EntreLeadership - #164: Carrie Wilkerson—Maximize Your Profits and Productivity

Episode Date: September 12, 2016

Entrepreneur extraordinaire and best-selling author Carrie Wilkerson joins us to talk some personal-growth gold, including how to be successful without leaving those you love behind and how to handle difficult conversations with one of your toughest employees—you! Also on this episode, EntreLeadership Coach John Felkins stops by to answer some small-business questions from our listeners. entreleadership.com/podcast 3 Reasons Team Members Fail Giveaway E1D LiveStream Infusionsoft's Lifecycle Marketing 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. We are broadcasting from the Music City, and this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Here's what's coming up. John Falcons, our head coach of our All-access program,

stops by in just moments as we answer your questions. Our feature conversation is with Kerry Wilkerson, bestselling author, blogger, entrepreneur extraordinaire, and friend of mine, you're going to love this. This is Personal Growth Bonanza. That's what this conversation is. And of course, we're going to bring you free stuff from our team at Entree Leadership and the folks who help us power this podcast.

That's right. Infusionsoft has a brand new tool. So we're going to give you that as well. So excited about getting this thing going. So let's do it. Well, folks, it's time for Ask the Coach and our head coach. John Felkins is back in studio with his coach. Coach, how are you?

I'm doing great. Thanks, Ken. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I got to tell you. I see you all the time, and it's always John. But then when we do this segment, I like to call you coach. And it's the old athlete to me that just doesn't want to admit I'm retired and I want to call somebody coach. You know, you're actually one of the very few people at Ramsey Solutions that refers to me as John.

Really? Yeah. Almost everybody refers to me as by my last name. Felcons. Felkins, yeah. Which is another kind of an athletic thing, right? Everybody's got a last name. Yep.

All that stuff. So this is always fun. So we've got three questions we're going to get to, folks. And we love your questions. Quick reminder here at the top. And then I'll tell you, before we let John go, podcast at entreleadership.com. We'd love to answer your questions. First up is Holly.

And she asked, how do I get to the first hire? Right now, she is the classic entrepreneur, John. She's wearing every hat. She's bootstrapping it. And it's a pressure washing business, which is kind of fun. She has zero debt. But she simply needs to know when, how, what, the whole nine yards, that first hire, which has got to be terrifying, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Let's start with when, right? Because we could go a long ways with this one question. It's a pretty straightforward thing. It's just not really easy. The straightforward answer is, when you have the margin to pay them. I know she's the CEO, the chief everything officer right now, right? but she has got to create enough profitability in her business to pay another person.

Once she has enough to cover that line item, that payroll, then she's a prospect for hiring her first team member. Now, a couple of things about that. One is she needs to be looking at a role that she'll get a return on her investment very quickly. So I don't suggest she hire somebody that's going to be pure overhead. You want to hire a revenue producer. So if she's pressure washing, she needs a pressure washer number two, right, to generate more revenue.

She can make that hire pretty quickly as soon as she can cost justify, you know, another pressure washer or another set of, you know, whatever tools that she needs. That person will help generate more revenue more quickly than, let's say, a bookkeeper. Because a bookkeeper is help that you need that, but they're not going to generate revenue. So if she's looking at revenue generating position, she can do that fairly quickly. As quickly as she can hire, I mean, cover, you know, the tools and things that she needs to equip that person, then pull the trigger on them. If it's an overhead role, she needs to really wait until she has the pipeline of work and the margin to justify that hire. All right. Thank you, Holly, for the question.

Good stuff there. Coach. Next up is Brendan. And he says, hey, I've got a team of 85 to 90 people. So how as the CEO do I connect with every team member in a meaningful way? Where do I find the time? You don't. You can't with that big of a team.

And I know you hate that. And Dave hates not being able to connect with every person on a 600-person team. What you've got to do is you've got to have that smaller group of select people that you can invest in and have them turn around and invest in that larger team. Now, that's not to say that you don't make any effort to connect with your team. You should still be doing things like, you know, walking around and talking to them. Even within our company, teams this size, you know, people do things like send a birthday card. There's still things you can do, and you should be doing all of that.

But with 90 folks, you're not going to be hanging out with each one of them all the time. Is it how we define meaningful? I think at this point you were leading to that. So I'm going to ask a question on behalf of Brendan because he can still connect in a meaningful way. It just may not be as intimate as he is thinking. So meaningful is, for instance, Dave does connect with us, all of us in meaningful ways. But it usually is in the form of him sharing his heart or his head or both to all 560, whatever it is now as it grows. And so he does that.

That's how he connects. That's the only way he can connect. So meaningful becomes a contextual thing. Yes, no? Yes, absolutely. I mean, when Dave stands up there in one of our staff meeting and casts vision for what we're going to do for the year. Hey, that's meaningful.

