EntreLeadership - #238: Kristen Hadeed—Learning to Lead

Episode Date: December 18, 2017

After accidentally starting a business (tune in for the whole story!) as a college undergrad, Student Maid founder and CEO Kristen Hadeed has learned a lot about leadership from her mistakes along the way—and you can too. But one of the most important things she’s learned is that no matter what business you’re in, everyone wants the same thing: to feel valued. To that end, she has become passionate about not only growing herself as a leader but also helping her team do the same. Her company may be in the cleaning business, but she likes to say she’s in the business of making her team members better people. You can do the same thing in your own business and if you ask Kristen, the upside is endless. Join us to learn how it’s done. entreleadership.com/podcast How To Create Core Values How To Achieve Work/Life Balance Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Andre Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders, by leaders, for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Speaking of conversations, our feature, this episode is with a young lady by the name of Kristen Hadid. Fantastic, fantastic young entrepreneurs. which you got a new book out called,

Permission to Screw Up. And all of you that are listening right now just kind of took a deep breath. You go, well, this is very nice. I've been waiting for this permission my whole life. And so here it comes in the form of a book, permission to screw up, how I learned to lead by doing almost everything wrong.

And then we have Dave Ramsey, who teaches to our company on a regular basis. And this time we're going to give you a little bit of his teaching on one of our core values of family. And of course, if we're bringing you a new episode, we're bringing you some free resources from our Entree leadership team and from our good friends at InfusionSoft. Now, I'm really excited about this. This is fun. Many of you probably know, we don't talk about it much on this broadcast, and we're not going to start. But I do now have my show on Sirius XM, the Ken Coleman show, and it is a caller-driven show.

So one of the things that we're going to give you the opportunity to do, we've had Ken's electronic mail for some time, and we love when you email in and you can continue to do that podcast. at entreleadership.com. But what we're going to do is, is if you would like to ask your question on the broadcast, that means you ask it over the phone and we answer for you, you can certainly submit your question. So we're going to look at the question first. We'll talk with you and figure out if we want to move forward on this as a format. So this is really, hey, do you want this? And if the answer is yes, then we will do it for you because we're here to serve you. So think of your questions, and then we want you to email the question. And here's the subject line. Ken's Mail. Ken's mail is the subject line that will get to our team and we'll check it out and be in touch with you.

Again, the email address is podcast at entreleadership.com. All right, let's get right to our feature conversation. She is Kristen Hadid. Folks, I get pitched on books all the time. And full disclosure, this book came to me from a publicist in New York that we have worked with in the past. It was like, hey, I want you to know about Kristen. I want you know about the book. And I checked it out, and I thought, this is really, really exciting because it's a millennial number one. And we don't think millennial is a swear word here. Certainly, I don't. How could I?

Eric, the producer and Will the engineer are both millennials. So you've got to learn to love these folks. And they are the largest demographic in the American workforce now. If you're not aware of this, this is a fact. They overtook Gen X last year. And so I believe in millennials. I think they have just as much to offer as any generation. Kristen Hadid is a millennial.

and she has done it from the ground up. This is a great story. A lot of good stuff here. Here is my conversation with Kristen Hadid. Well, Kristen, it's great to have you with us. Thanks for being with us. Congrats on the book. Thank you. So this is fun. One of our good friend Simon Seneca is a big fan of yours. And when the book came to me, I admittedly really liked it as I do on most books that I like simply on the title and the cover of the book, permission to screw up, how I learned to lead by doing almost everything wrong. And this is really fun. Before we dive into a lot of the content,

what you learned, I want to go back to the early days because I think this is so exciting to an entrepreneur or the audience. You decide, according to the PR materials, that you need a pair of jeans, and you thought, well, I got to, how can I get some dough for the jeans?

And you decide to start cleaning. And then at some point in your journey there, you decide this is a business. Take us back to those early days because I love the beginning stories. Yeah, so I was in college at the University of Florida. I was 19, completely lost, not sure what I wanted to do with my life. I was studying finance, thought I would move to New York to be an investment banker,

but not because I love finance, just because I thought you would make a lot of money in that kind of a career. And completely broke, walk into the mall, fall in love with a pair of jeans that I absolutely cannot afford. They were $99. And my first thought was, what is something I can do to just buy these jeans? And I didn't want to get a job. My classes were really demanding, and I had a scholarship.

And so the first thought that I had was I'll clean someone's house. And I'm not sure why that was the first thing that came to mind, but that's what it was. I put an ad on Craigslist. Someone miraculously hired me. It was a disaster. I had no idea what I was doing. It took me seven hours to clean her house when I said it would only take me two. I mean, everything that could have gone wrong went wrong.

But she really needed the help. So she hired me to come back every week and taught me how to clean. And then I forgot to take the ad down. So I had other people contacting me. And after a few months, I was cleaning almost seven days a week. And to me, it wasn't a business. I was moving to New York. This was just something to help me out while I was in school.

So the business piece didn't really happen until right before my senior year. So you name it student-made. And you're thinking, I've got to, this built-in workforce here with this college. It's a state college. There's kids all over the place like ants. I'm sure some of them want to work just like I did. And so you get this thing going. What was the early days like when you begin to go, okay, I've got more jobs than I can actually fulfill on my own? How did you start the hiring process? And when did you go? Wait a second. This is like a legit business. I'm not going to New York. I'm staying in Gainesville.

Well, right before my senior year, I got a contract to clean hundreds of empty apartments. And there's this three-week period in the summer where everyone moves out of their apartment and these places have to be clean before the new tenants move in. And I thought it'd be a great way to make a lot of money just for my dream apartment, hired 60 students because I thought it would be easier to work with people who were my peers. And I basically hired you if you were a student and you had a pulse. and didn't do any kind of training. You know, asked everyone, do you know how to clean?

