EntreLeadership - #153: Qualities to Look For in Leaders

Episode Date: June 27, 2016

Go to lunch with one of our top leaders at Ramsey Solutions. Suzanne Simms, Executive Vice President of the Business to Consumer Division, joins host Ken Coleman for a special noontime discussion on leadership and how you can influence and lead. Also on board is EntreLeadership Coach John Felkins, who answers business questions sent in from our listeners. entreleadership.com/podcast The EntreLeader's Guide to Delegation Infusionsoft's Webinar Guide Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now, here is your host, Ken Coleman. Broadcasting from the Music City, this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, for leaders. Hey, leaders, thank you so much for joining this conversation. We're having a blast here. We have a great episode coming to you. Here's what to expect.

We take your questions, and we give you answers in our Ask the Coach series with head coach, Falcons from our All Access program. And then we continue this new series that we created, this lunch with leaders, if you will. It's not the official name, but that's what we're doing. We're taking you inside our organization. This time, our guest is Suzanne Sims, who's an executive vice president of our business to consumer and our digital areas. And she is really refreshing and been with Dave a long time. So this is our goal. We simply want you to hear more of what Entree leadership looks like on a day-to-day, month-to-day, month, year-by-year basis within this organization because we eat our own food. And then we give a win

call to you. Now, this is kind of a new thing as well where we're getting win stories from men and women like you, the listeners themselves. We want to highlight where you have won and how entree leadership has played a small role in helping you win. And so we talk with Kyle and you're going to enjoy that. It will really encourage you. Then of course, we have some free tools. So stay tuned for all of that. All right, it's time for more Ask the Coach. And John Falcons, our head coach here. Good to see you, buddy. Good to see you. Thanks for having me, Ken. When are you going to wear the fist net hat and the bike shorts? You know what I'm talking about? The old school, uh, and come in with a whistle. No, I don't know what you're talking about. Really? No, not really.

It just scares me so badly. I'm not going to claim that I understand. I'm just saying this. I'm deflecting. It would be fun to see you walk in in that 1982 coach outfit. You know what I mean? And, and then we could take a picture. We could post it on Andre. What makes you, what makes you think I even own that. You don't, but I'm just saying, I think it'd be funny. Okay. Because for me, when I think coach, I think of guys who coach me, and that's growing up in the 80s. Remember the ridiculous outfits those guys wore in the 80s? That's all I actually remember the 80s pretty clearly. Yeah, yeah, it's unfortunate. All right, this is good fun. Alice is the first question up. She said, my employees have so much potential, and I need to give them the encouragement to act like

owners. Verbalizing this to them is the next step, I think, but I want to make sure it's inspiring for them, but realistic. Are there some do's or don'ts? Yeah, there are. I think the do's and the don'ts aren't as important, though. That's not what I would worry about. When I look at a team or I think about a team, what's the downside of them emotionally experiencing the responsibility, the success, the failures, everything that's involved in winning in business like an owner? Well, I, I think that list is pretty short, Ken. You want them to do that. So I would lean into that.

I would step into it. You probably won't get it right the first time. Not all of us are Dave Ramsey. Not all of us are Ken Coleman, where we can stand in front of a room and demand the attention and inspire a crowd like you can, Ken. I'll give you some money later. Thank you. But regardless, you've got to step into it,

and you've got to start to paint the picture for your team of what it is like to win together. And there's a lot of things that go into that, right? You've got to set up the compensation in such a way. that they experience the success financially and emotionally. And maybe that isn't some big structured program that you commit to and then would have a hard time pulling out of. But maybe it's just simply having that kind of that big thermometer graph on the wall. And as the team marches on and gets closer to the goal,

you celebrate, you bring in food for lunch, you know, whatever it is, although food is kind of one of our secret weapons around here with the team. So I'm not looking at that as a do, and don't situation. I'm looking at it as a, give yourself grace to get it a little bit wrong the first time, rinse, repeat, and just continue to do everything you can to inspire your team

and get them bought into the vision to the point that they experience it like owners. I love that. All right, let's move on to Ronald. At times, when I celebrate the small wins, some of the team members seem to think we have made it, and they get complacent. How can I reward the team for the small wins

and keep them motivated to exceed the actual goal for the big win. And Ronald put big in all caps. So big, big. It was a big big big. I like the way he's thinking. Well, first of all, great recognition, great job on celebrating the little wins because a lot of times as entrepreneurs, we don't do that.

