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00:00

Hello friends, this is Ted speaking and welcome to my business Show. Today we’re exploring one of my favorite topics leadership. Joining us today is Thomas Christie, who teaches the four keys to leadership success. Now Thomas is a leadership coach and his approach to leadership comes from a lifetime of international experience leading large corporates such as Colgate palmolive and a Straus group of companies.

 

Thomas also has entrepreneurial experience because after his corporate stints, he actually started company to distribute Lavazza coffee and was able to achieve a successful exit thereafter. In short, as a leadership coach Thomas has the whole package. Now in today’s episode, Thomas will speak to us about servant leadership, the importance of having a cathedral vision for your company, and the four keys to leadership success. So guys, if you ever received any value from the show, they don’t deserve to get your support.

 

The best way you can do this is to subscribe to the show, leave a review on Apple podcasts and to share the show with somebody who will find it useful as well. And now let’s dive right in. Hey, Tom, thank you so much for joining us today. It’s such a pleasure to have you here.

 

00:59

Well, it’s always fun. So Tom, let’s

 

01:00

have a very simple icebreaker so we can all get to know you a bit better. Please share with us who is Tom Kirstie when he isn’t working?

 

01:08

When he’s not working? All right. Well, that’s a good that’s a good question. Yeah, fun loving guy that I guess primarily as a family guy. Married to the same woman for 35 plus years, three grown daughters. So you know, dad, dad and husband and it’s important it’s just as important as I always say, if you can’t lead your family then don’t expect to lead a company.

 

Right? Because those are the people that are closest to you. And if they don’t buy into you then why would anybody else you know buy into you live in a beach whoa, I’m in you know the the fall part of my life. Living in beautiful San Diego, literally you walk up my back door and you’re on a beach so it’s a daily or maybe not every day, but several times a week, I go for a nice little strolls on a beach, which is very relaxing. And I love to play tennis. So I’m a I love watching tennis.

 

And I also love playing tennis. been doing it since I was a kid. Generally I love life. And I love living life.

 

02:14

Yeah, told me that she sounds like you’re living the dream. I’m so jealous right now. Now, Tom, I know you’re currently your leadership coach. But I’d love to explore your past corporate experience and your previous partnership with the SEC. Could you share with us what your journey was like during your time in the corporate world? And what was it like doing your partnership? dilla batcycle? Well,

 

02:32

I graduated from university, there was a lot of doors that I just happened to graduate at the right time. So the job Mark was was flourishing. And that was a series of doors that I could choose to go through. So I chose to go through one spent 15 years with that particular company, that company was Colgate palmolive company. So I spent 15 years with them. Probably every two years, every three years, I had a different job with them. So you know, maybe I’ll just give you a very rounded exposure, each one with increasing responsibilities.

 

So, you know, I was on, you know, climbing the corporate ladder, I guess. Then in 91, they gave me my first expat assignment. And if you’re, if your audience is not familiar with expats, but expats are, what I would say the business equivalent of the military, you know, we go all over the world and we fix problems. So they send us in they say, hey, Tom, there’s a business problem in central such an area, this you know, start up a business or whatnot, but there’s a business challenge of some sort, and they send you to fix it. And there’s a time frame window of about two to three years. So you have about two, three years to fix it.

 

And either way, you moving on, so in two or three years, if you haven’t fixed it, if you botched it, then they show you the door and you’re moving on that way. If you if you did go to a gym, you know if you did fix it and you did a good job, then they show you a different door and say hey, we want you to do this and, or something different in something bigger and better. So, you know, then you spent some time in Eastern Europe, then I spent some time in Latin America. And then eventually for family reasons. We moved back to the US in 2006.

 

And then I started up my own businesses in 2006. So you know, life is a journey of you know, fortune 100 companies, and you know, including Colgate Philips electronics, Reckitt Benckiser Strauss family, so it was each one had more responsibility. Each one has, you know, more fun and I, you know, certainly I’m not in the jack Welch’s category, or, you know, the Steve Jobs category. So, you know, but I did want to $400 and really, you know, $400 million business and with 2000 employees across 12 countries, so, I guess that counts for something.

 

04:56

Yes, of course. In fact, if I remember correctly or read it, you Where the CEO of the straws Group of Companies before he left to start a business with the Lavazza group? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Tom so could you actually share a little bit more about your partnership and deliver it so

 

05:10

show? You know, there’s an old saying, one is too small of a number to achieve greatness. So I’ve always believed I’ve done a number of mergers and acquisitions in my life. And the partnership with Lavazza was just, again, another Alliance where, you know, you put two companies together, and you can tackle a lot more than one. So Lavazza, at that time back in the, you know, early 2000s, their business model suggested that inside of Italy, they manage the entire supply chain. So you know, they had salespeople going into the stores, but outside of Italy, they always partner with people, they always partnered with local people.

 

And in the in the area of emerging markets. they partner with different individual small companies in those emerging markets. And they abolish those relationships and decided to do in a relationship with Strauss because stress is very strong in emerging markets. So we like you know, we aligned ourselves and had a, what we call an agreement with with Lavazza and the Strauss group to distribute Lavazza products in emerging markets.

 

06:20

So for the listeners at home, it’s a group of companies according to Wikipedia is branded as at least rabid coffee and the company claims that 16 million out of 20 million coffee purchasing families in Italy actually choose the butter, so it’s also a global brand, with a reported annual revenue of 2.2 billion euros in 2019. So we know Lavazza is one of the global players when it comes to coffee distribution not just in Italy but of course around the world.

 

Absolutely. So Tom I understand that eventually you actually existed from this business as well can you share a little bit more about this? How do you achieve that exit?

 

06:55

Well, to achieve an exit you have to plan it from day one. Right? You know a lot of people that are entrepreneurs they start companies you know they have this maybe grandiose vision that you know they’re going to and some people do i mean look at the Strauss family the stress family when I worked for them they were the not at that time they were the third generation family already

 

07:16

the labasa as well actually I think

 

07:20

absolutely they’re there so you know some companies do but other companies they basically say look you know I want to exit and and my kids don’t want the company so I need an exit strategy. So you kind of start working on that exit strategy to say okay, well if I’m going to buy in if I’m going to sell this company who do buy in and why I what what am i selling?

 

And in you know, am I selling a brand that has goodwill associated with it, you know, am I just selling accounts you know, that you know, are going to be discounted a lot more so, you know, what am I selling? How do I position that company for a successful sale?

 

08:00

So, Tom, after all your experience in the corporate world and in running your own business, could you share with us how have these experiences impacted the way you think as a business leader now that you’re a leadership coach?

 

08:11

Well look, you know, leadership is is not different in Corp a large corporation than in a small company or with your family I mean leadership is leadership I practice a model which is called servant leadership that works for me and certainly leadership in a one of the best servant leader you know CEOs that is Dan Cathy from chick fil a right he he funny says he says look you know, I I don’t have a parking space in front of the building I have a parking space I always you know, pull up and take the last parking spot on the back of the parking spot because I want my employees to be a lot closer to building so they have a lot less to walk than I do so so his mindset is always serving in all situations.

 

And good leaders understand that it’s not about them it’s about something much bigger than you know, it may be there may be the organization they may be their customers and may be you know, the the future of you know, humanity I mean, you know, it may be you know, faith but the but it’s it’s always if a leader basically says it’s about me then then they’re not going to be very successful because a lot of people and I got to buy into them I mean, look, you know, if you’re a head of family and you’ll say it’s about me and you know, I must confess that one time when I was early, you know, I’m much younger, I thought it was about me. So it took a while for for me to mature and say, Look, it’s not actually about me.

 

You know, I’m there to serve my family. You know, I I’m there to serve and you know, the kids more I’m ready to take them to soccer practice than I should take them to soccer practice. If, you know if if it’s my responsibility to make sure that, you know, my, my family lives in comfort and my kids go to school and you know, there have a roof over their heads, and they have a meal on the table, I mean, you know, that’s also part of being a servant, leader of a family, right? If you’re at work, it’s it’s again, it’s about making the people that are on your team, the people that are in your company, making them successful, creating an environment for success.