They all said yes. Some of them did not know how to clean, but they believed that they did. And then we show up to clean these apartments. And I have 60 employees. I've never been in a position of leadership before. I've never ran a business. You know, I don't know what I'm doing. So as my employees are cleaning these filthy apartments,

I decide to sit in this air-condition clubhouse. And not because I thought I was better than them, but because I truly just didn't know what my role was. as the leader. So I'm sitting in this air-conditioned clubhouse. They're cleaning filthy apartments. The work isn't fun. Their leader seems to not care about them at all. And a couple days into the contract, 45 of the 60 walked into the clubhouse where I was sitting completely unannounced and they just quit on the spot. I was 21 and these were my peers. And it was just, you know, I think I was shocked. I didn't really understand. It wasn't my intention to do anything to upset them. So I was confused. I wasn't

sure what I had done. And I really needed their help. So I think when I look back in my journey, that was the moment for me that really inspired my obsession with learning how to be a better leader and with learning how to build a company that people wanted to be a part of, even though we were cleaning. And so I was able to get those people back. And then we became a team. And I just really transformed in my own leadership that summer. And that's when I made the decision that I didn't want to move to New York because I was just so excited about this business and the team that I was building around me. So here you are, 21 years old, massive walkout.

And I love that you shared the emotion of just sheer confusion, you know, whoa, whoa, what's going on? And a lot of times leaders, when that moment hits them, when you're not completely sure what really is going on, this has not been an intentional poor leadership act, it's just kind of happened. There's a couple ways you can react to that. And your reaction was you really doubled down and said,

okay, I'm going to dig into this and find out what really happened. So what did that look like for you? What were your actions over the, you know, I guess those minutes, hours, days, and weeks right after that massive walkout? At first, I was angry at them. I remember thinking, how could they do this to me? I'm paying them. It's only a three-week job. Why did you commit to this if you were just going to quit? And then sheer panic said in when I realized how many apartments I had left to clean and I only had 15 people. I originally wanted to get them back because I wanted to dig deep and figure it out and make it right. But really, I just had to get these apartments clean. So I went and found the 15 people who didn't get the memo to quit and asked them if they would help me get these

others back. And we came up with this plan to invite everyone to my house that night for a meeting. And we begged them to come and we said they would get their paycheck early if they showed up. So everyone showed up. And I didn't prepare what to say. And so I just remembered. remember standing in front of them and being completely afraid and just being honest and saying I had no clue what I was doing. I've never been a leader before. I've never owned a company before. And, you know, people in the back are joking like, we can tell. This is not going well. And I just was honest, though. I said, I'm freaking out. I don't know what I'm going to do. I need you. I need your help. And what I realize now is I was vulnerable in that moment. And I shared my fear.

And I shared that I needed their help. And I admitted that. And I think they saw me as a human being and not as this heartless leader who sits in the air-conditioned clubhouse with their feet propped up. And so one kind of shouted out, I'll come back. And then it was this domino effect. And we went back to the apartments that night. And that was my first real lesson in leadership that it's definitely not sitting in a clubhouse. You know, you have to be, you have to be with your people. You have to be willing to do the work that you're asking them to do. And you have to make them feel like you see them and you care about them. Because that really was the big impetus for the walkout. They just felt like you're not involved at all. They're doing all the hard work. And when you're their same age,

this is very interesting because I think if you were twice their age, maybe not the same reaction. But there was some injustice there, wasn't there? Yes. And I think, too, they understood that this was my first time doing this. You know, my heart was in the right place. I just, I didn't know anything about leadership. So after that, I learned their names. I learned what they were studying. I asked them about their families. I would walk them to their apartments and help them carry their supplies. I would walk around with water bottles. I would help them clean. And I think we became a family that summer. And when it was over, no one wanted their jobs to end, including me. And that's why in the

end, I decided to give up this idea of moving to New York. And everyone in my life was like, what are you doing a cleaning company? But there was just something about it that I knew I was on the right path. Okay. So give us a fast version of the growth from that moment. So that's your first leadership crisis. Also really your first big leadership lesson, as you just shared. So you get them back in there and you take care of that contract. What did the growth look like? What intentionality did you begin to pursue from that moment on? Well, the following year, my senior year, the business grew a lot.

We clean not only houses and apartments and things, but we're also a concierge service. We walk dogs and house sit. So I almost had a drop out of school that we grew tremendously my last year in college. And then as the business continued to grow, I realized that what I was really excited about and passionate about, it definitely wasn't the cleaning. It was helping the people in my company grow and learn. And I think because I was learning how to be a leader, I wanted to help them learn the things that I was learning myself. So over the years, we've really transformed to become more of an education company. We still clean toilets, yes. But the whole mission behind

student made is that we want our people to leave better than when they came in. They take classes on things like confrontation and how to build meaningful relationships and how to listen. And we want them to leave with a skill set that really sets them apart and the skills that you really need to be successful, but unfortunately maybe aren't taught in school. Now this I want to dive into because I absolutely love it. I think it's a differentiator and I think no matter who you are listening in right now, folks, you need to take a listen to this and take some notes because this is you pouring resources, not just recognizing people and rewarding. Those are two R's that leaders get, but resources. You're intentional about this. So how does it work? Student made, does it

pay for the classes that you just referred to? Yes. So before our students really learn how to dust or vacuum, they take a four-hour workshop where they learn about their strengths and their behavior type. And they learn about listening and empathy and vulnerability. And we do that because it's kind of like sending them a message. We are here to invest in you so much that we are paying you to come to this class that has nothing to do with cleaning at all, you know?

