Noob School - The Freedom to Be Yourself: My Conversation with Amy Brusky of Kolbe Corp

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

Welcome back to Noob School! Today, I’m joined by a very special guest and a longtime friend of the show, Amy Brusky. Amy is the President of Kolbe Corp, and the work her company does is a huge reason reason I was able to grow a tiny company into a massive success.  Years ago, I was a young sales manager struggling to get my team to make cold calls. A consultant named Bill Lee introduced me to the Kolbe Index, and it completely changed my life. It taught me how to stop whining about my team’s performance and start hiring the right kind of people for the job.  In this episode, Amy and I dive deep into why understanding your "doing" mind—your instinctive strengths—is the secret to finding what her stepmother and Kolbe founder Kathy Kolbe called "the freedom to be yourself".  What we’re talking about in this episode:  The Three Parts of the Mind: Why your personality and intelligence only tell half the story, and why your instinctive way of taking action is the missing piece to your success.  Building Your Hiring Avatar: I share my personal "recipe" for hiring, from the local "beer test" to making sure their Kolbe numbers match the role before I even meet them.  Sales Strengths vs. Role Requirements: We discuss why some people are built for high-pressure cold calling while others, like a guy I once hired with high Factfinder numbers, are the only ones who can close a $25 million government deal that takes two years to finish.  Permission to "Procrastinate": If you’re like me and do your best work at the eleventh hour, Amy explains why that’s actually "active procrastination" and how to work with that energy instead of feeling guilty.  Career Wisdom for Your 20s: My advice to young professionals: stop trying to just "get a job" and start figuring out where you add the most value with the least amount of friction.  If you’re a leader trying to get your team right, or if you’re just starting out and want to find a career where the day "flies by," you don't want to miss this conversation.  Take the Kolbe A Index: kolbe.com  Connect with Noob School: Don’t forget to Like and Subscribe so we can keep bringing you these insights to help you reach your full potential!

All right, well, welcome back to Noob School. We've got such a special guest that she's calling in. She's not here in the studio with us. Amy Breske, the president of Colby, out in, you're in Phoenix, right? That's right. Yeah, I've been out there. I visited you guys. You were here.

I'm certified. That's right. You are, for everyone to know, you have gone through an exceptional three-day training that people apply for. You are one of our Colby experts. Well, I'm glad, I'm very glad to hear that. Your mom actually made a comment to me during class when she saw my numbers, 3393. She just looked at me and she kind of put her hands on her hips and she said, are you married?

I said, yes, yes. She goes, you must have a very patient wife. Exactly. Well, good. I'm looking forward to getting into what that means, but you are a will or a won't, you used to call them. Like, you have exceptional strengths, as do many people. But in your case, there's such an amazing niche of what you do well. So it's exciting to hear how you put it to. A very narrow sliver. It sounds amazing.

Well, for the people who are also just tuning in, I would like you to like and subscribe our podcast so we can reach more people. So please do that. It takes two seconds. But, Amy, we did meet, I think it was two years ago when I came out there. And one of the reasons I came out was I wanted to go through the training so I would learn even more about this test that I've been using for so long. And I just thought, what else could I learn? And, you know, the way I got to know you and, you know, the way I got to know you and, you. your company was, I mean, I don't know how long ago it was, but was Bill Lee and it had to be

maybe 30 years ago when he was doing the consulting for Colby. And we live in the same town and he somehow, somehow he called on me. I don't know how that happened because I was a young idiot sales manager. I had about 10 people. I didn't know what I was doing. And he said, what's going on with your sales? And I said, well, they're not good enough. Nobody will make their cold calls, you know, all this stuff.

I was just whining, just whining. And he looked up at the board and he said, well, I see this guy Todd up there. He's doing pretty well. And I'm like, yeah, well, Todd's doing good. Todd, but the rest of them stink. And he said, well, what if all of them were like Todd? And I was like, what? What a dream.

Yeah. What a dream. I didn't even know that was possible. You know, and so he told me how he would do it with looking at Colby and the other things they came from. And it completely changed my life. I mean, because I was then able to hire the right kind of people for my job. And we grew a tiny little company to a great big company with that one trick pony, just getting the right people. And there's a lot more to Colby, but that thing really helped me.

And I've always been thankful. I love that. Yeah, and I don't know that story. That is great. And when you build a team based on strengths, not only did you get what you needed, but you put people in the roles that love their job. And that's the goal, right? There are lots of skills that people have and they could do, so everyone listening, you could do a lot of things. The question is should you? Should you? Is that where you're going to be in the zone and you're in flow and the day flies by? And so what he was able to do is say, let's look at really what people. are bringing to the table and find people where they're going to be perform well for you and they're going to be more committed and engaged and love their role too. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I was one time, I've been through every piece of the ups and downs of the Colby situation because when I was in college, I had an internship working a construction company out in California. I thought, this is going to be great. Work in construction. You know, this is, and so I wasn't working construction. I was in the trailer. I was in the office.

And my job was to process the paperwork every day and write it all down, who showed up on time. I could not stay awake. I mean, I was so bored. I would just fall asleep all day long. They thought I was on drugs or something because it was such against migraine. But again, that's the thing. Until you know your Colby situation, you don't know why this is happening to you. Right.

