing? Right? Right?

Speaker 1 (02:17:45):
You could ask yourself, Yeah, what you know? I and
I and I love that. What I will what I
will say is that that is where I find my
entertainment for myself throughout my day. Uh. And what I
have done, so you know, part of this was what
should I do if that's what I want to eliminate?
But what I have done, and my motivator right now

(02:18:06):
is I have a conference coming up, and so I'm
preparing for it. And one of the things I'm doing
to prepare for it is I'm reading a book on
original thinking. It's called The Originals by Adam Grant. And so
what I've done, it's actually on my phone. But what
I've done is I set a timer of I got
to read for twenty minutes every night, and if if
I want to watch my entertainment, that's fine. If I

(02:18:28):
want to go through my YouTube videos, that's fine. But
I also have a time limit for when I want
to go to sleep by and I need to meet
that time limit, and I also need to meet my
twenty minutes of reading. And so it just means that
I have to make a decision. And so I've worked, well,
I've forced myself to where by you know, eight forty

(02:18:50):
or whatever it is, I got to be off and
I got to be reading, or I got to do
it first, you know, vice versa. So I've done that.
That's one of the ways that I've done it is
where I've given myself these like restrictions.

Speaker 2 (02:19:02):
I mean, the other thing is don't do it in bed. Yeah,
you know, that's another possibility. I mean there's this is
the thing we you can you can alter your context, yep,
and and that that is, you know, just change the environment.
You don't eat junk food, don't put chunk food in
your house. You want to eat more veggies, buy more veggies,
you know, stock up, you know, or if you have

(02:19:24):
to have junk food in the house because the kids
want it and you don't want to, you know, disappoint them, Okay,
make it really hard to get to put it in
the back of the cabinet, so you have to move
like five my wife.

Speaker 1 (02:19:34):
My wife has me hide the junk food. Yeah, because
I don't because I'm fine.

Speaker 2 (02:19:38):
Like I foust. You hide it from the kids.

Speaker 1 (02:19:40):
I had it from everybody, okay, because I fast so
it doesn't bother me. I could walk by a plate
of pizza right now. I'm not eating till two o'clock. So,
and I love pizza. Actually, I had a toast Master's
meeting at this really cool pizzeria the other day, and
toast Masters is at noon on Wednesdays. We meet at noon.
And we had it at this really cool pizzaia, brick
Oven Pizza. I mean, the pizza came out was gorgeous.
It was just like you know that nice little burnt

(02:20:01):
cross the beautiful if if you like pizza, you know
what I'm talking about right now. And cholesterol count. Yeah,
and we had we had the Toastmaster's meeting there, but
I fast so I could smell the pizza. I could
see the pizza and all that stuff. But I'm like,
I don't need till too so I'm not having any pizza,
I said, but I'll come back here with my wife.

Speaker 2 (02:20:17):
Most people don't see most people you're motivated.

Speaker 1 (02:20:21):
That's where I was trying to go with the with
the reading at night is is I'm motivated. So my
habit about watching it, I really you know, I wanted
to give it to you as an example so we
can get to the get the book, the phone out
of the room. But I don't have a motivation to
really stop doing that because I actually enjoy it.

Speaker 2 (02:20:36):
And I want to do it right.

Speaker 1 (02:20:37):
I want right right. I wanted to bring up that example.

Speaker 2 (02:20:40):
But the motivation in the Tiny Habits we help people
do what they want to do.

Speaker 1 (02:20:44):
Right right right. It's but it's about the motivation. And
I thought, and that's that's exactly. You got to exactly
what I wanted, which was change the context, which I
think is very important. And right now you're talking about
changing the motivation what.