That's meaningful. If that isn't, in fact, in fact, you know this, Ken. If Dave will sometimes tell us, if you don't find what we're talking about today meaningful, you need to go find something else to do. That's right. He encourages us. We have some boxes over in HR and clean out the old desk. The other thing that he does is, you know,

You know, maybe he doesn't hang out, like you're saying. It's not as intimate as just, you know, going and having lunch with each an individual person. But just the other night he did this, where he'll break the company up into smaller groups of folks, and he will intentionally do something. I think they did a thing the other night at the bowling alley with, you know, 75 or 50 people, something like that. And he does that maybe on a quarterly basis. So a lot of things you can do, but you're going to – it's a moving target. The key is just be intentional.

and invest that time. All right. Thanks for the question, Brendan. And then we will wrap up with Frank. Frank says, my team is struggling with gossip, and I want to implement your no gossip policy. How do we get that started when we are just absolutely covered up in gossip? Well, if you're the leader of an organization where something is going on that shouldn't be going on, the very first step you take is to look in the mirror,

and ask yourself the question, who allowed it to get to where it is? And that's you. As a leader, you let it get to where it is. So the first communication you have with the team is an apology. And this isn't some kind of passive-aggressive thing that you do. This is genuine. You go before the team and you say, you know what? We are riddled with gossip.

And it's my fault. I have allowed this. I have fostered this culture. this is on me, this is my fault, and today is the day we start to change that. And here's how, and here's why gossip's wrong, and here's what we're going to do. And then you start to step into that, and you define what you mean when you say gossip. Two team members complaining about something where there can't be a resolution. How are we going to handle it?

Well, we're going to pass negatives up and positives down and around. You start to spell it all out, but the very first step is you own your role. role as the leader in this thing, and then you cast a vision for how you're going to go forward. And then most importantly, Ken, you stay after it. You live it out consistently. You follow up, not the threat, but you follow up on what you said you were going to do when you hear this stuff. All right, Frank, thanks for the question. And coach John Falcons.

Thank you, sir, for answering our questions. Again, if you'd like to get an answer from the coach, very simple. Email it to us. Podcast at entreleadership.com. podcast at entreleadership.com. Hey folks, our Entree Leadership September giveaway. We're giving away a free resource, and it's just chock full of stuff to help you. This month, it's three reasons.

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What should you be looking for so that you can avoid that failure? All you have to do to get this amazing resource is text the word failure to 33444. Text the word failure to 3344 or you can go to entreleadership.com slash podcast. You can go to this episode 164. We have a link so you can download this. Two ways to get it. Text failure to 33444 or click on the link at ontreleadership.com slash podcast episode 164. Hey, I've been telling you folks about our Entree Leadership One Day Live.

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I mean, we were just having a very transparent conversation with the audience every day. Parenting, marriage, growing your business, growing yourself. And one of the ladies that I got to know as a result of being pitched by publicist was Carrie Wilkerson. Now she's the author of the barefoot executive, which I think is really her signature work, and she is a phenomenal entrepreneur. And then she's a mom and she's a wife. So she really gets who you people are. She really does. She's a personal growth junkie. She is an entrepreneur. That pretty widely describes and very accurately describes you. We know this from our survey. And so I'm very excited if you've never heard of Carrie Wilkerson and you've never heard from

her. She was a frequent guest on my show. And she is fantastic, in a word, fantastic. And I think you're really going to connect with her. This is personal growth gold. So let's get right to it. Here is my conversation with Carrie Wilkerson. Well, Carrie, it's fun to talk with you again. And in the month of September, we're talking about difficult conversations. And I want to start with a conversation that few of us really have and you understand it well and that's the idea of talking to ourself when it comes to this idea that again you have some great content on around clear boundaries expectations in life and in work and it starts with the conversation we need to have with ourselves so guide us through that what does that look like you know I think that

how we talk to ourself is huge first of all and I'm not going to get into any like woo-woo, let's do a ton of affirmations or let's do, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the fact that we need to. And I'm going to go ahead and launch into tough love first question out, if that's okay. Yeah, I love it. I think the first thing we need to do is quit breaking promises to ourselves. We need to, setting goals and achieving goals and doing our business and having balance and boundaries is about making a promise to ourselves and keeping that promise.

And if that promises working during certain times, we need to have a conversation with ourselves about what we will allow others to do, what we will allow ourselves to get away with, and what we will insist on. There have to be negotiables and non-negotiables. So I think it all starts with the conversation with me or with you saying, what is non-negotiable in my family life? What is non-negotiable in my faith life? What's non-negotiable in my business life?

and then what is negotiable. And when we are clear with ourselves on those things, it makes it easier than to be consistent and then to have that conversation with other people. And it's so true. Why do you think it is that we tend to break those promises? Because we want what's now instead of what's best. Yeah, that's rough. I just had the conversation with my 12-year-old this morning who has just join the cheer squad for junior high. She has 6.30 a.m. practice two days a week. This morning, she said, I don't like getting up this early, but I love being on the squad,

and I love the result. Right? I like that. That's a huge life lesson, y'all, right there. I think Ziglar said this back in the day. We need to stop giving up what we want most for what we want right now. What do we want right now? We want to binge watch the season of House of Cards or whatever the new pop culture thing is right now.