We're so quickly on to the next thing. We don't celebrate the little wins. But if you feel like they're getting complacent, first of all, you as the leader are responsible for that. You've got to recognize, hey, this is my thing and this is something that I need to correct, which I think is happening here. But it's simply he needs to paint that long-term picture. Where are we going?

It's not just what are we doing today. It's not what we're just hoping to accomplish by Friday, but what are we trying to do in the marketplace long-term? What mountain are we climbing? What are we trying to do in the economy? What are we trying to do in our community? Whatever it is, it just has got to be the longer-term vision that has to be painted for them.

And you know this, Ken, they have to be reminded. How many times do your kids have to hear something before it starts to sink in? Honestly, I don't know I'm still trying to figure it out. Yeah, me too. Me too, and my kids are a little bit older than years, but I'm still not done. So it's the same dynamic. I like that. That's really good.

Well, he is coach John Falcons. John Falcons is really the leader and his team behind the All Access success. This is a growing community. Thousands and thousands of Entree leaders who are part of All Access who create this a wonderful environment because of the coaching, because of the content and the community. And he will take your questions. Very simple. We'd love to hear them from you.

Got a question? Very specific. He'll give you specific answers you just heard. You can email us podcast at entreleadership.com. Podcast at entreleadership.com. Thanks, coach. We'll talk with you soon. Thank you.

Hey, folks, in addition to sending your questions to us, make sure that you're taking advantage of these monthly free webinars that we are giving you. And you can experience a little bit of. of what All Access does in helping leaders all around the country. We'd love for you to try it out. Just go to Entreleadership.com, and at the bottom of the page, you can join our free newsletter, and that's how you know what's coming your way.

This is not spam, this isn't a bunch of junk and chotchkes. This is, here's what we're doing. We'd love for you to join in, so make sure you do that, Entreeleadership.com, and join our newsletter. Speaking of webinars, nobody knows how to do webinars and make them work for you as well as Infusionsoft. Now, you know, we've been talking about this. all month here in June. This is the final week. I want to make sure that you take advantage of

this. Webinars are simply one of the best tools to help you communicate all around the world. It's that simple. Literally, you can touch people all around the world with your message, and you can convert people to your products, to your resources. So if you're curious on how to actually do this, how do you produce one? Infusionsoft has a great tool. You can do it in eight steps. Infusionsoft has created a guide that will cover many topics, but most importantly, how to select a webinar topic. How do you create a script and slides, getting people to attend,

and avoiding those pitfalls that make a webinar just unwatchable. That and so much more, go to infusionsoft.com slash eight steps. That's the number eight. Infusionsoft.com slash eight steps. Or you can go to this episode at entreleadership.com

and click on Infusionsoft's link in the show notes. Recently, Eric, the producer, Ben, the sound engineer, and I took Suzanne Sims to lunch. She is, as I said at the top of the podcast, our executive vice president of our business to consumer division and all of our digital strategy. She's been with Dave a long time. And this conversation is very important when you understand how we do, what we do, and why it works. So let's get right to it. Here are Suzanne and I enjoying great conversation over really good food. So take us to the moment where you get to know Dave. At what point does he say, hey, Suzanne, come work for me?

How'd that happen? Well, what happened was my husband and I were living in Knoxville. We moved back to Nashville. I needed some part-time work two days a week kind of thing just to supplement the income of the household. So they hired me for two days a week. Doing what? I'd call it administrative work. There was just a lot of administrative type support work that wasn't getting done.

Right. There were about 30 team members. We had about 30 radio stations, running hard and fast. It was all hands on deck all the time. There weren't all these clearly defined roles to perfection. And I just came in two days a week and did whatever needed to be done. What's the range of time to work in a couple days a week, doing a little bit of everything, just being a team player and making things happen to a full-time role where it's a little bit more defined?

Dave stopped by my cube one day and said, hey, have you thought about working full-time? We've got some really good roles and we need good people to fill them. long story short you know a few months into working there I went full time and they created a role for me that Dave had a vision for he'd been thinking about for a long time and no one else in the radio industry had ever created a role like this to this day they have not we called it affiliate relations but what it was was just simply coming in every day and building a relationship with the decision makers at all of our radio stations. We had about 30 to 35 at the time and getting to know them. And I kept spreadsheets with all of their personal information, their favorite sports teams,

their wife or husband, their spouse's birthday, their birthday, just things about them. So they would get, you know, little notes. And I just built relationship with them. And they were so taken aback by it because no one had ever done that. It's a very, the industry tends to be very, it's not relational. it's very transactional. And they were not used to someone adding that element. And so it went really well, and it led to us having a whole team that does that now. And over the years, we just kind of restructured where more and more people were reporting to me because it just made sense.

