The Entrepreneur DNA - What Separates Good Leaders from Great Ones? | Glenn Sharp

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

Get Glenn’s book Now What?, follow the Now What? Podcast on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube, and learn more through Sharp Leadership Development. https://a.co/d/0cZgPkLx In this episode, I sit down with Glenn Sharp, founder of Sharp Leadership Development, to discuss how entrepreneurs can achieve greater business success. We explore essential leadership skills and strategies for improving efficiency within organizations. Glenn shares insights from his work with over 20,000 managers, providing valuable professional development advice for anyone looking to refine their management skills and leadership training. About Glenn Sharp: Glenn has nearly 23 years experience managing in the retail, food service, and convenient store industries. As a training and development professional, Glenn has taught more than 15,000 management professionals and provided individual leadership coaching to countless managers as well.  Glenn has a unique style of connecting with participants as he guides them through experiences designed to help them in topics such as culture shaping, emotional intelligence, time management, change management, and more. Glenn is a Certified Master Trainer, Performance Consultant, and Change Management Professional. Website:https://www.sharpleadershipdevelopment.com/ Book (Now What?):https://readnowwhat.com/ Podcast (Now What?):Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/now-what-podcast/id1873596120Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2SqblZOmnJqXfPuM9OXZ9X YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=now+what+podcast+glenn+sharp About Justin: Justin Colby is the host of The Entrepreneur DNA and The Science of Flipping podcasts and a best-selling author. He is a serial entrepreneur with over and a seasoned real estate investor with over 20 years of experience. Driven by a passion to help entrepreneurs thrive, Justin created the Entrepreneur DNA community to support business owners in building wealth, systems, and long-term freedom. Through his podcasts, books, education platforms, and hands-on mentorship, he continues to help entrepreneurs scale with clarity and confidence. Connect with Justin: Instagram: @thejustincolby YouTube: Justin Colby TikTok: @justincolbytsof LinkedIn: Justin Colby Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What is up the entrepreneur DNA? This episode's going to be incredible with a very special guest. The founder of Sharp Leadership Development and someone who's worked with over 20,000 managers to create efficiencies in their business. You and I both know we all need it. Glenn Sharp is here with us. What's happening? Hey, Justin.

How are you? I'm doing great, brother. I'm doing great. Listen, I'm excited about this because your expertise, working with 20,000 managers to create efficiencies is something that we all, as entrepreneurs, business owners, founders, we all need better efficiencies in our business. And so none other than the leading man himself, Glenn, for you to be here. So I'm excited.

I immediately come into the things that I go through and I want to start the podcast off there, really more about creating efficiencies around people. I believe people probably are probably the more difficult. Well, I wouldn't say that. There's always challenges in business. but people in general create challenges, right? Because they bring their own kind of baggage into the day-to-day work or they bring their own kind of stuff.

So let's lean into some things that you would go over a review regarding people management, people leadership, people, you know, efficiencies around all that. Yeah, one of the things that I teach, you know, regardless of what industry we're talking about, is how important it is for you to do the work up front. All right. So I have this graph. I call it green line versus the red line. it's in my book. And it's an example would be you get a new hire, right, as a business owner.

You don't have to put much time and effort into going over expectations. But how many mistakes do new hires make? How many, you know, inefficiencies and how many, you know, costly errors do new hires make? So you save time, but think about the time and effort it takes to clean up the mess, right? That occurs. Versus putting the effort in up front, going over expectations. excuse me, what does quality work look like? You know, what is a clean area look like? How do I like to communicate with you? If you have a problem, this is the protocol,

assigning a big brother or big sister to them so that they feel comfortable and you can make sure that these guys know where to go. It's incredible to me those who do that and put most of the work up front, they literally don't experience half the things that people who are reactive and just wait for things to happen experience.

And they wonder, entrepreneurs and managers wonder why, why does that manager always have time to do extra things, to get next level, to think and anticipate six months down the road, to understand market trends, that type of thing. It's the reason why they're not in the weeds is because they put the effort up front, not only going over expectations, but training and everything else. And it's just amazing to me how many people, once they understand that and embrace that, their lives are so much easier. Yeah, you talked about your book for a second. Let's share your book. I think you have it there. Talk to a little bit of what's in that book. So this is really a story about me and a coaching

client. I'm currently coaching 53 people right now at all levels from COO all way down to individual contributor. So this is the story of Johnny. Johnny is an amazing mechanic in the airline industry. And because he's such a great mechanic, they made him manager of mechanics. Now, what's? What do I do? He's like, Glenn, I don't know how to be a manager. I'm an awesome mechanic. Yeah, I know how to turn wrenches. I do not know how to be a manager. I don't know how to conduct a performance appraisal or, you know, have a counseling session employee or do the things that managers have to do, coach individuals. So it's really a four-month journey of me coaching Johnny and getting him up to speed and getting him on a level playing field with his peers.

and so he asks questions of me and I answer them. And there's a ton of really cool tips, tricks, and ideas in this book. And it's not only for new managers. There's a lot of existing managers out there that I coach that literally told me, Glenn, you know what? I forgot half of this stuff. I got so busy and I've got so racked up with just the minutia that I forgot what got me here. And they're like, they went out to basics.