We want to have the pint of ice cream. We want to sit on the couch instead of doing our laps. We want to put off our homework instead of doing it right now. We want to X, Y, Z, fill in the blank. There are millions of things we can put there that we want right now. The more important question is, what do we want most? What do we want our business to look like? What do we want our body to look like?

What do we want our bank account to look like? What do we want our relationships to look like? You have to want that more than the immediate thing that's dangling right in front of you. That is such a two before to the chest. I mean, it's spot on. And I want to stay here for a moment. Okay. Because this audience is driven by personal productivity and everybody in this audience is guilty of what you just described. But you've got some great experience here. What you listeners might not know is that this is a woman who has at one point lost half. half your body weight. And you also paid off over six figures in debt. Now, in the Dave Ramsey world, that's like, sainthood. Okay? We know how difficult that is. And it really speaks to this. At some point, Carrie, when you just shared that with us, there is deep conviction

based on real experience, this idea of want now more than what we want most. And at what point did it become a, all right, I'm now focused on what I want most and I'm going to have to say no to what I want now. Was there a tipping point? And I asked that for your personal story to then kind of keep this line of encouragement going. Yeah. What does it take for those folks that are listening and they're in that right now and they've got to make the switch? Yeah, you know, I think part of the issue is let's just talk about America for a minute. We're too comfortable being in debt. We're too comfortable being obese.

We're too comfortable having fractured relationships. We're too comfortable breaking those promises to ourselves. With some people, they'll say, Carrie, what was the tipping point on you losing weight? You know, was it a moment of asking for a seatbelt extender on an airplane? Did you break a chair? Did you, you know, what happened? You know, I mean, everybody tends to have that tipping point story. And really, I just got tired of it.

disappointing myself. I got tired of delaying life. And that's in debt and that's with relationships and that's with weight and health and all those things. And the truth is I've lost probably 500 pounds. I just kept losing some of that weight over and over again. Right, right. Many of us have paid off, you know, half a million in debt. We just keep paying off the same 20 or 30 grand over and over again. You just have to quit waiting for desperation to find you. Dave Ramsey says all the time, when you get sick and tired of being sick and tired, that's when the change happens. Yeah, people tend to do better. Let's talk about diet for a minute.

And we tend to do better maybe after divorce. Well, is it because of our depression or the shock or because we're about to be back on the market or why then suddenly do diets work? Or we tend to do better in our home business when somebody else in the family gets laid. off or we have huge medical bills. Why are we continually waiting for other people to impose their desperation upon us? Why can we not be hungry enough and hustle enough to make our own change, to make our own difference? Why do we only seek marital counseling when they're on the brink of divorce? Somebody said to me on Twitter one time, why do you never hear any 30-pound weight loss stories? Why are they always 100-pound weight loss stories? Well, because at 30 pounds,

you're just like everybody else. Right. You have to wait. wait till you get to a point of desperation or ill health or, you know, something is fractured. So what I wish I could just do is grab people by the shoulders and shake them and say, find your own desperation, find your own hunger, find your own thing that says, I can do better. We can do better. We can make these daily decisions that make a difference. Only we can't. Quit waiting until you need a Kickstarter campaign.

Quit waiting. Oh, that's so good. All right, I want to stay here on this self-conversation, these expectations, because you've got some great content here and you're going to switch gears a little bit, but it's all in this idea of the right decisions and how do we help ourselves make right decisions. You talk a little bit about when reality and schedule collide. And I think when we look at personal growth, again, whether it's physical or mental or emotional, there's this reality, right? Life is always happening. And then there's the schedule that we've got to keep and all this. And that sometimes not. us off the path. And I want you to talk about that again from your own experience of what has worked for you, what you see work for others. Yeah. So reality and schedule collide. And that's why there are apps on our phone like ways that teach us how to go around obstacles in traffic. Right. So if we had a life app for that, that would help us look ahead and know when we're going to have an illness in the

family. My baby girl missed her first day of school at a new school because she had. bronchitis. So we couldn't have predicted that. She couldn't have predicted that reality collided with her schedule and with the school's schedule. Any parent can tell you that on the way to school drop off her pickup, reality and schedule collide on a daily basis, right? In other ways, having a newborn, anybody that's ever had a newborn, whether adopted or given birth, knows that the reality is sleep deprivation and feeding on demand. And that collides with what's on your calendar. And, you know, we have to plan for those things. It's called life. And we have to quit acting like everything is a blueprint or a prescription, et cetera. So those of us that seem to be