And then we ended up hiring more people to just serve the radio stations, because once they knew that we would serve them, they really started taking advantage of that. Now, just for a point of reference, when you start leading people, has entree leadership, because our audience knows the story well, we talk about it regularly. And if you're new to this podcast, you know, when Dave creates this term entree leadership, it's solely to train people within the organization. And then it kind of takes off and later becomes a book and number one and now it's all the stuff. But I'm just curious, when you start leading people for the first time, or certainly in the organization here, was entree leadership happening?

Was Dave? Not yet. So here you are figuring it out on the fly. Yes. But he was very, as he still is today, intricately involved in everything going on in the organization. And so I was under his leadership very on a daily basis. And I was there when he was going to the copy machine to print the pages for the Andre leadership lesson for that week. And then we would go in a conference room and he would teach us there in person from those pages from the copy machine.

There's a big difference in what you think leadership is and then what you have to do when you're in that role. I'm just curious. Did you like it initially? What was your take us back there? What was that feeling like? This is what I tell people. If you want to be in leadership, you've got to figure out a way to make that an organic part of your life. Because you all know the kid on the playground in third grade that everyone wanted to naturally know what they wanted to do and follow them around. Now, I'm not being that dramatic and describing myself. But at a very young age, 21, 22, working for a Fortune 500, company, I was putting a leadership role over a team of like 10 to 12 people, which I looked back on and go, they were crazy. Why were they doing that? But I had a natural ability to influence and lead. And so I didn't think anything of it. I've always taken it very seriously. But I didn't, it wasn't like this big like, oh, I'm in leadership, you know. Well, this is an interesting conversation. I don't want to get too sidetracked on this, but you just said something that I believe is true. and I think for our audience, I think this needs to be a raw realization.

Maxwell says leadership is influence. You used the word influence just a moment ago. You said you were naturally that way. I believe that you have to learn leadership on a high end level in order to be super effective. Yet, there are just certain people who have natural leadership skills that still have to be honed. Yes. You agree with that. Absolutely.

So you hire leaders all the time. So here's where I press you on this. what are you looking for in people that you, and I'm talking within our organization where you go, you know what, we're going to tap them to be in a role where they lead. What natural abilities do you look for? I look for someone who is comfortable in their own skin, which you can tell right off the bat. Because if they are, they've got a level of maturity that will make them a lot more successful. and I look for their ability and their desire to take what they do very seriously, but to not take

themselves too seriously. Because for me, that is crucial. That's how I approach my life every day. And if you take yourself too seriously, you will always be second-guessing, every word that comes out of your mouth, worried about how people are perceiving you, worried about how to hit the next strong of success instead of focused on being successful in what you're supposed to be doing. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. Curious to your style of developing yourself as a leader, because I think there's, let me just overgeneralize, I think there's probably three basic ways that you can develop as a leader.

There's the learning, right? That's reading books, going to events, you know, that kind of deal. Then there's the looking, you know, or listening. Maybe it's just two. So it's the learning and then the looking and listening. Which style do you tend to go towards? Here comes your tea, your specialty. Yeah, this is folks, by the way, Suzanne's made fun of my green tea.

Honey on the way. Oh, see? He just said honey. He did. The waiter just called me honey, but what he was really saying is your honey's not in the green tea. And if you don't like the bitterness of green tea, just a dollop or two of honey. Stir it a certain way. Stir it around.

It just takes the edge off. I do not and never ever have learned well from formal. mentoring or I don't learn well that way from books from formal you're looking and listening I find people who are successful who have influence around me and I simply do what they do

I mimic the way they communicate the way they carry themselves the way they interact relationally especially with people above them yeah you know Dave is a human being thus he has warts and shortcomings like any person but the guy's an extraordinary leader And I don't say that because I work with the guy.

I'm telling you, I observed it long before I got here. With the comment you just made, this mimicking, what are some things that you mimic from Dave that have been super helpful to you? Because I'm sure the list is long. But if you're mimicking, because you've been around him so long, give me just one example of something that you said, I've mimicked that, and you may be doing it in your own way, but functionally you mimic it.