And I think people come to student made now and they apply for a job. they'll say, is this the place where you learn how to be a leader? And we'll joke and say, yeah, but you also have to clean toilets. And everything we do is about that learning and growing. When did you make that decision? How far on the journey of running this company did you go, okay, we're going to start training people before they ever actually get on site and clean something? I don't think it was a conscious decision. I think it was just something that as I learned myself, because remember, I didn't have any experience. So all the things that we're teaching our people now are the things that I had to learn.

And I just wanted to help the people around me. So it started very early with me just having little sessions at the office where I would teach them maybe what I read in a book or what I had learned in a workshop that I had just taken. But I would say we formalized it and really became intentional about it about three years ago. Interesting. And do you believe to this day that it comes out of that first meeting

where everybody walked out and you wanted to going forward make sure that your team knew that you cared about them? Yes, and I think, you know, I really became obsessed with leadership. I mean, when you have 45 people walk out on you and you're 21, I mean, it's kind of like, oh, so it really sparked this obsession. I mean, I would go to the bookstore every Friday and just read about leadership. And I really wanted to become a better leader. And then as I was doing that, I thought, how selfish is it of me to learn all of this and keep it to myself? I want to share this with the people around me. And so, yeah, I think that the 45, I call them, I'm so grateful for them because I I don't know what would have happened had they not walked out. Okay, what's the model now? Because the thing has grown, you know, tremendously from those early days. Still, a majority of your workforce are students who come in, they know that it's a temporary gig.

Now you've got this reputation sounds like where they come in and they go, all right, I'm going to learn something else and I'm going to make an hourly rate. What's the breakdown of your team versus, you know, office people or people that are executives with you versus your workforce? Sure. Well, we have a pretty small executive team. there are five of us. And many of the five started with the company as students cleaned, decided that after graduation they didn't want to leave the company. And, you know, we employ all kinds of

students. Maybe they're in high school. Maybe they're in college. Maybe they're in cosmetology school. Maybe they're getting their PhD. And sometimes we hire people who aren't students. If someone really, really fits our culture, we don't believe that being a student, you know, defines who you are or your heart, of course. So we attract people based off of values, our culture. culture. And it's interesting, we've actually kind of scaled back in our business because we've realized that really to create this culture, you have to be so intentional. You have to really make sure that you're not growing too quickly. So we had a second location. And we used to employ upwards of 500 people at times during the year. And what we realize is in those times, our culture

suffered. And we would put the workshops and the curriculum on hold. And we would during our busy times, and we didn't want to do that anymore. So we made a decision that was really scary to scale back, to not do our busy summer season to the level that we had done, to actually sell our second location. And the fact is we're really excited about education and curriculum. So what we're doing now is we're taking what we've done in our business and we're helping other organizations create programs similar to ours.

So it's just interesting how you can start in a cleaning company and then it turns to this. But I think it just shows you just never know. It doesn't matter your industry or what you do. That's exactly right. I mean, the fact that you really, the service your company offers is cleaning. Yeah. But you're really in the people business. Because now you're writing books and you're out there speaking on this kind of stuff. And again, the whole premise of the book is permission to screw up. Let's get there. We're going to get back in some other stuff about what you learned.

And I want to specifically talk to you about millennials, which are now the largest demographic in the American workforce. And I'm kind of, I'm not a millennial. I'm Gen X. But I'm a little bit tired of millennials. will be coming like this dirty word. And I think it's grossly unfair. We'll get to that. That's a little bit of a tease, folks. Permission to screw up when you write a book like this and you got Cynic and Godin, people that, you know, our audience know very, very well, saying, hey, there's really something here. And really at the heart of this, there's a vulnerability in your story. But what you're really challenging readers with is what? What do you really want them to get out of this book? My hope is that in the end,

people will talk about their screw-ups more. Because I think we've made failure uncomfortable. We've made admitting that we don't have the answers, the scary thing. I think in leadership, we believe it's our job to make people feel safe and secure and to be strong. And all those things are true. But it doesn't mean that we have to be perfect. It doesn't mean that we have to have it all together all the time. And sometimes when you can admit to your people, hey, I don't know what to do in this situation.

or I am scared or I really messed up. You're actually building trust because we know that no one is perfect. So when you pretend like you are, we tend to not trust that person, right? But this wasn't the book I started to write. I started to write about success, all the things that I had learned, all, you know, the amazing accomplishments that student made had. And then it just felt empty. And I actually went to dinner with Simon Seneca.

And we were talking about the book. And I just said, you know, how do you know if you're writing the right book? and he said to me, in my experience, it is the right book if it is really hard to write. And I thought about that. This book was not hard to write and threw it away. And I went a year and a half past my deadline and almost threw my computer off a balcony several times. But I think I know now why many people don't write about this kind of thing because it's hard. You have to go back. You have to think about all the things you did wrong. You have to go back and revisit things that maybe you aren't proud of. of stories that don't paint you in the best light. And you have to talk about those.

I think this is a book that instead of focusing on the lessons I learned, it's how I learned them. And so, you know, I learned to empower people by being completely controlling and micromanaging. You know, I learn to make people feel valued by making people feel this big. And that stuff's not fun to admit, but I just hope that in sharing this book, that other people will have the courage to admit those things. Because I think when we can do that, we make leadership attainable.

You know, otherwise we're comparing ourselves to these. seemingly perfect people and we think, I'm not cut out for that. I can't do that. That's right. Yeah, I want to talk about if there was a process, and it doesn't have to be so formulaic, but I am curious, as you write a book about your failures, I think it's really empowering for others. And I want our listener right now to begin to visualize some of the things they've done where they just, they know they drop the ball. And it was excruciating. It's not fun to recount it. And it's really not fun to actually not just recount it, but to get back inside of it and learn from it and go, okay, let me break this failure down. That's when it really sucks. But it's also really, really valuable. I'm curious, do you have a process or did you have a process as you were just kind of organically learning to lead, which I think is refreshing? When you had a failure and you go, okay, I got to, I got to break this down and learn from this. How did you do it? What was your process? If it was mental, emotional, what did you do? So growing up, my parents made failure something we talked about all the time.