into the self-growth or we try to teach personal development, we have life like that too. But a couple of ways you can combat that. And one is by looking ahead, giving yourself some cushion. What obstacles might I encounter on my way to school today? What obstacles? What obstacles might I encounter in pursuit of this weight loss goal? What obstacles might I encounter in pursuit of debt freedom? So that's the reason in the baby steps. Dave talks first about your emergency cushion because invariably you're going to need new tires or you're going to have a health crisis. And then that derails everything if you haven't planned for reality. We cannot plan for idealism. We can set our goal for idealism, but plan for reality.

and then knowing that we'll meet somewhere in between. So I would say cut yourself a little slack but still move forward just like you would in traffic getting your kid to school. It's non-negotiable. Getting to them to school is non-negotiable. You're going to have to go around the obstacles. But here's what happens. Unless you've had those hard conversations with yourself on your own goal setting,

on your own productivity, on your own personal growth, then you say, oh, look, there's a stop sign, there's traffic, there's a wreck, there's a roadblock, I'm going to turn around and go home, I give up, I'll start again tomorrow. Well, we wouldn't let our kid miss school because of that. Why do we derail our own stuff because of that? That goes back to the personal conversation and the keeping promises to yourself. It's easier to keep those promises to yourself if you plan those obstacles in advance. We can't foresee all of them, but we can be realistic and know that there will be some. All right, now I'm going to tell you something, Carrie, and folks, listen, what she just shared is not just a personal growth method.

That's a great leadership message. I mean, Carrie, you run several businesses out of your home and you've got four kids. So you're the CEO of your home and all four businesses. Last I checked. Yeah. That's a great leadership message as well. You've launched multiple businesses and they're winning.

So, Carrie, what would you add from a leadership perspective on that same message, that idea of a conversation with yourself as a leader when you're running a business, growing a business, launching a business? And what would you add to it? You know, I would say something that I've learned, you've nailed it. It's hard for people to have trust and confidence in you when you don't have trust and confidence in yourself. And it's hard for you to have trust and confidence in yourself when you keep letting yourself down. And we let ourselves down by letting ourselves off the hook.

I'll restart my diet Monday. I'll start running on Monday. No, this time I really mean it. I'll do better on my business later. leadership is doing the hard stuff even when you don't want to. But let me back up a minute and say, you know, your businesses are winning. Here's the deal, you guys. I've taken steps backwards on debt journeys and weight journeys. We've had regains and then re-losses. And in business, not every business has been a win. You know, not every product has been a win. Not every book

has been a home run. Not every speech, have I nailed it. You know, you have to also know that in the pursuit of excellence, and excellence is in the eye of the beholder. So your excellence may look different than mine, may look different than Ken's. And that's cool. That's all good. Stop with the comparisons. You do you, please. But in the pursuit of excellence, there are going to be potholes in that road. And there are also going to be speed bumps. Being a leader means knowing we don't need to go around them. Sometimes we're going to fall at them and we're going to be beat up. And then we get out, we brush ourselves off. We clean up our wounds and we move forward anyway. So that's what I would add is that it doesn't mean we don't fail.

We do fail. And often in spectacular fashion, because we are the ones leading out loud. So you have to get over your fear of that. Learn to laugh at yourself. Learn to cry in the shower. And then, you know, move forward. That's so good. I want to switch gears now.

So we've been talking about expectations of ourselves, tough conversations with ourselves. I want to talk about others. You've got some great thoughts on this. I want to start with a topic that I don't know if we've talked about it much on this podcast, but when I saw it in the preparation and some of the things that you would be willing to talk about, it really jumped out at me. So it's not a fun topic, but I want to dive right into it, folks, and it's resentment. Carrie, I want you to tell it, where does that resentment come from?

And then I'm going to follow up with, I think, another important question on how to handle resentment. But first, where does resentment of others, what's the fountain of that? I think resentment comes from unmet expectations. Very simple. It can be, right? Unmet expectations and we'll stew about things. So then we can back it up and say, why are those expectations unmet? Well, maybe we were unclear on those expectations.