And it's not bad to have a job that is so against your nature and experience. that once in your career. I've always said I wish that for my even my own kids because if they if and when they become leaders, they'll be a little bit more empathetic to that. But it's almost like dating, you know, you date some people for a while to also help you figure out what you don't want. You very quickly figured out, okay, this is what I'm not going to do. This is, you know, this is not for me. So, right. Well, I was fortunate to get to your mom before she passed away. I'm very sorry about that, but what a life she had. That's right. Yeah, Kathy Colby, and she was my stepmom, but honestly, she's been my mom

since I was 19 years old. So, you know, and so it's been over 40 years. But what a force. I mean, not only did she affect me personally, because she was my mother for so long, but professionally, she's the person that drove my very first important career decision. I didn't know anything about Colby. I knew it was a company she ran and she founded. But what she did really early on for me, I was in a career, I was in my late 20s, and I had really worked my way up the corporate ladder. I had told myself, I'm going to say yet, for the next five years, I'm going to say yes to anything that comes my way. I don't know why, but I had that in my head and I just said, I'm going to say yes. So I had moved five times. I had lived in San Diego, Washington, D.C., back to

LA again. I'd done all these roles. Some were great for me. Some were not. But I was measuring my success by I'm moving up the ladder. I'm making more money than a lot of my friends. I'm doing all the right things. And one day she said, I'd be curious to hear how you define success. Like, what's your definition of success? And I said, well, I guess I'm doing it. This is success. I'm moving forward in my career. And she said, well, I define success as the freedom to be yourself. I had never heard that. I had never thought of that. I'm like, what kind of craziness is this?

But as she said that, I realized on the surface, things were great, but I was absolutely miserable. I really hated my job. I was so drained by the weekend that I couldn't even do anything. And so although I was capable and I kept getting promoted for things that really weren't in my sweet spot, this was not going to work for me long term. And the corporate world wasn't great for me. I knew that I was probably better suited for entrepreneurial life.

But with that one question, how do you define success? It really changed. And I absolutely radically changed my career trajectory at that point. And so she really affected me professionally too. And, of course, became one of my, my mentor for a long time. How wonderful. How wonderful. What type of industry was that in?

You were climbing the ladder in. So I was in weight loss industry. So I was in Jenny Craig Weight Loss Centers when we were growing rapidly. and I was specifically in the franchise department. So I know a lot about franchising. So I worked directly under the VP where we would sell stores. I would go in there. I would train them.

I'd get all of the franchisees up and running. And then I was going back when we were buying them back and it wasn't working. So I also got to see that. What is it to be a franchisee? And then I moved into sales training. So I ran an entire division. I ran the whole East Coast of sales trainers. And so I'm really passionate about people in sales

and making sure that you're doing, if you're in sales, that you get to do sales your way and that there's different, there's different roles for people in sales depending on your strengths. So I did that for a long time. And then just basic operations. Yeah, I learned a lot. Wow, what a company that you were with. I'm sure they were growing like crazy.

They were. Yeah, it was fun. Well, on that topic of salespeople and different types of Colby scores, you know, I have found, in my very simplistic view, generally speaking, I want to get a four, at least a four, at least a four, at least a four, a four or less. And if someone is over those ranges or under in one case, it's acceptable that it's good. The perfect one for me is something like a, you know, 6,6, 8, 3, you know, where you have more fact finder follow through a lot of quick start. and almost no implementer. Is that someone that works for you?

Is this for someone that works for you? Yes. Okay. So those would be salespeople, but I know when you have someone, again, what I've seen is when you have the higher fact finder follow through and a higher quick start, those people aren't going to stay in sales for very long. They're going to become managers, you're going to have their own business. And I've just seen my father is one of those people.

My old partner was one of those people. It was just like they're all destined to be leaders. I guess because they're more balanced and they have a higher natural capacity to deal with those things than other people. Yeah, I think depending on the environment they're in, they do really well in some bigger organizations and are able to do the level of detail and strategy and all of that versus like the true entrepreneurs are kind of off the cuff. And they're experimenting at all time. They're building the plane while they're flying it, you know. that statement. And that works in the entrepreneurial world. In fact, you have to do some of that. So when you say Justin to be leaders, I think in a more traditional sense, absolutely.

And for me, being very entrepreneurial and I am an eight and quick start, I was just drowning in a, it was great when the organization was brand new. I was there really on the ground floor. We were really entrepreneurial. And then the minute it started getting very established, lots of rules, we had to. I mean, that was the deal. It was starting to not work for me. anymore once it wasn't new every day. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. And I'm happy to describe that for people that are listening, like, what, what are we talking about when we're measuring Colby so they know when you say, yeah, I'm sorry. I forgot, I forgot to bring that up. So please do. Yeah, let me throw that out there because I know, you and I talk about this so naturally, because this is what we do.

This is what it's like to be in with a bunch of people in Colby world. So let me just say a couple quick things. First of all, Colby measures how you solve problems, make decisions, and execute. So you have a natural way, an instinctive way of getting things done. And this is different from your intelligence or your personality. So think of, you know, Plato and Aristotle, it's long been established that there's three different parts of the mind, the thinking, the feeling, and the doing. So thinking, what are your intelligence, what are your skills that you have? What are you capable of? The feeling part is about what's your personality type. What do you like? What do you value? What do you prefer? So are you more of an introvert? Are you more of an extrovert? And when you think about salespeople, especially,

we think there are some personality types that work really well in certain kinds of sales, right? But that's all your personality. And anyone listening, if you've ever taken Myers-Briggs or disc or predictive index or Clifton strength, strength finder, any of those kinds of assessments, those all fall under a personality test. So this third part of the mind is this missing piece that is you might have the skills to do things and the desire or preference to do it, but this is the how will you naturally execute. And that's the part of the mind that we measure exclusively at Colby. And it's directly tied to results because it's about actually getting things done. So if you're a leader, you want to make sure that you understand what's needed in a role and that we're

getting people that match that, which you did brilliantly in your job as a sales leader. But as an individual, you know, my advice to people all the time is constantly beyond this journey to discover your strengths in all three parts of the mind, but do not leave out this one piece because this is what all of our test three test studies show. It doesn't change over time. You are the same person that you were in high school. Think about when you did your best work on a project. You Were you the person that crammed and waited till the last minute and did your best work at the very end? Did you do a little bit at a time where you great at research? That's not changing.