Well, something that pops to the top of my head when you ask that is, when Dave sees a problem. he does not go through a formal process to fix that problem. In other words, he sees a problem in a certain area. He doesn't go through this super respectful formal process. Okay, I need to gather this leader with this leader and this leader have a meeting a week from Tuesday at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. And then after we finish that meeting, then I will structure another meeting with so and so and so. No, he immediately grabs a random group of people that in his mind,

would be great at solving that problem. It doesn't matter what department they're in. It doesn't matter what their position is. He knows that they would be the best minds to strategically fix that problem. He will gather them in a room, have a messy conversation, throw his passion into the mix. I love that. And then solve the problem. That's how I tend to operate the best.

It makes people a little uncomfortable, but it's also very refreshing to other people because it cuts through red tape and all the formality, and that's really in the DNA of our organization. Now, we've become more process-driven and more sophisticated over the years, which is a good thing, because we were so rough and tumble in the early days, and that got us to where we are,

but it won't get us to where we need to go, and so we've acknowledged that. But there's something in our DNA still where when a problem arises, we like to just get in a room and duke it out and have messy conversations you get to the resolution faster that way. Yeah, I love that.

You're very relational. Yes. I think some people immediately go, okay, I get that. I'm a relational leader too. I want you to lean in a little bit on the people that are listening going, I like clear boundaries, lots of borders, walls. You know, you get the analogy. I mean, there's pros and cons, everybody's style,

but maybe make the case of why being such a relational leader works. But before you do that, that mean? When I say relational leader, what does that mean in Suzanne Sims world? This is all I know to tell you is that I didn't have years of trying to climb a ladder, trying to prove myself, trying to show my value. So I don't have, I'm not guarded as a result. I just don't have that. It's not how I operate. So there are no boundaries up with, I mean, well, I have the needed boundaries in relationships in the workplace. but I am not a guarded person and people know that they can just,

when I say open door policy, they know that I really mean that. And when they ask me a question, they're going to get a very direct answer. They're going to always know where they stand with me. And I'm going to shoot straight from the hip in a way that I hope they perceive is caring and kind. Because I want to treat people the way I want to be treated. But I'm not going into every conversation worried about, I mean, I'm like every other person. I worry about how people perceive me.

It's not like I don't care, but that's not this driving force in my life because I have the trust of the people that I care deeply about, like Dave and my peers and even the folks that I lead. And so I don't walk into work every day feeling like I have to completely prove myself over and over again. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. So what's interesting now is...

But I didn't answer your question about the relational aspect. Here's the deal. What I described is the reason that, I am able to be relational successfully, okay? But when you're relational, then when you enter into a meeting and there are a group of people you're going to be working on a project with, maybe you don't know them all real well. Your natural instinct is going to be to get to know them. You know, if I was sitting around this table with four folks, let's say we were going to

work on a three-month project together. It wouldn't be okay with me after three months to not know what's going on with Ben's family. how many kids he has if he has kids. And like to me it would be unnatural. I would have to know those things. And when you build relationship with people that you're working with, you then have the ability to influence them. And when you have to have a difficult conversation,

it's very natural. It's not awkward. It's not out of left field because there's this relationship already built. There's a foundation. And you can sit down and you can say, you know what? You know I love you. You know I'm crazy about you.

and I've got your back outside of this room. You've seen it happen. But when you did X, Y, and Z, like, you were way out of line. Right. And I just need you to know that so you don't repeat that mistake. And then five minutes later, you're cracking a joke and having a good time. Right. Yeah, I love that.

Now, I want to talk about delegation, because this is like, you say delegation, right? And you just start itch it a little bit because it's just part of leadership. It's not a fun conversation to have, but things have really changed. I mean, you're talking about, We were just discussing your leadership. And you're talking about a team of 10 or something like that. And now as an EVP of our organization with, I guess we're nearing 600 people now, I can never keep up count. But I mean, we're above 550.

Yes. How do you delegate? Like, what is your style? What works? What doesn't work? Here's my philosophy. I don't ever want to be in a position where I am in front of Dave or the board. or any level of leadership

where an idea is being presented that is in my periphery that I cannot fully represent well and have their back. That's what I tell my folks all the time. I have eight people that directly report to me and I always tell them, I want to have your back,

which means we have to get together beforehand and be an agreement before we go to present an idea, a solution, or what have you. And some leaders, at my level would be perfectly fine, hearing things for the first time in front of, you know, the operating board, Dave, or what have you. But that's not my style because I want to set people up to be as successful as possible. And I think they take fewer licks that way.