And I remember I was in fourth grade. There was a speech contest. I practiced every day. I was determined to win this thing. I got second place. Devastated. And I remember getting in my parents' van. I was crying.

And as I was crying, my dad says, what do you think you could have done to win first? And so that was how I grew up. So failure was something that I reflected on, thought about how would I do it differently next time. And that theme was totally, you know, throughout my life, that's how I've handled it. So now when I fail, I just, I stop. I give myself permission to fail. I'm human. But I have to learn something from it. I have to do it differently next time. I think you fail when you repeat the same mistake without taking something from the first time and doing it differently. When you make the same mistake because you didn't grow from it, that to me is a failure. I want to throw something at you. I just had

a thought listening to you. And I know what I think about it, but I really want you to weigh it on this. Kristen, I think there is a marked difference between a leader publicly acknowledging failure and privately acknowledging it. And what I mean by that, it's one thing to stand up in front of the team and go, hey, I blew it, blah, blah, blah, blah, and kind of talk over it and then move on versus pulling in maybe some people, whether they're in leadership level or not, but people that you trust on the team and going, hey, I blew this. Let's walk back through this and give me your point of view. What would you have done or what did I? That's what I mean by private. It's one thing to acknowledge it. It's another thing to break it down with the people that actually had a court side view of that.

Do you agree with that or disagree? And then what is the best way to do that? I think because of the business I chose, because of the industry I'm in, cleaning, no one is here for the work. No one is here because they love dusting and vacuuming. So it made me from the very beginning. people would quit all the time and they wouldn't tell me why. And I didn't know, is it my leadership?

Is it because of this? It's because of that. So it made me ask people for their feedback about myself, about the business, about their jobs because it was the only way I could keep people. I had to know what am I doing wrong? What could I be doing better? And so feedback is something that is, it's huge in our business. And we do 360 reviews every quarter as a leadership team, exact team,

where we talk about things that didn't go well over the last quarter and what we could have done better. And sometimes these take six, seven hours, but it's so power. to hear, like you said, from the people who saw it, the people who were there. And that's, for me, I'm just so thankful that I've created an environment where people feel comfortable telling me where I could have been better and how I could have done it differently the next time around because we have to grow too. Leaders have to be told how they could have been better just like everyone else has to be told. I also want you to wait on something else. This is a bit of a curveball kind of out of nowhere here

because I just, before we started to record this, I just read an article about the predictions of what artificial intelligence are going to do for, you know, manual labor-type jobs or physical jobs, you know, administrative jobs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you said something just a minute ago, you said, you know, this is a company where nobody really wants to clean. When you look at the future, okay, your company, there are going to be certain manual jobs like cleaning that are going to completely disappear because of artificial intelligence. That's one part question. And it's all tied together. I'm very curious. And then the second part is, is if they won't. Are there people who say, you know what, I actually enjoy the idea of something

going from blah or disgusting to shiny? And then to realize, wait a second, I can be very, very happy and fulfilled, cleaning as opposed to looking at it as a menial job that's just lower level. I know that was a big two-part question, but let's go AI first and then we'll come back to that other question. Okay. Yeah, so I always joke my worst fear is robot maids. But no, I think that, that technology is not supposed to replace the interaction where to have as human beings. Yes. And I think especially in an industry like house cleaning, you as the homeowner want to trust and have a relationship with the person who is in your home cleaning.

And I don't think a robot or could ever do that or create that feeling. And so I think that jobs like these will still be around. And I think that I challenge businesses often to say instead of just, going with the technology, stand your ground. You know, decide that, no, we're not going to be completely online because relationship is an important part of our business and we're keeping this piece of our business so that we have interaction. Like, what are we all going to be, just robots?

You know, what kind of world is that going to be? And then I think that the second part of your question is that, yes, there are people who like to clean and who love this feeling of accomplishment of making a place look better than when they got there. But what I've learned is it's not about the work that we do. and you can only do that so much before you get sick of it. It's the same thing every time, and just like any work. It's all about how we make people feel and the environment.

And I think what's so important about the student-made story is that there are people who don't like to clean who love their jobs. And it just proves that it's not about the what. You know, if this can happen in a cleaning company, you can create an environment in any industry, in any business, and any organization where people truly just want to be. and I think that I wish I would have, someone would have told me that in the beginning because I was very discouraged. I remember thinking, why did I pick this industry, you know? Why can I have done something cool in Silicon Valley? But it doesn't matter what industry you're in.

The environment is the most important thing. Now, let me get a couple pieces of information so I can ask a better question because I have a thought and I want to make sure it's informed. Sure. The people that are clean, these are all students, correct? Yes. I mean, it's true to the brand. Okay. So you have a pretty good turnover rate, even if somebody stays with you three, four years.

they're moving on. So you have a pretty good turnover rate. Is that correct as well? Yes. Okay. So now I can ask a truly informed question. How do you transfer the culture? I really admire what you're doing with culture. I'm reading about you, read several things beyond the book and the publicity materials. When you create a culture like that where you've got constant turnover, that is a little bit tougher challenge. You've got people staying with you on average five, seven, 10 years or what have you. And there's a ladder for people to climb. There's not really a ladder necessarily for the people that are working for you. How do you do it? How are you intentional to keep that culture transitioning? That's the downside of hiring students, you know, and I didn't think

about that at the beginning. And so the cleaning industry has an average turnover of 75%. So for every 100 people 75 leave. So we usually can keep our students until they graduate, but sometimes they have to leave for internships or studying abroad. So it's hard. But for us, it's about hiring people. I describe culture as a feeling. And, you know, this feeling is, it's made up of all of the individual behaviors and personalities and values of the people who are in the room, in the environment. So we look for people who give us that feeling. It's like, would I, when I'm interviewing someone, I think, would I want to work next to this person? Would I enjoy cleaning with this person? Would I want to be with this person, you know, four days a week? Would I want this person to be my leader?