Speaker 2 (02:20:54):
I said you to do. If you want to learn
more about Tiny Habits, the book is great. It's not
an easy read. It's you know, it's it's complex stuff.
This is really heavy duty stuff, especially chapter eight. But
the but the best thing to do is go to
tiny habits dot com. And you'll see at the top
it says five day program. I used to coach in
this program. It's a free program, and in five days

(02:21:18):
you will develop three new habits, tiny habits, but three
new habits, and you work with a coach. It's all
done by email and automation. And people are just like, oh,
I don't enough time to do that. I always said
to people, if you spent over the entire week forty
five minutes total, I don't know what you were doing.
It's really easy, like this will not take up any

(02:21:40):
more of your time. And there's people who do it
over And when I used to coach it, there was
this woman in Japane. You said, take me over and over,
which was great, and she was wonderful. I love working
with her. But you know, it was all done through email.
I always used to offer a zoom session too if
people want that, and every now and then somebody pick
me up on that. But and you know, you can
do it as many time as you want. It's free.
They don't steal your information and you know, spam me

(02:22:01):
or any of that kind of stuff. Because the idea
is that we want people to understand that they here's
the key you can develop your skills of change. That's
the idea. That's what we're about. We're trying to develop
people's skills of change. I learned I could change late
in life. I didn't think I could. I didn't think
I could. I just wrote a blog piece last week
about this. You know, I thought that my you were

(02:22:23):
set right because this is what I was taught. This
is the way the world was, right, this idea that
you could actually improve yourself, especially late in life. I'm
fifty nine years old, and I can change stuff. Right,
I get up in the morning. I don't moan and
groan anymore. Right, what my father did? You know?

Speaker 1 (02:22:40):
Right?

Speaker 2 (02:22:41):
But you know, so you can actually part of a card.
Though it was he had some really likes and pains,
but did he did labor? But you know he was
a newspaper pressman. And so you know you you you
can change. You must change. Change is going to happen, right,
and it's whether you have some sort of say in

(02:23:03):
the matter, right or not?

Speaker 1 (02:23:04):
Right?

Speaker 2 (02:23:05):
You know? And if it comes, if change is forced
upon you, can you surf it?

Speaker 1 (02:23:08):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (02:23:09):
Right, like a wave. Yeah. And if there's something you
want to do, how do you choose to change.

Speaker 1 (02:23:14):
Yeah, I think those are great. And you know, two
things for you in terms of what you just said.
So one the toothbrushing thing, it's interesting that you brought
that up so many times. I actually bring it up
in my workshop about brushing your teeth because when I
talk about habit setting, because what people don't realize about
brushing your teeth. What we're talking about everybody that's hygienically
sound here, right, Like everybody brushes their teeth every day.

(02:23:36):
Raise your hand. Yeah, everybody's raised brushing their teeth every day.
But go to a three year old, What do you
have to tell a three year old go brush your teeth?
What do you have to tell a four year old?
Go brush your teeth? So it's not like you're just
born with a tooth brush in your hand and you
brush your teeth. You have to be taught that habit.
And eventually it was a tiny habit that you learned.

(02:23:57):
You learned how to crawl, you learned how to walk,
and you learn I had to brush your teeth, and
it became a habit. It became a habit because it
was reinforced by your parents. It was reinforced by not
getting cavities by all these different things, right, but eventually
it became a habit. So I always try to remind
people of that that when we talk about because I
kind of teach tiny habits, I guess in a way,

(02:24:18):
but I didn't know that when I talked to them
about replacing the negative habits with the productive habits. I
talk about brushing your teeth, is that once was just
a small little habit that you did that you had
to be reminded of and that you do today. And
the other one I want to talk about quickly with
what you just said about age, when we talked about
Queen's College, and I said, my parents are graduates. Yeah,
I had mentioned to you earlier on So my father's

(02:24:40):
seventy five years old as we record this podcast today,
and he's seventy five years old, and he just re
enrolled in Queen's College. He's retired now, and he re
enrolled for two courses. And I got to tell you
he is. I spoke to them on my ride in here.
I always called my parents every once in a while
before I come in, and I was on the phone
with my mother and she's she's you know, she's talking

(02:25:01):
in and I just hear him in the background, jumping around,
you know, just talking, just yapping away. That's what he does.
And and she goes, yeah, I'll you know, Leonard over here,
my father Leonard over here. You know, you know, I
can't have a normal conversation. I said, well, that's what
you get for dating a college boy.