Yeah. For lack of a better metaphor. All right. So this has to stretch you a little bit. And let me just pull an example, you know, out of the hat that I think will be helpful for our listeners. You know, you're not a technology, you know, guru by trade. You're just not. And we, you're your are in heavy technology. One example is a year ago, we launched every dollar, which is this online budgeting software. I mean, it's like, I can't even imagine how much technical stuff behind the scenes is going on to present this software. And so you've got a guy, Michael Finney, who's a VP, and he reports directly to you. Maybe give, just, I think that was wonderful construct he gave us, but what did it look like in that rollout of this big technology piece?

Yeah, when I became EVP of the consumer division, we had our subscription-based website that we put under my leadership. At the time, it was my total money makeover.com. We put a guy named Michael Finney in charge of that team and of that product. And he just intuitively, he's super smart. He understands both technology and he understands business. It's a really awesome combination. And he just intuitively started to lead his team in a direction where they did the right research. And they very quickly discovered what we,

really have as a budgeting product. That's what consumers are coming to us for. And so let's do it right. And so we started this process of concepting and then building what is now every dollar.com. I knew nothing about technology to this day. I know enough to be dangerous is what I tell people now, but it was very intimidating to lead Michael Finney, who was leading that team. And there are two reasons why it was successful. Number one, we're so highly collaborative at our organization, like over the top. And it's in our DNA. It's just how we operate. So when there were big meetings, we call them stakeholder meetings and sometimes Dave was in there. It wasn't just me and Finney and his team. You had at least two other board members, the CIO and you had the chief marketing officer. There were plenty of times

Dave looked more to them than to me for answers for some of the decisions we were making on every dollar. And that was a little disheartening at first, but I quickly learned, no, that's a good thing. There are a lot of cooks in this kitchen, but it's going to cause us to be more successful. And then number two is, Finney and I learned very early on how to best function together in a way that would set him up for success. It wasn't me trying to research technology and speak into the type of web development they were doing on every dollar. No, it was me meeting on a regular basis. with Finney instructing him on how to bring information to Dave and the board and how to use the right timing and the right presentation style and which information to bring and what information

to not bring. And that became very valuable to him because that was something he really desperately needed mentorship on. And so he leaned heavily on me because here he is leading this what became a very large team to implement the first massive digital. digital rollout our company had ever done. And he was at a loss on how to communicate effectively past his little team. And so that's where I was able to help him the most because I had years already under my belt doing that with Dave within our organization. And so that was the way we learned to function. Does that make sense? Yeah, this conversation strikes me as a great example of a secure leader, having the confidence to work with people that are much smarter on an issue

than you are, maybe just and generally have a higher IQ, but you were able to step in your role. Hold on just a minute. I wasn't insinuating that. No, no, no. What you're saying is very good. But Michael Finney is a really smart guy. Yes, very, very. And I'm saying that this is difficult for leaders.

We hear this in leadership conversations. You know, oh, I've got, hire a bunch of smart people and get out of their way. But you essentially just describe that, yet you were confident enough to go, here's the role I can play. to let you do what you do best and being confident in your role as a leader, not as the idea champion. That's not easy to do. You admitted that. You said, you know, you're sitting in there with Dave,

and Dave is directing his gaze at the guys that are in the details, but yet you had enough security to be like, hey, that's, I got to do this. If I don't do this well, it doesn't matter who Dave's looking at. I find that to be, that's got to be hard for a leader. Do you come to that security naturally? you just learned to step into that and go, I didn't have a choice. Yeah, I didn't have a choice.

So what do you mean by that? Because with my role, we were moving so fast to develop that product. If I had let myself get, been out of shape about that, that wouldn't have done anything for anybody. So I just accepted it for what it was. Yeah.

And had enough other things on my plate. Right, right. That honestly, it was like, yeah, I don't need to try to take on more there because that would be, it just wouldn't make sense. But over the years, and I've always joked about how I'm not the idea person. I'm not a creative type. You know, I know where my strengths are and that's not one of them.

So I'm okay with other people bringing great ideas to the table and casting vision. But just by being in an organization that is so full of awesome ideas, a million a day, I've naturally grown in that. All right. Let's put you on the spot to learn from a favorite. or not even a failure, but just, hey, this could have been done better. We were talking about delegation earlier, and I think you gave us some amazing kind of how-to stuff and how you do it that works.