So let's go through maybe one of the, you know, I'd almost like to use that book to allow everyone to understand the things that you deal with, the things that managers or leaders or entrepreneurs or founders will come across. What would be a classic question that you're trying to solve for for the leader, the manager, the founder? It's always time management. Time management is the big thing today. Like, how do I manage all this stuff that I have thrown at me?

And if you're an entrepreneur, I understand. I mean, you've got a million different things, especially if you're just starting out. I mean, you're chief cook and bottle washer, right? You are just, you know, doing everything. And the ability to delegate is the interesting part of time management. The pushback that I get in coaching and in my classes and my workshops on not delegating. And there's so many reasons why. And for me, I have to scrape away and really get to the root cause.

Why aren't you delegating? So there is, you know, really, they're not going to do it as well as I would, right? Or, you know, I, you know, I have control issues. and I don't trust it. The number one comment that I get, I had a group of 32 people in a class one time, and I said to them, let me get this straight. You have people on your team that are capable.

They have the time to help you. Why don't you delegate? And out of 32 people, the number one reason why they don't delegate, I don't know. That's what they said to me. I don't know. And I'm like, listen, you're your own worst enemy.

Again, the key to time management and the green line versus red line, whatever you want to call it, is not what you think. It's opportunity cost, right? Think about that. Opportunity cost is typically associated with finance, right? But what could you be doing if you weren't doing the schedule? You could put your time and effort into things that get you next level, right? Negotiating deals and different contracts and things like that, getting your business to, a totally different level rather than being in the weeds.

And that's what a lot of people don't realize is opportunity costs is a killer. Right. When you train someone on how to do something, it's a make you don't have to do that any longer. I'll give an example. I'm in Cincinnati right now and it's snowing. We had 14 inches of snow. All right. So a lot of our clients were like, hey, listen, you know, we've got a level two emergency here.

Let's hold off on doing anything. So I've got my son and his employees. They're sitting around. What do they do? Now, we'll keep ourselves busy. right, but I said to him, I said to my son this morning, train them. Pick a task that is terrible. It's horrible.

It's tedious, but it's not that hard, right? These two are smart individuals on your team. Have a master it this week. I'm willing to bite the bullet with labor as long as there's a return on investment. So imagine kitchen work if these two of the next four days can really practice and master the art of crown molding, which is a very, very intricate, very specialized art form, right? If they can do that, now Jonah doesn't have to do that in the kitchen. Now we can do other things, right?

He can do drawings for new, for customers. He can, you know, seek after new business rather than sitting in the kitchen and doing crown molding. So it's just like, rather than his, his idea was, let's just tell them they don't have to work the next couple of days. I'm like, no, no, right? Let's utilize this time. Let's train them because you will get, we will get our money back tenfold if they're able to master this. So that's the essence of time management. So many people, they have no idea why they can't get everything done in a given day.

And that's one of the reasons why is they are involved in things that they shouldn't be. Do you think that's a control issue? You think they feel like no one's going to do it as good as me, so I'm just going to go do it? It can be. It can be. Sometimes it's just an inability to let go, right? For a lot of individuals that I run into, they literally have said the following to me. Listen how to ridiculous this is.

Glenn, if I teach my people, if I train my people the right way, I'm going to be expendable. I'm like, really? You think you work for a company right now that if I'm your boss and you train your employees, you run a well-oiled machine, right? You think I'm going to fire you over labor? I go, first of all, if anybody ever does that, good riddance. Go find another company to work for it because that's not going to have the company for you. But I promise you, I'll find something for you.

And oh, by the way, who do you think I'm going to promote? The person whose hair is on fire all the time just barely gets it done or the person who not only gets it done, but has time to spare. Right? I'm going to promote the ladder every single time and twice on Sunday. Right. It's just like, it's incredible to me that mindset. But there's lots of different issues. There's lots of different reasons why the number one reason is what you cited though control.

I can't let go, right? I'm the only one who can do it that way. And I'm literally look at them and I'm like, somebody taught you how to do it once upon a time, okay? You can teach someone else. Here's an interesting part of that equation, right? The number one reason why people leave their jobs is what? Everybody knows this.