And it's all we believe, it's like, if you feel it, that means that they fit. because you fit the culture, so you know. And we're really big on that. And I think what's hard is when you have the demand and you have customers who want your services, your products, you're so tempted to just hire to fulfill the demand. We've been very, very good, especially recently, about saying no to customers because we don't have the people

and we're not willing to drop our standards just to fill the demand. So I think it's, yeah, attracting people who have, you know, the values, the things you're looking for, and who you would want in your own home. As long as you get the right people, I believe you can train them to do anything. But you can't teach someone how to have a better heart or how to be honest or those are things that people either are or aren't. What's your hiring process like? Mostly, we get applicants from referrals, so current students who are telling their friends about us.

And we don't even have standard interview questions. We usually just start with tell us about who you are, what should we know about you or tell us your story. And we try to make it as natural of a conversation as we can. and it sounds so simple, but it's just I tell the people who hire, follow your gut. If there is anything in your gut saying, nope, listen to it. Even if somebody doesn't meet the requirements, if someone's not a student and you feel this is the right person, hire them. Don't let these requirements get in the way of bringing great people on board. And that was a hard lesson for me.

I mean, I turned down so many people because they weren't a student. We used to have a 3.5 GPA requirement. I mean, oh, wow. Oh, my goodness. We lost so many wonderful people because I was so, I had this checklist. They have to have a 3.5. And then I realized one day, wait a minute, what does that mean? What does that even mean about who they are, their character?

I had a 3.5.1. I barely, you know, I almost couldn't have worked for my own company. So, yeah, follow your gut. Yeah, that's really good. So I want to know, when was the last time or do you on a regular basis get out there and still pick up a mop and put on some rubber gloves and scrub some counters? You know, it's rare. Yeah.

Unfortunately, I can't really be with a team now the way that I used to be. There are students or I don't know their names. And that's really hard for me. And I think that's something that happens as your company grows and you have to just accept that that's going to happen. I focus my time on our leadership team and creating the culture between us because I believe that if we have a strong relationship and if we're in sync, that will ripple over and they will then work to create those relationships with our students. So once a month we have what we call our leadership team workshops where we spend three days completely away from the business. We work on the business instead of in it.

We work on our team dynamic. It's kind of like a professional development, personal development workshop for three days every month. And aside from that, I'm speaking and helping other companies and taking our curriculum and teaching it to others. And when I am in Gainesville at our location, I try to make every moment count with the students and say hi and learn about who they are and what they're doing. But it's hard.

You know, I definitely don't, I can't be with them like I used to be. How often do you stand up in front of the entire company and talk about culture and values? You know, well, with our leadership team all the time. We have team meetings and, of course, there too, but we're just, we're starting something next year that I'm really excited about. Where we're actually doing professional development days for our students. So we're completely closing student made. And it's like a six hour, just we're getting together, we're talking about the culture, we're going to do some leadership work. and our first one's in January, and I'll be facilitating those.

So I'm really excited. We're doing it every quarter. So give me a chance to really be with them and to talk about our culture and kind of like what we do with the leadership team, but on a smaller scale. Well, I'm excited about that because I'm going to tell you, I think that's going to be huge when everybody can hear from you on a regular basis. Oh, yeah. Because you are, you're the story.

Like, every company's got a story, and you are the story. And you will be the story for as long as the company is around. What do you see this thing going? because we've talked a lot about, you know, how you handled failure and the book is chalk fullest. And what I love about this is it's story-driven and it's this narrative. It's not tips and techniques and just full of all that. So it's a lot of great stuff to learn there. But as a millennial leader and here you sit with some great success, you've got a tremendous amount of momentum right now.

Where are you thinking and what are you thinking? What's it look like the future of this company? You know, it's kind of like we feel like a startup again because we are. are now going down this different path where the focus is education. And we're not really sure what it looks like. We know that it involves taking our curriculum and teaching it to other organizations.

We have a dream of student made being completely student-led. And we're working on that. And not that we wouldn't be involved, but we really want our students to learn even more than they're learning now. So how can we actually have them be leading and running this company? So when they leave and graduate, they can say, I ran a business. So we're working on that.

And if we figure that out, we want to help other companies learn how to do the same thing, especially in the service industry where there isn't a lot of room for advancement, so giving people other opportunities to really learn and grow. But I think right now what we're seeing, there are a lot of organizations calling saying, please tell me how you employ millennials. You know, if you can get them to clean toilets, what are we doing wrong? Like, can you, so I don't like the millennial shaming, you know, I think everyone's human. We're all human beings.

We all want to feel valued at work. we all want the same things. But I think where we can help right now is really helping organizations that have people from different generations, learn how to work together in sync, learn how to create an environment where everyone thrives and the focus isn't on the differences versus what do we all have in common and how do we create a place where everyone can be a leader and everyone can reach their potential. Okay, so that's a great segue. I teased it several minutes ago.