Where have you fallen short on delegating? I had a team that I was leading that was one of the larger teams that I was leading a few years ago, and the vice president that reported to me had multiple things going on on his team that he was responsible for, like lots of different. types of job responsibilities. And it was too much for him to probably look after and it was too much for me to dig into. And so he was known and had a brand of being someone who was a very solid leader. And I was a little more hands off with his team as a whole because of that. And there came a point in time where he left our organization. And so when that happens, naturally you've got to find,

you know, even for a temporary time, you've got to elevate some folks to kind of run the ship for a little while. And as I dug in, I quickly realized that there was one portion of that team that was really in bad straits. Nothing had blown up yet, but it was very close. And I found out that the VP had not been leading that area at all, had been completely hands-off. And because I was being two hands-off with him, I wasn't aware of that. And it really didn't come to the surface until he left and moved on to a new season of his life. And that was a real lesson for me, because Because, I mean, you know, even when you have a lot on your plate and you're juggling a lot of balls at one time, you take your eye off of one. There are always going to be ramifications.

You cannot as a leader take your eye off any ball without there being consequences. And it may take a while, but ultimately you will have to deal with it as a problem. Yeah. So one of the things that we do well is great fun culture. You just can't be at our place for very long without just going, man, this is just a great stinking place to be. I want you to speak to that, how important you think it is in our culture, that we just have a lot of fun while working hard and doing great work. Well, I tell people all the time, like, life is too short. I'm never, ever going to work somewhere where I cannot have fun and genuinely like the people that I work with.

I mean, I only hire people that I like. And they're all kinds of different people. They're not all the same. But if you can't go to work and have fun, why would you do that? You spend so many hours of your life at work or with people that you work with. You've got to have relationship. You've got to like them and you've got to have fun. One of the most tremendous things for me is I looked up about a year ago and took on some added responsibility.

And I realize, okay, I've got all these big teams now reporting to me. And I don't, I'm having trouble keeping track of who's on what team. I see them walking around the building, but if they're a web developer, like, are they working on this product? Are they working on that product? It was very hard to keep it straight. So every quarter, I do a lunch with each of those teams, and it's the entire team. So with every dollar, it's a 25-person team because you've got every marketer, every web developer, every creative designer, every product owner, like they're all in one room with me sitting around a table. And I let them ask me any question they want.

and we have fun, mostly me, making fun of me. We eat together, and it really helps me connect the dots. And remember, when I see them in the hallway two days later, oh yeah, that's Jeremy. He used to do web development for our media department at one point, but now he's doing web development for every dollar, making a huge impact there, by the way. Needs to trim his beard a little bit,

but he's doing great web development work. And I also learned in that, lunch that he's one of the biggest pranksters in the entire organization. He pretty much plays a prank a day and they're pretty funny. So those are the kind of things that come out of those lunches. They're huge for me as a leader to keep up with things, but it also breaks down barriers. If they don't know me and they don't know that I don't take myself very seriously, they just know I'm an EVP, they can be intimidated by that. But when they have lunch with me and they realize all I do is make fun of myself, it just really drops those intimidation back.

boundaries. To this point, I've been very intimidated, but I'm glad you said that because now I'm relaxing a little bit. How do you get along with people that you don't like? How do you work with people you don't like? Like, I think people need to hear that. Like, I know you don't like me very well. I know it's awkward, but I feel like we can learn something. Can, how do you press through it? How many times have I told you that I love you? Thank you very much. I just needed to hear it again. I'm a needy person, people. I know. You're very self-aware. It's some therapy right now. You know. You know. You You know, hey, seriously, you know what I always say? One of my biggest sayings is, if you're self-aware, I can work with you.

Self-awareness is one of the most valuable character traits a person can have. Gary Vaynerchuk said that recently. I agree with that. You can be socially awkward. You can be hard to deal with, hard driving. But if you're self-aware about it, we can work with that. I've got a girl in our technology team right now does great work, super, super smart. But she was literally a bull in a China shop.

just running all over people all the time. It was her personality. She had a good heart and good intentions, but people couldn't deal with her. When we sat her down and kind of made her aware of this, she's like, oh, I get it. Like, I know that about myself. I know I have those tendencies. She's going through a book with her leader right now about her personal brand. She's working every single day on her communication style. Like, because she's self-aware. A year from now, she'll be a completely different person. And she may even be in a leadership role, which she desperately wants because she has awareness about herself. Well, people will work with you and forgive you quicker and allow you to kind of work through your junk if you are self-aware.