So quit trying to be more organized if that's not your deal, whatever it is, right? So that's what Colby measures. And we just look at four different things. We look at what do you do with information? What do you do with organization? How do you handle change and risk? And what do you do with the three-dimensional world? And so all of those, there's no good or bad, right or wrong.

It's just a continuum, right? So, and the most obvious thing is information. Are you someone that naturally needs a lot of detail and information? Are you someone that bottom line things? You and I, John, both being three on a scale of one to ten, on that fact finder mode, we bottom line things, we simplify, we bullet point things. We skip right over the details, right? We'll jump to the end.

So follow through. Scale of one to ten. how do you organize? Are you someone that's more traditionally systematic? Will you file things and strive to finish one thing before you start the next? Or do you actually get energy from jumping around? Doing a little bit of one thing, move into the next, and you're more naturally adaptable. By the way, there's people in the middle too. So I'm giving you the extreme. Quick start. What do you do with change? And that is think about someone who's just going to naturally jump in, experiment, try things, take a risk, do things that had never been done before and naturally.

Are you someone who's really good at stabilizing and maintaining what's working? Or are you in between somewhere? And then implementer, you were talking about doing construction. What we find in the construction world is people who really thrive being hands-on and doing hands-on construction. They're really tied into doing things in a concrete way with their hands, with tools, whatever, up to someone who's more abstract, doesn't have to see it to believe it. So those of you that really thrive in finance and some of those kinds of things,

things there. And I love sales examples there. My husband is a nine on a scale one to ten an implementer. He sells real estate. He sells a tangible product. And he's really good with that. But I know a lot of people in banking, finance, insurance, they're all in a one, two, three. They're selling a service. They're not selling something tangible. So that's kind of the overall. We all have those instincts. As I said, they're no good or bad right or wrong. But the sooner you really tap into them, you will find that you can get so much more done and just love the role that you're in. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And also, and again, I want your feedback on this, but as a sales coach now, I so often go into a new company and they're not happy with whether salespeople

are doing this or that. And then I test them, give them the Colby test, and I'm like, well, no wonder. You know, you're asking somebody with no quick start to make cold calls. And so we just need to get the right people for the jobs you have. Right. And kind of come up with an avatar of what we're looking for, the perfect person. And I tell people, we're not doing anyone a favor if we hire the wrong person for the job. That's not a favor to them. They're going to struggle. So it's really helpful. They're going to be miserable. Yeah. If you really like someone, people struggle. People struggle. with this when they hire a family or a friend, a family member, a friend where they really like them

so they want to give them a job, make sure it's the right job for them. If you really like them, you don't want to put them in something where they're going to be miserable. And sales is a great example of how you can have lots of different strengths and instinctive ways of solving problem

and doing well in sales, but I'm a huge fan of sales teams, like partnering up someone who's really good at going out and getting new business and cold calling or whatever that takes, and then someone who's really good at going out, going to manage that account and keep up selling that account. And oftentimes those two different parts of sales require some different instincts. And so we find it looks different as far as some

people are just better suited for some part of the job rather than the other. And so when I hear you know, accounting departments or something saying the salespeople aren't doing, they're not filling out all their paperwork and they're skipping all these steps. And I'm like, are they great at what they do, let's try and take as much of this off their plate as possible. Because where do you want their energy going, right? And so it is often that someone who's really, really good at bringing in new business, they're not great at the paperwork and all that. So what are we going to do instead of trying to change them to have more time in what their strengths are and get them some help on the other pieces with someone who loves doing the other piece? Yeah, you're right.

Like I know your assistant and my assistant have very similar Colby profiles. I mean, it's almost the exact opposite of who we are, who we are. And the things that make my heart flutter and palpitate, she likes to do. It's like a puzzle for her, you know, all the papers and all that stuff. So, yeah, everyone's got a place, right? Absolutely. Yeah. And the more that you can do that, and if you're newer in your career or trying to figure this out,

like really experiment and do a little bit of everything and figure it out and start like really tying into where are you just so in flow like what what could you do all day like ask yourself that question where the day just flies by what are those kinds of things believe it or not and maybe you can't do those all day that's that's not very realistic but what would happen if you increased it 10% or 20% like those are the little things we can all do and there are people like you said, who love to do and are really well suited to do the things that you don't love to do. And don't come naturally to you. I'm using the word love, but it really is about where your instincts are aligned. You end up loving them because it's aligned. And would it be true that

somebody with a more balanced, but more balanced numbers can kind of do any of them, like normally? Yeah. If you're someone that's really in the middle on that scale of one to ten, you're kind of in that four, five, and six in all of them or in most of them, you tend to be. You tend to be, you tend to be, someone who's a natural team player and we call those a facilitator and about 10% of the population falls in that but then there's a lot of other people that have quite a bit of accommodation they really do their best when they can accommodate things that are already happening versus innovate like starting them and sparking them and initiating um so the worst thing we could do to someone like that is put them in a room close the door and go just work on your own so you need to know those things about you too a

team member is someone that switches gears as needed for the needs of the team. Now, read or I listened to one of your video testimonials from Dan Sullivan, the strategic coach guy. I mean, a very famous guy. I had no idea. A guy with a 2-2-10 could do anything. Yeah. You know, I mean, that's just almost impossible. He must have a lot of, I don't know, how would you figure out having your own business if you have a 2-2-10-4?