Now we dive into the M word, millennials. I want to go back to something you just said. You said a lot of companies are calling saying, what are we doing wrong? Let's talk about some of the biggest wrongs or the biggest pitfalls that businesses, business leaders are making with millennials, maybe some poor assumptions or they're just mishandling or mismanaging things that they see that are generational but are not necessarily bad. What are you seeing? What are the big traps? Well, I first want to say, I don't think you can paint everyone with the same brush. I just want, even though I'm talking about millennials, I'm certainly not saying that every single millennial is this way. But for example, we hear, oh, millennials don't care about building a relationship. They just walk around with their headphones in. They don't want to talk.

But that's not true. Let's take it back a few steps. We grew up with cell phones. We grew up building our relationships in chat rooms. We grew up texting. We want that human interaction. Who doesn't want to connect on a meaningful level with what? someone. It's just maybe we don't know how. And then I flip it and I say, okay, let's say

millennial or not, you're in the conference room, a meeting is starting, people are, you know, getting in the room, are you on your phones like emailing and catching up on work? Or are you really connecting with the person next to you and asking how they're doing? And, you know, and usually we're on our phones. So the very thing that we're complaining millennials do, we're all doing. What I try to help people see is the thing we're complaining about is actually bigger than a millennial problem. It's a human problem. And we have to, in that case, work really hard to not let technology affect the way that we are supposed to interact and build relationships with each other. But then I think millennials, many did grow up with helicopter parents who loved their kids desperately but did, love their kids so much, but did things for them and overhelped and were over-involved.

We have parents who will ask to be a part of job interviews. We will have parents who come in and apply for jobs for their kids or who call and say, my son needs today off. And I think we try really hard to give our students the chance to learn how to be independent. You know, instead of saying, oh, they can't think for themselves, it's like, well, maybe they had parents who really did all the hard things for them. And so it's our responsibility to give them the chance to do the hard things here so that they learn how to rely on themselves and be independent. And so I think just sometimes it's so easy to point the finger and say, this bothers me.

But once you understand why maybe this is, we're seeing this, you have empathy. and you want to actually help. And that's our responsibility as leaders. We have to do that. This is our future. 75% of the workforce, 2025. Yeah. It's astounding that we just broad brush millennials as a whole because of a couple news reports.

I'm going to give you some data from CBS News. They published recently. I'd love for you to comment on this. I absolutely know it's true because it's data, but I think it's profound when you as a leader can begin to understand this is how millennials are wired. But the two factors by which a millennial chooses a job. So this is what they most are looking for in their choice. Is number one doing something that they're good at, okay, which that's intrinsically human,

but it's number one for millennials. And number two is, does the work matter to them? Is there a connection to their values? So is it something I'm good at? And then is it something that I think is good? is it make a significant muscle kind of flare a little bit inside of them. So we know that to be true. So then compensation is like three or four, I believe.

But those first two are way off the charts in the percentile. And I thought that was really astounding. And to me, it's a positive reflection on millennials. I mean, this is, I hear those two pieces of data, Kristen and I go, this is a dream employee. I can work with this. I can mold this and develop this. Is that what you're doing? It's bigger than just cleaning.

You're really trying to hone in on a generation that they're driven by those two things. I mean, I think that's why people work at student made, because it is bigger than cleaning. And I see data like that. And I would agree, but then I also think, doesn't every human being want to work on something that matters and be in a role or they're actually good at it? Right. But what's great, and this is a positive towards a millennial generation, they're more in tune with what they're really feeling, versus Gen X and certainly the boomers, you would never respond to a poll that way.

Right. I take the approach of what I do know is that every single person wants to feel valued, significant, empowered. That's right. So it's just the focus should be how do we help our people feel this way? And maybe these people need something different

than these people. But I try to help organizations see, this is the end goal. This is what we all have in common. So instead of focusing on this, let's just focus on these feelings and how to create them for everyone. But yeah, I agree.

There's so much potential, just like in any generation, of course. That's right. Well, and I agree with you 100% as well. I agree with you. Every human being wants to know that their life matters. That is the number one human issue. It's a sole issue. Okay, before I let you go, because I know you've got to go, the curriculum. You've mentioned a couple of times. This is great. Obviously, you've got a lot of companies calling you going, Kristen, help us out. What is this curriculum and how do companies engage with it and what are you seen as the end result? Well, right now the curriculum is me going to your company and teaching you myself. It's not very sustainable. Oh, okay. But we're working on that. So, yeah, we are working on taking the things that we're doing at student-made and making, whether you had me come in person or not,

you could implement your organization, have people in your company teaching it. So like I said, it's a startup. This is an area that we aren't really familiar with. We're very lucky to have partners on board who know this area very well. We're hoping one day to even create curriculum for classrooms. It's like, how do we teach kids at a younger age how to build meaningful relationships and how to listen and how to have empathy and how to give and accept feedback. And so these are the things that we're talking about now.

So I don't know. You know, it's just really exciting. All I can say is we're really, really excited about the work we're doing. And it feels more right now than it ever has in the past. Yeah. Well, that's exciting stuff. Really, really excited to see what happens with what you're doing. I think this is a great resource.

Where can people connect with you and maybe some opportunities down the road? Is it studentmade.com, Kristenhaddead.com. What's the best one? Both of those work? Yep. Kristenaddead.com, studentemade.com. And then, of course, the book, permission to screw up. And yeah.

Well, folks, she is Kristen Hadid. The book is Permission to Screw Up. How I Learn to Lead by doing almost, and I love that. It's in parentheses, by the way. Everything wrong. The organization is Studentmade. And you need to check it out. Really good stuff.