I mean, it's always has something to do in a relationship with manager, right? Believe it or not, in the large pools of data, money, the number one or the highest I've ever seen are lowest, however you want to look at is number five. Certainly people do leave for money. We'd be very naive to think that certain people didn't leave for the green. But the number one reason

always has something to do with their direct supervisor. The new number two is the interesting one. Okay? The new number two, at least of all the thousands of people that I deal with when I talk to them, is career path. And they're not talking about succession planning. They're talking about train me, develop me,

give me skilled and abilities I can put on my resume and I will stay or the likelihood that I will stay increases dramatically, especially in the so surprise a lot of individuals, the Gen Zs. Gen Zs want training

and they're not going to wait. They think succession plans are a bunch of BS, to be honest with you. And they have a point, to be honest with you. A lot of succession plans is a lot of timing,

there's a lot of favoritism, sometimes there's nepotism involved, right? And a lot of people don't realize that Gen Zs want to be trained. They will stay. with a likelihood that they will stay if they are trained. And they will even sacrifice money in some cases in order to be trained

because very few organizations actually train them. Do you think there's a connective, a connective tissue between the age, you and I love sports. I see the helmets here. The person who's on the field or on the court really never makes a good transition to being the coach or vice versa. The coach doesn't always mean that they were the, you know, best player on the field or on the court. Do you think there's some level of connectivity between

like, I know how to do the thing I'm doing, but I don't really know how to train the thing I'm doing. Yeah. I mean, there's an absolute connection. I mean, just because you're good at one thing, does it mean you're good at all things? So I teach a class called situational leadership. And, you know, I'll have this D1, D2, D3, D4. D1's a newbie all the way to D4 is, you know, your best, your high potential employee, right? But just because, because you're a D4, like I used to oversee field training and development for Speedway, a convenience store chain. Just because you're a really great trainer does not mean you'd be a good manager of trainers. It's a completely different skill set. This is what Johnny learns in the book. You're a great mechanic

that does not mean you'll be a great manager mechanics. It's completely different. In sports, you could be an amazing player. Like, they're, I don't, I've never really followed up. to the point of doing a ton of research, but there's some rumors going around that Michael Jordan dabbled in coaching for a second or at least thought about it. And people were like, no, don't even think about it. You will not be a good coach.

You don't have the patience for it. Because one of the things that he would say was, well, can't you just do this. Well, sorry, Michael, not everybody could jump four seconds in the air and slam, you know, slam a ball down. He doesn't understand. And he was a pretty harsh teammate.

Amazing player, I argue, the best player of all time. That's my opinion. But as a coach, as a coach, no way. And that's exactly what you cited. The assumption, though, especially with entrepreneurs, is a person's really a good individual contributor. Let's make them a supervisor. Let's put them in charge of people. And that is a huge mistake if you haven't tested them.

If you haven't at least given them some skills and abilities to set them up for success. Otherwise, you're asking someone to do something that they have no idea. They didn't learn how to be a manager through osmosis, right? They have to learn that skill set. It's a completely different job. So this is something I see all the time. The, you know, business owners, I guess, promote, if it's the right word, their top sales rep to sales manager.

So you just briefly talked about it. Like, I, as a salesperson, right? I literally graduated UCLA and I went door-to-door sales is my, very first thing I did, which my family was very disappointed, but I found that it was the very best education I got well beyond UCLA. I see it all the time in organizations that they feel like they should promote the best salesperson because they will be the best to teach it. Talk about that because I know the answer, how I would explain it, but the fundamentals of selling versus managing people or leading people, I think there's two criteria there, by the way. There's managing and then there's

leading. Let's talk a little bit about this dysfunction in organizations. Yeah, so I just finished a three-part series in December on sales training because for one of my clients, I do a podcast. It's called Now What, so easy to find, Now Why podcast by Glenn Sharp. But I did a sales series because I have a client who's going through this very issue right now. They have salespeople all over Ohio and they're trying to develop their district sales managers, right? It's a, completely different skill set. Stales is a little different, though, because in my opinion, you got to bring a little street cred to sales, right? If you don't know how to sell, it's really hard to actually sell your employees on how to change their behavior and things

like that. It's kind of like me as a trainer. I used to go visit my people all the time all over, you know, the Midwest, and I would literally say, I'll take the afternoon session. I want to show you a new technique or can be done. I literally turned the projector off and they were appalled. Like, oh my God, you can't do that. Like, yeah, you can do that. Let's try it. Right. And it was one of the best sessions we ever had.