 

So it’s not about hey, I’m the CEO, and this is how it shall be done. And come hell or high water, you know that you follow my rules? Or, you know, you go out the door? And if that’s the attitude, then you’re probably not a success. Yeah,

 

10:50

and you’re probably not going to be able to breed loyalty as well.

 

10:53

Now, and then look, that’s that’s one of the things that I learned. When you transition from a large organization to a small company, one of the things that you’ll learn is that your character is extremely important. It’s key because

 

11:10

your reputation as well,

 

11:11

yeah, absolutely. So, you know, when I worked for a large, multinational court, you know, companies, I would have people applying for jobs that have had, you know, Harvard MBAs or Oxford MBAs, or, you know, really high fliers that wanted to work, because those are great organizations and great brands. And they had quote, unquote, a reputation of being a good marketing company, or good technology, company, whatever.

 

And then usually what happens is, you know, we go out, and we take that for granted, you know, we take it for granted, and you start your own company, and then you try to hire people. And the first question they have for you is, well, who the heck are you on? Why should I work for you? Yeah, because you don’t have the brain you know, you don’t so so you have to get them to buy into your character buy into you.

 

And then you know, you can get some some good folks that can can help you. You know, this, reach your dreams and reach your vision. But you know, they don’t buy into you, then you have no chance. Yeah.

 

12:10

So Tom, before we speak a little bit more about your current venture, the leadership disciples, could you share with us about the book that you wrote recently, C suite and beyond the four keys to lead success? Can you share with us what the book is about? And what do you hope to achieve it?

 

12:24

Well, at this stage, I just want to give back so what I hope to achieve with the book is pretty simple. Let people learn from my mistakes and my wins. It’s it’s a, it’s a much less painful to learn from other people’s failures and other people’s wins, than if you try to do it yourself. Now, having said that, I kind of locked my head against the wall a few times in my life where, you know, I certainly could have done something different by somebody else’s example.

 

But I said, Now I know better. And, and the fact is, you know, we hear it all where, you know, I didn’t know much better. But the the book simply started because, as a public speaker, one of the things that were thought to say, it’s just much easier to remember your own stories, you know, first of all, your audience is not interested in facts and figures they’re interested interested in your stories. That’s you know, stories move people.

 

That’s another lesson by the way that I learned later in life that you connect to people with with your personal stories, and that’s the best way to to move an organization to new heights is is have them connect with you on a personal level, that’s really three stories. So I wrote all these stories down for public speaking.

 

And then I said, well, man, I got enough stories here to write a book. So then I said to myself, okay, well, how do I structure this book? I mean, I got all these great stories from all over the world from when I traveled and I worked and how do I put a framework around that? So then I started just by accident, noticing I was okay, well, this story, I was doing pretty good.

 

And this story I wasn’t doing too well. So that’s where I started hearing the stories together to say, Okay, what illustrates where I was successful and what illustrates when I wasn’t successful? So that’s when I came up

 

14:13

with these core principles to leadership, right?

 

14:15

Yeah, so that’s when I came up with the four keys and then I said all right, well, let me let me check and make sure is that unique to me, or is that common to other you know, leaders and successful companies and I found the commonality and so I said, Okay, well, you know, I think I’m onto something so let me do the four keys and and that’s how I came up with them.

 

14:37

So it was home. Could you share with us the four keys to leadership success? Yeah, yeah.

 

14:41

So before we get to the four keys, let me just add a preface that afford keys and and that is the word called influence. I mean, you know, we’re all trying to influence each other. We have you know, if you’re a sales guy, you’re trying to influence the person to buy your product if you’re purchasing guy you’re trying to influence the sales guy to give you the product cheaper right if you’re marketing if you’re a marketing guy you’re trying to convince the general public to choose your brand over somebody else’s brand

 

so you know if your husband you’re trying to influence you know you’re trying to influence your wife that you know you don’t want to take out so everybody’s in the you know is in the influence business and there’s you know many ways to to influence others but leadership is is a great way to get people in fact if you’re a leader all you’re really doing is influencing others to to to to take on your lead and follow what the what you guys want to do together

 

What do you want to accomplish together so you just you know influencing it and and you know, there’s many ways to influence I’m one of the cute stories I like to use is no one I have you know, three daughters and when they were young, I was never disciplinary. My wife was always disciplinary and you know, while my kids were young every once in a while they really got me ticked off so when they got me ticked off, I said,

 

Okay, well, we got to do a timeout. And by timeout, I meant Okay, you’re gonna have to stand against the wall with your toes and your nose touching and you have to stand there for two or three minutes until you know that’s your timeout because you got to calm down and and my first two daughters did it. And then when my youngest daughter came for the first time we came to do this she rebelled she said, Absolutely not. I’m not doing this so here’s that you know, a three year old kid that’s you know, just like I’m not doing it that I don’t care what you’re telling me I’m not doing it and so then I you know, forcefully walked over to her and you know, put my hand against her back I you know, pressed her against the wall.

 

You know, then she’s, she’s physically rebelling. She says, No, I’m not doing this. You’re crazy. You’re crazy. So after a while, I just wrote about laughter I said this is ridiculous you know, but the funny thing was my two older daughters were there and you know, they’re one of them comments that I know which one but when it comes like how stupid well we’ve to do this one that made us to do it. I mean, you know, well, I got the rebel and look talking about influence I mean, that that’s pretty much what happens in a work environment.

 

You know, what happens in a work environment is you have three colleagues and you know, you’re you’re asking them to do something and to may do it not because they want to do it, you know, they do it just because, hey, you’re a boss, and you’re asked to do it and they paycheck depends on on it. So it’s so they do it. And a third one says, No, no way. I’m not doing that. That’s crazy, right? So that so then all three of them get together and say, Okay, well, you know that this guy is clearly not a good influencer. So you know, we’re not going to follow his lead, we’re not going to follow you know what he wants to do, because this is ridiculous.

 

So and everybody kind of yeses you that because you’re the boss. And they, you know, they rely on your your paycheck, but they may have never bought into it.

 

17:57

So guys, as Tom was explaining, influence is very important part of leadership. If you’re not able to command that level of influence and respect from the people you’re trying to lead, you may actually find it a bit harder to work with them to get your desired outcome. So it goes back to the idea of servant leadership, as Tom was speaking about earlier, when you’re a good leader, you actually serve the people that you’re leading, is not all about you is about helping others succeed. So back to you, Tom, was the first key principle of the issue.

 

18:23

The first one is, and I mentioned to you before, you have to have a very strong character, but you have to know who you are. And, and especially, that’s extremely important. In the beginning, when you’re starting up a company, if people don’t buy into you, they’re not going to buy into a company because you know, it doesn’t exist, they don’t know what that company stands for they so they buy into you. So and in a company, when you get a little bit larger, the equivalent of a of an individual’s character is the company culture. So it translates, right, yeah. So you have a clock, you know, and they both are built on a foundation of values.

 

So you are character is based on a foundation of your values. And a corporate culture is built on a foundation of shared values, people that share those values in your organization. The second one is vision. So everybody should have I have a personal vision for myself and old great organizations have visions. Vision is not something that’s two years out five years out. Vision is something that’s 25 3050 years out, and they’ve Martin calls it the cathedral vision. Right? Do you do you have a cathedral vision for yourself?

 

Does your company have its Cathedral vision? Cathedral visions? You know, if you look at the cathedrals in Europe, they they took 234 100 years to build. So you started off with a plan any generations of people? Yeah, yeah. So you know, the guy the device that knew that he would never see the finish. product. So those are, you know, cathedrale visions, or you know, what I would call long term visions. The third key is having a strategic plan. And, you know, a good strategic plan is always a growth plan, you know, nobody wants to be less, you know, less successful, poorer, be more overweight, and also you always want to grow and whatever you’re doing. And the fourth one is you want to have a diverse team.

 

So you want to have make sure that you have a great inner circle that’s there to support you there to make you successful. So we can talk about each one of those keys, if you like, or just one of them, and you know, you pick them together. One is, I don’t think one is more important than the other. But I think you need all for

 

20:49

sure. Tom, why don’t we dive into four key principles by exploring one of the past clients that you worked with? How did you help them turn things around? What was the results like for them after you had a chance to work with them?