Studentmade.com. Kristenhaddeed.com. That's H-A-D. E-E-D-com. Well, this is fun. I knew when Simon wrote the foreword that this was going to be good stuff. And his praise for you is not at all to be overlooked. So this was delightful. Thank you so much. I know you're on the road. I'm going to be speaking somewhere, but I know our audience is better for hanging out with you. And so we appreciate you. Thank you. I so enjoyed this. Thank you. All right, folks. We're going to get right to Dave Ramsey. This is from a recent staff meeting where

where 650 plus of us smashed together in the room and we communicate intentionally. And then we had the great reminder from Dave of one of our core values, family. And this is such a strong and timely message as we move into the holidays. Here is Dave Ramsey. During the holidays that we're in the middle of, it's good to remember that one of our core values is family. We balance family and working hard. And occasionally we need to just stop and say, how's that work? What's that mean?

Because you always meet people who are on one side of the other. Like they spend so much time with their family that they don't work much and they don't get to keep their job. You know, straight up. I mean, you're self-employed and if you don't work, you don't eat, I mean, right? That's how it works if you're self-employed. I mean, if you just don't show up for work, eventually they fire you. Even here, we'll do that.

You know, like you've got to work, and you ought to be working while you're at work, not spending all your time on Facebook unless you're in social media department. And so, which I guess that would like to be your job then. But how do we balance that? Because we have stuff happen, like we rebuilt the whole thing on that. So we've got a creative team, we got a web team, we got dev team, we got marketing teams. We've certainly got the leadership teams looking at this thing, and we've got to get it ready before Christmas.

we cannot wait. I mean, November 1 was the latest possible launch of those changes. Or you've got to wait a lot for the first of the year, and you really have a screwed up mess all the way through Christmas, and we're just not going to have that. And so did some of those people work a lot during that period of time? Yes, they did. Yes, they did.

That cannot hear in this building, in this organization, that cannot be a pattern where just if you work there, it's 80-hour weeks. We don't do that. But sometimes is there something we have to, jump on and get it done? Yeah, because we're all self-employed. We've got to jump on it. We've got to get it done. But it shouldn't be an ongoing pattern. It shouldn't be a thing where you experience these ridiculous hours for an long period of time. There are times I put in ridiculous hours, and then there are times that I put in ridiculous hours. And you should too. You should take advantage of doing stuff like those service projects. You should take advantage of your PTO. You should take advantage of the celebrations and things that we do around here and the fun things that we do. You ought to plug into all of that. It rejuvenates you.

You ought to take your weekends like last weekend and recreate, recreate, be doing something, you know, to reset your spirit, reset your brains. You know, Sabbath is real. There's all kinds of productivity studies around taking a Sabbath and one seventh of your time set aside. That's the balance. But are there times you have to get stuff done? Yeah, there's times I get up at 5 a.m. 4 a.m. on Sunday morning and go to the airport and fly to Atlanta and speak. three services and then fly home and then go to the Entree Master Series reception that night

when I get home, which would be like a 16-hour day on a Sunday, hello. So there's times you have stuff you've got to get done. But then there's other times you don't. And so a couple things we want to remember there. Number one, family is a balance, but a balance is not like every week is an exact template of the week before. I don't know anybody's life that works like that, really. and if it does you have issues

like control freak issues most people things ebb and flow with the different seasons of life the different times of the year the different things you're facing whether you're facing family stuff or medical stuff or babies have come it ebbs and flows

and you focus on what you need to focus on right then and there are times we focus on work and we really need to be all in and then there's times you need to focus on family and many of you have gone through while you've been on this team and you've experienced something with a close family member that was very ill, going through cancer treatments, going through chemo, and we don't call you out and go, you're down to the hospital too much.

Your kids are freaking nick you. You can't be at the hospital too much. There's no possible definition of too much, okay? That's where you're supposed to be right then, period. Okay? That's how life works. That's family is first. And what do we all do?

And different people around here face all kinds of different things. Listen, if you come in and we sit down and we know what's going on, we're never going to tell you to put an emergency horrible situation like that on hold and get your work done. You need to be doing your family stuff. That's family first. We've never in the history of this place done that, ever. Nor in the history of this place have we allowed ongoing,

for year after year after year, a culture of 80-hour work weeks. but never in the history of this place if we allow people to just screw off while they're at work. So like while you're at work, freaking work, that's the balance, you know? And so if I own my own company, and I'm self-employed, which you do, you own your own company, you just happen to have one customer right now, most of you,

and it's called Ramsey, right? And if you own your own company, what do you do when somebody's sick? You're in your grandmother's funeral. You take off, you go the funeral, right? But what do when you're at work? You work, when you're at work. You care. you drive the lane. Sometimes you do it when you don't feel like doing it. Sometimes you do it in spite of

things that are going on at home. Sometimes you do it, and that's the balance. And it needs to just be a common sense balance, not where somebody comes in and taps you on the shoulder and says, hey, you're doing this right or wrong. You ought to just like be a freaking grown-up and know what's the right thing to do. Use some common sense. If your marriage is on the rocks, well, don't take six things and go to, you know, 14 things out of town in a row. Come in a row. Come in, and sit down and talk to somebody. My marriage is struggling. I need to come off the road. I don't need to be doing that right now. I don't need to go to that convention right now. Sit down and talk to a leader and tell them what's going on. You know, I work so much at Ramsey. It costs me my marriage. Not unless you

are an idiot because you didn't listen and you didn't understand the culture you were walking in. That is just not true of this place. Now, do we sometimes go a long time? Yeah. I mean, we did some stuff around here like with Salesforce and CRM and stuff, we were like, geez, man. Some of most people worked like six months of overtime. They worked a year and six months, most of them. And that went on too long, but we caught it. We backed it off.

Some of them said, hey, this is not who we are here. And we started pulling back. We started restaffing and looking at resetting the expectations on some of the projects. Because there's not anything we work on around here that's not exciting. There's not anything that we think, oh, I hate working on this. oh, this is so stupid. None of us have that problem. So it's like addicting, you know. Sometimes church is that way. Sometimes you volunteer so much at church, or if you work at church, if you've ever worked on church staff, you work yourself to death. Like Jesus needed your help.