Yeah. Well, he tells a lot of stories about how he declared band. bankruptcy twice because he really was trying to be something that he wasn't. And it wasn't until he figured out, wow, I got to stay in my lane and quit trying to be like some of the other business owners around me. And that happens. We compare ourselves or we pick someone who is our mentor or a guru or some idol and we try and do business like them. That may or may not work. And so he was trying to be something he wasn't. And then he realized he needed partnership and team. And so he found his puzzle piece and someone that could be the person that was going to do the things he wasn't.

And he said everything changed after that. But it took him saying, I'm not going to keep trying to be something I'm not. And then he was successful. Yeah. But it was building the team around him. Yeah. It's amazing because I would never have guessed that because he's been so successful. I have friends that go to see him and he's just been a great business.

Yeah. Absolutely. But he gets to do what he does. He is coming up with new ideas every day. And he's in his 80s now. And there's no end to the innovation he's going to do. So he still gets to do that. And other people bring that to life, right? Well, one of the things you said earlier about not changing, I was just thinking about, you know, I had a really good friend in high school who when we had to do a term paper or something hard like that, Of course, I put it off until, can I ask the teacher for an extension. That's how far I put it off. I couldn't do it. And he would have his done like three weeks early, done, turned in. Right, right.

And I'm like... And that's probably the same person he is now. It is. He is a high-powered, highly paid corporate lawyer doing like contract stuff for like construction companies. Right. So like massive billion dollar kind of stuff. And it's just for him, it's nothing, right? It's just like, oh, okay.

It sounds like he thrives in complexity and in structure, and that's where he does his best. If you put him into an entrepreneurial space, that would probably be more frustrating for him, where there's so many unknowns, we would take him out of his game. And by the way, those of you who either are younger and you remember what it was like to be in either high school or college or you have kids,

boy, is it fascinating to raise kids who are so, different than you. This is not genetic everybody, right? So if you were that planner in school, that doesn't mean your kid is necessarily going to be, right? But you could already see where he did his best work. School is incredibly frustrating for kids who are not detailed and structured. Because guess what? We have data on thousands of teachers, and they all look like that. So if that's not who you are or were or your kid is that school's going to be painful, but they have this amazing successful life once they get out and they're not in the confines of there is one right way to do things. You know, for a paper, you do an outline first, and then you do your research and then

you do your bullet points, and that there's one right way to come up with a paper. The minute you're out of those confines, then you do much better, as you discovered, right? You were able to It also explains the, Amy, the conflict between people like, you know, nine quick starts like me and a teacher. They just, they don't get it. They don't appreciate that someone wants to try this or do something different. And I don't appreciate that they want structure. And it took me, until y'all came along, I would be angry, not angry, but not happy with many people I worked with. I'm like, what is wrong with this person?

Sure. I don't, let's just do it. Okay, we know it's the right thing. Let's just do it. Yeah, let's just jump in. Yeah, of course. We can fix it later. Yeah, this is where we should probably say to,

your strengths are not a cop-out for getting done whatever it is you need to get done, right? So I always make a joke that, well, I'm a three-in fact-finder. I don't really do details. The IRS is not going to want to hear that, right? There is no close enough on your taxes. So same with school. If the teacher could just say, in a month, this paper's due here's what you have to deliver it's a presentation and a

whatever it doesn't matter if you do a little bit every single day for a month or if you wait until the last week and the night before you do your speech and you get up there and you wing it what matters is did you get an excellent result and so when we're looking at grading people on the process of how they got to the end result we're missing the mark we should really grade on output and same in the workplace right are they doing an excellent job then that's what we're looking at versus the how they got there. Yes, yes.

I've had to deal with that. I'm sure you have too. People will say to me, I saw Michael leaving early for lunch today or where's Perry been? He hadn't been here in three days. I'm like, they're crushing their number, leave them alone. That's right. That's right. And that's the kind of person probably, here's what this is about.

People feel like salespeople are just, I'm just hitting my numbers and then I'm going to slack off. And what I would say is, and there are probably people like that, so I'm not saying that's not true. There are people who do things in sprints. They do their best work where it's intense, it's in a sprint, I'm going to do all of it, and then they need to switch gears and take a break. You can't maintain that level. There's other people who are just going to be steady, steady all the way along, and that's what they do. So we're going to look at results instead.

It really is, everyone has their own creative process, if you think about it that way. So what is it? I was, there's an interesting thing. I was just hearing a speaker who was talking about writing and he said, I was told you have to write however many it was, a thousand words every day if you're a writer. So he's a business writer. And this is what I do and this is my process. And then I listened to an interview with the woman, oh my gosh, Shonda Rimes, I think,

who wrote the TV shows Gray's Anatomy and all these other wonderful shows and now she's done movies and all this. And she said, my method is, I'm just thinking about something for a while. I don't run anything down. It could be a year later. It could be two years later. And then I sit down for two days straight. I write it and it's done.

Entire TV series. But if we told her, she said, I've been told, every day you should be writing. It's like, no, that doesn't work for me. So I thought that example was such a great example of still getting this wonderful Emmy winning result. But in a way that's very much in a sprint kind of format. And that works for her. Yeah, I agree. That is certainly, that's a, you know, hiring people based on previous results is a good thing.

I tend, since I'm hiring, normally hiring people out of college, I'm hiring based on previous behavior, I suppose. And I want to talk to you about this hiring avatar, and I'll give me kind of how I do it, and then you can critique it. But Bill helped me with this way back when it really hasn't changed much. But he says if you're hiring for a company where I live in Greenville, South Carolina, he says you want to hire people that are ideally that are kind of from here. Sure. And I'm like, well, why? Or at least really committed to staying there.

Right. Or committed to staying. Because that was the reason. He goes, because you don't want to hire the Oklahoma City person that you love. And three years later they move home. So we want to establish this community of people around here. We'd like them to be kind of we want to get them from the same universities and generally the same majors. So we create this culture, right?