 

21:01

Yeah, so um, you know, we can do a case study. For any chapter, it’s actually an example we use in a book where I was asked to turn around a subsidiary for a large fortune 100 company. And at the time of that, they asked me to take that role. It was about a $45 million sales organization and losing, I think close to, I think close to two and a half or $3 million dollars, they were losing on $45 million sales. So,

 

21:32

so $45 million in sales, but still not profitable. What happened next,

 

21:37

and losing two and two and a half million and so so, so what kind of walked in there. And, you know, I noticed right away that the company had a culture. And I called it the Oh my god, panic culture. Right? Everything was in panic mode, right? Everything was in panic mode, Oh, we got to make the numbers, we got to do this, we got to. So it was in total panic. And it was, you know, maybe a lot of toxic culture. But certainly, it wasn’t a positive culture. It wasn’t a reinforced sculpture.

 

And I remember that, after two and a half years where we took this company that was 45 million and losing two and a half million, and then it was, I think we’re at 64 67 million in sales and, and making close to 4 million. So you know, complete turnaround in less than three years. And as I mentioned to you in the ecpat world, if you do a good job in three years, you’re moving on, and somebody else is coming in to take your place. And I remember the farewell party, that the company threw me and, you know, Romana, who was the other CFO, she gave a thank you speech to me. And she said, Tom, thank you for believing in us. And thank you for making us believe in ourselves.

 

Right? So we went from a culture, that was a panic, what do we do now, it’s your fault, while you’re pulling your weight, to a culture, that we respected each other, we supported each other. And, you know, we believed in the same vision, and we’ll talk about that in a second, but it was a positive supporting culture. I remember, I remember one time over in a meeting where, you know, people were starting to panic and, and I just kind of, you know, very logically, you know, talked about it and, and, and thought through that specific problem, and someone in the room and, you know, looked at me and said, How could you be so calm?

 

How can you be so that’s like, well, you got to have one calm person, and you got to have one calm, you can’t everybody panicking, and that was early on, you know, and then that then people, you know, started believing, and we had a very supporting culture, we believe in each other, we believe in our common cause. And, you know, that certainly was a key to making that company successful. The second thing was, you know, obviously, vision. There, there really was no vision for the company. And the we’re just

 

24:23

driving sales and training members, but there was no long term goal or vision at the same time selling

 

24:28

the wrong products, you know, huge discounts. And, you know, there was, the good news was that there was a vision for the large organization, just the local subsidiary never bothered adapting it. So it was a fairly easy exercise for us because, you know, we didn’t have to create a new vision. We just have this accurate Well, here’s the corporate global vision.

 

So how do we make that? How do we own that for this local situation? Some companies and other law Some people, some companies don’t have a vision, so you have to go to scratch and, and create one, which is okay, you know, but you should have a vision. And the two things about culture and vision is upfront, you can have a lot of discussion. What’s our culture going to be like, you know, what’s our vision going to be like, and have all the healthy discussions that you want. But once you agree, you can’t have dissension.

 

You can’t once you agree on their culture, once you’re green, a vision, you know, especially vision, you can’t say, Well, you know, I don’t think that’s right, well, you don’t think you’re right, then you don’t belong here. We talked about it, we agreed on it as gnosis, dissension, right. And the same thing with, with culture. And the other thing great about the culture is I don’t care if you’re a CEO of a company, or a janitor or a company, you know, if you have shared values and have a common culture, a janitor should be able to walk up to the CEO, and call them out to say, Look, that’s not our culture, what you’re doing, does not abide by a culture, those are not shared values that you’re that you’re demonstrating. And that’s important, because otherwise, it’s just posters on the wall. Otherwise, it’s just the tagline on your website. And then it’s then it’s meaningless.

 

So yeah, so that’s, that’s basically about the vision, and, and, and, and, and culture. And then the third one is, you know, a strategic role plan. And, you know, what we found was, we were spending or the company was spending a lot of marketing money on stuff that on products that really were low, low margin products, high volume, but low margin projects. And, and that those products really had to be more promotional money than the marketing money.

 

So the marketing money was spent the wrong way. The priorities were not, you know, right. So they were, you know, we had to reshuffle everything, and I don’t care if you’re, you know, a 1 million $1 million organization or you know, or $100 billion dollar organization, when you do your strategic role plan, you have to do two things. First of all, make sure that whatever you’re doing is aligned with your vision, so you don’t get off off off target with the latest, you know, trends and the latest shiny object.

 

27:21

Yeah, the shiny object syndrome, right?

 

27:23

So you have to stay true to your vision. And for us, and for every company. It’s just two questions. How are you spending your money? And how are you spending your time? So how are you spending your money? Those are things that you’re spending outside the organization? So you know, what am I spending my marketing money on? What am I spending my, you know, my trade money on? So those are, you know, my consulting, money, whatever, development money, those are all things that are outside your organization, then, you know, what am I spending my time on? Those are all your employees, what are they spending?

 

I mean, you’re paying them, so discussing you, but what are they spending your time on? Right? So it’s always those two questions, I don’t care how large or how small of an organization you are, and it’s just putting him into four buckets, you know, buckets, which is, you know, it’s urgent, and it’s important, the second bucket, it’s urgent, but it’s not important. The third bucket, it’s not urgent, but important. And a fourth bucket is is is not urgent, and not important.

 

And so, you know, you hear also the Boston matrix, you know, dogs, cash, cows, stars, you know, so select, if we had this with the star, you know, with the, with the Strauss Grove, we had, we were in a business, which is a private label business, we shouldn’t have been in so there was a divestment, you know, we had to sell the company, we had to divest from that company. You know, those are the things that are not even non important, you put them in a bucket to say, look, it’s not urgent to our growth, it’s not important to our growth. So let’s sell this business.

 

So let’s close this business either way, right? Or, you know, it’s, it’s not important now, I’m sorry, it’s not urgent now. But it is very important, you know, those are things are of the future, right? Those are, maybe that product is not going to contribute a lot to you to your margin, or to your bottom line, because in scale, it’s not that large yet. But in five years, if you continue to cultivate it, it will contribute a lot. And, you know, if I take that same example for myself on my book, I mean, my book was never urgent.

 

It was important I could have, I could have procrastinated and left it on the side for the next five years, and my life still would have gone on without the book, right. So what I tell people all the time, and this is what we did on this particular example is you have to reallocate resources, to things that are important and urgent or things that are important but not urgent, right? We have I don’t think we have a choice. We always find the way to spend our time and money on things that are important than urgent, we, we just do that, and probably 60% of our resources go to that.

 

But what we do do a lot is we spend a lot of time or money on things that seem important, because they’re important to somebody else. You know, but they’re not important to me. They’re urgent, they’re being requested. But they’re not important to you, they’re not unimportant success to your company, they just seem urgent, you know, maybe competition is doing it, right. Maybe somebody else is telling you to do it. So if we can take resources from that and allocated to things that are important, but not urgent, then I think you have been informed and that’s that’s what we did to turn that company around as we looked at our strategic plan.

 

And we took money and reallocate it to things that were important, but not necessarily, you know, that urgent. And the fact is, over the next two or three years, we launched the number of brand extensions on going out a number of brand new brands, put in a market, and they’re all high margin products. And that’s what our growth came from. That’s where the profitability came from. So just making a decision to say, Hey, you know, how do we spend our money? And how do we spend that time? And how is that aligned with our vision? Now, guys,

 

31:17

as Thomas has shared, always try to focus your time and resources on tasks that are important to you and your organization, there will be tasks that are important that are urgent, or not so important, but these are the ones that you want to focus on. urgency should not be the only metric that determines how you want to spend your time, because something could be urgent, as requested by someone else. And it could be something that’s not very important to you or your organization.

 

So then how to prioritize your time and resources. So Tom, the last principle of leadership is on the diversity of team, what was it like for your client when you’re working demo on this?

 

31:49

And then the last thing, you know, was the team. And like I mentioned, you know, the, the team that we had, you know, oddly enough, we we never had, I think there was only two people that were fired, you know, I think I only fired two or three people, everybody, you know, everybody else, you know, the CFO was the same person that was there. When I left them, when I got there, the sales manager was the same, the marketing director was the same.