As a sales manager, got to bring a little street credit, but you're no longer doing sales, right? Not up their level. You're probably doing sales at a little bit of a higher level. But from what I, you know, have taught with the district sales managers is your job now is to coach them, right? Every single meeting. Here's an idea that I'll just present to you guys, that I presented to them. How about every single meeting? meeting that you get together with your sales team, you never talk about the past.

What? We always go over numbers. I know you do. And it's a waste of time. But if I'm going to bring 20 people together, I'm going to make it counts. So why don't we go over a specific sales training technique? Why don't we go over situational training? Put them in a situation. How would you handle this? You know, things that you know inevitably are going to happen, right? How about doing that versus going over numbers? You can go over numbers anytime, right? I'm going to Unless it's like a goal, a stretch goal that you want to do in eight months or the end of the year, this is where we want to get to type of thing. So they understand context.

But how about making those meetings count, right? Here's another idea. One of the things that I teach at the University of Cincinnati is still, I'm down to one class. They teach change management at the master's level at University of Cincinnati because I love those Gen Zs. I love them to death and they're just fun, right? But one of the things that we talk about in change management is making sure that you, you identify the bright spots, okay? What are bright spots?

Bright spots are the individuals who are knocking it out of the park, regardless of limitations, regardless of everything that's thrown out of them, right? But utilizing them. So here's just the different way to look at it. Imagine as a sales manager, you rotate your meetings.

You and your two bright spots rotate and doing the meetings. Now, you're in attendance as a backstop, but imagine a peer looking at the other peers is in saying to them, this works. The reason why it works, because I did it the other day. Try this, try that type of thing, right? That comes across the psychology behind that is interesting. For example, if I'm ever going to train an employee,

now certainly I'm involved in the training process, but I always will pick a peer over myself. Now, it's not because the peer necessarily is better than I am. A lot of times they are, but the psychology is different, right? They'll ask a peer. They'll ask a bright spot tough questions. They'll ask, they'll be vulnerable with them. Chances are as their boss, they won't be vulnerable with me or as vulnerable. So they'll be like, it's this kind of weird. Did you experience this when you were first here, that type of thing? Or how do you do this? I don't even know how to do that. That's really intimidating to me.

That bright spot will answer them. And it's apples to apples now. It's not, hey boss, you're not out in the field. You don't know what's going on. The bright spot is out in the field. It is time tested. It's a proven technique, they're much more likely to listen to them than they are to a manager. That doesn't mean they won't listen to a manager, but the psychology is interesting, right? So that's kind of what I am teaching the sales teams, and they're embracing it and it's working. By the way, those bright spots, they want more responsibility. So the likelihood that they stay, the likelihood that they are happy with where they are increases dramatically.

So it's a win-win, right? Opportunity cost, the manager doesn't always have. have to do that meeting. The bright spot, you kind of separate them for the rest of the team, but also they get that skill set of running a meeting. You know, it's funny that you say that. So when I left UCLA and went directly into door knocking, how that business worked is basically effectively, I had my own business. And there was a warehouse of clients, Verizon, UPS, credit card processing, EO first, et cetera, right? And there was essentially a manager who we would work out of his office. his office, he was the manager that we, the leading salespeople, would train all the other salespeople, not because we were meant to manage them, but because we were meant to show them how to be good at what we did, right?

Right. And so that connectivity really, I really lean into that. I love how you explained it, and I'm now almost thinking of my past about how that business was built. It's not a function of I'm now managing these salespeople. That's the manager's job. but I'm showing them and I'm helping them with their processes to be as good as I can be. Yeah. No, absolutely.

That's a huge distinction. The thing that I think most, especially business owners, tend to, and this is at the biggest corporations, I know you work with very large corporations all the way down to the operator. But what I see too many business owners, regardless of size, is they use the term. and or they work through management techniques rather than understanding the difference between management and leading, right? Because people, as an instance, I believe to be the hardest part of our, any business,

because we all bring our own baggage to every single day, right? Yeah. Some can control it. Some can't. There is a vast difference between managing the numbers of the output or input of your employee and then leading that same employee. how you overcome that? How do you make the distinction? How do you separate that in your world the management versus the actual leadership? Because to me, there's a vast difference. And I actually believe there's a vast difference in success level between management and leadership. Yeah, I'll give you a great example. Again, comes from my change management experience. But I'm just going to draw this with my finger. Imagine the change curve of human behavior. People have seen this before. So I

as I start off, someone will listen to a change. And then, but inevitably, they have to, and this is the dip down. They call it the value despair, right? They have to, it has to get worse before it gets better. Okay. So the question I ask is, is it possible to make a change without going through some sort of discomfort? And the answer is no.

You have to. You either have to come to one of my classes or you have to try it or whatever, right? But here's what the difference between a manager and a leader, individual contributor in a leader. A leader will understand that it's going to get worse before it gets better. So as I draw this out, imagine you dip down here. It's getting hard. People are making mistakes, right? People even quit.