We've got different from the, like in your case, what's the big school out there? Is it Arizona? Arizona State University and then University of Arizona is two hours south. Yeah. Yeah. And so you probably have a lot of those people there and, you know, creates this culture. And then we like them to be leaders, like maybe president or their first. sorority or their fraternity, maybe sports, you know, maybe they played sports in high school or

college. And then, of course, they got to pass the beer test. You know, do you want to have a beer with them? We don't want anyone to work with us. We wouldn't pass that test. And then the last piece, usually if we got through all that, the last piece for us was, does the Colby match what typically works for us? Right. Right. Does that sound like a good avatar for you? Yeah. So you have a little bit of everything. When we talked about the three parts of the mind, you've got some of their basic experience and knowledge. And in this case, sounds like you at least want them to have a college degree in most cases, correct? So that's kind of, yeah, so that's kind of my, your check-off of skills and experience. They may have some job experience too, right? But you're also saying, hey, a little bit of leadership

experience in whatever they were in. Sports is interesting because you get to learn how to be on a team. So all of that is cure the type of experiences that we know works in our company. And then the personality part is, do I want to have a beer with them? And hopefully what you're doing is you're asking enough questions about do their values match your organizational values. Do they care about the same stuff? Are they going to mesh well with the team in whatever way that is? Right. And then that third piece is the doing part. So you're covering all three pieces. And that's what, you know, that's what we want. And whatever you find works, some other organization might find there's something a little bit different.

But I know for us, you know, based on our values, there's a few things I've seen along the way that works. Number one is, are they mission driven? Do they care about what Colby does? They can be an excellent performer, but we have found, this is just in our experience, people who are really passionate about making a difference in people's lives and are interested in kind of, increasing success and human behavior and some of that they just do really well with us right so we've got our own little criteria of what experience and all of that is and so figure out what that is for you and it's look at your high performers and then go from there and then you're trying to replicate people which is great within your entire organization we want to create some level of diversity in their Colby strengths because we know teams with diversity do well

but not in a position where if you have 10 salespeople and they're all doing the exact same job, that's where I don't want diversity. I kind of want them to be the same, right? But like you just described, you have an assistant that's totally opposite from you. That diversity and how you execute is really useful in that scenario. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I'll give you another little story. When I was a young salesperson, about to be the sales manager, I suppose, for this little company. I was working for and it ended up buying part of and it became a successful deal. But at the moment, it was like seven of us. And I was, I mean, I couldn't do the proposals done. I couldn't get these leads entered into the system. I mean, the easiest things in the world I couldn't do. Right.

And my partner, my soon-to-be partner and the CEO of the company, he kind of, he came to, he goes, you know, I think he saw the talent. You know, he saw the talent in the sales. And he said, I think I'm going to get somebody locally to come help us with the administrative things to free you up to just focus on sales. Perfect. Brilliant. Brilliant. A domer person would have just gotten rid of me.

Well, right. Or just force you to be something you weren't. Go get it together. This is not hard. And so I know even you're describing it as you couldn't do it. You could, but at what cost? Like it would have been slower. It would have tortured you.

It would have taken you. You would have had no energy to do the stuff that really mattered most on the team. That we, you cannot be all things to all people, everybody. We all want to. It doesn't work. You've got to figure out what is your best way of getting things done. And then figure out who's going to fill in the gaps around you. And that's harder when you're earlier in your career.

But as you keep moving, it gets a lot easier. Yes. Yes. You learn. And if you do the Colby early, that's a big, you know, a big advantage because you kind of know, I don't, I'm not going to love this. I think I might like this. Yeah, you'll give yourself a break. It's like, yeah, of course this is frustrating to me. Sometimes the most frustrating things are really simple and straightforward and you're fully capable of doing it. But then you make your, you feel guilty or you make yourself feel bad or even worse, you start setting goals. I'm just going to be better at this. Or people give you really. bad advice like do the worst things first thing in the morning it's like well no if you did all your paperwork first thing in the morning you've just burned through all the mental energy you had available to do great things creative things and instead

you burned it up on these lower level things that someone else would do really well so yeah that's that's good another little piece of knowledge I got one on my visit out there I don't remember who told me but you know some people would call a quick start like or low follow-through person, a procrastinator, probably maybe I have a procrastinator. And that y'all said, well, don't worry about it. Just procrastinate. And just leave yourself just enough time before you're meeting to get prepared and do your PowerPoint, whatever you have to do. That's right. And so that's what I do now. It's wonderful. I love it. See, you've given yourself permission to not feel guilty

about it. Here's the thing. And by the way, there's some really cool research about what's called active procrastination. So there really are actually a some body of research saying some procrastination is good. But we'll leave that aside. Let's say in the most traditional sense, there are certain people who get an extra boost of energy when it's a deadline time. Other people get stressed. For you, you do your best work when that's happening. Same thing for me. What I know is, let's say I have to do a big presentation and it really matters. I'm kind of nervous about it. And I could do a little bit every night and get all my slides perfect where I I have no flexibility in what I'm going to say.

But sure enough, even if I try to force myself to have this amazing presentation done, the night before, 10 o'clock at night in my hotel room, I'm going to come up with some idea for an activity, for a thing, or whatever, that, I mean, you could put a gun to my head and I couldn't come up with it two weeks before. And it's just because that is the way that my brain works. And so for you, you're doing your best work at the very end. that's when you're super efficient with your time, right? You're getting some solutions in record time. So it's a waste of your time and mental energy to do it early on because you're just going to change it at the end anyway. You're going to come up with something better.