 

So you know, the thing was, there was just, you know, how do you get the team to appreciate each other? And how do you work with a team to, to bring out the best, and so you have to have a diverse thinking theme. So that’s, you know, something that Well, yeah, we fine tune that theme a little bit, we realigned them a little bit. But it but it was, you know, you have to have a good functioning team. And I remember when I first walked into the organization, my predecessor, was a very strong sales guy. And, you know, he was selling at 85% of the company volume.

 

And again, you know, low prices, you know, high discounts, just the move volume. And, you know, there was 100 salespeople in a company, I was like, What the heck out 100 people doing it, this guy’s doing 80% of volume. So it was really, you know, recognizing that there’s a talented sales team, we had to reorganize the sales team to align them with our distribution map that, you know, it’s certainly evolved.

 

So, but it was really getting those, you know, hundreds of salespeople to work as a team, and to be analyzing that team with the tray structure and a customer’s structure but doing all those little things. It you know, two and a half years help so I you know, that’s a very specific business example for for that potential cola company. But I think, I think it works.

 

33:44

Tom, thank you for walking us through how you’ve applied the four principles of leadership to your own clients. Now, could we talk a little bit more about the leadership disciples? What are the kind of services that you provide for your clients? And could you share maybe Who are your target clients?

 

33:59

Well, the target clients or you know, we, we prefer to work with companies that are at least 50 million in revenue, because if they’re less than 50 million in revenue, they probably don’t take this whole leadership stuff very seriously. You know, look, you’re gonna have 50 million in revenue by one person and if they’re a stock trader, they’re going to easily hit the million you know, in revenues as one person but usually people come to me with a problem and and the first thing that I do is I listened to say, Okay, what is your problem and, and see if there’s a match and how you can help them, right?

 

But usually, if, if a company’s struggling with teamwork if the company is struggling with profit, if a company is struggling with growth, I usually can help them I listened to them. So I don’t just come back come into a company, hey, here’s the four keys. So follow the four keys and you’ll be successful. Right? You have to learn. One example I use it was a small bank, a boutique bank that I worked with They came in and they wanted to help me with their, they wanted me to help them with their strategic growth plan. And, you know, after doing a session with their team,

 

it became very apparent to me that the issue with that was not a lack of of lack of opportunities for growth, it was really a team that was not diverse thinking. It was a bank, and there were a lot of analytical people, a lot of number crunching people. And the issue was that they were they would kill any initiative, because they all will analyze that. And I was like, I don’t know, you know,

 

35:33

what do you very risk adverse, oh,

 

35:35

they wouldn’t take a risk, right? So they were they were risk averse, they were highly analytical. And, and the conclusion was to look, look, if you want to grow strategically, the first thing you have to do is change your team. Because you don’t have diverse thinking, you know, you will never implement any new project because it’s going to be over analyze the death and it’s going to be killed before it ever gets off the ground.

 

So my objective is really just just to listen, you know, what, what is what is their challenge? I mean, obviously, if everything is great that they don’t call me in, but if there’s there’s an issue where it’s not all going out, not profitable enough, you know, that then is a problem, then I can help them.

 

36:19

So I’m just a little curious here. Are you only helping clients currently in the United States or with technology? Are you able to service clients on a global basis as well?

 

36:27

Well, that’s the beauty of technology. Now, I mean, you and I are sitting in two parts of the world, two different time zones, yet we can get on and have any discussion and you know, we can even share if we wanted to, we could share our screens, we could look at financial numbers, we can look at, you know, breakout rooms in you know, different people.

 

So, you know, technology is wonderful now, so physical limitations are no longer limitations. With you know, whether you will use this technology or a different technology you know, there’s always the same you’re you’re able to share your screen, you’re able to have multiple people on there, if you want to break out rooms for follow up, be able to do that you can bring them back together.

 

So it’s pretty easy to do everything remotely, I still like to meet individuals in person, I’ll tell you why. You know, this, this is pretty close, because we get to see each other and, and we get to talk to each other but because we’re human beings, we have a lot of senses. Right and and I can tell you from experience I’ve I’ve had in situations where I walked into a room and my hair went out, you know, the hair goes up in the back, your your your neck, and you go, you know that I just like this, this person just rubs me the wrong way.

 

And, and, and you say, well, maybe I can’t work with this person, it goes, we just this whole, you know, to human beings, we just, you know, we’re not meant to get along for some reason. And you can only see that usually when one or two people sit across the table with each other. And, you know, I grew up in New York City, and I learned a lot more in the streets in New York, than I would in any university and I call it street smarts. And to this day, I have the gift of being able to walk into a room sitting across the table or across the chair with somebody for about 2025 minutes. And, and after, you know, within a half hour, and it’s not 100% foolproof, but you know,

 

38:35

you get a sense of

 

38:37

I got a sense that this guy is, you know, okay. Or I don’t want to have anything to do with this person. And that’s difficult to do over a phone call that’s difficult to do over zoom call. Zoom is better than phone call but, and emails the words you know, you know, somebody sends an email and copies 10 people on it. And they’re just a bunch of words and they can be interpreted so differently by all 10 people, and it’s just a mess. So, you know, we’re human beings, we have a lot of senses, you know, we smell, we hear we observe, you know, we speak so there’s a lot of stuff going on. And some of that stuff gets lost in technology.

 

39:15

Yeah, but at least there’s two more pros and cons. Tom, if the list is only one thing from today’s conversation, what we’d like you to be,

 

39:23

know who you are, know who you are. Because if you don’t know who you are, then nothing else matters. I mean, you know, you’re going to have a tough time putting a team together a diverse team together if you don’t know who you are, because they’re not going to want to team up with you. Right? If you don’t know who you are, then how are you going to know where you want to be? 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 years from now, right? So start with yourself leadership that you know they say leadership is you know, three different levels.

 

The first step is lead yourself, then you can lead others and then eventually You can develop future leaders. But if you don’t know who you are, how are you going to lead yourself? And so so know you’re in and you know, I always tell people look, there’s to define who I am, I asked myself three questions. And this was a real revelation I came over in many years. And the first question is, you know, who am I? The second question is, what am I passionate about? And the third question is, what am I good at? So who am I, I’m a servant leader, what am I passionate about? I’m passionate about making other people better. or other companies better or other products better and and what am I good at, I’m good at mentoring leading, right?

 

So the beauty of that is I can take that and I can take that formula anywhere, I could be a servant leader at work, or I could be a servant leader. At home, I could mentor my kids or I can mentor my employees, I can make my customers better I can make my employees better I can make you know my products better. So it’s a formula that that I can take any part of my life and I don’t have to reinvent myself, depending on what situation I’m in, so know who you are, start with that. And, and it’s not so easy, but once you figure it out, then things are easier.

 

41:15

So Tom, how can listeners get in contact with you if they need your help.

 

41:19

So I’m blessed and cursed with the last name. It’s it’s a very unique so if you Google or you know, LinkedIn or whatever, if you just look for caress the which is k e, r, s, z, ti, caress the and, you know, you’ll find me. Also, if you forget the spelling of my name, just go to Amazon and look for C suite and beyond C suite and beyond, on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, then that will get you to the book and then you know, you can backtrack to my website to LinkedIn. And then if you do go to my website, and you fill out a contact page, on my website, just look for kresge.com. You fill out the contact information, and I will send you a summary.

 

So not not the whole book, but it’s about a 20 page 22 page read, which is much easier than a 200 page visit. And it just gives you the the four keys, it gives you a handful of stories. The book is very rich, it’s got a lot of stories, and I lived them all. So I thought it were you know, there were great experiences. So I hope you can learn from them. And I hope you do get the book and I you know, definitely reach out to me and I’m happy to help.

 

42:33

Tom, thank you so much for joining us today. It was such a pleasure to have you here.

 

42:36

Thank you,

 

42:37

guys. Thank you for joining Tom and I On today’s episode, so have a think about how you can implement the four keys of leadership success to your business as well. Think about your character and culture, your vision, your growth strategy, and the members in your team. And of course, if you need help, don’t hesitate to reach out to him. And as before, if you’ve received any value from the show, then I love to get your support.

 

The best way you can show this is to subscribe to the show, leave a review on Apple podcasts and to share the show with somebody who find it useful as well. That’s all for me today. I’ll see you next time.