Maybe, and I'm going to say, girls, I'm going to call us out. I'm just going to call us out and say we expect other people to get us, to understand us, to read our mind or just to know. We say, we've been in relationship long enough. You should know that's how to react when I'm having this kind of reaction, et cetera, et cetera. We got to stop that. Unmet expectations lead to resentment and they stem from unclear communication. So that's all fine and good when we haven't had the conversation with self, but let's say we haven't had a conversation with spouse. And we expect them to help out around the house because now we have this big goal we're working on that's taking up more of our time. So yes, I expect maybe my partner to take out the trash and to help

clean up the table after dinner and to help me get the kids ready for bed. Okay, but I haven't, but I haven't communicated that. Maybe I've even been grateful when that has happened accidentally. So then I assume that's going to keep happening. You notice the, that's right. Right? And so it's happened once and I'm like, oh, yay, that's a new thing. So now I have expectation, but we've not communicated. And so then when it doesn't happen, what do we do? We stew. We're like having this crazy conversation in our head. Well, it must be nice to come home from work and sit down. I have to go, you know, I already take the kids to school. I already pack their lunches. I already pick them up and help them with homework. The least he or she could do is XYZ. Well, why do we wait until it gets to that point?

Why don't we sit and have the conversation when everybody's happy and well fed and has all their needs met? and we say, let's have some conversations about how things can be on the same page around here. Here are some things that would really be so helpful. And I just wanted to get your feedback on that. Instead of the resentment conversation where we blow up, we have a rage, we stomp our feet, we have tears. And then the other person who doesn't even know why they're having knives thrown at their head shuts down completely. and then they either chalk it up to hormones or a bad day or, oh, I'll go do this now, so they'll be

happy tomorrow. But it doesn't turn into the conversation about how do we make things work on an ongoing basis. Let's talk about expectations. Right. So I think the conversation, it's really important when everybody's calm, everybody's needs are met, everybody's well rested. Yes. You have a conversation and say, I'd love to talk about how things are going right now and

how things could work best for everybody. Is this a good time? Can we talk about this? And then say, and what are some expectations you'd like to see on my behalf? And it may be that he or she says, it'd be really helpful. You know, the dinner hour just makes my head explode. If I could walk in the door and we could eat within 30 minutes, I think everybody's blood sugar would be great. How do we work together to make that happen? Does this look like takeout on Tuesday and Thursday? Does it look like I'm going to meet you at Chili's on Monday? Does it mean we eat at the church on Wednesday? What does this look like?

How can I help? If we're having those conversations before it becomes resentment, it avoids the resentment factor. And guys, I'm talking about in money issues, in travel for business issues, all of these issues, it matters, have the conversations. They don't seem like fun, but they're groundwork. That's with your partner. That's with your kids. That's with people involved in your business.

that's with your team. That may even look like a conversation with teachers. I have a conversation with my kids' teachers at the beginning of every year. I say, I do work at home. So it may seem like I have a really flexible schedule, but I'm going to go ahead and tell you I'm not the Pinterest mom that makes the things and cooks the things and does all those things. I am really more helpful with funding the moms who have all those ideas.

Right. You'll buy the popsicle sticks. You're not going to decorate them. So can I give you a check to help with projects? I just don't want you to expect that I'm going to be up here once a week cutting out the things when really it's better for me to fund the supplies. And I've been having that conversation ever since I've been working at home. And guess what?

They love it. And then nobody has this hanging. Like, does the teacher expect me up there? Are they, what are the moms saying about me? You know, blah, blah, blah. We can get that out of the way in advance. And it just makes everything happier. So why can't we have these conversations ahead of time with the kids?

These are my expectations. What are your expectations? And then you find a middle ground ahead of time. Unmet expectations lead to resentment. Resentment leads to damage and to things that you cannot take back. Yeah, I wrote this down, folks. And this is something that I'm taking away. And I think this is really good.

What I'm learning from Kerry on this is that when we let resentment fester, it will bubble up and come out. And when it does, the emotion of that boiling over or bubbling up, it actually cancels out the expectations that you're trying to reveal because the emotion's so unhealthy that they don't hear the expectations. So it's better to just deal with it early on, as difficult as it may be, correct? That's what I'm taking away from that. Yeah. Sometimes those are tough conversations, but it's easier than the fights and the resentment and the threats later. Yeah, you lose credibility when you're emotionally not stable because of the resentment. All right, that's really good.

All right, I want to move forward because you're really great with time and workload boundaries. And there's two points I want to cover here. The first one is, I love how you put this. You say, we need to create space without being a diva. So guys, don't check out on this because you can be just as big a diva. And I get what you're saying. How do we create healthy boundaries and space without coming across like we think we're, you know, more special than everybody else because we've got these nuanced and defined kind of boundaries.

Well, let me back up and say people that work at normal jobs and clock in and out, so to speak, they have those boundaries kind of built in. People don't expect them to run, you know, cleaners, errands and babysit their kids during the day and go meet for coffee during the day. Am I right? I mean, they have these built in boundaries. Those of us that either are entrepreneurs or, you know, work at home, even if we work for somebody else, or maybe you're in some type of ministry or authors or speakers, our boundaries are not created by someone else. So, number one, we're more lax with them ourselves because let's go back to point number one, we haven't had the conversation with ourselves.