One or two people even quit. Oh, God, let's just give up. 90% of the people just give up, right? Versus a leader. A leader would literally say, especially if he or she believes that it has to get worse before it gets better. Oh, God, they're getting, they're making mistakes. people are leaving, okay?

There's, you know, all sorts of complaints. Good. They're halfway there. That's the difference right there. And I'll give you something else. The leader, before they make the change, they will get with their team and go over what to expect, right? Let's talk about if somebody leaves. Let's talk about if people make mistakes.

Let's talk about if people start to complain. Let's get prepared now as a group so that we are a united. front. When it does happen, we expected it. Right. And that's the difference right there. For me, the biggest difference between a manager and leader is vision and influence. Do they see ahead? Do they think ahead? Do they look ahead? And the influence piece is, can I get people to do things that they ordinarily would not do? Right. They go places where they ordinarily would not go. That's a different animal altogether. There's a lot of subtleties and a lot of tasks that both do. leader and manager, but a leader is different, right, totally different. They don't overreact

when things get hard because they put the effort in up front, but they understand it's supposed to be hard, right? They get that particular aspect of it. So I just think a lot of individuals are very reactionary, right? A leader is a little bit different. They see, they have a vision, right? They articulate their vision, but they understand that people are going to have to go to the process, right? I'll give you another small segment of my classes that I teach. Here's a question. Why in God's name would you ever make a change without talking to the end user? Did that make any sense at all to anyone? Right. Why would you make change without talking to an end user? That's the question. If you think about that, why would you ever make a change without talking to the end user,

right? It doesn't make any sense, correct? Who's the most important person in the entire change process? It's the end user, right? Especially when, yeah, the user. They're very smart and they're an unbelievable source of information, an unbelievable source. Yet, time and time again, when I go into organizations or when I talk to individuals who are running businesses, they say, no, I didn't talk to my people. Like, okay, they can tell you what, I mean, they might be not be as educated. They might not be as articulate, but they're smart. And then experts at what they do, they do it every single day. They can tell you what's working, what's not. They can give you ideas, right? Whether you take the ideas or not, that's up to you. But it's incredible.

Not only do they, do you get great ideas from them, but you show them respect by offering, you know, offering your time to them, but also listening to them. And it's incredible how many people miss that in regards to making changes. Yeah, funny enough, I lean into getting feedback more often than not. And what I say is very similar to you. I really love what you're saying is talk to the end user first. Because we are in our own silos when you're at the upper level, whether you're in a C-suite, you're the founder, you're quote unquote the manager, whatever the rule might be.

You're in your own four walls a lot of these times, right? You're not in direct connection to the sales, You're not talking to the buyer, the client, like, because you're now at a level where you don't. I believe in always asking, not just the generic, how's it going, but how can we be better? Hey, I'd love to have a team meeting. How do we actually become better at what we do? What are you guys seeing in the field? What are you guys seeing out there?

What are responses? I'll give you a great example. I've had USAAA for 23 years. I'm 44. My grandfather was in the military. that's how I was able to get it. I've always used them. I get a new car.

I use USAA. I do all the... Very recently, an all-state representative who carries a lot of my homeowners insurance, they reach out to me. They, you know, making sure I'm having my wind, fire, homeowners, blah, blah, the locks I'm here in Miami. Flood, of course. And they say, hey, I see that you have, you don't have our auto insurance.

I'd love to at least give you a quote, see if you can compare it to whoever you have. have. I went to USA and I looked at my six-month, whatever, premium they call it, Allstate literally said, okay, what do you get for all these things? I'll give you a quote. So I said, I have this, this, this, this, this, this, this is literally half what I pay USAA. Now, USA is known to be the best and the cheapest of blah, half, mind you. Yeah. I said, okay, do you make sure you have this, this, this, and this and this? They said yes. I immediately changed because it makes no sense to pay for the exact same thing, pay double.

doesn't make any sense, right? But as I'm changing, Allstate has to get, there's a process, I guess, that, like, I had to get on the phone with Allstate and USA at the same time, make it super awkward for USA to realize they're losing a client, right, for 23 years. Right. If their management team would have asked what's going on in the field, the first reply should be, we're losing people to cheaper pricing because they've never reached out to me to see if I wanted to do anything or if there is lower pricing. But as I'm changing, they want to throw a Hail Mary pass to say, hey, do you mind if I see if I can quote you something comparable to what Allstate is?