[This transcript has been automatically generated by a digital software and will therefore  contain errors and typos. Please kindly take note of this and only rely on the digital transcript for reference.]

00:00

Hello friends, this is Ted speaking and welcome to my business Show. Today we’re exploring one of my favorite topics leadership. Joining us today is Thomas Christie, who teaches the four keys to leadership success. Now Thomas is a leadership coach and his approach to leadership comes from a lifetime of international experience leading large corporates such as Colgate palmolive and a Straus group of companies.

 

Thomas also has entrepreneurial experience because after his corporate stints, he actually started company to distribute Lavazza coffee and was able to achieve a successful exit thereafter. In short, as a leadership coach Thomas has the whole package. Now in today’s episode, Thomas will speak to us about servant leadership, the importance of having a cathedral vision for your company, and the four keys to leadership success. So guys, if you ever received any value from the show, they don’t deserve to get your support.

 

The best way you can do this is to subscribe to the show, leave a review on Apple podcasts and to share the show with somebody who will find it useful as well. And now let’s dive right in. Hey, Tom, thank you so much for joining us today. It’s such a pleasure to have you here.

 

00:59

Well, it’s always fun. So Tom, let’s

 

01:00

have a very simple icebreaker so we can all get to know you a bit better. Please share with us who is Tom Kirstie when he isn’t working?

 

01:08

When he’s not working? All right. Well, that’s a good that’s a good question. Yeah, fun loving guy that I guess primarily as a family guy. Married to the same woman for 35 plus years, three grown daughters. So you know, dad, dad and husband and it’s important it’s just as important as I always say, if you can’t lead your family then don’t expect to lead a company.

 

Right? Because those are the people that are closest to you. And if they don’t buy into you then why would anybody else you know buy into you live in a beach whoa, I’m in you know the the fall part of my life. Living in beautiful San Diego, literally you walk up my back door and you’re on a beach so it’s a daily or maybe not every day, but several times a week, I go for a nice little strolls on a beach, which is very relaxing. And I love to play tennis. So I’m a I love watching tennis.

 

And I also love playing tennis. been doing it since I was a kid. Generally I love life. And I love living life.

 

02:14

Yeah, told me that she sounds like you’re living the dream. I’m so jealous right now. Now, Tom, I know you’re currently your leadership coach. But I’d love to explore your past corporate experience and your previous partnership with the SEC. Could you share with us what your journey was like during your time in the corporate world? And what was it like doing your partnership? dilla batcycle? Well,

 

02:32

I graduated from university, there was a lot of doors that I just happened to graduate at the right time. So the job Mark was was flourishing. And that was a series of doors that I could choose to go through. So I chose to go through one spent 15 years with that particular company, that company was Colgate palmolive company. So I spent 15 years with them. Probably every two years, every three years, I had a different job with them. So you know, maybe I’ll just give you a very rounded exposure, each one with increasing responsibilities.

 

So, you know, I was on, you know, climbing the corporate ladder, I guess. Then in 91, they gave me my first expat assignment. And if you’re, if your audience is not familiar with expats, but expats are, what I would say the business equivalent of the military, you know, we go all over the world and we fix problems. So they send us in they say, hey, Tom, there’s a business problem in central such an area, this you know, start up a business or whatnot, but there’s a business challenge of some sort, and they send you to fix it. And there’s a time frame window of about two to three years. So you have about two, three years to fix it.

 

And either way, you moving on, so in two or three years, if you haven’t fixed it, if you botched it, then they show you the door and you’re moving on that way. If you if you did go to a gym, you know if you did fix it and you did a good job, then they show you a different door and say hey, we want you to do this and, or something different in something bigger and better. So, you know, then you spent some time in Eastern Europe, then I spent some time in Latin America. And then eventually for family reasons. We moved back to the US in 2006.

 

And then I started up my own businesses in 2006. So you know, life is a journey of you know, fortune 100 companies, and you know, including Colgate Philips electronics, Reckitt Benckiser Strauss family, so it was each one had more responsibility. Each one has, you know, more fun and I, you know, certainly I’m not in the jack Welch’s category, or, you know, the Steve Jobs category. So, you know, but I did want to $400 and really, you know, $400 million business and with 2000 employees across 12 countries, so, I guess that counts for something.

 

04:56

Yes, of course. In fact, if I remember correctly or read it, you Where the CEO of the straws Group of Companies before he left to start a business with the Lavazza group? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Tom so could you actually share a little bit more about your partnership and deliver it so

 

05:10

show? You know, there’s an old saying, one is too small of a number to achieve greatness. So I’ve always believed I’ve done a number of mergers and acquisitions in my life. And the partnership with Lavazza was just, again, another Alliance where, you know, you put two companies together, and you can tackle a lot more than one. So Lavazza, at that time back in the, you know, early 2000s, their business model suggested that inside of Italy, they manage the entire supply chain. So you know, they had salespeople going into the stores, but outside of Italy, they always partner with people, they always partnered with local people.

 

And in the in the area of emerging markets. they partner with different individual small companies in those emerging markets. And they abolish those relationships and decided to do in a relationship with Strauss because stress is very strong in emerging markets. So we like you know, we aligned ourselves and had a, what we call an agreement with with Lavazza and the Strauss group to distribute Lavazza products in emerging markets.

 

06:20

So for the listeners at home, it’s a group of companies according to Wikipedia is branded as at least rabid coffee and the company claims that 16 million out of 20 million coffee purchasing families in Italy actually choose the butter, so it’s also a global brand, with a reported annual revenue of 2.2 billion euros in 2019. So we know Lavazza is one of the global players when it comes to coffee distribution not just in Italy but of course around the world.

 

Absolutely. So Tom I understand that eventually you actually existed from this business as well can you share a little bit more about this? How do you achieve that exit?

 

06:55

Well, to achieve an exit you have to plan it from day one. Right? You know a lot of people that are entrepreneurs they start companies you know they have this maybe grandiose vision that you know they’re going to and some people do i mean look at the Strauss family the stress family when I worked for them they were the not at that time they were the third generation family already

 

07:16

the labasa as well actually I think

 

07:20

absolutely they’re there so you know some companies do but other companies they basically say look you know I want to exit and and my kids don’t want the company so I need an exit strategy. So you kind of start working on that exit strategy to say okay, well if I’m going to buy in if I’m going to sell this company who do buy in and why I what what am i selling?

 

And in you know, am I selling a brand that has goodwill associated with it, you know, am I just selling accounts you know, that you know, are going to be discounted a lot more so, you know, what am I selling? How do I position that company for a successful sale?

 

08:00

So, Tom, after all your experience in the corporate world and in running your own business, could you share with us how have these experiences impacted the way you think as a business leader now that you’re a leadership coach?

 

08:11

Well look, you know, leadership is is not different in Corp a large corporation than in a small company or with your family I mean leadership is leadership I practice a model which is called servant leadership that works for me and certainly leadership in a one of the best servant leader you know CEOs that is Dan Cathy from chick fil a right he he funny says he says look you know, I I don’t have a parking space in front of the building I have a parking space I always you know, pull up and take the last parking spot on the back of the parking spot because I want my employees to be a lot closer to building so they have a lot less to walk than I do so so his mindset is always serving in all situations.

 

And good leaders understand that it’s not about them it’s about something much bigger than you know, it may be there may be the organization they may be their customers and may be you know, the the future of you know, humanity I mean, you know, it may be you know, faith but the but it’s it’s always if a leader basically says it’s about me then then they’re not going to be very successful because a lot of people and I got to buy into them I mean, look, you know, if you’re a head of family and you’ll say it’s about me and you know, I must confess that one time when I was early, you know, I’m much younger, I thought it was about me. So it took a while for for me to mature and say, Look, it’s not actually about me.

 

You know, I’m there to serve my family. You know, I I’m there to serve and you know, the kids more I’m ready to take them to soccer practice than I should take them to soccer practice. If, you know if if it’s my responsibility to make sure that, you know, my, my family lives in comfort and my kids go to school and you know, there have a roof over their heads, and they have a meal on the table, I mean, you know, that’s also part of being a servant, leader of a family, right? If you’re at work, it’s it’s again, it’s about making the people that are on your team, the people that are in your company, making them successful, creating an environment for success.