Speaker 2 (02:25:18):
No, that's great, I mean, and that's that's a wonderful
example too of you know. You know, I'm thinking a
lot about aging lately, a lot about aging. My wife
just retired officially. She's a law professor. At the end
of this semester. She is done. She's starting her own business.
She has a business where she helps people who are
She coaches people who are looking to retire and helps them.

(02:25:39):
She's a yoga instructor, so she she trains them in yoga,
but she also gives them other services and transition. Yeah,
and you know, financial and whatnot. She helps them up
with people. But it's a it's a great program. Look
it up, Maria Ane said it and so yeah, okay,
that would be great. Yeah, well then then then you'll
be like, why did they ever have that guy on it?

(02:26:01):
And she's amazing. Everybody loves Marie. He went, it's funny
people like me. And then they meet Maria AND's like,
gym's off to the side, but the you know, so
she So, I've been thinking a lot about aging, and
I just watched my father go through hell. My mom
died in twenty twenty eighty five. My mom did yoga
right up to the bitter end pretty much. She was

(02:26:23):
in better shape. But you wouldn't believe this woman was
eighty five and then she got nasty form of cancer.
Was dead pretty quickly. And then my father and nobody expected,
at least of all my father, for my father to
outlive my mother. No one. And my father was in
chronic pain for decades just from you know, doing hard,
you know, hard labor and impressed me. You're lifting skilled labor,

(02:26:45):
but you're lifting right heavy things of paper and all
this and his knees were destroyed on your feet the
whole time. And so he he suffered a lot, and
he wasn't didn't do himself any favors either, but you know,
he and and he just thought suffering was it? This
is what you do? You just suffering, and then eventually
you suffer more, and then you suffer more and then
you die, and that's what happened. He died last March,

(02:27:07):
so he you know, but I got I was very
close to him, particularly at the end, I you know,
talking to him every day on the phone and and
just watching what he was going through and realizing how
he had made choices in his life about the way
the world is, the way the things work. You know.
He was a wonderful guy, great leader. You know, both

(02:27:28):
my parents were brilliant. They had high school educations, but
they were brilliant. But he just he had these ideas
about the world that were his enemy in the end,
but it was too late for him to want to change.
Like it was like it was just beyond his capability.
And I thought, not me, not me, I'm going to

(02:27:48):
do it differently, you know. And unfortunately, around the same time,
I found tiny Abits and gave it coach and that
helped a lot, because all of a sudden, I'm like,
oh my god, I'm changing these things. I never thought.
Always thought I would just bite my fingernails, right, you know,
I thought at the end in the coffin, you know,
one hundred years old, and I have these gnarly little fingernails. Yeah,
you know, and I hate to keep using an example, but.

Speaker 1 (02:28:07):
Yeah, using that's the one. Yeah, yeah, I mean it.
It happened. It's with so many things. I talk a
lot about how I don't drink alcohol anymore. And it
started because of a tiny habit that I think I
had mentioned to you earlier, because I was going to
so many networking events. I was going to so many
networking events every night of the week, and I started
cutting alcohol out because I said, you know, i'd be
drinking every night of the week. Cut it out there.

(02:28:29):
You know. This was This is several years of a
process that I didn't even unconsciously. I always tell people
I accidentally quit drinking alcohol because I unconsciously was just
removing it from my from my daily life, eventually my
weekend life. Eventually it was like over the weekend, why
am I having this beer? Why am I having this
There was other motivators, like some of it was to

(02:28:50):
lose weight, some of it was to be in better shape,
and it was like, okay, well I'm gonna do this,
but I'm you know, I'm probably gonna have a beer
or I'm going to have an event. But eventually, by
not having the beer that weekend and thinking, oh, at
that party, I'll have a drink, and then at that
party not having the drink, and then another week goes
by another, and eventually by eliminating it slowly and through
this long process, quite accidentally, I must tell you that

(02:29:14):
it eventually became conscious where it was like consciously I said, well,
you know, I haven't drank this long, and I don't
really want to drinking.