And I said, absolutely not. You had your chance for 23 years to keep me. Your process is broken. You're not going out and listening to end user client. And then the manager or sales team is not going out asking how you can become better. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is the essence of the show undercover boss, right? It's like when these guys come down from on high and actually do the work and realize that their policies are incredibly difficult in time consuming and taxing on the employees, they're like, who created this?

And like, sir, you created that. Like, okay, I'm changing everything. I know they ham it up for TV a little bit, but that's the essence of undercover boss. It's like, get your butt down there and talk to these guys. You will save yourself a lot of time and effort. I have a story in my book where I have a client. They have two hubs in Ohio. They have one in Wilmington.

They have another in northern Kentucky, CVG airport. And these guys fix and maintain airplanes, right? So the CVG folks are struggling a little bit. So they decided to send 50 mechanics down to CVG from Wilmington. What nice guys, right? The problem is they didn't tell anybody. So they get a bus and there's 50 people go down there

and they didn't realize that, number one, they don't have any badges. And the person who's in charge of issuing badges is not there that day. So they're sitting in the break room, 50 people just wasting labor dollars. Okay? So finally the guy comes in after a few hours.

They don't have the paperwork certification. They have to be certified in paperwork in order to touch anything in CVG. Okay, so they're sitting for another few hours. Actually, they had to go back on the bus. It was a waste of time. Roll back the clock. Imagine just a quick Zoom call.

A couple of people from CVG. A couple of people from Wilmington. Hey, we want to help out. What do you need? What are we missing? Right? You need this. You need this.

How they could have got the badges issued well ahead of time. They could have sent them the paperwork and they could all been certified and signed off on it before they got on the bus. Right. But that's the reason why you asked these guys first. It would have taken how long? Yeah. A five, 10 minute phone call, yet the intention was good, but they don't understand business. They don't understand how it works.

Their mindset, the further. thing from their mind was to ask the end user. And that is troubling sometimes because, again, when it comes to real dollars, it might be, it might sound like soft skills. It might sound like, oh yeah, communication, Glenn, whatever I get it, talk to the end user. If you saw the bill, how much money that they forked over for labor costs for that day, it's not so funny anymore. They don't roll their eyes anymore over that. And that's why this stuff is so important. To an entrepreneur, I mean, margins are tight, right? Especially in the first five years, You can't afford to make these kind of mistakes.

It will cost you dearly, right? And that's one of the reasons why it isn't so important to be efficient with your people. Yeah. Now, I want to lean into what you see is probably the biggest issue, time management, right? And I'd love to hear your perspective on time management. I think the entrepreneurs out there in our space, you know, wake up earlier, work harder, create more time, which, you know, the Ed Milettes of the world have a great system speaking on state. where he talks about he breaks his day up into threes, right? He runs a six-hour intervals and he's able to accomplish more in a single day than most people do in a week or a month or whatever the

case is. What do you say to the manager, the leader, the founder, the entrepreneur, the person that is just struggling to do it all. Like, I got everything on my shoulders. I have all this stuff. I'm inundated. My plate is totally full and I never am able to get it all done. Yeah. I mean, I had someone in Miami, an individual. coincidentally, and he told me the same thing. Glenn, I'm up to my eyebrows and stuff. I'm totally consumed. What do I do?

So I go, all right, I'm going to come down there and I'm going to, I'll make you a deal. You listen to me for 30 days. Give me 30 days and I'll solve all your time management issues. And he's like, you're on. And I went down there and I go, okay, give me an employee, who are your best employees, name them. And one of his really good employees was Jack. Okay.

And I go, which one of your employees wants to be promoted, right? of the two. And he goes, Jack does. I'll go, let's take Jack. I go, well, here's what I want from you. Pick a task that is not that hard, but really time consuming. Right. And he goes, so the schedule. I go, good. Let's do the schedule. Jack gets to come in. He usually comes in at eight, usually coming at eight. You both come in at 7.30. Jack's an hourly, so he gets to leave at 4.30, so you don't incur overtime. I want you to train him for 30 minutes a day on how to do the schedule. Okay. So he goes, deal. I go, All right, first day, screws it up.

Second day, he screws it up. Third day, he screws it up. After about two and a half weeks, Jack became better than his manager at doing the schedule. So I go down to Miami, and he's smiling, let the cat that ate the canary. And I go, what are you smiling at? And he goes, what am I smiling at?

I don't have to do the schedule anymore. And I go, how much time do you save by not having you the schedule? He has a staff of 30. And he goes, probably like five, six hours a week. And then I explained to him the kind of, concept of opportunity costs, right? I go, now the reason why he was smiling is not that he doesn't have to do the schedule anymore. He got the fever. Now he's going to select someone else to do something else, right? Now he's got eight, nine hours back in this week. And that's the way

time management works. There is no easy button where you're like, Bing, all of a sudden all your time management issues are solved. That's just not how it works. It's chipping away, chipping away. But I had to chip away at his mindset. His mindset was completely flawed, right? And he was. And So this is a little provocative. So I ask people, and it's in the book as well, I ask people to really listen carefully because a lot of people have screwed this up and tried to get me in trouble over it. Okay? I said to him, I go, your time is more valuable than the people that work for you.