 

So it’s not about hey, I’m the CEO, and this is how it shall be done. And come hell or high water, you know that you follow my rules? Or, you know, you go out the door? And if that’s the attitude, then you’re probably not a success. Yeah,

 

10:50

and you’re probably not going to be able to breed loyalty as well.

 

10:53

Now, and then look, that’s that’s one of the things that I learned. When you transition from a large organization to a small company, one of the things that you’ll learn is that your character is extremely important. It’s key because

 

11:10

your reputation as well,

 

11:11

yeah, absolutely. So, you know, when I worked for a large, multinational court, you know, companies, I would have people applying for jobs that have had, you know, Harvard MBAs or Oxford MBAs, or, you know, really high fliers that wanted to work, because those are great organizations and great brands. And they had quote, unquote, a reputation of being a good marketing company, or good technology, company, whatever.

 

And then usually what happens is, you know, we go out, and we take that for granted, you know, we take it for granted, and you start your own company, and then you try to hire people. And the first question they have for you is, well, who the heck are you on? Why should I work for you? Yeah, because you don’t have the brain you know, you don’t so so you have to get them to buy into your character buy into you.

 

And then you know, you can get some some good folks that can can help you. You know, this, reach your dreams and reach your vision. But you know, they don’t buy into you, then you have no chance. Yeah.

 

12:10

So Tom, before we speak a little bit more about your current venture, the leadership disciples, could you share with us about the book that you wrote recently, C suite and beyond the four keys to lead success? Can you share with us what the book is about? And what do you hope to achieve it?

 

12:24

Well, at this stage, I just want to give back so what I hope to achieve with the book is pretty simple. Let people learn from my mistakes and my wins. It’s it’s a, it’s a much less painful to learn from other people’s failures and other people’s wins, than if you try to do it yourself. Now, having said that, I kind of locked my head against the wall a few times in my life where, you know, I certainly could have done something different by somebody else’s example.

 

But I said, Now I know better. And, and the fact is, you know, we hear it all where, you know, I didn’t know much better. But the the book simply started because, as a public speaker, one of the things that were thought to say, it’s just much easier to remember your own stories, you know, first of all, your audience is not interested in facts and figures they’re interested interested in your stories. That’s you know, stories move people.

 

That’s another lesson by the way that I learned later in life that you connect to people with with your personal stories, and that’s the best way to to move an organization to new heights is is have them connect with you on a personal level, that’s really three stories. So I wrote all these stories down for public speaking.

 

And then I said, well, man, I got enough stories here to write a book. So then I said to myself, okay, well, how do I structure this book? I mean, I got all these great stories from all over the world from when I traveled and I worked and how do I put a framework around that? So then I started just by accident, noticing I was okay, well, this story, I was doing pretty good.

 

And this story I wasn’t doing too well. So that’s where I started hearing the stories together to say, Okay, what illustrates where I was successful and what illustrates when I wasn’t successful? So that’s when I came up

 

14:13

with these core principles to leadership, right?

 

14:15

Yeah, so that’s when I came up with the four keys and then I said all right, well, let me let me check and make sure is that unique to me, or is that common to other you know, leaders and successful companies and I found the commonality and so I said, Okay, well, you know, I think I’m onto something so let me do the four keys and and that’s how I came up with them.

 

14:37

So it was home. Could you share with us the four keys to leadership success? Yeah, yeah.

 

14:41

So before we get to the four keys, let me just add a preface that afford keys and and that is the word called influence. I mean, you know, we’re all trying to influence each other. We have you know, if you’re a sales guy, you’re trying to influence the person to buy your product if you’re purchasing guy you’re trying to influence the sales guy to give you the product cheaper right if you’re marketing if you’re a marketing guy you’re trying to convince the general public to choose your brand over somebody else’s brand

 

so you know if your husband you’re trying to influence you know you’re trying to influence your wife that you know you don’t want to take out so everybody’s in the you know is in the influence business and there’s you know many ways to to influence others but leadership is is a great way to get people in fact if you’re a leader all you’re really doing is influencing others to to to to take on your lead and follow what the what you guys want to do together

 

What do you want to accomplish together so you just you know influencing it and and you know, there’s many ways to influence I’m one of the cute stories I like to use is no one I have you know, three daughters and when they were young, I was never disciplinary. My wife was always disciplinary and you know, while my kids were young every once in a while they really got me ticked off so when they got me ticked off, I said,

 

Okay, well, we got to do a timeout. And by timeout, I meant Okay, you’re gonna have to stand against the wall with your toes and your nose touching and you have to stand there for two or three minutes until you know that’s your timeout because you got to calm down and and my first two daughters did it. And then when my youngest daughter came for the first time we came to do this she rebelled she said, Absolutely not. I’m not doing this so here’s that you know, a three year old kid that’s you know, just like I’m not doing it that I don’t care what you’re telling me I’m not doing it and so then I you know, forcefully walked over to her and you know, put my hand against her back I you know, pressed her against the wall.

 

You know, then she’s, she’s physically rebelling. She says, No, I’m not doing this. You’re crazy. You’re crazy. So after a while, I just wrote about laughter I said this is ridiculous you know, but the funny thing was my two older daughters were there and you know, they’re one of them comments that I know which one but when it comes like how stupid well we’ve to do this one that made us to do it. I mean, you know, well, I got the rebel and look talking about influence I mean, that that’s pretty much what happens in a work environment.

 

You know, what happens in a work environment is you have three colleagues and you know, you’re you’re asking them to do something and to may do it not because they want to do it, you know, they do it just because, hey, you’re a boss, and you’re asked to do it and they paycheck depends on on it. So it’s so they do it. And a third one says, No, no way. I’m not doing that. That’s crazy, right? So that so then all three of them get together and say, Okay, well, you know that this guy is clearly not a good influencer. So you know, we’re not going to follow his lead, we’re not going to follow you know what he wants to do, because this is ridiculous.

 

So and everybody kind of yeses you that because you’re the boss. And they, you know, they rely on your your paycheck, but they may have never bought into it.

 

17:57

So guys, as Tom was explaining, influence is very important part of leadership. If you’re not able to command that level of influence and respect from the people you’re trying to lead, you may actually find it a bit harder to work with them to get your desired outcome. So it goes back to the idea of servant leadership, as Tom was speaking about earlier, when you’re a good leader, you actually serve the people that you’re leading, is not all about you is about helping others succeed. So back to you, Tom, was the first key principle of the issue.

 

18:23

The first one is, and I mentioned to you before, you have to have a very strong character, but you have to know who you are. And, and especially, that’s extremely important. In the beginning, when you’re starting up a company, if people don’t buy into you, they’re not going to buy into a company because you know, it doesn’t exist, they don’t know what that company stands for they so they buy into you. So and in a company, when you get a little bit larger, the equivalent of a of an individual’s character is the company culture. So it translates, right, yeah. So you have a clock, you know, and they both are built on a foundation of values.

 

So you are character is based on a foundation of your values. And a corporate culture is built on a foundation of shared values, people that share those values in your organization. The second one is vision. So everybody should have I have a personal vision for myself and old great organizations have visions. Vision is not something that’s two years out five years out. Vision is something that’s 25 3050 years out, and they’ve Martin calls it the cathedral vision. Right? Do you do you have a cathedral vision for yourself?

 

Does your company have its Cathedral vision? Cathedral visions? You know, if you look at the cathedrals in Europe, they they took 234 100 years to build. So you started off with a plan any generations of people? Yeah, yeah. So you know, the guy the device that knew that he would never see the finish. product. So those are, you know, cathedrale visions, or you know, what I would call long term visions. The third key is having a strategic plan. And, you know, a good strategic plan is always a growth plan, you know, nobody wants to be less, you know, less successful, poorer, be more overweight, and also you always want to grow and whatever you’re doing. And the fourth one is you want to have a diverse team.

 

So you want to have make sure that you have a great inner circle that’s there to support you there to make you successful. So we can talk about each one of those keys, if you like, or just one of them, and you know, you pick them together. One is, I don’t think one is more important than the other. But I think you need all for

 

20:49

sure. Tom, why don’t we dive into four key principles by exploring one of the past clients that you worked with? How did you help them turn things around? What was the results like for them after you had a chance to work with them?