And number two, we certainly haven't trained anybody else, what to think. So we immediately get like bad guy syndrome. We feel like if we tell somebody no, it makes us look like we have self-inflated importance, you know, but that's not it at all. So the most important thing is to know what your boundaries are, have the conversation with you. Number two, to be decisive about them. Let me unpack here for a minute. You know, I hear people all the time say, well, I haven't really decided on that business name or that baby name or that color carpet or that whatever it is. And here's the conversation I hear them saying to other people. You know, I'm thinking about naming the baby, you know, Rachel. What do you think?

or I haven't really decided. Well, what does that do? That invites input. Well, nobody ever argued with me about a baby name or gave me input on a baby name because I didn't invite it. I said, if the baby's a girl, we're going to name her Katie Grace, and if the baby's a boy, we're going to name him Everett James. Great. By the way, I want to bring this up. This is a little awkward, but I'm a little disappointing. Ken didn't make the final list. Just want to get that out there. Oh, sorry. You know, that was just one example of my many children. I love that. I love that. So nobody ever gave me input except that they would go, oh, great.

I love that. Oh, I know somebody. But if I had said, well, I'm thinking about, you know, Margaret Louise, but we're not sure. Well, you know what? You don't want to do ML because that doesn't really flow with your last name or I knew this girl named Mildred. You know how they do. It's the same. Like at the church carpet. Well, we haven't decided between red or blue carpet.

So then everybody has an opinion. People do this also with their boundaries. Well, I'm not sure if I can do coffee. It's such a busy work week for me. Oh, sure, you can. You probably need a break off. Let's just meet real quick and then you can get back to your work. Nope.

If I say, I can't do Wednesdays. Friday is my only flexible day. What if we meet in September on the second Friday? Do I sound like a diva? Do I sound like I'm more important than anybody else? Or do I sound like I have a schedule? Sounds like you have a schedule. You're very committed.

This is it. There you go. Yeah. So, Carrie, can you keep our daughter? she has an ear infection and can't go to school, but we're out of days out. Oh, thank you so much for trusting me with your daughter. However, because of my work schedule during the day, I really, I don't have the space to keep kids, but can I recommend to you a couple of sitters that I love?

Or does my guilt kick in and I go, um, you know, because I haven't had the conversation with myself. I haven't put my schedule down. Or maybe worse yet, I'm not disciplined enough that I'm really working during the day. And so I don't feel like I have any reason to say no. it just all backs up to having your own boundaries and being able to state them. So you do have to role play and practice some of those scenarios until you get good at them. But the best way to do that without being a diva is to say, let me check my work schedule

or let me check my calendar and I'll get back to you by Tuesday or I'll get back to you by Wednesday. That gives you time to get out of the emotion, to get out of the face to face, to go back and really look at what you've got going on and to formulate that in a non-emotional, non-gilt-driven way. Yeah, you know, and again, another takeaway here for me is that we've got to make the important decisions in concrete. Make them. And then you spend the rest of your time just managing those decisions.

So you've already made the decision. So now when all these things come at you, you just go back, go, well, I've got to manage my decision. I've already made this decision. I think that's really good. Let me ask you a follow-up here. Okay. because I think that's really good, but how do we begin to retrain people?

I went through this several years ago when Tim Sanders, you probably know Tim, he's the best-selling author, he was a friend, and he gave me some breakthrough stuff on email, this tyranny of the urgent, you know, because there's some people who just freak out if they don't have their inbox empty by the end of the day. And he said, you've got to retrain people who email you. So you create a flow that works for you, and it's going to take a little while. They will realize you will not get an email from Ken at night or on the weekends. That, by the way, is true. So if anybody wants to email me and you're listening, I'm not going to answer at night.

And the reason is, is because Tim said, once you answer at night or on the weekends, you've created an expectation. And so I didn't mean to get too long into that, but that's the example there. So how do you recommend to us on these clear spaces that we need to create? How do we then retrain people we live with and work with? All right. So number one is to retrain yourself and stop making exceptions. I was checking out at a mega store the other day, and the woman said, I said to her, is your line closed?

And she said, you're the last one I'm taking. I said, okay, great. So we're checking out. The guy behind me comes up and said, your light is off. Are you closed? She said, you're going to have to be the last one. I've got to clock out. Long story short is five more people came up and she kept making exceptions.

So is she having a hard time training people or is she having a hard time training herself? So number one is you have to train yourself to be okay. okay with the boundary. Number two is you have to have the conversations with people in a decisive way, like I mentioned. So if you were trying to answer emails, again, are you retraining people? Are you retraining yourself? Or do you need to just put an auto responder on your email? Thanks for your email. I got it. I respond to emails during weekday business hours. Look for an answer from me within 48 hours. Every email system has an auto responder, whether you use Gmail or heaven forbid, like Yahoo or Hotmail, all of them have a way to put a vacation auto responder on.