And if you work with someone like that and you see that that's how they do things, you just have to anticipate it. My assistant knows to plan for a last minute change. So she leaves buffer time in toward the end knowing that right before I go into a meeting or whatever it is, I'm going to need time to really. do my best thinking at that time. So we procrastinate the things that don't come naturally to us. And so there's a couple things you can do. Number one, just say, does this really need to get done? Usually it does, but like really ask yourself because sometimes we're saying yes to a bunch of stuff that really doesn't matter. So let's just say the answer is yes. Now you have to say, can I get help on at least a part of it? One piece of it. So sometimes I will have my assistant, just read an email, do some research for me, go pull some information. Can I do those things?

things, absolutely. But that just saves me a little bit of energy. So can you partner with someone on part of it? And when it just absolutely needs to be you, figure out what's your best way of doing that. Like get in the zone for whatever way you need to get it done and minimize the amount that you're actually working against your grain as much as you can. You know, I'm talking pie in the sky. We know that we all have to do stuff that's working against, you know, what's natural to us. but I promise you small little changes make a huge difference. Yeah, they do. Again, like you said, as time goes on,

hopefully you're able, you have the means to get more help, you know, to have more people help you. I've got plenty of help now. It's wonderful. Yeah, but even get peers to help you. Sometimes I'll even have a friend where I'll say, hey, can you look at this for me? I probably have missed a bunch of details.

Like, will you scan this or get a peer to help you? Or I've seen salespeople pair up. with certain clients together and decide to work something out or, you know, can you be on a part of this because you do this really well or whatever it might be. Okay. And can you give me a story about somebody that, like in your world that kind of finally understood their Colby and completely changed their world around? I mean, I know you did that to some degree, but is there somebody else you could talk about? Oh, boy. Yeah, there's so many. I mean, the good news is we get to hear some of these along the way. I can tell you about a lawyer who became an entrepreneur.

I mean, I see stuff like that all the time, or, you know, where they went all the way down this path, and they loved the law, right? So it's not that they don't like certain parts and aspects of the law, but they became a lawyer, had a really hard time passing the bar, really hard time. I think took a third time and maybe that's not that hard but this is in California um so I think that's a maybe a tougher bar I'm not sure um took it for the third time was seriously questioning am I going to keep being a lawyer you know and and early on was going to be in a career where um they were doing corporate law like really detailed stuff contracts all of that discovered really looked at are Colby's strengths and realize that they were someone that needed to be doing something different

every day. So went to work for the city attorney's office, was doing trials every single day you would stand up in court and you were prosecuting drug dealers. And it was just like multiple cases every day just standing up. And he started thriving in that so well that all of a sudden they started giving him special projects. And he got to create projects for the city that included innovative stuff they've never done. So for example, young people who were going to jail automatically for a pretty minor crime that they committed. He created a whole restitution program that hadn't really been done in the country before where people from the community came together and decided what else could this youth do to have some kind of paying back what they had done and hopefully avoid jail,

but still really put in time, right? There had to be some changes made and all that. And this became a model for all around the country of what we could do to prevent people from going to jail. But he found a way to, he loved the law, but most traditional law was never going to work for him to become much more innovative and kind of run his own department. It was almost like running an entire company and did great. But he was so beaten down by the time he got through the bar because here he was a smart guy, but just the way they were asking him to write the information was so formulaic and some of these things, and he just didn't work that way. But the minute he got out in the workplace, in the right role, he was thriving and he's been innovating ever since. So there's

all kinds of cool mediation stuff he's done. And yeah, I mean, there's, but we have heard from a lot of people that have just radically changed their career. And so, you know, what I always say to young people is there is no one career path. I did just share a story with you where this person got to take their law and put it into play. But I sat in a room one. with a bunch of women business leaders. This was a couple of years ago. And we all went around the room. There were 12 of us and told the story of where did you start your career

and where are you ending now. So they all own businesses. My goodness. One started as an EMT and now she owns the largest business furniture company and tech company. I mean, so wide vast. So just you have to just start. Don't think everyone's got this straight career path.

I almost know, I know very few people. people where it's so linear that you have to have a plan, you just have to be doing and discovering and meeting people along the way. I agree. I agree. I agree. I do know some people that have that career path where they kind of knew what they wanted to do and went to college and sometimes graduate school and, you know, very few of those people aren't doing very well. Like they're all, like, they kind of knew I wanted to do that. I wanted to be an accountant or whatever. And just the mileage of doing that every year for 20, 25 years, you know, you're going to be pretty successful, but it's hard to do. It's hard to figure out. But the Colby does help, you know.

Yes, yes. Knowing that gets you going in the right position, in the right direction, I should say, and choosing really well. It's about, I feel like understanding your strengths gives you like this lens. It's like putting on glasses for the first time. And all of a sudden, decisions become more clear. You know what to say yes to and what to say no to and you know what you should just let go and not feel guilty about. You're not going to just be naturally doing things naturally and everything that you take on. You're not going to be great at everything. You're just not. That's not the goal. No. No. And I think it also helps eliminate to a large degree the comparison game where I see this person my friend's doing so well. He's the high-priced lawyer in Atlanta.

Oh, I want to be like him. I was like, no, John, you got to be you. That's your only chance I got to be successful is to do what I could do. That's right. And, yeah. I talked to a lot of people in their 50s and 60s who take their cold band-ex for the first time, and they'll say, I wish I would have known this years ago. I would have made different choices.

So, yes, it's all about just starting down this journey a lot earlier where you're figuring out your strengths. Yeah. Yeah. I'll tell you what else. This is just a little sidebar on sales, but the fact that Bill Lee found me as a young sales manager struggling with a relatively small company and made an appointment and came, it kind of cold called me and changed my whole life.

Right. Now, I mean, because of the Colby, and it just goes to show you if you're in sales and you have something that can help people, you really should not be deterred, but to get in there and help them. Oh, my gosh. find a way. That's right. Everything you're selling, if you're in sales, someone really needs it.