 

21:01

Yeah, so um, you know, we can do a case study. For any chapter, it’s actually an example we use in a book where I was asked to turn around a subsidiary for a large fortune 100 company. And at the time of that, they asked me to take that role. It was about a $45 million sales organization and losing, I think close to, I think close to two and a half or $3 million dollars, they were losing on $45 million sales. So,

 

21:32

so $45 million in sales, but still not profitable. What happened next,

 

21:37

and losing two and two and a half million and so so, so what kind of walked in there. And, you know, I noticed right away that the company had a culture. And I called it the Oh my god, panic culture. Right? Everything was in panic mode, right? Everything was in panic mode, Oh, we got to make the numbers, we got to do this, we got to. So it was in total panic. And it was, you know, maybe a lot of toxic culture. But certainly, it wasn’t a positive culture. It wasn’t a reinforced sculpture.

 

And I remember that, after two and a half years where we took this company that was 45 million and losing two and a half million, and then it was, I think we’re at 64 67 million in sales and, and making close to 4 million. So you know, complete turnaround in less than three years. And as I mentioned to you in the ecpat world, if you do a good job in three years, you’re moving on, and somebody else is coming in to take your place. And I remember the farewell party, that the company threw me and, you know, Romana, who was the other CFO, she gave a thank you speech to me. And she said, Tom, thank you for believing in us. And thank you for making us believe in ourselves.

 

Right? So we went from a culture, that was a panic, what do we do now, it’s your fault, while you’re pulling your weight, to a culture, that we respected each other, we supported each other. And, you know, we believed in the same vision, and we’ll talk about that in a second, but it was a positive supporting culture. I remember, I remember one time over in a meeting where, you know, people were starting to panic and, and I just kind of, you know, very logically, you know, talked about it and, and, and thought through that specific problem, and someone in the room and, you know, looked at me and said, How could you be so calm?

 

How can you be so that’s like, well, you got to have one calm person, and you got to have one calm, you can’t everybody panicking, and that was early on, you know, and then that then people, you know, started believing, and we had a very supporting culture, we believe in each other, we believe in our common cause. And, you know, that certainly was a key to making that company successful. The second thing was, you know, obviously, vision. There, there really was no vision for the company. And the we’re just

 

24:23

driving sales and training members, but there was no long term goal or vision at the same time selling

 

24:28

the wrong products, you know, huge discounts. And, you know, there was, the good news was that there was a vision for the large organization, just the local subsidiary never bothered adapting it. So it was a fairly easy exercise for us because, you know, we didn’t have to create a new vision. We just have this accurate Well, here’s the corporate global vision.

 

So how do we make that? How do we own that for this local situation? Some companies and other law Some people, some companies don’t have a vision, so you have to go to scratch and, and create one, which is okay, you know, but you should have a vision. And the two things about culture and vision is upfront, you can have a lot of discussion. What’s our culture going to be like, you know, what’s our vision going to be like, and have all the healthy discussions that you want. But once you agree, you can’t have dissension.

 

You can’t once you agree on their culture, once you’re green, a vision, you know, especially vision, you can’t say, Well, you know, I don’t think that’s right, well, you don’t think you’re right, then you don’t belong here. We talked about it, we agreed on it as gnosis, dissension, right. And the same thing with, with culture. And the other thing great about the culture is I don’t care if you’re a CEO of a company, or a janitor or a company, you know, if you have shared values and have a common culture, a janitor should be able to walk up to the CEO, and call them out to say, Look, that’s not our culture, what you’re doing, does not abide by a culture, those are not shared values that you’re that you’re demonstrating. And that’s important, because otherwise, it’s just posters on the wall. Otherwise, it’s just the tagline on your website. And then it’s then it’s meaningless.

 

So yeah, so that’s, that’s basically about the vision, and, and, and, and, and culture. And then the third one is, you know, a strategic role plan. And, you know, what we found was, we were spending or the company was spending a lot of marketing money on stuff that on products that really were low, low margin products, high volume, but low margin projects. And, and that those products really had to be more promotional money than the marketing money.

 

So the marketing money was spent the wrong way. The priorities were not, you know, right. So they were, you know, we had to reshuffle everything, and I don’t care if you’re, you know, a 1 million $1 million organization or you know, or $100 billion dollar organization, when you do your strategic role plan, you have to do two things. First of all, make sure that whatever you’re doing is aligned with your vision, so you don’t get off off off target with the latest, you know, trends and the latest shiny object.

 

27:21

Yeah, the shiny object syndrome, right?

 

27:23

So you have to stay true to your vision. And for us, and for every company. It’s just two questions. How are you spending your money? And how are you spending your time? So how are you spending your money? Those are things that you’re spending outside the organization? So you know, what am I spending my marketing money on? What am I spending my, you know, my trade money on? So those are, you know, my consulting, money, whatever, development money, those are all things that are outside your organization, then, you know, what am I spending my time on? Those are all your employees, what are they spending?

 

I mean, you’re paying them, so discussing you, but what are they spending your time on? Right? So it’s always those two questions, I don’t care how large or how small of an organization you are, and it’s just putting him into four buckets, you know, buckets, which is, you know, it’s urgent, and it’s important, the second bucket, it’s urgent, but it’s not important. The third bucket, it’s not urgent, but important. And a fourth bucket is is is not urgent, and not important.

 

And so, you know, you hear also the Boston matrix, you know, dogs, cash, cows, stars, you know, so select, if we had this with the star, you know, with the, with the Strauss Grove, we had, we were in a business, which is a private label business, we shouldn’t have been in so there was a divestment, you know, we had to sell the company, we had to divest from that company. You know, those are the things that are not even non important, you put them in a bucket to say, look, it’s not urgent to our growth, it’s not important to our growth. So let’s sell this business.

 

So let’s close this business either way, right? Or, you know, it’s, it’s not important now, I’m sorry, it’s not urgent now. But it is very important, you know, those are things are of the future, right? Those are, maybe that product is not going to contribute a lot to you to your margin, or to your bottom line, because in scale, it’s not that large yet. But in five years, if you continue to cultivate it, it will contribute a lot. And, you know, if I take that same example for myself on my book, I mean, my book was never urgent.

 

It was important I could have, I could have procrastinated and left it on the side for the next five years, and my life still would have gone on without the book, right. So what I tell people all the time, and this is what we did on this particular example is you have to reallocate resources, to things that are important and urgent or things that are important but not urgent, right? We have I don’t think we have a choice. We always find the way to spend our time and money on things that are important than urgent, we, we just do that, and probably 60% of our resources go to that.

 

But what we do do a lot is we spend a lot of time or money on things that seem important, because they’re important to somebody else. You know, but they’re not important to me. They’re urgent, they’re being requested. But they’re not important to you, they’re not unimportant success to your company, they just seem urgent, you know, maybe competition is doing it, right. Maybe somebody else is telling you to do it. So if we can take resources from that and allocated to things that are important, but not urgent, then I think you have been informed and that’s that’s what we did to turn that company around as we looked at our strategic plan.

 

And we took money and reallocate it to things that were important, but not necessarily, you know, that urgent. And the fact is, over the next two or three years, we launched the number of brand extensions on going out a number of brand new brands, put in a market, and they’re all high margin products. And that’s what our growth came from. That’s where the profitability came from. So just making a decision to say, Hey, you know, how do we spend our money? And how do we spend that time? And how is that aligned with our vision? Now, guys,

 

31:17

as Thomas has shared, always try to focus your time and resources on tasks that are important to you and your organization, there will be tasks that are important that are urgent, or not so important, but these are the ones that you want to focus on. urgency should not be the only metric that determines how you want to spend your time, because something could be urgent, as requested by someone else. And it could be something that’s not very important to you or your organization.

 

So then how to prioritize your time and resources. So Tom, the last principle of leadership is on the diversity of team, what was it like for your client when you’re working demo on this?

 

31:49

And then the last thing, you know, was the team. And like I mentioned, you know, the, the team that we had, you know, oddly enough, we we never had, I think there was only two people that were fired, you know, I think I only fired two or three people, everybody, you know, everybody else, you know, the CFO was the same person that was there. When I left them, when I got there, the sales manager was the same, the marketing director was the same.