Speaker 2 (02:29:23):
Why would I.

Speaker 1 (02:29:24):
Want to drink now? Why do I want it? And
of course when we find out in science about how
terrible alcohol is and how it causes atrophy of the
brain and all these different things, and we're not even
talking about high levels. But that's besides the point. The
point that I'm making here of what the tiny habits
is that I think it's also allowing time for these
habits to grow and manifest and to maybe what your

(02:29:46):
ultimate desire is. I don't think that when I first
stopped drinking alcohol, my ultimate desire was to never drink alcohol.
But I can certainly say that it wasn't a bad outcome.
And it was years ago, I'm talking two thousan Ian
eighteen when I made that commitment of I'm not drinking
at networking events anymore. And I certainly got drunk after that,

(02:30:09):
but it wasn't at a networking event. But it took
years and eventually from not having that one more beer,
one more drink, one more that eventually it turned into
I just don't drink anymore and it just is what
it is, and I just choose not to. But it's
a small it's a tiny habit to your point that
started years ago.

Speaker 2 (02:30:30):
Yeah, I mean that's not really a habit, right, because
you were on your habit was drinking, and you unraveled that.

Speaker 1 (02:30:36):
Slowly unraveled the habit, okay, is a little bit different.

Speaker 2 (02:30:38):
That's fair. Yeah, yeah, that's fair. You know, it's almost
the opposite in a way. Yep. And I do feel
really obligated to point out that if it weren't for alcohol,
I never would have met my wife. But I hadn't
come home drunk and fallen fall off the couch.

Speaker 1 (02:30:51):
Listen, you know what, I'm another one that you and
I definitely are are in cahots on because my wife
and I same thing. We we were we were of
the barflies that you know, we're at the party and
we were the last ones out, and we were definitely drinking.
I mean, she's Irish and very proud of her her
irish nature of being able to hold her own and
but both of us we just don't drink anymore.

Speaker 2 (02:31:12):
Yeah, that's interesting.

Speaker 1 (02:31:13):
Yeah, but yeah, keep going.

Speaker 2 (02:31:14):
Yeah, no, but anyhow, No, it's just making a joke
about me falling off the couch and joining stage crew.
But so yeah, I mean, this is this is the
tiny habit stuff is really I mean, it's hard to
talk about in the abstract. Sometimes you really just want
to get down to it. It's very practical. There's actually
master networks. We're having another one of those summits that
we like, the When We Didn't Fall, And I'm doing

(02:31:35):
a Tiny Habits workshop on March sixth. You're welcome the camp.
I'll send you the information and it's in We're doing
this one in Nayak at the nax Seaport, so the
people out there it's on event bright to look for
the tickets. And so I'm I'm really excited because I've
never actually been able to present a Tiny Habits workshop before.

(02:31:57):
I've had one ginned up for a while, and every
time something I'm supposed to do, when something happens, well, I.

Speaker 1 (02:32:03):
Think that's going to be really cool. And I think
if you could add the unraveling because I don't realize well,
because what you just said to me, right, I thought
it was a habit that I created not drinking, but
you're saying it's unraveling, and that's huge, right, because I
didn't realize that I was unraveling a habit. I thought
it was I created a habit of not drinking, but
it's unraveling. I don't even creative habit of not of

(02:32:24):
not right right, right, that makes that makes perfect sense
when you say it now, right, I would love to
hear that. But yeah, you know your your presentation last
time was awesome. I'd I'd be happy to come to it.

Speaker 2 (02:32:34):
Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah, I'll send you the information.

Speaker 1 (02:32:36):
Yeah. Unfortunately, for for you listening out there, this this podcast, uh,
this March sixth event has come and gone. But of
course we're going to have Jim on my LinkedIn live shows.

Speaker 2 (02:32:47):
Dumb luck there.