Like, that's absolutely the case. You are doing important work. Yeah. So as we start to wrap up here, I know any individual that wants to do this can simply go to colby.com and take the Colby A test, right? Sure. Yeah, absolutely. It takes 15 or 20 minutes, doesn't cost much money, and you get the results the same day.

That's right. It's just, it's a great investment in you figuring out. out who you are and you'll get a pretty thorough report and then you'll get some audio too. You can listen to it online and listen to the audio and it's Kathy Colby interpreting your result. But yeah, start with your index and then hopefully have someone else that you either work with or live with or your most important relationships. Then it really helps to compare and have them do it as well.

Right. And then if you were a business owner that will really help you with your own self. you could do it with your team to better understand Charlie or Nancy, and you can do a special thing where you figure out the exact profile of the salespeople, right? Yeah. Yeah. So if you are a leader, then you can have your team do their Colby indexes and look at some team reports or just sit down and have some activities together.

And then as you're hiring, there's a process for using Colby and hiring too that's just going to help you take a little bit of the guesswork out of it. We all fall in love with candidates. You know, you meet with them face to face and you really like them. Yeah. You also want to know how are they naturally going to execute. So you're putting them in a role where they're going to succeed as well. I must admit to something that may violate some type of OSHA rule or something.

But, you know, when we were hiring a lot of people, if they did not pass certain things, including the Colby thing, I didn't want to meet them. for that very reason. I didn't want to say, I really like Amy. Let's bend the rules for Amy. It's like, no, we have a standard. The ideal process for Colby would really be that you would do it before you even meet them.

You can have a phone screen. You can do a little bit of that. But first of all, as a leader, your most expensive part of your day, your time is so valuable. So to meet with candidate after candidate who aren't going to execute the way you need them, that's just not a good use of your time. So screen them first.

And if you follow our process, it's, you know, it's really focusing on making sure that you meet and exceed the EEOC guidelines. So we're going to say, hey, what do you want in this role? You have them take it. Now you're just screening out and you're only meeting with the people that are falling within a certain range that is acceptable to. Yeah, it saves everyone time. Well, I must say that, you know, your company, Colby, what y'all do, really helped me personally to be a better kind of person, better entrepreneur. And it really helped me with my business.

And so I recommend everybody try it out and talk to Colby about it. Do you have any final words, Amy? No, and let me just confirm. Do you want them to contact us or do you want them to contact you? I want them to contact you directly. Just don't worry about the middleman. You're also an expert that can do this. But yeah.

I am. I am. I'm a sales coach mainly, but I'll have them to deal directly with you. Yeah. So, yeah, you just want to go to Colby. And Colby is spelled with a K, everybody. So K-O-L-B-I-E dot com. And that's where you can take the Colby Index and get more information,

but also where you can either find our phone number or, you know, email us at info at at colby.com. And we're happy to help whatever. whatever it is. We just, we want to spread the word. We want, we want to have a whole workplace where people are thriving and just love what they're doing and, and it's possible, everybody. If you have a, can build a team and make sure you're getting to use your strengths, what a difference it makes. And it's important for your most important relationships, by the way, too. So as a side note, we do also have youth indexes for about a fourth grade reading level and up and parenting a parent guide.

So I feel like I can't imagine not knowing this about my kids. They're much older now, but it's also for your significant other, your kids, and that kind of stuff too. Yeah, wonderful. Well, thank you very much. It's been delightful. Thank you for taking time. And hopefully I'll be back out there for a recertification real soon. Oh, that's great.

Thank you so much, John. Thank you. Okay, stay on for a second if you would. Did you like it? That was great. That was fun. Thank you. I wasn't sure if I was going exactly where you wanted me to go on some of the stuff.

Oh, it was great. I love talking Colby with you. It's wonderful. That's fun. Yeah, it's so good. And I'm so thrilled. You know, what you do in sales, I'm so passionate about sales, just being a sales trainer for a while. Because, you know, we used to train on process.

I used to train on scripts. My sales training was you had to memorize scripts. And guess what? The people who didn't do their scripts often were my best salespeople. So I really discovered our training programs were not working for certain types of sales people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm a big part of what I do for companies is get their team hired right, get the right people. And then just, you know, provide training, get the comp plan right, things like that. But it all bases around the people, and that's what the owners don't understand. It's really hard to, it's hard to give them to. understand it. Do you have some sales positions that you've seen that really are more fact finder follow through kind of sales? I will tell you that I've seen that in high tech companies. So where

they have these insane integrations that take forever and you really have to be a knowledge expert in depth. That kind of sale, I do find more fact finder follow through versus some of the others that are more initiating quick start driven. That's exactly what I would have said. We have, we know, we didn't sell really big stuff for a while. And so we never hired people with a lower quick start. But we had one. I hired one who was literally a two or a three quick start, lots of fact finder fall through like eights. I hired it because he went to the Citadel. He was a high-ranking guy on campus. He was a champion baseball pitcher. Everything, I just loved the guy. Unfortunately, I met him before I saw the Colby, right? And he did okay until we gave him the Miami Day.

Florida deal, which took two and a half years to close and it was $25 million deal. Wow. But I could have never done that deal. I mean, it was like all the details. He probably had 70 people in the county he was dealing with. Right. All the government kind of stuff. Yeah, that's a different kind of sale.

Yes. So those kind of people, I think, are good at those monster long term, like selling jets or something like that. That's right. Really technical, really in depth. Definitely. that was a good point about government, like dealing with bureaucracy of any kind, whether it's a university or, yeah, that kind of thing. By the way, I'm curious because I was hearing one of your podcasts where you're talking about basketball. You know, my husband used to be a professional baseball player. Yeah. And so one of my favorite examples is figuring out athletes and how their co-native strengths play out. We don't do that much with that anymore because you know Kathy helped the Phoenix Suns pick some draft picks for a few years. But anyway, if you're ever doing anything with young athletes, let me know because I'm just super curious still.