I mean, seriously, my wife calls it the Messiah complex. She's like, you think you're the only one that can help those people. The only one that can help those people is Jesus. And if you burn up, burn out, flame out, you're going to be of no use to the kingdom. So keep it in balance. You're not the Messiah. It's his job. Jobs taken. Can't have that one. But do we have to care? Do we have to be grown-ups and self-employed? Or will our business close if we don't take care of our business and get our work done on this business that we own and self-employed? You bet. You bet. That's what family means. So family means we have to keep our business open because it's how we feed our family. But family means, if family needs us, we need to be there for family. And we need to

keep that in balance. And so you cannot take a thin slice out of a day-to-day routine around here and apply that and say, oh, this place is not about family. Because that thin slice might be not about family. It might be about getting your work done. But you cannot take a thin slice over here and say, this bunch just runs on anarchy. They just go do whatever the flip they want to do because they let this person have unbelievable grace in a horrible situation in their family, and we weren't worried about their work. We said, go take care of that.

And it's real simple, y'all. How would you want to be treated? Treat other people like you want to be treated. It's a Jesus thing. But we have to have balance. So treat your job like you own it, your position like you own. it, your career like you own it because you do and treat it that way, and then make good grown-up decisions that balance with your family. And you make those decisions. And you do that all

around the holidays in particular, right? You know, like we've mentioned several times in here, a whole lot of business-to-business stuff, the businesses, unless they're in the retail world serving the consumer, they're pretty much, as of today, not working. They're pretty much mailing it in if their body is even there. And if their body's there, it may be still inebriated from the night before. I mean, they are just in party, party mode, right? They're just going. And so that's just not who we are.

We got retail around here, but we got business to business around here. And we got some stuff that we're laying some bricks in the wall right now that are stuff that is not going to see the light of day until March or April. And so if you don't do it today, March and April is going to suck. And it's called being a grown-up and looking forward into something forward and having a little bit of vision past Friday and working on what we do. That's the balance between family. So sometimes people see that core value and they just say family and that just means I can do

anything. If I just call it family, I can do anything. And not if you own your own business because you'll have to close. You'll have to say, I lost my business because I had to spend all this time on my family. And that would be your reality if you owned your own place. and you do own your own place. It's called You Incorporated. And You Incorporated brings a level of service to the marketplace that you get paid for

and a brand to the marketplace that you get paid for. And that's how that works. That's what that core value is about. So we do balance family and we work while we're at work. We work hard while we work. And sometimes that means ours, but it should not mean hours in perpetuation. It should not mean, oh, you know, the dev team over there, they work them 80 hours. No, we don't work our dev team 80 hours.

It's one of the benefit of being on the dev team. team here. Because most places they do work you out 24-7 in that world. They just work you all the time. And we don't. Now, sometimes, yes. I hope I've given you the balancer. Sometimes, but not always. Never always. I don't work 80 hours, always. But I'm not afraid still to work 80 hours. And usually it's to do something for one of you. Because I don't really need the freaking money personally anymore. Hello. Okay. And I love what I do too. And if you love what you do, you can do it too much. much if you're not careful. So be careful to turn it off. Oh, and here's another thing. When you're at home, be at home. Turn off all the stuff. And if you've been fighting all day here, and some days we've

been fighting all day, we've been scratching and clawing, stop. I always did this at the bottom of my street. And Gary Smalley and John Trent taught me this 20 years ago, 25 years ago, So, you know, maybe 30 in a marriage seminar that I went to a young married. And they said, you're wearing a sword all day and you're fighting. All day long, you're fighting through stuff. When you get home, take the sword off, put over the mantle. Don't use that same sword with your family. You're to reset your emotions.

Play some praise music on the way home. Turn something off. Don't listen to talk radio. It makes you mad. Especially sports talk radio. Right. You know what I'm saying? Reset. Be home when you're home. It changes everything. Hope you enjoyed that lesson from Dave Ramsey. And folks, speaking of core values, we take our core values very, very seriously here at Ramsey Solutions. We have 14, and that is your free resource this episode. Our 14 core values are in this resource. And so you're going to get to actually look at those. And this is a great, great resource, very, very popular. So if you'd like to get this resource, text the phrase, EL values.

Altogether, no space. Text EL values to 33444. And speaking of free resources, one more for you, of course, from our good friends at InfusionSoft. How to achieve work-life balance. Now, this is a gigantic question. The good news is there are some real practical ways to achieve this. And they have put this in a guide. And I love the word guide here because that's what this resource does.

We know from our good friends of InfusionSoft, you ready for this? 70% of small business owners report sacrificing family time or vacation time for work. So in this guide, InfusionSoft is going to cover for you some actionable tools, apps, and techniques from experts who have figured out how to work smarter and be unplugged when you need to be. And trust me, folks, your family and you, need you to be unplugged. Go to infusionsoft.com slash worklife balance. That's infusionsoft.com slash worklife balance.

All right, folks, really excited about this. Coming up next week, it is my favorite episode of the year. It's where the team gets together. Eric the producer and I fight about this. No, we really don't. We pick what we feel are our best conversations of the year. It's very, very difficult to do. And we put it together in a compilation,

end of year episode, bringing you the best of the best. So, hey, if you'd like to weigh in on this, you can do that. Do it on social media or via email podcast at entreleadership.com. Go to social media at entreleadership. And we love to hear from you. So before I let you go, I want to say a big, Merry Christmas to you, amazing leaders. We love you. On behalf of Eric the producer, our engineers Will Rutter and Jim Bab and the entire Entree leadership team. Thank you for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.