No, I did not say you are more valuable. That's absurd. That's obnoxious, unbelievably condescending and arrogance, right? But your time is more valuable than the people that work for you. You have a higher education level. You have a 32 years experience this guy had. What are you doing tasks for that 10 other people could do? If you were the CEO of a company and someone found out that someone with 32 years experience was still doing the schedule, would you be angry?

And the answer is yes. You should be doing only tasks that you should do. But you have to let go. And that's the essence of it. That's where you run a really, really efficient. operation. I'll tell you something funny. So I am CEO of Common Sense You. We do business to sharply edition development and dream kitchens. So dream kitchens is just refacing kitchen cabbets, doing full kitchen remodels, things like that, investing in my son. Now, when it comes to being

the CEO, I'm the alpha. My time is more valuable than everyone else that works for me, right? So I have that vision. I handle finances. I do some big deals, that type of thing. I am pushing the company forward. However, the other day, I went and helped my son Jonah out in the kitchen on a Saturday because no one was available, so help your boy out, right? So he is now the alpha. I'm an idiot when it comes to fixing, repairing, anything like that. You do not want me touching your kitchen. But I can go get lunch. I can go to Home Depot. I can throw out the garbage. I can cut up boxes. He is the alpha. Now that's the switch, correct? And that's where a lot of individuals don't realize that, you know, when you hire people who are better than you at specific areas, that's not a sign of weakness.

That's a sign of strength. That's what I want. That's diversity. When I have someone who's really, really good, like I always tease my wife, she's amazing project manager, program manager. She works with me. She's the own, you know, half owner of the business. She's amazing at the minutia, you know, the paperwork, stuff like that. I am a dreamer. I push the company forward. Together, we make a full brain, right?

Do you think about it? That's diversity. I teach diversity in the context of diversity of thought, right? But a lot of individuals through ego, through just discomfort, lack of, you know, lack of willingness to give up control, that type of thing. Don't understand how efficient that is when you hire people who are better than you in certain areas. It's not a sign of weakness. It's actually a sign of strength. We should do to podcast. I'm about to answer or give you a question that I think is probably a long answer. And maybe we do another episode, by the way. But what I heard there, by the way, just for, I want to re,

I want to reposition maybe what you said, how I heard it, and make sure it's accurate. You are asking the manager of the leader or the founder of the business owner to come in or to start a half hour earlier than he normally would to train the new and individual who's going to take over this role so that that new individual will forever hold the role. Now, that might take two weeks in your story. That manager leader had to train for roughly two weeks for this guy to get how to do the schedule. But now for the rest of time, this manager leader will not have to do the schedule because the new guy knows how to do the schedule better than he does. Exactly. So you're sad. And they're fighting 30 minutes a day for two weeks for quite literally

five hours a week in your example forever. And it's the gift that keeps on giving, right? That is investing your time versus spending your time. And the question in the coaching room is, is it worth it? Is it worth coming in a half hour early in order to get that long-term benefit? Right. And the answer, in my opinion, is yes, there is no other way. I wish there was.

I wish there was an easy button where you could just say, you know, hey, let's just make, make sure people are trained and everything is solved. You have to make some sacrifices, right? But the people who make the sacrifices up front. It's amazing. They don't have to make the sacrifices long term. The people who don't are constantly reactionary. They're constantly, their hair is constantly on fire.

They're spitting their wheels, things like that. But yeah, making, I don't think a half hour a day in order to achieve a goal like that is a big sacrifice. I really don't. It's just as an entrepreneur, I'm used to making sacrifices. is I'm used to working all the time. The question is, am I investing my time or am I spending my time? Right?

That's the question. Amen. And both work hard. No one's saying that if you work your butt off and you do the schedule, you don't work hard, but one of them is working smart. One of them's going to get a return on their investment. I'll give you one more. I'll go one more layer with you, Justin.

Not only did that person in Miami teach that individual on how to do the schedule, he told him, listen, once I delegate. the schedule. And by the way, you don't delegate anything until they prove proficiency. Right? They must prove that they know how to do it. Now it's yours. I don't want to know. But if I'm going to train you, you must train someone else on how to do the schedule as well. Now he's got two layers between him and the schedule. Chances are he'll never touch that again. If that person, if Jack goes on vacation, the schedule is still handled, right? I mean, that's investing your time from his standpoint as well as his important.

employee standpoint because now he has a backup. Everyone rewind. Listen to that again. I mean, Glenn, you've dropped diamonds and gold all over this episode, but like that is so investing your time versus spending your time, right? As entrepreneurs, his business, like, there's always a return on investment. Are you investing your time? Are you spending your time?