 

So you know, the thing was, there was just, you know, how do you get the team to appreciate each other? And how do you work with a team to, to bring out the best, and so you have to have a diverse thinking theme. So that’s, you know, something that Well, yeah, we fine tune that theme a little bit, we realigned them a little bit. But it but it was, you know, you have to have a good functioning team. And I remember when I first walked into the organization, my predecessor, was a very strong sales guy. And, you know, he was selling at 85% of the company volume.

 

And again, you know, low prices, you know, high discounts, just the move volume. And, you know, there was 100 salespeople in a company, I was like, What the heck out 100 people doing it, this guy’s doing 80% of volume. So it was really, you know, recognizing that there’s a talented sales team, we had to reorganize the sales team to align them with our distribution map that, you know, it’s certainly evolved.

 

So, but it was really getting those, you know, hundreds of salespeople to work as a team, and to be analyzing that team with the tray structure and a customer’s structure but doing all those little things. It you know, two and a half years help so I you know, that’s a very specific business example for for that potential cola company. But I think, I think it works.

 

33:44

Tom, thank you for walking us through how you’ve applied the four principles of leadership to your own clients. Now, could we talk a little bit more about the leadership disciples? What are the kind of services that you provide for your clients? And could you share maybe Who are your target clients?

 

33:59

Well, the target clients or you know, we, we prefer to work with companies that are at least 50 million in revenue, because if they’re less than 50 million in revenue, they probably don’t take this whole leadership stuff very seriously. You know, look, you’re gonna have 50 million in revenue by one person and if they’re a stock trader, they’re going to easily hit the million you know, in revenues as one person but usually people come to me with a problem and and the first thing that I do is I listened to say, Okay, what is your problem and, and see if there’s a match and how you can help them, right?

 

But usually, if, if a company’s struggling with teamwork if the company is struggling with profit, if a company is struggling with growth, I usually can help them I listened to them. So I don’t just come back come into a company, hey, here’s the four keys. So follow the four keys and you’ll be successful. Right? You have to learn. One example I use it was a small bank, a boutique bank that I worked with They came in and they wanted to help me with their, they wanted me to help them with their strategic growth plan. And, you know, after doing a session with their team,

 

it became very apparent to me that the issue with that was not a lack of of lack of opportunities for growth, it was really a team that was not diverse thinking. It was a bank, and there were a lot of analytical people, a lot of number crunching people. And the issue was that they were they would kill any initiative, because they all will analyze that. And I was like, I don’t know, you know,

 

35:33

what do you very risk adverse, oh,

 

35:35

they wouldn’t take a risk, right? So they were they were risk averse, they were highly analytical. And, and the conclusion was to look, look, if you want to grow strategically, the first thing you have to do is change your team. Because you don’t have diverse thinking, you know, you will never implement any new project because it’s going to be over analyze the death and it’s going to be killed before it ever gets off the ground.

 

So my objective is really just just to listen, you know, what, what is what is their challenge? I mean, obviously, if everything is great that they don’t call me in, but if there’s there’s an issue where it’s not all going out, not profitable enough, you know, that then is a problem, then I can help them.

 

36:19

So I’m just a little curious here. Are you only helping clients currently in the United States or with technology? Are you able to service clients on a global basis as well?

 

36:27

Well, that’s the beauty of technology. Now, I mean, you and I are sitting in two parts of the world, two different time zones, yet we can get on and have any discussion and you know, we can even share if we wanted to, we could share our screens, we could look at financial numbers, we can look at, you know, breakout rooms in you know, different people.

 

So, you know, technology is wonderful now, so physical limitations are no longer limitations. With you know, whether you will use this technology or a different technology you know, there’s always the same you’re you’re able to share your screen, you’re able to have multiple people on there, if you want to break out rooms for follow up, be able to do that you can bring them back together.

 

So it’s pretty easy to do everything remotely, I still like to meet individuals in person, I’ll tell you why. You know, this, this is pretty close, because we get to see each other and, and we get to talk to each other but because we’re human beings, we have a lot of senses. Right and and I can tell you from experience I’ve I’ve had in situations where I walked into a room and my hair went out, you know, the hair goes up in the back, your your your neck, and you go, you know that I just like this, this person just rubs me the wrong way.

 

And, and, and you say, well, maybe I can’t work with this person, it goes, we just this whole, you know, to human beings, we just, you know, we’re not meant to get along for some reason. And you can only see that usually when one or two people sit across the table with each other. And, you know, I grew up in New York City, and I learned a lot more in the streets in New York, than I would in any university and I call it street smarts. And to this day, I have the gift of being able to walk into a room sitting across the table or across the chair with somebody for about 2025 minutes. And, and after, you know, within a half hour, and it’s not 100% foolproof, but you know,

 

38:35

you get a sense of

 

38:37

I got a sense that this guy is, you know, okay. Or I don’t want to have anything to do with this person. And that’s difficult to do over a phone call that’s difficult to do over zoom call. Zoom is better than phone call but, and emails the words you know, you know, somebody sends an email and copies 10 people on it. And they’re just a bunch of words and they can be interpreted so differently by all 10 people, and it’s just a mess. So, you know, we’re human beings, we have a lot of senses, you know, we smell, we hear we observe, you know, we speak so there’s a lot of stuff going on. And some of that stuff gets lost in technology.

 

39:15

Yeah, but at least there’s two more pros and cons. Tom, if the list is only one thing from today’s conversation, what we’d like you to be,

 

39:23

know who you are, know who you are. Because if you don’t know who you are, then nothing else matters. I mean, you know, you’re going to have a tough time putting a team together a diverse team together if you don’t know who you are, because they’re not going to want to team up with you. Right? If you don’t know who you are, then how are you going to know where you want to be? 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 years from now, right? So start with yourself leadership that you know they say leadership is you know, three different levels.

 

The first step is lead yourself, then you can lead others and then eventually You can develop future leaders. But if you don’t know who you are, how are you going to lead yourself? And so so know you’re in and you know, I always tell people look, there’s to define who I am, I asked myself three questions. And this was a real revelation I came over in many years. And the first question is, you know, who am I? The second question is, what am I passionate about? And the third question is, what am I good at? So who am I, I’m a servant leader, what am I passionate about? I’m passionate about making other people better. or other companies better or other products better and and what am I good at, I’m good at mentoring leading, right?

 

So the beauty of that is I can take that and I can take that formula anywhere, I could be a servant leader at work, or I could be a servant leader. At home, I could mentor my kids or I can mentor my employees, I can make my customers better I can make my employees better I can make you know my products better. So it’s a formula that that I can take any part of my life and I don’t have to reinvent myself, depending on what situation I’m in, so know who you are, start with that. And, and it’s not so easy, but once you figure it out, then things are easier.

 

41:15

So Tom, how can listeners get in contact with you if they need your help.

 

41:19

So I’m blessed and cursed with the last name. It’s it’s a very unique so if you Google or you know, LinkedIn or whatever, if you just look for caress the which is k e, r, s, z, ti, caress the and, you know, you’ll find me. Also, if you forget the spelling of my name, just go to Amazon and look for C suite and beyond C suite and beyond, on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, then that will get you to the book and then you know, you can backtrack to my website to LinkedIn. And then if you do go to my website, and you fill out a contact page, on my website, just look for kresge.com. You fill out the contact information, and I will send you a summary.

 

So not not the whole book, but it’s about a 20 page 22 page read, which is much easier than a 200 page visit. And it just gives you the the four keys, it gives you a handful of stories. The book is very rich, it’s got a lot of stories, and I lived them all. So I thought it were you know, there were great experiences. So I hope you can learn from them. And I hope you do get the book and I you know, definitely reach out to me and I’m happy to help.

 

42:33

Tom, thank you so much for joining us today. It was such a pleasure to have you here.

 

42:36

Thank you,

 

42:37

guys. Thank you for joining Tom and I On today’s episode, so have a think about how you can implement the four keys of leadership success to your business as well. Think about your character and culture, your vision, your growth strategy, and the members in your team. And of course, if you need help, don’t hesitate to reach out to him. And as before, if you’ve received any value from the show, then I love to get your support.

 

The best way you can show this is to subscribe to the show, leave a review on Apple podcasts and to share the show with somebody who find it useful as well. That’s all for me today. I’ll see you next time.