But it's the person who's just got their head in the sand that's just almost impossible. All right. This is a question I love to ask folks. And that is, what are you learning right now? Where are you trying to grow? Here's where I'm being challenged the most right now and forcing myself to grow is that when I took on the extra responsibilities about a year ago, the people I'm working with in that area are completely wired different from the people I worked with for the previous really 12 to 14 years. They have a lot of feelings. And I'm not used to leading people who have high sea on the disc, have a lot of feelings, and interact with each other in that regard. and I've never had a lot of tolerance for it, which isn't awesome.

I'm not proud of that. And I'm being forced to learn how to communicate differently and lead differently as a result. Because a good leader has an appreciation for people who have a different personality profile from them. I can't stiff arm those people just because they're different from me. And so that's a huge area of growth for me right now. That's good. I struggle with that. Alan Harris runs our content department.

He has a chair sitting outside of his office. And there's a sign above the chair that points to the chair. And it says, feeling stay here. I love that. I love to have that motto. Oh, I wish I could get away with that.

But I can't do that in this area. It doesn't, and his is tongue in cheek, of course. He's an awesome leader. But as much as I would love to operate that way, I would never be able to break down barriers with those folks if I did. And by the way,

the reason I was put over that area, is because they needed new fresh leadership. There was some dysfunction going on in their processes, their communication. I've got to fix that. And the only way I can is if I appreciate who they are and the way they need to be communicated with. My burger with the fried egg and pimento cheese was really good, but what was better is this conversation. It really was good. And I know that our audience is going to appreciate that.

And one final question for you, because every interview needs a final question. can we use the company debit card? I mean, you're a big shot, EVP. Eric told me that you were paying for this out of your pocket. I did not know this. Shockingly, I'm not prepared for that detail. Suzanne Sims, everybody. For those of you keep you score at home,

I actually got tardy to pick up the tab. I did not have to, so that was a good lunch and a good day. And it really was a good meal. Hope you enjoyed that. Hey, I want to tell you about our tool that we've been giving to you all month, the Entree Leader's Guide to Delegation, the best way to build a business bigger than you. This is an absolute starter kit, if you will.

You can jump right into delegation. You're already delegating, or you're not delegating properly. This is something that's happening every day. This is not something you have to plan for and think about. It's happening. So we created this checklist, if you will, with a lot of great resources to help you get started doing it right, things like 10 basics of delegation.

You can print it out, and literally it's like a mirror, walking along with you and your leadership team. It's a great resource. By the way, many of you have jumped on board with this and have downloaded this guide. A couple ways to get it. Obviously, we give you a word to text if you want to go that route and that word is delegation. Text the word delegation to 33444. Text delegation to 3344. Or you can go to entreleadership.com slash podcast. Go to any of the episodes, if you will, in June, certainly this episode. And we have a link there for you to download it. I will tell you that one of the most enjoyable things we've started doing are these win calls. Now this is just something we call it internally and now you're hearing us talk

about it. But the idea came up several months ago in a podcast meeting with our leadership team. And we started thinking, there are so many people who are listening to this podcast who have come to one of our entre leadership events or through one of the conversations here or one of the lessons from Dave, what have you, being all access members. They have begun to talk. turn the ship and they're winning. And we wanted to highlight them because they represent you. It can be done. It is being done. So how have they turned the ship around? And that was the origin of this idea. Let's get some people and let's talk with them. People who are part of our community, our tribe, who listen to this podcast, come to our live events. Let's get their story.

Our guest is Kyle Malnati. Kyle is a partner of Madison and company properties. He is a real estate broker and winning and winning big. And this is a guy that I've had the pleasure of meeting at several events. He's one of these guys that when you meet him, you realize he's hungry. You know? Not as in hungry like he needs a banana, like Eric the producer is always eating behind the glass. That's his go-to fruit, by the way. But he's hungry to learn. He's hungry to win. He's hungry to get better. So this was a lot of fun. So let's get right to it. This is my conversation with Kyle Malnady. Kyle, it's great to be with you. And I want to dive right into this because you reached out to us and let us know, really struggled on this delegation thing, and that's our theme this month. And so I want you to share

your story, and let's go right to the point where you really sensed, this is a mess. I'm creating a mess. What was going on? Well, thanks, Ken. And yes, it was an absolute mess. As a young leader, as a baby leader, I had a number of years worth of hiring because I knew that I just couldn't get everything done. But then what would happen is I felt like I was kind of throwing tasks at people without a whole lot of direction. And it was really until I became familiar with the Entry Leadership program that I understood how to delegate properly. So I was probably a really poor leader for about five years.