Because otherwise it's like cost. You're costing yourself. Like I just, oof, that's amazing. Listen, I want to wrap up with this, Glenn. First of all, go get his book. If you're liking some of this, go get his book. You're on Amazon, right? Yeah, Amazon as well.

Yep. Amazon, it's on Kindle and Paperback. Perfect. The name? Now what? Now what? Yeah. Glenn, where do you land when you're talking about management,

talking about people, talking about time? How is AI going to play into all this? I think AI is going to help us dramatically or really do. But I caution everybody in regards to AI that what I see out there is individuals who take a vehicle like AI and take it too far. Let me give me an example what I mean by that. Before COVID happened, people were starting to train toward computer-based training. They would say things like, Glenn, we don't need you in the classroom. We'll just give them a computer-based training module.

and saturation rates, you know, testing rates were terrible. They're absolutely terrible, right? It's still about people. It's still about connection. Now, certainly AI can help us with that. There's no doubt about it. But I am warning my graduate students all the time, please don't remember that the key to business is connection.

It always will be, it always has been, and always will be connecting with people. So AI will be a great tool for you. It certainly will help you many, many areas. I mean, getting information and disseminating information and everything else that AI is producing for us. But it's still about connecting with people and don't try to substitute, you know, AI for that connection. Right. I'll kind of leave you with the following story. I asked a class one time, these are Gen Zs, keep in mind, okay? Are we better at communicating today than we were 50 years ago?

Very simple question. They wouldn't let me finish the question. before they started going, no, we're not. And I go, what do you mean? I go, look at this. I go look at the, look at my, I got a couple of phones here. I got a laptop. I got this. They go, we have more ways to communicate.

There's no doubt about it. But we suck at the one on one piece and we know it. Right. And we got to get better at it. So my final exam in one of these classes was a speech. They had to get up there and actually talk to people. They were not graded on public. speaking ability, right? But get your robot up there. Get off of that email, get off of, you know,

those devices and everything. You're going to have to learn how to influence people because that's the difference between an efficient organization and an inefficient. So to answer your question, loving. I think AI is going to benefit us greatly. But just like email, remember email used to be, it was set up to be the secondary. It was set up to be a tool, but it, for communication, it became the primary tool. So when was the last time you got, you were received an email and after you're ready, you're like, what the hell would that mean? Right? And now you have to, you have to call the person or you have to respond back to the next thing, you know, it's a dumpster fire. It can be completely, you know, taken way too far. And that would be my

only caution to people when it comes to managing individuals. Don't use it for what it is. It's a tool, but don't let it sacrifice the people piece, the connection piece. Goodness gracious. Everybody, this is Glenn Sharp. Now what is his book? Go to Amazon, go to Kendall, get his book. And Glenn, where else can people find you? I think there's going to be a lot of founders, entrepreneurs, business owners, managers, leaders that really want to connect with you. Where can they do that? Yeah, so the podcast, I drop every single week. It's designed for you guys. It's designed for managers, for owners. It's not three hours. It's 15 to 20 minutes snippets. And I go over a lot of these concepts. So I'm on

YouTube. I'm on Spotify. It's designed to be a supplement. A lot of people are like, I don't know how to do this or I don't know how to do that. And I will create a podcast just for that topic. Right. So someone asked me one time, they're like, I don't know how to do a counseling session. It's in the book, but I did a counseling session on YouTube, right? A 15, 20-minute session, this is how you would counsel an employee that's not doing what they're supposed to and you have to correct their behavior. So they're designed for individuals to really learn quick skills, right, to be able to make them think a little bit. And I'll be doing that,

obviously just about forever. My clients love it because they can send their people ahead of time. Hey, here's a quick clip of Glenn. I don't know if I agree with everything he said, but I want you to pay attention to what he said about, you know, spending your time versus investing your time. We're going to talk about that on Friday when we get together. And that gives them a huge advantage.

So that's what it's designed for. Glenn, you're amazing. Get them all over social media. Go to Amazon. Go to Apple. Go to Spotify. Listen to his podcast. Glenn Sharp is his name.

Now what is the book? I'm Justin Colby. This has been the entrepreneur DNA. I appreciate your buddy. And if this was pretty good and you think Glenn's expertise is worth sharing, which I damn sure do, make sure you share this episode at least to your friends. Appreciate you guys and see you in the next episode. Thanks, Justin.