Guys, that's old school. That's 2007, 2008 from the four-hour work week. It does not make you a diva. It makes you efficient. It's the waiter coming by the table and saying, I see you here waiting. Let me fill up your water glass. I'll be back to take your order in a few minutes. Yeah, we haven't talked about that yet.

Okay, so you have to acknowledge and then retrain people. The other thing you can do is put it as a standard signature line. You know, I answer emails during this time or do phone calls during this time. Your voicemail might have something that says, sorry, I missed your call. I don't take incoming unscheduled calls during weekday business hours. I'll return that during my blocked call time. And anybody that knows me knows I don't take incoming unscheduled calls. Their appointment calls or calls from my parents who are in their 70s, the kids' school,

day or a hospital number. If that pops up, I'll take that. But otherwise, you have to be on the schedule because I'm not reacting to your day. I'm controlling my day. So number one, you have to retrain yourself. Number two, you train other people. And you have to create some scripts. So I will say that since approximately 1998, I have worked heavy hours typically Tuesday,

Thursdays. So when people want to do calls or interviews or appointments with me, it's typically a Tuesday, Thursday. Why? Is there some, you know, lunar reason that I do that? No, it's because I have four children and most of them have been in some kind of Mother's Day out or preschool or university model private school on Tuesdays and Thursdays since 1998. So that's when Mama had the time. So on those days, it became really easy for me to say, Carrie, we want to do an interview with me. Great. I have availability on Tuesday and Thursday at this time. It also became easy for me to say, when people said, hey, let's do a play date or a lunch date, became easy for me to say, we can't do Tuesday or Thursdays.

Those are my scheduled income time. Those are my scheduled work time. Those are blocked off. You know, if you call the dentist, he doesn't conform to your schedule. He's got days for new patients. He's got days for checkups. He's got days for braces. He's got days for whatever it happens to be. He defines what his schedule looks like. And we have to do the same thing. We have to do the same thing. we have to do the same thing. Otherwise, we've just got another job or another ball in chain and we're reacting to everybody else. So retraining other people looks like, number one, you retraining yourself.

Number two, creating some scripts, some responses, creating some calendar block time, and keeping those promises to yourself. Love it. All right. Final question, putting you on the spot, so to speak. Very large audience. You've got leaders of all levels. You've got just personal growth junkies who aren't even in leadership.

The people who listen to this podcast want to get better. They want to make the most of their potential. You certainly model that as well. So final question, I want you to speak to our listeners and challenge them on a key conversation or a couple of key conversations that they can have this week with themselves, maybe with others. I'm going to leave it up to you to decide what to share with them to encourage them. in their week as they listen to this. That's a big order.

And, you know, I'll tell you my first reaction is to be a little emotional at that charge because I know in my gut, in my heart, wherever you have the seed of your emotions, right? I know what a game changer this can be for you listening. I would say, number one, set some space 20 minutes, 30 minutes, to get by yourself, turn off all your incoming notification, set a timer. you need to and really get clear on some hard conversations with yourself. Number one, what promises are you continually breaking to yourself? Why do you keep letting yourself down? Have the conversation, be tough on yourself and also loving. Have some grace, but do better. So have the conversation

with yourself. And then look at some areas where you have resentment. Where do you have resentment? And what conversation do we need to back up from there in order to start healing some of that. Is that with your shareholders, your family, shareholders or people you work with or some team? And then how do we need to have some more specific expectations? So for instance, with my kids, I can be frustrated with how their room looks, but I may say clean your room and their vision of a clean room is different than my vision of a clean room. So is it fair that I'm yelling at them for that or is it fair that I create some expectations? What I mean by that is, number one, I need your clothes, either hung up if they're cleaner, in the hamper, if they're dirt. And

Number two, I need the floor clean enough to walk in without injuring myself or others. Number three, I'd like the beds made. To me, that is a straight room. Those are my expectations. I need those met. So how do you back that up with your team at work with your partner? And let's start having some conversations to heal those. And then number three, what are some boundaries you need to create to make some space in your

life? Do you need to be a little more linear in your schedule? So Tuesdays and Thursdays are interviews. Monday morning is admin time because my poor team, I'm not communicating with them well. They're dropping the ball. It's making me mad. My turnover is too high. And it's really my own fault because I'm not setting expectations clearly. So really that's kind of a leadership chink in my armor right there. So when do you need to schedule those times? And fourthly, let's practice some scripts to help with the conversations. I really feel like one of my strengths as a parent is preparing my kids for hard conversations. So when they are walking out the