All right. So what took place when you showed up, I guess you came to an event and you kind of got an idea and said, okay, this can work. What was it that was a little bit of a breakthrough? And then how did you apply it back in your business to start cleaning up this mess? The big breakthroughs for me were all the content in the book

as well as the audio CDs that went along with the book. I loved to hear and Dave read about it. And then I started to plug into the live events, met some of the coaches, specifically John Falcons and Chris Oakley. And they started to coach me up on how to more effectively lead and delegate based on Dave's program. All right. And so I understand that the rope was the analogy of the rope that Dave shares. And we shared it on this podcast.

That was particularly helpful to you. How did you use that? That was probably my biggest breakthrough. because for me, delegation, I got my degree in finance. I went to business school. I always knew the delegation was something that had to happen. But my biggest problem was I didn't really understand what that meant. In the mastering the rope analogy that Dave uses, specifically with as a leader,

your hands are always connected to that rope, even as your teammate might continue to move forward and you give them a little bit more rope at a time as they demonstrate competency and as they demonstrate that they are responsible for an area. So the newer the teammate, the closer you keep that slack in the rope. And then the more seasoned the teammate, the more responsibility that they should have, you'd obviously want to give them more rope. And so that analogy really crystallized things for me. It was really kind of an abstract concept, the concept of delegation, before I heard Dave say that.

This was fun. You shared a lot of information with this as we talk to you about this because we love sharing real stories of entree leaders like you, Kyle. And I want to read a quote from one of your team. teammates in a performance review, and I want you to comment on it because this is really a success. We love sharing the win stories. This is the first time, as I'm quoting one of the ladies that you had a review with, this is the first time I have felt like I'm building a career, not just working in a job. She goes on to say things like I'm breathing fresh air.

This is exciting stuff. What do you point to when you hear a review come back to you like that as the leader? point to is creating that type of environment where she's commenting on it. Well, there are two main takeaways I had when I heard that in the performance review. It was a regular annual review like a lot of leaders have, and this person had been on our team through a really toxic turnover of a prior teammate that we had to let go. And so the two things that I really attribute that to are, one, me realizing that the leadership problem was me and that I needed to make some discernible changes. And then two, I needed to really

work on hiring properly. And the 12-step process of Dave's effective hiring that's in Entry leadership, really for me, I wasn't following that protocol. I was kind of taking bits and pieces of it. And once I committed to doing it step by step all the way through, what ended up happening is we hired effectively and got the cancer out of our building, as Dave likes to say. That's so good. Well, Kyle, we appreciate you hanging out with us. I appreciate you being a part of this amazing entree leadership tribe. You really do model what it is to be an entree leader. And we appreciate you, man. Ken Coleman, thank you. It's always great to see you, and I appreciate it. Really enjoy talking with Kyle. And incidentally, his business is debt-free. And we met him at Summit.

That's what's great about our Entree Leadership events, whether it be the one-day event or the Summit, where we get out there and we get to rub shoulders with you men and women who are just killing it. It's so encouraging. And so I want to mention our Summit event, 2017. Whole new lineup. Entreeleadership.com slash summit.

Entreeleadership.com slash summit to learn everything you need to learn about the event. but it's May 21 through 24 in Orlando, Florida, 2017. Dave Ramsey, Christy Wright, and Chris Hogan from our team. They're going to be joined on stage by Simon Seneca. The legendary coach, Lou Holtz, leadership guru, Jansi Maxwell, and another special guest who you will know well. We'll save that. You know us, we like to throw in those little extra surprises.

So stay tuned for that. We'll tell you more about that. I want to thank Coach John Falcons, Suzanne Sims, and Kyle Malnetti for being a part of this podcast. coming up next week, one of the most enjoyable interviews I've done in a long time. And all I'm going to say is, he's a Navy SEAL. Oh, my goodness, do we break some leadership, personal growth, and personal responsibility down? You're going to love that.

So on behalf of our producer, Eric Anthony, and the entire Entree leadership team, thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.