Speaker 1 (02:32:48):
Yeah, but you know what, we'll have it on my
LinkedIn live show and you'll get to tell everybody about
it there. So all of you listening right now, look
up tiny habits dot com. Look up Jim right because
you're a tiny habit coach.

Speaker 2 (02:33:00):
You habits coach just part of part of what I do.
I'm a leadership coach. I'm a leadership speaker and writer.

Speaker 1 (02:33:04):
Yeah. So there's a couple of different ways to meet you.
So could you just share with some of your contact
information with everybody?

Speaker 2 (02:33:11):
Yeah, my website is all on word Guidance for Greatness
dot com. I have my newsletter and podcast is. You
can find it, you know, pretty much anywhere, but it's
called on Leading with Greatness and it's on substack at
Jim Salvucci dot substack dot com. But if you look
up on Leading with Greatness on Apple or whatever, you

(02:33:32):
can find and look me up on LinkedIn. I can't
remember what my handle is. I always forget, but I do.
I do a lot on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1 (02:33:40):
Then you could change that, you could change it to
your name.

Speaker 2 (02:33:42):
Yeah, I forget, change it. I forget however configured?

Speaker 1 (02:33:45):
Oh oh, you forget how it's configured. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:33:47):
But Jim Salvucci, Yeah, I think it's Jim Salvucci PhD.

Speaker 1 (02:33:50):
You'll find him. He's a first connect with.

Speaker 2 (02:33:52):
Me now, Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right.

Speaker 1 (02:33:53):
You'll find him and and you'll be on my LinkedIn
live show, so you you're you will have been up
on on at when when you all hear this, and
then for all of you listening, this is also not
just being recorded in the iHeart studio, but we're also
recording live on YouTube, so the video is up on YouTube.
He YouTube.

Speaker 2 (02:34:10):
Hello whatever it is, Yeah wherever like the people the
jumbo tron waving the jumbo tron, cameras over here, cam on.

Speaker 1 (02:34:19):
But no, this this has really been a pleasure having
you in the studio and getting a chat with you
and getting to know you on a deeper level.

Speaker 2 (02:34:25):
Are sharing our stories of grel tiny, my my shameful stories.
By the way, I just remembered one more thing about
my website. If you go on that and you sign
up on the website I just had to put up
today is my new my new giveaway. Okay, So I
have something called the Transform to Greatness Toolkit. Very simple.

(02:34:50):
It looks like it's long, but it's actually quite It
just laid out in a big way, but it's just
five things about how to become a better leader, just
five point and each one I give a tiny habit recipe.

Speaker 1 (02:35:03):
Awesome, awesome, Well, reach out to Jim, if you want
to become a better leader, and I know you're your
old state saying is you want to rid the world
of bad bossing. That was the way I used to say,
And how do you say it today?

Speaker 2 (02:35:13):
Today? I say I want to guide today's young bosses
to become the next generation of great leaders.

Speaker 1 (02:35:21):
That's awesome. Join the movement, Join the movement everyone. It's
been a pleasure of having you on today. Thanks so
much for coming on.

Speaker 2 (02:35:27):
Wonderful, Thanks cool, Michael, great.

Speaker 1 (02:35:29):
Thank you for listening to The Michael Esposito Show. For
show notes, video clips, and more episodes, go to Michael
Esposito Inc. Dot com backslash podcast. Thank you again to
our sponsor dan Ten Insurance Services helping businesses get the
right insurance for all their insurance needs. Visit Denten dot
io to get a quote that's d N t N

(02:35:52):
dot io and remember when you buy an insurance policy
from Denten, you're giving back on a global scale. This
episode was produced by Uncle Mike at the iHeart Studios
in Poughkeepsie. Special thanks to Lara Rodrian for the opportunity
and my team at Michaelsposito Inc.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Transforming Bosses into Great Leaders; The Jim Salvucci Way

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

All Episodes

Transforming Bosses into Great Leaders; The Jim Salvucci Way

Stuff You Should Know