door and nervous about an outfit or a new school or a new hairdo or an audition, I can prepare them. What are three or four scenarios, Katie, that might happen? What are three or four things you're afraid kids are going to say? Okay, so let's practice some responses to those things. Now, that's a parenting perspective, but we need to do the same with ourselves. What if somebody asks me to, you know, run some errands for them? What if somebody asks me to go have lunch? Under what circumstances is that okay? Great. I can do that on Fridays. Friday is my fun lunch day. So I have an opening on Friday. What are some of those conversations and scripts you need to prepare yourself? We need to be prepared to keep the promises to our shareholders, to our team,

to ourselves. So if we're not prepared, we can't blame them. We can't blame other people. We can't blame the system, the economy, the rules, the atmosphere, the political climate, the campaign. We can't blame that. We have to look squarely in the mirror and say, I keep dropping the ball on these promises to myself, and that stops today. Wow, that folks, is a lot to think about and a lot to act upon. I know you will. Carrie, that was really, really fun. She is Carrie Wilkerson. Carrie Wilkerson.com. That's Carrie. C-A-R-R-I-E. You need to check out what she's doing.

If you haven't figured it out already, trust me on that. Carrie Wilkerson.com, Carrie, you are, I must tell you. I don't know if there is a category of human being that I respect more than the working mom, the CEO mom, the leadership mom, because there's just so much that you're doing. And as a husband and a father, you represent so many amazing women that are doing things, and you have poured your head and heart out to us, and I know we're better for it, so we're very grateful. Wow, I'm humbled and honored by that, Ken.

Thank you so much. All right, folks, quick takeaway. I wrote this down, and I'm going to be soaking on this, and I want you to as well. And she really talked to us about this idea of we tend to choose what we want now instead of what we want most. And there's not one of us that's a part of this community that is not guilty of that at some point or another, multiple categories of our life. and that just is a tremendous thought. So here's my question for myself. You can use it if you want.

This is for me. The question I'm going to ask myself today and every day is, what do I want most? What are those big goals spiritually, emotionally, financially, financially, professionally? You pick your own categories. What do you want most? What do you want more than anything? Because it stirs up that emotion in you.

Keep it top of mind. That's what I'm telling myself. I've got to keep that top of mind. And then I've got to ask the secondary question. After I'm super clear, crystal clear on what I want most, I now have to ask the all-important second question. And I wrote it down. And here's what I'm going to ask myself.

What am I doing now that is slowing my progress towards what I want most? What am I doing now that is hindering me from achieving what I want most? Got to get honest with myself. I think we would all do well to do that. Every major category of your life, really focus in on that. That can give us crystal clarity and help us on the journey towards what we want most. So that's what I'm going to be working on. Hope that encourages you as well.

I want to say this. You need to be connecting with Kerry. So you can go to her website. I mentioned it already, Carrie Wilkerson.com at C-A-R-R-R-I-E, Carrie Wilkerson.com. She's on Facebook, at Barefoot Executive on Facebook, and on Twitter at Carrie Wilkerson.

This lady really does model what an entree leader is. So glad she was with us. I am so encouraged. Can't wait to be asking those hard questions. Hey, folks, I mentioned the Infusion Soft giveaway for this month. It is called Life Cycle Marketing Planner. Now, when we think of hard questions, we know everyone struggles with knowing how do you market yourself best? How do you market your organization best? How do you market that product best? And how do you have and keep the best possible relationship with your customers?

Well, Chad Kirby understands both of those questions, and he, more importantly, can give us the answers. And so we had him come in studio and talk to you about this. So listen in as Chad Kirby from InfusionSoft explains how this tool, Lifecycle Marketing Planner, can help you win and win big. Championship teams have a great playbook. Great businesses have a great playbook. But the question we have as entrepreneurs is, where do we find that playbook? How do we create that playbook?

Well, at InfusionSoft, we have created the Lifecycle Marketing Planner. And this planner takes you through the entire life cycle of your customer. How do you attract these customers? Which customers should you be targeting? How do you sell these customers? How are you educating them? How are you wowing them? Do you have a strategy for your referral process?

All of these questions and answers are found in the Lifecycle Marketing Planner. Go to Infusionsoft.com forward slash Lifecycle and download your Lifecycle Marketing Planner so that you can have a championship playbook for your championship business. Big thanks to Chad Kirby and the folks at InfusionSoft for being a big part of what we do. Folks, we love them. What they do really does help you win. So make sure that you're connected with the good folks at InfusionSoft. And most importantly, use this tool, the lifecycle marketing planner. Hey, folks, you can get everything we mentioned, links, information, all you need to know that we

discuss in this episode at our website, entreeleadership.com slash podcast, episode 164. Eric the producer and the entree leadership team do a great job of giving you links and resources. Everything that we discuss in the podcast is there for you. So make sure you use that as a home base. We want to thank Coach John Falcons and Kerry Wilkerson for their time and the great content and encouragement. On behalf of Eric the producer and the entire Entree leadership team, thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.