We do have several certified people, by the way, that are working with teams, like entire college golf teams and other kinds of things, a soccer team. And so there's some really fun stuff people are doing with younger people and sports. There's a golfer. Well, thank you for that golfer named Bubba Watson. Yeah. So that guy's got to be a 12 quick start. I mean, he's never. taking a lesson. He just steps up there and wax it. Yeah. And it just kind of feels it somehow,

you know? Right. Well, I remember that Phil Mickelson used to get criticized a lot because he was taking too many risks and he's like, I'm not going to stop. That's the way I play. Yes, it seems like this was the safe way to do it, done deal. Sometimes it works for me. Sometimes it doesn't. I don't care. And I heard an interview and I went, oh, there's probably a one, two, or three and follow through an initiating quick start because he's kind of like, yeah, sometimes I'm just not going to do what the conventional wisdom says. And it doesn't work sometimes. It doesn't matter to me. I'm still going to do it. Well, we do a thing, if you have more time, we do a thing at the end where if you want to, you can ask me a couple of, like two or three questions, and we just call it

turn the tables. Do you want to ask anything? Anything pointed? Well, sure. I just kind of asked you a few things. So I don't know. Is there anything? You can ask them again. You can ask whatever you want. It's just we do a turn the tables to give you a chance to kind of grill me for a minute. Okay. Well then, yes, I'll ask you a couple things related to what we just talked about. That'd be great. Okay. So are we ready, gentlemen? Okay. All right, now we're going to play the game everyone's been waiting for. Turn the tables with Amy. Breske. Go ahead, Amy. Okay. So I want to ask you, because you are truly a sales expert. I just want some, I would love to know what do you find makes a great salesperson

first, and then I'll ask you a co-native question too. Like, what are some of the traits that you think makes a great sale? I like to hire people around from the area, okay, because I don't want them to leave and go somewhere else. So if I'm hiring locally, I want to get them that are from here, are going to stay here. I like them to be, you know, have some leadership, even if it was in high school, captain of the soccer team, you know, something. I like them to pass what we call the beer test. I don't know if you drink beer, Amy, but somebody that you'd like to go have a beer with.

We don't want anyone we wouldn't have a beer with to kind of be hanging around with us all the time. And then we kind of like them to have gone to a few common schools. Not just anything wrong with the other ones, but if you just hire from two or three local schools, you develop a nice culture in your company. of similarity. And then lastly, of course, they have to have the right Colby number, or they ain't getting in. Right. And so what's your superpower in selling? What makes you a great salesperson?

You know, I think over time, I've learned how to put myself in the other person's shoes to truly not go in there thinking I've got to make a sale, but to really with empathy, try to understand where they're coming from. and if it's a good fit, you know, to work on that together like as partners versus, you know, trying to show them this and this is what we do and that kind of thing. I don't, I can't even do a demo. So I think the empathy to understand what they really need and then try to fulfill that for them. Okay. Yeah, that's great. And do you think that can be trained or is that just learned over time?

Absolutely. Or I guess are some people more naturally empathetic to begin with? I think some people are, but in general, when I go into a new sales team, in general, they're, like if you were a new lead, they're saying, well, nice to meet you, Amy, let me show you my product and why it's so good. They go right to the, you know, the demo, and the person's putting it, you know, does that with their arms. That's right. Okay, whatever. What they want to do is just the opposite. They want to say, well, Amy, so nice of you, so nice of you to want to talk to us.

tell us about your situation, what's going on there? You know, and then you, oh, you gladly tell me what's going. You want to talk. And so we teach people to do that. That's great. Yeah, I love that. Okay. What is the biggest piece of advice you give to people right now in their 20s about their careers?

Well, I do this a pretty good bit, so I should have more of a pat answer. But, I mean, one thing. Well, I'm asking you because I'm working with people in their 20s. 20s and I need your wisdom. Okay, I'll tell you what I generally tell them is, you know, we ideally, we want to find out what's easy for us and provide it to people that that's hard for. And so that's the goal is what is an easy thing for me to do that's hard for other people. Like for me, coaching a sales team is completely easy.

I mean, I don't have to prepare for it. It's just I know exactly what to do. for somebody else, they wouldn't know the first thing about it. And so I think that's kind of a broad answer. If you get a little more narrow, I would say, you know, using tools like the Colby, you can quickly start to identify, you know, what you're most likely to be a good match for. And I don't know if you remember, it was a while back when I did my Colby, Amy,

but you told me that I should be either an entrepreneur, which I am, or an emergency room doctor or a circus clown. Those are my three things. That was the old result, everyone. There's no circus clowns in the result anymore, but yes. So, yeah, I mean, figuring out that area, I've got friends going back to college and high school that just got on the wrong bus.

And it's kind of like, here's what you don't want to do. Don't say, well, my job is to get a, a job out of college. I want to get a job. I want to get a high-paying job. No, that's not your job. Your job is to figure out where you want to be. Where can you add the most value? Where do you, like you said, where do you have a delightful day, you know, and it's easy for you. That's your job is to figure out where that is, and then go find out where those people are and get a job there. Yeah, I love that. And as you said, where you add most value? So I love that you're saying, you know, where can you contribute?

And we downplay what comes easily to us. So sometimes, like you're saying, people just naturally are like, well, that's not important. It's like, no, no, no. What you do very naturally, other people do not do. So don't minimize what comes easy to you. So, oh, good. Thank you. Well, those are my two questions.

I love it. You really grilled me. All right. Well, thanks, Amy. We'll see you next time. All right, thank you.